Smorgasbord of Pronunciation
Marco:
So do we have any topics tonight?
Casey:
Not really.
Casey:
We have a little bit of follow-up, and then, honestly, I have no clue what the rest of the show is going to bring.
Casey:
So it's going to be a little wild.
Marco:
Wacky wild Casey.
Marco:
Let's see what happens now.
Marco:
Woo!
Casey:
So we should probably do some follow-up, starting with computer science, John.
John:
Yeah, this is a little bit of follow-up on the software, the complexity of software and computing and all that other stuff.
John:
Lots of follow-up on that in all sorts of different directions.
John:
A few themes I noticed in the feedback.
John:
One theme was a lot of people who either are involved in academia or feel some connection to it, and what they wanted to talk about was sort of field versus field, their field versus someone else's field, whatever their field may be, physics, chemistry, engineering, computer science, math.
John:
I don't know if they misunderstood the discussion as if it was computer science versus other fields, but that sure is the discussion they wanted to have.
John:
And it reminded me of this quote, again, from, you know, as the original place, I see all quotes apparently as use net sigs.
John:
And this one is computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
John:
I have a link to it we can put in the show notes.
John:
I forget where the origin is, but the little, uh, hash on the URL is disputed.
John:
So maybe it's, it's disputed where that quote comes from.
John:
But anyway, uh, that I think gets to the heart of why we weren't talking about fields, computer science versus any other field.
John:
Cause it's not computer science is not about computers.
John:
It's, you know, we were talking about software and computer science is tangentially about software, but not really.
John:
Uh, but anyway, that's, those are difficult, different discussions to have about, uh,
John:
which field is superior to or a subset of some other field but that's definitely not what we're talking about the other one is people still want to talk about job difficulty like uh my job is harder than your job you're saying your job is the hardest job in the world so on and so forth i thought i made that clear in the last show but apparently not clear enough to not have people come in and say whatever i do for a living is harder than what you do for a living or you think what you do for a living is hard because you do it but blah and so on and so forth that's also definitely not what we're talking about
John:
One person sent in something about programming and complexity and the things we were talking about in the last show, which is from one of MIT's courses on the structure and interpretation of computer programs.
John:
What is it?
John:
SICP.
John:
That's the one.
John:
I think that's the name of the book, the book that they teach off.
John:
But anyway, MIT has lots of video lectures.
John:
And they said from minute nine to about 10 minutes and 45 seconds in this recording, the professor talks about a lot of the same things.
John:
He doesn't make the same argument I was making, but touches on a lot of the same points that I was using to support my argument.
John:
And it's a fun video to watch if you just want to watch an MIT professor teach for a while.
John:
So we'll have that link in the show notes as well.
John:
And it's only a minute and 45 seconds.
John:
You don't have to watch the whole thing.
John:
Just scrub forward to minute nine.
John:
And then, Casey, you put something in here from a listener email?
Casey:
I think that was Marco, actually.
Casey:
You're talking about software complexity?
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So this wonderful feedback we got from a guy named John, PurplePilot on Twitter.
Marco:
I love his name is John, by the way.
Marco:
So he says, the fundamental mistake here, of course, is that woodpeckers do not peck wooden houses.
Marco:
They peck trees.
Marco:
Trees are arguably the most complex things in existence, by the way, to get food, store food, and to nest.
Marco:
Dead wood, i.e.
Marco:
that which has been felled and chemically treated, is of no use or interest to woodpeckers.
Marco:
So a wooden civilization would be secure from woodpeckers, but probably vulnerable to woodworm or death watch beetles or termites.
Marco:
So I'm pretty sure, John, if you ever get tired of doing the show, we can replace you.
John:
with another john with another guy named john who made that comment it would have been much better if he pretended he was serious because towards the end it's clear that he was joking that kind of ruins the joke i'm not sure he was you honestly think he was joking i i assumed he was not woodworm death watch beetles and termites puts it over the top are are you joking when you criticize things
John:
That's not criticizing.
John:
That person knows.
John:
That was a knowing email.
Marco:
I don't know.
Casey:
Anyway, so we have a backup John.
Casey:
And thank goodness he is named John, because otherwise I would have been totally confused.
Casey:
Totally.
Casey:
So what's awesome these days, Marco?
Marco:
This week we're sponsored once again by a return sponsor from a while ago, Rem Objects.
Marco:
So you might remember a long time ago we told you about Rem Objects Oxygen, which is a cross-platform language that was based on Pascal, and it would let you compile for Mac, iOS, Android, Windows, or even Windows Phone.
Marco:
Rem Objects has a new language now.
Marco:
It's a similar kind of deal, but it's actually based on the C-sharp language.
Marco:
Is it C-pound, Casey?
Casey:
No, it is not C-pound.
Marco:
C-tick-tack-toe board?
Marco:
C-hash?
Casey:
Oh, you know, that's it.
Casey:
That's it.
Casey:
It's C-tick-tack-toe board.
Casey:
No, it is C-sharp, you big jerk.
Marco:
Okay, so there's a REM object C-sharp, and it has a lot of the same advantages.
Marco:
In fact, probably all the same advantages as oxygen.
Marco:
So this is really cool.
Marco:
It's...
Marco:
It brings C Sharp as a native language to Cocoa.
Marco:
So it's 100% C Sharp that you're writing, and you're writing it against 100% Cocoa.
Marco:
It's very, very cool.
Marco:
So, Casey, they asked you to take a look at it.
Marco:
What did you think?
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So I took a look at it very, very briefly, but I did take a look at it, and I did try it, and I built the world's simplest Hello World-style iOS app by writing C Sharp using REM objects.
Casey:
And it was really weird, but I definitely liked it.
Casey:
Basically, what they do is they let you write in C Sharp.
Casey:
But just like you said, Marco, you're writing against the Cocoa Touch framework.
Casey:
And so rather than using the .NET framework, which is, I believe, Xamarin's approach, which is more we're going to abstract away Cocoa behind the .NET framework that you're probably familiar with.
Casey:
This is a little closer to the metal, so to speak, in that you're writing C Sharp, but you're writing it against straight-up UIKit, for example.
Casey:
And they even went to the point of extending the C Sharp language such that you can use the Objective-C style method names or message names.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
I wrote code where I made an alert view.
Casey:
And so my code, for those of you who write C-sharp, is var view equals new UI alert view space with title, paren, quote, high, paren, space, message, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Casey:
So it's really kind of weird, but very cool that they've extended C-sharp in order to allow you to write directly against Cocoa and Cocoa Touch.
Casey:
The advantage there being that you're really just putting a thin veneer on top of it, and you're not relying on a whole different framework sitting between you and Apple's framework.
Casey:
So it's very cool, very clever, and very interesting.
Casey:
And the way they have you write code is by writing it in Visual Studio, which I would argue is the best IDE in the world, and then...
Casey:
You run an application on either your Mac or a Mac in the office or a Mac in the cloud, and it basically compiles the binary, dumps it onto that Mac, and lets you run your app either in the simulator or on the device or whatever.
Casey:
It's actually very straightforward, very easy to set up.
Casey:
It works really well.
Casey:
And I liked it.
Casey:
I can definitely see how this could make some really cool stuff without having to rely on somebody else's glue in between, really.
Casey:
I mean, you are, but it's the thinnest, lightest glue in the world.
Marco:
So if you're interested in getting your own thin layer of light glue and writing...
Marco:
native coco applications with the c-sharp language go to remobjects.com remobjects.com slash cs and you can see remobjects c-sharp for yourself they have a bunch of cool videos here you can see you know get more information um than my uh mediocre performance in this ad read here um you can actually get more information you can see the kind of code casey was writing all right here these great videos remobjects.com slash cs
Marco:
Thank you so much to RemObjects for sponsoring the show.
Marco:
I got to give them credit.
Marco:
This is a really cool thing to even attempt to do.
Marco:
And from everything I've heard, they do a really good job of it.
Marco:
So thanks a lot, RemObjects.
Casey:
Yeah, and I should also point out that one of the things they say in their FAQ is, you know, hey, what with the .NET framework being gone, what about cool stuff like Link?
Casey:
And so what they've done is they've taken a lot of the Link extension methods and – I thought it was pronounced Link.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
Maybe if your surname is Armand.
Casey:
But anyway, they basically ported some of the more frequently used parts of Link into their platform.
Casey:
So that's a really smart call and really, really awesome to have that tool in your tool chest.
Casey:
Cool.
Casey:
Thanks a lot.
Casey:
They canned the iPad 2.
John:
Finally.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
How long was that on sale?
Marco:
Forever.
Marco:
It was released in, what, 2011?
Marco:
What, like February 2011?
Marco:
So it made it three years, three full years of being on sale brand new.
Casey:
That is crazy talk.
John:
The amazing thing is it only had one price drop.
John:
Yeah, like I wonder if they had inventory they were trying to clear.
John:
They just like made way too many of them because you could see how Apple wanted to get away from 30-pin everywhere.
John:
There was this lone, I guess the iPad Classic still too, but like...
John:
lone real product lurching along with 30 pin we talked in past shows about why they would still want to be selling the two and how it made sense for education and all these other things they just want the lowest price possible but also might want the big screen and don't care about retina and so on and so forth but
John:
it just seemed like it but it just went on for just so long and and the thing is that they're replacing the ipad 2 not with like the next model up but with two models up that's how old it is that it's like they can't even can't even bring themselves to replace the ipad 2 with the 3 or just continue with they're replacing it with the 4 well they probably don't want to admit that the 3 existed
Marco:
I have the 3.
Marco:
I like the 3.
Casey:
It's not that bad.
Casey:
I agree.
Casey:
Well, actually, Aaron's using it now, and it's really not that bad.
John:
It's great.
John:
I mean, I really like the 3.
John:
The 3 is the one brief moment where Apple decided to—the thing they wouldn't move, the thing they wouldn't budge on was battery life.
John:
And so they made the thing thicker.
John:
And I wish they would do that with phones and laptops.
Yeah.
Marco:
Well, we'll see.
Marco:
Laptops, I wouldn't hold my breath on.
Marco:
Phones, I still hold out hope that if there is a bigger iPhone this year, and I think there will be, that that might also come with a... I was on the talk show a while back, and I mentioned this to Gruber, that like...
Marco:
I feel like if they do a big phone that might give them permission, if they keep a small one in the lineup, the small one can be the one that keeps getting smaller and thinner, and the bigger one can have a little bit more permission to be a little bit thicker and therefore have not only a bigger battery but a nicer camera sensor because the camera sensor is really limited very hard by thickness.
Marco:
There's so much more you could do with quality and image quality and things like optical image stabilization and better focus, possibly even a slight zoom capability.
Marco:
if you could get a little more depth on the phone.
Marco:
So I would love if they, obviously Apple's never going to make that their only model, but if they have a bigger iPhone that they'll keep the small one around for the nice marketing shots and people who want super thin, super small, but then they can have this bigger one for people who want the better camera and bigger battery.
John:
when i was listening to that episode i want to i felt like reminding you and reaching the podcast that the ipod touch my thing has a camera that is not flush with the back it sticks out so they just like that's that's kind of what happens if they just keep going thinner like well you can't go too thin because we gotta have the camera it's like screw the camera we're going thinner through the camera we'll poke out deal with it i'm kind of surprised that they're still selling the ipod touch tell me about it yeah yeah
Marco:
It seems like it doesn't sell that well, and they don't care that much about it.
John:
It's a kid's device, though.
John:
It's like a My First iOS device, because you can buy it for your kid.
John:
You don't have to worry about cell phone stuff.
John:
They can still play their iOS games.
John:
I think kids want them, based on talking to my children's friends and my little cousins and stuff.
John:
If they can't have an iPhone, which is, of course, what they really want.
John:
But if they're too young for an iPhone, an iPod Touch is the thing that they want that's like...
John:
They aspire to have an iPhone when they're a cool teenager in high school or whatever, but if they can't have that now, an iPod Touch is the next best thing.
Marco:
You don't think the iPad Mini has filled that role?
John:
Not among the kids.
John:
I haven't even seen an iPad Mini in the wild amongst young kids yet.
John:
I think that might be too big to give a kid, or maybe, I don't know, too expensive, too breakable.
John:
iPod Touches are much cheaper.
John:
It would be nice if they revised it every once in a while, but what can you do?
Casey:
Yeah, I agree with you, though, John.
Casey:
My sister-in-law, who was in high school, for the longest time until she somewhat recently got an Android phone when I wasn't paying attention, she was using an iPod Touch in addition to either a flip phone or one of those phones with the slide-out.
Casey:
So you can type on a full QWERTY keyboard.
Casey:
But anyway, so she was using her iPod Touch as her kind of sort of smartphone.
Casey:
Let me rephrase.
Casey:
Let me start this over.
Casey:
She was John Syracuse and had an ancient non-smartphone and then used her iPod Touch for doing smart things.
Casey:
And she loved it.
Casey:
And the way she spoke about it, it struck me as though that was a normal thing amongst her peer group if they didn't already have iPhones or Android phones or whatever.
John:
Yeah, and for the big phone that we think is coming this year, I'm pretty sure that they're going to be like, we don't need to make it thicker.
John:
We get all this extra area because they will.
John:
They'll get a bigger battery because the phone is bigger length and width-wise, and they won't make it thicker or higher.
John:
So I would imagine it'll be the same thickness as the 5, and I think they're not above having the camera stick out a little bit like it does in the iPod Touch or perhaps even more because I think...
John:
Unless they change the whole design to be designed around this, I think that Apple absolutely does not want to bulge.
John:
All of the Android phones that you see out there, or even the Nokia ones, when they want a bigger camera, they're like, we will smoothly kind of raise up some kind of lump, or it'll be like a lump with little ramps on the side, or some kind of organic...
John:
bulge type shape and you could apple could come up with a rounded bulging kind of like design kind of like the the emate if people remember what that looked like or even the toilet book uh toilet bowl imax or any of those things like it's not it's not out of the realm of possibility they could go with something curved in fact every time i think of an iphone 6 i think of something that's curved and tapered on the edges but
John:
That's just, you know, yes, I actually have dreams about the shape of the iPhone 6.
John:
That is not a prediction.
John:
That's just when I wake up having a dream where I saw the iPhone 6, it was curved.
John:
Anyway, whatever.
John:
You don't even buy iPhones, though.
John:
Why are you dreaming about it?
John:
Who knows?
John:
You can't control what you're dreaming about.
John:
Dream about industrial design.
John:
Hey, wait.
John:
So is this the year for an iPhone for you?
John:
Oh, I don't know.
John:
Can I take a bet on no?
John:
Stranger things have happened.
John:
But if they stick with the current design trends, that means flat.
John:
And if they're going to have the camera stick out, it will be a completely flat surface with a cylinder that sticks out from it.
John:
And really, that's not that bad.
John:
I mean, I guess if it sticks out too much, you can get hung up on stuff.
John:
But especially since so many people put cases on them anyway.
John:
All that does is make the camera flush with the case or close to being flush with the case.
John:
And that's actually not that bad.
John:
And maybe it would help hold the case in place to keep it from sliding.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I think Apple has options there.
John:
I think that I hope the bigger one has better battery life just because the battery is bigger.
John:
But then, of course, I'll also have a bigger screen and all that stuff.
John:
But yeah, what you're thinking of, Marco, of like, and you can actually make the big one thicker because we have the small one to fill it.
John:
That all gets back to what you're talking about with John on the talk show.
John:
They can have two phones.
John:
They can have one.
John:
Every possibility has a good argument for it would be something that Apple would do.
John:
None of them can you just rule out and say, well, Apple would never do that because all of them have really good reasons behind them.
John:
So we just have to wait and see.
Casey:
So I have a somewhat related question.
Casey:
One of the things that bothers me about a caseless iPhone is a probably all in my head fear that I'm going to scratch the lens of the camera.
Casey:
And I wonder if the current research or I guess they're actually not even research.
Casey:
They're building a plant to handle sapphire.
Casey:
Is that correct?
John:
It's already sapphire on the current phone.
John:
And that's not the lens of the phone.
John:
That's just the clear thing that covers the lens of the phone.
John:
So if you've got a scratch in that, I'm not even sure optically whether that would show up in your pictures.
John:
But even if it would, that part of the phone assembly does not bend the light as far as I know.
John:
It is purely there to protect the lens that does bend the light.
John:
So I'd imagine they could replace it for you reasonably inexpensively.
Marco:
Also, optically, because of where it is in the optical path, it would have to be a really bad scratch to show any kind of flaws in your photos.
Marco:
If you think about it, if you hold something very close to your eye and you're focusing on something very far away, it's like holding up a fishing line an inch in front of your eye and focusing on something 10 feet away.
Marco:
You're not going to see that fishing line or you're going to barely see it.
Marco:
It has to be a pretty large problem on that surface to be visible in the photos.
Casey:
So what I'm driving at, though, so whatever it is, be it a lens or otherwise, that's the outermost piece of the camera assembly.
Casey:
Would it make sense?
Casey:
And I don't know anything about photography, but would it make sense for that to be like sapphire or something very, very hard so that if they hypothetically had a bulge for this camera assembly, that maybe some of the marketing spiel could be, oh, don't worry, Casey Liss, this won't scratch because it's sapphire.
Casey:
And so don't worry your pretty little face.
Casey:
You're going to be all right.
John:
But it already is Sapphire.
Casey:
So it is Sapphire now?
Casey:
Yeah, on the 5S.
Casey:
I thought the Sapphire was for Touch ID.
Marco:
Is it both?
Marco:
It's definitely for the camera.
Marco:
The Touch ID home buttons, I think it might also be.
Marco:
I assume with the Sapphire plant they're building, a lot of people are speculating that they might be going for an entire Sapphire-covered screen to replace that glass.
Marco:
I have doubts about whether they can make enough of it to make that happen this year.
Marco:
I'm guessing probably not, because if you think about the amount of iPhones that are made every year, that's a lot of sapphire.
Marco:
And what we heard when the iPhone 5S first came out, when it was pretty supply-constrained, I believe the prevailing wisdom on that was that it was related to Touch ID supplies.
Marco:
And if that's the case, then you can bet that there's only so much involved in Touch ID, the Sapphire might have been the limitation.
Casey:
And a real-time follow-up for me from me, it is indeed on both the home button and the iSight camera as per their website.
John:
If Touch ID is going to go on all their devices, then they're going to need way more Sapphire.
John:
And so you don't need something like, oh, they're going to cover the screens with Sapphire.
John:
You just need to say, oh, well, Touch ID will spread from, it won't just be on the high-end phone anymore.
John:
It'll be on all sorts of things, iPads, you know, the mid-range phones.
John:
And so you're going to need a lot more Sapphire just for that.
John:
So that makes sense.
Marco:
Right, and there's definitely, you know, you can look at what they did this, you know, last fall with the product line between iPhone and iPad, and the, you know, the A7, and pretty much every benefit of the iPhone 5S went into both iPads as well, except Touch ID.
Marco:
And I think, I don't know if the M7 made it in, but that's less relevant than an iPad.
Marco:
But Touch ID was an obvious thing they left out there, and it was kind of questionable why they left it out.
Marco:
And I think supply constraints make a lot of sense for that.
Marco:
And yeah, certainly, John, I agree that,
Marco:
If they're bulking up Sapphire production, it really could just be for more Touch ID sensors.
John:
I don't think Sapphire would make that great of a screen covering either because it's not just hardness that you're after, like scratch resistance.
John:
Gorilla Glass, you see the little demos where they bend it and show that it withstands bending and is strong in other ways besides just being scratch resistant.
John:
And I'm not sure if Sapphire has the same...
John:
durability characteristics uh as gorilla glass and you know might might be more fragile i don't know it's someone someone who knows better about the relative material uh abilities of uh sapphire and gorilla glass can say but it's it's definitely a different thing so i wouldn't just say well they say it's better and they say it's harder therefore we should cover the whole screen in it maybe not
Marco:
Maybe this will finally be the year of the rollable, flexible phone.
John:
Who could have the flexible phone?
John:
Did LG have the flexible phone?
John:
Did you see that one?
John:
Somebody actually made one?
Marco:
We've had curved phones.
John:
No, yeah, all right, so it's curved, and they show it, like, in the little demo video, they show it sitting on a table, and it curves up like a little, you know, it's like concave, and a finger comes down and presses it, and so it goes from curved to be flat against the table.
John:
Like, that's more or less how much flex it has.
John:
I think it was LG, I don't remember which, but anyway, that amount of flex...
John:
Makes me wonder what the point is.
John:
It also makes me wonder, how much can you flex?
John:
You just want to grab it and go, if I keep flexing, what happens?
John:
It's like those glasses.
John:
You remember when those indestructible?
John:
Yeah, indestructible glasses came out in the 80s where you could take the thing and wrap them around your fingers and they would come back to shape, right?
John:
A flexible phone just invites some idiot to try to see how far it's going to flex.
John:
And I guarantee you, at a certain point, it will stop flexing and you'll be sad.
Yeah.
Marco:
I wonder too, this is one of those things that people always fantasize about, and there's always some prototype flexible something or other CES that no one ever makes after that.
Marco:
And I wonder, what is the use case for that?
Marco:
What use is a slightly flexible phone, but that you can't fold in half and make a lot smaller?
John:
yeah it's not it's i mean it's it's incremental step like the idea of things that are flexible is like there is durable as things that are flexible there is durable as you know like you can't break it all you can do is bend it and it springs back to its original shape so it's a durability type thing and like a little bit of flex is maybe a step along the way to extremely flexible yeah the thing is called the lg flex if you google for it you find pictures of it oh what a clever name well there's lg what do you expect
Marco:
Alright, we are also sponsored this week by a new sponsor to us, as far as I know, but a very, very old sponsor to podcasts.
Marco:
It's our friends at Smile.
Marco:
Now, you've probably heard of at least one Smile, formerly Smile Software, at least one Smile product.
Marco:
And I use a lot myself, actually.
Marco:
So this week, we're going to talk to you about TextExpander.
Marco:
If you've ever heard a podcast, you already know what this does.
Marco:
But just in case, we're going to tell you anyway.
Marco:
So it's really cool.
Marco:
TextExpander saves you time and effort by expanding short abbreviations into frequently used text and pictures.
Marco:
So they tell you all sorts of stuff it can do.
Marco:
So they say, for example...
Marco:
you can do like your, your email signature.
Marco:
You can automatically like, you know, type a couple of characters, say like, you know, EMS or something.
Marco:
And then that'll expand into your entire email signature.
Marco:
Um, you can, you can have standard responses to emails or whatever, and you can even define form fields within the responses.
Marco:
So you can say like, all right, when I type in, you know, X, Y, Z or whatever, fill up my default response, but then there's like these form fields and you can, you can like tab into them and type someone's name or type like a reason or something like that.
Marco:
Like you can, you can customize each one, um,
Marco:
based on how you define these things.
Marco:
So it's a very, very powerful tool to take tech shortcuts and expand them into whatever the heck you want.
Marco:
This is one of those tools that our friends Merlin and Brett Terpster, they love these kind of tools because you can customize the crap out of this.
Marco:
You can do so much.
Marco:
...with this kind of thing.
Marco:
You can create snippets from Apple Scripts and Shell Scripts.
Marco:
You can sync your snippets via Dropbox.
Marco:
You can use them on multiple devices.
Marco:
There's even TextExpander Touch on iOS.
Marco:
Normally, TextExpander is a Mac product.
Marco:
There's even the iOS version.
Marco:
It works as an API that other apps can integrate.
Marco:
Over 45 apps...
Marco:
on iOS 7 so far, have integrated TextExpander support.
Marco:
So when you're typing into one of their text fields, you can use your shared snippets and it all works.
Marco:
Really, really great.
Marco:
Dropbox Sync, awesome.
Marco:
So go to smilesoftware.com slash ATP to learn more about this.
Marco:
It's hard to really cram into this ad read everything TextExpander can do.
Marco:
Think of it as...
Marco:
Expand keyboard shortcuts into predefined things, but with so much power behind that and so many options and so many ways you can do that, that it's really quite incredible.
Marco:
And this is one of the reasons why I've never heard a tech spender ad read on anyone else's show that was shorter than like 15 minutes long.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
Go check it out, smilesoftware.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Also, if it helps, Smile is just run by really, really good people.
Marco:
They've been around forever making Mac and iOS software.
Marco:
Really, they make good stuff, and they're good people.
Marco:
So check them out, smilesoftware.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Thanks a lot for sponsoring our show.
John:
The tireless chat room has done a research for us and found a link that has information about Sapphire versus Gorilla Glass.
John:
Apparently Sapphire is 1.6 times heavier and Gorilla Glass can take 2.5 times more pressure than Sapphire can.
John:
And there's other things as well about light transmission.
John:
and how much energy it takes to manufacture it and other things so anyway it's a different material um a lot of the stats given this this is this is an interview with someone from grill glass obviously they're going to tell you all the things that are horrible about sapphire right like you know for how much energy it takes to manufacture it and how much it costs all those things you could change but the materials attributes of it might be more difficult to change so yeah maybe maybe don't look for a sapphire screen on the iphone 6 but definitely look for sapphire uh camera covers and touch id thingies
Casey:
Touch ID thingies.
Casey:
Is that a technical term?
John:
Touch ID surfaces.
Casey:
I just closed the tab.
Casey:
There is, I think, an official term for it, but that's all right.
Casey:
What else is going on?
Casey:
Do we want to talk about this book that came out about how Apple is haunted by the ghost of Steve Jobs?
Casey:
I really don't have much to say about it, but I felt like we should at least briefly recognize it.
Casey:
And it sounds like everyone that I know that's read it says it's pretty bad.
Marco:
See, that's the problem.
Marco:
Everyone thinks they should recognize it.
Marco:
Everyone thinks they have to comment on it, and I recognize by going on this rant I'm commenting on it and therefore being a hypocrite, but let me get through this.
Marco:
The fact is, you can say anything you want about anything.
Marco:
The whole point of this book
Marco:
is to get mentioned and become a controversy and get discussed so that everyone goes out and reads it.
Marco:
That's the whole point.
Marco:
And by lending credence to what is clearly, from almost all the reviews, what is clearly a pretty terrible book based upon a presupposed argument that really is not supported at all in the book and by the facts, it just seems like
Marco:
It seems like this is a cheap trick to get attention and to get book sales, and we're all falling into it by talking about it and by linking to the book and by even taking it as credible, by even the suggestion that we need to defend ourselves or to defend our position or that Apple needed to respond to it or anything like that.
Marco:
Why does anyone even need to be talking about this?
John:
Well, I mean, in the circles we travel in, there are a couple different strains that are working against this.
John:
One is that any book that ends up being critical of Apple, if you read mostly Apple-centric sites, people who are Apple fans are going to say, this book that says bad things about Apple is wrong because, and let me tell you why all the things they say are wrong, because I like Apple and I think Apple is good and they're saying Apple is bad and they're going to fight.
John:
So you expect to see that type of feedback.
John:
The other thing is that so few people have any access at all to Apple, so the content of the book is sure to be filled with, like,
John:
you know the example i was like we've we found tim cook's uh childhood typing teacher because that's the only person you can get access to you can't you can't talk to the people who know anything like you have to talk to people who have been out who are like who left apple years and years ago or who are were fired and are disgruntled or like you just you just don't have access to the real things you have second and third hand information and the first hand stuff you have is just barely relevant so you could be argued that
John:
Even if there was a case to be made that Apple is a haunted empire and there's all these problems or whatever, you wouldn't have access to enough people or facts to actually support your case.
John:
And that's why when people read this to say, OK, the whole story is that Apple has big problems.
John:
And that story, people assume like, you know, this author, Yukari Kane, went in with that premise ahead of time.
John:
Like, I'm going to write a book about why Apple is doomed and started from that premise and just found supporting stuff for it.
John:
but couldn't find enough supporting facts.
John:
It could be that she went in just trying to write a story about it, and the few supporting facts she found said, well, that's the only theme I can sort of tease out of all this information, mostly from second- and third-hand information, and I need something that's, like, dramatic.
John:
And the two things you can have are dramatic are, like...
John:
You know, the Steve Jobs two era story, which is Apple rising from the ashes.
John:
That's one kind of dramatic.
John:
And once they've risen from the ashes, the only other dramatic story left is watching them fall.
John:
So I don't know, like everyone who says who is familiar with the author before reading the book says that she was a good reporter and did a lot of good stories.
John:
So I'm not entirely willing to go full cynical and said she was writing like a hatchet job and just trying to gin up controversy.
John:
It could be that this is where the scant facts that she had led her, but it just doesn't sound like it's a very... I didn't read it, so I can't say it, but it just doesn't sound like it's a very well-supported argument within the book.
John:
And also, every single time I see her name, which is Yukari Kane, which I have to stare at every time I say it, what I read in my head is Weyland-Yutani, but neither one of you knows what that is.
John:
And Weyland-Yutani is not spelled in any way like Yukari Kane, but my eyes, like, transpose the Y and the K, and I get Weyland-Yutani.
John:
So anyway...
John:
So that's all I have to say about that book I think.
Marco:
Well, I feel like there's two things that I want to pick on here.
Marco:
One is that you say, well, she's a reporter.
Marco:
That doesn't mean anything.
Marco:
Reporters span the spectrum for – and even if she – I don't know anything about her, but even if she's been a reporter for a long time.
John:
But people said her reporting was good, like her stories were good, like they weren't trashy stories.
John:
They looked like they were well-researched stories and insightful and so on.
John:
Again, I'm going from what other people said because I don't remember seeing her byline anywhere, so I don't know.
Marco:
I mean, if you've ever, and this comes up frequently in the tech domain, I would imagine, if you ever read a story like in the New York Times about technology, and you see these are legitimate journalists supposedly writing about this, and then you see...
Marco:
60% of it is wrong or bad or misleading or somehow poorly done.
Marco:
With this, the fact that she's a reporter doesn't really mean anything.
Marco:
To me, reporters, while there are good ones, the average is pretty bad.
Marco:
Especially these days, the average is, I'd say, really bad.
Marco:
And so just being a reporter alone, even if you've done it for a long time, and even if some people think you're a good reporter...
Marco:
that doesn't necessarily mean you're qualified to write a book about a tech company, especially one as secretive and controversial as this.
Marco:
Second of all, who cares if it's a book?
Marco:
If this was published as a series of blog posts that all ended with, well, by the way, Steve Jobs' ghost was looking over them and they're doomed.
Marco:
If this was a blog and every post was trying to cram badly supported facts into a predefined narrative and not doing a very good job of even doing that,
Marco:
would we give any credibility to it?
Marco:
Would we even be talking about it?
Marco:
And the answer is probably no.
Marco:
Now, we are talking about this because it's a book.
Marco:
Because culturally, we put value on books.
Marco:
We say, oh, well, a book is a big deal because they had to spend months on it and some reporter or some publisher had to pick it up and everything.
Marco:
But the fact is, books are just as bad as everything else.
Marco:
And there's tons of horrible books being published all the time.
Marco:
The publisher published this book
Marco:
because they knew it would sell.
Marco:
They did their job properly in this case.
Marco:
They knew this book would sell.
Marco:
They didn't care whether it's going to be good or accurate.
Marco:
They don't need to care about that.
Marco:
All they need to care about is, will this book sell?
Marco:
And pretty clearly, they bet correctly on that.
Marco:
That doesn't mean it's good, and that doesn't mean that anybody needs to talk about it.
Marco:
It certainly doesn't mean that the burden is on us to somehow...
Marco:
somehow prove to the world that you know this book is stupid or that we need to you know ignore it the fact is books are just as fallible as everything else and have roughly the same quality average as everything else i think the jury's still out though on the on the theme of the book like ignoring that the content of the book and how well the theme is supported this is the right time for a book about how apple may be in decline right because we don't know if it's in decline yet it's too soon to say
John:
Everyone's still waiting on whatever Apple's going to do next or whatever.
John:
So if you're going to write a book about how Apple's declined, you better do it before they come out with whatever big whiz-bang thing that could go gangbusters.
John:
And you also say Apple never comes out with something or they come out with a brand new product and bet the whole company on it.
John:
It's a flop.
John:
If you then write a book about Apple's decline, you have to wait longer.
John:
You have to wait for the postmortem because you don't seem like you're insightful, right?
John:
So a book about how, you know, just based on the title, if you just pitched Haunted Empire, Apple after Steve Jobs, you could pitch that to a publisher.
John:
This is the right time for that book.
John:
It's just that this doesn't, it doesn't appear to be a good book based around that title.
John:
Right.
John:
But that is, like you said, the publisher is going to say, yes, we would love a book like that.
John:
We would love a good book like that.
John:
But if we can't get a good book like that, we'll take whatever book we get because now is the time for that book.
John:
And, uh,
John:
If Apple does go down the tubes, like people are going to be citing this book and saying, see, you know, everyone said that book was terrible, but she saw it coming and maybe she didn't see it coming.
John:
Like it just doesn't seem like if you make an argument and you don't support it well and you're sort of self-contradictory and get a bunch of things wrong and don't have good access, even if your theme turns out to be right later, I don't think you get credit for correctly predicting anything.
John:
But I think the jury is out and we are all waiting to see what Apple does next.
John:
So this is definitely the time for this apparently very bad book.
Casey:
One of the things that I've wondered about myself after hearing all the hubbub about this book is, am I capable and actually are we capable of being critical of Apple?
Casey:
And perhaps I'm just filling in the blanks to make my argument with myself sound okay and end the way I want it to.
Casey:
But I feel like the three of us have been fairly critical of Apple.
Casey:
We've lamented their services division pretty much since the show started.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
We've been complaining, or I believe we complained, about how little storage is in the devices, how little storage you get in their services.
Casey:
So I don't think that any of us are incapable of being upset with Apple or disagreeing with Apple.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
It's something I worry about, that I don't want to be just a shill.
Casey:
Or if I am a shill for Apple, I want to at least know it, admit it to myself, and then admit it to everyone that listens.
Casey:
And I don't think we're there yet.
Right.
John:
Worrying about whether I'm capable of being critical of something is not something that – When Marco before mentioned about journalists and how the average is pretty low and they get things wrong, I was reminded of that – it wasn't Time.
John:
Was it Time magazine?
John:
There was something like the Times of London or something, and then the story was reprinted in Time.
John:
But anyway, the whole big deal was like – Look at the Johnny Ive thing.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Finally, we have access to an interview with Johnny Ive, which it's true.
John:
He so rarely does interviews, and he decides to do an interview, not because it was a product introduction or anything, but it's like, hey, here's Johnny Ive if you want to talk to him.
John:
And then you read the interview, and A, it's clear that the person doing the interview doesn't really understand Apple, Johnny Ive, or technology, which is a shame because it's kind of like the Walter Isaacson situation, but writ small.
Marco:
Do you have any opinions on that, Sean?
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I mean, that's speaking of this haunted empire book, like I've just been ignoring it because I knew it was going to be no good.
John:
And like, I don't, I'm unlike the Walter Isaacson book.
John:
I don't have to read it because it's not like this is the one person who had special exclusive access to someone who's now dead.
John:
That is not the case with haunted empire.
John:
But anyway, this Johnny I've interview is like the person who did the interview read the Leander.
John:
What's his last name?
John:
Yeah.
John:
caning anyway his johnny ive book also suffers from not having a ton of access but he did the legwork and he got as much access as he could to his people as close as johnny ive as he could and it was a lot of new and good information in there even if you could tell it's like boy he really didn't get as much time as i'm sure he would have wanted with johnny ive himself and with apple but like what can you do but the johnny ive book i would recommend reading is
John:
Even if you can totally tell that it suffers from a lack of access, but that's not the author's fault.
John:
But the interviewer read that book, summarized it third grade book report style, and then asked Johnny Ive three dumb questions and wrote his answers.
John:
And that's their super exclusive interview.
John:
It's like, seriously?
John:
I mean, maybe if you haven't read that book that you might think, oh, this is some new information here.
John:
It's all just from the book.
John:
Like, I don't know if he got it from Johnny Ive himself, but he's just summarizing...
John:
The book and then the questions he asked Johnny Ive were just like the same questions he's answered a million times.
John:
And it just wasn't interesting.
John:
It was such a squandered opportunity, not squandered again in the same way that Walter Isaacson squandered it because Johnny Ive isn't dead and because he's done other interviews and so on and so forth.
John:
And he was not designated as the one person who was going to write the definitive autobiography of Johnny Ive.
John:
But boy, that was a bummer of an interview.
Casey:
Well, I love that the one thing that they grilled Johnny Ive on was, what do you do with your old iPhones?
Casey:
Who cares?
Casey:
What do you think is going to happen?
John:
The hermetically sealed operating system, whatever the hell that means.
John:
I think he was trying to get it like that you can't change the batteries or they're built in obsolescence.
John:
Oh, they actually said planned obsolescence.
John:
Yeah, like, you know, the connectors that are always changing.
John:
I made a tweet about it.
John:
I'm like, I just bought this 30-pin connector barely a decade ago, and now you're going to change it on me?
John:
Like, you've got to be kidding me.
John:
It's clear that he just didn't understand the market.
John:
He just, like, Googled for people angry at Apple and found, like, non-replaceable batteries.
John:
People complained about lightning connector.
John:
And it's like, those are not the things.
John:
Seriously, of all the things that Apple has done that are very Apple-like that piss people off,
John:
changing from the 30 pin connector to lightning after like a decade and a half or however the hell long the 30 pin connector was around that is not one of the apple things to do like that's not one of the they do lots of things like that's soldering the ram sealing the batteries but they've had two connectors in the entire lifetime this thing seriously uh all right that article was super disappointing and that's an example of someone wrote a good post about this i wish i could find it where they were like trying to be nice like look publications out there
John:
when Apple gives you exclusive access to one of their employees, don't send dunces to interview them.
John:
Like, is it so hard to find somebody who knows something about Apple to send them?
John:
Like, how do these people get picked?
John:
And the person in the article is, like, trying to take pain to say, I'm not saying you should have sent me or, like, my friends, but, like, seriously...
John:
You have these opportunities.
John:
It can't be that hard to find somebody who knew something who is also a competent interview and send them.
John:
Why is it always, why is it always people who have no idea what they're talking about?
Marco:
Well, you know, maybe the answer is because, like, maybe Apple agrees to do these kinds of interviews knowing that the questions are not going to really be anything real or difficult.
Marco:
Like, knowing this is going to be, like, a complete BS interview.
Marco:
Like, maybe Apple wouldn't agree to a published interview from you.
Marco:
Because they would know that you'd actually ask good questions that would be, you know, difficult.
John:
But old-style Apple PR would try to pick the person.
John:
But these days, they seem to pick the publication.
John:
Like, I don't think they picked this guy to interview.
John:
I think they offered up Johnny Ive to the publication, and the publication picked their reporter.
John:
And these people who they send, the dunces, they're worse because they're, like, trying to press Johnny Ive on things that are either no longer controversies or never really were about, like, you know...
John:
replaceable batteries is not hot in the news now.
John:
Like, that's not what you want to lean on Johnny Ive about as your tough questions or, like, hermetically sealed operating system.
John:
Like, he doesn't even know what he's getting at, but, like, past controversies or things that...
John:
like those aren't relevant that's not you know and having johnny i've have to try to parse those questions and deflect like that's a waste of his time i don't think apple would choose that either it's not like they're just getting softballs these guys are coming in like i'm gonna be tough and ask him the tough questions but the tough questions are nonsensical and johnny's like i think i understand what you're getting at but like didn't we like that controversy you know you want to talk to me about antenna gate like what are we talking about here it's he didn't ask about antenna gate but i
John:
It's the same type of thing.
John:
It's as if they sent some cub reporter to lean on Johnny Ivo at Antenagate.
John:
It would be about as useful and insightful as the interview that they did.
Casey:
Yeah, the interview was not that impressive to me at all.
Casey:
I was disappointed.
Casey:
But let it be known, news publications of the world, that if you need someone to interview an Apple employee, John Syracuse is available.
Casey:
You just have to pay for his flight.
John:
I'm a terrible interviewer, but I'll at least know what I'm talking about.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Also, every one of these themes comes with a responsive design.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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John:
You gave me time to find the article with Jeff Carlson, and the title of his post was, Why do big magazines hire hacks for big tech stories?
John:
So we'll put that in the show notes and the link to the actual interview and a link to Leander Caney's Johnny Ive book, which, like I said, suffers from a lack of access, but I would still recommend people reading because there is information that was new to me in that book.
Casey:
All right, so Sony released some virtual reality headset thing.
John:
Incorrect.
John:
They didn't release anything.
John:
They announced.
Casey:
You can tell how much I care about video games and know about this topic.
John:
Yeah, well, did you see this at all in your isolation bubble, Marco?
John:
Your jury duty isolation bubble?
Marco:
No, I think I saw one tweet talking about it, but it's at lunch during my very quick time.
Marco:
But unfortunately, during my quick time at lunch, I have to actually eat lunch.
Marco:
And so there's actually not a lot of time to browse the internet that much.
Marco:
So yeah, all I saw was that they are apparently making one or working on one.
Marco:
And I thought it was funny because it seems like...
Marco:
VR headsets are being worked on roughly every three to five years by somebody new, and they never seem to really get anywhere.
Marco:
I know there's the Oculus Rift.
Marco:
Is that the other one?
Marco:
I know that one.
John:
That was getting some traction.
John:
This is coming to a head, though, because this is not a regular cycle type thing.
John:
This is more like there's been people who have dabbled before, and there was the first brief feints in this direction in the 90s with these terrible...
John:
things that you'd see at like video arcades and parties, but it went away for a long time because we just learned, nah, we're not, that stuff doesn't work.
John:
And Oculus has been bringing it back in a big way.
John:
And the rumors of Sony doing it, we're also bringing it back because it's like, well, Oculus is this, you know, there were, I think there were Kickstarter originally.
John:
It's like,
John:
they're doing this thing and it seems really cool but you know who knows what's really there and then john carmack went to work for oculus and left id software and that was a big deal it's like oh my god well if he's going there he's no dummy he's not going to be like joining up in this company that really has nothing they must have something and people have tried it they've tried the dev kits they've said it's interesting and impressive they have the second version of the dev kit which is way better than the first and when a technology actually looks like it's getting going that's what you get like the first one is like
John:
there's something there, but this isn't great.
John:
And the second one is way better.
John:
And then the rumors of Sony doing, it's like, okay, well, Sony's looking at it.
John:
This isn't just a crazy research product because Sony wants to, you know, sell things to use with your PlayStation.
John:
They don't want like some weird, uh, you know, thing that's not practical in the real world.
John:
So GDC, I haven't read a lot about the story yet, mostly only read the headlines, but I know the highlights.
John:
The GDC, the Game Developers Conference, Sony announced that they're going to have some kind of headset thing, and they showed their history.
John:
They've been working on this thing for years and years, and they show all the various old prototypes.
John:
And this is not a shipping product yet.
John:
There's no pricing or availability, I don't think, but they have announced their intention to have a shipping product.
John:
So now I think that's...
John:
Now you kind of have a quorum.
John:
It's like Oculus was going to ship their thing anyway, and it's the real deal as far as people are concerned.
John:
People are actually playing games in it.
John:
Whether it would be amazing or fun or a revolutionary game or not, it was going to be a real product.
John:
But once Sony does it, it's like, okay, this is real, real.
John:
The Kinect, for all you may say, is useless for games or silly or only fun for certain things.
John:
Microsoft shipped it they shipped the Kinect they revised it they made it better they shipped the Kinect 2 it's part of Xbox One it is a real thing that's out there in the mass market and it seems like VR is very soon going to be a real thing that's out there in the mass market and we'll see if it's more successful than the Kinect has been but I think this topic is fascinating mostly because of the technology problems that are involved in doing VR and I've been reading about it for several years with a
John:
Michael Abrash, who now works at Valve, who's also been working on the same problem, and he is a previous development partner of John Carmack.
John:
They worked together on Quake, I believe, and maybe something before that as well.
John:
And there are tons of problems with VR, because you think of it as like you put this thing on your head, and it's like a screen close to your face.
John:
and it shows like what you would see in a first-person shooter and you're done right and that is so far from from the truth because if that's what it was we would have had it years ago that that doesn't work for tons and tons of reasons so i put a huge number of links here in the show notes we'll uh try to put them up in roughly chronological order marco if you don't have anything to read during jury duty i challenge you to get through even just the links in this article that i put here because they're extremely technical and in-depth
John:
And by the time you're done reading it, you'll be like, man, I don't want to implement a VR headset because that sounds really hard.
John:
The problems are just so different when you have screens right up close to your face and when the movement of your head has to affect the changes in view.
John:
Because any sort of disconnect there, it just totally breaks the illusion.
John:
Because when you turn your head, you better be looking to your side.
John:
You can't have it catch up later.
John:
I mean, talk about motion sickness.
John:
It's...
John:
It's very difficult to even do simple things with screens that are shoved in your head.
John:
And, of course, it has to be two different screens because your right eye sees something different than your left eye.
John:
So I think this is a real thing.
John:
I would really love to try something like this, but I have not had an opportunity to try it.
John:
But if Sony comes out with one, I will probably buy a PlayStation 4 and buy one of these crazy things and sit in my living room looking like a crazy person with something on my head just to see what this is like.
John:
You have to take a picture of that.
Casey:
Please.
Casey:
We'll get in touch with Tina.
Casey:
I'm not worried about it.
Casey:
Did you have a Virtual Boy when those were a thing?
Casey:
I'm genuinely asking.
John:
That's not the same as VR.
John:
That was stationary, but no, I didn't.
John:
Did anybody have a Virtual Boy?
Casey:
Well, I didn't know if that was during the era in which you could have bought it for yourself or anything like that.
Casey:
I forget if you're just a little old or very old.
John:
Yeah, no, I wouldn't have bought that for myself either.
John:
You could always tell that one was a dud.
Casey:
I just remember, and this is a true story.
Casey:
When I was a kid, I want to say this was like, I don't know, my 10th birthday or something like that.
Casey:
So this was early 90s.
Casey:
We were living, gosh, we were either living in Illinois or in Austin, Texas.
Casey:
And I somehow convinced my parents to go to this like virtual reality arcade.
Casey:
And I put a link in the chat and we'll put it in the show notes.
Casey:
And it was like this ghost.
Casey:
god-awful early 90s VR where you would hold something.
Casey:
I think it was a first-person shooter sort of thing where you hold something and you had this... Was there a pterodactyl?
Casey:
I don't remember.
Casey:
There couldn't have been that many of these things.
Marco:
It was the same VR demo that was in all the little science centers and everything in 1993.
Casey:
And so I had a birthday party there where we basically played like a not bloody death match game against each other.
Casey:
And I remember, you know, I'm not a big guy, but I remember trying to put this massive helmet on my head and barely being able to lift my damn neck because the thing weighed like 20 pounds.
Casey:
And oh my gosh, it was so rudimentary and so awful, but...
Casey:
At the time, I thought it was amazing.
Casey:
I couldn't believe my eyes.
Casey:
I couldn't believe what I was doing.
Casey:
It was incredible.
John:
What those things always felt like, and the reason they sucked and went away very quickly, is they felt like you were using your head.
John:
It felt like, you know, when you have someone who's like...
John:
disabled in a wheelchair in some way and they can't they can't use their limbs so they have lots of controls for their head because they do have neck control or you can hit a button with the side of your head it feels like you're using your head to operate the controls of a first-person shooter it does not feel like you are looking around in a virtual world because the lag was so horrendous they would just be like it would be like you know you'd be sending sending instructions via telegram to someone's
John:
Someone in another room who would then move the mouse on your first-person shooter.
John:
And, of course, the resolution was low and the frame rate was terrible.
John:
But if you read all these articles of the technical challenges, some of them are actually interesting because they're related to television challenges as well.
John:
Like, they're using, obviously, LCD screens in front of your eyeballs because you're not going to put CRTs there, although it would be really cool in a steampunk kind of way.
John:
And LCDs...
John:
What we mostly do with them on like our displays on our desks is they display an image and it's they're lit up all the time, essentially.
John:
And you change the image and the pixels change from one thing to another.
John:
But they're, you know, during the time in between the images changing, the old image is there the whole time and then it switches to the new image.
John:
And that turns out to be very terrible for things where you're turning your head because you start turning your head and say that the refresh rate is like 60 frames a second for one sixtieth of a second.
John:
The picture hasn't changed yet.
John:
You've started moving your head.
John:
Your head is moving, but the picture is not changing.
John:
And that's not the way it works in the real world.
John:
As soon as you start moving your head, what you see in front of you changes.
John:
And it's actually bad for the image to sort of be there all the time.
John:
And so one of the ones, one of the ways they've been combating this is with low persistence images where they will blink the image onto the screen for the smallest time possible and have the screen be black for most of that 60th of a second and then blink the next image and blink the next image.
John:
And you would say, wouldn't that be worse?
John:
Wouldn't that be like flashing and blinking and gross?
John:
But that's, you know, that's how CRTs work.
John:
but they'd have an electron beam scanning up and down and it does it so fast you can't see the scanning but it turns out that makes a big difference uh they're doing that in lcd televisions now as well trying to get rid of like the soap opera effect and not have that motion blur and everything to say let's strobe the backlight really fast so it's black in between frames like because it's not that it's on people say oh it's unnatural if the image is there it's just different technologies we're just used to like crts and movie projectors where it shows one image and then there's a blanking interval and then it shows another one uh
John:
With LCDs, televisions, and with these VR headsets, it turns out to be better for perception to show an image, really bright image, one frame of it, really quickly for a tiny amount of time, make the screen black until the next image is ready and show the next image.
John:
And that turns out to be better because the way our visual system works is not...
John:
like you read all these articles it is not like oh it's like a camera that records what's in front of us and sends the picture to our brain our visual system is all screwed up and lots of stuff happens in the brain and it is not as straightforward as you think it is so you have to do all these hacks and tricks to work work with the quirks of our visual system to make something that doesn't make people sick that feels realistic and that feels immersive and that's what oculus is doing that's what people are excited about it's like they're
John:
actually starting to get those hacks right i mean once they're figured out people in hindsight will be like oh you just got to do x y and z but we're figuring it out now uh but when i think about this i worry a little bit about sony like the oculus guys have great you know if john carmark were working they're they're doing it right and sony you're like maybe sony just wants to be kind of in the me too club and they're just going to take two screens and slap them in front of their eyeballs and it's not going to take advantage of all the stuff that oculus knows
John:
And that would be a bummer.
John:
And I think Oculus is scared of that, too.
John:
You would think Oculus would be scared that Sony's thing is going to be great.
John:
But one of the stories on Polygon I read today, I agreed with, I think it was by Ben Kuchera, was saying that Oculus wants the Sony VR thing to be awesome, too, because they don't want the Sony VR thing to come out, everyone to try it.
John:
it to suck and then everyone to go oh vr sucks and then oculus comes out and they're like no we're ignoring you because we all know the vr sucks now like oculus wants vr to be a real thing and so sony stinking it up would be bad but so far it seems like sony they've been you know researching for a really long time that they are not dummies they're not just taking two you know two psp or two playstation vita screens shoving in front of our eyeballs and calling it a day they look like they're doing the hard work as well
Casey:
No, no, no.
Casey:
They're putting Trinitrons in front of your eyeballs.
Casey:
I'm calling it a day.
John:
That would be cool.
John:
It would also solve the persistence problems.
John:
Low persistence images.
John:
Yeah, nice and easy.
John:
See?
John:
Problem solved.
John:
You're welcome.
John:
Might cause a few other problems, though, like, you know, neck pain.
John:
That was one of the points they made of the Sony one, is Sony highlighted the fact that their headset does not rest on your nose or, like...
John:
doesn't rest on your nose or maybe they even said also on your forehead like because that's one of the fatiguing things if you want to put this i mean they're not that heavy but they're heavy enough they're heavier than glasses for you know and if they rest on your nose and you use them for a while it'll make like your neck and your the bridge of your nose hurt after a while and so the sony one uses kind of like a
John:
sort of a ring around your head kind of like a visor type cap and then it hangs the picture the screen's down in front of your eyes so it shows that they are thinking about the practical real world problems oh and also they're open on the bottom so they don't like fog up inside if you get all sweaty cool this is probably the opposite of cool but uh i'm i'm very excited to try to answer the question in the chat room like i said no i have not tried the oculus rift any version i haven't tried the sony one either i would be willing to try either one of those things when i get a chance
Casey:
Anything else going on?
John:
I wish there was other stuff going on.
Casey:
This was actually a slow week.
John:
I put GitHub Hubbub in there.
John:
That's a valid title, too.
Marco:
I do not know enough about that to comment on it.
Casey:
Yeah, see, that's the thing.
Casey:
I've tried to read up as much as I can on it, but I just feel like there's no facts in the press at the moment, or the blogosphere, or whatever.
Casey:
And so, I don't think it would be appropriate to comment on the particular situation.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And speaking of things that – controversial things we could go down.
Casey:
Maybe not controversial.
Casey:
It's a poor choice of words.
Casey:
But speaking of things I'm not sure I want to touch because it's going to piss off the world no matter how eloquently we handle it.
Casey:
It's whether or not men in our field treat women poorly.
Casey:
I think the answer is yes, and I think it's terrible.
Casey:
But I don't know if I really want to go down that path.
John:
I don't think it's anything about the specific case that – it's not like we need to go in depth about the details of it.
John:
But like the larger issue I think is worth discussing.
John:
And like if we don't take the opportunity to discuss this issue when something happens related to it in – basically in our little circles of the blogs and Twitter feeds that we read, then –
John:
then we're just never going to talk about it.
John:
If it remains one of those things that everyone's uncomfortable with and we just never say anything about it and we just want to ignore it until it goes away or blows over or don't want to follow it, then I feel like things won't get better.
John:
And so I think it's worth us discussing in general, if not in this specific case.
John:
And I'll say one thing about this specific case, and then we can talk about the general issue if you guys aren't still too afraid.
John:
In this specific case, like when something like this comes up,
John:
There's always the, well, you know, all we've got is one person's side or we've got the other person's side or it's or it's, you know, one person's word against another or people pick sides and websites and one website is on this side and one website is on that side and the whole website start fighting with each other and people fight in the comments and stuff like that.
John:
And even without knowing any of the details, though, like.
John:
This is one of the things that comes up in a lot of cases, including one that I'm not going to bring up that everyone should know what I'm referring to.
John:
People like to take the rules that apply in Marco's jury duty and apply them to life and say, well, if there's any reasonable doubt, we can't convict.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
It has to be beyond a reasonable doubt.
John:
So innocent until proven guilty.
John:
uh that's the that's how we we must think about these things always and that's true in the law because there's consequences in law like you go to jail so you know the for criminal court cases the bar is high because we don't want to send people to jail when they didn't do it like we're trying to avoid but just having an opinion your opinion doesn't send anyone to jail and so i think we should be more free to have an opinion based on you know just
John:
whatever other criteria we think are reasonable because we're not saying we're sure we're not saying this person should go to jail or whatever we're just saying like if i had to put money on it like if you think about that we put the vaguest odds of you know what this is and when i see a story like this and i see all the hate going back and forth
John:
the vaguest odds on in this type of situation where a woman feels wronged by an employer the vaguest odds are she was wronged by an employer because it happens all the time like if i had to put money on it i would say the money is on that the woman telling her first person account of having a bad experience of work is telling the truth because that's
John:
almost always how it is and it doesn't mean like oh that's what you should just convict them all like i that's not the criteria you can use to actually convict someone or to say with certain someone it github is bad or good or whatever but if i had to put money on it that's what i would put money on and people are even afraid to make that assertion because they're like well you don't know and you just got one side all that is true but i think it's fine to kind of like
John:
get a feel for how you think things are going to turn out because you're not saying for sure.
John:
You're not condemning anybody.
John:
You're not pointing a finger at some specific person at GitHub and saying they're a bad person.
John:
You're just saying from a distance, I feel like when this thing comes out and all the laundry is finally aired and if it does go to court or whatever, that when the truth finally comes out and everyone kind of agrees by consensus of what the truth is, what will come out is that the woman was wronged because it just happens so often that that's the, that's the safe bet.
John:
Uh,
John:
And the fact that we can't even say that without saying, well, you're just you're prejudiced against GitHub now and you're condemning them without a fair trial, blah, blah, blah.
John:
It's like it just it doesn't seem like that's just like another stopgap against, you know, if you say anything, you need to have 100 percent proof.
John:
Otherwise, you're a bad person.
John:
And it's just he said he said versus she said and we shouldn't.
John:
discuss it at all so that bothers me about all these types of cases because i think it's okay to have a reasonable like expectation of how it might turn out because you're not you know you're not making any decisions and you're not saying anything with certainty but uh anyway that that's how i feel about this specific issue in this specific case
Casey:
Yeah, you're right in saying that we should talk about it.
Casey:
I think the thing that scares me is I want to handle it delicately.
Casey:
And given that our audience, all of who slash whom I love very dearly, tends to be a bunch of pedants.
Casey:
And God forbid I make one mis... God forbid I say one thing incorrectly.
Marco:
Isn't it pedant?
John:
Didn't we figure that out?
John:
There you go.
John:
What do you mean, figured it out?
John:
Who started the pedant thing?
John:
It sounds like a gruberism.
John:
I think it is.
John:
We've got to stop it.
John:
Everyone knows it's pedant.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Well, either way.
Marco:
There is no better word to mispronounce in the English language than that.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
So, perfect.
Casey:
Anyway, so I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about it.
Casey:
I want to make sure that I, if not all of us, handle it delicately, and I'm a little scared that I won't.
John:
But you shouldn't be because people who condemn people who are misspeaking, like, you know, everyone misspeaks.
John:
We do it all the time.
John:
And if you misspeak on a sensitive subject, it's no more intentional than when you misspeak saying someone's name or saying the name of a product or technology.
John:
Just because, like, the topic becomes so incredibly charged that you're worried if you accidentally say the wrong word that people from one side or the other are going to condemn you.
John:
And they shouldn't.
John:
We all make honest mistakes.
John:
We all misspeak.
John:
It happens, like...
John:
it's how you react to that.
John:
Like, because it is a charge issue, you may suddenly get all defensive or whatever.
John:
And that's, you know, where you wouldn't get all defensive if you misspoke about like the price of a product or something on a, you know, on a podcast.
Yeah.
Casey:
Sure.
Casey:
But no, it's interesting because I, so take my company, for example.
Casey:
We have, I don't know, maybe 10 developers, I would say, roughly.
Casey:
And of all of them, we have one young lady that is a tester and is part of our same group in the org chart.
Casey:
But I don't believe we have any developers.
Casey:
And that's really,
Casey:
It's really not a good thing, and it really bums me out.
Casey:
And I don't think it's deliberate on any of our parts.
Casey:
We're a fairly progressive company.
Casey:
I think we would certainly love to have more women developers.
Casey:
I mean, being 50-50 or whatever the planetary ratio is, 60-40 or whatever, would be awesome.
Casey:
But as it turns out, our particular group is almost exclusively a bunch of dudes.
Casey:
And I wish that wasn't the case.
Casey:
And I have not worked with very many women developers in my entire career, which is around about 10 years now.
Casey:
And I don't like it.
Casey:
It's no good.
Casey:
But it's...
Casey:
I mean, even in school, I barely saw any women engineers.
Casey:
And I don't know why that is.
Casey:
I don't know if it's a social or societal thing, or at least in America, but I wish that wasn't the case.
Casey:
And so the things that, what is it, Gene McDonald that is doing AppCamp?
Casey:
I totally got that wrong.
Casey:
Do you know what I'm talking about?
John:
OpCamp for girls, right?
Casey:
Okay, okay, I did get that right.
Casey:
Like, I think that's awesome.
Casey:
And I'm really stoked and hopeful that that really makes a difference.
Casey:
And I think it will.
Casey:
I don't know, like, Marco, have you worked with a lot of women?
Marco:
As developers, I think the number might be zero.
Marco:
I went to school with a few, although the ratio there was pretty terrible as well.
Marco:
Yeah, I'm thinking back, I'm pretty sure I've never worked with a female developer.
Marco:
And that's, I mean, that's, you know, this is...
Marco:
One of the reasons why I don't usually talk about controversies like this that always seem to come up in our tech world recently is because I completely agree that it is a problem, but I really don't know how to fix it.
Marco:
I'm going to just try to do my best to be conscientious in the decisions I make in a limited capacity I can.
Marco:
I mean, I've never even been...
Marco:
in a position where I was able to hire somebody.
Marco:
I've never made a hiring decision before.
Marco:
Even at Tumblr, I wasn't allowed to make hiring decisions.
Marco:
So I think that's one of the areas, obviously, where you could focus a lot on that is hiring.
Marco:
And then if you're a boss over any people, if you're a supervisor, then that's relevant there as well.
Marco:
I've never been in this position, so I really don't know the issue that well, or I don't know really what it would take to fix it.
Marco:
I do agree, Casey, that I have been in a position where I was at least able to look over and help interview applicants for jobs before.
Marco:
And thinking back, I don't think there was even ever a case where...
Marco:
a woman even applied to the point where I was even able to see her resume or interview her to a position.
Marco:
But my sample size there is very, very small.
Marco:
I was only involved in a handful of those kind of things.
Marco:
But there's definitely problems in our industry with both
Marco:
The hiring of women and then the treatment of them once they get hired and the treatment of women in – I mean, and this is not limited to the tech industry.
Marco:
This is a problem culturally worldwide in most places, which is really terrible.
Marco:
But I don't know how to solve that problem besides the limited bit I can do from where I am as far as I know, which is –
Marco:
you know, when things like app camp for girls come around, I can try to support those things.
Marco:
And if I'm ever given a chance to make a hiring decision, then, you know, to ignore gender when I make that decision.
Marco:
Um, besides that, I, I don't really know what else I can do.
Marco:
And if there are, you know, major things I could do, uh,
Marco:
And I'd love to hear about that.
Marco:
When App Chem for Girls came out, it got a lot of support because I think a lot of people didn't know what to do.
Marco:
And that was something that was very clear.
Marco:
This could help.
Marco:
In a small way, this could help.
Marco:
So let's support that.
Marco:
And supporting that could help.
Marco:
I would like to have more opportunities from people who know more about this and who are better suited to even know how to address these kind of things, which I'm admittedly not.
Marco:
I would love to know what else – men who are programmers like us, what else we can do to address this?
Marco:
How else can we help?
John:
Here's something I've heard from people who have worked with –
John:
who have worked with a lot of women and and don't you know have been like well i work with women and everything seems to be fine here and uh
John:
I don't see any problems.
John:
And the idea there is if you are a nice person and if you hang out with other nice people, if someone is being a jerk somewhere, you might not see that because there's the whole culture of women trying to keep their heads down and not make a big fuss about these things.
John:
And so it could very well be that you are working in a company with a bunch of women who you treat perfectly fine but who nevertheless get terrible treatment from others and just don't say anything about it.
John:
And you're not aware of that because they don't say anything about it.
John:
It doesn't apply to any of us.
John:
Well, I mean, I suppose it could apply to me, but for you two who are not working with a lot of women, that's not going to come up.
John:
But like when I think about things we can do, it's like.
John:
even if you're not in this situation, if you just read enough about it to know what the pathologies are, to know, like, yes, it is possible for you, a nice person, to be working alongside women who are being terribly treated and you not know it because they don't feel confident in confiding in you because they don't complain about it.
John:
And so, like, you don't even... This is like, oh, well, you could support women who have these problems or whatever.
John:
It's like, you can't support them if you don't know what's happening.
John:
So that's, like, step one.
John:
Be aware of what you might not even know.
John:
Like, you might not even know that these things are happening.
John:
And this is not... By the way, when I think about the GitHub thing...
John:
This is a specific case with a possible gender slant.
John:
But jerky bosses are everywhere, and those I have experienced.
John:
And jerky bosses can be jerks.
John:
They tend to be jerks to everybody.
John:
And it's a similar type of situation where maybe someone is getting sort of harassed or emotionally abused by their boss, by their boss's spouse, by anybody else.
John:
Regardless of what gender they are, people have terrible bosses and terrible work relationships.
John:
And some people hide it because they feel like, I mean, men and women who like if someone is, you know, treating them very badly at a job and they don't want to say anything because it looks like they're weak or they don't feel like they don't have a way out.
John:
And you may be working alongside them and not even know it.
John:
That's another reason I believe these things, because toxic work relationships between, you know, you know, superior and subordinate work relationships that are toxic are just everywhere.
John:
Like and I have experienced those and I've seen them firsthand, secondhand and heard about them from others.
John:
They're worse when gender is involved, but even if gender is not involved, it happens so much.
John:
The anti-pattern of give somebody a little bit of power and have them have any sort of imbalance and they start abusing that power and taking it out on the people below them and just...
John:
so many bad things happen in companies because of that uh and if you're not aware of it because like if it's not happening to you you might not see it and so that i think would be like the first step that any of us could take is be aware that this could be a thing that's happening even if you're not part of it um and i don't know what you do about that but i guess i guess being aware is the first step and the second one is you know supporting people who are in these situations again regardless of gender or whatever and i guess the third is uh
John:
Don't don't work for companies like that.
John:
Like, don't start a company like that.
John:
Don't be a company like that.
John:
Don't be a boss like that.
John:
But also don't work for companies like that.
John:
Because the problem is when, like, you know, even if all these things are true about GitHub, I'm sure there's lots of good people who work there and they like working at GitHub.
John:
And maybe some of them are even tangentially aware of this thing.
John:
But it's like, but I like my job and I don't want to realize that I work for a bunch of jerks.
John:
Uh, if I quit, would that change it?
John:
Uh, do we collectively all go up and say, we know somebody's being a jerk to somebody else and they should fix it?
John:
Like silence is like the worst thing that could happen here because people will just kind of keep their head down and try not to think about it.
John:
And it doesn't really affect them.
John:
And maybe it's not as bad as it seems to be.
John:
Uh, and that's the worst thing that can happen.
John:
That just, you know, maintains the status quo and the status quo is crappy for a lot of people.
Casey:
Do you work with a lot of women developers currently?
John:
I do.
John:
Surprisingly, most of my past jobs have, well, I mean the first startup I worked at, like I was the only programmer and I was male.
John:
So there you go there, but there was like the graphic designers were female and then we hired another programmer who was female.
John:
So like, I guess pretty good ratios there.
John:
A couple of my other jobs have been more like lopsided where you expect with either zero women programmers, like one, uh, my current job, I don't think it's 50 50, but there's a lot of, uh, female programmers.
Uh,
John:
Uh, and the reason I brought this up about not knowing is like, as far as I'm aware, like they're treated well, like, but that doesn't mean there's something bad not happening that I don't know about.
John:
And I'm constantly aware of that.
John:
And even like, we can all, we all find ourselves, anyone who's our age will find ourselves accidentally doing or saying something sexist because like, essentially that's how we were raised.
John:
That's the culture that we were raised in.
John:
And it's a struggle every day to try to untrain yourself from these terrible things that were, you know, these,
John:
expectations and biases that we have um but no there's our hiring definitely seems to not discriminate based on anything and female developers as far as i'm concerned as far as it seems to be all my co-workers concerned are not treated any differently than any other developer uh
John:
But there could be bad things happening somewhere that I don't know about.
John:
I really hope not.
John:
I haven't seen any of it, but I worry about it sometimes.
John:
Because I read all, I mean, maybe it's like, you know, going to WebMD and finding out everything's cancer.
John:
You read all these stories, you're like, maybe that's happening in my company.
John:
And like I said, I have been at companies where bosses have been jerks, like all, you know, gender not involved at all, but just terrible, terrible situations between people and groups of people.
John:
And I also don't see that in my current job, but I'm always looking for it.
Casey:
Yeah, it's a very tough thing, and I'm sitting here thinking to myself, you know, let's suppose that I start working with a female developer, and let's suppose she gets crapped on by either a peer or a boss, and I don't think that that's technically justified.
Casey:
And when I say technically, like, her code isn't good enough or something like that.
Casey:
And I think that that's incorrect, that her code is fine.
Casey:
Like, do I have the cajones to say, dude, or cajones?
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
Oh, this is just a smorgasbord of pronunciation to that.
John:
Go ahead.
Casey:
That was intentional that time.
Casey:
The pedantic whatever before it was.
Casey:
No, that one was intentional.
Casey:
The other one was not.
Marco:
I love also that we're using a word for testicles while talking about sexist problems.
Casey:
That's so true.
John:
Well, he was saying if he had the, yes, I know.
Casey:
Anyway, go ahead.
Casey:
No, it's a fair point.
Casey:
But yeah, you know what I mean?
Casey:
Like, would I have the gumption to say dude or lady or whoever boss person is, you know, that's not cool.
Casey:
That's not right.
Casey:
I don't know that I would.
Casey:
And I'm not proud of that.
Casey:
I'm not saying that because I'm excited about it.
Casey:
I just, I don't know.
Casey:
I'm very non-confrontational.
John:
That's another thing to keep people from saying anything, because they're like, but, like, by doing that, it's like, you know, am I infantilizing them by making it sound like they can't defend themselves and coming to their rescue, which is also a sexist thing?
John:
And so, like, people, you know, well-meaning people are paralyzed by the fear that they're going to do something wrong, and sometimes...
John:
They would have done something wrong had they not.
John:
But like doing nothing is almost worse.
John:
So like you need leeway on all sides.
John:
Like everyone involved has to give everyone leeway.
John:
Like you have to understand that if you did something like that and really what you did was insulting and the person didn't like it.
John:
I mean, it's, you know, to get back to the old thing, judging people by their...
John:
Judging yourself by your motivations, by other people, by their actions.
John:
Well, they would see your action and condemn you for it, but you would judge yourself much better because your motivations were pure.
John:
And so you need understanding all around to make the situation go better, like not to condemn people who are trying to do the right thing, but merely to explain to them what they could have done differently or whatever, but not say, like, that person is Casey's now my enemy because...
John:
he you know he spoke up and made it seem like i can't speak for myself made the problem worse they should explain that to you that you know what you did made me feel like i can't stand up for myself and diminished me in the eyes of my peers but not say casey is now my enemy and i'm gonna hate him because it's clear that what you're trying to do is helping like that's that but that goes around in circles like just look at some of the comments threads and these things it just goes around and around and around and like a lot of times it's it's people who are on the same side fighting with each other about how best to help each other right
Marco:
And that's one of the reasons why I don't usually join these discussions, because I have enough people sniping me from every possible angle with everything I write.
Marco:
The last thing I need is to enter a discussion on a topic where it is so hot button, and you're right, if you...
Marco:
even in a discussion trying to defend women or condemn sexism, even in a discussion like that, it's so easy to find exactly what you said, to find flaws in that that themselves are sexist or have some other problem.
Marco:
And if you enter this extremely contentious discussion...
Marco:
you are taking a big risk, especially if you're somebody like me who a lot of people love to hate.
Marco:
And so to me, it's not worth the risk of entering a discussion where I am so intimidated to add anything to the discussion, and I also don't really think I have much constructive to add,
Marco:
And so there's not a whole lot of upside there for me, and there's a whole lot of downside, because not only am I probably not really going to help anybody, but I'm also probably going to make myself look unintentionally terrible.
John:
Well, I'm not saying you have to write about anything you don't want to write about.
John:
But one of the reasons you're probably going to unintentionally look terrible is because, like I said, we all have these gender biases that are in us.
John:
And they are going to come out unintentionally in what you write.
John:
And people are going to call you on it.
John:
And that's not going to feel good.
John:
But it doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong.
John:
It's difficult to react to it in the right way, which, again, may be a reason you just choose not to write about it, which is a perfectly valid choice.
John:
But...
John:
Like, sometimes I feel like at a certain point, like if everybody does that, if everybody's like, well, I know I have many internal biases.
John:
And if I try to speak about it in any way, those biases will come out and people will call me on and I'll feel bad and I'll have difficulty reacting in a nice way.
John:
Therefore, I'll say nothing.
John:
If everybody did that, that just just continues the status quo and like nothing gets better ever.
John:
And so like some people kind of have to.
John:
A fall on your sword to just, you know, be willing to if that's something you feel like you want to do.
John:
And the second thing is, by doing that, by trying to say anything like we're trying to now, and inevitably, like getting things wrong and revealing our own biases.
John:
part of the process of people yelling at you about that is making you more aware of them and working on them so that the next time you don't make the same mistakes and you kind of like like you would hope that you would hope that that's you'd be improving yourself like you would be beating down your biases and i think even though i tend not to participate in these things i don't tweet about them really i don't participate in the comment sections but i read a ton of them and i think just even just reading them may has made me much more aware of the things that i do or think or say
John:
or don't do or think or say that are that are making the situation worse or that are upholding a corrupt system uh you know consciously or otherwise like just by reading about them like reading basically reading other people getting getting attacked for the things that they say like i'm not a participant but i'm seeing it happen and what i'm coming away with is i might have said that same thing and i would have been just as wrong and i agree with this person and i have to think about why that's the case and like
John:
I think that's a growing experience.
John:
I think that's one thing I get out of this that might be good is like exposure to this.
John:
The masses being exposed to this, even though the masses are not participating, just like the few people who are yelling at each other are participating.
John:
Being exposed to this debate online, even in the terrible form that it exists online, will hopefully help everyone who reads it.
John:
to sort of move along the path towards whatever they think their goal is.
John:
I guess maybe it'll make the terrible people more terrible too, but I feel like in general it's going to help matters.
Casey:
You know, something that Marco said a minute ago kind of struck me.
Casey:
You said you're intimidated to join the discussion.
Casey:
And I think that was a verbatim quote, but if not, it was a spirit.
Casey:
And I feel the same way completely.
Casey:
But I can't help but sit here and think, well, what kind of a wuss am I where I'm intimidated to join the discussion?
Casey:
I can't imagine how intimidated I would be to be the recipient of this kind of BS treatment.
Casey:
And I completely agree.
Casey:
I'm a little uncomfortable about talking about this because I don't want to come across as a sexist pig, and I fear that I may.
Casey:
And yet, at the same time, I'm getting so worked up over what is really an innocuous conversation in the grand scheme of things, I cannot fathom how uncomfortable I would be if my boss treated me like crap simply because I'm a dude.
Casey:
I don't even want to think about it.
Casey:
It must be terrible.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Good talk.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week.
Marco:
Can we end this at all in any better way than that?
Marco:
I guess not.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Ram Objects C Sharp, Smile, and Squarespace.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Casey:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental, they didn't mean.
Casey:
So, John, we can dodge this question if you want, but you had said, you know, you saw some of your own wrongs in some of the things you read.
Casey:
Are there any examples you're willing to share?
Casey:
Because I'm trying to think of I know I think of things wrongly in many ways, but I can't think of a specific example of where I know I'm wrong about something or or where I've read something lately and been like, oh, yeah, probably done that, too.
Casey:
Are there any examples you can think of where you've had that kind of reaction that you're willing to share?
John:
Well, the easy one is, like, terminology.
John:
All the words that we grew up using that are, it's like, oh, it's political correctness.
John:
No, they're insulting.
John:
Like, they're insulting to use those, like, I'm not going to, you know, like, the anti-homosexual slurs that we all said when we were kids when we didn't even know what that meant.
John:
And you will see people defending their ability to say that because, like, well, but I don't mean it that way because they grew up saying it, right?
John:
But, like, that's one of those things that once you learn how offensive it is,
John:
you your reaction shouldn't be like to double down and be like nope i'm gonna keep saying it because i know i'm not homophobic and i don't mean it that way therefore i'm gonna keep saying it that's not that's not a mature and appropriate response and the same applies to women i mean i wonder if anyone will call you out for referring to the woman you work with as young lady because that's insulting because it's implying she's you know inferior or like whatever you know what i mean like
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
I didn't even think of it.
Casey:
See, here it is.
Casey:
That's a perfect example because I'm trying to think of what in my screwed up brain is the least offensive and most innocent terminology possible.
John:
Right.
John:
And it's just because what we were conditioned to do growing up.
John:
And that's not an excuse.
John:
It's just an explanation.
John:
And so the idea is to become aware of these things that we do just out of habit and how they position the people who are on the receiving end of them.
John:
And seeing other people called on it may make you think,
John:
I say that a lot too, don't I?
John:
And I should think about something else that I could substitute for that.
John:
Or, you know, I mean, and a lot of this you'll see online is people like, oh, that's a political correctness police and there's certain words that you can't say or whatever.
John:
And there's obviously you can take anything to extreme and become ridiculous and call everybody gyno-Americans instead of women because women is insulting because it has men in the name.
John:
Like, you know, it's...
John:
obviously you can go crazy with that but but the thing is like people whatever people say like automatically because their parents said it because they said it when they were saying kids some people will just defend that to the death and they'll be like nope i gotta be able to say that forever i'm not i know how i mean it i'm nice person i'm not mean to to women whatever therefore you trying to make me not say that is impairing my freedom and it's political correctness gone awry and it's like
John:
You know, that's that's not a fight worth having.
John:
That is you're on the wrong side of that.
John:
It's just it doesn't it doesn't matter how you mean it.
John:
You're working it.
John:
You're working in a larger context here.
John:
You know, if everybody calls the women of the office girls and you just do that instinctively and you don't mean it in a bad way because you really like them.
John:
Like the thing is, it has an unconscious effect on you because if you constantly refer to them as girls, even though if you think you don't mean it, it will shape the way you think about them.
John:
They're, you know, they are younger, they are children, but the men of the office run things and the girls in the office are just, you know, like, it will shape your thinking just by saying the words, right?
John:
And so it's worth actually making a concerted effort to change the way you speak about it, because it will change the way you think about it.
John:
Not because someone's making you, not because they're taking away your freedom or because of political correctness.
John:
Like, it's just basic self-improvement.
John:
I mean, I can think of many more examples.
John:
And you can keep going out into farther and farther reaches with not just gender issues, but homosexuality and race and everything else, everything that is some difference between us.
John:
Like, you can chase all these things down.
John:
And inevitably, in all of us, there's something we're doing that we could do better that is hurting these marginalized groups.
Casey:
So what would you say was the proper term that I should have used?
Casey:
Women.
Casey:
Fair enough.
John:
that's a fair answer i don't know i i for some reason i feel like but you shouldn't feel bad like you shouldn't it's not we know you didn't mean anything by it but like this is one of those cases where it's just yeah yeah the macro just comes out of your head and like it's and and the fact that you were second guessing yourself like that's you get into the panic like oh what am i supposed to say because you're just you know the pet you're ingrained you're just used to saying something else so it takes actual concerted effort to stop saying one thing and say something different and you're going to slip up and like you just but it's like
John:
That's not a reason just to double down and say, well, I'm never going to try to change myself at all.
John:
I'm just going to always say the same thing forever, and if you try to stop me, you're bad.
Marco:
I mean, that's I think what makes it so hard is because people who mean perfectly well can so easily say something or think of something in a way that really isn't perfectly fine or neutral as you intend it to be.
Marco:
Like when I wrote my review of Vesper, I used the word balls all over the place.
Marco:
It takes balls to do blah, blah, blah.
Marco:
And I got a few comments from people.
Marco:
Most of the comments I got on the article were about, of course, I would write this because this is John Gruber's app.
Marco:
And of course, Apple people all look out for each other.
Marco:
All you got to do is write an app and you charge $5.
Marco:
And if you're John Gruber, that's fine for him.
Marco:
That was most of my feedback.
Marco:
Which, of course, is easy to disregard.
Marco:
But I got, I think, one or two comments about how the word balls was kind of unintentionally sexist because, like, that's – well, only men have balls.
Marco:
And that made me think, and it –
Marco:
I didn't at the time think that was worth rewriting the whole article.
Marco:
Let's not use the word balls.
Marco:
But it definitely made me stop using it like that in the future.
John:
Well, see, like when you say unintentionally sexist, unintentional in that sexism and gender relations were not in your mind when you wrote it.
John:
And of course, it's a common saying that we all know that we've probably been using all our lives, right?
John:
But that term, you're not responsible for the sexism in that term.
John:
But the person who first came up with that term, you could be damn sure that sexism was 100% part of that.
John:
They're trying to say men are tough, men are brave, men do things that are brave, so it takes balls.
John:
It takes this organ in male's bodies that women don't have that really has nothing to do with toughness at all.
John:
But nevertheless, it's, you know, well, men have it and women don't and women are wimpy.
John:
Like, it is 100% a sexist term.
John:
But it's so ingrained in the culture that at a certain point, it just loses all that sexism.
John:
It just becomes part of the background noise.
John:
But part of that background noise is, yes, it takes balls to whatever.
John:
And you see women co-opting it and saying that they have balls and it just becomes a generic term or whatever.
John:
But what I always think about that is like, all right, so I didn't mean it that way.
John:
But it totally does mean that.
John:
And does it hurt me to use a different term?
John:
And it's the same analysis you went through.
John:
It's like...
John:
you know maybe i'm not going to go back and rewrite the thing because i but like in the future now maybe you'll think twice about it like that's again you know just participating these things if your thing had comments on it i'd saw people those comments that would have gone into my head when i'd find myself having to say that like you know it it will make you think well it's no skin off my back to use a different term there's plenty of other cliches and analogies and words that i could use to mean the same thing
John:
Why don't I not use the one that is demeaning to women or, you know, excludes them from the realm of having bravery?
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Right.
Marco:
And, you know, I think going back to my earlier question of like not really knowing what I really could do.
Marco:
I think that kind of stuff is a big part of it.
Marco:
That's the kind of thing everybody can do is just the everyday basics of vocabulary and perception and assumptions that we can get called out on occasionally and then question and then edit ourselves to think about that in the future to be like, you know, actually...
Marco:
That is unnecessarily exclusive or has unnecessary baggage and I could use this alternative instead that's better.
Marco:
That, I think, is something that everybody can do.
Marco:
And unfortunately, these are the kind of things that usually day-to-day most people won't get called out on things like this.
John:
Well, the thing is, you're not going to call the people out on it now, but your grandchildren will call those same people out on it.
John:
It's like now when we look back at TV shows from the 50s, or even Mad Men.
John:
You just look at it like, oh, look how sexist they were.
John:
That's exactly how we're going to look to people 50 years from now.
John:
It doesn't change.
John:
The amount of sexism that we have to come back from is so massive that for millennia, people are going to look back three or four or five generations and go, oh, look how sexist they were.
John:
You can make a show about it.
John:
Part of Mad Men is seeing...
John:
boy, can you believe we were ever like that?
John:
That was so long ago.
John:
Well, they're going to say exactly the same things about us.
John:
And since we can't do that, since from our perspective, you saying it takes balls, it's like, that's not in the front of your mind when you're doing it.
John:
And no one else, almost no one else reading it had a thought in their head about like, oh, that's a sexist thing to say.
John:
But in reality, it is.
John:
And 60, 70 years from now, if someone goes back and reads that blog post, look how casually sexist this guy was.
John:
And optimistically speaking, they'll say that, right?
John:
And
John:
it's not like it's just a difference of perspective like it takes time for that to be like sort of you know conditioned out of people like we need to stop saying it stop saying these things make it unacceptable to say them amongst our friends like all the terrible things that i and my friend said when we were little boys like we are stuck living with that like we have to work to get that out of our brains but hopefully our children will not do those things they'll do different things that are bad and you know
John:
we're we hope that we're making progress and i think we are because if you always look back 50 100 200 years like people seem to get more terrible more sort of like just unevolved and uh sexist and racist like that's how it should be as we go back in time people should look more and more terrible in terms of their practices and the enlightened bit is realizing we are exactly going to look exactly the same to people multiple generations from now and so
John:
You know, just try to do the best you can.
John:
Try to go as far forward as you possibly can.
John:
In fact, if you're not farther forward than most people that you're living with, you're probably doing something wrong.
Casey:
You're bordering right on the fine line of politics, and that's scary.
John:
Right.
John:
That we won't talk about.
John:
This is fine.
John:
I think politics, there's plenty of people on both sides of that, whereas sexism, like, the reason we see this coming up on the web and everything is, like, historically, there's just been so little voice to this.
John:
Like, it's just been in the background, and, like, no one talks about it, and...
John:
It's like, well, everything's sexist, so what?
John:
There's nothing you can do about it.
John:
Now I think more people speaking up and getting support from other people, this is becoming more... It still amazes me when some company will... Someone in their PR department will issue some terrible sexist statement.
John:
It's like, don't you read the internet?
John:
Even if you are a terrible sexist person, if your job is PR, don't you understand that this is a thing?
John:
There's so little self-awareness.
John:
The worst offenders are the least self-aware.
John:
And so I, I hope that increased communication of the internet and everything is making, is spreading awareness of this and improving matters across the board at an accelerated rate because it just seemed like, I mean, you guys weren't watching movies in the eighties and stuff like, do you remember the movie working girl?
Casey:
I know that it exists.
Casey:
I've never seen it.
John:
It was like Melanie Griffith and maybe Harrison Ford.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I'm getting this all wrong.
John:
But anyway, like they'd have these female empowerment movies in the eighties.
John:
But if you go back and watch them now, it's like, this was the female empowerment movie.
John:
This is terrible.
John:
This is terribly sexist.
John:
And it's just like insulting to women.
John:
But it was like, you go girl, do some aerobics.
John:
You can have a job and wear a suit too.
John:
And like, and that was progress back then.
John:
But like, you know, it's not even that long ago.
John:
And you look at it now, it's like, you know, and I have a feeling that like,
John:
because those type of movies were not subject to sort of the, the, you know, the feedback from the masses in real time in large volume, like it was movie studios and they'd send it out to the, you know, like it just, we weren't all there to participate.
John:
So it seems like we couldn't, we couldn't do sort of like the, the, the right compile, run, debug, iterate, whatever cycle, you know what I mean?
John:
Like it, that cycle is so much faster now with us being,
John:
yelling at things yelling at each other in real time about every little thing and even though that whole cycle seems silly and annoying and just like people want to ignore it or whatever i think that cycle the fact that the iteration is faster is increasing the rate of improvement all right good talk
Casey:
That is a good talk.
Casey:
I know you meant that genuinely, and I kind of regret hitting the brakes a little bit earlier.
Casey:
But it's just a field of landmines, and I don't know.
John:
You should feel happy that – not happy, but you should be both disappointed and relieved that I'm assuming that –
John:
When I look at my Twitter followers, this is the thing where you can look at your analytics, at what percentage of your Twitter followers are female, and almost none of my Twitter followers are female.
Casey:
Oh yeah, mine's like 96% men or something like that.
Casey:
I'm actually looking right now.
John:
And I wonder about the listeners to this show.
John:
Are their ratios similar to our follower counts?
John:
What kind of feedback email do we get?
John:
Are 50% of the people listening to this show women, but 90% of the feedback we get is from men?
John:
That seems unlikely too.
John:
So yeah, that's a symptom.
John:
A symptom of all the problems we just described.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Hopefully we won't get too much flack, but I would love to get some really good feedback about it.