ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► All your data is out there and you have no idea if any of it's valid.

00:00:04 ◼   ► You're just propagating single bit errors into all of your backups at Infinitum.

00:00:09 ◼   ► You don't worry about that? You don't think about that? How terrible it is?

00:00:14 ◼   ► John, I choose not to worry about that.

00:00:17 ◼   ► Wow. Blame me when your wedding pictures are corrupted and there's a giant pink pixel where your face should be.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Oh, please. Well, firstly, a pink pixel where my face should be would probably be an improvement.

00:00:27 ◼   ► improvement but secondly i have like thirty five back up so that including

00:00:30 ◼   ► the original they're all corrupted because once they go bad in the original

00:00:32 ◼   ► desk you're just corrupting your backups you're just propagating the corruption

00:00:35 ◼   ► because you have no idea it's there i would i have the original dvd the

00:00:39 ◼   ► original dvd those will keep yep oh gosh little little burnt spots on ink

00:00:45 ◼   ► under plastic that'll last forever and it's organic dye so it decomposes

00:00:50 ◼   ► yeah i hate you so much uh so what are we talking about today uh

00:00:55 ◼   ► Well, this is turning into the Accidental Marco podcast because you've gone and sold

00:01:01 ◼   ► stuff again. I'm waiting to be told that I've been replaced or sold or, I don't

00:01:05 ◼   ► know, somebody else is my daddy now. So, a big week?

00:01:09 ◼   ► Yeah, a little bit. At least this is the last one. Like, I'm out of stuff to sell now.

00:01:13 ◼   ► Oh, sure.

00:01:14 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, right. Yeah, well, you just got to make new things to sell.

00:01:16 ◼   ► Yeah, seriously. I saw so many jokes about how your next app has already been sold and

00:01:20 ◼   ► nobody even knows what it is yet.

00:01:22 ◼   ► Yeah, that's pretty good because I don't know what it is yet, so that's pretty good.

00:01:24 ◼   ► At this point I do know what it is, but we'll see.

00:01:28 ◼   ► If you just pay attention to what sessions I go to during WVDC, you'll probably be able to guess it pretty easily.

00:01:32 ◼   ► But it doesn't really matter.

00:01:36 ◼   ► I'm really excited to finally have, like basically

00:01:40 ◼   ► I mentioned at some point before the magazine sale was public,

00:01:44 ◼   ► and I should mention too, Glen and I were arranging this almost a month ago.

00:01:48 ◼   ► And it just so happened that, we did arrange it after

00:01:52 ◼   ► Instapaper thing, but it was before the Tumblr thing. And as the Tumblr thing was going on,

00:01:58 ◼   ► Glenn and I were emailing each other going, "Man, this is going to be hilarious when

00:02:01 ◼   ► we announce this." And everyone's going to think I'm just selling everything I own.

00:02:09 ◼   ► But yeah, the main reasons I wanted to sell the magazine were what I wrote in the blog

00:02:16 ◼   ► post, which is basically I had created a job for myself that was a lot less of what I wanted

00:02:22 ◼   ► do than I expected. Like, it was a lot of just administrative stuff and process stuff

00:02:28 ◼   ► and overhead and almost no development.

00:02:32 ◼   ► You know, I kind of wish that I failed as spectacularly as you do in creating these

00:02:39 ◼   ► lucrative-appearing businesses that you just have to be burdened with unloading. It's

00:02:44 ◼   ► a tough life you live, Marco.

00:02:47 ◼   ► I mean, no, it's, you know, the other main reason that I wanted to sell it is that because

00:02:55 ◼   ► it was taking up my time, and it's a mental burden as well, having these things, you know,

00:03:00 ◼   ► like everything that you do, you know, occupies some kind of space in your mind and in your,

00:03:06 ◼   ► you know, like in your present state of mind.

00:03:08 ◼   ► I'm probably abusing these terms.

00:03:09 ◼   ► I'm definitely not a Buddhist or anything that anyone who would be trained properly

00:03:14 ◼   ► in being able to describe these things, but I don't like having things on my plate that

00:03:27 ◼   ► I'm not really into.

00:03:29 ◼   ► And obviously there's some stuff that you've got to do.

00:03:31 ◼   ► You've just got to do it.

00:03:32 ◼   ► You've got to do your taxes.

00:03:34 ◼   ► You've got to clean your house.

00:03:36 ◼   ► There's stuff you've got to do.

00:03:38 ◼   ► But something like making your own business, you have control over that.

00:03:43 ◼   ► So anyway, one of the reasons why I wanted to sell Instapaper was because it was weighing

00:03:50 ◼   ► on me mentally that I didn't want to put in the effort into it that it really deserved,

00:03:55 ◼   ► and a lot of it I couldn't put in the effort that it really deserved.

00:03:58 ◼   ► With the magazine, it was more like, "I can keep doing this indefinitely," because it

00:04:03 ◼   ► wasn't taking up much of my time, but why keep a business around that I'm barely putting

00:04:08 ◼   ► anything into?

00:04:11 ◼   ► And what I learned also, like coding…

00:04:13 ◼   ► You know the answer to that question though, right?

00:04:15 ◼   ► Well because it makes money, right?

00:04:16 ◼   ► Is that the answer?

00:04:17 ◼   ► Yes, that's the usual answer.

00:04:18 ◼   ► Like, "Well, I keep a business around that makes money that I barely put anything into."

00:04:23 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the answer.

00:04:24 ◼   ► Well, but the reality is, like, you know, you can ask people who buy a restaurant, you

00:04:29 ◼   ► know, thinking, "Oh, this will generate money forever."

00:04:31 ◼   ► Like, you know, maybe, but you're going to be involved whether you like it or not.

00:04:36 ◼   ► Like it's going to need you.

00:04:38 ◼   ► You know, like it's the idea of a business that just generates passive money, you never

00:04:42 ◼   ► have to touch it, those do exist, but not really in the software world.

00:04:47 ◼   ► They really don't exist.

00:04:49 ◼   ► You can neglect something for a while, and it can work for a little while, but it doesn't

00:04:54 ◼   ► really exist in the sense that you're still going to have to maintain that, you're still

00:04:58 ◼   ► going to be responsible for that.

00:05:01 ◼   ► You know, it doesn't, you can't just let it sit there and stagnate forever.

00:05:05 ◼   ► Eventually, things are going to dwindle down.

00:05:07 ◼   ► People are going to see that you haven't done much to it in a while, and they're going to

00:05:12 ◼   ► move on.

00:05:13 ◼   ► Or something's going to break, like the TextMate 1 problem.

00:05:16 ◼   ► Something might break at any point and cause problems.

00:05:19 ◼   ► So...

00:05:20 ◼   ► Well, there's no reason you couldn't have done exactly what Glenn is doing, though.

00:05:24 ◼   ► So he's taking the reins now, and he's not a developer, right?

00:05:26 ◼   ► Well, not this kind of developer.

00:05:28 ◼   ► So he is just bringing people on to take over development with the iOS app, to do all sorts

00:05:34 ◼   ► of ancillary things while he sort of wrangles them.

00:05:37 ◼   ► So it seems to me that it's like if your heart was in it, if this is what you really

00:05:41 ◼   ► wanted to be was like run a publication and grow a publication, you would be doing it.

00:05:47 ◼   ► And it has less to do with whether the thing is making lots of money or a little bit money

00:05:54 ◼   ► or how long it's going to make money because you're perfectly capable of doing the things

00:05:57 ◼   ► that Glenn is doing with it, basically delegating to other people to do all the stuff, delegating

00:06:01 ◼   ► the development of everything. It's just that that seems like not something you want to

00:06:05 ◼   ► do. That's right. And I could delegate the development

00:06:09 ◼   ► to somebody else, but the development was the part I liked the most. But there just

00:06:13 ◼   ► wasn't that much that I wanted to do with it. I loved building the app. I loved all

00:06:19 ◼   ► the little design tricks and everything, and I loved doing all that. But then once the

00:06:23 ◼   ► app is done, I'm like, "Well, you know..." It's in maintenance mode, basically. There

00:06:29 ◼   ► certainly features you can add. There's some good stuff Glam wants to do to it. But it

00:06:33 ◼   ► was all stuff that I really didn't care that much about, I wasn't that motivated to do.

00:06:37 ◼   ► And ultimately it wasn't... You're right that if I wanted to keep doing this, I could have.

00:06:45 ◼   ► There's nothing... Of course I could have. My theory is that... Well, I know, just the

00:06:51 ◼   ► the way I feel, I know that I'm not really, I'm just not that into doing the management

00:07:01 ◼   ► and the business stuff.

00:07:03 ◼   ► I do that stuff because I have to, not because I really love it.

00:07:09 ◼   ► And so the magazine had become, my role in the magazine had become pretty much all business

00:07:14 ◼   ► stuff and overhead and none of the stuff I wanted to do very often.

00:07:19 ◼   ► And so what I also learned, I was talking to our friend _DavidSmith recently, like I

00:07:24 ◼   ► don't know, a couple hours ago.

00:07:26 ◼   ► Because, you know, DavidSmith has lots of apps.

00:07:30 ◼   ► He has a portfolio of many apps.

00:07:32 ◼   ► He does a lot of things.

00:07:34 ◼   ► I don't think I can really do that.

00:07:36 ◼   ► You know, when I started working on the magazine alongside Instapaper, I started learning some

00:07:40 ◼   ► of these difficulties in my motivation or my personality or whatever it is.

00:07:46 ◼   ► I'm not very good at working on multiple apps at the same time, of the same type.

00:07:51 ◼   ► I can do a web app and a native app that those are different enough.

00:07:55 ◼   ► I can do an app, a podcast, and a blog because those are very different things, and they

00:08:01 ◼   ► serve different parts of my brain and my satisfaction in what I do and what I make.

00:08:08 ◼   ► But I really don't think I'm very good at having multiple apps that all need attention.

00:08:15 ◼   ► When I had the nursing clock app, that was nothing. I crapped it out in a couple of days

00:08:21 ◼   ► and it didn't require any maintenance. It made something like thirty bucks over the

00:08:25 ◼   ► course of its life. It didn't require any maintenance. That's a whole other story.

00:08:31 ◼   ► But to have two apps going at the same time that both need a good amount of attention

00:08:36 ◼   ► ongoing, I can't do that. I really don't work well that way. So I really, I wanted

00:08:44 ◼   ► to start this new thing I'm doing, and it's an iOS app, so I wanted to start a new thing,

00:08:53 ◼   ► and I know I could have kept doing the magazine, but I was so not that into it already, just

00:08:59 ◼   ► because of what my job had become that I created for myself, I was so not that into it already,

00:09:05 ◼   ► I wanted a clean plate.

00:09:09 ◼   ► I wanted to have nothing else competing for my attention in the app space.

00:09:13 ◼   ► Also, I mentioned last episode or recently, I don't know

00:09:17 ◼   ► when, I don't want to talk this whole episode by the way, but I mentioned last episode or something

00:09:21 ◼   ► like that, that I work in bursts of productivity.

00:09:25 ◼   ► Running a publication doesn't really allow you to do that because

00:09:29 ◼   ► there's a publication schedule. So every two weeks,

00:09:33 ◼   ► even though it wasn't a lot of work for me, you know, Glenn was doing almost all of it already, but

00:09:37 ◼   ► every two weeks I had to do XYZ.

00:09:41 ◼   ► And doing a podcast, that's a little bit different

00:09:45 ◼   ► in that it's easier and it's more of me being creative and having this creative output.

00:09:49 ◼   ► Publishing an issue with a magazine does not involve creativity on my

00:09:53 ◼   ► part by very much. I picked a few photos and picked the cover image and that's about it.

00:09:57 ◼   ► And then I had to pay checks to everybody and do the server push

00:10:01 ◼   ► stuff like that. It just wasn't that interesting. So having to do that every two weeks felt

00:10:07 ◼   ► like a restriction on me. Whereas, oh, and you can't really take a week off. At least

00:10:12 ◼   ► this show, if we really want to, we can take a week off. Not that any of us are likely

00:10:16 ◼   ► to do that, but if we really wanted to, we could take a week off. With a publication,

00:10:22 ◼   ► you can't. So it locked me into this fixed schedule, but I don't really work very well

00:10:27 ◼   ► that way. So that was another reason. But anyway, the main reason I wanted to sell it

00:10:33 ◼   ► was because I wanted to clear my plate and be able to put myself into my next project

00:10:39 ◼   ► fully.

00:10:42 ◼   ► That makes complete sense. And not to psychoanalyze you at all, but it seems to me that we're

00:10:48 ◼   ► seeing a trend, and certainly I've known you for a really darn long time, so I feel

00:10:53 ◼   ► like I'm somewhat qualified to speak about this. It seems like I'm seeing a trend that

00:10:57 ◼   ► anything that's compulsory you tend to not like. And in the case of the magazine, once

00:11:02 ◼   ► you fit…

00:11:03 ◼   ► You don't say…

00:11:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I know, right?

00:11:05 ◼   ► …a trend since like first grade.

00:11:06 ◼   ► Yeah. So, I mean, that's exactly my point. I mean, you've talked a lot about how you

00:11:10 ◼   ► don't really like homework. You've talked about how you don't really love paying taxes,

00:11:14 ◼   ► which granted, who does? You've talked…

00:11:16 ◼   ► I know. I love paying taxes. I don't like dealing with it.

00:11:19 ◼   ► Well, you know what I mean.

00:11:20 ◼   ► So, and also it seems like part of the reason

00:11:24 ◼   ► that you got turned off by the magazine

00:11:26 ◼   ► to build on what you were saying before

00:11:28 ◼   ► is because you had to be productive at certain times.

00:11:30 ◼   ► It's not that you hated necessarily doing the work,

00:11:34 ◼   ► at least that's what it, it sounds to me anyway,

00:11:36 ◼   ► that it's not necessarily that you hated doing the work

00:11:38 ◼   ► as much as you had to do it at a certain time

00:11:40 ◼   ► and that's really tough.

00:11:42 ◼   ► And the other thing I'll say,

00:11:43 ◼   ► and then you can refute everything I just told you

00:11:44 ◼   ► if you want because I'm trying to put words in your mouth.

00:11:47 ◼   ► The other thing I'll say is it's like the same reason you don't have the 1M anymore.

00:11:51 ◼   ► You've got your fancy nice car.

00:11:53 ◼   ► You don't want to have to choose between two equally fancy nice cars.

00:11:56 ◼   ► It's so ridiculously good.

00:11:57 ◼   ► I know.

00:11:58 ◼   ► And you're going to get me started and we don't want to do that because nobody can

00:12:01 ◼   ► listen to me.

00:12:02 ◼   ► Go ahead.

00:12:03 ◼   ► Move on.

00:12:04 ◼   ► But you know what I mean?

00:12:05 ◼   ► You don't want to have to choose between two nice things anymore than you want to have

00:12:08 ◼   ► to choose between two crummy things or whatever the case may be.

00:12:12 ◼   ► And whether or not other people understand what the burden was, the fact of the matter

00:12:17 ◼   ► is you felt it was a burden, and you felt that you had to work on it rather than desired

00:12:21 ◼   ► to, and so that's the point at which, at least to me it seems, that's the point at which

00:12:25 ◼   ► you sold Instapaper, when you felt like you had to work on it. It's the point in which

00:12:29 ◼   ► you sold the magazines, when you felt like you had to work on it, and when you didn't

00:12:32 ◼   ► want to work on it anymore. I mean, from an outsider's point of view, that's what I'm

00:12:36 ◼   ► seeing.

00:12:37 ◼   ► Yeah, that's pretty accurate. I mean, you know, I'm not a very complicated personality.

00:12:42 ◼   ► You know, there's not a lot of layers here. It's pretty much what you see is what you

00:12:47 ◼   ► get like you know I don't make any effort to hide all that stuff and you nailed it that's me.

00:12:51 ◼   ► I mean that's pretty fair. John, any observations on that before we totally sidestep?

00:12:56 ◼   ► No, I don't think so. I think Marco is doing what we would all do if we could.

00:13:00 ◼   ► Not do the things you don't want to do, do the things you do want to do, right?

00:13:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:13:05 ◼   ► All right, do you want to share anything about this forthcoming app? And I did not

00:13:12 ◼   ► figure out in advance whether or not I should ask that question.

00:13:15 ◼   ► So...

00:13:16 ◼   ► Nah, not yet.

00:13:17 ◼   ► I will in time.

00:13:18 ◼   ► You know, honestly, I'm kind of, I'm still debating in my head, because debating out

00:13:24 ◼   ► loud is boring, I'm still debating in my head whether to pre-announce anything about the

00:13:31 ◼   ► app before it's ready, whether to put up like a splash page and do all that bullsh*t.

00:13:35 ◼   ► Oops, I gotta bleep that.

00:13:37 ◼   ► Or you know, all the stuff people do, you know, just hype up their app, have a queue,

00:13:43 ◼   ► I'm not going to do that.

00:13:44 ◼   ► But put up a splash page and tease it, say, coming soon.

00:13:48 ◼   ► I don't know if I want to do that,

00:13:49 ◼   ► or if I want to just say what the app will be,

00:13:51 ◼   ► and then collect feedback at the expense of having competitors

00:13:55 ◼   ► then copy me and stuff.

00:13:56 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:13:58 ◼   ► I'm going to decide all those things

00:14:00 ◼   ► over the next few months.

00:14:02 ◼   ► But what I have decided is that I'm not

00:14:06 ◼   ► going to make any major decisions about the app's

00:14:10 ◼   ► feature set or design or layout or navigational structure

00:14:14 ◼   ► until after WVDC.

00:14:15 ◼   ► Because I want to see what iOS 7 introduces.

00:14:17 ◼   ► I want to see what's different and what's coming up.

00:14:19 ◼   ► And then I will decide fully, here's

00:14:23 ◼   ► the kind of feature set this will have.

00:14:25 ◼   ► Here's the business model.

00:14:26 ◼   ► If they introduce something like upgrade pricing or trials,

00:14:29 ◼   ► that might influence my decision on the business model.

00:14:32 ◼   ► So I don't want to make any decisions yet

00:14:34 ◼   ► on all those big things.

00:14:35 ◼   ► And then I'll see.

00:14:36 ◼   ► Maybe throughout the summer, maybe I'll tease it.

00:14:38 ◼   ► Maybe I will just announce it outright and it won't be available yet, or maybe I'll

00:14:43 ◼   ► just shut up about it until it's ready.

00:14:45 ◼   ► I don't know yet.

00:14:46 ◼   ► Well, did you see what Justin Williams is doing with whatever he's building?

00:14:50 ◼   ► You know, I didn't have a chance to look at that yet.

00:14:52 ◼   ► Yeah, the Passbook thing.

00:14:53 ◼   ► The Passbook thing?

00:14:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I forget what he's calling it.

00:14:56 ◼   ► Man, this is an accidental podcast.

00:14:57 ◼   ► PIP-Pass.

00:14:58 ◼   ► Any sort.

00:14:59 ◼   ► Yes.

00:15:00 ◼   ► It's a car reference, Casey.

00:15:01 ◼   ► We should know this.

00:15:02 ◼   ► I know.

00:15:03 ◼   ► I'm disappointed myself.

00:15:04 ◼   ► premise, in case you're not familiar, is you get this Passbook item into Passbook,

00:15:09 ◼   ► and I guess what he's doing is he's going to update it with little bits and blurbs about

00:15:14 ◼   ► the forthcoming app as he decides to release it. And whether or not you believe in pre-releasing

00:15:20 ◼   ► things and pre-announcing things, I think it's a very clever and different take on

00:15:25 ◼   ► something that we've seen ad nauseum our entire lives. So I didn't know, Marco, if

00:15:29 ◼   ► you had any thoughts on that. I guess if you haven't really looked into it, you can go

00:15:31 ◼   ► ahead and use the book.

00:15:32 ◼   ► But it looks like the point of it is to do things,

00:15:37 ◼   ► it looks like a combination of being able to tease apps

00:15:40 ◼   ► that are upcoming and also the iOS version of a newsletter.

00:15:43 ◼   ► Traditional software developers, especially indies

00:15:50 ◼   ► who have sold on the Mac and stuff, they have,

00:15:53 ◼   ► for a long time, had mailing lists they maintain.

00:15:56 ◼   ► And then, like, Rogue Amoeba has talked about this before,

00:15:59 ◼   ► friends over there where they hardly ever mail anything out to people, but when they

00:16:03 ◼   ► make a brand new product or a major update, then they will. And that's always a significant

00:16:07 ◼   ► source of upgrade revenue and of customers coming back

00:16:11 ◼   ► and buying new stuff. And people actually like that. And on iOS, there's no good way to

00:16:15 ◼   ► do it. You can kind of, you aren't allowed to do it with push notifications, although people

00:16:19 ◼   ► do, but you aren't allowed to technically. And you don't want to annoy people.

00:16:23 ◼   ► And you also don't usually have access to things

00:16:27 ◼   ► their email address.

00:16:28 ◼   ► So this is an interesting idea if it's

00:16:30 ◼   ► going to address some of that beyond just the promoting

00:16:33 ◼   ► upcoming app thing.

00:16:35 ◼   ► But I guess that's all I have to say,

00:16:37 ◼   ► because I don't know much about it yet.

00:16:40 ◼   ► John, did you have any thoughts?

00:16:42 ◼   ► Marco was saying he wasn't sure whether he wanted to tease

00:16:45 ◼   ► this thing ahead of time.

00:16:46 ◼   ► It seems pretty clear to me that you

00:16:48 ◼   ► don't want to tease it ahead of time,

00:16:49 ◼   ► but are only considering it because it

00:16:50 ◼   ► may be a good way to build good buzz for your application.

00:16:55 ◼   ► Well, here's the thing.

00:16:56 ◼   ► I've always thought building Buzz before you could actually get it is kind of a waste.

00:17:00 ◼   ► Because I know when...

00:17:02 ◼   ► I forget where I was.

00:17:04 ◼   ► I was talking to somebody about this.

00:17:05 ◼   ► Sorry to whoever that was.

00:17:06 ◼   ► Hopefully it wasn't you guys.

00:17:09 ◼   ► That there's this movie for...

00:17:12 ◼   ► It's a documentary about sign painters.

00:17:14 ◼   ► People used to paint signs by hand before vinyl signs and everything came out.

00:17:18 ◼   ► And they keep promoting this thing everywhere.

00:17:22 ◼   ► And I see it everywhere.

00:17:23 ◼   ► And it's a little documentary.

00:17:25 ◼   ► it's been at film festivals and stuff,

00:17:27 ◼   ► but I can't get it.

00:17:29 ◼   ► I can't buy it, I can't rent it, I can't view it online.

00:17:33 ◼   ► No matter what I do, I won't be able to get it for months.

00:17:35 ◼   ► And so they're getting all this publicity out there,

00:17:39 ◼   ► and I'm interested, I'm responding, I'm saying,

00:17:42 ◼   ► I want to see this movie, I will pay a few bucks right now

00:17:45 ◼   ► to see this movie if you can get it to me,

00:17:47 ◼   ► but it's not out.

00:17:48 ◼   ► And that drives me crazy as a customer,

00:17:52 ◼   ► because what's probably gonna happen

00:17:54 ◼   ► is it's gonna come out in six months,

00:17:55 ◼   ► and I won't care anymore and I will have forgotten by then.

00:17:58 ◼   ► So I hate pre-hyping things

00:18:01 ◼   ► because you get people interested.

00:18:04 ◼   ► I mean, this is one of the reasons

00:18:04 ◼   ► why the Apple strategy works so well.

00:18:06 ◼   ► Apple says nothing until the thing's available

00:18:10 ◼   ► and then it's like, all right,

00:18:10 ◼   ► here's this awesome new thing, you want this, right?

00:18:13 ◼   ► You can buy it today or this Friday.

00:18:15 ◼   ► You can respond immediately.

00:18:18 ◼   ► The hype does something for you.

00:18:19 ◼   ► When this product's not even available yet

00:18:22 ◼   ► and not gonna be available for months,

00:18:24 ◼   ► What can you really do with that?

00:18:26 ◼   ► What can you really do with all that hype?

00:18:28 ◼   ► Like, to me, I think it's kind of arrogant

00:18:31 ◼   ► to expect people to remember all that crap

00:18:34 ◼   ► in two or three months.

00:18:36 ◼   ► - Well, you would, I mean, I assume you wouldn't,

00:18:37 ◼   ► like, it's a spectrum here.

00:18:39 ◼   ► You wouldn't tease it way, way, way ahead of time,

00:18:41 ◼   ► but perhaps, like, basically, first,

00:18:43 ◼   ► you don't put anything up until the thing

00:18:44 ◼   ► is basically done, and all you're doing

00:18:46 ◼   ► is delaying it so you can build this hype.

00:18:47 ◼   ► So maybe if it's only, like, one week or two weeks lead time

00:18:50 ◼   ► when you are actually finished, basically,

00:18:52 ◼   ► you're just like, "This is the ramp up to sale." I wouldn't say do like they do with the movies

00:18:57 ◼   ► and tease it the summer before it comes out with some obscure image to get people excited about

00:19:02 ◼   ► what the movie is. What I was getting at before is that if marketing was not a factor at all,

00:19:11 ◼   ► and human beings weren't buying this application and you were just making it for your own

00:19:15 ◼   ► edification, you would release it when it's done and not say anything about it ahead of time. I

00:19:20 ◼   ► I mean, you won't even say what it is at this point.

00:19:23 ◼   ► So it seems like your inclination is, "Why would I ever tell anyone anything until it's

00:19:27 ◼   ► done, and then I would give it to you, and here it is."

00:19:29 ◼   ► But the only reason you're considering it is because maybe that attitude is a little

00:19:33 ◼   ► bit too close to this.

00:19:34 ◼   ► Maybe there's something that's a happy medium where three days before I have a countdown

00:19:38 ◼   ► clock or a week ahead of time I put an image or something like that.

00:19:41 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:19:42 ◼   ► I mean, you have to look at it as, for me, what's in it for me, really?

00:19:47 ◼   ► What is my benefit from pre-announcing and pre-teasing something?

00:19:53 ◼   ► It's hard, honestly.

00:19:54 ◼   ► I would love to share stuff with people.

00:19:55 ◼   ► I would love to share information with people.

00:19:57 ◼   ► I've been burned a lot in the past by being ripped off.

00:20:01 ◼   ► I'm still very sensitive to that.

00:20:03 ◼   ► I'm trying to reduce my sensitivity to that over time, but I still am very sensitive to

00:20:08 ◼   ► it.

00:20:09 ◼   ► The last thing I want to do is announce what I'm going to do and then get ripped off before

00:20:14 ◼   ► I even do it.

00:20:15 ◼   ► Everything is a remix, Marco.

00:20:19 ◼   ► The one thing I would say and then maybe we can do a quick sponsor.

00:20:22 ◼   ► The one thing I would say is that in my personal opinion, you've just preannounced everything

00:20:27 ◼   ► you should need to preannounce or need is probably a poor choice of words but everything

00:20:31 ◼   ► you might want to preannounce.

00:20:33 ◼   ► We know that you're working on an iOS app.

00:20:35 ◼   ► We know that it's going to be something different and I don't think we really need

00:20:38 ◼   ► to know any more than that.

00:20:39 ◼   ► I think I echo what you were saying earlier, that it's almost disrespectful to say more

00:20:45 ◼   ► than that.

00:20:46 ◼   ► I mean, people know you've cleaned your plate of all your obligations.

00:20:49 ◼   ► Presumably you've found something that's no longer compulsory but actually interesting

00:20:53 ◼   ► to work on.

00:20:54 ◼   ► And so everyone knows that you're not going to sit on your island with your yachts and

00:20:58 ◼   ► helicopters and your M5 and drive in circles.

00:21:01 ◼   ► So that's all I think anyone wants to know, is that we're going to get something else

00:21:05 ◼   ► in the world thanks to you.

00:21:07 ◼   ► I can tell you that it will contain a UI WebView.

00:21:10 ◼   ► And it is not a watch.

00:21:11 ◼   ► Ooh.

00:21:14 ◼   ► Fair enough.

00:21:15 ◼   ► So who do we like?

00:21:17 ◼   ► This week, we have two brand new sponsors.

00:21:19 ◼   ► I'll tell you about the first one right now.

00:21:21 ◼   ► The first one is from RAM object software.

00:21:23 ◼   ► It's called Oxygen for Cocoa.

00:21:26 ◼   ► And it's a new programming language.

00:21:29 ◼   ► And it's for Cocoa and the Objective-C runtime.

00:21:31 ◼   ► So I want to explain this properly.

00:21:33 ◼   ► Give me some leeway here.

00:21:35 ◼   ► So they say, especially they even address this comment to John,

00:21:38 ◼   ► it is not a bridge, and it is not an abstraction layer.

00:21:42 ◼   ► It is a true language for the platform,

00:21:45 ◼   ► and it replaces Objective-C within the tool stack.

00:21:48 ◼   ► So it gives you full and direct access

00:21:51 ◼   ► to all the Cocoa classes and APIs.

00:21:53 ◼   ► All the objects you interact with in the code

00:21:55 ◼   ► are the real Objective-C objects.

00:21:57 ◼   ► You're calling methods on a real UI button,

00:21:59 ◼   ► you're implementing a real UI table view controller

00:22:01 ◼   ► subclass, et cetera.

00:22:03 ◼   ► And it compiles down to regular Objective-C runtime objects

00:22:06 ◼   ► and native code.

00:22:08 ◼   ► So the resulting executable is all but indistinguishable

00:22:11 ◼   ► from one created with Objective-C and Xcode.

00:22:13 ◼   ► And if you debug the app or if you run it in instruments,

00:22:16 ◼   ► it looks like it's written in Objective-C,

00:22:17 ◼   ► so all those things just work.

00:22:19 ◼   ► So the language is based on object Pascal.

00:22:22 ◼   ► But there's a good reason that their tagline is,

00:22:25 ◼   ► it's not your daddy's Pascal.

00:22:27 ◼   ► I don't know, my daddy didn't have Pascal, maybe yours did.

00:22:29 ◼   ► 'Cause it goes well beyond what most people associate

00:22:32 ◼   ► with Pascal, but it maintains all the readability

00:22:35 ◼   ► and consistency that makes Pascal a great language.

00:22:37 ◼   ► So it has many advanced features that they say blows Objective

00:22:41 ◼   ► C out of the water, things like future types, class contracts,

00:22:45 ◼   ► and many elements that make it just more

00:22:46 ◼   ► convenient and straightforward to use in Objective C.

00:22:49 ◼   ► For instance, you can use plus to concatenate two NS strings,

00:22:52 ◼   ► and it will automatically box from integer to an NS number

00:22:55 ◼   ► if you call method on it, stuff like that.

00:22:58 ◼   ► And the other cool thing about this

00:23:00 ◼   ► is that this Oxygen language is also available for the .NET

00:23:03 ◼   ► platform and for Java and Android.

00:23:06 ◼   ► So if you are writing applications

00:23:07 ◼   ► for multiple platforms or, say, a server back end,

00:23:10 ◼   ► you can do it all in the same language.

00:23:12 ◼   ► Oxygen has been around on .NET for about eight years,

00:23:15 ◼   ► and it's the most widely used non-Microsoft language

00:23:18 ◼   ► on the platform.

00:23:20 ◼   ► So what they say is it isn't to encourage the write

00:23:26 ◼   ► once, run everywhere kind of crappy cross-platform apps,

00:23:29 ◼   ► But it's designed to let you create platforms--

00:23:31 ◼   ► or create apps for each platform natively,

00:23:33 ◼   ► but you can use the same language in all places.

00:23:35 ◼   ► So you learn it once, and then you know it.

00:23:38 ◼   ► Anyway, you can find out more at remobjects.com.

00:23:41 ◼   ► That's R-E-M objects.com/oxygen.

00:23:45 ◼   ► But it's oxygen spelled with an E on the end.

00:23:47 ◼   ► So it looks like oxygen, but it's pronounced oxygen.

00:23:50 ◼   ► So O-X-Y-G-E-N-E. Or you can go to oxygenlanguage.com,

00:23:54 ◼   ► spelled the same way.

00:23:56 ◼   ► Listeners of this show can get 20% off any of the product

00:23:58 ◼   ► with coupon code ATP13.

00:24:01 ◼   ► Once again, that's ramobjects.com/oxygen

00:24:03 ◼   ► with an E on the end,

00:24:04 ◼   ► and use coupon code ATP13 for 20% off.

00:24:07 ◼   ► Thank you very much to Oxygen for Cocoa

00:24:12 ◼   ► from RamObject Software.

00:24:14 ◼   ► I was pronouncing this Oxygen in my head

00:24:15 ◼   ► the entire time we were setting up the sponsorship

00:24:17 ◼   ► until they gave me the text and they--

00:24:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, a lot of people-- - They specifically gave me

00:24:19 ◼   ► the pronunciation guide that it is pronounced Oxygen.

00:24:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, the people have been sending me the links

00:24:25 ◼   ► and I was going to the site and reading the site

00:24:27 ◼   ► and also pronouncing it the wrong way into my head.

00:24:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:30 ◼   ► Pronounce "Oxygen" but spell "Oxygen."

00:24:32 ◼   ► All right.

00:24:33 ◼   ► The top thing on their site should have been just the pronunciation guy.

00:24:37 ◼   ► Is there anyone behind this that we would know?

00:24:39 ◼   ► Because I always wonder where these companies come from, because what they're doing is not

00:24:42 ◼   ► something like, "Oh, I just think I'll do this thing where you write in one language

00:24:45 ◼   ► and deploy on all these different platforms."

00:24:47 ◼   ► Yeah, it isn't a small job.

00:24:48 ◼   ► Right.

00:24:49 ◼   ► And yet, they seem like, "Where do these people come from?"

00:24:53 ◼   ► where they must have been toiling on this in obscurity for years.

00:24:57 ◼   ► Well, they said they've been on Microsoft platforms for eight years. So I think that's

00:25:01 ◼   ► probably where they came from, is they started out there and then they migrated the language.

00:25:05 ◼   ► They were just off our radar, I guess. Yeah, and now they've branched out into iOS. That

00:25:07 ◼   ► makes some sense, because I'm like, "How in the world do you ever accomplish that in any

00:25:12 ◼   ► reasonable time frame?" I have no idea. And more importantly, you look at this and you're

00:25:17 ◼   ► like, "Why can't Apple do stuff like this?" But they're not.

00:25:21 ◼   ► can. They just, yeah, aren't they? Well, they don't care about anyone but themselves.

00:25:25 ◼   ► They themselves. And paying taxes. Let's have a whole podcast about paying taxes. That sounds

00:25:29 ◼   ► like fun. Oh, that sounds super fun. Oh, God.

00:25:33 ◼   ► And sort of kind of speaking of paying taxes, the other thing I wanted to at least briefly

00:25:37 ◼   ► talk about is Tim Cook at All Things D, which was what, last night, I believe, at the time

00:25:43 ◼   ► of recording, which is Tuesday night. So there were a couple of interesting things that came

00:25:50 ◼   ► of this and to be honest this conversation may be fairly short but one of the things

00:25:55 ◼   ► that I thought was really awesome was the way he talked about how Apple views their

00:26:03 ◼   ► job. Tim said, "We think that the customer pays us to make certain choices on their behalf.

00:26:11 ◼   ► Instead of going in and I've seen some settings on these phones where it said that you're

00:26:18 ◼   ► deep into the bowels of the thing, choosing this and that and the other and the other

00:26:22 ◼   ► and the other. I don't think that's what most customers want. Do some want it? Yes, of course.

00:26:28 ◼   ► But is that a mainstream customer want? I don't think so.

00:26:33 ◼   ► I thought that was about as good a way as any that I've ever heard somebody sum up the

00:26:39 ◼   ► way Apple approaches products. And I know when I talk to a lot of my developer friends,

00:26:46 ◼   ► particularly the local ones that work, say, in .NET or other languages, they all get very

00:26:50 ◼   ► angry about the fact that they don't have a lot of control over iOS devices, and that's

00:26:54 ◼   ► why a lot of them use Android devices.

00:26:57 ◼   ► And I keep coming back to, you know, five, ten years ago, maybe ten years ago, I would

00:27:02 ◼   ► have much preferred an Android device because I could fiddle with it and tweak it and turn

00:27:07 ◼   ► it into something honestly kind of awful.

00:27:10 ◼   ► But now I just want stuff to work, and I want Apple to make those choices for me.

00:27:15 ◼   ► And again, I thought this was just an unbelievably good and short way of summing it up.

00:27:19 ◼   ► I don't know what you guys thought about it.

00:27:22 ◼   ► I always get nervous when I hear Tim Cook saying product-related things.

00:27:26 ◼   ► Not that I think he shouldn't.

00:27:28 ◼   ► I mean, the CEO, he speaks for the company, that's fine and everything.

00:27:33 ◼   ► But I guess my picture of him in my head is not that—that's not his strength.

00:27:39 ◼   ► I would much rather see him—when he starts talking about a similar thing like why they

00:27:43 ◼   ► don't have a large line of phones and all the different things about international business

00:27:48 ◼   ► and manufacturing.

00:27:49 ◼   ► I'm confident that he's an expert in those areas.

00:27:51 ◼   ► But in these other areas, I feel like he is doing what a lot of other normal CEOs do,

00:27:56 ◼   ► which is relaying the result of discussions with the lower level experts in the company

00:28:03 ◼   ► who are at the tier below him or the tier below them.

00:28:08 ◼   ► I don't know, it does sound right.

00:28:13 ◼   ► It sounds like a summary to me of previous discussions.

00:28:17 ◼   ► If you left it up to Tim Cook what things would be allowed to be in settings and what

00:28:21 ◼   ► things wouldn't be, I feel like he would make bad decisions in one direction or another.

00:28:26 ◼   ► He would have very few settings, but they would be the wrong settings, or he would have

00:28:30 ◼   ► no settings, and that's untenable.

00:28:31 ◼   ► Just ask Marco.

00:28:32 ◼   ► Or he would have too many settings.

00:28:37 ◼   ► The whole settings thing, this could be a whole separate topic, the reason we talk about

00:28:43 ◼   ► it is because it's not easy.

00:28:44 ◼   ► You can't just give a rule like, "Oh, you should have no settings," or, "You should

00:28:47 ◼   ► have as few settings as possible."

00:28:49 ◼   ► You have to have just the exact right settings, and you have to know, and it's kind of like

00:28:54 ◼   ► a gut feeling or whatever, what are the right settings to have?

00:28:56 ◼   ► What is important and what isn't?

00:28:58 ◼   ► Because we all know that the settings in an application can make or break it, right?

00:29:02 ◼   ► It doesn't mean you have to have a lot of them, but if you don't know what you're doing,

00:29:05 ◼   ► yeah, then you end up with a lot of them.

00:29:06 ◼   ► And it's like, well, at least everyone who needs to change something can change the thing

00:29:09 ◼   ► they want to change.

00:29:10 ◼   ► That's pretty terrible, right?

00:29:11 ◼   ► But by the same token, if you put in the wrong settings, there's only three settings, and

00:29:14 ◼   ► they're the wrong ones, it's like, "Man, this app would be perfect if I could only do X."

00:29:19 ◼   ► And it doesn't have to be a frivolous thing.

00:29:21 ◼   ► It could be something important.

00:29:23 ◼   ► It totally breaks the way I work with this application because I can't change this particular

00:29:29 ◼   ► behavior and it drives me insane.

00:29:30 ◼   ► and the application is no good for you.

00:29:33 ◼   ► And everyone's got one of those, and you can't include everybody, so that's the art of it,

00:29:36 ◼   ► figuring out for most people, these are the top five most important things that should

00:29:41 ◼   ► be settings because neither decision is clearly the right thing to do, and that's what I'm

00:29:45 ◼   ► going to go with.

00:29:46 ◼   ► And that is sort of an art more than anything else.

00:29:47 ◼   ► So when I hear a manager-y type person giving a pat answer, like, "Oh, they pay us to make

00:29:51 ◼   ► decisions for them," and I know some people want settings, but most people don't, and

00:29:55 ◼   ► people applaud that.

00:29:56 ◼   ► I'm like, "That's like a platitude.

00:30:00 ◼   ► If I know that it's backed by the good taste to know which ones to set, then that's fine.

00:30:05 ◼   ► But if I just hear it in isolation, I'm like, "Well, you know, I'm not impressed by that

00:30:09 ◼   ► statement."

00:30:10 ◼   ► Or if I'm being mean to Tim Cook, I don't know.

00:30:12 ◼   ► Well, no, I don't think you're being mean to Tim Cook, but what I think is hard is to

00:30:18 ◼   ► realize—or at least hard for me anyway—is to realize that Tim may not be the man that

00:30:24 ◼   ► knows that, unlike Steve, but he's smart enough to find the person, man or woman, that

00:30:31 ◼   ► can make that call and empower them to do so.

00:30:34 ◼   ► And I think giving Johnny, Ive, and Craig Federicchi a little bit more control is evidence

00:30:41 ◼   ► of that.

00:30:42 ◼   ► That I think Tim knows that he's not that guy, but he will empower the guy or girl that

00:30:47 ◼   ► is that guy or girl.

00:30:49 ◼   ► Did that make any sense at all?

00:30:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:51 ◼   ► Like, he's got it.

00:30:52 ◼   ► It's unfair to him.

00:30:53 ◼   ► can be on that stage, and it's got to be him. So he has to speak for the whole company,

00:30:57 ◼   ► right? I mean, like you said, we were kind of spoiled by Steve Jobs, where he could speak

00:31:01 ◼   ► about that particular topic. Like, it was reversed with Steve Jobs. When Steve Jobs

00:31:04 ◼   ► would talk about, like, supply chains and inventory and transformation, then you could

00:31:08 ◼   ► tell he was not talking about something that he was deeply knowledgeable about, but he

00:31:11 ◼   ► was merely channeling Tim Cook. And it's weird to see that reversed now, you know, when Tim

00:31:15 ◼   ► is talking about financial stuff and supply chains. That's like him talking, and the other

00:31:20 ◼   ► times it's him representing the rest of the company.

00:31:23 ◼   ► Well, I think, first of all, I think it's worth pointing out that Steve did make tons

00:31:29 ◼   ► of bad decisions. And he did often rely on the people below him arguing with him until

00:31:35 ◼   ► he relented. And sometimes he didn't relent and shipped bad decisions to the public and

00:31:41 ◼   ► then had to go back on those. So, you know, there's that. Anyway, I think, John, I think

00:31:47 ◼   ► you're being a little bit mean to Tim Cook here. I think, you know, you look at this

00:31:53 ◼   ► guy talk, and I think, you know, I'm about halfway through the video. I read the live

00:31:59 ◼   ► stream last night as it was happening, but the live stream really does not capture it

00:32:02 ◼   ► very well. First of all, the live streams generally paraphrase. They don't usually say

00:32:08 ◼   ► the exact words, because they usually can't keep up. And so, you know, it helps to watch

00:32:16 ◼   ► the video to really get an idea of what he said, exactly what he said and how he said

00:32:21 ◼   ► it. And you look at this guy speak and he is a rock. I mean, he is rock stable, rock

00:32:29 ◼   ► solid. He was the same with Congress. Like, you can't make this guy flinch. And I think

00:32:35 ◼   ► if he was mainly just repeating things he was told or things he had been taught by the

00:32:42 ◼   ► the lower down people about the product philosophies and stuff, I don't think he would be quite

00:32:47 ◼   ► as solid when talking about them. And I think you'd see him doing a lot more misstatements

00:32:53 ◼   ► or kind of awkward, clumsy handling of the statements, but he doesn't do that. He's rock

00:32:57 ◼   ► solid. And so I think he really has internalized everything he needs to internalize to be the

00:33:08 ◼   ► CEO of a product-focused company like this. I really think that he knows a lot more and

00:33:14 ◼   ► that he has a lot more of these sensibilities than you give him credit for here.

00:33:18 ◼   ► Well, what I'm looking for is basically like, you know, I don't think he doubts that he's

00:33:22 ◼   ► shaky on any of the principles, but when it comes down to it, as I said, the tricky part

00:33:27 ◼   ► about this is not this unlike a lot of the economic stuff is not a science. It's more

00:33:31 ◼   ► of an art, and he's not the one with that gut feeling that is going to drive the company.

00:33:36 ◼   ► As you said, Steve Jobs has got—was wrong plenty of times, too.

00:33:39 ◼   ► But for the most part, in the big sweeping decisions, like, "We should make a teal

00:33:44 ◼   ► computer.

00:33:45 ◼   ► We should make a music player.

00:33:46 ◼   ► And it should be like this.

00:33:47 ◼   ► And we should get into phones.

00:33:48 ◼   ► And it's not going to ship until it's good enough for me."

00:33:51 ◼   ► Like, in the big things, his gut was what drove these things.

00:33:55 ◼   ► So it's one thing to say, you know, this abstract philosophy of, "We'll make decisions

00:34:00 ◼   ► for you and choose what needs to be in the application and what doesn't."

00:34:04 ◼   ► And it's another thing to know that that is also the guy whose gut is going to guide big,

00:34:09 ◼   ► sweeping things like, "What is Mac OS X going to look like?"

00:34:12 ◼   ► The fact that it was all crazy and blue and shiny or whatever, right?

00:34:17 ◼   ► Was that the right thing to do?

00:34:18 ◼   ► The wrong thing to do?

00:34:19 ◼   ► I mean, your gut can be wrong about these things.

00:34:20 ◼   ► And he's not the guy with that, right?

00:34:23 ◼   ► That's true.

00:34:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:25 ◼   ► Even though he understands the principles.

00:34:26 ◼   ► Like I said, I think it's basically the reverse of jobs, because whenever Jobs talked about

00:34:29 ◼   ► the economic stuff, he was a smart guy.

00:34:31 ◼   ► He knew all the principles.

00:34:32 ◼   ► but when it came down to it to decide which supplier should do what and how much of the flash memory should be pre-buy

00:34:37 ◼   ► and is this a good deal or are we going to be saddled with tons of LCDs that we don't need or should we wait for this?

00:34:42 ◼   ► He wasn't the guy to make that call, but he just understood all the underlying concepts.

00:34:46 ◼   ► And it's probably true that Tim Cook is much more solid when talking about topics that he's not the super duper expert in than Jobs was,

00:34:55 ◼   ► because when Jobs did talk about economics, he sounded more like he was somebody merely parroting things that he learned from other people,

00:35:00 ◼   ► even though he also probably understood them.

00:35:02 ◼   ► But I think the thing that is in Tim Cook's favor during this entire thing,

00:35:07 ◼   ► and especially I think back to last year's WWDC,

00:35:09 ◼   ► which I probably came across in the keynote,

00:35:11 ◼   ► but I mean, we were there and we saw him as a speck on the stage or whatever,

00:35:14 ◼   ► but you can kind of feel it in the room,

00:35:15 ◼   ► that Tim Cook has the same enthusiasm and passion

00:35:19 ◼   ► and he's not faking it that Steve Jobs had for these things.

00:35:21 ◼   ► I think about the time when he was on stage talking about the blind guy

00:35:25 ◼   ► using the iPad to walk around the woods and everything.

00:35:27 ◼   ► Unless he's an Academy Award-winning actor, he was not faking the fact that that made

00:35:34 ◼   ► him feel like what he's doing with his career in life is meaningful.

00:35:37 ◼   ► More so than all the stuff they ask about, market share and different moles of phones

00:35:41 ◼   ► or whatever, he is really touched by the idea that the things he's making are changing the

00:35:47 ◼   ► world in a touchy-feely, Apple, goofy kind of way.

00:35:51 ◼   ► And that, I think, is his best asset as CEO.

00:35:55 ◼   ► Well, okay, second best.

00:35:57 ◼   ► to his expertise in the job that he had before he was CEO is the fact that he really is enthusiastic

00:36:04 ◼   ► about this stuff.

00:36:05 ◼   ► And he's not a bean counter, and he's not just out there to steer a ship, or he's not

00:36:12 ◼   ► just a manager for manager's sake.

00:36:13 ◼   ► That's why he left Compaq or wherever he was before, why John Sculley left Pepsi.

00:36:19 ◼   ► You don't want to sell sugar water, you want to come with Steve and change the world.

00:36:22 ◼   ► And with Tim, too, I think we've really seen, over the last year especially, we've

00:36:27 ◼   ► really seen him just develop this incredible image of just not only being an absolute rock

00:36:36 ◼   ► about everything, and this is definitely a guy you'd want running your company, but

00:36:41 ◼   ► you can also tell that, A, he's not an idiot on any level.

00:36:45 ◼   ► Like, to use a Steve Jobs word, he's not a bozo at all.

00:36:49 ◼   ► you can tell this guy is sharp and knows exactly what he's doing. But he's also,

00:36:53 ◼   ► and he has, he's very deliberate in what he does. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't

00:36:57 ◼   ► feel like he's like, you know, thrown spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. It seems

00:37:02 ◼   ► like he's really being very deliberate about everything he does. But also, he projects

00:37:07 ◼   ► a very, just a very nice personality when he speaks publicly. He seems, he seems extremely

00:37:14 ◼   ► polite, well-spoken, personable, but still firm and strong.

00:37:20 ◼   ► And so I think he has like the perfect image of what you'd want a CEO of an important company

00:37:27 ◼   ► to have.

00:37:29 ◼   ► And he's extremely deliberate in the way he speaks as well.

00:37:33 ◼   ► Something I wish I could be better about is taking a moment to think about what you were

00:37:37 ◼   ► going to say, especially in like a one-on-one conversation.

00:37:40 ◼   ► This podcast is a little bit different, but if you're in a serious conversation, say,

00:37:45 ◼   ► you know, remember that I do consulting for a living.

00:37:47 ◼   ► So, say I'm at a client and they ask me a question, my natural inclination is to fire

00:37:52 ◼   ► off an answer immediately.

00:37:53 ◼   ► And one thing that I respect deeply about Tim is that he will sit there and allow a

00:37:59 ◼   ► silence so he can collect his thoughts and make sure that his answer is a great one.

00:38:05 ◼   ► Not just a good one.

00:38:06 ◼   ► Not just an acceptable one, but a great one.

00:38:09 ◼   ► That was a big Steve Jobs-ism.

00:38:11 ◼   ► Steve Jobs would just let that pause.

00:38:12 ◼   ► And at a certain point when Steve Jobs did it, you wondered, "Is he pausing together

00:38:16 ◼   ► his thoughts, or is now this kind of a head game?"

00:38:19 ◼   ► Where he's pausing.

00:38:21 ◼   ► Like he already knows what he's going to say, but he's just like, "A little longer."

00:38:25 ◼   ► Like in that, what was that, WRC 1998 or whatever thing where he was doing Q&A, and the guy

00:38:30 ◼   ► asked him the obnoxious question about—I forget what the obnoxious question is.

00:38:34 ◼   ► Like, "It was clear that you don't know what you're doing."

00:38:36 ◼   ► Or whatever.

00:38:37 ◼   ► He was angry about OpenDoc or something or whatever.

00:38:38 ◼   ► And the pause after that, I should time it in the video.

00:38:41 ◼   ► It's like so long where he's waiting for the response there.

00:38:43 ◼   ► If I could think of a couple more mean things to say about Tim Cook.

00:38:48 ◼   ► It's not mean.

00:38:49 ◼   ► It's just like we're all comparing to Steve Jobs, right?

00:38:51 ◼   ► And with any kind of powerful person speaking publicly, you basically get two choices.

00:38:58 ◼   ► You get the guy who really, truly believes what he's saying and is earnest about it,

00:39:04 ◼   ► and the guy who says exactly the right thing but gives some kind of hint that he also knows

00:39:12 ◼   ► that it's BS.

00:39:13 ◼   ► And a good example is—we didn't get to talk about this—the congressional thing

00:39:15 ◼   ► where Tim Cook is up there explaining Apple's business and everything.

00:39:18 ◼   ► And Tim Cook did nothing wrong.

00:39:20 ◼   ► He did exactly what you're supposed to do.

00:39:22 ◼   ► And I can't decide—actually, I can't decide.

00:39:25 ◼   ► For me, I think it's worse to be the guy who really believes that everything you're

00:39:29 ◼   ► telling Congress is the 100% straight, honest truth.

00:39:32 ◼   ► Like, you know, the fact that he'd never mentioned why they had these things overseas and how

00:39:37 ◼   ► it was a tax avoidance scheme and stuff like that, like, everything he said was true.

00:39:41 ◼   ► It was just sort of an error of omission.

00:39:43 ◼   ► And I feel more comfortable, like, if Steve Jobs was doing it, he would make it clear

00:39:48 ◼   ► that everyone knows this is BS.

00:39:50 ◼   ► Because everyone watching knows it's BS.

00:39:51 ◼   ► Congress knows it's BS.

00:39:52 ◼   ► Tim Cook knows it.

00:39:53 ◼   ► We all know it's like kind of a, it's theater, right?

00:39:56 ◼   ► But sometimes I think that Tim, for a second or two, I think that Tim Cook really believes

00:40:00 ◼   ► what he's saying.

00:40:01 ◼   ► I'm like, "Wait a second.

00:40:02 ◼   ► really, you know, he's no dummy, we're all in on this or whatever, but he's so earnest,

00:40:06 ◼   ► and you're like, "Oh my god, maybe he really believes that, maybe," you know, I'm like,

00:40:10 ◼   ► "No, come on, he doesn't really believe that," and to me that's worse. I would rather have,

00:40:13 ◼   ► like, the guy who's in on the sort of shared delusion that we're all, you know, the suspension

00:40:21 ◼   ► of disbelief for this theater type thing than the true believer type thing, because the second Tim

00:40:25 ◼   ► If Tim Cook really believes that everything he omitted in discussing Apple's various tax

00:40:31 ◼   ► shelters doesn't exist, then we know we're in trouble.

00:40:36 ◼   ► Maybe that's just testament to how incredibly earnest and honest, like for a second, he

00:40:40 ◼   ► can make me believe that he really believes it.

00:40:44 ◼   ► Before we exit the Tim Cook, all things D topic, I do want to point out also that a

00:40:49 ◼   ► lot of people have said, "Oh, he hasn't really said anything here.

00:40:52 ◼   ► He didn't say anything new, or he didn't learn anything."

00:40:55 ◼   ► think that's all crap. I think he said quite a lot. And he said it in the Apple way and

00:41:01 ◼   ► in the Tim Cook way, but I think he said quite a lot of interesting things.

00:41:06 ◼   ► That's criminology. I mean, if you go back, I would watch the Steve Jobs one, and you're

00:41:09 ◼   ► all just looking to see. He's never going to say, "Say it." So there's reporters

00:41:13 ◼   ► who have no idea about, just generic reporters who go through it and go, "Oh, it doesn't

00:41:18 ◼   ► seem like he said anything." But for people who are following every single fart that comes

00:41:23 ◼   ► out of Apple when you ask him, "What do you think about big screens? I guess you guys

00:41:28 ◼   ► are making one or whatever." And the first thing that's out of his mouth is, "Well, we're

00:41:31 ◼   ► not making one yet." That's the answer. That is the biggest answer you're ever going to

00:41:38 ◼   ► get out of anything. Even Steve Jobs was never that open, even on his wildest days.

00:41:43 ◼   ► Right. Yeah. What he's saying is perfectly clear. We're not making one yet. We're not

00:41:46 ◼   ► ruling it out for the future or whatever. He doesn't say that if they don't have a larger

00:41:50 ◼   ► a screen phone in the planning stages already. Little things like that were dropped everywhere

00:41:57 ◼   ► about time-lining the television, time-lining anything that's wearable. It reminds me of

00:42:04 ◼   ► Steve Jobs way before the iPhone, like five years or something before that, when people

00:42:12 ◼   ► were asking Apple about PDAs. That was the big thing to do. It's like, "Is Apple going

00:42:15 ◼   ► to make a PDA?" If they had tried to buy Palm or Handspring or something and been rebuffed

00:42:19 ◼   ► and none of them ever announced that. It was all secret rumors and stuff. And people kept

00:42:24 ◼   ► asking about PDAs. And at a certain point, Apple would give answers and no comments or

00:42:29 ◼   ► whatever. At a certain point, Steve Jobs said to some reporter, "We believe that phones

00:42:33 ◼   ► are where the future of this business is going to be." Boom, Apple's making a phone. That's

00:42:37 ◼   ► all you needed. And that's why for years, my friends and I were like, "When is the iPhone

00:42:42 ◼   ► coming?" And we would just call it the iPhone because it was the iMac and the iPod. "When

00:42:45 ◼   ► is the iPhone coming?" And then we started to lose faith. We're like, "Maybe they're

00:42:48 ◼   ► never going to make a phone. It's been such a long time. But back then, when you make

00:42:53 ◼   ► a statement like that to a reporter, you might as well just come out and say exactly what

00:42:57 ◼   ► you're doing. I guess reporters can't report on it because it would be—he didn't really

00:43:02 ◼   ► say that, but for people reading the tea leaves, it's all out there in the open in his answers.

00:43:09 ◼   ► I would say specifically, he seemed to confirm—in his Tim Cook and in the Apple way—he seemed

00:43:16 ◼   ► to confirm that they are working on some kind of watch-like device that includes multiple

00:43:22 ◼   ► types of sensors and serves multiple functions. Didn't you get that impression from what he

00:43:26 ◼   ► said?

00:43:27 ◼   ► Yeah, he said wearable. Oh, yeah, that wearable stuff. I think there might be something to

00:43:29 ◼   ► that. It's a really interesting area.

00:43:30 ◼   ► But it has to do multiple things. It can't just do one thing, and it has to have multiple

00:43:35 ◼   ► sensors. I'm thinking he's looking to replace that Nike fuel band on his wrist.

00:43:39 ◼   ► He's describing his product obliquely at that point.

00:43:42 ◼   ► I mean, I think that was a very clear, not even a hint, that was like beating you over

00:43:48 ◼   ► the head, "We are doing something like a watch that's going to have multiple sensors

00:43:52 ◼   ► and certain multiples."

00:43:53 ◼   ► Yeah, that combined with the entering new product categories for your earning call.

00:43:56 ◼   ► And possibly as soon as this fall, it seemed.

00:43:59 ◼   ► The people freak out about it like we did with the phone thing.

00:44:01 ◼   ► The phone didn't come out for like five years or whatever it was.

00:44:04 ◼   ► It was some insane amount it seemed like forever, right?

00:44:06 ◼   ► It doesn't mean that the watch is coming out next week.

00:44:09 ◼   ► That's the problem with the echo chamber of the news.

00:44:11 ◼   ► Like, "Oh, the watch is coming.

00:44:13 ◼   ► It's going to come out any second."

00:44:16 ◼   ► The timelines in these things are huge.

00:44:17 ◼   ► You just read the tea leaves to see, "All right, is this something that Apple's even

00:44:21 ◼   ► looking at?"

00:44:22 ◼   ► Because if you would ask them if Apple was thinking of making a car, his answer would

00:44:25 ◼   ► have not been, "The car airspace is really interesting.

00:44:27 ◼   ► I think a car made by Apple could be really interesting, and it would have to use multiple

00:44:31 ◼   ► sensors."

00:44:32 ◼   ► No, he would say, "No, we're not interested."

00:44:35 ◼   ► It's a different answer.

00:44:37 ◼   ► All it does is tell you that something that you wear that you purchased from Apple that's

00:44:42 ◼   ► not a clip-on iPod shuffle is potentially in the future of this company and tells you

00:44:46 ◼   ► nothing about the timeline other than it's probably not a decade from now.

00:44:51 ◼   ► But even on the timeline, I think he was pretty clear that we're going to see a new category

00:44:55 ◼   ► from Apple this fall or early next year.

00:44:58 ◼   ► That could have been the TV had he not put the kibosh on that in his answers at the de-conference,

00:45:03 ◼   ► right?

00:45:04 ◼   ► Like, earnings call was like a new category, and everyone's like, "Okay, is the new

00:45:07 ◼   ► category TV?" which has been rumored for a really long time, or "Is the new category

00:45:10 ◼   ► something that you wear?" which has also been rumored.

00:45:12 ◼   ► And then, fast forward to the conference, he gets asked both questions, gives very different

00:45:16 ◼   ► answers, and you're like, "All right, I guess it's the thing you wear."

00:45:18 ◼   ► Now, didn't he—was it him that said that nobody wears watches anymore?

00:45:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:25 ◼   ► But what was interesting, he said—like, the livestreams kind of transcribed this quickly,

00:45:28 ◼   ► but what he actually said was like,

00:45:31 ◼   ► - For something to work here,

00:45:33 ◼   ► you first have to convince people it's so incredible

00:45:38 ◼   ► that they wanna wear it,

00:45:39 ◼   ► because where, you two guys are wearing watches.

00:45:44 ◼   ► If we had a room full of 10 to 20 year olds,

00:45:47 ◼   ► and we said everybody stand up that has a watch on,

00:45:54 ◼   ► I'm not sure anybody would stand up.

00:45:57 ◼   ► I don't see it.

00:45:59 ◼   ► - 10 to 20 year old, I mean, yeah, okay,

00:46:00 ◼   ► so the guy deals with data?

00:46:02 ◼   ► That sounded a lot like they did a survey.

00:46:05 ◼   ► Like that's, it sounded like that was data

00:46:07 ◼   ► that they had looked up already.

00:46:08 ◼   ► Like he wasn't just, like that's the kind of thing

00:46:11 ◼   ► that Steve would just kind of wing from his gut.

00:46:14 ◼   ► - They did market research. - Tim, I don't think would.

00:46:15 ◼   ► I think Tim, he was talking as though

00:46:18 ◼   ► they were already looking into this.

00:46:19 ◼   ► And he, like the comments about multiple sensors

00:46:22 ◼   ► and about glasses sucking, I really think he was

00:46:25 ◼   ► pretty clearly telling us there's going to be something here.

00:46:30 ◼   ► Apple under Steve Jobs did do lots of market research. Jobs liked to downplay it, and he

00:46:34 ◼   ► would say they didn't do focus groups for the design, which is true, but the best example

00:46:38 ◼   ► I can think of that is, speaking of nobody-wears-watches-anymore, is when people were asking about, "Is

00:46:42 ◼   ► Apple going to do some—is it pre-iPad? Is Apple going to do some sort of reading device

00:46:45 ◼   ► or whatever?" And he said, "Nobody reads anymore," and then he threw out a couple

00:46:51 ◼   ► statistics. The only way he would know those statistics off the top of his head is from

00:46:57 ◼   ► Apple's own market research that they had done in the planning stages for making the

00:47:00 ◼   ► iPod or iPad, which was so clearly in development then. By quoting a statistic that is supposed

00:47:08 ◼   ► to be shooting down the argument of the person who's saying, "Oh, you should make this thing."

00:47:11 ◼   ► "Oh, nobody reads anymore." People say that, surveys show that people from this age group,

00:47:16 ◼   ► I forget what statistic he threw out, but you don't know that statistic off the top

00:47:19 ◼   ► head if you had not investigated it. So it's the same type of thing. Yeah, they did do market

00:47:25 ◼   ► research. They continue to do market research to see, you know, to decide what kind of product

00:47:29 ◼   ► they're going to make. I don't know if Tim does more of it than Steve. I know Steve definitely

00:47:33 ◼   ► wanted to downplay the idea that they, you know, it's anything other than springing from their

00:47:39 ◼   ► creativity. But yeah, they're a big company. Of course, they do market research. So I'm sure they

00:47:44 ◼   ► know exactly how many people of what ages wear watches or would be willing to wear something

00:47:48 ◼   ► and so on. Well, right, and to that end, when he says, you know, if you have a room full, was it 10

00:47:54 ◼   ► 20-year-olds or 10 to 20-year-olds? It doesn't matter. I'll have to rewind. I think it was 10

00:47:58 ◼   ► to 20-year-olds. 10 to 20-year-olds. But to be honest, it doesn't matter. The point I'm driving

00:48:03 ◼   ► at is when he says, "Oh, nobody in the 10 to 20-year-old range," or whatever the statistic was,

00:48:07 ◼   ► "wears a watch," is that like a Barney Stinson challenge accepted moment? Or is that him saying,

00:48:13 ◼   ► "No, really, nobody wants a watch and there's nothing we can do to stop it." Well, what he was

00:48:17 ◼   ► - What he was saying, the theme of what he was saying

00:48:21 ◼   ► was basically that if you're gonna convince people

00:48:25 ◼   ► to wear a watch, it has to be really, really good.

00:48:29 ◼   ► And implying that what's on the market now

00:48:31 ◼   ► in the field of smart watches is not good enough

00:48:34 ◼   ► to convince people to wear a watch who weren't already

00:48:36 ◼   ► and who weren't nerds like people who were buying Google Glass

00:48:40 ◼   ► and so it sounded like what he was saying

00:48:44 ◼   ► was a combination of Google Glass is a total flop

00:48:47 ◼   ► and nobody will wear it,

00:48:48 ◼   ► and we think there's something to be had in the watch area,

00:48:53 ◼   ► but nothing else out there is good enough yet,

00:48:54 ◼   ► which is typical Apple stuff to say

00:48:57 ◼   ► before they enter a market.

00:48:59 ◼   ► - Right, that's exactly my point,

00:49:00 ◼   ► is they're saying, "Well, right now it all sucks,

00:49:02 ◼   ► "but the underlying under your breath comment is,

00:49:07 ◼   ► "'Oh, but we'll show you.'"

00:49:09 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:49:10 ◼   ► - It's like men's hats, you know, whatever.

00:49:13 ◼   ► The '40s were all—you look at those old movies, all the men on the street in New York

00:49:17 ◼   ► City were all wearing hats, right?

00:49:19 ◼   ► And then eventually that fell out of favor, and then nobody wears a hat to work.

00:49:22 ◼   ► And in fact, it would be rude to wear a hat to work if you were wearing a baseball hat

00:49:26 ◼   ► or something, right?

00:49:27 ◼   ► So men's dress hats—and I guess women's dress hats to some degree—fell out of fashion.

00:49:32 ◼   ► So if you had asked 60 years ago how many men wore a hat today on their way to work

00:49:37 ◼   ► with all their hands, they'd go, "Well, I think watches are like that," in part

00:49:39 ◼   ► because—actually, it started with pagers.

00:49:41 ◼   ► Remember when people would just start looking at their pagers to see what time it was?

00:49:45 ◼   ► Once you had some other way to tell what time it was, other than a watch, watches change

00:49:51 ◼   ► from this practical thing that you had to wear so you got places on time into merely

00:49:55 ◼   ► like jewelry, like a fashion accessory.

00:49:57 ◼   ► People still do wear watches, but even the people who do, I wonder if they still pick

00:50:02 ◼   ► up their phone to tell what time it is.

00:50:03 ◼   ► So like him saying, "Oh, people don't wear watches," is because the function of a watch

00:50:08 ◼   ► as a timekeeper that goes on your wrist, we don't need that anymore because that functionality

00:50:13 ◼   ► has been subsumed in these other smart devices. But if we can make something that you can

00:50:18 ◼   ► put on your wrist that suddenly does have value to you beyond just telling you what

00:50:21 ◼   ► time it was, then maybe that would be a good thing. So he's saying there's all those wrists

00:50:24 ◼   ► out there that don't have watches on because watches are not worth putting on your wrist.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Those wrists are just waiting there for something. And it doesn't have to be wrists. Who knows

00:50:34 ◼   ► where these things are going to be attached to your body. But something that you wear

00:50:37 ◼   ► Probably yes, probably on your wrist

00:50:39 ◼   ► That's that's what he's saying with that answer is all those wrists out

00:50:43 ◼   ► They're just crying out for something really cool from Apple to stick on them

00:50:46 ◼   ► Would do either one of you guys wear a watch no

00:50:51 ◼   ► You know

00:50:51 ◼   ► I

00:50:52 ◼   ► Didn't I didn't so I'd say a couple of years ago and I've always

00:50:57 ◼   ► Enjoyed them and I've always told myself that if I ever hit it big and sell everything that I own ahem

00:51:03 ◼   ► uh... that i would get myself a stupidly expensive watch and by that i mean like

00:51:07 ◼   ► several hundred dollars as opposed to twenty

00:51:10 ◼   ► uh... but i'd i'd keep telling myself i want to buy myself uh... watch and i

00:51:15 ◼   ► haven't worn one in a few years and on

00:51:18 ◼   ► too cheap to buy one

00:51:20 ◼   ► there is a guy in the uh... in the old tumblr office

00:51:23 ◼   ► and i want to say we was in case it would cause any problems but there is

00:51:26 ◼   ► this guy who who shared the office

00:51:29 ◼   ► and uh...

00:51:30 ◼   ► and he had a watch dealer come in

00:51:32 ◼   ► like twice a year to show them these new fancy, really

00:51:37 ◼   ► like $10,000 watches.

00:51:40 ◼   ► And it was this kind of short, thick guy

00:51:43 ◼   ► with a nondescript briefcase would come in, open up

00:51:46 ◼   ► the briefcase, and show off 30 grand worth of watches

00:51:49 ◼   ► right there.

00:51:50 ◼   ► It's like this whole cult of watch people.

00:51:52 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:51:53 ◼   ► It's like camera people, but even more so,

00:51:55 ◼   ► because cameras have more of a function.

00:51:58 ◼   ► Once they tell time, beyond that,

00:52:00 ◼   ► everything else is basically just fashion. And although I was just on a podcast with

00:52:06 ◼   ► Guy and Rene, and I don't remember if this part of it was after the recording had ended

00:52:10 ◼   ► or if they'll stick it in so you can forgive me for repeating it, but we were talking about

00:52:14 ◼   ► the watch thing. And what I said to them was that this is such a dangerous area for Apple

00:52:21 ◼   ► or any other company because once you put something on your body in a way that counts

00:52:28 ◼   ► says "wearing," you enter this whole other realm of crazy, illogical, nonsensical, ego-entangled

00:52:37 ◼   ► decision-making.

00:52:38 ◼   ► Because the iPod Shuffle, you clip onto your clothes.

00:52:41 ◼   ► And most people would say you are not wearing an iPod Shuffle.

00:52:44 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, it's just my iPod, but it attaches to my clothing for convenient carrying."

00:52:48 ◼   ► But once you have something that, "Oh, I'm wearing this," then forget it.

00:52:55 ◼   ► Many people will take an electronic device, carry it in their pocket, or even clip it

00:52:59 ◼   ► to their clothes, but the thing that people are willing to wear that is acknowledged as

00:53:03 ◼   ► a wearing thing is totally dictated by things that Apple really doesn't have any control

00:53:09 ◼   ► over.

00:53:10 ◼   ► I'm sure Apple's up to the challenge, but what a challenge that is.

00:53:13 ◼   ► Give me something that I will want to wear, because then it becomes a fashion statement,

00:53:18 ◼   ► an expression of self, much more so than even carrying a laptop or a phone.

00:53:23 ◼   ► things do you know you carry a part of your image with that thing I feel like

00:53:27 ◼   ► wearing is like the next level and because basically if you make this thing

00:53:30 ◼   ► ugly you know in the opinion of some buyer thinking about this is the most

00:53:34 ◼   ► awesome device ever I think it's awesome but I'm not gonna wear and like that's

00:53:38 ◼   ► part of the Google lasting is because that's wearing when you put that thing

00:53:41 ◼   ► on your head that counts as wearing something and if it looks awkward or

00:53:45 ◼   ► geeky and gives you a great image no matter how awesome it is you're just

00:53:47 ◼   ► gonna be like mmm you know I mean it's hard for me to relate because everything

00:53:51 ◼   ► Everything I own is unfashionable and ugly and it makes me look stupid.

00:53:56 ◼   ► But other people have lots of their self-image tied up into looking good.

00:54:00 ◼   ► And you have to sort of, I guess, not step on those landmines to get a product into their

00:54:07 ◼   ► hands that they're willing to wear.

00:54:08 ◼   ► Lots of nerds are willing.

00:54:09 ◼   ► I mean, look at the people willing to wear glass.

00:54:11 ◼   ► Some people just have no barrier.

00:54:12 ◼   ► Like, "Sure, I'll put anything on it if it has some practical value."

00:54:14 ◼   ► You should get Google Glass, John.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Or, "Here, futuristic.

00:54:16 ◼   ► Even I have my limits."

00:54:18 ◼   ► But yeah, and that is such a dangerous part about wearable tech.

00:54:23 ◼   ► And I don't know how Apple in particular is going to navigate that, because they're not

00:54:26 ◼   ► going to make 700 models of this.

00:54:27 ◼   ► Samsung is going to make 700 models of the ripoff product, right?

00:54:30 ◼   ► And you'll be able to find one that works for you.

00:54:32 ◼   ► It's the same thing with the phone cases, right?

00:54:35 ◼   ► Even though you don't wear a phone, people buy the phone, but then there's a bazillion

00:54:38 ◼   ► cases.

00:54:39 ◼   ► And some of the cases you find hideous, but other people love.

00:54:41 ◼   ► Rhinestone-encrusted things, or wooden cases, or things that look like they're made of Legos,

00:54:45 ◼   ► or brushed metal.

00:54:47 ◼   ► That's how people are able to even come to terms with the things they carry a lot of

00:54:50 ◼   ► the time.

00:54:51 ◼   ► If you can't do something similar to something that you wear, Apple's going to be in trouble

00:54:54 ◼   ► because no matter how neutral and tasteful they make it, some person's going to say,

00:54:58 ◼   ► "I wouldn't wear that.

00:54:59 ◼   ► I won't wear that."

00:55:00 ◼   ► Yes, but you're also not considering that I think Apple at the moment anyway is more

00:55:07 ◼   ► than not very trendy.

00:55:09 ◼   ► And so it's trendy and kind of cool now to have a silver laptop with a piece of fruit

00:55:16 ◼   ► shining on the lid. And I could swear that I had read stories years ago that people would

00:55:21 ◼   ► connect iPod earbuds or iPhone earbuds to non-Apple devices just so they also had the

00:55:29 ◼   ► white crap dangling in their ears.

00:55:31 ◼   ► Yeah, no, they would do that. But that's what I'm saying. I think there is a part of personal

00:55:35 ◼   ► expression embodied in fashionable electronic devices that you carry. And this is like the

00:55:40 ◼   ► next level because you're not just carrying this, you're wearing it. It's so crazy.

00:55:45 ◼   ► Think about shoes, you know, how crazy people are about the shoes they're willing and not

00:55:49 ◼   ► willing to wear.

00:55:50 ◼   ► How many times do you see somebody else's shoes and you think, "Man, I would never wear

00:55:53 ◼   ► those shoes," but the person wearing those loves those shoes.

00:55:55 ◼   ► They paid 300 bucks for them, right?

00:55:58 ◼   ► It's such an incredible range, and people will reject products that are perfectly good

00:56:03 ◼   ► in every possible way because they'll just say, "I can't wear that.

00:56:06 ◼   ► I won't wear that."

00:56:08 ◼   ► And it'll be really interesting to see how Apple navigates this because these are extremely

00:56:13 ◼   ► dangerous waters.

00:56:15 ◼   ► They are, but if you think about Apple's normal devices, they're extremely simple and tasteful

00:56:21 ◼   ► and generally speaking look good.

00:56:23 ◼   ► Surely not to everyone, but generally speaking there's not a lot to them, they're not very

00:56:26 ◼   ► flashy, and they just look good.

00:56:29 ◼   ► And so I actually, I do agree with you, and I think that this is a whole new territory

00:56:32 ◼   ► they're not used to, but I also think that they'll probably navigate these waters pretty

00:56:36 ◼   ► darn well.

00:56:37 ◼   ► Well, if they do the naked robotic core thing again, I mean, like I said, it's work for

00:56:40 ◼   ► them with the phone.

00:56:41 ◼   ► like you said, "Oh, they make something tasteful." It's very unadorned, very subdued or whatever.

00:56:46 ◼   ► But some people want it to be pink and rhinestone encrusted. So there better be a way for me

00:56:49 ◼   ► to take a pink rhinestones and shove them all over the Apple iWatch. Otherwise, I'm

00:56:53 ◼   ► not wearing that thing because it looks just so boring and ugly and looks like a techno

00:56:56 ◼   ► bobble and mine needs to have rhinestones because I'm fabulous, right?

00:56:59 ◼   ► John, I cannot wait to see you with your pink rhinestone encrusted watch. I am extremely

00:57:06 ◼   ► excited for it.

00:57:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, it'll go great with my Motorola clamshell phone.

00:57:10 ◼   ► Now with color screen.

00:57:12 ◼   ► - This is what happens when you get three nerds

00:57:17 ◼   ► talking about fashion.

00:57:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, it never ends well.

00:57:19 ◼   ► - This is fantastic.

00:57:21 ◼   ► - Goodness.

00:57:23 ◼   ► - All right, we should do our next sponsor.

00:57:24 ◼   ► - I was just about to ask.

00:57:25 ◼   ► - I missed a good time.

00:57:26 ◼   ► All right, our next sponsor, they need no introduction,

00:57:31 ◼   ► but the sad thing is that it won't apply to all of you

00:57:33 ◼   ► 'cause there are still people out there

00:57:34 ◼   ► who have not bought this yet.

00:57:36 ◼   ► It's Solver.

00:57:37 ◼   ► And I don't know if it's pronounced solver.

00:57:39 ◼   ► I say solver in my head, but I also said oxygen in my head,

00:57:42 ◼   ► so my head's not always right, I guess.

00:57:45 ◼   ► It's solver.

00:57:45 ◼   ► So it's S-O-U-L-V-E-R. And what this is,

00:57:49 ◼   ► this is an app for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

00:57:53 ◼   ► And they told me to just wing it,

00:57:55 ◼   ► because they knew that I'm a massive fan of this,

00:57:57 ◼   ► so they didn't even give me a script.

00:58:00 ◼   ► Solver is basically a hybrid between a calculator,

00:58:05 ◼   ► a notepad and a spreadsheet. If you can kind of think of that, and I've done, if you just

00:58:10 ◼   ► search my site for Solver, you'll see I've posted about it like ten times over the years.

00:58:15 ◼   ► It, oh my God, you have to hit the, basically if I'm working, I have this app open. I have

00:58:20 ◼   ► it open now, even for a podcast. I always have it open. What I suggest you do, download

00:58:26 ◼   ► this app, I'm pretty sure there's a trial, they didn't even tell me, I should probably

00:58:29 ◼   ► look that up. I'm pretty sure. Yes, there is a trial. Download the app, give it a shot.

00:58:37 ◼   ► What you want to do is just once you install this app, even just the trial, just hide calculator.

00:58:44 ◼   ► If you have it in your dock, take it out of your dock. Never launch calculator again.

00:58:48 ◼   ► And I suggest trying it on the Mac first, because that's really, in my opinion, that's

00:58:51 ◼   ► where I use it the most. That's where it's best. Try it out instead of calculator. And

00:58:56 ◼   ► Any time you would try to figure out some little computation,

00:59:01 ◼   ► type it into a Scratch Silver document instead.

00:59:04 ◼   ► And once you start using it for like a day,

00:59:07 ◼   ► you will instantly realize, oh my god,

00:59:10 ◼   ► why have I been using stupid calculator apps besides this

00:59:14 ◼   ► all these years?

00:59:15 ◼   ► Like why have I taken so long to find this app?

00:59:19 ◼   ► It's basically a scratch pad for numbers.

00:59:22 ◼   ► So I started using this, I don't know,

00:59:26 ◼   ► 2005 or something like that. They've been around forever. Started using it forever ago.

00:59:30 ◼   ► And ever since I started using it, I hardly ever use spreadsheets anymore. And I never

00:59:36 ◼   ► use Calculator anymore. It is, and it's for programmers, for people who are just doing

00:59:42 ◼   ► simple calculations. Basically, if you're the kind of person who has ever launched the

00:59:46 ◼   ► Calculator app on your computer, you can probably use this and you can probably benefit from

00:59:50 ◼   ► So, it's called Solver, S-O-U-L-V-E-R.

00:59:54 ◼   ► It's 20 bucks in the Mac App Store or directly from their site.

00:59:57 ◼   ► They also have some volume license discounts.

01:00:00 ◼   ► You can get, for instance, a four computer household pack for only 25 bucks.

01:00:06 ◼   ► You can get volume licenses. This is the kind of thing like,

01:00:09 ◼   ► if I was running a business with employees, which I guess I won't do because I apparently hate doing that,

01:00:13 ◼   ► but if I was running a business with employees, I would buy one of these for every employee

01:00:17 ◼   ► for every employee and just have it, just hide calculator on the computers, do some

01:00:21 ◼   ► kind of like group IT policy and put this on there instead. Really, it's that good.

01:00:27 ◼   ► So they also have for iOS. Now I use it for iOS, although I will say I use it for Mac

01:00:31 ◼   ► more, but in iOS it's really great. First of all, on the iPad, there is no built-in

01:00:37 ◼   ► calculator from Apple. So you need to install something if you ever need a calculator. Might

01:00:42 ◼   ► as well install this. It's awesome for lots of different things. It's all, and you know,

01:00:45 ◼   ► It does formulas, you can use variables, you can use simple logic, you can use labels.

01:00:51 ◼   ► It's really an extremely high-functioning application for doing any kind of number scratchpad

01:00:58 ◼   ► work.

01:00:59 ◼   ► It's just so good.

01:01:01 ◼   ► Anything that you would otherwise use a simple spreadsheet for, like, oh, let me figure out

01:01:06 ◼   ► what my S3 costs are going to be this month for my bandwidth.

01:01:08 ◼   ► You just use Solver.

01:01:10 ◼   ► It's just so perfect for this.

01:01:12 ◼   ► So anyway, it's five bucks for iPad.

01:01:14 ◼   ► It's three bucks for iPhone.

01:01:15 ◼   ► I even use it-- I know this is going on long--

01:01:17 ◼   ► but I even use it as a scoreboard

01:01:21 ◼   ► when I'm playing games in real life.

01:01:23 ◼   ► Like if you're playing like 500 Rummy with people,

01:01:25 ◼   ► playing any kind of table game, you

01:01:27 ◼   ► need some way to keep score between rounds.

01:01:29 ◼   ► I type things into Solver.

01:01:30 ◼   ► Every person will have a line labeled with their initials

01:01:32 ◼   ► or their name, and then I'll just do score plus.

01:01:35 ◼   ► And every single time there's a round,

01:01:37 ◼   ► I'll add another one to their name.

01:01:38 ◼   ► You can always see, leave it out,

01:01:39 ◼   ► you can always see what everyone's total is

01:01:41 ◼   ► and what each round was before that.

01:01:43 ◼   ► There are just so many uses for this app.

01:01:45 ◼   ► Constantly go get silver, please for the love of all that is good go get silver. It is that good

01:01:51 ◼   ► You need you need this app. It's by Aquila and it's I'm not even gonna try to spell it. I'll put in the show notes

01:01:56 ◼   ► It's Aquila comm slash silver. So you LV ER or find it in the Mac App Store or the iOS App Store?

01:02:02 ◼   ► Thanks to solver for sponsoring

01:02:05 ◼   ► So not to pile on at all

01:02:07 ◼   ► But I solver solver whatever it's called is one of the few apps that I that triple dipped in other words

01:02:13 ◼   ► I had to pay on all three platforms, and I didn't feel bad about it because it really

01:02:17 ◼   ► is that good.

01:02:18 ◼   ► And the other thing that I wanted to point out is that you know how a lot of people,

01:02:23 ◼   ► ourselves included, have complained and moaned about how when you're building a calculator

01:02:27 ◼   ► app for a computer, you don't really—and actually, Marco, you wrote a post about this,

01:02:31 ◼   ► I think.

01:02:32 ◼   ► You don't want to be encumbered by what's physical.

01:02:37 ◼   ► And solver or solver, whatever, is a great midway between a spreadsheet and a calculator,

01:02:42 ◼   ► and they were able to do that because they chucked out all the cruft and old stuff from the physical world

01:02:47 ◼   ► and just made something that's really great in the computing world. Now that I think of it, I just totally stole a blog post, didn't I?

01:02:52 ◼   ► Yeah, that's entirely my blog post. But yeah, it's like, I believe I called it "overdoing the interface metaphor."

01:02:57 ◼   ► And the idea, this was like back before most skeuomorphism debates, but the idea was like, you know,

01:03:02 ◼   ► if you make a computer calculator, you don't want to bring over like a big grid of buttons that you have to click on.

01:03:07 ◼   ► and then a single line display. That's stupid.

01:03:11 ◼   ► Computers can do so much more than that if you just let them.

01:03:15 ◼   ► And so Solver is a calculator app that was clearly

01:03:19 ◼   ► designed for computers and not designed to try to mimic

01:03:23 ◼   ► what old calculators used to be. It was designed for what computers can actually do and do

01:03:27 ◼   ► well. And it's also a

01:03:31 ◼   ► NS document based app on the Mac and

01:03:35 ◼   ► I don't know if the iOS versions are document based,

01:03:38 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure they are.

01:03:39 ◼   ► And because what that means is on the Mac,

01:03:40 ◼   ► you get all of the line and mountain line,

01:03:42 ◼   ► you know, auto save and version support,

01:03:44 ◼   ► and it uses iCloud to sync everything,

01:03:47 ◼   ► and it actually works.

01:03:48 ◼   ► I tried it between my laptop and my computer, it's great.

01:03:52 ◼   ► Really, it's just a fantastic app.

01:03:53 ◼   ► And the guys even told me, they're like,

01:03:57 ◼   ► you can probably sell it better than we can.

01:03:59 ◼   ► And I think I've basically devoted every chance I get

01:04:02 ◼   ► over the last few years to talk about this app,

01:04:04 ◼   ► devoted to trying to convince the world, please, for the love of God, just use this app. Trust

01:04:09 ◼   ► me, it is that good. Even when the Mac App Store came out, I bought it, even though I

01:04:15 ◼   ► already owned it. I bought it at the Mac App Store just to A, give them more money, and

01:04:19 ◼   ► B, have a quick way to install it after any reinstall or any other computer that I owned.

01:04:24 ◼   ► It really is that good.

01:04:25 ◼   ► I can't believe it took you guys that long for the "skew" word to come up. I would have

01:04:28 ◼   ► led with that. Basically, the calculator is to skeuomorphism as this is to the opposite

01:04:34 ◼   ► of that. I'm also a big fan, although I pronounce it "solver" because I like that better.

01:04:40 ◼   ► The other thing I'll add is the reason I use this app all the time, and I actually use

01:04:46 ◼   ► the dashboard widget of another skeuomorphic calculator occasionally, but I also have solver

01:04:50 ◼   ► open all the time, although I just quit it before launching Skype because I wanted to

01:04:54 ◼   ► free up some memory to make sure Skype feels good, is that this thing also does the stuff

01:04:59 ◼   ► that you might find yourself typing into Google for, and I use it to do math in a lazy way.

01:05:04 ◼   ► Like I write 27 as a percentage of 359. Write that into Solver and it gives you the answer.

01:05:10 ◼   ► You could do that math yourself. We all know basic algebra. You can do division and multiplication

01:05:14 ◼   ► and figure it out. But did I do the division wrong, or did I put the wrong thing in the

01:05:18 ◼   ► the right place or whatever, you can do 5,300 bytes squared in kilobytes, and it will do

01:05:24 ◼   ► the conversions for you.

01:05:25 ◼   ► Oh yeah, there's unit conversions, there's stock price lookups.

01:05:30 ◼   ► The feature I like about it the best is that thing, where you can write in a single English

01:05:33 ◼   ► sentence that expresses what you want to know, and it will just give you the answer of it.

01:05:38 ◼   ► And I find it faster to go to Solver than to go to a Google search box and type these

01:05:41 ◼   ► things in.

01:05:42 ◼   ► Right, because it's a native app. It's all right there. It's all running already, and

01:05:44 ◼   ► it's just a text box. It's great.

01:05:47 ◼   ► I think it is the one app where I find autosave the most satisfying because before autosave,

01:05:52 ◼   ► I didn't like the fact that I had the little modified dot and I would quit and it would

01:05:55 ◼   ► ask me to save. I was like, "Just save everything all the time," and now it does.

01:06:00 ◼   ► Yeah, it's fantastic, really. It's hard to describe how good it is in just one ad

01:06:04 ◼   ► spot, which is why this is taking us so long. But believe me, you've got to try this app.

01:06:09 ◼   ► It's so good. The people who develop it seem like really nice guys. I've talked to

01:06:12 ◼   ► them a lot over email in the last five years or so. You just want to support this. They're

01:06:18 ◼   ► always putting out updates to fix any little problems that come up, although honestly I've

01:06:23 ◼   ► rarely ever seen a problem. It's just so good. It's like your text editor of choice.

01:06:29 ◼   ► It's one of those apps that you can look at whatever you spend on this and say, "This

01:06:33 ◼   ► has helped me make so much more money than whatever it costs. This is so worth the minimal

01:06:38 ◼   ► price I paid for it once years ago because it's that important to what I do.

01:06:44 ◼   ► All right, so let's just continue to talk about this fantastic app the rest of the show.

01:06:51 ◼   ► In terms of timely topics, the only one I've got left is WWDC, but I haven't had a proper

01:06:57 ◼   ► think about what predictions I want to be wrong about.

01:06:59 ◼   ► So is there anything that you two wanted to bring up?

01:07:03 ◼   ► Oh yeah, because that's coming up.

01:07:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:06 ◼   ► Next week should be our predictions show.

01:07:10 ◼   ► But I didn't want to do that today, but can if we have to. And I'll be even more wrong if we do it today.

01:07:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know if I'm right. It's much better to do the prediction show right before

01:07:18 ◼   ► WOC because then we have the highest chance of being right.

01:07:22 ◼   ► You want to cheat and wait for all of the last bits of reverse to come.

01:07:26 ◼   ► Well honestly, do you think anything's going to change between this week and next week with predictions?

01:07:30 ◼   ► No, but our knowledge of it. Yeah, but there'll be something. All the obvious things that are in the invitation

01:07:34 ◼   ► like, "Oh, I bet they'll show the new version of iOS and Mac OS X." That's great. But we

01:07:40 ◼   ► want to know what else. Is there anything else? Or what are the features? Did we get

01:07:45 ◼   ► a leaked iOS 7 screenshot somewhere, some blurry image of--

01:07:48 ◼   ► Hazbell notebooks.

01:07:50 ◼   ► Yeah. Is that now, or is it going to be announced, or is it going to just have a little new badge

01:07:54 ◼   ► after we walk out of the thing like the Mac Pros did because it's not important enough?

01:08:01 ◼   ► But those details will be clearer by next week, I think.

01:08:04 ◼   ► I bet Haswell MacBook Pro updates would at least warrant an eight-slide Phil Schiller

01:08:11 ◼   ► mention.

01:08:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:08:13 ◼   ► No.

01:08:14 ◼   ► I mean, they spent a lot of time on the new Retinas last year, and granted that was like,

01:08:17 ◼   ► "Oh, it's the first Retina."

01:08:19 ◼   ► But certainly it's worth something, some slides showing how much faster and lower power

01:08:24 ◼   ► they are and all that good stuff.

01:08:25 ◼   ► Right.

01:08:26 ◼   ► Here's an update to our notebook line.

01:08:27 ◼   ► And Lord knows they're not going to be showing us new Mac Pros.

01:08:29 ◼   ► No.

01:08:30 ◼   ► So I'm a hardware that can be in a clear acrylic tube

01:08:33 ◼   ► outside my-- what kind of the room, you know?

01:08:36 ◼   ► They should just put an old Mac Pro in there

01:08:38 ◼   ► and see how many people gather around it.

01:08:40 ◼   ► You know what they should do?

01:08:40 ◼   ► They should take an old Mac Pro and slap

01:08:42 ◼   ► a new sticker on the side.

01:08:44 ◼   ► I hear that works.

01:08:46 ◼   ► I think what we're going to-- I guess this is becoming

01:08:49 ◼   ► predictions anyway.

01:08:50 ◼   ► I think what we're going to see is mostly the focus is going

01:08:54 ◼   ► to be on iOS 7.

01:08:55 ◼   ► But I'm actually really curious to see what

01:08:58 ◼   ► we learn about Mac OS 10.9.

01:09:01 ◼   ► Yeah, because if they keep with their pattern of cat modifier

01:09:04 ◼   ► cat, then this comes up as cat again, right?

01:09:07 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

01:09:10 ◼   ► Like, four releases is a cycle, cat modifier cat.

01:09:14 ◼   ► And so either they're done with cats,

01:09:16 ◼   ► or we've got to have a new cat.

01:09:19 ◼   ► I have been since like last year, or for a long time.

01:09:23 ◼   ► Like, I have to give a name for the thing

01:09:25 ◼   ► I put in my notes file.

01:09:27 ◼   ► I've, and mine is called links, L-Y-N-X.

01:09:31 ◼   ► Not that I think that's what the cat name is gonna be,

01:09:32 ◼   ► but when I asked my brain, well brain,

01:09:34 ◼   ► you have to type in something else

01:09:36 ◼   ► to be your placeholder for 10.9,

01:09:37 ◼   ► and I don't wanna write 10.9, I wrote in links.

01:09:40 ◼   ► 'Cause I can't, can you even think of another,

01:09:42 ◼   ► it was like Ocelot and all sorts of BS things.

01:09:44 ◼   ► Either cat names are done, which I'm perfectly fine with,

01:09:46 ◼   ► good, can the cat names, I'm all for it.

01:09:48 ◼   ► Or my brain says links, so.

01:09:51 ◼   ► But I have no idea what they're gonna call it,

01:09:52 ◼   ► I've heard nothing.

01:09:54 ◼   ► what's the modifier gonna be them

01:09:56 ◼   ► if i don't know mountain links

01:09:58 ◼   ► has made up of graphical links

01:10:01 ◼   ► snow links that i can i don't think that this is a this is you know another

01:10:05 ◼   ► reason links won't be the name right but

01:10:07 ◼   ► it

01:10:08 ◼   ► i'm happy to be done with cats

01:10:10 ◼   ► well do you think there's maybe a ten point ten to maybe they won't be a

01:10:13 ◼   ► modifier cap for this next minute maybe they will change the naming convention

01:10:16 ◼   ► and i have ten point ten

01:10:18 ◼   ► i think they'll do well

01:10:21 ◼   ► It feels like, like what are they gonna,

01:10:23 ◼   ► to go to something where you're like,

01:10:25 ◼   ► oh, this is not 10, it's like this one goes to 11.

01:10:27 ◼   ► Like if you wanna do some sort of thing like that,

01:10:29 ◼   ► you can't just do that as a marketing push.

01:10:32 ◼   ► There has to be something to go along with that,

01:10:33 ◼   ► and I don't see any kind of change that's that radical

01:10:36 ◼   ► in the 10.10 timeframe.

01:10:39 ◼   ► Like 10.10 should be the modifier cat release

01:10:42 ◼   ► of whatever the hell they have cooked up for this thing,

01:10:44 ◼   ► but who knows, I mean, four releases is definitely a pattern

01:10:48 ◼   ► but they break the pattern

01:10:49 ◼   ► where the hell they feel like it.

01:10:50 ◼   ► So for obvious reasons, I'm very interested in what's going on there, and I'm less interested

01:10:54 ◼   ► in what's going on in iOS.

01:10:56 ◼   ► And I'm sure iOS will be by far the more dominant focus in the news, and I'm not expecting anything

01:11:01 ◼   ► you're shattering out of 10.9.

01:11:03 ◼   ► But the question is, what the hell is it?

01:11:06 ◼   ► I'm really curious to see what—besides the name, of course, which is very interesting—what

01:11:12 ◼   ► will 10.9 be for the marketing, first of all?

01:11:17 ◼   ► What will they market about the features of it?

01:11:18 ◼   ► then will there be anything interesting for developers? Will there be substantial improvements

01:11:23 ◼   ► to the core in any significant way? What is there to do? And it's only been a year since

01:11:29 ◼   ► Mountain Lion, now that they're on their shorter cycle, so it's not going to be a massive rewrite

01:11:35 ◼   ► of anything. Well, there's plenty to do, but the most interesting

01:11:38 ◼   ► question is, given how much attention Apple wants to focus on OS X, they can't do everything.

01:11:46 ◼   ► things do they prioritize? Because that will give you an idea of what they feel is important.

01:11:51 ◼   ► Do they just do things that they would have had to do anyway because they're changes to the core

01:11:54 ◼   ► OS to benefit most OSes? With line to mountain line, they almost entirely focused on things that

01:12:03 ◼   ► bring together the mental space of the Mac and iOS in terms of making the application look a

01:12:09 ◼   ► certain way, having them have iCloud integration, trying to make it so, "Hey, you've used your

01:12:14 ◼   ► iPhone or your iPad, this Mac is not all that different.

01:12:18 ◼   ► Take a look.

01:12:19 ◼   ► Look at the contacts app.

01:12:20 ◼   ► See how it's kind of the same, like stuff like that.

01:12:22 ◼   ► And the auto save, hey, you don't have to save things on iOS, you know, to varying degrees

01:12:25 ◼   ► of success.

01:12:26 ◼   ► But that was where they were putting their energy.

01:12:27 ◼   ► And they weren't, for example, putting it into a new file system or, you know, making

01:12:32 ◼   ► the OS faster, improving the virtual memory system, changing out the kernel to have better

01:12:37 ◼   ► like all sorts of nitty gritty things that would be totally interesting to someone like

01:12:40 ◼   ► me.

01:12:41 ◼   ► But Apple saying, well, that's we're not getting any bang for the buck out of that.

01:12:44 ◼   ► Like, don't spend all your time working on that.

01:12:46 ◼   ► Instead, spend your time in this other area.

01:12:48 ◼   ► So they did that with Lion, and they sort of repented a little bit with Mountain Lion

01:12:53 ◼   ► to say where they had overreached and sort of shore things up and put a third panel into

01:12:57 ◼   ► the stupid book metaphor app.

01:12:59 ◼   ► Like, well, a book can have three parts, right?

01:13:01 ◼   ► But then one of them has to be half of it, and the other one has to be 25 and 25 percent?

01:13:07 ◼   ► Anyway, do they keep doing that, or do they concentrate in a new area this time?

01:13:12 ◼   ► like Fusion Drive would have been an obvious thing, but they already released that.

01:13:17 ◼   ► Fusion Drive missed Mountain Lion. I feel like they wanted to get it into that.

01:13:20 ◼   ► But they're like, "Alright, well fine, screw it. Fusion Drive, it's not tied to another release.

01:13:24 ◼   ► It just appears suddenly with some new iMacs and stuff."

01:13:26 ◼   ► Well, that was also a good way to sell hardware.

01:13:29 ◼   ► Like the way Siri was tied to the 4S, that was a good way to say,

01:13:34 ◼   ► even though you can create it now on the command line, nobody really knows that.

01:13:39 ◼   ► there's no interface and disk utility, and no one's doing it, really, except super nerds.

01:13:44 ◼   ► For the most part, it's like, if you want the combination of very high speed and very

01:13:48 ◼   ► high capacity, you must buy a new iMac or Mac Mini.

01:13:51 ◼   ► Well, I give them a pass on that because, unlike the Siri thing, anything having to

01:13:58 ◼   ► do with low-level disk drive crap is really sensitive to the specific mechanism and drivers

01:14:05 ◼   ► and everything involved there, to the point where I really believe that, basically, it's

01:14:09 ◼   ► It's not that it won't work, it's just that they didn't QA it in any configuration.

01:14:12 ◼   ► They only had time, and they only QA'd it in these specific configurations.

01:14:17 ◼   ► It probably will work perfectly fine in tons of other configurations, but whatever your

01:14:20 ◼   ► SSD either does or doesn't support the TRIM command, or has some other feature, or ends

01:14:25 ◼   ► up running into some pathological case that they never tested for or whatever.

01:14:29 ◼   ► So I don't blame them for being super conservative with the supported hardware there.

01:14:33 ◼   ► But they didn't hold it for the next OS release, because they had this hardware they wanted

01:14:37 ◼   ► to ship.

01:14:38 ◼   ► It didn't make the OS that they wanted it to make.

01:14:40 ◼   ► In that WWDC session, they hinted that there was this thing that they would like to talk

01:14:44 ◼   ► about but can't, and that was Fusion Drive.

01:14:47 ◼   ► It just missed the release.

01:14:48 ◼   ► It didn't get on the boat for that one, so they put it out mid-release.

01:14:52 ◼   ► But Fusion Drive would be an awesome 10.9 feature.

01:14:54 ◼   ► If they had announced that WWDC, we'd be like, "Wow, this is great.

01:14:57 ◼   ► 10.9's got some really cool features.

01:14:58 ◼   ► You see that Fusion Drive?"

01:15:00 ◼   ► But now that's kind of spoiled by it already being out there.

01:15:03 ◼   ► I'm sure they'll have sessions on it, and the support for it will be expanded and blah,

01:15:07 ◼   ► blah blah blah, but that kind of takes some of the wind out of its sail, and my eternal

01:15:12 ◼   ► new file system thing, like, probably not this year either, who knows.

01:15:15 ◼   ► Well, and actually, that just got me thinking.

01:15:18 ◼   ► There are still a fair amount of Macs that have platter drives, right?

01:15:23 ◼   ► Because we just mentioned the Fusion drive, which is half platter, well, maybe more than

01:15:27 ◼   ► half platter and also an SSD, but most of the lower end Macs, or MacBooks and MacBook

01:15:33 ◼   ► pros, the non-retina ones anyway, they all still have platter drives by default, right?

01:15:40 ◼   ► So the reason I bring this up is I wonder if, and I'm looking mostly to John for your

01:15:45 ◼   ► two cents on this, I wonder if the Mac line switches, well, if it can, and let's assume

01:15:51 ◼   ► it can, and if it switches to all flash hard drives, would that lead to easier choices

01:15:57 ◼   ► in either creating or picking a new file system?

01:16:01 ◼   ► Whereas right now they've kind of got a leg in two very different worlds where you have

01:16:05 ◼   ► to support both the comparatively old and slow platters as well as this brand new, well

01:16:12 ◼   ► reasonably new I should say, flash system.

01:16:16 ◼   ► So if everything was flash and that's all we needed to worry about, would that be easier?

01:16:22 ◼   ► And a corollary to that would be would iOS jump to a different file system before the

01:16:29 ◼   ► OS X does because everything on iOS is Flash.

01:16:34 ◼   ► It's not going to jump to all Flash, though.

01:16:36 ◼   ► They're stuck with spinning drives for the foreseeable future.

01:16:39 ◼   ► I was saying in a past episode of some podcast about what the next—assuming there are some

01:16:44 ◼   ► Mac Pros or Mac Pro-like machines or something, whatever, you know what I'm talking about,

01:16:49 ◼   ► I thought that those will be Fusion Drive and you won't have a choice.

01:16:53 ◼   ► Like you won't be able to get it not as a Fusion Drive.

01:16:55 ◼   ► You won't be able to get it as pure SSD because the storage is too small, and you won't

01:16:58 ◼   ► be able to get it without an SSD.

01:17:00 ◼   ► You're getting fusion drive, period.

01:17:02 ◼   ► Because that is their medium-term solution for make it faster, but also let people store

01:17:08 ◼   ► their gigantic libraries of stuff.

01:17:10 ◼   ► That's why they made it.

01:17:12 ◼   ► Having the flash versus spinning disk, what that split is going to force them to do if

01:17:19 ◼   ► they ever get off their butts is use some form of native storage on the flash.

01:17:23 ◼   ► There are lots of other systems out there that do this type of thing.

01:17:27 ◼   ► File systems are designed for spinning things with particular behaviors of access time and

01:17:31 ◼   ► sequential access is faster than random and seeks really kill you.

01:17:34 ◼   ► The whole file system is laid out in such a way to minimize those things, or hopefully

01:17:37 ◼   ► laid out in a way to minimize.

01:17:39 ◼   ► All those things are either the opposite or just completely moot on SSDs because their

01:17:44 ◼   ► performance characteristics are so different.

01:17:46 ◼   ► Random access versus sequential access becomes less meaningful when you've just got a bunch

01:17:49 ◼   ► of chips that you're addressing, but they have their own particular quirks or whatever.

01:17:54 ◼   ► A file system layer on top of that is almost like, I mean, there are lots of file systems

01:17:59 ◼   ► tailored to Flash or whatever, but Apple's the kind of company who could use just raw

01:18:03 ◼   ► access to the NAND, particularly on iOS devices.

01:18:07 ◼   ► Why not?

01:18:08 ◼   ► Everything is already there.

01:18:09 ◼   ► You still have to provide the same interface to the application, so maybe that's a complication

01:18:13 ◼   ► for them.

01:18:14 ◼   ► But if they want to extract the maximum performance with the lowest overhead from Flash, you don't

01:18:19 ◼   ► need to go with the file system.

01:18:20 ◼   ► Not only just the file system that was designed for spinning disks, but you don't need what

01:18:23 ◼   ► we think of formally as a file system now, you just need to continue to provide the same

01:18:26 ◼   ► interface, the same driver interface to the higher levels of the OS so it looks like HFS,

01:18:31 ◼   ► because it always has to look like HFS Plus, because all the APIs expect it to look like

01:18:34 ◼   ► that, but under the covers it doesn't have to be.

01:18:39 ◼   ► I think that they probably won't even do that, but the reasons I think they need a new file

01:18:45 ◼   ► system have little to do with spinning disk versus flash, it just has to do with the fact

01:18:48 ◼   ► that HFS is really old and crappy in all the ways that I've listed in my various articles

01:18:52 ◼   ► complaining about this. And if they come up with a new one, I don't think it will matter

01:18:57 ◼   ► that it's not 100% tailored to SSDs. It'll be fine. And they'll put it on the spinning

01:19:03 ◼   ► disks and they'll probably also put it on the SSDs and they'll use core storage to make

01:19:07 ◼   ► fusion drive out of them and hopefully we'll all be happy.

01:19:11 ◼   ► All right. We'll find that.

01:19:15 ◼   ► We'll find that, yeah. The world you're thinking of is like, "Oh, wouldn't it be great? We

01:19:20 ◼   ► we don't have to worry about spinning disk anymore, we just use Flash, but it's just

01:19:23 ◼   ► not here.

01:19:24 ◼   ► I mean, only Marco can get the big—and even that one can't hold his—well, it probably

01:19:29 ◼   ► was your iPhone library, like 260 gigs or something.

01:19:31 ◼   ► Yeah, it actually does hold almost everything I have.

01:19:34 ◼   ► Yeah, but that's—I mean, it's not—that's not an average person's thing, where I easily

01:19:39 ◼   ► have—I fill a terabyte drive easily.

01:19:42 ◼   ► My next computer cannot have a terabyte drive as its main drive, because that won't be

01:19:45 ◼   ► big enough, right?

01:19:46 ◼   ► because I'm not using that much stuff. People still can't afford terabyte SSDs, and they

01:19:55 ◼   ► won't be able to next year either, or probably the next year after that either. So for a long time,

01:20:00 ◼   ► we're going to—and spinning drives keep getting bigger too. And Fusion Drive, by all accounts,

01:20:04 ◼   ► is amazing in terms of how it makes it feel like it really is just an SSD, but you still get all

01:20:09 ◼   ► that storage. Because people's usage patterns really are, you do just hit a small set of files

01:20:14 ◼   ► over and over again.

01:20:15 ◼   ► Well, that's why I wonder if, you know, like with Fusion Drive, I believe the ones that

01:20:19 ◼   ► ship in MX, they're only 128 gigs, right? On the SSD portion?

01:20:24 ◼   ► Yeah, like, it's cheap out there.

01:20:27 ◼   ► And the point is, it uses like a 4 gig write buffer, and then the rest of it is, you know,

01:20:31 ◼   ► roughly 120 gigs worth of, you know, frequently accessed files or frequently accessed block

01:20:36 ◼   ► storage. And, you know, if you think about it, like, there's really not that much reason

01:20:42 ◼   ► and why they couldn't also build that into a lot of laptops except cost.

01:20:46 ◼   ► And the problem is, the Retinas are already

01:20:50 ◼   ► high-priced items and are already all flash. So the Retinas, they won't fit in.

01:20:54 ◼   ► Spinning is not coming back to laptops. Well, but they could get a little bit

01:20:58 ◼   ► more life and a nice performance boost if they would build in a little

01:21:02 ◼   ► tiny 128GB module into the non-Retina laptops

01:21:06 ◼   ► that still exist. The Air wouldn't need them, so actually I guess

01:21:10 ◼   ► I'm talking myself out of this.

01:21:12 ◼   ► 'Cause the Air's already all flashed,

01:21:14 ◼   ► the Retina's already all flashed.

01:21:15 ◼   ► - Spinning is not coming back to laptops.

01:21:16 ◼   ► - And the other ones are all too cheap,

01:21:17 ◼   ► they can't afford the margin.

01:21:18 ◼   ► All right, nevermind.

01:21:19 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:21:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, it's just basically,

01:21:22 ◼   ► it's just the, I mean,

01:21:23 ◼   ► there are whole desktop lines,

01:21:24 ◼   ► when I'm like, you got the iMac,

01:21:26 ◼   ► that's like, why would you even buy a big hunk of thing

01:21:28 ◼   ► on disk if it doesn't come with like a terabyte of storage?

01:21:30 ◼   ► 'Cause like, what's the point?

01:21:32 ◼   ► Why not just get an Air and hook it up

01:21:33 ◼   ► to a thunder cold display or whatever?

01:21:34 ◼   ► And there's the Mini, which still has spinning,

01:21:36 ◼   ► but also has the option to SSD,

01:21:38 ◼   ► And those spinnings will probably go away too.

01:21:40 ◼   ► It's really just the Mac Pro because it's got the big bays and you can put the big drives

01:21:45 ◼   ► in there.

01:21:46 ◼   ► And for people who have huge amounts of data, SSDs are still way too expensive for that.

01:21:52 ◼   ► And the spinnings just keep getting bigger and cheaper.

01:21:54 ◼   ► And it's like, boy, you're leaving money on the table if you don't have a solution to

01:21:58 ◼   ► let people take advantage of that cheap storage.

01:22:00 ◼   ► And they do.

01:22:01 ◼   ► Apple has a solution.

01:22:02 ◼   ► It's there waiting for them, so they're going to use it.

01:22:03 ◼   ► It's medium term.

01:22:04 ◼   ► It's not going to go away today.

01:22:05 ◼   ► It's not going to go away tomorrow.

01:22:07 ◼   ► It will go away once SSDs get big enough and cheap enough to serve as the one and only

01:22:16 ◼   ► complete main drive for a normal person.

01:22:19 ◼   ► As long as the size of the pictures we're taking with our cameras don't scale with the

01:22:23 ◼   ► same rate that SSD storage scales.

01:22:26 ◼   ► Right.

01:22:27 ◼   ► Oops.

01:22:28 ◼   ► All right.

01:22:29 ◼   ► With that, let's wrap it up.

01:22:30 ◼   ► Sounds good.

01:22:31 ◼   ► All right.

01:22:32 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to our two sponsors.

01:22:33 ◼   ► Solver by Aqualia Software, go to solver, go to Aqualia.com/solver, we'll link to that

01:22:38 ◼   ► in the show notes.

01:22:40 ◼   ► And Oxygen for, Oxygen, Oxygen for cocoa from RamObject Software, it's spelled Oxygen though

01:22:46 ◼   ► with an E on the end, you'll see.

01:22:48 ◼   ► Go to RamObject Software, go to RamObject.com/Oxygen with an E on the end and use coupon code ATP13

01:22:56 ◼   ► for 20% off.

01:22:58 ◼   ► Thanks a lot guys.

01:23:02 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:23:07 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

01:23:09 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental (accidental)

01:23:13 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:23:17 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

01:23:20 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental (accidental)

01:23:23 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:23:28 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:23:32 ◼   ► @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:23:37 ◼   ► So that's Kasey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:23:41 ◼   ► Auntie Marco Armin S-I-R-A-C

01:23:46 ◼   ► U-S-I-C, R-A-C-U-S-A

01:23:49 ◼   ► It's accidental, accidental

01:23:52 ◼   ► They didn't mean to

01:23:55 ◼   ► Accidental, accidental

01:23:57 ◼   ► Tech.Cat.SoLong

01:24:02 ◼   ► Set on the show, it's a good title.

01:24:05 ◼   ► Cat, comma, modifier, cat.

01:24:07 ◼   ► I agree. And also I should add that when you said graphical links, I was being myself.

01:24:14 ◼   ► I think you're the only person who got that.

01:24:16 ◼   ► Oh my god.

01:24:18 ◼   ► Do you guys have links installed still?

01:24:20 ◼   ► Does it come? I don't know.

01:24:22 ◼   ► No, it doesn't. Because I always build it and install it.

01:24:24 ◼   ► And I'm pissed when it doesn't come.

01:24:26 ◼   ► And like, you build it yourself and it doesn't come with SSL support.

01:24:30 ◼   ► That annoys me.

01:24:31 ◼   ► Oh, and those are the other things.

01:24:32 ◼   ► Wget now is cranky about SSL certificates and you have to pass the no certificate check

01:24:35 ◼   ► option.

01:24:36 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

01:24:37 ◼   ► Well, that doesn't come built anymore either.

01:24:38 ◼   ► I know.

01:24:39 ◼   ► It's one of the things.

01:24:40 ◼   ► It's like Solver.

01:24:41 ◼   ► When you get a new Mac, I install Quicksilver, Solver, all the apps that need bbedit, and

01:24:44 ◼   ► I also go and install Wget and links.

01:24:46 ◼   ► Because I'm old.

01:24:49 ◼   ► No, but seriously, who likes cURL?

01:24:54 ◼   ► You have to pass the capital O option to do the one thing that's the common case.

01:24:58 ◼   ► Like what good...

01:24:59 ◼   ► The curl's default is just spew it into standard app.

01:25:02 ◼   ► That's talking about an app with terrible defaults.

01:25:03 ◼   ► That's why I installed wget.

01:25:04 ◼   ► I should just alias wget to curl minus capital O, but ugh.

01:25:09 ◼   ► Yeah, we have a show about text editors where everyone is stuck with-- like Marco's stuck

01:25:15 ◼   ► with TextMate because it's just what he got used to, right?

01:25:18 ◼   ► And you can never leave it, so it'll be like 70 years old still using TextMate 2, and everyone

01:25:22 ◼   ► else is using their--

01:25:24 ◼   ► It'll still be in alpha?

01:25:25 ◼   ► Neural, yeah, the neural interfaces or whatever.

01:25:27 ◼   ► Well, it's the same thing with Unix shells, where I know so many people, myself included,

01:25:31 ◼   ► where whatever Unix shell they learned when they first learned Unix, they'd never leave

01:25:35 ◼   ► it and they'd just carry it around with them forever.

01:25:37 ◼   ► I live in fear of the day that Mac OS X is not going to come with TCSH, which is my login

01:25:41 ◼   ► shell, because that's what the login shell was at BU in 1993.

01:25:44 ◼   ► Well, it's one of those things, once you learn one, there's not really enough benefit to

01:25:48 ◼   ► learn any other ones to make it worth the learning curve.

01:25:52 ◼   ► The one you use keeps working.

01:25:53 ◼   ► Yeah, you just carry your dot files around forever.

01:25:55 ◼   ► They all have very similar abilities, so it's not like there's a massive reason to switch.

01:26:00 ◼   ► Well unless you use Bash, which sucks.

01:26:03 ◼   ► I think of changing to ZSH or one of the super fancy modern, like the equivalent of hipster

01:26:09 ◼   ► shells, not really, because hipsters didn't exist when ZSH was made.

01:26:13 ◼   ► They do have lots of really amazing features, but then I just think about the amount of

01:26:16 ◼   ► time I would have to spend to recreate my preferred key bindings and environment and

01:26:21 ◼   ► all that stuff, and I say, "You know what?

01:26:23 ◼   ► keep going with TCSH. But like for the past seven, eight years, maybe ten years at work,

01:26:31 ◼   ► I'm always the only guy who doesn't use Bash. Because all the people who grew up in the

01:26:34 ◼   ► Linux generation, Bash was the default, and they all just used Bash. And so people don't

01:26:40 ◼   ► — they see my shell prompt and it's not a Bash shell prompt and they just say, "Just

01:26:45 ◼   ► type export whatever equals," and I type something different, like, "That's not going to work.

01:26:48 ◼   ► What are you doing? What is this? What are you typing into it?" Yeah.

01:26:51 ◼   ► That must be hard for you.

01:26:55 ◼   ► It is, because my entire office, for test plans or for putting instructions up or whatever,

01:27:01 ◼   ► I have to translate everything into Bash-ese, because I can't.

01:27:05 ◼   ► Because for the people who don't really know Unix, I can't just tell them what to do.

01:27:08 ◼   ► I have to type out the exact commands, and then I have to start a little Bash cell in

01:27:12 ◼   ► one of my windows so I can just make sure I'm not making typos and stuff like that.

01:27:15 ◼   ► So it's like I'm speaking a foreign language in the midst of all these other people.

01:27:20 ◼   ► You could just convert to Bash.

01:27:21 ◼   ► Why would I ever do that? It's terrible.

01:27:23 ◼   ► The only reason to use Bash is if you were doing shell programming, because no one should ever do any shell programming in CSH or TCSH.

01:27:31 ◼   ► But why would I ever do shell programming? We already went over that at the beginning of the show.

01:27:34 ◼   ► Is it bad? I probably shouldn't say this when we're still live,

01:27:38 ◼   ► but is it bad that I'm almost enjoying this part of the show more than the actual show?

01:27:43 ◼   ► Oh, this is all going in.

01:27:44 ◼   ► Oh my god. I hope so.

01:27:45 ◼   ► Oh, this is fantastic.

01:27:47 ◼   ► I think this would have been a good topic for an actual show instead of just me yelling about things.

01:27:51 ◼   ► No, no, it's much better you're just yelling about things.

01:27:54 ◼   ► That's the best part.