0:00:00[Music]
0:00:08Hello and welcome back to Upgrade on Relay FM. This is episode 10 of Upgrade.
0:00:14This episode is brought to you by our friends over at TextExpander from SMILE
0:00:20where you can type more with less effort and hover simplified domain management.
0:00:25My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by your host, Mr. Jason Snell.
0:00:30Hello, Mr. Myke Hurley. How are you?
0:00:32I am very well, sir. How are you?
0:00:34I'm doing great. I had a minor flood in my laundry room moments ago, but there are many
0:00:41towels. Towels are good at absorbing floods and nothing seems to have shorted out. So,
0:00:48doing great.
0:00:49Are you well-grounded?
0:00:50I hope so. I'm wearing my tennis shoes, sneakers, or trainers, perhaps you would call them.
0:00:57So I'm hopeful that I'm insulated from the flood, should it come.
0:01:03Good. If the floods come, I am ready.
0:01:08Oh man. Okay, so...
0:01:11You should build a podcasting arc, just in case.
0:01:15That's a good idea. Podcasting is back. Did you hear?
0:01:18Did you hear? I did hear about that actually. I heard the rumors.
0:01:22And we've reached double digits. So we're alive and kicking at 10. That means it's been
0:01:2810 weeks of my post Macworld life because I started two podcasts that week.
0:01:37The week after. That's interesting. You'll be able to judge
0:01:39it as it goes further and further into the future.
0:01:42Yeah, Upgrade and TV Talk Machine are both at episode 10 this week because I started
0:01:46those two podcasts 10 weeks ago.
0:01:48Yeah, it's funny how that is.
0:01:50So it's, yeah, my site actually Six Colors
0:01:52has been up for exactly two months now.
0:01:55- Congratulations.
0:01:57- September 16th, so yeah, thank you.
0:01:59Thank you, here I am.
0:02:00- Yeah, that's-- - Still alive.
0:02:00- That's the interesting thing about like
0:02:02most of the relay shows, right, where they were new,
0:02:05they're all the same episode number.
0:02:07- Right.
0:02:08- Like obviously it's starting to change a bit now,
0:02:09but it was funny and it still is 'cause it's like
0:02:1213, 13, 13, 13, like.
0:02:15- Yeah.
0:02:16- I like it though.
0:02:18- Yeah, one of these days,
0:02:19Casey's just gonna be like, I can't, I can't,
0:02:21a baby, ah, can't, and then, you know,
0:02:23that one's gonna get behind.
0:02:25- Yep.
0:02:25- That's my prediction is he's gonna be like,
0:02:27how about we, although then again, I don't know,
0:02:29maybe it's his lifeline, these podcasts that he's on.
0:02:32(laughs)
0:02:33- He's escaped.
0:02:34- I mean, he does work, he does work outside the home
0:02:37and therefore, you know, it's,
0:02:39I just remember for the first three weeks
0:02:41when my daughter was born, my daughter who just turned 13.
0:02:44So it's amusing to watch Casey go through
0:02:45having a newborn and I just got a teenager.
0:02:49So I, but I was thinking back to then
0:02:50and I was home for, I think three weeks.
0:02:52And it was after week one or half of week one,
0:02:56it was the cabin fever was high.
0:02:58I was like going to Home Depot and bringing back cabinets
0:03:03and storage bins and things like that.
0:03:06Like let's do projects 'cause we're just sitting
0:03:09with a sleeping baby otherwise.
0:03:11- I think Casey's like partly back at work now.
0:03:15- Yeah.
0:03:16- He's doing what I did with, especially with my second,
0:03:18when my son was born, I took,
0:03:22I sort of scattered my leave and vacation time.
0:03:24So I did a week off and then a week where I went in
0:03:27like a couple of days and then another, you know,
0:03:29then a bunch of three day weeks.
0:03:31And I just sort of scaled it a little bit,
0:03:33which I think is smart because yeah, just being gone
0:03:36and then suddenly being full-time after having that baby
0:03:39and being under that sort of sleep stress is pretty crazy.
0:03:43- Is this the paternity vertical?
0:03:45- It could be parenting vertical.
0:03:47It's possible.
0:03:48We've stumbled into a vertical.
0:03:49Even before we get to follow up, we are verticalizing.
0:03:53- Should we do some follow up?
0:03:54- Should we do some follow up, Myke?
0:03:58Yes.
0:03:59One of these days we're not gonna have any follow up.
0:04:01- I'll make it up, don't worry.
0:04:03I'll find something.
0:04:04- Okay.
0:04:06I have a little bit of Taylor Swift follow up.
0:04:09I never thought I would say that,
0:04:10but Taylor Swift follow up is a thing.
0:04:13part of this, we talked about this last week,
0:04:15about this is following up on follow-up
0:04:18about when I was talking about streaming services
0:04:20and pointing out that, you know, they're shifting sands
0:04:23and you could have things disappear from your library
0:04:26and Taylor Swift pulled her music from Spotify.
0:04:29There was a back and forth last week
0:04:31where the guy from Spotify said,
0:04:32"We're paying you a lot of money."
0:04:34And her people were saying,
0:04:35"Well, no, it's not really a lot of money."
0:04:37And it turned out that the truth lies in the middle
0:04:41where Taylor Swift's people were quoting the figure
0:04:43that she made in the US last year from streaming.
0:04:47So basically the smallest number possible.
0:04:49And Spotify was- - It was like half a million
0:04:51or something. - Yeah, half a million.
0:04:52And Spotify was, and this made me laugh,
0:04:55they took the worldwide figure
0:04:57and then took the trend line of where payments were going
0:05:02to estimate her payment for next year, which is cheating.
0:05:06- Because she has a new album out right now.
0:05:08that's why the trend line is so good.
0:05:11- Yeah, so that's cheating.
0:05:13And then there's Spotify growth and all that.
0:05:14But so that was interesting and it has brought up
0:05:17a lot of people have had opinions about this.
0:05:20And I think like we were talking last week,
0:05:22it's worth talking about,
0:05:25you wanna find a sustainable place, right?
0:05:27And you don't want artists to say,
0:05:30well, forget it, this is bad,
0:05:32we're gonna pull out of these services.
0:05:34But at the same time, the artists do need to make a living.
0:05:38So you need to find a sustainable place.
0:05:40And the argument now seems to be Taylor Swift on one side
0:05:43and Spotify on the other, she's saying it's not.
0:05:46And they're saying it is sustainable.
0:05:48And the problem is it's unclear to me
0:05:52as somebody not in the music business,
0:05:53whether Taylor Swift is using her clout
0:05:56to represent all artists, right?
0:05:59And they're like, she's gonna make her money regardless
0:06:01and she's okay with that, but she's got a soapbox
0:06:04to stand up for other artists rights.
0:06:07or whether she's just concerned about what Taylor Swift
0:06:12is gonna make and that what she says doesn't really apply
0:06:15to anybody but like the top 20 artists.
0:06:18And I don't know the facts there,
0:06:20but I think everybody who loves music
0:06:22and loves streaming services wants this to work, right?
0:06:25We want it to be something where it's great for consumers,
0:06:29you pay your monthly fee, you can listen to what you want,
0:06:31what you want is there and doesn't disappear
0:06:34and that the artists get paid.
0:06:37That's really what everybody wants.
0:06:38- I think there's no way it will ever even out.
0:06:41Like, artists are never gonna make as much
0:06:44from streaming services as they made
0:06:46from selling their albums directly.
0:06:49- I'm not sure artists made money
0:06:51from selling their albums directly though, really, right?
0:06:53Because the record companies took all that money, so.
0:06:56- So that's where I go back to my feeling on this,
0:06:59is that in the long run, it will even out
0:07:02if you ignore the actual money coming from the music,
0:07:07itself. Because in theory, it allows more people to find out about you and therefore
0:07:14people buy concert tickets because that's where that seems to be.
0:07:18You're making the Dave Grohl argument, which is, "Look, I don't really care about..."
0:07:24Dave Grohl said basically, "I've written off album sales, whatever. If they like my music,
0:07:30they'll come to my show and that's where I make my money." And that's actually true for
0:07:33a lot of artists is that historically the record companies have taken so much of the
0:07:36money that the artist couldn't make it on album sales anyway. So, you know, I would
0:07:43argue that that is maybe wrong, like morally wrong, and that new technology coming in could
0:07:49potentially right some of those wrongs and bring that money directly to the artists in
0:07:55a way that it hasn't. And you see that with things like artists doing Kickstarters and
0:07:58Indiegogo's and I've bought my last what two Myke Doty albums direct from him
0:08:05using I think Indiegogo and I did they might be Giants thing where I paid them
0:08:10directly and I got concert tickets and and their album releases and I just
0:08:15re-upped where they're doing a thing called Dial A Song Direct where it's part
0:08:20of their instant fan club where you pay them directly and they give you stuff
0:08:25right? There are options there. I looked at that Dial-A-Song thing for this year and I
0:08:31don't understand how they make any money from it. Well I think they make a little,
0:08:37and I think it's because it's direct because they're eliminating the middleman there,
0:08:41but yeah like this the Dial-A-Song direct I think you pay like 30 bucks or something and you just
0:08:45get some songs. The instant fan club for They Might Be Giants you pay what $100 and you get
0:08:51two concert tickets, you get two album releases, and you get the the weekly like dial-a-song music
0:08:57and some like merch. You know, it's probably not a huge moneymaker, but it does attach them directly
0:09:04to their biggest fans, which I think is kind of cool. But anyway, so these are options are out
0:09:09there too, and maybe that's where the future of this stuff is, is the super fans. Spotify isn't
0:09:14for the super fans, Spotify is extra, and then you get your money through super fans buying stuff
0:09:19direct from you and your concerts and maybe that's it and that's fine. That's fine if
0:09:25that's the case. But Taylor Swift is still not on Spotify so my argument that just like Netflix,
0:09:34music services may have this problem where your favorite artist just vanishes. Maybe that will
0:09:39happen. In the long run it needs to be solved because it will devalue these services if that's
0:09:44the case but I fear that we are in a period of upheaval where artists are going to be
0:09:49doing this and contract disputes are going to happen and catalogs are going to disappear
0:09:54from the music services too and that would be bad for those services and the people who
0:09:59use them.
0:10:00We mentioned Foo Fighters. I thoroughly recommend their new album, Sonic Highways.
0:10:06I didn't mention Foo Fighters, I mentioned Nirvana but that's a disconnect between us.
0:10:11Oh, interesting.
0:10:12I like Foo Fighters too, it's fine. But yeah, I just you know, you're you're a young whippersnapper
0:10:17And and Dave Grohl was in a band before Foo Fighters. Anyway, I know I know I know the history
0:10:22But yes, I love the new album. I've been listening to it on Beats music
0:10:27But on Friday they know tomorrow I think tomorrow morning
0:10:34No, it's Friday. They have
0:10:37Tickets going on so for the tour and I'm gonna wake up especially early to get in line to buy tickets
0:10:41And that's because I love the new album.
0:10:44So it was.
0:10:45- So that's our music vertical.
0:10:47- Music vertical.
0:10:48- Check.
0:10:49Let's see what other follow up do we have?
0:10:52- We're gonna come back to Spotify
0:10:53in a bit actually, I think.
0:10:55- Okay, that's good.
0:10:56That makes sense.
0:10:57We'll get there.
0:10:58Setup follow up.
0:11:02We talked about our setups last week.
0:11:04And I know that was hard for some of us to hear.
0:11:09And I felt really bad afterward.
0:11:10I'm like, you know, Myke was really good on the show about it, but now I'm a little concerned that Myke has been upset by our discussion of his setup.
0:11:20So I hope you're okay.
0:11:24I haven't been upset. I've just been slightly harassed.
0:11:29Ah.
0:11:31And slightly... I've just been trying not to think about it, basically.
0:11:35Okay.
0:11:36has been my tactic at the moment.
0:11:39However, I say harass, people have had very,
0:11:42they've had very good suggestions for me in all.
0:11:48But my main thing is I don't necessarily want
0:11:53to change anything about the way that I work right now.
0:11:55- Well, that goes back to you being your own IT guy,
0:11:58where you're being very conservative.
0:12:00And when I said that, I really meant
0:12:03you're being very conservative in your tech decisions
0:12:06for what you're doing now, because you've got a business,
0:12:10and you've got particular needs,
0:12:12and you've got a workflow that works for you.
0:12:14And just like any IT person I saw
0:12:16in the publishing industry,
0:12:18like at Macworld, the editors would install new updates
0:12:22immediately and be like, "Oh, yeah, whatever,
0:12:23new software, we'll do whatever."
0:12:25But the people who did the design and the copy editors,
0:12:28yeah, those computers were very rarely updated.
0:12:33It was a very conservative approach
0:12:35because they were the ones who had to get the magazine out.
0:12:40And they had the Adobe software and all that.
0:12:43And it was a very different kind of thing
0:12:44where it's like, let's not mess this up
0:12:46just because it's fun.
0:12:47Whereas editors, that was our job
0:12:48was to just mess things up for fun.
0:12:51And so I think that's the position you're in,
0:12:53which is you wanna be careful.
0:12:55You don't wanna mess anything up.
0:12:57You're out on your own now building this business.
0:13:01You wanna be careful about how you do it.
0:13:03And I think that makes perfect sense.
0:13:05and it's very easy for the internet to get judgmental about that and be like, "Oh, come
0:13:08on, just buy a thing." And you're like, "Well, no, I'm not going to buy that thing right
0:13:12now. I'm going to make my own priorities." And that's quite right.
0:13:15Yeah, that is exactly it. Thank you. Although listener Kyle on Twitter and in the
0:13:21chat room as we speak did point out that Mountain Lion supports AirDrop. So you could AirDrop
0:13:26your files from your Mac mini to your MacBook Pro.
0:13:30Yeah I've not tried that out yet but that is one that I will maybe have a go with.
0:13:35I'll see. All right. Also some follow-up for me Alexander Vachich I'm gonna say
0:13:46radiant AV on Twitter said I am very surprised that as a prolific writer as
0:13:51Jason is he would use such a terribly uncomfortable desk with a slide-out
0:13:55keyboard tray. Hmm. Now so some some judgment feeling some judgment from the
0:14:00internet. I wrote him back and basically said, "Well, I'm the one at the desk and
0:14:05you're the one looking at a picture, so who's better at judging how
0:14:08uncomfortable it is?" I love your responses to things. Right? I mean, really, like, one photo and you've
0:14:15decided it's uncomfortable, I'm sitting at it, maybe I have a better idea.
0:14:19His point in the end was that he hates keyboard trays and that he has had an
0:14:28experience where he, you know, he does the hover thing where you're hover,
0:14:31hover, uh, he, where he, you know, your hands are, which you shouldn't do when
0:14:36you're typing, which is when you're paused and you're thinking, or you're
0:14:39reading something on screen to hold your hands over your keyboard and suspend
0:14:43them there, like you're ready to type at any, at a moment's notice, that's really
0:14:47bad for your hands and your wrists and your arms and your shoulders.
0:14:50It's just bad.
0:14:51You should not do that.
0:14:52You should type when you need to type and not hover when, when you're not typing.
0:14:57And he said he had pain from doing that
0:15:00and that the problem with the keyboard tray
0:15:01is you can't rest your hands on it because it's all flimsy.
0:15:04And that's all true to the point that
0:15:06although I was okay with my old setup,
0:15:09I have actually for the last few days
0:15:10been trying it with the keyboard tray off
0:15:13with the iMac higher up on the arm
0:15:16and further back on the desk
0:15:17and my keyboard and a track pad on the desktop
0:15:21instead of in the keyboard tray.
0:15:22And it's different and I'm not sure I like it
0:15:25but I'm giving it a try
0:15:27because I never really loved keyboard trays too.
0:15:29It was more, if you've got an adjustable keyboard tray
0:15:31and a monitor on an arm and a sit-stand desk,
0:15:34you can literally put your keyboard, your desktop,
0:15:37and your display at any height.
0:15:40And that's what I had.
0:15:41And there are some advantages to that.
0:15:44But I'm kind of interested in this approach
0:15:47where the keyboard is on the solid surface
0:15:51instead of on the flimsy keyboard tray.
0:15:53So I'm trying that out
0:15:54and I'm not sure whether it's better or worse.
0:15:56I can barely get my desk low enough to make this work
0:16:01and my chair high enough, but it does work.
0:16:03So I'm gonna give that a try.
0:16:05- We're all going through changes.
0:16:08- Yeah, it happens, workspaces.
0:16:11I have a Nick and Nerf brain ball follow-up.
0:16:14- Of course, I mean, why wouldn't we?
0:16:16- It's important.
0:16:18I hear that it turns out that they're going
0:16:23for a lot of money on eBay.
0:16:25Listener NJ Green wrote in with a link to a $130 brain ball on eBay.
0:16:33And listener Greg tweeted, "Are you absolutely sure that your Nerf brain isn't for sale?" To
0:16:40which I said, "You couldn't afford it." And no, they're not for sale. But it turns out that yes,
0:16:48these two, I think I have a third in a box somewhere, but I have two out in my office
0:16:53here these two orange Nick and Nerf brain balls from the 90s. You have mint in box. I don't have
0:17:01mint in box. So this is the other thing somebody and I'm not sure who said I hope you've still got
0:17:06the containers because they're really worth something and that I don't have because as I
0:17:11said a couple weeks ago the brain balls came to the Macworld offices back I mean way back when
0:17:19when we were on Howard Street and down in San Francisco
0:17:21and not on Second Street.
0:17:22So this is right after the Macworld Mac user merger.
0:17:25So it's late nineties.
0:17:28And it was part of, I don't know,
0:17:30some piece of software, maybe mind mapping.
0:17:33I don't remember what it was, but they sent a box
0:17:37and like a lot of PR things, they send it with like,
0:17:40well, I will get their attention
0:17:41by having not just a press release and a box with software,
0:17:44but a brain and we'll say,
0:17:47oh, think clearer with our software or whatever it is.
0:17:50So they obviously they paid an intern or somebody
0:17:52to take them out of the boxes, the original boxes,
0:17:54and just put them in their mailer with their stuff
0:17:57and mail that to tech industry people.
0:17:59So I don't have the box because I did literally collect
0:18:03from my coworkers who had just kept them at their desks
0:18:06and didn't care about them.
0:18:07I collected the extras like two years later.
0:18:10Like, no, I'll take that brain ball if you're not using it.
0:18:12So that's the story with the brain ball.
0:18:15So I don't have it mint in box.
0:18:16They are definitely used, although the 131 on eBay is used.
0:18:20- Yeah, very clearly.
0:18:22- These are like gold, Myke, they're like gold,
0:18:24which is why my other bit of brain ball followup
0:18:25is terrifying.
0:18:26My daughter had her birthday party this weekend.
0:18:28As I said, she turned 13.
0:18:30And she had a bunch of girls over.
0:18:33There were like eight girls in our house
0:18:34and it was pretty crazy.
0:18:35They were outside, they did some tie dyeing.
0:18:37They hung out in her room
0:18:38and they hung out for a little while in our garage,
0:18:41which is not just my office,
0:18:42but there's a big beanbag chair here and there's a TV
0:18:44and they can, and when I'm not using it, the idea is,
0:18:47it's also a place for teenagers to go and not be near us,
0:18:52which is, that's a feature.
0:18:53I came out after they had all left late that night,
0:18:58Saturday night, to discover on the floor
0:19:02in various far corners of the house, both of my brain balls.
0:19:07So the girls had been playing with the brain balls.
0:19:10- And they know the what?
0:19:13I, well that was exactly what I thought it is.
0:19:15This goes for $130 on eBay.
0:19:17So I haven't said anything to my daughter about it yet,
0:19:21but I'm, I actually, what I did, what I did tell her was,
0:19:24"Hey, the stuff that's on my desk needs to be off limits
0:19:27and don't let anybody play with the stuff
0:19:29that's on my desk."
0:19:30I, what I didn't say is like my precious,
0:19:32precious orange foam brain.
0:19:34- Yeah, don't tell her how much they cost
0:19:36or one day one of them will just go suspiciously missing.
0:19:39- Just gone.
0:19:40- Who knows where it went.
0:19:41So that's orange foam brain follow-up, vertical.
0:19:45Done.
0:19:46- Because we have another piece of follow-up,
0:19:48I think it might stretch a bit.
0:19:50So should we talk about Hover now and then?
0:19:52- I would like to hear from some friends right now.
0:19:55In my moment of need where I'm upset
0:19:57about my potentially damaged brain balls,
0:20:00I would like to hear from a friend.
0:20:03- Well, let me cheer you up, Jason,
0:20:04by telling you about our very good friends at Hover.
0:20:07They are the best way to buy and manage domain names.
0:20:11Hover has been my choice for as long as I can remember
0:20:15from when I became sensible,
0:20:17because before Hover, my life was crazy,
0:20:20trying to navigate the obstacle course
0:20:22of domain management,
0:20:24but Hover has cleared all of that up.
0:20:26Once you need a name,
0:20:27which can either be a name for a new project,
0:20:29or maybe you wanna play a joke on me and Jason
0:20:32and set up like ManchegoCheese.fm or something,
0:20:36you can go to-- - Play telephone.blooming.
0:20:39You can go to Hover and get all of this.
0:20:41They have a really great way of searching for domains.
0:20:43You just type in the words that you're looking for
0:20:46and they'll give you all of the top level domain options
0:20:49that are available.
0:20:50They have over 200 different top level domains.
0:20:52As Jason mentioned, they have .plumbing if you want it.
0:20:55They have .academy, .coffee.
0:20:57They have .sexy if that's the kind of thing
0:21:00you're looking for.
0:21:01They also have your standards like .com, .co, .me, .net.
0:21:05- Brainball.sexy.
0:21:06- Brainball.sexy. - It's right there.
0:21:07Brainball.xyz if you want it as well.
0:21:10Basically you could monopolize all of the Brainball domains
0:21:15by just going to Hover and registering them all
0:21:17in one easy go.
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0:21:21for Brainball, then you can take advantage
0:21:24of their volume discounts when it comes to renewal time.
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0:22:05and you'll save 10% off your first purchase at hover.com
0:22:09and show your support for upgrade.
0:22:10That is Verticals, V-E-R-T-I-C-A-L-S at checkout.
0:22:14Thank you so much to Hover for sponsoring this show
0:22:17and supporting Real AFM.
0:22:19- Our friends.
0:22:20- Our friends, our good friends.
0:22:21- At Hover.
0:22:23- At Hover.
0:22:24- And also my other mic translation for that spot would be,
0:22:29When he says X, Y, Z, he means X, Y, Z.
0:22:32- Yes, yes.
0:22:33You need to go to hover for your X, Y, Z.
0:22:36- Yes, that's, thank you.
0:22:38Well done.
0:22:39- I love that they, that hover embracing this,
0:22:42because basically it's just becoming a war of pronunciation.
0:22:45And they're just letting us go with it.
0:22:48So I appreciate that.
0:22:50- I have some, we're into the UK US vertical now.
0:22:53I wanted to mention, I had an episode of The Incomparable
0:22:56that I posted this weekend,
0:22:58which was about web comics.
0:23:01And that's one word because in the episode,
0:23:04you'll hear John Syracuse say,
0:23:06"One word, web comics, not web comics.
0:23:08It's one word, web comics."
0:23:10It's like, all right, all right.
0:23:11And then like, seriously, it's like,
0:23:12I will never ever write that as two words again
0:23:14'cause John Syracuse has told me it's bad.
0:23:16It's just, I do what he says.
0:23:18So there was a reference in there to a comic called "Ax Cop"
0:23:22and Tony Sindelar tells a story about a guy
0:23:25who he saw at PAX that he thought was a cop, an actual cop,
0:23:30but it turns out it was an ax cop cosplayer.
0:23:33So he was a cop guy wearing,
0:23:35essentially impersonating an officer,
0:23:36but he had a hatchet and so it was okay.
0:23:38But what Tony said was impressive is that he had,
0:23:42he had a natural authentic cop mustache.
0:23:45And I thought authentic cop mustache
0:23:49was a really great title.
0:23:51So I decided that was gonna be the title.
0:23:52And then I had that moment of like, well, wait,
0:23:54aren't there two different ways to spell mustache?
0:23:56And indeed that led me into a dictionary,
0:24:00bottomless pit of dictionary definitions
0:24:02where I discovered that Americans spell mustache,
0:24:06M-U-S-T-A-C-H-E
0:24:08and non-American English speakers
0:24:10tend to spell it M-O-U-S-T-A-C-H-E.
0:24:14I had no idea.
0:24:16So anyway, I spelled it the American way,
0:24:17just like how gray.
0:24:18- So my question, how do you-
0:24:20- Gray is the same way.
0:24:21The rule with gray by the way is very easy
0:24:23because if you're American you spell it with an A
0:24:25and if you're English you spell it with an E.
0:24:27- Oh, that's nice, it's good to remember.
0:24:28- If you're Australian, I'm sorry,
0:24:30you should probably spell it with an A,
0:24:32but you probably spell it with an E.
0:24:33- So my question to you with the mustache thing
0:24:37is how do you, I mean, we know Movember because it's M-O
0:24:41and they're also referred to as Moes, you know?
0:24:44A mustache is referred to as a Moe.
0:24:47Interesting that-- - Right, because it's
0:24:48pronounced Moes-dash?
0:24:50- No, it's spelled that way.
0:24:52I do know many people... - spelt! spelt! which we would say spelt. oh man.
0:24:56I know many people that call them mustaches but there you go.
0:25:01that's another thing for another time. - mustachio!
0:25:03uh i don't know it's it's stupid but it's just yet another way where our uh
0:25:07our common language separates us so that's your usuk hover
0:25:12hover
0:25:15ah follow up so last week we're almost done last week we spoke about
0:25:19um, podcasting. Podcasting is back. And this is, you're gonna hear this everywhere at the
0:25:25moment because everybody's really interested in it. Um, and especially on other podcasts
0:25:30that you listen to, I'm sure everyone's going to talk about it, but we get to go there first
0:25:33because it's Monday. Because it's Monday, yeah. Um, we spoke last week about serial
0:25:38and what that's doing and now there's all these like Wall Street Journal articles and stuff and
0:25:41then there's been more stuff over the weekend and like Marco wrote a very interesting post about,
0:25:48about podcasts and sponsorship and the way that all that sort of stuff is growing.
0:25:54But then today, as we record this, which is the 17th of November 2014, there seems to
0:26:02have been some rumours floating around that Spotify is going to enter the podcasting game
0:26:06and become a provider of spoken word audio content.
0:26:12And then Jason Snell, in response to this, wrote a quote.
0:26:17a great post on his site, sixcolors.com, and I believe that my co-host, Jason, knows Mr.
0:26:23Jason Snow and can comment on his opinions.
0:26:25Yes, I have his Nerf brain ball right here.
0:26:30Yeah, it was, well, this came up this morning, the TechCrunch story about Spotify having sort
0:26:38of secret podcasting features built in, and it led to a whole discussion on the little
0:26:42back channel from Relay, and Stephen Hackett wrote a post on his site, and I wrote a post
0:26:47on my side about it. And I think it's interesting because I think we can debate whether Spotify
0:26:56is a brand for, they probably would say we are a brand for listeners and podcasting is
0:27:02one of the ways people listen to things. And I would say maybe it's a music brand and I'm
0:27:08not sure whether people are going to want to listen to spoken word on Spotify. That
0:27:13like a pretty different use case but I could maybe maybe but there was a lot
0:27:17there was another pretty big music brand that brought podcasts in there wasn't
0:27:21there
0:27:22so iTunes yeah well that's true that's true although that's different in that
0:27:27iTunes is sort of this catalog of they had audio books and they have and their
0:27:31podcasts and all that but it is true Apple has the big the big library for
0:27:35for podcasting and so in my piece which I've been meaning to write for a while
0:27:41and I may have even mentioned it on a previous show,
0:27:43this idea that podcasting is having a moment,
0:27:45that's really great.
0:27:46Apple is uniquely positioned, I think, to give it a boost.
0:27:50I'm not sure whether it will or not.
0:27:51I'm not sure whether Apple cares enough.
0:27:53It's not really at the core of Apple's business,
0:27:55but at the same time, I feel like Apple,
0:27:58more than any other single company,
0:28:00could probably boost the future of podcasting.
0:28:02And this is an interesting moment where, you know,
0:28:05like we said last week,
0:28:06we can roll our eyes at this rediscovery of the medium,
0:28:08but it's great that it's been rediscovered
0:28:10'cause it needed to be rediscovered
0:28:12because all those newspaper and magazine stories
0:28:14were written in 2005 about it.
0:28:17And the tech wasn't far along enough
0:28:20for it to become a mainstream hit.
0:28:23And it is now, but everybody sort of just saw it fizzled
0:28:27in 2005 and then below the radar, it continued to grow,
0:28:31but it just never met the outrageous expectations of 2005.
0:28:36So now we've all seen it grow,
0:28:38we've all adopted podcasting apps
0:28:40and are listening to all these podcasts all the time.
0:28:42And I'm listening to several right now.
0:28:45It's only slightly distracting.
0:28:47And it's good that people are rediscovering it.
0:28:52Writing an article in New York magazine about it
0:28:56that gets passed around is good for everybody
0:28:58because it's going to bring more people in as listeners
0:29:01because they read about serial
0:29:03and they wanna listen to podcasts
0:29:04and then they'll say, what else can I listen to?
0:29:07It's great for podcasters because I really believe that major, there are lots of major advertisers that, you know, we would think they'd be really savvy in terms of technology and things like that.
0:29:21But no, actually, like an ad buyer, an ad agency who reads that story that's getting passed around about podcasting.
0:29:28I really believe those people are going to be more likely to buy advertising because it's got that stamp that says, oh, this is a thing now.
0:29:36And before they might've been like,
0:29:38nah, podcasts, nobody cares about them anymore.
0:29:40- It's just a hobby.
0:29:41- But now it's like, oh, oh, did you hear their back?
0:29:44And we can joke about, did you hear the podcasts are back?
0:29:46But that is a message that for people
0:29:49who are potentially buying podcasts,
0:29:51advertising is a big deal.
0:29:52And I do think that that also is gonna reach
0:29:55potential listeners who are gonna say that.
0:29:57And that's good for the medium.
0:29:58So I think it's all great for the medium,
0:30:01but Marco Arment had a post this weekend
0:30:04that partially was throwing everybody, including us,
0:30:08who's done a podcast survey with the mid-roll
0:30:10where we asked people to fill out some survey information
0:30:13so we know more about who our listeners are.
0:30:15I sort of threw them under the bus,
0:30:16but the larger point that I thought was interesting
0:30:19was him pointing out quite rightly,
0:30:21look, the tech is evolving slowly.
0:30:22Not everybody's got Bluetooth.
0:30:23Not everybody's car radios have Bluetooth.
0:30:25It works easily.
0:30:26It's kind of hard to set up, but it'll get there.
0:30:29And I thought that was a good point too,
0:30:31Not only are people, the tech's okay now,
0:30:35but it's gonna get better.
0:30:36And this comes back to the larger point,
0:30:38which is somebody in something
0:30:40is gonna put podcasting over the top.
0:30:42And my piece on six colors, I'm saying really is Apple.
0:30:46You could argue it's Apple and Google
0:30:48with CarPlay and Android Auto,
0:30:50but could it be Spotify?
0:30:53Could the Spotify already with its podcast integration,
0:30:56could it do it?
0:30:57Is some third party?
0:30:59I mean, we were talking on,
0:31:01not to give too much away on the Relay Back channel, but we came up with a billion dollar
0:31:04idea about how we're going to completely revolutionize podcasting. So some third party like us could,
0:31:10we could do that too. Billionaires, please contact us. We've got some great ideas. Just
0:31:16write us a check and we'll do it. I'll be the editorial director of Brilliant Podcast
0:31:21Startup Incorporated, LLC, GMBH, whatever, XYZ. So I don't know.
0:31:30I think it would be extremely good for the medium if Spotify got involved
0:31:36because I think it will push Apple even further into doing something because
0:31:41they know that they are the home. Whether people listen in Overcast or whatever it
0:31:48doesn't matter. The iTunes podcast directory remains the home. They make up a small percentage
0:31:55of our overall listenership. In some instances, the highest is like 15-20% of our downloads
0:32:00come from iTunes and the rest come from the third-party apps. And that's in its highest.
0:32:06I think this show actually has the highest listenership in iTunes. That of all of our
0:32:12shows. The incomparable iTunes and podcast app scores
0:32:15are higher. I think the further you get out of the super Apple tech nerd sphere, which
0:32:21we're deep down in, this is where we live, but I think it gets bigger and bigger. I'm
0:32:27fairly comfortable in saying the two most popular pieces of software to listen to podcasts
0:32:32are iTunes and Apple's podcast app.
0:32:35That is not what we see.
0:32:40In the world, but not for us.
0:32:41Oh, yes. In the world. Of course.
0:32:44in the world, right? So that's the challenge is getting across. Our audience already is
0:32:50aware of podcasts, right? But what about everybody else? That's the question.
0:32:55So I think things like Spotify would be good. I mean, we would of course put our shows into
0:32:59Spotify provided they didn't have terms like Stitcher does, right? So, Stitcher has very
0:33:04restricted terms.
0:33:05Right, right. You have to mention Spotify or if they want to do something with your
0:33:08ads, like Spotify has got their premium service, are they going to want to take your ads out
0:33:11are you going to have to put in because that's not how do we make money if they
0:33:14there are a lot of questions right there are a lot of questions but in the chat
0:33:19room by the way real-time follow-up about several people saying podcasting
0:33:22is not podcast is not a good name and I'm torn on that because I feel like a
0:33:28name ends up not meaning anything yeah a name like it doesn't you know I've had
0:33:34like Joe Steele like Joe Steele is just taking the words right out of my mouth a
0:33:38podcast by any other name would smell as sweet. It actually doesn't matter. Leo
0:33:42LePort tried to do it. He came up with a worse name in my netcast. It's so much
0:33:47worse. He continues to hold on to that. He's kind of, well now, he's kind of
0:33:51giving up. I think other than the fact that they've got it in their pre-rolls
0:33:54and all of that, I hear him talking about podcasts all the time now. I think
0:33:56he's no longer trying to start a netcast revolution there.
0:34:00There's no point trying to change it. I try to explain it to people as being that it's like on-demand radio or I
0:34:05I mean, radio was probably the word you wanna use
0:34:08to talk about this stuff.
0:34:09It's like it's internet radio or something like that.
0:34:11But I'm not entirely convinced
0:34:14that there's another word out there that solves this.
0:34:16Maybe a brand name, maybe somebody's app does it,
0:34:19or Spotify has a, again, the rumor is,
0:34:24has a thing that says podcasts.
0:34:25And that doesn't solve that problem,
0:34:28but maybe somebody could come up with something
0:34:29that becomes a more generic concept than podcasts.
0:34:33Because in the end, I want regular people
0:34:38to be able to listen to podcasts.
0:34:40And more than that, I want them,
0:34:42I want that person who reads about that podcasts are back
0:34:45and that serial is really good to listen to serial.
0:34:49And when they get caught up with serial
0:34:51and there's no new episode for a week,
0:34:53I would like the podcast app that they're using to say,
0:34:58here's something else you might like.
0:35:00And that doesn't exist right now.
0:35:02that really, I mean, Stitcher will do that, I guess,
0:35:04but that's about it.
0:35:05And Stitcher is bad for other reasons.
0:35:08So there's a lot of opportunity out there.
0:35:11It's early days for the medium,
0:35:12but I think it's great for the medium
0:35:13that we're having these conversations
0:35:15and that people are taking notice again,
0:35:17because we all think it's a great medium.
0:35:20- I think it's an interesting time.
0:35:24I'm very excited that I'm involved in it.
0:35:27I also think that, you know,
0:35:30The thing that I keep coming back to right now,
0:35:32the reason why this is all happening,
0:35:34I genuinely think that in a few years time,
0:35:36there will be podcasting before and after iTunes
0:35:40and podcasting before and after Serial.
0:35:42I do think that this is a pivotal time in the industry
0:35:47is this show because it is pulling people in.
0:35:51And I hope, going on from what you were saying, Jason,
0:35:54I do hope that what happens is people listen to this
0:35:58and they're like, "I quite like this.
0:35:59"What other things do I like?
0:36:01"I like tech."
0:36:03And then they start searching around
0:36:04and then they find other shows
0:36:06and then they say, "I also like movies."
0:36:08And they find other shows.
0:36:08"I also like video games."
0:36:10And I think that that is pretty much
0:36:13what pulls people in anyway.
0:36:15And I'm seeing, serial is very interesting.
0:36:19I am coming into contact with many people now
0:36:22as I'm telling people what I do for a living,
0:36:24telling me that I listen to serial.
0:36:27that is happening in my life because I know that
0:36:30Syria was doing what podcasting always did
0:36:34but on a wider basis which is word of mouth.
0:36:36That is how shows tend to grow because nobody advertises.
0:36:41There's no, people aren't,
0:36:43we don't advertise upgrade on This American Life, right?
0:36:46It doesn't work like that, we don't do that.
0:36:48So people find out about this stuff through word of mouth
0:36:51and Syria was seeing that at a much wider base.
0:36:54My only hope is that, I mean, 'cause I'm,
0:36:58I know you're not very far into serial
0:36:59and there'll be no serial spoilers here.
0:37:01I'm becoming increasingly more uncomfortable with the show
0:37:04and I hope that that doesn't happen to the wider base.
0:37:09I love it, but it's just,
0:37:11I'm starting to wonder what's the end of it.
0:37:15- Right, but ideally, I mean, serial is, it's storytelling.
0:37:20I mean, it is journalism, but it's storytelling
0:37:22And it works because of the way the story is being told.
0:37:25And if presumably they have a good ending
0:37:30that fits, endings are hard,
0:37:33but that fits with what's come before.
0:37:34We'll have to see, but I think you're right.
0:37:37I feel like we've had this conversation before
0:37:40about what's the podcast that's gonna break out
0:37:44and it hasn't happened,
0:37:46but Serial might be the one that does it at last.
0:37:50I mean, like, Marc Maron had a bunch of stories about him,
0:37:52but it didn't seem to, you know,
0:37:54everyone is a little bit bigger,
0:37:56and this is certainly, I think, the biggest by far up to now.
0:37:58- Well, iTunes are currently promoting with a banner
0:38:03that it's the show, it's reached five million downloads
0:38:07quicker than any show ever has.
0:38:08- Yeah, Apple's very excited about it.
0:38:09- I suspect that that's incorrect in some instances.
0:38:13I would say that's probably five million through iTunes,
0:38:16so it means it's much larger,
0:38:18And I expect that that number is not right now.
0:38:21I don't think it was immediate.
0:38:22I think it hit 5 million a couple of weeks ago or something.
0:38:25And then they talk about it.
0:38:26But I would expect it to be a much,
0:38:28much larger totals than that.
0:38:31- Something that came up in the chat room
0:38:35that I think is worth mentioning again about the name
0:38:38and how you try to explain even what they are to people.
0:38:43And it's a hard thing to do.
0:38:44I've mentioned before that I've explained to my mother
0:38:47several times what a podcast is and I think she still doesn't get it. But this is my point
0:38:51is calling it the label you put on it, whatever that label is, that's not the reason people
0:38:57don't get it. People don't get it because it's abstract, it's a new kind of medium,
0:39:04and because the tech to get it is not as easy as it should be. I think those are the issues.
0:39:09I think the name is, it's easy to blame the name, the name is not the problem. The name
0:39:13may not be great, but the name is not the problem. The problem is that when if my sister
0:39:20says I want to listen to this serial thing that I heard about, how do I do that? I have
0:39:25to be like, okay, well, you go to the podcast app and you do search or you can find the
0:39:29thing and you tap on it and all that. And then she says, well, but how do I listen to
0:39:32it in my car? I'm like, okay, have you paired your car with Bluetooth? No, I haven't. All
0:39:35right, well, you know, it's this whole chain of things. It's just, and it's not something
0:39:41people are familiar with. People took a lot of time to understand how the web
0:39:45worked and how like Netflix worked. And this is another one of those things
0:39:49where you've got to explain streaming media and it's on demand, but you can
0:39:53also download them in advance. And it's just, there's a lot in there. And the
0:39:57more that the technology evolves, the easier it's all going to get, which is
0:40:01why I keep coming back to things like CarPlay and Android Auto. Like the more
0:40:05this is all just kind of part of what everybody expects in their car and they
0:40:10can go boop and play something gets a lot easier but I don't know but it's an
0:40:16exciting time to have this happening because I think I think it is is good
0:40:20for all of us. This American Life actually made a really funny and clever
0:40:25video about how to how to listen to podcasts I'll find it and put it in the
0:40:33show notes it's Ira Glass is with I think he says a friend but I think it
0:40:38might be a relative, it's a lady who's in like her 80s or 90s and she explains how
0:40:43to find, how to listen to the show. It's very, very clever. I like, yeah, I'll find
0:40:50it, I'll put it in the show notes. It's, yeah, it's How to Listen to a Podcast with
0:40:55Ira and Mae and it will be in the show notes. Jason, where can people find the
0:40:58show notes for this show? You go to relay.fm/upgrade/ten. Perfect. Ten is the
0:41:06same number in English and American English. Indeed it is. It's very funny, it's actually
0:41:11quite amusing, so I would urge people to watch it. But, you know, things like that, that's
0:41:15pretty good. They explain it really well actually. I thought they did a great job.
0:41:20Nice. Podcasting is the future.
0:41:22It's the future. It's happening. It's back. Do you want to talk about Friends now or do
0:41:30you want to talk about another topic before we talk about a friend?
0:41:33Let's talk about friend.
0:41:34This episode of Upgrade is also brought to you by our friends Smile and we want to talk
0:41:38about TextExpander Touch today.
0:41:40TextExpander Touch is the fantastic app for your iPhone or iPad that's going to save you
0:41:45time and effort by helping you expand short abbreviations into frequently used text.
0:41:50Whether it's something simple like a frequently used address, maybe a shipping address that
0:41:54you use when you buy things on the internet, an email signature that you frequently want
0:41:59a pen that maybe even has an image in it or several paragraphs of a standard response
0:42:04to an email support request that you get a lot, you're going to love how easy it is to
0:42:08use TextExpander to avoid typing those same things over and over and over again.
0:42:14With TextExpander Touch you're able to sync all of your snippets with TextExpander on
0:42:17the Mac via Dropbox, meaning that all of your snippets are going to stay in sync on all
0:42:21of your devices.
0:42:22You can access your TextExpander snippets inside Smiles iOS app where you can write
0:42:26little notes and you can copy and paste the text or you can enable TextExpander
0:42:30in the other 60 apps in the App Store that have integrated snippets like
0:42:33OmniFocus, Day One, Fantastical, Draft, Lorton Center Pro and many many more.
0:42:38But with iOS 8 and TextExpander Touch 3 came the TextExpander custom
0:42:44keyboard so that you're able to expand abbreviations in any application on your
0:42:48iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. So now even if an app doesn't support
0:42:52TextExpander snippets directly you can just change the keyboard over
0:42:55and you have access to all of your snippets right there.
0:42:59This is something that couldn't have been done
0:43:00before iOS 8 and a new TextExpander keyboard
0:43:02has made it just perfect.
0:43:05I mean, you have everything, you have it right there.
0:43:07You don't have to switch into another app,
0:43:09you don't have to hope that your snippets are up to date,
0:43:11it's just there.
0:43:13The TextExpander Touch keyboard communicates directly
0:43:15with the TextExpander Touch 3 application,
0:43:17so it needs to ask for that full access
0:43:19for the keyboard in the settings.
0:43:20This is because it needs to share the data
0:43:22between the application and the keyboard.
0:43:24Smile have updated their privacy policy on their website to show that they care about
0:43:28your privacy and they don't do anything crazy.
0:43:35You should go right now to the App Store and grab the new TextExpander Touch 3 and start
0:43:39saving time today.
0:43:41I am a big fan and I could not recommend TextExpander enough.
0:43:49If you want to find out more, point to your web browser at smilesoftware.com/upgrade.
0:43:53Thank you so much to Smile for their support of this show and relay FM that smile software.com/upgrade
0:44:01And a good friend a very good friend indeed we like our friends and smile are a very good one like
0:44:09How can you not be friendly with a company that's called smile exactly exactly?
0:44:14I'm very happy that their name is just smile now smile on my Mac used to be their name
0:44:19and I never really understood that.
0:44:21That seemed like a haiku to me.
0:44:23- Yes.
0:44:24I mean, you smile down upon. - Or the first line of a song.
0:44:27Yeah, there's a smile on my Mac.
0:44:28My Mac is now smiling.
0:44:29I'm smiling upon my Mac.
0:44:30I'm just smile.
0:44:33It's good.
0:44:34It's much better that way.
0:44:34Oh, what now?
0:44:39- Well, what would you like to talk about?
0:44:41We have a few things.
0:44:42- Well, I mean, we should talk about app pricing
0:44:45a little bit, I think. - Yes.
0:44:47- The two big stories from last week actually
0:44:49were these two interesting game releases, Monument Valley, the extra levels of Monument Valley,
0:44:55and also Space Age came out last week. - Two absolutely fantastic games, like,
0:45:01super good games, but their pricing is interesting because they are not 99 cent games and they are
0:45:09not in-app purchase driven games. - Right, they're not in the genre of, you know,
0:45:16freemium games right where where you go and and get it for free and download some levels and then
0:45:22you can opt to buy more levels for more space age is four dollars and monument valley is four
0:45:28dollars and the new forgotten shores expansion pack is an in-app purchase of two dollars more
0:45:34and uh you know i it's interesting the there was there was a minor kerfuffle and it was minor
0:45:44and I like saying kerfuffle. A minor a minor dust up, a minor uh there were some people who gave
0:45:50a Monument Valley one star, good Myke, good one star reviews because they were mad that
0:45:57that they had the the temerity to uh to to charge for an update. How dare they?
0:46:05And that led to all of us sort of rolling our eyes and doing that. Come on it's two bucks,
0:46:11you get more levels, why is this a big deal? And I wrote a piece on Six Colors about this
0:46:17because I think it's at least worth understanding why people are acting so entitled. And, you
0:46:24know, one-star reviews are like, "Those people are babies and they're having a tantrum."
0:46:29And, you know, "Okay, let's just give that as a given." But the question is, why? And
0:46:35for developers, do they need to keep that in mind? Or do they just not care and say,
0:46:40know, "Hey babies, I don't care about you, you know, you're just being a baby."
0:46:46And I think it's worth having that conversation. I think it's worth saying what, like looking
0:46:53at what Monument Valley, us two as the developer, we're looking at what they did and saying,
0:46:59what were their options here and why did they choose, without knowing the details of their
0:47:03business, why did they choose what they chose and what other things could they have chosen.
0:47:10And you know, they had options.
0:47:11I had several people point out that they had the option to just give it away for free.
0:47:16And that that would be, and there's most people who make that argument, there's this implication
0:47:21that they'll give it away for free.
0:47:23It'll make their existing customers happy and everybody else in the world will then
0:47:28flock to buy it and they'll make more money that way, which I don't believe is true in
0:47:33most cases.
0:47:34- That's what I think a lot of app developers,
0:47:37especially in the productivity category, work that way.
0:47:41Whether it works for them, I don't know.
0:47:42But like you, for example, you see Fantastic Hal
0:47:45releases a new update and they go back up the chart again
0:47:48'cause they get a bit of press,
0:47:49or OmniFocus goes back up the chart again
0:47:52because they've had a good update.
0:47:54That's the way that they work.
0:47:55I don't know if that is the best way of working,
0:47:58especially because you hear these days
0:47:59that the charts kind of aren't what they used to be,
0:48:03getting to number 10 in the charts now is not like what it was a couple of years ago
0:48:07or something.
0:48:08But I mean, that's the way that it is done.
0:48:12But I'm not saying I think that's right or wrong.
0:48:14I think that's why you get...
0:48:17Basically I keep coming back to the fact that now the App Store is its own economy.
0:48:24And there are ways of working and there are expectations that live within that economy
0:48:29that have been built by developers, whether it could be EA as the developer,
0:48:35right, or it could be Smile as the developer.
0:48:38There have been decisions that have been made and there have been opportunities
0:48:42taken, and now we have a situation in which apps are expected to be cheap or free.
0:48:46And if you charge the price of a cup of coffee, it's a premium app.
0:48:52And but that's the world that we live in now.
0:48:56So it's about understanding how we work within those parameters.
0:48:59complaining that, you know, $3 is not gonna be able
0:49:03to put food on the table.
0:49:04I understand that.
0:49:05And of course, I agree with that.
0:49:07And I buy applications for that amount of money
0:49:10if I think that I want them and I think that they're worth it
0:49:12and I want to support the developer.
0:49:14But that is the world in which we live now.
0:49:16Am I being unfair?
0:49:18- No, one of the things that a developer like us too
0:49:22has to deal with is the environment that they're in, right?
0:49:24And they can behave a certain way all they like,
0:49:29but they're not, you know, it isn't the US2 app store.
0:49:33It isn't the Monument Valley app store.
0:49:34It's the app store and every other,
0:49:36the behavior of every other app developer,
0:49:39especially of every popular app,
0:49:41impacts how their customers see
0:49:43what their business decisions are.
0:49:45And so through that lens,
0:49:49charging an in-app purchase,
0:49:51when Doodle Jump is, you know,
0:49:53updated every month with new features
0:49:54and they never charge anybody for them
0:49:56because their strategy is to just keep having people
0:50:00buy Doodle Jump.
0:50:02And I think Doodle Jump, the philosophy there,
0:50:04and the whole argument here is only 1% of the world
0:50:07or one fraction of 1% of the world has your app.
0:50:09So pretty much everybody doesn't have your app.
0:50:11So you should just keep making it better
0:50:13and more people will buy it.
0:50:14Whereas I think the argument for Monument Valley might be,
0:50:18this app is a premium app.
0:50:20It was promoted heavily.
0:50:22Everybody wrote about it.
0:50:23Apple promoted it.
0:50:24Apple's going to promote these expansions.
0:50:26Everybody who is probably, or most people who are likely to discover Monument Valley
0:50:31have discovered it.
0:50:33And our best audience for the new levels is the people who already played Monument Valley.
0:50:39So we're going to put it inside the game that you've already paid $4 for, and we're going
0:50:45to charge for more levels.
0:50:47And that way it's also fair in a way that somebody new who wants to play Monument Valley
0:50:52needs to buy the full game for $4, and then if they want the extra levels, they need to pay
0:50:56another $2. That was their decision. If you're used to getting free updates, especially they
0:51:04made some mistakes, I think some of their update communication to their customers was, "We are
0:51:10going to be adding new levels in an update," which I think was very easily, in this environment,
0:51:15read as, "We're going to give you new levels." And what they got, the update actually enabled
0:51:20the ability to buy new levels. And you know that I think people make an assumption based on the
0:51:27environment that we're in the app store. And that's okay. They could have opted. I mean,
0:51:31this is what I go through in my piece on six colors. They could have opted to,
0:51:36I think the best option potentially was to go back in time. So first you got to build a time machine,
0:51:41but what if Monument Valley had the first couple of levels for free? And then there was an in-app
0:51:46purchase for the last eight levels and then there was a new in-app purchase for another set of
0:51:50levels. I don't think there would be complaints then. Maybe they decided at the time when it came
0:51:57out they decided that's not the game they wanted to play, they didn't want to interrupt the game
0:52:01experience that way because it is an experience to play that game. It's not a--
0:52:06I've had a couple people tell me, "Well, I don't really like the puzzles, they were too easy."
0:52:10It's like, yeah, they're not that hard but that's kind of not the point. It's meant to be mildly
0:52:14puzzling and beautiful and atmospheric and that's why that game is successful. So maybe
0:52:22they could have made it freemium, it would have been junkier that way, it's nicer the
0:52:26way it is. But they have to make that decision and they're living in that environment. But
0:52:32I do hate it when people assume that everything should be free. That is the problem because
0:52:37I think the truth is if the only way that they could have released this was by making
0:52:42it free for existing customers, they would not have made the levels because I don't think
0:52:47they believe there is enough of a market in new sales driven by the release of new levels
0:52:53to make it worth their while. Now they could be wrong about that but I bet you that was
0:52:59their calculation.
0:53:00When you heard new levels coming, what did you expect?
0:53:05I assumed that it would be an in-app purchase, although I think I heard that it was going
0:53:09to be an in-app purchase, but it's a premium app, right? I paid for it. And so I kind of
0:53:15expected that new levels would be paid. They could have released a second app. And I actually
0:53:19think one of the problems with this whole thing is that they conceived, you know, Monument
0:53:25Valley has an ending. And so how do you make a sequel? And they decided they weren't going
0:53:29to make a sequel. They were going to kind of insert new levels in between the sort of
0:53:34next to last level and the last level of the original story,
0:53:38because that was a place where they could fit it
0:53:41into the story.
0:53:42And as a result, I don't know if it would make sense
0:53:44as a standalone app.
0:53:45And that would have been another way to go,
0:53:47is just to release it as another $4 app or $2 app
0:53:49and say, "It's Monument Valley 2."
0:53:51But they didn't wanna make that.
0:53:52They felt that this was just an addition
0:53:55to the existing story.
0:53:58So they had lots of options.
0:54:01This might be the right one.
0:54:02I think their customers, you know,
0:54:07the other thing here is the customer isn't always right.
0:54:10That's, everybody always says the customer's always right.
0:54:13The customer is always right.
0:54:14No, customers can be unreasonable.
0:54:16And more to the point, not everybody is your target audience.
0:54:21And people who aren't in your target audience
0:54:22will get really huffy about not being
0:54:24in your target audience.
0:54:25How dare you not target this to me?
0:54:27This should all be about me.
0:54:29But in reality, as a business,
0:54:31you need to choose who your target is,
0:54:34and it's not going to be everybody.
0:54:35And that's just how it works sometimes.
0:54:38And so in this case, it may just be that they're like,
0:54:41look, our audience for this is people who love the first
0:54:43game and are happy to spend $2 to get a new experience
0:54:46in this game.
0:54:47That's our target audience.
0:54:48And we want to reach those people.
0:54:50And we don't want to just add to the main game for free
0:54:54and hope we find people who weren't paying attention
0:54:56a year ago.
0:54:57We want this to be to our core audience,
0:55:00these are the people who appreciate what we're doing here.
0:55:02They're the ones who are going to give us the money.
0:55:04And if you're not in that audience,
0:55:06you can be outraged about it,
0:55:08but that's their decision and it might be a good one.
0:55:13Sometimes good business decisions
0:55:14leave some people on the outside looking in,
0:55:16and that's just how it goes.
0:55:18- You literally cannot make everybody happy.
0:55:22Like I see this more now running a business, right?
0:55:26There are sometimes there are things
0:55:27that people ask you to do,
0:55:29which make perfect sense to you, the person asking,
0:55:32and also kind of makes sense to me as the business owner.
0:55:35But sometimes I try and weigh up the risk, reward,
0:55:39or just like the work and reward that's required
0:55:42for a decision and feel that it doesn't work out for me.
0:55:45Where it seems like a perfectly valid idea
0:55:47or a way of doing things,
0:55:49that doesn't necessarily mean that that matches
0:55:52with your ambitions and goals for your business.
0:55:55And this is clearly the way that us two decided to go.
0:55:58Like they decided that what they would do
0:56:00is release this app,
0:56:02at the very least these levels as an update to the app.
0:56:05They could have released a second app
0:56:06and then whatever they would have been the benefits
0:56:09or negatives of that or not.
0:56:11I mean, we have no idea if Apple requested anything in this.
0:56:16Please do it this way or don't do it that way,
0:56:19we don't know.
0:56:20But this is the way that they chose to go.
0:56:24And I think for me, I think they made the right choice.
0:56:27I prefer having it all in one app.
0:56:29And I would have given them the money anyway.
0:56:31Like I would have given them the money.
0:56:33I wanted to give them more money.
0:56:34This is one of those scenarios
0:56:36where I wanted to give them more.
0:56:37It's the same with Space Age as well.
0:56:40I hope that they do more of that game because I loved it.
0:56:44And I hope there is more of that story.
0:56:46Same sort of idea, right?
0:56:48Apps that are about four or five dollars each
0:56:51and tell great stories and have a little experience
0:56:54and a short.
0:56:55And I like that because it's like longer than a movie
0:56:58and cheaper than a movie.
0:56:59So I'm happy with that.
0:57:01- Yeah, some people are, I mentioned that people said,
0:57:04oh, "Monte Valley, the puzzles aren't very hard."
0:57:06And "Space Age," I've heard that some of that too.
0:57:09It's like, oh, it's so short and it's not, you know,
0:57:12parts of it aren't that hard.
0:57:13And I mean, I'm on the last level,
0:57:15which my wife has beaten, but I haven't.
0:57:17And last level's really hard.
0:57:20- I was texting Federico.
0:57:21I was like, please help me.
0:57:23Because we interviewed one of the developers, Matt Coney, on Virtual,
0:57:27and I was completing the game that day,
0:57:30and I finished it five minutes before we started
0:57:32because I was struggling so much with the last boss,
0:57:35and I was just frantically texting Federico and getting him to help me.
0:57:39Yeah, it's hard stuff there, but earlier it's easy.
0:57:43And actually, this is, I think, one of the issues.
0:57:45I like that they make it premium.
0:57:48They say, "You're going to pay us $4 for this.
0:57:50This is a commitment."
0:57:52And yes, I wish Apple had a tryout or demo system,
0:57:55but they don't.
0:57:56And so your options are to make it free
0:57:58with an in-app purchase at a gate where you say,
0:58:00look, you can play the first two levels
0:58:01and then you have to stop the first level, whatever it is.
0:58:03Or you can just say, look, buy this
0:58:06and you'll have a good experience.
0:58:08Sometimes I think creative decisions factor into this.
0:58:14It's easier to do the gate after a level or two
0:58:17when it's a series of escalating kind of like
0:58:20video game levels that are just, you know, more, more guys or faster guys or whatever
0:58:26than it is when you're telling a story. And I feel like Space Age is a good example where
0:58:32I've talked to some people who started playing it and said, "Eh, it's kind of boring." I'm
0:58:35like, "Okay, well, it's telling you a story and if it's not working for you, then that's
0:58:41a problem and maybe it's not for you." But that story unfolds over time and you actually
0:58:46have to get into several levels before you realize that it's doing lots of interesting
0:58:51things with storytelling that you might not expect from a video game. But you have to
0:58:55get there. And because of the way it's structured, I think it actually would have been a bad
0:59:00freemium game because the first couple of levels are really simple because they're trying
0:59:03to ramp you up and they're trying to explain how this whole system works. And it calls
0:59:10into question the structure of the thing you're trying to build. I was actually talking, it's
0:59:14It's NaNoWriMo and I'm working on revising my novel this month.
0:59:18I had somebody read it who's a novelist and a writing teacher too.
0:59:22One of the points he made was, "You're spending too much time.
0:59:25The first hundred pages, not a whole lot happens.
0:59:28You need to condense this and you need to provide more excitement early on," because
0:59:32he said, "In reality, agents and publishers are looking for a reason to bail out of anything
0:59:38they're reading because they read so much.
0:59:40And if there isn't something really solid and exciting at the beginning, it's going
0:59:45to make it hard to sell.
0:59:46That doesn't necessarily mean that all the best novels have something exciting at the
0:59:49beginning, but the ones that--it's going to be harder to sell it to anybody if you don't
0:59:55have that.
0:59:56And that reminded me of Space Age, because it's the same thing.
0:59:59It's like, they could have distorted their story to make it seem really awesome and exciting
1:00:03early on before the gate dropped and you had to pay money, but they didn't want to do that.
1:00:09They didn't want to tell the story in that way.
1:00:10And it would have made their story less good,
1:00:13this story that they wanted to tell.
1:00:16So they made that decision.
1:00:17So some of that is the creative decision.
1:00:18It's just like,
1:00:19and I think Monument Valley would be the same way.
1:00:21It sort of breaks the spell and they're trying,
1:00:25the whole idea here is these are beautiful and interesting
1:00:28and quirky works of art.
1:00:29They're experiences, they're not just puzzles.
1:00:31They're, I hate to say,
1:00:33it sounds so pretentious to say they're experiences,
1:00:35but I can't find a better word for it.
1:00:38It's like you become, you're listening to the music,
1:00:40you're looking at the graphics,
1:00:43it's like watching a movie except interactive.
1:00:45It's not playing something that's got like a bunch of levels
1:00:49like playing Wordament
1:00:50and just doing word searches all the time.
1:00:52It's not that kind of thing.
1:00:54And I think maybe the premium model works better for that.
1:00:57- I have loads of games, especially on the iPhone
1:01:00that have no end, like threes, right?
1:01:03I play, I still play threes every day
1:01:06and I love those sort of games.
1:01:07sometimes I want a game that has an end that I can reach without putting 45 hours in and if it's
1:01:13going to cost me five pounds or five dollars to get that game I'm happy with that. And I really do.
1:01:21I love these sorts of games and I'm pleased that there was that kind of outpouring of support for
1:01:32us too, you know, where people kind of drove the the rating up, because I think things like that
1:01:37are important to show that there is a market for it, even if your ratings sometimes tell you not so much.
1:01:43Yeah, yeah, and it turns out people rushed to us to defense more or less and gave them a bunch of
1:01:50five-star ratings and it was fine, but it's interesting. I think the big picture here is
1:01:56it's very easy to look at something from the outside and say, "Oh, well, they should have done this,"
1:02:00and people do that all the time, but they don't know the dynamics, they don't know the cost to us too, to make this.
1:02:06They don't know, you know, there's an assumption that they didn't think about it, I'm sure they thought about it a whole lot,
1:02:11and they have lots of reasons to do it this way. Could they have communicated it better? I think yes.
1:02:17I don't think it would have mattered in the end. I think they probably anticipated that there would be reactions like this,
1:02:23and they decided this was the best way to go.
1:02:27And it's an interesting lesson and it's worth everybody who is in the app ecosystem, the app
1:02:35market, the app industry needs to look at this and use it as another lesson of like, how do you define
1:02:42the feelings of your target audience and how do you approach that? And I know people, I mean,
1:02:49Marco Arment took great care in figuring out the business model for Overcast. And he went a bunch
1:02:53of different ways before he settled on one that he thought would make sense. And what he settled on
1:02:57was freemium what he settled on was you know a limited version of the app for
1:03:01free and then you unlock one time to enable all the other features and that
1:03:05you know he came up with a whole bunch of other ideas before he settled on that
1:03:09so people are thinking about this stuff all the time and this is another data
1:03:12point and and you know in the end just because lots of games are freemium
1:03:18and lots of apps are freemium it doesn't mean that that's the right approach for
1:03:22something like Monument Valley or Space Age where it's a you know a certain kind
1:03:28of game that is that is more of this experience and less of a casual like
1:03:33super you know super easy game it's like it's different and maybe this is the
1:03:37right approach for them maybe maybe this boutique you know you're buying it up
1:03:41front approach works better for this kind of game I don't know but I'm sure
1:03:44all the developers think about this a whole lot. So if you'll allow me for a
1:03:49moment just a tad of cross-promotion I'm hoping to be joined on Inquisitor this
1:03:53week by Monument Valley's executive producer Dan Gray so I'll ask you a bunch
1:03:58of this stuff awesome I'll get the answers for you Jason you'll just say
1:04:02yeah we didn't think about it we just thought you know purchase sounds good
1:04:07he has a nice ring to it kind of sounds like I do and we just want with it yeah
1:04:12sure I'm sure I'm sure that that's it but bottom line is if you know it takes
1:04:18time and money to make these these apps and they need to find a way to make that work
1:04:23and to get that money back. And I'm glad that they chose to make more levels of Monuments
1:04:29Alley because I was sad when I played through it because it was beautiful and I think about
1:04:32it from time to time and I've gone back and played it once or twice and I'm happy that
1:04:40it's in the world and this is I was happy to give them two dollars for it. It was not
1:04:45a it was a no-brainer.
1:04:47- The new ones are stunning.
1:04:48They are stunning. - No orange foam brainer.
1:04:52Yeah, they are.
1:04:52It makes me laugh.
1:04:53I mean, again, the puzzles aren't necessarily hard.
1:04:55It's those moments of delight.
1:04:57Again, I'm sorry to use these words
1:04:59that sound like I'm on stage at an Apple event,
1:05:01but it's those moments of delight where you turn a wheel
1:05:03or you do something or the perspective changes
1:05:07in Monument Valley and you go, "Oh, look at that.
1:05:10"I see that now."
1:05:11That's what I love about it.
1:05:12It's not the diabolically difficult puzzles.
1:05:16It's that those moments of surprise where your perspective shifts and you see something more clever,
1:05:20it's clever and you're in there listening to that music and looking at the graphics and it's,
1:05:25you know, that's what I love about that. And I've had some of those same experiences with Space Age
1:05:30where there are narrative things that happened that made me laugh out loud that I thought were
1:05:34really funny and clever and, you know, that's part of it too. Do you have anything else you'd
1:05:41like to talk about today or should we leave it there for today's episode?
1:05:45I think we could leave it there. I mean at some point we should
1:05:50probably talk about... another vertical in this
1:05:54podcast is future products from Amazon.
1:05:58And I've got the that Amazon TV stick thing that's there
1:06:03that's their Chromecast competitor. I've got that ordered
1:06:06but it doesn't come out for another week or something.
1:06:09And then the Amazon Echo was announced,
1:06:12which is like a Siri speaker that lives in your house
1:06:15and listens to everything you say.
1:06:17And that's a weird product with a weird product video.
1:06:19And we could talk about that,
1:06:21but I signed up to be on the list to buy one of those.
1:06:26- Oh really? - So we might,
1:06:27well, yeah, you can always send it back, right?
1:06:30I kind of wanna try it.
1:06:31- You're a technologist.
1:06:33- Yeah, I kind of wanna try that one.
1:06:35And I'm a Prime member,
1:06:36so it's cheaper for me than it is for other people.
1:06:38and I wanna give that a try, but it's a weird product.
1:06:41And so we could talk about it now,
1:06:42but I think maybe, and maybe we will on a future show,
1:06:45but maybe we'll just do what we do in this podcast,
1:06:48which is promote that in the future,
1:06:50we'll talk about Amazon hardware products,
1:06:52but never get to it.
1:06:54- When is the Echo likely to ship?
1:06:56- It's unclear to me.
1:06:58- It's just three to five weeks on their page at the moment.
1:07:01- Yeah, but you sign up, and then they say,
1:07:04will let you know when you can purchase one.
1:07:11When I go to the Echo page it says, "Thank you for your request.
1:07:16If selected, you will receive an email with an invitation to purchase in the coming weeks."
1:07:21Oh my word.
1:07:23How lucky you will be to receive an invitation to spend $100 on Amazon.
1:07:28I wonder if you can do it in the UK.
1:07:30Let me see.
1:07:31No, it's not in the UK.
1:07:33- No, but it is, you know, it's,
1:07:37what I like about Amazon is that they have,
1:07:41they feel the freedom to do kind of crazy products
1:07:43and mash up technologies.
1:07:44And I think that's great.
1:07:47I don't know whether it's always practical.
1:07:49The Fire Phone was a flop, but maybe they'll learn from it.
1:07:52And, you know, although I look at the,
1:07:54I saw an ad the other night for the Fire Tablet.
1:07:58The Fire Tablet's a pretty good value,
1:08:01but I look at it and I think, wow,
1:08:03If you want an Android tablet, you shouldn't get it
1:08:05'cause it's not really an Android tablet.
1:08:07And if you want an iPad, you shouldn't get it
1:08:08'cause it's certainly not an iPad.
1:08:10What is it?
1:08:11It's this weird Amazon hybrid thing.
1:08:13And I don't know, I like Amazon a lot.
1:08:16I like their services a lot.
1:08:17And some of the stuff, I'm not sure I'm convinced
1:08:22that this is stuff that people actually want.
1:08:24That it's like Amazon wants it
1:08:25because they want you to be in their ecosystem,
1:08:27but I'm not sure they're making products
1:08:28that actual people want.
1:08:31- Yeah, they're making stuff that makes sense for Amazon.
1:08:34- I mean, the Amazon Echo is literally like,
1:08:36we have this technology, what could we build with it?
1:08:38And that's bad.
1:08:40But what's good is, if there's somebody with a vision of,
1:08:42like, you know what would be great is if my speaker,
1:08:45you know, my Sonos kind of speaker
1:08:47could be controlled by voice, and oh, well imagine,
1:08:51we could do all this other stuff too.
1:08:53You know, maybe there's a good product in there,
1:08:54or maybe it's a disaster.
1:08:56I'm not encouraged by their product video,
1:08:58which is really cheesy.
1:09:00- So bad.
1:09:01but we'll see.
1:09:02- I think I could spend an hour
1:09:03just talking about that video.
1:09:05- At that point, we should just watch
1:09:06too many cooks instead.
1:09:08- Too many cooks.
1:09:09Sorry, everyone.
1:09:11- My son leaving the house this morning,
1:09:13he had to return, it's library day,
1:09:15so he had to return his books
1:09:17and he had a stack of five books.
1:09:18And I said, too many books?
1:09:20And my wife and I were then singing too many books
1:09:23all the way to school with him,
1:09:24which he was not happy about,
1:09:26but he had too many books.
1:09:28- Too many books.
1:09:29- Too many books.
1:09:31many books. Every podcast I'm on ends up in singing in the end. That's what I've
1:09:36learned. Thank you so much to our sponsors. It takes a lot to make a book, especially if you're friends at Hover!
1:09:44Thank you Hover and Smile for supporting this week's episode. You guys are
1:09:50fantastic and thank you for helping us out. And good friends. They are good friends. They're very
1:09:54good friends. Enemy slot still available. Yes. Amazon? If you want to be a friend or
1:10:01an enemy let us know. Yeah. Thank you all for listening. You are also our friends and
1:10:07if you'd like to get in touch with us I am @imike on Twitter. I am YKE Jason is @jsnell.
1:10:14We are @relay.fm/upgrade. If you go to /10 you'll get the show notes for this week's
1:10:19episode and you can also find the contact button to send us an email if you would like.
1:10:24Jason also writes thefantasticsixcolors.com and you should go and check him out and read
1:10:29his fantastic work, which you should be doing.
1:10:32If you're not already, why are you listening to this podcast as well?
1:10:34You should know Jason's work, surely.
1:10:36Surely.
1:10:37If not...
1:10:38Maybe they never learn to read.
1:10:39Maybe.
1:10:40And if that's the case, I'm sorry.
1:10:41You have podcasts.
1:10:42You always have the podcast.
1:10:43Always have the podcast.
1:10:44We'll be back next week with another episode of Upgrade.
1:10:49Until then, I'll buy you a telephone.
1:10:52Arrivederci.
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