86: Moving the Party to the Bar Down the Block
08 Oct 2014Ello and Twitter, iPhone 6 Plus scaling, and the iPhone 6’s appeal vs. usability tradeoff.
Episode Description:
- Trends in social networks
- App.net Broadcast
- Ello (@marcoarment, @caseyliss, @johnsiracusa, @atpfm)
- Cupcake
- The Talk Show #74: Glenn Fleishmann explains Bitcoin
- Follow-up:
- iPhone 6 Plus Scaling (mostly thanks to Hendrik's research)
- More on the bendy iPhone 6 and 6 Plus
- Continued iPhone 6 impressions
- Post-show:
- More on the iPhones 6 screens
- Gamecube controllers
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Transcript start
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, all right, we can avoid it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now you can have you can have your your minutes in the Sun here.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh Can I? Do you know what this is about? No,
⏹️ ▶️ John I know neither one of you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Remember back in the day when I used to do an app net Broadcast when we went live.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, you don’t do that anymore. Do you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know I haven’t done that in a while
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t even post the the show links to after that anymore,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? Well with that in mind mind. Do you want to ask me how many people were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey complaining about me not doing the app.net broadcast anymore?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, actually, it would not surprise me if there was like one or two people who did because it seems like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of person who ever received an app.net broadcast probably feels entitled to keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco receiving app.net broadcasts. Is that correct?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Actually, no, to my recollection, not a single soul said anything. All
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right, that’s that’s also an equally explainable. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s too bad. Hey now we’re all using ello. Oh, yeah the thing I logged into once Yeah, I logged in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once I followed everyone anyone I could find yeah define using
⏹️ ▶️ John Fair point we have it we have accounts I don’t I I think I did post something I reposted reply
⏹️ ▶️ John to someone someone sent me a message and I replied But I don’t know what’s going on on that site at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just wanted my username and now I didn’t get it. I’m sad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got set up pretty well. I got my username. I couldn’t get Marco of course, but I got my I got Marco Arment at least. I got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my username and I found some people to follow and I’m like all right well now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what? I’ve followed some people I want to follow and what do I put here?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you can you can do the kind of like rich media. It’s kind of like halfway between Twitter and Tumblr. You can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do kind of like a rich media thing or combined thing and this doesn’t seem to be any kind of reasonable post limit or anything like that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s like I don’t really know what to put there because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I use Twitter I hang out on Twitter people I talk to are on Twitter it’s the exact same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem I have with app.net even at the beginning which is which was not it wasn’t that nobody was there because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of people were there and LO is the same thing LO lots of people are on LO officially but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the question is like when I have a thought that I want to post or when I have a question I want to ask where do I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put it if you put it on both then it’s kind of awkward for people who follow you in both places to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of annoying and if you’re only going to put it on one place chances are Twitter is the better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco place for most purposes. It doesn’t really solve the problem of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how do you split yourself between these two services like if LO had come out when Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was pissing us all off and app.net came out it would have had a better chance. App.net
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was a decent idea at the right time for the most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part that was not executed that well and and then you know the motivation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for it kind of faded away because you know Twitter like is always going to be shifting in directions that we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you know Twitter Twitter’s moves are gonna be like the kid these days for us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s good like what they’re gonna just keep doing things that push it in a direction because you know basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Facebook and Twitter both extremely envy the other and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in ways that make both products substantially worse. And so I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, Twitter is going to keep adopting like the worst things about Facebook.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Twitter is… but they’re gonna do it in a way it’s gonna be like the boiling the frog thing. Like they’re gonna do like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little things here and there along the way. It’s not gonna be like one massive change that’s gonna make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of us run fleeing. I think five years from now what Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is would be nearly unrecognizable to us today. But it’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be done that way over, you know, in a gradual way it’s gonna be done over that span so that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we slowly won’t notice that we’re being boiled. And so there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never going to be this one event that kicks all of us off and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or drives us all to go switch to something else. Like to go like, we’re all going to leave at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once. The whole party’s moving over to the bar down the block. Like it’s going to there’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be like one event that pushes us all. And, you know, and if you are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the bar down the block at that point, you know, you could benefit hugely from that. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that probably won’t happen. And chances are we’re going to lose a bunch of people on the along the way to other things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, like like when Napster was shut down, everyone didn’t just go to one thing. There was like five different things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, this always happens whenever any kind of like community major social site like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when when something goes away the people kind of scatter and fragments over different places so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as Long as we want to keep talking to the people that we’re talking to on Twitter We’re gonna be keeping using Twitter for that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and know the service chance a chance
⏹️ ▶️ John You know how like when you take copyrighted material like they call it, you know piracy or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s not really theft in the digital realm because when you
⏹️ ▶️ John download an item the the person who gave it to you still has it
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s not displacement you know digital bits they get copied everything so it’s like it’s a different type parent well in
⏹️ ▶️ John social networking the thing the phenomenon of like ello you know usually the analogy of let’s
⏹️ ▶️ John all this I’ll move the party to the bar down the block when anything like ello comes along even though we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not we have this baseline dissatisfaction with Twitter that’s kind of always simmering there
⏹️ ▶️ John we don’t all leave Twitter what we do is we all go to the bar down the block, but we also
⏹️ ▶️ John stay in Twitter. So it’s like when you take digital bits or whatever. The original person still
⏹️ ▶️ John has them. We’re still on Twitter, but we’re also, we all run over to LO. And then we get there, and it’s kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John this empty white room, and it’s kind of boring, and we try to get a username, and
⏹️ ▶️ John then we leave. But we never left Twitter. So it’s like the digital equivalent of let’s go to the bar. We all do.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think every time something new comes up, like, well, it’s kind of like Twitter, but not Twitter. Someone asked me on Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ John surprise. What is it that is supposed to be appealing about LO? And I said, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of like Twitter, but not Twitter. And that’s the appeal of all these things. I would love something that’s kind of like Twitter, but isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, because Twitter pisses me off in ways X, Y, and Z. And so we all stay in Twitter, but we dupe ourselves,
⏹️ ▶️ John and we go over to, not D-U-P-E, and we all go over to, or maybe that
⏹️ ▶️ John as well, go over to LO or to app.net or whatever, because it looks, if you
⏹️ ▶️ John squint, it looks kind of like Twitter, and we all don’t like Twitter, and maybe this will be the next thing we get there,
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s like, meh. I mean, you’re right. Like, if there was a big event that actually kicked us out, physically speaking,
⏹️ ▶️ John so we couldn’t, we had to leave Twitter. But even then, even if we got all pissed, we would all keep our Twitter accounts. We would keep using
⏹️ ▶️ John it. And we’re going to keep using it until something else is out there that
⏹️ ▶️ John makes us want to move to it and do stuff there instead. I don’t think there’s ever going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be a time where we leave Twitter and start using something else in one fell swoop. Yeah. We’re always going to stay
⏹️ ▶️ John on Twitter. And there’ll be some kind of transition phase. We just never make it over the hump during the transition.
⏹️ ▶️ John And app.net, we got pretty far. There was conversations happening there. There were lots of people that we knew. It just,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, we also still stayed on Twitter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and Elo also has the problems of, like, they seem to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really popular really quickly before they were quite ready for it. Not in a scaling way. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know if they had challenges there. Twitter did too, so. Well, that’s true, but in the way that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, they don’t have a mobile app. Their web app is just barely functional.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they don’t have any apps. That’s one of the reasons I’m not using it at all. Where’s the app for my Mac? Where’s the app for
⏹️ ▶️ John my iPod? And it’s like, well, I’m not gonna go to that website.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, that’s like, if you are launching any kind of social product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco today and you don’t have at least an iPhone app, you’re dead in the water. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s where people go. Like, launching in the web browser might seem like a good idea to some web
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nerds, But the fact is, the web browser is no longer the preeminent platform for this sort of thing. The iPhone app
⏹️ ▶️ John And the web browser is the worst for it. Like, if you’re going to be anything like Twitter, Twitter’s
⏹️ ▶️ John whole thing is it’s a text box that holds a small amount of text in a button, and then underneath it, a big list of other
⏹️ ▶️ John blurbs of text. Like, doing that in a web page is not optimal.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s practically designed for mobile. Like, it is the mobile Facebook.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, get rid of everything. Just make one text field and a box, and you put some words in there, not a lot of them, and you press
⏹️ ▶️ John a button, and then you scroll through this big giant table view. Like Twitter is made for mobile.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s true, but you’re saying that you wouldn’t want to go to the website, but don’t you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use the Gmail web interface rather than like mail or airmail?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but Gmail is massive. Emails are not 140 characters. They’re organized
⏹️ ▶️ John in complicated ways. It’s not just a big linear timeline. So they require actions and filing and
⏹️ ▶️ John replies. Like the email is not Twitter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, it’s not Twitter, But I don’t know, it just struck me odd that you immediately snubbed
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s also because you want a dedicated place to do this thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everything on iOS obviously is dedicated, takes over the screen or whatever. But on the Mac, I don’t want a dedicated
⏹️ ▶️ John entire browser tab to, never mind the Twitter website, it’s just not nice these days. And well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway. I don’t know if some people do. It never was nice. I mean, let’s be honest.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was nicer. Like, all the things you’re talking about, Twitter doing that we don’t like a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of them manifest in the website with the crazy lines between posts trying to show like it’s just I just want a
⏹️ ▶️ John big linear time-altered stream and that’s that’s what you get an iOS devices that’s what I get in my little Mac app that
⏹️ ▶️ John I used and everything’s good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah and and ello like their their business model their appeal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the reason why people are actually using it is because it’s a new thing that’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like Twitter and And everyone wants to wants to establish their username there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wait, but hold on. Is anyone actually using it? Because I’m not trying to like, you know, be funny or anything.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve seen two or three posts on Ello that have been linked probably on Twitter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s about it. And I logged into Ello, like we were saying earlier, once to grab my username and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like set the bare minimum of profile information. Right. And I literally have not logged in since.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’m the exact same way.
⏹️ ▶️ John I left email notifications on. So just in case some people are trying to contact me, they all get emailed about and that happened
⏹️ ▶️ John once and I replied, but that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s and that’s I think the best hope of drawing people in is like, you know, those notifications are on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by default. But, you know, and, you know, their whole their whole appeal is supposed to be that they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never going to have ads. Right. That’s that’s what they’re saying. We’re never going to have ads. You know, we’re going to somehow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fund ourself through basically like donations and Kickstarter like things, something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that. I don’t know the details, but I don’t see that working. And
⏹️ ▶️ John they have their VC funded. They’re not they may say whatever they say, but in reality, their VC funded.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And the thing is, like a company can say whatever it wants at the beginning. You can you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can say and you can mean I’m not saying they’re planning on lying to us or that they’re planning on changing direction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco later. I’m not saying that the people today can can think and say and do whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they want. But the fact is, this can always change in the future. At any time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the future, maybe the founders aren’t aren’t there anymore. maybe someone else takes over the company. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Elo, if it even started to take off, we would not really be getting anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compared to where we are on Twitter, because Twitter is a lot of great things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but its main downsides for the good of society, basically, its main downsides
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are that it’s centralized, and secondarily, it used to have a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of big scaling problems, although those are really mostly a thing of the past now. Now if we go to Elo,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Elo will have the exact same scaling challenges if it actually gets enough people and enough usage to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco viable. They’re going to face all the same scaling things. We’re going to start again from zero. Start again
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from like 2005 on Elo for scaling, right? And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the end, if they actually manage to have a big mass of people using it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it can replace Twitter for us, we still have one centralized company
⏹️ ▶️ Marco controlling this medium. And Twitter has shown this really is its own medium, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unfortunately a medium tied to its network. And you know, as we saw, like with tent.is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever, whatever it’s called, didn’t they rename it? Whatever that is, cupcake. Oh, is that it? Okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s cupcake.io.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whatever that whatever that is, or was decentralizing. This is hard. It’s a hard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem. But Elo is not solving that problem. Neither was app.net. These, these companies,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re starting just like a new Twitter. And it’s going to have, in the best case scenario,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they succeed and actually make these things, it’s going to go through all the same challenges Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has gone through with scaling and growing the community and moderation or lack thereof and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spam and abuse. Those are all going to hit it. And then at the end, we’re still going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have this one centralized company that controls all of this. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what if that company, you know, LO seems like they’re nice and customer friendly now, But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so did Twitter when they started. And that was a long time ago. Most of those people have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco moved on. And it’s a very different company with very different needs and different stakeholders
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. And a different controlling party, really. And so that can happen to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any company like this. What we need to be designing is an alternative that can satisfy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the roles that Twitter serves for us, but in a way that is a decentralized protocol,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a standard. It is not one central server that does all this work that is owned by a private
⏹️ ▶️ Marco company. It is a protocol like email or DNS. That’s what we need.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whether it’s RSS-based, I don’t really care about the implementation details. Dave Weiner can have his RSS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco world if he wants it. That’s fine. I don’t care how it works, but that’s the kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing we need. And I know people are saying, people in the chat are telling me, I know that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what tent.io slash cupcake was or is it didn’t take off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and maybe it’s because it launched at the same time as app.net and so it was like it was too competitive I don’t know and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there are a lot of problems there’s a lot of challenges in developing that sort of thing with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially with things like identity and discoverability of other people on the network but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is the kind of solution we need to the Twitter being kind of a problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not to build another company up to this point. It’s to eliminate the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need for these companies for this medium.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just don’t see how we’re gonna get there. And I say that because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Twitter’s really good at grabbing all walks of life. It started with the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey super nerds and then it’s ending, it’s ended, it’s carrying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on through superstars. And I’m not trying to say that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey popular musicians or popular actors or whatever are not intelligent, but they value very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey different things than the nerds do. And it’s taken a series of very specific
⏹️ ▶️ Casey decisions by Twitter, the company, in order to make Twitter the product to be something that appeals
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of to everyone. And yes, the nerds like me and you, we all grumble about things that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they do. But in the end of the day, as you said before, this is the popular bar. And what’s weird about Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is it’s a very, I can’t think of a better word than democratic or unifying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perhaps. Everyone is kind of sort of on the same page on Twitter. Yeah, I may have more or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey less followers than other people. I have a lot less followers than you two, for example, but really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyone can pretty much talk to anyone else. And that’s not something you see in a bar. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something you see in regular society. And to have a regular schmo deal with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something that’s decentralized, that doesn’t have a real easy onboarding experience,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that isn’t something like the web that is so deeply
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rooted in the internet that it’s gotten past the fact that it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of a weird onboarding and URLs are funny and what does dot com really mean, etc. I just don’t see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how a Tentist cupcake, whatever we’re calling it, I don’t see how it could get there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, look at email. I think email is a great example of how this kind of thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could happen and the likely result. So email is exactly what we’re talking about. It is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a decentralized social network that has, and it has discoverability
⏹️ ▶️ Marco challenges, it has problems with spam and abuse, but we’ve managed to make it all work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is like, we don’t have this like panacea of geekdom where everybody has their own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco domain name and everyone’s, you know, everyone owns their digital identity. No, we have a lot of people like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. But But then we also have like Gmail and Yahoo Mail and MSN Mail, these like massive conglomerates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that let anybody create an email account. And a lot of people are fine just doing that. And that is very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco centralized within that service, but it still interoperates with everything else. And none of the services
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are ever going to get powerful enough to control the medium, I hope, Google. But it doesn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be like total decentralized, like, you know, Bitcoin, Tor kind of style of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every nerd has their own thing, or rather, every nerd is required to have their own thing and every user is required to be a nerd.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It doesn’t have to be that way. It can be more like the way email does work, which is the nerds can get their own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco identities and their own domains if they want them and everyone else can go to some central provider. This is really isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this exactly what tent did. Everyone else can go to that can go to like you know a couple of the big popular providers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and get some kind of free identity and not worry about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s what tent did. But like thinking of Casey’s problem of how how do you get something like tent which has
⏹️ ▶️ John existed for a long time or cupcake which is the actual domain name. How do you get that to catch on? I think the
⏹️ ▶️ John best shot in the current environment is for something, I don’t know the technical details
⏹️ ▶️ John of cupcake.io or whatever, but for something like that to not actually be the product.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if you can imagine, for instance, if Bitcoin had caught on better because it had a better user interface or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever, some kind of sort of peer-to-peer network consensus-based
⏹️ ▶️ John protocol for doing something that ends up being very valuable to
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of people, like whether it’s, you know, other than people trying to launder money. I’m picking
⏹️ ▶️ John monetary things just because Bitcoin is an obvious example. But the purpose of the system was like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is kind of a weird thing. But actually, people totally use it as a way to transfer money from each
⏹️ ▶️ John other without a central mediating authority with consensus-based thing or whatever. I mean, obviously, we know
⏹️ ▶️ John how Bitcoin has ended up and all the weirdness in there. But anyway, something like that, where
⏹️ ▶️ John someone builds an underlying infrastructure for, because that’s what you need for this. If you don’t have a central server, you need some way
⏹️ ▶️ John for it to be more or less peer to peer, but for there to be consensus of everybody about what is the
⏹️ ▶️ John nature of the timeline. And how do we agree that this is the timeline and that it
⏹️ ▶️ John hasn’t been poisoned with fake things. And you really said, but Twitter serves that role in a centralized thing. Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ John determines what is and isn’t a tweet. They get permalinks for all the things, all this other stuff. It’s not like email where you can be storing forward
⏹️ ▶️ John and you have your own private repositories and you can delete them, it’ll be gone. Every email doesn’t have a URL. So you need some kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of centralized way to figure out where the, we’re just going to call them tweets,
⏹️ ▶️ John where the tweets are, what is the URL of a tweet, can I prove this tweet was really made, verified check marks,
⏹️ ▶️ John all that stuff. But you don’t want to have a central authority. So that’s kind of what Bitcoin does with its weird hash
⏹️ ▶️ John bakes consensus thing. But it’s peer to peer, but a large mesh network
⏹️ ▶️ John where no one node is the big. And Attempt is kind of like that. is more federated where it’s islands and there could be very large islands the
⏹️ ▶️ John equivalent of hotmail and gmail or whatever but anyway a system like that but
⏹️ ▶️ John not built for anything having to do with twitter merely built for some other thing that has a readily explainable
⏹️ ▶️ John highly lucrative reason for being that causes it to to come into
⏹️ ▶️ John very common use and to be built out everywhere and for every operating system to have it built in and
⏹️ ▶️ John to have a client on every platform and And then it all comes tumbling down, kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of like Bitcoin May. But during the interim, when that was getting distributed
⏹️ ▶️ John everywhere, because lots of people were making money using this network, the infrastructure that’s made for that network, people said,
⏹️ ▶️ John hey, you know what else we can do on this network? We can send each other little messages to talk about whatever it is we’re doing, transferring the money
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever other. Even if it’s a gaming thing, massively online, peer to peer, multiplayer
⏹️ ▶️ John gaming, whatever the infrastructure is, at some point, they’ll say, you know, you could use the same infrastructure to
⏹️ ▶️ John send tiny little messages to each other, kind of like SMS piggybacked on the voice network for cell
⏹️ ▶️ John phones. And that is the only way we’re going to get a Twitter-like thing, I think, because
⏹️ ▶️ John it has to be sort of snuck in behind some other thing that pays for and is
⏹️ ▶️ John the tractor to pull this massive, really complicated infrastructure to spread it across all devices
⏹️ ▶️ John and the entire network. And then someone shoving little messages there, and then have the other thing probably implode
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. And then what you’re left with is like, oh, well, And now we have all these clients and all these servers and all this stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John for this, you know, this peer to peer network with no centralized authority to authentically exchange
⏹️ ▶️ John small messages with each other. And we’ll just use that. I mean, maybe, you know, I was trying to think of like
⏹️ ▶️ John iMessage, but that’s centralized as well. But anyway, that I think is the best case scenario, the most
⏹️ ▶️ John likely scenario, because I just don’t see a way like Casey where something whose origin
⏹️ ▶️ John is in I want to be a Twitter like thing, but I’m distributed. I don’t see how that ever gets to critical mass without being pulled
⏹️ ▶️ John behind something as sort of camouflage for it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Complicating this problem like the way social sites grow is kind of random.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s kind of like, you know, it’s kind of like fashion. It’s like, you know, what what’s going to succeed and fail. You can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can increase your chances or decrease your chances with choices you make. But ultimately, it’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of random what ends up being picked up and taking off. And it has a lot to do with things like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, who goes there? What exactly when it comes, like when it comes around, when someone hears about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, like we’re all talking about tent like it’s already dead. We don’t even know because at the moment the tent was launched,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we looked at it and it didn’t solve our problems at that moment. So we moved on.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just logged in. My last message is from five months ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I squatted on either lists or Casey lists on tent and just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, hello, never looked back. What I did want to ask you guys, and this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a genuine question. Have there been any sort of services
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or protocols like email, like RSS that have arisen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey significantly after, say, the late 90s when the when the web and the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Internet, as we know it today, kind of took off? I’m thinking like BitTorrent is a protocol that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey taken off to a degree, but it’s still a little bit on the fiddly side. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s been no Twitter, there’s Facebook, I guess, but that’s still centralized. Is there
⏹️ ▶️ John BitTorrent and Bitcoin combined kind of, because BitTorrent, its tractor was piracy,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? That’s the thing, like, no one wants to deal with this stuff, but if it means you can get free stuff, then, you know, so that
⏹️ ▶️ John spread, you can get a BitTorrent client for everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? Although they have the tracker problem, which like, it’s like kind of centralized.
⏹️ ▶️ John Exactly. So, but it’s not distributed. Bitcoin, the tractor there was like laundering money or or buying drugs or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever, a way to exchange money between parties who don’t trust each
⏹️ ▶️ John other, and speculative, trying to get
⏹️ ▶️ John rich quick. Anyway, there was a tractor behind Bitcoin as well. And
⏹️ ▶️ John that is like BitTorrent in that it had a tractor to pull it. And also, what I was talking
⏹️ ▶️ John about, where there’s no central authority, does have the consensus problems of if anyone gets more than 51% or
⏹️ ▶️ John more than half of the computing power, You could, in theory, poison the blockchain and do all this other, you know, go listen to that big Long Glen Fleischman.
⏹️ ▶️ John What was it? New Disruptors, I think? I think it was a talk show. Maybe it was a talk show. But yeah, trying to explain. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John Bitcoin is not, it’s a little bit to wrap your head around. But for the most part, like, it’s not a great system
⏹️ ▶️ John for what I was describing. But it’s like BitTorrent plus this other thing. And I feel like there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John something else out there. If it’s not piracy or buying drugs or laundering money,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe it’s porn, maybe it’s games, right? some other tractor is going to pull whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John the next iteration of this is. Because I don’t think either one of those is sufficient to be an infrastructure for
⏹️ ▶️ John a centralized Twitter-like thing. But it proves that if you have a big enough tractor, you can make the craziest, weirdest,
⏹️ ▶️ John most unfriendly protocols and stuff spread everywhere. I mean, they’re making dedicated hardware for
⏹️ ▶️ John Bitcoin, for running out loud. You just need a tractor that is not like Twitter. And then you need that to be successful long enough
⏹️ ▶️ John for someone to say, hey, we can put messages in this infrastructure. And then you’re off to the races because someone else has done the hard work for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Our first sponsor this week is our friends at Squarespace. Now I actually went to Squarespace’s
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco Really, the things they’re doing you think shouldn’t be possible in web browsers. They managed
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s like some things are kind of embargoed I think, but they have a video of it. You can go, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s squarespace.com slash the word seven, S-E-V-E-N. Anyway,
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Squarespace. My wife’s site is on Squarespace. It’s really… There’s a lot of reasons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for this. It’s a very, very solid platform. You don’t have to worry about things like scaling or
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco on parchment paper. Our printer ran out of regular paper earlier this afternoon.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that after it ran out of paper when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there? Yeah, when you were here I put in like the last like clump of regular paper
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could find. Now that’s gone too. That’s what they call paper, comes in clumps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My wife and I came to realize that this evening when I was discussing our lack of paper that we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been saving all this. We have like resume paper and parchment paper from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back when these things mattered and it’s the cheesiest stuff. It’s It’s like imagine if you had a resume
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you have resume paper. First of all, can you imagine when in the rest of your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco life you will ever be applying for a job where a paper resume would even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be accepted? Secondly, if you actually found one and applied for it with a paper resume,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco imagine how it would look if you sent if you gave this like this blue paper that’s all like this blue
⏹️ ▶️ Marco parchmenty paper that has this big Southworth watermark across the middle of it. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is the cheesiest crap
⏹️ ▶️ John possible. That would be a big upgrade from what actually happens, which you may not have experienced. Here’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John actually happens in the modern job age. If you’re lucky, you apply to a job directly
⏹️ ▶️ John through some crazy website. If you’re unlucky, you end up going through a recruiter. Either way, no matter how you format your
⏹️ ▶️ John resume, they will demand it be formatted in some other way, including possibly pasting blocks of text into
⏹️ ▶️ John multiple text areas on a web page. And that will go through seven different systems so that by the time you sit
⏹️ ▶️ John down in front of of someone, what they will have done is printed from their web browser, whatever interface
⏹️ ▶️ John they see your resume in, and it will just come out as an unholy mess of badly wrapped,
⏹️ ▶️ John ugly formatted, ugly, like it will just, it will just look like your resume had been put through a blender.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that is what they have in their hand in front of them when they’re looking over, quote unquote, your resume. It bears no resemblance
⏹️ ▶️ John whatsoever to whatever your resume began as. So actually, it would be a huge upgrade for them to have
⏹️ ▶️ John a piece of paper in their hand that I printed with my resume formatted the way I like it. But that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John the way it happens.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. Yeah. When I was last applying for jobs that had already started and it was like I made this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco awesomely formatted, you know, PDF resume. And everybody wanted either Word or like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a plain text paste out of all the keywords.
⏹️ ▶️ John Word is an improvement because at least they can print the Word document. The worst is when it goes through like a recruiter system and HR
⏹️ ▶️ John system then comes back out as a printed web. But you can tell what the whole you know, it used to be worse when like the web browsers would
⏹️ ▶️ John put these insane footers and headers. And I know they still do, but at least they use tiny text now. But just, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s terrible. I guess that maybe we’re just on our way passing through, and eventually it’ll just be like my resume’s on the web, pull it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wow. So you want to do some follow-up? Let’s do it. So we had some very interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey emails from Hendrik, who is PocketPixels on Twitter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think I’m the most qualified of the three of us to talk about this. But John, I think you were lamenting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it the most. Would you like to cover this particular piece of follow-up?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so last week we were discussing a piece of information posted
⏹️ ▶️ John to Twitter as an image of text with no provenance that I could determine.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it was discussed as a hypothetical. If this is true, it would be
⏹️ ▶️ John gross. It turns out that it is not true. What we were talking about was
⏹️ ▶️ John when viewing 1080p video on an iPhone, what is it? Is this the 6 Plus?
⏹️ ▶️ John on a 6 plus that actually has a precisely 1080p pixel screen 1920 by 1080
⏹️ ▶️ John does it does the iPhone six plus blow the movie up to the
⏹️ ▶️ John off screen three X size and then shrink it back down to 10 a year. Does it just show it directly at native 1080? Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s what the image of text said that it does that scaling. And that was crazy because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like you’ve got the, you’ve got the content, you’ve got the screen, they’re actually pixel for pixel perfect map for
⏹️ ▶️ John each other, why would you ever pass through any scaling and shrinking process? All you’re doing is destroying information.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we went back and forth discussing that. None of us knew what actually went on. What turns
⏹️ ▶️ John out is that they do do the crazy hard thing which we were discussing about
⏹️ ▶️ John changing resolutions or changing the native output or I don’t know what how you want to describe it but the bottom line
⏹️ ▶️ John is that if you show 1080p content or if you just make a view of any kind you have the
⏹️ ▶️ John power as a developer on an iPhone 6 plus to get exactly one to one pixel accurate rendering
⏹️ ▶️ John of whatever it is you want whether it’s an open GL view or a video thing or even even actually I think you can do with just the
⏹️ ▶️ John UI could view I think it has to be open GL
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t look at the if was that native scale thing was that only in GLK view
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t have time to look at that
⏹️ ▶️ John but anyway this this is we will provide a link for this in the show notes but it is on Apple’s dev forum so you only be able
⏹️ ▶️ John to follow the link if you have a developer account but it was asking similar question, like, hey, I’ve got some content.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s perfect for 1080. I want to get it to be rendered exactly. Can I do that? And they went back and forth
⏹️ ▶️ John with the answer as you can. And so Hendrik did a bunch of experiments to see before
⏹️ ▶️ John finding these APIs and everything to show this. And what he did was he played 1080p content.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s very difficult to tell by looking at it, like we said. It’s going to be very difficult to tell with the naked eye whether it’s scaling it or not. But
⏹️ ▶️ John he played one of those test pattern images with very fine lines. they have one pixel lines, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John why it works. As you can see, is this how it’s supposed to look? Is that an MPEG artifact or whatever? But the easy
⏹️ ▶️ John way you could tell is he would tap to show the player controls, which are like UIKit views.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when the UIKit views come on top of the image, parts that are not covered by the
⏹️ ▶️ John UIKit views change appearance. So they get blurrier or they look different.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when those things go away, then it goes back to what we assume is native one-to-one mode. So he posted a video of this.
⏹️ ▶️ John You could try it yourself with this Vimeo video, which is the 1080p test image or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, that was like the hypothetical practical proof. And then the more
⏹️ ▶️ John technical proof is in that dev forums thread where you can see people from Apple saying, yes, if you want to view
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s one to one pixel accurate, you can get it. Here’s how you get it. Here’s the APIs you can use. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I would assume that in all cases where Apple can get that one to one, like, for example, playing video
⏹️ ▶️ John without any controls over it, they do. But it’s interesting that they’re able to not only switch, but switch
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of seamlessly when the UI appears and disappears. Like, apparently, they’re switching all the time, not just from app to app,
⏹️ ▶️ John but within a single app when elements appear. So it seems like Apple has the
⏹️ ▶️ John various different scaling modes for different views and alignment with the hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John down to a science here, where they’re able to switch at every opportunity
⏹️ ▶️ John to do whatever is the most efficient and whatever is the best possible choice for the screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, hang on. There’s actually a cricket in my office. So I got to go take care of that because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can hear it. So
⏹️ ▶️ John hops when you need him?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Come on, right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the rug, a sleeve. He’s totally ignoring this cricket. Hold on a second.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For what it’s worth, I did find the article that the block O text came from. Actually, I think somebody linked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it to me. I don’t think I found it, but anyways, it’s the register dot co dot. Look, actually, I’ll just put
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it in the chat room. It was in the show notes for last episode.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, if I don’t say that that origin is not reassuring.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, well, in the best part is the title of this article on the register dot co dot uk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is Apple iPhone six plus gorgeous fat pixel destiny,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey density, excuse me, but it’s wasted.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so that whoever posted that or the register people were confused by the fact that it doesn’t matter.
⏹️ ▶️ John Screenshots always are taken in the high resolution, even when you’re, you know, you can prove to yourself either with your
⏹️ ▶️ John own code or with your own sample videos that it really is showing native 1 to 1 1080 without any
⏹️ ▶️ John scaling up or down. If you take a screenshot of that, it still ends up larger. Like the screenshotting
⏹️ ▶️ John mechanism blows it up.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t find it. Nice. So going back to that video, can you give me a clean edit point here?
⏹️ ▶️ John anything that we need to keep? We found Casey. Someone sent Casey a link to the
⏹️ ▶️ John video that that screen
⏹️ ▶️ John How much for a clean edit point? Dogs are supposed to eat these crickets. Oh!
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, the problem is no longer existing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Murderer! Eh, FWaller, you know what I meant. It’s the same thing. If they’re taken in native resolution but saved in
⏹️ ▶️ John high- the point is the file on disk ends up at high- high res. You want to go into arguments about
⏹️ ▶️ John what stage does it become high res?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is it or is it not a living soul? When is it- when is it a life,
⏹️ ▶️ John John? I don’t even understand the distinction you’d be drawing there. They’re taken in Native
⏹️ ▶️ John Reds, but saved. At what point is it taken but not saved? Are we discussing the memory buffers now? Now we have
⏹️ ▶️ John to argue about whether the – well, technically, it’s not really saved. Oh my God.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey See, and if people ever wonder why we sometimes leave like these somewhat flippant responses
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to pedantic points and questions, this is why. Because all we do is get people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being completely pedantic to
⏹️ ▶️ John If all I said he was trolling me so congratulations you successfully trolled
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Man this show is such a train wreck. I love it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, is your cricket dead now?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t want to talk about the cricket.
⏹️ ▶️ John So what did it go badly? mistakes were made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, I I I Did my usual move of just dropping something heavy on it and just leaving it there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I’ll deal with it later
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is truly a new low of procrastination
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s even worse is what is that I what I dropped on it was a An iPad 2 in a in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of those like bookcases Because that was like the nearest thing that was big enough and flat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough to do what I wanted to do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and gosh darn It people like me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if I hope you didn’t if you’re listening, I hope you didn’t need your old iPad 2 case anymore
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because it’s going to be sacrificed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be cleanable easily. Yeah, I hope she makes you clean the guts off of it. And I have found a use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for an iPad 2. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not even drinking and this is the best. Oh man. All right, so do we want to actually try to come back to this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey FU or are we just going to give up on this one?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, so I actually put the test video on my 6 Plus to see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how noticeable is this. know in the last episode almost everything I said was wrong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was I had said both you won’t notice the quality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco difference and there’s no way Apple went through the trouble of making this work because who cares it doesn’t matter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they probably just double scale it and so it turns out they did go through the trouble to make this work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they did care and and on the test video showing a test pattern
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the quality difference is noticeable and not you know I don’t think it would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be noticeable in regular video watching. I don’t think anybody would ever notice. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you watch the test video, you know, when it’s fullscreen, you see it unscaled,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then if you tap the screen to show the bars, you see it get scaled. And everything kind of… well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the lines, the way it like alternates one pixel black, one pixel white
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in these lines, so that way you can see if it gets blurred at all, because it just turns gray.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s very clear like the switch is obvious. So it’s interesting, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, I still don’t think it’s worth the effort to just do it for this. I think the way they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did it was clearly for OpenGL. That makes more sense. Like they can bypass
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the scaler for OpenGL to have direct access to the pixels. That makes a lot of sense. I totally understand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why that is there. And I guess I didn’t think of that as as a potential reason why else this would have to exist.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When I was saying this wouldn’t be worth it, because I still maintain that you can see the difference in the test video, I don’t think it matters
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for video playback.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the interesting thing is, as pointed out by Hendrik, which I assume he confirmed with experimentation, if you put
⏹️ ▶️ John an opaque UIKit view on top, it does not scale. Like it knows it only needs to do it
⏹️ ▶️ John if it needs to composite it. So that, like I said, they’re taking every opportunity to say, do we really have to go up
⏹️ ▶️ John and then down again? And if every single view on top of your OpenGL view is opaque,
⏹️ ▶️ John the answer is no, you don’t. I can still go direct to screen. So it’s going direct to screen with the UI. I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean I suppose I would wonder I guess even if you had like a 3x image as part of your
⏹️ ▶️ John UI right it would scale that image and you know in the off screen and then put that and composite it
⏹️ ▶️ John together, or not composite it together, just blit it together because it’s completely opaque. So even
⏹️ ▶️ John though you had a 3x resource it would be displayed at native, you know a scaled native down version
⏹️ ▶️ John of itself. So I think they did the best you could expect
⏹️ ▶️ John with the hardware that they had on hand. And there was another little piece of information
⏹️ ▶️ John added about this. I forget if it was the same person, it was Hendrik or somebody else, but they’re talking
⏹️ ▶️ John about why would you ever, you know, why did you want to take video and then
⏹️ ▶️ John there was a perfectly native fit for the screen and scale it up and scale it back down. That’s crazy. And
⏹️ ▶️ John this bit of information is offered for a somewhat related scenario, but not quite in the realm of digital
⏹️ ▶️ John video, where if you shoot video in a certain resolution,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then you, the question is, why would you ever scale that video up to be a much higher
⏹️ ▶️ John resolution for editing purposes, only to scale it back down later for the
⏹️ ▶️ John final product? Or not scale it back down? Like, why would you ever want to do that? Or scale it back down, not
⏹️ ▶️ John to the original size, but a slightly smaller size? And the answer was that, in this forum post that we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John put in the show notes anyway, When you scale something up, you’re making it like blurrier and you’re stretching
⏹️ ▶️ John it out and you’re doing all that stuff, but you’re essentially adding information. Now it’s interpolated
⏹️ ▶️ John information based on the information that was there. You’re synthesizing information, you know, that’s how the scaling works.
⏹️ ▶️ John But by synthesizing that additional information, it does actually add information for the image. Fake information, made-up
⏹️ ▶️ John information, guesses, but that information is added. So when you scale it back down, if you don’t scale it all the way back
⏹️ ▶️ John down, in the end is an image with more visible detail than the one you started with because
⏹️ ▶️ John it made up the details it made up when It interpolated them So if you take a 2k image scale it up to 4k and then
⏹️ ▶️ John well That’s you know Take a 2k image scale up to 8k and then back down to 4k it will look better than if you
⏹️ ▶️ John just took the 2k image and scale it up to 4k because you add all that information and Then you shoved
⏹️ ▶️ John it and then you you made it, you know, you shrunk it back down and that was the argument anyway I don’t know anything about film
⏹️ ▶️ John editing That’s the argument in this in this film editing forum and you can read about it, but that’s that’s an interesting point I don’t think it applies
⏹️ ▶️ John to you eyes, which are not photographic images, but for video I can understand how
⏹️ ▶️ John you might say well fake information made up by you know By cubic interpolation
⏹️ ▶️ John is better than not having the information at all because it will leave you with a more detailed image
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Our second sponsor this week is I think they’re new to our show. But anyway, they’re not new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to us It’s a studio neat. So you’ve probably heard of studio neat or at least one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of their products They’ve made a couple of things that I really enjoyed. So they started
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out with the Glyph, G-L-I-F. They started out as a Kickstarter project, I believe, right? That was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Kickstarter first? I believe that’s right. Yeah. I think most of their stuff has been Kickstarter first.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, started out with the Glyph, which is a tripod mount and a stand for iPhones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And what’s interesting too is that they made this adjustable at the outset, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so because it’s adjustable, it already works with the new iPhones, including the 6 Plus with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or without cases, which is pretty awesome. You know, there’s a lot of iPhone accessories out there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that many of which become effectively worthless and unusable once the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco size of the iPhone changes. And they’ve,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by foresight and probably some luck, been able to buck that trend and their stuff ends up staying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco useful. So, you know, good on them for that. Anyway, so that’s the Glyph Studio Needs Tripod Mount
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stand for iPhones. But what we’re actually talking about today is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve moved on to cocktails and cocktail-related products. So this is Casey’s wheelhouse here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not the parking lot, right? Do you drink in the parking lot?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It does happen before a football game, but you wouldn’t know about that either.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m from Ohio. I know about that. So anyway, Studio Neat has moved on to cocktails
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the Neat Ice Kit. And now, Casey, both you and I have Neat Ice Kits.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do. So Tom and Dan, the guys at Studio Neat, they’re on a mission to convince you that making awesome cocktails
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at home is not that hard. Cocktails are simple. You just need a few readily available ingredients.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you already have access to everything a fancy cocktail bar does, except for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clear and correctly sized ice. So to fix this, Tom and Dan made the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Neat Ice Kit. The Neat Ice Kit is a set of tools for creating the right ice for your at-home
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cocktails. So Casey, can you describe how this works?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sure, so the way this works is you order a kit and it has some foam insulation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and within that you place this, what is it, silicone mold.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you fill this mold with just tap water or maybe if you’re really fancy, like stuff out of a pure water filter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you put that silicone mold in the foam insulation, you put
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of it into the freezer and you let it sit for around a day. And then a day later,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what happens is you have this, I think it’s about two inches wide by two inches long by four inches
⏹️ ▶️ Casey deep, a rectangular, not a cube, what’s the word I’m looking for?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rectangular solid. Yeah, that. Thank you. So anyway, so you have this basically 3D
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rectangle and you, half of it is really cloudy and the top half of it is perfectly, perfectly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clear. And the reason that happens from what I understand is as the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey foam insulation keeps the bottom and sides insulated, the top is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exposed to the freezer air. And so it freezes from top down, and so all the impurities end up at the bottom.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well then they give you a mallet and a chisel, and you can break this rectangular prism,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever Marco just called it, in half. Solid. Thank you, solid. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you have now a two by two by two perfectly clear block of ice.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is extremely fussy, extremely silly. It is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by most arguments a complete waste of time and every time I have a drink, this is exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I do and I love it and I am so – I mean we are kind of paid to say this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but hand on heart, this is absolutely true. I love my Neat Ice Kit. I love it so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much that I actually stockpile uncut bricks. So if for some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reason someone comes over unexpectedly or maybe I’ve just had a very bad day, And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have plenty of crystal clear big ass ice cubes, as they call them,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in order to put my vodka on top of. And I cannot recommend it enough. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really is fantastic. I did a review of it on my website, which we may or may not remember to put in the show notes, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by ten of them because they’re awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I actually ordered one for myself before they sponsored the show just because I thought it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was interesting. And I’ve they didn’t tell me to say this, but I’ve tried a few of the other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solutions out there to try to make like fancy ice at home and None of the other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ones were as easy to use as this one So anyway each neat ice kit includes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the mold the chisel the chisel also includes a bottle opener right in it So it’s pretty cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a club that doubles as a muddler and a Lewis bag And I didn’t know this but apparently a Lewis bag
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a bag you crush ice in like you put the ice in the bag You hit the bag with your club and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out comes crushed ice. Is that roughly correct Casey?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s the idea So if you had a situation where you have a cocktail that requires
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a thin but tall glass, and I forget which ones they are off the top of my head, but you could take your big ass crystal
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clear ice cube and then chop it up a couple more times, throw that ice into the Lewis bag,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use that muddler like Marco was talking about, bang, bang, bang, and crush all that ice in the Lewis bag. And now you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got crystal clear crushed ice instead of a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cube. Right. Or you can even you can you can crush up the cloudy half of the cube that you would would have otherwise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put in your dog bowl like I did, but because Hopps did not care about the cloudiness. He was happy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have ice in his bowl regardless of whether it was clear or not, but people care, so we can have the cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clear ice for ourselves. Anyway, the Neat Ice Kit also makes an amazing gift for the holidays, for weddings.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually, I ordered one for myself and they also sent me one like two weeks later just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because they like me, and so I gave the second one away. I regifted it actually, yeah, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I gave it away because it makes a great gift. So anyway, check it out. Go to studioneat.com and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use code ATP when you check out to get 10% off anything in their store.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Really, I love these guys. They have so many great products. Can’t recommend them enough. studioneat.com.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Don’t forget code ATP. Thank you very much.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I could go on forever about Studioneat. And they’re such nice guys. Yeah, they’re awesome. Like, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even better that they’re such nice guys. Oh, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would still go on and on. I’ve met them. They’re fantastic. They’re that nice in person as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, I would go on and on about the neat ice kid even if they were jerks because it’s that wonderful But they are also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’m a big fan of their cosmonaut. It’s a stylus for iPads.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I’ve got that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one Yeah, it’s like I’ve tried a lot. I guess another thing like I’ve tried a lot of styli for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco touch devices and None of them really worked for me as well as the cosmonaut does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I even have the fancy one from paper the pencil and And I’m not an artist
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all and so like it doesn’t really work for me, but the cosmonaut is awesome It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s like a dry erase marker basically like that’s that’s the feel it has which which Matt like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the reason they made it So big and chunky like that is because that’s roughly the precision you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco With any of these things and and so they made it kind of fit that they made the form of it fit the precision
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that You actually get and so it just makes it feel like more right, you know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I hear you anyway. I’m attempting to make it through this episode and get to a topic, but it’s not looking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco not going to happen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now. So let’s talk about some bent iPhone tests because we haven’t done that enough.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Technically, we started with a topic.
⏹️ ▶️ John true. Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s a Marcos new move is he derails either before
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco or just in the beginning of fall off. You
⏹️ ▶️ John just add whatever he wants to talk about to make sure we get to it, even though it’s not follow up. Exactly. Add that to the bingo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hey, it works. Otherwise we’d be all follow up every week. Nobody wants that.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, we would get it would be the same total amount of time whether that part is at the beginning or the end, it would just be appropriate
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco for the end.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Anyway, last week, we talked
⏹️ ▶️ John about the consumer reports test. And I mentioned a bunch of stuff that I didn’t see
⏹️ ▶️ John in that report, apparently was there and either I missed it, or I saw an early version of the report, or maybe a reblog of the report
⏹️ ▶️ John that didn’t quite correctly copy and paste the content. It’s hard to tell when you’re following things from Twitter and your iOS device
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t show the full URL anyway. But anyway, Consumer Reports did test
⏹️ ▶️ John not just how much force does it take to break these things, but also how much force can be applied before
⏹️ ▶️ John what they called deformation, which is what I was saying. How much force can you apply before it doesn’t spring back?
⏹️ ▶️ John And so you can see, we’ll put the link in the show notes again to this Consumer Reports page. You can see they tested that for
⏹️ ▶️ John the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And speaking of bending iPhone 6 and 6 Plus and warranty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey repairs. We got some interesting feedback from listener Jared. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he says, I made the mistake of looking at my iPhone six from the side bending from carrying it in my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not at all skinny jeans. That was his emphasis. I’m sorry, skinny jeans and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey suit pants bent point is right at the bottom of the lower volume button button went to the Apple Store
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yesterday, Chicago’s Lincoln’s Lincoln Park, which is usually super awesome and accommodating. And here’s where it gets interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The genius proceeded to tell me that based on an article in scare quotes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they had received as of October 3rd, that the bending of the phone only occurs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because of a lot of pressure or blunt force. And that the scratches on my case, which were because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of keys in my pocket by accident, was an indication that my phone had been mistreated and they wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cover the bend under warranty. Thus I would have to pay them $300 on top of the $900 that he already
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shelled out because he bought a T-Mobile 128 gig non-contract phone. So that’s a change.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it seemed at first that Apple was pretty happy to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do a warranty return or exchange on these, and now, apparently not so much.
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t see it that way, that’s what Marco said. He said he thought that if you brought it to an Apple store and it had
⏹️ ▶️ John a bend and it was still under warranty, maybe Apple would be nice and replace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Well, because we had heard reports from people who did that. Yeah. Did we get one from someone who said
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they? I don’t know whether it was Twitter or feedback, but I did read reports like the second or third
⏹️ ▶️ Marco day after this started coming out that this might happen, there were reports saying people who browse the Genius
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Bar and they were like, oh yeah, you know, that shouldn’t have happened, here’s a new one. And now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ve heard not just from Jared, but we’ve heard from a number of people. I’ve seen, we have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least two feedback emails here, and I got a couple of tweets to this point as well, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it sounds like in the last few days Apple has changed their policy and has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco issued some kind of directive from above saying they’re no longer going to replace phones for being bent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and and I don’t know I mean we I think we don’t know enough about this problem yet to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know whether it’s actually a real problem or not it was sounding at first like it was gonna be a big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem and then the consumer reports thing came out and then it’s like oh well it’s not really a problem as much maybe probably not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you know we’re not gonna know for like six months like in six months if half of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if half the people you know who have iPhone 6s, they’re bent and these people aren’t like totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco abusive, then I think we’ll know, oh yeah, this actually was a bit of a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the Consumer Reports does give us the information because they test, they show a
⏹️ ▶️ John range and let me look, did they do the 5s in that test as well? Because that’s what we can compare it to
⏹️ ▶️ John is the most recent Apple phone that we may be familiar with. I mean, the iPhone 6
⏹️ ▶️ John was not super weak, like the 6 and 6 plus were not the bottom of the barrel. They were more towards the
⏹️ ▶️ John middle low end. But it wasn’t, yeah. So they were the same as the HTC One.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you haven’t heard lots of stories about the HTC One M8 getting bent, right? But the HTC
⏹️ ▶️ John One was the weakest. Because no one’s buying it. Yeah, well, you know. HTC
⏹️ ▶️ John One was the weakest in their test. The 6 was the second weakest. The 6 Plus was the third weakest. But the range
⏹️ ▶️ John is not astronomical. Yeah, so the iPhone 5 was considerably
⏹️ ▶️ John stronger. It didn’t get deformed until 130 pounds of pressure versus the 6 which deforms
⏹️ ▶️ John at 70 and the 6 plus which deforms at 90 So this is a range from 70 to 150
⏹️ ▶️ John pounds of pressure for the deformation from best to worst, right? And so the iPhone 6 plus is just
⏹️ ▶️ John shy of the middle It’s on the low end and they you know So but like those seem like ballparks and like
⏹️ ▶️ John is it is it a difference is that’s why we got into what I talked about Last show which is all right So this these
⏹️ ▶️ John tests tell us what they deform at but we don’t know what the expected Range of pressures
⏹️ ▶️ John that a phone in your pocket gets subjected to are both based on the length of the phone Which is what I was talking about
⏹️ ▶️ John last week, but also just forget the length of the phone Just say uniform phone length if it turns out that
⏹️ ▶️ John the pressures in a person’s pocket Generally peak around 100 pounds of pressure
⏹️ ▶️ John That means that Apple’s iPhone 5 was comfortably above that range and now the line of phones they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John released is below that range, right? And so it could just be there’s just a threshold, like in general, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, the worst you’re gonna feel in a pocket is 100 pounds of pressure. So as long as your phone clears 100 pounds, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John fine. Like we don’t know where that dividing line is. What is the expectation of pressure? And so this second email
⏹️ ▶️ John from Chris M. is sort of a contrast to the previous one. It says he had a phone that was kept
⏹️ ▶️ John in his left pocket while he played a podcast during a flight.
⏹️ ▶️ John He said, there was no tightness in my pocket, nor was it pressing against anything, et cetera. Not a mark
⏹️ ▶️ John on it. Took it to the genius bar. The genius person agreed that it had not been mistreated. It looked perfect,
⏹️ ▶️ John but couldn’t replace it under warranty because of this aforementioned order from above that they’re not doing
⏹️ ▶️ John that anymore. Now, we’ve seen the numbers for the pressure. And I’d never
⏹️ ▶️ John felt any tightness. These things aren’t bending themselves. It’s not Uri Geller bending your phones. They’re bending because pressure
⏹️ ▶️ John is being applied to them. It could be that the pressure is applied in such a way that it’s distributed across your leg so you don’t feel
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Somewhere, somehow, there’s at least 70 pounds of pressure being applied to the center of that.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s like best case, because it would be harder to bend it if you apply it 70 pounds of pressure to some place other than directly in the middle,
⏹️ ▶️ John using the edges of the fulcrum. Like, they’re using a three-point press holding the very edges, putting the pressure right. That’s the worst case scenario,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? You would have to apply more pressure if you were applying it if the
⏹️ ▶️ John distance from the fulcrum and the edge of the thing was shorter. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John somehow, pressure is being applied to these phones. The thing we’re missing now is the expected, what is
⏹️ ▶️ John the environment of the pocket like in terms of pressures? And if you’re going to build something to withstand
⏹️ ▶️ John those pressures, is this phone just under a warranty? And that I guess
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll find out, like Margo said, experimentally, it’s just like all your friends who keep their phones in their pockets are all of them slightly bent
⏹️ ▶️ John in a couple months.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, and when a new iPhone comes out, when it has any kind of potential
⏹️ ▶️ Marco physical or design flaw, you don’t really know until a few months in how bad is it really like the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco five came out and the edges scuffed up pretty easily and should the lighter color metal underneath you know that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it took us a while to figure out that was going to be a thing right the iPhone 4 came out everyone thought antenna gate was the big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem when really the big problem with the iPhone 4 was the proximity sensor the home button to on that one yeah that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah that was the one with their home button always died and you know so like there’s we you don’t really know like not every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone is perfect some are better than others I think with this one I see I’m actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Actually, seeing this table on Consumer Reports, case separation I don’t really care about because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think, like, I think the deformation is the more important column, the one that people are actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more likely to hit and get upset by in regular use. What’s interesting, two things. First
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all, that by their measurements, the 6 Plus was actually stronger than the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 6, which I think is the opposite of what you’d probably expect. Secondly, the 6
⏹️ ▶️ Marco withstood only slightly more than half as much force
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the iPhone 5. And so that’s a pretty big difference. To
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only be able to withstand roughly half the force, that’s substantially weaker. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, because this test is synthetic, and you’re right, we don’t know how this will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hold up in practice, but that does look like a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John The round numbers make me worry about it a little bit too. Why is it 70, 90, 130?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if they’re just kind of saying this reflects the imprecision in our
⏹️ ▶️ John experiment, and we didn’t want to show you the exact numbers because that would show a degree of certainty
⏹️ ▶️ John that doesn’t actually exist in the experiment. I mean, there are a lot of variables here. These
⏹️ ▶️ John devices are not uniform solids. They vary on the inside. They have different materials
⏹️ ▶️ John at different points. And there’s the weak points with the volume buttons, little strengthening strips and there’s a printed circuit board on
⏹️ ▶️ John one side and a battery on the other so there’s all sorts of variables going on here so it’s not a straightforward test but
⏹️ ▶️ John like i said that’s what really matters is the the environment that you know the environment
⏹️ ▶️ John that these phones are subjected to but like the HEC1 up there showing similar you know being
⏹️ ▶️ John the weakest in the test and being a phone that’s been out for a while and that we’ve heard nothing about bending
⏹️ ▶️ John makes me think it can’t be that terrible because if there’s going to be a group of people who are are going to baby their phones,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not going to be HTC One owners. You know, like the Apple ones are the people who are going to care about their little device
⏹️ ▶️ John and not getting scratches on it and stuff like that. I know the HTC devices are really nice and appeal to people who like nice
⏹️ ▶️ John things. I think that HTC makes really good looking phones. But if I had to take
⏹️ ▶️ John entire groups, iPhone owners versus HTC One owners and say, of these groups, which
⏹️ ▶️ John one will treat their phones nicer, I’m going to pick the iPhone one because I think it attracts a certain kind of hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John nerd. And so if we haven’t heard anything about HTC One, then yes, it’s because they haven’t sold any of them. It’s because
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t get any excitement from telling people that HTC One is bending. I think we would have seen the story anyway
⏹️ ▶️ John if it was it was a big deal, just because you’d be like, oh, HTC, they can’t catch a break. They make these great phones that no one seems to buy.
⏹️ ▶️ John And now they may want to bend.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, I don’t think that’s I think the things that you just kind of disregarded
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are pretty big things like, yeah, no one’s buying HTC phones in general, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part of the problem HTC is having with their business. And you never hear about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like minor physical flaws or minor design flaws of Android phones. It just doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen. They’re not nearly as high profile. There is not nearly as much money and attention to be had by pointing out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco flaws in them. It like it just doesn’t happen like that is not a fair comparison.
⏹️ ▶️ John I still think I still think it would get reported though. I mean, the agency one got reviewed everywhere. I’ve seen them in practice.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve seen people have them like it’s not there. They’re not so rare that you like. I’ve still never seen anyone using a surface in real life,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I’ve seen plenty of HSE ones. And they got reviewed all the major sites. Why would they review it if
⏹️ ▶️ John no one buys HSE? Like it’s not wouldn’t be a big story. Wouldn’t be the Wall Street Journal. Right. But on the sites
⏹️ ▶️ John that we travel in, I think we would have seen it by now if it was a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Let me do our final sponsor for the week. It is our friends at Hava.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They do that, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why are you why are you pandering to them or why don’t? And no, no, you
⏹️ ▶️ John it right. Just. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, what they’re all they’re all crazy. Don’t don’t listen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I completely agree. Anyway, hover is the best way to buy and
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can you do this entire read in a fake British accent? I can’t.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hover is a domain record star. That’s awesome. They have so many great things. A domain registrar
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty rare right there. But they back all that up with, they have great design, they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easy to use powerful tools to manage your domains, they have all these crazy features you can add,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and many of them come for free. You get privacy built in for free, you know, because they, Hover believes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that certain things should be included for free with names. You shouldn’t have to like pay extra to avoid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting spammed at your home address or whatever. So they give you the privacy feature for free. They have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all these great things you can add on to it like email services and everything else. They have this great valet transfer service
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where you can if you if you’re going to give them your login to your old registrar, they will log
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is no cost no matter how many names you’re transferring in, they will do it for you and they’ll do all the settings properly do all the DNS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco properly do all the stupid transfer codes they have to do. It’s a great service. If you need any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco support with your domains or any of your other products you buy through Hover they have the best customer support
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around. They have step-by-step instructions online. They have email support and they have this awesome
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing I love to talk about the no wait no hold no transfer telephone support service.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They wrote phone but I said telephone to make it sound more impressive. They have telephone support service because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is pretty impressive these days that here’s like you know a website that you can call and have people actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pick up the phone who can help you. And they really is like no wait, no hold, no transfer policy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You call them up, a person picks up the phone and they can help you. There is none of this bouncing around, let me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco direct you to this department, let me put you through this stupid touch tone menu or the even worse, the ones that make you speak
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the robot menus. Oh, that’s the worst. Track a package. Those are awful. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so when you call them a real life human being is there who can actually help you and they pick up right then.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Their customer support there, they know their stuff. They’re very friendly. I think the company is Canadian.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know if it’s, I’m pretty sure the customer support is right there in their office. So the customer support is probably also Canadian.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So of course they’re going to be that nice. Super friendly people and getting your problem solved is quick and painless.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They also have volume discounts. This is a new thing. If you’re buying tons of domains, more than just, let me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see, starting at just 10 domains is where the volume discounts start kicking in and then they go up in value from there the more you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy. Really great stuff at Hover. Again, I can’t possibly tell you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how great this is in one ad read, which is why they have given me three pages of things I can choose to read,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I go through them all on my parchment paper. I’m going through them all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every week, going through a few new ones. Anyway, so when you’re ready to buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your domain name, go to hover.com, check out what’s available. They have all the new TLDs, many of which are
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco ones that you can get, they have them all and you can register them all right there at Hover. So you can go to Hover, you can get a.plumbing
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’re almost through
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, we’re done. Skip everything else.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I thought you wanted to defend your iPhone grip, which is wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, someone gave us that link last week and you never put it in the show notes. Now it’s stale, but whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, I do I do want to mention one more thing about the iPhone 6 physical design and grip. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first of all, I use my five s briefly today to set up the live streamer and yeah, the five like first of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco five s is such a better looking phone. Like I look especially the back you look at the back and like man this thing this like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the five s looks downright sexy on the back and the six and six plus look stupid on the back.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I don’t like how the five looks on the back. I can I can see the argument for the six looking worse on the back
⏹️ ▶️ John but I just do not like the back of it just looks so boring to me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the five I’ll give you the 5s I disagree with because the 5s the way they change they change the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tone of the of the dark color
⏹️ ▶️ John I know but like like all the things that look good about the 5 and 5s back look good in apples close-up
⏹️ ▶️ John shots From a human distance not and met with macro photography. It’s just a
⏹️ ▶️ John a matte metal bathtub with you know chamfered edges that
⏹️ ▶️ John are probably nicked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, but like the way like they would like the two-tone back with like the glass
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John windows and everything that it’s just I think it looks so much nicer anyway anyway
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so first of all yeah impression going back to it is oh my god this thing is tiny secondly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh my god I can reach everything this is glorious because I’m still still having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trouble reaching everything yeah and and I’ve definitely I’ve decided this week
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tiff gave in and got a case for hers and I’ve decided I’m gonna get a case too and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have never had a case on my phone before I carried phones I carried Palm Pilots I I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never had a case on those. I have never had a case on any electronic device I’ve ever carried around, as far
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I can remember. I might be wrong, but as far as I can remember, I’ve never have. The closest I came was I had like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this leather, like a leather cling stick-on thing on the back glass panel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of my 4 and 4S, which is awesome. And actually, I ordered new ones to try on the big phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John You just killed a cricket with a case, didn’t you?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That was Tiff’s iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco She has used cases before, although never on phones. but I have never used one as far
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I can remember.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So what did you get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco case-wise? Tiff got the Apple leather case. I am waiting for my leather thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to come in the mail to see if that will be enough, which is great. It’s actually only, it’s like 20 bucks, so it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John So why are you getting the case though? Why have you decided this is the one you need a case for?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s because when I hold this phone in my hand, it just feels slippery. And I know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was, you know, everyone says the new phones feel slippery when new phones come out. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is always, even when the 4 and 4S came out with the glass back, which actually grips pretty well, people said it felt slippery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it did compare to the 3GS. People always say that, but this time, I’ve now been using this phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for, what, two and a half weeks, however long it’s been, and it still feels very precarious. I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost dropped it many times, and I have never, as far as I can remember, I’ve never dropped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an iPhone or any other electronic device.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you think it’s the rounded edges, the thinness? It’s not the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco material. I think it’s a combination of all, think it’s a combination of the rounded edges the thinness
⏹️ ▶️ John You can do the tilt test right now do the tilt test with the 5s and the 6 just to see at what angle do I have
⏹️ ▶️ John to tilt my hand before it starts sliding off because everyone I’ve known who’s done that test has said that the 6 is either more grippy
⏹️ ▶️ John or equally grippy with the 5 in terms of just you know friction with your skin but the rounded edges
⏹️ ▶️ John and the thinness do make it feel slipperier like that you know like it’s like a little you don’t have the the
⏹️ ▶️ John sharp edges that you feel like you’re gonna hold on to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah I just Tried to do the tilt test and I can’t I can’t I mean I’m not gonna drop them But I can get almost 90 degrees
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that’s not really but mostly because my hands are slightly Moist because I’m warm
⏹️ ▶️ John you just put the put the five and the six next to each other in the same hand and it’s not a pro Anyway, but the point is like I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John think the materials at fault But the rounded edges and the thin is nothing to make it feel like that Maybe this one is getting finally
⏹️ ▶️ John has crossed your naked robotic core threshold where you’re like, okay now This is this is clearly not the device. This
⏹️ ▶️ John is clearly The thin the core of the device that I will slot into something that I’m going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it’s a combination of factors. To me, the big things that make this phone feel more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco precarious and possibly be more precarious to hold are the combination of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco side design. The sides themselves don’t dig into your hands at all. They don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco grip your hand. The size of the 5 with the squared side and the sharp edges,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that does kind of nicely grip your hand. There’s a big surface there for friction to stay in place.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s a big part of it. Secondly, I think the possibly bigger part,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco besides not having grippy sides, is that I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to so often change my grip on the phone in use to be able to reach something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that I think is by far the biggest risk to dropping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. It’s like when you’re holding it one-handed, you’re walking around, you’re doing something, and you’ve got to go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hit a button in the upper corner that you can’t reach. And so you’ve got to change your grip. You’ve got to choke up on it. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is much more precarious in your hand at that point because you have lost your supporting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pinky, your load-bearing pinky at the bottom, or you’ve just used your grip the whole time, which God knows how that works.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, I have to reach up and you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot less support in that time. And you are literally, you’re like scooting the phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down your hand so that you are intentionally loosening your grip on it to change where you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco holding it. And so what I’m looking for and like I so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve I still don’t have a case on my phone yet but I picked up tips a couple times in the last couple days
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to like check something on it and it feels glorious. I’m like oh my god I need this like it with the with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Apple leather case on it. That is how I want this phone to feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it improves so many things and it does make the edge swipe gestures a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like slightly annoying to do because you feel like kind I hit the edge of the case with your finger. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I’m not using the case on the phone, which is how I’m using my phone, there’s a different problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is that you have to like make sure that you’re that you’re not actually touching the screen with any part of your grip
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the screen is so close to the edges and they are so nicely rounded that it’s very easy to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accidentally touch the edge of the screen. Especially if you’re reaching across it. If you’re like diagonally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reaching across with your thumb to one of the upper corners, then like the pad of your hand below your thumb, it’s very easy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to accidentally hit the screen with that. And so there’s all these problems, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I even thought the other day that the digitizer on my phone was broken around the edges, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of my edge tabs were not registering, and I frequently have problems bringing up the lock screen camera,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is an edge drag, and a bunch of people tweeted back basically saying they’ve had the same thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even on their 5S’s after iOS 8. So it appears to be a software bug of like the automatic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco finger rejection that’s always been more prevalent on the iPad. They’re applying it to the iPhones now as well. I don’t know if they ever if they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always have, but it’s at least doing it in iOS 8. The new phones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the screen goes so close to the edge that they have to do that. So and it seems like it calibrates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco based on whenever you unlock the phone. Like if you if you lock it and then unlock it, it seems to recalibrate. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so if you’re if you’re getting edge tap to ignore, do that. It tends to fix it. Like, if you have a case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on it, you are far less likely to accidentally be touching the edge. So it will also improve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the reliability of edge touch gestures in normal use. So like there’s, I feel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this is the first phone where the stock
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design of it is just not that compatible with me. Like it’s the first iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where I’ve felt this way, where I actually need a case or something to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make this more ergonomic and more usable to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’m hearing very similar complaints from a lot of people. I think we’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look back on this design in the future once we have a different design and once we’ve had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the benefits of hindsight and time, I think we’re gonna look back on the iPhone 6
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design as a low point. Not to say it’s a failure, but that it’s not up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the usual standards of what we come to expect from iPhone designs.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do you think the curved glass, the fact that the screen, so I assume this is the case. I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John look closely at the one when I was handling it, but there’s part of the glass in the front of the iPhone 6
⏹️ ▶️ John that is not the screen. That’s right. Because the curved part, the screen image is not displayed on the entire curved
⏹️ ▶️ John part. There’s a certain point the screen stops, but the glass keeps going. And so it doesn’t make it clear
⏹️ ▶️ John like to your finger or any part of you, I’m touching glass now, but is this part of the glass
⏹️ ▶️ John that I’m touching part of the screen image or part of the digitizer that detects my touch. And
⏹️ ▶️ John that, I think, could lead to some confusion, both about edge touches
⏹️ ▶️ John and touch rejection, and just like feeling in your hand what it is that you’re doing. Whereas
⏹️ ▶️ John before, I think, I don’t know, I don’t have my iPod Touch with me. I think the screen image went
⏹️ ▶️ John up to something that you could feel. Do any of you have an iOS device? And you can look at it and tell me if that’s the case?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have every iOS device.
⏹️ ▶️ John Screen images go to the edge of the like can you feel where the lights stop or no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no no and I can’t on a 5s Either all right well But on a 5s like on a 5s you never had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any reason For any part of your finger or hand to be resting on the front face of the phone that was not going to the screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whereas because of the curved edge you’re kind of always partially on it
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you can feel the edge now that that would be your dividing point for like feeling in your hand
⏹️ ▶️ John am I touching the screen? I mean not since that corner is there like well once I round the corner even though that’s not technically the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John right there. You would keep your hands out for the curve can can sort of lead you into touching it. I’ve had
⏹️ ▶️ John cases on all of my iPod touches always. I used to always use silicone cases because they were the most grippy
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s what I wanted. And then I eventually gave up on that because I couldn’t find a good one for my current gen iPod
⏹️ ▶️ John touch and moved to TPU, which I like as well. And now Apple’s making a silicone case.
⏹️ ▶️ John Where were they? You know, five years ago, but I’m probably gonna try their silicone case if I get one of these because I like it to be
⏹️ ▶️ John super grippy for all the reasons that you said, but I’ve just always felt that way. I’ve always felt that all the iPod touches
⏹️ ▶️ John were too thin and slippery for me to use without a case.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’d like to go back a minute and explore what happened in your head when you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey picked up that five S and I, I, Aaron is still on the five S, um, and by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey her own choice, and I use her phone probably once every day, once
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every couple of days, because, you know, it’s the nearest one and I need to look something up and every
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time I pick up Aaron’s phone, the The first thought I have, which is what you said, Marco, is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey holy crap, this feels so much better in my hand. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think I actually prefer, from a feel point of view, I prefer having the flat
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sides. Certainly I can reach everything, which is marvelous because I never realized
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how much I use my iPhone with only one hand. But the second
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thought I have is, holy crap, the screen is a postage stamp.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And when I was expecting what came to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be the 6, I didn’t think I really was yearning for more screen real estate. And now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I have it, which is exactly what everyone said would happen, I really don’t like going back.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But the hardware is so much better. And so I was curious, Marco, do you also get that feeling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of, oh my gosh, this is so cramped when you’re using the phone?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, granted, I haven’t used it that much. I just picked it up and played with a few things for minutes here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there. But what I notice is that I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this screen is really tiny. I think, oh my God, I can never go back to this. However, then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I notice, not only does it feel better, not only can I reach everything, but because of those two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco factors, I can actually use it much faster. Like whatever I’m trying to do on the 5S,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can do faster than I can do it on the six and this is even after now being pretty used to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco six and and I think that’s it’s because I can reach everything so much faster
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I I wanted more screen space I was I was on the side of people that said please give us bigger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screens I think Louie Mantia he tweeted I think it was him he tweeted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I don’t know a week ago something along the lines of they should have done
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two different sizes like like I think he said like 4.5 and 5.0 and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know what the big one you know people who have the big phone like it so maybe 5.5 was the right size for the big one but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think 4.5 rather than 4.7 might have been the better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco size for the 6. I think that would have made it you know a little closer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to to the 4-inch thing that was so easy to feel and reach everything for so many people you know obviously 0.2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inches is not a big difference but it is it is a noticeable difference. I don’t think we even really know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet the full value of having more screen space on the phones because so much software doesn’t take advantage of it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet. So all this might change in a year when more apps are updated, you know, but for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now I think it’s kind of like the like you know buying the contrasty TV in the store.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When I look at the 6 and I look at the screen I would much rather like it’s more appealing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to me but when I actually try to use the phone iPhone, the 5S, I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is more usable for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I would agree with that. It’s funny because I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know if I were to do it all over again, and let’s suppose in some hypothetical world
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I could have the six internals in a 5S case.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m leaning toward I would choose the, I don’t know, hypothetical iPhone 6 mini,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it’s a tough call. curious to see and I’d be curious to hear what you guys think. Do you think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that next year, Apple will make a iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 6S in a four inch form factor? I’m leaning towards no, but I think
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they got to look at the sales numbers though, because like they don’t have to make that decision right away.
⏹️ ▶️ John Although they already probably have enough sales information, like they know, you know, how well did the 4S sell
⏹️ ▶️ John when we put out the 5? How well did the 5, well, five-selling, but on the 5S. Like, if it looks like the 5S
⏹️ ▶️ John and 5C are selling way out of proportion to the numbers we would expect
⏹️ ▶️ John for last year’s phone, they’re gonna be like, okay, this shows there is an appetite for
⏹️ ▶️ John the smaller model that is disproportionate to it. Like, every year someone always buys last
⏹️ ▶️ John year’s model, but this year we sold five times as many of last year’s model, and what we’re showing
⏹️ ▶️ John is that people who had fives, rather than upgrade to sixes, chose to get last year’s model,
⏹️ ▶️ John And like those, I think those numbers will be compelling to Apple. But
⏹️ ▶️ John in the absence of those numbers, if it just looks like, oh, well, it’s the same as every year, a couple of people by last year’s phone and then more
⏹️ ▶️ John people buy the new one. It seems like if they wanted one in that size
⏹️ ▶️ John with, you know, if they wanted to keep one in that category, they would have maybe done something
⏹️ ▶️ John to besides leaving the five S and five C exactly as they are. I don’t know. Like if they had come out with three different
⏹️ ▶️ John size phones, would we have all freaked out? Two phones, three phones. But one phone more or less, I
⏹️ ▶️ John just feel like they have the manufacturing lines up for those other ones. They’re just going to keep making them. But once those age out and God
⏹️ ▶️ John knows how long that’ll be, because they’re still selling the forest somewhere in the world,
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway. The lesson is, are they selling three point five inches anymore? No, they’re not.
⏹️ ▶️ John So like if if their sales patterns match every every other
⏹️ ▶️ John sales pattern that they’ve done when they’ve bumped the size, they will let the smaller size age out. If the sales patterns do not
⏹️ ▶️ John match that phenomenon in a significant way, they’re going to say, Oh, now we have to backfill that with a different phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I don’t know, I’m with you on that. I think it will depend like right now for this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco next year, at least or at least right now, you can get a five S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 32 gig for 150 on contract, and that’s a pretty good deal. And that’s a pretty good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone. And in many respects, it’s very close to the six. You know, the going from the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco five S to the six is if you if you don’t care about the screen size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco difference, in other respects, it’s a fairly small difference, except unfortunately the camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is noticeably better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would also add that the battery life, even a couple of weeks in on my 6,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yes, I understand it’s a brand new battery. Yes, I understand the 5S battery was a year old, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel like the battery life is noticeably better on my 6 than it was
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s rated higher, isn’t it? Like Apple’s numbers put it as higher, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I honestly don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I think it’s like an hour or two over. But yeah, like any you know, like we said before, like the numbers when you look at them
⏹️ ▶️ John on Apple spec sheet, there’s oh, the success slightly higher numbers than the five s, but slightly
⏹️ ▶️ John higher. Like those are hours they’re showing. Even if it’s one higher, one extra hour feels like an eternity. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh my God, I still have a whole hour to go on this phone. It’s amazing. You know, so yeah, like
⏹️ ▶️ John I said, the new battery stuff last time, a lot of people can be complaining about that. That’s to remind people that it’s that
⏹️ ▶️ John that advantage is going to be massively exaggerated with your one or two year old phone. But I’m pretty sure Apple actually
⏹️ ▶️ John in the specs shows it as being, yes, the six gets better battery life than the five S, even if they’re both brand new out of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think if enough people either buy the five S in the next year, like more more than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco however many people usually buy the year old phone. And if enough and, you know, say next
⏹️ ▶️ Marco year, I wouldn’t expect them to bring out a new four inch phone next year. You know, next year is like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the S cycle and all likelihood they’ll be like you know the 6s and the 6s plus or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the year after that when it’s time for a likely redesign for it on a two-year redesign cycle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t surprise me if they if they had a smaller phone as part of that next redesign so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m thinking for small phone fans it’s gonna be a rough next two years or yeah it’s gonna be rough next two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years but then there might be something because the thing is like with this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the screen size like there is not There are not a lot of ways they could have better executed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the physical design of this phone that would have made the screen not be too big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the people who think the screen is too big today. Or that think the phone is too big. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s already, they couldn’t really make the phone that much smaller than what it is right now and still have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this size screen. So I think if the 6 is too big for you, any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone with a 4.7 inch screen in the future is likely to be too big for you. I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they can fix this problem with design improvements really. So either the problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will go away and people will just deal with it because they want the other advantages of the phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or those people will start choosing non-Apple phones which I’m sure Apple does not want. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ll see what happens there I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So if Apple on either the 6s or the 7 they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bring back the 4-inch form factor how do they spin that from a marketing perspective.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They completely ignore it and they say call it give it some cool name like iPhone Air, iPhone mini, iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John They don’t have to spin it because if they time it right all they’ll be doing is making sure that they continue
⏹️ ▶️ John to have a phone of that size in their lineup because they have phones of that size in their lineup now the 5c will eventually go away
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re left with the 5s the 5s goes away and that’s the point you replace it with your new 4-inch phone
⏹️ ▶️ John like I don’t think that requires any explanation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we good thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week hover studio neat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Squarespace and we will see you next week
⏹️ ▶️ John if it’s even possible you’re saying hover even more incorrectly even more like they don’t like like you’re saying it
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re you’re forcing the you even more than you were before sorry
⏹️ ▶️ John either so no I can’t do it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because it’s incorrect that’s why you can’t do it
⏹️ ▶️ 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, Margo and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can find the show notes at atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 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
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Syracuse It’s accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A little more on the screen thing since now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have more time because we’re in the after show. Is that how this works? So again as I said earlier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wanted a bigger screen before we had bigger screens I really wanted this I was hoping to get one and we got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. However I kind of questioned the value of a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco relatively small screen size improvement or screen size increases on on devices that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost always hold in portrait orientation. Because you pay a lot in phone size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for these diagonal increases, but you get so little horizontal space
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with each gain. Like the horizontal size difference is very small between these three
⏹️ ▶️ Marco models. And I would argue that actually matters a lot more for a lot of things. Things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like reading and and you know, a lot of applications, you know, any kind of you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco email kind of stuff, you know, wit matters so much for all these apps. It is so often the limiting factor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in how usable something is, web pages, stuff like that. That…
⏹️ ▶️ John You want that square Blackberry phone. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ha ha ha. Yeah, but like, I can, honestly, I can see why some crazy person
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there thought that was a good idea. Because you really, like, you’re making the phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much bigger in ways that only really get you a little bit of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco verticals, or horizontal space.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, like you said, you want the apps to get updated. If they update the apps, a few pixels does
⏹️ ▶️ John matter. Suddenly layouts that were not feasible before become feasible due to the average length, the average size of
⏹️ ▶️ John post titles and avatar images. You just need the software to be updated. Because if all you’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ John is stretching the existing iPhone UI, like you’ve seen when you overcast the iPad, then you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not getting any value out of those extra pixels. But I think there are enough extra pixels that a UI designed for them
⏹️ ▶️ John can actually derive value from it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe but there’s there’s also the factor that when you by making the screen bigger, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also had to abandon certain areas of the screen that are no longer easily reachable
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but not for control. I’m saying just for display purposes, like most of the larger size is not so you know, it hurts you in terms
⏹️ ▶️ John of control placement, but it helps you in terms of how much information can you put on the screen? Like it’s the type of thing where
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re so used to using an app on the iPad, and then you go use the iPhone version, and you’re missing half the UI, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh yeah, they can’t show that part of the UI, even in landscape mode, because they just don’t have room. And it just feels
⏹️ ▶️ John like you’re looking at the app through an overlay with a cutout in it, and you can only see the table view.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can’t see the sidebar. Apps that are updated, especially for the 6+, but maybe also
⏹️ ▶️ John for the 6, it may take longer to do that for the 6, to say, like, OK, we’re in a world where
⏹️ ▶️ John I can assume that you’re going to have these extra pixels available. But I think that will make a difference. And even
⏹️ ▶️ John if just simple things of like, you can read more text on a web page before you get the flick, that type of thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey See, but the thing is, it’s most obvious to me that the vertical real estate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a big deal when I go to the messages app on Aaron’s phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And yes, some of that is horizontal. But I feel like a lot of the difference is I can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see so much more context on my phone as to the last several messages that have been sent,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or in my case, the last several GIFs, that I can’t see on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aaron’s phone because the screen is vertically a lot shorter as well.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the biggest benefit of larger screen is for, you know, for people who have trouble seeing things on a squinty little screen, like
⏹️ ▶️ John the zoom mode and or just using an irregular mode, but cranking up the text size, both of those things. The fact that
⏹️ ▶️ John zoom mode, which haven’t really talked about much, exists on both the 6 and the 6 plus, shows like not only we’re gonna give
⏹️ ▶️ John you a bigger thing, but we’re gonna make you crank, we’re gonna allow you to crank it even more. And a large
⏹️ ▶️ John and only increasing proportion of the potential customer base
⏹️ ▶️ John Has bad vision and likes to see things bigger. So.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. What else is going on? Anything else for the after show or are we going to wrap this somewhat early?
⏹️ ▶️ John GameCube controllers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was hoping to avoid GameCube controllers.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right. All right. We can avoid it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now you can have you can have your your minutes in the sun here.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, can I? Do you even know what this is about? No,
⏹️ ▶️ John I. No, neither one of you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know. I know you’re really excited about GameCube controllers for some reason.
⏹️ ▶️ John You too. I should say this when I go on gaming podcasts and then I can talk about my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d love to hear it. So what what happened? It looks like they’re like they’re now for sale again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, there’s no. No, no,
⏹️ ▶️ John no. Yeah, I don’t know. I guess. Oh, I see what this is. I can understand why you guys don’t follow this
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. Yeah. See, did you click the little link? It’s just an adapter. Let’s use the GameCube controller. Like so Smash Brothers
⏹️ ▶️ John is coming out as a fighting game for it’s out for 3DS coming out for the Wii U. It’s very popular.
⏹️ ▶️ John And for a while we’ve known that they were gonna sell an adapter that lets you use Your GameCube
⏹️ ▶️ John controller with your Wii U and they’re selling a special Smash Brothers branded one with a little logo on it Specifically
⏹️ ▶️ John for this purpose So the adapter is one thing and then they were gonna reissue the GameCube controllers with logo on it saying we
⏹️ ▶️ John know you love playing Smash Brothers with the GameCube controller and your GameCube here you go you’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John be able to keep doing that on the Wii U and that’s kind of like Kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John if we were just talking about the iPhone being replaced and like okay Well, the small ones are aging out. It’s time to make
⏹️ ▶️ John a new 4-inch version and if what they did instead was Brought back
⏹️ ▶️ John the exactly the 5s and like gave you a way to use your 5s with iOS 10 Right
⏹️ ▶️ John or with iOS 9 or whatever they’re up to at that point It would be like aren’t you gonna make a new like I know you like
⏹️ ▶️ John that that phone size was good But aren’t you gonna make a new small phone? We’ll see here they say we you’d like that controller so much
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve given up on ever making a better controller So we’re just gonna bring back. We’re gonna sell you a $20 adapter
⏹️ ▶️ John that lets you use your old controller from whatever year that was 2001 maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John 2002 Just bring that one back. We’re gonna keep we keep making them. We never really stopped making them We’re
⏹️ ▶️ John just gonna keep making them again, and I think it’s Hey I’m happy because the news
⏹️ ▶️ John is the news now is that not only will you be able to use this GameCube controller with Smash Brothers Which everybody knew
⏹️ ▶️ John but Apple or Apple Nintendo has officially announced that you will be able to use this GameCube controller controller adapter with any game
⏹️ ▶️ John that supports the Classic Controller, the Wii Classic Controller Pro, and the Wii U Pro Controller. Which is basically
⏹️ ▶️ John like if you have a virtual console game or some other game, like, this adapter isn’t just, you know, the only reason
⏹️ ▶️ John you’d buy this adapter is if you have this one game. The adapter will essentially allow you to use your GameCube controller in all the reasonable
⏹️ ▶️ John scenarios where you would expect a GameCube-like controller to work. And I’m very happy about that because I don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ John the Wii U Pro Controller for a variety of reasons. But I’m also like,
⏹️ ▶️ John this announcement makes me think, A, Nintendo is admitting that the Wii U Pro Controller
⏹️ ▶️ John is crappy. It’s not like, it’s not shoddily made, it’s nicely made, it looks nice, it feels reasonably good.
⏹️ ▶️ John But there’s a reason people prefer the GameCube controller, which is inferior in many ways, especially the D-pad.
⏹️ ▶️ John The D-pad on the GameCube controller is a total write-off. Like, the GameCube controller is not perfect, but it is better overall,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think, than the Wii U Pro Controller. the fact that Nintendo is reissuing this
⏹️ ▶️ John controller and making an adapter for it says we admit that our fancy new Wii U Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John controller has not met with the enthusiasm that we hoped it would, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John among people who like the GameCube controller. And then they’re further admitting that
⏹️ ▶️ John we can’t do any better, or we’re not gonna try to do any better right now, so all we’re gonna do
⏹️ ▶️ John is let you use your old controller. And that’s kind of exciting and depressing at the same time because what
⏹️ ▶️ John you would expect them to do, like we’re expecting them with the phones, if the small ones are popular,
⏹️ ▶️ John make me a new 4-inch phone that is better than my old 4-inch phone, that brings along all the
⏹️ ▶️ John things I liked about my 4-inch phone but is new and improves on the things that you would expect, like how
⏹️ ▶️ John about something that’s like a GameCube controller but has a D-pad that’s worth a damn, or, you know, fix
⏹️ ▶️ John the shoulder buttons to be more interesting than the GameCube shoulder buttons because they were a little bit weird. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s happy news, sad news. But all I know is I’m getting this adapter, and I already ordered two new GameCube
⏹️ ▶️ Casey question, why are there two USB connectors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on this? And more importantly, why are they different colors?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because one USB connector is not enough for four controllers, apparently. Who knows what’s crazy?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. I mean, look at the connectors on these. Like, this is ancient technology. You know this is before
⏹️ ▶️ John wireless before USB controllers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, but you’re still not answering my question Why the hell would you make one gray and one black that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m assuming that because you have to plug one into one board and one video like I’m they want you to differentiate
⏹️ ▶️ John them Someone’s saying it one is for data and ones for power for the rumble Oh, yeah, or four rumble packs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my best guess to does the Wii you only have two USB ports
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it only has two I’d have never plugged anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into my best guess is that they don’t want you to be able To plug in two of these adapters
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I would just reject that I like the theory in the chat room that one is for power and one that you need two connectors
⏹️ ▶️ John to be able to power for rumbles But who knows
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but why make them why make them different colors though? That’s oh god. That’s so hideous
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe one has to be in one port at one has to be in another. I don’t know. I hope not that would be
⏹️ ▶️ John Amen, it’s Nintendo. You don’t we can’t put anything past them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I got it. I got a Nintendo credit They are doing what they do best Which is they are finding ways
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make people buy large quantities of 20 and $30 accessories
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well like I was posting on Twitter I was looking for some
⏹️ ▶️ John controllers if you were playing some GameCube games and the the analog stick eventually wears out of these things if you use it
⏹️ ▶️ John long enough like it’s loose and sloppy and so I was looking for some new ones to buy
⏹️ ▶️ John and you can still buy a white one which they made specially for the Wii with a longer cord
⏹️ ▶️ John and And what else can you buy? I think I might have seen some black ones hanging around But they made them in a variety of colors
⏹️ ▶️ John and if you want one of the fancy colors and you want new in box not used It’s extremely
⏹️ ▶️ John hard to find you can you know, you can immediately find them for like $200 on eBay You know new
⏹️ ▶️ John in the box platinum or spice GameCube controllers or wave birds similar
⏹️ ▶️ John the wireless version version of those things very expensive if you want them new like their collectors items
⏹️ ▶️ John this point. So them reissuing them with a Smash Brothers logo on them, I didn’t want that one because I didn’t want a Smash Brothers logo
⏹️ ▶️ John on top of the thing. And it was also black and boring. So I bought a white one and then on eBay I bought a silver one
⏹️ ▶️ John which is supposedly new in the box. We’ll see if that turns out to be the case because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s eBay. But yeah, I would really like them to make a new controller that’s better
⏹️ ▶️ John than the GameCube controller but so far they have not done that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. I feel better for having known
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that. What did
⏹️ ▶️ John you feel like? like picking up a controller right now and playing all your favorite GameCube games?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All my favorite GameCube
⏹️ ▶️ Casey games. Yeah, well, I don’t think I ever played any GameCube games, but I did have a random flashback
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to F-Zero on the Super Nintendo recently, which I loved. I miss that game.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that would be another thing. So they could issue an adapter for
⏹️ ▶️ John NES and SNES controllers. You can probably buy them online now anyway, but like they sell they sell NES and SNES
⏹️ ▶️ John games on their, you know, the virtual console thing. And yet they want you to play them with these variety
⏹️ ▶️ John of remade controllers. And so that’s the case where you would want, oh it’s a nostalgia game, obviously you’re playing an 8-bit
⏹️ ▶️ John or 16-bit game, you want the original controller because the whole point is nostalgia. Fine. Here
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like they should just make a better controller