69: Welcome to the Web, Casey
13 Jun 2014Casey learns web programming, App Bundles as upgrade pricing, HFS+ (of course), Metal, and the next Apple TV as a disruptive game console.
Episode Description:
- Follow-up:
- It's OK if you got two T-shirts. Keep them both.
- Marco was wrong about CloudKit limits.
- Casey's broken Showbot.
- Abusing new App Bundles and Complete This Bundle to achieve upgrade pricing in the App Store.
- The WWDC NDA is mostly gone.
- Marco's likely filesystem corruption and restore.
- Apple's new Metal graphics API.
- Might the next Apple TV become a game console?
- How Apple TV Might Disrupt Microsoft and Sony (Ben Thompson)
- TV "pucks" for gamers
- After-show special: Tiff and John discuss Journey.
Sponsored by:
Transcript start
⏹️ ▶️ John Time was when all AOL users were behind one big proxy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We have important follow up this week. First of all, if you got two t-shirts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is fine. That was supposed to happen. What happened was the first t-shirt had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some printing problems mostly on the back where the the font wasn’t rendered
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it like it like fell back to a default font and it printed our monospace code
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a fixed width font variable with font you mean yes sorry thank you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve missed you John and then
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just picturing all the feedback if we just let that slide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thanks so anyway yeah so the second one is it has the fixed font issue
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which because it also messed about the spacing and everything it was it was really weird looking before so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco teespring was kind enough to reprint all the shirts at no cost and send to everybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was supposed to happen so it was no mistake if you got a second one that’s in fact it might be a mistake
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you didn’t and you don’t have to return the other ones that you got or anything just you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know keep them with Teespring’s compliments and we thank Teespring for fixing the error so quickly and
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah the question is which shirt now is more valuable because as we mentioned in the past shows about the
⏹️ ▶️ John shirt being printed if the printing on the back messes up it’s like the upside-down airplane stamp so now you have two shirts
⏹️ ▶️ John you have one where the printing on the back is totally messed up and it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John in a variable with font but the metrics of the letter spacing are like the metrics of a mod the monospace
⏹️ ▶️ John font yeah crazy amounts of space it just looks terrible and then there’s the one printed the way we intended
⏹️ ▶️ John which one of those shirts is better now because you could be like I’ve got one of the ATP shirts with the printing air but everybody’s
⏹️ ▶️ John got one with the with the printing error at this point anyone who’s got any 80 pictures
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right it’s the same amount of both and it will always be the same amount of both because it’s not like you can go order
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the shirt now and get the fixed one only like it was it’s the same quantity of both shirts that will probably ever exist
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah so next year we’ll probably have a different shirt and we’ll see how this turns out but we’ve been fielding a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of tweets and emails from people asking about the double shirts just keep them and a lot of emails
⏹️ ▶️ John and tweets from people who said they got two shirts but did not notice any difference between them
⏹️ ▶️ John and that was surprising to me for listeners of the show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t tell Teespring
⏹️ ▶️ John well but there’s definitely a difference. Once I feel like once we tell them, oh, there was a problem with the printing on the back and they lay them both
⏹️ ▶️ John down and look at the two backs, there’s a big difference between them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Also the, um, the ATP badge on the front on the new shirt is a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lighter in, in the shades because, you know, when you, when you give somebody a color to print
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a shirt, it has to go through color conversion and become a print color. And that entire world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just sucks in every possible way. The entire world of like color converting for print and trying to get colors to look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right in print. It’s just a terrible, terrible existence. And here’s to Teespring
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for living in that world so that we all don’t have to.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MG Yep. No, that was very nice of them to write that wrong. And regardless of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who was at fault, it sounds like it might have been a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B, but…
⏹️ ▶️ John JS Oh, no. Teespring was entirely at fault. Let’s not say who was at fault. Because, like, I mean, so here’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. Like, I feel bad for them. It’s good. Teespring has always been good to me and they’ve, like, they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John taken action to correct problems. But it’s better if you if you don’t have the problem to begin with. And I’m speaking mostly from Teespring’s
⏹️ ▶️ John perspective, because from the customer’s perspective, everybody got two shirts for the price of one. So it’s great for
⏹️ ▶️ John customers, but for Teespring, like Marco said, it’s like, he uploaded the thing, it looked correct in the preview,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they printed a huge number of shirts. Like no human looked at them to compare them to
⏹️ ▶️ John the preview on their website. Like you figured you’d print one, look at it and say, yep, okay, print 1,000 or so of those, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like they need to amend their process, because it’s, you know, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John a great company that they’re eating that cost and doing it, but on the other hand, it’s kind of their fault. And I would, I’d feel like they would
⏹️ ▶️ John have processes in place to do a human sanity check of runs over 1000 shirts or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, yeah, and in their defense, they, as soon as they became aware of the problem, they were in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco contact with me a lot. And we I had talked to like three different people there. And everyone’s trying to resolve the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing they wanted me to, you know, send them the original file that caused the error, so they could fix it. And they told me like, they’re changing all these policies.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think it scared them enough and probably caused them to lose enough money that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they made some changes as a result.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, they bent over backwards for my hypercritical shirts as well. Like they’ve definitely been, you know, I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John they have that part of the business down where you’re responsive to customers and do the right thing. They just got to work on the other part of the business
⏹️ ▶️ John where you don’t make mistakes to begin with. And I mean, if I wanted to ding Markov or anything, I assumed you were uploading outlines.
⏹️ ▶️ John If I had known you were uploading text, I would have advised you to upload outlines.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In my defense, yeah, so the issue was the they recommend you upload an EPS. Okay, and I don’t know anything about this stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This was one of the first times I’d ever used Illustrator was to do this and I uploaded the EPS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I checked that it had the embedded font and I didn’t convert to outlines. I didn’t know that was a thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you could or should do. So I didn’t convert to outlines. I just uploaded the EPS with the embedded copy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the font and every designer once I, you know, once we had the problem and I mentioned this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every designer was like, oh no, you never do that because printers so often screw up. Well, I didn’t know that. I didn’t have the experience
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to know that. And so I thought I played the embedded font. It’s fine. Right. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the bigger problem, I think, was that in their image preview on the site,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it rendered it correctly, because the image, the thing that generates the image preview has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a different rasterizer than the thing that actually prints onto the shirts. And so that’s kind of a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And that’s why it’s ultimately Tee Springs fault. Like, know Marco is the inexperience of not a
⏹️ ▶️ John confirmed outline because he hadn’t been using illustrator since illustrator 88 on his black and white Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John and bring things down lines but you know the preview shows
⏹️ ▶️ John one thing and you get something else printed like that’s the whole basis of the site is like you up you click these buttons you see a picture
⏹️ ▶️ John you say yes I want that picture to become a real thing you click some more buttons and then a real shirt shows up at your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right and and in their defense one of the things they they asked me for was a copy of the original file because they said their rasterizer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should have used the embedded font. Like that was not intended behavior that it didn’t like and they didn’t want to require
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone to use outlines because you know you know Teespring used by a lot of amateurs you know it’s it’s not it’s not always professional
⏹️ ▶️ Marco designers using it it’s oftentimes like you know some some group maybe making thing making shirts to raise money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for like you know their youth group or something and and so you know they want it to work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with people who are not illustrator experts so they you know anyway they resolved it well so I’m happy with them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, let’s move on. We have a lot of feedback. Our feedback is like 15
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pages long in our document. What is all this?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know. I think it’s mostly, John, because I certainly didn’t do it. But another really quick one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We were all obviously in San Francisco last week for WWDC. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just wanted to quickly say thank you to everyone who said hi to us, to everyone that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well purchased and then wore a shirt, to anyone who went to the talk show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and to Gruber for having us all on the talk show. I had a really fantastic week. I think I speak for the two of you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guys as well in saying so. And so again, anyone who spent any amount of time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with us, even if it was just to say, Hey, thank thank you for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I have some more follow up on the talk show. Oh, and in addition to saying, Yeah, I agree.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That was awesome. Thank you. You know, the the the ditto of what Casey just said.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was completely wrong about how cloud kit limits work. And I, I definitely said the wrong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing on the talk show. And I think I even said the wrong thing on our show last week, where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Cloud Kit limits are raised per user by something like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one meg of database use 100 megs of assets use, but each user is not limited to that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one meg and 100 megs. That simply every user adds that amount to your total pool,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the resources are pooled between everybody. So that does dramatically change things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for how you can use Cloud Kit and whether you can rely on it being sufficient for you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or not. It still leaves a few questions like, you know, we still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t really know what happens when you hit that limit. And you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, anything involving like, you know, so you know, what is there? What happens like if one user
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a complete outlier and uses like a gig of the database somehow because they have some script going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that runs awry or something, you know, like, how do you how do you solve issues like that with it? there’s still some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco issues but it isn’t nearly as as scary as I assumed it was because the resources
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are pooled by that amount not limited per user
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure that change that the clarification it’s it’s important but I don’t sure it changes it entirely
⏹️ ▶️ John for you know we were talking about the example of the could you enter could you do Instagram on this even though users
⏹️ ▶️ John will have varying amounts if it’s like only a hundred megs of like blob storage per user
⏹️ ▶️ John any user who uses Instagram will blow through that in like a year if they’re regular It’s like your average user will
⏹️ ▶️ John blow through that. So it opens it up a little bit to more variability.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you think most of your users are gonna use like one meg and a couple of people are gonna use like 500 megs, then yeah, having it add 100 megs to
⏹️ ▶️ John the pool for each user for blob storage is good. But
⏹️ ▶️ John anything that’s involving serious amounts of data, you immediately get to that question. All right, well, if I start my own little Instagram,
⏹️ ▶️ John after a year, everybody’s gonna have more than 100 megs of photos, right? So then what happens?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, but you know, but like the issue, like the instance I gave on the talk show, which was, you know, could they use this for Vesper?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, Vesper is a note-taking app that supports image blob attachments. But most people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t use a lot of images, most people just use it for text, and most people would have a hard time making a megabyte of text
⏹️ ▶️ Marco notes unless they used it very, very heavily. But you know, so in Vesper’s case, like, it might be a bad idea
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to say, you can only have up to a megabyte of text notes, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bet their average is so far below a megabyte that they would be okay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to use it if they wanted to. I
⏹️ ▶️ John would pull stats from all active users before I committed to that, you know what I mean? See what
⏹️ ▶️ John the average, you can find out what the average is, make sure whatever your user data collection agreement
⏹️ ▶️ John allows for this or whatever, and then just see what the average size is, because who knows what people are doing with Vesper.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe people are using it as a photo collecting app for all we know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of the discussions they were having before they launched the Sync Service
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was, you know, like they don’t actually know. Because, you know, before there was a sync service a few weeks ago, they didn’t actually know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what the average usage was of these things. You know, how much people actually, how many pictures, because, you know, hosting pictures is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously a lot more data than hosting text. And they’re like, well, how many pictures do people take with Vesper? You know, are there a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of image notes? Are the images very large? Are there outliers that have just tons and tons and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tons of image notes? And, you know, you don’t know that. Like, I’m facing this with Overcast now. I’m actually getting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reasonably close to launch now. And I have no idea what to expect on the server side,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and therefore the cost side. It’s very hard to predict these things. That’s one of the reasons why CloudKit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is very attractive to a lot of people, because if you have this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rockin’ launch where you get way more people than you thought you would, your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco costs are not going to skyrocket, well, unless you hit one of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco master limits that’s really, really high, that I think that would be quite difficult. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you’re caught you the unpredictability of your initial cost and initial server needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is kind of removed as a stress and pain and possible business model pain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco point you know. So it is very it is a very attractive option and I think a lot of people are gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John I hope somebody does so that we can see if things have really improved because all I think
⏹️ ▶️ John back to when you mentioned like if you have a really big launch you’ll be happy you did this. Letterpress? Yeah letterpress
⏹️ ▶️ John and what’s the first really popular app to use this apple provided cloud service
⏹️ ▶️ John and in the case of game center it was letterpress it was very popular and game center
⏹️ ▶️ John fell over and cried like a little baby
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well apparently apple’s new photos app and the photosync service
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is supposedly all built on cloud kit it’s the it’s the same thing and i you know who knows they probably have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of reserve capacity maybe but i don’t know you know supposedly that is what they are doing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So in other news, we have been, it is currently 915 and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was trying to use my ShowBot and Marco tried to tell me… It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey broke already? Hold on. Marco tried to tell me when I was writing the ShowBot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a couple of weeks ago that people, and these are my words not Marco’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that people are jerks and they’re going to do whatever they can to mess with the ShowBot. And I said no,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, it’ll be fine. Our listeners are great. They’re awesome. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of a sudden, while you were talking, I look at the show bot, which is all run kind of real time using
⏹️ ▶️ Casey WebSockets. And next thing I know, I see that the does Casey
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show bot actually work title, just skyrocketing in votes. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so someone apparently has decided to make Web API
⏹️ ▶️ Casey requests or a WebSocket request to add a vote to that particular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey item and then eventually crash the showbot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re not being jerks. They’re being good testers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, maybe. But anyway, so the point is that it lasted 15
⏹️ ▶️ Casey minutes and that is how long the chat room can handle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a new toy to play with and then subsequently break.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re going to be a good father. Have I mentioned that your showbot has never worked for me? What
⏹️ ▶️ John do you mean it’s never worked? It is never remember I tried I tried to use it once from work and I said oh maybe it’s not working because of a
⏹️ ▶️ John firewall because some weird web socket thing and I’ve tried it from home and all I ever see is the word connecting that’s all I’ve ever seen of
⏹️ ▶️ John the of your show about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well if you want you can see that now I just
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I know I’m looking I’m looking at it now
⏹️ ▶️ John and it says connecting so I’m I you know Marco’s crappy PHP thing
⏹️ ▶️ John one Casey’s node show bot zero
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well that’s what I get for trying to do some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fancy But his is Ajax. It’s even better. It’s Websocket. He left right past Ajax.
⏹️ ▶️ John He went to he went too far. Oh, wait, something happened. Now it says titles. No, something’s happening. So that
⏹️ ▶️ John was like a seven minute load time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you’re if you remember, Casey, what I also told you is, you know, it would be nice if it had some kind of persistent storage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t lose all the titles that have been suggested up until that. I know. I know. The problem is, so it would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be nice if it could write it out to a file every few
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seconds. Well, but that’s the thing is all kidding aside. I did look into this and the problem is because this is hosted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Heroku because I generally like Heroku, the file system is ephemeral.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so even if I dump something to file, then if I do anything, that file
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will go away. Like if I restart the dyno like I just did, the file will go away.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why don’t you just make a web request to someone who’s running a real web server. I was waiting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, I hate to tell you, Casey, but my servers can save files. It’s a crazy thing. I know it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bleeding edge, brand new technology, but my servers are actually able to save data to disk.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and that’s the thing is what I need to do is, as people are recommending in the chat, I need to use Postgres or some other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey SQL or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t need to use Postgres for show titles, for crying out loud. Make a file with numbers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t. That’s why I didn’t. But apparently Heroku’s file system is all ephemeral
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or maybe it isn’t and I just don’t realize it. But the only reason I was supposed to or that I was trying to bring this up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was to point out that it took virtually no time for the chat room to just completely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tear apart my show bot. Now they’re putting in script tags, putting in long titles.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Welcome to the web, Casey. Have you ever used a computer? Oh my God, this is why you a**holes don’t have nice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things. This is ridiculous. I quit. I quit the show and I quit you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, not you two, everyone else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love that you were so naive that you didn’t think this would happen. You’re such a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice person, Casey. You really are.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had faith in humanity and God, how wrong I was. I’m sorry. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we can carry on. I’m just going to ignore my own creation. Whatever you big jerks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s the three of us are cool. It’s everyone else I don’t like. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey moving on. All right. So we have some follow up
⏹️ ▶️ John next bit of follow up. This is after WRC. A bunch of people tweeted this at me and I thought it was
⏹️ ▶️ John clever. We didn’t get to it in the actual WRC show. And I haven’t actually
⏹️ ▶️ John looked into this because I have not seen any of the sessions related to this because they’re mostly iOS related and everything. But in
⏹️ ▶️ John the keynote, they mentioned bundles. You can sell a bunch of apps on the App Store together for
⏹️ ▶️ John one price. And apparently, kind of like in iTunes, where there’s the complete this album button,
⏹️ ▶️ John where you buy the rest of the song, buy the album, minus the cost of the songs you already bought
⏹️ ▶️ John in the album, there’s a complete this bundle thing on the App Store. I’m assuming there is because these people were
⏹️ ▶️ John telling me was, where if you bought one app in a two app bundle, you could complete this bundle by
⏹️ ▶️ John simply paying the difference for the second app. And people were proposing this
⏹️ ▶️ John as a terrible, confusing way to do upgrade pricing. Because what you would do is, when you have a
⏹️ ▶️ John new version of your app, you keep the first version of the app on the store, you introduce the new version at whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John price you want to sell it to new users, and then you make a bundle that includes the old version and the new version
⏹️ ▶️ John for less than the sum of their prices, which allows people who already own the old version to complete
⏹️ ▶️ John this bundle, effectively giving them an upgrade price. Which again, like I said, I think that is terrible and confusing
⏹️ ▶️ John and not obvious, but it is a clever hack of the rules as presented to me by
⏹️ ▶️ John these people who sent me this information. Do either of you know if that stuff is accurate about complete this bundle? I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do not. Are there any bundles actually in the store yet that we could even see? I don’t think there are. I don’t think you can make them
⏹️ ▶️ John If this is all true and it actually works like this, people will do this for their upgrades,
⏹️ ▶️ John for upgrade pricing, and it will be confusing to users. And so that’s a shame. Like, imagine people on their websites
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to tell people like, if you want upgrade pricing, go get the bundle, but do complete this
⏹️ ▶️ John bundle. And ugh, I don’t know. That’s, this is like, if this loophole
⏹️ ▶️ John exists, Apple needs to close it, not because it’s terrible to allow upgrade pricing, but because it’s so confusing. And you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John developers will jump on it in a second. Everyone will have these stupid instructions on their website telling people how to get upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ John pricing by buying a bundle, which is not obvious.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, well, also, I mean, the biggest thing that I think would blow a hole in this is, do you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have all the apps that are in the bundle still in the app store by themselves? Because if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you do, that means you have to have your old version still for sale while your new version is for sale. And that’s terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so the idea, I mean, again, the terrible proposed idea is you keep the old one in the store
⏹️ ▶️ John for a limited time because the upgrade pricing would be some window of like a couple months and you raise the individual price
⏹️ ▶️ John of the like the standalone old version to something crazy that no one would accidentally buy. Of course, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s like you hope no one will actually buy until someone actually buys your, you know, $999 app and is pissed off at you
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. But that all this is just like a terrible workaround to get
⏹️ ▶️ John into a loophole to give your existing customers a cheaper price for your new app. But it has so many bad side effects.
⏹️ ▶️ John They just need they need to close this hole. I don’t know how they will close it because if they have a complete this bundle thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know how you stop this from happening.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think it’s just one of those things like developers are so desperate to, they, we,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are so desperate to get ongoing revenue. Because you know what happens in the App Store when you have a paid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app, this is what always happens. You launch and you get this nice big spike of sales, but then it starts dropping.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And sometimes that drop can be pretty steep. So eventually, you know, you start making not enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco money from your current version and you’re like, okay, well, now I want to work on this new version or we have been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco working on this new version, I got to release it. it, you know, got to make more money from this. Now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the olden days you release a new version and charge an upgrade price because the full price was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco generally high enough, you know, if you’re charging a hundred bucks for the full price of your app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then you release a new version, your existing customers would like it a lot if you gave them the new version for maybe fifty bucks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or forty bucks or whatever. So that, you know, the upgrade discount thing happened. Well now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the iOS app store there’s pretty much no good way to do it, or the Mac App There’s pretty much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no good way to do that. Developers are always looking for a way to get around this and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do this, but the reality is all these things are terrible hacks and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they will all anger some portion of your customers to some degree no matter how you do them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and or cause you lots of support costs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There is no good solution to this. The only solution to this is what Apple is doing with their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps in the App Store. The few Apple apps that they still charge money for in the App Store, which that number
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keeps going down, but the few apps like the Pro Apps they charge money for, you know, Logic,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Aperture, stuff like that, Final Cut, they just, they drop all the prices down to a fraction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of what they used to be. You know, these things used to be like $300, $600, $1000. Now, like things that were $1000 are now $300.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that were $300 are now like $70, you know, Logic is only $200, like, they dropped all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their prices. And then when a new version comes out, it’s just like Apple hardware,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new version costs the same thing as the old version. If you bought the old version, too bad, you want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new one, pay full price. And that’s a little more palatable now than it used to be because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the prices have gotten lower. It still kind of sucks, but in a lot of ways, it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, quote, fair. It’s also, from Apple’s point of view, it’s also very, very simple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The new version of the app is a brand new standalone app. The old version is removed from the store,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so you can only buy the new one. And upgrades are, you know, well, you’re paying less
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than you used to pay, be happy. And so that same model applies to iOS,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the prices of course are even lower. Instead of $100, you’re paying a dollar, or $5 at most.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, almost no one’s paying over $5 on iOS for anything really. If you buy, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, TweetBot 1 for three bucks, And then next week, TweetBot 2 comes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out, and it’s another three bucks. Too bad. Like, that’s the attitude that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have to have. That’s their only choice, really. That’s what Apple has done with their stuff. They’re leading the way on that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think people are pretty much used to it. I mean, people will complain no matter what you do if you charge money. There’s always gonna be people who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco complain, but I don’t think you’d have fewer people complaining if you had upgrade pricing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so the reality is, this is the world we live in now. this is, you know, Apple has been very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clear that if you want to do some kind of upgrade pricing scheme, figure out a way to make an in-app purchase. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the in-app purchase is the way that you add features to an existing app and try to get more money from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. That’s that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the chat room has come through and linked us to the documentation for the app bundles
⏹️ ▶️ John and two relevant rules from this page from Apple app contains in a bundle must be available
⏹️ ▶️ John for sale on their own as well. So you do have to keep that other older app for sale in the store and
⏹️ ▶️ John app bundles also support complete my bundle complete my bundle provides customers who previously purchased
⏹️ ▶️ John one or more of the apps included within the bundle an additional discount on the app bundle so I don’t know if it’s a straight subtraction
⏹️ ▶️ John of price or whatever but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco perfect so that you can do this but it’s a terrible idea too
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and I assume people will
⏹️ ▶️ John do it and I’m not sure how Apple will react to it because if they just if they just sort of shrug and go
⏹️ ▶️ John well they’re within the rules we defined uh I expect there to be some confusion and sadness, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the app store.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you have both versions of your app in the store at the same time, and they’re both paid apps, you’re going to get so many angry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco customers, so many angry support emails, so many one star reviews. I think that problem will be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco self correcting. It’s a terrible, terrible idea to have both versions in the store at the same time because people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will accidentally buy the old one and then be very angry. They just spent money on an obsolete app that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t entitle them to much or any of a discount on the new one because you know in total and yeah it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John although cranky I mean this whole thing of cranking the price up on the old one and then just refunding anyone who accidentally buys
⏹️ ▶️ John it and eating 30% of that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can’t refund them Apple has to refund that’s the thing like you as the developer you can’t just push a refund button when they email you and say oh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sorry I corrected that for you can’t you have no control over that it’s this is why it’s a terrible idea
⏹️ ▶️ Marco developers please do not do this it is you will regret it your customers will be upset it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is just a very very bad idea
⏹️ ▶️ John I I wonder if the people who are most likely to do this are the very few people on the app store who still
⏹️ ▶️ John have expensive apps like over 50 bucks and they want to offer upgrade pricing because like you said, upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ John pricing is pointless when you’re selling $3 apps, right? But if it’s like $50, $100, are there any of
⏹️ ▶️ John those left? I don’t even know. It used to be that Apple was close to that range, but now not
⏹️ ▶️ John really anymore these days, although where’s Aperture like 80 or something? Yep. But anyway, Apple’s not playing the game. The Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John store is not playing. So I wonder if there’s someone out there with like some specialty CAD application that wants to offer
⏹️ ▶️ John off-grade pricing and tries this and then we can wait for their blog posts where they cry about their
⏹️ ▶️ John customers getting angry at them or people being confused.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I could see you know, like obviously like the higher the priced app, the more sense it might make to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco try a scheme like this, but I just I think it’s a terrible idea from the
⏹️ ▶️ John start. And speaking of looking at web pages at developer.apple.com and reading about
⏹️ ▶️ John them on the air, there was A lot of confusion during the week about what the hell was the NDA situation
⏹️ ▶️ John for WWDC because all of us were at the beginning of every session, they had the little announcer
⏹️ ▶️ John person come on and say, reminder, everything under the session is NDA, and blah, blah,
⏹️ ▶️ John blah. And the boilerplate text and speech that we encountered at
⏹️ ▶️ John WWDC was the same as every year, which is basically the keynote is public, it’s streamed to the world, all the sessions are under
⏹️ ▶️ John NDA. And they are, but the content of that NDA, according to various blog posts included this new
⏹️ ▶️ John clause that said, Oh, by the way, you’re allowed to talk about any technical information you see in these things. You just can’t like
⏹️ ▶️ John post screenshots, copy and paste text from slides, or distribute the software or review products
⏹️ ▶️ John or something to that effect. But I’m not a lawyer, I didn’t know what that text meant. So we’ve all been very cautious about
⏹️ ▶️ John it. But here, I think is the kicker after coming home from WWDC. I think we all realized that
⏹️ ▶️ John anybody in any web browser can go to Apple’s developer website
⏹️ ▶️ John without having an account of any kind without signing anything agreeing to anything and simply play videos
⏹️ ▶️ John from WVC you can watch videos of all the sessions of WVC this year for free
⏹️ ▶️ John without signing any agreement with Apple, which means basically that anything contained in those videos,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re allowed to talk about because anybody can see them because it’s essentially public information. I know enough about Apple’s NDA is to know
⏹️ ▶️ John that if it’s public information, you can talk about it. So that is a relief in one respect, and that we we don’t have to
⏹️ ▶️ John tiptoe around this stuff because if it was in a WWDC session, we can talk about it because you can just go watch the video right
⏹️ ▶️ John now. And on the other hand, what it means is that anybody who cares can sit there, watch every
⏹️ ▶️ John video from WWDC, and then will have no reason to read my OS 10 review because everything
⏹️ ▶️ John in those videos, you will know more than you’re going to learn from my review because all I do is summarize WWDC,
⏹️ ▶️ John but no one wants to watch all those videos, so you’ll probably read it anyway because as long as my review is, it is still way
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco than watching everybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think you’ll be alright. Anyway, our first sponsor this week is a new sponsor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is Automatic. They actually, this is a relatively new product. It actually got the domain name automatic.com.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like even spelled the normal way, not like the WordPress way. It spelled the actual way that you spell the word automatic.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Automatic is your smart driving assistant for your smartphone. So if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go to automatic.com, you can see this thing. And we actually, we talked about this in Neutral in I think the second to last episode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the third to last episode are neutral. We actually talked about this and we are probably irresponsible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough drivers, well Casey and I are at least, that this would have probably some bad news for us.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Here’s what it does. So this plugs in, they have this little, I think it’s a Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dongle, but they have a little dongle that plugs into the OBD, which one’s the wrapper, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, on board data OBDC, right? OBD2. Oh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sorry. Yes. It’s that port in your car that it’s usually in the it’s like in the driver’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco foot well And it’s like it’s what they plug the diagnostic thing into when you go get service
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They have a little a little dongle it plugs into that and then that can connect to an app on your phone that they have and This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco diagnostic port in almost any modern car can dump out tons of useful information from the engine like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how what you know? What kind of gas mileage you’re getting? What the engine is doing what kind of condition the engine is in if there’s any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problems with the engine if you know? So, when the check engine light comes on, what that really means is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is an error. It’s just a Boolean. There is something in your car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reporting an error code. This thing can actually tell you what those codes mean. It can decode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them from almost all popular car types. You can go on their website and learn more about which ones are supported and everything, but it’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, then it can even tell you how you’ve been doing on your gas mileage. You can see all these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty graphs and averages, and you can kinda compete with yourself. You can see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how you’ve been doing, how much fuel is costing around your area, and how much your driving style is helping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or hurting your fuel cost goals. It can also remember where you parked. You can locate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your car on a nice little map. Look at their app. It’s all very Apple-designee.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a very well-made app. Right now it is iPhone only. It is coming soon to Android.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, one more little benefit that they will big benefit potentially. If you are in a crash,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a serious crash, they can actually automatically detect that from the OBD,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, port, and they can notify local authorities automatically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re in a crash. So this thing could really help you out. Hopefully you won’t need that feature, but if you do, you might be glad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have it. So anyway, iPhone only coming soon to Android. This ships in only two business days,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there’s a 45-day return policy. So just get it, try it out, see if you like it. I bet you will. It’s free shipping.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, go to automatic.com slash ATP. Normally, it’s $99.95.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there’s, by the way, no subscription fees, nothing per month for that service. You just buy the thing, and that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No subscription fees. So $100 normally. You can get 20% off. Get this thing for just $80 at automatic.com slash ATP.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks a lot to Automatic for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ John When we talked about this on Neutral, it was sort of in the context of car manufacturers should be ashamed
⏹️ ▶️ John of themselves that they’re not already this, right? But now here we are a year or two
⏹️ ▶️ John later, whatever it’s been. And that’s the new status quo. With Apple doing CarPlay,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, give up on car makers trying to do something. Apple’s just like, look, just let us take over your screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John We will project a UI onto it from our device. And it’s like sort of externalizing the technology
⏹️ ▶️ John part into a part that you upgrade faster than you upgrade your car, and never relying on the car manufacturer
⏹️ ▶️ John to do anything. So it’s like with automatic, there’s this port. It has information. Car manufacturers have been
⏹️ ▶️ John really slow to put that information to use, especially in non-high-end cars,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they all have this port. So why don’t we sell this thing that people can buy, stick in there, and use in conjunction
⏹️ ▶️ John with their smartphone or whatever to sort of add technology to their otherwise
⏹️ ▶️ John inexpensive and woefully under-technologicalified, that’s not a
⏹️ ▶️ John word, but it sounds good, car.
⏹️ ▶️ John it is. So one more thing on the WWDC NDA stuff, as people have
⏹️ ▶️ John noted, if you go to the video page, which we will put in the show notes for anyone who wants to watch WWDC videos,
⏹️ ▶️ John the ones that they pretty much never release on video, in my recollection, are the lunchtime sessions,
⏹️ ▶️ John which are not technical sessions presented by Apple, but Apple invites in guest speakers from various
⏹️ ▶️ John places. A couple of years ago, Pixar did it. J.J. Abrams was there one year. This year,
⏹️ ▶️ John the lunch session that I went to was presented by someone who works for Lucasfilm The star
⏹️ ▶️ John wars franchise and he was talking about the new show that the new animated show that he’s working on but kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of did a big tour of The star wars universe in his history with it
⏹️ ▶️ John Those you’re not going to be able to find and it’s not because I don’t think there’s any NDA type thing It’s just that I think
⏹️ ▶️ John their deal with the people who want to come in and speak is we’re not gonna film you We’re not gonna release your film Just come and talk
⏹️ ▶️ John to the people who are attending our conference as a nice thing to do That’s probably an easier sell then. Hey famous person
⏹️ ▶️ John come here and we’ll film you and then we’ll will sell access to your video or release it for free.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you won’t find the Star Wars session, which is the one most nerds are interested in this year. I was there
⏹️ ▶️ John and it was good and it was fun and it’s a shame you can’t see it, but oh well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so we have a mountain more followup to get through. This might be a hypercritical style 80%
⏹️ ▶️ Casey followup episode. Oh, geez. I
⏹️ ▶️ John was gonna say we could just do this next item and then leave the rep, because there’s one item on cloud
⏹️ ▶️ John and then two items on medical stuff that I think, maybe we mentioned in the previous episode, I just wanted to
⏹️ ▶️ John read this this Apple and cloud feedback because it was the first time that I had heard this
⏹️ ▶️ John information although I think one of you two had alluded to it before. This is from anonymous source who
⏹️ ▶️ John knows if it’s real whatever anyway typical caveats about feedback
⏹️ ▶️ John do not take this as gospel but here’s what this person said in regards to Apple in the cloud.
⏹️ ▶️ John They said iTunes, iCloud and the majority of server-based interfacing are handled by a huge division of Apple that acts
⏹️ ▶️ John almost like its own company due to sheer size. They employ mostly contractors, including offshore. From my
⏹️ ▶️ John experience, they were the slowest responding division by far and seemed to be completely locked in politics.”
⏹️ ▶️ John This is like the scenario that we imagined thinking about Apple’s cloud
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. It seems like the people who do that aren’t as good as the people who do the other stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wait, hold on. I didn’t say they weren’t as good. I said they seem like they’re not getting the resources or the priority
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they need to be good.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so here’s the next the next bit of this as a software developer outside the division who needed to work with them
⏹️ ▶️ John in parallel to build something. It’s a nightmare. Imagine submitting a request to the NSA to give you information and receiving
⏹️ ▶️ John a piece of paper saying they can’t do the technical reason six months later, like, it’s not that they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not good. It’s not just that they’re under resourced. It’s that they seem to be not as responsive,
⏹️ ▶️ John like they’re not it’s they’re not working on the same team, like within Apple, you imagine, or we got to get the new iPhone out and
⏹️ ▶️ John and we need the OS needs to be done and whatever frameworks for these new features need to be on there
⏹️ ▶️ John and the hardware design, like it’s all, everyone’s working together to just get this job done. And then there’s this other entity far away,
⏹️ ▶️ John disconnected with a huge latency where every time you have to deal with them, it’s like a big turnaround time and it seems
⏹️ ▶️ John like they’re not on the same page as you. Is it just because they’re under resources? Is it just because they’re remote? I don’t know, but this,
⏹️ ▶️ John you could, if this is true, this would explain why their cloud stuff has such problems because it’s almost like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not Apple doing it. It’s like this other entity that’s not running the same race with them.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not sort of together on producing this big thing. But outsourcing,
⏹️ ▶️ John as the spolsing thing, don’t outsource your core competency. If cloud is an Apple’s core competency at this point, then
⏹️ ▶️ John what is? Like, they need to bring that back in if it really is outsourced like this. Because if this is true,
⏹️ ▶️ John it is very depressing and a bad situation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s almost as if they need increased collaboration.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now, that was just increased collaboration amongst the hardware and software guys. stop them from fighting. Those are the people who already were
⏹️ ▶️ John working pretty well together. This is, who knows what this is. So again, I don’t know if any of this is true.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anonymous sources, who knows. But if it is true, it confirms my worst fears and
⏹️ ▶️ John presumably it is changing. Like the Cloud Kit stuff would indicate a change in that direction because it sure seems like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, that Apple is dogfooding its own stuff and to a degree that they hadn’t before
⏹️ ▶️ John and that Cloud Kit looks like a much more sane API than the previous ones,
⏹️ ▶️ John much more like the APIs that everyone was building for themselves. So things are looking up in this area.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is a sort of a look backward on how things might have been if this is all accurate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and that does corroborate what I had heard, although that’s more detailed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than I had heard. But also, I heard from some, so we had somebody else, I don’t know if it was the same person or not,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or maybe it was a random conversation I had somewhere, but somebody else said that this actually was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actively changing. and Federighi was now able to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco push against that to some degree and get stuff moving and apparently changes were happening.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s all that we know really. Heck, we don’t even really know that. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it basically sounds like it has been bad and it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still a little bit bad, but it is making progress. And I think what Apple is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco showing, what they’re announcing, and even just how their stuff is performing recently, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the results seem to be bearing that out. That seems like a plausible explanation of what we’re seeing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, before we move on to the official topics, let me get one more sponsorship out of the way because we were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little late to the first one. Our second sponsor this week is Lynda.com.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco L-Y-N-D-A dot com. Lynda.com helps you learn and keep up to date with your software,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pick up your brand new skills or explore new hobbies with easy to follow, excellently produced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco professional video tutorials. Now you can learn a new programming language, you can create
⏹️ ▶️ Marco UI, you can get design tips, you can get your first code up and running with Objective-C, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably even Swift pretty soon. I imagine they’re working on that very quickly. They’re usually very quick to put up new stuff when new stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco comes out. You can even use lynda.com to learn new applications for new creative endeavors,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like if you want to learn Photoshop or Illustrator or Logic or anything like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can learn video editing, post-production, all this crazy stuff. You can learn all that stuff from beginner to advanced.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They have over 2400 courses. They’re taught by industry experts and they add more courses every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco week. You can always go, as I said, they’re always up to date with new stuff. They work directly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with software companies, so that way when a new version of Photoshop comes out, they can have a tutorial on day
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. You can get started right away. Really fantastic. Now, lynda.com, this is the best part,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think. You get all this. You can have access to their entire library. It isn’t per
⏹️ ▶️ Marco video. you pay $25 per month, and that’s a flat fee. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get unlimited access to everything for 25 bucks a month. So that kind of removes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the pressure in your head. You’re like, well, do I really wanna learn about this thing for another $3?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You don’t have to worry about that. 25 bucks a month gets you unlimited access to their entire catalog. So browse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around. You might find something that you didn’t think you’d want to be interested in, but watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few minutes of it and see, and then you might be like, oh, I always assumed that would be harder, or, oh, that’s how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can do this cool thing. I never knew that. So anyway, go to lynda.com, L-Y-N-D-A.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash ATP, and you can get a free seven-day trial. Go check it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out, you know, see for yourself. We’ve all, all three of us have watched stuff on there. I’ve learned a lot from their stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially with some of the podcast production stuff that I’ve done, and chances are I’ll probably go in there to learn Swift or JSON
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or, sorry, Node or all sorts of stuff. They have all sorts of language courses. You can even learn PHP
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re the only person on Earth doesn’t know it yet, John, and you can learn all sorts of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new stuff there. 3D printing, they even have 3D printing, I mean they have this crazy list
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of stuff. Go check it out. These are nicely produced professional video tutorials. Go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to lynda.com slash ATP. That is lynda.com with a Y.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lynda.com slash ATP. Thanks a lot to Lynda for sponsoring our show once again.
⏹️ ▶️ John Pretty sure I’ve written more PHP than Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s possible, but not necessarily true. When Aaron and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got engaged, I had an old ThinkPad running
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some flavor of Ubuntu. And I wrote our wedding website
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in PHP. And this was actually my first exposure to databases, because I’d always
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been writing client-side apps. And so I wrote a wedding website which allowed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you to RSVP online, and I was extremely proud of myself. That was all PHP.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I thought that went really well until my friend who had an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apostrophe in his surname went to register, and all of a sudden everything took a turn
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I didn’t properly escape everything. But like I said, it was my first experience, and that went
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty well. And we didn’t have to use the not in order to do that because, I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone used the not at that point and I didn’t want to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You really wanted to show Erin right up front what she was getting into. Basically yes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey That’s good, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You found the right one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, what are we talking about tonight? We’re talking about Marco’s Mac Pro woes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh yes, how could I forget. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I woke up to a computer that was showing signs of disk failure. Basically it had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco totally locked up, like you could still move the mouse and everything, you could still like launch bar, you could still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco invoke commands and you know click on stuff and move stuff, but anything that would cause a disk access
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would just freeze whatever you were using. And you know, so I tried, like I couldn’t even like you know launch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco console, like I tried to launch the console app to see if it was showing me anything useful and I couldn’t even do that because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would require reading from the disk so I thought oh crap my SSD is dead
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I rebooted and rebooted and rebooted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and could never get past the gray spinner and verbose mode it would stop at the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how do you pronounce the FSCK disk command checking thing just spell it out it’s fine anyway
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it wouldn’t get past it was doing that and would never finish it I gave it lots of time I gave it an hour
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to see like is it taking a while to finish no it wasn’t it was just stuck
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you know I for short from from a super duper clone which is by far
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the the fastest recovery method and so I did that it was fine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you know so I’m fine I’m back up now and everything’s fine it seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh and for whatever it’s worth while it was in the the unbooted unbootable state I booted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the clone and ran Disk Utility against the damaged disk, it appeared
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have no errors. I did the whole repair, verify everything, it reported nothing wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In conclusion, it appears as though this was almost certainly a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco file system related problem. You know, I don’t know. Anyway, this is boring, but I had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an issue that caused enough disk corruption to make the disk unbootable, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it seems to have been related to the file system I was using, was HFS plus
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re doing the verbal sound effects now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah well I don’t have one of those crazy sound boards like on bionic where I can just hit a button
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love bionic it bionic is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s so good but I couldn’t even tell you why it’s just so good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s it’s so bad that it’s so good and they know it that’s the like it’s the show that it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s it’s like it’s like Milton the guy from office space like it’s you know it’s like you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know the show got fired six years ago and no one told them and they’re good they just keep going in every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco day it’s just this ongoing piece of performance art and between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two people who are very funny together and just have nothing to talk about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the show is like totally off the rails oh it’s so wonderful and it is it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco comical like it is such good humor and the funniest part is you’re sitting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco listening thinking why am I still listening to this and they’re sitting there producing it saying why are we still producing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this and yet it works I don’t know why it works but it does work and it’s hilarious
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I really enjoy it oh
⏹️ ▶️ John I hope they didn’t pay for that spot because I’m not sure you’re really selling it there why am I still
⏹️ ▶️ John listening to this says Marco Armand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no nobody should be listening to it but I listen to it and I love it oh I completely agree with everything you just said it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so good and I think they would I think they would agree with me I I think they would say don’t listen to it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, it’s so wonderful because it really is like the entire show. Like if you think Back to Work is a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show of in jokes, you have no idea because Bionic is one entire show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey made of nothing but in jokes. It’s ridiculous and it’s wonderful in every possible way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it is. It is really quite good. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I forgot we were even talking about that. How do we even get there?
⏹️ ▶️ John Ding soundboard, HFS plus. Nice, right. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Anyway. So I put the
⏹️ ▶️ John link of the show notes to this article that a bazillion people have sent me on Twitter from this person complaining about HFS
⏹️ ▶️ John Plus because they had a bunch of photos and it was like something like 15,000
⏹️ ▶️ John photos stored over six years and he ran some checksums to compare. I guess
⏹️ ▶️ John he had valid checksums someplace and compared it to the file stored in HFS Plus and he
⏹️ ▶️ John lost 28 files over six years and these are images and some of these like JPEGs
⏹️ ▶️ John would half load some of them would load completely again this is what we’re talking about bit rot you know
⏹️ ▶️ John that digital storage is not forever errors will be introduced and if they’re introduced in your images
⏹️ ▶️ John you may lose some or all of individual pictures like if the error is
⏹️ ▶️ John towards the end maybe you’ll be able to see most of the picture for the errors in the middle you go see the top half of the picture maybe there’s some clever thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that they could recover for those maybe the whole file is hosting you just get a bunch of static or garbage but anyway that’s a shame if that’s the only
⏹️ ▶️ John copy of the picture you had. And this article talks about HFS plus and how it’s old and how it’s crappy and so on and
⏹️ ▶️ John so forth. And a lot of people sent me this thing going, see, you’re always talking about the HFS plus, right? Look at this poor guy. He’s backing
⏹️ ▶️ John you up saying HFS plus is crappy. And I didn’t respond to most of these people.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I didn’t really tweet out the link to the article because this article is not really about HFS plus
⏹️ ▶️ John being crappy. I already wrote a bit about HFS plus being crappy in one of my reviews that is linked to in this article
⏹️ ▶️ John at the end in an addendum. HFS plus is crappy and it does corrupt
⏹️ ▶️ John itself and I’m not even sure that’s what happened to Marco’s thing because disk utility said everything was okay
⏹️ ▶️ John so HFS plus probably didn’t corrupt its metadata structure it probably does think it is keeping track of everything
⏹️ ▶️ John but bit rot is something that is sort of a separate issue where when
⏹️ ▶️ John data goes bad on disk the metadata keeping track of where that data is could be perfectly
⏹️ ▶️ John valid, like hfs plus has not corrupted itself, it knows where all of your data is for every single file, it’s just that that data
⏹️ ▶️ John itself is garbage. And hfs plus does not care what the content of that data is, it
⏹️ ▶️ John just needs to keep track of it. And remember where it is and how much is available free and how
⏹️ ▶️ John much is occupied and where each piece of individual files are in what order they go in. And hfs plus
⏹️ ▶️ John does fail, hfs plus does fail, in many respects in doing that job. And that is one of
⏹️ ▶️ John my complaints about hfs plus. But the second complaint about HFS plus and all sort of file systems that predate
⏹️ ▶️ John the ZFS dawning of reliability of getting religion about reliability.
⏹️ ▶️ John They don’t care what your data is either. They just cross their fingers and hope that the disk storage system is reliable and ZFS
⏹️ ▶️ John was the first file system to first popular file system to get serious about
⏹️ ▶️ John saying that we’re going to take responsibility for keeping track of whether the stuff you
⏹️ ▶️ John wrote to disk is what is still there. And it would do that with checksums, not just checksums on the metadata, but also checksums
⏹️ ▶️ John on the data itself, which is computationally expensive and takes memory and has all these limits. But ZFS
⏹️ ▶️ John would be able to detect errors in the storage system. Sometimes they’re errors in the hard drive, sometimes the errors in the disk controller,
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes the error in the driver stack, and in the operating system. No matter what,
⏹️ ▶️ John where the source of the error is, ZFS this thing was like end to end data protection where if we write data,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then later on go to read it, and if what we read is not what we wrote originally, we will tell
⏹️ ▶️ John you that there’s a problem. That doesn’t save your data, it’s still garbage. But then you can if you have the
⏹️ ▶️ John ability to detect when something went wrong, if you’re using any form of redundant storage, which the FS offered itself
⏹️ ▶️ John where it could store your data twice on disk or three times on disk, you could use a multi disk scenario, you could have
⏹️ ▶️ John backup so on and so forth. The key is having the files and let you know immediately, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John this data is bad. But I know I have another copy of this data over there. And I can tell if that
⏹️ ▶️ John data is good. So I don’t have to guess like, Oh, this one is bad, that other one must be good. I can also check that one. Oh, that data is good. Let
⏹️ ▶️ John me write it back on top of this one. Let me you know, it could you know, sort of the self healing file system,
⏹️ ▶️ John not knowing whether your data is bad, like this person manually made a bunch of checksums or whatever, and then compared them.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you don’t know your data is bad, you won’t find out that your data is hosed until that
⏹️ ▶️ John corrupt data has like spread to all of your backups, it’s been pushed to your cloud backup, it’s all it’s, you know, your last three
⏹️ ▶️ John months worth backups have long since been overwritten and all you have is the corrupt data because you don’t have your
⏹️ ▶️ John data going back to the beginning of time all you have is multiple copies of your corrupt data and you won’t know that again until
⏹️ ▶️ John like you’re trying to get out pictures for someone’s high school graduation and you want a baby picture and you realize
⏹️ ▶️ John the baby picture you wanted is corrupt if you had a file system that had n10 data integrity
⏹️ ▶️ John the file system could have notified that you you notified you of that immediately when it happened and could have potentially
⏹️ ▶️ John repaired it it from a good copy. So that’s I think what this this article is really complaining about
⏹️ ▶️ John that all file systems are not like ZFS and offer data integrity
⏹️ ▶️ John guarantees and not so much that oh yeah, HFS is crappy because it does it loses track of where your data
⏹️ ▶️ John is, which does happen and people do tweet about that all the time. But that’s not really what this article is about.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by backblaze our friends at backblaze it is unlimited,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unthrottled, uncomplicated available anywhere. You can try it for free with no credit card required.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So go to backblaze.com slash ATP. This is awesome
⏹️ ▶️ Marco online backup and believe me this is a great time to have them as a sponsor because when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my hard drive when I thought my drive had died this morning and either way regardless
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of what I thought I had to wipe it and start fresh I was never nervous that I was going to lose data
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I know that yes I have my time machine here I also have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my super duper clone here which which is what gave me a very fast recovery today. But I also knew
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that no matter what, Backblaze would have my data also. And so there’s always this other place,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s always this backup for you. And actually I met the two founders, I think they were the two founders,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I met two high people at Backblaze for tea in San Francisco, and they actually bought me an $11 tea,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which was very generous of them, because nothing at some of our tea lounge or whatever is cheap.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was quite good though, also quite large. I don’t know how anybody can drink a tea that size of what they serve there. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was like a 20 ounce pitcher of tea for one person anyway. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these guys are really sharp. They know their stuff and they’re just nice people. You can tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you use the product. You can tell when you look at the website. You can tell when you read their blog where they explain technical details
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of things like here’s how we built these crazy storage pods that have all these hard drives in them. Here’s the plans. Here’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what we do. Here’s how we get drives that are cheap by driving all around the country and doing crazy stuff with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rebates. They’re just good people and they know their stuff. It was founded by ex-Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco engineer so their software on the Mac is great. They have all this new stuff. They have email alert notifications. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can get like a report every couple of weeks saying, hey, this is what we have. Just so you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have this much data. It was last backed up at this time. They’ll send you an alert if they haven’t heard from your computer in a while. So that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way if you like pause the backup when you’re recording a podcast or something and you forget to unpause it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they will send you an email alert in a couple days saying, hey, by the way, we haven’t heard from you. This is unusual. You should probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know about this and fix it. It is fantastic. They have a 15 day free trial with no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco credit card required. You just enter an email and password and that’s it. You’re off. And this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is really, it’s $5 a month and that’s it. There’s no add-ons, there’s no gimmicks, there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like tacked on charges or fees or surcharges. $5 a month per computer for unlimited
⏹️ ▶️ Marco space. And we, I mean, geez, my wife has about 3 terabytes on hers. I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about a terabyte and a half on mine. My mom has a whole 38 gigs on hers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Obviously a big range here, but you know, it doesn’t matter. Same price, five bucks a month, easy. They don’t have to charge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you more if you go to the three gig or three terabyte limit like my wife. It’s fine. It is the simplest online
⏹️ ▶️ Marco backup and in my experience, it’s also the fastest. Just so you know, if you have a nice fast upstream, I’ve had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very good experience with getting stuff to Backblaze very quickly. So go to backblaze.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash ATP. If you mistype it as Blackblaze, they actually own that domain name too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Don’t look up what it used to be. Just go to backblaze.com slash ATP. Thank you very much to Backblaze
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for sponsoring our show once again and for buying me tea last week.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay. So, let’s talk about metal and I do not mean the flavor of music. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am not at all qualified to talk about any 3D programming, anything because I’ve never really done it and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, I don’t believe you have either. That is not true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, really? am slightly, slightly a hair above
⏹️ ▶️ Marco completely unqualified. Excellent. Because I, in college,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I tried writing, I tried writing a 3D version of Scorched Earth. And I tried it in like three different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco languages, using at least two different graphics APIs, using DirectX first, then OpenGL,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then something else using OpenGL. It was basically, it was my way of fooling around with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco various 3D stuff that I was learning in college, And then I kind of used my most recent version of that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a demo to get myself my first job. And then I never looked at 3d programming again. So I know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough. I know very basics of 3d programming as it stood in 2003 and 2004.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s probably completely useless by today’s standards. And I would never consider myself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a knowledgeable programmer at all. However, I at least know like the kinds of things that low level graphic APIs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. So, John, why don’t you tell us about Metal?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think I know any more about it. I mean, I’ve done about the same amount of 3D programming as Marco, like demo apps
⏹️ ▶️ John on the SGIs in college, you know, where you just get something up on the screen and maybe move it around. You’re like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John that was really hard. I’m not doing this anymore because it’s super hard to get anything impressive
⏹️ ▶️ John up on the screen, especially back then. But I mean, that…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you want to know about Metal as an API, just start listening to Debug and eventually Guy English
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say enough things because he actually is qualified to know and because he’s actually a real game
⏹️ ▶️ Marco programmer. So listen to what he says about Metal and you’ll learn
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more about it from him than from us.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the executive summary is what’s important. I mean we’re going to talk about it from a business perspective but it’s like so OpenGL
⏹️ ▶️ John and OpenGL ES is what Apple was using previously. These are open standards that are in theory not controlled by
⏹️ ▶️ John any one company. There’s a consortium blah blah blah. These are very old standards that have evolved over the years.
⏹️ ▶️ John when these standards were created, the current crop of 3D hardware, current GPUs,
⏹️ ▶️ John did not exist in this form. And so the API, even though it has evolved over the years, it’s had to
⏹️ ▶️ John maintain backward compatibility, it is not well suited to
⏹️ ▶️ John current hardware. Not just in the particular details, because a lot of that is handled by a driver, but just in terms of the
⏹️ ▶️ John programming model. Like, what do you do? You issue a series of function calls that
⏹️ ▶️ John set things up and then cause them to be drawn. And the sequence of events that are presented
⏹️ ▶️ John through an OpenGL API have almost no bearing on what’s actually happening with the hardware in terms of,
⏹️ ▶️ John when does something happen? When do commands get sent to the GPU? When do the things that
⏹️ ▶️ John are going to be drawn get sent to the GPU’s memory? How do things get written back? How does that affect this? A lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of that happens in the driver, but that’s just another level of indirection. So you’re there doing things step by
⏹️ ▶️ John step in your program, and there’s this whole other program going on behind the scenes to manage that stuff to say, all right,
⏹️ ▶️ John When should I ship this stuff off to the GPU so it’s available in time? Oh, wait, the program just read something back from the GPU.
⏹️ ▶️ John Actually, we have to stall and read that back from the GPU. So previously, the GPU was two frames ahead of the CPU.
⏹️ ▶️ John But now the CPU wants to read that data back, so we have to wait for it to catch up and resynchronize. And there’s latency between
⏹️ ▶️ John the GPU and the CPU. But if you don’t accept the latency, you might not be completely utilizing the GPU. And
⏹️ ▶️ John all sorts of details that come from the mismatch between this relatively high-level API
⏹️ ▶️ John that does not acknowledge the existence of the GPU in its current form and what’s actually going on behind the scenes.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that requires game programmers to do all sorts of voodoo stuff where they’re like, well, I know
⏹️ ▶️ John if I do these sequence of events and do this little thing here, it will force these things to all be uploaded to the GPU.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I know if I do this, my shaders will be compiled and will be ready for me. That’s another
⏹️ ▶️ John thing with OpenGL. There’s OpenGL shader language, and that’s sort of a high-level language, but it has to be compiled for
⏹️ ▶️ John the individual GPU. And whether that happens at the time your program runs,
⏹️ ▶️ John or at the time it draws a frame, or you want your shaders to be pre-compiled, and DirectX has this method
⏹️ ▶️ John where they pre-compile them down to sort of a, not byte code, but more compact form. And then Apple’s drivers
⏹️ ▶️ John had to use LLVM for that back in the day. Anyway, it’s an extremely complicated
⏹️ ▶️ John world. And what developers who use 3D programming wanted to do is say, this is way too complicated.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t keep track of all the different machines and the Rube Goldberg device that causes graphics go up on the screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you just gave me a programming model that was a closer match to the way things actually
⏹️ ▶️ John happen, it would be a lot easier to get something that performs well on a wide range of hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ John Metal is an interesting entry into that field because first of all, Metal right now
⏹️ ▶️ John only works on iOS and only works on the A7. So certainly it’s not helping people deploy
⏹️ ▶️ John their, you know, write code that’s going to work on a wide variety of platforms or a wide
⏹️ ▶️ John variety of hardware. Going forward, I’m sure they will expand support for it. I’m sure it supports the A8 now and all that other
⏹️ ▶️ John good stuff, and who knows what it’ll support in the future. But for now, it’s very narrowly constrained. But
⏹️ ▶️ John the programming model of Metal does fit closer to the way things work. It shows you,
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s a command buffer. Batch your commands up, batch your things up, ship them off to the GPU
⏹️ ▶️ John in the correct order. Like, we’re exposing all these things that were previously happening in the driver that were completely opaque
⏹️ ▶️ John to you, we expose them as objects. And you have a programming language that lets you construct them, package
⏹️ ▶️ John them up, send them off. And it’s much cleaner than OpenGL, and it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John great fit for the way modern GPUs work today. And the reason Apple thinks this
⏹️ ▶️ John is something that’s going to help people is not because they think people are going to write their programs in Metal
⏹️ ▶️ John and target only A7 devices to greater, but because the people who make the game engines, which they had
⏹️ ▶️ John all on the stage during the keynote, that’s why they had Epic up there with their Unreal Engine and they showed Unity and
⏹️ ▶️ John all the other game engines out there whose names I can’t remember like the big four engine makers
⏹️ ▶️ John for 3D engines. That’s what most game makers use because writing a 3D engine is super hard. Well if the
⏹️ ▶️ John engine middleware makers make sure their engines
⏹️ ▶️ John are able to run with metal when they’re running on the A7 then anyone who develops
⏹️ ▶️ John a game on top of that engine gets the advantage of oh if you play my my game on an A7, I’ll get better performance.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s an interesting move by Apple to sort of try to get away from OpenGL
⏹️ ▶️ John and take control of their own destiny with a more modern API. And it’s also interesting that they didn’t choose to do what Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John did, which is Microsoft wanted to compete with OpenGL years and years ago, and they made DirectX, which learned from OpenGL’s
⏹️ ▶️ John mistakes and was more modern, but is not that new. I mean, Metal is much newer than OpenGL.
⏹️ ▶️ John And of course, AMD has Mantle, which is a similar type of thing to Metal. As far as I’m aware, I have not read
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot about Mantle, but a closer to the metal, which is, I’m assuming, where Apple got
⏹️ ▶️ John its name. Mantle is a closer to the metal API. It’s one of the few areas in computing
⏹️ ▶️ John where the APIs are actually getting not so much a lower level, but
⏹️ ▶️ John exposing more of the foibles of the hardware rather than going the other direction, rather than abstracting
⏹️ ▶️ John at all. Because OpenGL is more distant from the hardware than either Mantle or Metal,
⏹️ ▶️ John or probably DirectX for that matter. So that’s the situation with Metal. That’s what Apple is doing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when Apple announced Metal in the keynote, I tweeted something to the effect of, so is Apple gonna make
⏹️ ▶️ John a game console or what? Because they just made their own sort of low level
⏹️ ▶️ John game console A type 3D API. They’ve got a little box that you connect to a TV. They’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John got controller support APIs built into iOS. Everyone keeps expecting them to
⏹️ ▶️ John offer some way to put apps on the Apple TV. What’s the deal here? Are they going to make
⏹️ ▶️ John one? Are they not going to make one? Are they just going to dance around this until they have all the pieces, but then just refuse to do anything, kind of like they did with
⏹️ ▶️ John e-books for years and years, where they had all the pieces in place to be the world’s dominant e-book maker, and then just
⏹️ ▶️ John let Amazon do it because they couldn’t be bothered. And this comes up because there
⏹️ ▶️ John was a Strategory post today that says how Apple TV might
⏹️ ▶️ John disrupt Microsoft and Sony that talks about the same issue. Have you guys read this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think it’s interesting. I mean, it’s definitely, you know, like one of Ben’s main
⏹️ ▶️ Marco arguments there is that the official, you know, high-profile
⏹️ ▶️ Marco game consoles out there are these very, like, high-end, hot, expensive devices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that, you know, it is necessarily kind of keeping them high-end because they’re these, like, these $400 boxes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, you know, It kind of locks out casual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gamers who it’s just not worth them spending 400 bucks on this box. Meanwhile,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so many people are getting things like the Apple TV or the Roku or the new Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fiery box, whatever it is, that The Merlin says it’s good. Anyway, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many people are getting these these, you know, little cheap boxes that can stream video or watch Netflix or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and that that model like that market is is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably very likely to disrupt the gaming market at some point soon. That’s kind of the gist, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, basically. I mean, I think if you look at Metal, I mean, Metal is really interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just because, you know, oh look, it’s a new level API that is a lot faster. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s worth asking why they made Metal. You know, why did Apple put so much effort
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into something that is entirely about games? Because Apple historically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has, Hell, we were talking about this a couple of weeks ago how Apple just doesn’t really seem to care about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco games Obviously they do obviously we were at least partially wrong on that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think it’s entirely about games though
⏹️ ▶️ John because I mean think about the games is one big aspect of it definitely,
⏹️ ▶️ John but their whole UI uses OpenGL and viewed through the lens
⏹️ ▶️ John of iOS Metal starts to look more like a battery saving feature where they can more
⏹️ ▶️ John efficiently use the GPU with more precision exactly Doling out the the commands to
⏹️ ▶️ John it in the right order and having you know Ten times faster draw call performance and all these things
⏹️ ▶️ John that benefits there makes their UI snappier And it has a potential battery savings because
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re spending less time Flogging the GPU to get your stuff done and their whole UI is basically
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not a 3d game But it’s all OpenGL on iOS and on the Mac for that matter
⏹️ ▶️ John these days. So there is a platform Benefit to it even if no game maker
⏹️ ▶️ John ever used it. I don’t think they would have gone through the effort of no game maker used it and Clearly game
⏹️ ▶️ John makers like metal because like all the big engines are saying yes We’re gonna support it and I don’t think Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John had to twist their arms because this is what game makers want They want their games to go faster. They don’t like fighting with OpenGL
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to figure out what weird incantations they have to do to get good performance. And, you know, game makers want good
⏹️ ▶️ John battery life too. They don’t want people to play a game and have it destroy your phone’s battery. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and I also think it’s very obvious that there are a number of major strategic benefits here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, you know, obviously a lot of people are saying, oh, well, this will encourage people to write games
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only for iOS. And I think that’s, I think the number of people who will make that decision based on Metal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very, very small because most people aren’t writing this level of code. I mean, you know, they’re like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people, the people make the engines, they’re writing code at this level, and they’re possibly investing into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making metal ports for their engines that will, you know, they they’re not going to stop making OpenGL
⏹️ ▶️ Marco versions. You know, they’re still going to like the big engines out there that everyone licenses or uses, they’re still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to have OpenGL versus they can keep running on Android and everything else. That’s, they’re not going to to just stop doing that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it will reinforce the pretty frequent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco idea that games, while they might run on Android stuff, they usually run better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on iOS. And it’s usually because most, you know, most Android stuff out there has a pretty wide range of GPUs and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco GPU power. And some of the cheap Android stuff, like some of the cheap Android tablets, historically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have had very weak GPU power compared to comparable iOS devices. Partially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of cost, partially out of other concerns who knows but for whatever reason Android GPUs have historically sucked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and yes I know there are some devices that have good ones but I think the average is pretty bad for what’s actually sold
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I think this is a way for Apple to keep that lead going for a while longer you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like as the Android stuff gets better hardware and starts catching up I think this is this is a way to just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be like all right let’s keep that lead going but ultimately I think this does they were very specific
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that this is for the a7
⏹️ ▶️ John well and and for the a8 you assume I mean like obviously obviously but yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John like I mean it’s it’s a total Apple thing to do who what other company could even
⏹️ ▶️ John you know could feasibly do this because Apple has such a limited line and is so relentless
⏹️ ▶️ John about moving things forward and doesn’t really care that this API doesn’t apply to their old things going to apply
⏹️ ▶️ John to all of their iOS devices from this time forward assuming the iPod Touch gets the A7 this year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah the iPod Touch exists. Yeah no I mean like I think the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fact that this is A7 only or A7 and above only probably signifies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that if Apple’s going to win the game market the way they’re going to do it is by waiting until there’s an A7 in the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco TV and then be like all right hey now we have this thing start making games for it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think we’re waiting until that becomes economical. And I think that’s why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we don’t have an Apple TV SDK yet. I think that’s why the Apple TV hardware has done very little in the last few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years, like has moved forward very little. I think they’re just waiting for economics until they can combine this thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, keep the same price point 100 bucks, maybe even drop it by, you know, 20, 30 bucks, but probably keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep it at 100 bucks, and eventually put an a seven in there. And that, heck,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that might be this fall that it would be a little aggressive, but they could probably do it if they wanted to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think there’s a very good chance of that happening and of that happening soon. That might even be the big fall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing is, hey, you know, you guys are all talking about wearables that nobody wants. We kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made a game system that’s gonna kick butt in the market because we’re gonna sell a ton of them anyway and then you can start making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco games for it using all of our existing infrastructure, using metal and here’s a new controller so the controlling doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suck and that’s it. I mean that that would be a pretty amazing fall.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like I said during the of every C keynote, Apple has all the pieces to make
⏹️ ▶️ John a run of this exact strategy. An inexpensive box with pretty good 3D performance. They’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John got their own chip, they got their own GPU, they got their own iOS, they’ve got now
⏹️ ▶️ John a low level console style API for doing 3D and taking advantage of that hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’ve got the API for controller support. All the pieces are there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Unfortunately, all those pieces, the technology pieces are not the hard part of being successful in the game console
⏹️ ▶️ John business. Just ask Microsoft. Getting the technology right is good,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I don’t think it’s even necessary. It’s not like a necessary but sufficient thing. I don’t think it’s even necessary to get
⏹️ ▶️ John the tech right. The Wii’s technology was disgusting, and they were successful in the market, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John the hard part of being successful in the game market is how do you get
⏹️ ▶️ John people who spend money on games to buy your thing? And the answer to that would be like, they’ll buy it because it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s a great TV puck to watch Netflix on and whatever. So they have they have and it’s cheap. So that’ll get people to buy things.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then how do you get game developers to develop good games for your platform and just ask
⏹️ ▶️ John the Ouya people how easy that is to do? It is really, really hard and
⏹️ ▶️ John probably cost potentially billions of dollars. If you want to make a run at this market
⏹️ ▶️ John and get all those people who are currently buying $60 games for their PS4s. And like we’ve talked
⏹️ ▶️ John about before, the next generation of consoles was announced the question was, is there still a place in the market for
⏹️ ▶️ John big expensive devices that play mostly or only games? The answer is yes. People love the PS4.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is selling pretty well, certainly well enough to make Sony happy. Microsoft’s console is selling pretty well as well.
⏹️ ▶️ John No one wants the Wii U because it’s crappy. Maybe there’s there, you know, E3 was
⏹️ ▶️ John this past week, so maybe Nintendo’s fortunes will rise next year. We don’t know. But this
⏹️ ▶️ John generation of consoles, I would say, is a success. And when this generation ends, the
⏹️ ▶️ John next generation will ask the same question again. Does anyone watch these stupid $400 boxes? Do people want to pay $60 per
⏹️ ▶️ John game? That question will be asked again. But for this generation, it’s true. If no one wants those
⏹️ ▶️ John boxes, and there’s no one out there, there’s not enough people out there to sustain that the
⏹️ ▶️ John potential for the entire gaming market to switch to $99 pucks. I think most gamers would
⏹️ ▶️ John consider that kind of a bad situation. And the questions are, there’s so few of those people,
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t matter what they think. They’ll be sad, but oh, well, who cares. It’s like the command line people being said when the GUI
⏹️ ▶️ John came and took over everything and they just went and played with Linux and no one cared about them anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think that scenario is likely though, even though these so-called core gamers, and I hate that term because
⏹️ ▶️ John it makes no sense, but the so-called core gamers, even though they are not the majority, they
⏹️ ▶️ John sure as hell spend a lot of money. When a game, as someone just put in the chat room, when a game like Grand Theft
⏹️ ▶️ John Auto 5 comes out and it makes a a whole jillion dollars. Casual gamers are not buying that right. Hardcore
⏹️ ▶️ John gamers are paying $60 a pop for these games. They’re doing it willingly. They’re happy with the results
⏹️ ▶️ John and they pump a huge amount of money into the ecosystem. And it’s not like just a few whales like on Candy Crush where
⏹️ ▶️ John most of the money is made off of these poor addicted small group of people and everyone else just kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John uses it for a little while or whatever. Everybody pays $60 to get grant that auto.
⏹️ ▶️ John And those people are still willing to do it. And that, I think, is the business that Apple would have a
⏹️ ▶️ John seriously hard time getting into, because as we’ve discussed previously, it doesn’t seem like Apple’s that into games.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’re not that into games, there’s no way you’re going to do what it takes to woo the good developers. Plus, they would have to have
⏹️ ▶️ John some IP of their own, like Microsoft said, Halo, and Sony’s got all its own
⏹️ ▶️ John first party games. Nintendo’s got Mario and all Donkey Kong and all that stuff. I don’t think Apple can be
⏹️ ▶️ John a player in that market.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I don’t think Apple wants to be a player in that market.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, that was the question. And then I said to Ben Thompson, it’s like, that’s the things that they
⏹️ ▶️ John have are the technical ingredients to be a player in that market. But it sure seems like Apple doesn’t want that market.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why would you want to be part of what, by all accounts, is a declining market? Despite the fact that it
⏹️ ▶️ John is clearly feasible now and makes tons of money, why would Apple want in on that market? Is that
⏹️ ▶️ John a market that’s taking off like a rocket ship to the sun and is going to be super awesome for years to come?
⏹️ ▶️ John Doesn’t seem like it right now. So why would Apple be saying, we really need to get in on this market? really
⏹️ ▶️ John need to make a device that’s competitive with the PS5 and the Xbox, whatever the hell they’re going to call it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t see Apple thinking that that is a good thing to do, regardless of whether they could do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, but that wasn’t that wasn’t Ben’s point, though, was it? I thought Ben’s point was more to grab
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the portion of the market that’s more like Marco and I, where we don’t really take games too seriously,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but we do enjoy it. And hey, man, if we’ve already got this Apple TV box
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sitting, well, I mean, presumably a new one, you know, I just bought this Apple TV. Oh, you know, I guess
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it plays games. Maybe I should give that a shot and see if that’s any good. And yes, they may have this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this world class, okay, that might be a stretch, but they may have this really, really great hardware, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, really great tool chain. But that’s kind of ancillary to the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thought that here’s a low cost box that makes for really easy consumption.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think that was more Ben’s point.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but the Apple already has that market. It’s called the iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, if you look at what the existing game consoles do, and you look at the direction they are going, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have all decided, even the previous generation, I mean not the PS2, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the PS3, the Xbox 360, and the Wii, the first Wii,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they all started adding all these media center features. Once like, you know, streaming Netflix became a thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all these streaming video sites, like, you know, that all happened in the last generation of consoles,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they all added these features and they all took advantage of that and they all with their current generation, the new generation,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the exception of I think the Wii U which didn’t really do this kind of stuff, but the other ones moved
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much further towards like that media center role. And because you know people who buy these things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you have very little interest in playing games you’re probably not buying an Xbox
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One, the new Xbox One, stupid name, or the PS4. You’re probably not going to think that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worth it, which is what Ben’s article It must be really frustrating because Ben’s in the chat room
⏹️ ▶️ Marco listening to us mangle his article but sorry Ben, but you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you are if you aren’t that into games you’re not buying those things period like you’re not going to get those unless maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know maybe your kids want one so you get it for your kids but you’re probably as the parent you’re probably not going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use that yourself very much if you can help it. There’s this whole other market of people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like me and Casey people who primarily want for its media functions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and if it can also play games great but we weren’t going out there and spending 60
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bucks to buy GTA 6 like that was not us that was that was possibly never us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was it’s definitely not us now and there’s a lot of us like this and and I think you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the I think the game console makers realize that their market is declining because they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying to be this media boxes also they’re trying to push in this direction Apple already has a very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco successful little media box people buy and put on their TVs and Apple is going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco approach it from the other way. The same way the Amazon Firebox is doing it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Here’s a mid-powered cheap box that you can plug into your TV, here’s a game controller
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for it and an app store where you can spend $3 to buy a game for it if you want to and it’s not going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a AAA awesome world-class game with a $50 million budget. going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be Flappy Bird 3 and you’re going to like it and that’s it. And it’s a totally different
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV will add games the same way that the other consoles added TV features. They’ll add it because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s right there. You might as well do it. You have the hardware available, but people
⏹️ ▶️ John are not buying a PlayStation so they can watch TV shows and people are not going to buy the Apple thing to play games
⏹️ ▶️ John unless Apple gets serious about games because what Apple will be competing with is the $99 box from PlayStation,
⏹️ ▶️ John which they’ve had out for a while in Europe and they just they renamed and are introducing
⏹️ ▶️ John the US as PlayStation TV. Why would you buy the $99 box from PlayStation
⏹️ ▶️ John that streams Netflix and does whatever the hell they’re going to do, you know, like does all the same things that these little TV connected pucks do?
⏹️ ▶️ John Why would you buy the PlayStation one and not the Amazon one? Why would you buy the Amazon one and not the Apple one? Well, if you care anything about games,
⏹️ ▶️ John of course, you’re going to buy the PlayStation one because like they have that thing where you can play old old PS3 games
⏹️ ▶️ John on it with a streaming service. It plays Vita games natively. Like it’s always going to have the better games.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you don’t care about games, you’ll buy the Amazon Fire TV and play Angry Birds, or you buy the Apple one and play whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS game is supported to it. Like, that bifurcation in the market already exists, and everyone thought
⏹️ ▶️ John like the iOS app store was going to totally disrupt the gaming space, and in many respects it did,
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of what kinds of games most people play, but it didn’t disrupt it to the degree
⏹️ ▶️ John that the home console business became unviable. And so if that split just continues on
⏹️ ▶️ John the television, I think that that you’ll still end up with the same split scenario where you have the
⏹️ ▶️ John core gamer market and the casual gamer market. And I don’t think anyone will buy the Apple Puck to
⏹️ ▶️ John play games on if the PlayStation Puck exists, or the Microsoft Puck, or whatever. It’s going to be the same
⏹️ ▶️ John thing in the Puck Wars on the TV, where it’s just which one you want depends on what you care about more.
⏹️ ▶️ John The way you win in the gaming space is not having the tech and not having the APIs, not having the price point. You’ve got to have the games.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Apple has certain kinds of games that they have locked up. Like, you know, the iOS style games,
⏹️ ▶️ John they have them first, they have them best, they run the best there, but they don’t have the kinds of games that people
⏹️ ▶️ John tend to sit in front of a TV and play. And I’m not sure that the casual type of games that Apple is
⏹️ ▶️ John dominant on, if ported to the television, if that’s the type of thing that people will sit in front of the TV and play on a
⏹️ ▶️ John couch. I think once they sit on a couch and are gonna play games in that context, they would prefer
⏹️ ▶️ John to get the PlayStation puck for a similar price and play those games.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re coming at this all wrong because you’re coming at this from the perspective of a gamer. And I don’t think that’s what Ben
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is trying to portray. He’s trying to say it’s a more opportunistic attention grab based
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the fact that Marco and I both have these brand new Apple TVs. And you know what? I wouldn’t mind playing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a okay game every once in a while. I don’t give a crap about Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what have you. I just want to occasionally sit down and blow some crap up. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for that, this Phantom Apple TV is perfect.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re gonna make our buying decisions, not based on which of these pucks has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the games we want, we’re gonna make it based on other factors. Like if we have Amazon Prime,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and this Fire TV is really cheap and comes with this video streaming service that we’re already paying for with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Prime, it’s like, well, might as well get that. If we buy a lot of stuff on iTunes, if we buy a lot of movies and TV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shows on iTunes, we’re gonna buy the Apple TV puck because the PlayStation puck can’t play the videos. And so it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if we’re gonna buy a puck anyway, You know, if we only want to have one, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if we only can afford one, then the other factors that go into these various media
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ecosystems that these things are made to play are going to play a big role in that decision. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re going to have Amazon customers buying the Amazon one, and iTunes customers buying the Apple one.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, that’s what I said before, that like, if you’re choosing based on games, you’re going to choose the Sony one, but if you’re not choosing based
⏹️ ▶️ John on games, you’ll choose the Amazon one or the Apple one. But the whole premise of this article is how Apple might disrupt
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft and Sony. And it’s not disrupting Microsoft and Sony if people are not changing their purchase decisions. If you were going to always
⏹️ ▶️ John buy an Apple TV and now games are just a bonus, you are not disrupting Microsoft or Sony unless
⏹️ ▶️ John you were previously going to buy a PS5 or an Xbox whatever and you decide, you know what, instead,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m going to buy the Apple thing because that’s good enough. Or I’m going to buy the Sony puck because that’s good enough. To disrupt the market,
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to basically take your low end thing and buy that instead
⏹️ ▶️ John of the high end thing. And you have to eat your way up the chain. And I’m saying eating your way up the chain, at a certain
⏹️ ▶️ John point, you cannot eat up any higher because you just don’t have the games. And it’s not saying Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John could not do this. I’m saying the hard part is not the technology. The hard part is getting the games to consume
⏹️ ▶️ John up in the higher end. And again, people thought this was gonna happen in the mobile game space. Like, oh, you think these mobile
⏹️ ▶️ John games are crappy and casual, but soon they’re gonna just destroy the entire market and no one’s gonna be able to like,
⏹️ ▶️ John low end disruption. You poo-poo these games, you think Angry Birds is stupid and no one should play that and Candy Crush is dumb,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you just wait. In five years, there won’t even be a high end market because low end disruption will destroy them. That has not
⏹️ ▶️ John yet happened. It doesn’t seem like it’s happening. I think you cannot disrupt
⏹️ ▶️ John the big players in the game market without having really good games. And I don’t think any, it doesn’t mean
⏹️ ▶️ John they have to be as high tech or whatever. You just have to have the really good games. And thus far, Apple has not shown that
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s willing to do what it takes to get the really good games to stop people from saying, you know what? I was gonna buy
⏹️ ▶️ John a PS5, but I don’t need it anymore. All my gaming needs are now met by this Apple device.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I get your point. Your point is correct that Apple will not take over the high end, but I think Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or boxes like this, if Amazon continues their effort, if it actually succeeds with games, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the big risk here is not that these media companies are going to take over the high end of gaming,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s that they’re going to be good enough and with such a massive price advantage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, you see this all the time. This is classic disruption.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I was just saying that there would be no more high end. That’s low end disruption. The high end is not viable. No one can be a high
⏹️ ▶️ John end. take over the hand that no one could be the high end because it’s not viable. But that’s what I’m saying. I if this was going to happen,
⏹️ ▶️ John I would think we’d be seeing it happen already. Like that, that there is no
⏹️ ▶️ John more room for high end. That the 60 dollar games are not a thing. Apple doesn’t have to get those customers. They just have
⏹️ ▶️ John to starve the companies that make them to death to say, you can keep trying to do that, but we’re going to make your business unviable. And
⏹️ ▶️ John then we’re all that’s left in the end. And I don’t think that can happen because I think enough people
⏹️ ▶️ John want really good games, the kind of which Apple has thus far shown it is not willing or able to
⏹️ ▶️ John get made for its platform. Maybe. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John the one thing Apple has going for it is that in the realm of TV connected pucks, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has a good store. Amazon has a pretty good store. The game console makers
⏹️ ▶️ John are not that great about having nice, convenient app stores that regular people can use that don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John suck. They don’t have your credit cards stolen from them. Speaking of Sony. Yeah. Microsoft may be doing
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit better. The one advantage all the Apple has is they have experience
⏹️ ▶️ John in selling you $3 things electronically. And people are familiar with their stores.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if they can leverage their iOS advantage that you can say, Oh, you buy it here and you can play it on your TV as well. And all these other
⏹️ ▶️ John things like that, that is an advantage they have in the gaming space for casual gaming. But the way I
⏹️ ▶️ John see it playing out unless something changes seriously is that your TV will become
⏹️ ▶️ John just like every other part of the current market where there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a split between the people who want the big expensive thing and buy $60 games and the people who want everything else. And the ratios,
⏹️ ▶️ John I imagine, would be similar there. And I do think it’s a declining market. I think the people who want $60 games is declining.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just not declining so precipitously that I’m willing to say that Apple or Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John or Sony, for that matter, are poised to disrupt the high-end gaming market by making it unviable.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sony clearly is hedging its bets with its little TV puck thing, saying, well, if it’s going to happen, we should do it to ourselves.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they’ll sell this puck and they’ll see how it sells. And if it starts to catch on, I’m sure Sony has no problem redirecting their attention
⏹️ ▶️ John in the next generation to puck like devices. I don’t know if Microsoft’s planning to have a puck, but it wouldn’t surprise
⏹️ ▶️ John me. So everyone is kind of hedging their bets. But I think the success of the PS4 and Xbox One are making
⏹️ ▶️ John people say, Alright, we’ve got one more generation breathing room, let’s start planning our next gen and see, see how things shake out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, automatic, lynda.com,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Backblaze and we will see you next week.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And if you’re into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey T. Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Syracuse. We have a special guest tonight. It is my wonderful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wife Tiff, and because Tiff actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did my homework for me. Oh, that’s right. Tiff has played
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Journey after years of listening to John tell us about Journey
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and why we should all be playing Journey. Tiff actually played it because John discovered
⏹️ ▶️ Marco while talking to Tiff at WBDC this week that she is a gamer and that I have apparently hidden this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fact from all of you guys until this point but she is a gamer sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and she’s actually better than me at almost every game that we’ve both played.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And anyway, so she did my homework for me and here she is.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Hey, what’s going on?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tiff. All right. Well, you know, before you do anything, if I hypothetically did eventually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want to play this game, is this going to spoil everything?
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Yeah, you should probably leave.
⏹️ ▶️ John And neither should Mark over that. Did he watch you play?
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment He watched me play enough that he knows what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment, John going on because he’s
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment never going to play.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Tiff Arment know him.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’m never going to play either. I don’t have a PlayStation, so I’m never going to play.
⏹️ ▶️ John You should not listen. I’m telling you should go away and come back later.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Yeah, where’s that big like spoiler bell? Alright, do you really want me to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not listen? Because the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey likelihood of me playing
⏹️ ▶️ John this… The spoiler bell. Jason Snell is crying somewhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s a spoiler horn, isn’t it? BOOOOOOOM Do you really want me to go away?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, you should. I mean, you played Monument Valley. You could potentially play this. I think you should go away and come back.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, just to be clear, the likelihood… I cannot play this game until somebody…
⏹️ ▶️ John You’ll be able to play it on your $99 PlayStation puck in about a year, so… All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. I’m going to take my headphones off and just watch the chat ruin everything for
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment me. It’s just gonna be you, me, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s all we need. We need those jokers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wow. Zing. All right, I’m taking my headphones off.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Bye. Is he gone?
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Okay. So where should I start? I guess at the beginning, I’ve done all my homework.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment I played the game now four times, and I listened to the incomparable and
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment I read your article. So homework done.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you tweeted after you played with an emoji. I’m not an emoji conversant enough
⏹️ ▶️ John to know what you meant by that emoji. But it was like the the biting down teeth
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of like what it made it seem like is that you did not like this game when you first played it.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Well, the first time I played it without anything, just sitting down, playing it, knowing nothing,
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment I didn’t like it.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right. So explain that.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Well, I thought, first of all, so spoiler bell, I thought like the people who I was with
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment were AI. So I was like, Oh, this is just stupid. This person just walking around with me. I’m just doubled.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment And then I felt like it was a game that like you got siphoned through.
⏹️ ▶️ John See, that is super interesting, because that’s why I don’t want people to know like I told Marco to make sure
⏹️ ▶️ John that the PlayStation was connected to the network, but not to tell you that it was a network game, because I don’t want people to know that the
⏹️ ▶️ John people are real people. And it’s interesting to see. Some people play the game and immediately realize those
⏹️ ▶️ John are other people. Some people play the entire game and just assume they’re AI the entire game.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Right, and that’s what I assumed. And then because there’s really no challenge, you just kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment ooze through this world. And you do some things, and certain things will attack you, but
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment there are no consequences for it. So I was just like, this
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment is just boring.
⏹️ ▶️ John So here’s what I was hoping. I was hoping that as a gamer, you would realize
⏹️ ▶️ John when the people are interacting with you that they couldn’t possibly be AI because they exhibit behaviors that no AI
⏹️ ▶️ John could possibly exhibit.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Well, maybe like the people that I played with were just kind of like helping me like jump and walking around with
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment me. They weren’t doing anything extraordinary. But the after I listened to the incomparable
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment and then realized that they were real people, and then I started getting into like everything that you guys were talking about on that episode
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment about why it was a beautiful game and why it was good and why it was fun and the whole the article that
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment you wrote about people being nice to each other and all that that made me want to play the game again. So
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment when I played it the second time, I really felt like I got it, you know, because then I was
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment also playing with someone who was like showing me where things were so I can get my scarf really
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment long. So that was fun. So I was like following him around. And so I felt like that
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment was, I guess, more of the right way to play the game.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you only get one chance to play it for the first time, which is kind of a bummer. And like I said, I think I said on the incomparable,
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel lucky that my first playthrough was so perfect in the way that it was. The other thing I was hoping
⏹️ ▶️ John with you as a gamer who plays things on hard mode was that you wouldn’t realize that there
⏹️ ▶️ John are no consequences for failure because you wouldn’t fail. That you wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John be attacked by those things and have your scarf being eaten and realize, oh, no matter how many times I attack,
⏹️ ▶️ John I never die. Just my scarf gets shorter until a certain point, and I don’t actually die. And I said
⏹️ ▶️ John in the Incomparable, the great thing about the game is it doesn’t tell you what the consequences are. So you don’t have a health
⏹️ ▶️ John meter. you don’t know what it takes for you to die, or if you can die at all. So if you’re in a particular mindset,
⏹️ ▶️ John you might be like, I don’t know what’s going to happen here. I have nothing to fall back on. I can’t look at my number of hearts up on the screen and
⏹️ ▶️ John know that I’m okay if I get hit once for all I know it’s single hit death and I don’t want to die because I’m in the
⏹️ ▶️ John middle of this experience with this other person or even depending on what kind of gamer you are, even
⏹️ ▶️ John if you assume it’s an AI, I’m the type of person who could find themselves getting attached to an AI. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John if there was just a really good AI in a game and I felt like protective of it or attached to it as a companion.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would be sad if it died or like in my journey experience when I was playing with that person, even though I realized
⏹️ ▶️ John the person, even if it was a I, I would feel like they let them down by like when you’re hiding in those little and the little
⏹️ ▶️ John pieces in the snowy part and someone pokes out and like, oh, now you’re both screwed because you made a mistake. And I just
⏹️ ▶️ John felt terrible that I did that to that person. It was like attention for the rest of the game that I had let
⏹️ ▶️ John this person down, you know?
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Yeah, I mean, I totally get that. And I especially felt that the second time through like I was really upset
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment when I lost my my companion the second time I played it because he was helping me do all this stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment and we got separated after this you know one part with the dragon and I was really upset and I was like waiting
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment for him and like singing my little song in the dark like at the end like waiting and he wasn’t showing
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment up and then I ended up in a second the next level with some like little tiny short
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment scarf noob like jumping up and down and I’m like oh that was me yesterday and he was like singing and yelling and jumping and I’m like I
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment can’t help you. I don’t know what I’m doing either. So I just left him in the dust and I kept on going. And then my
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment long scar friend showed up again. And so I was like, we rejoiced and sang little songs together. And so that was really
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment great. And but that was, again, my second experience when I knew it was a real person.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment And then but the first time I played through right at the end, the when you’re going up the tower,
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment the snow tower, my like little buddy who I was with, who I thought was an AI, like froze to death.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment He just like sat down and was like shivering and not moving. And I was like singing Adam and nothing was happening.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment So I just went on alone. And when I was the first time I thought like, Oh, okay, so I had
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment a companion through the middle of the game, I didn’t have one in the beginning. And then he kind of like froze to death
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment at the end. But so I had to like do the end alone. I’m like, Oh, okay, I guess this is just the time that I don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment a double of me that I go up with. So it was definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment the first time around wasn’t as fun as the second time.
⏹️ ▶️ John What I told my wife when she was asking that I said that I thought you didn’t like the game and she was asking why and I said
⏹️ ▶️ John my theory was that since you are a gamer that uh and I didn’t know that you had the
⏹️ ▶️ John that you thought it was an AI the whole time but this fits is that if you feel like you’re playing a game
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole time you’re playing this game and this would for somebody who plays games on hard because you want like a challenge like if
⏹️ ▶️ John you if you were always in the headspace of I am playing a game it’s kind of like if you watch a movie
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re always in the headspace of I’m watching a movie the movies that get you you forget you’re watching a movie and you feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re experiencing what you’re experiencing. And if you journey relies entirely on that happening, because
⏹️ ▶️ John not every game does like if you’re playing a first person shooter in super hard mode, you can feel like you’re playing a game the whole time. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John totally satisfying.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Oh, yeah, you have to be engaged. I mean, the thing about journey was that I felt like when sometimes you’re going through like some
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment of the areas, I felt like I could just let go of my controller. And it would just go there for me, you know, like I was
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment just being funneled through the game.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, yeah, like it is, you can’t you can’t feel like you’re playing a game like because yes, if you think about it for two seconds, you were like, Oh, this
⏹️ ▶️ John section is on rails, I can let go. But it’s like, you know, you can’t you can’t think that way.
⏹️ ▶️ John You have to you have to think I am here, this is happening to me. And why would I ever want to let go? So for the sections where you’re sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of surfing down the hill and stuff. The reason I found those those levels so amazing is because like
⏹️ ▶️ John early in the game, you realize you can slide. And it’s just it’s just like, there’s no point there. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John no, you’re not you don’t get extra points for going through the little stanchions, you know, the little gates that you can
⏹️ ▶️ John go that’s, that’s not there. Like, oh, you have to do that. And and your extra bonus? No, it’s all about just having fun. And you have to feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like you’re there and enjoying the little sort of dolphin things, diving through the sand and going in the why?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because do you get some reward when you jump on their heads? No, you jump in their heads because it’s fun. And you really have to just feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re there. And if the entire time you feel like you’re playing a game, then it’s like, well, this game is not challenging.
⏹️ ▶️ John This game is not interesting. This game doesn’t offer me anything, doesn’t offer me extra power up, extra weapons, all the
⏹️ ▶️ John type of things that you would, you know, in a game in a game where you can be OK, feeling like you’re playing a game. You have to
⏹️ ▶️ John not feel like you’re playing a game for this and feel like you’re having experience and realizing there are other people probably helps you with that, because
⏹️ ▶️ John then it’s like, oh, I’m not playing a game in the same way that suddenly you feel like, you know, you ever see people
⏹️ ▶️ John like texting, walking down the street and the expressions on their face are, you know, angry
⏹️ ▶️ John, Tiff Arment joyful.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They’re holy. They’re going through all the emotions of what’s happening, but nothing’s happening to them,
⏹️ ▶️ John And what they’re using is an app that has a text box and a bunch of little text box over it or whatever. But their experience
⏹️ ▶️ John is like, Oh, no, no, they’re connected to the person on the other end of this, like and journey does that with significantly better
⏹️ ▶️ John graphics than the messages app on iOS, right? And can should can elicit the same type of emotions because like I
⏹️ ▶️ John said, in the article, they shave, they shave off every possible way that person can be a jerk to you. And all that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John left is the good and in general, people are good to each other. And even if they try to be a jerk, it just comes off as like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, craziness or disinterest, like they can’t do anything to harm you. So it’s like a relentlessly positive
⏹️ ▶️ John, Tiff Arment experience.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment And with it with that whole argument, though, that’s exactly why I disagree with you that when you first play the game that someone
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment should know that you’re playing with other people because the game was infinitely more enjoyable
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment for me when I realized that it was just another person with me, instead of just an AI. And
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment so I didn’t enjoy the game when I thought it was AI. But I love the game after I found out it was
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment a real person. And I’ve gone back twice now and played it once I played under Marcos name, and I had to go get my own name
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment so I can get my own scarf stuff. and I didn’t have Tumblr more. What was it? Instapaper Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment They’re like, you played with Instapaper Marco. It’s like, no, you played with Tiff,
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Armand, whoever I am, I don’t know. But like, that’s, you know, that that whole experience
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment of with other people made it so much better. And I would have never played the game again, if it was anything
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment like the first time I played it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was hoping that you would not know that think they’re AI initially, but
⏹️ ▶️ John but figure it out after like five minutes, because that realization that it’s another person is a fun realization. Because,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, again, if you don’t like that, that’s the common experiences. If they don’t know it’s AI, they initially
⏹️ ▶️ John think it is AI, but then figure out that it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment the it’s kind of like the reverse Blair Witch Project. Like if you see the movie, and then you
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment and you think it’s real, it’s great the first time you see it, and then you realize it’s not real. And it sucks. It’s the worst
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment movie ever. So journey is reverse Blair Witch Project.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, people do go back and play journey. I mean, do you have your white robe yet? Are you on the path to get
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Well, no, because now I’ve got cheated out of a out of an entire playthrough because I played on Marco’s
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment account. And so then I had to create my own account. And so I only have two
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment playthroughs on mine. Although I found like this crazy shortcut where you can like jump to any level and I accidentally
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment did that tonight. And all of a sudden I skipped half the game and I was like, Whoa,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, that’s the hub. That’s the hub level you you want to get the white. The white robe is the
⏹️ ▶️ John one thing that is game like in this industry board and multiple playthroughs. You don’t have to play a certain number of times, although there is something
⏹️ ▶️ John that happens as you play a multiple number of times, but you could play through once and have the white robe.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Well, your robe gets all like in much more intricate on the bottom. So right now I have like a whole bunch of intricate
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment orange bits.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and that keeps going until it reaches like it fills up entirely. But the white robe is
⏹️ ▶️ John not dependent on that filling up, you could fill up that entire thing and still not have a white robe and you could do one playthrough and get the white robe.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Yeah, I still got to find all the little symbols everywhere because
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment I think I could do much better.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s not much you know, this that’s the only collectible in the game as little symbols. And like I said in the article, like when you get
⏹️ ▶️ John the symbol and you’re playing with someone else, they get it too. You don’t steal it from them.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Oh, yeah, yeah. I think that that’s great. Because then you can do that’s what the one part of the second time I played through the person was showing
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment me where everything was and helping me get them. So we like both had the same length scarf. And that was
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment just fantastic. And just tonight, I found like a little new person. And I was like, Come with me. I know where these things are.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then once you once you have those long scarves, like when you get into the levels that have danger, then it’s like, I mean, even though
⏹️ ▶️ John the stakes are like, like you say, you can’t die, you don’t want to lose your scarf. Right? And don’t want your new you want to protect your
⏹️ ▶️ John new person if there’s someone new with you or if you have a long scarf yourself you’re like look I I worked for the earlier part of this
⏹️ ▶️ John game to get this I don’t want it to be taken from me and then so exactly so what do you think of the ending part
⏹️ ▶️ John where you’re in the snow and going up the mountain and everything and how that ends is
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment oh I thought I died I was like no I thought I don’t know I thought I failed the first time I played
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment I was I was alone and it was cold and windy and like I didn’t know I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment like that’s it it’s over I need to do something again I need to go back and do it again. But then, you know, I started flying
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment and I’m such a spaz sometimes and you know, when you go up after you die in the snow and
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment or whatever happens to you in the snow and you go up to the mountain, I crash right into
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment the side of the mountain. I’m stuck under the mountain and I’m jumping Oh, it was horrible. I’m like, this is supposed to be my
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment moment. And I’m like, I’m all caught underneath the mountain.
⏹️ ▶️ John So for the story part of the game, were you? Were you on board with that? Were you paying attention to the cutscenes
⏹️ ▶️ John and the first or second playthrough and like deciphering the story and then you know connecting it to the ending.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Oh yeah definitely and like how all the little markers are all really graves and you know all this stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment and I liked how just like you talked about in the incomparable where you know you when you have a companion
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment with you it shows it on the the wall that there’s someone else with you or you’re alone in certain parts
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment and it yeah I thought it was I thought it was a really nice story that it was simple it was uplifting
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment you know like it it moved you along and I liked it a lot. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John For my one playthrough that you know you only have one chance to make the first playthrough. I’m so happy that I happened to
⏹️ ▶️ John that I played alone in the beginning to get the feel of the game and then found someone and had a sort of experience with them in which I
⏹️ ▶️ John disappointed them but that we did end up going through the light together in the end. You know, we’re like
⏹️ ▶️ John you get up to that final sort of snowy part where it’s quiet and your scarf is gone and the light
⏹️ ▶️ John is right there. The thing you’ve been trying to get through the whole time.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Oh, so you had someone going with you. I like keep waiting at the tie waited at the top the last game and
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the thing waiting it waiting at the top you’re like is that person gonna come
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment nobody showed up I was like beep beep like you know beeping my little and no one’s coming because I
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment keep crashing into the mountain when I get up there so I’m always behind
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah I’ve waited I’ve waited at the top several times for people sometimes they show up sometimes they don’t but the first time we
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of like I mean the first time you know you don’t know what’s gonna happen in that snowy thing and I was with the person going up the snowy thing
⏹️ ▶️ John we both pitch over into the snow. I thought, like you, that’s the end of the game. Because, like, you know, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if you saw the ending of The Sopranos, but all sorts of things. And, like, that’s one way it could
⏹️ ▶️ John end. But that wasn’t the end. Like, you know, you were in, you end up in that other
⏹️ ▶️ John place. And for me, it was with that other person. And we sort of, like, swooped to the top
⏹️ ▶️ John of that mountain together, joyously, not crashing to the side of the mountain, luckily.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Yeah, like, because I listened to you on, and you were saying that, oh, this is your freedom moment, and you get to, like, play
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment around. And I’m there like crashing to the side of the mountain, stuck underneath like this snowy bank and
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment I’m walking. I’m like, this is so pathetic. Everyone else is flying. It’s like happy music and the scarves
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment are everywhere and the little like the friendly little carpet dogs are like, you know, and everything’s
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment happening and I’m stuck like under this mountain. I’m like, what kind of a hell gamer am I? It’s just terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ John The carpet dogs. I like I always call them dolphins. But since you have hops around, I can
⏹️ ▶️ John, Tiff Arment see how they might look like little
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment you. Yeah, well, they’re all loyal and they come by. that sad one in the snow. Oh, it kills me.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment, John So sad. It’s like, I’m so
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment cold and you can’t take it with you. Yeah, terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so I’m sad that your first playthrough wasn’t everything that it could be, but like you can’t control.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Well, I guess I wanted it to be so much because you’re like, it’s going to be so good. And you know, I had all these
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment expectations and I’m like, really, John likes this game. It’s just kind of like a funnel game. That’s what I call them. They just you just
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment want to let go of the controller and let it happen to you. And you’re like, this
⏹️ ▶️ John right, but you need to be engaged to not like you need to not be thinking that’s a possibility because there is no control. What do
⏹️ ▶️ John you mean to control you’re walking through a desert? There’s no controller like you need to get into that headspace. Yeah, appreciate it. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m glad you haven’t. And that’s why I said like in the episode, it was titled one of our past 80 piece was a journey would
⏹️ ▶️ John be wasted on Marco or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Oh, yeah, he would just be like, this was why did I just do this? He’s like, he would be like, why did I just play this game?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because he would never get into that headspace. Like it like, you know, you’re getting into it on second playthroughs. And now you’re having like the
⏹️ ▶️ John actual experience of the game or whatever you have to, you have to be there in the game. And you
⏹️ ▶️ John have to like be absorbed in the story and be appreciative of a pretty desert and a cute little
⏹️ ▶️ John frozen cloth thing and the scary dragons. And like, if you’re never going to get into that space
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re always just think I’m sitting on a couch holding a controller, you’ll never enjoy the game.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Yeah. And you know, honestly, that I would have been I would have just stopped right there if it were my first playthrough. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment what then. But I did all my homework. I, you know, listen to the uncomfortable. I read your article and that
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment that sucked me back in. So it ends up I really do like the game. So what are we
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment playing next? Huh?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I was super sad when it seemed like you didn’t like it, because I’m like, oh, all these other recommendations I had for her,
⏹️ ▶️ John now I’m not even going to give them. Because if she didn’t like Journey, it’s clear our taste in games
⏹️ ▶️ John differs. No, it’s like some people don’t like the same type of games. And unlike Marco, it’s totally clear that you’re a gamer,
⏹️ ▶️ John but maybe you just don’t like the same type of games that I do. Or if you’re going to recommend a movie to someone, you recommend a Fellini
⏹️ ▶️ John movie and they hate it. It’s like, well, I guess we like different kinds of movies. It’s not necessarily a bad movie. But
⏹️ ▶️ John if you came around on Journey, I can continue your list of games that you can play.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment I do. I can be very open-minded with most games. Like I just finished Limbo because
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment now I’m all in a gaming mood and then I can go like, you know, to the shoot-em-up Halo, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment all that Half-Life kind of stuff game. So I’m pretty versatile.
⏹️ ▶️ John So what are you in the mood for? Are you in the mood for a game that is more kind of like not too hard,
⏹️ ▶️ John not too challenging, all about atmosphere and relationships? Well definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment games I could play during nap time. That’s good.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because two ways to go on this, like my traditional thing is if you have a PlayStation three, you need to
⏹️ ▶️ John play Eco Shadow the Colossus and Journey and the Last of Us and
⏹️ ▶️ John the Last of Us is the most traditional game straight up triple A game with shooting things and
⏹️ ▶️ John zombies and everything you think of. But it’s like a very well done one of those games. It is one
⏹️ ▶️ John of the few that I usually don’t like games like that. So that if you’re in the mood for that type of game, that is the one to get.
⏹️ ▶️ John will satisfy you on all the levels that those type of games satisfy people if you’re into that.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Yeah, that sounds good. Someone write that down.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then if if you get through that, maybe you will have like had enough junk food that you’ll be
⏹️ ▶️ John in the mood for eco and shallow classes. Shallow classes is
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Oh, I already played Walking Dead chat room.
⏹️ ▶️ John You didn’t though. Did we talked about this?
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment no, no, not Walking Dead. No, no, the other two zombie ones.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I recommended I recommended Walking Dead. You can play that on your Mac, but I don’t. I need to see what your taste is
⏹️ ▶️ John like more. So we’ve got one end of the spectrum of his journey. The Last of Us is pretty much on the other end
⏹️ ▶️ John of the spectrum. It’s not I guess Grand Theft Auto would be the other end of the spectrum. But
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment no, no, I played that one too. So
⏹️ ▶️ John right, but Last of Us is more serious. You’ll see that all my games are like, put it this way. I
⏹️ ▶️ John like one hour dramas on TV. The games I recommend are all the type of games you’d see recommended by someone
⏹️ ▶️ John, Tiff Arment hour dramas
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Well, that’s pretty much what we watch. So I think that would totally work. Although I did watch the like a preview
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment gameplay of Ico.
⏹️ ▶️ John Eco. Yeah, it’s eco.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Yeah, it was very like Zelda E, right? Zelda esque.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s nothing like Zelda in gameplay.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Tiff Arment That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John what it looked like. It looks like it, but it is. It is like journey in that you have to be there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Otherwise you feel like this game is not hard. There are no exciting power ups. There’s no level meter. I’m not leveling
⏹️ ▶️ John this like you. All those things that you’re complaining you would have exactly the same complaints about eco. But I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like journey before journey it was my like my go to like games as our
⏹️ ▶️ John PlayStation three type game it is considerably longer than journey it’s like 11 hours it is a little bit harder in terms of puzzles
⏹️ ▶️ John and if you have a low tolerance for puzzles you might find it frustrating or annoying but I really love it and then shout out the class
⏹️ ▶️ John this is like an in between stage where shout out class is actually pretty darn hard and to the point where I’m not sure
⏹️ ▶️ John that you would actually finish the game because you’d be like you know what I’ve seen with
⏹️ ▶️ John, Tiff Arment this oh
⏹️ ▶️ John I see what this game has to offer I see how it’s kind of go and I don’t want to grind through it, especially if you hate
⏹️ ▶️ John the PlayStation controller like I hated.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Yeah, it’s not the best controller.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but it has the same mood as eco. It’s from the same developer and it’s sort of all
⏹️ ▶️ John of a piece. So so I would say go to last of us next because that is very straight ahead.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think one of the best games for the PlayStation three for people like traditional games. And if you make it through
⏹️ ▶️ John that, that should be like what, 16, 20 hours, something like that. Then we’ll revisit the
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment Excellent. Well, Adam’s been taking two to three hour naps. So that plus some evenings.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment I think I can Plow
⏹️ ▶️ John see. No, that sounds great. And we’ll have you back on to here. Maybe Marco He’s just a lost cause
⏹️ ▶️ John like maybe Marco can play last of us with you or watch you play cuz he’s a spaz But who knows?
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment well he like walks by while he’s getting coffee and like we’ll check out my video game and be like oh it’s happening here and then He’ll make
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment some like snide remark about it and be like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ll go sit in his chair and bang on his keyboard without him. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment exactly. He’ll put on his fish and he’ll disappear to the world and that’ll be it.
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s missing out. All right. Poor Casey is out there.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment How do we get him back?
⏹️ ▶️ John I can tell him to come back.
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment All right, do we should I put Margo back? So thanks for talking to me about journey.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sure. Anytime. Anytime you want to kick Margo off the show, you can come up. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Tiff Arment excellent. You’re that you’re out. I’m in. All right. Bye,
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, as we said at WWDC, what we learned from WWDC is
⏹️ ▶️ John that in the Marco-Tiff marriage, Marco is
⏹️ ▶️ John my wife and Tiff is me. Pretty much.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can we just get a clip, a sound clip of you saying Marco is my wife? That’s all we need.