8: Hold Me!
12 Apr 2013Giving Dave Morin the benefit of the doubt, Facebook Home, tech giants maintaining their own OSes, Google forking WebKit, and Panic’s Status Board.
Episode Description:
- Giving Dave Morin the benefit of the doubt on that Vanity Fair trainwreck.
- Who Facebook Home is for and why Facebook made it.
- Whether Facebook, Amazon, Samsung, etc. could or should make their own OS or maintain completely diverged Android forks.
- Google forking WebKit, Chrome vs. Safari, and the fork's likely implications for Apple and web developers.
- Debug #11: Don Melton and Safari
- WebKit contributors by company
- Panic's new Status Board app (and IAP reaction).
- We included Jonathan Mann's ending theme song again. Thanks, Jonathan!
Sponsored by Igloo Software.
Transcript start
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s scary and I don’t like it, help me!
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We missed a lot this week. Or last week, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot, I was here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey He says with not a hint of bitterness.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, of course not. John, bitter?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did want to mention quickly the Dave Moran vanity fair thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because I think, from what I can tell, based on some things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve seen, you know, both from him making a few little comments here and there and from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few other people, including the magazine’s esteemed editor Glenn Fleischman, who apparently talked to him
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit more, it sounds like it sounds like it was pretty overblown. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it sounds like the Vanity Fair reporter might have been exaggerating or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco taking some of those things really far out of context or mangling them somewhat. So I want to give the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guy a little bit of the benefit of the doubt. And, because, you know, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve had reporters mangle stuff I’ve told them and it is terrible because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it makes you look like a total douche and and certainly his his thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did make him look that way but you know we don’t really know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much of that he really said and how bad it really is so I do want to give
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the guy the benefit of the doubt and just you know maybe and float the idea that that might not have been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entirely accurate because it sounds like it probably wasn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I don’t know, could you, could any human being be that much of a colossal
⏹️ ▶️ Casey jerk without intending it?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean… I don’t know if he’s so much of a jerk because like, if I had given those answers and people had like
⏹️ ▶️ John complained about me giving those answers, I feel like I could defend them.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t, I didn’t read the whole thing but I saw most of the quotes and they did seem ridiculous, but
⏹️ ▶️ John assuming they’re talking about real things, I would say to the people who didn’t like them, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John come at me, bro. Like, they’d be like, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John two phones, you got one for the day and one for the night. I’d be like, yeah, because I don’t like a battery pack makes my phone
⏹️ ▶️ John bigger. And so if I have two phones, and I can’t charge it all day because I’m running around from meeting to
⏹️ ▶️ John meeting, so having two phones lets me have a skinnier one. Like, you could defend
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it. They’re not saying that, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And he actually did defend that particular point. He said in some Twitter app reply to somebody that what he
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really said was that he has and he you know he does have two iPhones which is ridiculous but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he is also a very successful tech company CEO so you know it’s not like you know it goes with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the territory it’s to some degree but he said what the reason he has two is he has one of them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for only work stuff and only work apps and the other one for only personal stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that he can like leave work at work and not be distracted by personal stuff like that actually, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, I still don’t really ever see myself having two iPhones even if money was no object,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I could see why he would do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not a great solution, but I feel like you could explain it and defend it. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ John what you can’t explain and defend is, I mean, assuming the quotes are accurate, is
⏹️ ▶️ John saying those things in the context of an interview and not thinking people are going to think you sound like a tool, because you
⏹️ ▶️ John will. You have to, certain things need to be, provide context and if you don’t think you’re going to be able
⏹️ ▶️ John to provide that context or, you know, like, it’s not the right forum to do that. Like, say you’re talking with
⏹️ ▶️ John your friends about how you manage your phones. That’s the time to pull up, oh, I have one for work and one for home and stuff like
⏹️ ▶️ John that because it’s not extravagant cost-wise and it is kind of annoying. I bet he has lots of problems syncing stuff up between
⏹️ ▶️ John the phones and stuff, but that’s the context where you bring this up. You don’t bring it up and like, hey, we’re talking to you for a magazine
⏹️ ▶️ John interview. Like, it’s not, that’s not the time to bring that up. So he made some strategic errors in when to bring things up.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the always being on the offensive, defensive, like you could say that as a joke, meaning
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly you keep your ringer off because you don’t want to be disturbed during the day and the person says and asks you why so often, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the offense, defense thing. It’s a funny joke, but if you just see the words written there, you’re like, he’s dead serious.
⏹️ ▶️ John He thinks, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, one of the theories I heard, which right at the beginning, right after it was published, somebody said that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it looks like he might have just been trolling them. And if you go into it with that theory
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you read it again, you can kind of see that. Like that’s actually, I would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say that is equally plausible as he’s that much of a douche. Like I’d say those are equal. I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey agree with that. You told me that, we had discussed this when I had first arrived in New York last week,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and when you first said that, I was like, well, maybe it’s possible. So.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really, I mean, I think the way more likely answer is that he wasn’t trying to intentionally trolled him
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and he isn’t that much of a douche and the real answer is it was just blown out of proportion by the reporter
⏹️ ▶️ John he might not be that self-aware like you could if you are that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s hard to tell I mean look at look at the picture the picture he’s got himself he does like collars that stick up
⏹️ ▶️ John and that is true and the pictures are kind of precious and like you would think
⏹️ ▶️ John like someone who’s just a little bit more self-aware and perhaps not as not a CEO
⏹️ ▶️ John of a big and important company might like like I couldn’t put a picture of myself like that like
⏹️ ▶️ John I would I don’t know it’s it’s a tough call but you know this is a this is a fluff non-story
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway and it’ll just come and go and I don’t fault him as a person for any of this silliness.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Speaking of silliness I guess let’s go chronologically Facebook home.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah I I don’t know what to make of that. I was never
⏹️ ▶️ Casey big into Facebook, although it seems from what I can tell that both you guys,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even at your peak, liked Facebook a lot less than I liked Facebook. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I look at it a few times a week because it seems socially awkward not to.
⏹️ ▶️ John never looked at Facebook
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey a few times a week, ever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s exactly my point. my peak certainly and even now I probably have embraced
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it more than I think either of you gentlemen. But and I’d think I could get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey away without ever looking at it and certainly Erin and I have mostly the same circle of friends so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she could keep me updated on the 800 people that are having babies right now. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, I couldn’t imagine an entire phone experience based solely off of what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all my friends are doing. And furthermore, it seems to me like one of the things that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey society is challenged with these days, that sounded way overblown, but I’m gonna roll with it now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that you’re never in the moment. You’re always worrying about what your Twitter people are saying, your Twitter followers are saying, or what your Instagram
⏹️ ▶️ Casey followers are commenting on and liking and so on and so forth. And this seems to just make that even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey worse. I don’t know, I just don’t get it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it depends on, like, you know, for me, one of the reasons why I’ve never gotten into Facebook.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have an account, but I’ve never been active. In fact,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my wife created the account for me when we got engaged so that she would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John point to. So she could put you as her fiance.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. That’s when I got my account, and that’s why I got my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John account. That is very symbolic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and apt. And so I’ve never really been active because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not that I fundamentally object to the I don’t really care either way on that front. It’s that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Facebook is set up to conflate the idea
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of people you know and people whose content you want to follow online. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to me those are very much non-overlapping circles. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that’s true for a lot of people. And that’s why, like, the beauty of Twitter, you know, at first Facebook didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even have asymmetric following. I I think now it does. I don’t even know for sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s how little I use it. And usually I’ll end up logging in like maybe once
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every two or three months to answer some message from somebody that I probably should answer that I get an email notification
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about. And so every time I log in, there’s like a totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different interface and it confuses the crap out of me and I never know how to do anything or what’s going on or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where something is. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an old man. Yeah, really. Like I need the kids to explain it to me. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s how I am every time I log into Facebook.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t need the kids to explain to me. I know an annoying product when I see one. I’m like, no. I
⏹️ ▶️ John know all the things that it can do, and I can figure out how to do them eventually. I just do not want to do them. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t do not want is my reaction to Facebook entirely. And I have to stop myself from like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know how people get, you know, they get all angry about Apple, and they’re just like angry at Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John And like, you just mention anything about, oh, I got a new iPad today. Oh, I hate Apple. And they just get angry. I have to stop
⏹️ ▶️ John myself from having that feeling about Facebook. We’re not, we don’t curse in this podcast,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? I said douche like four times. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John mean, we can curse lightly. I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John abbreviate, but like, every time someone mentions anything about Facebook, like I just hear it in passing,
⏹️ ▶️ John like this voice in my head says, man, F Facebook. Like, I’m like, wait a second, why are you getting angry about it? It’s just like
⏹️ ▶️ John a website where people do stuff and they enjoy things. That’s a good way for people to connect and people, you know, not everyone can have their
⏹️ ▶️ John own website and it’s a way for people to post pictures to each other and social, like my rational brain knows why Facebook
⏹️ ▶️ John exists is popular, but this other part of me has visceral hatred of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a struggle. Well, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really don’t like—it’s one thing to say this is a website where people can communicate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tumblr is a lot of those same things for people, so I got to see that develop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think what’s different with things like Tumblr versus things like Facebook is that Facebook is one of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these companies—we’ve had a few of these in our history of this industry. It’s one of these companies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where if something is having some success, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want a piece of it too. And they can’t stand not to be in a market. And the originator of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this was Microsoft.
⏹️ ▶️ John In our lifetime anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In our industry. Yeah. I would say. Like I don’t think I like the previous
⏹️ ▶️ Marco giants like IBM, I don’t think they were ever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John quite like this. Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John was much worse about this than Facebook is so far.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Because Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John would do anything. Like if anyone became remotely popular, like, whoa, we’re going to do one of those. And Facebook at
⏹️ ▶️ John least is like, all right, well, lots of people can go off and do lots of other things. But, you know, they
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t make a music player when the iPod was popular.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco They didn’t make
⏹️ ▶️ John a tablet. I mean, like the phone, you know, they’re not as like, Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John was like, anybody does anything, even if it looks like they’re going to fail, we’ll make a failure project alongside it just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, you know what? with NBC too or whatever they did or buy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John NBC. Yeah, I mean, like a TV, interactive TV could be the future. People are going to be
⏹️ ▶️ John doing things on TV and like, yeah, they’re not as desperate as feeling as Microsoft.
⏹️ ▶️ John But that type of vibe where a company gets big enough and I think this is a
⏹️ ▶️ John rational thing. Google and Facebook both do it. It’s like, look, we are big and successful,
⏹️ ▶️ John but if we’re just content to be what we are, we are going to get left behind. And so all the companies
⏹️ ▶️ John are looking to see what the next thing is going to be. And Google
⏹️ ▶️ John decided, look, we need to do something with social. And they refocused their entire company on Google+. And Facebook, already
⏹️ ▶️ John the king of social, said, we see the area where we’re weak is in mobile. And that is not going
⏹️ ▶️ John away. That’s going to be a big thing. And we got to figure out something there. So I think it’s a reasonable strategy for companies who are
⏹️ ▶️ John very large not to be happy with what they are and just get better at it, but to
⏹️ ▶️ John look for the other thing that’s going to be big. not everything, not like Facebook’s not making a game console, they’re not like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, doing things that will deliver groceries to your house or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John like whatever eBay’s doing stuff like that. Like, they’re, they’ve picked a reasonable thing, I think, for
⏹️ ▶️ John like, look, we have to be in mobile. If we’re not in mobile, we’re screwed long term. And so they’re doing something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the way they’re doing it, though, and this is this is partly why I brought up the the sprawl
⏹️ ▶️ Marco argument, the way they’re doing it, is seemingly designed with the assumption
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone using it exclusively uses Facebook or primarily uses Facebook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as their communication mechanism to anybody. And it seems like…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and part of that might just be like blindness to people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who only partially care about Facebook or communicate with some of their friends on Facebook and some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not. And part of it might be an effort to actively extinguish that kind of use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and to convert those people to spread the tentacles and bring them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in and railroad them into using Facebook for way more of the communication
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they previously were doing through other channels, like text messaging or anything else. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that kind of rubs me the wrong way. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it’s just ignorance where they’re just thinking, well, of course, everyone who uses Facebook only uses Facebook,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s one thing. I don’t think they’re that stupid though. Facebook has shown extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good product sense, product sensibilities, skills in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting people in and keeping them there. So I don’t think you can attribute any Facebook move to stupidity.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they have very, very smart people running that company. And so, you know, it’s not like Microsoft.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But, you know, they have extremely smart people running that company, so they know exactly what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re doing. And I think it’s very clear what they’re doing here. they are they are extinguishing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or at least attempting to extinguish any other communication
⏹️ ▶️ Marco methods on the phones that have been infected by this this home
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, not extinguishing it. All the old stuff is still there too. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, they’re they’re trying to bury it is what I’m saying. Like, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John by taking over the lock screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John They just want to be there too. Like they, you know, if they don’t, if they’re not a sibling,
⏹️ ▶️ John at least with SMS text messaging or whatever other thing people are using, if they’re not at least
⏹️ ▶️ John a sibling with that, if you have to launch the Facebook app, they’re subordinate to the rest of the phone experience, kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of like they are on iOS, right? They think they should at least be a sibling with those things, and
⏹️ ▶️ John since Android allows you to take over the lock screen and stuff, it looks like they’re out in front of everything else,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I would still call that a sibling just because it’s the first thing you see. It’s still alongside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Eh, maybe. I don’t know. think we’ll see how it plays out because one very careful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco line they have to walk is if they do go too far in that direction of being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too aggressive and not working very well or making the phone not work very well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you want to do a lot of non-Facebook communication that if they go too far in that direction they’ll have fewer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco installs of this thing and fewer sales of those phones that have it pre-installed. So you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know they have to walk that line somewhat. I guess it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to see, like, you know, does this, you know, is this still roughly the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of thing in six months or a year and how many people are using it?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the thing I was thinking about for home and for another topic I hope we talk about, I have a blog post
⏹️ ▶️ John stewing on this and I will go ahead and spoil the whole blog post. Does it involve a utensil?
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s not that much overlap, it seems, between people who read the blog and people who listen at the podcast because
⏹️ ▶️ John very often I choose not to blog something that I podcasted about and people are like, what are you talking about podcasts? I don’t know what you’re talking
⏹️ ▶️ John about. Anyway, uh, so in both of these situations, the,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, I’m viewing it kind of like an RTS a little bit. And, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John the reason that the resource that is critical to victory in the realm of
⏹️ ▶️ John both Facebook home and also in the web kit blink thing is developers. They need to mine
⏹️ ▶️ John for more developers basically. Uh, and the reason I’m thinking about in that
⏹️ ▶️ John respect, and I’m talking about developers who make this stuff, is that on
⏹️ ▶️ John home, everyone’s like, oh, this is just a precursor. They’re going to fork Android. They’re going to do their own OS. They could do the lock screen now,
⏹️ ▶️ John but clearly, they’re going to make their own phone OS. And thanks, Google, for giving
⏹️ ▶️ John us the head start with Android. We’ll take what you’ve got and go off in our own direction, kind of like Blink did with WebKit.
⏹️ ▶️ John But and same thing with Samsung. Oh, Samsung’s working on their Android port. Thanks, Google, for all your hard work. Now
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re off to the races. Ha ha, screw you, Google. We’re making all the money. You’re screwed. They can’t beat Facebook with Google+.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they can’t make money off Android because Samsung’s selling all the phones and making all the profits. So poor Google
⏹️ ▶️ John did all the work to make Android. And other people just stole it and did what they wanted. That’s one narrative about this thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John But in the case of Samsung and Facebook, I have to think, look,
⏹️ ▶️ John does Facebook have the skill to say, oh, thanks, Google, we’re taking Android. And we’ll just take it from here. We’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John fork it. And we’ll go off on our own. support a platform? Can they develop an OS on
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco an ongoing basis? Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John need to? Well, but that’s the whole thing, like, it’s saying, okay, you either fork it, in which case, okay, well, you’re on your own. It’s not like you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to keep merging with the next version of Android that Google puts out. You will diverge. You will fork. You will split. You will
⏹️ ▶️ John not be able to benefit from the future work that Google does, or it will be very difficult for you. Otherwise, you’re not forking.
⏹️ ▶️ John Otherwise, you’re just piggybacking. So when people say, oh, they’re going to make their own OS and it will be a fork.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re giving up being able to do sane merges with the next major version of Android. You’re either going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be the platform owner or you’re not. Right now, Google is the platform owner because they made it, they continue to make
⏹️ ▶️ John it, the next version of the OS comes from them, and the other people say, okay, well, Google’s come up with the next major version, let’s
⏹️ ▶️ John integrate it and screw it up in some way and put our little crap on it, right? And that’s what Facebook’s doing now. But a fork is,
⏹️ ▶️ John become master of your own destiny. Own the OS. We make our own OS. It used to be based on Android, yeah, whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John But now it’s our own thing. And we develop it. We support the developers to the point where you
⏹️ ▶️ John could have application compatibility diversion some point in the future, because that’s what a fork eventually leads to, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, this one works on Facebook’s OS, but not on regular Android, not on Samsung’s OS. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think Facebook has the ability to be a platform owner. Maybe they can hire
⏹️ ▶️ John up that ability. Certainly, they didn’t have the ability to make a well-designed UI until they hired all the designers. But right
⏹️ ▶️ John now, I don’t think Facebook has the ability to be a platformer because that is a high bar. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John how many successful platform owners have we seen in our industry? Microsoft, Apple, Google.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re not making a native OS. That’s what I’m talking
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey about. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see, and that’s the thing is that it is a very big distinction, but to kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shove that aside just for a moment, I mean, when I remember back to the original days of Facebook, where it was completely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Facebook controlled, there were no apps, there was no freaking Farmville or anything like that. It was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a very different place, and that was really about sharing your life. And at that point,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it wasn’t yet about throwing away all of your privacy, or if it was, they were quieter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about it. But now, to your point, it’s not a native platform,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it’s still, to a large degree, it’s a platform. I mean, you have all these different apps, if you were to call them that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey running on top of their platform. And they’ve done a lot to,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’ve done a lot of kind of wild things in order to make their platform work. And what comes to mind,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and this, this is kind of what you guys were saying about them having so many really bright people there. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, I presume you would know better than I didn’t they write like a PHP to C++ cross compiler or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John like that. At
⏹️ ▶️ John some point, they did some crazy thing. But that’s that’s server side. Like, I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey write, they have
⏹️ ▶️ John a web platform, and they an API platform, but writing an OS, you have
⏹️ ▶️ John a hardware device, and you are the operating system on the hardware device, and you build up in layers from the thing controlling
⏹️ ▶️ John the cell radio to the graphics system to every other part. It’s an OS, an actual native OS.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Google is doing all that work now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, not quite. They started with Linux. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John come on. Let’s be realistic here.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. But they didn’t fork Linux, right? Right. It’s like they have a base foundation
⏹️ ▶️ John that they follow, but when you do the OS part, That’s where you’re making the API, and the new version has a
⏹️ ▶️ John different API for scrolling, and has different buttons, and has this, like, that’s OS development, and OS development
⏹️ ▶️ John involves all that annoying crap of like, oh, you gotta have API documentation, and you gotta have a developer program, and you gotta have an SDK,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you gotta make sure the tool’s working, all the crap that Apple does, all the crap that Google does for its Google, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you have to develop the OS, you have to make it better. Year after year, they want a new major version that does something better,
⏹️ ▶️ John that has faster graphics, that uses the GPU better, that has new APIs. It takes a lot of people,
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of skill, a lot of expertise to do that. And it’s not easy. And I don’t, like Amazon was the example,
⏹️ ▶️ John like oh they forked Android to make their little tablet thing. Amazon’s, you know, they forked it and it’s their own thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they don’t have the skills in house to continue to develop their own OS. They’re, inevitably they’re going to have to
⏹️ ▶️ John either just be this like evolutionary dead end that slowly evolves in whatever direction they want, or they’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ John have to do some super painful re-sync or another re-fork or something. But
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco clearly they have not like taken the reins of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco OS. actually have done. I think they actually have like pulled more recent changes from Google into their version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco already. For like some of the newer devices, I’m pretty sure somebody told me that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they had done that.
⏹️ ▶️ John See if they’re doing that they’re not really much of a fork at that point then you’re just kind of like a you’re just one of those people who’s
⏹️ ▶️ John taking what Android’s done and mutating it and trying to like you you either you either have your own OS or you don’t or
⏹️ ▶️ John you like are you dependent on Google or not like if Google decides we’re not developing Android anymore are you screwed that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s how you can tell whether you are really a master of your own destiny. Apple is not relying on anyone
⏹️ ▶️ John to develop their rest. Microsoft is not relying on either is Google. But if Google just folds its arms and says, you know what?
⏹️ ▶️ John Never mind that Android stuff. We’re going to stop developing it. Everyone who makes an Android device who has been
⏹️ ▶️ John using Android in any form, we’re going to be like, but then next year, when Apple comes out with a new version
⏹️ ▶️ John of their mobile OS, what will we do? And Google’s going to be like, well, you know. What
⏹️ ▶️ John is that? Someone could quote from Watchmen right now if they knew the quote, but I don’t. you nerds listening do
⏹️ ▶️ John so imagine it in your head right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John think it’s worth considering what happens in that scenario.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Let’s say, not that Google stops developing Android, that’s just like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thought exercise to see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John if you really are independent.
⏹️ ▶️ John But what if they take a closed source?
⏹️ ▶️ John probably even less likely than them stopping development. Is it? I think the licensing prevents them from actually
⏹️ ▶️ John doing that on a go-forward basis. I don’t think they can just close the door and say, okay, well, what we released so far is
⏹️ ▶️ John open, but going forward, all that will be closed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If Amazon can do it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John why can’t Google?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think Amazon has everything. I don’t know the licensing issues involved there, but that seems very unlikely,
⏹️ ▶️ John like legally speaking, and even if it’s legally, like politically, can you imagine what would happen there?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, it’s much more likely that they will use their
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco licensing agreements with the Google.
⏹️ ▶️ John Their licensing agreements with the Google services to be like, you know how, like, Like, if you want to be
⏹️ ▶️ John able to use the Google services with your thing and be certified as an Android device and all the other tools
⏹️ ▶️ John they have to put people in lines they’ve been trying to use, like get carriers to stop mucking up their OS and stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John they probably will continue to turn the screws on those. But that doesn’t do anything against, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John Amazon, probably, because if they’re just like, you know, oh, well, you can’t even call your thing Android. All right, fine, we won’t. OK,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, you can’t even use the Google Play Store. OK, fine, we won’t. We’ll have our own store. I mean, like, I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John what kind of screws they can turn on Amazon. I don’t think they could bring it close closed source, but same type of deal say they
⏹️ ▶️ John did take a closed source If you all of a sudden are sweating bullets because you realize you do not have
⏹️ ▶️ John people who can develop maintain support Like a mobile OS which is an incredibly complicated thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Then you realize oh geez we really were a parasite on Google
⏹️ ▶️ John Which may have been bad for Google and great for you when it was happening, but realize that’s what you are So everyone who’s clamoring
⏹️ ▶️ John for a Facebook, you know fork or a Samsung fork I think Samsung is even less likely to be able
⏹️ ▶️ John to develop their own mobile OS, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That would be hilarious.
⏹️ ▶️ John Both of them could staff up to do it. Facebook just bought OSmeta, which was that company run by
⏹️ ▶️ John Amit Singh, if I’m pronouncing his name correctly, the author of the gigantic Mac OS X internals book that’s off
⏹️ ▶️ John to my right right now. He’s a smart guy, heavily into OSs. He did this
⏹️ ▶️ John stealth startup that we don’t even know what they’re doing with a bunch of other smart people. And Facebook bought them. I tweeted
⏹️ ▶️ John this afternoon that now he’s got an OS. Now Facebook has an OS internals team. So maybe they are staffing
⏹️ ▶️ John up for it. But like that’s, that’s the resource that they need to mine for. If you want to be independent of Google,
⏹️ ▶️ John and have be a player in the mobile space, along with, you know, Apple, Microsoft,
⏹️ ▶️ John rim, and Google, whoever you whoever you want to say out there who has actually a mobile platform, you’ve got to be
⏹️ ▶️ John master of your own destiny and do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wonder though, you know, it’s I think it’s worth it’s worth considering, let’s say, something Something happened
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Google or with Android or something happened where it forced Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to no longer be able to pull changes from Google. Whatever it is, whether it’s going closed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco source or whether it just becomes really impossible for them to do it or Google does something else, who knows. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suppose Amazon has to basically get stuck with what they have so far
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and either let it stagnate forever and just build minor things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on top of it or hire some ridiculously large you know OS team to to develop that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is a major undertaking as you said how long do you think they could go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco without doing that like how long do you think they could keep selling Kindle branded
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tablets and maybe even eventually phones while keeping the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rough version of Android they have now and just doing minor tweaks of it as necessary
⏹️ ▶️ John a couple years probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m thinking it might be like 10 years
⏹️ ▶️ John not 10 because like I mean Think about, I know things have matured a little bit, and it’s not horrendously
⏹️ ▶️ John slow or whatever. But even just in terms of hardware support, hardware moves on. Like 10
⏹️ ▶️ John years, all the phones are going to be using 64-bit system on a chips, and they’re going to have a 32-bit OS. And so right away, you
⏹️ ▶️ John just forget it. You need to do something there. Maybe those chips won’t even run 32-bit stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or you have to have a solution for fat binaries, and maybe it’s a different architecture. Maybe they’re all x86. Then
⏹️ ▶️ John God knows what’s going to happen in 10 years. They cannot last that long. But a couple of years, they could do it. And by the
⏹️ ▶️ John end of that run, it would be like, boy, this really doesn’t, you know, the Amazon stuff already
⏹️ ▶️ John feels clunky and slow. Like, it’s not even awesome now. So they don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a big cushion. But nobody buys the Amazon hardware because it’s good. Because it’s not. It’s actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really, really quite terrible in most ways. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John nobody buys it for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The hardware isn’t bad, it’s just the OS is not great. Well, and nobody buys it for that either.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John People buy the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Amazon stuff because of price and because of the Amazon content ecosystem. That’s, those are the two, in that order,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Those are the two big reasons why people buy the Amazon stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wish I knew how many people were actually buying Kindle Fire tablets, and of those people,
⏹️ ▶️ John how many people were using them like tablets and not just as a way to play Angry Birds and read books.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, but John, it’s a record number of Kindle buyers this year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John It’s like 20% more than last year. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last year, it was the number one selling product on Amazon.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, like I don’t pay attention to them until they’ve come to play, right? Because
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, reading, fine. And yeah, I assume they’re doing well in that because I don’t see anyone
⏹️ ▶️ John else being dominant in the e-reading space. But in the tablet space, it seems like they just
⏹️ ▶️ John haven’t really committed. But Amazon is patient, so they’ll keep doing what they’re doing. And I don’t doubt, like
⏹️ ▶️ John of all the companies, Amazon has shown that it’s willing to staff up to do crazy-ass stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John So maybe someday they will. Jeff Bezos will wake up and say, you know what? We need an OS team. Hire
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody. And we won’t need to make any money for another two decades.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the reason I bring that up in the context of Blink is because Blink is a similar situation where
⏹️ ▶️ John you had WebKit, it was caged HTML with a bunch of Linux nerds making their stuff for like Conqueror
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything. Apple comes along and says, actually, we’re going to pay people to
⏹️ ▶️ John develop this. And they will quickly dwarf all your efforts because they’re highly motivated, highly
⏹️ ▶️ John paid, highly skilled people versus your group of Linux volunteers. And lo and behold, guess what? Now we are the
⏹️ ▶️ John rulers of this thing, and we dub it WebKit. And thanks a lot, KHTML, KJS. We are
⏹️ ▶️ John now running the show here. And then Google comes along, makes its browser Chrome, and says, oh, we’ll use WebKit. That’s great. And
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple and Google go in lockstep developing stuff until eventually it’s like Google has more
⏹️ ▶️ John committers and is putting more code into WebKit than Apple is. And then there’s this
⏹️ ▶️ John tension between the different process models and all this other stuff. And they can’t cooperate with each other because they’re deadly enemies,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re supposed to be working on the same project. And Google says, you know what? We’re going off on our own. And at that point, Google is entirely
⏹️ ▶️ John able to support its development. If anything, Apple might be like, but does that mean you’re not going to
⏹️ ▶️ John contribute security fixes to WebKit anymore? Because those are really nice. We like those. And
⏹️ ▶️ John Google made its own JavaScript engine, which was pretty darn good. And Apple was like, man, we were so proud
⏹️ ▶️ John of our JavaScript engine. They just made their own, and they keep making theirs better. And I guess ours is good, but like, jeez,
⏹️ ▶️ John every two weeks, they keep making that thing faster, and it’s scary, I don’t like it, hold me. So
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a situation where Google has the developers. Google does not need to mine for more developer
⏹️ ▶️ John resources. They are in the driver’s seat of Blink. I have no
⏹️ ▶️ John trouble believing they will continue to develop Blink at a, if not even more rapid pace than they
⏹️ ▶️ John have been developing WebKit. And I feel like Apple is the one who is a little bit sheepish in this situation, going,
⏹️ ▶️ John jeez, we really were benefiting from Google putting all those developers against WebKit. And now,
⏹️ ▶️ John presumably some percentage, not all, but some percentage of those guys are only gonna be committing to Blink.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s kind of not a great situation for Apple to be in. But of course, if Blink really is open, Apple can always
⏹️ ▶️ John switch to it in a couple of years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah, right. Like that would ever happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John happen if they keep it open. I could see it happening. Either that or Apple needs to replace those developers to keep
⏹️ ▶️ John up the pace, you know, because rendering engines is complex and competitive field.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interesting. we’ve always heard that, and as far as I know this is still true, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that teams at Apple are really quite small and that, you know, their overall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco engineering staff is not nearly as big as you would think it would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the number of products they have, the amount of money they make, etc. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this is one of those things where, similar to server infrastructure,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where their model just does not stand up to competition from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other big tech giants, especially somebody like Google, where Google is willing to throw massive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco engineering resources at almost any problem that they want to solve.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, like, if Apple wants to keep its teams small, which seems to be the way it’s set
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up to work, and certainly it seems like that’s just a choice they’ve made,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they want to keep their team small and not throw massive resources at this one particular problem, then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they won’t be able to compete. They won’t be able to keep up in this market anymore. It’s gotten too big for that model
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, they have small numbers of really smart people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sure, but at some point it becomes just a time problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, Google has larger numbers of equally smart people. Exactly. That’s where the problem is. I don’t think they
⏹️ ▶️ John fear anything from Samsung throwing a hundred times the number of bodies at it, but they’re all mediocre.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, Samsung has never shown any ability to write good software. And for that matter, neither has Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the client side. Amazon writes pretty good server-side software, but their client-side software has always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been pretty abysmal.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, stupid question. WebKit, is that C and C++? Is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think. WebKit, you mean?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, isn’t that what I just said? WebKit is C++, is it not?
⏹️ ▶️ John Italian? Uh, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The reason I ask is, I was just thinking to myself, I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all the different kinds of things that Apple works on, but off the top of my head, you know, obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all their OS 10 and iOS stuff, that’s all Objective-C by and large.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What is Clang? Is Clang C++?
⏹️ ▶️ John Clang is C++. It’s built as a series of C++ libraries.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, so what I’m thinking is, you couldn’t take, in principle anyway, you couldn’t take a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of iOS or OS 10 developers and say, hey, go work on WebKit. I mean, obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you’re a good developer, you can figure it out, but if these are people who are living and breathing Objective-C,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you throw them into the world of what I presume to be very complex and difficult C++, that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey easy. And I can’t imagine that the Clang team A is very big and B
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has enough free time to go and just decide to be WebKit gurus.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And they also do WebObjects, which is Java if I’m not mistaken, so again, not exactly apples to apples,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pardon the crummy pun. But I guess what I’m saying is if they wanted to throw a bunch of bodies at the WebKit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey problem, I would assume that there’s not that many bodies to throw that are that good
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at C++. And either way, it sounds like one of the other things we heard lately,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or at least that I heard, or saw fly by lately, is that apparently iOS 7 is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey running behind, and so all the OS… Did I get that right? And all the OS X developers have been punted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over to iOS 7 to get that squared away before WMDC.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that is the rumor. Well, I mean, first of all, I don’t think it’s an issue of language
⏹️ ▶️ Marco familiarity. I think it’s an issue of code-based familiarity. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey that’s a very good
⏹️ ▶️ John Programmers are not interchangeable widgets, you know, Casey. Pointy-haired boss, you can’t just
⏹️ ▶️ John and put him into slot A. No, those teams are dedicated to people with knowledge,
⏹️ ▶️ John skills, and experience in specific areas. That’s why you can’t actually mine for developers like in StarCraft.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not like you could say, we need more web engines. How many people in the world do you think there are that can
⏹️ ▶️ John even be useful working on a world-class JavaScript interpreter for web engines.
⏹️ ▶️ John The number of people who even qualify for that is small. And the people who have done it before, have experience, and can
⏹️ ▶️ John make their engine faster than the next guys, it’s slim pickings for that. I don’t know how many people
⏹️ ▶️ John there are in the world who, the people on the V8 team and the Nitro team at Apple, and
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess maybe those crazy people doing the Rust-based thing at Mozilla and Samsung,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s it. That’s the pool of people in the world who have years of experience making
⏹️ ▶️ John JavaScript engines. And getting someone up to speed, even if you’re the world’s best programmer in whatever language
⏹️ ▶️ John is going to take you a long time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Absolutely. My point was just that if they wanted to handle this internally, I agree
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with everything you just said. It’s not as easy as just picking up the chess piece and moving it over a few spots. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if they wanted to handle this internally, I don’t know that that would be easy regardless of the unfamiliarity
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the code base. And so then you have to start talking about, well, let’s go hire a bunch of people to throw
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the problem. And that’s just not an easy thing to do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think it’s necessarily an issue of not having the right talent in the company.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s an issue of not wanting to allocate it to that project. Because for the most part,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s version of WebKit is very competitive in general. It works,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it works well, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seem like a pressing issue.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, wait a second. I’m going to actually stop you there. Works and works well, because this is another thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that I think of when I think of the WebKit blink divorce and who’s
⏹️ ▶️ John holding the short end of the stick when or who’s missing a chair when music stops and
⏹️ ▶️ John how it might be Apple. So Chrome was sort of developed in secret, came out of nowhere. We’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to use WebKit. Here we go. But they did their own process model with the process per tab and stuff. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And not knowing the details of how it’s implemented, but just having used both browsers a lot, I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very safe to say that Chrome’s implementation is way better than
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. And so those came first. And Apple wanted to do something similar. And Google wouldn’t give it to them, because Google did that code
⏹️ ▶️ John above the engine layer. Like, it’s in the Chrome app itself. It’s still open source. It’s still in the Chromium code
⏹️ ▶️ John base. Apple could have forked it and grabbed it and done whatever. But it’s not in the engine. And Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John and the WebKit team implemented it in the engine so that even if you embed WebKit inside your just random application,
⏹️ ▶️ John you still get multiprocess. Whereas in chrome’s model, if you I don’t know if you can,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re still using WebKit, but like chrome does the multiprocessing stuff. Chrome handles the I’ll figure out how many process
⏹️ ▶️ John correspond to watch tabs and managing them and reaping them and doing all that stuff that’s in the chrome application. So if you were to take
⏹️ ▶️ John out, you know, the WebKit core that they’re using an embedded, you would not get multiprocess protection.
⏹️ ▶️ John Whereas if you embedded apples WebKit, you would. But anyway, uh, the The proof is in the pudding, as you
⏹️ ▶️ John said. Chrome did it first. And when Apple tried to do it, Safari was wonky
⏹️ ▶️ John for like two years.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It’s still wonky. I would
⏹️ ▶️ John say it still is. I still get like, oh, my page is not responding. Would you like to reload? That never happens to me in Chrome. And there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like a new frigging build of Chrome every two days that I’m at my computer with the beta thing and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John Google is crushing them. And so it’s like, all right, well, who has the better web? Who has the better web
⏹️ ▶️ John rendering engine designers on staff? I don’t really know who’s better. All I know is that Chrome
⏹️ ▶️ John is rock solid and stable, and I’m on the beta channel, and WebKit
⏹️ ▶️ John has been wonky since they added multiprocess. So it’s not looking good for the home team, you know? Oh, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think that the chances of Apple having a meaningful amount
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of talent shifted onto this project that wasn’t already working on it is probably pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco minimal, because, I mean, A, something’s wrong with the leadership at Apple somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco along the line between the top and WebKit because Safari has been so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible since Lion. I mean, really, and I still use Safari as my primary browser, so I still feel this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot. I don’t think anybody who uses Safari on a regular basis will tell you that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s better now than it was in 10.6. I mean, there’s a few better features
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a little bit better support for some web standards things because it’s a newer build of WebKit, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think overall, ever since they split the process model into the renderer versus the front end,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s been slower and more crashy and just generally worse.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s been faster. Stability definitely has been worse. It feels faster to me than it used to be. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the features and speed and everything, I still use Safari as my main browser as well,
⏹️ ▶️ John although I run Chrome constantly alongside it. I would still rather use Safari than Chrome. It’s just that every once in a
⏹️ ▶️ John while, Safari craps out. And that grates on me because it’s like, why doesn’t Chrome crap out? Why is Safari crap
⏹️ ▶️ John out? and why do I have a new build of Chrome that presumably fixes bugs and improves performance every three days?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, well, and I’ve had Chrome tabs crash. I mean, I think every Chrome user probably has seen that at least
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once, but it’s, and I mean, I use Chrome a lot less than I use Safari,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so obviously this is not quite valid, but I see way fewer problems in Chrome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The problems I see in Chrome that make me not wanna use it are all of Google’s creepiness, where they keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying to reach for more of my data more of my stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I find that distasteful, so that’s why I don’t use the browser, but I can’t deny that technologically it is way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I feel like we’ve come full circle and now we’re back to talking about creepy people like Facebook.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, it’s an interesting thing. One thing I was wondering while I was listening to you guys talk is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like there’s an obvious answer I’m not realizing, but what is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the motivation for Apple to really have a world-class web
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rendering engine? I mean, I wasn’t around for the days of Internet Explorer on the Mac, so I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey never felt that pain. But obviously it’s just prudent in general
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to have a really good web browser on your platform, but why does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple need to have the ultra number one super fantabulous best web experience
⏹️ ▶️ John You can reverse it and say all those like surveys that are out there like, you know, X percentage
⏹️ ▶️ John of the smart phone sold are, you know, Android and Y percentage are Apple’s and they look at web usage X percentage
⏹️ ▶️ John of the hits to any popular websites overwhelmingly iOS users. And it’s because Apple was the first
⏹️ ▶️ John one out of the gate with a web browser that actually worked worth a damn that fit on your phone. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John that attracted all the people who like browsing the web and you can browse the web from your phone. just for phones but for anything like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a strategic advantage to have a really good web rendering engine and leaving
⏹️ ▶️ John that to someone else if your company like Apple is crazy because when you left it to someone else they do a crappy job
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft doesn’t really care about the Mac version you know even when they do a great job Internet Explorer 5 for Mac was an awesome
⏹️ ▶️ John you know in terms of CSS support and was an actually a pretty darn awesome browser you missed that and everything but it
⏹️ ▶️ John was it was amazing that’s why all the designers loved Mac back in the day but it’s like oh this thing understands CSS you know that spec
⏹️ ▶️ John from 1996, yeah, that one. It implements like, all right, 60% of it, but it’s better than 0%.
⏹️ ▶️ John But still, if it’s not under your control, then Microsoft loses interest and never makes an IE6
⏹️ ▶️ John for the Mac. Or I don’t remember what the OS X version was. Maybe that was 6.0. But anyway, they ignore it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey can’t get Mozilla
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco to pay any attention
⏹️ ▶️ John to it. And you’re like, look, this is hurting our platform. If browsing the web from our computers
⏹️ ▶️ John suck, it sucks that that’s bad for us. So we need to take the reins on this. And that paid off
⏹️ ▶️ John double when it came time to feel the phone. You’re like, oh, we already have a web rendering engine.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we wisely chose the KHTML instead of the Gecko rendering engine, which is a smaller
⏹️ ▶️ John and lighter weight. And we are driving that project now and we can tailor it to our platform. Huge dividends,
⏹️ ▶️ John big payoff. You’ve just, it was a great decision to do that. And like the WebKit team and the
⏹️ ▶️ John WebKit project are probably like the third most important, maybe fourth, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know, some third or fourth most important thing that Apple has done in the last couple of decades. It’s like Mac OS
⏹️ ▶️ John X, iOS, WebKit, and I guess you’d have to include in that like
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the iPod Hi-Fi and iTunes. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, in that order. I think, you know, one thing that annoys me about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Google forking it though is this arrogance. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I shouldn’t say this is exclusive to Google because Apple has and will make similarly arrogant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco moves. But it’s the arrogance of them saying basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s technologically inconvenient for us, for a few of our programmers, to not be ‑‑
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be working in your code, so we’re going to fork it, which basically takes the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco technological burden off of the handful of people at Google who it’s affecting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and puts it on to every web developer in the future.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John to say like, now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re gonna have one more engine that’s gonna, that we won’t know is gonna be similar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough that we’re gonna have to test separately on and eventually it’s going to diverge in how it renders things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so we’re gonna have to deal with that. Like, I don’t know, it
⏹️ ▶️ John Did you read Glenn’s thing on that?
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t read anything he writes, I know. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco think I saw it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sorry, I was gone out of the country for a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John week. Oh yes, I
⏹️ ▶️ John know. They have the internet over there in Germany. Anyway, his
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco thing, and I’m mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John on board with this, was that we’re past the point where any one rendering engine
⏹️ ▶️ John has enough weight in the market to
⏹️ ▶️ John do something in an incompatible way. And any sort of divergence by any party is seen as damage, and you get
⏹️ ▶️ John dinged for it. No one is dominant enough to say, oh, well, that’s just the way Internet Explorer does it, so everyone’s got to deal with it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the point I would add to that, although he might have added this as well, I don’t remember, he says a lot of things,
⏹️ ▶️ John that the variance just among quote-unquote WebKit is already insane. The variance between
⏹️ ▶️ John WebKit on iPhone, WebKit on iPad, WebKit on some other phone platform, WebKit
⏹️ ▶️ John on some Nokia thing, WebKit on some television connected device, WebKit in various
⏹️ ▶️ John versions of Mac OS X, that variance is already bigger than the variance between Blink
⏹️ ▶️ John and WebKit is going to be. Up until the point where you get to things like NACL, and
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m sure they’re going to going to put Dart in their stupid thing, too. But I don’t think Google has the weight, at least so far, to shove. Well, isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the number one
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but not like 90%. They have a plurality,
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever the word is for when you don’t have more than 50%, but you’re the biggest piece of the pie. Look at that vocabulary
⏹️ ▶️ John today. Nice. Probably got it wrong. We’ll wait for the corrections. But
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, I don’t think they have enough weight for that. It’s a danger. It’s something to look out for, because they do want to put in
⏹️ ▶️ John the native client thing. And they do want to shove Dart down our throats, even though it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John a very interesting language, I don’t think. They have all sorts of grand plans. But
⏹️ ▶️ John right now, they’re just forking. They’re getting rid of all the baggage they don’t care about. And I bet Apple’s looking on jealously. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know what? We only really care about the Mac and iOS, too. Why are we supporting all these little platforms? It’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John now they’re weighed down by the community of people, the WebKit community. I mean, maybe they
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t feel that way. Maybe they just say, we’re going to do what we want. And then we’re just going to land our changes. and I’m going to break everyone else’s platforms
⏹️ ▶️ John and boo-hoo. But right away, Google is like, aha, finally, freedom. Now we’re making
⏹️ ▶️ John a web rendering just for us. Drop all the other build targets. Drop everything else we’re not interested in and start landing
⏹️ ▶️ John the commits that we care about. The kind of control that Apple sort of had with WebKit up to this point. But
⏹️ ▶️ John Google’s left the baggage behind, and now they’re free. And Apple is left holding the bag without
⏹️ ▶️ John Google’s help and still having to support the WebKit community. That’s why I was thinking,
⏹️ ▶️ John if Google runs away with Blink but keeps it open source, Apple could find themselves in a few years going,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know what, the next version of Safari uses Blink.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you know, honestly, if that would also mean they would move more towards
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Chrome process model, I would love to see that. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John we’ll see. That would be
⏹️ ▶️ John an ego hit for the WebKit team, don’t you think? Like all the people who did, you know, the WebKit 2 stuff with
⏹️ ▶️ John the split rendering engine and the Nitro JavaScript engine and just say, no, we’re going with V8 and their process model.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I mean, it would be a downgrade because Apple does embed WebKit in all sorts of things. And it’s part of their SDK
⏹️ ▶️ John for their, they have a native SDK for their OS, for both iOS and the Mac. And if you want to do a web view,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can embed it, and you get multiprocess web rendering. You wouldn’t get that with Blink, because
⏹️ ▶️ John that logic, again, is in the application, unless they package that up in some way or refine it. But who knows where
⏹️ ▶️ John going to be in a few years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I think we see this. This is kind of a common failure with Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple had such a great streak for so long, And they do so many things pretty well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it seems like they’re culturally unable to accept when they do things badly or inefficiently
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or just not as well as everyone else in the market. And they seem often
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unable or unwilling to turn those things around. And you know, with this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, this is the kind of thing where WebKit became dominant and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was so successful, not because Apple did it, but because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple was putting the most effort into it. They started out with a really solid foundation and they just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco poured effort into it at a time when there wasn’t a lot of effort being poured into web rendering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco engines and they weren’t building solid foundations except for WebKit,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Gecko, and Ness. And they
⏹️ ▶️ John staffed up, they hired Dave Hyatt from who formerly worked on Mozilla and everything. They hired
⏹️ ▶️ John all the people who had experience, who’d cut their teeth doing the web rendering engine that’s going to beat Internet
⏹️ ▶️ John Explorer, the whole muzzle around it. All those people, they’re disenfranchised. They’re disappointed.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ll pay you a good salary. Come work for us. Apple’s cool. The company’s doing well. Maybe you’ll get stock options.
⏹️ ▶️ John They were able to staff up with the wandering masses of people who, with real world
⏹️ ▶️ John experience, building web rendering engines. And they did a great job. And compare that with who was out there working
⏹️ ▶️ John on Conqueror, just random people who are kind of into, They wanted to have a web running
⏹️ ▶️ John engine for KDE. But Apple took it and ran with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And by the way, I’ve got to mention, everyone’s linked to it already, but if you haven’t heard this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet, you have to listen to Guy English and Rene Ritchie’s podcast, Debug.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not only should you be listening to this podcast anyway, but there’s an episode number 11 from two weeks ago
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that had an interview of Don Melton, the guy who, I think he headheaded
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco WebKit team. He was
⏹️ ▶️ John managing the WebKit
⏹️ ▶️ John was brought on, he was the first member of the WebKit team, he was the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco first manager
⏹️ ▶️ John and then he came on board at the same
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco time. And he
⏹️ ▶️ Marco discussed a lot of this stuff and it’s a really good episode, you should listen to it, I’ll put it in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But you know, anyway, so you know, Apple did so well with that because they were building on a solid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco foundation and just poured tons of effort into it. Now Google is doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. Google is building on a solid foundation of WebKit and they’re pouring tons of effort
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into it and so it’s gonna be really hard for Apple to keep up with that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John and you see they probably won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John put in the chat room
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh no I don’t click links click that link okay fine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John this is just a little it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John take a while to load
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco all right while that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco loading this episode is generously sponsored by igloo software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco igloo is an intranet you’ll actually like you can store content like word documents and Photoshop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco files but you You can also create content with Igloo’s built-in apps. Igloo has apps for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco blogs, calendars, forums, Twitter-like microblogs, and wikis.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s easy to collaborate because your Igloo has everything built in, commenting, version control,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can even at-mention your coworkers. These features are available on any content type, whether
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco reasons they love the platform is easy customization. There’s drag and drop widgets to configure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your entire intranet. Anyone can do it. But they don’t ignore the technical users either. Everything’s 100%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco customizable. The Igloo website is actually built using their platform. You have full control
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over CSS and the ability to inject global or per-page JavaScript. There’s even an open
⏹️ ▶️ Marco API. So go check it out today. Get a free 30-day trial at igloosoftware.com.atp.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s our show, actually, not a tech podcast. Go to igloosoftware.com.atp. Thank you very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much to Igloo Software for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ John Every time I see this Igloo thing, I weep. I wish my work used
⏹️ ▶️ John this for their internet because we do not, and it is not good. You don’t know what it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John out there in the world, man.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I don’t. Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John SharePoint, Exchange, like just the worst software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the entire world. Casey
⏹️ ▶️ Casey knows that stuff, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Oh, do I ever. Oh, you
⏹️ ▶️ John have no idea. Can you imagine, I don’t know if Casey in your J-O-B job, if you have to deal with stuff that’s worse than this, but this Igloo
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff is like, oh my god, I would kill for this. We have a wiki. It’s not like this wiki. We have a calendar
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s, ugh, so painful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What’s especially cool about Igloo, and they’re not paying for me to say this, what’s especially cool about Igloo is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they like our stuff. They listen to our shows. they always sponsored 5x5 and I was sponsoring this and like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ll put into the landing page they’ll put in custom stuff to like have jokes about our show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in it or you know like they gave away an AeroPress last year like it like they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they like our stuff they’re really supporting us so I really appreciate that so thanks to them
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah I remember they have a big Merlin Manning landing page yeah so to stream on it exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah like they really they’re really into this stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John was like is it do they have like a dedicated person whose job it is to listen to these podcasts or are they just actual fans?
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess they have to be actual fans.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I think they’re just actual
⏹️ ▶️ John They wouldn’t know enough to make those clever, you know, pages with the AeroPress and the Merlin thing or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John or be inspired enough to do something that funny if they were just doing it as part of their job.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. Plus I think they’re in Canada. Let me double-check that. But I think that’s why it’s called Igloo.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was gonna say, it’s Igloo. What else do you need to look at?
⏹️ ▶️ John Are there igloos in Canada?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up in the very top part, I guess. I mean, it It would have to be, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey God, where’s Dalrymple when we need him?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know. Anyway, so I got this page to load. Let me go back to it here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So what is this, graphs of commits?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, yeah, look at that. So look at the ones, summary of activity, reviewed commits per company, active
⏹️ ▶️ John authors per company. Blue is Apple, and the yellowish-p-green
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yikes. So you can see what has
⏹️ ▶️ John happened here. Apple’s, like, you can’t, measuring commits is not a good measure. I wish it was like lines of code
⏹️ ▶️ John or something. Well, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco not good either.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a rough estimate. And if you look at it, you’re like, who’s been the driving
⏹️ ▶️ John force behind WebKit in the past several years? And you look at these graphs, and it looks like it hasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I would say, just based on whatever the heck they’re measuring here, it looks like Google started
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to outpace Apple in about 2009 or so. Yeah, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John as soon as Chrome came out, because they were
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco in self-mode
⏹️ ▶️ John until Chrome appeared, right? And then Chrome comes out. I mean, the active authors, I think, is a reasonable metric, because the
⏹️ ▶️ John commits, you don’t know how big the commits are what’s the standards for the size of a commit. Maybe they’re just putting in a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of little changes. But the act of authors is like, Apple’s got an uphill battle. Because people who work for Google are not
⏹️ ▶️ John dumb and are not terrible programmers. And that’s a big area with the Google
⏹️ ▶️ John color in terms of number of authors. And so, yeah, it’s a concern,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, in fact, what’s interesting is that on the author’s quantity graph,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nokia actually has a few more than Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Authors per company? Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Whereas which color is Nokia? Red?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Red, yeah. And Apple’s the light blue, not the dark. Anyway, this is probably really boring to listen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to. So let’s move on. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John misreading that graph. The graph will be in the show, and people can judge for themselves.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, we’ll see. At
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it looks like it’s half as many for Nokia as Apple. If you just hover somewhere, it’ll show it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh, yeah. I’m looking at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the pie below it, but that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey might be the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entire time. All right, anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey most boring podcast ever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Let’s listen to us click around and browse the web. Moving on, do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you want to talk about Panic’s status board?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, what I want to talk about about Panic’s status board is the pricing, which I think is
⏹️ ▶️ John especially coming in after a jury’s big thing on pricing. It’s like, you know, I don’t think Panic
⏹️ ▶️ John needed to hear this from jury. They knew it already, and they’re demonstrating their mastery of app pricing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. So, let’s first give a quick overview of it. Give them a little free plug here because they’re cool people and they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very friendly. Our friends at Panic, they made this app called Status Board.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They had something similar for internal use and then they decided a couple years ago to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco start making it into a product. And it is basically what it sounds like. It’s for iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s optimized specifically also if you want to output to a big like HDTV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a wall in an office, but you don’t have to do that. You can just use it on an iPad. And it just has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco customizable little widgets that you can arrange on the screen to show things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any kind of thing you can graph, you can put in there. They have built-in widgets for things like weather
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and tweets and stuff like that. And so it’s made to be like hanging
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a wall in a tech company or something, which is exactly how they use theirs. It’s just show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco status of the company, how things are moving, any kind of metrics you want to graph, etc. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think it’s the first thing to ever do this, but it certainly looks like it’s probably the nicest. And it’s interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, you know, the whole tech blogosphere Oh, God.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Kind of exploded talking about this yesterday when it came out. Just because, mostly because we’re friends with those guys.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Almost everyone who’s writing about it has met these guys at some point and everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who works at Panic is ridiculously nice and smart, so it’s a pretty easy company to get friendly with.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, part of it was just because of that, but I think the app is pretty damn good. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the only thing that, you know, the problem I have with it, first of all, I think it was very smart to require iOS 5,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because that means it can run on the iPad 1. And I bet a lot of people, myself included, have an old iPad 1
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lying around not doing anything. So that that’s very nice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Second thing is that I wish I had a way to mount this in my bathroom This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be like the perfect like a bathroom wall Display if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John you’re you just got
⏹️ ▶️ John to get a TV in your and then just airplay to it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What would you be monitoring while you’re on the pot?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, he’s got things to monitor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, that would be like the perfect like RSS ticker kind of kind of spot, you know Whether people bring
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the paper in there. It’s this would be the digital version. You want to touch it
⏹️ ▶️ John He’d see the the software network failures in real time. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Don’t know what’s going on over there, but anyway, so So what John was alluding to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that so the pricing of this is interesting So it’s it’s ten dollars to buy the app And then there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an in-app purchase if you want the ability to output to the TV now They’ve actually disabled
⏹️ ▶️ Marco airplay mirroring programmatically I don’t know exactly how they do that but I haven’t looked. I’m sure it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some flag where you can say they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John shouldn’t be mirrored. Same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There you go. Yeah, so I’m sure it’s supported in the SDK. But so they disabled airplane mirroring
⏹️ ▶️ Marco supposedly because it just they said they tried it and the quality was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible. Like the picture quality was terrible. So instead, they have their own custom
⏹️ ▶️ Marco handling of the external display, which I think requires, I don’t think it can go over the airplane. I think it requires
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the cable adapters.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, HDMI adapter. And even that one they were complaining about with the lightning connector, how they did a whole blog post about how
⏹️ ▶️ John it compresses stuff and it’s all gross looking, whereas the old ones…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And now we know why they were so interested in that. But they took
⏹️ ▶️ Marco TV out and made that an in-app purchase that was originally priced at $50.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then Rusty from Shifty Jelly was complaining
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Twitter about it, because he’s in Australia, so he kind of got the app before the entire U.S. because of the date,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the release date. So he started complaining about it, really, like the first hour it was released,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco panic responded and then they decided to lower the price. So now it’s a $10 in-app purchase
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on top of the $10 app to get TV output. And so I think a lot of things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about this are very interesting. First of all, I think we’ll get to the app price
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a second. First of all, the charging for TV out, which is something these devices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can normally do for free to mirror at least doing your own implementation which you think is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better and then disabling the mirroring and then charging for it that’s gonna anger a lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so that’s that’s kind of a ballsy move charging $50 for that is is even more interesting because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know you figure I can see where they’re coming from like if you’re if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing this you probably have dedicated a TV or monitor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solely to this purpose so you’ve spent hundreds or thousands of dollars for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the hardware to plug this into.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re dedicating an iPad to it too. Exactly. I would have, maybe I wouldn’t have stuck to
⏹️ ▶️ John the $50, but I think both sides, the app price and the aftermarket purchase could
⏹️ ▶️ John have been increased because this is not a casual application. You’re like, oh, you know what? I can use my life status.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you need a status board, it’s because you have an environment like a company or like,
⏹️ ▶️ John know, a work group or something that needs money, like you are, you are
⏹️ ▶️ John signed up, I’m looking for something to be so I can monitor the status of things. And whatever that thing is important
⏹️ ▶️ John enough, and I need to see it now. And it’s like, you it’s like, it’s like selling things to businesses. The reason you can charge so
⏹️ ▶️ John much money for businesses is like their business, they’re already paying through the nose, like to rent their office and to pay for health care for all their employees.
⏹️ ▶️ John And like, their money’s going out like crazy. And if someone, you know, so we want a thing to put up
⏹️ ▶️ John a status board in the room, how much is that 700 bucks, fine, just buy Like we have these big TVs in our conference rooms that you can
⏹️ ▶️ John like hook up your laptop too And they have a camera on top of them. They have little PC strapped to the back of them I don’t even want
⏹️ ▶️ John to know how much those things cost. They’re probably like thousands of dollars. Yeah terrible, by the way They’re absolutely terrible So
⏹️ ▶️ John anybody who’s in the market for it for a status board of any kind would not blink for two
⏹️ ▶️ John seconds if this thing costs You know, maybe a hundred dollars is extreme but like 20 bucks forget
⏹️ ▶️ John it That’s like it’s basically free
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right and originally 60
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like if that was still the price
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John and it’s still
⏹️ ▶️ John free anything less than like a you know 300 is like discretionary petty cash spending and
⏹️ ▶️ John anybody who wants to have a status board
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right if you’re putting like you know a $330 iPad stuck to the back of a you know $500 TV or $600 TV then the software is free that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right then yeah effectively the software is free and so like and I think the pricing is smart
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too because most people who download it are probably never going to connect to any kind of external display
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most people who download it are probably curious nerds who want a status thing like for their desk or like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like It’s the same people and first of all like me of course. I’m not I’m not denying membership in that group, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s similar to how in the in the late 90s people started getting little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tiny LCD matrix displays That would connect via serial or USB to their computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and having like having like their their CPU fan speed and temperature On
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little LCD display next to their monitor just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John just to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you know little little additional information And of course people do that with cars all the time, and they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have like those tacky external meters and everything. Like people, like nerds like that kind of stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We like that. And so to have something like this, where many nerds have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco old iPads sitting around not doing much, and so dedicating an iPad to it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not that much of a stretch for a lot of people like us. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have this like little $10 app, granted $10 for an iPad app is on the high
⏹️ ▶️ Marco end of people usually charge and I’m sure they’re getting a lot of flack for that. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s such a cool thing. We want that. And if any of us actually get it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco working and mount it somewhere and use it every day, it’s totally worth $10. And the low
⏹️ ▶️ John price of $10 makes me think they couldn’t decide whether the curious
⏹️ ▶️ John nerd market and the business market, or not even just business, people who actually need a status board is one market and
⏹️ ▶️ John curious nerds is another market. And they’re kind of trying to straddle the line between it’s not totally outside
⏹️ ▶️ John the curious nerd range i mean i bought it i’m never going to freaking use the thing but i have i have a panic problem
⏹️ ▶️ John i buy every single one of their applications regardless of whether i’m ever going to use it because i want them to continue
⏹️ ▶️ John to exist and succeed also a little bit of a cable sasser fan boy but anyway uh
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the curious nerd market and but like you could ignore them entirely and price the thing at 200 bucks and you
⏹️ ▶️ John you might actually make more money uh because like if this catches on with businesses, they will just
⏹️ ▶️ John buy it. They will just buy it. If they need something like this, they’ll buy it. Because if they don’t, they want to have a status
⏹️ ▶️ John board and maybe they’ll see some story in Wired, like they have that status board story. Like, why doesn’t our status board look that good?
⏹️ ▶️ John Ours is just some webpage with ugly fonts that we put up on a screen. It’s not, you know what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I think the pricing here is very smart because, and I think the original pricing of the $50
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in-app purchase for the TV out and a $10 purchase for the app, I think that’s even smarter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they’ll probably have to go back to that at some point, because it does rattle that line, because you need a low
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entry price for the app, because it’s also an ecosystem. It’s a platform. You know, it’s a small one, but it’s still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a platform. You need people to develop modules for common things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be stuck in there. And so like out of the box, for instance, it doesn’t support any kind of like Google
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Analytics or any kind of web analytics engine. There’s already people working on that, and there’s already some engines that already have plugins for it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, I think Google Analytics would be a very obvious candidate for something that needs to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here. Someone’s already whipped that up. Oh yeah, good, okay. It wasn’t done by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco noon today and then I stopped looking.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was done on lunch today. I don’t know if it’s done in a nice way, but someone just threw together some Ruby
⏹️ ▶️ John to connect and you just have that running on your server and point it to your own
⏹️ ▶️ John URL, like the do-it-yourself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. Oh yeah, right. So yeah, so they need an ecosystem to start building
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to add value to this thing so that the people who want to make a TV will have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an easier time with it and will more want to do that. So like I think it’s a very smart split to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a relatively inexpensive app for the nerds to play with and then be able to sell it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to people who are building hard who are devoting hardware to it to be able to sell it at a higher price to them. So I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco genius and I don’t think they’re gonna really sell a massive amount of those in-app purchases
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I don’t think they need to sell a massive amount of them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well the other thing I thought was interesting is I looked at the I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know if I should call it an SDK, but basically the mechanism by which you can input random
⏹️ ▶️ Casey data that they’re not privy to into the app. And it was very, very straightforward.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If I remember right, for tables, or I’m sorry, for graphs, you can give
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it CSV or JSON for tables, you can give it CSV
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John HTML tables.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and then you can just go wild and say and and they will render just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey straight-up HTML be it table or graph or whatever Anything you want just HTML as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of these little widgets and it was it was very cool And I looked at the I think it was three different PDFs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that talk about these three different methods tables Charts and just random anything and the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sum total of the documentation for all of that was I don’t know 15 pages or something like that John
⏹️ ▶️ John It reminded me of a very Apple way to do things. And I kind of mean that in a good way and also in a bad
⏹️ ▶️ John way. I don’t know if this is a good way or bad way. You can decide for yourself. But
⏹️ ▶️ John like, Panic decided how things should look on a status board, because that’s part of the charm of the product,
⏹️ ▶️ John is we’re going to give you a nice looking status board, not that thing that you had some random programmer throw together, right? We’re going
⏹️ ▶️ John to have our designers work on it and lay down the law for like, these are the types of
⏹️ ▶️ John graphs you can have. These are the colors they can pick because they look cool together. This is how the things are shaded. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not just like, hey, look, you have a little corner of a web view. And just go nuts and put your stupid
⏹️ ▶️ John blinking background and auto-playing music in it. That’s not how it’s going to work.
⏹️ ▶️ John Then the SDK is necessarily very limited to, these are the kind of things you can do. These are the elements you can put
⏹️ ▶️ John in them. You can have a word. You can have an image. You can have an optional little line of bar graphs. You can use HTML tables. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a couple of styles we define. It’s very, very limited. Where if a company like Google did it, look at
⏹️ ▶️ John Google’s graphing API. That’s the other end of the spectrum, where they said, we’re going to make a graphing API,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s going to be just like we are not, it’s like the DHH thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not opinionated software. The Google Graph API is we have a bazillion parameters. You can make a whole bunch of graphs. It’s extremely
⏹️ ▶️ John flexible. Make anything, any color, any size, any label you want. And we have this really complicated
⏹️ ▶️ John API for doing that and go nuts. Where the panic one was like, there are seven things you can do, or three things you
⏹️ ▶️ John can do, a couple of variations on them and that’s it. And so it’s extremely limited in terms of flexibility,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the reward you get for that is it’s impossible to make a status board that’s just horrendously ugly.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, and the tech they use to do it, like I look at it and I think to myself,
⏹️ ▶️ John CSV and HTML tables, I guess that’ll work, but like they didn’t develop a general purpose
⏹️ ▶️ John system for an API and then build their APIs on it. They just kind of decided, these are the kinds of things we’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John have, what’s the most convenient thing for you to emit? Like, that’s one possible strategy. But I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know, maybe it’s the programmer disease. Let’s cite the X-Gates CD comic. You ever see the one where
⏹️ ▶️ John someone asks the other person to pass the salt, and he gets hung up trying to implement a general purpose
⏹️ ▶️ John system for passing things across tables? I’m probably blowing the punchline. But it’s like programmer mindset, where you can’t just do some
⏹️ ▶️ John simple thing. You have to like, wait, no, I can develop a generic system for doing things like this and use this to build
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing you want me to do. That’s the programmer mindset. But looking at their API and a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple’s APIs and things Apple does, clearly they’re not infected by that disease. They’re like, why should
⏹️ ▶️ John we do that? We know exactly what we want to do. Let’s make it as simple as possible, even if we haven’t created
⏹️ ▶️ John a LEGO construction set for building arbitrary status display things, because they haven’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John But so that’s the trade-off in what they’ve done. I don’t know if you want to decide whether that’s good or bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, to some extent, I think pragmatically, as a user of this thing, pragmatically, that’s a very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good thing because this is like, you know, for the most part, if you’re building one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of these or tweaking this or setting one up for yourself or your company, it’s, you know, it’s futzing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around, it’s overhead, you know, like it’s not a business critical thing. And so you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really want your programmers or yourself to be tied up tweaking this thing for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John know, like. Yeah, you
⏹️ ▶️ John wanna get in, get out. Exactly. And not make it be ugly, right? They’re keeping, it’s on
⏹️ ▶️ John rails. to more and more DHH lingo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there. Right, like you know they it is designed so that you give it your data
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you make a few minor adjustments and that’s it and you then and you don’t have to think about how to make it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice-looking or anything like that they take care of that for you. That’s that’s a major appeal I think.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But as soon as you want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t support you’re sad. Exactly and that’s again it’s that’s certainly the Apple way. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But But I think for this, because it’s non-mission critical,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the right answer for a lot of people who face that is, oh, well, just live without it or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco deal with what it does do. I’m not sure how many people will actually think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I think that’s the pragmatic view.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s version 1.0. So the guy who wants to see the live video camera of the security camera that’s out in front of his building as
⏹️ ▶️ John one of his status programs, oh, we don’t currently support live video, right? But if they get enough demand for live video, they
⏹️ ▶️ John will come up with a nice, attractive, simple way to do live video and version two will have a live video thing, but
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ve just not made out the gate a generic status board type thing where you can build anything you want.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can’t. They give you a couple little things. This is what you can do. Future versions may have new ones, but they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John designing an OS. Like, they’re not making it, you know. It’s very constrained. And like Casey
⏹️ ▶️ John said, the big payoff for that is, like, I read every word of those instructions because it’s like three pages of text, nicely written,
⏹️ ▶️ John simple. You know, you don’t have to really know anything about anything to understand what they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John saying. just need to have a little tiny bit of background and like, I don’t even know if you need any web
⏹️ ▶️ John development background, I guess you would to put up a server or something. But it’s, it’s so dead simple, and so possible
⏹️ ▶️ John for normal people to do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and you remember one of the things they cited was, hey, if you have Dropbox, you could just put a CS I think was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a CSV example, you just put the CSV in Dropbox, and you copy a public link and next thing you know, now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s in your status board.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, that’s how it’s geared. It’s explaining to people, people who don’t know that, hey, did you know that something
⏹️ ▶️ John you put in Dropbox is accessible via HTTP on the internet. People might not know that and you wouldn’t mention that if you were writing
⏹️ ▶️ John technical documentation. But panic documentation, there’s not a lot of words. But take two sentences out
⏹️ ▶️ John to remind the people who are reading this, maybe they don’t realize you can do that with Dropbox, you know?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And one thing, I mean, and this app so far, I mean, it is 1.0. There’s a few people reporting crashes on the iTunes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reviews. But overall, the level of polish
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this is incredible. I mean, like, you know, like Fog Creek,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, famously Joel Spolsky with Joel and Software start, you know, he and Michael Pryor started this company and they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few very successful products. And one of their first major product, Fog Bugs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is so successful that it seemed to, at least for a while, basically keep the entire company
⏹️ ▶️ Marco afloat pretty much entirely on its own. And it made so much money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for them that they were able to make things extremely nice for their developers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make a very, very nice office environment, and just add a ridiculous amount of features
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into this product. And it has… It’s like, you know, they had this great cash
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cow, and so they were just redirecting all of that cash into ridiculous
⏹️ ▶️ Marco features for this thing. Panic, I don’t know what their cash cow is. They have a number
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of well-known products, maybe Transmit, I would guess. But Panic,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and actually probably Coda these days.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Actually, we know what their cash cows are because somebody pointed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco out— Oh, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco says so on their example screenshots?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, sort of. If you look—God, I’m trying
⏹️ ▶️ John They just tweeted a link that showed their revenue and the graphs for the past day,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you see the status board line shooting up like a rocket and everything else. else looks like zero but that’s obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco well right I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s launch day and there’s no numbers in the y-axis you know right it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right but like panic I feel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like they are a company where they’ve had their cash cows and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve made things they’ve made a very nice office and made things very nice to developers and rather than just adding a whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bunch of features constantly with all that money they add polish
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with with all those resources they like you know the fog Creek ways you just add feature after feature after feature
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John to Fogbucks. You know
⏹️ ▶️ John why that is of course.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because they’re cool? I don’t know what.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because Joel’s from Microsoft and they’re a bunch of Windows users. That’s what it is. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John They came from Microsoft. You two maybe don’t realize it because that’s where you came from too. But it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just a different ethos. They come from the world of Microsoft. They weren’t even like big on Mac support. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like why their software was nice but it never quite looked nice. Like as nice as you would think it should look.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It has every feature under the sun though.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it took a while to even get Joel to switch to a Mac. I think he’s on a Mac now. But like that those guys are from
⏹️ ▶️ John the they’re like you know the semi enlightened PC you know developer type things
⏹️ ▶️ John but they kind of know what they’re supposed to be doing but they just you know like
⏹️ ▶️ John the difference in them and Panic is a great illustration because you know I
⏹️ ▶️ John the Fog Creek probably has more great programmers than Panic does. They have more people period like it’s much bigger thing like
⏹️ ▶️ John in those the fog people are really smart and successful and do great things and have a great working environment all that stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John but we would look at the end products and there’s just no comparison they are different kinds of products for a different audience totally
⏹️ ▶️ John so everyone go out everyone go out and buy status
⏹️ ▶️ Marco board it’s a good app I mean I see like it’s the kind of thing like I don’t need this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John look I’m looking for a reason to need
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah if you’re a curious nerd like you’re like I need I gotta find some reason to use this yeah we have
⏹️ ▶️ John all the old iPads I’m probably never going to use it, but I just like that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In my various businesses, I’m generally pretty terrible at monitoring metrics.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just don’t do it. Many metrics I don’t even collect,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I don’t do any kind of data mining or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John anything like that. You
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco but you can’t measure.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Or you don’t measure, sorry. And so, I feel like this is an aspirational
⏹️ ▶️ Marco purchase for me. if I buy this cool app to do this cool thing on my wall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or my desk, then maybe I’ll become that kind of person who starts measuring things and paying attention.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s very unlikely, but maybe.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Weirder things have happened. And what I was gonna say before is, very early on, somebody noticed, and I can’t find
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the life of me where this link came from, but I saw it on Twitter. Somebody noticed that they had posted pictures of the status
⏹️ ▶️ Casey board, I think perhaps when they were dogfooding it, but it wasn’t released, and you could see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey their revenue graph and this was right before the status board public release and it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very, very, very clear that their desktop apps were making
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of the money and their iOS apps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John by comparison
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were making almost
⏹️ ▶️ John I saw that graph too, but the x-axis was like three days, so you
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s true. But historically, Transmit, I think, was their big thing. But they also have Unison with the
⏹️ ▶️ John Usenet subscription thing, and I always wondered how much that makes, because that’s recurring revenue. And it’s a small
⏹️ ▶️ John audience, but the people who-
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, but you weren’t supposed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to talk about Usenet.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I know. I don’t know. It’s an interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John wrinkle of them producing a status board product and doing stories about like there was a Wired story before the app was even
⏹️ ▶️ John out about status board things showing their status board. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John in their office and everything. And it’s kind of like revealing the innards of your business semi-accidentally.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think they probably care because like so what what are you gonna do with that information?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I don’t think it was that you make
⏹️ ▶️ John you make the next panic see how easy it is right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know I think before we leave this topic I Think we should revisit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the $10 price point of the of just buying the app because that that’s also unusual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in how high it is for for an iOS app and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know obviously the question there’s obviously two big questions here one would be you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can they pull that off? And then the other one would be, can you pull it off? You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and, you know, or, you know, can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John X pull it off? Can one pull
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it off? Yeah, right. You could, definitely. So I think the question of whether
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they can pull it off is probably yes, for a long time, if not indefinitely, just because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of, you know, to some degree there’s not that much competition in this market, but also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just because of who they are, that they are very well known already, they have a great reputation, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their customers know that their stuff is very well made. And so, their customers are very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco likely to be willing to jump in blind and blow $10 on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the chance this might be good or useful to them. And if they really do think it will be very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco useful to them, then $10 is not that ridiculous of a price to pay. It’s not like it’s $100 or $1,000. It’s $10, which, you know, by…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if most of their customers are coming from the desktop world, where software is usually far more than $10,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then that seems like a very inexpensive product.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it’s also… The curious nerd market is presumably the people who understand that software is worth
⏹️ ▶️ John money. We all know the people who don’t understand why you would ever pay for software, and like, they want Angry Birds to be free, and blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ John But they They would not be happy customers of the status board app or wouldn’t want it. So if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John selling to the curious nerds, like, oh, these people already understand that you pay money for software. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco don’t have to overcome that hurdle. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have to pander to their 99 cent thing. Well, I think that’s the case. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John that for the status board app in particular, that like, there’s not a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of looky-loos who are just browsing through the store and like, oh, I’ll buy that status board app.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, that’s true. Yeah. But I wouldn’t necessarily assume that geeks are willing to pay more.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that, not so much more, but they just understand. It’s not outrageous
⏹️ ▶️ John to them for the $10. $50 thing is probably still over their line for those people who aren’t buying
⏹️ ▶️ John for a business. And they’re just
⏹️ ▶️ John I just wanted to play with it, but on my TV, I’m not paying $50. And they already went back
⏹️ ▶️ John on that a little bit. But I think if you can sell, because think about things like pages and stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John At a certain point, you’re selling to people who accept that software is worth money, and $10 is not that much
⏹️ ▶️ John in the grand scheme of things. You already bought an iPad. it was a lot more than 10 bucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I don’t know. So I think what we have here is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s fine for panic situation. Ha ha. You know, like they can charge $10.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the question is, can any iOS developers charge $10 for a good product?
⏹️ ▶️ John go back to the jury thing, it’s like if you make software for dentists, you can. You can charge more than that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. As you said, this is very clearly aimed at businesses and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nerds. And both of those, especially businesses, are usually willing to pay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for stuff at all, and businesses you can charge a good amount for. And this is still cheaper than anything else they would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably find. But it depends on what you’re doing. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this market, it does seem like there’s really not any kind of major competition for the same kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quality or taste put into this app. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wonder, if I was making a new app today, I found with Instapaper
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I really can’t price it any higher than $5. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s $4 even, just because I found that I made more there.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s an app that everyone who owns an iPhone should have. Statusboard is not an app that everyone who owns an iPad should have.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know what I mean? Like, you are trying to sell, like, who could benefit from Instapaper? Everybody. Anybody. Anybody
⏹️ ▶️ John who reads webpages on their phone, which is basically anybody with an iPhone, can benefit from this app. benefit from a status
⏹️ ▶️ John board already. You’re just cutting it down to a tiny, narrow fraction of the world who even has need
⏹️ ▶️ John for this in their life. And so you can, you can charge them more because if they need it, like it, they
⏹️ ▶️ John need it. It’s not just like a frivolous type of thing, you know? So I think that’s a spectrum that Jerry was talking about. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re making a to-do app, there’s a bazillion of them. Anybody can use a to-do app. It’s not like specific to
⏹️ ▶️ John them, to some particular problem domain where a status board is. It’s a specific to,
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’ve been thinking about for any reason in your life, I’d like if I could see that up on a board, like just because
⏹️ ▶️ John even if you just think it would be cool, you are one of the people who has that need, but most people will never have that need, have
⏹️ ▶️ John no reason to ever have anything like that. So yeah, you can’t, you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ John if you make, you know, quote unquote, boring software for specific people with very
⏹️ ▶️ John specific problems, you can get away with charging them more. But Instapaper, you can’t because that Instapaper is for
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody’s for the whole, it’s basically the angry birds of, you know, Like, anybody can use it. I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco guess that’s true. Anybody can find it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco useful. And I found, whenever I’ve done a search for some kind of relatively specialized
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app, I’ve always found that, A, they’re all terrible. If you’re looking for some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John specific X app, they’re terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco software, terrible. Yes. They’re all terrible, and most of them are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not 99 cents or free. Most of them are like $5 or $8. they’re up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there in the iOS price world. And part of that’s just because they can,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because there’s no competition or very little. And part of that’s because if you’re not selling to the mainstream
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you need to be able to pay a programmer or pay yourself a reasonable rate,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to charge more than a dollar because you’re just not gonna sell that much volume.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I think it’s actually the reverse though. Because like if you know, if you are a dentist, you’re not gonna do everything
⏹️ ▶️ John on paper. You need dentistry software. And if a dentist decides they want to do something on their phone having to
⏹️ ▶️ John do with dentistry, and they search for dentistry apps, and there’s like two of them, and you’re one of them,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, you can charge. You have the power to charge more, because there’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John terrible application that crashes on launch, and then there’s yours which doesn’t. And you can charge that guy almost
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey whatever you want.
⏹️ ▶️ John Almost whatever you want within reason, because he is a captive audience. Whereas when he searches for games,
⏹️ ▶️ John he has many choices. And they’re all perfectly fine, and they’re all great. And he searches for to-do
⏹️ ▶️ John lists. Like, there’s a million of them. But the choices are slim. Like, maybe there’s no apps for a particular kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John medical imaging that you want to be able to sort of airplay images from the big
⏹️ ▶️ John giant. Like, who knows? But there’s very specific problems. Someone has a problem in their job, and they would
⏹️ ▶️ John like to use an iOS app to help them solve it in some cool way. And they probably fantasize about,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, boy, I wish there was something that did that. If one of those things appear or two of them appears, they’ll put down $10 in a second.
⏹️ ▶️ John because they’ve been dying to give someone money for something, and then the app will be terrible. So
⏹️ ▶️ John if you can field even just a competent entry in those things, you can charge a lot more money.
⏹️ ▶️ John It usually requires some domain knowledge, which is why you’re able to charge a little more as well. But if you can
⏹️ ▶️ John field a great app, like Statusboard is a great app, then you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John so far ahead of the game.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, you want to wrap it up? I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, we’re going long here. All right, thanks to Igloo Software for sponsoring this episode again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go to abluesoftware.com slash ATP to start a free trial there because they’re awesome and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah let’s play it out with the song.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, accidental, oh it was accidental, accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him, cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, Accidental It was accidental Accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can find the show notes at atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M D-N-T
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco Armin S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A What song are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you going to play?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco play the same song again.
⏹️ ▶️ John Which one? I like the second one with the bleeps and boops.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are so into the bleeps and boops. And the other, see the other one is so catchy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It gets stuck in your head.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, this is why what happens if you let the fish fan pick the music