Journey Would Be Wasted On You
John:
You think if we wait another decade, this 90s music will wrap around and become awesome like the 80s music did, or will that just never happen?
John:
As I always do, I listened to the show last week, and I kept waiting for myself to make a point that I meant to make during the show.
John:
And it's conceivable that I stopped paying attention for three seconds and missed myself saying this.
John:
So if I'm repeating something I said in the very last show, I apologize.
Marco:
So to be clear, you are following up with your theoretical past self.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Like, I, I mean, I didn't have, you know, I don't have notes or anything, but when we were talking about peace, I'm like, this is one of the major points I want to make.
John:
And it's about scaling, which we also talked about in the last show.
John:
And I don't know how I could have possibly managed to miss it.
John:
Uh, but just in case anyway, uh, one of the, the innovations that the company that makes the peace cell thing is supposedly bringing to the table is the ability to solve this problem that we discussed in the last show, which is sort of solving, uh,
John:
for what signal needs to be sent out by all the various towers so that the interference combines to make exactly the right signals in exactly the right place.
John:
So not just for one phone, but for two, 10, 5, 1,000, whatever.
John:
Every single one of those, all the towers that are transmitting that could possibly be overlapping and interfering with each other need to do so in such a way that every individual phone gets exactly the signal that's meant for it in exactly the spot that the phone is.
John:
And that, as you can imagine, requires fast communication between all the nodes, but also a lot of processing power.
John:
And the supposed innovation that the company is bringing, I think Artemis is the name of it, that the company is bringing, is the ability to solve that problem.
John:
Hey, everybody, what signal do all these towers need to put out so exactly the right signals go in exactly the right places?
John:
To solve it in real time, scaling linearly with the number of phones.
John:
So...
John:
Instead of, oh, we can solve for two phones or three phones, but as we go up to 10 phones, then it becomes like 100 times harder to solve.
John:
And if we go up to 1,000 phones, it's like a million times harder to solve, and there's no way we could do it.
John:
Supposedly, they have a system where they can just add computers in a more or less linear fashion to support more phones within the cell area.
John:
And so that's what allows this system to be possible.
John:
They're saying, we have the computing capability to do this.
John:
We have the communication infrastructure to do it.
John:
And we have come up with a way to solve whatever this problem is, to solve for the output that all these cells, towers need to put out to make constructive interference in just the right way.
John:
And we can do it linearly.
John:
Because if you couldn't do it linearly, you can imagine that...
John:
Maybe it would work for like a trade show or something, but for an entire city with thousands upon thousands of cell phones, if it didn't scale linearly, you've got big problems in terms of computing power.
John:
And so that is one of perhaps the most important claim, that and the ability to do with existing cell phones over existing LTE networks without requiring special hardware on the handsets.
John:
Those two things are the two things that make PSEL possible.
John:
Again, according to the claims, we'll see how it shakes out.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
And the next bit of follow-up was actually for me for once.
Marco:
It doesn't happen often, but it does occasionally happen.
Marco:
Last episode at the end, I was discussing, or John and I, and occasionally Casey, making vinyl references, were discussing scaling and the difference between scaling and performance.
Marco:
And in it, I discussed how when I'm writing web apps, I don't use database joins.
Marco:
In fact, I don't use them in local apps either.
Marco:
But that's more because of my framework.
Marco:
Anyway...
Marco:
So I don't use database joins, and the reason why I don't use database joins is for various scaling concerns and basically to keep my options open for splitting up that database in the future and also to shift as much work as possible onto the easy and cheap-to-scale web-slash-application servers and leave the hard and expensive-to-scale database server with as light of a workload as possible.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Anyway, so I got a bunch of feedback on that from a lot of people.
Marco:
A handful of people who agreed with me and a whole bunch of people who disagreed.
Marco:
The people who agreed are typically people who had done it before, who had worked on large-scale applications before, who had seen these exact problems and solved them in the same way.
Marco:
So, of course, they would agree because they did it the same way themselves.
Marco:
The biggest argument against my technique of not using joins...
Marco:
was that we've never needed that in our organization or on our project, or I've personally never needed that on my projects.
Marco:
So you might as well use the database as much as you can.
Marco:
And when you need it, then you cross that bridge.
Marco:
And to me, I wrote a quick thing on my blog, so I'm not going to go too far into it.
Marco:
But basically, I think that's kind of the wrong angle to approach scaling questions from.
Marco:
Scaling is...
Marco:
constantly asking yourself then what so okay you have this so far you have all these things on one server because that one server is enough but then what happens when it's not enough then what and scaling well and building scalable systems means trying to anticipate some of those then what scenarios and having a decent answer for it that's not going to involve
Marco:
rewrite half your code and comb through your whole code base and make sure you aren't using joins anywhere anymore.
Marco:
If you think about, not only is that a ton of work, and it could potentially introduce tons of bugs if you haven't written this way from the beginning,
Marco:
But also, you'd probably be doing that under incredible pressure and time constraints because you're probably doing that because you hit an oh crap moment in your scaling and you realize, oh wait a minute, I've added the most RAM to this than I could possibly add and it's not helping.
Marco:
Or I've done everything I can with one box and it still isn't enough.
Marco:
What do I do?
Marco:
And
Marco:
If you don't plan for those, and obviously this is all qualified to an extent or within reason.
Marco:
You don't have to plan to be the next Facebook because you probably won't be.
Marco:
And if you do become the next Facebook, you can hire a bunch of smarter people that need to do all this as you get that big.
Marco:
But even just going from...
Marco:
from tiny to small or from small to midsize, you're going to hit some of these questions and you're not going to have a giant IT staff.
Marco:
You're not going to have infinite money.
Marco:
You're not going to have infinite time.
Marco:
And so it's worth considering that because, you know, and a lot of people would say, oh, this is about premature optimization and premature optimization is wrong, period, because that's, you've heard that before and it sounds good.
Marco:
And the fact is that's, you know, premature optimization is not always wrong or bad.
Marco:
It's a trade-off.
Marco:
You're trading, in most cases, you're trading some complexity for some or a lot of performance.
Marco:
Or, you know, in the case of scaling, options in the future for better scaling or easier scaling or possible scaling.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And so premature optimization and designing things to be scalable can be worthwhile if it's relatively easy and if there's not a lot of major costs to it, both in time and in maintenance and limitations in the app and other things.
Marco:
If it's relatively easy to make better decisions that make your app more scalable the whole time you're designing it,
Marco:
you should do it because it's like a best practice.
Marco:
It isn't that much more work, and you might never need it, but when you do need it, you'll be very glad you have it.
Marco:
So I guess that's it on that topic for now.
Marco:
Do you guys have any other follow-up on scaling?
John:
I think there were two other threads of, uh, of feedback on the, on the thing.
John:
Uh, one more, the people who were, uh, saying that it sounded like you were using my SQL without using any relational features.
John:
So here are a bunch of non-relational data stories that you could use instead.
John:
So there was a couple of people who had that.
John:
And then the other one was, I think maybe it was just one person, but I thought it was a good point that we didn't get to that depending on the nature of your application, if you have something that's sort of non-interactive and trivially siloable, uh, you could get away with, you know, you wouldn't have to worry about this joint type thing because all you would do is just sort of shard up by customer and one customer's data would never mingle with another's.
John:
And at that point, like there's, you know, then you have, you
John:
your entire scale your entire horizontal scaling strategy is entirely based on divvying users up into smaller and smaller bins and you just need some way to figure out where this user's bin is and that could be something super fast and easily scalable and then just the bins it's like well if the bin is too slow my solution is to cut the bin in half and that point if you do joins against the bins it doesn't matter all it does is make you have to cut them into pieces sooner um
John:
Obviously, social applications are not like this, where you have to where there's some sort of global awareness or you're you're following that person's things and they're following yours or whatever.
John:
And, you know, most systems are not this simple, but it was a good point that, like, really, it really depends on the shape of your system.
John:
What what does the state look like in your thing?
John:
What state are you tracking?
John:
How is the state related to the other state?
John:
And if you're sure that there is no interrelations, nor will there be in the future, you can get away with just sharding by user.
Marco:
That's a very big if, though.
Marco:
And I agree.
Marco:
If you have something like, for instance, if you look at something like Zendesk or FreshBooks, these hosted applications that...
Marco:
they create a little site or thing for you as the customer.
Marco:
And these are, by definition, very private things that none of their other customers ever need to access your data.
Marco:
In fact, it should not be possible for them to access your data.
Marco:
So it makes sense when you have something that is that strictly divided by user, where the users will never have to interact with each other or their data.
Marco:
It makes sense to then do that kind of sharding there.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
if you have any kind of consumer facing general purpose service kind of thing, like there's, there are so many options for cross data referencing.
Marco:
And, uh, and you know, if you, if you start out with a system that's charted in that way, uh, then first of all, you are, that is a pretty big limitation you put on yourself and your development.
Marco:
And it does add complexity and it does add management complexity.
Marco:
Um,
Marco:
So that's the kind of thing that I would be very careful to decide.
Marco:
If you're deciding that up front to do that from the beginning, I would be very careful of that decision because that really will limit you later and it might not be necessary or it might not be right or you might have to pivot into something that has a little bit more data crossover.
John:
Yeah, even consumer facing systems, though, isn't like real systems that are out there.
John:
A lot of the times they will take the part of their system that scales in this way and scale it in that way and then use a different strategy for like the interrelated.
John:
Because that's what you have to end up doing when you scale things is you're going to end up breaking breaking apart the functionality of your application, which is part of the reason why you're not doing joins.
John:
But just like in the grand scheme of things, like maybe user information could be sharded up nicely by user.
John:
but then all the interrelated information has an entirely different backend with entirely different scaling strategy.
John:
Like you end up, you know, it's the whole service oriented architecture thing.
John:
You end up with different pieces of your application scaling in different ways, because very often it's not, there is no one master scaling solution for your entire app.
John:
You have to look at it in pieces and like,
John:
The login flow is like this.
John:
Session management is like this.
John:
User information is like this.
John:
Relationship management is like this.
John:
I mean, one of the crazy examples, I remember I read a story a while back about how LinkedIn had a fairly standard looking backend, except for the part that handled all the relationships.
John:
And that had to be on a server where it was all in memory.
John:
And I remember reading that and feeling bad for them because it's like,
John:
That's like a built-in time bomb for scaling.
John:
They're racing more as law to see, will the relationship information in LinkedIn get big faster than we can buy machines, faster than the amount of RAM we can stuff into a single machine?
John:
And so that's kind of an unfortunate thing, but it's obvious they didn't use that same scaling strategy for the user information.
John:
It was just for the relationship information, which is another system.
John:
Uh, and then one more thing on this, the, the, then what question, one of the, then what's that you, that you haven't asked and haven't had, didn't have to ask for a Tumblr guys and probably will never have to ask for any of your applications.
John:
But I think a lot of people thinking about the, then what's should consider is the idea of making database accesses, uh,
John:
from essentially a web application or any application for that matter, like the code that is running your thing, it connects to a database.
John:
Very often in these large applications need to find somewhere to scale.
John:
They have to put a layer in between there.
John:
So you want some kind of data access layer
John:
that does not connect to the database to get information.
John:
And so if you're using something like, you know, what is it, FC model or whatever using or any of these like things that basically you're going to put, you're putting SQL in your code somewhere, right?
John:
And you're like, well, it doesn't matter.
John:
You don't see the SQL.
John:
It's all abstracted away.
John:
But like essentially what you're making is a front end to do SQL queries for you.
John:
Like if I needed to, I could swap that out for something that didn't talk directly to a database.
John:
But it would be kind of painful.
John:
And so if you make a data access layer that is agnostic to the destination, either you make it
John:
work over HTTP from the very start and then have sort of a web, you know, a web service backend that gets you that information.
John:
You're like, well, that seems like it's going to be slower and it seems like a waste of time and I'm never going to need to do that.
John:
Maybe you're right.
John:
But in my experience, a lot of applications, one of the first things they run into, even if they have perfect horizontal scalability in terms of sharding users, because it's that type of thing.
John:
Say it's like a B2B business where
John:
Uh, you're always, you know, your customers do want their things to be solid.
John:
Like, Oh, it's no problem.
John:
Well, eventually you run into the realization that most, especially we're using relational database.
John:
Most relational database products are not made to support the number of connections that are anything close to sort of the scale of users on the website.
John:
And so you have to conserve those database connections.
John:
You need some sort of, I mean, they have database connection pulling all the other strategies, but in general, if you divorce your application as much as possible from, uh,
John:
where it's getting its information.
John:
Even if that information is in a database now, having some sort of transport layer in there, like even something as dumb as HTTP for some kind of, you know, again, service-oriented architecture type thing, that seems terrible for performance and often is much worse for performance.
John:
And that's why people say, no, you know, Casey's probably, you know, he was complaining about having to make a round trip to the database for multiple, you know, imagine if you had to make an HTTP request to something and then that something would potentially go to a database.
John:
That's even more overhead.
John:
And yes, you are sacrificing performance and complexity for along an axis that you think you might need to control.
John:
You know, you might need to, if that, then what says, okay, well, we're out of database connections, you know, then what, or, you know, like having, having the application correct, connect directly to databases, you know, security concern or a networking issue or whatever, then what, if you do everything as a service, then you could have, you know,
John:
multiple data centers and and different you know do everything over http and do geographic load balancing and have all this you know it gives you more flexibility so uh that that's a then what that that's just one more than what that i've i've come across many times in my working career and every time i've either designed or been working on application that connects directly to a database i've regretted it but your mileage may vary
Marco:
No, I mean, I agree on that.
Marco:
And I'm pretty sure I don't actually know this for sure, because when I left, I actually did leave.
Marco:
But but I'm pretty sure at Tumblr that was that was like one of the big things they did pretty soon after I left.
Marco:
Like once they got like a more experienced staff in there who would work on systems of that size, which and it was I mean, one of the reasons I left was that it was it was getting pretty far beyond my ability to scale it myself.
Marco:
And yeah.
Marco:
And that's one of the first things they did was move to that kind of architecture.
Marco:
And that does make sense.
Marco:
That is one of those things, again, where I think you can go a pretty long way without doing that.
Marco:
And so, again, it's a premature optimization that...
John:
you you know it might be worth it for you to do that in in my case it almost never is uh and and it never well never has been so far um but certainly that is something that might be worth doing i don't like that phrase though because like it built into a premature optimization premature saying you're doing it sooner than you need to like these are optimizations like because whenever that's one of the the uh vocabulary tools wielded by programmers and arguments like well that's a premature optimization but it's a tautology like you are
John:
asserting that it is premature by calling it premature.
John:
Why is it premature?
John:
Is it too early or is it not too early?
John:
That's the whole argument that we're supposed to be having, and you can't win that argument by pulling out the term premature optimization.
John:
That just explains what your position is, but then you still have to defend it.
John:
So all these optimizations, what you're saying, Marco, is like...
John:
They're not premature.
John:
This is, in fact, exactly the right time to do it because my expectation is X, Y and Z. And then you're arguing about like, are we ever going to get big as we as we scale, which thing will break first?
John:
Like you have to basically decide what is our maximum possible size?
John:
What's the first thing that's going to fall over?
John:
How long can we go?
John:
doing joins, how long can we go directly connected to the database and just map them out and have arguments about like, which one you think is going to come first.
John:
And then, you know, you live and learn and applications change shape as you go and inevitably you make some bad choices and maybe, Oh, I thought we were going to grow in this way, but it turns out this feature ended up being much more popular.
John:
and we hit this thing before we hit that thing so you're always trying to you know second guess what the future is but the whole point is don't do any premature optimizations do ones that you know are not premature in fact they're exactly the right time to do them and to to know what that is you have to just you kind of have to guess but you use your experience and your knowledge of building similar applications in the past you know
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Maybe instead of thinking of them as premature, you think of them as whether they're worthwhile or not.
Marco:
Anyway, the only other thing I would say about having that multi-tiered architecture is, for whatever it's worth, if database connections are your problem...
Marco:
you're in a weird situation I've never seen before.
Marco:
I have never seen a database be limited by its number of connections.
Marco:
Maybe that's because I write my code to disconnect when it's done.
John:
Connecting and disconnecting is another thing.
John:
Especially old school relations databases are not designed to handle connection storms.
John:
you know how many users can try to connect to your database once say a hundred thousand users want to connect at the same time what does that do versus those hundred thousand users being spread out over a minute over 30 seconds over one second how does it handle that uh and then you're like well we'll have persistent connections okay but now you have people tying up connections and now you're the number you know it's i see it all the time yeah fair enough that's probably more you know usage specific with whatever your application actually is and and how and whatever however your layer actually treats the database connection
John:
And how good your pooling solution is, because, again, relational databases, depending on their vintage, may or may not have robust pooling solutions.
John:
At Google scale, though, one of the fun things is you run out of port numbers.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
So when they do the web sockets, and it's like a 16-bit number, you get 65,000 of them or whatever.
John:
At Google scale, you run into limitations of the operating system.
John:
You're like, well, this machine could support more connections, but we were literally out of port numbers.
Casey:
That's insane.
Casey:
It makes sense, but that is not something I ever would think to be a problem.
John:
Yeah, well, that's what Google's for, to find those limits and to patch Linux to overcome them and figure something else out.
Marco:
Yeah, that's the other thing.
Marco:
I never got into the level where I had to start tweaking kernel settings and things like that.
Marco:
We would use the kernel's stock because that was... And again, I don't know what Tumblr's situation is now.
Marco:
They're way bigger now, especially now that Yahoo bought them.
Marco:
They're probably getting a lot of help from Yahoo's people and running on some of Yahoo's infrastructure.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
But certainly at the time I left, we never had to get into that.
Marco:
And yeah, anyway...
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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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:
And either way, even if they host it for you, you always have direct access to the database, and you can directly query it, or you can export your data and take it elsewhere.
Marco:
HelpSpot has been around for a long time.
Marco:
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Marco:
Thank you very much to HelpSpot for sponsoring our show once again.
Casey:
I have a question for the both of you guys.
Casey:
And I think it applies to both of you, but I'm going to start with you, Marco.
Casey:
So how do you get outside of your comfort zone and learn something new?
Casey:
And if you think about your history, you wrote Tumblr and PHP.
Casey:
You wrote Instapaper and PHP.
Casey:
You used MySQL for both the magazine PHP and MySQL, now Overcast PHP and MySQL.
Casey:
Even Second Crack, which was kind of a for fun pet project, was PHP and MySQL.
Casey:
Well, I guess not MySQL, but PHP.
Casey:
How do you learn something new?
Casey:
How do you go about that?
Casey:
Do you not care?
Casey:
Does it not bother you?
Casey:
Do you just don't think it's an issue right now and you'll learn it when you need to?
Casey:
Because the only example that I can think of knowing your history is when you learned iOS development for Instapaper.
Casey:
But what have you done since then?
Casey:
And what cued me off on this was everyone saying you should look at NoSQL databases.
Casey:
And you basically said, well, I've got MySQL and it works fine for me.
Marco:
Well, it's a combination of factors.
Marco:
I mean, one is certainly that I'm not very good at making myself learn new things if I don't have to.
Marco:
That's just a character flaw, I guess.
Marco:
No question, that's one of the factors.
Marco:
But also...
Marco:
there's, there's two others.
Marco:
One is conservatism, uh, that, you know, I, I've been on the cutting edge before.
Marco:
I have, I have lived in the cutting edge world before and it's a lot of work and it, it's a lot of, you know, maintenance and versions of weird things running on your server that crash in the middle of the night and need attention, uh, or hitting weird bugs that, you know, that because just you're running such a new version of things or such a new technology that hasn't really had all the bugs ironed out yet.
Marco:
Um,
Marco:
So that's another big part of it, that I'm now at a point where I want to avoid those kind of costs if I can.
Marco:
And that's not always going to be the case.
Marco:
And sometimes it's worth the cost.
Marco:
So for instance, on Overcast servers, I've decided to run HHVM as the interpreter layer because it is just so much faster than PHP.
Marco:
And what I'm probably going to do, I was setting up my load balancing today, and I'm probably going to have two web front-end VMs to start, and one of them I'll run HHVM and one of them I'll run PHP.
Marco:
So if it crashes weirdly, I'll still have something to take up the slack until I fix it.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
For whatever it's worth, generally speaking, I try to avoid the cost of being on the bleeding edge because I've decided it's not worth it.
Marco:
You might have a different calculation on that for whatever your application might be.
Marco:
For me, I've just decided it's not worth being on the bleeding edge.
Marco:
Now, that being said...
Marco:
Obviously, there's a lot of things that I could learn besides PHP and MySQL and Objective-C for iOS development.
Marco:
There's a lot of things I could learn that are mature and are far from being on the bleeding edge these days.
Marco:
And for most of those, I haven't simply because it hasn't yet been really necessary.
Marco:
Learning things has a big cost, and I have to weigh whether it's worth going through the learning period, going through the period of finding all of the
Marco:
intricate details of the behavior and finding out the best ways to do things and and learning the apis in enough depth to use them really well and i'm at that point with the technologies i know now for the most part and for me to learn a whole new language or platform or something it has to be worth that learning curve and i've decided that for what i'm doing currently it's not worth that and part of that
Marco:
Obviously, on the iOS side, I don't think there's anything I can learn that would be better than Objective-C.
Marco:
I don't think there are any better things, really.
Marco:
For what I'm doing, I think I'm using the best things already.
Marco:
For the web side, certainly you can do a lot better than PHP these days.
Marco:
I still would argue that that might not be the case for MySQL, but certainly you can do a lot better than PHP.
Marco:
The main reason I haven't gone there on the web side
Marco:
I don't really need to.
Marco:
Nothing's forcing me.
Marco:
And not only do I already know it and it's very stable, but also I just don't care that much about the website.
Marco:
I am not that interested in running cutting-edge web stuff or even learning new web stuff that I don't really have to learn because the website to me is a supporting role.
Marco:
I am...
Marco:
I am not making a web app that happens to have an iOS client.
Marco:
I'm making an iOS app that happens to have a web backend.
Marco:
And that's where my focus is.
Marco:
I care so much more about the iOS thing.
Marco:
That's why I want to be cutting edge on the iOS side.
Marco:
I want to be doing everything right on the iOS side.
Marco:
But the website is really just serving a supporting role here.
Marco:
And
Marco:
And it's more important for me.
Marco:
I don't care about new web stuff.
Marco:
I'm very interested in learning new frameworks for iOS.
Marco:
When so much of this cool stuff that's come around, like Grand Central Dispatch and stuff like that, so much of this cool stuff that's come around in iOS, I'm really into.
Marco:
I love that stuff.
Marco:
I find it very interesting.
Casey:
That's a fair point.
Marco:
New web stuff, I just don't care about.
Marco:
I don't care about web programming.
Marco:
I really don't enjoy web programming anymore.
Marco:
I find it very boring.
Marco:
And I do it because I have to to build the products I want.
Marco:
So the primary goal is I like client-side programming for iOS and Objective-C.
Marco:
And I like the products that result from these things.
Marco:
And so the web code base is really just a supporting role for that.
Marco:
So for me, my priority there is just get it done.
Marco:
I don't want to spend a ton of time on it.
Marco:
Just get it done so that it can do what I need it to do.
Marco:
And that doesn't include learn a bunch of new web languages when I'm not really being presented with clear motivations to do that.
Casey:
Yeah, that makes sense.
Casey:
And I think the most surprising use of PHP for me isn't Overcast or Instapaper or Tumblr.
Casey:
It's second crack.
Casey:
And granted, it makes perfect sense that you would use something you're familiar with, especially for a project that's not going to make you any money and you're just doing it for the heck of it.
Casey:
But when I write something outside of work and I do it for fun...
Casey:
I tend to force myself to use a different technology.
Casey:
For example, I wrote Fast Text, which is an iOS app.
Casey:
And I did that in Objective-C because I didn't know Objective-C and I wanted to learn it.
Casey:
And I have been dabbling with writing my own kind of second crack.
Casey:
Let's call it third crack for the sake of a conversation.
Casey:
I've been using Node because I've heard a lot of great things about Node and I wanted to try it.
Casey:
And I've actually really, really come to like it.
Casey:
And
Casey:
It's just surprising to me, perhaps because you don't have a corporate stooge job, so you have a lot more control over your own destiny.
Casey:
But it's surprising to me that you don't have this thirst to learn something new.
Casey:
When I don't learn a new language in about a six-month-to-one-year window, I start to get kind of crabby and angsty and anxious, and I really need to learn something new.
Casey:
And it seems like, for better or worse, that doesn't seem to apply to you.
Marco:
Well, it does.
Marco:
And totally, you know, I get that, like, the programmer itch, basically.
Marco:
I totally get that.
Marco:
But I satisfy it in different areas than the web language I use.
Marco:
Second Crack, you know, for those who don't know or care, Second Crack is my custom static blogging engine that I wrote.
Marco:
And it's just like a bunch of command line scripts, basically, and they're all written in PHP.
Marco:
And I'm probably the only person in the universe using PHP to write command line scripts, and that's fine.
Yeah.
Marco:
And you're right, that totally would have been a great opportunity to try a new language because it was a small project with small needs that was not very pressing to get it done quickly and doesn't need to scale, really.
Marco:
You're right, that would have been great.
Marco:
And maybe sometime I will rewrite that because it's pretty crappy, really.
Marco:
So maybe sometime I'll rewrite that in something else.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
Part of the reason why, as you said, I don't have a day job, when I wrote Second Crack, it was itself a procrastination from my actual apps.
Marco:
That's part of the problem when you work for yourself is that anytime you're able to do work like that,
Marco:
it's potentially taking away from your quote work, like your official work that you're actually getting paid for or trying to get done.
Marco:
And I forget exactly which project I was procrastinating on when I wrote Second Crack.
Marco:
I'm pretty sure it was probably Instapaper, but I'm not positive on the timing on that.
Marco:
But either way, that was itself a procrastination.
Marco:
And so I didn't want to spend a lot of time on it.
Marco:
So that's why I figured, let me just use PHP because I can get it done very quickly with PHP.
Marco:
I didn't want it to be a big time sink.
Marco:
Yeah, that makes sense.
Marco:
That being said, though, I still learn tons.
Marco:
As I said, I try to keep up as much as I can with iOS APIs, especially low-level stuff.
Marco:
For instance, with Overcast, I don't use AV Player or AV Audio Player.
Marco:
And I'm not sure if I've said that publicly before.
Marco:
I think I have, so this shouldn't be a big surprise.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
I'm playing audio files, and I'm not using AV Player.
Marco:
And if you've ever worked on this stuff, you should know, therefore, what that means.
Marco:
I'm using raw core audio.
Marco:
And this has been an amazing learning process.
Marco:
And probably I didn't need to do that.
Marco:
I have some reasons why I did it, but I probably didn't need to.
Marco:
Chances are, you could just do... I could have used AV Player and saved myself a lot of time, but...
Marco:
I wanted certain levels of control and I wanted to learn this stuff.
Marco:
So I made extensive use of things like the accelerate framework using all the VDSP functions.
Marco:
So these functions that, that basically vectorize operations and use SIMD instructions, stuff like that to really make these things awesomely fast if possible.
Marco:
And,
Marco:
I'm using that stuff all over the place in so many ways.
Marco:
And so, like, I'm learning things like that.
Marco:
I'm learning various different concurrency strategies and, you know, doing things like the crazy ring buffer for the buffering of the samples that I'm reading from the files and everything.
Marco:
Like, that stuff I love.
Marco:
That's all really interesting to me.
Marco:
This is all, you know, that's where I've been learning is in Overcast client-side code.
Marco:
And, again, the web stuff I couldn't possibly care less about.
Casey:
So, John, what about you?
Casey:
Because your day job has been, as far as I know, pretty much forever in Perl.
Casey:
Do you ever have that itch?
Casey:
What do you do to scratch it, if so?
John:
Well, with less time for, like, fun programming projects for all the things that I've put on my own plate, essentially, besides my job over the years, whether it be, you know, writing Forrest Tactical, which I used to do much more of, or podcasting more recently, there's not as much time for fun programming projects.
John:
Like, I wrote my own little static...
John:
blogging engine thing, but that was kind of like Marco's and they were like, yeah, it's supposed to be kind of a fun project, but really it was a practical thing.
John:
And my, you know, I just wanted to get it done quickly.
John:
And so I wrote it in Perl cause I know we could get it done quickly.
John:
And I intentionally stopped myself from making it good because it was like,
John:
Because I, you know, this is something I would know how to do.
John:
I could make this thing have bells and whistles and be awesome and have this cool feature.
John:
And I was like, no, make it as dumb as possible.
John:
Get done with it.
John:
Like, because I was at that point, I was trying to not distract myself from writing, which I'm not distracting myself from writing anymore by making the engine, but I'm also not writing.
John:
But anyway, back then it was like, don't spend time writing the engine.
John:
You do this all day.
John:
It's stupid.
John:
Make the dumbest thing you can possibly do that works.
John:
And I did.
John:
And it's super dumb.
John:
And, you know, it didn't stop me from writing.
John:
But the thing that I think has made me, like, try new things and stuff or whatever is kind of the brutal nature of the tech job market starting in the mid to late 90s in that I've had a lot of jobs.
John:
And, you know, like, how did I get to use MSQL, MySQL, SQLite, Oracle, Informix, Postgres?
John:
Like...
John:
you're not going to get experience in all those databases probably in one place.
John:
Even if you're there from the beginning when it's like three guys, maybe you'll touch on one or two of them.
John:
But, like, how will you ever take an in-depth survey of all these different database products?
John:
Well, you do it by having, like, seven different jobs.
John:
And the first place you work, there is no database, so you get to pick something.
John:
And the second place maybe uses MySQL.
John:
And the third place you decide to use Postgres, because I think that might be fine.
John:
Like, when you make commitments like that, like, they tend to last...
John:
for a long time.
John:
Or if you're some big company that's already using Oracle, you're not going to come in there and go, you know what?
John:
I'd really like to try out Postgres.
John:
It's like, well, we're using Oracle, so get a different job.
John:
And languages is the same way.
John:
If you're a web developer, yes, every place I've worked has used Perl in some fashion, but
John:
the proportion of my time spent writing pearls is very wildly.
John:
For example, the company where I use Postgres extensively, a huge amount of the code was in stored procedures in Postgres.
John:
And at various points, I was mostly a Postgres database designer slash stored procedure writer.
John:
Uh, and in Formix, we also use a lot of stored procedures.
John:
Uh, and like if, if you're writing an application that is mostly essentially a JavaScript application that just talks to, to a faceless backend, the faceless backend is pretty boring.
John:
Uh,
John:
And the entire application lives on the client side.
John:
And so you're at that point, you're writing a JavaScript application.
John:
It's, it's not node where it's, you know, server side JavaScript, but client side JavaScript with all the frameworks, like, well, then what framework are you using?
John:
You know, how did I get to use all these different frameworks going from plain old Dom to like prototype Dojo, jQuery,
John:
you know angular ember uh backbone underscore like how do you get to use all those you're not going to get to use all of them at one place because once you start building an application on top of one of those you're probably going to keep building it that way and then you say oh well you know jquery is really popular now so we should really we really picked the wrong horse when we decided to do everything with prototype and you know rails did that a little bit to some degree as well it's like well
John:
know how many thousands of lines are in this application now do you want to rewrite it with jquery or do we just continue you know plowing bravely onward and so yeah changing jobs not usually not voluntarily but more like when you know the company starts to go down the tubes or you know have layoffs or or changes direction or whatever you get a new job that's a new opportunity to learn a lot of new things even if the whole time like i'm just a web developer what does web developer mean web developer means
John:
being multilingual learning and even like even css like well i've got no css i got no html i got to keep all the specs but there's all the languages on top of css like less and sass and stuff you will find yourself learning new languages all the time just to keep up with the constant amazing churn in web technologies uh and you were and you will build products on whatever the web technologies are at the time that your company chooses or you choose or whatever and then when you go to the next job there'll be a different set of technologies
John:
Not that I enjoy moving jobs.
John:
I don't.
John:
I wish I could stay in one job for, you know, I don't like switching jobs.
John:
I find it stressful.
John:
But the plain fact is that I have switched jobs many times.
John:
And I think that has forced me more than anything to learn new technologies.
Casey:
That makes sense.
Casey:
I'm a little surprised that neither of you seems to dedicate the time outside of work to do this.
Casey:
But let's also not lose sight of the fact that you have children and I do not.
Casey:
So that probably relates more than just a little bit.
John:
I mean, I read a lot about it.
John:
I've never written a significant program in Objective-C, but I feel like I know the language.
John:
And I've never written any of these frameworks, but I know a lot about them.
John:
And it's like, yes, it's kind of like a dilettante kind of like, well, I just read a lot of books about it.
John:
It's true.
John:
I read a lot of articles, read a lot of books, read a lot of Ruby Python code, read a lot of Node.js code, read headers from Cocoa things to see what it's like.
John:
I'm not coding in those, but I feel like by surveying them, I'm...
John:
i don't know if it's the same thing as like it's certainly not the same thing as doing a real project in it but you kind of get a sense for what's out there and so it's not entirely alien to like why am i reading these big these big long rust tutorials why did i read all the documentation about go because i have a project in mind because i'm going to use them probably not but i have an academic interest in that type of thing and i think reading through it gives you an idea of what it might be like to program in that
Marco:
Fair enough.
Marco:
Actually, I did look at Go recently because everyone kept telling me I should.
Marco:
It does look really interesting.
Marco:
And I think if I were to go through the trouble of learning a whole new web language, that might be the one I would go to because it seems like it's made with my sensibilities pretty well aligned.
Marco:
So anyway.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Lynda.com works with software companies to provide you with updated training the same day a new version hits the market, so you're always up to speed.
Marco:
And they have courses for all experience levels, whether you're a beginner or an advanced user of these things.
Marco:
Now, you get all of this, 2,400 courses, one low monthly price gets you all of this.
Marco:
It's a flat rate.
Marco:
$25 a month for unlimited access to the entire Lynda.com library.
Marco:
Now, I mean, I've seen some of their videos.
Marco:
I've actually learned a lot from them.
Marco:
From my podcast editing, I went through some of their videos on Logic and audio engineering, and it's great.
Marco:
I mean, you got to see this.
Marco:
Casey was telling us last time, you got to see how they have the video, and then next to it, they have a transcript.
Marco:
and it tracks and the transcript shows you it highlights where you are what's being said so you can and then you can scroll through the transcript to jump to any point in the video so you can like skim through and you can see oh i want to i want to hear about this topic right here in the transcript click on that it goes to that point in the video really well done you can watch them on your ipad and everything it's fantastic they don't need flash or any stupid stuff like that now relative to our recent discussions
Marco:
They have courses in web development, for instance, that you can learn Node.js.
Marco:
You can learn AngularJS or CoffeeScript or, as many people would tell me, to learn NoSQL databases.
Marco:
They have all these things.
Marco:
There's a whole course they recently added called Programming for iOS 7 for Non-Programmers.
Marco:
So you can learn how to make an app.
Marco:
If you're not a programmer, there actually are about two or three of you out there who listen to the show who can tolerate us and yet who aren't programmers.
Marco:
You three people can finally learn how to program if you want to.
Marco:
Programming for non-programmers for iOS 7 is a great course on lynda.com.
Marco:
So recently, Adobe launched Lightroom for mobile, Lightroom for iPad, basically.
Marco:
And they have a course on that.
Marco:
So you can learn how to edit your photos and manage them on the go.
Marco:
So this is all really fantastic stuff.
Marco:
It's high-quality stuff made by people at the top of their fields.
Marco:
These are not like the little homemade YouTube videos you see.
Marco:
Really fantastic quality, top-notch content.
Marco:
I've used this myself.
Marco:
We all said we use this ourselves.
Marco:
I really can't recommend them enough.
Marco:
Fantastic.
Marco:
So thanks a lot to lynda.com, L-Y-N-D-A dot com.
Marco:
If you go to lynda.com slash ATP, you can start a free seven-day trial.
Marco:
That is lynda.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to Linda for sponsoring our show once again.
Casey:
Apple did something a little un-Apple-like today, and they've announced an OS X beta program for regular people, for non-developers.
Casey:
This is surprising to me.
Casey:
What did you guys think?
John:
I wasn't so old.
John:
I could remember definitively what the details of the old Apple-free developer program were because Apple's developer program has changed over the years.
John:
Right now, it's like $99 for the iOS dev program, $99 for the OS X dev program.
John:
And those prices were a step down from the old program, which was like, you could be a select developer for like $500 a year.
John:
You could be a premier developer for like 1200 and there was no iOS.
John:
So I don't, or maybe there was early at the tail end of that, but anyway, there weren't separate programs for iOS and OS 10.
John:
Uh, but there was also a free tier where you could be a developer at the free tier and the things I can't remember at the free tier, whether you got early seeds of the early OS 10 betas or not, uh,
John:
Yeah, so someone can write and tell me the exact details of what the free programs were like.
John:
But anyway, this is kind of a return to the free thing.
John:
It's like, hey, you can be a registered developer, kind of, sort of, not really, at Apple.
John:
But if you're just interested in getting the pre-release software, sign up for free.
John:
You don't have to pay $99 because I'm assuming you're not going to write your own applications.
John:
You just want to get the early versions of the OS, which a lot of people did back in the day.
John:
It's like, well, you've got to be part of the dev program if you want early releases.
John:
Yeah.
John:
uh you know even if you're not going to make your own application which is essentially why i'm always a dev a member of the mac developer program i'm not writing mac applications but i've been a member of the mac developer program a paying member for just years and years now because that's how you get the early releases and this is an example of the ability to get the early release and i assume nothing else except for just the early releases like no you know no developer technical support incidents no ability to uh sign apps and upload them to the app store and all that other stuff but anyway
John:
for regular people.
John:
So you do need an Apple ID.
John:
You do need to agree to a confidentiality thing where you're not going to talk about, you know, the features that you see and so on and so forth.
John:
You do agree to let Apple, like, collect diagnostics from your computer and all the other normal stuff that you might imagine agreeing to if you've decided to run beta software to help out Apple.
John:
And in return, you get to see an early peek at things.
Casey:
So are you surprised by this?
John:
Not really, because, like...
John:
you know like they're not first of all these people are not gonna i assume they're not gonna get the same seeds that developers get it's gonna probably apple's going to take their time and release maybe you know developers maybe get five or six seeds and of those apple will pick like here's one seed that everybody gets and then there'll be a bunch of dev seeds and then one seed that everybody gets then a bunch of dev seeds but nobody's getting anything until someone goes on stage at wdc and shows you know the new features and stuff it's not as if
John:
You will be seeing some secret thing before everyone else.
John:
Everyone's going to see it on stage at WWDC.
John:
There's going to be a build at WWDC.
John:
And, you know, at that point, it's like, well, who cares if you get the WWDC build?
John:
Do you get to build a couple weeks after that?
John:
Like the cat's out of the bag.
John:
So don't think that by signing up for this, wow, I don't have to pay any money and I get to know all of Apple's secrets.
John:
You're not going to know any secrets.
John:
Continue to go to the rumor sites if you want to see fuzzy screenshots of supposed unreleased things.
John:
This is merely a way to let you... Basically, Apple is doing this because I think they want wider testability of their OS, and they're trying it out on the Mac because that probably seems like a safer bet.
John:
They just want more people to try stuff out so they're not surprised when they release something to the public because there's a very small number of developers.
John:
And they have probably a less diverse set of hardware than the market at large.
John:
And so Apple would prefer, I think, to get wider testing of its OS and not right away and just certain builds.
John:
And, you know, like we think, you know, maybe two or three releases leading up to it.
John:
These are the ones that we want to test widely to check for, you know, driver compatibility issues or hardware issues or whatever.
John:
That's why Apple is doing this, because Apple thinks it will benefit to them and make their software more robust.
John:
It's not them doing you a favor to let you see pre-release software.
John:
It is entirely, hey, we really need a wider testing base.
John:
At a certain point in the development of our OS, it comes to a point where we say, we know all we can know with our small set of internal testing in QA and our small set of developers who are using this.
John:
If anyone wants to sign up for a wider beta, we would love to know like if something's crashing on some obscure configuration that we don't have here and then we can collect the data and figure it out.
John:
And maybe they'll consider doing that with iOS eventually as well.
John:
But I think the Mac is like a safe place to try out this type of program.
Casey:
Yeah, I tend to agree.
Casey:
I thought that there were a couple of interesting things that came from this.
Casey:
Firstly, something that occurred to me was it's Apple participating in a little bit more outreach and a little bit more community involvement.
Casey:
I know, especially after Microsoft Build, there's been a lot of comparison between Microsoft's approach to developers and Apple's approach to developers.
Casey:
Now, granted, this isn't a developer-specific approach,
Casey:
uh program and that's kind of what i'm driving at is that you would think if apple was going to reach out into the public at all in any capacity that perhaps it would be to be a little more friendly to developers i agree with what you said john that this is really about apple doing what's good for apple as apple always does but it just seems kind of unfortunate that they're reaching out to the wrong group
Casey:
And the other thing I was thinking about was, what if they've learned from iOS 7?
Casey:
And iOS 7, even though a lot of the nerds knew it was going to look really different and really flat, and that's really how you would describe it, but you know what I mean.
Casey:
But it has depth.
Casey:
Right, it has depth, of course.
Casey:
And clarity.
Casey:
And chamfered edges.
Casey:
Oh, wait.
Casey:
But anyway, what if Craig Hockenberry is right?
Casey:
He wrote a really great post.
Casey:
I think it was a post.
Casey:
Maybe it was a series of tweets.
Casey:
But either way, he wrote something recently saying, hey, there's a lot of indication that OS X is going to look pretty different in the next version.
Casey:
And his point was, developers, you should really start testing with some of the fonts we expect them to use and so on and so forth.
Casey:
Well...
Casey:
What if this is queuing up or setting up for, is a better way of phrasing it, a little bit more outreach to the public at large?
Casey:
So at WWDC, we see the new OS X. It looks really, really different.
Casey:
And rather than nobody getting to see it and nobody getting to play with it except developers or those willing to pay the $100...
Casey:
Maybe they're trying to reach out to some of the super Apple nerds or maybe even like self-appointed evangelists, if you will, and say, yeah, you try it out and you spread the word that this isn't so bad.
Casey:
I'm standing on a whole bunch of theory here, but I don't know.
Casey:
It makes sense to me.
John:
Well, it's not so much that they want them to be evangelists for them.
John:
I think it's more like, to use an example from OS X instead of the iOS 7 thing, it's kind of like their attempts to handle autosave and getting rid of the save command.
John:
By sending out what's probably going to be a fairly significant UI overall of the OS to a wider group of people, they hope to find out earlier rather than later that, oh, everybody hates the new autosave and people want save as to be back and they want it to have a command key.
John:
That's the type of thing you could have found out in a wider early beta.
John:
um and that they only found out after the release and had to you know patch up in mountain lion you know what i mean like that's that again it's serving apple it's not just hey let's see if your thing crashes or whatever uh but also if people flip out because when you when all those people who are looking at rumor screenshots see something like that they may have trepidation about it but apple has no way to get feedback from them and
John:
And really, like, well, a lot of them will think, well, I got to try and see what it's like when I use it.
John:
But if all those people who are so enthusiastic that are reading a rumor site had the actual pre-release of the OS and got to try it and said, oh, I can't even, I can't tell what's what.
John:
Like, you know, for example, these buttons without borders, I can't tell other buttons.
John:
They just look like text or, you know, that's the iOS equivalent.
John:
But, like, if there's some big UI change that they're not so sure about, if they put it out to a wider audience, they will get...
John:
A, they'll get informed feedback instead of like, I saw a screenshot that looks like it's going to be terrible.
John:
And B, presumably through the mechanisms that they're going to distribute, there will be official channels to which to send that feedback, not just complaining on Twitter or posting in web forums or whatever, but actual feedback directly to Apple where people can write 20 paragraph missives about why they don't like the new look and how they can't tell which one is in the front anymore or whatever they're going to say.
John:
You know what I mean?
Casey:
Yeah, that makes sense.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Marco, any thoughts on this?
Marco:
I'm less excited about it than most people.
Marco:
I mean, first of all, it's mostly because I have zero interest in running a beta version of OS X on my Mac.
Marco:
Zero.
Marco:
The only time I ever installed a beta was when Reading List was first added to it.
Marco:
And I was tipped off that this was a thing in the betas and I should see it because at the time I still owned Instapaper.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And so I signed up with the developer program, paid the $100 to see this reading list thing and see how worried I had to be, basically.
Marco:
And even then, I installed it on a laptop that I didn't care that much about because it's so important to me that my computer work perfectly as much as possible.
Marco:
And whenever my computer does not work perfectly as much as possible, it's very disruptive and it's potentially very costly to me.
Marco:
And so I...
Marco:
I always want to make sure that I'm okay in that regard.
Marco:
And so it's just not worth me running the betas for the most part, ever.
Marco:
I do it on iPhone because the iPhone is not that important to me.
Marco:
If my iPhone...
Marco:
reboots twice a day.
Marco:
That's annoying, but oh well.
Marco:
It's more important for me in iOS because my software runs on iOS.
Marco:
It's more important for me to get into that as early as possible and to have my software running on my main phone.
Marco:
When something like iOS 7 comes out that changes a whole bunch about the entire paradigm of the UI, the entire style, it's good to
Marco:
start getting that ingrained in me earlier so I can develop for it well, things like that.
Marco:
But because it doesn't apply to me on the OS X side, I just don't care at all.
Marco:
Now, maybe the problem was not enough people were testing things on the OS X side to make the testing really worthwhile to Apple or to accomplish their goals.
Marco:
Do you see them doing this for iOS?
Marco:
I sure as hell don't.
Marco:
The iOS beta is like everyone who wants the iOS beta gets it.
Marco:
They find some developer to get them to add it to their account, add their device to their account, and they get the beta.
Marco:
Or everyone pulls together money and buys a slot on someone's... There's all these weird things people do to get iOS betas these days.
Marco:
And the reason they don't really need to do it there, and they probably won't do it there, is because there's all this demand to run iOS betas.
Marco:
All that demand probably isn't really there for the OS X betas.
Marco:
And part of that's because Macs aren't as interesting as iPhones.
Marco:
There are a lot fewer people who have them.
Marco:
And part of that's just because OS X doesn't change that much.
Marco:
Maybe this next beta will be so different.
Marco:
Maybe 10.10 will be so different that everyone will want it.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
But...
Marco:
I'm guessing they weren't getting enough people testing, and that's why you had things like the crazy Gmail problems in Mavericks that, like, why wasn't that caught in a beta?
Marco:
You know, stuff like that, because I'm guessing most people who are on the OS X betas probably have the same...
Marco:
The same priorities I do in that they probably don't want to run them on their main work machines.
Marco:
So they probably are like, you know, developers who make Mac apps, who want to make sure their Mac apps work.
Marco:
So they probably run them in a VM or on some other hardware that that's not their primary stuff.
Marco:
They and then they just test their app.
Marco:
So if that's what most of the testers are doing, it's in Apple's best interest to try to broaden that tester base.
Marco:
But again, I don't see this as that big of a deal.
Marco:
I don't see how many people who are not developers and or who were unwilling to pay for the developer account before.
Marco:
I don't see how many people are going to really get who are going to be dying to install what's probably going to be a boring beta of a boring OS on boring products because they're all pretty mature at this point.
John:
Now, speaking of the Gmail thing, like that's one aspect of, you know, even if you do install the betas like I have to do, of course, for writing my review.
John:
If that's something that you do, whether you're a developer or whether you're writing a review or whatever you're doing with the betas, if you're one of the people who has an account for a reason now, because you're part of the press or because you're a developer, you almost never use it against your real data.
John:
So you're not going to use your real email account or your real contacts.
John:
And with good reason, because if you had done that, you would learn eventually that some early beta version of an OS scrambled all your contacts and now you're sad.
John:
You always have usually multiple...
John:
test accounts, multiple test iCloud accounts, multiple game center accounts, multiple everything.
John:
Like, you know, dummy email accounts, dummy contacts.
John:
Like, you don't put it on your real data.
John:
And so are you going to notice the Gmail bug if all you're doing is just, like, you're not actually sending and receiving email.
John:
You're not actually keeping track of what you're marking read and what you haven't.
John:
And so you wouldn't notice these bugs because you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, mail.
John:
Like, why would you even go to the mail app unless you just wanted to see what the new features are or whatever?
John:
If you don't use it for your real email every day, you're like,
John:
huh, didn't I mark that messages on Reddit?
John:
It's just a bunch of test messages.
John:
Maybe you wouldn't notice at all.
John:
And I think this actually will go to a different pool of people, a pool of enthusiasts who want to use it and who are going to use it with their real data.
John:
And I would say at this point, if you find this program exciting and you want to use these betas, keep in mind that, like Marco said, he doesn't use it on his main machine.
John:
I never install beta versions of OS X on my main machine, ever.
John:
Like, I have complete separation because...
John:
And even when it's like, oh, this is the Golden Master, like, oh, have you installed the Golden Master?
John:
No, I wait until I can get it from these days from the Mac App Store.
John:
And didn't they have a thing this most recent release where like the build number changed at the last minute or whatever?
John:
I never, ever, ever install anything from ADC on my real computer.
John:
I always get it.
John:
I used to, you know, I would always get it from the actual CD that would come in the mail, you know, like a retail CD or DVD or these days the actual one from the Mac App Store.
John:
I won't even usually install the .0 release.
John:
Yeah, well, you know, occasionally I'll be worried about that, but in the past few releases, they've been pretty good.
John:
So, if you're thinking of doing this, Apple has all these crazy warnings and everything and have it backed up or whatever, like, by all means, if you're an enthusiast and you know what you're getting into, but realize, like, it could erase your entire hard drive.
John:
Like, it could scramble all your contacts in iCloud.
John:
Like, oh, don't worry, I got backups.
John:
What if it scrambles all your contacts in iCloud?
John:
Where are those backups?
John:
Like, how are you going to restore that?
John:
iCloud is very opaque and it's difficult to wrangle it back into shape.
John:
So,
John:
be aware of what you're getting into.
John:
I imagine that since this is free, a lot of people are going to be like, oh, awesome, I'm going to try the beta, and then it will hose them in some way.
John:
They'll be like, wah, the beta hose.
John:
It's like, that's, it's, you know, that's, you knew what you were getting into, but you don't know, like, your enthusiasm kind of, and that's part of the experience.
John:
I did the same thing back in the day with, like, you know, Mac OS 8 betas and stuff where they were just terrible and data destroying, and it's,
John:
I guess it's okay.
John:
I'm trying not to generalize and say it's going to be like a bunch of enthusiastic teenagers destroying their parents' Macs with beta versions of it.
John:
But I was that teenager.
John:
Why not?
John:
Why shouldn't it be?
John:
I think that's kind of a rite of passage.
John:
Basically what I'm saying is I would recommend nobody join this program, but I think that people will.
John:
And I think that the people who do join the program will be providing a different kind of testing than the existing people who pay $99 a year.
Marco:
We are also sponsored this week.
Marco:
I feel good about the sponsor reads this week because I've printed on cardstock.
Casey:
Oh, thanks, Merlin.
Marco:
Because of a printer loading error.
Marco:
So I have nice, thick sponsor reads this week.
Marco:
PC load letter.
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
What does that mean?
Marco:
Office space.
Marco:
Hey, all right.
Casey:
Is that both of us?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
It's first time for everything, kids.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
New Relic is an all-in-one web application performance management tool, APM.
Marco:
It lets you see performance from the end user experience down through your servers and down to each line of your server-side code.
Marco:
Our friends at New Relic asked us to take a minute and say a big thank you to all your data nerds out there building all this great stuff that we all know and love.
Marco:
They're sending a shout-out to the developers, the software geeks, the code jockeys, to those brave few who see things differently.
Marco:
High fives to all you rule-breakers and disruptors.
Marco:
Here's to working nights to wearing oversized, concentration-enhancing headphones upon your furrowed brows.
Marco:
New Relic thanks you.
Marco:
Nowadays, if you're in any business, you're in the software business.
Marco:
Software powers our apps, runs our databases, manages our accounts, and runs e-commerce sites and email programs.
Marco:
When software breaks, everyone loses.
Marco:
New Relic helps improve your software performance so your users have a better experience and your business is more successful.
Marco:
How's that for a win-win?
Marco:
New Relic monitors every move your application makes across the entire stack and shows you what's happening right now.
Marco:
You can zero in on problems quickly with transaction tracing, SQL, and Nusql performance analytics.
Marco:
I'm going to go with that now, I think.
Marco:
application topography mapping, and deployment history makers and comparisons.
Marco:
See, I don't even know what half these things are, but they sound awesome.
Marco:
If I was actually up to date with web development, I would probably know what these things are, but I don't.
Marco:
But this sounds really awesome.
Marco:
They even support PHP.
Marco:
So they support Ruby, PHP, Java, .NET, Python, and even Node.
Marco:
So if you're one of those crazy cutting-edge node developers like Casey, you can actually use New Relic right now to monitor your application's performance.
Marco:
So go to newrelic.com slash ATP for a 30-day free trial.
Marco:
All you got to do is deploy their agent, and it will start collecting data immediately.
Marco:
And you'll be able to quickly see inside your app and start finding hotspots, fixing issues, and optimizing performance.
Marco:
Once again, go to newrelic.com slash ATP for a free 30-day trial.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to New Relic for sponsoring our show once again.
Casey:
We learned today about some new Thunderbolt information about third generation Thunderbolt.
Casey:
And I'm not really that excited about it, mostly because I don't plan on getting a new computer anytime soon.
Casey:
But Marco, do you want to tell us about this?
Marco:
Well, there's not a whole lot known yet.
Marco:
So there's not really much to discuss.
Marco:
I might as well just save it for three years from now when these ports actually come out.
Marco:
But basically, there was some leaked Intel roadmap document that showed details on the next Thunderbolt version.
Marco:
Thunderbolt 3, it'll probably be called.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
And basically, we'll put the link in the show notes on MacRumors, basically doubling the bandwidth, so up to 40 gigabits per second.
Marco:
And they're going to actually change the connector, which is probably going to be interesting.
Marco:
They're going to make a smaller connector that also apparently will be able to charge up to 100 watts.
Marco:
Yeah, that's ridiculous.
Marco:
Underscore Kyle Cronin in the chat room just asked a really good question.
Marco:
Which direction does the power go here?
Marco:
Does the peripheral power the computer or vice versa?
John:
I thought you asked that on Twitter already.
John:
You were saying you could almost power a display.
John:
Didn't you tweet that today?
Marco:
Yeah, that's interesting, though.
Marco:
Yeah, I didn't think about it that direction.
Marco:
All this says is...
Marco:
Enables system charging up to 100 watts.
John:
Yeah, that actually... ADC did it already.
John:
Speaking of ADC, the other ADC, Apple Display Connector powered the 22-inch Apple Cinema display.
John:
There was one cabling in the other.
Marco:
No, no, this is the other way.
Marco:
This is the other way, though.
Marco:
This is saying that a Thunderbolt display could charge your laptop.
John:
Right, without the little dangly MagSafe thing like we have now.
Marco:
Somebody pointed out on Twitter also that this is the proposed, the codename Alpine Ridge controller from Intel.
Marco:
And this is apparently like still three generations away or something.
Marco:
It's pretty far off.
Marco:
So we're probably not seeing it soon.
Marco:
It's probably, you know, a year or two at least.
John:
I think it might be sooner than we think because, like, it's maybe not across the line, but soon enough that I think the change in connector is a little bit upsetting because it's like, I know we didn't want Apple to wait any longer to do what it's, you know, to really want it to wait longer for the Mac Pro, but even if it's like a one and a half to three year gap, like, you're going to change a Thunderbolt connector already?
John:
We just got Thunderbolt ports on our Mac Pro, and then you're going to change them.
John:
And the difference is 1.5 millimeters in height.
John:
I mentioned on Twitter that I had been staring at the edges of various retina MacBook Pros in meetings at work, because that's what you do in boring meetings, thinking about which one of those connectors is going to get thinner next.
John:
Because if you look at the sides, what we have is kind of a menagerie of MacBook and MacBook Pros.
John:
Around the office depending on who got their hardware wins you can see them slowly getting skinnier And you could see like up the ethernet port disappears up the magsafe gets squished up now It looks like the USB is practically edge to edge and you can see them squeezing and squeezing and really this headroom there But the way Apple designs their laptops There is a curved section that sort of gives you a place for you to hook your fingers underneath And then there is a flat section that's perpendicular to the table and that's where the ports go and they squeeze that thing down like
John:
MagSafe, USB, and Thunderbolt are squeezed pretty tightly in the flat section now.
John:
And it's like, if you want to make the laptop thinner, you could start giving up the little lip that you tuck your fingers under, but you don't want to make something that's like as thin as just a flat section and flat on a table.
John:
You wouldn't be able to pick it up.
John:
You'd be trying to get your fingernails underneath it to try to pull it up off the table.
John:
So things have to get thinner.
John:
And, you know, Thunderbolt is probably, you know, USB is probably the first one, but we already know, we talked about in the past show, the new USB 3 connector, that it'll be skinnier.
John:
So that takes care of the USB ports.
John:
that leaves thunderbolt as potentially the thickest thing besides magsafe and magsafe i think is due to be revised as well because magsafe 2 everyone seems to hate uh but the due to the design it's like well it's a big magnetic surface and people hate magsafe 2 because it's not as secure as the old one because they made it you know they made it skinnier if you make it skinnier still won't it be even worse and maybe it's time for a new magnetic power connector that
John:
I mean, I don't think they want it to insert because the whole point, it's supposed to come off easily.
John:
But I think they could use a design revision as well.
John:
But Thunderbolt, it seems kind of early for them to be making the thing thinner.
John:
And I'm a little bit worried about that.
John:
I hope this bus comes sooner rather than later.
John:
I hope actually 2015 that we would see this sometime in calendar year 2015.
John:
If only for the retina angle, you know, because now we finally, in theory, would have bandwidth to do my desired quad 27-inch design.
John:
retina resolution display it still depends on like the new display port specs and everything else but this lists a bunch of acronyms that could in theory provide this like i don't know what hdmi2 encompasses i don't even know what tbt is uh so maybe one of those maybe one of those things would could could power a monitor at the resolution that i want but uh changing the connectors they mentioned there'll be an adapter an adapter you're gonna get it's like two years after thunderbolt appears and already there's adapters i guess i guess magsafe one and two all over again
Marco:
Well, and to be fair, I mean, how many people really have Thunderbolt devices so far?
Marco:
It's not going to be a massive problem to have all these people buy little $30 adapters or probably even less than that.
Marco:
I mean, the whole problem with Thunderbolt is that no one's using it.
John:
Yeah, the stagnation of the market is an advantage because it's like, well, if I had anything to plug in, I wouldn't need an adapter.
John:
But since I have nothing to plug in anyway,
John:
So I mean, I guess even Apple's monitors, even like, you know, for the people like doing what I do with the MacBook Air and the Thunderbolt display, I bet a lot of people do that setup where you have Thunderbolt plugged into your laptop to, you know, so you don't have it's the equivalent.
John:
So we don't have to have a dock, you know, the stupid docks.
John:
They have a PC laptop.
John:
So you snap the thing in and 800 connectors connect.
John:
We can do it all through Thunderbolt, right?
John:
Well, now you need like...
John:
The poor Thunderbolt display.
John:
First, it came with the MagSafe 1-2 adapter.
John:
You used to get that with a display, so you could attach the charging thingy to the laptops.
John:
And now it will also come with a Thunderbolt 1-2 adapter.
Casey:
For what it's worth, though, ever since the Thunderbolt display came out, I have lusted after it, and I'm way too cheap to buy one.
Casey:
But the thought of not having to have, I don't know, four or five or six cables to plug in every time I plug in my computer when I get home...
Casey:
And only have two is just sounds awesome.
Casey:
And to bring this down to just one, if we're reading this right, and the power would flow from display into laptop.
Casey:
I mean, that sounds great.
Casey:
It genuinely, genuinely does.
John:
The problem is that one connector is probably going to be crappy because I can tell you, we don't disconnect our laptop a lot.
John:
But I've done it enough that every time I do it, like it does not feel like a robust option.
John:
oh, you can connect and disconnect this 8,000 times and it'll be fine.
John:
Every time I'm doing it, I'm like, I'm so conscious of like the potential number of connects and disconnects this cable has in it because there's a little chip in that thing and it's like a long, stiff thing sticking out of the side of your laptop.
John:
It's not as, you know, you feel like I can plug and unplug the lightning port in my iPhone forever and I feel fine about it until like maybe the cable will fray, but whatever, I'll get a new one.
John:
the thunderbolt thing going into the side of especially a macbook air feels pretty perilous and i have little faith that the 1.5 millimeter thinner version will feel any less perilous unless they invert it and do like a lightning style connector but i'm not holding my breath
Marco:
Well, I've read somewhere, maybe this is just somebody's reaction to this, but I did read somewhere that maybe one of the reasons they were redesigning the connector is that the new one really isn't that great, that it does fall out easily or becomes slightly pulled easily.
Marco:
There's no part of its design that's really high friction or no little locking ball bearings like the Lightning has or anything like that.
Marco:
I've never felt the Thunderbolt
Marco:
things were secure.
Marco:
I mean, I mostly just use it like for Ethernet.
John:
Yeah, that feels precarious, right?
Marco:
But yeah, exactly.
Marco:
Exactly.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
This is a little bit random, but I keep meaning to ask you when we were asked on Twitter, what's the overcast update?
Marco:
um i'm almost in beta that's basically it which is probably what i said last time but i'm way closer this time uh today i was writing the directory uh to give you some idea you know making the ad podcast thing work more than just search uh that's what i'm doing right now uh it's getting close the login thing is done you know all that all the account stuff is done um yeah getting there that's about it that's it isn't that interesting right now
Casey:
That's fair.
Casey:
I just don't think we talked about it in a while.
Casey:
That's quick and easy.
Casey:
Are iPad sales leveling off?
Casey:
There's been a little bit of chatter about this lately.
Marco:
Yeah, this I wanted to talk about.
Marco:
So there was this post by, oh boy.
Casey:
Go ahead, John.
Casey:
Save Marco.
Marco:
Please.
Casey:
Jean-Louis Gasset.
Marco:
Thank you so much.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So he wrote this post, which we'll link to in the show notes, basically saying or suggesting that iPad sales have or are about to be revealed to have leveled off.
Marco:
And then Gruber linked to it and added his own commentary as well.
Marco:
And, you know, so the theory here is that, you know, maybe iPad and overall tablet sales are not doing as – they're not growing as well as everyone expected.
Marco:
And, you know, maybe that – maybe tablets have been overestimated and maybe expectations of tablets have been too high.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I wanted to talk about this because I personally have really had trouble making my iPad useful to me.
Marco:
I've heard so many people who that's not the case for.
Marco:
So many people are finding incredibly interesting, creative ways to use their iPad to get all their work done or just bring their iPad when they go on trips and not bring a laptop or whatever else.
Marco:
And I have not had that experience at all.
Marco:
And part of that's just because of the work I do, being a lot of programming and stuff like that.
Marco:
But even things that aren't programming, I find myself, when I'm on the iPad, I find myself saving things for when I go back to my Mac because it'll just be so much faster and easier to do it there.
Marco:
For me, the limitations of iOS...
Marco:
work on a phone that you know the limitations of how how apps are so incredibly isolated from each other and so you know multitasking is is very limited uh there is no like you know the document model of ios where you know you don't have like your files you just have each app and it has its own little silo of data you know all that stuff makes it very hard for me to to work the way i want to work
Marco:
And so I have not found the iPad to be very useful.
Marco:
And in fact, I hardly ever use mine.
Marco:
I have stopped buying every version of it, even for developer testing purposes.
Marco:
You know, now that I have the Retina Mini and my wife has the iPad Air, I really can't see us buying the next ones that come out either because these are going to be fine for a while.
John:
Yeah, I'll remind you of that.
John:
Sounds like you need an iPad Pro, Margo.
Right.
Marco:
And so I wonder, how many people is this the case for?
Marco:
So for me, what I've found, and this is why I think the iPhone lineup might make this more interesting.
Marco:
I've found that there's things that a phone does well.
Marco:
And the iPad does most of those things well.
Marco:
But the things that the phone does poorly, the iPad doesn't do a lot of them much better.
Right?
Marco:
And the iPad is worse than the phone in a few major ways.
Marco:
Number one, it is not always with you.
Marco:
Your phone is always in your pocket.
Marco:
Your iPad, you might not have it with you.
Marco:
In my case, I almost never have it with me because it doesn't fit in clothing or jacket pockets, and I don't carry bags big enough for it most of those places I go.
Marco:
So, you know, the phone is always with you, and your phone always has a data connection for most people.
Marco:
iPads, yes, you can get them with data connections, but...
Marco:
It's not the common case, I don't think.
Marco:
And even if you have data connection, like I feel kind of bad paying 20 bucks a month for this data connection that I hardly ever use.
Marco:
But my iPad becomes even less useful if I don't have that.
Marco:
But I'm not happy about that.
Marco:
Most people just don't get data connections or data plans for their iPads.
Marco:
And so that major difference between always being with you and always having a data connection, that actually makes the iPad even less useful for me than it normally is.
Marco:
And so I have to wonder, I've said before, I don't think it's wise to ever bet against the smartphone.
Marco:
I think the smartphone is an amazing product.
Marco:
ideal and it's like the intersection of the best of so many things and it's so good and it's so useful and there's so much potential in the smartphone for me if the smartphone had a little bit bigger screen which it's probably about to which in the non-Apple world that's old news and they've had big screens for years
Marco:
I really don't think I'm going to have a use for an iPad at all.
Marco:
Even today, if my iPad got stolen today, please don't come steal it, but if it got stolen today, I'm pretty sure I would not replace it.
Marco:
And so but, you know, if my like my phone, the combination of a phone and a computer is so great for me.
Marco:
And I'm wondering, you know, whether whether the iPad is really necessary long term as a product category and whether it's succeeding long term as a product category or whether it will become more of a more of a narrow niche product, as most people realize that a phone and maybe a computer is good enough.
Casey:
So I would like to argue with everything you just said.
Casey:
Cool.
Casey:
So I had an iPad 1.
Casey:
I had an iPad 3rd gen, so the first Retina iPad.
Casey:
And now I have what I like to call the RetinaPad Mini, which drives Stephen Hackett nuts, which makes me want to call it that even more.
Casey:
And I got the RetinaPad Mini with LTE.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
for the first time.
Casey:
I'd always had Wi-Fi-only iPads, and this one I got with LTE.
Casey:
I got a Verizon RetinaPad Mini, and then right around the time I got it, T-Mobile started doing that crazy thing where you can buy a SIM for $10 one time, and then they'll give you 200 megs of data for free every single month.
Casey:
And the idea is, or I presume the idea is, that it's a gateway drug to get you to pay T-Mobile for data.
Casey:
Well, what I found is the combination of moving from big iPad to iPad mini –
Casey:
As paired with this T-Mobile plan that really, quite honestly, gives me enough data for pretty much any usage I would want away from a Wi-Fi hotspot like a friend's house or family member's house or at home or work, the combination of having an LTE iPad with just a little bit of data every single month and having it be an iPad Mini made me fall in love with this iPad Mini completely.
Casey:
so much more than I did my prior iPads, which I kind of went in and out of love with.
Casey:
I would use them a lot, then I wouldn't use them at all.
Casey:
Then I would use them a lot, not at all.
Casey:
And I love my iPad mini.
Casey:
And I wonder if...
Casey:
I wonder if by virtue of it having LTE and either if I could tether against my iPhone, which I can't because I'm still on the AT&T Unlimited plan, or if I had a plan wherein I could share my data with my iPad for very little extra per month.
Casey:
Any of these combinations or the T-Mobile thing that I've done makes me absolutely adore my iPad.
Casey:
And generally speaking, when I travel, I don't bring a computer with me unless I'm traveling for work.
Casey:
And in fact, we were...
Casey:
traveling all of last week.
Casey:
And the only reason I had a computer with me was because I had to record the podcast while we were on the road.
Casey:
And if it wasn't for that, I would have left the computer at home.
Casey:
So it's funny because everything you just said, it makes sense to me, but I like my iPad for all the reasons you don't like your iPad.
Casey:
I know, John, what do you think about this?
John:
I think the thing that's holding the iPad back is two aspects.
John:
One is that, as I said in past shows when I was talking about the iPad Pro, if the iPad wants to take over more of the functionality currently occupied by PCs, it has to expand its ability to do the things that PCs can do in some ways.
John:
vague, as yet unspecified way, possibly having a larger screen, possibly better multitasking, possibly better document management, better inter-application communication, all the things we discussed, right?
John:
So that is, it's like, okay, well, what can you do with that?
John:
Well, the PC market is not as big as the phone market.
John:
Phone market's growing, PC market, I think, is either...
John:
growing slowly or possibly shrinking so say the ipad takes over some portion of that that still doesn't get you the kind of growth that people are expecting from it like that's still like gangbusters but that's one that's one area where it probably has to move if it wants to get some growth and the other area is it's got to come way way down in price uh because it's what it's competing against is psychologically if not in actuality it's competing against
John:
uh cell phones which are free and they're not free like oh they cost thousands of dollars a year for your cell phone plans and iphones incredibly expensive all that is true but psychologically speaking cell phones are practically free because most people in first world countries feel like they need to have a cell phone and eventually all cell phones will be what we currently call smartphones and it's like
John:
You know, it's not free because it costs a lot of money, but people are like, well, I have to have a phone.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Like the tablet is competing against nothing.
Marco:
Like if you don't buy a tablet, you will just you will spend zero because you like no one's going to say, oh, you know what?
Marco:
I'm going to replace my phone with a tablet.
John:
Well, that's the that's the phablet phenomenon.
John:
Right.
John:
But but yeah, but there are what they're competing against is like they they consider a phone is like I have to pay for that.
John:
That's a sunk cost.
John:
Right.
John:
And, you know, that's basically free.
John:
Now you're telling me I got to pay more.
John:
And like the thing is, if.
John:
If they have some task they need to do that is just not convenient or possible to do on even a very large phone, their choice is a PC or a tablet.
John:
And PCs are traditionally more expensive.
John:
But tablets, especially Apple's tablets, are still pretty darn expensive.
John:
If Apple could, like, say the iPad mini, Retina iPad mini was $99, just throw out some fantasy scenario there.
John:
There's no doubt that that would move the needle on sales.
John:
And even if you think, well, I'm not sure how I'm going to use this.
John:
And I'm not sure how that would shake out.
John:
But I just think the idea that every single home that has a smartphone would also have an iPad just hanging around just to be that thing, like the modern, the future world equivalent of a magazine.
John:
i'm just going to sit on the couch and read a magazine well you're not going to read a magazine you're going to look at web pages on your ipad or i'm just going to go up to my room and watch some some netflix or or stream something from my dvr or whatever like the idea that just having a flat screen even if it never leaves the house just it's just a convenient thing to have around the house and i think the uses of it are fine but when it costs seven hundred dollars you're like do i need a few one of those future world things seven hundred dollars worth no i don't even five hundred dollars like that
John:
you know and i think they'll sell a lot more than if they go down in price and you know i guess there's three things the final thing is that many people have mentioned they're just a little bit too they're just a little bit too good so far i know so many people who are using ipad ones and see no reason to upgrade that is the again the competing it's the phone where there's many reasons to upgrade because of the subsidies and all the other things or whatever like it's tough you know they first of all they don't feel like they should because they said i spent 500 on an ipad i'm keeping it for years and the second thing is well you know
John:
I guess unless games stop working, they don't care if they don't run iOS 7.
John:
I guess they do kind of cycle it down to the kids and let them use it, but they are incredibly long-lasting and surprisingly durable for a $500 piece of glass.
John:
You'd think they'd all be destroyed by now.
John:
i've seen so many go through the grubby paws of kids and just they survive in a home environment those things survive for a long period of time and so if there were 99 dollars you'd be like yeah every year or two i'll get a new one of these flat things because it's what we use to like you know it's it's what we use to like read stuff and read you know read web pages is better than reading it on my phone i won't drain my phone's battery and i use it to watch video because it's a little bit bigger screen and
John:
If you could get the price way down and if you could get a little bit more capable, that would make sure that there's an iPad in everybody's home.
John:
And that would also make sure that when people go on trips, they're like, maybe I don't need to buy a laptop and I can eat into the PC market by just saying I can take this with me because I can do more or less everything I need to do.
John:
You would say, when do you reach your limit?
John:
Can developers do everything they need to do?
John:
Probably not, but you keep going down.
John:
Can people do regular word processing work?
John:
That's still pretty annoying.
John:
That's where the iPad Pro comes in.
John:
It's not like Apple needs to sell your iPads at a loss right now, but I think just the natural... Look at the Apple TV.
John:
It took a while for the Apple TV to get down to $99.
John:
The iPad is going to take even longer because that screen is tough to really push down much farther, but...
John:
Give it five, seven years.
John:
And when Apple has tablet things that span the same range as iPods do, I think there is a legitimate reason for every house that has a smartphone to have a tablet device.
John:
And if Apple can get its price point down, it could be that device.
John:
So I think that's where the growth potential is for tablets.
Casey:
Yeah, that makes sense.
Casey:
The thing that I think about is what is really holding the iPad especially, but the iPhone and just iOS in general, what's holding it back?
Casey:
And we've talked in the past around this time last year about what's the low-hanging fruit for iOS.
Casey:
And
Casey:
I guess maybe low-hanging fruit is a poor way of phrasing it, but what's the thing that bothers everyone the most?
Casey:
And copy-paste is the seminal example from years back that it infuriated everyone to not have copy-paste.
Casey:
Obviously, that had to show up quickly.
Casey:
Well, inter-app communication...
Casey:
I feel like we're getting to the point that we're really going to need to crap or get off the pot, or Apple is really going to need to.
Casey:
I don't want to get into a WWDC prediction episode, but is this the time?
Casey:
Is that enough to make iOS a little bit more powerful?
Marco:
Interrupt communication itself is... It's a phrase we throw around.
Marco:
It's a concept we throw around that we think... First of all, we all assume that iOS 8 will improve this somehow because there's a lot of... You can see that there's a lot of the groundwork already laid in 6 and 7 for this.
Marco:
You have things like remote view controllers, things like the UI activity system.
Marco:
You can tell that they're taking steps towards allowing this.
Marco:
But the problem is that...
Marco:
Internet communication itself does not really solve the problem.
Marco:
It makes some things a little bit better.
Marco:
Suppose iOS does something very similar to the Contractor Intents on Windows Phone and Android, which is what most developers are asking them to do, myself included.
Marco:
I think that would be great.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
I think a big part of the problem is the document model, the file system model.
Marco:
Where you store your data, how you access your stored data, where things are divided, and where things are not accessible from.
Marco:
And I think that...
Marco:
There's all this simplicity on these devices of not having to manage your files, not having to figure out where things are, not having to go to your parents' house and see everything is on the desktop and that their hard drive is, quote, full because they're out of space for their icons.
Marco:
You avoid all those problems, but the amount of power that that removes from usage is pretty dramatic.
Marco:
And I think that, more than anything, is what limits iOS from being used in more productivity-type roles.
John:
Yeah, Apple's still holding the line on that, and I think most people agree with the sentiment, and we just hope that, like, well, presumably Apple has thought of this and has some solution.
John:
Like, the geeks just say, oh, just show us the file system, and they just want to reproduce all the same problems.
John:
And, like, yeah, that would solve it for geeks, right?
John:
Modulo sandboxing, I guess.
John:
But for everybody else, it's like, well, siloed per app is simple, but it has all these problems.
John:
Does not give up all the simplicity and go all the way back to just raw access to the file system, again, if only for security concerns, but has the benefits of being able to, like, you know, work.
John:
Even normal people seem to grasp Dropbox because Dropbox essentially took the file system problem and narrowed it down to a single place, kind of like the desktop, which was the old place that everyone you mentioned here.
John:
that was the one place that people felt comfortable just put everything in desktop and then what people would do is like well i have all my crap on my desktop because that's the one place i know how to find and i make falters on my desktop for sub projects and it's like it's like training wheels for the real file system and dropbox is like that as well and it's like
John:
It's the same as the file system.
John:
It's just narrow.
John:
Your Dropbox is equivalent to the desktop.
John:
But once you start making folders in your Dropbox, it's like the person who finally starts making folders on the desktop gives lots of stuff.
John:
And they start organizing things.
John:
And you just want to say, just go a little bit farther.
John:
The whole file system is your oyster.
John:
It's not just the desktop.
John:
New folder, one.
John:
Yeah.
John:
You can put folders anywhere.
Marco:
New folder, 17.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So I hope that Apple doesn't give up.
John:
But at a certain point, it's kind of like the give up and use tables CSS joke site from years ago.
John:
It's like at a certain point, it's like, well, Apple, you've been thinking about this for years.
John:
And if you really can't think of something that's better, at a certain point, you need to just say, we failed in our ability to give you something that's both simpler and equally powerful or close to as powerful and just give us back the freaking file system.
John:
And I do not want them to do that.
John:
I think that would be...
John:
Not only an admission of failure, but an actual failure.
John:
So I really keep hoping that they come up with some scheme that has the security benefits of sandboxing, but that lets applications easily work, multiple applications work on the same document.
John:
I mean, that's part of my whole vague, cloudy idea.
John:
iPad Pro Vision is the idea of using multiple applications to make a sort of composite document or work on a project that has some images and some text files and some this and some that like like you would do on your Mac when you're doing any sort of remotely complicated project.
John:
without it being, oh, I just do everything in one app.
John:
Even Xcode's going that direction.
John:
Xcode is like, yes, it's a whole bunch of different things.
John:
You've got images, you've got header files, you've got source code, you've got interface builder documents, you've got all this stuff, but it's all in Xcode.
John:
I guess except for the image editor.
John:
Once they embed an image editor in Xcode, we'll know they've really just given up.
John:
Because then they can just port Xcode 7 right to the iPad Pro, and it's like, hey, you don't need to launch a separate app.
John:
All your stuff is in one place.
Marco:
Does it seem like the iPad app library is stagnating?
Marco:
Because it seems that way to me, but because I'm not that into using my iPad, that could just be because I use TweetBot and it hasn't been updated yet, or whatever.
John:
What do you mean by that?
John:
Which kinds of apps are you talking about, specifically?
Marco:
It seems to me that, again, anecdotally, so whatever this is worth, I'm not seeing a lot of iPad apps come out anymore that are interesting or exciting, and a lot of the...
Marco:
previously good apps still either have been updated to iOS 7 and sort of very dated or are just on really slow update cycles so they're seemingly abandoned or some of them actually have been abandoned.
Marco:
Some of them have been updated but have been made worse.
Marco:
It seems like
Marco:
The iPad was a priority for app developers for about two and a half years, and now it's just not.
Marco:
And I can point to lots of, you know, if this is the case, beyond just what I'm seeing, I can think of lots of reasons why that might be the case.
Marco:
You know, the... I've been meaning to write a blog post about this, but I keep forgetting to do it.
Marco:
But, you know, one of the biggest would be, you know, the App Store pricing model and...
Marco:
the top list model and how that encourages the race to the bottom and pricing and very low prices made up at very large volume.
Marco:
Uh, all of that depends on there being very large volume.
Marco:
But if the iPad is not being used that much to buy a bunch of apps, and if instead most of them are being used to watch videos and browse the web, uh, and we know they don't sell nearly as well as iPhones do already.
Marco:
Um, well,
Marco:
maybe that's a big problem i mean it's certainly it seems to me like maybe like to me one of the reasons why i'm not using the ipad is because like the twitter app is better on my phone the rss app is better on my phone like the half the things i do on on on my ios devices like the iphone the apps i have on my iphone are better than any i can find on the ipad uh is is this just me or is this a broader thing
John:
I think the sales numbers definitely are an influence because there's way more iPhones.
John:
But I think there's a bifurcation of applications.
John:
In the beginning, it was like, well, everyone's going to make all their apps everywhere.
John:
And then eventually people learned which apps are better suited to which environment.
John:
So to give an example, these days, if a new game comes out, I don't have fear that there's not going to be an iPad version.
John:
And if there's anything that has to do with like...
John:
reading experience a magazine app a comic reader uh something for watching video there's no i'm there's no concern that it's not going to have an ipad version or even anything for like a controlling application like the tivo application i'm not concerned that's not gonna you know because anything that's not sort of on the go
John:
Because on the go style apps like Twitter clients and stuff like that, I don't expect to find them on the iPad because those are like clearly focused on the phone.
John:
Anything that is clearly something you'd want to use like a mobile type application, that's going to be phone first or phone only.
John:
Whereas any application that benefits from having a larger screen...
John:
that's going to be iPad only or iPad first.
John:
And so I, I definitely do that.
John:
See that split.
John:
And I sent, I have the same frustration and it's like, well, I know most of the time I'm, I'm not reading Twitter on my iPad, but I would like to have a universal version of whatever my favorite Twitter client.
John:
And as a matter of fact, I do, cause I use Twitterific, but those type of applications like Glassboard, for example, uh,
John:
There's no iPad version of that, and it frustrates me.
John:
It kind of makes sense, but on the other hand, because it's like a mobile on-the-go app, but it's like when I'm on my iPad and I have to run that 2X thing, I just feel bad.
John:
So I just think it's kind of the application splitting and going to where they need to go.
John:
And unfortunately, some of that split is if you need X number of sales to be profitable, forget the iPad because there's not that many iPads out there.
John:
But I think a lot of it is just appropriateness of screen size.
Casey:
Well, and to answer your question, Marco, I'm going to kind of ask myself and then answer it with a different question, which is what have I been excited about?
Casey:
What have I been excited about on the iPad lately?
Casey:
And I'm really excited that the 1Password iOS 7 update just came out.
Casey:
That's universal.
Casey:
I'm waiting with bated breath for a TweetBot update for iOS 7.
Casey:
And Fantastical 2 came out, and I'm really pumped about that.
Casey:
That's about it.
Casey:
I mean, Threes came out for the iPad.
Casey:
I was excited about that, too.
Casey:
But do you see what I'm saying?
Casey:
Like, to your point, there's not a lot that's been brand new that has happened on the iPad.
Casey:
Fantastical is a good example, though, that I've been really, really, really excited about that's happened, shoot, in months, if not around a year now.
John:
Well, I mean, there's games.
John:
Like, if you're into playing games, I mean, there's a pretty regular cycle of exciting new games that are available for the iPad that come out.
John:
I mean, it's not, you know, like,
John:
it's not there are tons of the games that come out most of them are crappy but i'm talking like the good games like the current one is like monument valley and before that was threes and then you had things like uh the room and year walk and like there's always lots of great software out there uh games that take advantage of a large screen but i think a lot of again i think a lot of the ipad stuff thinking of it is like the thing you have around the house yeah it's going to be a video app and through it through it you're going to consume stuff or it's going to be a comic reader through which you're going to get
John:
spend a continual stream of money on comics.
John:
I mean, just ask Merlin, like, is he excited that there's a new version of Comixology out?
John:
No, but it's just like, it's a fixture.
John:
It becomes part of that appliance and it's an appliance through which you funnel money.
John:
So it's not like there's not money to be made there because if you have that app and use it to buy things or even just magazine subscriptions,
John:
It's a continual faucet of money versus just like, oh, I can sell you one app for $199 if I'm lucky.
John:
It's like, no, you'll spend $50, $100 a month on comics through this one app that we will continually update and develop.
John:
But it's not exciting.
John:
It's not like there's amazing new apps coming out.
John:
But I think there's less of that on the phone, with the exception possibly of music streaming services that you pay a subscription for.
John:
The phone is less of a venue for...
John:
I'm going to download this one app and yeah, the app will be updated, but for the next year, two years or my entire life, I will continue to funnel money through this application because it's the way I get my video, my comics or my games or whatever.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it also depends on, you know, for any, whatever app you're talking about, like how hard is it?
Marco:
How much work is it to maintain a separate iPad interface or a separate iPad app entirely?
Marco:
And for certain types of things like, you know, video type apps, it's a lot less work than something like a word processor would be.
Marco:
You know, like games, it's, you know, some work in the interface layout and stuff.
Marco:
But for the most part, you're getting that...
Marco:
Fairly easily.
Marco:
There's all these productivity apps.
Marco:
It's a lot more work.
Marco:
I'm not even making Overcast for iPad when I launch.
Marco:
Maybe I'll add it later, but I'm launching without any iPad interface, even though I could just say in the P-list...
Marco:
Yeah, I work on the iPad, sure.
Marco:
And just let the interface scale itself up, but it would look terrible.
Marco:
I'd rather not do that, and so I'm not doing that.
Marco:
I'd rather do it well or not at all.
Marco:
So right now I'm going to choose not at all, and then maybe I'll address well later.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
I wonder for how many developers are going to make that call and say, you know what, it's probably not worth it.
Marco:
Almost every other podcast app on the store that's popular at all has a dedicated iPad version because all of them were written two to three years ago when that was a thing you all did.
Marco:
You had to have an iPad version two or three years ago because it was the hotness.
Marco:
But now, for so many types of apps, and a lot of apps are still fine on the iPad, things that are, you know, you said games, probably fine, as well as an iOS game could be doing fine.
Marco:
They're probably fine.
Marco:
Reading apps, things like Comixology, reading apps are fine, because reading is substantially better on the iPad, but
Marco:
Other kinds of things, utilities, you know, things like that.
John:
Well, I mean, what about, like, you mentioned word processors.
John:
Like, things like Comicology and, like, Microsoft Word or whatever, like, there's no iPhone version of the Office apps, is there?
John:
I don't know.
John:
I didn't even look.
Marco:
No, I don't think so.
John:
Well, like, I mean, comiXology, again, I don't know if that's universal either, but really, who wants to try to read comics on their phone screen?
John:
Like, there are certain applications where the big screen is not only, like, desirable, but it's like, well, I'm not going to bother making, like, even for games, depending on what your interface is, sometimes the games just don't make sense on the phone.
John:
I mean, obviously, games are highly motivated to get on the platform that has, you know, more users.
John:
But there are classes of applications, and I think kind of like office-style applications and stuff like that.
John:
Yeah.
John:
It doesn't make sense to make a phone version because you have a certain UI in mind and that UI only works at minimum on the iPad mini.
John:
It's just not feasible.
John:
It's like, why even bother on the phone?
John:
And I think the reverse is also true for things like with the podcast.
John:
Maybe you'll find out you're mistaken, but it's like, why even bother?
John:
Who's carrying around their iPad to listen to podcasts while they walk their dog, right?
John:
It's not a scenario you have in mind.
John:
Oh, believe me, I'm going to hear from all of them.
John:
Oh, you will.
John:
You will.
John:
It could be that there is an actual usage scenario where having an iPad version is useful.
John:
It might not just be that those people made it back when it was the thing to do.
John:
You'll find out, I guess, with the feedback.
Casey:
Oh, I can think of one.
Casey:
What if I'm at home and I want to broadcast via AirPlay or something like that, and I don't want to use my phone for whatever reason.
Casey:
It doesn't matter why.
Casey:
I'm at home and I want to beam to something else over AirPlay.
Casey:
I would reach for my iPad before I'd reach for my phone.
John:
But you could just run the iPhone version of 2x like I do with Glassboard.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
It's not like you're being prevented from it.
John:
Like, what is it about a podcast application that you would want a, you know, a specific iPad specific version?
John:
Because like for podcast apps, you're not spending your time manipulating the UI.
John:
You're spending your time with the screen turned off, you know, listening.
Casey:
Sure, but I'm going to want something that looks good on the iPad.
Casey:
So to Marco's point, yes, I can absolutely get away with a 2X version of the iPhone version of Overcast, hypothetically, but I wouldn't want it.
Casey:
I wouldn't be happy about it.
Casey:
And that may make me come back to my iPhone, which granted, this is a huge first world problem.
Casey:
But nevertheless, I can absolutely tell you that if I could listen to a podcast on my iPad,
Casey:
I would in a lot of cases.
John:
I mentioned Twitter apps before, and I was kind of speaking to the general case where Twitter apps, I imagine, are much more popular when you're on the go on your phones, right?
John:
But I do read Twitter, actually, a lot from my iPad, mostly because what I'm doing when I'm reading Twitter is following links.
John:
And when I'm following links, oh, all of a sudden I'm browsing the web, and I would much rather browse a web page.
John:
A, not get the crazy iPhone mobile version, if they have some crappy iPhone mobile version.
John:
And B, just get the much bigger screen to read things.
John:
even if I'm going to Instapaper them from the Twitter application, like browsing, like it's not the tweets themselves that, oh, you need an iPad screen to see a tweet.
John:
Tweets look fine on my iPod.
John:
But most of the time what I'm using Twitter for is following links that people put in.
John:
It's kind of, you know, my on-demand replacement for RSS.
John:
And yeah, I want to read those links on the big screen or want to watch those videos on the big screen.
John:
If someone links to a new Godzilla trailer, I'm much happier to watch that Godzilla trailer on my iPad than to try to, you know, look at the tiny thing on my iPad.
John:
iPod Touch and have to, you know, turn off the rotation lock so I could rotate it so the image isn't microscopic and, you know.
Marco:
How much does this change if there's a 5-inch phone?
John:
Yeah, we'll see, I guess.
John:
I mean, none of us have used a 5-inch phone, right?
John:
So we don't know, like...
John:
Does it make a difference?
John:
Does it make a significant difference?
John:
Do all of a sudden I feel comfortable watching the Godzilla trailer, or do I still wish I had it on my iPad?
John:
I guess we'll all find out.
John:
People who are using Android phones now already know the answer for themselves, but for the people in the Apple camp, I presume we get these phones.
John:
We'll find out how much it really makes a difference in practice.
Casey:
See, I think it'll make a big difference for non-power users.
Casey:
I don't want to call them normal people, but non-geeks.
Casey:
And I can't cite a specific example, but I know a lot of friends and family who either have been saying, oh man, I really hope there's a bigger iPhone, or I left the iPhone because it never got bigger and I wanted something bigger.
Casey:
Now, some of these people carry phablets, which...
Casey:
personally, I think, look ridiculous, and I would not want to try to stuff in a pant pocket, but that's just me.
Casey:
And typically, everything I poo-poo, I end up coming around and liking, like Apple, like Macs, like iPhones, like BMWs, etc., etc.
Casey:
But anyway... Oh, and who recommended all these things to you?
Casey:
Yeah, whatever.
Casey:
The point is, I think, Marco, you're right, that for a lot of people, having a much bigger phone...
Casey:
will prevent the need for an iPad.
Casey:
Although with that said, I think John was right in saying having a bigger screen and not hitting the mobile version of websites is really, really refreshing.
Casey:
Because in my experience, a lot of times if there's a responsive site, it will...
Casey:
either be considerably better at iPad sizes, or the iPad will just see the full-bore desktop version.
Casey:
And I'm curious to see if a 5-inch or maybe even 6-inch iPhone comes out this year, what will happen with responsive sites?
Casey:
Will they just...
Casey:
stretch the current four, what is it, 4.3 inch version of their site a little bit?
Casey:
Will that be a different break point?
Casey:
And as silly as that sounds, I think that would make a big difference to me.
John:
I think everything's coming up iPad Pro again, because this whole, a larger phone, what it does is it pushes, it pushes the iPad to be like, okay, differentiate yourself now.
John:
Like now the difference in size between the mini and whatever phone Apple comes up with, that gap is narrowed.
John:
what is it that you're good at ipad like well i've got a bigger screen like well how much bigger like again do people want to read comiXology on their bigger phone no maybe not but maybe it encroaches starts to encroach on some things that people thought they needed an ipad mini for and like well i can actually get away with that on my thing so like to to make a spot for itself in that in-between area that you know the article is talking about that may find a home between the phone and the laptop and
John:
maybe it has to continue to move upscale and to continue to encroach on PC territory and to take things away from there and to go with bigger screens or, you know, maybe the mini gets scaled up and the, the other one becomes the pro and it gets even bigger.
John:
Like,
John:
I think that's inevitable with phones getting larger.
John:
I mean, I guess it depends on how large they get.
John:
If it gets a little bit larger, then not a big deal.
John:
But some of these phones that I see, it's like, is that a phone or is that an iPad mini?
John:
It's really close.
John:
And at that point, what place is there for an iPad mini in your life?
John:
All it is is a slightly larger phone that doesn't work as a phone.
John:
And so then if you're going to get something at all, it's going to be like, what is this?
John:
What is this tablet uniquely good at?
John:
It's uniquely good at reading magazines because I don't want to read a magazine on my phone because it's still too small.
John:
It's uniquely good at reading comics, uniquely good at having video because I don't want to watch a video on this little tiny thing.
John:
And, you know, it's uniquely good at being a multifunction word processor, email handling app, blah, blah, blah, within an extendable keyboard, and it becomes a Microsoft Surface and, like, whatever.
John:
Like, I feel like there's a potential for it to be pushed upmarket kind of in terms of capabilities and size.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Like, I'm not arguing that the iPad is going to go away or that it's bad at everything.
Marco:
You know, my position, which I think you agree with, because I think you said this, is that it's just going to, you know, like, there are things the iPad is better at.
Marco:
But, you know, it's...
Marco:
it's no longer going to be assumed that everyone who has the means to buy an iPad should buy one.
Marco:
That's kind of been the assumption.
Marco:
If you're into this kind of stuff at all and you have enough money to afford an iPad, you should buy an iPad.
John:
I think it'll be, like I said, I think it'll be more assumed as we go on because it'll just, as the price comes down, every household, if you have a smartphone, it'll be assumed you also have a tablet to do the things you do on tablets, a big tablet, not a little one.
Marco:
Yeah, maybe.
Marco:
And I do think that you're, you know, you're positioning it as like the thing you have in your home and just keep around the house.
Marco:
That I think it has a better future for than being traveling productivity devices.
Casey:
Yeah, see, I couldn't disagree with you more.
Casey:
But I think we're both right is the thing.
Casey:
It depends on what you're after.
Casey:
And typically, if I'm on the road, I just want to browse Twitter, like John was saying, catch up on RSS, do the things that people always say are content consumption.
Casey:
And that's all I need when I'm on the road.
Casey:
And I prefer to do that on an iPad.
Casey:
And so I think it would be great.
Casey:
I would continue to have an iPad for travel if for no other reason.
John:
people do want to leave their laptops at home.
John:
Like there still is that people want to, whether they're ready to or not, I don't know.
John:
But like, I know I like going places with just my iPad.
John:
And in many cases, I can pull it off.
John:
And there is a desire to do that.
John:
It's just a question of does the iPad yet fulfill that?
John:
Does it live up to the way you want to use it?
John:
And sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.
John:
That's again, if it starts to push up market a little bit, people still won't want to bring their full-fledged laptop, especially if it's their like work laptop or they associate it with work.
John:
But they'll want to have, you know, a powerful tablet with them.
Marco:
See, I think that the distinction of this idea of people that don't want to bring their laptops with them, there's two sides to this.
Marco:
One is that if it's their work laptop and it's not like they're not self-employed or they are self-employed but they hate themselves, a lot of people don't want to bring their work with them because they don't like their work and that's fine.
Marco:
And so the work laptop has this emotional baggage of being your work that you're on vacation, you don't want to bring this.
Marco:
But
Marco:
So that's one side, and you're never going to get over that.
Marco:
Eventually, you'll have a work tablet if this goes the way that everyone thinks it will, and you won't want to bring that either because that's your work tablet.
Marco:
So whatever.
Marco:
That I think we can safely disregard as a thing because eventually that will be merged.
Marco:
But the other side of it is people who say, I don't want to bring this whole laptop with me.
Marco:
Laptops in the last couple years have gotten so much thinner and lighter and smaller, and battery life is going through the roof.
Marco:
Laptops are getting so awesome that a lot of people who say that, they have a two or three-year-old laptop.
Marco:
Well, it turns out...
Marco:
modern laptops are a lot better than that.
Marco:
The last few years have been amazing in laptops, and if half of the rumors are true about what Apple's lineup is going to have in the laptops in the near future, it's going to be even better.
Marco:
They're talking about this supposed 12-inch Retina Air that might not even have fans, and maybe it might even run on ARM chip.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
Laptops are...
Marco:
really really good and you know that there's a reason why laptops have taken over the world as like the computer of choice for almost everybody who who can make that choice um laptops are awesome and they keep getting more and more and more awesome they keep getting smaller thinner lighter better battery life better displays everything about and and the os's are you know
John:
well windows yeah now you're getting to it because it's not just the size and everything it's like the reason people feel like i don't want to bring my laptop isn't just because it's my work thing it isn't just because it's heavier because i have an old laptop it's also because the experience of using an ipad because it runs ios and it's you know so simplified is more relaxing for you know a a vacation type atmosphere and again that gap could narrow as well like that's what apple's trying to do they're trying to simplify mac os 10 they're trying to shave off the edges that you know like like
John:
These things are on a collision course, but it's still debatable which one will get to the critical point first, especially with pricing.
John:
Because if a tablet can be $99 and Apple's best MacBook Air is still $599 in some distant future, the tablets are going to win just based on price.
John:
So it used to be definitely a size thing.
John:
I don't want to be lugging this big thing with me.
John:
As the size issue becomes less, then you get down to, okay, now it's down to price and now it's down to OS simplicity.
John:
And OS simplicity, the PC has a fighting chance.
John:
If you look at what Microsoft's trying to do with Windows 8 and Apple trying to simplify its OS on the price front,
John:
uh i don't know maybe that's that's a closer i was gonna say i would give the edge to the tablet but now that i think about it especially if they go to an arm-based air uh that might be a reasonably fair fight too because in the end what's the difference between an arm-based macbook air and a microsoft surface and an ipad with a keyboard in terms of pricing like that could be close too i don't know this is too close to call this race
Marco:
I mean, the funny thing is if you think about what people want out of a, quote, iPad Pro, most people who try to get productivity work on their iPads either use or at some point have tried keyboards for their iPads.
Marco:
So you think about, okay, what do you do about the keyboard?
Marco:
If you've ever used a keyboard on an iPad, you realize how much the pointing device situation sucks because you have to keep using the keyboard on the bottom and then reaching up to touch the screen to move things around on the screen.
Marco:
That sucks.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
It seems like what people want out of an iPad Pro is to make it more like a laptop.
Marco:
And what if this 12-inch thing is pretty much the iPad Air's hardware with a keyboard running a ported version of OS X?
Marco:
That would solve multitasking.
Marco:
It would solve document management.
Marco:
It would solve all of the, quote, productivity needs.
John:
well i wouldn't solve solve like because people like people don't like os 10 compared to ios like it's more relaxing to use ios like they're trying i like it i know geeks do but you know like it's the appeal of tablets is broad ranging in terms not just the physical parts of it it's also the software parts the same software parts that we're complaining against that like the limitations like that's the line apple is trying to walk how do i make the ipad more capable without making it crappier how do i make
John:
The Mac less annoying to use without removing its capabilities.
Casey:
Yeah, I see.
Casey:
And I come back to what John has been saying, which is part of the reason I ditched the laptop is because it's old and heavy and doesn't have a great battery.
Casey:
But partly because for the things I do when I'm traveling, which is basically just catch up on Twitter and RSS and email and so on.
Casey:
I'll just bring the iPad.
Casey:
And maybe if I'm feeling really exotic, I'll bring my Apple Bluetooth keyboard and throw it in a suitcase and use it in situations where I'm sitting down at the desk in the hotel or whatever and cranking out a few emails.
Casey:
But I'd much prefer that over a small Mac because I find using iOS more enjoyable in that situation.
Casey:
I know.
Casey:
We'll see.
Casey:
Time will tell.
John:
And I guess we also forgot the input method.
John:
Marco mentioned the terrible keyboard support in iOS, which really is grim, especially like cursor control.
John:
And really doing cursor control with touch is also grim.
John:
But for all other applications, people like just being able to touch the screen and move stuff around.
John:
Say you're using Apple or Google Maps to do nav on your iPad and you want to move the thing around.
John:
There's just direct manipulation as part of the relaxation.
John:
You're not swiping on a trackpad.
John:
You just can touch the screen.
John:
And
John:
Again, Apple can do something, but they can make some kind of convertible MacBook Air.
John:
The keyboard folds around the back on it, and then you can touch the screen.
John:
There are ways out of this, but then it's like how to use Mac OS X with touch and blah, blah, blah.
John:
The attractiveness and the relaxation factor of the iPad...
John:
It's about the whole product.
John:
It's about the interaction.
John:
It's about the size.
John:
It's about the OS.
John:
It's about the simplicity.
John:
It's about the applications.
John:
It's about the history, the lack of baggage.
John:
There is a lot to it.
John:
In the same way that there's a lot to what's stopping it from being a PC replacement.
John:
There's a huge laundry list of things there as well.
John:
It's not just one thing.
John:
And so it's difficult to say who's going to be able to make moves faster.
John:
the best and the fastest who's like, if we fast forward seven years, what does the, in terms of like how, how many tablets are sold versus how many PCs are sold?
John:
What are those ratios look like?
John:
Is it like 80% tablets and 20% PC?
John:
Is it 50, 50?
John:
Uh, then we'll know who got to the sweet spot first by looking at those ratios and, you know, decade or two.
Marco:
I mean, I, I think it's going to end up shaking out with basically, uh,
Marco:
I suspect we're going to see the category which, ironically, Microsoft started with these pretty much laptop tablets.
Marco:
Tablets that are basically just really small laptops running laptop-type OSes, laptop-type software.
Marco:
Whether they're convertible or not, I don't think is that relevant.
Marco:
I think we're going to see the market split as it matures into...
Marco:
phones are going to keep getting bigger until they're all pretty much as big as they can be and still fit in most people's pockets.
Marco:
So we'll have these big phones that'll cut out a lot of the tablet use cases or a lot of the tablet rationality, at least.
Marco:
Then we're going to have...
Marco:
the tablet for consumption people who like things like big screens or who need to draw on them or do things that most people could do on a phone but are better on something with a bigger screen.
Marco:
And those might be used at home a lot or whatever.
Marco:
And then we're going to have people who want to do productivity...
Marco:
type tasks who are really going to want these lap tablets, like the surface type things, and maybe that's what this 12-inch thing is, that kind of thing.
Marco:
I think that's going to be... It's going to split into the more casual or non-traditional productivity use cases will keep...
Marco:
will keep the current tablet form factor as like their best thing where they run best.
Marco:
But I think people who keep trying to like put their iPads in these big folio cases and attach a keyboard at the bottom and, you know, all these kind of like iPad bolt-ons trying to make it more like a computer, I think we're going to see that usage merge into just really compact laptops that whether they run...
Marco:
Whether they run Intel chips or not, whether they run OS X, I'm guessing it would be really small laptops running OS X or Windows 8.
Marco:
Really small computers running regular PC operating systems with tablet-like hardware, but with a keyboard.
Marco:
With touchscreens?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
Well, maybe touchscreens optionally, but probably not.
Marco:
Probably just... What I'm really talking about is really like an iPad Air hardware running an ARM port of OS X, as I said earlier.
Marco:
I really think that...
John:
the productivity use is going to be so much better on that that's just a laptop though i mean that's not that's not a lap tab like i mean microsoft's really taking the bullet on this one because they're they're trying to do the thing we're describing and not doing well at it for a variety of reasons not all of which have to do with the design of their product a lot of them is just like market timing and
John:
issues with their os and all sorts of other issues but they're basically being the sega cd of this generation yeah they haven't they but the bottom line is they haven't figured out to ignore all the software ignore all the market things ignore all the timing things they just haven't figured out the hardware like kickstand floppy keyboard hinge no hinge like i mean everything they've done it's like an 11 inch macbook air does all those things better in terms of you know because it's got the stiff hinge like that's why i keep thinking of
John:
Give you a stiff hinge, a keyboard that folds all the way on the, on, on the back.
John:
So, and then a touch screen and then an OS that you can actually use with touch.
John:
Like those are the ingredients they're kind of missing so far.
John:
And I think Microsoft will keep trying with the surface.
John:
Hopefully they will eventually find.
John:
the the correct combination of physical attributes and then who knows if they'll they'll ever get the timing right or their software right but apple there's still an opportunity for apple to figure that out before them if they decide to so i guess we'll be watching for this you know this 12 inch retin air is it just is it just another air that happens to be a different size or are they going to try to do something special there i i think apple does not have an appetite to try to make a hybrid device of the type that i described many many years ago in a back page but common mac world
John:
I think I was saying dual OS, and certainly Apple's not going to do that, but I'm not sure they're even trying to find the solution.
John:
I think they're happy to allow things to evolve independently and just let them duke it out in the market.
Marco:
Yeah, I don't know.
Marco:
Again, I'm more skeptical that I think it's really just like...
Marco:
In the same way that phones getting larger screens will eat a lot of the tablet use from the bottom, I think laptops getting a lot smaller, thinner, lighter, and having better battery lives will eat a lot of the top end of the market.
Marco:
And so I really don't...
Marco:
I think so many of the people who are using tablets for productivity are going to be very satisfied in a few years with a really small laptop that has a lot of the benefits of a tablet hardware while not having a lot of the limitations of tablet software.
Casey:
Marco, we tried the netbook thing.
Casey:
It didn't work out.
Casey:
Yeah, that's true.
Casey:
All right.
Marco:
Well, thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week.
Marco:
uh help spot linza.com and new relic and we will see you next week now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental oh it was accidental
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Margo 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.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss.
Marco:
M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T.
Marco:
Marco Arment.
Marco:
S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Casey:
They didn't.
Casey:
So long.
Marco:
I feel like I need to explain my Sega CD reference because the chat room is getting it all wrong, saying that maybe I meant the 32X or the CDX even.
Marco:
I think that was – was that what the Jupiter project became?
Marco:
It looked like a toilet and it was like a Genesis with a Sega CD combo.
Marco:
Anyway, I don't even think that even came out.
Marco:
But if it did, oh, well, no one bought it.
Marco:
The reason I said Sega CD and not 32X is because I was using the reference to... Sega was infamous for putting out technology long before it could be good, or at least trying to.
Marco:
And the Sega CD was one of the first...
Marco:
uh widespread cd-rom gaming systems if not if not the first widespread one um and it was just awful you know it was a 1x drive and load times were insane the graphics really weren't that much better than any genesis games and it you know it didn't really add much hardware wise to the genesis uh it was just very expensive games were terrible they're mostly like fmv adventure games like the only game worth getting really was sonic cd almost every game besides that was terrible and uh
Marco:
And the reason why I made that reference in relation to the Surface was like the Surface, I think, was Microsoft having this interesting hardware idea of doing it like a generation too early, basically, before it could really be... If it was going to be good, I think they did it too early to be good.
Marco:
So that's why I suggested the Sega CD because that was like they did it like a generation before the other CD-ROM gaming systems and the other ones were way better than it because they had the benefit of having better technology available to them whereas the Sega CD was just like way too early, way before its time and pretty bad as a result.
Marco:
And that's why the 32X is not an appropriate reference, because the 32X failed for lots of reasons that had nothing to do with its technology.
Marco:
The technology was actually pretty good, but it failed for lots of other reasons.
Casey:
Yeah, I was a Nintendo kid.
Marco:
As you can tell, I was a Sega person.
Marco:
What happened to you both?
Marco:
I grew up.
Casey:
Ooh!
Marco:
Yeah, what happened to me was the Sega CD in 32X, and then I stopped being a Sega person.
Casey:
I might have told this story on the podcast, I don't recall, but when I was in high school and for the beginning of college when I was at home, I worked at a Babbage's, which was a subsidiary of GameStop, and I remember vividly peddling the Dreamcast like you couldn't even imagine before it came out.
Casey:
Oh, it's going to be so much better.
Casey:
It's going to be awesome.
Casey:
It's going to be awesome.
Casey:
It's going to be so much better.
Casey:
It's going to be awesome.
Casey:
And then it came out and it was so much better, I would argue.
Casey:
Although I'm not going to stand on this one like I did the vinyl argument.
Casey:
Anyway, point being it came out like three people bought it and then it disappeared and Sega all but folded after that.
Marco:
I mean, the problem was that by all accounts, I never had a Dreamcast, but I played one a few times here and there.
Marco:
By all accounts, the Dreamcast was a good system.
Marco:
The problem was the Dreamcast followed the Sega CD, the 32X, and the Saturn, all of which were terrible game systems.
Marco:
And so Sega's fan base was pretty burned by that point.
Marco:
And there were other factors involved as well that made the Dreamcast kind of fail.
Marco:
But the biggest problem with the Dreamcast had nothing to do with its hardware.
Marco:
The hardware was actually really good.
Marco:
Yeah, agreed.
Marco:
So, John, out of curiosity, what should we have been talking about besides the Sega CD and KC Nintendo fanboyism?
Marco:
What was the proper answer to what game systems we used in the early 90s?
John:
I was just saying what happened to you, you were both enthusiastic gamers as kids and then fell off the wagon or onto the wagon.
John:
I don't know, whichever analogy is the one that's bad.
Marco:
Yeah, I'm never straight on that, actually.
Marco:
I mean, for me personally, it was getting into things like personal side projects and side programming projects and then eventually working for myself and writing and podcasting, all this other stuff I'm doing with my free time.
Marco:
where I just don't... There's never a time during the day when I think, I would like to spend the next hour playing a video game.
Marco:
I used to have those moments, and now I just don't.
Marco:
There are other ways I'd rather spend that time now.
Casey:
Yeah, same here.
Casey:
When I was younger, the Nintendo 64 came out, and I was still hugely into that.
Casey:
I blew so many hours on Goldeneye and Mario Kart, I can't even tell you.
Casey:
And then I just kind of stopped playing games...
Casey:
I think I might have found girls around that point.
Casey:
Or more appropriately, I might have actually started to have some modicum of success with girls.
Casey:
But I remember vividly buying a PlayStation, the original PlayStation with my own money and getting Metal Gear Solid and one of the Final Fantasies and playing the crap out of those.
Casey:
And then I never really looked back at games anymore.
Casey:
ever again.
John:
Well, here's what you two are missing right now.
John:
For the same reason that I assume you both like to watch television and movies, like you still both do that and it's a thing that you enjoy, the experience afforded by the best modern games is
John:
Is like the best movie you've ever seen combined with the best TV you've ever seen multiplied by 20 for people who are into games and who are you know Fluent in the interface and vocabulary of gaming a great game.
John:
I think all gamers would agree Is a superior experience to a great movie to these to them because they're gamers, right?
John:
And so even if you're not that into games I would think that a really great game could give you the equivalent experience of a really great movie or a really great TV show and
John:
And just like movies and TV, there's going to be a lot of crap.
John:
There's going to be a lot of stuff you're not interested in.
John:
There's going to be stuff that's disappointing.
John:
But that's why I continue to find time in my schedule to play these games.
John:
A, I like to follow the industry, so it's just a hobby, you know, just reading about it or whatever.
John:
But what games do I play?
John:
I don't have a lot of time to play games, but I make time to play the games that I think are going to be great, and I enjoy them immensely, and I'm glad I carve out that time in the same way that I carve out time to watch Game of Thrones or...
John:
in the past, The Wire or The Sopranos or all those other things that you find time in your schedule.
John:
I'm not going to watch every TV show.
John:
TV is mostly crap, but The Sopranos is great and I'm going to watch it.
John:
And I feel the same way about, you know, playing The Last of Us or, you know, certainly Journey or anything like that.
John:
So it's not like, you know, I'm not saying you both have to be gamers or whatever, but I think that it's reasonable to assume that were you to pursue gaming, there would be games that you would enjoy as much as you enjoy your favorite television programs or movies.
Casey:
Yeah, but let's consider that I tend to have terrible taste in music, television, and movies.
Casey:
So...
John:
But, I mean, you like what you like.
John:
There's a bazillion games out there.
John:
There's a bazillion movies and TV shows.
John:
If you like to watch, you know, Supernatural, then that's the kind of show you want.
John:
There are gaming equivalents of that.
John:
Like, I'm saying, at this point, it's a genre as rich as television or movies or books, for that matter.
John:
Well, maybe not as rich as those things, but moving in that direction.
John:
But certainly, in mass market appeal, there's...
John:
probably something that you could find that would appeal to you the problem i think for people who aren't into it is like well how do i know what to pick like to me it's just one big giant blob of games and if you're not following the game industry and reading game magazines reading gaming news sites and following gaming people on twitter you don't know which thing to pick and if you just go into the store like i'll just try this game you'll try it it will be crap you'll be annoying like see this is why i don't play games they're stupid
John:
So there is that barrier.
John:
I'm not saying it's easy to come into, but I think that there's nothing about the two of you, including your age or maturity level, that is preventing you, that is making you incapable of enjoying modern gaming.
John:
Because for a reasonable approximation, everybody enjoys modern gaming.
John:
Everybody's a gamer.
John:
to some degree or another uh and if anything you two are standing out as oddities and that you used to be gamers and now as adults just sort of cut them out of your life entirely and that's becoming increasingly rare wait you think this is like unusual yeah what i don't think so yeah i i'm with marco go go look at the numbers on go look at the numbers on the gaming industry go look at the average age of a gamer you are uh not in the majority
Marco:
You're saying that it's unusual for people to play games when they're younger and then not play games when they're like in their 30s?
John:
Yep.
John:
What do you think the average age of a gamer is?
Marco:
No, I know it's going up, but that doesn't necessarily mean what you just said.
John:
Yeah, but just look at the distribution.
John:
Look at how many people, how big is the gaming industry?
John:
How many copies do games sell?
John:
How many people say they play games at all?
John:
Like, it's massive.
John:
It is mass market.
John:
Most people play games.
John:
Certainly most people who have any kind of computing device do.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I'm with Marco on this.
Casey:
I have no facts to back me up, but, well, that never stopped me before.
John:
Yeah, me neither.
Casey:
But that just doesn't pass the smell test for me.
John:
And what's interesting is... Wait, you sound like my parents, so I'll let the readers write in and tell you all this.
John:
Do you still play games?
John:
You haven't grown out of those?
John:
The equivalent I always used to give my parents, which they found non-convincing and all, and you will also find non-convincing, but I will do it again.
John:
It's kind of like if my grandparents could see them at 85 years old and say,
John:
you guys are still playing Pinochle.
John:
You didn't grow out of cards.
John:
How can you be playing?
John:
It's like they played it their whole life.
John:
They played card games when they were kids.
John:
They played it till the day they died.
John:
They played, it's just, you know, that was their version of games is these card games.
John:
They didn't grow out of them.
John:
And in the same way, most anyone who's actually a gamer, of course, never grows out of them.
John:
But at this point,
John:
like anyone who grew up with games continues to play them their whole life they don't stop playing them in the same way that my grandparents never stopped playing pinochle it's just you know you don't it's not something you grow out of it's not like uh a child's toy there's no such thing as uh as adults would never want to do it games are not like that it's like saying you still watch movies isn't that a kid thing you still you still read books it's not just something for kids
Marco:
I don't want to suggest that games are juvenile, because that's not at all what I mean, and that's not why I stopped playing them for the most part.
Marco:
It's literally just like, there are many different ways to entertain yourself these days, and I have chosen to not play very many games anymore, to hardly play any at all anymore, because all of the alternatives...
Marco:
all the alternatives to amusing myself or to spending time, things like browsing the internet or socializing online or watching TV series on Netflix.
Marco:
I've chosen to do all of those things instead.
Casey:
But that's not true because you and Tiff both love board games.
Casey:
And yes, it's not video games, but it's games.
Casey:
And if we're broadening, if I'm moving the goalpost, that to me counts.
Casey:
And similarly, I don't really play games anymore.
Casey:
But if I'm in a group setting, I love to play a game of Cards Against Humanity.
Casey:
Or I enjoyed, what was it, Puerto Rico that we played in South Carolina, Marco.
Casey:
And what was it we played just this past weekend?
Casey:
I already forgotten.
Casey:
Quirkle.
Casey:
Quirkle.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
Games like that I really enjoy.
Casey:
And the other thing I've found that I fill my free time with, if I'm not just farting around on the internet, is I've gotten really back into reading novels again, which I used to do a lot as well as a kid.
Casey:
And now I've gotten back into that.
Casey:
And so realizing that the local library is one of the best inventions of the world, I've pretty much had a book with me almost always for the last six months to a year.
John:
See, now you're back in the minority again because most Americans anyway don't read.
John:
You ever see those scary statistics about how many people don't read a novel after they graduate from high school?
John:
That is not, yeah.
Casey:
Yeah, I don't want to think about it.
John:
But gaming is much more mass market than reading novels.
Marco:
Yeah, that's probably true.
John:
Oh, yeah, definitely.
John:
Really, you guys too game a little bit.
John:
You're saying if I'm not playing Grand Theft Auto, I'm not gaming.
John:
Letterpress counts.
John:
Playing Total Annihilation or whatever you're playing with your friend's wedding, that counts.
John:
It didn't happen, by the way.
Marco:
well failing to play total annihilation that's pc that's pc gaming pc gaming is attempting to get a game no i know but even console like i i have a ps3 the only game i have for it is uh is the wipeout version that was a download game i i i bought it thinking i'd get more gaming out of it but i also just wanted a blu-ray player and at the time it was about the same price as a blu-ray player so oh yeah i'll get the ps3 and and yeah never use it as a gaming console
Casey:
Wait, that's not true either, is it?
Casey:
Because I thought you had something to learn the Nürburgring on.
Marco:
Was that the PS3 or the Xbox?
Marco:
I forget which one I chose.
Marco:
You know, that might have been the PS3.
Marco:
I forget, but I use that for like three nights total.
Marco:
So, okay, I might have two games for it.
John:
The problem for getting into these AAA type games is that...
John:
If you're out of it for a long time, again, you're lacking in the literacy of the current gaming conventions and genres.
John:
And so, yeah, you can fire up like a driving game because driving games are driving games.
John:
But were you to, I mean, that's why I'm not, that's why I don't spend my time encouraging you too much to play Journey because I feel like if you played it, it would be lost on you and that you're missing the context to appreciate that game fully and
John:
It's almost like... You have spent so much time encouraging me to play Journey.
John:
I know.
John:
But it's clear that you're not going to do it.
John:
And so now it's like... Now I'm almost like, I'd rather you not play it.
John:
I'd rather you have a bunch of warm-up games if you ever got to that point.
John:
Because you'd play it and you'd be like, that's all right.
John:
It's kind of boring.
John:
The game would be lost on you.
John:
And the same thing with like, you have a PS3.
John:
Should you play The Last of Us?
John:
No.
John:
If you haven't played a AAA video game in years and years, The Last of Us is not... It's not going to work for you the way it works for the people who are still, you know, sort of...
John:
in in the triple-a gaming thing you were definitely both of you in the more of the casual gaming space so i'd say yeah get mine you and valley it's fun like i i don't think it's you know it's all right it's not amazing i think it's a little bit too easy and a little bit too short and not even as uh i think your walk was a much better game for example i think ridiculous fishing is a better game for example uh but those are the type of games where you don't need a lot of context you can just dive right into them and i think for example both of you would probably enjoy ridiculous fishing
Marco:
I played Ridiculous Fishing for about 10 minutes and didn't see the appeal.
Marco:
And I know everyone loved it.
Marco:
And so that's, I assume, you know, what happens is I will try these games that everyone says are amazing and they're being big hits.
Marco:
I'll try them.
Marco:
And most of them, I mean, you know, like I got into threes and letterpress, you know, like the kind of, and dots, like, you know, I get into some iOS casual games, but most of these games that people just totally obsess over are,
John:
i don't find them that fun and so i assume there's something wrong with me that i'm just not a gamer because i don't like what everyone else likes but but you are like you you made your own units for whatever that was was that total annihilation i mean like when i was 16 right but those you still had the instinct to want to play like that's still inside you it's just that now all of your all of your touchstones are now out of date so when you try to play something modern doesn't work that casual games are ridiculous fishing
John:
when i first tried it too i thought like yeah whatever but like there is there is a hook in the game and if you allow it to go maybe you need to be a little bit more of a gamer for that hook to find purchase monument valley is simpler but i think it's it's more of a trifle uh your walk is probably you would not you need to be a gamer to play that i'm just trying to think like threes and letterpress you guys both have no problem getting to that you want because it's more like a board game which marco does play actively like and then you're like oh i understand what this is about more or less it's like
Marco:
By the way, by actively, we'll play board games.
Marco:
Me and my wife will play board games with friends who are over sometimes.
Marco:
I would say we probably play board games for maybe an hour and a half every two months.
Marco:
We're not talking about a frequent hobby.
Marco:
I would like to play more of them because I do enjoy them.
Marco:
But yeah, I don't get the chance that often.
John:
I mean, that's, I think, more of a time investment from my perspective than a video game because you've got to get all the stuff out and you've got to get the multiple people and they all have to be there.
John:
Whereas a video game, you can steal time to play more conveniently than you can steal.
John:
You can't play one of these complicated German board games that requires five people and they all have to know the rules already, although you're going to be there for an hour.
John:
That is not something you can steal time and just grab a quick game of or even put in an extra hour of.
John:
How did I play The Last of Us?
John:
I played it
John:
when the kids were asleep, when my wife was out of town and a series of, you know, one or two hour,
John:
uh sittings and i could not play a if i had a board game that i was interested in i would be like you and waiting around to have time to gather a bunch of people who also want to play a board game who also know the rules to play the board game so i think that's it's harder to find time to do that but you manage to do it like and it's fine i'm just saying like i think there there is enjoyment to be had there is nothing in you that's making that's making you like oh i'm just not a gamer i guess i just love these games that everybody loves a lot of times you're just missing the context for it uh and i think there are games out there that you would enjoy
Marco:
I'm sure there are, but I think you're right that I'm not willing to put in a massive time investment to try to find these things.
Marco:
I'm not willing to say, oh yeah, I'm going to spend this whole Saturday afternoon.
Marco:
If my wife's out of town and my kid's asleep,
Marco:
The thing I would most want to do is go to my computer and write or program.
Marco:
I love doing those things.
Marco:
I would rather do that than go to the TV and play a game.
John:
Someday you'll be ready for Journey, Marco.
John:
Maybe Adam will do it for you.
John:
Because Adam will want to play games, probably, because they're a fun thing to do and kids have nothing to do.
John:
But they have nothing but free time, right?
John:
So maybe he'll help you get you into them.
John:
But someday, when you're ready, Journey will be there for you, presumably with the PS5 remastered version.
Marco:
yeah and and you know if that happens like you know if my kid ends up liking games yeah i agree that's that's likely um you know if he ends up liking games and i'll play with him that's a whole different story then i would you know because then i'm spending time with my kid and you know interacting with him while playing these games that makes sense of course then you'll suck and you'll be the dad who can't play games well but isn't that how it always has to be you probably suck too you just don't realize it no not my family i will tell you the day when my any of my kids can beat me in any video game and i am determined that day will never come
Casey:
All right, now it's time for titles.
Marco:
So let's see what we've covered in this episode so far.
Marco:
We've had OS X reviews, Journey.
Casey:
File systems, yep, file systems.
Casey:
We had it earlier.
Casey:
We have seriously hit the John Syracuse of, like, Quadfecta.
Casey:
We're not even close.
Casey:
We didn't even mention TiVo.
John:
There's so many things that we didn't even touch on.