catatp.fm Unofficial Accidental Tech Podcast transcripts (generated by computer, so expect errors).

3: Conditions Led To Freecell

Small-camera design, Sony RX1, Apple and casual gaming, Solitaire and Minesweeper, original Game Boys, iOS default mail/browser/calendar apps.

Episode Description:
  • The Nifty MiniDrive
  • The challenges of small-camera design
  • Sony RX1 and Sony's camera-business revival
  • Apple in the gaming market and the evolution of casual gaming
  • Solitaire, Minesweeper, and the first time anyone has mentioned FreeCell in 2013
  • The bad old days of Game Boys, lead-acid "portable" computers, and mouse-pointer trails
  • iOS' refusal to let you pick default browser, email client, calendar app, etc.
  • Mini-web-browsers inside of iOS apps
  • How iOS could adopt Contracts or Intents, and the problems that might arise

Transcribed using Whisper large_v2 (transcription) + WAV2VEC2_ASR_LARGE_LV60K_960H (alignment) + Pyannote (speaker diaritization).

Transcript start

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I received my first Kickstarter-backed thing in the mail today.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I want to love it, but it’s quasi-DOA.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I got the nifty mini-drive. Did you guys remember this from like 8 months ago or something

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that? I think so, yeah. Was it like the USB drive that fits in the SD card slot?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, basically. So the premise is, it fits in the SD card slot of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Mac. And they’ve designed it and machined it in such a way that you stick

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this into the slot and stick, I think it’s a micro SD card into

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the nifty mini drive. And then you put the mini drive in the SD card slot for your Mac.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then it sits flush as opposed to the way full size SD cards typically sit. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’ve basically added another drive to your Mac, which I don’t know why I wanted to to do this other

⏹️ ▶️ Casey than it seemed cool. And now that I’ve gotten it, it looks great. It

⏹️ ▶️ Casey looks to be the same aluminum that the Mac is made of. I didn’t get a color, I just got it in plain

⏹️ ▶️ Casey aluminum. And I really like the look of it, but apparently some tolerance

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or something was a little bit off in some of the first batches. And so without putting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey scotch or cello tape around it, the drive was read-only. So I had to put

⏹️ ▶️ Casey scotch tape around it because SD cards have a physical switch to make

⏹️ ▶️ Casey them read-only.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so apparently without Scotch tape around it, it didn’t trip or did trip whichever

⏹️ ▶️ Casey direction the switch that made OS X treated as read-only. So now I have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Scotch tape around it. But other than that, it’s actually really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco cool. I was just curious.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Let me just clarify. So you took something from somebody who’s never made anything before that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco made to sit flush inside of a delicate tiny slot in your expensive computer, then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco add a tape to it and put that in the delicate slot in your

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey expensive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, you are exactly right. Clearly nothing bad will happen.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m looking at this video and they’re taking like the little sand disk label and using it as a shim inside

⏹️ ▶️ John the thing to – did you see this in the video? I’m assuming you did.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey They’re saying,

⏹️ ▶️ John take the little carrier, take your little card that’s inside it, but then they shove the little piece of paper or plastic like

⏹️ ▶️ John underneath it to try to shim it to shift it around inside the thing. Is that where you put the tape?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I just put the tape around the outside

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John of it. Watch

⏹️ ▶️ John the Kickstarter video. I don’t have the audio on, but here.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This seems like the kind of product where the better idea would be to wait until this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing got popular, wait until somebody else with manufacturing experience rips it off

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just makes like a $7 version of it on Amazon, and just buy that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Why would you buy this at all, though? I don’t understand

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that at all.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because it just seemed cool.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco How

⏹️ ▶️ Marco big is the biggest capacity you can use? Biggest like just capacity you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey can you can have in here. I have a 64 gig micro SD card and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that was not

⏹️ ▶️ John super duper slow

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It wasn’t terrible. I mean I put like five gigs of top gear on it and took like 10 minutes or something like that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean it was not fast without question But it was not

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey You’re

⏹️ ▶️ John taking up your SD card slot like what if you want to take things off a camera like the whole point of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it you assume I use a camera other than our phones.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I mean I have I have this new small camera and it it has SD cards but I never take them out because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it charges over USB, which is an awesome feature of a camera. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just plug it in by USB whenever I transfer so I can kind of top off the charge also.

⏹️ ▶️ John What camera is this?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The ridiculous one, the Sony RX1. Oh

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, yeah. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking at- That

⏹️ ▶️ John charges over USB?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not only does that, I have a Sony camcorder that we got when the baby was born. The camcorder charges

⏹️ ▶️ Marco over USB. It’s awesome. I keep meaning to blog about this. It’s one of the best features

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just for like, it’s one of those little tiny conveniences that’s just awesome.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, because the change, well, on the RX one, does it have a removable battery though at least? Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I have, I have, I got a second one cause the battery life isn’t that great. If you’re doing a whole bunch of viewing on the screen, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can only shoot like a couple of hundred pictures before the battery goes. Um, and I, we only ever hit the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco battery being dead during shooting once, like cause we just don’t shoot that many at once. Um, but, um,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a fantastic camera for so in so many ways.

⏹️ ▶️ John I was excited about that camera until I saw how much it costs. I’m like, Oh, so it just costs as much as a regular camera.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah. It’s the cost is like, Oh, It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John a small and it’s still two grand so never

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know what’s what’s crazy about this camera is that? It is actually worth

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it like Compared to the market it is worth that price. I totally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco see why

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Sony is charging that however

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco well,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but yeah like however even though it is Competitive with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with its equals it is still like you still feel like you shouldn’t be paying this much for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a camera this size size, even though it’s so great because it is that size and it is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s it’s so good like the image quality you get from both that ridiculously good sensor

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the really, really good optic in front of it. The quality you get of it, like it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is better in many ways than my 5d mark to

⏹️ ▶️ John these cameras, cameras are pissing me off still. It’s kind of like television is pissing me off for a long time because it’s like, look, we you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, I liked mirrorless I’m like, Okay, finally, we’re making some friggin progress. We can stop with the flappy mirrors

⏹️ ▶️ John and the other stuff that has its origins in optical things that are no longer a factor because we all have giant screens in the back

⏹️ ▶️ John and we use those like stop, alright. That will be, you know, like how long, this should be progressing like Moore’s Law,

⏹️ ▶️ John I want a gigantic full frame sensor in a tiny little camera, the sensor is only like one inch square,

⏹️ ▶️ John can we fit that in a small camera? Oh, it’s still too grand, I mean, come on, come on, faster, faster, because you realize

⏹️ ▶️ John like this is one of those things where it should be that like in

⏹️ ▶️ John five or ten years the amazing Canon 5D I should be able to get that in a little dinky thing like it seems

⏹️ ▶️ John like that should be the progression it’s it maybe not a phone but in a tiny little dinky handheld camera but it’s like well

⏹️ ▶️ John no if you get a small camera you get a sensor the size of you know 1 8th of a postage stamp so screw you like

⏹️ ▶️ John no put the big sensor in there well

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I would do it

⏹️ ▶️ John still it’s still two grand I guess it just that’s how much

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I mean it’s almost three grand.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s twenty eight hundred. But like, I mean I think the RX1’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco biggest flaw or biggest downside, it’s not really a flaw I guess, it’s more of just a downside

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the practicality of its design, is that the lens sticks out pretty

⏹️ ▶️ Marco far. Just because, I think it’s just because if you want an

⏹️ ▶️ Marco f2.0 35 millimeter lens that can project enough of an image circle to cover a full-frame

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sensor it needs to be a certain size like you just can’t like I don’t think they could have made it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that much smaller and so the result is that the camera is is fairly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco deep so like you can’t put it in a pocket of anything except like a big loose jacket

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pocket

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John you get

⏹️ ▶️ John like one of those pancake lenses though that it gives you like the weird you know fish eye appearance type thing you know

⏹️ ▶️ John like

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco no that you could do right The

⏹️ ▶️ John optical part of it is the intractable part. Because look, if you’re precision grinding glass

⏹️ ▶️ John and aligning the things with each other and the nature of optics and the nature of glass is such that that is not, I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John expect that to get cheap according to Moore’s law. But I do keep hoping that the sensor part of it

⏹️ ▶️ John should progress along the typical technology. So I’m OK with zoom lenses

⏹️ ▶️ John always being super expensive because it’s like, they’re not subject to Moore’s law or any of those

⏹️ ▶️ John things. But the sensors, I felt like, light gathering ability at the very least. I want to see

⏹️ ▶️ John more progress than I have seen. So even though my Canon S110 or whatever the hell I have for my little

⏹️ ▶️ John mini camera is amazing compared to my first digital camera, it’s not amazing enough. And so

⏹️ ▶️ John the mirrorless movement, I thought we were gonna move towards, so you don’t want a giant SLR and you don’t need this

⏹️ ▶️ John giant thing, but in these little tiny cameras, we’re gonna put much bigger sensors and give you a reasonable lens and try

⏹️ ▶️ John to cut down the price. But it seems like the RX1 is the other direction. like okay for people who already have lots

⏹️ ▶️ John of money in a professional photographers we can make them not have to carry such a big giant monster thing but it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John still gonna cost you know whatever twenty eight hundred bucks as you said

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah and it’s and it like it isn’t as portable as I want it to be but I love using it I just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco absolutely love using it and like it has it has made my entire

⏹️ ▶️ Marco setup of Canon glass seem obsolete now even though the glass is great

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this and this now feels like the new form factor of cameras Like, I really don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco see myself buying another SLR. Like, I don’t, I probably will. I’ll probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco go back on this, like, in three years or something, but…

⏹️ ▶️ John No, you won’t. That’s the days of the SLRs are numbered with

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco those

⏹️ ▶️ John stupid mirrors. It’s like people are going to be talking about that sound. When I was a boy,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey we heard this when we took a picture and we loved it. And

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, yeah, yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m actually just excited. I don’t know anything about photography and I wish I did, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve never had the time nor the money to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John figure it out. Nor the children.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey nor the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John children.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I’m actually kind of happy to see Sony doing well again. I think, John, you’ve talked about this at length in the past, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I was a kid, Sony was the brand. And then,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey God, how the mighty fell. And to hear you espousing this camera with

⏹️ ▶️ Casey such enthusiasm, it’s good to hear that Sony’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco doing well. But what happened, Sony bought Minolta

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and really became extremely serious about camera stuff, like, I don’t know, five, six,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco eight years ago, something like that. And they’ve been slowly progressing. And they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco got into the SLR business fairly recently, like with the A90, was it the first one?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whatever the first one was, they got into the SLR business. And what’s happening now, for a while, Canon

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was very clearly the leader in sensor technology. And for a while, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think even the lenses, and they’re still doing very well in the lenses, close with Nikon but still doing very,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very well. But the Canon sensors have kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco slowed down in progress recently and everyone else has caught up very closely.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And in many ways, by almost all measurements, the new Sony sensors are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco better than Canon sensors.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, Sony

⏹️ ▶️ John used to be an embarrassment in the camera industry. I remember

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco when I

⏹️ ▶️ John was first shopping for digital cameras, like, oh, it’s Canon and Nikon, and Sony makes cameras too, but just ignore them because

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re pieces of crap. they don’t know what

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John doing with these digital cameras, right? And it’s taken them a while to turn that around to be

⏹️ ▶️ John taken seriously as a player. Like every time they’d be like some amazing new Sony camera would have some aspect of it that was amazing,

⏹️ ▶️ John but all the rest of it would be crap. And you’d look at the pictures that you get taken with and it would just be a mess, even if it was just image processing

⏹️ ▶️ John or battery life or some weird ergonomic aspect that was screwed up because they wanted to make it sleek. But it seems like they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John finally figuring it out at long last. Oh, yeah. And so now that they’re carrying forward their strengths

⏹️ ▶️ John that they had on the electronic stuff and you know they figured out all the other stuff that

⏹️ ▶️ John you know it kind of makes me wish that Apple made a camera because even all these cameras like now that now that the

⏹️ ▶️ John whole back of them is a screen and a lot of it is the UI and these camera makers have no idea how

⏹️ ▶️ John to make a user

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco interface. Oh yeah, the UIs are

⏹️ ▶️ John terrible. Yeah I really you know they can need some help there. The good thing that’s saving cameras

⏹️ ▶️ John is I think like car dashboards there will always be a place especially

⏹️ ▶️ John in professional cameras for knobs, dials, and buttons because you can use them without, you can get to them without looking

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s much easier using a touchscreen and doesn’t mean you don’t also expose that on a touchscreen but

⏹️ ▶️ John the camera makers who are good at the shutter button, the knobs, the dials, the twisty things, that will,

⏹️ ▶️ John that skill will not become obsolete. It won’t be like, oh well it used to be good at those knobs and twisty things but now you don’t need them at all anymore. No, you’ll

⏹️ ▶️ John always want them on a camera.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s why

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco shouldn’t make one.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, because they’ll, no removable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John battery, no buttons. Apple would make one with no

⏹️ ▶️ Marco buttons and it would be it everything will be on the screen it’d be a pain in the ass to use

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah it might be okay for a casual camera like we’re just talking about you know like you know people who are in different

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that’s the problem casual

⏹️ ▶️ John camera like that’s why people love the iPhone that’s all they

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey want

⏹️ ▶️ John a big screen that you point at something and you say what on screen now make picture

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco of the problem is that the market for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco casual cameras is evaporating I mean

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s well you know that’s the phone market like I mean basically you could say Apple has entered the market with the iPhone and that’s that’s you

⏹️ ▶️ John know that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right like that’s what they’re doing Apple has entered the camera market the same way they entered the video game platform market, kind

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of accidentally. And then once they realized they were doing it, they really took advantage of it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s still not really in the video game market.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. How well is that Wii U selling?

⏹️ ▶️ John I know, but I’m just saying that they’re in their own market making their own

⏹️ ▶️ John things. They’ll never be in the gaming market until they decide they want to make a machine focused

⏹️ ▶️ John on games and they’re not going to do that because it’s not what they

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco do. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they have made machines for those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John type of games. No, it

⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t even have any buttons on it. It’s the same thing. It’s like trying to make a car

⏹️ ▶️ John dashboard but there’s no steering wheel. You steer by dragging your finger on the screen. It’s fine. You can put a virtual steering wheel on the screen and

⏹️ ▶️ John drag that with your finger. They’re not going to do that. They’re never going

⏹️ ▶️ John to put something on an iPhone that uggs it up just for the purposes of games. The type and

⏹️ ▶️ John of games that you can put on an entirely touchscreen device with really no buttons to speak of

⏹️ ▶️ John that You can use for gaming is so incredibly limited

⏹️ ▶️ Marco well there They’re they’re they’re doing a typical disruption move of not attacking

⏹️ ▶️ Marco head-on Into that market there. They’re kind of running this parallel thing on the side that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is taking a lot of That market away without doing exactly the same thing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because if they try

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John to do the same thing they would They’re

⏹️ ▶️ John doing a blue ocean thing. They’re going for the people who were never going to buy those crazy game machines, right? And that’s why they’re selling a

⏹️ ▶️ John bazillion copies and making tons more money. But they’re not going after

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the people who

⏹️ ▶️ John want to play games that can’t be played on a touch screen. If

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s interested in taking the gaming market, they would make something that can

⏹️ ▶️ John play games that can’t be played on a touch screen. But they’re not interested in the gaming market. They’ll just take what they can get from what they are

⏹️ ▶️ John interested in. But they’re making more money than everyone else, because it turns out there’s way more people

⏹️ ▶️ John who don’t care about games that can’t be played on a touchscreen. Because basically,

⏹️ ▶️ John touchscreen games alone are too complicated for most people. It’s just like, oh, it’s a touchscreen game, but it’s simple. You’ll like it. You just

⏹️ ▶️ John pull back the little bird and you let him go. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John people can

⏹️ ▶️ Marco handle that. Don’t be jeweled. They’ve made an alternative. Like, before, if you wanted to play a game,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’ve always had the consoles and the high-end PCs doing these kind of, you know, these A-rated games,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco big major, big budget, complex things, these awesome graphics and everything. And you’ve always had

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the market for casual games. You know, in the old days, casual game for those CD-ROMs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at Walmart full of 10,000 Solitaire variants. Now,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then for a while, they were like flash games on the web, and there are still some of that, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now you’re seeing this massive boom. Oh, and like for six months they were on Facebook and now you’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco seeing this massive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John boom. They’re still on Facebook.

⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft owned the casual game market in the 90s because the casual game market was dominated by Minesweeper

⏹️ ▶️ John and Solitaire, the two most

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco played

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey games by

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco humans in the entire

⏹️ ▶️ John history of the universe because everyone had a PC on their desk in the 90s and all they did all day was play Minesweeper and Solitaire.

⏹️ ▶️ John Too bad they didn’t charge money

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco for them. Don’t forget

⏹️ ▶️ John FreeSell. Yeah, oh sorry.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, that’s true. It’s an

⏹️ ▶️ John untapped market, but that’s just the equivalent. Everyone has cell phones now and everyone plays games on them, but Apple was smart

⏹️ ▶️ John enough to actually make a market and imagine if the iPhone just came with three games and well it was no app store

⏹️ ▶️ John people would play those three games so

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco much the difference

⏹️ ▶️ Marco though the difference now is that they have this massive game library on these casual

⏹️ ▶️ Marco devices casual gaming has never been better than it is today it’s all and it gets better all the time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that more and Apple really owns quite a big portion of casual gaming

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s why they’re attacking big gaming because casual gaming in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco general is now way bigger, way easier, and way more rich than it was before in content

⏹️ ▶️ Marco availability. And so now, whereas before I think a lot of people would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get tired of those casual games and go buy an Xbox if they wanted to play games at night, now you’re seeing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot more people who are sticking with the world of casual games instead of buying a game

⏹️ ▶️ Marco console.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but if Apple’s just not willing to make it possible to play games

⏹️ ▶️ John that aren’t playable on a touchscreen. They’re never going to pull that mark. It’s like someone who’s trying to say, I’m going to make

⏹️ ▶️ John a thing. And it’s like a movie, but it’s on a little tiny box that’s in your home. And way more people are going to have it.

⏹️ ▶️ John And like saying, OK, well, are you ever going to do a thing

⏹️ ▶️ John where the picture is the size of the side of the building? No, no, it’s always going to be small in the home. Like it can’t really

⏹️ ▶️ John be taller than one story, because people’s ceilings are like eight feet high. So we’re really not, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John there will always be a market for movies because the screen is way bigger and it’s a different experience and I mean this is

⏹️ ▶️ John not as ridiculous in terms of square footage or whatever but there’s just certain types of games that

⏹️ ▶️ John people like to play that you can’t play with touchscreen controls and if Apple is never never never never never gonna go

⏹️ ▶️ John after them there’s always going to like they’re saying we don’t we don’t want that you can do something else and it just

⏹️ ▶️ John so happens that the games that you can’t play with touchscreen controls are like the traditional genres that are way deeper that most

⏹️ ▶️ John people can’t play at all but there is a proven market for this Is there enough

⏹️ ▶️ John of a market for four or three console competitors? Probably not, so say goodbye to some of them, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John But I still think that if Apple refuses to go to that, it’s not like there’s a future where all gaming is touchscreen gaming.

⏹️ ▶️ John That

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco just does not exist. Oh, no, definitely not.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But just like there’s no future where movie theaters are totally gone, but I think it’s very easy to see that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco game consoles are getting really marginalized, just like movie theaters.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it’s consolidation. Like, there’s probably not enough of a market left for all the players

⏹️ ▶️ John that are there to be doing what they’re doing. So there’s going to be some sort of consolidation that goes on there. But

⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that Apple is so hands-off with the games, like they’re not even, it’s not even to the point where, I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe we should talk to some Apple evangelists about this, but like, so they’re competing in theory with Android for the casual

⏹️ ▶️ John game dollar. Like, so you want to make a, you know, Sally’s Spa type game.

⏹️ ▶️ John The console makers in that market are so mature that, you know, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sega, like all those people

⏹️ ▶️ John back in the day, would go to the popular third-party developers, EA or whoever and

⏹️ ▶️ John court them and say, you should really make your next great Sally Spog game for our platform and here’s why. And

⏹️ ▶️ John cater to them and just go after them because they’re competing for the content creation talent.

⏹️ ▶️ John Is Apple going out and trying to get EA to make casual games for them and not for Android?

⏹️ ▶️ John No, because they’re just like, EA will make games for us. We’re the only people who have paying customers.

⏹️ ▶️ John We’ve got it in the bag. The market hasn’t matured to the point where it’s even to the level where the console

⏹️ ▶️ John market was in the 80s where, you know, I don’t believe Apple is, believes in games. Like they like the fact

⏹️ ▶️ John that games that are on their platform, but they’re not going to do anything for those people with the games except, okay, we’ll put a good GPU for you

⏹️ ▶️ John in there. We’re like, oh, could you put like buttons in a joystick or have an officially supported blue, like even just Bluetooth, it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John something, anything, throw us a bone, let us have a controller. They’re like, no, we’d rather not. You, we’d rather you not muck up our thing

⏹️ ▶️ John with any sort of traditional video game controller. Can’t you just make your game touchscreen? Really? We feel like your game should conform

⏹️ ▶️ John to our interfaces, our vision for the phone or whatever, and they’re like, oh, all right. That’s where the money is. Let’s make

⏹️ ▶️ John a million of these games for a dollar each or whatever. I just don’t feel like Apple believes in, understands

⏹️ ▶️ John or is interested in gaming. They just, you know, pick what they can

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco get. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think you’re right about that for the most part. But do you honestly think that a game

⏹️ ▶️ Marco released for iOS would sell very well if it costs like more than a dollar and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco required a $30 joystick?

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, like that’s that’s how if they ever wanted to go after the rest of the market, you take your iPad Pro in 2020, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John and you have an officially supported Bluetooth controller interface for it, or some sort of attachment

⏹️ ▶️ John that snaps into the lightning connector on your phone or whatever, and turns it into a game machine, and suddenly,

⏹️ ▶️ John now, the rest of the market is in real trouble, because they’re saying, we’re not going to leave a portion of the

⏹️ ▶️ John game market for you. We’re taking all the monies from all the casual games, and even that niche market for just people who want more sophisticated

⏹️ ▶️ John games, we’re gonna take that too, because guess what? We have official support for games that you play that do not require

⏹️ ▶️ John you touch the screen. And then everyone else is doomed. But Apple thus far has been like, no,

⏹️ ▶️ John just stick to the touch screen. Like, that’s our thing. It’s simple. If you feel like you can’t make a certain type

⏹️ ▶️ John of game you can’t make with a touch screen, tough luck. Then don’t do it then, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but that’s, I mean, as a user, I kind of like that. Like, as a user, as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John a casual gamer. I’m not saying it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the wrong strategy for Apple, but I’m saying like, it doesn’t show me that they’re really, really

⏹️ ▶️ John into gaming. Because they’re not trying to say, what kind of interactive gaming experiences can we have? Let’s make it like

⏹️ ▶️ John Nintendo is into gaming. Nintendo is like, what can we make to do something new

⏹️ ▶️ John in gaming? And we don’t care what we have to make, a crazy, waggly remote, a second screen, like, you know, like

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. We’re just trying to think of something. Except

⏹️ ▶️ Marco easy online play.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, they would do that if they could. That’s a competence issue, I believe, not really a…

⏹️ ▶️ John They would like that to happen if you could sprinkle the fairy dust and make it happen. But but like they you know their whole company

⏹️ ▶️ John is focused on what can we make? To make to push the frontiers of gaming and Apple is just not

⏹️ ▶️ John doing that at all not even close

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know to go back a little bit. I have to disagree that salt Well, maybe not disagree but point out

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that maybe solitaire is not the most Widely played game ever because I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey can tell you when I had a Nokia or Nokia whatever It’s called phone and it had nibbles on it or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Oh, yeah You know what I’m talking about? Snake.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s what it was. I saw that getting played

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John constantly for like five years. Snake and Bejeweled might be

⏹️ ▶️ John contenders, but I feel like the sheer number of idle hours of desk drones not wanting to work

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey at their Windows 3.1 PCs, Windows 95,

⏹️ ▶️ John like there’s this

⏹️ ▶️ John institutionalized old people solitaire playing for just hours as they sit at their security

⏹️ ▶️ John desk and do nothing.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Well, and also like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco those Windows games were the three Windows games or the two Windows. Like sometimes you didn’t get free sale. I don’t know what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the like what conditions led to that or what versions of Windows had and didn’t but like solitaire minesweeper

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Those have been on every desktop computer that everyone’s ever had that ran Windows which is most of them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Since like the early 90s or earlier, and they’re still there now like like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know that you’ve they’ve had like what 25 years at

⏹️ ▶️ John least they’re there on your work computer is the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey key, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, of course you can put whatever games you want, but on your work computer there’s nothing except though and especially before the web

⏹️ ▶️ John the web has really heard that because now you can just go like a porn

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right

⏹️ ▶️ John so that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco probably sucking a lot

⏹️ ▶️ John of time away from you know for the for the people sitting at desks being

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco bored but the content filter

⏹️ ▶️ Marco won’t know that you’re using Minesweeper

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah I don’t I what I have to wonder I wish I wish Microsoft had put monitoring and also so you can calculate the sheer

⏹️ ▶️ John number of hours it has spent that people have spent playing these games

⏹️ ▶️ Marco minesweeper does not translate well to touch by the way I downloaded one for the I’ve had for like for my most recent flight

⏹️ ▶️ Marco somewhere and I remember trying it out and the problem is like the difference between flagging

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a square and opening it which is a really really important thing to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John not go wrong

⏹️ ▶️ John with your right you got a touch with your right hand

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it even it had it like you could set us that double tap was one of them and one of them was like tap

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and hold but like if you mess up once you blow up a bomb and your games over

⏹️ ▶️ John so even casual games can’t be touch screen only. Wow.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Minesweeper doesn’t. Well like, for a long time, two of the biggest casual games were Minesweeper

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Tetris, and neither of those work on touch. I’m a huge Tetris fan, and it does not work

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on touch. But that’s not to say that there aren’t awesome casual games

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John can have just as much time with.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco they have

⏹️ ▶️ John touchscreens. Touchscreens have done a Nintendo-type move where there was types of games that were not possible without a touchscreen.

⏹️ ▶️ John And suddenly the whole world of them has opened up. So kudos for Apple for that, but clearly that was not, like that’s a side effect of

⏹️ ▶️ John making a touchscreen interface. And I really do believe that they are making their hardware,

⏹️ ▶️ John like they want, who wants the GPU? It’s all about game people. So they were in consultation with like all those other guys about their gaming

⏹️ ▶️ John stack, but that’s as far as it goes. We’ll give you a great GPU, we’ll give you a great screen.

⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t ask us for anything else.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Don’t ask us for control recommendations. But also, you know, they give them a lot of good APIs.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, making games for iOS is way better of a business and way better

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the programmers than making games for Android. And Apple knows this. And I think Apple tries to stay

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ahead of this as much as they can. Like, Apple’s devices consistently have really good GPUs.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, there’s a lot of Android devices sold that are really lopsided. They have fast CPUs,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really high resolution screens, and really terrible GPUs, because it’s harder to really advertise that,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or it’s harder to get it right or more expensive. But Apple does

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so well with having all their devices, being able to play really great games. And there

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not being that many GPUs out there, so it’s easy to program for all the Apple devices.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they

⏹️ ▶️ John know. Although, early on was because they had an OpenGL accelerated GUI, so kind of they needed it at

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco anyway.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And Apple knows very much that gaming is extremely

⏹️ ▶️ Marco important to attract and keep people on their platform, especially young people. I mean, the whole iPod

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Touch was so focused on gaming for so long because of that, because they knew that it was, a whole lot of iPod Touch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco owners are kids and teenagers who their parents don’t wanna buy them iPhones yet. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have iPod Touches, and games are really important in those markets.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they really do focus quite a lot on games.

⏹️ ▶️ John It makes me sad when I see a lot of my friends and relatives without my consultation or blessing

⏹️ ▶️ John have decided they’re gonna buy their children significant others Kindle fires

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco oh

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John god

⏹️ ▶️ John and then I go and I fire HDs and then I go and I see the kids playing games on a Kindle

⏹️ ▶️ John fire there’s nothing sadder than a kid playing a game on the Kindle fire and I’m not saying this to sound

⏹️ ▶️ John like elitist but like the Kindle fire is not a gaming machine like get your kid a Nintendo DS like

⏹️ ▶️ John it will cost you less money and that kid will have so much more fun

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah you know I know I bet a lot of Kindle fires were bought for kids thinking they’d be good gaming machines

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it makes sense like every birds on that’s But you want like

⏹️ ▶️ John things,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s just like you you want a cheap a cheap solution to your kids desire for an iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know like something where like if they if they break it or lose it, you know, you can be out

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 160 bucks instead of 500 bucks like that. That’s a way more attractive thing for parents. I’m sure

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but Yeah, man, cuz the Kindle fire I haven’t used any of the new generation

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ones But the the first generation one that I have is is a terrible device in every possible

⏹️ ▶️ Marco way I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like when

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John a big fan of Coke and your parents buy you like a case of RC Cola

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and you’re like, no. I know it seems like the same thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like there are no redeeming factors to the Kindle Fire 1. It’s just so, so bad.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It wasn’t even cheap enough to make it worth being this bad.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. So parents, buy your kids Nintendo DS, please. It’s not that much money. You

⏹️ ▶️ John can get it used old one. Not the 3DS, don’t even spring for the fancy. That one’s too expensive. Just an

⏹️ ▶️ John old Nintendo DS. indestructible it has a bazillion awesome games

⏹️ ▶️ John that are fun that the frame rates are good on

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not a tablet but yeah

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think once your kid is able to start caring about the frame rate then maybe then maybe upgrade

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to an iPad

⏹️ ▶️ John well no because the games I would rather play a DS game like it’s got its got buttons I’ve got buttons and

⏹️ ▶️ John a d-pad and

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you can get the screen

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I had to pick a platform to play Tetris on I’d rather play Tetris on the DS than

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yes,

⏹️ ▶️ John of course. You can actually, I mean, the Game Boy was the original, you know, Tetris monster machine

⏹️ ▶️ John for kids. Oh, yeah. I mean, the parents were playing it on their PCs, but the kids in the back of the car with the Game Boy, with the

⏹️ ▶️ John gigantic Game Boy with the, you know, not black and white, but kind of yellowish greenish

⏹️ ▶️ John and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey black. Oh, those were the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John days.

⏹️ ▶️ John Playing Tetris, that, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it was

⏹️ ▶️ John practically a Tetris machine.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, yeah, because any game with a scrolling background, like a platformer, just smeared so badly on that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen, you couldn’t even play it. like the original Game Gear had the exact same problem.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Game

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Gear was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible. Everything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey about the Game Gear was terrible. Did it burn through batteries?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, it used six AA batteries at a time. And it used them up in five minutes.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it would burn through six batteries in like 45 minutes or an hour. It was a pretty short time.

⏹️ ▶️ John It would last you a lunch period in middle school. That’s my gauge for

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco how

⏹️ ▶️ John long those things would last. It was like, oh you can bring it to lunch and I don’t want to turn it on to lunch. And then all your friends would play

⏹️ ▶️ John at lunch and by the end of lunch, well the batteries are dying now.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and so you’d have to have like these tremendous rechargeable battery pack accessories or any

⏹️ ▶️ John and they were nike ad not even nickel

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Metal exactly

⏹️ ▶️ John terrible terrible memory effect on them.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh, yeah Let me tell you well

⏹️ ▶️ John I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think people with game boys have to have those big light things on the front like those big

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this big like light magnifying glass combo accessories

⏹️ ▶️ Casey With stereo

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John speakers. Yes

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what you missed out on to it by not being a Mac user so the the original Mac Mac

⏹️ ▶️ John non-desktop machine, let’s call it, called the Mac Portable. It had

⏹️ ▶️ John a lead-acid battery, like the kind in your car. Oh my god! It weighed 16

⏹️ ▶️ John pounds, I believe. I have one in my attic. It weighed 16 pounds. It had a full-size, actual,

⏹️ ▶️ John real keyboard. 16 pounds, why the hell not, right? And so it was like,

⏹️ ▶️ John this is a laughingstock. I don’t know how to have a trackball embedded in for movement. This is a laughingstock type of thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John This is a ridiculous machine, but you know what it had? It had something that you kids might know the name of, called an Active

⏹️ ▶️ John Matrix LCD screen. And that meant when you move stuff, the screen updated and it was like a miracle.

⏹️ ▶️ John It was like a miracle, because we’d all seen the smeary LCD screens, like LCD screens, those are terrible. And

⏹️ ▶️ John once you saw this thing, you’re like, wait a second, it doesn’t smear. You know, it was, I mean, I probably look at it now, it probably looks like a ghosting

⏹️ ▶️ John mess, but it was Active Matrix versus, you know, the passive matrix displays that you saw.

⏹️ ▶️ John It was such a night and day experience. It was like, this is what I want from Apple. I don’t care that it’s 16 pounds. I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John care that it has a lasted battery. I don’t care that it’s this gigantic beast with a handle. The screen is

⏹️ ▶️ John amazing, you know. That was the old Apple. There was always something phenomenal

⏹️ ▶️ John about even their worst machines.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Did you, in the Mac universe back then, did you guys ever have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mouse pointer trails?

⏹️ ▶️ John Intentionally or unintentionally? Because the crappy, you know, the first PowerBooks,

⏹️ ▶️ John did they all have Active Matrix? I think it may have only been an option. I remember mouse cursor trails on bad laptops

⏹️ ▶️ John for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John years.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was actually a feature of Windows.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I think in 3.1 they added it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was a feature where it would just draw. It would leave the mouse pointer graphic.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It would not unblit it. It would draw it on the screen in the shadows.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s very similar to when Windows freezes. But it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John happened all the time. When

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a window blocks its main event loop, whatever. I forget what it’s called on Windows. but what when it doesn’t respond with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco main event loop and it doesn’t respond to repainting events uh… so everything is kinda smears all over the window

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cuz not i don’t is this still true in windows seven eight that it’s the windows aren’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco their own layers anymore

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John or like i don’t know when the

⏹️ ▶️ John windows windows seven arrow has a compositing window

⏹️ ▶️ Marco manager all good finally okay cuz i know before i think you can turn it off though because it’s windows good yet

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but yet like it it the screens are so bad but then they actually added artificial mouse trails to make it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco easier to see where your mouse pointer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John was.

⏹️ ▶️ John To find where it is. And that’s actually kind of an accessibility thing. Like, my mother

⏹️ ▶️ John uses the crank up the size of the cursor

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey thing because

⏹️ ▶️ John her vision is going, right? And so that, because she can’t, otherwise she forgets

⏹️ ▶️ John where the cursor is. And you can’t see it. Like, you wiggle it around, try to get the motion. Well, if you’ve got trails and you wiggle it around, all of a sudden, there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John this white swirl happening off in the corner. You’re like, oh, there’s the cursor.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, Marco, can I ask you about the magazine? Yeah. So you had tweeted

⏹️ ▶️ Casey earlier today, which if this gets released by the time anyone hears it, it’s going

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be like a week ago. But anyway, you had tweeted that you had added support for other

⏹️ ▶️ Casey mail clients other than Apple mail. And it got me to thinking, and I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably not looking at this right, but I wanted to hear your guys’s take. It got me to thinking that to some degree,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like that sort of developer effort that you had to go through to support

⏹️ ▶️ Casey all these other mail clients, which I’m assuming is just a series of URL schemes, is that correct?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey wasn’t all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these other, I literally just added support for Gmail and Sparrow. Because I can’t, nobody told me any other

⏹️ ▶️ Marco client that they’re using except for that new mailbox thing, they don’t have a URL scheme, so I can’t do anything with it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. But it still got me to thinking that that almost smells to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey me like the iOS equivalent of the Android fragmentation in the sense that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s something that’s not well managed by well, I mean, URL schemes are well managed by the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John other, but

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey really, really not.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the Wild West out

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey there. They don’t even have a registry

⏹️ ▶️ John like they did for type creator codes, you know?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, so that’s fair. But what I’m driving at is there’s a mechanism for quasi, you know, internet communication,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but, but really, that that is a hack to me that you shouldn’t have to go through. And I don’t think it’s Apple style to let you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pick a different mail client, or at least not an iOS. But that just kind of smells like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what do you I was curious what you guys thought about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that.

⏹️ ▶️ John They don’t like letting you pick a different mail client.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey But

⏹️ ▶️ John eventually, I mean, think about the Mac, how they don’t really like letting you pick your different

⏹️ ▶️ John default browser. Remember

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey when there

⏹️ ▶️ John was the Internet Config Control Panel where you said, what application do you want to use for the FTP protocol? What application

⏹️ ▶️ John do you want to use for? And you got to pick it. But then, you know what? Let’s just put that as a preference in Safari. And

⏹️ ▶️ John then every stupid web browser had to say, no, I’m the default browser. No, I’m not. And you’d have to go to the app itself

⏹️ ▶️ John to change that setting. There still is a system-wide registry and database of who controls. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John not exposed. And that’s the Mac where it’s supposed to be the Wild West. On iOS, it’s like, so you want to use a

⏹️ ▶️ John different default mail client? Well, screw you. That’s why when I went to the magazine and I saw, oh, it wants

⏹️ ▶️ John me to send an email, and the only email account I have configured on my Mac is not one of the ones

⏹️ ▶️ John that I would want to use from a web browser, so basically I couldn’t. I use the

⏹️ ▶️ John Gmail app. This is, I guess, before you added a Gmail support or whatever. Anytime I see anything that’s sending

⏹️ ▶️ John email on iOS, my heart drops because I’m like, oh, well, that’s not using. That’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John you. I have one really obscure account configured to mail, and I never look at it. And I don’t want to send

⏹️ ▶️ John from that account. And it’s not my real account, and it’s not my Apple ID account. It just depresses

⏹️ ▶️ John me, all because I deign to use a different email client.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, it’s a mess. That whole world is a mess. But I think Gmail

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is probably the only real exception where there’s actually demand that matters to Apple.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco On the Mac, when a lot of this Mac stuff was designed, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the early days of Mail and Safari, Mail and Safari sucked.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John And in many ways, Safari still sucks.

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple didn’t have a Mail client, and Apple didn’t have a web browser when this stuff was done in classic Mac OS. Like, of course

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re going to let you pick what the default application for email is, because Apple didn’t even have a horse in the game. It’s not like they had

⏹️ ▶️ John a Claris email, or I guess, you know, loosely affiliated. But they sure didn’t have a web browser. It’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ John do you want to use IE as your default web browser, or Netscape, or iCab,

⏹️ ▶️ John or CyberDog. I guess they had CyberDog, too. We keep going back. But that underpinning,

⏹️ ▶️ John if you were designing an OS, like I’m going to be an awesome OS, and I’m going to support third-party development, of course you have

⏹️ ▶️ John to have a system by which the user gets to choose which of these umpteen third-party applications they want to serve

⏹️ ▶️ John these particular needs. But then once Apple has a horse in the game, it simplifies things greatly so you don’t have to shop

⏹️ ▶️ John around. Apple gives you something. Everything works out of the box, and you’re fine. But God forbid you are a slightly advanced user

⏹️ ▶️ John say, you know what, I believe I’ll use a different mail client. It’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up. What are you doing here?

⏹️ ▶️ John You know, and on the Mac, you can figure out how to do it, but a normal person can’t. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John if my parents decided that they wanted to use a different mail client, which they probably never would, but if they did, they would have no idea how to do that.

⏹️ ▶️ John They would never think to look in the preferences for the mail client that they, in either mail client, they wouldn’t think to look for

⏹️ ▶️ John the preferences to tell the OS that they want to

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco use

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that same client. Well, it would do what the browsers do, which is all the third-party ones would have a nag screen that would pop up

⏹️ ▶️ Marco saying hey you want to set us as the default but you know I but I think like an iOS just like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because because iOS launched with the best browser and mail client

⏹️ ▶️ Marco available on iOS and well but now it’s now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say mail and Safari are still the best mail

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John well client and browser because

⏹️ ▶️ John they won’t let anyone else use nitro JavaScript engine so duh no wonder it’s the best like you know for

⏹️ ▶️ John safety reasons and whatever like they have legitimate security reasons for not allowing that to happen, but everyone else’s hands

⏹️ ▶️ John are tied behind their back.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey So no one is ever gonna

⏹️ ▶️ John make a better browser than Safari in terms of performance and web rendering because they’re the only guys who get to use the good rendering

⏹️ ▶️ John engine, they’re the good JavaScript engine. I wouldn’t,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. I mean, Safari’s JavaScript is faster than everyone else’s on iOS, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think that’s what’s holding back the other browsers,

⏹️ ▶️ John honestly. You’re not allowed to use that, that’s why, doesn’t the Chrome use

⏹️ ▶️ John WebKit on iOS entirely, including

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the JavaScript engine?

⏹️ ▶️ John unlike Chrome on the Mac which uses the V8 JavaScript, because you’re not allowed to make an interpreter. That’s their other thing. You can’t

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco use,

⏹️ ▶️ John unless you’re a game maker and you get grandfathered in or whatever the hell crazy deal they have with EA to let them run Lua scripts

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. You

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco can’t make an interpreter.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They changed the interpretation of that rule like a year ago to be even more vague

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and unspecified, but more sensible most of the time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John But still, I

⏹️ ▶️ John mean it’s still boxes out JavaScript engines.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh, sure.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, you’re making a language and we don’t want you to download code from the internet and execute it. So you have

⏹️ ▶️ John to use our JavaScript engine and the slow version of our JavaScript engine that doesn’t have

⏹️ ▶️ John all the security, possibly security violating features. So no one is gonna ever make a browser that’s gonna be universally

⏹️ ▶️ John better than Safari. And then mail, I would say that lots of people would say that people already have

⏹️ ▶️ John made better clients than mail. I don’t know how, if you like this mailbox crazy thing, which has other

⏹️ ▶️ John server side and security and privacy concerns to it, but client wise, like it’s an innovation in terms

⏹️ ▶️ John of how you deal with your mail. And I really like that innovation, I just don’t like everything else about the client, which is why I’m not gonna get it.

⏹️ ▶️ John But they have a chance, there is a chance that someone could make a better iOS

⏹️ ▶️ John native mail client than Apple, because there’s no technical reason holding them back. The only thing that screws you is that, well,

⏹️ ▶️ John so what? No other application is gonna see your stupid mail thing, and when you send mail, we’re gonna still pull up Apple Mail, because

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the way it works. Right.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So do you ever think that will change? I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t. I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t ever see there being enough demand from customers. honestly like gmail maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco chrome no I just don’t see there being this massive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco demand from customers on iOS to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John want to use alternative

⏹️ ▶️ Marco clients enough for Apple to want to change their minds on the policy like if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John there was a huge demand

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’d be different

⏹️ ▶️ John I think long term what’s going to happen is that as in so many things there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John going to be a new killer application either category or or an individual instance

⏹️ ▶️ John that wants to fill the role that’s currently filled by a default Apple application.

⏹️ ▶️ John And in order to be competitive, there will be public pressure to say, hey, why can’t I use popular

⏹️ ▶️ John new thing instead of the dumb default thing that comes? And that will only happen not because of anything that

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s doing, but because of the sheer mind share and sort of cultural attraction that this other thing gets.

⏹️ ▶️ John They dodged a bullet on Twitter for that, because it was always third party and they didn’t have a single horse in the game, right? And they integrated

⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter into the US. I don’t know what the next thing is, but whatever it is, if it wants to take over like web

⏹️ ▶️ John browsing or mail sending and becomes wildly popular, independent of Apple, Apple will be under pressure from that same

⏹️ ▶️ John casual public to how come every time I send mail on my iPhone it brings up a stupid mail

⏹️ ▶️ John application? I want to sell in Holo mail with the new holographic Holo whatever thing that’s made by third-party company

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not Apple and they have an app, but every time I send mail like that’s the phenomenon I’m looking for where it’s going to be

⏹️ ▶️ John something that becomes popular, independent of Apple, that they can’t be ignored And they’re just going to be

⏹️ ▶️ John forced to say, you know, all right, we now have a way for you to choose which application

⏹️ ▶️ John you want to send mail. A boring other one or this crazy holo mail that everyone loves? I’m mispronouncing

⏹️ ▶️ John holo.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe what it would actually take would be one of those killer apps getting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge and taking over, growing really fast, like Instagram levels of growth, just taking over like crazy,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but on Android instead. Instead and not even being available on iOS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John because it can’t exist in the App Store

⏹️ ▶️ John Because they would say on my iPhone the stupid Apple app always comes up But on my Android phone I get

⏹️ ▶️ John to pick which one I want and everybody who has an Android phone Automatically picked whatever crazy popular new thing is and so everyone

⏹️ ▶️ John that Android phone is happily going along and doing their thing and the Apple People like yeah, we have this workaround We’re like most

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple like the worst-case scenario is people have to do what Marco is doing It’s like alright like you tried to do with

⏹️ ▶️ John the magazine originally with the Chrome

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, just automatically pick

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John the right one.

⏹️ ▶️ John With Instapaper, like, oh, if you have Chrome installed, I want to eat. You’re forced to do crap like that, because the OS

⏹️ ▶️ John gives no way for people who want to use Chrome to indicate that preference. You’re

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like, well,

⏹️ ▶️ John if they have it

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco installed, like, you’re trying to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco eat me. I shouldn’t have to do this at all. There should be absolutely no reason why an app developer should need to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco separately code support for different mail clients or different browsers. I shouldn’t even have to know what browsers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are out there.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s like, and every application is going to have to have this stupid proliferation of preferences and dealing with URL protocols.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it just makes a mess. And that’s like the worst thing that could happen to Apple, is that something becomes wildly popular,

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple refuses to budge, every application that does anything that involves this application suddenly adds a preference that

⏹️ ▶️ John says use Apple default, use this one or whatever. And then every time you download a new application, you gotta go into settings and change

⏹️ ▶️ John it. And so I gotta tell this to use my, I mean like Fantastical is kind of almost there because they wanna make a default

⏹️ ▶️ John calendar, but they can’t replace the default calendar. Like there’s a lot of people I bet who would buy an iOS

⏹️ ▶️ John calendar application completely replacing the existing calendar if they could.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I would do that with Fantastical, absolutely. And actually, you were talking about something

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s only on Android that isn’t on iOS, and this isn’t a great example, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one that jumped to mind was the swipe keyboard thing that all the Android users rave about. And I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t think it’s popular enough to get the response from Apple that you’re talking about, John, but that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey certainly is something that I think of, that Android users can hold over our heads and say, hey, look what we can do,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you can’t, without a jailbreak

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John or something like

⏹️ ▶️ John that. to what Apple will do. Letting you pick your favorite email application is within the realm of

⏹️ ▶️ John what I would consider plausible for Apple to do in

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the future.

⏹️ ▶️ John But letting you pick a different app instead of Springboard is outside that realm.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Or

⏹️ ▶️ John a different keyboard, like a third-party keyboard app, that is just, they don’t even let you do

⏹️ ▶️ John it on the Mac. That’s a good yardstick, is the question. Do they let you replace the Finder with another app? No.

⏹️ ▶️ John You can hack it up and figure out a way to do it, because it’s the Mac and it’s much more open than iOS. But they don’t offer

⏹️ ▶️ John you that option. You can pick your default browser, and you can pick your default mail client, and you can pick which application

⏹️ ▶️ John automatically has ownership over.shtml files or whatever the hell you want. But you cannot

⏹️ ▶️ John pick through a GUI interface. You know what? I’m not into the Finder. Can you launch into Pathfinder and stuff?

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s up to the Pathfinder devs to figure out how to hack your system up to make that happen. So keyboards, probably

⏹️ ▶️ John outside the realm of possibility in the near or distant future.

⏹️ ▶️ John Springboard replacement, also probably not going to happen.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh, yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John Never going to happen. but replacement mail and browsers

⏹️ ▶️ John could I mean maybe not mail maybe not browsers maybe not calendar but something along those lines a camera apps maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John now

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you know like but it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there there aren’t that many types of apps like that that that they’re that they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John use a is something else yeah

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is so compelling to replace the default apps like they’re really there aren’t really aren’t a lot of categories like that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s why I think like like calendar is a great example of one of those categories but I think the demand

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for that is even lower than demand for browsers. I would say demand for browsers is probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lowest, because Chrome and iOS is not that much better than Safari and iOS. Demand

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is probably highest for email clients because everyone wants to use the Gmail app. I think that is probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the strongest case for this preference existing. Calendars, I don’t think, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, I think the market for alternative calendars, while it may be big enough to support a few developers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing it, I don’t think it’s big enough for Apple to have to care about having a default.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So setting?

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I don’t know. Like calendars, reminders, to-do lists. Like there are tons of third-party things that people

⏹️ ▶️ John like. Like the defaults are, I think a lot of people ignore the defaults because the third-party market is so rich for those

⏹️ ▶️ John things, especially with like, they were ahead of Apple in integrating with a Mac client and an iPad and iPhone

⏹️ ▶️ John all together with one big shared thing. You know what I mean? It’s just that they’re not so much launched from other applications. Like

⏹️ ▶️ John what you don’t want is for people to be in a cool app and see that they’re about to do some activity that’s going

⏹️ ▶️ John to invoke another app and realize with a sinking feeling that, oh, this is not going to

⏹️ ▶️ John invoke the app that I want. And that repeatedly happening to people

⏹️ ▶️ John is what makes people sad. I guess it happens the most, I guess, by sending email because it’s not done from a sheet like a tweet might be

⏹️ ▶️ John with that API or whatever. They send you off to the mail app to send your email.

⏹️ ▶️ John And you don’t end up in the Gmail app or whatever the app that you wanted to use was. I mean, Apple can

⏹️ ▶️ John nip this in the bud. The reason we hated it so much with browsers, We said Microsoft stagnated on IE, and they said,

⏹️ ▶️ John we’re just not going to develop that anymore. IE6 is perfect and it never needs to be changed ever again. And the

⏹️ ▶️ John gap just widened and became increasingly crazy. Imagine if Windows users could not change

⏹️ ▶️ John their default browser at all, but had to explicitly copy and paste the URL, launch

⏹️ ▶️ John Netscape back in the day, paste the URL in. That’s what the situation

⏹️ ▶️ John is like on iOS now, if you want to use something different for your mail or

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco browser. Yeah, you’re right.

⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, there’s a link, I bought it, I want to tap it. And

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s, that’s sort of true. On the new version of one pair new ish version of one password,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they did something absolutely brilliant, which was they made their URL handlers,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey O P HTTP, and O P HTTPS. So the premise is,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you’re in Safari, and you want to open that site that you’re looking at in one password, it is fiddly, admittedly,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it’s as unfitly as you can be, which is to say, you go to the URL bar and you put the letters OP

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in front of whatever the crap is there and then it’ll kick over to 1Password and open it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John up. They

⏹️ ▶️ John had to make their own browsers, but they had to do.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, you’re absolutely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John right.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s like, that is so, I don’t know if it’s terrible, but it’s like, you’re 1Password

⏹️ ▶️ John and you want to provide password management services and the only way you can do it is like, I’ve just got to

⏹️ ▶️ John make the whole new browser. It’s great that they can do it with a nice embeddable webkit control and everything like that, but it’s like, that’s the heavyweight

⏹️ ▶️ John solution. Actually don’t even browse the web from that, browse the web from our thing because this is one little thing

⏹️ ▶️ John that we want to do in some cases and we can’t do it unless you do you know you’re literally using our

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco software

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have the exact same thing with instapaper which is I wanted to add an easy read later button because mobile Safari makes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that so hard to do that I built a whole web browser into instapaper

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that people could browse the web and save stuff from it if they couldn’t figure out how to install the bookmarklet

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John and

⏹️ ▶️ John you should you should never remove that feature by the way I’m gonna come I’ll hunt you down

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I well and I would love I would love to remove that feature I Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John to bring up the

⏹️ ▶️ John Version of the web page without leaving the app. That’s like common use case

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would love to remove it, but I probably never can because of because of things like that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because there’s enough people who use it but also because There’s gonna be so many people who who

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just browse

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John from that

⏹️ ▶️ John figure out how to do the bookmark,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right? Because I can’t do anything. I figured

⏹️ ▶️ John out the bookmark like I have it, but it’s just you know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, no, I mean, and I think like a system like Windows 8’s contracts

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Would really go a long way towards solving a lot of these issues not all of them there would still be some issues, but you know if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if if Apple broadens this whole UI activity thing from iOS 6

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and combining with the remote view controllers thing that they quietly added to iOS 6

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as well and used behind the scenes. If they transform this into something like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Windows 8 Contracts with iOS 7 maybe. Does

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco help? Well it would be a tremendous help if they did it that way. Right now, its current implementation

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on iOS 6, it’s really extremely unhelpful in many ways. Where like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, for me to add the send to Instapaper button in the magazine, I had

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to manually code that into the magazine, provide an icon for it, write all the code to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco log into Instapaper to save it, all that stuff, even though I had the Instapaper app installed.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If I wanted it to be in the app without kicking over to the Instapaper app and then kicking back, which is kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco inelegant, if I wanted it to all be in the app, I had to write that all myself. There’s no

⏹️ ▶️ Marco way Instapaper could offer to the magazine its own interface that could

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be in magazine share panel that that doesn’t exist

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John yet. If that did exist…

⏹️ ▶️ John That share panel will open up almost guaranteed in iOS 7. You’ll be able to put stuff in that share

⏹️ ▶️ Marco panel. I really hope so. But that’s a major architectural change though. And that’s why

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a big deal if they do it. And it might not happen yet because it is such a major change.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that would… that’s part of what Windows 8 contracts are.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That would go a long way towards solving a lot of these problems. If I could just If I could just say,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco here, I have this item to share. Open up a share panel, and I can offer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you a URL, a file of this type, and this text. And any

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps that can do something with these things can show up here and do their thing. And I don’t have to code all that myself. That

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would go a long way.

⏹️ ▶️ John Is the remote view controller stuff the stuff that’s using XPC that’s actually in iOS 6 but not public?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yes. The thing that spawns the external process and communicates with it through a secure sandbox

⏹️ ▶️ John channel. Exactly.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s currently used for the mail sharing controller. And I think maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even the Twitter one and the Facebook one. The tweet sheet thing. But definitely the mail one uses it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they could definitely use that exact same kind of system to do this for all third party apps

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and have this kind of system. But the share

⏹️ ▶️ John sheet is different. The share sheet is literally what you said. It’s just a question of querying which applications can

⏹️ ▶️ John handle this type of thing, showing their stupid icons feeding them the data with a launch event.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, add to Instapaper. You’d be perfectly happy if the add to Instapaper was, hit the share button, hit the little I

⏹️ ▶️ John Instapaper icon. Your application gets, like all you would need is a fricking URL. Your application

⏹️ ▶️ John gets a URL and has a chance to shove it in somewhere and then it goes away.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but then the question is, does it switch to my app first? Because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s kind of inelegant. Or is my app just brought up in a background state

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I present a view controller that the remote controller then displays, and then I’m just handing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this data, and my app never shows up. That would be the right way to do

⏹️ ▶️ John it. The share thing with the list of icons, I assume it’s going to launch you. The remote view controller

⏹️ ▶️ John thing where you get to present an interface is what you really want, but that’s more complicated. But any time there’s a private

⏹️ ▶️ John API like that used by Apple apps, that you know, like XPC has public API on the Mac, right? So this is kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of one of those things where it seems like, this is how a public API,

⏹️ ▶️ John private API becomes public. It’s like how a bill becomes a law, how a baby is made. First Apple uses

⏹️ ▶️ John it in all their apps, and then they hopefully wring the bugs out

⏹️ ▶️ John of it, and then the next release they open it up to everyone, or in the next release they decide they made a terrible mistake,

⏹️ ▶️ John scrap it, and start over again. But XPC is already public on the Mac, so I feel pretty good about that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The only problem I have with this idea is, let’s take in the example of the magazine,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t really see how this would help in the sense that what you’re doing is you’re doing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey something with the URL. So if you have a share sheet and you’re presenting to the share sheet,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hey, I’ve got a URL, who can do something with this? That’s going to be half the damn apps on your iPhone

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or iPad or whatever the case may be.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, that’s why they don’t do it because everyone’s like, I register for star data. Well, and

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually like there was a good interview from Chipone on debug

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the podcast by Rene Ritchie and Guy English. You know Chipone, the hacker guy?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, Grant Paul. Anyway, he was talking on their show about how

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is a problem on Android that does implement this feature because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco then you have these apps that show these giant long lists of what you can do with something and they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of, they’re not really ordered in any good way. You can’t really set like a default of what you want

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to show up on top for certain types. Like it, that actually then becomes a pretty challenging

⏹️ ▶️ Marco interface problem

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah they can do the thing like where you hold down on the icon and they wiggle and you can X them out and there’s a more

⏹️ ▶️ John button at the bottom if you want to get some back like you know you’re gonna have to trim those lists because as soon as you do that yeah

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t like it look at the friggin app store

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it’ll be used I don’t know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco well first of all they can they can police it so they can say like well you know you don’t really have a use for this so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re not gonna let you register for it

⏹️ ▶️ John but some applications don’t like have legit like what if you’re a text editor. Any time something is text,

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re like, oh, look,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco there’s whatever. Any of those. There’s

⏹️ ▶️ John elements. There’s elements again, or a PDF reader or something.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like Goodreader and Dropbox will just register for every file type.

⏹️ ▶️ John Or an image, like all your camera apps are going to show up, all your image retouching apps.

⏹️ ▶️ John The interface problem is it’s either going to have to be opt-in, which would be kind of annoying for regular users,

⏹️ ▶️ John or opt-out, where you just use the gesture that we all know to make icons go away, which is hold

⏹️ ▶️ John your finger down the little X and then you know trim the list

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco maybe that will be or it’ll just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco reorder itself when like you know whichever one you use last would move up to the front of the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John list

⏹️ ▶️ John oh no that’s that’s no good that’s the reason springboard doesn’t work that way because it would drive

⏹️ ▶️ John people nuts yeah upper left is Safari where did it go I haven’t used it recently

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah you just get a muscle memory of like that sheet comes up it’s the papers top left corner you tap it if it’s papers

⏹️ ▶️ John not the top left corner because you didn’t use it could use a different one last time. That’s angry making.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey See, and I agree. And that’s what I’m driving at is that RPC definitely solves a problem,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is, if you’re Marco, and you want to have a native Instapaper share

⏹️ ▶️ Casey function from within the magazine, you’re right now you’re screwed. And RPC

⏹️ ▶️ Casey would fix that. But that to me, it doesn’t really fix the problem of I have a URL, I wish

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to email, what can email this URL, because it’s more than just having a URL you want

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to share or do something with, you want to be able to say that my intention is to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey email it. And then that calls the list down to whatever email clients you have, or

⏹️ ▶️ Casey perhaps if Apple was nuts and had a default email client setting, then that is what

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John you

⏹️ ▶️ John get. Yeah, that’s the Android intent. So it wouldn’t just be a protocol driven, it would be action

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey driven. Exactly.

⏹️ ▶️ John It would have to have, action would have to be a component. We were just saying protocol driven for like, if you have raw data, kind of like, you know, who

⏹️ ▶️ John can handle this pasteboard data type

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey of thing. Right.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, there’s also, the intention is like, I would like, you know, who is an email like Apple could just the

⏹️ ▶️ John applicant define these things that I was saying in another podcast a while ago, if Apple wants to allow third party email applications,

⏹️ ▶️ John by all means, let it say, look, if you want to be a third party email application that participates in the system,

⏹️ ▶️ John we’re defining here’s how you must behave in terms of RPC. Here’s the features you have to support.

⏹️ ▶️ John You must support attachments, custom subject lines to his front. Like so you can like conform to some protocol

⏹️ ▶️ John that I’m sure Apple’s mail application already totally conforms to or whatever, like define it however you want. People

⏹️ ▶️ John will jump through those hoops to be like, you know, so basically you don’t run to the problem of like, oh, well, you picked a third

⏹️ ▶️ John party email application that can’t handle subject lines for some reason. And my application doesn’t work because it puts some

⏹️ ▶️ John code in the subject line. You know what I mean? Like, that’s what they want to avoid. Like, Oh, you, because, because you’re not using the default email application,

⏹️ ▶️ John your stuff broke. Uh, so they would have to say, if you want to be a replacement for

⏹️ ▶️ John a system thing, you must support these features, this protocol, you know, this screw it down as

⏹️ ▶️ John tight as you want, because people will jump through it to be in that and that will solve the consistency problem of being afraid

⏹️ ▶️ John everything is working fine but because he was a third-party email application something broke you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know right and that’s a huge support problem for developers when that start that stuff starts getting possible like right

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now I mean and that’s kind of flip side of this like right now I because I’m building in support for all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these things manually I can test them all and I can be pretty sure that the options that everybody

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that anybody will ever see will all work but once you start integrating these other things then Then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people will start blaming you for like, oh, when I shared to new experimental browser X

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from your share panel, it didn’t work right in this weird way. And they’ll email me saying it’s my fault.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I just had that with the hypercritical.co podcast feed. Ever since that site went up, people are like,

⏹️ ▶️ John I tried to subscribe to your feed and reader and it showed me this crazy ass thing. And they show me like a sheet in reader

⏹️ ▶️ John that shows a huge list of things, none of which are my feed, some of which have my name related to them.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, what the hell? I’m like, that must be running a search or something. What the hell is it doing? And you’re like, look,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a URL. It’s HTTP colon slash slash, and it has a bunch of stuff. You click it, and

⏹️ ▶️ John this is on the Mac. So it activates, OK, what is your handler for RSS? I guess it looks at the MIME type of the thing

⏹️ ▶️ John coming back, you know, Atom feed or whatever. And then it launches your preferred newsreader application, which happens to be readers

⏹️ ▶️ John in these people’s systems. And then reader gets it. And it turns out what Safari does is it takes off the HTTP,

⏹️ ▶️ John puts in feed colon slash slash, out whatever the default protocol handler

⏹️ ▶️ John is for feed, basically what is your news reader, launches that, but gives it that URL

⏹️ ▶️ John and I believe it excises the feed at that point and hands the URL without deleting

⏹️ ▶️ John HTTP or something. What it comes down to is that what reader was doing is taking the URL as it was given

⏹️ ▶️ John which no longer had, oh no, I think it was stripping off the feed. Reader was stripping off the feed colon slash slash,

⏹️ ▶️ John not putting HTTP slash slash back on, that to the Google Reader API and

⏹️ ▶️ John Google Reader API interpreted that as a search term and not a URL and hilarity ensues.

⏹️ ▶️ John God. And that is a pretty, that is like, like how complicated is that? It’s a link that you click

⏹️ ▶️ John that launches a protocol handle, you know what I mean? Like it’s, that’s as simple as it could possibly be and yet it still went totally awry.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like once it went off to the third-party application, it’s like, oh yeah, I’m totally compliant. I handle feed URLs.

⏹️ ▶️ John But then what it does with them, it passes them to Google Reader and and Google Reader does something crazy with it. And then so you

⏹️ ▶️ John get into a situation where you’re like, hey, I tried to subscribe to your news feed, but when I clicked on it, because the news reader

⏹️ ▶️ John I used isn’t whatever news reader you tested with, something crazy happened. So I guess no matter how

⏹️ ▶️ John simply you make it, something can go wrong that you did not expect.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yep. This bug is fixed in the next version of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Reader, supposedly. Right, then it’ll introduce five more.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’ll be happy. Like the results were, I don’t know why Google is

⏹️ ▶️ John doing this. I’m assuming it’s because they don’t think.co is a real extension. They’re probably looking for the.com

⏹️ ▶️ John to do their fuzzy matching. Is this a URL? Kind of odd. I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John know. Yeah, but the search terms that come up are vaguely related to me because it’s got the word hypercritical and feed and

⏹️ ▶️ John main. And so you see things about the podcast and my name. And yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John Took me a while to figure that one out.