156: A Mac on Fire
12 Feb 2016Casey got a new job, then couldn’t figure out how to use his iPad.
Episode Description:
- Follow-up:
- Previous-episode feedback and constructive criticism
- Einstein's quote
- Photos.app crop/aspect behavior theories
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Bluetoot (©MerlinCo 2011) headphone dongle concept
- TDK Boombox
- AGPtek Bluetooth to headphone converter
- Sennheiser MM 400-X, Marco's pick for portable Bluetooth podcast listening
- Arctic P311, Casey's pick for inexpensive Bluetooth headphones
- Casey's new job
- The Life, by John Gruber
- Memberwise Initialization in Swift
- Casey briefly tries using an iPad full-time
- Firewatch
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann
- Post-show: Steam
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Chapters
- Follow-up: Apple criticism
- “As simple as possible, but no simpler”
- Follow-up: Photos.app design
- Bluetooth headphone retrofits
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- Casey’s new job
- Sponsor: Igloo
- Casey’s iPad workflow
- Sponsor: MailRoute
- Why you should play Firewatch
- Ending theme
- Post-show: Steam
Follow-up: Apple criticism
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have not looked at the show notes by the way, so whatever we’re talking about is going to be a surprise to me.
⏹️ ▶️ John New job, you trying to use an iPad full time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s basically all you today, so good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John luck with that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sweet. Alright, we’re going to go live. Boy, we sure got a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of feedback about last week’s episode. Like a lot. And this, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so last week’s episode we were especially unusually critical of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple and in particular their UI design recently, especially things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Apple TV and the Photos app. We have so many responses from that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they are split right down the middle. It was a very polarizing episode.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco About half of the comments said, I can’t believe you are still… You’re so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco negative about Apple. I’m getting so tired of this. I just can’t listen anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just can’t take it anymore. I can’t take the negativity. And then the other half was,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am so happy you guys are finally saying all this stuff or that you are drawing attention to this problem that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also agree with or have, or thank goodness, I’m so happy you covered this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Including people in Apple who said they were very happy that we covered it. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know what to think about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Did you actually count them? I meant to count them as well, because I felt like it was definitely it was not
⏹️ ▶️ John lopsided one way or the other, but I’m like, you know, you know how you like your perception of the feedback is different. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe I’m thinking, am I weighing the ones that agree with me too much? Or am I weighing the ones that disagree because
⏹️ ▶️ John they feel bad too much? Like, so I, you know, I should just count them, but of course I never got around to it. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I should go back and do that to see. My impression just based on feel was that
⏹️ ▶️ John it was more, slightly more supporters than detractors, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I, you know, I could be wrong on that, but anyway, it was definitely not a landslide in one direction or the other. And
⏹️ ▶️ John like, it wasn’t so much the volume of the feedback as each piece of feedback was
⏹️ ▶️ John very emphatic about whatever their point was. Either they really, really loved it and they’re like, thank God,
⏹️ ▶️ John or that was a great episode or the best episode ever or whatever, or the exact opposite. That was the worst
⏹️ ▶️ John ever. I hate you all. Goodbye. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s funny. I didn’t count either. But but my conclusion was nearly identical. My conclusion
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was it was split really close to 5050. I would actually say it was slightly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more, you guys need to stop whining, and slightly less, oh, thank goodness somebody’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey saying it. But it was near as makes no difference to 50-50. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was, I don’t know, it was a little bit sad to see so many people upset about it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by and large, I felt like the feedback was certainly polarizing, like Marco had said.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I felt better about it, even the people who didn’t like it. I mean, if you don’t like it, you don’t like it. like this, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone’s entitled to their opinion, right? But, but I really felt like, you know, as we’ve been talking about these various issues
⏹️ ▶️ John related to Apple, that that of all the episodes that we’ve had that have touched on these topics, I thought it was
⏹️ ▶️ John fairly constructive, like that it wasn’t just complaining for the sake of complaining, that we were trying to figure out like,
⏹️ ▶️ John what is, you know, describe the problem in detail, just like, I mean, not like, I don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV. It’s bad. Like we had reasons, right? And then, and then trying to dig into why are those
⏹️ ▶️ John reasons there? What couldn’t they do differently? like specific and constructive, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And without any sort of, therefore Apple is doomed stuff. And like, and you know, so I guess for
⏹️ ▶️ John some people making it specific and constructive doesn’t matter as much as like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, just taking too long or whatever. Anyway, I’m not trying to change anyone’s minds about what they do or
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want to hear in a podcast. But for my part, at least, that’s what I’m always aiming for is if
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re going to be talking about problems that you’re having, try to do it in a constructive way. Try
⏹️ ▶️ John not to be mean-spirited, not to get carried away, but to really get to the
⏹️ ▶️ John heart of the matter and try to figure it out. Imagine that it was your problem to solve. How would you solve it?
⏹️ ▶️ John What is the way to fix this? That’s what I’m always thinking.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I agree. So hopefully we’ll have some happier shows over the next few,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but knowing us, we’ll see how that works out.
“As simple as possible, but no simpler”
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But speaking of happy things, do we have any follow-up?
⏹️ ▶️ John A couple items here. This, in the last episode, as part of critiquing the Photos
⏹️ ▶️ John UI and the general trend on the Mac of simplifying Mac applications,
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the quotes I threw out that I thought was, I still don’t remember the designer’s name, I thought was the guy,
⏹️ ▶️ John not the Bang & Olufsen guy,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe him? That’s who I think you thought it was.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I thought it was some designer, and many people pointed out to me after the show that the quote I was quoting about,
⏹️ ▶️ John as simple as possible but no simpler, was not a designer. Apparently it’s attributed to Albert
⏹️ ▶️ John Einstein. And I looked this up on Wikipedia or not Wikipedia, wiki quote, sorry, sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the actual quote, as is often in the case, the actual supposed quote that led to the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing I was quoting is much more complicated and much more Albert Einsteinian, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ John Here it is. It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the
⏹️ ▶️ John irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation
⏹️ ▶️ John of a single datum of experience.” That does not roll off the tongue, like, as
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey simple as possible
⏹️ ▶️ John and no simpler, right? This was from On the Method of Theoretical Physics, the Herbert Spencer
⏹️ ▶️ John lecture delivered at Oxford, June 10, 1933. All right, so that is a real thing that he said that
⏹️ ▶️ John was recorded. It sounds a lot, you know, if you simplify the sentence, it is much like what I said. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the QuoteInvestigator.com story talks about how the quote attributed to Einstein may have arisen from
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And the variant is everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler, and so on and
⏹️ ▶️ John so forth. So we’ll put all these links in, like all these kind of quotes that you’ve heard attributed to a particular
⏹️ ▶️ John person. It’s hard to know where they actually came from. But the sentiment rings true with enough people that
⏹️ ▶️ John this quote and this idea survives, despite its cloudy origins.
Follow-up: Photos.app design
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So tell me about photos crop and aspect behavior theories.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so a lot of my complaints were focusing on the photos application, which I use a lot and which I still do like,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the frustrations with the Apple product design in
⏹️ ▶️ John using photos as an example. And one of my major complaints was about dealing with the cropping
⏹️ ▶️ John photos and constraining their aspect ratio and stuff. And a couple of people had some suggestions to make that easier
⏹️ ▶️ John inside the application. One of them is the keyboard shortcut, which if you hold down the shift key, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can constrain the proportion to the original proportions. The tricky bit with that is you have
⏹️ ▶️ John to hold down the shift key before you begin the drag, unlike a lot of other operations in like graphic applications
⏹️ ▶️ John or you know, that you may be familiar with where you start, say dragging a selection outline in Photoshop and then
⏹️ ▶️ John if you hit the various modifiers to constrain it, you can switch those modifiers in the middle of the drag. With
⏹️ ▶️ John this, you have to be holding down shift before you begin the drag. If you begin the drag, then nothing you do with shift makes any
⏹️ ▶️ John difference. So that’s convenient to know. There was a theory that nobody offered in the
⏹️ ▶️ John feedback that I’ve totally expected to get and literally nobody sent a lot of people So like various keyboard shortcuts,
⏹️ ▶️ John but nobody sent this idea And it is a reason to try to explain why?
⏹️ ▶️ John Photos every time you go to edit an image and hit the crop thing you have to hit the aspect menu
⏹️ ▶️ John and select original Even though it’s what I want every single time and you know setting aside the keyboard shortcuts or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John Why does it not remember that every time I go to crop I want the aspect to be the original right? Why
⏹️ ▶️ John does it just not remember like the last thing I used or have a preference or something? You know, you don’t even need a preference setting just basically
⏹️ ▶️ John when I change that pop-up menu Leave it that way until I change it again and my theory
⏹️ ▶️ John if I had to have someone explain that default Aside from them possibly just saying oh we never got around to making that sticky
⏹️ ▶️ John would be That if you remember the last setting used in an application that’s trying to be
⏹️ ▶️ John as simple as photos is Someone go in there and for you know have to make a square photo for something
⏹️ ▶️ John so they would you know figure find the little aspect select square and resize their photo
⏹️ ▶️ John and crop it and be done. And then three days later, come back and go to crop a photo and just try dragging the
⏹️ ▶️ John little outline and have it all of a sudden snap to a square. And they wouldn’t understand, why does it keep snapping
⏹️ ▶️ John to a square? I don’t want it to be a square or whatever thing. I wanna do freeform
⏹️ ▶️ John cropping here. And they won’t remember that the settings did. They’ll think it’s broken or someone different
⏹️ ▶️ John will come to the program and not realize that it is remembering the last thing. So resetting from zero every single time gives
⏹️ ▶️ John what they think is the sensible default for everybody, which is unconstrained, which I don’t even know if that’s a sensible default. But
⏹️ ▶️ John in theory, you could argue that by remembering the last thing you picked, it’s making the application appear broken
⏹️ ▶️ John to future people who may not know about the aspect menu, or even someone who picked it from the item last time and didn’t do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think that’s a good reason to do it in an application like Photos, because I think that is not as
⏹️ ▶️ John common as, like, I think you would be gearing the application to
⏹️ ▶️ John novices too much and that you should be realized that everyone starts off as a novice but if you use photos year after year
⏹️ ▶️ John after year eventually you will learn a thing or two and become if not an expert then at least a proficient user
⏹️ ▶️ John and that constant annoyance of having to pick that or having to hold on the shift here having to do whatever overwhelms
⏹️ ▶️ John it so my opinion is still the same but if I had to make the counter argument against my opinion or try to explain the
⏹️ ▶️ John behavior of photos as it exists that’s one explanation and the other explanation a lot of people gave which I think is not an explanation
⏹️ ▶️ John at all and I think is obvious but we should have pointed out in the past show is that
⏹️ ▶️ John Part of the simplification of these various Mac applications is to make them
⏹️ ▶️ John look and work more like their iOS counterparts. iOS counterparts obviously have to be more simple necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ John because they have to work on a phone screen in many cases. So obviously you can’t have giant toolbars or buttons. You
⏹️ ▶️ John just don’t have room for anything. You have to simplify, right? But on the Mac, the whole point
⏹️ ▶️ John of that discussion was that on the Mac those same constraints don’t hold. So for the sake of uniformity trying to say if we just make it look and
⏹️ ▶️ John work the same in both things So then you’re just not treating the Mac the way it should be treated It should be the advantages of the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John platform should be realized in the applications that run in them They should it shouldn’t be constrained to the lowest common denominator
⏹️ ▶️ John as defined by a phone or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well and also like you know just in the same way that like it was the best thing for the phone and for the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to Not just have Mac OS like shoved onto them and just poured it onto them You know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco straight in that same way having iOS things just shoved straight onto the Mac is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not appropriate for the Mac. And we can look at the last, you know, what, five years of OS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco X releases? Like, basically since Lion, as they have attempted to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shove iOS things onto the Mac, and most of the time it really flops,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or it’s just bad, or at best, mediocre. There’s a whole bunch of, like, the iOSification
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Mac that has been attempted, and it just lands flat. It just doesn’t feel right on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac. just in the same way that the Mac UI wouldn’t feel right on the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the worst one is where they they decide they have to have doubt like maybe not down to the pixel but
⏹️ ▶️ John basically the same glyphs the same icons the same sort of menus like when I see a Mac application with
⏹️ ▶️ John like basically an iOS 7 style button that is really just plain text like that language doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t fit in on the Mac because the rest of the Mac isn’t like that most Mac apps are not like that on the Mac buttons have little
⏹️ ▶️ John outlines and stuff that look like little capsules blah blah blah, you know, there is a design language
⏹️ ▶️ John for the controls and experience on the Mac and it is different from the phone. And so when an Apple application lands on the Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ John setting aside the functionality and how many things are hidden away or if it’s designed for a phone screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ll just change the surface part of it to look and act weird, and it just doesn’t fit in. And
⏹️ ▶️ John so the photo suffers from all of that. It’s massively simplified, lots of stuff is hidden, many things are constrained, like the little
⏹️ ▶️ John pop-up thing with the sharing thing that that we talked about that’s just way too small for no reason. The icons
⏹️ ▶️ John are sometimes identical to the ones on the phone, and I think they’re trying to make a family resemblance, but
⏹️ ▶️ John they haven’t, there has never been an iOS 7 style revolution in the Mac UI. Yosemite
⏹️ ▶️ John was as close as they came, which flattened stuff out and took away a lot of the gloss and everything, but it is by
⏹️ ▶️ John no means like iOS 7 was on the phone and the iPad where
⏹️ ▶️ John it radically changed the look and feel and the way you design applications. So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John before we get off photos, one last item is a lot of people suggested keyboard shortcuts. I know a lot of these. I’ve looked them up in the help,
⏹️ ▶️ John so on and so forth. One of the issues that I’ve complained about in the past that I should have emphasized last time as well is that
⏹️ ▶️ John Photos likes to ignore my keystrokes. Not all of them. Most of the time the keystrokes land, but
⏹️ ▶️ John if I had a penny for every time I hit the space bar and nothing happened in Photos, I would be able to buy a nice
⏹️ ▶️ John meal. And so the same thing for like rotating or hitting enter to
⏹️ ▶️ John edit or, you know, command keys usually have a higher percentage like command R to rotate but C
⏹️ ▶️ John to crop and stuff like that but I don’t know where those keystrokes go I don’t know if there’s a responder chain thing
⏹️ ▶️ John falling down and it’s not like it’s just like mightily delayed and I get impatient and
⏹️ ▶️ John hit it again sometimes I will just say you know what I’m not gonna hit it again maybe it did register I’ll just wait and I’ll and
⏹️ ▶️ John you know after 10 seconds you’re like nope that spacebar just went into the ether so
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah keyboard shortcuts are not personal they’re not a solution for most people using the application
⏹️ ▶️ John because most people never are going to memorize those keyboard shortcuts, but even for me who knows some of them, the keyboard shortcuts become unreliable
⏹️ ▶️ John as well. Every time I do, you know, edit crop aspect original with the mouse cursor, it works every
⏹️ ▶️ John time, it’s just tedious. So that’s why I end up doing it repeatedly rather than attempting to do the keystrokes, because if I do the keystrokes
⏹️ ▶️ John and I wait for a three count and nothing happens, then I end up going to the mouse anyway.
Bluetooth headphone retrofits
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, somebody sent to us, and I apologize because I don’t know who sent this in,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but somebody sent us a Bluetooth headphone dongle concept, which was done by Sean
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nelson. This is on partlySean.com. And I’m glad that one of you put this in the show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey notes because I meant to and I completely forgot. This is actually a really interesting idea. So the general premise
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here is, hey, if the iPhone 7 really does give up the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey headphone jack, then what would Apple do to kind of bridge the gap
⏹️ ▶️ Casey between the phone not having a headphone jack and all of us
⏹️ ▶️ Casey having these headphones that are probably not Bluetooth? And so this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sean Nelson person did a prototype, a concept
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of, hey, here’s how Apple could fix this. And what it is, is a circular puck that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has a headphone port, like you would find on the iPhone 6S. On
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one side, a lightning port on the other for charging, and it will convert any headphones
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into Bluetooth headphones. It doesn’t appear to have any buttons as far as I can tell. It does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a little clip on it so you can clip it to your clothes. This is a really, really clever idea, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really think that this is a pretty good way to bridge that gap. But what did you guys think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s interesting that it takes the approach of putting it on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the phone end of the cable and basically you plug your headphones into this and they still have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their full cables. As we discussed, as I brought up a couple of weeks ago, you can’t really put it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the headphone end of the cable because there really is no standard size or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shape cable that would fit a large number of headphones that would go on that end because they all have just these different shaped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plastic surrounds and everything. So anyway, it is smart to put it on that into the cable. I will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also say that these devices already exist. You can you can go on Amazon. You can get things like this, not that would be small
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and attractive and would have Apple logos on it or would charge by lightning. Those are those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would all be new here, but you can get these things already like you know you can go on Amazon and get them for probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like thirty bucks. You can you can get devices that adapt any end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of any audio setup to and from Bluetooth. very common and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of them even work. So it’s not it. You know, we can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we can try this today. We can see already what this is like today, as long as we don’t need to charge by lightning.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is a good idea for the most part. However, first of all, having a cable that dangles
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into your clothing but then doesn’t plug into your phone like it kind of seems like I don’t know. It’s really worth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having that cable. It seems kind of clunky, but I don’t know. I mean, I suppose it’s better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than having to buy all new headphones. But I don’t know, it seems like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of complexity to solve this problem. If you’re going to have a wire that goes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down into your clothing and comes out of your headphones, why not just have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a wired adapter that can then plug directly into the alleged lightning port
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is headphone compatible of the alleged new headphone jackless iPhone 7? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John you covered all the points I was going to make, which is that these things exist already and that it’s weird to have a wire.
⏹️ ▶️ John Where do you put the wire? Like, especially if you have your phone in your pocket and then this wire with a dongle is also in your pocket.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re like, right, you have this wire to nothing, right? You have to put it somewhere. You know, you’re going to have it dang hanging
⏹️ ▶️ John from your ear, swinging back and forth as you walk. So you’ll probably stick it in the pocket. But the reason I can think of why Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John might find this solution attractive is that the wired adapter, we keep thinking of one way.
⏹️ ▶️ John One way is that if the passive lightning to headphone
⏹️ ▶️ John adapter that we’ve been surmising might be possible is not possible, then
⏹️ ▶️ John this is probably better than trying to make an adapter with a chip in it, like try to make an active adapter. It’s more
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple-like than trying to make an active adapter, probably. But even if the passive
⏹️ ▶️ John thing does work, the passive thing, I don’t know if you can sell the passive thing for 30 bucks, maybe Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John can, but the point is Apple can sell this for more money. little battery Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ John container thing it’s what Apple is good at making very small simple things that don’t really have
⏹️ ▶️ John like an on-off switch or any complicated you know but inside are very very precise and it uses
⏹️ ▶️ John all their expertise in terms of making very small chips and batteries and all that good stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John and they can sell it to you for more money and it does seem like a little bit more elegant solution because then your your phone could be in
⏹️ ▶️ John one pocket and this can be the other and they’re not connected to each other I I can see them selling it as
⏹️ ▶️ John a more advanced version of a wired adapter. And this design
⏹️ ▶️ John looks neat. Like every time you see a prototype of it, it looks like the little watch adapter, basically like a little circular thing with an Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John logo on it, although I don’t think they would put a giant Apple logo like that on it, but who knows? It looks
⏹️ ▶️ John like an Apple product. Looks like an Apple product they could sell, and as ridiculous as it may be, especially if they put a clip on
⏹️ ▶️ John the back of it, like this guy’s got a clip to his pants waistband or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is not a good look.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. I think it I mean is it any worse than clipping an iPod shuffle anyway Yes, it looks plausible to me as
⏹️ ▶️ John an Apple product, and I think they can sell it for more money So especially if they can’t do a passive adapter.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think this is a reasonable Option that Apple might want to consider and as you pointed out if Apple doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do it There’s a million third-party ones that are already making it They’re gonna be excited by an iPhone with no headphone jack
⏹️ ▶️ John to say now We have a new audience to advertise to hey you just get one of those new phones buy our little square
⏹️ ▶️ John dongle that we’ve been selling for five years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yet another thing you gotta charge and spend 30 bucks on.
⏹️ ▶️ John it charges through lightning.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I don’t know. It seems like this is too clunky of a solution.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like Apple’s solutions are going to be either buy new headphones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or use this passive wire adapter.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you’re sure that the passive wire adapter is gonna be possible?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean but if that rumor site was true that they were gonna have this, I mean, it’s already possible today if you put some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smarts in the adapter. You can do it on today’s lightning ports with some circuitry and some smarts there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we already know such a thing is possible. It would just be better if it could be passive and if the phone could sense it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through a new revision of the port.
⏹️ ▶️ John I agree, but I’m just, I’m not sure. I’m not sure how Apple would prioritize that. Like, is it really important
⏹️ ▶️ John to make sure we can have passive adapters or are you just gonna say, you know, just deal with it and get new headphones.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everybody get new headphones. In three years, you won’t care anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so when we go in Tailgate, which we’ve spoken about on the show in the past,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have a TDK Boombox, which is actually the model for this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speaker thing, and it doesn’t have any Bluetooth support
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on it. And so years ago, I got this absolutely terrible,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like $13 AGP Tech Bluetooth adapter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll put a link in the show notes, even though I don’t think it’s available anymore. It is a total piece
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of crap, but it works perfectly. And so, like the build quality is terrible. It’s very chintzy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looking. So think of like a USB key that has a headphone jack on the outside
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of it and plugs in via USB on the other side. So what I do is I plug this into a USB port
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is on this speaker, on this TDK boombox, This receives
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Bluetooth and then I plug the this little headphone cable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from this Bluetooth to RCA converter basically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In so the headphone cable goes from there to the boombox and suddenly this boombox that has no Bluetooth support
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Has Bluetooth support so this is the other direction than what we’re talking about But to your point earlier Marco, you know, you can go either
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way with this and it was $13 And I mean it is a piece of crap, but it’s been working
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perfectly for three years So I guess is it really that crappy after all? But yeah, it works well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and and so you’d be surprised what you can do for not a lot of money It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like those invisible fences for your pets only this is invisible wire someone in
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the camera I’m saying
⏹️ ▶️ John like like we were saying what like what’s the point of having a little wire with a dongle that you stick
⏹️ ▶️ John in your Pocket or clip on your pants. It’s like three inches away from where your phone is It’s like there are still some advantages for that
⏹️ ▶️ John absurd scenario Mostly is that like when you want to take out your phone and do something there’s not a wire attached
⏹️ ▶️ John to it I mean, I guess probably people are you know Who are used to listening on wired headphones are good at taking out their phone
⏹️ ▶️ John to send a quick text or see something or whatever Without wrangling the wire, but it is I think I keep thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John of it as a luxurious feature Like the fact that the two aren’t connected anymore They are now connected
⏹️ ▶️ John with an invisible wire Even though there’s a stupid real wire still in play because again you’re using your old headphones
⏹️ ▶️ John and they don’t support this new phone It is still a slightly more luxurious experience
⏹️ ▶️ John to be able to take out your phone without a wire attached to it. Invisible wires are better
⏹️ ▶️ John than wires in general. And if you can’t get rid of wires entirely, which, um, Apple will surely sell you Blue’s
⏹️ ▶️ John Headphones to do that, but if you can’t because you want to use your old headphones for whatever reason, a dongle like
⏹️ ▶️ John this, as ridiculous as it seems, I think does actually have offer some material advantages. To the
⏹️ ▶️ John point where I’m thinking, like, maybe I would do it, because my big problem is, like, when I’m walking from the parking garage to work.
⏹️ ▶️ John Very often my headphone cord gets caught on like a door handle going through like the garage doors or up in the stairwells
⏹️ ▶️ John at work or whatever and ends up yanking the headphones either out of my ears or out of my phone or both.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would like it if I could. I mean obviously my solution is just use Bluetooth headphones,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just use Bluetooth headphones.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I use earbuds. I don’t want to look like Ohura with the big thing coming out of
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Anyway, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have smaller things that look get the Sennheiser MM 400 It is really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basic. It’s like something like 150 bucks. Is it earbuds?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, it’s the new version I use for any kind of walking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and often even travel purposes. I bring the predecessor to it, which is the Sennheiser PX210BT,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is long since discontinued. But the MM400X is seemingly the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exact same thing, but with a microphone added, so you can make phone calls on it. And these sound like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco complete garbage for music purposes. purposes but for podcast they’re great because they have actual hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buttons on the side so they’re it’s so they’re small they fold up they can fit in any large jacket
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pocket and any bag very very easily not a pants pocket they’re too big for that but they’re otherwise they’re great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco battery life is great they charge via micro USB you can get new batteries for them if you want to like separate batteries
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they have these amazingly useful buttons actual buttons like not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like a capacitive touchpad which is infuriating not some little tiny switches. You can operate them with gloves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on in the winter because the buttons are nice and big and they make sense where they are. I listen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to these exclusively when I’m walking with my iPhone because I’m always listening to podcasts. Sound quality doesn’t matter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they are so much better than anything else I’ve ever tried for portable podcast
⏹️ ▶️ John I like my earbuds with my little clicker on the wire.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s another
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. Where would the clicker go if I didn’t have a wire? It
⏹️ ▶️ John to the ear cup. No, I like to clicker down where it is. Anyway, whole point is I think I would
⏹️ ▶️ John actually, for find this thing vaguely useful if it existed. So much so that maybe I should just buy
⏹️ ▶️ John one of those ones that’s already on Amazon and give it a try, but maybe I’ll just hold out to see if Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco will have. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s one for 20 bucks. Apple will have Bluetooth earbuds, and maybe that will solve my problems.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you’d like to not spend $200 on a set of Bluetooth headphones, my beloved Arctic P311s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’ve had for like four years are still going strong. I use them for music, I use them for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey podcasts, they will not make Marco happy, I’m sure. from an audiophile’s perspective, they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are terrible. But if you don’t have hyper intense
⏹️ ▶️ Casey requirements, if you’re not Mark Warman, they’re like 30 bucks and might have been going strong for years.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that I think about it, Bluetooth earbuds wouldn’t help because again, wherever the clicker be, I really got news. So I think the iPod shuffle
⏹️ ▶️ John killed me in that. Did the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco iPod shuffle- On your
⏹️ ▶️ John ear cup? No, the iPod shuffle didn’t, there’s no ear cup in earbuds, obviously.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use mine with the buttons are right there. It’s even, it’s easier and more reliable than using the clicker.
⏹️ ▶️ John headphones, it’s too much, I can’t pull that off. It’s too much to have big, giant headphones
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Try the P311s, they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John and they’re only 30 bucks, just saying. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John point is, this concept, I think, is not entirely
⏹️ ▶️ John And if Apple doesn’t make one, maybe I’ll buy one and give it a try.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We should talk about bagels.
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Casey’s new job
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Squarespace, build it beautiful. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve had a big week so far.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so tell us about this. What exactly happened, in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your own words, Casey?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Describe for the audience what happened. So yeah, so this past Monday, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey started a new job. I took the last week almost entirely off. I had a week of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey self-directed fun employment. I went into my old job on Monday for a few hours,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Spent the remainder of last week just kind of relaxing and taking a break. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then on Monday, I started a new job as an iOS developer, which is completely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey scary and completely awesome. To recap, in case you weren’t familiar with my professional
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exploits, I had been working at a consulting firm doing.NET stuff for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey between three and a half years and four years, and I did like it, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my heart wasn’t really in dotnet anymore. I really do love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey C sharp, hand on heart. I love C sharp. I think C sharp is great. I really do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love Visual Studio. I think Visual Studio is great. But everything around that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just couldn’t care less. Like it just didn’t do anything for me. And when I was hired
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at this job, I was told, hey, you know, you’re going to be our iOS guy. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was the iOS guy, which was good. But the problem was we only ever landed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one bit of iOS work. And when it’s a consulting firm, you don’t typically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have the luxury of working on what you want to work on. You work on what you’re told to work on. And that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey means a client will tell the company, we will give you money to work on this thing. And then the company tells the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey consultants, you know, my company tells us, okay, it’s time to work on this thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it just so happened that the only time I ever did an iOS app was several
⏹️ ▶️ Casey years ago when I did an iPad app. And it was for all the wrong reasons, an executive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey decided, oh, we should be in the app store, even though we don’t really have anything useful to offer. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we built an app to put in the app store. Anyway, so I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hadn’t been unhappy necessarily, but I hadn’t been terribly happy. And I just was trying to figure out, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what do I do? And it’s hard, especially when you’re a consultant, but it’s hard in general. I mean, I kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know how to write code for iOS. You know, I know objective C reasonably well
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for someone who doesn’t do it professionally. Um, I sort of, kind of ish know Swift.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so it’s a hard thing to sell any employer on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey teaching you how to do this stuff on the job, unless the employer is for some reason incentivized
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for you to learn this on the job. So for example, if my consulting firm had gotten a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey contract to do iOS work, then suddenly my employer, the consultancy, will be hugely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey incentivized for me to learn on the job. But it’s pretty hard for them to sell me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as a supposed expert when I’m not really an expert. And typically when you’re going to a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey consulting firm, you’re looking for experts. So it was clear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me that it wasn’t really going to work out. If I really, really, really wanted to pivot to iOS,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it wasn’t going to work at the consulting firm. And so a friend of mine, a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mutual friend between Marco and I, a friend named Jamie, he had just gone to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a local company here in town that their bread and butter is not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iOS, but they have their own iOS app that is part of their product offering.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And he had been saying, hey, you should come join me, you should come join me, you should come join me. And finally, I was like, you know what? I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should come join you. And so I interviewed and I got the job.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was very plain about what I do and do not know about iOS, but what was great about my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new gig is they recognized, hey, you seem like you’re a pretty darn good engineer. One of our engineers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is saying you’re a pretty good engineer. Sorry, Dr. Drang. And so we have faith that whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you don’t know, you can pick up. So let’s do this. And I started this past Monday
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I haven’t really gotten into too much code yet, but, uh, so far, so good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it is blowing my mind that the things that we talk about here and the things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’ve been pumping into my ears by way of, of Marco’s other show, um, and,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and by way of, you know, Corn Tuition and by way of Mobile Couch and so many of these other shows,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey suddenly this stuff that I’ve just long to do, I’m now doing. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s really, really exciting. And I’m petrified because I’m used to, you know, I was a pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey darn good.NET developer. Not the best, but pretty darn good. And I wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey often scared by the things I was asked to do in my day-to-day job. And now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am not a pretty darn good iOS developer. I’m at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey worst a rookie and at best an intermediate level iOS developer. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so I’m reaching on this and that’s really, really scary. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I found that that’s the best way to force myself to learn is to go straight into the deep end
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and just learn how to swim. So I’m excited. I’m excited just selfishly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because this is what I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. I’m excited for the show, because I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even though we don’t get that deep into developer topics that often, it’ll be nice to have someone else who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does this sort of thing for a living other than Marco. And I’m just excited to learn something new,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I’ve been doing the same stuff for a long time. And the last really new thing I learned,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you don’t count some React that I was dabbling with maybe a year ago, was when I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey taught myself Node for my blog, and that was in 2014. So it’s about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time for me to get scared and learn something new. So I don’t know if you guys have any questions about that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If not, we can just put it in the parking lot. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco but if you have any questions, I’m happy to field them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Otherwise, we can just move it right along. So
⏹️ ▶️ John you talked about the tech differences of like C sharp versus objective C and you know, the different
⏹️ ▶️ John ID and all that stuff, whatever. But setting that aside, like getting back to the
⏹️ ▶️ John doing consulting work versus doing a product. I think you covered this in your blog post, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John the idea with consulting work is sometimes you get a crappy job, but the job ends.
⏹️ ▶️ John And sometimes when you get a good job, that job ends too. But with product work, I imagine,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, without getting into details of what kind of product you’re making or what kind of company you’re working for, it’s conceivable
⏹️ ▶️ John that you could get to be an iOS developer dedicated to working on a product that does nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the product is like, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John developer and I’m working on a product, but I don’t care about this product at all. Like I don’t have any passion for this product.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t, you know, and the customers who use this product are not really into the product. And no matter how good I
⏹️ ▶️ John do my job, they’re never gonna really appreciate it because it’s like, you know, an industrial machine control thing or something where it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John not, you know what I mean? And in that case, you would be using the new technology. You’d be learning things. You’d technically be an iOS developer,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I’m thinking it’s like, imagine if like your worst consulting gig just never end, never ended.
⏹️ ▶️ John So is part of your decision to go to this specific company, the idea that, like, do you care what the
⏹️ ▶️ John product is really like? Is it just better that it is a product that you can like work on and incrementally make better
⏹️ ▶️ John year over year over year, even if it’s a boring product? Or do you also kind of need it to be
⏹️ ▶️ John a product that interests you more than like your least interesting consulting gig?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, no, it’s a very fair question. Um, I think I have to reach back just a half step and explain
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’ve been doing some flavor of consulting since roughly 2006, so it’s been about a decade
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now. The first couple of years from 06 to 08, I was doing government contracting,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is not exactly consulting. I was working for a company
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that had a product, but literally the only people that bought that product was the US government.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So really what ended up happening was the government said, hey, we want this new feature. And we said, okay, we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do that. And so It was basically consulting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey After that, it was just regular, no asterisks, honest to goodness consulting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from 08 on. I found that there have definitely been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some projects where the client was awesome and the project was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of fun. And eventually, what ends up happening
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, as you described, John, the client either can stand on their own two feet, so to speak,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or they feel like that product is complete enough for now. And then they say, all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, thanks for your time. We’ll see you later. And that’s a total bummer because here’s something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you really invested in. The kind of consulting I was doing, I should also note, is typically project-based.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it was myself and a bunch of my coworkers at the consulting firm would swoop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in, do a project, and then swoop out. And of course we would be working alongside the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey client, but the overwhelming majority of the work was done by the people at my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey consulting firm. It’s not like your individual consultant who is just an individual
⏹️ ▶️ Casey contributor, and this is where the staff-og thing came in a couple of months back.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so typically with project-based consulting, you build this project with your friends at work and then it’s like, okay, thanks,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then you leave. And that’s a total bummer. And even though it’s nice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to know that you have – that each project is to some degree a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ticking time bomb because eventually it will go away, both the good and the bad,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s nice to think about – I really wanted to try
⏹️ ▶️ Casey walking on the grass on the other side of the fence and I wanted to see is a product company
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really what I wanted and really what I want. Let me give you a really weird but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey concrete example of why I wanted this. So I believe it was my first day, it was my first
⏹️ ▶️ Casey day at the new job. And we actually had this like all hands meeting offsite,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which was just purely coincidental. And so we were in a different portion of Richmond
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at this all hands, and then we needed to come back to the office afterwards.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we were traveling from the all hands, I was at a hotel, to the office, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I got stopped at this light that typically will take two or three cycles for me to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey through with this particular time of day. It was around lunchtime and this is right by a bunch of other, right by a bunch of businesses
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and a bunch of eateries. So everyone’s going to or coming back from lunch. And as I’m sitting at this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey light, I’m thinking to myself, oh my God, this is taking so long. Oh my God, this is taking so long. I’m going to have to make up this time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because, oh God, I’m sitting here for like 10 minutes. And it’s one thing if you sit at a light for like a minute, you could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just kind of flub that and you know, whatever. client isn’t going to care if you bill them for one minute where you weren’t actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doing work, but this is like 10 minutes and I’m really, I can’t build a client for this 10 minutes. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so I’m now I’m gonna have to stay at work 10 minutes later than I plant. Oh, wait, wait, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a timesheet anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I’m not working for a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey client anymore. Oh my God. I don’t have to give a shit. This takes an hour
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I don’t have to answer to anyone anymore. Well, not literally, of course, but you know what I mean? This
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is magnificent. And it’s just stupid stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m just kind of, I was ready to take a break from consulting and who knows, maybe in a year or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two, maybe I’ll 1099 and I’ll just go in if you’re not an American, basically I’ll be an independent consultant
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and maybe I’ll go back to a consulting firm, who knows. But for right now, oh my God, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was magical not to have to stress about sitting in a, in a stupid light for 10 minutes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and to come back around to John’s question a little more concretely, I’m really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey amped to work on a product period, but I agree with you, John, that if the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey product was something like industrial control system, it was not likely to keep my attention very long.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, with that said, I don’t intend to share what my employer is or who my employer is, nor what I’m working
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on. I don’t know. It’s just, I’d prefer to keep that, that world separate, but I will say that the particular thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’m working on, although it is not for me, it is for a general
⏹️ ▶️ Casey audience and depending on what lens you use to look at it, I genuinely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think it’s helping people and I think that’s pretty cool being able to help people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and make a difference in people’s lives, a small difference, but a difference nonetheless. And so because of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, I, and granted I’m still in the honeymoon period, but I’m very hopeful that I’m really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to enjoy working on this. And additionally, the particular company I’m working for in the particular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iOS app that I’ll be working on, it isn’t great. It’s okay, but it isn’t great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But the important thing is the company knows that it isn’t great and they’re looking to fix it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I’m getting in kind of on the ground floor and being able to influence
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some of those changes insofar as I can help make architectural decisions,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, not as much like, oh, we should use CocoaPods versus, God, what’s the other one? I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey drawing a blank. It doesn’t matter. Who cares? I believe it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m going to be in charge of all the most boring decisions on the software project. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, exactly. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is going to be our file naming convention.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But you know what I mean? Like architectural decisions, I can work with my friend Jamie, who is pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much the lead architect. I can work with him and we have a good rapport because we worked together in the past and say, hey, I really like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this. We should go that direction or, you know, this just doesn’t feel right. And in some ways,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being a little bit ignorant as to how iOS development works is kind of an advantage for these sorts of discussions because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t have that background knowledge to influence or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perhaps taint what I think about these decisions. And so I’m really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey amped to work on something and work on something for a long time, which is not what I’ve been doing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the last nearly decade. Does that answer your question or did I completely flood that?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think you have. I hadn’t even thought about the whole timesheet thing because it shows how much consulting I’ve done. None.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s got to be a big upgrade in lifestyle.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve done product work in some fashion or another for my entire career.
⏹️ ▶️ John For the most part, it is better. I can say even working on a product that you’re not actually interested in, the aforementioned
⏹️ ▶️ John and often maligned industrial control software, that can be interesting too. Everything can be interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the dark side of product work is both the best and the worst thing that could
⏹️ ▶️ John ever happened to a product you’re working on is it becomes very popular and very important to the company and a huge moneymaker. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ John like, isn’t that all upside? No, because that means the product will live for a long time and we’ll have a lot of customers
⏹️ ▶️ John and any change to it is consequential. And if you work there for five years, you will,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, if you come five years after that happened, you will be inheriting a giant, possibly disgusting looking
⏹️ ▶️ John code base that nevertheless
⏹️ ▶️ John treated as the golden, you know, child and can’t be messed with. And if you were there from the beginning,
⏹️ ▶️ John you will have created five years worth of painting yourself into a corner and making dumb decisions that you come to regret.
⏹️ ▶️ John And now have this giant, you know, Jenga style tower that’s that’s teetering. But nevertheless, the entire
⏹️ ▶️ John company is built on and you are both responsible for having made it this way. Back when you were younger and
⏹️ ▶️ John less experienced, you know, past you was always the worst enemy of every programmer. And you don’t have the option
⏹️ ▶️ John to say, well, you know, unless you go change a different company, I want to do a different project. Now let’s go different products
⏹️ ▶️ John like no, this product is the company. But that is what the joys and the sorrows of product
⏹️ ▶️ John work. But you are far from that now, especially if you are, if they have an app now and they know it’s bad. So you’re kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of getting to go in there and clean up. Just try to keep five years from now, Casey, in mind when you’re doing your work.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s the idea. And we’re, like I said, we’re re-architecting everything and we’re trying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to make intelligent decisions as to how to do this so that it’s sustainable,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so that it’s testable, which I know is Marco’s favorite thing, you know, unit testing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco love unit testing. I test all over my everything. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco covering all my builders. Oh, God, just stop.
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s gonna get testing religion. It’s gonna be awesome. He’s gonna be like, you know what, testing is actually a useful way to do
⏹️ ▶️ John so like, I don’t know when it’s gonna happen, but it could happen conceivably.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I would love if I already had testing.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, no, as a way as a way to do development like, you know, rather than you know, like, you write lines of code, you want
⏹️ ▶️ John to see those lines code do the thing you wanted them to do. Like, not entirely test-driven development, just getting
⏹️ ▶️ John enough of it into you to go, it doesn’t matter if no one else, like it doesn’t, it doesn’t even matter. It’s just, this is the way I
⏹️ ▶️ John write code from now on. It is, I think everyone can benefit from testing. I feel like you will make that, you will turn
⏹️ ▶️ John that corner eventually. We’re just, they’re just waiting for it to happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Given infinite time, everyone could benefit from testing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh, here we go. No, you’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what happens with that. But it’s conceivable, I can say that it could happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah, yeah. I think testing is a great idea that I don’t do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I think that’s probably a fair summary Anything else on the new job any other questions or
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, yes the other thing That you should point out because there was confusion about it And I wanted to bring it up
⏹️ ▶️ John as another point is that a lot of people think like hey I left my my job or I had to work in this
⏹️ ▶️ John big corporation like a Dilbert or wherever and now I’m going indie
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey know I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John quite know what indie means but indie Marco knows what Indy’s means because he’s basically been that for
⏹️ ▶️ John a very long time now But it just means like you kind of stop
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of like indie rock it’s kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it’s a synonym for retired
⏹️ ▶️ John indie rock or independent movies like that term especially independent movies like started to warp
⏹️ ▶️ John as like Small independent movies would nevertheless be bankrolled by big studios under I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know You know, but anyway, the definition of indie for software is basically
⏹️ ▶️ John That you write software for a company that you own It’s been
⏹️ ▶️ John muddied a little bit by the fact that if all your paychecks come with a signature that says Apple Incorporated
⏹️ ▶️ John at the bottom of it, are you really indie? You’re still kind of indie. The definition we still say, yeah, even if every
⏹️ ▶️ John one of your paychecks is signed by Apple, you’re still indie because you get to decide everything
⏹️ ▶️ John about the product. You own the product. You just are sort of outsourcing your distribution
⏹️ ▶️ John and your entire relationship with your customer and many other things to Apple, but you’re still indie. But the bottom line is that
⏹️ ▶️ John and also what comes with it is like you you run the show you make the decisions and you’re not running a hundred
⏹️ ▶️ John person company like is you know are the heads of the Omni group indie
⏹️ ▶️ John no not really they’ve got a company they’ve got a Mac software company an iOS software company that a lot of people work for
⏹️ ▶️ John can you be in D with two people probably two or three maybe you’re pushing it but the
⏹️ ▶️ John idea is that essentially you are your own boss or something very close to it and so in that case if you
⏹️ ▶️ John worked on a product for a long time and you kind of got sick of it, even if it was selling well, because you’re indie,
⏹️ ▶️ John you could say, you know what, I’m going to do something else now. As long as the next thing you do also sells well, and as long as you have some
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of transition plan for supporting the other one, or maybe you sell it to somebody like Marco loves to do,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can do that. Whereas if you were in a company, especially if you’re in like a public company with shareholders and everything is scaled up
⏹️ ▶️ John and people care a lot, you can be like, well, I’m going to try a different product now. This one is perfectly fine and it’s profitable, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m kind of bored of it. That doesn’t happen in that world. So this is something that the group recalled in an
⏹️ ▶️ John article a long time ago, the Life, capital T, capital L. I think it was in reference to Brent Simmons
⏹️ ▶️ John stopping NetNewsWire development. Probably sort of in
⏹️ ▶️ John the post-internet age, sort of in the time when Apple was on an upswing,
⏹️ ▶️ John there was a resurgence in the old idea. The idea does exist for a long time, but there was a resurgence and a popularization
⏹️ ▶️ John of the idea, thanks to the internet and blogs, that if you are a computer programmer who liked
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple stuff, you could make a pretty good living for yourself by writing programs that other
⏹️ ▶️ John people who use Apple stuff would buy from you. And they would give you money and you would give them software, and if
⏹️ ▶️ John you can get enough of them to do that, through the magic of software, like, it’s not any harder work for you
⏹️ ▶️ John to sell an application to a hundred people versus a thousand versus potentially a million, because
⏹️ ▶️ John bits are bits and you copy them and you don’t have to manufacture them and there’s no incremental costs and you know all the wonderful things about software
⏹️ ▶️ John that you can do a certain amount of work and the amount of work that you have to do
⏹️ ▶️ John does not scale with a number of customers you do the work and then if ten people
⏹️ ▶️ John buy it you did the same amount of work as if 20 or 30 or 100 and so people can make really good livings
⏹️ ▶️ John selling software they were their own boss they got to do something that they wanted to do they got immense satisfaction of it
⏹️ ▶️ John out of it and it was you know that’s the life he was referring to iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John gave a different view of that but at this point I think everyone who’s involved in this ecosystem would agree that it
⏹️ ▶️ John is slightly harder to live the life it is slightly harder to be an independent
⏹️ ▶️ John software developer who makes their living doing that if only because the market is so much
⏹️ ▶️ John more crowded I think we talked about this on maybe this podcast maybe the ones in the way distant past of like
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re doing something that is really fun and a lot of other people want to do it
⏹️ ▶️ John because because it’s fun, that’s going to drive down the value of the thing you’re doing. If a bunch of students
⏹️ ▶️ John want to make an iOS application for fun and give it away for free or close to free,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you say, well, but I’ve got to feed my family, I can’t afford to give away, you know, like the value
⏹️ ▶️ John of what you’re doing is being driven down because there are more people in the market. And so it makes it harder for a regular
⏹️ ▶️ John person who wants a family and healthcare and everything to be able to make a living as an independent software developer.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not getting to the point where it’s like being professional athlete where a small amount can do it, but it’s getting more to the point where it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John a regular job where it’s not like if you’re a decent programmer and you find
⏹️ ▶️ John a market need that’s not being met and you sell an application, you’re good to go for 20 years. You can just keep selling and revising that
⏹️ ▶️ John application for 20 years and you’ll have a healthy lifestyle. Like those days are past because the market is just, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, too crowded. Um, but my question for Casey about his new
⏹️ ▶️ John job is maybe you didn’t think about that now because you’re like, I don’t know enough about iOS development,
⏹️ ▶️ John but My question is, does that still appeal to you as sort of the real polar opposite, grass is greener
⏹️ ▶️ John on the other side of the fence, from the consulting world? Consulting world where
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to go where they tell you, you have to track your hours, your different clients are your masters at various
⏹️ ▶️ John times, and then the far opposite side is Marco’s life where you call the shots, you
⏹️ ▶️ John decide what you’re going to make, and you build it your way on your schedule and
⏹️ ▶️ John your time, and find a way to make that a viable living. Did that ever, does
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco appeal to you?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I try to find a way to make it a viable living. It doesn’t always work. I make things my way, I call
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the shots, but then the market decides whether to pay me or not.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but like you have, you know, for the most part you’ve been successful doing that. Like I said, it’s not an easy thing to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like it’s not like you can, you know, how many people do you know who are still living the indie life? But
⏹️ ▶️ John my question for Casey is does that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not, honestly, I’m not even sure I am anymore, but that’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John You’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay. I know what you mean, But I think App Store economics are such that it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very, very hard to do that anymore. And I think the number of people doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is probably shrinking for sure. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overcast is not making as much as Instapaper did. And the trend lines for these things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are generally downward. past
⏹️ ▶️ Marco numbers are going up very slowly now with patronage, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still making less than what it did before the patronage model, which that was less than what Instapaper made.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So overall, this whole market is getting harder.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Corey Poffett Yeah. I think, John, I understand what you’re driving at. There’s a couple of things to unpack here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey First of all, it was easy for me to tell who did and did not read my entire blog post
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because those who did read the blog post, it was abundantly obvious that I am still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey working for the man. It’s just a different man, figuratively speaking, of course. But those who didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey read the blog post or perhaps only read above the fold were like, oh, you went indie. Congratulations. So that was kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of funny. But to directly answer your question, I certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have thought quite a bit about going completely independent. And to me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that means one of two things. It either means what you described, John, and what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco is trying to and or succeeding at doing. I’ll let you be the judge of that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Or it means I am consulting, but not as part of a consulting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey firm, but instead as an independent consultant. And this is, if you’re in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey United States, often referred to as 1099ing. There’s many other ways you can refer to it. But that means as a single
⏹️ ▶️ Casey person, I am going and helping with something. And I am my own boss. I am my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey own salesperson. I am my own employee. I am
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everything soup to nuts. And so what may happen if I were to, if I were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to make a guess, I think one of a couple of things will happen either. I’ll stay at my current job for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quite a long time, or I will be here for a while until I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really get to know iOS. And then maybe I’ll try to split
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my time between a handful of, um, of clients. and those clients might be say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco and Underscore or maybe somebody else entirely. Or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe I’ll come up with that brilliant idea to make that impossibly great update to fast text
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or whatever comes after fast text. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think today I’m in a position that I would be comfortable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being completely independent. As much as I think it would be fun and as much as I’d love to try it, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t think I’m comfortable doing it today. I’m the only breadwinner for the family and granted I’m diversified a bit insofar
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as I have podcast income as well as regular income. Um, I really want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to continue to have health insurance that my employer helps me pay for.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the thing that I really want to do, like I said earlier, I kind of know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how to do, but I don’t really know how to do. And the best way to learn how to really do it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is to just freaking do it. And it’s much easier, as I discussed earlier, to be a part
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of a product company who knows what they’re getting into when they hired you and knows what you are or are not capable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of. It’s easier to learn on that job
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than it is to try to position yourself as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an expert consultant but not really be an expert in it. So for now, I’m really happy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the move. Again, I’m in the honeymoon period. There’s certainly bad parts to this company
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like there are any company, but so far all the bad parts seem super manageable and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all the good parts seem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’m really enthusiastic.
⏹️ ▶️ John They are you talking about considering, you know, the whole 1099 independent consulting
⏹️ ▶️ John only because it is a thing that, you know, I’m assuming you’re talking about C sharp type consulting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no. I meant, I meant, well, I mean, it could be C sharp, but I was, I was, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John saying like If you were to do it now, it would be very difficult for you to be an iOS consultant because you don’t have a lot of relevant experience,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you could consult on the same exact stuff that you were doing at the previous company. And to me, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like the worst of both worlds, where you have to be a consultant, you have to work in a tech that maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t like or is not as interesting to you as iOS, and you have to do everything yourself. And it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John all the downsides of being independent with none of the upsides of getting to decide
⏹️ ▶️ John what you want to make, you know what I mean? Yep.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I completely agree with you. And plus I don’t think I’m a very, very good salesperson, so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think I would be good at like, you know, pounding the pavement or whatever term, phrase you want to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use and trying to drum up work for myself. I mean, I feel like, you know, I could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shill for myself on the podcast and be like, Hey guys, if you want a C-sharp person, just let me know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I’d rather not do that and it’s just, it’s not those sorts of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things that you just described are not things that I’m interested in and not things that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I’m good at. And just like you said, the things that I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good at like C-sharp and that sort of thing, I don’t necessarily want to keep doing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you’re exactly right. To go completely independent today, I would probably be backed into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the corner of doing all the things I don’t really want to do. And so I’d much rather
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have the steady and reliable paycheck and the help on health insurance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that comes from working for, quote unquote, the man. And then we’ll reevaluate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a couple of years and see where things stand then. But like you, I think I can speak for you, John, I am extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey risk adverse. Is that the word, averse?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I always get it wrong, sorry. I’m extremely risk averse, and I’d rather
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have some of that risk consumed by my employer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than have to shoulder it myself. Now, yes, this is where all of the internet and perhaps Marco is saying, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your employer could fire you at any second, they could fold tomorrow, you never really really know. And yes, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey true. But the way I perceive it, you know, better, worse, or indifferent, is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that this is less risky than going completely independent today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re at least outsourcing many of the jobs, you know, like you’re outsourcing many of the risks and much of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the work by working for somebody else. And I wouldn’t say, you know, you’re totally right in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco predicting what I would say that, you know, any job you could lose at any moment, you just kind of lose control
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you’re working for somebody else. But the fact is, if you go to work for an already established company
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that already has multiple employees and like your salary is not where 100%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of their budget is going, you know, then like, you know, certainly it makes it less likely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they would fail on the market in a way that would affect you or things like that, like compared to just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you going on your own and trying to make one app and trying to see that one app succeed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because the company that you’re going to work for has already released that one app, and it’s already doing well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough for them to hire people and to keep paying the bills, hopefully. So certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you do reduce and outsource some of those risks by working for somebody else.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and additionally, I didn’t leave my old job with my middle fingers in the air.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I left my old job in such a way that if things fell through with this one,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m pretty sure I could go back without having to put my tail too far between my legs. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m pretty sure every job I’ve left, I could say the same for. And plus,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as time goes on, some of the people I worked with two or three jobs ago
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are now at other jobs where I’ve never worked. And so I could go work with old friends again
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the new places they’re now working at, which actually, if you think about it, is exactly what happened here. Jamie
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I worked together a couple of jobs ago. We still kept in touch for a long time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it ended up that this all came circling back around. I kind of hate myself.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We circled back to each other, and now we’re working together.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, pick me later all over the parking lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, exactly. So for those who are not independent, which I think is the overwhelming
⏹️ ▶️ Casey majority of us, if you leave a job not like a jerk, you also have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that option. So even if this all fizzled tomorrow, I would still have the option of going back to the old
⏹️ ▶️ Casey job, or working with some of my old co-workers from years ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, there’s always new bridges to burn. Exactly. I’m still disappointed that you didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco take us up on the offer to have me, John, and Underscore go into your old job and quit for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That would have been hysterical, but I don’t think that would have been a wise choice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Probably not, but it would have been really fun for us, at least. I think you made the right choice for yourself, though.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it would have been enjoyable, and man, that would have been a really great YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ Casey video, nothing else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are happy to burn anyone’s bridges that they need burned. We’re happy to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and that’s the thing. I mean, I certainly had a list of grievances that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I could have shared with my employer on the way out the door. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they knew some of the things that made me unhappy, like the fact that I wasn’t doing iOS. And so when I told them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was leaving, they were a little surprised and a little bummed. But when I said I was leaving
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do iOS work, they were like, oh, well, okay, yeah, that makes sense. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like there’s no good, or in my perspective anyway, no good comes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of, hey, I quit, and by the way, let me tell you all the reasons why you guys are a bunch of jerks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, there’s no good comes of that because everyone is a jerk in their own way and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m a jerk in my own way, and so we can all be jerks together and that’s okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, plus, suppose you do go back to your old company, say in two years. You are now a two-year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco experienced iOS developer that they didn’t have to pay you for training in the meantime, and now they can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco charge way more for your time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s actually extremely true. So we’ll see how it goes. I’m really excited. I’m really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey scared, but I’m really excited. And I’m really anxious to see what it’s like. It’s going to be interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being client side. And it’s going to be interesting because most of the C Sharp stuff I was writing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was all server side. I had written some clientside C Sharp way, way, way, way, way back when I first
⏹️ ▶️ Casey started writing in C Sharp, but I haven’t done that in a long time. The closest thing I’ve come to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey client-side programming is JavaScript, and I’m not going to get into that wholly war, but suffice to say,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I haven’t done real honest-to-goodness client-side development in a long time. Additionally, I’m really looking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey forward to some of the engineering challenges of working on a mobile device that I haven’t had to worry about in a long
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time. The processors are getting faster and faster and stronger and stronger, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cycles are not free. And more importantly, network traffic is not free. And even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey after having been there only a couple of days, there’s a couple of choices that have been made in the app for understandable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reasons that I’m thinking to myself, ooh, that probably shouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be the way we do things. And I’m not the first one to this conclusion there. It’s a known issue,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it’s some of those engineering challenges that you don’t have to think about that often anymore, even though you probably should,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but you don’t have to, that I’m really anxious to start worrying about again, even though it’s going to be a complete pain in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tuchus. So we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just let me know when you get far enough into your Swift stuff that we can talk about memberwise initializer
⏹️ ▶️ John proposals on the podcast and bore Marco with it. All right. That sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey great. Is that the thing that Erica Sadan, forgive me, I don’t know how to pronounce her last name, but she
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just had a blog post about that like a week ago, maybe a few days ago?
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe. She’s on the list. Swift Evolution. Learn about the future of the language you’re just
⏹️ ▶️ John tell what you’re learning now will be obsolete in T-minus three months when this proposal goes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through. This is great, though. As long as Casey keeps learning Swift, I don’t have to, really. We can just, you know, we’ll just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use you, right? I don’t think that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. Somebody, I think it was Curtis, had said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s about time that you guys got a Swift programmer on the show, show, which I thought was pretty funny. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so yeah, we’ll see how it goes. But I’m really anxious. A lot of the existing code is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of course, in Objective-C, but all the new stuff is in Swift. And I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looking at the Swift book over the fun employment week and I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trying to teach myself some of it. And a lot of Swift really does, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be completely fair, this is all academic because I was working in a playground and just reading the book.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But a lot of it looks really, really good. And it may be that once I start really developing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with it, I will hate everything. But so far, I’m really enjoying it. It’s looking really
⏹️ ▶️ John So am I still in second place for amount of Swift written if you count the lines of code in my host and
⏹️ ▶️ John reviews? Yes. All right. Just let me know, Marco, when you do more than 10 lines
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever my line count is for the section where I put code samples of Swift.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I will start learning Swift when desktop Linux takes over. It’s always like a year and a half out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, so I appreciate you letting me go on about that for a little while. But yeah, and also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would be remiss of me not to mention that I’ve gotten so many people tweeting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at me in response to the blog post and the announcement and Marco’s blog post as well, or link
⏹️ ▶️ Casey post. And I really appreciate all of it. I didn’t think that many people gave a crap about where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I spent my time during the day. And I don’t mean that in a nasty way. It’s very flattering that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people have said—have been so enthusiastic, and so I really, really appreciate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We just couldn’t wait to pull you out of the parking lot. That was really it. We never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talked that much about your work, just because it wasn’t something you wanted to talk about on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the show, and we don’t see each other privately that often. But it certainly did seem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to me that some of the overhead of being in a big corporate…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not a big corporate, but being in a big company and doing the consulting work and having to track your time and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t even imagine the kind of stress that you have to internalize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have things like your traffic light incident of thinking about, how am I going to bill a client for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the time I accidentally spent a little bit too much at this traffic light? It seems like that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something that, you know, it’s certainly working for any company has its stresses. Working for no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco company has its stresses, even though nobody else sees them except me. But, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like you’re making a move here that, at least by the way it sounds and by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what you are describing so far, it sounds like you’re moving towards less stress and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco towards something that is significantly more aligned with what you want to be doing and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where you want to take your skills with things like iOS and moving towards client-side stuff, moving towards
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Swift. So it sounds like for what you want today, this is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way better fit for you. And so I’m really happy for you. I am so happy to hear this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think anyone who’s been following your work for the last couple years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever, anyone who’s been following your work recently has probably noticed the same things. that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what you were doing was not very well aligned with what you wanted to be doing anymore, and now this new job
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sounds like it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, I couldn’t agree more, and I appreciate it. I’m really looking forward to it. And the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey funny thing about all of this is that I’ve been able and lucky enough to go to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey WWDC in 2011, 12, 13, 14, and 15. And every single time, I’ve felt almost guilty that I’ve taken
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a ticket from a quote unquote real iOS developer because there was certainly a potential
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every single year that I could be doing an iOS project in the following year. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nevertheless, I hadn’t done very many of them. And let’s be honest, we’ve talked about it more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than a couple times on this show, Fast Text was never that popular. Well here it is, now that I’m an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey honest to goodness iOS developer, guaranteed I will not get a ticket this year. So I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ruined everything. But that’s okay. But that’s okay. Why don’t you tell us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about something that’s awesome.
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Casey’s iPad workflow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Check out igloo software today igloo software.com slash ATP. Thanks a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alright, so just to keep this the all Casey all the time show,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wanted to tell you about my last day at my last job. And this sounds like it’s gonna be boring, but bear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with me here. I decided because I wanted to be a model employee
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I don’t need to hear emails about why this maybe was a bad idea. I’m sticking with it being a good idea.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I decided to be a model employee and try to remove all of my stuff off my work computer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the last job, all my stuff off of it, just reload OS X, leave it in a position
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where it starts up and the first thing it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to do is finish the installation. So I did that over the weekend right before
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this past Monday. So when I went in Monday, I effectively had no computer. I mean, I physically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had one, but it was ready to get set up new. I had taken a Mr. Clean magic eraser and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cleaned the exterior of it. Everything was good. I put it back in the box because for whatever reason, when they gave me the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey computer, they gave me the box. Everything was great. I really wanted to,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey however, scan a few tax-related documents at our scanner in the office.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the way the scanner works is, it’s a scanner slash printer slash copying machine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You can save something to a USB key. You can save something to, to, or you can send
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something via email. Well, I didn’t know how long my email address was going to last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because, you know, it’s maybe I could have keyed in my personal email address, but it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was certainly intended to be used only for your work email addresses. And I’m literally there for like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two or three hours to do an exit interview or two, and then get on my way. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t even know if I would have an email address on this past Monday. It turns out I did, but I brought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my iPad mini with me. And what I wanted to do was I wanted to scan these documents and confirm that they scanned
⏹️ ▶️ Casey properly and save them to Dropbox if at all possible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So how do you do that? Well, I brought a USB key, but the problem with that is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have no way to confirm whether or not it works. We don’t have any like public terminals sitting around in the office.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sure I could have asked somebody awkwardly, Hey, do you mind if I use your computer to see if my scanned
⏹️ ▶️ Casey W2 looks right PS don’t look over my shoulder, please, because it shows you exactly how much I made last year. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little awkward. Um, so I needed to do everything via my iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And what I ended up doing was I had sent the scans
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to my work email, which was still working, sat down on my iPad, looked at these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey scans and then put them in Dropbox. That sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like it was a pretty easy thing to do, but man, did it take forever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey compared to using a Mac? I had to go to mail. I had to wait
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the message to download, get angry when occasionally mail showed me that there was a new message,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but refused to download it, force quit mail, go back into mail, finally, the message
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is there. Now I need to open the PDF. Then I need to open a, do the little share
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sheet thing, go to open in and then go to Dropbox. And then now I’m opening it in Dropbox.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now I need to tap, tap, tap, tap, tap to figure out what folder to go in. and I need to rename the file by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the way, and then I can finally save it. Sometimes there was a share
⏹️ ▶️ Casey button, sometimes there wasn’t and I needed to tap and hold. What a fricking nightmare.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It took forever to do something that on a Mac would have taken like four and a half seconds.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it was both a wonderful experience in that I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey able to accomplish this at all on the iPad, which I think even a little, even not long ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wouldn’t have been able to, or it would have been even more taps to make this work. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all I wanted in the world was to have a Mac in front of me so I could make this go so much faster.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Additionally, I needed to fill out another tax form, which included a signature.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey On OS X, you can sign using your finger on the trackpad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in preview, or you can sign a piece of paper, hold it up to the camera that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on your Mac, and it will, quote unquote, scan, really take a picture of your signature, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey filter out all the background noise, if you will, and let you put your signature on PDFs. Easy peasy,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey simple to do. With the stuff that comes on iOS, I couldn’t do that. I am
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sure there are like 300 different apps, like for example, PDFPen, that would have let me do that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I didn’t have anything out of the box to do it, And that’s frustrating. And I don’t want to have to search
⏹️ ▶️ Casey through the app store, which as we discussed earlier, is a dumpster fire full of options
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to figure out the one that I wanted. Additionally, similarly, some of the PDFs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I scanned, I really wanted to rotate. On preview, that’s command R.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Easy peasy. How do you do that on an iPad without a third-party app?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What I’m coming around to and bringing all this up is, I really enjoyed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the fact that I could sit on one of the couches at work where we had the old job where we had some couches. And actually, there’s some at the new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey job as well. I really enjoyed being able to sit on the couches at work and use a computing device
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that wasn’t a laptop. But all I wanted in the world was to have a damn laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I understand why Mike and Federico and CGP
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Grey and Jason Snell and others might enjoy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that because it was kind of cool being able to put puzzle pieces together to get most
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of this stuff done. But maybe I’m just old. I don’t know why,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it just felt awful to have to jump through so many damn hoops
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get what are comparatively super simple operations done on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad. And I don’t know if you guys have any thoughts about this, if you, if many, Yeah, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I didn’t know if this is if we’re beating this horse to death But I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get why this would be fun for people. I just don’t see why it would be fun
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I understand why it felt bad like one reason. I mean you kind of touched on it Why why
⏹️ ▶️ John might it feel bad to have this experience and why was it so difficult? part of it has to be
⏹️ ▶️ John Just simply a gap in knowledge that for example Vatici could tell you exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John how you should be doing the thing that you’re doing because he has experience You know how to do it on the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John because you’ve done it before on the Mac You know which programs how to get things between them
⏹️ ▶️ John and the comparison I always think is like so many things that seem effortless to me and my Mac are Not effortless to other
⏹️ ▶️ John people with less experience with Macs that we don’t even think about these tools We have at our disposal and you always
⏹️ ▶️ John know, you know drag from this application to that one But that one you can’t drag directly into there You can drag
⏹️ ▶️ John it onto the app icon for this application But this other one you got to go to the desktop into Meteor and who knows you could drag anything out of
⏹️ ▶️ John there And how do you know that sometimes you got to hold down before the drag is active and you can’t just start dragging as soon As you click the mouse button like
⏹️ ▶️ John these are things we internalize details that are just Byzantine and don’t really make any sense and aren’t consistent And
⏹️ ▶️ John we don’t have to go to the App Store and look for the applications We want because we already have them installed and we already know You know
⏹️ ▶️ John all that like that we know what to do on the Mac and so you go to some place where you don’t know What to do and you feel less competent
⏹️ ▶️ John it feels like I know I could do this in two seconds in in Realm X where I am an expert.
⏹️ ▶️ John And now I’m in Realm Y and it’s frustrating to, you know, to get into, to feel like a novice.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that I think explains a large part of the dissatisfaction and the fact that you could do it at all probably
⏹️ ▶️ John means that there’s like 900 better ways to do it that you just don’t know yet because you don’t have the apps installed.
⏹️ ▶️ John But on the other side of this is what we’ve talked about a lot is that in the end, some things still just are easier to do
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Mac, no matter what arrangement or things, because sometimes some of the things that Vitegi might explain about his
⏹️ ▶️ John crazy world of living and you know on the iPad only You think about and you’re like, all right
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, that’s impressive that you could do it at all but really it’s a Rube Goldberg machine and that’s really this
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t be the True path forward like really this is just like you’re doing this to suffice
⏹️ ▶️ John for now But I have to believe that maybe some of the things that you were doing actually would be
⏹️ ▶️ John just as easy if not easier On the iPad if you just knew how to do them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you very well could be right. I guess the thing that frustrated me was that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out of the box on OS X, all the puzzle pieces I need are there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and are arranged pretty closely together. So you just kind of have to, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shove them a little bit nearer to each other and they all fit. And I think you made a great point that a lot of that comes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from experience. Whereas out of the box on iOS, those puzzle pieces
⏹️ ▶️ Casey may exist and hell, they may even fit together more nicely than they do on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey OS X, although I’m skeptical. But the problem is you have to seek them out. And I personally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t have that patience that Mike and Federico and so many others do. Now, Marco, what were you going to say about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was actually going to say something very similar to what John said, which is like in the iPad’s defense, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were not familiar with it. You know, you are an expert on the Mac. You are not an expert in doing this kind of thing on the iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, and so, yeah, there are ways to do these kinds of things that, yeah, you you just didn’t know. It’d be similar if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you tried to use Linux. Linux might have tons of tools to do these things and you just don’t know about them. Things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. So something to think about with iOS stuff and with people who are going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do most of their work on iOS or all their work on iOS. I think there’s a bit of a parallel to draw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here between this kind of dilemma and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the reason why so many people still buy laptops with DVD drives
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in them. All of us geeks can look at this and say, why would anybody want a laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a DVD drive? What year is this? It is very common people still buy laptops with DVD drives because they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say, well, what if I need it? I need this every so often. It’s very similar to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how people justify buying SUVs a lot of times. Or pickups. Yeah. A lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of times people who buy SUVs, they choose them over a different kind of vehicle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they might be happier and more comfortable driving more of the time or that might work better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for them in other ways might be easier to park or more efficient or whatever they choose SUVs over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those vehicles sometimes because they think they might occasionally need to use some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of you know the features on the SUV and even though 99% of the time they never use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them and during the entire time they own the SUV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the need for it for its benefits over a regular vehicle might only come up like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three or four times. And if they didn’t have the SUV three or four times, they probably could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have found some way around, you know, we could rent a truck for this afternoon or whatever. But people still choose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those because of these occasional needs. And that’s a very powerful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco force in decision-making, when people are choosing these kinds of things that they’re buying or using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or owning, because they think, you know, as much as I could get away with I need 90%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the time with this simpler, smaller option, whether that’s iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or a motorcycle, you know, they, they can see as much as I can get away with that most of the time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that last like one or five or 10% of the time that what I’m doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t be done on this thing at all, or can’t easily be done on this thing. I’m going to be really upset
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I don’t just get the bigger, more capable thing to begin with. And sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that actually isn’t a rational decision. Sometimes, like, you know, they could have been fine with the smaller thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the bigger thing, they’re actually less happy with it overall. But it’s very hard to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco persuade people of that up front. And a lot of times, like, the times where the smaller tool isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sufficient, they stick out in the person’s mind, and that affects their decision-making forever. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there have been so many times in my past travels
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which I’ve owned a MacBook Air or a 13-inch MacBook of some kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I have regretted not having the 15-inch. Now I have a 15-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I’m looking at it, I’m like, you know, I hardly ever need this to be this big. I really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardly ever like, but it does occasionally happen and so I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tempted to go smaller for my next one but it’s that it’s in the back of my mind like, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but man I do really really like it sometimes. So I think looking at the iPad, we have a kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of similar problem here where if you’re super devoted to doing as much as you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on it, you can get quite a lot done on it. But when people look at that concept and they think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, but what if, you know, but what if I want to do this one fairly, you know, trivial
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing that just by the design of the iPad or by its, you know, hardware restriction or something, it just can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do or by iOS’s restrictions, it’s very clumsy to do, you know, and you only need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of those things for the idea of an iPad being your primary work machine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be dismissed in your mind or to seem impossible. And so many people will have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of those things at least. And I have tons of those things, so that’s one of the reasons I don’t do it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think in this case, it’s a very hard problem to solve because that’s the kind of thing that just takes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years and years of software maturity and a blossoming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco third-party ecosystem and advancement in the OS and the interface and everything. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now, if you are accustomed to the Mac, it’s really easy to just get a bunch of stuff done. And honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac has taken a beating in enthusiast communities recently. It seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like everybody wants to flee from the Mac. And it seems like whenever the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad or iPhones get better, we hear from people who are just seemingly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t wait to drop their Mac. It’s like on fire. like, oh my god, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rushing these other things because I just hated my Mac so much. Thank god I can run to the iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I don’t feel that at all. I love the Mac. I think the Mac is great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And my only concern is when Apple messes with the Mac in ways that I don’t agree with or that I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make it worse. But even those are few and far between, relatively speaking. And the Mac is awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And to me, the Mac is my work machine and my main machine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I am not looking to constantly flee the things I’m using if they’re working fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But you know, that’s I totally get the driving force that that makes people think that way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I do think you know, when somebody like you goes to try the iPad as a as like a work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco device, even for this, you know, for this one task you tried to do on it, when it when you run into one of those walls of things that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t do, it just seems like, Oh my God, this thing is worthless. Why would anybody ever do this? And you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s basically to summarize this very long rant. reasons on both sides and it depends just like everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else that can always be summarized
⏹️ ▶️ John this whole issue of Casey’s iPad use and trying to try and get out on for size
⏹️ ▶️ John reminded me of an older discussion I forget what podcast I have one of the ones with Mike he’s in a million podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not narrow it down at all
⏹️ ▶️ John discussing his use of the iPad and how he he remembered how it was just like an
⏹️ ▶️ John accessory thing but now there are so many things that he prefers to do he was talking about sitting in front of his Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John with his iPad using his iPad like he’s literally sitting in front of his Mac but instead of using the Mac that’s in front
⏹️ ▶️ John of him he’s instead got his iPad propped up in front of him he’s using it to do things
⏹️ ▶️ John like sorting through email or whatever. Certain classes of tasks that he by his own admission were
⏹️ ▶️ John less efficient on the iPad but the thing that made him want to use it was that he found
⏹️ ▶️ John them more enjoyable to do on the iPad and this is this is not necessarily the factor that is making
⏹️ ▶️ John people try to drop their Mac like they’re hot but
⏹️ ▶️ John different expression but it is like the idea that
⏹️ ▶️ John certain things and I’ve experienced this too I think we all have with the iPad maybe even Marco once in a while
⏹️ ▶️ John certain things feel more comfortable to do on the iPad not even ergonomically speaking but just
⏹️ ▶️ John like mentally like somehow that our brain goes into a different state or maybe we’re sitting in a different
⏹️ ▶️ John chair I mean with Mike’s example he was actually literally sitting in the same chair that he’s in front of but he also talked about doing
⏹️ ▶️ John it in bed or whatever ever, or just, I don’t know, like, just
⏹️ ▶️ John that it feels different to sort of like your body relaxes and you’re just kind of like swiping things around on
⏹️ ▶️ John the screen to you know, flick this message over there, scroll down over there, look at that I find
⏹️ ▶️ John that a lot of browsing stuff like if I want to read through Twitter, like if I’m behind, I want to catch up on Twitter or something,
⏹️ ▶️ John I find it much more comfortable to catch up on Twitter on an iOS device than on my Mac, even
⏹️ ▶️ John though I know that it’s more efficient to do on my Mac, I can open a link in a web browser faster because
⏹️ ▶️ John my Mac is so much more powerful and bigger than when I click on the link. Browser window opens, there it is, it’s very fast, I don’t have to
⏹️ ▶️ John switch apps, you know, like I know intellectually, that if you were to put a stopwatch on
⏹️ ▶️ John it, or make any kind of objective measure of efficiency, you would find that doing that
⏹️ ▶️ John task on the Mac is better, but it feels better to do it on iOS device. And someone
⏹️ ▶️ John in the chatroom said the lean back experience, maybe that’s part of it, like that it’s more relaxing.
⏹️ ▶️ John just the context switch that we all spend so much time or at least I do sitting in front of a computer all day that
⏹️ ▶️ John you know sitting down on a couch also in front of a computer but the computer is really flat and you touch it
⏹️ ▶️ John somehow that like it’s a mode switch and it feels more relaxing but I think
⏹️ ▶️ John that is that’s part of this and it factors into Casey’s discussion of feeling like
⏹️ ▶️ John this is just you know what he was feeling was the other side the inefficiency that like I know how to do this in this
⏹️ ▶️ John other realm and I have to do it on here and it’s like a puzzle for for me to solve and it’s annoying
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s the worst kind of inefficiency because you know you’d already be done by now if you just did it on the Mac, right? Yep.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the flip side of that is when you acknowledge the inefficiency and then it
⏹️ ▶️ John just feels better. And I’m not entirely sure
⏹️ ▶️ John what all the different sources of that feeling are. I know a few of them, but I think it’s an interesting phenomenon. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I think everyone who’s used an iOS device has felt that to some degree, even if you’re just feeling it on your phone. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a better example for Marco who doesn’t really use iPads that much. Some things just feel better to do
⏹️ ▶️ John on your phone. I think Gruber has talked about how his preferred device for reading Twitter is his phone, because that
⏹️ ▶️ John just feels like the natural place to do a particular activity. And it’s gotta be less efficient. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John you can put fewer things on the screen. If you wanna tap a link, it’s much more of a pain and you gotta go back and all this other stuff, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it just feels better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you know, to provide a counterpoint to my earlier lamentations,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey When I was on my way back from the Armands actually at the At the beginning of the year when we all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey congregated at Marco’s house I was sitting in the back of Aaron’s car with Declan trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey keep him occupied and happy and whatnot And when he wasn’t in actively in need of you know, entertainment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or whatever. I was sitting back there with the same iPad mini and I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Watching us I was using iPad multitasking and I had typically ways
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in like a third of the screen on the right-hand side in the little multitasking area and then the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey main window I was either slack or Twitter or Occasionally if we were in a stretch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like say the Jersey Turnpike where we didn’t really need to worry about you know directions or anything I would have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Twitter as two-thirds of the screen and slack is a third of the screen or maybe even half and half and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I I have never taken a car trip that felt easier because I was entertained
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the entire way and granted, you know, I’m talking to Aaron and stuff and I’m helping Aaron and whatnot,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey helping Declan and whatnot, but when I was just sitting there kind of doing my thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I could not have enjoyed using the iPad more in that, in that moment, because all the things that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey used to suck about using an iPad, just constantly double pressing the home button or using the multitasking gestures to go back
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. All of that went away when I could even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use just two apps simultaneously. So in that case, it was magnificent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being able to use the iPad. And I think using a laptop would have been considerably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey worse in the backseat of a car as you’re hurtling down the road because for among many other reasons,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a laptop doesn’t have a cellular connection. Yes, I could have tethered to my phone,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but still it was just, it would have been a lot more uncomfortable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so there are definitely times and places, and I’m not trying to say that there’s consumption
⏹️ ▶️ Casey versus creation. I’m not trying to get into that argument. It just so happened that it worked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really well in this case for the sorts of things you would want to do in the back of a car.
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Why you should play Firewatch
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⏹️ ▶️ John I reconfigured my email recently and accidentally got mail route misconfigured from my
⏹️ ▶️ John hypercritical domain and I could not get it turned back on fast enough.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is what it’s like, because you don’t even see all the crap that comes to it, because I don’t really use that email address,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it is publicly visible. And so like the web scrapers have long since found it. Boy,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I have talked way too much this episode. People love you, man, this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is great. People are all mad at me and John for being negative about Apple last week, so we needed you to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rescue us this week and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey get all the listeners back.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s it. John, you play any good games lately?
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s one game I wanted to talk about, not review, because maybe we’ll talk about it on some other podcast
⏹️ ▶️ John where we spoil the game or anything, but I just wanted to encourage people to
⏹️ ▶️ John take a look at the game, because I have played it and I enjoyed it, and I don’t want to spoil it for you,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I do want to explain to you why you might want to play this game. The game is Firewatch, it’s by
⏹️ ▶️ John Campo Santo, I don’t know how to pronounce the name of that, I’ve never actually said it out loud until now.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That seems like a
⏹️ ▶️ John reasonable guess. Yeah, in cooperation with our friends at Panic, makers of Transmit
⏹️ ▶️ John and Coda and many other fine products and other fun things.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they started development on this game, this is a weird thing for Panic to even be involved in at all because they are a Mac and iOS software
⏹️ ▶️ John company, not a game maker, but they, there a lot of gamers on the staff there and this is something I wanted to try
⏹️ ▶️ John and so they helped get this project underway and it’s a bunch of game veterans actually making the game so this is not
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of newbies making this thing. It’s my type of game if you heard me talk about games on
⏹️ ▶️ John other podcasts I like artsy fartsy games which is a way of saying like not
⏹️ ▶️ John games that are filled, not the equivalent of blockbuster, Hollywood
⏹️ ▶️ John blockbuster movies that are just like filled with space marines and huge budgets and millions and millions of people
⏹️ ▶️ John buy them. This is more like independent art house movies that
⏹️ ▶️ John have a limited appeal but the people who like them really love them. I love games like that. This is one of those games.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the reason I want to encourage people to do this is back to something I talked about in Hypercritical and I always
⏹️ ▶️ John dwell on the skill barrier to enjoyment of video games. I really enjoy video games. I like other
⏹️ ▶️ John people to enjoy them, but I know there’s some inherent amount of experience with video that
⏹️ ▶️ John you need to have before you can enjoy one, much more so than other media like movies where
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe you need to have some knowledge of like the history of film but in general a really good movie can be enjoyed by
⏹️ ▶️ John anybody who sort of lives in the same society as you at the very least. But video games,
⏹️ ▶️ John there rarely are a lot of skills that need to be acquired before you don’t have to think about those skills and
⏹️ ▶️ John can instead enjoy the game for what it is. So Firewatch is one of of those games that
⏹️ ▶️ John requires very little of you in terms of knowledge of how video games work,
⏹️ ▶️ John skill with a controller, whatever. There’s not a lot of complicated mechanics, there’s not a lot of rules or
⏹️ ▶️ John systems, it doesn’t demand lightning fast reflexes or anything like that. It does require
⏹️ ▶️ John you to know how to orient yourself in 3D space and sort of a first person type thing, but it is very
⏹️ ▶️ John slow and you won’t be, for the most part, rushed. There is some limited amount of being able
⏹️ ▶️ John to use either a controller or a mouse and keyboard required of you. Like it’s not, you know, it’s a game. You do have
⏹️ ▶️ John to play it. But it is very gentle. And I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John an interesting game that gives me an opportunity to recommend it to people who I wouldn’t recommend,
⏹️ ▶️ John say, you know, Destiny or one of some other game that I like that I just know is not going to be appealing to people who aren’t into
⏹️ ▶️ John video games because it’s just so complicated and so in-depth. So in my ongoing
⏹️ ▶️ John effort to get more people to like video games, I would encourage everybody who either has a PlayStation 4
⏹️ ▶️ John or a Mac or a PC to check out this game it does require a
⏹️ ▶️ John somewhat substantial Mac or PC I forget where the actual requirements are but some people
⏹️ ▶️ John have said on Twitter that It helps if you have a discrete GPU on the Mac. I don’t know if that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a hard and fast requirement I played it on the PlayStation 4 It’s nice to have a PlayStation 4 because
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re like look at it runs on the PlayStation 4. I have one of those. I’m fine I think it runs
⏹️ ▶️ John better on a beefy gaming PC or a Mac with a big video card, but
⏹️ ▶️ John You know from all the people responding on Twitter like you learn nobody has a Mac with a good video card anymore They all have
⏹️ ▶️ John the you know integrated graphics people don’t even have the discrete graphics in there You know in the laptops because who gets discrete graphics,
⏹️ ▶️ John but anyway Check the your requirements before you buy it’s available on Steam They do have a better
⏹️ ▶️ John refund policy than the apps the App Store, so you you might be in luck there
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s fairly inexpensive. It’s like 20 bucks or something. It’s not a long game, which you might think Oh, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not getting value for my money But I think that is a good aspect of a game like this The reason I’m recommending
⏹️ ▶️ John it is you don’t have to sink like a hundred hours into this thing It you can finish for the
⏹️ ▶️ John game and between three and four hours My first run through the game was like three and a half hours You could take
⏹️ ▶️ John much longer if you go slower or whatever, but the point is you’re not investing your whole life in this game It’s more like watching a
⏹️ ▶️ John really long movie or maybe two really long movies So think of the length as
⏹️ ▶️ John a benefit to people, I think of it like as a benefit to people who don’t play games that much because you don’t want to send them
⏹️ ▶️ John to the game that you know really after the first 25 hours it really starts to get interesting. That’s not, that’s a non-starter
⏹️ ▶️ John for people. I haven’t said anything about what the game is about. It’s called Firewatch.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s, the idea is there’s like a big house in the middle of the woods that you look around in to spot
⏹️ ▶️ John fires in the woods and report them if you’re like a forest ranger. uh that doesn’t really tell you anything
⏹️ ▶️ John about the game so what do i do do i just go to this place and look out the window it is a narrative type game
⏹️ ▶️ John where there mostly you’re in it for the characters and the stories again it is not based on mechanics
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not going to be you know uh you know traversing a tech tree or
⏹️ ▶️ John finding resources or leveling up your character or doing any of the other things you typically do in a more
⏹️ ▶️ John traditional game this is much more of a a narrative driven game. All these things that I’ve said about
⏹️ ▶️ John the game may make people who are into games, the so-called hardcore gamers,
⏹️ ▶️ John who love games like Starcraft and Destiny and Battlefront and all
⏹️ ▶️ John these other things, people who love those types of games, gamey games, the quote-unquote self-described
⏹️ ▶️ John gamers, may think this is not the game for them. And maybe it isn’t, because I like this kind of games, I like artsy-fartsy games, but if you
⏹️ ▶️ John demand the challenge of a Bloodborne or something, you are not going to find it So I but I feel like gamers
⏹️ ▶️ John already know about this game. They know all the review sites. They’ve read reviews of it They know if this is the type of game they’re gonna like I’m mostly talking
⏹️ ▶️ John to the people who would think video games That’s not for me. They’re too complicated Consider giving us a try.
⏹️ ▶️ John It could be like I said people on Twitter been asking I always ask them have you played a first-person game
⏹️ ▶️ John before do you have any sort of like Medium level competence of like oh, I know which direction
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m pointed in in a 3d world and I can walk around and look at things That’s really all that’s required of
⏹️ ▶️ John you and some minor button pressing if you pass that hurdle Give it a try
⏹️ ▶️ John And Marco and Casey should definitely play it because it’s short and they never play any games and they can both play it just fine
⏹️ ▶️ John Whether they’ll enjoy it or not Who knows because I don’t think either one of them likes artsy fartsy movies as far as that goes
⏹️ ▶️ John But for everyone else check it out. It’s really cool at minimum The game looks beautiful, even if
⏹️ ▶️ John you just launch it and look at the title screen and go damn Those guys are good at what they do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now serious question can can we pull a Merlin on this and do it in half and half or do you really need to do?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Dedicate like three or four hours to I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John think you need to do the one sitting I did it once sitting accidentally like I was I was saving this for the weekend
⏹️ ▶️ John because I Had the game for a little while it’s been out for a little while I was like, oh, I don’t want to like I don’t want to rush it on a work
⏹️ ▶️ John night or you know Be up late or whatever I’ll just say for the weekend But last night my wife wanted to do something else
⏹️ ▶️ John instead of watch TV show with me She wanted to watch someone that shows that she watches like I’ll find something to do myself
⏹️ ▶️ John I said, you know, I’ve got fire watch and people people are talking about in the internet Maybe I should just I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just started maybe I’ll just launch it See what it’s like or whatever and then I started playing in and of course I couldn’t stop
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know I just ran through the whole game one sitting you do not need to play this entire game one sitting but I would encourage You
⏹️ ▶️ John to play the game in a small number of sittings Don’t play for five minutes and then leave it the next day in five minutes
⏹️ ▶️ John and leave for the next day like because it is A narrative and because it is all about mood and character. You need to have some
⏹️ ▶️ John amount of through line like you wouldn’t watch You know Say you’re watching
⏹️ ▶️ John like a four-hour movie you wouldn’t watch in five minute increments, but if you want to do it in two sittings That’s probably okay. Actually, that’s really
⏹️ ▶️ John not okay because I have different rules for movies, but
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco this game I’m gonna say
⏹️ ▶️ John If you want to do it in multiple settings that fine if you do it all in one, it’s great and I think it’s even more powerful that way but asking
⏹️ ▶️ John someone to sit in front of their TV for three to four hours is Asking probably a
⏹️ ▶️ John bit too much of someone who’s not into games.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No fair enough. I’d like to try it I wanted to try it even before you were talking about it, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’ll see when I have the time knowing me It’ll be I don’t know a year and a half from now something like that So
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, as long as you don’t read any spoilers for it, just you’ll be fine That’s that’s also part of the reason I was afraid I
⏹️ ▶️ John was gonna get spoiled on like I better I’m gonna get going on this sooner rather than later.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Yeah, hopefully we’ll hopefully I’ll find the time to try it soon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. All right. Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week Squarespace, igloo, and mail route
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we will see you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John show is over, they didn’t even mean
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental. John didn’t do any research, Marco and
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental. And you can find the show notes
⏹️ ▶️ John at atp.fm And if you’re into Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can follow them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and T. Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John mean to. Accidental, tech podcasts
Post-show: Steam
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So here’s a question. So I am interested in playing Firewatch. I have this iMac. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also have a PS4. I generally prefer using a computer for first-person
⏹️ ▶️ Marco games, but I don’t want to install Steam.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why not? Steam is fine. Steam is least of your concerns. Steam is nice, actually. Like, I mean, this is
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of Mac users’ first experience with Steam, and it looks atrocious, and it’s filled with, like, I always wonder how companies don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John get sued for this. Like, you remember the old gumball window widgets, the red, yellow, and green? you know, when they
⏹️ ▶️ John used to look like, they used to look like glowy spheres. Well, so Steam is entirely, Steam is not a native Mac application.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know what it’s made out of, but they basically took Steam and dressed it up in the skin of a Mac application,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know, with their own graphics. So they basically copied and pasted the old glowy balls from like 10.6 or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John and put them in the corner of their windows, and then just left them there. And as the OS has evolved, 10.7, 10.8, 10.9, 10.10,
⏹️ ▶️ John the little glowy balls are still up there, and you realize that really isn’t, like nothing on the screen is a native controller.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, nope, it is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. So it doesn’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John it looks weird. It doesn’t look anything like a Mac app or whatever. But here’s what I like about Steam.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It also doesn’t work, and it installs all the startup items everywhere. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, no startup, well, yeah, it does want to run on launch, but you can turn that off.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it constantly runs, it puts itself everywhere, and it’s a terrible app,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s like, ugh.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, here’s what’s good about Steam. It lets you download games and play them, which sounds like so what, so what?
⏹️ ▶️ John But in the days before Steam, when you had to download some kind of installer to your Windows PC and get
⏹️ ▶️ John the installer to run on the same PC that other games are also installed on and
⏹️ ▶️ John they would fight each other and you’d have to fight over graphics card settings, there’s a reason Steam is so popular because it
⏹️ ▶️ John took the terrible world of gaming on the PC, not necessarily the Mac because there was very little gaming there at all,
⏹️ ▶️ John gaming on the PC and made it way less terrible. Is it still not as good
⏹️ ▶️ John as it should be? Maybe, but I love Steam and I even love Steam on the Mac, even though it has a weird updater, even
⏹️ ▶️ John though it wants to launch on login items. Like, it does silly things, you can stop it from doing them, it doesn’t come
⏹️ ▶️ John with malware. It has better, for the most part, it has better, you know, refund
⏹️ ▶️ John policy and sales and trials and all the other things that you can do and early access and
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. Better than the App Store. Not that that’s a high bar, but better than the App Store for buying games.
⏹️ ▶️ John Probably better than the App Store for selling games as well. And Cable was tweeting today how exciting it was that on the day
⏹️ ▶️ John they launched Firewatch and Steam, they had already issued two bug fix updates.
⏹️ ▶️ John Steam, once your game is accepted to the Steam store, you do updates without any
⏹️ ▶️ John interference at all. You just post them and they go up immediately.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I wouldn’t mind Apple taking some of their inspiration for the App Store from Steam.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If they wanna know where things could be improved, don’t look at the App, although the App Store apps are garbage, but don’t look at the Steam
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app, because the Steam app kind of, But to me the steam app feels like, hmm how do I put this gently,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it feels like not only a windows app that is running on your Mac, not only that which is bad enough,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it also feels like it is a windows web app designed to run
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in internet explorer 3.0 which they have embedded in the app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and is running in virtual PC emulation through Rosetta emulation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on your Mac. That’s how it feels.
⏹️ ▶️ John better than the Mac App Store app. Don’t you think it’s better than the Mac App Store app? Just in terms of the sheer number of features.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco view your data. It is not as good as the iOS App Store app, which again is not saying much, but it is way better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than the Mac App Store app because the Mac App Store app actually works worse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than Steam, and that is saying a lot. Because the Steam app just does not work doing so many stupid little things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But wow, the Mac App Store app is even worse.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, I would heartily endorse Steam as a way for Mac users to get and play
⏹️ ▶️ John games, Even though the place that you buy stuff through is a little bit weird and looks strange.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just because you will be successful. You will be able to purchase a game,
⏹️ ▶️ John it will download it for you, when you want to launch it you go to Steam and you can double click it and you’ll be able to play
⏹️ ▶️ John the game. And you will never be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco able to get rid of
⏹️ ▶️ John Steam again. You can uninstall it, fine. And that’s the best thing about Steam, it’s like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John all the great things about the App Store before the App Store. Say you’re done playing a game and you want to free up some hard drive space. Uninstall
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Wait, is the game gone? everything. Well behaved modern Steam games, save all your
⏹️ ▶️ John save stuff and stayed in the cloud and everything so you can uninstall the game to free up disk space, know
⏹️ ▶️ John that you can reinstall the game later and get all your stuff back. Again, well behaved Steam games. I have
⏹️ ▶️ John some older Steam games that don’t do that and it really annoys me, but The good ones do everything right.