Spirited Defense of Pong
Casey:
Why did you make me download this stupid game?
John:
You should play this while rocking.
John:
You get an infant in your arms.
Marco:
Yeah, you can do it one-handed.
John:
One arm, baby holding, rock, bounce, walking, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, die.
John:
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, die.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So in the post show from the last episode, we kind of had a post show neutral.
Casey:
And I was talking or I thought I was talking completely hypothetically about cars for Aaron and myself, you know, now that Declan's around.
Casey:
And I don't know if...
Casey:
I made it clear that that entire conversation was completely hypothetical.
Casey:
And of course, what with this being us, everyone came out of the woodwork to give car recommendations or car anti-recommendations, you know, never buy this car, it's terrible, etc., which is certainly appreciated.
Casey:
But I don't think I made it clear that it was all just hypothetical.
Casey:
I mean, neither of us is going to get a car anytime soon.
Casey:
And I still love my BMW, and I plan to keep my BMW for at least a couple more years, if not longer than that.
Casey:
And as I think I said on the show, Erin loves her Mazda 6, and I think she'd probably rather give me up than the car.
Casey:
And, you know, who can blame her?
Casey:
So I did want to mention that.
Casey:
Additionally, a lot of people came out of the woodwork to say the Golf R wagon is a thing, or if you're not from the United States, the Estate.
Casey:
I believe that's right.
Casey:
And Saloon is a sedan.
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
And you're still saying golf, apparently, too?
Casey:
Yeah, golf, golf, whatever.
John:
What is that?
John:
That's not even an accent.
Casey:
Is it G-U or G-O?
Casey:
Isn't it a G-O-L-F?
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
So it's golf R. Yeah.
Casey:
Why is everyone saying that's wrong?
Casey:
You keep saying like the Gulf of Mexico.
Casey:
Oh, all right.
Casey:
Well, whatever.
Casey:
Anyway, the GR.
Casey:
Point being, I know that's a thing.
Casey:
The reason I didn't bring it up is because I don't suspect that we'll get it in the United States.
Casey:
And yes, I believe it was in Los Angeles briefly.
Casey:
For the purposes of the Los Angeles Motor Show, Auto Show, whatever, but the likelihood of that arriving in the States is slim to none.
Casey:
Additionally, people have suggested various Subarus, including the Outback, also known as the BMW 3GT, as well as the Subaru Forester.
Casey:
And I owned a Subaru in the past, and that car had its entire drivetrain replaced over the course of the 60 or 80,000 miles that I had it.
Casey:
And although I drive like a jerk, I don't drive like an animal.
Casey:
So I don't think it's my fault.
Casey:
And the likelihood of me getting another Subaru is not good.
Casey:
So thank you for all the recommendations for the cars that I'm not buying.
Casey:
And that will be enough of the car talk for now.
Marco:
You know, TIFF's 3GT has not had any parts on it replaced.
Marco:
It's actually going quite well.
Marco:
In fact, we use it for our Thanksgiving trip this past weekend.
Marco:
And it was glorious.
Marco:
I love all the luxuries of having, you know, like all like the weird little hooks and stuff in the trunk and all like the little latch points and little things that can move around plus the giant trunk space to begin with.
Marco:
It was quite pleasant.
Marco:
I think we're going to sell you and Aaron on one of these next time.
Marco:
You'll see.
Marco:
You're denying it now, but I bet once you actually see it and give it a chance, and once Aaron sees it and gives it a chance, I bet we can convert you guys.
Casey:
That's not likely.
Casey:
You may be able to get me, maybe, but there's no chance you'll get Aaron because I think she thinks it looks too much like a wagon, which she doesn't like.
Casey:
And beyond that, I don't think she particularly wants a BMW, much to my chagrin.
Casey:
I don't know, that word I'm thinking of.
Casey:
It's pronounced shagride.
Yeah.
Casey:
Much to my dismay, let's go with that.
Casey:
In no small part because all BMW drivers are jerks, myself extremely included, and she doesn't want to associate with them.
Marco:
Anyway, sorry, enough of the car talk.
Marco:
You want to tell us about something that's cool?
Marco:
I would love to.
Marco:
In fact, this week, we have a fourth sponsor, and it's a holiday miracle.
Marco:
It's definitely not because of a clerical error last week.
Marco:
It was definitely a holiday miracle that's the reason we have four sponsors this week.
Marco:
Our first sponsor this week is Studio Neat, once again, with a whole bunch of cool stuff.
Marco:
So if you go to studioneat.com slash ATP, they've made a really cool ATP holiday cocktail guide for us.
Marco:
and they've made you got to check out this page i mean first of all the pigs looks incredible because they have incredibly good design skills over there uh go to studioneat.com slash atp and they have actually made custom drinks they've made the casey list the john siracusa the marco arment you can tell they actually listen to our show and actually know us so the casey list is a vodka drink the john siracusa is non-alcoholic and is based on sprite yeah
Casey:
That made me laugh so hard when they showed this to me, when Tom and Dan from Studio Neat showed this to me.
Casey:
The John Syracuse, it was far and away my favorite.
Marco:
Well, because I was a little concerned because I saw this when we weren't on the air when I saw this.
Marco:
And when I first saw they made drinks for the three of us, I thought, oh, well, I don't know if John's going to want to be associated with an alcoholic drink.
Marco:
And I saw, oh, no, it's Sprite.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
John, is that a correct assessment?
John:
I was happy that they made an alcoholic, but I'm not a big fan of mint.
John:
I'm entirely sure I would actually like this one.
John:
But if the drink is supposed to embody me more than be a drink that I like, then I don't know, maybe it's a combination.
John:
It might work.
John:
I've never I haven't tried this.
John:
I can't say whether or not it works as a drink.
Casey:
Well, similarly, I don't know if I'd like a Moscow mule.
Casey:
I mean, if you look at the constituent ingredients, it seems like something I would enjoy, but I don't know that I've ever had one.
Casey:
So like, I know I hate old fashions, much to the dismay, not chagrin of Mike Hurley and Marco, but this sounds like it would be all right.
Marco:
I think it's funny.
Marco:
And mine is, of course, a coffee-based dessert drink, which sounds pretty good, if I can say.
Marco:
I think it's even better that John has a minor complaint about his.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
It wouldn't be the John Syracusa if the real John Syracusa didn't have a minor complaint about it.
John:
Well, I haven't talked about my vague dislike of mint things on the show before, so they can be forgiven for not knowing this tiny detail about me.
Casey:
Would you like to talk about that now, John?
John:
I would not.
Casey:
Would you talk about that now, John?
John:
No, we don't need to.
John:
We can move on.
John:
Fair enough.
Marco:
Well, we're still in the sponsor, right?
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
Sorry.
Marco:
My bad.
Marco:
No, we're going to come back to that at some point.
Marco:
Maybe not today.
Marco:
Maybe not tomorrow, but someday.
Marco:
Anyway, this is all at studioneat.com slash ATP.
Marco:
You got to look at this page.
Marco:
It's hilarious.
Marco:
They also have made a cocktail tool guide at cocktailtoolguide.com.
Marco:
And check that out as well.
Marco:
They've collected a whole bunch of gear, some stuff they make, some stuff that they don't make, and they don't care if they make it or not.
Marco:
They want you to have the best gear for making cocktails at home.
Marco:
And some of this stuff is really cool.
Marco:
And finally, they have this new thing called the Simple Syrup Kit.
Marco:
And it is exactly what it sounds like.
Marco:
It is a kit to help you make and store simple syrup.
Marco:
And honestly, when they first announced this, I was a little skeptical because I've made simple syrup before.
Marco:
It's sugar and water.
Marco:
And I thought, what could you possibly need a kit for to make this?
Marco:
Like, couldn't you make this in anything?
Marco:
And I have.
Marco:
And for years, I've been making my own simple syrup, usually for iced coffee recipes.
Marco:
And the fact is, making simple syrup by yourself, even though it is incredibly simple, it does have like two or three potential spots for annoyance.
Marco:
And I watched the video and I saw the simple syrup kit tonight.
Marco:
And I'm like, actually, that fixes those annoyances.
Marco:
Like, I got a hand to these guys.
Marco:
I thought there was no room for a dedicated product in that space, but they made one.
Marco:
And it looks pretty good, I gotta say.
Marco:
I mean, check this out.
Marco:
These guys really have a knack for taking things that maybe you didn't think you needed.
Marco:
And then once you have them, you're like, wow, of course I needed this.
Marco:
This is great.
Marco:
How did I live without this?
Marco:
Check out Studio Neat.
Marco:
And you got to look at their cocktailtoolguide.com as well as the studioneat.com slash ATP, where they create these awesome cocktails for each of us.
Marco:
and uh really they they are they're really funny i gotta say and the pages are beautiful the video they shot is beautiful of the simple syrup kit check them out they they're they make great stuff um as i mentioned last time they have the cosmonaut they have the glyph um they have the neat ice kit all this great stuff they make studio neat.com slash atp
Casey:
Yeah, and as a final quick addendum to that, Tom and Dan are the two guys that run Studio Neat, and they're friends of ours, and they're super, super, super awesome people.
Casey:
So if you're going to throw a little bit of money their way, they're well-deserving, and the stuff they make is awesome.
Casey:
I don't know if we mentioned, but you get 10% off if you use the code ATP.
Casey:
And forgive me if we already talked about that.
Marco:
Yes, forgive me for not talking about that.
Marco:
That's very important.
Marco:
Use coupon code ATP for 10% off anything from the Studio Neat store.
Marco:
So thanks a lot to Studio Neat once again.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
What are we talking about tonight?
Casey:
There's not that much going on.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Well, that was a good show.
Casey:
Thanks a lot to our four sponsors this week.
Casey:
Marco makes his own news, right?
Casey:
Yeah, you could say that.
Casey:
Marco, what's been a bee in your bonnet these days?
Marco:
Well, I had the thing about the push notification ad, which was, I don't know how much of a topic that really is.
John:
It's really a topic.
John:
You did a whole blog post about it.
John:
You tweet about it all day.
John:
Let's just say about you making your own news.
John:
That could have come and gone, but you felt like you needed to chime in about it.
John:
And so you wrote a big, long blog post about it and then argued with people on Twitter about it.
Marco:
It was 195 words, most of which were not about that particular one.
John:
Really?
John:
I thought it was longer.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
There was an image in the middle that might have thrown you off.
Marco:
Make yourself useful and put a link in the show notes then.
Marco:
So basically, the other day, Apple sent out two push notifications advertising the red App Store promotion from the App Store app.
Marco:
So if you had notifications enabled for the App Store...
Marco:
If I remember correctly, I don't think I ever actually enabled those.
Marco:
I don't think I was ever asked to.
Marco:
Maybe the first time I launched the App Store app on some OS version, maybe it asked me and I said yes.
Marco:
But I don't usually say yes to things like that.
Marco:
And mine were enabled.
Marco:
So I don't know what that was about.
Marco:
If it's actually enabled by default and it never asks you up front, that's kind of crappy.
Marco:
But I can't say for sure whether it was that way or not.
John:
Yeah, I was I was wondering why I didn't see this.
John:
And now that you mentioned this, I realized that the whole time I was reading your tweets in your post, I was like, well, I didn't get that because I don't have an iPhone.
John:
Right.
John:
But I realized I do have an iPhone.
John:
And then wait, I have an iPhone.
John:
Why didn't I get that?
John:
And I realized the reason I didn't get it is because anytime I set up any iOS device, I go to the notification screen, turn everything off and then selectively turn on like the two apps that I want to allow to send me notifications, which are.
John:
I don't know, like messages and... Is there another one?
John:
Messages and messages?
John:
I can't think of anything offhand, but certainly not App Store.
Marco:
Well, anyway, so regardless of whether it was... If it's on by default, it's even worse.
Marco:
But regardless...
Marco:
What I was pointing out – and it kind of got – the idea kind of got muddied a little bit because the message they sent was promoting something for the Product Red charity thing, which is – and I don't – honestly, I don't know the details of how the Product Red Corporation works.
Marco:
I think it's not technically a nonprofit and there's some kind of weird stuff.
Marco:
I don't know the details.
Marco:
It doesn't matter.
Marco:
And please don't email us.
Marco:
It really doesn't matter for the conversation.
Marco:
A lot of people took issue with me complaining about a push notification that is for this good cause.
Marco:
And the fact is, I'm not taking issue with notification.
Marco:
I'm taking issue with... Or rather, I'm not taking issue with the content of it.
Marco:
I'm taking issue with the fact that Apple sent a promotional push notification.
Marco:
And there is specifically a rule in the App Store guidelines, rule number 5.6...
Marco:
And the rule says that apps cannot use push notifications to send... I forget the exact wording, but it's something like marketing or promotions of any kind.
Marco:
This rule, if you've ever had any apps installed on any iPhone ever, and you've ever said yes to push notifications to anything besides messages, John...
Marco:
You almost certainly know that apps violate this rule constantly.
Marco:
Apps always send push notifications for advertising purposes.
Marco:
There's always like, hey, come back to our game.
Marco:
New bombs are 50% off today only.
Marco:
Like crap like that.
Marco:
And it is so incredibly common.
Marco:
And it's really unfortunate.
Marco:
And so my post was basically saying...
Marco:
This is really unfortunate how common this is, that it is against the rules, and Apple doesn't really enforce that rule.
Marco:
And to some degree, they kind of can't enforce that rule.
Marco:
And we talked about this a little bit before.
Marco:
And now it's even worse that Apple itself doesn't follow that rule.
Marco:
And so that's my main complaint here, after all this preamble, that yeah, it was a little thing.
Marco:
Yeah, it was essentially for a good cause.
Marco:
Yeah, it was only two push notifications sent in one hour on one day.
Marco:
this is really setting a bad example it's setting a bad precedent and it's showing once again this is not that different from the U2 album being shoved into our libraries this is not as bad as that I don't think but it's
Marco:
This is Apple showing that they don't respect or they don't see that this is a boundary that they shouldn't cross.
Marco:
Like, an advertising push notification, to me, is really offensive.
Marco:
And I totally understand why...
Marco:
You know, the Target app or the Kohl's app or some kind of crappy news sites app.
Marco:
Yeah, they will do it.
Marco:
Of course they'll do it.
Marco:
They're crappy retailers and they're shameless because most giant retailers have to be shameless to survive.
Marco:
And certainly news sites generally do as well.
Marco:
So that's fine.
Marco:
If somebody with really terrible low standards with no self-respect and who doesn't respect their customers either wants to spam people, that's not a surprise.
Marco:
But those are not usually terms used to describe Apple or their products and especially things that are the default in their products.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
What worries me here is that not only is Apple setting a bad example that this practice is okay by doing it themselves, but also that it just shows that Apple is... There's stuff getting through.
Marco:
And Apple is not one person.
Marco:
Apple has lots of people.
Marco:
Maybe some of them don't follow the same standards or make mistakes sometimes.
Marco:
That's fine.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
It's a worrying trend.
Marco:
First, we had the U2 album that somehow got out, and no one was able to stop that and say, you know what, this is kind of a bad way to do this.
Marco:
And now we have this message.
Marco:
And again, it's a little thing, but we're starting to see a trend here, and that worries me.
Marco:
It worries me that Apple doesn't seem to respect this boundary and doesn't seem to think this is a problem.
John:
I think my issue with it is not so much everything that you said about push notifications and boundaries and the YouTube album and everything.
John:
It's part of a pattern of behavior with Apple and the App Store where if this was the only thing that happened, it probably wouldn't have bothered me that much and it would have just been a silly aside.
John:
But this is happening in the context of an Apple with an App Store and a long history of
John:
really weird, arbitrary, nonsensical enforcement or half enforcement of some rules when they feel like it, but not other rules.
John:
Like if Apple didn't have that pattern of behavior where an app will be found in the app store for three years and then get pulled and Apple will get pulled, then put in after a bunch of stories appearing websites, you know, or they'll reject an app for reasons that don't seem to make sense or be fair, you know, like that whole history is,
John:
And the fact that all of us are kind of close to people who write applications and come in contact with those sort of weird arbitrary rules and all that stuff over the years, that makes this thing more egregious because it's like they're rubbing it in our face.
John:
Yes, we know the rules don't really apply to Apple because they run the store.
John:
We're aware of that.
John:
But it's like...
John:
are at least for me anyway my my sort of bitterness and anger by proxy because i don't even have an app in the app store but i know a lot of people who do when i read these stories i'm like this person did everything right they made a great app they tried to do something it seems if i could never predicted they would have got a pull it's not a borderline thing seems like it's exactly what apple wanted and then the app gets pulled for some crazy reason and apple doesn't care and it's this person's livelihood and they spend all this time on it and they could not have predicted ahead of time that this would have been the result and yet now they could be potentially out uh
John:
All that time and money they spent developing the application now may be wasted for reasons that don't make sense.
John:
We all sit out here and try to divine what is Apple's motivation?
John:
What kind of store are they trying to make?
John:
Because they're sure as hell not going to tell us.
John:
They list all these rules, but they don't say why.
John:
And their decisions, you look at them and you try to figure out, based on this decision, they're trying to...
John:
not have a store where junky apps are on there?
John:
No, there's plenty of junky apps.
John:
Are they trying to not have a store where apps have advertising?
John:
No, they're trying to not have free apps.
John:
They don't want apps.
John:
It doesn't even make any sense.
John:
With the exception of some simple stuff like no porn apps, that kind of thing makes sense and they've been consistent on it.
John:
Almost everything else, I can't figure out what it is that they're aiming for.
John:
Why enforce this rule and not that one?
John:
Why come down here and not there?
John:
What is the shape of the App Store they're trying to make by these rules?
John:
So it just seems arbitrary.
John:
And in the context of all of that, then doing something like this just seems egregious.
John:
And it's not the incident.
John:
It's the surrounding sort of...
John:
sadness and the reason this incident is so galling you put the text of the uh the rule 5.6 in your uh your thing in case people think this is some big legalese thing or whatever here's the full text of of the of this rule uh and the app store guidelines apps cannot use push notifications to send advertising promotions or direct marketing of any kind
John:
That's it.
John:
That's the whole thing.
John:
There's not like 20 paragraphs of stuff.
John:
That's it.
John:
And it is not ambiguous.
John:
Advertising promotions or direct marketing of any kind.
John:
This is clearly either it's an advertisement or it's a promotion or it's direct marketing.
John:
It's certainly one of those things like that.
John:
That pretty much covers all your bases.
John:
And so they do this one little thing like we were already kind of upset that, you know, they don't catch all these ads that are spamming us with, you know, come back to our store to buy as an app purchase.
John:
And then when they do it themselves, it's for me, it's not so much about the push notification, which I never even saw.
John:
It's about like someone at Apple had no problem doing this.
John:
And it's just it's just it's like just rubbing it in your face.
John:
And that's maybe that's like transference.
John:
Like it's not fair to come down on whatever this one little incident was.
John:
But really, it is.
John:
It's about it's about everything else that has to do with the App Store.
John:
And it's just being focused on this one.
John:
Maybe for Marco, it's also about the push notification.
John:
But for me, this is just, you know,
John:
the the flashpoint of a much larger sort of sadness about the app store do you think that people who aren't in our little circle of tech nerd people uh know or care anything about this specific notification like if they don't read sites that covered it as news so they don't read marco's blog they don't follow anyone on twitter
John:
But the notification did come on their phones.
John:
Did they even take note that it was – did they even notice?
Marco:
I mean I would imagine most people who have any reasonable number of apps installed probably get regular spam notifications.
Marco:
I mean so many apps send them, especially like big retailer and publisher apps.
John:
Or games.
John:
Free-to-play games are the worst.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
All of those apps, it is so incredibly common.
Marco:
This is mostly what Unposed is about.
Marco:
Abuse of this system and directly breaking this rule is so incredibly common that I would imagine...
Marco:
Most people who have a reasonable number of apps installed are accustomed to seeing push notification ads all the time.
Marco:
So they probably didn't think anything of this one.
Marco:
Maybe even the people who run the App Store promo team.
Marco:
Maybe the people at Apple who sent this ad...
Marco:
aren't even aware that it's against the review rules.
Marco:
These are different teams.
Marco:
They probably have.
Marco:
I bet the people who've sent that don't even know about this.
Marco:
And maybe on their phones, maybe they see enough push notification ads from other apps.
Marco:
They just think it's a normal, acceptable thing to do.
John:
Well, that's what I think.
John:
I think it is a normal, acceptable thing to do for other people.
John:
Again, that's why I'm getting back to the theory that it's our closeness to people who make and sell apps on the App Store and the history of Apple dealing with the App Store rules and those people that makes us in any way sensitive to this.
John:
Whereas I think other people who don't know anyone who makes apps, don't care what it takes to make apps, don't care what the rules are for the App Store, this totally disappears into the noise.
John:
Noise that is mostly not of Apple's making, maybe just through their negligence of not enforcing this rule.
John:
on other applications which as you pointed out somewhere maybe in the blog it's really hard to enforce this and apple historically has not been good at sort of crowdsourcing this kind of enforcement because basically when you're reviewing the app if you review the app and you never get an ad push notification
John:
you can't determine whether the ad will never send a push notification.
John:
The app is approved, it goes into the store, then here come the push notifications to be approved.
John:
It's trivially easy to do that.
John:
So there needs to be some mechanism whereby people can report
John:
notifications but i think is this you also said like you can't how do you you don't put that in the ui to say report this notification as spam or something because that kind of mucks it up and it's like it's kind of like the maps thing all over again where people were trying to send corrections when apple had things in the wrong spot and apple was not good at integrating those corrections at least initially into improving the map data this is not apple's forte so if they are going to have a sort of very clear unambiguous rule against push notification ads they also need some mechanism for enforcement if
John:
independent of what of them sending it themselves which i and i totally buy what marco said is that the people who sent it either didn't know this was a rule or didn't care uh and both i think are equally likely but again i think the only reason that it's talked about in our circles is because of our former contact with the app store and it has poisoned us on this entire issue everyone else doesn't care at all because their entire life is dismissing stupid notifications about come back to the game now because you're seven sprouts of
John:
and you need to pluck them and you can get this new 50 gems or 20% off, whatever.
Marco:
We shouldn't just accept that, oh, well, this rule is violated all the time, so we might as well not even try to enforce it.
Marco:
That's not good enough to me.
Marco:
I've heard a few people say that, like, oh, well, this is too common.
Marco:
Who cares?
Marco:
It's just one notification.
Marco:
And the fact is it isn't just one notification.
Marco:
And the entire experience of your phone, of using your phone,
Marco:
changes in a pretty important and non-subtle way if you routinely get ad notifications like that's that is not a small thing just wait until they start showing up on your watch right like that that is not a small thing notifications should matter you know or you you should at least be allowed to treat them as if they matter whether you do or not another story but like it should it is an interruption to you
Marco:
It is literally pushed.
Marco:
You don't ask for it.
Marco:
It is literally pushed to your device at any time.
Marco:
It alerts you.
Marco:
It is meant to interrupt you to show you something that you care about seeing.
Marco:
An ad is never going to be one of those things.
Marco:
And the idea that, oh, well, Apple can't really enforce this very easily, and lots of people break the rule, so we don't need to even try to enforce the rule.
Marco:
No, that is not good enough, and that is not...
Marco:
Like, Apple shouldn't think that's good enough.
Marco:
And what worries me is whenever there's any sign that maybe they do think it's good enough.
Marco:
And I think that's why this irritated me so much.
John:
And see, the thing is, even though Apple is bad at this, at sort of crowdsourcing, a type of thing that can't be done in app review, really, because it's so easy to circumvent.
John:
It has to be sort of done in the field, and they have to collect that information.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And most people don't realize app review only spends a few minutes with each app.
John:
Yeah, so the other alternative is to collect all the information and that Apple is not good at.
John:
but the other part of it they're in such a powerful position to if they can get any kind of collection they're in such a powerful position to enforce it because all they have to do is kind of have a sort of you know i don't know three strikes you're out or some sort of demerit based system where you know the first time all right so what maybe you didn't know about this rule maybe you didn't see this in the guideline by the way app developer we noticed that a
John:
uh maybe confirm with the app developer is this the case or these people i don't know how you determine authenticity because it's so easy to fake this like or whatever but in consultation with the things that hey you know not an automated kind of youtube is taking down your movie because someone was playing copyrighted music in the background right but in a in a human to human way which i think they can afford to do with developer relations hey we got a lot of complaints about your app sending an ad uh somehow somehow collect those things and say to the person you know you're not supposed to do that it says this guideline okay my bad
John:
that's one strike and the second time they do it is a like you know hey we told you about this before and it seems like you're still doing it uh you really need to stop doing that because if we get more reports of you doing again we're going to pull you out from the store and then whether it's three strikes because it's a baseball analogy or something entirely different like they are totally in a position to talk to the people about something because it's a willful violation it's not like oh i accidentally used something that calls a private api like those things happen all the time people aren't doing that intentionally there's no accidental push notifications for ads happening
John:
Right.
John:
Maybe once you don't know about it, maybe twice.
John:
Oh, you didn't quite get it worked out, but like three or four or five times, or maybe it resets after a year or whatever.
John:
They are in such a powerful position to tell anybody in the app store, you need to stop this.
John:
And they don't need to be perfect.
John:
They don't need to catch every single one, but it has to be, there has to be repercussions right now.
John:
People are terrified to make it.
John:
And we'll talk about this maybe the next topic, terrified to make notification center widgets and stuff in iOS because they're afraid they're going to get pulled.
John:
But nobody's afraid to send push notifications because there's no repercussions.
John:
And Apple has all the power.
John:
They can, at their leisure, whenever they want, according to whatever schedule they want, put the fear of Apple into every single developer and say, yeah, we may just pull your app if you keep doing that.
John:
But they don't.
John:
There's no consequences.
John:
They don't collect this data.
John:
There's no three strikes policy.
John:
It's just, you know, it's completely falling through the cracks.
Casey:
Well, that's the thing.
Casey:
And you hit the nail on the head and that they're enforcing the wrong stuff.
Casey:
They're tearing apart all of these today widgets, which maybe we should take a pause and then talk about that, rather than going after all these ridiculous push notifications.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
you know, a lot of people have called for, and I think they're right, you know, like you, I think one of you just said this, but having some way of reporting them.
Casey:
And I think it was Paul Haddad had said, you know, if you do, what is it?
Casey:
A right to left swipe.
Casey:
Did I get that correct?
Casey:
Anyway, it doesn't matter.
Casey:
If you do the swipe, the one direction to, to take action on
Casey:
the particular push notification you just got.
Casey:
Well, let's use swipe in the other direction to like report for spam or something along those lines.
Casey:
And I don't think that's a bad idea.
Casey:
And I don't think most regular users have any idea that you can get pretty granular with your push notification settings more so than almost anything else I can think of in iOS.
Casey:
And and so I think a lot of people just live with all the spam.
Casey:
And that begs the question, you know, if there's this much spam coming onto their phones, at what point do people start feeling like that degrades the experience?
Casey:
Well, I love my iPhone, except that it's constantly buzzing with weird messages that I really don't care about.
Casey:
And I wish I could make them go away.
Casey:
You know, I don't know.
Casey:
Marco, you want to tell us about something that's cool?
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Harry's, a shave good enough to gift.
John:
You know what I like best about the Harry's handle, the shaving handle thing?
John:
It's not shaped like some part of a transformer.
John:
It's not like I'm holding a tiny skinny robot in my hand.
John:
I don't know when that started.
John:
I think it started even when I was a teenager.
John:
The razor handles had to look like transformers.
John:
It doesn't make any sense.
John:
Make it comfortable.
Marco:
Am I supposed to say H so the British people understand what I'm saying, even when I spell it out?
Casey:
The way they complain about hover, you probably should.
Marco:
H-A-R-R-Y-S dot com.
Marco:
Harries.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So do you want to talk about today, Widgets?
Casey:
Because as if this episode wasn't grumpy enough, let's get even grumpier.
Casey:
So one of the friends of the show, Greg Pierce, writes an iOS app called Drafts.
Casey:
And he had a pretty cool Today widget, from what I gather, where there are several buttons that will let you do several different things, including start a new draft in the app.
Casey:
And...
Casey:
Apparently, he was told by Apple, was it today or yesterday, recently, that if he wants to continue to have his app in the App Store, he needs to take away those buttons from his Today widget, which was effectively the entire Today widget.
Casey:
So here it is.
Casey:
He's getting told you cannot have anything really interactive in the Today widget.
Casey:
That's not fair.
Casey:
Anything that involves like creation.
Casey:
I forget how he phrased it.
Casey:
I don't have the tweet in front of me, but it was something along the lines of,
Casey:
It's it's reviewing data only.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Well, so and I think we need to be very clear on this because a lot of the tweets and stuff flying around have not been.
Marco:
And Greg clarified this, too.
Marco:
But it's important that if we're talking about this, we're talking about the right thing.
Marco:
So it appears and unfortunately, this seems to be constantly shifting.
Marco:
But it appears that the reason why Apple is not letting them have those buttons in the app is not because they are buttons necessarily.
Marco:
It is because they launch the app from the widget to complete a task or to do a task in the app.
Marco:
And that is what Apple is saying you can't do.
Marco:
Whether you agree with that or not, we can talk about.
Marco:
But Apple is not saying you can't have buttons.
Marco:
They're saying you can't launch the app from the extension to complete a task.
John:
Was that something that was known beforehand or they just decide that now or seemingly make it up?
Marco:
They seemingly made it up.
Marco:
Yeah, I've heard.
Marco:
And yes, and, you know, Monty underscore underscore in the chat room is saying dash Evernote does that exactly, Marco.
Marco:
I know that.
Marco:
And there are other apps that do that.
Marco:
This is, as John was saying earlier, part of the problem with app review that a lot of times the rules are not enforced consistently.
Marco:
And a lot of times like Evernote might have been approved and they made like a little note to their boss saying, hey, we might want to consider the policy on whether they can do this or not.
Marco:
And then, you know, eventually they make that decision and then drafts get hit by it and then maybe Evernote will get hit by it, you know, in the future next time they try to update or maybe Apple will send them a pleasant phone call.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
But the point is these rules are evolving and it's really a bad scene for all parties involved.
Marco:
I think Apple is obviously, you know, Apple is never going to say these are the rules, they are set in stone and they're complete.
Marco:
They even say in the rules document, I think it says in the intro that it's like a living document and it will be changed over time and they're going to change their mind on rules, they're going to figure out new rules.
John:
The fact that they change over time, like we'd expect them to change over time, to change in response to changing markets, to be refined and made more specific and clarify things that are unclear.
John:
That's why it's so important to do the thing that Apple seems not to do that well, which is explain the motivations.
John:
Because if you say, here's a set of rules, and what we're trying to do with these rules is...
John:
is and then explain their motivations because the motivations let you say well the rule doesn't say anything about this specifically but it doesn't violate the spirit of the law we have the letter of the law we don't necessarily have the spirit is there a good chance this this is like borderline and might get rejected or you know usually you can tell if you're trying to skirt a rule like you know you're doing that but sometimes you're just like the example i just put in the show notes is uh james thompson's uh p calc where he made a
John:
uh pcal because a calendar application calculator for ios and the mac uh and he made a little calculator in the in the today widget you know just a number pad with plus minus multi you know it's a calculator right and i bet the whole time he was making that he's like boy this is a perfect example of a today widget because it just so happens that an extremely simplified version of the functionality of my application fits within a today widget because you know the count the big calculator app
John:
It's very complicated.
John:
It's got a customizable keyboard and, you know, a tape and scientific notation and programmable functions like that.
John:
But I can give you a simple add a bunch of numbers together thing here.
John:
And he got rejected.
John:
And I haven't talked to him about this, so I don't know whether this is the case.
John:
But from from seeing his tweets about it, it seems like he spent the entire time since WWDC, since iOS 8 was announced until now working on this widget.
John:
Never in a million years thinking this widget is going to get rejected because you're not allowed to have calculators as in a today widget.
John:
Right.
John:
It just didn't even occur to him because looking at the rules, there's nothing from what he could define from the spirit of the rules that said this type of thing would cause it to be rejected.
John:
now i'm pretty sure this was fairly quickly reversed i think it's back in the store now or whatever that's correct but it was it was reversed after we all loudly publicized it yeah after we all you know he because he's he's a well-known developer a long time apple developer there was lots of stories is that why it got reversed maybe maybe not maybe it was just a mistake or whatever but that type of experience where you where you think you're doing exactly what apple wants like you you're coming home from wwc and you're like boy i'm totally on board with this thing i'm gonna make a
John:
a great i'm going to take advantage of these new apis you made like that's what wdc is trying to get you to do here here's this new software here are these new apis now go out there and make something great with it and you do it and it's just like nope reject it you're like what do you mean reject it and you know you have no recourse you know there's the appeals process but like it's so difficult to talk to someone and you know and you just don't understand you say i didn't think i was skirting a rule i didn't think i was even close to any lines nothing in these things would indicate to me that i would ever get rejected and you just get rejected and
John:
would it have been reversed if he wasn't such a well-known person in the apple community maybe maybe not you're never getting an explanation of why it happened or at least not a public one and there's just nothing in there you know what are you trying to do with these what are you trying to prevent from happening you're launching another application no are you putting advertisements in there no are you putting a tiny little game inside there no it's just
John:
it's exposing some functionality your application it's like it's exactly what you think you're supposed to do so that type of stuff you know again frustration by proxy i don't have an app in the app store this doesn't affect me but it's just it makes me it makes me upset that this that this happens it's just it's like mismanagement it's like especially when it's immediately reversed it's just bad blood for no good reason
Marco:
And I think what you just said about, oh, well, he wasn't putting a little game in there or anything.
Marco:
I think that should be allowed, too.
Marco:
I think what we're seeing here is Apple is obviously still trying to figure out what the rules around this are.
Marco:
And I think the rules should have already been decided for the most part and should be pretty clear to them.
Marco:
And I think they are exerting a lot more like nanny state level control over this than is warranted because, you know, from their point and secondarily, maybe the reason they don't want apps to launch themselves or other apps from notifications or from the today view is
Marco:
Maybe there's a security angle on that.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
If there is a security angle on that, Apple should fix that security angle and then allow it.
Marco:
Because that's stupid.
Marco:
So maybe there's a security thing and that's the reason.
Marco:
We haven't been told that.
Marco:
But regardless, that's something worth fixing and then allowing.
Marco:
I think what we're seeing here is Apple saying, here's this great new system we've made, very powerful, but we're going to be extremely cautious so that we don't allow users to make a bad experience for themselves.
Marco:
That is Apple's typical MO.
Marco:
However, the way they've done it here is, first of all, the process of adding a Today widget to your Today view...
Marco:
is pretty deliberate like it doesn't like you you don't just install an app and all of a sudden it's automatically in your today view like that's that doesn't happen you have to manually go and add it and that's a process that i would imagine most users don't know how to do don't care to do and are certainly not going to be able doing accidentally too many times and not even knowing how they did it and it's considerably harder than say accepting push notifications for an app
Marco:
right yeah like the app can't just present a button that does this like you have to actually go into your today view and like go down go down like to like the edit area whatever it is and add it like you have to deliberately put these things there because of that so you have chosen to download this app you have chosen to add its widget to today view um
Marco:
I don't think Apple needs to be as protective of what's there because the user has chosen, put this here, please.
Marco:
This is so important to me.
Marco:
I want this in my today view because the today view, it doesn't scale well to having tons of crap there.
Marco:
You're going to be picking a small number of things to put there in all likelihood.
Marco:
So Apple's concern, if I had to guess, it's about keeping that simple and lightweight.
Marco:
But they don't have to do that because the process of adding those things is already so deliberate and difficult.
Marco:
And it doesn't handle having a lot in there just design-wise already that I think anything that an app is allowed to do in itself, it should be allowed to do there too.
Marco:
I don't think Apple is...
Marco:
is doing itself or its customers, and certainly not its developers, any favors by trying to say, well, you can put things here, and it's a UI view.
Marco:
You can render into it whenever you want, and you can have buttons and stuff, but we only want it to be for these quick glance kind of tasks.
Marco:
That's a really hard line to draw.
Marco:
We're seeing the problems with them trying to draw that line.
Marco:
And I think it's a bad idea to even try to draw that line.
Marco:
I think if somebody downloads a game, let's say it's a game that puts Pong in your notification center.
Marco:
It's a Pong game, and you can install the Pong Today widget, and you can play Pong in your Today view.
Marco:
That's not a great idea for a game, but someone's going to do it and make a billion dollars.
Marco:
I will take my royalty later.
Marco:
But if you want to do that as a user,
Marco:
Why does Apple have to say, no, you can't do that?
Marco:
That's not what this is for.
Marco:
You have to go to the app for that.
Marco:
You chose to get the app.
Marco:
You chose to put it in Notification Center.
Marco:
You chose to bring it down and play Pong with it.
Marco:
This is not something that I see ripe for abuse from developers if you let them just do whatever they want within their little view there.
Casey:
Do you suspect that AppReview is part of Federici's organization?
Marco:
If I had to guess, I would say Schiller's because it's part of developer relations, I think, which is part of Schiller's.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
I agree.
Casey:
Well, could it be something as simple as, you know, as far as engineering is concerned, it's the Wild West in a good way, not in a bad way.
Casey:
But Schiller's group is like, uh-uh.
Yeah.
John:
uh-uh that's no good but chiller well all right so eddie q is the app store guy right yeah running the app store all right and so so p calc the weird thing with p calc as jason snell pointed out in the chat room is that uh p calc was accepted p calc was promoted with like the big banner and the app store with the big artwork and everything accepted to the app store promoted and then rejected it was rejected while it was in the promotion
John:
Right.
John:
So people who are responsible for saying, hey, here's an application that demonstrates like this is a great iOS app.
John:
This shows a developer is using our new APIs, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
John:
Like they choose what to promote.
John:
That's Schiller's organization, maybe.
John:
But Eddie Q runs the store where it's road.
John:
I don't understand how it's working, but it's it seems entirely plausible that one hand didn't know what the other hand was doing on the one hand.
John:
Some people are picking out applications they think are worthy to promote in the app store.
John:
And on the other hand, someone else is rejecting pCal because they think you shouldn't have a calculator thing in the state.
John:
And then eventually those people got together and maybe talked and then the app was unrejected.
John:
But it just it it's not it does not inspire confidence in the organization when when stuff like that happens, because like, guys, talk to each other, figure out, you know, what's going on here.
John:
And especially since, again, we're trying to divine the motivations for like, could we have foreseen this?
John:
Is there anything in what Apple has ever said from any public public or private communication about today widgets that would indicate to you beforehand that?
John:
that this thing was even close to any boundaries of something that he didn't want to have, because it's not, you know, as, as much as you, your, your spirited defense of the pong game, right.
John:
Because of the way today center widgets work.
John:
I think anybody doing that could have a reasonable expectation that you were outside the bounds of what today center widget is supposed to be, because it's so far out of the bounds of anything that Apple has shown.
John:
But,
John:
Apple has shown things that are exactly like a calculator type thing, like a small, vaguely interactive graph or some information that you can swipe to do something or a couple of buttons you can press.
John:
You know, it's adding numbers for crying out loud.
John:
I mean, I know there are technical limitations on TodayCenter, but just in terms of like TodayCenter, whatever the hell these things are called.
John:
Limitations on like when your app is going to be instantiated and how quickly you're going to be torn down.
John:
And like, you know, you're not...
John:
You can't cram in.
John:
You can't take a long time to initialize.
John:
You don't have a long time to tear yourself down when you're getting pulled out.
John:
There are limitations on putting it.
John:
But if you're working within that context, something like a procedurally drawn Pong game or a calculator that adds numbers, it's perfectly fine.
John:
So it's not, it just doesn't make any sense.
John:
And so when Apple does stuff like that, this is the bad blood I was talking about.
John:
When stuff like that happens, you're like, it's not a big deal, but it gave one developer a lot of stress for a day or two and doesn't make any sense.
John:
And it makes it look like Apple is an organization that doesn't have its stuff together, you know?
Marco:
It does have a chilling effect on other development.
Marco:
I don't have any plans for Today Widget because I don't think it makes a lot of sense for Overcast, but if I had plans for it, I would certainly be reconsidering them now because I don't know.
Marco:
As a developer,
Marco:
Should I invest a few months into doing something that will very possibly get my app rejected in the future and have to pull it out?
Marco:
It's such a big risk.
Marco:
Especially for apps like Drafts, like Peacock, where it's a bigger undertaking, it's a bigger selling feature.
Marco:
I don't know that I would be developing for Notification Center widgets right now.
Marco:
It's just not worth the risk.
Casey:
All right, why don't you tell us about something that's cool that maybe will make us a little happier than this fiasco.
Casey:
Have you ever built a website, Casey?
Casey:
You know, once or twice.
Marco:
Building a website used to take a long time.
Marco:
You would just set it all up yourself manually, spend all day troubleshooting random errors and stuff.
Marco:
If you ever had to edit the site, it'd be pretty easy to break your links or even break the whole site, break the layout, put in like a space in the wrong place and break your PHP file.
Marco:
Sometimes even just changing the font color would be a huge headache.
Marco:
Now we have Squarespace and you can build beautiful websites with it without a sweat.
Marco:
If you're new to Squarespace, check it out today.
Marco:
If you've been hearing about Squarespace for a long time, well, now there's more with the brand new Squarespace 7.
Marco:
Squarespace 7 has a whole bunch of really new features, including a redesigned user interface.
Marco:
They have integration with Google apps for your domain.
Marco:
So you can have like your Squarespace domain registered there.
Marco:
You can have your apps there.
Marco:
You can have email, spreadsheets, documents, all that set up through Squarespace with the domain that's hosted by them.
Marco:
They also have a new partnership with Getty Images.
Marco:
So you can get 40 million high quality photos for your site.
Marco:
I mean, you probably don't need all 40 million of them, but I bet there's something in there that you need.
Marco:
You need an image for your site.
Marco:
If you've ever tried to buy like a stock photo or officially commercially licensed photo from somewhere else, it's usually very complicated to get the right license.
Marco:
It's very expensive.
Marco:
I've done this for the magazine.
Marco:
I know how expensive that can be and how complicated that can be.
Marco:
They worked out a great partnership with Getty so that you can pick any of these 40 million high quality photos for a post, for a header image, for a background image, whatever you need for just $10 an image.
Marco:
It's really a fantastic deal.
Marco:
And they take care of all of it for you.
Marco:
Browse right in the Squarespace interface.
Marco:
It's really great.
Marco:
Anyway, they also have 15 new design templates with Squarespace 7.
Marco:
They have a great new feature called Cover Pages.
Marco:
This is basically, you can, it's either like an intro page for your full site or it can be your site.
Marco:
You can have like a nice single one-page site.
Marco:
You can put them up temporarily or permanently.
Marco:
So you can do like a splash page to have promoting a sale you're having or promoting a special or promoting a new post you did or a new video you made.
Marco:
or you can just have a nice trendy intro page to your full site they make it beautiful they make it easy and i've i've seen this myself it is really quite impressive and this this kind of stuff used to be really hard and now it's really easy with squarespace all this very simple very powerful beautiful designs you can customize them as much as you want you can be a nerd like us and actually inject html css and javascript right into the template and
Marco:
Uh, or you can use their drag and drop wizards and it's all very easy.
Marco:
Uh, it is great.
Marco:
I love using Squarespace and there's so much there that like I, you know, our site for the show is built on Squarespace.
Marco:
I, I built a Squarespace site for, uh, for my kids preschool.
Marco:
I mean, it's so, just so easy to use.
Marco:
There are so many use cases for it that you don't have, you know, even if you know how to
Marco:
You don't have to build every website you make.
Marco:
And this is, I would recommend using Squarespace for so many things that previously you'd try to do yourself or you try to install some hosted CMS somewhere.
Marco:
Anyway, you can start a free trial today with no credit card required.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Anyway, go to squarespace.com and use offer code ATP to get 10% off your first purchase and to show your support for our show.
Marco:
We thank Squarespace once again for sponsoring our show.
Marco:
Squarespace, start here, go anywhere.
Casey:
Do you want to go totally meta and talk about podcasting?
Casey:
Because people love that.
Marco:
So our friend Alan Pike of Steam Clock Software wrote a great post that we'll link to in the show notes.
Marco:
They basically considered and started researching the possibility of making a podcast double-ender recording app.
Marco:
And in the post, they go through their rationale for why they wanted it, why they think there was a market, and
Marco:
And then as they did more research into the market and ran some numbers, they realized they actually shouldn't make it because there just aren't enough podcasters to really support it financially.
Marco:
The market is just not big enough for it.
Marco:
So our friend Rob Ryan at Martian Craft...
Marco:
wrote kind of a follow-up, maybe a counterpoint argument to it that was really good, basically saying you're targeting professionals, somebody who uses an app to do their work, basically, to make their job possible or easier or better.
Marco:
And when you're targeting professionals, it's easier to charge more money.
Marco:
And so he was saying maybe there's a way to charge more money to the small number of podcasters who might use such a thing and fund it that way.
Marco:
What did you think of these when you read them?
Casey:
Yeah, I think so.
Casey:
which is a much better way of going about things than just throwing something against the wall and seeing if it sticks.
Casey:
And I thought it was a really great post.
Casey:
And then Rob Rhines was equally great because he was saying, well, if you spin it one or two other ways that you may or may not have considered Alan, there may be something there.
Casey:
And certainly...
Casey:
Both of them have built successful businesses by making intelligent business decisions.
Casey:
And I think Martian craft is quite a bit bigger than steam clock.
Casey:
So you could make an argument that Rob is coming from definitely a place of, of knowledge and experience.
Casey:
Not that Alan isn't, but yeah, I think both of them make excellent points and whether or not you care about how the three of us make our podcast works.
Casey:
It's still an interesting thought process with regard to entering a new market.
John:
When I read the original post about, hey, we're thinking about making this podcasting app, which is something I think we've talked about on the show before, about the weird hodgepodge of things we use to do the podcast and how one app that put it all together would be nicer.
John:
But we always said the same thing as Alan did in this thing.
John:
Well, one app that puts it all together would be nicer, but the total market for people who need this app is small.
John:
And
John:
You know, probably those people, even if you sold every single one of them, it's probably still not a viable business, which is what these two posts are about.
John:
But the real thing that I think about when reading the original post about this app is just how incredibly hard it would be to do this app well, because it encompasses so many other applications that are in themselves complicated, hard to do applications.
John:
And connecting things together is, I think, even harder than making a good audio editor, a good audio recorder, you know, a good, you know,
John:
Skype-type application, whatever you want to call those, voice communication.
John:
Like, trying to either integrate multiple apps or build those things in and have them all work together is just incredibly hard to do a good job on.
John:
So I think that just the development job on this would...
John:
I'm not going to say it's harder than Photoshop because Photoshop is a very full-featured application, but it's harder than Photoshop 1.0, I can tell you that, right?
John:
To do all the things that we do with these separate applications as well as we're able to do them with these separate applications in the first version because that's what you would need.
John:
You'd be like...
John:
especially for a tech nerd type people.
John:
It's like, well, we get the job done now, but it would be nice if we didn't have these hassles.
John:
But how much money am I willing to give up for that?
John:
And that's what the other follow-up post is about.
John:
But also, how much quality am I willing to give up for integration?
John:
you're like well if i got this application and the pricing isn't a problem but i get better results when i use these seven different applications that i'm already using so is the downgrading control or quality or whatever for the 1.0 version of this product you know it's it's a tough sell even for the people who you know money is no object we don't care about the pricing
John:
You can make it really expensive.
John:
What are you giving me that is an improvement over what I have?
John:
And especially just out the gate, I just don't see how it's going to be as good as whatever system everyone's using.
John:
If you're going to sell to new people, hey, you don't know how to use these seven applications to make a podcast.
John:
It's really annoying.
John:
If you don't want to have to deal with that stuff or learn all that sort of witchcraft, get this one application.
John:
then I think you'd have a better shot at selling them because they don't know what it's like to use logic and Marco's weird audio aligner and Skype and all these other things that we use to sort of make this all work together.
John:
Uh, they don't know how to do all that.
John:
So you're, you're giving them a shortcut to getting up and running, but that market of people who want to do podcasting, uh, but don't want to learn all the other applications, like how many new podcasts are coming on the scene at this point and how many of those people have max and,
John:
You know, the whole idea of like, well, you'd be able to send someone a link and they'll download an application and that'll hook them into this app or whatever.
John:
Like, man, I would not want to try to make the first version of that application at any price, even if there was a huge market.
John:
So this application terrifies me from a development perspective because I think it would be really, really hard to do.
John:
And I still think no matter how you price it, the market is really small.
John:
Now, the one good thing it has going for it is there...
John:
for not for integrated applications but for sort of expert level applications there is a market for a really really difficult to use tool that is really capable but is also like full of bugs and the vendor is annoying like there's a long history of applications that you can think of some whatever application you use oh like logic
John:
avid logic you know even photoshop to some degree like those things exist so that must be a maybe that's less possible today than it was but i still think those those type of applications exist but i don't know if people want to be in that software even something like uh not final cut uh final draft is actually kind of a weird example of that where you know listen to those those uh john august podcasts where like there's one application and
John:
that everybody has to use, that got entrenched, and the vendor is not the best vendor, and people kind of have this love-hate relationship with it, but it's like it's the thing that everybody uses.
John:
Someone else suggested Pro Tools.
John:
That is a thing that happens.
John:
That's kind of like a dysfunctional customer...
John:
uh and software vendor relationship i feel like so i wouldn't i wouldn't want to go into that even though it appears to be a viable business quark express is another example that kind of eventually went sour right so i i think that that is what i see as a way to make a business out of this but i wouldn't want to go i wouldn't want to be in that business and the other side of that i was talking about like hey make it a
John:
easy to use, integrated, my first podcasting app that will not give you as good a results as using these dedicated, expensive applications in this mishmash with Marco's special custom code.
John:
Like it won't give you those kinds of results.
John:
It will be buggy and weird and it will be really hard to pull off.
John:
That I think is less viable because I just think there are fewer people
John:
Trying to do podcasting that way.
John:
If anything, I think the only way you can get an entry level app like that is to target iOS and not the Mac and somehow get an audio interface in there with like the USB connector or something like that.
John:
But man, my head hurts just thinking about this.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, that's like there's a number of big problems with trying to make an app for podcasting.
Marco:
and you nailed most of them.
Marco:
First of all, having to work with everybody's setups is not trivial because this is a world where there's a huge variety, a huge range of diversity of hardware and hardware types, hardware setups, logical setups of like, do you have four people together in a studio recording onto a multitrack mixer?
Marco:
Do you have...
Marco:
four people on skype who were all trying to talk at the same time do you have are you recording church sermons and and putting that out as a feed are you recording off of a phone you have one person on a phone in australia while three people are in the uk trying to talk without latency like there's so many variations there
Marco:
There's also the huge variations in budget.
Marco:
A lot of podcasts are produced in radio studios.
Marco:
And a lot of them are produced on people's laptops.
Marco:
And there's everything in between.
Marco:
And all of that you have applied to what really is a very small number of producers.
Marco:
Overcast's entire directory.
Marco:
Every feed I know exists.
Marco:
I think I have a little over 200,000 of them.
Marco:
From what I've heard, I've heard rumors about the size of iTunes's directory being somewhere around the 500,000 number.
Marco:
And if I look at the number of... So Overcast right now has about 180,000 users.
Marco:
Of those, only about, I think, something like 40,000 podcasts actually have any subscribers.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
obviously not everybody uses overcast but i think that's a that can give you some idea of like roughly how many podcast how many distinct podcasts are even listened to by more than a couple of people and so i would put the number around you know 50 000 maybe um and so you think about all right so how many producers is that not you know not not every one of those 50 000 that that has listeners is produced by a
Marco:
There's a lot of people who produce many shows, radio stations, podcast networks.
Marco:
So how many people actually edit podcasts that are listened to by more than a couple of people?
Marco:
That number starts getting smaller and smaller.
Marco:
So as you go through these steps, you start saying, all right, well, how many people could even use an app I make?
Marco:
And I would say generously generously.
Marco:
the number of unique podcast producers is probably less than 10 000 possibly a lot less than 10 000 how many of them would be even willing to use my app because a lot of these people have their own workflows and this like when this is like when you get into like the pro uh content production or like you know the pro software markets you got to fight with people's existing workflows so you have to say like all right well
Marco:
I probably wouldn't use an app like this because I edit this show and I use Logic.
Marco:
Logic is not perfect, but it works.
Marco:
It's only $200, I think, or $300.
Marco:
I think it was $200.
Marco:
It's only $200.
Marco:
It works.
Marco:
I know there's a fairly decent chance I'm not the only person using it.
Marco:
And I might, I know the number of using it for podcasting is small, but like the number of people using this is going to be big enough that if there's like a major bug, it'll probably get caught and fixed before it hits me.
Marco:
And, and I know that like,
Marco:
I can buy this knowing that it's going to probably work on the next version of Mac OS X, so I won't be stuck after an upgrade.
Marco:
It's probably maybe going to be maintained in the future.
Marco:
All these fears that no one ever got fired for buying IBM, that kind of thing.
Marco:
You generally want to be conservative in your choice of pro tools.
Marco:
And so a small app would have to fight against all of those factors for the chance to possibly win...
Marco:
a small percentage of a small number of people's business.
John:
The worst thing for the other app competing in this area is that the other applications that people are using just have to add a few features to their existing mature applications.
John:
So audio editing apps, right?
John:
There's plenty of established audio editing applications.
John:
All they have to do is add one or two or three features focused on podcasting, say if they built in your audio alignment thing for multi-track stuff.
John:
it's like oh well like if each one of the if each one of the constituent apps that you use for each function like if skype adds some features focused on podcasting of logic adds some features focused on podcasting you know like you know squarespace already has features focused on podcasts and like the integration of like all the different pieces that we put everything together if they just kind of say oh i guess podcasting is a thing now and i make an audio editor so
John:
I should have a template for podcasts.
John:
I should have some tools that are useful for people who do large multitrack podcasts and like, and that's it.
John:
And then it's like, well, now why am I using your app?
John:
Right.
John:
And it was so easy for them to do because they're already a great audio editor.
John:
They're already a widely used application for talking to people over the internet.
Uh,
John:
it's just so hard to compete in it all this said like if someone did an amazing job on an application like this even if it didn't do everything in-house even if it said you know edit audio and external editor and threw you into logic or something like it like if it didn't do the whole thing but just kind of integrated stuff together uh
John:
Even that, I think we would all be willing to try because we would like it to be easier.
John:
So I don't think it's not like the idea of the application is bad.
John:
It's just that the environment for pulling it off, the degree of difficulty is really high.
John:
And maybe someone just did it for free out of the goodness of their heart and was an amazing developer.
John:
It would be a benefit to the world.
John:
But as a business, it's tough.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And worth clarifying two points.
Marco:
One, there is an app for editing called Hindenburg, which H underscore underscore B mentioned in the chat.
Marco:
I actually tried this.
Marco:
Honestly, I kind of find the name distasteful because that's kind of a tragedy that killed a bunch of people.
Marco:
But anyway, so it's a dedicated radio journalism, podcast journalism kind of app.
Marco:
It's made for radio journalists to produce that style of podcast.
Marco:
It is $375 to use commercially.
Marco:
And so Logic is half the price.
Marco:
So they're fighting that battle already.
Marco:
And I'm not saying they should charge less because I don't think they could charge less and make enough money to survive because the number of potential customers are so small here.
Marco:
So that's another thing to consider.
Marco:
There are alternative editing apps and they...
Marco:
I don't know anybody who uses Hindenburg.
Marco:
I mean, granted, I don't know a lot of radio journalists, but I'm sure they have users, but that's a tough sell to a lot of people.
Marco:
Second thing to clarify is that Alan Pike's potential product was not an editing product.
Marco:
It was just something to do the double-ending recording.
Marco:
And the number of people who do that style of podcast production is even smaller than the number of producers because that's a fairly rare way to produce a podcast where everybody records their end and then an editor combines them all.
Marco:
And that's what we do here.
Marco:
That's what a few other shows do that we know.
Marco:
But most shows that have remote guests just record Skype and it's fine.
Marco:
And, you know, it's not the best audio quality, but you then you avoid sync issues.
Marco:
You avoid trying to get the person to select the right input for that for the program that's recording the thing or having them having them have to buy piezo or call recorder or something like that.
Marco:
Like it avoids a lot of issues to just record a Skype feed.
Marco:
So that's what most people do.
John:
That was that was one of the big pitches of this is like the difficulty of getting guests.
John:
So if you're going to have a podcast where you have guests and you don't want to limit yourself to guests who know how to do podcasting, you have to have some way to say, hey, person who probably owns a computer but knows nothing about podcasts, do these simple steps and you will be able to talk to us over the internet in a way that you will be participating in a live podcast or in a pre-recorded podcast.
John:
And it's kind of like the same problem that Fog Creek Copilot was trying to solve or whatever, where you have...
John:
You need to screen share with your relatives to help them with their computer problems.
John:
It's difficult over the phone to, you know, get them to initiate screen sharing.
John:
So here, you just send them an email.
John:
It has a link.
John:
They click the link, they click three buttons, and you're connected to them, right?
John:
that's a very difficult problem and i think that problem is easier than the problem of hey do these simple steps person who's not too familiar with computers and you are now talking live with me and possibly recording your end locally on your disk that is surely fast enough to keep up with this and you won't have like it's just and your audio input will be through the right stuff and it's but just doing that part of it just the guest application even just that is really hard to do because copilot i don't even know if that's still a thing i've tried to use it a few times the mac version
John:
did not go well for me i kind of i kind of sort of got it to limp through what it was i've paid for like many times like they had a business model where you pay some amount you can use it for like an hour or something in desperation i've tried it it's a good idea but it was not smooth sailing at all and so even that's not a solved problem and many people have tried including apple with uh with the iChat stuff
Marco:
And podcasting, too, it has a certain degree of built-in complexity.
Marco:
You're dealing with microphones and people's random computers, random environments, and random internet connections.
Marco:
And there's a reason why.
Marco:
If you have a regular show with regular guests...
Marco:
Like the three of us, it's worth it for the three of us to have like, you know, each end recorded separately because we're always the same people.
Marco:
All three of us were willing and able to buy a nice microphone and have a quiet room where we record and use software that records it.
Marco:
And we're technically able to do that and to do it reliably.
Marco:
And all of our internet connections we know are solid enough and we even live geographically close enough that it's not usually a problem.
Marco:
so none of these things were problems for us so that's why we choose to do the show that way but again like like if you're if you're having a new guest every week that's a tough thing to coordinate and it's you know it's hard enough getting them a microphone to even use skype properly uh and you know to add in the complexity of are you recording the right thing and you're going to send me your file this yeah that's it's just not worth it so yeah i think the market for that is is extremely small and and it's not and the way the big show
John:
Yeah.
John:
That is incredibly expensive.
John:
That's way more expensive than buying a $300 application or a $500 application or a $1,000 application or a $100 a month application.
John:
But that has a much higher chance of success, I think, than the application will take care of it for you.
John:
You're probably still going to need that human to walk the person through the supposedly so simple setup because of physical factors, not even the software, even if the software is perfect.
Marco:
And beyond all that, if you go to take Rob Ryan's approach of saying, well, hey, charge more money.
Marco:
This is worth it to people.
Marco:
So beyond all the problems of it being a really small market of people who are producing these things and willing to try your app, there's also some severe budget problems for most people.
Marco:
Like most people, you know, podcasting well, like using high quality stuff is already a tough sell because you're already asking people to spend a few hundred dollars on a decent mic and, you know, some kind of setup there, maybe a pop filter, maybe an anti-shock thing or a mount and all this stuff.
Marco:
then oh call record it's another 30 bucks and uh you know something like maybe logic then of 200 or maybe garage band but garage band keeps getting worse for podcasts in each new version uh it like it's you're already asking people to spend a lot of money already most people are not willing to do that most podcasts are not produced that way most podcasts are produced from people's built-in mics and headsets and iphone mics and stuff like that like it's they're you know they don't sound very good but a lot of people like you can't ask like
Marco:
Maybe some church recording its sermons and everything, they don't have maybe the money to buy Logic.
Marco:
There's so many podcast producers out there who are not going to be spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on software and gear to do this.
Marco:
And that will always be the case.
Marco:
There's always going to be most producers who are going to be doing it as a hobby or on a low budget.
Marco:
And you have to account for that.
Marco:
And so that's like...
Marco:
I agree with Rob Ryan that a professional app should be priced accordingly, but I don't think there's enough podcast producers to ever support something like this anytime soon.
John:
In defense of Rob's post, if you could snap your fingers and make the theoretical application come into existence that is awesome at all this stuff, that does everything as high quality, as integrated, as relatively bug-free, that really provides the benefit...
John:
Then all of his various pricing strategies could probably work out.
John:
But the prerequisite is you actually have an application that helps people make money, like that is more convenient for them, that produces better results in less time, that has fewer bugs, that has features that would be difficult, you know, like that can replace a fractional portion of a staffer that you would need, right?
John:
Right.
John:
Uh, then it may be viable.
John:
And, but like, even then it's borderline because you don't have the benefit.
John:
I think it was another Joel article, like the different kinds of software you sell, the cheap, free stuff that random person buys off the street, the sort of consumer applications that you could sell to an individual, uh,
John:
uh who's gonna buy you know application for like you know they'll buy photoshop for themselves or whatever and then and that's like a hundred bucks a couple hundred bucks or maybe like a small monthly subscription fee then there's a gigantic chasm and then your starting price is 30 grand right and that's like enterprise enterprise software you're selling it to a business to business this is such an essential part of their business the 30 grand or you know let's use the oracle pricing model
John:
How about percentage of revenue?
John:
How does that feel to you?
John:
How much money do you have?
John:
Not profit, revenue, yeah.
Marco:
Contact us for pricing.
John:
That is just a huge gap between like a couple hundred bucks, maybe pushing a thousand, and then up into the multiple thousands.
John:
And there's not much in that middle ground there.
John:
And I don't know, podcasting is not at the point now
John:
where it can be sold as enterprise software for the most part.
John:
There are enterprises that are doing it.
John:
Maybe kind of like, I don't know, maybe like Twitter, a TV network is trying to do a podcast or like the daily show.
John:
But now even those, I think of like the daily show podcast is not, you know, you couldn't sell them 30 grand podcasting setup.
John:
They're just putting stuff together.
John:
And anyway,
John:
I don't know if that market will ever exist for enterprise-level sales.
John:
Because even in the entertainment industry, Maya or whatever is a couple grand, but it's not 60 grand.
John:
Whereas Oracle sells to businesses, and their checks have a lot of zeros on them.
Marco:
And all the pro podcasters who are doing it from studios or as part of bigger companies, they already have their workflows established.
Marco:
You're probably not even going to get them with a new tool like this, because they're already set up with how they do things.
Casey:
Wasn't it on Core Intuition semi-recently that Daniel Jalkit was talking about how – I think it was maybe FastScript's – is that his?
Casey:
Is that right?
John:
Yeah, Daniel Jalkit has FastScript, the little script menu thing with the keyboard shortcuts.
Casey:
And so he had written it and had a per-seat licensing model or something like that.
Casey:
And then he got approached by some company and they said, we want to buy it for the entire company.
Casey:
And I forget exactly how he phrased it, but apparently he came up with some number that he thought was so ridiculous they would basically laugh at him.
Casey:
And that's what they paid.
Casey:
And that's kind of what you guys are talking about is, you know, you find there's eventually a time when a company will pay just absurd amounts of money in order to get this app.
Casey:
But I agree with you that finding podcasters to do this is going to be challenging.
Marco:
Yeah, and maybe someday there will be enough podcasters to make this a viable market, but today there just simply are not that many, and we're so far from that.
Marco:
It's not like there are almost that many.
Marco:
It's not like there are going to be that many next year, but as soon as we finish making this app, we are pretty far from there being enough to support things like this.
John:
So in conclusion, somebody make this awesome app.
John:
We will all buy it and tell you what's wrong with it.
John:
And you go out of business.
John:
The end.
Marco:
Honestly, I probably wouldn't buy it.
John:
I already have our workflow.
John:
We would totally get it to look at it.
John:
We would make you buy it, Marco.
Casey:
We would send one of us to go get it, probably Marco.
Casey:
And Marco would try it and not use it because he doesn't like things that other people make.
Casey:
And additionally...
John:
That's a good summary.
Casey:
And moreover, on top of that, we are – well, maybe not you, John, but certainly Marco and I are of an age where we grew up trying to find ways to acquire things without paying a lot of money.
Casey:
And while I think I speak for all of us in saying we're willing to spend money here and there when it's appropriate and when we think it's reasonable –
Casey:
if we have a workflow that works, that is not something that we necessarily, that's not a problem we necessarily want to throw money at.
Casey:
And, and that's what I think Marco is saying is that we have something that works.
Casey:
And if it's a lot, if it's just way easier than, okay, but if it's just a bit easier, yeah, whatever.
John:
I've been afraid to upgrade to Skype seven.
John:
That's free.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Lynda.com was a big help to me in learning how to use Logic to edit this podcast and to make the audio sound good with things like compressors and EQs and limiters and stuff like that.
Marco:
um really like this is why this ties in like you can just buy logic spend 25 bucks a month on lynda.com and uh and learn how to do all this yourself with those tools and then you don't need to buy anything else anyway um lynda.com also offers an annual premium plan uh in which you can download courses to your iphone ipad or android app and watch them offline um you can also get sample files with the
Marco:
Anyway, they have all sorts of courses you might like.
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Marco:
Lynda.com is so useful, 30% of colleges and universities and most of the Ivy League schools offer Lynda.com subscriptions to their students and faculty members.
Marco:
Anyway, check it out.
Marco:
There's a lot of great stuff there.
Marco:
I like them a lot.
Marco:
Go to Lynda.com slash ATP, L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash ATP, and you can get a free seven-day trial with access to all courses.
Marco:
Really a fantastic deal.
Marco:
Go get your free trial started today and watch as much as you can in the next week.
Marco:
Lynda.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to Lynda.com for sponsoring our show once again.
Casey:
All right, John, tell us about the video games on the iPhone that you've been playing lately.
John:
Just one game, which I think Marco has played it.
John:
I guess you haven't, Casey.
John:
The game is Crossy Road.
John:
Everybody's playing it.
John:
It's very popular these days.
John:
I like the name.
John:
until i realized that it's probably an attempt to cash in on the flappy bird i didn't even make that connection but you're i liked it so much better before i made that connection but i still think it's a good name it's adorable anyway uh the game is like kind of like frogger if you remember that if you don't you can google it it's like infinite frogger
John:
That's not what I want to talk about about this game.
John:
What I want to talk about is the monetization strategy of this game, which is simultaneously confusing and depressing, but maybe I still don't quite understand the way things are working these days.
John:
So it's a popular game.
John:
It's really well done.
John:
I think they could have easily sold it for 99 cents, but they didn't.
John:
They decided to go free to play.
John:
Fine.
John:
That's what, you know, I think people are doing these days.
John:
but crossy road is either really bad at free-to-play which makes it good or or i don't understand the how the stuff works so most free-to-play games have to find some way to get money from you somehow in the game by buying things that help you in the game or showing you ads or both and crossy road has both of those things it has characters that you can use
John:
in the game you can buy different characters starts you off with a chicken you can buy all sorts of other characters there's an in-game currency that you get that you can find these little coins and you get some currency uh and you can use that currency to redeem it's kind of like a gumball machine that gives you characters for free
John:
And there's a time-based mechanic where you get a free gift based on how long you play.
John:
It's got all the type of things you see, kind of an energy mechanic.
John:
How long do you have to play?
John:
How much longer until I get a new free gift?
John:
How many coins do I collect?
John:
And you buy the players with actual real money, you know, 99 cents each or whatever.
John:
And it seems like a reasonably good monetization strategy, but...
John:
the characters don't make the game any easier for you so they don't give you extra powers they don't give you extra lives they don't give you anything like that in fact a lot of the characters make the game harder for you instead of easier so the only motivation to buy them is kind of like buying hats and counter-strike or whatever like you know it's a frivolous thing that and that has worked in the past so maybe i'm not quite understanding it but
John:
they're not pressuring you they're not pressuring you to buy things in the game you can play it and you don't have to buy things and they have a little thing where you can see an ad and they just present you like a little icon that shows like a little movie which i don't think yeah team fortress 2 sorry chat rooms corrected me where the hats were anyway i was wondering how that would look in counter strength yeah
John:
not really the right setting no not um a little movie strip and then a little coin symbol whatever saying hey if you watch this movie we will give you coins and of course that's an ad if you tap on that it shows you an ad for some other game you know they get some money for that ad and then you get this in-game currency that you can eventually redeem in a little gumball machine for random characters that you can get these are the same characters that you could buy otherwise um and i think i forget who pointed this out it might have been jason and his thing that he was writing about crossy road
John:
The fundamental problem with their monetization strategy from the outside, from someone who's playing, is I think it's more fun not to pay any money to play this game.
John:
It's more fun to play... The game itself is fun.
John:
Getting coins in the game is fun.
John:
Redeeming them in a little gumball machine for a random guy is fun.
John:
And you don't feel like you're missing anything because you're like, boy, if I could pay the 99 cents, I could finally get the power that lets me walk on water for two steps and that would really help you.
John:
There's none of that.
John:
And so it isn't entirely like...
John:
for the most part friendly to the user not in your face it does prompt you a couple times to say hey do you want notifications when essentially our energy meter runs out and you can when you should come back to the game and play again but you can say no like it presents that in game maybe presents it a few more times than it should and maybe little kids like watching my kids play it they will watch the ads to get the coins because they want to get the other characters so i guess they're getting some ad revenue for that but
John:
i just look at this game and i'm like boy i wish i could give you some money for this game but i don't want any other characters like i've got all the ones i got i got it was more fun for me to get them for free and now i have them and they don't make the game any easier anyway so i'm concerned what i'm saying is i'm concerned about crossy road this developer's probably a millionaire right now who's swimming in his bathtub full of money saying that's great kid you tell me how i should run my business but like it's puzzling to me because
John:
it seems to do everything wrong like from the perspective of the evil free-to-play game that like learns to extract money from people so i guess what i'm saying is you should all go out and get crossy road it's a great game and i really hope the developer is swimming in a bucket full of money but i just don't figure out how they would be unless everybody's looking at those damn ads
Marco:
Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me.
Marco:
I'm trying to look around.
Marco:
I'm trying to look at the App Store.
Marco:
Do you know where it places on the top grossing list?
John:
Oh, I don't know.
John:
I don't look at those things.
Marco:
Because it's number four on the top free list.
Marco:
But it would not surprise me if you're right that it actually isn't making that much money.
Marco:
When you were describing that, I've only played it a handful of times.
John:
Yeah, your score stinks.
Marco:
Yeah, because I only played it a handful of times.
Marco:
I don't really like this kind of game, but when somebody says, oh my god, this game is great, you have to play it, I'll go and buy it in the App Store, and I will forget what the upfront price is, whether it was free or not.
Marco:
I just don't even remember, because it's like, okay, it's usually so cheap, it's a dollar, who cares, or it's free.
Marco:
And so I didn't even realize this was the monetization scheme.
Marco:
I've played the game a handful of times.
Marco:
Like, you can probably expect many people to have done who have downloaded it.
Marco:
I didn't even realize that's how it was monetized.
Marco:
So that's a problem.
John:
He might make it up in volume, though, because this is a super popular game.
John:
And like I said, little kids do want to see the ads.
John:
So maybe all of his money is made by showing ads to little kids to buy other games.
John:
And I think people will buy the other characters.
John:
But, I mean, my other yardstick is so far...
John:
My son, who has spent an undisclosed amount of money on Clash of Clans, and the amount is large.
John:
Well, that's very different, though.
John:
But he is susceptible to in-app purchase.
John:
He has not asked me once to buy him one of these things for 99 cents.
John:
Nice.
John:
And he's not shy about asking me to press this button.
John:
I think I read a tweet the other day about...
John:
someone woke up and found their their kid slowly trying to move their finger onto the touch id on their phone while they were asleep to try to do an app purchase so you gotta watch these kids like he's not shy about asking and he has not asked once that shows me that as whoever it is who wrote this again maybe jason it's more fun to play the game to unlock this stuff for free than it is to buy it that is more fun so why would you ever the other thing is less fun you're paying money to have less fun
Marco:
I mean, like, it would not surprise me if this really isn't doing that well.
Marco:
Like, as I said, like, so I just can't get the whole list.
Marco:
I couldn't find in the top 150 top grossing.
Marco:
So I don't know where it is, but it's probably not high.
Marco:
Somebody said there's ads in there.
Marco:
Are there ads in it?
John:
Like I said, you can you can click on a little thing that says, look at this ad and we'll give you, you know, 20 coins or whatever.
Marco:
But it's not even showing the ads during regular gameplay like the way Flappy Bird did?
John:
Well, it puts up a dialogue box.
John:
It puts up a dialogue box.
John:
Here are your options.
John:
If you have more than 100 coins, you can redeem 100 of them right now in the gumball machine.
John:
You might have a free gift on the time-based mechanic, which will just give you one of those things that you could buy because you've been playing for a long time.
John:
Or press this thing, we'll show you an ad and give you 20 coins.
John:
i don't but like but as a player like when do i even need to do that like and one of the you never need to do it and one one of the things one of the things that i got from the gumball machine was 500 coins which is basically like five free characters like it's just it's i don't understand it so i just opened it up to just to see like you know how this is and like so so far i'm playing this game and i'm seeing no ad i'm seeing no solicitation for buying these coins or doing it
John:
Go die, and you'll see a little thing that says free gift.
John:
And if you have over 100 coins... Oh, yeah.
Marco:
You know, I saw that before, and I had no idea what that was.
John:
Yeah, and that's why I said, like, the little icon that shows the film strip.
John:
I don't know if kids know what film looks like.
John:
The little, you know, the celluloid with the little notches.
John:
So when you do an icon, it's like the old telephone handset icon, which I guess kids are kind of socialized to no means phone because it's the icon on our phones.
John:
But...
John:
whatever it is celluloid film strips with the little holes in the edges i don't know if people know what that but anyway there's a little symbol that looks like that and then it shows coins oh here's this gumball thing okay so i'm seeing this now i saw this once before i had no idea i could even pay anything in here i thought it was literally a free gift and i just get this you know this weird cow or something yeah but you can't pay there you can go like when you start the game when you start the game there's a little thing where you can change your character in the lower left and if you scroll through all the characters have 99 cents underneath
John:
This is the worst monetized popular game I've ever seen.
John:
Well, but that's what I'm saying.
John:
I don't know if it is like we're on the outside.
John:
We don't know how much money.
John:
Again, this person could already be a millionaire and we have no idea what's going on.
Marco:
Honestly, I feel bad for this developer because whatever they're making, they could be making a lot more.
John:
Yeah, I would have paid $5.99 for this game.
John:
It is an amazingly well done game.
John:
I mean, yeah, granted, it's just Frogger.
John:
You know, he didn't make up Frogger or whatever, but execution wise and like fit for, you know, for input method and viewing context and retina screens and everything is it's
Marco:
it's beautiful it's amazing i mean even if there was just an eye ad on the top or bottom like just the way flappy bird did it that would annoy me and it would make the game less fun well and you can pay a dollar to to hide it i would have paid that instantly right like that that itself that i guarantee you whatever monetization they're doing with this app with this weird coin thing
Marco:
I guarantee you what I just said with an iAd and a dollar to hide it would have done at least 10 times better for them.
John:
But you wouldn't have done that because you would have felt bad about an app like that.
John:
If you buy all these characters, there's 99 cents to like 20 of them.
John:
I think you could spend like 20 or 30 bucks on this game.
Marco:
But as you said, there's really no reason to...
John:
Well, I mean, again, maybe just in my experience and in my kids' experience, it seems like there's not.
John:
But maybe other people, again, with buying the hats in Team Fortress 2 and all that stuff, like maybe people want horse armor.
John:
There's another gaming reference for you.
John:
Like maybe people do want to buy them and don't want to unlock them and just can't live unless they have the Dark Lord as their character.
John:
The characters are cool and they do change the game.
John:
They really need it.
Casey:
You know, I can't help but feel like we spent the beginning of this episode talking about how the spammy push notifications are really cheapening your product and it's a terrible way to go.
Casey:
And now we're ending the episode by saying, oh, you should have put ads on this thing.
Casey:
You would have made a fortune.
Casey:
Thanks a lot to our sponsor.
John:
i'm saying this is a good game that people should buy but they can't buy it i tell you what everyone go download this game for free play it for five or ten minutes and if you think it's worth something pay 99 cents for the favorite character choice and by the way when i said they changed the game they changed the graphics in the game they don't change the gameplay only to sometimes make it harder but for example if you buy the penguin spoiler it makes everything all snowy it's adorable just get the game
Marco:
but even like what you said what you said like like the whole idea of like oh i i got this game for free i'm enjoying it so much i want to give them money i forgot how much i paid for the game days after buying it and it was free maybe you thought you already had given this money but you didn't well exactly so many people i bet like they don't like you know a lot of people only buy free stuff or download free stuff and that's fine
Marco:
But there's a lot of people like me who are like, you'll pay a dollar for a game without really thinking about it.
Marco:
And so if you see a game that has no ads in it and no obvious spam to try to monetize, I would assume I probably paid a dollar for this and not even think about giving them more money in the future.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
I think we're done.
Marco:
Anyway, thanks a lot to our four sponsors this week, Studio Neat, Harry's, Squarespace, and lynda.com, and we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin, because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
John:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
And if you're into Twitter.
Marco:
You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental, they didn't mean to.
John:
You guys should both get this game, and I think I'm Game Center friends with all of you.
John:
I have this game.
John:
And we'll play it more.
Marco:
I just played it on the air.
Marco:
We had a podcast about podcasting followed by playing Crossy Road on the air.
Marco:
Yeah, this is the worst episode of this podcast ever.
John:
It really is.
John:
My favorite feature of this game, which I feel bad almost spoiling because when you see it, it's just really...
John:
really well done is that your game center friends when they play of course it records their score and you can see the leaderboard and doing all that stuff but when you're playing the game you will see the name of the person written across the farthest distance that they've made it so their highest score you'll i was i always see marco arment on like you know 30 or whatever your pathetic score is across the ground so you literally hop over their name when you're beating their score it's brilliant
John:
cool yeah and i was trying to i kept trying to contact jason i think he left i sent him private messages i sent him ims what i was trying to do is send a friend request from my son's game center account to his because jason has the highest score of anyone on my friends list uh but my son i think has beaten him and i wanted to give my son motivation to beat somebody's score so i said if they could just get him to be friends with jason then he would have you know i basically just want jason to be knocked into second place
Marco:
All right, so I have an account on AppFigures, and AppFigures lets you browse other apps' rankings.
Marco:
So I'm showing, you know, the ranking is pretty consistent.
Marco:
It is, if you look at just free, like on the free chart, it's in the top five most of the time.
Marco:
So Crossy Road is really in the top five depending on how you look at it, like what category you're looking at.
Marco:
It's in the top one through four in games.
Marco:
Oh, it's number 12 overall.
Marco:
Maybe number 13 when you look at it.
Marco:
So we're talking like this is the number 12 most downloaded free app in the App Store for the last while.
Marco:
So that's a very, very high rank.
Marco:
Probably tens of thousands of installs per day.
Marco:
Now, if you look at the top grossing.
Marco:
In iPhone, top grossing is around the 200th place.
Marco:
So it's placing number 15 of top downloads, number 200 in top grossing on iPhone.
Marco:
On iPad, it's like number 300.
Marco:
So it's even worse on iPad.
Marco:
That is... I mean, I'm sure the developer's making decent money on that, but the money they're making is not proportional to the downloads they're getting at all.
Marco:
That's a very bad ratio for how popular this game is, how popular it has been for the last week or two, however long it's been out.
Marco:
That is not generating a ton of money for that level of downloads.
Marco:
And I think it shows.
Marco:
Just getting a bunch of people, if you have some kind of freemium monetization scheme like this, you have to also set the pain point of what you're paying for.
Marco:
You have to set that with some thought as well, just to be smart business.
Marco:
Ranking in the 400 in the app store, I'm guessing...
Marco:
Top of my head, I'm guessing that's $5,000 a day or less.
Marco:
For a game this popular, that's not great.
Marco:
That's really... The developers are getting really ripped off on this, basically, by their own creation here, by not giving enough of a reason for people to pay and also not putting an ad in it or not putting an upfront price on it.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I feel bad for whoever made this because it's clearly...
Marco:
Like the world is getting a lot more value out of this than what they're being ultimately paid for.
Casey:
So real-time follow-up, I am playing this game, and it's weird.
Casey:
But I'm looking at my leaderboard, and it's going from bottom to top.
Casey:
Me with 28.
Casey:
My friend Eric Wielander with 34.
Casey:
Marco with 43.
Casey:
Adam Swindon with 63.
Casey:
John Syracuse at 157.
Casey:
And coincidentally, Dan Provost of Studio Neat, 384.
Casey:
Wow.
Casey:
Wow.
John:
Yeah, I haven't really broken through in this game yet.
John:
You gotta get on that, John.
John:
I mean, we don't stand a chance, but you might.
John:
My problem is with the control scheme and I have my own sort of energy meter in the game where... I'm just hearing excuses now.
John:
If I play it more than two times...
John:
I have diminishing returns.
Casey:
Blame the controller.
Casey:
No, the computer's cheating, Marco.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
It was a computer error.
John:
Now, the ultimate... No, I mean, like, obviously, the tap interface.
John:
This is one of those games where the ultimate interface, I feel like, would be if I could hook up a D-pad or a joystick to this.
Casey:
Of course.
John:
Suddenly, the game would be a million times easier.
Casey:
Of course, John.
John:
So part of the game is like... You know, part of the game is that the control scheme is not quite... You know, because they use tap to go forward, but swipe for the other three directions.
John:
And frequently, I will...
John:
initiate an action and get the wrong action like basically it'll hop forward when i really meant to be a swipe back to the left or the right because the controls are not that uh precise but that's all part of the game you know anyway really but when i do best is when i'm not paying attention like i just i just sort of look absent mindedly at the screen and run the algorithm and i'll find myself crossing into the hundreds and i'll notice i'm crossing to the hundreds get nervous and die but really i only play two or three games and then i you know go back to the desert golfing or something
John:
yeah i've actually been playing a lot of desert golfing it's amazing wait desert golfing crossy road is a better game than desert golfing i think we can say that i spent a lot more time in desert golfing i'll tell you that i know i believe it but that's not i don't think it's i'm currently on hole 217 yeah i'm farther than that but my of course you are
John:
my desert golfing score is not good is desert golfing is brutal yeah i'm at 743 strokes for being on hole 217 yeah i'm my my score is just just terrible because like it's we should have a whole gaming section desert golfing is punishing in that like it's brilliant and pure in that you've launched the game and you start playing and that's it when you relaunch the game puts you back to where you were that's it no saves no loading screen no menus no undo you can't even reset it can you no start you can uninstall it and you can install it again like that's it
John:
the game is the game the best thing would be like if they actually stored your cloud stored your score in iCloud so that you couldn't even reset it right no but no but then you need to have like it would be like syncing and everything it is just brutally like this is the game you are now playing in the game oh didn't like that stroke you never get it back there's no mulligans there's no undo there's no resetting there's no anything it's just an endless desert scrolling from left to right
John:
and a terrible physics engine that is just filled to the brim with bs because i cannot believe however they program that i mean you've played it marco like oh you're not going to roll down that hill huh that doesn't make any sense yeah it just like stops in the middle of one hill but any other hill it rolls down the entire thing slowly right and like even just the the physics of bouncing like the angle of incidence does not equal the angle of reflection in any universe forget about sand simulation it's just not even like accurate rigid body physics so it is
John:
It is total BS in this game.
John:
And yet I play it because you just launch it.
John:
And what are you doing?
John:
You're getting the ball in the hole and you quit it whenever you want.
John:
When you come back, you'll be right where you left off.
John:
And yeah, I did 16 strokes in that hole because it was pissing me off.
John:
But the next one, I got a hole in one.
John:
You just keep going.
Marco:
yeah i love um in fact speaking of alan pike um on his on his video game podcast i believe it's called up up down down is that right john yeah anyway he interviewed the creator of this uh sometime recently and i listened to that i love how the guy even said like you know like you the first time you get a hole in one you expect like some kind of like congratulations and just nothing happens like it goes to the next hole that's it no different than any other score
John:
It is a lesson about life.
John:
This is really the next game we need to get John Rotter to play, although I think he'll probably bounce off of it.
John:
But if he ever comes out of his three stupor, Desert Golfing can teach you something profound about life, I think.
John:
Kind of in the same way that Demon's Souls can.
John:
I absolutely love it.
Casey:
Marco, real-time follow-up.
Casey:
I now have 46 to your 43, so I can put the game down.
John:
Did you hop over his name, didn't you?
John:
Wasn't that fun?
Casey:
It didn't look like his name.
Casey:
It looked like gobbledygook.
John:
I assume you've never actually played Frogger or had heard of it before I mentioned it, Casey.
Casey:
I had heard of it, you big jerk, but no, I've never played it.
Casey:
Oh, well.
Casey:
I think I've even seen the segment on Seinfeld, and I didn't even watch Seinfeld.
John:
That's where you know Frogger from, yeah.
John:
Anyway, this is better than Frogger.
John:
Well, that isn't hard.
Yeah.
Casey:
Now I can't concentrate on playing this stupid game.
Casey:
What have you done to me?
Marco:
I hate you two.
Marco:
Just install Desert Golf.
Marco:
It will calm you back down.
John:
It's Desert Golfing, not Desert Golf.
Marco:
Yes, sorry.
Marco:
Desert Golfing.
John:
I kept calling it Desert Golf, too.
John:
People are going to search for it.
John:
They need to find it.
John:
Desert Golfing is you pay money for it, and that's it.
John:
You pay money, you get the game.
John:
This is the game.
John:
Was it a dollar or two?
John:
You are now playing the game.
John:
I don't remember what it was.
Marco:
I've gotten so much enjoyment out of this game, and I know how abusive it is, and yet I keep playing it because it is satisfying.
Marco:
Like the guy was saying, there's so many games, it's just a constant showering you with praise and with rewards.
Marco:
Anytime you do anything, you're amazing, here's some fireworks, you get a bonus coin for your cow.
Marco:
There's none of that.
Marco:
You just play the game,
Marco:
And when you succeed in doing each hole, you just move on to the next hole.
Marco:
That's it.
John:
And the game is cruel and arbitrary and incorrectly programmed.
John:
But you love it.
John:
Just like life.
Marco:
The only thing that makes me mad about this game is that I didn't make it.
Marco:
I've always kind of wanted to make a game.
John:
You could have made this.
Marco:
Yeah, and there's not a lot of games that I'm technically qualified to make.
Marco:
And I totally could have done this.
John:
and i just never thought of it well the trick the tricky part is the procedural generation with a twist of the levels i think that is the because the genius of this game is it just goes on and on and on like how can it go on and on did a human lay out all these levels no it's procedurally generated but not just is it yeah it is there's an article that you can see interview where it's it's procedurally generated but not random so there is human influence over it somehow that like
John:
particular holes have certain attention paid to them i don't know the details he didn't reveal the details but it's for the most part procedurally generated but with the human touch to you know when you're stuck on a on a hole that is particularly difficult i always see the you know the touch of the human you know screwing with you there
Marco:
right like there's been like a like a big ramp up to the hole on both sides so you instantly roll off of anything and weird little ledges and stuff like so you can sit kind of see the human touch there but there's so many levels like you know did you even get up to the cactus yet i don't know how where that appears there's a cactus yeah i don't want to spoil it for you just keep playing okay i i will i mean i i actually enjoy this game it's crazy like i took so many freaking screenshots of that cactus
John:
i knew it was coming there are other things out there in the distance too but i don't want to i don't want to ruin what it was it's not frog fractions which you've both never heard of but trust me that's an apt uh comparison so it is not frog fractions it is desert golfing is the opposite of frog fractions so just keep playing the the funny thing is in the like nothing the little thimble full of game development i've done one of the things i've done is a procedural terrain generator for a scorched earth style game which is this style like i
John:
i actually already have an algorithm to do that i and i don't have the things that like you know make sure that the hole is reachable in some reasonable way and yeah so that's what i'm saying like procedural generate is dangerous because you can get unwindable holes especially with this bs physics you can get unwindable holes oh yeah so it's you have to be careful and and the other thing is like so you procedurally generated you hope you have rules so you don't make unwindable holes but you have to play through them all to make sure yeah
John:
and that's the worst punishment of all wait so so like is my hole 203 the same as your hole 203 yes yes it's deterministic there's a seed and everyone's levels look the same
John:
although he's he said he might change that in the future and might change some of the later levels i won't tell you what later means but you'll be depressed like over a thousand just just trying to i'll keep going i'm just trying not to think about yeah like if i never uninstall this game like i'll i'll run this until it doesn't run on my phone anymore right it'll just keep going like the numbers will keep going up the ball will keep going in the hole i will keep getting angry at the physics
Casey:
Well, was it you, John, that tweeted about how YouTube has to go 64-bit now because of Gangnam Style?
John:
Yeah.
John:
Oh, I retweeted somebody that.
Casey:
So it'll be the same thing.
Casey:
Oh, on the view counter, you mean?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Wow.
John:
They're using sine 32-bit like animals.
Yeah.