148: Your Feelings Are Real

18 Dec 2015

Managing and understanding negativity about Apple and technology today.

Episode Description:

Follow-up:
- Green shifting (see also)
- Continuous release schedules
  - Jeff Atwood's Infinite Version
- iPhone 7 battery theories
4-inch iPhone 6S predictions
Marco's SOLEMEMO battery case
- Marco's slim battery brick
Negativity about Apple
Apple TV App Store challenges
- Ctrl-Walt-Delete: A Cycle of Despair
- BMW X6M
Swift Open Sourcing
Post-show Neutral:
- Casey drives a Tesla Model S

Chapters

Follow-up: “Green shifting”
If Apple did continuous releases
iPhone 7 battery predictions
4-inch iPhone 6S predictions
SOLEMEMO battery case
Sponsor: Squarespace
Technological oil shale
Sponsor: MailRoute
Non-iPhone App Store health
Sponsor: Automatic
Closing thoughts on negativity
More on Swift open-source
Swift’s open-source license
Swift’s package manager
Swift 3.0 goals
More closing thoughts
Ending theme
Post-show: Casey drives a Tesla

Follow-up: “Green shifting”

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Was looking at something and then it jumped away. Is that the kind of experience you want to provide me?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Paul Loft said that there is actually a term just like there is for everything in business like parking lot

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and Aug or staff Aug or whatever the hell we’re gonna talk about for the concept.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I think I described on an earlier show people in middle management are motivated to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Make things that are bad not sound quite as bad when they talk to their boss because if you’re telling your

⏹️ ▶️ ^John boss bad news your boss would be like well why is this bad news happening isn’t the reason we pay you to make

⏹️ ▶️ ^John bad things not happen and so as it goes up the management chain say you start with the truth down at the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John leaf nodes by the time we get to the CEO what is a disastrous problem doesn’t sound so bad

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and the term for that is green shifting which is a play on red shifting just like you know the galaxies are racing away from

⏹️ ▶️ ^John us and the wavelengths of light coming from stretch towards the red side of the visible light spectrum. So all

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the galaxies are stars and stuff are red shifted. Green shifting is how things get nicer as they

⏹️ ▶️ ^John go up the org chart. So that’s a great term. I had not heard it before. But it’s a real thing.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I had not heard that either. I

⏹️ ▶️ ^John never heard it. You can use it. You can use green shifting. I don’t know your org chart at home isn’t quite deep enough.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Maybe like when hops does something terrible outside like rolls in something gross when you report it

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to Adam, you can say, Oh, hops just got a little dirty. And And then when Adam reports at the tip, she’s at the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John top of the org chart by the way, when Adam

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Casey} reports at the tip he

⏹️ ▶️ ^John can say, Hops had fun outside and then voila, Hops eating cat poo has been green shifted.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco That honestly pretty much happens like that I think. That really is very

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco plausible of a situation to happen and how it would be communicated in our household.

If Apple did continuous releases

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco All right, what did

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Rafael write in?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John This is an interesting take on something we talked about last episode about what can Apple

⏹️ ▶️ ^John can do about software quality and having like Snow Leopard releases where you just work on bugs and stuff and the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John concept of yearly releases came up. And what I was arguing was like it’s really

⏹️ ▶️ ^John arbitrary if you’re a disciplined software organization as Apple has become in these last few years. All you’re doing

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is changing the discipline from like working on something until it’s done but

⏹️ ▶️ ^John just sticking to a schedule and saying what is in and what is out for that schedule and anything that’s out gets pushed

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to the next release and so on and so forth and that’s fine and Raphael

⏹️ ▶️ ^John gave the example that should have thought of it that is true for a lot of the software we use today

⏹️ ▶️ ^John instead of doing fewer releases how about doing more releases as in continuous release

⏹️ ▶️ ^John kind of like Chrome or these other browsers that they call evergreen that are sort of like mandatory auto updating

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and you don’t really care what the version is like none of us know offhand what chrome version run run whatever the latest is and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John chrome updates all the time and it updates whenever the hell it feels like it um if instead

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of having yearly releases and saying well that’s that’s too that’s it’s too much of a rush make them two year

⏹️ ▶️ ^John get rid of the whole concept of like this big important release that’s worthy of a press release

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and bullet points and instead just do small incremental changes all the time i think uh jeff outward had a

⏹️ ▶️ ^John article about this a couple years ago called the infinite version but it’s basically the same thing that most people are familiar with

⏹️ ▶️ ^John from the world of web browsers where version stops mattering and it’s just the software exists and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it continually continuously updates itself and hopefully it’s better and that’s a different

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a different mindset where you’re making lots of small changes which are easier to make and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the consequences of screwing them up are smaller because then you’re sure you then you know what it is screwed it up like if you made

⏹️ ▶️ ^John one small change and all of a sudden you know there was some huge performance regression in some DOM operation

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like happened with Chrome 43 recently, you know what change did that.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And you can a you have the option of just rolling it back because it’s just one small change from the previous version. And B,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John if you have a better chance of fixing it, because you know exactly what small thing it was. And so if you make a series of small changes over time,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it’s potentially better for your customers, and also better for

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you in terms of knowing what you’ve done to screw things up. So I kind of like this idea and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John looking at the software that we use more and more of it. I mean, just think of iOS where you said to do updates,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John apps manually, then they became auto updating. We’re not quite at the infinite version for all software available.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John But moving away from like what I would call marketing releases, where the only reason you have a big thing is it’s kind of like a

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like a tradition or a holdover from when you bought things in cardboard boxes. And of course, there had to be a

⏹️ ▶️ ^John big deal because you’d have to put a new set of cardboard boxes and new art on the cover, like doing yearly digital releases

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is really just kind of a hold over from that. And it seems like the trend is away from that and more towards

⏹️ ▶️ ^John continuous releases. And I think that I’m intrigued by this idea. And I like to subscribe

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to this newsletter. The the upside I said like they’re only doing these these regular reasons for marketing purposes

⏹️ ▶️ ^John purposes, but marketing is not nothing right. If Apple was to move to sort of

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a continuous release cycle for major products, that means it gives up the the perk of being able

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to make grand announcements at WWDC or at some kind of press

⏹️ ▶️ ^John conference where they invite the press out to show them something. You can’t get that anymore. You don’t get the big bump in the press.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John You don’t get the Apple today announced, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And maybe they get that less with software than hardware.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John But that is there is a downside to this. And part of the reason Apple keeps doing

⏹️ ▶️ ^John these marketing releases is because it’s it’s worth it to them to get the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John extra hype and publicity and get people excited and hat and seem to make significant progress. Like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that’s a lot of what we love about apples like one day they appear and they say, Hey, we’ve got this great idea and look at this

⏹️ ▶️ ^John new thing. And we go, Ooh, look at the new thing. If we got that same thing in 700 steps,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you know, instead of in one big bang, it’s less impressive, even though we end up at the same spot.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John So I think that definitely has to be a factor. I still think it’s worth it. But that’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that’s a calculus they’d have to do internally if they ever wanted to move to this type of system for software release.

iPhone 7 battery predictions

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey And Eric Michael Zober had some interesting thoughts on iPhone battery thinness.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Yes, so last week we were talking about the battery case and I of course complained as I always do that the iPhone

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco battery life is not good enough. And one of the theories presented was that maybe the battery case was

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco kind of like Apple feeling out the market for a little more info on whether people really do

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco want more battery life in their iPhones in order to inform future decisions about the iPhone designs.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And our friend Eric Michael Zuber wrote in to point out that, by this time, the iPhone 7 is almost certainly

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco already completely done and designed. The new iPhone battery case is a signal that the battery life for the

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco iPhone 7 will probably be the same or worse than the iPhone 6 and 6s. If Apple had waited until

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the inevitably thinner iPhone 7 were released next year to introduce a battery case, the press would have jumped on them

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco saying it proved battery life in the iPhone 7 to be inadequate. Now if Apple releases a new battery case for the iPhone 7,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Apple battery cases will be old news because they of course just released this one for the iPhone 6. In other words,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco this is the first Apple battery case, not the last. So all that from our friend

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Eric Michael Zuber, I think that is pretty much on point. I think he’s almost certainly right that the 7 is almost certainly

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco done or close enough to done that they wouldn’t be making major changes to things like how large the battery

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is because that’s a pretty major physical change to a design. I’m guessing this is

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco maybe not quite planned out quite that well, but more like

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the battery case was what seems like a band-aid solution. It seems like something that Apple did not expect

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco maybe even one year ago to be making and releasing now, but that they

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco identified a problem slash opportunity and made it to address that. But

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I think he’s right that they probably are not going to be meaningfully addressing battery life in the iPhone 7.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And if they were, they probably wouldn’t have released this because the iPhone 7 is gonna be out in in, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco what, seven or eight months, nine months? So, you know, Apple’s very patient. And so

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco if they were really gonna address this problem in the iPhone 7 and give us, you know, a big chunk of battery life improvement,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco they probably wouldn’t release a battery case today. Or at least it would make it a lot less likely that they would.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco So I think he’s right, and I think we’re just gonna have to live with it. You know, that people who want more battery

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco power are either gonna go to the Plus or just use external battery cases or battery packs.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Like this theory only works if you assume Apple is the only company in the world that makes iPhone accessories. Battery cases have been a

⏹️ ▶️ ^John thing forever. Like there is no additional weight for Apple making a battery case that suddenly

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Apple is saying. Like they sell battery cases in their stores. People use them all the time. It’s a thing.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Like Apple is just making one of them because it finally got around to making one of them. Of course the iPhone 7 is going

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to be thinner. Of course it’s going to be. That’s the way it goes, right? And

⏹️ ▶️ ^John predicting that the battery life will be similar? Well, it’s been similar for many years now, so that’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John not a big surprise either. I just don’t make the leap all the way to. Therefore, releasing this early is a way

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to avoid appearing to say that the iPhone 7 doesn’t have good battery life. It’s going to have the same as the 6

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and, you know, within the success within a small margin of error. And it’s going to be thinner because that’s what Apple does

⏹️ ▶️ ^John with iPhones. I think it’s just status quo. And a lot of people are pointing out also that like saying,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John oh, Apple makes a battery case that let them know more information about who buys battery cases. if

⏹️ ▶️ ^John they sell them in their stores they already have that information so they could be charting the the battery

⏹️ ▶️ ^John cases that they sell themselves from third parties just as well as they can be charting their own so i think apple has a

⏹️ ▶️ ^John pretty good feel of who wants a battery case and what sizes are the most popular

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and it just made one for the same reason it makes a leather case and a silicone

⏹️ ▶️ ^John case and cases for your ipads and all the other accessories they make because it’s things that people want to buy

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and apple will make one for you and you can buy it from them and their margins are probably better than anyone else’s because they get

⏹️ ▶️ ^John good pricing on parts and they charge like 10 or 20 more bucks than everyone else for their little

⏹️ ▶️ ^John logo.

4-inch iPhone 6S predictions

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco It is also worth considering, you know, the rumors are getting pretty strong. There’s a lot of smoke

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and even some evidence now that there will be a new 4-inch iPhone design

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco soon. We don’t know how soon. Maybe it’s in the spring, maybe it’s in the fall. Who knows? It doesn’t matter that much, to be honest. But

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco there is certainly a lot of smoke by these rumors, so there is very likely

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco to be fire here. This is very likely to be a real thing that is happening, and it makes a lot of sense for them to make a new 4-inch phone.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco If the rumors are true, the 4-inch phone will have the approximate internals of the iPhone 6S.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Now if you look at any kind of battery life graph for the iPhones,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco there was actually a noticeable jump from the 5S to the 6. And

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco we saw this for years beforehand with Android phones that were all bigger than all the iPhones. That when you make

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco a big phone, you have room for more battery. The reason why the 6 Plus gets more

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco battery life is because it has a a battery that’s something like 50% larger than the 6 because there’s room for it

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco without making it too obscenely thick or too weirdly heavy for its proportional

⏹️ ▶️ ^John size. And it outruns the screen. Like the screen got bigger too and the screen takes more power but the more battery

⏹️ ▶️ ^John outruns the more screen. So the bigger you make it, the more the battery wins. Exactly.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco So it does look very likely there will be a 4-inch phone but if we follow that advantage

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco now then backwards back to making 4-inch phones again a 4-inch phone with

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Apple’s current priorities for thinness and and the expectation like the

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco 5s is way thicker than the 6 and the 6 still has more battery life than it just because of that of You know the ratio of

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the volume now They’re not gonna make a new 4-inch phone. That’s as thick as the 5s again.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco It would of course be thinner It would probably be more like the iPod touch or even

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco not that thin but because of radios but it would probably be more like the 6S thickness,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco but just in a smaller body. That small four-inch phone, assuming it’s real and assuming it’s coming out soon

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and assuming it has the guts of a 6S, would probably get pretty mediocre battery life,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco even worse than the 6S, I would guess. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I mean, the other tool that they have at their disposal which they’ve been leveraging is make stuff inside the phone

⏹️ ▶️ ^John take less power. So one thing is obviously if they do another process shrink on

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the main system on a chip, that’s some savings there. The other rumor that I’ve been reading about,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that’s probably not for the iPhone 7, but it’s a thing to think about for the future, is moving to OLED for the screens, which

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is another power savings. And you have to think, like what is left that’s taking power in the phones? Well, there’s send and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John receive for the cell signal, which I’m not entirely sure how much you can do about that, because at a certain point, you have to have

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a signal of a certain strength just to talk to the towers and stuff, right? So there’s that, there’s the screen,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John there’s the Increasingly small number of chips on the thing most dominated by the system

⏹️ ▶️ ^John on a chip and maybe I guess The RAM and so you get your biggest bang

⏹️ ▶️ ^John For the buck of making making the screen take less power making the system on a chip take less power And that’s what Apple has always been

⏹️ ▶️ ^John doing over time and so that is their tool to perhaps eventually

⏹️ ▶️ ^John outrun The the you know their their thinness you know getting thinner

⏹️ ▶️ ^John over time right? So far they’ve just been kind of like on this knife’s edge and I think you’re right that

⏹️ ▶️ ^John They’re not gonna make the the four-inch one as big as the 5s and therefore it will probably get worse Certainly, it

⏹️ ▶️ ^John will get worse battery life’s than the 6 6s size phone. Certainly that will it gets worse than the 5s Well,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it’s gonna have a way more power efficient system on a chip than the 5s did But then again, I don’t know

⏹️ ▶️ ^John they could underclock it They have they have tools at their disposal to essentially pick the battery life But I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John think it’s crazy to say that the smaller phone is gonna get less is going to have lower battery life, just in general.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Right. And that also, if you assume all this to be true, that we are speculating on here, that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco also is more explanation why Apple would want to get into the battery case market now

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and kind of get prepared for it. And then when they release a new iPhone 6

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco minus or whatever, whenever they release this new small phone, then Apple

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco already makes battery cases. this is a thing that you can do. If you need more battery life than what we

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco offer, it isn’t a design flaw. You should just buy this accessory that we make for this phone that will

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco be smart and right there available at launch time. So I think it makes a lot of sense looking

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco at the most likely reasons why they made this battery case.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco As we said last week, and as other people have pointed out, and especially our friend John Gruber, it really

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is not a terrible product. It’s just a little bit weird. It’s not that great to

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco look at and it has a few questionable design aspects to it, but the functionality that everyone

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco says seems to be pretty decent.

SOLEMEMO battery case

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco On that note, I want to do a quick bit of follow-up on my Sola memo case that I ordered during last

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco week’s show on an impulse buy. I actually got a chance to use it for a few days

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco over the last week. And first of all, it’s not MFI certified. So what that means

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is that Apple has not given it the Made for iPhone stamp of approval. It basically means that Apple

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco has not certified it to be compatible and safe and everything else to use with iPhones.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco So there’s some risk involved here. And if I were using a case every single day,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I might reconsider using one that was not MFI certified. And it’s weird, like the lightning

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco connector on the inside that it uses to plug into the phone, it’s obviously like not a real

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Apple lightning plug. This is obviously like a knockoff in every way. It’s a knockoff.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco That’s one of the reasons why it is shaped unlike any other iPhone connector I’ve ever seen where

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco in the way it kind of like, it kind of like moves the lightning port down. So it charges through lightning

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and it has no chin. It’s the only battery case I’ve found that has no chin. Not even

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Apple manages to do that, but there’s probably some good reason why within the MFI spec other people

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco can’t do that and be MFI certified. Probably something about how much stress it can take or what kind of design

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it has to have or how much thickness something has to be or something. Overall, it is

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco surprisingly thin and light. It is not as thin as the Apple Leather Case or anything.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco You do notice that it does add thickness, but it doesn’t add a lot of size. And so

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it actually feels pretty good to use. It does not feel intrusive in the pocket. It’s almost

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco like an iPhone 3G slash 3GS plastic. Feels pretty good to grip in the hand.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco It is dumb though. So trying another battery case has made me now appreciate

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco what Apple says when they call theirs the smart battery case. You know, this one, you have to

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco turn it on and turn it off manually. It does not turn itself off when the phone reaches 100%, or

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco when it’s down to zero or whatever. It doesn’t do anything smart. It is literally just like,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco you manually apply power to your phone when you feel like it and then you turn it off when you

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco feel like your phone has charged enough. So it is dumb, it is cheap, it is not MFI

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco certified. That being said, it does work, it is really small, and it is really light, and

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it feels good in the hand. So I think I’m gonna bring it to conferences and stuff for the next nine months or so,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco until the next phone comes out. And ask me again how it is after WWDC. Yeah, we’ll check your pockets for

⏹️ ▶️ ^John smoke while you’re not paying for it. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco No, I mean, the first time I charged it, I was intentionally doing it during a long car ride the other

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco day so that I could feel if it was getting too hot. Like I could feel it

⏹️ ▶️ ^John easily. Yeah, this is the best place to have a fire is a moving car, you’re right. That was a good plan. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco totally. So anyway, yeah, not terrible. I would say for 50 bucks, it

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is reasonably priced. And I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it just because

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I’m a little scared that it, because it is not certified and because it is very knockoffy, I’m a little

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco scared of what it might do to someone’s phone, but I’m willing to take the risk on my own phone. So that’s its usefulness.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And I think I would rather carry this than the 6 Plus because I’ve determined

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the 6 Plus to be too large for me most of the time. I would rather carry this than the 6 Plus.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco We’ll see what happens with the 7 Design.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And would you bring this instead of your little pocket thing with the little

⏹️ ▶️ ^John attached USB cable, you know, your little pocket battery thing?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco The pocket battery thing is gonna have a much longer life because the pocket battery thing is gonna work with the iPhone 7

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and this won’t. You know, that one, and that one’s also half the price and a little more capacity, up in 3,000 milliamp

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco hours. That’s the Volt Ready, something ultra slim, something, something with a built-in

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco lightning cable, which is awesome. You know, that one’s 25 bucks. I still, I would, and that one I think is MFi certified,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco So I would definitely recommend that one if you’re looking for one to buy. But if you want an actual battery case

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and not a separate thing that you have to carry around and occasionally plug into your phone, this is a decent case.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco But if you’re gonna be using it that rarely, I might even say go with Apple’s just because it’s officially supported

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and a little bit smarter. But I don’t regret buying it for my very limited needs out of a battery

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco case because usually I don’t use a case, a battery case, and for the few weeks,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco a year that I really want one, this’ll probably be fine. But if you’re going to use it every day, I would say maybe get an MFI certified

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco one.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Yeah, that sounds like a smart idea. All right, why don’t you tell us about something that’s awesome.

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⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey All right, so what are we really talking about tonight? Do you want to talk about how the Apple TV is

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey making no money for app developers like every other app store on the platforms? Yeah. Actually,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey no, no, no, let me try that again. Would you like to talk about the challenges that are facing

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Apple TV developers? I’m trying to take a more positive spin on this. So let’s talk

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco about this. This is something that, you know, in recent weeks, we’ve been very critical

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco of some stuff Apple has done. I have heard all year from people calling me out for being too negative

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco about Apple and everything. And we’ve gotten a little bit of that with the whole show. It’s been a lot on me, though.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And that’s fair, because I have been very negative about Apple. And I wanted to kind of explain a little bit about why.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco So this Tux Arcade article that came out about two weeks ago, editors note, the popular games in

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the Apple TV app store making $100 a day or less a worrying trend appears. And the whole article

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is, I mean, it’s pretty ranty, and it isn’t all fair criticism,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco but there is a lot of fair criticism in it. And I think it’s worth considering

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco for both Apple—not that they will care or read it—but for both Apple and for Apple developers like

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco us, it is worth considering some of these things and kind of how that relates to Apple negativity.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And there was also a really good episode of Control-Walt-Delete,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco which is a podcast with with Neelay Patel and Walt Mossberg. There was an episode, I think this week, I’ll link to it

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco in the show notes, about being disappointed with modern tech and

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco being burnt out on where modern tech is going, and whether we’re in a slow period of true innovation.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And so I think all this combines with what I perceive

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco with Apple’s current problems of of just, there’s a lot of stuff that’s at like a 1.0 state,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco or that’s being pretty clearly neglected for a long time. What

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I think, I think what has happened is we had such massive years

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco of advancement over the last decade, so much advancement, even the last two decades, really.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco There’s been so much advancement in computing, so much advancement in the web, in phones, in apps, and how

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco we compute, what we compute on, all the various options we have, the how good the hardware

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is, how good the software is, how good the services are, we have made tremendous strides.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco But I think over the last, I don’t know, three to five years,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I think we have picked so much of the low-hanging fruit already in

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco technology, that yes, there are things we can keep doing

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco to keep making things better and to keep uncovering new ground, but I think it’s getting harder, and the

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco number of asterisks that you have to accept on everything seems to

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco be getting larger. Because again, we’ve done so much of the easy stuff already,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and that’s not to say there isn’t anything left to do, but I think the gains are gonna be harder

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco to get. So for example, if we narrow this down, this is obviously a big sprawling feeling that’s hard to nail down.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco So let me focus it down for now to the Apple product line. We are now at the point where

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the hardware is so capable that we are mostly just limited by

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco dumb physical attributes. How big are we willing to make the thing so that we can have a screen

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco that’s big enough to see or touch or keyboard that’s big enough to actually use? I think what we’re seeing

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is, once we start pushing these boundaries of, well, what if we wanna do more

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco on our iPads? Or what if we wanna make our laptops even smaller and even lighter? What if we

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco wanna compute on our wrist? We keep having to add these asterisks. In order to compute

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco on our wrist, we had to have this weird little computer with this weird interface on it that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco can do some things but is really slow and is kind of nice for some things but has to work over Bluetooth which is really unreliable

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and there’s all this weird stuff. What we see with laptops is, oh well you want to push it so small and

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco so light and so thin that now it has to be really slow and we have to get rid of all the ports

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco which do occasionally come in handy and also the keyboard has to be this really controversial, very

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco ultra thin design that has a lot of problems for a lot of people. And with the iPad Pro, this is this

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco amazing device for people who do productive work on their iPad, but it’s so big that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco you kinda can’t hold it like you used to hold an iPad, and you might not be able to

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco do a lot of things that other iPads can do very easily with it because it’s so big. And so we’re starting

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco to hit these areas in which we’re just hitting trade-offs left and right. Like, everything

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco has asterisks on it, everything has exceptions. In the olden days, we would have a smaller

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco number of more generalized products. You know, you would have a Mac,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and whether you got like an iBook or a Power Mac G5, they could do

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco roughly the same kinds of things. It would just like, you know, how fast do you want it? How much space do you need? That kind of stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Now, we’re getting these products that are differentiated not by

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco like minor spec details like that, but by like massive differences in how they can be used,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco what they can do, what they can’t do, or what they’re really difficult to do with.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And so it just seems like we’re fragmenting everything. In the process, we’re starting a lot of things with

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco weird 1.0s. We are ignoring a lot of other things because it’s too much to manage.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco We’re kind of ignoring the old and boring stuff. So there is a lot being lost here. And now it’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco to the point where people have to struggle to figure out how to do basic things on the newest hardware

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco that we have that we were able to do on computers years ago because the newest hardware is so much better certain ways that it’s really compelling

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco to carry or to use or whatever. I feel like we are now at a point where there

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco are so many trade-offs being made to achieve what we think is next, to achieve

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco where we want to go next or the kind of hardware we want to be carrying around

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and using. There are so many trade-offs now that in a lot of ways, a lot of things are

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco just getting worse or more cumbersome or more complicated or kind of less baked.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And we’re seeing weird products like It’s like these weird laptop-tablet hybrids that are trying

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco to cross these lines and kind of not doing a great job of it, oftentimes.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And I don’t know. It feels like there’s a lot of weirdness in the product line.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco There’s a lot more saying no to things you can do with these products, rather than

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco like — as I said before, you go buy a computer, and anything you can do in the

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco world of computing, you can do on a computer before. Now that’s no longer the case. In the early days of smartphones, you go and

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco you buy the iPhone and you have the best smartphone, period. That was it. Now, it isn’t so simple anymore. Now,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco do you also want an iPad or not? Do you also want a watch or not? There’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco so much variation now. In some ways, that’s good. You can specialize. You can make amazing

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco hardware for certain roles, but in so many other ways, we are forced to make all these

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco trade-offs that we didn’t have to make before. Anyway, this is all very long and rambly, but

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco getting back to it. The reason why I keep criticizing stuff when

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I feel that it’s warranted, when I feel like it’s important, is because this is where I

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco do everything. This is my life, this is my hobby, this is my work, this is my career.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I do everything. Everything I do, I do with Apple products, with my computer, with my

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco phone, with all this stuff. When anything about them gets worse, or when the future of them gets called

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco into question, I don’t want to go to desktop Linux or Windows. This

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is where I get my work done. So I get very defensive of them. And when I see Apple

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco spreading themselves very thin, trying to do all these different things to try to figure

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco out what the next version of computing is, so that they can dictate that and own that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and figure that out, I’m sitting here with my version of computing that has worked great for decades,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and I get a little defensive of it. And I get worried when the stuff I use

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco becomes less reliable or less good or stops working at the expense of trying

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco to push forward this new world here that I

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco think is really trying to like, I don’t know, it’s like trying to extract oil

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco shale. We pumped all the easy oil back forever ago, now we have to get all this weird oil

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco out of shale and stuff. I don’t know, this is a very long and rambly argument. I should just cut this entire

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco thing. What do you guys think? Is there anything to what I’m saying here or am I just totally lost? Or old? I think you

⏹️ ▶️ ^John need a new thought technology, as they say.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Not a new one. It’s a thought technology we all already have. It just needs to be applied in a new context. And

⏹️ ▶️ ^John this is going more meta than maybe you are, but if you ever find yourself

⏹️ ▶️ ^John thinking or saying a thing that you know that people have been thinking

⏹️ ▶️ ^John or saying for the entire recorded history of humanity. It doesn’t mean that you’re wrong or that you’re

⏹️ ▶️ ^John right, but it does mean that you have to remember to sort of

⏹️ ▶️ ^John check yourself by saying, all right, I know, just to give an example, I know

⏹️ ▶️ ^John for a fact that people are always saying the kids these days and that every generation thinks

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that the kids are like lazier than they are, right? And that when I was a kid I learned how to, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John do Latin in school and the kids these days don’t and whatever like we all know that right and so if we ever find

⏹️ ▶️ ^John ourselves saying you know is it true am I out of touch no it’s the children who are wrong

⏹️ ▶️ ^John if we find ourselves saying that because we know that people always say that

⏹️ ▶️ ^John we check ourselves and say okay it doesn’t mean that I’m wrong it could be that the kids these days do have a problem

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and or whatever but I have to be really really skeptical when I have that feeling because there’s a

⏹️ ▶️ ^John reason everyone always has that feeling because everyone gets old and they see the kids and kids do things differently than they do and they

⏹️ ▶️ ^John think the kids are lazy and and not as good as they were and should and they had it harder than the kids you know what

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I mean like we all know that one there is an equivalent you know repeating thought or

⏹️ ▶️ ^John historical fact or sort of feeling about the world um in lots of different contexts and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you Marco I think I’ve hit on one of them which is computing used to be simpler we had PCs

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and even in the smartphones we had smartphones and there was one of them and it was the best one and uh whatever

⏹️ ▶️ ^John trade-offs were inherent in that device. It didn’t matter because there was no other iPhone you could get because that was the iPhone

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and PCs were general purpose and there was a long period of time where you do the PCs just got faster and better. They got more memory,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John more CPU, more disk and laptops got smaller but not so small that they started to have size

⏹️ ▶️ ^John compromises and they got faster and better and you know from black and white to color screens and like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it was just such a logical normal progression and part of the reason it seemed normal was because we were

⏹️ ▶️ ^John in the age when things are changing like we were growing up during that time and anything that happens when you’re growing up you know it’s the old saying I

⏹️ ▶️ ^John think it’s Douglas Adams or somebody over like whatever technology exists when you’re born you think is normal whatever technology

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is invented before you’re 30 you think is great and anything invented after you’re 30 you think is an abomination unnatural

⏹️ ▶️ ^John abomination right so that feeling you’re getting is totally real

⏹️ ▶️ ^John but because everybody always has that feeling every generation before has that feeling but everything whether it’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the automatic transmission or the wheel or the horseless carriage or television

⏹️ ▶️ ^John versus radio or radio versus going to the theater or the mass is not in Latin anymore

⏹️ ▶️ ^John or whatever it is or the amazing variety of clothes that we have to choose from. When I was a boy, we

⏹️ ▶️ ^John just had one pair of pants and one shirt. Like you have to reexamine everything

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you’re feeling about this in the context of your own life and your own

⏹️ ▶️ ^John progression through this. And it’s like, is this just a natural part of getting older or is this a natural part

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of a market getting older? Because like some markets are mature and kind to stay the same, like, for example, mechanical

⏹️ ▶️ ^John watches, not a lot of motion, they’re just fashion moving back and forth. And some markets are much more dynamic, like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John technology, they’re changing all the time. And like I said, this doesn’t mean that you’re wrong about, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Apple being in a period where they’re like, either overextended, or doing weird things or making different trade offs,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John or perhaps not picking the best balance of the product line, especially as far as you’re concerned, or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John But it does mean that at the very least, every time you have these feelings, just

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like if you had the feeling about the kids these days, you have to examine it

⏹️ ▶️ ^John in that context, honestly. And even if you’re not going to examine it, at the very least, voice the fact that you know this is a cliche and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it could be it could be that you’re totally misleading yourself or whatever. And I think that

⏹️ ▶️ ^John will go a long way towards getting to the heart of what is really going on, because the feeling is real, like feeling is 100%

⏹️ ▶️ ^John real. But it’s when you draw from that feeling to the conclusions that you have to be careful, especially, and I think especially,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John we’re getting back to specifics more when in the case of apple you find

⏹️ ▶️ ^John your way through a series of logical leaps to some sort of maliciousness

⏹️ ▶️ ^John or or bad motivation whether it be greed or carelessness or uh

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you know whatever it may be because most of the time as we all know like things it’s very

⏹️ ▶️ ^John easy to jump to conclusions about you know maliciousness when really it’s just an unfortunate series of events or a

⏹️ ▶️ ^John product that’s not actually made for you or uh you don’t don’t have all the information available or all those other

⏹️ ▶️ ^John explanations because you know in the grand scheme of things Apple is not a super

⏹️ ▶️ ^John evil company and it’s true that you can have a company full of really good people but nevertheless does

⏹️ ▶️ ^John things that are bad but we all know Apple well enough that I really have a hard

⏹️ ▶️ ^John time believing the the most craven theories about why Apple does anything especially without

⏹️ ▶️ ^John any any actual evidence other than it seems like this is the type of thing they would do because I’m mad about the fact that the product

⏹️ ▶️ ^John lines are changing. And getting even more specific, I think with the trade-offs in the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John products, I think it’s just a natural diversification of this type of product line. If you just look at any other business where

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you start off with something simple, even just a Model T that comes in one color, and look at the variety of crazy things

⏹️ ▶️ ^John we have now, did you see, what was it, the, not the M6, the X6M,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it’s the M version of the stupid X BMW, what is that called? Yeah, the X6M. It’s like 0-60 in 3 seconds, it’s like an

⏹️ ▶️ ^John SUV that’s as fast as it just

⏹️ ▶️ ^John doesn’t make any sense as a car like they make completely nonsensical things And it’s like oh I liked it better when

⏹️ ▶️ ^John we just had the model t and that was the card you could get you can get a Panamera You can get that High-solo

⏹️ ▶️ ^John now the car the x6m you can get a Miata with a Fiat body on it I mean you can get

⏹️ ▶️ ^John all manner of crazy things in cars And it’s like it was much simpler when it was just like one or two cars it was but this is not

⏹️ ▶️ ^John how the market Goes and now it’s like now I have to pick which trade-offs do I want do I want a minivan or do I have to? get this car but I can’t fit

⏹️ ▶️ ^John as many kids in it but then this has seats but they’re small back seats but it doesn’t go as fast as this car it’s like yeah

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that’s just the natural progression of any market it’s gonna spread like that and it may be uncomfortable because we were used to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John especially a set a weird period of time when we grew up there in computers that when they were basically

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the same but better every year it was just such a clean win it would be nice if things continue to that way nice

⏹️ ▶️ ^John in terms of our comfort but probably not the right thing to do for the market anyway I’m not this is not like I said

⏹️ ▶️ ^John this is not to dismiss all your criticisms I have criticisms about too we all do only to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John make a comment on how how I think we all have to look at

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the things that are legitimately upsetting us about the technology probably you know in the grand scheme of things who cares

⏹️ ▶️ ^John right but the technology products that we’re thinking about and buying and like you said because you use them for your work and it does have an

⏹️ ▶️ ^John effect on you an actual real effect it’s not all academic and there’s nowhere else to go like well

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you don’t know that because you just don’t even try that for all you know Android could be awesome

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I’m thinking more on the desktop like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you could be right there. Maybe Linux. I can’t even say it all right. So Windows 10 Windows 10 might be good Casey

⏹️ ▶️ ^John likes other windows. You can put them on the side of the screen if you don’t know how to manage Windows.

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} No,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I mean, I think for first of all, I think you’re right. I mean this this is why everyone loves you because

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco you’re able to see through all of our emotions and BS arguments and and call

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it what it is. So I think you’re right.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Emotions are real going back from just this whole show is just a series of erotic references and Simpsons

⏹️ ▶️ ^John references that you don’t get. Emotions are real. Like it’s not it’s not to say it’s not to say that like, oh, dismiss

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the emotion like those are real. Your feelings are real and legitimate and I want to validate them, right? It’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John just it’s like what you how you act on them and what conclusions you might draw. And all I’m saying is

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to be skeptical when those thoughts fall into common patterns that we know are kind of anti-patterns doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John mean that you’re wrong. It just means like use that as a tool to turn through them.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco No, I mean, that’s fair. I think part of what What I’m feeling is that I really do think Apple

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco has more quality problems now than they used to. I really do think that they are spread more thin than they used to be,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and I really do think that their new products are not nearly as big of hits or as clean

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco of wins as their previous products. But I think also it’s that,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco as you mentioned, it used to be so much simpler. For a while there,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I would get excited about almost anything Apple did, because almost anything they did was potentially

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco for me. Whereas now, like you know, right now, everything’s all

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco hyped up about iPad Pro and the Apple TV, because those are the newest things. And the kind of products

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I use, like the biggest, most powerful, most expensive desktops, and the biggest laptops,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco don’t get updated very frequently in meaningful ways. The Mac Pro hardly ever gets touched. The 15-inch

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco MacBook Pro is actually due for an update pretty soon with Skylake, and I’m sure they’re gonna make it, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco thinner and lighter and with less battery life and everything and that’ll be fine and I’ll probably buy one eventually.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco So you know the kind of products that I like just are kind of out of the PR cycle right

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco now and and the kinds of products like the iPad is very frustrating to me because I have

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I always want to really get into the iPad and just never it just never sticks for me I never can can do what

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I need to do on it and I hear other people able to incredibly,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco awesomely, freely work on their iPad Pros and get most or all of their work

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco done on the iPad and I feel like I’m living in on another planet here because I just can’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco do that and I’m afraid of you know that I’m being the old fogey here who’s gonna get overrun by all these young people using iPads

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and and being able to I don’t know glide above me with their wonderful big light aircraft carriers

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco that are the giant iPads but I think back to in In college,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco sorry for the long, long wins and Marco episode right now, but I’m almost done. I’m almost back to coughing, don’t worry.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco But I think back to a time in college, I had a professor who’s still there named Gregory

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Kapfhammer at Allegheny College. I noticed in his office that he was using desktop Linux.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And I asked him, why don’t you use Windows? Why are you using Linux to do

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco all this stuff? Why are you not using Windows like the rest of the world? Wouldn’t that be more useful?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And he said, I don’t use Windows because I can’t get any of my work done on Windows.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And at the time, that seemed like the most ridiculous statement I had ever heard. And I thought,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco wow, what a huge nerd this guy is. Like, I can’t believe, how could he not get his, like, how can he get his work done on

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Linux? Now, looking back on it, he was totally right. And, you know, Linux

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco really was the best platform to get all of his work done. And now, if I say, what is the best

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco platform get my work done, it is very clearly Mac OS X. No question,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it’s Mac OS. The reason I don’t use Windows and the reason I don’t use Linux is that I could

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco not get any of my work done on those platforms. Now, my work might change over time. Obviously,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco if I stop making iOS or Apple ecosystem apps, then I could probably

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco work very well on Linux because then I wouldn’t need Xcode. But

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the The difference is, if you’re using desktop Linux, I feel like you have some kind of ownership over that.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Because it is so open source and weird and fragmented, that kind

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco of keeps it healthy. It’s kind of like not having a monoculture as much. Whereas, in

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the Apple world, one company controls my entire work environment,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco my entire work and hobby life. One company controls all of that. And also,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco they seem like it’s no longer really top of their radar anymore.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And that’s a little bit scary to me. And so part of my reaction against

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco everyone thinking they can get all their work done on the iPad is kind of a defensive position of like, wait a minute,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I can’t get my work done on the iPad. And also, all this focus on the iPad is possibly costing

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the platform that I do get my work on attention and maybe its future. And that feels threatening.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And obviously, that’s not a good position to be in, to feel that way or to feel threatened by that.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Obviously, partially defensive and irrational and partially, you know, old man get off my lawn kind

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco of stuff, but it is certainly a feeling that I think is worth recognizing.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I don’t know. What do you guys think?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey So I think the problem that you and I have is that even though you said

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey you kind of switched the Apple ecosystem in 2004, is that right? That’s right.

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Casey, Marco} All right,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey so for me it was I believe 2008, and I think the problem that you and I

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey are wrestling with is that maybe less than 2004, but certainly

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey in 2008, when I, when I became an Apple user, things were just getting

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey better and better and better and better in pretty much every measurable

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey way. I’m sure if you were to go back to listen to podcasts from 2008 or 2009, we would, we would

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey have found something to complain about because that’s what nerds often do. But with

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey hindsight, I feel like it’s fairly clear that things were just getting so much better so much quicker.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey We were on this like hockey stick of, of awesome, just going up and up and up and up. And

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I remember being very happy about snow leopard and snow leopard came at the right time because I felt like that’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey when things were starting to get a little shaky and then snow leopard came and to my recollection fixed a

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey lot of the problems. And I think that this,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey the last year or so, maybe a little more, maybe a little less, is the first

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey time that I, and I presume you Marco, have had to deal with an apple that maybe

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey isn’t firing on all cylinders or, or isn’t, isn’t doing what we

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey want it to do, which comes back to what John was saying earlier, you know, maybe this isn’t for us after all.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey And, and I think back to like the 2008 era and I don’t feel like they ever.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I don’t think at that point they really had any terribly strong competition in the mobile space.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey And I think anyone who paid even the least bit of attention would realize, wow, their

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey computers are so much better than anything that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Microsoft would have touched. And it was so obvious

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey that Apple was so much better in almost every measurable way. And it was funny because at

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey the time I remember saying to friends, you know, I hope that Android gets better and

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I hope that Windows Phone, Mobile 6, Metro, whatever it was called. Pocket edition.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Pocket edition. I hope that takes off because I want Apple to have competition. I want

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey them to have to work for it because I don’t want them to get complacent. And looking

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey back on it, I almost wonder if that wasn’t what we wanted because

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey granted Apple shouldn’t be complacent now and perhaps isn’t complacent.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey But at the time, I feel like they were so far ahead of the competition that they could

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey meander their way into something awesome, casually.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Whereas today, I don’t know if I would go so far as to say that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey they’re playing catch up, but things are not quite so simple anymore. And I think Marco,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey you had said earlier, as one of you guys had said earlier, You know, Android phones are pretty darn good now. And

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey well, fair enough. It was so they’re got, they’ve gotten a lot better anyway. And so a lot of the

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey ways in which Apple was a clear and obvious winner, they may not be the clear and obvious winner

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey anymore. And so I feel like where they used to be, they used to be paving

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey the, the racetrack, you know, half a, half a, half the length of track ahead

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey of all the race cars. Now they’re like yards ahead of the race cars. And I think it’s starting

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey to show. And so I think what we’re wrestling with, and I’m hoping John will provide

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey some historical context here as soon as I shut up, is this is the first time that you and I have

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey seen an apple that maybe has sputtered a little bit. It may not be as bad as us

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey three curmudgeons make it out to be, but I think we can all agree they’re

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey sputtering a little bit, just a little bit. And it’s hard for

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey you and I to deal with that because we’re not used to that.

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Non-iPhone App Store health

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Thank you very much to MailRat for sponsoring our show. So going back to

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco what I started out wanting to talk about with this Tux Arcade article about the Apple TV app store

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco apparently doing pretty poorly so far, it does seem like one of the problems that Apple’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco facing now is that even Apple seems to be trying

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco very, very hard to replicate their earlier successes and not really hitting them.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And so the article is talking about, from the point of view of developers and the app stores, and saying

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco that basically that not a lot of people are having success in the

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco non-iPhone and iPad app stores. So the watch and the Apple TV and maybe

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the Mac, I don’t know if it’s even talked about the Mac, but certainly the watch and the Apple TV, like the new ones.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I would even extend that to say probably the iPad. I mean, we’ll see. Like right now, the

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco iPad Pro is out. It’s a good time for selling decent iPad software right

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco now. And the iPad Pro will have momentum. It is a very compelling

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco product to a lot of people, so it will succeed. It will have momentum. It will do well in the holiday season. It

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco will probably do well for the next year or so. But then what? You know, because we saw what happened

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco with previous iPad software, which was basically, you know, it

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco did okay for a while, but then it was very hard for developers to justify by putting a lot of time into the iPad

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco versions of their apps. And there’s always going to be certain apps where it always makes sense. But I’m talking more generally, like

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco more apps, general purpose apps, general productivity, or browsing, or social, or whatever kind of apps

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco that people tend to want to use on their modern computing devices. The iPad historically has been

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco pretty far behind in a lot of those areas, because it just hasn’t been worth developers putting a lot of time into it.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco The sales didn’t usually support it, while the iPhone always did very well.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco So in this article, they’re basically making the same argument that like, you know, all these new app stores keep coming out from Apple and

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Apple keeps wanting developers to make all this great stuff for these new devices and new platforms,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco but it doesn’t seem to be working very well. It doesn’t seem like

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it’s worth developers time to put much into those things. And that’s a shame because these

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco are platforms that have incredible potential if it’s realized, but it’s just not. You know,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco this article is citing like very, very low sales figures for these apps. I can just

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco tell just like anecdotally talking to my developer friends and seeing my own numbers like from the watch and stuff,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it really does seem like developing for the watch or the TV at this point is probably

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco not a great use of limited amounts of time. And

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco developing just for the iPhone is probably a pretty safe bet for most apps, unless they really

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco need like a big canvas or they really need a TV version or something. but it seems like Apple

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco had this great success with the iPhone, and everything they’ve done since then has been trying to

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco recreate that kind of success. Maybe, I mean, obviously the cell phone market is very different with

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco things like subsidies and just the pocketability and everything. They’re never gonna

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco exactly reproduce the iPhone success, but they at least wanna get, I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco know, in the ballpark, within order of magnitude maybe. And

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I think they’re having trouble replicating their own success. And from

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the angle of developers, like what this is talking about, I think one of the problems here is that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Apple, with the success of the iPhone and with the early success of the iPad, although not

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the later success, but with the success of those two platforms and mostly the iPhone, Apple developed

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco this level of closed-offness and arrogance towards developers

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco that I don’t know if they always had it. I wasn’t an Apple developer before that point.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco But certainly, with the App Store era here,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it seems like they have developed almost a hostility. In many ways, it is hostility.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco In certain ways, it’s not. The open sourcing of Swift is solid and a really good move.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco But in many ways, the actual experience of being an Apple developer, especially if you’re reliant on the

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco App Stores, if you’re on anything about the Mac, the actual

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco experience of being an Apple developer is pretty hostile at most times.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco If you look at every other company in the industry, every other company that has a platform that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco they need apps to be built on, they are all—with the

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco possible exception of Amazon, because they’re just horrible—but besides Amazon, other companies

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco try to attract developers to their platform. They tend to make things nicer for developers. tend

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco to actively recruit developers and try really, really hard to get developers

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco to their platforms. Apple tries to get developers to their platforms the way New York

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco tries to get people to move here. It’s just barriers

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and brick walls and taxes and downsides.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Apple basically says, please don’t be a developer here, because for the iPhone, they didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco have to go out and beg developers to come develop for their platform. Developers were knocking the door

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco down and Apple has been able to kind of be carried by that all this time.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco That attitude of being in the maximum position of power,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco not needing to really be nice for developers to work with at all

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco for the iPhone. But for their other platforms, they’re having these problems.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco other platforms, developers aren’t knocking the doors down. I feel like Apple doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco really know how to manage that situation. They don’t even know how to attract developers

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco who don’t already want to be there. They certainly are not set up for it with the store or developer

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco relations or any of these departments that, so far, have not really needed to do this,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco at least in the last decade. I feel like they don’t even know how to solve this problem.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Part of it is not their problem to solve. Part of it is a market problem of, well, they got to get more of these devices out there

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and get people to buy more apps on them. But a big part of it is Apple’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco developer approach in general, the app stores themselves, and the app

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco store policies are all really fighting against developer adoption on these new platforms. So

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I feel like this is one major way in which Apple is stumbling now. And I don’t see an end in sight

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco to the way they currently do developer relations and the app stores. And

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco so therefore, I don’t think the Apple TV and the watch are going to really do well app-wise.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And I’m worried about the iPad Pro once the current newness of it dies

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco down, which is probably only going to be in like six months. Once that dies down, I worry about the

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco health of the software ecosystems on these platforms, because it seems like Apple does not know how to manage that.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John You should feel okay about the iPad, I think, because like in big picture

⏹️ ▶️ ^John type stuff of, you know, having used Apple stuff since 1984 or not use Mac stuff since 1984 and Apple

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to Apple twos before that and everything. There is an overall arc

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to this market that I talked about, like that, you know, personal computers became a thing

⏹️ ▶️ ^John in my lifetime anyway. And for a while they had

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a steady stream of improvements, obvious improvements to a basic form called the personal computer.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And round about the time laptops started to become a thing that one

⏹️ ▶️ ^John solid form, which was basically a keyboard, a box and a monitor, plus or minus the monitor being connected to the box

⏹️ ▶️ ^John or whatever, and just getting better every year. Floppy disks that Yeah, well, that that

⏹️ ▶️ ^John sort of it became more diverse, like the tree started to sprout branches, and just it’s getting

⏹️ ▶️ ^John more branch here as we go here. So that’s that’s diversifying. So there is that overall arc, but still within that overall

⏹️ ▶️ ^John arc, like said there’s the ups and downs of Apple, there’s the ups and downs of the industry, there’s lots of other

⏹️ ▶️ ^John things going around. If you’ve seen more than one of those cycles, it starts to not feel as panicking

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and you can just say, well this isn’t as bad as it was when the Mac came out and was better than every other computer in the world and nobody bought it.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Certainly they didn’t have that problem with the iPhone and even the iPad to that degree. But really what

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I think you should feel good about for the iPad for example is, we were

⏹️ ▶️ ^John tweeting recently a couple days ago about all these stories of like uh elementary school teachers and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John computer labs having the the young kids come into computer labs and be throwing the mice around because

⏹️ ▶️ ^John they had no idea what they were right because this is a generation of children that is brought

⏹️ ▶️ ^John up with phones that are like the iphone and with tablets and some of these

⏹️ ▶️ ^John kids even if there was a pc in their house with a mouse attached to it um

⏹️ ▶️ ^John probably had never had any occasion to use it had no attraction to it were you know were

⏹️ ▶️ ^John asking to grab their parents iPhone to play games on it if they didn’t have one of their own and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John if they were if they were lucky enough to have like a hand-me-down iPad or some kind of tablet would do stuff

⏹️ ▶️ ^John on that the personal computer as a thing to to the upcoming generation

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is I mean and any of the mouse examples because like if they did have a PC was probably a laptop and probably

⏹️ ▶️ ^John had a trackpad another thing that’s not a mouse so it doesn’t really matter

⏹️ ▶️ ^John in the grand generational scheme of things if this entire generation thinks of

⏹️ ▶️ ^John either doesn’t think of computers or basically thinks of them as tablets it doesn’t mean Apple’s gonna win the market

⏹️ ▶️ ^John for tablets but it does mean that every every kid born into a world

⏹️ ▶️ ^John where they touch screens on their phones and their tablets that’s how they do everything has no attachment to the PC is a thing

⏹️ ▶️ ^John they’re going to be you know when they’re an old professor they’re gonna be like a wine professor why

⏹️ ▶️ ^John do you have this stupid tablet that you touch on your thing like why why don’t you use VR headset and he’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like I only get my work done is on this tablet and then it’s like why don’t we use VR headsets but everyone else uses

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a stupid using a tablet right that’s a silly example I’m just picking things out of a hat that we can relate to right

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that the job of the company like long the long-term health of the company is to try to figure out what the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John next thing is and be there and Apple did a pretty good job with the iPad doesn’t mean Apple’s going to win

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the future sort of, you know, Apple was lucky enough to both invent the future with the iPhone,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you know, say, Hey, guys, this is what a smartphone should be like. And everyone’s like, everyone else was like, Oh, yeah, no, you’re totally right.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And then here we are today. And they still did well. Apple essentially

⏹️ ▶️ ^John invented the future, as we know, like, this is what a modern GUIs looks like. We’ve got like menus and dragging files around

⏹️ ▶️ ^John doing all this stuff. And, and they more or less popularized that but didn’t win

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that market. Someone else came and said, Yeah, those are great ideas now and Microsoft Microsoft just said, We’ll take those and run with it. And

⏹️ ▶️ ^John we’re going to do better than you in every other way. So you’re going to be a footnote in that type of race.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John So when I think about all these markets that you’re talking about for like selling apps to the iPad,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and how is the iPad Pro going to do how’s the television and do or whatever, I think the most important thing is to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John make sure that Apple is wherever these various markets are going. TV attach boxes are a thing and Apple’s a

⏹️ ▶️ ^John little behind there, but they still have to be there. Tablets are a thing mostly because Apple made them a thing, mostly because

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Apple made the smartphone a thing, and Apple is also there and is kind of still in the race.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John So I’m not as really pessimistic about all these things because Apple may not

⏹️ ▶️ ^John be the clear winner in all these categories, but it is reasonably well positioned. And the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John other thing that comes to mind, historically speaking, is whenever I hear Apple fans start to talk

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like Microsoft fans of old or think like it. The old the old Microsoft fandom

⏹️ ▶️ ^John when Microsoft ruled the world and Apple was a footnote and Windows was everywhere and and the PC was just a plain

⏹️ ▶️ ^John old PC and that would never change and Microsoft would live forever right?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John There was a mindset that any market that Microsoft entered they would win and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that Microsoft must enter every market and that’s unhealthy thinking like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the iPhone is a phenomenal success. And then it’s like, well, if they if they if

⏹️ ▶️ ^John if Apple enters the TV market, the assumption is a they want it to be as successful as the iPhone, not monetarily,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John but you know, in terms of like it is as successful of all the TV boxes. Apple makes the best one everyone agrees,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and they sell a lot of them and they make a lot of money. You know what I mean? That they need to, to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John be the leader in that market, be the best and then it needs to be super successful. And

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it’s impossible to do that. But it doesn’t mean Apple shouldn’t be in those markets. So I think it’s okay

⏹️ ▶️ ^John for Apple to enter a market or dip its toe in a market or noodle around in a market for a really

⏹️ ▶️ ^John long time, like with the TV boxes, or even tablets for that matter, because it’s important for them to be

⏹️ ▶️ ^John there to figure out what that’s about and to try to improve and try to be well positioned. If and when something takes

⏹️ ▶️ ^John off, which is why Apple also has to do a VR thing, maybe why they’re making a car. But I don’t, I

⏹️ ▶️ ^John don’t get bent out of shape thinking about it’s a real problem if

⏹️ ▶️ ^John people don’t make lots of watch apps. Maybe watch apps as we as they are currently conceptualized are not even

⏹️ ▶️ ^John worth doing in which case it would like what are you winning is like a pyrrhic victory you’re on the top of a

⏹️ ▶️ ^John little tiny hill like we are the king of watch apps it’s like no one cares about watch apps it’s not important you

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it’s a waste of time like don’t like don’t try to force it uh

⏹️ ▶️ ^John allow the markets to be what they’re going to be and in particular for the tv apps what i think about is

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is that place where people make software and sell it for money. That’s a model that has worked on the App Store and on the PC

⏹️ ▶️ ^John before. But on television, I think of all the apps that I use, and it’s like I pay money to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Netflix and Netflix needs to have an Apple TV app, but I don’t pay money for the Netflix app. I pay money to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John HBO and HBO needs to have an Apple TV app, but I don’t pay money for the HBO. Like, you know what I mean? It’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like a value add or something that just has to be there. But it’s not a situation in which someone writes software and sells

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it to me for money. It is merely just a way to receive the content that I pay a subscription

⏹️ ▶️ ^John for. You know what I mean?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco That is kind of how every game console works, though. Why am I

⏹️ ▶️ ^John telling you this? Does Apple have to try to compete with game consoles?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John They’re figuring that out. Is this the future of gaming or is it not the future of gaming? If it is, Apple’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John reasonably positioned. If it’s not, if you can’t, if the traditional console

⏹️ ▶️ ^John model still has legs and Apple doesn’t want to compete there, and why would Apple want to compete there? That is an old

⏹️ ▶️ ^John model that works, but it is certainly not like the future, right? So

⏹️ ▶️ ^John anyway, I’m I think I’m just more chill about these things and that I don’t see every move that Apple makes into a new

⏹️ ▶️ ^John market is like a desperate ploy and that I must be down on it if it’s not successful because

⏹️ ▶️ ^John almost nothing is going to be as successful as the iPhone. Almost nothing is going to be as successful as the PC, conceptually,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John not the Mac specifically, but the PC was an amazing success. Apple did not share in most of that success.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John But how how often do you get those things? You’ve got the PC, you’ve got the automobile, you’ve got movable type,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you’ve got the wheel, you’ve got the smartphone. Like, we don’t know what the next one of those things is gonna be.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Tablets could just be an extension of the smartphone. Maybe VR is the next one, maybe it’s not, I don’t know. But

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I’m fine with Apple making a TV box that hopefully is a decent TV box. I would have been fine

⏹️ ▶️ ^John with them making a DVR, but they never did because they don’t love me. You know, like,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I think it’s, you just have to like kind of, I’m fighting against is the expectation that used to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John be around Microsoft that they had whatever they did they had to be the winner and had to be awesome and it had to be great like the Steve

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Ballmer go go go type thing. Microsoft found the limits of that Microsoft found that eventually not only

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is this next thing not going to be the next big thing like pen computing for Windows or whatever the hell they were doing like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John not only are we not going to be speaking to our computers as the main form of input in 2001 as Bill Gates might

⏹️ ▶️ ^John have been surmising at some point in the past. Not only will,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you know, whatever market Microsoft thinks be like the Xbox be like the future of entertainment,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John although that was pretty successful as far as other things, but there will be a big thing, Microsoft will be in it

⏹️ ▶️ ^John smartphones, and it will lose, it will lose big, like it will have been there

⏹️ ▶️ ^John before everybody else. And it will not only not win, but it will just be like a

⏹️ ▶️ ^John footnote, like, you know, Windows Phone, right? And like, that’s, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John what comes from expecting every single thing you do to like, we’re going to dominate them, because you start to believe your own hype, you start

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to believe all we all Microsoft has do is introduce a product in this category. And we will be dominant and we will win.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And if we make up a new category, like computing with a pen, that will be the next big thing because our CEO says

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it is. And when it’s not, we’ll keep making a new version and a new version and a new version. And we’ll be like, I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John understand what’s going on here. And then someone else will come out with, you know, the iPhone or whatever and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John make us all look foolish. And so I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going inside Apple from the outside. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ ^John much more content to to let these things sort of sort themselves minus the stuff you’re talking about with the developer

⏹️ ▶️ ^John relations because I think that’s legit issue that Apple needs to sort out regardless of what platform it deals with, including even the car.

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Closing thoughts on negativity

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Do

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey we have any other thoughts on this or do we want to take this to a slightly happier place?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I have a lot of thoughts on it, but I mean, you brought up the topic, but we’ll save it for follow up. Maybe we’ll get feedback

⏹️ ▶️ ^John from people about it later.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I think what’s tough about it is that, like Marco has said, we’ve seen some

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey feedback lately, especially about how negative we’ve all been. And it’s a tough thing, right?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Because maybe we have been a little too negative. But we want to call it

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey like we see it. And right now, this is how we see it. And

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I think I probably speak for Marco, but I certainly speak for myself in trying to—I intend

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey to try to find the more positive side of things going forward. But we also don’t want

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey to not say what we think. And if it becomes a bear to listen to, then I’m

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey sorry. I genuinely am. But this is what we think. And you know what I think about the Swift open source thing?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey The more I see of it, the more I like it.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Nice try, nice transition there. Now, before we even get off that, I just want to say,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it’s not a choice between, like, you know, because every time I get that feedback, I assume it’s not about

⏹️ ▶️ ^John me, because I’d say I’m not too negative. So I’ll be the one person who will boldly say,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John if you were sending an email and saying you’re too negative and you mean me, I disagree, because I think I’m exactly the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John amount of negative I normally am. Then again, I also had a podcast called Hypercritical, so

⏹️ ▶️ ^John maybe I’m holding myself to a slightly different standard. But I think I think the issue is like the trap

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is basically it’s not a choice between well do I not get to say what I feel do and I get to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you know I’m just being honest or whatever it’s all about like I said at the beginning of this whole thing it’s all about an

⏹️ ▶️ ^John examination of you know you are feel your feelings are real and you have to examine them

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and examine them with the lens of like could there be other really common reasons that I’m

⏹️ ▶️ ^John feeling the things I’m feeling about this particular thing that are not explained by the conclusions I would like to leap to because I’m

⏹️ ▶️ ^John defensive or upset or I have just turned 30 and the world is passing me by as children

⏹️ ▶️ ^John swipe their fingers on their iPad screens and I need to use a mouse or whatever. You know what I mean?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I think most of that feedback is legit and it’s a signal for all of us, yes even

⏹️ ▶️ ^John me, to just take a closer look at

⏹️ ▶️ ^John where these feelings are coming from. we’ve been super negative before.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It’s mostly just about I feel bad and therefore I come to this conclusion. Now some of

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it granted some of it is people are just someone here anything bad about Apple, but that they have their own things like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John why why are you so upset when anyone says anything about about Apple, especially people who love Apple like that’s a separate issue, but

⏹️ ▶️ ^John there’s enough of it and this you know this is true of anything that your critical of whether it’s Star

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Wars or Apple or any other thing like it behooves all of us to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John make sure we are not being a cliche and to not react to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John complaints of negativity immediately by thinking that now you’re just telling me I can’t tell you

⏹️ ▶️ ^John what my real feelings are and I just want to be honest and I’m just saying I’m just saying the truth I’m just saying the real thing like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it just to be to be self-critical like you know the greatest hypercritical of all

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is I can’t do the Whitney Houston transition someone else can figure it out. But yeah, being self critical is

⏹️ ▶️ ^John perhaps the most important place of criticism. And I think it’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John worthwhile for all of us to do that. And I think we try to do that to each other, whichever

⏹️ ▶️ ^John one of us is in the crankiest mood. Hopefully the other two help try to think about other ways

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that that could be explained. And so I think that’s an ongoing thing and I think we’ll all

⏹️ ▶️ ^John try to do better in the new year.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Yep, absolutely.

More on Swift open-source

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey So, Swift open source. We’ve talked about the sum and unfortunately the show

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey notes are, I think, some of the things we’ve talked about and some of the things we haven’t. But

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I’m still stunned and extremely pleased

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey with pretty much everything associated with this entire endeavor. I cannot –

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I just can’t believe that this is really what Apple is doing. And just this week,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Craig Federighi was on the talk show, which I thought was awesome. And there was some other

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey guy on it too, other than John Gruber. I don’t know who he was. He was all right. But Federighi was great.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey And I thought it was a really candid conversation. It didn’t feel to me like

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey it was all just BS marketing speak. This is not unlike the conversation that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Gruber had with Phil Schiller at WWDC. I thought it was really great. I think what they’ve done

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey there is great. Chris Ladner, if you ever want to come on the show, let us know.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey All this open sourcing with Swift and the way it’s being handled and how receptive they’ve been to

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey additions from the community, like Erika’s—how do you pronounce her last name? Erika Satan? She

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey had pitched getting rid of increment and decrement operators, and that apparently is going

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey to be a thing. She did the for loops. Sorry,

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Casey, John} my bad. She got rid of the classic for

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey loops. Sorry, my apologies. But that’s so now they’re gone and I just think that’s phenomenally

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey awesome and and I really genuinely Commend Apple for pretty much

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey everything that they’ve been doing around this space. I don’t know. What do you guys think?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Yeah, the stuff I have in for Swift stuff is basically left over from the first time we discussed it, but it’s small tidbits

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that I thought were fun first one was a tweet from Chris Latner from

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a little while back says Swift’s comments and test suite are on track to be one of the most correctly spelled and best

⏹️ ▶️ ^John indented ones in the industry and This maybe this makes no sense But it’s a comment like when you have

⏹️ ▶️ ^John an open source project and you put it out there and there’s a lot of excitement About it as there is about Swift and there’s a lot of people who want to do

⏹️ ▶️ ^John things The easiest thing to do is sort of bike shedding or whatever to say I’m just gonna

⏹️ ▶️ ^John go in there and fix typos and I’m gonna reindent this because the spacing is all messed up in this thing Because

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it’s really easy to do that And when you have a million people and they’re just I say I just want to go in there and fix something And so I just they,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you know, fork it on GitHub and go into the documentation and test suite

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and like fix the broken indenting. And there’s a lot of people with enthusiasm. And that’s how

⏹️ ▶️ ^John they landed. And it’s kind of snarky. It’s like, on the one hand, you could be saying that

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like, Oh, Chris ladders being mean, don’t you appreciate our contributions?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John We’re fixing your spelling and typo. That’s a legitimate concern. But that’s not how he meant it at all as Matthew Palmer pointed

⏹️ ▶️ ^John out, anyone teasing people about what he calls pedantic PR as pull requests

⏹️ ▶️ ^John on Swift Lang, the first non Chris Latner commit was a typo fix.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And that Chris Latner himself to clarify later slightly made another tweet that said,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John making small improvements is the one that everyone gets started. This is how open source works. Hey, I want to help contribute Swift,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John but I am not ready to declare how the language should work because I’ve never even written anything in it. Go

⏹️ ▶️ ^John fix typos, go fix a dent and go fix the test suite, go find a test that fails on your system and make it so it passes on

⏹️ ▶️ ^John your system by adding a new conditional or improving a capability check or something. That’s how open source works.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John So and I think the spirit of these tweets about like the best spelled and indented things

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like that’s that’s a spirit of like, joyfulness of like, look at all these people who are contributing. Craig talked about it on the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John talk show, like the tremendous activity around Swift so much enthusiasm, enthusiasm

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that had nowhere to go and Swift was closed source. And now that it’s open source, all these people who are jazzed about Swift,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John have some place to put that effort. And just having hundreds and thousands of people making

⏹️ ▶️ ^John this thing better, like, it’s just got to feel awesome for Apple. It’s like, essentially, you know, the magic of open source, we’re

⏹️ ▶️ ^John getting free labor that’s making things better for everybody, including us. And everybody’s happy about it. The people do it are

⏹️ ▶️ ^John happy because they feel like I contributed to this big thing that’s important to all of us. Apple’s happy because their stuff

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is getting better. It’s it’s great.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Yeah, I’ve been I’ve been really impressed by all of it.

Swift’s open-source license

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey What else did we have in the show notes here? The license, do you want to talk

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey at all about that, John?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Yeah, it came up on the talk show as well. The Apache 2 license, I’m not a connoisseur of open source

⏹️ ▶️ ^John licenses, but it was pointed out to me one interesting thing about Apache 2, other than the fact that it being

⏹️ ▶️ ^John non-viral like the GPL and a license that is suitable for a commercial entity like Apple to use for

⏹️ ▶️ ^John its software so that it doesn’t have to open source everything that it writes in Swift or whatever else.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John particular part of it is the patent grant that basically makes

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it gives people cover to say, Hey, if I use Swift for like whatever I’m doing, I’m making

⏹️ ▶️ ^John some embedded software for like, you know, a light switch that can

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Wi Fi light switch or something and I want to use Swift to do it. Do I have to worry that Apple is going to sue

⏹️ ▶️ ^John me for violating some patent or something like that? And the Apache to license

⏹️ ▶️ ^John grants, you know, if you you use the software with this license, what is it? You know,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it’s legalese, but each contributor hereby grants to you a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John non-charge royalty-free, irrevocable except as stated in the section patent license to make have made

⏹️ ▶️ ^John use offer sell blah blah blah. Like everyone who contributes is basically saying if you were contributing something,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John um, that and you have any patents that each contributor grants

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to you a license to those patents and then there’s the fun section at the end it says if you institute

⏹️ ▶️ ^John patent litigation against any entity including a cross claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit alleging that the work or

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a contribution incorporated within the work constitutes a direct or contributory patent infringement than any patent licenses granted

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to you under this license shall terminate so basically if you contribute stuff and then try to sue other people

⏹️ ▶️ ^John because like hey that’s my patented work in there then you lose all the patent protection it’s basically a way to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John try to work around our stupid patent system to make people feel safer about both contributing

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to Swift and or whatever it things on the Apache license and and to using it and to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John dissuade people from like putting a little patent time bomb and then trying to sue everybody who uses Swift

⏹️ ▶️ ^John because their patent thing is in there. I thought it was pretty clever. At least assuming that I have my understanding

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of it is remotely accurate. But the bottom line is that this is something that would make the Apache

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to license particularly appealing to Apple and make it appealing

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to people who want to contribute because you might be afraid of contributing to a project to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a project run by a company that has a million patents and that has litigated based on patents

⏹️ ▶️ ^John in the past and Apple has.

Swift’s package manager

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey All right, so we did not talk about the package manager.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Yeah, this is a sort of a human interest story angle type thing. So I don’t know

⏹️ ▶️ ^John much about the Swift package manager, other than we will put a link to it in the show notes and it’s open source, and you can look at it.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John But apparently, one of the developers behind it is the guy who made homebrew, which is a package manager,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John open source package manager for OS 10. His name is Max Howell. And the reason this came

⏹️ ▶️ ^John up in our little circles is he had some snarky tweets about

⏹️ ▶️ ^John not hiring him like he interviewed a google and apparently google did not want him and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John max felt like uh they didn’t want him for dumb reasons uh regardless

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of why google didn’t want him they didn’t and apple hired him and used him to write used him

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and had him write a package manager for swift and considering he wrote homebrew which is a pretty popular package manager for os 10

⏹️ ▶️ ^John he probably has some significant experience writing package managers so hopefully he did an

⏹️ ▶️ ^John even better job on the second one. Um, and that,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like his complaint was basically like they wanted me to do computer science stuff and they wouldn’t hire me even though

⏹️ ▶️ ^John they use homebrew in Google. Like, so you have your, your employees are using my software, but they won’t hire me because I can’t do

⏹️ ▶️ ^John some weird computer science, the tree ish thing and injury, at least that’s his perception, perception of why he wasn’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John hired. And I’ve always thought that that type of interview, not Google specifically cause their, their hiring has changed over

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the years and I’m not sure what it’s like these days, but that type of hiring thing, not the puzzle hiring, but

⏹️ ▶️ ^John where you interview people, and you want them to demonstrate their knowledge

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of theoretical computer science concepts, there’s there’s value in that.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John But I feel like you have to hire based on a balance of things. So maybe hire some some

⏹️ ▶️ ^John guy who is really strong academically and knows a lot of a lot of the conceptual stuff but has never really written a working

⏹️ ▶️ ^John program in his life because I well, it’s on the balance like, you know, he’s, I wouldn’t he’s not a great programmer,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and maybe he doesn’t even know the language we want him to write in but he conceptually he knows some really important

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and heavy-duty things so that guy is a hire the other side of that is maybe this

⏹️ ▶️ ^John guy doesn’t even have a degree maybe dropped out of high school for all you know but he’s written

⏹️ ▶️ ^John he has a history of work of products of actual software that people use that maybe we even use

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that shows he knows how to create a good working product that people like but he doesn’t know

⏹️ ▶️ ^John anything about computer science theory maybe that guy on balance should also be a hire. If you just say there’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a minimum bar and you got to know this minimum theoretical stuff and we don’t care if you have any practical skill,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you’ll end up with a bunch of like just cats wandering around in your office thinking deep thoughts and never getting anything

⏹️ ▶️ ^John done. And so I’m glad to see that Apple’s hiring process recognized,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you know, it obviously was selecting for different things. And I mean, really, the hiring process can probably

⏹️ ▶️ ^John be like homebrew, we’ve heard homebrew, that’s pretty cool and then you just make sure he’s not a crazy person and that he can get

⏹️ ▶️ ^John along with people and that he’s interested in doing what you want him to do which may be is write a package manager for Swift and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John great you’re hired so I think this is a win for Apple and a loss for

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Google not that Google necessarily needed him to write a package manager for them or something but I’ve just always thought that they’re hiring

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is slightly unbalanced in terms of and again like maybe it’s their their whole thing

⏹️ ▶️ ^John was like it’s worse for us to have a bad hire than to skip a good hire so maybe it’s working exactly as designed and that

⏹️ ▶️ ^John there was that study or whatever that went around the web recently that like one bad hire is much more costly

⏹️ ▶️ ^John than missing out on a good hire. So that could be Google’s policy as well. So maybe everything’s working out for everybody,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John but it just seemed like a happy ending to what could have been a sad story of this guy who’s obviously

⏹️ ▶️ ^John got some skills and he found a good home in Apple.

Swift 3.0 goals

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Have you had chance to look into the Swift 3.0 goals because there’s a whole

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I guess this is a repo That is Swift evolution that talks about among other things

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey What’s going to be happening in Swift 3?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Yeah, that’s an ongoing thing There’s a mailing list which I subscribe to and it’s such high volume

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that I can’t I can’t keep up with it Like not only do I have to have it filtered somewhere But I tried subscribing

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to the digest version because I can’t handle the activity I keep thinking it’s going to die down. But

⏹️ ▶️ ^John boy, yeah, they’re 3.0. The goals for the runo is

⏹️ ▶️ ^John still up in the air. People are still thinking of things. People are proposing like, you know, major things

⏹️ ▶️ ^John right now, like more significant than getting rid of classic for loops and you know, plus plus

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and minus minus much more significant. I’m assuming most of them will not be adopted. But the fact

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that that’s how that’s what the discussion is that these are being entertained and discussed. It’s a little bit scary.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And it’s like, haven’t nailed things down more than that by now maybe we haven’t maybe this is just

⏹️ ▶️ ^John exuberance of activity but it’s exciting to see it happening in real time and you can contribute to it

⏹️ ▶️ ^John if you’re not a dummy like me and respond to the digest version and forget to put a subject line in so your first post to the mailing list has

⏹️ ▶️ ^John no subject but if you don’t do that yeah it’s the worst

⏹️ ▶️ ^John i even have undo send on gmail it just took me too long to notice that the undo thing went away i need a longer timer

⏹️ ▶️ ^John because i’m old and stupid But yeah, like the only thing I would say were

⏹️ ▶️ ^John hard and fast is like the things they say are out like language level concurrency not in 3.0.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And it’s good to draw that line because that’s a whole can of worms that you know,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it’s good. Yeah. Anyway, but but minor things, you can see them happening in real time. Subscribe

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to the mailing list and just try to read the messages that come up there every day. And there’s a process.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It’s a proposal process. It’s a discussion. gets to contribute to the discussion. Um,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John effectively, because if you’re not going to implement the feature yourself, uh,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John or if Apple’s not going to adopt it, like effectively, Apple is still in charge of this whole thing. It’s not as if it’s a democracy. And if we

⏹️ ▶️ ^John all vote for some silly feature that Apple doesn’t want, then, you know, they’re not going to have it. But that’s the nature

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of open source. If people, if everyone in the community, literally everyone in the community, uh, wants classic

⏹️ ▶️ ^John for loops backs and Apple doesn’t, the community can just fork it and go ahead. Now you’re, you’re the developer of Swift,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you know, develop your fork, give it a different name. Uh, go nuts. That’s the magic of open source. But for

⏹️ ▶️ ^John now, everyone seems to be singing Kumbaya and be perfectly willing to throw a million

⏹️ ▶️ ^John proposals at Apple and discuss them at length and then just trust that Apple is going to pick

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the ones that it both thinks are useful and have reasonable support.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Yep. And to hear more of John talking like this, I highly suggest that everybody listen to

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the talk show episode from this past week featuring Craig Federighi and our

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco friend John here because honestly like you know the Federighi part was big news but honestly John I thought

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco your segment was really really great you really really killed it

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco so a good job there and I definitely recommend for all listeners if you are interested in hearing about Swift

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco being open-source you must listen to that episode of the talk show it is long but it is worth it

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and it helps if you’re a programmer because yeah I sometimes I feel bad when I go off. Not even John at a certain point, his eyes are glazing

⏹️ ▶️ ^John over, but like, well, you know, it was an episode about Swift. So

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey indeed, anything else about Swift, Swift, open sourcing that you would like to discuss tonight or would you

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey like to hold off for another day?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John No, we’ll say, I mean, some of the stuff is aging. Like I would say if you want to still keep up on this stuff,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John just do subscribe to those mailing lists. You know, it’s the best, like it’s an insane amount of activity.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Um, if you have any interest in it all, it might feel like, uh, you know, drinking from a fire hose. The The other thing

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you can do is subscribe to people’s blogs. Like Erica had a post about like, here are the interesting things

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that happened on the Swift Evolution marrying list this week. You know, her opinion on the like,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John then you don’t have to read 1000 messages. Someone smart will just pick out the things that were actually interesting and you can kind of get a summary like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John even that’s one of the cool features of the like the profile down list, which are actually surprisingly active,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John given the relative popularity of Pearl these days. But even that is just too much to go through, even when it’s only like 10

⏹️ ▶️ ^John or 15 people talking back and forth with each other so they would have weekly summaries. Here’s what happened on Pro 5 Plotters this week

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and just kind of a summary of the of you know of everything literally rather than just the regular one. So if you can’t handle

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the mailing list, the people in the mailing list that are contributing the most probably have blogs.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Subscribe to their blogs and then you’ll you know get it one step removed. But anyway, it’s exciting times a

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Swift and an Apple.

More closing thoughts

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Yeah, and bringing it back around a little bit to what we were saying earlier, as Apple

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is so big and so now sprawling, and as they keep doing things

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco that have a mixed appeal to people like us, or at least me, it

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco was like, some things they do I’m really into, and a lot of things they do I’m really not.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco As this happens, and as we see them stumble here and there, and as we see things that that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco aren’t as good as they should be here and there, it is really easy to get really negative about

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco this stuff. And I’ve been really kind of fighting that for a while and trying to figure out

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco how to reverse that negativity in me and in the way I feel about it, the way I talk

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco about it. And I think one way to do it that I really want to focus more on

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is that even though the company is really big and they do some pretty crappy things here and there, in my

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco opinion, there are areas like this, like areas with like the Swift open

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco sourcing that’s going on now where they really are doing really great things.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And even if over time those areas that they’re doing really great work in become

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco a smaller proportion of the things they do, at least in the way that I care about them,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the fact is they are still doing a lot of really good stuff like that. And I say this

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco on my 5K iMac from last year Mac from last year that I absolutely love,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco using an OS that I absolutely love, that I get all of my work done on, and I don’t want to change.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco So, you know, there is a lot of good there. And I think the way forward in trying

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco to mature my discussion about this and trying to minimize negativity unnecessarily

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is really just to find the positives, because they are there.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I completely agree. One final tidbit on speaking of the positive bits about Swift.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John This is a tweet from Danny Gregg says he kind of loves that the Swift team referenced tweets

⏹️ ▶️ ^John in their source. This is the exact opposite of radar or GTFO, which is from our

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Mike Derwitz coin that he’s credited with it. Let’s say one of the mantras from Apple

⏹️ ▶️ ^John many years in the past and today to some degree as well is say you’ve cornered some Apple person

⏹️ ▶️ ^John at WWDC and you’re like, oh, there’s a bug in your API, you’re responsible for the whatever library. Well, when you do this with the whatever

⏹️ ▶️ ^John library, this thing happens or whatever. And Apple people would say, you have to file a radar. You can’t just tell

⏹️ ▶️ ^John me you can’t just like shout at me in the hallway and tell me that if you pass nil for this parameter, your crashes, right?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John You have to file a radar. That’s how we track things. That’s our bug tracking system. Um,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and the swift approach to this is someone tweets something

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and someone on the swift team sees the tweet. and I guess they make the radar

⏹️ ▶️ ^John or they add the bug tracking issue or whatever. And then when they fix it in the source code, they reference the tweet

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that told them about this crasher. So that’s what they’re saying, Danny Gregg is saying in this tweet, they’re basically like, if

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you look at the Swift source code, you will find links to tweets saying, this is why we know about this bug,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John this person tweeted this, and then we went and fixed it. Which is totally the opposite of you have to go to Apple’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John official bug trapper and file a radar or it’s useless even talking to me. And both of them are good advice. It’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you can’t really yell at people in the whole nwvc and expect something you want to if you want to work, you got to work in this within the system.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John But on the other hand, Swift, the Swift team is so engaged in the community that

⏹️ ▶️ ^John they you know, they’re stewing in people’s tweets about these things. And if they see a tweet that says, Hey, I’ve got a crasher in this, whatever,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John they will note the tweet and I guess they added it to their own bug tracker or whatever, or they’ll just pay, you know, paste

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the link to the tweet into the source code to remind them later to click on that link to go back to the tweet and say, Oh, yeah, that’s the guy who said they

⏹️ ▶️ ^John had this thing and like follow up with them or whatever is total community engagement all the way

⏹️ ▶️ ^John down to the level of referencing tweets that led to bug fixes, which is fascinating from

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the perspective of a company that popularized the term radar or GTFO.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I think we’re good. Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Squarespace, route and automatic

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and we will see you next week.

Ending theme

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey it was accidental, 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 C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S That’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey and T. Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It’s accidental, they didn’t mean to Accidental

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Tech podcast We’ve been broadcasting for so

⏹️ ▶️ ^John long

Post-show: Casey drives a Tesla

⏹️ ▶️ ^John So the car’s name is the X6M. That’s too many letters. It’s not the M6,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it’s not the 6M, it’s the X6M, because the X6 is the car and this is the M version. Not the M Sport,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John but the actual M. So it is an M car, but it’s not an M car because the M’s at the end. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John 3.7 seconds to 60. 3.7 seconds to 60 for basically an

⏹️ ▶️ ^John SUV. Look at this thing. It’s like making a hippo dance. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John just, you know, it’s amazing that you can do it. And the Car and Driver review of this they had a shootout between

⏹️ ▶️ ^John these cars like this one and whatever the Mercedes one is and it was like these cars shouldn’t even exist

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it’s unholy that they’re able to make but like but why like it’s fascinating I guess

⏹️ ▶️ ^John but no one should ever buy these cars they make no sense and it defies the laws

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of physics that like you make this thing corner this flat and go this fast like going through slalom

⏹️ ▶️ ^John cones and doing like handling things and a thing that’s shaped essentially like a Jeep Cherokee with like a little bit lower

⏹️ ▶️ ^John hood. It is what what a world we in case he probably wants one. Oh, he would like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the American version better probably. But yeah, this car is way too good

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco looking for Casey to want it.

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, John} Oh, no,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John there’s nothing

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Casey} good looking about this car.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Exactly hideous.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I know. No, this is way too ugly for me to

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey ever drive. Don’t worry, it comes in white. Oh my god, I hate you so much. Although

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I do love you, john for knowing the very, very nuanced difference between an M Sport car

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey and an actual M car. How

⏹️ ▶️ ^John could I not? How could I not?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Well, spend enough time with us two knuckleheads and I don’t blame you. And car-related news, since we’ve

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey already opened the neutral door, I drove a Tesla. Yeah, so tell us about that.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Dear friend of the show, underscore David Smith, has quietly bought his family a Tesla

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Model S, a 90D. And he and his family visited

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey this past weekend very, very briefly as they were kind of swinging through Richmond, he took

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey me for a ride. And I know this is not the David Smith that I met a

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey few years back, because we got to the end of my road and at the end of the road that my house

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey is on, it tees onto a pretty big road. I don’t remember the exact words that were used,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey but something along the lines of, are you ready, came from Underscore’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey mouth, and you have to understand kids that Underscore used to drive a Corolla,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey and although it was his idea for Marco and I to join him at the 2 day

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey M driving school I think he was the least aggressive of the three of us is that fair to say

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey oh easily and next thing I know he’s saying to me are you ready

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey and then he stands on the gas while making a 90-degree turn it’s not the gas sorry the throttle

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey thank you Oh, John, you’re the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John best.

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John later tonight I’m going to tape the show off TV so I can watch it later.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Oh, God. I don’t even know where to go from here. But anyway, so he took me for a spin.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey He demonstrated autopilot, which was fascinating and petrifying.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey He drove reasonably briskly, which made me so happy

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I cannot even begin to describe it. And then we got back, we went on like a literally five to 10

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey minute loop, which involved a little bit of curves, a little bit of travel

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey on a highway, and then a little bit of just like regular surface roads. And then he offered for me to drive

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey and do basically the exact same circuit. First impressions, the

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey car doesn’t creep when you come off the gas. However, there is a setting

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey to

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Casey, John} turn on creep mode,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey which is extremely weird. And I bet they don’t call it that, though. No, I believe they do. I think

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey they might creep mode. Well, I don’t I don’t know if it’s creep mode. I see what you’re saying now. I didn’t get it

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey at first. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco a good name for it though, because you really don’t want that on. Right,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey exactly. And the funny thing was, Underscore said to me, well, you know, this is going to be more like your car, which doesn’t really creep

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey when you come off the brake, which in general is true. But my

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey brain was in automatic mode, where if you come off the brake, you’re going to move forward.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey And it didn’t take long for me to get used to the creep not being there, but it was peculiar because my brain had to like

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey balance this threshold between driving a stick and driving an automatic, which is very

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey peculiar. He spent a long time and I’m genuinely glad he did explaining

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey to me how freaking weird regenerative braking is. And you know

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey what? It’s freaking weird. And so

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that’s an option too, by the way, you can turn off the one foot driving mode, but it’s stupid because you’re losing

⏹️ ▶️ ^John power. So don’t turn

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it off. Just get used to it. you can turn that down.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Yeah, I was about to say, just like Marco just said, you can also turn it down. I think there were three settings. I think it’s off,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey medium, and high or something along those lines.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I mean, the funny thing is, it was really easy for me to drive Tesla’s because my car with the DCT

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco doesn’t creep. Oh, that’s true. And it has so much engine vacuum when you let

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco off the gas that it really pulls you back, almost like regenerative braking. So

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco in the settings you were using, it actually feels a lot like my car.

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, John} That’s true. When you’re

⏹️ ▶️ ^John doing

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} that,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you’re not getting any gas back

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} from it. All you’re doing is saving on

⏹️ ▶️ ^John brake wear on your horrendously expensive brakes. Yeah, that’s right.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco They just need to last to the end of the lease. Oh, god. What’s the countdown? I don’t know, four months,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey something like that? Fair enough. So we eventually take off. And I got

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey halfway down my little neighborhood street. And I got going, just a hint too quickly,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey so I could feel the regenerative braking. And it is weird, man. It’s not that terribly

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey dissimilar from driving a Wrangler at speed, where if you take your foot off the gas, you just suddenly kind of

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey stop. But, um, but the difference here again is instead of it being because

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey there’s so much wind resistance against this rolling box, in this case, it’s because like you were saying, John, you

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey are actually recovering, you know, electricity, which is really cool. And so what ended up happening

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey was it didn’t take me too long to, as one of you just said, drive with basically only one foot

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey and it’s weird. I liked it. It was kind of a fun game, but it is weird.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey That being said, I eventually got onto a larger road and, you know, kind of was creeping

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey a little bit, and then I stood on the accelerator or throttle,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey if you will, and by God, the closest thing

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I can, the closest analogy I can make is imagine a turbocharged

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey car like mine or like Marcos, where you’re in a relatively

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey low gear at reasonably quick speed. So say I’m in like second

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey gear at like 50 or 60 miles an hour. So if I stand on the gas at that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey point, presumably the turbo is already providing boost. And if I stand on the gas,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I’m going to go and I’m going to go with quickness. Well, a relative quickness, given that I’m

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey burning dead dinosaurs. This thing, however, felt like that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey from a stop. From any speed, from any speed, there was instant infinite

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey power. And the 90D, as I said to Marco, after

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I drove it, it is sufficiently fast. Now, as I also said to Marco,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I’m not used to Marco being satisfied with sufficient, but it

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey was without question, sufficiently fast. Told you so. It

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey is absolutely true. I still think you’re gonna get the performance version, but it is sufficiently fast.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I actually have to decide this week what I’m getting. Oh, really? So I was just looking at the configurator

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco today like, should I just go performance anyway? And I’m thinking,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I still think probably not. But I was tempted. Just to let you know, I was tempted by

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it. One thing that I learned while browsing around their forums, which

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Hmm. I’ve seen a lot of internet communities

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco in my time so far, and the Tesla forums are

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco not among the most helpful that I have seen. But

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco one thing that I learned from these random strangers of very mixed credibility

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and relevance skills and writing skills on a page that loads incredibly

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco slowly because what year is this? Anyway, on the official Tesla forums, I

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco learned that apparently the quoted range that you get goes

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco down pretty hard over time. It says you lose like 3-5% a year,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco which sounds like a lot. And the range upgrade to go from 85-90d is only 6%. And

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco The difference between the non-P

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and the P version in battery is something like 20%. So it’s actually, it’s a pretty

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco big difference. And so I wonder, you know, I think maybe I really

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco might want the maximum range and to not get the P version, if for no other reason, which there are

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco other good reasons not to get it, but if for no other reason, then to really maximize my initial range because I’m not even gonna be getting that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco in like two years, you know? Like to give myself more padding on the range.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John take it to an Apple store, you get the battery swap for $99, right? Something like that, yeah. Welcome to the world of lithium

⏹️ ▶️ ^John ion batteries that just like the ones on your phone, they get crappier as you use them.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey You know, it’s funny you bring that up because Dave made a couple of interesting points. The first

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey thing he said was, you know, if you were going to buy one, which I’m not, but if you’re going to buy one,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey it

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Casey, John} makes it-

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey You will. Three years. Too much money. If it was affordable, it would have already

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey happened. I would have traded in my car already. Same

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco thing about Apple products, same

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, John} thing about BMWs. Stop, stop, stop. I

⏹️ ▶️ ^John think the Tesla is slightly more expensive than the average car than a Mac is than the average PC.

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Casey} Exactly. Thank you, John.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John In terms of absolute values, if not percentages. Let’s see what happens when the Model 3

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey comes out. Right. So we’ll see. But anyway, he made an interesting point, which was

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey the way this technology is and with the way the batteries are, it would probably

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey be a pretty dumb idea to purchase one rather than lease one. And I’ve never had a lease in my life.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey And they seem in a lot of ways like a complete waste of money to me. But I think he’s probably

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey right in this case, that it seems like it would be silly to purchase a car

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey where when you fill the tank, so to speak, in three or four years, you will

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey not be able to fill it as high as you were once able to when it was new.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Do you remember the plan for the quick charge stations that instead of the supercharger, they would take the battery

⏹️ ▶️ ^John out and give you a new one?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I don’t know if that’s a thing anymore, but I do remember that plan.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I mean it wouldn’t be a new one it would just be a different one.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Yeah it’s like getting propane cylinders at the hardware

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, John} store.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco You might get a new one but chances are you’re getting someone’s old rusty one. Yeah

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I mean because it’s like what is that that’s the majority of the cost in the car obviously is that big honking battery and so there’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John no avoiding the fact that they’re going to get old and they’re going to get crappier and yeah at least lease starts to make sense

⏹️ ▶️ ^John in that scenario but the problem is then when the lease is up do you lease another one like they’re not gonna yes

⏹️ ▶️ ^John there’s gonna be a secondary market for them but at at a certain point, the battery is crap.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Like, you know, if just we haven’t been around long enough, like, I mean, I guess you could find some Tesla Roadster

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and see like, is there other Tesla Roadsters out there that just no one wants?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Because it’s like selling a car with a seized engine. It’s like, yeah, it’s fine, but you just need a new engine. Yeah, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John fine,

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} but

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you just need a new $50,000 battery pack.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Yeah, this is not a car that I would want to own outright just because it

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is changing so much still. We still, you know, the Model S has only been around for what, three

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco or four years, so like it hasn’t been that long, right? So like we still don’t really know what the used market is.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Like when they guess at least residual, they really are just kind of guessing it. So like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco by leasing, you’re putting the risk on Tesla, not on you. And I think for

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco a product this young that’s advancing so quickly, plus like, you know, they keep advancing the features

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and the product and the hardware that’s available in the car Like, you know, in six months after

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I get mine, there’s gonna be some massive new feature that my car can’t do that I’m gonna want.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco You know, like, cause they keep, they make things so quickly, it isn’t even on a yearly schedule. They put stuff

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco out like every four months. Like just new features, new changes, and some of them are software that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the previous cars can get, and some of them aren’t. And so like, it really is updated as

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco often as like a computer is updated. Like with new features and new capabilities and new hardware. And so

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco do you really want to be using a six-year-old one? Like, maybe not. You know, if you care about all the cool new stuff

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco they keep adding, I think a lease really does make a lot of sense. And especially for a car that’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco this young in its development cycle, for an industry that’s this young, like the whole electric car industry,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco you know, you don’t know what it’s going to be like in three years. You don’t know what the market for these cars will be like in

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco three years and how easy it will be to sell one or what long-term maintenance might

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco cost. all those are still such unknowns that leasing makes a lot of sense.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Yeah, I agree. The other interesting point that Underscore made, and I didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey know this was a thing, but apparently whatever flavor of battery is in the Tesla,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey it is understood that charging it only to about 80 or 90%, I

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey forget exactly what it was, is better for the battery than charging it all the way to 100%.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey And so apparently what you can do is, You can say to the car, you know what,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey generally speaking, just charge to 80%. It’s not, I’m just going to be around town, it’s fine. And then you

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey can like request or tell it to do a full max range charge

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey in the instances that you’re about to go on like a road trip or something like that, which I just thought was fascinating.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Is this the extension of the BMWs where you have settings for every possible thing? Like the Tesla, it’s all settings,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John settings all the way down. It’s all computers and electronics. Like they’ve taken it to the final,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Like BMW sounds like it was they were always taking to like the things you can adjust on other cars You can adjust in the BMW

⏹️ ▶️ ^John but but some things you can’t adjust at all, right and Tesla’s like everything’s upper grabs How did

⏹️ ▶️ ^John maybe if you want when you turn the steering wheel to left the wheels go, right? It’s a setting Probably

⏹️ ▶️ ^John not that one but they could probably do it because it’s electric power steering.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Yeah, it’s ridiculous. Um the touchscreen in the center Visually,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey just the, I mean, with the screen off, like just visually having a 17-inch monitor in

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey the center of the car looks ridiculous and I hate it. However, it did not take long for

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey me to start to appreciate what that affords you, having this humongous screen in the center of the car.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Like having a navigation screen that is a mammoth. Being able to go to pane,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey like so you can split it in half so that the thing is mounted in portrait orientation, but you can split

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey it in half so you have like a top half and bottom half and do two wildly different things on them. I thought the touchscreen

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey was reasonably responsive. I didn’t think it was bad. I thought it was aesthetically

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey sufficient. I wouldn’t say it looked great, but it was okay. My understanding is they recently did

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey a quote-unquote iOS 7 update and before that it looked really dated from what I’ve been told.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey But this one, I mean, seemed fine. I still can’t get over how quick it

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey was from any speed. It was just instant. It was like getting, It was like one of those linear induction roller coasters.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey At any speed, it was just instant power. I did briefly try the autopilot. Really weird.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Really, really weird. Not bad weird, but really weird. David said that if you leave

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey your hands off the wheel for an extended length of time, it gets progressively more angry

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey about that fact, and I believe he said it will eventually just pull the car over and put

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey on the emergency flashes, assuming that you’ve had some sort of medical emergency or something. But, uh,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey but it was very cool, but very, very weird. And it was unbelievably cool

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey to me to see, even when I wasn’t in autopilot mode, just because of the

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey like proximity awareness to what was going on around me. It would actually show an icon

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey of the car in front of me on the dashboard. So not like this specific make and model of that car, but like a representative.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey This, there’s a car in front of you and it’s about here. Similarly, I see where you are in the lane. And

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey so it kind of gives you a constant bird’s eye view of where you are within the lane, which was very, very interesting.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I loved it. I thought it was extremely cool. I won’t say

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey it utterly ruined my car, but if I were to buy a car tomorrow

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey and I could afford one of these, I would absolutely do that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey instead of any sort of a petrol or gasoline car. I also got to the point that I started

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey to think to myself You know, maybe instead of getting an erin an SUV

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey What if we got her a model s it does hold more it has that front trunk thing got her

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey a model s yeah, right

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Casey, John} Mm-hmm.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Oh, yeah, I floated this idea

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Casey, John} Briefly

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey and she looked at me. It was like, huh not happening but That

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I I loved it. I absolutely loved it I thought it was extremely cool and

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey it seems clear to me that this is the future.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It’s not the future, it’s the present in my neighborhood. They are, I don’t know if they’re the most common

⏹️ ▶️ ^John rich person car, but they’re pretty close. They’re just everywhere.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Yeah, I have, for whatever it’s worth, I have seen a noticeable uptick in them in like just the last

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco three months around here too. Like I’m guessing going all wheel drive, whenever that was

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco last year, whenever that was, I bet that helped them tremendously in the Northeast.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Now I really am seeing them all over the place.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Yeah. I don’t even know what to say. It was just so… And you know what it was?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I’ve become very spoiled by my car, because my car, and this is not unique to BMWs,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey but I do think it’s unique to luxury cars. It’s just built well. Yes, it’s had

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey problems. Yes, It almost exploded a few weeks back. It’s had its share of problems,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey but when it’s running properly, which is more often than not, it just is so

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey well-built. It just feels so solid. It just feels right.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey And this car, the Tesla Model S felt the same way. I didn’t miss the sturdiness

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey of it at all. Whereas when I drive Aaron’s Mazda 6, which is an absolutely great car,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey it’s a little old now, it’s a 2007, but it’s a great car. And I really like her car. It’s just not

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey built the same way. It’s not built as sturdy as like a German

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey boat of a car is. And this is built just as sturdy. I loved it. The

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey iPhone app definitely has a bunch of problems, but the fact that you can do so much from the iPhone app, you can open the sunroof,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey you can turn on the air conditioning, you can tell it to charge, you can see what the charge is. It was incredible. When we

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey plugged it into my house, it like sort of trickle charged for a little bit to kind of decide

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey whether or not my electricity coming out of the house was sufficient enough to do a full-bore charge. And then it

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey eventually ramped up to—I think it was like 2 amps or something like that, I forget exactly what it was—but it eventually ramped itself up to

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey like, I’m going to charge myself as quickly as I possibly can from a traditional electrical outlet. Just

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey everything about it was so cool and so well done. And it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have problems, but it was so cool and

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey so well done and so clearly a nerd’s automobile. I want one.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I want it.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Yeah, I really am curious to keep talking to Underscore and seeing what he thinks, you know, long term. And,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco you know, one thing, like I heard, I talked to a friend in my neighborhood who just got one,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and I think he probably has similar sensibilities as me with this sort of thing. And

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco he said he loves it, but it is a car made by tech people.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And it has like, you know, bugs and software updates and stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, John} It’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco like you kind of have to like, like you know that you’re signing yourself up for that. But that aside,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it is really nice. And it comes with the upsides of that as well. You know, like the frequent updates and adding stuff

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco after the fact. I mean, my car has gained nothing since I bought it, except for some

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco things started to work a little bit worse over time. But my car has not gained a single new feature

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco since I bought it, whereas like Tesla’s get updated over the air and they get new stuff all the time. So

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco that’s interesting. And I might not always want that. There might be some times where it drives me nuts when

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it doesn’t do what I want or when I want to be more conservative, but I think overall

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it’s probably a net win. So I guess we’ll see what happens. I mean, we could be looking back

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco on this episode in three years when you have already

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco bought one,

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, Casey} my

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco lease is about to end, and I’m ranting about how much I hate all these dynamic software bugs and

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco everything. We might be looking back on this and laughing, but at this moment, I think it sounds like, like

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco an okay trade-off overall. And to get a car that’s overall that good, I think it’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco worth it.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey One final note while I’m thinking of it. I was utterly baffled with what to

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey do when we got back to the house and I parked the car. The gear shift is on the right-hand side, it’s on the

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey column, and that was pretty self-explanatory. Heck, it’s a hell of a lot better than BMW automatics. Not

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey the DCTs with the automatics.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco The DCTs are, believe me, even weirder. I mean, like, so okay, when you turn my car

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco on, it starts in park. As far as I know, once you shift it out of park, I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco think there’s a way to get it back into park without turning the car off. There is on the

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey automatics, I can’t speak for the DCTs.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco There is, you’re right. The DCTs are totally different for some reason. And it

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is so strange. I mean, the automatics are, the BMW modern automatics are themselves

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco incredibly unintuitive and weird and just messed up. The DCT is

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco also just as weird, but it’s all different. It’s just, it’s very strange.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I just shift with the paddles, and I don’t use the stick unless I need to reverse, because the stick is just so strange

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco that it’s just not worth it.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Yeah, so I put the car in park, that was fine. And then I look for the ignition switch,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey which I guess ignition in and of itself is a barbaric term now, or archaic, I should say, but

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey there wasn’t one. And I just kind of was looking around confused, And I think Dave was just kind

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey of enjoying my, my being perplexed. And eventually I looked at him and said, what do I

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey do? He said, just get out. I mean, the car’s it’s always on effectively. As long as you’re sitting in the

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey car, the car’s on ready to go. So just get out. And when I locked the car, it’ll kind of shut itself off.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey So weird. So cool. So much the future. I wants it.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey So, uh, yeah, if you are, uh, someone who is interesting in advertising on the Accidental Tech podcast,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey otherwise known as the Casey Buy a Tesla Fund. Please reach out to any one of us.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Send us as many emails as you’d like, because I would like to have a Tesla.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Yes. We’re now going to have six sponsors per episode, by the way. Why is Tesla not buying ads?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John They don’t need to. Well, they do. They do need to.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey So we are moving to six to 12 ads per episode. We’re trying to do the math. We’re going

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey to get work on that.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John If Tesla wants to get me into one, they’re going to have to buy ads.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco You still wouldn’t buy one. You would

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, John} still

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco talk yourself out of it. Well, I don’t have the house for it. I don’t have the space for it.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I don’t have to talk myself out of it. I don’t have a burning desire for a Tesla. Like, if I had enough money

⏹️ ▶️ ^John for a Tesla, I would definitely be shopping for different cars. You guys have already had fancy BMWs and gotten out of your

⏹️ ▶️ ^John system. I haven’t. I would not. If you give me enough money for Marco’s fancy Tesla, I would shop

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a different car.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco What would you get instead for, say, 90 grand or whatever these end up being? I would

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco look

⏹️ ▶️ ^John at all the… I would look at Mercedes, BMW, Audi. I wouldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John look at Jaguar, sorry. Hell, I would even look at Acura. I would try,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John see what’s out there. That’s what I would consider before a Tesla. Because I’m not ready to have weird car

⏹️ ▶️ ^John experiments. Like, you guys will work out the kinks. The seventh model of Tesla,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John just like the iPhone, when they come up to the fifth, sixth, or seventh Tesla one, then it’ll probably

⏹️ ▶️ ^John be right for me.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Oh goodness. Yeah, so I want it and don’t ever hand me the key to your Tesla because you’re

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey never going to get it back.

catatp.fm Unofficial Accidental Tech Podcast transcripts (generated by computer, so expect errors).