Full-Stack Businessperson
Casey:
Oh, my goodness.
Casey:
His sausages are wonderful.
Casey:
If I gave you a playlist of MP3s and it lasted, say, half an hour to 45 minutes, would you play that instead of that god awful crap that you make everyone listen to every week?
Marco:
Probably not, but I would at least be willing to consider it.
Casey:
Your honesty is both annoying and appreciated all at the same time.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, chances are not great.
Marco:
I'll tell you that.
Marco:
But I would consider it.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Marco:
Why is everyone in the chat room thanking Casey?
Marco:
You don't know what the music is yet.
LAUGHTER
Marco:
Yeah, that's a good point.
Marco:
I mean, what if it's just like a bunch of Dave Matthews band?
Marco:
Like, is that really an improvement?
Marco:
I would argue not.
Casey:
It honestly would not be a bunch of Dave Matthews.
Casey:
The only reason I would play a bunch of Dave Matthews is if A, I had absolute control of the live stream, which would never happen.
Casey:
And B, I did it just to troll Marco, which I don't think I care enough.
Casey:
So I would like to offer my services as unofficial official DJ or official unofficial DJ, if you will.
Casey:
If you ever find the need arising.
Marco:
I'm actually curious, John, what would be on your playlist?
John:
I don't know.
John:
I'd probably throw in some video game soundtracks, some mashups that I like, weird things I would probably do because I'm not going to play songs that everyone's heard before because that's boring.
Marco:
Well, that's why I play Fish because no one listens to it except me.
Casey:
I will say that I did find out, I don't remember if it was you, John, that told me, but somebody pointed out to me that the Journey soundtrack was available on iTunes, and it was like five or ten bucks, and I pretty much insta-bought that.
John:
That was me, of course.
Casey:
Okay, I thought it might have been you, but I wasn't sure.
Casey:
And it is excellent, so...
Casey:
Do you remember the Transport Tycoon soundtrack was like really snazzy and snappy jazz?
Casey:
Yeah, yeah.
Casey:
It was actually pretty good.
Casey:
It was pretty good.
Casey:
Somebody eventually like made MP3s because it was all MIDI, I believe, just in a different extension, file extension.
Casey:
But really, it was just MIDI.
Casey:
And somebody took the midis and like sampled them or recorded them.
Casey:
I don't know what the correct term is, but did something with them to create like really good sounding MP3s.
Casey:
And at one point or another, I had it and I've long since lost it.
Marco:
i'm sure that the uh very that the community of transport tycoon revivalists which is quite large actually uh and has i mean because you know like they if if anyone out there is a fan of transport tycoon and you don't know about open ttd let me tell you about open ttd uh fans have basically rewritten the entire engine of the game and it runs on everything it runs on macs linux windows um some a couple people even imported it to ipad here and there although the ipad ports are terrible um but it mainly runs on mac windows and linux and
Marco:
it is so good and they've added features to the game and they've improved things like they've improved the uh the pathfinding of the trains and everything and they've added different features they have this whole new signal type and make signals more useful it's fantastic uh it oh man if if you if you ever played transport tycoon or even sim city 2000 and you're into trains at all um you're gonna love open ttd and it's free
Casey:
Yeah, it's really fantastic.
Casey:
In fact, I think we've mentioned this on the show at some point or another, but Transport Tycoon and Visual Basic 1 were pretty much how you and I became friends.
Casey:
That's right, yeah.
Casey:
The combination of those two.
Casey:
That and an utter fear of the outdoors.
Marco:
Yeah, that probably contributed more.
Marco:
I mean, we would have found something else to do inside on your computer if we didn't have those two things.
Casey:
This is true.
Casey:
The only time I've ever seen OS2 warp.
Casey:
Those were the days.
Casey:
Hi, Guy English.
Casey:
I feel like OS2 needs a Guy English bell, just like File Systems and HFS Plus is John's bell.
Marco:
Yeah, it needs some kind of dull thunk.
Marco:
Like, yeah, OS2 warp.
Casey:
Woo!
Casey:
Oh, goodness.
Casey:
All right, what's going on?
Casey:
Any follow-up?
John:
Yeah, I put one item in because follow-up was feeling lonely.
John:
I can't believe you just put the Transport Tycoon stuff in a follow-up.
John:
I don't know if that qualifies as follow-up.
Casey:
Well, no, it was the beginning of the show.
Casey:
I just knew that when I'm going to do show notes, if this makes it into the show, that I would want to look at it there.
Casey:
So it's not strictly follow-up.
Casey:
I'm sorry for tainting the sanctity of your follow-up.
John:
We're talking about Apple Mail in Mavericks and the Gmail-related bugs and how the public beta program for Yosemite might help Apple catch those type of bugs.
John:
Michael Tsai, I really hope I'm pronouncing his last name correctly, tweeted or emailed one or the other.
John:
The other alternate theory for the Gmail bug was not so much that Apple didn't catch it in Mavericks, it's just that it was difficult to figure out how to fix in time for the ship date, and they just shipped knowing that there were bugs and knowing they planned to fix them and were working on the fix long before Mavericks shipped and shipped the fix as soon as they got it fixed.
John:
Considering there's a second party involved here, considering Gmail's on the other end over there, it may be a bug that involves Google and also involves Apple,
John:
It's plausible theory, and we didn't mention it on the last show, so I thought I would just mention it now.
Marco:
I also think it's worth mentioning.
Marco:
So in the context of this, we were talking about the Gmail bug in Mavericks.0 and Gmail's various incentives and everything.
Marco:
I believe, John, I believe you had asserted that certainly some people in Google use Apple Mail and there and there's enough of them that it'd be worth them making sure it works.
Marco:
And I said I'd be pretty surprised if there were any significant portion of people who work for Google using using Apple Mail.
Marco:
And I asked if anybody knew this, they could write in.
Marco:
And we heard from a few people who work at Google who said universally, they all said nobody there uses Apple Mail or, you know, effectively nobody.
Marco:
But they all said that they've never seen anyone use it.
Marco:
And pretty much everyone uses Gmail because, you know, the workflows that are built around it and everything.
Marco:
It's like Apple Mail's presence among Google employees is apparently nearly zero, which does not surprise me.
John:
Makes me wonder what kind of workflows because they're like one guy was like, oh, I tried to use Apple Mail because they all said that Macs are very prevalent there, which we already know.
John:
Right.
John:
So they said everyone's got Macs.
John:
And one of the persons like when I came, I tried using Apple Mail, but it was like not the thing to do.
John:
Like everyone was using Gmail.
John:
And I'm wondering if they have some kind of like plugins or Gmail Labs things like what is it about the web interface that kind of makes it so that Apple Mail isn't viable if you're just doing mail stuff.
John:
you know, fine.
John:
But like, what is the, is it just like peer pressure that everybody's using mail?
John:
Is it, I guess maybe integration with Google calendar or something?
John:
I don't know.
John:
Uh, but anyway, uh, yeah, I guess they're not motivated to make it work with Apple mail.
John:
Uh, but it's interesting to me that there is that, uh, that, that it's at least that one person felt like there was, you know, that it was not even a viable thing to do, not just like personal preference, but just like once you're in Google, you're going to use Gmail because that's the way it's done.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Like it would be difficult for you to use Apple Mail was was the gist of it.
Marco:
And whether that was technical, political or both, I think it was kind of left to the imagination.
Marco:
But I'm guessing it's probably some of both.
John:
The weird thing about the political angle is like, oh, you know, well, it's like dog food.
John:
Like, why wouldn't if you're not using your own mail client, obviously, then your own mail client sucks.
John:
And, you know, like you should use your own your own thing should be good enough for you to use.
John:
But like I said, it wasn't contradicted by any of the emails.
John:
Macs are all over the place in Google.
John:
And how is that not a contradiction in terms of why are Chromebooks not good enough for everybody?
John:
I mean, I guess Google doesn't really make a sort of full-fledged computer for developers or whatever.
John:
But their arch-rival Apple
John:
They're using all their hardware inside.
John:
I mean, they're not using the phones, I assume, but for the laptops, they're all Mac.
John:
So it makes me wonder if, like, is Google motivated to make a sort of non-Chromebook full-fledged laptop?
John:
I don't know what the hell OS it would run.
John:
I mean, certainly not Windows.
John:
So it seems like they're internally conflicted no matter what.
Marco:
Well, and there is a whole, I mean, I think a lot of this is kind of, you know, company culture as well.
Marco:
Like, there's a whole lot of people out there who use a Mac as their computing platform, but aren't all in on Apple's other stuff.
Marco:
You know, they use Chrome as the browser, they probably use Gmail in a web window or something as their mail client.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
There's a whole lot of people out there who function that way just fine willingly and happily because that's just their preference.
Marco:
And I would imagine those people are more likely to want to work for Google than somebody who's all in the hole of Apple stuff.
Marco:
So, you know, probably among their employees, it's kind of self-selecting where like their employees probably just want to use Google stuff in its native interface because that's just their preference.
Marco:
And that's one of the reasons they work there.
John:
Well, you've got Chrome as your browser, and then you have a bunch of terminal windows in which you run like Emacs or something, or maybe you have a favorite text editor.
John:
And that's like the whole experience.
John:
But then like, why do you need Apple hardware?
John:
Why can't you get by with the Chromebook?
John:
Are you locally compiling things in Go and C++?
John:
Is that why you need to have a better CPU than the Chromebooks?
John:
Do you just want nicer hardware?
John:
Yeah.
John:
You know, I don't know if there's much soul searching about this because they're probably like, I'm just going to get Apple hardware.
John:
And then when I use it, I'm using all Google services and I'm using, you know, whatever weird version of TextMate that I've kept left over.
John:
I'm using VI or Emacs or whatever.
John:
So I don't think there's much of an Apple in their faceness, but.
John:
they're still using apple hardware and i have to think that if google continues this kind of microsoft like march towards there is no market we don't want there is no thing we can't do uh there is no reason we should rely on everybody like google really has really crept up on that they didn't start off that way but now it just seems like the old the old thing with microsoft was like is there any business they don't want is there anything having to do with personal computers that they that they don't want you're like well
John:
They're not, you know, they make applications, but they don't make dev tools.
John:
Well, they make a compiler, but they don't really make an ID.
John:
Well, can they make an ID?
John:
Well, they don't make all the applications.
John:
They just do, you know, basic office.
John:
Okay, well, now they have a paint application.
John:
Like, you know, well, they don't make games.
John:
Okay, they have Flight Simulator.
John:
Oh, well, they don't make game consoles.
John:
Now they have the Xbox.
John:
Like, it was like Microsoft wanted to do everything, and Google is slowly going towards it.
John:
So far, Google doesn't want to do PC hardware.
John:
Like, the Chromebook is close, kind of.
John:
They want to supersede PC hardware with something that's not as problematic as a PC, and maybe they'll succeed in that someday.
John:
But I have my eye on Google's megalomania.
John:
Certainly Apple, we just discussed last week about the Apple-IBM thing.
John:
There's plenty of things that Apple doesn't want to do.
John:
Like it still doesn't really want to touch Enterprise with a 10-foot pole, which is why it's having a 10-foot pole named IBM.
John:
Touch it for them.
Casey:
Is there anywhere to go from here other than something awesome?
Marco:
Oh, actually, before we do that, speaking of follow-up... I love how you've had follow-up withdrawal.
Marco:
You were holding it in for this two weeks.
Marco:
Now you have to get some kind of follow-up out.
John:
Well, so the Apple-IBM thing, we got some feedback from people who are like, you're too down on Apple about the enterprise.
John:
They actually do a lot of enterprise things.
John:
I tried to express that in the last show to say that it's not like Apple really ignores it.
John:
They do do a lot of things for the enterprise.
John:
They have come a long way.
John:
But the question is always, are they willing to commit?
John:
Are they willing to go to the lengths that other enterprise companies go to?
John:
So the two kinds of feedback we got were, one, from the people saying Apple is really doing much better on the enterprise.
John:
They're not nearly as bad as you think they are.
John:
And the other is from people saying, as far as Apple has come, they're still bad for reasons X, Y, and Z.
John:
Both of those are true.
John:
They're not both seeing a different Apple.
John:
They're seeing the same Apple, just looking at it from two different perspectives.
John:
One, that they've come such a long way and are so much better now than they used to be.
John:
And the other is that compared to the companies that build themselves around serving the enterprise, Apple is still not willing to do all the things the enterprise wants out of them.
John:
And that's the impasse they've been at forever.
John:
And the question, like I said last show, was always...
John:
What's Apple going to do about that?
John:
They're going to continue to act this way to kind of turn their nose up at it, but do enough to sort of get a little bit of the business?
John:
Or do they feel like they want more of the business?
John:
And I think they feel like they do want more of the business, but they don't want to change them.
John:
They don't want to change their own behavior to get more of that business.
John:
They just want to have someone else augment their existing infrastructure and support to get more of the business indirectly.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week once again by our friend Matt Alexander at Need.
Marco:
Need is a refined retailer and lifestyle magazine for men.
Marco:
And it kind of came out of the Bionic podcast in a way.
Marco:
And so you figure it has to be pretty interesting if it came out of that, right?
Marco:
Each month, Need curates and sells a limited quantity of exclusive products from the world's top men's brands.
Marco:
These collections are presented in the form of a monthly editorial built around a certain theme and are shot by local independent photographers.
Marco:
And if I may say so myself, they all look really stylish and awesome.
Marco:
Beyond clothing, which they have a lot of, they also sell coffee, literature, furniture, and lots of other cool stuff.
Marco:
Need is also expanding.
Marco:
Soon they will localize to certain cities around the world, the first of which will be London.
Marco:
And I'm guessing that's London, England, or the UK, England, I never know.
Marco:
Great Britain, oh boy.
Marco:
I'm pretty sure London at least is in England.
Marco:
I don't know how to refer to the rest of it.
Marco:
It's in England.
Marco:
Sorry if I offended the entire UK, England, Great Britain, continent, subcontinent, island.
Marco:
Okay, so Need is only eight months old, but they will already be one of the primary sponsors of New York Fashion Week.
Marco:
Now, I actually know what this is because my wife watches Project Runway.
Marco:
Do you guys actually know what Fashion Week is?
Casey:
It's something in New York City where a bunch of fashionable people descend upon New York and make everyone else feel poor.
Marco:
It's a really good idea to sponsor this if you're a clothing company and needs already doing it.
Marco:
Because Fashion Week is huge.
Marco:
New York has all these stupid things.
Marco:
They have Internet Week and all this crap.
Marco:
They try to boost other industries and make these events all trying to mimic Fashion Week poorly.
Marco:
fashion week is the real thing it's what everyone else is trying to be it's such a huge deal in new york need is sponsoring fashion week they'll be bringing along small independent brands to show off the company and its aspirations in the midst of the world of high fashion in other words in their words
Marco:
They're going to tell everyone about starting up, working independently, and telling great stories in a traditional world of exclusivity and brands.
Marco:
Anyway, go to neededition.com.
Marco:
And that's not the math.
Marco:
It's the E edition.
Marco:
Neededition.com.
Marco:
Check out their collection.
Marco:
And it changes every month...
Marco:
Seriously, add this to your RSS reader.
Marco:
It's one post a month.
Marco:
I mean, come on.
Marco:
If you still use RSS, we'll get to that.
Marco:
But I still use RSS and I have it in my RSS reader.
Marco:
Anyone who places an order with need and was sent from ATP can send an email afterwards to hello at need edition dot com with the subject line New York Fashion Week.
Marco:
To commemorate the special occasion, they will then throw in a bunch of extras with those orders before they ship things like magazines, field notes, socks, scarves, etc.
Marco:
And then you'll be put in a list to get 25% off your next order.
Marco:
And they've been doing this offer for a couple of weeks now.
Marco:
ATP listeners, if you have multiple orders where you've emailed them and gotten the 25% off the next order thing, you can stack that so you can get you can collect two of them and get 50% off an order after that.
Marco:
So just for ATP listeners, they're being really nice to us.
Marco:
And most of all, though, the first five orders will receive one of five limited edition, never to be publicly sold, Knead branded hats.
Marco:
Now, I don't have a lot of hair, so hats are very useful.
Marco:
Knead produced a Knead Ebbets Field collaboration hat.
Marco:
Ebbets Field is the company that created the original baseball cap, apparently.
Marco:
These hats are going to be worth about $50 if they were sold at retail, but they're not going to be.
Marco:
There's five limited edition hats.
Marco:
and uh let me see i believe you get it for free right yeah they will just toss us in so the first five orders uh that email them with this email hello at need edition.com after you hear this with the subject line new york fashion week after you place an order um this is a great deal i might do this i might take one of these quick before the delay on the live stream um anyway thank you thank you very much to need go to need edition.com to check it out
Casey:
I have a request for that ad read.
Casey:
Can you put in like ragtime bionic music?
Casey:
You know what I'm talking about?
Marco:
See, I love I love when need sponsors because I can totally mess up the entire read and put all put all sorts of my own personal crap into it.
Marco:
And it doesn't matter because Matt is like a friend of ours.
Marco:
So he doesn't really mind.
Marco:
And it still works because people keep ordering stuff.
Marco:
So it's both a great thing that Matt is doing for us and a great thing that our listeners are doing for Matt and for us indirectly by buying stuff from his company anyway, even when I fumble through the read like that.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So I told you I had a piece of follow up that.
Casey:
Oh, that's what it was.
Casey:
I was stalling so I could remember.
Casey:
John, how's the review?
John:
That's your follow-up?
John:
Yes.
John:
I thought you were going to talk about Apple-IBM stuff with input from your dad.
John:
Nope.
Casey:
I asked and he had nothing.
John:
Reviews just going slowly.
John:
It's terrible.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Good, eh?
John:
It's like a dark cloud over my life.
John:
And I just feel like it's never going to get done.
John:
I'm going to have to end up taking off time from work to get done.
John:
And then they keep changing things and things don't work.
John:
And you're trying to review anything that has to do with the network and like the seeds are coming out.
John:
They're like, oh, this functionality still doesn't quite work yet.
John:
And then other stuff they don't mention.
John:
And you try it and it doesn't work.
John:
And you're like, well, does it not work because it's broken or does it not work because it's still like a month from release and I can't really write about it?
John:
I'm going back through stuff I've already written and changing it because I had this big paragraph complaining about this, but then they changed that.
John:
So I don't have the complaint anymore.
John:
Like, yeah, I have notes in my thing of like, remember to talk about this.
John:
And then I have to go back two weeks later and remove that note.
John:
Oh, actually now that's changed.
John:
So you don't have to remember.
John:
I'm not making progress.
John:
I need to, I need to plow bravely forward and just get something written and then go back and change it.
John:
Even though it keeps, it's, I don't know.
John:
I don't know if they're changing more things than usual or if I'm writing too early about things that I have complaints about.
John:
I don't know.
John:
It's going slowly.
John:
It's depressing.
Casey:
So semi-related, you had tweeted earlier today that you had something to the order of four or five machines on your desk.
Casey:
And any time you did anything, you were inevitably using the wrong keyboard and mouse.
Casey:
And I had suggested, and from your snarky reply, I assume many had suggested that you should use, what is it, Synergy?
Casey:
Is that right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
Well, see, other people, fine.
John:
People don't know what I know.
John:
But you of all people should know that I know what Synergy is.
Casey:
I was encouraging you to better yourself by using Synergy.
John:
I know all about Synergy.
John:
I don't want it.
John:
I don't need it.
John:
It's just a temporary situation.
John:
I'm not trying to create a setup where I have a system where I can use five computers at once.
John:
I just have to do it.
John:
Remote desktop is the worst because you can kind of keep it straight.
John:
If you're like, it's like laptops and my desktop, you can kind of keep it straight if things are physically separated.
John:
But once you bring a remote desktop into the mix, then it's game over.
John:
Because now, like, you have the same screen three times.
John:
Because, you know, I've got the original screen and then the remote screen and then my regular screen that it's in.
John:
And then if the remote desktop is at the front, then it gets all your keyboard focus.
John:
So your, like, Quicksilver shortcut goes to the remote desktop, not to the thing over there.
John:
But it's just...
John:
it's madness i could i just quitting apps and closing the wrong windows just for hours at a time slowly going mad but synergy would fix this for you my friend and it doesn't take that no it would not it would not no i mean synergy has downsides as well and it's it's just another layer of stuff it's the same reason i don't use screen or tmux right like i know i recognize all the benefits i've experimented with them
John:
But, you know, it's always something like, you know, the screen, you're like, I don't want you taking over control.
John:
Well, you can remap that.
John:
Well, I don't want it to have any of my keystrokes.
John:
And, you know, like it was synergy doing weird things with making using your regular computer feel strange and doing weird things with the command key is just.
John:
It's not – I'm not going to try to – plus that's a – it's not really yak shaving, but it's a diversion.
John:
Like I don't need to be – what I should be doing is making forward progress in a review, not trying to tweak my setup that helps me do the review.
John:
Like I do enough of that.
John:
I'm just sitting here using Yosemite and doing experiments to try to –
John:
To try to figure out how I can accurately write a single sentence.
John:
I spend like 45 minutes an hour experimenting with the thing to say, what can I say about this?
John:
What is the truth of this thing?
John:
And then it's like, well, I wrote one sentence tonight and I spent an hour and a half and I'm tired and need to go to bed.
John:
At this rate, it will be done in 10 years.
Casey:
So the review is going excellently is what I'm hearing.
Mm-hmm.
Casey:
Awesome.
Casey:
Well, since I've asked, what's going on with Overcast?
Marco:
I'm fixing bugs, basically.
Marco:
Yeah, that's about it, really.
Marco:
I'm fixing lots of bugs.
Marco:
The sales are going pretty well still.
Marco:
Obviously, it's down substantially from the first few days, but it seems to be leveling off now, which is nice, because now I'm able to predict roughly what it will be next month.
Marco:
And so far, I'm very happy with it.
Casey:
Have you cranked back on the initial server build-out, farm, whatever you want to call it?
Marco:
I actually haven't.
Marco:
So far, I'm keeping all eight of the web heads.
Marco:
And the reason why is... So before, I have one feed-crawling server that its entire purpose is to crawl the feeds.
Marco:
And it can be maxed out.
Marco:
It can be hammered at CPUs because it doesn't matter.
Marco:
Because that's its only job.
Marco:
And so what I have what I have going at launch, I had these eight web servers up front to help take web requests.
Marco:
And then very quickly after launch, my feed server got overwhelmed with just the queue was backing up because so many people are adding more feeds.
Marco:
And I was already crawling a lot, but people added a lot more than I expected.
Marco:
So I started I ran additional crawling processes under nice on the web servers.
Marco:
And so in theory, what I think this will do and what it is doing so far is all the web servers I have now burst capacity.
Marco:
So, you know, like when a popular show like right now, I mean, our show is one of the top shows in Overcast.
Marco:
I think there's like 20,000 people or something who subscribe to it in Overcast.
Marco:
So when a new episode of this show is published, I send 20,000 push notifications within the span of a few seconds.
Marco:
And any of those devices that are connected to the internet will immediately try to fetch, try to perform a sync request, basically.
Marco:
And so you might have 20,000 devices all performing syncs within the first few seconds of that request going out.
Marco:
And so I need some kind of burst capacity for when that happens.
Marco:
So what I'm doing now is I have all these web servers, and I'm keeping the additional crawlers running on nice.
Marco:
So what I think should happen is I'll have that burst capacity when I need it, when a new episode of something popular comes out.
Marco:
And when that happens, all of those processes that are nice will deprioritize and maybe the queue for crawling other things will slow down for a minute or two.
Marco:
And then the rest of the time, I have all this additional feed capacity.
Marco:
So I think I think this is and my original plan was to, you know, that the feed crawling on those web servers was going to be temporary and that once everything calmed down, I would eliminate half of them maybe and then set up a dedicated feed server to crawl more feeds that way.
Marco:
But I think I'm actually going to keep it the way it is because it gives me this nice balance of a lot less wasted capacity.
Casey:
And you had said in the past that whatever the sum total of the monthly cost for these 810 servers is considerably less than what you had last paid for Instapaper.
Casey:
Is that correct?
Marco:
Yeah, yeah.
Marco:
I had originally said it was like 540.
Marco:
I had to upgrade my backup server.
Marco:
I ran out of space on it.
Marco:
So now it's going to be more like 600.
Marco:
But still, yeah, 600 bucks a month for a lot of Linode instances providing a lot of power, a lot of computational power.
Marco:
That I don't think is a bad deal at all.
Marco:
Nice.
Marco:
Anyway, that's how Evercast is going.
Marco:
It's going very well, and I'm very happy.
Marco:
I'm fixing a lot of bugs.
Marco:
There still are some annoying ones, but I think I actually got two of the biggest ones in this update, so we'll see.
Marco:
I'm still working on the update, but I'll submit it probably in a few days.
Casey:
So do you feel like you're working just as hard as you were pre-launch and post-launch, or have you kind of settled into a rhythm at this point and you're able to breathe?
Yeah.
Marco:
I am able to breathe, but it is still a lot of work.
Marco:
Email.
Marco:
I'm still keeping up with email.
Marco:
I did hit bottom of the first batch.
Marco:
What's interesting is what people are requesting now.
Marco:
So I'm still getting about 100 emails a day.
Marco:
um and many of them i don't respond to you know i i promised that i wasn't i promised in the feedback form that i will read everything but i won't guarantee your response to everything and i'm keeping that promise so far i am reading everything and i'm not responding to everything because i can't you know it's even reading 100 emails a day takes takes a long time um and a lot of them you know don't even need a response a lot of them even say as much you know no response necessary and so i take them up on that offer usually um
Marco:
But what's interesting is that what people are asking for now is different from what people asked for on day one, even though the main feature set has not changed since then.
Marco:
I'm getting, you know, a couple bug reports certainly here and there because there are still some bugs that are affecting a lot of people, which I'm very annoyed by and I'm trying to fix as quickly as I can.
Marco:
But, like, for example, day one had tons of requests for the two big things I don't support, streaming and video.
Marco:
It also had lots of requests for smaller features and preferences and behavioral preferences people wanted.
Marco:
You know, different ways they wanted episode management to be, push notification options, things like that.
Marco:
Like, all sorts of different, more granular options or different modes episodes could be in, like...
Marco:
One of the more common ones on day one, which I mentioned before, was like a lot of people want an episode to be new but not downloaded.
Marco:
And a lot of people want deleted episodes to also show whether they have been played or whether they were never played.
Marco:
So, you know, people requesting these different states things can be in and, of course, all the management of the interface and the code that would go with that would be a lot.
Marco:
All that was really on day one, and what I'm hearing from people now is substantially less of those requests, and the requests I'm getting now are much nicer and more like, you know, it would be nice if someday maybe you added this, not like, I can't use a podcast app that doesn't have this, or I don't believe you shipped 1.0 without this, which a lot of the day one stuff was that.
Marco:
And I think, I mean, my theory on this is pretty obvious, really.
Marco:
You know, I think day one, everyone tried it who was into podcast apps, who heard about it.
Marco:
Like, there was this big rush of people who tried it and, you know, probably necessarily didn't want to like it, maybe, on some level, because...
Marco:
Nobody wants to change their workflow if they're established.
Marco:
And also people who really do find those features like deal killers.
Marco:
Anything that I don't do or that I do differently from what they want to do, that actually is a deal killer for them.
Marco:
So all of them I heard from on day one, and then I stopped hearing from them because they stopped looking at the app.
Marco:
So now who I'm hearing from are the people who are actually using the app for the most part.
Marco:
I mean, there are new people discovering it every day, but...
Marco:
not nearly in the numbers as the first two days um so what the emails i'm getting now are actually on some level i think they're actually more important to pay attention to because most of those people who i heard from on day one i'll probably never win them over it's it's probably not worth a lot of effort to try to win them over um and there's a lot of people who use the app for whom it could be a little bit better with what might be a small change and by catering to those people
Marco:
I build goodwill, I build fans, I build loyal customers.
Marco:
And those people are the ones who will spread the app to their friends.
Marco:
And so I think it's more important to make a smaller group more fanatically happy about your app than to try to address the entire world with it.
Casey:
So, John, tell us about ARM-based Macs.
John:
Let me talk about this.
John:
So many past shows, it seems like.
John:
I don't know why it's coming up again.
John:
I guess Jean-Louis Gasset wrote about it on his Monday Note blog, and then a bunch of people linked it, including Gruber, and people are talking about it again.
John:
I guess we'll talk about it again, too.
John:
I feel like we had this exact same discussion.
John:
I pulled the exact same numbers last time, but I mean...
John:
You know, I don't know.
John:
I guess we'll talk about it again.
Marco:
I don't think it was a very good article because it was based on a lot of assumptions about the relative chip pros and cons between ARM and Intel that aren't necessarily true or at least partially misinformed.
John:
You're not looking in the notes file either, I guess?
John:
No.
John:
Anyway, so here are the stats I put in the notes file.
John:
Probably the same exact stats I had last time.
John:
So the whole idea was, should Apple not use Intel CPUs in its Macs anymore, but instead use ARM CPUs, presumably of their own design?
John:
And everyone suggesting that has their reasons for suggesting it.
John:
One of the reasons it comes up very often is that if they did that,
John:
Uh, ARM CPUs, uh, are more power efficient than x86.
John:
And the second reason is that Apple would be master of its own destiny because Apple really wants to own and control all the important technologies that go into their devices, witness their design of the A7 and their, their, you know, deep involvement in the manufacturing process.
John:
And of course they do all the software as well.
John:
And they make the OS and they make the applications and blah, blah, blah.
John:
And originally, if you want to go back really far, they investigated.
John:
My understanding is that they investigated for the iPhone project or for an Apple phone project.
John:
Can we make a phone and not do a deal with a carrier with a wireless carrier?
John:
Like, is it feasible to do it on Wi-Fi?
John:
Can we be our own?
John:
What is that acronym, Casey?
John:
MVNO, something like that?
John:
Yeah.
John:
Like, they looked into all that.
John:
It turned out not to be feasible.
John:
But the whole fact that they were looking into it was like, can we do this without being beholden to somebody else?
John:
And it turns out the answer was no.
John:
So bummer for them.
John:
So anyway, this is along the same vein.
John:
On the tech front, though, and the power thing, every time I think about the power thing, I think about, you know, just how far Intel has come in terms of power efficiency.
Yeah.
John:
So we'll look at here.
John:
I have stats for the current 13-inch MacBook Air, which is kind of my sort of standard bearer for Apple's middle-of-the-road laptop.
John:
It does not have a gigantic battery.
John:
It's pretty slim.
John:
But on the other hand, it is a full-fledged laptop, and the performance is actually pretty good.
John:
So the current gen 13-inch MacBook Air is a 54-watt-hour battery, and Apple says it gets about 12 hours battery life.
John:
Now, in my own testing, when I was doing Mavericks battery testing, I found that number can get even bigger if you use it very lightly.
John:
Like, you really are just doing, like, light web browsing, and, you know, my battery test was very light in Mavericks.
John:
It was, like, automated, basically, like, going to a bunch of web pages, switching tabs, reloading web pages, everything.
John:
going to a text editor, typing some random text, saving the text document, going, you know, it was like, that's the type of stuff it was doing.
John:
Very light, and I was getting, you know, 15 hours out of it.
John:
But anyway, 12 hours is what Apple says.
John:
The iPad Air, which is my standard bearer for the iOS ARM device, it's got the biggest, fastest ARM CPU in it.
John:
It's got a pretty darn big battery because the iPad Air is their biggest iPad.
John:
It is a, I guess, is this number wrong in here?
John:
32.4 watt hour battery?
John:
Let me check.
John:
32.4 watt hour battery i just have a typo in the notes and apple claims this is good for 10 hours of battery life although they say nine hours if you use cellular data so if you do the math on that it ends up that the ipad air is about 40 more energy efficient than the the macbook air in terms of how many watt hours gives you how many hours of usage out of it and who knows if apple's
John:
usage things are comparable.
John:
Like what are they, how are they coming up with the 12 hour number of the MacBook air and what kind of activity they're coming up with it, with the, uh, the iPad air 10 hour battery life.
John:
It's a, but still the iPad air wins by like 40%.
John:
The iPad air wins by 25% of you include cellular datas, but the iPad air, the MacBook air doesn't even have that option.
John:
So whatever.
John:
So it's like 40% better energy efficiency, but then you look at, you have to have some proxy for, okay, it's 40% more energy efficient, but how fast is the CPU?
John:
How does the a seven CPU compare to the MacBook air CPU?
John:
and cpu benchmarking is a pain i just did geek bunch because that's what everybody does whatever it just this is just a ballpark right so the macbook air geekbench uh compared to the ipad air geekbench uh the macbook air is 230 faster in single core and 250 faster in multi-core so in exchange for 40 more energy efficiency it gives up
John:
2x performance or 2.5x performance.
John:
And so that's quite a gap to make up.
John:
So you could say, oh, the ARM processors are more energy efficient.
John:
They're not more energy efficient when doing the same thing.
John:
The conjecture with Apple switching to ARM is that they could switch to ARM CPUs, ignoring the chipset, ignoring Thunderbolt, ignoring all the other technical and intellectual property issues to prevent them from having this be feasible.
John:
Just the CPU.
John:
Can Apple take an ARM chip and make it 250% faster while maintaining its 40% energy efficiency advantage, right?
John:
Because as you make the CPU more performant, you're going to lose that energy efficiency, right?
John:
It's not like the iPad Air is 40% more energy efficient doing the same thing.
John:
It's way slower.
John:
It's two times slower, at least.
John:
And this doesn't even get into the relative comparisons of the embedded GPUs and forget about a discrete GPU and the MacBook Pros.
John:
And again, the Mac Pro, who knows what you would do with that.
John:
So there are a lot of just unanswered technical performance questions in terms of what would be...
John:
So putting aside the being master of your own destiny, what would be the advantage for Apple to switch to ARM, technically speaking?
John:
Would you get a Mac that lasts longer battery-wise?
John:
Would you get a Mac that performs at least as well as the existing Macs?
John:
Would you get Macs that perform better?
John:
These are all unanswered questions.
John:
We don't know.
John:
I'm saying the gap right now, it does not make it seem like Apple, like it's a gimme for Apple to say, oh, Apple could totally make a CPU that is exactly as fast as the current MacBook Airs, but is more energy efficient.
John:
I don't see that in the numbers.
John:
I'm not saying it's impossible, but nothing Apple has ever done so far has shown that it could do that.
John:
And the second aspect of this is everyone complaining about the Broadwell delays, like Broadwell being delayed into next year, which is why Apple had to rev its laptop line and just say, well, OK, we'll give you more RAM, which is nice, by the way, give you more RAM and lower the prices because we're not going to have new laptops until we can get the new CPUs.
John:
And so it's a bummer like, oh, well, see, if Apple, you know, if Apple made its own ARM chips, they wouldn't have this problem because they wouldn't be reliant on Intel.
John:
And these delays wouldn't affect them because they would be, you know, getting masters of their own destiny.
John:
I don't much see that because in the race to say, can we make an ARM chip that's as good, that has the same performance per watt as Intel things, if you're going to have any shot at that, you have to be using the same process size as Intel.
John:
And the only person who can do the same process size as Intel is Intel.
John:
So you'd still be relying on Intel to fab your 14 nanometer ARM chips.
John:
And if Intel can't get its 14 nanometer x86 chips out the door,
John:
chances of it being able to get your ARM 14 nanometer chips out the door before it puts this x86 ones out the door are very slim.
John:
You'd have to get Intel to agree to fab them in the first place.
John:
Then you'd have to get them to agree to give you priority.
John:
And then you'd have to say that the thing that's stopping Intel from making the x86 chips at 14 nanometers is just like laziness or something.
John:
And if only, you know, if only Apple was whipping them along and say, well, see, if Apple was master of its own destiny, it would have 14 nanometer ARM CPUs for its next generation of MacBook Airs that have more performance per watt than the Intel ones.
John:
And just technically speaking, I don't see it.
John:
Now, it doesn't mean they're not going to do it or they would do it and just make some excuses and eventually catch up because that's kind of an Apple's MO.
John:
It's like with the Maps thing.
John:
Well, we just can't have Google Maps anymore.
John:
And our new Maps are going to be worse and they're going to be worse for a long time, possibly forever.
John:
But we just have to do it.
John:
That's always an option.
John:
So I'm not saying Apple will never do this.
John:
But on paper, it does not look like a compelling change for me.
John:
And this is even ignoring like the Mac Pro and all
Marco:
all my sad x86 games and the ability to run windows and all that good stuff yeah the ability to run windows i wonder how much that matters my my feeling is that it probably matters a good amount still and i'm sure it's going down every year with how much that matters but i bet there's still a lot of people who run like the windows version of microsoft office in virtualization at least ahem
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Yeah, that's exactly true.
Casey:
And actually, I recorded an episode of Mac Power Users last night.
Casey:
And one of the things we very briefly talked about is what happens if Macs go ARM or certainly if they weren't Intel.
Casey:
And that would be a showstopper for me.
Casey:
And additionally, if there was a Intel Mac and an ARM Mac, let's say they were both brand new, you know, Broadwell comes out, but simultaneously there's an ARM-based Mac.
Casey:
I would absolutely choose the Intel-based Mac for work at least because I live in Windows at work.
Casey:
I mean, I don't use Bootcamp.
Casey:
Is Bootcamp even still a thing?
Casey:
Yeah, it's still there.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
Well, anyway, so I don't use Bootcamp.
Casey:
I use VMware Fusion.
Casey:
But my point is that I pretty much live in VMware Fusion at work.
Casey:
And so for me to have...
Casey:
really, really bad and crummy virtualization would be a showstopper.
Casey:
I would have to use one of those Dell behemoths if I didn't have an Intel Mac.
Casey:
And that's just a terrible life that nobody wants to leave.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, to do an architecture transition again would have to come with major gains.
Marco:
And I think, you know, John, everything you said is right.
Marco:
And, you know, looking at what they would lose with Windows compatibility and the cost of having all developers have to recompile.
Marco:
Because, you know, as we said last time, we talked about this, or as I said, at least, you know, going from PowerPC to Intel, they use Rosetta to try to help transition along and emulate the old stuff.
Marco:
But that also worked primarily because the Intel chips were so much faster.
Marco:
There was a huge performance jump when they made that transition.
Marco:
And here there probably wouldn't be that same performance jump.
Marco:
In fact, it might even get slower.
Marco:
So it would not be an easy transition.
Marco:
If it be possible, they could do it.
Marco:
It's a different environment now.
Marco:
Windows isn't as important.
Marco:
developers in the mac app store you know they're using apple's apple's xcode toolkits and everything so apple could just ship a cross compiler and make universal binaries again like they could do it if they wanted to but it would not be a cheap or easy transition to make and so the question is whether it would be worth it and i've been looking at these numbers and thinking about you know johnny right thinking about like the fab capacity issue and i don't see it really being worth it
John:
See, I think they can actually make a pretty darn high-performance ARM chip, mostly because, like, with their integration, like the fact that they control the compiler, they control the language, they control the microarchitecture of the chip.
John:
You can really get some impressive gains out of that, but you still are always, in the end, faced with the problem of who the hell is going to fab this chip.
John:
And if the answer isn't Intel using their best process before or at the same time as they do their own flagship chips,
John:
Then your answer is, well, it doesn't matter how great your chip is.
John:
If you have to fab at a size, a generation behind what Intel does, how the hell are you going to compete on price performance with them?
John:
Like, it is just a huge advantage to say you're at 22 nanometers and we're at 14.
John:
It's like, you know, everyone likes to bring up the x86 tax.
John:
All these crazy instructions, like the x86 tax has been going down, you know, for years.
John:
It just always keeps going down and down because as the number of transistors in the chip goes up and up, and even if you exclude cache, which is a huge part of it, or even if you exclude the GPU, the percentage of transistors you have to spend that x86 is so small that it's not even a factor.
John:
It's a factor in terms of elegance, and it's just disgusting to think about those things being there, and it would be nice if more of them get phased out.
John:
But at this point, it's like...
John:
X86-64 isn't as gross.
John:
You can implement the old 16-bit instructions and crazy-ass crap that's never going to get called as slow as you want with as few transistors.
John:
It's a tiny blip.
John:
It's not the kind of blip that you can build a sustainable performance advantage on.
John:
You know, like process and manufacturing is just such a huge part of this.
John:
And so Intel has to be a huge part.
John:
And I don't know the ins and outs of the details that people have been talking about this, but like CPU is one thing, but you've got chipset, you've got Thunderbolt, you've got whatever the current version of PCI Express is and all that stuff.
John:
And a lot of that stuff is tied up with either patents or actual intellectual property that involves Intel.
John:
So...
John:
I don't think you're going to get away from Intel unless you're going to do something like an iOS device where it's like, oh, no Thunderbolt over here.
John:
We don't even have USB.
John:
It's our own little widget.
John:
It's got our own port on the side of it.
John:
And we control everything, but you can't quite do that with Macs yet.
Marco:
We are also sponsored this week by a new sponsor.
Marco:
It is Top Brewer.
Marco:
Go to topbrewerusa.com.
Marco:
It's from a company called Scanomat.
Marco:
This is interesting.
Marco:
So Top Brewer is a revolutionary coffee system that dispenses espresso, coffee, cappuccino, lattes, filtered sparkling water, cold and hot filtered water, and other drinks on demand via a Bluetooth connection with just a tap on your iOS or Android device.
Marco:
top brewery is designed and manufactured in denmark um a lot of things that are awesome come from denmark that are difficult to pronounce uh such as uh jorg jensen is that the jensen electronics brand i assume is this one of those electronic brands that no one's ever heard of except for you no jensen they've been around forever they've been around since the 80s at least right also a bang and olofsson which you've probably heard of them at least they're in the apple stores and everything um and of course lego which is singular and plural at the same time it is not legos
Marco:
It is Lego trademark brand bricks or something, right?
Marco:
So anyway, Lego comes from Denmark too.
Marco:
Great design and great coffee are also part of Denmark's culture.
Marco:
Now with Top Brewer, drinks are customizable and can be saved as favorites.
Marco:
You can have this thing if you prefer 9.5 grams of espresso beans in your espresso or over 8.5 grams.
Marco:
You can save your preference as a favorite and your favorite drink as a tap away.
Marco:
You can save, you know, whether you like more or less foam in your cappuccino, all this stuff.
Marco:
Now, what's cool with Top Brewer, you probably saw this circulate around like the, you know, look at these cool gadget kind of sites about a year ago when they first announced it and showed it off.
Marco:
It looks just like a big, like, you know, one of those big like U-shaped kitchen taps.
Marco:
It just looks like a tap.
Marco:
on a flat counter and all the machinery and reservoirs and everything for it are hidden in the countertop it is the it is the coolest like cleanest most modern looking thing i've seen in a long time um it's all you know all the machinery is hidden away and you can see this beautifully designed silver tap and it's it's really cool
Marco:
And these are commercial grade components in the top brewer.
Marco:
Now, they target both home installations as well as small offices and commercial settings.
Marco:
It includes a burr grinder for the coffee, which is made of even the burr grinder is made of cast aluminum.
Marco:
And it alone is 13 pounds and is really, you know, high quality stuff in here.
Marco:
So Top Brewer is the perfect marriage of beautiful design, exquisite coffee.
Marco:
And so here's what you do.
Marco:
You find one of these things or install it in your home.
Marco:
But at first, if you want to go try it, go find one.
Marco:
They have them installed at various places around a lot of cities these days, and they're expanding very soon.
Marco:
so go find one of these you install their app and then you just order from the app you just walk up to the thing and order it right from the app and then it makes your drink right there you don't have to interact with anybody so maybe the baristas might have a problem with this I don't know but you don't have to interact with anybody or you know give your name so they can misspell it on the cup or anything like that you just walk up to this thing with the app and it makes your preferred drink and you can walk up to any of these things anywhere anywhere that you find one in any city any stores that have them or you can install one right in your home or office
Casey:
um so anyway go to top brewer usa.com that is top brewer usa.com um check it out it's really interesting and i think they're probably going to be big pretty soon all right so the other thing that's been going around the internet over the last week to week and a half maybe two weeks is whether or not anyone can make money in the ios app store marco are you making any money in the ios app store
Marco:
Well, I am right now.
Marco:
Ask me again in three months.
Marco:
Fair enough.
John:
That's fine for Marco.
John:
That's the other thing.
John:
Yeah, right.
John:
The actual full version of that is, is it possible for anyone to make money in the app store besides Marco?
John:
That's basically the meme.
John:
That's Marco and like three other people that they list.
Marco:
That's true.
Marco:
I mean, there's two problems, really, that people face.
Marco:
Problem number one is getting noticed at all and ever having strong sales.
Marco:
You know, so that's like, you know, my reputation and existing audience gives me that kind of for free.
Marco:
Not entirely free, but, you know, close.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But then problem number two affects me as much as anybody else, which is once you've found and saturated the number of people who are going to ever buy your app, what happens to your sales curve?
Marco:
And how do you get more people to buy it who are not finding it or who are choosing not to buy it or who are looking at the category and choosing one of your competitors instead?
Marco:
And that's a much harder problem.
Marco:
And I don't have any benefits there over anyone else, really.
Marco:
And it's a hard problem to solve.
Marco:
And so, you know, the first problem you can kind of address by...
Marco:
So doing things like, you know, like like picking a category where there's less competition, but there is still a market.
Marco:
That's really hard to find, though.
Marco:
You know, a lot of times there's no competition because it isn't very useful or, you know, it's a problem that it's very useful to like 10 people in the world and you're one of them.
Marco:
So congratulations, but it's going to be hard to sell it.
Marco:
And a lot of things are just like, you know, it's kind of cool, but who's going to pay for it?
Marco:
And if it isn't that compelling to pay for, even if it's kind of cool, it's hard to get a lot of sales there.
Marco:
So, you know, we've seen a lot of these blog posts over the last couple of weeks.
Marco:
on the problems in the App Store and how hard it is for developers to make a good living there.
Marco:
And a lot of developers have shared numbers, like actual numbers.
Marco:
Here's what we made, which is unusual.
Marco:
In most places, talking about your salary is taboo.
Marco:
And that's a whole other discussion about whether that should be that way.
Marco:
There was actually a really good Planet Money episode about that recently that you can find out.
Marco:
It's interesting, though, to see because what most of these people are revealing is that they're making a lot less money than people might have assumed.
Marco:
And then a lot less money that then is worth continuing to work on it, basically.
Marco:
And so, you know, this was started out by Jared Sinclair and his post about Unread, which is an RSS reader.
Marco:
And it ends up it's made, you know, I forget the exact number.
Marco:
It was like $30,000 over its lifetime of over a year.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Something like that.
Casey:
I thought it was like 40-ish, but the point is it was in the 30 to 50 range, let's say.
Marco:
Right, yeah.
Marco:
And so it was below his expectations and makes it hard to justify full-time work on it if you're a programmer in the United States paying for United States health insurance and everything and rent or a mortgage and everything else.
Marco:
It's pretty expensive to live here.
Marco:
And if you're making $30,000 a year, when you have a skill that you could make easily twice that, and probably more so, depending on the area that you live in, working for anybody else, that's kind of hard to justify.
Marco:
So I don't know.
Marco:
Casey, I mean, what do you think about this?
Marco:
Because you're a normal person.
Marco:
I'm apparently... People get mad when I talk about this.
Marco:
Because anything I say, people say, oh, well, you can't... This doesn't apply to you.
Marco:
You can't say that.
Marco:
Oh, this works for Marco.
Marco:
People get very mad at me when I talk about this.
Marco:
So Casey, you are more normal than I am.
Marco:
And people tend to like you a lot more.
Marco:
So what do you think of this?
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So I think...
Casey:
It's a tough thing.
Casey:
And there's been a bunch of things that a friend of the show, underscore David Smith, has posted both in text form and in audible form about this.
Casey:
I think he is a good counterpoint to yours insofar as he is also successful, but he does it by way of diversification.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Whereas you do it by way of really dumping all of your time into one app.
Casey:
And both of those are perfectly valid ways of going about it.
Casey:
For me, I don't think I'm going to ever post this in a blog post or anything.
Casey:
But I was looking at fast text numbers.
Casey:
And in brief, the first check I got from Apple was the end of September in 2010.
Casey:
Wow.
Casey:
And it was $43.
Casey:
And I was unbelievably excited about that because I had actually earned some modicum of money on the App Store.
Casey:
I didn't earn a lot.
Casey:
And if we care, I could go in the blow-by-blow of how much I earned.
Casey:
But suffice to say, it wasn't until sometime during ATP's run that I finally cracked into profit for Fast Text.
Casey:
And I was just adding up all the numbers.
Casey:
And if I added things correctly, I am $143 in the black.
Casey:
That counts for all the profit I've made, or all the money I've made, which is about $650, minus five years in the App Store, which is about $100 a pop, minus the $40 I spent on Opacity Express to make the world's worst icon with feet.
Casey:
You're welcome, John.
Yeah.
John:
Um, I liked it.
John:
Well, you're not subtracting on WWDC tickets or travel to WWDC or the price you paid for the inferior footless icon that replaced, uh, well, I have not, I, I was, or my friend, um, uh, Jacob Swidek actually did not charge me for that icon.
Casey:
He did it out of the goodness of his heart because he's awesome.
Casey:
And I don't know if he's doing contract work anymore, but if you want a good icon, talk to him.
John:
But WWDC, you don't count, and that wipes out all your profit.
Casey:
Well, yes and no.
Casey:
Of the four years I've been to WWDC, I think work paid for three of them, if I'm not mistaken.
Casey:
So you could argue that that one year would put me heavily in the red.
Casey:
But I consider that slightly ancillary, and we can get into a whole debate as to whether or not that's reasonable.
Casey:
But let's take WWDC as completely unrelated.
Casey:
Let's assume I've never been to WWDC, still over five years, because Fast Text launched shortly after iOS 4 came out.
Casey:
And so in the five or so years that it's been out,
Casey:
I've earned $143.
Casey:
Now, I've done nothing to promote it other than occasionally mentioning it here.
Casey:
And that's about it.
Casey:
And to be honest, especially now, it's getting a little old, getting a little long in the tooth.
Casey:
I need to find some time to work on it.
Casey:
I can't believe I beat you.
Casey:
i know i can't believe overcast shipped before your ios 7 update the really embarrassing thing is that ios 8 is going to beat me too yeah i did work on it briefly two weeks ago and i i what was it that you had said the uh shoot the top layout guide yes that got me halfway there but i'm not quite through yet and because i'm too damn stubborn to use springs and struts i'm i'm i still haven't updated it but anyway um
Casey:
But yeah, so over the course of five years, having done no real marketing whatsoever, I've earned $143.
Casey:
And I'm happy with that.
Casey:
I mean, I'm certainly not complaining about it, but I certainly wouldn't be leaving my job for $143 over five years.
Casey:
I mean, that's like one nice meal...
Casey:
If by nice, you mean Panera Bread every half year to a year.
Casey:
You know what I mean?
Casey:
So it's hard.
Casey:
And Justin Williams has been talking in his snarky way, which I love.
Casey:
But he's been talking on and off about that.
Casey:
You know what?
Casey:
Business is just hard.
Casey:
Business is hard.
Casey:
And that's the thing is that you got to be a businessman or woman before you're a developer in a lot of cases.
Casey:
And I think, Marco, you've done pretty well with that by finding a niche, niche, niche, whatever, finding a cubby that's not terribly well served up until Overcast.
Casey:
And in the case of Overcast, finding a way to make it something unique.
Casey:
And we'll see over time, or you'll see over time, whether or not that's sustainable.
Casey:
But underscore David Smith, by comparison, has his hands in a lot of different pots.
Casey:
And that's what keeps him profitable and able to be independent.
Casey:
And somebody mentioned in the chat a moment ago, well, yeah, you know, you say you didn't do any real marketing, but well, you mentioned it on ATP and that's marketing.
Casey:
And, you know, that's a fair point.
Casey:
That's an absolutely fair point.
Casey:
But okay, let's assume that that's quote unquote real marketing.
Casey:
I still have only earned 150 bucks over five years, you know?
Casey:
So if that's real marketing, that means it's even more depressing than we originally thought.
Marco:
This episode is also sponsored by Fast Text.
Casey:
Right?
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I long so much.
Casey:
I long so much to be able to go independent and do my own thing and not work for the man.
Casey:
And I love my job.
Casey:
I truly do.
Casey:
But it would be so neat to be like you or underscore and be able to be my own person, if you will, in mega air quotes.
Casey:
But in the end of the day...
Casey:
I don't really have a terribly stressful job.
Casey:
And as long as I show up and do decent work, I'm going to maintain that not terribly stressful job.
Casey:
And there's a lot to be said for that.
Casey:
And I think, as always, the grass is greener on the other side.
Casey:
And I have it pretty easy, all told.
Yeah.
Casey:
So, so young and foolish.
John:
If I just show up every day and do good work, I'll keep my job.
John:
And I tell you that after my first child was born that I lost my job.
John:
Anyway, that's lots of fun.
John:
What job number is this for you, Casey?
John:
Is it number three or something?
John:
This is four.
John:
And did you voluntarily leave all the previous jobs?
John:
Thus far, yes.
John:
So you're a quitter.
Yeah.
John:
What I'm saying is chances are good that you're going to have more jobs in your life, and I think it's a reasonable chance that some of those transitions will happen not by your choice.
Casey:
It is certainly possible.
Casey:
I tend to try to pick a company that, from everything I can tell, is stable, and to the best of my ability, I am certainly not the most important person there, but I am...
Casey:
Not the low-hanging fruit, if you will.
Casey:
But you're right.
Casey:
I mean, the company that I work for, it could fold tomorrow and I could be none the wiser.
John:
I'm going to turn this into an episode of quit.
John:
But the whole thing of the illusion of stability versus the...
John:
Like the panic that you feel and the stress that you feel about, oh, I'm doing my own thing, but that means it's all on me.
John:
Whereas like, well, no, I'm not doing my own thing.
John:
It's not all on me, but at least I have security.
John:
Well, you really don't have security, but it kind of feels like you do.
John:
So the reality is that depending on your personality trait, the bottom line is, do you feel more stressed?
John:
Are you more stressed in situation A versus situation B?
John:
regardless of whether the situation A and B are actually comparable in any way.
John:
Just because you feel safer in a job doesn't mean a job is safer, but feeling safer is like 90% of the battle anyway.
John:
If you have a personality where if you were to go off on your own, all you would do is stress all the time, that wouldn't be a good thing for you, even if it was exactly comparable risk-wise in reality.
John:
It just matters how you feel.
John:
But all this stuff on the web going around about the App Store viability...
John:
I have to think that it's motivated by... There's no point in writing about this if there's not an angle.
John:
And the angle I see a lot is...
John:
Someone who's not me is to blame for my difficulties.
John:
Not in a bad way, because everyone kind of thinks that, but it's like, if it was just on you, you're like, well... I mean, kind of like Casey's thing.
John:
He's not writing posts complaining about how hard it is to make money out of FastX.
John:
Whose fault is it that FastX... Well, is FastX an awesome, super-duper app?
John:
No, it's not.
John:
No, it is not.
John:
Has it been updated religiously to keep up with the latest tech?
John:
No, it has not.
John:
You're a jerk.
John:
You know, it's like...
John:
it's not like you're searching for like, why couldn't they make money?
John:
You know, you can make money off as that.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Like, and that's why you're not writing blog posts about it.
John:
Whereas other people like Jared, you know, they'd say like, I made a great app.
John:
I love it.
John:
It, it embodies my own ideals.
John:
I think the interface is great.
John:
I think it does something useful.
John:
I really liked the way it works.
John:
I worked hard on it.
John:
It's bug free.
John:
I've kept it updated.
John:
I use latest technologies.
John:
And then like, why, why aren't I successful?
Um,
John:
And you're not going to turn that on yourself because you're like, look, I made an awesome app.
John:
I did a good job with this.
John:
I look at all the other apps that are out there.
John:
Mine is at least as good as them, if not better.
John:
So you're going to immediately be looking for some reason why you didn't succeed.
John:
It doesn't have to do with your own personal failings.
John:
And in most cases, it's not really your fault.
John:
Like you did do a good job on the things that you care about.
John:
Like you did make an ICY.
John:
It is a good app.
John:
It is bug-free.
John:
It does do something useful.
John:
But then you get into all the things that Marco was talking about.
John:
All right, well, then whose fault is it?
John:
What am I going to write about?
John:
Well...
John:
Maybe you wrote an app that has a has a potential customer base of 10 people and they all bought it already.
John:
Right.
John:
Maybe maybe your taste doesn't match other people's tastes.
John:
Like if you have a beautiful bug free, nice interface application for like, you know, counting oranges.
John:
how many people in the world need to count oranges?
John:
Maybe it's just a hobby of yours or like train spotting or some other strange, like you have, there's so much more to it.
John:
And that's where the end of the business thinks, maybe you picked a good audience, maybe it's already crowded and so on and so forth.
John:
And that's kind of boring too.
John:
That's where a lot of these things get to is like, oh, just business is hard or whatever.
John:
But everyone is looking for something more interesting than that.
John:
Because just saying business is hard, like that post has to come after everyone else's post comes to be kind of like the, you know, let me just say the obvious thing to get us back to sanity.
John:
But the previous ones are like,
John:
what is what is apple doing what is the app is the app store environment getting worse is apple not doing things that may used to be easier to make money but now it's not as easy and i blame apple for that because they control the ecosystem and on ios there is an angle to that because it's like if you want to make an ios app
John:
the app store is the only game in town like unless you want to you know sell them one of those weird jailbreak stores or something which usually people don't want to do apple controls everything and so unless apple is perfect you're going to say i made a good app i think i picked a reasonable category uh but the app store is harder to make money in now than it used to be and whenever i see posts like that i think well
John:
Yeah, like people know about it now.
John:
Like it's not, you know, getting in early.
John:
You know, the gold rush is over.
John:
The gold rush didn't end because Apple did something bad.
John:
The gold rush ended because everyone everyone came to California.
John:
Like everyone's here now.
John:
Like the gold, the gold has been dug out of the ground.
John:
When you're the first app on the app store on day one, everyone buys you because there's nothing for them to buy.
John:
You know, if you were the first read later app, then you get a lot more customers than if you're the 17th read later app.
John:
Right.
John:
That's just the gold rush means everyone rushed in and the market was filled.
John:
And so now, of course, it's harder to make money.
John:
But it kind of gets like what I kind of get back to is the I see this a lot in writers complaining.
John:
I guess developers, too, like.
John:
writers developers anybody who does anything creative fields and development they're like don't work for free we've all heard that before i think i've done this complaint about the same thing on the podcast but don't work for free because it devalues you know the work so when you work for free and i tell somebody that i want to get paid they're like well i'll just take this guy he works for free and don't do that because you're you're making the thing that we do less valuable by being willing to do it for free
John:
And that is 100% true.
John:
If the market is full of people like, I will write your application for free, or I will write your blog post for free, or I will do this logo design for you for free, it makes it harder for you to charge money for any of those services, because if the guy doing it for free is just as good or, God forbid, better than you, you've got, you know, it's very difficult to charge money.
John:
And so if you are talking to your peers, hey, everybody who does whatever, everybody who paints paintings, everyone who writes articles, everyone who develops software...
John:
don't do your thing for free or don't give your thing away because that makes it harder for all of us to make money.
John:
And that is true.
John:
But the problem with that is what if the thing that you're doing is really fun?
John:
What if it's really cool?
John:
What if it's really fun to make apps?
John:
What if it's really fun to do paintings?
John:
What if logo design is really fun?
John:
What if you can do it in your spare time, like while having a regular job?
John:
What if college students really like to do it and they're really smart and talented and don't really need to have a job?
John:
those are unfortunate facts of life about many endeavors and making apps is kind of fun i guess or working for yourself is also fun all these things that make it attractive to people like casey and me and you know it's like that makes it attractive to everybody everybody wants to do that everybody wants to lead the good life everyone wants to do something cool
John:
And all the people who are able to do that something cool because they don't need to have a job or because they're in college or because they're just young and foolish or whatever, like their reward is the fun of it.
John:
They make it harder for everyone else to make money.
John:
So that's like, I don't know.
John:
It's like, that's not, I don't, I don't think you can blame anybody in that.
John:
The people saying that it's harder, it is harder, but I don't really blame the people doing it for free or for the fun of it because they're getting their own reward out of it.
John:
And like, that's,
John:
I'm not going to say that there's people who are writing this blog post are not entitled, but like I'm I'm making a statement independent of that thing of saying there is no entitlement to be able to make a good living doing something awesome that you love.
John:
Right.
John:
Think of all the people who are in actual real creative fields like, you know,
John:
people who want to be singer-songwriters or, like, painters or poets.
John:
You can be like, boy, wouldn't it be great if I could make six figures a year writing poetry?
John:
Yes, that would be great.
John:
Good luck with that, right?
John:
Like, the more people want to do it, the more awesome it seems.
John:
Of course, the harder it's going to be to do that.
John:
And writing applications is a much more viable skill in terms of making money than poetry.
John:
But it's a continuum, and writing applications that you feel like writing when you feel like writing them is...
John:
Farther towards the poetry end of the spectrum than doing what Casey or I do, which is doing something that an established company needs you to do for money in a business that they've already proven is a viable business.
John:
Is that too depressing?
John:
I don't know.
Casey:
Do you, John, at all aspire to be independent, be that an independent consultant or perhaps an independent product guide?
Casey:
Is there any part of you that desires for that?
Casey:
Oh, I aspire to be retired.
Yeah.
Casey:
That's a wonderfully John Syracuse answer.
John:
Oh, that's fantastic.
John:
I aspire not to have to work.
John:
I aspire to be independently wealthy.
John:
All these are reasons why I will never have these things.
John:
But if you're just asking what I want, yep, that's what I want.
John:
I want to not have to work.
John:
And who doesn't want to not have to work?
Casey:
Like, seriously.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
So accepting that working in some capacity is a fact of life at the age in which we all are, in a perfect world, do you think you would prefer to be independent or do you think you would prefer to be working for the man and have that either perceived or perhaps actual stability?
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
Well, I'm just doing what everyone else does, which is you do the thing that causes the least pain, essentially.
John:
So for me, I would be incredibly stressed out if I was in any of these situations these indie developers are in.
Casey:
Oh, amen.
John:
Absolutely.
John:
It just is not compatible with my personality.
John:
It's very attractive, but the only way I could do it is if I could say, well, I don't have to worry about money.
John:
so like that's what that's the the thing of it is like if you just dump the bucket of money on me and say here you go you never have to worry about money again what i would end up doing would look a lot like what an indie developer ends up is doing but the only reason i'd be able to do it is because i would have no pressure to be successful like i could do whatever the hell i wanted and it doesn't matter if it's a caesar fails and that's the only way i could do that without like stressing myself to death
Marco:
Yeah, but you'd find other things to stress about.
John:
No, I wouldn't, though.
John:
Like, you know, like, this is like the remaining, oh, I guess I would probably stress about health and stuff eventually.
John:
I get old and stressed about my kids and all that other stuff.
John:
But, you know, there's always something.
John:
But, like, in terms of work, the only thing I would do, the only way I would ever do, like, the indie lifestyle is if it didn't count.
John:
Like, if it didn't matter where I succeeded or failed.
John:
So, because I just wouldn't, the kind of life that Marco leads, well, or any of these indie developers were like, or even, I mean, well, I don't know.
John:
If your livelihood depends on you being successful by doing something that you want to do with the skill that you have, whether it be writing an application or even like writing a novel or running your own website or anything like that, where it's just you, nobody else, no support.
John:
So like basically the entrepreneurial spirit.
John:
I do not have that.
John:
Because there would just be too much stress and I would be miserable.
John:
And so I've chosen a life that avoids that stress by saying someone else worry about that.
John:
I will develop my skills, become a valuable worker for someone else to pay.
John:
And that to me feels more secure.
John:
And I don't know what number job I'm on, like six, seven, something like that.
John:
Like I, I don't like that experience either having to go from job to job, but.
John:
The gaps are longer.
John:
And in between, I feel like I have more stability than I would know those things, which is why neither one of us to this point, Casey or I, are Marco.
John:
And Marco is Marco because he did things that we were not willing to do.
Marco:
Well, hold on, though.
Marco:
There's a big asterisk here, though.
Marco:
What a lot of people don't know or have forgotten is that I didn't take indie development full time until after it was successful.
Casey:
Yes, and that's true.
Casey:
But I've thought about this on and off a fair bit.
Casey:
You did answer a Craigslist ad for a job posting that had for a company of one employee.
Casey:
Which is something that I can't speak for John.
Casey:
But there's no freaking way I would ever do that.
Casey:
Because at that point, all of the stability I'm seeking, it's not there.
Casey:
Because it's just one guy.
Casey:
How could one guy possibly do anything right?
John:
But he was young, though.
John:
Like, I might do that if I was young.
Marco:
Well, no, that was a concern.
Marco:
That was definitely a concern.
Marco:
Because of how expensive New York is to live in, I was concerned that, well, if this company goes under and I stop getting paid...
Marco:
It takes like one and a half months for me to have no savings left.
Marco:
And that's it.
Marco:
So I was concerned.
Marco:
But I mean, the main reason I did that was not because I was some like, you know, forward thinking maverick or something.
Marco:
It was because I only had two offers that were at all even reasonable.
Casey:
um and i really didn't want to take the other one like the other one would have made me miserable and i knew that and david made let me work on a mac so i took that one that was it like that was that was the factors that went into it right and that all of that makes sense but the thing of it is is that you took what to john or i or i shouldn't speak for john but what to me would it was a tremendously risky offer
Casey:
Even though in a lot of ways it was better, it was still riskier.
Casey:
And I am so risk adverse that I really admire the fact that you took that job offer at Davidville, which led to all, I would argue, led to all of these other things.
Casey:
And if I was in the same position, I would have gone to whatever that financial services firm, whatever it was that you were looking at or that you were also flirting with.
Casey:
That's where I would be.
Casey:
And I would be freaking miserable right now.
John:
I would have taken that job.
John:
My first job out of school was in a five-person startup.
John:
It was like the dot-com days.
John:
It was like 1997, so...
John:
That's what you did then.
John:
And like, and it's your first job and you don't have any responsibilities and you figure, you know, like I did take that job.
John:
It's just that my company didn't turn out to be Tumblr.
John:
Like, like almost everyone else's, you know, you know what I mean?
John:
Like, so it's always just luck of the draw.
John:
But like the thing about Marco saying, well, I didn't leave my job until I was making good money with Instapaper.
John:
Like, yeah, that's the typical nerd way to do it.
John:
But even at that point, I would be saying, well, you know, I did this app in my spare time.
John:
It's popular.
John:
People like it.
John:
I'm making good money off of it.
John:
Now I can quit my job.
John:
And I would never get to that leap point because I would say, you can't quit your job because, yeah, you're making money over now.
John:
But what about next year and the year after that and the year after that?
John:
And you have to have some confidence like this is a thing that I can do, that I can sustain this, that I'm going to have to write a second app and a third app and I have to find ways to make money and whatever.
John:
And I would never have confidence that I could do that.
John:
And what I would feel like I was doing is if I take the time off, I'm I'm derailing from like a career path elsewhere.
John:
And if I go off and Instapaper goes for a few years and then it kind of fizzles out, I'm like, oh, now what do I do?
John:
I got to go back into the job market and I would be afraid that I can't get back into the job train.
John:
Now that's, that is not a really irrational fear because if you wrote Instapaper and it say it fizzled after a few years, but did really well in between, it would be no problem for you finding a job doing like iOS contracting or anything like it's, it wouldn't actually be a problem.
John:
But I mean, I wasn't looking at the app store at the time.
John:
So I was in 1997, there was no app store or anything like that.
John:
But that's the kind of feeling that like, even if you are doing a side project and even if that like the side project becomes successful and lucrative,
John:
The truly, you know, sort of person who's afraid about his financial security like I am and probably like Casey is would be like, oh, that's fine.
John:
You know, but you can't quit your job because what are you going to do next year or the year after that or 10 years from now or 15 years or 20 years from now?
John:
We're like, do you think this is a sustainable thing that you can do in your entire career?
John:
Or do you think this is something that might go well for a couple of years and you're going to have to get a real job again anyway?
John:
And if you had to get a real job again anyway, why not just keep the real job you have now because it'll be harder to go, you know,
John:
that's the that's the that's the kind of little voice in the back of my head that's preventing me from ever doing ever doing anything independent yep well but you know the the trick there i mean this but this really is quit um you know the the the flaw in that thinking is in assuming that jobs are stable and and the reality is like they're they're not at all like yeah i made the same point before and i've said i've been through seven jobs anyway i'm just saying like people do essentially what makes them feel comfortable as within the bounds of their values or whatever and
John:
Within the bounds of my values, having a regular salary job makes the rest of my life less stressful.
John:
As you get closer to retirement, maybe that changes.
John:
It's like, well, you know, maybe I go independent now because it's not like I have 20 years of career ahead of me anyway.
John:
So if I end up doing something outside of my job that becomes vaguely successful, I can jump ship and do that.
John:
Because if it fizzles out after a few years, then I'm actually really am going to retire with all the money I saved from my salary job during those other years anyway.
John:
So...
John:
I think all these indie developers talking to each other on these blogs and amongst each other is just kind of a way of each person coming to terms with their own sort of values.
John:
Like...
John:
it takes a certain amount of guts to leap into that lifestyle and it takes a certain sort of temperament and mindset to keep at it like underscore definitely has the mindset he has the mindset to jump into it and he has the head for keeping doing it he's just going to do what it takes and he's like you know the the full spectrum kind of business thing and you too marco for that but you know like you may like set one aspect more than another but you realize there is a spectrum of things that you have to do that
John:
There's the business side, the marketing side, choosing what you're going to do, the technical side.
John:
And you have your favorites.
John:
Nobody likes all of it.
John:
But you realize it's sort of a, you know, instead of like a full stack web developer, you have to be a full stack business person.
John:
And you have to be able to tolerate the lifestyle that comes with that.
John:
Obviously, success makes it more tolerable.
John:
But some people...
John:
jump into it, liking only one aspect of it and realize that all that other stuff is just necessary.
John:
Like, and that's the problem with the gold brushes.
John:
You could jump into it just being into like the one aspect of it and just be like, I really liked development and I made an app and it's one of the only three of its kind in the app store.
John:
And I'm making money for three years.
John:
And then all of a sudden, all these competitors come in and it becomes a more competitive market space.
John:
And you're like, well, I really don't like doing any of the parts except for the cool part where you write the app.
John:
And if I don't do those things, I can't really compete.
John:
And App Store, you've changed, man.
John:
It's like, well, maybe you just weren't cut out for that.
John:
You just like...
John:
The environment has changed and the things that you like to do and don't like to do are no longer fit for success in this environment.
John:
As the environment changes, the things that it selects for success change as well.
John:
We all have complaints about the App Store and what Apple does.
John:
Those are all legitimate complaints, but most of this talking about the App Store has to do with people coming to terms with their own tolerance for what the current App Store environment is like.
John:
Because some people like, well, I had to stop being independent.
John:
I had a job and other people like I'm going to stick it out no matter what.
John:
And like what you don't hear about all these things is like, well, here's my sales numbers.
John:
But like, does your spouse work during that time?
John:
Are you still living with your parents?
John:
Are you independently wealthy?
John:
And so it doesn't matter what happens here anyway, because you have a trust fund like you never know what they're actual.
John:
Do you live in Kansas where your rent is really low or like?
John:
You never know what the actual situation is like.
John:
How do you live?
John:
How do you live on that little money?
John:
Are you going to stick it out?
John:
Are you not going to?
John:
Those are more like personal decisions that have to do with your current living situation and your tolerance for risk and stress.
John:
And that, I think, is the bulk of the discussion, which is a good discussion to have.
John:
The tiny sliver of the discussion is, are there things that Apple is doing or not doing that make it better or worse for everybody or better or worse for a particular type of developer?
John:
And that I think is the thing I took away from this is like, not so much what is Apple doing to the app store that makes it a more hostile or friendly environment for developers, but what kind of people are they selecting for?
John:
And obviously the people having this discussion thinks if Apple is not selecting for me, that's bad because I'm awesome, which is good.
John:
You should think that.
John:
on the other side of the coin, Apple might be thinking, oh, yeah, we want to select those apps that win Apple Design Awards, but not as much as you might think.
John:
Like, we just need enough to have Apple Design Awards, but in reality, we're also kind of okay with EA being in the store, even though EA is never going to win an Apple Design Award, right?
John:
And so, like, what... The kind of store that we wish it was, all filled with beautiful handcrafted artisanal applications made by passionate people with attention to detail, like...
John:
You can't make a full store of that, or if you can, maybe that's not the store that Apple wants.
John:
You do need, like, you need EA in there, I guess.
John:
I mean, and even things like Tokuboka, which are great applications, that's obviously, that's like a full-fledged business.
John:
It's not like two people working out of a garage, right?
John:
Even if it may have started that way.
John:
And maybe you even need Angry Birds, which, again, started as two people and becomes this big thing.
John:
So...
John:
I think it was an interesting discussion.
John:
I enjoyed spectating it from the sidelines, but I don't think there's any one clear mission or sign we can hold over our head to say, do X now or else.
John:
It's just more like, this is life.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
It's a really, really nice piece because you don't need a frame for these things.
Marco:
They're like, it's the finished product.
Marco:
You hang it on the wall.
Marco:
You put it on your desk.
Marco:
There's your photo.
Marco:
And it's really affordable, in my opinion.
Marco:
What I use them for, so I have a couple of big ones over my desk for pictures that I printed, you know, actual photos.
Marco:
And then up on my wall, I have this row of app icon fracture prints.
Marco:
And it's because they have this small square size.
Marco:
It's something like 5x5.
Marco:
Let me see.
Marco:
six by six maybe something like that um it's and so i have my app icons of the apps i've worked on before all printed on those so there's a row of three of them now i got two of them coming yeah anyway it's a great way to have like a visual representation like a tangible trophy of the apps you've done or and you can put website icons up there podcast artwork um pretty much anything square or rectangular you can get printed on these things
Marco:
The print quality is fantastic.
Marco:
I'm very happy with it.
Marco:
The photos look good.
Marco:
The icon artwork looks good.
Marco:
Oh, yeah, see it.
Marco:
Prices start at just $12 for the small square size, which is 5x5, they say here in the read.
Marco:
Fracture puts everything you need right in the box.
Marco:
So, you know, they even give you a picture hanger screw, like the little anchor screw.
Marco:
They even give you that.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
It's a fantastic service.
Marco:
They've been around for a while.
Marco:
I've used them for a few years now.
Marco:
They've sponsored for a few years.
Marco:
I really enjoy Fracture Prints.
Marco:
You really have to see it to believe it.
Marco:
And just, you know, 12 bucks for the small size, that's really, that's fantastic.
Marco:
You know, you can...
Marco:
You can get that no problem.
Marco:
Now, the good thing is you don't even need to pay that much because you can save 15% with the coupon code ATP.
Marco:
So please go to fractureme.com.
Marco:
That's fractureme.com and use coupon code ATP to get 15% off.
Marco:
So that way you support them and our show.
Marco:
Now, they're also doing something special.
Marco:
if you order using coupon code marco free the first 25 people to use coupon code marco free will get a free small square size which is the size i use for my app icons on the wall so go to fracture me.com to make an order use code marco free if you're one of the first 25 people to do it you'll get a free small square uh print and if you are not use coupon code atp to get 15 off still fantastic prices i love these guys really they sponsored our show a lot
Marco:
Even before they sponsored, I used them myself, and I continue to order prints from them.
Marco:
Even when we don't even have a code and I have to pay full price, I still continue to order prints from them because they're that good.
Marco:
Anyway, thank you very much to Fracture, who prints your photo in vivid color directly on glass.
Marco:
FractureMe.com.
Casey:
So we should also point out with regard to people opening the kimono or whatever the phrase is.
Casey:
That's such a gross phrase.
Casey:
Well, sorry.
Casey:
Revealing their numbers, which also – okay, sharing their number, whatever.
Casey:
Anyway, the point is somebody, Jazzy Chad – I don't know who exactly that is, but Jazzy Chad put up a post which we'll put in the show notes about –
Casey:
it's like for game developers, because the assumption is that game developers make all the money in the app store.
Casey:
And as it turns out, this person who has a day job at Twitter, which allows him, I'm assuming it's a him, allows him to make these things in his spare time and not have to worry about making a living off of it.
Casey:
He wrote three or four games, some of which look really nice.
Casey:
I've not played any of them, but nevertheless, he wrote a few games and
Casey:
For three games, and some of which he spent a lot of time trying to market, he basically ended up a little bit in the red because of the marketing he paid for in order to try to make some money on these games.
Casey:
So even for game developers...
Casey:
All is not rosy in the App Store anymore.
John:
Well, you don't have to say even for it, because what's more fun than writing a cool iOS application?
John:
Writing an iOS game.
John:
It's a reasonable yardstick to say, how much fun is it to do this thing?
John:
And then how many people can do it at all?
John:
all development has a good a good uh a good number in the how many people can do it at all because only certain people have the desire or tolerance to learn all the esoteric crap you have to learn to be a programmer right so people just aren't into it like that's great that's good for us right it helps us make more money because most people don't want to learn this crap uh
John:
But game development of all the kinds of all the kind of programs you're going to write writing a game like that's if you've talked to any program or a lot of our first programming experiences is I wanted to write a game because people who like to program maybe also like computer games and like I would like to write one of those and even if you don't end up as a game program or how many of us I know certainly my first programs I ever wrote were game programs.
John:
And I certainly did it up as a game.
John:
Game programming is fun.
John:
So it's fun.
John:
It's not looking good for what are my chances of making a lot of money doing this?
John:
In fact, it starts to become more like what are my chances of like making a hit movie or a best selling novel?
John:
Games are kind of like that.
John:
It is a creative field.
John:
You do need all sorts of skills that don't have any technical skills.
John:
And you need technical skills on top of that, which is like, oh, now it's really hard to find this one or two people who can do this.
John:
Right.
John:
And also it's kind of a hit driven culture where you have to have the right game at the right time.
John:
And boy, that's tough.
John:
I would not be surprised to see that it is much harder to make a living selling games in the app store than it is selling a to do list application or a podcast application or anything else.
Marco:
Yeah, games are a tough market because there is infinite competition.
Marco:
There are so many games.
Marco:
And games are also competing for attention with other things that you do to kill some time sometimes and have some fun sometimes.
Marco:
That includes things like social networking and movies and music.
Marco:
Well, no one listens to music except me anymore, but...
Marco:
Other people watch movies and browse Twitter and Facebook and post stupid stuff.
Marco:
All of that is competing for time and attention with games.
Marco:
Games have these immense price pressures are squeezed from all sides.
Marco:
Plus, they have the problem of if you make an RSS reader, you can ship a 1.0 that isn't very good, that didn't take you very long to make, and you can add to it over time.
Marco:
Games don't really work that way, at least not most of the time.
Marco:
Usually with a game, you pretty much have to do all of it up front before you know whether anybody will buy it.
Marco:
And so it's just a really tough market.
John:
Unless you license IP and then you can do episodic content because you have a known property.
John:
It's much more like games are almost nothing like the application market and almost everything like the market for all other entertainment, whether it be television shows or movies or music or anything like that.
John:
There's a technical aspect to it, and there's all sorts of those details that you have to know, but that just kind of adds a degree of difficulty to what is basically, can you make a good game?
John:
Can you even think of a good game that's fun?
John:
And then can you implement that well?
John:
And then can you put it out into an extremely crowded market in a way that people even see it?
John:
Really hard to do.
John:
because it's like there's no utility value like a podcast app but like this helps me do a thing i like to do uh it's like it's the difference between uh well i would say like a podcast app helps you sort of play do something you want to do which is listen to podcasts i'm trying to think of a game equivalent i don't know if there is one helps you manage your games i don't know uh but games are just like the thing you do that's fun right it's like podcasts are the thing that you do that's fun
Marco:
And games do have a few advantages over other app types.
Marco:
You know, one of them being, for example, that they don't really compete directly as much as you might think in the way that like, you know, people usually only use like one RSS reader at a time.
Marco:
And they might only ever buy one or two RSS readers.
Marco:
Yeah, games are consumables, right?
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
Games, you download, you play it for a little while, and then you move on and you buy more games.
Marco:
And so it's easier for multiple games to reach the same customer.
Marco:
Whereas if you're in a category of competing similar apps, chances are most people are just going to pick one of those.
John:
Or like email apps.
John:
Like people aren't switching.
John:
A small group of nerds is even looking for alternative apps.
John:
Most people have an email app.
John:
They're going to stick with it or whatever.
John:
But games are consumable.
John:
And that's actually a better fit for the app store in that respect, I guess.
John:
Because it's like, what do I do for upgrade?
John:
But you don't.
John:
You just make another game.
John:
or you make game version 2 and you know make it a sequel and it's a separate app because everyone like no one has a problem with that yeah well somebody does but you know yeah but it's the same thing it's like well then how do you know it's just everyone wants to make a game and making a good game is really hard because it's just not technical and it's not really ui although you might have to do some ui but it is really hard to make a good game
Marco:
I think, though, to end this on a positive note, when all these posts first came out two weeks ago, whenever Jared started it, when these first came out, it looked pretty grim for the first few days.
Marco:
In the last few days, I've seen a lot of posts from people who are making it work.
Marco:
And they're inspirational in a way.
Marco:
They're motivational, at least.
Marco:
Where you can make this work.
Marco:
But you have to both do it intelligently in a way that that will succeed and have reasonable expectations on how much you're going to make and, you know, base your decisions on that.
Marco:
So, for instance, you know, John, you were saying earlier, like a lot of people want to be app developers.
Marco:
So therefore, there are a lot of app developers and a lot of people doing it for very little money because a lot of people do it on the side.
Marco:
There's nothing wrong with that.
Marco:
That's how I started.
Marco:
Casey, you're a side app developer.
Marco:
John, you would be if you could write apps in Perl.
Marco:
This is how lots of people start.
Marco:
And a lot of people never take it full time.
Marco:
That's what they always do.
Marco:
Part time side projects, mostly as hobbies that might bring in a little money here and there.
Marco:
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Marco:
You should probably start with that if you're interested in doing this at all.
Marco:
Don't quit your job and have this romantic notion of sitting in a coffee shop and writing apps all day and collecting a bunch of money.
Marco:
Like, it's harder than that.
Marco:
And it's going to take longer than that before you reach that point.
Marco:
Like in the past year that I've been working on Overcast, it really hasn't been full time.
Marco:
I've had this show and I've had my blog.
Marco:
Those both bring in money.
Marco:
They both take time and work.
Marco:
And so I didn't have zero income for the last year.
Marco:
I had income from those two things.
Marco:
I don't think I would have done Overcast if I had zero income for a year.
Marco:
I think I would have tried to find some way to continue having money come in every month.
Marco:
And we all start from a very small amount.
Marco:
You look at apps today, it's similar to putting AdSense on a blog in 2006.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Like I had ads on my blog in 2006 and I was extremely happy.
Marco:
You know, I was getting like fast text numbers at most.
Marco:
You know, I think and Google had like a minimum where they wouldn't even send you a check until you had at least I think it was 100 bucks.
Marco:
It was like 50 or 100 bucks.
Marco:
And I only hit that twice.
Marco:
in the entire time I ran ads.
Marco:
So I made a total of like 200 bucks maybe in like five years.
Marco:
You were running ads on my blog.
Marco:
It was miserable.
Marco:
And I was working on that frequently.
Marco:
I was writing like probably once a week at least.
Marco:
The problem is like the amount of effort you put into something does not correlate directly to how much other people are willing to pay for it.
Marco:
And so you have to have reasonable expectations of, you know, no matter how much effort you put into an app of type X, whatever it is you want to make, you're probably not going to earn more than, you know, a few thousand bucks in the best case scenario.
Marco:
Rather than bemoan that and complain and say it's Apple's fault, because, you know, there are things Apple can do to improve, but this is mostly not Apple's problem.
Marco:
i think if you look at like what's something like underscore david smith is doing he makes many apps he tries things all the time he said he said on one of his shows recently i think he's made like a couple hundred apps and they they aren't all still in existence in the store but he's like created something like a couple hundred apps
Marco:
And he sees what works.
Marco:
He doesn't put a ton of time into version one if he can help it.
Marco:
He sees what works.
Marco:
And in the ones that work, he puts the time in that they earn, basically, from their sales.
Marco:
Proportionally, if something sells well, he'll give it more attention to succeed more.
Marco:
And if something doesn't sell that well, he discontinues it and moves on.
Marco:
That's a really smart approach.
Marco:
It's a very pragmatic approach.
Marco:
It's a very effective approach.
Marco:
And it's very realistic of what the store actually is.
Marco:
I saw another post from a guy who said... I'll try to find these in the show notes.
Marco:
I'm sorry.
Marco:
I don't remember the names offhand.
Marco:
But I saw another post from a guy who said...
Marco:
he develops apps on the side or as you know as most of his income but he lives a really inexpensive lifestyle and he can like go skiing with his family and be present for his kids and he just you know lowers his expectations and and lowers his expenses and and that's and he can do what he wants that's great like
Marco:
If you go into it with reasonable expectations, you can succeed.
Marco:
But you have to know what the market is and know what you're likely to get out of it.
Marco:
And I saw also, like Justin Williams had a post saying that he doesn't think you should spend any more than 90 days building version 1.0.
Marco:
Because that way, you know, you get it out there quickly.
Marco:
And if it's going to be a flop, you can move on quickly.
Marco:
And if it's going to be a hit, then you can know that and you can choose how much you invest in it in the future.
Marco:
That, again, greater device.
Marco:
This is all about...
Marco:
And I know I just violated all this with Overcast, but keep in mind, as I said, that was not full-time work.
Marco:
It's all about limiting your risk and lowering your expectations and then adapting to the conditions that actually happen once you put it out there.
Marco:
There was also... Oh, man, what's... I forget the name.
Marco:
What's the guy who's running the four-part experiment who had an app and he made it free and he made it in that purchase...
Marco:
An App Store Experiment, Stuart Hall.
Marco:
All right, now I know.
Marco:
Okay, so it's Stuart Hall.
Marco:
We'll link to it in the show notes.
Marco:
It's called An App Store Experiment, and there's like five or so parts.
Marco:
And it's really good.
Marco:
It's a really good read.
Marco:
So he started out, he made an app called The 7-Minute Workout.
Marco:
It does something relatively simple, but there is a market for it, but it's a relatively simple app.
Marco:
And he started out with...
Marco:
it being a paid app and then it went in at purchase free app and he's trying all these additional things and he's showing the results he's showing all the actual numbers the whole time of like you know here's like every i think like every six months or so he posts a new thing he's saying here's what i've done in the last six months here's the results that it has had and everything
Marco:
So this is the way to do the App Store.
Marco:
You take an approach like this or an approach like underscore David Smith's where he makes a lot of small apps first and then decides what to work on or what to give more time to afterwards.
Marco:
That is how you succeed.
John:
See, I think this blog discussion, as it's spread out from our circle, we start to get into things that are different because in our circle, this is the people who want to sort of live the life where you want to make an application that you think is cool, that does something that you're interested in, and you want to make it the way you want to make it.
John:
And then you hope people will pay for that.
John:
And that is kind of the central core of our little circle of people.
John:
Right.
John:
Right.
John:
And as this discussion has spread out, you start getting into the people.
John:
And I think underscores at the fringes of our circle, because he also has kind of the same values as us.
John:
But a lot of the people closer into this central heart of the indie lifestyle would say,
John:
Yeah, but I don't want to make 100 apps because I probably wouldn't be into a lot of those apps or whatever.
John:
And like underscore and like Preston Stewart, I already forgot his name.
John:
Stewart Hall.
John:
Who's doing this app.
John:
One of the things that they're into is the business part of it, the game part of it, figuring out what do I do to my business to like I'm turning dials here.
John:
Some of those dials have to do with writing code, but a lot of the dials have to do with things like pricing or which app should I make or what should I, you know.
John:
That's the thing that they're into.
John:
And as you go farther and farther out from that circle, you'll find some guy who's making like an iOS application that helps the reception desk at a dental office.
John:
And he's making a living doing that, but he's so far outside our circle, he's never seen any of these blog posts, right?
John:
But he's happily making a living doing that.
John:
And you're like, but I don't want to make a dental app.
John:
It's not interesting to me.
John:
It's like, oh, suddenly it's not as fun anymore, right?
John:
You know, as you move away from the center of, I want to do exactly what I want, when I want, I want to do an awesome job on it, and I want to get paid.
John:
Like, yeah, everybody wants that.
John:
And if your skills and interests and what you do happens to coincide with the way to make money, that's great.
John:
But as you spread out, people have different interests.
John:
Maybe someone is super into making, you know, applications for a dentist's office, right?
John:
And that's what he wants to do.
John:
Maybe he wouldn't be in our circles, or maybe he's just like, well, I'll do this because this makes money.
John:
Like...
John:
it's it's the desire the center of the thing is like this sort of selfish desire to just be happy doing what you want to do and be successful and as you tell people actually you have to be farther away from the thing you like actually you have to be more like underscore because and it's like but that's not fun to me it's obviously fun for underscore so he's doing it right he's actually interested in that but you said but that's not fun for me what i want to make is a whatever app and or i want to make games that's all i want to make and it's like well
John:
you know, good luck.
John:
Like it's, it's not everyone can do exactly what they want to do.
John:
Some people are willing to get off of like, I mean, we should have underscore on the show.
John:
It said like, would you prefer to just make one beautiful application that you're really into?
John:
Or do you actually like this part of it where you try to make lots of like, is that actually interesting to you?
John:
And it's
John:
seems like he's always blogging about it and everything seems like that that aspect of it is interesting to him and it's just he's lucky in that that interests him and he's good at it and it meshes with his skill set and that allows him to be successful and all these people who are having small success they were doing what they wanted to and they were doing it the best they could it just turns out that that
John:
is not a formula for making money at this particular time and there are many things they can do to change their behavior to make more money but the question for them is do those changes make me less happy and is it worth it for me or is there something else i could do that's radically different like say get it do ios contracting or just get a regular job or you know get a job in totally unrelated fields and continue to do this on the side that would give me an overall happier life again it's back to like
John:
You know, essentially trying to do what's going to make you the happiest and picking an arbitrary goal like I want to be a successful indie developer.
John:
If that's not actually going to make you happy because of what it takes to be an indie developer, you should do something else.
John:
You know.
Casey:
So in summary, despite what we thought, the forecast isn't as overcast as we initially believed.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Need, Top Brewer, and Fracture.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss.
Marco:
M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T.
Casey:
Marco Arment.
Marco:
S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Casey:
They did it.
Casey:
You spent a long time workshopping that while we were talking?
Casey:
Wow.
Casey:
It's been a while since I've had an extremely cheesy joke to end the show.
Casey:
It's been like two weeks.
Casey:
Oh, shut up!
Casey:
How is your showbot doing?
Marco:
Is it up?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And actually, somebody whose name I don't have in front of me made – no, not the – Robbie McKinney.
Casey:
McKinney?
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Made a really good pull request, which I have a couple of minor quibbles with, so I didn't –
Casey:
Hey, I'm calling it like I see it.
Casey:
Anyway, I'm assuming this is a he made a pull request so it will periodically back itself up to Pastebin.
Casey:
Wow.
Casey:
Which I thought was a very clever idea.
John:
It's complicated.
John:
It's not the solution.
John:
Yeah, it's like the Rube Goldberg machine to persistence.
John:
Oh, whatever.
John:
Every three seconds it prints out a little piece of paper then ties itself to the leg of a bird and the bird flies off to a random direction.
Yeah.
John:
I hate you.
Casey:
Why are you so mean to me?
Casey:
Why are you so mean?
Casey:
Anyway, 10 foot pole named IBM.
Casey:
Don't like it.
Casey:
It was like two seconds of the show.
Casey:
I aspire to be retired.
Casey:
I actually was going to petition for my own title, but that is pretty good.
Marco:
Yeah, that's my pick from what I've seen so far.
John:
Who doesn't aspire to be retired?
John:
You aspire to be retired, do you not, Casey?
Casey:
Oh, I aspire to.
John:
It's not like full-fledged John Roderick, like I have to be a retired CIA director.
John:
Just retired is fine.
Marco:
I don't aspire to be retired.
John:
You are retired.
Marco:
But retirement, like to me, the idea of not working is really boring.
John:
But it's not not working.
John:
Retired means you no longer have your job.
John:
You would still do the things that you like doing.
John:
It's just that you're not doing them because someone is telling you to.
John:
And that's your life almost all the time.
John:
It's kind of a blurry line, though.
John:
Like I said, if I was retired, my life would look a lot more like Marco's.
John:
Like I would still probably do tech-related things.
John:
It's just that I'm not doing them because someone is telling me to or because someone is paying me to.
John:
I'm just doing them because it's what I feel like doing.
Casey:
Well, as an example, if I was quote-unquote retired, I would absolutely still write for my blog that not that many people read.
Casey:
I would still do the show because those are the things that I 99% of the time enjoy doing.
Casey:
I told you earlier, I really like my job, but I don't enjoy my job 99% of the time.
Casey:
Got to be in the parking lot sometime.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
The title of mine that I was going to petition for, but I think the other one is better, was Full Stack Business Person, which I think John said.
Casey:
But I Aspire to be Retired is also pretty awesome.
John:
I like Full Stack Business Person better than that.
John:
And I think it's more at the heart of what we were discussing about like...
John:
having to do all the aspects of being successful, not just the ones that you like.
John:
Fair enough.
John:
I mean, in that respect, I guess, like, I mean, that's the part of Marco's life that feels like working.
John:
Like, he enjoys, I'm sure you enjoy the development part way more than the other parts, right?
John:
But you got to do the other parts, you know?
John:
Like, that's your version of, that's your boss, basically.
John:
Like, you know that you have to do the parts of maintaining your business and dealing with all that crap because you know that's just part of it.
John:
Like, you can't, and you hate managing people more than you hate doing it yourself.
John:
So you're just going to do it.
John:
or just you know deal with it right that that is essentially your boss but the thing is if i you know being retired is like well whatever depending on the hobby that you pick there's probably some aspect of that too like for example say i'm retired i would probably still like to write things and maybe i would still write like big you know uh os 10 reviews for our stack and there's aspects of the writing process that i don't like too but overall it's still worth it so i would do the parts that i don't like
John:
Because overall, I still like it and I would still feel like I'm retired and I don't have a boss telling me what to do, but I'm still doing activities that have aspects of it that feel like drudgery because the overall I like the thing.
Casey:
So it'd be like you wrote a show bot and then had everyone you knew and didn't know tear it apart.
John:
No, that's not there's no you liked every part of that.
Casey:
I did.
John:
I really did.
Casey:
Well, I got frustrated, but I did like it overall.
John:
But it's all the fun part.
John:
It's all development.
John:
You're not out there trying to negotiate for a trademark on the name for your show bot or filling out paperwork for taxes for New York State.
Casey:
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Casey:
Nothing like that.
John:
I do not underestimate the... That's another aspect.
John:
We didn't even talk about this, but another aspect of the independent lifestyle.
John:
I think I dislike the business part of it even more than Marco does, which is saying something, I think.
Marco:
Well, it doesn't... Honestly, it doesn't that much work.
John:
Well, it's just you've done it and you get used to it and it kind of becomes more routine.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Especially once you cross the point where you're finally willing to hire an accountant, it makes things so much easier for not that much money.
Marco:
And yeah.
Marco:
Any business people who don't have an accountant, hire an accountant.
John:
All the things that you've learned over your years of doing this, that process of learning that, I would hate.
John:
You've already done it.
John:
You've learned it.
John:
You've set it up.
John:
But that was work to do that.
John:
Maybe you enjoyed it more than you've let on.
John:
But I just have no interest in that.
John:
I don't want to deal with it.
John:
I don't want to learn it.
John:
I don't want to get good at it.
Marco:
Well, but, you know, there's also there's there's like entire entire types of things that you have to deal with in working for someone else as well.
Marco:
Things like commuting, getting, you know, finding the business, dealing with the office and how things are done and how to file for vacation days.
John:
You kind of track.
John:
Train for those by going to school, though, because school and going to college kind of trains you on how to commute, how to live on your own, how to deal with bureaucracy, how to follow rules, how to show up places on time.
John:
All the things that part of the working life school essentially trains you for anyway.
John:
So it's like, by the time I'm done with school and ready to get a job, I already know how to do this.
John:
I already know how to commute.
John:
I already know how to use public transportation.
John:
I already know how to show up places on time and do assignments and, you know, like that.
John:
In that respect, school is a preparation for the drudgery of, uh,
John:
of life but all this business stuff of being an entrepreneur it's like nothing prepares you for like well depending on what your major is i guess like starting your own business and dealing with like you know all the incorporation and tax codes or like the part that you don't have to deal with having like lots of employees saying you're actually going to start a real company with like 50 or 100 employees there's a whole bunch of stuff about that that you don't know and that you would have to find out if you decided to do that but you hate that so much you're just never going to do it
Marco:
right well because i like i did briefly have a full-time employee and it was awful paperwork wise and so i stopped doing it even though like awful just meant like i got an envelope from paychecks every two weeks because i i was paying them like you know 50 bucks a month to handle it all for me and uh even that like stressed me out because i didn't i didn't understand it fully and and that that that bothered me but forget about like hr issues like if you have like a big company where you're hiring 50 or 100 people that's just you know
Marco:
I'm not saying that running a company with employees is easier than going to work with somebody.
Marco:
But working for yourself as a self-prior or like a one-person LLC is pretty simple.
Marco:
And I would say it's simpler than most people who haven't done it probably think.
Marco:
Especially, please, for the love of God, hire an accountant.
Marco:
As long as you have an accountant and have a lawyer do the LLC papers.
Marco:
You'll be out of there for less than $2,000 probably for everything to be set up.
Marco:
The hardest part of working for yourself is the work.
Marco:
It's making the money.
Marco:
All this other stuff is very minor by comparison for most businesses that we would start.
Marco:
We're lucky.
Marco:
We're not trying to make stuff.
Marco:
We don't need to hire 10 people and have malpractice liability kind of insurances.
Marco:
We're not going to make a product that kills somebody.
Marco:
And then we get sued over it.
Marco:
Like we're not going to make we're not trying to sell somebody something like some appliance that they're going to plug into their house and it's going to set their house on fire.
John:
It's much harder to like start a restaurant, for example.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
All this money up front.
John:
You have to take all this risk.
John:
You have to put your life savings into it.
John:
You have to get business loans.
John:
You have to hit up everyone, you know, for money and you have like a 90 percent chance of failure.
John:
yeah exactly i mean the kind of businesses we start are are very very easy to start and run by comparison yeah i mean again that's that's why it's like how how fun is it and that's another aspect how little risk is there involved yeah can you do it in your spare time and do a lot of people think it's really cool uh starting a restaurant just a lot of people think that's really cool but you cannot do that in your spare time while you hold down a regular job very easily
John:
like physical businesses starting a retail store or starting a restaurant stuff like that are much worse which is why but you know it's it's so many people writing apps yeah because it only takes like a hundred bucks and a few hours of time and you have an app in the store that's like it takes so little right casey
Casey:
Well, that would be true if I had already known iOS development when I wrote fast text.
Casey:
And I know you were being silly, but if I were to write fast text again today, in fact, I have considered rewriting it in Swift.
John:
That may be the fastest path to an iOS 8 compatible version.
John:
Just start over.
Marco:
Honestly, that often is the answer to it.
Marco:
Whenever Apple changes stuff dramatically, iOS 8 dramatically changes all the auto-rotation stuff.
Marco:
They replaced all of it, basically.
Marco:
Starting over with a brand new app is definitely easier in some cases, especially if the app is relatively simple, like Fast Text is.
Marco:
It's definitely easier to start fresh than to try to carry forward this iOS 4 code base for five years.
Casey:
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Casey:
On a very random note, John, I'm a little disappointed in you because I ate fast food Italian last weekend and you did not berate me at all.
John:
I saw you posted a picture of something.
John:
I didn't know what that was.
Casey:
You've not been to Fazoli's?
Casey:
Oh, so good.
John:
I did not recognize that.
John:
I mean, it looked like, you know, the typical Olive Garden, like, hot dog buns with grease sprayed on them that people think are breadsticks.
John:
But I thought maybe it was like you had gone back to, like...
John:
virginia tech and like an old like you know like a place a place on campus that you're into i'm like well whatever like maybe it's i don't know i just know italian food in virginia anyway so come on oh listen to this guy yes you're right there are certainly no italians in the entire commonwealth of virginia and certainly none of them refugees uh-huh
Casey:
Uh, Fazoli's is fast food Italian.
Casey:
That is not a joke.
Casey:
It is like a fast casual.
Casey:
I think it's what they call like a Panera bread sort of thing.
Casey:
And when you're in Fazoli's and you're dining in, you get unlimited, what did you call them?
Casey:
Grease sprayed hot dog buns.
Casey:
Yeah, more or less.
Casey:
And there is, or there was, I don't know if there still is, a Fazoli's in the town next to where Virginia Tech is.
Casey:
And I used to love going there.
Casey:
And I haven't been to one in years.
Casey:
And we were on our way back from the beach.
Casey:
And I thought, you know, I think there's a Fazoli somewhere in Virginia Beach.
Casey:
And sure enough, we looked and there was one.
Casey:
And I begged Erin, would it be okay if we stopped?
Casey:
And she said, absolutely.
Casey:
And it was delicious.
Marco:
I'm looking through this menu here and I'm betting all of this is microwaved.
Marco:
Probably.
Marco:
Everything I've found so far could be easily microwaved.
Marco:
I used to work in a tiny restaurant.
Marco:
It was one of my BS jobs in high school.
Marco:
And I learned very quickly that you shouldn't order things like lasagna in an entire restaurant.
Marco:
Oh, I had that.
Marco:
Because you're not going to make somebody a single serving cube of lasagna when they order it.
Marco:
That doesn't make sense.
Marco:
It's impractical.
Marco:
It's probably impossible without taking a ton of time.
Marco:
Lasagna is made ahead of time and put in the fridge or frozen.
Marco:
And then when you order it, they microwave it and serve it to you on a plate.
Marco:
And, you know, looking at these kind of entrees they have here, I'm looking at all this thing like this probably all work that way.
Marco:
They probably all are just like pre-made in the freezer waiting to be microwaved.
Marco:
Oh, God.
Casey:
The particular dish I had was the ultimate sampler, which I did not consume all of because I didn't have the room.
Casey:
But it is fettuccine alfredo, meat lasagna, spaghetti, and penne with meat sauce.
Marco:
So starch, butter, butter, starch, beef, butter, and starch.
John:
So good.
John:
The problem with fast food Italian is that, like, fast food in terms of, like, you walk up to someone, tell them what you want, and you keep standing there until you get the food.
John:
No, it was not that bad.
John:
Even if you take a little number, if you wait, like, a couple minutes.
John:
I mean, it takes minimum, like, you know...
John:
Three, four, five minutes to cook pasta.
John:
But the fast food Italian place is like, well, they have to have the pasta already ready.
John:
And they just dunk it into hot water.
John:
And it's like, you can't.
John:
That's no good.
John:
It's like it's immediately just forget it.
John:
I mean, I would rather have a microwave thing of lasagna than some pasta that's been sitting around waiting for me to show up.
John:
And they just dunk it in hot water and say, oh, here you go.
John:
Like, no, you can't.
John:
You can't have.
John:
There's no such thing as fast food pasta and other kinds of Italian food.
John:
I mean, the big restaurants make a bunch of lasagna anyway and cut it up for you, but they make it that day.
Marco:
Not always.
John:
Well, you know, a good Italian restaurant.
Marco:
The place I worked at, they wouldn't even... This bought the crap out of me.
Marco:
The bread they serve was frozen, you know, bought in, and we just baked it for like 10 minutes, and it was on premium.
Marco:
It was just warming it up, though.
Marco:
The butter, they would have me take the butter cups from the tables that were half used and just top them off and send it back out.
John:
that's probably illegal yeah i and i resisted i i would whenever i would not do that they would yell at me and and they would make they would make me uh do it and oh man it was yeah now fast food italian should not be a thing there i guess i suppose pizza is kind of fast food italian you can but even a pizza takes a little while to cook and prepare i don't know i i'm not into these places casey i'm glad you enjoyed your terrible fast food italian but you know where else i was at a sonic drive-in
Casey:
which is also amazing.
Casey:
And I don't think you guys have that in the Northeast because... Is this like a tour of the worst fast food restaurants in the country?
Casey:
Oh, it's so delicious.
Casey:
You know what it's like?
Casey:
You listening to me talk about how much I love Fazoli's in Sonic is like the entire rest of the friggin' world listening to you talk about fish.
Casey:
Cheesy bread hot dogs?
Casey:
I did not have that.
Casey:
I had just a cheeseburger.
Casey:
This is very... What color is that drink?
Marco:
What...
Marco:
Is this made from food?
Marco:
Which drink?
Marco:
Any of them.
Marco:
All of them that are shown on the website.
Marco:
They're all these like neon colors.
Marco:
This is bright blue.
Marco:
It's like a pure cyan.
Marco:
Like a bright cyan.
Marco:
And then there's this hot dog that's in this cheese bun with cheese and bacon on top of the hot dog with cheese wrapped around it and cheese on top.
Marco:
Oh my god.
John:
It's only 1,100 calories for one of these burgers.
John:
That's pretty low for fast food.
Marco:
How much is one of these cheesy hot dogs?
Marco:
Let's see.
Marco:
The one they're showing on the front page, the ultimate cheese and bacon cheesy bread dog.
Marco:
What a name.
Marco:
Where do you get the info?
Marco:
Oh, your nutrition.
Marco:
It's only 550 calories.
Marco:
That's not as much as I would have thought, although it's only one hot dog.
Marco:
Presumably, you'd probably order two of them.
Marco:
yeah wow ultimate cheese and bacon cheesy bread dog still only 550 calories the the the teal cyan drink i was seeing on the home screen is apparently power aid brand mountain blast slush which tastes like mountain blasts i guess only 150 calories for that say oh wait what that's a wacky pack
Marco:
what is a wacky pack so this is one of those sites where like every other word has the registered trademark symbol after it because like none of this is actually food it's all just like concepts and marketing trends they've invented somehow fast food burgers and hot dogs don't bother me as much as like fast food italian quote it's because you're italian that's why i don't know i don't know if it's like the i guess the like burgers and hot dogs were always kind of fast food and there's not they're mostly soy protein anyway yeah
John:
We have Shake Shack here now.
John:
I like that.
Casey:
I've never had Shake Shack, but I'd really love to.
Casey:
I've heard it's excellent.
Marco:
Shake Shack is very good.
Marco:
There is usually a big line at the ones in New York.
Marco:
I don't know how the ones everywhere else are, but it is very good.
Marco:
I mean, it's greasy, but it's like greasy fast food done by foodies.
Marco:
So it is a high-quality implementation of greasy fast food.
Casey:
Do you guys have Five Guys Burgers and Fries up where you are?
John:
Yeah, we have them too.
John:
And comparing them, they're different.
John:
I think Shake Shack feels a little bit more like it feels like it's worse for you when you're eating it, which can be good and bad.
John:
I don't think there's any real health or calorie difference between them.
John:
Five Guys feels more like...
John:
It was made by you in your house or backyard.
John:
And Shake Shack feels more like it was made in a restaurant.
John:
Because, I mean, they used the potato bun, which maybe you wouldn't use at home.
John:
And their burgers are a little different.
John:
I like them both.
John:
I think Five Guys fries are better.
John:
And Five Guys has more variety in their menu.
John:
But I stopped going to McDonald's and Burger King or whatever, I guess, after I graduated college.
John:
And I think the only reason I went to them there is because they were in the food court.
John:
And I could buy them with my little points card thing.
John:
But I don't really go to those anymore.
John:
But when Shake Shack came, I started going to that and I realized this is like making up for all those years that I never went to McDonald's Burger King or Wendy or any other fast food place because now I can go to Shake Shack and pay way more money and wait on a humongous line or have my poor wife wait on a humongous line rather and get burgers again.
John:
I mean, we make burgers at home and stuff too, but Shake Shack ones are better than the ones I make at home and probably much worse for me.
Casey:
See, this is a totally southern thing, but we have a thing in North Carolina and Virginia called Cookout.
Casey:
And you can get like 44 pounds of food for five bucks or something like that.
Casey:
But it is just like you were at a cookout in your backyard.
Casey:
It is eerie how similar the burgers taste.
John:
My backyard cookouts aren't that good, though.
Casey:
I want better food than that.
Marco:
Yeah, why wouldn't you just have a cookout?
Marco:
A cookout is not that hard to have.
John:
I'm no good at making burgers at home.
John:
Not that I've really tried to do anything special.
John:
We make them at home.
John:
They're all right.
Marco:
I recently decided that it's not really worth grilling burgers most of the time.
Marco:
Grilling hot dogs is so much easier because they're pre-cooked so you can't really overcook them and it's very obvious when they're done.
Marco:
It's just so much easier.
Marco:
And then you can have two of them or you can do different things.
Marco:
You don't get all full from having one.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
Hot dogs are slightly worse for you, probably, than burgers.
Marco:
Slightly, but, you know, the ones that are all beef, it's mostly just, you know... Just beef and nitrites, so... Yeah, well, they have, like, low nitrite... They're the ones that taste bad.
Yeah.
Marco:
the whole i remember i got a whole foods hot dogs once like they have the that i think they have like the no nitrates bacon at whole foods they have all sorts of like healthier equivalents of healthy food oh yeah they're all awful it's terrible they're just terrible yeah no they i actually this is so sad i i recently discovered there's this i don't know what the brand name is but there's this brand of like hipster brooklyn hot dogs they're actually made in brooklyn and it's like eight dollars for six of them
Marco:
But they're really good.
Marco:
They're like super foot long thin.
Marco:
They have the natural casing and they're all beef.
John:
If you want that, there's a commercial option, which is also really expensive.
John:
But this is basically the hot dogs I buy.
John:
So I figure out if I'm going to have something terrible for me, it better taste damn good.
John:
The terrible thing.
John:
Boar's Head natural casing foot long hot dogs.
Marco:
Yeah, it's very similar to those.
Marco:
Because my store has those too.
Marco:
I almost got those.
Marco:
Yeah, they're very similar.
John:
Those are like $7 for a pack or something like that.
Marco:
yeah they're they're good though like well the ones i had that were so similar they're they're good because it only has like four ingredients and you know it's mostly beef salt and a casing and uh they're i and you know given how rarely i actually eat hot dogs i'm willing to spend a dollar 25 on each one if i if i have to because they're it's they are really good should look that up good do you have borset down where you are casey
Casey:
Absolutely.
John:
Yeah, you should try those.
John:
Everyone on this podcast should try those particular hot dogs because I think most people don't buy them because they look weird and people are afraid of them because they say natural casing.
John:
Try it.
John:
I like them so much better than every other hot dog.
John:
In fact, we don't buy anything except boar's head hot dogs because I won't eat anything else at this point.
John:
And then you have the regular choice boar's head hot dogs and the footlong ones.
John:
And yeah, they're expensive or whatever, but it's worth trying once to see if you care about the difference.
Casey:
Yeah, there's a hot dog shop very, very near to actually across the street from where I work.
Casey:
And don't be creepy.
Casey:
And it is really awesome in part because the casing has that like really awesome snap to it.
Casey:
And oh, that's the best.
Marco:
Yeah, it's natural casing.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And Pan in the chat mentions Nathan's with the natural casing.
Marco:
Those are hard to find around here.
Marco:
But I think they're the best tasting ones I've had, the Nathan's natural casing footlongs.
Marco:
um but yeah they're my my regular store doesn't even have them and yeah they're a little hard to find but yeah and i figure too like you know if you're eating hot dogs so often that paying about 75 cents to a dollar per hot dog is a big problem for you i think you're eating too many hot dogs that's probably true or or you may you may be a picky toddler
Marco:
that's yeah that's what kids will only eat hot dogs that's right yes that yeah this this rule exempts anyone under the age of 17 otherwise you're eating too many if you're an adult and eating too many hot dogs then yeah that's a problem and if you're not eating that many hot dogs and you can afford a dollar per dog or whatever uh yeah get these good ones because they really are better
Casey:
What you really need to find, though, in my friend Phil, he has found up in the D.C.
Casey:
area this guy.
Casey:
What is the name of the business?
Casey:
I don't remember.
Casey:
But it's a guy who makes sausages.
Casey:
His name is Lothar.
Casey:
He's like 6'3 and 300 pounds.
Casey:
And he's from Hamburg.
Casey:
Perfect.
Casey:
Or something like that.
Casey:
I forget.
Casey:
Somewhere in Germany.
Casey:
And oh, my goodness.
Casey:
Goodness, his sausages are wonderful.
Casey:
And that is a terrible poll quote that I'm going to pay for later in life.
Casey:
But nevertheless, I am now committed.
Casey:
But yes, the sausages that Lothar makes are excellent.
Casey:
And I should just stop talking now.
Casey:
Can we be done?
John:
This is turning into a crazy food podcast.
John:
Marco will have to cut most of this out.
Marco:
Yeah, definitely.
Marco:
Except for Casey's sausage love.
Marco:
Yeah, great.
Marco:
Thanks for that.