Designed by App in Cal
Marco:
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Marco:
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Casey:
And you're going to have like 16 hours in your car.
John:
Oh yeah.
John:
You're going to burn out the butt massager.
Casey:
It's so true.
Casey:
Oh, man, that's funny.
Marco:
There's so many show intros.
Marco:
Should we tell the public when we're actually recording this so that if anything big happens next week that they know?
Casey:
Yeah, we probably should.
Casey:
So today it is June 21, which is a Friday.
Marco:
The longest day of the year.
Marco:
Is it really?
Marco:
By some times, yes, it is the solstice.
Casey:
Ah, right, right, right.
Casey:
So we are recording today because John is traveling next week and we didn't want to leave our beloved fans slash listeners without an episode next week.
Casey:
So we're recording very early and we'll release a week from today.
Marco:
So when Apple buys Nintendo on Monday, we won't know about it.
Casey:
Well, I thought the plan was you were going to buy Nintendo on Monday, then sell it to Apple, and then they would just shut it down and eat it alive.
Casey:
Is that not the plan?
Marco:
Not a bad idea.
Marco:
I mean, that would give us more to talk about, at least.
Marco:
But then John wouldn't be able to talk about it.
Marco:
I would just call you and just talk alone without John.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
That would make him so angry.
Casey:
It would be so funny.
Marco:
I guess somebody bought Nintendo, huh?
Marco:
Anything to say about that?
John:
nope not really not really okay i guess we'll move on let's talk about the mac pro some more john what would you do i mean honestly you'd be so upset i would think i would i would actually write a blog post about that that's how momentous that would be you'd be so angry it would drive you to write a blog post no i'd be so motivated yeah there's so many things i want to write about but it's like i don't have time got it got it got to go back to fretting about my review
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
How's that going?
John:
I'm fretting about it.
John:
Well, at least it's not July.
John:
Yeah, no, that's why I didn't say I'm writing.
John:
I'm fretting about it as like a full-time activity.
John:
I'm still gathering resources and trying to come up with an outline and thinking about, oh, God, look at all the stuff I have to write.
John:
And then also thinking maybe it'll be really short this year.
John:
I don't know.
Marco:
I mean, you've got to figure, like, they're changing less and less in each release as the release time has gotten shorter, right?
John:
Yeah, more or less.
John:
But, like, I don't know.
John:
I'll have to see.
John:
I think it will be shorter.
John:
I think that's been the trend because they have, like you said, they've been doing less.
John:
But you never know when I'm going to go off on some weird tangent.
Marco:
yeah maybe knowing you you're probably not going to make the review shorter it'll just give you more space and time to expand on things that you would have otherwise not gotten not a time to get to well like the 10.6 review i thought that was going to be super short because like apple's coming out up front zero new features like oh this is going to be a short review and it was shorter but it wasn't as short as i thought it was going to be it wasn't like you know a few thousand words less it wasn't like a whole lot shorter
John:
Yeah, and this one I think will be shorter still, but we'll see.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Quantity is not the thing.
John:
Just quality.
John:
I want it to be interesting and good.
John:
So I'm going to concentrate on that, assuming I ever finish fretting and start writing.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
So speaking of shorter things, this might be a short episode because we have a laundry list of miscellaneous topics, but I don't know how much we'll actually get to.
Casey:
Casey, come on.
Casey:
I know.
Casey:
Now that I've stated it's a shorter episode, we're going to go for two hours, so everyone buckle up.
Marco:
Anytime John and Dan would say, oh, this is going to be a short one of hypercritical, I would always immediately take out my iPhone from walking the dog and just look at the timestamp and just see how much.
Marco:
And it's always like 110 minutes remaining or something like that.
John:
We went through this.
John:
My listeners did a good job and did, like, statistical regression analysis to see that me saying it was going to be a shorter show did not, in fact, make the show longer and actually made it slightly shorter.
John:
And I don't know enough about statistics to know whether, like, the statisticians argued amongst themselves whether it was significant or not.
John:
But there was no clear trend of the opposite.
John:
It just seems that way.
John:
It's like, you know, it seems like it because it's the opposite of what you would expect and it stands out in your memory.
John:
But in reality...
John:
They were actually not way longer.
Marco:
I love that both your audience and you know that.
Marco:
That somebody actually went – that's awesome.
John:
Several people, several people, yes.
John:
Someone put the link in the show notes about it.
Casey:
Oh, that's fantastic.
Casey:
All right, so one of the things I wanted to ask you guys what you thought –
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
and i don't know if it has a title it probably does that i'm not aware of but it was a fairly abstract uh black and white kind of almost essay about what apple does in order to design products and to my recollection i don't remember them ever having started with a video and i think we talked about this briefly uh one or two episodes ago but they actually started with a video this year and i thought it was a very interesting video that basically said hey listen
Casey:
The way I interpreted it was, you know, this is how we do our thing, and if you don't like it, tough nuts.
Casey:
And I was curious what you two had to say about that.
John:
They used to start with, you know, the Mac PC ads.
John:
Remember when they started a couple of keynotes with those?
Marco:
Didn't they start last year's keynote with the garage band thing?
Marco:
No, no, no.
Marco:
The guy walking in the woods who was blind and using an iPhone?
John:
No, that wasn't the start.
John:
I mean, the start means, like, lights dim, everyone, you know, gets ready to hear something, and instead of a person walking out on stage, they just play a video.
John:
And I think the only other times they've done that are when they were showing ads, like, you know, the all-Mac PC ads with Justin Long and Hodgman.
Marco:
Well, I mean, you can kind of argue that they're all ads, right?
John:
But like television ads that were going to run on television, they would play that.
John:
Or custom ones where this was not going to actually run on television, but those characters come out.
John:
But the difference about this one is it wasn't supposed to be funny, and it wasn't an advertisement using known properties or showing a product or something.
John:
It was more like a...
John:
mission statement kind of a statement of philosophy or whatever and i thought as i said i think on the first in the podcast we did right after the keynote that that was like okay this is going to be something big like you know like when a video begins with in the course of human events like you know you know like they're gonna well oh my god apple is start opening an apple store on the moon and they're you know whatever like
John:
It's going to be something momentous or significant for the company, or maybe they were buying Nintendo.
John:
Something at that level.
John:
And what followed in the keynote did not live up to that lofty goal.
John:
And so then, in hindsight, the video, which is beautifully produced and very interesting and contains a lot of accurate content about how Apple sees itself and how we see Apple, comes off as pretentious.
John:
Because what they released was great and awesome, but...
John:
That video should have been saved for when they do something more momentous.
Casey:
So you did or did not like it all?
John:
I love the video.
John:
I thought it was beautiful.
John:
It was nicely done.
John:
You understand what it's saying, but I feel like it was out of balance.
John:
It's like you can't...
John:
You can't start with that.
John:
Everyone's like, oh, my God, what is it going to be?
John:
And what it is is great, but not like, you know, I don't know.
John:
I mean, when could Apple have gotten away with that?
John:
They can get away with it at the original Mac intro and probably the iPhone intro.
John:
That's about it.
Casey:
You really think it was overblown?
Casey:
I didn't think it was overblown at all.
John:
Slightly.
John:
It was just slightly overblown.
John:
Not ridiculously overblown, but slightly.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I wouldn't say that either.
Marco:
And by the way, I should point out, the chat room is saying that last year, the Siri kind of comedy stand-up video, that was the intro last year, wasn't it?
Casey:
Yeah, because they did like a little garage band bit.
Casey:
Well, it was like a rim shot.
Marco:
Yeah, it was like Siri's comedy act.
Yeah.
John:
Thanks for that.
Marco:
I believe that was the intro, so I think they're right.
Marco:
Anyway, I don't think this year's intro video was overblown or overstating the case at all.
Marco:
I think
Marco:
I mean, looking at the keynote, right afterwards, we were all excited.
Marco:
And as you said, we all thought it was pretty great.
Marco:
Now, with some time for it to sink in and get a little bit less shiny, looking back on it, I still think it was awesome.
Marco:
I still think it was a really, really great keynote.
Marco:
It was one of the best ones we've had for years.
Marco:
I agree.
Marco:
And there was a lot.
Marco:
Not only was the energy...
Marco:
Really great.
Marco:
And the showmanship was really great with the exception of that weird car demo.
Marco:
But besides that, everything was great.
Marco:
And then what they showed us was also pretty great.
Marco:
You had this revolutionary change in iOS.
Marco:
This...
Marco:
A nice update to OS X with mediocre scale improvements, but a nice update.
Marco:
But the big thing was iOS, and then this surprise Mac Pro, which to most people doesn't matter, but to a few people, including the three of us, it's really interesting and extremely surprising.
Marco:
Plus, better MacBook Air.
Marco:
I think it was a really good keynote.
John:
Yeah, but if you're going to explain your philosophy, the products they introduced were not out of character for the company or shocking or going to knock the industry on its ear or anything like that.
John:
And so that's why it's out of balance a little bit.
Marco:
Maybe iOS 7 might.
John:
I think it would be better if that video was just on their website.
John:
It would be fine.
John:
But using it as a lead-in to introduce a bunch of products that more or less everybody expected and, you know, like that aren't like the original Mac or the iPhone where it's just like nobody saw that coming and it was just out of left field and it far exceeds expectations.
John:
And I don't think it's crazily out of bounds.
John:
It's just a little bit out of bounds.
John:
And I do think the keynote was great.
John:
I think all the announcements were great.
John:
I think it was very impressive, again, except for the car thing.
John:
but you know it's tough to pull that off like because you want all those things they said you want to say those things and it's difficult to say them without sounding a little bit full of yourself because you're telling them why you're great and you have to do it in a way that isn't insulting and it's very difficult to pull that off and i think the only way you can like think different is kind of similar where think different kind of pulled it off because there was no attachment it wasn't lead into any sort of product it was just like pure like this is the philosophy of the company and that didn't sound pretentious that sounded uh
John:
foolhardy, perhaps, because you almost went bankrupt.
John:
You've got nothing.
John:
What the hell do you think you're going to make?
John:
A teal computer?
John:
So what, right?
John:
And in hindsight, it looks good, right?
John:
But here, I'm saying just in the context of using that as the lead-in, they didn't put anything in there that they needed that video.
John:
You could have...
John:
The Johnny Ive videos where he tells you about their philosophy are more product-focused and would match up better with a bunch of product announcements versus the philosophical thing with something revolutionary.
John:
If they're going to enter some new business or something, maybe I can see that.
John:
Anyway, I like the video.
John:
I watch it again.
John:
Every time I watch it, I'm impressed by whoever made this video did an awesome job.
John:
It's very clever and nice and tasteful.
John:
I do like it.
Marco:
Well, wouldn't you also... I mean, the video also sets the stage for iOS 7, specifically.
Marco:
It's specifically about clearing away everything, starting over again, taking away what's unnecessary.
John:
But they had their own iOS 7 intro video, which was also very good, but so much more product-focused, and it kind of hit some of the same points.
Marco:
I think this was like laying the foundation for the iOS 7 video later on, and for us to accept that the iOS 7 design decisions were correct and inevitable.
John:
Here's what I think that video was a lead-in for.
John:
I think it was a lead-in for the Tim Cook era, where this is the first big party for Tim Cook's newly rearranged Apple and what they can do.
John:
And that...
John:
I mean, it wasn't stated as such, but in hindsight, it looks like if you had to say, what was that video about?
John:
Because it wasn't about a new Mac Pro.
John:
I think it was kind of about iOS 7, but the iOS 7 video was more about that.
John:
It was more about...
John:
It's like Tim Cook's thing different.
John:
Not really, but he's saying, here we are.
John:
This is the new Apple, the forestall-less Apple, I guess, the new Tim Cook Apple with something new showing that we really can move on from all the things that Steve Jobs created just to do something great in his absence, something that he didn't foresee and didn't have a hand in.
John:
In hindsight, I think that's what that video will match up best with.
Casey:
See, and what I think... I think what the video did for me was... You know, Apple hadn't said anything since, what, October, November, something like that?
Casey:
What was it, the iPad mini release?
Casey:
Is that right?
Marco:
Yeah, that was the last Apple event.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So this was... To me, it kind of set the stage...
Casey:
Here's Apple.
Casey:
I know we haven't said anything for almost a year now or eight months, whatever the number was.
Casey:
Let's just remind everyone this is how we roll, and this is what we do, and we're going to keep that mindset while we show you all this cool crap with the exception of the weird car demo.
Casey:
And I think it was a really nice way to set the stage.
Casey:
Was it overblown?
Casey:
I mean, I don't think it was, but I can see your point, John.
Casey:
But I think it was all about setting the stage for, you know, this is Apple.
Casey:
We are Apple.
Casey:
This is what we care about.
Casey:
And if you don't like that, shove off.
Casey:
But this is how the next two hours are going to be.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
That's what I thought.
Casey:
Okay, so what about – did you guys watch the video that they did not show during the keynote, which is called Making – or I don't know if it's called Making a Difference One App at a Time.
Marco:
Something like that, yeah.
Casey:
It was something like that.
Casey:
It was like an eight-minute video or something along those lines.
John:
I haven't even watched it.
John:
uh it's interminable it's long it's 10 minutes long but it seems long and tldw but it is i watched the whole thing but it is beautifully produced it is nice it's heartwarming uh but it really depends on your goodwill towards apple to accept the connection between apple and all the good things that they're showing happening in there it's like they are good things but are they necessarily related to apple like
John:
Technology helps people in all sorts of ways, and all sorts of companies are behind that technology.
John:
It's good that Apple's technology helps people in that way, but I don't think it's a distinguishing characteristic that makes Apple stand out.
John:
Unlike the design video, which shows what they put in that design video are...
John:
The ways that Apple is different than most other companies, whereas I think any company that makes a technology product that can be used to help people could have made a video like the one that Apple made there.
John:
Although at least it shows that Apple cares that this is how their products are.
John:
This is what they're thinking of when they're making their products.
John:
They want to see this type of outcome, but it's easy to be cynical about it.
John:
And, you know.
John:
like monsanto could have made the same ad it would have been like damn them this is not really what monsanto is like and with apple like that's kind of what apple's like but on the other hand what technology microsoft could have made the same video their their products are helping people in similar ways you know
Casey:
Yeah, I really liked it.
Casey:
Part of the reason I liked it was because it featured Charlottesville, Virginia, which is just an hour west of here, and I used to live there.
Casey:
But beyond that, I thought it was really touching and heartwarming, much like the blind hiker guy from last year's keynote.
Casey:
I just thought it was well done.
Casey:
And you're right that anyone could have made a video like this, but I
Casey:
I love that Apple cares enough to not only make a video that's like one or two minutes, but they made like an eight or nine minute video all about why and how their devices literally improve people's lives.
Casey:
And I just think it's cool that they even pay lip service to that being a priority, whether or not it is a priority, although I would argue it is given all their accessibility work and things of that nature.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Marco, what did you think?
Casey:
Well, you didn't see the video, so never mind.
Casey:
I didn't see the video.
John:
I don't care about you.
John:
The reason the hiker thing worked for me, I think, is because Tim was there doing the intro and afterwards talking about it to say, this is not just a heartwarming video.
John:
Let me tell you personally from my heart in a convincing way that this is what makes me get out of bed in the morning.
John:
This is what I'm trying to do with the company, and he's the CEO.
John:
That makes that one land more, whereas having this video is kind of out there as a corporate statement.
John:
It's nice and all.
John:
I think it's fine, but especially at 10 minutes long, if you're going to use it as something to represent your company, no one's going to watch that 10-minute long video.
John:
Very few people are, I think.
Casey:
Well, except you and me, apparently.
Casey:
Certainly not, Marco.
Marco:
I haven't even watched it.
Marco:
I have so many Apple videos that I want to watch.
Marco:
I still have eight or nine sessions that I wanted to watch that I didn't get a chance to see.
Marco:
That's another thing I'm doing instead of writing.
Marco:
I felt the entire plane ride home.
Marco:
I was watching sessions.
Marco:
And even the day after I got home, watching sessions.
Marco:
See, Nat, remember we were talking before about how once you leave that week, it's no longer your job to be in those sessions.
Marco:
And so you just never get around to doing it.
Marco:
Well, I'm seeing that now.
Marco:
I have these eight more sessions that I really want to watch, but when's it going to be a good time to do it?
John:
I'm assigning it to you.
John:
It's your job since you don't have any other job.
Casey:
Yeah, you're unemployed.
Casey:
What else do you have to do?
John:
That's right, exactly.
John:
He's supposed to be making an app or something, but I'm saying, no, that job starts in a few weeks.
John:
This week, your job is to watch WRC videos.
Casey:
And then give John the cliff notes for anything related to OS X. No, I've got to watch myself.
Casey:
I know you do.
Casey:
All right, there were a couple other videos I wanted to briefly touch on.
Casey:
The first was, I don't remember if they showed this during the keynote.
Casey:
I believe they did at the very end, but the new commercial designed by Apple in California.
Casey:
And this kind of ties in with the one we mentioned at the beginning, and that was at the beginning of the keynote, where they said at the end of the video, something along the lines of, it's only then we sign our work, and then they flash up Designed by Apple in California.
Casey:
In this other video, they show people just using their products in everyday things and everyday scenarios.
Casey:
And again, at the end, it's Designed by Apple in California.
Casey:
So one of the things you can easily see between these two videos that literally bookended the keynote and then OS X Mavericks, which was in the middle, by the way, I still hate that name,
Casey:
Anyway, all of this is go California, yay California, yay California.
Casey:
And why or when did they get so excited about California?
Casey:
Not to say that's bad before we get a zillion angry Californians, but when did this become a thing?
John:
That's been on the back of their products since jobs came back practically, or maybe even before that.
Casey:
But, I mean, it seems like there's a new emphasis behind it, and I don't know what brought that on.
Marco:
Well, it's less about California and more about made in the USA at this point, I think.
Marco:
I mean, you know, the California pride has always been there.
Marco:
And you're right, that was a lot of jobs right there.
Marco:
But I think at this point, this is them saying, kind of responding to all the Chinese worker controversy kind of things from the last year.
Marco:
Saying, you know what?
Marco:
No, we can bring something to the U.S.
Marco:
And now this is something they can say, especially with the Mac Pro.
Marco:
Now they can really say, look, this is a whole U.S.
Marco:
computer right here.
Marco:
As long as you don't check where the flash RAM was made.
John:
yeah i mean who knows like the what the asic cpus i think are man aren't they manufactured in texas they are but what about all the ram the flash and the d-ram this gets back to what what uh casey just said about like he liked the video because it showed a part where he lived like this this uh you know the silly notion that we have of like attachment to place and sort of you know and you know extension into like jingoism and nationalism of uh
John:
pride in country is really pretty much nonsensical if you think about it for more than 10 minutes uh but it is definitely a real thing so i don't blame them for for playing into it uh but yeah like in in the cynical view is what marco said you can view it as damage control for the chinese factory things or whatever pride in california is no more or less ridiculous than pride in the united states is probably no more or less ridiculous and pride is made you know made on earth like
John:
doesn't really matter where it's made or where you're from or anything like that.
John:
Is it a good product?
John:
Is it not a good product?
John:
Are you treating workers?
John:
Well, you're not treating workers.
John:
Well, uh, you know, our country needs to have a good economy.
John:
So keep the business in our company, not in stone else's country because of imaginary lines or oceans or whatever.
John:
Like it,
John:
that you know i i find that that's why designing california bothers me a little bit because it's like who cares what is it about cal what is it about the borders of california that exists you know for historical reasons that have nothing to do with anything that makes you proud that the people who made it were in california when they made it and perhaps live somewhere else now and perhaps were born somewhere else you know as dented meat said in the chat room i'm so ready to join starfleet apparently
John:
but but yeah no it's like the i don't know uh what they're i don't think the buy i think the buy california takes away from their message because what they are is they're proud that we made this thing and this thing is good in these ways and they show the people using their products and having fun with them and you know it's also beautifully shot and all the people are beautiful and you know like that part of it is a legitimate message like hey we made something nice and our products enhance people's lives so thumbs up right guys uh
John:
That's advertising.
John:
It's fine.
John:
You can see it on Mad Men.
John:
But the geographic part of it, I find a little off-putting, but probably other people don't.
Marco:
Well, California is itself also part of the advertising.
Marco:
And it's not like they chose California just for this, but I think they're using it to their advantage now that they're there.
Marco:
California has a really great reputation among, I think, most people, most Americans especially, of being this really nice place and kind of this cool place and this kind of liberal, hippie, but cool, great weather place.
Marco:
Except for LA, right?
John:
Are we leaving out LA?
Marco:
Who cares about LA?
Marco:
There aren't that many states in the U.S.
Marco:
with that great of a reputation.
Marco:
Where you can say, oh yeah, we're from Minnesota.
Marco:
And you're going to have everyone in the whole country saying, wow, Minnesota?
Marco:
They made that in Minnesota?
Marco:
That's so cool.
Marco:
This isn't a major effect or a major part of their marketing or branding efforts, but...
Marco:
It is a small contributor, and especially in the wake of both the Chinese worker thing and the wake of Samsung becoming this major competitor.
Marco:
This is them saying, you know, don't support that Korean company.
Marco:
We're an American company in California.
John:
Don't you find that slightly off-putting?
John:
Oh, sure.
John:
That's where it starts to get into, you know.
John:
Anyway, I think it's fine.
Marco:
Well, I find it off-putting that all of our politicians have to end everything with God bless America.
John:
Yeah, no, that's a whole other.
Casey:
But you can see why they do it.
Casey:
Send email to Marco, please.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I think, yeah, the California thing, to my memory, came in around the time Jobs came back again and has stayed throughout.
John:
And it's shorthand for we're proud that we did this and they need some way to identify themselves and
John:
And they are a California company founded in California.
John:
And so that's what they've chosen because their employees come and go.
John:
Their executives come and go.
John:
A lot of the people who work there weren't born in California.
John:
Like, they don't have much to hang their hat on.
John:
But insofar as a corporation can be seen as an entity with a place, Apple's place is California.
John:
So that's their shorthand for trying to refer back to themselves and their tribe as a collective entity.
Casey:
Well, and to that end, I mean, when you think of California and you think of business, other than Hollywood and perhaps music, what's your first thought?
John:
Avocados?
John:
I don't know.
Casey:
Fine.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Never mind then.
Casey:
No, but I mean, when I think of a big, well, maybe not a big business, but when I think of business in California, I think Hollywood, I think music, and I think Apple.
Casey:
And and I would I would think that most Americans would agree.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
There's one other video I wanted to ask you guys about.
Casey:
And then perhaps, Marco, you can tell me about something that's cool.
Casey:
But the other one I wanted to ask about is today, which, again, is quite a long time before most of you will actually hear this episode.
Casey:
The trailer for the Ashton Kutcher Steve Jobs movie came out.
Casey:
Did either of you see this two-minute trailer?
Casey:
Please, Marco, tell me.
John:
I did.
John:
I did watch it.
John:
I thought that maybe this is that other Steve Jobs movie, you know, the good one, because didn't this show in a film festival and everyone panned it like a year ago?
Casey:
Well, like Panzerino, I think, said mixed about it.
Casey:
If memory serves, he said it was entertaining, but not great.
John:
I never had high hopes for this movie, and the trailer did not change my mind about that.
John:
I don't think I'll even bother watching it.
Casey:
So our friend Brad that, well, John, you've never met him, but Marco and I and David Smith went and spent some time with Brad the Sunday before WWDC.
Casey:
He had commented on Twitter that the musical selections were just terrible, or the musical editing was terrible.
Casey:
And I think he's right.
Casey:
But I actually didn't think the trailer was bad.
Casey:
I mean, it is clearly taking a lot of creative license with the actual reality of what happened.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
I thought it would be enjoyable.
John:
So here's the question, Casey.
John:
If you were tasked with making a parody of this trailer, how would you do it?
Casey:
I would have made the same trailer.
John:
That's what I'm saying.
John:
It is so overblown.
John:
And ignore the fact that the people who made the movie... Clearly, the people who made this movie do not and cannot understand what it was that was important about all these things that Apple did.
John:
Which is fine, I guess, because if other people don't care, just treat it as fiction.
John:
But even within the realm of fiction, it's so overblown.
John:
Everyone just...
John:
screaming and so emotional and dramatic about things and they're saying nonsense the whole time right because again people they don't understand what was important about the apple what to what was important about the mac what was important about the iphone they have no idea like no earthly clue it's kind of like the steve jobs biography where but even more extreme uh the isaacson biography where if you don't understand what was important about the original mac there's no way you can make a movie about it right
Marco:
Well, but that's not – their goal is not to be accurate.
Marco:
Their goal is to be, like, good to watch, to be an interesting movie.
John:
It's, like, based on a true story, but it's not, like, you know, a retail – I think it's not so much – that's not the case in a lot of other movies.
John:
Like, a lot of political dramas or things about important parts in American history, like –
John:
like the Lincoln movie, which I didn't see, I'm assuming that that movie understood that what was important about the Civil War was like, you know, keeping the Union together and slavery and like the major issues were there and understood, right?
John:
But because it's about technology and it's...
John:
it's not as important as those things that everyone can relate to they don't know what was important what was important about the apple too they're not quite sure uh but they know it was important and they know people got rich from it and they know it has something to do with nerds and electricity and so let's just go you know what i mean whereas no one's like something about slavery but it was slavery i think slavery was bad like i don't remember something about that but anyway that's not really important we just want to show the dramatic scenes of abraham no you have to understand what's behind it otherwise you're not you know you're making a movie loosely based on the civil war and abraham lincoln not really
John:
you know so whatever like i i don't think this movie is going to make any waves it will come and go we will forget it mercifully how about just just a blanket rule that i'm just gonna not even watch any trailers for any of these steve jobs various things just if anybody makes a good one just let me know well this there's the uh the the sorkin one isn't he doing one yes yes he is and he did he did no this is not that he did the face things are there no this is the terrible one with ashton kutcher
Casey:
No, no, no, no.
Casey:
That's not fair.
Casey:
There was one made by Funny or Die that I wasn't dumb enough to watch in its entirety.
Casey:
And I want that hour back.
John:
Isn't it supposed to be a joke?
Casey:
It is.
Casey:
And it was so painfully bad.
Casey:
And the comedy of it is Justin Long is Steve Jobs.
Casey:
Justin Long, the I'm a Mac Justin Long was Steve Jobs.
Casey:
And I should have known from the title, which I think was iJobs, that it was going to be friggin' terrible.
Casey:
And friggin' terrible doesn't begin to describe how bad that movie was.
John:
It's like an SNL skit that goes on for an hour.
Casey:
Yes, but during that terrible time in SNL when it was not even in the realm of funny.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
I feel like John Syracuse right now.
Casey:
I'm so fired up and angry about this.
Marco:
Well, let's take a break from talking about terrible entertainment.
Marco:
Yes, let's do that.
Marco:
To talk about good entertainment...
Marco:
This episode is sponsored by Audible.
Marco:
They're the leading provider of downloadable audiobooks.
Marco:
They have over 100,000 titles in virtually every genre.
Marco:
So if you want to listen to something, Audible has it.
Marco:
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Marco:
You can listen to them on iPhones, iPads, computers, Kindles, lots of things.
Marco:
Even the old iPods, they even work on those.
Marco:
They're offering ATP listeners a free audiobook along with a 30-day trial.
Marco:
Go to audiblepodcast.com slash ATP to take advantage of the special offer.
Marco:
Get a free audiobook, free 30-day trial, audiblepodcast.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Now, Audible likes if their hosts have something to recommend, a certain book.
Marco:
It helps to get started because then you know, like, okay, what do you want your free audiobook to be?
Marco:
So do you guys have any great recommendations of great audiobooks you've heard recently?
Yeah.
Casey:
I have recommendations of books I've read.
Casey:
I've not heard them on audiobooks, but I'm confident that they are excellent.
Casey:
I have two.
Casey:
The first one, which everyone will judge me for, is the new Dan Brown book, which I believe is called Inferno.
John:
Judge, judge, judge.
Casey:
I know.
Casey:
I know.
Casey:
So I actually quite like that one.
Casey:
But I'm a sucker for Dan Brown books.
Casey:
They're easy reads.
Casey:
They're exciting.
Casey:
And so I like that.
Casey:
The other one is a book that my wife recommended, which is called The Art of Racing in the Rain.
Casey:
And it was a little bit on the emotional side and a little less on the racing side.
Casey:
But there was enough racing to keep me excited and entertained.
Casey:
And I actually really like that one as well.
Casey:
So I would recommend both of those.
Casey:
That's nice.
Casey:
That's so you.
Casey:
Yeah, I know.
John:
So here's what Audible is good for.
John:
I would never recommend someone read this recommendation, I'm going to say, but on audio, this is the ideal place for it.
John:
So what...
John:
What I did when I was looking at this, I went to the Audible icon website and I searched for Stephen King, who's one of my favorite authors.
John:
Again, feel free to judge.
John:
And I got 145 results, which I guess doesn't surprise me because he's got a lot of books.
John:
But they have, I mean, I don't know if they have all of them, but they have a lot.
John:
And what I'm going to recommend is the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, which is like a gazillion pages.
John:
And if I line them up on the shelf in hardcover and I said, oh, you should really read this book series, you'd be like, okay, whatever.
John:
There's no way I am reading that.
John:
Because it's just too much.
John:
You can recommend one book and like, oh, maybe I'll read it and see if I like it.
John:
But recommending a seven book series that took place basically over the course of my entire life from, you know, from 1970s and it ended in the 2000s.
John:
Right.
John:
But an audio, they have every single one of these an audio.
John:
And if you're on a long car trip or you're going to be traveling or you're just, you know, going to listen to it over the summer at the beach or when you're out mowing the lawn, you just get every single one of the seven books and just plow through them.
John:
And that is probably the only way most people are ever going to read a multi-thousand page epic like The Dark Tower.
John:
We haven't done the Incomparable podcast about this series yet.
John:
We will eventually.
John:
I think it's great, even when it goes off the rails a little bit.
John:
I think it all comes together in the end.
John:
So that's my recommendation.
Marco:
And this is also, I would like to say that one reason I do like audiobooks, especially, first of all, you know, traveling in cars and everything, it's awesome for all that.
Marco:
But one thing I like about them is I actually like when a lot of books are abridged.
Marco:
Because a lot of books need to be abridged.
John:
No, I hate when they're abridged.
John:
I was going to specifically mention these dark tar ones are unabridged, which I like.
John:
But I guess Audible has both.
John:
So if you're the kind of person who doesn't want to hear all the words in the book, then...
John:
They have that for you, but I highly recommend the unabridged show title.
John:
There you go.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Well, thank you very much to Audible for sponsoring this episode of ATP.
Marco:
To get a free audiobook and 30-day trial, go to audiblepodcast.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Thanks a lot.
Marco:
All right, so what's next?
Casey:
All right, so the other thing I wanted to ask you guys about, and perhaps more, Marco, than anyone else since you haven't done any of your other homework, is what do you suspect people will do?
Casey:
And I think we've touched on this briefly, but what do you suspect app developers will do with regard to dropping support of old versions of iOS when iOS 7 comes out?
Casey:
I feel like we've glanced off the outer atmosphere of this topic, but I think there's more...
Casey:
to be said.
Casey:
So let's suppose that you haven't sold everything that you own, and let's suppose you still had at least one popular app, be that Insta something else or Instapaper or whatever.
Casey:
What do you think you would do?
Casey:
I mean, you've said in the 300 other podcasts you were on this week that you're probably going to stick with iOS 7 for this new thing.
Casey:
Definitely.
Casey:
But what do you think you would do if you had a successful existing iOS app?
Marco:
Hmm.
Marco:
That's a really good question.
Marco:
Because, yeah, obviously, I think if you're making a new app and you have no legacy to support, I would say no question, make a brand new one and require iOS 7, period.
John:
No question?
John:
No, you can't say no question.
John:
But say you're EA and you're going to release a game.
John:
You've got to support iOS 7.
John:
So you're talking like an independent developer, like a one- or two-person shop, making an application.
John:
It's fantastic.
John:
Yeah, then they should go iOS 7 only.
Marco:
And especially I am also referring to applications where they aren't custom making most of their entire interface.
Marco:
Like, you know, a game has usually an entirely custom interface that doesn't use any standard widgets or anything, at least in most cases.
John:
But even out of game, say Evernote didn't exist, but they formed a company six months ago, and they're about to come out with their first product.
John:
It's going to be called Evernote.
John:
It's a note-taking type of thing.
John:
I would still say don't make it iOS 7 only.
John:
I think that is a luxury that you have if you know that – well, you'll get into this, I'm sure, eventually, because the other side of this coin is –
John:
You can stand up from the pack by being iOS 7 only and being the only app that accurately links up with iOS.
John:
But, you know, I guess Microsoft Office would be another example of it.
John:
Even though their new iOS Office is not all that impressive.
John:
If Microsoft Office came out like the real Microsoft Office, not just like a SkyDrive application that lets you view and minimally edit apps...
John:
They have to support iOS 6.
John:
They can't say, oh, no, Microsoft Office for iOS 7 only because that offers them no advantage and offers them mostly disadvantages.
John:
So it's not quite as universal, I think, as you're saying.
John:
But for you, it definitely is universal.
John:
And for lots of other people, it's a way to stand out from the pack because if you are the first to-do app that is truly iOS 7 native in look, feel, and functionality, you stand out more than if you just make another to-do app that works on iOS 6 and 7.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, and part of it also is about why your app exists, right?
Marco:
If you are somebody like Evernote or like Instagram or Twitter, you know, like a big web service where your primary business is not selling your app for a few bucks.
Marco:
Your primary business is this big web service, especially if it's something social where you need to have as many people as possible, right?
Marco:
then you should be compatible with as many versions as possible.
Marco:
Then you might still need to run an iOS 5.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
Probably not 5, but you at least couldn't go 7 only so soon because that would really hurt your bottom line to lose all those free users.
Marco:
That would hurt the bigger product too much probably for a while.
Marco:
Similarly, if you're that kind of company, you should probably also have an Android app and a Windows Phone app and even a Windows 8 app
Marco:
just to get – because you need to be everywhere, right?
Marco:
But for most people, most iOS developers are in one of two situations.
Marco:
Either they're doing contract work for somebody else, which is, I would assume, based on just anecdotal evidence and talking to people everywhere, I would assume that contractors are probably the bulk of the people programming for iOS, right?
Marco:
I would – if not the majority, I bet they're a massive portion.
Marco:
Anyway, so if you're contracting for somebody else, you might not be able to make this choice or at least not yet or you might not be able to be that aggressive with it.
Marco:
So that will just depend on your client and your business needs.
Marco:
But if you're in the segment of developers like what I usually do, which is you sell an app for money in some form, whether it's the magazine with an app purchase or something else with an app purchase or whether it's a few bucks up front for the app like Vesper, Instapaper, that kind of stuff.
Marco:
If you're in that business where you need to make money from the app and you're better off having a better app that people will talk about and think is worth money and you're better off targeting people who will spend money on an app, then not only does that weight you more towards newer devices and people who upgrade quickly anyway –
Marco:
But then you really can stand out by, as you said, you really can stand out by having a really, really nice iOS 7 app from early on in that OS's release cycle.
Marco:
So if you're in that kind of situation...
Marco:
And obviously, I think it's very important to recognize whether you are or not.
Marco:
But if you're in that kind of situation where you can benefit from having a really great app for the new OS, and you're targeting people with money, then I think it's very safe to require it within about a month of the launch.
John:
I think one thing everyone can agree on, assuming Apple's numbers are accurate, and I have no reason to doubt them, is that it's probably safe for everyone if you're making a new application to drop iOS 5.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
Because 6, 93%, it doesn't matter who you are, that's safe at this point.
Marco:
unless you're targeting the iPad, then it's a little bit less safe.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I guess if you have an app that's iPad only, it's specifically targeted to people who are likely to have old iPads, but you know, but 90, like it's not going to get any safer than that.
John:
When it's like, when are you going to have a higher number than that in adoption?
John:
As a lot of people were pointing out on Twitter today, or maybe it's just one person I cannot keep track before I read these things.
John:
Like,
John:
iOS 7 probably won't be like that because iOS 6 stretched back pretty far, like a surprisingly far amount down to lower, crappier devices, whereas iOS 7 draws the line a little bit closer up.
John:
And so we'll have to wait for those old devices to age out, and it will probably be a long, long time before iOS 7 or greater has.
Marco:
That's not true.
John:
You don't think so?
John:
No, no, no.
John:
I'm thinking specifically of my cruddy iPod Touch that runs iOS 6 and totally shouldn't.
Casey:
The 3GS?
John:
No, I'm saying... 3GS is the other example that it could run iOS 6, but, you know...
John:
What does 7 go down to, though?
John:
It goes down to the iPhone 4.
Marco:
It supports everything that 6 does except the 3GS and that iPhone 4 cord touch.
John:
And any iPod touch except for the most recent.
Marco:
Right, yeah.
Marco:
The one that was based on the iPhone 4 internals.
Marco:
It does not support that one.
Marco:
But it supports all the recent ones, which is everything that's been for sale except for the cheapest one until two weeks ago.
John:
Well, the only iPod Touch it supports is the absolute most recent one, right?
John:
It doesn't support any of the nine.
Marco:
Yes, but that's a little bit distorted because they skipped a year of the iPod Touch, which, as you know.
John:
Maybe my view of things is also skewed because I'm an iPod Touch household.
John:
So it seems to me that it's like if they came out with Mavericks and the only Macs it ran on are the absolute latest model that they're still currently selling.
John:
In each product line, and you feel that way.
John:
But we'll see.
John:
The proof is in the pudding.
John:
How well does it run is what really matters.
John:
Because I wish I had not upgraded my old touch to iOS 6 because it chugs.
John:
And so, yeah, it can run it.
John:
And I was initially happy that it was supported.
John:
And I guess I probably still am because there are probably a lot of apps that are iOS 6 only.
John:
At least I can run them.
John:
But it is not happy at all.
Marco:
Yeah.
Yeah.
Marco:
So yeah, I think 7 cuts off about the same number of people, probably as 6 did.
Marco:
If you're not an iPod Touch user.
Marco:
Well, but if you're an iPad user, it cuts off nothing.
Marco:
So maybe that balances out.
Marco:
Anyway, I'm not that worried about cutting off new devices for 7.
Marco:
Because I don't think it's substantially different than every other OS release in that regard.
Yeah.
Marco:
So yeah, I don't know.
Marco:
And I think we are going to see some people holding back because they don't like the changes.
Marco:
Just like some people held back because they heard about maps or whatever on 6.
Marco:
Or their jailbreaks don't work until a certain date afterwards or something like that.
Marco:
Those are all going to be small slices.
Marco:
And they're all going to add up to something significant, but they're all going to deteriorate over time.
Marco:
Once there's a jailbreak out for 7, if there isn't already, there might already be one.
Marco:
But once there's a jailbreak out, then one of those big slices goes away.
Marco:
Once there's – and to various degrees of tethering for the jailbreak, then everything all changes.
Marco:
Once most people get a little more comfortable with the idea of how it looks, then another slice starts falling away.
Marco:
once a new device comes out that replaces something that was old and unsupported, like maybe when the next generation of iPod Touch comes out, possibly this fall, who knows, maybe then some of the old iPod Touch users who can't run the new one, maybe they upgrade.
Marco:
And so then that slice falls away.
Marco:
And that's always what happens with every release.
Marco:
There's always these segments of people who either can't or won't run the new OS for a limited amount of time until either they change devices, their old device dies, or some condition changes that was holding them back.
Casey:
So the way you're talking, it almost sounds like if you still had Instapaper, you would make it iOS 7.
Marco:
Well, no.
Marco:
Instapaper still doesn't require iOS 6.
Marco:
Instapaper, I was set on requiring 5 for a while.
Marco:
I forget when I started requiring 5, but it was before 6 was out, but not by that much.
Marco:
I think a few months before 6 came out.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
With the magazine, I was able to require 6 because I just didn't care, and I wanted all the new stuff, and I wanted to use Avenir next without having to pay for it for iOS 5.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
But again, I think... I mean, there's a few different factors here, right?
Marco:
Obviously, again, if you don't need tons and tons of people necessarily, if you just need good app sales, that's different.
Marco:
If Instapaper was a brand new app being released today, I would probably require... Well, today I'd require six, but...
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I think if it already required 6, and therefore if it had already cut off all the iPad 1 people, then I wouldn't have that much of a problem requiring 7 within about two months of 7's release.
Casey:
But you also have to consider that the fallback, or the... I can't think of the word I'm looking for, but in order to support both iOS 7 and iOS 6, it stands to reason it's a lot more challenging than simultaneously supporting 6 and 5.
Casey:
Well, not necessarily.
Marco:
I mean, it really depends, right?
Marco:
The magazine supports 7 with a very, very small code change.
Marco:
It's literally just like it's hidden under the status bar accidentally, so you've got to change that.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
That's a very small change.
Marco:
And you can conditionally do that.
Marco:
If I'm running on 7, do this.
Marco:
Otherwise, do this.
Marco:
If there's few enough of those conditions, that's manageable.
Yeah.
Marco:
I think the big problem with trying to support 7n6 at the same time isn't necessarily the code complexity, because you can make that work.
Marco:
For the most part, you can deal with that.
Marco:
The big problem is by not fully adopting 7's new interface stuff.
Marco:
your app will look old and feel old.
Marco:
That's the big problem.
Marco:
It's not about code.
Marco:
Well, it would be about code if you actually need to rewrite.
Marco:
If you write two separate interfaces, then it is about code.
Marco:
Please don't do that.
Marco:
But if it's just about we have to work on both, then what you're going to have is an iOS 6 app that happens to be compatible with 7.
Marco:
And it's going to look and feel like an iOS 6 app for the most part.
Marco:
You'll get the new bar styles once you compile it for 7 and stuff.
Marco:
But
Marco:
You won't have any of the new navigation stuff, and it'll be a lot harder for you to add that in to an existing code base that has to also run on 6.0 all the time.
John:
There's a potential pitfall in this, though, that you could also end up with, to use an OS X analogy, an application full of drawers.
John:
Do you remember?
John:
Maybe that was before your time.
John:
Do you remember the drawers in OS X?
Marco:
Yeah, like that was very heavily used in the 10.3 days.
John:
It was like one of their flagpole UI elements.
John:
They said, here's Mac OS X, and it's got a thing called Sheets that come down from the window.
John:
That was a new element.
John:
It's got this thing called the Dock.
John:
That's new.
John:
It's also got this thing called drawers.
John:
And the mail application, Apple's mail application, originally featured a drawer.
John:
And everybody said, oh, I'm going to have these drawers in my application.
John:
So any kind of application that would today have a sidebar ends up with a drawer.
John:
And drawers ended up being not such a great idea.
John:
And so all these people are like, I'm going to be a native application.
John:
I'm not going to be a carbon application where I'm going to use it.
John:
It's going to be cocoa.
John:
And I'm going to get to use drawers and do all this stuff.
John:
And look, and I'm native.
John:
And then everyone's like, yeah, no, not so much on that drawer thing.
John:
And then you're stuck with an application with drawers.
John:
And you go, oh, I got to change this to a sidebar.
John:
So we don't know what is the equivalent of drawers.
John:
If anything, maybe there's no equivalent of drawer in iOS 7.
John:
Oh, I would say Dynamics.
John:
There might be.
John:
Yeah, there might be something in there that's like that, that seems like a good idea, and everyone jumps in the bandwagon and says, oh, look at this, I'm native, I'm a real iOS 7 application, and then everyone goes, ooh, actually not so great, and then you're forced to rewrite parts of your UI because that entire interface element or some aspect of it falls out of favor or is determined to...
John:
not be a good idea not not that that argues against doing it you really should go whole hog into ios 7 because you know someone's got to find out if there are any drawers to continue to torture this analogy lurking you know you know the only way you're going to find out is people make real applications using the system that apple has devised and we'll find out what works and what doesn't right
Casey:
Yeah, I think if I were to wager a guess, I think what will happen is a lot of these big apps, say like Evernote, maybe that's a little too big, but take Instapaper, for example.
Casey:
Maybe they'll try to dance the, you know, we'll still look like iOS 6 for the most part.
Casey:
We're not going to look like the fancy new iOS 7 thing.
Casey:
And I don't think that's going to work for very long.
Casey:
I think that
Casey:
That even your average customer is going to say, why does this look so old?
Casey:
Why doesn't it look better?
Casey:
And I suspect that people will hedge in the direction of not requiring iOS 7.
Casey:
And then, Marco, I think you'll end up right, that people will quickly end up requiring it after just a couple months.
Marco:
And also, it's going to take a little while for developers to realize what they should do under iOS 7.
Marco:
This is why I've said as soon as we get beta 2, which actually might be before this podcast is released, but as soon as we get beta 2, I'm installing it on my main phone.
Marco:
because I need to start learning it.
Marco:
And I have it on this 4S, but I hardly ever use the 4S for anything because it has no data plans.
Marco:
It's basically an iPod Touch, but I have an iPhone.
Marco:
So it's never in my pocket.
Marco:
I'm never using it.
Marco:
I need to immerse myself in iOS 7 as a user so I can start to understand how my app should be.
Marco:
And it's going to take developers a while to get into that, I think.
Casey:
Do the 4S and the 5 have the same size sim?
Casey:
I don't remember.
Marco:
I'm not sure.
Marco:
I guess I could pop it over if they do.
Casey:
That's what I was going to say is if it were me, I mean, I don't have a 4S.
Marco:
But it's so chunky and the screen's so short.
Casey:
Oh, it's so terrible.
John:
The short screen is the one that's going to kill you.
John:
But I still like the 4 design better than the 5 design in terms of like an object design.
John:
But yeah, the short screen, you're like, you can't go back once you get the taller one.
John:
It's going to be the same way when the iPhone Plus comes out.
Marco:
By the way, the chat is correcting us that actually know they're not the same SIM size.
Casey:
Oh, then you won't have to suffer through the small screen then.
Casey:
Damn.
Casey:
Keep in mind that my carry phone is a 4S, you spoiled jerks.
Marco:
That's all right.
Marco:
You'll probably upgrade this fall, right?
Marco:
Are you on a two-year cycle?
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
It'll be fine.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
We have a second sponsor this week.
Marco:
This is a new sponsor.
Marco:
It's called Transporter.
Marco:
And you might have heard about this from other tech podcasts because they're sponsoring all of my favorite shows, so you probably have heard of them already, but we're going to tell you about them anyway.
Marco:
This is Transporter.
Marco:
So here's the idea.
Marco:
Sharing the occasional photo, movie, or document online is simple enough, but trying to share and protect entire collections of files is far from simple.
Marco:
There are solutions out there to do this, but most of them are cloud solutions.
Marco:
They require either recurring fees or a lack of privacy or just a lot of complexity.
Marco:
Transporter is special
Marco:
And so all your data is stored directly on the transporter's hard drive.
Marco:
It's only shared with people you specify, and so it's completely private, unlike most cloud services.
Marco:
And best of all, it's really, really easy to use.
Marco:
You can just send an invitation to somebody that you want to share a folder with or anything, and they accept it, and that's it.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
Obviously, there's an obvious comparison here to Dropbox.
Marco:
And what I love about Transporter is that they are not afraid for us to talk about Dropbox.
Marco:
They aren't afraid to themselves talk about Dropbox and how they compare, because obviously one question is, why not just use Dropbox?
Marco:
They attack this question head-on because they are confident in their product to say there actually are a lot of advantages here.
Marco:
So one of the biggest advantages is that you own and control the hardware.
Marco:
And that gives you a level of control and privacy that you really can't get with most other services, including Dropbox.
Marco:
And anytime data is transmitted, you can have two transporters that share a folder.
Marco:
So the files will sync every time you modify something.
Marco:
Or you can have a transporter at home and be somewhere like on your iPad or your laptop and pull files off of it using one of their apps.
Marco:
What's great about this is the file never passes through Transporter servers.
Marco:
And all data along the way is encrypted end-to-end.
Marco:
And only you have the key.
Marco:
And it's only stored locally in those app storage.
Marco:
So it's never transmitted over the internet.
Marco:
Nobody at Transporter, nobody on their servers has access to the data.
Marco:
Nobody has the keys over there.
Marco:
Their staff can't read your data.
Marco:
If they get some kind of weird government request, they can't do anything because they can't read the data.
Marco:
It's really great end-to-end encryption.
Marco:
So it's a level of privacy and control that a lot of businesses need and a lot of people feel safe having.
Marco:
So Transporter is sold in three different configurations.
Marco:
You can get one empty for $199.
Marco:
It can use any 2.5-inch hard drive, so you can supply your own drive, and you can also upgrade these later.
Marco:
Or you can get a 1TB model for $299 or a 2TB model for $399.
Marco:
Anyway, to learn more, go to filetransporter.com slash ATP.
Marco:
And they have a special deal for all of you wonderful listeners.
Marco:
If you buy them from their online company store at filetransporterstore.com, you can use the coupon code ATP, all lowercase, after you select the model that you want to buy, and you get 10% off.
Marco:
And this is pretty good.
Marco:
You know, 10% off the 2TB model is $40.
Marco:
So that's a lot of money off.
Marco:
So go to filetransporter.com slash ATP to learn more about this cool thing.
Marco:
Or you want to buy one directly with our coupon code, go to filetransporterstore.com and use coupon code ATP.
Marco:
Thanks a lot for the transporter.
Casey:
Yeah, I should say that they sent, apparently I'm their favorite because they sent me a demo unit to play with.
Casey:
And I have never really played with network attached storage before.
Casey:
And this thing was set up pretty much immediately.
Casey:
And it is basically private Dropbox in the best possible way.
Casey:
It really is pretty nice.
Casey:
And aren't they coming out with a new version of their software?
Casey:
Am I making that?
Marco:
Yes, there's a 2.0 version.
Marco:
It might be out by the time this podcast airs.
Marco:
I spoke with them today, and they think it might be.
Marco:
They're storage people, so they're very conservative with what they release.
Marco:
They want to make sure it's stable and everything like that.
Marco:
So, yeah, there's going to be this big 2.0 version that makes the software even better and gives you a lot of the conveniences that the Dropbox integrated software does with things like Finder integration and things like that.
Marco:
Also worth pointing out is that these capacities, I mean,
Marco:
to get two terabytes on Dropbox, you're going to end up paying quite a lot.
Marco:
And because this is all your local storage, they can give this to you.
Marco:
And there's no recurring fee for the service.
Marco:
You buy the enclosure, and then just the price of the enclosure covers lifetime service from their servers to do the relaying and coordination of the handshaking and the DNS stuff for your app to be able to find your server.
Marco:
your transporter and everything.
Marco:
So there's no monthly fees.
Marco:
You could buy the enclosure up front and you're set.
Marco:
So anyway, really great product.
Casey:
It's really nice.
John:
It really is.
John:
Before we move on, I have one brief thing to say about the transporter.
John:
I know a lot of nerds who hear about this, and I think the first time I heard about it on a podcast ages ago thought like –
John:
It sounds like a step backwards because it's like, well, Dropbox, everything's in the cloud.
John:
I don't have to worry about storage anymore.
John:
And then these people want to sell me a hard drive in a box.
John:
Like, didn't we already do that?
John:
Like, I'm removed on from having a hard drive in a plastic box or whatever.
John:
But, you know, as I've learned more about the product and looked at it, like...
John:
What I do is I fast forward in my mind like 10, 20 years and what got me is watching the video on their site where they show like, you know, they're always doing these videos where they show a nice house with transporters all over and everyone's work desk has a transporter on it or whatever.
John:
So if you think about these things are already pretty small.
John:
Like if you look at them, you know, it's a two and a half inch drive.
John:
They're already pretty small, but shrink these things down in 10, 20 years to be like similar capacities, but now they're the size of a thumb drive.
John:
And like they barely need any energy or maybe they like get all their energy wirelessly or something like that and have way more of them.
John:
And that is actually like more of the future because instead of having a single central service using like Amazon S3 as its back end or whatever, you have a real truly completely distributed system.
John:
where everyone's house is just littered with these little things that deal with their storage, and they're all redundant and talking to each other and completely secure, and there is no central point of failure.
John:
And people are in control of their own data because they control, oh, I put these three at home, these four at work, these up in the vacation house or whatever.
John:
And your own data, you get all the benefits of a cloud where you can get at it anywhere, and it's redundant, and you don't have to be like, oh, my power went out of my house, but I still have access to my work transporter, and it's synced with my home run or whatever.
John:
And that actually sounds more like the sci-fi books where...
John:
It's like a distributed network of completely independent little tiny storage pods instead of relying on a single company to do your cloud hosting stuff.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
And plus, you get one of these at home, one of these at work.
Marco:
That's going to be way cheaper than having two terabytes of S3 storage that you have to pay for every month.
John:
Yeah, and it might actually be faster, too.
John:
Dropbox occasionally gives me data rates that I know are not anywhere close to maxing out my Fios connection.
John:
And, you know, I don't know if they're throttling it or if S3 is cranky or if I'm talking to a server in Seattle and it's far away from me and it's a lot of hops.
John:
But I'm like, you know, even just like waiting for these, you know, the audio files to upload to you, they're not going at the speed of my upload connection.
John:
Whereas if we both had transporters, like the only thing, you know.
Marco:
That's a great example because that's one of the problems I have with a lot of online backup services and things like that is that I have this awesome fat Fios connection and a lot of services can't accept my files fast enough.
Marco:
That's one of the reasons why previous sponsor Backblaze, why I like them so much, because Backblaze can actually accept my uploads really quickly and usually as fast as I'm willing to send them, whereas a lot of other services can't do that.
Marco:
But yeah, this is even better.
Marco:
This is just going direct from your pipe at home to wherever you're requesting it from.
Marco:
Anyway, moving on.
Marco:
Thanks to the Transporter.
Casey:
Thank you very much, and thanks for sending at least one of us a demo unit.
Casey:
I really do like it.
Marco:
I think pretty much anything called the Transporter is cool, because you had the movies, right?
John:
I mean, that was... When you Google for it, the movie isn't the number one hit, but they're the number two, so they're doing pretty well.
John:
That's pretty good.
Marco:
That was a very, very popular movie series.
Marco:
It's so bad.
Casey:
It was entertaining.
Casey:
It was bad.
Casey:
It was.
Marco:
It is like the pinnacle of bad entertaining movies.
Marco:
And Jason Statham, is that how you say his name?
Marco:
He is in so many bad entertaining movies.
Marco:
But I think the transporter, especially the first one, is just like the best example of this category.
Casey:
But didn't he use Audis the whole time?
Marco:
So we can't watch it.
Marco:
Yeah, I believe they were A8 with the W12.
Casey:
I'm just kidding.
Casey:
Yeah, they were all the big Audis if memory serves.
Casey:
I only saw the first one, I think, and it was an A8 if memory serves.
Marco:
Yeah, but it had the W12 engine, I believe, so it was like the souped-up A8.
Marco:
Yeah, whatever.
Casey:
Anyway, I have another couple things we can talk about, but I've been Captain Dictator, so do you guys have something you would like to share?
Casey:
John?
John:
Did I complain about the iOS 7 calendar already?
Casey:
No, you did not.
John:
Like, I had this in my mind as soon as I saw the keynote.
John:
And I was like, well, it's just a little thing, not a big deal.
John:
It's a beta, whatever.
John:
But it's just been gnawing at me.
John:
And then I always thought, well, maybe I already complained about it.
John:
But anyway, if this is a repeat, I apologize.
John:
I'm old.
John:
I'm senile.
John:
And blame the other two for not reminding me that I already talked about it.
John:
So in the Google Docs file that I know you all constantly have open, there's a...
John:
a link to an apple insider article that has the picture i want uh that i'm pretty sure was shown publicly so we're not breaking any any day but anyway you can just go to appleinsider.com uh and you know the link will be in the show notes and do you guys have this picture up now yeah i got it took me a while to figure out how to click a link from google docs or you can just like you know marco can just pull up his ios 7 device and look at the calendar right but look at the middle picture of the calendar showing the month view i think i complained about it on twitter maybe that's what i'm remembering here you see that you see that the month view mm-hmm
John:
Like we were all in the sessions and heard about the philosophy of iOS 7.
John:
And even in the keynote, they talked about it, about, you know, clarity and deferring to the content, not having a lot of Chrome getting in the way.
John:
What's important about this?
John:
I just want to see this stuff.
John:
And so a good example of that is the red dot on the number 17 in the screenshot showing you today is the 17th.
John:
You look at the screen, you can immediately find what day today.
John:
It's not like a subtle gray highlight or a little tiny underline.
John:
It's like, boom, red circle.
John:
Today is the 17th, right?
John:
Not a lot of vertical lines, you know, separating anything.
John:
And it's like very clean.
John:
The numbers are laid out there.
John:
But to me, and this happens to me, lots of calendar apps on the Mac, on, you know, in menu bar icons, anywhere.
John:
The most important thing, especially in stupid outlook for the Mac, the most important thing for me to know is what the hell month am I looking at?
John:
that's really important to me like oh don't you know what the current month is if you see the current day don't you always know what the no i don't always know what the current month is especially when it's on around month boundaries or have we crossed over and stuff and if you're paging through and you're not on the page with today what month am i what month am i looking at that is super important that is like the most important piece of content on this page with the possible exception of what today's day is but even today's day is meaningless if you don't know what month it is and look how they treat the month in the month view on the calendar
John:
Do you see where it is in the screenshot?
Marco:
I'm looking at the old calendar app on my phone next to this to see for comparison.
John:
I don't know if it's better or worse than the same.
Marco:
No, the old one, there's a second title bar below the main bar, and it just says in big, bold letters, June 2013.
John:
And this one says, Jun.
John:
Jun.
John:
It does not say June.
John:
It has the three-letter abbreviation.
John:
And it's like, of all the content on this page, it should be just gigantic and bold and not abbreviated, right?
Marco:
Well, also, it's going to change positions as you flip through the months.
John:
Yes, because it's like I was asking people on Twitter, why in the world?
John:
Like, this is so in conflict with their stated philosophy.
John:
Like, I think they even brought this up when they're talking about the philosophy, but like...
John:
defer to the content the content is king we really just want to see people just want to see their content and the photos like look we want to see your photos and here i want to see what the freaking month is like oh well that's not so important let's we're going to abbreviate it because it's more important for us to attach it right above the number one in the month and you're right that it will not only is it small not only is it not emphasized like it's even less distinct than the back button for crying out loud it's going to move on every single page because if the first day is a friday or thursday or wednesday it's going to move around and continue to be abbreviated
John:
and that i mean it's so what they made so what they made one choice that is counter to what they're doing and i thought it wouldn't bother me it's like yeah they made a bad decision in one application those guys will fix it i mean the notes app could be argued is even worse with the weird letterpress style and the inset shadows and stuff or whatever but big deal they made nobody's perfect they have a philosophy
John:
They're saying, this is what our philosophy is.
John:
This is our ideal.
John:
Okay, we failed to achieve it.
John:
But as time has passed, it continues to just stick in my craw that I'm just, like, having them up there showing this application and saying those words, like, you'd want to hide this one.
John:
You'd want to be like, oh, don't look at that one.
John:
But that one we know doesn't conform to our philosophy.
John:
Don't show it and say, isn't this beautiful?
John:
Isn't this nice?
John:
No, it's not.
John:
It says Jun.
John:
It does not say Jun.
John:
You know, it's...
John:
it's bothering me more and more.
John:
And so I know everyone is talking about the icons on the home screen and are they going to change those?
John:
Oh, don't worry.
John:
It's just a beta level.
John:
Plenty of time to refine them.
John:
This is what I'm looking at.
John:
Well, anyway, this is what I'm looking at it as my bellwether because this doesn't require you redrawing a whole bunch of icons.
John:
This just requires someone to go, you know what?
John:
The month is a pretty darn important thing in month view.
John:
It does not deserve to be abbreviated.
John:
It should be bigger.
John:
It should be bolder.
John:
And that's the kind of, I mean, just, you know, just center it, put on the same line, center it, let them spell it out.
John:
plenty of room for german month names which i assume are much longer than ours whatever but faster yeah it and they all they all move over to the right when you come up behind them i don't know it bothers me and i and i expected after the keynote to see a million people slamming this because it is like the most obvious example of like uh you know do what i say not as i do and uh
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Well, you know, people have been pointing this out a lot, and not just... Well, this is actually the first time I've seen the calendar complaint, but people, us included, have pointed out lots of just design flaws in iOS 7 so far.
Marco:
And I think it's important to consider that similar to how...
Marco:
Apple, the company, they always look out for – people think, oh, they do everything, whatever is best for users.
Marco:
But that's not quite true.
Marco:
They do what's best for Apple first, and then secondarily what's best for users.
Marco:
And if those priorities are ever challenged, what's best for Apple always wins.
Marco:
Similar to that –
Marco:
We all think of Apple as this company that has this really great design sense.
Marco:
And they do, mostly.
Marco:
But there's always been this kind of competing interest at Apple of what looks cool.
Marco:
And what looks cool, I think, is more important overall than what's a great design to them in many instances.
Marco:
And especially in software.
Marco:
Hardware, they can often...
Marco:
find the right balance.
Marco:
In software, they often don't.
Marco:
And I think this is one of those examples, a lot about iOS 7.
Marco:
For example, I think using the super thin font everywhere, I find the extremely thin font extremely hard to read.
Marco:
And the fact that there is that adjust legibility setting to just make the font a little bit thicker, that alone says like, you know, they know this too and somebody's fighting about it internally.
Marco:
Um...
Marco:
You know, there's always things like this with Apple software.
Marco:
Almost everything they've removed from, like, this, you know, quote, skeuomorphic stuff from, like, desktop calendar and stuff like that, like, almost all these things were things that were put in there because they look cool.
Marco:
And high enough up people, oftentimes Steve in the past, high enough up people thought they looked cool enough to push them through even though people knew that it wasn't as good of a design or it wasn't as functional or it wasn't as usable or it wasn't as legible.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
In the case of Jun, the cool thing that they are preserving, which many people pointed out and which I think is totally not a justification for it but is possibly an explanation, is that when you go from the month to the year view, like they want to do the transition, it looks like you're just zooming out.
John:
And in the year view, the months are abbreviated.
John:
And I think there it kind of makes sense because you can do the abbreviation in a much larger font.
John:
You can put three big letters.
John:
You see it to the left there.
John:
Yeah.
John:
it would be harder to read september spelled out on the year view but you can make scp really big for september and so they want the dynamic transition that john to go right into the little john on the year view in a transition and it's like oh see it's like it's perfect just like how the the title slides over with the back button to become the title of the previous page and all that stuff like it's just perfect right and someone was so married to that perfect transition that they could not bear a crossfade into june right you know what i mean like a crossfade
John:
From year view into month view, where the three-letter abbreviation crossfades into the full month name, is not the end of the world.
John:
But someone was like, no, we're married to it.
John:
This is the transition.
John:
No crossfades.
John:
It's got to feel like it's a real thing.
John:
And that's the wrong call because it's better to sacrifice the purity of that transition to conform to your other supposed purity, which is clarity and deferment to the content and what is important and just show what's important to the user.
Marco:
But if something is almost as usable and looks really cool, they will always opt for that every time.
John:
It's just a bad call.
John:
It's just a bad call on one app.
John:
It's not a big deal, but that's my canary in the coal mine.
John:
I'm going to be watching to see when that abbreviation gets bigger.
Marco:
I'll be watching to see when the default font is thicker.
Casey:
I agree.
Casey:
But to go back to the calendar, I do think it was very cool.
Casey:
And John, you touched on this briefly, the way the transitions worked.
Casey:
And I don't have an iOS 7 device here.
Casey:
But my memory tells me that when you went from the day view to the month view, you kind of zoomed out and back towards your face.
Casey:
That's a terrible description.
Casey:
But you kept zooming outwards.
Casey:
And like you said, John, you went from the month view and then you zoomed out to the year view.
Casey:
And then the way the transition for the home screen is when you hit the home screen from the year view,
Casey:
When you hit the home button from the ear view, you would kind of zoom out again into Springboard.
Casey:
And I just thought that was really well done and really cool.
Casey:
But before you said crossfade, I was thinking to myself, you know, that's weird.
Casey:
Why didn't they do a crossfade from month to year?
John:
Because it's not – real zooms don't crossfade, right?
John:
It's not real.
John:
The thing about all those things is I think they are good and they are really neat to see.
John:
Yeah.
John:
all the previous versions of ios have pretty much demonstrated that the conceptual model of home screen application like that one level of like you're either in an app you're in a home screen people get that even with the transitions that are not as beautiful and perfect as they are on ios 7 because like you said if you tap on it in ios 7 the calendar in particular because its icon looks like you had simply zoomed in on
John:
You know, the day view in a month calendar.
John:
And it's just all like, oh, I'm just pushing back, pushing back, zooming in, zooming in and just one smooth, continuous experience.
John:
That's great and all.
John:
But it's like it's fixing something that wasn't really a problem because everybody very quickly groks.
John:
screen with a bunch of icons, you're in an app, you hit that button, you go back to the screen with a bunch of icons.
John:
Like everybody gets that.
John:
That's as simple, it's not super duper, you know, even ignoring folders, which I think people still also kind of get, but just that model of like, you're either on Springboard or you're in an app.
John:
And if you're in an app and you want to get to Springboard, you hit the button,
John:
You don't need the transition, like the genie effect, to say, where the hell did my window go?
John:
I think that is still necessary, because if people click a button on their window, and the window just disappeared, they will not notice that a little square appeared in the lower right.
John:
But I think everybody, even if there was zero transition...
John:
groks the model eventually and certainly now of just like oh i i get it now i'm in an app i hit that button i'm back on the screen with the icons i get how those two things are arranged and so this marriage to this particular transition is like it's too much it's killing an ant with a sledgehammer like we we get it we understand how you get to and from the home screen and so like i don't say you shouldn't do it it's good it's nice and everything but do not sacrifice aspects of the application for it you know
Marco:
Yeah, I think it's going to be a lot like when I made the magazine 1.0 and my goal was to have no setting screen.
Marco:
And then that actually turned out to cause a few other bad design decisions because I was trying to reach that one goal and reality interfered.
Marco:
And I had to compromise in other ways.
Marco:
And then that turned out to be the wrong decision.
Marco:
I think there's a lot of cases like that in iOS 7 where they're...
Marco:
They're trying to preserve something about the appearance or the structure or their principles.
Marco:
They're trying to say, well, we need to make this choice because of this principle, that this was one of our goals.
Marco:
So therefore, because this animation is going to be this certain way, then it'll look best to have Jun there instead of Jun.
Marco:
And so this is what we're stuck with, or this is the right thing to do.
Marco:
And eventually, they're going to start refining that and cutting back on some of these things, I think, or finding new ways to satisfy both.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
Like, they've got principles that they laid out.
John:
And some of the principles sometimes come in conflict.
John:
And it's the question of which one wins.
John:
And, you know, picking the right winner is just as important as picking the correct principles.
John:
Because we all agree with the principles.
John:
Oh, the transition should be smooth and obvious.
John:
And also, we agree with, oh, the content should be emphasized and not the Chrome.
John:
Like, if you're on board with the iOS 7 idea, we're on board with both of those.
John:
And it's like, okay, when they come in conflict...
John:
we maybe don't agree with picking the transition one over, you know, the content being king, you know, or, or deciding that their entire treatment of text also clashes with someone being able to look at this thing at a glance, and all they see is the content, like what they what they want to know is there, and they're not distracted by the interface.
John:
And if people are having trouble reading these spindly little fonts, then some other aspect of the philosophy has stomped on the one we think should be more important.
John:
Right, exactly.
Casey:
Are we really that surprised either that Apple, when creating this new whiz-bang thing, has favored the new whiz-bang thing over what is arguably right?
Casey:
In other words, I don't think it's surprising that they're choosing Jun over doing something that doesn't really...
Casey:
fit the whiz bang as well, but it's really the right answer.
Casey:
And that's putting June in.
Casey:
Does that make sense?
John:
But they picked these, these tenants, like they really hammered on deferment, like deferring to the user and the content and emphasizing the content over the Chrome.
John:
Like that's them.
John:
No one's putting that on them.
John:
Like they're, they're not burdened with that.
John:
They've chosen that as a tent pole of iOS seven.
John:
Uh, and it's up to them to figure out like, like if they, if they give us all these, these philosophies and tenants of iOS seven, uh,
John:
they have to figure out how to reconcile these in a
John:
I think that's the one that we all agree is a good idea in iOS 7.
John:
And the other ones they latched on to about their particular treatment of typography and how things would transition, we're like, those are good and everything, but we really like the one where you emphasize the content and not the Chrome.
John:
And their prioritization of those tenants, the tenants that they chose, seemed to be different than everyone else's at this point.
Marco:
Well, and this is – I mean all design for all apps, every – design is a whole bunch of series of choices, and most of them are not easy choices.
Marco:
And because with those principles they have, almost none of them are – you can just say, all right, well, how should this thing behave?
Marco:
Well, we're going to satisfy all three of those things perfectly and make everything great by just doing this one option here.
Marco:
Every time you're designing something and developing something, you're always having to compromise on those things.
Marco:
And good design is about figuring out the right compromises because there's always going to be lots of conflicting rules and principles and factors and everything like that.
Marco:
And that's what makes a good designer a good designer is having great judgment there and then also being able to look back when they've been wrong and say, you know what, that was the wrong choice.
Marco:
This is overall better to do it this other way.
Casey:
All right, is that all we got?
Marco:
I guess.
Marco:
We good?
Casey:
I think we're good.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Well, thanks a lot to our two show sponsors, Audible.
Marco:
Go to audiblepodcast.com slash ATP.
Marco:
And File Transporter, or just simply Transporter, go to filetransporter.com slash ATP.
Marco:
And thanks a lot, guys.
Bye.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
John:
Cause it was accidental.
John:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
John:
It's accidental.
Marco:
They didn't mean to.
John:
I don't have any objections to it.
John:
If we have the blessing of the person in the chat room who will never get credit on the show and will just have to tell his grandchildren, they used my title once.
John:
Didn't hear that on the show, Grandpa.
John:
Oh, trust me.
Casey:
I do kind of like, I feel like John Syracuse now, but I don't think that really makes sense in the grand scheme of things.
John:
You don't know how I feel.
John:
You don't know what it feels like to be me.
Casey:
No one really does.
Casey:
Oh, I gotta lose it.
Casey:
It's not even that late.
Casey:
We've had some fun reviews lately.
Marco:
Really?
Marco:
I don't even read them.
Marco:
I always forget that that's a thing that I can go check.
John:
Not that many reviews.
John:
Maybe we should have the...
John:
every three months begging for people to review us.
John:
Because I remember that they existed recently, too.
John:
I usually check them pretty obsessively, but I had a long spell where I didn't.
John:
I mean, WWDC had an interruption.
John:
I went back, and there weren't that many new ones.
John:
So maybe we had to go back to that section of the show where we beg everybody to still leave iTunes reviews.
Marco:
Well, the problem is that they're not in the theme song.
Marco:
There's no call-out in the theme song.
Marco:
We're getting tons of Twitter followers.
Marco:
Our site's doing great.
Yeah.
John:
Yeah, I don't know.
John:
You don't need to call it the theme song, but every once in a while you mention the review and then people go, we have a lot of reviews.
John:
All our reviews are good.
John:
The other thing about having a show with three people on it is that in most reviews, your chances of them saying something nice about you are good.
John:
The reviews always say something good about two out of three people.
John:
That's true.
John:
And someone gets thrown under the bus.
Casey:
That is true, actually.
Casey:
That's mostly true.
Casey:
That's mostly true.
Casey:
However, I cannot remember seeing a bad comment about John ever.
Casey:
And if there's a bad comment, I'd say it's two-thirds about how much of a...
Casey:
Marco is, and one-third about how ignorant and stupid I am.
John:
My bad comments are at least severe, but usually what it is, is this show isn't as good as Hypercritical.
John:
That's what it comes down to for mine.
Marco:
Which is actually a compliment to you.
John:
I know, but the bad thing that they say is that my performance in this show is lesser, and it doesn't satisfy their need for whatever it is they need.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
I'm getting off...
John:
with the least bad reviews.
John:
But what I'm saying is like most of them, two out of three people, they say something nice about it.
Casey:
Yeah, but some of the... God, I'm trying to find one or two of them that were interesting.
Casey:
Oh, here you go.
Casey:
Marco is so full of himself, but John makes up for them all.
Casey:
Seriously, a good listen.
Marco:
That's the entire review.
Marco:
I mean, that's pretty standard, I would say.
Marco:
I mean, I feel like nobody really insults you, Casey.
Marco:
They just... Oh, they do.
John:
You want to read some bad Casey ones?
John:
Go find some.
John:
They're in there.
Casey:
I would love to read some bad Casey ones.
Marco:
I just thought the only bad Casey ones were like, who's this guy?
Marco:
Who the hell are you?
Casey:
No.
Marco:
Now they know who he is and they don't like him.
Casey:
Oh, no.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So in the middle of a very long review, I think Armit and Syracuse feel that they need a moderator of sorts to keep the show moving.
Casey:
I agree, but they picked the wrong guy.
Casey:
They picked a friend rather than someone with the requisite skill set.
Casey:
Casey is in over his head.
Casey:
I would have been too, but I would have declined the offer.
John:
First of all... That's why you're wrong.
John:
None of us like Casey.
Marco:
First of all, suppose his entire premise is true.
Marco:
Do you think anybody could reign us in when John and I are both talking forever about something?
Marco:
It's an impossible job.
Casey:
I don't know how to approach this diplomatically and delicately.
Casey:
And so I'm just going to say you two are impossible sometimes.
Casey:
Actually, this was legitimately good feedback and actually, to be fair, made me try to work on something that I do think is an issue.
Casey:
Casey is diplomatic to the point of blandness, always tempering his point of view as if to not upset anyone ever, which continues.
Casey:
I miss hypercritical, but having John Syracuse on any podcast is better than none.
Casey:
And I actually think he is.
Casey:
That was a reasonable point.
John:
It's like the Dark Crystal, though.
John:
Is that before you guys' time?
John:
You know the Dark Crystal?
Casey:
No.
John:
Come on, guys.
John:
Marco, nothing?
John:
What?
John:
Chat room, this is what I have to work with here.
Casey:
You're such a...
John:
god i didn't think that i thought for i i questioned whether i should preface that with like oh have you guys heard of that because that would be like insulting it's like have you guys heard of star trek like you'd be like oh come on like of course you're a star trek don't be stupid but nothing all right never mind no i'm not gonna the chat room is catching up and they're they all hate us now so although i will say to go back a step ben rice said i still think casey list is marco's imaginary friend
John:
Well, I'll try my dark crystal thing anyway.
John:
So like what we have here with the three of us together is all the ingredients that are needed.
John:
They're just not evenly distributed.
John:
So it's like some of Marco's self-confidence needs to go into Casey.
John:
And some of Casey's ability to shop needs to go into me and Marco.
John:
That's about right, I'd say.
John:
See what I'm saying?
John:
So we combine them.
John:
Then we would have the ultimate podcast host who would then be very lonely.
Yeah.
Casey:
Oh, God, that's so true.
Casey:
Oh, man.
Casey:
And Denton Meat is right.
Casey:
We all thought he was the imaginary friend around here, and then we met him.
Marco:
Yeah, I met him for like 10 seconds, but we did meet him.
Marco:
Oh, by the way, Casey's real, and he's spectacular.
John:
Oh, you get that reference.
John:
I at least got that one.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
I'm losing my crap over here.
Casey:
Can that please be the show intro?
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
It's awesome.
Marco:
We have so many great show intros.
Marco:
I'm going to have to save them up.
Casey:
We might have to do an after the evening or whatever, or subsequent to the evening or whatever we're calling it.
Casey:
Oh, this is good.
John:
Oh, before midnight.
Casey:
Before midnight.
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
Oh, goodness.
Casey:
I should find some of these bad reviews and pull up Gruber and read them all.
John:
no i mean like the people aren't like really mean like you know what i mean like no for the most part there were a couple that actually stung but i mean genuinely they only think they only think if there's a kernel of truth if they you know what i mean but people aren't being no but people aren't being like go read go read some reviews to other podcasts yeah and you'll see that's the problem like nobody hates us enough to write a really funny bad review
Marco:
They only hate us enough to write kind of mean reviews.
John:
Because all listeners are all discerning and intelligent and attractive people.
John:
Of course.
John:
Even the ones who hate us are articulate enough to leave a reasonable review.
Casey:
I think the only one that stung – I shouldn't say it stung.
Casey:
The one that I read about me hedging too much, that was absolutely valid.
Casey:
And it kind of stung, but more was like, dude, I really do need to work on that.
Casey:
The one about me being over my head kind of hurt.
Casey:
It's okay, though.
Marco:
I'll be all right.
Marco:
But the premise there just is not valid.
John:
It doesn't make any sense.
John:
I don't think people understand that you're a programmer for a living.
John:
They think you're just some guy off the street.
John:
Well, I don't know.
John:
You are a .NET programmer most of the time, right?
John:
Still, come on.
John:
I mean, you know what I mean.
Casey:
He writes Perl.
Casey:
How are you shitting on me?
Casey:
He writes Perl.
John:
Come on.
John:
But people think I'm like an iOS or OS X developer, and I'm not.
Casey:
No, actually, all kidding aside, forgive me for starting Mutual Admiration Society, but you know about Objective-C and Cocoa and Cocoa Touch for someone who never does any of this.
John:
I know.
John:
I don't know if they know that I don't want to do it.
Casey:
He says begrudgingly.
John:
That's also the thing that non-programmers don't understand, is that at a certain point, when you have a certain level of experience in programming, the mysticism of different APIs and languages falls away, and you just kind of realize that it's all more or less the same stuff.
John:
And like, that's the whole thing of employers are like this too.
John:
Like once you've been a professional programmer for, I don't know, five years, certainly for 10, uh,
John:
assuming you've been keeping your skills up or whatever, you can learn any language because it's like, okay, well, what's the equivalent of whatever in this language?
John:
Conceptually, you understand everything you need to know, and it's just a matter of syntax.
John:
The same thing with APIs.
John:
Once you've used an API that has all these concepts in terms of callbacks and notifications and event loops and background processes, conceptually, once you understand the concepts,
John:
It's not like, oh, but you're an iOS programmer, you'll never understand OS X, or you'll never understand .NET.
John:
Like, it's all the same stuff.
John:
Like, there's very rarely some new revolutionary idea that you can't even grok, and it's just a matter of the details.
Marco:
Oh, yeah, and going back to our design discussion, I think it's a similar thing with, like, you know, most programming languages don't come out and do, like, radically...
Marco:
totally unheard of ideas, they're all trade-offs.
Marco:
And it's like, all right, well, Wix had a trade-off.
Marco:
What are your priorities for what you're doing?
Marco:
And therefore, Wix had a trade-off is the best for you to use for this.
Marco:
That's why it's so hard to say that one language is, quote, better than another, because usually they just have made different trade-offs.
John:
Yeah, and I think there is a thing where if someone just uses one language forever and that language doesn't have anonymous functions or closures occurring or pick your whatever feature, then you won't have seen that concept.
John:
And if some of the language is heavily based on it, you will not grok it and you will have to first grok that concept.
John:
But that's why I'm saying if you've been in the industry for a long time and use lots of different languages, eventually...
John:
you know, you didn't spend your entire time and see eventually you run across a language that has these features, you know, or even if just in a language had never had lexical scope and you don't understand how that works or why it might be useful.
John:
Like, but, but I feel like just, especially in today's development of like the web where you encounter like seven languages running one application.
Yeah.
John:
You get all the concepts or whatever.
John:
But I think for non-programmers listening, they will assign you an expertise in a particular realm and decide that you can't possibly have any intelligent comment on the other realm.
John:
So because Casey's a .NET programmer, what could he possibly have intelligent to say about OS X?
John:
Well, it's like...
John:
It's not as if, oh, that's totally foreign.
John:
I can't possibly understand what's going on there.
John:
GUI API is a GUI API, right?
John:
Talking to a database from programming language is talking to a database.
John:
Have you used an ORM before?
John:
Well, we have ORMs here too.
John:
It's all the same stuff.
Marco:
As long as we can all agree that PHP does suck.
Marco:
Yes, we do.
Marco:
Everyone agrees.
Marco:
No one disagrees.
Marco:
There is no better or worse language except PHP, which is worse.
John:
are you feeling okay well look i still use it because again it's the trade-offs right there's joke languages that are worse right there's like there's like brain right that's that's worse right you know there is there is levels to go down farther but yeah at a certain point i mean arguably php is kind of a joke language actually here's an interesting question which maybe we should save for a show which is a worse language php or javascript
John:
Oh, PHP.
John:
No contest.
John:
Come on.
Marco:
Really?
Marco:
I think that might require some thought.
John:
JavaScript just has so much fewer moving parts.
John:
So even if you think all those parts in JavaScript are worse than the parts in PHP, PHP has so many freaking parts.
Marco:
Well, JavaScript has browsers, you know?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I think... No, no.
John:
The language.
John:
We're just talking about the language.
John:
The language.
Marco:
No, no.
Marco:
We're talking about... If you're talking about moving parts, we're talking about in practice here.
John:
No.
John:
I mean, like, the language.
John:
Think of the size of the API.
John:
You know?
John:
There's...
Marco:
Yeah, but think about how much in JavaScript it is not accessible from the API.
John:
I don't know.
John:
JavaScript is a simple language that's crappy, but at least it's small.
Marco:
I mean, PHP might be worse than JavaScript, but I would really have to make a pros and cons list or something.
Marco:
Really think about it and really weigh it, because I really do think they're not... I think their badness is closer than you might assume.
John:
Well, you know, it's the same thing with the PHP discussion we had way back when.
John:
It's like I'm talking about just the language in the abstract, like in terms of here are the keywords, here's the syntax, here's the concepts and embodies and not any of the practical concerns.
John:
Once you throw the practical concerns into it, other things come in because like JavaScript as a language is better than PHP as a language.
John:
But you may say...
John:
developing a real application in JavaScript is worse because of variants in browsers, whereas PHP is always the same or whatever, you know, like then you can make different arguments.
John:
But when I'm talking about the language, I'm always talking about the language in the abstract.
John:
Like you're a language designer.
John:
You want to make a thing that executes.
John:
There are no real world concerns at all.
John:
You're just designing a language the same way you design a written language.
John:
Here's the syntax.
John:
Here are the nouns and verbs.
John:
And here's how it's structured.
John:
And, you know, the whole nine yards.
Casey:
I want to piddle with some of the server side.
Casey:
Piddle?
Casey:
Screw around with.
Casey:
All right.
John:
You can put that, too, if you want.
John:
Whatever.
Casey:
You're so hyper-piddle.
Casey:
This is a whole other show.
Casey:
It really is.
Casey:
Well, you know what?
Casey:
We should just bank this for the next time one of us isn't around.
Casey:
But anyway, I want to screw around with Node.js or one of the new hotness.
John:
Node.js is so two years ago.
John:
Come on.
Casey:
Whatever.
Casey:
I live in the .NET world.
Marco:
Isn't the Windows Azure thing, isn't that Node on the server?
Marco:
I think it is, right?
Casey:
I believe that's right.
Casey:
Yeah, I think so.
Marco:
It's certainly interesting.
Marco:
Whatever I see about Node.js, it looks like it's probably really interesting right now.
Marco:
But when you're programming something and you don't want to spend a ton of time on the nuts and bolts of it, you don't really want interesting.
Marco:
You want something that was interesting five years ago.
Marco:
And so I think Node.js, whatever project I start five years from now, I'll probably use it then.
John:
Well, here's the ideal project for something like Node if you want to experiment.
John:
It would be something like Matt and Reese's tweet marker type service where conceptually, again, there's not a lot of moving parts.
John:
You're going to be storing an offset or a position for people in some sort of server back end.
John:
And what your server software has to do is basically accept a request maybe with some minor authentication.
John:
And then, like, get and store a number for somebody.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Right.
Marco:
It's not going to – you're not going to hit a problem where, like, oh, crap, like, the Iconv library sucks for this.
John:
Right.
John:
So then you can write that in Node and be like, my first Node application.
John:
Like, it's one step above writing in Echo server.
John:
Right.
John:
you get all the advantages that are supposedly in node you see okay does this scale really awesomely can is this super easy to deploy and i can run it everywhere and like and you can you can really you know torture test it and say like all right i could have written this and anything because the amount of code it's like three pages of code for for the server part of it not the storage part not the other stuff you know just for the web app part and that's a perfect opportunity to try out something new because you're like if it doesn't work i'll just rewrite it and you know pick your favorite language and it won't be a big deal but if it does work maybe i'll get all these advantages that everyone says about node you know
Casey:
You know what I think we should do is we should write websites in just straight C, because that sounds bright.
Casey:
I did that.
Casey:
Been there and done that, yeah.
Casey:
I know.
Casey:
I'm trying to troll you, too.
John:
Nothing better than string manipulation in C. Oh, yeah.
John:
Really secure, too.
John:
No buffer of those in my query parsing code.
John:
No, sir.