Conditions Led To Freecell
Casey:
uh so i received my first kickstarter backed thing in the mail today and i'm i want to love it but it's quasi doa so i got the nifty mini drive did you guys remember this from like eight months ago or something yeah it's like was it like the usb drive that fits in the uh sd card slot
Casey:
Yeah, basically.
Casey:
So what the premise is, it fits in the SD card slot of a Mac, and they've designed it and machined it in such a way that you stick this into the slot and stick, I think it's a micro SD card into the nifty mini drive.
Casey:
And then you put the mini drive in the SD card slot for your Mac, and then it sits flush as opposed to the way full-size SD cards typically sit.
Casey:
And so you've basically added another drive to your Mac, which I don't know why I wanted to do this other than it seemed cool.
Casey:
And now that I've gotten it, it looks great.
Casey:
It looks to be the same aluminum that the Mac is made of.
Casey:
I didn't get a color.
Casey:
I just got it in plain aluminum.
Casey:
And I really like the look of it, but apparently some tolerance or something was a little bit off in some of the first batches.
Casey:
And so without putting scotch or cello tape around it, the drive was read-only.
Casey:
So I had to put scotch tape around it because SD cards have a physical switch to make them read-only.
Casey:
And so apparently without scotch tape around it,
Casey:
it didn't trip or did trip whichever direction the switch that made OS X treat it as read-only.
Casey:
So now I have scotch tape around it.
Casey:
But other than that, it's actually really cool.
Marco:
I was just curious.
Marco:
Let me just clarify.
Marco:
So you took something from somebody who's never made anything before that's made to sit flush inside of a delicate, tiny slot in your expensive computer, then added tape to it and put that in the delicate slot in your expensive computer.
Casey:
Yes, you are exactly right.
Casey:
Clearly nothing bad will happen.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
No, I just put the tape around the outside of it.
John:
Watch the Kickstarter video.
John:
I don't have the audio on, but here.
Marco:
This seems like the kind of product where the better idea would be to wait until this thing got popular, wait until somebody else with manufacturing experience rips it off and just makes a $7 version of it on Amazon and just buy that.
John:
Why would you buy this at all, though?
John:
I don't understand that at all.
Casey:
Because it just seemed cool.
Marco:
How big is the biggest capacity you can have in here?
Casey:
I have a 64 gig micro SD card and that was not super duper slow.
Casey:
It wasn't terrible.
Casey:
I mean, I put like five gigs of top gear on it and it took like 10 minutes or something like that.
Casey:
I mean, it was not fast without question, but it was not.
John:
You're kicking up your SD card slot.
John:
Like what if you want to take things off a camera?
Casey:
Like the whole point of it, you assume I use a camera other than our phones.
Oh,
Marco:
I mean, I have this new small camera, and it has SD cards, but I never take them out because it charges over USB, which is an awesome feature of a camera.
Marco:
And so I just plug it in by USB whenever I transfer so I can kind of top off the charge also.
John:
What camera is this?
Marco:
The ridiculous one, the Sony RX1.
John:
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marco:
That charges over USB?
Marco:
Not only does that.
Marco:
I have a Sony camcorder that we got when the baby was born.
Marco:
The camcorder charges over USB.
Marco:
It's awesome.
Marco:
I keep meaning to blog about this.
Marco:
It's one of the best features.
Marco:
It's one of those little tiny conveniences that's just awesome.
John:
Yeah, because on the RX1, does it have a removable battery, though, at least?
Marco:
Yeah, and I got a second one, because the battery life isn't that great if you're doing a whole bunch of viewing on the screen.
Marco:
You can only shoot a couple hundred pictures before the battery goes.
Marco:
And we only ever hit the battery being dead during shooting once, because we just don't shoot that many at once.
Marco:
But it's a fantastic camera in so many ways.
John:
I was excited about that camera until I saw how much it costs.
John:
I'm like, oh, so it just costs as much as a regular camera.
John:
Yeah, the cost is insane.
John:
It's a small and it's still two grand, so never mind.
Marco:
You know, what's crazy about this camera is that it is actually worth it.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
Compared to the market, it is worth that price.
Marco:
I totally see why Sony is charging that.
John:
You're getting miniaturization and everything.
Marco:
However, even though it is competitive with its equals, you still feel like you shouldn't be paying this much for a camera this size.
Marco:
even though it's so great because it is that size, and it's so good.
Marco:
The image quality you get from both that ridiculously good sensor and the really, really good optic in front of it, the quality you get of it, it is better in many ways than my 5D Mark II.
John:
yeah these cameras are pissing me off still it's kind of like televisions are pissing me off for a long time because it's like look we you know i liked mirrorless i'm like okay finally we're making some freaking progress we can stop with the flappy mirrors and the other stuff that was has its origins and optical things that are no longer a factor because we all have giant screens in the back and we use also we stop all right
John:
This should be progressing like Moore's Law.
John:
I want a gigantic full-frame sensor in a tiny little camera.
John:
The sensor's only like one inch square.
John:
Can we fit that in a small camera?
John:
Oh, it's still two grand.
John:
I mean, come on, come on, faster, faster.
John:
Because you realize this is one of those things where...
John:
It should be that, like, in five or ten years, the amazing Canon 5D, I should be able to get that in a little dinky thing.
John:
Like, it seems like that should be the progression.
John:
Maybe not a phone, but in a tiny little dinky handheld camera.
John:
But it's like, oh, no, if you get a small camera, you get a sensor the size of, you know, one-eighth of a postage stamp, so screw you.
John:
Like, no, put the big sensor in there.
John:
Well, I would say... It's still two grand.
John:
I guess it just... That's how much... It's almost three grand.
Marco:
It's $2,800.
Marco:
But, like... Yeah, but, you know... I mean, I think...
Marco:
The RX1's biggest flaw or biggest downside – it's not really a flaw, I guess.
Marco:
It's more of just a downside of the practicality of its design – is that the lens sticks out pretty far.
Marco:
I think it's just because if you want an f2.0 35mm lens that can project enough of an image circle to cover a full-frame sensor –
Marco:
It needs to be a certain size.
Marco:
I don't think they could have made it that much smaller.
Marco:
And so the result is that the camera is fairly deep.
Marco:
So you can't put it in a pocket of anything except a big, loose jacket pocket.
John:
You get, like, one of those pancake lenses, though, that gives you, like, the weird, you know, fisheye appearance type thing.
John:
No, that you could do.
John:
But you're right, though, like, the optical part of it is, like, is the intractable part.
John:
Because, look, if you're precision grinding glass and aligning the things with each other and, like, the nature of optics and the nature of glass is such that that is not – I don't expect that to get cheap according to Moore's law.
John:
But I do keep hoping that the sensor part of it should progress along the typical technology, you know, it's –
John:
So I'm okay with like zoom lenses always being super expensive because it's like they're not subject to Moore's law or any of those things.
John:
But the sensors, I felt like the light gathering ability at the very least.
John:
Right.
John:
I want to see more progress than I have seen.
John:
So even though like my Canon S110 or whatever the hell I have for my little mini camera.
John:
is amazing compared to like my first digital camera it's not amazing enough and so like the mirrorless movement i thought we were going to move towards uh so you don't want a giant slr and you don't need this giant thing but in these little tiny cameras we're going to put much bigger sensors and give you a reasonable lens and try to cut down the price uh but it seems like the rx1 is the other direction it's like okay for people who already have lots of money and are professional photographers we can make them not have to carry such a big giant monster thing but
John:
It's still going to cost $2,800, as you said.
Marco:
It isn't as portable as I want it to be, but I love using it.
Marco:
I just absolutely love using it.
Marco:
It has made my entire setup of Canon glass seem obsolete now.
Marco:
even though the glass is great, this now feels like the new form factor of cameras.
Marco:
I really don't see myself buying another SLR.
Marco:
I probably will.
Marco:
I'll probably go back on this in three years or something.
John:
No, you won't.
John:
The days of the SLRs are numbered with those stupid mirrors.
John:
People are going to be talking about that sound.
John:
When I was a boy, we heard this and we took a picture and we loved it.
John:
Yeah, yeah.
Casey:
I'm actually just excited.
Casey:
I don't know anything about photography, and I wish I did, but I've never had the time nor the money to figure it out.
Casey:
Nor the children.
Casey:
Nor the children.
Casey:
That makes me do it.
Casey:
But I'm actually kind of happy to see Sony doing well again.
Casey:
I think, John, you've talked about this at length in the past, but when I was a kid, Sony was the brand.
Casey:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
And then, God, how the mighty fell.
Casey:
And to hear you espousing this camera with such enthusiasm, it's good to hear that Sony's doing well.
Marco:
But what happened, Sony bought Minolta and really became extremely serious about camera stuff, like, I don't know, five, six, eight years ago, something like that.
Marco:
And they've been slowly progressing.
Marco:
And they got into the SLR business fairly recently with the AE...
Marco:
90 was the first one?
Marco:
Whatever the first one was, they got into the SLR business.
Marco:
And what's happening now, for a while, Canon was very clearly the leader in sensor technology.
Marco:
And for a while, I think even the lenses, and they're still doing very well in the lenses, very close with Nikon, but still doing very, very well.
Marco:
But the Canon sensors have kind of slowed down in progress recently, and everyone else has caught up very closely.
Marco:
And in many ways, by almost all measurements, the new Sony sensors are better than Canon sensors.
John:
Yeah, Sony used to be an embarrassment in the camera industry.
John:
I remember when I was first shopping for digital cameras, like, oh, it's Canon and Nikon, and Sony makes cameras too, but just ignore them because they're pieces of crap.
John:
Like, they don't know what they're doing with these digital cameras, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
and it's taken them a while to turn that around to be taken seriously as a player.
John:
Like, every time they'd be like, some amazing new Sony camera would have some aspect of it that was amazing, but all the rest of it would be crap, and you'd look at the pictures that you get taken with, and it would just be a mess, even if it was just image processing or battery life or some weird ergonomic aspect that was screwed up because they wanted to make it sleek.
John:
But it seems like they're finally figuring it out at long last.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
And so now they're carrying forward their strengths that they had on the electronics stuff, and, you know, they figured out all the other stuff that, you know,
John:
it kind of makes me wish that apple made a camera because even all these cameras like now that now that the whole back of them is a screen and a lot of it is the ui and these camera makers have no idea how to make a user interface oh yeah the uis are terrible yeah i really you know they can need some help there the good thing that's saving cameras though is i think like car dashboards uh
John:
There will always be a place, especially in professional cameras, for knobs, dials, and buttons, because you can get to them without looking, and it's much easier using a touchscreen.
John:
It doesn't mean you don't also expose that on a touchscreen, but the camera makers who are good at the shutter button, the knobs, the dials, the twisty things, that skill will not become obsolete.
John:
It won't be like, oh, well, you used to be good at those knobs and twisty things, but now you don't need them at all anymore.
John:
No, you'll always want them on a camera.
John:
and that's why apple shouldn't make one yeah no removable battery uh apple would make one with no buttons and it would be everything would be on the screen it'd be a pain in the ass to use yeah it might be okay for a casual camera like we're just talking about you know like you know people who are into photography casual camera like that's why people love the iphone that's all they want it's a big screen that you point at something and you say what on screen now make picture of the problem is that the market for casual cameras is evaporating
John:
Well, you know, that's the phone market.
John:
Basically, you could say Apple has entered the market with the iPhone, and that's what they're doing.
Marco:
Apple has entered the camera market the same way they entered the video game platform market, kind of accidentally.
Marco:
And once they realized they were doing it, they really took advantage of it.
John:
Apple's still not really in the video game market.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
How well is that Wii U selling?
John:
I know.
John:
I'm saying that they're in their own market making their own things.
John:
They'll never be in the gaming market until they decide they want to make a machine focused on games.
John:
They're not going to do that because it's not what they do.
Marco:
Well, I think they have made machines.
John:
No, it doesn't even have any buttons on it.
John:
It's the same thing.
John:
It's like trying to make a car dashboard, but there's no steering wheel.
John:
You steer by dragging your finger on the screen.
John:
It's fine.
John:
You can put a virtual steering wheel on the screen and drag that with your finger.
John:
You know...
John:
they're not going to do that.
John:
They're never going to put something on an iPhone that uggs it up just for the purposes of games.
John:
So the type of games that you can put on an entirely touchscreen device with really no buttons to speak of that you can use for gaming is so incredibly limited.
Marco:
Well, they're doing a typical disruption move of not attacking head-on into that market.
Marco:
They're kind of running this parallel thing on the side that is taking a lot of
Marco:
that market away without doing exactly the same thing.
Marco:
Because if they tried doing exactly the same thing, they would have a lot harder time.
John:
They're doing a Blue Ocean thing.
John:
They're going for the people who were never going to buy those crazy game machines, right?
John:
And that's why they're selling a bazillion copies and making tons more money.
John:
But they're not going after the people who want to play
John:
games that can't be played on a touchscreen.
John:
If Apple's interested in taking the gaming market, they would make something that can play games that can't be played on a touchscreen, but they're not interested in the gaming market.
John:
They'll just take what they can get from what they are interested in.
John:
But they're making more money than everyone else because it turns out there's way more people who...
John:
who don't care about games that can't be played on a touchscreen.
John:
Because basically, touchscreen games alone are too complicated for most people.
John:
It's just like, oh, it's a touchscreen game, but it's simple.
John:
You'll like it.
John:
You just pull back the little bird and you let him go.
John:
People can handle it.
Marco:
They've made an alternative.
Marco:
Before, if you wanted to play a game, you've always had the consoles and the high-end PCs doing these kind of...
Marco:
these A-rated games, major, big-budget, complex things, these awesome graphics and everything.
Marco:
And you've always had the market for casual games.
Marco:
In the old days, casual games were those CD-ROMs at Walmart full of 10,000 Solitaire variants.
Marco:
Now...
Marco:
And then for a while, they were like flash games on the web.
Marco:
And there are still some of that.
Marco:
But now you're seeing this massive boom.
Marco:
Oh, and like for six months, they were on Facebook.
Marco:
And now you're seeing this massive boom.
John:
They're still on Facebook.
John:
Microsoft owned the casual game market in the 90s because the casual game market was dominated by Minesweeper and Solitaire, the two most played games by humans in the entire history of the universe because everyone had a PC on their desk in the 90s.
John:
And all they did all day was play Minesweeper and Solitaire.
John:
Too bad they didn't charge money for those.
John:
Don't forget FreeSell.
John:
Yeah, I'm sorry.
Casey:
Oh, that's true.
John:
It's an untapped market, but that's just the equivalent.
John:
Everyone has cell phones now and everyone plays games on them, but Apple was smart enough to actually make a market.
John:
Imagine if the iPhone just came with three games and there was no App Store.
Marco:
play those three games so much but the difference now though the difference now is that they have this massive game library on these casual devices casual gaming has never been better than it is today it's all and it gets better all the time and that more and apple really owns quite a big portion of casual gaming and that's why they're attacking big gaming because casual gaming in general is
Marco:
is now way bigger, way easier, and way more rich than it was before in content availability.
Marco:
Whereas before, I think a lot of people would get tired of those casual games and go buy an Xbox if they wanted to play games at night, now you're seeing a lot more people who are sticking with the world of casual games instead of buying a game console.
John:
Yeah, but if Apple's just not willing to make...
John:
it possible to play games that aren't playable on a touch screen they're never gonna they're never gonna pull that mark it's like it's like someone who's trying to say i'm gonna make a thing and it's like a movie but it's on a little tiny boxes in your home and way more people are gonna have it uh and like saying okay well are you ever gonna do a thing where the picture is the size of the side of the building no no it's always gonna be small in the home like it can't really be taller than one story because people's ceilings are like eight feet high so we're really not you know
John:
there will always be a market for movies because the screen is way bigger and it's a different experience.
John:
And I mean, this is not as ridiculous in terms of square footage or whatever, but there's just certain types of games that people like to play that you can't play with touchscreen controls.
John:
And if Apple is never, never, never, never, never going to go after them, there's always going to, like they're saying, we don't want that.
John:
You can do something else.
John:
And it just so happens that the games that you can't play with touchscreen controls are like the traditional genres that are way deeper that most people can't play at all.
John:
But there is a proven market for it.
John:
uh is there enough of a market for four or three console competitors probably not so say goodbye to some of them right you know but i still i still think that if apple refuses to go to that it's not like there's a future where all gaming is touchscreen gaming that just oh no definitely not but i you know just like the just like there's no future where movie theaters are totally gone but i think it's very easy to see that game consoles and are getting really marginalized just like movie theaters
John:
I mean, it's it's it's consolidation.
John:
Like they there's probably not enough of a market left for all the players that are there to be doing what they're doing.
John:
So there's going to be some sort of consolidation that goes on there.
John:
But like the fact that Apple is so hands off with the games like they're not even it's not even to the point where I mean, maybe you should talk to some Apple evangelists about this.
John:
But like so they're competing in theory with Android.
John:
for the casual game dollar.
John:
Like, so you want to make a, you know, Sally spa type game.
John:
Uh, the console makers in that market are so mature that, you know, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sega, like all those people back in the day, uh, would go to the popular third party developers like EA or whoever and court them and say, you should really make your next great Sally spa game for our platform.
John:
And here's why.
John:
And like, and cater to them and just like go after them because they're competing for the content creation talent, uh,
John:
Is Apple going out and trying to get EA to make casual games for them and not for Android?
John:
No, because they're just like, EA will make games for us.
John:
We're the only people who have paying customers.
John:
We've got it in the bag.
John:
The market hasn't matured to the point where it's even to the level where the console market was in the 80s.
John:
you know i don't believe apple is believes in games like they like the fact that games that are on their platform but they're not going to do anything for those people with the games except okay we'll put a good gpu for you in there but like oh could you put like buttons in a joystick or have an officially supported blue like even just bluetooth it's like something anything throw us a bone let us have a controller like no we'd rather not you we'd rather you not muck up our thing with any sort of traditional video game controller can't you just make your game touch screen really we feel like your game should conform to our interfaces our vision for the phone or whatever and they're like oh all right that's where the money is let's
Marco:
make a million of these games for a dollar each or whatever i just don't feel like apple believes in understands or is interested in gaming they just you know take what they can get well i think you're right about that for the most part but do you honestly think that a game released for ios would sell very well if it costs like more than a dollar and required a 30 joystick
John:
Well, that's how if they ever wanted to go after the rest of that market.
John:
You take your iPad Pro in 2020, right?
John:
And you have an officially supported Bluetooth controller interface for it or some sort of attachment that snaps into the lightning connector on your phone or whatever and turns it into a game machine.
John:
And suddenly, now the rest of the market is in real trouble because they're saying...
John:
We're not going to leave a portion of the game market for you.
John:
We're taking all the monies from all the casual games, and even that niche market for just people who want more sophisticated games, we're going to take that too, because guess what?
John:
We have official support for games that you play that do not require you to touch the screen.
John:
And then everyone else is doomed.
John:
But Apple thus far has been like, no, just stick to the touchscreen.
John:
That's our thing.
John:
It's simple.
John:
If you feel like a certain type of game you can't make with a touchscreen, tough luck.
John:
Then don't do it then, right?
Marco:
Yeah, but that's... I mean, as a user, I kind of like that.
John:
Like, as a user, as a casual gamer... I would say it's the wrong strategy for Apple, but I'm just saying, like, it doesn't show me that they're really, really into gaming.
John:
Because they're not trying to say, what kind of interactive gaming experiences can we have?
John:
Let's make it like... Nintendo is into gaming.
John:
Nintendo is like, what can we make...
John:
to do something new in gaming.
John:
And we don't care what we have to make, a crazy, waggly remote, a second screen, like, you know, like whatever.
John:
We're just trying to think of something.
John:
Except easy online play.
John:
Well, they would do that if they could.
John:
That's a competence issue, I believe, not really a... They would like that to happen if you could sprinkle the fairy dust and make it happen.
John:
But, like, they, you know, their whole company is focused on what can we make to push the frontiers of gaming.
John:
And Apple is just not doing that at all, not even close.
Casey:
You know, to go back a little bit, I have to disagree that – well, maybe not disagree, but point out that maybe Solitaire is not the most widely played game ever because I can tell you when I had a Nokia or a Nokia or whatever it's called phone and it had nibbles on it or whatever.
Casey:
Oh, yeah, the Snake game.
Casey:
You know what I'm talking about?
Casey:
Snake, that's what it was.
Casey:
I saw that getting played constantly for like five years.
John:
Yeah, Snake and Bejeweled might be contenders, but I feel like the sheer number of idle hours of desk drones not wanting to work at their Windows 3.1 –
John:
You know, Windows 95.
John:
Like, there's this institutionalized old people solitaire playing for just hours as they sit at their security desk and, you know, do nothing.
Marco:
Well, and also, like, those Windows games were the three Windows games or the two Windows.
Marco:
Like, sometimes you didn't get free sell.
Marco:
I don't know what conditions led to that or what versions of Windows had it and didn't, but...
Marco:
Like, Solitaire and Minesweeper, those have been on every desktop computer that everyone has ever had that ran Windows, which is most of them, since, like, the early 90s or earlier.
Marco:
And they're still there now.
Marco:
Like, you know, they've had, like...
John:
What, 25 years at least?
John:
They're on your work computer is the key.
John:
Of course you can put whatever games you want, but on your work computer there's nothing except, especially before the web.
John:
The web has really hurt that because now you can just go look at porn.
John:
That's probably sucking a lot of time away from the people sitting at desks being bored.
Marco:
But the content filter won't know that you're using Minesweeper.
John:
Yeah, I have to wonder.
John:
I wish Microsoft had put monitoring and all stuff so you can calculate the sheer number of hours that people have spent playing these games.
Marco:
Minesweeper does not translate well to touch, by the way.
Marco:
I downloaded one for the iPad for my most recent flight somewhere, and I remember trying it out, and the problem is the difference between flagging a square and opening it, which is a really, really important thing to not do wrong.
John:
You've got to touch with your right hand.
John:
Right.
John:
Right hand, and then...
Marco:
Like, you could set it so that double tap was one of them, and one of them was, like, tap and hold.
Marco:
But, like, if you mess up once, you blow up a bomb and your game's over.
John:
See, even casual games can't be touchscreen only.
Marco:
Wow.
Marco:
Minesweeper doesn't.
Marco:
Well, like, for a long time, two of the biggest casual games are Minesweeper and Tetris, and neither of those work on touch.
Marco:
I'm a huge Tetris fan, and it does not work on touch.
John:
yeah but you know but that's not to say that there aren't awesome casual games that i yeah no they have just as much time with yeah touchscreens have done a nintendo type move where there was types of games that were not possible without a touchscreen right and suddenly the whole world of them has opened up so kudos for that but clearly that was not like that's a side effect of making a touchscreen interface you know
John:
And I really do believe that they are making their hardware.
John:
Who wants the GPU?
John:
It's all about game people.
John:
So they were in consultation with all those other guys about their gaming stack.
John:
But that's as far as it goes.
John:
We'll give you a great GPU.
John:
We'll give you a great screen.
John:
Don't ask us for anything else.
Marco:
But also, they give them a lot of good APIs.
Marco:
Making games for iOS...
Marco:
is way better of a business and way better for the programmers than making games for Android.
Marco:
And Apple knows this.
Marco:
And I think Apple tries to stay ahead of this as much as they can.
Marco:
Apple's devices consistently have really good GPUs.
Marco:
There's a lot of Android devices sold that are really lopsided.
Marco:
They have fast CPUs, really high-resolution screens, and really terrible GPUs because it's harder to really advertise that or it's harder to get it right or more expensive.
Marco:
uh so but like apple does so well with with having all their devices being able to play really great games and they're not being that many gpus out there so it's it's easy to program for all the apple devices and so and they know early on was out because they had an open gl accelerated gui right kind of they needed that anyway right
Marco:
And Apple knows very much that gaming is extremely important to attract and keep people on their platform, especially young people.
Marco:
I mean, the whole iPod Touch was so focused on gaming for so long because of that.
Marco:
Because they knew that a whole lot of iPod Touch owners are kids and teenagers who their parents don't want to buy them iPhones yet.
Marco:
And so they have iPod Touches.
Marco:
And games are really important in those markets.
Marco:
So they really do focus quite a lot on games.
John:
It makes me sad when I see a lot of my friends and relatives without my consultation or blessing have decided they're going to buy their children or significant others Kindle Fires.
John:
Oh, God.
John:
And then I go and I fire HDs.
John:
And then I go and I see the kids playing games on a Kindle Fire.
John:
There's nothing sadder than a kid playing a game on a Kindle Fire.
John:
And I'm not saying this to sound like elitist, but the Kindle Fire is not a gaming machine.
John:
Get your kid a Nintendo DS.
John:
It will cost you less money and that kid will have so much more fun.
Marco:
I bet a lot of Kindle Fires were bought for kids thinking they'd be good gaming machines.
John:
Because it makes sense.
Marco:
You want a cheap solution to your kid's desire for an iPad.
Marco:
Something where if they break it or lose it, you can be out $160 instead of $500.
Marco:
That's a way more attractive thing for parents, I'm sure.
Marco:
But
Marco:
Yeah, man, because the Kindle Fire, I haven't used any of the new generation ones, but the first generation one that I have is a terrible device in every possible way.
John:
It's like when you're just a big fan of Coke and your parents buy you a case of RC Cola, and you're like, no, I know it seems like the same thing.
Marco:
There are no redeeming factors to the Kindle Fire one.
Marco:
It's just so, so bad.
Marco:
It wasn't even cheap enough to make it worth being this bad.
John:
yeah so parents buy your kids nintendo ds please it's not that much money you can get it used old not the 3ds don't even spring for the fancy that one's too expensive just an old nintendo ds it's indestructible it has a bazillion awesome games that are fun that the frame rates are good on uh it's not a tablet but yeah
Marco:
I think once your kid is able to start caring about the frame rate, then maybe upgrade to an iPad.
John:
Well, no, because the games... I would rather play a DS game.
John:
It's got buttons.
John:
It's got buttons and a D-pad and you can throw it on the screen.
Marco:
If I had to pick a platform to play Tetris on, I'd rather play Tetris on the DS than on Tetris.
John:
Yes, of course.
John:
You can actually... I mean, the Game Boy was the original, you know...
John:
tetris monster machine for kids oh yeah the parents were playing it on their on their pcs but the kids in the back of the car with the game boy with the gigantic game boy with the you know not black and white but kind of yellowish greenish and black those were the days playing tetris that you know and tetris practically a tetris machine oh yeah because any game with a scrolling background like a platformer just smeared so badly on that screen you couldn't even play it just like the original game gear had the exact same problem
Marco:
oh the game gear was terrible everything everything about the game batteries yes it used six double a batteries at a time and it used them up in five minutes yeah i think it would burn through six batteries in like 45 minutes or an hour it was it was a pretty short time it would last you a lunch period in middle school that's my gauge for how long those things would last it was like well you can bring it to lunch and i don't want to turn it on to lunch and then you all your friends would play at lunch or by the end of lunch while the batteries are dying now
Marco:
So you'd have to have these tremendous rechargeable battery pack accessories.
Marco:
Yeah, and they were NiCAD, not even nickel metal hydride.
John:
Terrible, terrible memory effect on them.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
John:
Because I appreciate lithium-ion, let me tell you.
Marco:
People with Game Boys have to have those big light things on the front, like those big light magnifying glass combo accessories.
Casey:
With stereo speakers?
Casey:
Yes!
John:
That's what you missed out on, too, by not being a Mac user.
John:
So the original Mac...
John:
uh non-desktop machine let's call it uh called the mac portable uh it had a lead acid battery like oh my god car okay it weighed 16 pounds i believe i have one in my attic it weighed 16 pounds it had a full-size actual real keyboard
John:
16 pounds why the hell not right and so it's like this is a laughing stock i don't have like a trackball embedded in for for moving this is a laughing stock type of thing like this is a ridiculous machine but you know what it had it had something that you kids might know the name of called an active matrix lcd screen and that meant when you move stuff the screen updated and it was like a miracle it was like a miracle because we'd all seen the smeary lcd screens like lcd screens those are terrible
John:
And once you saw this thing, you're like, wait a second, it doesn't smear.
John:
You know, it was, I mean, I probably look at it now, it would probably look like a ghosting mess.
John:
But it was active matrix versus, you know, the passive matrix displays that you saw.
John:
It was such a night and day experience.
John:
It was like, this is what I want from Apple.
John:
I don't care that it's 16 pounds.
John:
I don't care that it's a lasted battery.
John:
I don't care that it's this gigantic beast with a handle.
John:
The screen is amazing, you know.
John:
That was the old Apple.
John:
There was always something phenomenal about even their worst machines.
Marco:
Did you, in the Mac universe back then, did you guys ever have mouse pointer trails?
Marco:
uh intentionally or unintentionally because the the crappy you know the the first power books so did they all have active matrix i think may have only been an option i remember i remember mouse cursor trails on bad laptops for years it was it was actually a feature of windows uh i think in 3.1 they added it it was a feature where it would it would just draw it would leave the mouse pointer graphic it would not unblit it it would draw it on the screen uh
Marco:
In the shadows.
Marco:
Very similar to when Windows freezes.
Marco:
But it's happening all the time.
Marco:
When a window blocks its main event loop, I forget what it's called on Windows, but when it doesn't respond to its main event loop and it doesn't respond to repainting events, so everything just kind of smears all over the window because it's not... Is this still true in Windows 7 and 8 that the windows aren't their own layers anymore?
John:
Windows 7 Arrow has a compositing window manager
Marco:
oh good finally okay because i know like you can turn it off though because it's windows oh good yeah but yeah like it the screens were so bad back then they actually added artificial mouse trails to make it easier to see where your mouse pointer was to find where it is and that's actually that's actually kind of an accessibility thing like my mother uh uses the crank up the size of the cursor thing because her vision is going right uh
John:
And so that, because she can't, otherwise she forgets where the cursor is and you can't see it.
John:
Like you wiggle it around and try to get the motion.
John:
Well, if you've got trails and you wiggle it around, all of a sudden this is white swirl happening off in the corner.
John:
You're like, oh, there's the cursor.
Casey:
So Marco, can I ask you about the magazine?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So you had tweeted earlier today, which if this gets released by the time anyone hears it, it's going to be like a week ago.
Casey:
But anyway, you had tweeted that you had added support for other mail clients other than Apple Mail.
Casey:
And it got me to thinking, and I'm probably not looking at this right, but I wanted to hear your guys' take.
Casey:
It got me to thinking that to some degree –
Casey:
I feel like that sort of developer effort that you had to go through to support all these other mail clients, which I'm assuming is just a series of URL schemes.
Casey:
Is that correct?
Marco:
And it wasn't all these other.
Marco:
I literally just added support for Gmail and Sparrow because nobody told me any other client they're using except for that new mailbox thing.
Marco:
They don't have a URL scheme, so I can't do anything with it.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
But it still got me to thinking that that almost smells to me like the iOS equivalent of the Android fragmentation in the sense that it's something that's not well managed by – well, I mean, URL schemes are well managed by the OS.
Casey:
No, they're not.
John:
They're really, really not.
John:
It's the Wild West out there.
John:
They don't even have a registry like they did for type creator codes, you know.
Casey:
Okay, so that's fair.
Casey:
But what I'm driving at is there's a mechanism for quasi-internet communication.
Casey:
But really, that is a hack to me that you shouldn't have to go through.
Casey:
And I don't think it's Apple style to let you pick a different mail client, or at least not an iOS.
Casey:
But that just kind of smells.
Casey:
I was curious what you guys thought about that.
John:
They don't like letting you pick a different mail client.
John:
Yeah.
John:
But, you know, eventually, like, I mean, think about the Mac, how they don't really like letting you pick your different default browser.
John:
Like, remember when there was the Internet Config Control Panel where you said, what application do you want to use for the FTP protocol?
John:
What application do you want to use for?
John:
And, like, you got the pickup, but then, like, you know what?
John:
Let's just put that as a preference in Safari.
John:
And then every stupid web browser had to say, no, I'm the default browser.
John:
And you'd have to go to the app itself to change that setting.
John:
There was no system-wide.
John:
There still is a system-wide registry and database of who control, but it's not exposed.
John:
And that's the Mac where it's supposed to be the Wild West.
John:
On iOS, it's like, so you want to use a different default mail client?
John:
Well, screw you.
John:
That's why I went...
John:
When I went to the magazine and I saw, oh, it wants me to send an email, and the only email account I have configured on my Mac is not one of the ones that I would want to use from a web browser, so basically I couldn't.
John:
I use the Gmail app.
John:
This is, I guess, before you added Gmail support or whatever.
John:
Anytime I see anything that's sending email on iOS, my heart drops because I'm like, oh, well, that's not using...
John:
I have one really obscure account configured to mail, and I never look at it.
John:
And I don't want to send from that account, and it's not my real account, and it's not my Apple ID account.
John:
It just depresses me, all because I deign to use a different email client.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, it's a mess.
Marco:
That whole world is a mess.
Marco:
But I think...
Marco:
Gmail is probably the only real exception where there's actually demand that matters to Apple.
Marco:
On the Mac, when a lot of this Mac stuff was designed, like the early days of mail and Safari, mail and Safari sucked.
John:
And in many ways, Safari still sucks.
John:
Yeah.
John:
You know, or or iCab or CyberDog.
John:
I guess they had CyberDog, too.
John:
You know, like we keep going back.
John:
But like that underpinning, like if you were designing an OS, like I'm going to be an awesome OS and I'm going to support third party development.
John:
Of course, you have to have a system by which the user gets to choose which of these umpteen third party applications they want to serve these particular needs.
John:
But then once Apple has a horse in the game.
John:
It simplifies things greatly so you don't have to shop around.
John:
Apple gives you something, everything works out of the box, and you're fine.
John:
But God forbid you are a slightly advanced user and say, you know what?
John:
I believe I'll use a different mail client.
John:
It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
John:
Hold up.
John:
What are you doing here?
John:
On the Mac, you can figure out how to do it, but a normal person can't.
John:
If my parents decided that they wanted to use a different mail client, which they probably never would, but if they did, they would have no idea how to do that.
John:
They would never think to look in the preferences for the mail client.
John:
In either mail client, they wouldn't think to look for the preferences to tell the OS that they
Marco:
Well, it would do what the browsers do, which is all the third-party ones would have a nag screen that would pop up saying, hey, you want to set us as the default?
Marco:
But I think on iOS, because iOS launched with the best browser and mail client available on iOS.
Marco:
The only browser and mail client.
Marco:
Well, but now I would say Mail and Safari are still the best Mail client and browser available on the platform.
John:
Well, Safari is the best because they won't let anyone else use Nitro JavaScript engines.
John:
So, duh, no wonder it's the best for safety reasons and whatever.
John:
They have legitimate security reasons for not allowing that to happen, but everyone else's hands are tied behind their back.
John:
So no one is ever going to make a better browser than Safari in terms of performance and web rendering because they're the only guys who get to use the good rendering engine.
John:
They're the good JavaScript engine.
John:
I wouldn't...
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I mean Safari's JavaScript is faster than everyone else's on iOS, but I don't think that's what's holding back the other browsers, honestly.
John:
You're not allowed to use that.
John:
That's why doesn't Chrome use WebKit on iOS entirely, including the JavaScript engine?
John:
unlike Chrome on the Mac, which uses the V8 JavaScript, because you're not allowed to make an interpreter.
John:
That's their other thing.
John:
Unless you're a game maker and you get grandfathered or whatever the hell crazy deal they have with EA to let them run Lua scripts or whatever.
John:
I think that doesn't matter.
Marco:
You can't make an interpreter.
Marco:
They changed the interpretation of that rule like a year ago to be even more vague and unspecified, but more sensible most of the time.
John:
But it still boxes out JavaScript engines.
John:
They're clearly, oh, you're making a language and we don't want you to download code from the internet and execute it.
John:
So you have to use our JavaScript engine and the slow version of our JavaScript engine that doesn't have all the security, possibly security-violating features.
John:
So no one is going to ever make a browser that's going to be universally better than Safari.
John:
And then mail, I would say that lots of people would say that people already have made better clients than mail.
John:
I don't know if you like this mailbox crazy thing, which has other server-side and security and privacy concerns to it, but...
John:
Client-wise, it's an innovation in terms of how you deal with your mail.
John:
And I really like that innovation.
John:
I just don't like everything else about the client, which is why I'm not going to get it.
John:
But there is a chance that someone could make a better iOS native mail client than Apple because there's no technical reason holding them back.
John:
The only thing that screws you is that, well, so what?
John:
No other application is going to see your stupid mail thing.
John:
And when you send mail, we're going to still pull up Apple Mail because that's the way it works.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So do you ever think that will change?
Casey:
I mean, I don't.
Marco:
I don't ever see there being enough demand from customers, honestly.
Marco:
Gmail, maybe.
Marco:
Chrome, no.
Marco:
I just don't see there being this massive demand from customers on iOS to want to use alternative clients enough for Apple to want to change their minds on the policy.
Marco:
If there was a huge demand, that would be different.
John:
I think long term what's going to happen is that, as in so many things, there's going to be a new killer application, either category or individual instance, that wants to fill the role that's currently filled by a default Apple application.
John:
And in order to be competitive, there will be public pressure to say, hey, why can't I use popular new thing instead of the dumb default thing that comes?
John:
And that will only happen not because of anything Apple's doing, but because of the sheer mind share and sort of cultural traction that this other thing gets.
John:
They dodged a bullet on Twitter for that because it was always third party and they didn't have a single horse in the game.
John:
Right.
John:
And they integrated Twitter into the US.
John:
But I don't know what the next thing is, but whatever it is, if it wants to take over like web browsing or mail sending and becomes wildly popular, independent of Apple, Apple will be under pressure from that same casual public.
John:
to how come every time I send mail on my iPhone, it brings up a stupid mail application.
John:
I want to sell it in HoloMail with the new holographic Holo whatever thing that's made by a third-party company that's not Apple, and they have an app, but every time I send mail, like, that's the phenomenon I'm looking for, where it's going to be something that becomes popular, independent of Apple, that they can't be ignored, and they're just going to be forced to say, you know, all right, we now have a way for you to choose which application you want to send mail, our boring other one, or this crazy HoloMail that everyone loves.
John:
I'm mispronouncing Holo, but whatever.
Marco:
Maybe what it would actually take would be one of those killer apps getting huge and taking over, growing really fast, like Instagram levels of growth, just taking over like crazy, but on Android instead, and not even being available on iOS because it can't exist in the App Store.
John:
They would say, on my iPhone, the stupid Apple app always comes up.
John:
But on my Android phone, I get to pick which one I want.
John:
And everybody who has an Android phone automatically picks whatever crazy popular new thing is.
John:
And so everyone with an Android phone is happily going along and doing their thing.
John:
And the Apple people are like, yeah, we have this workaround where most Apple... The worst case scenario is people have to do what Marco is doing.
John:
It's like, all right.
John:
Like you tried to do with the magazine originally with the Chrome...
Marco:
Yeah, and just automatically pick the right one.
John:
With Instapaper, if you have Chrome installed, you're forced to do crap like that because the OS gives no way for people who want to use Chrome to indicate that preference.
John:
I shouldn't have to do this at all.
Marco:
There should be absolutely no reason why an app developer should need to separately code support for different mail clients or different browsers.
Marco:
I shouldn't even have to know what browsers are out there.
John:
Yeah, and every application is going to have to have this stupid proliferation of preferences and dealing with URL protocols.
John:
And that's the worst thing that could happen to Apple, is that something becomes wildly popular.
John:
Apple refuses to budge.
John:
Every application that does anything that involves this application suddenly adds a preference that says, use Apple default, use this one, or whatever.
John:
And then every time you download a new application, you've got to go into settings and change it and say, oh, I've got to tell this to use my...
John:
I mean, like, Fantastical is kind of almost there because they want to make a default calendar, but they can't replace the default calendar.
John:
Like, there's a lot of people, I bet, who would buy an iOS calendar application completely replacing the existing calendar if they could, you know?
Casey:
Yeah, I would do that with Fantastical, absolutely.
Casey:
And actually, you were talking about something that's only on Android that isn't on iOS, and this isn't a great example, but one that jumped to mind was the swipe keyboard thing that all the Android users rave about.
Casey:
And I don't think it's popular enough to get the response from Apple that you're talking about, John, but that certainly is something that I think of that Android users can hold over our heads and say, hey, look what we can do, and you can't without a jailbreak or something like that.
John:
There's a limit to what Apple would do.
John:
Letting you pick your favorite email application is within the realm of what I would consider plausible for Apple to do in the future.
John:
But letting you pick a different app instead of Springboard is outside that realm.
John:
Or a different keyboard, like a third-party keyboard app, that is just...
John:
They don't even let you do it on the Mac.
John:
That's a good yardstick, is the question.
John:
Do they let you replace the Finder with another app?
John:
No.
John:
You can hack it up and figure out a way to do it because it's the Mac and it's much more open than iOS, but they don't offer you that option.
John:
You can pick your default browser, and you can pick your default mail client, and you can pick which application automatically has ownership of it.
John:
you know dot shtml files or whatever the hell you want but you cannot pick through like a goie interface you know what i'm not into the finder can you can you launch into pathfinder and stuff it's up to the pathfinder devs to figure out how to hack your system up to make that happen so keyboards probably outside the realm of uh of possibility in the near or distant future springboard replacement also probably not gonna happen oh yeah never gonna happen apple's way but replacement mail and browsers uh
John:
Maybe not mail, maybe not browsers, maybe not calendar, but something along those lines.
Marco:
Camera apps may be... There aren't that many types of apps like that that the use case is so compelling to replace the default apps.
Marco:
There really aren't a lot of categories like that.
Marco:
That's why I think...
Marco:
like calendar is a great example of one of those categories but i think the demand for that is even lower than the demand for browsers i would say demand for browsers is probably the lowest because chrome and ios is not that much better than safari and ios demand is probably highest for email clients because everyone wants to use the gmail app i think that that is probably the the strongest case for this preference existing uh
Marco:
But calendars, I think the market for alternative calendars, while it may be big enough to support a few developers doing it, I don't think it's big enough for Apple to have to care about having a default setting.
John:
Well, I don't know.
John:
Like calendars, reminders, to-do lists.
John:
Like there are tons of third-party things that people like.
John:
Like the defaults are – I think a lot of people ignore the defaults because the third-party market is so rich for those things, especially with like – they were ahead of Apple on integrating with a Mac client and an iPad and iPhone all together with one big shared thing.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
It's just that they're not so much launched from other applications.
John:
Like what you don't want is for people to be in –
John:
a cool app and see that they're about to do some activity that's going to invoke another app and realize with sinking feeling that oh this is not going to invoke the app that i want right and that repeatedly happening to people uh is what makes people said i guess it happens the most i guess by sending email because they you know it's not done from a sheet like a tweet might be with that api or whatever it's they send you off to the to the mail app to send your email uh and you don't let you don't end up in the gmail app or whatever your the app that you wanted to use was
John:
Apple can nip this in the butt.
John:
The reason we hated it so much with browsers was Microsoft stagnated on IE and they said, we're just not going to develop that anymore.
John:
IE6 is perfect and it never needs to be changed ever again.
John:
The gap just widened and became increasingly crazy.
John:
Imagine if Windows users could not change their default browser at all, but had to explicitly copy and paste the URL, launch Netscape back in the day, paste the URL in.
John:
That's what the situation is like on iOS now.
John:
if you want to use something different for your mail or browser.
John:
Yeah, you're right.
John:
You're like, oh, there's a link I bought it.
John:
I don't want to tap it.
Casey:
Well, that's sort of true.
Casey:
On the new version of 1Password, they did something absolutely brilliant, which was they made their URL handlers...
Casey:
O-P-H-T-T-P and O-P-H-T-T-P-S.
Casey:
So the premise is, if you're in Safari and you want to open that site that you're looking at in 1Password, it is fiddly, admittedly, but it's as unfiddly as you can be, which is to say, you go to the URL bar and you put the letters O-P in front of whatever the crap is there, and then it'll kick over to 1Password and open it up.
John:
They had to make their own browsers, what they had to do.
Casey:
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
John:
That is so... I don't know if it's terrible, but it's like...
John:
you're one password and you want to provide password management services.
John:
And the only way you can do it is like, I've just got to, I've just got to make the whole new browser.
John:
It's great that they can do it with a nice embeddable web kit control and everything like that.
John:
But it's like, that's the heavyweight solution.
John:
Actually, don't even, don't even browse the web from that browse the web from our thing, because this is one little thing that we want to do in some cases, and we can't do it unless you do,
John:
Unless you're literally using our software.
Marco:
I have the exact same thing with Instapaper, which is I wanted to add an easy read later button because mobile Safari makes that so hard to do that I built a whole web browser into Instapaper so that people could browse the web and save stuff from it if they couldn't figure out how to install the bookmarklet.
John:
You should never remove that feature, by the way.
John:
I'll hunt you down.
Marco:
I would love to remove that feature.
Marco:
I would so love to.
John:
I like to bring up the full version of the webpage without leaving the app.
John:
That's my common use case.
Marco:
I would love to remove it, but I probably never can because of things like that, because there's enough people who use it, but also because there's going to be so many people who just browse from that.
John:
You never figure out how to do the bookmark.
John:
Right, because I can't do anything else so far.
John:
I figured out the bookmark.
John:
I have it, but it's just, you know...
Marco:
I think a system like Windows 8's contracts would really go a long way towards solving a lot of these issues.
Marco:
Not all of them, there would still be some issues, but if Apple broadens this whole UI activity thing from iOS 6 and combining with the remote view controllers thing that they quietly added to iOS 6 as well and used behind the scenes, if they transform this into something like Windows 8 contracts,
Marco:
with iOS 7, maybe.
Marco:
But does that really help?
Marco:
Well, it would be a tremendous help if they did it that way.
Marco:
Right now, its current implementation on iOS 6, it's really extremely unhelpful in many ways.
Marco:
For me to add the send to Instapaper button in the magazine, I had to manually code that into the magazine, provide an icon for it,
Marco:
write all the code to log into Instapaper, to save it, all that stuff.
Marco:
Even though I had the Instapaper app installed.
Marco:
If I wanted it to be in the app without kicking over the Instapaper app and then kicking back, which is kind of inelegant, if I wanted it to all be in the app, I had to write that all myself.
Marco:
There's no way Instapaper could offer to the magazine its own interface that could be in the magazine share panel.
Marco:
That doesn't exist yet.
John:
If that did exist... That share panel will open up almost guaranteed in iOS 7.
John:
You'll be able to put stuff in that shit.
Marco:
I really hope so.
Marco:
But that's a major architectural change, though.
Marco:
And that's why it's a big deal if they do it.
Marco:
And it might not happen yet because it is such a major change.
Marco:
But that would...
Marco:
That's part of what Windows 8 contracts are.
Marco:
That would go a long way towards solving a lot of these problems.
Marco:
If I could just say, here, I have this item to share.
Marco:
Open up a share panel, and I can offer you a URL, a file of this type, and this text.
Marco:
And any apps that can do something with these things can show up here and do their thing.
Marco:
And I don't have to code all that myself.
Marco:
That would go a long way.
John:
Is the remote view controller stuff, the stuff that's used in XPC that's actually in iOS 6 but not public?
John:
Yes.
John:
The thing that spawns the external process and communicates with it through a secure sandbox channel?
John:
Exactly.
Marco:
It's currently used for the mail-sharing controller, and I think maybe even the Twitter one and the Facebook one.
Marco:
But definitely the mail one uses it.
Marco:
They could definitely use that exact same kind of system to do this for all third-party apps and have this kind of system.
John:
But the share sheet is different.
John:
The share sheet is literally what you said.
John:
It's just a question of querying which applications can handle this type of thing, showing their stupid icons and feeding them the data with a launch event.
John:
Add to Instapaper.
John:
You'd be perfectly happy if the add to Instapaper was hit the share button, hit the little iInstapaper icon.
John:
Your application gets – all you need is a freaking URL.
John:
Your application gets a URL.
John:
and has a chance to shove it in somewhere, and then it goes away.
Marco:
But then the question is, does it switch to my app first?
Marco:
Because that's kind of inelegant.
Marco:
Or is my app just brought up in a background state, and I present a view controller that the remote controller then displays, and then I'm just handing this data, and my app never shows up?
Marco:
That would be the right way to do it.
John:
The share thing with the list of icons, I assume, is going to launch you.
John:
The remote view controller thing where you get to present an interface is what you really want, but that's more complicated.
John:
But anytime there's a private API like that used by Apple apps, like XPC has public API on the Mac, right?
John:
So this is kind of one of those things where it seems like this is how a private API becomes public.
John:
It's like how a bill becomes a law, how a baby is made.
John:
First, Apple uses it all, and
John:
First, Apple uses it in all their apps, and then they hopefully wring the bugs out of it.
John:
And then the next release, they open it up to everyone.
John:
Or in the next release, they decide they made a terrible mistake, scrap it, and start over again.
John:
But XPC is already public on the Mac, so I feel pretty good about that.
Casey:
The only problem I have with this idea is let's take in the example of the magazine.
Casey:
I don't really see how this would help in the sense that what you're doing is you're doing something with a URL.
Casey:
So if you have a share sheet and you're presenting to the share sheet, hey, I've got a URL.
Casey:
Who can do something with this?
Casey:
That's going to be half the damn apps on your iPhone or iPad or whatever the case may be.
John:
Well, that's why they don't do it, because everyone's like, I register for STAR.
John:
I can handle any data.
Marco:
There was a good interview from Chipone on Debug, the podcast by Rene Ritchie and Guy English.
Marco:
You know Chipone, the hacker guy?
Marco:
Anyway, Grandpa.
Marco:
Anyway, he was talking on their show about...
Marco:
how this is a problem on Android that does implement this feature because then you have these apps that show these giant long lists of what you can do with something and they're not really ordered in any good way.
Marco:
You can't really set a default of what you want to show up on top for certain types.
Marco:
That actually then becomes a pretty challenging interface problem.
John:
Yeah, they can do the thing like where you hold down on the icon and they wiggle and you can X them out and there's a more button at the bottom if you want to get some back.
John:
You're going to have to trim those lists because as soon as you do that, yeah, look at the freaking App Store.
John:
Are you?
John:
I don't know.
Marco:
Well, first of all, they can police it.
Marco:
So they can say like, well, you don't really have a use for this, so we're not going to let you register for it.
John:
Some applications, though, have legit... What if you're a text editor?
John:
Anytime something is text, you're like, oh, look, there's elements again, or a PDF reader or something.
Marco:
Yeah, like Goodreader and Dropbox will just register for every file type.
John:
Or an image, like all your camera apps are going to show up, all your image retouching apps.
John:
It's just...
John:
The interface problem is it's either going to have to be opt-in, which would be kind of annoying for regular users, or opt-out where you just use the gesture that we all know to make icons go away, which is hold your finger down on them, hit the little X, and then trim the list.
John:
Or it'll just reorder itself.
Marco:
Whichever one you used last would move up to the front of the list.
John:
Oh, no, that's no good.
John:
There's a reason Springboard doesn't work that way.
John:
Because it would drive people nuts.
John:
Upper left is Safari.
John:
Where did it go?
John:
I haven't used it recently.
John:
The muscle memory of that sheet comes up.
John:
Instapaper is the top left corner.
John:
You tap it.
John:
If Instapaper is not the top left corner because you didn't use it, but you used a different one last time, that's angry making.
Casey:
See, and I agree.
Casey:
And that's what I'm driving at is that RPC definitely solves a problem, which is if you're Marco and you want to have a native Instapaper share function from within the magazine, right now you're screwed, and RPC would fix that.
Casey:
But to me, it doesn't really fix the problem of, I have a URL I wish to email immediately.
Casey:
What can email this URL?
Casey:
Because it's more than just having a URL you want to share or do something with.
Casey:
You want to be able to say that my intention is to email it.
Casey:
And then that calls the list down to whatever email clients you have.
Casey:
Or perhaps if Apple was nuts and had a default email client setting, then that is what you get.
John:
Yeah, it wouldn't – that's the Android intent.
John:
So it wouldn't just be a protocol-driven.
John:
It would be action-driven.
John:
Exactly.
John:
It would have to have – action would have to be a component.
John:
We were just saying protocol-driven for like if you have raw data, kind of like who can handle this pasteboard data type of thing.
Casey:
Right.
John:
Yeah, there's also – the intention is like I would like – who is an email?
John:
Like Apple could just –
John:
Apple can define these things.
John:
I was saying in another podcast a while ago, if Apple wants to allow third-party email applications, by all means, let it say, look, if you want to be a third-party email application that participates in the system we're defining, here's how you must behave in terms of RPC.
John:
Here's the features you have to support.
John:
You must support attachments, custom subject lines, so you can conform to some protocol that I'm sure Apple's mail application already totally conforms to or whatever.
John:
Define it however you want.
John:
People will jump through those hoops to be like,
John:
So basically, you don't run to the problem of like, oh, well, you picked a third-party email application that can't handle subject lines for some reason, and my application doesn't work because it puts some code in the subject line.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
That's what they want to avoid.
John:
Because you're not using the default email application, your stuff broke.
John:
So they would have to say...
John:
if you want to be a replacement for a system thing you must support these features this protocol you know just screw it down as tight as you want because people will jump through it to be in that and that will solve the consistency problem of being afraid everything is working fine but because i use a third-party email application something broke you know
Marco:
Right, and that's a huge support problem for developers when that starts getting possible.
Marco:
Like right now, I mean, and that's kind of the flip side of this.
Marco:
Like right now, because I'm building in support for all these things manually, I can test them all.
Marco:
And I can be pretty sure that the options that anybody will ever see will all work.
Marco:
But once you start integrating these other things, then people will start blaming you for like, oh, when I shared to new experimental browser X from your share panel, it didn't work right in this weird way.
Marco:
And they'll email me saying it's my fault.
John:
Yeah, I just had that with the hypercritical.co podcast feed.
John:
Ever since that site went up, people are like, I tried to subscribe to your feed in Reader, and it showed me this crazy-ass thing, and they showed me a sheet in Reader that shows a huge list of things, none of which are my feed, some of which have my name related to them.
John:
I'm like, what the heck?
John:
I'm like, that must be running a search or something.
John:
What the hell is it doing?
John:
And you're like, look, it's a URL.
John:
It's HTTP colon slash slash, and it has a bunch of stuff.
John:
You click it, and this is on the Mac.
John:
So it activates, okay, what is your handler for RSS?
John:
I guess it looks at the MIME type of the thing coming back, you know, Atom feed or whatever.
John:
And then it launches your preferred newsreader application, which happens to your readers and these people's systems.
John:
And then reader gets it.
John:
And it turns out what Safari does is it takes off the HTTP, puts in feed colon slash slash,
John:
Finds out whatever the default protocol handle is for feed.
John:
Basically, what is your newsreader?
John:
Launches that, but gives it that URL.
John:
And I believe it excises the feed at that point and hands the URL without the leading HTTP or something.
John:
But what it comes down to is that what reader was doing is taking the URL as it was given, which no longer had, oh, no, I think it was stripping off the feed.
John:
Reader was stripping off the feed colon slash slash, not putting HTTP slash slash back on, feeding that to the Google Reader API, and Google Reader API interpreted that as a search term and not a URL, and hilarity ensues.
John:
God.
John:
And that is a pretty – that is like –
John:
Like, how complicated is that?
John:
It's a link that you click that launches a protocol handle.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Like, that's as simple as it could possibly be, and yet it still went totally awry.
John:
Like, once it went off to the third-party application, it's like, oh, yeah, I'm totally compliant.
John:
I handle feed URLs.
John:
But then what it does with them, it passes them to Google Reader, and Google Reader does something crazy with it.
John:
And then so you get into a situation where you're like, hey, I tried to subscribe to your news feed, but when I clicked on it, because the newsreader I used isn't...
John:
whatever newsreader you tested with, something crazy happened.
John:
So I guess no matter how simple you make it, something can go wrong that you did not expect.
John:
Yep.
John:
This bug is fixed in the next version of Reader, supposedly.
John:
Right, then it'll introduce five more.
John:
Yeah, I'll be happy.
John:
I don't know why Google Red is doing this.
John:
I'm assuming it's because they don't think .co is like a real extension.
John:
They're probably looking for the .com to doing their fuzzy matching.
John:
Is this a URL?
John:
It's kind of odd.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Yeah, but the search terms that come up are vaguely related to me because it's got the word hypercritical and feed and main.
John:
You see things about the podcast and my name.
John:
It took me a while to figure that one out.