169: My Fingers Are Still Moving
13 May 2016In-car purchases, podcast politics, and voice assistants ordering terrible pizzas.
Episode Description:
- Casey's iPhone battery woes
- John's drug days in Reconcilable Differences #25: Zarro Droogs
- Tesla's In-Car Purchase
- Follow-up: Mere-exposure effect
- New York Times article on Apple meeting with podcasters
- Viv & Hound
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann
- Post-show:
- New Instagram Icon
- A tour of bad food
Sponsored by:
- Fracture: Photos printed in vivid color directly on glass. Use promo code ATP10 for 10% off your first order.
- FreshBooks: Online invoicing made easy.
- Backblaze: Online backup for $5/month. Native. Unlimited. Unthrottled. Uncomplicated.
Chapters
- Hot, cold, and defective batteries
- Sponsor: Fracture (code ATP10)
- Tesla’s in-car battery purchase
- Mere-exposure effect
- Sponsor: FreshBooks
- NYT podcasting article
- Sponsor: Backblaze
- Ordering bad pizza by voice
- Ending theme
- Post-show: Instagram updates
- Post-show: A tour of bad food
Hot, cold, and defective batteries
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Don’t think we let ourselves just be idiots often
⏹️ ▶️ John We don’t I feel like that’s our core competency
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I was using my iPhone today I was sitting at I would guess 30% battery life
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am aware that you can turn on battery percentage I think that is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the mark of a lunatic because all that does is stress me out when it’s on I’d rather not know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, so I was sitting at, I would guess, about a third battery life, and I go to record
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a video of Declan. We were walking around outside, and as I’m recording the video,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not that I was framing it. I’m actively recording the video. All of a sudden, the phone turns off.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That in and of itself is unfortunately common, but that was weird. But okay, so I go to turn the phone back on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wait, wait, wait. That’s common? Well, common enough that we’re…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t want to say functional high ground, but it felt like a functional high ground sort of occurrence, right? Like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, that was weird, but I’m sure once it reboots itself, everything will be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, your Windows recency is showing. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco acceptable behavior. That is not normal.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, well, before the show, we were just talking about how you rebooting your iMac fixed everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but that’s neither here nor there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t say that was right either.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I go to start the phone back up and it tells me, no, I won’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because your battery’s dead. What? You know what I’m talking about? Like the, I will not start until you plug
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like, yeah, it’s a little like battery with the red line and black screen, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah. So I’m like, that’s weird. I was just at 30%. So I do the like, hold both
⏹️ ▶️ Casey buttons until it force restarts itself dance and it starts back up and I’m back at 30%.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, that was really weird, but I’ll roll with it. Then I go to record
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a video again same exact thing happened Except this time it didn’t want to turn itself back on.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, your battery is toast I’ve heard of this a lot of people have had this problem with many different models of phone iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John in the past that Exactly the same symptoms you get your battery down to something that’s below half
⏹️ ▶️ John but not really really low And then it’s just like nope No battery for you
⏹️ ▶️ John and the same thing like sometimes it’ll come back like oh here I am again 20% You got to take that in that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John that is a very common symptom, and I don’t know I don’t know what it is it could just be a bad battery They just can’t maintain the voltage
⏹️ ▶️ John and once it gets below a certain level the phone is just like yeah so much for that But then you bring it back, and it’s like oh, I can maintain
⏹️ ▶️ John the voltage now I’m not really I can’t you just got to bring it in don’t bother like like some people John Roderick
⏹️ ▶️ John who live with this for Like a year or more and accept it as just like this darn
⏹️ ▶️ John phone It’s like that’s like Marco said that is that’s not the way it’s supposed to work you have to bring that in tell them the
⏹️ ▶️ John symptoms I’m sure they’ve heard it a million times before because this is a common symptom.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There is one exception though that is also almost exactly the same behavior you get during a hot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or cold thermal shutdown.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, yeah, obviously temperature stuff, but I’m assuming it’s spring. It’s like it’s not too hot, not too cold. I assume you hadn’t left
⏹️ ▶️ John it in the sun on the dashboard of your car before using it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, we had just gone for a walk about a mile and a half walk. It was in my jeans pocket.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There was no I mean, it’s it’s humid out because it’s been raining for the last year. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, there was nothing environmental that should have cost it. What I’ve done is I’ve left it plugged
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in and have planned to leave it plugged in all night just to see. This is before
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we had this conversation, but I thought, well, maybe it’s just not calibrated or something like that. So I’ll just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey leave it plugged in all night. Well, I mean, I always leave it plugged in all night long, but I’ll be really diligent about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey leaving it plugged in and we’ll see if that changes it. But it sounds like I’m making a trip to the Genius Bar.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whee! Typical Windows. Blame yourself. defrag it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey first, no, you didn’t update
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your Windows update virus definitions, it’s your fault, it’s totally your fault.
⏹️ ▶️ John But aren’t you happy now? Like if I had something like this happen, especially on a device that I’ve had for a while, I’d be like, oh yes, new
⏹️ ▶️ John battery. Your battery’s getting old anyway, how many cycles has it been through? You’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna get a fresh new battery, assuming you’re still under warranty.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I mean, it’s a success, so yeah, I’m still under warranty, but what that also means is I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gotta go to the Genius Bar, I’ve gotta do the backup dance, I’ve got to convince them that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is an actual issue that isn’t my fault, etc.
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess I’m sure they’re well-versed in this exact problem and have a procedure and you’re not the first
⏹️ ▶️ John person to tell them it’ll be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say though, it really, when I first saw this doing thermal shutdown, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was on Tiff’s phone this past winter when she was trying to take videos of our kid playing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the snow in the high 20s or low 30s Fahrenheit. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the phone, after a couple seconds of shooting video, just kept shutting down on her. And we thought it was broken. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was like, Oh, we got to bring it in. And then once we came inside, the problem could never be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reproduced at room temperature. And we were like, Oh. And I looked up and I figured out that’s actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expected behavior that I guess all those videos you see in Apple commercials, like the shot on iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where people are on ski vacations, I guess they’re taking really short shots.
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to keep the phone. You can’t keep the phone in a pocket that’s essentially outdoors. your pockets are
⏹️ ▶️ John you know if you were to if your pockets get cold in other words you have to have it in a pocket that’s sort of the inside of the body heat
⏹️ ▶️ John part of it because that’s all the really it’s not as if your phone freezes solid within 20 seconds it’s already frozen when it’s in your pocket
⏹️ ▶️ John and you take it out and it just goes that you know a little extra bit so you really have to either keep it
⏹️ ▶️ John inside inside your glove or someplace close to your body so that the phone stays and more or less
⏹️ ▶️ John body or room temperature then you get a long time before it freezes solid into a brick of inert lithium-ion
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey get one of those little
⏹️ ▶️ John hand warmer thingies, you know, the little shaky packets with the
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff that they give off heat. Someone should sell a case like that. You’ve already got the big lump for the battery case. How about the
⏹️ ▶️ John heat case for the winter?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Then it would get hot thermal shut down.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it doesn’t. They don’t get that hot. Those things are,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know. So the hand warmer things are the things that people who live in ridiculous climates use, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you guys use that all the time?
⏹️ ▶️ John Skiers use it. Oh the best is I don’t know someone in the chat room Remember this before the age of the chemical
⏹️ ▶️ John packets that you would put in your pocket that you know You’d start a reaction and it would get warm not hot, you know warm like that They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not burning your hands because they’d have lawsuits. They had these things that were kind of like Metal
⏹️ ▶️ John clamshell things that had inside them essentially burning embers like not open
⏹️ ▶️ John flames But burning embers to give off heat sounds like the most dangerous thing you
⏹️ ▶️ John could possibly imagine And that was the old tech and that was much worse so the new
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff is a considerably safer and more Civilized
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it was it like was it
⏹️ ▶️ John or how did that my recollection was that was like a clamshell? I look more kind of like a compact or a
⏹️ ▶️ John snuff box or something and that Little burning ember things you get out by opening and closing it that way But you’d use
⏹️ ▶️ John it closed and just had a metal outside that would radiate the heat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weird. It sounds like a crazy contraption from your drug days, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, my drug days, This is the beginning of the ad.
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Tesla’s in-car battery purchase
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey I couldn’t remember what the 70 stood for. Anyway, for the 70, you can pay $3,250
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to unlock another five kilowatt hours. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can pay $3,250 for someone to flip an electronic switch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that, I don’t know about that, man. That
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just seems a little weird to me. On the one side, they are indeed making the car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey better, so shouldn’t you pay for that? But on the other side, they make it better so many other ways and you don’t have to pay for that. So why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is this something that costs money?
⏹️ ▶️ John The joke I made on Twitter about this was, uh, it’s like an app purchase where they ship you the app that has the code
⏹️ ▶️ John for the features that are currently locked. And by doing an app purchase, all they do is flip a bit that
⏹️ ▶️ John enables that feature. In other words, you got you just like when you get the car, the car comes with this extra battery,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, but it’s not enabled. Well, you get this app, the app comes with this extra functionality, but it’s not enabled. And that was mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John me being snarky because of course the difference is that it doesn’t cost money to manufacture
⏹️ ▶️ John the additional functionality like copying bits is essentially free whereas someone paid
⏹️ ▶️ John to manufacture and assemble the parts of your car that they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John giving to you in a disabled state so you actually are receiving like
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s that’s part of the the package it’s a physical good it costs every time they do that they whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John it is they put that extra bit of battery and that that’s a real physical item. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not just a simple copying of bits. Now, I don’t know if this makes us good from a
⏹️ ▶️ John business standpoint in terms of do you feel better or worse about Tesla as a company in light of this, maybe you feel better because like
⏹️ ▶️ John your car magically got better, but maybe you feel worse and that you understand you paid to manufacture
⏹️ ▶️ John assemble this, this stuff and then you give it to me, but you intentionally turn it off. It’s like you’re making
⏹️ ▶️ John my car worse on purpose and and then ransoming it that last little bit. Unless I’m totally misunderstanding
⏹️ ▶️ John what they’re actually doing with this bit flipping, but if it is actually a physical
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that they are paying to create and then giving to you in a shutoff state to try to ransom more
⏹️ ▶️ John money from you later, doesn’t give me a particularly good feeling about the company or the car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s definitely a weird thing. And yeah, I agree that it’s probably not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a way to win customer satisfaction. People will feel ripped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off by that. People who own the 70D and then learn that, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually you have 75 kilowatt capacity physically, but we only shipped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to 70, and then if you want, you can pay $3,000 to unlock it. I can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco totally see why the people who own those 70Ds are like, that’s kinda BS-y.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, that’s a little bit BS-y. But, you know, Tesla, it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weird company at a weird stage in its life doing weird things. And most of those things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are, I think, overall for the better. With the Model S, keep in mind that the Model
⏹️ ▶️ Marco S is sold with a pretty healthy profit margin from what I understand. And the main reason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is to basically fund the company’s further development to do things like the Model 3. Because if you look at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s included in the Model S and the starting price of whatever it is, like 70,000,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever the starting price of the Model S is, And then you look at the Model 3 with the starting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco price of $35,000. And we already know some of the things that will be included and won’t be included in that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it seems kind of crazy if you try to estimate, well, roughly how big of a battery is there in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Model 3? Roughly how big of a battery is there in the Model S? How can they possibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cut the cost of the car in half and sell the Model 3 with so much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of what’s also in the Model S? And the answer is that their costs aren’t being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cut in half, just the Model S has a nice fat profit margin and the Model 3 won’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So what you’re paying for with the Model S today is not just like cost of the components plus 20%.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, you’re paying a premium for it because it is a brand new product. You’re paying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of like the early adopter premium on it. It has high profits now. In the long run,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it will have lower profit margins in all likelihood because competition will come in and push some of these prices down. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, as things mature, then and the cost will also go down. But the role of the Model S is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically to generate lots of profit for Tesla to make the Model 3. So from that perspective,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can see why they do things like this. Because you know that that additional battery that you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hauling around, the additional five kilowatt hour battery did not cost Tesla $3,000 to put in there.
⏹️ ▶️ John even if it did, you already paid for it. Like they sold you a car with that battery in it for
⏹️ ▶️ John the price that you paid, you know what I mean? Like that was like, someone in the chat room is saying It’s the type of thing where
⏹️ ▶️ John they stop manufacturing the 70 kilowatt, but you bought a 70 kilowatt. So like, well, we don’t have any more 70 kilowatts,
⏹️ ▶️ John but we’ll give you a 75. But flip the switch so that when you get it, it looks like the 70 that you
⏹️ ▶️ John ordered. Like that was that was the arrangement. You order the 70 comes with 70 kilowatts. We give you a car that comes
⏹️ ▶️ John with 70 kilowatts. Everyone should be happy. But again, from a from a feel good about the company
⏹️ ▶️ John perspective, it should they should do what Apple does in those cases where like if you have a really old Mac and something goes wrong with it, and you’re still
⏹️ ▶️ John within warranty or whatever, or Apple just feels bad they’re like well we can’t we can’t fix this for
⏹️ ▶️ John you we can’t replace the part because we don’t make that part anymore and we can’t give you a new like you
⏹️ ▶️ John know laptop of this kind because we don’t even make that laptop but here you go here’s the current model of that laptop that
⏹️ ▶️ John happens all the time at apple and every time it happens uh it’s like a you know
⏹️ ▶️ John a miracle to the people who get it like you’re giving me not only are you giving me a new laptop you’re giving me a new better
⏹️ ▶️ John laptop because you don’t make my old crappy one anymore and you’re not charging me any money for it because it’s just like this
⏹️ ▶️ John this laptop is a total write-off, it’s having too many hardware failures, we can’t get a part. That makes people love Apple. So
⏹️ ▶️ John if Tesla, someone in the chat room said it would make the people feel bad who bought a 70D and just got a 70D, if you bought a
⏹️ ▶️ John 70D after they stopped manufacturing them and they gave you a 75, they’re like, yeah, I know you ordered a 70, but
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s a 75. You would love Tesla. You’d be like, this is awesome. And would 70D people be mad? No, because they’ve had their car
⏹️ ▶️ John for a year or whatever. Well, they’d be mad,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it wouldn’t be for legitimate reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ John But do other Mac users get mad like, hey, that’s no fair. I had to pay for that computer
⏹️ ▶️ John new, you bought an old crappy computer and it broke and you got the new one for free. Anyone who begrudges people
⏹️ ▶️ John their their good fortune involving you know the time they chose to purchase or the time their thing broke.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just ridiculous. So anyway, I don’t think this is as you noted, Margo, like
⏹️ ▶️ John this, this is a car that you know, it costs a lot of money has a big margin, the people who are buying it
⏹️ ▶️ John are probably not caring that much about $3,000 here or there because this is a very expensive car. So
⏹️ ▶️ John in the grand scheme of things, maybe it doesn’t hurt them. But they’ve sort of, they’ve missed an opportunity
⏹️ ▶️ John to become even more beloved. Using you know, the Apple style things of just like, you know, surprise and
⏹️ ▶️ John delight or whatever, not just in your application, but also in your policies is one of the reason people like the genius bar,
⏹️ ▶️ John I know people have bad experience with it as well. But to go there, have a person who, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, will take care of your needs. And if there’s any sort of issue to have the people go that that’s like kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John a luxury goods experience where if you pay, if you really, really massively overpay for something,
⏹️ ▶️ John the one good thing is if you have any problem with it, like, return it any time or we’ll give a new one or we’ll clean it
⏹️ ▶️ John up for you for free or whatever. Even though you don’t massively overpay for Apple stuff, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John just a little bit overpay, when you go in with your broken computer and they can’t replace it because it’s too old and they give you
⏹️ ▶️ John a brand new model, that’s just awesome. That’s like you are loyal for at least another three years before you get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And also, keeping in mind also, even though all the hype right now is about the Model 3
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the next two years, possibly more, the Model S is still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the only Tesla you can buy, or the X, I guess, but nobody wants that one. Sorry, X people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The entry price, whatever they can make the cheapest Model S, that is the entry price for Tesla
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the next X years, two, three, whatever it ends up being before anybody can just go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco order a Model 3 and have it delivered in six weeks or whatever. The lower
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they can make that price the more people they can get into being Tesla customers at all. They also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to preserve those profit margins on the higher specced models, because that’s funding the rest of the company.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s important for them to somehow get the price down enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so they can get a few more people in, basically without cannibalizing their higher end sales. So they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to do tricks like this, where it’s like, well, if we sold it just as a 75
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before. So it was like 75 for that one or 85 for the big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one up. That was too small of a difference. We would lose too many sales. Maybe they figured so they made that one a 70, even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco though it technically had 75 in there or something like that. And then when they raised the other one from 85
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to 90, then they raised the other one from 70 to 75 because now you’re just keeping the same difference.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s all sorts of reasons why they could have done this that make total sense and that even though
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they might annoy some of the customers who don’t think things should work that way, It might be better than the alternative
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the company as a whole.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This isn’t unprecedented either. When I first heard about the story a few days back, my first thought was, no,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s a little gross. But as I was thinking about it while you guys were talking,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I paid almost $1,000 for a Cobb Access Port, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a thing. I refer to it as a chip colloquially, but really it’s just a software
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reprogrammer that you plug into the OBD2
⏹️ ▶️ Casey port and it will reflash the computer and give you a little bit more power and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it makes the car a little bit faster. And then I was thinking to myself, well, but that’s a little bit different because that’s third
⏹️ ▶️ Casey party. And so, yeah, it makes sense that a third party is going to want to sell you something to make your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey car better. But then I got thinking about it a little more and it occurred to me, BMW sells what they call the performance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey power kit, which to my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John understanding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does have a little bit of hardware involved, but the majority
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the changes are simply a reflash, just like my Cobb does. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is a first party thing. And again, it’s not entirely apples to apples because there is a little bit of hardware,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it’s a first party thing that I’m looking on BMW’s website right now and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s $2,107. So this is not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that different in my eyes than what BMW is already doing and presumably other manufacturers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wonder, can you pirate a battery?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John You could pirate the bit flipping. But no, in the BMW case, maybe part of the money that you’re paying is to
⏹️ ▶️ John offset increased warranty repairs for your engine that is operating slightly outside the intended
⏹️ ▶️ John boundaries of whatever, depending on what it’s changing about the engine.
⏹️ ▶️ John It could be impacting reliability or other issues like that. So
⏹️ ▶️ John the price is basically everyone pays this price as a blanket insurance policy for the slightly increased odds that you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to have your valve train blow up or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It could be, but I mean, I would hope and assume that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these engines are built in such a way that their tolerances give them enough leeway that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a first party solution would not bump up against any of that. Now, my solution might.
⏹️ ▶️ John But there’s a reason they sell them where they sell. They sell the they they try it with a car manufacturer trying to do or sell their engines
⏹️ ▶️ John tuned in a way that balances performance with reliability
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And economy.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, right. So there’s a whole bunch of things in the mix there and they’re going
⏹️ ▶️ John for something that makes, the worst thing you want to happen is you put these cars
⏹️ ▶️ John out there with a particular balance of things and it turns out that all of them end up coming back in like six years
⏹️ ▶️ John with something really expensive wrong with the engine. Like you don’t want that to happen. But if people say, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John I know you can squeeze more horsepower out of this thing if only you increase the boost on the turbos, or
⏹️ ▶️ John change the timing, or whatever you want to do on the thing. And it might have
⏹️ ▶️ John a slight detrimental impact on reliability. But if people are willing to give us some money, we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John do that. And then it gets like a big pool to pay for the one guy out of every 100 whose engine
⏹️ ▶️ John dies a premature death due to this tuning thing. But everyone has the same engine. It’s not as if there’s part
⏹️ ▶️ John of your engine that you’re not being allowed to use. It’s more like, I think of it as like buying
⏹️ ▶️ John AppleCare Plus or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough. I was gonna say it’s like 80 minute CDRs versus the 74 minute standard, but as you kept going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it ended up being nothing like that.
Mere-exposure effect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Adam Bushman writes in to say, getting to love something like ad bumpers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by just by being exposed to it frequently, that’s called the, is that Mary or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Miri exposure effect? I’m surely mispronouncing that, but M-E-R-E exposure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, Casey, you are the chief pronouncer on the show. Oh, great. Chief summarizer and chief pronouncer.
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought it was like merely by being exposed and it’s like the worst name effect ever, the mere exposure
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco exposed. Anyway, we’ll link
⏹️ ▶️ John the Wikipedia article, which obviously none of us actually read. But you can read it. Indeed,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you all can do our homework for us. That’s how the show works. It’s accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you know, that’s one of the jobs of Wikipedia is every phenomenon that you think has a name probably
⏹️ ▶️ John does. That’s probably a phenomenon.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey The idea that it
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco turns out there’s a name for it already.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that phenomenon? I bet nobody knows except Merlin I guarantee you he knows.
⏹️ ▶️ John he just looks it up on Wikipedia like everyone else. This is the beginning of the
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey So the New York Times on the 7th,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which was this past Saturday as we record, released an article, Podcast Surge,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but Producers Fear Apple Isn’t Listening. And this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey article, it some problems. The quick summary
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from your summarizer in chief is that Apple supposedly had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a handful of big name podcasters into their campus
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to talk to Apple about what they want from Apple to make their jobs easier.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the way this New York Times article was written was basically we want all the data
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about all the things. And Apple may or may may not be giving that to us, and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mildly alarming. This has created quite obviously quite a hubbub
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in our little circle because most of the things that the New York Times article is talking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about, about big data, about getting access to who listened to what when, and when I say who, I mean
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how old is this person, what gender are they, where do they live, how much do they make, what do they like, what do they not like, etc. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when they listen, do they listen to the whole thing, do they only listen to a part of it, do they listen to the beginning and skip the middle, do they skip the ads, do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they not skip the ads? They like the ads, they not like the ads. Tell us everything. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for those of us who care about our listeners, we don’t want that. We don’t need that. We
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t want that. And we hope we never get in the position that we do need that. And so this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey article had a lot of problems and Marco, you wrote a really nice post about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t really know what to say that hasn’t already been said in either Marco’s post or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Federico’s, but But I’m sure there’s something to be said, so Marco, take it away.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, the good thing is all the other stuff that had to be said, Jason and Mike said on Upgrade this week. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I suggest you go listen to that instead. But if you really if you want to stick around here as well, or listen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to us as well, there’s a few parts here. I mean, so you mentioned the data gathering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part that the leading podcaster is allegedly wanted. By the way, this whole article is stating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bunch of things as fact. Like this is definitely how Apple does things now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This meeting definitely happened, it definitely happened like this with these people in it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so far I have not heard any corroboration to support
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of these facts, like the specifics about the meeting. Additionally, I know firsthand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that many of the things in the article stated as fact or implied as fact are wrong or misleading
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with how the system works, or Apple’s role in it, or technical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco details of how it works. So, take this article with a giant pile of salt. Honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say don’t even bother reading it. If you did read it, it reads more like something that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe somebody on Forbes would have written to be like an anti-Apple clickbait piece.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because it attributes a lot of intent and malice to Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for what they’ve been holding back on all these years and stuff like that, that is just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco misleading at best and in some cases just outright wrong, it needs to be taken with a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of salt. So that being said, I think you can look at the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco medium here, the podcasting medium, the way it has worked so far,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which basically works like RSS readers that happen to play audio files, that’s basically it. Like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sites publish RSS feeds with MP3s or AACs and the vast majority are MP3s, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m just gonna say that from now on. And clients are basically RSS readers and they fetch those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco RSS feeds for everything you subscribe to and when a new episode is present they download the mp3 file
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s embedded the link of which is embedded in the feed uh… then they show it to you as an episode when it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco playing it’s simply playing an mp3 it is not like loading pages
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the site of the of the uh… podcast provider or anything like that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uh… it is not executing javascript on their behalf it is not sending them tracking information
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they do get the hit on their server for when you fetch that MP3.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So podcasters already have a certain amount of data about their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco listeners. And so the idea that Apple needs to step in and provide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco data so that people can have any idea what size their audience is, it’s a little exaggerated because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we already know how big our audience is. It’s a little bit approximated, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think history shows with a lot of this data science in massive quotes. My fingers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are just constantly moving during this whole thing. Constant air quotes, just up and down. All
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the web data stuff is also imprecise, so it’s also very easily faked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and defrauded all the time and everything. So all the problems that apply to what we have now also apply
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to proper, my fingers are still moving, big data kind of analytics
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and creepy tracking stuff. Anyway, so we already know how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big the audience is to a rough degree, where they are to a rough degree,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and how many of them download each show. We don’t need that level of data integration
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where you go much beyond this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we might in the future in order to get high ad rates. But right now we don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The reason the web had, well, I quote, had to, my fingers are still moving,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had to do all this creepy data stuff is because web ad rates just plummeted.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, they were never great to begin with, and over the years since the web has been a thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they’ve just basically always gone down. Because general web display ads, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ads you’d see on the side of a news site or increasingly on top of the news site you’re trying to read,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco floating in, flying around the news site, in the background of the news site, in every sidebar, above and below the content,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco posing as content, posing as, oh, these top news stories, these weird new tricks the new scientists wanted you to learn about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Britney Spears like the reason it keeps getting so bad on the web is that nobody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looks at web ads nobody see it’s not that people see them and ignore them but people don’t even see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them even if you don’t have an ad blocker installed you you like visually don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see them like you like you don’t perceive them you you skip over them the whole banner blindness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing is real there’s very little that that web publishers can really do to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of money on those things. And so they’ve had to do all this crazy tracking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff just to try to make it slightly more targeted, to raise the rates slightly more,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then of course there’s the rise of all these programmatic ad exchanges, which makes everything even worse and even more horrible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and even more creepily tracked, but that’s a long side that we don’t need to get any more into.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Summary version, basically, The web sucks for ads. Like it is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible place to advertise. It is a terrible place to publish advertisements, to try to make money from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. Additionally, as I mentioned before, all the massive fraud that goes on, like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco such a mess. It is so, it’s just bad for everybody because the medium just doesn’t work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that well for display. It just doesn’t work very well, simple as that. And as everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gets more and more cutthroat and advanced technically and algorithmically generated and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s just getting worse and worse and worse and it’s there’s kind of no end in sight there the web the web
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a place to make money through advertising is is really a pretty pretty bad place to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so podcasts on the other hand because these are just mp3 files it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an audio stream there’s basically nothing you can really do to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco advertise in an audio stream except just insert a an ad that somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is speaking into the stream. And because of lots of reasons, there’s not a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of tracking you can do to say like, you know, did people hear that ad? With a few exceptions, but for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most part, nobody, you can’t really track, did people hear this? Did people listen this far in the show?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, you pretty much can’t do it, because like, what if somebody’s playing it on their iPod that doesn’t even have an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco internet connection? You know, like, you don’t know that. They’re still playing the file they downloaded from you, and there’s no way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for that to be reported to you. What if they’re playing it in some web embed or Twitter embed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where they can see the mp3 file but they’re not loading
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a whole app? They’re not loading your whole webpage or something. They’re still listening.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And by the raw metric of download counts, they will be counted.
⏹️ ▶️ John all you can really get. What if the soothing sound of our voice put them to sleep and as they fall asleep, five
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly, yeah. Should we get paid for those? There’s no way to tell whether somebody has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco listened to a certain point, basically, unless you control the app. And we’ll get to that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So anyway, this to me is like this beautiful system because the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco web, I love the web, and it makes me so sad to see what the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco web has become over the last five years or so, as everything has just gotten so much more cutthroat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and driven by automated ad tech and algorithmic content generation. It’s just, as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I said, it’s just a mess and as a fan of both the web as a medium and also the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco openness of blogging and RSS feeds and everything, which I still use by the way, I still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use an RSS reader, it’s not dead, that world is losing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to Facebook and Twitter and Apple and these kind of closed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ecosystems. That makes me very sad. Podcasting is still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco run that way. The question basically, the debate here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is whether podcasting can still be run that way for a longer time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whether this you know the article kept saying like it’s it has outgrown its roots. Has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it? Like does podcasting really need to add all this crap to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let people’s business grow? Because podcasting is working just fine the way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is. So if you talk about like how much you make per listener or per
⏹️ ▶️ Marco per user. Ad people call this the CPM, the cost per thousand impressions,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco however you measure that. Thanks, France, by the way, for the M. So the web,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think you’re lucky to get—I mean, what’s a good web CPM today? Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few dollars, maybe, at most? I mean, and with podcasting, the numbers are lower. The listener numbers are lower.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, you know, a good website can get millions of hits a month.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The top podcasts, things like This American Life, really big podcasts, might get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a million downloads a month or something in that ballpark. I don’t know. I don’t have recent numbers on that, but that’s what I heard a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco year or two ago or something like that. A million downloads a month for a podcast would put you in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the top handful of podcasts that exist in the world, whereas a million hits to a web page is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lower to mid-level traffic these days. You can get way more than that if you’re a big site. but the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcast can command something like a $20 to $60
⏹️ ▶️ Marco CPM instead of what the web is getting like, you know, a dollar or two. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcast advertising is just so much more effective. It’s not even close. It is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way more effective. And part of that’s because you have, you know, people like us, like the hosts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reading the ads and that makes you pay attention more. A big part of it is you’re actually hearing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them as opposed to the web where you just do not even see the ads at all. And not because of ad blockers, because you actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just ignore them. Podcast ads are so much more effective just because of the medium, because of how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s heard, where it’s heard, who is saying it, what they’re saying, the relationship people have, the dedication
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have, where and how they’re listening, as opposed to like on the web, you’re kind of just like skimming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco constantly and you kind of get through as fast as you can. A podcast, you’re probably listening to while doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something else, whether it’s working, driving, whatever the case, you’re less physically engaged
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the activity so you’re less likely I think to skip the ad. It’s just such a different environment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it just happens to work way better for ads. So for some reason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this handful of big podcasters allegedly met with some people at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple allegedly trying to get them to say, well we want to basically do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like web levels of data tracking and we want Apple to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put that in their app because that’s the only way we can have we can really have it done is to put these things in apps. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco implication there is because they want their business models to be more like the web
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that just seems insane to me because the web is in such shambles and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have it great over here in podcast land. They don’t know how lucky they are.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The web does these data things because it has to for most sites to get anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all. Not because that is the inevitable way forward to quote
⏹️ ▶️ Marco grow your business. Podcasting is not new. It is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not even, I wouldn’t even say it’s booming. I think it’s growing steadily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same way it has for 10 years. And if you look at like podcast growth,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not a hockey stick curve. It’s basically a line. And everyone’s, everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who thinks it’s new, it’s just like, it’s like the tip of the iceberg thing, like where it finally poked out of the ocean, where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like they think, oh my god, this is here all of a sudden, and in reality, like, no, it’s been growing the entire time under the ocean, you just didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see it. There’s basically the debate over whether
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcasting needs to change in order to enable, quote, growth,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or to mature, or something. And what angered me so much about this article, in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco addition to all the things that it got, factually wrong or misleading. It basically stated as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco given, as fact, that podcasting was outgrowing its roots and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needed to change the way it operates to be more like the web.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I very strongly disagree with that. I’m not saying that podcasting should never change,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I am saying I don’t think it needs to change in this way right now and possibly ever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because this is a different medium. It It works very differently. And the idea that a few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people, most of whom come from the web and ad tech worlds, think that podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should work more like the web. First of all, I find that baffling because as I said, the web sucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And second of all, I think that is a bad argument. It doesn’t follow. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can’t make that argument without support that’s showing that somehow podcasting is really suffering without
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this and is declining and needs this to survive. And I’m seeing no evidence of that at all. In fact, I’m seeing the opposite.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m seeing podcasting is growing and is doing very well. Going to the Apple side, what could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple do? Apple is a directory, they’re the biggest directory,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they have this big editorial section where they can promote shows, which they do. And as far as I know, they’re the only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who invest a lot of human effort to actually make editorial podcast picks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in lots of different categories every week. And around the world, I think. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re already doing a lot on the editorial side. I don’t know what else they could do on the editorial side. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think they’re already doing way more than anybody could be expected to do,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco given that they’re making so little money off of podcasting. I think they’re doing a very good job. Apple, I think editorially,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they’re set. We should be thankful they’re doing as much as they do. And then you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Apple Player. And this is kind of where, so the Apple Podcast Player is the most popular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcast playing app, the one built into iOS. I don’t know how well iTunes does anymore on the desktop. I think it’s pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco small, probably. But the one on iOS that comes with iOS called Podcasts from Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a purple icon, that is the most popular podcast player in the world. It has something like 60% or 70% of podcast downloads,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco according to most people. And so they’re basically pushing Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to say, the stats we get now are not enough. We want you to do two things for us. We want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you to A, give us as much data as you can about the people. So tell us how many of these downloads
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into your app actually get listened to, where do they listen, where do they stop playing each episode, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly what time stamp down to the second, so we can optimize our content and tweak our storytelling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco abilities. And then our advertisers can ask how many people actually heard our entire ads, and they can then, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guess, not pay us. Like, I get a lot of these things don’t make sense
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once you think them through. I don’t know why podcasters would be asking for some of these things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, so that’s part one, is that they want Apple to add all this creepy data
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tracking to their player app and then to report it to the podcaster in some way. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once again, I think Jason Snell and Mike Hurley on Upgrade this past week did a very, very good job of covering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly what the kind of implications of this would be and how just the scale of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco operation this would entail to even do this if they wanted to, and how useful the data would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually be, considering that it isn’t all listeners.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco depending on the show somewhere between like probably 20 and 70 percent of the listeners
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so you know that’s and it might not be a representative sample so it’s you know it the quality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the data they would get would itself be in question even if they got it and in the process of them getting it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the the systems involved the implementation of that would be a huge mess not to mention
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the ethical and quality issues it would then create the incentives it create with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcast creation with with these pro podcasters to like structure their shows differently so that they would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco boost these numbers and in these little tiny ways that would kind of sacrifice quality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or overall flow but how it would give us five percent more this month you know because you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can say now that would never happen but look at the web it happens it always happens so you know let’s not kid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ourselves like that would definitely happen so you have this main this massive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problematic request of the more data. Then you also have the request from the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcasters that Apple enable other business models. And what they basically mean is enable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a way for people to pay for our shows. You know there’s already ways to pay for podcasts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Lots of podcasts do. I know this because Overcast doesn’t support their feeds and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hear from all their fans every day. There’s already ways
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do things like paid feeds, members-only feeds, whether it’s password-protected or or it’s hidden
⏹️ ▶️ Marco URLs, I do support those. Thanks Jason, I do support those. Please subscribe to Six Colors.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The password stuff I don’t support, and a lot of them, they’ll be like a members only area or paid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcasts that aren’t even distributed as podcast files, they’re in a feed. You sign up with their website and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then you can download the raw audio files. There are lots of ways to do this. The biggest way to do this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco though, Apple made in 2008, it’s called the App Store. This is what most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people do. If they want to have a paid podcast, they release their own app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to play their podcast, which gives them all of the capabilities
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the podcasters are asking Apple for, allegedly. That already exists. It’s existed for eight years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s called the App Store. You can make your app. You can charge whatever you want for the app. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can have in-app purchase in the app. You can control the entire player experience and do all the creepy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco data tracking you want. That’s already there. Many podcasts have their own apps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is not a new thing. And it works okay. I don’t know anybody who makes a ton
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of their listenership or money that way, but they make some, it’s fine. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know what? If that’s the kind of system you want, it already exists. And take it from a developer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guarantee you that whatever Apple would do with the podcast app store, or with the podcast store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that everyone’s apparently asking for, would be worse. That would be a worse system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than just making your own app. You don’t want that. Trust me, either way, Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco taking 30%. Let’s be honest here. I mean, we know that. They’re taking at least 30% either way. At
⏹️ ▶️ Marco least in the app store, it’s only 30%. If they make their own podcast store, that gives them the opportunity to set a new rate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It might be higher now that Apple’s a services company. So, believe me, you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John want that. But don’t you understand why they don’t want to make their own app? Isn’t it obvious
⏹️ ▶️ John the fragmentation problem of that? If everyone has their own app, like the advancement of the app store
⏹️ ▶️ John is like the one place you go to get all the software instead of having to go to individual developers’ websites that have discoverability
⏹️ ▶️ John problems and making people aware and getting the fatigue. Kind of like we have on Apple TV now, like
⏹️ ▶️ John the fatigue of like, if I wanna list this podcast, I gotta do this app, and I wanna do that podcast, I gotta do that
⏹️ ▶️ John app. Kind of like when books were individual apps back when Apple was allowing that, where you could get one book as an individual
⏹️ ▶️ John app. It’s just a lot of fragmentation, and if everybody did that, really hard to get
⏹️ ▶️ John attention from anybody. And like the sort of level playing field that you were talking about before is an advantage
⏹️ ▶️ John of saying, look, Apple, you just implement this stuff as sort of the baseline within the only podcast
⏹️ ▶️ John player app that matters the built in Apple one as far as these people are concerned, allegedly in this, in this article
⏹️ ▶️ John here, then we wouldn’t have to fight for the attention to get our app downloaded. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it really is a barrier to people like people don’t want to have to download a new app for it’s like having to download
⏹️ ▶️ John a new app for every movie you want to see it’s a rather just go to a store and be able to rent or buy the movie and you don’t have to go to 17 different
⏹️ ▶️ John stores and there are still multiple stores but if it was one per podcast that’s bad so
⏹️ ▶️ John I kind of what I’m trying to do reading this article is put myself into perhaps not the headspace
⏹️ ▶️ John of the theoretical people who talk to Apple but the headspace of the author
⏹️ ▶️ John of this article because a lot of things in this article are not quotes are not and are not like
⏹️ ▶️ John sentiments attributed to people who supposedly met with Apple, but rather just stated in
⏹️ ▶️ John what looks like the author’s voice, presumably informed by the I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know by by accounts of the meeting. And I’m trying to try to figure out like,
⏹️ ▶️ John why is it that the author or the people that the author spoke to believe
⏹️ ▶️ John these things about podcasting like what is I know what,
⏹️ ▶️ John what are we missing? Because you I think you’ve outlined it pretty well, like from our perspective doesn’t make any sense, but our perspective isn’t the
⏹️ ▶️ John only perspective. And I think the best thing I’ve come up with is that
⏹️ ▶️ John if you want to, if you want to reach a bigger audience,
⏹️ ▶️ John like podcasts are the size of they are. Serial is way bigger than lots of podcasts. This American life is way
⏹️ ▶️ John bigger, but that kind of barely counts because it built its audience on the radio and not as a podcast, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John you want to go really big with that big audience means
⏹️ ▶️ John I suppose high production values it costs more to make shows that good to battering you know if that’s true but like
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m trying again I’m trying to get in their head and they’re thinking like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s loosely correlated high production values can result in better shows they sometimes do result in better shows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they they don’t always and they aren’t always required
⏹️ ▶️ John right but anyway they’re going for if you were going for a much bigger audience part of that would also be going for
⏹️ ▶️ John bigger advertisers, advertisers who are used to who would
⏹️ ▶️ John not bother advertising on the numbers the most podcasts put up.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you want big advertisers, big advertisers, having been conditioned by all
⏹️ ▶️ John the crap on the web that you just talked about, want this information that is not available from podcasts.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s kind of like we want to go really big. We want to go mass market. By the way, when you go mass market,
⏹️ ▶️ John your CPMs go down. Because mass market, like we’re gonna make a show for everybody, everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John is not as valuable as people who are super duper into model trains. Because if you have a podcast,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, for people who are super duper into model trains, model train manufacturers will pay a lot for that,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Whereas if you’re gonna have our podcast is listened to by everyone, everyone’s not a
⏹️ ▶️ John great demo. Or like, our podcast is listened to by, you know, like, you really, the
⏹️ ▶️ John reason podcasts get such high CPMs And the reason I think a lot of tech podcasts get high CPMs is
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s an it’s a narrow self selecting audience based on the topic. And those audiences
⏹️ ▶️ John can be much more valuable than the mass audiences. So anyway, if you want to make podcasts way bigger,
⏹️ ▶️ John and sell to a mass audience, and your CPM goes down, you really need the tools that will let you get
⏹️ ▶️ John Coca Cola to put an advertisement on your thing or you know, talk to Procter and Gamble or whatever, like these
⏹️ ▶️ John really big things that you know, buy Super Bowl ads and are
⏹️ ▶️ John huge ad budgets. And I think that’s kind of the chicken egg, the thing they’re trying to go it’s like podcasters,
⏹️ ▶️ John it looks like it’s like a wasted medium from the perspective of these, these people who are going to want to go for a big
⏹️ ▶️ John audience, like I bet many more people would go for any or think about radio like you’d have,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, every kind of mass advertiser would be on radio because like, oh, this reaches everybody. But the
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody model is so different than the current podcasting model, I think what they want to happen is, please make
⏹️ ▶️ John a world where Coca Cola will advertise. And here are the ingredients we see that will
⏹️ ▶️ John hook up all the pieces in this chain so that we will have a podcast that plays to 50 million people, and that
⏹️ ▶️ John really big companies pay for ads at a tremendous rate, and a tremendously low CPM,
⏹️ ▶️ John but we’ll make it up in volume. And now we are a big player and we will just squish all the other shows and it’ll make
⏹️ ▶️ John cereal look like a little silly NPR fluke. I don’t even know if cereal was NPR, sorry PRI, if that’s you
⏹️ ▶️ John or whoever the hell it is. Um, and that, and like, and that’s so outside
⏹️ ▶️ John our understanding of podcasts and our little tech circle and our nerdy podcasts and stuff like that. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t necessarily think that that can’t and shouldn’t exist.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, but like as a goal, I kind of see it as, well, it’s something
⏹️ ▶️ John to that, like, imagine if you have the podcast that everybody listened to, serially, it seems like it was most people,
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, like it’s just big compared to other podcasts. It’s not as if someone came out with the
⏹️ ▶️ John equivalent of, you know, Star Wars 1977, like the movie that everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John in a generation saw. There is no podcast equivalent to that yet. And they could be going for it. And I think that’s an
⏹️ ▶️ John interesting goal and interesting thing to aspire to. But the way the things they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John asking for, A, are informed by the web. And like you said, like, that’s pretty stupid. And B, like the whole
⏹️ ▶️ John what they’re asking Apple to do. I don’t understand why, maybe they haven’t been burned enough by this, but asking
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple to, hey, build in these analytics into your app and make, you know, and subscriptions and stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And of course, there are so many things that only Apple can do because their platform level things are have to do with the app store.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s only one way to get software on your things. It’s through the app store. Again, focusing on iOS, but I’m sure
⏹️ ▶️ John they make the same pitch to Google of all the Google’s got its own Google play thing going on over there. But were
⏹️ ▶️ John they successful in lobbying Apple for the things they supposedly wants? They will just, you know, in
⏹️ ▶️ John their wildest dreams, what they will have successfully done is created YouTube, which is terrible. You can never
⏹️ ▶️ John run a situation where the only reasonable way to make money with video
⏹️ ▶️ John on the web is through YouTube and YouTube controls everything. Or music. Yeah, YouTube controls everything
⏹️ ▶️ John about it and there’s no competition and they can change the terms at any time and what the hell are you going to do because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s YouTube. Like, why would you ask for that? Why would you, you are, you know, again, to Apple’s credit
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, or to Apple’s apathy or whatever, like, they’re probably not going to do any of this stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if they did, it would be terrible for everyone involved, both the big guys, because they would just be
⏹️ ▶️ John putting themselves under the thumb of Apple. And for the small people who were like, No, we don’t want that we like to be free and
⏹️ ▶️ John open or whatever, like, so it’s a terrible doomsday scenario if they got what they wanted, because
⏹️ ▶️ John it would it would just make it dysfunctional, all the ways you talked about for the web and the data and the ever decreasing
⏹️ ▶️ John CPMs and the perverse incentives and the fraud and everything like that. And you would be shoveling
⏹️ ▶️ John all the power in the market to this one gatekeeper just because you didn’t write want to write your own app and because you couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John abide to have a simple open system with RSS feeds because it just it wouldn’t didn’t give you the analytics you want.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like it’s it’s such a terrible thing to want. Like again, I kind of see where they’re coming from.
⏹️ ▶️ John And like we want the big breakout hit. And we need this data and we need these tools. But I feel like you should work that
⏹️ ▶️ John out. hard for me to talk about this to even accepting the premise that these things happen in the article where
⏹️ ▶️ John they said they did, but because
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco they didn’t pretend that it did.
⏹️ ▶️ John You should be talking to Coca Cola about how they should be okay with,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, funding this podcast full of celebrities that you think millions and millions of people are going to listen to without the
⏹️ ▶️ John obsessive data that they think they should technically be able to get. She’s like Coca Cola picture back
⏹️ ▶️ John to the olden days when people filled out little paper forms after they watch television shows and you and you bought
⏹️ ▶️ John you bought advertisement based on that and now we’re going to tell you a precise number of downloads and you won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do it because it’s just not enough data and you need to know the exact demos and again where they live and what their income is and what things they last clicked
⏹️ ▶️ John on and what their last boss on amazon what cookie has been tracking them through their facebook clicks for
⏹️ ▶️ John the last oh it’s just i i it’s it’s a somewhat
⏹️ ▶️ John admirable goal to try to make like a podcast breakout hit but i think
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the supposed demands of these people in this article
⏹️ ▶️ John are totally the wrong way to go about it. And one tiny passage that I highlighted here just to finish
⏹️ ▶️ John up, like, makes me just question everything about this. This is again, not a quote and not attributed
⏹️ ▶️ John to anything, but it’s, uh, the article says promotion within iTunes, which is one of the only reliable
⏹️ ▶️ John ways to build an audience, particularly for a new show is decidedly decided by a small team, blah, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ John within iTunes is not not only not one of the
⏹️ ▶️ John only reliable ways to build an audience but probably one of the worst ways to build an
⏹️ ▶️ John audience like if you could guarantee that you would have
⏹️ ▶️ John be promoted as the number one podcast on iTunes for an entire year would that build an
⏹️ ▶️ John audience versus say if you made a podcast that promised
⏹️ ▶️ John to slowly lay out the plot for Star Wars episode 8 the The episode 8, entirely
⏹️ ▶️ John unpromoted on iTunes podcast, would crush your podcast. It’s the only reliable way
⏹️ ▶️ John to build an audience by making things that people like. Leveraging an existing
⏹️ ▶️ John audience is probably the best way to build an audience, but the only reliable way? I can’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John of a single person who found their favorite podcast because it was promoted on iTunes. I’m sure they’re out there and I’m sure
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ll send us things, but it’s just such a warped view of the world of podcast listening.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not how people discovered Serial. did not discover serial because it was promoted on iTunes. It was
⏹️ ▶️ John promoted on iTunes because people discovered serial. Like it’s, you know, like there is a place for editorial
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, but if you got it in your head that iTunes is already this this kingmaker gatekeeper,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, I don’t know, you’re, you’re abdicating all of your responsibility to build your own
⏹️ ▶️ John audience by having a good show and doing your own marketing and stuff like that. Like again, editorial is important and they
⏹️ ▶️ John do promote shows and it’s important like, you know, for shows to come out of obscurity, that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple can put them in new and noteworthy, and whatever weird systems they’re having. It’s a fun
⏹️ ▶️ John little thing, but really, to frame it as the only reliable way to build an audience,
⏹️ ▶️ John particularly for a new show, that just does not match with my understanding
⏹️ ▶️ John of the podcast world at all, especially when it comes to mass market shows. Because the mass
⏹️ ▶️ John market is not trolling the iTunes podcast directory. They don’t even know know what podcasts are. They only know because they
⏹️ ▶️ John heard about Serial and then they figured out what podcasts are.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the problem. By treating Apple as the whole world,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as you very well said, you’re not only trying to make them the only platform that matters at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all and trying to increase their share, but you’re also investing in a sinking ship because that 60%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco market share that they most likely have among listening, that goes down every year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Believe me, I’ve been watching. That’s decreasing over time as more podcast players
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sprout up on iOS and as more people finally get around to listening on Android. Android
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so far has been very underrepresented in podcast stats according to most big hosts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know Libsyn used to announce numbers every so often. It used to be something like 8 to 1 in favor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of iOS for every show that they host, which is a lot of shows. Now Android is getting higher.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You have people like Google Play and Spotify entering the podcast market in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco possibly big ways. We’ll see how that how those end up going and I don’t like them but they exist
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so we’ll see how that ends up going. But you know you have the podcast market being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco becoming more and more diverse. Apple’s market share is going down and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of a sudden these people want to give Apple a reason to lock things down and dominate? That’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible idea. And also like I said like the idea of relying on them for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your for like all of your audience growth is ridiculous like you know we know from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the App Store we know like no everyone who relies only on the App Store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for their promotion we tell them they’re doing it wrong we tell them like no you can’t even the App Store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people will tell you please don’t rely on us like and if if you’re trying to get featured
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by the App Store and you have no other marketing that actually hurts your chances
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of being featured. They want to feature things that have real marketing plans. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the idea of trying to like basically make Apple do all your work for you to promote your podcast,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as you said John, is terrible. Also getting back to the ad thing for a second which kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of ties into this. Everything that the podcasters are asking Apple to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do or asking for is basically comes down to we are not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making enough per listener from our ads and we would like to add all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this tracking so that we can make more money. It’s basically like saying the only way for us to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco grow is to extract more out of the existing listener base. Remember what I said
⏹️ ▶️ Marco earlier about the relative size of the audience between podcasts and the web?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A great podcast might get a few hundred thousand downloads an episode. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would put it in like the top probably five or 1% of podcasts on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the web that’s nothing if you want to grow your business as podcasters
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way for growth is to get more people listening to podcasts and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get more people listening to your podcast that’s obvious like I don’t understand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how anybody can look at the situation now and say well what we need to grow the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to really grow this we’re out or out growing this old model here What we really need is ad tech?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What? No, you need more people listening to podcasts. You know how you do that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not by making podcasts suck. It’s not by getting all creepy on people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and putting all this stuff in their face. It’s not by putting up a paywall, sorry. Grow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the audience. That’s the way for revenue growth. You start doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all this data mining crap when either your ads don’t work or when you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco saturated the audience and you need to find new ways to extract more out of what you have. We are neither
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of those things are true for podcasting. It’s the opposite. Podcasting has tons of room to grow. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a not hockey stick level, you know, growth, but it is steadily growing over time. There’s tons of potential still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to grow into, especially as we, as we have further penetration of Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and cell phones in cars, uh, which is where a lot of listening happens and we have all these new, like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, cheap home speaker, Bluetooth devices, people to listen more at home. and you have people getting more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and more into the habit of listening to things on their smartphones. Like, there is tons of room for growth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here. And there are so many people who don’t listen to podcasts now. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where you focus. You focus your effort on growing the pool. We’re already making great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rates on the ads. Rates that, as you said, when you expand like Coca-Cola,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all these things were like, oh, we have to expand into brand advertising. Okay, so right now, we have mostly direct
⏹️ ▶️ Marco response advertisers. This is things like Squarespace, things where you sign
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up for a service or you buy a product and you give them some kind of coupon or discount code or you visit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a special URL and they track how many people bought their thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through each episode’s URL and that kind of gives them an idea of how many people might have heard the ad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and how much they are willing to pay for future ads as a result of how much they’re making from their past ads.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All these articles about how much we have to move into brand advertising,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re all like, well, we keep hearing the same ads from Squarespace over and over again. You ever wonder why?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re not dumb. They’re buying them because they work really well. Whatever they’re spending on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ads, which as I said is a really nice amount by CPM, whatever they’re spending on the ads,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re making that back. They can see it in direct response conversions and results.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The reason why we have so many direct response advertisers and why every podcast,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the most part, does is because they can directly measure the value,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they see it, and they say, we want more because these ads are working ridiculously well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Brand advertising, things like, oh, we’re just going to plaster Coke ads all over these billboards for the next 10
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years and hope that increases our margins slightly. Brand advertising, by definition,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is almost impossible to measure. basically goes unmeasured. Brand advertising is basically a shot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the dark. People are just hoping that over time, by getting their logo and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their name out there and associating happy things with their brand or whatever, people will start recognizing their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brand and sales will slowly increase as this recognition builds. The web has developed such incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sophisticated and creepy levels of tracking and analytics and behavioral monitoring and surveillance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they can see to a much greater degree what works and what doesn’t, brand ads don’t pay that much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the web because they can see it’s not working. When you’re saying you want brand ads,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what you’re really saying is, we’re gonna sell brand ads because our ads don’t work. So we’re gonna sell these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to you, Coke, because we know you won’t really be able to measure.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, but Coke also isn’t interested in the small numbers and Squarespace, maybe not Squarespace,
⏹️ ▶️ John but some other advertisers that are basically paying to acquire new customers for some kind of subscription
⏹️ ▶️ John plan may not be able to pay like, Coke will pay more because
⏹️ ▶️ John brand advertising is by definition a we want the big numbers, huge shotgun approach.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the only type of advertising to which the sort of general purpose broad demographic
⏹️ ▶️ John is actually desirable because that’s what we’re going for. We want everybody to know what Coca Cola is. We don’t care who you are, what you do,
⏹️ ▶️ John what you’re interested in, you need to know about Coca Cola and it’s awesome. They want the big
⏹️ ▶️ John numbers. that it is acquiring customers, even something like in a fracture or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like I don’t think that they they’re not gonna they’re not gonna keep the same CPM and pay
⏹️ ▶️ John for a show that gives 100 million people that bankrupt the company, right? And they’re not interested,
⏹️ ▶️ John they don’t they’re not interested in spraying there like they’d be overpaying because only a small fraction of people actually
⏹️ ▶️ John interested in signing up would be much better to go on a podcast where a much higher percentage of the people who listen
⏹️ ▶️ John are into digital photography and making prints of it or whatever, you know, so I feel like, they want to get those
⏹️ ▶️ John big advertisers because you know, the number on the check is going to be really big. And the only people who are going to write
⏹️ ▶️ John that check are the people who are doing brand advertising. And that’s the way you get again, you know, if you want to get a
⏹️ ▶️ John podcast that has 200 million downloads for every episode, I think brand advertising
⏹️ ▶️ John is your only your only path to that. And so they they’re trying to connect the dots to
⏹️ ▶️ John make happen. And by the way, like, I agree that the way you would get a big podcast like that is you have
⏹️ ▶️ John to get more people listening to podcasts. The best way to do that is to keep podcasts like the web.
⏹️ ▶️ John The reason everybody can and did eventually come to use the web is because
⏹️ ▶️ John it wasn’t controlled by Microsoft or Yahoo or whoever else. Like it was a thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John anyone can implement the web browser and anyone can make a website and no one company owns and controls it.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what let it spread everywhere. If you try to make Apple the king of podcasts or Android the
⏹️ ▶️ John king of podcasts or whatever, you’re narrowing the number of people who can listen to podcasts,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially if you pick somebody who has a platform. Because again, say you took iOS or Android and one of them became the
⏹️ ▶️ John only thing in podcasting that mattered, you’re cutting off half of the market right there. You want everybody to be
⏹️ ▶️ John able to listen to podcasts really easily on no matter what device they have, whatever weird thing
⏹️ ▶️ John they buy in their house or have on their person or in their car or wherever, you want everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John to be able to listen to podcasts just like everybody can go to your website. The reason websites have huge amount of traffic is because
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody can go to websites that you doesn’t you don’t have to have a special kind of computer or a special operating
⏹️ ▶️ John system or a special application or whatever. Essentially every platform has some way to browse the web.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we’re at that point with podcast now it’s just RSS. Anybody can make a player for it for any app
⏹️ ▶️ John for any type of thing. Any move that big podcasts would do in the hopes of getting
⏹️ ▶️ John like big brand advertising or making a big podcast that tried to make podcasting
⏹️ ▶️ John more more narrow in that way as shooting themselves in the foot because you
⏹️ ▶️ John those people are out there you want to make you want to make them be able to listen to podcast no matter where they are what they’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ John do not make podcasting tied to a particular store particular application or anything like that that’d be so dumb
⏹️ ▶️ John this is the beginning of the ad
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco policy. And, you know, online backup, because you have this little bit additional overhead of restoring,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still do recommend having a local backup, something like Time Machine or a SuperDuper clone or something like that, but
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⏹️ ▶️ John This is the end of the ad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we talked about an episode or two ago, how I felt like it’s been trendy to dislike
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Apple watch. Well, it’s been trendy to really, really, really freaking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love the Amazon Echo. Um, I do not have one. I don’t, I don’t know that I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, sure, probably. I’ve never seen one in person to my recollection,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but everyone that I know swears by it, loves it, etc. And so it seems like everyone’s getting really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey infatuated with voice-based control. And the people who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did Siri, which was the, you know, that software was eventually bought up by Apple, and I believe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the company was as well. So a lot of the ex-Siri people have gone on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to create Viv, Which is kind of the spiritual successor to Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they demoed it on Monday now I didn’t have the time to watch the video, but my understanding was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this was something pretty darn impressive
⏹️ ▶️ John Impressive if you don’t think about it too much, I guess
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I have hound I’ve seen the the the things I don’t maybe maybe this only bothers
⏹️ ▶️ John people like me but on the flip side of it I think
⏹️ ▶️ John none of these things are up to the point where they pass the regular person
⏹️ ▶️ John threshold of magic because as we’ve discussed many times in the past with Siri the problem
⏹️ ▶️ John with Siri and things like that is and you’ll see when you have any kid use Siri for five seconds
⏹️ ▶️ John people immediately jump to oh this is a little person in my computer but obviously it’s not and as soon as they discover
⏹️ ▶️ John the very real and very close limits of any of these things though it breaks the illusion it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John oh I thought this was like a little person on my computer I could talk to instead it’s just a crappy program
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s like basically boils down to like playing a text adventure game where you have to learn
⏹️ ▶️ John syntax and what you can say and what you can’t say and it’s disappointing it’s disappointing to people
⏹️ ▶️ John and they kind of put it in a bin with I thought it was gonna be this magical thing where I can talk to a person on my
⏹️ ▶️ John phone really it’s just like the voice version of the command line where
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to learn the things that it can do first of all and I have to learn the ways I can say the things
⏹️ ▶️ John that it can do and granted there are many ways that you can say it maybe more than in the average text adventure but probably
⏹️ ▶️ John about the same as in any good text adventure and the new demo is like showing off context
⏹️ ▶️ John like oh it kind of remembers last thing I said to it so I can refer back to it using you know if I as long as they use the
⏹️ ▶️ John right words and they’re the it will understand what I’m talking about and build on my past
⏹️ ▶️ John conversations and it’s like I’m having a conversation. If you see a demo with a preset script
⏹️ ▶️ John it is it seems to be very impressive until you realize there is only a very small number of things
⏹️ ▶️ John that you can ask about and those things aren’t always interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do you like it’s you want to ask about facts that you can pull out a wolf from alfra or
⏹️ ▶️ John things having to do with the weather or date and time or unit conversions then Then you can have this amazing but
⏹️ ▶️ John extremely boring conversation about stuff that you don’t really care about, but if you really want to know something
⏹️ ▶️ John more complicated, you better hope that’s within the problem domain. I’m not saying that these are bad products,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they’re amazing and we need to keep advancing on this and it’s great, but like I said, as soon as you have a voice talking to you or they can understand
⏹️ ▶️ John what you’re saying, people immediately jump to, this is HAL 9000 or like, it’s a little
⏹️ ▶️ John person, but it’s totally not a little person. so far from that, that there’s always the
⏹️ ▶️ John inevitable letdown. So as we continue to march there,
⏹️ ▶️ John progress there, I think that’s good, but this slight diversion with Viv or whoever
⏹️ ▶️ John you want to say it, and all those other ones, bothers me as the type of
⏹️ ▶️ John person who reads the Wirecutter or Marcos Headphones Reviews or Marcos Lightbulb Reviews
⏹️ ▶️ John or anything like that, and that the very boldly stated business model
⏹️ ▶️ John of these companies is we will make deals with other companies so you can say
⏹️ ▶️ John you know have a piece of delivered at my house at 5 p.m. and also send flowers to my mom for Mother’s Day you’re like wow
⏹️ ▶️ John what an amazing demo it’s like having a personal assistant but you don’t get to pick what pizza it is
⏹️ ▶️ John or what company sends the flowers the company that makes the product that you’re talking to does
⏹️ ▶️ John deals with Domino’s and pro flowers and that’s what gets sent not because those are the best flowers
⏹️ ▶️ John or because your assistant knows the best flowers to get for your mom or the kind of pizza that you like, but because
⏹️ ▶️ John these are the deals the company whose voice agent that you’re talking to made, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John made partnerships with. And so their incentives are all screwed up. Their incentives of the supposed personal assistant
⏹️ ▶️ John is not to help you get the things that you want in your life. It’s to dutifully
⏹️ ▶️ John follow through on the business deals that the company has made. And all these companies are looking for if we make this thing so sticky that people love
⏹️ ▶️ John talking to it and just like rely on it as part of their life, then we can charge people a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of money to, you know, like the same way that Google can charge money for search results. We got everybody typing into our search
⏹️ ▶️ John box. Now all of a sudden you buy, you buy a advertising keywords or search keywords for us. It’s very valuable.
⏹️ ▶️ John If everybody does all their pizza ordering, then we can charge whatever pizza company a lot of money to say, did you
⏹️ ▶️ John want to be the pizza company that fulfills pizza requests? But you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously people like me and I think a lot of people kind of care where their pizza comes from. Maybe they don’t care so much about
⏹️ ▶️ John where the flowers come from, but the model that that they should be presenting is,
⏹️ ▶️ John here is an artificially intelligent agent or whatever, the agents, good 90s Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, the knowledge navigators can help you with life. It’s supposed to be helping me. It’s supposed to be, like, I
⏹️ ▶️ John want it to do things that, you know, if it’s gonna save me work, I would go and figure out what the best
⏹️ ▶️ John dishwasher is and what the comparative features are and stuff like that. Or, you know, I would, if I moved into
⏹️ ▶️ John a new area, I would, you know, troll reviews to try to find out where do people like, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, the best pizza, or you know, like ratings, like I want it to figure out what
⏹️ ▶️ John I want in my life, what my needs are, and follow through on that. But I don’t know if there’s money to be made on that because we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not willing to pay for that service. So someone’s gotta pay and the people who are paying is Domino’s and you’re gonna get a stupid Domino’s
⏹️ ▶️ John pizza. And so you get what you deserve. Right, and it’s just, it’s misaligned
⏹️ ▶️ John incentives, but I don’t know the way out of it because aligned incentives would be, you pay me $5 a month for
⏹️ ▶️ John the privilege of using Siri or Veeve and no one wants to do that either because they’re not good enough for $5 a month.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, no, I’ll just do the web search myself or I’ll just go to the wire cutter myself, right? So I don’t know how you
⏹️ ▶️ John find your way out of this. It could be, I don’t know, it could be that most people are fine with that. They’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t really wanna know or care what deals you make behind the scenes as long as somebody comes and picks up
⏹️ ▶️ John my package. I don’t care what they ship it by or anything like just, they’re not as
⏹️ ▶️ John picky. They’re not reading reviews about their light bulbs, right? They’re just like, whatever. It’s just convenient for me to be able
⏹️ ▶️ John to do this and I don’t really care what company product is involved and I don’t care
⏹️ ▶️ John what deals are made behind the scenes and I don’t care that my needs aren’t the most primary thing it’s a service I get for free
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s built into my phone or I yell it into the air and Amazon Echo does it I don’t care that all the products are
⏹️ ▶️ John fulfilled through Amazon or you know like it’s like pushing that button to paper towels you know at least you get to pick
⏹️ ▶️ John what Amazon has a wide variety but I don’t care that they all come from Amazon maybe most people are fine with that
⏹️ ▶️ John but for me personally I don’t like it and I also think that the misaligned incentives
⏹️ ▶️ John will just become a larger and larger problem until and unless these
⏹️ ▶️ John services actually become so good that people are willing to pay for them. Because wouldn’t you pay $5 a month to have a personal assistant
⏹️ ▶️ John who you could just shout orders to and would do stuff and was not actually a person you didn’t have to like care about their feelings
⏹️ ▶️ John and well-being or anything? Like that’s the dream of artificial intelligent personal assistants for every movie about the future where you
⏹️ ▶️ John just yell things into the air and things get done. And wouldn’t you love it if that assistant learned more about you and about what
⏹️ ▶️ John you like and what you dislike and did the research for you and collaborated with other agents and you know, just
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of ask your reaction to the meal you’re just eating instead of you having to hit a star rating. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the magical future we think about and I think everyone would be willing to pay for that because paying for an actual personal assistant
⏹️ ▶️ John to do all that stuff, it’s really expensive. $5 a month looks like a bargain. But we’re not there yet,
⏹️ ▶️ John the products just aren’t that good. So in the meantime, Domino’s will be paying them to deliver you
⏹️ ▶️ John excretable pizza to your house.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love that like, that your dream scenario here is that you can basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a virtual person who is totally, basically your slave and you can be a jerk to.
⏹️ ▶️ John actually a person. It’s just a computer. But you don’t have to be a jerk to it, but you also don’t have to worry about,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, don’t sleep, don’t eat, don’t get annoyed when you’re frustrated, don’t get annoyed if you yell
⏹️ ▶️ John at them. That’s why we use computers, because we don’t have to have this constant, like, we’re not trying to
⏹️ ▶️ John emotionally support our computers most of the time. We just want them to do what we tell them to do when we do it, because they’re machines and
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not people, right? And that’s the dream of having the computers, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John just think not as a personal assistant, but rather think of it as like, the using
⏹️ ▶️ John a computer without having to sit in front of a computer and click on things or touch the screen or type things in. You’re just talking into the
⏹️ ▶️ John air and then somewhere else, the computer is doing your thing. And the whole machine learning angle, like
⏹️ ▶️ John the same way a personal assistant would learn your preferences and everything, that’s what computers are great at. That’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John Netflix is great at, by seeing what we watch and we have to help with the silly way of hitting stars and stuff, but eventually Netflix
⏹️ ▶️ John gets good at thinking, I think you will like this movie based on movies you’ve seen in the past and have liked.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s incredibly primitive compared to what we could do if we had a conversational long-term relationship
⏹️ ▶️ John with a voice-controlled thing that was on our side and was entirely made
⏹️ ▶️ John to try to make our lives better, but again, there’s no business model for that and the tech
⏹️ ▶️ John still isn’t quite there, but I feel like we can get there eventually. And once we do, someone is going to get $5
⏹️ ▶️ John a month from a hell of a lot of people once that becomes good enough.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, but it doesn’t have to be that it’s $5 a month. I mean, it could be that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this future Siri or what have you, it takes a cut of whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it facilitates a sale for. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John but but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a distance that’s incentivized to make deals with the highest bidder who makes crappy pizza.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Well, I’ve got
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, perhaps. But first of all, Domino’s pizza is not crappy. of
⏹️ ▶️ John my god so bad what are you talking about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hi john yeah i’m with john sorry gaysy that’s that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey well you guys
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are you’re way too snooty anyway uh the point is that it why couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we have a hypothetical conversation where i say hey i’d like a pizza please sure where would you like it from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey papa john’s or dominoes or what have you i mean presumably would have to be some national chain so i’m not it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John be but then how do you get paid how does that service get paid you think it’s just taking a cut of that because they it’s kind of like grubhub
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever like they’d have to kind of opt in the The money’s got to come from somewhere because unless you want to pay extra for that pizza
⏹️ ▶️ John and like have this, you know Siri surcharge of experts because Grubhub is so freaking expensive Like there’s lots
⏹️ ▶️ John of services that kind of do a small portion of what we would imagine Veeve or Siri doing But all of them the disincentive
⏹️ ▶️ John is This is great If you have money to burn and you can’t be bothered to go someplace and you don’t mind your
⏹️ ▶️ John food being cold by the time It gets here and you don’t mind waiting a long time and half the time it doesn’t work like this There’s so many caveats,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the the money is a big deterrent $5 a month for the blanket
⏹️ ▶️ John service of essentially just connecting the dots to things that you could do themselves. That works financially if you have enough
⏹️ ▶️ John people to do it, as does Domino’s being the exclusive will bring you a crappy pizza provider.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I feel like the percentage of everything is just back to the Grubhub model. And it’s that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John that has proven to be good for, you know, in my day, we would say
⏹️ ▶️ John yuppies, Like, good for people with high paying jobs and not a lot of time.
⏹️ ▶️ John And more money, money is less important to them than their time, and
⏹️ ▶️ John so they do that. And even those things, you’re kind of like, sometimes it’s more worth it for you
⏹️ ▶️ John to go there yourself and get the thing. I don’t know. Everyone needs to try it. I mean, would any of us order a pizza
⏹️ ▶️ John in that way? Even if you could, like, well, if you could tell at the store, but it charged you 20%
⏹️ ▶️ John on top of that, would you order a pizza that way?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, if I was in a position where I didn’t want to sit down at a computer or an iPad or an iPhone,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I just wanted to, within 30 seconds, say, Hey Siri, get me… Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I forgot I can’t say that. Sorry. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco it’s too late now. I’ll beep it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What do they say on Upgrade? Ahoy Telephone. Thank you. I wanted to say aloha. Ahoy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me a pizza a large pepperoni no pineapple pizza from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Domino’s delivered to my house. Your bad taste continues. You’re in favor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of this bulsary pepperoni and pineapple?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I honestly have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not tried pepperoni and pineapple yet but I do like pineapple and ham. I don’t get that a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in New York because they don’t really do it here because it’s not canonical John but I do enjoy that combo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I can get it. But yeah normally I mean I like pepperoni and I like pineapple,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John you know. There was
⏹️ ▶️ John a ham and pineapple discussion, but I’m not sure if it’s on a podcast that has yet to be released. Did you hear me talk about Hawaiian
⏹️ ▶️ John pizza on any podcast? If not, it hasn’t been released, so I won’t spoil it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did hear you talk about it. I forget which show it was on. Yeah, same here. It might have been when you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guessed it on Upgrade. You did that recently, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, maybe that was it, but anyway, yeah, I don’t wanna get into it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the point is, the point is. The point is, Casey has terrible taste in pizza, so his answer to this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey question is irrelevant.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Whatever if you if you Marco and John slash you
⏹️ ▶️ John switch to hamburgers if you need to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh no because then I’m gonna tell you I think Wendy’s is just fine, then you get a bust my balls about that, too All right, what are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they like in the South how about barbecue? Oh, yeah, would you just get it from Dallas barbecue because it doesn’t matter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you say well barbecue is barbecue I mean just I guess Dallas barbecue is fine
⏹️ ▶️ John But for all these things are like this, you know If the money is gonna be coming from taking a cut the money’s got to come from somewhere So it’s got
⏹️ ▶️ John to be a surcharge, right? Because I unless you you have to have deals if you’re going to take a cut like the price remains the same
⏹️ ▶️ John but they cut us in you have to have deals for that if you don’t then you just have to add a surcharge because then
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t need deals on either end, but the surcharge is usually pretty significant And that’s in
⏹️ ▶️ John addition to whatever additional things they’re charging you to deliver it plus tip and all that other stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, that’s the thing exactly though because the delivery surcharge is a surcharge You could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you wanted get in your car or ride your bike or walk or what have you and go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fetch your pizza But sometimes you just want the convenience of this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey meal magically showing up at your doorstep. I personally cannot imagine a time where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would want to say, Hey, uh, Hoy telephone, get me a Domino’s large pizza,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but there are certainly people in the world that may be willing to pay a dollar
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or two or whatever the case may be to a Hoy telephone themselves, a pizza. I mean, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Domino’s lets you order pizza with emoji by some mechanism I’ve never tried. So I would imagine that there are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people that are doing that too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You ever wonder why Domino’s has to make it so easy to order their pizza?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, fine, okay. If you wanna believe Domino’s is gross, that’s fine. All I know is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, just listen to the forthcoming episode of Analog where we probably won’t cut the discussion about people that are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey too good for chain restaurants and how much I hate all of them, which is basically everyone in the chat
⏹️ ▶️ Casey room and the two of you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There are good chain restaurants. There just are very few good chain pizza restaurants and I think most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of them would be local chains that you wouldn’t have heard of. But it’s fine, no it’s fine. Also, if you’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have chain pizza, I’m not sure Domino’s is even the best one of those. Well what would it be? I was always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bigger fan of like the really crappy ones, like Little Caesars or Pizza
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Hut. Because it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well because it’s like, if you’re gonna go with some really crappy big brand pizza, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might as well go like super crappy and get like all the junk food value of
⏹️ ▶️ John it. I feel like I would get something frozen from the supermarket before I would take delivery
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, I did a lot of those
⏹️ ▶️ John too. And those are not good, don’t get me wrong, they are terrible. That’s how bad I think the delivery
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You would take a Red Baron pizza over Domino’s.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not Red Baron, but maybe something else.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What is the thing that’s not delivery? It’s DiGiorno. Man, that marketing works.
⏹️ ▶️ John that would kind of be like a matchup. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John we shouldn’t have gotten to the pizza topic.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How is it so? Why?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t get past this I can’t imagine a world where somebody says man, I’d really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like some pizza and I’d like to get Domino’s and You
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have to be like mmm Domino’s is not good enough for me. I’m sorry. We’re gonna have to go somewhere else
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you know sometimes you have to eat things you don’t like but I think it’s I’m even this is more of an issue for
⏹️ ▶️ John Me even than Marco’s thing cuz Marco’s like he has this fancy coffee, right? But when he’s on the road, he’ll get Starbucks Yeah, precisely.
⏹️ ▶️ John When I’m on the road, I will, I would, the equivalent of me is I would choose not to have coffee. Sometimes I
⏹️ ▶️ John do. Like that’s the level I’m at with same thing with pizza and bagel. I just don’t get pizza
⏹️ ▶️ John if I can’t get good pizza and it’s fine. I eat something else and if someone else gets bad pizza, I’ll eat it. You know, you got
⏹️ ▶️ John to eat to stay alive, right? It’s not, but I will never choose it. Like, whereas Marco, because he’s addicted, will
⏹️ ▶️ John choose to get Starbucks, uh, because it’s like, well, it’s better than no coffee, but no, it’s not better than no pizza.
⏹️ ▶️ John No pizza beats Domino’s pizza.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my God. If I listeners, if I ever get to the point that I’m this fussy about freaking
⏹️ ▶️ John not, it’s not fussy. It’s just like, it’s just a preference. Like I don’t, I don’t consider it the same category of
⏹️ ▶️ John food. It’s like, I’ll just pick a dip. There’s plenty of kind of foods to choose from. Like, I’m not that picky about burgers, right? I’ll I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John many more options for burgers, including ones from chains and lots of things from chains. But when it comes to pizza, I will just pick a different
⏹️ ▶️ John food product. And I I don’t think it’s being snobbish. It’s just kind of like that. I don’t I don’t like that doesn’t taste
⏹️ ▶️ John good to me. I don’t want it and I don’t need it for chemical reasons. So I will just pick
⏹️ ▶️ John something else like I’d rather have a sandwich from Subway than bad pizza. Oh, I don’t know what that and sandwiches from
⏹️ ▶️ John Subway are are probably the bottom rung of thing that you can call sandwich.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ve lost as people know in the chat room. We’ve lost the Domino’s brand sponsorship. We’re losing the Subway brand sponsorship
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is why we can’t have brand advertisers and podcasts because we’ve already pissed off all the brands.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ll take Waffle House sponsorships though because I feel like they are they embrace what they are.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m a little more of a steak and shake person myself over Waffle House.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t even understand why Subway is so bad. You’re watching them create it in front
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t understand why Subway is bad? Please Casey, please stop. Please
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey stop. I don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I’m trying to help you here. Do not. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey want your help. Subway
⏹️ ▶️ John is not the hill you want to die on. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not saying that it’s the hill I want to die on. I don’t want your help. I want to be able to go to any friggin restaurant
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I want and be genuinely happy with the meal I’ve had. I have gone to Subway, although not lately, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been genuinely happy with the meal I’ve had. Are there better sandwiches in the world? Absa-friggin-lutely.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Does that count as a restaurant? Oh god. Subway, please. I haven’t been this angry at you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two since the Mac Pro discussions. Oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Just if I ever get this fussy and high maintenance, just kick me in the shins.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What vodka would you drink, Casey? Would you drink the big handle of like the cheap Russian whatever vodka
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that comes in the plastic bottle? Would you drink that?
⏹️ ▶️ John You just gotta run it through a bit of filters and it’s fine. How
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey do you know that, John?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, you didn’t, you weren’t privy to this?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because it’s the stupid secret of vodka.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Once I saw that, I don’t drink it, I don’t know anything about
⏹️ ▶️ John it, but once I saw that thing with the filters, I’m like, alright, everyone who deals with vodka is just…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought that was BS. I know exactly what you’re referring to, but I thought that was BS.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yes, I might be wrong. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John entirely willing to
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey believe it, especially with alcohol. After the first few drinks
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, you can just like secretly switch to the crappier stuff and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, that’s here’s the thing. Like I would absolutely choose a fussy vodka like Tito’s if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had the choice. But if I don’t have the choice or if I’m or if like a real vodka is on happy hour, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, you do you just put a couple lemons in there. Wait a second for it to get a little bit watered down with a little bit of lemon in it and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then you’re fine. I’d prefer the Tito’s for sure, but I am perfectly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happy with a slightly watered down, slightly lemony vodka. And I’d be happier about that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey having saved a bunch of money of getting a real one instead of a Tito’s. I would be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happy with that. Although that is the best example I’ve heard so far of me being fussy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wouldn’t you ruin like a $13 Brita filter by converting your cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ Marco vodka into $13 expensive vodka?
⏹️ ▶️ John still come out ahead if you run it through enough times so it’s equivalent to like the $500 bottle. Is
⏹️ ▶️ John there $500 vodka? Vodka’s not that good. I’m sure there is. I’m absolutely sure there is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There absolutely is. And I should also note that my Fussy Vodka, Tito’s, is like the cheapest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the Fussy Vodkas, which is part of the reason why I like it so much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I remember when you were coming over and we bought a bottle so that you would not judge our vodka
⏹️ ▶️ Marco collection because you’re so judgy of things. I remember being very surprised how inexpensive it was because the way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you talked about it, I thought it would be like a really premium priced one. But nope, turns out vodka is just terrible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so nobody prices it very high.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s not terrible. Are you a gin drinker? You are a gin drinker, aren’t you? How’s your grass taste?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I occasionally drink gin. Not by itself. I mean, I prefer gin-based drinks like martinis
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to drinking it straight.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, god, a gin martini. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco forgot. Honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not that much of a liquor person. I much prefer either not drinking or drinking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, so you like to drink your bread. I understand I’m gonna get so much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey angry email. I’m gonna have to quit the show. It’s gonna be the worst I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John I tried to help you with the subway thing. It’s not too late to ask Marco to cut it out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let it stay in try try to get this back on the rail slightly I will say John you were you were seemingly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco puzzled by the idea of why would somebody pay like a like a 20% premium for the convenience
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of ordering through this, through like a cylinder robot voice.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not why, but that your audience is limited. Because I know those services exist, and I know the people who use them, but they’re never gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John be mass market because 20% is just too much for most people. I’ll tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you what though, I would probably pay roughly that premium to avoid talking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to somebody on the phone. Ah,
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, yeah, I know. I understand, like that’s, there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was my only alternative, like, cause like a lot of the places around here, that, you know, like, you know, in the area
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I think John and the both of us live in, there’s not a lot of chains present. And a lot of the places you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco order from are just like independently owned places. And so anything that relies on like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, really convenient, like you can order with our app or things like that, like most of the places around here don’t support that because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re not a big enough operation to be integrated that way or to have their own app or whatever else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Which means A, I can’t use Apple Pay anywhere. I can’t even use my chip card anywhere even, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in most places either. And B, they don’t support any of these automated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ways of ordering, so if I wanna order something, I’m still doing it the way the San Francisco people think is barbaric,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of calling them on the phone and placing an order for delivery or going and picking it up in my car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I hate talking on the phone so much, especially-
⏹️ ▶️ John Nerdy introverts with disposable income, again, it’s a narrow market, where
⏹️ ▶️ John the potential for agents that can do things conversationally without you
⏹️ ▶️ John having to type things or really pay attention, just yelling commands out into the air. The potential for that is mass market,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the number of people who are currently willing to pay to avoid phone
⏹️ ▶️ John calls and stuff like, and, and don’t blink at a 20%, it’s just too small.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like I, and I feel these things with the, that’s another ding against these
⏹️ ▶️ John things that are funded by having deals with deals with providers of their services
⏹️ ▶️ John is that exactly the people who are the nerdy introvert people who don’t want to make phone calls. Those are exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John the people who read the wire cutter and obsess over which light bulbs they’re gonna get. And those people will not
⏹️ ▶️ John be happy not being able to choose who provides their flowers or even who gives them their weather report. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John those are exactly the people who want the thing that’s going to use big data
⏹️ ▶️ John to figure out what the best whatever is and learn your preferences and do all that stuff. they don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John to be hemmed into, uh, you know, particular vendors. And so I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know, maybe, maybe he was just hoping to be purchased by Apple or, or, uh, Google or alphabet
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. And that’s their big exit plan there. But I, I, I am not a fan
⏹️ ▶️ John of this model where, uh, the product isn’t good enough for users to pay for it yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the way they make their money is with back end deals. And you have this agent who you can’t do, you have this personal assistant
⏹️ ▶️ John who can do a limited number of things. Hopefully, if you get the syntax right, and you have no control
⏹️ ▶️ John of or awareness over the companies that are fulfilling the things
⏹️ ▶️ John and seemingly no way to give feedback about how well it went when the pizza arrived, did you like it? Or did you not like it? It could just
⏹️ ▶️ John say get me a pizza, but not from that last place because it was gross. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going back to the original topic here of these voice assistant things, I think there’s a lot more to discuss
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here, which we probably don’t have time for today. Honestly, there’s a lot more to discuss here about just how these things are and,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the kind of ecosystem runs. First of all, I think it would be a hilarious business model if the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Siri founders just kept making things, selling them to Apple, and then just quitting and making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the next thing, and then Apple buys that one.
⏹️ ▶️ John People do that all the time. That’s the serial entrepreneur thing. You make a startup, you know exactly what to make,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know that you have multiple potential buyers. You play them off each other, you sell, you do the next one. And what you
⏹️ ▶️ John get to do, I guess, is during all that time, do the fun part that you like, starting the company, doing
⏹️ ▶️ John the exciting thing or whatever, and you just have exit after exit. That’s the way some people live their lives.
⏹️ ▶️ John Totally viable business model, especially in this day.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, so I do think, getting back, because it wouldn’t be an episode of this show without a complaint about Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We almost made it. I know. I’m a little bit worried that this is an area where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple started this game, really. Apple came out with Siri in 2011,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? Yeah, 2011. And Apple started this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whole thing really. Like you know there was voice command stuff before that but Siri took
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to another level and integrated it with the phone and you know it was it was a big deal. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then since then Siri has advanced but fairly slowly and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in fairly small steps while at the same time it seems like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now there are multiple companies. There’s Amazon, there’s Hound,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Amazon, Hound, Viv, there’s all these companies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now coming out with even better stuff that seems like a generation ahead of Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the intelligence and the recognition and the accuracy and things like that. It seems like Apple kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of started this and now everyone’s kind of overrunning them and I don’t think Apple is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hustling. I’ve used this word before that it seems like Apple recently lacks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hustle. This isn’t the only area that this applies to where like Apple kind of starts something and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone else kind of rushes in and does their own version of it better and Apple just kind of can’t keep
⏹️ ▶️ John Is this a problem? Well, I wouldn’t call it hustle in this case. Like do you remember when when Jobs can the
⏹️ ▶️ John the ATG Apple Technology Group or Advanced Technology Group? I forget what ATG stands
⏹️ ▶️ John for. Someone someone who works at Apple. But but anyway, like Apple used to do way more basic research
⏹️ ▶️ John type stuff like that whole whole department whose job was to do like basic research type things and
⏹️ ▶️ John in theory maybe they would come up with a couple ideas that other groups in the company that made actual products would
⏹️ ▶️ John do. And Steve Jobs concentrated the whole company on like, no, don’t do pie in the sky. Wouldn’t it be cool
⏹️ ▶️ John if let’s investigate this kind of technology type thing? I mean, Brett Victor used to work at Apple for crying out loud, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And then Jobs was like, no, we want to make great products that ship now. And they’ve done that. And that’s a very successful
⏹️ ▶️ John advanced technology group. the helpful Casey List has in the chat room.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey We wanna make
⏹️ ▶️ John actual products because it doesn’t do anybody good to have these research
⏹️ ▶️ John ideas and maybe one of them shows up many years later. But things like Siri, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the only real way you advance that is with some amount of basic research. So it feels like Apple found a
⏹️ ▶️ John company that was doing this thing, whatever the SRI company or whatever company Siri came from that already had done the basic research,
⏹️ ▶️ John acquired them, productized it, and is working the improvements to Siri you’re talking about,
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of them have to do with productized improvements, make it more reliable, make it faster, build it on a different
⏹️ ▶️ John platform. But the basic research needed to take Siri to the next level, I don’t know if that is
⏹️ ▶️ John budgeted for and accounted for or dealt with within the realm of Siri the product. Like, so they feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like they’re advancing the product. And meanwhile, the founders have left because they’re like, I don’t want to just incrementally advance this product
⏹️ ▶️ John or make it more reliable or faster. Like, that’s your problem. I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in how do you make the next great
⏹️ ▶️ John personal assistant or whatever. And the fact that they felt like they had to leave Apple to
⏹️ ▶️ John do that. I mean, maybe it’s you know, maybe they’re they’re misinformed. And really, there was a place and for Apple to do
⏹️ ▶️ John that basic research, and it should have been part of the plan or whatever. But the Apple of today is much less
⏹️ ▶️ John focused on basic research stuff. And they do like the things they do, like all that
⏹️ ▶️ John research into touchscreens and stuff like that. That’s not the same as basic research. It’s more like
⏹️ ▶️ John pre production and product things like ideas for future concrete products. And again, I think this is a
⏹️ ▶️ John great strategy and it gives you great products instead of just great concept videos that don’t actually lead to anything. It’s been the cornerstone of Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John success so you can’t really fault them for that. But I think it’s also the reason that Google, who does
⏹️ ▶️ John tons of crazy ideas and basic research stuff in-house that just never goes anywhere, which we criticize them for,
⏹️ ▶️ John and startups who their whole point is like, oh, you have a great idea, let’s see it. And half of them die and you don’t care, but if
⏹️ ▶️ John any of them end up being successful, as we said before, Apple can just buy them again. that I think is actually
⏹️ ▶️ John a viable strategy. Like, if they can’t, or don’t want to support
⏹️ ▶️ John that type of advancement in house, allow it to flourish out in the market, wait for all the crappy ones
⏹️ ▶️ John to die, find the ones that are left and buy them at the right time. Because one thing Apple does have is a lot of money. So
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe Apple buys Viv and the next version of Siri is powered by that. And who can say that’s a bad strategy.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just uncomfortable during this time now where where we see like, you know, seemingly everybody else can
⏹️ ▶️ John do Siri better than Apple can. And Apple is just barely working on, can we make existing Siri
⏹️ ▶️ John reliable and a little bit smarter and expand the capabilities? And by the way, still no API, so no real
⏹️ ▶️ John ecosystem or whatever. And that I think is uncomfortable, but I don’t think it’s insurmountable because you
⏹️ ▶️ John just throw money at whatever the most successful thing is. The problem is if Google is the one who does
⏹️ ▶️ John the, you know, Siri better than Siri, which arguably they already have, because Google’s not gonna sell you their stuff. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a problem for Apple. but Viv or Veve is not a problem for Apple. It’s an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m going with Vive.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, that’s the HTC VR thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but I’m never gonna get that. Or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Veve too? I don’t even know. That’s Viv. All right, thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Fracture,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco FreshBooks, and Backblaze, and we will see you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can find the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes at ATP.FM And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey T. Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse, it’s accidental, they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to ♪ So accidental, accidental ♪ Tech Podcasts So
Post-show: Instagram updates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Instagram changed their icon and everyone lost their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t like the icon that much but I don’t think it’s the total
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John dumpster fire that everyone else says.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s pretty bad. It’s pretty bad. Do you remember when web 2.0 was a thing? You guys remember web 2.0? Yeah. Gradients
⏹️ ▶️ John and rounded corners. Yeah, the web 2.0 parody sites that would like make fun of all the design
⏹️ ▶️ John tropes of web 2.0. The Instagram icon looks like a modern version of
⏹️ ▶️ John making fun of the flat design tropes. I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco could see that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like if you tried to do a parody icon of like imagine if the Instagram icon Adopted all
⏹️ ▶️ John of the current fashion trends in the most obvious and glaring ways you would get that stupid thing But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think it’s that bad. I mean, it’s not as bad as Domino’s pizza or vodka
⏹️ ▶️ John Whatever It has some things going for it, especially we look at their alternate designs and how boring some of those were I
⏹️ ▶️ John like the design that was like a a black Square with a white circle in the middle of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like just you know, let’s workshop that a little bit more At least this one has something to it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It will stand out A little bit on people screens because it’s not just a flat
⏹️ ▶️ John color Like as so many people have said on Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ John And as I’ve said about Windows XP at bumper sounds in the end, it doesn’t matter that much Because
⏹️ ▶️ John long-term eventually you will come to associate with whatever the hell image they make you will come to associate that with Instagram
⏹️ ▶️ John and kids who are just getting their first iPhones now who don’t know what the old icon look like will be fine with it and it’ll just cruise in but
⏹️ ▶️ John it is not the type of I think That that explains
⏹️ ▶️ John why it’s not a disaster But I think you can also have an icon that
⏹️ ▶️ John the initial impression is that it’s a nice well-designed pleasing icon And it also
⏹️ ▶️ John will come to be associated with the application that you know and love like you don’t have to it’s not as if It’s an either-or well,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can have an icon that is immediately attractive, but it will be crap long-term know it’ll also be good long term.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I feel like this one is a missed opportunity to make a better icon and I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John particularly like it but it’ll be fine. It’s not it’s not disastrous like what was that disastrous one like when they tried to
⏹️ ▶️ John do that Tropicana orange juice and they backpedaled on it. You always know it’s disastrous if they change their mind so come come back
⏹️ ▶️ John in two shows from now and see if they change the icon back but I have a feeling they won’t because it’s not that bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The other changes they’ve made recently are more offensive that like the icon like they replaced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one crap icon with another crap icon like the old icon was crap too it was
⏹️ ▶️ John crap that was that had a really good branding like it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was yeah it looked great in iOS 6
⏹️ ▶️ John right and it stayed a long time but at a certain point when you’re the last one standing I think you it becomes sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John an act of defiance or like a quirk and you know only one only one icon gets
⏹️ ▶️ John to do that you can’t have a home screen that has like six icons that still look like iOS X, but if only one does
⏹️ ▶️ John it, like, all right, sure, go with that. But yeah, it didn’t need to be updated. And they had a difficult
⏹️ ▶️ John challenge. But inside the app, I actually like I like the I like the fact that it doesn’t look like
⏹️ ▶️ John the central item on the toolbars constantly selected. I like the fact that stupid blue is gone. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I completely agree. I really, really like the the new look of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app. And I think you and I are mostly on the same page about the icon. Like I don’t Love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, but I don’t think it’s bad. I and I also didn’t think the last one was bad Yes, it looked outdated,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I I completely concur that the branding was great I think I would have preferred just a flattened or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perhaps simplified simple a Simplified version of the
⏹️ ▶️ John have been pretty timid though if they did that everyone been like Like oh you did the obvious thing
⏹️ ▶️ John You just made a flat shaded version of the camera and I think that would be more difficult I think that would actually
⏹️ ▶️ John be less successful than this because
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey yeah, you’re although it
⏹️ ▶️ John may be immediately kind of inoffensive You won’t have gone anywhere. This is at least
⏹️ ▶️ John is You know that you can tell they made a change. It’s not like oh, it’s a subtle tweak. Nope big change
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and on top of that this icon definitely stands out which presumably is the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey goal, right? It’s not another damn blue icon, you know, it’s it’s something that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a color palette that looks different than than anything else I have on my home
⏹️ ▶️ Casey screen. And of course that may not be true for everyone, but it’s certainly the case on my phone. I mean, it jumps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out at me on my home screen. It is on my very, very first home screen because that’s how much I love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this damn app. So I think the icon’s okay. I’m sure I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey come to think it’s decent over time, like you had said, John, but I completely, completely agree.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I love the muted look of the app itself so that damn near
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all the color is either profile pictures or the actual photos on Instagram.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really, really like it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wish I could pay money to get rid of the ads, though. The ads in my Instagram feed are just oppressive.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe I don’t follow enough people, but it seems like every fifth thing is a giant ad. I’m seeing,
⏹️ ▶️ John or rather scrolling past without looking, way too many friggin’ ads on Instagram. Like, please, I will give you,
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess I would give them a dollar a month. Maybe that’s not worth it to them. So I’ll just continue to scroll past the ads.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know some people are like, oh, I don’t see any ads in my feed and I don’t know what algorithm I’ve tripped to make them spam me with
⏹️ ▶️ John ads like crazy, but too many, too many ads.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, for a while I had no ads and it was great. Then a few months ago I started
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting a very heavy ad load like we were describing and it really almost ruined Instagram for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I didn’t go back for a while. I guess my engagement dropped. And then recently I just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of stopped seeing ads. like flip back off for me but the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other day about about two days ago I somehow got switched to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco algorithmic timeline and yeah what I they could put any icon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they wanted into the ugliest graphical theme they wanted just give me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my stupid chronological timeline back because the algorithmic timeline I mean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I I’m just not used to it so maybe I will get used to it and appreciate it and I’ve never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used anything else with an algorithmic timeline. I don’t read Facebook.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I technically have an account there, but I literally have never used it to read its news feed. I’ve never done
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. I don’t use like YouTube subscriptions or things like that to like browse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco YouTube. And whatever Twitter is doing with their algorithmic thing, I don’t, I don’t, whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe it doesn’t show up in TweetBot. I don’t see it. I’ve never seen it. So I, this is the first time I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever actually seeing an algorithmic timeline and something that that previously didn’t have one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s terrible like it doesn’t make any sense like I’m seeing pictures
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of order that they happened I have no idea when I’ve like seen everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m seeing things that that that don’t make sense that make me think that I’ve reached completion but then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t I see right below it like oh here’s one that I saw 12 hours ago and the right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco below is one from eight minutes ago and you got to be kidding me
⏹️ ▶️ John for all these years I’ve been using Instagram I think I’ve mentioned this before but what I do if is I launch the Instagram app,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it shows me whatever picture I was viewing last time, briefly. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and it refreshes. Right,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then I memorize in that brief moment, I memorize what that image is, and then I scroll backwards till I get to it. Yep,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey same here. And I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John basically doing my own tweet marker. Yeah, don’t get
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco used to that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because that’s how I read it. I’m an Instagram completionist, and I read them chronologically, and I don’t wanna miss any.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s slightly confused by the fact that I see a lot of them cross-posted to Twitter, because sometimes I think, oh, I’ve seen that
⏹️ ▶️ John one already, I must have gone too far, but no, that’s why I gotta memorize the one that’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey god, I know exactly what you’re saying.
⏹️ ▶️ John If they ever fix the app so it doesn’t flash the last image you saw on the screen right before it refreshes the timeline, it would totally
⏹️ ▶️ John screw up my workflow.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey So if I got hit with the algorithmic
⏹️ ▶️ John one, I don’t know what I would do. Maybe I would just stop using Instagram, but I’ll have to try it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, that’s what I’m considering it, because it’s that bad. So here, I’m re-reading my timeline now. I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco four hours ago, three hours ago, four hours, four hours, five hours,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 10 hours, one day, eight hours, two days, 10 hours,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one day. It’s completely, it’s just shuffled. 12 hours, it’s just shuffled. I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see things even like, you know, so you might be able to say, oh well, you know, I noticed that it puts my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wife up top because I usually like her photos and I try to see them all. It even shows her photos
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of order. It is so disruptive and I can’t find any option anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to flip it back. I think this is just something that they’re presumably doing to either
⏹️ ▶️ Marco boost some engagement thing that they measured once in Facebook or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They want to they want a new revenue stream of like Charging the brands that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you follow to appear higher up in your stream or
⏹️ ▶️ John You know it’s charging charging brands to make more people see the things you have 20 million followers But
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll show your thing to 10 of them unless you pay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah It’s like you earn those followers those people all said I want to see everything this person posts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we’re gonna charge you for access to the audience that you earned yeah That’s the Facebook model and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Facebook goes Instagram, so that’s probably what this is for and man. It sucks as a user I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel so bad now for Literally the entire rest of the world who actually uses Facebook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who you know trying to make sense of that newsfeed I remember when they made that change the newsfeed a few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years back I remember everybody was all upset, and I didn’t really understand why But now I do, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it completely changes the nature of the service, and it kind of breaks it for me. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really don’t like this, and I think this is going to reduce my usage of Instagram substantially.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think Instagram, maybe I’m wrong about this, but Instagram seems not uniquely vulnerable,
⏹️ ▶️ John but more vulnerable than usual to, if they screw things up, to someone saying, all right,
⏹️ ▶️ John well I’ll just make an Instagram that works like it used to. Like imagine one that actually kept track of where you were in the timeline and just did it straight
⏹️ ▶️ John ahead. I believe it’s called Tweetbot. I know, but is the social graph so
⏹️ ▶️ John embedded? Because you can’t do that to Facebook. Facebook has too many features, too many users, it’s too big. Instagram has
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of users, but not a lot of features, and it’s still kind of an island unto itself. They haven’t really totally integrated
⏹️ ▶️ John with Facebook at this point. If Instagram really does screw
⏹️ ▶️ John things up, and maybe there’s a generation of people who are like, oh, they’re stuck on Instagram, but look at Snapchat. It comes out of nowhere. You
⏹️ ▶️ John can grab new users with a new product that people find compelling. Instagram breaks everybody’s workflows, who
⏹️ ▶️ John they care about. There is a market opportunity for someone to do a very straightforward
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS app that shows you the pictures your friends took in order and has a simple asymmetrical
⏹️ ▶️ John following process like Twitter and has likes and comments like it’s not technologically unfeasible.
⏹️ ▶️ John All that’s required is for Facebook to anger enough people to make a viable market for some other small competitor, even if it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just like a company that’s never going to be as big as Facebook, it’s never going to Never gonna be as big as Instagram, never gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John usurp Instagram, but merely become an alternative. I guess you could consider it a successful
⏹️ ▶️ John app.net for Instagram.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, dammit, you took the joke right away from me. I was so excited to make that joke, but never
⏹️ ▶️ John joke, I mean, it’s a thing that could possibly happen. Like, it’s not inconceivable that that could be a thing, depending on
⏹️ ▶️ John how badly Instagram screws it up and how many people’s workflow actually does disrupt. For all we, as people sitting in the chatroom, if
⏹️ ▶️ John you follow tons of people, an algorithmic timeline is indistinguishable from a non-algorithmic one Because you never keep track of anything
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway. You just launch the app and you scroll until you’re satisfied or something. Do people scroll backwards? Like they launch the app,
⏹️ ▶️ John they get zipped to the top of the timeline and they scroll the other way? I do,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco yeah. I did.
⏹️ ▶️ John Until they see a picture that they recognize already then they stop? Yep. Is that how people use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the only way you really could use it before.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, you could use it the way I was using it and the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco way Casey was using it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Memorize the picture, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. It’s like a little game. Scroll, scroll, scroll, found it. Now go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey through them. Oh, see, I misunderstood. I actually do what you just described. I misunderstood your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John original point.
⏹️ ▶️ John When it loads, I see the picture of, I don’t know, like Mike Mattis took pictures
⏹️ ▶️ John of cows in a field, and that blinks on the screen for a second, and then it loads 50 other pictures. Then I scroll down
⏹️ ▶️ John to find the cow picture, and then I see the cow picture, and then I move it down.
⏹️ ▶️ John I go past them really fast.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, come on. What you have to do is you have to pay an assistant $5 a month to scroll for you. And
⏹️ ▶️ John say, Veev, take me to the picture that I last saw, Which again,
⏹️ ▶️ John when I first played with Instagram, I’m like, maybe I don’t understand how this app works. Is it broken? Do people, how
⏹️ ▶️ John do regular people use Instagram? Because every time I launch it, I wanted to show me the last picture I saw. The same way every time
⏹️ ▶️ John I launch a Twitter app, I want it to show me the last tweet I read. Frustrating.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think the way regular people do it, if they care enough at all, is what you just described and what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do, and it sounds like what Marco does, which is, okay, memorize what I just saw, and then start at the top
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John keep going. And stop when you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hit it. Right, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m too old to keep that in short-term memory for that long. I have
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey a couple of seconds before it leaves my head entirely.
⏹️ ▶️ John Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, cow, stop, good. And then I don’t have to remember that picture anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, the problem is the cross posts also screw me up too, because then I convince myself that the one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just saw, like that I’d seen on Twitter previously, was the one that flashed when I opened the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app, and sometimes that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John right. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John why you gotta, you gotta, yeah, try my technique. It’s, you only have to remember it for a very short period
⏹️ ▶️ John of time and you can immediately forget it. Enjoy it while you can. Don’t close the Instagram app though, because when
⏹️ ▶️ John you relaunch it, if it’d get purged out of memory, then you’ll be back to the top again.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I never noticed that, but now that you say that, you’re absolutely right. I never thought about it that way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John That’s why I follow
⏹️ ▶️ John like three people on Instagram. I’m able to maintain this workflow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just giving my regular timeline back for God’s sake. I’m gonna get so many emails. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John think that you will find there are some kin of the subway defenders.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Someone already wrote just me, of course, saying that I’m not crazy and that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s okay to like things that other people don’t like.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, they were too scared to sit on the doll, though, so. Apparently.
⏹️ ▶️ John But Subway is vile, Subway is vile, though, seriously.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah, Subway’s the worst.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh yeah, but you know, Sbarro Pizza, that’s so much better.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sbarro Pizza is better than Subway, yes, you’re correct.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John think it’s. It’s equivalent, it is absolutely equivalent.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it is better, it is a better food product. It’s not a good food product, but it’s better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think there is something I could order at Subway that I would rather have than anything Sbarro would
⏹️ ▶️ John No, because here’s the thing with Sbarro. They have dough, they have sauce, they have cheese, they assemble them and
⏹️ ▶️ John they make them hot. Dough is not good, sauce is not good, the cheese is not good. How is that any different than Subway?
⏹️ ▶️ John Subway has something that you think is bread, but it’s actually some kind of mold that grows
⏹️ ▶️ John into a bread shape.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey It’s like this little mutant bread fetuses that have so many preservatives and chemicals
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And then the cold cuts are, I don’t know what they are, but they’re just,
⏹️ ▶️ John are they frozen? Are they, like, they’re just, they’re not, they don’t look like or taste like what cold cuts are
⏹️ ▶️ John supposed to be. Like, we know what cold cuts are supposed to be. You go to the store and you slice them, you get them. Like, these
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of, I don’t know what’s wrong with them. They just look and taste like preservatives and come in these little
⏹️ ▶️ John units that they, it just, they’re just not right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what do you think is the ingredient quality at Sbarro’s?
⏹️ ▶️ John Right! Well, but that’s what I’m saying. I feel like their cheese is more like real cheese. Like there’s nothing to go
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey wrong like that. Based on what? you
Post-show: A tour of bad food
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s no equivalent to salami. Salami is a difficult product to get right. Subway salami
⏹️ ▶️ John is I don’t know what the hell it is. Same thing with their cheese. The little pre-assembled
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s the ingredients for this type of sandwich slapped on there. Again,
⏹️ ▶️ John the bread and the colon because they’re such a big part of it, then you can say, okay, well maybe their tomatoes and lettuce are fine. Maybe.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe their tomatoes and lettuce are fine, equivalent to whatever the Sbarro is using. Sbarro has no equivalent.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even their pepperoni, I feel like pepperoni Domines the type of product where you’re not a you know, there is no
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of gold standard for pepperoni. There’s lots of variability, and it’s all kind of crappy in one way or the other. But just you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John that sauce stone cheese I feel like is the higher quality is like these are honest products, not good tasting products tomorrow.
⏹️ ▶️ John But they’re honestly there whereas at subway, they’re taking a sandwich and screwing up the bread
⏹️ ▶️ John and the cold cut parts of it. And then I’m like, All right, I’m out. That’s it. What it was left, I’m not gonna go there for the tomatoes
⏹️ ▶️ John in the lettuce. It is just is incredibly byliness is cognitive dissonance. What about the cheese triangles,
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, the cheese, the tessellation, I mean that’s just a silly problem, assembly problem. But although
⏹️ ▶️ John cheese shouldn’t really be triangle shaped, really. I mean it should be squares or circles, right? I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John who makes triangle cheese? It’s just like, why are they even bothering to cut it into that
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I think it starts out as a square. I know, and they cut it into triangles, why? So they can screw up the tessellation and anger people? It
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey doesn’t make any sense.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t understand. You’re just waving your hands in the air and like you just don’t care
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and saying, oh, Sbarro is great ingredients but Subway they can’t be great
⏹️ ▶️ John and not a great ingredients that they’re just they’re more straightforward and honest like no one’s gonna say that pizza dough isn’t pizza
⏹️ ▶️ John dough where I think they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey nobody’s no their
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey eating a hot dog it
⏹️ ▶️ John is fresh every day bake it fresh from what from what from terrible like
⏹️ ▶️ John mushroom mold spore bread fetuses
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey oh it’s tomorrow
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t get shipped the same bread probably from the same damn
⏹️ ▶️ John oh is no it’s not it’s a pizza dough is more straightforward to Like, like, here’s the problem. Is it? There are so many
⏹️ ▶️ John good places where you can get sandwich, like, maybe you have to be from New York and understand deli. So if you want a sandwich with cold cuts on it,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not a high bar. There’s a billion delis in New York state that can give you a sandwich
⏹️ ▶️ John with cold cuts on it that is so much better than Subway that you should just never, pretend that store
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t even exist anymore. Like, you can go to Whole Foods and get a better sandwich. Like, you can go
⏹️ ▶️ John to any supermarket and have them assemble you a sandwich with cold cuts on it that’s better than Subway. You can go to Panera,
⏹️ ▶️ John also way better than Subway. Like I can’t think of anything worse than Subway. How can you, is there any place that will sell you a worse
⏹️ ▶️ John sandwich than Subway? This is my question. I can’t think of one.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Like the airport, the airport,
⏹️ ▶️ John when they’re wrapped in Saran wrap, those sandwiches are better than Subway. This is what I’m getting at. Like at least they have real
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even, actually, even like when Arby’s added sandwiches to their menu like a while back, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way better than Subway sandwiches. And that’s from Arby’s.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Like, and again, those are probably literal hamburger buns.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, like they actually got like bread and like they started stocking all like bread and cold cuts and stuff and they started
⏹️ ▶️ John is the subway is I feel like the bottom rung of any chain food
⏹️ ▶️ John in in the world like it’s probably in the world I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think of anything worse ooh Utah Brian just pointed out what is worse which I assume he said
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he said the plastic triangle sandwiches I assume he’s talking about the ones you get like in gas stations that’s what I was
⏹️ ▶️ John saying I was saying at the air the plastic triangle sandwiches at the airport are better than subway they probably
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you food poisoning and kill you. No, John. No, because they’re made
⏹️ ▶️ John with real bread. And you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the internal
⏹️ ▶️ John ingredients are gonna be gross, but most of that grossness is because they’ve been there for a long time, which is also why you’re gonna get food
⏹️ ▶️ John poisoning, which is why you shouldn’t eat them. But based on like, you know, what are they made of?
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re made of bread. And the ingredients in them… They’re made of pathogens. Sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John the airport sandwiches are bad because they’re made with ingredients that don’t have enough preservatives in them, and they just sit there and they get all gross.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, it’s It’s like any airplane food like they try to make it out of good ingredients But if you know you have this pre-cooked
⏹️ ▶️ John chicken and tomatoes and then you let them sit there and you’re like This would have been better with preservatives because this is just sat there
⏹️ ▶️ John too long and gone through too many pressure changes and now it’s just a vile rubbery tasteless mess
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know what’s infuriating about doing this show with you John is that you are just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey completely and utterly wrong Completely like I could concede that subway is not great
⏹️ ▶️ Casey food I’m not arguing that
⏹️ ▶️ John name or a sandwich name or a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sandwich. Hold on. Hold on Hold on. The airport sandwiches are unequivocally worse. But the problem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, because everyone on the Internet thinks you can never say anything that’s wrong ever, now we’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get a thousand emails with people saying, oh, John is completely wrong. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to help you here. Subway really is the bottom.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey OK, well, OK, let’s again let’s let’s concede for the sake of discussion that Subway is the worst. Let’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just assume even though it’s not. But let’s assume it is. I don’t understand why you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think Sbarro is any better or different. Pizza dough is the same kind of dough
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s shipped from some factory in West Bumblescrew into the local Sbarro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the Subway dough is. And every day at Subway, they cook the dough.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You think they make the friggin’ dough at the Sbarro?
⏹️ ▶️ John Rip the crust off a Sbarro thing. That crust has more bread-like qualities
⏹️ ▶️ John than any bread ever to come out of Subway. I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey crap Subway uses. Crispier, crunchier crust because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s cooked at high temperature. It is more chewy and gluten-y. It is much more like
⏹️ ▶️ John bread. Not particularly good tasting bread, but much more like bread than that stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I are going to opposite Sbarro’s and Subway’s. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey again, I’m not trying to say that Subway’s is the definition of good food. I’m not saying that, but I just, I cannot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reconcile in my head that you think that Sbarro is Leaps and Bounds better than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Subway because they are to my eyes of effectively the same quality. I like both
⏹️ ▶️ John I would say Leaps and Bounds. It’s better, but it’s better.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey lot of it is because
⏹️ ▶️ John degree of difficulty. It’s got so few ingredients and none of them are weird mutant versions of legit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ingredients. Pizza has so many more ingredients.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re saying it’s easier to make good pizza than a good sandwich,
⏹️ ▶️ John Easier to make pizza with actual honest ingredients like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey how can you say that
⏹️ ▶️ John serious problem like any kind of cold cuts are like, it’s very difficult to there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a high degree of difficulty there. It’s not simple like oh, sauce cheese and bread made really
⏹️ ▶️ John hot in an oven. cold cuts are a processed product that is complicated to make that that
⏹️ ▶️ John has a lot of variety what the things that are similar between roast beef and turkey and salami,
⏹️ ▶️ John like there’s a huge range of expertise that you need to make any of those. But they’re not making them
⏹️ ▶️ John in each location. They’re buying that I know, but they’re where they’re buying them from is like the lowest bidder and they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John so incredibly vile that they are should not even be called salami or even their ham or their turkey.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everything is just terrible. Like again, something like Panera who has similar challenges. Their Italian
⏹️ ▶️ John combo Panera is not a good Italian sandwich. The coconuts on it are not good and yet still way better than
⏹️ ▶️ John the ones at Subway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Everything you’re saying about Subway, how does that not apply to Sbarro? Thank you.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because like I said, cheese, mozzarella cheese is very, it’s hard to screw up. It’s a very simple cheese.
⏹️ ▶️ John It doesn’t need to be aged. It’s inexpensive. And most of it tastes like more or less like mozzarella cheese.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not a complicated product like salami or slicing ham or roast beef or like mozzarella cheese is very straightforward.
⏹️ ▶️ John So is the dough is very straightforward. So it’s not a complicated dough. It’s not a sourdough. It’s not some special thing you need to do. It is
⏹️ ▶️ John like perhaps one of the most straightforward doughs. And tomato sauce also very easy. Tomatoes can very well.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down. It’s not it’s not how long
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do you spend making sauce when you make
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John your own sauce?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s pasta sauce is not pizza sauce Casey. Please don’t tell me you’re putting pizza sauce on your on your pasta or vice versa
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the same thing with a regular way, right? I mean, it’s really not that
⏹️ ▶️ John saying like those are sturdier ingredients that are harder to screw up that have a lower degree of Difficulty to make something
⏹️ ▶️ John that qualifies as the food obviously, it’s not good, but it’s it is honest straightforward
⏹️ ▶️ John It is the food whereas cold cuts and bread are I don’t think bread is that difficult? Subway somehow
⏹️ ▶️ John managed to screw it up, but cold cuts definitely are difficult and I would just Rather, not have
⏹️ ▶️ John cold cuts than have cold cuts that are that bad. And not have bread rather than have bread that’s that bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t reconcile you saying that it’s harder to screw up a cold cut, like a slice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of ham. Harder to make, yes. How can you screw up a slice of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an animal easier than you can screw up a complicated multi-part
⏹️ ▶️ John Because it’s not just a slice of an animal. That’s the whole thing. They put tons of preservatives
⏹️ ▶️ John and goop and everything on those things to try to make them be shelf-stable for longer periods of time. They’re generally pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John perishable, and you kind of, to do it right, have to ship them in big giant hunks that you slice on demand, but there’s no way in hell somebody’s going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just, I can’t reconcile this. Like, I’m,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I’ve left behind-
⏹️ ▶️ John Have you not had good cold cuts? Maybe this is the problem. Do you not know what cold cuts are supposed to taste like?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey absolutely. If I could, if I could live off of Boar’s Head
⏹️ ▶️ Casey white American cheese, I would. And this is where you start bitching at me about how American cheese isn’t cheese, but
⏹️ ▶️ John Why do American cheeses is what you go for? Cheese is actually one of the easier ones because again, cheese
⏹️ ▶️ John is inherently has a little more shelf stable than something, I mean salami is pretty good at that, but like something
⏹️ ▶️ John like sliced turkey or roast beef, that’s got a pretty low
⏹️ ▶️ John shelf life compared to cheese, right? Cheese is gonna be much more sturdy to a fast food
⏹️ ▶️ John type environment. Cold cuts are hard.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Not mozzarella.
⏹️ ▶️ John Somebody’s trying to do mass market with cold cuts and they are forced to make
⏹️ ▶️ John this unholy alliance with chemicals, preservatives, and crap products.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But isn’t that also true of every fast food place that has burgers and stuff? It’s all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same challenges.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. I mean, burgers have the advantage that frozen
⏹️ ▶️ John ground beef, reheated, there’s a lot of fat that gets you by in those things where it’s just like, yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s terrible, it’s grade D meat, it’s frozen, but there’s a lot of fat involved and there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John actually not that much meat in the grand scheme of things and you slather a bunch of other stuff on it and basically just tastes like salty, squishy fat.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s more difficult to hide bad salami, because bad salami has a very distinctive taste.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a strong taste, and if it’s bad, it’s bad. But it’s the same thing with burgers
⏹️ ▶️ John to some degree, in that that’s why you can tell the difference between Shake Shack and
⏹️ ▶️ John a burger that came to the store frozen, right? Like, it’s not that big of a difference, but you can tell.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, you’re so wrong, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John Also, Jared is a really bad person, so you should.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, there’s that. Are you basically saying that McDonald’s is better than Subway because it’s burgers?
⏹️ ▶️ John Better how? I mean, McDonald’s is kind of its own thing. I would eat McDonald’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before I’d eat Subway.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would eat Subway before McDonald’s if only for health reasons. Because I feel like McDonald’s has fewer
⏹️ ▶️ John healthy choices, whereas even Subway will taste really bad and it’s going to have less saturated fat and
⏹️ ▶️ John hopefully less calories, depending on what I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pick. Well, McDonald’s is also so incredibly strictly managed and regulated and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down to so many sciences and also they probably do more throughput customer wise.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John risk of… More throughput than Subway? I bet they do. Subway I
⏹️ ▶️ John think has a pretty good system. I found Subway to be about as consistent as McDonald’s. I don’t go to McDonald’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well but from a pure fear of foodborne illnesses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John perspective,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think McDonald’s is probably a safer bet.
⏹️ ▶️ John And things are hotter there, especially if you go to a hot summer’s. I can tell you that I have eaten Subway
⏹️ ▶️ John much more recently than I’ve eaten McDonald’s, But it’s mostly, it’s not for taste reasons, it’s because someone else wants Subway,
⏹️ ▶️ John someone who shall remain nameless, and I will eat it. Whereas when we want
⏹️ ▶️ John burgers, we go to Five Guys or Shake Shack these days. Or In-N-Out, In-N-Out when you’re in California.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, Tony, Five Guys, Five Guys, I mean it’s delicious,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John but it’s pure fat. It is pure
⏹️ ▶️ John fat. I know, but it tastes better than McDonald’s. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to agree with Casey. I haven’t had McDonald’s in, I think, a few years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I’ve had Five Guys recently and I don’t get the appeal, honestly, I really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t get the appeal of Five Guys. Like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s just like greasy fast food burger, there’s nothing special about it. I don’t think it’s any better than like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Wendy’s or an Arby’s.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh no, it’s way better than Wendy’s or Arby’s. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey going to the wrong ones. It’s a higher class
⏹️ ▶️ John of food than those places. Is it? Yeah. Yeah. It tastes,
⏹️ ▶️ John the way I describe Five Guys is it’s more like a burger that you would make yourself in your house with ingredients that you bought yourself.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco is a little bit not an
⏹️ ▶️ John expert. Chef is not gonna be a great burger, but it definitely does not taste like McDonald’s Burger King or
⏹️ ▶️ John even In-N-Out where you totally tell that’s a fast food burger. Five Guys tastes more like a mediocre regular burger.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If I have a mini, I haven’t had Five Guys in probably as long as Marco’s had McDonald’s, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I eat a Five Guys, I forget if they call it like a mini bacon cheeseburger, whatever the smallest bacon cheeseburger.
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t get bacon at Five Guys, that’s my tip. Don’t get bacon. You might think you want it, but don’t get it. to taste better without
⏹️ ▶️ John their bacon is bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know about that. I have not gotten their bacon before and I still think it’s bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hold on. But the point I’m trying to get to though is if I eat a mini bacon cheeseburger,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whether or not bacon is a good call of five guys, if I eat a mini bacon cheeseburger and some of their fries,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an hour later I feel like a beach frigging whale. I can eat a equivalently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sized burger at McDonald’s or Wendy’s or what have you and still be a functional
⏹️ ▶️ Casey human being an hour later. Whereas five guys, not so much.
⏹️ ▶️ John That may be a digestive issue you have, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t typically have digestive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John problems. How do you feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about In-N-Out? I think that it is very good. I think that if I’m really honest,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is overrated by East Coasters because we don’t get it ever. So it’s a very good burger, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think it’s that much better than any other equivalent chain.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would lump In-N-Out as in the same family as McDonald’s and Burger King, but better than both of them. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I would not put it in the same
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s fair. A Shake Shack or even Five Guys. Because it’s more of a fast food style burger. Like everything
⏹️ ▶️ John about it, the bun, the way the burger is prepared, everything about it is a fast food style burger. And it is a higher quality
⏹️ ▶️ John fast food style burger, but it is not the non-fast food style burger as includes
⏹️ ▶️ John Five Guys and Shake Shack. Because it’s a different style. Like, you know, everything about it, the size, the proportion of
⏹️ ▶️ John the meat to the bun, what the bun is made out of, how the burger is prepared, whether the burger has ever been frozen before, a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco To me, I honestly object to lumping Five Guys and Shake Shack together.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think Five Guys is way closer to the big fast food chains than it is to Shake
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s closer to Wendy’s, because Wendy’s has a style of burger that’s a little bit different than McDonald’s Burger King in
⏹️ ▶️ John and out, I feel like. As you go on the continuum, I think you go to Wendy’s, then go to Five Guys. I agree
⏹️ ▶️ John with separating it from Shake Shack, because Five Guys is obviously not as good as that, or not as weird, not as different. Shake
⏹️ ▶️ John Shack’s got a potato bun and everything. It’s got all sorts of weird stuff going on that is not involved in
⏹️ ▶️ John the Five Guys burger. But Five Guys is definitely more straightforward. I think a lot of this is colored by their fries, which are
⏹️ ▶️ John all over the freaking map among all these ones. And if you had to categorize them just by their fries, I don’t know what you’d do. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John the fry variability I found to be huge. Even in individual locations.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wait, where? At McDonald’s?
⏹️ ▶️ John Every place. Like, I mean, just locations like, this Shake Shack has good fries, but this Shake Shack has bad fries. How
⏹️ ▶️ John does that even make sense? It’s like, no consistency. more consistency as you get to McDonald’s and Burger King, but… I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I was also not impressed with Five Guys fries, to be honest. I mean…
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, some people love them, some people don’t. Now, I’ve gone to the same Five Guys different times, and sometimes the fries are good,
⏹️ ▶️ John and sometimes they’re not. The same exact location, no consistency.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now really, if you’re talking about French fries, it’s Chick-fil-A waffle fries or Get Out.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think… I think you have to put waffle fries aside. I don’t think you can put them into the fry. We’re talking about
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco stick fries. Yeah, that’s basically hash browns at that
⏹️ ▶️ John point. Oh, come on. Well, yeah, waffle fries is a different thing. They’re good, I’m not saying waffle fries
⏹️ ▶️ John are great, but you can’t bring a waffle fry to a regular fry fight. That’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s cut up potato. You have the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weirdest rules. I mean, like, home fries are also cut up potato,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John but. Again, yeah, exactly, why not include home fries
⏹️ ▶️ John and hash browns? Like, why not throw a Waffle House in there? They got hash browns.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my God, it’s not a hash brown. It’s not even near a hash brown.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah, well, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You guys are crazy. Now I just want steak and shake. I tried making a steak and shake frisco melt last week. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually didn’t get that far off. The hardest part about it, that I didn’t achieve properly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that steak and shake frisco melts have two very thin burgers. And I don’t know how you make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a burger that thin. Like, I tried, and it wasn’t even close.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apart, yeah. I’ve never been to steak and shake.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, me neither. I’ve heard good things about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would imagine you probably have to freeze the patties to make them hold together.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no, all the, that’s the secret to those very thin ones. They come frozen as hockey bucks
⏹️ ▶️ John and you put them on the grill and they cook really fast because fast foods need to cook things really fast. Well, dang, if it tastes good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t really care.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s like a, what do you call it, minute steak? Or the other steak with the holes pounded in it so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wow. Speaking of, I had White Castle when I was at that bachelor party in Vegas a few weeks back.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s the bottom of the rung of hamburgers, speaking of,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was different, but I was fairly inebriated, so it hit the spot at the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Drunk Vegas White Castle? No.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sounds like a really bad idea.
⏹️ ▶️ John The same reason people find themselves at Taco Bell. So were you drunk? Oh, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah. Oh, no. Taco Bell’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey great. I’m not kidding either. I love Taco Bell.
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, bottom of the ladder for Mexican food, right? Taco Bell,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s probably fair.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think generally speaking, The later your fast food place is open, the worse it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey probably is. The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco the food is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah. I think that’s fair too, but I love me some Taco Bell. And actually, their morning crunch wrap, their breakfast crunch wrap, very good,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey believe it or not. Wow. Which has hash brown in it, as it turns out.
⏹️ ▶️ John Of course it does, why wouldn’t it?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I still remember that
⏹️ ▶️ John Saturday Night Live ad where they’re adding the, they’re making the ridiculous menu item for Taco
⏹️ ▶️ John Bell. Put it in a tote bag, fill it with salsa. You remember that ad? Nope, nope.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh God, I gotta look it, pick a title while I look this up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pete Jackson on Twitter. Casey has never had a good sub. Couldn’t be more obvious. That
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was 13 minutes ago. Four minutes ago. Okay, listened a little further. Revised thesis.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hold on, hold on. Revised thesis. Casey has never had a good meal of any kind.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I don’t want to say it, but some people are detecting a trend. Who is it? Who’s the chain food
⏹️ ▶️ John hound? It’s not you, Casey. There’s someone else who’s better.
⏹️ ▶️ John who’s really into like going to, you know, like Applebee’s and TGI Fridays.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh see, curiously enough, I don’t particularly care for those. Like I’ll eat
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John there. No, nobody does.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re terrible. But it is somebody in our circle who like is an aficionado of them. Like, yeah. Or,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know what I’m talking about. Like that, again, the bottom rung of the chain restaurants.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mid-priced chain restaurants for like, for full table service.
⏹️ ▶️ John everything is really bad for you. yeah and they have weird thing weird meals
⏹️ ▶️ John that appeal it’s kind of like before Guy Fieri came and showed everybody the true meaning of evil you
⏹️ ▶️ John know with his terrible restaurants that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I mean honestly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I there’s a lot like a lot of those big chain restaurants I’ve never even been to because like like in the in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the times of my life that I lived in places that had them I couldn’t afford to go there
⏹️ ▶️ John what was that one that was like with a B or something Bennegan’s Bennegan’s there you go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean I used to go to Ponderosa sometimes for like special occasions. Like growing up, I’d
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go like once a year to Ponderosa.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would put it in a similar category as Outback, but I would put it in a separate category from TGI Fridays, Applebee’s, Bennegan’s.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is Bennegan’s still around?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So CMF, I went to college in Pennsylvania, that is true. I went to college, however, in the middle of nowhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John where- Most of Pennsylvania is the middle of nowhere. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where basically, I went to college in Meadville, Pennsylvania,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where the only restaurant in town, There was a Ponderosa, I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but we never went there. The only restaurant in town that anybody would ever go to was just a Perkins. And so I went to Perkins
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot before that. In Ohio, I went to Denny’s a lot, which is basically the same restaurant.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh, Denny’s is awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s something. It’s better than Waffle House.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Oh, it’s so good.
⏹️ ▶️ John Denny’s is awesome? Oh, so good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would disagree strongly on that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Best pancakes in the world, IHOP.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that was, in case it’s not clear, that was an attempt to ridicule Casey’s
⏹️ ▶️ John very low-level taste.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love Eschatologist in the chat saying, Denny’s is a place you wind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Well put. That is perfect. That is well put.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, again, it’s open very late, like IHOP, also open late. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, that’s why I went to Perkins in college, because it was open 24 hours. So the interesting story, Tiff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I, our first date was we drove 40 minutes to Erie, Pennsylvania
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the nearest big town we drove 40 minutes to get there to go to the Olive Garden
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s amazing it’s amazing this relationship last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was our nice restaurant for our first date
⏹️ ▶️ John again I would say bottom bottom of the of the ladder for Italian
⏹️ ▶️ John food restaurants we all not agree is name a worse Italian food restaurant than the Olive Garden it’s impossible
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the borrows obviously no I know so borrows has better Italian food in the Olive Garden, hands down.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No. That’s not true. That is untrue. Not at all. Not true.
⏹️ ▶️ John The Olive Garden breadsticks are the only other bread item that I can think of that is similar to Subway bread. They’re delicious.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s basically a hot dog bun with grease sprayed on it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, and it’s wonderful.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not bread. That is not
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey a bread. It is absolutely bread.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is not a breadstick. It is, oh, you know. As I once said on my blog,
⏹️ ▶️ John Olive Garden is the gold standard for bad Italian food. They intentionally overcooked
⏹️ ▶️ John their pasta so they can be gummed by the senior citizens who there and so it won’t Sensibilities of Middle America.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is not like a made-up thing. This is what they do as corporate policy. It is
⏹️ ▶️ John please all the gardens. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t understand why people like you so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco much really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all the fast-food places That we’ve mentioned so far. I think I’d rather eat in an olive garden than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost any of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Margo, what’s happening to you? You’re in New York, go have some real Italian food. Please, stop going to Olive
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Garden. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if that’s an option, sure. But if my alternatives are Subway and Sbarro, I’m going to Olive
⏹️ ▶️ John would choose to borrow Olive Garden any day. Not because I love Sbarro, but because I hate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Olive Garden so much. Yes, that’s because it’s cool to hate Olive Garden, particularly when you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t know Olive Garden existed until much later in life, long after I left Long Island, because when I was in Long
⏹️ ▶️ John Island either there wasn’t Olive Garden there or I didn’t know they existed. Certainly never went to
⏹️ ▶️ John one, right? When I went to, like, people are like, oh, they like Olive Garden, it’s like this chain restaurant.
⏹️ ▶️ John I expected it to be not good, probably bad, but I was not
⏹️ ▶️ John prepared for exactly how bad it was. And then I did internet research, and why, how can this be so bad? How can
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey this be a popular chain? Of course you did internet research.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, oh, they are intentionally making food to appeal to the tastes of people who don’t like Italian food. That’s basically what
⏹️ ▶️ John a boiled stout did.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, okay. Well, you clearly have never been to fazoli’s which was
⏹️ ▶️ John never been to bazooka. I don’t even know what that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is It’s fast fast food Italian.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s there. There’s the place that’s like Italian racial stereotypes
⏹️ ▶️ John and like assaulting insulting to Italians. It’s the book
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey a day. We’re
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco gonna bet thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep Yes that that is more insulting than all of God. Yeah, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that is pretty bad I will give
⏹️ ▶️ John as an Italian when I go to the restaurant. I feel insulted my heritage feels insulted you should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Bukit Ubefo is a disaster, but yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey To go back a step, I met Aaron at an Applebee’s and you could argue our first date,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which we didn’t think was a date at the time, but in retrospect was our first date was at an IHOP.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And here we are, almost a decade, well, a decade after that first date and almost a decade into marriage.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, and Marcus started out at Almond Garden.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, see? That’s what you need. You need s*** food. That’s how you build a good relationship. That’s the cornerstone, really.