There’s Probably a Wizard for It
Marco:
Adam's gaming PC has started to regularly blue screen.
Casey:
Oh, you don't say.
Casey:
So the Windows installation has been there for six months or more?
Marco:
I have absolutely no idea what to do about it.
Casey:
Blow out the dust.
Casey:
All kidding aside, when I last regularly used Windows, and we were talking before even the bootleg started, Marco and I were, that I haven't regularly used Windows in a VM anyway since 2018.
Casey:
And I don't think I've had...
Casey:
a windows installation since like the early 2010s like i think i went maybe even earlier than that like late aughts early 10s so it's been a long time since i've used windows for more than literally five minutes but when i was a a devout and or maybe avid i guess i should say windows user it used to be the rule of thumb was every six months you destroy everything and put it back where it was
Casey:
And, you know, start anew so you would clean out all the cruft and get all the junk out.
Casey:
Now, it would not surprise me if that is not at all the case today, but how long has Adam's computer been operational?
Marco:
That was TIFF's first gaming PC from like two and a half or three years ago, something like that.
Marco:
And so there's a number of factors here.
Marco:
So number one, it is, it was very well specced at the time.
Marco:
It has the mobile, uh, Nvidia, um, 20 80.
Marco:
So it's actually a pretty well specced computer for, you know, whatever, two years ago, whenever, you know, whenever we bought it, um, the downside of the 20 80 in a laptop and whatever that giant version of it was to begin with is that it's a very large, very hot running GPU.
Marco:
Um,
Marco:
And so already I'm thinking, Oh no, this laptop that worked totally solidly for, you know, two years.
Marco:
And then all of a sudden has started like blue screening regularly while playing games.
Marco:
Like, um, I don't feel great about that from a hardware perspective, but then I'm thinking like, well,
Marco:
if it is something stupid and software related i'll feel really dumb if we ended up like you know replacing it or somehow getting it service i don't even know how it would do that um and like i'm so far from the pc world at this point i have no idea like can i sell this can i trade it into somebody that's the most marco answer is screw it sell it and get a new one
John:
you can sell anything that someone's willing to buy i don't think you need permission from or knowledge of the pc market to do that you can just put things for sale i mean you just explain how to sell things on ebay this is a thing you can sell it on ebay yeah but like if the gpu might be flaking out like i can't really in good conscience sell that to a person like if there was some kind of like trade-in thing i could do that but you don't know that the gpu is flaking out you're just speculating you
John:
It occasionally blue screens, but that could be anything.
Marco:
It regularly blue screens.
Marco:
And it's so funny, because I'm so far from using Windows regularly.
Marco:
I mean, the last time I used Windows regularly, the version I used was XP.
Marco:
I never used Vista or anything after it until getting these gaming PCs.
Marco:
And we literally use them only for gaming.
Marco:
So they're basically consoles to us.
Marco:
We open them up and launch...
Marco:
steamer the minecraft launcher and and go from there and that's about all we do on them and so it's funny like you know all these years i i hear you know you as nerds you always hear stories of people in your life and oh i don't want to upgrade to the latest software it's going to break everything and meanwhile these pcs they have windows 10 i think on them and they started asking very aggressively for us to upgrade to windows 11 and i'm thinking of this like from my point of view like
Marco:
Why?
Marco:
Why would I want to touch anything?
Marco:
It works, mostly.
Marco:
It works now.
Casey:
Except the blue screens.
Marco:
Well, yeah, okay, fair enough.
Marco:
But the other two, they work totally fine.
Marco:
So it's like, why would I want to do a software update...
Marco:
If everything works, whatever it's adding, I couldn't possibly care less about.
Marco:
Any features it's adding to Windows, I don't even know.
Marco:
I don't care.
Marco:
These things are only gaming consoles to us.
Marco:
The last thing I want is to upgrade my version of Windows, which...
Marco:
you know best case scenario nothing about my life changes that's the best case scenario and there's lots of worst case scenarios where something that worked before doesn't now like and i'm realizing like this is how regular people have thought about computers forever like it's so kind of funny and sad like
Marco:
First of all, how many people never update their software for this very good reason of like, you know what, I did it once, it broke stuff, I was burned, and I don't want to do it again.
Marco:
And asking analytically, what's this thing going to do for me?
Marco:
And then also, how much hardware, especially in the PC world, let's be honest,
Marco:
how much hardware that's been perfectly fine has been replaced due to software bugs and the person would just like look i can't afford to or don't have the skills to figure this out i'm just going to buy a new one like i can't tell you how many like when i was in the pc world i'm sure i'm sure you both have seen this i can't tell you how many pcs i've saw people replace that were just like oh it's old and slow because it was full of spyware
Marco:
You could have just reformatted and reinstalled Windows on it, and it would have been fine.
Marco:
The hardware was fine, but so much PC hardware has been discarded and replaced over time.
Marco:
That was totally 100% fine because people were misdiagnosing software problems for hardware problems, or that was the easiest way out of the problem for them, or the fastest, or the only thing they knew they could do, whatever it is.
Marco:
and here i am like waffling over that same dilemma like what do i do about this damn computer like it's not it's now it's unreliable do we do we replace it it seems kind of wasteful to replace it right at this point but why aren't you using the uh the old ways just wipe it in and reinstall i mean that's a reasonable first step especially if the only thing you ever do with it is game everything is on steam or whatever it's not like you need to uh preserve anything
Marco:
wipe and reinstall and if that cures it then yay it was some weird software thing that you didn't have to figure out but at the very least do that right well so i i'm thinking of that and that's that's that might be what i do next but like i don't know how to do that anymore like i have no idea how to do that i don't know where games are storing their files i have no idea how to preserve like all the you know the progress adam's made in his games that
John:
That's why Steam is good.
John:
I mean, we talked about Steam before.
John:
What does it bring to you?
John:
For Steam, at least, you don't have to worry about that because Steam will take care of it all.
John:
Pretty much everything has cloud sync saves and all the games, obviously, themselves are on Steam.
John:
Minecraft, I don't know the answer to that, but I assume Microsoft does a reasonable job.
John:
But if you had individually installed a bunch of games, yes, that's where you'd be.
John:
But still, as I'm sure you know, you can reinstall Windows without erasing the hard drive.
John:
honestly i don't even know how to do that like i don't even like i know there's probably some kind of probably a wizard for it i know i probably like you know hold some key command at boot and it probably has its own like system recovery thing and then you'll see a big dos screen with white text on a black background they'll tell you it hit f2 if you want to do this and f3 if you want to do that and you'll feel like you're using modern technology as you look at your drive letters yes let me jump into my bios after i see my ram count up yeah and by the way if you had said okay to that windows 11 thing you just would have found out that you don't have tpm 2.0 and you can't upgrade to windows 11 anyway
John:
well i don't i'm i don't even know is that trusted platform module is that like we still we actually did that windows 11 requires tpm 2.0 you probably have it i'm just making a joke and i'm kind of bitter because i couldn't update it i was willing to update my windows gaming pc installation which which is an external ssd that i plug into my mac pro um it has like what i think i have windows 8 on it or no i must have windows 10 yeah windows 10 on it and i was like i'll upgrade to windows 11 what the hell like uh and i said no sorry you don't have tpm 2.0 and then i did all this googling to see
John:
Does the Mac Pro have something that can fool Windows into thinking it's TPM 2.0?
John:
I don't know.
John:
And I just gave up.
John:
So I'm stuck on Windows 10 as well.
Marco:
I remember when the TPM stuff was first floated.
Marco:
This was back when I was using PCs.
Marco:
And the...
Marco:
let's say the PC enthusiast community was not very thrilled with the idea of basically like DRM support in hardware in our computers.
Marco:
And it's funny to think back, like now in today's world, we carry around these phones and we have tablets, we have computers.
Marco:
All of them have hardware DRM support deeply.
Marco:
Like there's so much hardware DRM support.
Marco:
Everything with an HDMI port has hardware DRM support.
Marco:
Like there's so much hardware DRM everywhere in all the devices.
Marco:
And we just like...
Marco:
Not only did we lose that fight, we were annihilated in that fight, and no one cared.
John:
Not really, because the main benefit we get from TPM stuff and all the secure stuff that we have on even Macs today and iPhones and everything...
John:
is not the one that the TPM, like the anti-TPM people were complaining about.
John:
They're like, oh, this is going to put DRM in everything and we're not going to be able to share all our songs through Napster and something.
John:
They would spin out all these things about how it's going to make it more difficult to pirate stuff and make our software not ours or whatever.
John:
But the actual main important function of all these things is to provide a chain of trust for booting so that the machine knows that it's booting something that is trusted
John:
And that chain of trust has to go all the way down to the hardware, right?
John:
To try to make it, it's much, much harder, not impossible because there are bugs in these things, but much, much harder to sort of like get a rootkit in there that even if you wipe the OS, you're still infected, right?
John:
And, you know, that whole secure boot thing that's on the modern Macs, it's on all our iOS devices and iPads and everything like that, that is a thing about being confident that you're running the OS you're thinking you're running.
John:
Which no one has a complaint about.
John:
Everybody wants that.
John:
No one wants to be rootkitted or exploited in a way that's deep in your hardware.
John:
But in theory, that same hardware could be made to like, oh, this program won't run unless it checks for a secret key that we embed in the secure enclave equivalent in the TPM, blah, blah.
John:
And that just didn't really happen.
John:
plain old normal software-based DRM like Fairplay or whatever the hell Apple calls their modern one is we had that back then and we have it now and that's mostly all Apple uses for this type of thing like all the exploits on the iPhone and everything aren't about like oh I can't sideload because Apple has encryption it's like no if you jailbreak the OS you can sideload whatever the hell you want like and the jailbreak doesn't involve well sometimes it involves breaking the hardware level or whatever but
John:
The slippery slope fantasies of TPM and having this security hardware on all our devices, the dystopia it was going to bring, it didn't bring it.
John:
All it brought us was secure boot, which is a thing we all like.
John:
The dystopia of DRM and everything doesn't require the hardware.
John:
It just requires people being annoying and stupid with their, you know, with how they sell things.
John:
And people still do that all the time.
John:
Copy protection, you know.
John:
DRM on, you know, so music is DRM free, but Apple's iTunes movies are still not DRM free for some stupid reason because it prevents piracy because everyone knows you can't find movies on the internet.
John:
Thanks, Apple.
John:
That DRM made sure that no one will ever pirate a movie again.
John:
Success.
John:
No, what it did was it made it so I can't take screenshots of movies to make jokes on Twitter.
John:
That's what the DRM did.
John:
That's what we should have been fighting about.
John:
But that didn't require TPM.
John:
That just requires stupid software.
John:
Anyway, rant over.
Casey:
You know, I have a tangentially related question, which I'm now totally derailing the conversation.
Marco:
This conversation was never railed, Casey.
Casey:
When there's something, like let's say something that's exclusive to Disney+, I don't know, like Hamilton a year ago.
Casey:
And there exists on the back of falling off the back of trucks.
Casey:
There exists a copy of Hamilton.
Casey:
How are those captured?
Casey:
Like, are people playing this on some sort of like TV and then using like some illicit HD capture card that doesn't respect DRM or something like how does that work?
John:
No, that is very weak sauce piracy.
John:
You don't want to take an encoded file of some kind, decompress it and play it, then send it over a wire and try to capture it and then recompress it.
Marco:
How else do you do it, though?
Marco:
Do people use HLS hacks?
Marco:
Doesn't HLS have DRM optionally?
John:
So there's a million ways to pirate things, obviously.
John:
I think one of the most common used to be back in the day when we had physical media was they would send screener DVDs.
John:
Yeah, yeah, totally.
John:
And they would just get the actual digital files over there.
John:
And then they started watermarking them and stuff like that.
John:
Most streaming services either used to or still have a way to send the actual encoded file in pieces that, you know, and you can just sort of intercept those pieces and stick them all together probably with MFmpeg.
John:
Kind of like what you do for the keynote streams, right?
John:
If you can get the data as it would come into the decoder to go onto your screen and capture it that way, you don't have to play it and then recapture it.
Casey:
I think this is how – so I'm actually talking a little bit outside my comfort zone, believe it or not.
Casey:
If I were to download something from, like, NBC.com, you know, for, I don't know, for example, like This Is Us or something like that.
Casey:
Like, I could use, hypothetically, you know, YouTube DL or what is it?
Casey:
YTDLP is the blessed version now.
Casey:
And I could log into my Verizon Fios to show that I have access to this thing.
Casey:
And it does magic.
Casey:
And I know that HLS is involved, although now you know everything I know about HLS.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
One way or another, it does magic to do, I think, exactly what you're describing, John.
Casey:
But I had assumed and presumed that it is not quite so simple for a Disney Plus or Netflix is another great example.
Casey:
I wonder how those are captured if a reasonably mature tool chain like YouTube DL can't do it, which I don't think it can.
John:
Well, I mean, the final way is just break the encryption.
John:
I mean...
John:
It's easier said than done, obviously, but it only takes one person to do it.
John:
And obviously, DCSS broke the DVD encryption ages ago, but every one of these things that has some kind of DRM thing is crackable.
John:
And getting back to the TPM thing, maybe if there was a mandatory hardware component, it would be slightly harder to crack these things.
John:
And I say only slightly, because there's a lot of security-related hardware that is just so thoroughly broken.
John:
I think Intel stopped shipping.
John:
They announced they're going to stop shipping or stop supporting SGX, which is one of their secure enclave things, just because it was so thoroughly and massively broken.
John:
And when it's in silicon and a bunch of chips, you just have to basically say, yeah, that's over now.
John:
We're not doing that anymore because it's so thoroughly broken and you can't change it because it's in millions of chips.
John:
And so it's like, that's not a thing anymore, right?
John:
I wish DVDs had done that, but that industry moves slower.
John:
But yeah, you can crack the encryption like they say in the movies.
John:
Once someone gets through, it's open season and everything.
John:
And I think Fair Play was cracked pretty early on too.
John:
I don't know if the current version of Fair Play is, but that's the final way to do it.
John:
It's like,
John:
You've got the file somewhere.
John:
If I can download it in Disney Plus, it's like, oh, but it's encrypted on your iPad.
John:
How are you going to play it?
John:
Oh, we've broken that encryption already.
John:
And so there you go.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So where were we?
Casey:
So how are you fixing your computer?
John:
We were pirating movies, which is not possible because Apple puts DRM and everything.
John:
right and because of tpm i can't reinstall windows possibly exactly i have no i mean people complain about that but i think pretty much every modern pc supports tpm 2.0 it was just people with some older pcs or like enthusiast setups that didn't have tpm that are suddenly locked out of windows 11 it's like why do you even care like i don't know but anyway it was a controversial move anytime anything obsolete hardware in the pc space someone complains
Marco:
I would imagine that's not going to be my limiting factor.
Marco:
My limiting factor is going to be, A, am I ever really going to figure out how to reinstall Windows on this laptop?
Marco:
And then B, am I going to actually want to spend probably a day?
Marco:
It's not going to be a small operation for me because I haven't done this in how many years?
Marco:
I mean, 20 years maybe?
Marco:
It's been a long time.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And I'm sure everything is like I'm sure all the crappy stuff is the same as it was 20 years ago.
Marco:
But I'm sure a lot of the other stuff is totally different.
Marco:
And so I'm going to have to like relearn the entire process.
Marco:
And it's just like this is why people buy new computers when they don't have to.
Marco:
Because that's honestly an idea that if this computer was a little bit older.
Marco:
i would probably strongly consider this site and if there was an easy way to like trade it in somewhere i would probably strongly consider that idea but it's not and it's not and so i have to that i have to now figure out like oh how the heck do i do this it's probably easier than it was and then how do i put on like all the drivers and everything i don't want it who wants to deal with that who has time for that but i say if you if you just reinstall windows you won't have to reinstall the drivers they'll still be there i think
Marco:
oh i doubt that very much but i don't know i mean i'm probably gonna have to like find some like me of today like like teenage me who like people i used to guess what that's adam i know no like people used to pay me like a hundred bucks to reinstall windows on their pcs like you know adults would like when i was in high school because like and now i understand why adam will probably give you the family rate
Marco:
yeah right but now i totally understand why like if if i could hire some kid to come here and just do this for me and it would work for a hundred bucks i would totally do that because i'd do it that would save me a whole day all right come on i mean travel expenses i'll pay the ferry that's that's it you're on your own for gas
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Casey:
All right, we should probably start the show.
Casey:
And let's do that with some follow-up as we are contractually obligated to do.
Casey:
John Sambakos has a picture for us with regard to their printer.
Casey:
And oh my gosh, this is very distressing.
John:
yes this is the uh his hp photo smart 3100 dexter murder room version this is an inkjet printer uh we will put a link to the tweet and maybe marco can make this chapter art or maybe not you never know until you look uh go look at the chapter art uh if your podcast player doesn't support chapter art uh try using overcast because it does
John:
um yeah uh inkjet printers are a mess inside but turns out richard smith has a picture of the inside of his printer and it happens to be the printer that marco loves so much is hb m553 uh inkjet color inkjet whatever and it's a disaster inside there too it's a laser it's a color laser it's massive it's amazing how can you think that's an inkjet no i'm saying look at the picture oh yeah no i saw i saw yeah
John:
it's a mess there's a little bit of magenta in the area a little bit come on man i mean this is what i mean you look inside a printer and it looks like you know an ink murder room how does a paper pass through this and not come out streaked with every color under the rainbow but apparently it does probably the paper path is clean but everything else is just destroyed
Casey:
Oh, yeah, those were those were slightly traumatizing.
Casey:
And speaking of traumatizing, let's see who this was.
Casey:
This is Brian Omita tweeted at me earlier today.
Casey:
And apparently there's a YouTube channel.
Casey:
What is this called?
Casey:
Northridge Fix.
Casey:
And I believe this is a repair shop in Northridge, California.
Casey:
And the proprietor will repair things and do videos showing him repairing it.
Casey:
And today, or actually, yes, I think it was literally today, the proprietor repaired, guess what, a broken USB-C connection on an LG Ultrafine 5K monitor.
Marco:
Mine works fine.
Marco:
What are you talking about?
Marco:
You must be wrong.
Marco:
These always work.
Casey:
So anyway, so...
Casey:
The monitor does not make an appearance, but the motherboard does.
Casey:
And in the span of about 15 video minutes, this gentleman, and I found this fascinating because my electronics experience was a little bit in college and then, you know, screwing around with Raspberry Pi, what was it, two years ago now?
Casey:
And so I understand the general principles behind what's going on, but if you had asked me to do any of these things, it would have been a disaster.
Casey:
So anyways, he like, you know, repairs this connection, including like, you know, removing some solder, applying new solder, fixing some lines.
Casey:
on the PCB.
Casey:
Like it's very intricate and very interesting.
Casey:
And in the span of 15 minutes, this guy gets this motherboard good as new.
Casey:
Meanwhile, my LG 5K arrived at LG's repair center in City of Industry, California on the 22nd of December.
Casey:
And I have heard precisely about it since then.
Casey:
And I am getting more and more perturbed by it.
Casey:
So there's that.
Casey:
So that's my LG update for the day.
Marco:
LG always has the best service, Casey.
Marco:
This is totally an anomaly.
Casey:
Yep, definitely an anomaly, for sure.
John:
This video shows the kind of repair that Apple does not allow or like to do, which means changing components on the circuit board by resoldering them or doing whatever.
John:
Apple's solution is always new circuit board, fresh new circuit board, everything new, because this type of repair, inevitably things will corrode later and blah, blah, blah.
John:
if you've ever i'm looking at this video um if you've ever seen uh what's his name uh lewis rossman uh the guy i was talking about in the right to repair thing he has a similar channel where he shows similar repairs only he's got like the uh the amount that this is zoomed in i think his is zoomed in maybe two to three times as much for even tinier components and he's got these little tiny tiny soldering iron needle lead things that look huge in the video but in reality are these tiny you know because the smaller the components get this harder this uh
John:
this becomes so this looks like within the realm that a human might be able to accomplish it but sometimes when rossman does things i'm like how far are you zoomed zoomed in it's like doing micro surgery where the tiny tip of the hypodermic needle fills the entire screen as if it's just like a tree trunk so yeah so anyway it was uh interesting and also depressing to see this so thank you to brian
Casey:
So breaking yesterday, I believe it was, Microsoft has decided to acquire Activision Blizzard for almost $70 billion.
Casey:
So you might know, you might have heard of Activision for a variety of reasons, mostly their games, but lately you might have heard about them because of the apparent frat house that is their corporate culture.
Casey:
And so they, Microsoft got them at a steal.
Casey:
They were worth like over a hundred billion, I think like a year ago.
Casey:
And now they have acquired Activision Blizzard or are about to acquire Activision Blizzard.
Casey:
And it seems like they're saying without saying they're going to clean house of at the very least the CEO, I think it's Bobby Kotick or something like that.
Casey:
And potentially more of senior management at Activision, which seems like a reasonable course of action.
John:
The numbers here are really big.
John:
Someone, John Ehrlichman, tweeted a list of Microsoft's biggest acquisitions.
John:
Number one is this one, the Activision Blizzard for $70-ish billion.
John:
Second place is LinkedIn.
John:
I mean, this is like a list of companies you forgot Microsoft bought.
John:
The second is LinkedIn.
John:
They bought them.
John:
That was $26 billion, so like less than half the size.
John:
Nuance, the speech recognition company, they used to do like Dragon Dictate, I think, but they licensed their speech engine to tons of people.
John:
That was $20 billion.
John:
Skype was $8 billion.
John:
ZeniMax, which no one has ever heard of, but I think we talked about it on the show, was $7 billion.
John:
ZeniMax bought id software, Doomquake, all that things, and they owned a bunch of other stuff as well.
John:
uh microsoft bought github i'm not sure if people remember that but they did that was also seven and a half billion nokia i remember that oh yeah yeah seven seven point two billion a quantive i don't even know what the hell that is six point three billion uh and then minecraft for 2.5 billion um so microsoft has purchased a lot of things but this activision blizzard thing is big and
John:
If you think about what they're buying, I like reading the articles about it because they're writing an article for a general audience that doesn't know who Activision Blizzard is.
John:
So they have to say, you don't know the name of this company, kind of like me with a quantitative, but here are the things they own that you might have heard of.
John:
So the Wall Street Journal listed in their article had...
John:
said that they're getting a stable of popular game franchises including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush.
John:
So there's three choices from the very large catalog they're getting.
John:
People have probably heard of Call of Duty, maybe World of Warcraft, probably Candy Crush.
John:
If you haven't heard the other two, you've probably heard of Candy Crush.
John:
But Activision Blizzard, as the weird name implies, is a huge conglomeration of things.
John:
Blizzard used to be its own company.
John:
Activision used to be a game company, then a game publisher.
John:
And Activision bought tons of things and eventually they bought Blizzard and they just got bigger and bigger and had more and more IP.
John:
And then Microsoft gobbled them all up.
John:
And a lot of people were comparing this to when Disney went and bought all the things.
John:
Disney bought Star Wars, then they bought Marvel, and of course they have all the Disney stuff.
John:
And it's like, wow, Disney owns everything.
John:
That's why Disney Plus can be a streaming service that has all the things.
John:
They're not small franchises.
John:
Disney bought Star Wars for, was it 4 billion?
John:
I don't remember.
John:
I think they bought Marvel for also 4 billion.
John:
I may be using the specific numbers wrong, but those are mid single digit billions for Star Wars and all of Marvel.
John:
And they bought this game company for $70 billion.
John:
I mean, you always hear like games are bigger than movies, which is true.
John:
But that should give you some idea of how much what they bought was worth.
John:
They didn't just buy Star Wars.
John:
They didn't just buy Marvel.
John:
They bought tons of extremely lucrative franchises.
John:
And customers they bought because people were playing World of Warcraft for, what, is it multiple decades now?
John:
At least one and a half decades or something.
John:
Those are subscribers who pay every month to play a game.
John:
There's a bunch of other games that are like that.
John:
And then all these other important franchises that make tons and tons of money.
John:
Not to mention, you know, future games that could be made by...
John:
the various game development studios that are within Activision Blizzard.
John:
So it is a huge purchase.
John:
The Wall Street Journal article said that this would make Microsoft the world's third largest gaming company.
John:
Don't look at the notes.
John:
Try to guess what the number one and two are without looking if you didn't already read it.
Casey:
Oh, gosh.
Casey:
I did not read it.
Casey:
I don't have the faintest idea.
Marco:
I'm going to say number two is probably Nintendo.
Casey:
Is Electronic Arts still a thing?
Marco:
I believe so.
Marco:
Number one, probably EA, and then number two, Nintendo?
John:
Well, you've got to think like Stratechery.
John:
Come on.
John:
WeChat?
Marco:
I mean, you'd probably know they're in the company.
John:
Anyway, number two, Tencent.
Marco:
Oh, of course.
Marco:
That makes sense, yeah.
John:
The other thing you have to remember is that mobile gaming is the biggest part of gaming, right?
John:
Which we don't think about when we think of gaming.
John:
And number one, and this is kind of bogus, number one, Sony.
John:
really yeah but here's yeah there was the trick question right uh would make it the third largest gaming company by revenue yeah sony has a lot of revenue but not all that's from video games i mean sony makes other things besides video games um so i think that's a little bit bogus but that's what that's why everyone is sort of like feeling the ground shake especially the sort of hardcore gamers who don't maybe care that much about mobile
John:
is because now microsoft who as you might know has a gaming multiple gaming platforms pc gaming which basically means microsoft pc gaming and not so much linux gaming and of course xbox and their competitors are on the console side are sony and nintendo nintendo is the tiniest drop in the bucket you could possibly imagine they are not on this list um
John:
but now microsoft owns tons and tons of ip as they say tons and tons of franchises many of which i would say most of which used to be available on platforms other than microsoft's right so you could buy many of the games made by activision blizzard you could buy them for playstation and occasionally you could buy them for nintendo consoles when they felt like throwing some shovelware of last year's game onto a nintendo platform or you know they just want to cash in on the switch craze or whatever so you
John:
If you're a gamer and you look at this, you're like, oh no, I don't currently have an Xbox.
John:
I have a PlayStation or a Switch or whatever.
John:
Will I be able to play the next version of insert my favorite game here now that Microsoft owns it?
John:
Because historically, one thing that
John:
especially console makers have done is when they buy a franchise or a developer or a publisher or whatever the next version of that game will only be for their platform it will be exclusive to their platform that's the point of buying them you know i will buy rare and the next version of perfect dark will not be on nintendo platforms it will only be on consoles and it will stink and everyone will be sad but anyway like microsoft does own rare by the way um
John:
that you know it was the old move it's like i bought the franchise and now it's only going to be in our platforms that's another reason for you to buy our thing so if you're a gamer and you don't have an xbox platform i'd be kind of sad but then even if you're not a hardcore gamer you look at these numbers you're like is it really healthy for a company that itself has gaming platforms you know pc gaming and the xbox uh gaming platform to also own the so many of the most popular game franchises
John:
uh you know in the entertainment world like disney owns everything and that's terrible and it makes it sad and really controls a lot of what gets made but disney doesn't own you know 40 of the movie theaters not that this is particularly a great analogy here but i'm trying
John:
They don't own the means to watch those things, right?
John:
They own the IP to make the movies, but you don't have to buy a special Disney console to watch the movies.
John:
If they owned both, all the TVs and DVD players or half the TVs and DVD players and movie theaters and also all of the franchises that constitute the movies, that would be kind of upsetting.
John:
So I look at this.
John:
And I know there's not anything.
John:
Well, I don't think there's anything particularly to stop it from like antitrust or whatever, because in the grand scheme of things, mobile is still bigger.
John:
And if you can't really slice and dice the market and say, well, it's not a big deal because the gaming market is so big and we can't say it's just I only care about the console gaming market.
John:
you'd have to really get narrow it's kind of like as i say all the time oh you know honda has a monopoly on honda cars well they do but like that's too you're slicing the market too narrowly or apple has a monopoly on apple computers yeah but that's stupid um if you know so if you look at the entire world of gaming microsoft is still small
John:
But if you look at the world of console gaming, they look a little bit bigger.
John:
And what I mainly look at is, of Microsoft's competitors, particularly on the console platform, how do their competitors look compared to them in terms of stable of IP that they own?
John:
And nobody comes close.
John:
Nintendo arguably comes the closest just because they made all their own IP.
John:
The stuff that makes Nintendo Nintendo, Nintendo made.
John:
But it's not a lot of it.
John:
There's not as many franchises as Microsoft owns.
John:
Sony has also bought tons of studios and built up its IP catalog through acquisitions, but it has fallen way behind Microsoft in terms of gobbling up other things in the industry.
John:
um so i look at this and i get a little bit frightened but the thing that makes me feel a little bit better is the thing that's usually safe to bet on is when a big company buys a smaller company they screw it up when a company buys some ip they mess it up in some way right that basically the shelf life of ip especially for video games is not guaranteed uh so you buy call of duty uh
John:
You're like, great, we'll be minting money from Call of Duty for the next 20 years.
John:
You won't if you make bad games.
John:
To give an example, I don't want to crap on this, but like Bungie made Halo and then split from Microsoft.
John:
But Microsoft kept Halo.
John:
It's like, great, well, we have the IP.
John:
We don't need those stinky Bungie people.
John:
We've got the Halo IP.
John:
We can continue to make Halo games without them.
John:
And they did continue to make Halo games without them.
John:
And not that they were bad, and in particular, Halo Infinite is much better than the recent ones.
John:
But they never recaptured the magic of the original Bungie made series of three or four Halo games.
John:
Right.
John:
IP is like that.
John:
You can't just say, well, because we own it, we're going to do a great job.
John:
But it's kind of the inverse of the Marvel effect.
John:
Right.
John:
Marvel IP was owned and optioned by various people at various times for years and years.
John:
And nobody can make anything out of it.
John:
And they sold it for a song to, you know, a company that said, well, actually, we are going to make good movies with Marvel material.
John:
And we're going to start with Iron Man.
John:
And they'd be like, who?
John:
It's like, just trust me.
John:
It'll be good.
John:
They took IP that no one could do anything with and made something good out of it.
John:
It's equally likely, probably more likely, to take IP that people have made amazing things with and make some duds.
John:
Because it's hard to, like, just owning the IP doesn't mean you can actually do the thing, particularly in creative fields.
John:
Can you make a good game?
John:
Can you make a good movie?
No.
John:
you know if you own the characters fine that's a start and you get people in seats but over the course of many many years if you don't make good games based on these franchises people will leave you behind so you know that's why it's important they didn't just buy the ip they also bought the studios that made them and the people that made them and so on and so forth but even within that i feel like in the games world there are very few with the exception again possibly of nintendo stuff
John:
Very few sort of franchises that have stood the test of time and not sort of withered and been replaced by other franchises.
John:
And Nintendo has done it by basically, yeah, it's Mario and all the games, but like what does, you know, Mario Galaxy have in common with the original Super Mario Brothers in terms of game design and gameplay?
John:
Very interesting.
John:
Very, very little.
John:
You think, oh, he's a guy, he's a plumber, he jumps around.
John:
But Nintendo has had to reinvent its franchises over and over and over again to remain relevant, and that is extremely difficult to do.
John:
So, you know, can Call of Duty make the leap to VR in 2075?
John:
No.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I mean, I think I feel like it'll just be defunct and be replaced by other franchises.
John:
So I'm kind of rooting for this ploy not to work as well as it has for maybe arguably Disney and for Microsoft to not become the overwhelmingly dominant force in console gaming because I'm a console gamer and I don't want Microsoft to have that much power.
Casey:
I know this is interesting.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I'm actually, because I'm not much of a gamer, almost most interested to see if the cultural changes that Microsoft is hinting are coming actually do arrive and if they actually do make a difference.
Casey:
It's also interesting for me because my little brother actually used to work there until this past summer, I believe.
Casey:
And so it's kind of fascinating watching from the outside.
Casey:
And I spoke with him very briefly earlier today and
Casey:
I don't think he had really had time to talk to his former co-workers at that point, but it's interesting to watch, to say the least.
John:
Some people look at the story and think this shows the consequences for screwing up your company by having a terrible culture that is abusive and disrespectful to your employees and sexist and filled with harassment and all that stuff.
John:
It's like, ha, see, it tanked the value of their company and then someone swooped in and bought them out, right?
John:
And everyone seems pretty sure that despite the announcements today or whatever, that once the acquisition goes through,
John:
I mean, this would be true even if there wasn't a terrible culture at Activision.
John:
In general, when a company buys you because your Star Christ was slammed and you're doing really poorly and someone swoops in and buys you, they're not going to keep the people who are running their company around.
John:
They're going to replace them all with their people because you suck.
John:
That's why we bought you.
John:
So that was going to happen no matter what.
John:
But then on top of that, it's like also these are all terrible people.
John:
And the reason their stock price tank was because these are all terrible people.
John:
We found out about it.
John:
I'm pretty sure they're going to clean house for multiple reasons here and hopefully get rid of most of the bad people.
John:
It's difficult to do that, though.
John:
But everything I've heard, Microsoft's culture is way, way better than activated.
John:
I mean, it's low bar, right?
John:
Yeah, it's terrible.
John:
Microsoft's culture is better.
John:
So I have some faith that they're going to.
John:
like i said they're going to clean house for reasons nothing to do with culture just because that's what that's what you do when you when you gobble someone up and you put your own people in charge but hopefully they will find and root out all of the very worst people uh in addition to putting all of their good people in charge of things and that should hopefully help because uh i feel like if they can make great games under these terrible conditions they can make even better games under conditions that are less terrible
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Casey:
All right, so moving right along.
Casey:
Hey, what's up with those green bubbles?
John:
I don't know.
John:
Do any of your conversations with the green bubbles work anymore?
John:
I mean, that was one of your longstanding complaints.
Casey:
You know, it's funny you say that because it just kind of got fixed magically months and months and months ago.
Casey:
And then just like in the last month, either Aaron or I, I forget which one, lost just a message or two.
Casey:
And I almost was in such a big rage that I flipped my entire home upside down.
Casey:
And the only reason I didn't was because I was saving that moment for the LG 5K, which is still
Casey:
But nevertheless, now, if you recall, basically all of Aaron's family, some of whom are still speaking to us at this point, are on Android phones.
Casey:
And it's been frustrating, to say the least.
Casey:
And I...
Casey:
I have been petitioning very strongly for them to buy iPhones in part because I am so annoyed by MMS group chats, but also because they're constantly complaining.
Casey:
It's, you know, the standard thing, right, where the people with the PCs and the Android phones need all the tech support.
Casey:
And I have told all of them in no uncertain terms, if you want to get help on that, that's not me because I don't run PCs.
Casey:
I don't have Android phones.
Casey:
You're going to have to ask somebody else.
Casey:
And that's mostly worked okay.
Casey:
But anyway, I digress.
Casey:
So yeah, so if you live in the blessed life where...
Casey:
You don't have to interact with Android people.
Casey:
This isn't really a thing, but for those of us who lived the cursed life of a mixed OS world, it is annoying, the green bubbles.
Casey:
But apparently, if you believe the Wall Street Journal, the green bubbles are an evil lock-in that Apple is sitting there Mr. Burns-style, you know, tenting their fingers and cackling all the way to the bank.
John:
Well, I mean, there's the cultural aspect of like, oh, green bubble means you have a less expensive phone, you're poor, like whatever, like the whole sort of class system of fancy iPhones versus non-fancy green bubbles things, which you can imagine teens certainly going in for because that's what being a teenager is all about, whether it's your Reebok shoes or your T-shirt with the alligator on it.
John:
I'm using bad references from the 80s.
Marco:
But anyway...
Marco:
We sound like Mr. Burns trying to describe what the young people are doing these days.
John:
We're so far from this.
John:
I'm describing it as we would have described it in the 80s, making fun of older people who didn't know what an Izod shirt was.
John:
Anyway, that is definitely a thing.
John:
And that does affect the numbers you see of how many teenagers have an iPhone and how many teachers want an iPhone.
John:
But it's like, well, how many teenagers want the expensive fancy thing?
John:
Like it's good that Apple has that image because you want to be cool with the teens because they eventually become adults and spend money on things.
John:
But that's not really the issue.
John:
The issue is what Casey was talking about, even though he was kind of jokingly talking about the class stuff as well, is that if you're trying to have a conversation like a group conversation using your phone.
John:
And bugs make that difficult, where someone will reply and you won't see their reply, or half the people will see their reply, or you'll say something and they won't see what you said.
John:
Like the basic function of having a group conversation is impaired by poor interoperability between iMessage, which is Apple's service for messaging, and SMS, which is the old cell phone messaging service back from before smartphones even, right?
John:
And that bad interoperability is what makes the experience bad.
John:
And it leads people to do things like, oh, everything would work better if everyone used the same messaging service.
John:
And if it's the majority of people have iPhones and there's one or two people who don't have iPhones, the solution is to badger those people to say, just get an iPhone so we can have a productive conversation where everybody sees everybody's other messages and we don't miss things and things don't get screwed up, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
And that is a real phenomenon.
John:
And this is, you know, started a broader conversation about RCS, which is, I put a link to it in here somewhere, what is it, Rich Communication Service.
John:
It's like the successor to SMS, as in a cell phone messaging service that has more feature-rich than SMS, that is more modern, that is not sort of, doesn't have its origins in like sideband analog cell radio stuff that SMS came from, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
but importantly it's it's still like a cell phone type thing where your phone number is your identity and all that other stuff and lots of other companies have been getting on apple saying hey apple you should support rcs because if you don't you're showing that you're using iMessage for lock-in for your messaging service or whatever um and there's some truth to that uh that like it would be good well start start with casey's thing it would be good if if
John:
uh sms and iMessage worked better together as in you could have productive conversations and not mess your messages like i don't see who would disagree with that i don't think apple is intentionally sabotaging i think it's probably a hard problem but if you pretend to support it like casey can in theory have a group conversation with android phones and iphones it should work right like it just should otherwise why have the feature you know is it supposed to work or is it just not supposed to work and it's like a decoy or something right
John:
and then rcs is similar if rcs ever becomes a thing and it becomes a feature that carriers and again i'm mostly just talking about the us here we'll get to all your other messaging things in a second and most carriers support rcs apple should probably support it so that you can have a conversation maybe even a group conversation with multiple people some of whom are using rcs and some of whom are using i message just like you can have one today with people who are using i message and people using sms
John:
seems like a reasonable thing to do and by the way it should work like all the time people should get all the messages i don't think that's particularly controversial but i think what most people are mad about is the idea of like message platform lock-in which is funny to me because imessage has one of the one of the weakest message platform lock-ins and like uh who is it uh i think
John:
mario marco said he heard this on uh on uh what instratechery or was it dithering podcast yeah yeah uh talking about this i think i think a lot of people have in talking about larger conversation have hit on what the the real issue here which is what messaging service is popular where you live and why
John:
uh in the us i message is very popular uh if you're gonna if you see someone on a cell phone sending tech messages the chances that are it's especially using iphone chance that it's i messages are pretty darn high elsewhere in the world different services have won i don't remember the exact affiliations but i'll try i think japan is line is the most popular service um wechat is china right uh a lot of europe is whatsapp
John:
I'm sure there are different ones in other countries.
John:
And it's like, how did that come to be?
John:
What is it about these services that make them so dominant in these different places?
John:
And why is it different?
John:
Why isn't iChat popular across the whole world?
John:
Why isn't WhatsApp popular across the whole world?
John:
Why are these regionalities?
John:
And I think what it highlights is how little the messaging service itself has to do with
John:
what everybody uses it's just basically like who got critical mass first and a lot of things in the computing world are like that like why is facebook popular why was myspace popular why was aol popular there's lots of legit reasons like hey well send out free cds and here's this business study showing it's great but the whole point is if you're in the right place in the right time make just make reasonable enough moves you can get critical mass for things like this that have network effects where
John:
Facebook is only useful if your friends are also on Facebook.
John:
A messaging app like AIM is only useful if your friends are also on AIM.
John:
And if you can get that critical mass of everyone I know is on this thing, it snowballs and it becomes very difficult to go someplace else because you need a huge meteor or boulder explosion or something to kick people off of one and put them onto another.
John:
It's very hard to dislodge people if everybody is there.
John:
So...
John:
Why is lying in Japan?
John:
Because they got critical mass first.
John:
Why is WhatsApp in these European countries?
John:
Because they got critical mass first.
John:
And there are other things like SMS used to cost money there and less money here and so on and so forth.
John:
The whole point is whatever got critical mass, that inertia is very difficult to overcome.
John:
And you need something big to knock it out.
John:
But what it also means is there's nothing specifically about...
John:
line versus whatsapp that makes one better than the other in terms of a messaging service maybe there's better cultural fits in terms of how they marketed themselves and of course their economic ones of what was free versus what charged money and how much the carriers charge for things and so on and so forth but not the specific service right uh and related to that just before we came on the air i read a jason snell article in macworld that talks about one point that i was going to make in the show was that i message is crappy and
John:
We all know this, right?
John:
It's not a good messaging service.
John:
We already pointed out how it doesn't interoperate with SMS.
John:
It has very few features compared to other services.
John:
Even just within iMessage, there can be weird bugs and stuff.
John:
And it doesn't change much.
John:
Every year, iMessage doesn't get that much better.
John:
I mean, they tried to do the iMessage App Store and that didn't really go anywhere.
John:
But lots of things that are in iMessage have been the same as they have been for ages.
John:
The search is still bad.
John:
The way they do replies is still weird.
John:
Jason pointed out like the tap back feature where you can put different reactions.
John:
It's been the same like five or six reactions for the entire life of that feature.
John:
It's
John:
it's not a product that they're iterating on and making better and better all the time.
John:
So if you could say, okay, everybody's kicked off all their messaging services, none of your friends or any messaging service, let's start from a level playing field and let's all decide what messaging service we should get on.
John:
And by the way, we erased your memory so you don't remember iMessage so you can't do it out of Abbott.
John:
And you look at the messaging services based on who has the nicest app, who has the most features, like all that other stuff.
John:
And price is most taken about it because these are all these days internet powered things.
John:
I don't think iMessage would do as well as it does.
John:
It was a default messaging app on iPhones, and iPhone became popular, and that's why iMessage is popular, but not because it's a good message service.
John:
It's terrible, right?
John:
And so this whole conversation about like, oh, iMessage is giving you lock-in, everything with network effects gives you lock-in, and it always feels terrible.
John:
It's like, why is everybody doing X when Y is better than X?
John:
It's like, well, it's too late.
John:
Everybody's doing X, and it's a social thing, and so unless you have some way to get everybody off of X,
John:
And on to why, like, say X goes out of business, or, you know, X is overwhelmed with spam, or it's very difficult.
John:
I'm trying to think of like, it's like a conversation I have with Merlin, what would get people off Facebook?
John:
What would get people off of their messaging service of choice?
John:
If everyone you know is on WhatsApp, what gets you off of WhatsApp?
John:
What gets you and everyone you know off of WhatsApp?
John:
And it's very difficult.
John:
You know, we haven't been able to get everybody off of Facebook.
John:
And I don't think you're gonna get everybody who's on iMessage off of iMessage.
John:
That's why I feel it's imperative that if you're going to do cross protocol support, that you make it actually work.
John:
And if you're not going to do cross protocol support, then just don't do it at all.
John:
And let your message let you know, make your own little bubbles in the world.
John:
So all this to say is that I guess Apple should probably implement RCS, but it's not going to really help anything.
John:
Oh, and by the way, RCS is, you know, because it's a carrier thing.
John:
It's kind of swimming against the tide where modern messaging servers say, we'll use the Internet communicate, which is a great idea because the Internet is cool.
John:
uh but having your identity be your phone number that's really crappy it's i mean apple i know speaking of how far things apple did uh can i send uh sms's for my mac yeah kind of through your phone because you need a phone number well can i have a conversation with blue and green bubbles on my mac sort of
John:
with a little help from your phone or a relay that converts that it's like like if you use the internet anything connected to the internet can do it if you use your phone number there has to be a cell phone or a phone number somewhere involved and in that respect rcs is sort of a
John:
retrograde type of service where it's not forward looking like forward looking services are all internet based and so although we'll probably have to support rcs because it's better than sms and it's not as technically backwards if you're looking for a new service for the entire world to communicate with each other on rcs is not it it's got to be something on the internet
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I don't see Apple being willing to implement RCS unless they can explain away the lack of end-to-end encryption.
Casey:
Because my limited understanding of RCS—I might have this wrong—is I think Google layered on a superset or something of RCS or their own custom—like Apple does with Bluetooth and has their own custom stuff riding on top of traditional Bluetooth—
Casey:
Well, I guess Google, I think, had put their own custom stuff on top of RCS so they could get end-to-end encrypted messages.
Casey:
And I don't see Apple being able to or perhaps willing to implement RCS unless they have a good privacy story.
Casey:
Because otherwise it's like, well...
Casey:
Why are you banging this privacy drum over there?
Casey:
But then you totally throw it out the window over here.
Casey:
And with SMS and MMS, I mean, it's like table stakes, at least here in America, that you have to support those things.
Casey:
Otherwise, you basically don't have a functioning cellular phone.
Casey:
But I know it's different the rest of the world.
Casey:
But for here, you have to have it.
Casey:
But, you know, to add something that is...
John:
i was going to say inherently dangerous but that's that's a bit overblown that is certainly less secure than than apple would like it seems it seems like it would be disingenuous for them to do that well sms already doesn't have any security so this would be just a replacement for sms like i don't think apple is raring to go in this i think if other people intermittent rcs and it becomes an issue where it's like hey everyone else is doing it apple then apple should do it too but i don't think apple has to lead here or anything like
John:
You mentioned SMS, like the reason you have to have it to have a functioning cell phone is just to give one example.
John:
The current current use of SMS for two factor, which itself has its own problems, but it is still a common practice.
John:
And the whole point of that being a second factor is that it's a phone number.
John:
Right.
John:
And we sent through SMS because that is sort of the, you know, the base level lowest common denominator thing that cell phones can understand.
John:
could could people send two factors using rcs they could but you have to get to a point where there is a a reasonable chance that that's going to work i don't think there are probably any cell phones that people are still using that can't do sms but rcs is nowhere right so
Casey:
I don't think that's true.
Casey:
I think it's implemented in lots of places, isn't it?
Casey:
Maybe I have this all wrong, but I could swear that it's been implemented certainly on a lot of carriers.
Casey:
And I thought Android has had it for many more years than I had thought.
Casey:
I thought it was just coming out now, and I think it's been there for four or five years.
John:
The standard is certainly very old, but I think everybody still sends two-factor stuff using plain old SMS and not RCS just because it's guaranteed to be there.
John:
At the minimum, the billions of iPhones in the world can't get it, and so if you send it via RCS and someone has an iPhone, they can't log into your two-factor thing.
John:
That seems like a big deal.
John:
That's why they're going to... Anyway, if RCS replaces it just because SMS is an ancient old standard and eventually SMS is going to go away and RCS is going to replace it, then yeah, Apple has to do it because...
John:
It's the lowest common denominator.
John:
The same reason Apple, well, not the same reason Apple do SMS because iMessages know it exists.
John:
But like the same reason Apple continues to support SMS, not because Apple loves SMS.
John:
It's because if they took it away, their phone becomes significantly less functional for the users.
John:
If RCS ever gets to that point, then Apple will have to do it.
John:
And that's I feel like that's what I'm saying.
John:
Apple should do it probably before it becomes a problem, but only just before it becomes a problem for them.
John:
I'm not sure it's a problem right now.
John:
I've certainly never encountered something in my life where my phone's lack of RCS support has been a problem.
John:
But they should eventually implement it.
John:
Don't wait for it to be a problem and then band-aid it.
John:
Anticipate it by a little bit and then implement it.
John:
And who knows?
John:
I hold out hope that RCS being a more modern protocol...
John:
Apple and implementing in a more modern time maybe with a more modern language even there is a higher chance that it will the interoperability between iMessage and RCS will work better than the interoperability between SMS and iMessage and hey that's great for Apple they just never have to fix those bugs they can just let it sail off into the sunset and replace it with the new better actually functional RCS and iMessage interoperability.
Casey:
If I may, again, take us on a small tangent, something that really drives me nuts about my group chats with one or more Android people is, and I'm sure many Americans have experienced this, if I'm in a group chat, like, for example, Aaron and me and my brother-in-law, who's an Android user, and my sister-in-law, who also has an iPhone, because of my brother-in-law, whom I love dearly, the entire damn chat is all green bubbles because of that one Android phone.
Casey:
It makes sense.
Casey:
Um, and if I were to slip up or let's say if Aaron were to slip up and do a tap back on one of these messages, which I would argue maybe shouldn't even be allowed in the first place, but let's leave that aside for a second.
Casey:
What I will receive is Aaron lists liked, and then like a quotation of the message that she gave a thumbs up too.
Casey:
Which, okay, fine.
Casey:
I understand that, you know, when Aaron's phone is trying to verbalize, for lack of a better word, or transmit her action to an Android phone, the best it can do is say Aaron Liss liked and then repeat the message.
Casey:
Sure.
Casey:
Totally makes sense.
Casey:
But on my phone, I have an iPhone.
Casey:
Why is Apple not parsing Aaron Liss liked and then the exact message that she liked?
Casey:
Why is messages not parsing this and throwing a thumbs up on the message that she liked?
Casey:
Do you understand what I'm saying?
John:
Yeah, well, I mean, you don't want it to be parsing.
John:
What you want is sort of a dual rights thing where your phone sends the iMessage to the iMessage people and the SMS to the SMS people.
John:
So you're doing everything sort of like the native way.
Casey:
I'm sure there would be no problems there, John, with no one source of truth.
John:
But what I'm saying is like the other way you're describing is if an SMS comes in and the string is exactly one of these five strings interpreted as a tap back on the previous thing.
John:
And that is not a great way to go about things.
John:
Especially with localization and other stuff, it's weird.
John:
You don't want to sort of like...
John:
send text interpret text that goes through sms certain text being special triggering commands to run yeah probably how you want to get even if it's as simple as like well when i see that i'll interpret it as a thumb and display it that way not that sms and imessage aren't cracked 10 different ways all the time anyway but i probably wouldn't choose to do that but the way they do it you can see it making sense it's like and look how we interoperate oh it's easy we'll just convert everything into text and
John:
And they just didn't go the extra mile to say, but, you know, can we make it better for the iMessage users?
John:
And I guess the conspiracy theory is like, see, they made it look annoying.
John:
So the green bubble people would be shunned into getting an iPhone.
Casey:
So that's the thing, right, is that I totally understand that Erin's phone, when she likes the message, you know, sounds good.
Casey:
I totally understand that her phone admits Erin lists liked sounds good.
Casey:
But where I start to be the conspiracy theorist with, like, the red yarn all over the bolton board is when my phone doesn't take that and turn it into a thumbs up.
Casey:
And I understand what you guys are saying, but I feel like there's got to be a way to make this somewhat reliable.
Casey:
Or, you know what, even if somebody literally typed the message, you know, Casey List likes such and such, and, like, if there was an errant thumb, like, is that really the end of the earth?
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
There was an errant thumb attributed to you because the client would then interpret it as you liking the thing.
John:
You need a little.
Casey:
Sure.
Casey:
But perhaps perhaps it would only do that if I'm like if I typed out Casey list like sounds good.
John:
I know.
John:
I mean, anyway, I mean, so there's there's two angles.
John:
One, the product design one is doing it as text for everybody.
John:
The uniform experience is sort of adhering to, you know, a principle that you may have for the UI that everyone involved in group conversations is the same thing.
John:
Right.
John:
And so you may not like that.
John:
And it's like, well, why do we have to get dumbed down and gets back to that whole argument?
John:
But at least it's a consistent experience in theory.
John:
I mean, minus the bugs that we're talking about.
John:
The whole point is we don't get a consistent experience.
John:
But you can see the argument for the sort of simplicity of just saying, look, everybody in the group chat sees the same thing.
John:
We're not giving special treatment to the Apple ones where they know how to do the tap backs and the other ones don't, just so we're all looking at the same stuff.
Casey:
Yeah, but I could swear that I read recently, and I'm not going to be able to dig up an article to justify or verify this, but I swear that Google is doing what I described.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
No, I'm saying from a product design perspective, you could make the decision that everyone should see the same thing.
John:
Yeah.
John:
even if only just so you know what they're seeing, right?
John:
Because otherwise, how do you know what other people are seeing on their screen?
John:
If it looks good to you, maybe you don't realize that it looks weird to them, whereas just doing this text everywhere shows it looks good to everybody.
John:
So there is an argument to be made for this sort of consistency, even though it's lesser quality.
John:
But the other thing is, and it's not a conspiracy theory, it's just like if Apple's going to prioritize features,
John:
They're not going to prioritize making really, really good integration with SMS just because they would prefer everyone to use iMessage.
John:
So why are we, you know, it's not, it's not like, you know, their mustache twisting.
John:
Ah, it's part of our dastardly plan.
John:
It's just plain old prioritization.
John:
It's like, what do we care more about?
John:
Like,
John:
new feature x or making sms and imessage work together better and clearly they don't care that much about making sms imessage work work together even just basic functionality in terms of the messages go through and people see them like that has been a struggle this is way down on the list like it's just prioritization sort of banality of it's not even a banality of evil it's not actually evil it's just like look we have to have priorities and this is a pretty low one because
John:
Apple's solution would be just use iMessage.
John:
It comes with your phone.
John:
Oh, but my friends don't have iMessage.
John:
Oh, they should buy iPhones.
John:
But if they don't, we try to interoperate too and we do the best we can.
John:
But it's not going to be a high priority.
John:
Apple is not going to win people over by making that integration better.
John:
And that sounds evil to people.
John:
It's like, see, they're intentionally making it bad.
John:
But I feel like there is a nuanced distinction between choosing your priorities based on what's important to the company
John:
versus an evil plan to punish bad people with green bubbles right and even though they seem like they're the same thing i feel like it's an it's important to understand the distinction there right even if there are like two or three people who are twisting their mustaches or rubbing their hands together saying haha this will really teach those android users
John:
I don't think it's like corporate policy to do that.
John:
If you look at the leaked emails and everything, I think it was Eddie Q was pushing for iMessage to be on all platforms and other people said, why would we do that?
John:
It's great platform lock-in.
John:
People use iPhones because they all have iMessage and if we let them, if we let iMessage be everywhere, that removes a differentiator and people think that's evil.
John:
That's what everybody does in business.
John:
It's like, why would we put Halo on the PlayStation?
John:
People buy an Xbox because it has Halo.
John:
Why would we put it everywhere?
John:
It's like, see, you're trying to lock people into the Xbox.
John:
Like, yeah.
John:
yeah we're trying to make the xbox be the best-selling cup like that's business and it's not a life or death thing and it's not like i don't think that's particularly evil and even then the argument was had with some high big executives like eddie q arguing it's like that's all well and good but we should make imessage be everywhere right because it's it would be make us more successful like bringing the ipod to windows right that's always the push and pull especially in computer markets or whatever it was like
John:
should we try to be the standard for everything or should we try to be a really cool feature that makes you buy our product instead of theirs and it's not always easy to know when you should cross over that bridge like in hindsight it's easy like so can you believe they didn't want to put the ipod on windows how dumb would have that been yeah it's easy in hindsight but other decisions have gone the other way and have also worked out so
John:
You know, I'm not sure where iMessage is at this point, as I think they were saying on dithering.
John:
It may be too late to put iMessage everywhere.
John:
Speaking of that, it's like, oh, Apple can solve this problem by just putting iMessage on every single platform.
John:
Who the hell would want iMessage?
John:
If you're using something that has better features, which is basically anything that's not iMessage, like Line, WhatsApp, probably WeChat, all those things are better chat clients than iMessage.
John:
They have more features.
John:
They're more useful.
John:
Maybe some of them are also crappy in ways that Apple wouldn't like in terms of being festooned with ads or spam or whatever, but...
John:
In terms of feature set, it's not even close.
John:
What I think about is Slack.
John:
Slack is so much better at sending textual messages back and forth to people and having conversations and threads and reactions and inline previews and all the things you do.
John:
And that's a freaking web view.
John:
And it's so much better than iMessage.
John:
It's not even funny.
John:
I would use Slack as my instant messaging app if that was an option.
John:
But of course, to do that, I would have to
John:
you know, send the giant asteroid that would knock everybody I know off of iMessage and onto some hypothetical iMessage replacement that has the same features as Slack, right?
John:
Oh, and I guess the other factor that we need to throw in here is who owns the thing?
John:
A private company owning something like Facebook owning WhatsApp may be a factor in some people's decisions and certainly is in mine.
John:
Not enough to change who goes where because network effects don't care about that.
John:
But I would prefer not to switch from iMessage to a system owned by a company that I trust less than Apple.
John:
That doesn't mean that's what's keeping people on iMessage at all.
John:
But me, personally, I don't like the idea of switching to a better, more full-featured chat client that happens to be owned by Facebook.
John:
So I really hope that doesn't happen.
Marco:
I almost wonder how much any of this, giving people new options at this point, I wonder how much that even matters.
Marco:
Because it seems like most people don't evaluate... You were saying, John, how it would be pretty much impossible to try to move everyone off of what they're using now.
Marco:
And I think the reason why is that most people, I think, have worked out their messaging platform around the time that they got their first smartphone.
Marco:
And all their friends got smartphones and they all messaged each other on something.
Marco:
And I think most of the world that can have a phone at all now has a smartphone and has a messaging platform.
Marco:
And I think it's one of those things, as you were saying three hours ago, it's not that these platforms are competing on features or anything.
Marco:
They're mostly just like, why do people use the ones they use?
Marco:
Well, because their friends used it, and that's how they talk to their friends.
Marco:
And then it's just kind of... Certain groups fall into place with certain platforms, and I don't think we're ever going to change that.
Marco:
I don't think...
Marco:
First of all, I'm surprised RCS is even still being talked about because it had so many shortcomings when it was first floated, however many years ago that was.
Marco:
But no one's looking for text messaging to get better without it being a totally different thing.
Marco:
No one's looking for RCS.
Marco:
That solves no problems people actually have.
Marco:
And iMessage is great for the people who use it.
Marco:
The people who currently don't use iMessage will probably never use iMessage.
Marco:
And I think you could say that about almost all these platforms, like whatever you use, like your messaging needs.
Marco:
If you have a smartphone, your messaging needs are probably pretty well settled and you're probably not looking to change.
Marco:
And so I almost wonder how much any of this discussion, even like if Apple launched iMessage on Android tomorrow, like would it would people actually even install it?
Marco:
Would people use it?
Marco:
Probably not.
Marco:
People probably keep doing what they're doing already.
John:
Well, it has a chance in the U.S.
John:
just because so many people in the U.S.
John:
still use SMS, right?
John:
And SMS is so dire and so terrible and so old that I think you could get some people, if they put out iMessage for Android, I think you could get a lot of Android people off of SMS and onto iMessage.
John:
Uh, because in this country we don't have, you know, a huge majority of people on WhatsApp or WeChat or line or, or anything like that.
John:
Um, the other thing, I mean, there's two other things that can move people.
John:
Like obviously the big asteroid coming in, you know, one version of the big asteroid is, Hey, the company that runs line.
John:
Yeah.
John:
They went out of business.
John:
guess what that'll get everybody offline uh that's the problem with these like oh i'm on a messaging platform i'm never gonna move you'll move if the company goes out of business and doesn't get bought like or you'll move if that company turns into like a you know a blockchain thing and like starts spamming you with nft crap and just becomes a giant scam thing right or it becomes festoon with ads or the or someone buys it and drives it into the ground that's the difficulty of
John:
having network effect based platforms owned by individual companies because individual companies can screw up and they can go out of business or be bought by somebody worse and do terrible things and just mess up arguably that's kind of what happened to myspace versus facebook right we keep hoping that facebook's gonna screw up and wither away and die but they keep staying alive and getting more money so it's difficult to kill them but that's one way you can get rid of things and the second way is
John:
uh people like i said they're just never going to change their platforms yeah but they die and if young people are using a different platform wow right if young if young people are using a different platform like oh young people all message each other on snapchat and snapchat becomes the dominant platform of the next 50 years because those young people started using snapchat when they were nine and just never stopped right because that's what them and all their friends were on that type of that's not an asteroid that's more of a slow rollover that can also happen
John:
We're just a generational thing.
John:
One thing is seen as cooler than something else.
John:
Old people use X, young people use Y, and the old people never change and the young people never change.
John:
And you wake up 50 years later and all the old people are dead and everybody's using Snapchat for messaging.
John:
But that presupposes that Snapchat's going to stay in business and not screw up their application and everything, right?
John:
This is the danger of having something as important as ubiquitous instant message type text messaging being owned by individual private companies.
John:
If there was an individual private company that owned email, we would be on email seven by now, like whatever the seventh generation of email is.
John:
Not that email is great, you know, no encryption, spam is a problem, blah, blah, blah, because it wasn't owned by any single company.
John:
it's very difficult to kill uh you know companies come and go companies screw up they they you know they fill their products with ads and and spam and malware and do all sorts of terrible things but email survives because no matter what any individual company does email as a standard has network effect is one of the original network effects of the internet right
John:
everybody's got it uh it's difficult for any single company to replace it a lot of people tried really really hard and they didn't pull it off and no matter how many companies go out of business email stays that's not true of instant messaging so we're kind of in the early stages of that in 50 years
John:
Of all the companies I described, how many will still be in business?
John:
How many will have been bought by other companies?
John:
It's like WhatsApp.
John:
Facebook buys Line and says Line is eventually gone, and now it's folded into WhatsApp.
John:
And by the way, WhatsApp is gone, and it's folded into Facebook Messenger.
John:
Those are things that can happen.
John:
It's the danger of having...
John:
private companies that may not live that long and may not do what you want controlling such an important thing so that's the one thing that rcs has going for it is that at least it's like a cross-company standard i mean granted they're cell phone carriers so not the best companies and granted it's a terrible standard and it's crappy and old and doesn't have the features we want and so on and so forth but that's one of the advantages that sms has is
John:
there's no company that can go out of business that makes sms not work right it's kind of baked in it's old it's ancient it's crappy but it's not owned by any one single company and rcs has that advantage and the you know again the advantage for me personally not for regular people because they don't care but for me personally i like the fact that apple runs iMessage because i trust apple more than say facebook or whoever owns wechat any company based in china i probably don't want them to run the messaging service that the whole world uses right
John:
so i think this is still a problem area uh and it is difficult to move people on mass from one thing to the other but change can happen through people dying and change can happen through companies dying and i guess that's what we have to root for not people dying that's gonna happen whether we root for it or not i guess oh my gosh when they're really old long natural death as we call it not an unnatural death but natural one oh dear god when you're old and no one cares about you anymore
Casey:
Usually I'm the one who puts not only my foot, but my ankle and my thigh in my mouth.
Casey:
But today that role is being played by John Syracuse.
John:
Have you ever thought about the phrase that died of natural causes?
Casey:
It's like a natural childbirth.
Casey:
It's the same thing.
Casey:
No, it's not the same thing at all.
Casey:
I mean, it's kind of the same thing.
Casey:
I mean, whatever.
Casey:
I don't feel like arguing about that either.
Casey:
See, this is where I put my foot in my mouth.
Casey:
It's happening again.
Casey:
Anyway, I don't know.
Casey:
The other thing, just to get ahead of the feedback emails that have already come in, I'm quite sure.
Casey:
Every time we talk about messaging platforms, particularly Americans, all the smug Europeans and people from the Asian countries are always like, well, just tell everyone to change.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
Okay, sure.
Casey:
I'm going to tell the 700 contacts in my phone book.
Casey:
You know what?
Casey:
The king has decided that I am going to use WeChat now.
Casey:
So if you would like to talk to me, come talk to me on WeChat.
Casey:
Yeah, that's totally going to work.
Casey:
Related, when's the last time you loaded the Glass app on your iPhone?
Casey:
I rest my case.
John:
Does anyone actually say that?
John:
Just tell everyone to change?
John:
I haven't seen that.
John:
Yes, it happened in the chat earlier today.
John:
Earlier today.
John:
It's kind of like people saying we can solve traffic jams by everyone just to go at once, right?
Casey:
Seriously.
Casey:
It's so preposterous.
Casey:
Like, yes, maybe like my core 20 or 30 people, maybe I could get half of them to change to my preferred messaging service, but the likelihood of that is almost zero.
John:
Even if you bought them all brand new iPhones, you probably still couldn't get 100% conversion.
John:
Right, exactly.
John:
If you bought them and paid for their cell phone plan for their life, you probably still can get 100% conversion.
John:
Yep.
John:
Because people just like what they're used to, right?
John:
And they don't want change.
John:
Like, why am I changing?
John:
Why don't you change stream?
John:
Why don't you get an Android phone?
John:
How about that?
Marco:
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Casey:
All right, let's do some Ask ATP.
Casey:
And I have been excited to hear John talk about this.
Casey:
And that's no sarcasm.
Casey:
I really mean it.
Casey:
Daniel Bergfuss writes, Mac OS is over two decades old now, but its foundation is still roughly the same and also the foundation of Apple's entire OS suite.
Casey:
Would you say that this will continue to be true for the next two decades?
Casey:
Or should we assume that a team within Apple is cranking away on exploring a completely new OS approach designed from the ground up to even better suit Apple's multifaceted future?
Casey:
Should we expect another large transition within the next 20 years because of this, maybe impacting Apple's full range of products?
Casey:
And if so...
Casey:
What is your advice for Apple as well as your hopes and dreams for this new approach?
Casey:
And to get ahead of you, John, the very first thing I thought of when I read this Ask ATP, which was very good, was avoiding Copeland 2010, excuse me, which I will put in the show notes.
John:
You should probably put the revisited article because it explains it and has all the links back.
John:
Because otherwise you have to link to all three of them and it's confusing.
John:
So maybe just do the revisited articles.
John:
Yeah.
John:
sorry dad yeah we've done these links for anyway um so for making a completely new os uh the rumors are that's one of the things that apple was doing for the car project because as you can imagine an operating system suitable for helping a car to drive is has different requirements than one that runs your cell phone or whatever and you know it's a clean sheet type thing apple doesn't have an existing car they don't have an existing car software base so they could
John:
Start from scratch and use more modern technology better suited to being a car OS.
John:
But who knows where any of that is going.
John:
That aside, the good thing about what Apple did with Mac OS X is they sort of built their operating system...
John:
the core OS thing with a POSIX Unix style layer to it.
John:
And that really helps for the future.
John:
If there's some deficit of the microkernel, the mock microkernel and the BSD system that's fused to it and all sort of low-level parts of Apple's operating system, if it turns out that there's some limiting factor for some future application, whether it be VR or self-driving cars, something like that,
John:
Apple can really re-plumb the guts in very interesting ways while still maintaining that sort of POSIX-compliant layer on top of it.
John:
Because that's something that the software industry has done many times over, putting POSIX layers on operating systems that are not themselves, like, natively Unix POSIX systems.
John:
Windows NT did it back in the day.
John:
Microsoft does it with Windows.
John:
Like, it just...
John:
it is a common thing arguably apple's kind of doing it with on with the bsd kernel fused to mock and everything and yes there are all sorts of stuff in mac os 10 that use the mock ports and all sorts of mock ipc features that are specific to mock but you can also i'm saying mach you can also mock those mock you can mock versions of mock what i'm saying is that it's a layer cake and so
Casey:
Oh, my gosh.
John:
Because Apple got rid of the main deficits, which was, hey, no memory protection, no preemptive multitasking, all the Copeland 2010 stuff, right?
John:
Because they address those and have a solid foundation, they can rip out the guts and put better, more interesting guts in there while still maintaining lots of compatibility with the higher layers because that layer, that sort of POSIX-UNIX layer, is very common across the entire world.
John:
world of operating system that has proved very durable and useful.
John:
There's no underlying design that really negates that interface.
John:
And it's not to say that could be the only thing.
John:
You could have some sort of real-time operating system that you use in the car and it has advanced features, but you can implement the sort of old fuddy-duddy POSIX APIs on top of that.
John:
and give them a road going forward.
John:
That said, so far, everything that Apple has made has shown that the guts of Next Step slash Mac OS X is surprisingly flexible.
John:
They put it on a watch, right?
John:
They didn't just put it in a phone or an iPad.
John:
They put it in a wristwatch.
John:
So I'm not sure what...
John:
flexibility or new features you need from the core os that you're not getting they can they put it on giant mac pro all the way down to a wristwatch and it's done really well in all of those different applications it just goes to show that the core os is not the limiting factor in those things so i don't think there's any specific thing that apple needs for any of the platforms that are currently planned setting aside the car so
John:
ar vr future gaming console any kind of computing device from a wristwatch all the way up to a big personal computer i think their core os is in a reasonable good place and it's not like it hasn't changed it is improved and everything but i think i think that's doing mostly okay they can redo replumb the kernel to try to fix some long-standing architectural problems and they can do it in a way that we probably don't notice the car is the one where they might need a new approach and rumor is that's what they were doing for the car
John:
which is let's not build this on top of the mac os 10 foundation because it's kind of old and creaky in terms of the way we need a car os to handle like the reliability concerns of a multi-thousand pound piece of metal are different than the reliability concerns of your cell phone they just are so let's get something that's more reliable and we're not going to get to that reliability by starting with this giant code base and trying to make it more reliable and plus we need real-time features because you kind of need to decide now now now whether you should turn
John:
And they're operating systems designed for that, right?
John:
They're real-time operating systems using spacecraft and airplanes and all sorts of other stuff.
John:
And Apple being Apple, of course, they would try to make their own, right?
John:
Because they have a lot of smart people, which fine.
John:
But that project hasn't come out yet.
John:
So that is the only place where I think a new OS approach is...
John:
If not necessary, then reasonably appropriate.
John:
Every other application Apple has applied the Darwin core of Mac OS X, Mac OS whatever, to it has succeeded and gone great.
John:
Again, I will cite the wristwatch.
John:
If you can get a drone on a wristwatch and a giant Mac Pro, it's probably doing okay.
John:
So I wouldn't worry about it too much.
Casey:
I'm surprised by this.
Casey:
I was expecting a lot more angst from you.
Casey:
I'm not saying this is bad.
Casey:
I'm just, I'm surprised.
John:
there were rumors in that same blog where the couple 20 thing a couple 2010 thing was like that the l4 microkernel was being investigated like the really really core of the os like there's lots of interesting projects of how you can make something more reliable or faster or better in situations of high contention but you can do that without disturbing the higher layers and it turns out they haven't done they haven't needed to do that yet so it makes me think that there's not a particular crisis looming here maybe i need
John:
the younger version of me to write like avoiding Copeland 2057.
John:
But right now, I think with the exception of the car project, they're in a reasonably good position.
Casey:
Patrick writes, I haven't owned or played a gaming system in over 10 years.
Casey:
Recently, I played some halo with a friend.
Casey:
It was a lot of fun.
Casey:
And I'm thinking about getting a modern system.
Casey:
The problem, however, is that I don't know which one to get.
Casey:
I don't want to buy multiple platforms since I'm not a hardcore gamer.
Casey:
The switch PS five and Xbox all have a game or two that look really appealing.
Casey:
Do you have any advice on helping me choose a platform?
Marco:
Without knowing exactly which games look appealing to Patrick on each platform, I would just say go with the one that's going to give you the most fun.
Marco:
If you're not a hardcore gamer, that means that getting the latest and greatest graphics on the PS5 and Xbox, whatever it is, is a lower priority.
Marco:
What you're optimizing for is fun.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
I think for most people, the odds are you'd have the most fun with the switch out of those.
Marco:
Um, it's also right now much easier to get.
Marco:
So that's, that helps.
Marco:
Um, and, and it benefits from a pretty large software library since it's been out a few years now, uh, compared to the PS five and Xbox, whatever, which are both much newer.
Marco:
And so I would say, unless there is a, unless like there's like a really must have game or games calling you over to the PS five or Xbox, um,
Marco:
Go with the Switch because you're more likely to find a lot of fun there, and it's just easier to approach being less expensive, easier to get, larger game library already in place.
Marco:
And it has the benefit of being portable if you ever actually need that, which you might not think you would use, but you might end up using it.
John:
I don't think there's a larger game library because you forget the PlayStation plays PlayStation 4 games and the Xbox plays the older Xbox games as well.
John:
So there's a big catalog of those.
John:
But the not a hardcore gamer is the big twist here because it makes people think like what you just said.
John:
Okay, well, then you don't care about all these, you know, why get a super expensive, super powerful console?
John:
You don't care.
John:
You're not a hardcore gamer.
John:
But if you're not a hardcore gamer, that also means the people who who say that probably don't have a lot of experience, especially with modern video games.
John:
So you don't know if that person is the type of person who is going to love World of Warcraft and should therefore get a gaming PC.
John:
Right.
John:
Because they've never had contact with it.
John:
They don't have any immunities built up.
John:
They don't have the antibodies.
John:
You don't know what thing is going to be their thing.
John:
It could be that it turns out that they're super into real-time strategy games or they get obsessed with puzzle games or they're really, really into Final Fantasy.
John:
You just don't know because they haven't been exposed to them.
John:
So they can't give you an opinion.
John:
I like this type of game or that type of game.
John:
And so guessing like, oh, you should like Nintendo because most people like Nintendo and it's fun.
John:
it's hard to make that assumption if i met this person in real life i'd i'd talk to them and try to figure out you know if you've played any games in the past which one appealed to you you're like well i used to play sim city a lot and i would lose hours and hours in sim city and civilization right and
John:
that tells me a lot about what type of game they're going to be interested in but by the same token if they've never played an open world game for example maybe that's the thing that is going to make them obsessed and it's so difficult to choose a platform without really interrogating somebody about that because
John:
Most people who play video games don't play like any large percentage of the games available for a platform.
John:
Not everybody's like me where you essentially play one game all the time, but some people don't.
John:
But one game, some people, all they play is World of Warcraft, right?
John:
For a first approximation, all I play is Destiny, right?
John:
That's one type of gamer.
John:
But the other type is not someone who plays 75 games a year.
John:
Most people play a small number of games per year of the type that they like.
John:
And if you are really, really into Zelda, you have to get Nintendo.
John:
It's the only place it is.
John:
There's not even any kind of Zelda equivalents on other platforms for the most part.
John:
Sorry, Oceanhorn.
John:
And if you just play the one or two Zelda games that are released and then a couple other things, you have to get a Nintendo platform.
John:
So that's the danger of picking a platform.
John:
You're like, I'm really excited about...
John:
I'm really excited about Call of Duty and that's available everywhere, right?
John:
Well, fast forward and maybe it's only available on Xbox and PC and they get a PlayStation and they're like, oh, but I want to play Call of Duty.
John:
In fact, that's the only thing I want to do with my game system is play Call of Duty.
John:
Now I can't play Call of Duty.
John:
This thing is useless to me.
John:
But when someone's not a hardcore gamer, you don't know.
John:
Like, are they going to be a single franchise player for a decade?
John:
Or are they going to get heavily into one or two types of games that are better on one platform or the other?
John:
So it's really a shot in the dark.
John:
So my suggestion for anyone like this is like,
John:
find a game find a game that you think you really want to play and maybe test that theory by trying it over a friend's house or whatever and then buy whatever platform that game is on right if it's on multiple platforms then it's an easier conversation you can talk about price and features and availability but you're not i know it's difficult because you're like i don't want to buy the wrong platform but really what you want to do is find the game or games that appeal to you and then buy whatever platform lets you play that game or games
Marco:
But I would say, like, the odds of the Switch having stuff that you find really fun are pretty high.
John:
But it depends.
John:
Maybe they're the type of person who's going to get obsessively into Civilization.
John:
The Switch is not going to help them there, right?
John:
Or, I don't know, Civilization.
Marco:
So I'm trying to think of a game like... Well, then you're a PC, I think, at that point.
John:
Right.
John:
But you don't know.
John:
Like, maybe someone who's just like, all I do is play The Sims.
John:
Right.
John:
There's all I do all day long is play the Sims.
John:
That's the type of game I get into or like, you know, or World of Warcraft or, you know, an open world thing.
John:
You have to you have to know you never know if they haven't had contact with that.
John:
What is going to suck them into the rabbit hole?
John:
Maybe they get sucked into no rabbit holes and they just want to casually play stuff and they just be fine with their phone.
John:
Right.
John:
So that's why it's so difficult for people who haven't been exposed, because if you haven't been exposed to
Casey:
don't know what if anything will grab you and you can't predict based on your past behavior because if you've never been exposed to world of warcraft you have no idea whether it will consume your life or whether you will not care about it at all yeah this is the one moment where i kind of am sad that blockbuster video doesn't exist anymore right because didn't once you talk about this marco just a couple months back like renting video game systems and video games and whatnot and so you could like
John:
rent a switch and give it a try for a week or whatever a few nights just to see how it goes and then rent an xbox after that you know and so on it amazes me that they did that i mean i did that i rented the systems i was like how did those systems survive for more than three days yeah seriously it was a gentler time i guess i think i was the only person renting the sega saturn so it was getting pretty gently used you again okay you want the saturn here you go
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And then Peter Wagner writes, my wife and I recently combined our last names into a single hyphenated last name.
Casey:
However, I know many people confuse hyphens M dashes and N dashes.
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
Is it EM or am I pronouncing that correctly?
Marco:
It's M. You got it right.
Casey:
It's M and N. Yep.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
I didn't know if I was supposed to be like spelling those out or anything.
Casey:
Anyways, do most programming languages distinguish between these three?
Casey:
I worry someone will use the wrong one and will wind up with multiple entries in an important database somewhere.
Casey:
Or worse, they won't be able to find our entry at all.
John:
This is where not being a computer programmer is a blessing for normal people.
John:
But also it makes you have sometimes the wrong mental model about what part of what is responsible for what.
John:
So this is not, for the most part, a programming language problem, but it is a problem.
John:
But it's a problem for complicated, stupid reasons that you probably don't care about involving the entire stack between you and where the data is stored in back.
John:
And I'm sure all of us could describe all the different places where this can get screwed up, including sometimes the programming language, but very rarely.
John:
But...
John:
the wire protocol, the database format, the web form.
John:
Like, there are so many places where non-ASCII characters can get mangled due to sort of, you know, US dominance and invention of the internet and international standards and crap like that.
John:
But yes, you probably...
John:
should be concerned that anything fancier than ASCII is going to get mangled by some, especially if you're in the US, is going to get mangled by some system somewhere.
John:
But it is not mostly the fault of the programming language.
John:
It's the fault of one of the other 17 layers between you and success.
Marco:
Anytime that you are relying on other people to enter your information into a computer system, you have a pretty high risk of errors there, no matter whether you have a hyphen or not.
Marco:
So I think that John is right, first of all, that this is not a language problem, but this is a technology problem in the sense that like…
Marco:
You're relying on things like Unicode normalization to match – and anybody who has a name that has a letter that is not common in English.
Marco:
So for instance, if you have a vowel that has an accent over it of various forms as part of your name or something like that, that's – there's going to be a lot of cases where –
Marco:
not necessarily programming languages, but just like the frameworks, the databases, as John was saying, different parts of the stack might either not consider an A with an accent over it to be an A, or they might consider that to be a different character than an A, or it might not match in the right way or something.
John:
Or it gets double encoded because someone screwed up the web form, and so now the UTF-8 itself becomes UTF-8 encoded, and you get the big capital A with a tilde over it.
John:
There's just so many ways that this can go wrong.
Marco:
Right, but the good thing is most things that are related to Unicode encoding, UTF-8 encoding, stuff like that, most of those things are probably being worked out in most computer systems over the last few decades because of the prevalence of having to make software that works all over the world for every different language and all different character sets and everything.
Marco:
So that problem is less of an issue, I think, in most cases you're going to run into today.
Marco:
The bigger problem, I think, is normalization.
John:
Except for the parts where you care about it the most.
John:
Like banks and healthcare, which are the most backwards and the most terrible systems.
John:
And unfortunately, money and health are probably the areas where this is going to annoy you the most.
John:
Starbucks is going to probably have your name in beautiful UTF encoded characters preserved everywhere across the whole entire thing.
John:
But your hospital might not even be able to fit your name because their field for last name only has like eight characters max.
John:
And they're all ASCII, right?
John:
So it...
John:
Things are slowly getting better.
John:
Unicode does make things better.
John:
But the older the system, your DMV, whatever, the worse things tend to be.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
The other thing that might help you out a little bit is that most people, especially people who would be entering your name into a database somewhere...
Marco:
don't know how to type M dashes or N dashes and don't even know what they are.
Marco:
We're lucky people can deal with things like periods in anything.
Marco:
Relying on the general public to type punctuation correctly, again, this is going to be very error-prone no matter how you do it, but most people...
Marco:
don't know that there are these different dashes and nor would they know how to type them um and usually if you see somebody sending you a different dash it is not usually because they hit you know option minus or whatever or or that they held down the the hyphen key on their ios keyboard and waited a second and got the other two dashes there um
Marco:
It's usually because they typed in two dashes in a row and whatever they're typing in corrected it to an M dash for them.
Marco:
So it's this is like, you know, no one's choosing to type these except nerds like me.
John:
And very often you will not know how to enter them, even if you're entering yourself, because say you're not on a Mac.
John:
Like I came across this recently.
John:
Someone was asking me, how do I type this stuff in Windows?
John:
And I was like, I don't know.
John:
do they still have those like you know alt 015 or whatever type on the number pad oh my god is that still like the only way to do it they have to fix that by now it's windows that has to still work but i'm sure it does i don't know the numerical code for an m dash do you off the top no like and and if you're not a mac user you have no idea about all the you know options semicolon for an ellipsis and crap like that right so even if you are allowed to type it yourself the keyboard doesn't have those keys on it so you have to know how to enter them and it's it's weird
Marco:
Thank you to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Linode, and Mack Weldon.
Marco:
And thank you to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join.
Marco:
Please do.
Marco:
ATV.FM slash join.
Marco:
And we'll talk to you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
It's accidental.
Marco:
They did it.
Casey:
So long.
Marco:
I had such a jerk store moment two weeks ago.
Casey:
Tell me more.
Casey:
You were buying some dried meats?
John:
No.
John:
What is it?
John:
The spirit of the stairs?
John:
Someone tell me the French for that in the chat room, please.
John:
What is that?
John:
I have no idea what you're talking about.
John:
The spree d'escalier, maybe?
John:
Did I beat the chat room to it?
John:
I think you beat the world to it.
John:
Yeah, seriously.
John:
A jerk store moment.
John:
That's from a Seinfeld episode where George remembers a great comeback line, but he remembers it like a day later, right?
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
John:
So the spirit of the stairs is, I think, a French saying of, like, you remember the witty comeback as you're going down the stairs on your way out of the place where you were insulted.
John:
Oh, okay.
Marco:
So two weeks ago, when I did my first thing about, like, you know, eating more vegetables, and you guys were berating me because you don't believe I like coconut because I don't like dried toasted coconut flakes.
Marco:
And I'm sitting there in the edit the next morning.
Marco:
I'm like...
Marco:
how did i not like fight back on this in the most obvious way and then i thought to myself how am i going to tell them this i better save it for next week well then next week comes around that's last week's show and i told and we talk about the same topic again and i totally forget to give this follow-up and then the next morning editing that i'm like oh my god i can't believe how did i not
Casey:
Well, so hold on.
Casey:
I don't remember exactly what you said, but my recollection of the conversation was, you see, guys, I don't like coconut.
Casey:
I like this, this, this, this, and this, which all include coconut, but I really don't like coconut.
John:
No, it's even worse than that.
John:
No, you're misremembering.
John:
But before we get to that, though, Marco, I would like to remind you of what happened in that Seinfeld episode.
John:
Do you remember how it ends?
Marco:
I believe George like eventually does get himself back into that group and like gives his stupid jerk store thing and it falls on its face miserably, you know, which is how this is going to do.
John:
Maybe a cautionary tale.
John:
So with that in mind, proceed and explain to how we should not have said that you really don't like coconut.
Marco:
Okay, so my position on coconut is that I like – I eat tons of coconut.
Marco:
I eat the coconut meat that you get pre-sized at the grocery store, like those little wedges of coconut.
Marco:
I drink a lot of coconut milk, and I have coconut-based cream and milk and stuff in lots of other things.
Marco:
Oh, and I like coconut water as well.
Marco:
Okay, so – So you like coconut?
Yeah.
Marco:
You two said that the only way you like coconut is shredded, toasted, dried.
John:
I don't think you said the only way.
John:
I just said that that is a very common way.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
And then you told me that because I don't like the shredded, toasted, dried version, that it sounds like I don't like coconut.
Marco:
So, okay.
Marco:
If you look at what is in a coconut...
Marco:
What's in it untouched.
Marco:
Like you just take like the hair off.
Marco:
What's in the coconut naturally in the most basic state is all the stuff I like.
Marco:
And you guys are saying you only like this one, like really processed version of it.
Marco:
And that like somehow I'm the one who doesn't like it.
Marco:
You don't like coconut.
Marco:
If you don't like coconut meat and coconut water and coconut milk, you don't like coconut.
John:
We just like the other ones better.
John:
It's like saying, I like steak tartare, but I don't like hamburger steak or any cooked form of meat.
John:
And you're like, oh, you only like this processed form of beef.
John:
I'm like, well, I'm going to say if you don't like hamburgers or steaks, you don't like beef.
John:
But I'm like, you know, I like steak tartare, the raw version.
John:
In fact, that's the best version.
John:
I just go right up to the cow and I bite it.
John:
You like the uncooked coconut, but the most common form of coconut in this country is shredded and very often toasted.
John:
So mounds and almond joy are shredded coconut.
Marco:
The most common form of cheese in this country is American cheese.
Marco:
Are you saying that if somebody doesn't like American cheese that they don't like cheese?
John:
That's what I'm saying.
John:
Cheese has more variety than coconut.
Marco:
Does it?
Marco:
I think the thing, the coconuts that I'm eating, the form of the coconut I'm eating is pretty different from the form that you're eating.
John:
But the most common form, you said you also didn't like German chocolate cake.
John:
Like we're not just saying dried toasted coconut.
John:
All that is very common, but you also excluded tons of other forms of coconut that are way more common than just having the raw coconut.
John:
So I think if you're saying I don't like any of those, but I only like it raw, it's like only liking steak tartare, but insisting that you love beef.
Marco:
I think I love coconut and I think you guys don't.
Marco:
I think you guys love coconut candy.
Casey:
I would say that I don't generally care for coconut.
Casey:
I think there are occasions where I like it.
Casey:
It's typically like the number one thing I can think of is like coconut shrimp, which is, you know, deep fried to smithereens.
Casey:
It's very American.
Casey:
There's a lot of coconut.
Casey:
Well, I will be the first to tell you that is not really coconut at that point.
Casey:
It is some other thing entirely.
Marco:
Is it even shrimp at that point?
Marco:
Yeah, who knows?
Casey:
It's mostly batter, like all fried things.
Casey:
Right?
Casey:
But I think the analogy I use, because I don't think I particularly care for coconut with a couple of exceptions.
Casey:
But the example I used is that I keep telling Aaron that I don't like caramel, caramel, however you pronounce it.
Casey:
Um, but then I'll keep saying, oh, this is really good.
Casey:
And what is this?
Casey:
And I can't think of a specific example, but oh, that's, you know, like chocolate covered in caramel.
Casey:
And then I'll say something, oh, wow, this, that was really good.
Casey:
What was that?
Casey:
Oh, it's such and such with caramel over it.
Casey:
But, but, but I don't like caramel.
Casey:
And Aaron will just give me that look like you think you don't, but you do.
Casey:
And so I would say that I don't particularly care for coconut with an exception or two.
Casey:
And I think my coconut moment is that I tell you, I would tell you, I don't like caramel, but I think I actually do.
John:
Yeah, I think, Marco, the thing you're missing, you're saying the essential raw form of it is the primal form.
John:
And I'm saying that the primal form is the form that it is most commonly found in, just like the cooked beef thing.
John:
Yes, beef is meat eaten raw, but generally it's cooked.
John:
And if you only like the raw form, you can make the argument that this is the most primal form.
John:
I like beef the most because I don't even need it to be cooked.
John:
But in this country, that's weird.
John:
And I feel like coconut is in the same category.
John:
Most people have it shredded.
John:
sometimes dried sometimes toasted but certainly not just raw from the thing and because you like it that way you think that means you really like coconut but i think it's because it's so uncommon that you like it in a weird way and you don't like all the much more common ways it makes me think you're not as big a fan of coconut if you really love coconut you say i like it in all forms like if you really love beef i love all forms of beef from steak tartar to a great steak to you know a burger to everything you possibly imagine steak smoothies i love it um
John:
i think you'd have a stronger argument i think you'd have a stronger argument there but because you like a weird form of coconut the best and actively dislike the other ones it makes you less of a coconut fan in my eyes well first of all i would say my weird form of coconut is only weird in the u.s and even then it's pretty it's getting less weird over time as like all these dairy alternatives start involving coconut the coconut milk is probably getting less weird the uh the raw uncooked coconut staying weird
John:
How do people what do people do with them?
John:
I don't know if most people could even if we said you have one hour to buy raw and cooked coconut, go do it.
John:
Most people couldn't accomplish that task because they wouldn't even know where to look for it.
John:
It's not it's so uncommon.
John:
Next time you're in Kroger, Casey, see if they even have that in the store.
Casey:
You assume I'm going into grocery stores these days.
Casey:
It's all click list, baby.
John:
Someone's got to go into groceries.
Casey:
No, even Aaron doesn't.
Casey:
We do the deliver to your Trump thing.
John:
Well, that's even better test.
John:
Have some Instacart person try to find this for you.
John:
You're like, what?
John:
You want a what?
John:
Coconut.
John:
And they'll bring you a bag of shredded coconut because that's much more common.
Casey:
All kidding aside, can you not find like coconut in the produce section?
Casey:
I'm genuinely asking.
Casey:
I have no idea.
Casey:
You can find whole coconuts sometimes.
Marco:
Usually they have those peeled ones that they have somehow removed the dark brown hair on the outside, and what's left is this tan cone.
Marco:
It's like a weird shape.
Marco:
They've shaved off part of it.
Marco:
I haven't been brave enough to open one of those up yet, but I almost did last time, but they felt kind of soft.
John:
Yeah, but Whole Foods is the only place that has for $1,000 a piece the pre-cut up pieces of coconut.
John:
And they're delicious.
John:
Because Whole Foods will pre-cut up any fruit for you and charge you $1,000 for it.
Casey:
Is there anything that isn't $1,000 at Whole Foods?
John:
No.
John:
Some things like milk is a loss leader at Whole Foods.
John:
Our Whole Foods is the place where we can get the cheapest milk.
John:
Is that right?
John:
They want to get you in the door, but do not buy any cup of fruit because it costs more than a car.
Casey:
I think I might have told this story on ATP like literally five years ago.
Casey:
But one day when I was at my jobby job, I decided to go out to eat or like to grab some food from out, which is very unusual for me.
Casey:
Usually I brought like a sandwich or something.
Casey:
And I decided to go out, and I worked very close to a Whole Foods.
Casey:
And so I went to Whole Foods, and I went to the little hot bar, and I was treating myself.
Marco:
Well, there's your mistake on so many levels.
Casey:
Well, so hold on.
Casey:
On a million levels.
Casey:
But I'm all excited.
Casey:
I got a little of this, a little of that.
Casey:
And because I'm American, I grabbed, you know, like a ladle full of mac and cheese, which, of course, weighs 85 tons and is a caloric bomb.
John:
That and the hard-boiled eggs.
Casey:
The weight will kill you.
Casey:
exactly and so i grabbed some mac and cheese and i went through the line and of course this was 10 years ago my memory shot and so i'm probably making this up but i genuinely you're forgetting that you told the story in the show before but go on i said that i told the story in the show before at least give me credit for that so anyway so i get i go to check out it was like 18 at the hot bar for just me you can't get one thing of cut up pineapple for that price
Marco:
That's how they get to it.
Marco:
That isn't a whole food problem.
Marco:
That's every hot bar.
Marco:
When I used to work in Manhattan, we'd go out to lunch a lot of days, and we'd occasionally go to a place that had one of those big hot bars.
Marco:
You put anything in there, $13, anything.
John:
Yeah, I mean...
John:
And it makes economic sense.
John:
Like both the hot bars and the pre-cut fruit, like it's not like they're gouging you for the hell of it.
John:
It's because you have someone – you have to pay someone to cut up all that fruit and then they end up throwing out tons of it because it doesn't keep, right?
John:
And so someone prepares all that food, cooks it, puts it in these dishes, sits it out there, and then half of it gets thrown away because nobody bought it.
John:
And so the one person who buys a salad pays for like –
John:
you know a huge amount of food and like when you buy that thing of cut up fruit it's yes it's the cost of the fruit but then it's the the time of the person cutting it up and then there's the fact that the seven other bins of pineapple are going to get thrown away in two days and no one's going to buy them so you're buying all those too
Marco:
I think I'm mostly just upset because I had a pineapple today and it was really disappointing.
John:
My latest pineapple.
John:
We discussed the difficulty of trying to get one that is the correct ripeness.
John:
I did actually Google up on that to try it, but it was very difficult advice to follow.
Marco:
I even, like, and I knew when I was buying it because I was wearing a big mask and I was trying to, like, you know, dip the mask down to smell the bottom of the pineapple and, like, I couldn't smell much.
Marco:
I'm like, well, can I not smell much because I just had a mask on my face for an hour?
Marco:
Or can I not smell much?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Well.
Marco:
Right.
Yeah.
Marco:
no thank god that wasn't it but uh but yeah so like i i knew going into it like this is this is going to be a pretty bland pineapple but they were really they were like on sale for like two bucks i gotta try it just in case i'll take two dollar pineapple in january marco thinks i don't know anything about pineapple and even i know that's a poor choice
John:
I mean, for $2, you can't go.
John:
I mean, it's probably worth the gamble because who knows if you got lucky, but you didn't.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I mean, it's not inedible.
Marco:
It's just not, you know, a good pineapple.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
When you get a good one, it's so good because I like pineapples, John.
Marco:
I don't know if I find the natural form of it and I cut it up and I eat it and I like that.
John:
Even now, I would say that if you like fresh pineapples but didn't like canned pineapples, I'd be like, you don't really like pineapples.
Marco:
Now, I don't like pineapple flavored seltzer.
Marco:
Does that mean I don't like pineapple, John?
No.
John:
Final flavor salsa is just carbonated water that I wave a pineapple over for two seconds.
Casey:
That's like my martinis with vermouth.
Casey:
You know, it's funny to me how genuinely upset you are about this market.
John:
I love coconut.
John:
Don't tell me I don't love coconut.
John:
This has been annoying me for two weeks.
John:
I have the purest coconut love.
Marco:
Your coconut love is processed, but I love the purest.
John:
but it was the gall of you telling me i don't like coconut because i eat it like the most direct way i explained i i think i explained my reasoning i mean you may disagree with it but i had that was my thinking on that and i think it is not an unreasonable way to think about who loves something more than someone else no only you are agreeing on cheese