I Hold My Children To A Higher Standard
Casey:
What the hell's on the live stream right now that everyone's freaking out about?
Casey:
Warm it up, Chris.
Casey:
I'm about to... We're not live yet, right?
Casey:
we do have some follow-up something happened a few hours ago thank goodness because otherwise this would have been a short show but uh but yeah we do have some follow-up so john would you like to tell us about how uh people do or do not play games yeah last week i mentioned uh the average age of gamers and none of us knew what it was and if someone wrote it in the chat room i didn't notice so i apologize for that uh
John:
But I looked it up.
John:
It's not hard to find this information.
John:
So here are the stats.
John:
This was in regards to both of you saying that you had grown out of playing games and me saying that's ridiculous because most people who play games are even older than you or adults.
John:
Wait, hold on.
John:
Neither of us said we grew out of games.
Marco:
That's going to get us some feedback, which it already has, which is not accurate.
John:
I don't remember the exact quote, but it was something like you just felt like you were out of it.
John:
Anyway, everyone responding thinks that's what you said.
John:
So obviously there was a miscommunication and you can feel free to clarify because they keep saying, I agree with Casey and Marco.
John:
I also grew out of games.
John:
Like we're seeing those responses again.
John:
That doesn't mean that's what you said.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
I mean, what we both said was, was that we didn't see games.
Marco:
Correct me if I'm wrong, Casey, that, that we didn't see games as like a juvenile thing that you would grow out of, but rather like,
Marco:
We played games for a long time, and then in recent years or after we left college or whatever, we just didn't choose to spend our time playing games or didn't have the time to play games anymore.
Marco:
So it's not necessarily a growing out of it, because that implies that it's like a juvenile thing.
Marco:
It's more that we just chose not to spend our time doing that anymore.
John:
yeah i would agree with that our priorities shifted right it's like the same result but with with a different reason and with with less judgment in the reason initially one of you said i don't know i guess i just grew out of it and maybe that was a joke and yes later you did say that at least marco said that he didn't think they were juvenile or anything but everyone latched on to the growing out of an angle but anyway here is the information i was trying to get across this at the average age of gamers and
John:
No one else knew what it was.
John:
The average age of game players, according to the Entertainment Software Association, which is a trade association that tracks these type of things for video games, is 31 years old.
John:
This is United States.
John:
Stats only.
John:
I think it's only U.S.
John:
Anyway, the average age of the U.S.
John:
population is 37.2.
John:
So...
John:
yes the average age of the people in the united states is slightly older but i think that makes sense considering video games were introduced partially into the lives of many people who are alive today so you don't have a sample you know everyone alive wasn't born when video games were introduced uh the uh the ratios are 52 male 48 female and out of the most frequent game purchasers the ratios are exactly even 50 50 male female they say 59 of americans play video games
John:
And here are some stats and breakdowns.
John:
Women over 18 are 36 percent.
John:
Boys 18 or younger are 17 percent.
John:
So twice as many women twice as many adult women play games as juvenile boys do.
John:
And they say 51 percent of U.S.
John:
homes have a game console and there's an average of two game consoles in each house that has any.
John:
uh so like i said most game players are more or less our age i'm older than 31 you guys are also you're both older than 31 right i am 31 yep there you go so you are exactly the average age of a gamer uh and i think it makes sense because our people your age marco and my age are basically like video games were invented more or less when we were young by the time we were old enough to play them they were popular uh we played them we grew up we continue to play them whereas people who were
John:
you know, 30 years old before the Atari 2600 was introduced are much less likely, I think, to have gotten into it.
John:
So we are sort of the first generation of people to have grown up with games, and it makes sense that we continue to play them, whereas the people who are sort of ahead of us may have never gotten into it at all.
John:
And I think I made all these points in the last show, people talking about growing out of games and stuff.
John:
and tweeting about it and so on and saying, well, I don't do it as much now as I used to.
John:
You may grow out of the games that you played when you were a child in the same way you grow out of the books that you read.
John:
You don't read little golden books anymore.
John:
You don't watch Hanna-Barbera cartoons anymore.
John:
There are many things you did as a child that you grow out of, but video games...
John:
are a medium uh and they're fairly diverse and so even though you of course you don't have the time to play games that used to because you don't have time to do anything enough time to just pick any any sort of leisure time activity you of course you have more time of that when you're a kid uh but as you get older you will like different games just like you like different movies and different television shows and different books and that i think is natural i think a lot of the people who say well i grew out of games you know all i do now is
John:
And then they insert like the three games that they play.
John:
But I barely have time for that.
John:
Well, yeah, so of course you barely have time for it.
John:
But if you're still playing games like that, then you didn't really grow out of games.
John:
You just grew out of the games that you played as a child.
John:
It's true that some people never grow out of the games they played as a child.
John:
Maybe they played Super Mario Bros.
John:
as a child.
John:
They love Super Mario Bros.
John:
to this day and they keep playing it.
John:
That's fine, too.
John:
Same thing with books.
John:
I mean, how many adults out there read young adult books as like, you know, and love them?
John:
Like the Harry Potter series is a good example, or a lot of these things, even like the Hunger Games and stuff like that.
John:
A lot of these books are technically young adult books, but many adults enjoy them.
John:
Did they not grow out of that?
John:
Should they have grown out of books?
John:
Should they have grown out of those specific books?
John:
I don't think it's an important distinction, but the idea that games are something that most people played when they were a kid and don't play anymore, I think is not borne out by the statistics, at least in the United States.
Marco:
do people count as gamers if they just have like angry birds and thought on their phones versus like a console game or a PC game?
Marco:
Like, is there a distinction and should there be a distinction?
Marco:
And maybe the, maybe the answer is no, but, but should there be a distinction between like people who have a couple of casual games on their phone versus people who, who like, you know, own dedicated gaming hardware or have bought like a 40 or $50 game before?
Yeah.
John:
I don't think they're making those kind of distinctions.
John:
I think they consider all games games, and so would I. If you say, well, I don't play games, all I do is, and then you insert some iOS game that you obsessively play in every moment of spare time.
John:
Yeah, you play games.
John:
They do add information on consoles, which you would consider like that's not casual, right?
John:
I don't know if that's still true, but like this thing is saying 51% of homes have a game console in them.
John:
Someone in those homes is playing those games, right?
John:
And so, you know, it's not like, well, 51% of homes have game consoles, but the only people play game consoles are the 17% of gamers who are male and younger than 18.
John:
Like that seems...
John:
unlikely but anyway i count them all as games like there's ios there are plenty of legitimate games on ios i mean maybe they're not counting like solitaire and minesweeper but i think maybe these days those have sort of uh fallen by the wayside but yeah i don't i don't think there's a useful distinction between that's not a real game that's like that's not a real book that's just a i don't know a mystery novel a romance novel do these not count as real books or something it has to be you know tolstoy a game is a game is a game fair enough
Casey:
Actually I do have a question for you.
Casey:
Does Tina get involved in any of the video gaming around your house?
John:
She plays games on her phone a lot, and I think that's where she plays the majority of her games, but at various times she has been very into, as an adult, very into both console games and computer games.
John:
But these days, any time she... I don't want to reveal her dirty gaming secrets, but certain iOS games that have the ability to get their hooks into people have gotten their hooks into her, and so she is very susceptible to that.
John:
I don't approve of most of the games that she plays, but she definitely does play them.
John:
fair enough now what about your kids because i i know your son last i heard is really into minecraft um is that still the case yes minecraft has destroyed his life and ours he he had a very diverse gaming education up until the age of you know i guess like nine uh sometime in his ninth year of life minecraft came in and destroyed everything else having to do with his life he is obsessed with minecraft and
John:
Has he played any game other than Minecraft recently?
John:
I don't think so.
John:
He's totally obsessed.
Casey:
And neither your son nor daughter got into the Wii U very much?
John:
Well, I mean, when his friends come over, he plays the Wii U with his friends, because I guess Minecraft is not as much of a social game.
John:
So he does still play that, and I assume then the next... Recently, I've been playing games that he can't play with me, but I'm assuming the next game that we can all play together comes out, he'll play with me, like the next Zelda game or...
John:
uh what do you call it god i can't even remember the name anymore because now yeah the last guardian if that ever comes out he'll play that with me uh but he's not clamoring to play those games we have all these game consoles hooked up and i've been playing games on them more than he has so but yeah like it's it's like it's natural for kids his age to get obsessed with things like this i mean just ask marco with his total annihilation units and everything
John:
At a certain point, you get really into one game.
John:
Like, yeah, you like lots of games, and then a certain game comes and it just absorbs you.
John:
And this has happened with Minecraft.
John:
My daughter, I keep trying to get her to play games many, many times on many different consoles and on the computer.
John:
She'll play a little bit of kind of casual games on iOS, but she's just not into it.
John:
I don't want to really push it, but I keep putting them in front of her.
John:
I actually had her play Monument Valley, and that, I think, was about her speed.
John:
I still haven't played that yet.
John:
She just turned seven.
Marco:
I did buy that game and have not even opened it.
Marco:
Like now, ever since iOS 6, I believe, added that new badge on apps so that you could tell if you have an app that you've never launched before.
Marco:
I've really been shamed by those badges on my phone because it's all games.
Marco:
And there's like there's I probably right now my phone probably have like seven or eight games that I bought in the last six months.
John:
that i haven't even launched yet like i want to be a gamer in theory but i never decide to spend the time doing that monument valley is uh actually a great example of an application that takes advantage of retina uh if they go out it doesn't matter for games who cares half of those are low res 3d things scaled up to but uh this monument valley has graphics that really benefit from from the retina resolution because they're just such
John:
beautiful little finely detailed things it's not it's not like a typical 3d game with stuff flying all over the place it's just you know it's very precise uh and it looks great in retina i think the game itself i think it's more of a casual game i think it is very beautiful and interesting but it's way too easy for anyone who's an actual you know experienced gamer and plays games a lot uh and it's a little bit short i don't really care about length that's not like i'm buying it for the length if it was short and fulfilling i feel like it just
John:
There should have been a little bit more there in terms of the overall experience.
John:
Maybe if it was harder and I had more of a challenge, but I recommend it for lots of people who find the games that I enjoy too challenging.
John:
So I think that's why I had my daughter play.
John:
It's like, well, you'll be able to play this.
John:
You'll be able to do well, and it will challenge you a little bit.
John:
I think you'd be bored by it, Marco, but you should still just launch it just to look at the graphics because, like I said, it's the rare game that...
John:
I can't even imagine on a non-retina screen being half as nice looking.
Casey:
So you said that it's probably way too easy for an experienced gamer.
Casey:
So I'm now a little concerned that I won't be able to handle it.
John:
You will.
John:
It's not.
Casey:
I'm kidding.
Casey:
I'm kidding.
Casey:
I need to try it.
Casey:
I haven't bought it yet.
Casey:
I keep forgetting about it anytime I'm sitting in front of my phone or iPad just goofing off.
Casey:
I need to get it.
John:
although i may i don't know like maybe my things are skewed because i have seen tweets from people talking about like not so much getting stuck but having difficulty and i can't tell if they're joking so maybe my idea of what's difficult and what's not is totally skewed so one of you should just play it like just play through two levels it'll take you five minutes and just tell me it wasn't that like there's almost no choice like it leads you it's it is very linear there's not many places that you can go wrong
John:
I mean, the same could be said of journey, but it's different.
John:
Anyway, try it.
John:
Homework for you, too.
Casey:
If I try the first two levels and it takes me 35 minutes, should I not admit that?
John:
It will not.
John:
The first level will take you 30 seconds.
John:
The second level should take you about two minutes.
Marco:
One more quick theory about gaming and losing interest in gaming over time.
Marco:
And maybe this is just me.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
And John, I'm sure you're going to have a good explanation for this.
Marco:
I've found that one of the biggest factors I think that got me out of gaming, and maybe it's just coincidence because it overlapped my age progression and my work progression, but one of the things I think got me out of gaming is so many of the types of games that I enjoyed
Marco:
fell out of favor, and we would get almost none of them made anymore.
Marco:
So, for example, I love 2D platformer games.
Marco:
Sonic, Mario, any of the good 2D platformers, I love those.
Marco:
But almost nobody makes 2D platformers anymore.
Marco:
Incorrect.
Marco:
Well, hold on, hold on.
Marco:
And I did play that awesome one on Xbox Live, Shadow Complex, I think it's called.
Marco:
I did play that one and loved it.
Marco:
And so, you know, for a while, and maybe now the indie scene is getting this back, fortunately, but for a while, like, once the 3D systems came out, the PlayStation, the N64, the Saturn, it became, like, 2D platformers basically went extinct for a while.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And the same thing happened with RTS games, where I loved RTS games, as you mentioned in my Total Annihilation phase earlier.
Marco:
Loved RTS games through almost my entire teenagehood, if that's a word.
Marco:
And then RTS has kind of stopped being made very well after maybe 2003, 2004-ish.
Marco:
Like, Supreme Commander was a big one that was awesome, but nobody bought it.
Marco:
And then...
Marco:
They kind of went by the wayside as fantasy and MMOs kind of took over.
Marco:
So that kind of bothered me too.
Marco:
And now iOS... I also love turn-based strategy games, but those are very few and far between and are almost never commercial hits.
Marco:
And now with iOS...
Marco:
Some of the best casual games, you know, are... They used to be great in iOS.
Marco:
You get them for, like, five bucks, and they were awesome.
Marco:
And now they've all been ruined with freemium and free-to-play and all that crap.
Marco:
And so I wonder, like, you know, is this just me?
Marco:
Am I just...
Marco:
kind of missing the new stuff because I stopped looking around like I do with PHP?
Marco:
Or is this a legitimate reason why I've been kind of kicked out of gaming for a while?
Marco:
I don't know.
John:
Well, there's two things here.
John:
One, there are...
John:
genres that become more and less popular over time think of in terms of movies like murder mystery movies where the whole plot of the movie is someone is murdered and you have to figure out who it is you don't see a lot of them anymore uh you do see some of them but like that that genre has become less popular over time so that does happen and it comes in cycles you know what's popular now uh it may not be what's popular 50 years from now and
John:
goes around circles um on that front by the way the reason i said incorrect for the 2d games is right now there's a massive renaissance in 2d platformers which i don't particularly like because i'm not into 2d platformers but they're all over the place and not just indie games nintendo has been putting out brand new 2d mario games that i enjoy way less than their 3d versions and there's just a constant stream of them and those are not indie things those are like you know
John:
They're Nintendo flagship titles and tons of indie ones.
John:
So if you're into 2D platforming, like you cannot throw a rock without hitting a 2D platformer.
John:
But one of the genres you mentioned, real-time strategy, the type of real-time strategy game you're talking about, like isometric sprite-based, you know,
John:
2d map kind of thing like even before the age of 3d hey wait hang on a second total annihilation was none of those by the way go ahead all right i don't know what vintage your real-time strategy games are but yes they eventually went 3d and you could yeah anyway uh they became less popular a lot of the reason they became less popular is because computers became more able to do the genres that became more popular so once first-person shooters started to take over the entire universe and you could do any genre in first-person perspective so there was first-person everything uh
John:
real-time strategy games became less popular.
John:
They're still out there.
John:
I mean, there's still StarCraft.
John:
There's the things that they've kind of, you know, that same type of perspective you'll see.
John:
Diablo is not a real-time strategy game, but it's a similar perspective in that you're looking down on what looks like a little board and clicking on people and doing things.
John:
So, yeah, if you get really into a particular game and a particular genre and a particular implementation of that genre, because people like, well, I like real time strategy games, but I don't like the ones that do X, Y and Z. I only like the ones that like when I was I think I talked about myth on a past show about how much I liked it.
John:
It was so different than other RTS games.
John:
If you're into those specifics, you may have to wait for another one of those things to come around.
John:
But what I would say is that the things you like about that type of game exist in other games, and you shouldn't really be married to the genre.
John:
If you just like watching murder mysteries, it's like, what is it that I like about murder mysteries?
John:
Do I like the fact that someone gets killed and I could get the same thing out of a horror movie?
John:
Do I like the fact that there's suspense and I could get it out of...
John:
a different kind of thriller or am i just looking for a puzzle that i have to solve and instead i should be watching the you know m night Shyamalan movies with a stupid twist i mean like what you were getting out of those games the things you enjoy systemizing things micromanaging things you know do you enjoy like working the tech trees there's a lot of games you can play now perhaps like a role-playing game with a big crafting tree and like character development like you may be able to get the same experiences out of different types of games
John:
Or it may be that you just really like real-time strategy games and you just have to wait until something like that becomes popular again.
John:
That's conceivable, too.
John:
And like I said, it's the same thing at every other medium.
John:
What kind of books are popular now?
John:
What kind of movies?
John:
What kind of TV shows?
John:
I mean, look at TV for crying out loud.
John:
If you are totally into formulaic half-an-hour sitcoms, it's there.
John:
It's so hard to find now because everyone has to have some sort of twist or angle, and the one-hour drama is hugely popular now.
John:
The one hour drama was like an aberration, you know, 20, 30 years ago.
John:
And now it's like everything has to be this gritty one hour drama.
John:
Like they make a show about Sleepy Hollow and it's like this big gritty thing, you know.
John:
And whereas like the old sitcoms are they used to be everywhere.
John:
Now they're very rare and each one of them has some weird twist about them.
John:
So I think that's part of it.
John:
But like I said, gaming is not as broad as books, movies or TVs.
John:
Not yet anyway, but it's getting close.
John:
But there's probably something out there that you would get the same type of enjoyment out of.
John:
And who knows, like maybe if you're like, oh, they don't make murder mystery movies anymore.
John:
All of a sudden you start going to see like, you know, goofy comedies.
John:
You may find out, hey, I never watched goofy comedies before, but I really enjoy them.
John:
So there's there's a lot out there.
Casey:
You know, the funny thing for me is, to take this aside just a smidge, is that I find that I get really into certain games, but only for a very small window of time.
Casey:
And most recently, it's been iOS games.
Casey:
But I think I mentioned last episode, or I might have, that I played Metal Gear Solid the whole way through.
Casey:
I used to love the Zelda games.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Well, I played Ocarina of Time, and I don't think I ever had whatever it was for the Wii.
Casey:
But I'll find these games that I just am obsessed with.
Casey:
So I'm looking at my iPhone, and I only have a handful of games on there.
Casey:
But right when the iPhone came out, I played the crap out of flight control forever.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
When the incident came out, I loved that.
Casey:
Letterpress loved that.
Casey:
Tiny Wings.
Casey:
Ramp Champ by the Icon Factory, which is a much better game than a lot of people gave it credit for.
Casey:
Threes, when that came out recently.
Casey:
So all these games, I'm madly in love with them, and I'll play them to death.
Casey:
Not unlike what I do when I find a song I like.
Casey:
And then I just never look back.
Casey:
So I haven't played threes in like a month.
Casey:
And I was playing it nonstop for two or three weeks.
Casey:
And maybe that's just my personality.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
It's just the way I've approached gaming lately.
John:
You're in the middle of a letterpress game against me, Casey.
John:
So anytime you want to move.
John:
Like six months.
Casey:
I was about to say, I haven't opened that app in forever.
Casey:
It's not that it's bad.
Casey:
Like, I still do enjoy it when I open it, but I just never think about it anymore.
Casey:
And I think I heard Marco say that you're the same way.
Casey:
Like, I get these obsessions, but then just as quickly as I get the obsession, then it's done.
John:
That's why, like, with my limited time as an adult and a parent and all this other stuff, the type of game that I gravitate to are in two kinds.
John:
One is the kind that I can just spend for a couple of minutes of fun, like, whatever.
John:
Let's do these asynchronous turn-based games like Letterpress or Words with Friends.
John:
And three is, even though it's single-player, you know, it's just like, yeah, whatever, just some quick fun.
John:
And the other type of game I like is the kind, kind of like the, like, True Detective or the new popular thing of one-hour dramas that have a season-long arc that ends and then the cast changes.
John:
There's a couple of shows doing that now.
John:
And that, I think, is a good model because people are like, I don't want to invest in this show that could go on some X number of seasons and might not have a satisfying ending or whatever, like where I met your mother or how I met your mother.
John:
I don't even watch that show.
John:
But it's like, well, if people don't have a lot of time, let's make a one-hour thing, a one-season arc that you can consume as a thing and be satisfied with.
John:
And so the video games that I, the non-casual video games that I play are ones that are going to give me an experience for a defined amount of time, and it's not going to be open-ended, and I'm going to play through it.
John:
I mean, not necessarily that they're story-based games, because Journey is not really a story-based game, but that's two hours of gameplay.
John:
In and out, like, that is the perfect, you know, it's cheap, I can get it as a digital download.
John:
amazingly enjoyable for me loved it two hours done and even something like the last of us i think i only i don't remember how many hours i put into that maybe 16 or 11 or 20 i don't remember what the stat was but that's a little bit longer but it's it's a single player there is a multiplayer aspect that i don't care about single player game with a story i play it it has a beginning middle and end and i'm done
John:
It's not like I feel guilty, like, oh, I never go back to it.
John:
Yeah, I finished it.
John:
I played the game like there is a it is a unit of entertainment.
John:
It just happens to be a longer unit than a movie, but actually a similar length to watching True Detective, for example.
Marco:
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Marco:
Now, you can get 20% off by using coupon code ATP, which also lets them know that you came from the show, so please do that.
Marco:
Once again, this is Fracture.
Marco:
Go to FractureMe.com and use coupon code ATP to get 20% off.
Marco:
Really fantastic stuff.
Marco:
Love their prints.
Marco:
Once again, FractureMe.com, ATP coupon code.
Marco:
Thank you very much.
Casey:
So we should take note that we have finally, the three of us, figured out a design that we felt was worthy of printing a t-shirt, mostly because we wanted to get it out for WWDC like all the cool kids do, and we were running out of time.
Casey:
So we have t-shirts available for sale.
Casey:
We are recording this on the last day of April of 2014.
Casey:
And they are going to be available for purchase until May 11.
Casey:
Is that right?
Marco:
Something like that.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah, they have a little over week.
Casey:
So we'll talk about this one more time and only one more time on the next episode.
Casey:
They are $19.
Casey:
They have basically a stylized version of our show art on the front and a little surprise on the back.
Casey:
I don't know if you want to talk about that or you want to leave it as a small surprise.
Casey:
That's up to you, Marco.
Marco:
I think you should check it out.
Marco:
I think you should go to the final URL.
Marco:
The thing is teespring.com slash accidental.
Yeah.
Marco:
However, we made a little shortcut in case you don't know how to spell Teespring.
Marco:
If you go to ATP.FM slash shirt, it will redirect you to the shirt.
Marco:
So ATP.FM slash shirt.
Marco:
You must buy this shirt within the next roughly 10 days or so.
Marco:
And actually, by the time this episode comes out, it's going to be more like eight days.
Marco:
So hurry up and buy the shirt.
Marco:
We've already sold a lot past the goal.
Marco:
So this is awesome.
Marco:
Thank you very much.
Marco:
And so these will definitely be printed and made.
Marco:
They will make it in time for the US for WWDC probably.
Marco:
uh internationally it depends on where you live we've heard reports of some of them coming right before some of them coming right after so we can't really guarantee internationally but uh in the u.s they should be there in time for wdc and um and yeah so check it out uh teespring.com slash accidental or atp.fm slash shirt
John:
And keep in mind that since we are so... It's so difficult for us to pick a design that we like.
John:
If we have shirts next year, it's very likely that it will be a different design.
John:
So even if you are living internationally or aren't going to WWDC at all anyway...
John:
Don't worry so much about whether you're going to get it in time for this year's WWDC.
John:
If you order it now, you'll have it for next year's WWDC.
John:
And next year's shirt, if there is one, will very likely be different.
John:
So this may be the only time to buy this shirt.
John:
You can decide whether that's a good or bad thing when you go look at the shirt.
John:
But please do keep that in mind.
John:
Because tons of people keep asking me if they want to order hypercritical shirts.
John:
And I did hypercritical shirts already, and I'm not sure I'm doing them again.
Casey:
anytime soon if ever and those people should have ordered when they were available for sale so don't let this happen to you order them when they're available for sale yeah and i also wonder for those who are international i have not tried this myself obviously but i wonder if you could you know arrange with your hotel hey would you accept a package for me or so on and so forth so you might even be able to get it delivered to your hotel
Marco:
I know that is a possibility.
Marco:
So, I mean, the hotels usually will charge for that.
Marco:
But I know it is possible because I did that one year to get a shirt delivered to a hotel at the conference.
Marco:
But look into it anyway.
Marco:
And also because... So Teespring is kind of like Kickstarter where...
Marco:
They have the buying period for a limited time, and then they do the whole run at once.
Marco:
They print them all, and that's it.
Marco:
You can't order them after that.
Marco:
So it is very unlikely, I think, that we will get our act together and make a new design that we like in the next year.
Marco:
So definitely, if you want a shirt anytime between now and next May, you should probably buy this one.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Thanks a lot.
Casey:
Okay, so we were actually, I was a little nervous about not having a lot to talk about on this show.
Casey:
And then just today, Facebook decided to try their own hand at xCallbackURL, which was surprising for me anyway.
Casey:
So they came out with Facebook app links.
Casey:
And I should probably point out, I guess it's the Pulse.
Casey:
What is it?
Casey:
It's not a subsidiary of Facebook.
Casey:
I'm not familiar with what Pulse is, but I guess it came from there.
Casey:
Do you guys know what that is?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
The basic premise of AppLinks is that if a user taps on a link on a mobile device and that link belongs to a website that in turn offers the same content in a native app with better features than a web view, the link could automatically redirect the user to the app if installed on the App Store with support for deep linking to content inside the app.
Casey:
The goal, according to Facebook, actually, I guess there isn't from this site.
Casey:
Anyway, the goal, according to Facebook, is to provide the best experience to a user who clicks a link on a mobile device with features to control what happens when a link is clicked on iOS, Android, or Windows phone.
Casey:
Is that from Federico's write-up, actually?
John:
Yeah, I think it is.
John:
Okay.
John:
So I pasted in this paragraph.
John:
First of all, I saw this Facebook app link thing like 15 minutes before the show started, so I know very little about it.
John:
But I pasted in this thing because it sounds like something I would never, ever want.
John:
Like the idea that I'm on a website and I tap on a link and it shoves me, it takes me out of the web browser, puts me into an app and shoves me into some deep thing in the app.
John:
The example in the video was like, say you're on a website and you see a movie that you like and you want to know if it's playing towards you and you tap on it and it launches a movie app and takes me into there and about like,
John:
I know that their example is like, yeah, it's annoying to have to go back to the home screen, launch your ticket buying app, do the same search you just did on the web.
John:
But like if I'm in a website and I found the thing, I would like to buy it there on the web.
John:
I hate being I hate that little banner that comes down and says, hey, I know you're looking at our website, but did you know we have an app?
John:
You should try that.
John:
The whole idea that, like, the app could provide better features than the web view.
John:
Look, if I'm in a web browser and I'm doing stuff, I want to just do it on the web.
John:
Like, I'm not saying that native apps don't have a place, but if I'm navigating around the web, the last thing I want is to be chucked into an application, deep-linked or otherwise.
John:
So I do not like the idea of this thing.
John:
Like, I'm assuming people are commenting on this about, like,
John:
the inter-app communication thing that maybe iOS will do something about, iOS 8 will do something about or whatever.
John:
We'll talk about that in our WWC prediction show in the future, I'm sure.
John:
But that's about native apps talking to each other and cooperating, you know, multiple native apps coordinating to get a single job done.
John:
And I guess the web browser is one of those other native apps.
John:
But if I'm on a web page, like, I don't like those two things being, I don't like switching between those two things.
John:
I don't care.
John:
how coordinated they can be about where I jump back and forth.
John:
I question whether jumping out at all is ever the right thing to do.
Casey:
Well, and see, generally speaking, I would agree with you that if I'm in the browser, it's probably a deliberate action, and I want to remain in the browser.
Casey:
And the app banners, whatever they're called, at the top, they just get in the way and are very annoying, especially in the case that the app is already installed.
Casey:
Well, maybe less so if you're trying to advertise that you have an app.
Casey:
In any case, the one time where I think this makes a lot of sense is if, for example, for some reason I've browsed something in Safari and I end up on some really heavy media app.
Casey:
Let's take Spotify, for example.
Casey:
I'm probably going to want to listen to whatever the song or playlist or what have you is in Spotify's app rather than in mobile Safari.
Casey:
So for things like that, it makes sense.
Casey:
But other than that, I tend to agree with you, John.
John:
I guess it's not the capability that's bad so much.
John:
It's just that I see the potential for abuse.
John:
And that if there was a big badge that was like, open this up and insert name of native app here, and it was clear that that's what it was going to do, it's fine.
John:
But these websites, these companies are so desperate to get you to install and use their app.
John:
I don't know why.
John:
They just, you know, better engagement with our... I'm not going to do Marco's voice.
Marco:
Brands.
Yeah.
John:
Like, it's just annoying.
John:
It's like, I would rather you just make your website good and I'll use your app if I want to.
John:
But, like, now if we give them the ability to make every single link a potential minefield that's going to take you out into some native app, I'm not enthusiastic about this.
Marco:
Yeah, I think definitely, I totally agree that this has nothing to do with xCallbackURL or internet communication, really.
Marco:
That's a different problem.
Marco:
I think there's a couple problems with this.
Marco:
I agree with everything John said so far, which is that
Marco:
Yeah, there are probably some conditions where this is what you'd want as a user, but there's also probably just as many, if not more, where it's not what you'd want as a user.
Marco:
And yeah, you could then prompt the user to ask what they want, but then that's more clunkiness, more complexity.
Marco:
It's one of those things where...
Marco:
I have a feeling this solves a problem that Facebook thinks they have, and they assume everyone else has the same problem, but it doesn't really... There's probably not a good problem to be solved in a good way here.
Marco:
Furthermore, I don't know how they could possibly get this to work very well or very effectively in their real world, because the most common mobile browsers are Mobile Safari and Chrome, at least the ones that are actually used for web browsing instead of sitting in a drawer or playing videos.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
I don't see... Apple, there's almost no chance in hell they would ever implement this in mobile Safari, so that's out.
Marco:
Any chance of a plugin architecture in mobile Safari that would enable plugins for this is probably also out.
Marco:
Google, including this in Chrome, maybe, but Google hates Facebook.
Marco:
So I don't know if that's going to happen either.
Marco:
You know, what's in it for them?
Marco:
Probably nothing.
John:
Does this require browser support?
John:
I didn't even read enough of it to know whether it requires browser support.
Casey:
Well, in the documentation, I read through all the documentation, and I didn't like it.
Casey:
I didn't think it was very good.
Casey:
I thought their examples were... Examples are always contrived, but these were crummy.
Casey:
They were just crummy examples.
Casey:
But the way I understood it is...
Casey:
If you tap a link in, or if you end up on a page in a web browser, including like a UI web view in, say, Tweetbot, for example, then if you see all these meta tags, meta tags, whatever they're called, at the top of this HTML document, you can say, oh, I can build a URL based on the information in these meta tags and make a check that
Casey:
you know, with iOS and say, hey, does this URL, is this a URL that you know about?
Casey:
And if so, just quietly, well, I guess not so quietly, actually redirect into the app.
Casey:
So say I'm in TweetBot, I land on, I'm using a browser in TweetBot, I land on a Spotify page, then TweetBot can say, oh, I see that there's this app link or whatever it's called.
Casey:
And I see that Spotify is installed on Casey's phone.
Casey:
So let me just punch you over to Spotify.
Casey:
Marco, did you read into this at all?
John:
no i i actually spent about five minutes before the show looking at this because i i could i didn't see it before then but so i could be totally wrong on this yeah i mean that's the way i interpreted it hopefully we'll either get a lot of emails saying i'm right or a couple emails saying i'm wrong well the key diagram on the site is the one that's like hey it works across you know windows phone and android and ios and like right away well apple has no interest in this and the thing is if apple has no interest in it
John:
And I think as Renee tweeted, that's why the link to Renee in our show notes is like, doing this right before WWDC, there's a reasonable chance, I'm not going to say a good bet, but there's a reasonable chance that Apple might have some similar type of thing having to do with maybe like a better version of X callback URL or something.
John:
Whatever Apple decides to do that's remotely in this area, that's what Apple's going to do.
John:
That's what they're going to support.
John:
And that's what everybody on the iOS platform is going to support.
John:
Making a cross-platform standard is so hard when one of the vendors, Apple,
John:
is just going to ignore you forever.
John:
And might potentially do its own thing.
John:
Because if Apple does its own thing, people will do whatever the hell iOS supports.
John:
Because it is still by far the most popular platform for games where people actually give you money.
John:
Or for applications, not just games.
John:
But half games.
John:
Anyway.
John:
uh yeah so i totally expect apple to ignore this and if apple ignores it it's a non-starter for the apple platform anyway and that means it's never going to be cross cross platform i know it's an open standard and blah blah blah but good luck getting apple to sign in with that like your best bet would be to get it to be supported as like a w3c standard because apple does support those but
John:
something coming from facebook and you know trying to solve their cross-platform development difficulties apple is just not interested in that at all and that's not to say that anything because apple is the one who added that stupid annoying dialogue box and
John:
i i complained about that dialogue box says hey download your app but before they did that it was every individual website doing something even worse in client in client-side javascript uh to do the same feature so really i'm mad at everybody who keeps trying to make me get their app apple apple adding the feature to standardize it at least standardizes the annoyance and makes it like it doesn't slow down the browser as much because it's no longer terrible client-side javascript running but it's no longer a modal dialogue box
John:
Or something that would animate, but they wouldn't use the GPU's accelerated animation, so it would be like JavaScript redrawing.
John:
It was bad.
Casey:
Yeah, so reading more on Vatici's article, quoting again, apps that implement apps...
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
I mean, I guess that's nice, but to both your points, without Safari supporting this, I don't see how this is going to be that fantastic.
Marco:
By the way, this also requires a page fetch.
Marco:
It requires for, let's say you open a link in TweetBot, it requires TweetBot to first fetch the HTML of the page, parse it, look for these tags, and then possibly offer you the option to redirect into an app.
Marco:
So that's pretty crappy.
John:
Yeah, the reason I put that quote in there, the one that Casey just read, was not because of the information, but because I wanted to shame the copywriter who wrote it.
John:
So the little bit was like, app links will be able to scan a link that's been tapped by the user and, comma, in a matter of seconds, comma, understand whether it can be open in a matter of seconds.
John:
I sure as hell hope not.
John:
I know it's an expression, but the copywriter, that's the wrong order of magnitude for how long it should really take to scan for links in HTML.
John:
Because if it really does take seconds, there's a serious problem.
Marco:
Well, and even the wording there, scan a link, that's not really true.
Marco:
It's, you know, fetch the contents of a link and then look at the contents to see if maybe you can open it.
Marco:
I mean, that's a different proposition.
Marco:
I don't see this being widely adopted.
Marco:
You know, John, as you said, if there's no chance that Apple's going to implement this, which I'm pretty sure that's the case, then how much of a standard is it?
Marco:
platform-itis going on, and they always have.
Marco:
This is nothing new.
Marco:
Where Facebook always comes out, you know, Facebook and Apple both have their, and Google and Amazon, everyone, they all have their own breed of arrogance.
Marco:
And Apple's arrogance is well-known and well-documented.
Marco:
Apple's arrogance is, we're just going to make our own thing, and you can make it a standard if you want to.
Marco:
Facebook's arrogance is, we're going to launch all these platforms and standards that are going to be useful and implemented by everybody, even when that's almost never actually the outcome to what they make.
Marco:
And it almost always just serves them at best, and even they often abandon the things they make.
Marco:
So I think this is a nice-sounding story, but I don't see it being implemented by almost anybody important, and certainly not widely enough to matter.
Yeah.
John:
Yeah, Facebook is not a trusted actor in this relationship, right?
John:
Because it's, you know, yes, they're trying to make an open standard, but it's so clear that it's it is designed to solve a problem that Facebook has, which is how do we deploy our application on all the different platforms?
John:
Apple does not have that particular problem.
John:
Or at the very least has it in a very small version that they still make iTunes for Windows.
John:
But beyond that, they do not want to deploy their software on every mobile platform.
John:
So this isn't a problem they have.
John:
And it's like, why would we why would we get on board with this thing that, yes, it's open and trying to be standardized, but clearly exists to serve Facebook and will probably evolve to continue to serve Facebook?
John:
if we're not sure that like i mean that's what the w3c is the only thing and even that is just like these big companies are all you know on the whatever in these in these working groups for w3c at each other's throats trying to fight for the little details of you know what image elements going to be used for multi-resolution images on the web and whether we should support canvas and all this other stuff and so that is a form in which they feel like it's a more level playing field where all the big companies are at each other's throats trying to deal with web standards
John:
And whatever gets through, more or less Apple implements.
John:
But Apple also does the thing where it proposes a standard, then implements it and ships it to millions and millions of people and says, well, we already kind of implemented this and shipped it to everybody.
John:
Does that help you guys think maybe you should adopt it as a standard W3C?
John:
Like, it's not a...
John:
Yeah, that's how standards work in the real world.
John:
The sort of, you know, kumbaya, sit around the campfire, I think we're all going to get along type of thing.
John:
Like, oh, Facebook released it at OpenStandard.
John:
Everyone should use it now.
John:
That's never what it's like.
Casey:
So what is the...
Casey:
What is benefiting Facebook by having a standard way with which to deep link into an app?
Casey:
Because that's the ostensible premise behind this is not only that you can launch an app, which everyone knows how to do reasonably easily.
Casey:
But here's a standard by which we define what data you're passing to that app or that needs to be passed that app in order to get to the exact content you want.
Casey:
So what's the play for Facebook here?
Marco:
Well, it's pretty obvious.
Marco:
It's for Facebook's app.
Marco:
Let's say Facebook obviously encourages sharing all their crap as much as possible.
Marco:
Let's say you hit a sharing link in something that goes to a Facebook property.
Marco:
They want to be able to launch one of their apps directly into that so that they control the whole experience and it isn't just showing their web page or it goes right to their app and they get more information or it's faster for the user so they don't have to go through the web first.
Marco:
They clearly want this for themselves.
Marco:
I mean, that's why they did it.
John:
Didn't Facebook just have... I was seeing tweets about it today.
John:
Didn't they have their little developer PR thing or some kind of... Yeah, it's called fate.
Casey:
Oh, God, I didn't even think of it that way.
John:
Anyway, I did not watch this speech thing, but from what I've seen from Facebook in past months, I'm going to pretend that I did and pretend this is what they said.
John:
And I imagine that this is all part of the strategy that they have to stop being...
John:
a single thing called Facebook, which is a website that you go to or more abstractly an application that you use through the web browser and other things and start being a series of more special purpose applications circling around this giant hub of information that they have about everybody.
John:
And so I think things like Paper, Paper didn't replace the Facebook app.
John:
It just kind of augments it.
John:
I think what they want to make is a fleet of mobile applications, a fleet of native mobile applications that all cooperate and interoperate with each other and with the Facebook website to make one single unified Facebook experience.
John:
And that's why they want a deep link from Paper into the official Facebook app, from the Facebook website into whatever other app they come out with, like the idea that they're transitioning into...
John:
Well, they already were a platform, but they want to be a different kind of platform where all these different pieces on all these different platforms can all talk to each other and, you know, sort of cooperate.
John:
So in some ways it is kind of like inter-app communication, but all their data is on the web and in the cloud.
John:
And so they have to, their version of inter-app communication is a way to basically deep link from one application to another into the web, out of the web.
John:
So it makes sense from what they want to do.
John:
Why do they think?
John:
They want to do it as an open standard.
John:
That just tends to be the way they do things.
John:
And I think they would be happy if it became commonly supported because then they would have some assurance that the OS or the web browsers or whatever wouldn't change in a way that prevents their nice standard from working, you know?
Casey:
Yeah, I guess.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
At first, I was like, oh, this sounds – actually, no, this doesn't sound that impressive after all.
Marco:
It sounds like a cool idea until you think about it a little bit or try to implement it and start thinking about the realities of it and how Apple will never support mobile Safari and everything.
Marco:
It kind of falls apart under scrutiny, I think.
Casey:
Yeah, that's a very good way of phrasing it.
Casey:
What else is cool these days?
Marco:
Our friends at Backblaze.
Marco:
We are also sponsored this week once again by Backblaze, which I still pronounce sometimes in my head as Backblase, because I think it sounds fancier.
Oh, God.
Marco:
Anyway, they're awesome.
Marco:
So Backblaze is online backup for $5 a month.
Marco:
It's a Mac-native app, and that $5 a month gets you unlimited, unthrottled, uncomplicated backup.
Marco:
We've talked a lot about the value of online backup here before, and to quote one of John Gruber's sponsor reads, if you don't use this, you're nuts.
Marco:
I mean, online backup is amazing.
Marco:
There's an entire class of problems, hazards, events, where if you just have like a local clone or time machine backup, like sitting in your office next to your computer plugged in, things like power surges, lightning strikes, floods, fires, theft, there's all sorts of bad things that can happen that would affect both the main computer and the backup if all you have is the one in your house.
Marco:
And so online backup takes care of that and a whole bunch of other problems.
Marco:
It's a fantastic solution.
Marco:
I've been using it myself.
Marco:
My wife uses it.
Marco:
We've been using Backblaze for a couple of years at least now.
Marco:
Very happy with it.
Marco:
So they also have easily – you can easily restore –
Marco:
all of your files of course but you can also easily restore just one file right through the web interface you also have an ios app that you can use to access any of your backed up files and even share them if you want to um you there's also they just added email alerts so that you can say for instance like every every i think week or two weeks the email you saying all right this is the status of your backups here's what we have we have this computer we have this many gigs this is the last time it checked in
Marco:
So you can always be confident at what it's doing.
Marco:
And you can, of course, also try to restore anything on the web whenever you want to to confirm that.
Marco:
It's also founded by ex-Apple Engineers.
Marco:
It is a native application.
Marco:
It's not some weird cross-platform runtime thing.
Marco:
It's a native application.
Marco:
It sits in your system preferences.
Marco:
It's also a little menu bar thing.
Marco:
It's pretty nice.
Marco:
It runs natively on Mac and on Mavericks, and there's also a PC application as well.
Marco:
So there's a 15-day trial with no credit card required.
Marco:
You just enter an email and password, and that's it.
Marco:
And once again, once you go to pay for it, it's just $5 per month for a computer.
Marco:
And there's no gimmicks, no add-ons, no additional charges.
Marco:
$5 a month for unlimited, unthrottled backup.
Marco:
It even gets cheaper, actually, if you pay for a whole year up front.
Marco:
So it is by far the simplest online backup to use.
Marco:
Just install it, and it does the rest.
Marco:
Go to backblaze.com slash ATP to get going.
Marco:
Once again, that's backblaze.com slash ATP, and I use it and also recommend it.
Marco:
Thank you very much to Backblaze for sponsoring the show.
Casey:
So God help me, but I'm about to bring up comics.
Casey:
Skip, skip, skip.
Casey:
I actually don't really have that much to say about the Comixology Amazon thing, but I thought I should at least ask you two if you had anything to say.
Casey:
To me, it seems like everyone is acting selfishly as expected, and there's nothing here of note.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
What do you guys think?
Marco:
I think Merlin covered it very well on Back to Work this week, so just listen to that.
Marco:
He did a really good job of covering the nuance of this problem.
Marco:
I mean, I had a quick blog post about it, and I'm not going to rehash it here.
Marco:
Basically, my opinion is that Amazon, as the new owners of Comixology, Amazon is doing what they always do, the kind of thing they always do.
Marco:
It's not really a surprise to anybody, and it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody that Amazon is acting the way they always do.
Marco:
And it kind of sucks, but they have their reasons and that's it.
John:
Whenever we talk about tech topics where there's something that upsets, you know, basically, you know, people who are into following the tech industry and they get angry about it on Twitter and they write blog posts and stuff like that.
John:
There's a couple of different reactions that I see that are, you know, sort of reaction types.
John:
One is the easy one where people like people are partisans for a particular company.
John:
If they like one company, they don't like another company.
John:
Whatever happens, they're going to find out why this proves that Google is evil, why this proves that Apple is evil, like whatever.
John:
Like they have their favorite company.
John:
They have the companies they don't like.
John:
Whatever happens, those people will come out of the woodwork and do that.
John:
So you have people who are really big Amazon fans defending Amazon and people who hate Apple saying it's Apple's fault to come up.
John:
You know, that is straight up.
John:
The other way is people trying to figure out what's really going on and saying, well, it's really nobody's fault.
John:
And they're just kind of sort of trying to do the middle of the road type thing where.
John:
They don't want to assign blame, but they're sad about it.
John:
And it's just like, well, it's just the way it is because everyone just has to be selfish.
John:
It's kind of what Casey said before.
John:
And my reaction to it is always a little bit.
John:
I don't know if it's it's less common or people who have my reaction just don't tweet about it as much.
John:
I come from like a parenting angle where whatever company I like the best, like in this case will be Apple.
John:
Right.
John:
I... Something bad will happen and I will decide that I'm very disappointed in the company that I like.
John:
And so... Can you give him a thumbs down?
John:
Instead of taking it out on the companies... Instead of taking it out on the companies that I don't like, I'm like, oh, well, you, you know, you are the company I don't like and this is your fault.
John:
Instead, I will say, what is it that my company did that caused this to happen?
John:
You know, he's like, I'm disappointed in my child.
John:
Like, that I hold my children to a higher standard, right?
John:
I don't care what other kids are doing.
John:
Why were you involved?
John:
And so...
John:
I mean, maybe that's not the real origin of this thing, but that's just, you know, like the way I was thinking is like my first reaction is always to blame Apple.
John:
Is it because I dislike Apple?
John:
No, it's because I expect more of them.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Like I have a high standard.
John:
I'm disappointed in them.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And we should point out, by the way, what we're talking about in case anyone was living under a rock this week and didn't realize what happened.
Marco:
Comixology, the popular comic buying app for iOS, especially iPad, was bought by Amazon.
Marco:
And then like within a month,
Marco:
they uh amazon did basically exactly what the kindle app does which is they removed the ability for comiXology to have in-app purchase for new comic issues and uh is that even the right term comic issues i'm sorry i'm not a comics person so anyway i'm not sorry
Marco:
Anyway, they removed an app purchase, and so now you have to go out to the Amazon website separately, or the Comixology website owned by Amazon, buy the comics there, and then go into the app and download the things you've bought.
Marco:
It's the exact same way the Kindle app works.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
That's almost entirely just to avoid paying Apple their 30% on in-app purchases.
Marco:
And Apple has a couple of rules that you have to give them their 30% on in-app purchases.
Marco:
And also that if you have a way on your site for people to pay you without going through Apple for something that is digital...
Marco:
Um, you can't advertise that in the app and you can't link to it from the app.
Marco:
So you, so you can't, for instance, like you can't just have an app or like a link in the app that kicks you out to Safari for a second.
Marco:
You enter your credit card stuff on, on your site, avoid Apple's charge and then kicks you back into the app.
Marco:
That's, that's no longer, uh, that was, that was only allowed for like two weeks and then they killed that.
Marco:
So, uh,
Marco:
So the issue is, obviously, you know, Comixology under Amazon, Amazon did not want to keep paying Apple 30%.
Marco:
And many people are blaming Apple for this, including John, I guess.
Marco:
Many people are blaming Apple saying, well, they shouldn't be taking 30% or they shouldn't have that rule that you can't link to your store.
Marco:
And that's certainly something worth discussing.
Marco:
A lot of people are mad at comiXology because they're ruining the experience here, making it much more clunky to buy things and probably eliminating a lot of impulse buys.
Marco:
Because what would happen, I guess, from what I've heard, is that you'd get to the end of a comic and it would ask you to buy the next issue.
Marco:
And you could buy it right there and start reading it.
Marco:
And you can't do that as easily anymore.
Marco:
So that's probably going to impact sales.
John:
Let me explain why I blame Apple for this and have blamed Apple for it ever since they did the same thing with the Kindle app way back when.
John:
And it's not about the particulars.
John:
It's about the big picture.
John:
And the big picture is the technology exists to provide an experience that customers like.
John:
And not only just the customers like, but that actually is beneficial to the people selling the goods as well.
John:
Like you said, the ability to just write in the app, impulse purchase comics.
John:
Every comic I've ever purchased in my life, with the exception of, I think, one flimsy paperback version
John:
anime comic back when i was 15 years old has been through the comiXology app and why because it is so ridiculously easy i'm not even into comics i don't even like comics but i've got the comiXology app and if you read one issue and if it puts that button says do you want to read the next one and it puts a little price like yeah whatever you tap the button like that's the whole killer that is the killer app of the app store the fact that you could with your thumb go all right i'll do that
John:
And the game goes and that goes.
John:
All right.
John:
I mean, that's why the 99 cents, you know, the barrier to entry is so low.
John:
So technology exists for sure to do that.
John:
And the experience is really awesome for customers.
John:
They love it.
John:
And it's usually pretty good for the people selling the stuff, too, because they sell more stuff because the barrier to buying it is less.
John:
anything that prevents that from happening anything that says yeah we could do this and yeah it would be good in all these sorts of ways but i don't care what the but is is the but like well they have to get 30 because it's fair and they want to have a flat i don't i don't want to hear about the reasons all i know is that this is technologically possible it is not financially infeasible uh but it doesn't happen and so you say well apple sets the rule amazon is choosing not to follow them it's amazon's fault for doing that
John:
This is not just one occurrence.
John:
I mean, I guess Kindle is also Amazon as well.
John:
But like a lot of businesses don't have 30 percent to shave off to give to Apple.
John:
And you say, well, they used to pay way more than that brick and mortar retail stores.
John:
That's true as well.
John:
We're supposed to be getting better over time.
John:
And like the the value you're getting out of being in the app store.
John:
Is that worth 30%?
John:
The relationship you had with retail establishments, even though they took more off, was much more complicated in terms of being able to ship, you know, for books, in the case of books, being able to ship things back and dealing with inventory and having a remainders market and like...
John:
I would think that we would be having more efficiencies in the system.
John:
I'm not saying they should charge less than 30%.
John:
I'm not saying they shouldn't charge 30% at all.
John:
I'm saying that it is an Apple's interest as the platform owner to figure out what they have to do to make it.
John:
So there's a good experience that is, is bent is definitely a win, win.
John:
I don't know if it's a win, win, win to use the, you know, the business speak.
John:
I don't know if, if,
John:
Everyone's going to be happy, but at least two of the three parties here are going to be happy with this.
John:
They need to figure out a way to make it happen.
John:
And the second thing that annoys me about it is the strategy tax thing.
John:
And that, oh, by the way, did you know that Apple has a bookstore?
John:
And they pay themselves 30%.
John:
Don't worry.
John:
It's, you know, that...
John:
That seems like, is that the reason they're not doing it?
John:
Because they want to promote iBooks?
John:
Well, I don't think iBooks even sells comics, so probably not in this case.
John:
But in the Kindle store, it really burns me that, you know, Kindle can't, you know, if Kindle wants to sell their books inside the app, which everyone who uses the Kindle app would love, they've got to give Apple 30%.
John:
And really, there was just, I don't think there's 30% hanging around to shave off of these things, right?
John:
And so, yeah, they could just crank up their prices by 30%.
John:
but then they have to match the store on the web store.
John:
Like all these rules that Apple set up are made to introduce inefficiencies in the system to sort of force people to either use their system and therefore not be able to offer people a discount for going to the website or whatever, or don't use it.
John:
And people are choosing not to use it.
John:
And you can say, well, they're playing hardball and that's Amazon's fault, but...
John:
At this point, I think it's clear that Apple's strategy of just holding the line on 30% and saying, nope, we're never going to, you know, it's going to be this way for everybody and that's it.
John:
It's not working.
John:
It's not making people... It's having the opposite effect.
John:
People aren't saying, well, what choice do we have?
John:
I guess we just got to do it because we want to give our customers a good experience and we get more sales.
John:
The opposite is happening.
John:
They're just opting out.
John:
And if they think they're calling Apple's bluff or whatever, I think Apple's bluff is called.
John:
Apple needs to do something about it because...
John:
We want to have, you know, I mean, there are so many other things that aren't as good in Android, but Android at least gives you the option of not paying Google whatever percent if you use your own payment processor.
Marco:
Right, yeah.
Marco:
So on Android, you can, if you use Google, they charge 30% just like the others, but there's no rule against using your own.
Marco:
So you can build in your own and many of the big apps have.
Marco:
And I want to point out also, Amazon, when they sell something, they also tend to usually charge at least 30%, especially on digital goods, especially for smaller publishers, for self-published people.
Marco:
They actually often charge more than 30%.
Marco:
And
Marco:
So this isn't like, you know, Amazon wants to give more to the authors.
Marco:
It's more like Amazon just wants that 30% for themselves.
John:
Well, the authors will get more, but like we're ignoring how Amazon splits up its money because that is a whole separate issue of, yes, you can definitely complain about Amazon.
John:
They're not great about, you know, like they want all the money.
John:
for everything they they want to sell your stuff below cost and give you nothing for they want to give your thing away for free like amazon does that i'm just talking about the relationship between apple and everyone else because that's where the dysfunction is like we could if we could address this and we could buy things inside the thing then the secondary dysfunction would be like okay well how much of this purchase price after apple gets its cut goes to the creator or whatever so like i think that's a little bit of a sideshow and a lot of people like well this is better because some of that 30 will go to the content creators and that's probably true but that's not why like it
John:
Don't hang your hat on that as the reason we shouldn't be able to buy things inside an iOS app.
John:
It is an artificial situation brought on by a platform owner and someone who wants to be on the platform, butting heads.
John:
And the, and we are the loser.
John:
The customers are the loser in this situation.
John:
And in the beginning it was like, well, let's just see how this shakes out.
John:
But now after all these years, I think Apple needs to do something different.
John:
I don't know what that different thing is.
John:
Is it different thing you buy Amazon?
John:
No, it's a different thing.
John:
You, you lower your percentage.
John:
You come up with a different kind of deal.
John:
Like,
John:
Because consumers are suffering for it.
John:
And that, I think, is the primary response.
John:
Apple's like, oh, we just care about making great products.
John:
It is not a great product when it can't buy a Kindle book inside the Kindle app.
John:
It's just not.
Marco:
See, I disagree on this point, on the idea that Apple has to do something, that Apple is somehow losing here or they have to.
Marco:
I mean, there's one side of this that's an entitlement argument that I don't think is entirely fair.
Marco:
One side of this is, you know, well...
Marco:
we should be able to do whatever we want on this computing platform because we're able to do whatever we want on Macs and PCs.
Marco:
But the reality is, iOS is mostly a computing platform, but there's no third-party software that doesn't go through the App Store unless you jailbreak, but that doesn't really count.
John:
But this isn't a technical issue.
John:
This isn't a safety issue.
John:
This isn't a technical issue.
John:
This isn't an ease of use.
John:
It's a capability thing that we know is possible.
John:
It's an artificial business constraint.
Marco:
Well, sure, but okay, so this is only a contentious issue because iOS is the dominant tablet platform for people who buy things and read them on tablets that they also use for anything else in the world.
Marco:
So what if the dominant portable computing platform was, you know, what if it ended up differently?
Marco:
What if the dominant tablet or the dominant portable computing platform was the Sony PSP?
Marco:
Or what if it was the e-ink Kindle?
Marco:
You know, then you look at like the e-ink Kindles.
Marco:
No one ever had apps on that.
Marco:
I mean, they had a quick little KDK thing that died.
Marco:
Thank God it was half-baked at best.
Marco:
You know, you couldn't make apps for the e-ink Kindle.
Marco:
Apple could not make iBooks for the e-ink Kindle.
Marco:
Apple probably also couldn't make iBooks for the PSP.
Marco:
It's a game console.
Marco:
Game consoles work very differently, similar to how the App Store works, although probably on worse terms, I would imagine.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
You look at other types of computing devices that aren't just PCs and Macs, other types of computing devices that are owned by one company, that are kind of vertically integrated, etc.
Marco:
They work usually the same way that Apple does with the same kind of rules or more restrictive or they take bigger cuts.
Marco:
So, and including one of Amazon's own platforms, it is very, very popular, which is the Ian Kindle platform.
Marco:
So, I don't really think that it's, that Apple has to do anything here, or that they're necessarily unjustified, or that they're being excessively greedy.
John:
I really... So, your argument is that because other people do bad things, Apple is also entitled to do bad things?
Marco:
No, my argument is that
Marco:
You, as company X or as individual X, you are not entitled to access Apple's customer base on your own terms that you dictate.
John:
But it's not the Amazon that has the entitlement.
John:
I'm having the entitlement as the customer.
John:
I'm supposed to be the one that Apple is serving.
John:
Like, they're reducing the value of their products to me through this fight that they're having with Amazon over this.
John:
Like, Amazon is certainly, yes, certainly not entitled to access to Apple's customers.
John:
That's what the whole fight is over.
John:
Like, those two companies are fighting, but we are the losers.
John:
We are caught in the middle.
John:
And at a certain point, us being the losers...
John:
affects apple more than it affects amazon because amazon can go anywhere can sell in whoever the amazon cares much less about who the winner is in the whatever space than apple does because amazon will is it was promiscuous we'll try to get you to buy yes they have their own platform too but it's not like they're shunning ios and android they will still sell what they want to sell it's it's us that it's losing and i i was willing to give it a couple of years like to see how it would shake out but
John:
If, for example, Apple had become ridiculously dominant, like they had 90% market share and everything, maybe Amazon would have lost this one.
John:
Maybe they would have gone back to selling in the app, but it didn't work out that way.
John:
And so now I think it's time to readjust.
John:
I just don't see the pressure being that strong on Apple here.
John:
I think Apple is not fulfilling its responsibility as a platform owner to make its products the best they can be for its customers in the long term.
John:
Not just the short term.
John:
Like I said, I was willing to give them a year or two to play hardball and see how it went, but it is going badly for them.
John:
And I blame Apple because they're my child.
Yeah.
Marco:
I will disagree that it's going badly, but also one more thing.
Marco:
I think Apple could probably look at this from another angle and say, if you're proposing a change to App Store policy, you can't just look at it as what would good implementations do with that?
Marco:
What would good people do with that?
Marco:
How would that be used well?
Marco:
You have to also look at it as, how would that be used terribly?
Marco:
How would that be used by scammy people, by crappy companies like King?
Marco:
How would that be used by terrible people and terrible companies?
Marco:
And allowing other in-app purchase systems that Apple does not run...
Marco:
would also introduce a huge risk of an erosion of trust in the payment system by bad actors, like big game companies with in-app purchase schemes, stuff like that.
Marco:
Bad actors having their own credit card input things in their apps that then behave badly.
Marco:
But who's suggesting that, though?
Marco:
No one is suggesting that.
Marco:
Well, so that's one of the options.
Marco:
There's a couple options to solve this.
Marco:
one of the options is to reduce apple's cut let's say they cut it in half to 15 do you think that would change amazon's mind i'm guessing not let's say all the rules stay the same but the cut goes down the most feasible option for them if you're looking like what's the practical solution what do you actually want them to do uh
John:
Two things.
John:
One, on the technical side, they should make it possible for someone with a catalog volume the size of Comixology, let alone Amazon itself.
John:
If there's any limit, Amazon is going to hit it with an Amazon.com app, for example.
John:
It sells everything that Amazon sells because their catalog is massive.
John:
But anyway, make sure that's all set.
John:
Make sure you have a system in place.
John:
And then what I would change about it is it's ridiculous that they have this hard-line thing where it's got to be 70-30 with everyone.
John:
Cut a deal with Amazon.
John:
I think it's not insane.
John:
Like, oh, it's unfair.
John:
Why does Amazon get it?
John:
They get a special deal because they're Amazon.com.
John:
You are not Amazon.com.
John:
You get a different deal.
John:
I don't think that's unreasonable.
John:
And Apple seems so tied to like, it's 70-30.
John:
It never changes.
John:
Everyone is treated equally.
John:
Isn't that nice and fair for everybody?
John:
It stops being a tenable strategy when your consumers are made to have worse experiences because of, I don't know, what crazy principle that you want, like, you know, each individual Apple developer to feel fair.
John:
I don't think it's unreasonable to cut a deal with Amazon.
John:
Figure out what you have to do.
John:
the terms of that deal don't even need to be public i don't care what amazon and apple have to do to or with each other behind closed doors to get this deal to happen just do what you have to do if someone complains hey amazon's getting a special deal when you get to be the size of amazon then you'll get a special deal too like is that crazy am i am i breaking secret rules of the app store by suggesting this insane idea
Marco:
Well, it would be breaking with a lot of precedent.
Marco:
Historically, Apple has generally very consistently enforced the same rules for everybody, big and small, and much to the big companies' chagrin in a lot of cases.
Marco:
But they generally do not negotiate major exceptions to rules like that, even with companies as big as Amazon or Facebook or The New York Times or anything like that.
Marco:
They really have not done that.
Marco:
I agree they haven't.
Marco:
I think it's silly that they haven't.
Marco:
See, I don't know.
Marco:
I mean, there is, you know, a lot of the App Store and a lot of its problems, honestly, are because of this kind of like almost sort of mostly democratic system that it has often been or it is in a lot of respects.
Marco:
Like the top list is, you know, famously minimally filtered.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And so you see crappy scam apps up there all the time because they're not really monitoring it that closely.
Marco:
And it's worth arguing whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.
Marco:
But for the most part, the app store is run on a pretty level playing field where big companies are not allowed to break rules that small companies can't also break.
John:
Well, it's not breaking a rule if you have a deal.
John:
There's anger in the chat room about this.
John:
Here's a couple of the things.
John:
Dented Meat says, do you really think that if Amazon is given a better deal, they will automatically pass the money to the content creators?
John:
No, of course not.
John:
I didn't say that.
John:
I don't think anyone said that.
John:
Again, we're not talking about Amazon divides up the money.
John:
That's a whole separate issue.
John:
That's totally not what I'm talking about.
John:
I don't know what Amazon would do with it.
John:
Probably not because that's not how they work.
John:
Uh, and then people say like comparing it to like bribes and corruption.
John:
This is, it's, it's a business relationship.
John:
When you are, when, when Apple is buying parts from someone who makes like screens or widgets or whatever, they negotiate a deal to buy those screens.
John:
They get a better price than you do if you want to buy 10 of them.
John:
That's business.
John:
That's not bribes and corruption.
John:
That's just how business works.
John:
You get volume discounts.
John:
If you're going to drive a certain amount of business, you get a better deal.
John:
I don't think that's corruption or bribe.
John:
That's just how business works.
John:
It's a contract, and no one else is entitled to see, hey, how much is Samsung paying you for screens?
John:
Apple's not entitled to see that.
John:
That's individual contracts with businesses.
John:
If someone's bringing up antitrust, Apple doesn't have the market share in any market to be...
John:
Even remotely considered for antitrust, except for the crazy people who are going to say that Apple has a monopoly on Apple computers.
John:
And I love that one that everyone gets old.
John:
You know, I understand why you'd want to have uniform rules.
John:
And that's a good idea right up to the point where it seems like there's some sort of problem here.
John:
There is definitely a problem.
John:
And like maybe they can never come to a deal.
John:
Like if they can't come to a deal, they can't come to a deal.
John:
But as far as any of us are aware, they've never even considered this as an option.
John:
I mean, another example is they held the line on, I imagine a lot of the rumors about like Microsoft and Office and why isn't Office available.
John:
Microsoft doesn't want to give Apple 30% of its software sales, right?
John:
And so that went on for a really long time until eventually Microsoft blinked and produced Office, but they found a way to do it without giving Apple a cut because you have to sign up for Office 365 and all this other... Wait, is that true?
Marco:
I thought they were giving Apple the cut if you bought it in the app.
Marco:
For the subscription, you mean?
Casey:
I thought it was a little of both.
Casey:
I thought that the way that Microsoft hopes you go is you already have an Office 365 subscription you got on your own accord.
Casey:
But I believe, Marco, you're also right that there is an in-app purchase of some capacity that Apple does get a cut of.
John:
But like the thing I was talking about early on was Microsoft Office will be available for the iPad.
John:
It'll be $99 and Apple will get 30% of that.
John:
And that's not what Microsoft did.
John:
That's not what happened.
John:
You know, like they have...
John:
The subscription model, you know, the apps are free, right?
John:
It's a free download.
John:
Yep.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And then, so that, that is, you know, it's a different monetization strategy as opposed to simply selling office at a premium price and giving Apple 30% of right off there.
John:
And like, in that case, there would be no way to get office without paying Apple 30%.
John:
And now there is a way you download a free app, go to Microsoft's website where they offer you the same prices, you know, in app purchase.
John:
And even that took a long time to figure out.
John:
I think customers didn't really lose out in that one.
John:
And I think Apple kind of won that battle.
John:
But the battle over an application through which you naturally want to buy things and consume them right in them.
John:
Apple is not winning that battle for whatever reasons.
John:
And I think something should be done about it.
John:
And I mean, thus far, because Google is so incompetent in this area and has not been able to penetrate the market, people aren't like, well, screw Apple.
John:
I'm just going to get an Android dress because you're not like I think the iPad is still better.
John:
You know, I think it's.
John:
Apple still maybe that's what they think too like we're still in the driver's seat eventually we'll win this but there's a lot of years of suffering that's gone on already with the Kindle app and the comiXology is a drop in the bucket and we just see a lot of it because you know we know people who read comics and are angry about it but I think it is a of a type that will continue coming up until someone figures something out.
Casey:
So what about this as a proposed alternative?
Casey:
So the times in which we all get bitter about the 30% seem to be, so far as I can tell, reselling.
Casey:
So Amazon or Comixology is reselling the comics in their app.
Casey:
What if...
Casey:
Apple announced that, hey, if you come to us and can prove to us that you're a reseller, then we'll drop the fee to 15% or something like that.
Casey:
And so for things like games where you're not really reselling anything, then you still have to pay the 30%.
Casey:
And you can't just make a shell company and say, yes, I promise that this shell company isn't me.
Casey:
You have to actually go to someone in Apple and prove to them by whatever means they want that you are simply reselling and you are not providing your own original content.
Casey:
And thus, it's not reasonable to give Apple 30%.
Casey:
You will give them the lower tier cost.
John:
you don't need to think that hard about this you can do things if you're so stuck on doing uniform rules for everybody you just give like volume discounts if you sell x amount of dollars we get x percent and if you sell 10 billion dollars i mean like there are plenty like which microsoft does that yeah these are not like new technologies in the world of business like this is how business has worked forever it's just that the apps the app store is the aberration can we apply this uniformly to everybody and not have any variability for volume so that if you sell three in-app purchases for virtual coins versus 30 billion in-app purchases
John:
when you get exactly the same percentage it's nice and convenient everyone you know but like again it's only a problem until like it's making your platform worse to deploy applications on the kindle app is worse on ios in this respect than it is on other platforms that allow purchase and comiXology just got worse because
John:
Uh, uh,
John:
It's not like I'm saying Amazon is the scorpion here.
John:
It's like, well, it's in its nature.
John:
It's going to do that.
John:
Like, I think Amazon does plenty of evil things too.
John:
All I'm thinking about is why is the platform that I use on my tablet getting worse for me to do things I like to do on it?
John:
And I just want it to be worked out.
Casey:
Marco, before you jump in, I'd just like to point out I understand the Scorpion reference.
John:
That's because I talked about it on Hypercritical and you listened.
Marco:
You know, John, you're assuming that Apple needs to address this.
Marco:
And in your position, you're arguing that... It is an assumption.
Marco:
You're arguing that Apple needs to fix this.
Marco:
And I just don't see the urgent need.
Marco:
And I think the Kindle app...
Marco:
Being this way for so long, I mean, it's been, what, four or five years, or probably three or four years that the Kindle Lab has been this way?
Marco:
That's been there long enough, and it doesn't seem to really be affecting Apple's sales or customer satisfaction.
Marco:
Overall, it doesn't seem to be that...
Marco:
that you know apple's really like being held to the fire here that they really have to change this i don't i don't see the big push i don't see why they would have to do any of these things why they and by the way i think lowering their cut to anything would not please amazon i think amazon wants to own that whole experience and the whole processing of anything that is potentially right but then but at that point i could stop blaming apple and say well apple offered them like 0.01 and they just so rejected it's like well then it's not apple's fault anymore
Marco:
Yeah, and honestly, I really do think Amazon wants to own the entire customer process, not just that commission.
Marco:
They want everything to be going through them only, and so they have full control and full access.
Marco:
I really don't think that a rate cut would do it for them.
John:
Well, the idea that, like, they don't need to do it because, like, well, they've been doing it for years with Kindle and it hasn't hurt them, right?
John:
It's difficult to sell while it hasn't hurt them.
John:
But, like, the one thing I would point to, like, a metric, you're just like, well, maybe they would have sold more iPads if you could have bought things.
John:
Like, that's hard to prove.
John:
Like, whatever.
John:
But the one thing you could point to is good old Tim Cook's favorite, customer sat.
John:
customer sat among people who read comics has suddenly gone down i can tell you that and i think customer i mean kindle app didn't have it but like customer sat among people who use the kindle app would go you know way higher for their ipads if they could buy things through it because think about that like some people they consider their ipad like it's my comic reading device and like that's what they use it for and i bet there are people out there who consider their kindle reader and if suddenly those people could buy the things like they got to the end of series one of a book series and there was a little page at the end of the kindle thing that said
John:
Do you want to start reading the next one?
John:
Tap this button.
John:
You tap the button, a little spinner appeared for two seconds and you're reading the next book.
John:
Their customer sat with their iPad would go up.
John:
Like that is a metric that you can track that they talk about a lot that they should be watching.
John:
Is it causing people to not buy iPads?
John:
I don't know.
John:
Like maybe customer satisfaction is disconnected from their bottom line in vague ways, but they do care about it because that's their whole thing is like, we're trying to make great products to make people happy.
John:
And here's the case where they're intentionally choosing not to do something that they know will make people happy.
John:
because of a fight they're having with a competitor about pricing.
John:
And like I said, it's okay to do that for a while, but the way it's shaking out, it doesn't seem like Amazon's going to budge.
John:
And, you know, customer satisfaction with these experiences is either still not going up to the level they know it could be, or going down in the cases where applications have to backslide.
John:
So...
Marco:
Assuming that there's no rate change that could get Amazon to actually accept that and do everything directly through Apple.
Marco:
Assuming that the only thing that would allow them to offer in-app purchases on Apple's platforms in a way that Amazon would approve would be to do what Google allows, which is to just have their own payment processing in the app.
Marco:
And Apple would just remove the rule that you can't do that.
Marco:
Do you think the net gain from that...
Marco:
in overall Apple ecosystem customer satisfaction, assuming that anybody else could do that same thing.
Marco:
Assuming that, as I said earlier, assuming that King could put their own payment system in Candy Crush to make 30% more and that any random app could put their own credit card system in.
John:
But you keep going back to your own payment system.
John:
No one is suggesting that.
John:
I would never suggest that people be able to do their own payment systems.
Marco:
So you're basically putting forth the idea that Apple should negotiate a lower rate with Amazon and that Amazon would probably accept a lower rate.
John:
It's not just Amazon.
John:
Say Amazon plays hardball and we will not give you a red cent.
John:
You'll never get anything.
John:
For example, Amazon's policy was, if you don't let us implement our own payment, then screw you.
John:
And then I would say it's in Apple's interest not to ever do that because we'd say, well, you implementing your own payment system would make it worse for our customers.
John:
So it's not actually, we're not benefiting our customer so long you do this, so forget it.
John:
But then that would mean like Marvel Unlimited and all these other, like Comixology had white label versions of their apps to other people.
John:
So I don't know how that's going to work out now that Amazon owns them.
John:
But there's a potential for other people in the market to say, well, we'll do a deal for the people who own these comics and we will sell comics electronically and we will let them, you buy them from within our app.
John:
And you would see the people who enter comics say, well, screw Comixology.
John:
I'm not using them anymore.
John:
You can't even buy inside the app.
John:
I'm going to this other thing or I'm going to this subscription plan.
John:
Like those ones where you pay a monthly fee and you can read X number of comics.
John:
Like,
John:
The competition, hopefully, at least in the realm of comics, maybe not in the realm of books or anything else, would make it so that other people would spring up and say, well, you're not willing to pay Apple 2%, but I think 2% is a reasonable transaction fee and we're going to pay it.
John:
And now everyone's going to come to our app and no one's going to buy through your thing because they don't want to go to your website to buy stuff.
Marco:
I'm looking at just what effect these kind of decisions would have on the entire iOS ecosystem and on all developers and all users of it.
Marco:
I don't see a scenario here where Apple could make a change that would dramatically improve the situation with Amazon stuff and would...
Marco:
would be a net benefit and wouldn't have too high a cost in user satisfaction, even ignoring the money Apple would lose on that reduced or lost commission.
Marco:
I don't see this as being a net win.
Marco:
I see bad people taking advantage of it and an erosion of trust in buying iOS apps and paying for things on iOS, which should reduce customer satisfaction.
John:
What would the bad people do with the reduced rate based on volume or otherwise?
Marco:
Yeah, the reduced rate, that's something that I think would probably only negatively affect Apple, but I also don't... Again, I don't see Amazon taking that deal.
Marco:
And you're right, maybe someone else will, and maybe that'll be the situation.
Marco:
But see, I just...
Marco:
Again, I don't see the big need for this.
Marco:
I mean, you know, people are mad this week.
Marco:
They'll be over it next week.
Marco:
And even now, most of the anger is going to Comixology and Amazon.
Marco:
Apple's not even getting hit by most of it.
John:
Yeah, but the customer satisfaction with their iPads goes down.
John:
They're less satisfied with their product.
John:
I mean, like, maybe it's like it doesn't reflect on Apple.
John:
Maybe they blame Comixology.
John:
But what if they, the next time they need to buy a tablet...
John:
by then they have long since heard that this isn't a problem on android and they read you know comics there and can buy them right in the app maybe that will change their decision like it's small but it's you know these little things add up books i think is bigger the kindle app is bigger and the kindle app has the advantage that i'm pretty sure you can never buy them inside the kindle app so it's not like anything was ever taken away but if people find out that oh if you get a kindle fire you can buy within the app that may attract them more to a kindle fire especially if they start using their tablet mainly as a kindle device
Casey:
I feel like, and you might have even said this earlier, because the iPad is so much better than everything else on the market, I don't think that customer set will be influenced negatively enough to level the playing field.
John:
Yeah, you're probably right.
John:
And that's what Apple is counting on, too.
John:
But these little things add up.
John:
And I was going to say that Sam the Geek in the chat room says that the white label versions of Comixology are keeping their in-app purchase.
John:
But like I said, now that Amazon owns them, I wonder how long those white label versions of Comixology app are going to be in the world at all.
John:
But clearly, the people who are currently using them, I think the companies that put out the comics themselves actually white label them.
John:
Those people are highly motivated to get away for people with iOS devices to be able to easily buy their comics.
John:
And apparently they have been willing to pay the 30%.
John:
I assume they will continue to be willing to do the 30%.
John:
And that could be a way that Apple quote unquote wins this one by basically saying, well, no one will use comicology anymore.
John:
We'll still get 30% and we'll get 30% from these other people instead.
Yeah.
John:
that's that's potentially true as well like i'm just tired of the game of chicken i feel like it's gone on for too many years um and i don't want to see i don't want to see apps coming onto the platform and just we'll just assume well of course you can't buy within the application of course you have to do this dance to go through a website and like a little some kid little kid's gonna ask me grandpa why why can't i buy things inside applications i say well
John:
Ten decades ago.
John:
Three decades ago.
John:
I can't do math anymore because I'm old.
John:
Apple decided that they wanted to charge everybody 30% and everyone else decided they weren't going to pay it.
John:
And Apple still makes the best tablets, but we have to do this because of a fight between these giant corporations.
Marco:
Wow.
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:
How is that for a win-win, or if you're John Siracusa, a win-win-win?
Marco:
new relic monitors every move your application makes i don't understand that what is a win-win-win is that who are the three people in that customers amazon and apple oh okay but i've heard that in other businesses always just like that kind of like two companies and the customer kind of thing that's three parties yeah
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thanks a lot to New Relic for sponsoring our show once again.
Casey:
So are we done in the comics thing that we don't have anything to say about?
John:
I didn't listen to the Back to Work episode yet.
John:
I'm still behind.
John:
So I don't know what Merlin had to say about it.
John:
But sorry if I repeated any of the stuff that he said.
Marco:
He mostly took like the kind of middle moderate ground of like this is all more complicated than we understand.
Marco:
And, you know, we kind of shouldn't be making assumptions like we understand everything going on with these big companies.
John:
Okay, well, I guess we didn't overlap.
John:
Although I did talk about, like, you know, I tried to add disclaimers as far as we know.
John:
Because who knows, like, what overtures any one company is making to Apple.
John:
Who knows what response Apple is making to them.
John:
We just know what these people announced publicly and what they end up doing.
Marco:
I don't think this issue is going to be resolved anytime soon.
Marco:
Between, you know, Apple with their 30% rules and their no external payment processing rules versus Amazon and their desires versus customers and their experience.
Marco:
I just...
Marco:
The Kindle app has been this way for years and it has not budged.
Marco:
Neither side has budged at all.
Marco:
So I don't see that changing for a very similar app with the same parties involved that has a much smaller audience.
Marco:
I just don't see it changing.
John:
The volume discount thing has the advantage that it lets everybody pretend that they didn't budge.
John:
Because Apple can say, well, we still apply the same rules to everybody.
John:
And other people say, well, we weren't going to do it, but we got Apple to change the rules.
John:
Because what that encourages is...
John:
You are encouraged to drive more business through iOS, sell tons of crap, because the more stuff you sell, the lower our percentage goes.
John:
And so that would let everybody save face.
John:
And like you said, maybe it wouldn't bring Amazon back to the table.
John:
But even if you ignore Amazon, if they're going to be butts about it, then fine.
John:
Tons of other people would be like, oh, now I am much more highly motivated to figure out a way to sell goods through iOS.
John:
uh the app store because i'm like if i just sell a little bit of them fine but if i sell tons of them the percentage that gets taken goes down unfortunately the people selling the most stuff for the app store are you know the companies you mentioned who are using the existing in-app purchase system to sell digital coins to people for bazillions of dollars and
Marco:
And there too, besides Amazon, what other major examples are there that would have enough of an impact that are inconveniencing customers enough and are bad enough and inconvenient enough for customers that Apple would be more pressured to act beyond just, let's just keep our 30% because it's working great for us?
John:
Yeah, I mean, you're looking for potential things.
John:
Like, if Apple wants some people to buy things through iPads, and I think they should, because I think that's a great way to buy a lot of content that can be digital, and I think it should use a single unified system that Apple controls for in-app purchases so everyone isn't like, all the things about it that we like...
John:
If there was more of that, it would be better.
John:
So anybody who's got anything to sell that could potentially find its way through the invisible airwaves to your iPad should be encouraged to do so.
John:
Someone in the chat room brought up, like, look where the revenue is coming from.
John:
If it's all coming from the big guys, then they wouldn't want to change the rate because then...
John:
they basically apple would be losing money like why would apple ever do give a volume discount if all their income or a huge amount of their income is coming from the big guys yeah apple would make less money like this is the problem with this whole thing is that people used to be like oh apple runs the itunes store at break even and it's not really a profit center and oh no the app store is like yeah they take a cup it's really just enough to keep the lights on but it has always been like apple's i don't know if it's their secret strategy or whatever but it's been pretty clear like
John:
you could see apple five years ago rubbing their hands together saying yes ignore our break-even businesses they're totally not there to make money it's just to make our devices more valuable they know that it is you know this is what you want the type of system where we don't have to do anything more and we magically get money like people can drive more and more money through our systems like we like that the margin is better than having to make another metallic widget to sell to somebody and
John:
It's much easier to just simply let someone tap another button and get another 30% cut of a transaction that's going through our system.
John:
And lo and behold, years down the line, suddenly Apple's businesses like iTunes and stuff that were, oh, just run it break even, are starting to make some significant money.
John:
And the apps are the same thing.
John:
Like, oh, it starts out as just enough for us to cover our costs or whatever.
John:
But I have a feeling that Apple would like it if these businesses stopped being break even and started making some serious money.
John:
And while people aren't paying attention, that's where they're going.
John:
So any potential plan that says, oh, we're going to give you less revenue because of your volume discount,
John:
It's like Apple might be thinking, I know we've always kind of pretended this is like a break-even business, but if we're going to do this, it might actually be a break-even business.
John:
And we're not Amazon.
John:
We actually want profits.
John:
So there are forces against any idea like this.
John:
It's almost like I wish it would hurt them more because you're right that it's not hurting them enough that it's clear that they have to do this.
John:
They're going to be out of business or they're doomed.
John:
That's totally not the case.
John:
It's just like it's just like a little thorn in your side where you know it could be better.
John:
And someday you are going to have to explain to your mom who got a Kindle Fire when she gets her iPad.
John:
I'll get the iPad.
John:
It's better.
John:
But on my Kindle Fire, I could buy the books and the thing.
John:
And you will have to explain that to her.
John:
And good luck making it sound reasonable.
John:
It's impossible.
John:
It's not reasonable.
John:
Apple's product is worse in this one small way.
John:
And it...
John:
It galls me.
Marco:
Or she'll just get an iPad and just buy things in iBooks.
Marco:
That's a fate worse than death.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week.
Marco:
Fracture, Backblaze, and New Relic.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
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.
John:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them.
Marco:
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.
Casey:
Marco Arment.
Marco:
S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Casey:
They did it in me.
Casey:
Do you want to talk about this weird test flight thing that we've been putting off forever?
Marco:
It's really old news now.
Marco:
I've forgotten what it is by now.
Marco:
So, Bursley was acquired.
Marco:
Do we even know?
Marco:
Is there any actual confirmation that Apple was the acquirer?
Marco:
The internet said so?
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
I think even that is not definite, not confirmed.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
TestFlight basically just very quietly shut down.
Marco:
It stopped accepting new applicants or new customers to beta test the apps with it.
Marco:
And it's just quietly shutting down.
Marco:
And they never made an announcement about this.
Marco:
They never explained it.
Marco:
It's just a very, very quiet shutdown.
Marco:
And so the theory is that Apple bought them, and they're probably going to integrate maybe first-party...
Marco:
Maybe Apple might actually integrate test flight-like functionality into the provisioning portal for iOS apps so that we could stop doing the stupid UDID dance with things like hockey and test flight and other beta testing type things.
Marco:
But I don't know.
Marco:
It...
Marco:
like i would love for that to be the case i would love for the story with test flight to be that apple's building something like this in and that's why it's shutting down but firstly was also a big mobile ad company right wasn't that or analytics one of those things so apple might have wanted it for that and test flight was this little side project they had that wasn't making any money so apple just you know made them quietly shut down like it could be any of these things i would put money that they're going to do the thing that test flight did
John:
inside Apple, just because it makes so much sense that I mean, anytime you see a bunch of third party sites popping up, the developers are using like lots of developers using hockey app, lots of developers are using test flight.
John:
Apple hates that.
John:
If there's something that, you know, third party developers need to be done, there should not be a thriving ecosystem of companies that that serve these developers needs to do these things.
John:
If the thing they're doing is something like it's common.
John:
So Apple wants to eventually have a solution to do that.
John:
If they bought this company and this company did that, I would say it's almost guaranteed that what they're trying to do is get something in-house that does similar to the thing that they did.
Marco:
See, I don't know.
John:
This is probably just like... You just think nothing can ever get better in the App Store, but it can sometimes.
Marco:
Yeah, it's some kind of psychological barrier that I have where, especially in areas like this, like the provisioning of devices, the UDID limits, the beta testing being such a pain...
Marco:
I can't fathom Apple actually making a major improvement to this.
Marco:
And again, I would love to be proven wrong.
John:
They'll probably still give you a fixed list of IDs that only rotates at a certain... There will still be plenty of things to annoy you, I'm sure.
John:
But just the general experience of provisioning and the ability for people to easily download betas and distribute them.
John:
I'm assuming they will fix some of the annoyances, but I guarantee there will be more that remain.
John:
Don't worry, code signing will still be terrible, so you'll have that.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, I don't know.
Marco:
I mean, like, I've heard rumblings here and there from the rumor sites and everybody that like, you know, this might finally be the year where Apple like really makes things better for developers in the App Store.
Marco:
So like, you know, the tools side, like the Xcode is fantastic.
Marco:
It's been improved a lot.
Marco:
Objective-C, the language has been improved a lot.
Marco:
All the tools are really great.
Marco:
But then you cross over into the provisioning and the iTunes Connect and the App Store rules and the pricing mechanism and upgrades and trials and all that stuff that developers have been wanting forever.
Marco:
I have no faith that...
Marco:
apple will ever improve that stuff because it they they just haven't like the app store has been running now for uh what six years five years and it and this stuff has almost not changed at all there have been very minor changes but don't you think they've been kind of in the middle of a multi-year arc where they've been adding lots of stuff so fast that they haven't had enough time to essentially make it work
John:
Yeah, I mean, like the whole I mean, there's the iOS thing and there's like they've been doing a lot of stuff to code signing provisioning profiles and betas and like and sandboxing and the sandbox bookmarks on the Mac for opening up like they're adding all sorts of things you can do and revving their compiler tool chain.
John:
And like they've kind of been out running themselves, leaving a trail of crappy half implemented things behind them.
John:
hopefully at some point they will get to a point where they can circle back and say that's what i hope they're doing by buying test fly it's like okay we had a way to do this before the way sucked for years now we finally have a chance to take a breath and say let's go back and instead of adding a new capability let's merely make it less incredibly unpleasant to do with something that you could previously do you know what i mean i'm hoping that they're at that point i mean ios 8 may be a move in that direction so i'll know that we're over the 7 hump you know so we'll see
Marco:
Yeah, maybe.
Marco:
I hope you're right.
Marco:
I don't have high hopes.
Marco:
I don't have a lot of faith, but I hope you're right.
Marco:
It might not be this year.
Marco:
It could be next year.
Casey:
Yeah, maybe.
Casey:
Anything else going on?
Casey:
Nope.
Casey:
I quietly relaunched my website that's not on Tumblr anymore.
John:
What is the URL?
Casey:
www.caseylist.com.
Casey:
Really inventive.
Casey:
And that's my second crack, or third crack, if you will.
Casey:
I don't really have a name for it.
Marco:
What is the directory called for the project?
Marco:
It has to have something.
Casey:
It does.
Casey:
It's camel, C-A-M-E-L, which is kind of a, what is it, port menu?
Casey:
I don't know how to pronounce the word, but you see it on Wikipedia all the time.
Casey:
It's a mash of my first and middle names.
Casey:
But anyway, so yeah, so that's all written in Node, and everyone's probably breaking it now, and that's okay.
John:
So what's it going to take to get you off of the using your last name as a pun thing?
John:
Is that an impossible task?
Casey:
It's never going to happen.
Casey:
No, I mean, I couldn't think of a good name.
Casey:
So that site...
Casey:
in many ways is kind of a mashup of underscores and your two sites, uh, both in terms of inspiration for CSS inspiration for layout, things of that nature.
Casey:
And, um, and so I, I looked at underscore site after I had decided to call this thoughtless and, um,
Casey:
Um, he just calls his David Smith and obviously there's hypercritical there's marco.org.
Casey:
I didn't like casey list.com.
Casey:
Um, I don't have a fancy pants name like hypercritical that I've been using for forever.
Casey:
Um, so I don't know.
Casey:
This was the first thing that I came up with that didn't make me gag, but I'm not in love with it either.
John:
Didn't you read that whole post that you wrote about not doubting yourself?
Casey:
You should not have a title of the thing that says that you're thoughtless.
Casey:
I knew that was coming.
Casey:
That's why, like I said, I'm not in love with what I've got here, but that's all right.
Marco:
See, I've never seen you use the list last name pun in a way that wasn't self-deprecating.
Casey:
Well, yeah, and that's kind of my shtick.
John:
Well, because it sounds like less, and there's not a lot of good words.
Casey:
Weightless?
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Whatever.
Casey:
But anyway, this is Node, and I've been piddling with it a little bit lately.
Casey:
Let me do a...
Casey:
clock on it.
Casey:
405 lines of code.
Casey:
Basically, the way it works is there's a series of markdown files in directories that match the directories you see in the URLs.
Casey:
And then there's a header and footer markdown file.
Casey:
And so if you go to any of these URLs, and during Fireball style, if you put .md at the end, it'll show you the source.
Casey:
And so I have a little bit of metadata at the top.
Casey:
And then other than that, it just processes the markdown files, throws on a header, throws on a footer and calls it a day.
Casey:
And so it's 405 lines of node using several packages because I haven't yet been horribly burned by third party software.
Casey:
And I know I'm pretty proud of it.
Casey:
I like it.
Casey:
It's not flawless, but I like it.
Casey:
I should call it flawless.
Casey:
That's what I should call it.
Marco:
There you go.
Marco:
Finally, you figure one out that is not self-deprecating.
John:
No, because that has flaw in it.
John:
It's like the flawless.
John:
Is this a list with the flaw?
John:
It's like you can't use the last name as a pen.
Casey:
I know.
Casey:
I know.
Casey:
I got to think of a better name.
Marco:
That's great.
Marco:
Even your brag had a self-deprecating root in it.
John:
If this software didn't use Markdown, I might replace mine with it, but it does, so I won't.
John:
what's wrong with markdown i don't like it you're a purist right don't you write everything in actual html straight yeah i find that for me i find it better in all ways than writing in a markdown i don't want to go through another translation i i'm going to publish html i know how to write html i write it i publish it there's no i don't have to say how is this going to transform i don't need to do like a transformation it's just i don't know that's how i work i don't say that everyone else has to do that but that's the way i do it but anyway most people seem to like markdown
John:
And so they make all these apps that work with Markdown, and if you don't want to use Markdown, it's not good.
Casey:
Well, for what it's worth, Markdown – I'm going to phrase this wrong, but Markdown is HTML?
Casey:
No, that's the other way around.
John:
Yeah, I know.
John:
You can just write HTML and Markdown too, but it's like once I'm doing that, then what the hell is the point?
Casey:
Well, so what I'm saying is with the – so if you look at any one of these URLs and put the .md at the end –
Casey:
uh so i'm looking at the atp shirts one as example as an example you would have to have the at at and then you know the couple of metadata entries but everything below those everything below that can all be straight html this looks i know but like this looks like my thing like i have the same format of only i don't have at ads i just have metadata on the top i just use the mail format where the first blank line ends the header section uh and then i have the html
Marco:
Yeah, I do something similar, which is I have header format on top.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Keep talking.
Marco:
I'll show you one of mine.
Marco:
Mine's weird.
Marco:
But it makes sense to me.
Casey:
That's what this is about.
Casey:
It made sense to me.
Casey:
I wanted to try something that I hadn't done before, which is Node.
Casey:
I like the code.
Casey:
I don't love the code.
Casey:
A part of me wants to throw it on GitHub and embarrass myself, but
Casey:
Uh, I really want to fix a few things up before I do it.
Casey:
Like for example, it's a good thing.
Casey:
I only have two posts on there because if we go, if I go past, I don't know, 10, it's going to look ridiculous because I don't do pagination at the moment.
Casey:
Um, you'll figure that out.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I mean, I actually already have a plan.
Casey:
I just haven't implemented it yet.
Casey:
Uh, I'm going to do like the world's worst pagination, which is kind of a loose pagination.
Casey:
Once I get it worked out, maybe we'll talk about it in another after show.
Casey:
But, um,
Casey:
But yeah, so I'm pretty proud of it.
Casey:
It's white, not because it's Casey always says white.
Casey:
It's white because I couldn't figure out a background color that I wanted.
Marco:
It's white, of course.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
I felt like I needed to spend all this time working out better CSS because I suck at CSS.
Casey:
And for a brief moment, I thought about copying the Marco one color at the top and then everything else below.
Casey:
And then I looked at it the way it was, and I was like, you know, it's good enough.
Casey:
Why fuss over it?
Casey:
So I'm pretty proud of it as simple as it is.
Casey:
And maybe I'll open source it.
Casey:
Maybe I won't.
John:
If you're even thinking about showing this code to anybody, it is a lot better than the code that's running my chat because I would never show it to anybody.
John:
I don't even like looking at it myself.
Casey:
It's bad, but it's not awful.
Casey:
There's definitely a lot of places where it could be cleaned up and spruced up and made a lot cleaner.
Casey:
I'm repeating myself in several places.
Casey:
But by and large, I don't think it's terrible.
Casey:
I mean, to be honest, how bad can you really screw up 405 lines of JavaScript, leaving aside the fact that it's JavaScript?
Marco:
I've seen a lot of bad JavaScript.
Marco:
It's definitely possible.
Casey:
And the other thing is, and I'm looking at the source that you pasted in the chat, Marco.
Casey:
This is not a link blog.
Casey:
I have no support for a link post versus a regular post.
Casey:
So it's just a blog.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
I dig it so far.
John:
Yeah, I don't have any support for link things either.
John:
Not that I ever post them.
John:
But I mean, if I did, I would guess I would go and add support to whatever.
John:
Here's the real problem with adding links.
John:
Everyone has already used up all the obvious characters for indicating links.
Casey:
I completely agree.
Casey:
I 100% agree.
Casey:
That is 100% the problem.
John:
Well, you could steal my arrow afterwards.
John:
Is it arrow after or before?
John:
It's not your arrow.
John:
Everybody uses the arrow.
John:
And then Daring Fireball uses a star for none.
John:
And a lot of other people use it.
John:
Everyone uses the infinity for permalinks.
John:
And it's just like there's no more glyphs left.
John:
So the game over.
John:
Well, what's wrong with just using the standard glyphs that everyone else uses?
Casey:
Because you want to be different, Marco.
Casey:
You want to be your own special snowflake.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
You want to be a brand.
Casey:
Well, you can't be your own special snowflake because that's Dr. Drang.
Marco:
The real problem with link blogs, I think, is that whether – well, there's two problems.
Marco:
Number one is what the feed items link to.
Marco:
No matter which option you pick, people will be upset and confused.
Marco:
It's just different people.
Marco:
Yep, that's true.
Marco:
So that's one problem.
Marco:
There's no good solution to that.
Marco:
The other problem is when you choose a title and a length of the post, it's confusing as to whether you wrote this, whether that's your title of your post...
Marco:
And then some people will get to your link post permalink page and not realize that that big title at the top is a link to something else.
John:
Well, I mean, you can avoid that by not making the title be a link to anything on the page when you're viewing it.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
when you're viewing when you're viewing just the page that just shows that story the title is not a link every place else the title is a link and then you have to choose where you want it to go but i would say you would make it go to the you know i don't know it's like where where does the link go in a link post on a on its i would mostly say it goes to the story like i like the idea of of linking from the text that you write to the thing you're talking about and not relying on the title to fill that role
Marco:
then it's kind of redundant but then i don't know like it the big problem with link blogging is that all of these questions like there's no clear good solution like whatever whatever you pick is going to have issues yeah you just have to pick one and people people just have to get used to it yeah the rss one is worse but most people don't seem to use rss anymore these days so that kind of takes care of itself i just use both i have an alternate feed in my footer that that has the other link style
Casey:
I just noticed that earlier today, which I'd never seen before, obviously.
Casey:
The other thing I wanted to talk about briefly about this was how I'm hosting it, which is to say that I put it on Heroku because for a one-web dino, as they call it, it is absolutely free.
Casey:
And from what I can tell, this didn't get absolutely crushed under the load of live listeners, but...
Casey:
But what was unique to me was that when I went to deploy to Heroku, having never used Heroku before, I looked at how to do it.
Casey:
And what it amounted to was I needed to add a proc file to my source, which specifies that it is a website, not like a worker or anything like that, and its node and which node file to run.
Casey:
I needed to clean up my package JSON, which defines what my dependencies are, but that was it.
Casey:
And then I pushed to a Git repository that they set up, and suddenly I had a website.
John:
All right, now I'm not using your system anymore, because I thought it was generating static files, but I forgot that you're actually using...
John:
Code runs when you, yeah, no, I got to have static.
Casey:
Well, and so basically everything is generated on the fly lazily, but once it's generated, it's held in memory for some amount of time, I don't recall.
Casey:
So you're right, it isn't static, but nevertheless, I would assume that it should hold up to some pretty heavy load.
John:
Well, you can do the cruddy thing, which I considered doing before I decided even this was too much work with make a system that dynamically generates web pages and then just crawl it yourself to create your static pages and then just upload the static ones.
Casey:
Maybe it's my own ignorance coming through, but if I have everything in memory, how is it going to be that hard to answer a gazillion requests?
Casey:
Like, it's all there.
Casey:
It's rendered HTML in memory.
Casey:
I just got to look it up from a hash and dump it to the request or to the response object.
Casey:
So what else is there to worry about?
Marco:
That's the thing.
Marco:
I mean, with all these static blogging systems, static blogging is really great.
Marco:
But, and I use it on my site, but you can get almost all of the benefit from just caching.
Marco:
I mean, because static blogging, you have to change a few things.
Marco:
If you do static, one of the main things is you have to serve the same markup to everybody and the same... Like, you have to serve the same content for every hit.
Marco:
You can't do server-side...
Marco:
browser detection or device detection and altering what you send, you know, mobile layout separately.
Marco:
Like you have to serve everyone the same market, but with responsive design and with the removal of comments, uh, or even outsourcing comments to other services like discuss where you just embed a static JavaScript link and the thing works.
Marco:
Um,
Marco:
If you relegate all dynamic functionality to JavaScript embeds or to CSS with responsive design, then it works.
Marco:
Now, you can do that exact same thing either through a static system or just put a caching proxy in front of your server.
Marco:
Put Varnish or Nginx in caching mode.
Marco:
Put those in front of your server.
Marco:
Just have it cache every hit for one second.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
Cache every page it serves with a TTL of one second, and you'll be able to tolerate almost every possible flood of traffic you will ever get, even if the thing is being generated from a database on every hit that actually gets through.
Marco:
Static blogging, it does offer high performance, but it also just offers a pretty strong degree of simplicity for deployment.
John:
That's what I'm going to get.
John:
I'm not doing it for performance reasons.
John:
I'm doing it because I'm cheap.
John:
Because then you can deploy anywhere.
John:
I don't need anything to run any code.
John:
It's not just cheap, but you have the most options.
John:
It will literally work everywhere.
John:
You don't need to run anything.
John:
You don't need to have any software.
John:
There is no software.
John:
Static blogging is not done for performance reasons.
John:
It's just mostly for...
Marco:
just you have all the options in the world it's going to work everywhere on every single hosting system you could possibly imagine and yes it will also happen to be performant in all of them but that's not really why you're doing it like it just keeps but hold on though there is software they just move it i mean that's the thing like you said there's no software but unless you're actually writing html pages which most people are not doing uh there there absolutely is software involved and that has to be maintained and it has to run somewhere it's just running on your computer like you know like the
John:
Oh, yeah, no.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Well, I mean, yeah, but you control that.
John:
Like it's not your deployment options are unlimited.
John:
You can move from one hosting provider to another.
John:
You don't have to worry if they if they don't support Node.js or have a different version or make some sort of complicated thing.
John:
You need a different deployment.
John:
It's like you just are syncing files somewhere.
John:
And that's, you know, if you have a site that actually gets traffic, then you don't have to worry about this, then fine, right?
John:
Some code deployed, but, like, my site doesn't get any traffic.
John:
I want the cheapest possible thing I can possibly get, and that ends up being static hosting.
John:
And, you know, you get what you pay for.
John:
But that's why I did it static, not because I was looking for performance.
John:
Although, like, occasionally I do get traffic bursts, and it's nice that I don't have to worry about them because, again, it's static.
John:
I don't even use, like, it is super static.
John:
Some people are like, well, it's static, but I use, like...
John:
you know, some server side includes system or something to put in headers.
John:
Nope.
John:
100% static.
Casey:
Yeah, and that's the thing is that, admittedly, this is dynamic the first run.
Casey:
But like I said, as soon as I've parsed the markdown for any of these pages, it's held in memory for at least half an hour, if not more than that, until I either deliberately toss the cache or it times out or whatever.
Casey:
So this isn't a challenge or anything like that.
Casey:
But I feel like I should, in principle, be able to handle a crud load of traffic without crumbling.
John:
yeah you should but it's like yours is static in the respect that really matters for performance and that you're not like talking to it you're not talking to a database for example like it the files that you're reading are static they just happen to be so both markdown and you do a little bit of post-processing and memory and and it's not like node is a single process like event driven right yep it's a single single process so you don't even have to worry about your cache getting divided through apache children or some other concern that you might have with yeah so you're fine and really just like me no one's going to read your blog so we're both fine
Casey:
Except really, really no one's going to read my blog, whereas nobody reads yours.
Casey:
We can compete.
John:
You'd be surprised how few people read my blog.
Casey:
Well, you never post, which... Exactly.
John:
If you never post anything, nobody reads it.
Casey:
I don't know how that works.
Casey:
And admittedly, I'm not good at that either.
Casey:
And I'm hoping this will make me better, but I don't know.
Casey:
It was a lot of fun.
Casey:
It was a lot of fun to do.
Casey:
I'm still very impressed with how unbelievably simple Heroku was to deploy to.
Casey:
Because truly, I had heard of it, but never really done anything with it.
Casey:
And it must have been well under half an hour, maybe even under 15 minutes between the time I said, you know what, let me just see if I can throw this on Heroku and if it'll work.
Casey:
And the time that I had it not only up there, but I'd updated my DNS to point to it.
Casey:
It was unbelievably quick and easy, and that really is awesome.
John:
Yeah, but is it $5 a month?
Casey:
It's $0 a month.
John:
Oh, that's right.
John:
Yeah, he's beating you, John.
John:
Yeah, I guess that's true, but then he's stuck deploying someplace that supports Node.js.
John:
You know, they also support PHP.
John:
Oh, great.
John:
What are the limits?
John:
Like, when do you have to start paying?
Casey:
I have no, I honestly don't know.
Casey:
I mean, basically if I add more web front ends, then that costs money.
Casey:
But in terms of like bandwidth or, you know, I don't know if after 30 gigs used or something like that.
John:
Well, you're not going to hit the bandwidth limit.
John:
It might be like CPU time or something.
John:
What we need to do is get one of your stories to go up on like Hacker News and like a bunch of other sites simultaneously saying Daring Fireball link and Marco will link it and everyone will tweet it and we'll see.
John:
if you get into the pay zone because okay like the even though i don't have anything on my blog no posting every once in a while some random story will land on some social media site and all of a sudden i'll have a spike it's not a big spike but it's big enough that i would worry that i would go out of the free zone and start getting charged some crazy amount of money i love how that's that's how the world control casey by making him popular yeah we need to test the system here right