You Don’t Have the Antibodies
Casey:
How's that low-level C audio code or whatever the hell it is you're working on?
Casey:
I'm making progress.
Casey:
Do you have any hair left to pull out of your head, Marco?
Marco:
No, this is why I cut it short, to make that impossible.
Marco:
I knew I was going to be working on core audio this week, so I got a fresh haircut, number two on the razor.
Marco:
Nice.
Marco:
And that means it's too short to realistically grab hold of.
Marco:
I feel like Adam could still get a handful.
Marco:
Maybe.
Marco:
He might not have... He's got little fingers like pincers.
Casey:
So any pre-follow-up stuff we need to worry about?
Marco:
There is no pre-follow-up.
Marco:
Only post-follow-up and follow-up and more follow-up.
Casey:
Lots and lots of follow-up.
Marco:
Maybe the show is pre-follow-up.
Casey:
At this point, should we just call this the accidental follow-up podcast?
Marco:
Well, there's follow-up and then the main topics are really just pre-follow-up for next week.
Casey:
It's so true.
Casey:
So let's do our follow-up so we can get to the pre-follow-up.
Casey:
We should probably start with talking about our discussion about how to attract or encourage women and girls to listen to the show.
Casey:
And unsurprisingly, we got a lot of feedback about this.
Casey:
And I appreciate and I know we appreciate all the feedback.
Casey:
A lot of it was really good.
Casey:
Pretty much all of it was really interesting.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And it's certainly opened my eyes a bit with regard to how men reacted to it, how women reacted to it.
Casey:
And so just a few things I think we should talk about up front.
Casey:
I think first and foremost, we...
Casey:
I would say we caught a little bit of flack about spending so much time talking about advertisers and Harry's specifically, and I think that's reasonable.
Casey:
I think the problem with the way the last episode went is that because we spent so much time talking about...
Casey:
Talking about the advertisers, it appeared as though that was the thing we thought was the biggest priority, just by virtue of the fact that we spent so much time on it.
Casey:
And in reality, that's not at all what any of us think is the biggest priority, the first thing to change.
Casey:
It's just...
Casey:
As per usual, we got wrapped around the axle on that topic.
Casey:
And I don't know if any of you have ever heard this show, but we sometimes get off in the weeds.
Casey:
And that's exactly what happened.
Casey:
And and I think while the discussion, I think, was good, I don't mean for it.
Casey:
And I'm pretty sure you guys don't mean for it to be representative of what we think is the right approach to fix this problem.
Casey:
It just so happens we got off in the weeds.
John:
I think actually I would back up for a second.
John:
Maybe we all have different opinions of this feedback, but here's how I would characterize it.
John:
First of all, I want to say that I still feel like I'm still processing that feedback.
John:
I agree.
John:
Partly because it's still coming in and partly because I think it was the most upsetting to me feedback that we've ever gotten in the show.
John:
Um, and there was a wide, wide range of responses.
John:
The feedback was all over the map.
John:
Um, but the title of the top of that map was probably like, you guys are dummies.
John:
Like, I felt like this was skewed way negative, like consensus is we are dummies.
John:
Um, and it's not to say that it's not useful, but like, sometimes we get feedback that's like,
John:
just providing information or supportive or whatever but pretty much all this feedback was telling us uh things that we missed or whatever i mean some of it was i guess feedback because we solicited feedback but uh it was fairly negative um i don't know if that surprised me i think i was kind of dreading discussing this topic because i kind of figured this would be the the feedback we would get but it's uh
John:
the fact that i'm still processing it makes me feel like i don't i don't quite know what to think um and you i think what you highlighted uh is probably the only dominant theme that i saw in it because like i said even though it was mostly negative it was wide ranging like people had very different ideas about what we got wrong right so uh
John:
a wide range all in the negative realm but the one thing a lot of people seem to agree on you already hit is that uh regardless of how they felt about the ads um that that was not the core issue people who said you absolutely have to get rid of the ads also ads are not at the core issue people who said you absolutely have to keep the ads also the ad is not the core issue right so that i feel like is the only consensus that i could draw out of this so far two things one that we didn't do a very good job and two that the ad is a distraction regardless of what people feel about it
John:
What did you think of that?
John:
Am I being too negative on the negativity, Marco, or did you get that impression as well?
Marco:
No, that was pretty much it.
Marco:
I mean, I'm also still processing a lot of it.
Marco:
I would say just anecdotally, I don't know if you guys feel the same way, I would say anecdotally, this was probably the most words we've gotten in feedback on any topic.
Marco:
It has taken me a long time to even just read the feedback email.
Marco:
There's been so much of it.
Marco:
And most of it has been very informative.
Marco:
I mean, overall, you know, there was definitely a prominent pattern to a lot of it that began with, I'm a man, but... And then a giant wall of text that showed really a pretty poor understanding of gender issues in technology or ever in life.
Marco:
And that I'm a little saddened by.
John:
Didn't you feel like, though, that was like the easiest feedback to handle?
John:
Yeah, I ignored most of that.
John:
I mean, it's depressing that, you know, we're going to get that type of thing.
John:
But it's the type of feedback you read and you're like, all right, well, so I know these people are out there.
John:
I know they're listening.
John:
They have different opinions and values than we do.
John:
But it's easier to...
John:
I don't know.
John:
I feel like it's easier to process because I feel like they, in many respects, they are who we are most capable of reaching, right?
John:
Like if we can reach those people, then that will affect change, right?
John:
If we can turn those people around or just even move them more towards what we think, you know, our value system, that that will be a success.
John:
And they were sort of showing us
John:
Here we are over here.
John:
If you feel like moving us towards your way of thinking, this is where we are.
John:
So now you know what you got your work cut out for you.
Casey:
Yeah, it was surprising to me.
Casey:
I think most of the email, while negative, was...
Casey:
There was certainly a lot of, hi, I'm a dude, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
Okay, so you should really improve it.
Casey:
But the thing that struck me was, gosh, the immediate Twitter replies to the ATP account were disappointing.
Casey:
And I was certainly and remain taken aback by it because I was very surprised about how many replies we saw, which basically made me think that we were all members of the He-Man Woman Haters Club, which I don't remember signing up for.
Casey:
And I don't remember that being a thing.
Casey:
And that was a little bit disappointing.
Casey:
Not all of them, of course, but a lot of them.
John:
Well, I mean, I think that's, that is the most, much more interesting feedback to me.
John:
Also more upsetting, but much more interesting.
John:
Um, and because it's, it's, I don't know, it's giving us new information as opposed to just saying, Hey, there are people out there with regressive ideas about, uh, women in technology.
John:
Like we already knew that, but, uh,
John:
The other side of the coin is more enlightening.
John:
And I would say for the feedback and trying to characterize it, we get more feedback from women than usual, which is expected in this type of topic.
John:
And the reason I was emphasizing the wide range is.
John:
You know, as I tried to emphasize on the last show, like women are not a monolith.
John:
No individual woman who tweets at us or writes to us is purporting to speak for all women.
John:
They are just individuals.
John:
Right.
John:
And that's why getting a lot of feedback is good, because otherwise, if you if you just get feedback from three people and they all three different opinions, you have no idea what to think.
John:
If you get feedback from 300 people, then maybe you can start sort of, you know, slicing and dicing it and trying to to figure things out.
John:
And, you know, so soliciting feedback is one thing.
John:
And the second thing, which, you know, many people emphasize is like you solicit the feedback and then you have to actually read it and listen to it.
John:
Right.
John:
The difficulty in doing that correctly, as I talked about one difficulty is.
John:
Try not to be defensive.
John:
Try not to feel like you have to answer everything.
John:
Try not to feel like every piece of advice is an accusation, so on and so forth.
John:
Try not to suffer from male answer syndrome.
John:
All these bad instincts that are in me, definitely, and maybe in you two as well.
John:
You have to fight those.
John:
But the second thing is, with this huge range, even talking about something as silly as the ad, which everyone more or less agreed was not the core issue here, just looking at the women who gave feedback on the ad,
John:
You know, you can't possibly do what, quote unquote, everyone wants because they want contradictory things.
John:
Some women said you absolutely have to keep the ad removing.
John:
It would be insulting.
John:
Some women said you absolutely have to remove the ad.
John:
Its presence is insulting.
John:
So if we get their feedback and we listen to it, at some point we have to do something.
John:
And there is no course of action.
John:
It seemed to me that a lot of the people writing in all camps, no matter what their opinion is,
John:
believe that they uh they didn't seem to leave a lot of room for other uh possibilities many people wrote in to say this is the situation you guys are dummies who are not seeing it uh and the answer is obvious just do what i say um right and but it's like but you know if just that one email it's fine but it's like you read one email after the next after the next after the next and it's like if i do what you want then these 10 people are going to be upset if i do what they want then these 50 people are going to you know
John:
That's that's that's our job.
John:
Our job is to solicit feedback, accept it, read it, listen to it, try to understand it and then decide what the right thing to do for us is.
John:
Right.
John:
And that's why I feel like I'm still processing it because it's difficult.
John:
Right.
John:
Like, you know, to sort of be in the people pleaser mode where you're like, we're trying to do the right thing here.
John:
Right.
John:
We're trying to solicit feedback.
John:
If only there was a quote unquote answer.
John:
But there is not.
John:
There is lots of people's opinions and lots of people's answers.
John:
And we have to figure out.
John:
How do we make forward progress on our goals based on this feedback?
John:
And it's just... It's kind of making my head spin at this point.
Marco:
Well, but I think one thing I think that we can all agree on, besides cheese, ding, is that we got a lot of feedback because we asked for it.
Marco:
And that's exactly what we wanted.
Marco:
We were asking the question to our audience, especially to the women in our audience...
Marco:
What can we do to help address this massive gender imbalance in our audience and in tech podcasting and in tech as a whole?
Marco:
This is a big problem.
Marco:
And I don't pretend to be an expert on this.
Marco:
I'm far from it.
Marco:
I do, however, want to improve it.
Marco:
And as a guy who is a smartass and has always been a smartass, I've always had the problem of I rush right to thinking I have an answer to something.
Marco:
And as we saw in the email and as many women see every single day...
Marco:
that's a very common thing in this business.
Marco:
And that's a very common thing among men in general.
Marco:
The attitude that we just have an immediate answer for everything and we know everything about everything and we can quickly explain away anything or any problem.
Marco:
And one of the things that I think everyone would agree on, which there isn't much in this argument that everyone would agree on,
Marco:
But I think everyone who's on the right side of this can probably agree that especially we men need to be listening more.
Marco:
We need to be asking and listening more.
Marco:
We just need to be listening to what women are actually telling us.
Marco:
And it was very valuable to see all that feedback, even though a lot of it was contradictory from women about what we should or shouldn't do.
Marco:
The fact is we asked, we are listening, and we are going to continue to ask and listen.
Marco:
And to all the men out there who responded in that matter-of-fact way, this is going to be hard for you to change in your life.
Marco:
It's certainly hard for us.
Marco:
But you have to be open to the idea that the first step when this question is asked is to listen to what women are telling you.
Marco:
Listen to what they have to say.
Marco:
To ask them and to be listening and to care.
Marco:
Not just to jump to thinking you know the answer.
Marco:
Because really, that is such a big problem for so many people.
Marco:
And this is really primarily a problem with men that do this.
Marco:
The fact is, the world is not a perfectly balanced place where everything is equal.
Marco:
It's far from it.
Marco:
And that's the whole problem we're trying to address.
Marco:
It is okay to recognize that even if you think you're being good and even if you think that you are helping, there are going to be things – and John, you talk about this a lot – there's going to be things that you subconsciously do or that you just do because you've always done them or that's just the way you think that you think are normal and neutral but they're not.
Marco:
And so it is of utmost importance that men in particular don't just jump to thinking you know the answers here, that really sit back and listen.
Marco:
Because there's a lot that we need to hear.
John:
That's what I talked about on the Gamergate episode.
John:
One of the suggestions I made to the audience of people who may have been sort of sympathizing with Gamergate.
John:
And I was trying to look for something that I could suggest that would be like...
John:
actionable and that i felt like would make real change uh based on what has worked for me and i was suggesting like i forget which twitter accounts i uh suggested but a bunch of people's twitter accounts like the everyday sexism twitter accounts i probably i'm sure i suggested brianna was the twitter account like just follow these twitter accounts if it was my suggestion but then don't ever reply to them just read just read the tweets and i said it's like
John:
the tweets are going to make you angry.
John:
Sometimes you're going to disagree with a lot of them.
John:
Um, the whole idea is like a one year plan of like subscribe and read the tweets.
John:
Like, you know, make, don't make it crazy volume.
John:
Just have it in the mix of your Twitter.
John:
And I'm doing this in terms of Twitter, but you could do anything blog posts, you know, who you, uh, whose Facebook posts you read, what sites read or whatever.
John:
Um,
John:
just read them.
John:
Even if for the entire year, you absolutely 100% disagree with every single thing that you read, because I feel like the osmosis of that, like sort of just being in contact with those ideas will slowly affect your worldview because it's essentially forced listening.
John:
Like you're not really listening.
John:
You may be reading them, like hate reading them.
John:
Like, Oh, look at these dummies.
John:
I disagree with everything.
John:
They're so dumb.
John:
They don't know anything about anything.
John:
Right.
John:
If you just keep reading them, like the everyday sexism one is a great example.
John:
It's like you just read day after day after day of like minor things that happen to people or situations they're in.
John:
I feel like it will eventually get through to you.
John:
Like this is not made up stuff.
John:
And like because I think the volume is important.
John:
Right.
John:
And so we are subjecting ourselves to this essentially voluntarily to try to, you know.
John:
you know bring us bring us the feedback uh tell us what you think uh give us your ideas um and we just kind of have to soak in it like you know it's like by you know we're soaking it to some degree uh but like by actually inviting it we're kind of getting a big dose of it dumped on our head and that's part of the process um of course this is uh a podcast and this is follow-up and of course we do have responses to things so we're kind of violating our own rules here but i'm the the
John:
the reason i suggested all that twitter stuff is like that's how i feel like i got into this like just gamer gate was you know a big part of it but even before that reading like every single post about these things reading people following new people looking at their tumblers following them on twitter just just reading everything mostly not responding to it mostly not engaging with people on twitter mostly but just like reading it and and gamer gate was like the peak was just like every day with like 17 new things to read
John:
right and then following the links following the threads following the different people uh to you know where they come from what what's their background what have they written before what have they done you know like that kind of sort of uh it's not sort of like ambient research or whatever on the topic is i felt has been most influential in my life and and changing myself on these topics and like i said this feedback is uh
John:
is part of that and now that i've said all those things to try to be deferential and everything now i have to go and ruin it by responding to what i think was the the the harshest criticism we got because i think it's the one thing again this wasn't like this wasn't the most common but if i look if i go over to the most negative end of the spectrum of the feedback we got it's not believe it or not from the people who have regressive ideas about women in tech their feedback tended not to be harsh tended to be uh
John:
i don't know condescending and patronizing but like that's but the most harsh ones and the ones that that felt the worst were feedback from women who the gist of this feedback was uh on the topic of uh changing the host lineup and changing the format of the show saying essentially if you don't do one of those two things then it shows you don't care about women at all and this is all bs front
John:
Um, and that's the harshest version of that.
John:
There's just like, you know, saying these two things are, are, are the test for you.
John:
If you don't, if you refuse to do things, as we said, I talked about last show, we didn't want to change the host line of the show.
John:
We didn't want to turn it into an interview show.
John:
We basically ruled those out.
John:
And I feel like,
John:
people hearing that people hearing us say you know we read through this big list of suggestions that people suggested to us uh and then we ruled out those two right off the bat and it just feels like every other encounter women have had in technology where it's like the people in in the position of power
John:
hear their concerns and then immediately dismiss them.
John:
So it's like slamming the door in their face.
John:
And I understand why people are angry about that.
John:
I understand why, why we got that feedback, why the people are feeling the way they did, why they felt compelled to go to the feedback form and, and write those things in.
John:
But I, you know, the, I responded to some of these people and what I said in all the responses was similar was that,
John:
As I said in the show, that would absolutely make the show more appealing.
John:
Granted, this is feedback we received.
John:
I agree with them.
John:
Where I disagree is by us not doing those two specific things and only those two specific things, change the host lineup, turn the show, change the show format to be an interview show, that somehow there's nothing else we can do to make the show more appealing to women, to get more women listeners.
John:
I totally disagree with that.
John:
I think there are a ton of things we could do to find more, you know, to make the show more inclusive, to find, attract more women to the show.
John:
It's just a tremendous amount.
John:
We read a whole bunch of them on the last show.
John:
Tons of people sent us feedback with ideas, right?
John:
The only two things we ruled out were changing the host lineup and changing the format of the show to be an interview show.
John:
Everything else, including the Harry's ad, I might point out, was on the table, right?
John:
And so that feedback, like...
John:
It hurt the worst because it shows that those people, what they came away with was that we were dismissing them, that we were just doing exactly what has been done to them in the entire technology industry for their entire life, which is just like, this popular show that I listen to is going to address my concerns for a moment.
John:
And door slammed in face, right?
John:
That's the experience they got out of the show, which is terrible.
John:
Not our intention.
John:
Obviously, we did a bad job, but I still have to say that I feel like
John:
our show can exist in its current form and be better than it is that we can that we can make positive progress towards our goal of inclusiveness and maybe that's not enough progress maybe we can make more progress by changing the show in those ways but i feel like it's like that this show has value and can be better in its current form i don't know if that's like
John:
so a lot of the worst feedback again made it sound made it feel like maybe feel like that our show just should not exist like that it is an affront to the cause and that the world does not need another three dudes tech podcast and the best thing we could do is just change it in a fundamental way so it's a different show and if we don't do that it shows we really don't care and you would just we don't want to do anything that will that will perturb our happy little home in any way and i feel like that is a mischaracterization and that we were totally willing to do anything within the bounds of the current show
John:
Again, provided, you know, granting entirely that it would be make the show more attractive to women if we did those things.
John:
But we want to have our show with the three of us.
John:
This is our show.
John:
I feel like I, you know, it's a valid thing to do to have the show with the three of us.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I don't know how else to characterize that without without just sort of reinforcing everything they think that's basically like, oh, you just want to have your show.
John:
And that's that.
John:
I do want to have the show with the three of us.
John:
And I feel like that show can be better.
John:
And I feel like some positive progress in making that show better is.
John:
It's positive, right?
John:
Is it as positive as it could be if we, you know, and, you know, I don't want to go into the same.
John:
That's why I should have.
John:
I feel like I'm still processing.
John:
I'm getting more defensive by the moment.
John:
But if you go into the, you know, I'll stop myself here.
John:
But what do you guys have to think about this topic?
Casey:
Yeah, of all the feedback we got, a lot of it hurt in the sense that it made me very angry because I was disappointed in the very chauvinistic things that I saw.
Casey:
But the stuff that actually hurt and cut the deepest was when a woman would write in and say, like you had said, John, basically, if you don't fundamentally change the show, then you're just a bunch of liars.
Casey:
And, well, like you said, John, that absolutely would be the number one best way to put our money where our mouth is.
Casey:
I don't think it's unreasonable for us to take that off the table.
Casey:
And even though the show is in so many ways about binary, the show itself is not binary.
Casey:
And there is a lot of in the middle that we can do to improve ourselves and to improve the way we handle the show.
Casey:
And...
Casey:
just generally make things more inclusive without changing the three of us.
Casey:
And I should point out that we got a fair bit of women that wrote in that said, I understand why someone would ask you to change the lineup, but don't do that.
Casey:
Because the reason I listen, says several women that wrote in, the reason I listen is because of the three of you and because of the chemistry you have and because of the way you beat each other up over white cars and fish and so on and so forth.
Casey:
and if you change that lineup, it could ruin everything.
Casey:
And so if this is the most hurt I've gotten, I'm still coming from a place of indescribable privilege, and I recognize that.
Casey:
But it really bummed me out because I feel like
Casey:
I want to work together the three of us and the three of us and, and the women that listen and, and the men that listen.
Casey:
And I just want to work together to make this a more inclusive, happy place.
Casey:
And it, I feel like, just like you said, John, there is somewhere in the middle between doing nothing and completely eviscerating the lineup as it is, as it exists today.
John:
I would go even farther because like from my, from my perspective, like,
John:
As I said, women are underrepresented in tech podcasts.
John:
I think we linked to Rocket last week, but we should put more links in the show notes of other tech podcasts that are very similar to ATP but have women on them.
John:
There's the Vector podcast with Georgia Dow and iMore.
John:
There's the iMore podcast with...
John:
Serenity and Allie and then Rocket.
John:
Like the fact that I can't name more than a handful of these off the top of my head shows you there is not a lot of them, but they are out there.
John:
And so women looking to hear other women's voices on the topics of tech, you know, there are options and I think there should be more of them.
John:
You know, should our show be one of them?
John:
Like our show is our show is the three of us.
John:
Right.
John:
But like from from my perspective, I think it's very possible that we can do maybe not more good, but a tremendous amount of good by talking to our audience.
John:
You know, making our show more inclusive so it doesn't feel like that if you're a woman listening that you somehow shouldn't be and this isn't the place for you.
John:
Right.
John:
So a lot of the things are like, what can we do to change tons of things?
John:
Like, what can we stop doing that is bad?
John:
What can we do that is that is repelling women?
John:
Right.
John:
Can we you know, we only talk about a certain number of things each week.
John:
out of the huge range of things we could talk about by picking different things of talk about is can we change the show and most importantly i feel like even if we are completely unsuccessful in our efforts to get more women and girls to listen to the show by talking to the men who listen to the show that is probably realistically speaking our best avenue for positive change because if we could snap our fingers and convince all the men on the show to uh you know get on board with our way of thinking about this as
John:
As regressive as ours even may be, but just like to move them along the continuum, that would be a tremendous benefit.
John:
And that's one of the pieces of feedback I have heard from a lot of people, especially people deeply entrenched in this issue, is that if you can, it's the men's behavior that needs to change, right?
John:
So we were all about like, can we make the show more inclusive?
John:
Can we make sure we're not doing anything to repel women?
John:
we need to get through to the men to say these in a nice way we can't say like oh you guys are all bad people you shouldn't listen like that is not it that is not it at all we want to be able to like bring bring people along with the ideas that we have and even if we're only just talking to men
John:
that that is a huge way that we can uh that we can make a positive change in this area uh you know so i just i feel like the three of us if if we change the show while keeping the format and while keeping the three of us there i still feel like we can do a massive amounts of good if we just figure out how to do and get our acts together
Marco:
We also got a lot of feedback that was suggesting what would make the show more appealing to women.
Marco:
But that's how the people presented it.
Marco:
But in reality, it's not about...
Marco:
It would make the show more attractive to anybody of any gender.
Marco:
It had nothing to do with women.
Marco:
So things like just making it easier for new listeners to get into the show.
Marco:
So not spending the entire show on follow-up, not being too much inside jokes, stuff like that.
John:
Nobody said don't send the whole show up.
Marco:
follow up don't try to throw follow up under the bus and mix it into the other topic nice try a few did but anyway it was you think i keep email that's great um i do read it i don't keep it um no like you know there are things about our show format and that we can definitely improve on things that will make it easier for any new listeners to come in and to feed and to stick with us
Marco:
And that's like a lot of people frame those things as here's why women don't like your show, which is a complete BS or it's at least not the whole story.
Marco:
It's like here's why a new listener might not stick around.
Marco:
That's the real story.
Marco:
And so there are things there that we need to and should improve to get more more women listening, mostly because that's how we get more people listening.
Marco:
Like it has nothing to do with women.
John:
Well, I mean, like I said on the past show, you can like some of them were, you know, like not that they said this, but as I said last time, if we talked about politics, we would have much broader, broader appeal than if we talk about programming.
John:
And a lot of people we've always got complaints when we go into the super programming stuff.
John:
But bottom line is that's one of the things that we want to talk about.
John:
We are three programmers on a podcast.
John:
We're going to talk about programming.
John:
Some people love the programming.
John:
Some people hate it.
John:
That's more of just a narrow versus broad issue.
John:
It is not specifically a gendered issue, I feel like.
John:
But a lot of people say, I'm not super into programming.
John:
So whenever you talk about programming, I tune out.
John:
And we've been getting that feedback for the life of the program.
John:
There is a ceiling on our appeal.
John:
If we did a show about politics...
John:
it would have way broader appeal and but like but that's not the show we're doing so in in in many ways like it's it's the same type of thing like oh so you want it you want to broaden your eyes you want to get more women to listen well change what you talk about it's like yes okay change what we talk about in what way well i would love it if you didn't talk about programming anymore well yeah um there are lots of women programmers who listen who like when we talk about programming like we're doing a show about programming like i would love it if you didn't talk about apple
John:
Maybe more people would listen if we didn't talk about Apple, if we talked about something with, you know, with much broader appeal.
John:
So that's that's something we have to deal with.
John:
Like, we're always trying to say, well, you know, within the confines of what?
John:
Oh, you wanted to broaden the show, but you don't want to change your show.
John:
We do want to change it within the confines of the topic area.
John:
Right.
John:
And the three of us and everything.
John:
And that's like to many people that is basically sort of like you don't really want to change.
John:
you say you want to change you say you want to make the show more inclusive you say you want to make it more appealing but you don't want to actually change anything about the show and i reiterate again i think there are just so many things we could change within this format to do better just a tremendous amount of things we can change that we will hopefully be working on moving forward that can make this show more inclusive and and you know and and change people's hearts and minds who do listen to the show men or women on whatever you know i don't know
John:
I just I just feel I feel somewhat defeated by this entire topic.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And I think we should probably put a fork in it for today.
Casey:
And a couple of quick thoughts.
Casey:
First of all, if you are listening to this and don't care for it.
Casey:
I am sorry to hear that.
Casey:
Please do not bother writing in to tell us that you don't care for it because this is going to continue to happen.
Casey:
And you can either carry on with the show or not.
Casey:
But this is something that's very important to the three of us.
Casey:
And we're going to keep talking about it.
Casey:
And that's just the way it is.
Marco:
And it's absolutely on topic.
Marco:
This is a major problem in the tech industry.
Marco:
It is definitely relevant for tech podcasts to talk about this issue.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And the other thing, I'm seeing a lot of angst in the chat room right now that we're doing a lot of navel gazing and talking about the show and talking about, oh, what could we do?
Casey:
What could we do?
Casey:
But not doing anything.
Casey:
Two quick thoughts on that.
Casey:
First of all, I think just talking about this is doing something.
Casey:
I mean, would you rather us not talk about this?
Casey:
I don't think that's really a solution.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And secondly, outside of the show, in private conversations between the three of us, we are absolutely discussing pretty much anything that we've gotten in email.
Casey:
We are discussing and considering pretty much everything.
Casey:
Even things we probably don't want to do or may not do are on the table in private conversations between the three of us.
Casey:
I ask only that you bear with us and give us a chance to get our heads around everything, give us a chance to put things together and watch this space.
Casey:
I know it's probably not happening as quick as it should.
Casey:
It's probably not happening as quick as it could, but we are working on it and we are trying as hard as we can.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And expect us to screw up.
John:
Like, expect us to do badly again.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Like, it's not, don't expect miracles, right?
John:
And we will never go as far as some people want us to go.
John:
People will always be disappointed in us.
John:
Like, people will be disappointed that this show exists at all, which is clear from the feedback sometimes, right?
John:
But, you know, some people, like, it's...
John:
I just feel like one of the traps that men fall into when they get into this topic is like, I'm going to do good here.
John:
I am going to champion the rights of whatever oppressed people that I'm getting behind this cause, blah, blah, blah.
John:
And then they get told that what they're doing is wrong, and they're like...
John:
But I was trying to help.
John:
Well, forget you guys.
John:
Now I'm not even going to help anymore.
John:
And it's like, that's exactly the wrong attitude.
John:
We're trying mightily to avoid that.
John:
You have to understand that everyone is not going to agree with you.
John:
Everyone is not going to like you.
John:
And the closer you get to trying to make some kind of progress...
John:
Uh, the more angry people will be that you didn't go far enough.
John:
And that is, that is a positive force.
John:
I feel like pushing us in the right direction, not the wrong direction.
John:
I'm trying to get that as, as a wind behind us as, as we become ever more disappointing to the people who are really invested in this cause.
John:
I'm hoping we were actually moving more towards like we were making positive progress in that direction, right?
John:
That we're not going the other way that we don't get repelled by that.
John:
We don't,
John:
that we don't start to resent the idea that boo-hoo people said mean things to us who are quote-unquote on our side.
John:
I want that to be a wind at our back rather than something deterring us from pursuing this.
Casey:
So, Plex.
Casey:
Yeah, I spoke last week about how the Synology, or certain Synology, specifically I think I cited the DS-214 Play, as having the proper hardware to transcode video used
Casey:
And do so quickly, which makes it really great for Plex.
Casey:
A handful of people very gently pointed out to me that I am full of crap and that the 214 does indeed have the right hardware.
Casey:
However, Plex does not have access to it because of whatever is going on within the Synology.
Casey:
I don't know the technical details, but suffice to say I'm full of crap.
Casey:
So what I have found, or I think a listener actually pointed out to me, is a list of all the different network attached storage devices that Plex will run on.
Casey:
And it shows exactly what these devices can and cannot transcode in a reasonably performant way.
Casey:
So we will put that in the show notes.
Casey:
I apologize if you took any action on my BS recommendation.
Casey:
I did not realize that I was dead wrong, but hopefully I've caught you before you spend any money.
Casey:
I do love my Synology.
Casey:
I do not have a 214 anymore.
Casey:
I have one that is not at all well suited for transcoding.
Casey:
And so I do recommend Synologies in general, but I cannot recommend the 214 that I previously recommended because, as it turns out, they are a terrible idea for Plex.
Casey:
So check out that list and buy one that actually works to do the things I thought the 214 would.
John:
I had high hopes for that hardware transcoding, but I don't use Plex.
John:
So what I found was that when the hardware transcoding was useful, it was good.
John:
Yeah.
John:
But if you are downloading more exotic, weird formats or you have no idea what the hell formats you are downloading.
John:
Legally, of course.
John:
Very often the hardware transcoding can't handle it.
John:
And there's one thing about software transcoding.
John:
It may be slower, but it can do a much broader range of things.
John:
So I find myself wishing that rather than hardware decoding, I really had a faster CPU to do software transcoding.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
What is going on with iPhoto and Time Machine?
John:
I think this was right after last week's show that we got this feedback, direct link to an Apple support article saying, whatever happened to that thing?
John:
Did I imagine that Time Machine integration?
John:
Apparently, I did not imagine it, although this thing doesn't have screenshots, it says.
John:
As of iPhoto 11, which was version 9.2, obviously...
John:
uh and uh os 10 lion 10 7 2 or later that's when iPhoto lost the ability to browse backups as they call it that according to the Apple article this means that instead of restoring specific photos within your iPhoto library you must restore your entire iPhoto library so I forget when iPhoto 11 was I'm assuming 2011 but that's when this feature went away and there was no more integration and I assume this is a feature that was never public for like third-party apps that it was something only iPhoto could do because it was written by Apple
John:
And it has fallen by the wayside, sadly.
John:
Or maybe it's a good thing, I don't know.
Marco:
Our first sponsor this week is Cards Against Humanity.
Marco:
And as usual, they have sent John a toaster to review in lieu of a sponsor read here.
Marco:
So John, what is the toaster that Cards Against Humanity sent you to review this week?
John:
so this week we've got the cuisinart custom classic toaster oven broiler which i guess has a sensible name it is model number t capital o capital b hyphen four zero another model number with both an o and a zero in it which boggles my mind i don't know how they keep anything straight um
John:
This is about the same size as my Breville 650L or whatever my model number is that I always forget.
John:
It is a legit four-slice toaster oven.
John:
It's got four unshielded resistive heating elements inside it.
John:
It has a very straightforward UI.
John:
This is the first toaster that I did not ever need to look at the instructions for, which is saying something.
John:
uh it shouldn't be but it is that's really sad yeah three knobs on the i usually look at the instructions like figure out there's some nuance i'm missing like i could usually operate any toaster uh but then like okay but then what about you know there's some nuance here that i'm probably missing i need to look at the manual this one has just had three knobs one for function like toast broil bake you know reheat whatever one for temperature that goes from you know the normal range of toaster oven temperatures and degrees fahrenheit
John:
and one for toast shade and the toast shade one you set to like you know it's a big range you set it to what you want and then there is a start stop button so if you find the correct setting for your toast every morning you don't have to adjust it you just press the button it does it repeatedly so that's all good um
John:
There's no timer at all, which I didn't notice until a little bit later.
John:
I'm like, you know what?
John:
There's no way for me to set this thing for 10 minutes, 15 minutes.
John:
No timer at all, which is a very interesting simplification, almost an Apple-like move.
John:
They're like, because it's very difficult to incorporate all those things together and have all the desirable features of not having to figure out where the setting is without either going to something digital like the Breville where you have, you know, a computer display, right?
Marco:
or lcd display or making your thing complicated so there's just no timer at all this or if there is i didn't find one because there was i didn't read the manual but i'm pretty sure there's no timer just to start stop button now does that make it harder to use the oven feature because obviously with a toaster you don't really need a timer you need the darkness knob which it does have but does the lack of a timer make the oven feature less useful to you
John:
it depends like you should know that it doesn't have a timer if that's something you rely on i find that with with any feature except for toasting on my existing toaster oven i don't tend to use the timer i just kind of like put it in if anything it kind of annoys me if the timer is too low like if i'm reheating something and the timer was like six minutes i'm like oh actually i want to just i usually just turn the knob and i say just 30 60 minutes like i'm never i'm going to take it out when i feel like it's done i'm not going to forget about it right but if you want a timer this is not the toaster view uh the knobs themselves
John:
really good knob feel actually it's probably average knob feel but compare compared to the knob feel on these other toasters it is phenomenal right and by the way if you don't know what the knob feel youtube channel we'll put a link in the show notes you should check it out it's just that's a thing wait really you've never heard of the knob feel youtube channel
John:
Are you honestly surprised that we have never heard of that?
John:
Yes, because it's like a meme.
John:
It's not like an obscure... It's supposed to be funny.
John:
It's a guy who just films himself fiddling with knobs, and I think he made a terrible mistake at the beginning of... His format is...
John:
he films his hand filling with knobs and then he doesn't say any words he makes noises like grunts like like that's that's it and he's really confined himself by not having words like there's tons of these videos if he only had incorporated words it would be a much richer experience i feel like anyway um these knobs are are weighty and smooth and they feel expensive and like the best comparison is my breville toaster which has
John:
like the worst feeling knobs I've ever felt on an appliance in my life.
John:
And I don't understand why they're so, well, I do because they're made of plastic and they're flimsy, you know, but like, why, why didn't they spend more money?
John:
Right.
John:
Anyway, great knobs.
John:
One big problem with these knobs though, you can't tell where the knobs are pointing because like the knobs have like a matte black plastic around them with ridges.
John:
And one ridge is ever so slightly taller than all the other ridges.
John:
And you can tell by feel where that ridge is, but by looking at it, forget it.
John:
Like, and there's no markings on the front of the knob, like a little red triangle or something.
John:
So figuring out where the knobs are pointing, like what, what function is this set to?
John:
What temperature is it set to?
John:
You basically have to feel on the thing, especially if your toaster is in a slightly darker, you know, under a counter type area.
John:
They really blew it on those knobs.
John:
Great knob feel, not great knobs.
John:
And it's got a tray in it.
John:
That's kind of like a U shape, like dip down, which seems weird to me.
John:
But then I realized,
John:
What they want you to do and I actually confirm this by looking at the little pictures on the side of the boxes You can there's two different sets of slots you can slide the tray into but then within each slot You can flip the tray over to do plus or minus like an inch because of the dip in the thing It's hard to explain I'll have to put a picture in the show notes But anyway, there's essentially four different positions you can put the thing in not just two two slots in each slot You can put in two different positions
John:
That seems like an interesting idea to get more flexibility of like different positions.
John:
But overall, I don't think it's worth it because like things get caught on the little U-shaped thing when you're trying to slide a piece of toast out if you have four slices in there.
John:
So clever idea.
John:
But in the end, I would say ditch it.
John:
This does have a thing that tries to pull the tray out when you open and close the door.
John:
But because you can reposition the tray...
John:
they can't make a single mechanism to do that they have to put kind of like a metal hook that catches the the tray in both positions so if the thing is really high or really low it will catch at different areas like it's a difficult problem to solve i understand if you want to make a movable tray how do you connect something to it so it comes out but again like it technically kind of works but if you ever have to move the tray manually when you close the door again the little hook has to re-engage and it bumps the tray up
John:
lots of weird compromises this machine um it's about a minute slower than my toaster to toast a piece of bread uh but in all other ways it is very comparable to my toaster just a bit dumber and a bit clunkier but with better knob feel so that that was kind of long i'm sorry but this was actually a very interesting toaster better knob feel but worse overall knobs because of the difficulty in detecting yes yes worse worse overall knob right totally because you can't tell where they're pointing but it feels good to turn them
Casey:
So in summary, this is better or worse than the Breville?
John:
It's worse.
John:
Definitely.
John:
I mean, the Breville has like digital timers and like, you know, it's just way better to adjustments for a number of slices and auto adjust the time based on the temperature inside the toaster.
John:
The Breville is a better toaster.
John:
Functionally, this just has some interesting aspects and it is very similar to the Breville in terms of size and even appearance.
John:
Do you think this is a good value for 80 bucks?
John:
It sounds like you're saying yes.
John:
yeah i mean it's a little slow like a minute slower to toast that's that's the borderline of like i feel like i feel like i would still probably take the black and decker three knob over this because at least that toast that's my big hang up it's my personal thing i feel i don't want to waste that long for toast if it's into the four minute range for a piece of toast no like i you know i i would still probably take the smaller more conventional also three knob by the way black and decker uh over this thing it's just kind of a dead ringer for the breville but like
John:
I can see where that extra, you know, 100 and whatever dollars went for mine.
Marco:
Thank you very much to Cards Against Humanity for sponsoring our show once again.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We got some pretty good feedback from Kitty.
Casey:
John, do you want to talk about this?
John:
Yeah, this was on the topic of watches replacing phones.
John:
I think we have another piece of feedback about this as well.
John:
And her idea was a lot of the features that the phone has, not the phone has, the watch has that don't necessarily seem to be
John:
is watch related uh specifically all the little you know things about uh sending little pictures to people and the 3d emoji and uh all the different fitness app type things obviously need to have an accelerometer in there or whatever but the phone has an accelerometer the phone has a screen the phone has all these things why are they on the watch now in that aspect this is true of a lot of apple products whatever the new glory product is seems to get
John:
a lot of the the cool features first and then they trickle down this happened a long time with like hey ios got some cool feature and then eventually it came to the mac and then it reversed the direction a few times there uh
John:
i don't know if those things will ever come to the phone they're right there's nothing stopping them from being on the phone including all the fitness tracking stuff because hey the phone's got an accelerometer and everything too you can't do obviously the blood pressure or you know the pulse stuff but everything else could happen on the phone it will be a shame if all the advancement of those features happens on the watch instead of the phone but i i would kind of understand it and the second one is like things like watch faces uh
John:
With the complications on them and everything, the iOS home screen, as a bazillion people have pointed out many, many times, including many Android fans, the iOS home screen could be a lot cooler if it supported essentially complications, otherwise known as widgets or, you know, any kind of customization so that you could make your lock screen or your home screen.
John:
more customizable than you can now apple has been moving slightly in that direction with the you know the notification center and the ability to put widgets in there and stuff but in the end the home screen you know springboard is still just a big grid of icons with some uh clumsy foldering thrown in and uh
John:
i i think i would you know if i could have complications uh you know in scare quotes on the ios home screen i think that would be a plus but again we'll see if that ever comes instead of back to the mac back to the iphone in this case i mean and
Marco:
Part of the reason why I think we don't have... We have complications on the watch face, but we don't have complications on your lock screen on your phone.
Marco:
I think part of the reason why is just inertia.
Marco:
First of all, you do have the TodayView widgets, which I personally don't use because I don't use TodayView.
Marco:
And I would definitely use lock screen complications long before I'd use TodayView stuff.
Marco:
But keep in mind... So not only do they have an existing thing that kind of does that...
Marco:
Because iOS has been around for so long and is so powerful within the company, even though it is not like the glory product that the watch is right now, there's inertia with managerial decisions there.
Marco:
So somewhere in Apple, probably pretty high up, there's some manager or VP holding tight to the idea that there should not be widgets on an iPhone home screen, as far as you know.
Marco:
I mean, maybe iOS 9 changes this.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
But I doubt it.
Marco:
So somewhere there's somebody who decided that a long time ago and is sticking with that decision and is not letting that change yet.
Marco:
And anything that's been around for a while is going to have these kind of people.
Marco:
There's been a lot of discussion this week about the Mac App Store because there was that app...
Marco:
What was it called?
Marco:
Reveal?
Marco:
Redacted.
Marco:
Redacted, yeah.
Marco:
That hit number one and made very little money being number one.
Marco:
And even though it's not quite number one, it's not quite... Anyway, it doesn't matter.
Marco:
A lot of discussion about the Mac App Store and how much it sucks.
Marco:
Personally, I think the Mac App Store situation can be blamed on one major thing, and that's sandboxing.
Marco:
The app review, the 30% cut, lack of upgrade pricing, all those things hurt.
Marco:
But none of them hurt as much as sandboxing did, in my opinion.
Marco:
I think sandboxing on the Mac has been a massive loss, a massive net loss overall.
Marco:
And it has cost the Mac App Store a lot of good apps and a lot of developer goodwill.
Marco:
But somewhere in Apple, there's clearly somebody who has power who is keeping sandboxing there and keeping sandboxing a requirement to be in the Mac App Store.
Marco:
And so even though it looks like it might not be the best idea for the product, just...
Marco:
The fact is, when you have a big company, you have people, you have power, you have power struggles sometimes, you have debates internally.
Marco:
There's these other factors that keep things the way they are, even if it's not ideal.
Marco:
So in this case, the watch comes up, and the watch is kind of a clean slate.
Marco:
It seems to run some variant of iOS, but it is basically a clean slate in the things it offers, the things it doesn't, the UI it offers, where things are allowed, where things aren't allowed.
Marco:
And so it was able to do things that we might not see for a while on iOS.
Yeah.
John:
Not the sidetrack on this thing, but in the sandboxing, the guy at Apple who thinks they should do sandboxing, I think I mostly agree with that.
John:
I think sandboxing is a positive direction for the Mac to go, but the execution of the implementation of that policy left a lot to be desired.
John:
Having it become mandatory before it was full-featured, right?
John:
Having there be so few ways for apps to...
John:
to do things outside of sandboxing on a case-by-case basis with exceptions.
John:
I feel like even if sandboxing had sprung into existence in its current state immediately, not that you can do that because it needs to be developed to some degree, but the capabilities that were possible in sandboxing early on were just so limited and so broken and so weird and so buggy.
John:
To mandate people going to that, that was getting off on the wrong foot.
John:
i think you do have to bring the mac towards a sandboxing type environment but the way to get there is like not the way they've done it so i i feel like that is more of a an execution uh fumble than a theater theoretical fumble and i do think that there will always be things that are outside the sandbox and should be allowed to be on the mac app store with caveats with some kind of warning blah blah blah but like
John:
Moving in that direction is good.
John:
Maybe it's similar with all the other decisions.
John:
You may agree with the end-state goal, but you don't agree that the way that Apple plans to get there is going to be successful or has been beneficial.
Marco:
Yeah, that's basically how I feel.
Marco:
Sandboxing, in theory, is a huge security improvement.
Marco:
And I would like to be in the place where everything is sandboxed properly.
Marco:
But I agree that the way it's been done has been pretty miserable.
Marco:
And the reality is you have this system that is opt-in by a very small number of apps.
Marco:
It's not preventing Mac malware.
Marco:
It's not preventing major apps from just going around the app store and selling themselves elsewhere.
Marco:
There's still tons of software that is made and run every day that's not sandboxed, including a lot of Apple software, because it's either not sandboxed or
Marco:
sandbox technically but is given like these blanket permissions to do anything it wants and so it's kind of not really sandboxed uh so they're like in theory it's a great idea if everything on the system can be properly sandboxed in practice how do we get there and what they've done so far has been miserable the best thing for sandboxing like the best use of sandboxing and apple is doing this as well is for apple to sandbox its stuff and it has been it's been sandboxing tons of its demon processes parts of the os like
John:
You know, sandboxing has to exist.
John:
Apple should be the primary user of it.
John:
They should be applying it pretty strictly to all parts of the OS that they possibly can to have them have the least privileges, the least access, so on and so forth.
John:
And during that process, you know, applying it to their GUI apps, applying it to, you know, they should be dogfooding this like crazy.
John:
They should be ringing it out, figuring out everything.
John:
And then offering it to developers as this is a way for you to write your app in a way that you don't have to worry about some bug hosing the entire person's computer.
John:
Like sell it as a benefit, not as like you have to do this because we say so.
John:
And if your app doesn't work because of it, oh, well, you get an exception that's on a ticking time bomb that's going to run out in about a year.
John:
So either stop selling your app or make a new app.
John:
Like it was just it was just done so badly.
John:
And I feel like the sandboxing technology had to be developed.
John:
Apple should be using it.
John:
all app developers can use it, should be using it, but it should not be, it should not have been warping the Mac app store in the way that it is pushing out good apps entirely out of the store, making people discouraged to not even want to develop a Mac app because I know because they're like, well, it doesn't even matter.
John:
My idea won't even work with sandbox anyway.
John:
So why don't even bother?
John:
It's just been not great.
Casey:
Yeah, it seems to me that a lot of times Apple is do as I say, not as I do.
Casey:
And I think sandboxing is a great example of that.
Casey:
And it's unfortunate because I think a lot of the pain that developers feel, Apple either feels it and says, oh, we'll just not deal with that.
Casey:
Oh, this sandboxing, we can't do what we want with sandboxing.
Casey:
Well, screw it.
Casey:
We're Apple.
Casey:
We don't need to bother.
Casey:
Or
Casey:
There are some times, like with CloudKit, where it's embraced.
Casey:
It's CloudKit that I'm thinking of, right?
Casey:
That Photos runs on?
Casey:
Yeah, okay.
Casey:
So the CloudKit gets embraced.
Casey:
And from everything I've heard, CloudKit is actually really solid because Apple dog fooded it.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
It's unfortunate to me that more of that doesn't happen.
Casey:
Or maybe if it is happening, that nobody knows it because we're left to assume it's not happening and blame that as one of the big issues with, say, sandboxing.
Casey:
But maybe it is happening.
Casey:
We're just not aware of it.
Marco:
To me, the Mac App Store as a whole... I've never had an app for sale in the Mac App Store, so I haven't seen that side of it.
Marco:
But just from reading what our friends say who are in it, and from using it as a user...
Marco:
It seems like the Mac App Store is Apple at its worst.
Marco:
All of Apple's... The worst things they do, they do most of those things in the Mac App Store.
Marco:
And also, there's very little upside.
Marco:
So in the iOS App Store, you have to put up with 30%.
Marco:
You have to put up with all these rules and restrictions.
Marco:
You have to do app review.
Marco:
But the upside is you get access to this massive, massive customer base.
Marco:
that is just incredibly high in volume, and there's tons of money floating around, and it's fairly easy... Well, not fairly easy.
Marco:
It's possible for many people to make a good living there.
Marco:
The Mac App Store has all of the same downsides as the iOS App Store, plus it has a way smaller install base than iOS.
Marco:
Even among people who use Macs, a smaller percentage of them use the Mac App Store,
Marco:
Also, the Mac App Store app is, I think, one of the worst apps that ships with OS X. I mean, it's just a terrible app.
Marco:
It's buggy.
Marco:
It is confusing to navigate even when it works properly.
Marco:
It is visually really wacky and inconsistent and dated looking.
Marco:
I mean, it's just a terrible app.
John:
the mental model of it always blows my mind because like how many people know that if you click the update button and immediately quit the app that the update still continues in the background like who would who would guess that based on the model of any app they've ever used like because it's so integrated into the system with the software update d or whatever the hell is running in the background like the fact that it could be downloading updates when they like it just totally breaks the model of an of an app that most people are used to on the mac so it's super confusing
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, so the Mac App Store, it has all the downsides of the iOS App Store, plus a number of additional downsides, and very little of the same upside.
Marco:
And so it's no wonder that no one's in it, and there's no activity there.
John:
The biggest downside is, sadly for everybody involved, that there are alternatives to it.
John:
For all the things that developers hate about the iOS App Store, about the 30%, about not having your own customers, about not even being able to respond to reviews, just all those terrible things.
John:
On the Mac, people are like, oh...
John:
Well, we don't have to deal with that.
John:
We'll just sell it ourselves, right?
John:
We're already a big company.
John:
We already know how to sell things.
John:
We don't need to sell in the Mac App Store.
John:
We have the alternative, right?
John:
And so that means that they get all the benefits of, you know, being able to talk directly to their customers, be able to sell updates, like all that stuff.
John:
But they also get all the downsides that Apple is trying to help them to avoid.
John:
Like essentially, if there had been only one place where you get software for your Mac, and I'm not recommending this because I am an old cranky man who likes things the old way.
John:
But anyway, if that had been the case,
John:
the mac app store ironically would actually be much better because people would be forced to get into it uh that would probably force apple to deal with some of its rules you know like well that hasn't happened on ios it has though because like i mean think about the oh no interpreters okay well i guess games can have interpreters because they all use scripting language that's it that's a perfect example of
John:
Let's make a bunch of really strict rules.
John:
Uh, and then let's have unforeseen consequences.
John:
And what EA says, look, you got to let us run Lewis scripts.
John:
That's how our whole games work.
John:
EA is big enough for them to go.
John:
All right.
John:
All right.
John:
You can't run interpreter unless you're a game running a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John:
And like every other place where something has been restricted in the iOS app store, if a big enough or enough important companies, uh, you know, if it's, if it's stopping them from selling in there, or if they, if they can't get their applications on, like, just think of what the Mac app store would be like.
John:
if that was the only way adobe could get photoshop onto the mac it would have to be very different sandboxing could not existence it was what is apple going to say we're not interested in photoshop for the mac anymore sorry you know something would have to give uh this is all just a fantasy hypothetical scenario not something i recommend you can never actually happen for the mac being the way it is
John:
general purpose computer is not a closed system like ios blah blah blah i understand all of this i'm just saying like due to that reality the mac app store is even worse it's even further handicapped by by the existence of a better readily available alternative that mac developers are already experienced with
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Our last piece of follow up is from Sarah, and she had some very interesting points with regard to the watch, which, John, you alluded to earlier.
Casey:
Do you want to tell us about these?
John:
Yeah, this was about Marco talking about, again, the watch replacing the phone.
John:
And I said that I hadn't heard anyone saying that.
John:
And Marco said, other than the people looking at his watch and saying, oh, that's the new thing.
John:
That's going to replace the phone now.
John:
Right.
John:
Which is really just, you know.
John:
And the reasons for this are things that hadn't occurred to me because I don't have these problems.
John:
And the problems are...
John:
women's clothing don't have as many pockets uh so you don't always have a place to your phone and the alternative of putting in a bag is a pain she refers in this email to the tyranny of the handbag is a real thing and it describes a phenomenon that i admit i also have not seen since if you've ever been to a nightclub you will have seen women dancing awkwardly unable to move properly because they can't put their bag down anywhere or a group of women dancing in a circle with their bags on the floor in the center so they can keep them safe but the women can still dance
John:
uh this is not this is not a good situation and not something that it comes up but the the idea is if you can have a watch on your wrist you don't have to worry about a pocket to find to put the thing in you don't worry about putting something valuable in your purse and finding someplace safe to put your purse um
John:
And I've seen a lot of watch reviews and a lot of it is about like the freedom of not having to fish your phone out of your pocket.
John:
I think there is a potential freedom in not only not having to fish your phone out of your pocket, but maybe not having to have your phone to perform some limited set of tasks.
John:
Like if you just want to sort of be in touch by phone and be able to send and receive text messages in some rudimentary way.
John:
Maybe the freedom that affords is worth the massive drop in functionality that you would be sacrificing by not having a phone but only having a watch.
John:
So there's one vote for a person who's willing to do that as soon as the watch becomes a little bit more independent.
Marco:
Yeah, that's a very good point that we didn't think of because we didn't ask.
Marco:
And this is one of the things we're trying to improve.
John:
Even you, if you went on a dog walk, right?
John:
If you could go on a dog walk with Bluetooth headphones, and you'd probably do this now with just preloading stuff onto the watch or whatever, but like...
John:
Wouldn't it be nice?
John:
You always say like, I don't necessarily take my wallet, don't necessarily take my keys, but I do always take my phone.
John:
Would you feel like you could get into a place where you're going to go out for a door walk and just have your watch on and that's it?
John:
What would they need to add to your watch for you to do that and not have to feel like it's an inconvenience?
Marco:
Well, it would need to be able to run Overcast.
Marco:
That's number one, like independently of the phone.
Marco:
So not with WatchKit, an actual native Overcast app that would have my stuff on it synced and everything.
Marco:
So that's what I would need to do that.
Marco:
The reality is I wouldn't face this problem personally.
John:
You always have a pocket for your phone, but I'm saying like, what if you didn't have to take it?
John:
It's like, oh.
John:
well overcast is because overcast like is not an app that you're constantly interacting with for the most part like you're listening right you know so it's the ideal case of like oh well if that's all you need if you just need your podcast if you just need a native overcast on your watch and your watch has you know a cell radio or whatever like if you got all that you can snap your fingers and have it would you find yourself like you'd be taking your phone out of habit but then eventually you'd be like like maybe you use it if you want to send a long text to somebody you don't want to dictate it into your wrist i don't know
Marco:
i don't have a watch so i can't really make a call on this yeah i i don't know i mean i i see why a lot of other people would want this it like runners or joggers like they they could use it because like the chances of a phone flying out of your pocket if you try to keep it in jogging shorts is way higher than if you keep it in like the jeans and terrible cargo shorts that i wear when i walk my dog yeah they don't even need cell radio they just need a gps
Marco:
Yeah, and a lot of the exercise trackers have GPS for that reason.
Marco:
Apple Watch doesn't yet, but we'll see about that.
Marco:
And that's why I can see the Apple Watch adding GPS before I see it adding a cell radio necessarily.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
and it's lower power and my wife has a big garmin you know a garmin like basically a wristwatch it's the ugliest thing you've ever seen in your life but a big garmin gps wristwatch and she has an iphone 5s right but she doesn't like to run with the phone because it's it's big right so she puts the garmin and why doesn't she just have a step tracker like she wants to know exactly how far she ran and maybe the route she took and step tracking is not as accurate as gps for measuring the things so she wears the big bulky garmin thing so she doesn't even want to watch but maybe if uh apple watch that is
John:
If the Apple Watch had GPS, I think she could be compelled to buy one or become more interested.
Marco:
And I'll tell you, I don't think the Apple Watch can do distance accurately without the phone present, because I don't know how it would.
Casey:
Well, the documentation that I've read, although I haven't tried this, is that if you keep the phone with you, it'll obviously use the phone's GPS to kind of cross-reference and corroborate what it thinks.
Casey:
But it knows how tall you are.
Casey:
It knows how many steps you're taking.
Casey:
And so it makes a best guesstimate based on what it thinks your stride is and how many steps you've taken.
John:
to guess how far you've run and i think that it will kind of train itself based on the times that you actually have your phone with you and do the same things yeah i think i saw ren tweet something like showing she brought a gps with her and also the uh also the apple watch after she had calibrated and showed they were only off by like you know a fraction of a mile or something to try to show that it was you would think that step tracking could always would always be off by some amount but actually it can get pretty close but but you know
John:
It's not just distance.
John:
The people who want GPS is because they want to see their route.
John:
They want to see a map.
John:
I ran through the park.
John:
I did this.
John:
Here's where I was going slow.
John:
Here's where I was going fast.
John:
That's what you want.
John:
So you need two-dimensional positioning at the very least.
Marco:
And for whatever it's worth, the two-dimensional positioning and distance tracking when I have the phone with me on my dog walks.
Marco:
is great.
Marco:
I verified there's a site called GMap Pedometer that lets you just... It's an overlay on Google Maps and you can just click out the route you took and it'll tell you how long that was.
Marco:
I love tracking this now.
Marco:
I've never been into activity before.
Marco:
I've never tracked anything about my activity.
Marco:
I've never cared about fitness.
Marco:
I've never regularly done any fitness, except I do walk my dog most days.
Marco:
And we have a very hilly town, and we walk between three quarters of a mile and two and a half miles, depending on weather and ability and everything.
Marco:
So I've now actually been really enjoying tracking that and seeing, oh, I've only gone 1.2 miles.
Marco:
Maybe I should...
Marco:
take this turn here and go up this block and add.
Marco:
And I keep finding myself adding to the route just to help me finish up my circles on the watch or to beat yesterday's record or whatever.
Marco:
It's really... This gamification stuff of fitness...
Marco:
I know that it might not work forever.
Marco:
This stuff tends to work for a week, and then you give up on it.
John:
You don't have the antibodies.
John:
That's what's happening here.
John:
You've been infected by fitness gamification, and you have not built up an immunity to it from having had 17 different FitWits go through the wash or whatever else.
John:
So this is your first experience with this, and it does have hooks.
John:
It has hooks.
Marco:
I'm under no impression that this will last forever.
Marco:
I hope it does.
Marco:
But I know myself and how lazy I am and how much I hate fitness.
Marco:
So this will probably wear off.
Marco:
But right now, just wanting to finish those circles has gotten me to move more and to complete my goals every day.
Marco:
I have on my watch face, I have only a couple of complications.
Marco:
And one of them is the activity rings.
Marco:
And so whenever I look at the watch, I'm seeing that.
Marco:
So it's not like this thing I have to remember to check, like a Fitbit or even like a pedometer app, like David Smith's pedometer app.
Marco:
I have to remember to check those.
Marco:
This, I don't even have to remember to check.
Marco:
It's annoying me on the watch face every day until it's complete.
Marco:
And so that, like, it actually does work.
Marco:
You know, before the watch came out, I was concerned about the big sensor bulge on the bottom of it for the fitness sensors.
Marco:
And I made a couple of remarks to friends saying, like, you know, if they made a version that didn't have that sensor bulge and lacked all the fitness features, I'd rather have that version because it would be thinner.
Marco:
It might be more comfortable than not having that bulge there.
Marco:
It might be lighter, blah, blah, blah.
Marco:
Yeah, it turns out I use those features and I love those features.
Marco:
So I'm really glad there is no option not to have them because I would have picked that option and I would have missed all this and missed out on the health benefits and stuff thereof.
Marco:
So yeah, I'm very happy with this.
John:
Real-time follow-up on my wife wanting an Apple Watch.
John:
She emphasizes that the main reason why she doesn't want the watch is because she can't wear it at work for security reasons.
John:
And so I should have thought of that.
Casey:
Why?
Casey:
It doesn't have a camera or anything.
Casey:
It has a microphone.
John:
I think she can't have anything with Bluetooth or something.
John:
What?
Casey:
That's so peculiar.
John:
She has lots of security restrictions where she works.
John:
But anyway, yeah.
John:
Otherwise, I assume she would get it just to try it out, just to see what it's like.
Casey:
Yeah, I'd like to echo everything that Marco said, and we're going to – well, I guess rather than talk about it in a minute, we'll just talk about it right now.
Casey:
I did get an Apple Watch.
Casey:
I ended up – I think I had already talked about how I had ordered one on launch day at about 7, 10 after 7 in the morning on Eastern time.
Casey:
um what ended up happening was a listener of this show natan gesher was nice enough to offer me a spare watch that he had had he became upon the spare watch because he had ordered two the one that i always wanted which is the 42 millimeter space black sport space gray excuse me sport um he ordered one of those and then ordered a different one i believe it was the 42 millimeter white sport and decided that oh he actually liked the white sport or whatever it was i'm pretty sure that's right though and
Casey:
And he was kind enough to offer to sell me the extra 42 millimeter space gray sport that he had.
Casey:
And so that's what I did.
Casey:
It was extremely gracious of him.
Casey:
He didn't need to do that.
Casey:
He could have absolutely raked me over the coals in terms of cost.
Casey:
So I am forever indebted to Natan.
Casey:
But anyways, I got my Apple Watch and I really like it.
Casey:
And hopefully by the time this airs, I will have put up my review of the Apple Watch on my blog.
Casey:
And so hopefully you will see a link in the show notes.
Casey:
If you don't, then yell at me to publish it.
Casey:
But either way, I completely agree, Marco, with everything you said, that having the rings as a complication, which I do, and seeing the nudge to stand up and seeing, oh God, I really need to just go for like a 10 minute power walk around the neighborhood.
Casey:
That absolutely has gotten me moving more than I did before.
Casey:
And yes, maybe in a month or even in a week, that'll all go away.
Casey:
And I'll just find this to be...
Casey:
But today, I love it, and it's absolutely causing me to move more.
Marco:
Our second sponsor this week is Igloo.
Marco:
Igloo is an intranet you will actually like.
Marco:
With Igloo, you can share news, organize your files, coordinate calendars, and manage projects all in one place.
Marco:
It's like taking the best of the web and productivity apps, calendars, Twitter-like microblogs, file sharing, task management, wikis, and more, all available privately and securely for your company or group.
Marco:
Igloo intranets are highly functional, stylish, easy to use with widget based drag and drop interfaces.
Marco:
They also have an upgrade this past fall and spring called Viking, which revolves around documents and how you interact with them, gather feedback and make changes.
Marco:
They've even added the ability to track who has read critical information on your internet to keep everyone on the same page.
Marco:
It's kind of like read receipts in email, although less annoying.
Marco:
And it helps you track whether employees have read and acknowledged policies, signed off on legal agreements, or confirmed completion of training materials.
Marco:
Very important for a lot of businesses to be able to have confirmation of those things.
Marco:
And all of Igloo is built on a very advanced HTML5 platform.
Marco:
It's fully responsive, and it offers all these features, all of its features, the document tracking, annotations, document viewing, all sorts of stuff, tracking things, wikis, all this stuff.
Marco:
It offers all of this in HTML5.
Marco:
So you can do all those on mobile devices.
Marco:
It's really quite impressive.
Marco:
You can preview, annotate documents, edit, track changes, all this stuff, no matter what device you're on.
Marco:
Full functionality, whether it's a computer, iPhone, Android phone, or even a BlackBerry, they make it work on all these devices through HTML5.
Marco:
And also because it's responsive, it looks good on all those devices.
Marco:
And when new devices come out, new screen sizes come out, Igloo already works on them.
Marco:
So if your company has a legacy intranet that looks like it was built in the 90s, you should definitely give Igloo a try.
Marco:
They are even completely free to use for as long as you want for groups of 10 or fewer people.
Marco:
So really, if you have a small company or group for 10 or fewer people in it, you got to give Igloo a try.
Marco:
I mean, it's free.
Marco:
You have nothing to lose.
Marco:
If not, you can go check it out and you should still give it a try because it is really very reasonably priced after that.
Marco:
And really, you can get a free trial, of course.
Marco:
So there's so much about Igloo to like.
Marco:
It is really for businesses that need an intranet, which is most businesses.
Marco:
You got to check it out.
Marco:
It's so much better than everything else out there that does this.
Marco:
So sign up for a free trial today at igloosoftware.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Igloo, the intranet you will actually like.
Marco:
Thank you very much to Igloo.
Marco:
igloosoftware.com slash ATP.
John:
Yes, please resist the urge to write your own internet, please, for everyone involved.
John:
It never works out.
Casey:
Nope.
Casey:
Amen to that.
Casey:
All right, so Facebook came out with instant articles.
Marco:
The gist of it is that Facebook has now launched this platform, system, whatever you want to call it, for publishers like the New York Times and BuzzFeed and TechCrunch, like for major publishers...
Marco:
I think it works with any webpage, but we'll see.
Marco:
Anyway, they've launched this thing where publishers can now have articles that pop up and can be read completely within the Facebook apps and the Facebook site.
Marco:
I think the site, at least the apps.
Marco:
The apps are what matters most anyway for mobile stuff.
Marco:
And the idea here is interesting.
Marco:
So the idea is they don't want you going to the publisher's websites to read them or popping up a web view in the app, like on the NewYorkTimes.com or whatever.
Marco:
They want the article to display directly within the Facebook app, natively in the interface, have all the images and stuff loaded up there and be able to do dynamic, cool animated stuff and everything else.
Yeah.
Marco:
I have a pretty cynical view of this, but I think it's inevitable.
Marco:
John, what do you think?
John:
Well, so the first part of it I was interested in was the instant part, because just technologically, like, you know, this is a native app.
John:
You know, as Gruber said, it looks like it's by the same people who did the paper app.
John:
I saw it tweeted by Mike Mattis.
John:
That's how I find out about it.
John:
So I assume he's involved.
John:
It's very slick looking.
John:
The pitch to the user is you're going to launch Facebook anyway.
John:
You're going to scroll through your Facebook feed, right?
John:
That's something you're going to do anyway.
John:
When you see something interesting in your Facebook feed, like someone posted an article like, oh, I saw this girl.
John:
You might want to check it out too or have some commentary.
John:
when you tap on that whether it's like a movie review or you know something for you to be outraged about and then yell about on facebook or whatever it is they want you to be able to tap on that thing and not have to wait for a web page to load they want you to tap and immediately be reading the article right and of course all the demos are of you know articles from national geographic or something with a beautiful picture in it or whatever um but as i think as gruber emphasized like
John:
uh unlike marco's traditional criticism of paper which is that the app looks great of all your friends are beautiful people who are always on vacation in california which we should have a ding for that too um the instant thing is like okay well this is not articles that your friends made these are articles in you know the new york times or you know the huffington post or whatever like these are professionally produced things you know and the chances of them looking nice and enticing your timeline is really high and
John:
But they want to make it so that when you're scrolling through your timeline that you can consume those as easily as you can read a comment from somebody.
John:
They just want you to tap on it and it's instantly there.
John:
And if that works as advertised, that's a great end user benefit because people do scroll through the timelines and people do want to occasionally read things.
John:
And I know that I often feel...
John:
I would like to read that, but I don't want to wait for the thing to load, which sounds so stupid.
John:
It's like you can't wait two seconds for something to load like you're on Wi-Fi, you're on iPhone 6.
John:
It's not going to take an age to load, but sometimes it's just like just the idea of the screen blanking, going through a spinner and having to hit the back button, blah, blah, just waiting for that.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Maybe we're all spoiled.
John:
I would use the analogy of the studies that I think Google or Yahoo did or whatever of like, what does an extra 200 milliseconds of response time on a server do to the purchase rates of items in a store?
John:
And it's like tremendous effects of a tiny speed change of page loading.
John:
You would think like...
John:
Does shaving 200 milliseconds off of the product page make a difference in sales?
John:
And the answer is like, yes, a tremendous difference.
John:
Like there's a huge cliff after which people just aren't interested and lose, you know, like.
John:
And so that effect, I think, is real for people.
John:
As they say, Marco can add a filter that makes my voice sound like his here.
John:
Engaging with content as in reading the stuff.
John:
Yeah.
John:
reading the stuff that's in the timeline someone posted a link to an article are you going to actually read that article you're just going to scroll right past it if it loads quote unquote instantly uh then you won't and the reason i think this is an interesting reframing is because as we all know it can't actually like there's nothing instant all it's doing is pre-loading it right that's all you know it's just spending a different time doing it rather than waiting and you know
John:
Tons of browsers to do this.
John:
Chrome, I think, was the first one to really aggressively do it, like prefetching all the pages linked from a page.
John:
Google prefetches the first search results in Chrome.
John:
We're going to load it before you tap it so that by the time you do tap it, it is loaded.
Marco:
It's also presumably loading less stuff.
Marco:
It's probably also not loading the million different JavaScript trackers.
Marco:
It'll load some of them because it is compatible with publishers' tracking systems, publishers' ad systems.
Marco:
So it will be loading some of that stuff.
Marco:
But I think I would bet... And it's not loading giant style sheets, giant JavaScript includes for the site theme and the header and everything.
Marco:
You don't think it is?
Marco:
I'm betting that it's only loading the article plus tracking stuff and ad stuff.
Marco:
Not necessarily the tremendous sidebars, all the related content.
Marco:
If you look at a typical article page for a major site...
Marco:
there's so much other crap on that page and so many includes uh for style and javascript and stuff like there's so much stuff a lot of that's still going to be there in the facebook version because they're going to want their tracking and they're going to want their money and facebook supports those things but i bet it's going to be a lot less just by not having like the headers the footers the sidebars all that crap that's always loaded i was just thinking they would want to be more time for that filter again a richer experience which is code for going to take a year to download because it's going to have a lot of stuff in it but
John:
But it could be better.
John:
It's conceivable that it could be lighter weight due to the shared resources among all of these instant articles.
John:
But basically, it's time-shifting.
John:
It's clever pre-caching of things that we will fetch it for you so that when you tap it, it is there, which is a great idea for an application benefit.
John:
But trying to sell that as instant, I don't see how that can fulfill its promise because it's got to download this thing sometime.
John:
And if your connection is slow and you launch the app and you scroll through it, it's not good.
John:
And you tap on the first thing you see.
John:
And if it doesn't have, you know, it's going to have background downloading.
John:
Like I'm sure they're going to do everything on their power in the iOS platform to try to get this stuff downloaded before you tap on it.
John:
But sometimes you're going to win the race.
John:
And when you do that, are you going to be like, hey, I thought this was supposed to be instant because it won't.
John:
It won't be instant.
Marco:
it's a reasonable selling point that like but like putting it right in the name may end up backfiring so that's that's one thing just simple technology behind what is this thing what is the selling point for users or whatever well i mean do you think the name is actually meant to be like this is why facebook is doing it or do you think the name is a red herring to convince people that they should do this thing that massively benefits facebook
John:
Well, that's what I'm getting at.
John:
So, like, this is the end user.
John:
This is the end user story.
John:
Why would a user be interested in this feature?
John:
Instant articles.
John:
You want to read them?
John:
You don't have to wait.
John:
Good.
John:
But it is the least interesting aspect of this feature from a sort of strategic perspective, because the strategic perspective is Facebook saying...
John:
We want to be the place where people get your content.
John:
Don't send them to your website.
John:
In fact, why do you even bother having a website?
John:
Why don't you do everything through us?
John:
We have this great ad network.
John:
We can do cool ad targeting.
John:
You could advertise through us.
John:
We'll let you give 100% of the revenue from all the people who go through blah, blah, blah.
John:
It's totally great, guys.
John:
Come right in.
John:
You know, like...
John:
i hope all the content providers are smart enough to not sort of fall into this trap because it's giving facebook if this if this was super successful and it became one of those things like well you got to have a facebook instant article you can't there's no way you can get any traffic without doing that that spells bad news for everybody except for facebook everybody consumers you know websites everybody and so i really now that i want to say that i hope it doesn't succeeded uh succeed but like
John:
I kind of do hope it doesn't succeed.
John:
Not because it's not a benefit to the end user, but because I don't want Facebook to be the gateway for most of the things that people read.
Marco:
Because, no, I don't.
Marco:
Unfortunately, I think that's the reality.
Marco:
I think we've been feeling for a while, and a lot of people I don't think are ready to see or admit this yet, but the web is really dramatically losing relevance.
Marco:
Not the internet, but the web.
Marco:
The web as viewed in web browsers.
Marco:
That is so dramatically losing relevance in the age of mobile and apps and native stuff now and social stuff.
Marco:
The web is losing.
Marco:
It's not going to die.
John:
I don't know if it's losing.
John:
I feel like this goes in cycles.
John:
And like you said, it's not going to die.
John:
You can't kill it because it is unkillable, right?
John:
But it does go inside.
John:
It's kind of the same things people said about giving Apple power by like, you shouldn't have a website.
John:
You should just have an app, right?
John:
And that's the same exact situation.
John:
You wouldn't want to give Apple that power at all.
John:
But the way that looks like it's shaken out to me is that every website has an app, but it has not made the websites go away.
John:
And this Facebook thing looks much more capable of making the websites become like, like there's a New York Times app, but there's no way the New York Times app is ever going to make the New York Times website go away.
John:
There's a New York Times, if there was a New York Times instant article thing, because Facebook is just so much bigger than Apple and already has already succeeded.
John:
So has already gotten so far in getting everybody to consume everything through the Facebook feed that it's terrifying.
John:
Like they are closer to being able to suck publications in and make their websites irrelevant.
Marco:
This is way bigger than Google News ever was back in the day, when that was a big deal and publishers were trying to threaten to sue them, but then they didn't want to be blocked by them or omitted because that would be even more disastrous.
Marco:
This is like that times 10.
Marco:
I really do think that...
Marco:
Web browsing is really in trouble, and as a result, publishers are in trouble.
Marco:
I wrote an article with a terrible title about this about a year ago or something.
Marco:
I think it's very clear that all of this social usage, all the time people are spending using apps and using social networks on their phones and stuff...
Marco:
Some of that is additive when people are just waiting in line at the bank or something where they weren't doing these things before.
Marco:
But a lot of that is also time that has been taken away from browsing the web, reading publisher sites, reading RSS and stuff like that for the geeks.
Marco:
This has actually been...
Marco:
And all this social activity is competing with that and has taken a lot of it.
Marco:
I worry a lot about the future of the web.
Marco:
I really don't think this is a small trend or a temporary thing or something that is guaranteed to just have the pendulum swing back the other way eventually.
Marco:
I think this is a major shift that people have voted with their time and with their activity and with their attention.
Marco:
They have voted for centralized proprietary ecosystems focused on social and snackable listicle traffic in these social networks, Facebook mostly, some Twitter, stuff like that.
Marco:
People have voted.
Marco:
That's where they're going.
Marco:
That's what they want the internet to be.
Marco:
People on the whole don't care about the open web.
Marco:
They don't care about everyone having their own site that they own and control and being able to browse things through open standards.
Marco:
People don't care.
Marco:
A few geeks care.
Marco:
Even we have moved so much of our activity to Twitter and stuff.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
This is a massive trend that I think it would be unwise to ignore.
Marco:
And unfortunately, just like when we moved from the previous systems that we had to the web, there was a lot of good that came from that.
Marco:
A lot of big numbers that came with that.
Marco:
A lot of new abilities that came with that.
Marco:
But not everything transitioned over.
Marco:
Not everybody was a winner there.
Marco:
And a lot of things just, well, that thing that used to work now doesn't.
Marco:
Or that role that you used to have, now we don't need you anymore.
Marco:
That is happening now with the move towards apps, the move towards social stuff, and with so much traffic to web publishers now coming from mobile and social usage.
Marco:
not coming from blog links and search engines and people browsing in web browsers on their computers.
Marco:
Like, that shift is happening and has happened.
Marco:
Like, we are already very much into that shift.
John:
Well, I characterize it as a series of swings, but not so much as a pendulum.
John:
Because like you said, one thing does supplant the other.
John:
But like...
John:
almost in terms of that we're getting into a more balanced situation now.
John:
And the sort of supremacy of the web was actually unbalanced because what the web let you do originally was read stuff like articles.
John:
Right.
John:
And for a long time,
John:
that since that was so dominant and it was like that defined the internet was the web right and what the web let you do is read stuff people were spending a lot more of their time reading stuff even if you want to lump rss into that and now we've shifted because there's ways to do things other than read stuff you can text people text messaging was one of the first shifts now i'm not just reading stuff i'm writing stuff right you can play games you can watch little movies you can
John:
you know use native apps to do things that are very different than reading a big page of stuff and so i feel like this is an adjustment in terms of activity choices like oh people are reading the web less because they're doing things more what are they doing on their phone they're not doing the equivalent of reading the web they're doing something different and why couldn't they do that on the web because the web took a long time to get that kind of interactivity and everything um
John:
um so i think maybe we're more imbalanced now the reason this instant uh article thing is is scary is because it is asking people to do the one thing that the web you know is best suited for like you know reading stuff public publishing a publishing platform anybody can make a website you can start publishing stuff and the entire world can read it and what kind of stuff how about a bunch of text and pictures right that is like the core competency of the text reading things uh of the web reading things
John:
If Facebook can get that into there, you know, it's not even an interactive thing.
John:
It's not a social network like for, you know, like the articles in a social network.
John:
You're reading the article, right?
John:
If they can pull that away from the web, now you're really starting to pull at the core of like what the web...
John:
what the web does in a non-proprietary way it's as if someone tried to replace email with the system that was exactly like email but 100 proprietary and that so far hasn't worked despite email being super terrible way worse than the web ever was in terms of no authentication and spam and all the other things that we hate about email uh
John:
The web has a leg up on that.
John:
Well, has that not worked?
John:
How about iMessage?
John:
But that's not email.
John:
Like, email is when you write a long-form thing.
John:
Like, even text messaging hasn't, like, you would think, like, oh, I have a hundred ways I could write to somebody.
John:
I could send them a Twitter DM, I could write to them in Slack, I can do this, I can do that, and yet email survives, despite it being terrible.
John:
Facebook messages are pretty big.
John:
I know, but, you know, I mean...
John:
perhaps the main thing keeping email alive is that you can't even sign up for any service without an email like it is the linchpin of our entire system right what are you going to put in the you know i mean like and i feel like the web has that same longevity but it would be a huge mistake for anybody publishing on the web to give facebook too much power and
John:
with web publications struggling to figure out their monetization strategies and all this other stuff they are vulnerable to to do you know to being like well we got to do something and facebook has a great advertising platform and they have a whole jillion users and then you know you just wait a year and facebook starts turning the screws and being like actually we're not going to show your article to a lot of people unless you pay us which is their whole big thing and just ugh
Marco:
That's the thing.
Marco:
This is why this is such a terrible situation.
Marco:
I think because of the move towards everything being mobile, because so much traffic to publishers' websites now has to come from social sources...
Marco:
I'm not sure the publishers have much of a choice.
Marco:
It's just like when Google News, when people threatened and made them block them and then begged to be let back in.
Marco:
There's all these situations where one party has just tremendous power on the web and publishers pretty much have to play ball with them because they can't afford not to have that audience, not to have that traffic.
Marco:
Facebook is that platform today.
Marco:
And publishers depend so much on getting social traffic.
Marco:
Facebook is so good at delivering that traffic sometimes and only if you pay and being really cagey about it.
Marco:
Of course that's their plan.
Marco:
Of course their plan is to move even more activity into Facebook.
Marco:
It comes from not only a position of greed, but also a position of just arrogance.
Marco:
Like, our app is better than your website.
Marco:
You are incapable of making pages that load quickly, even though this can be solved by smart web design and a good CDN.
Marco:
And a lot of times they're right, though, unfortunately.
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, but not every time.
Marco:
But anyway, this move is them just annexing more of the web.
Marco:
Like, hey, you know what?
Marco:
We are so powerful that you have to play ball with us.
Marco:
We're going to offer this thing now.
Marco:
And our partners who use this, their stuff is going to rank a lot higher than a random link to an arbitrary site now in the timelines.
Marco:
And as you said, they're going to start turning the screws, right?
Marco:
They are so good at that.
Marco:
That's what they do.
John:
You would think they would figure it out by now.
John:
Like kind of how the music labels figured out after the iTunes thing, like maybe don't give one company too much power, right?
John:
Yeah, well, ask the music labels how well they're doing right now.
John:
Well, but like, I mean, they eventually figured it out, and now it's kind of like accepted wisdom in the digital publishing, you know, digital media, like music, movies, or whatever, that it is a huge mistake to put all your eggs in the basket of one technology company.
John:
Despite the fact that all the media companies have proven they can't do the technology themselves, they've learned, I think, just received wisdom now.
Yeah.
John:
Even if you can't do any of this tech yourself, which you can't because you suck, never give one company all your stuff.
John:
Never let Apple get too big.
John:
Never let Amazon get too big.
John:
And they all know that, right?
John:
And maybe they know it too well and are being stubborn with things like TV where they could be making progress, blah, blah, blah.
John:
But you would think in the web they would also know that by now as well.
John:
I mean, let's just look at e-books and Amazon.
John:
Like, oh, boy, that was it was a real big mistake to give Amazon that much power in the ebook industry.
John:
Right.
John:
And they tried to balance it with Apple.
John:
And then, you know, that didn't quite work out the way they wanted it to.
John:
Right.
John:
So I'm hoping everybody in web publishing, even though they're in the same dire situation of like, we can't figure out how to monetize.
John:
We can't reach our audience.
John:
Social is taking over, blah, blah, blah.
John:
I hope that someone in the meeting raises their hand and says, this is all good and all, and I love these numbers and the projections and blah, blah, blah, but we really need to hedge because if we put all our eggs in the Facebook basket, they will own us and it will be bad.
Marco:
See, I think you're right.
Marco:
They should be saying that.
Marco:
However, I don't think they have another choice.
Marco:
And that's why Facebook can do this.
Marco:
This is like...
Marco:
The Internet is really, you know, we like to think that the Internet is this platform that enables all this openness and everything.
Marco:
And it does and it can.
Marco:
But it also enables massive consolidation of power and consolidation of attention and usage into these proprietary lockdown systems.
Marco:
We keep seeing it again and again with everything you use listed.
Marco:
And that's only going to continue.
Marco:
And it's very clear that when you have these centralized systems like Facebook, like Twitter, like Amazon,
Marco:
You can offer benefits like Google.
Marco:
You can offer benefits that get people in in such massive numbers that that private company gets a tremendous amount of power and can basically dictate their terms to the rest of the world then.
Marco:
Everything like we're saying this is really potentially really bad and they shouldn't give Facebook all this power but the fact is Facebook already has this power and if someone's not going to play ball with Facebook they're just going to start losing Facebook search traffic or Facebook social traffic and they're going to be they're going to be forced to play ball they're going to their hands are going to be forced.
John:
Well, they've got the same game plan as the music labels after going too far in the Apple direction.
John:
Their best and their only hedge is, unfortunately, to try to spread a little bit of your content to another proprietary centralized thing.
John:
Like, in other words, Twitter with the cards and whatever.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Can they play Twitter versus Facebook off of each other?
John:
Facebook is just so massively bigger than that anyway.
John:
But but that's what they've got.
John:
The option is let's also keep talking to Twitter about their thing and whatever new social network thing.
John:
Like, let's also talk to them about like no exclusivity deals.
John:
try to hedge your bets the best you can so you know amazon's music was nothing when itunes was dominant but by being given tons of attention by being given drm free music before apple was given it by all the music labels and everything it helped make amazon into perhaps not the competitor they all wished it was but at least uh itunes is now not the only game in town of course spotify and all the streaming services right even that the streaming services i i bet music labels want to spread things around with the different streaming services they wouldn't like one to be dominant it's just
John:
Yeah, that's something that tends to happen.
John:
Amazon is massively dominant in online commerce.
John:
Walmart is massively dominant in the U.S.
John:
in retail.
John:
Facebook is massively dominant online and social.
John:
It's a bummer.
Marco:
But there's something else here, though, which I think is worth pointing out.
Marco:
Like, there's a difference in the power balance between your examples that you just gave for the most part and this, which is like...
Marco:
If a popular kind of product is constantly being searched for on Amazon and Amazon doesn't have it, that makes Amazon look bad.
Marco:
Amazon kind of needs that.
Marco:
With the music label negotiations, there's only, what, four music labels?
Marco:
If a big music store launches and they don't have one of them, that's a big problem.
Marco:
That's going to result in lots of people looking for stuff, not finding it, and that negatively affecting the chances that they're going to keep using that music service or keep buying from that store or even keep bothering to search there.
Marco:
With Facebook and these publishers, Facebook doesn't really need any of them at all.
Marco:
This is purely for the publisher's benefit to be in this system.
Marco:
If any one publisher or any group of publishers decides they're not going to do it,
John:
facebook couldn't possibly care less they don't need them well they don't need them but they want them they want they want their place to be the gateway to this they don't want i mean you know share on facebook like you can go to a website and the share buttons underneath every article to share the article on every possible social service but that's not the integration of the people that uh that facebook wants they want you to go to facebook to find the article not go to the website to find the article and then hit a share button to share with people facebook although they do want you to do that because they want people to be
John:
you know looking at things on Facebook but it's the inversion of like you know website what website we own you the only you publish your content through our system on our terms to the people we say you can you can reach right and I guess the web keeping the websites themselves are a hedge on that but
John:
i don't know like i i don't know what the best move for them is because they do need to reach people like all i can think about is uh how much it could be worse like imagine if facebook owned youtube like we'd all be screwed like it's the game over like just there's and youtube itself is pretty dominant but then you see twitch and you're like well maybe you twitch is keeping youtube uh honest or does google own twitch now i keep i forget didn't amazon buy them i don't know anyway the consolidation is evil uh
Casey:
Well, everything old is new again, and so I suspect that before too long we'll be seeing keywords on commercials, and we'll talk about that right after this commercial.
Marco:
Nice.
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Casey:
All right, so Verizon bought AOL, which is weird.
Casey:
Yeah.
Marco:
What's that all about?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Some people said it was about ad technology.
Marco:
I don't know.
John:
That seems to make sense to me, because what else could it be about?
John:
dial up i don't know i mean they do have a bunch of popular websites and some of the spin has been like oh this is about content i forget what they have like uh huffington post is tech crunch theirs too like they have a bunch of properties like they're basically like a holding company at this point um but from everything i've read what the ceo did to make the the company desirable uh as an acquisition is focused on
John:
how like trying to make this company a compliment for the things that other companies might need you know so they're they're advertising technology to serve you know whatever boy you need this filter a lot serve rich ads video ads to people targeted you know uh if someone is looking for that ability and the ability to reach a large number of people
John:
that's what AOL has packaged themselves up into and I saw all the depressing numbers of like how low AOL has fallen from you know the time when they were doing the Time Warner merger for 380 billion or whatever now they sold themselves for four part of it is like the name AOL like the company has always been and increasingly more than what we think of when we think of AOL but then I just think about all those people they're still charging for dial-up and I just get angry
John:
Is the logo still lowercase?
John:
So it just looks like AOL.
John:
And I want to be clear, angry AOL, not because I think that people shouldn't have dial-up, but I'm angry at our situation in this country that if your best internet option within your budget is dial-up on AOL, we are failing as a country to... I feel like at this point, affordable broadband internet access should be important enough that it should be subsidized
John:
you know, maybe not subsidized, but like we should, whatever we have to do to make it affordable as, as it affordable as having a telephone line is, that's what internet access should be.
John:
Uh, and if your only option is literal dial up over a modem to AOL, then things have gone horribly wrong.
Casey:
Yeah, I'd say so.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Ben Thompson had a pretty good take on this that I skimmed very quickly before we recorded.
Casey:
And it seems like it is about ad technology.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
It's just...
Casey:
there are aol has a bunch of internet properties like tech crunch for example and and there was a time where i really hated tech crunch but um i actually have come back around and it helps that our friend matt panzerino is there um but there's a lot of really good properties there and i'm going to be fairly sad when verizon inevitably forces um editorial opinions on all of them don't you think they'll sell them before they do that i would assume that if they're not interested in content they'll sell those things off
Marco:
Maybe.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I mean, they probably do make money, though.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
You know, I've never worked at a big publisher.
Marco:
I have no idea how, you know, in theory, they all attempt to maintain editorial independence from their corporate high-up owners.
Marco:
In practice, I don't know how hard that is.
Marco:
If I had to guess, I'm guessing that they can usually do that most of the time, but maybe sometimes it gets weird or hard.
Marco:
I don't know.
John:
I don't know if Verizon is like Roger Ailes.
John:
I don't think they have a big, you know, ideological slant that they're going to impose on the Huffington Post and TechCrunch.
John:
Yeah, probably not.
John:
They'll just add the Verizon tracking cookie to all the sites, you know.
John:
Actually, they already have that because it's already on their network.
John:
Anyway, like Verizon just wants your eyeballs and your monthly check, right?
John:
And so this is just furthering their goals here.
John:
Can we think of someone who we would rather have had buy AOL?
John:
Would we rather have AOL go bankrupt?
John:
What are the alternative scenarios for the future of AOL that we would like better than Verizon buying them?
John:
I mean like what I'm getting at is that it's not I didn't you know sort of cringe when I saw this announcement in the same way I did when I saw like Facebook bought Instagram right like sometimes you see a consolidation you're like oh no right this one it's like yeah all right I mean like
John:
could be worse right like verizon could merge with comcast like there are many more worse doomsday scenarios than uh than verizon buys aol um i mean verizon could just agree to just stop competing with comcast and stop building out fios yeah yeah no they can only do that with billions and billions of speaking of subsidies with billions and billions of dollars from the government they need more billions nope they can't do it anymore
John:
Well, good talk.
John:
Is there much else to say on AOL Verizon?
John:
I don't know.
John:
Basically, what I have to say is that of all the mergers that have taken place between big companies, this one seems like, all right, whatever.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Is this... So, off the top of my head, I don't know.
Marco:
The AOL Time Warner thing, between that and HP Compaq, which was the worst merger in history?
Marco:
AOL Time Warner.
John:
that was bigger than hp compact yeah because hp compact at least like were similar and did similar things and it's a consolidation that made some sense especially in a market where microsoft was grabbing ever larger values of the pc market and the hardware vendors were being pushed harder and harder that there's going to be consolidation among them and they both had kind of an enterprise angle like hp compact
John:
makes some sense and it only looks bad because the entire pc sector was contracting as microsoft sucked all the oxygen out of it hey well time warner was a fantasy of like the internet and hollywood are together and we're going to have tv shows on it like this is just it's just a fantasy of some c-level executives head like billions of dollars and little birdies and stars spinning around people's heads thinking this is going to be the new juggernaut uh and it was just like boy you know i just feel like that was a much bigger disaster
Marco:
Thanks a lot for our three sponsors this week.
Marco:
Cards Against Humanity, Igloo, and Squarespace.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
And if you're into Twitter.
Marco:
You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T Marco Arman S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse It's accidental They didn't mean to Accidental Tech Podcast So long
John:
Didn't even get to talk about your audio engine.
Marco:
You can talk about that now.
Marco:
There's not that much to say.
Marco:
I'm working on my streaming engine.
Marco:
Which streaming engine is this?
Marco:
What number?
Marco:
What attempt number?
Marco:
I think four?
Marco:
Every couple of days on Twitter, somebody asks the Overcast account,
John:
when are you going to add streaming god finally you know something like that and they do have a point you're doing you're doing the voice for the finally thing but streaming was discussed on this very program a fairly long time ago as an important upcoming feature for overcast yeah my goal was to add it like last fall that hasn't happened yet
Marco:
And it's not because I haven't been working on it.
Marco:
It's because I haven't gotten it to work yet.
Marco:
I've been making progress.
Marco:
And I haven't been working on only streaming in Overcast for the last year or whatever.
Marco:
I've been doing other things as well.
Casey:
Yeah, like walking your dog.
Marco:
Yeah, well, that's testing Overcast.
Marco:
Simple stuff like the entire rest of the app that I've been working on.
Marco:
Stuff like that.
Marco:
I have tried to write a streaming engine for Overcast on a number of occasions, and I keep doing it badly.
Marco:
The one I've been writing over the last two weeks is significantly better.
Marco:
I've gotten significantly further than I've gotten with any other attempt before.
Marco:
I think I'll be able to do it.
Marco:
I think the one I'm writing now is going to be the one.
Marco:
So John Beals in the chat is asking, is there an off-the-shelf streaming solution?
Marco:
I have looked at a couple of packages.
Marco:
I have even tried to integrate some of them that claim to offer this.
Marco:
None of them have worked for me.
Marco:
And some of them, they haven't worked for me because they have just annoying shortcomings that would be a problem in my app.
Marco:
Things like, oh, this will support streaming of everything except MP4 files.
Marco:
That's a bit of a problem for podcasts since any AAC encoded podcast is wrapped in an MP4 container.
Marco:
Simple things like no way to get ID3 information.
Marco:
Well, that might be a problem for me in the future if I want to parse that.
Marco:
Or no ability to jump around in certain formats in certain cases.
Marco:
There's problems and limitations with a lot of these other packages out there that...
Marco:
If you're writing an app where you are streaming from a known set of sources that you know, like if you control the source end and you can say, well, we are only going to serve MP3 format streams, for instance.
Marco:
And so you know what you're going to be reading and you have control over that.
Marco:
You have a lot more options then.
Marco:
First of all, if you don't need smart speed, you can just use AV player.
Marco:
That's the basic thing.
Marco:
For most people, you don't need to be working at this level because most applications, AV player will work just fine for you.
Marco:
The only reason I need to be at this level is to get smart speed working.
Marco:
Now, another option, the guy who makes RSS radio, this is one of the only other apps that has silent skipping as a feature.
Marco:
I met him at NS Conference this year.
Marco:
He's a really nice guy.
Marco:
And I asked him, because I know that he supports streaming and he has silent skipping, and I asked him how he did it.
Marco:
And he said he just doesn't have silent skipping and effects when it's streaming.
Marco:
And he just has two different paths in the code where if he's playing a video or if he's playing an audio file off a stream, he just uses AV player.
Marco:
And then if he's not, he uses his other audio engine where he can do effects.
Marco:
And I could go down that route too.
Marco:
I'm just choosing not to.
Marco:
So I could have offered streaming at the very beginning and just say, well, you can stream, but then smart speed won't work if you stream.
Marco:
I'm just choosing that I don't want that.
Marco:
I don't want that to be my solution.
Marco:
I want smart speed and voice boost and any other effects I do in the future.
Marco:
I want those all to be available no matter what the source of the audio is.
Marco:
Whether you're streaming it, whether you're playing off a local file, etc.
Marco:
Also, with AVPlayer, you can't save the contents of a stream.
Marco:
And I don't like that.
Marco:
I think if you're going to stream the data once, you should be able to write that data to the local disk and be able to play it offline afterwards if you want to.
Marco:
So again, a limitation with the built-in stuff.
Marco:
I could have these different modes where I say, well, in this mode, you have these limitations.
Marco:
I'd rather not do that.
Marco:
I'd rather just have one smart, solid system that applies the same rules no matter where the data comes from and gives you the same features no matter where the data comes from.
Marco:
So that's why I'm doing it the hard way.
Marco:
And it's very hard.
Marco:
And that might not be the right answer.
Marco:
This might be a terrible idea.
Marco:
It might not be worth it.
Marco:
But this is how I'm choosing to do it.
John:
Don't you feel like once you kind of... Because really, from reading your message, it seems like if any of these streaming frameworks gave you a place to sort of insert your own code into the stream where you could do your smart speed stuff, you'd be all set.
John:
But none of them seem to give you that low-level access because they always just assume, oh, we'll take care of everything for you.
John:
You just point us at the stream and we'll get the audio.
John:
It's like, no, I need to be in there.
John:
I need to look at the byte stream as it flows by.
John:
I need to be able to do stuff with it, right?
John:
So what you're essentially doing is...
John:
A lot of work that's already done for you in other frameworks just so you can get that one access point.
John:
Is this a correct characterization or no?
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, that's part of it.
Marco:
And even just the way the frameworks work, the way they're structured, how the code does certain things.
Marco:
There's a couple of different low-level audio APIs that you could be using.
Marco:
I have to be working at basically the lowest level to do what I do.
Marco:
And so some of them don't work at a level that low.
Marco:
Some of them do, but in a weird way that has limitations like this.
Marco:
Some of them are basically just doing what I'm doing, and I can just look at them and see some trick they do or some weird thing.
John:
uh for the most part now that i now that i figured out the right way to do it i think uh i think i'm making good progress so i'll get there this will be your new instapaper table view or grid view where it's like you do this thing you finally come out you've got this thing finally i have a streaming engine supports all my features two ios releases later they add hooks to all their apis so that you could do smart speed in any one of their streaming things which is fine like that's just that's you got to do what you got to do but
John:
I don't know.
John:
Maybe maybe this will never be important enough for them to do like the collection views was eventually important enough for them to do because tons of apps have views like that of arbitrary grids of items reordering and blah, blah, blah.
John:
But I'm not sure how many apps care about the low level audio access that you need.
John:
So maybe you'll be safe on this one.
Marco:
Yeah, and AV player can support voice boost even.
Marco:
You can do audio effects in AV player.
Marco:
You just can't adjust the timescale of the audio.
Marco:
So you can do any effects that take in and output the same number of samples.
Marco:
You can do that in AV player, no problem.
Marco:
Well, it's not easy, but you can do it.
Marco:
But anything that adjusts the timescale dynamically, you can't.
Marco:
And that is what SmartSpeed needs to do.
Marco:
One of the questions in the chat, let me see, Coding Explorer asked this.
Marco:
Why is streaming in such demand?
Marco:
If you have Wi-Fi, downloading an individual episode takes like 10 seconds when it's slow.
Marco:
That's a good point.
Marco:
I've gotten along this far without having streaming.
Marco:
One could argue, as I've asked myself many times as I keep failing to do it properly, one could ask, do I ever need streaming?
Marco:
And the answer is, I think I can get away without it forever if I need to.
Marco:
But it would be better with it for three main reasons.
Marco:
One very big use case that people always ask for that I can't satisfy is a lot of people prefer to run their clients in streaming-only mode.
Marco:
And the big advantage here is that you never have to download big chunks.
Marco:
So any... Like an episode that comes in that you don't actually end up listening to, you didn't download that.
Marco:
So you didn't waste that data.
Marco:
And also, it takes up no disk space, basically.
Marco:
Like, you know, you'll have some space for like...
Marco:
caching and artwork and the database stuff like that but compared to when you're downloading entire episodes of like 50 or 100 megs that's very little space and people so often who have like these 16 gig iphones that for some reason apple is still selling uh they can be very low on space so if you can have a mode in your podcast app that doesn't use a lot of disk space that's there's a lot of people who want that uh secondarily no matter how fast your connection is
Marco:
If there's an episode that you want to listen to right now and it is not downloaded, to tap it and to have to sit there and wait for the whole thing to download before it can even start sucks.
Marco:
Even if it only sucks for five seconds, that still sucks.
Marco:
In many cases, it's going to suck for a lot longer than that because the reality is not everybody has fast Wi-Fi.
Marco:
Not everybody is on Wi-Fi.
Marco:
Not everyone's cell connections are that fast.
John:
um so if you can tap and start playback soon immediately like that is better like no question that is better well forget about the wi-fi and the cell connections my i have fast all of those things it takes forever to download some podcasts because the hosting
John:
is slow that is my biggest complaint about streaming is like if i forget to download a podcast and i have to you know go to work you look at it and it's like what is this doing 200k per second forget it well i'm not going to sit here and wait 15 minutes and it's not because of my connection it's because the server can't feed me the bytes fast enough and then i blame your background downloader for not downloading the background
John:
yeah if i had to pick one i'm i'm not big on streaming like i i like the fact that it will be able to play it playing i i would like actually a hybrid mode where it starts playing as soon as possible but it still downloads the whole thing but the the feature that i most get annoyed about it with overcast is why isn't this downloading i don't know why it's not downloading i know you have the like start all stop all thing i futilely tap it sometimes i know you fought with that with the background download framework and everything it's still mysterious to me
John:
there's no indication in the ui and nothing i can do about it to say other than sometimes pause and restart pause and restart until something starts happening i always want to know why are you waiting to download just download i'm on wi-fi i would also like to know that yes unfortunately this the frameworks do not give you that information you just sell it start downloading this and you know it started when you get the first bite right i'm like a software update running in the background it's ahead of you in the queue you know taking your spot in the background queue that's like yeah
Marco:
And Aiden Haynes in the chat just mentioned what was going to be my third point, which is, you know, let's say I want to build a feature where you can view a share link natively in the app.
Marco:
If somebody says, check out this podcast, it was so funny at this minute.
Marco:
And that minute is an hour into the show.
Marco:
If you can open up that link in Overcast and start that playback at that point, you don't have to download the entire file before that, the whole first hour of the show.
Marco:
You can download a few bytes, get the header information, and then jump ahead with a range request.
Marco:
and then only download the part from your playhead forward.
Marco:
So that's also a very compelling use case that could be very useful in the future if I do more social features and stuff like that.
Marco:
So there are all these features.
Marco:
Even right now, when a new download comes in, you get the notification.
Marco:
Right now, the only thing I can offer on that is a dismiss button.
Marco:
I can't wait until it's downloaded and then notified, but a lot of people don't like that, and it's not really what people want most of the time.
Marco:
They want to know when it's out.
Marco:
So I notify when it's out.
Marco:
It would be ideal if I could have a button on the notification that said play for the people who want to play it immediately.
Marco:
And again, that's one more feature I can't do really well until I have streaming.
Marco:
So there's a whole bunch of these little features, little niceties that are all being held up by my lack of streaming.
Marco:
And so that's why I'm working on this.
Marco:
Yes, I can get along forever without it, but the app would be a lot better with it.
Marco:
And so that's why I'm doing it.
Marco:
That's why it's worth all this trouble.
Marco:
And I think I've gotten pretty far with this latest attempt.
Marco:
I think I'm really onto something here.
Marco:
I think this might be the one, guys.
Marco:
I might have found the one.
Casey:
Number 42.
Casey:
Number 42.
Casey:
You said you looked at a bunch of different packages in order to do this for you, and you said that they didn't work.
Casey:
Out of curiosity, did you crib anything particularly useful from any of these different open source packages, or was that basically a waste of time?
Marco:
I looked at some of them just like how they use some of the APIs.
Marco:
Right, right.
Marco:
But I didn't even copy and paste any code out from them.
Marco:
It was that different or that unsuitable for my task.
Marco:
It was more of a general overview of like, oh, that's interesting.
Marco:
They don't use a buffer here.
Marco:
Or, oh, they're using the audio file API here.
Marco:
Or they're using this weird call here.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
It is good that I can look at them because they're open source.
Marco:
I can look at them and see the stuff, but they haven't been as useful as I would have hoped.
Marco:
But for the most part, I would rather that be the case.
Marco:
Honestly, I would rather write it myself if I can for lots of reasons.
Marco:
Part of it because I'm just that kind of arrogant programmer.
Marco:
Part of it because I want to understand what's happening.
Marco:
I wrote the rest of my audio engine.
Marco:
This is a pretty critical part of it.
Marco:
And by writing my own audio engine, I'm able to do so much in the app.
Marco:
So many little custom things.
Marco:
Like one of the packages I was looking at, basically in order to use it, I would have to replace most of my audio engine with it.
Marco:
And I tried even just trying to integrate that.
Marco:
Just trying to put that in.
Marco:
Like all the different things that I have to try to wedge...
Marco:
Even having access to their source code, just the amount of work and change and bug potential that I was creating by trying to just match the features I have now using their audio engine, it was more work to do that than it would have been to just write my own, even if it takes me a year to do it.
Marco:
Have you considered writing it in Go?
John:
I've heard that's fast.
Marco:
Oh, I wish speed was the problem, but it's not.