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3: Conditions Led To Freecell

 

00:00:00   Uh, so I received my first Kickstarter backed thing in the mail today.

00:00:06   And I want to love it, but it's quasi-DOA.

00:00:12   So I got the nifty mini drive.

00:00:14   Did you guys remember this from like eight months ago or something like that?

00:00:17   I think so.

00:00:18   Yeah.

00:00:19   It's like, was it like the USB drive that fits in the SD card slot?

00:00:21   Yeah, basically.

00:00:22   So what it, the premise is, it fits in the SD card slot of a Mac.

00:00:28   they've designed it and machined it in such a way that you stick this into the slot and

00:00:33   stick I think it's a micro SD card into the nifty mini drive and then you put the mini

00:00:40   drive in the SD card slot for your Mac and then it sits flush as opposed to the way full

00:00:45   size SD cards typically sit and so you've basically added another drive to your Mac

00:00:50   which I don't know why I wanted to do this other than it seemed cool and now that I've

00:00:54   I've gotten it, it looks great. It looks to be the same aluminum that the Mac is made

00:01:02   of. I didn't get a color. I just got it in plain aluminum. And I really like the look

00:01:05   of it, but apparently some tolerance or something was a little bit off in some of the first

00:01:10   batches. And so without putting scotch or cello tape around it, the drive was read-only.

00:01:18   So I had to put scotch tape around it because SD cards have a physical switch to make the

00:01:24   them read-only. And so apparently, yeah, so apparently without Scotch tape around it,

00:01:30   it didn't trip or did trip whichever direction the switch that made the, that made OS X treated

00:01:36   as read-only. So now I have Scotch tape around it. But other than that, it's actually really

00:01:40   cool. I was just curious.

00:01:41   So let me just, let me just clarify. So you took something from somebody who's never

00:01:45   made anything before that's made to sit flush inside of a delicate tiny slot in your

00:01:50   expensive computer, then added tape to it and put that in the delicate slot in your

00:01:55   expensive computer.

00:01:56   Yes. You are exactly right. Clearly nothing bad will happen.

00:01:59   I'm looking at this video, and they're taking the little SanDisk label and using it as a

00:02:03   shim inside the thing to—did you see this in the video? I'm assuming you did. They're

00:02:08   saying, "Take the little carrier, take your little card that's inside it," but then they

00:02:11   shoved a little piece of paper or plastic underneath it to try to shim it to shift it

00:02:17   around inside the thing. Is that where you put the tape?

00:02:19   No, I just put the tape around the outside of it.

00:02:22   - Watch the Kickstarter video.

00:02:23   I don't have the audio on, but here.

00:02:25   - This seems like the kind of product

00:02:26   where the better idea would be to wait

00:02:30   until this thing got popular,

00:02:32   wait till somebody else with manufacturing experience

00:02:34   rips it off and just makes like a $7 version of it

00:02:37   on Amazon and just buy that.

00:02:39   - Why would you buy this at all though?

00:02:40   Like that's my, I don't understand that at all.

00:02:42   - Because it just seemed cool.

00:02:43   - How big is the biggest like just capacity

00:02:46   you can have in here?

00:02:47   I have a 64 gig micro SD card and that was not--

00:02:50   - It was super duper slow.

00:02:52   - It wasn't terrible.

00:02:53   I mean, I put like five gigs of top gear on it

00:02:55   and it took like 10 minutes or something like that.

00:02:57   I mean, it was not fast without question,

00:02:59   but it was not terrible.

00:03:00   - Then you're checking up your SD card slot.

00:03:01   Like what if you wanna take things off a camera?

00:03:03   Like the whole point of it.

00:03:04   - You assume I use a camera other than our phones.

00:03:07   - I mean, I have this new small camera

00:03:10   and it has SD cards, but I never take them out

00:03:12   because it charges over USB,

00:03:16   which is an awesome feature of the camera.

00:03:18   And so I just plug it in by USB whenever I transfer

00:03:21   so I can kind of top off the charge also.

00:03:23   - What camera is this?

00:03:24   - The ridiculous one, the Sony RX1.

00:03:27   - Oh yeah, yeah.

00:03:28   - I'm looking.

00:03:29   - That charges over USB?

00:03:31   - Not only does that, I have a Sony camcorder

00:03:33   that we got when the baby was born.

00:03:35   The camcorder charges over USB.

00:03:37   It's awesome.

00:03:38   I keep meaning to blog about this.

00:03:39   It's one of the best features just for like,

00:03:41   it's one of those little tiny conveniences

00:03:43   that's just awesome.

00:03:44   - Yeah, 'cause the change,

00:03:45   Well, on the RX1 does it have a removable battery though at least?

00:03:48   Yeah, and I have, I have, I got a second one because the battery life isn't that great

00:03:51   if you're doing a whole bunch of viewing on the screen.

00:03:53   Like you can only shoot like a couple hundred pictures before the battery goes.

00:03:57   And we only ever hit the battery being dead during shooting once, like because we just

00:04:00   don't shoot that many at once.

00:04:03   But it's a fantastic camera for so, in so many ways.

00:04:06   I was excited about that camera until I saw how much it costs.

00:04:08   I'm like, oh, so it just costs as much as a regular camera.

00:04:10   Yeah, it's, the cost is insane.

00:04:11   I was like, oh, it's exciting, it's so small and it's still two grand, so nevermind.

00:04:14   You know, what's crazy about this camera is that

00:04:18   it is actually worth it.

00:04:20   Compared to the market, it is worth that price.

00:04:24   I totally see why Sony is charging that, however--

00:04:26   - You're getting the miniaturization and everything.

00:04:28   - Yeah, but yeah, however, even though it is

00:04:32   competitive with its equals, it is still,

00:04:36   you still feel like you shouldn't be paying this much

00:04:38   for a camera this size, even though it's so great

00:04:42   because it is that size and it is like it's so good.

00:04:45   Like the image quality you get from both

00:04:47   that ridiculously good sensor and the really,

00:04:50   really good optic in front of it,

00:04:52   the quality you get of it, like it is better in many ways

00:04:56   than my 5D Mark II.

00:04:58   - Yeah, these cameras are pissing me off still.

00:05:01   It's kind of like television's been pissing me off

00:05:02   for a long time 'cause it's like, look,

00:05:04   I liked mirrorless, I'm like, okay, finally,

00:05:06   we're making some frigging progress.

00:05:08   We can stop with the flappy mirrors and the other stuff

00:05:10   that has its origins in optical things

00:05:12   that are no longer a factor because we all have giant screens in the back and we use those.

00:05:14   And we stop, alright.

00:05:15   That will be, you know, like how long, this should be progressing like Moore's Law.

00:05:19   I want a gigantic full-frame sensor in a tiny little camera.

00:05:22   The sensor is only like one inch square.

00:05:24   Can we fit that in a small camera?

00:05:26   Oh, it's still two grand.

00:05:27   I mean, come on, come on, faster, faster.

00:05:29   Because you realize like this is one of those things where it should be that like in five

00:05:35   or ten years, the amazing Canon 5D, I should be able to get that in a little dinky thing.

00:05:39   Like it seems like that should be the progression.

00:05:41   Maybe not a phone but in a tiny little dinky handheld camera, but it's like well

00:05:45   No, if you get a small camera you get a sensor the size of you know

00:05:48   1/8 of a postage stamp so screw you like no put the big sensor in there. Well, I would do it

00:05:52   It's still too grand. I guess it just that's how much I mean

00:05:55   It's 2800 but like you know, I mean I think

00:05:59   The the rx-1s biggest flaw or biggest downside. It's not really a flaw

00:06:05   I guess it's it's more of just a downside of the practicality of its design is that

00:06:10   The lens sticks out pretty far just because I think it's just because if you want an f/2.0

00:06:17   35 millimeter lens that can project enough of an image circle to cover a full-frame sensor

00:06:24   It needs to be a certain size like you just can't like I don't think they could have made it that much smaller

00:06:29   and so the result is that the camera is is

00:06:32   Fairly deep so like you can't put it in a pocket of anything except like a big loose jacket pocket

00:06:40   You get one of those pancake lenses though, that gives you the weird fisheye appearance

00:06:45   type thing.

00:06:46   No, that you can do.

00:06:47   But you're right though, the optical part of it is the intractable part, because if

00:06:51   you're precision grinding glass and aligning the things with each other, and the nature

00:06:55   of optics and the nature of glass is such that that is not...

00:06:58   I don't expect that to get cheap according to Moore's law, but I do keep hoping that

00:07:02   the sensor part of it should progress along the typical technology.

00:07:07   So I'm okay with like zoom lenses always being super expensive because it's like that they're

00:07:12   not subject to Moore's law or any of those things.

00:07:14   But the sensors I felt like the light gathering ability at the very least, I want to see more

00:07:19   progress than I have seen.

00:07:21   So even though like my Canon S110 or whatever the hell I have for my little mini camera

00:07:25   is amazing compared to like my first digital camera, it's not amazing enough.

00:07:29   And so like the mirrorless movement I thought we were going to move towards.

00:07:33   So you don't want a giant SLR and you don't need this giant thing.

00:07:35   in these little tiny cameras, we're going to put much bigger sensors and give you a

00:07:38   reasonable lens and try to cut down the price. But it seems like the RX1 is the other direction.

00:07:43   It's like, okay, for people who already have lots of money and are professional photographers,

00:07:46   we can make them not have to carry such a big giant monster thing, but it's still going

00:07:50   to cost, you know, whatever, $2800 as you said.

00:07:52   Yeah, and it's, like, it isn't as portable as I want it to be, but I love using it. I

00:07:57   just absolutely love using it. And, like, it has made my entire setup of Canon glass

00:08:04   seem obsolete now. Even though the glass is great, this now feels like the new form factor

00:08:12   of cameras. I really don't see myself buying another SLR. I probably will. I'll probably

00:08:18   go back on this in three years or something.

00:08:20   No, you won't. The days of the SLRs are numbered with those stupid mirrors. People are going

00:08:26   to be talking about that sound. "When I was a boy, we heard this when we took a picture,

00:08:29   and we loved it!"

00:08:30   Nice.

00:08:31   Yeah, yeah.

00:08:32   I'm actually just excited.

00:08:33   I don't know anything about photography, and I wish I did, but I've never had the time

00:08:38   nor the money to figure it out.

00:08:40   Nor the children.

00:08:41   Nor the children.

00:08:42   That makes me do it.

00:08:44   But I'm actually kind of happy to see Sony doing well again.

00:08:46   I think, Jon, you've talked about this at length in the past, but when I was a kid,

00:08:50   Sony was the brand.

00:08:51   Oh, yeah.

00:08:53   And then, God, how the mighty fell.

00:08:56   And to hear you espousing this camera with such enthusiasm,

00:09:02   it's good to hear that Sony's doing well.

00:09:04   But what happened, Sony bought Minolta

00:09:06   and really became extremely serious about camera stuff,

00:09:10   like, I don't know, five, six, eight years ago,

00:09:12   something like that.

00:09:13   And they've been slowly progressing.

00:09:15   And they got into the SLR business fairly recently,

00:09:19   like with the A90 was the first one?

00:09:21   Whatever the first one was, they got into the SLR business.

00:09:24   And what's happening now, for a while, Canon was very clearly the leader in sensor technology.

00:09:32   And for a while, I think even the lenses, and they're still doing very well in the lenses,

00:09:35   very close with Nikon, but still doing very, very well.

00:09:40   But the Canon sensors have kind of slowed down in progress recently, and everyone else

00:09:45   has caught up very closely.

00:09:48   And in many ways, by almost all measurements, the new Sony sensors are better than Canon

00:09:53   sensors. Sony used to be an embarrassment in the camera industry. I remember when I

00:09:58   was first shopping for digital cameras, like, oh, it's Canon and Nikon, and Sony makes cameras

00:10:02   too, but just ignore them because they're pieces of crap, like they don't know what

00:10:04   they're doing with these digital cameras, right? And it's taken them a while to turn

00:10:09   that around, to be taken seriously as a player. Like, every time they'd be like, "Some amazing

00:10:12   new Sony camera would have some aspect of it that was amazing, but all the rest of it

00:10:16   would be crap," and you'd look at the pictures that you get taken with and it would just

00:10:18   be a mess. Even if it was just image processing or battery life or some weird ergonomic aspect

00:10:23   that was screwed up because they wanted to make it sleek, but it seems like they're finally

00:10:26   figuring it out at long last.

00:10:28   Oh yeah.

00:10:29   And so now that they're carrying forward their strengths that they had and the electronic

00:10:32   stuff and, you know, they figured out all the other stuff that, you know, it kind of

00:10:37   makes me wish to have implemented camera because even all these cameras like now that now that

00:10:41   the whole back of them is a screen and a lot of it is the UI and these camera makers have

00:10:45   no idea how to make a user interface to save their lives.

00:10:47   The UI's are terrible.

00:10:48   Yeah.

00:10:49   I really, you know, they can need some help there.

00:10:52   The good thing about saving cameras is that I think like car dashboards, there will always

00:10:57   be a place, especially in professional cameras, for knobs, dials, and buttons, because you

00:11:01   can use them without looking, and it's much easier using a touchscreen.

00:11:05   And it doesn't mean you don't also expose that on a touchscreen, but the camera makers

00:11:09   who are good at the shutter button, the knobs, the dials, the twisty things, that skill will

00:11:14   not become obsolete.

00:11:15   It won't be like, "Oh, well, you used to be good at those knobs and twisty things, but

00:11:17   now you don't need them at all anymore."

00:11:19   No, you'll always want them on a camera.

00:11:21   And that's why Apple shouldn't make one.

00:11:24   Ah, yeah, because they'll-- no removable battery, no buttons.

00:11:27   Apple would make one with no buttons,

00:11:28   and everything would be on the screen.

00:11:30   It would be a pain in the ass to use.

00:11:32   Yeah, it might be OK for a casual camera.

00:11:34   We're just talking about people who are in different--

00:11:37   Well, that's the problem, though.

00:11:37   For a casual camera, that's why people love the iPhone.

00:11:39   That's all they want.

00:11:40   It's a big screen that you point at something,

00:11:42   and you say, what on screen now?

00:11:44   Make picture of.

00:11:45   The problem is that the market for casual cameras

00:11:47   is evaporating.

00:11:48   Well, that's the phone market.

00:11:50   Basically, you could say Apple has entered the market with the iPhone, and that's the

00:11:53   market.

00:11:54   That's what they're doing.

00:11:55   Right.

00:11:56   Apple has entered the camera market the same way they entered the video game platform market,

00:11:58   kind of accidentally.

00:12:00   And once they realized they were doing it, they really took advantage of it.

00:12:05   Apple's still not really in the video game market.

00:12:07   I don't know.

00:12:09   How well is that Wii U selling?

00:12:11   I know.

00:12:12   I'm just saying that they're in their own market, making their own things.

00:12:17   They'll never be in the gaming market until they decide they want to make a machine focused

00:12:22   on games.

00:12:23   And they're not going to do that because it's not what they do.

00:12:25   Well, I think they have made machines for the same use.

00:12:28   No, it doesn't even have any buttons on it.

00:12:30   It's the same thing.

00:12:31   It's like trying to make a car dashboard, but no steering wheel.

00:12:35   You steer by dragging your finger on the screen.

00:12:36   It's fine.

00:12:37   You can put a virtual steering wheel on the screen and drag that with your finger.

00:12:42   They're not going to do that.

00:12:43   They're never going to put something on an iPhone that uggs it up just for the purposes

00:12:47   of games. So the type of games that you can put on an entirely touch screen device with

00:12:53   really no buttons to speak of that you can use for gaming is so incredibly limited.

00:12:56   Well, they're doing a typical disruption move of not attacking head-on into that market.

00:13:04   They're kind of running this parallel thing on the side that is taking a lot of that market

00:13:10   away without doing exactly the same thing. Because if they tried doing exactly the same

00:13:13   thing, they would have a lot harder time. They're doing a blue ocean thing. They're

00:13:16   going for the people who were never going to buy those crazy game machines, right? And

00:13:19   that's why they're selling a bazillion copies and making tons more money. But they're not

00:13:24   going after the people who want to play, you know, games that can't be played on a touchscreen.

00:13:29   Apple's not interested. Like, if Apple's interested in taking the gaming market, they would make

00:13:33   something that can play games that can't be played on a touchscreen. But they're not interested

00:13:37   in the gaming market. They'll just take what they can get from what they are interested

00:13:40   in. But they're making more money than everyone else because it turns out there's way more

00:13:43   people who don't care about games that can't be played on a touchscreen. Because basically,

00:13:50   touchscreen games alone are too complicated for most people. It's just like, "Oh, it's

00:13:53   a touchscreen game," but it's simple. You'll like it. You just pull back the little bird

00:13:56   and let them go. People can handle it. It could be jeweled.

00:13:59   They've made an alternative. Like before, if you wanted to play a game, you've always

00:14:05   had the consoles and the high-end PCs doing these A-rated games, major, big-budget, complex

00:14:12   things, these awesome graphics and everything. And you've always had the market for casual

00:14:16   games. In the old days, casual games were those CD-ROMs at Walmart full of 10,000 solitaire

00:14:23   variants. Now, and then for a while they were like flash games on the web, and there are

00:14:30   still some of that, but now you're seeing this massive boom. Oh, and like for six months

00:14:35   they were on Facebook, and now you're seeing this massive boom.

00:14:38   Well, they're still on Facebook.

00:14:39   Microsoft owned the casual game market in the '90s because the casual game market was

00:14:43   dominated by Minesweeper and Solitaire, the two most played games by humans in the entire

00:14:49   history of the universe because everyone had a PC on their desk in the '90s and all they

00:14:53   did all day was play Minesweeper and Solitaire.

00:14:55   Too bad they didn't charge money for those.

00:14:56   Don't forget FreeCell.

00:14:57   Yeah, I'm sorry.

00:14:58   Oh, that's true.

00:14:59   It's an untapped market, but that's just the equivalent.

00:15:02   Everyone has cell phones now and everyone plays games with them, but Apple was smart

00:15:05   enough to actually make a market.

00:15:06   Even if the iPhone just came with three games and there was no App Store, people would play

00:15:10   those three games so much.

00:15:11   The difference now is that they have this massive game library on these casual devices.

00:15:18   Casual gaming has never been better than it is today, and it gets better all the time.

00:15:25   Apple really owns quite a big portion of casual gaming, and that's why they're attacking big

00:15:30   gaming, because casual gaming in general is now way bigger, way easier, and way more rich

00:15:36   than it was before in content availability. And so now, whereas before, I think a lot

00:15:41   of people would get tired of those casual games and go buy an Xbox if they wanted to

00:15:47   play games at night, now you're seeing a lot more people who are sticking with the world

00:15:51   of casual games instead of buying a game console.

00:15:55   But if Apple's just not willing to make it possible to play games that aren't playable

00:16:00   on a touchscreen, they're never going to pull that market. It's like someone who's trying

00:16:04   I'm going to make a thing and it's like a movie but it's on a little tiny box that's

00:16:07   in your home and way more people are going to have it and like saying, "Okay, well, are

00:16:13   you ever going to do a thing where the picture is the size of the side of the building?"

00:16:17   No, no, it's always going to be small in the home.

00:16:19   Like it can't really be taller than one story because people's ceilings are like eight feet

00:16:23   high so we're really not, you know, there will always be a market for movies because

00:16:27   the screen is way bigger and it's a different experience.

00:16:29   And I mean this is not as ridiculous in terms of square footage or whatever but there's

00:16:33   There's just certain types of games that people like to play that you can't play with touchscreen

00:16:37   controls.

00:16:38   And if Apple is never, never, never, never going to go after them, there's always going

00:16:42   to, like they're saying, "We don't want that.

00:16:45   You can do something else."

00:16:46   And it just so happens that the games that you can't play with touchscreen controls are

00:16:48   like the traditional genres that are way deeper that most people can't play at all.

00:16:52   But there is a proven market for.

00:16:55   Is there enough of a market for four or three console competitors?

00:16:58   Probably not, so say goodbye to some of them, right?

00:17:01   but I still think that if Apple refuses to go to that,

00:17:04   it's not like there's a future where all gaming

00:17:06   is touchscreen gaming.

00:17:06   That just does not exist. - Oh no, definitely not.

00:17:08   But just like there's no future

00:17:10   where movie theaters are totally gone,

00:17:11   but I think it's very easy to see that game consoles

00:17:15   are getting really marginalized, just like movie theaters.

00:17:19   - I mean, it's consolidation.

00:17:21   There's probably not enough of a market left

00:17:23   for all the players that are there

00:17:25   to be doing what they're doing,

00:17:25   so there's gonna be some sort of consolidation

00:17:27   that goes on there.

00:17:28   But the fact that Apple is so hands off with the games,

00:17:33   they're not even, it's not even to the point where,

00:17:35   I mean, maybe we should talk to some Apple evangelists

00:17:36   about this, but like, so they're competing in theory

00:17:38   with Android for the casual game dollar,

00:17:41   like, so you wanna make a Sally's Spa type game.

00:17:45   The console makers in that market are so mature

00:17:47   that Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sega,

00:17:50   like all those people back in the day,

00:17:52   would go to the popular third party developers,

00:17:54   like EA or whoever, and court them and say,

00:17:56   you should really make your next great Sally Spaw game for our platform and here's why."

00:18:00   And cater to them and just go after them because they're competing for the content creation

00:18:04   talent.

00:18:06   Is Apple going out and trying to get EA to make casual games for them and not for Android?

00:18:11   No, because they're just like, "EA will make games for us.

00:18:14   We're the only people who have paying customers who got it in the bag."

00:18:18   The market hasn't matured to the point where it's even to the level where the console market

00:18:22   was in the '80s where...

00:18:23   I don't believe Apple believes in games.

00:18:26   They like the fact that games are on their platform, but they're not going to do anything

00:18:29   for those people with the games except, "Okay, we'll put a good GPU for you in there."

00:18:32   We're like, "Oh, could you put buttons and a joystick?

00:18:34   We're having an officially supported Blu--" Even just Bluetooth, it's like something,

00:18:37   anything.

00:18:38   Throw us a bone.

00:18:39   Let us have a controller.

00:18:40   They're like, "No, we'd rather you not muck up our thing with any sort of traditional

00:18:43   video game controller.

00:18:44   Can't you just make your game touch screen?

00:18:45   Really we feel like your game should conform to our interfaces, our vision for the phone

00:18:49   or whatever."

00:18:50   And they're like, "Ah, all right.

00:18:51   That's where the money is.

00:18:52   Let's make a million of these games for a dollar each or whatever."

00:18:55   I just don't feel like Apple believes in, understands, or is interested in gaming.

00:18:59   They just, you know, pick what they can get.

00:19:00   Well, I think you're right about that for the most part.

00:19:03   But do you honestly think that a game released for iOS would sell very well if

00:19:09   it costs like more than a dollar and required a $30 joystick?

00:19:13   Well, like that's, that's how, if they ever wanted to go after the rest of the

00:19:16   market, you take your iPad pro in 2020, right.

00:19:19   And you have an officially supported Bluetooth controller interface for it,

00:19:23   or some sort of attachment that snaps into the lightning connector on your phone or whatever

00:19:28   and turns it into a game machine and suddenly now the rest of the market is in real trouble

00:19:32   because they're saying "we're not going to leave a portion of the game market for you,

00:19:36   we're taking all the monies from all the casual games and even that niche market for just

00:19:39   people who want more sophisticated games, we're going to take that too because guess what,

00:19:42   we have official support for games that you play that do not require you to touch the

00:19:46   screen." And then everyone else is doomed. But Apple thus far has been like "nah, just

00:19:51   stick to the touch screen. That's our thing. It's simple. If you feel like you can't make

00:19:55   a certain type of game you can't make with a touch screen, tough luck. Then don't do

00:20:00   it then, right?

00:20:01   Yeah, but that's, I mean, as a user, I kind of like that. As a user, as a casual gamer--

00:20:08   I'd say it's the wrong strategy for Apple, but I'm just saying it doesn't show me that

00:20:13   they're really, really into gaming. Because they're not trying to say, "What kind of interactive

00:20:17   gaming experiences can we have? Let's make it like--" Nintendo is into gaming. Nintendo

00:20:20   It was like, what can we make to do something new in gaming?

00:20:25   And we don't care what we have to make, a crazy waggly remote,

00:20:27   a second screen, like whatever.

00:20:30   We just try to think of something.

00:20:31   Except easy online play.

00:20:34   Oh, they would do that if they could.

00:20:36   It sounds like a competence issue, I believe,

00:20:38   not really a-- they would like that to happen

00:20:40   if you could sprinkle the fairy dust and make it happen.

00:20:42   But their whole company is focused

00:20:44   on what can we make to push the frontiers of gaming.

00:20:48   And Apple is just not doing that at all,

00:20:50   not even close.

00:20:52   You know, to go back a little bit, I have to disagree that Sol—well, maybe not disagree,

00:20:56   but point out that maybe Solitaire is not the most widely played game ever, because

00:21:02   I can tell you, when I had a Nokia or Nokia whatever it's called phone, and it had nibbles

00:21:06   on it or whatever—

00:21:07   Oh yeah, the Snake game.

00:21:08   You know what I'm talking about?

00:21:09   Snake, that's what it was.

00:21:10   I saw that getting played constantly for like five years.

00:21:12   Yeah, Snake and Bejeweled might be contenders, but I feel like the sheer number of idle hours

00:21:17   of desk drones not wanting to work at their Windows 3.1 PCs.

00:21:22   That's very true.

00:21:23   You know, Windows 95.

00:21:24   Like, there's just institutionalized old people, Solitare, playing for just hours as they sit

00:21:29   at their security desk and, you know, do nothing.

00:21:31   Well, and also, like, those Windows games were the three Windows games, or the two Windows.

00:21:35   Like, sometimes you didn't get Freestyle.

00:21:37   I don't know what conditions led to that or what versions of Windows had it and didn't.

00:21:41   But like, Solitare and Minesweeper, those have been on every desktop computer that everyone

00:21:46   has ever had that ran Windows, which is most of them, since the early 90s or earlier, and

00:21:51   they're still there now. They've had, what, 25 years at least?

00:21:58   They're on your work computer is the key. Of course you can put whatever games you want,

00:22:03   but on your work computer there's nothing except, and especially before the web, the

00:22:07   web has really hurt that because now you can just go look at porn, right? So that's probably

00:22:10   sucking a lot of time away from the people sitting at desks being bored.

00:22:14   But the content filter won't know that you're using Minesweeper.

00:22:17   Yeah, I don't know, I have to wonder.

00:22:19   I wish Microsoft had put monitoring in all its stuff so we can calculate the sheer number

00:22:23   of hours that people have spent playing these games.

00:22:27   Minesweeper does not translate well to touch, by the way.

00:22:29   I downloaded one for the iPad for my most recent flight somewhere, and I remember trying

00:22:33   it out, and the problem is the difference between flagging a square and opening it,

00:22:39   which is a really, really important thing to not do wrong.

00:22:42   With your right you got to touch with your right

00:22:44   Like it even it had it like you could set us that double tap was one of them and one of them was like

00:22:51   Tap and hold but like if you mess up once

00:22:54   You blow up a bomb and your games over so even casual games can't be touchscreen only

00:22:59   Mine sweeper doesn't well like

00:23:03   For a long time that two of the biggest casual games are mine sweeper and Tetris and neither of those work on touch

00:23:09   I'm a huge Tetris fan, and it does not work on touch

00:23:12   Yeah, but you know but that's not to say that there aren't awesome casual games that I know that

00:23:18   It's just my screen with yeah touch screens have done a Nintendo type move where there was types of games that were not possible without

00:23:24   A touch screen right and suddenly the whole world of them has opened up so kudos for all of that

00:23:28   But clearly that was not like that's a side effect of that making a touchscreen interface, you know

00:23:32   And I really do believe that they are making their hardware

00:23:35   Like they want who wants the GPU. It's all about game people

00:23:39   So they were in consultation with all these other guys about their gaming stack, but that's

00:23:43   as far as it goes.

00:23:44   We'll give you a great GPU, we'll give you a great screen.

00:23:48   Don't ask us for anything else.

00:23:50   But also, they give them a lot of good APIs.

00:23:54   Making games for iOS is way better of a business and way better for the programmers than making

00:24:01   games for Android.

00:24:03   And Apple knows this, and I think Apple tries to stay ahead of this as much as they can.

00:24:07   devices consistently have really good GPUs.

00:24:10   There's a lot of Android devices sold that are really lopsided.

00:24:13   They have fast CPUs, really high resolution screens,

00:24:16   and really terrible GPUs, because it's harder

00:24:19   to really advertise that, or it's harder to get it right,

00:24:22   or more expensive. But Apple

00:24:25   does so well with having all their devices

00:24:28   being able to play really great games.

00:24:31   And they're not being that many GPUs out there,

00:24:34   So it's easy to program for all the Apple devices.

00:24:37   And they know.

00:24:38   Yeah, a lot of them are early Amazons though because they had an OpenGL-accelerated GUI,

00:24:41   so kind of they needed that anyway.

00:24:44   Right.

00:24:45   And Apple knows very much that gaming is extremely important to attract and keep people on their

00:24:51   platform, especially young people.

00:24:52   I mean, the whole iPod Touch was so focused on gaming for so long because of that, because

00:24:56   they knew that a whole lot of iPod Touch owners are kids and teenagers who their parents don't

00:25:02   want to buy them iPhones yet.

00:25:03   And so they have iPod touches, and games are really important in those markets, so they

00:25:10   really do focus quite a lot on games.

00:25:12   It makes me sad when I see a lot of my friends and relatives, without my consultation or

00:25:17   blessing, have decided they're going to buy their children or significant others Kindle

00:25:21   Fires.

00:25:22   Oh, God.

00:25:23   And then I go and I see the Fire HDs, and then I go and I see the kids playing games

00:25:27   on a Kindle Fire.

00:25:28   There's nothing sadder than a kid playing a game on a Kindle Fire.

00:25:31   And I'm not saying this to sound like elitist, but like the Kindle Fire is not a gaming machine.

00:25:36   Like get your kid a Nintendo DS.

00:25:39   It will cost you less money and that kid will have so much more fun.

00:25:41   Yeah.

00:25:42   You know, I bet a lot of Kindle Fires were bought for kids thinking they'd be good gaming

00:25:45   machines.

00:25:46   Because it makes sense.

00:25:47   I mean, you can play Angry Birds on them and a couple of other things, but it's just...

00:25:51   You want a cheap solution to your kid's desire for an iPad.

00:25:56   Something where if they break it or lose it, you can be out $160 instead of $500.

00:26:01   bucks like that. That's a way more attractive thing for parents, I'm sure. But yeah, man,

00:26:08   because the Kindle Fire, I haven't used any of the new generation ones, but the first

00:26:12   generation one that I have is a terrible device in every possible way.

00:26:17   It's like when you're just a big fan of Coke and your parents buy you a case of RC Cola

00:26:21   and you're like, "No." I know it seems like the same thing.

00:26:25   There are no redeeming factors to the Kindle Fire one. It's just so, so bad. It wasn't

00:26:31   cheap enough to make it worth being this bad.

00:26:34   Yeah.

00:26:35   So parents, buy your kids Nintendo DS, please.

00:26:37   It's not that much money.

00:26:39   You can get it used all month.

00:26:40   Not the 3DS.

00:26:41   Don't even spring for the fancy--

00:26:42   that's one's too expensive.

00:26:43   Just an old Nintendo DS.

00:26:45   It's indestructible.

00:26:46   It has a bazillion awesome games that are fun,

00:26:51   that the frame rates are good on.

00:26:54   It's not a tablet, but yeah.

00:26:56   I think once your kid is able to start

00:26:58   caring about the frame rate, then maybe upgrade to an iPad.

00:27:02   Well, no, because the games, I would rather play a DS game.

00:27:06   It's got buttons. It's got buttons and a D-pad and you can draw

00:27:10   the screen. If I had to pick a platform to play Tetris on, I'd rather play Tetris on the DS

00:27:14   than on the X3. Yes, of course. I mean, the Game Boy was the original

00:27:18   Tetris Monster machine for kids. The parents were playing

00:27:22   it on their PCs, but the kids in the back of the car with the Game Boy, with the

00:27:26   gigantic gameboy with the, you know, not black and white, but kind of yellowish greenish

00:27:32   and black.

00:27:33   Those were the days.

00:27:34   Playing Tetris, that, you know, and Tetris.

00:27:36   Practically a Tetris machine.

00:27:37   Oh yeah, because any game with a scrolling background, like a platformer, just smeared

00:27:42   so badly on that screen, you couldn't even play it.

00:27:45   Just like the original Game Gear had the exact same problem.

00:27:48   The Game Gear was terrible.

00:27:50   Everything about the Game Gear was terrible.

00:27:51   Didn't it blow through batteries?

00:27:52   Yes, it used six AA batteries at a time.

00:27:54   And it used them up in five minutes.

00:27:55   Yeah, I think it would burn through six batteries in like 45 minutes or an hour. It was it was a pretty short time

00:28:02   It would last you a lunch period in middle school. That's my gauge for those things would last

00:28:06   It was like well

00:28:07   You could bring it to lunch and I don't want to turn on to lunch and then you

00:28:09   All your friends would play at lunch or by the end of lunch while the batteries are dying now

00:28:12   Yeah, and so you'd have to have like these tremendous rechargeable battery pack accessories or any and they were nikad not even nickel metal

00:28:19   I'd write exactly terrible terrible memory effect on them. Oh, yeah

00:28:24   Because I'm a my on let me tell you well

00:28:26   I think people with gameboys have to have those big light things on the front like those big as big like light

00:28:31   magnifying glass combo accessory, it's

00:28:34   With stereo speakers. Yes

00:28:36   That's what you missed out on too about not being a Mac user. So the the original Mac

00:28:41   Non desktop machine let's call it called the Mac portable

00:28:47   It had a lead acid battery like oh my god car

00:28:51   Okay, I weighed 16 pounds. I believe I have one in my attic it weighed 16 pounds

00:28:56   It had a full-size actual real keyboard

00:28:59   Because 16 pounds why the hell not right and so it's like this is a laughingstock

00:29:05   I had like a trackball embedded in for moving. This is a laughingstock type of thing like oh

00:29:10   This is a ridiculous machine

00:29:11   But you know what it had it had something that you kids might know the name of called an active matrix

00:29:15   LCD screen and that meant when you move stuff the screen updated and it was like a miracle

00:29:20   It was like a miracle because we'd all seen the smeary LCD screens like LCD screens

00:29:25   Those are terrible and once you saw this thing like wait a second. It doesn't smear

00:29:28   You know it was I mean I probably look at it now probably like a ghosting mess

00:29:31   But it was active matrix versus you know the passive matrix displays that you saw it was such a night and day and experience

00:29:38   It was like this is what I want from Apple. I don't care that it's 16 pounds

00:29:41   I don't care that as a last at battery

00:29:42   I don't care that it's this gigantic beast with a handle the screen is amazing. You know

00:29:48   That's that was the old Apple there was always something something phenomenal about even their worst machines. Did you in the Mac?

00:29:55   Universe back then did you guys ever have mouse pointer trails?

00:30:00   Intentionally or unintentionally because the crappy you know the the first power book so did they all have active matrix?

00:30:08   I think made have only been an option

00:30:09   I remember I remember mouse cursor trails on bad laptops for you it was it was actually a feature of Windows

00:30:15   I think in 3.1 they added it. It was a feature where it would just draw, it would leave the

00:30:21   mouse pointer graphic, it would not unblit it, it would draw it on the screen in the

00:30:27   shadows. So it's very similar to when Windows freezes.

00:30:31   But it happened all the time.

00:30:34   When a window blocks its main event loop, whatever, I forget what it's called on Windows,

00:30:37   but when it doesn't respond to its main event loop and it doesn't respond to repainting

00:30:41   So everything just kind of smears all over the window because it's not

00:30:44   Is this still true in Windows 7 and 8 that it's the windows aren't their own layers anymore or like

00:30:51   Windows Windows 7 arrow has a compositing window manager. Oh good finally. Okay, because I know like you can turn it off though

00:30:58   Because it's windows good. Yeah

00:31:00   But yeah

00:31:01   Like it the screens were so bad back then they actually added

00:31:03   Artificial mouse trails to make it easier to see where your mouse pointer was to find where it is

00:31:08   And that's actually that's actually kind of an accessibility thing like my mother

00:31:12   Uses the crank up the size of the cursor thing because her vision is going right

00:31:16   uh

00:31:17   And so that because she can't

00:31:19   Otherwise she forgets where the cursor is and you can't see it like you wiggle it around try to get the motion

00:31:22   Well, if you've got trails and you wiggle it around all of a sudden

00:31:24   This is white swirl happening off in the corner. You're like, oh, there's the cursor

00:31:27   So marco, can I ask you about the magazine? Yeah

00:31:33   So you had tweeted earlier today, which if this gets released by the time anyone hears

00:31:39   it, it's going to be like a week ago. But anyway, you had tweeted that you had added

00:31:43   support for other mail clients other than Apple Mail. And it got me to thinking, and

00:31:49   I'm probably not looking at this right, but I wanted to hear your guys' take. It got me

00:31:53   to thinking that to some degree, I feel like that sort of developer effort that you had

00:31:59   had to go through to support all these other mail clients, which I'm assuming is just a

00:32:03   series of URL schemes. Is that correct?

00:32:05   Yeah. And it wasn't all these other. I literally just added support for Gmail and Sparrow,

00:32:09   because I can't—nobody told me any other client that they're using, except for that

00:32:14   new mailbox thing, but they don't have a URL scheme, so I can't do anything with it.

00:32:18   Right. But it still got me to thinking that that almost smells to me like the iOS equivalent

00:32:25   of the Android fragmentation in the sense that it's something that's not well managed

00:32:30   by—well, I mean, URL schemes are well managed by the OS, but—

00:32:32   No, they're not. They're really, really not.

00:32:34   It's the Wild West out there. They don't even have a registry like they did for type

00:32:38   creator codes, you know?

00:32:39   Okay, so that's fair. But what I'm driving at is there's a mechanism for quasi-interapp

00:32:44   communication, but really, that is a hack to me that you shouldn't have to go through.

00:32:48   And I don't think it's Apple's style to let you pick a different mail client, or

00:32:51   or at least not in iOS, but that just kind of smells.

00:32:55   I was curious what you guys thought about that.

00:32:57   - They don't like letting you pick a different mail client.

00:32:59   But eventually, think about the Mac,

00:33:03   how they don't really like letting you pick

00:33:06   your different default browser.

00:33:07   Remember when there was the internet config control panel

00:33:10   where you said, what application do you want to use

00:33:11   for the FTP protocol?

00:33:13   What application do you want to use for,

00:33:14   and you got the pickup, and then you're like,

00:33:15   you know what, let's just put that as a preference in Safari.

00:33:18   And then every stupid web browser had to say,

00:33:20   no, I'm the default browser.

00:33:21   And you'd have to go to the app itself to change that setting.

00:33:24   Like, there was no system-wide-- there still

00:33:26   is a system-wide registry and database of who controls it.

00:33:28   But it's not exposed.

00:33:29   And that's the Mac where it's supposed to be the Wild West.

00:33:31   On iOS, it's like, so you want to use a different default.

00:33:34   Mail client?

00:33:35   Well, screw you.

00:33:35   Like, that's why when I went to the magazine,

00:33:38   and I saw, oh, it wants me to send an email.

00:33:39   And the only email account I have configured on my Mac

00:33:43   is not one of the ones that I would want to use from a web

00:33:45   browser.

00:33:45   So basically, I couldn't-- I don't have-- I use the Gmail

00:33:49   this is before you added Gmail support or whatever.

00:33:52   But it's like, anytime I see anything that's sending email on iOS,

00:33:55   my heart drops because I'm like, "Oh, well that's not using--"

00:33:58   I have one really obscure account configured to mail

00:34:02   and I never look at it, and I don't want to send from that account,

00:34:04   and it's not my real account, and it's not like my Apple ID account,

00:34:07   and it just depresses me, all because I deign to use a different email client.

00:34:13   Yeah, I mean, it's a mess. That whole world is a mess.

00:34:16   But I think Gmail is probably the only real exception where

00:34:21   there's actually demand that matters to Apple.

00:34:25   On the Mac, when a lot of this Mac stuff was designed,

00:34:29   the early days of Mail and Safari, Mail and Safari sucked.

00:34:34   And in many ways, Safari still sucks.

00:34:37   Apple didn't have a Mail client, and Apple

00:34:39   didn't have a web browser when this stuff was

00:34:41   done in classic Mac OS.

00:34:42   Of course they're going to let you

00:34:43   pick what the default application for email is.

00:34:45   because Apple didn't even have a horse in the game.

00:34:47   It's not like they had a Claris email, or I guess,

00:34:49   but loosely affiliated.

00:34:51   But they sure didn't have a web browser.

00:34:52   It's like, do you want to use IE as your default web

00:34:55   browser, or Netscape, or iCab, or Cyberdog.

00:35:00   I guess they had Cyberdog, too.

00:35:02   We keep going back.

00:35:03   That underpinning, if you were designing an OS,

00:35:05   I'm going to be an awesome OS, and I'm

00:35:07   going to support third-party development,

00:35:08   of course you have to have a system by which the user gets

00:35:11   to choose which of these umpteen third-party applications

00:35:14   they want to serve these particular needs.

00:35:15   But then once Apple has a horse in the game, like it simplifies things greatly so you don't have to shop around.

00:35:20   Like Apple gives you something, everything works out of the box and you're fine.

00:35:22   But God forbid you are a slightly advanced user and say,

00:35:25   "You know what, I believe I'll use a different mail client."

00:35:27   It's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up, what are you doing here?"

00:35:29   You know?

00:35:30   And on the Mac you can figure out how to do it, but a normal person can't.

00:35:33   Like, if my parents decided that they wanted to use a different mail client, which they probably never would,

00:35:38   but if they did, they would have no idea how to do that.

00:35:40   They would never think to look in the preferences for the mail client that they...

00:35:43   In either mail client they wouldn't think they'll look for the preferences to tell the OS that they want to use it as a client.

00:35:48   Well it would do what the browsers do, which is all the third party ones would have a nag screen that would pop up saying,

00:35:52   "Hey, you want to say this is the default?" But I think like on iOS,

00:35:57   because iOS launched with the best browser and mail client available on iOS,

00:36:01   and it's now, I would say, mail and Safari are still the best mail client and browser available on the platform.

00:36:12   Safari is the best because they won't let anyone else use

00:36:14   Nitro JavaScript engine.

00:36:16   So duh, no wonder it's the best for safety reasons

00:36:19   and whatever.

00:36:19   Like they have legitimate security reasons

00:36:21   for not allowing that to happen.

00:36:22   But everyone else's hands are tied behind their back.

00:36:24   So no one is ever going to make a better browser than Safari

00:36:26   in terms of performance and web rendering

00:36:28   because they're the only guys who

00:36:29   get to use the good rendering engine.

00:36:31   They're the good JavaScript engine.

00:36:32   I wouldn't-- I don't know.

00:36:33   I mean, Safari JavaScript is faster than everyone else's

00:36:36   on iOS.

00:36:36   But I don't think that's what's holding back

00:36:41   the other browsers.

00:36:42   You're not allowed to use a Java--

00:36:45   that's why-- doesn't Chrome use WebKit on iOS entirely,

00:36:49   including the JavaScript engine?

00:36:51   Unlike Chrome on the Mac, which uses the V8 JavaScript engine?

00:36:53   Because you're not allowed to make an interpreter.

00:36:54   That's their other thing.

00:36:56   You can't use--

00:36:56   Oh, yeah.

00:36:57   Yeah.

00:36:57   Unless you're a game maker and you get grandfathered in

00:36:59   or whatever the hell crazy deal they have with EA

00:37:01   to let them run Lua scripts or whatever.

00:37:03   I think that doesn't matter.

00:37:03   You can't make an interpreter.

00:37:05   They changed the interpretation of that rule

00:37:06   like a year ago to be more-- even more vague

00:37:10   unspecified but more sensible most of the time.

00:37:13   But still, I mean it's...

00:37:14   Yeah, it still boxes out JavaScript engines.

00:37:16   Oh, sure.

00:37:17   They're clearly, "Oh, you're making a language and we don't want you to download code from

00:37:20   the internet and execute it."

00:37:21   You know, so you have to use our JavaScript engine and the slow version of our JavaScript

00:37:26   engine that doesn't have all the security, you know, possibly security violating features.

00:37:29   So no one is going to ever make a browser that's going to be universally better than

00:37:32   Safari.

00:37:33   And then mail, I would say that lots of people would say that people already have made better

00:37:38   clients than mail.

00:37:39   I don't know how if you like this mailbox crazy thing which has other server side and security and privacy concerns to it, but

00:37:45   Client wise like it's an innovation in terms of how you deal with your mail, and I really like that innovation

00:37:51   I just don't like everything else about the client which is why I'm not going to get it, but

00:37:54   They have a chance that there is a chance that someone could make a better

00:37:58   Ios native mail client than apple because there's no technical reason holding them back

00:38:02   The only thing that screws you is that well so what?

00:38:05   no other application is going to see your stupid mail thing,

00:38:08   and when you send mail, we're going to still pull up Apple

00:38:09   Mail, because that's the way it works.

00:38:11   Right.

00:38:11   So do you ever think that will change?

00:38:13   I mean, I don't.

00:38:14   I don't ever see there being enough demand from customers.

00:38:17   Honestly, Gmail maybe.

00:38:20   Chrome, no.

00:38:22   I just don't see there being this massive demand

00:38:26   from customers on iOS to want to use alternative clients enough

00:38:30   for Apple to want to change their minds on the policy.

00:38:32   Like, if there was a huge demand, that'd be different.

00:38:35   - I think long term what's going to happen is that,

00:38:38   as in so many things, there's going to be

00:38:42   a new killer application, either category

00:38:44   or individual instance, that wants to fill the role

00:38:48   that's currently filled by a default Apple application.

00:38:52   And in order to be competitive,

00:38:54   there will be public pressure to say,

00:38:55   hey, why can't I use popular new thing

00:38:58   instead of the dumb default thing that comes?

00:39:00   And that will only happen,

00:39:01   not because of any of Apple's doing, but because of the sheer mind share and sort of cultural

00:39:06   traction that this other thing gets.

00:39:08   They dodged the bullet on Twitter for that because it was always third party and they

00:39:10   didn't have a single horse in the game, right?

00:39:12   And they integrated Twitter into the US, but I don't know what the next thing is, but whatever

00:39:16   it is, if it wants to take over like web browsing or mail sending, it becomes wildly popular

00:39:20   independent of Apple.

00:39:21   Apple will be under pressure from that same casual public to, "How come every time I send

00:39:26   mail on my iPhone it brings up the stupid mail application?

00:39:29   want to sell in holo mail with the new holographic holo whatever thing that's made by a third

00:39:33   party company that's not Apple, and they have an app, but every time I send mail, like,

00:39:37   that's the phenomenon I'm looking for, where it's going to be something that becomes popular,

00:39:40   independent of Apple, that they can't be ignored, and they're just going to be forced to say,

00:39:45   you know, "All right, we now have a way for you to choose which application you want to

00:39:50   send mail. Do you want our boring other one or this crazy holo mail that everyone loves?"

00:39:54   Or, I'm mispronouncing holo, but whatever. Holographic.

00:39:57   Maybe what it would actually take would be one of those killer apps getting huge and

00:40:03   taking over, growing really fast, like Instagram levels of growth, just taking over like crazy,

00:40:08   but on Android instead, and not even being available on iOS because it can't exist in

00:40:13   the app store.

00:40:14   That's why there would be pressure.

00:40:15   They would say, "On my iPhone, the stupid Apple app always comes up, but on my Android

00:40:19   phone I get to pick which one I want, and everybody who has an Android phone automatically

00:40:22   picks whatever crazy popular new thing is.

00:40:24   So everyone with an Android phone is happily going along and doing their thing, and the

00:40:26   And the Apple people are like, yeah, we have this work around where most Apple--

00:40:30   the worst case scenario is people have to do what Marco is doing.

00:40:32   It's like, all right.

00:40:34   You tried to do it with the magazine originally with the Chrome--

00:40:36   Yeah, and just automatically pick the right one.

00:40:38   With Instapaper, like, oh, if you have Chrome installed,

00:40:40   you're forced to do crap like that because the OS gives no way

00:40:43   for people who want to use Chrome to indicate that preference.

00:40:45   You're like, well, if they have it installed--

00:40:47   I shouldn't have to do this at all.

00:40:49   There should be absolutely no reason why an app developer should

00:40:52   need to separately code support for different mail

00:40:55   clients or different browsers. I shouldn't even have to know what browsers are out there.

00:40:59   Yeah, it's like every application is going to have to have this stupid proliferation of preferences

00:41:03   and dealing with URL protocols, because it just makes a mess. And that's like the worst thing that could happen

00:41:07   to Apple, is that something becomes wildly popular, Apple refuses to budge,

00:41:11   every application that does anything that involves this application suddenly adds a preference that says

00:41:15   "Use Apple default, use this one," or whatever. And then every time you download a new application, you've got to

00:41:19   go into settings and change it and say, "Oh, I've got to tell this to use my..." I mean, like, Fantastic

00:41:23   is kind of almost there, because they

00:41:25   want to make a default calendar, but they can't

00:41:26   replace the default calendar.

00:41:28   There's a lot of people, I bet, who

00:41:29   would buy an iOS calendar application completely

00:41:32   replacing the existing calendar if they could.

00:41:35   Yeah, I would do that with Fantastic Cal, absolutely.

00:41:38   And actually, you were talking about something

00:41:40   that's only on Android that isn't on iOS.

00:41:42   And this isn't a great example, but one that jumped to mind

00:41:45   was the swipe keyboard thing that all the Android users

00:41:49   rave about.

00:41:49   And I don't think it's popular enough

00:41:52   to get the response from Apple that you're talking about,

00:41:54   John, but that certainly is something that I think of

00:41:56   that Android users can hold over our heads and say,

00:41:59   "Hey, look what we can do," and you can't

00:42:01   without a jailbreak or something like that.

00:42:02   - Yeah, there's a limit to what Apple will do.

00:42:04   Letting you pick your favorite email application

00:42:06   is within the realm of what I would consider plausible

00:42:10   for Apple to do in the future,

00:42:12   but letting you pick a different app instead of Springboard

00:42:14   is outside that realm, or a different keyboard,

00:42:17   like a third-party keyboard app, that is just,

00:42:21   They don't even let you drill down to the Mac.

00:42:22   That's a good yardstick, is the question.

00:42:24   Do they let you replace the Finder with another app?

00:42:26   No.

00:42:27   You can hack it up and figure out a way to do it,

00:42:29   because it's the Mac, and it's much more open than iOS.

00:42:31   But they don't offer you that option.

00:42:33   You can pick your default browser,

00:42:34   and you can pick your default mail client.

00:42:36   And you can pick which application

00:42:37   automatically has ownership over .shtml files,

00:42:40   or whatever the hell you want.

00:42:41   But you cannot pick through a GUI interface.

00:42:44   You know what?

00:42:45   I'm not into the Finder.

00:42:46   Can you launch into Pathfinder?

00:42:47   It's up to the Pathfinder devs to figure out

00:42:49   how to hack your system up to make that happen.

00:42:50   So keyboards probably outside the realm of possibility in the near or distant future.

00:42:58   Springboard replacement also probably not going to happen.

00:43:00   Oh yeah, never going to happen.

00:43:01   Because that's what's going to happen in Apple's way.

00:43:02   But replacement mail and browsers, maybe not mail, maybe not browsers, maybe not calendar,

00:43:09   but something along those lines.

00:43:10   Like camera apps maybe, you know, like all the...

00:43:13   There aren't that many types of apps like that that the use case is so compelling to

00:43:19   to replace the default apps.

00:43:21   Like there really aren't a lot of categories like that.

00:43:23   And that's why I think like Calendar is a great example

00:43:26   of one of those categories, but I think the demand for that

00:43:29   is even lower than the demand for browsers.

00:43:31   I would say demand for browsers is probably lowest

00:43:34   because Chrome and iOS is not that much better

00:43:36   than Safari and iOS.

00:43:38   Demand is probably highest for email clients

00:43:40   because everyone wants to use the Gmail app.

00:43:41   I think that is probably the strongest case

00:43:45   for this preference existing.

00:43:47   calendars, I don't think, you know, I think the market for alternative calendars, while

00:43:52   it may be big enough to support a few developers doing it, I don't think it's big enough for

00:43:56   Apple to have to care about having a default setting.

00:43:59   Well, I don't know, like calendars, reminders, to-do lists, like there are tons of third-party

00:44:05   things that people like. Like the defaults are, I think a lot of people ignore the defaults

00:44:08   because the third-party market is so rich for those things, especially with like, you

00:44:12   know, they were ahead of Apple and integrating with a Mac client and an iPad and iPhone all

00:44:16   together with one big shared thing.

00:44:17   You know what I mean?

00:44:18   It's just that they're not so much launched

00:44:20   from other applications.

00:44:21   What you don't want is for people to be in a cool app

00:44:24   and see that they're about to do some activity that's

00:44:26   going to invoke another app and realize with a sinking feeling

00:44:30   that, oh, this is not going to invoke the app that I want.

00:44:33   And that repeatedly happening to people

00:44:36   is what makes people sad.

00:44:37   I guess it happens the most, I guess,

00:44:38   by sending email because it's not done from a sheet

00:44:41   like a tweet might be with that API or whatever.

00:44:43   They send you off to the mail app to send your email,

00:44:47   and you don't end up in the Gmail app or whatever

00:44:49   the app that you wanted to use was.

00:44:51   I mean, Apple can nip this in the bud.

00:44:53   Like, the reason we hated it so much with browsers

00:44:54   is because Microsoft stagnated on IE,

00:44:56   and they said, we're just not going to develop that anymore.

00:44:59   IE6 is perfect and never needs to be changed ever again.

00:45:02   And the gap just widened and became increasingly crazy.

00:45:05   Imagine if Windows users could not change their default

00:45:08   browser at all, but had to explicitly

00:45:11   like copy and paste the URL, launch Netscape back in the day, paste the URL in. That's

00:45:17   what the situation is like on iOS now, if you want to use something different for your

00:45:22   mail or browser. You're like, "Oh, there's a link. I don't want to tap it."

00:45:27   That's sort of true. On the new-ish version of 1Password, they did something absolutely

00:45:33   brilliant which was they made their URL handlers OP HTTP and OP HTTPS. So the premise is if

00:45:42   you're in Safari and you want to open that site that you're looking at in 1Password, it

00:45:46   is fiddly admittedly, but it's as unfiddly as you can be which is to say you go to the

00:45:51   URL bar and you put the letters OP in front of whatever the crap is there and then it'll

00:45:55   kick over to 1Password and open it up.

00:45:56   They had to make their own browsers. What they had to do?

00:45:59   Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right.

00:46:01   That's like, that is so, I don't know if it's terrible, but it's like, you're one password

00:46:06   and you want to provide password management services, and the only way you can do it is

00:46:10   like, I've just got to make the whole new browser.

00:46:12   It's great that they can do it with a nice embeddable WebKit control and everything like

00:46:15   that, but it's like, that's the heavyweight solution.

00:46:17   Actually, don't even browse the web from our thing, because this is one little thing that

00:46:22   we want to do in some cases, and we can't do it unless you're literally using our software.

00:46:26   I have the exact same thing with Instapaper, which is I wanted to add an easy read later

00:46:30   because Mobile Safari makes that so hard to do, that I built a whole web browser into

00:46:35   Instapaper so that people could browse the web and save stuff from it if they couldn't

00:46:39   figure out how to install the bookmarklet.

00:46:41   You should never remove that feature, by the way. I'll hunt you down.

00:46:46   I would love to remove that feature. I would so love to.

00:46:51   I like to bring up the full version of the web page without leaving the app. That's my

00:46:56   common use case.

00:46:58   I would love to remove it, but I probably never can because of things like that, because

00:47:03   there's enough people who use it, but also because there's going to be so many people

00:47:07   who just browse from that.

00:47:09   Never figure out how to do the bookmark.

00:47:10   Right, because I can't do anything so far.

00:47:12   I figured out the bookmark, though.

00:47:13   I have it, but it's just, you know.

00:47:18   And I think a system like Windows 8's contracts would really go a long way towards solving

00:47:23   a lot of these issues.

00:47:24   all of them. There would still be some issues, but if Apple broadens this whole UI activity

00:47:31   thing from iOS 6 and combining with the remote view controllers thing that they quietly added

00:47:38   to iOS 6 as well and used behind the scenes, if they transform this into something like

00:47:44   Windows 8 contracts with iOS 7 maybe, if they did this, it would be a tremendous help if

00:47:53   if they did it that way. Right now, its current implementation on iOS 6, it's really extremely

00:47:58   unhelpful in many ways. For me to add the "send to Instapaper" button in the magazine,

00:48:05   I had to manually code that into the magazine, provide an icon for it, write all the code

00:48:11   to log into Instapaper, to save it, all that stuff. Even though I had the Instapaper app

00:48:17   installed. If I wanted it to be in the app without kicking over the Instapaper app and

00:48:21   taking back, which is kind of inelegant, if I wanted it to all be in the app, I had to

00:48:26   write that all myself. There's no way Instapaper could offer to the magazine its own interface

00:48:33   that could be in the magazine's share panel. That doesn't exist yet. If that did exist...

00:48:37   That share panel will open up almost guaranteed in iOS stuff. You will be able to put stuff

00:48:41   in that share panel. I really hope so. But that's a major architectural change, though.

00:48:46   That's why it's a big deal if they do it.

00:48:49   It might not happen yet because it is such a major change.

00:48:55   That's part of what Windows 8 contracts are.

00:48:58   That would go a long way towards solving a lot of these problems.

00:49:02   If I could just say, "Here, I have this item to share.

00:49:06   Open up a share panel and I can offer you a URL, a file of this type, and this text.

00:49:13   apps that can do something with these things can show up here and do their thing. And I

00:49:17   don't have to code all that myself. That would go a long way.

00:49:21   Is the remote view controller stuff the stuff that's using XPC that's actually in iOS 6

00:49:25   but not public? Yes.

00:49:27   The thing that spawns the external process and communicates with it through a secure

00:49:31   sandbox channel? Exactly.

00:49:34   It's currently used for the mail sharing controller, and I think maybe even the Twitter one and

00:49:39   the Facebook one. But definitely the mail one uses it. And they could definitely use

00:49:45   that exact same kind of system to do this for all third-party apps and have this kind

00:49:49   of system.

00:49:50   But the share sheet is different. The share sheet is literally what you said. It's just

00:49:53   a question of querying which applications can handle this type of thing, showing their

00:49:57   stupid icons and feeding them the data with a launch event. Like, add to Instapaper, you'd

00:50:03   be perfectly happy if the add to Instapaper was hit the share button, hit the little iInstapaper

00:50:07   icon, your application gets, like all you need is a freaking URL.

00:50:11   Your application gets a URL and has a chance to shove it in somewhere

00:50:15   and then it goes away. Well, but then the question is, does my

00:50:19   app, does it switch to my app first? Because that's kind of an elegant.

00:50:23   Or is my app just brought up in a background state and

00:50:27   I present a view controller that the remote controller then displays and then

00:50:31   I'm just handling this data and my app never shows up. That would be the right way to do it.

00:50:35   The share thing with the list of icons,

00:50:37   I assume it's going to launch you.

00:50:39   The remote view controller thing where

00:50:40   you get to present an interface is what you really want,

00:50:42   but that's more complicated.

00:50:44   But any time there's a private API like that used by Apple

00:50:46   apps, like XPC has public API on the Mac, right?

00:50:50   So this is kind of one of those things where it seems like--

00:50:53   this is how a private API becomes public.

00:50:57   It's like how a bill becomes a law, how a baby is made.

00:50:59   First Apple uses it in all their apps,

00:51:04   And then they hopefully wring the bugs out of it.

00:51:07   And then the next release, they open it up to everyone.

00:51:10   Or in the next release, they decide

00:51:11   they made a terrible mistake, scrap it, and start over again.

00:51:13   But XBC is already public on the Mac,

00:51:15   so I feel pretty good about that.

00:51:17   The only problem I have with this idea

00:51:18   is, let's take in the example of the magazine,

00:51:23   I don't really see how this would help in the sense

00:51:27   that what you're doing is you're doing something with a URL.

00:51:30   So if you have a share sheet, and you're

00:51:32   presenting to the share sheet, "Hey, I've got a URL. Who can do something with this?"

00:51:37   That's going to be half the damn apps on your iPhone or iPad or whatever the case may be.

00:51:41   That's why they don't do it, because everyone's like, "I register for Star!"

00:51:44   Exactly.

00:51:45   "I can handle any data."

00:51:46   Well, and that actually, like, there was a good interview from Chipone on Debug, the

00:51:52   podcast by Rene Ritchie and Guy English. You know Chipone, the hacker guy? Anyway, Grant

00:51:58   Anyway, he was talking on their show about how this is a problem on Android that does

00:52:05   implement this feature, because then you have these apps that show these giant long lists

00:52:10   of what you can do with something, and they're not really ordered in any good way.

00:52:15   You can't really set a default of what you want to show up on top for certain types.

00:52:20   That actually then becomes a pretty challenging interface problem.

00:52:23   Yeah, they can do the thing where you hold down the icon and they wiggle and you can

00:52:28   X them out and there's a "more" button at the bottom if you want to get some back.

00:52:32   You're going to have to trim those lists because as soon as you do that, yeah, look at the

00:52:35   friggin' app store, it'll be used up the wall too.

00:52:37   Are you? I don't know. Well, first of all, they can police it, so they can say, "Well,

00:52:40   you don't really have a use for this, so we're not going to let you register for it."

00:52:44   Some applications, though, have legit—like, what if you're a text editor? Any time something

00:52:48   is text, you're like, "Oh, look, there's whatever. There's elements again." Or

00:52:53   or a PDF reader or something.

00:52:54   Yeah, like GoodReader and Dropbox will

00:52:56   get you a register for every file type.

00:52:58   Or an image, like all your camera apps

00:52:59   are going to show up, all your image retouching apps.

00:53:01   Like it's just-- the interface problem is you'll want to--

00:53:05   it's either going to have to be opt-in,

00:53:07   which would be kind of annoying for regular users,

00:53:09   or opt-out, where you just use the gesture that we all

00:53:12   know to make icons go away, which is hold your finger down

00:53:14   on them, hit the little x, and then trim the list.

00:53:17   Maybe that will be annoying.

00:53:18   Or it'll just reorder itself.

00:53:21   Whichever one you used last would move up

00:53:23   the front of the list. Oh no, that's no good. That's the reason Springboard doesn't work

00:53:27   that way. Because it would drive people nuts! Upper left is Safari, where did it go? I haven't

00:53:32   used it recently. You just get a muscle memory of like that sheet comes up, Instapaper is

00:53:37   top left corner, you tap it. If Instapaper is not the top left corner because you didn't

00:53:40   use it, but you used a different one last time, that's angry making. See, and I agree,

00:53:45   and that's what I'm driving at is that RPC definitely solves a problem which is if you're

00:53:51   Marco and you want to have a native instapaper share function from within the magazine you're right now

00:53:58   You're screwed and RPC would fix that but that to me. It doesn't really fix the problem of I have a URL

00:54:04   I wish to email

00:54:06   What can email this URL because it's more than just having a URL you want to share or do something with?

00:54:11   You want you want to be able to say that my intention is to email it and then that calls the list down

00:54:17   to whatever email clients you have or

00:54:20   Or perhaps if Apple was nuts and had a default email client setting, then that is what you

00:54:25   get.

00:54:26   Yeah, that's the Android intent.

00:54:27   It wouldn't just be protocol driven.

00:54:28   It would be action driven.

00:54:29   Exactly.

00:54:30   It would have to have...action would have to be a component.

00:54:32   We're just saying protocol driven for like if you have raw data, kind of like who can

00:54:35   handle this pasteboard data type of thing.

00:54:37   Yeah, there's also the intention is like I would like who is an email...

00:54:41   Apple can define these things.

00:54:44   I was saying in another podcast a while ago, if Apple wants to allow third party email

00:54:48   By all means let it say look if you want to be a third-party email application that participates in the system

00:54:53   We're defining here's how you must behave in terms of RPC. Here's the features you have to

00:54:57   support you must support attachments custom subject lines to is front like so you can like

00:55:02   Conform to some protocol that I'm sure Apple's mail application already totally conforms to or whatever like define it

00:55:08   However, you want people will jump through those hoops to be like you know so basically you don't run to the problem of like

00:55:13   Oh, well you pick the third-party email application that can't handle subject lines for some reason and my application

00:55:18   doesn't work because it puts some code in the subject line.

00:55:21   That's what they want to avoid.

00:55:22   Because you're not using the default email application,

00:55:25   your stuff broke.

00:55:26   So they would have to say, if you

00:55:28   want to be a replacement for a system thing,

00:55:30   you must support these features, this protocol.

00:55:33   Just screw it down as tight as you want,

00:55:35   because people will jump through it to be in that.

00:55:37   And that will solve the consistency

00:55:38   problem of being afraid.

00:55:40   Everything is working fine, but because you

00:55:42   use a third-party email application, something broke.

00:55:44   Right, and that's a huge support problem for developers.

00:55:47   that starts getting possible.

00:55:49   Right now, and that's kind of the flip side of this,

00:55:51   right now, because I'm building in support

00:55:54   for all these things manually, I can test them all.

00:55:57   And I can be pretty sure that the options that anybody

00:55:59   will ever see will all work.

00:56:02   But once you start integrating these other things,

00:56:04   then people will start blaming you for like,

00:56:07   "Oh, when I shared to new experimental browser X

00:56:10   "from your share panel, it didn't work right

00:56:13   "in this weird way."

00:56:14   And they'll email me saying it's my fault.

00:56:16   I just had that with the hypercritical.co podcast feed.

00:56:19   Ever since that site went up, people were like,

00:56:21   I tried to subscribe to your feed in Reader

00:56:23   and it showed me this crazy ass thing.

00:56:24   And they showed me a sheet in Reader

00:56:26   that shows a huge list of things, none of which are my feed.

00:56:29   Some of which have my name related to them.

00:56:31   I'm like, that must be running a search or something.

00:56:34   What the hell is it doing?

00:56:35   And you're like, look, it's a URL.

00:56:37   It's HTTP colon slash slash and it has a bunch of stuff.

00:56:40   You click it and this is on the Mac.

00:56:42   So it activates, okay, what is your handler for RSS?

00:56:45   I guess it looks at the MIME type of the thing coming back,

00:56:48   Atom feed or whatever.

00:56:49   And then it launches your preferred news reader

00:56:51   application, which happens to your readers

00:56:52   in these people's systems.

00:56:53   And then reader gets it.

00:56:54   And it turns out what Safari does is it takes off the HTTP,

00:56:58   puts in feed colon slash slash, finds out

00:57:01   whatever the default protocol handle is for feed,

00:57:03   basically what is your news reader, launches that,

00:57:07   but gives it that URL.

00:57:08   And I believe it excises the feed at that point,

00:57:12   and hands the URL without the leading HTTP or something.

00:57:14   What it comes down to is that what Reader was doing is taking the URL as it was given,

00:57:19   which no longer had-- oh, no, I think it was stripping off the feed.

00:57:22   Reader was stripping off the feed colon slash slash, not putting HTTP slash slash back on,

00:57:26   feeding that to the Google Reader API, and Google Reader API interpreted that as a search

00:57:31   term and not a URL, and hilarity ensues.

00:57:34   And that is a pretty-- that is like-- how complicated is that?

00:57:38   It's a link that you click that launches a protocol handle.

00:57:41   You know what I mean?

00:57:42   as simple as it could possibly be,

00:57:43   and yet it still went totally awry.

00:57:45   Like, once it went off to the third-party application,

00:57:47   it's like, oh yeah, I'm totally compliant,

00:57:49   I handle feed URLs, but then what it does with them,

00:57:51   it passes them to Google Reader,

00:57:52   and Google Reader does something crazy with it,

00:57:54   and then so you get into a situation where you're like,

00:57:56   hey, I tried to subscribe to your newsfeed,

00:57:58   but when I clicked on it,

00:57:59   because the newsreader I used isn't

00:58:01   whatever newsreader you tested with,

00:58:03   something crazy happens.

00:58:04   So I guess no matter how simple you make it,

00:58:06   something can go wrong that you did not expect.

00:58:12   Yep.

00:58:13   This bug is fixed in the next version of Reader, supposedly.

00:58:15   Right.

00:58:16   Then it'll introduce five more.

00:58:18   Yeah.

00:58:19   I'll be happy.

00:58:21   I don't know why Google Reader is doing this.

00:58:22   I'm assuming it's because they don't think .co is a real extension.

00:58:27   They're probably looking for the .com to doing their fuzzy matching.

00:58:30   Is this a URL?

00:58:31   It's kind of odd.

00:58:32   I don't know.

00:58:34   Yeah.

00:58:35   But the search terms that come up are vaguely related to me because they've got the word

00:58:38   hypercritical in feed and maine and so you see things about the podcast and my name and

00:58:43   yeah. Took me a while to figure that one out.

00:58:47   [BLANK_AUDIO]