Welcome to the Web, Casey
Marco:
Time was when all AOL users were behind one big proxy.
Marco:
We have important follow-up this week.
Marco:
First of all, if you got two t-shirts, that is fine.
Marco:
That was supposed to happen.
Marco:
What happened was the first t-shirt had some printing problems, mostly on the back, where the font wasn't rendered.
Marco:
So it fell back to a default font, and it printed our monospace code in a fixed-width font.
Marco:
Variable-width font, you mean.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
yes sorry thank you i've missed you john and then i was just i i'm just picturing all the feedback if we just let that slide thanks um so anyway yeah so the second one is it has the fixed font issue um which because it also messed up all the spacing and everything it was it was really weird looking before so um teespring was kind enough uh to reprint all the shirts at no cost and send them to everybody uh that was supposed to happen so it was no mistake if you got a second one that's in fact it might be a mistake if you didn't
Marco:
And you don't have to return the other ones that you got or anything.
Marco:
Just keep them with Teespring's compliments.
Marco:
And we thank Teespring for fixing the error so quickly and fully.
John:
And the question is, which shirt now is more valuable?
John:
Because as we mentioned in the past shows about the shirt being printed, if the printing on the back messes up, it's like the upside down airplane stamp.
John:
So now you have two shirts.
John:
You have one where the printing on the back is totally messed up.
John:
And it's like...
John:
In a variable with font, but the metrics of the letter spacing are like the metrics of the monospace font.
John:
So there's crazy amounts of space.
John:
It just looks terrible.
John:
And then there's the one printed the way we intended.
John:
Which one of those shirts is better now?
John:
Because you could be like, I've got one of the ATP shirts with the printing error.
John:
But everybody's got one with the printing error at this point.
John:
Anyone who's got any ATP shirts.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
It's the same amount of both.
Marco:
And it will always be the same amount of both because it's not like you can go order the shirt now and get the fixed one only.
Marco:
Like it's the same quantity of both shirts that will probably ever exist.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So next year we'll probably have a different shirt and we'll see how this turns out.
John:
But we've been fielding a lot of tweets and emails from people asking about the double shirts.
John:
Just keep them.
John:
And a lot of emails and tweets from people who said they got two shirts but did not notice any difference between them.
Marco:
and that was surprising to me for for listeners of the show don't tell teespring well but there's definitely a difference once i feel like once we tell them oh there was a problem with the printing on the back and they lay them both down and look at the two backs there's a big difference between them yeah also the um the atp badge on the front on the new shirt is a little bit lighter in in shades because you know when you when you give somebody a color to print on a shirt it has to go through color conversion and become a print color and
Marco:
That entire world just sucks in every possible way.
Marco:
The entire world of color converting for print and trying to get colors to look right in print is just a terrible, terrible existence.
Marco:
And here's to Teespring for living in that world so that we all don't have to.
Marco:
Yep.
Marco:
No, that was very nice of them to write that wrong.
Marco:
And regardless of who was at fault, it sounds like it might have been a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B, but... Oh, no.
John:
Teespring was entirely at fault.
John:
Let's not say who was at fault.
John:
Because, I mean, so here's the thing.
John:
Like, I feel bad for them.
John:
It's good.
John:
Teespring has always been good to me, and they've taken action to correct problems.
John:
But it's better if you don't have the problem to begin with.
John:
And I'm speaking mostly from Teespring's perspective, because from the customer's perspective...
John:
Everybody got two shirts for the price of one.
John:
So it's great for customers, but for Teespring, like Marco said, it's like, you know, he uploaded the thing, it looked correct in the preview, and they printed a huge number of shirts.
John:
Like, no human looked at them to compare them to the preview on their website.
John:
Like, you figured you'd print one, look at it, and say, yep, okay, print a thousand or so of those, right?
John:
So...
John:
I feel like they need to amend their process because it's you know, they're a great company that they're eating that cost and doing it.
John:
But on the other hand, it's kind of their fault.
John:
And I would I'd feel like they would have processes in place to do a human sanity check of runs over a thousand shirts or something.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
And in their defense, as soon as they became aware of the problem, they were in contact with me a lot.
Marco:
And I had talking to like three different people there and everyone's trying to resolve the thing.
Marco:
They wanted me to send them the original file that caused the error so they could fix it.
Marco:
And they told me like they're changing all these policies.
Marco:
So I think it scared them enough and probably caused them to lose enough money that they made some changes as a result.
John:
I mean, they bent over backwards from my hypercritical shirts as well.
John:
Like they've definitely been, you know, I feel like they have that part of the business now where you're responsive to customers and do the right thing.
John:
They just got to work on the other part of the business where you don't make mistakes to begin with.
John:
And I mean, if I wanted to ding Marco for anything, I assumed you were uploading outlines.
John:
If I had known you were uploading text, I would have advised you to upload outlines, but...
Marco:
In my defense, yeah, so the issue was they recommend you upload an EPS.
Marco:
Okay, and I don't know anything about this stuff.
Marco:
This was one of the first times I'd ever used Illustrator was to do this.
Marco:
And I uploaded the EPS, and I checked that it had the embedded font.
Marco:
And I didn't convert to outlines.
Marco:
I didn't know that was a thing that you could or should do.
Marco:
So I didn't convert to outlines.
Marco:
I just uploaded the EPS with the embedded copy of the font.
Marco:
And every designer, once we had the problem, and I mentioned this, every designer was like, oh no, you never do that because printers so often screw up.
Marco:
Well, I didn't know that.
Marco:
I didn't have the experience to know that.
Marco:
And so I thought, I play the embedded font, it's fine, right?
Marco:
And then the bigger problem, I think, was that
Marco:
in their image preview on the site it rendered it correctly because the image the thing that generates the image preview has a different rasterizer than the thing that actually prints onto the shirts and so that's kind of a problem yeah and that's why it's ultimately t springs fault like i you know marco is the inexperience of not converting to outline because he hadn't been using illustrator since illustrator 88 on his black and white mac and covering things that lines uh but you know
Marco:
the preview shows one thing and you get something else printed like that's the whole basis of the site is like you up you click these buttons you see a picture you say yes i want that picture to become a real thing you click some more buttons and then a real shirt shows up at your house right and and in their defense one of the things they they asked me for was a copy of the original file because they said their rasterizer should have used the embedded font like that was not intended behavior that it didn't like and they didn't want to require everyone to use outlines because they know you know teespring is used by a lot of amateurs you know it's it's not it's not always professional designers using it it's oftentimes like
Marco:
you know some some group maybe making thing making shirts to raise money for like you know their youth group or something and and so you know they want it to work with people who are not illustrator experts so they you know anyway they resolved it well so i'm happy with them anyway um let's move on we have a lot of feedback our feedback is like 15 pages long in our document what is what is all this
Marco:
I know.
Marco:
I think it's mostly, John, because I certainly didn't do it.
Marco:
But another really quick one.
Marco:
We were all obviously in San Francisco last week for WWDC.
Marco:
And I just wanted to quickly say thank you to everyone who said hi to us, to everyone that purchased and then wore a shirt, to anyone who went to the talk show and to Gruber for having us all on the talk show.
Marco:
I had a really fantastic week.
Marco:
I think I speak for the two of you guys as well in saying so.
Marco:
And so, again, anyone who spent any amount of time with us, even if it was just to say, hey, thank you for that.
Marco:
And I have some more follow-up on the talk show.
Marco:
Oh, and in addition to saying, yeah, I agree.
Marco:
That was awesome.
Marco:
Thank you.
Marco:
You know, the ditto of what Casey just said.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I was completely wrong about how CloudKit limits work, and I definitely said the wrong thing on the talk show, and I think I even said the wrong thing on our show last week, where the CloudKit limits are raised per user by something like, you know, one meg of database use, 100 megs of assets use, but...
Marco:
Each user is not limited to that 1 meg and that 100 megs.
Marco:
That simply, every user adds that amount to your total pool, and the resources are pooled between everybody.
Marco:
So that does dramatically change things for how you can use CloudKit and whether you can rely on it being sufficient for you or not.
Marco:
It still leaves a few questions.
Marco:
We still don't really know what happens when you hit that limit.
Marco:
And anything involving... What happens if one user is a complete outlier and uses a gig of the database somehow because they have some script going that runs awry or something?
Marco:
How do you...
Marco:
How do you solve issues like that with it?
Marco:
So there's still some issues, but it isn't nearly as scary as I assumed it was because the resources are pooled by that amount, not limited per user.
John:
I'm not sure that changed that clarification.
John:
It's important, but I'm not sure it changes it entirely.
John:
We were talking about the example of could you do Instagram on this?
John:
Even though users will have varying amounts,
John:
If it's like only 100 megs of like blob storage per user, any user who uses Instagram will blow through that in like a year if they're regular users.
John:
It's like your average user will blow through that.
John:
So it opens it up a little bit to more variability.
John:
If you think most of your users are going to use like one meg and a couple of people are going to use like 500 megs, then yeah, having it add 100 megs to the pool for each user for blob storage is good.
John:
But anything that's involving serious amounts of data, you immediately get to that question, all right, well, if I start my own little Instagram, after a year, everybody's going to have more than 100 megs of photos, right?
John:
So then what happens?
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
But the instance I gave on the talk show, which was, could they use this for Vesper?
Marco:
Vesper is a note-taking app that supports image blob attachments.
Marco:
But most people don't use a lot of images.
Marco:
Most people just use it for text.
Marco:
And most people would have a hard time making a megabyte of text notes unless they used it very, very heavily.
Marco:
So in Vesper's case, it might be a bad idea to say you can only have up to a megabyte of text notes, but I bet their average is so far below a megabyte that...
John:
you know they they would be okay to use it if they want to i would pull stats from all active users before i committed to that you know what i mean like see what the average find out you can find out what the average is like make sure you know whatever your user data collection agreement allows for this or whatever and then just see what the average size is because who knows what people are doing with vesper you know like maybe people are using it as a photo collecting app for all we know
Marco:
one of the discussions they were having um before they launched the sync service uh was you know like they don't actually know because you know before there was a sync service a few weeks ago they didn't actually know what the average usage was of these things you know how much people actually how many pictures because you know hosting pictures is obviously a lot more data than hosting text and they're like well how many pictures people take with vesper you know are there a lot of image notes are there are the images very large and are there outliers that have just tons and tons and tons of image notes and
Marco:
You don't know that.
Marco:
I'm facing this with Overcast now.
Marco:
I'm actually getting reasonably close to launch now, and I have no idea what to expect on the server side, and therefore the cost side.
Marco:
It's very hard to predict these things.
Marco:
That's one of the reasons why CloudKit is very attractive to a lot of people, because
Marco:
If you have this rockin' launch where you get way more people than you thought you would, your costs are not going to skyrocket.
Marco:
Well, unless you hit one of those master limits that's really, really high, but I think that would be quite difficult.
Marco:
The unpredictability of your initial cost and initial server needs...
Marco:
is kind of removed as a stress and pain and possible business model pain point.
Marco:
So it is a very attractive option, and I think a lot of people are going to use it.
John:
I hope somebody does so that we can see if things have really improved, because I think back to when you mentioned if you have a really big launch.
John:
You'll be happy you did this.
John:
Letterpress?
John:
Yeah, Letterpress.
John:
And what's the first really popular app to use this Apple-provided cloud service?
John:
And in the case of Game Center, it was Letterpress.
John:
It was very popular.
John:
And Game Center fell over and cried like a little baby.
Marco:
Well, apparently Apple's new Photos app and the Photos sync service is supposedly all built on CloudKit.
Marco:
It's the same thing.
Marco:
And who knows, they probably have some kind of reserve capacity maybe, but I don't know.
Marco:
Supposedly that is what they are doing.
Marco:
So in other news, it is currently 9.15 and I was trying to use my show bot and Marco tried to tell me...
Marco:
Hold on.
Marco:
Marco tried to tell me when I was writing the show about a couple of weeks ago that people – and these are my words, not Marco's – that people are jerks and they're going to do whatever they can to mess with the show bot.
Marco:
And I said, no, no, it'll be fine.
Marco:
Our listeners are great.
Marco:
They're awesome.
Marco:
And –
Marco:
All of a sudden, while you were talking, I look at the show bot, which is all run kind of real time using WebSockets.
Marco:
And next thing I know, I see that the does Casey show about actually work title just skyrocketing in votes.
Marco:
And so someone.
Marco:
Apparently has decided to make Web API requests or WebSocket requests to add a vote to that particular item and then eventually crash the show bot.
Marco:
They're not being jerks.
Marco:
They're being good testers.
Marco:
Maybe.
Marco:
But anyway, so the point is that it lasted 15 minutes.
Marco:
And that is how long the chat room can handle a new toy to play with and then subsequently break.
John:
You're going to be a good father.
John:
Have I mentioned that your showbot has never worked for me?
John:
What do you mean it's never worked?
John:
It has never.
John:
Remember, I tried to use it once from work, and I said, oh, maybe it's not working because of a firewall, because some weird web socket thing.
John:
And I've tried it from home, and all I ever see is the word connecting.
John:
That's all I've ever seen of your showbot.
Marco:
Well, if you want, you can see that now.
Oh, shut up.
John:
I just restarted it.
John:
I know.
John:
And I'm looking at it now, and it says connecting.
John:
So I'm, you know, Marco's crappy PHP thing one, Casey's node showbot zero.
Marco:
Well, that's what I get for trying to do something fancy.
Marco:
But his is Ajax-y.
Marco:
It's even better.
John:
It's WebSockets.
John:
He leapt right past Ajax.
John:
He went too far.
John:
Oh, wait, something happened.
John:
Now it says titles.
John:
No, something's happening.
John:
So that was like a seven-minute load time.
Marco:
If you remember, Casey, what I also told you is, you know, it would be nice if it had some kind of persistent storage.
Marco:
That way, if it crashes, you don't lose all the titles that have been suggested up until that point.
Marco:
I know, I know.
Marco:
I know.
Marco:
So it would be nice if it could write it out to a file every few seconds.
Marco:
Well, but that's the thing.
Marco:
It's all kidding aside.
Marco:
I did look into this.
Marco:
And the problem is, because this is hosted on Heroku, because I generally like Heroku, the file system is ephemeral.
Marco:
And so even if I dump something to file, then if I do anything, that file will go away.
Marco:
Like if I restart the dyno like I just did, the file will go away.
John:
Well, I should just make a web request to someone who's running a real web server.
Marco:
I was waiting for it.
Marco:
You know, I hate to tell you, Casey, but my servers can save files.
Marco:
It's a crazy thing.
Marco:
I know it's bleeding edge brand new technology, but my servers are actually able to save data to disk.
Marco:
Well, and that's the thing is what I need to do is as people are recommending the chat, I need to use Postgres or some other SQL or something like that.
John:
You don't need to use Postgres for show titles, for crying out loud.
John:
Make a file with numbers in it.
Marco:
That's why I didn't.
Marco:
That's why I didn't.
Marco:
But apparently Heroku's file system is all ephemeral, or maybe it isn't, and I just don't realize it.
Marco:
But the only reason I was trying to bring this up was to point out that it took virtually no time for the chat room to just completely tear apart my show bot.
Marco:
Now they're putting in script tags, putting in long titles.
Marco:
Welcome to the web, Casey.
Marco:
Have you ever used a computer?
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
This is why you a**holes don't have nice things.
Marco:
This is ridiculous.
Marco:
I quit.
Marco:
I quit the show, and I quit you.
Marco:
Well, not you two.
Marco:
Everyone else.
Marco:
I love that you were so naive that you didn't think this would happen.
Marco:
You're such a nice person, Casey.
Marco:
You really are.
Marco:
I had faith in humanity, and God, how wrong I was.
Marco:
I'm sorry.
Marco:
Anyway, we can carry on.
Marco:
I'm just going to ignore my own creation.
Marco:
Whatever, you big jerks.
Marco:
The three of us are cool.
Marco:
It's everyone else I don't like.
Marco:
Anyway, moving on.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So we have some follow up.
John:
Next bit of follow up.
John:
This is after WWDC.
John:
A bunch of people tweeted this at me and I thought it was clever.
John:
We didn't get to it in the actual WWDC show.
John:
And I haven't actually looked into this because I have not seen any of the sessions related to this because they're mostly iOS related and everything.
John:
But in the keynote, they mentioned bundles.
John:
You can sell a bunch of apps on the app store together for one price.
John:
And apparently kind of like an iTunes where there's the complete this album button where you buy the rest of the song by the album.
John:
minus the cost of the songs you already bought in the album.
John:
There's a complete this bundle thing on the app store.
John:
I'm assuming there is because these people were telling me there was where if you bought one app in a two app bundle, you could complete this bundle by simply paying the difference for the second app.
John:
uh and people are proposing this as a terrible confusing way to do upgrade pricing because what you would do is when you have new version of your app you keep the first version of the app on the store you introduce the new version at whatever price you want to sell to new users and then you make a bundle that includes the old version and the new version for less than the sum of their prices which allows people who already own the old version to complete this bundle effectively giving them an upgrade price which again like i said i think that is terrible and confusing and not obvious
John:
But it is a clever hack of the rules as presented to me by these people who sent me this information.
John:
Do either of you know if that stuff is accurate about complete this bundle?
Marco:
I do not.
Marco:
Are there any bundles actually in the store yet that we could even see?
Marco:
I don't think there are.
Marco:
I don't think you can make them yet.
John:
If this is all true and it actually works like this, people will do this for their upgrades, for upgrade pricing, and it will be confusing to users.
John:
so that's a shame like imagine people on their websites trying to tell people like uh if you want upgrade pricing go get the bundle but do complete this bundle and oh i don't know that's this is like if this loophole exists apple needs to close it not because it's terrible to allow upgrade pricing but because it's so confusing and you know developers will jump on it in a second everyone will have these stupid instructions on their website telling people how to get upgrade pricing by buying a bundle which is not obvious
Marco:
Yeah, well, also, I mean, the biggest thing that I think would blow a hole in this is, do you have to have all the apps that are in the bundle still in the App Store by themselves?
Marco:
Because if you do, that means you have to have your old version still for sale while your new version is for sale.
Marco:
And that's terrible.
John:
Well, so the idea, I mean, again, the, the, the terrible proposed idea is you keep the old one in the store for a limited time because the upgrade pricing would be some window of like a couple of months and you raise the individual price of the, like the standalone old version to something crazy that no one would accidentally buy.
John:
Of course, you know, that's like, you hope no one will accidentally buy until someone accidentally buys your, you know.
John:
999 dollar app and it's pissed off at you or whatever but that all this is just like a terrible workaround to get into a loophole to give your existing customers a cheaper price for your new app but it has so many bad side effects they just need they need to close this hole i don't know how they will close it because if they have a complete this bundle thing i don't know how you stop this from happening
Marco:
Yeah, I think it's just one of those things like developers are, they're so desperate to, they, we, are so desperate to get ongoing revenue.
Marco:
Because, you know, what happens in the app store when you have a paid app, this is what always happens.
Marco:
You launch and you get this nice big spike of sales, but then it starts dropping.
Marco:
And sometimes that drop can be pretty steep.
Marco:
So eventually, you know, you start making not enough money from your current version.
Marco:
And you're like, okay, well, now I...
Marco:
I want to work on this new version or we have been working on this new version.
Marco:
I've got to release it.
Marco:
I've got to make more money from this.
Marco:
Now, in the olden days, you release a new version and charge an upgrade price because the full price was generally high enough.
Marco:
If you're charging $100 for the full price of your app and then you release a new version, your existing customers would like it a lot if you gave them the new version for maybe $50 or $40 or whatever.
Marco:
So the upgrade discount thing happened.
Marco:
Well, now in the iOS App Store, there's pretty much no good way to do it.
Marco:
Or the Mac App Store.
Marco:
There's pretty much no good way to do that.
Marco:
And developers are always looking for a way to get around this and to do this.
Marco:
But the reality is, all these things are terrible hacks.
Marco:
And they will all anger some portion of your customers to some degree, no matter how you do them.
Marco:
And or cause you lots of support costs.
Marco:
and so it's just it never there is no good solution is the only solution to this is what apple's doing with their apps in the app store that the few apple apps that they still charge money for in the app store which that number keeps going down but the few apps like the pro apps they charge money for you know logic aperture stuff like that final cut
Marco:
they just they dropped all the prices down to a fraction what they used to be you know these things used to be like three hundred dollars six hundred dollars a thousand dollars now like things that were a thousand dollars are now three hundred dollars things that were three hundred dollars are now like 70 bucks you know logic is only 200 like they dropped all their prices and then when a new version comes out it's it's just like apple hardware the new version costs the same thing as the old version if you bought the old version too bad you want the new one pay full price
Marco:
And that's a little more palatable now than it used to be because the prices have gotten lower.
Marco:
It still kind of sucks, but in a lot of ways, it's, you know, quote, fair.
Marco:
It's also, from Apple's point of view, it's also very, very simple.
Marco:
The new version of the app is a brand new standalone app.
Marco:
The old version is removed from the store, so you can only buy the new one.
Marco:
And upgrades are, you know, well, you're paying less than you used to pay.
Marco:
Be happy.
Marco:
And so that same model applies to iOS, but the prices, of course, are even lower.
Marco:
Instead of $100, you're paying $1 or $5 at most.
Marco:
Almost no one's paying over $5 on iOS for anything, really.
Marco:
If you buy TweetBot 1 for $3, and then next week TweetBot 2 comes out, and it's another $3, too bad.
Marco:
That's the attitude that we have to have.
Marco:
That's their only choice, really.
Marco:
That's what Apple has done with their stuff.
Marco:
They're leading the way on that.
Marco:
And
Marco:
I think people are pretty much used to it.
Marco:
I mean, people will complain no matter what you do if you charge money.
Marco:
There's always going to be people who complain, but I don't think you'd have fewer people complaining if you had upgrade pricing.
Marco:
And so the reality is this is the world we live in now.
Marco:
This is, you know, Apple has been very clear that if you want to do some kind of upgrade pricing scheme, figure out a way to make an in-app purchase.
Marco:
You know, the in-app purchase is the way that you add features to an existing app and try to get more money from them.
Marco:
That's it.
John:
So the chat room has come through and linked us to the documentation for the app bundles and two relevant rules from this page from Apple.
John:
App contains and a bundle must be available for sale on their own as well.
John:
So you do have to keep that other older app for sale in the store.
John:
And app bundles also support Complete My Bundle.
John:
Complete My Bundle provides customers who previously purchased one or more of the apps included within the bundle an additional discount on the app bundle.
John:
So I don't know if it's a straight subtraction of price or whatever, but.
Marco:
Perfect.
Marco:
So that you can do this, but it's a terrible idea too.
John:
Yeah, and I assume people will do it, and I'm not sure how Apple will react to it.
John:
Because if they just sort of shrug and go, well, they're within the rules we defined, I expect there to be some confusion and sadness.
John:
But it's the App Store.
Marco:
If you have both versions of your app in the store at the same time, and they're both paid apps, you're going to get so many angry customers, so many angry support emails, so many one-star reviews.
Marco:
I think that problem will be self-correcting.
Marco:
It's a terrible, terrible idea to have both versions in the store at the same time because people will accidentally buy the old one and then be very angry they just spent money on an obsolete app that doesn't entitle them to much or any of a discount on the new one in total.
Marco:
and yeah it's although crank i mean there's the whole thing of cranking the price up on the old one and then just refunding anyone who accidentally buys it and eating 30 percent of that you can't refund them apple has to refund that's the thing like you as the developer you can't just push a refund button when they email you and say oh sorry i corrected that for you can't you have no control over that it's this is why it's a terrible idea developers please do not do this it is you will regret it your customers will be upset it is it is just a very very bad idea
John:
I wonder if the people who are most likely to do this are the very few people on the App Store who still have expensive apps, like over $50, and they want to offer upgrade pricing.
John:
Because like you said, upgrade pricing is pointless when you're selling $3 apps, right?
John:
But if it's like $50, $100, are there any of those left?
John:
I don't even know.
John:
It used to be that Apple was close to that range, but now not really anymore these days, although...
John:
was aperture like 80 or something yep but anyway apple's not playing the game the chapel sure is not playing so i wonder if there's someone out there with like some specialty cad application that wants to offer upgrade pricing and tries this and then we can wait for their blog post where they cry about uh their customers getting angry at them or people being confused
Marco:
Yeah, I could see, you know, like, obviously, like the higher the priced app, the more sense it might make to try a scheme like this.
Marco:
But I just I think it's a terrible idea from the start.
John:
And speaking of looking at web pages at developer.apple.com and reading about them on the air.
John:
There was a lot of confusion during the week about what the hell was the NDA situation for WWDC, because all of us were at the beginning of every session.
John:
They had the little announcer person come on and say, reminder, everything under the session is NDA and blah, blah, blah.
John:
And like, you know, so it.
John:
the boilerplate text and speech that we encountered at wc was the same as every year which is basically the keynote is public it's streamed to the world all the sessions are under nda and they are but the content of that nda according to various blog posts included this new clause that said oh by the way you're allowed to talk about any technical information you see in these things you just can't like post screenshots copy and paste text from slides or distribute the software or review products or something to that effect
John:
uh but i'm not a lawyer i didn't know what that text meant so we've all been very cautious about it but here i think is the kicker after coming home from wwc i think we all realized that anybody and in any web browser can go to apple's developer website without having an account of any kind without signing anything without agreeing to anything and simply play videos from wwc you can watch videos of all the sessions of wwc this year for free without signing any agreement with apple
John:
which means basically that anything contained in those videos, we're allowed to talk about because anybody can see them because it's essentially public information.
John:
I know enough about Apple's NDAs to know that if it's public information, you can talk about it.
John:
So that is a relief in one respect and that we don't have to tiptoe around this stuff because if it was in a WWDC session, we can talk about it because you can just go watch the video right now.
John:
And on the other hand, what it means is that anybody who cares can sit there, watch every video from WWDC, and then we'll have no reason to read my OS X review because...
John:
Everything in those videos, you will know more than you're going to learn from my review because all I do is summarize WWDC.
John:
But no one wants to watch all those videos, so you'll probably read it anyway because as long as my review is, it is still way shorter than watching everybody from WWDC.
Marco:
Yeah, I think you'll be all right.
Marco:
Anyway, our first sponsor this week...
Marco:
is a new sponsor it is automatic they actually this is this is a relatively new product that actually got the domain name automatic.com like even spelled the normal way not like the wordpress way it's spelled the actual way that you spell the word automatic automatic is your smart driving assistant for your smartphone
Marco:
So if you go to automatic.com, you can see this thing.
Marco:
And we actually, we talked about this in neutral.
Marco:
And I think the second to last episode, or the third to last episode of neutral, we actually talked about this.
Marco:
And we are probably irresponsible enough drivers, well, Casey and I are at least, that this would have probably some bad news for us.
Marco:
Because here's what it does.
Marco:
So this plugs in, they have this little, I think it's a Bluetooth dongle, but they have a little dongle that plugs into the OBD, which one's the wrapper, which one's the port?
Marco:
Onboard data, OBDC, right?
Marco:
OBD2.
Marco:
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marco:
Sorry, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Marco:
It's that port in your car that it's usually in the driver's footwell, and it's what they plug the diagnostic thing into when you go get service.
Marco:
They have a little dongle that plugs into that, and then that can connect to an app on your phone that they have.
Marco:
And this diagnostic port in almost any modern car can dump out tons of useful information from the engine, like what kind of gas mileage you're getting, what the engine is doing, what kind of condition the engine is in, if there's any problems with the engine.
Marco:
If, you know...
Marco:
When the check engine light comes on, what that really means is there is an error.
Marco:
You know, it's just a Boolean.
Marco:
Like, there is something in your car supporting an error code.
Marco:
This thing can actually tell you what those codes mean.
Marco:
It can decode them from almost all popular car types.
Marco:
You can go on their website and learn more about which ones are supported and everything, but it's great.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
Then it can even tell you how you've been doing on your gas mileage.
Marco:
You can see all these pretty graphs and averages, and you can kind of compete with yourself.
Marco:
You can see how you've been doing, how much fuel is costing around your area, and how much your driving style is helping or hurting your fuel cost goals.
Marco:
It can also remember where you parked.
Marco:
And you can locate your car on a nice little map and, you know, look at their app.
Marco:
It's all, you know, very like Apple design-y.
Marco:
It's a very well-made app.
Marco:
Right now it is iPhone only.
Marco:
It is coming soon to Android.
Marco:
Oh, one more little benefit that they, well, big benefit potentially.
Marco:
if you are in a crash in a serious crash they can actually automatically detect that from the obd yeah port and uh and they can notify local authorities automatically if you're in a crash so this thing could really help you out um hopefully you won't need that feature but if you do you might be glad you have it um so anyway iphone only coming soon to android this ships in only two business days and there's a 45 day return policy is
Marco:
So just get it.
Marco:
Try it out.
Marco:
See if you like it.
Marco:
I bet you will.
Marco:
It's free shipping.
Marco:
Anyway, go to automatic.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Normally, it's $99.95.
Marco:
And there's, by the way, no subscription fees, nothing per month for that service.
Marco:
You just buy the thing and that's it.
Marco:
No subscription fees.
Marco:
So $100 normally, you can get 20% off.
Marco:
Get this thing for just $80 at automatic.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to Automatic for sponsoring our show.
John:
When we talked about this on Neutral, it was sort of in the context of car manufacturers should be ashamed of themselves that they're not already doing this, right?
John:
But now here we are a year or two later, whatever it's been, and that's the new status quo with Apple doing CarPlay.
John:
It's like...
John:
Give up on car makers trying to do something.
John:
Apple's just like, look, just let us take over your screen.
John:
We will project a UI onto it from our device.
John:
And it's like sort of externalizing the technology part into a part that you upgrade faster than you upgrade your car and never relying on the car manufacturer to do anything.
John:
So it's like, you know, with automatic, there's this port.
John:
It has information.
John:
Car manufacturers have been really slow to put that information to use, especially in non-high-end cars.
John:
But they all have this port.
John:
So why don't we sell this thing that people can buy, stick in there and use in conjunction with their smartphone or whatever to sort of add technology to their otherwise inexpensive and woefully under technologicalified.
John:
That's not a word, but it sounds good.
John:
Car.
John:
Now it is.
John:
So one more thing on the WWC NDA stuff.
John:
As people have noted, if you go to the video page, which we will put in the show notes for anyone who wants to watch WWC videos, the ones that they pretty much never release on video, in my recollection, are the lunchtime sessions, which are not technical sessions presented by Apple, but Apple invites in guest speakers from various places.
John:
A couple of years ago, Pixar did it.
John:
J.J.
John:
Abrams was there one year.
John:
This year, the lunch session that I went to was presented by someone who works for Lucasfilm.
John:
on uh the star wars franchise and he was talking about uh the new show that the new animated show that he's working on but kind of did a big tour of uh the star wars universe and his history with it uh those you're not going to be able to find and it's not because i don't think there's any nda type things it's just that i think their deal with the people who want to come in and speak is we're not going to film you we're not going to release your film just come and talk to the people who are attending our conference and
John:
as a nice thing to do and that's probably an easier sell than hey famous person come here and we'll film you and then we'll sell access to your video or release it for free so you won't find the star wars session which is the one most nerds are interested in this year i was there and it was good and it was fun and it's a shame you can't see it but oh well
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So we have a mountain more follow-up to get through.
Marco:
This might be a hypercritical style 80% follow-up episode.
Marco:
Oh, geez.
John:
I was going to say we could just do this next item and then leave the rep because there's one item on cloud and then two items on medical stuff that I think maybe we mentioned in the previous episode.
John:
But I just wanted to read this Apple and cloud feedback because it was the first time that I had...
John:
Heard this information, although I think one of you two had alluded to it before.
John:
This is from an anonymous source.
John:
Who knows if it's real, whatever.
John:
Anyway, typical caveats about feedback.
John:
Do not take this as gospel.
John:
But here's what this person said in regards to Apple and the cloud.
John:
They said, iTunes, iCloud, and the majority of server-based interfacing are handled by a huge division of Apple that acts almost like its own company due to sheer size.
John:
They employ mostly contractors, including offshore.
John:
From my experience, they were the slowest responding division by far and seemed to be completely locked in politics.
John:
This is like the scenario that we imagined thinking about Apple's cloud stuff.
John:
Like, it seems like the people who do that aren't as good as the people who do the other stuff.
Marco:
Wait, hold on.
Marco:
I didn't say they weren't as good.
Marco:
I said they seem like they're not getting the resources or the priority that they need to be good.
John:
Well, so here's the next bit of this.
John:
As a software developer outside the division who needed to work with them in parallel to build something, it's a nightmare.
John:
Imagine submitting a request to the NSA to give you information and receiving a piece of paper saying they can't due to technical reasons six months later.
John:
Like...
John:
It's not that they're not good.
John:
It's not just that they're under-resourced.
John:
It's that they seem to be not as responsive.
John:
Like they're not working on the same team.
John:
Like within Apple, you imagine, all right, we got to get the new iPhone out and the OS needs to be done and whatever frameworks for these new features need to be on there.
John:
And the hardware design, like it's all, everyone's working together to just get this job done.
John:
And then there's this other entity far away, disconnected with a huge latency where every time you have to deal with them, it's like a big turnaround time.
John:
And it seems like they're not on the same page as you.
John:
Is it just because they're under resource?
John:
Is it just because they're remote?
John:
I don't know.
John:
But this, you could, if this is true, this would explain why their cloud stuff has such problems because...
John:
It's almost like it's not Apple doing it.
John:
It's like this other entity that's not that's not running the same race with them.
John:
That's not sort of together on producing this big thing.
John:
But, you know, outsourcing as the Spolsky things don't outsource your core competency.
John:
If cloud is an Apple's core competency competency at this point, then what is like they need to they need to bring that back in if it really is outsourced like this, because if this is true, it is very depressing and a bad situation.
Marco:
It's almost as if they need increased collaboration.
John:
Now, that was just increased collaboration amongst like the hardware and software guys to stop them from fighting.
John:
Those are the people who already were working pretty well together.
John:
This is who knows what this is.
John:
So again, I don't know if any of this is true.
John:
Anonymous sources, who knows?
John:
But if it is true, it confirms my worst fears and presumably
John:
presumably it is changing like the cloud kit stuff would indicate a change in that direction because it sure seems like you know that apple is dogfooding its own stuff and to a degree that they hadn't before and that cloud kit looks like a much much more sane api than the previous ones much more like the apis that everyone was building for themselves uh so things are looking up in this area this is a sort of a look backward on how things might have been if this is all accurate
Marco:
Yeah, and, you know, that does corroborate what I had heard, although that's more detailed than I had heard, but also I heard from some – so we had somebody else.
Marco:
I don't know if it was the same person or not, or maybe it was a random conversation I had somewhere, but somebody else said that this actually was, like, actively changing and, you know, like –
Marco:
Federighi was now able to push against that to some degree and get stuff moving, and apparently changes were happening.
Marco:
That's all that we know, really.
Marco:
Heck, we don't even really know that.
Marco:
It basically sounds like it has been bad, and it is still a little bit bad, but it is making progress.
Marco:
And I think...
Marco:
What Apple is showing, what they're announcing, and even just how their stuff is performing recently, I think the results seem to be bearing that out.
Marco:
That seems like a plausible explanation of what we're seeing.
Marco:
Anyway, before we move on to the official topics, let me get one more sponsorship out of the way because we were a little late to the first one.
Marco:
Our second sponsor this week is lynda.com.
Marco:
L-Y-N-D-A dot com.
Marco:
lynda.com helps you learn and keep up to date with your software, pick up your brand new skills, or explore new hobbies with easy to follow, excellently produced, professional video tutorials.
Marco:
Now, you can learn a new programming language.
Marco:
You can create UI.
Marco:
You can get design tips.
Marco:
You can get your first code up and running with Objective-C or probably even Swift pretty soon.
Marco:
I imagine they're working on that very quickly.
Marco:
They're usually very quick to put up new stuff when new stuff comes out.
Marco:
You can even use Lynda.com to learn new applications for new creative endeavors, like if you want to learn Photoshop or Illustrator or Logic or anything like that, you can learn...
Marco:
video editing, post-production, all this crazy stuff.
Marco:
You can learn all that stuff from beginner to advanced.
Marco:
They have over 2,400 courses.
Marco:
They're taught by industry experts, and they add more courses every week.
Marco:
You can always go, as I said, they're always up to date with new stuff.
Marco:
They work directly with software companies, so that way when a new version of Photoshop comes out, they can have a tutorial on day one.
Marco:
You can get started right away.
Marco:
Really fantastic.
Marco:
Now, Lynda.com, this is the best part, I think.
Marco:
You get all this.
Marco:
You can have access to their entire library.
Marco:
It isn't per video.
Marco:
You pay $25 per month, and that's a flat fee.
Marco:
You get unlimited access to everything for $25 a month.
Marco:
So that kind of removes the pressure in your head.
Marco:
You're like, well, do I really want to learn about this thing for another $3?
Marco:
You don't have to worry about that.
Marco:
$25 a month gets you unlimited access to their entire catalog.
Marco:
So browse around.
Marco:
You might find something that you didn't think you'd want to be interested in, but watch a few minutes of it and see.
Marco:
And then you might be like, oh, I always assumed that would be harder.
Marco:
Or, oh, that's how you can do this cool thing.
Marco:
I never knew that.
Marco:
so anyway go to lynda.com l y n d a.com slash atp and you can get a free seven day trial go check it out you know see for yourself you know we've all three of us have watched stuff on there i've learned a lot from their stuff especially with some of the podcast production stuff that i've done and chances are i'll probably go in there to learn swift or json or sorry node or uh all sorts of stuff they have all sorts of language courses you can even learn php if you're the only person on earth who doesn't know it yet
Marco:
John, and you can learn all sorts of new stuff there.
Marco:
3D printing.
Marco:
They even have 3D printing.
Marco:
I mean, they have this crazy list of stuff.
Marco:
Go check it out.
Marco:
These are nicely produced professional video tutorials.
Marco:
Go to lynda.com slash ATP.
Marco:
That is lynda.com with a Y. lynda.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to Lynda for sponsoring our show once again.
John:
Pretty sure I've written more PHP than Casey.
Marco:
That's possible, but not necessarily true.
Marco:
When Aaron and I got engaged, I had an old ThinkPad running some flavor of Ubuntu.
Marco:
And I wrote our wedding website in PHP.
Marco:
And this was actually my first exposure to databases because I'd always been writing client-side apps.
Marco:
And so I wrote a wedding website, which allowed you to RSVP online.
Marco:
And I was extremely proud of myself.
Marco:
That was all PHP.
Marco:
And I...
Marco:
thought that went really well until my friend who had an apostrophe in his surname went to register and all of a sudden everything took a turn because I didn't properly escape everything.
Marco:
But like I said, it was my first experience and that went pretty well and we didn't have to use the knot in order to do that because, I don't know, everyone used the knot at that point and I didn't want to.
Marco:
You really wanted to show Erin right up front what she was getting into.
Marco:
basically yes yeah and she's still here that's that's good yeah you found the right one so anyway um what are we talking about tonight talking about marco's uh mac pro woes oh yes how could i forget so that was fun yeah so what happened
Marco:
uh i woke up to a computer that was showing signs of disk failure uh basically it had totally locked up um like you could still move the mouse and everything you could still like launch bar you could still invoke commands and you know click on stuff and move stuff but
Marco:
anything that would cause a disc access would just freeze whatever you were using.
Marco:
And, you know, so I tried, like, I couldn't even like, you know, launch console.
Marco:
Like I tried to launch a console app to see if it was showing me anything useful.
Marco:
And I couldn't even do that because that would require reading from the disc.
Marco:
Uh, so I thought, Oh crap, my SSD is dead.
Marco:
And, uh,
Marco:
i rebooted and rebooted and rebooted and could never get past the gray spinner in verbose mode it would stop at the how do you pronounce the fsck disk command checking thing just spell it out it's fine anyway it it wouldn't get past it was doing that and would never finish it i gave it lots of time i i gave it an hour to see like is it taking a while to finish no it wasn't it was just stuck
Marco:
And, you know, I restored from a super-duper clone, which is by far the fastest recovery method.
Marco:
And so I did that, and it was fine.
Marco:
And, you know, so I'm fine.
Marco:
I'm back up now, and everything's fine.
Marco:
It seems...
Marco:
Oh, and for whatever it's worth, while it was in the unbootable state, I booted from the clone and ran disk utility against the damaged disk.
Marco:
It appeared to have no errors.
Marco:
I did the whole repair, verify everything.
Marco:
It reported nothing wrong.
Marco:
in conclusion it appears as though this was almost certainly a uh file system related problem you know i don't know anyway it this is boring but i had an issue that caused enough disk corruption to make the disk unbootable and uh it seems to have been related to the file system i was using which was hfs plus
Marco:
Ding.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
That's it.
John:
We're doing the verbal sound effects now.
Marco:
Yeah, well, I don't have one of those crazy sound boards like on Bionic where I can just hit a button.
Marco:
I love Bionic.
Marco:
Bionic is... Oh, it's so good.
Marco:
But I couldn't even tell you why.
Marco:
It's just so good.
Marco:
It's so bad that it's so good.
Marco:
And they know it.
Marco:
It's the show that...
Marco:
It's like Milton, the guy from Office Space.
Marco:
It's like the show got fired six years ago and no one told them.
Marco:
And they just keep going in every day.
Marco:
It's just this ongoing piece of performance art.
Marco:
Between two people who are very funny together and just have nothing to talk about.
Marco:
Because the show is, like, totally off the rails.
Marco:
Oh, it's so wonderful.
Marco:
And it is comical.
Marco:
Like, it is such good humor.
Marco:
And the funniest part is you're sitting there listening thinking, why am I still listening to this?
Marco:
And they're sitting there producing it saying, why are we still producing this?
Marco:
And yet it works.
Marco:
I don't know why it works, but it does work and it's hilarious and I really enjoy it.
Marco:
Oh, I agree.
John:
I hope they didn't pay for that spot because I'm not sure you're really selling it there.
Yeah.
Marco:
why am i still listening to this says marco armand no nobody should be listening to it but i listen to it and i love it oh i i completely agree with everything you just said it's so good and i think they would i think they would agree with me i think they would say don't listen to it oh it's so wonderful because it really is like the entire show like if you think back to work is a show of in jokes you have no idea because bionic is one entire show made of nothing but in jokes it's ridiculous and it's wonderful in every possible way
Marco:
yeah it is it is really quite good uh anyway um i where were i i forgot we were even talking about that how do we even get there uh ding soundboard hfs plus right okay anyway so i put the link of the show notes to this article that a bazillion people have sent me on twitter
John:
from this person complaining about hfs plus because they had a bunch of photos and it was like something like 15 000 photos stored over six years and he ran some checksums to compare i guess he had valid checksum someplace and compared it to the the file stored in hfs plus and he lost 28 files over six years and these are images and some of them were some of these like jpegs would half load some of them would load completely again this is what we're talking about uh bit rot you know
John:
that digital storage is not forever uh errors will be introduced and if they're introduced in your images uh you may lose some or all of individual pictures like if the error is towards the end maybe you'll be able to see most of the picture if the error is in the middle you'll see the top half of the picture maybe there's some clever thing they could recover from those maybe the whole file is hosed and you just get a bunch of static or garbage but anyway that's a shame if that's the only copy of the picture you had
John:
Uh, and this article talks about HFS plus and how it's old and how it's crappy and so on and so forth.
John:
And a lot of people sent me this thing going, see, you're always talking about the HFS plus, right?
John:
Look at this poor guy.
John:
He's backing you up saying HFS plus is crappy.
John:
Uh, and I didn't respond to most of these people and I didn't really tweet out the link to the article because this article is not really about HFS plus being crappy.
John:
I already wrote a bit about HFS plus being crappy in one of my reviews that is linked to in this article, uh, at the end in an addendum.
John:
HFS Plus is crappy, and it does corrupt itself.
John:
And I'm not even sure that's what happened to Marco's thing, because Disk Utility said everything was okay.
John:
So HFS Plus probably didn't corrupt its metadata structure.
John:
It probably does think it is keeping track of everything.
John:
But BitRot is...
John:
something that is sort of a separate issue where when data goes bad on disk uh the metadata keeping track of where that data is could be perfectly valid like hfs plus has not corrupted itself it knows where all of your data is for every single file it's just that that data itself is garbage and hfs plus does not care what the content of that data is it just needs to keep track of it and remember where it is and how much is available free and how much is occupied and where each piece of individual files are and what order they go in and
John:
And HFS Plus does fail.
John:
HFS Plus does fail in many respects in doing that job.
John:
And that is one of my complaints about HFS Plus.
John:
But the second complaint about HFS Plus and all sort of file systems that predate the ZFS dawning of reliability, of getting religion about reliability,
John:
They don't care what your data is either.
John:
They just cross their fingers and hope that the disk storage system is reliable.
John:
And ZFS was the first popular file system to get serious about saying that we're going to take responsibility for keeping track of whether the stuff you wrote to disk is what is still there.
John:
And it would do that with checksums, not just checksums on the metadata, but also checksums on the data itself, which is computationally expensive and takes memory and has all these limits.
John:
But ZFS would be able to detect errors in the storage system.
John:
Sometimes there are errors in the hard drive, sometimes there are errors in the disk controller, sometimes there are errors in the driver stack in the operating system.
John:
No matter where the source of the error is, ZFS's thing was like end-to-end data protection, where if we write data and then later on go to read it, and if what we read is not what we wrote originally, we will tell you that there's a problem.
John:
That doesn't save your data.
John:
It's still garbage.
John:
But then you can, if you have the ability to detect when something went wrong, if you're using any form of redundant storage, which ZFS offered itself, where it could store your data twice on disk or three times on disk, you could use a multi-disk scenario, you could have backups, so on and so forth.
John:
The key is having the file system let you know immediately, oh, this data is bad.
John:
uh but i know i have another copy of this data over there and i can tell if that data is good so i don't have to guess like oh this one is bad that other one must be good i can also check that one oh that data is good let me write it back on top of this one let me you know it could you know sort of the self-healing file system not knowing whether your data is bad like this person manually made a bunch of checksums or whatever and then compared them
John:
If you don't know your data is bad, you won't find out that your data is hosed until that corrupt data has like spread to all of your backups.
John:
It's been pushed to your cloud backup.
John:
It's all it's, you know, your last three months worth of backups have long since been overwritten.
John:
And all you have is the corrupt data because you don't have your data going back to the beginning of time.
John:
All you have is multiple copies of your corrupt data.
John:
And you won't know that again until like.
John:
You're trying to get out pictures for someone's high school graduation and you want a baby picture and you realize the baby picture you wanted is corrupt.
John:
If you had a file system that had N10 data integrity, the file system could have notified that you notified you of that immediately when it happened and could have potentially repaired it from a good copy.
John:
Uh, so that's, I think what this, this article is really complaining about that all file systems are not like ZFS and offer data integrity guarantees and not so much that, oh yeah, HFS is crappy because it does, it loses track of where your data is, which does happen.
John:
And people do tweet about that all the time, but that's not really what this article is about.
Marco:
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Thank you very much to Back Blaze for sponsoring our show once again and for buying me tea last week.
Marco:
Okay, so let's talk about metal, and I do not mean the flavor of music.
Marco:
So I am not at all qualified to talk about any 3D programming, anything, because I've never really done it.
Marco:
And Marco, I don't believe you have either.
Marco:
That is not true.
Marco:
Oh, really?
Marco:
I am slightly...
Marco:
slightly a hair above completely unqualified.
Marco:
Excellent.
Marco:
Because in college, I tried writing a 3D version of Scorched Earth, and I tried it in like three different languages using at least two different graphics APIs, using DirectX first, then OpenGL, and then something else using OpenGL, and
Marco:
It was basically, it was my way of fooling around with various 3D stuff that I was learning in college.
Marco:
And then I kind of used my most recent version of that as a demo to get myself my first job.
Marco:
And then I never looked at 3D programming again.
Marco:
So I know enough, I know very basics of 3D programming as it stood in 2003 and 2004.
Marco:
So it's probably completely useless by today's standards.
Marco:
And I would never consider myself a knowledgeable programmer at all.
Marco:
However, I at least know the kinds of things that low-level graphic APIs do.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
So, John, why don't you tell us about mail?
John:
I don't know why you think I know any more about it.
John:
I mean, I've done about the same amount of 3D programming as Marco, like demo apps on the SGIs in college, you know, where you just get something up on the screen and maybe move it around.
John:
You're like, well, that was really hard.
John:
I'm not doing this anymore because it's super hard to get anything.
Marco:
impressive up on the screen especially back then but i mean i mean really if you want to know about metal as an api just start listening to debug and eventually guy english will say enough things because he actually is qualified to know and because he's actually a real game programmer so listen to what he says about metal and uh you'll you'll you'll you'll learn more about it from him than from us
John:
But the executive summary is what's important.
John:
I mean, we're going to talk about it from a business perspective, but it's like, so OpenGL and OpenGL ES is what Apple was using previously.
John:
These are open standards that are, in theory, not controlled by any one company.
John:
There's a consortium, blah, blah, blah.
John:
These are very old standards that have evolved over the years.
John:
When these standards were created, the current crop of 3D hardware, current GPUs, did not exist in this form.
John:
And so the API, even though it has evolved over the years, it's had to maintain backward compatibility.
John:
it is not well suited to current hardware, not just in the particular details, because a lot of that is handled by a driver, but just in terms of the programming model.
John:
Like, what do you do?
John:
You issue a series of function calls that set things up and then cause them to be drawn.
John:
And like the sequence of events that are presented through an OpenGL API have almost no bearing on what's actually happening with the hardware in terms of
John:
when does something happen uh when do commands get sent to the gpu when do the things that are going to be drawn get sent to the gpu's memory how do things get written back how does that affect this a lot of that happens in the driver but that's just another level of indirection so you're you're there like doing things step by step in your program and there's like this whole other program going on behind the scenes to manage that stuff to say all right uh when should i ship this stuff off to the gpu so it's available in time
John:
Oh, wait, the program just read something back from the GPU.
John:
Actually, we have to stall and read that back from the GPU.
John:
So previously, the GPU was two frames ahead of the CPU.
John:
But now the CPU wants to read the data back.
John:
So we have to wait for it to catch up and resynchronize.
John:
And there's latency between the GPU and the CPU.
John:
But if you if you don't accept the latency, you might not be completely utilizing the GPU and all sorts of details that come from the mismatch between this relatively high level API.
John:
that does not acknowledge the existence of the GPU in its current form and what's actually going on behind the scenes.
John:
So that requires game programmers to do all sorts of voodoo stuff where they're like, well, I know if I do these sequence of events and do this little thing here, it will force these things to all be uploaded to the GPU.
John:
And I know if I do this, my shaders will be compiled and will be ready for me.
John:
That's another thing with OpenGL.
John:
There's OpenGL shader language, and that's sort of a high level language, but it has to be compiled for the individual GPU.
John:
Whether that happens at the time your program runs, or at the time it draws a frame, or you want your shadies to be pre-compiled, and DirectX has this method where they pre-compile them down to sort of a, not bytecode, but more compact form, and then Apple's drivers had to use LLVM for that back in the day.
John:
Anyway, it's an extremely complicated world, and what developers who do 3D programming wanted to do is say, this is way too complicated.
John:
I can't keep track of all the different machines and the Rube Goldberg device that causes graphics to go up on the screen.
John:
If you just gave me a programming model that was a closer match to the way things actually happen, it would be a lot easier to get something that performs well on a wide range of hardware.
John:
Metal is an interesting entry into that field because first of all, Metal right now only works on iOS and only works on the A7.
John:
So certainly it's not helping people deploy their, you know,
John:
Write code that's going to work on a wide variety of platforms or wide variety of hardware going forward I'm sure they will expand support for it I'm sure it supports the a8 now and all that other good stuff And who knows what it'll support in the future, but for now, it's very narrowly constrained But the programming model of metal does fit closer to the way things work it it shows you
John:
Here's a command buffer.
John:
Batch your commands up.
John:
Batch your things up.
John:
Ship them off to the GPU in the correct order.
John:
Like we're exposing all these things that were previously happening in the driver that were completely opaque to you.
John:
We expose them as objects.
John:
And you have a programming language that lets you construct them, package them up, send them off.
John:
And it's much cleaner than OpenGL.
John:
And it's a great fit for the way modern GPUs work today.
John:
and the reason Apple thinks this is something that's going to help people is not because they think people are going to write their programs in Metal and target only A7 devices or greater, but because the people who make the game engines, which they had all on the stage during the keynote, that's why they had Epic up there with their Unreal Engine, and they showed Unity and
John:
All the other game engines out there whose names I can't remember, like the big four engine makers for 3D engines.
John:
That's what most game makers use because riding a 3D engine is super hard.
John:
Well, if the engine middleware makers make sure their engines are able to run with metal when they're running on the A7...
John:
Then anyone who develops a game on top of that engine gets the advantage of, oh, if you play my game on an A7, I'll get better performance.
John:
So it's an interesting move by Apple to sort of try to get away from OpenGL and take control of their own destiny with a more modern API.
John:
And it's also interesting that they didn't choose to do what Microsoft did, which is Microsoft wanted to compete with OpenGL years and years ago, and they made DirectX.
John:
which learned from OpenGL's mistakes and was more modern, but is not that new.
John:
I mean, Metal is much newer than OpenGL.
John:
And of course, AMD has Mantle, which is a similar type of thing to Metal.
John:
As far as I'm aware, I have not read a lot about Mantle, but a sort of a closer to the Metal, which is I'm assuming where Apple got its name.
John:
Mantle is a closer to the Metal API.
John:
It's one of the few areas in computing where the APIs are actually getting...
John:
not so much lower level, but exposing more of the foibles of the hardware rather than going the other direction, rather than abstracting it all.
John:
Because OpenGL is more distant from the hardware than either Mantle or Metal, or probably DirectX for that matter.
John:
So that's the situation with Metal.
John:
That's what Apple is doing.
John:
And when Apple announced Metal in the keynote, I tweeted something to the effect of, so is Apple going to make a game console or what?
John:
Because they just made their own sort of low-level game console-y type 3D API.
John:
They've got a little box that you connect to a TV.
John:
They've got controller support APIs built into iOS.
John:
Everyone keeps expecting them to offer some way to put apps on the Apple TV platform.
John:
What's the deal here?
John:
Are they going to make one?
John:
Are they not going to make one?
John:
Are they just going to dance around this until they have all the pieces but then just refuse to do anything?
John:
Kind of like they did with e-books for years and years where they had all the pieces in place to be the world's dominant e-book maker and then just let Amazon do it because they couldn't be bothered.
John:
And this comes up because there was a strategy post today
Marco:
uh that says apple tv might just how apple tv might disrupt microsoft and sony that talks about the same issue have you guys read this yeah i i think it's interesting i mean it's it's definitely true you know like one of the one of uh one of ben's main arguments there um is that the the official you know high profile game consoles out there are these very like high-end hot expensive devices and
Marco:
That, you know, it is necessarily kind of keeping them high end because these are like these $400 boxes that, you know, it kind of locks out casual gamers who it's just not worth them spending $400 on this box.
Marco:
Meanwhile, so many people now are getting things like the Apple TV or the Roku or the new Amazon Fiery box, whatever it is, that...
Marco:
the Merlin says it's good anyway so many people are getting these little cheap boxes that can stream video or watch Netflix or whatever and that model like that market is probably very likely to disrupt the gaming market at some point soon that's kind of the gist right
Marco:
i mean basically i mean i think if you look at metal i mean metal is really interesting just because you know oh look it's a new level api that is a lot faster um but it's worth asking why they made metal you know why did apple put so much effort into something that is entirely about games um because apple historically has hell we were talking about this a couple of weeks ago how apple just doesn't really seem to care about games um
Marco:
Obviously, they do.
Marco:
Obviously, we were at least partially wrong on that.
John:
I don't think it's entirely about games, though.
John:
Well... Because, I mean, think about... The games is one big aspect of it, definitely.
John:
But the whole UI uses OpenGL, and viewed through the lens of iOS, Metal starts to look more like a battery-saving feature.
John:
where they can more efficiently use the GPU with more precision, exactly doling out the commands to it in the right order and having 10 times faster draw call performance and all these things.
John:
That makes their UI snappier and has a potential battery savings because you're spending less time flogging the GPU to get your stuff done.
John:
And their whole UI is basically, it's not a 3D game, but it's all OpenGL on iOS and on the Mac for that matter these days.
John:
So there is a platform,
John:
benefit to it even if no game maker ever used it i don't think they would have gone through the effort if no game maker used it and clearly game makers like metal because like all the big engines are saying yes we're going to support it and i don't think apple had to twist their arms because this is what game makers want they want their games to go faster they don't like fighting with open glas trying to figure out what weird incantations they have to do to get good performance and and you know game makers want good battery life too they don't want people to play a game and have it destroy your your phone's battery
Marco:
That's fair.
Marco:
Well, and I also I think it's very obvious that there are a number of like major strategic benefits here.
Marco:
Like, you know, obviously, you know, a lot of people are saying, oh, well, this will encourage people to write games only for iOS.
Marco:
And I think that's I think the number of people who will make that decision based on metal is probably very, very small because.
Marco:
most people aren't writing this low level code i mean you know they're like the people as you people make the engines they're writing code at this level and they're possibly investing into making uh metal ports for their engines that will you know they they're not going to stop making open gl versions you know they're still going to like the big engines out there that everyone licenses or or uses they're still going to have open gl versions they can keep running on android and everything else like that's
Marco:
They're not going to just stop doing that.
Marco:
But it will reinforce the pretty frequent idea that games, while they might run on Android stuff, they usually run better on iOS.
Marco:
And it's usually because most Android stuff out there has a pretty wide range of GPUs and GPU power.
Marco:
And
Marco:
Some of the cheap Android stuff, like some of the cheap Android tablets, historically have had very weak GPU power compared to comparable iOS devices.
Marco:
Partially out of cost, partially out of other concerns, who knows.
Marco:
But for whatever reason, Android GPUs have historically sucked.
Marco:
And yes, I know there are some devices that have good ones, but I think the average is pretty bad for what's actually sold.
John:
It's not a time.
Marco:
and i think this is a way for for apple to keep that lead going for for a while longer you know like as the android stuff gets better hardware and starts catching up um i think this is this is a way to just be like all right let's keep that lead going but ultimately i think this does they were very specific that this is for the a7 well and and for the a8 you assume i mean like obviously obviously
John:
But yeah, I mean, it's a total Apple thing to do.
John:
What other company could even, you know, could feasibly do this?
John:
Because Apple has such a limited line and is so relentless about moving things forward and doesn't really care that this API doesn't apply to their old things.
John:
It's going to apply to all of their iOS devices from this time forward, assuming the iPod Touch gets the A7 this year.
Marco:
oh yeah the ipod touch exists um yeah no i mean like i i think the fact that this is a7 only or a7 and above only probably signifies that if apple's going to into the game market the way they're going to do it is by waiting until there's an a7 in the apple tv and then like all right hey now we have this thing start making games for it um
Marco:
And I think we're waiting until that becomes economical.
Marco:
And I think that's why we don't have an Apple TV SDK yet.
Marco:
I think that's why the Apple TV hardware has done very little in the last few years, has moved forward very little.
Marco:
I think they're just waiting for economics until they can combine this thing, keep the same price point, $100, maybe even drop it by $20, $30, but probably keep it at $100 and eventually put an A7 in there.
Marco:
And that...
Marco:
Heck, that might be this fall.
Marco:
It would be a little aggressive, but they could probably do it if they wanted to.
Marco:
I think there's a very good chance of that happening and of that happening soon.
Marco:
That might even be the big fall thing is, hey, you know, you guys are all talking about wearables that nobody wants.
Marco:
We kind of made a game system that's going to kick butt in the market because we're going to sell a ton of them anyway.
Marco:
And then you can start making games for it using all of our existing infrastructure, using metal.
Marco:
And here's a new controller so the controlling doesn't suck.
Marco:
And that's it.
Marco:
I mean, that would be a pretty amazing fall.
John:
Like I said during the WWC keynote, Apple has all the pieces to make a run at this exact strategy.
John:
An inexpensive box with pretty good 3D performance.
John:
They've got their own chip.
John:
They've got their own GPU.
John:
They've got their own iOS.
John:
They've got now a low-level console-style API for doing 3D and taking advantage of that hardware.
John:
They've got the API for controller support.
John:
All the pieces are there.
John:
Unfortunately, all those pieces, the technology pieces, are not the hard part of being successful in the game console business.
John:
Just ask Microsoft.
John:
Getting the technology right is good, but I don't think it's even necessary.
John:
It's not like a necessary but sufficient thing.
John:
I don't think it's even necessary to get the tech right.
John:
The Wii's technology was disgusting, and they were successful in the market.
John:
so the hard part of being successful in the game market is how do you get how do you get people who spend money on games to buy your thing and the answer to that would be like oh they'll buy it because it's like you know it's a great tv puck to watch netflix on or whatever so they have they have and it's cheap so that'll get people to buy things and then how do you get uh game developers to develop good games for your platform and just ask the ouya people how easy that is to do it is really really hard and
John:
probably cost potentially billions of dollars if you want to make a run at this market and get all those people who are currently buying $60 games for their PS4s.
John:
And like we've talked about before the Next Generation of Consoles was announced, the question was, is there still a place in the market for...
John:
Big, expensive devices that play mostly or only games.
John:
The answer is yes.
John:
People love the PS4.
John:
It is selling pretty well, certainly well enough to make Sony happy.
John:
Microsoft's console is selling pretty well as well.
John:
No one wants the Wii U because it's crappy.
John:
Maybe their, you know, E3 was this past week, so maybe Nintendo's fortunes will rise next year.
John:
We don't know.
John:
But this generation of consoles, I would say, is a success.
John:
And when this generation ends, the next generation will ask the same question again.
John:
Does anyone watch these stupid $400 boxes?
John:
Do people want to pay $60 per game?
John:
That question will be asked again.
John:
But for this generation, it's true.
John:
If no one wants those boxes and there's not enough people out there to sustain that, the potential for the entire gaming market to switch to $99 pucks, I think most gamers would consider that kind of a bad situation.
John:
And the question is, all right, if there's so few of those people, it doesn't matter what they think.
John:
They'll be sad, but oh well, who cares?
John:
It's like the command line people being sad when the GUI came and took over everything and they just went and played with Linux and no one cared about them anymore.
John:
uh i don't think that scenario is likely though even though these so-called core gamers and i hate that term because it makes no sense but the so-called core gamers even though they are not the majority uh they sure as hell spend a lot of money when when when a game has someone to spend the chat room when a game like grand theft auto 5 comes out and it makes a whole jillion dollars
John:
Casual gamers are not buying that, right?
John:
Hardcore gamers are paying $60 a pop for these games.
John:
They're doing it willingly.
John:
They're happy with the results and they pump a huge amount of money into the ecosystem.
John:
And it's not like just a few whales like on Candy Crush where most of the money is made off of these poor addicted small group of people when everyone else just kind of uses it for a little while or whatever.
John:
Everybody pays $60 to get Grand Theft Auto.
John:
And those people are still willing to do it.
John:
And that, I think, is the business that Apple would have a seriously hard time getting into because, as we've discussed previously, it doesn't seem like Apple's that into games.
John:
If you're not that into games, there's no way you're going to do what it takes to woo the good developers.
John:
Plus, they would have to have some IP of their own, like Microsoft's at Halo and Sony's got all its own first-party games.
John:
Nintendo's got Mario and Donkey Kong and all that stuff.
John:
I don't think Apple can be a player in that market.
John:
Well, I don't think Apple wants to be a player in that market.
John:
Well, that was the question.
John:
And then I said to Ben Thompson, the things that they have are the technical ingredients to be a player in that market.
John:
But it sure seems like Apple doesn't want that market.
John:
Why would you want to be part of what, by all accounts, is a declining market?
John:
Despite the fact that it is clearly feasible now and makes tons of money,
John:
Why would Apple want in on that market?
John:
Is that a market that's taking off like a rocket ship to the sun and is going to be super awesome for years to come?
John:
Doesn't seem like it right now.
John:
So why would Apple be saying we really need to get in on this market?
John:
We really need to make a device that's competitive with the PS5 and the Xbox, whatever the hell they're going to call it.
John:
I don't see Apple thinking that that is a good thing to do, regardless of whether they could do it.
Marco:
Yeah, but that wasn't Ben's point, though, was it?
Marco:
I thought Ben's point was more to grab the portion of the market that's more like Marco and I, where we don't really take games too seriously, but we do enjoy it.
Marco:
And hey, man, if we've already got this Apple TV box sitting – well, I mean presumably a new one.
Marco:
I just bought this Apple TV.
Marco:
oh, you know, I guess it plays games.
Marco:
Maybe I should give that a shot and see if that's any good.
Marco:
And yes, they may have this world-class, okay, that might be a stretch, but they may have this really, really great hardware and really, really great tool chain, but that's kind of ancillary to the thought that here's a low-cost box that makes for really easy consumption.
Marco:
And I think that was more Ben's point.
John:
Yeah, but Apple already has that market.
Marco:
It's called the iPhone.
Marco:
If you look at what the existing game consoles do, and you look at the direction they are going, they have all decided, even the previous generation, not the PS2, but the PS3, the Xbox 360, and the Wii, the first Wii...
Marco:
they all started adding all these media center features.
Marco:
Once streaming Netflix became a thing, and all these streaming video sites, that all happened in the last generation of consoles.
Marco:
And they all added these features, and they all took advantage of that.
Marco:
And they all, with their current generation, the new generation, with the exception of the Wii U, which didn't really do this kind of stuff, but the other ones moved much further towards that media center role.
Marco:
Because people who buy these things...
Marco:
If you have very little interest in playing games, you're probably not buying an Xbox One, the new Xbox One, stupid name, or the PS4.
Marco:
You're probably not going to think that's worth it, which is what Ben's article says.
Marco:
This might be really frustrating because Ben's in the chat room listening to us mangle his article.
Marco:
Sorry, Ben.
Marco:
But, you know, if you aren't that into games, you're not buying those things, period.
Marco:
Like, you're not going to be getting those.
Marco:
Unless maybe your kids want one, so you get it for your kids, but you're probably, as the parent, you're probably not going to use that yourself very much if you can help it.
Marco:
There's this whole other market of people, like me and Casey, people who...
Marco:
primarily want it for its media functions and if it can also play games great but we weren't going out there and spending 60 bucks to buy GTA 6 like that was not us that was that was possibly never us it was it's definitely not us now and there's a lot of us like this and and I think you know the I think the game console makers realize that their market is declining because they're trying to be this media boxes also they're trying to push in this direction
Marco:
Apple already has a very successful little media box people buy and put on their TVs.
Marco:
And Apple is going to approach it from the other way.
Marco:
The same way the Amazon Firebox is doing it.
Marco:
Here's a mid-powered cheap box that you can plug into your TV.
Marco:
Here's a game controller for it.
Marco:
And an app store where you can spend $3 to buy a game for it if you want to.
Marco:
And it's not going to be a AAA awesome world-class game with a $50 million budget.
Marco:
It's going to be Flappy Bird 3.
Marco:
And you're going to like it.
Marco:
And that's it.
Marco:
And it's a totally different market.
John:
Apple TV will add games the same way that the other consoles added TV features.
John:
They'll add it because it's right there.
John:
You might as well do it.
John:
You have the hardware available.
John:
But...
John:
People are not buying a PlayStation so they can watch TV shows, and people are not going to buy the Apple thing to play games unless Apple gets serious about games.
John:
Because what Apple will be competing with is the $99 box from PlayStation, which they've had out for a while in Europe, and they renamed and are introducing the U.S.
John:
as PlayStation TV.
John:
Uh, why would you buy the $99 box and PlayStation that streams Netflix and does whatever the hell they're going to do?
John:
You know, like does all the same things that these little TV connected pucks do.
John:
Why would you buy the PlayStation one and not the Amazon one?
John:
Why would you buy the Amazon one and not the Apple one?
John:
Well, if you care anything about games, of course you're going to buy the PlayStation one because it's,
John:
Like they have that thing where you can play old PS3 games on it with a streaming service.
John:
It plays Vita games natively.
John:
Like it's always going to have the better games.
John:
But if you don't care about games, you'll buy the Amazon Fire TV and play Angry Birds or you buy the Apple one and play whatever iOS games reported to it.
John:
Like that bifurcation in the market already exists.
John:
And everyone thought like the iOS app store was going to totally disrupt the gaming space.
John:
And in many respects, it did in terms of what kinds of games most people play.
John:
But it didn't disrupt it to the degree that the home console business became unviable.
John:
And so if that split just continues on the television, I think that you'll still end up with the same split scenario where you have the core gamer market and the casual gamer market.
John:
And I don't think anyone will buy the Apple Puck to play games on if the PlayStation Puck exists or the Microsoft Puck or whatever.
John:
It's going to be the same thing in the Puck Wars on the TV where it's just...
John:
Which one you want depends on what you care about more.
John:
The way you win in the game space is not having the tech and not having the APIs, not having the price point.
John:
You've got to have the games.
John:
And Apple has certain kinds of games that they have locked up.
John:
Like, you know, the iOS style games, they have them first, they have them best, they run the best there.
John:
But they don't have the kinds of games that people tend to sit in front of a TV and play.
John:
And I'm not sure that...
John:
The casual type of games that Apple is dominant on, if ported to the television, if that's the type of thing that people will sit in front of the TV and play on a couch.
John:
I think once they sit on a couch and are going to play games in that context, they would prefer to get the PlayStation puck for a similar price and play those games.
Marco:
You're coming at this all wrong because you're coming at this from the perspective of a gamer.
Marco:
And I don't think that's what Ben is trying to portray.
Marco:
He's trying to say it's a more opportunistic attention grab based on the fact that Marco and I both have these brand new Apple TVs.
Marco:
And you know what?
Marco:
I wouldn't mind playing a okay game every once in a while.
Marco:
I don't give a crap about Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty or what have you.
Marco:
I just want to occasionally sit down and blow some crap up.
Marco:
And for that, this phantom Apple TV is perfect.
Marco:
We're going to make our buying decisions not based on which of these pucks has the games we want.
Marco:
We're going to make it based on other factors.
Marco:
Like if we have Amazon Prime and this Fire TV is really cheap and comes with this video streaming service that we're already paying for with Prime, it's like, well...
Marco:
Might as well get that.
Marco:
If we buy a lot of stuff on iTunes, if we buy a lot of movies and TV shows on iTunes, we're going to buy the Apple TV puck because the PlayStation puck can't play the videos.
Marco:
And so it's like, if we're going to buy a puck anyway, you know, if we only want to have one or if we only can afford one, then the other factors that go into these various media ecosystems that these things are made to play are going to play a big role in that decision.
Marco:
And so you're going to have Amazon customers buying the Amazon one and iTunes customers buying the Apple one.
John:
Well, that's what I said before, that if you're choosing based on games, you're going to choose the Sony one.
John:
But if you're not choosing based on games, you'll choose the Amazon one or the Apple one.
John:
But the whole premise of this article is how Apple might disrupt Microsoft and Sony.
John:
And it's not disrupting Microsoft and Sony if people are not changing their purchase decisions.
John:
If you were going to always buy an Apple TV and now games are just a bonus,
John:
You are not, you know, disrupting Microsoft or Sony unless you were previously going to buy a PS5 or an Xbox, whatever.
John:
And you decide, you know what?
John:
Instead, I'm going to buy the Apple thing because that's good enough.
John:
Or I'm going to buy the Sony puck because that's good enough to disrupt the market.
John:
You have to you have to basically take your low end thing and.
John:
buy that instead of the high-end thing and you have to eat your way up the chain and i'm saying eating your way up the chain at a certain point you cannot eat up any higher because you just don't have the games and it's not saying apple could not do this i'm saying the hard part is not the technology the hard part is getting the games to consume up in the higher end and again people thought this was going to happen in the the mobile game space like oh you think these mobile games are crappy and casual but soon they're going to just destroy the entire market and no one's going to be able to like
John:
low-end disruption you you poo-poo these games you think angry birds is stupid and no one should play that and candy crush is dumb but you just wait in five years there won't even be a high-end market because low-end disruption will destroy them that has not yet happened it doesn't seem like it's happening i think you cannot you cannot disrupt the the big players in the game market without having really good games and i don't think any it doesn't mean they have to be as high tech or whatever you just have to have the really good games and thus far apple has not shown that it's willing to do what it takes to get the really good games to
John:
stop people from saying, you know what, I was going to buy a PS5, but I don't need it anymore.
John:
All my gaming needs are now met by this Apple device.
Marco:
I get your point.
Marco:
Your point is correct that Apple will not take over the high end, but I think Apple or boxes like this, if Amazon continues their effort, if it actually succeeds with games...
Marco:
I think the big risk here is not that these media companies are going to take over the high end of gaming.
Marco:
It's that they're going to be good enough and with such a massive price advantage.
Marco:
I mean, you see this all the time.
Marco:
This is classic disruption.
John:
Well, it's the same.
John:
There would be no more high end.
John:
That's low end disruption.
John:
The high end is not viable.
John:
No one can be a high end.
John:
They don't have to take over the high end.
John:
No one can be the high end because it's not viable.
John:
But that's what I'm saying.
John:
If this was going to happen, I would think we'd be seeing it happen already.
John:
Like...
John:
That there is no more room for high end.
John:
The $60 games are not a thing.
John:
Apple doesn't have to get those customers.
John:
They just have to starve the companies that make them to death to say, you can keep trying to do that, but we're going to make your business unviable.
John:
And then we're all that's left in the end.
John:
And I don't think that can happen because I think enough people want really good games, the kind of which Apple has thus far shown it is not willing or able to get made for its platform.
Marco:
Maybe.
Maybe.
John:
anyway the the one thing apple has going for it is that in the realm of tv connected pucks uh apple has a good store amazon has a pretty good store the game console makers are not that great about having nice convenient app stores that regular people can use that don't suck that don't have your credit card stolen from them speaking of sony yeah microsoft may be doing a little bit better
John:
the one advantage all the apple has is they have experience in selling you three dollar things electronically uh and people are familiar with their stores and if they can leverage their ios advantage that you can say oh you buy it here and you can play it on your tv as well and all these other things like that that is an advantage they have in the gaming space for for casual gaming but the way i see it playing out unless something changes seriously is that
John:
Your TV will become just like every other part of the current market where there's a split between the people who want the big expensive thing and buy $60 games and the people who want everything else.
John:
And the ratios, I imagine, would be similar there.
John:
And I do think it's a declining market.
John:
I think the people who want $60 games is declining.
John:
It's just not declining so precipitously that I'm willing to say that...
John:
Apple or Microsoft or Sony, for that matter, are poised to disrupt the high end gaming market by making it unviable.
John:
Sony clearly is hedging its bets with its little TV puck thing saying, well, if it's going to happen, we should do it to ourselves and they'll sell this puck and they'll see how it sells.
John:
And if it starts to catch on, I'm sure Sony has no problem redirecting their attention in the next generation to puck like devices.
John:
I don't know if Microsoft's planning to have a puck, but it wouldn't surprise me.
John:
So everyone is kind of hedging their bets.
John:
But I think the success of the PS4 and Xbox One are making people say, all right, we've got one more generation breathing room.
John:
Let's start planning our next gen and see how things shake out.
Marco:
So thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Automatic, lynda.com, and Backblaze.
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.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Marco:
They did it.
Marco:
We have a special guest tonight.
Marco:
It is my wonderful wife, Tiff.
Marco:
And because Tiff actually did my homework for me.
Marco:
Oh, that's right.
Marco:
You're a cheater.
Marco:
Tiff has played Journey.
Marco:
After years of listening to John tell us about Journey and why we should all be playing Journey, Tiff actually played it because John discovered while talking to Tiff at WVDC this week
Marco:
That she is a gamer and that I have apparently hidden this fact from all of you guys until this point.
Marco:
But she is a gamer sometimes and she's actually better than me at almost every game that we've both played.
Marco:
And anyway, so she did my homework for me and here she is.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Hey, what's going on?
John:
Lay it on me, Tiff.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Well, now, before you do anything, if I hypothetically did eventually want to play this game, is this going to spoil everything?
John:
Yeah, you should probably leave.
John:
And neither should Mark over that.
John:
Did he watch you play?
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
He watched me play enough that he knows what's going on because he's never going to play.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
I know him.
John:
He's so terrible.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, I'm never going to play either.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
I don't have a PlayStation, so I'm never going to play.
John:
Casey, you should not listen.
John:
I'm telling you you should go away and come back later.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, where's that big spoiler bell?
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Do you really want me to not listen?
John:
The spoiler bell.
John:
Jason Snell is crying somewhere.
Marco:
It's a spoiler horn, isn't it?
Marco:
Do you really want me to go away?
John:
Yes, you should.
John:
You played Monument Valley.
John:
You could potentially play this.
John:
I think you should go away and come back.
Marco:
Well, just to be clear, the likely, I cannot play this game until somebody.
John:
You'll be able to play it on your $99 PlayStation puck in about a year or so.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
I'm going to take my headphones off and just watch the chat ruin everything for me.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
It's just going to be you, me, John.
Marco:
That's all we need.
Marco:
We don't need those jokers.
Marco:
Wow.
Marco:
Zing.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
I'm taking my headphones off.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Bye.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Is he gone?
John:
Yes, we're safe.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Okay.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
So where should I start?
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
I guess at the beginning, I've done all my homework.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
I played the game now four times and I listened to the incomparable and I read your article.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
So homework done.
John:
So you tweeted after you played with an emoji.
John:
I'm not an emoji conversant enough to know what you meant by that emoji, but it was like the the biting down teeth kind of like what it made it seem like is that you did not like this game when you first played it.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Well, the first time I played it without anything, just sitting down, playing it, knowing nothing.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
I didn't like it.
John:
All right, so explain that.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Well, I thought, first of all, so spoiler bell, I thought like the people who I was with were AI.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
So I was like, oh, this is just stupid.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
This person's just walking around with me.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
I'm just doubled.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And then I felt like it was a game that like you got siphoned through.
John:
See, that is super interesting because that's why I don't want people to know.
John:
Like I told Marco to make sure that the PlayStation was connected to the network, but not to tell you that it was a network game because I don't want people to know that the people are real people.
John:
And it's interesting to see...
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
some people play the game and immediately realize those are other people some people play the entire game and just assume their ai the entire game right and that's what i assumed and then because there's really no like challenge you just kind of like ooze through this world and you do some things and you know certain things will attack you but there are no real like no consequences for it so i was just like this is just boring
John:
See, here's what I was hoping.
John:
I was hoping that as a gamer, you would realize when the people are interacting with you that they couldn't possibly be AI because they exhibit behaviors that no AI could possibly exhibit.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Well, maybe like the people that I played with were just kind of like helping me like jump and walking around with me.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
They weren't doing anything extraordinary.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
But the after I listened to the incomparable and then realized that they were real people.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And then I started getting into like everything that you guys were talking about on that episode.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
about why it was a beautiful game and why it was good and why it was fun.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And the whole the article that you wrote about people being nice to each other and all that, that made me want to play the game again.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
So when I played it the second time, I really felt like I got it, you know, because then I was also playing with someone who was like showing me where things were so I can get my scarf really long.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
So that was fun.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
So I was like following him around.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And so I felt like that was, I guess, more of the right way to play the game.
John:
Yeah, you only get one chance to play it for the first time, which is kind of a bummer.
John:
And like I said, I think I said on The Incomparable, I feel lucky that my first playthrough was so perfect in the way that it was.
John:
The other thing I was hoping, you as a gamer who plays things on hard mode, was that you wouldn't...
John:
realize that there are no consequences for failure because you wouldn't fail.
John:
You wouldn't be attacked by those things and have your scarf being eaten and realize, oh, no matter how many times I attack, I never die.
John:
My scarf gets shorter until a certain point and I don't actually die.
John:
As I said in The Incomparable, the great thing about the game is...
John:
It doesn't tell you what the consequences are.
John:
So you don't have a health meter.
John:
You don't know what it takes for you to die or if you can die at all.
John:
So if you're in a particular mindset, you might be like, I don't know what's going to happen here.
John:
I have nothing to fall back on.
John:
I can't look at my number of hearts up on the screen and know that I'm OK if I get hit once.
John:
For all I know, it's single hit death and I don't want to die because I'm in the middle of this experience with this other person.
John:
Or even depending on what kind of gamer you are, even if you assume it's an AI, I'm the type of person who could find themselves getting attached to an AI.
John:
Like if there was just a really good AI in a game and I felt like protective of it or attached to it as a companion, I would be sad if it died or...
John:
Like in my journey experience, when I was playing with that person, even though I realized the person, even if it was AI, I would feel like they let them down by like when you're hiding in those little and the little pieces in the snowy part and someone pokes out and like, oh, now you're both screwed because you made a mistake.
John:
And I just felt terrible that I did that to that person.
John:
It was like attention for the rest of the game that I had let this person down, you know?
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, I mean, I totally get that.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And I especially felt that the second time through.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Like, I was really upset when I lost my companion the second time I played it because he was helping me do all this stuff.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And we got separated after this, you know, one part with the dragon.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And I was really upset.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And I was, like, waiting for him and, like, singing my little song in the dark.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Like...
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
At the end, like waiting and he wasn't showing up.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And then I ended up in a second, the next level with some like little tiny short scarf noob, like jumping up and down.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And I'm like, oh, that was me yesterday.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And he was like singing and yelling and jumping.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And I'm like, I can't help you.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
I don't know what I'm doing either.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
So I just left him in the dust and I kept on going.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And then my long scarf friend showed up again.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And so I was like, we rejoiced and sang little songs together.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And so that was really great.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And but that was, again, my second experience when I knew it was a real person.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And then but the first time I played through right at the end, the when you're going up the tower, the snow tower, my like little buddy who I was with, who I thought was an AI, like froze to death.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
He just like sat down and was like shivering and not moving.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And I was like singing at him and nothing was happening.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
So I just went on alone.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And when I was the first time, I thought like, oh, OK, so I had a companion through the middle of the game.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
I didn't have one in the beginning.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And then he kind of like froze to death at the end.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
But so I had to like do the end alone.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
I'm like, oh, OK, I guess this is just the time that I don't have a double of me that I go up with.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
So it was definitely the first time around wasn't as fun as the second time.
John:
What I told my wife when she was asking, I said that I thought you didn't like the game and she was asking why.
John:
And I said, my theory was that since you are a gamer, that I didn't know that you had that you thought it was an AI the whole time.
John:
But this fits is that if you feel like you're playing a game the whole time you're playing this game.
John:
And this would fit for somebody who plays games on hard because you want like a challenge.
John:
Like if you were always in the headspace of I am playing a game.
John:
It's kind of like if you watch a movie and you're always in the headspace of I am watching a movie.
John:
The movies that get you, you forget you're watching a movie and you feel like you're experiencing what you're experiencing.
John:
Journey relies entirely on that happening because not every game does.
John:
If you're playing a first-person shooter in super hard mode, you can feel like you're playing a game the whole time and it's totally satisfying.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Oh yeah, you have to be engaged.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
I mean, the thing about Journey was that I felt like when sometimes you're going through some of the areas, I felt like I could just let go of my controller and it would just go there for me.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
You know, like I was just being funneled through the game.
John:
Well, yeah, like you can't feel like you're playing a game.
John:
Because yes, if you think about it for two seconds, you realize, oh, this section is on rails.
John:
I can let go.
John:
But it's like, you know, you can't think that way.
John:
You have to think, I am here.
John:
This is happening to me.
John:
And why would I ever want to let go?
John:
So for the sections where you're sort of
John:
surfing down the hill and stuff the reason i found those those levels so amazing is because like early in the game you realize you can slide and it's just it's just like there's no point there there's no you're not you don't get extra points for going through the little stanchions you know the little gates that you can go that's that's not there like oh you have to do that in your extra bonus no it's all about just having fun and you have to feel like you're there and enjoying the little sort of
John:
dolphin things diving through the sand and going the why because do you get some reward when you jump on their heads no you jump on their heads because it's fun and you really have to just feel like you're there and if the entire time you feel like you're playing a game then it's like well this game is not challenging this game is not interesting this game doesn't offer me anything doesn't offer me extra power up extra weapons all the type of things that you would you know in a game in a game where you can be okay feeling like you're playing a game you have to not feel like you're playing a game for this and feel like you're having experience and realizing there are other people probably helps you with that because then it's like oh
John:
I'm not playing a game in the same way that suddenly you feel like, you know, you ever see people like texting, walking down the street and the expressions on their face are, you know, angry or joyful.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
They're going through all the emotions of what's happening, but nothing's happening to them, really.
John:
And what they're using is an app that has a text box and a bunch of little text box over it or whatever.
John:
But their experience is like, oh, no, no, they're connected to the person on the other end of this.
John:
And Journey does that with significantly better graphics than the Messages app on iOS, right?
John:
And can elicit the same type of emotions because, like I said in the article, they shave off every possible way that person can be a jerk to you.
John:
And all that's left is the good.
John:
And in general, people are good to each other.
John:
And even if they try to be a jerk, it just comes off as like,
John:
You know, craziness or disinterest like they can't do anything to harm you.
John:
So it's like a relentlessly positive experience with it with that whole argument.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
So that's exactly why I disagree with you that when you first play the game that someone should know that you're playing with other people because the game was infinitely more enjoyable for me when I realized that it was just another person with me.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
instead of just an AI.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And so I didn't enjoy the game when I thought it was AI.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
But I love the game after I found out it was a real person.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And I've gone back twice now and played it once I played under Marco's name, and I had to go get my own name so I can get my own scarf stuff.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And I didn't have Tumblr more what was it into paper Marco.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
They're like, you played with Instapaper Marco.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
It's like, no, you played with Tiff.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Armin, whoever I am, I don't know.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
But like, that's, you know, that whole experience of with other people made it so much better.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And I would have never played the game again if it was anything like the first time I played it.
John:
I was hoping that you would...
John:
Not know, think they're AI initially, but figure it out after like five minutes.
John:
Because that realization that it's another person is a fun realization.
John:
Because, you know, again, if you don't like that, that's the common experiences.
John:
If they don't know it's AI, they initially think it is AI, but then figure out that it's not.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
See, it's kind of like the reverse Blair Witch Project.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Like if you see the movie and then you and you think it's real, it's great the first time you see it.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And then you realize it's not real and it sucks.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
It's the worst movie ever.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
So Journey is reverse Blair Witch Project.
John:
Yeah.
John:
People do go back and play Journey.
John:
I mean, do you have your white robe yet?
John:
Are you on the path to get that?
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Well, no, because now I got cheated out of an entire playthrough because I played on Marco's account.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And so then I had to create my own account.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
and uh so i only have two playthroughs on mine although i found like this crazy shortcut where you can like jump to any level and i accidentally did that tonight and all of a sudden i skipped half the game and i was like whoa yeah that's the hub that's the hub level you you want to to get the white the white robe is the one thing that is game like in this and it's to reward multiple playthroughs you don't have to play a certain number of times although there is something that happens as you play a multiple number of times but you could play through once and have the white robe well your robe gets all like much more intricate on the bottom so right now i have like a whole bunch of intricate orange bits
John:
Yeah.
John:
And that keeps going until it reaches like it fills up entirely.
John:
But the white robe is not dependent on that filling up.
John:
You could fill up that entire thing and still not have a white robe and you could do one play through and get the white robe.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Yeah.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
I still got to find all the little symbols everywhere because I think I could do much better.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And there's not much, you know, that's the only collectible in the game is those little symbols.
John:
And like I said in the article, like when you get the symbol and you're playing with someone else, they get it too.
John:
You don't steal it from them.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Oh, yeah.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Yeah.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
I think that that's great because then you can because that's what the one part the second time I played through the person was showing me where everything was and helping me get them.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
So we like both had the same length scarf and that was just fantastic.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And just tonight I found like a little new person.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
I was like, come with me.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
I know where these things are.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And then once you have those long scarves, like when you get into the levels that have danger, then it's like, I mean, even though the stakes are like, so you can't die, you don't want to lose your scarf, right?
John:
And you want to protect your new person if there's someone new with you.
John:
Or if you have a long scarf yourself, you're like, look, I worked for the earlier part of this game to get this.
John:
I don't want it to be taken from me.
John:
Yeah, exactly.
John:
So what do you think of the ending part where you're in the snow and going up the mountain and everything and how that ends?
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Oh, I thought I died.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
I was like, no.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
I thought I don't know I thought I failed the first time I played I was I was alone and it was cold and windy and like I didn't know I'm like that's it it's over I need to do something again I need to go back and do it again but then you know I started flying and I'm such a spaz sometimes and you know when you go up after you die in the snow and or whatever happens to you in the snow and you go up to the mountain I
John:
i crash right into the side of the mountain i'm stuck under the mountain and i'm jumping oh it was horrible i'm like this is supposed to be my moment and i'm like i'm all caught underneath the mountain so for the story part of the game were you were you on board with that were you paying attention to the cut scenes in the first or second playthrough and like deciphering the story and then you know connecting it to the ending
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Oh, yeah, definitely.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And like how all the little markers are all really graves and, you know, all this stuff.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And I liked how just like you talked about in the incomparable where, you know, you when you have a companion with you, it shows it on the the wall that there's someone else with you or you're alone in certain parts.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And yeah, I thought it was I thought it was a really nice story that it was simple.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
It was uplifting, you know, like it it moved you along and I liked it a lot.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Yeah.
Yeah.
John:
For my one playthrough that, you know, you only have one chance to make the first playthrough.
John:
I'm so happy that I happened to that I played alone in the beginning to get the feel of the game and then found someone and had a sort of experience with them in which I disappointed them.
John:
But that we did end up going through the light together in the end, you know, where like you get up to that final sort of snowy part where it's quiet and your scarf is gone.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
and the light is right there the thing you've been trying to get through the whole time oh so you had someone going with you i like keep waiting at the time i waited at the top the last game and yeah that's the thing waiting waiting at the top you're like is that person gonna come nobody showed up i was like beep beep like you know beeping my little and no one's coming because i keep crashing into the mountain when i get up there so i'm always behind
John:
yeah i've waited i've waited at the top several times for people sometimes they show up sometimes they don't but the first time we kind of like i mean the first time you know you don't know what's going to happen in that snowy thing and i was with the person going up the snowy thing we both pitch over into the snow i thought like you that's the end of the game because like you know i mean and if you saw the ending of the sopranos but all sorts of things and that like that's that's one way it could end but that wasn't the end like you know you were in you you end up in that in that other place
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
and for me it was with that other person and we sort of like swooped to the top of that mountain together joyously not crashing to the side of the mountain luckily yeah like that because i listened to you on and you were saying that oh this is your freedom moment and you get to like play around and i'm there like crashing to the side of the mountain stuck underneath like this snowy bank and i'm i'm walking i'm like this is so pathetic everyone else is flying it's like happy music and the scarves are everywhere and the little like
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
the friendly little carpet dogs are like you know and everything's happening and i'm stuck like under this mountain i'm like what kind of a hell gamer am i it's just terrible the carpet dogs like i always call them dolphins but since you have hops around i can see how they might look like little carpet dogs to you yeah well they're all loyal and they come by especially that sad one in the snow oh it kills me it's so sad it's like i'm so cold and you can't take it with you yeah terrible
John:
Well, so I'm sad that your first playthrough wasn't everything that it could be.
John:
But like, you can't control.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Well, I guess I wanted it to be so much because you're like, it's gonna be so good.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And you know, I had all these expectations.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And I'm like, really?
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
John likes this game?
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
It's just kind of like a funnel game.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
That's what I call them.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
They just you just want to let go of the controller and let it happen to you.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And you're like, this is
John:
right but you you need to be engaged to not like you need to not be thinking that's a possibility because there is no controller what do you mean you control you're walking through a desert there's no controller like you need to get into that headspace yeah to appreciate it but i'm glad you haven't and that's why i said like in the episode it was title of one of our past atps was a journey would be wasted on marco or something like that oh yeah he would just be like this was why did i just do this he's like he would be like why did i just play this game
John:
because he would never get into that headspace like it like you know you're getting into it on second playthroughs and now you're having like the actual experience of the game or whatever you have to you have to be there in the game and you have to like be absorbed in the story and be appreciative of a pretty desert and a cute little frozen cloth thing and the scary dragons and like if you're never going to get into that space and you always just think i'm sitting on a couch holding a controller you'll never enjoy the game
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Yeah.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And, you know, honestly, that I would have been I would have just stopped right there if it were my first playthrough.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
And that's what then but I did all my homework.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
I, you know, listen to the uncomfortable.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
I read your article and that that sucked me back in.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
So it ends up I really do like the game.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
So what are we playing next, huh?
John:
Yeah, I was super sad when it seemed like you didn't like it because I'm like, oh, all these other recommendations I had for her, now I'm not even going to give them because if she didn't like Journey, it's clear our taste in games differs.
John:
No, it's like, you know, some people don't like the same type of games and unlike Marco, it's totally clear that you're a gamer, but maybe you just don't like the same type of games that I've
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
or you know like if you're going to recommend a movie to someone you recommend like a fellini movie and they hate it it's like well you're we i guess we like different kinds of movies it's not necessarily a bad movie but if you came around on journey i can continue uh your list of games that you can play i do i can be i can be very open-minded with most games like i just been i just finished limbo because now i'm all in a gaming mood and then i can go like you know to the shoot them up halo you know all that half-life kind of stuff game so i'm pretty versatile
John:
So what are you in the mood for?
John:
Are you in the mood for a game that is more kind of like not too hard, not too challenging, all about atmosphere and relationships?
John:
Well, definitely games I can play during nap time.
John:
That's good.
John:
Because two ways to go on this.
John:
Like my traditional thing is if you have a PlayStation 3, you need to play Eco, Shadow of the Colossus and Journey.
John:
uh and the last of us and the last of us is the most traditional game straight up triple a game with shooting things and zombies and all everything you're thinking of but it's like a very well done one of those games it is one of the few as i usually don't like games like that so that if you're in the mood for that type of game that is the one to get it will satisfy you on all the levels that those type of games satisfy people if you're into that
John:
yeah that sounds good someone write that down um and then if if you get through that maybe you will have like had enough junk food that you'll be in the mood for eco and shadow the colossus shadow the colossus is oh i already played walking dead chat room uh you didn't though did we talked about this no no no not walking dead no no the other two zombie ones
John:
yeah i recommend it i recommended walking dead you can play that on your mac but i don't i i need to see what your taste is like more so we see we've gone one end of the spectrum which is journey the last of us is is pretty much on the other end of the spectrum it's not i guess grand theft auto would be the other end of the spectrum but oh no i played that one too so right but last of us is more serious you'll see that all my games are like put it this way i like one hour dramas on tv
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
uh the games i recommend are all the type of games you'd see recommended by someone who watches one hour dramas on tv well that's pretty much what we watch so i think that would totally work although i did watch the um like a preview gameplay of eiko yeah it was very like zelda e right zelda-esque
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
It's nothing like Zelda in gameplay.
John:
That's what it looked like.
John:
It looks like it, but it is, it is like journey in that you have to be there.
John:
Otherwise you feel like this game is not hard.
John:
There, there are no exciting power ups.
John:
There's no level meter.
John:
I'm not leveling.
John:
Uh, there's like you'll, all those things that you're complaining, you would have exactly the same complaints about eco, but I think it's a,
John:
like journey before journey it was my like my go-to like games as art playstation 3 type game it is considerably longer than journey it's like 11 hours it is a little bit harder in terms of puzzles and if you have a low tolerance for puzzles you might find it frustrating or annoying but i really love it and then shadow of the colossus is like an in-between stage where shadow class is actually pretty darn hard and to the point where i'm not sure that you would
John:
actually finished the game because you'd be like you know what i've seen with this oh now that's a challenge i see what this game has to offer i see how it's kind of go and i don't want to grind through it uh especially if you hate the playstation controller like i hate it yeah it's not the best controller yeah but it has the same mood as eco it's from the same developer and it's sort of all of a piece so uh so i would say go to last of us next because that is very straight ahead and i think one of the best games for the playstation 3
John:
for people like traditional games and if you make it through that that should be like what 16 20 hours something like that uh then we'll revisit the artier games excellent well adam's been taking two to three hour naps so uh that plus some evenings i think i can uh plow through it so we'll see no that sounds great and we'll have you back on to here and maybe
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
marco is he's just a lost cause like maybe marco can play last of us with you or watch you play because he's a spaz but who knows well he like walks by while he's getting coffee and like we'll check out my video game and be like oh what's happening here and then he'll make some like snide remark about it and be like you know he'll go sit in his chair and bang on his keyboard with adam yeah exactly with the he'll put on his fish and he'll disappear to the world and that'll be it
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
He's missing out.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
All right.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Poor Casey is out there.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
How do we get him back?
John:
I can tell him to come back.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
All right.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Should I put Marco back?
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
So thanks for talking to me about Journey.
John:
Sure.
John:
Anytime.
John:
Anytime you want to kick Marco off the show, you can come on.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Oh, excellent.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Hear that?
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
You're out.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
I'm in.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
All right.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Bye, John.
John:
Bye, Tim.
John:
All right.
NEW_SPEAKER_SPEAKER_01:
Hi.
Marco:
Hello.
John:
Yeah.
John:
As we said at WWDC, what we learned from WWDC is that in the Marco Tiff marriage, Marco is my wife and Tiff is me.
Marco:
Pretty much.
Marco:
Can we just get a clip, a sound clip of you saying Marco is my wife?
Marco:
That's all we need.