15: Cat, Modifier Cat
31 May 2013Why Marco sold The Magazine, teasing apps before launch, Tim Cook at AllThingsD, and WWDC predictions for OS X.
Episode Description:
- Why Marco sold The Magazine.
- Teasing apps before they're out, building hype, and Pit Pass.
- Tim Cook at AllThingsD.
- Cook's presence and speaking style.
- What Cook implicitly said about future Apple products.
- WWDC predictions for OS X.
Sponsored by:
- Oxygene for Cocoa: Use coupon code ATP13 for 20% off.
- Soulver: The essential calculator-spreadsheet-notepad hybrid.
Transcript start
⏹️ ▶️ John All your data is out there and you have no idea if any of its valid you’re just
⏹️ ▶️ John propagating single bit errors into all of your backups ad infinitum
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t worry about that. You don’t think about that how
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Terrible it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I choose not to worry about that
⏹️ ▶️ John Wow Blame me when your wedding pictures are corrupted and there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey pixel. Oh, please
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, firstly a pink pixel where my face should be would probably be an improvement But secondly, I have like 35 backups of that,
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they’re all corrupted because once they go bad in the original disc, you’re just corrupting your backups. You’re just propagating the corruption because you have no
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have the original DVD. The original DVD.
⏹️ ▶️ John Those will keep you. Oh, gosh. Little little burnt spots on
⏹️ ▶️ John ink under plastic. That’ll last forever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s organic dye, so it decomposes. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I hate you so much. So what are we talking about today? Well, this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is turning into the accidental Marco podcast because you’ve you’ve gone and sold
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff again I’m waiting to be told that I’ve been replaced or sold or I don’t know somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Casey else is my daddy now. So a big week
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah a little bit at least this is the last one like I’m out of stuff. Oh sure I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Saw so many jokes about how your next app has already been sold and nobody even knows what it is yet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s that’s pretty good. I don’t know what it is. Yeah, that’s pretty good Actually, at this point I do know what it is, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ll see. If you just pay attention to what sessions I go to during WBDC, you’ll probably be able to guess it pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easily, but it doesn’t really matter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m really excited to finally have, like, basically, I mentioned at some point before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the magazine sale was public, and I should mention too, like, Glenn and I were arranging this almost a month
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ago, and it just so happened that, you know, we did arrange it after the Instapaper
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing but it was before the Tumblr thing and so as the Tumblr thing was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going on Glenn and I were emailing each other going man this is gonna be hilarious when we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey announce this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everyone’s gonna think I’m just selling everything I own but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but yeah I the main reasons I wanted to sell the magazine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were you know what I wrote in the blog post which is basically I had created a job for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco myself that was a lot less of what I wanted to do than I expected. It was a lot of just administrative
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff and process stuff and overhead and almost no
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I kind of wish that I failed as spectacularly as you do in creating these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lucrative-appearing businesses that you just have to be burdened with unloading. It’s a tough
⏹️ ▶️ Casey life you live, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sorry. I mean, no, it’s, uh, you know, it, the other main reason that I wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to sell it is that because it was taking up my time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it was, and it’s, it’s a mental burden as well, having these things, you know, like everything that you do, um,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, occupies some kind of space in your mind and in your, you know, when you, like, in your present
⏹️ ▶️ Marco state of mind. I’m probably abusing these terms. I’m, I’m definitely not a Buddhist or anything that, that anyone who would be trained
⏹️ ▶️ Marco properly and being able to describe these things but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but uh i uh i don’t i don’t like having things on my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plate uh that i’m not really into and obviously there’s some stuff that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got to do just you know you just got to do it like you know you got to do your taxes you got to you know clean your house
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stuff you know like There’s stuff you gotta do. But something like making your own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco business, you know, that’s, you have control over that. So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the reasons why I wanted to sell Instapaper was because it was like weighing on me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mentally that I didn’t want to put in the effort into it that it really deserved and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of it I couldn’t put in the effort that it really deserved. With the magazine, it was more like, I can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep doing this indefinitely because it wasn’t taking up much of my time but why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep a business around that I’m barely putting anything into? And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I learned also like
⏹️ ▶️ John coding… You know the answer to that question though right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well because it makes money right? Is that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John answer? That’s the usual answer. Why keep a
⏹️ ▶️ John business around that makes money that I barely put anything into? Yeah that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the reality is like you know you can ask ask like people who buy a restaurant you know thinking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh this will generate money forever. Like, you know, maybe, but you’re going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco involved whether you like it or not. Like, it’s going to need you. You know, like, it’s the idea of a business
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that just generates passive money, you never have to touch it. Those do exist, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not really in the software world. They really don’t exist. You can neglect something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a while, and it can work for a little while, but it doesn’t really exist in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sense that you’re still going to have to maintain that. You’re still going to be responsible for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can’t just let it sit there and stagnate forever. Eventually, things are going to dwindle down. People
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are going to see that you haven’t done much to it in a while, and they’re going to move on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or something’s going to break. With the TextMate 1 problem, something might break at any point and
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, there’s no reason you couldn’t have done exactly what Glenn is doing, though. So he’s taking
⏹️ ▶️ John the reins now, and he’s not a developer. Well, not this kind of developer. So he is just bringing people
⏹️ ▶️ John on to take over development of the iOS app to do all sorts of ancillary things
⏹️ ▶️ John while he sort of wrangles them. So it seems to me that it’s like if your heart
⏹️ ▶️ John was in it, if this is what you really wanted to be, was like run a publication and grow a publication,
⏹️ ▶️ John you would be doing it. And it has less to do with
⏹️ ▶️ John whether the thing is making lots of money or a little bit of money or how long it’s going to make money, because you’re perfectly capable
⏹️ ▶️ John of doing the things that Glenn is doing with it, basically delegating to other people to do all the stuff, delegating the
⏹️ ▶️ John development and everything. It’s just that that seems like not something you want to do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s right. I could delegate the development to somebody else, but the development
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was the part I liked the most. But there just wasn’t that much that I wanted to do with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I loved building the app. I loved all the little design tricks and everything, and I loved doing all that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But then once the app is done, I’m like, well, it’s in maintenance mode basically and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you can there’s certainly features you can add there’s some like there’s some good stuff glam wants to do to it but it was all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff that I that I really didn’t care that much about I wasn’t that motivated to do and and you know ultimately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it wasn’t you’re right that if I wanted to keep doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this I could have there’s nothing you know of course I could have my theory
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that well well I know you know just the way I feel I know that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I’m not really I’m just not that into doing the management and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco business stuff you know that’s I do that stuff because I have to not because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really love it and so the magazine had become my role in the magazine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had become pretty much all business stuff and overhead and none of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff I wanted to do very often and so what I also learned I was talking to our friend underscore
⏹️ ▶️ Marco David Smith recently, like, I don’t know, like a couple hours ago. And because,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, David Smith has lots of apps. He has a portfolio of many apps. He does a lot of things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think I can really do that. You know, when I started working on the magazine alongside Instapaper, I started
⏹️ ▶️ Marco learning some of these difficulties in my motivation or my personality or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever it is. I’m not very good at working on multiple apps at the same time of the same type.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know I can do a web app and a native app that you know that those are different enough. I can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do an app, a podcast, and a blog because those are very different things and they you know they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco serve different different parts of my brain and my satisfaction and what I do and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I make. But I really don’t think I’m very good at having multiple apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that that all need attention.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Like when I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had the nursing clock app that was nothing. You know, I crapped it out in a couple of days and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it didn’t require any maintenance and it made something like 30 bucks over the course of its life. But, you know, it didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco require any maintenance. So, you know, that’s a whole other story. But to have like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two apps going at the same time that both need a good amount of attention
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ongoing, I can’t do that. I really don’t work well that way. So I really,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wanted to, you know, I want to start this new thing I’m doing and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s an iOS app. So, you know, I wanted to start a new thing and I know I could have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kept doing the magazine, but I was so not that into it already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because of what my job had become that I created for myself. I was so not that into it already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you know I I wanted a clean plate I wanted to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing else competing for my attention in the in the app space also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mentioned last episode or recently I don’t know when I don’t want to talk this whole episode by the way but I mentioned I mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last episode or something like that that that I work in bursts of productivity running
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a publication doesn’t really allow you to do that because there’s a there’s a publication schedule
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so every two weeks weeks, even though it wasn’t a lot of work for me, you know, Glenn was doing almost all of it already,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but every two weeks I had to do XYZ and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing a podcast and you know that’s a little bit different in that it’s easier and it’s more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of me being creative and having this creative output. Publishing an issue with a magazine does not involve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco creativity on my part by very much. You know, I picked a few photos and picked the cover image and that’s about it and then I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had to pay checks to everybody and do the server push and stuff like that and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know it just wasn’t it wasn’t that interesting so like having to do that every two weeks felt like a restriction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on me whereas oh and you can’t really take a week off like at least this show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know if we really want to we could take a week off not that any of us are likely to do that but if we really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wanted to we could take a week off with with a publication you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it was like it locked me into this fixed schedule but I don’t really work very well that way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that was another reason. But anyway, the main reason I wanted to sell it was because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wanted to clear my plate and be able to put myself into my next project fully.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that makes complete sense. And not to psychoanalyze you at all,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it seems to me that we’re seeing a trend, and certainly I’ve known you for a really darn long
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time, so I feel like I’m somewhat qualified to speak about this. It seems like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m seeing a trend that anything that’s compulsory, you tend to not like. And in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey case of the magazine, once
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco you don’t see it, yeah, it’s been a trend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since like first grade.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you mean, and I’m, that’s exactly my point. I mean, you’ve talked a lot about how you don’t really like homework, you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talked about how you don’t really love paying taxes, which granted, who does? You’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco talked about-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love paying taxes, I don’t like dealing with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, you know what I mean. So, and also, it seems like part of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reason that you got turned off by the magazine to build on what you were saying before is because you had to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be productive at certain times. It’s not that you hated necessarily doing the work,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at least that’s what it sounds to me anyway, that it’s not necessarily that you hated doing the work as much as you had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do it at a certain time and that’s really tough. And the other thing I’ll say, and then you can refute everything I just told you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you want because I’m trying to put words in your mouth. The other thing I’ll say is it’s like the same reason you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have the 1M anymore. You’ve got your fancy nice car. don’t want to have to choose between two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey equally fancy nice cars.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey ridiculously
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you’re going to get me started and we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco want to do that because nobody listens to me. Go ahead, move on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But you know what I mean? You don’t want to have to choose between two nice things any more than you want to have to choose
⏹️ ▶️ Casey between two crummy things or whatever the case may be. And whether or not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other people understand what the burden was, the fact of the matter is you felt it was a burden and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you felt that you had to work on it rather than desire to And so that’s the point at which, at least
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me, it seems that’s the point at which you sold Instapaper when you felt like you had to work on it. It’s the point in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which you sold the magazines when you felt like you had to work on it and when you didn’t want to work on it anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, from an outsider’s point of view, that’s what I’m seeing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s pretty accurate. I mean, you know, I’m not a very complicated personality.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, there’s not a lot of layers here. It’s pretty much what you see is what you get. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, I don’t make any effort to hide all that stuff and you nailed it. That’s me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, that’s pretty fair. John, any observations on that before we totally sidestep?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I don’t think so. I think Marco is doing what we would all do if we could. Not do the things you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want to do, do the things you do want to do, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. All right. Do you want to share anything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about this forthcoming app? And I did not figure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey advance whether or not I should ask that question. So…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, not yet. I will in time. You know, honestly, I’m kind of I’m still debating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in my head Because debating out loud is boring. I’m still debating in my head
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether whether to Pre announce anything about the app before it’s ready
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether to put up like a splash page and do all that bullshit oops, I gotta bleep that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or Or you know all the all the stuff people do and just hype up their app have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a cue I’m not going to do that, but put up a splash page and tease it, like, coming soon!
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know if I want to do that or if I want to just say what the app will be and then collect feedback at the expense
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of having competitors then copy me and stuff. So I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m going to decide all those things over the next few months. But what I have decided
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that I’m not going to make any major decisions about the app’s feature set
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or design or layout or navigational structure until after WWDC. Because I want to see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what iOS 7 introduces. I want to see what’s different and what’s coming up. And then I will decide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fully, like here’s the kind of feature set this will have. Here’s the business model.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like if they introduce something like upgrade pricing or trials, that might influence my decision on the business model.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I don’t want to make any decisions yet on all those big things. And then I’ll see, maybe throughout
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the summer, maybe I’ll tease it. maybe I will just announce it outright and it won’t be available
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet or maybe I’ll just shut up about it until it’s ready. I don’t know yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well did you see what Justin Williams is doing with whatever he’s building?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a chance to look at that yet. Yeah, the passbook thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I forget what he’s calling it. Man, this is an accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco podcast. PitPass. Any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. It’s a car reference, Casey. We should know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know. I’m disappointed myself. But the premise, in case you’re not familiar, is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you get this passbook item into passbook, and I guess what he’s doing is he’s going to update
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it with little bits and blurbs about the forthcoming app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as he decides to release it. And whether or not you believe in pre-releasing things and pre-announcing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things, I think it’s a very clever and different take on something that we’ve seen ad nauseum
⏹️ ▶️ Casey our entire lives. So I didn’t know, Marco, if you had any thoughts on that. I guess if you haven’t really looked into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco it. I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had a chance to look at it, but it looks like, you know, the point of it is to do things, it looks like a combination of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being able to tease apps that are upcoming and also like the iOS version of a newsletter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like traditional software developers, especially indies who have sold on the Mac and stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have for a long time had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mailing lists they maintain and then, you know, like Roga Amoeba has talked about this before, our friends over there, where like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they hardly ever mail anything out to people, but when they make a brand new product or a major update, then they will.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s always like a significant source of upgrade revenue and of customers coming back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and buying new stuff. And people actually like that. And on iOS, there’s no good way to do it. You can kind of…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You aren’t allowed to do it with push notifications, although people do, but you aren’t allowed to technically. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t want to annoy people. And you also don’t usually have access to things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like their email address. So this is an interesting idea if it’s going to address some of that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco beyond just the promoting upcoming app thing. But I guess that’s all I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to say because I don’t know much about it yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. John, did you have any thoughts?
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco was saying he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to tease this thing ahead of time. It seems pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John clear to me that you don’t want to tease it ahead of time, but are only considering it because it may be a good way to, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John build, you know, good buzz for your application,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, here’s the thing. I’ve always thought building buzz before you could actually get it is kind of a waste because I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know when, like, I forget where I was. I was talking to somebody about this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sorry to whoever that was. Hopefully, it wasn’t you guys. That there’s this movie
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for, it’s a documentary about sign painters. People used to paint signs by hand before, like, vinyl
⏹️ ▶️ Marco signs and everything came out. And they keep promoting this thing everywhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I see it everywhere. And it’s a little documentary. It’s been at film festivals and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I can’t get it. I can’t buy it. I can’t rent it. I can’t view it online. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t, no matter what I do, I won’t be able to get it for months. And so they’re getting all this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco publicity out there and I’m interested. I’m responding. I’m saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want to see this movie. I will pay a few bucks right now to see this movie if you can get it to me. but it’s not out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and like that drives me crazy as a customer like because what’s probably going to happen is going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco come out in six months and I won’t care anymore and I will have forgotten by then so I hate pre
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hyping things because you get people interested in me this is one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the reasons why the Apple strategy works so well Apple says nothing until the things available
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s like all right here’s this awesome new thing you want this right you can buy it today or this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Friday, you know, that’s, you can respond immediately. The hype does something for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When this product’s not even available yet and not going to be available for months, what can you really do with that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What can you really do with all that hype? Like, to me, I think it’s kind of arrogant to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expect people to remember all that crap in two or three months.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you would, I mean, I assume you wouldn’t, like, there’s this, it’s a spectrum where you wouldn’t tease it way, way, way ahead of
⏹️ ▶️ John time, but perhaps, like, basically, first, You don’t put anything up until the thing is basically done. And all you’re doing is
⏹️ ▶️ John delaying it so you can build the site. So maybe if it’s only like one week or two weeks lead time, when you are actually
⏹️ ▶️ John finished, basically, and you’re just like, this is the ramp up to sale. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I wouldn’t say like, do like they do with the movies and tease it the summer before it comes out with some obscure
⏹️ ▶️ John image to get people excited about what the movie is. And then, you know. But
⏹️ ▶️ John what I was getting at before is that if marketing was not a factor at all,
⏹️ ▶️ John and human beings weren’t buying this application, you were just making it for your own edification,
⏹️ ▶️ John you would release it when it’s done and not say anything about it ahead of time. I mean, you won’t even say what it is at this point.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it seems like your inclination is, why would I ever tell anyone anything until it’s done? And then I would give
⏹️ ▶️ John it to you, and here it is. But the only reason you’re considering it is because maybe that attitude is a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John too close to the best. Maybe there’s something that’s a happy medium, where three days before I have a countdown
⏹️ ▶️ John clock, or a week ahead of time I put an image, or something like that. You know what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean? you have to look at it as, you know, for me, like what’s in it for me really? Like why,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what is my benefit from pre-announcing and pre-teasing something? And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because, you know, and it’s hard. Honestly, I would love to share stuff with people. I would love to share information with people. I’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco burned a lot in the past by being ripped off and I’m still very sensitive to that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, I’m trying to, I’m trying to reduce my sensitivity to that over time, but I still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco am very sensitive to it. And so the last thing I want to do is announce what going to do and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get ripped off before I even do it. Everything’s a remix, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, the one thing I would say, and then maybe we can do a quick sponsor, the one thing I would say is that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in my personal opinion, you’ve just pre-announced everything you should need to pre-announce, or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey need is probably a poor choice of words, but everything you might want to pre-announce. We know that you’re working on an iOS app.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We know that it’s going to be something different, and I don’t think we really need to know any more than that. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think I echo what you were saying earlier that it’s almost disrespectful to say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more than that. I mean, people know you’ve cleaned your plate of all your obligations. Presumably you found
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something that’s no longer compulsory, but actually interesting to work on. And so everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey knows that you’re not going to sit on your island with your yachts and helicopters and your M5 and drive in circles.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s all I think anyone wants to know is that we’re going to get something else in the world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tell you that it will contain a UI web view and it is not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco So who do we like?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This week we have two brand new sponsors. I’ll tell you about the first one right now. The first one is from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco RemObject Software. It’s called Oxygen for Coco. And it’s a new programming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco language. And it’s for Coco and the Objective-C runtime. So I want to explain this properly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So give me some leeway here. So they say, especially they even address this comment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to John, it is not a bridge and it is not an abstraction layer. It is a true language
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the platform and it replaces objective C within the tool stack. So it gives you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco full and direct access to all the Cocoa classes and APIs. All the objects you interact
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with in the code are the real objective C objects. You’re calling methods on a real UI button, you’re implementing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a real UI table view controller subclass, et cetera. And it compiles down to regular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Objective C run time objects and native code. So the resulting executable is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all but indistinguishable from one created with Objective C and X code. And if you debug the app or run
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it in instruments, it looks like it’s written in Objective C, so all those things just work. So the language is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco based on Object Pascal. But there’s a good reason that their tagline is, it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your daddy’s Pascal. I don’t know, my daddy didn’t have Pascal. Maybe yours did. Because it goes well beyond
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what most people associate with Pascal, but it maintains all the readability and consistency that makes Pascal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a great language. So it has many advanced features that they say blows Objective-C
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of the water. Things like future types, class contracts, and many elements that make it just more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco convenient and straightforward to use in Objective-C. For instance, you can use plus to concatenate two NS strings
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it will automatically box from an integer to an NS number if you call a method on it. You know, stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So and the other cool thing about this is that this oxygen language is also available for the.net
⏹️ ▶️ Marco platform and for Java and Android. So if you are writing applications for multiple platforms
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or say a server back end, you can do it all in the same language. Oxygen has been around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on.net for about eight years and it’s the most widely used non-Microsoft language on the platform.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you know, what they say is, you know, it’s not ‑‑ it isn’t to encourage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the right ones run everywhere, kind of crappy cross-platform apps, but it’s designed to let you create
⏹️ ▶️ Marco platforms, or create apps for each platform natively, but you can use the same language in all places, so you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco learn it once and you know it. Anyway, you can find out more at remobjects.com,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s R-E-M-objects.com, slash oxygen, but it’s oxygen spelled with an E on the end,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it looks like oxygeen, but it’s pronounced oxygen, so O-X-Y-G-E-N-E.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or you can go to oxygenlanguage.com, spelled the same way. of this show can get 20% off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any of the product with coupon code ATP 13 once again it’s ram objects dot com slash
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oxygen with an e on the end and use coupon code ATP 13 for 20% off thank you very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much to oxygen for oxygen for cocoa from ram objects software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was pressing this oxygen in my head the entire time we were setting up the sponsorship until they gave me the text and they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John yeah a lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gave me the the pronunciation guide that it is pronounced oxygen
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah they’ve been people been sending me the links and I was going to the site and reading the site and also pronouncing it the wrong way into my
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It’s pronounced oxygen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but spelled oxygen.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right. Yeah. The top thing on their site should have been just a pronunciation guide.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is there anyone behind this that we would know? Because I always wonder where these companies come from. Because what they’re doing is not
⏹️ ▶️ John something you’re like, oh, I just think I’ll do this thing where you write in one language and deploy on all these different platforms.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. And yet, they seem like, where do these people come
⏹️ ▶️ John from? must have been toiling on this in obscurity for like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco years. Well they said they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been on Microsoft platforms for eight years. So I think that’s probably where they came from is they started out there and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John migrated to language. They were just
⏹️ ▶️ John off our radar I guess. Yeah. And now they’ve branched out to iOS. That makes some sense because I’m like how in the world do you ever,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, accomplish that in any reasonable time frame?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have no idea. And more importantly, you look at this and you’re like why can’t Apple do stuff like this? But they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John They can. They just aren’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well they don’t care about anyone but themselves. And they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco themselves are happy. Let’s have a whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcast about paying taxes. That sounds like fun. That sounds super fun. Oh God.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And sort of kind of speaking of paying taxes, the other thing I wanted to at least briefly talk about is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tim Cook at All Things D, which was what, last night, I believe, at the time of recording, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tuesday night. So there were a couple of interesting things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that came of this, and to be honest, this conversation may be fairly short, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of the things that I thought was really awesome was the way he talked about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how Apple views their job. Tim said, We
⏹️ ▶️ John that the customer pays us to make certain choices on their behalf.
⏹️ ▶️ John Instead of going in and I’ve seen some settings on these phones
⏹️ ▶️ John where they said that you’re deep into the bowels of the thing, choosing this and that and the other and the other
⏹️ ▶️ John and the other. I don’t think that’s what most customers want. Do some want it? Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John of course. But is that a mainstream customer
⏹️ ▶️ John want? I don’t think so.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought that was about as good a way as any that I’ve ever heard somebody sum
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up the way Apple approaches products. And I know when I talk to a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my developer friends, particularly the local ones that work, say in.NET or other languages,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they all get very angry about the fact that they don’t have a lot of control over iOS devices, and that’s why a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of them use Android devices. And I keep coming back to, you know, five, 10 years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago, maybe 10 years ago, I would have much preferred an Android device because I could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fiddle with it and tweak it and turn it into something honestly kind of awful.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But now I just want stuff to work, and I want Apple to make those choices for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And again, I thought this was just an unbelievably good and short way of summing it up. I don’t know what you guys
⏹️ ▶️ John I always get nervous when I hear Tim Cook saying product-related things. Not that I think he
⏹️ ▶️ John shouldn’t. I mean, he’s the CEO. He says he speaks for the company. That’s fine and
⏹️ ▶️ John everything. But I guess my picture of him in my head is not that.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not his strength. I would much rather see him, when he starts talking about a
⏹️ ▶️ John similar thing, like why they don’t have a large line of phones and all the different things about international
⏹️ ▶️ John business manufacturing. I’m confident that he’s an expert in those areas, but in these other areas I feel like he is
⏹️ ▶️ John doing what a lot of other normal CEOs do, which is relaying the result
⏹️ ▶️ John of discussions with the lower level experts in the company who are at a tier below
⏹️ ▶️ John him or a tier below them. I don’t know. It
⏹️ ▶️ John does sound right. It sounds like a summary to me of previous discussions.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you left it up to Tim Cook what things would be allowed to be in settings and what things wouldn’t be, I feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like he would make bad decisions in one direction or another. He would
⏹️ ▶️ John have very few settings, but they would be the wrong settings, or he would have no settings and that’s untenable, just ask Marco. Or he would
⏹️ ▶️ John have too many settings. The whole settings thing, this
⏹️ ▶️ John could be a whole separate topic. The reason we talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John it is because it’s not easy. You can’t just give a rule like, oh, you should have no settings, or you should have as few settings as possible.
⏹️ ▶️ John You have to have just the exact right settings. And you have to know, and it’s kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John a gut feeling or whatever, what are the right settings to have? What is important? What isn’t? Because we all know that
⏹️ ▶️ John the settings in an application can make or break it, right? It doesn’t mean you have to have a lot of them. But if you don’t know what
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re doing, yeah, then you end up with a lot of them. And it’s like, well, at least everyone who needs to change something can change the thing they want to
⏹️ ▶️ John change. And that’s pretty terrible, right? But by the same token, if you put in the wrong settings, there’s only three settings and they’re the wrong
⏹️ ▶️ John ones. It’s like, man, this app would be perfect if I could only do X. And it doesn’t have to be
⏹️ ▶️ John a frivolous thing. It could be something, you know, important. Like it totally breaks the way I work with this application
⏹️ ▶️ John because it doesn’t, you know, I can’t change this particular behavior and it drives me insane.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then the application is no good for you. And everyone’s got one of those and you can’t include everybody. So like, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the art of it, figuring out for the most people, these are the top five most important things
⏹️ ▶️ John that should be settings because neither decision is clearly the right thing to do, and that’s what I’m going to go with. And
⏹️ ▶️ John that is sort of an art more than anything else. So when I hear like a manager-y type person giving a pat answer, like, oh, they
⏹️ ▶️ John pay us to make decisions for them. And I know some people want settings, but most people don’t. And people applaud
⏹️ ▶️ John that. I’m like, that’s like a platitude. It’s not, you know, if I know that’s backed
⏹️ ▶️ John by the good taste to know which ones to set, then that’s fine. But if I just hear it in isolation,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m like, well, you know, I’m not impressed by that statement.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m being mean to Tim Cook. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know. Well, no, I don’t think you’re being mean to Tim Cook. But what I think is hard is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to realize, or at least hard for me anyway, is to realize that Tim may not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be the man that knows that, unlike Steve, but he’s smart enough to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey find the person, man or woman, that can make that call and empower them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do so. And I think giving Johnny, Ive, and Craig Federici
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little bit more control is evidence of that. That I think Tim knows that he’s not that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guy, but he will empower the guy or girl that is that guy or girl.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Did that make any sense at all?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, like he’s got it. It’s unfair to him because he, only one guy can be on that stage and it’s got to be him. So he has
⏹️ ▶️ John company, right? I mean, like you said, we’re just kind of spoiled by Steve Jobs where he could speak about that particular
⏹️ ▶️ John topic. Like, it was the reverse with Steve Jobs. When Steve Jobs would talk about, like, supply chains and inventory
⏹️ ▶️ John and transactions, then you could tell he was not talking about something that he was deeply knowledgeable about, but he was merely
⏹️ ▶️ John channeling Tim Cook, and it’s weird to see that reversed now, you know, when Tim is talking about financial
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff and supply chains. That’s like him talking, and the other times it’s him representing the rest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I think, first of all, I think it’s worth pointing out that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Steve did make tons of bad decisions. And he did often rely on the people below him
⏹️ ▶️ Marco arguing with him until he relented. And sometimes he didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco relent and shipped bad decisions to the public and then had to go back on those.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, you know, there’s that. Anyway, I think, Sean, I think you’re being a little bit mean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to Tim Cook here. I think, you know, you look at this guy talk and I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know I’m about halfway through the video I read the live stream last night as it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happening but the last year really does not capture it very well first of all the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco live streams generally paraphrase they don’t they don’t usually say the exact words because they usually can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep up and and so you know you could it helps to watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the video to really get an idea of what he said exactly what he said and how he said it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you look at this guy speak and he is a rock I mean he he
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is rock stable rock solid he was the same with Congress like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can’t make this guy flinch and I think if he was if he was mainly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just repeating things he was told or things he had been taught by the by the by the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lower-down people about the product philosophies and stuff I don’t think he would be quite as solid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when talking about them And I think you’d see him doing a lot more misstatements
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or kind of awkward, clumsy handling of the statements. But he doesn’t do that. He’s rock solid. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think he really has internalized everything he
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs to internalize to be the CEO of a product-focused company
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this. I really think that he knows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot more and that he has a lot more of these sensibilities than you give him credit for here.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, what I’m looking for is basically like, you know, I don’t think he doubts any that he’s shaking
⏹️ ▶️ John on any of the principles. But when it comes down to it, as I said, the tricky part about this is not this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Unlike a lot of the economic stuff is not a science. It’s more of an art. And he’s not the
⏹️ ▶️ John one with that gut feeling that is going to drive the company. As you said, you know, Steve Jobs has got
⏹️ ▶️ John was wrong plenty of times, too. But for the most part, in the big sweeping decisions like we should make a teal
⏹️ ▶️ John computer, we should make a music player, and it should be like this, and we should get into phones, and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not going to ship until it’s good enough for me. In the big things, his gut was what
⏹️ ▶️ John drove these things. So it’s one thing to say this abstract philosophy of,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll make decisions for you and choose what needs to be in the application and what doesn’t. And it’s another thing to know
⏹️ ▶️ John that that is also the guy whose gut is going to guide big, sweeping things
⏹️ ▶️ John like, what is Mac OS X going to look like? the fact that it was all crazy and blue and shiny or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Was that the right thing to do? The wrong thing to do? I mean, your gut can be wrong about these things,
⏹️ ▶️ John and he’s not the guy with that, right? That’s true. Even though he understands the
⏹️ ▶️ John principles. Like I said, I think it’s basically the reverse of Jobs, because whenever Jobs talked about the economic stuff, he was a smart guy,
⏹️ ▶️ John he knew all the principles, but when it came down to it, to decide which supplier should do what and how much of
⏹️ ▶️ John the flash memory should be pre-buy and is this a good deal, or are we going to be saddled with tons of LCDs that don’t need
⏹️ ▶️ John or should we wait for this? He wasn’t the guy to make that call, but he just understood all the underlying
⏹️ ▶️ John concepts. And it’s probably true that Tim Cook is much, like you said, much more solid
⏹️ ▶️ John when talking about topics that he’s not the super duper expert in than Jobs was, because when Jobs did talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John economics, he sounded more like he was somebody merely parroting things that he learned from other people, even though he also probably
⏹️ ▶️ John understood them. But I think the thing that is in Tim Cook’s favor during this entire
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, and especially I think back to last year’s WWE DC, which I probably came across in the keynote But
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean we were there we saw him as a spec on the stage or whatever But you can kind of feel it in the room that that Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ John is Has the same enthusiasm and passion and he’s not faking it that Steve Jobs had for these things I think about the time
⏹️ ▶️ John when he was on stage talking about like the the blind guy using the iPad to like walk around the woods And everything
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s unless he is an Academy Award-winning actor He was not faking like the fact that
⏹️ ▶️ John that that made him feel like what he’s doing with his career and life is meaningful, right? More so than
⏹️ ▶️ John all the stuff they ask about market share and different models of phones or whatever, he is really, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John touched by the idea that the things he’s making are changing the world in a touchy-feely, Apple, you know, goofy kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John way. And that, I think, is his best asset as CEO.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, okay, second best. Second to his, you know, expertise in the job that he had
⏹️ ▶️ John before he was CEO is the fact that he really is enthusiastic about this stuff and he’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not he’s not a bean counter and he’s not just out there to sort of steer a ship
⏹️ ▶️ John and or like he’s not just a manager for a manager’s sake
⏹️ ▶️ John why he left compact or wherever he was before you know why
⏹️ ▶️ John Sculley left Pepsi you know you don’t sell sugar water you want to come with Steve and change the world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well I’m with Tim too I think we’ve really seen over the last year especially we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really seen him just develop this incredible image
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of just not only being an absolute rock about everything and you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is this is definitely a guy you’d want running your company but you can also tell that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a he’s not an idiot on any level like you know like to use a Steve Jobs where like he’s not a bozo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all like you can tell this guy is sharp and knows exactly what he’s doing but he’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also and he has he’s very deliberate in what he does you know it doesn’t it doesn’t feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he’s like you know throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks it seems like he’s really being very deliberate about everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he does but also he projects a very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just a very nice personality when he speaks publicly he he seems he seems extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco polite well-spoken personable but still firm and strong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so I think he has like the perfect image of what you’d want a CEO of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an important company to have.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey He’s extremely deliberate in the way he speaks as well. Something I wish I could be better about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is taking a moment to think about what you were going to say, especially in like a one-on-one conversation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This podcast is a little bit different, but if you’re in a serious conversation, say,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey remember that I do consulting for a living, so say I’m at a client and they ask me a question, My
⏹️ ▶️ Casey natural inclination is to fire off an answer immediately. And one thing that I respect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey deeply about Tim is that he will sit there and allow a silence so he can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey collect his thoughts and make sure that his answer is a great one, not just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a good one, not just an acceptable one, but a great
⏹️ ▶️ John That was a big Steve Jobsism. Steve Jobs would just let that pause. And at a certain point when Steve Jobs did
⏹️ ▶️ John it, you wondered, is he pausing to gather his thoughts or is now is this is kind of a head game where
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s pausing. Like he already knows what he’s going to say, but he’s just like, a little longer. Like in
⏹️ ▶️ John that, what was that, WOC 1998 or whatever thing where he was doing Q&A and the guy asked him
⏹️ ▶️ John the obnoxious question about, I forget what the obnoxious question is, like, it was clear that you don’t know what you’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ John or, say he was angry about OpenDoc or something or whatever. And he just, the pause after that, I should time it in the video,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like so long where he’s waiting for the response there. If I could think
⏹️ ▶️ John of a couple more mean things to say about Tim Cook, it’s not mean, it’s just like we’re all comparing to Steve Jobs, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John With any kind of powerful person speaking publicly, you
⏹️ ▶️ John basically get two choices. You get the guy who really truly believes
⏹️ ▶️ John what he’s saying and is earnest about it, and the guy who says exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John the right thing but gives some kind of hint that he also knows that
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s BS. example is we didn’t get to talk about this the congressional thing where Tim Cook is up there explaining Apple’s business
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything and Tim Cook did nothing wrong like he did exactly what you’re supposed to do and
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t decide I actually I can’t decide for me I think it’s worse to be the guy who really
⏹️ ▶️ John believes that everything you’re telling Congress is the 100% straight honest truth like
⏹️ ▶️ John you know the fact that he’d never mentioned why they have these things overseas and how it’s a tax avoidance scheme
⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff like that like everything he said was true it was just sort of of an error of omission.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I feel more comfortable, like if Steve Jobs was doing it, he would make it clear that
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone knows this is BS, because everyone watching knows it’s BS, Congress knows it’s BS, Tim Cook knows, we all know it’s like kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of a, it’s theater, right? But sometimes I think that Tim, for a second or
⏹️ ▶️ John two, I think that Tim Cook really believes what he’s saying. I’m like, wait a second, he knows what’s really, you know, he’s no dummy, we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John all in on this or whatever. But he’s so earnest, and you’re like, oh my maybe he really believes that
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe you know I’m like no come on he doesn’t really and to me that’s worse I would rather have like
⏹️ ▶️ John the guy who’s in on the sort of shared uh delusion that we’re all you know
⏹️ ▶️ John the suspension of disbelief for this theater type thing than the true believer type thing because the second
⏹️ ▶️ John Tim Cook really believes that uh everything he omitted in discussing
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple’s various tax shelters doesn’t exist then we know you know we’re in
⏹️ ▶️ John trouble and maybe that’s Maybe that’s just testament to how incredibly earnest and honest, like for a second he can make me believe
⏹️ ▶️ John that he really believes it, but I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know. Before we exit the Tim Cook, all things D topic,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do want to point out also that a lot of people have said, oh, he hasn’t really said anything here, he didn’t say anything new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or he didn’t learn anything. And I think that’s all crap. I think he said quite a lot. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he said it in the Apple way and in the Tim Cook way, but I think he
⏹️ ▶️ Marco said quite a lot of interesting things.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s Kremlinology. I mean, we’re all like, if you go back, I would watch the Steve Jobs one, and you’re all just looking to see, like, he’s never
⏹️ ▶️ John going to say say it. So there’s reporters who have no idea about, you know, just generic reporters like,
⏹️ ▶️ John they go through it and go, oh, it doesn’t seem like he said anything. But for people who are following every single, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John every single fart that comes out of Apple, when you ask him, you know, what do you think about big screens?
⏹️ ▶️ John And I guess you guys are making one or whatever. And the first thing that out of his mouth is as well, we’re not making one yet. I mean, like, that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John answer. Like, that is the biggest answer
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re ever going to get out of anything. Like, even Steve Jobs was never that open, even on his wildest days. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John And what he’s saying is perfectly clear. We’re not making one yet, we’re not ruling it out for the future, whatever. He doesn’t say that
⏹️ ▶️ John if they don’t have a larger screen phone, like, in the planning stages already. And
⏹️ ▶️ John little things like that were dropped everywhere about, you know, timelining the television, timelining
⏹️ ▶️ John anything that’s wearable. It reminds me of Steve Jobs way,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t remember when I was, way before the iPhone, like five years or something before that, when
⏹️ ▶️ John people were asking Apple about PDAs. That was the big thing to do. It’s like, is Apple going to make a PDA? They
⏹️ ▶️ John tried to buy Palm or Handspring or something and been rebuffed. I don’t know that they ever announced that. It was all secret
⏹️ ▶️ John rumors and stuff. People kept asking about PDAs. At a certain point,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple would give answers and no comments or whatever. But at a certain point, Steve Jobs said to some reporter, we really believe that
⏹️ ▶️ John phones are where the future of this business is going to be. Boom, Apple’s making a phone. Like, that’s all you needed.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s why for years, my friends and I were like, you know, when is the iPhone coming? And we would just call it the
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone, because it was the iMac and the iPad. When is the iPhone coming? And then we started to lose faith. We’re like, maybe they’re never going
⏹️ ▶️ John to make a phone. It’s been such a long time. But back then, when you make a
⏹️ ▶️ John statement like that to a reporter, you might as well just come out and say exactly what you’re doing. I guess reporters can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John report on it because it would be, you know, he didn’t really say that, but
⏹️ ▶️ John for people reading the tea leaves, it’s all out there in the open in his answers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say specifically, he seemed to confirm, in his Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and in the Apple way, he seemed to confirm that they are working on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of watch-like device that includes multiple types of sensors and serves multiple functions.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Didn’t you get that impression
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John from what he said? Wearable oh
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah that wearable stuff. I think there might be something to that. It’s a really interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Can’t just do one thing and it has to have multiple sensors He’s he’s looking to replace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Nike fuel band on his wrist.
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s like describing his product obliquely at that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco point right I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that was a very a very clear not not even a hint that was like beating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you over the head We are doing something like a watch. That’s gonna have multiple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John sensors That combined
⏹️ ▶️ John with the entering new product categories for the earning call. And
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco possibly as soon as this
⏹️ ▶️ John The people freak out about it, like we did with the phone thing. The phone didn’t come out for five years or whatever it was. It was some insane
⏹️ ▶️ John amount. It seemed like forever. It doesn’t mean that the watch is coming out next week. That’s the problem with
⏹️ ▶️ John the echo chamber of the news, like, oh, a watch is coming. It’s going to come out any second.
⏹️ ▶️ John The timelines in these things are huge. You just read the tea leaves to see, all right, is this something that Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John even looking at? because if you had asked him if Apple was thinking of making a car, his answer would have not been, the car
⏹️ ▶️ John airspace is really interesting, I think a car made by Apple could be really interesting and it would have to use multiple sensors
⏹️ ▶️ John for… No! He would say, no we’re not interested, like, it’s a different answer, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John All it does is tell you that something that you wear, that you purchase from Apple that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not a clip-on iPod shuffle is potentially in the future of this company and tells you nothing about the timeline
⏹️ ▶️ John other than it’s probably not a decade from now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But even on the timeline, I think he was pretty clear that we’re going to see a new category from Apple this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fall or early next year.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that could have been the TV had he not put the kibosh on that in his answers at the Deconference,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? You know, because like, the earnings call was like, new category, and everyone’s like, okay, is the new category TV,
⏹️ ▶️ John which has been rumored for a really long time, or is the new category something that you wear, which has also been rumored? And then
⏹️ ▶️ John fast forward to the conference, he gets asked both questions, gives very different answers, and you’re like, all right, I guess it’s the thing you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, didn’t he, was it him that said that nobody wears watches anymore?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but what was interesting, he said, like the live streams kind of transcribed this quickly, but what he actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco said was like, For something
⏹️ ▶️ John to work here, you first have to convince people it’s so incredible
⏹️ ▶️ John that they want to wear it because we’re, you two guys are wearing watches.
⏹️ ▶️ John If we had a room full of 10 to 20 year
⏹️ ▶️ John olds and we said, everybody stand up that has
⏹️ ▶️ John a watch on, I’m not sure anybody would stand up. I don’t see it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 10 to 20 year olds. I mean, yeah, okay, so the guy deals with data. That sounded a lot like they did a survey.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It sounded like that was data that they had looked up already.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the kind of thing that Steve would just kind of wing from his you know from his
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think Tim he was talking as though they were already looking into this and he like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the comments about multiple sensors and about glasses sucking I really think he was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty clearly telling us there’s gonna be something here
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Apple under Steve Jobs
⏹️ ▶️ John did do lots of market research Jobs liked the downplayed and he would say they didn’t do focus groups for the other design which is
⏹️ ▶️ John true but the best example I can think of that is speaking of nobody wears watches anymore is when people were asking
⏹️ ▶️ John about, is Apple going to do some pre-iPad? Is Apple going to do some sort of reading device or whatever?
⏹️ ▶️ John And he said, nobody reads anymore. And then he threw out a couple of statistics.
⏹️ ▶️ John The only way he would know those statistics off the top of his head is from Apple’s own market research that
⏹️ ▶️ John they had done in the planning stages for making the iPad, which was so clearly in development then. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John by quoting a statistic that is supposed to be shooting
⏹️ ▶️ John down the argument of the person who’s saying, oh, you should make this thing. Oh, nobody reads anymore. People say that, you know, surveys
⏹️ ▶️ John show that people from this age group, I forget what statistic you threw out, but like, you don’t know that statistic off the top
⏹️ ▶️ John of your head if you had not investigated it. So it’s the same type of thing, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John They did do market research, they continue to do market research to see, you know, to decide what kind of product they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna make. I don’t know if Tim does more of it than Steve. I know Steve definitely wanted to downplay the idea
⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s anything other than springing from their creativity.
⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, they’re a big company. Of course, they do market research. So I’m sure they know exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John how many people of what age wear watches or would be willing to wear something, and so on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, right. And to that end, when he says, if you have a room full, was it 10 20-year-olds or 10 to 20-year-olds?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It doesn’t matter. I’ll have to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco rewind. I think it was 10 to 20-year-olds.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 10 to 20-year-olds.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But to be honest, it doesn’t matter. The point I’m driving at is, when he says, oh, nobody in the 10 to 20 year old range or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever the statistic was wears a watch, is that like a Barney Stinson challenge accepted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey moment or is that him saying, no, really, nobody wants a watch and there’s nothing we can do to stop it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco starting. What he was saying, the theme of what he was saying was basically that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re going to convince people to wear a watch, it has to be really, really good. that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s on the market now in the field of smart watches is not good enough to convince people to wear a watch who weren’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco already and who weren’t nerds like you know people who are buying Google Glass and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so it sounded like it sounded like what he was saying was a combination of Google Glass
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a total flop and nobody will wear it and we think there’s something to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be had in the watch area but nothing else out there is good enough yet which is typical Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff just stuff to say before they enter a market.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right that’s exactly my point is they’re saying well right now it all sucks but you know the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey underlying you know under your breath comment is oh but we’ll show you exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like like men’s hats you know whatever the 40s were all you know you
⏹️ ▶️ John look at those old movies all the men on the street in New York City were all wearing hats right and then eventually that fell out
⏹️ ▶️ John of favor and then nobody wears a hat to work you know like it and in fact it would be rude to wear a hat to work if you’re going
⏹️ ▶️ John like a baseball hat or something right so you know men’s dress hats and I guess women’s dress hats to some degree
⏹️ ▶️ John fell out of fashion so if you had asked you know 60 years ago how many men wore a
⏹️ ▶️ John hat today on their way to work all their hands ago well I think watches are like that in part because you know I think actually
⏹️ ▶️ John started with pagers remember when people just started looking at the pagers to see what time it was
⏹️ ▶️ John once you had some other way to tell what time it was other than a watch watches
⏹️ ▶️ John changed from this practical thing that you had to wear so you got places on time into merely like
⏹️ ▶️ John jewelry, like a fashion accessory. And people still do wear watches, but even the people
⏹️ ▶️ John who do, I wonder if they still pick up their phone to tell what time it is, right? So like him saying, you know, oh people don’t wear watches
⏹️ ▶️ John is because like the function of a watch is a timekeeper that goes on your wrist. We don’t need
⏹️ ▶️ John that anymore because that functionality has been subsumed in these other smart devices. But
⏹️ ▶️ John if we can make something that you can put on your wrist that suddenly does have value to you beyond just telling you what time it was, then
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe that would be a good thing. So he’s saying there’s all those wrists out there that don’t have watches on because watches are
⏹️ ▶️ John not worth the time, not worth putting on your wrist. Those wrists are just waiting there
⏹️ ▶️ John for something, and it doesn’t have to be wrists, who knows where these things are going to be attached to your body, but something that you wear, probably
⏹️ ▶️ John yes, probably on your wrist. That’s what he’s saying with that answer is all those
⏹️ ▶️ John wrists out there are just crying out for something really cool from Apple to stick on them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do either one of you guys wear a watch?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I did until, I’d say, a couple of years ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’ve always enjoyed them, and I’ve always told myself that if I ever hit it big and sell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everything that I own, ahem, that I would get myself a stupidly expensive watch,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and by that I mean like several hundred dollars as opposed to twenty. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I keep telling myself I want to buy myself a watch, and I haven’t worn one in a few years,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m too cheap to buy one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the in the old tumblr office. I don’t want to say who he was in case it would cause any problems but there was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this guy who who shared the office and and he had a watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dealer come in like twice a year to show him like these like new fancy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like really like $10,000 watches and it’s like you know this this like you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of short thick guy with like a nondescript briefcase would come in open up the briefcase and show off you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know 30 gram with the watches right there and it was like it’s like this whole cult of like watch people
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco oh it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like camera people but even more so because cameras have more of a function like yeah once they tell
⏹️ ▶️ John time beyond that everything else is basically just fashion yeah and although I was just
⏹️ ▶️ John on podcast with guy and Renee and I don’t remember if this part of it was
⏹️ ▶️ John after the recording had ended if they’ll stick it in so you can forgive me for repeating it but we were talking about the watch thing
⏹️ ▶️ John and what I said to them was that This is such a dangerous area
⏹️ ▶️ John for Apple or any other company because once you put something on your
⏹️ ▶️ John body in a way that counts as wearing, you enter this whole other realm
⏹️ ▶️ John of crazy, illogical, nonsensical, ego-entangled
⏹️ ▶️ John decision-making. Because, you know, the iPod Shuffle, you clip onto your clothes. And most people
⏹️ ▶️ John would say you are not wearing an iPod Shuffle. It’s like, oh, it’s just my iPod, but it attaches to my clothing
⏹️ ▶️ John for convenient carrying. But once you have something that, oh, I’m wearing this, then,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, forget it. It’s like, many people will take an electronic device, carry
⏹️ ▶️ John it in their pocket, or even clip it to their clothes. But the thing that people are willing to wear that is acknowledged
⏹️ ▶️ John as a wearing thing is Totally dictated by things that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John really doesn’t have any control over and I’m sure Apple’s up to the challenge But what a challenge that is
⏹️ ▶️ John Give me something that I will want to wear because if then it becomes a fashion statement
⏹️ ▶️ John an expression of self Much more so than even carrying a laptop or a phone even those
⏹️ ▶️ John those things do you know you carry a part of your image? With that thing I feel like wearing is like the next level
⏹️ ▶️ John and because basically if you make this thing ugly in the opinion of some buyer.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re going to be like, this is the most awesome device ever. I think it’s awesome, but I’m not going to wear it. And that’s part of the Google
⏹️ ▶️ John Glass thing, because that’s wearing. Once you put that thing on your head, that counts as wearing something.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if it looks awkward or geeky and gives you a weird image, no matter how awesome it is, you’re just going to be like, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, I mean, it’s hard for me to relate, because everything I own is unfashionable and ugly, and that makes me
⏹️ ▶️ John look stupid. But other people have lots of their self-image tied up into looking good.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you have to sort of, I guess, it’s like not step on those landmines
⏹️ ▶️ John to get a product into their hands that they’re willing to wear. Lots of nerds are willing. I mean, look at the people willing to wear glass.
⏹️ ▶️ John Some people just have no barrier. Like sure, I’ll put anything on if it has some practical value.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco You should get Google Glass, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or futuristic. Even I have my limits. But yeah, and
⏹️ ▶️ John that is such a dangerous part about wearable tech. And I don’t know how Apple in particular is going to navigate that, because
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not going to make 700 models of this. Samsung is going to make 700 models of the ripoff product, right? And you’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John be able to find one that works for you. It’s the same thing with phone cases, right? Even though you don’t wear
⏹️ ▶️ John a phone, people buy the phone but then there’s a bazillion cases and some of the cases you find hideous but other people love.
⏹️ ▶️ John Rhinestone encrusted things or wooden cases or things that look like they’re made of Legos or brushed
⏹️ ▶️ John metal, like that’s how people are able to even come to terms with the things they carry a lot of the time. If you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do something similar to something that you wear, Apple’s gonna be in trouble because no matter how neutral and tasteful they
⏹️ ▶️ John make it, some person’s going to say, I wouldn’t wear that. I won’t wear that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, but you’re also not considering that I think Apple at the moment anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is more than not very trendy. And so it’s trendy and kind of cool now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to have a silver laptop with a piece of fruit shining
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the lid. And I could swear that I had read stories years ago that people would connect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPod earbuds or iPhone earbuds to non Non Apple devices
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just so they also had the white crap
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John dangling. Yeah No,
⏹️ ▶️ John they would do that. But like I that’s what I’m saying I think like there is a part of personal expression
⏹️ ▶️ John embodied in Fashionable electronic devices that you carry and this is like the next level
⏹️ ▶️ John because you’re not just carrying this you’re wearing it Like it’s so crazy. Like think about shoes, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know How crazy people are about the shoes they’re willing and not willing to wear how many times you see somebody else’s shoes and you think?
⏹️ ▶️ John like, man, I would never wear those shoes. But the person wearing those loves those shoes. They paid 300
⏹️ ▶️ John bucks for them, right? It’s such an incredible range, and people will reject products
⏹️ ▶️ John that are perfectly good in every possible way, because they’ll just say, I can’t wear that. I won’t wear that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And yeah, it’ll be really interesting to see how Apple navigates this, because these are extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They are. But if you think about Apple’s normal devices, they’re extremely simple and tasteful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and generally speaking look good. Surely not to everyone, but generally speaking, there’s not a lot to them,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’re not very flashy, and they just look good. And so, I actually, I do agree with you, and I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that this is a whole new territory they’re not used to, but I also think that they’ll probably navigate these waters pretty darn
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, if they do the naked robotic core thing again, I mean, like I said, it’s work for them with the phone. Because like you said, oh, they make something
⏹️ ▶️ John tasteful, very unadorned, very subdued or whatever, but some people want it to be pink and
⏹️ ▶️ John rhinestone encrusted. So there better be a way for me to take a pink rhinestone and shove them all over the Apple iWatch,
⏹️ ▶️ John otherwise I’m not wearing that thing, because it looks just so boring and ugly and looks like a techno-bobble and mine needs to have rhinestones
⏹️ ▶️ John because I’m fabulous, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, I cannot wait to see you with your pink rhinestone-encrusted watch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am extremely excited for it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’ll go great with my Motorola clamshell phone. Now with color screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is what happens when you get three nerds talking about fashion.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, it never ends well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco goodness let’s we should do our next sponsor I was just about to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ask the good time all right our next sponsor it they need no introduction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and but the sad thing is that won’t apply to all of you because there are still people out there who have not bought this yet it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco silver I don’t know if it’s pronounced silver I say solver in my head but I saw says that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oxygen in my head so my head’s not always right I guess it’s silver so it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco s-o-u-l-v-e-r and what this is this This is an app for the Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone, and iPad. They told me to just wing it because they knew I’m a massive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fan of this, so they didn’t even give me a script. Solver is basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a hybrid between a calculator, a notepad, and a spreadsheet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you can kind of think of that. If you just search my site for Solver, you’ll see I’ve posted about it like 10
⏹️ ▶️ Marco times over the years. Oh my god, you have to get…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I’m working, I have this app open. I have it open now. Even for a pocket. I always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have it open. What I suggest you do, download this app. I’m pretty sure there’s a trial.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They didn’t even tell me. I should probably go look that up. I’m pretty sure, yes, there is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trial. Download the app. Give it a shot. What you want to do is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just, once you install this app, even just the trial, just hide calculator. If
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have it in your dock, take it out of your doc, never launch calculator again. And I suggest trying it on the Mac first, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s really, in my opinion, that’s where I use it the most, that’s where it’s best. Try it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out instead of calculator. And any time you would try to figure out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some little computation, type it into a scratch silver document instead. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once you start using it for like a day, you will very, you will instantly realize, oh my God, why have I been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using stupid calculator apps besides this all these years? Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why have I taken so long to find this app? It’s basically a scratch pad for numbers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I started using this, I don’t know, 2005 or something like that. They’ve been around forever. I started using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it forever ago. And ever since
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I started using it, I hardly ever use spreadsheets anymore. And I never use calculator anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is, and it’s for programmers, for people who are just doing simple calculations.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you’re the kind of person who has ever launched the calculator app on your computer, you can probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use this and you can probably benefit from it. So it’s called Solver, S-O-L-V-E-R.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s 20 bucks in the Mac App Store or directly from their site. They also have some volume license discounts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can get, for instance, a four computer household pack for only 25 bucks. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can get volume licenses. This is the kind of thing, like, if I was running a business with employees, which I I guess I won’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do because I apparently hate doing that. But if I was running a business with employees, I would buy one of these for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every employee and just have it just hide calculator on the computers through some kind of like group IT policy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and put this on there instead. Really it’s that good. So they also have for iOS.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now I use it for iOS, although I will say I use it for Mac more. But in iOS it’s really great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco First of all, on the iPad, there is no built-in calculator from Apple. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you need to install something if you ever need a calculator. will install this it’s awesome for lots of different things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s all and you know they it does formulas it does very you can use variables you can use simple logic you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use labels I mean it’s really an extremely high functioning application
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for for doing any kind of you know number scratchpad work it’s it’s just so good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything anything that you would otherwise use a simple spreadsheet for like oh let me figure out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know what my s3 costs are gonna be this month for my bandwidth like I just use solver it’s so it’s just so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco perfect for this so So anyway, it’s five bucks for iPad, it’s three bucks for iPhone. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even use it, I know this is going on long, but I even use it as a scoreboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I’m playing games in real life. Like if you’re playing 500 Rummy with people, playing any kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco table game, you need some way to keep score between rounds, I type things into Solver. Every person will have a line
⏹️ ▶️ Marco labeled with their initials or their name, and then I’ll just do score plus. And every single time there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a round, I’ll add another one to their name. You can always see, leave it out, you can always see what everyone’s total is and what each round was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before that. There’s just so many uses for this app. I use it constantly. Go get silver,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco please. For the love of all that is good, go get silver. It is that good. You need you need this app.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s by Aqualia. And it’s I’m not even gonna try to spell it. I’ll put in the show notes. It’s Aqualia
⏹️ ▶️ Marco comm slash silver, so you lv er, or find it in the Mac App Store or the iOS App Store.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to silver for sponsoring.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So not to pile on at all. But Solver, Solver, whatever it’s called, is one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the few apps that triple-dipped. In other words, I had to pay on all three platforms,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I didn’t feel bad about it, because it really is that good. And the other thing that I wanted to point out is that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know how a lot of people, ourselves included, have complained and moaned about how when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re building a calculator app for a computer, you don’t really… And actually, Marko, you wrote wrote a post about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this, I think. You don’t want to be encumbered by what’s physical.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And Solver or Solver or whatever is a great midway between a spreadsheet and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a calculator. And they were able to do that because they chucked out all the cruft and old stuff from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the physical world and just made something that’s really great in the computing world. Now that I think of it, I just totally stole a blog post,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I? Yeah, that’s entirely my blog post. But yeah, I believe I called it overdoing the interface metaphor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this was like back before most skeuomorphism debates, but the idea was like, you know, if you make a computer calculator,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t want to bring over like a big grid of buttons that you have to click on and then one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a single line display. Like that’s stupid. You know, the computers can do so much more than that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and if you just let them, you know, and so Solver is it’s a calculator app that was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clearly designed for computers and not designed to try to mimic what old calculators
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used to be. It was designed for what computers can actually do and do well and and you know it’s also it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a and it’s a document based app on the Mac and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forget, I don’t know if the iOS versions are document based, I’m pretty sure they are, and because what that means
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is on the Mac you get all of the line and mountain line, you know, auto save and version support and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uses iCloud to sync everything and it actually works. I’ve tried it between my laptop and my computer, it’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Really, it’s just a fantastic app. And the guys even told me, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you can probably sell it better than we can. and i think i i’ve basically devoted every chance i get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the last few years to talk about is that i devoted to trying to convince the world please for the love of god just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use this app it trust me it is that good and i mean even like when when the mac app store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco came out i bought it even though i already owned it by part of the mac app store just to a give them more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco money and be have a quick way to install it but after any reinstall or any other computer that i have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uh… it it really is that good
⏹️ ▶️ John i can’t believe that you guys that long for the skewered to come up I would have led with that. Basically,
⏹️ ▶️ John the calculator is to skeuomorphism, as this is to the opposite of that. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’m also a big fan,
⏹️ ▶️ John although I pronounce it solver, because I like that better. The other thing I’ll add is
⏹️ ▶️ John the reason I use this app all the time, and I actually use the dashboard widget of another skeuomorphic
⏹️ ▶️ John calculator occasionally, but I also have solver open all the time, although I just quit it before launching Skype,
⏹️ ▶️ John because I wanted to free up some memory to make sure Skype feels good is that this thing also does
⏹️ ▶️ John the stuff that you might find yourself typing into Google for and I use it to do math in a lazy way
⏹️ ▶️ John like I write 27 is the percentage of 359 write that into
⏹️ ▶️ John solver and it gives you the answer you could do that math yourself we all know basic algebra you can do division multiplication
⏹️ ▶️ John and figure it out but you know did I do the division wrong or did I put the wrong thing in the right place or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John you can do 5300 bytes squared in kilobytes and it will do the
⏹️ ▶️ John conversions for you and give you it does
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh, yeah, there’s unit conversions. There’s stock price lookups. Unit conversions.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the feature I like about it the best is that thing where you can write in a single English sentence
⏹️ ▶️ John that expresses what you want to know, and it will just give you the answer of it. And I find it faster to go to Solver than to
⏹️ ▶️ John go to Google Search Box and type these things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it’s a native app. It’s all right there. It’s all running already. And it’s just a text box. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think it is the one app where I find AutoSave the most satisfying. Because before AutoSave,
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t like the fact that it had the little modified dot, and I would quit. And they would ask me to save, and I was like, just save
⏹️ ▶️ John everything all the time, and now it does. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s fantastic, really. I mean, it’s hard to describe how good it is in just one ad spot, which is why this is taking us so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long. But believe me, you’ve got to try this app. It’s so good. And the people who develop it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seem like really nice guys. I’ve talked to them a lot over email in the last five years or so. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you just want to support this. And they’re always putting out updates to fix any little problems that come up, although honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve rarely ever seen a problem. I mean, it’s just so good. It’s one of those apps that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, it’s like your text editor of choice. It’s like one of those apps that you can look at whatever you spend on this and say,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this has helped me make so much more money than whatever it costs. Like this is so worth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the minimal price I paid for it once years ago, because it’s that important to what I do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so lest us continue to talk about this fantastic app the rest of the show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In terms of timely topics, The only one I’ve got left is WWDC, but I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had a proper think about what predictions I want to be wrong about. So is there anything that you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two wanted to bring up?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, yeah, because that’s coming up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, we’ve only got, next week should be our predictions show. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t want to do that today, but can if we have to. And I’ll be even more wrong if we do it today.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I don’t know if I’m right. It’s much better to do the prediction show right before WWDC, because then we have the highest
⏹️ ▶️ John chance of being right.
⏹️ ▶️ John You want to cheat and wait for all of the last bits
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and bursts. Well, honestly, do you think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything’s going to change between this week and next week with predictions? No, but
⏹️ ▶️ John our knowledge of it, yeah, but there’ll be something. All the obvious things that are in the invitation
⏹️ ▶️ John is like, oh, I bet they’ll show the new version of iOS in Mac OS X. That’s great. But
⏹️ ▶️ John we want to know what else. Is there anything else? Or what are the features? Do we get a leaked
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS 7 screenshot somewhere, some blurry image of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something else? Haswell notebooks?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Is that now, or is it going to be announced, or is it going to just have a little new badge after we walk out of the
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s not important enough? But those details will be clearer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think. I bet Haswell MacBook Pro updates would at least warrant an eight-slide Phil Schiller mention.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, they spent a lot of time on the new Retinas last year, and granted that was like, it’s the first bread and you know
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac but but certainly it’s worth something some slides showing how much faster
⏹️ ▶️ John and lower power there and all that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here’s an update to our notebook line
⏹️ ▶️ John Lord knows they’re not gonna be showing us new Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco so we want some
⏹️ ▶️ John hardware some hardware that can be in a clear acrylic tube outside
⏹️ ▶️ John you know they should just put an old Mac Pro in there and see how many people gather around it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know what they should do is they should take an old Mac Pro and slap a new sticker on the side I hear that works.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think what we’re gonna, I guess this is becoming predictions anyway, I think what we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna see is mostly the focus is gonna be on iOS 7 but I’m actually really curious
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to see what we learn about Mac OS 10.9. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John because if they keep with their pattern of cat modifier cat, then this comes up
⏹️ ▶️ John as cat again, right? Like that’s, four releases
⏹️ ▶️ John is a cycle. Cat, modifier, cat. And so either they’re done with cats,
⏹️ ▶️ John or we’ve got to have a new cat. I have been since like last year,
⏹️ ▶️ John or for a long time, like I have to give a name for the thing I put in my notes file.
⏹️ ▶️ John And mine is called links, L, Y, and X. Not that I think that’s what the cat name is going to
⏹️ ▶️ John be, but when I asked my brain, well brain, you have to type in something else to be your placeholder for 10.9, and
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want to write 10.9. I wrote in links. Because I can’t, can you even think of another? It’s like ocelot
⏹️ ▶️ John and all sorts of BS things. Either cat names are done, which I’m perfectly fine with. Good, can the cat names. I’m all for it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or my brain says Lynx. So, but I have no idea what they’re going to call it. I’ve heard nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, what’s the modifier going to be then?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. Mountain Lynx. Makeup. Graphical Lynx. Snow
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Graphical Lynx.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is, you know, another reason that Lynx won’t be the name, right? But I’m happy to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, do you think there’s going to be a 10.10? Because maybe there won’t be a modifier cat for this next one. Maybe they will change the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John to not have 10.10. No,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they’ll do. Well, I think it feels like, what are they going to… To
⏹️ ▶️ John go to something where you’re like, oh, this is not 10. It’s like, this one goes to 11. If you want to do some sort of thing
⏹️ ▶️ John like that, you can’t just do that as a marketing push. There has to be something to go along with that. And I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John see any kind of change that’s that radical in the 10.10 time frame.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like 10.10 should be the modifier cat release of whatever the hell they have cooked up for this thing, but who knows
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean For releases is definitely a pattern, but they break the pattern where the hell they feel like it So
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, I mean obviously for obvious reasons I’m very interested in what’s going on there, and I’m less interested in what’s going on in iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’m sure iOS will be by far the more dominant focus in the news And I’m not expecting anything
⏹️ ▶️ John or shattering out of 10.9, but the question is all right well Then what the hell is it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah? that’s like I’m really curious to just see like what you know besides the name of course which is very interesting but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but what do they like what will 10.9 be for the for for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the marketing first of all like what will they market about the features of it and then you know will there be anything interesting for developers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will there be substantial improvements to the core in any in any significant way like you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know what what is there to do and it’s only been a year since mountain lion so you know now that they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on their shorter cycle so it’s It’s not going to be a massive rewrite of anything.
⏹️ ▶️ John plenty to do. But the most interesting question is, given how much attention
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple wants to focus on OS X, what, because they can’t do everything, what things do they
⏹️ ▶️ John prioritize? Because that will sort of give you an idea of what they feel is important. Do they just
⏹️ ▶️ John do things that they would have had to do anyway because they’re changes to the core OS to benefit most OSes?
⏹️ ▶️ John With Lion Mountain Lion, they almost entirely focused on things that
⏹️ ▶️ John bring together the mental space of the Mac and iOS in terms of making the application look
⏹️ ▶️ John a certain way, having them be able to have iCloud integration, like trying to make it so, hey, you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John used your iPhone or your iPad, this Mac is not all that different. Take a look, look at the Contacts
⏹️ ▶️ John app, see how it’s kind of the same, like stuff like that. And the autosave, hey, you don’t have to save things on iOS, you know, to
⏹️ ▶️ John varying degrees of success, but that was where they were putting their energy. And they weren’t, for example, putting it into a new file
⏹️ ▶️ John system, or making the OS faster, improving the
⏹️ ▶️ John virtual memory system, changing out the kernel to have better, like all sorts of nitty gritty things that would be totally interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John to someone like me. But Apple’s saying, well, we’re not getting any bang for the buck out of that. Don’t spend all your
⏹️ ▶️ John time working on that. Instead, spend your time in this other area. So they did that with
⏹️ ▶️ John Lion, and they sort of repented a little bit with Mountain Lion, to say where they had overreached and
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of shore things up and put a third panel into the stupid book metaphor app like, well a book can
⏹️ ▶️ John have three parts right? But then one of them has to be half of it and the other one has to be 25 and 25%?
⏹️ ▶️ John Ugh. Anyway. Do they keep doing that? Or
⏹️ ▶️ John do they concentrate in a new area this time? And like Fusion Drive would have been an obvious thing but they already released
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Fusion Drive missed Mountain Lion. I feel like they wanted to get it into that. But they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John like, alright, well fine, screw it. Fusion Drive. It’s not tied to another Release it just appears suddenly with some
⏹️ ▶️ John new iMacs and stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well And that was also a good way to sell hardware you know like like the way Syria was tied to the 4s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know that was a good way to say Even though you can create it now on the command line
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nobody really knows that there’s no interface and disk utility and no one’s doing it really except like super
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nerds like for the most part It’s like if you want the combination of a very high speed and very high
⏹️ ▶️ Marco capacity you must buy a new iMac or Mac mini
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I don’t I don’t I give them a pass on that because unlike the the Siri thing
⏹️ ▶️ John anything having to do with with Lola, we’ll just drive crap is really sensitive to the
⏹️ ▶️ John specific mechanism and you know drivers and everything involved there to the point where I really
⏹️ ▶️ John Believe that basically it’s not that it won’t work It’s just that they they didn’t QA it in any configuration like
⏹️ ▶️ John they only had time and you know They only QA did in these specific configurations and it probably will
⏹️ ▶️ John work perfectly fine in tons of other configurations but like whatever your SSD either does or doesn’t support the trim command
⏹️ ▶️ John or has some other feature or Ends up running to some pathological case that they never tested for
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever So I don’t I don’t blame them for being super conservative with the supported hardware there But
⏹️ ▶️ John like they didn’t hold it for the next OS release because they have this hardware They wanted to ship they just it just didn’t make it didn’t make
⏹️ ▶️ John the OS that they wanted to make like in that WWDC session They hinted it There was this thing that they
⏹️ ▶️ John would like to talk about but can’t and that was the fusion drive, right? It just missed the release. It didn’t get on
⏹️ ▶️ John the boat for that one. So they put it out mid-release. But Fusion Drive would be an awesome 10.9 feature. If
⏹️ ▶️ John they had announced that to WVDC, we’d be like, wow, this is great. 10.9’s got some really cool features. You see that Fusion Drive?
⏹️ ▶️ John But now that’s kind of spoiled by it already being out there. I mean, I’m sure they’ll have sessions on it and
⏹️ ▶️ John the support for it will be expanded and blah, blah, blah. But that kind of takes some of the wind out of its sail.
⏹️ ▶️ John And my eternal new file system thing, probably not this year either. Who knows?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and actually, that just got me thinking, there are still a fair amount of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Macs that have platter drives, right? Because we just mentioned the Fusion Drive, which is a half platter,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, maybe more than half platter and also an SSD. But most of the lower end
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Macs, or MacBooks and MacBook Pros, the non-Retina ones anyway, they all still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have platter drives by default, right? So the reason I bring this up is I wonder
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if, and I’m looking mostly to John for your two cents on this. I wonder if the Mac line
⏹️ ▶️ Casey switches, well if it can, let’s assume it can, and if it switches to all flash
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hard drives, would that lead to easier choices in either creating
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or picking a new file system? Whereas right now they’ve kind of got a leg in two very different worlds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where you have to support both the comparatively old and slow platters
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as well as this brand new, well, reasonably new, I should say, flash
⏹️ ▶️ Casey system. So if everything was flash and that’s all we needed to worry
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about, would that be easier? And the corollary to that would be, would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iOS jump to a different file system before the OS X
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does because everything on iOS is flash?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not going to jump to all flash. So they’re stuck with spinning drives for the foreseeable future.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was saying in a past episode of some podcast about what the next… Assuming there
⏹️ ▶️ John are some Mac Pros or Mac Pro-like machines or something, whatever, you know what I’m talking about, I thought
⏹️ ▶️ John that those will be Fusion Drive and you won’t have a choice. Like, you won’t be able to get it not as Fusion Drive.
⏹️ ▶️ John You won’t be able to get it as pure SSD because that storage is too small, and you won’t be able to get it without an SSD. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re getting Fusion Drive, period. Because that is their medium-term solution for
⏹️ ▶️ John make it faster, but also let people store their gigantic libraries of stuff. And that’s why they made it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Having the flash versus spinning disk, what that
⏹️ ▶️ John split is going to force them to do if they ever get off their butts is use some form of native storage on the
⏹️ ▶️ John flash. Like there are lots of other systems out there that do this type of thing. File systems
⏹️ ▶️ John are designed for spinning things with particular behaviors of access time and sequential access
⏹️ ▶️ John is faster than random and seeks really kill you. And the whole file system is laid out in such a way way to minimize those things, or hopefully
⏹️ ▶️ John laid out in a way to minimize. And all those things are either the opposite or just completely
⏹️ ▶️ John moot on SSDs because their performance characteristics are so different. Like random access versus sequential access
⏹️ ▶️ John becomes less meaningful when you’ve just got a bunch of chips that you’re addressing, but they have their own particular quirks or whatever. So
⏹️ ▶️ John a file system layer on top of that is almost like… I mean, there are lots of file systems tailored
⏹️ ▶️ John to Flash or whatever, but Apple’s the kind of company who could use just, you know, raw access to the NAND.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, particularly on iOS devices, like, why not? Like, everything is already there. You still have to provide the same interface
⏹️ ▶️ John to the application, so maybe that’s a complication for them. But if they want to extract the maximum performance
⏹️ ▶️ John with the lowest overhead from Flash, you don’t need to go with the file system. Not only just the file system that was designed
⏹️ ▶️ John for spinning disks, but you don’t need what we think of as formally as a file system now. You just need to continue to provide the same
⏹️ ▶️ John interface, you know, the same driver interface to the higher levels of the OS. So it looks like HFS, because it
⏹️ ▶️ John always has to look like HFS plus, because all the APIs expect it to look like that. but under the covers it doesn’t have to be, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think that they probably won’t even do that, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the reasons I think they need a new file system have little to do with spinning disk versus flash, it just has to do with the fact that HFS
⏹️ ▶️ John is really old and crappy in all the ways that I’ve listed in my various articles complaining about this,
⏹️ ▶️ John and if they come up with a new one, I don’t think it will matter that it’s not 100% tailored
⏹️ ▶️ John to SSDs. It’ll be fine, like, And they’ll put it on the spinning disks, and they’ll probably also
⏹️ ▶️ John put it on the SSDs. And they’ll use core storage to make Fusion Drive out of them. And hopefully we’ll all be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. We’ll find that. We’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John find that, yeah. Now, the world you’re thinking of is like, oh, wouldn’t it be great? We don’t have to worry about spinning disks anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John We just use Flash. But it’s just not here. I mean, only Marco can get the big
⏹️ ▶️ John one. Even that one can’t hold his, well, it probably was your iPhoto library’s like 260 gigs or something. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it actually does hold almost everything I have.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but that’s not an average person’s thing, where I easily
⏹️ ▶️ John have, I fill a terabyte drive easily. My next computer cannot have a terabyte drive as its main drive, because
⏹️ ▶️ John that won’t be big enough. I’m not using that much stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John People still can’t afford terabyte SSDs, and they won’t be able to next year either,
⏹️ ▶️ John or probably the next year after that either. So for a long time, we’re going to, And spinning drives keep getting bigger too.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Fusion Drive, by all accounts, is amazing in terms of how it makes it feel like it really
⏹️ ▶️ John is just an SSD, but you still get all that storage. Because people’s usage patterns really are, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John you do just hit a small set of files over and over again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well that’s why I wonder if, you know, like with Fusion Drive, I believe the ones that ship in the MX, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only 128 gigs, right? On the SSD portion?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John like it’s not, it isn’t big.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the point is, it uses like a four gig write buffer, and then the rest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it is roughly 120 gigs worth of frequently accessed files or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frequently accessed block storage and you know if you think about it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s really not that much reason why they couldn’t also build that into a lot of laptops except cost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the problem is the retinas are already high-priced items and are already all flash
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John retinas, they won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John fit in. Spinning is not coming back to laptops.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but they could get a little bit more life and a nice performance boost if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they would build in a little tiny 128 gig module into the non-Retina
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptops that still exist. The Air wouldn’t need them. So actually, I guess I’m talking myself out of this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John the Air’s already all flashed, the Retina’s already all flashed. Spinning is not coming back to laptops.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the other ones are all too cheap. They can’t afford the margin. All right, nevermind.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, I mean, it’s just basically like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just the iMac, I mean, their whole desktop line is running like, You have the iMac that’s like, why would you even buy
⏹️ ▶️ John a big hunk of thing on a disk if it doesn’t come with like a terabyte of storage? Because like, what’s the point? Why not just get an
⏹️ ▶️ John Air and hook it up to a Thunderbolt display or whatever? And there’s the Mini, which still has spinning, but also has the
⏹️ ▶️ John option to SSD, and those spinnings will probably go away too. Like it’s really just the Mac Pro, because like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s got the big bays and you can put the big drives in there. And for people who have huge amounts of data,
⏹️ ▶️ John SSDs just are still way too expensive for that. spinning just keep getting
⏹️ ▶️ John bigger and cheaper and it’s like what you’re leaving money on the table if you don’t have a solution to let
⏹️ ▶️ John people take advantage of that cheap storage and they do apple has a solution it’s there waiting for them so they’re they’re going to use it’s medium
⏹️ ▶️ John term it’s not it’s not going to go away today it’s not going to go away tomorrow it will go away once
⏹️ ▶️ John you know once ssds get big enough and cheap enough to serve as
⏹️ ▶️ John the one and only complete main drive for a normal person as long as long
⏹️ ▶️ John as I guess the size of the pictures we’re taking where the cameras don’t scale with the same rate that SSD
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, oops. All right with that let’s wrap it up.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right thanks a lot to our two sponsors. Solver by Aqualia Software. Go to Solver, go to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco aqualia.com slash Solver. We’ll link that in the show notes. And Oxygen for Co, Oxygen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oxygen for Coco from Ram Object Software. It’s spelled Oxygen though with an E on the end. You’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Go to Ram object software doc or go to rim objects.com slash oxygen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with an E on the end and use coupon code ATP 13 for 20% off
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now the show is over they didn’t even mean to begin because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was accidental, it was accidental And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can find the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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 Anti
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey U-S-A Syracuse. It’s accidental, accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They did it in me in two.
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, accidental. Tech podcasts, it’s so long.
⏹️ ▶️ John Set on the show, it’s a good title.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey modifier, cat.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree. And also I should add
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when you said graphical links, I was thinking to myself I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco would pass it on. I think you’re the only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco person who got that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Do you guys have links installed?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Does it come? Let me see.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it doesn’t because I always build it and install it. And I’m pissed when it doesn’t come.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I definitely do not.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like you build it yourself and it doesn’t come with SSL support and it annoys me. Oh, and what’s the other thing?
⏹️ ▶️ John Wget now is cranky about SSL certificates and you have to pass the like no certificate
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco check option. That doesn’t come built anymore either. I know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s one of the things. It’s like Solver.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like when you get a new Mac, I install Quicksilver, Solver, like all the apps that need BB edit. And I also go and install Wget and Lynx.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, but seriously, who likes Curl? Like you have to pass the capital O option
⏹️ ▶️ John to do the one thing that’s the common case. Like what good, oh, the Curl’s defaults is just spewed into standard
⏹️ ▶️ John app? That’s talking about an app with terrible defaults. That’s why I installed Wget. just alias w at the curl
⏹️ ▶️ John minus capital o but yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah we have show but text editors were like everyone is like stuck with you know like Marco stuck with text mate because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just what he got used to right and you can like never leave it so he’ll be like 70 years old still using text mate to
⏹️ ▶️ John and everyone else’s you know using
⏹️ ▶️ John still be an alpha neural yeah the neural interfaces or whatever well it’s same thing with like Unix shells where like
⏹️ ▶️ John I know so many people myself included where whatever Unix shell they like learned when they first learned Unix, they’d
⏹️ ▶️ John never leave it and they’d just carry it around with them forever. I live in fear of the day of like, MicroSend’s not going to come with TCS-H,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is my login shell, because that’s what the login shell was at BU in 1993. It’s one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things, like, once you learn one, there’s not really enough benefit to learn any other ones to make it worth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the learning curve. Like, you just, you know, the one you use keeps working.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, you just
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco files with you forever. They all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have very similar abilities, you know, so it’s not like there’s like a massive reason to switch.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, unless you use bash which sucks, but you know Yeah, I think of changing to like ZSH
⏹️ ▶️ John or one of the like the super fancy modern like the equivalent of hipster shells Not really because
⏹️ ▶️ John hipsters didn’t exist when you know But like they do have lots of really amazing features But then I just think
⏹️ ▶️ John about the amount of time I have to spend to recreate my preferred Key bindings and environment
⏹️ ▶️ John and all that stuff and I say, you know what just keep going with TCS age but like for the past but
⏹️ ▶️ John seven, eight years, maybe ten years at work, I’ve been, I’m always the only guy who doesn’t use Bash.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because like all the people who grew up in the Linux generation, like Bash was the default, and they all just use Bash.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so people don’t, they see my shell prompt and it’s not a Bash shell prompt, and you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John they just say, just type export whatever equals and I type something different, like that’s not going to work, what are you doing, what
⏹️ ▶️ John is this, what are you typing into? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco there’s more to life than that. That
⏹️ ▶️ John must be hard for you. It is because my entire office, for test plans or for
⏹️ ▶️ John putting instructions up or whatever, I have to translate everything into Bash-ese because I can’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because for the people who don’t really know Unix, I can’t just tell them what to do. I have to type out the exact commands,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then I have to start a little Bash cell in one of my windows so I can just make sure I’m not making typos and stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s like I’m speaking a foreign language in the midst of all these other people.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, you could just convert to Bash. No.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why would I ever do that? It’s terrible. The only reason to use bash is if you were
⏹️ ▶️ John doing shell programming, because no one should ever do any shell programming in CSH or TCSH. But
⏹️ ▶️ John why would I ever do shell programming? We already went over that at the beginning of the show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is it bad? I probably shouldn’t say this when we’re still live, but is it bad that I’m almost enjoying this part of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the show more than the actual
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco show? Oh, this is all going in.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my God, I hope so. Oh, this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John fantastic. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think this would have been a good topic for an actual show, instead of just me yelling about things.