Moving the Party to the Bar Down the Block
John:
All right, all right.
John:
We can avoid it.
Marco:
You can have your minutes in the sun here.
John:
Oh, can I?
John:
Do you even know what this is about?
Casey:
No.
John:
Neither do I. No, neither one of you.
Casey:
Remember back in the day when I used to do an app.net broadcast when we went live?
Marco:
Yeah, you don't do that anymore, do you?
Casey:
No, I haven't done that in a while.
Marco:
I don't even post the show links to app.net anymore.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Well, with that in mind, do you want to ask me how many people were complaining about me not doing the app.net broadcast anymore?
Marco:
You know, actually, it would not surprise me if there was like one or two people who did, because it seems like the kind of person who ever received an app.net broadcast probably feels entitled to keep receiving app.net broadcasts.
Casey:
Is that correct?
Casey:
Actually, no, to my recollection, not a single soul said anything.
Marco:
All right, that's also an equally explainable outcome.
Marco:
Oh, that's too bad.
Marco:
Hey, now we're all using Elo.
Casey:
Oh, yeah, the thing I logged into once.
Marco:
Yeah, I logged in once.
Marco:
I followed anyone I could find.
Marco:
Yeah, define using.
Marco:
That's a fair point.
John:
We have accounts.
John:
I think I did post something.
John:
I posted a reply to someone.
John:
Someone sent me a message, and I replied.
John:
But I don't know what's going on on that site at all.
John:
I just wanted my username, and now I didn't get it, and I'm sad.
Marco:
I got set up pretty well.
Marco:
I got my username.
Marco:
I couldn't get Marco, of course, but I got Marco Armitz at least.
Marco:
So I got my username and I found some people to follow.
Marco:
And I'm like, all right, well, now what?
Marco:
I've followed some people I want to follow.
Marco:
And what do I put here?
Marco:
And you can do the kind of like rich media.
Marco:
It's kind of like halfway between Twitter and Tumblr.
Marco:
You can do kind of like a rich media thing or combined thing.
Marco:
And this doesn't seem to be any kind of reasonable post limit or anything like that.
Marco:
But it's like...
Marco:
I don't really know what to put there because I use Twitter.
Marco:
I hang out on Twitter.
Marco:
People I talk to are on Twitter.
Marco:
It's the exact same problem I have with App.net even at the beginning, which was not – it wasn't that nobody was there because a lot of people were there.
Marco:
And Elo is the same thing.
Marco:
Lots of people are on Elo officially.
Marco:
But the question is like when I have a thought that I want to post or when I have a question I want to ask, where do I put it?
Marco:
If you put it on both, then it's kind of awkward for people who follow you in both places.
Marco:
It's kind of annoying.
Marco:
And if you're only going to put it on one place, chances are Twitter is the better place for most purposes.
Marco:
It doesn't really solve the problem of how do you split yourself between these two services?
Marco:
Like if Elo had come out when Twitter was pissing us all off and app.net came out,
Marco:
It would have had a better chance.
Marco:
App.net was a decent idea at the right time, for the most part, that was not executed that well.
Marco:
And then the motivation for it kind of faded away.
Marco:
Because Twitter is always going to be shifting in directions that we don't like.
Marco:
Twitter's moves are going to be like the kid these days for us.
Marco:
They're going to just keep doing things that push it in a direction because basically Facebook and Twitter both extremely envy the other in ways that make both products substantially worse.
Marco:
And so I think Twitter is going to keep adopting the worst things about Facebook.
Marco:
Twitter is, but they're going to do it in a way, it's going to be like the boiling the frog thing.
Marco:
They're going to do little dickish things here and there along the way.
Marco:
It's not going to be one massive change that's going to make all of us run fleeing.
Marco:
I think five years from now, what Twitter is would be nearly unrecognizable to us today.
Marco:
But it's going to be done that way in a gradual way.
Marco:
It's going to be done over that span so that we slowly won't notice that we're being boiled.
Marco:
And so there's never going to be this one event that kicks all of us off or drives us all to go switch to something else.
Marco:
To go like, we're all going to leave at once.
Marco:
The whole party's moving over to the bar down the block.
Marco:
There's not going to be one event that pushes us all.
Marco:
And if you are the bar down the block at that point, you could benefit hugely from that.
Marco:
But
Marco:
that probably won't happen.
Marco:
And chances are, we're going to lose a bunch of people on the, along the way to other things, you know, like, like when Napster was shut down, everyone didn't just go to one thing.
Marco:
There was like five different things, you know, like this always happens whenever any kind of like community, major social site, like when, when something goes away, the people kind of scatter and fragments over different places.
Marco:
So as long as we want to keep talking to the people that we're talking to on Twitter, we're going to be keeping using Twitter for that.
Marco:
And no other server stands a chance.
Yeah.
John:
You know how like when you take copyrighted material, like they call it, you know, piracy or whatever, but it's not really theft in the digital realm because when you download an item, the person who gave it to you still has it.
John:
Like it's not displacement, you know, digital bits, they get copied and everything.
John:
So it's like it's a different type of paradigm.
John:
Well, in social networking,
John:
think the phenomenon of like elo you know usually the analogy of let's all let's all move the party to the bar down the block when anything like elo comes along even though we're not uh we have this baseline dissatisfaction with twitter that's kind of always simmering there we don't all leave twitter what we do is we all go to the bar down the block but we also stay in twitter so it's like it's like you know it's like when you take digital bits or whatever the original person still has them we're still on twitter but we're also we all run over to elo
John:
And then we get there and it's kind of like this empty white room and it's kind of boring and we try to get our username and then we leave.
John:
But we never left Twitter.
John:
So it's like the digital equivalent of our school to the bar.
John:
We all do.
John:
I think every time something new comes up like, well, it's kind of like Twitter, but not Twitter.
John:
Someone asked me on Twitter.
John:
surprise what is it what is it that is supposed to be appealing about elo and i said uh it's kind of like twitter but not twitter and that's the appeal of all these things i would love something that's kind of like twitter but isn't twitter because twitter pisses me off in ways x y and z and so we all stay in twitter but we dupe ourselves and we go over to not d-u-p-e
John:
And we all go over to, and maybe that as well, go over to LO or to app.net or whatever.
John:
Because it looks, if you squint, it looks kind of like Twitter.
John:
And we all don't like Twitter.
John:
And maybe this will be the next thing we get there.
John:
And it's like, meh, you know.
John:
I mean, you're right.
John:
Like, if there was a big event that actually kicked us out, physically speaking, so we couldn't, we had to leave Twitter.
John:
But even then, even if we got all pissed, we would all keep our Twitter accounts.
John:
We would keep using it.
John:
And we're going to keep using it until...
John:
Something else is out there that makes us want to move to it and do stuff there instead.
John:
I don't think we're ever is ever going to be a time where we leave Twitter and start using something else in one fell swoop.
John:
Yeah.
John:
You know, we're always going to stay on Twitter and be there'll be some kind of transition phase.
John:
We just never make it over the hump during the transition.
John:
And app.net, we get pretty far.
John:
There was conversations happening there.
John:
There were lots of people that we knew.
John:
It just, you know, we also still stayed on Twitter.
Marco:
And Ello also has the problems of... They seem to get really popular really quickly before they were quite ready for it.
Marco:
Not in a scaling way.
Marco:
I don't know if they had challenges there.
Marco:
Twitter did too.
Marco:
Well, that's true.
Marco:
But in the way that...
Marco:
They don't have a mobile app.
Marco:
Their web app is just barely functional.
John:
Yeah, they don't have any apps.
John:
That's one of the reasons I'm not using it at all.
John:
Where's the app for my Mac?
John:
Where's the app for my iPod?
John:
It's like, well, I'm not going to go to their website.
John:
Right.
Marco:
If you are launching any kind of social product today and you don't have...
Marco:
at least an iPhone app, you're dead in the water.
Marco:
That's where people go.
Marco:
Launching in the web browser might seem like a good idea to some web nerds, but the fact is the web browser is no longer the preeminent platform for this sort of thing.
Marco:
The iPhone app is.
John:
And the web browser is the worst for it.
John:
If you're going to be anything like Twitter, Twitter's whole thing is it's a text box that holds a small amount of text and a button, and then underneath it a big list of other blurbs of text.
John:
Like,
John:
Doing that in a web page is not optimal.
John:
It's practically designed for mobile.
John:
It is the mobile Facebook.
John:
Get rid of everything.
John:
Just make one text field in a box and you put some words in there, not a lot of them, and you press a button and then you scroll through this big giant table view.
John:
Twitter is made for mobile.
Casey:
Yeah, that's true.
Casey:
But you're saying that you wouldn't want to go to the website, but don't you use the Gmail web interface rather than like mail or airmail?
John:
Yeah, but Gmail is massive.
John:
Emails are not 140 characters.
John:
They're organized in complicated ways.
John:
It's not just a big linear timeline.
John:
So they require actions and filing and replies like the email is not Twitter.
John:
no it's not twitter but i don't know it just struck me odd that you immediately you know snubbed the hello website and it's all and it's also because like you want you want a dedicated place to do this thing i everything on ios obviously is dedicated takes over the screen or whatever but on on the mac i don't want to dedicate an entire browser tab to never mind the twitter website is just not nice these days and well
John:
I don't like it anyway.
John:
I know some people do.
Marco:
But it never was nice.
Marco:
I mean, let's be honest.
John:
It was nicer.
John:
Like it was like all the things you're talking about Twitter doing that we don't like.
John:
A lot of them manifest in the website with the crazy lines between posts trying to show that I guess it's just I just want a big linear time ordered stream.
John:
And that's that's what you get in iOS devices.
John:
That's what I get in my little Mac app that I used.
John:
And everything's good.
Marco:
And Ello, their business model, their appeal... I think the reason why people are actually using it is because it's a new thing that's kind of like Twitter, and everyone wants to establish their username there.
Casey:
Wait, but hold on.
Casey:
Is anyone actually using it?
Casey:
Because I'm not trying to be funny or anything.
Casey:
I've seen two or three posts on Ello that have been linked probably on Twitter, and that's about it.
Casey:
And I logged into Ello, like we were saying earlier...
John:
once to grab my username and like set the bare minimum of profile information right and i literally have not logged in since yeah i i'm the exact same way i left email notifications on so just in case some people are trying to contact me there i'll get emailed about and that happened once and i replied but that's it
Marco:
Yeah, and that's, I think, the best hope of drawing people in is, like, you know, those notifications are on by default, but, you know, and, you know, their whole appeal is supposed to be that they're never going to have ads, right?
Marco:
That's what they're saying.
Marco:
We're never going to have ads.
Marco:
You know, we're going to somehow fund ourselves through basically, like, donations and Kickstarter-like things, something like that.
Marco:
I don't know the details, but...
Marco:
I don't see that working.
Marco:
They're VC funded.
Marco:
They may say whatever they say, but in reality, they're VC funded.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And the thing is, a company can say whatever it wants at the beginning.
Marco:
You can say, and you can mean.
Marco:
I'm not saying they're planning on lying to us or that they're planning on changing direction later.
Marco:
I'm not saying that.
Marco:
The people today can think and say and do whatever they want, but the fact is...
Marco:
This can always change in the future.
Marco:
At any time in the future, maybe the founders aren't there anymore.
Marco:
Maybe someone else takes over the company.
Marco:
Like, LO, if it even started to take off, we would not really be getting anywhere compared to where we are on Twitter.
Marco:
Because Twitter is a lot of great things.
Marco:
But its main downsides for, like, the good of society, basically, its main downsides are that it's centralized.
Marco:
And secondarily, it used to have a lot of big scaling problems.
Marco:
Those are really mostly a thing of the past now.
Marco:
Now, if we go to Ello, Ello will have the exact same scaling challenges if it actually gets enough people and enough usage to be viable.
Marco:
They're going to face all the same scaling things.
Marco:
We're going to start again from zero.
Marco:
Start again from like 2005 on Ello for scaling, right?
Marco:
And then at the end, if they actually manage to have a big mass of people using it,
Marco:
and it can replace Twitter for us, we still have one centralized company controlling this medium.
Marco:
And Twitter has shown this really is its own medium, but it's unfortunately a medium tied to its network.
Marco:
And as we saw with tent.is or whatever it's called, didn't they rename it?
Marco:
Whatever that is.
Marco:
Cupcake.
Marco:
Oh, is that it?
Marco:
Okay.
John:
I think it's cupcake.io, maybe.
Marco:
Whatever that is or was.
Marco:
Decentralizing this is hard.
Marco:
It's a hard problem.
Marco:
elo is not solving that problem neither was app.net these these companies they're starting just like a new twitter it's and it's going to have in the best case scenario if they if they succeed and actually make these things it's going to go through all the same challenges twitter has gone through with scaling and growing the community and and moderation or lack thereof and and spam and abuse all those there's those are all going to hit it and then at the end we're still going to have this one centralized company that controls all of this and
Marco:
What if that company, you know, Elo seems like they're nice and customer friendly now, but so did Twitter when they started.
Marco:
And that was a long time ago.
Marco:
Most of those people have moved on.
Marco:
And it's a very different company with very different needs and different stakeholders now.
Marco:
and a different controlling party, really.
Marco:
And so that can happen to any company like this.
Marco:
What we need to be designing is an alternative that can satisfy the roles that Twitter serves for us, but in a way that is a decentralized protocol, a standard.
Marco:
It is not one central server that does all this work that is owned by a private company.
Marco:
It is a protocol like email or DNS.
Marco:
That's what we need.
Marco:
You know, whether it's RSS based, I don't really care about the limitation details.
Marco:
Dave Weiner can have his RSS world if he wants it.
Marco:
That's fine.
Marco:
I don't care how it works, but that's the kind of thing we need.
Marco:
And I know I know people are saying people in the chat are telling me I know that's what tent.io slash cupcake was or is.
Marco:
It didn't take off.
Marco:
And maybe it's because it launched at the same time as App.net and so it was too competitive.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
And there are a lot of problems.
Marco:
There's a lot of challenges in developing that sort of thing, especially with things like identity and discoverability of other people on the network.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
That is the kind of solution we need to the Twitter being kind of a problem.
Marco:
It's not to build another company up to this point.
Marco:
It's to eliminate the need for these companies for this medium.
Casey:
I just don't see how we're going to get there.
Casey:
And I say that because...
Casey:
Twitter's really good at grabbing all walks of life.
Casey:
It started with the super nerds, and then it's ending.
Casey:
It's ended.
Casey:
It's carrying on through superstars.
Casey:
And I'm not trying to say that popular musicians or popular actors or whatever are not intelligent, but they value very different things than the nerds do.
Casey:
And it's taken...
Casey:
a series of very specific decisions by Twitter, the company, in order to make Twitter the product to be something that appeals kind of to everyone.
Casey:
And yes, the nerds like me and you, we all grumble about things that they do.
Casey:
But in the end of the day, as you said before, this is the popular bar.
Casey:
And what's weird about Twitter is it's a very...
Casey:
I can't think of a better word than democratic or unifying, perhaps.
Casey:
Everyone is kind of sort of on the same page on Twitter.
Casey:
Yeah, you know, I may have more or less followers than other people, like I have a lot less followers than you two, for example.
Casey:
But really, anyone can pretty much talk to anyone else.
Casey:
And that's not something you see in a bar.
Casey:
It's not something you see in regular society.
Casey:
And to have a regular schmo deal with something that's decentralized, that doesn't have a real easy onboarding experience, that isn't
Casey:
Something like the web that is so deeply rooted in the internet that it's gotten past the fact that it's kind of a weird onboarding and URLs are funny and what does .com really mean, etc.
Casey:
I just don't see how a tentist cupcake, whatever we're calling it, I don't see how it could get there.
Marco:
Well, look at look at email.
Marco:
I think email is a great example of how this kind of thing could happen and the likely result.
Marco:
So email is exactly what we're talking about.
Marco:
It is a decentralized social network that has and it has discoverability challenges.
Marco:
It has problems with spam and abuse, but we've managed to make it all work.
Marco:
We don't have this panacea of geekdom where everybody has their own domain name and everyone owns their digital identity.
Marco:
No, we have a lot of people like that.
Marco:
But then we also have Gmail and Yahoo Mail and MSN Mail, these massive conglomerates that let anybody create an email account.
Marco:
And a lot of people are fine just doing that.
Marco:
And that is very centralized within that service, but it still interoperates with everything else.
Marco:
And none of the services are ever going to get powerful enough to control the medium, I hope, Google.
Marco:
uh but it doesn't have to be like total decentralized like you know bitcoin tor kind of style of like every nerd has their own thing or rather every nerd is required to have their own thing and every user is required to be a nerd it doesn't have to be that way it can be more like the way email does work which is the nerds can get their identities and their own domains if they want them and everyone else can go to some central provider this is really isn't this exactly what tent did
John:
um everyone else can go to that can go to like you know a couple of the big popular providers and get some kind of free identity and not worry about it yeah that's what tent did but like thinking of casey's problem of how how do you get something like tent which has existed for a long time or cupcake.io which is the actual domain name how do you get that to catch on i think the best shot in the current environment is for for something i don't know the technical details of cupcake.io or whatever but for something like that
John:
To not actually be the product.
John:
So if you can imagine, for instance, if Bitcoin had caught on better because it had a better user interface or whatever, some kind of sort of peer to peer network consensus based protocol for doing something that ends up being very valuable.
John:
to to a lot of people like whether it's you know i mean other than people trying to launder money right so i'm picking monetary things just because bitcoin is an obvious example but like the purpose of the system was like well this is kind of a weird thing but actually people totally use it as a way to transfer money from each other without a central mediating authority with consensus-based thing or whatever like i mean obviously we know how bitcoin has ended up and all the weirdness in there but anyway something like that where
John:
Someone builds an underlying infrastructure for because that's what you need for this.
John:
If you don't have a central server, you need some way for for it to be more or less peer to peer, but for there to be consensus of everybody about what is the nature of the timeline and how do we agree that this is the timeline and that.
John:
it hasn't been poisoned with fake things and you really said but your twitter serves that role in a centralized thing twitter determines what is and isn't a tweet they get permalinks for all the things all this other stuff it's not like email where you can be storing forward and you have your own private repositories and you can delete them it'll be gone you know every email doesn't have a url so you need some kind of centralized way to figure out where where the you know we're going to call them tweets where the tweets are what is the url of a tweet can i prove this tweet was really made
John:
verified check marks, all that stuff, but you don't want to have a central authority.
John:
So that's kind of what Bitcoin does with the, you know, with its weird hash base consensus thing.
John:
But, you know, it's peer to peer, but a large mesh network where no one knows the band attempt is kind of like that is more federated where it's islands and there could be very large islands, the equivalent of Hotmail and Gmail or whatever.
John:
But anyway, a system like that, but not built for anything having to do with Twitter, merely built for some other thing that has a readily explainable, highly lucrative, uh,
John:
reason for being that causes it to to come into very common use and to be built out everywhere and for every operating system to have it built in and to have a client on every platform and and then like it all comes tumbling down kind of like bitcoin may right
John:
but during the interim when when we when that was getting distributed everywhere because lots of people were making money using this network the infrastructure that's made for that network people said hey you know what else we can do is on this network we can send each other little messages to talk about whatever it is we're doing transferring the money or whatever other even if it's a gaming thing massively online uh peer-to-peer multiplayer gaming you know whatever the infrastructure is at some point they'll say you know you can use the same infrastructure to send tiny little messages to each other uh kind of like sms piggybacked on you know on the voice network for cell phones
John:
And that is the only way we're going to get a Twitter-like thing, I think, because it has to be like sort of snuck in behind some other thing that pays for and is the tractor to pull this massive, really complicated infrastructure to spread it across all devices and the entire network.
John:
And then someone shoving little messages there and then have the other thing probably implode or whatever.
John:
And then what you're left with is like, oh, well, now we have all these clients and all these servers and all this stuff.
John:
for this, you know, this peer-to-peer network with no centralized authority to authentically exchange small messages with each other.
John:
And we'll just use that.
John:
I mean, maybe, you know, I was trying to think of like iMessage, but that's centralized as well.
John:
But anyway, that I think is the best case scenario, the most likely scenario, because I just don't see a way like Casey where something whose origin is in, I want to be a Twitter-like thing, but I'm distributed.
John:
I don't see how that ever gets to critical mass without being pulled behind something as sort of camouflage for it.
Marco:
complicating this problem like the way social sites grow is kind of random it's kind of like you know it's kind of like fashion it's like you know what what's going to succeed and fail like you can you can increase your chances or decrease your chances with choices you make but ultimately it's kind of random what ends up being picked up and taking off and it has a lot to do with things like like you know who goes there what exactly when it comes like when it comes around when someone hears about it like
Marco:
We're all talking about Tent like it's already dead.
Marco:
We don't even know because at the moment the Tent was launched, we looked at it and it didn't solve our problems at that moment.
Marco:
So we moved on.
John:
I just logged in.
John:
My last message is from five months ago.
Okay.
Casey:
I think I squatted on either Liss or Casey Liss on Tent and just like, hello, never looked back.
Casey:
What I did want to ask you guys, and this is a genuine question, have there been any sort of services or protocols like email, like RSS that have arisen recently?
Casey:
significantly after, say, the late 90s when the web and the internet as we know it today kind of took off.
Casey:
I'm thinking like BitTorrent is a protocol that's taken off to a degree, but it's still a little bit on the fiddly side.
Casey:
But there's been no Twitter.
Casey:
There's Facebook, I guess, but that's still centralized.
John:
Is there anything – BitTorrent and Bitcoin combined kind of because BitTorrent –
John:
its tractor was piracy, right?
John:
That's the thing, like, no one wants to deal with this stuff, but if it means you can get free stuff, then, you know, so that spread, you can get a BitTorrent client for everything, right?
Marco:
Right, although they have the tracker problem, which, like, it's, like, kind of centralized.
John:
Yeah, exactly, so, but it's not distributed.
John:
Bitcoin, the tractor there was, like, laundering money or buying drugs or whatever, like, you know what I mean?
John:
A way to exchange money between parties who don't trust each other.
John:
Right.
John:
And, you know, speculative, you know, trying to get rich quick.
John:
But anyway, like there was a tractor behind behind Bitcoin as well.
John:
And that is like BitTorrent in that it had a tractor to pull it.
John:
And also what I was talking about where there's no central authority or does have the consensus problems of like if anyone gets more than 51 percent or more than half of the computing power, you can in theory poison the blockchain to also that, you know, go listen to that big lone Glenn Fleischman.
John:
uh what was it uh new disruptors i think i think it was a talk show maybe it was a talk show but yeah trying to explain anyway bitcoin is not it's it's a little bit to wrap your head around but for the most part like it's not a great system for what i was describing but it's it's like bit torrent plus this other thing and i feel like
John:
There's something else out there.
John:
If it's not piracy or buying drugs or laundering money, maybe it's porn, maybe it's games, right?
John:
Some other tractor is going to pull whatever the next iteration of this is, because I don't think either one of those is sufficient to be an infrastructure for a centralized Twitter-like thing.
John:
But it proves that if you have a big enough tractor, you can make the craziest, weirdest, most unfriendly product.
John:
protocols and stuff spread everywhere i mean they're making dedicated hardware for for bitcoin for right now you just need a tractor that is not like twitter and then you need that to be successful long enough for someone to say hey we can put messages into infrastructure and then you're off to the races because someone else has done the hard work for you our first sponsor this week is our friends at squarespace now i actually went to squarespace's uh press event today where they they announced the new uh squarespace 7 and showed it off a bit it's actually about to enter beta
Marco:
I think tonight they started rolling it out to certain users.
Marco:
You'll have the option to check a box and turn it on.
Marco:
And I got to say, Squarespace is doing some cool stuff.
Marco:
Really, the things they're doing you think shouldn't be possible in web browsers.
Marco:
They managed to do it.
Marco:
And I know just enough about this stuff to know how hard it is.
Marco:
And they're doing some crazy good stuff.
Marco:
Anyway...
Marco:
Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website portfolio and online store.
Marco:
For a free trial and 10% off, visit squarespace.com and enter offer code ATP at checkout.
Marco:
A better web starts with your website.
Marco:
Squarespace is simple and easy.
Marco:
They have beautiful designs for you to start with.
Marco:
All of their stuff is mobile and responsive right from the start.
Marco:
You can pick, they're adding a bunch more templates now as part of this update.
Marco:
I'm not sure what else, there's like some things are kind of embargoed, I think, but they have a video of it.
Marco:
You can go, I think it's squarespace.com slash the word seven, S-E-V-E-N.
Marco:
Anyway.
Marco:
um squarespace it's awesome i i really can't say enough good stuff about this their editor everything is drag and drop and it's all wissy wig and it's all gooey stuff but you can also get in there if you want you can inject javascript you can inject html you have full control our site's hosted on squarespace i've done a number of sites on squarespace my wife's side is on squarespace uh it's really there's a lot of reasons for this it's a very very solid platform
Marco:
You don't have to worry about things like scaling or things going down.
Marco:
Squarespace is all this giant platform with CDNs and everything.
Marco:
Everything's optimized.
Marco:
They take care of SEO for you.
Marco:
It is incredible, all the stuff you get.
Marco:
They have commerce.
Marco:
You can build a store.
Marco:
You can sell things.
Marco:
You can have a blog.
Marco:
You can have a portfolio.
Marco:
It...
Marco:
So much stuff is built into Squarespace and you can do it all with like no effort whatsoever.
Marco:
It's really cool.
Marco:
And one thing I like about it, too, you can see like as they as they update the themes and move your sites forward and everything.
Marco:
I I like when someone else takes care of fashion for me and because I'm not a fashionable person.
Marco:
And Squarespace, you can keep your site looking amazingly trendy and up to date if you just pick a new theme every year or two.
Marco:
Because they're always adding all these new themes that just look awesome.
Marco:
You can look at it and be like, wow, that is exactly what is in fashion right now.
Marco:
And they really are, they're amazing at knowing how to bring that to the masses.
Marco:
It's really quite good.
Marco:
So anyway, plans start at just $8 a month.
Marco:
This includes a free domain name.
Marco:
You've signed up for a whole year up front.
Marco:
They also have 24-7 live chat and email support located all over the world.
Marco:
I, again, can't say enough good about Squarespace.
Marco:
You can start a free trial today with no credit card required.
Marco:
Start building your website.
Marco:
When you decide to sign up for Squarespace, make sure to use the offer code ATP to get 10% off your first purchase and to show your support for our show.
Marco:
Thank you very much to Squarespace for sponsoring us and so many other great podcasts.
Marco:
Once again, Squarespace, a better web starts with your website.
Marco:
I'm reading the sponsor reads tonight on parchment paper.
Marco:
Our printer ran out of regular paper earlier this afternoon.
Casey:
Was that after it ran out of paper when I was there?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
When you were here, I put in the last clump of regular paper I could find.
Marco:
Now that's gone, too.
Marco:
That's what they call paper.
Marco:
It comes in clumps.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
My wife and I came to realize that this evening when I was discussing our lack of paper that we've been saving all of this.
Marco:
We have like resume paper and parchment paper from from back when these things mattered.
Marco:
And it's the cheesiest stuff.
Marco:
It's like imagine if you had a resume, if you have resume paper.
Marco:
First of all, can you imagine when in the rest of your life you will ever be applying for a job where a paper resume would even be accepted?
Marco:
Secondly, if you actually found one and applied for it with a paper resume, imagine how it would look if you gave this blue parchment paper that has this big Southworth watermark across the middle of it.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
This is the cheesiest crap possible.
John:
That would be a big upgrade from what actually happens, which you may not have experienced.
John:
Here's what actually happens in the modern job age.
John:
So if you're lucky, you apply to a job directly through some crazy website.
John:
If you're unlucky, you end up going through a recruiter.
John:
Either way, no matter how you format your resume, they will demand it be formatted in some other way, including possibly pasting blocks of text into multiple text areas on a web page.
John:
And that will go through seven different systems so that by the time you sit down in front of someone, what they will have done is printed from their web browser whatever interface they see your resume in, and it will just come out as an unholy mess of badly wrapped, ugly formatted, ugly, like it will just...
John:
it will just look like your resume had been put through a blender and that is what they have in their hand in front of them when they're looking over quote unquote your resume it bears no resemblance whatsoever to whatever your resume began as so actually it would be a huge upgrade for them to have a piece of paper in their hand that i printed with my resume formatted the way i like it but that's not the way it happens
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
When I was last applying for jobs, that had already started.
Marco:
And it was like, I made this awesomely formatted, you know, PDF resume.
Marco:
And everybody wanted either Word or like a plain text paste out of all the keywords.
John:
Word is an improvement because at least they can print the Word document.
John:
The worst is when it goes through like a recruiter system, then HR system, then comes back out as a printed web.
John:
But you can tell with the whole, you know, it used to be worse when like the web browsers would put these insane footers and headers.
John:
And I know they still do, but at least they use tiny text now.
John:
But just...
John:
Yeah, it's terrible.
John:
I guess that maybe we're just on our way passing through and eventually it'll just be like my resumes on the web pulling up on your iPad.
Casey:
Wow.
Casey:
So you want to do some follow up?
Casey:
Let's do it.
Casey:
So we had some very interesting emails from Hendrick.
Casey:
who is PocketPixels on Twitter.
Casey:
I don't think I'm the most qualified of the three of us to talk about this, but John, I think you were lamenting it the most.
Casey:
Would you like to cover this particular piece of follow-up?
John:
Yeah, so last week we were discussing a piece of information posted to Twitter as an image of text with no provenance that I could determine and...
John:
It was discussed in as a hypothetical.
John:
If this is true, it would be gross.
John:
It turns out that is not true.
John:
What we were talking about was
John:
When viewing 1080p video on an iPhone 6 Plus that actually has a precisely 1080p pixel screen, 1920x1080, does the iPhone 6 Plus blow the movie up to the off-screen 3X size and then shrink it back down to 1080, or does it just show it directly at native 1080?
John:
uh and that's what the the image of text said that it does that scaling and that was crazy because it's like you've got this you've got the content you've got the screen they're actually pixel for pixel perfect map for each other why would you ever pass through any scaling and shrinking process all you're doing is destroying information uh and we went back and forth to discussing that uh none of us knew what actually went on what turns out is that they do do the crazy hard thing which we were discussing about
John:
uh changing resolutions or changing the native output or i don't know what how you want to describe it but the bottom line is that if you show 1080p content or if you just make a view of any kind you have the power as a developer on an iphone 6 plus to get exactly one-to-one pixel accurate rendering of whatever it is you want whether it's an open gl view or a video thing or even even actually i think you can do with just the ui could view i think it has to be open gl i think i didn't look at the the if was that native scale thing was that only in glk view
Marco:
Oh, I didn't have time to look at that.
John:
Anyway, we will provide a link for this in the show notes, but it is on Apple's dev forum, so you'll only be able to follow the link if you have a developer account.
John:
But it was someone asking a similar question, like, hey, I've got some content that's perfect for 1080.
John:
I want to get it to be rendered exactly.
John:
Can I do that?
John:
And they went back and forth.
John:
The answer is, you can.
John:
And so Hendrick did a bunch of experiments to see before finding these APIs and everything to show this.
John:
And what he did was he played 1080p content
John:
And it's very difficult to tell by looking at, like we said, it's going to be very difficult to tell with the naked eye whether it's scaling it or not.
John:
But he played like one of those test pattern images with very fine lines.
John:
They have one pixel lines, which is why it works.
John:
So you can say, is this how it's supposed to look?
John:
Is that an MPEG artifact or whatever?
John:
But the easy way you could tell is he would tap to show the player controls, which are like, you know, UIKit views.
John:
And when the UIKit views come on top of the image, parts that are not covered by the UIKit views change appearance.
John:
So they get blurrier or, you know, they look different.
John:
And when those things go away, then it goes back to what we assume is native one-to-one mode.
John:
So he posted a video of this.
John:
You could try it yourself with this Vimeo video, which is the 1080p test image or whatever.
John:
But anyway, that was like the hypothetical practical proof.
John:
And then the more technical proof is in that dev forums thread where you can see people from Apple saying, yes, if you want a view that's one-to-one pixel accurate, you can get it.
John:
Here's how you get it.
John:
Here's the APIs you can use.
John:
So...
John:
I would assume that in all cases where Apple can get that one-to-one, like, for example, playing video without any controls overlaid on it, they do.
John:
But it's interesting that they're able to not only switch, but switch sort of seamlessly when the UI appears and disappears.
John:
Like, apparently they're switching all the time, not just from app to app, but within a single app when elements appear.
John:
So...
John:
It seems like Apple has the various different scaling modes for different views and alignment with the hardware down to a science here where they're able to switch at every opportunity to do whatever is the most efficient and whatever is the best possible choice for the screen.
Marco:
Yeah, hang on.
Marco:
There's actually a cricket in my office.
Marco:
I got to go take care of that because you can hear it.
John:
Where's hops when you need him?
John:
Come on.
Marco:
He's lying on the rug asleep.
Marco:
He's totally ignoring this cricket.
Casey:
Hold on a second.
Casey:
For what it's worth, I did find the article that the block O text came from.
Casey:
Actually, I think somebody linked it to me.
Casey:
I don't think I found it.
Casey:
But anyways, it's theregister.co.uk.
Casey:
Actually, I'll just put it in the chat room.
Casey:
It was in the show notes for last episode.
John:
Well, if I had known, that origin is not reassuring.
Casey:
Well, and the best part is the title of this article on theregister.co.uk is Apple iPhone 6 Plus.
Casey:
Gorgeous, fat pixel density, but it's wasted.
John:
Yeah, so whoever posted that or the register people were confused by the fact that it doesn't matter.
John:
Screenshots always are taken in the high resolution, even when you can prove to yourself, either with your own code or with your own sample videos, that it really is showing native 1 to 1 1080 without any
John:
scaling up or down uh if you take a screenshot of that it still ends up larger like the screenshotting mechanism blows it up i can't find it nice so going back to that video can give me giving me a clean edit point here did you say did you say anything that we need to keep we found uh casey someone sent casey a link to the video that that screen text was how much for a clean edit point dogs are supposed to eat these crickets oh
John:
Okay, the problem is no longer existing.
John:
Murderer!
John:
AF Waller, you know what I meant.
John:
It's the same thing.
John:
If they're taken in native resolution, but saved in high res, the point is the file on disk ends up at high res.
John:
You want to go into arguments about what stage does it become high res?
John:
Is it or is it not a living soul?
John:
When is it a life job?
John:
I don't even understand the distinction you'd be drawing there.
John:
They're taken in Native Reds, but at what point is it taken but not saved?
John:
Are we discussing the memory buffers now?
John:
Now that we have to argue about whether the... Well, technically, it's not really saved.
John:
Oh, my God.
It's just...
Casey:
See, and if people ever wonder why we sometimes leave these somewhat flippant responses to pedantic points and questions, this is why.
Casey:
Because all we do is get people being completely pedantic to us.
John:
F. Waller said he was trolling me, so congratulations.
John:
You successfully trolled.
Casey:
Oh, man.
Casey:
This show is such a train wreck.
Casey:
I love it.
John:
Is your cricket dead now?
Marco:
I don't want to talk about the cricket.
John:
Did it go badly?
John:
Mistakes were made?
Marco:
Well, I did my usual move of just dropping something heavy on it and just leaving it there.
Marco:
And I'll deal with it later.
Casey:
That is truly a new low of procrastination.
Marco:
What's even worse is that what I dropped on it was an iPad 2 in one of those bookcases.
Marco:
Because that was the nearest thing that was big enough and flat enough to do what I wanted to do.
Casey:
And gosh darn it, people like me.
Marco:
So Tiff, I hope you didn't, if you're listening, I hope you didn't need your old iPad 2 case anymore.
Casey:
Because it's going to be sacrificed forever.
Marco:
It should be cleanable easily.
Marco:
Yeah, I hope she makes you clean the guts off of it.
Marco:
And I have found a use for an iPad 2.
Casey:
I'm not even drinking, and this is the best.
Casey:
Oh, man.
Casey:
All right, so do we want to actually try to come back to this FU, or are we just going to give up on this one?
Marco:
No, so I actually put the test video on my 6 Plus to see how noticeable is this.
Marco:
In the last episode, almost everything I said was wrong.
Marco:
In the last episode, I had said both, you won't notice the quality difference.
Marco:
And there's no way Apple went through the trouble of making this work because who cares?
Marco:
It doesn't matter.
Marco:
They probably just double scale it.
Marco:
And so it turns out they did go through the trouble to make this work.
Marco:
They did care.
Marco:
And on the test video showing a test pattern, the quality difference is noticeable.
Marco:
And not, you know, I don't think it would be noticeable in regular video watching.
Marco:
I don't think anybody would ever notice.
Marco:
But if you watch the test video, you know, when it's full screen, you see it unscaled.
Marco:
And then if you tap the screen to show the bars, you see it get scaled.
Marco:
And everything kind of, well, the lines, the way it like alternates one pixel black, one pixel white in these lines.
Marco:
So that way you can see if it gets blurred at all because it just turns gray.
Marco:
It's very clear, like the switch is obvious.
Marco:
So it's interesting.
Marco:
But again, I still don't think it's worth the effort to just do it for this.
Marco:
I think the way they did it was clearly for OpenGL.
Marco:
That makes more sense.
Marco:
Like they can bypass the scaler for OpenGL to have direct access to the pixels.
Marco:
That makes a lot of sense.
Marco:
I totally understand why that is there.
Marco:
And I just I didn't think of that as as a potential reason why else this would have to exist when I was saying this wouldn't be worth it.
Marco:
Because I still maintain that while you can see the difference in the test video, I don't think it matters for video playback.
John:
And the interesting thing is, as pointed out by Hendrick, which I assume he confirmed with experimentation, if you put an opaque UIKit view on top, it does not scale like it knows it only needs to do it.
John:
If it needs to composite it so that, like I said, they're taking every opportunity to say, do we really have to go up and then down again?
John:
And if every single view on top of your your OpenGL view is opaque, the answer is no, you don't.
John:
I can still go direct to screen.
John:
So it's going direct to screen with the UI.
John:
I mean, I suppose I would wonder, I guess, even if you had like a 3x image as part of your UI, right, it would scale that image and, you know, in the off screen and then put that and composite it together and not composite it together, just bled it together because it's completely opaque.
John:
So even though you had a 3x resource, it would be displayed at native, you know, a scaled native down version of itself.
John:
So I think they did the best you could expect with the hardware that they had on hand.
John:
And there was another little piece of information added about this.
John:
I forget if it was the same person.
John:
It was Hendrick or somebody else.
John:
But they're talking about why would you ever, you know, why did you want to take video?
John:
And then there was a perfectly native fit for the screen and scale it up and scale it back down.
John:
That's crazy.
John:
And this bit of information is offered for a somewhat related scenario, but not quite in the realm of digital video.
John:
where if you shoot video in a certain resolution, and then you, the question is, why would you ever scale that video up to be a much higher resolution for editing purposes only to scale it back down later for the final product or not scale it back down?
John:
Like, why would you ever want to do that?
John:
What's it, you know, or scale it back down, not or to the original size was slightly smaller size.
John:
And the answer was that in this forum post that we'll put in the show notes anyway, was that when you scale something up, you're making it like blurrier and you're stretching it out and you're doing all that stuff.
John:
But you're essentially adding information.
John:
Now it's interpolated information based on the information that was there.
John:
You're synthesizing information.
John:
You know, that's how the scaling works.
John:
But by synthesizing that additional information, it does actually add information for the image.
John:
Fake information, made up information, guesses, but that information is added.
John:
So when you scale it back down, if you don't scale it all the way back down, what you get in the end is an image with more visible detail than the one you started with because it made up the details.
John:
It made up when it interpolated them.
John:
So if you take a 2K image, scale it up to 4K, and then, well, let's, you know, take a 2K image, scale it up to 8K, and then back down to 4K, it will look better than if you just took the 2K image and scale it up to 4K because you add all that information.
John:
and then you shrunk it back down.
John:
And that was the argument anyway.
John:
I don't know anything about film editing.
John:
That's the argument in this film editing forum, and you can read about it.
John:
But that's an interesting point.
John:
I don't think it applies to UIs, which are not photographic images, but for video, I can understand how you might say, well, fake information made up by cubic interpolation is better than not having the information at all because it will leave you with a more detailed image.
Marco:
our second sponsor this week is uh i think they're new to our show but anyway they're not new to us it's a studio neat so you've probably heard of studio neat or at least one of their products they've made a couple of things that i really enjoyed um so they started out with the glyph glif um they started out as a kickstarter project i believe right that was kickstarter first
Casey:
I believe that's right.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I think most of their stuff has been Kickstarter first.
Marco:
Anyway, it started out with the Glyph, which is a tripod mount and a stand for iPhones.
Marco:
And what's interesting, too, is that they made this adjustable at the outset.
Marco:
And so because it's adjustable, it already works with the new iPhones, including the 6 Plus with or without cases.
Marco:
which is pretty awesome.
Marco:
There's a lot of iPhone accessories out there, many of which become effectively worthless and unusable once the size of the iPhone changes.
Marco:
And they've, by foresight and probably some luck, been able to buck that trend, and their stuff ends up staying useful.
Marco:
So good on them for that.
Marco:
Anyway, so that's the glyph.
Marco:
Studio needs tripod mount and stand for iPhones.
Marco:
But what we're actually talking about today...
Marco:
is that they've moved on to cocktails and cocktail-related products.
Marco:
So this is Casey's Wheelhouse here.
Marco:
Not the parking lot, right?
Marco:
Do you drink in the parking lot?
Casey:
It does happen before a football game, but you wouldn't know about that either.
Marco:
I'm from Ohio.
Marco:
I know about that.
Marco:
So anyway, Studio Neat has moved on to cocktails with the Neat Ice Kit.
Marco:
And now, Casey, both you and I have neat ice kits.
Marco:
We do.
Marco:
So Tom and Dan, the guys at Studio Neat, they're on a mission to convince you that making awesome cocktails at home is not that hard.
Marco:
Cocktails are simple.
Marco:
You just need a few readily available ingredients.
Marco:
And you already have access to everything a fancy cocktail bar does, except for clear and correctly sized ice.
Marco:
So to fix this, Tom and Dan made the Neat Ice Kit.
Marco:
The Neat Ice Kit is a set of tools for creating the right ice for your at-home cocktails.
Marco:
So, Casey, can you describe how this works?
Casey:
Sure.
Casey:
So, the way this works is you order a kit, and it has some foam insulation, and within that you place this silicone mold.
Casey:
And you fill this mold with just tap water, or maybe if you're really fancy, like stuff out of a pure water filter.
Casey:
And you put that silicone mold in the foam insulation.
Casey:
You put all of it into the freezer and you let it sit for around a day.
Casey:
And then a day later, what happens is you have this, I think it's about two inches wide by two inches long by four inches deep rectangular, not a cube.
Casey:
What's the word I'm looking for?
Marco:
A rectangular solid.
Casey:
Yeah, that.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
So anyway, so you have this basically 3D rectangle and half of it is really cloudy and the top half of it is perfectly, perfectly clear.
Casey:
And the reason that happens, from what I understand, is as the...
Casey:
the foam insulation keeps the bottom and sides insulated, the top is exposed to the freezer air.
Casey:
And so it freezes from top down, and so all the impurities end up at the bottom.
Casey:
Well, then they give you a mallet and a chisel, and you can break this rectangular prism, whatever Marco just called it, in half.
Casey:
Solid.
Casey:
Thank you, solid.
Casey:
And then you have now a two-by-two-by-two perfectly clear
Casey:
another block of ice.
Casey:
It is extremely fussy, extremely silly.
Casey:
It is by most arguments, a complete waste of time.
Casey:
And every time I have a drink, this is exactly what I do.
Casey:
And I love it.
Casey:
And I am so, I mean, we are kind of paid to say this, but hand on heart, this is absolutely true.
Casey:
I love my neat ice kit.
Casey:
I love it so much that I actually stockpile
Casey:
uncut bricks so if for some reason someone comes over unexpectedly or maybe i've just had a very bad day then i have plenty of crystal clear big ass ice cubes as they call them uh in order to put my vodka on top of and i cannot recommend it enough it really is fantastic i did a review of it on my website which uh we may or may not remember to put in the show notes but uh buy 10 of them
Casey:
Because they're awesome.
Marco:
I actually ordered one for myself before they sponsored the show just because I thought it was interesting.
Marco:
And they didn't tell me to say this, but I've tried a few of the other solutions out there to try to make like fancy ice at home.
Marco:
And none of the other ones were as easy to use as this one.
Marco:
So anyway, each neat ice kit includes the mold, the chisel.
Marco:
The chisel also includes a bottle opener right in it, so it's pretty cool.
Marco:
A club that doubles as a muddler and a Lewis bag.
Marco:
And I didn't know this, but apparently a Lewis bag is a bag you crush ice in.
Marco:
Like you put the ice in the bag, you hit the bag with your club, and then out comes crushed ice.
Marco:
Is that roughly correct, Casey?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah, that's the idea.
Casey:
So if you had a situation where you have a cocktail that requires a thin but tall glass, and I forget which ones they are off the top of my head, but you could take your big ass crystal clear ice cube and then chop it up a couple more times, throw that ice into the Lewis bag, use that muddler like Marco was talking about, bang, bang, bang, and crush all that ice in the Lewis bag.
Casey:
And now you've got crystal clear cream.
Marco:
crushed ice instead of a cube right or you can even you can you can crush up the cloudy half of the cube that you would have otherwise put in your dog bowl like i did um but because hops did not care about the cloudiness he he was happy to have ice in his bowl regardless of whether it was clear or not but people care so we can have the cool clear ice for ourselves anyway
Marco:
The neat ice kit also makes an amazing gift for the holidays, for weddings.
Marco:
I actually, they, I ordered one for myself and they also sent me one like two weeks later just because they like me.
Marco:
And so I gave the second one away.
Marco:
I regifted actually.
Marco:
Yeah, but I gave it away because it makes a great gift.
Marco:
So anyway, check it out.
Marco:
Go to studioneat.com and use code ATP when you check out to get 10% off anything in their store.
Marco:
Really, I love these guys.
Marco:
They have so many great products.
Marco:
Can't recommend them enough.
Marco:
StudioNeat.com.
Marco:
Don't forget code ATP.
Marco:
Thank you very much.
Casey:
I could go on forever about Studio Neat.
Casey:
And they're such nice guys.
Marco:
Yeah, they're awesome.
Casey:
Like, it's even better that they're such nice guys.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
I would still go on and on.
Marco:
I've met them.
Marco:
They're fantastic.
Marco:
They're that nice in person as well.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah.
Casey:
I would go on and on about the Neat Ice Kit, even if they were jerks, because it's that wonderful.
Casey:
But they are also that wonderful.
Marco:
Yeah, I'm a big fan of their Cosmonaut.
Marco:
It's a stylus for iPads.
John:
I've got that one.
Marco:
I've tried a lot of styli for touch devices, and none of them really worked for me as well as the Cosmonaut does.
Marco:
I even have the fancy one from Paper, the pencil.
Marco:
I'm not an artist at all, and so it doesn't really work for me.
Marco:
But the Cosmonaut is awesome.
Marco:
It's like a dry erase marker, basically.
Marco:
That's the feel it has.
Marco:
The reason they made it so big and chunky like that is because
Marco:
That's roughly the precision you have with any of these things.
Marco:
And so they made it kind of fit that.
Marco:
They made the form of it fit the precision that you actually get.
Marco:
And so it just makes it feel like more right, you know?
Casey:
I hear you.
Casey:
Anyway.
Casey:
I'm attempting to make it through this episode and get to a topic, but it's not looking good so far.
Marco:
It's not going to happen.
Casey:
No.
Casey:
So let's talk about some bent iPhone tests because we haven't done that enough.
John:
Technically, we started with a topic.
Casey:
That's true.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
That's Marco's new move is he derails either before or just in the beginning of the follow up to just add whatever he wants to talk about to make sure we get to it, even though it's not follow up.
John:
Exactly.
John:
Add that to the bingo board, people.
John:
Hey, it works.
John:
Otherwise, we'd be all follow up every week.
John:
Nobody wants that.
John:
Oh, we would get it would be the same total amount of time, whether that part is at the beginning or the end.
John:
It would just be appropriate if it was at the end.
John:
Anyway, last week we talked about the Consumer Reports test and I mentioned a bunch of stuff that I didn't see in that report.
John:
Apparently it was there and either I missed it or I saw an early version of the report or maybe a reblog of the report that didn't correctly copy and paste the content.
John:
It's hard to tell when you're following things from Twitter.
John:
Your iOS device doesn't show the full URL anyway.
John:
But anyway, Consumer Reports did test not just how much force does it take to break these things, but also how much force can be applied before what they call deformation, which is what I was saying.
John:
How much force can you apply before it doesn't spring back?
John:
And so you can see we'll put the link in the show notes again to this Consumer Reports.
John:
As you can see, they tested that for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus as well.
Casey:
And speaking of bending iPhone six and six plus and warranty repairs, we got some interesting feedback from listener Jared.
Casey:
And he says, I made the mistake of looking at my iPhone six from the side, bending from carrying it in my not at all skinny jeans.
Casey:
That was his emphasis.
Casey:
Uh,
Casey:
I'm sorry, skinny jeans and suit pants.
Casey:
Bent point is right at the bottom of the lower volume button.
Casey:
Went to the Apple store yesterday, Chicago's Lincoln Park, which is usually super awesome and accommodating.
Casey:
And here's where it gets interesting.
Casey:
The genius proceeded to tell me that based on an article, in scare quotes, they had received as of...
Casey:
October 3rd, that the bending of the phone only occurs because of a lot of pressure or blunt force and that the scratches on my case, which were because of keys in my pocket by accident, was an indication that my phone had been mistreated and they wouldn't cover the bend under warranty.
Casey:
Thus, I would have to pay them $300 on top of the $900 that he already shelled out because he bought a T-Mobile 128 gig non-contract phone.
Casey:
So that's a change.
Casey:
And it seemed at first that Apple was pretty happy to do a warranty return or exchange on these.
Casey:
And now apparently not so much.
John:
It didn't seem that way.
John:
That's what Marco said.
John:
He thought that if you brought it to an Apple store and had a bend and it was still under warranty, maybe Apple would be nice and replace.
Marco:
Well, because because we had heard reports from people who did that.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Did we get one from someone who said that?
Marco:
I don't know whether it was Twitter or feedback, but I did read reports like the second or third day after this started coming out, this might happen.
Marco:
They were saying people, people who brought us the genius bar and they're like, oh, yeah, you know, that shouldn't have happened.
Marco:
Here's a new one.
Marco:
And now we've heard not just from Jared, but we've heard from a number of people.
Marco:
I've seen we have at least two feedback emails here.
Marco:
And I got a couple of tweets to this point as well, that it sounds like in the last few days, Apple has changed their policy and has issued some kind of directive from above saying they're no longer going to replace phones for being bent.
Marco:
And I don't know.
Marco:
I mean, I think we don't know enough about this problem yet to know whether it's actually a real problem or not.
Marco:
It was sounding at first like it was going to be a big problem.
Marco:
And then the Consumer Reports thing came out.
Marco:
And then it's like, oh, well, it's not really a problem as much.
Marco:
Maybe, probably not.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
We're not going to know for six months.
Marco:
In six months, if half the people you know who have iPhone 6s, they're bent and these people aren't totally abusive, then I think we'll know, oh, yeah, this actually was a bit of a problem.
John:
Well, Consumer Reports does give us the information because they show a range.
John:
Let me look.
John:
Did they do the 5S in that test as well?
John:
Because that's what we can compare it to is the most recent Apple phone that we may be familiar with.
John:
uh i mean the iphone 6 was not super weak like the 6 and 6 plus were not the bottom of the barrel they were more towards the middle middle low end but it wasn't yeah so h they were the same as the hcc1 and you you haven't heard lots of stories about the hcc1 m8 getting bent right but but it's uh the hcc1 was the weakest there's no one's buying it yeah well you know
John:
HTC One was the weakest in their test.
John:
The 6 was the second weakest.
John:
The 6 Plus was the third weakest.
John:
But the range is not astronomical.
John:
So the iPhone 5 was considerably stronger.
John:
It didn't get deformed until 130 pounds of pressure versus the 6, which deforms at 70, and the 6 Plus, which deforms at 90.
John:
So this is a range from 70 to 150 pounds of pressure for the deformation, from best to worst, right?
John:
And so the iPhone 6 Plus is just shy of the middle.
John:
It's on the low end.
John:
But those seem like ballparks.
John:
And is it a difference?
John:
That's why I got into what I talked about last show, which is
John:
All right, so these tests tell us what they deform at, but we don't know what the expected range of pressures that a phone in your pocket gets subjected to are, both based on the length of the phone, which is what I was talking about last week, but also just forget the length of the phone, just say uniform phone length.
John:
If it turns out that the pressures in a person's pocket generally peak around 100 pounds of pressure, that means that Apple's iPhone 5 was comfortably above that range, and now the line of phones they've released is below that range.
John:
Right.
John:
And so it could just be there's just a threshold.
John:
Like in general, you know, the worst you're going to feel in a pocket is 100 pounds of pressure.
John:
So as long as your phone clears 100 pounds, you're fine.
John:
Like we don't know where that dividing line is.
John:
What is the expectation of pressure?
John:
And so this second email from Chris M is sort of a contrast to the previous one.
John:
It says he had a phone that was kept in his left pocket while he played a podcast during a flight.
John:
He said there was no tightness in my pocket, nor was it pressing against anything, etc.
John:
Not a mark on it.
John:
Took it to the genius bar.
John:
The genius person agreed that it had not been mistreated.
John:
It looked perfect, but couldn't replace it under warranty because of this aforementioned order from above that they're not doing that anymore, right?
John:
Now, we've seen the numbers for the pressure.
John:
And he said, I'd never felt any tightness.
John:
Like, these things aren't bending themselves.
John:
It's not Uri Geller bending your phones.
John:
Like, they're bending because pressure is being applied to them.
John:
It could be that the pressure is applied in such a way that it's distributed across your legs so you don't feel it.
John:
But somewhere, somehow, there's at least 70 pounds of pressure being applied to the center of that.
John:
That's, like, best case, because it would be harder to bend it if you apply it 70 pounds of pressure to someplace other than directly in the middle using the edges of the fulcrum.
John:
Like, they're using a three-point press holding the very edges, putting the pressure right.
John:
That's the worst-case scenario, right?
John:
uh you would have to apply more pressure if you were applying it if the if the distance from the fulcrum and the edge of the thing was uh shorter so somehow pressure is being applied to these phones the thing we're missing now is the expected what is the environment of the pocket like in terms of pressures and if you're going to
John:
if you're going to build something to withstand those pressures, is, is this phone just under a warranty?
John:
And that, I guess we'll find out, like Marco said, experimentally, or just like all your friends who keep their phones in their pockets are all of them slightly bent in, you know, a couple of months.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And, and it, you know, when a new, when a new iPhone comes out, when it has any kind of like potential physical or design flaw, you don't really know until a few months in, like how bad is it really?
Marco:
Like the iPhone five came out and the edges scuffed up pretty easily and showed the lighter color metal underneath.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
It took us a while to figure out that that was going to be a thing.
Marco:
The iPhone 4 came out.
Marco:
Everyone thought antenna gate was the big problem when really the big problem with the iPhone 4 was the proximity sensor.
John:
Was it the home button 2 on that one?
Marco:
Yeah, that was the one where the home button always died.
Marco:
You don't really know.
Marco:
Not every iPhone is perfect.
Marco:
Some are better than others.
Marco:
I think with this one...
Marco:
See, I'm actually seeing this table on Consumer Reports.
Marco:
Case separation, I don't really care about because I think the deformation is the more important column, the one that people are actually more likely to hit and get upset by in regular use.
Marco:
What's interesting, two things.
Marco:
First of all, that by their measurements, the 6 plus was actually stronger than the 6, which I think is the opposite of what you'd probably expect.
Marco:
Secondly, the 6 withstood only slightly more than half as much force as the iPhone 5.
Marco:
And so that's a pretty big difference.
Marco:
To only be able to withstand roughly half the force, that's substantially weaker.
Marco:
And again, because this test is synthetic, and you're right, we don't know how this will hold up in practice, but that does look like a problem.
John:
The round numbers make me worry about it a little bit, too.
John:
Why is it 70, 90, 130?
John:
Like, is there... I don't know if they're just kind of saying this reflects the imprecision in our experiment, and we didn't want to show you the exact numbers because that would...
John:
That would show a degree of certainty that doesn't actually exist in the experiment.
John:
I mean, there are a lot of variables here.
John:
These devices are not uniform solids.
John:
They vary on the inside.
John:
They have different materials at different points, and there's the weak points with the volume buttons with little strengthening strips, and there's a printed circuit board on one side and a battery on the other.
John:
So there's all sorts of variables going on here.
John:
So it's not a straightforward test.
John:
But like I said, what really matters is the...
John:
the environment that, you know, the environment that these phones are subjected to.
John:
But, like, the HTC One up there showing similar, you know, being the weakest in the test and being a phone that's been out for a while and that we've heard nothing about bending makes me think it can't be that terrible because...
John:
If there's going to be a group of people who are going to baby their phones, it's not going to be HTC One owners.
John:
The Apple ones are the people who are going to care about their little device and not getting scratches on it and stuff like that.
John:
I know the HTC devices are really nice and appeal to people who like nice things.
John:
I think that HTC makes really good-looking phones.
John:
But if I had to take entire groups, iPhone owners versus HTC One owners, and say, of these groups, which one will treat their phones nicer, I'm going to pick the iPhone one because I think it attracts a certain kind of...
John:
hardware nerd and so if we haven't heard anything about hdc one's been yes is it because they haven't sold any of them it's because there's you don't get any uh excitement from telling people that hdc one is bending i think we would have seen the story anyway if it was it was a big deal just because we'd be like oh hdc they can't catch a break they make these great phones that no one seems to buy and now they made one and it bends
Marco:
honestly i don't think that's i i think the the things that you just kind of disregarded are pretty big things like yeah no one's buying htc phones in general which is part of the problem htc is having with their business and you you never hear about like minor physical flaws or minor design flaws of android phones it just doesn't happen they're not nearly as high profile there is not nearly as much money and attention to be had by pointing out flaws in them
Marco:
It just doesn't happen.
Marco:
That is not a fair comparison.
John:
I still think it would get reported, though.
John:
I mean, the HTC One got reviewed everywhere.
John:
I've seen them in practice.
John:
I've seen people have them.
John:
They're not so rare that you're like, I've still never seen anyone using a Surface in real life, but I've seen plenty of HTC Ones.
John:
And they got reviewed on all the major sites.
John:
Why would they review it if no one buys HTC One?
John:
It wouldn't be a big story.
John:
It wouldn't be the Wall Street Journal, right?
John:
But on the sites that we travel in, I think we would have seen it by now if it was a problem.
Marco:
Let me do our final sponsor for the week.
Marco:
It is our friends at Hava.
Casey:
Did I do that right?
Casey:
Why are you pandering to them?
Casey:
No, you did not do it right.
Casey:
Yeah, I figured.
Casey:
I mean, they're all crazy.
Marco:
Don't listen to those people.
Marco:
I completely agree.
Marco:
Anyway, Hava is the best way to buy and manage domain names.
Marco:
Can you do this entire read in a fake British accent?
Marco:
I can't.
Marco:
Anyway, Hover is the best way to biomanage domain names.
Marco:
I can't really say it better than that.
Marco:
Hover is a domain registrar that's awesome.
Marco:
They have so many great things.
Marco:
A domain registrar that is respectful of your time and your money and your preferences and your privacy, that's pretty rare right there.
Marco:
But they back all that up with they have great design.
Marco:
They have easy to use, powerful tools to manage your domains.
Marco:
They have all these crazy features you can add and many of them come for free.
Marco:
You get privacy built in for free, you know, because they hover believes that certain things should be included for free with names.
Marco:
You shouldn't have to, like, pay extra to avoid getting spammed at your home address or whatever.
Marco:
So they give you the privacy feature for free.
Marco:
They have all these great things you can add on to it, like email services and everything else.
Marco:
They have this great valet transfer service where you can... If you're willing to give them your login to your old registrar, they will log into it and transfer all your names over to Hover.
But...
Marco:
by themselves for free this is no cost no matter how many names you're transferring in they will do it for you and they'll do all the settings properly to do all the dns properly to do all the stupid transfer codes they have to do it's a great service if you need any support with your domains or any of your other products you buy through hover they have the best customer support around they have step-by-step instructions online they have email support and they have this awesome thing i love to talk about the no wait no hold no transfer
Marco:
telephone support service they wrote phone but i said telephone to make it sound more impressive they have telephone support service because it is pretty impressive these days that here's like you know a website that you can call and have people actually pick up the phone who can help you and they really is like no wait no hold no transfer policy you call them up a person picks up the phone and they can help you there is none of this bouncing around low let me direct you to this department let me put you through this stupid touchtone menu or the even worse the the ones that make you speak to the to the robot menus
Marco:
those are the worst track a package those are awful anyway so when you call them a real life human being is there who can actually help you and they pick up right then uh their customer support they're they know their stuff they're very friendly they're canadian i think the company is canadian i don't know if this i'm pretty sure the customer support is right there in their office um so the customer support's probably also canadian so of course they're going to be that nice um super friendly people and getting your problem solved is quick and painless
Marco:
They also have volume discounts.
Marco:
This is a new thing.
Marco:
If you're buying tons of domains, more than just, let me see, starting at just 10 domains is where the volume discounts start kicking in, and then they go up in value from there the more you buy.
Marco:
Really great stuff at Hover.
Marco:
Again, I can't possibly tell you how great this is in one ad read, which is why they have given me three pages of things I can choose to read, and I go through them all on my parchment paper.
Marco:
I'm going through them all every week, going through a few new ones.
Marco:
Anyway.
Marco:
So when you're ready to buy your domain name, go to Hover.com.
Marco:
Check out what's available.
Marco:
They have all the new TLDs, many of which are on sale recently.
Marco:
They did a huge sale in September.
Marco:
I'm pretty sure they're still doing one in October as well.
Marco:
They have all sorts of great domain names.
Marco:
All the new stupid crazy ones that you can get, they have them all, and you can register them all right there at Hover.
Marco:
So go, you can go to hover.
Marco:
You can get a dot plumbing name.
Marco:
If you want to, they have that.
Marco:
They have like, you know, dot NYC, like all these, all these like crazy new TLDs.
Marco:
They have them all go to hover.com.
Marco:
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Marco:
Uh, uh, once again, go to hover.com and don't forget to use coupon code invisible spreadsheet, all one word invisible spreadsheet.
Marco:
That will get you 10% off your first order.
Marco:
Thank you very much to hover for sponsoring our show.
Marco:
Once again,
Casey:
We're almost through the follow-up.
Casey:
No, we're done.
Casey:
Skip everything else.
Casey:
Oh, I thought you wanted to defend your iPhone grip, which is wrong.
John:
No, someone gave us that link last week, and you never put it in the show notes, so now it's stale, but whatever.
Marco:
You know, I do want to mention one more thing about the iPhone 6 physical design and grip.
Marco:
So, first of all, I used my 5S briefly today to set up the live streamer, and yeah, the 5S is such a better-looking phone.
Marco:
Especially the back.
Marco:
I look at the back, and it's like, man, this thing...
Marco:
The 5S looks downright sexy on the back, and the 6 and 6 Plus look stupid on the back.
John:
I don't like how the 5 looks on the back.
John:
I can see the argument for the 6 looking worse on the back, but I just do not like the back.
John:
It just looks so boring to me.
Marco:
The 5 I'll give you.
Marco:
The 5S, I disagree with.
Marco:
Because the 5S, they change the tone of the dark color.
John:
I know, but like all the things that look good about the 5 and 5S back look good in Apple's close-up shots from a human distance, not with macro photography.
John:
It's just a matte metal bathtub with, you know, chamfered edges that are probably nicked.
Marco:
No, but with the two-tone back with the glass windows and everything.
Marco:
I think it looks so much nicer.
Marco:
Anyway.
Marco:
So, first of all, yeah.
Marco:
Impression going back to it is, oh my god, this thing is tiny.
Marco:
Secondly, oh my god, I can reach everything.
Marco:
This is glorious.
Because...
Marco:
because i'm still still having trouble reaching everything yeah and and i've definitely i've decided this week um tiff gave in and got a case for hers and i've decided i'm going to get a case too and i have never had a case on my phone before i carried phones i carried palm pilots i never had a case on those i have never had a case on an electronic device i've ever carried around as far as i can remember i might be wrong but as far as i can remember i've never have
Marco:
The closest I came was I had like this leather, like a leather cling stick-on thing on the back glass panel of my 4 and 4S, which is awesome.
Marco:
And actually, I ordered new ones to try on the big phone or on the current phone.
John:
You just killed a cricket with a case, didn't you?
Marco:
that was tiff's ipad she she has used cases before although never on phones um but i have i have never used one as far as i can remember so wait so what did you get case wise uh tiff got the apple leather case i am waiting for my leather thing to come in the mail to see if that will be enough which is great it's actually only it's like 20 bucks so it's great but so why are you getting the case though why why have you decided this is the one you need a case for
Marco:
It's because when I hold this phone in my hand, it just feels slippery.
Marco:
And I know that was, you know, everyone says the new phones feel slippery when new phones come out.
Marco:
This is always, even when the 4 and 4S came out with the glass back, which actually grips pretty well, people said it felt slippery because it did compare to the 3GS.
Marco:
Like, you know, people always say that.
Marco:
But this time, like, I've now been using this phone for, what, two and a half weeks, however long it's been.
Marco:
And it still feels very precarious.
Marco:
I have almost dropped it many times.
Marco:
And I have never, as far as I can remember, I've never dropped an iPhone or any other electronic device.
Marco:
So you think it's the rounded edges, the thinness?
Marco:
It's not the material.
Marco:
I think it's a combination of all.
Marco:
I think it's a combination of the rounded edges, the thinness, and the back.
John:
but you think do the do the you can do the tilt test right now do the tilt test with the 5s and the 6 just to see at what angle do i have to tilt my hand before it starts sliding off because everyone i've known who's done that test has said that the 6 is either more grippier or equally grippy with the 5 in terms of just you know friction with your skin but the rounded edges and the thinness do make it feel slipperier like that you know like it's like a little you don't have the the sharp edges that you feel like you're going to hold on to
Marco:
Yeah, I just tried to do the tilt test, and I can't... I mean, I'm not going to drop them, but I can get almost 90 degrees, so that's not really... But mostly because my hands are slightly moist because I'm warm, but anyway... But you just put the five and the six next to each other in the same hand, and it's not a problem.
John:
Anyway, the point is, I don't think the material is at fault, but the rounded edges and the thinness definitely make it feel like that.
John:
Maybe this one is getting... Finally has crossed your naked robotic core threshold where you're like, okay, now this is clearly not the device.
John:
This is clearly...
Marco:
the core of the device that i will slot into something that i'm going to hold well it's it's a combination of factors to me the the big things that make this phone feel more precarious and possibly be more precarious to hold are the combination of the side design like the sides themselves don't dig into your hands at all like they don't grip your hand like the size of the five with with those with the squared side and like the sharp edges
Marco:
that does kind of nicely grip your hand.
Marco:
There's like a big surface there for friction to stay in place.
Marco:
So that's a big part of it.
Marco:
Secondly, I think the possibly bigger part, besides not having grippy sides, is that I have to so often change my grip on the phone in use to be able to reach something.
Marco:
And that, I think, is by far the biggest risk to dropping it.
Marco:
When you're holding it one-handed, you're walking around, you're holding it, doing something, and you've got to go hit a button in the upper corner that you can't reach.
Marco:
And so you've got to change your grip.
Marco:
You've got to choke up on it.
Marco:
And then it is much more precarious in your hand at that point because you have lost your supporting pinky, your load-bearing pinky at the bottom, or you've just used your grip the whole time, which God knows how that works.
LAUGHTER
Marco:
And so I have to reach up and you have a lot less support in that time.
Marco:
And you are literally scooting the phone down your hand so that you are intentionally loosening your grip on it to change where you're holding it.
Marco:
And so what I'm looking for... So I still don't have a case on my phone yet.
Marco:
But I picked up TIFFs a couple times in the last couple days to check something on it, and it feels glorious.
Marco:
I'm like, oh my god, I need this, with the Apple leather case on it.
Marco:
That is how I want this phone to feel.
Marco:
It improves so many things.
Marco:
And it does make the edge swipe gestures a little slightly annoying to do, because you have to hit the edge of the case with your finger.
Marco:
However...
Marco:
When I'm not using the case on the phone, which is how I'm using my phone, there's a different problem, which is that you have to, like, make sure that you're not accidentally touching the screen with any part of your grip.
Marco:
Because the screen is so close to the edges and they are so nicely rounded that it's very easy to accidentally touch the edge of the screen, especially if you're reaching across it.
Marco:
If you're diagonally reaching across with your thumb to one of the upper corners, then the pad of your hand below your thumb, it's very easy to accidentally hit the screen with that.
Marco:
And so there's all these problems.
Marco:
And I even thought the other day that the digitizer on my phone was broken around the edges because all of my edge tabs were not registering.
Marco:
And I frequently have problems bringing up the lock screen camera, which is an edge drag.
Marco:
And a bunch of people tweeted back basically saying they've had the same thing even on their 5S's after iOS 8.
Marco:
So it appears to be a software bug of like the automatic finger rejection that's always been more prevalent on the iPad.
Marco:
They're applying it to the iPhones now as well.
Marco:
I don't know if they always have, but it's at least doing it in iOS 8.
Marco:
The new phones, the screen goes so close to the edges that they have to do that.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
And it seems like it calibrates based on whenever you unlock the phone.
Marco:
If you lock it and then unlock it, it seems to recalibrate.
Marco:
And so if you're getting edge tapped ignored, do that, and it tends to fix it.
Marco:
But if you have a case on it, you are far less likely to accidentally be touching the edge.
Marco:
So it will also improve the reliability of edge touch gestures in normal use.
Marco:
I feel like this is the first phone where the stock design of it
Marco:
is just not that compatible with me.
Marco:
It's the first iPhone where I felt this way, where I actually need a case or something to make this more ergonomic and more usable to me.
Marco:
And I'm hearing very similar complaints from a lot of people.
Marco:
I think we're going to look back on this design in the future once we have a different design and once we've had the benefits of hindsight and time...
Marco:
I think we're going to look back on the iPhone 6 design as a low point.
Marco:
Not to say it's a failure, but that it's not up to the usual standards of what we come to expect from iPhone designs.
John:
Do you think the curved glass, the fact that the screen, so I assume this is the case.
John:
I didn't look closely at the one when I was handling it, but there's part of the glass in the front of the iPhone 6 that is not the screen.
Marco:
That's right.
John:
It's because the curved part, the screen image is not displayed on the entire curved part.
John:
At a certain point, the screen stops, but the glass keeps going.
John:
So it doesn't make it clear to your finger or any part of you, I'm touching glass now, but is this part of the glass that I'm touching part of the screen image or part of the digitizer that detects my touch?
John:
and that i think would could lead to some confusion both about edge touch edge touches and touch rejection and just like feeling in your hand what it is that you're doing whereas before i think i don't know i don't have my ipod touch with me i think the screen image went up to something that you could feel when you have an ios device and uh you look at it and tell me if that's the case
Marco:
i have every ios device so so screen images go to the edge of the uh like can you feel where the lights stop or no no no and i can't on a 5s either all right well but but on a 5s like on a 5s you never had any reason for any part of your finger or hand to be resting on the front face of the phone that was not going to the screen whereas because of the curved edge you're kind of always partially on it yeah you can feel the edge now that that would be your dividing point for like feeling in your hand or
John:
Am I touching the screen?
John:
I mean, not since that corner is there like, well, once I round the corner, even though that's not technically the screen right there, you would keep your hands out where the curve can can sort of lead you into touching it.
John:
I've had cases on all of my iPod Touch as always.
John:
I used to always use silicone cases because they were the most grippy and that's what I wanted.
John:
And then I eventually gave up on that because I couldn't find a good one for my current gen iPod Touch.
John:
and moved to tpu which i like as well and now apple's making a silicone case where were they you know five years ago but i'm probably going to try their silicone case if i get one of these because i like it to be super grippy uh for all the reasons that you said but i've just always felt that way i've always felt that all the ipod touches were too thin and slippery for me to use without a case
Casey:
So I'd like to go back a minute and explore what happened in your head when you picked up that 5S.
Casey:
And Erin is still on the 5S by her own choice.
Casey:
And I use her phone probably once every day, once every couple of days, because it's the nearest one and I need to look something up.
Casey:
And every time I pick up Aaron's phone, the first thought I have, which is what you said, Marco, is, holy crap, this feels so much better in my hand.
Casey:
I think I actually prefer, from a feel point of view, I prefer having the flat sides.
Casey:
Certainly, I can reach everything, which is marvelous because I never realized how much I use my iPhone with only one hand.
Casey:
But the second thought I have is, holy crap, the screen is a postage stamp.
Casey:
And when I was expecting what became – what came to be the six, I didn't think I really was yearning for more –
Casey:
screen real estate.
Casey:
And now that I have it, which is exactly what everyone said would happen, I really don't like going back.
Casey:
But the hardware is so much better.
Casey:
And so I was curious, Marco, do you also get that feeling of, oh my gosh, this is so cramped when you're using the phone?
Marco:
I mean, granted, I haven't used it that much.
Marco:
I just picked it up and played with a few things for minutes here and there.
Marco:
But what I notice is that I think the screen is really tiny.
Marco:
I think, oh my god, I can never go back to this.
Marco:
However, then I notice, not only does it feel better, not only can I reach everything, but because of those two factors, I can actually use it much faster.
Marco:
Like, whatever I'm trying to do on the 5S, I can do faster.
Marco:
Faster than I can do it on the 6.
Marco:
And this is even after now being pretty used to the 6.
Marco:
And I think it's because I can reach everything so much faster.
Marco:
And I wanted more screen space.
Marco:
I was on the side of people that said, please give us bigger screens.
Marco:
I think...
Marco:
Louis Mantia, he tweeted... I think it was him.
Marco:
He tweeted like, I don't know, a week ago.
Marco:
Something along the lines of they should have done two different sizes.
Marco:
I think he said like 4.5 and 5.0.
Marco:
And I don't know what the big one.
Marco:
People who have the big phone like it.
Marco:
So maybe 5.5 was the right size for the big one.
Marco:
But I think...
Marco:
4.5 rather than 4.7 might have been the better size for the 6.
Marco:
I think that would have made it a little closer to the 4-inch thing that was so easy to feel and reach everything for so many people.
Marco:
Obviously, 0.2 inches is not a big difference, but it is a noticeable difference.
Marco:
I don't think we even really know yet the full value of having more screen space on the phones because so much software doesn't take advantage of it yet.
Marco:
So all this might change in a year when more apps are updated, you know.
Marco:
But for now, I think it's kind of like buying the contrasty TV in the store.
Marco:
When I look at the 6 and I look at the screen, I would much rather, like, it's more appealing to me.
Marco:
But when I actually try to use the phone, the 5S, I think, is more usable for me.
Casey:
Yeah, I would agree with that.
Casey:
It's funny because I don't know if I were to do it all over again.
Casey:
And let's suppose in some hypothetical world, I could have the six internals in a 5S case.
Casey:
I'm leaning toward I would choose the, I don't know, hypothetical iPhone 6 mini.
Casey:
But it's a tough call.
Casey:
And what I'm really curious to see, and I'd be curious to hear what you guys think, do you think that next year Apple will make a iPhone 6S in a four-inch form factor?
Casey:
I'm leaning towards no, but I think I want them to.
John:
I think they're going to look at the sales numbers, though, because they don't have to make the decision right away, although they already probably have enough sales information.
John:
They know how well did the 4S sell when we put out the 5.
John:
How well did the 5 sell when we put out the 5S?
John:
If it looks like the 5S and 5C are selling way out of proportion to the numbers we would expect for last year's phone, they're going to be like, okay, this shows there is an appetite for the smaller model
John:
That like that is disproportionate to like is every year someone always buys last year's model.
John:
But this year we sold like, you know, five times as many of last year's model.
John:
And what we're showing is that people who had fives rather than upgrade to sixes chose to get last year's model.
John:
And like those I think those numbers will be compelling to Apple.
John:
But in the absence of those numbers, if it just looks like, oh, well, it's the same as every year.
John:
A couple of people buy last year's phone and then more people buy the new one.
John:
Uh, it seems like if they wanted one in that size with, you know, if they wanted to keep one in that category, they would have maybe done something to besides leaving the five S and five C exactly as there.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Like if they had come out with three different size phones, would we have all freaked out?
John:
Two phones, three phones, what's one phone more or less?
John:
I just feel like they have the manufacturing lines up for those other ones.
John:
And they're just going to keep making them.
John:
But once those age out and God knows how long that'll be, because are they still selling the forest somewhere in the world?
Marco:
Uh, maybe, uh,
John:
Anyway, the lesson is, are they selling 3.5 inches anymore?
John:
No, they're not.
John:
So if their sales patterns match every other sales pattern that they've done when they've bumped the size, they will let the smaller size age out.
John:
If the sales patterns do not match that phenomenon in a significant way, they're going to say, oh, now we have to backfill that with a different phone.
Marco:
Yeah, I don't know.
Marco:
I'm with you on that.
Marco:
I think it will depend... Like, right now, for this next year, at least, or at least right now, you can get a 5S 32GB for $150 on contract.
Marco:
And that's a pretty good deal, and that's a pretty good phone.
Marco:
And in many respects, it's very close to the 6.
Marco:
You know, going from the 5S to the 6 is... If you don't care about the screen size difference...
Marco:
In other respects, it's a fairly small difference, except unfortunately the camera is noticeably better.
Casey:
I would also add that the battery life, even a couple weeks in on my 6, yes, I understand it's a brand new battery.
Casey:
Yes, I understand the 5S battery was a year old.
Casey:
But I feel like the battery life is noticeably better on my 6 than it was on my 6.
John:
It's rated higher, isn't it?
John:
Like Apple's numbers put it as higher, right?
Casey:
I honestly don't know.
John:
I think, I think it's like an hour or two over, but yeah, like any, you know, like we said before, like the numbers, when you look at them on Apple spec sheet, there's a, Oh, and the success slightly higher numbers than the five S but slightly higher.
John:
Like those are hours they're showing.
John:
Even if it's one higher, one extra hour feels like an eternity.
John:
Like, Oh my God, I still have a whole hour to go on this phone.
John:
It's amazing.
John:
You know?
John:
So,
John:
Yeah, I said the new battery stuff last time.
John:
A lot of people have been complaining about that.
John:
That's to remind people that that advantage is going to be massively exaggerated with your one or two-year-old phone.
John:
But I'm pretty sure Apple actually in the specs shows it as being, yes, the 6 gets better battery life than the 5S, even if they're both brand new out of the box.
Marco:
I think if enough people either buy the five S in the next year, like more, more than however many people usually buy the year old phone.
Marco:
And if enough, and, and, you know, say next year, I wouldn't expect them to bring out a new four inch phone next year.
Marco:
You know, next year is like the S cycle.
Marco:
And I likelihood there'll be like, you know, the six S and the six S plus or whatever.
Marco:
But the year after that, when it's time for a likely redesign for it on a two year redesign cycle, um,
Marco:
It wouldn't surprise me if they had a smaller phone as part of that next redesign.
Marco:
So I'm thinking for small phone fans, it's going to be a rough next two years.
Marco:
Or, yeah, it's going to be a rough next two years, but then there might be something.
Marco:
Because the thing is, with this screen size, like...
Marco:
There is not a lot of ways they could have better executed the physical design of this phone that would have made the screen not be too big to the people who think the screen is too big today.
Marco:
Or that think the phone is too big.
Marco:
Because they couldn't really make the phone that much smaller than what it is right now and still have this size screen.
Marco:
So I think if the 6 is too big for you, any phone with a 4.7 inch screen in the future is likely to be too big for you.
Marco:
I don't think they can fix this problem with design improvements, really.
Marco:
So either the problem will go away and people will just deal with it because they want the other advantages of the phone.
Marco:
Or those people will start choosing non-Apple phones, which I'm sure Apple does not want.
Marco:
So we'll see what happens there, I guess.
Casey:
So if Apple on either the 6S or the 7, they bring back the 4-inch form factor, how do they spin that from a marketing perspective?
Marco:
They completely ignore it and they say, give it some cool name like iPhone Air, iPhone Mini, iPhone Nano.
John:
They don't have to spin it because if they time it right, all they'll be doing is making sure that they continue to have a phone of that size in their lineup.
John:
Because they have phones of that size in their lineup now.
John:
The 5C will eventually go away.
John:
You're left with the 5S.
John:
The 5S goes away, and that's the point you replace it with your new 4-inch phone.
John:
I don't think that requires any explanation.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
We good?
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Hover, Studio Neat, and Squarespace, and we will see you next week.
John:
If it's even possible, you're saying Hover even more incorrectly, even more like they don't like.
John:
You're forcing the you even more than you were before.
John:
Sorry, Hover.
John:
I can't do it either, so.
John:
No, I can't do it.
Casey:
It's because it's incorrect.
Casey:
That's why you can't do it.
Yeah.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, 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.
Casey:
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.
Casey:
They did it.
Casey:
A little more on the screen thing since now we have more time because we're in the after show.
Marco:
Is that how this works?
Marco:
So again, as I said earlier, I wanted a bigger screen before we had bigger screens.
Marco:
I really, I wanted this.
Marco:
I was hoping to get one and we got one.
Marco:
However, I kind of question the value of relatively small screen size increases on devices that you almost always hold in portrait orientation.
Marco:
Because you pay a lot in phone size for these diagonal increases, but you get so little horizontal space with each game.
Marco:
Like, the horizontal size difference is very small between these three models.
Marco:
And I would argue that that actually matters a lot more for a lot of things, things like reading and a lot of applications, any kind of email kind of stuff.
Marco:
Width matters so much for all these apps.
Marco:
It is so often the limiting factor in how usable something is, web pages, stuff like that.
Marco:
You want that square BlackBerry phone.
Marco:
Yeah.
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, but honestly, I can see why some crazy person there thought that was a good idea.
Marco:
Because you're making the phone so much bigger in ways that only really gets you a little bit of verticals or horizontal space.
John:
Well, like you said, you want the apps to get updated.
John:
If they update the apps, a few pixels does matter.
John:
Suddenly, layouts that were not feasible before become feasible due to the average length, the average size of post titles and avatar images.
John:
You just need the software to be updated.
John:
Because if all you're doing is stretching the existing iPhone UI, like you've seen that when you stretched Overcast to the iPad, then you're not getting any value out of those extra pixels.
John:
But I think there are enough extra pixels that a UI designed for them can actually derive value from it.
Marco:
maybe but there's there's also the factor that when you by making the screen bigger you also had to abandon certain areas of the screen that are no longer easily reachable in your designs yeah but not for control i'm saying just for display purposes like most of the larger size is not so you know it hurts you in terms of control placement but it helps you in terms of how much information can you put on the screen like
John:
It's the type of thing where if you're so used to using an app on the iPad and then you go use the iPhone version and you're missing half the UI, you're like, oh, yeah, they can't show that part of the UI, even in landscape mode, because they just don't have room.
John:
And it just feels like you're looking at the app through like an overlay with a cutout in it.
John:
You can only see the table view.
John:
You can't see the sidebar apps that are updated, especially for the six plus, but maybe also for the six.
John:
Uh, it may take longer to do that for the six to say like, okay, we're in a world where I can assume that you're going to have these extra pixels available.
John:
But I think that will make a difference.
John:
And even if just simple things of like, you can read more text on a webpage before you have to flick, you know, that type of thing.
Casey:
See, but the thing is...
Casey:
It's most obvious to me that the vertical real estate is a big deal when I go to the messages app on Aaron's phone.
Casey:
And yes, some of that is horizontal, but I feel like a lot of the difference is I can see so much more context on my phone as to the last several messages that have been sent, or in my case, the last several gifts that I can't see on Aaron's phone because the screen is vertically a lot shorter as well.
John:
I think the biggest benefit of larger screen is for, you know, for people who have trouble seeing things on a squinty little screen, like the zoom, the zoom mode and, or just using an irregular mode, but cranking up the tech size, both of those things, the fact that zoom mode, which we haven't really talked about much exists on both the six and the six plus shows like not, not only are we going to give you a bigger thing, but we're going to make you crank.
John:
We're going to allow you to crank it even more.
John:
And a large and only increasing proportion of the, uh, potential customer base, uh, has bad vision and likes to see things bigger.
John:
So yeah,
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
What else is going on?
Casey:
Anything else for the after show?
Casey:
Or are we going to wrap this somewhat early?
John:
GameCube controllers.
Casey:
I was hoping to avoid GameCube controllers.
John:
All right.
John:
All right.
John:
We can avoid it.
Marco:
You can have your minutes in the sun here.
John:
Oh, can I?
John:
Do you even know what this is about?
Marco:
No.
John:
Neither do I. No, neither one of you.
Marco:
I know you're really excited about GameCube controllers for some reason.
John:
Oh, you too.
John:
See, I should save this for when I go on gaming podcasts, and then I can talk about my controller stuff.
Casey:
Okay.
Marco:
I mean, no, I'd love to hear it.
Marco:
So what happened?
Marco:
It looks like they're now for sale again?
John:
No, there's... No, no, no.
John:
Yeah, I don't know.
John:
I guess...
John:
Oh, I see what this is.
John:
I can understand why you guys don't follow this stuff.
John:
Yeah, see, did you click the little link?
John:
It's just an adapter that lets you use the GameCube controller.
John:
So, Smash Bros.
John:
is coming out as a fighting game.
John:
It's out for 3DS, coming out for the Wii U. It's very popular.
John:
And for a while, we've known that they were going to sell an adapter that lets you use...
John:
your GameCube controller with your Wii U, and they're selling a special Smash Brothers branded one with a little logo on it specifically for this purpose.
John:
So the adapter is one thing, and then they were going to reissue the GameCube controllers with the logo on it saying, we know you love playing Smash Brothers with the GameCube controller in your GameCube.
John:
Here you go.
John:
You'll be able to keep doing that on the Wii U. And that's kind of like...
John:
Kind of like if we were just talking about the iPhone being replaced and like, OK, well, the small ones are aging out.
John:
It's time to make a new four inch version.
John:
And if what they did instead was brought back the exactly the 5S and like gave you a way to use your 5S with iOS 10.
John:
Right.
John:
Or with iOS 9 or whatever they're up to at that point.
John:
And it would be like, aren't you going to make a new?
John:
Like, I know you like that.
John:
That phone size was good.
John:
But aren't you going to make a new small phone?
John:
Well, see, they say, well, you like that controller so much.
John:
We've given up on ever making a better controller.
John:
So we're just going to bring back.
John:
We're going to sell you a $20 adapter that lets you use your old controller from whatever year that was.
John:
2001, maybe?
John:
2002?
John:
Just bring that one back.
John:
We're going to keep making them.
John:
We never really stopped making them.
John:
We're just going to keep making them again.
John:
And I think it's I'm happy because the news is the news now is that not only will you be able to use this GameCube controller with Smash Brothers, which everybody knew, but Apple or Apple.
John:
Nintendo has officially announced that you will be able to use this GameCube controller adapter with any game that supports the classic controller, the Wii Classic Controller Pro and the Wii U Pro Controller.
John:
which is basically like if you have a virtual console game or some other game, like this adapter isn't just, you know, the only reason you'd buy this adapter is if you have this one game.
John:
The adapter will essentially allow you to use your GameCube controller in all the reasonable scenarios where you would expect a GameCube live controller to work.
John:
And I'm very happy about that because I don't like the Wii U Pro controller for a variety of reasons.
John:
But I'm also like this announcement makes me think,
John:
A, Nintendo is admitting that the Wii U Pro Controller is crappy.
John:
It's not, like, it's not shoddily made.
John:
It's nicely made.
John:
It looks nice.
John:
It feels reasonably good.
John:
But there's a reason people prefer the GameCube controller, which is inferior in many ways, especially the D-pad.
John:
The D-pad on the GameCube controller is a total write-off.
John:
Like, the GameCube controller is not perfect.
John:
But it is better overall, I think, than the Wii U Pro Controller.
John:
And the fact that Nintendo is...
John:
reissuing this controller and making an adapter for it says we admit that our fancy new Wii U Pro controller has not met with the enthusiasm that we hoped it would.
John:
especially among people who like the GameCube controller.
John:
And then they're further admitting that we can't do any better or we're not going to try to do any better right now.
John:
So all we're going to do is let you use your old controller.
John:
And that's kind of exciting and depressing at the same time, because what you would expect them to do, like we're expecting them with the phones,
John:
If the small ones are popular, make me a new 4-inch phone that is better than my old 4-inch phone that brings along all the things I liked about my 4-inch phone, but is new and improves on the things that you would expect.
John:
Like, how about something that's like a GameCube controller, but has a D-pad that's worth a damn?
John:
Or, you know, fix the shoulder buttons to be more interesting than the GameCube shoulder buttons because they were a little bit weird.
John:
I don't know.
John:
So it's happy news, sad news.
John:
But all I know is I'm getting this adapter and I already ordered two new GameCube controllers.
Casey:
So question, why are there two USB connectors on this?
Casey:
And more importantly, why are they different colors?
John:
Because one USB connector is not enough for four controllers, apparently.
John:
Who knows what's crazy?
John:
I don't know.
John:
I mean, look at the connectors on these.
John:
This is ancient technology.
John:
This is before wireless, before USB controllers.
Casey:
Yeah, but you're still not answering my question.
Casey:
Why the hell would you make one gray and one black?
Casey:
That's hideous.
John:
Oh, I'm assuming because you have to plug one into one board and one to the other.
John:
They want you to differentiate them.
John:
Someone's saying one is for data and one is for power for the rumble.
John:
Power four rumble packs.
Marco:
My best guess, too, does the Wii U only have two USB ports?
John:
I think it only has two.
John:
I've never plugged anything into them.
Marco:
My best guess is that they don't want you to be able to plug in two of these adapters.
John:
Nah, I would just reject that.
John:
I like the theory in the chat room that one is for power and one... That you need two connectors to be able to power four rumbles.
John:
But who knows?
Casey:
But why make them different colors, though?
Casey:
That's... Oh, God, that's so hideous.
John:
Maybe one has to be in one port and one has to be in another.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I hope not.
John:
That would be stupid.
Casey:
Amen.
John:
It's Nintendo.
John:
You can't put anything past them.
Marco:
Well, I gotta give Nintendo credit.
Marco:
They are doing what they do best, which is they are finding ways to make people buy large quantities of $20 and $30 accessories.
John:
yeah well like i like i was posting on twitter i was looking for some controllers because we were playing some gamecube games and the the analog stick eventually wears out of these things if you use it long enough like it's loose and sloppy and uh so i was looking for some new ones to buy and you can still buy a white one which they made especially for the wii with a longer cord
John:
And what else can you buy?
John:
I think I might have seen some black ones hanging around, but they made them in a variety of colors.
John:
And if you want one of the fancy colors and you want new in box, not used, it's extremely hard to find.
John:
You can immediately find them for like $200 on eBay.
John:
You know, new in the box, platinum or spice GameCube controllers or WaveBirds, similar to the wireless version.
John:
a version of those things.
John:
Very expensive if you want them new, like they're collector's items at this point.
John:
So them reissuing them with a Smash Brothers logo on them, I didn't want that one because I didn't want a Smash Brothers logo on top of the thing, and it was also black and boring.
John:
So I bought a white one, and then on eBay I bought a silver one, which is supposedly new in the box.
John:
We'll see if that turns out to be the case because it's eBay.
John:
But yeah, I would really like them to make a new controller that's better than the GameCube controller, but so far they have not done that.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
I feel better for having known that.
John:
Don't you feel like picking up a controller right now and playing all your favorite GameCube games.
Casey:
All my favorite GameCube game.
Casey:
Yeah, well, I don't think I ever played any GameCube games, but I did have a random flashback to F-Zero on the Super Nintendo recently, which I loved.
Casey:
I miss that game.
John:
Yeah, that would be another thing.
John:
So they could issue an adapter for NES and SNES controllers.
John:
You can probably buy them online now anyway, but they sell NES and SNES games on their virtual console thing.
John:
uh and yet they want you to play them with these variety of remade controllers and so that's the case where you would want oh it's a nostalgic game obviously you're playing an 8-bit or 16-bit game you want the original controller because the whole point is nostalgia fine but here i feel like they should just make a better controller