A Series of Heartbreaking Rejections
John:
Boy, I put my photos into Google Photos.
John:
Oh, yeah?
John:
You know why I finally ended up doing it?
John:
Because, like, the thing I just tweeted about my controller, my PlayStation controller with the worn-out thing on the bottom, I was trying to find the old picture, like the original one, because I wanted to do the tweet, like, here's the new one, here's the old one, and I could not find that picture.
John:
I'm scrolling through my photos library.
John:
I just, like, I could not find it.
John:
I couldn't even narrow it down to, like, I was trying to, like, look at the release date of Destiny, but I didn't get it on the release date, and I'm scrolling, and I know it's, like, one picture.
John:
I could not find it, so I'm like...
John:
wait so to find one picture you uploaded your entire photo collection to google photos and that was easier yes to find because how else are you going to find the one picture if i knew which photo to upload like i have to upload the whole thing i wanted to try it anyway this just pushed me over the edge that's amazing so as is uploading literally 70 000 photos um i'm typing in searches like because you can search while it's uploading trying to think of searches that will find this so i type in controller
John:
no no matches ps4 no matches black plastic matches but none of the ones i wanted then i was thinking maybe it's not in my photo library maybe it's on some other trapped in some ios device so i start putting things up and i think it was actually trapped in my phone so now i'm uploading from my phone like photos that again tina has the library not me right so it's her photo thing so uploading from google photos google photos from her mac and
John:
is pushing those pictures up, but it's not pushing any of the pictures up from my phone.
John:
So now I'm trying to push up from my phone into the thing, and I just type controller into the search, and you know what I found?
John:
Two pictures of GameCube controllers and a picture of my brother getting a PlayStation 2 in 2004.
John:
Seriously, it's magic.
John:
It is, but I still didn't find the damn picture.
John:
I mean, I found it myself eventually because I figured out that I had tweeted it, and I found the tweet based on searching the tweet.
John:
Yeah.
John:
so all that and it still didn't you still didn't actually find the photo with three it found three controllers the problem is i don't know if that picture has been pushed up the whole time we've been recording my phone has been in theory pushing photos up um and i'm guessing that's where it is in these 7 000 photos that are on my phone but anyway it did find pictures of controllers so i have some hope now
John:
uh we should do a little bit of john's favorite thing in the world we should do some follow-up and uh there's some very very sad follow-up there's not going to be a 5k monitor at wwdc well we don't know but that's the rumor was there was there ever going to be the 5k monitor was that really a strong thing we did a whole show last week all about all the hardware that we were excited for and then like immediately after that all the rumor site said you know
John:
You're looking for 5K monitors with GPUs?
John:
Forget it.
John:
You're looking for new MacBooks?
John:
Those might not even be there.
John:
No hardware.
John:
It's going to be all about software.
John:
Don't get your hopes up.
John:
And, of course, no one even bothered to refute the idea that they're going to make a new Mac Pro because no one cares about that enough to even put on the rumor site, yeah, there's not going to be any of those either.
John:
So yesterday I was all hopeful, and now the prevalent rumors are all the hardware you hope for may still come, but not at WWDC.
Marco:
That's not a huge surprise.
Marco:
I mean, the no MacBook Pros is a little bit surprising, but I would expect the display to come with the next update to the Mac Pro.
Marco:
And whether that's the same time as the MacBook Pro or not, who knows?
Marco:
But it does seem like it's probably going to be a high-end, mostly pro product for a while.
Marco:
I don't think a lot of people...
Marco:
who are like mid-range buyers who have like a 13-inch MacBook Pro are going to be buying the very first Apple 5K display.
Marco:
It's probably going to be expensive.
Marco:
It's probably going to be, you know, this big special thing that's going to require the brand new computers.
Marco:
I wouldn't expect this to be like just an average consumer release.
Marco:
I would expect this to wait for the Mac Pro, but I could be wrong.
John:
See, I would think the opposite.
John:
I would think that the whole purpose of this monitor is so people who buy MacBook Pros can have a really big screen when they sit down at their desks.
John:
And that the whole point of this entire product is that's why it's got a GPU inside.
John:
So even our lowly MacBooks that don't actually have a GPU that can drive it, no problem.
John:
The GPU that's inside the screen is enough to drive it.
John:
You're not going to play games on it or anything, but it's just it's enough to actually drive that many pixels.
John:
So now look at all these great laptops.
John:
They're great laptops on the go and sit down at your desk and you have essentially a 5K iMac style screen in front of you.
John:
And they won't even mention the Mac Pro because who the hell cares about the Mac Pro?
Marco:
If this was like a regular update, like when they when they went from 27 inch LED to 27 inch Thunderbolt display, that was like, OK, we already know how to make screens this size.
Marco:
We've been making them for a long for a few years at that point.
Marco:
And before that, we made 30 inch screens for even more years.
Marco:
It's like this is no big deal.
Marco:
It's like mostly existing technology put together in a new way.
Marco:
In this case, this is a 5K screen.
Marco:
This is still a very high-end product.
Marco:
There still are very few 5K screens in the market.
Marco:
So you've got to figure this is going to be expensive.
Marco:
It's probably not going to be $1,000.
Marco:
It's probably going to be a little more.
Marco:
And even if it was $1,000, that's still compared to other monitors that people would have to put on a desk.
Marco:
That's still a pretty expensive monitor.
Marco:
So I would expect this to be a high end thing at first.
Marco:
And then maybe in a few years when they update it next to add whatever new screen construction technique they've developed by then, then it'll be more consumery.
Marco:
But I wouldn't expect version one to be.
Casey:
Yeah, I agree with that.
Casey:
However, I do think that there is some very, very big demand for this.
Casey:
Say, for example, you are an iOS developer and say, just for the sake of discussion, you have an actual job and you go to an office and that office issues you a 15-inch MacBook Pro.
Casey:
But they issue you two Lenovo displays that are of unremarkable resolution.
Casey:
And so every time you're running the iOS simulator, you're running it at like half size, even for like an iPhone 6 simulator.
Casey:
So that can cause problems such as you're doing something with a UI table view and you don't want it to look like a UI table view.
Casey:
You don't want any separators between all the UI table view cells.
Casey:
And when you're just looking at the simulator stationary, the divider lines, the separator lines between each cell disappear because it's at half zoom.
Casey:
And then suddenly you go and you start playing around with your UI table view, and suddenly these magical lines appear from nothingness.
Casey:
And it's very freaking annoying because you wish you had noticed it in the first place.
Casey:
Not a very big deal, but still annoying.
Casey:
And then you come home to your beautiful 5K display and think to yourself, wow, wouldn't it be nice to have something like this at work so I didn't have to run the simulator at half height?
Casey:
I mean, just hypothetically anyway.
Casey:
I would kill for a Thunderbolt retina display.
Casey:
I would kill both of you for a Thunderbolt retina display at work.
Casey:
Yeah, I know you are.
Casey:
I don't think work would pay for it because I agree with you.
Casey:
It'll probably be very expensive.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
Man, would that be awesome.
Casey:
It's all right, though.
Casey:
Oh, and before the entire internet writes me, I have the two displays, and I have a standing desk, so I run my MacBook Pro in clamshell mode.
Casey:
Yes, I know you don't think that's a good idea.
Casey:
Yes, I'm aware that there's potential heat problems.
Casey:
Yes, I know the simulator would be able to run full height.
Casey:
If I did use the onboard display, I understand all those things.
Casey:
I am my own man, and I do what I want to do.
Casey:
All right, which one of you decided you wanted to talk about the iPhone SE?
Marco:
You know, it's all like me to add follow-up to the show.
John:
Yeah, it was because a lot of people sent us this follow-up.
John:
Last week, we talked about the upcoming iPhone and how it might look very similar to the 6 and 6S and if that was a big deal.
John:
And one of the ending points was like, this is their third shot at the same form factor.
John:
And if they do a really good job, like the second iterations of phones usually are really good and a third one could be even better.
John:
And we talked about all the reasons that might be.
John:
And a lot of people said, hey, the iPhone SE is basically the third shot at the same form factor, albeit separated in time by, you know, by quite a few other models in between.
John:
But it really is the third shot at that five style form factor.
John:
And I don't think...
John:
the se changed that much about the case like it's not like the 6 and 6s of being like less bendy and less slippery to you know trying to do minute changes you might not even notice but still improving on the 6 does the se improve on the 5s case in any way other than possibly being cheaper to manufacture because they didn't have the the shiny chamfered edge around it oh gosh yeah i don't remember
John:
i think that's the only thing i can think of and i guess different colors but anyway everyone loves the iphone se i don't know if it's because it's a third shot of the same form factor but it is a precedent for doing doing a phone that they had two models experience with and doing it again and they can do it even better
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And yet another instance of lowercase m, capital O-S, Mac OS.
Casey:
That's what it's called.
Casey:
Yeah, that's exactly how you pronounce it.
John:
Lowercase m-ac, m-ac-o-s.
John:
Yeah, that's how you pronounce it, kids.
Casey:
It had been seen in the wild, but apparently has been killed and brought back to the farm.
John:
well i think i'd seen it before with a capital m in some like apple thing that just looked like they forgot the space or and that doesn't even make sense they forgot so anyway it has been seen before on apple stuff with the capital m and i think quickly removed as we're recording this right now where you click on the url that we're pasting into the chat room you would see an official apple page that lists you will not it's already been changed already i checked it i checked like five minutes before the show started
John:
oh well is is there a spy in our document no it was this was this is on nine to five mac it was tweeted all over the place this is not a secret url that we just figured out like i guess yeah they're on top i i purposely checked just before we we connected the skype's call i wonder if they've changed it like nope still there and i copied and pasted it right out of that document into the notes mere moments ago but apparently the little elves are really fast anyway that's probably a uh
John:
fairly telling slip up because when you have the list of os is all in order like that you know ios mac os tv os and watch os they all look like the same when you write them like that and i don't know if it turns out that they don't rename it like this this will be a weird series of slip ups
Marco:
yeah i think at this point it's over that's that's the name period if you don't like it sorry i really hated the name macbook when like the very first macbook and macbook pro i really hated the name macbook i had the power book was such a better name still still has a better name and macbook still has a terrible name it's still i agree but i got used to it and now i don't care you know so that's that's gonna if you if you hate lowercase mac os okay you know it's gonna suck for a little while and then you're gonna move on and life will go on
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Casey:
So I'm happy to report that Apple apparently knew that I had not spent the time to figure out my WWDC predictions yet and has decided to drop some very interesting news and thus take away most of the time that we're going to be able to talk about WWDC predictions.
Casey:
And instead, we'll just have to talk about some App Store changes later.
Casey:
Uh, so thank you people at Apple for timing it appropriately because I haven't thought about my dub dub predictions yet and you can hear me fumble about it in probably about an hour and a half.
John:
But then Marco had to go and ruin it by having an entire podcast about this earlier today.
John:
So he's all got all his thoughts out of his system already about this.
Marco:
Oh yeah.
Marco:
Cause all my thoughts in this totally fit in 30 minutes.
Marco:
Well, it's your own stupid fault for having a short podcast.
Marco:
Well, I saved minutes 31 through 90 for you guys.
Marco:
Delightful.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So what we're talking about is Phil Schiller went to, I think it was The Verge that broke the news.
Casey:
Is that correct?
John:
It was a whole bunch of sites, actually.
John:
I saw it on The Loop first, actually.
John:
Yeah.
John:
In my Twitter feed, which is now the substitute RSS, The Loop was the first one that tweeted about it.
John:
And then I think I saw The Verge next or maybe Gruber after that.
John:
yeah loop verge gruber uh telegraph had one i think that was it that was all the ones i saw although it's interesting like who who got this story and who didn't i don't know how they made those decisions but you could probably read something into the favorability of various outlets based on uh who got this
Marco:
Yeah, so basically the story is that there are some substantial changes to the App Store that are happening now.
Marco:
So the first one, I think, is a gimme.
Marco:
The first one is these really suspiciously fast app review times that we've seen in the last few weeks.
Marco:
This is not just a fluke.
Marco:
It is not an accident.
Marco:
And it is apparently not temporary.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Apple has officially acknowledged that these things are real that yes indeed app review is much faster they they have made some changes to allow it to be faster and to probably stay faster and that is really good because before it was like well this could be an accident that they you know it just happens to be really fast but it'll you know
Marco:
If they don't mention it ever, then it could probably go back at any time.
Marco:
But now that they've mentioned it in public, they've bragged about how good this is.
Marco:
It is way more likely, I think, to stay this way or for this to be the new target standard rather than just a fluke.
John:
I wonder if it'll get a WWDC slide now.
John:
Maybe like they've... And by the way, before we even continue with these things, the very fact that everything we're going to talk about in these App Store changes is being announced now, like days before WWDC, but presumably not saving it for WWDC...
John:
there's a lot of speculation about why that may be the of course the party line is we have so much good stuff to tell you about at wwc this just wouldn't fit so here a couple days early here's this news and the more pessimistic take is there's enough in this announcement to cause discussion consternation and worry among developers in addition to like excitement or whatever that if this was in the keynote this is all people will be talking about afterwards and apple wants people to come out of the keynote keynote not talking about app store pricing but instead talking about
John:
insert thing that they're going to announce.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a few different takes on this that are plausible.
Marco:
Certainly, yeah, the pessimistic take of like, well, developers are going to hate these changes.
Marco:
I don't think that was it, honestly, because I think most of these changes are good.
John:
Well, not hate them, but that they will be talking about them.
John:
They'll be at top of mind for developers.
John:
It goes towards WWDC being, yeah, it's a developer's conference, but Monday's keynote is for the public.
John:
And they didn't want...
John:
They didn't want developer-oriented news dominating their let's talk to the public one time a year that's not a special event thing.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Well, so that's the thing, too.
Marco:
I think we have to realize, like, yeah, there are 5,000 developers who watch that keynote in that room.
Marco:
And then there's another, you know, another handful of thousands of developers.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
Probably another, like, 10,000 to 50,000 developers who are watching that keynote live streamed to various places.
Marco:
And then there's also like thousands and thousands and thousands of people who just watch the keynote because they're Apple fans or they're Apple customers or they're press or whatever.
Marco:
And then whatever is announced in the keynote, that gets reported on mainstream news.
Marco:
It gets reported all over the web.
Marco:
It gets reported on TV, on like CNN and stuff.
Marco:
This is a mass media event that happens to be the beginning of a developer conference.
Marco:
So the focus of whatever is in that main keynote is going to be more mainstream than just talking to developers.
Marco:
Honestly, it was kind of surprising that Swift was unveiled in the keynote because it was so technical, even though it was barely unveiled, but it was.
Marco:
But generally, you don't see source code in the main keynote.
Marco:
You don't hear about a lot of low-level changes.
Marco:
You'll hear about some, maybe, or it'll be like one of those word cloud slides where there's a whole bunch of little words on the slide, and everyone rushes to take a picture of it.
Marco:
It's like, oh, wait, there's a whole bunch of stuff buried in there.
Marco:
And then they just kind of move on and tell you in more detail later, like after the public has gone away, and they tell you in a session.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
That keynote is mostly a consumer event.
Marco:
It is barely a developer keynote.
Marco:
And so it could be that this stuff is really mostly only relevant to developers.
Marco:
And the stuff that they are leaving in the keynote is just more... This is Apple's summer announcements and getting people ready for the big stuff that's happening in the fall.
Marco:
So just like how last year they spent so much time on Apple Music.
Marco:
And developers could do nothing with that.
John:
That turns out neither could the public.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
But like, you know, it's like this is mostly a consumer event.
Marco:
And so, you know, having some developer stuff that's that's of, you know, possibly large importance happen outside that main keynote is totally understandable.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So anyway, the App Store review times may or may not get a slide if they did.
John:
I mean, you can do the one brief slide, as we talked about earlier in the week.
John:
Review times are down.
John:
Isn't Phil Schiller great?
John:
Everybody loves it.
John:
And the answer to the question of we discussed a couple of weeks ago, if things are actually faster, how might they do this?
John:
We talked about many possibilities that they could change the rules that govern how they do things so they can have better automated tools.
John:
And there were some rumors of management changes.
John:
I think there was a couple of stories about that on the Web earlier.
John:
The answer from Phil Schiller when he did his media tour was basically everything we said contributed to the thing.
John:
It's everything.
John:
Tool improvements, internal to Apple, staffing changes and policy changes, I think Gruber listed.
John:
So there is no one thing that is making this faster.
John:
It's a series of changes which sum up to the stats that they're touting now, which is 50% of apps are reviewed within 24 hours and 90% within 48 hours.
John:
Yeah, this is awesome.
John:
It's just so, so awesome.
Casey:
Yeah, I've been stunned by this.
Casey:
And I think it's a good thing that the tool improvements and just trusting their tools to suss out any private API violations, any crashes, potentially things like that.
Casey:
I mean, trusting your tools, that's a good thing.
Casey:
I mean, this is why I write unit tests.
Marco:
Mm-hmm.
Marco:
That makes one of us.
Marco:
To me, this kind of just shows the potential of before Phil took over the App Store, I don't want to throw anybody under the bus or anything, but it sure seemed like it was not progressing at all and that basically nobody was working on progressing it.
Marco:
And Phil took over not that long ago, and a lot of stuff is changing, and a lot of progress is being made for the better.
Marco:
So I'm kind of excited.
Marco:
If all this changed in such a short time, while there's been finally somebody literally running the story...
Marco:
What else is going to change?
Marco:
Even in the big picture, even if some of these things don't work out or don't do as well as they want it or whatever or make things harder in certain ways or in easier in other ways, whatever happens with these changes that they're doing,
Marco:
They're making changes.
Marco:
That's amazing.
Marco:
Because for like eight years, they changed almost nothing.
Marco:
So this is real progress.
Marco:
And this is a rapid and dramatic change.
Marco:
Almost all, if not all, for the better.
John:
uh you know the the uh again the pessimistic take is this was a management change like uh phil's just taken over control of what previously didn't have control over and when you switch a new manager onto a new project and it's important and they want to make a good showing they want to come out of the gate and say okay you put me in charge of this and in short order i did these things that made it better isn't that great um
John:
um that's a pressing need within a typical uh you know bozo corporation which we assume apple isn't but anyway that's one pessimistic take and the other one is we were all excited when they finally turned their attention to the mac pro that had been neglected for a long time and came up with this amazing radical new computer that shows they really do care about the macro pro and surely this means that the mac pro is off to a new brighter healthier future involving lots of updates and lots of future changes not that i'm predicting this for the app store but if you wanted to be pessimistic about it and and uh
John:
you know it is possible that there's enough there's enough reasons why this might be a bunch of big dramatic changes that have been a long time coming sort of like pent-up demand and that they'll let this stew for a year not because they don't care anymore but even just like like the idea that they're going to be sort of let's try a bunch of things and fail fast or whatever like i think their appetite for churn in the app store rules has obviously increased but i don't think it's that great so i would expect
John:
this set of rules to possibly be tweaked and sussed out over the next year.
John:
And then maybe, you know, I think we'd all be happy if every year they revisited the rules of the store and saw how they did for a year, because you can't really change it every week.
John:
What are you going to change it in response?
John:
So you don't have enough data to know whether it's a good idea or a bad idea.
John:
So unlike perhaps the operating systems, a yearly, pretty regularly scheduled update to app store rules is a reasonable idea.
John:
And if you tried to update the rules radically more often than that, I think it would be too much churn for developers.
Marco:
No, I mean, even if they change something about the store every two years.
Marco:
Yeah, we're just saying more than once every eight years.
Marco:
Yeah, that would still be like radically more progressive than the way it's been all this time.
John:
Yeah, they did add bundles, right?
Marco:
Sort of.
John:
The other good thing, by the way, about all these changes we're going to go through is they all apply to all stores, including the Mac App Store, the tvOS store.
John:
Yeah.
John:
All right.
John:
So that's fast review times.
John:
Good for Phil.
John:
The next thing is subscription pricing available for all app types, which is...
John:
by far the most interesting and the most uh fraught with uh doubt announcement of course we're only like you know one day into this announcement but the the gist of it is that uh you know previously if you wanted to sell an app on the app store that did subscriptions it had to be a subscription to some kind of media thing like television or like a news service or audio or whatever and now subscription pricing is open to all kinds of apps and so
John:
a quick naive reading of that could be like great then basically no more restrictions previously i had to follow these special rules to be a subscription app now anybody can just say i want my app to be a subscription app and then you start reading the rules and you're like is that what they're saying that any app can be a subscription app or is it just say that any app can potentially be a subscription app and that is the current source of doubt again credit one day in i'm sure apple will clarify i'm sure things will get worked out
John:
um but right now there's still some doubt about it so it's hard to know entirely how to feel about this because all the debates about does this enable sustainable development is this you know all the things that marco i'm sure talked about on his uh developer podcast whose name i can never remember earlier today um
John:
We don't know if this is going... Like, should we indulge in speculation about how this model might work, particular kinds of apps, before we even know whether Apple will allow it?
John:
Yes.
John:
We should indulge in that?
John:
Yes.
Marco:
Yeah, because, I mean, look.
Marco:
So, if you just look at this as, like, the most conservative reading of the rules that they've put on that page...
Marco:
then it's basically no change from what we already had, policy-wise.
Marco:
I mean, there are some technical changes, but... Policy-wise, it would say you don't have to be a media app.
Marco:
Yeah, but you already didn't have to be a media app.
Marco:
Like, Instapaper has that kind of subscription now.
Marco:
Evernote has had it forever.
Marco:
Instapaper counts as a news thing.
Marco:
Evernote... No, it doesn't, because it's not... Believe me, I looked into this back when... When these first launched in the days of Newsstand, when Newsstand launched in, I think, 2011 or something like that, it was only Newsstand apps.
Marco:
And then shortly afterwards, I think maybe like a year afterwards, it became available to any app that was delivering periodic content of some kind.
Marco:
But it had to be like issues or episodes.
Marco:
It had to be like, you know.
John:
It couldn't be for like, I guess it couldn't be.
John:
We don't know.
John:
But like if you were delivering video, because HBO Go and everything has all this stuff outside of it.
Marco:
It could have been, but it had to be episodic content.
Marco:
It couldn't just be like, you just have access to this thing forever, but it could be like, you have access to this new thing every week or month or whatever.
Marco:
And then that then quickly got semi-relaxed into where it stayed between then and now, which is...
Marco:
You could kind of do it for any kind of recurring service, but it was risky whether Apple would approve you or not because the definitions around it were fairly vague as to what would qualify.
Marco:
But it was clear that you had to have some kind of recurring service, like some kind of backing web service that had cloud storage or content available on the service or something.
Marco:
Most apps would not qualify for that.
John:
But all that language is still there, though.
Marco:
Everything you just said.
Marco:
That's the problem.
Marco:
So I know Brent Simmons wrote a good post basically asking clarification on this.
Marco:
Because if you read Phil's comments in these interviews, it sounds like now any app can do this no matter what.
Marco:
But then if you look at that page, it looks like that's not the case.
Marco:
It looks like it's still the old rules.
Marco:
And it depends a lot on the interpretations of some words on the page.
Marco:
It says all apps are eligible to use this, but it's appropriate for these types of roles.
Marco:
So does that mean they would approve it for inappropriate uses?
Marco:
You know, it depends on how these things are.
Marco:
But, you know, I think what's going to happen is, like most times when a new app review policy gets put into place and details aren't quite worked out yet, what's almost certain to happen is either in the next few days, they're going to edit the language in that page to be more clear and to, like, firmly fall on one side or the other.
Marco:
Or...
Marco:
unfortunately more likely they're going to figure it out through rejections later this fall and then we'll kind of solidify the policy and that that would suck i hope that's not how they do it but you know i because phil is like the guy on top of app review you know one in the grand scheme of things and because his actual statements that
John:
really strongly say otherwise than that page i'm guessing this was probably like a debated thing internally until very recently and they they just kind of haven't worked out like the details yet but i don't know he's from marketing they always want to put on give you the bright side of it that's what his whole role is let me tell you what's great about this so even if it was exactly as you said where maybe they'll reject it maybe they won't he's not going to come and tell you that he's going to come and tell you it's open to everybody um
John:
And then sort of allow the chips to fall away.
John:
And I think they did update the copy on this page because a lot of the language is about, oh, you have to have like, you know, content or services or, you know, issues or whatever.
John:
But then certain senses explicitly call out exactly what we're talking about.
John:
Like this is, you know, like many freemium apps, successful auto renewal subscription apps operate with services that are continuously supported and often require sustained content development.
John:
That would be like you get a new, you know, a new level every week or something for a game.
John:
or feature enhancements to retain users feature enhancements is exactly what we're talking about we're saying hey i want to add a new feature to my app that you use to take notes with there is no service there's not even a sync service let's say there is no there's just an application that runs on your phone i just want to add feature enhancements can i charge you a subscription for that it's right there in the language but then every other thing on the page
John:
it just leads you back into the oh but of course you have to be providing a service or uh you know periodic content or whatever so it's i don't think feature enhancements was there before like there's no real equivalent to this page because i think they're all new pages right yeah but i don't think that language so someone put those words there but then didn't get them didn't like it's like the rest of the page doesn't agree with it so you're right it kind of looks like it might be conflicted but again the pessimistic take and pessimistic not because we're just mean people but founded on past history like the past has been very much like
John:
the rules are kind of vague it will we'll nail it down through a series of heartbreaking rejections to a bunch of small developers and then when you see their bodies fall below you like oh don't do that what that guy did oh don't do that that's a waste of time they got those guys wasted six months and their app can't get on the store right you know you know it's going to be james thompson again
Marco:
He gets the worst luck with app review.
John:
You know it's going to be like... James Thompson can have a calculator app and you have a subscription and each month you get a new number.
John:
So after 12 months you have all the digits plus zero plus two operators.
Casey:
So his is like the stop making sense of calculator apps?
Casey:
I see how it is.
Casey:
I think that if I were Apple...
Casey:
I would do pretty much exactly what they did, which is I would write the verbiage, verbiage, however you pronounce the word.
Marco:
Verbiage.
Casey:
Verbiage, right?
Casey:
I would write the text such that it leaves plenty of room for Apple to put the kibosh on anything that they don't think is appropriate.
Casey:
But that doesn't mean they'll actually wield that hammer.
Casey:
It just means the hammer's available to them if they so desire.
Casey:
Right.
John:
Would you do that because you're Apple and you're trying to act like a big jerk?
John:
Because that's what that's like.
John:
Like, let's write it real vague to leave everyone in doubt so we retain all the power and can make arbitrary decisions.
John:
No, Apple.
John:
Decide what you want now.
John:
And if you can't decide, even be honest about that.
John:
This is the worst.
John:
Like...
John:
If you like, seriously, it's their job to come up with a policy.
John:
Do you want people to be able to charge money for an app that just adds new features every year and has no back end services?
John:
Decide that before you write the policy.
John:
Don't write it because how are they going to whatever mechanism they're going to use to make that decision later when they're deciding to reject someone's app?
John:
Do that now as a thought experiment.
John:
Don't wait until it comes.
John:
It's so asinine to not... I mean, if they're in a hurry and they had to put this out and they haven't decided, fine.
John:
But I'm saying, like, that is a general policy to, like, retain, reserve the right to, like, be vague and just let people send things in and then decide then.
John:
Don't wait for that to happen with real apps.
John:
Run a thought experiment and decide now.
John:
They should be able to decide, I think, very clearly.
John:
Is this a valid thing to do for just plain old apps that add features that have no backend service and no periodic content?
John:
Yes or no.
John:
Pick something now.
John:
Write it down clearly.
John:
I, I'm not even a developer, but I'm super angered by their inability to communicate clearly on this topic.
John:
Um, and if it's just an error in the text and it's fixed in three days, then fine, you know, good on Apple, you know, I should give them a break.
John:
It's only been a day, but I don't buy that whole, this is what I would do too, because it remains maximum power for me.
John:
Like that's gross.
Marco:
And the big thing is, in addition to hurting all the existing developers who are going to try this and hurting new stuff, what this is really going to hurt if they can't clarify this or if they don't clarify this or if it stays in the more restrictive interpretation of these things, which is only apps with services and content and stuff,
Marco:
then this won't apply to things like pro-content editing or pro-content creation apps.
Marco:
And that seems like a perfect candidate for subscription pricing in the app store.
Marco:
Something like, you know, if you're going to have like a pro-image editor or a pro-audio editor or, you know, pro-drawing apps, like pro-apps,
Marco:
usually don't have backing web services usually don't have like a magazine built into them like you could have a backing drm service like it was like photoshop photoshop doesn't have a backing service but it does just for drm but i guess you know oh it has all this behance garbage nobody wants you know it
Marco:
Pro apps are a perfect use for subscription pricing on iOS because it kind of solves free trials.
Marco:
It completely, in my opinion, solves upgrades if you can get people to pay.
Marco:
And the people who are most likely to pay are people who use pro apps to get advanced functionality on things like their iPad Pros that they're desperate for amazing software on.
Marco:
it seems like this is the most clear need for subscription pricing is like, you know, A, video apps on the Apple TV, B, pro stuff on the iPad.
Marco:
And if they don't clarify this rule, I don't know, it would be royally stupid for any pro app developers to start developing their pro app or port their pro app over to the iPad or the iPhone to,
Marco:
Suppose you make an amazing music app for pros or a pro photo app and you bring it to iPad.
Marco:
You wanted to charge like $40 a year or something.
Marco:
And then, oh, you can't do it.
Marco:
Reject it.
Marco:
Sorry, you don't have a web service.
Marco:
That's horrible.
Marco:
And most smart business people won't even start that development until this is clarified.
Marco:
So it seems like this is a great way to incent or incentivize.
Marco:
Thanks to Phil's quotes on these websites, it looks like incent is actually a word.
Casey:
I thought the same thing.
Casey:
I was like, wait, I thought that was incentivized.
Casey:
Well, I guess not.
Casey:
I guess I'm wrong.
Marco:
Yeah, I looked it up.
Marco:
It's in Apple's dictionary on MacOS, so I assume it's real.
Casey:
Excuse me, I think you're thinking of MacOS.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
I'm thinking of OS X.
Marco:
Oh, people are going to hate us so much.
Marco:
Oh, boy.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So anyway, this is a great incentive for pro app development on iOS.
John:
Or would be if they were clear about it.
John:
And to be honest, it's not as if this new rule necessarily needs to be the thing that solves the problem.
John:
We've identified it as a potential problem.
John:
It could be that these changes are just not addressing that, which is fine, too.
John:
But...
John:
uh if they think they're addressing it for all the reasons marco said they're not really because pro app the reason pro apps are scared away from you know the ipad pro and to some degree these days you know the mac app store some degree yeah well all apps are so you can't tell if it's just because the pro apps but um
John:
that they don't they can't be sure that there is a business model that will support sustained development of a pro application that's and because they're so expensive because they're you know because the the barrier to entry of like what does it take to make a real full-featured pro application out of the gate that takes a lot of money initially you have to have a plan going forward you could try like i think it might be fun to make a you know a silly free-to-play game you know or 99 cent thing like you can try that and it can be a throwaway thing if you have the money to spare but if you're
John:
You have to have a solid go to market strategy where you understand how it's going to be sold, how you're going to get money, how are you going to fund development, how are you going to make the money back that you spent on it and how you're going to continue to pay for it.
John:
And that same uncertainty still exists if these rules are still vague.
John:
Like I said, this rule doesn't necessarily have to make that possible.
John:
But when I first heard, oh, subscription pricing opened all.
John:
That's the first thing I thought of is finally there's a way to sustain, you know, basically iPad Pro applications.
John:
Expensive to develop, full-featured applications that are important for people to do their jobs.
John:
that aren't just put on the app store and then forgotten about and like you make your money back and then you move on to the next thing that's what this seemed like and again a lot of the language and almost everything phil has said makes that clear but a lot of the other language makes it not clear so hopefully this will be clarified you know again we're we are less than 24 hours after this announcement so maybe we're being too harsh but uh
Casey:
i just find it frustrating to for the press tour to be leaning so heavily on all our hopes and dreams and then the actual text of all the web pages to be just making everything as clear as mud again you know maybe it's freaky friday or i guess since it's wednesday wacky wednesday because um marco is super duper enthusiastic and chipper about this and i'm i don't know man i don't know how i feel about this and i think the reason i'm hemming and hawing a little bit is because
Casey:
Looking at this from the perspective of a very cheap consumer who is happy to pay for apps for sure, but I don't want every app that is even remotely decent to think of themselves as, oh...
Casey:
I certainly am a professional app, and I can go subscription, and I can charge $5 or $10 or $15 or $20 a year because I am worth it.
Casey:
Where some apps, like TweetBot, I freaking live in TweetBot and Overcast, actually.
Casey:
I spend a lot of time in Overcast.
Casey:
I would pay $20 a year for those apps.
Casey:
But there's a lot of apps that I worry their developers will think, oh, we are definitely a pro app.
Casey:
We deserve a subscription pricing, blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
Where I really don't think that's the case.
Casey:
I think it should be either a one-time fee or perhaps a one-time in-app purchase or something along those lines.
Casey:
And I don't know.
Casey:
I'm hopeful that this does solve all of our problems like Marco seems to think that it will.
Casey:
But I really don't want to end up paying a monthly fee or a yearly fee or what have you for every damn app on my home screen.
John:
I don't think this will sort itself out, though.
John:
It'll sort itself out in the market like it's not going to developers are free to try whatever they want.
John:
But but I don't think I don't think these rule changes, especially in the short term, will change what people are willing to pay for applications.
John:
All it will do is make it so that the sort of like the unrealized sort of like what Mark would do with patronage.
John:
There's untapped money, like money that people would be willing to give but have no way to give to sustain the development of the apps they use regularly.
John:
That's what basically Patreon is.
John:
Do you care enough about Overcast that you want to make sure that Overcast continues to exist?
John:
Subscribe, right?
John:
And like you just said, you listed two apps that you use all the time that you would gladly subscribe for.
John:
Without any kind of subscription and without like...
John:
a patronage thing that marco's doing there's no once someone buys it from you there's no more way for them to give you money unless marco does the thing where he makes an entirely new overcast 2 and you know all the things we've talked about in the past right so this releases that money from the people who are willing to pay it but it doesn't make everyone else suddenly willing to pay way more for the software they have now it could make developers be all like oh i want to try this it's the hot new thing but those developers will be sad because they'll find out what is the actual appetite for
John:
to pay a monthly subscription for app they'll realize that many people you know installed their 99 cents out and never looked at it again or you know or whatever like i i don't think you have too much to worry about because i really don't think this will change the hearts and minds of users in the short term especially and so if developers change their plans they will be punished by not getting a lot of sales and people will stop using their app and move to competitors and then they'll change back and it'll sort of settle down again
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
And that's the thing is that I agree with you that users aren't going to look at this, generally speaking, that differently.
Casey:
But what I'm worried about is that even in a run of the mill developer with a good but not world class app is going to think, oh, well, darn it, my app is great.
Casey:
And I think everyone is going to pay a subscription for me.
Casey:
And you're right that this will kind of suss itself out over time.
Casey:
But I really hope that everyone in the app store doesn't immediately run to subscription pricing when really, at least on my phone, in my iPad anyway, there's a very small subset of apps that I think really should consider subscription pricing that I think really should, that should be worth it.
Casey:
And granted, my handful, my five apps are different than your five apps.
Casey:
They're different from Marco's five apps.
Casey:
So maybe that'll suss itself out that way as well.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
I just really hope that everyone on the App Store doesn't immediately run to subscription pricing.
Marco:
I have heard from a number of people now saying, basically expressing that same sentiment of...
Marco:
I, as a user, don't want everything on my phone to all of a sudden be charging me $2 a month or whatever.
Marco:
To some degree, that's reasonable.
Marco:
To some degree, John is right that the market will sort this out.
Marco:
And also, to some degree, I think this is an improvement over the reality that we have now.
Marco:
So right now, if you consider the example of, say, TweetBot, like we've been mentioning, TweetBot releases a brand new version of the app, and TweetBot is a paid upfront app,
Marco:
And then about every year or two, they release a new version that is a brand new standalone app for, what is it, a few bucks, like five bucks or four bucks, whatever.
Marco:
So basically, you're almost already paying $3 or $4 a year for TweetBot.
Marco:
If you move to subscription pricing, there's not really much of a change, except it's easier and better for everybody.
John:
Oh, it's a psychological change.
John:
You know, they don't want to sign up for another eel in Roderick online parlance.
John:
I know.
Marco:
I'll get there.
Marco:
But so, you know, and then the customers, like, you don't have to go through the stupid hoops of, like, well, download the new app, hopefully transfer all your accounts over, delete the old app, transfer all your settings, all this stupid stuff.
Marco:
Like, you know, it avoids all that, all the cumbersome complexity of, like, replacing a paid app with its next paid app version.
Marco:
The developers will make more money this way because of the new 85-15 split that you get in years two through infinity, which is a whole other thing that's really cool and most likely related to Apple TV negotiations, but with video providers and possibly Amazon.
Marco:
But anyway, the consumer side of this is everyone's saying, I don't want everything on my screen to all of a sudden charge me X dollars a month.
Marco:
If you instead think about it as X dollars a year, which is probably going to be a more common price point, because ideally, you don't want to be bugging people every... You don't want to be reminding people every month that they could cancel your subscription if they wanted to.
Marco:
Because every time that email comes in from Apple saying, the following subscriptions are about to renew in a few days or whatever, that's a prompt for people to cancel your subscription.
Marco:
So you don't really want to do that if you can help it.
Marco:
If you can charge a few dollars a year instead of a few dollars a month,
Marco:
that is probably a better idea as long as you can still make enough money that way.
Marco:
And so if you think about it from a paid app perspective, if you're paying $5 or $4 or $3 every year or 18 months or whatever, whenever there's a new standalone paid app version of something that's upgraded that way, versus if you have a $4 a year subscription...
Marco:
It's not that different.
Marco:
And it's actually way easier for you with the subscription.
Marco:
So I think this is the kind of thing where not every app will do it.
Marco:
In fact, I would guess very few apps will do it for the same reason very few apps are paid up front anymore.
Marco:
Most people won't pay for most apps.
Marco:
That's not going to change.
Marco:
Most apps are still going to be free with garbage inside of them to fund it somehow.
Marco:
Most apps are still going to be like, you know, you don't really have to pay for really anything, but you could pay if you want to.
Marco:
All the big in-app purchase, freemium, mind trick games are still going to make all the money in the app store.
Marco:
All the market forces around this aren't really going to change that much as far as I can guess.
Marco:
What will change is...
Marco:
Apps that are already now earning money through some way that's a little bit clunkier now have a smoother, easier way to do it where they will probably also make more in the process.
Marco:
And it's easier for both them and for users.
Marco:
So don't think about it as everything on your home screen is going to start charging you $2 a month.
Marco:
Think about it as maybe two or three apps that you really use are going to charge you $4 a year.
Marco:
Because that's more likely to be the outcome.
Marco:
And if you think about it that way, it's pretty awesome.
Casey:
Oh, I agree.
Casey:
I completely agree.
Casey:
I just hope that the people who are writing these apps, that the developers writing these apps, have the self-awareness to realize whether or not it's appropriate for them to move to the subscription pricing.
Casey:
And if they don't realize it, that's why, coming back around, I think some of this verbiage is written the way it is on the website that gives Apple the leverage and ammunition with which—
Casey:
say, no, this is not an appropriate use of a subscription.
Marco:
Again, the market will sort this out.
Marco:
Developers will very, very quickly learn that pricing well above what people are willing to pay for their app is probably not going to work for them.
Marco:
On the other hand, suppose you have an app on your home screen, and they start charging $4 a month.
Marco:
If they can make enough money doing it that way and you don't want to pay, good for them.
Marco:
And that's too bad for you.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
I agree.
Marco:
Again, the market sorts this out.
Marco:
The developers who overpriced their apps passed what the market will bear will adjust it.
Marco:
And you as a consumer might have to pay more, but I would argue that prices for software have been artificially depressed for quite some time and subsidized by a combination of hope and VC money.
Marco:
I think that it's really good to have this option.
Marco:
And not every developer will use it.
Marco:
You know, implementing these subscriptions is not that easy.
Marco:
And it's kind of a pain.
Marco:
And, you know, it's not as easy as putting a paid app up there.
Marco:
You have to, like, code in this in-app purchase and have the back end to verify the receipts and keep track of who's subscribed and everything.
Marco:
So, like, it's not simple to do this.
Marco:
So not every app will do this, even if Apple would approve them, which we don't know.
Marco:
So I think this is going to be a much smaller deal than you expect to like apps as on a whole, like as a whole, but it will make a really big difference to the relatively low percentage of apps that will actually end up using it.
John:
And one thing that developers who decide to go subscription should factor in, I'm sure they all are all thinking about this already, but like the psychological barrier to signing up for a recurring payment, even if the recurring payment is actually less than what you've actually been paying.
John:
Like, for example, say your Twitter client updates every year and every year you buy a new copy for five bucks and then they go to two years, two dollars a year.
John:
You're like, great, that's like half price.
John:
And you're like, but what if at the end of this year I don't want to upgrade?
John:
Right.
John:
Like it's always, you know, the whole like if you're signing up for a bill and you're like, well, how am I going to keep track of the bills?
John:
How am I going to know when it renews?
John:
Like and we know that Apple handles this pretty well, like in terms of sending you an email, letting you know that your thing is up for renewal, that they're going to let you know if the price changes like, you know, Apple is doing a good job in it.
John:
But just the mere concept of signing up for a recurring payment, even if it is less money now and less money in the long term, bothers people.
John:
Right.
Marco:
And honestly, as a developer, I say, too bad.
Marco:
So we'll take these things separately.
Marco:
First of all, the subscription pricing.
Marco:
It's like, yes.
Marco:
But as I said before, people are sure that you want to pay between zero and one times and then have functionality that's updated forever.
Marco:
And that's that's not sustainable, right?
John:
Well, no, but it's not not even that you want it to be updated forever.
John:
It's just that you like the idea that it's a thing that goes on in the background that you have to be aware that it exists, like the perhaps irrational in the case of Apple fear that you will forget this thing exists and that you're being charged, you know, five dollars a year forever.
John:
Kind of like an AOL dial subscription that you just forgot to cancel in 1997.
John:
Yeah.
John:
like that that that's what i'm talking about mostly not the idea that you just want to pay once and get features because again say you're gladly paying like you know say you're paying like five dollars for a new twitter client every nine months and you're happy to do it because you think it's awesome every single time then they ask you to pay two dollars a year and you're like what in perpetuity
John:
like i'm signing up for something that you know like it doesn't make sense but especially again especially since apple is so good about like not letting you forget these things are there it's not as if you're gonna not know that you're being billed for this and everything in fact i think isn't like if you don't do something it won't auto renew i don't know how how good it is
Marco:
No, no.
Marco:
That's only if you raise the price.
Marco:
It will continue to bill you until you stop it.
Marco:
And right now, the interface to stop these subscriptions is awful and buried.
Marco:
Assuming this will all be better.
Marco:
But they've said part of this announcement was that all of this is getting an overhaul.
Marco:
So a lot of this depends on the implementation details.
Marco:
It really does.
Marco:
And so we will see that the previous renewing subscription system was really rough.
Marco:
There were a lot of things about it that were really...
Marco:
just badly done or inconvenient or consumer hostile or developer hostile.
Marco:
So a lot of this depends on the details.
Marco:
So I'm just assuming with my predictions here, I'm assuming that they have made it better enough that we can overcome those problems.
Marco:
I see what you're saying.
Marco:
I agree that it is a bigger barrier, but...
Marco:
The reality is paying it all is a big barrier.
Marco:
And once you're over the hump of paying it all, yes, people would choose to pay once if given the option.
Marco:
Oh, do I want to pay $4 once or $4 every year?
Marco:
Of course you're going to choose the first one.
Marco:
But that is not sustainable.
Marco:
And we've seen this over and over and over again.
Marco:
Software these days, people expect continuous updates.
Marco:
And the pay once model, whether it's pay once forever or whether it's pay once every 18 months, then there's upgrades in separate apps.
Marco:
Both of those are dysfunctional in a lot of ways.
John:
You're saying it's not feasible for developers, right?
John:
But I'm thinking it from the perspective of the customer.
John:
It's perfectly sustainable from the perspective of the customer because the customer is like, I buy a Twitter client.
John:
A year later, that developer goes out of business because no one ever could find a way to give him more money.
John:
And then I pick a new Twitter client.
John:
a year goes by and then that new developer releases a new version of his application i can use it or not you know like like buying a new application every year is the model that they've been going on if that new application is from the same developer fine and suddenly that's sustainable from the developer's perspective
John:
If that new application is a different one, it's still the same money from the user's perspective, right?
John:
We're just looking at it from the developer's perspective, saying it's not sustainable, therefore I'm going to go to subscriptions.
John:
Subscriptions are not going to help you if your application is not attractive enough to get people over the eel barrier.
Marco:
Sure.
Marco:
However, the other model has a whole bunch of problems.
Marco:
So, for instance, why are you not considering buying a Mac Pro today, John?
John:
Mac Pro's cost way more than apps.
John:
I don't think this is applicable.
John:
I'm short circling this analogy.
Marco:
Believe me, it works exactly the same way.
Marco:
Why are you not buying a Mac Pro right now?
Marco:
Because it's crappy.
Marco:
I don't want that one.
Marco:
Because you know a new one's coming out soon.
Marco:
No, I don't.
Marco:
I don't know that at all.
Marco:
Nobody knows that.
Marco:
Well, the current one's three years old.
Marco:
That's what I'm saying.
John:
That's why I don't want to buy it, because it's not a good product to buy.
Marco:
You expect there's probably going to be an update to it coming soon, and if you buy it now, you won't get the updated one for free.
John:
I know all the anti-patterns.
John:
I'm not saying this is not bad.
John:
This started with me giving advice to developers.
John:
Hey, developer, you're thinking of changing your applications to sufficient pricing?
John:
If you only think about how this will affect your revenue...
John:
you're not factoring everything and you also have to factor in how unattractive the idea of of a pay this amount uh on this interval forever and ever until you cancel is to people um that is very unattractive to a lot of people more so than every year after my favorite app developer goes out of business find the next client that i want to buy for two bucks even though or five bucks even though it may be costing the user more to do it the other way
John:
people are more comfortable that and not just because they're what it's used to because people have a real fear of recurring bills of all kinds like even if it's one dollar a year like and i think the older you get the more like younger people may eventually get okay with it because you just get used to whatever like the status quo is like so if you're coming of age during this time won't be a big deal but the older you get like i have trouble convincing my parents to buy a two dollar application i could never convince them to buy a one dollar a year application even if they use that application every single day
John:
My parents have $1 a year to spend.
John:
But if I try to say, wait, I have to pay that every year?
John:
For how long?
John:
Forever?
John:
If I stop paying, do I stop being able to use the app?
John:
Doesn't make any sense.
John:
People do not like recurring payments.
Marco:
You're right.
Marco:
There are a lot of people who don't.
Marco:
It's not everybody.
Marco:
A lot of people don't care.
Marco:
But there are a lot of people who don't, certainly.
Marco:
but I think so many of those people wouldn't pay for these things anyway.
Marco:
I don't think it's as big of a problem as you think.
John:
Again, I'm thinking of applications that are changing their thing.
John:
The upside to this, and it is very large, is for applications that...
John:
Like the ones that Casey said, we all have applications on our phones that we hope continue to be updated and improved that we will gladly pay a yearly fee for.
John:
Everybody has stuff like that on their phone.
John:
Those developers now have a way to unlock that money that we were ready to give them, but usually didn't have a way to do so.
John:
Like, so that is the big upside to this.
John:
The only potential downside is developers miscalculating if their application is one of those ones that has that on tap market, like, or if that on tap market is, is big enough or whatever.
John:
And so,
John:
I guess you have to know as a developer, who are my customers?
John:
Who are my potential customers?
John:
If I change subscription pricing, does my app have that much potential value to that many potential people that it is one of those apps that can get away with subscriptions?
John:
Or does it not?
John:
And the things that Casey was worried about is that a bunch of developers will miscalculate, will think that they can do it, and it will be like...
John:
maybe not company killing but uh like there'll be a short-term loss of applications as a bunch of them try out the subscription model lose all the customers who aren't willing to do that people seek out alternatives and then when they change their mind and realize that they're not the one of those people who can sustain subscription pricing then switch back and it's too late they've lost everything and that would be like a net loss of like it would be it would perturb users who lose a bunch of applications and like i said the market will start it out eventually but there could be some short-term
Marco:
churn and pain from user perspective as developers try things out yeah but i ultimately i think this is going to be a very short-lived experimentation period you know it people are going to realize very quickly whether this is working for them or not and honestly most developers underprice their work anyway so i think the opposite of problem i think we're not enough people will try this
John:
although speaking of speaking of the short-term thing that is another phenomenon is that if you are the first application in a set of users applications that they have on their home screen or whatever to go subscription they might be like you know what i really don't like subscriptions but i've been hearing a lot of this new subscription thing and maybe i'll try it if you are the 10th one to do that subscription fatigue may set in so like like so many changes in the app store and like the app store itself there is probably a gold rush period where if you can you know decide now like if you want to run this experiment
John:
It's probably better to start soon rather than, you know, three weeks in after everyone has been prompted three times on their home screen if they want to, you know, change the subscription or whatever.
John:
Because if you're the first one, that is definitely an advantage.
John:
And there is definitely a first mover advantage.
John:
And then I guess you'll find out if your model is sustainable before anyone else does.
Marco:
I think most people don't really use that many apps on a regular basis that they would even pay for, let alone that would be subscription-based.
Marco:
I'm guessing the average number of apps on somebody's phone that are going to attempt this at all is probably something like three at most.
Marco:
I mean, it's probably not that many.
Marco:
And that's why I don't think the fatigue issue or the too many eels issue, I don't think these will be prevalent.
John:
Three is fatigue.
John:
The third one, people are going to be like, that's it.
John:
No more of these applications asking me for subscriptions.
John:
Three is definitely over the fatigue barrier.
John:
One is the honeymoon period.
John:
Two is you're getting grumpy.
John:
Three is like, nope, I'm out for regular people.
Casey:
Yeah, I agree.
Marco:
I really think these are going to be mostly single-digit number of dollars per year.
Marco:
Most people won't have a whole lot of those in their phone, except the most power of the power users.
Marco:
Then it's going to be very small amounts per year, and it's going to be fine.
Marco:
And it's just going to be easier for everybody once it's all established.
Marco:
But we'll see.
John:
anyway to sum up this thing i think any kind of change description to broadening it in any way even if it's vague or whatever is a good thing because i mean i'm talking about all the potential bad sides but net this is going to be an improvement like this is a positive change all we're arguing about is exactly how positive because it could potentially be really really positive or just a little bit positive but it's going to be positive like make no mistake about that even though it sounds like we're i'm just complaining about all the potential downsides and
John:
how things can go wrong like anytime there's any change people can go wrong and developers can make bad choices about how to change their pricing structure or the application or which applications to make but i can't see any way that this could make things worse this is going to make things better it's going to make us have better applications on the phone it's going to
John:
make it so that our favorite applications don't go out of business as often after whatever the initial shakeout period is when people figure this out right um and it could potentially finally solve the problem of how do you get pro level feature full applications on all of apple's platforms in a way that can be ongoing just like it was with box software where year after year they would make new versions and charge you for them and everything so
John:
And we didn't even talk about the 85-15 split, except for mentioning it briefly.
John:
Also, obviously, a positive change for everybody except for Apple.
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Casey:
We were talking earlier about the 85-15 split.
Casey:
So Apple has said if you have a subscription with a user and that user keeps a subscription for at least a year, subsequent to that first year being completed, Apple will only take 15% and they will give 85% of the revenue back to the developer.
Casey:
And John had made a...
John:
kind of offhanded comment that oh that's bad for apple and and i presume john you don't mean that in a literal sense it's good for everybody except apple and i was mostly joking obviously it's good for apple if more people develop for the app store and all you know more sustainable applications more people develop for longer they're motivated to make their customers happy and keep them for a year like obviously there is upside for apple but uh but what i'm saying is
John:
There is, you know, it's all upside for developers getting more money.
John:
And for users, it's upside because the price for the user doesn't change at all.
John:
They don't really care how the money split up, except for the fact that they probably like it that the developers are getting more money because they're not really worried about Apple being cash strapped at this point.
Marco:
this is great because first of all it shows that apple can lower their cut and that they're willing to selectively lower their cut now for for for the right reason we always knew they could it just didn't say whether they would yeah exactly so so this is interesting so now they can lower their cut to incent behavior that they need or want so i mentioned on under the radar like this would be a great thing to do so for instance like
Marco:
if they really wanted to kind of juice or subsidize more growth of certain kinds of apps or certain platforms, like if they wanted to say, like, all right, anything bought on an iPad Pro would be this, or any Apple TV apps would have this split.
Marco:
This is a way for them to turn some levers to juice development of certain kinds of apps that they want or need.
Marco:
I think they've seen things like the Watch and the Apple TV and the iPad Pro having their app stores take off probably more slowly than Apple wanted them to.
Marco:
I think it's good for them to develop incentive systems that they can use to help juice app development in the right and in sustainable ways.
Marco:
So that's good.
Marco:
It's also interesting that this is probably part of the negotiation of things like getting Netflix and HBO Go to allow signups on the Apple TV.
Marco:
And there was actually a report back on Recode in April that this was the case, that they were actually getting 15% from the beginning on those things.
Marco:
For the longest time, for the entire history of the App Store, until possibly this or until possibly this Apple TV deal, all developers were given the exact same terms and had to follow the exact same rules.
Marco:
Everybody from, like, Facebook down to, you know, the 123 NoteTaker on Connected.
Marco:
Like, every app was given the same terms.
Marco:
And it was very kind of, like, fair and democratic in that way.
Marco:
And that was actually, from what I understand, that was kind of, like, a big part of the culture of the EddyQ App Store team.
Marco:
So, yeah, good on them for that.
Marco:
This is interesting in that, like...
Marco:
Obviously, there have been market pressures for Apple to lower that rate for certain big companies.
Marco:
A big one is Amazon.
Marco:
I'm sure part of the negotiation with Amazon are that Amazon does not want to give Apple 30% of things that are bought in their apps or memberships that are started in their apps.
Marco:
Apple doesn't budge on that, and Amazon doesn't budge on that, and that's why we don't have Amazon Video on the Apple TV.
Marco:
this is interesting in that it looks like apple is now bugging on that for the right reasons which include things like getting important partners on the apple tv and that as they're doing that for them they're also then bringing in any developer under certain terms with that too so yeah it'd be nice if all apple tv apps were 85 15 for everything uh that's probably not going to happen at least not yet uh but this is nice that like that that kind of like everybody gets the same deal thing
Marco:
seems to be still either continuing or mostly continuing and also this is great because like that cut being so high you know 30 is a lot that cut being so high makes certain business models either impossible or at least not very compelling to even try to do on apple's platforms
Marco:
the more they can lower that or the more places in which they can lower that the more it makes completely new business models possible or or more practical on apple's platforms and that's good for everybody that's good for the developers and the users and apple everything won't suddenly be possible because you know for a lot of business models 15 is still too much for somebody else to be taking still can't sell ebooks 15 is too high for that to give one example
Marco:
Yeah, probably.
Marco:
But Amazon is not going to be happy with that either.
Marco:
Amazon is only going to be happy when they can have their own checkout with their own stuff and not pay Apple anything.
Marco:
And I don't expect Amazon and Apple to resolve that anytime soon, because Apple is certainly not going to budge on that.
Marco:
And Amazon is not going to accept anything else from Apple.
John:
especially at least not for the apple tv where amazon kind of you know where amazon can afford to lose the apple tv can't they can't they just do like well you're talking about just for people who subscribe to the app but don't a lot of the video apps say like oh if you subscribe to the web then apple doesn't get any of that money yeah and then you just sign it like why doesn't amazon just do that
Marco:
They already do that on all of Apple's other platforms.
Marco:
That's exactly what they do.
Marco:
The only reason they don't do it on the Apple TV is because there are so few Apple TVs out there of the new generation that Amazon is gambling that they can just afford to not be there and that they have the upper hand in that negotiation.
Marco:
Whether that's true or not.
John:
Sell that Fire TV boxes so that you can ship them to people for free.
John:
That's packing material.
John:
That's the whole thing with Amazon.
Marco:
I have no pity for either side there.
Marco:
You have two stubborn monopolists fighting over who gets to be the stubborn monopolist.
Marco:
Like, okay, good luck with that.
Marco:
But yeah, anyway, so I think this is great.
Marco:
This 8515 thing is great.
Marco:
I would love to see this in more places.
Marco:
I wouldn't hold my breath on that yet, but I'm glad to see it anywhere.
Marco:
And to have this make things possible that weren't possible before and to give...
Marco:
To reward developers who have that long-standing customer base, to reward them with basically a raise is really cool.
Marco:
The only downside to it is that I think for the foreseeable future, it's probably going to benefit very few people.
Marco:
There's going to be very few developers who have subscription-priced apps and who have users sticking around that long.
Marco:
I think it's going to be a small group.
Marco:
But for those people, this is really nice.
John:
And it's the second change that we've gone through so far that no matter how you look at it, definitely seems focused on what we always talk about, sustainable development.
John:
How do I make it more feasible for a developer to make something for the platform and then keep improving it year after year, rather than doing the hit and run or the one hit wonder or the game or other throwaway type of thing?
John:
How do we make that possible?
John:
Subscriptions, no matter how we slice them,
John:
either make that a little bit better or a lot better and 80 15 after the first year couldn't be more clear we want you to keep your customers for an entire year if you can do that there will be a reward at the end of it you are now incentivized motivated to do this not scented because i don't like that it's a weird word yeah um and so yeah so it's it's two for two and trying to make a more sustainable the only question i have about it i haven't looked into it deeply is like
John:
the the loophole of like all right so it's it's per customer so it's like you joe schmoe have been a customer for a year joe schmoe's uh subscription money after the first year changes over to 80 15 but the but the guy who signed up six months later doesn't change to 80 15 to the same so it's not calendar year it's like customer year but so if you're a customer if you have a customer who has been subscribing every month for 12 months and then in the 13th month they go you know what i'm not subscribing anymore and cancels their subscription and
John:
And then five minutes later, resubscribes or a month later, resubscribes.
John:
Like if there's a gap in the year long thing that you lose out on the 815, does the clock start over again?
John:
Or is it the cumulative 11 months that they were a subscriber?
John:
And then after their 12th month, like details like that about it doesn't have to be a contiguous streak if they bail in the last month, but change their mind five minutes later, five minutes later or a day later or a month later.
John:
What are all the rules surrounding that?
John:
Because it would seem kind of cruel to like, say you're a really good customer for an application and you want it to be sustainable and you were really excited about being able to fund it for an entire year because you knew in your second year that the developer would be getting more of your money.
John:
But for whatever reason, you either accidentally or you changed your mind briefly or something, you canceled it.
John:
And then you resubscribe.
John:
And you're like, oh, and I got to use that for another year before this developer gets.
John:
Not that people care so much about developers that they're worried about it.
John:
But I'm just trying to, like, I hope there are rules in there that have reasonable buffers to make it so that you don't.
John:
Because you have to keep the customer for a year.
John:
You wouldn't want to lose out on that money due to a technicality or a silly mistake.
Marco:
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Casey:
All right, so another big change to the way the App Store works.
Casey:
You can pay to get placement in search results, sort of, kind of.
Casey:
I'm not entirely clear on how this is all held together, and I'm guessing, Marco, you probably have the best overall understanding of it.
Casey:
So can you take the summarizer-in-chief mantle from me and kind of give us the quick and dirty version?
Marco:
If you're interested in these search ads, go to the link that we're going to put in the show notes, Apple's page on this, because they have screenshots, and it explains better than we can in the audio.
Marco:
Basically, the gist of this is they are now offering...
Marco:
search ads for developers so that when you search you can pay for your app to show up for certain relevant search keywords uh when people you know people search certain words in the app store you can pay for it to take there's a single spot on top it's highlighted in blue so it's you know you're not like fooling people and thinking this is a real result it looks like an ad it's labeled as an ad i think you are fooling people but we'll get to that after you after you finish summarizing go ahead
Marco:
So it's basically very similar to what we've seen from search engines like Google, from search ads, for over a decade.
Marco:
It's a very similar kind of thing.
Marco:
And I think Apple has put in place certain limits and controls that are there to limit potential abuse and annoyance and possible fraud issues.
Marco:
It sounds like they've actually done a really good job.
Marco:
It looks pretty good to me.
Marco:
The restrictions they've put in place sound pretty good.
Marco:
If they work as well as they sound, I think it'll actually be a really good system.
Marco:
By the way, just briefly, some of those restrictions are things like there's only one ad being shown at a time, so you don't have to worry about a giant stack of ads above the real search results.
Marco:
Because the ads only take up at most half of that viewport, you're still seeing, whatever the top couple results are, you're still going to see those pretty easily on screen.
Marco:
So it's not really going to bury the organic search results.
Marco:
One worry that I saw a lot of people cite was basically keyword squatting of bidders, of big budget games bidding on your keywords, like image editor or podcast player, just to get their big budget game.
John:
Or squatting on your trademarks.
John:
They would actually register your product's exact name as a keyword.
Marco:
Right, exactly.
Marco:
And Apple says on this page that you're only going to show up on searches for which your result would be relevant, no matter how much you're willing to pay.
Marco:
And so we'll see what that means in practice.
Marco:
That sounds a lot like a big data search problem that Apple's usually not very good at, but we'll see.
Marco:
Again, I'm willing to give them the benefit of that.
Marco:
At least let's see what this is.
Marco:
Because...
Marco:
If they do this well, and it looks good so far in their press shots, we'll see how it is again.
Marco:
If they do this well, I think this is great.
Marco:
I have not heard from any other developers who are as excited about this as I am, and maybe that's a bad sign, I don't know.
Marco:
If you have a big budget and you want more growth, you now have a way to get more growth.
Marco:
You can bid on some search keywords or there's even what I thought was interesting.
Marco:
There's an option in the screenshot they show.
Marco:
There's an option to not specify the keywords and to just let Apple kind of put you into things it thinks are relevant.
Marco:
not just the option i think that's the default i think you're right uh so that i think is more interesting because honestly trying to keep track of what keywords you should be bidding on is is a lot of work and there's a lot of kind of voodoo and a lot of some data some guessing and it's just it just it makes it more work so if if apple can do a decent enough job and get you a decent return or you know decently low cost per tap uh for automatic searches then
Marco:
you'll actually get in more places because you'll be on keywords you wouldn't have thought of.
Marco:
And if they work, then great.
Marco:
So that, I think, is interesting.
Marco:
But if the system works... So it's a way for both people with a budget to spend to get more people to download their app.
Marco:
So that's cool.
Marco:
Also, people keep saying, what's going to happen to the small developers who can't afford this?
Marco:
If you're a small developer trying to break into a market, it is almost impossible to get meaningful exposure unless you woo the press and get them to write about you somehow.
Marco:
this is easier and more reliable and yes it costs some money but you know it's a crowded market sometimes you got to pay some money to get noticed because you have to buy you have to buy promotional spots if you are going to try to break into a category where no one's really going to write about your app or you haven't gotten the kind of press you want or it's too narrow of a category for the press to care uh this is great this is a way for you to get to your customers and to be visible and
Marco:
If you're launching a new photo editor, there is no way you're going to show up in that number one spot at any, you know, before this, you could not show up there.
Marco:
If people search for image editor and they got this one camera, whatever is number one spot, that's it.
Marco:
That's what they're seeing.
Marco:
Your app doesn't stand a chance.
Marco:
Now you have a way to get there.
Marco:
And maybe you don't do it forever.
Marco:
Maybe you do it only to build your initial audience.
Marco:
Then you depend on organic spreading of your app after that.
Marco:
But this gives you an option where there was no option before.
Marco:
I don't see how you can look at this and say this is a bad thing.
Marco:
The only major valid criticism of this is...
Marco:
Yeah, they really should make the actual search better before worrying about things like this.
Marco:
But ultimately, okay, this is reality.
Marco:
That's not going to happen.
Marco:
The original search will get better or not separately from this.
Marco:
That is independent of this.
Marco:
So in the reality that we live in, it makes this happen independently.
Marco:
I would much rather have an app store where I, as a developer, can buy keywords to promote my apps...
Marco:
And we'll see.
Marco:
Maybe the pricing will make this impossible.
Marco:
But I would at least rather have the option to try than to have something where if I want to break into a new market, I have to either already be famous or get the press to write about me.
Marco:
Because that is not nearly as open and democratic as this is.
John:
They're trying to be helpful, it seems like, to people who have less experience in these things by giving you the tools to do the fairly simple multiplication and division to say, look, you're going to lose money if you bid because it's an auction system.
John:
If you bid too high, if this is a very popular keyword and a lot of people are bidding on it and they're bidding it up and up,
John:
and you get caught up in that you won't make that money back because it costs so much money and it's per tap by the way like it's not per purchase it's not a fair time period it's how many people tap on your your results right you have to kind of guess what do i think my conversion rate is going to be of all the people who tap on my ad how many of them are actually going to buy it for each one who buys it how much do i uh how much money am i going to make and therefore how much money does it cost me in aggregate during this ad campaign to acquire
John:
Uh, each customer who will give me a certain amount of money and Apple will actually have a little tool where you can say, look, if you don't want to do this very complicated multiplication and division in your own head, just put your cost per acquisition, your CPA goal in there.
John:
And then they'll figure out how to maximize your app downloads.
John:
Like you just give them your target number where you feel like this ad.
John:
campaign will be worthwhile for you whether it's you put in a number that makes you feel like you won't lose any money or that you're willing to lose a certain amount of money like how much how much do you want it to cost you to get a new customer if you want to cost you 50 cents to get a new customer each new customer gives you a dollar you're going to come out ahead maybe it costs you uh you get a dollar from every customer but you're willing to pay two dollars to acquire your first set of customers like marco was saying on your launch day or whatever you can do that just put that number in and it'll do it for you like everything they say about this sounds good down to i've heard i don't know if this is text from
John:
The ads or Phil Schiller talking to people, the idea that like, say your application is Twitterific and someone types Twitterific into the search thing.
John:
I had heard that there would be no ad there, that Twitterific will be the number one hit and there'll be no ad displayed because it is an exact match for the name of an existing application.
John:
In other words.
John:
Nobody can buy the Twitterific keyword to make their thing show up as the number one hit when someone searches for Twitterific.
John:
Again, I don't know if this is official or it's just something that was like floating around, but that is exactly the type of thing that I would expect from Apple to try to have to try to be.
John:
classy and and not sleazy and for the reason that like i posted about this earlier on twitter today and mentioned it earlier when marco we said that the ads are clearly marked um it doesn't quite work on twitter when i what i said was that i had heard a couple stories about how the ads uh how you know ads will be in search results and all of them had the same screenshot i assume provided by apple
John:
that shows a search and shows an ad at the top and i saw that picture four separate times on four separate websites each time i looked at it it was like you know in the mix with an article that i'm like skimming and reading or whatever i looked at the screenshot i'm like oh i guess this is showing an ad result and i looked at it and go oh no it's not showing an ad result this is just regular search results because at that point i didn't know it had come from apple i thought people were just showing what the app search looks like
John:
four times i looked at it only on the fourth time did i realize they're trying to show this as one of those ad search results and i looked at it a little closer and then i saw the tiny letters ad in a little tiny blue light blue box uh in a light blue thing and so i posted to twitter of course everyone said once you say uh this isn't clearly marked as an ad or you know i basically i posted the story i saw this image four times before i realized that it was an ad
John:
But once you say that, everyone's like, look, there's little thing says ad right there.
John:
You see it as clear as day.
John:
If you're looking with that mindset, yes.
John:
And other people are like, how can you not tell?
John:
It's blue.
John:
Blue doesn't mean ad.
John:
I thought it was like the top hit, a selected hit.
John:
I have no idea why it was blue.
John:
And this is a real phenomenon.
John:
Someone posted a tweet with a study showing that something like 57% of people...
John:
don't identify ads in like google search results as ads even though they're also clearly marked again with a little tiny yellow thing that says ad in them or whatever if you're not going into it with the mindset that some of these things are going to be ads and that you should look to see how they're identified you won't recognize this as an ad it will look like the most prominent and the most important especially if it's colored differently and it's on the top but there's a difference between recognizing uh
John:
you know people say like what what do you care about a good analogy someone gave on twitter was like when you go into the store to buy dvds which i guess this is an old person who said this and you see a dvd on you see a dvd on the end cap of the display right someone paid for that end cap placement like it's a whole retail thing where you pay the retailer more money to have your thing more prominently placed um do you care that they paid for that placement or do you just care that oh that's the application that i want but that analogy does not work at all because
John:
what you want people to know is again in theory this breakdown is because apple search is so bad you want them to think when i do a search the things near the top of the search are the most relevant to the thing i searched ads don't care about your relevance again modulo apple's rules the thing at the top when it's an ad is not there because apple's search algorithm thinks this is the most relevant application for your search it's there because someone paid for it to be there for your search and that is different it is different
John:
you know from the user's perspective you want to know oh this must be the thing you know i search for uh you know twitter and this is the top one this must be the best twitter application the most popular twitter application uh the most downloaded twitter application the application that most matches the keyword twitter or if it's a more complicated thing or whatever
John:
none of those things are true if it's an ad if it's an ad the answer is it's because someone paid apple money to put it there which is totally different and totally a misaligned incentive with what the user was expecting now because the apple search results are so terrible maybe a paid ad is just as relevant as the number one hit in many cases but uh but you know in theory uh it's not i'm not saying there shouldn't be ads having only one ad is good having it you know having you not be able to fill it with with garbage lies and well i don't know
John:
Again, we fall back on the app store not being that great.
John:
I was going to say that because the ads themselves can only contain text from your actual application, like you don't get to write an ad, you don't get to write like your own ad copy.
John:
It just pulls from your actual application on the store.
John:
You have to have an application on the store.
John:
And all this does is pull your icon, your name, your description, everything from your actual entry.
John:
that should go towards making sure that you can't make a misleading ad or a fake ad unfortunately as we see many times over you can make a misleading application icon you can make a misleading application name and you can make your description misleading and those can all be in the store so this doesn't really save us but again in theory the rule system is correct you don't get to write your own custom ad so it's very classy there's only one of them it's limited if everything goes well this should all work out really well and still i say that
John:
It's not even Apple's fault.
John:
No matter how prominently Apple says this is an ad, most people I feel will not realize it's an ad.
John:
They could put A.D.
John:
in gigantic black letters and people be like, huh, what are these weird A.D.
John:
letters be here?
John:
They could put this is an advertisement, surgeon general's warning, smoking causes cancer in a giant box.
John:
People would still not see it.
John:
this this is a real phenomenon it happens all the time and apple's being so super subtle about it there's no chance that people regular people are going to realize this is an ad unless someone points it out to them even if they notice the ad they'd be like what does that mean is this it's an advanced copy or does this application contain ads like it is not clear at all now
John:
maybe it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things whether it's clear because most of the top google search results are also ads and nobody knows and people click on them and the world turns on and everything is fine but i think that is the final barrier to like a completely clean totally classy uh i sound like donald trump now um you know like believe me you don't yeah and apple style um how does apple do advertising in a way
John:
that avoids all the pitfalls of advertising.
John:
I think they've avoided pretty much every single one of them in theory, except for the part where people just absolutely cannot tell that this thing is an ad.
Casey:
Well, I think the reason that, well, one of the reasons it's so hard to tell it's an ad is one of the really great decisions they've made, which is what you were just talking about, that you can't really write an ad for your app.
Casey:
It just shows your app's search result at the top and labels it as an ad.
Casey:
And I think that's really smart because then you're not going to have a bunch of like really obnoxious, like, you know, punch the monkey sort of things going on.
Casey:
But on the other side of the coin, it makes it nearly indistinguishable from all the genuine search results below it.
Casey:
So it's kind of a double edged sword.
Casey:
But I will absolutely take this approach over allowing any sort of image there or, you know, god awful punch the monkey sort of things.
Casey:
This is a much classier, much better approach, even despite the fact that by forcing it to look like the search results below it, it does kind of blend in a bit.
John:
And the thing is, it's not so much that it blends in because it does look distinct.
John:
It's not like, oh, this is just like all the, but it looks like the best result.
John:
Like that was the, I got to find this survey for the show notes, but the survey result was like, they showed people search results.
John:
I don't know if it was Google, but like from a search engine and they asked them, what do you think these top results are?
John:
And people would say, these are the most popular results.
John:
These are the most relevant results.
John:
These are the results that most other people clicked on.
John:
Like this is what people thought those results were.
John:
What they actually were was ads.
John:
People could tell they were different, that they were highlighted, that they were prominent.
John:
But what they would read that as is these are the best.
John:
Like it does look different.
John:
You can tell there's the white results and then there's the one blue one on top.
John:
But how you interpret that blueness is not built into the blueness.
John:
Like you can't tell that's blue.
John:
Are you colorblind?
John:
No, you can see that it's different.
John:
Everyone sees it as different.
John:
But if you ask them,
John:
you know again you don't prime them by giving them the answer and say can you tell this is an ad you say what do you think the blue results were i bet people are going to say that's the best result that's the one that's the most downloaded that's you know like that's the highest rated that's what people are going to say even though it says right in their face capital a lowercase d in a tiny little blue box that i guarantee my parents cannot see by the way um even if you made it bigger people won't read it or people will think that that meant the application contains ads which by the way is the thing they should probably tell you and they do tell you if it contains in-app purchases but
John:
anyway uh not clear not really apple's fault entirely probably almost nothing they can do about it but it's one of the reasons that someone's asking me if i was for or against this change um i think i'm slightly against it because i don't i would rather just have a really good search i see all the things that marco's saying about it but from a user's perspective um how applications gain traction in the market is not my problem and i just want really relevant search results without any ads that i have to skip over
Marco:
Honestly, though, as a user, maybe I'm biased because I'm a developer and I kind of understand the back workings of this, but as a user, I think it also might be helpful to know because the search is usually pretty poor, if you're looking for something decent,
Marco:
If an app is advertising, I think there's a better chance it's a decent app because it's like, oh, this app is being cared for.
Marco:
It has a budget.
John:
Or it has a really good free-to-play hooks and it's going to bankrupt me when my kid spends lots of money on it.
Marco:
like you know games are games are a different story here and and games i i think we we don't usually when we're talking about like app pricing and issues and stuff i think we aren't usually talking about games which is worth clarifying because games are obviously not only are they a massive part of the app store and we should be talking about them the majority of the app store exactly but but but they also work very differently in in a lot of different ways and and so
Marco:
If you're just talking apps, like non-game apps, if you're searching for something to do something, a certain type of app or whatever, the one that advertises there and that shows up there and that Apple has deemed relevant to your search query enough to show you that ad...
Marco:
That, honestly, to me, is one signal of many that you should take with whether this is the one you look at or not.
Marco:
Because it's like having a high-quality icon or high-quality screenshots or whether you garbage up your name with a whole bunch of crap or whether you leave it fairly clean.
Marco:
It's one signal of many that you can use to try to figure out...
Marco:
when you're searching for something, what should I look further into than the search results screen?
Marco:
What do I tap into to glance at, to evaluate and decide whether to download or not?
Marco:
An app that has decided to pay for an ad and that can pay for an ad and that is running an active ad campaign and that Apple has deemed relevant, those are all useful signals.
John:
Do you use that same logic when you do Google searches?
John:
Do you click on the first five things, which are all ads?
Marco:
I don't do Google searches anymore, but oftentimes for DuckDuckGo, I do do searches.
Marco:
I know I'm that guy.
Marco:
I am too.
John:
Casey, you use DuckDuckGo?
John:
You got all your photos in Google Photos.
John:
They have every picture of your family, but you won't give them your searches.
Casey:
Right, because I actually think that DuckDuckGo has been better for me.
Casey:
Those bang shortcuts, whatever they call them, are the best.
Marco:
Those are great.
Marco:
Those ducks, man.
Marco:
Those ducks are really getting to you.
Marco:
They're really going.
Marco:
But in general, search result ads, I do occasionally click on because they are occasionally what I'm looking for.
Marco:
Not every time, certainly, but sometimes.
Marco:
Sometimes when I search Amazon, Amazon has sponsored listings and sponsored alternatives to products.
Marco:
Sometimes I click on those too.
Marco:
Not all the time, but sometimes.
Marco:
I know what that means.
Marco:
So I use that as, again, one input of many to decide what to do with these results.
John:
Yeah.
John:
In general, I don't really like the idea of advertisements moving themselves into the store in this way.
John:
But, you know, I can see the potential upside for developers on many fronts.
John:
So if it helps more good developers than it helps bad developers, I guess it's a net win for users as well.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And honestly, if you think about big, big picture, long term stuff here, I think not only does this make it easier for less known developers to get better known, and it makes it way easier to launch a new app in a crowded category.
Marco:
But also, long term, I think this helps kind of support higher prices.
Marco:
If we're trying to move towards an app store where developers have good reasons to charge higher prices and can sustain those prices, one of the ways you can get higher prices is by getting your app in front of a better targeted audience for people to potentially buy it.
Marco:
And so the ads will help on that front.
Marco:
Also, developers will now consider the cost of the ads when considering how to price their apps, how high they can price them, how low they can afford to price them or not afford to price them.
Marco:
This is all going to be added into all this calculus and all this marketing.
Marco:
This will, in general, I think, help slightly raise app prices and better reward developers who can find their target markets this way.
Marco:
I think this is a really big move towards higher quality, more sustainable software and making it easier, not harder, for new developers to break into the market.
Casey:
All right, so a couple other quick points, and then we really need to get in some WWDC talk.
Casey:
Beta will be over the summer, and they're not going to charge people during the beta.
Casey:
They are not showing ads to anyone 13 or younger, which I think is excellent.
Casey:
And they're not going to do any terribly crazy tracking outside of location tracking, which you can pretty easily turn off in settings.
Casey:
So this is – I mean, as advertising goes, it's a pretty Apple, pretty classy approach to it.
Casey:
But it is still advertising in a place that we may or may not want it.
Casey:
So we'll see.
Casey:
But I'm hopeful.
John:
I'm hopeful.
John:
And this is like Apple's second move into – well, maybe second or third, depending on how you can move into –
John:
google style businesses i tried to do i add a serious kind of google style thing uh and i mean this is what you know google and facebook like their whole businesses are based on this type of thing and so uh it's about time because certainly uh google has done tons of apple style things including making their own hardware and making a phone and you know doing all this stuff and trying to have a desktop operating system and facebook uh
John:
I mean, it's got Oculus on the hardware front.
John:
Didn't they try to make a phone once, too?
John:
Anyway, you know, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
John:
It's nice to see Apple, like, I don't know if it's nice to see it because I'm not that into the advertising thing, but, like, for so long it seemed that every other company was willing to try to do the things that Apple was good at, and there were certain things that those other companies did to make lots of money that Apple decided were not worth really looking into.
John:
Selling ads against search.
John:
is not a speculative business model at this point it is it is a known quantity and the fact that apple just didn't do it for so long uh other than selling the safari search bar to google but that's kind of more of a corporate thing than than an individual bidding on keywords um yeah everyone wants to make more money from services uh this could definitely work out i saw someone joking in the again on the pessimistic angle that
John:
the 80-15 split, all the extra money that developers make will get funneled right back into Apple in the form of paying for keyword search ads.
John:
But hey, if that is a virtuous cycle that produces more and more revenue and more and more customers, I think everyone will still be happy.
Casey:
Yeah, I agree.
Casey:
Let's talk WWDC.
John:
What's WWDC?
Casey:
It's the thing that you two are going to that I'm not.
Casey:
Thanks for that.
Casey:
So this is Wednesday that we're recording, the 8th of June.
Casey:
This coming Monday, the 13th of June, is the big keynote.
Casey:
And then following the keynote is the Developer State of the Union.
Casey:
So what are we expecting Apple will announce?
Casey:
We are hearing no hardware.
Casey:
We're hearing a lot of rumors about Siri on OS 10 slash Mac OS.
Casey:
What are we thinking?
Casey:
Let's start with Marco.
Marco:
Basically, it's software updates.
Marco:
I think it's going to be the big thing.
Marco:
What's new in iOS?
Marco:
What's new on Mac OS?
Marco:
What is new TV, watch?
Marco:
I mean, look, Apple now has four platforms that they are hopefully evolving at a steady pace.
Marco:
iOS is...
Marco:
I mean, I would imagine it's got to slow down at some point.
Marco:
It's got to mature at some point.
Marco:
But, you know, Apple always pushes that one really hard.
Marco:
The iPad probably has like separate enhancements for multitasking and everything.
Marco:
So that's, you know, there's going to be like probably, especially because Apple still is pushing the iPad hard, trying to save its sales decline.
Marco:
So, you know, I expect to see major time and energy devoted to iPad software improvements for pro use in all likelihood, things like multitasking.
Marco:
So what's new on the iPhone, that's going to get some big stuff.
Marco:
What's new on Mac OS 12, that's obviously going to be a part of it.
Marco:
Anything that's new, if there's any new major underlying technologies, any new methods of storing files on the local disk, John...
Marco:
You know, if there's anything, you know, shared technologies, that's going to get some time.
Marco:
And then you got to figure, like, this is going to be the first WWDC since the Apple TV was launched.
Marco:
It's probably going to be something Apple TV related, you know, major new stuff in Apple TV OS, whatever, TV OS.
Marco:
And then I honestly hope there's significant changes to watch OS, too, because... Sorry, you're out of time in the keynote.
Marco:
exactly so like you know they unveiled all this all this like developer app store changes today you know if you think about like all the software platforms that need to go into that keynote that are especially the ones that are still fairly young like iPad Pro and tvOS and watchOS that still have like lots of room for major improvements I think it's going to be a pretty full keynote not to mention if they actually shove in the Apple Music update again which was rumored I hope they don't but I think they probably will
Marco:
If they actually shove that in there, too, that takes even more time.
Marco:
And we know they try to keep the keynotes to under two hours.
Marco:
So I think it's going to be software updates the whole thing, basically.
Marco:
Software updates almost the whole time, and then maybe a little bit for Apple Music.
Marco:
And that's two hours, easily.
Casey:
The thing I'm most interested in is there's been a humongous push towards cloud data and big data and processing data.
Casey:
You know, huge quantities of data and doing it server side like Google Photos as a great example.
Casey:
And I'm really curious to see and actually Alexa from Amazon.
Casey:
I'm really curious to see what is Apple's answer to this or maybe even not answer, but what is their approach to solving similar problems?
Casey:
And not even necessarily with photos, but just in general, everyone who has an Alexa seems to fall in love with her.
Casey:
So what is Apple doing with Siri or an equivalent technology to keep our attention on products that they create?
Casey:
And I don't know what that's going to be, but I'm very curious to see what they do in that department, because I suspect they're going to do something that is a little bit different than everyone else, a little bit more Apple than everyone else, which is obvious, but something that we didn't really expect.
Casey:
And I'm looking forward to seeing what that is.
John:
hear marco make his uh snarky file system comment about new ways of storing uh bits to disk or whatever we realize that we're all entering the uh the the age where we say things like i'm gonna did you tape that on tv i think we all say tape do you guys say tape that you should tape that not i know what you're saying but i think i usually say record
John:
you may be past that but i'm borderline in my generation we all tape things you know and it doesn't make any sense because for such a long time we haven't been using vcrs or anything that has actual tape so we still on phones and even you'll watch the wwc presentations unless it's being done by a very young person we'll talk about uh you know disk io or writing things to disk there's no disk there never has been a disk in a phone right as in a round thing that spins uh but we still say disk so disk is the new tape what else is new
John:
Anyway, speaking of that, you know, if they want to announce a new file system, that's fine.
John:
Like, whatever.
John:
I still say 2017.
John:
You're not going to see this thing on people's computers until 2017.
John:
But you want to announce it a year early?
John:
I'm all for it.
John:
Bring it on.
John:
Anyway, to more serious predictions, I'm really sad if all these rumors about no hardware are true.
John:
because i'm excited about hardware but you know what can you do if it's the obvious ones are you know the mac and ios updates because we've you know the ios update like whatever we know that's happening the mac one we also kind of know what's happening we know about a rebrand we know about siri on uh on the mac uh i don't know what other features they're going to mix in there that's all well and good based on the
John:
The marketing and the design of the WWDC site and also all the activity on Swift Evolution, which has been tentatively out in the open.
John:
Surely there will be stuff in there about the new version of Swift.
John:
I mean, we already know everything about Swift 3.
John:
Look at the mailing list.
John:
It's all public.
John:
You know what's going to be in there.
John:
I don't think there's going to be any surprises there like, oh.
John:
oh, there was a secret feature of Swift 3 that we didn't even reveal.
John:
Maybe one or two minor ones like that, but nothing earth shattering.
John:
But they will emphasize that.
John:
You know, it'll get a slide or two in the keynote and then much more in the State of the Union.
John:
Hey, if you haven't been paying attention, Swift 3 is actually pretty different than Swift 2.2 and a bunch of ways that are going to break your apps.
John:
But don't worry, Xcode will fix them for you.
Casey:
Well, and speaking of Xcode, you know, you said that there's not a lot of surprises they could have with regard to Swift because it's all out in the open.
Casey:
And I agree, but they could certainly have some surprises around Xcode, for example, much better Swift support, for example, syntax highlighting that doesn't crash constantly, for example, segfault 11 going away.
John:
Maybe it crashes even more.
Casey:
is that a feature or a bug historically speaking they've done a lot of changes to to xcode to support swift and not all of them have reduced the number of crashes yeah so we'll see i would love god would i ever love to have um some improvements to xcode with regard to swift and actually i like xcode i don't i don't begrudge it like so many people seem to perhaps because i just haven't been using it long enough but
Casey:
There are definitely annoyances that I run into pretty much daily that I would typically around Swift that I would love to see improved.
Casey:
So fingers crossed.
John:
You're pretty much guaranteed to get that.
John:
There's going to be a new version of Xcode.
John:
It's going to have better Swift support.
John:
It's going to have fewer bugs.
John:
It's going to be faster.
John:
It's going to support all the news.
John:
But like that's going to happen.
John:
That happens every year.
John:
That's going to happen as well.
John:
That's also that's also a gimme.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I think the wild cards for me are, again, still sticking to software, watching TV.
John:
I don't know... First of all, I don't know how much room there is.
John:
The things I just listed, you're already at the point where you have room for maybe one or two more segments.
John:
How much can you really say about watching TV?
John:
I also am under the impression...
John:
that one of those two platforms is not going to have that much new about it i just don't know which one it is right i hope it's tv because it's the newer one and the watch could really use some uh some uh tlc but i'm not quite sure what to expect there tv doesn't really need a whole lot right now like well it needs a lot it needs a new remote but they're not going to announce that at wwc
Marco:
Yeah, that would be a fall hardware update thing.
Marco:
And honestly, I'm not expecting the Apple TV to be updated every year.
Marco:
I'm guessing we don't get a new one this fall.
Marco:
I'm guessing maybe it's on a two-year cycle, but we'll see.
Marco:
We'll talk about that later.
Marco:
But the tvOS in general, it's fine.
Marco:
It's not perfect, but it's fine.
Marco:
The watch really needs a lot of help in a lot of areas.
Marco:
And it's also, as you said, it's also the older platform.
Marco:
So I would expect, I hope,
Marco:
that if they're trying to figure out how to allocate resources here, I hope watchOS gets more attention.
Marco:
In reality, from what I've heard, watchOS is still a very separate team from the rest of the organization.
Marco:
But I really hope we see something significant from watchOS.
Marco:
And I think we will.
Marco:
I think the time is right.
John:
and even if they didn't have time to do like a whole rethink and revamp they just do custom watch faces they get a lot of applause everybody comes out smiling right it doesn't take much you know like because that's a significant enough feature where they don't have time to really delve into all the details of how what is the role of the watch and blah blah if you just do custom watch faces that opens up such a market and people will attend the sessions and everyone will want to make one and people who have watches will be excited about the idea uh
John:
That's just, you know, I'm not saying that I'm not predicting this is something we're going to do, but all you need is one announcement of that caliber.
John:
It will tamp down a lot of the grumbling.
John:
And I don't think they have, I don't think they have time even in the presentation.
John:
If they've totally rethought watch OS, like in Marco style rethink where like, you know, we've learned a lot from years worth of work and it turns out we were totally wrong about a hundred ways that people use their watches.
John:
I don't know if you have time to talk about that with everything else because my final prediction is like, if this is ready, this will be a cornerstone of the presentation, which is
John:
we know series coming to the mac and everything but like if there is a radically new better version of siri which i really hope there is i think apple that will be a fairly big leg on the stool that is this presentation just if not just simply because those things are prominent now with the echo and with alexa and with google io leaning so heavily on that and with the rumors of apple improving siri
John:
they will spend time in the keynote saying siri is better than ever uh and i think they have to to show that they are still that they're still relevant in that market they were one of the the pioneers in that market and they everyone else has seemed to be eclipsing them they have to say they have to at least say hey we're still here and i think that what they would like to say is in fact
John:
The new version of Siri is the most amazing thing you've ever seen, and we're going to burn a lot of keynote time showing you demos of people talking into a computer that they hope to God listens to them and does what they want it to do live on stage.
John:
So I don't know anything about whether an amazing new version of Siri is ready, but if it is, I think that's going to get a lot of time.
John:
So when I envision this keynote, I see lots of software, every single update has something that you like, and tentpole features.
John:
The really new version of Siri...
John:
Swift in the new version of Xcode as the little developer nugget, and then some other wild card for maybe Watch or something else I'm not even thinking of.
Marco:
Yeah, I forgot about Siri, but that's obviously... You're totally right.
Marco:
In the current landscape, they need to say something about Siri.
Marco:
So I'm totally with you.
Marco:
I think they will present a new version of Siri that appears to be very much improved.
Marco:
Whether it is actually very much improved, we don't know yet.
Marco:
And it might not be, but...
Marco:
they i think they will definitely present it as if it is regardless and if there's an api even better i really really hope there is a siri api i think we are way past due for that but uh that's part of the new improve siri not just that it listens to you better but that it's like those other ones where they all have apis and apple doesn't yet
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, if there's really an API to Siri and it's done in a way that apps can actually take advantage of, not just a handful of real tiny use cases, but if it's done well and if it's done broadly so that lots of apps can use it for lots of good things, it almost wouldn't matter whether the underlying service improved at all otherwise or not.
Marco:
That would be enough.
Marco:
That is such a big deal to do that.
Marco:
That would certainly be a much better Siri.
John:
And I think last year, I think maybe the past, I think my track record for WSC predictions the week before have been awful.
John:
Like that I'm just like totally wrong about everything.
John:
Not as bad as mine.
John:
Just take that in account.
John:
So it's much easier for me to do the next thing, which is like, which announcements would you most be excited about?
John:
And the more I think about it, the more I think that I would actually be more excited by a new Mac Pro than a new file system.
John:
not because i think the new mac pro is more needed than the new file system but because but because like the last guardian i'm willing to wait till you know i don't have to wait to 2017 for the last guardian right guys 2016 anyway um i'm willing to wait 2017 is my file system year i'm filing it away it's over there 2017 new file system if you want to announce it now fine but if not i won't be broken up but this is the year of the new mac pro
John:
you're going to keep making the mac pro it's time so i will that is the the announcement at wdc will get me personally the most excited is new mac pro not probably not the most exciting to almost anyone else in the entire audience especially casey but that's that's what i want
John:
um if they do a new file system and not the mac pro i'll be like you could have saved the file system to next year and give me the mac pro this year because honestly a new file system is not going to help any not going to help my poor 2008 mac pro right now like it's new faucets not even gonna probably run on it well maybe on the ssd but anyway i want a new mac pro in this completely hardware free keynote i'm almost certainly not going to get one but that's my pie in the sky dream but if you could pick any feasible announcement for wwc as your number one what would it be
Casey:
That's a really good question.
Casey:
Hmm.
Marco:
I mean, we already got like, you know, substantial app store business model changes today.
John:
So yeah, you can't pick that one.
John:
I would say it becomes unfeasible because if they were there, they would have been in this announcement.
John:
So it's no longer feasible.
John:
Not that they can't do them, but it's just that you got them.
Marco:
right so you're talking just keynote not like the whole conference just keynote announcements basically yeah because you know one of the wild cards that people are asking for or that people are predicting possibly is some kind of developer tools for the ipad whether it's xcode or playgrounds or something else you know some kind of developer story for ipad last year or the year before i thought they were going to announce it i yeah i fully expect that to arrive someday but i haven't heard enough rumblings to think this is the year but who knows
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, it depends, you know, what would be the scope of it?
Marco:
Like if they wanted to bring just Swift playgrounds, you know, just that to the iPad without like the whole developer tool stack, that's obviously a much smaller problem set to bring over.
Marco:
And that is more plausible.
Marco:
Like you just have playgrounds.
Marco:
To bring over Xcode for the iPad, I think people who are predicting that maybe don't understand or don't know quite how complex of a job that would be because it isn't just the Xcode interface.
Marco:
It's the entire system of...
Marco:
the massive ecosystem and pile of tools and frameworks and everything that goes under Xcode.
Marco:
Everything that Xcode is calling out to to do all the work and all these build tools and integration with other things that are part of people's build needs and everything.
Marco:
It's so complex to bring over all of Xcode.
Marco:
I don't think it's going to happen in the near future because it just depends.
John:
It's coming.
John:
I think it's pretty near.
John:
There's a reason the iPad Pro has 4 gigs.
John:
Yeah.
John:
if i'm not saying it's going to be this year but i think it's totally feasible this year and next year is when you should really be on the lookout if it doesn't happen this year because i think it's coming full-on xcode or just like a playground equivalent obviously it'll be a different application you can't have windows and everything right but but like all those tools that marco's talking about like i said that's i think that's why the ipad pro has four gigs why else does the ipad pro have four gigs doesn't make any sense unless unless it is allowing for a class of application that does not yet exist on the ipad
John:
And one of those classes of applications would be a ever so slightly cut down version of Xcode.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I think it has that much RAM just so it can multitask efficiently and well.
John:
But then why doesn't mine have four gigs?
John:
I like the multitask.
Marco:
No, I mean, I think I think long term Xcode will, you know, or, you know, developer tools will come to the iPad.
Marco:
But I don't think we're there yet because it is such a big job.
Marco:
Playgrounds, you know, some kind of like very cut down subset of it, maybe.
Marco:
but like whatever we would call like it's something that we would consider xcode or equivalent can you make an app and put on the app store maybe but there's so i mean there's so much there that that is that you need for the platform to support that it just doesn't yet or that it does very clunkily so far for developer tools well it wouldn't have to be sandboxed you know it would be the one app that's you know no rules would apply to that like
Marco:
No, but it's so much to bring over and so much change and so much that people don't – if you just think about that idea, if you just throw it out there, you don't realize quite how much more is involved until you really start thinking about, okay, well, let's bring over things like version control and package management and all the compilers and all the linkers and all the libraries and all the tools.
John:
I think they'll all run in four gigs.
John:
Oh, jeez.
John:
I mean, that's – I mean, your compile times will not be good.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
And it's already slow on an iMac to build a big Swift project.
Marco:
It's not fast.
Marco:
That's what I'm saying.
Marco:
Long term, I think we'll probably get there, but I would not expect this to be imminent unless it is only a very cut down version like Playgrounds only.
John:
yeah I agree I had a vision in the audience when Swift was announced and my vision was Xcode for iPad and now just because I had that vision I feel like it's closer than other people do but it doesn't make any sense anyway that wouldn't be your most excited you still haven't said what you'd be most excited about that's feasible
Marco:
I guess it would probably be Mac Pro plus 5K.
Marco:
But I think it's, you know, Apple PR has been so clearly leaking to everybody that there's not going to be any new hardware.
John:
So I think it's still feasible that you can have that as your pick.
Marco:
But I would even argue it's not feasible because Apple PR has basically said it's not happening.
John:
I mean, like, technically feasible.
John:
Like, the reason the App Store changes aren't feasible is because they already did that.
John:
Not because, like, you know... Anyway, if you don't want to pick that, I would have picked for you watch... But you don't wear the watch anymore.
John:
Never mind.
John:
You were so excited about watch faces until you stopped wearing it.
Marco:
Well, and, you know, I would certainly be interested in developing watch faces.
Marco:
But I think I'd be more interested if the watch hardware also changed to have some kind of always-on-screen mode.
Marco:
Because that, like...
Marco:
Now that I've gotten accustomed to regular watches, the one thing that really irritates me when I go back to the Apple Watch for a day here or there is that the face isn't always on.
Marco:
So you glance at it and you have to wait for it to turn on, and sometimes it doesn't.
Marco:
That...
Marco:
adding that amount of friction to every little interaction when you're glancing at your watch when you aren't used to it kind of just grinds.
Marco:
It's irritating.
Marco:
So for me to get back into wearing the Apple Watch and using it for any meaningful amount of time, I would need, I think, two changes.
Marco:
First, I would want custom watch faces, and I want to make my own, of course.
Marco:
And then second, I would want some kind of always on screen.
Marco:
And I just don't think that's feasible this year.
Marco:
Maybe in a hardware event later this year or next year when a new watch is unveiled, maybe then.
Marco:
But honestly, given the state of the watch hardware and software today, it doesn't seem like an always on screen mode is even in the plans.
Marco:
But I don't know.
John:
Well, your inability to pick one is in keeping with your top four performance.
John:
Exactly.
John:
I will partially not pick three options here.
John:
Your feasible announcement that you'd be most excited about.
John:
See?
John:
It's hard.
John:
It's hard.
Casey:
I don't know.
John:
I have answers for both of you.
John:
I already gave Marco's answer.
John:
He should have been the watch face one.
John:
Casey's answer is the new MacBook Pro.
Casey:
No, because I'm not going to get one.
John:
I know, but you would be most excited about it.
John:
You want one.
John:
You know you shouldn't get one.
John:
You'd feel ashamed, but you'd be like, oh, those are awesome.
Casey:
I think that is true, that I would lust for one and I would be excited about one.
Casey:
But I am pretty happy with my Retina 5K life at home.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
sitting here now and famous Casey last words, I don't see anything wrong with my current MacBook pro.
John:
Just wait until you start unlocking your people, seeing people unlock their new MacBook pros with touch ID while you're typing in your password, the lock screen again and again.
Casey:
Truth.
Casey:
Um,
Casey:
This is a very odd choice, and it wouldn't be during the keynote, I'm quite sure.
Casey:
But I'd love to see a better reflection API in Swift.
Casey:
Because I feel like that reflection allows me to solve a whole class of problems.
Casey:
And I include in that...
Casey:
Annotations as well.
Casey:
So in C Sharp, that would be attributes.
Casey:
Reflection and annotations in Swift, I think, would be really, really awesome.
Casey:
And it would help me solve a bunch of problems that I'm struggling to solve today.
Casey:
There are ways around these problems, or there are ways to solve these problems without reflection, without metaprogramming, but it would be easier if I had it.
Casey:
Oh, and I always get them backwards, but covariance and contravariance and generics, better support for that because it's driving me up a wall.
John:
I would say that those aren't feasible only because if they were coming, you would have already seen them on Swift Evolution because those are exactly the type of stuff they would do.
John:
And they talked about them, and I think they are coming, but probably not Swift 3.
Casey:
That's what I want most.
John:
See, we all want things that are not feasible.
Casey:
Right, that's the problem.
John:
But there's so many things that are feasible.
John:
Like, I think all the unannounced hardware is feasible.
John:
Like, they could announce it even if it's not shipping for a long time, right?
John:
Even a new Apple TV or something like that would be feasible, but...
Casey:
oh well i mean i think something that is truly feasible that i think i would be the most amped up about is actually probably the thunderbolt display because it at first i didn't really get the draw but now now that i'm living this life like that we were discussing earlier where i'm really living in the simulator and doing it on a non-retina screen it's pretty friggin miserable and
Casey:
It's miserable enough that I would probably use my own personal money to buy myself a Thunderbolt display or whatever they end up calling it, an external retina display and bringing it to the office and having it just live there because it would make my professional life that much better.
John:
Hear that, Apple?
John:
We all want 5K external displays.
John:
Chop, chop.
Marco:
Yes, please.
Marco:
You know, John, you'd have to buy a new Mac Pro to drive it.
Marco:
Yeah, I know.
Marco:
There is no way your 2008 Mac Pro is driving that thing, GPU inside or not.
Marco:
There's no way it's driving it.
Marco:
You don't even have Thunderbolt 1 ports.
Marco:
You don't even have USB 3.
Marco:
Nope.
John:
Does the current Mac Pro?
John:
Yeah, it does, right?
John:
Yeah, just barely.
John:
It doesn't have USB-C and Type-C connectors.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Thanks to our three sponsors this week, Ring, Hover, and Backblaze.
Marco:
And we will see you next week live from California, where we will be on vacation always.
John:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
John:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C
Casey:
So if you want, this would be a good time for me to talk about my garbage topic at the bottom of the list, my change of opinion.
Casey:
You decide you love the Apple Watch.
John:
yeah margo changes an opinion i love how that's a bullet point yeah so i think i like the ipad now oh god okay mike you just sold the big pro i thought that was like you got two big pros and you sold or did you sell tiffs because she's using the small one now
Marco:
So we got the big pro.
Marco:
Tiff thought she might be interested in it, and it was her upgrade cycle for the iPad, like her upgrade year.
Marco:
And she ended up just not really liking it that much.
Marco:
She loved the pencil support, but it was just so big that she kept her regular-sized 10-inch iPad around also.
Marco:
And having two iPads, if you're not Mike or CGP Grey, it's burdensome and a little bit wasteful in some ways for most people.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
And she decided she said I could have the big pro and she and she we got her one of the new baby pros when it came out because, you know, she wanted a pencil support.
Marco:
We wanted to consolidate.
Marco:
So Tiff got a new baby pro and I got the big one and the big one I didn't have much to do with.
Marco:
You know, it's like I this is not for me at all.
Marco:
So since neither of us were using the big one, we sold it.
Marco:
The Baby Pro, though, one thing I noticed during the brief time I spent with the big one, and then I verified with the Baby Pro, is that A, I do like pencil support occasionally.
Marco:
Not all the time, but occasionally.
Marco:
And B, I really like the speakers.
Marco:
And, I mean, when they first announced the, you know, major upgrade to the speakers for the iPad Pro, I thought, okay, who cares?
Marco:
You know, I guess they had all the space to give to something.
Marco:
I guess shove better speakers in there, fine.
Marco:
I didn't think it was a big deal.
Marco:
When Amazon had their crap tablets a few years ago and they were advertising how great their sound was, I thought, not a big deal.
Marco:
Who cares?
Marco:
It's sound on a tablet.
Marco:
Who cares?
Marco:
But as I mentioned before, I listened to a lot of podcasts through the built-in speakers in my devices.
Marco:
During the brief time that I had the giant iPad Pro, I used it a lot to listen to Overcast in the kitchen and living room.
Marco:
this is a space inefficient approach by the way i i know it's so so i use it a lot for that and especially in the kitchen it was so good to be able to like you know maybe maybe have a recipe displayed or something but just had to have that be so you know so nice and loud and clear with those speakers uh it was so great to have that as like as like a kitchen and and and dining room speaker um plus you could use it as a tray to carry food into the table exactly yeah yeah the
Marco:
I basically fell in love with the speakers of the iPad Pro.
Marco:
Once I was using it constantly as speakers, well, that also meant that solves another problem I always have with iPads, which is they're never where I wanted them to be.
Marco:
It's like, oh, well, I might use the iPad on the couch right now, but it's upstairs because I was using it last night or whatever.
Marco:
It was always not in the same room.
Marco:
Well, I was using it every day in the kitchen, so it was always there.
Marco:
It was always in the same spot.
Marco:
It was right next to a plug.
Marco:
It was always either plugged in or had just been plugged in, so it was always charged, always there.
Marco:
I was using it frequently enough that it was always at hand.
Marco:
So I started using it more.
Marco:
I started using it after we'd cook and maybe go watch some TV before bed.
Marco:
I would bring the iPad over to the couch because it was nearby and browse the web and stuff on there instead of on my phone.
Marco:
It's obviously more pleasant when you have more screen space.
Marco:
If you have one of these devices at hand, you generally want to use it.
Marco:
It's usually better.
Marco:
So I started using it more because my usage pattern had changed because the speakers were so good that I would want to use it constantly for that purpose.
Marco:
So it was always around for other purposes.
Marco:
But the Big Pro is way too big for that kind of use.
Marco:
It's so big that the Big Pro, I think, is really good if you're using it literally as an iPad Pro user.
Marco:
If you're using it for major productivity use, for major multitasking use, uses where you really take advantage of all that screen space.
Marco:
Not just browsing Twitter and the web when you're watching TV or trying to read or something like that.
Marco:
It's not great for that.
Marco:
And so we decided to sell it.
Marco:
And Tiff got a Baby Pro.
Marco:
And then I got a Baby Pro, too.
Marco:
And I sold all my other iPads, all the previous ones.
Marco:
I don't need any of them anymore because I don't really... My app runs on the iPad, but hardly anybody uses it there.
Marco:
So I don't have to worry about, what if I have a bug on the iPad 3?
Marco:
No, that hasn't happened in years.
Marco:
So I don't need to keep all these around.
Marco:
sold every other one we both now have baby pros i've been using it every day i've been using it heavily and it's it's now been i think almost a month it's been a while so i so it's i i now i'm using it more often more per day and it has been longer since i bought it and i'm still using it
Marco:
than any previous iPad I've ever owned.
Marco:
I think it's actually sticking now because it is kind of always at hand because I'm always using it for the sound.
Marco:
I'm always using it for overcast.
Marco:
So because it's always around, that has fixed the main problem I always have with it, which is it's never where I want it to be, so I just don't use it.
Marco:
And so now I'm getting into things like, oh, I wonder how much more I could do on it.
Marco:
Obviously, I'm not going to be programming on it anytime soon.
Marco:
But I could start answering some emails.
Marco:
I'm getting a little bit better at the iPad typing keyboard.
Marco:
I could kind of wait for the iPad to do certain browsing tasks that are better on it.
Marco:
Certain shopping tasks are better on it.
Marco:
It's like...
Marco:
I'm using it now.
Marco:
What other iPad people like about it, I'm starting to see some of these things.
Marco:
Granted, I'm nowhere near the level of real iPad Pros like Federico.
Marco:
But just getting a little taste of it, it's really nice.
Marco:
And I don't think I'm going to stop buying laptops because I like laptops a lot.
Marco:
And when I need a laptop, I really need a laptop.
Marco:
But the Baby Pro especially is so good.
Marco:
And I have my pencil loop on there.
Marco:
I got the same one.
Marco:
Mike had a little stick-on loop.
Marco:
So I always have the pencil.
Marco:
I don't use the keyboard.
Marco:
We have one for plane trips, but I don't leave it on because it's too big and heavy.
Marco:
So just the regular smart cover with the pencil always available.
Marco:
It's just really nice.
Marco:
And I get it.
Marco:
Again, I don't know if this is going to totally replace my portable needs forever, but I get it now.
Marco:
And I'm using it now on a regular basis.
Casey:
You know, it's funny you say that, that the keyboard is only there for like plane trips or whatever, because maybe a week or two ago, I went into the Apple store and very, very briefly played with the Baby Pro's keyboard.
Casey:
And I am a devout iPad mini user.
Casey:
I really love my iPad mini.
Casey:
I've had iPad minis for the last couple of cycles now.
Casey:
And I love the portability of them.
Casey:
I think it's the right size for me.
Casey:
But after having tried that keyboard, that was close enough to my beloved Magic Keyboard that it felt pretty similar.
Casey:
I walked out of that Apple store thinking to myself, maybe I could go full-size iPad again.
Casey:
Which was weird because I have not longed for a 10-inch iPad since I stopped buying them after the iPad 3.
Casey:
But the keyboard was enough to make me think, maybe I do want to go back there.
Casey:
I mean, not to say you're wrong or I'm right or vice versa.
Casey:
Just it's funny that each of us is having our own little thing to bring us back to the iPad or the 10-inch iPad.
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, you know, for me, it was the speakers.
Marco:
And for you, it could be the keyboard.
Marco:
I mean, like, I found the keyboard, the main problem with it is not the feel of the keys.
Marco:
It's actually surprisingly not as crappy as I expected.
Marco:
It's not great, but it's not as bad as I expected.
Marco:
But the big problem for me is just the additional weight of the keyboard.
Marco:
It makes the iPad substantially heavier to just carry around the house and, you know, to just have a round.
Casey:
That's good to know because I didn't pick up this iPad and I really don't need another iPad right now.
Casey:
So any reason I can have not to buy one sounds great.
John:
I never left the iPad.
John:
I'm glad that you're using it for all the things that everyone else is using it for us.
John:
One thing you didn't mention that you might want to try, although it's kind of a shame you probably already played all these games, is a lot of games that you played and enjoyed are even better.
John:
On the iPad.
John:
Like, I remember when I was in my Altos adventure phase, I alternated from playing on the phone and on the iPad, but eventually settled on.
John:
And when I was going for a real serious high score run, the iPad was the place to be.
John:
It just gives you much more room to do stuff and to see things without your fingers blocking stuff.
John:
And you can see the graphics better.
John:
Even, like, you know, games where, you know, where you're just...
John:
there aren't uh reaction based games like uh what do you call it the isometric uh perspective uh thing uh with ida monument valley yeah there you go that one i played that on the ipad too because it just looks it looks better so yeah if there are any games you didn't play that everyone else played and thought was awesome try them on your ipad um and any new games you try uh give them a try on your ipad before you try playing them on your phone because it's a really good game platform for those type of games
Marco:
Yeah, actually, earlier today, I discovered that new game that the humans are from the world of goo people, where you program.
Marco:
Wait, what?
Marco:
What is it called?
Marco:
It's like human something, like the human resource or something like that.
John:
Yeah, human resource department thing.
John:
It's like a programming game.
John:
No wonder Marker likes it.
Casey:
Oh, is this the one that teaches you assembly or something like that?
Marco:
Yeah, it's called Human Resource... The title's cut off, so it's Human Resource something.
Marco:
Human Resource Machine, the chat room says.
Marco:
There you go, yeah.
Marco:
It's the World of Goo people, so I love World of Goo, so I figured... Yeah, I loved World of Goo.
Marco:
I figured I'd give this a shot, even though it's not the same kind of game at all, but I love their style, and I figured I got so much enjoyment out of World of Goo that giving them another five bucks, even if I never even play this game, is totally worth it.
John:
Speaking of, do you own every Tokuboku game in existence?
Marco:
I don't know if I own every one of them, but we certainly own many of them.
Marco:
Adam's iPad is filled with Tokuboku stuff, among other things.
Marco:
Sega Mini is also a big one.
Marco:
Sega Mini makes excellent children's games.
John:
yeah there was there's a profile of them in the latest issue of edge magazine talking about tokoboka and i'm i was always impressed with those in terms of they make so many of them and you think like how can they have so many apps and each one our kids really enjoyed them and uh got a lot of my daughter still plays them from time to time even though she's probably outgrown most of them now that's another good example of a
John:
a whole class a whole line of games that was totally made for and for touch and couldn't exist on other platforms and is just uh really good and of course better on the ipad than on the phone yeah well i'm glad you've joined the ipad uh the ipad age
Casey:
Yep, you and Mike both.
Casey:
John and I never left, but you and Mike were, oh, the iPad sucks.
John:
You left when you went down to that little mini thing.
John:
It's practically like a phone-sized thing.
John:
I feel like you're leaving.
Casey:
Fine.
Casey:
Remember, I don't use a mutant, humongous phone like Mike, speaking of.
Casey:
But no, you and Mike were all poo-poo on the iPad, and suddenly, look who's crawling back.
Casey:
I'm feeling very smug about this.
Marco:
The iPad Pro, the big Pro, was interesting for people who were already into it for the most part.
Marco:
And it got some new people in, but I think it was mostly appealed to people who were already into it.
Marco:
But I think the baby Pro is really what... There's basically no downsides to it at all, unless you need more screen space.
Marco:
Literally everything... What?
John:
the ramp three gigs of ram there's literally no just think of how awesome that machine if that machine came with four gigs of ram it would be unquestionably the best ipad apple has ever such a perfect product like no downsides all upside amazing as it stands the baby pro is practically all downsides no upside you know whatever i just said anyway except for that one little thing so close so close apple
Marco:
I mean, for whatever it's worth, maybe I'm just not using it heavily enough.
Marco:
The amount of RAM has not been a noticeable problem for me.
Marco:
And it is so, so good in like every other way.
Marco:
This is like a really solid release, a really solid version of the iPad.
Marco:
And
Marco:
It has the keyboard.
Marco:
It has the pencil.
Marco:
It has the amazing new screen and the color stuff.
Marco:
Of course, it's still very lightweight and very easy to carry around and very fast.
Marco:
It's so good.
Marco:
I really think if there's any role for an iPad in your life at all, this is an amazing iPad to have.
Marco:
It's so, so good.
John:
i've even the little back case thing has even grown on me remember i said i had like the back cover the silicone whatever they call it and i didn't know if i was going to stick with it now i'm pretty firmly in the camp that i like it i still don't like the little lip around the edge but i do still recognize the lip gives me a little bit of extra grip because the board is too small but the grippiness on the back giving it more security as i rested on like the curved arm of my sofa and stuff and the protection that it adds
Marco:
um i think it probably helps that i went down from the three to this but uh yeah um i don't i don't think i'm taking that that case off i like it cool yeah i'm very happy with just having the front smart cover because it's very small and lightweight and when i'm concerned about the surface on i just put it face down on the cover so it's not like you know scratching the back
Marco:
easy oh what is that that loop thing you should send me a link to that because i've been looking for a way to when i go to wdc if i'm going to bring my pencil with me how am i going to attach it to something sounds like you have a solution to that it is the lecatern 1917 red pen loop hold on i'll give you a link yeah it's it's made to attach pens to notebooks but it works perfectly well on the ipad too here we go
John:
you know you stick it on and you can unstick it really easily you know so if you don't worry about like permanent sticking stick it on what is this we're talking about here how else are you going to attach anything to your ipad i thought what is it i see three of this is three separate ones it's a sticky pad with a little tube that you shove the pen through
John:
I would expect this from Mike with his stickers or everything, but you?
John:
You're sticking things to your iPad?
Marco:
No, I mean, normally I wouldn't stick anything to any of my things because I hate being sticky and I hate having things stuck to my things.
Marco:
But this provides such a good utility that it is really worth it.
Marco:
i'm gonna reject this that's fine you can you can reject it i will enjoy my always available apple pencil i also did the thing where i replaced the the back cap of the pencil with the lightning cable adapter to charge it like i just i keep that on there all the time which is great like i i put the cap in the box
John:
Does that come with it?
John:
Yeah.
John:
I think it's still in the box.
John:
I'd go in the attic to fish that out.
Marco:
Yeah, the one that just has lightning hole on two sides.
Marco:
Now my pencil can always be charged via a nearby lightning cable.
Marco:
And for the very rare case where I would want to charge it from the lightning port on the iPad, then I can take this quote cap off and put it in there for a minute.
Marco:
But it's way more common that I charge it with a cable.
Marco:
So it makes sense to do that cap swap thing.
Marco:
So then it's just always in that mode by default.
Marco:
And you always have that with you.
Marco:
You always have that adapter with you.
Marco:
I wish they would just ship it that way, but I understand why they don't.
Marco:
Because Johnny Ive is just too perfect the other way, even though it doesn't work as well.