77: Full-Stack Businessperson
08 Aug 2014Transport Tycoon, sausages, ARM Macs, and making money in the App Store.
Episode Description:
- Casey wants to be the pre-show DJ
- Follow-up:
- Macs with ARMs (in contrast to bubbles with feet)
- Making money in the App Store
- Jared Sinclair's blog post
- Planet Money on discussing salaries
- Fast Text (iTunes Link) sales
- Post-show:
- Rube Goldberg Machine
- Casey's terrible fast-food preferences
Sponsored by:
- TopBrewer: A revolutionary built-in coffee system for the home or small business.
- Fracture: Photos printed in vivid color directly on glass. Use code ATP for 15% off. Marco's app-icon Fractures (First 25 people: Use code marcofree for a free small square Fracture).
- Need: A refined retailer and lifestyle magazine for men. Email here after ordering to get some bonuses and 25% off your next order.
Transcript start
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my goodness his sausages are wonderful.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If I gave you a playlist of mp3s and it lasted say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey half an hour to 45 minutes would you play that instead of that god awful crap that you make
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone listen to every week?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Probably not but I would at least be willing to consider it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Your honesty is both annoying and appreciated all at the same time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, chances are not great, I’ll tell you that. But I would consider
⏹️ ▶️ John Why is everyone in the chat room thanking Casey? You don’t know what the music is yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s a good point. I mean, what if it’s just like a bunch of Dave Matthews band? Like, is that really an improvement?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would argue not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It honestly would not be a bunch of Dave Matthews. The only reason I would play a bunch of Dave Matthews
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is if A, I had absolute control of the live stream, which would never happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And B, I did it just to troll Marco, which I don’t think I care enough.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I would like to offer my services as unofficial official
⏹️ ▶️ Casey DJ or official unofficial DJ, if you will, if you ever find the need arising.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m actually curious, John, what would be on your playlist?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, like, I probably throw in some video game soundtracks, some mashups
⏹️ ▶️ John that I like, weird things I would probably do because I’m not going to like play songs that everyone’s heard before because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, that’s why I play Phish because no one listens to it except me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will say that I did find out, I don’t remember if it was you, John, that told
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me, but somebody pointed out to me that the Journey soundtrack was available on iTunes and it was like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey five or ten bucks and I pretty much insta-bought that.
⏹️ ▶️ John That was me, of course.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, I thought it might have been you but I wasn’t sure and it is excellent. So do you remember the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Transport Tycoon soundtrack was like really snazzy and snappy jazz. Yeah, yeah, it was actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty good. It was pretty good. Somebody eventually like made MP3s of it because it was all MIDI,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I believe, just in a different extension, file extension. But really, it was just MIDI. And somebody took
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the MIDIs and like sampled them or recorded them. I don’t know what the correct term is, but did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something with them to create like really good sounding MP3s. And at one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point or another, I had it and I’ve long since lost it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m sure that the community of Transport Tycoon revivalists, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually, and has… I mean, because, you know, if anyone out there is a fan of Transport
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tycoon and you don’t know about OpenTTD, let me tell you about OpenTTD.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fans have basically rewritten the entire engine of the game, and it runs on everything. It runs on Macs, Linux, Windows.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A couple of people even ported it to iPad here and there, although the iPad ports are terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. And it is so good. And they’ve added features to the game, and they’ve improved things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like they’ve improved the pathfinding of the trains and everything. And they’ve added different features. They have this whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new signal type that makes signals more useful. It’s fantastic. Oh man,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you ever played Transport Tycoon, or even SimCity 2000, and you’re into trains at all,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re gonna love OpenTTD, and it’s free.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s really fantastic. In fact, I think we’ve mentioned this on the show at some point or another, Transport Tycoon
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Visual Basic 1 were pretty much how you and I became friends. That’s right, yeah. The combination of those two.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That and an utter fear of the outdoors.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that probably contributed more. We would have found something else to do inside on your computer if we didn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those two things. This is true. The only time I’ve ever seen OS2 warp. Those
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were the days. Hi, Guy English. I feel like OS2 needs a Guy English bell, just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like file systems and HFS Plus’s John’s bell.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It needs to be just some kind of like dull thunk. Like, yeah, OS2 warp!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey goodness. All right, what’s going on? Any follow-up? Yeah, I
⏹️ ▶️ John put one item in, but his follow-up was feeling lonely. I can’t believe you just put the Transport Tycoon stuff in a follow-up. I don’t know if that qualifies as a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey follow-up. Well, no, it was the beginning of the show. I just knew that when I’m going to do show notes, if this makes it into the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show, that I would want to look at it there. So it’s not strictly follow-up. I’m sorry
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for tainting the sanctity of your follow up.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’re talking about Apple Mail in Mavericks and the Gmail related bugs and how the public
⏹️ ▶️ John beta program for Yosemite might help Apple catch those type of bugs. Michael Sy,
⏹️ ▶️ John I really hope I’m pronouncing his last name correctly. Yeah, tweeted or emailed one of the
⏹️ ▶️ John other the other alternate theory for the Gmail bug. It was not
⏹️ ▶️ John so much that Apple didn’t catch it in Mavericks. It’s just that it was difficult to figure out how to fix
⏹️ ▶️ John in time for the ship date, and they just shipped knowing that there were bugs and knowing they planned to fix them and were working on the fix long
⏹️ ▶️ John before Maverick shipped and shipped the fix as soon as they got it fixed. Considering there’s a second
⏹️ ▶️ John party involved here, considering Gmail’s on the other end over there, it may be a bug that involves Google
⏹️ ▶️ John and also involves Apple. It’s plausible theory and we didn’t mention it on the last
⏹️ ▶️ John show, so I thought I would just mention it now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also think it’s worth mentioning, so in the context of this, we were talking about the Gmail bug in Mavericks.0
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Gmail’s various incentives and everything. I believe, John,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe you had asserted that certainly some people in Google use Apple Mail and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s enough of them that it would be worth them making sure it works. And I said I’d be pretty surprised if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there were any significant portion of people who work for Google using Apple Mail. And I asked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if anybody knew this, if they could write in. And we heard from a few people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who work at Google who said, universally, they all said, nobody there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uses Apple Mail, or effectively nobody. But they all said that they’ve never seen anyone use it. And pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much everyone uses Gmail, because the workflows that are built around it and everything, it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Mail’s presence among Google employees is apparently nearly zero, which does not
⏹️ ▶️ John Makes me wonder what kind of workflows, because they’re like, one guy was like, oh, I tried to use Apple Mail. They all said that Macs
⏹️ ▶️ John are very prevalent there, which we already knew, right? So they said, everyone’s got Macs. And one of the persons was like, when I came, I tried using Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John Mail, but it was not the thing to do. Everyone was using Gmail. And I’m wondering
⏹️ ▶️ John if they have some kind of plugins or Gmail Labs things. What is it about the web interface
⏹️ ▶️ John that kind of makes it so that Apple Mail isn’t viable? If you’re just doing mail stuff, fine. But
⏹️ ▶️ John what is the, is it just peer pressure that everybody’s using mail? Is it, I guess, maybe integration with Google
⏹️ ▶️ John Calendar or something? I don’t know. But anyway, yeah, I guess they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not motivated to make it work with Apple Mail. But it’s interesting to me that there is that.
⏹️ ▶️ John That it’s at least that one person felt like there was you know, that it was not even a viable thing to do not just
⏹️ ▶️ John like personal preference, but just like once you’re in Google, you’re going to use Gmail because that’s the way it’s done.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right? Yeah, like it would be difficult for you to use Apple Mail was was just a bit and and whether that was technical,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco political or both. I think it was kind of left to the imagination, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m guessing it’s probably some of both.
⏹️ ▶️ John The weird thing about the political angle is like, well, it’s like dog food. Like, if you’re not using your own
⏹️ ▶️ John mail client, obviously, then your own mail client sucks. And your own thing should be good enough
⏹️ ▶️ John for you to use. But like I said, and it wasn’t contradicted by any of the
⏹️ ▶️ John emails, Macs are all over the place in Google. And how is that not a contradiction, in terms of why
⏹️ ▶️ John are Chromebooks not good enough for everybody? I mean, I guess Google doesn’t really make a sort of full-fledged
⏹️ ▶️ John computer, but for developers or whatever. But their arch rival, Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re using all their hardware inside. I mean, they’re not using the phones, I assume. But for the laptops, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John all Mac. So it makes me wonder if, like, is Google motivated to make a sort of non-Chromebook,
⏹️ ▶️ John full-fledged laptop? I don’t know what the hell OS it would run. I mean, certainly not Windows. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it seems like they’re internally conflicted no matter what.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and there is a whole, I mean, I think a lot of this is kind of company culture as well. like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a whole lot of people out there who use a Mac as their computing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco platform, but aren’t all in on Apple’s other stuff. You know, they use Chrome as the browser, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably use Gmail in a web window or something as their mail client. Like, there’s a whole lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out there who function that way just fine, willingly and happily, because that’s just their preference.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I would imagine those people are more likely to want to work for Google
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than somebody who’s all in on all of Apple’s stuff. So, probably among their employees, it’s kind of self-selecting where their employees
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably just want to use Google stuff in its native interface because that’s just their preference,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s one of the reasons they work there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you’ve got Chrome as your browser, and then you have a bunch of terminal windows in which you run like Emacs or something, or maybe you have a favorite
⏹️ ▶️ John text editor. And that’s the whole experience. But then, why do you need Apple hardware? Why can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John you get by with a Chromebook? Are you locally compiling things in Go and C++?
⏹️ ▶️ John Is that why you need to have a better CPU than the Chromebook? you just want nicer hardware, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I don’t know if there’s much soul searching about this, because they’re probably like, I’m just going to get Apple hardware. And
⏹️ ▶️ John then when I use it, I’m using all Google services. And I’m using, you know, whatever weird version of text mate that I’ve kept left
⏹️ ▶️ John over, I’m using vi or emacs or whatever. So I don’t think there’s much of an apple
⏹️ ▶️ John in their faceness, but they’re still using Apple hardware. And I have to think that if Google
⏹️ ▶️ John continues this kind of Microsoft, like march towards, there There is no market we
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want. There is no thing we can’t do. There is no reason we should rely on everybody. Google
⏹️ ▶️ John has really crept up on that. They didn’t start off that way. But now it just seems like the old thing with
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft was like, is there any business they don’t want? Is there anything having to do with personal computers that they don’t want?
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re like, well, they make applications, but they don’t make dev tools. Well, they make a compiler,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they don’t really make an ID. Well, can they make an ID? Well, they don’t make all the applications. They just do basic Office.
⏹️ ▶️ John OK, well, now they have a paint app. well, they don’t make games, okay, they have flight simulator, oh, well, they don’t make game
⏹️ ▶️ John consoles, now they have the Xbox. It was like Microsoft wanted to do everything, and Google is slowly
⏹️ ▶️ John going towards it. So far, Google doesn’t want to do PC hardware. Like, the Chromebook is close,
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of. They want to supersede PC hardware with something that’s not as problematic as a PC, and maybe they’ll succeed in that someday.
⏹️ ▶️ John But, uh, I don’t know, I have my eye on Google’s megalomania. Certainly, Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John we just discussed last week about the Apple-IBM thing. There’s plenty of things that Apple doesn’t want to do. still doesn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John want to touch enterprise with 10 foot pole, which is why it’s having a 10 foot pole named IBM touch it for them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is there anywhere to go from here other than something awesome?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, actually before we do that, but speaking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of follow up. I love how you’ve had like follow up withdrawal. Like you were holding it in for this like two weeks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, you have to get some kind of follow up out.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so the Apple IBM thing, we got some feedback from people who are like, you know, you’re too down on
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple about the enterprise that actually do a lot of enterprise things. I tried to express that in the last show, to say that it’s not like Apple really
⏹️ ▶️ John ignores it. Like, they do do a lot of things for the enterprise. They have come a long way. But the question
⏹️ ▶️ John is always, are they willing to commit? Are they willing to go to the lengths that other enterprise companies go
⏹️ ▶️ John to? So, the two kinds of feedback we got were, one, from the people saying, Apple is really doing much better
⏹️ ▶️ John on the enterprise, and they’re not nearly as bad as you think they are. And the other is from people saying, as far as Apple has come,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re still bad for reasons X, Y, and Z. So like, both of those are true.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re not both seeing a different Apple. They’re seeing the same Apple, just looking at it from two different perspectives. One, that they’ve come such a long way
⏹️ ▶️ John and are so much better now than they used to be. And the other is that compared to the companies that build themselves around
⏹️ ▶️ John serving the enterprise, Apple is still not willing to do all the things the enterprise wants out
⏹️ ▶️ John of them. And that’s the impasse they’ve been at forever. And the question, like I said last show, was always,
⏹️ ▶️ John what’s Apple gonna do about that? They’re gonna continue to act this way, to kind of turn their nose up at it, but do enough to
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of get a little bit of the business, or do they feel like they want more of the business? And I think they feel like they do want more of the business,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they don’t want to change them. They don’t want to change their own behavior to get more of that business. They just want to have someone else
⏹️ ▶️ John augment their existing infrastructure and support to get more of the business indirectly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week, once again, by our friend Matt Alexander at Need.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Need is a refined retailer and lifestyle magazine for men. And it kind of came out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the Bionic podcast in a way. And so you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has to be pretty interesting if it came out of that, right? Each month, Need curates and sells
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a limited quantity of exclusive products from the world’s top men’s brands. These collections are presented
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the form of a monthly editorial, built around a certain theme, and are shot by local independent photographers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Beyond clothing, which they have a lot of, they also sell coffee, literature, furniture, and lots of other cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff. Need is also expanding. Soon they will localize to certain cities around the world,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the first of which will be London. I’m guessing that’s London, England, or the UK,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco England? I never know. Great Britain? Oh boy. I’m pretty sure London at least is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in England. I don’t know how to refer to the rest of it. It’s in England. Sorry if I offended the entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco UK, England, Great Britain, continent, subcontinent, island. Okay, so, Need is only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eight months old, but they will already be one of the primary sponsors of New York Fashion Week.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, I actually know what this is because my wife watches Project Runway. Do you guys actually know what Fashion Week is?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something in New York City where a bunch of fashionable people descend upon New York
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and make everyone else feel poor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a really good idea to sponsor this if you’re a clothing company and needs already doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it because Fashion Week is huge. It is like New York has all these stupid things like they have like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Internet Week and all this crap that they try to boost other industries and make them make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these like events all trying to mimic Fashion Week poorly. Fashion Week is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco real thing. It’s what everyone else is trying to be. It’s such a huge deal in New York. Need is sponsoring Fashion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Week. They’ll be bringing along small independent brands to show off the company and its aspirations in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco midst of the world of high fashion. In other words, in their words, they’re going to tell everyone about starting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up working independently and telling great stories in a traditional world of exclusivity and brands.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway go to neededition.com and that’s not the math it’s the e edition neededition.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco check out their collection and it changes every month seriously add this to your RSS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reader it’s one post a month I mean come on if you still use RSS we’ll get to that but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still use RSS and I have it in my RSS reader anyone who places an order with need and was sent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from ATP can send an email afterwards to hello at need edition.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the subject line New York Fashion Week to commemorate the special occasion. They will then throw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a bunch of extras with those orders before they ship things like magazines, field nose, socks, scarves, etc.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then you’ll be put in a list to get 25% off your next order. And they’ve been doing this offer for a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of weeks now. ATP listeners, if you have multiple orders where you’ve emailed them and gotten the 25%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the next order thing, you can stack that so you can get you can collect two of them and get 50% off an order after that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So just for ATP listeners, they’re being really nice to us. And most of all though,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the first five orders will receive one of five limited edition, never to be publicly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sold, Need branded hats. Now I don’t have a lot of hair so hats are very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco useful. Need produced a Need-Ebbetsfield collaboration hat.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ebbetsfield is the company that created original baseball cap apparently these hats are gonna be worth about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fifty dollars if they were sold at retail but they’re not going to be they are only there’s a five limited edition
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hats and let me see I believe you get it for free right yeah they will just toss us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in so the first five orders that email them with this email hello at neat addition calm after you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hear this with the subject line New York Fashion Week after you place an order this is a great deal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I might do this I might take one of these before the delay in the live stream.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, thank you very much to Need. Go to neededition.com to check it out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have a request. For that ad read, can you put in like ragtime bionic music?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know what I’m talking about?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco See, I love when Need sponsors because I can totally mess up the entire read
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and put all sorts of my own personal crap into it and it doesn’t matter because Matt is like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a friend of ours so he doesn’t really mind and it still works because people keep ordering stuff. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s both a great thing that Matt is doing for us and a great thing that our listeners are doing for Matt and for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us indirectly by buying stuff from his company anyway, even when I fumble through the read like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. So I told you I had a piece of follow up that I Oh, that’s what it was.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was stalling so I could remember. John, how’s the review?
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s your follow up? Yes, you’re going to talk about Apple IBM stuff with input from your dad, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and he had nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, reviews just going slowly. It’s terrible. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John Not good, eh? It’s just like a dark cloud over my life. I just feel like it’s never going to get
⏹️ ▶️ John done. I’m going to have to end up taking off time from work to get it done. Then they keep changing things and
⏹️ ▶️ John things don’t work. When you’re trying to review anything that has to do with the network and the seeds are coming out, they’re like, oh, this
⏹️ ▶️ John functionality still doesn’t quite work yet. Then all this stuff they don’t mention and you try it and it doesn’t work and like well
⏹️ ▶️ John does it not work because it’s broken or does not work because it’s still like month from release and I can’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John write about it and then I’m going back through stuff I’ve already written and changing it because I had this big paragraph
⏹️ ▶️ John complaining about this but then they change that so and I don’t have the complaint anymore like
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah I have notes and my thing I like remember to talk about this and then I have to go back
⏹️ ▶️ John two weeks later and remove that note because oh actually now it’s changed so you don’t have to remember I’m not making progress
⏹️ ▶️ John I need to I need to plow bravely forward and just get something written and then go
⏹️ ▶️ John back and change it, even though it keeps. It’s I don’t know. I don’t know if they’re changing more things than usual
⏹️ ▶️ John or if I’m writing too early about things that I have complaints about. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s going slowly. It’s depressing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So semi related, you had tweeted earlier today that you had something to the order of four
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or five machines on your desk. And any time you did anything, you were you were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in you were inevitably using the wrong keyboard and mouse. And I had suggested, and from your snarky
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reply, I assume many had suggested that you should use, what is it, Synergy?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, see, other people, fine. You know, people don’t know what I know. But you of all people should know that
⏹️ ▶️ John I know what Synergy is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was encouraging you to better yourself by using Synergy.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know all about Synergy. I don’t want it. I don’t need it for this. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just a temporary situation. I’m not trying to create a setup where I have
⏹️ ▶️ John a system where I can use five computers at once. I just have to do it. Remote desktop is the worst, because you can
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of keep it straight if you like. It’s like laptops and my desktop. You kind of keep
⏹️ ▶️ John it straight if things are physically separated. But once you bring a remote desktop into the mix, then it’s game over.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because now you have the same screen three times. Because I’ve got the original screen, and then the remote screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then my regular screen that it’s in. And then if the remote desktop is at the front, or then it gets
⏹️ ▶️ John all your keyboard focus. So your quick silver shortcut goes to the remote desktop, not to the thing over there, but it’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s madness. I could, I just quitting apps and closing the wrong windows just for hours at a time,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But Synergy would fix this for you, my friend, and it doesn’t take that long. No, it would not.
⏹️ ▶️ John It would not. I mean, Synergy has downsides as well. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just another layer of stuff. It’s the same reason I don’t use Screen or Tmux, right? Like I know, I recognize all
⏹️ ▶️ John the benefits I’ve experimented with them, but you know, it’s always something like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re like, I don’t want you taking over control A. Well, you can remap that. Well, I don’t want it to have any of my keystrokes. And like it was
⏹️ ▶️ John Synergy doing weird things with making using your regular computer feel strange
⏹️ ▶️ John and doing weird things with the Command key. It’s just, I’m not going to try to, plus
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not really yak shaving, but it’s a diversion. Like I don’t need
⏹️ ▶️ John to be, what I should be doing is making forward progress in a review, not trying to tweak my setup that helps
⏹️ ▶️ John me do the review. Like I do enough of that of just sitting here using Yosemite and doing experiments to
⏹️ ▶️ John try to figure out how I can accurately write a single sentence. I’ve spent like 45 minutes an hour
⏹️ ▶️ John experimenting with the thing to say, what can I say about this? What is the truth of this thing? And then it’s like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John I wrote one sentence tonight, and I spent an hour and a half, and now I’m tired and need to go to bed. At this rate, it’ll be done in 10
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So the review is going excellently is what I’m hearing. Mm-hmm. Awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, since I’ve asked, what’s going on with Overcast?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m fixing bugs, basically. Yeah, that’s about it, really. I’m fixing lots of bugs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The sales are going pretty well still. Obviously, it’s down substantially from the first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco few days, but it seems to be leveling off now, which is nice, because now I’m able to predict
⏹️ ▶️ Marco roughly what it will be next month. And so far, I’m very happy with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Have you cranked back on the initial server build out farm, whatever you want to call
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually haven’t. I’m so far I’m keeping all eight of the web heads. And the reason why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is so as so before, you know, I have, I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one feed crawling server that its entire purpose is to crawl the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feeds and it can be maxed out, you know, it can be like hammered at CPUs, because it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco matter. Because that’s that’s its only job. And so what I have going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at launch, I had these eight web servers up front to help take web requests.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then very quickly after launch, my feed server got overwhelmed with just the queue was backing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up because so many people were adding more feeds. And I was already crawling a lot, but people added a lot more than I expected.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I started, I ran additional crawling processes under nice on the web
⏹️ ▶️ Marco servers. And so in theory, what I think this will do and what it is doing so far
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is all the web I have now burst capacity. So you know like when a popular show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like right now like I mean our show is one of the top shows in Overcast. There’s something I think there’s like 20,000
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people or something who subscribe to it in Overcast. So when a new episode of this show is published, I send 20,000
⏹️ ▶️ Marco push notifications within the span of a few seconds. And any of those devices that are connected
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the internet will immediately try to fetch it, try to perform
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a sync request basically. And so you might have, you know, 20,000 devices all performing sinks within
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that within the first few seconds of that request going out. And so I need some kind of burst capacity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for when that happens. So what I’m doing now is I have all these web servers. And so I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keeping the additional crawlers running on nice. So what I think should happen is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll have that burst capacity when I need it when a new episode of something popular comes out, and all the rest of it. And when that happens,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all those processes that are nice will deprioritize and will you know, maybe the queue for crawling other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things will slow down for a minute or two. And then the rest of the time I have all this additional feed capacity.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think I think this is and my original plan was to you know that the feed crawling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on those web servers was going to be temporary and that once everything calmed down, I would eliminate you know half of them maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then set up a dedicated feed server to crawl more feeds that way. But I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m actually gonna keep it the way it is because it gives me this nice balance of a lot less wasted capacity.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you had said in the past that whatever the sum total of the monthly cost for these 810
⏹️ ▶️ Casey servers is considerably less than what you had last paid for Instapaper, is that correct?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah, I’d originally said it was like 540. I had to upgrade my backup server, I ran out of space on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, so now it’s gonna be more like 600, but still, yeah, 600 bucks a month for a lot of Linode instances,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco providing a lot of power, a lot of computational power. that I don’t think is a bad deal at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MWL Nice. JF Anyway, that’s how Overcast is going. It’s going very well, and I’m very happy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m fixing a lot of bugs. There still are some annoying ones, but I think I actually got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two of the biggest ones in this update. So, we’ll see. I’m still working on the update, but I’ll submit it probably in a few
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MWL So, do you feel like you’re working just as hard as you were pre-launch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and post-launch, or have you kind of settled into a rhythm at this point, and you’re able to breathe?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am able to breathe, but it is still a lot of work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Email I’m still keeping up with email. I did hit bottom of the first batch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What’s interesting is what people are requesting now. So I’m still getting about 100
⏹️ ▶️ Marco emails a day and many of them I don’t respond to. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I promised in the feedback form that I would read everything, but I won’t guarantee a response
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to everything. And I’m keeping that promise so far. I am reading everything and I’m not responding to everything because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t. Even reading 100 emails a day takes a long time. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of them don’t even need a response. A lot of them don’t even say as much. There’s no response necessary, and so I take them up on that offer usually.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But what’s interesting is that what people are asking for now is different from what people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco asked for on day one, even though the main feature set has not changed since then. I’m getting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a couple bug reports certainly here and there because there are still some bugs that are affecting a lot of people which I’m very annoyed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by and I’m trying to fix as quickly as I can. But for example, day
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one had tons of requests for the two big things I don’t support, streaming and video. It also had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lots of requests for smaller features and preferences and behavioral preferences people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wanted. Different ways they wanted episode management to be, push notification options, things like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All sorts of different more granular options or different modes episodes could be in. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the more common ones on day one, which I mentioned before, was like, a lot of people want an episode to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new, but not downloaded. And a lot of people want deleted episodes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to also show whether they have been played, or whether they were never played. So, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like people requesting these different states things can be in, and of course all the management of the interface and the code
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would go with that would be a lot. All that was really on day one, and what I’m hearing from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people now is substantially less of those requests. And the requests
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m getting now are much nicer and more like, you know, it would be nice if someday maybe you added this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not like, I can’t use a podcast app that doesn’t have this, or I don’t believe you shipped 1.0 without this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which a lot of the day one stuff was that. And so, and I think, I mean, my theory on this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty obvious, really. You know, I think day one, everyone tried
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it who was into podcast apps, who heard about it. people who tried it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and, you know, probably necessarily didn’t want to like it, maybe on some level, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nobody wants to change their workflow if they’re established. And also people who really do find
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those features like deal killers, you know, anything that I don’t do, or that I do differently from what they want to do, that actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a deal killer for them. So all of them I heard from on day one. And then I stopped hearing from them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because they stopped looking at the app. So now what I’m hearing from who I’m hearing from are the people who are actually using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the app for the most part. There are new people discovering it every day, but not nearly in the numbers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the first two days. So the emails I’m getting now are actually,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on some level, I think they’re actually more important to pay attention to because most of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who I heard from on day one, I’ll probably never win them over. It’s probably not worth a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of effort to try to win them over. And there’s a lot of people who use the app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for whom it could be a little bit better with what might be a small change. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by catering to those people, I build goodwill, I build fans, I build
⏹️ ▶️ Marco loyal customers. And those people are the ones who will spread the app to their friends. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I think it’s more important to make a smaller group more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fanatically happy about your app than to try to address the entire world with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So John, tell us about Arm-based Macs.
⏹️ ▶️ John Let me talk about this. So many past shows, it seems like. I don’t know why it’s coming up again. I guess
⏹️ ▶️ John Jean-Louis Gasset wrote about it on his Monday Note blog, and then a bunch of people
⏹️ ▶️ John linked it, including Gruber, and people are talking about it again. I guess we’ll talk about it again, too. I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John we had this exact same discussion. I pulled the exact same numbers last time, but I mean, you know, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess we’ll talk about it again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think it was a very good article because it was it was based on a lot of assumptions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the relative chip pros and cons between arm and arm Intel that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco aren’t necessarily true or at least partially misinformed.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re not looking in the notes file either. I guess no anyway. So here are the stats I put in the notes file probably
⏹️ ▶️ John the same exact stats I had last time. So the whole idea is should Apple not use Intel CPUs
⏹️ ▶️ John in its Max anymore but instead use ARM CPUs, presumably of their own design.
⏹️ ▶️ John And everyone suggesting that has their reasons for suggesting it. One of the reasons it comes up very often
⏹️ ▶️ John is that if they did that, ARM CPUs are more power efficient than
⏹️ ▶️ John x86. And the second reason is that Apple would be master of its own destiny, because Apple really
⏹️ ▶️ John wants to own and control all the important technologies that go into their devices, witness their design of the A7,
⏹️ ▶️ John and their deep involvement in the manufacturing process. And of course, they do all the software
⏹️ ▶️ John as well. And they make the OS. They make the applications and blah, blah, blah. And originally, if you want to go back really far,
⏹️ ▶️ John they investigated. My understanding is that they investigated for the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John project or for an Apple phone project, can we make a phone and not do a deal with a carrier, with a wireless
⏹️ ▶️ John carrier? Is it feasible to do it on Wi-Fi? Can we be our own? What is that acronym, Casey?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like that? Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John They looked into all that. It turned out not to be feasible. But the whole fact that they were looking into it is like, can we do this without
⏹️ ▶️ John being beholden to somebody else? And turns out the answer was no. So bummer for them. So anyway, this is along the same vein.
⏹️ ▶️ John On the tech front, though, and the power thing, every time I think about the power thing, I think about
⏹️ ▶️ John just how far Intel has come in terms of power efficiency. So we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John look at here, I have stats for the current 13-inch MacBook Air, which is kind of my sort of standard bearer
⏹️ ▶️ John for Apple’s middle of the road laptop. It does not have a gigantic battery. It’s pretty slim.
⏹️ ▶️ John But on the other hand, it is a full-fledged laptop and the performance is actually pretty good. So the current
⏹️ ▶️ John gen 13-inch MacBook Air is a 54-watt-hour battery, and Apple says it gets about 12 hours battery
⏹️ ▶️ John life. Now in my own testing, when I was doing Mavericks battery testing, I found that number can get even bigger if you
⏹️ ▶️ John use it very lightly. Like you really are just doing like light web browsing. And you know, my battery
⏹️ ▶️ John test was very light in Mavericks. It was like automated, basically like going to a bunch of web pages, switching tabs,
⏹️ ▶️ John reloading web pages, going to a text editor, typing some random text, saving the text document,
⏹️ ▶️ John going, you know, it was like that type of stuff it was doing, very light, and I was getting, you know, 15 hours out of it. But anyway, 12 hours
⏹️ ▶️ John is what Apple says. The iPad Air, which is my standard bearer for the iOS arm device,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s got the biggest, fastest arm CPU in it, it’s got a pretty darn big battery, because the iPad Air is
⏹️ ▶️ John their biggest iPad. It is a, I guess, what is this number wrong in here?
⏹️ ▶️ John 32.4 watt hour battery, let me check. 32.4 watt hour battery, I just have
⏹️ ▶️ John a typo in the notes. And Apple claims this is good for 10 hours of battery life, although they say nine hours if you use
⏹️ ▶️ John cellular data. So if you do the math on that, it ends up that the iPad Air is about 40%
⏹️ ▶️ John more energy efficient than the MacBook Air in terms of how many watt hours gives you
⏹️ ▶️ John how many hours of usage out of it. And who knows if Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John usage things are comparable. Like, how are they coming up with the 12-hour number of the MacBook Air, and what kind of activity
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re coming up with the iPad Air 10-hour battery life. But
⏹️ ▶️ John still, the iPad Air wins by like 40%. The iPad Air wins by 25% if you include cellular data. But
⏹️ ▶️ John the MacBook Air doesn’t even have that option. So whatever. So it’s like 40% better energy efficiency. But then
⏹️ ▶️ John you look at, you have to have some proxy for, OK, it’s 40% more energy efficient. But how fast is the CPU? How does the A7
⏹️ ▶️ John CPU compare to the MacBook Air CPU? And CPU benchmarking is a pain. I just did Geekbench
⏹️ ▶️ John because that’s what everybody does, whatever. This is just a ballpark. So the MacBook Air Geekbench
⏹️ ▶️ John compared to the iPad Air Geekbench, the MacBook Air is 230% faster in single core and 250% faster
⏹️ ▶️ John in multi-core. So in exchange for 40% more energy efficiency, it gives
⏹️ ▶️ John up 2x performance or 2 and 1⁄2x performance. And so that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John quite a gap to make up. So you could say, oh, the ARM processors
⏹️ ▶️ John are more energy efficient. They’re not more energy efficient when doing the same thing. The
⏹️ ▶️ John conjecture of Apple switching to ARM is that they could switch to ARM CPUs, ignoring the chipset, Thunderbolt, ignoring
⏹️ ▶️ John all the other technical and intellectual property issues that may prevent them from having this be feasible. Just
⏹️ ▶️ John the CPU. Can Apple make, can Apple take an ARM chip
⏹️ ▶️ John and make it 250% faster while maintaining its 40% energy
⏹️ ▶️ John efficiency advantage, right? Because, you know, as you make it, as you make the CPU
⏹️ ▶️ John more performant, you’re gonna lose that energy efficiency, right? It’s not like the iPad Air is 40% more energy
⏹️ ▶️ John efficient doing the the same thing. It’s way slower. It’s two times slower, at least. And this doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John even get into the relative comparisons of the embedded GPUs. And forget about a discrete
⏹️ ▶️ John GPU and the MacBook Pros. And again, the Mac Pro, who knows what you would do with that? So
⏹️ ▶️ John there are a lot of just unanswered technical performance questions in terms of what would be,
⏹️ ▶️ John putting aside the being master of your own destiny, what would be the advantage for
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple to switch to ARM, Technically speaking, would you get a Mac that lasts longer battery-wise?
⏹️ ▶️ John Would you get a Mac that performs as at least as well as the existing Macs? Would you get Macs to perform better?
⏹️ ▶️ John These are all unanswered questions. We don’t know. I’m saying at the gap right now It does not make it seem like Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s a gimme for Apple, say oh Apple could totally make a CPU that is exactly as fast as the current MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Airs, but is more energy efficient I don’t see that in the numbers I’m not saying it’s impossible, but nothing Apple has ever
⏹️ ▶️ John done so far has shown that it could do that And the second aspect of this is everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John complaining about the Broadwell delay is like Broadwell being delayed into next year Which is why Apple had to rev its laptop line
⏹️ ▶️ John and just say well, okay We’ll give you more RAM which is nice by the way give you more RAM and lower the prices because we’re not gonna have
⏹️ ▶️ John new laptops until we can get The new CPUs and so it’s a bummer like oh, well see if Apple You know
⏹️ ▶️ John if Apple made its own arm chips They wouldn’t have this problem because they wouldn’t be reliant on Intel and
⏹️ ▶️ John these delays wouldn’t affect them because they would be you know getting masters of their own destiny. I I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John much see that because in the in the race to say can we make an ARM chip This is this is good
⏹️ ▶️ John has the same performance per watt as Intel things if you’re gonna have any shot at
⏹️ ▶️ John that you have to be using the same process size as Intel and the only person who
⏹️ ▶️ John can do the same process size as Intel is Intel so you’d still be relying on Intel to fab your 14 nanometer
⏹️ ▶️ John ARM chips And if Intel can’t get its 14 nanometer x86 chips out the door
⏹️ ▶️ John chances of it being able to get your arm 14 nanometer chips out the door before it puts this
⏹️ ▶️ John x86 ones out the door are very slim. You’d have to get Intel to agree to fab them in the first place then you’d have to get them
⏹️ ▶️ John to agree to give you priority and then you’d have to say that the thing that’s stopping Intel from making the x86 chips at 14
⏹️ ▶️ John nanometers is just like laziness or something and if only you know if only Apple was whipping them along and say well
⏹️ ▶️ John see if Apple was a master of its own destiny it would have 14 nanometer ARM CPUs for its next generation of MacBook Airs
⏹️ ▶️ John that have more performance per watt than the Intel ones and just Technically speaking, I don’t see it. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t mean they’re not going to do it, or they would do it and just make some excuses and eventually catch up, because that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of been Apple’s MO. It’s like with the Maps thing. Well, we just can’t have Google Maps anymore. And our new maps are
⏹️ ▶️ John going to be worse. And they’re going to be worse for a long time, possibly forever. But we just have to do it. That’s always an option. So I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John saying Apple will never do this. But on paper, it does not look like a compelling change for me. And this
⏹️ ▶️ John is even ignoring the Mac Pro and all my said x86 games and the ability to run
⏹️ ▶️ John Windows and all that good stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, the ability to run Windows, I wonder how much that matters. My feeling is that it probably matters
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a good amount still. And I’m sure it’s going down every year with how much that matters. But I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bet there’s still a lot of people who run like the Windows version of Microsoft Office in virtualization,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ahem. Right. Yeah, that’s exactly true. And actually, I recorded an episode
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Mac Power users last night. And one of the things we very briefly talked about is what happens
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you know, Macs go ARM and or if they certainly if they weren’t Intel and that would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be a showstopper for me or and additionally if there was a Intel Mac and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an ARM Mac let’s say they were both brand new you know Broadwell comes out but simultaneously
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s an ARM based Mac I would absolutely choose the Intel based Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for work at least because I live in Windows at work I mean I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do you use bootcamp is bootcamp even still a thing yeah it’s still there okay well anyway So I don’t use bootcamp,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I use VMware Fusion. But my point is, is that I pretty much live in VMware
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fusion at work. And so for me to have really, really bad and crummy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey virtualization would be a showstopper. I would have to use one of those Dell behemoths if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t have an Intel Mac. And that’s just a terrible life that nobody wants to leave.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, So to do an architecture transition again
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would have to come with major gains. And I think, you know, John, everything you said is right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you know, looking at what they would lose with Windows compatibility and the cost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of having all developers have to recompile, because, you know, as we said last time we talked about this, or as I said, at least,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, going from PowerPC to Intel, they used Rosetta to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco try to help transition along and emulate the old stuff. that also worked primarily because the Intel chips
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were so much faster. There was a huge performance jump when they, when they made that transition. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here there probably wouldn’t be that, that same performance jump. In fact, it might even get slower. So, um,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I, I, it would, it would not be an easy transition. If it’d be possible, you know, they could do it, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a different environment. Now Windows isn’t as important, um, developers in the Mac app store, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, they’re using Apple’s, Apple’s Xcode toolkits and everything. so Apple could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just ship across compiler and make universal binaries again like they could do it if they wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to but it would not be a cheap or easy transition to make and so the question is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether it would be worth it and I’ve been looking at these numbers and thinking about you know John you’re right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thinking about like the fab capacity issue and I don’t see it really being worth it.
⏹️ ▶️ John You see I think they could actually make a pretty darn high performance arm chip mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John because like with their integration like the fact that they control the compiler They control the language.
⏹️ ▶️ John They control the microarchitecture of the chip. You can really get some impressive gains out of that, but you still are
⏹️ ▶️ John always in the end faced with the problem of who the hell is going to fab this chip. And if the answer isn’t Intel using their best process
⏹️ ▶️ John before they do it, before at the same time as they do their own flagship chips, then your answer is, well, it doesn’t matter how great your
⏹️ ▶️ John chip is. If you have to fab it a size, a generation behind what Intel does, how the hell are you going to compete
⏹️ ▶️ John on price performance with them? Like, it is just a huge advantage to say you’re at 22 nanometers and we’re at 14.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, you know, everyone likes to bring up the x86 tax. They’re like, oh, all these crazy instructions.
⏹️ ▶️ John The x86 tax has been going down for, it just always
⏹️ ▶️ John keeps going down and down. Because as the number of transistors in the chip goes up and up, and even if you exclude cache,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is a huge part of it, or even if you exclude the GPU, the percentage of transistors
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to spend on x86 is so small that it’s not even a factor. It’s a factor in terms
⏹️ ▶️ John of elegance, and it’s just disgusting to think about those things being there and it would be nice if more of them get phased out.
⏹️ ▶️ John But at this point it’s like x86-64 isn’t as gross. You can implement the
⏹️ ▶️ John old 16-bit instructions and crazy ass crap that’s never going to get called as slow as you want with as few transistors as you want.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a tiny blip, it’s not the kind of blip that you can build a sustainable performance advantage
⏹️ ▶️ John on. Process and manufacturing is just such a huge part of this, and so
⏹️ ▶️ John Intel has to be a huge part of this. I don’t know the ins and outs of the details that people been talking about this, but like CPU is one
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, but you’ve got chipset, you’ve got Thunderbolt, you’ve got whatever the current version of PCI Express is and all that stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John And a lot of that stuff is tied up with either patents or actual intellectual property that involves Intel. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think you’re going to get away from Intel unless, you know, like, unless, like, unless you do something
⏹️ ▶️ John like an iOS device where it’s like, oh, no Thunderbolt over here. We don’t even have USB. It’s our own little widget. It’s got her
⏹️ ▶️ John own port on the side of it. And we control everything but you can’t quite do that with Max yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are also sponsored this week by a new sponsor. It is Top Brewer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Go to topbrewerusa.com. It’s from a company called Scan-O-Mat.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is interesting. So Top Brewer is a revolutionary coffee system that dispenses espresso,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco coffee, cappuccino, lattes, filtered sparkling water, cold and hot filtered water,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and other drinks on demand via a Bluetooth connection with just a tap on your iOS or Android
⏹️ ▶️ Marco device. Top Brewer is designed and manufactured in Denmark. A lot of things that are awesome
⏹️ ▶️ Marco come from Denmark that are difficult to pronounce, such as Jorg Jensen. Is that the Jensen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Electronics brand? I assume.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is this one of those electronic brands that no one’s ever heard of except for you?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, Jensen, they’ve been around forever. They’ve been around since the 80s at least, right? Also Bang & Olufsen, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’ve probably heard of them at least. They’re in the Apple stores and everything. And of course, LEGO, which is singular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and plural at the same time. It is not Legos. It is Lego trademark brand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bricks or something, right? So anyway, Lego comes from Denmark too. Great design and great coffee are also part of Denmark’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco culture. Now with Top Brewer, drinks are customizable and can be saved as favorites. You can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have this thing if you prefer 9.5 grams of espresso beans in your espresso
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or over 8.5 grams, you can save your preference as a favorite and your favorite drink is a tap away.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can save, you know, whether you like more or less foam in your cappuccino, all this stuff. Now what’s cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Top Brewer, you probably saw this circulate around like the, you know, look at these cool gadget kind of sites about a year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ago when they first announced it and showed it off. It looks just like a big,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, one of those big like U-shaped kitchen taps. It just looks like a tap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a flat counter. And all the machinery and reservoirs and everything for it are hidden in the countertop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is the coolest, cleanest, most modern looking thing I’ve seen in a long time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s all the machinery is hidden away and you can see this beautifully designed silver tap and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s really cool. And these are commercial grade components in the Top Brewer. Now they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco target both home installations as well as small offices and commercial settings. It includes a burr
⏹️ ▶️ Marco grinder for the coffee, which is made of, even the burr grinder is made of cast aluminum
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it alone is 13 pounds and is really high quality stuff in here. So, Top
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Brewer is the perfect marriage of beautiful design, exquisite coffee, and so here’s what you do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You find one of these things or install it in your home, but at first, if you want to go try it, go find one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They have them installed at various places around a lot of cities these days and they’re expanding very soon.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So go find one of these. You install their app and then you just order from the app. You just walk up to the thing and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco order it right from the app and then it makes your drink right there. You don’t have to interact with anybody. So maybe the baristas
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might have a problem with this, I don’t know, but you don’t have to interact with anybody or give your name so they can misspell it on the cup
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or anything like that. You just walk up to this thing with the app and it makes your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco preferred drink. And you can walk up to any of these things anywhere that you find one in any city, any stores that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have them, or you can install one right in your home or office. So anyway, go to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco topbrewerusa.com. That is topbrewerusa.com.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Check it out. It’s really interesting. And I think these are probably going to be big pretty soon. All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. So the other thing that’s been going around the internet over the last week to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey week and a half, maybe two weeks, is whether or not anyone can make money in the iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app store. Marco, are you making any money in the iOS app store?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I am right now. Ask me again in three months. Fair enough.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s fine for Marco. That’s the other thing that’s going on. Yeah, right. The actual
⏹️ ▶️ John full version of that is, is it possible for anyone to make money in the app store besides Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s basically the meme. That’s true. and like three other people to the list.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s true. I mean, there’s two problems really that people face. Problem number one is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting noticed at all and ever having strong sales. You know, so that’s like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, my reputation and existing audience gives me that kind of for free, not entirely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco free, but you know, close. But then problem number two affects me as much as much as anybody else,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is once Once you’ve found and saturated the number of people who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are going to ever buy your app, what happens to your sales curve?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And how do you get more people to buy it who are not finding it or who are choosing not to buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it or who are looking at the category and choosing one of your competitors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instead? And that’s a much harder problem. And I don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any benefits there over anyone else really. It’s a hard problem to solve. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so, you know, the first problem you can kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of address by doing things like, you know, like picking a category
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where there’s less competition but there is still a market. That’s really hard to find though. You know, a lot of times there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco competition because it isn’t very useful. Or you know, it’s a problem that it’s very useful to like 10
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people in the world and you’re one of them. So congratulations, but it’s going to be hard to sell it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And a lot of things are just like, you know, it’s kind of cool, but who’s going to pay for it? And if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it isn’t that compelling to pay for, even if it’s kind of cool, it’s hard to get a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of sales there. So you know, we’ve seen a lot of these blog posts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the last couple of weeks on the problems in the App Store and how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard it is for developers to make a good living there. And a lot of developers have shared
⏹️ ▶️ Marco numbers, like actual numbers. what we made, which is unusual. In most places,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talking about your salary is taboo, and that’s a whole other discussion about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether that should be that way. There’s actually a really good Planet Money episode about that recently that you can find.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s interesting, though, to see because what most of these people are revealing is that they’re making a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less money than people might have assumed, and then a lot less money that then is worth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco continuing to work on it basically. And so, you know, this was started
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out by Jared Sinclair and his post about Unread, which is an RSS reader. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it ends up it’s made, you know, I forget the exact number. It was like $30,000 over its lifetime
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of over a year, right? Something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought it was like 40 ish, but the point is it was in the 30 to 50 range, let’s say.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. Yeah. So, you know, and so it, it, which was, you know, below his expectations and makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it hard to justify full-time work on it. If you’re a programmer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the United States paying for United States health insurance and everything and rent and or mortgage and everything else,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s pretty expensive to live here. And if you’re making $30,000 a year,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you have a skill that you could make easily twice that and probably more so, depending
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the area that you live in, working for anybody else, that’s kind of hard to justify. So I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know. Casey, what do you think about this? You’re a normal person. I’m apparently – people get mad when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I talk about this because they – anything I say, people say, oh, well, you can’t – this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t apply to you. You can’t say that. Oh, this works for Marco. Like people get very mad at me when I talk about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this. So Casey, you are more normal than I am and people tend to like you a lot more.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So what do you think of this? CASEY METZLER
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. So I think it’s a tough thing and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s been a bunch of things that – a friend of show underscore David Smith has posted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey both in text form and in audible form about this. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he is a good counterpoint to yours insofar as he is also successful,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but he does it by way of diversification, whereas you do it by way of really dumping
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of your time into one app. And both of those are perfectly valid ways of going about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For me, I don’t think I’m going to ever post this in a blog post or anything,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I was looking at FastTax numbers. In brief, the first
⏹️ ▶️ Casey check I got from Apple was the end of September in 2010, and it was $43.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was unbelievably excited about that because I had actually earned
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some modicum of money on the App Store. I didn’t earn a lot, and if we care,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I could go in the blow-by-blow of how much I earned. But suffice to say, it wasn’t until sometime during
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ATP’s run that I finally cracked into profit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for FastText. And I was just adding up all the numbers. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I added things correctly, I am $143 in the black. That
⏹️ ▶️ Casey counts for all the profit I’ve made, which is about… Or all the money I’ve made, which is about 650
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bucks, minus five years in the App Store, which is about 100 bucks a pop, minus
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the $40 I spent on Opacity Express to make the world’s worst icon
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with feet. You’re welcome, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John I liked it. But you’re not subtracting on WWDC tickets or travel to WWDC or the
⏹️ ▶️ John price you paid for the inferior footless icon that replaced the icon?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I have not. I was my friend, Jacob
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Swiatt, actually did not charge me for that icon. He did it out of the goodness of his heart because he’s awesome. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know if he’s doing contract work anymore. But if you want a good icon, talk to him.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, but WWDC, you don’t count on that wipes out all your profit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, yes, no. Of the four years I’ve been to WWDC, I think work paid
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for three of them, if I’m not mistaken. So you could argue that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that that one year would put me heavily in the red. But I consider
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that slightly ancillary. And we can get into a whole debate as as to whether or not that’s reasonable. But let’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey take WWDC as completely unrelated. Let’s assume I’ve never been to WWDC
⏹️ ▶️ Casey still over five years because Fast Text last, or excuse me, launched
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shortly after iOS 4 came out. And so in the five or so years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it’s been out, I’ve earned $143. Now I’ve done nothing to promote it other than occasionally mentioning it here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s about it. And to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be honest, especially now, it’s getting a little old, getting a little long in the tooth. I need to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey find some time to work on it. I can’t believe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I beat you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco believe Overcast shipped before your iOS 7 update.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The really embarrassing thing is that iOS 8 is going to beat me, too. Yeah, I did work on it briefly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two weeks ago. And I what was it that you had said? The content of shoot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the top layout guide. Yes, that got me halfway there, but I’m not quite through yet. And because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m too damn stubborn to use springs and struts, I still haven’t updated it. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but yeah, so over the course of five years, having done no real
⏹️ ▶️ Casey marketing whatsoever, I’ve earned $143. And I’m happy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with that. I mean, I’m certainly not complaining about it, but I certainly wouldn’t be leaving
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my job for $143 over five years. I mean, And that’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one nice meal, if by nice you mean Panera Bread, every
⏹️ ▶️ Casey half year to a year. You know what I mean? So it’s hard. And Justin Williams
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has been talking in his snarky way, which I love, but he’s been talking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on and off about that, you know what? Business is just hard. Business
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is hard. And that’s the thing is that you got to be a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey business man or woman before you’re a developer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a lot of cases. And I think, Marco, you’ve done pretty well with that by finding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a niche, niche, niche, whatever, finding a cubby.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Finding a cubby that’s not terribly well served up until Overcast. And in the case of Overcast,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey finding a way to make it something unique. And we’ll see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over time, or you’ll see over time, whether or not that’s sustainable. But underscore
⏹️ ▶️ Casey David Smith, by comparison, has his hands in a lot of different pots.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s what keeps him profitable and able to be independent. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey somebody mentioned in the chat a moment ago, well, yeah, you say you didn’t do any real marketing, but well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you mentioned it on ATP and that’s marketing. And that’s a fair point. That’s an absolutely fair point. okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let’s assume that that’s quote unquote real marketing. I still have only earned $150
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over five years, you know? So if that’s real marketing, that means it’s even more depressing than we originally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This episode is also sponsored by Fast Text.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know. I long so much to be able to go independent and do my own thing and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not work for the man. And I love my job, I truly do. But it would be so neat to be like you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or underscore and be able to be my own person, if you will, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mega air quotes. But in the end of the day, I don’t really have a terribly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stressful job. And as long as I show up and do decent work, I’m going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to maintain that not terribly stressful job. And there’s a lot to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said for that. And I think, as always, the grass is greener on the other side.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I, you know, I have, I have it pretty easy, all told.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, so young and foolish. If I just show up every day and do good work, I’ll keep my job.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And I tell you that
⏹️ ▶️ John after my first child was born that I lost my job. Anyway, that’s lots of fun.
⏹️ ▶️ John What job number is this for you, Casey? Is it number three or something? This is four. And
⏹️ ▶️ John did you voluntarily leave all the previous jobs? Thus far, yes. So you’re a quitter.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re going to have, what I’m saying is, chances are good that you’re going to have more jobs in your life. And
⏹️ ▶️ John if, and I think it’s a reasonable chance that some of those transitions will happen
⏹️ ▶️ John not by your choice.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is certainly possible. I tend to try to pick a company
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that from everything I can tell is stable and from the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and to the best of my ability, I am certainly not the most important person there, but I am
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not the low-hanging fruit, if you will. But you’re right. I mean, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey company that I work for, it could fold tomorrow, and I could be none the wiser.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I’m going to turn this into an episode of quit. But like, you know, the whole thing of like
⏹️ ▶️ John the illusion of stability versus the non-illusion, like the panic that you feel and the
⏹️ ▶️ John stress that you feel about, oh, I’m doing my own thing, but that means it’s all on me. Whereas like, well now
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not doing my own thing, it’s not all on me, but at least I have security. Well you really don’t have security, but it kind of feels
⏹️ ▶️ John like you do. So the reality is that depending on your personality trait, the bottom line is
⏹️ ▶️ John do you feel more stressed? Are you more stressed in situation A versus situation B? Regardless
⏹️ ▶️ John of whether situation A and B are actually comparable in any way. Just because you feel safer in a
⏹️ ▶️ John job doesn’t mean a job is safer, but feeling safer is like 90% of the battle anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you have a personality where if you were to go off on your own, all you would do is stress all the time,
⏹️ ▶️ John that wouldn’t be a good thing for you, even if it was exactly comparable risk-wise in reality. It just matters how you
⏹️ ▶️ John feel. But all this stuff on the web going around about the App Store viability,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to think that it’s motivated by, like, there’s no point
⏹️ ▶️ John in writing about this if there’s not an angle. And the angle I see a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John is someone who’s not me is to blame for
⏹️ ▶️ John my difficulties. Not in a bad way, because everyone kind of thinks that, but it’s like, if it was just on you,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re like, well, like, we kind of like Casey’s thing. He’s not writing posts complaining about how hard it is to make money out of Fastex. Whose
⏹️ ▶️ John fault is it that, you know, Fastex, well, is Fastex a awesome, super-duper app? No,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it’s not. No, it is not.
⏹️ ▶️ John Has it been updated religiously to keep up with the latest tech? No, it has not.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey You’re a jerk.
⏹️ ▶️ John it, you know, like, it’s not like you’re searching for like, why couldn’t I make money on, you know why you couldn’t make
⏹️ ▶️ John money on Fastex. You know what I mean? And that’s why you’re not writing blog posts about it. Whereas other people like Jared,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’d say, like, I made a great app. I love it. It embodies my own ideals. I think the interface
⏹️ ▶️ John is great. I think it does something useful. I really like the way it works. I worked hard on it. It’s bug free. I’ve kept it updated.
⏹️ ▶️ John I use the latest technologies. And then, like, why
⏹️ ▶️ John aren’t I successful? And you’re not going to turn that on yourself. Because you’re like, look, I made an awesome
⏹️ ▶️ John app. I did a good job with this. I look at all the other apps that are out there. Mine is at least as good as them, if not better.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you’re going to immediately be looking for some reason why you didn’t succeed that doesn’t have to do with your own
⏹️ ▶️ John personal failings. And in most cases, it’s not really your fault. Like, you did do a good job on the
⏹️ ▶️ John things that you care about. Like, you did make a nice UI. It is a good app. It is bug-free. It does do something useful. But
⏹️ ▶️ John then you get into all the things that Marco was talking about. All right, well, then whose fault is it? What am I going to write about? Well, maybe you
⏹️ ▶️ John wrote an app that has a potential customer base of 10 people, and they all bought it already.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe your taste doesn’t match other people’s tastes. If you have a beautiful, bug-free, nice interfaced
⏹️ ▶️ John application for counting oranges, how many people in the world need
⏹️ ▶️ John to count oranges? Maybe it’s just a hobby of yours, or train spotting, or some other strange. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John so much more to it, and that’s where they get into the business things. Maybe you picked a good audience, maybe it’s already crowded, so on and so forth. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of boring, too. That’s where a lot of these things get to, is like, oh, just business is hard, or whatever. But
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone is looking for something more interesting that because just saying business is hard like that post has to come after everyone else’s
⏹️ ▶️ John post comes to be kind of like the you know let me just say the obvious thing to get us back to sanity the previous ones
⏹️ ▶️ John are like what is what is Apple doing what is the app is the app store environment getting
⏹️ ▶️ John worse is Apple not doing things that may used to be easier to make money but now it’s not as easy
⏹️ ▶️ John and I blame Apple for that because they control the ecosystem and on iOS there is an angle to that because it’s like if
⏹️ ▶️ John you want to make an iOS app the app store is the only game in town like unless you want to you know, sell
⏹️ ▶️ John them one of those weird jailbreak stores or something, which usually people don’t want to do. Apple controls everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so, unless Apple is perfect, you’re gonna say, I made a good app. I think I picked a reasonable category,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the app store is harder to make money in now than it used to be. And whenever
⏹️ ▶️ John I see posts like that, I think, well, yeah, like people know about it now. Like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not, you know, getting in early, the gold rush is over. The gold rush didn’t end because Apple did something
⏹️ ▶️ John bad. the gold rush ended because everyone came to California. Like, and now everyone’s here now. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John the gold has been dug out of the ground. When you’re the first app on the app store on day one, everyone buys you because there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John nothing for them to buy. You know, if you were the first Read Later app, then you get a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John more customers than if you’re the 17th Read Later app, right? That’s just, the gold rush means everyone rushed in and the market
⏹️ ▶️ John was filled, and so now, of course, it’s harder to make money. But it kind of gets, like, what I kind of get back to is the,
⏹️ ▶️ John I see this a lot in writers complaining, Well, I guess developers, too.
⏹️ ▶️ John Writers, developers, anybody who does anything creative fields and development, they’re like, don’t work for
⏹️ ▶️ John free. We’ve all heard that before. I think I’ve done this complaint about the same thing on the podcast. But don’t work for free because it devalues
⏹️ ▶️ John the work. So when you work for free and I tell somebody that I want to get paid, they’re like, well, I’ll just take this guy. He works
⏹️ ▶️ John for free. And don’t do that because you’re making the thing that we do less valuable
⏹️ ▶️ John by being willing to do it for free. And that is 100% true. If the market is full
⏹️ ▶️ John of people like, I will write your application for free, or I will write your blog post for free, or I will do this logo design
⏹️ ▶️ John for you for free, it makes it harder for you to charge money for any of those services,
⏹️ ▶️ John because if the guy doing it for free is just as good or God forbid better than you, you’ve got,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s very difficult to charge money. And so if you are talking to your peers, hey, everybody who does
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever, everybody who paints paintings, everyone who writes articles, everyone who develops software, don’t do your thing for free, or don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John give your thing away, because that makes it harder for all of us to make money. And
⏹️ ▶️ John that is true, but the problem with that is, what if the thing that you’re doing is really fun?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey What if it’s really cool?
⏹️ ▶️ John What if it’s really fun to make apps? What if it’s really fun to do paintings? What if logo design is really fun? What if
⏹️ ▶️ John you can do it in your spare time, like while having a regular job? What if college students really like
⏹️ ▶️ John to do it, and they’re really smart and talented and don’t really need to have a job? Those are unfortunate facts
⏹️ ▶️ John of life about many endeavors, and making apps is kind of fun, I guess, or working for yourself is also fun.
⏹️ ▶️ John All these things that make it attractive to people like Casey and me. And, you know, it’s like that makes
⏹️ ▶️ John it attractive to everybody. Everybody wants to do that. Everybody wants to lead the good life. Everyone wants to do something
⏹️ ▶️ John cool. And all the people who are able to do that, something cool because
⏹️ ▶️ John they don’t need to have a job or because they’re in college or because they’re just young and foolish or whatever, like their
⏹️ ▶️ John reward is the fun of it, they make it harder for everyone else to make money. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like I don’t know. It’s like that’s not I don’t I don’t think you can blame anybody in that. The people saying that it’s harder,
⏹️ ▶️ John it is harder. But I don’t really blame the people doing it for free or for the fun of it, because
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re getting their own reward out of it. And I’m not going to say that
⏹️ ▶️ John people who are writing this blog post are not entitled, but I’m making a statement independent of that thing, of saying
⏹️ ▶️ John there is no entitlement to be able to make a good living doing something awesome
⏹️ ▶️ John that you love. Think of all the people who are in actual real creative fields, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John people who want to be singer songwriters or like painters or poets, you can
⏹️ ▶️ John be like, boy, wouldn’t it be great if I could make six figures a year writing poetry? Yes, that would be great. Good luck with
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Right? Like, the more people want to do it, the more awesome it seems, of course, the
⏹️ ▶️ John harder it’s going to be to do that. And app writing applications is much more viable
⏹️ ▶️ John skill in terms of making money than poetry. But it’s a continuum and
⏹️ ▶️ John writing applications that you feel like writing when you feel like writing them is farther towards the poetry
⏹️ ▶️ John end of the spectrum than doing what Casey or I do, which is doing something
⏹️ ▶️ John that an established company needs you to do for money in a business that they’ve already proven is a viable business.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is that too depressing? I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you, John, at all aspire to be independent, be that an independent consultant
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or perhaps an independent product guide? Is there any part of you that desires for that?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I aspire to be retired.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s a wonderfully John Syracuse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco answer. Oh, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John I aspire not to have to work. I aspire to be independently wealthy. All these are reasons why I will never have these things.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you’re just asking what I want, yep, that’s what I want. I want to not have to work. And who doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey want to not have to work? Like, seriously. Like, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, sure. Okay. So accepting that working in some capacity is a fact of life at the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey age in which we all are. Would you in a perfect world, do you think you would prefer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be independent? Or do you think you would be you would prefer to be working for the man and have that either
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perceived or perhaps actual stability?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I’m just doing what everyone else does, which is you kind of like you do the thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John causes the least pain, essentially. So like, so for me, I would be
⏹️ ▶️ John incredibly stressed out if I was in any of any of these situations, indie developers are
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey in. Oh, amen. Absolutely.
⏹️ ▶️ John It just is not compatible with my personality, right? So the only way, like, it’s very attractive,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the only way I could do it is if I could say, well, I don’t have to worry about money. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, that’s what, that’s the thing of it is, like, if you just dump the bucket of money on me and say, here you go, you never have to worry about money again.
⏹️ ▶️ John What I would end up doing would look a lot like what an indie developer is doing. But the only reason I’d be able to
⏹️ ▶️ John do it is because I would have no pressure to be successful. Like I could do whatever the hell I wanted
⏹️ ▶️ John and it doesn’t matter if it succeeds or fails and that’s the only way I could do that without like stressing myself to death.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah but you’d find other things to stress about.
⏹️ ▶️ John No I wouldn’t though like you know like this is like the remaining oh I guess I would probably stress
⏹️ ▶️ John about health and stuff eventually I get old stress about my kids and all that stuff but you know there’s always something but like
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of work the only thing I would do the only way I would ever do like the indie lifestyle
⏹️ ▶️ John is if it didn’t count like if it if it didn’t matter whether I succeeded or failed. Because I just wouldn’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John the kind of life that Marco leads, well, or any of these indie developers, where like, or even, I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, well, I don’t know. If your livelihood depends on you being successful
⏹️ ▶️ John by doing something that you want to do with the skill that you have, whether it be writing an application
⏹️ ▶️ John or even like writing a novel or running your own website or anything like that, where it’s just you,
⏹️ ▶️ John nobody else, no support, so like basically the entrepreneurial spirit. I do not have that
⏹️ ▶️ John because it would just be too much stress and I would be miserable. And so I have chosen a life that avoids that stress by
⏹️ ▶️ John saying, someone else worry about that. I will develop my skills, become a valuable worker for
⏹️ ▶️ John someone else to pay. And that, to me, feels more secure. And I don’t know what number of job
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m on, like six, seven, something like that. Like, I don’t like that experience either, having to go from job
⏹️ ▶️ John to job. But the gaps are longer. And in between, I feel like I have more stability than I would
⏹️ ▶️ John know those things, which is why neither one of us to this point, in case you’re I are Marco and
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco is Marco because he he did things that we were not willing to do. And well, hold on, though,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a big asterisk here, though. What a lot of people don’t know or have forgotten
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that I didn’t take in the development full time until after it was successful.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, and that’s true. But I’ve thought about this on and off a fair bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You did answer a craigslist ad for a job posting that had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that for a company of one employee, which is something that I can’t speak for john, but there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ Casey frickin way I would ever do that. Because at that point, all of the stability I’m seeking,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not there because it’s just one guy, how could one guy possibly do anything right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But he was he was young, though, like I might do that if I was young.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, no, that was a concern. That was definitely a concern. Because I you know, because of how expensive New York is to live in,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was concerned that, well, if this company goes under and I stop getting paid, it takes like one and a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco half months for me to have no savings left, and that’s it. So I was concerned. But I mean, the main reason I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did that was not because I was some forward-thinking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maverick or something. It was because I only had two offers that were at all even reasonable,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I really didn’t want to take the other one. The other one would have made me miserable and I knew that and David
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let me work on a Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John So I took that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. That was the factors that went into it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. And all of that makes sense, but the thing of it is that you took what to John or I – I shouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speak for John – but what to me was a tremendously risky offer. Even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey though in a lot of ways it was better, it was still riskier. And I am so risk adverse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I really admire the fact that you took that job offer at Davidville, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey led to all I would argue would lead to all of these other things. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I if I was in the same position, I would have gone to whatever that financial services firm whatever it was you were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looking at or that you were also flirting with. That’s where I would be and I would be freaking miserable right now.
⏹️ ▶️ John Let’s say I would have taken that job. My first job out of school was like in a five person startup. It was like the
⏹️ ▶️ John dot com days was like 1997. So that’s what you did then. And like and it’s your first job
⏹️ ▶️ John and you don’t have any responsibilities and you figure you know like I did take that job. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just that my company didn’t turn out to be Tumblr, like almost everyone else’s. You know what I mean? So some
⏹️ ▶️ John of it’s just luck of the draw. But the thing about Marco saying, well, I didn’t leave my job until I was making good money with Instapaper,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, yeah, that’s the typical nerd way to do it. But even at that point, I would be saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, I did this app in my spare time. It’s popular. People like it. I’m making good money off
⏹️ ▶️ John of it. Now I can quit my job. And I would never get to that leap point, because I would say, you can’t quit your
⏹️ ▶️ John job, because, yeah, you’re making money off an app. What about next year? And the year after that, and the year after that. You have to have some confidence, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a thing that I can do, that I can sustain this, that I’m going to have to write a second app and a third app,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’m going to have to find ways to make money and whatever. And I would never have confidence that I could do that. And what I would feel like I was doing is if I take the time
⏹️ ▶️ John off, I’m derailing from like a career path elsewhere. And if I go off and Instapaper goes
⏹️ ▶️ John for a few years and then it kind of fizzles out, I’m like, oh, now what do I do? I got to go back into the job market,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I would be afraid that I can’t get back into the job train. Now, that is not really a rational fear,
⏹️ ▶️ John because if you wrote Instapaper and say it fizzled after a few years, but did really well in between, it would be no problem for you finding
⏹️ ▶️ John a job doing iOS contracting or anything. It wouldn’t actually be a problem. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I wasn’t looking at the App Store at the time. So I was in 1997. There was no App Store or anything like that. But
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the kind of feeling that even if you are doing a side project, and even if the side project
⏹️ ▶️ John becomes successful and lucrative, the truly person who’s
⏹️ ▶️ John afraid about his financial security like I am and probably like Casey is, would be like, oh, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John fine. but you can’t quit your job because what are you going to do next year or the year after that or 10 years from now or 15 years from
⏹️ ▶️ John now or 20 years from now? We’re like, do you think this is a sustainable thing that you can do in your entire career?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or do you think this is something that might go well for a couple of years and you’re going to have to get a real job again anyway? And if you had to get a real job again
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, why not just keep the real job you have now because it’ll be harder to come, you know? That’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of little voice in the back of my head that’s preventing me from ever doing anything independent.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yep. Well, but you know, the trick there, I mean, this really is quit, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the flaw in that thinking is in assuming that jobs are stable and the reality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like they’re not at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I made the same point before and I’ve been through seven jobs anyway. I’m just saying like people do essentially what makes
⏹️ ▶️ John them feel comfortable within the bounds of their values or whatever. And within the bounds of my
⏹️ ▶️ John values, having a regular salary job makes the rest of my life less
⏹️ ▶️ John stressful. As you get closer to retirement, maybe that changes, like, well, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, maybe I go independent now because it’s not like I have 20 years of career ahead of me anyway, so if I end up doing something outside
⏹️ ▶️ John of my job that becomes vaguely successful, I can jump ship and do that, because if it fizzles out after a few years, then I’m actually really
⏹️ ▶️ John am going to retire with all the money I saved from my salary job during those other years anyway. So I think all
⏹️ ▶️ John these indie developers talking to each other on these blogs and amongst each other is just kind of a way of
⏹️ ▶️ John each person coming to terms with their own sort of values, Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it takes a certain amount of guts to leap into that lifestyle, and it takes a certain sort of temperament
⏹️ ▶️ John and mindset to keep at it. Like Underscore definitely has the mindset. He has the mindset to
⏹️ ▶️ John jump into it, and he has the head for keeping doing it. He’s just going to do what it takes, and he’s like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the full spectrum kind of business thing. And you too, Marco, for that. But you know, like, you may like
⏹️ ▶️ John one aspect more than another, but you realize there is a spectrum of things that you have to do. There’s the business side, the marketing
⏹️ ▶️ John side, choosing what you’re going to do, the technical side and you have your favorites and nobody likes all of it, but you realize it’s sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of a, you know, instead of like a full stack web developer, you have to be a full stack business person
⏹️ ▶️ John and you have to be able to tolerate the lifestyle that comes with that. Obviously, success makes it more tolerable,
⏹️ ▶️ John but some people jump into it liking only one aspect of it and realize that
⏹️ ▶️ John all that other stuff is just necessary. Like, and that’s the problem with the gold rushes. You could jump into it just being into like the one
⏹️ ▶️ John aspect of it and just be like, I really like development and I made an app and it’s one of the only three of its kind in the app
⏹️ ▶️ John store and I’m making money for three years and then all of a sudden all these competitors come in it becomes a more competitive
⏹️ ▶️ John market space and you’re like well I really don’t like doing any of the parts except for the cool part where you write the app
⏹️ ▶️ John and if I don’t do those things I can’t really compete and app
⏹️ ▶️ John store you’ve changed man it’s like well there maybe you just weren’t
⏹️ ▶️ John that you just like the environment has changed and you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John the things that you like like to do and don’t like to do no longer make so that, are no longer fit for
⏹️ ▶️ John success in this environment, right? And so as the environment changes, the things that it selects for
⏹️ ▶️ John success change as well. And I don’t, like, we all have complaints about the App Store and what Apple does. And those are all legitimate complaints.
⏹️ ▶️ John But most of this sort of talking about the App Store, I think, has to do with
⏹️ ▶️ John people coming to terms with their own tolerance for what the current App Store environment is like. And then,
⏹️ ▶️ John because some people are like, well, I had to stop being independent. I had a job. And other people are like, I’m going to stick it out no matter what. And what you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t hear about a lot of these things is, well, here’s my sales numbers. But does your spouse work during that
⏹️ ▶️ John time? Are you still living with your parents? Are you independently wealthy? And so it doesn’t matter what happens here
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway because you have a trust fund. You never know what their actual, do you live in Kansas where your rent is really low?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or you never know what the actual situation is. How do you live? How do you live on that little money?
⏹️ ▶️ John Are you going to stick it out? Are you not going to? Those are more personal decisions that have to do with your current living situation and your
⏹️ ▶️ John tolerance for risk and stress. And that, I think, is the bulk of the discussion, which is a good discussion
⏹️ ▶️ John to have. The tiny sliver of the discussion is, are there things that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is doing or not doing that make it better or worse for everybody, or better or worse for a
⏹️ ▶️ John particular type of developer? And that, I think, is the thing I took away from this is, not so
⏹️ ▶️ John much what is Apple doing to the App Store that makes it a more hostile or friendly environment
⏹️ ▶️ John for developers, but what kind of people are they selecting for? And obviously, the people having this discussion
⏹️ ▶️ John thinks, If Apple is not selecting for me, that’s bad, because I’m awesome, which is good. You should think that. But
⏹️ ▶️ John on the other side of the coin, Apple might be thinking, oh, yeah, we want to select those apps that win Apple Design Awards,
⏹️ ▶️ John but not as much as you might think. Like, we just need enough to have Apple Design Awards. But
⏹️ ▶️ John in reality, we’re also kind of OK with EA being in the store, even though EA is never going to win an Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John Design Award, right? And so the kind of store that we wish it was all
⏹️ ▶️ John filled with beautiful, handcrafted, artisanal applications made by passionate people with attention to detail.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can’t make a full store of that. Or if you can, maybe there’s not the store that Apple wants. You do
⏹️ ▶️ John need an EDA in there, I guess. I mean, and even things like Tokuboka, which
⏹️ ▶️ John are great applications, that’s obviously a full-fledged business. It’s not like two people working out of a garage,
⏹️ ▶️ John even if it may have started that way. And maybe you even need Angry Birds, which, again, started as two people and becomes this big
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. So I don’t know. I think it was an interesting discussion. I enjoyed spectating
⏹️ ▶️ John it from the sidelines, but I don’t think there’s any one clear like Mission
⏹️ ▶️ John or like sign we can all hold over our head to say do x now or else. It’s just more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Our final sponsor this week is fracture. Once again fracture is the company that prints
⏹️ ▶️ Marco photos directly on glass Uh, it’s really nice. I have a bunch of fractures all around my office
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fractures it’s hard to describe it’s literally what it sounds like they print a photo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the back of a very thin piece of glass that then adhered to like a thin
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost like a corrugated cardboard type of backing so that you can you can put like hangers in it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything it’s a really really nice piece because you don’t need a frame for these things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they they they’re like it’s the finished product you hang on the wall you put it on your desk there’s your photo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s really affordable in my opinion. What I use them for, so I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a couple of big ones over my desk for pictures that I print, you know, actual photos. And then up on my wall I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this row of app icon fracture prints. And it’s because they have this small square size,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s something like 5x5, let me see, 6x6 maybe, something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I have my app icons of the apps I’ve worked on before, All printed on those. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a row of three of them now. I got two of them coming. Yeah. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a great way to have like a visual representation, like a tangible trophy of the apps you’ve done.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you can put website icons up there, podcast, artwork, pretty much anything square or rectangular,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can get printed on these things. The print quality is fantastic. I’m very happy with it. The photos look good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The icon artwork looks good. Oh, yeah. See, prices start at just $12
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the little anchor screw, they even give you that. It’s a fantastic service, they’ve been around for a while,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve used them for a few years now, they’ve sponsored for a few years. I really enjoy Fracture Prints.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the small size, that’s really, that’s fantastic. You can get that no problem. Now,
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco and use coupon code ATP to get 15% off so that way you support them and our show.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco fantastic prices. I love these guys. Really, they sponsor our show a lot. Even before they sponsored, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used them myself and I continue to order prints from them. Even when we don’t even have a code
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I have to pay full price, I still continue to order prints from them they’re that good. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thank you very much to Fracture, who prints your photo in vivid color directly on glass. Fractureme.com.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we should also point out with regard to people opening the kimono or whatever the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phrase is. That’s such a gross phrase. Well, sorry. Revealing their numbers, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also, okay, sharing their number, whatever. Anyway, the point is somebody, Jazzy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Chad, I don’t know who exactly that is, but Jesse Chad, uh, put a, put
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up a post, which we’ll put in the show notes about what it’s like for game developers,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because the assumption is the game game developers make all the money in the app store. And as it turns out,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this person who has a day job at Twitter, which allows him, I’m assuming it’s a him,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, allows him to make these things in his spare time and not have to worry
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about making a living off of it. he wrote three or four games, some of which looked really nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve not played any of them, but nevertheless, he wrote a few games and for three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey games, even in some of which he spent a lot of time trying to market, he
⏹️ ▶️ Casey basically ended up a little bit in the red because of the marketing he paid
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for in order to try to make some money on these games. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even for game developers, all is not rosy in the app store anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you know, is that even for because what’s more fun than writing a cool iOS application? Writing an
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, it’s a reasonable yardstick to say, how much fun is it to do this
⏹️ ▶️ John thing? And then how many people can do it at all? All development has
⏹️ ▶️ John a good number in the how many people can do it at all, because only certain people
⏹️ ▶️ John have the desire or tolerance to learn all the esoteric crap you have to learn to be a programmer, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So people just aren’t into it. Like, that’s great, that’s good for us, right? It helps us make more money, because most people don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John to learn this crap. But game development, of all the kinds of programs
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re going to write, writing a game, like that’s if you’ve talked to any programmer, a lot of their first programming experiences
⏹️ ▶️ John is I wanted to write a game. Because people who like to program maybe also like computer games, and I would
⏹️ ▶️ John like to write one of those. And even if you don’t end up as a game programmer, how many of us, I know certainly my first programs I ever wrote were
⏹️ ▶️ John game programs, and I certainly didn’t end up as a game programmer. Game programming is fun. So if it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John fun, it’s not looking good for what are my chances of making a lot of money doing this? In fact,
⏹️ ▶️ John it starts to become more like what are my chances of making a hit movie or a best-selling novel?
⏹️ ▶️ John Games are kind of like that. It is a creative field, you do need all sorts of skills, you don’t have any new technical
⏹️ ▶️ John skills, and you need technical skills on top of that, which is like, oh, now it’s really hard to find this one or two people who can do this,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And also, it’s kind of a hit-driven culture where you have to have the right game at the right
⏹️ ▶️ John time, and boy, that’s tough. I would not be surprised to see that it is much harder
⏹️ ▶️ John to make a living selling games in the app store than it is selling a to-do list application
⏹️ ▶️ John or a podcast application or anything else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, games are a tough market because there is infinite competition. It’s just, there’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, there’s, there are so many games and games are also competing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for attention with other things that you do to kill some time sometimes and have some fun sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that includes things like social networking and movies and music and, well, no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one listen to music except me anymore but you know other people you know watch movies and you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco browse Twitter and Facebook and post stupid stuff and like all of that is competing for time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and attention with games and so again and you know games have these immense price pressures
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are squeezed from all sides plus they have the problem of like you know if you make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you make an RSS reader you can ship a 1.0 that isn’t very good that didn’t take you very long to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make and you can add to it over time games don’t really work that way, at least not most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the time, you know, usually with a game, you pretty much have to do all of it up front before you know whether anybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will buy it. And so it’s just a really tough market.
⏹️ ▶️ John Unless you license IP and then you can do episodic content because you have a known property, you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just, it’s much more like games are almost nothing like the application market
⏹️ ▶️ John and almost everything like the market for all other entertainment, whether it be television shows or movies or music
⏹️ ▶️ John or anything like that. There’s a technical aspect to it and there’s all sorts of those details that you have to know
⏹️ ▶️ John but that’s just the kind of like adds a degree of difficulty to what is basically can you make a good game can you even think of
⏹️ ▶️ John a good game that’s fun and and then can you implement that well and then can you
⏹️ ▶️ John you know put it out into an extremely crowded market in a way that people even see it
⏹️ ▶️ John really hard to do because it’s like there’s no utility value like a podcast app but like this helps me do
⏹️ ▶️ John a thing I like to do it’s like it’s different between well I’m gonna say like
⏹️ ▶️ John a podcast app helps you sort of play do something you want to do which is listen to podcasts I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to think of a game equivalent. I don’t know if there is one helps you manage your games I don’t know but games are
⏹️ ▶️ John just like the thing you do. That’s fun, right? It’s like podcasts are the thing is you that you do that’s fun
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right and games do have a few advantages over other app types, you know, one of them being for example
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that They don’t really compete directly as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much as you might think in the way that like Like, you know, people usually only use like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one RSS reader at a time, you know, and they might only ever buy one or two RSS readers. Yeah, games
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are consumables, right? Exactly. Like games, like you download, you play it for a little while, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you move on and you buy more games. And so it’s not like, it’s easier for multiple games
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to reach the same customer. Whereas if you’re in a category of competing similar apps,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chances are most people are just going to pick one of those.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or like email apps, like people aren’t switching. A small group of nerds is even looking for alternative
⏹️ ▶️ John apps. Most people have an email app, they’re gonna stick with it or whatever. But games are consumable. And that’s actually a better
⏹️ ▶️ John fit for the app store in that respect, I guess, because it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I do for upgrade? But you don’t, you just make another game.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or you make game version two and make it a sequel and it’s a separate app, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no one has a problem with that. Well, somebody does, but you know.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but it’s the same thing. It’s like, well, then how do you, you know, it’s just everyone wants to make a game. And making
⏹️ ▶️ John a good game is really hard because it’s just not technical and it’s not really UI, although you might have to do some UI,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it is really hard to make a good game.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think though, to end this on a positive note, you know, when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all these posts first came out, like two weeks ago, whenever Jared started it, when these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first came out, it looked pretty grim for the first few days. In the last few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco days, I’ve seen a lot of posts from people who are making it work, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re inspirational in a way. you know, they’re motivational at least, where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can make this work, but you have to both do it intelligently
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a way that will succeed, and have reasonable expectations on how much you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to make, and you know, base your decisions on that. So, for instance, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as John, you were saying earlier, like a lot of people want to be app developers, so therefore there are a lot of app developers, and a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of people doing it for very little money, because a lot of people do it on the side. There’s nothing wrong with that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s how I started. Casey, you’re a side app developer. John, you would be if you could write apps in Perl.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is how lots of people start. And a lot of people never take it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco full time. That’s what they always do, part-time side projects, mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as hobbies that might bring in a little money here and there. And there’s nothing wrong with that. You should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably start with that if you’re interested in doing this at all. Don’t quit your job and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have this romantic notion sitting in a coffee shop and writing apps all day and collecting a bunch of money, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco harder than that. And it’s going to take longer than that before you reach that point. In the past year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I’ve been working on Overcast, it really hasn’t been full time. I’ve had this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show and I’ve had my blog. Those both bring in money, they both take time and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work, and so I didn’t have zero income for the last year. I had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco income from those two things. I don’t think I would have done Overcast if I had zero income
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a year. Like I think I would have tried to find some way to continue having money come in every month.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you know, we all start from a very small amount. Like you look at apps today,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s similar to like putting AdSense on a blog in 2006. All right? Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had AdSense on my blog in 2006 and I was extremely happy. You know, I was getting like fast text numbers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at most. You know, I think and Google had like a minimum where they wouldn’t even send you a check until
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you had at least I think it was a hundred bucks. It was like 50 or 100 bucks and I only hit that twice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the entire time I ran ads. So I made a total of like 200 bucks maybe in like five years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You were running ads on my blog. It was miserable and I was working on that frequently. I was writing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like probably once a week at least. The problem is like the amount of effort
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you put into something does not correlate directly to how much other people are willing to pay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for it. And so you have to have reasonable expectations of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, no matter how much effort you put into an app of type X, whatever it is you want to make, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably not going to earn more than, you know, a few thousand bucks in the best case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scenario. Rather than bemoan that and complain and say it’s Apple’s fault,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because you know, there are things Apple can do to improve, but this is mostly not Apple’s problem. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you look at what something like underscore David Smith is doing, he makes many apps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He tries things all the time. He said on one of his shows recently, I think he’s made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a couple hundred apps. And they aren’t all still in existence in the store, but he’s like created
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something like a couple hundred apps. And he sees what works. He doesn’t put a ton of time into version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one if he can help it. He sees what works. And in the ones that work, he puts the time in that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they earn, basically, from their sales. proportionally, like if something sells well, he’ll give it the attention,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, more attention to succeed more. And if something doesn’t sell that well, he’s going to, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, he discontinues it and moves on. That’s a really smart approach. It’s a very pragmatic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco approach, it’s a very effective approach, and it’s very realistic of like what the store actually is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I saw another post from a guy who said, I’ll try to find these in the show notes, I’m sorry. I don’t remember
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the names offhand, but I saw another post from a guy who said like, He develops apps on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco side, or as most of his income, but he lives a really inexpensive lifestyle, and he can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go skiing with his family and be present for his kids, and he just lowers his expectations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and lowers his expenses, and he can do what he wants. That’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you go into it with reasonable expectations, you can succeed,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you have to know what the market is and know what you’re likely to get out of it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I saw also, like Justin Williams had a post saying that he doesn’t think you should spend any more than 90 days building
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version 1.0. Because that way, you know, you get it out there quickly. And if it’s going to be a flop, you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco move on quickly. And if it’s going to be a hit, then you can know that and you can choose how much you invest in it in the future.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That again, greater device, this is all about. I know I just violated all this with overcast. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, keep in mind, as I said, like, that was not full time work. It’s all about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco limiting your risk, and lowering your expectations.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then adapting to the conditions that actually happen once you put it out there. There was also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh man, what’s, I forget the name, what’s the guy who’s running the four part experiment who had an app and he made it free and they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made it in at purchase? An app store experiment, Stuart Hall. Alright, now I know. Okay, so it’s Stuart
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hall, I’ll link to it in the show notes. It’s called an app store experiment and there’s like five or so parts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s really good, it’s a really good read. So he started out, he made an app called the 7 Minute Workout.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It does something relatively simple, but where there is a market for it, but it’s a relatively simple app.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And he started out with it being a paid app, and then it went in-app purchase,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco free app, and he’s trying all these additional things. And he’s showing the results.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He’s showing all the actual numbers the whole time of like, you know, here’s like every… I think like every six months or so, he posts a new thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He’s saying, here’s what I’ve done in the last six months. Here’s the results that it has had and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is the way to do the App Store. You take an approach like this or an approach like underscore David Smith’s where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he makes a lot of small apps first and then decides what to work on, you know, or what to give more time to afterwards.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is how you succeed.
⏹️ ▶️ John See I think this blog discussion as it’s spread out from our circle, we start to get into things that are different because
⏹️ ▶️ John in our circle, this is the people who want to sort of live the life where you want to make an application that you think is cool,
⏹️ ▶️ John that does something that you’re interested in, and you want to make it the way you want to make it. And then you hope people will pay for
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And that is kind of the central core of our little circle of people, right? And as this discussion has spread
⏹️ ▶️ John out, you start getting into the people. And I think Underscore is at the fringes of our circle, because he also has kind of the same values
⏹️ ▶️ John as us, but a lot of people closer into this central heart of the indie lifestyle would say,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, but I don’t want to make 100 apps, because I probably wouldn’t be into a lot of those apps or whatever. And Underscore
⏹️ ▶️ John and like, there’s a person, Stuart, I already forgot his name. Stuart Hall. Who’s doing this app. One of the
⏹️ ▶️ John things that they’re into is the business part of it, the game part
⏹️ ▶️ John of it, figuring out what do I do to my business to like I’m turning dials here. Some of those dials
⏹️ ▶️ John have to do with writing code, but a lot of the dials have to do with things like pricing or which app should I make or what should that you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the thing that they’re into. And as you go farther and farther out from the circle, you’ll find some guy who’s making like an iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John application that helps the reception desk at a dental office. And he’s making a living doing that. But he’s so far outside
⏹️ ▶️ John our circle, he’s never seen any of these blog posts, right? But he’s happily making a living doing that. And you’re like, but I don’t want to make
⏹️ ▶️ John a dental app. It’s not interesting to me. It’s like, oh, something is not as fun anymore, right? You know, as you move away from the center
⏹️ ▶️ John of, I wanna do exactly what I want, when I want, I wanna do an awesome job on it, and I wanna get paid. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, everybody wants that. And if your skills and interests and what you do happens to coincide
⏹️ ▶️ John with the way to make money, that’s great, but as you spread out, people have different interests. Maybe someone is super into making, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, applications for a dentist’s office, right? And that’s what he wants to do. Maybe he wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John be in our circles, or maybe he’s just like, well, I’ll do this because this makes money. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the desire. The center of the thing is this sort of selfish desire to just be happy doing
⏹️ ▶️ John what you want to do and be successful. And as you tell people, actually, you have to be farther away from the thing you
⏹️ ▶️ John like. Actually, you have to be more like underscore big is. And it’s like, but that’s not fun to me. It’s obviously fun for underscore, so he’s doing it, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s actually interested in that. But you say, but that’s not fun for me. What I want to make is a whatever app. Or I want to
⏹️ ▶️ John make games. That’s all I want to make. And it’s like, well, good luck.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not everyone can do exactly what they want to do. Some people are willing to get off of like, I mean, we should
⏹️ ▶️ John have Undercore on the show. It’s like, would you prefer to just make one beautiful application that you’re really into?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or do you actually like this part of it where you try to make lots of like, is that actually interesting to you? And it seems like he’s always blogging
⏹️ ▶️ John about it and everything. It seems like that aspect of it is interesting to him. And it’s just he’s lucky in that
⏹️ ▶️ John that interests him and he’s good at it. And it meshes with his skill set. And that allows him to be successful. And all
⏹️ ▶️ John these people who are having small success, They were doing what they wanted to, and they were doing it the best they could. It just
⏹️ ▶️ John turns out that that is not a formula for making money at this particular
⏹️ ▶️ John time. And there are many things they can do to change their behavior to make more money. But the question for them is,
⏹️ ▶️ John do those changes make me less happy, and is it worth it for me? Or is there something
⏹️ ▶️ John else I could do that’s radically different, like, say, do iOS contracting, or just get a regular
⏹️ ▶️ John job, or get a job in a totally unrelated field and continue to do this on the side that would
⏹️ ▶️ John give me an overall happier life. Again, it’s back to like, you know, essentially trying to do what’s going to make you the happiest
⏹️ ▶️ John and picking an arbitrary goal, like I want to be a successful indie developer.
⏹️ ▶️ John If that’s not actually going to make you happy because of what it takes to be an indie developer, you should do something else,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know? So in summary, despite what we thought,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the forecast isn’t as overcast as we initially believed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Needt, Top Brewer, and Fracture.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we will see you next week.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can find the show notes at
⏹️ ▶️ John atp.fm, And if you’re into Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can follow them, at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco Harmon, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A,
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse. It’s accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s accidental. They didn’t mean to. Accidental. Accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tech podcasts so long.
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, check my cast so long.
⏹️ ▶️ John You spent a long time workshopping that while we were talking?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wow. It’s been a while since I’ve had an extremely cheesy joke to end the show. It’s been like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, shut up! How is your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey showbot doing? Is it up? Yeah, and actually somebody whose name I don’t have in front of me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey made, no not the person, Robbie McKenney, McKinney? I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey made a really good pull request, which I have a couple of minor quibbles with. So I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get it. I didn’t. Hey, I’m telling I’m calling it like I see it. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m assuming this is he made a pull request, so it will periodically back itself
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up to pastebin. Wow. Which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I thought was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was a very clever idea.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s complicated. It’s not the solution. It’s like the Rube Goldberg machine, the persistence.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, whatever. Every every three seconds it prints out a little piece of paper, then ties itself to the leg of a bird and the
⏹️ ▶️ John bird flies off into a random direction.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I hate you John. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John on the database. Why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are you so mean to me? Why are you so mean? Anyway, 10 foot pole
⏹️ ▶️ Casey named IBM, don’t like it. It was like two seconds of the show. I aspire to be retired.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I actually was going to petition for my own title, but that is pretty good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that that’s my pick. If I from what I’ve seen so far.
⏹️ ▶️ John Who doesn’t aspire to be retired? You aspire to be retired, do you not, Casey? Oh, I absolutely,
⏹️ ▶️ John I aspire to be. It’s not like full-fledged like John Roderick, like I have to be a retired CIA director.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just retired is fine. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t aspire to be retired.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But retirement, like to me, the idea of not working is really
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s not not working. Retired means you no longer have your job. You would still do the
⏹️ ▶️ John things that you like doing. just that you don’t you’re not doing them because someone is telling you to. And that’s your
⏹️ ▶️ John life almost all the time. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of a blurry line, though. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John like I said, if I was retired, my life would look a lot more like Marcos. Like I would still probably do tech related
⏹️ ▶️ John things. It’s just that I’m not doing them because someone is telling me to or because someone is paying me to. I’m just doing them because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s what I feel like doing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, as an example, if I was, quote unquote, retired, I would absolutely still write
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for my blog that not that many people read. I would still do the show because those are the things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I 99% of the time enjoy doing I I told you earlier. I really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like my job, but I don’t enjoy my job 99% of the time gotta
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be in the parking lot sometime Exactly the title of mine that I was going to petition for but I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think the other one is better was full-stack business person Which I think John said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I aspire to be retired is also pretty awesome
⏹️ ▶️ John I like full-stack business person better than that. And I think it’s more at the heart of what we were discussing about like
⏹️ ▶️ John having to do all the aspects of being successful, not just the ones that you like. Fair enough.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, in that respect, I guess, like, I mean, that’s that’s the part of Marco’s life that feels like working. Like he enjoys, I’m sure you enjoy the
⏹️ ▶️ John development part way more than the other parts, right? But you got to do the other parts, you know, like that’s your that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John your version of that’s your boss, basically. Like, you know that you have to do the parts of maintaining
⏹️ ▶️ John your business and dealing with that crap because you know that’s just part of it. Like you can’t and you hate
⏹️ ▶️ John managing people more than you hate doing it yourself. So you’re just going to do it or just deal with it,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? That is essentially your boss. But the thing is, if I being retired is like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John depending on the hobby that you pick, there’s probably some aspect of that too. Like, for example, Sam retired. I would probably still like to write things.
⏹️ ▶️ John And maybe I would still write like big OS X reviews for Ars Technica. And there’s aspects of the writing
⏹️ ▶️ John process that I don’t like too. But overall, it’s still worth it. So I would do the parts that I don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ John because overall, I still like it. And I would still feel like I’m retired and I don’t have a boss telling me what to do, but I’m still doing
⏹️ ▶️ John activities that have aspects of it that feel like drudgery because the overall I like the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it’d be like you wrote a show about and then had everyone you knew and didn’t know tear
⏹️ ▶️ John No, that’s not there’s no you liked every part of that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I got frustrated, but I did like it overall.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s all the fun part. Like it’s all development. You’re not like out there trying to negotiate
⏹️ ▶️ John for a trademark on the name for your show bot or filling out paperwork for taxes for New York State.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, no, no, no, no, no. Nothing like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I do not underestimate the, that’s another aspect. We didn’t even talk about this, but another aspect of the independent lifestyle. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I dislike the business part of it even more than Marco does, but just saying something, I think.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it doesn’t, honestly, it doesn’t that much work.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it’s just, you’ve done it and you get used to it and it’s kind of becomes more routine, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, especially like once you cross the point where you’re finally willing to hire an accountant. It makes things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much easier for not that much money. And yeah, any business people who don’t have an accountant,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hire an accountant.
⏹️ ▶️ John All the things that you’ve learned over your years of doing this, like that process of learning that, I would hate. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ve already done it. You’ve learned it, you’ve set it up, but that was work to do that. Maybe you enjoyed it more than
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ve let on, but I just not wanna, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John have just no interest in that. I don’t wanna deal with it, don’t wanna learn it, don’t wanna get good at it, don’t, ugh.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, there’s also, there’s like entire types
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of things that you have to deal with and work for someone else as well. Things like commuting,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting, you know, finding the business, dealing with the office and how things are done and how to file for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John vacation days and how to file… You
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of train for those by going to school though, because school and going to college kind of trains you on how to commute,
⏹️ ▶️ John how to live on your own, how to deal with bureaucracy, how to follow rules, how to show up places on time. All the things that
⏹️ ▶️ John part of the working life school essentially trains you for anyway. It’s like by the time I’m done with school and ready
⏹️ ▶️ John to get a job, I already know how to do this. I already know how to commute. I know how to use public transportation. I already know how to show up places on time and
⏹️ ▶️ John do assignments. And in that respect, school is a preparation for the drudgery
⏹️ ▶️ John of life. But all this business stuff of being an entrepreneur, it’s like nothing prepares you for, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John depending on what your major is, I guess, starting your own business and dealing with all the incorporation
⏹️ ▶️ John and tax codes, or the part that you don’t have to deal with, having lots of of employees saying we’re actually gonna start a real
⏹️ ▶️ John company with like 50 or 100 employees. There’s a whole bunch of stuff about that that you don’t know and that you would have to find out if you
⏹️ ▶️ John decide to do that. But you hate that so much, you’re just never gonna do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right? Well, because I like I did briefly have a full time employee and it was awful paperwork
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wise. And so I stopped doing it, even though like, awful just meant like I got an envelope from paychecks every two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weeks, because I was paying them like, you know, 50 bucks a month to handle it all for me. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even that, like stress me out because I didn’t understand it fully and that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bothered me. I forget about HR issues. If you have
⏹️ ▶️ John a big company where you’re hiring 50 or 100 people, that’s just, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not saying that running a company with employees is easier than going to work for somebody but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco working for yourself as a sole proprietor or a one-person LLC is pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco simple. And I would say it’s simpler than most people who haven’t done it probably think.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco please, for the love of God, hire an accountant. As long as you have an accountant and have a lawyer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do the LLC papers, you’ll be out of there for less than $2,000
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably for everything to be set up. The hardest part of working
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for yourself is the work. It’s making the money. All this other stuff is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very minor by comparison for most businesses that we would start. You know, we’re lucky. We’re not trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make stuff. We don’t need to hire 10 people and have like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco malpractice liability kind of insurances. Like, you know, we’re not going to make a product that kills somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then we get sued over it. Like, we’re not going to make, we’re not trying to sell somebody something like some appliance that they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to plug into their house and it’s going to set their house on fire.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s much harder to like start a restaurant, for example. Oh, yeah. You have to have all this money up front. You have to
⏹️ ▶️ John take all this risk. You have to put your life savings into it. You have to get business loans. You have to hit up everyone you know for money and you have like a 90%
⏹️ ▶️ John chance of failure. Yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, the kind of businesses we start are very, very easy to start and
⏹️ ▶️ John comparison. I mean, again, that’s why it’s like, how fun is it? And that’s another aspect,
⏹️ ▶️ John how little risk is there involved? Can you do it in your spare time? And do a lot of people think it’s really cool?
⏹️ ▶️ John Starting a restaurant, a lot of people think that’s really cool, but you cannot do that in your spare time while you hold
⏹️ ▶️ John down a regular job very easily. Physical businesses, starting a retail store, starting a restaurant,
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff like that, much worse, which is why, you know, it’s so many people writing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, because it only takes like a hundred bucks and a few hours of time and you have an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app in the store. That’s like, it takes so little. Right, Casey?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, that would be true if I had already known iOS development when I wrote Fast Text. I know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you were being silly, but if I were to write Fast Text again today, in fact, I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey considered rewriting it in Swift.
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe the fast, maybe the fastest path to an iOS eight compatible or just start
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, that often is the answer to like, whenever Apple changes stuff dramatically, like iOS eight dramatically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco changes all the auto rotation stuff. And like, they, you know, they replaced all of it basically. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco starting over with a brand new app is, is definitely easier in some cases,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially if the app is relatively simple, like fast text is, it’s definitely easier to start
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fresh than to try to like carry forward this iOS 4 code base from five years.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, you’re absolutely right. On a very random note, John, I’m a little disappointed in you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because I ate fast food Italian last weekend and you did not berate
⏹️ ▶️ John I saw you posted a picture of something I didn’t know what that was.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bento fazolis? Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John I did not recognize that. I mean, it looked like, you know, the typical Olive Garden, like hot dog
⏹️ ▶️ John buns with grease sprayed on people think that people think are breadsticks.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I thought maybe it was like like you had gone back to like Virginia Tech and like an
⏹️ ▶️ John old like, you know, like a place, a place on campus that you’re into. I’m like, well, whatever. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe it’s I don’t know. I just know Italian food in Virginia anyway. So come
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on. Oh, listen to this guy. Yes, you’re right. There are certainly no Italians in the entire Commonwealth of Virginia
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John none of them refugees.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh-huh. Uh, fazoli is fast food Italian. That is not a joke. It is like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a fast casual. I think it’s what they call like a Panera bread sort of thing. And when you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in fazoli and you’re dining in, you get unlimited, what did you call them? Grease
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sprayed hot dog buns. Yeah, more or less. And and there there is a or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there was, I don’t know if there still is a fazoli in the town next to where Virginia
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tech is. I used to love going there and I haven’t been to one in years.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we were on our way back from the beach and I thought, you know, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s a Fazoli somewhere in Virginia Beach. And sure enough, we looked and there was one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I begged Erin, would it be okay if we stopped? And she said, absolutely. And it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m looking through this menu here and I’m betting all of this is microwaved. Probably.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it looks, everything I found so far could be easily microwaved. like here’s it so like I used to work in a time restaurant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as one of my BS jobs in high school and I learned very quickly that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shouldn’t order things like lasagna in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey a restaurant I had that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cause you you know you can’t you’re not gonna make somebody a single serving cube of lasagna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when they order it that doesn’t make sense it’s impractical it’s probably impossible without taking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a ton of time lasagna is made ahead of time and put in the fridge or frozen and then when you order
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it they microwave it and serve it to you on a plate and you looking at these kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entrees they have here, I’m looking at all the same, like this probably all work that way. They probably all are just like pre-made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the freezer, waiting to be microwaved. Yep.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, God. The particular dish I had was the ultimate sampler, which I did not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey consume all of because I didn’t have the room. But it is fettuccine Alfredo, meat
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lasagna, spaghetti, and penne with meat sauce.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, starch, butter, butter, starch, beef, butter, and starch. So
⏹️ ▶️ John good. It’s the problem with fast food Italian is that like fast food in terms of like you walk up to someone
⏹️ ▶️ John tell them what you Want and you keep standing there until you get the food
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey It’s not that
⏹️ ▶️ John even if you take a little number if you wait like
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean it takes minimum like you know Three four or five minutes to cook pasta But
⏹️ ▶️ John the fast food Italian place is like well They have to have the pasta already ready and they just dunk it into hot water and it’s like you can’t that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John no good It’s like it’s immediately just forget it I mean I would rather have a microwave thing of lasagna
⏹️ ▶️ John than some pasta that’s been sitting around waiting for me to show up and they just dunk it in hot water and say, oh, here you go. Like, no,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t, you can’t have, there’s no such thing as fast food pasta. Now other kinds of Italian food,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, the big restaurants make a bunch of lasagna anyway and cut it up for you, but they make it that day.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Well, you know, good Italian restaurant.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The place I worked at, they wouldn’t even, this bought the crap out of me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The bread they serve was frozen, you know, bought in and it was just like, baked for like 10 minutes and it was all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pre-baked just warming it up though. the butter, they would have me take the butter cups
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the tables that were half used and just top them off and put them send it back out.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s probably illegal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I and I resisted I would whenever I would not do that they would yell at me and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it would make they would make me do it. Oh man, it was
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no fat fast food Italian should not be a thing there. I guess I suppose pizza
⏹️ ▶️ John is kind of fast food Italian you can but even a pizza takes a little while to cook and prepare. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not into these places, Casey. I’m glad you enjoyed your terrible fast food Italian.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where else I was at a Sonic drive in, which is also amazing. And I don’t think you guys have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that in the Northeast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like a tour of the worst fast food restaurants in the country.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, it’s so delicious. This you know what it’s like. You listening to me talk about how much I love the Zoli’s in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sonic is like the entire rest of the friggin world listening to you talk about fish. Cheesy bread hot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dogs. I did not have that. I had just a cheeseburger. This is very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what color is that drink? What is this made from food? Which drink?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Any of them? All of them that are shown on the website. They’re all these like neon colors.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is bright blue. It’s like a pure cyan, like a bright cyan.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What and there’s the hot dog that’s in this cheese bun with cheese and bacon on top of the the hot dog with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cheese wrapped around it and cheese on top like oh my
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s only 1,100 calories for one of these burgers that’s pretty low for fast food.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How much is one of these cheesy hot dogs? Let’s see the one they’re showing on the front page the ultimate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cheese and bacon cheesy bread dog. What a name! Where do you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco find where to get the info? Oh your nutrition. I love it’s only 550 calories that’s not as much as I would have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thought from Although it’s only one hot dog. Presumably you’d probably order two of them, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wow. Ultimate cheese and bacon cheesy bread dog. Still only 550 calories.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco teal cyan drink I was seeing on the home screen is apparently Powerade brand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mountain Blast slush, which tastes like mountain blasts, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Only 150 calories for that. See? Oh wait, that’s a wacky pack.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What is a wacky pack? See this is one of those sites where like every other word has the registered trademark
⏹️ ▶️ Marco symbol after it because like none of this is actually food it’s all just like concepts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and marketing trends they’ve invented.
⏹️ ▶️ John Somehow fast food burgers and hot dogs don’t bother me as much as like fast food Italian quote-unquote.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s because you’re Italian. I don’t know if it’s like that I guess the like burgers and hot
⏹️ ▶️ John dogs were always kind of fast food and there’s not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re mostly soy protein anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John We have Shake Shack here now. I like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve never had Shake Shack but I’d really love to. I’ve heard it’s excellent.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Shake Shack is very good. There is usually a big line at the ones in New York. I don’t know how the ones are everywhere else are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it is very good. I mean it’s greasy but it’s like greasy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fast food done by foodies. So it is a high
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quality implementation of greasy fast food.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you guys have Five Guys burgers and fries up where you are?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we have them too. And comparing them, they’re different. I think Shake Shack
⏹️ ▶️ John feels a little bit more like, it feels like it’s worse for you when you’re eating it, which can be good and bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think there’s any real health or calorie difference between them. Five Guys feels
⏹️ ▶️ John more like it was made by you in your house or backyard,
⏹️ ▶️ John and Shake Shack feels more like it was made in a restaurant. Because I mean they use the potato bun which maybe you wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John use at home and their burgers are a little different I like them both I think Five
⏹️ ▶️ John guys fries are better and five guys has more variety in their menu But like I stopped going to you know
⏹️ ▶️ John McDonald’s and Burger King or whatever I guess after I graduated college And I think the only reason I went to them there is because they were like
⏹️ ▶️ John in the food court And I could buy them with my little you know points card thing But I don’t really go
⏹️ ▶️ John to those anymore But shakes when Shake Shack came I started going to that and I realized this is like Like making up for all
⏹️ ▶️ John those years that I never went to McDonald’s, Burger King, or Wendy, or any other fast food place. Because now I can go to Shake Shack
⏹️ ▶️ John and pay way more money and wait on a humongous line or have my poor wife wait on a humongous line rather
⏹️ ▶️ John and get burgers again. I mean we make burgers at home and stuff too, but Shake Shack
⏹️ ▶️ John ones are better than the ones I make at home and probably much worse for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey See, this is a totally southern thing, but we have a thing in North Carolina and Virginia called Cookout
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you can get like 44 pounds of food for five bucks or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But it is just like you were at a Cookout in your backyard.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is eerie how similar the burgers taste. Michael
⏹️ ▶️ John Svoboda My backyard Cookouts aren’t that good though. I want better food
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than that. Aaron Powell Why wouldn’t you just have a Cookout? A Cookout is not that hard to have.
⏹️ ▶️ John Michael Svoboda Yeah, no, I’m no good at making burgers at home, not that I’ve really tried to
⏹️ ▶️ John do anything special.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco make them at
⏹️ ▶️ John home they’re alright but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I recently decided that it’s not really worth grilling burgers most of the time I can like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco grilling hot dogs is so much easier because they’re pre-cooked so you can’t really overcook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them and they’re very it’s very obvious like when they’re done and you’re like it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much you and then you can have two of them or you can do different things like you don’t you don’t get all full for having one
⏹️ ▶️ John and hot dogs are slightly worse for you probably than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco burgers slightly but you know the ones that are all beef it’s It’s mostly just, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John beef and nitrates. So
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco yeah, well, they have like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John nitrate. The ones that taste bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John The whole forever. I got a whole foods hot dogs once like they have the, I think they have like the no nitrites bacon and
⏹️ ▶️ John whole foods. They have all sorts of like healthier equivalents of healthy food. Oh yeah. And they’re all awful. They’re just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, they, I actually, this is so sad. I recently discovered there’s this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know what the brand name is, but there’s this brand of like hipster Brooklyn hot dogs. actually made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in Brooklyn and it’s like $8 for six of them, but they’re really good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re like super footlong thing. They have the natural casing and they’re all
⏹️ ▶️ John If you want that there’s a commercial option which is also really expensive but this is basically the hot dogs I buy as I figure
⏹️ ▶️ John out if I’m gonna have something terrible for me it better
⏹️ ▶️ John good. The terrible thing. Boar’s Head natural casing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s very similar to those like that because my store has those too. I almost got those. Yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John they’re very Like
⏹️ ▶️ John seven dollars for a pack or something like that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, they’re they’re good though like it Well the ones I had that works are similar there they’re good because it only has like four
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ingredients, and you know it’s mostly beef salt and casing and They’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I and you know given how rarely I actually eat hot dogs I’m willing to spend a dollar 25
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on each one if I if I have to because they’re it’s they are really
⏹️ ▶️ John good Should look that up get the abort said down where you are Casey Absolutely. Yeah, you should try those.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everyone on this podcast should try those particular hot dogs because I think most people don’t buy them because they look weird and people
⏹️ ▶️ John are afraid of them because they say natural casing. Try it. I like them so much better than
⏹️ ▶️ John every other hot dog. In fact, we don’t buy anything except Boar’s Head hot dogs because I won’t eat anything else at this point.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then you have the regular choice Boar’s Head hot dogs and the foot-long ones. And yeah, they’re expensive or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s worth trying once to see if you care about the difference.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, there’s a hot dog shop very, very near to, actually across the street from where I work,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and don’t be creepy, and it is really awesome in part
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because the casing has that like really awesome snap to it. And oh, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco best. Yeah, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco casing, yeah. Yeah, and Pan and Scan in the chat mentions Nathan’s with the natural
⏹️ ▶️ Marco casing. Those are hard to find around here, but I think they’re the best tasting ones I’ve had,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nathan’s natural casing footlongs. But yeah, they’re my regular store doesn’t even have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them and yeah they’re a little hard to find. But yeah, I figure too, like you know, if you’re eating hot dogs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so often that paying about 75 cents to a dollar per
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hot dog is a big problem for you, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eating too many hot dogs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s probably true.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or you may be a picky toddler.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s yeah. Lots of kids
⏹️ ▶️ John will only eat hot dogs. That’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yes that yeah this this rule exempts anyone under the age of 17 Otherwise you’re eating too many if you’re an adult
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and eating too many hot dogs Then yeah, that’s a problem. And if you’re not eating that many hot dogs and you can afford
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a dollar per dog or whatever Yeah, get these good ones because they really are better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, you really need to find though in my friend Phil He has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey found up in the DC area This guy, what is the name of the business?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t remember, but it’s a guy who makes sausages. His name is Lothar.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey He’s like 6’3 and 300 pounds, and he’s from Hamburg. Perfect.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Or something like that. I forget it. Somewhere in Germany. And oh my goodness, his
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sausages are wonderful. And that is a terrible poll quote that I’m going to pay for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey later in life. But nevertheless,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I am now committed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But yes, the sausages that Lothar makes are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey excellent. And I should just stop talking now. Can we be done?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey turning into
⏹️ ▶️ John a crazy food podcast. Marco will have to cut most of this out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, definitely. Except for Casey’s sausage love.