Fish Bicycle Scenario
Casey:
All right, so what are we talking about tonight?
Marco:
I think it was actually kind of a slow week in tech news.
Marco:
It was.
Marco:
I think one thing I definitely did want to talk about, though, and I probably should have read more about it beforehand, but oh well, is this IDC PC sales are doomed report.
Marco:
And do either of you know the specifics of it?
Marco:
I know the gist of it is that PC sales are way, way down.
Yeah.
John:
What's that way?
John:
It's like 14% or something, right?
Marco:
But isn't that like the biggest drop in a decade or something?
John:
Yeah, but only because like it was an industry that was always growing.
John:
Like every year you sold a little bit more.
John:
And then this is like not just a, you know...
John:
a slowing growth but a reversal now it's or i don't even know if it's a reversal see none of us read enough about this but anyway it's 14 it's not like a 90 drop or 50 it's 14 but people freak out about it i mean i if you were to graph all these numbers i think it would look like oh well it's clear that you know like growth is leveling off and then it starts to turn downward and you know that's what that's what you would expect right
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I think it's worth discussing and thinking about why people buy new PCs and when people buy new PCs.
Marco:
Because obviously, some degree of this growth was just population growing and more people getting a computer at all.
Marco:
I'm sure that factor was responsible for probably the majority of PC sales maybe in the 90s and probably a good amount of PC sales still in the 2000s.
Marco:
But
Marco:
I would guess that now, these days, the PC market probably relies a lot on upgrades in this decade, and the last one probably as well.
Marco:
And so I have these theories, and I don't really have anything to back this up except my own personal experience and having previously been a PC guy and a tech support guy and everything else, but
Marco:
One of my theories is, you know, so in the 90s, when I got my first computer, and so this is when I started paying attention, plus I was a little bit young in the 80s, but so in the 90s, I feel like most people, like, why would you upgrade your computer?
Marco:
Why would you buy a new computer?
Marco:
And I feel like in the 90s, the biggest reasons were significant speed upgrades or new capabilities.
Marco:
Like if your old computer didn't have a modem and you either added a modem to your computer or you got a new computer with a modem.
Marco:
Later on, you have networking support once broadband comes in the very late 90s.
Marco:
You had the addition of things like sound cards and CD-ROM drives and major...
Marco:
major new hardware capabilities that sometimes required new computers and sometimes weren't just done as upgrades.
Marco:
And then similarly, like back in the 90s, RAM was so incredibly scarce that an old computer and a new computer would actually be substantially differently performing even just like two years later because the new computer would be able to afford more RAM.
Marco:
And, you know,
Marco:
CPUs were doing things like adding math coprocessors and adding hardware floating point ability, like things that now just every computer and watch and HDMI adapter has built in, but back then they didn't.
John:
They also have the Mission Impossible operating system where this operating system will self-destruct in six months to two years.
John:
Your computer would just slowly get worse and worse and worse.
John:
And what does a regular person do in that situation?
John:
Time to buy a new computer.
John:
That's what it comes down to.
John:
If the thing you have...
John:
And it gets worse or broken or bad or inadequate in some way.
John:
That's when you replace it.
John:
A good comparison is television sets where the television set you had, it still shows TV shows.
John:
Does it turn on?
John:
Do the channels change?
John:
OK, I'm fine.
John:
And HGTV was like, OK, well, now I feel it is.
John:
inadequate because i saw my friend's hgtv mine doesn't look like that it's time to buy a new tv but otherwise people who are not video files would just keep their tv unless tv stopped performing what the job that it was supposed to do and but pcs used to be like you'd buy them and in two years like it would it wasn't even as good as the day you bought it forget it compared to your friend's computer where it also pales in comparison but it just it just degraded like you know
John:
software would get slower, and then we'd get viruses.
John:
Well, that was later, though.
Marco:
I feel like... In the 2000s, I would say that was more when that happened.
Marco:
In the 90s, I think it was much more about things that were... Computers were actually advancing significantly past their hardware capabilities.
John:
It was like HDTV came out every year.
John:
Every year, you'd see your friend's computer or the computer in the showrooms, and it would be like looking at your regular TV versus an HDTV.
John:
And you'd be like, oh, well...
John:
Mine sucks now.
Marco:
In the 2000s, I feel like there was also this major move towards laptops and wireless.
Marco:
That helped drive a lot of sales.
John:
That's another way your thing could suck.
John:
Look at this guy.
John:
He's in a coffee shop.
John:
He's being cool and hip, and I'm attached to this gigantic full-height tower.
Casey:
To that end, when I was in school, which was 2000 through 2004, I got a ThinkPad that had a built-in 802.11b card.
Casey:
So rather than having this PCMCA card with the little pimple – well, not little.
Casey:
It was this huge bulbous thing sticking out the side, kind of like an SD card does in a Mac today.
Casey:
Well, I actually had a ThinkPad with a built-in – and I think it was a Cisco card, no less.
Casey:
And oh, man, I thought I was hot stuff.
Casey:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
The three places on campus that actually had wireless at Virginia Tech at the time, I could do it without having that stupid PCMCIA card hanging out on my computer, and it was amazing.
Casey:
But it's interesting because to go back a step, I remember vividly my dad and I taking our 386 and adding a math coprocessor to it.
Casey:
And I mean, so I feel like, yeah, exactly.
Casey:
And so I feel like there was a wave, there was a period of time where advances were happening slow enough that you could kind of staple them on the computer you had.
Casey:
And I would, based on no facts whatsoever, I feel like that was early to mid nineties.
Casey:
And then Marco, I think you're right.
Casey:
Then all of a sudden the velocity really cranked up and then you had to replace an entire computer or an entire motherboard to get the next advancement.
Marco:
Although, to be fair, prices plummeted during that same time.
Casey:
Also true.
Marco:
Like, my first computer in 94 was, like, $2,500.
Marco:
And then by 97, I built a whole new one from parts for, like, 900.
Marco:
I mean, it was a substantial difference.
John:
Oh, that's, you know, silicon consolidation.
John:
Shrinking means you can fit more stuff on fewer chips.
John:
Fewer chips cost less money, blah, blah, blah.
John:
I mean, it's to the point where our iPhones, you know, you get the whole system on the chip, right?
Marco:
But I feel like, you know, in the 2000s,
Marco:
There were still these things happening.
Marco:
There were still these big new reasons why you'd want a new computer.
Marco:
And a lot of that, I think, had to do with wireless and people moving from default of buying desktops to default of buying laptops.
Marco:
But I think a lot... I was working briefly in the tech support business in the mid-2000s.
Marco:
And I was, for very many years before and after that, still doing it on the side for friends and family and stuff.
Marco:
And
Marco:
it was very very clear that starting in probably the early to mid 2000s a lot of people were replacing perfectly good computers because they were full of malware and people thought oh it had slowed down because it's too old i guess i have to get a new one you know they wouldn't think to like reformat and reinstall windows like that that was never considered they would just go out and buy a new computer even though their whole was perfectly fine uh hardware wise and which is a comical and tragic waste of resources but uh
Marco:
i feel like that that certainly boosted pc sales and probably is still to some extent although anti-malware tools are way better now and uh and way more widespread but uh but can you really that has to be that has to be a lot no exactly like people don't know you know regular people don't know like they would say oh i'm out of space i have to get a new computer
Marco:
Right.
Casey:
Or, you know, it got slow and I didn't knowingly do anything to make it slow.
Casey:
So thus, it must be that technology has progressed past me and it's time to get new hardware where you're absolutely right.
Casey:
In reality, it is – well, and John is right as well.
Casey:
You know, it's a mission impossible operating system where every six months you're going to have to reinstall Windows from scratch.
Casey:
And especially without really good backup solutions or – I mean this is a time before in-home networks were a thing or for the most part anyway.
Marco:
And it was very expensive to have three times as much hardware space as you actually needed.
Casey:
Right.
Marco:
Nobody backs up now either.
John:
Let's not kid ourselves.
John:
That's true.
John:
That's true.
John:
I mean Mac users probably have the highest percentage of anybody just because of Apple's incredible push with Time Machine and like the Apple Store experience where there's likely to be someone –
John:
during your purchase experience who told you the time machine exists and this thing you might want to consider doing and it's not that hard but the percentage is probably just depressingly low for Mac users and even more depressingly low for regular people.
John:
Yeah, I would guess that's true.
Casey:
But either way, my point is that let's say you had, and I don't remember a really valid number at the time, but let's just say you had a gig of MP3s in early 2000s.
Casey:
Where are you going to put that gig of MP3s while you're reinstalling everything on your hard drive?
Casey:
And, I mean, you could burn it to CD, and obviously there's many other options that existed, but they weren't commonplace.
Casey:
And that's assuming you're confident enough in your abilities to even reinstall Windows, which eliminates 99% of the population to begin with.
John:
Well, that's why everyone was just raced into the arms of appliance-like devices like iPods and smartphones.
John:
Because that's the story here.
John:
It's like, okay, people aren't buying PCs.
John:
Why?
John:
Because they replaced their PCs with a smartphone or with an iPod or with a combination.
John:
Because if you had that gig of MP3s, you're probably pretty geeky to begin with.
John:
But anyone with a gig of MP3s who is not geeky probably has it on a phone or an iPod that works more like an appliance that gives them a fighting chance of...
John:
preserving that in some way like like they trash their pc they get a new one but they just plug their ipod into it and says do you want to sync with this i don't even know if it allows you to do that crap but like i would imagine that the lifeboat for their music is these small handheld appliance like devices and it's not so much like oh they like them better because they're small and handheld and people have to have a phone anyway it's just that they work
John:
They're so much more friendly to people.
John:
You can't screw it up.
John:
You can install apps, uninstall apps.
John:
There's very little you can do.
John:
I don't think specifically Apple devices.
John:
But even Android phones are much less intimidating and much less easy to accidentally screw up than a PC.
John:
So I'm surprised that people say, well, I can get Facebook on this.
John:
I can send text messages.
John:
I can make phone calls.
John:
I can look at the few websites I want to do.
John:
And I get Netflix on my TV.
John:
Remind me again why I have a computer?
Marco:
Well, I think that's why a lot of people are assuming that this decline in PC sales is being caused by tablets.
Marco:
And I think it's really being more caused by smartphones.
John:
Yeah, tablets, I mean, they don't help.
John:
They're not helping matters, but smartphones, it's got to be by far.
John:
Yeah.
John:
It's stealing the growth market of the people who previously were going to buy a computer but now don't feel the need for one and let us keep upgrading their phone every couple of years for a similar cost to buying a really terrible, you know, PC.
Marco:
No, PCs are way cheaper than you think they are, John.
John:
people buy pcs at costco and sam's club for like for like 300 bucks i'm saying like the phone is a similar cost it's it's you know 299 for your fancy smartphone plus the contract that you're probably gonna get anyway so you can text all your you know what i mean like that's that's factored in it's like well you gotta have a cell phone and yeah the data plan is a little bit more expensive hey it's only 300 bucks well you could have bought about a 300 pc and honestly you should buy a 300 smartphone instead of a 300 pc you will be much more satisfied with
Marco:
And in this day and age, if you are at all interested in owning a computer and you live in a first world country, you probably have already owned one.
Marco:
Unless you're like 10 years old or something.
Marco:
But you've probably already owned one.
Marco:
And so you are faced not necessarily with the decision of, should I go out and buy a new PC this year?
Marco:
But should I upgrade my PC this year?
Marco:
And...
Marco:
I feel like people are doing so much more.
Marco:
You're right, people are doing so much more on their phones now.
Marco:
The phones have become the primary computing device for so many people.
Marco:
I feel like so many people probably have these great new smartphones, whatever kind, I don't really care, these great new smartphones, and then they have...
Marco:
some laptop from 2008 that's like creaking and falling apart you know some dell inspiran piece of garbage and uh you know this creaky plastic thing that has windows xp on it that you know they hardly ever use maybe they open it up like a couple times a year to get some file or you know do something that they can't do on their phone but like what's their motivation to upgrade that computer ever as long as it still works and even when it even when it breaks what's their motivation then
John:
I have to wonder like how many people like there's some minimum amount of computing, especially in the Internet age that you have to do to feel like you're part of society.
John:
Like, you know, you have to you don't necessarily have to have a Facebook page, but probably have to have email and you probably have to know about the Web.
John:
And, you know, there's some there's a baseline of like you are part of our regular first world country society.
John:
You have some connection to the Internet and electronic device.
John:
Uh, and that's, that's the thing that used to be bringing people along and they'd buy PCs.
John:
But I wonder how many of the people, like once you cross that baseline, how many people use personal computers for leisure, I guess, put that in quotes or whatever, like where, you know, because most of the time you're at work, you're commuting, you're, you're doing stuff.
John:
You're not like it.
John:
Your leisure time is small for the working person during the day.
John:
You have your job, you have your family, you have all those responsibilities, then you have a small amount of leisure time per day.
John:
You can watch TV, you can go to a movie, you can go out, like whatever you want to do during that leisure time to engage in your hobbies.
John:
How many people choose to take any portion of that leisure time and sit in front of a personal computer?
John:
I would imagine it's very small, especially if they can get their sort of societal baseline participation in the Internet age all during the day by looking at their phone.
Marco:
Well, see, I wouldn't assume it's that small of people who want to have computing-like activities during that time.
Marco:
I think especially social networking, especially Facebook.
Marco:
But even before that, they had casual games.
Marco:
So I feel like we still...
Marco:
In fact, I would even say that it's probably likely that that number of people is still increasing.
Marco:
The number of people who would rather spend that leisure time either... TV was obviously the big answer in the past and still is probably the predominant answer, but...
Marco:
Now, especially as computers moved first to laptops and now to phones and tablets so predominantly, now you have the option to be checking email and browsing Facebook while you have the TV on and you kind of have to pay attention to it.
Marco:
And that's a very popular option.
Marco:
And there's a lot of people who just go to the computer room or their computer desk or whatever and...
Marco:
spend their leisure time browsing Facebook and playing little games and stuff instead of watching TV.
Marco:
That, I think, is still growing and still has plenty of room to grow.
John:
When I picture it, I have trouble picturing someone going... I guess maybe it's because I'm picturing a desktop computer and that's why I can't picture it.
John:
Maybe if I picture a laptop and they're on the couch anyway that it seems more plausible.
John:
But I just see them...
John:
I see them getting this done throughout the course of the day with their phone.
John:
And even when they're sitting and watching TV, having the phone next to them, I don't see anyone going off into a room with his desktop sitting down in that chair and doing stuff for long periods of time.
John:
And I don't see people so much sitting on the couch with their laptops open.
John:
I think they used to do that until phones and a little bit tablets.
John:
But I don't know.
John:
It's hard for me to gauge because, like, there's this circle of...
John:
computer connectivity savvy surrounding me through my own influence of my family and everything, making them all get iPods and get computers.
John:
I don't know what it's like outside that circle.
Marco:
It's hard to observe.
Marco:
It's also worth considering the connectivity problem that certainly at your house, people who have computers tend to have Wi-Fi these days, usually because it comes for free with your internet connection.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
If you have a laptop and you want to bring it anywhere, most people don't tether.
Marco:
Most people don't have 3G cards in their laptops.
Marco:
Their laptops are only connected if they have Wi-Fi somewhere.
Marco:
And despite what many geeks like to think, Wi-Fi is nowhere near ubiquitous.
Marco:
Not even close.
Marco:
But if they have a smartphone, that's effectively always connected.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
It's almost like, I feel like computers now, this isn't a perfect analogy, but bear with me.
Marco:
I feel like computers now are kind of like PDAs in 2003.
Marco:
They were cool, and they were useless for them, but these other things were coming up and just destroying the relevance of that market.
John:
It's not going to get wiped out like PDAs did, though.
Marco:
No, it won't, and that's why it's not a perfect analogy, but I think it's a similar level of relevance to people now.
Casey:
Well, sort of.
Casey:
What you forget as a spoiled person who works out of the house and doesn't have to go to an office like John and I is that even business people whom don't
Casey:
On the strictest sense, their living isn't in the computer.
Casey:
By that I mean they're not writing code or doing something along those lines.
Casey:
Business people still have PCs and droves because they need to do corporate email and they need to write Word documents and they need to write PowerPoints and so on and so forth.
Casey:
So I don't think anything you've said is necessarily incorrect, but I think we should point out that this is all true of outside of the workplace activities.
Casey:
And all sorts of professions these days are still completely and utterly tied to having a computer in front of you always during the workday.
John:
Yeah, that'll be a canary to see.
John:
I don't know.
John:
That's a good question.
John:
What the steady state is going to be going forward?
John:
How TV versus movies kind of settled in after the invention of television?
John:
It didn't wipe out movies, but the ratio is sort of adjusted to a...
John:
a not a steady state but not as dramatic as you know first there was no tv and all of a sudden there is houses shake out but yeah once once the majority of people are who would have gone into work and sat in front of a pc no longer do that and they sit in front of something else that'll be the belt and that's why i think like the pc won't you know like like the movie theaters the pc won't go away because there are certain tasks that you know i mean
John:
It depends on what you call a PC.
John:
Is your PC a big screen with a nice keyboard that you sit in front of, but actually all it is is a bunch of naked peripherals that you walk up to with your phone and it magically connects them?
John:
Is that a PC anymore or is that your smartphone, right?
John:
I don't know the semantics, but I'm saying like.
John:
a thing with a large screen and a more efficient input device than you can get in a handheld device whatever that thing is and i'm just going to continue calling it a pc uh i don't think people are going to go to work and not sit in front of the one of those or even like even if it's like you go to work and you put your hands into the neural receptors and put on your glasses like you know what i mean like the thing the thing that you that is at your desk lets you get your job done that's not going to be a phone because like the the
John:
The constraints are different.
John:
It doesn't have to be small to fit in your pocket.
John:
Why would it be?
John:
Now, maybe the entire smarts of your work experience are on something the size of a phone, and you carry it with you.
John:
But that experience of, you know, taking advantage of the fact that you don't have to be battery-powered all the time, and you don't have to fit into your pocket, you can work more efficiently when those constraints are lifted.
John:
And I don't think that will go away, but I do think those constraints don't apply to lots of activities, like, you know...
John:
dorking around on the web or reading reading web pages or you know playing on facebook or using twitter or whatever like so many categories of things you don't need those constraints so i i think the the ratio will adjust between these smart devices and i think eventually it will start to blur where the only distinction really is uh how much room do you have for input output peripherals and how much what is your power budget are you near a plug do you need to be portable uh
John:
That seems like what the long-term thing is, where this distinction between smartphone and PC will be, we'll keep trying to draw that little fuzzy line as they slowly, you know, merge.
John:
Not that we're all using smartphones again, but like, you know, once the smart guts and the input-output start becoming sort of interchangeable, it really doesn't make sense.
John:
It's kind of like, you know, when the iPad came out, it's like, is it a PC?
John:
I don't know.
John:
It throws the old categories for a loop, and you don't really know how to talk about it.
Marco:
I think stepping back a half step for a sec, I wonder how much of this PC sales downturn businesses are responsible for.
Marco:
Because, you know, we know businesses buy lots of PCs.
Marco:
They always have.
Marco:
And I don't think that's necessarily changing.
Marco:
However, at least not yet.
Marco:
I mean, as you said, I think, you know, who knows what it will be in five or ten years.
Marco:
But certainly for now, it does seem like everyone's still buying PCs and using office apps and stuff like that.
Marco:
And I think that's going to be with us for quite some time.
Marco:
but how many new PCs do businesses buy in a recession where there's no new jobs for anyone?
Marco:
If you aren't hiring a lot of people, then you're not buying PCs for new employees.
Marco:
Obviously, there's some annual number of PCs that will fail or wear out or be lost by salesmen and need to be replaced in any organization, but...
Marco:
besides that basic churn rate of replacements, what reason would businesses have to upgrade their systems if they've found something that works for them?
Marco:
What has the business software world offered
Marco:
to justify upgrades in the last, I don't know, 12 years?
John:
In my experience in the corporate stooge world, the upgrade rate doesn't seem to have changed much.
John:
It seemed like the...
John:
Personal computers on people's desks turned over at the same rate when I started in the job market in the late 90s and now, which is not particularly rapid, one, two, three years, and different companies have different policies, and it depends on the time, the size of the company, the bureaucracy, and the kind of deals they have with Dell for whatever they're putting, you know what I mean?
John:
But it wasn't like, oh, back when the internet was new, we got a new PC every year, but now it's every three years.
John:
The average over my career has been
John:
a similar turnover rate, which has been surprisingly slow for me, like to the point where most of the people have a PC that they're using that they think is old and crappy and they don't like, but they still have to wait another year before they can get a new one.
Casey:
I would agree with that.
Casey:
And I would actually also double down and say that in my experience, and I work for a fairly small consulting firm in Richmond, but we consult with fairly large companies, some of which are Fortune 1000 or Fortune 500 or something like that big is the point I'm driving at.
Casey:
And in both our firm and our clients, I've seen a MacBook Airification of general laptops in the workplace.
Casey:
And by that, I mean, not necessarily everyone's getting a MacBook Air, but almost everyone I know that doesn't write code for a living, so regular people, they're all getting either MacBook Airs, and that does happen, or they're getting whatever Dell or Lenovo equivalent is that's very thin, very small, very light, and very portable devices.
Casey:
And that kind of goes back to what you were saying, John, about what will the future bring?
Casey:
Is portability really paramount?
Casey:
And it seems like even for people who don't travel for a living, everyone's got a laptop now and everyone's got something that vaguely resembles a MacBook Air or is a MacBook Air.
Casey:
And furthermore, a lot of times I wonder if the PC sales downturns are related to Apple doing better in the business world.
Casey:
And you could attribute that to maybe people bringing their own devices and IT departments being forced into supporting them.
Casey:
You could say it's because IT has chosen to support them.
Casey:
But one way or another, it seems like I see a lot more Macs today than I ever have before.
Casey:
And I don't think that's a particularly profound statement or observation.
Casey:
And so I wonder if that's reflected in this report that you're citing, Marco, that PCs aren't selling as well.
Marco:
I wonder also how much has to do with... Because so many business computers used to be desktops, and so many of them now are laptops, even for regular employees that probably could have a desktop, for so many businesses now, laptops are the new default or the most common type that they buy.
Marco:
Laptops don't last as long as desktops in use.
Marco:
First of all, if you have some kind of turnover...
Marco:
If you come into a job, it wouldn't be that unheard of for them to give you somebody else's desktop that's like a year and a half old that still works fine for your job purposes.
Marco:
Then you just get someone else's computer.
Marco:
You might, if you're lucky, get a new keyboard, and that's about it.
Marco:
But with a laptop, A...
Marco:
It's a much harder sell to use someone's used laptop.
John:
What are you talking about?
John:
They can use laptops in a second.
Marco:
But how used?
Marco:
Because laptops show wear a lot.
Marco:
As used as you can imagine.
Marco:
A desktop, you can replace a keyboard for $12 and it looks new.
Marco:
They don't replace the keyboard.
John:
They give you the old keyboard.
John:
With the person's fingernail clippings in it.
John:
Yes.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
John:
It's rough out there in the real world, Marco.
John:
It is.
Marco:
Okay, well, the other thing is, at least also with laptops, they tend to have two major problems.
Marco:
One is that they just, because they're portable, because they're going to get banged around a bit, I don't think they tend to last as long.
John:
That's just a guess.
John:
And then the second thing is...
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And the second thing is a very, very common laptop problem is needing a screen repair.
Marco:
And screen repairs usually, once it's out of warranty, they're almost never worth doing because they're so expensive on laptops.
Marco:
So I feel like in general, if I had to guess, I would guess that the average business laptop is in service for less time than the average business desktop.
John:
That is true.
John:
That would make you think they'd be replacing them more, but that's definitely true.
John:
I see how PCs are treated in the office now that there's so many more of them.
John:
I feel like Adobe owes the world some restitution for their... Flash destroys laptops of all kinds.
John:
Mac, PC, I see these problems.
John:
With heat?
John:
Yeah, because they do like a Google Hangout or whatever.
John:
Not just Google Hangout, I think that's HTML5.
John:
But like anything that involves Flash, whenever I'm in a meeting and I hear someone's tiny little high RPM laptop fan going, it's a good bet that where I had to peek around their screen, they had some tab with some stupid Flash thing running in it.
John:
And I hear it.
John:
You know that sound of the laptop with the fans cranked up?
John:
Unless you're doing like H.264 encoding or something, that shouldn't be happening on your work machine, but it's so common.
John:
And I'm like, that can't be good for the computer, you know?
John:
Of all the other things of spilling your coffee on it and clunking it around and dropping it on the table and tipping it off your desk and all the other terrible things that happen to laptops, on top of that, they're all running hotter than they should be because of Flash.
Casey:
And the other thing I should point out is that, again, being as part of a small firm, I think we have somewhere around 80 employees.
Casey:
That's small?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Oh, you have no idea.
Casey:
But anyway, so being part of a small firm, believe it or not, we are relatively progressive.
Casey:
And so we have been issuing Macs to people that are not developers.
Casey:
And we've been issuing them to the developers for a while because the developers are all demanding it.
Casey:
But one of the reasons that we're very reluctant to issue Macs to regular people who don't really need it... Is that really an appropriate use of whom?
Casey:
No, probably not.
Casey:
I get yelled at so many times as who, whom, that guy, whatever.
Casey:
It doesn't matter.
Marco:
Just say who every time.
Casey:
I'll say who every time.
Casey:
But anyway, the point I'm driving at is that the reason we don't get Macs more often is because Dell has such an unbelievably great warranty, or maybe not warranty, but service plan, such that you can pretty much dropkick a Dell, and they will be there either that day or the next day with whatever part you need.
Casey:
They will come to our office, they will fix it, and you will be done within 24 hours.
John:
I was going to say how much of these PC vendors realize how much they owe to Apple's complete indifference to the enterprise market.
John:
They are just not interested.
John:
But Dell comes and returns.
John:
That's nice.
Marco:
The idea of Apple doing on-site help is laughable.
John:
There are Apple business liaisons and they make motions in that direction, but they're not willing to do well.
John:
what it takes nor should they be as far as i'm concerned like i think they're wise to stay out of that business because i think it's poison but by apple being so terrible at business and so terrible at servicing businesses compared to you know dell or the any other uh resellers pc resellers who are just willing to do anything for you and just have a machine ready to execute uh that is it's got to be keeping many crappy pc companies afloat because like
John:
Like Casey said, I have also experienced an incredible increase in recent years of regular non-geek people who want Apple hardware, whether it be phones to replace their BlackBerry or laptops to replace their Dell laptops, and are willing to make noise about it and make it happen instantly.
John:
uh, in companies.
John:
And that, that is a fairly new phenomenon, at least in my work experience where, I mean, it used to be people were a little bit disgruntled and they look at the neat little Mac was over there, but it's like, Oh, whatever.
John:
I got to get my work done.
John:
But now like we've crossed some sort of threshold where it's like, you know what, why, why can't I have a Mac?
John:
I think that would be nice.
John:
And, uh,
John:
Then the poor IT companies have to, I've got to figure out how to get a Mac and maybe there's a local reseller who gets it and what happens when it goes bad.
John:
The poor IT people have horror stories of like, I had to go to the Apple store.
John:
That's not how corporate IT works.
John:
A human being is not supposed to carry a computer to a store in a mall.
John:
That is not how corporate IT works.
John:
Once that happens, the tension still exists there.
John:
I don't think Apple is interested in that market.
John:
I don't know how that's going to resolve itself because the people want it, but it's a terrible experience for corporate IT.
Casey:
Right, and it gets worse because the particular MacBook Pro I have is a 15-inch non-retina late 2011.
Casey:
And we put 16 gigs of RAM in this thing, and most of my developer co-workers have basically the same machine.
Casey:
And one of my co-worker's machines, his motherboard got fried somehow.
Casey:
Casey, this is a Mac.
Marco:
I believe it's called a logic board.
Casey:
Oh, whatever.
Casey:
Send Marco email.
Casey:
But anyway, about whom as well.
Casey:
But anyway, the point I'm driving at is that our IT guy, who's an awesome, awesome, awesome guy, he took it to the mall, to the local Apple store, which is literally three miles from our office.
Casey:
And they took one look at it and said, oh, this model doesn't support 16 gigs of RAM.
Casey:
That's why you fried your motherboard or logic board.
Casey:
That'll be $700, please.
Casey:
And you think Dell would do that?
Casey:
Absolutely not.
John:
Why did he go to the mall store?
John:
I was just about to give disclaimers.
John:
Like, please don't write in.
John:
I know Apple has actual business service now.
John:
This was like stories from a long time ago when the Apple store first came out.
John:
But this is recent where your IT guy went to the Apple store?
Casey:
I don't think we – I mean, I know we have resellers or whatever, but I don't think – You're 80 people.
John:
But like, yeah, there are VARs around who will do that stuff for you.
John:
But I think even Apple itself has programs that you can get into if you're any kind of company to not have to bring things to the Apple store.
John:
and that very well could be i have a business account guy at the apple store yeah but he doesn't does he come to your house no i still have to go there but he doesn't come like with a replacing computer in his hand and hand that off to you and just take the other computer away i do they do that for people i don't even know dell the dell experience is like or any kind of like enterprise class hardware they come you get the new thing or the fixed thing within like two hours and your problem is solved it's re-imaged everything's back the way it was like that's how corporate it is supposed to work
John:
And, you know, server is the same type of thing.
John:
It's like a four-hour window.
John:
Like if your, you know, EMC hardware goes down, your stupid support contract is supposed to have a geek with the neckbeard parachuting into your data center within hours and fixing your thing.
John:
That's why you pay a bazillion dollars.
Casey:
And that's the thing is it's all quote-unquote free.
Casey:
And then my poor IT guy, he goes to Apple and they say, okay, that'll be $700.
Casey:
And by the way, we need to send this thing to God knows where in order to get it done.
Casey:
I mean, why would he buy any more Macs that way?
Marco:
Okay, first of all,
Marco:
I don't think it's possible for an unapproved quantity of RAM to fry a logic board.
Casey:
No, no, I agree.
Marco:
That's exactly the point.
Marco:
Second of all, he failed the number one rule of Apple do-it-yourself third-party RAM upgrades, which is always keep the Apple RAM and put it back in whenever you bring it in for surveys.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Well, and you're absolutely right.
Casey:
But it doesn't negate the point that that is a really, for lack of a better word, offensive experience for him.
Casey:
And why would he continue to buy apples knowing that if anything breaks, the person, the owner screwed and thus he is screwed?
Casey:
Well, because he doesn't have a choice.
John:
Because the stupid employees keep whining for it.
John:
I mean, that's the tension.
John:
Apple doesn't want to support IT.
John:
IT doesn't want to buy Apple.
John:
But the employees want Apple.
John:
And there's just this constant struggle.
John:
But the tide has been shifting.
John:
It used to be that IT just held the line.
John:
No, you can't have a Mac.
John:
There are no Macs in this company, period.
John:
No, you can't bring your Mac from home.
John:
That was the old story.
John:
And that slowly shifted.
John:
And once people got their foot in the door, as far as I know, I was the first officially...
John:
corporate purchase mac in my company like four years ago right now if you when you get hired i believe it is an option for most people to say they would like a max and tons of people have requested max in fact often they get a mac alongside their their dell so they have their dell thing they're like quote unquote real work computer but they also have a work purchased macbook air macbook pro something like that really
Marco:
Well, I think what happened was Apple attacked from the top there.
Marco:
Apple made products... And I don't know if this was intentional or not.
Marco:
Probably not.
Marco:
But Apple made products that were so good that the bosses started wanting them.
Marco:
And so it depends on... I feel like how soon Macs were permissible or supported in your IT infrastructure at your work probably depends a lot on...
Marco:
on how high up the IT department ranks authority-wise and how long it took for somebody who ranks above them in authority to want to bring in their own iPhone or iPad or MacBook Air.
John:
The bosses brought the iPhones in alongside them.
John:
And the MacBook Airs.
John:
Maybe, but I would say the developers...
John:
If you have a company with whiny developers, they're the ones who brought the Macs in for the desktop type of thing.
John:
Yeah, but they were bringing it in.
John:
They want to have a Unix system where you can develop Unix software, but you can also do GUI stuff all on one machine, no SIGWIN, no Linux servers that you're a test agent to.
John:
So those are the two portals.
John:
It's like C-level executives make anything happen because they run the company and they want an iPhone, they're going to get one, and that cascades into Macs.
John:
Although, for my experience, C-level executives...
John:
have not been uh clamoring for max they're perfectly happy to sit there with whatever the cutest little think pad is because they really don't know how to use computers that shows what kind of companies i've worked for i've not worked for uh companies where the ceos are computer nerds let's say see and as a you know software consulting firm when i knew that the tide had turned when one of our c-level execs i don't even remember his title which is funny because there's like four c-level execs but anyway
Casey:
He had asked for a Retina MacBook Pro when the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro was pretty much brand new.
Casey:
And that was the first time I had seen a quote-unquote business person have a Mac.
Casey:
And since then, I'd say it's a 50-50 split between Macs and PCs.
Casey:
But all of the business people are all getting things, like I was talking about earlier, that are approximately the same form factor as a MacBook Air, whether or not there's an Apple on the display.
Marco:
Well, they're Ultrabooks.
Marco:
It's one of these... Right, right, right.
Marco:
I love, you know, this is something that the PC industry does all the time, and it isn't just the PC industry that does this, but they certainly do it a lot, which is you take something that's having some success and you immediately genericize it and start discussing it as if it's a category, even if it's not really yet.
Marco:
Like tablet?
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
Tablet, even like PDAs, back when pretty much the only game in town was Palm and the Palm Pilots.
Marco:
Actually, before it was...
Marco:
No, it was the U.S.
Marco:
Robotics Pilot 1000, I think, first.
Marco:
It isn't just Apple that gets targeted with this.
Marco:
It's any company that has some kind of innovative thing.
Marco:
The analysts and the press start genericizing it because they want it to be a category because then it's better for them and there's more to talk about and it's more interesting.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
It totally sucks the life and originality out of the originator, I guess.
Marco:
So it definitely happened with tablets.
Marco:
And then it, of course, happened with Ultrabooks.
Marco:
Ultrabook was the generic name for MacBook Airs.
Marco:
And everything that looks exactly like them and has their exact specs.
John:
Intel came up with the name Ultrabook.
John:
Yes, that's true.
John:
They coined it as a generic, but sometimes it doesn't happen.
John:
Like podcasts, it didn't happen with.
John:
I don't know if they tried to do broadcast audio, internet audio, but podcasts stuck, and that became the Kleenex of what we're doing right now.
Marco:
Leo Laporte tried to make Netcast, and it just didn't stick outside of his network.
John:
Yeah, I mean, sometimes you just can't get it out of the way.
John:
Apple didn't have a generic name for...
John:
for the macbook airs that's too much of a mouthful ipad could have potentially stuck but you know they tablet tablet had been pre-existing like was you know pen windows for pen computing and all the grid thing like tablets have been around for ages so that was sure but that's not term that's not what like the ipad was so different i know but it's a rectangle that you touch like it doesn't take much like that that generic term had been out there well you didn't touch the old ones you know
Marco:
Have you ever used, like, the old tablet PC from the – I think it was the late 90s or early 2000s when Microsoft did their, like, second or third version of what they called tablet PC?
Marco:
And it was actually decent.
Marco:
It was, like, you know, they had, like, the convertible ones.
John:
They have these again now.
John:
It would fold it back on itself.
Marco:
Yeah, it had, like, a little swivel hinge.
Marco:
Yep, yep.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
My friend had one of those.
Marco:
And it was actually really interesting to use.
Marco:
But it was –
Marco:
If you imagine using Windows 8 only in desktop mode on a device with no keyboard, that's kind of how it was.
Marco:
There were some affordances for pen input in some applications, and the system would throw up the on-screen keyboard kind of hackily as needed, but it wasn't a very polished or robust system.
Casey:
It wasn't.
Casey:
And it's funny you bring it up because my wife is a school teacher, a high school teacher.
Casey:
And when she was in college or university, depending on where you are, she was actually given one of these tablets, these Microsoft tablets, to use during her in-class training, student teaching.
Casey:
I couldn't think of the name of it for a second there.
Casey:
And I don't recall why she liked it, but she was like the only person on the planet that really, really liked having...
Casey:
one of these pen-based Windows machines.
Casey:
I'll have to ask her after the show what it was that she liked about it, but she swore by it.
Marco:
My friend loved his.
Marco:
It was really great for note-taking, especially if you're standing up, like you would be with a lot of teaching and a lot of professions.
Marco:
A lot of times it's
Marco:
Just contextually, it's kind of hard to sit down and open up a laptop and type.
Marco:
But even without that, if you just like handwriting and if you handwrite a lot of your notes, that's probably still a better experience than using an iPad.
John:
People liked it for the same reason.
John:
All the good things that we like about iPads now, a tiny fraction of those were present in any sort of tablet form factor thing.
John:
Microsoft really snatched a feat from the Joseph Victory with the whole tablet thing because they were just investing in it so early and so often.
John:
And, you know, I experienced the same thing.
John:
People with those stupid swivel head things.
John:
It was just terrible plastic.
John:
You saw hardware and everything.
John:
But, like, there was enough of the things we love about the iPad.
John:
The fact that you can use it on your lap.
John:
The fact that you could touch it if you want to.
John:
You know, like, all that stuff was like, it's just a tiny bit of it.
John:
And there's enough in there where people were like, hey, you know, so this thing is a piece of crap.
John:
But there's something about it that I kind of like.
John:
And you'll latch on to it and say, yeah, I'd like more of that.
John:
But Microsoft could not get out of its own way.
John:
I mean, it's obvious now in retrospect what they should have done.
John:
But, like, you know...
John:
I say this about all the things they were they were just to same thing with Windows CE and and Windows Mobile.
John:
They were too married to Windows everywhere, PC everywhere.
John:
That is the paradigm.
John:
You know, they would never have done anything like iOS and the iPad where it has, you know, no application compatibility.
John:
But the Mac looks nothing like the Mac works.
John:
Nothing like the Mac.
John:
If Microsoft had done that.
John:
you know, back when it was playing with all these things, it would have had like four chances, four complete chances to screw up before the iPad even existed.
John:
Instead, every single one was like, oh, you got a start menu on your phone.
John:
You're like, are you kidding me?
John:
A start menu on my phone?
John:
Like that shows they just didn't get it.
John:
So they had, it was all there for the taking.
John:
They just could not get out of their own way.
John:
Couldn't get rid of Windows and Office.
John:
Like that's the story of Microsoft.
Yeah.
Casey:
And you know what's really funny is the college I went to is Virginia Tech, and they have a really, really great engineering program.
Casey:
And I'm looking at the Virginia Tech College of Engineering fall 2013, spring 2014 computer requirement because everyone is required to bring a computer.
Casey:
os windows 7 or 8 professional 64-bit processor third gen core i5 blah blah blah blah input device integrated wacom wacom wacom whatever it's called ntrig or s pen or companion slate slash tablet that is required wow to this day that is this year's computing requirement weird huh that's really interesting
Casey:
And supposedly, I don't know anyone that's in school anymore because I'm way too old for that, but I've heard rumblings that there are some things about it that are really great and a lot of things that are really terrible.
Casey:
And one thing I was going to bring up was even way back when, when we were talking about like in the early 2000s when these pen computers were sort of kind of popular –
Casey:
One of the things that I think a lot of people liked about it, Marco, I think you alluded to this, was note-taking and specifically OneNote, which was a Microsoft Office app that I have used and actually is really darn good for taking notes.
Casey:
And it's very freeform.
Casey:
And I'm sure there's equivalents on the iPad now that I'm not even aware of.
Casey:
But at the time, it kind of stood by itself as a really, really awesome note-taking app.
Casey:
And like you said, Marco, when you can do that with a pen, it's no different than paper, really.
Casey:
It was...
Casey:
probably better.
Marco:
It's way better than using a capacitive stylus on a capacitive screen.
Marco:
If you're going to be handwriting notes or doing anything with a pen on a regular basis, you really want a resistive screen or whatever the Wacom... Are those resistive, the Wacom ones?
Marco:
Or are they just a special kind of capacitive?
John:
Pressure sensitive is what you're doing.
John:
There's several aspects of it.
Marco:
You want a screen that your hand will not trigger, basically.
John:
Yeah, well, there's pressure sensitive, and there's also proximity detection.
John:
So there's capacitive touch, proximity detection, which I'm not sure how that works, and then plain old pressure sensitivity.
John:
So all the POMs are pressure sensitive.
John:
You'd have to press on the screen to make it register or anything.
John:
The Windows tablet things and the Wacom tablets, I believe, have...
John:
proximity they can tell when the pen is near it because it hasn't even touched it yet and i think right now the currently the current wacom that's what i'm going to go with i'm going with wacom uh i believe it's wacom but i always say wacom just because it's fun just like i say you know the effing key they should have pronunciation got on their website and maybe they do but we have not looked at it obviously uh
John:
But I think what they currently do is they do the pressure sensitivity in the pen, if I'm correct.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I know that at one point they've done this, where the pressure-sensitive device is inside the pen, and the surface that you're drawing on does not actually give like the old Palm screens used to give.
Marco:
I think all the Wacom tablets, I think they've always been like that.
Marco:
The pen is somehow smart, but somehow doesn't use a battery.
Marco:
I don't know if it uses induction to power itself or what.
Marco:
It's pretty cool.
Marco:
Anyway, I want to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, Squarespace.
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Marco:
So going back a second.
Marco:
There was some news or rumor or something.
Marco:
We are so ill-prepared for this show.
Marco:
There was some news or rumor or something that Microsoft Office for iOS was delayed or something.
Marco:
There was something about Office for iOS this week.
Marco:
What was that?
John:
There was a leaked schedule, some sort of supposed leaked document from inside Microsoft that had Office for iOS.
John:
Office for tablet-type systems as 2014.
John:
And so, like everyone was saying, well, they're not going to release it for iOS before they release it for Windows 8 RT or whatever.
John:
And therefore, if there is an iOS version of Office, it's not coming until 2014, too.
John:
I think that was the gist of it.
John:
The point was that lots of people...
John:
thought maybe this year Microsoft would ship Office for iOS, and this supposed unverified leaked thing from inside Microsoft had the number 2014 on it instead of 2013.
John:
And that's the story.
John:
That's all you need for a story.
Marco:
Do you think – I mean, as we were discussing 15 minutes ago about businesses and their computer usage and everything –
Marco:
Do you really think that Office for iPad is going to be a big deal if it ever does come out?
John:
No, they've waited too long.
John:
The longer they wait, the less important and relevant it becomes.
John:
I'm not turning up my nose at it because I think it will be useful.
John:
I think the most interesting thing about Office for iOS is how the hell that dance between these two Cobras is going to work, or this Cobra and this mouse, if you decide.
John:
Apple and Microsoft are like,
John:
Is Microsoft going to give, I guess they're going to give Apple 30% of their office sales like that is just, I mean, like, I don't even know how that's going to work.
John:
Or is it going to be like free, but there's going to be in-app purchase for a subscription and it'll be subscription only.
John:
So Microsoft gets recurring revenue and they don't mind giving up the 30%.
John:
I don't know.
John:
And what is it going to look like?
John:
And how is it going to have file compatibility?
John:
Will it use iCloud?
John:
Will it have Dropbox integration?
John:
Will you need to sign up for Microsoft SkyDrive and it'll do HTTP requests to Microsoft servers?
John:
And there are so many unanswered questions about how would this, it's like a fish bicycle scenario.
John:
How is this even going to work?
John:
I don't understand.
John:
And that to me is much more interesting than does the iPad suddenly become legitimate because it has Office?
John:
Because I don't think people care about that.
Casey:
Well, see, I don't know if I'd be so sure.
Casey:
I think your average consumer, your average business consumer, is assuming that the iPad is a brick that is useless for doing normal day-to-day business things because it doesn't have office.
Casey:
Now, as it turns out, I think that's bogus.
Casey:
But I think your Joe Schmo business consumer, I bet you it will be a big...
Casey:
mental shift once it's available.
Casey:
That's based on no facts.
John:
It won't be like, it'll be the same way that Keynote is available on iOS and the Mac.
John:
So no matter what presentation you have, it'll work identically in both places, right?
John:
No.
John:
Like, think of all the crazy, like, oh, you embed this Excel chart, this chart in this thing and this PowerPoint and it's linked to this Excel document when you update the Excel document.
John:
businesses still use that stuff you can't do that on ios like there's just no way like you have to it's not going to work the same as it does on a desktop and that i found is the bar where it's like you know because i have office on my mac but you know people still turn their nose up at it and rightfully so because it's like look we're passing around what should be a text file but instead it's a word document that for some reason has some crazy macro thing in it or something um
John:
and it doesn't look right on your Mac, so just open it in your VM and just don't even bother with this.
John:
If it's not 100% compatible, I found an amazing variety, a pointless variety, but an amazing variety in the features of these individual files that people use in Office for Windows, and that having Office on the Mac, maybe it gets the foot in the door, maybe it checks a checkbox, but in practice,
John:
All the time I come across documents that do not look the same on the Mac and the BC.
John:
So what hope is there really that someone's going to be able to take a document, somehow spirit it over to your iPad, and it will function correctly there, even just in a viewing.
John:
Forget about editing.
John:
Just like, will it look the same when I open it?
John:
I have very little faith that this will be.
John:
So I think it'll be the same type of phenomenon.
John:
Well, it's got Office, and it will get in the door, but in practice it's going to be like...
John:
look, if you didn't create it in iOS, it's going to look different there, and some things might not work.
John:
And if you want to see a real budgeting spreadsheet, you have to open it on a PC.
Marco:
And I would say also, that's not that different from the status quo.
Marco:
You're totally right that if it's going to be a different edition of Office, if it's going to work differently at all, which it almost certainly would have to, then that's going to be a major problem for integrating it to businesses.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
Right now, we already have that.
Marco:
Right now, we have pages.
Marco:
We have iWork on iOS.
Marco:
So we already have a situation now where people can open MS Office documents on their iOS devices.
Marco:
In a half-assed way.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And it kind of works.
Marco:
Sometimes.
Marco:
And if you're coordinating with someone else who's using the PC version, you'll probably have issues or you'll at least have inconsistencies and weird formatting problems.
John:
At our office, people still send Word documents, emails, and make webpages with links.
John:
The URL of links is G colon backslash because everyone has their G drive mounted.
John:
Or triple slash share name for a share that's mounted on everyone's PCs because the IT pushes it on.
John:
That's how the world works.
John:
If you are the guy with the Mac and you go, I clicked on the link and nothing happened,
John:
they're going to be like, oh, well, just look at it in a PC.
John:
It works there.
Marco:
What a shame.
John:
I mean, that's the world the Macs come into, and that's why the people who get them are like the people who can support themselves, because IT doesn't want to support that.
John:
They can't make everyone stop authoring documents with PC-specific features or paths to shares that are not mounted on.
John:
It's just backslashes instead of slashes.
John:
Like, oh, it works fine for me on my Windows machine.
John:
I don't see what your problem is.
Casey:
I completely agree.
Casey:
My point is simply that, and I think you yourself had said this, John, that it gets the foot in the door and it at least lets it become part of the conversation.
Casey:
Whereas I think for an average business user, if there's no office, it's not even a discussion.
Casey:
I'm not even going to give it a shot.
Casey:
In reality, even if there is office, it's going to be a piece of garbage, not because it's Microsoft, but just because there's way too much complexity for that platform.
Casey:
but I think just having it there would be a big win in the sense that it would at least let the iPad enter the conversation.
John:
Well, Windows 8 is really the real entry of tablet computing into the office because in theory, like once the few more revs of silicon and Windows 8 non-laptop laptops will become the real deal, and I see no reason if Microsoft is able to
John:
keep going on this course that they can't produce what's essentially that that thing that you know the convertible tablet we were just talking about essentially that but the non-crappy version because now finally in something that small with like with no keyboard attachment or maybe that clicky keyboard or maybe you know a full-size keyboard that you can bluetooth to or whatever suddenly you have real computing power a reasonable small screen maybe the possibility to like hook it up to another screen like it's a dockable laptop without
John:
a keyboard that turns into it's the whole it's the whole windows eight concept and i think that is a reasonable concept for businesses because if it's an x86 in there you can run the quote unquote real versions of office which are still going to be incompatible with like you know the office 97 documents that people are still passing around and companies all over the world but
John:
like that's that will move things on and i think that's microsoft's goal is like okay we would like to see a windows 8 instead of an ultrabook a windows 8 tablet but really it mostly gets used as a pc but it also doubles as a tablet when you move it like that's what they're going for and that seems reasonable to me and once that happens then it's like well everyone else has these little things that look like squares that you carry can i have the thing with the apple logo on the back that's a square that you carry and
John:
The distinction is like, well, this has an x86 chip and it runs via office.
John:
I think that will be even less of a barrier.
John:
It was like, all right, well, that's a rectangle too.
John:
You can try that rectangle.
John:
Does it have office?
John:
Yeah, but they don't know that that doesn't help you.
Marco:
Well, I think, I mean, it's worth considering, would Microsoft withhold Office from iOS as a competitive advantage to boost Windows 8 tablets?
John:
No, they're just not done with it.
Marco:
You think?
Marco:
I don't know.
John:
I think... They may not have embarked on the project with gusto.
John:
The moment the iPad was announced, like, oh, get the Mac business unit.
John:
They need to get work in an Office for the iPad.
John:
Maybe they didn't do that, but at this point, it's not like they're holding it back.
John:
They just...
John:
have not been scrambling to get it.
John:
Maybe they probably are scrambling to get it finished at this point, but yeah, I don't, I just think it's a factor of team size and syncing with whatever the crazy strategy is going to be for pricing and figuring all that, that they just, they started on it when they finally got all their ducks in a row about what they were going to do and they're writing it and it will be done when it's done.
Marco:
See, I don't believe that.
Marco:
Honestly, I think right now, maybe two years ago, I would have believed that they wanted Office everywhere and they're going to put it on the iPad.
Marco:
But now that they have their own alternative to the iPad, they are competing directly with iPads and iOS for professional slash business slash office use.
Marco:
I can see them totally wanting to keep Microsoft Office and, quote, the real Microsoft Office.
Marco:
They've already used that as a selling point, that these are tablets you can also get real work done on.
Marco:
I can see them wanting to keep that exclusive and not ever making an iPad version of Office.
John:
They'll make one.
John:
I mean, maybe it'll be crappy.
John:
Maybe it'll be, you know, like it's made by a different team.
John:
It's not really compatible.
John:
I think it will eventually be there once they get everything sorted.
John:
And already, I mean, their tablets already have Office and iPads don't.
John:
So, like, they are milking the exclusivity period now.
John:
It's not, I don't think, I don't think there's anything to be gained by them, like, extending it out for years and years and, like...
John:
Why do they keep making Office for the Mac?
John:
They're not about to yank that away and say, well, if you want Office, you have to get a PC.
John:
They make money on these things.
John:
That's the bottom line.
John:
The Mac business unit makes the money, and I'm sure Office for iOS will as well.
John:
They'll price it at a whole $9.99, or maybe it'll be a recurring subscription.
John:
I don't even know.
John:
I don't know what they're going to do, but I'm sure whatever they do, it will make them money.
Casey:
Another thing to consider is, and I'm talking a little bit out of my wheelhouse now, but I know I've heard a lot of rumblings around our office that it would be considerably cheaper for us to start using Microsoft, their Office 365 or whatever it is, which I don't know barely anything about, but apparently is all like, I think it's web-based.
Casey:
It's like Google...
Casey:
Docs and Google Spreadsheet or whatever.
Casey:
But anyway, apparently there's some Office 365 thing, whatever that means, that I'm being told is actually considerably cheaper.
Casey:
And I believe that's a subscription-based thing.
Casey:
Regardless if it's native software or if it's web-based, it's subscription.
Casey:
And so that makes me wonder, John, if you're absolutely right, that if something arrived on the iPad...
Casey:
Maybe it would either be part of this Office 365 thing, or it would at the very least be a subscription one way or the other.
John:
Microsoft has had this subscription bug in their butt for so many years, and it's just such a hard sell.
John:
I mean, Adobe's managed to – I wouldn't say pull it off, but they've managed to not have just gigantic backlash because Adobe did the subscription thing.
John:
They continue to sell it alongside.
John:
It's the type of thing where people, I think, mentally resist the notion of, why do I have to pay every year for this thing?
John:
But I think once they get on that train, and if you do subscription really well, if it's not just the same exact experience you had before, only now you pay every single year.
John:
If it's like, oh, well, now you get your updates instantly, and it's nice and clean, and you never have to worry about licensing.
John:
You can give all the benefits that you could possibly have with a subscription.
John:
If you can deliver on those benefits...
John:
I think it is possible to bring the IT guys in because the IT people are already paying like whatever the hell thing you pay Microsoft for.
John:
They're like, you get access to all of our software for free.
John:
And, you know, like those deals that they make with companies where you, okay, well, you license this and every year you pay this amount of money for your exchange server and you get an unlimited number of seats and any software in our library that you want, you can download license-free versions of it and distribute, you know.
John:
That is basically a subscription, but it has to be renegotiated and repurchased and stuff.
John:
It would be nicer if it was just automated through your computer and you're just connected to the big Microsoft servers and money flowed from your company into theirs every year.
John:
That's the dream.
Marco:
Isn't that what .NET originally meant?
Marco:
Wasn't the .NET initiative originally one of the names for their subscription plans?
John:
I don't think so.
John:
It's an umbrella term that covered many different things, but I always associated with the common language runtime and that whole big ball of wax.
Casey:
I thought it related to their Microsoft Live, before it was Microsoft Live or MSN Live, whatever they're calling it now.
Casey:
I think it was .NET Passport.
Casey:
That's what I'm thinking of.
Casey:
That was something else.
Casey:
Yeah, but to most people, .NET is .NET is .NET.
Casey:
Just like iCloud is iCloud is iCloud, even though under the hood, it's many different technologies doing many different things.
Casey:
I don't know.
Marco:
The point is, don't use iCloud.
John:
So there's another sad tweet of some person who got their app rejected because their iCloud download wouldn't complete.
John:
Oh, yeah, that was great.
John:
And they got rejected for that reason.
John:
Everyone's got their limit.
John:
And who knows if that was even what the actual problem ended up being, but that's what he thought it was.
John:
And so it's like, all right, well, I will now rip the guts out of my app and start over.
Marco:
When I pulled the print feature out of Instapaper's iOS apps, which actually, by the way, still angers three people who used it.
Marco:
So I developed this print feature.
Marco:
It got my app rejected twice.
Marco:
And then during one of the big iOS upgrades, I think going from four to five, something broke about it really badly.
Marco:
And I was just like, you know what, I've probably spent more time testing this feature, just using it in development, than all of my customers combined have used this feature.
John:
But now you've got a misleading name for it.
John:
It says right there, Instapaper.
John:
If it doesn't instantly turn things into paper, I'm one star.
John:
Useless.
Marco:
Well, I removed the feature, and three people got angry.
Marco:
But most people, I announced on Twitter, hey, I'm going to remove this feature because it's being problematic to support.
Marco:
And almost every response was, you can print from Instapaper?
Marco:
No one even knew that was there.
Marco:
And I have to wonder, and this is kind of office related, how many people print from iOS devices?
John:
I've never seen someone do it, nor have I ever done it myself.
Casey:
The only person I know that does it regularly is my father, who is very forward-thinking, but for some reason, he likes him some pieces of paper.
Casey:
And so I know he does that relatively often.
Casey:
He just hates trees, that's what it is.
Casey:
Apparently, he's a terrible, terrible man.
Casey:
He prints, or last I heard anyway, he prints from his iPad somewhat regularly, and from his iPhone as well, I think.
Casey:
But he just, I don't know, he's one of those people who just likes paper.
Marco:
I think AirPrint, it's one of those really cool technologies that's just come out way too late.
Marco:
It's like black CD-Rs.
Marco:
Remember those?
Marco:
The ones that had the black bottom surface?
Marco:
They would have been really cool if they came out like five years earlier.
John:
oh the playstation had uh colored ones too right yeah they were all black yeah but just like this this technology like air print is this is this awesome technology like there's no more print drivers as long as your printer supports this one particular that's not a technology it is a uh it's a choice it's a business a business innovation sure like finally we have the leverage to force the damn printer manufacturers to stop making this byzantine zoo of crazy ass hardware and say no you
John:
You do it all yourself.
John:
We talk to you one way and you take it and you print it and I don't want to hear about it.
John:
You don't get to install any drivers.
John:
You don't get to do it.
John:
That's why printers have been so terrible.
John:
It's not a technology problem.
John:
It was a business problem because printers were made by various companies and operating systems were made by others and this thing called the driver exists and it was just never going to be
John:
a happy ending.
Marco:
Well, and most printers were like soft printers, like soft modems, where the printer itself would have very minimal computing power and would do almost no computations.
John:
Well, that's a recent innovation.
John:
That was actually an exciting thing.
John:
That was like, finally, it's going to solve this printing problem.
John:
We're going to make the printer super dumb.
John:
We're going to put all the smarts in the driver.
John:
That'll solve the printing problem, right?
John:
No.
John:
Just moved it around.
John:
What you really need to do is just say...
John:
you know that you don't get to install a driver this is what we're going to put out there you will receive it and you will print it and if you don't your printer will appear to be broken and that's it
Marco:
This is like the legacy computing podcast.
Marco:
It is.
Marco:
Like, do you want to talk about cassette tapes next?
John:
Yeah.
John:
Oh, sure.
John:
Why not?
John:
Rewinding them with a pencil.
John:
Pros and cons.
Marco:
Be kind.
Marco:
Rewind.
Marco:
Let's wrap it up.
Marco:
Thanks again to our sponsor, Squarespace.
Marco:
Go to squarespace.com slash ATP to get a free trial and credit us with that referral and check it out if you want to make a website.
Okay.
Marco:
now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin do we want to shill for people to review us on itunes yeah become those people let's do it yeah let's why don't you please review us on itunes if you like us and uh if you don't like us please email john and uh because you looked at how many reviews you have and you got depressed because there's so few of them because there aren't many
Marco:
Honestly, I usually forget to look at all.
Marco:
So I end up looking like once every, I don't know, two months or so usually at my iTunes reviews.
Marco:
But usually there aren't really that many usually.
John:
All right.
John:
So you hear that, reviewers, you don't understand anything about Marcos.
John:
He never looks.
John:
But I look all the time.
John:
So say nice things about me.
Casey:
As do I. There you go.
Casey:
I'm vain enough that I look regularly.
Casey:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C
Marco:
My favorite review is that one from the guy who's like, Marco isn't that bad on this particular podcast.
John:
Take what you can get.
John:
Seriously.