206: All You Need Is Five Nerds
26 Jan 2017iOS 10.3 changes, developers responding to reviews, year of iPad, and Casey’s morning routine.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Casey needs his morning coffee
- Follow up:
- APFS is in iOS 10.3
- Developers will be able to respond to App Store reviews
- Apps can change their own icons
- Floating iPad keyboard
- Apple API for Soliciting Reviews
- Under the Radar #64 again
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann
- A 10.5" iPad? Let's do math.
- Post-show:
- Representation of tech interests in elected officials
- Marco convinces Casey to spend money
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Chapters
- Casey’s morning coffee
- Follow-up: Consumer Reports
- Stockpiling keyboards
- WebKit goes to the beach
- Sponsor: Casper (code ATP)
- APFS in iOS 10.3
- Sponsor: Indochino (code ATP)
- App Store changes
- Sponsor: Betterment
- iOS 10.3 APIs
- Rate-this-app prompts
- 10.5-inch iPad?
- Ending theme
- After-show: Tech in politics
- After-show: Neutral
Casey’s morning coffee
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m already tired, I’m already cranky, this is going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be a long show. If only there was like a mild beverage you could take that would help
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you be a little bit more awake and alert for a little while after you take it. That would really come in handy. Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drug pusher. I mean of all the drugs that you can be mildly chemically addicted to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is by far the most pleasant and least harmful.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not true. I’m sure there are less harmful drugs to be addicted to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean deodorant maybe, but like, that’s not really a chemical addiction. How are you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey He’s huffing it, that’s what he’s doing. No, I did have a glass of Diet Coke,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re right, so maybe that’ll help a little bit. Because that’s what you were talking about, is caffeine, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I get my caffeine from Diet Coke, like any responsible human would do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, surrounded by cancer sugar,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good luck with that. It’s better than having to choke down coffee, am I right? So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco so yeah, so I’m tired. Everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the world is worse in the food world right now than the gradual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco invasion of sucralose into everything. Why? Why? Just use real
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sugar or don’t sweeten it. Sucralose is the worst in the universe. You can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always taste that horrible aftertaste. Ugh, this has sucralose in it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, so that’s the thing is the horrible aftertaste that regular humans like yourself get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from Diet Coke. I actually get that from regular Coke. Like regular Coke lingers in my mouth for days
⏹️ ▶️ John stop drinking soda.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Problem solved.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Soda’s terrible. I don’t… I drink Diet Coke… I have a can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at lunch pretty much every day, during the week that is, and then I’ll usually have like a glass
⏹️ ▶️ Casey after dinner and that’s it. But I’ve not yet found
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any demonstrable proof in my own body. I’m not saying this is true for anyone else, but in my own
⏹️ ▶️ Casey body, I have not yet found demonstrable proof that caffeine negatively impacts my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ability to sleep, especially after you two keep me up until midnight. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can have a fair bit of Diet Coke in the evening right before going to sleep and I’m fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s the worst, why? Ugh, it’s so bad. So, but the thing is though, you are right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Diet Coke is bad, but coincidentally, I am also right that coffee is revolting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco We’re both wrong. No, that’s not— And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re both wrong. I think there’s a large body of evidence to suggest that I’m right on this. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey coffee is disgusting. And God, oh God, I would hate to be that person that has to have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a cup of coffee in the morning in order to function. Screw that. You know what I do in order to function
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the morning? I get out of bed. I don’t even shower in the morning. I shower at night because, P.S., showering in the morning is disgusting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You should be showering before you get in bed rather than sleeping on three weeks’ worth of filth. But anyway—
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re just piling on the unpopular opinions. going out but no
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco not my fault that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone’s wrong but
⏹️ ▶️ John how often are you washing your sheets hang on a second i’m doing some math you may be
⏹️ ▶️ John slightly off on your sheet washing cycles
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no it is more often than once every three weeks but but but seriously i cannot fathom
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like i understand that i am the weirdo on this one all all snark aside i am the weird one that almost everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey i know showers when they wake up i’m trying to make two different points simultaneously.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Number one, I currently, as it stands today, have no
⏹️ ▶️ Casey morning routine in order to get out and to get myself moving in the morning. The way I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get myself moving in the morning is I open my eyes. I am ready to go after
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. So I’m looking at a little avatar of you, my Skype
⏹️ ▶️ Marco client, that does actually reflect generally what you look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like and your hair is really nicely done and it looks like you might have some product in there. So does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that just, did you put that on at night somehow or?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, no, no, that’s a fair criticism. That’s an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco entirely different issue. What I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey meant to say, I have my morning routine, don’t get me wrong. My point was just that I’m not one of those people that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey needs like a coffee in order to be ready to handle the day. Like you can come at me right first thing in the morning
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with some sort of technical problem and I’m okay with that. Now the one thing I did not consider
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is I do need to consume something for breakfast. It can be damn near anything. I can have a Pop-Tart, I can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have an Eggo, I typically make myself a fruit smoothie,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever. You know, I would hate to be the kind of person who couldn’t fuck in the morning before I ate something. I just get out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of bed, I’m ready to solve problems. I often will start work and programming before I’ve had coffee.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s a thing. Like, I often don’t have coffee until like 10 or 11 o’clock. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see, I’m okay with that. It’s these people that typically work in an office that are like, oh, don’t talk to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me, I haven’t had my coffee. Like, screw that. Come on. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an adult. them being like a pain in the butt like you know like if they weren’t complaining about the coffee they complain about something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else. I agree we agree. No I will say that in defense of your weird night showering habit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it having traveled with you a bunch it actually makes it really convenient to travel with you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John because you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco waiting in the morning for you to get ready you’re always ready like whenever I am because I am I’m a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco morning shower so of course I take longer I also sleep as long as I possibly can I’m never waiting for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you ever when we travel.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know if that’s actually true. I would hope you don’t ever wait for me in the morning. I’m sure there’s some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point in time where you’re waiting on me. Well, when you’re doing your hair.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I’m just kidding.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John actually, it would be, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t think we’ve ever actually shared a hotel room, but if we ever had to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey that would be very convenient
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also to have you be a night shower, because then we’re not competing for the shower in the morning either.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey true, that’s true. The whole point I was trying to make, like I was saying, is twofold. One, I mean, I could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey handle a technical problem first thing in the morning. I’d prefer to have a breakfast first, but I don’t have to. But number
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two, I can’t get out of my head how gross it is for someone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to take the day’s filth and put it into their bed every night.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Every night, today’s filth. Monday’s filth into the bed. Tuesday’s filth, let’s add Tuesday onto Monday’s filth.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wednesday’s filth, let’s add Wednesday’s filth onto Tuesday’s filth, onto Monday’s filth, and let’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey roll in it for eight hours. That sounds awesome. And again, I recognize before the entire internet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey writes me, which they’re about to do anyway, I recognize that this is a weird thing and that I am the weird
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one here, but I cannot fathom how any human being that values
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hygiene can get into covers that they’re getting in without showering first.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s disgusting. Oh, I don’t get it. Now, this is where a couple of… So there’s a few things people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco say. Number one- How dirty are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you getting during the day?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how dirty are you getting during the day? You sit in an air-conditioned office behind a chair, in a chair, behind a screen, blah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s still some point,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can only speak for myself, but at some point during the day, I probably have at least a little shimmer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on me of sweat, of dirt, of something. Because you don’t have winter there. Maybe.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Number two.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the south. I’m choosing what battles to fight right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Number two, this is where all sorts of people come out of the woodwork and say, well, don’t you sweat at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey night? Sometimes, you’re absolutely right, sometimes I do. But at least leave it as the night
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dirt that’s in the bed. Why would you contribute the day dirt on top of the night dirt? That’s barbaric,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think your threat model for dirtying sheets is
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey wrong. The whole
⏹️ ▶️ John model of how sheets exist in one state and how transfer
⏹️ ▶️ John happens from you to the sheets, putting them in a state that you don’t like, I think that whole model is wrong. Because,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, maybe we don’t want to get into it, but are you sleeping naked? Because the transfer
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey is wrong. Wouldn’t you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like to know, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just saying, like, it seems like what you’re modeling here is an idea
⏹️ ▶️ John of how, how things would transfer
⏹️ ▶️ John from one place to another, making one thing that was clean, dirty, right? But I don’t know if that idea
⏹️ ▶️ John maps to the reality of you sleeping in beds. It’s an alternative
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Moving on. Let’s start with some follow up.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My favorite thing about this conversation is all the new listeners we got last week
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thinking you know what what they’re going to expect that this show is and then they tune in here
⏹️ ▶️ John Tune in live. They’ll just be the pre-recorded one and this will not be heavily featured at the start of the program
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s hope not. Let’s hope not.
Follow-up: Consumer Reports
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So let’s start with some follow up. Uh, consumer reports have re has recommended the MacBook pro. So turns out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, uh, they have worked with Apple in order to fix Apple’s bugs, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey may or may not entirely be Apple’s fault. Oh, I guess the bugs were anyway, it doesn’t matter. Point is they have retested
⏹️ ▶️ Casey their MacBook pros. One model got almost 19 hours on a charge. I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey entirely clear how that could be possible, but that’s what they say.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it was that because that’s how their tests work. Like it so saying before the absolute numbers don’t really matter
⏹️ ▶️ John on tests like this because there’s no way you’re actually gonna write You know simulate any particular users All
⏹️ ▶️ John you want to know is we use the same test all the time Is this better or worse than the same than like the previous
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac or a different model? You want some kind of consistency within the numbers, but you know, it’s uh, it’s like story points
⏹️ ▶️ John in a sprint Casey I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know what you’re talking about
⏹️ ▶️ John the consumer reports thing the main reason I put it in here one was just that you know to follow up on
⏹️ ▶️ John like guess what, like we said, they probably would last time they retested and everything’s fine, blah, blah, blah. But
⏹️ ▶️ John thinking from it from the perspective of someone who used to write for a
⏹️ ▶️ John publication that did product reviews, and used to do product reviews myself, as, as like an institution
⏹️ ▶️ John for doing reviews as a publication as a venue as a place where people get information.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is not a good outcome, because now anyone who reads consumer
⏹️ ▶️ John reports has to think consumer reports did or didn’t recommend it. But is this the real story?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or do we have to wait two weeks for them to figure out what the real story was, and then to tell us whether they should get it or not like their job
⏹️ ▶️ John is to tell us whether this laptop is worth buying or should be avoided. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m going to say, although some people may differ, that the product with and
⏹️ ▶️ John without this bug, like whether you have the beta version that fixes this bug fix, or whether you don’t have the beta version is not
⏹️ ▶️ John that different markers using it presumably without this beta fix. And it is it it is a satisfactory
⏹️ ▶️ John product, right? With the beta fix, maybe it’ll be a little better.
⏹️ ▶️ John Stop. Well, you talked about it the whole last time about how, you know, it’s not as bad as you thought it would be. And so, like, I’m not saying-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just every week I waffle on whether I like the new one or whether I want to switch back to the old one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Because- But it’s not as if the battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey life is fatally bad. The keyboard is so bad. Yeah, I know, I know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The battery life, so, again, I’ve actually been doing my own tests, and the battery life is not good, but it’s okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the old one was similar. The old one was also not good, but okay. But God,
⏹️ ▶️ John the keyboard is so bad. I was saying they can’t even recommend the product.
Stockpiling keyboards
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, remind me, have you tried the Magic Keyboard? We’ve been through this so many times, I honestly don’t recall.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, for desktops, I gotta use an ergonomic keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I use desktops too heavily, and I have minor RSI problems if I use regular keyboards. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to avoid those, and to avoid them becoming major RSI problems, I use ergonomic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey totally. I was just curious, I didn’t know if you had like tried one for more than 10 seconds in a store, because I find
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, I’ve talked long, to anyone who will listen, about how much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I love the Magic Keyboard. And I have only used the new MacBook Pro keyboard for but a flash.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it was a while ago, so this is all on memory and it was a very brief time that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey used it. But I feel like the frustrating thing for me about the new MacBook Pro keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was that it was like 80% of perfection. Because I’m not saying you agree, I’m just saying to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me. Because it was so similar to the Magic Keyboard, But I think the throw was a little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bit smaller and that difference was enough to just drive me batty.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’m sure I would get used to it over time, but man, was it annoying because I feel like it was so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey close. You were right there. You almost had it and they didn’t quite get there. And the thing that’s scary
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me is that I suspect whenever a Magic Keyboard 2 happens, I bet you anything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’re going to use that keyboard with the shorter throw and I’m going to be very sad and I’m going to be I’m gonna be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Gruber in buying a thousand and four original Magic Keyboards to keep around until kingdom come
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because this is my favorite keyboard I’ve ever used.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well first of all I actually have done that myself. Microsoft upgraded the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Sculpt ergonomic keyboard that I have used for a few years now as my main one. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quote upgraded that to the new Surface ergonomic keyboard and I bought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one and I actually had to return it because the The surface ergonomic keyboard has is Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instead of its own custom miles thing, but it has a special Bluetooth implementation details.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess that are incredibly incompatible with Max and I’ve never had a PC keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was incompatible with a Mac before the Microsoft sculpt ergonomic is one of these or I mean the Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surface ergonomic excuse me and and there the two main problems. If you’re looking at this a lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco asking about this two main problems number one you can’t remap option and command
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be like on windows and alt properly the system panel that you do it in for every other PC keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the changes doesn’t apply it doesn’t work like you can change it there but the the keys still don’t change their functions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the second problem which is even more fatal than that is that it’s bluetooth implementation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically it falls asleep after a while and when you wake it up by pushing keys again
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the first couple keys you push don’t get recognized. So it’s really a pain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to use in practice. So it is effectively incompatible with the Mac. First time I’ve ever had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a PC keyboard where that’s been a problem. And so I had to return it. And also the ergonomics got worse and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got uglier. So there you go. The key switches feel a little bit better, but it is way too wide because it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco added the 10 key numpad area back on. And it’s low and flat, does not have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a riser in front. So the ergonomics are all doors and whatever the look they’re going for it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gray. It’s like it’s like the lining of cubicle walls like that kind of like gray carpety material.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s it’s like they made a keyboard of that so big miss on that and so so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the sculpt ergonomic keyboard that I like so much is now officially discontinued.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I stockpiled three of them right now because you can still get them in most places for like around sixty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seventy So I stockpiled a few of them for myself. And I figure like, by the time I burn through three of these,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which should be probably five years or so, six years or so, then I should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably be able to find something else by then.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And is that one Bluetooth, the old one that you’re stockpiling, or is that wired?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, it’s its own custom RF dongle, like most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Logitech mice, you know, like it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco its own little thing. And it’s not very good. Like the Sculpt wireless
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I’ve been using for years now, The wireless thing is pretty flaky. That’s usually the way these keyboards
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eventually die. The reason I replace them is usually that the wireless thing just becomes too unreliable. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can change batteries, and you can re-sync it, and you can move it around. Eventually those things just don’t help anymore,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or it still starts failing. And when it’s working properly, it never fails. It’s solid. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever it is that kills these keyboards after maybe two years of use,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is what ultimately ends the use for me and for a lot of other people.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So what were we trying to talk about the Consumer Reports
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Consumer Reports. Who cares? I mean, Consumer Reports is still going to keep doing the same BS they do all the time. They’re going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to keep doing it every time there’s a new Apple product. They’re going to get attention with some crazy headline. Oftentimes it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be about a real problem. Sometimes it won’t be. But usually when it is a real problem, they will be overblowing
⏹️ ▶️ John I think Marco’s drinking beer tonight. I’ve had like…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco or am I wrong?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve had literally like one inch of beer. It is still in the neck. And you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s a 4% beer.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s no amount that I’m saying here. You mentioned last time I said I could tell when
⏹️ ▶️ John you were drinking and you said, oh yeah, well next time tell me and so I just did.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is like the lightest beer I’ve ever seen and I’ve drank almost none of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I do not, I’m not attributing any kind of cause. I’m just saying. I’m just
WebKit goes to the beach
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so also in this last week, I haven’t had a chance to read this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so I’m going to defer to you, John, on this, but there’s a blog post on the WebKit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey blog introducing Riptide WebKit’s Retreating Wavefront
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Concurrent Garbage Collector. That sounds fancy. So what’s this all about, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, on the last program where we talked to Chris Latner, towards the end,
⏹️ ▶️ John we talked about ARC versus garbage collection and Chris went through this whole big thing
⏹️ ▶️ John about the tradeoffs and the different behaviors. And that might have been over
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of people’s heads because it was lots of jargon there. This is another one of WebKit often
⏹️ ▶️ John does these things to the WebKit developers post a thing that talks about some technical underpinnings
⏹️ ▶️ John of some feature of the browser or the engine usually. And
⏹️ ▶️ John this one describes their new garbage collector for JavaScript, kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John the stuff that Chris said, you can’t read this starting from zero and understand every part of it. But they do
⏹️ ▶️ John go through and explain a lot of it. And I think if you just Google some stuff and find some links, you can, you know, start
⏹️ ▶️ John understanding it. But I think it’s a good example of a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of the things that Chris alluded to, like that the the attributes of a garbage collector that are very similar
⏹️ ▶️ John to the attributes of arc and that there there’s additional bookkeeping and stuff that has to be done
⏹️ ▶️ John in line as part of the normal operation because the slam against arc
⏹️ ▶️ John is very frequently that well you’ve got all these reference counts you
⏹️ ▶️ John know increments and decrements all over your code you didn’t write those things but they get added anyway and it’s just like
⏹️ ▶️ John overhead and so even if you don’t understand all the weird nuances of this very very
⏹️ ▶️ John long article i think it is written in in a very clear way. Whoever wrote this, I think, did a good job. You have to assume
⏹️ ▶️ John some foundational knowledge. And maybe more things could be links, because you know
⏹️ ▶️ John I love to make things links.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Do you? I had no idea.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. But anyway, the word you don’t understand, just type it into a Google search box
⏹️ ▶️ John or look at the Wikipedia page or something, and you’ll learn about it. So I would encourage anybody whose interest
⏹️ ▶️ John was piqued by that discussion on last week’s episode to read maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John over a couple nights this very long post about WebKit’s garbage
⏹️ ▶️ John collector because I think it is really well done and you learn a lot and
⏹️ ▶️ John you will also even if you don’t learn that much come to a
⏹️ ▶️ John gut level understanding of exactly how much of a pain in the button it is to make JavaScript go fast and how much
⏹️ ▶️ John time and effort and money is being put into doing that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed and this was by Philip Pizlow Just FYI.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I miss the beach Wavefront that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey all it took
⏹️ ▶️ Marco riptide wavefronts like ah Summertime
⏹️ ▶️ John if you read the whole thing and understand a little bit of it The title will make sense by the end Retreating wavefront concurrent
⏹️ ▶️ John garbage collector all those words mean something and are explained at length in the article
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s funny, you know I remember you being vehemently opposed to the beach and I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey only mildly less opposed to it now the two of us are both converted. Who knew?
⏹️ ▶️ John Turns out, I’m opposed to your pronunciation of that word. Which word?
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APFS in iOS 10.3
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to Casper for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so John had a big day Yesterday was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it I believe when when the 10.3 beta was released and John
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have it on good authority that you did a little happy dance at your cubicle when you saw this news come out Is that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey true? Please do not deny it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I Do not do a happy dance. My
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey happy dance was when they announced
⏹️ ▶️ John existence of of the file system. That was my happy dance. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, we had a bell, we had a happy dance, we had all sorts of things. That time has passed.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I will say this, though, so that what you’re talking about is the announcement that the announcement slash leak
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, that iOS 10.3 and the beta builds that developers can get now will
⏹️ ▶️ John apparently convert your iOS from HFS plus
⏹️ ▶️ John to APFS upon upgrade and that’s mostly notable
⏹️ ▶️ John because a it is a partial fulfillment of the the goal Apple set forth
⏹️ ▶️ John for itself at WWDC last year they said you know we want to convert all
⏹️ ▶️ John of our platforms that means like iOS and Mac OS and I guess watch OS I mean basically
⏹️ ▶️ John all all Apple platforms to be on APFS in 2017 now 2017 is the entire year
⏹️ ▶️ John they didn’t say which part of the year or whatever but here we are in January and there’s already a beta
⏹️ ▶️ John of iOS 10.3 that converts to APFS so it’s not as if they’re waiting till you know
⏹️ ▶️ John October or whatever when the successor to Sierra comes out for for the Mac or you know whenever these
⏹️ ▶️ John things are going to be released they seem to be ahead of the game ahead of schedule
⏹️ ▶️ John and I was worried last year that are they really going to be able to roll over their entire product line with
⏹️ ▶️ John a new file system that they just announced and you know next year sometime but
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re apparently doing well they seem confident people who have upgraded I think Marco is one have not
⏹️ ▶️ John seen all their data disappear in a puff of smoke so things are looking good so far right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so my upgrade went totally fine I didn’t realize so I here I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was new version new beta of iOS comes out of course I installed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on my main phone immediately. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Did you not learn from iOS 5? You and I did this together on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco a 5.4. It was 5.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, we learned together. Gruber still gives me crap about that. Yeah, but he should
⏹️ ▶️ Casey give you and me crap because we were both idiots and here it is. Well, now to your defense, this was a point
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the point releases are usually completely harmless. They are almost never a problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for almost anybody and so, you You know that that that’s why I figured like let me do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this. There’s some new api’s I needed to test against limit. Let me try some stuff and make sure everything works and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So okay, then after we I installed it like by like an hour later,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I learned that oh I’m now using a PFS like it was it was not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not even a thing like all I noticed was that the install took maybe fifteen minutes longer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than I thought it would. It was a little slow, but otherwise like my phone booted up. Everything’s fine. like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve had zero issues so far and then a couple hours later when chatting with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John I learned that I’m using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Funny how that is.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well it’s not really true because I said I used it in the Sierra dev builds.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That doesn’t like not in your main machine that doesn’t count if it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John not like your main machine.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was as main machiney as it could be like I did everything that you could do with APFS on my main machine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can’t boot off of it with Mac OS 10. No, you
⏹️ ▶️ John cannot boot off of it, but I was still using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Well, then you’re not really.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that doesn’t count. I’m using APFS in production on my main machine before John and that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m I think I’m done for the year.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s on your phone. You’re for your main machine. Come on. Thought you’re a Mac user. The computer I use most often.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, based on based on nothing but Marcos firsthand experience
⏹️ ▶️ John of having upgraded and the vague wording in Apple’s release notes
⏹️ ▶️ John that have been tweeted out by various people. This is what we’re talking
⏹️ ▶️ John about on past shows about in place conversion, and how the design
⏹️ ▶️ John of APFS makes that not as crazy as you might think it sounds like you might be thinking, Oh, how is it going to do?
⏹️ ▶️ John How is it going to upgrade my file system? Do I have to have like 50% of my storage free so it can write all the data to
⏹️ ▶️ John a new location and do this thing or is it going to like back it all up to the cloud or make me do an iTunes backup
⏹️ ▶️ John and restore it? How is it going to? How’s it going to do this without destroying my data? And
⏹️ ▶️ John as we discussed last time, the strategy is that you leave all the data exactly where it is. You write
⏹️ ▶️ John a new set of metadata structure somewhere and the metadata is just like what tells you information
⏹️ ▶️ John about the data. Where is it? How much of it is there? Like the names of the files, the dates, all that crap.
⏹️ ▶️ John Write that somewhere and that doesn’t take up that much room. Like you need a reasonable,
⏹️ ▶️ John probably fixed size chunk of metadata, more or less, plus or minus extended attributes for each file.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the bigger of the files you have, the more efficient this is. So if you have tons
⏹️ ▶️ John and tons of relatively large files like music or videos, it’s an even bigger win.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you don’t probably need that much free space. You need some free space for all iOS upgrades, you need some free space,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you don’t need that much. all the metadata there pointing to the data exactly where it exists.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then only at the very very end after writing all the metadata they do a very fast very
⏹️ ▶️ John quick operation that says and big swaperoony rewrite the headers and the volume to say oh actually
⏹️ ▶️ John now this is an APFS volume and the metadata is over here. And that
⏹️ ▶️ John little tiny critical section should only take like fractions of a second right that
⏹️ ▶️ John is the only time where you could potentially have a a problem if it failed in the middle but even then they could use journaling
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything to defend against that. You don’t have to worry about any more than you normally would.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, somehow running out of battery during your upgrade or I don’t even know what could happen because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not like you can accidentally unplug a phone. Like they do want to be plugged in when they’re being upgraded but it’s not like you’re gonna have
⏹️ ▶️ John a power cut unless there’s some sort of hardware problem or you really drain your battery. So the moral
⏹️ ▶️ John of the story is yes upgrading in place is a real thing it should go fine
⏹️ ▶️ John and it is actually fairly safe assuming everything goes okay so I am NOT afraid
⏹️ ▶️ John of doing these upgrade I’m not gonna do the beta like I’m not in a hurry but when 10.3 comes out
⏹️ ▶️ John I expect it to be fairly uneventful barring any catastrophic bugs because once you’re running
⏹️ ▶️ John APFS then if there’s a bug in APFS then you’re gonna to be sad, right? But the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco conversion process itself
⏹️ ▶️ John seems like it’s okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What are you more afraid of in practice, bugs in APFS, or the regular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco behavior of HFS plus?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s, that’s the only thing that bothered me a little bit about the conversion when I was thinking about it more now that it’s a real thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because the conversion is like, what I would like it to do is run essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John FSDK or you know, the repair thing to like to validate all of the HFS
⏹️ ▶️ John plus metadata to make sure that it’s not incorrect in various ways and all the ways that if you were to run disk utility
⏹️ ▶️ John on your disk right now it would find a bunch of crap wrong because HFS is weird and buggy and sometimes doesn’t keep
⏹️ ▶️ John track of things the right way and it will find stuff that it can tell is wrong by exhaustively going over the data and metadata and comparing
⏹️ ▶️ John them and doing so and so forth. I would like it to do that before it dutifully
⏹️ ▶️ John writes the new metadata to a new location and based on your 15 minute time i’m not sure that does I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know how long it would take to like to essentially FSD K HFS plus
⏹️ ▶️ John on a 64 gig iOS device maybe it’s faster than I think because the disks are so much smaller than you
⏹️ ▶️ John know like a terabyte on a Mac or whatever so I’m not sure if it is doing that
⏹️ ▶️ John I would feel more comfortable if before it decided to make a copy made sure the thing that it’s copying is
⏹️ ▶️ John right and this gets back to what you’re saying what are you afraid of bugs and APFS or bugs in HFS plus.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m still probably more afraid of bugs and APFS because bottom line it takes a long time
⏹️ ▶️ John for a file system to really be bug free but at the moment of conversion
⏹️ ▶️ John I am definitely more worried about my existing HFS plus disks and all my iOS devices
⏹️ ▶️ John having the normal residue of problematic metadata that seems to accumulate in all HFS plus volumes
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m more worried about that at that point. After conversion,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to say I have to give the nod to HMS plus for you know, for
⏹️ ▶️ John a brand new file system that has never been deployed on Apple devices. If something is going to go wrong,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s going to happen unlike that first big deployment, it’s you know, HMS plus for all of its little crappy
⏹️ ▶️ John bugs, I really don’t expect any massive data destroying things to suddenly pop up. HMS
⏹️ ▶️ John plus is going to be what it is. And it has been for a long time. And it’s not good, not good by a long stretch,
⏹️ ▶️ John but presumably, I can’t remember the last time a
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t remember last time HFS was even updated, but all the updates that they’ve done to it, none of them have caused
⏹️ ▶️ John any sort of catastrophic problems that APFS plus APFS cannot say these names.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, anyway, I’m, I’m gonna upgrade everything. I’m just gonna go for it. I have a lot of backups, you should have a lot of backups
⏹️ ▶️ John to let’s just all dive in and see how it goes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, that’s part of like, you know, on one hand, it is awfully bold for Apple to deploy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their brand new file system on their most popular device. Like, you know, it’s to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it part an automatic, not even like an update, but an automatic part of seemingly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all iOS 10.3 installed. Well, you know, we’ll see if it ships that way, but it looks like that’s the plan.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Then that means all of the iPhones are going to get this and they’re all going to be converted when they reboot and that’s it. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s a pretty bold move. On the other hand, iOS is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, even though it has a much larger install base, in many ways, it’s lower risk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the nature of phones is that they’re these kind of closed systems. You have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like very limited numbers of configurations. You don’t have like weirdo like like on a Mac. You have all the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different like, you know, different disks and partition schemes and all sorts of apps that could be trying to mess with them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or things like that. On iOS, it’s all very much it’s all very controlled and there’s fewer combinations of things, configurations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and also the nature of phones is that people lose break
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and replace them often and so they’re designed in in software and in services
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have everything in the cloud and have everything backed up most of the time and I mean that isn’t in practice always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the case but that’s the case way more often on phones and it is on Macs so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if something does go catastrophically wrong for some percentage of users on the phone it is probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less destructive than if it happened on Mac OS.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mostly agree with that. Well, I mean, the other obvious reason why they would do iOS first is because it’s more important
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s where their effort goes and the Mac will be
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco an afterthought. Like, oh
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, I’m also looking for the Mac. But yeah, phones are so much more of a controlled system. And also
⏹️ ▶️ John all of the weird crap about APFS, which is mostly good, you know, like the
⏹️ ▶️ John space sharing stuff and, you know, all the things
⏹️ ▶️ John that make it behave differently than you might expect are not visible
⏹️ ▶️ John at all in iOS. Because iOS doesn’t have the problem of 10 different ways that you can see free space and
⏹️ ▶️ John users looking at it. Like, already the way you see free space in iOS is already an illusion. You go to
⏹️ ▶️ John the preferences in general and usage and all that stuff. Like, those numbers have only a vague connection
⏹️ ▶️ John to space on disk because they’re totally hiding whole classes of things that don’t count towards your space and they’re trying to sum up
⏹️ ▶️ John space and attribute it to applications. Like, it’s already an illusion. So, there’s no weirdness there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Whereas on the Mac, if you do, you know, if you use the power of the file system and if disk
⏹️ ▶️ John utility is actually updated to use it, people can make arrangements that start to make
⏹️ ▶️ John far less sense where you can have a single APFS container with three volumes on it, and then how do you throw the free
⏹️ ▶️ John space on them? And trying to figure out when you make an instant copy, does that count
⏹️ ▶️ John as space being taken up? Now you have two, one gigabyte files where before you had one, but the free space didn’t change, even
⏹️ ▶️ John though you don’t have any shared volumes on the containers and all that goes away. on
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS and also iOS is case sensitive. So that gets rid of all of whatever you’re gonna deal with for case
⏹️ ▶️ John folding stuff. I did file one radar against APFS back in the early days about
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole character encoding handling and the fact that you can have
⏹️ ▶️ John two files with apparently the same name on the Mac on APFS, but you can’t do that on HFS Plus because
⏹️ ▶️ John HFS Plus does this normalization stuff to try to make them all the same, do a weird normalization.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, I didn’t know the state of that radar. I don’t think the state of that radar has changed. Maybe it was closed as a dupe.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t even remember. It went into the black hole. I haven’t heard anything about it. But for Macs,
⏹️ ▶️ John most, the vast, vast, vast majority of which have case-insensitive file systems, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna have to make decisions about that. And I don’t know what decisions they made. So
⏹️ ▶️ John if the Mac gets the ability to boot from APFS before the October-ish release
⏹️ ▶️ John of whatever follows macOS Sierra, I will be surprised. But on the other hand, it’s January
⏹️ ▶️ John already doing iOS, maybe it will come to the Mac earlier. But coming to the Mac is obviously the
⏹️ ▶️ John changes I find more interesting because I’m into the Mac and because you can actually see the file system. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it is actually the more difficult one than doing iOS.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s interesting. Never thought of it that way. Any other thoughts about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iOS 10, three that that are general and aren’t spelled out in the rest of our document?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I don’t know. Marco, you’re using it. What What is it like and anything exciting in there?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No. I mean, as a user, I don’t even really notice anything, honestly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s a good sign. Sounds like it’s stable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I’ve had zero problems, nothing that you typically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco associate with a beta one of a major point release or a major release like iOS 11.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s nothing like a beta one of that level.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If I didn’t know academically that I was running a beta, I would not realize I was running a beta.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That sounds like a pretty clear win to me so far anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, the other thing on file system being in 10.3, like the fact that this is a point release and Marco saying, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t really know it’s that much of a difference. APFS tech wise, has capabilities
⏹️ ▶️ John that could be leveraged in iOS 11, or whatever the next major version is to provide
⏹️ ▶️ John headlining style features. So for example, snapshots, the ability to preserve the state of the entire file system
⏹️ ▶️ John in a consistent state could be used. I don’t know if Apple will do this, you know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a political issue more than anything to roll your phone back to an ungood state
⏹️ ▶️ John in a reliable way. It’s something that you can’t really do now. All you have to do is restore from backup or restore from the cloud. And we know how
⏹️ ▶️ John annoying that is to do. But imagine if before the the iOS 11.1
⏹️ ▶️ John to 11.2 upgrade, it would just routinely snapshot everything beforehand. But if you didn’t like the upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ John at any point, you could switch back to the state it was like the day before or whatever. Oh, there’s no chance of that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know. But but tech wise, that is that is possible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And I think what’s more likely to be used is maybe a recovery thing where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, if an upgrade fails for some, for some reason, then there’d be some mechanism to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have it kind of automatically roll itself back. You know, that’s that’s more likely, I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then I don’t like the new icons. I’m going to go back. Apple does not enable that really at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, or you could do it on a like, uh, I don’t know. They could
⏹️ ▶️ John do it at any level they wanted. They could do it per application level to go back to an old version of the application. They could do time machine
⏹️ ▶️ John type of features inside applications to find old versions of, you know, you could, you can already do this stuff in various ways
⏹️ ▶️ John above the level of the file system. But the fact that you get this sort of for free out of the file system and it’s very efficient
⏹️ ▶️ John and fast and presumably have apis, those are the type of things that, yeah, you’ve got a PFS But you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have probably almost any of the features that could be built on it. Those are major OS features They could be for
⏹️ ▶️ John few not it. Maybe not even 11 Maybe iOS 12 or whatever same thing with a thumb the Mac if and when
⏹️ ▶️ John we can boot from APFS Yeah, that’s all well and good, but there are many years Presumably
⏹️ ▶️ John of features that are built in us like who knows if time machine will even be updated to support APFS in the next
⏹️ ▶️ John version of Mac OS maybe we’ll have to wait for the version after that It’s not it’s non-trivial to take advantage
⏹️ ▶️ John of all these features, and you know I’m in no hurry It’s like, step one, get the file system with these features and make it
⏹️ ▶️ John solid. Step two, three, four and five, then slowly roll out the features that
⏹️ ▶️ John consumers won’t care that it’s enabled by the new file system that only care about the features, but many things will be enabled by these features.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I look forward to them even though Oh, 10.3. Oh, I’m new file system. What was the big deal? The big
⏹️ ▶️ John deal should come later.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Indochino. Good.
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App Store changes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks a lot for Indochino for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, we should really be able to respond to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reviews in the App Store. Android has been able to do this for a long time, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now it’s finally a thing. And that’s something to be excited about. It seems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty clear to me that Phil Schiller is making moves. So Marco, how do you feel?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of amazing as an iOS developer, and I said some of this when Phil first started doing things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like last spring and summer, but it’s just kind of amazing as an iOS developer to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have things changing in the App Store and getting better at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because the App Store is what, eight years old? Eight and a half,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something like that? Something like that. And during that time, during the first seven years of it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost nothing changed, almost nothing improved. There were a few minor things here and exceedingly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco minor things. Some things even got worse. And so to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it being worked on and to have positive changes or any changes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a new feeling for iOS developers. And overall,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since Phil has taken over, I think the changes have been overall quite good. Very few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things have been a major miss or majorly harmful. Even search ads,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where they were very controversial, and I think that’s with good reason.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I now spend more on search ads than I do on my servers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I don’t love that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t know that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s accounting time with taxes and everything. So I’ve been looking back and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco adding up everything, and I now spend a good amount of money on search ads every week.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I have all these graphs. I mean, this is a diversion. This is not the main topic tonight, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It could be if you wanted to. anyway. Yeah, you know, basically I’m now paying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a certain part of my user base, and it isn’t that big of a portion of my user base. The overall search ad traffic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has been lower than I expected, and I don’t think it’s because I’m losing auctions. I think it’s because I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being shown or there just aren’t that many searches for the things I’m bidding on, but the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco search ad system is possibly a net improvement, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s something it’s something big, and these are customers that now I’m getting and and the way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m the way I have things split out and being measured it is apparent to me that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of the customers I’m getting by a search ads are not coming from people who are looking for overcast.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They were coming from people who were looking for like podcast or some things like that, like you know more generic terms,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco competitor names, things like that, because I have my overcast bids I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have on a separate campaign, so I can tell like am I spending a lot of money just to get people I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to get anyway, which you know I don’t want that number to be very high, although I don’t really want anybody else outbidding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me either, but you know if that number was very high, then I’m just paying for people who tapped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco result number one, so the result number two in the search and that’s no good, but that number isn’t very high. That’s not a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco massive percentage of what I’m spending. Most of what I’m spending is on generic circus terms, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the system is kind of working as designed. I don’t love
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I’m taking a portion of what apples give me every month and just giving it right back to them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey It’s like they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco already they’re already taking thirty percent like you know at least that I don’t I don’t see it doesn’t feel good to be paying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them back all this money, but but overall like the search ads have been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay. As I said, they’re not bringing in a large percentage of new users
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off the top of my head. I actually don’t know the number, but I thought my head. I think it’s probably like ten percent or less of new users
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are coming through search search ads, but but it’s you know it’s in that ballpark at least, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these are people I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise pretty clearly like from if you could tell from the search terms and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from how when I go to the store how I rank on those search terms because app store search is terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like you know you search for podcasts and like you know five of the first ten apps are like alarm clock apps. It’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s stuff that’s totally unrelated. It’s literally like it’s the the search is still just as awful as though has been,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but but to have search ads there I am getting customers I wouldn’t have gotten before so that’s that’s overall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco positive even though I’m paying for them and I’m paying a little more than I would like but it’s still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco within the realm of reasonable I think so anyway
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that aside it is really nice going back to the original question it is really nice to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have changes happening in the App Store that most of which are good and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m also using subscriptions now I’m using the I purchased subscriptions. Next September, I’m going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco start getting my 85% people renewing. That’s going to be a great day because I’m going to just get a raise for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no reason. That’s awesome. So you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let your subscriptions renew, please. But otherwise, yeah. So anyway, so for this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco specific change of responding to reviews, and I guess maybe we’ll get later to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the app review prompting mechanism change. I don’t know if we’re gonna talk about that on this show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If not, we talked about it on this week’s Under the Radar. Plug, plug. So responding to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reviews. So as let me let me begin by asking you guys at App Store users,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do you read a lot of the reviews? No. So basically, if developers start responding to reviews,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will you will you really see that?
⏹️ ▶️ John I do read reviews for apps that I have like I have no idea about the whole domain. Like I’m looking for
⏹️ ▶️ John and I was looking for application recently for uh like laying out uh where furniture
⏹️ ▶️ John is in room so i need something can do walls and doors and windows you know with correct to scale measurements and have like
⏹️ ▶️ John you know couches and end tables you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know so just
⏹️ ▶️ John to see how furniture is going to fit in the room without doing it yourself by cutting out little pieces of paper which is fun but
⏹️ ▶️ John i figured that an ipad app would be better and i have no idea about that uh area and as you noted
⏹️ ▶️ John search is terrible so i do what i think are reasonable searches and it shows a million hits,
⏹️ ▶️ John half of which are scams or pieces of garbage. And the ratings don’t tell you that much.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to actually look at the reviews to see, you know, like a two and a half star thing
⏹️ ▶️ John could be 50 people cranky that it’s $5 and then 150 people who think it’s actually
⏹️ ▶️ John reasonably good app. You have and the only way to tell that is to look at the review. So I will scroll through them and see,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, because you can’t tell people rate things low for reasons unrelated to the functionality
⏹️ ▶️ John of the app. I’m willing to pay 299. I don’t care that 90% of your reviews are from people who can’t believe
⏹️ ▶️ John you’d wanted to charge $2.99 for this. I just want to know does it do the job. So I do read them
⏹️ ▶️ John and weep, I suppose.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So my theory, my impression of this so far, basically, is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the effectiveness and the value in developers being able to respond to reviews
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is highly dependent on implementation details of how this is actually done for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both the reviewer, the customer, or the reviewer, the developer, and people reading the reviews.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And also just how many people actually do go through and read reviews. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think iOS developers have a pretty good idea that having star ratings matters. Having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a high average matters, and it looks better if you have a high number of them. Because it says, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually in parentheses next to the star average, it’ll tell you how many ratings there were. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when people are choosing an app or deciding whether to download or buy an app,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think a lot of people do look at those star ratings and that matters. But the actual written reviews,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we don’t really know. I kind of have a hunch that they don’t matter that much, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not a large percentage of people do go through and really read them or read a decent number
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of them. And so if that’s the case, then whether developers can respond
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to them doesn’t matter that much. And if you look, you know, this is one of those things that the Android people are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going crazy today because Android has had this for years, maybe even since day one. I don’t even know. From what we hear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Android people, it’s mostly a non-issue. It’s like, yeah, some people do it. It doesn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco matter. Like that’s it. But it isn’t that big of a deal. Right. So we don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how this will play out in iOS. It isn’t the same market, but there’s certainly some overlap. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I’m right that not a lot of people read a lot of the reviews, they mostly just look at the ratings,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then whether you as a developer respond to them is really completely up to you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s kind of an optional support channel if you want it to be. That being said,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco App Store reviews, like your customers consider that a support channel whether you do or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not. And that’s not going to suddenly start now that developers can leave responses.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s always been the case. always had people treating the review system as a support channel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and using it to you know grind axes or to ask weird questions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or to withhold stars as hostages until you add their favorite features like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that has always been the case it’s not going to change that for developers like the perception
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that people expect you to respond has always been there so so people who are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco upset now that this is like an additional support channel they now have to manage newsflash. It always has been one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We just haven’t been able to manage it. So now we will have a way to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it implementation wise. There’s a huge open question of how are these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shown? Are they shown in a way that many people will see them? One of my big questions about it is if I respond
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to review is the person who wrote it notified of that response. Is it sent to them in some way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through you know through like an email by apple or something, because if not, then the value I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me responding is even lower. Because a large part of the value if somebody writes something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is either really a support request or is indicating they’re having some kind of problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could help with or the misunderstanding the app in some way like they’re saying it doesn’t have a feature but it really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does have that feature. If they aren’t notified of my response, that has a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot less value than to respond. So the implementation details, it rests
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot on this. How are they shown in the interface. How do developers respond? How hard is it to respond?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do we have to go through some weird iTunes connect tool? Is there going to be a third-party app that makes it easy?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How are we going to deal with the different storefronts in different parts of the world? How are we going to deal with different languages?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There are lots of big question marks on the implementation details of this that will decide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how effective it is or isn’t and whether it’s worth developers responding or not. And of course, there’s going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the people like Twitter and Facebook who just respond to every single thing with, please email support
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we’ll try to help you out. You know, like fake template response. But overall, it’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna be either completely forgettable and it’s gonna be a total non-event and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not a lot of people are gonna respond and it’ll be fine and nobody will care or it’ll be a positive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. The only downside is I’m gonna start reading my reviews.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’ll be positive for developers like it’s situational like one this this is a developer
⏹️ ▶️ John pleasing feature more than a customer pleasing one it seems
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco yes absolutely did
⏹️ ▶️ John like customers may or may not care especially if they’re not notified who knows but uh
⏹️ ▶️ John if you happen to be a specific developer who has a specific app that has
⏹️ ▶️ John a very popular lots of people clicked on helpful blah blah blah like the top review is a
⏹️ ▶️ John scathing review filled with mistaken information as in like you said,
⏹️ ▶️ John I expect this thing to have feature x and it doesn’t it’s garbage and it totally has feature x this person just hasn’t found
⏹️ ▶️ John it and you would love to be able to tell them actually click on the blah and there’s a thing and you know like but you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John respond and you don’t know the person’s email and there’s no way you can communicate that and your poor
⏹️ ▶️ John app sits there with this ever you know that everyone who loads up your app is going to see that as like the most helpful
⏹️ ▶️ John review and it is just the worst and most developers aren’t in this situation but for the one
⏹️ ▶️ John that is this feature is like the best thing ever because you
⏹️ ▶️ John know they don’t care how it affects the whole app store they don’t care if it you know if it even gets them any more
⏹️ ▶️ John conversions they just you know it’s like the principle I just can’t stand this one mistaken review being
⏹️ ▶️ John sitting there sitting there at the top right and I guess they could just release a new version and erase it which is a whole other a whole
⏹️ ▶️ John other thing about how reviews and ratings are going to last across releases which by the way is not part of this apple
⏹️ ▶️ John has said they’re aware of that problem they don’t have anything to announce at this time but we should
⏹️ ▶️ John be looking forward to something happening there. But in the meantime, it just feels so
⏹️ ▶️ John good. I can imagine as a developer to be able to finally respond. I think even if
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not notified, it just lets you feel better to be like, well, that person will never know because they’re long
⏹️ ▶️ John gone. But anyone else who stumbles across these reviews, at least I’ve set the record straight, whether or not you really set
⏹️ ▶️ John it straight, whether you actually dug yourself in deeper by being passive aggressive in your response, and people look, think
⏹️ ▶️ John of your app worse, like it’s just human nature to feel better about this. And practically
⏹️ ▶️ John speaking, I think you have to give developers that channel, it’s up to them to do something
⏹️ ▶️ John useful with the channel, they could not use it at all, or they could, you know, be self destructive and do bad things
⏹️ ▶️ John with it and argue with their customers, even though you only have one reply, I guess they get into edit wars as the question and the
⏹️ ▶️ John answer re edit themselves over and over again. But not having that channel long at all for
⏹️ ▶️ John like seven or eight years has just felt terrible. And so I think this is, is a really
⏹️ ▶️ John important feature to have. The importance is far out of proportion
⏹️ ▶️ John from the effect that it will have on anybody’s business, probably. But just like it’s one of those like, why didn’t you do
⏹️ ▶️ John you had a system for commenting, you had everything in place, we’re not asking you to expose their emails,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is another bone of contention of who owns the customers, Apple still owns them, right. But just give developers
⏹️ ▶️ John some way to respond. And it took so long, and it’s finally here. So I think, I think there’s no way this
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t be a net positive for the app store as a concept, even if it’s not a net positive
⏹️ ▶️ John for any particular person’s sales. It will be a net positive for a developer’s state of mind.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I’m looking forward to seeing how this shakes out. And I don’t know, I’m also curious to hear what you think of it, Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey after it’s been a little while and seeing if you hate reading reviews or not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, what do you think of it? You’re an an iOS developer, what do you think?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. It’s a little weird for my situation because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a company, it’s not just me, and seeing the feedback come through our email
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is interesting and enlightening. It does tell me that a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the problems we expect to see, because we know that they’re problems,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of people cite them as problems, but there are certainly times where people like, I don’t understand how to do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey blah. Why can’t I do blah? And in that situation, it would be super
⏹️ ▶️ Casey convenient to be able to, and this, these are all the emails. So obviously we can reply,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but hypothetically, if these are reviews, it would be super convenient to be able to say, oh, if you need to do that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing, you just tap here and then tap there and then problem solved. And by the way, it sounds like we need to make
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this better in the future. But, um, in that sense, I mean, I’m positive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about it. But I don’t suspect that it’s going to be my personal job to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be trolling the reviews and well, not trolling, I guess, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John weeding through the reviews. You
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know what I mean? Yeah, right. Weeding through the reviews to respond when necessary. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree with both of you. I think this is a net positive and I’m curious to see what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happens in it. And I’m also very curious to see if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey after a while, like if you people start, people or companies for that matter, start replying to reviews
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and we see how that goes. And that either convinces the rest of us
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to dive in head first, or if it convinces, uh, uh, someone in the chat said trawling,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is the word I was looking for. T R T R a W L I N G. Sorry. Anyway. Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, so yeah, so it does, does, does Marco start replying to reviews
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and he has a terrible, um, experience with it. And so underscore says, oh, I’m never touching that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Or does Marco start replying to reviews and it’s a great experience and suddenly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey underscores like heck Yeah, I want in on that and then suddenly my employers like heck. Yeah, we want in on that You know what?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean? Like I’m curious to see what the not literal beta testers but kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of effective beta testers Show us about the experience if it’s garbage or if it’s great
⏹️ ▶️ John It really depends on that personality though We all know people who probably shouldn’t respond to comments
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like you can make it worse for yourself
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, because you you have a free text box and if you get there like in the wrong mood or you’re angry, like if you end up like
⏹️ ▶️ John yelling at your customers, it’s not a net win for you. But I don’t think someone like David Smith is going to see someone yelling
⏹️ ▶️ John at their customers and say, Oh, I better stay away from reviews because he won’t yell at his customers like customer support
⏹️ ▶️ John and dealing with, you know, customer support issues is a skill and you can have
⏹️ ▶️ John more or less of it depending on where your skill set lies. And it is not a thing that you should assume that you’re able to
⏹️ ▶️ John do just because you wrote the application. So you know, the channel has to be there.
⏹️ ▶️ John But for you know, it’s giving people even though they only have one reply that is
⏹️ ▶️ John more than enough rope for a lot of people to hang themselves. So now now there’s another skill set that these
⏹️ ▶️ John small shops are independent developers who have to be able to do a million things. Guess what, here’s one more thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to add to your skill set or find some way to outsource.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And honestly, and I said this on under the radar to again, talk, listen to under the radar this week
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re into this topic, we went into more of it, but this is a huge opportunity in the tools
⏹️ ▶️ Marco space for some service or app to make it easy for developers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to receive new reviews and reply to them and track which ones they have either
⏹️ ▶️ Marco replied to or decided not to reply to across all the different stores, maybe with built-in translate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco functionality of some sort with a decent API. That’s a thing. Please somebody make that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you can sell that to a lot of iOS developers for ongoing recurring subscription fee
⏹️ ▶️ John using Apple’s convenient, convenient, open rest API. I
⏹️ ▶️ John like all these things you’re describing, you know, it may just because I just did a podcast about this, but all I
⏹️ ▶️ John can think of is how much better that game I play that you guys make fun of all the time. Destiny
⏹️ ▶️ John does with this exact thing. Destiny, the game has an extensive API
⏹️ ▶️ John that is completely open to anybody who wants to use it, they will, they can give you all the information about all
⏹️ ▶️ John your characters and all your stats and let you do things with it. And there are, you know, browser
⏹️ ▶️ John plugins, websites, iOS applications, everything you could possibly imagine
⏹️ ▶️ John for messing with your stuff and destiny. Why? Because it’s an open API. They said, here’s an API
⏹️ ▶️ John to all of our stuff and simple, you know, authentication scheme where you just authenticate and then it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John and the number of things that people have made is just like the thing you just subscribed, would there be 100 of those
⏹️ ▶️ John the next day if this was destiny that we were talking about? I don’t know what the situation is for Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John interface to reviews. But if it’s not as good as destiny the game, maybe they should hire people from
⏹️ ▶️ John bungee because this is like making a decent API that anybody can use is like
⏹️ ▶️ John a simple rest base API that speaks JSON. It’s not that hard like individual
⏹️ ▶️ John people, you know, make these little Chrome plugins or web pages that do amazing
⏹️ ▶️ John things. And they do it all for free and they do it in their spare time. And any one of them, you
⏹️ ▶️ John would love to have something that’s that good for what you just described for dealing with reviews in the iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John app store. But if Apple keeps it all proprietary, and it’s behind some weird thing, then it’s going to be much harder to make
⏹️ ▶️ John and there will be fewer of them and it will be sad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Betterment.
Sponsor: Betterment
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iOS 10.3 APIs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Betterment, investing made better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving on, I hear rumor on the streets that Marco is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually going to, in the new version of Overcast, and don’t tell him I squealed,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he’s actually going to change the icon for Overcast to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the show art of the actively playing podcast. Since I’ve spilled the beans, Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why don’t you tell us more about this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So one of the features that has been added in iOS 10.3 beta
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is this mechanism for seemingly setting alternate app icons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in code. The implementation of this is a little questionable. Steve Trout and Smith did some digging
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and apparently, I believe the API doesn’t actually work yet, but apparently
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is evidence in the frameworks and stuff that it prompts you to confirm it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It prompts the user to confirm any change of icon before it actually applies it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the question is, what is this for? And it is not for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco developers like me to do things like, for instance, like I would love to have to change
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the icon based on, you know, whether it’s night or day.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I could have like a dark mode at night and if I and then I could add automatic dark mode switching and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s just not going to be practical if that’s what it is. There was a tweet from the fantastic cow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people that they would love to have because you know it’s an alternative calendar app and just like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple calendar app. They’d love to change their icon to be the day number every day just like what Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app does. So it always shows the right date and it’s not going to do that either. It just prompt you every morning. Yeah, right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a new push notification time to update your icon. Come
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John here and say okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can kind of understand why they do it that way though because it is a security concern because of applications could programmatically change
⏹️ ▶️ John their icon. You could totally be be fished by an application that suddenly changes icon to
⏹️ ▶️ John look like some some trusted application, and you don’t notice that you’re not on the page you thought you were on and you tap
⏹️ ▶️ John the icon and it puts up like a phishing screen looks just like the you know, like, it is dangerous to
⏹️ ▶️ John allow applications to arbitrarily change their icon without a prompt. So I totally understand that prompt. But you’re right,
⏹️ ▶️ John that eliminates all sorts of use cases. And especially with the phishing stuff, this is kind of like so many
⏹️ ▶️ John other app store things. Fantastic cow should be able to change its icon to be the date, right? It
⏹️ ▶️ John should be able to do that. And it’s like, well, but if we let them do that, then everyone can it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John do you like there should be some earnable level of trust within the system, just like
⏹️ ▶️ John there was on Stack Overflow or whatever. And fantastic cow should have earned some level of trust.
⏹️ ▶️ John But this one, I don’t know how this this mechanism can work. It’s very difficult to do these types of systems. Just ask the people who run Stack
⏹️ ▶️ John Overflow, it is it is a hard problem to solve. But throwing up your hands and saying, Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John no, well, fantastic the cow can’t show the data on their icon. That’s not the right solution either. So I’m glad
⏹️ ▶️ John whoever this feature is made for is getting the features that they asked for. And I can think of reasonable
⏹️ ▶️ John uses of it in that context. But it kind of annoys me that
⏹️ ▶️ John the API is only being made public, but in a way that so many use cases
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Yeah, I mean, again, like you said, it is a tricky problem. There’s lots of there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lots of potential abuses for this. So it does make sense why they would strictly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco control it. But honestly, I’m kind of surprised it needs to be there at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I honestly am very surprised it needs to be there at all. And if it needs to be there at all, I think it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should be there in a way that’s more useful. So for instance, maybe to avoid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco possible security issues, maybe the icon has to be part of your app’s bundle so you can’t generate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it dynamically. And And then maybe app review checks all of them, just to make sure that you don’t that you don’t have like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the messages or Apple pay icon in there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John you know, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s that’s a way they could do it for everybody. And that would make it a lot more useful. And then fantastic. I could just ship 31
⏹️ ▶️ Marco icons and have the app just call them without a prompt. Like that’s totally reasonable. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John even with those things, because good, because your applications aren’t swift, they even switch to get like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you could they can make an API like that. But once you can get pointers to things you can fill in the image
⏹️ ▶️ John data with a programmatically from an obfuscated giant data array that you hide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in your like no you can’t if it was like if it was a set image named to call
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you had to pass it only a name something in your bundle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way to abuse that then
⏹️ ▶️ John people are very sneaky I mean what this what was the thing we saw recently with that that
⏹️ ▶️ John piece of malware in the App Store doing some weird things and calling some weird APIs with like some
⏹️ ▶️ John selector swizzling like the bottom lines is really difficult to both
⏹️ ▶️ John human and automatically determine whether an application is safe. It’s kind of the halting problem. So it doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do it because it’s impossible to do with 100% accuracy like you’re right, they get there was just covered the 99% case.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I think also, and even perhaps more reliably, reputation
⏹️ ▶️ John of developers earnable through some kind of system to show that you are trustworthy and are not trying to scam
⏹️ ▶️ John people. And even that has problems feels like what if you’re not trying to scam them, but someone broke into your server and messed with your application,
⏹️ ▶️ John like there’s always going to be problems. Um, but at this point
⏹️ ▶️ John in the life cycle of, of the app store, it’s supposed to, uh, particularly for
⏹️ ▶️ John things like calendars where the utility of it is significant. Like I do look at the calendar icon to
⏹️ ▶️ John see what the date is on my phone frequently, um, that they have to find
⏹️ ▶️ John a way to make that be there. And whether it’s the scheme that you were describing Marco, where it’s just a very limited API,
⏹️ ▶️ John or it is a trust based system, which would have many other uses, by the way, not just for
⏹️ ▶️ John this API could have uses for review times and for how deep of a review you do and stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John like that. This is another one of those things that should be there by now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, no matter what the fact that there’s an API, even though it’s super restricted right now, I mean, that’s Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey style, right? I mean, look at the Siri, what do they call them the the different groups
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of functionality, a term for it. I can’t think of it off the top of my head, but you know, you can only use Siri in certain contexts.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, maybe this is one of those things and maybe they’ll open it up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the future. I mean, I’m not terribly confident about that, but it could be, you never know. But, uh, yeah, however
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this came to be, whatever this is about, um, I mean, I guess cool,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe we’ll see what happens, but I suspect just like Marco was saying, this is going to amount to a whole lot of nothing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for most people. Yeah. Uh, Moving on, Steve Troutman-Smith, who is, I guess at this point, an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey honorary member of the show since he’s given us most of the topics for tonight just by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tweeting all this stuff. He has also found a floating detached
⏹️ ▶️ Casey keyboard. Now this is different than the thing, I don’t even know if it’s still a thing, but than the thing that at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey least used to be the case where you could slide the keyboard up the screen on an iPad and it would split in two.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So there would be like a half on either side of the screen. And I think the intention there was so you could touch type with your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gripping the screen. This is not the same thing as that because that’s split in two. This
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is an entire like iPhone shaped and sized keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you can use single-handedly on a 9.7-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad, which seems really peculiar and stupid to me at first.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then I got thinking about it and I was like, you know, that actually might make some amount of sense. This might be kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of cool. So there’s, um, because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if there’s a situation where I’m holding an iPad one-handed, which admittedly I can’t imagine that would be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey terribly often, but, uh, if I, or maybe if I had the iPad propped and I wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to use only one hand to type having all those keys right next to each other, I could see that being kind of cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, it’s all hypothetical, right? Cause I haven’t tried this myself, but it might be neat. I’m not writing this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey off immediately as garbage. It might also be garbage. I don’t know. you’re not too impressed, Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We would have to see like how Apple tells the story of this feature, like what is the intent of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, assuming, you know, if it gets released. That’s a big if, but if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco released, I would be very curious to know what Apple thinks of this feature, what they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expect it to be used for, because as it is, like, you know, as he’s showing it in these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screenshots, I can’t think of a good use for this. Like, I think it would be very, very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard to type on an actual iPad hardware. no matter where you put it on the screen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’d be very, very hard to type on. The whole reason that keyboard works is because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you are holding a device that is roughly the size of your hand and using one or two thumbs on it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The way you hold an iPad is totally different. The way your fingers reach things on the iPad is totally different.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t see how this would work, honestly. But at this point, iOS is so big,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s so much there that they can add features like this that only like two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people ever want to use or like the app changing the app icon changing API that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they added that like you know how many apps you’re ever going to be able to use that in a constructive way you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know zero five you know there’s lots of API’s now like various extension
⏹️ ▶️ Marco points that that exist that are almost never used by anybody but like one type of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app uses it and that’s enough as you mentioned the Siri kit stuff like being able to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco order certain things through Siri or query certain things through Siri where like that’s really only ever going to be used by like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco zero to one apps that are on somebody’s phone, but it’s worth it to have it because those might be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough people to matter with iOS being so big. So something like this, like, you know, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would argue on the iPad, they should probably be spending their time doing more important things that affect more people on the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that could have a bigger return. But you know, someone’s going to use it. And so I guess if it wasn’t too much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work, it’s probably fine. But I, I hesitate to see, or I struggle to see the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use of this myself.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think there was a tweet saying that this is actually, this code has been in there since the beginning
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey of iOS 10. Like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not a 10.3 feature. And again, to be clear to everybody, this is not something that’s in a 10.3 beta. This
⏹️ ▶️ John is a hidden thing, like the code is there for it, but it’s not exposed. It’s just like going through headers and finding
⏹️ ▶️ John things to call. The most important thing to me, looking at this
⏹️ ▶️ John potential feature that may or may not ever ship or be revealed
⏹️ ▶️ John in any way is that it is I guess the second maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m missing some things iteration of bringing essentially Windows
⏹️ ▶️ John to iOS it is a floating square on the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John that is not you know it’s not the screen divided in half or in thirds or slide our panel that slides up
⏹️ ▶️ John from the side or whatever it is its own independent floating square that Presumably you can put wherever you want.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s called a window. Doesn’t have title bar on it. It’s not a window in the Mac sense, but it’s definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John a window. Picture in picture, also a window. You can kind of move that thing around on the screen without not completely
⏹️ ▶️ John free form. Same thing with our little friend, the assistive touch button nub thing that you can put anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ John on the screen. It’s like iOS was first everything fills a screen, and then second,
⏹️ ▶️ John the screen starts getting subdivided into pieces for multitasking, thirds and halves and stuff like that. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John finally, a bunch of little guys come and plop up on the top on this one big floating layer on top of
⏹️ ▶️ John everything. Keyboards, picture in picture, this is the touch stuff. It
⏹️ ▶️ John is a step in the direction away from the absolute extreme
⏹️ ▶️ John simplicity that iOS was born in and towards a tiny toe dip into the world
⏹️ ▶️ John of the Mac where you can have more than one thing on the screen at the same time
⏹️ ▶️ John in an arrangement of your choosing and you can move stuff around depending on
⏹️ ▶️ John and where you what you want to see and this tiny little keyboard this weird little iPhone floating keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever thing is interesting to me not just because it’s a window but also because it
⏹️ ▶️ John reinforces the idea and I feel this even on my iPad that sometimes when that
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard slides up it’s taking a larger portion of the screen than
⏹️ ▶️ John you think is appropriate for a keyboard at this time. Like, oh man my big iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John screen now a huge portion of it is taken up with this big honking keyboard. If
⏹️ ▶️ John a particular task you don’t you don’t need like that whole bottom third of the screen to be taken up with a keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John just to have a little floating thing that you can put anywhere maybe you don’t want it covering the bottom maybe you want it covering the left or the top or the side
⏹️ ▶️ John or maybe you want to knew your thumb or whatever the same reason people like these has a touch button even though they’re chasing that little puck around
⏹️ ▶️ John the screen moving it out of the way so doesn’t obscure stuff. Apparently, people get used to that. And like,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s just part of me using my phone is occasionally I have to move the little thing out of the way. But it’s still
⏹️ ▶️ John preferable. Well, here, I think you’re trading a very large keyboard, take up, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John not just obscuring large portions of screen, but often the app have to change their view hierarchy and view structure to accommodate
⏹️ ▶️ John for the very large keyboard when it comes up to say no application, you don’t have to change your layout at all. Let
⏹️ ▶️ John the user deal with that the user will be the janitor and old Steve Jobs parlance. And they’ll just move the little
⏹️ ▶️ John tiny keyboard around where they want to move it. Now like both of you said, having
⏹️ ▶️ John not used this, it does not immediately appear to be to me to be any sort of win
⏹️ ▶️ John and I kind of agree with the fact of it not being exposed right now and I would like to have to see what kind of story they
⏹️ ▶️ John explain this but like the split keyboard that I think Casey mentioned before where you take the
⏹️ ▶️ John the existing iOS keyboard and split it and I’m pretty sure that feature still exists because I’ve used it recently or recently-ish
⏹️ ▶️ John like in the last year. They announced that feature, they showed it, people
⏹️ ▶️ John oohed and aahed, and I think most people who don’t use it just forgot about it. But if it’s still there, it
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t do anybody harm. If you don’t ever use it, and you don’t ever accidentally trigger it, it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this could be that category of things, but I want to encourage Apple to continue to explore
⏹️ ▶️ John this radical idea we call Windows, with a lowercase w.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my goodness. Yeah, I mean, we’ll see what happens. It’s fascinating to me that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple is shipping this code dark. Not surprising necessarily, but just interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But what’s really super interesting is that Steve Shroud and Smith is finding all this stuff. Like just the stuff that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he can dig up is tremendous. And I don’t even know where to begin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do some of the stuff that he’s able to do. And I’m deeply impressed by it. And I love that that he’s sharing it with the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey world, even to the point of making a sample project that’s on GitHub, and we have a link to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it in the show notes, or a link to a tweet of his anyway, to exercise the icon thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like, just such cool stuff. And man, I wish I was smart like him. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyway, yeah, we’ll see what happens with this floating keyboard thing. I do think that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your point about the windowing is interesting, John, especially because if I recall correctly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can actually resize the picture-in-picture window if you like pinch it, I think there are some limits,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I think you can enlarge and shrink it. And I’ve also noticed that you can kind of flick it off
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the side, so there’s just like a little handle or like nubbin that pokes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out off the side of the screen. So if you wanted to like shimmy it off to the side just for a moment to look at something and then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bring it back, you can do that. So there is some amount of window management that’s going on in iOS today.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it seems like more and more is coming, which is really, really interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ John And picture in picture, it shows Apple’s willingness to ship features on
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS in which it’s up to you to deal with that little window. Like the whole point is you don’t have to have the app
⏹️ ▶️ John in the front, you can go do other things and we won’t even mess with your multitasking, we won’t even take up one of the multitasking slots
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, it’s just this little window. And maybe it’s blocking stuff, it’s up to you to move it out of the way.
⏹️ ▶️ John If it’s covering something you don’t want, move it to a different place. If you just wanna get rid of it, it is pushing that
⏹️ ▶️ John management test app, deciding that you know where, like, oh, I don’t care that it covers this part of the screen And if it’s covering something annoying, you move
⏹️ ▶️ John it. And in practice, I found with picture in picture, it’s usually not that hard to find some place on the screen where
⏹️ ▶️ John you can put it, where it’s not bothering you. And you know where that is because you know the apps that you’re using.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the curse and the power of Windows, as we all know on typical personal computers is
⏹️ ▶️ John you can put them wherever you want and you can arrange it in a way that makes sense to you. And it’s so much more limited on iOS. Like you have
⏹️ ▶️ John very few of these little things and the where you can put them and how big they can be and how you manipulate them is incredibly limited.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I think, you know, coming from a world where the entire phone was one application all the time, that incredible
⏹️ ▶️ John simplicity, and moving to a world with, you know, iPad Pro, you know, large
⏹️ ▶️ John type devices with a pen and all this other stuff, you have to start giving people the ability to do this. Otherwise you’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John leveraging the power of the larger screen and the multitasking and all that other stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you know, I love picture in picture on my iPad, and I love it so much, even on macOS, that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I found, I don’t remember who introduced this to me, but, And forgive me if I’ve mentioned this on the show before,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but there’s a Safari extension called Pied Piper, but it’s Pied P-I-P-E-R.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Get it? Anyway, it’s a Safari extension that’ll allow you to easily do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey picture and picture on like YouTube and I think Vimeo and a couple of other places and Plex for the Plex
⏹️ ▶️ Casey web front end. Yes, I am aware that you can do some like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right click, right click again, dance on YouTube in order to get it to support
⏹️ ▶️ Casey picture in picture. But this just puts a little, uh, a little button right on the video that lets you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kick it over to a picture in picture. And I find that super convenient, particularly because although I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey believe in having a gazillion Safari tabs, or like you do, John, I do believe in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey having about 11 D billion spaces or virtual desktops, and so having picture in picture can let
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this, um, hover across several different spaces, which is really nice. So I’ll put a link to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that in the show notes. Anything else on iOS 10.3?
Rate-this-app prompts
⏹️ ▶️ John I briefly mentioned the reviewing interface thing that Margo said he talked about it under the radar, but
⏹️ ▶️ John that was a an issue we talked about in past ATPs, I think, with applications
⏹️ ▶️ John asking you to rate them obnoxiously more often than you would like. And we were discussing, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, oh, maybe you could report them that they’re doing that or application shouldn’t be doing that. But then how
⏹️ ▶️ John do you enforce the guidelines? Apple solution to this seems to be make an official API for
⏹️ ▶️ John asking that and put limits on the official API, and eventually some point in the future, force everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John to use the API. So this sounds I endorse this plan. This sounds like a good plan. I look forward
⏹️ ▶️ John to them rolling it out. I like that they’re doing it reasonably cautiously, not just one day saying, Hey, guess what,
⏹️ ▶️ John if your app asks for reviews in any way, except the official API, you will get rejected. They’re not doing that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the API is it the limits are are sane. It’s like three times per year,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can ask. And with a global switch that says I never want to be asked to rate
⏹️ ▶️ John an application, I’m going to use that global switch, because I do never want to be asked many applications that
⏹️ ▶️ John I use and like frequently asked me to rate them and have obnoxious choices at the bottom of the dialog
⏹️ ▶️ John boxes, none of which my brainstem, you know, my brainstem doesn’t know which one to pick. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to read words and be like, it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe later, no, like, I just go away box,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want to see you. So I endorse this API. I wish
⏹️ ▶️ John it would come sooner. In fact, I wish they would make it even more draconian now. And the nice thing is,
⏹️ ▶️ John everything I heard about this is like, yes, these are reasonable choices. Like, what about the applications
⏹️ ▶️ John like Marcos that never prompt you, but just have a little section in the preferences that say, hey, if you want to rate it,
⏹️ ▶️ John are they okay? Answer, yes, you’re totally allowed to do that because that’s not a thing that pops up in your face. If you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John scrolling through the settings and you see the thing, those applications don’t have to be remove from the store
⏹️ ▶️ John or change the thing. And if Marco wants to make it, so when you tap that thing, it pops up an inline thing to review
⏹️ ▶️ John the app. Can he use that new API? Yes, he can. See, it’s not that hard. Like we’re so used to like
⏹️ ▶️ John every API that Apple, every sort of app store rule or API they introduce, there being a bunch of obvious
⏹️ ▶️ John problems that we all whine about, right? No obvious problems in this one. There may be non-obvious problems,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like it is just a great feeling to get an announcement at the app store and go, they made,
⏹️ ▶️ John for all the big choices, They made reasonable ones yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco yeah, i mean this like again
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we did spend about a half of under the radar this week talking about this, so i have to re put that in the show notes plug
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plug. However, this is one of this is like quintessential good apple. This is like seeing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a problem that is that causes a poor user experience, but that that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for some reason that that exists for a good reason. So like these app review these rate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my app dialogues exist for a good reason because they work and because as I mentioned earlier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco star ratings in the App Store tend to matter and so when you can have a way for most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps to get a lot more star ratings that will definitely increase their downloads and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sales in a way that most people don’t love but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of them also just don’t care that much about it that’s going to happen that’s going to be inevitable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so Apple has addressed the need for them with this API they’re saying okay we understand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you need to prompt users for that you think you need there needs to be a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way to prompt users to review your app however they take control away
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the developer of of whether that’s allowed to happen or not the developer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still says when it should happen but they don’t know whether it will succeed or not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then combined with the policy change that will be coming down the road
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at some unspecified time that says you won’t be allowed to ask for reviews any other way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that combination will be awesome the only problem I see with this which again we talked about this under the radar please listen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to that also the only problem I see with this is enforcement because I think it’s going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco similar to the rules that they have against spam push notifications or push notifications that are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used for quote marketing or promotional purposes I think every single app that uses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco push notifications with very very few exceptions, including
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the App Store app has been used for promotional purposes. Like apps abuse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this all the time. Apple themselves abuse this sometimes and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know games are the worst. Big content apps are the worst. Big company apps are the worst. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tons of apps spam notify people for things like, hey bombs are now on sale for a limited
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time. Come check out the newest content. Like crap like that. That is explicitly prohibited in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app app review rules, but that has never been enforced in any kind of scale because it’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of hard to enforce that when you’re reviewing apps for like three minutes at a time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As long as you don’t see the problem come up during those three minutes during app review, it’s going to be really hard to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enforce unless as we discussed a couple times way back, like maybe they could add some kind of like report
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a problem button, but like is Apple really going to clutter up their UI of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every notification or something like that or every app icon or every app in the store with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a report violation button? Probably not. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the problem that this review policy and review change will have is if they can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really consistently enforce that you aren’t allowed to do it the old way anymore,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then all the big apps that are data-driven like Twitter and stuff, they’re just going to keep doing it the old way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And nothing’s going to really… It’s only going to hurt the good people who are trying to do things the right way.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you only need a small number of people report like this is not a type of thing where you need like everybody to even know
⏹️ ▶️ John the reporting interfaces. Yes, all you need is five nerds, five nerds to know
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco where how to report it, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because all you need, all you need to do is alert Apple. Oh, hey, maybe check this app out.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe it’s doing this thing. And unlike push notifications. It’s not like this is a data driven thing where like,
⏹️ ▶️ John the avenue is there and the avenue is legal. It’s just the content that’s bad. This is the place where the avenue
⏹️ ▶️ John is not allowed. you are not allowed to pop up a dialog box that says anything about ratings and leads people to ratings,
⏹️ ▶️ John like without using the official API, right? So you don’t have to be like, Oh, you’re allowed to use push notifications. It’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John the things that you push in those notification shouldn’t be ads. You’re like, Oh, no, totally. We’ll never push ads, right? That’s not a reviewable
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. Whereas popping up a dialog. I mean, obviously, you can be sneaky and say, Oh, the content
⏹️ ▶️ John of the dialog is pulled from the web, and you’ll never know what it is, right? You know, people can work around it. But
⏹️ ▶️ John if you just let us go out into the wild. And nerds know where the boxes that tells them that application is a problem,
⏹️ ▶️ John then that will you know, and then they sort them by volume. And they just say every week,
⏹️ ▶️ John go through the ones that people are complaining about. And see if it’s Yes, it’s true. Look, I’ve, you know, I spent more than
⏹️ ▶️ John three minutes with this application. And guess what, it does prompt you for ratings and bring the band hammer, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s, you know, it’s like all these enforcement problems, like, just because you can’t do it 100% doesn’t mean
⏹️ ▶️ John you shouldn’t try it all. They and they need to get better about this in general, some kind of feedback mechanism for
⏹️ ▶️ John it. And honestly, I think applications will be motivated to use it like, because this
⏹️ ▶️ John the API, another good thing is API does is it improves the application, you don’t have to send people elsewhere to
⏹️ ▶️ John write a review anymore, they can stay in your app. Developers have wanted that for a long time. And now you get
⏹️ ▶️ John it. So there is incentive, there’s a carrot as well as a stick for everybody to use this API. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know. I was happy with this announcement. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco honestly, like, I hate rate this app dialogue boxes, but the implementation of this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is so good that I think I would leave it on. And I think I would be totally okay with apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I use on a regular basis showing this easy little box like once, and then I can just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say, Yeah, okay, four stars, five stars, whatever done and that’s it. Like I I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never leave ratings for anything because I don’t want to go through the hassle and I never think about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I should because you know usually only people with access to grind leave ratings. So like if you like things, you should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco leave ratings for them. But I just I almost never do. I have very few reviews on my account
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I just don’t think about it. This makes it a lot easier to do it. So as a customer, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think and as somebody who wants to support good apps, I actually will leave this on. It is a really nice implementation.
⏹️ ▶️ John Speaking of reviews that you just you’ve reminded me slash shaming me into the same thing like
⏹️ ▶️ John I was thinking, when do I leave star reviews and why don’t I and you got both the reasons I almost never do.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I don’t because who wants to leave the application there and to go do something. But if it was in the dialogue, and I could
⏹️ ▶️ John just hit the number of stars, I would do that. And I should. And thinking of that, obviously, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have any app in the store to think of our reviews for but I do have podcasts in the iTunes store, and those get reviews.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’m not going to say they are a tire fire because they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re good reviews. You know, we have good reviews for this podcast and for other podcasts that them on.
⏹️ ▶️ John But as shows age, what I have found is in new reviews
⏹️ ▶️ John come in more slowly and the reviews become increasingly negative
⏹️ ▶️ John eventually everyone who had anything nice to say about the show has already said what they have to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco which is fine. You’re like, how many how
⏹️ ▶️ John many reviews can you add for leave for a show? But if in the middle of this podcast,
⏹️ ▶️ John a you know, a magic auditory dialogue box could pop up and people could auditorily,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, or with mental powers press like, this is the analogy is falling apart. Anyway, if it was really
⏹️ ▶️ John easy to write podcasts, I think more people would rate it. And I think it would make the ratings nicer.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s not easy to write podcasts, and therefore nobody does it. And I have to say, I don’t write the podcast I listen to either.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so the only people who are motivated to write podcasts are when the show newly launches and
⏹️ ▶️ John people are enthusiastic, and then later when people are angry.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And so now all we
⏹️ ▶️ John have left are the angry people writing the podcast, which is fine. Like I I don’t even know how reviews or podcast
⏹️ ▶️ John stars have any effect on our audience at all either. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it’s also possible that you might be using a podcast app whose creator is very vehemently against
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the idea of podcast reviews and would never implement such a feature.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do other podcast things have it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it’s not a lot of other podcasts have their own directories. Those that do. I don’t know of any that have any kind of review
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system, but that’s probably for good reason, because your view systems for podcasts are a terrible idea.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s no API to do iTunes reviews, basically, to give a star rating.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I really doubt it. You might be able to hack it through some kind of undocumented weird thing, but I really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doubt it. That would be a massive potential for abuse. I don’t think they would want to expose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that in any real way. You can read reviews through an API that’s, I think, also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco undocumented. I don’t do that either. I don’t care. want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show the content of reviews, the ratings from reviews. I think in the context
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of podcasts and podcast search and podcast discovery, the star rating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system is incredibly dysfunctional and therefore I just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do not want it and I don’t want Overcast to show any part of it ever. I have my own recommendation system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is a simple like thumbs up. That’s it. It’s a it’s a Boolean. And like, you like this, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. There’s no dislike, there’s no stars, there’s no commentary. There’s many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problems with those systems. Simple, thumbs up, easy.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the recommendation system in Overcast works really well. Like, there was Chris Lattner cheated on us and went on another
⏹️ ▶️ John podcast to talk about stuff. And I was like, oh, I wanna hear that podcast too. So I launched
⏹️ ▶️ John Overcast and I went to the screen where you, like, I was gonna like search for the show name or whatever, but I didn’t have to because
⏹️ ▶️ John it was already at like the very top of the like most recommended
⏹️ ▶️ John It was right there. it with the icon I mean I recognized it because the icon I had seen on Twitter I’m like oh that must be it boop
⏹️ ▶️ John boop done didn’t even need to type anything into a search box
⏹️ ▶️ John just from people going thumbs up hey this was a good episode of the show that’s all it takes
⏹️ ▶️ John like I don’t really care what the star rating is for that podcast.
10.5-inch iPad?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey On a final note for tonight, there’s been a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mathematics that’s been done. There’s been a lot of math done. Math, British listeners.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maths, Casey. It’s maths. No, it’s math. They don’t know what that means. Whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Did you know it’s pronounced hover? Anyway, so a friend of the show, Dan Provost, who is one half of Studio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Neat, has done some math. some numbers and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he has concluded that there probably should or at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey least could be a 10.5-inch iPad. And I’m going to try to summarize this as quickly as possible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you look back to the original big iPad Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey announcement, what Schiller had said was, hey, if you take two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey full-size iPads vertically in portrait, but put them adjacent with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey each other, that screen real estate of the two of them combined is the size
⏹️ ▶️ Casey real estate wise, you know, resolution wise of the 12.9 inch iPad Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Dan said, well, what happens if you did the same thing, but with iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey minis? So you have two iPad minis standing in portrait mode next to each other, adjacent to each other.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How big would the resultant iPad need to be. So cue
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some math, a little Pythagorean theorem, and guess what? The answer is right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey around 10 and a half inches, which works out, or I shouldn’t say it works out, which is interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because we’ve been starting to hear a little bit of rumbling about, oh, there might be a 10 and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a half inch iPad someday, somehow in the future, but nobody really understood it until
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Dan started to do this math. So, this sounds really darn plausible to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What I’m not sure of, and I’ve heard a lot of people pontificating about it, is do they keep a 9.7-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad around? If I were to wager a guess, I’d say they do,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but only in the dustbin, the old devices bin, cheaply, as Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What do you think? Tim Cynova, PhD Knowing Tim Huth, that means you’re going to be here for like 10 years. Michael Mishkoff,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey PhD Well, there’s that. So, Marco, how do you read all this? What do you think?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it sounds very plausible. I mean, it seems like if you look at the 12.9
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inch iPad Pro users, the people who like that are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco real power users of the iPad. They really like having multitasking especially, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the more you multitask, the more you really want resolution. If they ever do Windows like John wants, that would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be even more important, as we know from using PCs forever. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco demand for it, I think, is almost certainly there because lots of people who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are real iPad power users want that extra resolution for multitasking, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for whatever reason, either it’s carry size or hand size or whatever else,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 12.9 is a little too big. It’s a pretty big iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Have you spent any time with one, Casey, the 12.9?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Not really. There’s a couple people at work that have them, so I see them. And even though I see them from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time to time, like maybe once a week, every time I see one I think to myself, my word,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is a tremendous iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco It is comically large.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah, especially you coming from the mini, right? So, and you know too, so the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mini shows us that you can take the regular 9.7, you know, quote regular, iPad 9.7
⏹️ ▶️ Marco resolution, you can shrink it down a little bit to iPhone density,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and as long as you have decent eyesight, it works right and so there is a market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for that for people who don’t mind a little bit everything being a bit smaller who are maybe younger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or power users are really precise with their fingers or whatever else they would rather have a smaller carry size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and still have higher resolution. So there is a market for that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going from 9.7 resolution into the iPad mini size, so therefore it follows there’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably also a market for people who want the 12.9 resolution in a more 9.7 size.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think this makes a lot of sense. Whether they’ll do it or not is another story.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s plausible. Certainly, we’ve heard minor rumblings. And I think, big picture—before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John gets in and tells me why I’m wrong about all this—I think, big picture, if you look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the way way Apple devotes resources in recent years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They find a product line that is in great need of attention and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they spend a year really whipping it into shape and then they move on to the next thing that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs a lot of attention. The Apple TV a couple years ago was that thing. The Apple TV was in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible shape. There was lots of increasing competition. They wanted to get it onto an app model and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they gave some effort to it, they gave it a big boost, and then they just left it alone. There’s been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost nothing changed in the new Apple TV since its release a year and a half ago, whenever that was.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Last year, they put that amount of attention on the Apple Watch, because the Apple Watch was basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on fire when it came out. It had so many problems. WatchOS 3 got lots
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of attention. I expect that the Apple Watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not going to see tons of major changes this year. I think last year was its time to shine. It got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bunch of good improvements in watchOS 3 and now we’re probably in for a quiet period.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And now I expect this year to be another year of iPad improvements where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I expect there to be decent investment into the iPad this year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to try to turn around its sales curve, to try to really boost it, try
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get it moving as like as another growth engine again. I also expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that this year, I hope that there is a larger than usual effort
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put into the iPhone. I think it’s the iPhone’s turn in this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco model. So basically, I think, and the iPhone is a lot more important than the iPad. So I expect the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone to get things that are a little more resource intensive and the iPad to get things that will satisfy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people, like kind of like holdover updates. So you know long-standing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco customer requests like if we ever get the rumored fix of the multitasking switcher to have like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a much better app launching icon thing than the weirdo card thing they have now like that’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to happen this year if it’s going to happen at all, because it may like this is the year for like iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco improvements that people really want that will get people really excited about the iPad again and that will keep the power users
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going and then probably major effort on the iPhone hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John Here’s the thing about the iPad form factor and where the product is in its life.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s one of the easiest products for Apple to fiddle with
⏹️ ▶️ John because at iPad size with the internals, you have a lot of leeway.
⏹️ ▶️ John You have so much leeway that they don’t even have to use all the space for battery anymore, right? It can be pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John darn thin. They have room for giant speakers. The actual system on a chip and all the other things
⏹️ ▶️ John so small compared to the size of the device, you can from year to year
⏹️ ▶️ John make different decisions about how big is it? How big is the, you know, the surround
⏹️ ▶️ John for the entire screen? Does it have a home button on the screen that tech ever comes from the iPhone? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can play with all sorts of sizes. And by the way, every time you change the size or any other dimension, you can
⏹️ ▶️ John sell more accessories and cases and stuff. And everybody loves that. So tech wise and investment
⏹️ ▶️ John wise, it’s such an easy thing to do to say we can take, you know, the iPad pro 9.7,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is, which is one of the best iPads ever made and change a whole bunch of things about
⏹️ ▶️ John it dimensionally to try to make a different compromise on the product with very little investment.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because what does it really take to change the size of the screen by, you know, less
⏹️ ▶️ John than an inch? What would it take to update the Mac pro?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Right, right. Like it’s not, Oh, here we go.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, but this is, this is like, this is the easiest thing ever because you’re not under space constraints. It’s just a matter of finding a
⏹️ ▶️ John new supplier and they do that routinely anyway, even if they keep the screen the same size to find new suppliers for things like you
⏹️ ▶️ John can tweak this product and I think the iPad is in a good place now. I think the iPad Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John is, you know, one of the best iPads Apple has ever made, perhaps the best and it is one of the
⏹️ ▶️ John few products that I recommend Apple products that are going to people these days with no reservations. I want to
⏹️ ▶️ John get an iPad. I like that I points up should I get the iPad Pro? Yes, just get it. It is it is there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John nothing wrong with it. It is great. Maybe you can have more ramp, but who cares? Like it’s so
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey good. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John so few compromises, you know, and the few things that I think about that they could change
⏹️ ▶️ John these rumors, like I said, for satisfying type of things that you can do to make people happy. Would I like an Apple pencil
⏹️ ▶️ John to that connects to the smart connector? Hell yes. I mean, charges from it. I hate the little plug in thing
⏹️ ▶️ John on the end, the end to charge. Like you rarely have to do that. Like the battery lasts a a long time, but there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John room for improvement with small changes to form factor and fit and finish,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’ll get to sell new cases and new pencils and new third-party stuff to go on, like
⏹️ ▶️ John such an easy win. And I don’t know if that counts as, like you said, Marco, putting lots more investment into the iPad and giving it more
⏹️ ▶️ John attention. What I think it counts as is satisfying customers of the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John with actually a fairly minimal investment, just doing like the basic stuff, saying, well, we made a couple iPads, we’ve learned
⏹️ ▶️ John some things, let’s change it, that’s shifted around. And you know, they don’t know what sizes they talked
⏹️ ▶️ John about in the original iPad. This is the size that we picked when you just got to pick one size fine. But as the product
⏹️ ▶️ John line diversifies, I don’t care how many sizes of iPad there are as long as they’re not changing by three millimeters, three
⏹️ ▶️ John or four sizes is fine with me. And if you want to fade one out and bring another one in, these are not radical shifts. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John aside from the thing we always talk about of like, I would like a 28 inch iPad, like the Microsoft Surface
⏹️ ▶️ John Studio, that’s a whole different product, right, whatever. But within the realm of battery-powered iPads
⏹️ ▶️ John that you hold in your hands, I’m perfectly happy to see them mess with the dimensions
⏹️ ▶️ John of this product and the ergonomics and how it works with the case and the pencil and all that
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. And I can’t imagine that that type of change is a break-the-bank type
⏹️ ▶️ John of thing. So by all means, Apple, continue to make the already good iPad better
⏹️ ▶️ John with minimal investment. And with the money that you save, you
⏹️ ▶️ John have a line of desktop computers that I would love to see updated.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that does it. Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Indochino, Betterment,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Casper. And we We will see you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even mean to begin, Cause it was accidental, oh it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental. John didn’t do any research, Marco and
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t let him, Cause it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental. And you can find the show notes
⏹️ ▶️ John at ATP.FM And if you’re into Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can follow them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, N-T Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John mean to. No wonder when you made me power, you accidentally.
⏹️ ▶️ John Take the time to do this kind of crap,
After-show: Tech in politics
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So a friend of the show Brianna Wu has decided that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she really hasn’t had enough grief in her life
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and So she thought you know what? I’m gonna run for Congress. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is it the House of the Senate? I always get it backwards that she’s running for house. I believe right? so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she’s running for the house in Massachusetts if I understand everything properly and She has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a an ad that we will link to in the show notes And so one of the platforms
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she’s running on, among other things, is like the whole kerfuffle from, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guess it was early last year, middle of last year, about Tim Cook and the iPhone FBI stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that that’s worth mentioning. Something that’s relevant potentially to a lot of our listeners, even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you don’t happen to live in Massachusetts. So John is our representative Massachusettin?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t even know. What do you call yourself?
⏹️ ▶️ John You just wanted to say, you just want to say, mass hole, didn’t you?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really did. I really, really did. But I tried not to.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco You got it right. It’s Massachusetts. That’s right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m pretty sure that’s not right. Got it in one. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s not it at all. Anyway, so what are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your thoughts on this, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so she’s running in Massachusetts. She’s running against another Democrat because surprise, Massachusetts,
⏹️ ▶️ John surprise. We’ve had problems with the Republicans here before. But anyway, she is running against another Democrat who
⏹️ ▶️ John is insufficiently aligned with democratic principles
⏹️ ▶️ John and is not prioritizing the things that she would like to see prioritized. And one of those issues, one of the issues that is relevant
⏹️ ▶️ John to a tech podcast is the idea that, you know, this is true of most politicians, regardless of party,
⏹️ ▶️ John they don’t know much about tech stuff. And they’re easily influenced
⏹️ ▶️ John by companies with a lot of money who will persuade them
⏹️ ▶️ John to vote in ways that are aligned with the interests of those companies. And because they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know much about the tech, they’re like, well, I don’t know, I guess this is the right thing to do. Like they don’t even know, right? But if you someone
⏹️ ▶️ John who is involved in the tech world has a chance to
⏹️ ▶️ John take stands on and make an important part of the platform issues that we care about. So for example, the
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone FBI stuff like it, I think if you just asked a regular person, should the FBI
⏹️ ▶️ John be able to get into a terrorist throne like they also yes, of course, totally But to understand the bigger
⏹️ ▶️ John issue, right? The bigger issue of like, oh, don’t just answer based on your fear of terrorism,
⏹️ ▶️ John but think about the bigger issue of data privacy and the consequences and what it would lead to if
⏹️ ▶️ John all information was accessible and encryption was outlawed and all these other things. All those things that tech people,
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like, have a better grasp on than regular people. To make that a platform
⏹️ ▶️ John of a congressional run, A, it’s novel to have someone who is actually informed about tech
⏹️ ▶️ John and who’s making those issues front and center. Like, this is a differentiating factor.
⏹️ ▶️ John My opponent doesn’t know about any of this stuff and doesn’t care and is going to always vote the wrong way on these issues because they’re just going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be aligned with the cable companies or whoever donates to their campaign. Again, regardless of party, this is not a partisan issue.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, tech is terrible in the political world. But
⏹️ ▶️ John to make it a differentiating factor, but my question is, do people
⏹️ ▶️ John care enough about this issue for it to be a good idea politically speaking like maybe the reason
⏹️ ▶️ John that no politicians bring it up is that like yeah so what you are on the
⏹️ ▶️ John right side as far as nerds are concerned but are there enough nerds to make this something that helps you
⏹️ ▶️ John get elected or is this an issue that you never see in campaign ads for a very
⏹️ ▶️ John good reason and that very good reason being nerds are few and don’t vote or don’t believe
⏹️ ▶️ John you or don’t care and I don’t know the answer to that question I like the idea of you know who doesn’t like the idea
⏹️ ▶️ John of their pet issues becoming the platform of some politicians are going to say, I know you care about,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, net neutrality and digital privacy and whatever. And no one ever talks about
⏹️ ▶️ John them. But I’m going to talk about them like, yes, I like that person. But if there’s like seven of us out there who care about these
⏹️ ▶️ John things, this is not going to help her get elected. So I’m of two minds in this. I’m, I’m, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John happy to be catered to by a candidate who believes the same things I do about these
⏹️ ▶️ John relatively esoteric features, But especially in the current climate, which I’m not going to go into too much, where there
⏹️ ▶️ John are so many issues that I think we all agree are so much more important than this. Is this
⏹️ ▶️ John a distraction? Or even in the best of cases, do people really care enough
⏹️ ▶️ John about digital privacy and other tech issues to vote based on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them? And to be clear, that’s not like the only item in on her platform by any stretch of the imagination.
⏹️ ▶️ John no, no, no, no. I mean, the ad will have a link to in the show. It’s not even about that. Like it’s not about that at all. like
⏹️ ▶️ John women’s issue is much larger a platform and that’s an easier sell because yes, I think that is a winner. You know, women’s issues
⏹️ ▶️ John is I mean, just look at the women’s March and like plenty of women have all based on women’s issue,
⏹️ ▶️ John but specifically as relates to a tech podcast, you know, her mentioning
⏹️ ▶️ John at all that this is an issue and part of her platform I think is is rare and novel.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m not I’m not excluding any of the other things that are much more important on our platform. I’m just saying this issue is specifically
⏹️ ▶️ John Does anyone care enough about it or will it always be dwarfed by the much more important issues including
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it’s it’s it’s One note in in in the music, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It it’s one It’s one thing that that certainly I care about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and and I think that the two you guys care about That when a represent an elective
⏹️ ▶️ Casey representative of mine here in Virginia Votes against what I consider to be common
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sense Republicans, uh, nerd topics, you know, for example, of voting against net
⏹️ ▶️ Casey neutrality. I, I, I noticed that and that’s enough to make me strongly consider
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the way I vote the next time I vote. So yeah, I think, I think this, this can absolutely sway people. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re right also that, that there are far more important things to worry about, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is also something that I am worried about.
⏹️ ▶️ John I always feel the same way when I see, you know, my, my representatives, which in general I’m fairly well aligned with because
⏹️ ▶️ John in the state that I happen to live in, but again, they, you know, they just vote, uh, the wrong
⏹️ ▶️ John way, in my opinion, on so many issues related to tech. And it’s like, you just have to swallow that and be like, look,
⏹️ ▶️ John the alternative, the alternative is so much worse and so much more important to things. But on the other hand,
⏹️ ▶️ John it just, it just hurts to constantly have to swallow that. So I, like I said, I’m excited by
⏹️ ▶️ John someone who I agree with on all the big issues and But also these one
⏹️ ▶️ John section of small issues, right? And that that definitely it’s so rare, especially for tech things, because
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody can no one’s going to find a politician that agrees with everyone interviews that doesn’t exist. You always have, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John even if we didn’t have this horrible two party system, you’re never going to find someone to represent you like I agree with every single
⏹️ ▶️ John thing they say you got to have a hierarchy, you got to prioritize and so on and so forth. But I think tech is not
⏹️ ▶️ John is not as obscure as it should be more prominent than it is. Let’s put it that way, because
⏹️ ▶️ John the importance of tech in all of our lives has increased so much over the past several
⏹️ ▶️ John decades that now it actually is up there with the other issues.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, it should be discussed. It should it shouldn’t be like, oh, that’s completely esoteric. Who cares about the Internet? Because
⏹️ ▶️ John the Internet is extremely powerful and extremely important, and its power and importance is
⏹️ ▶️ John not diminishing over time. So maybe it’s a generational thing, and maybe we have to wait
⏹️ ▶️ John for a couple of generations to turn over before we really get into a world where people accept and understand the importance
⏹️ ▶️ John and power of networks and the internet. And hopefully we don’t make too many bad decisions before then
⏹️ ▶️ John and screw it all up, you know, but it should be talked about more than it is. And it’s a shame
⏹️ ▶️ John that even today, like even in the framing that I gave this is still viewed as
⏹️ ▶️ John a thing that only nerds care about and can understand. But it affects everybody’s
⏹️ ▶️ John life doesn’t matter whether you’re a nerd or whether you’re into tech or whether you’re listening to this podcast. These issues do affect
⏹️ ▶️ John your life. It is basically impossible to live in the United States and not be affected by,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the technology law and telecommunication law and all those things. You are affected
⏹️ ▶️ John by it. Whether you understand, you know, why your cable bill is going up or, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John where you’re able to get information over and from or not, things could be much worse than they are. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the net neutrality thing. We’ve sort of held the line on it for a long time,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s a fragile wall that could crumble at any moment. And I really hope more
⏹️ ▶️ John people in Congress and running for Congress bring this issue along. Like you said, another note in the symphony,
⏹️ ▶️ John it deserves to be at least mentioned. That’s not going to say that it deserves to be at least mentioned along with the other headline issues
⏹️ ▶️ John that are much more important. You know, the people’s lives depend on in a very real and immediate way.
⏹️ ▶️ John Tech issues should also be brought along for the ride at this point.
After-show: Neutral
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, Casey, it seems like you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might be thinking more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John seriously than I expected about possibly getting a Tesla.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not true. Stop with that ridiculousness.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So let me just give a brief statement on the matter of you possibly getting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Tesla. So you… cars are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a big part of your identity.
⏹️ ▶️ John boy, he’s going right. This is how this is going to go. Okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey right. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seriously. So when we went to cars and coffee a few weeks ago, I made the remark
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that now that I’m a Tesla person and now that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at all the other cars out there and all their like decked out engines and big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mufflers and all this like horsepower and everything else and I I feel kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way I feel now when I see cool, overclocked PC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware with all the blue LEDs in it and everything else. That is something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was a huge part of my life for a long time, but what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve moved to now, all that is irrelevant to me now. So I look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at that now, I look at cool PC hardware, or even just fast PCs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good graphics cards, awesome CPUs, dual CPU systems that used to be members of the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco family and now aren’t. All of these high-end PC hardware things that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used to love so much, I’m no longer interested because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I see them and I’m like, okay, that’s cool, I respect the kind of horsepower your PC has, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I’m no longer interested in Windows PCs, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a hard time really getting into it as much and it kind of feels like it’s the past in my life.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So at this car event I kind of felt that way, looking at all these cars thinking like, now that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have experienced the joy and sheer disruption
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of driving an electric car that really does make all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gas-powered cars feel like the past and feel old and clunky by comparison, even really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good ones, it makes them feel old and clunky by comparison, I had a hard time appreciating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much of the cool car world because of that, because now I’ve kind of shifted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in what I live in and what I like and what’s important to me. So for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you to consider a Tesla, I have a feeling that you are going to have a very hard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time in your mind reconciling that with this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco core part of what you’ve made your identity of like you love cars, you’ve loved cars your whole life, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you love the engine parts of cars. You love the mufflers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the noise and the cylinders. You love all that stuff. And so I wonder if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe you should be considering a Tesla more seriously than you are, but maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re not letting yourself consider it because you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to put at risk that part of your identity changing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I think, I’m trying to think of a brief answer to this quasi-question because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think we could do a like 50-minute deep dive into my psyche and what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey motivates me and what doesn’t. But I understand where you’re coming from. I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey first of all, the primary reason I’m not really considering a Tesla is it’s just so much money.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s just so much money. I’d said to you privately
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that if you look at what a reasonably well-equipped
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Model S costs if one were to buy one, and not to say that’s the right answer, but that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think of because I’ve only ever bought cars. I’ve never leased. So you look at the price tag
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of a reasonably equipped Model S and it’s hovering around $100,000. I understand you can get cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ones, but built the way I would want it, it would probably be around $100,000. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost three times what I paid for my current car, which is a BMW 3 Series.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s not an unreasonable car. That’s a pretty nice car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, to be fair, you are comparing used to new, though.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey So maybe— That is true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So compare used to used if you’re going to make a price comparison.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I’m going to have to go the other direction because I don’t have the faintest idea what a Tesla is used. But I can tell you that my car,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when it was new, was $55,000, something like that. So which, to be clear, is ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like my car is very nice. It is not a $55,000 car. That’s why I bought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it used. But in any case, so you’re looking at two of my car for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one Tesla. And that in and of itself makes all of my pipe dreams
⏹️ ▶️ Casey moot because there’s I don’t think that there’s any way I could justify spending that kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of money or the equivalent thereof in a lease. I just I don’t think I could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do it. Now this is where everyone will say, well, perfect. The Model 3 is just the right car for you. Maybe. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know. I’m skeptical it’ll be as quick as I’d like it to be. And this is where everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey says, well, what do you really need to go fast for? I don’t. But that’s what I like. And I like what I like.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco No, there’s nothing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wrong with wanting to go fast. And believe me, with a Tesla, there is ample speed. Even their slow models are fast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, the Model S, I agree. I’m less confident in the 3. It very well could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be, very, very well could be, I’ll end up wrong. In which case, I think I’ll give the Model 3 a real look.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t put a deposit down or anything like that because I think it’ll still be like two to three years before
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of those is even available for those who put a deposit down. I forget what the official timeline is, but we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But so let’s assume for the sake of conversation that I’m willing to spend $100,000 or the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey equivalent thereof in the lease payment. I think you’re largely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey onto something in that it would be a tough bridge to cross because I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have for my entire life, since I can remember, I’ve treated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cars and car culture to some degree as such a critical
⏹️ ▶️ Casey part of my life. And I think that comes from, there was always
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an old car in our garage. My dad worked for IBM for something like 30
⏹️ ▶️ Casey years, but there was a brief window of time before he started working for IBM where he was a professional
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mechanic for Buick. And he had always tinkered with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cars since he was a kid. Now the difference between dad and I is that he has actual practical knowledge and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of my knowledge, well, what little I have, is all theoretical. And if you doubt me on that, I have a podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to recommend to you. But in any case, but all kidding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey aside, I’ve grown up with cars around me all my life. And I think you tend to emulate your parents
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and my dad has always been obsessed with cars. And so because of that, I think I’ve always been obsessed with cars.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And even if I were to get a Tesla, sitting here now, not knowing any better,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I would probably want like a stupid dino juice powered,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not weekend car, but like weekend car, one that has three pedals, maybe a convertible,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not that I’ve ever owned one really. But that sounds like it could be fun. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like an S2000 or something like that. Just to have to remind me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what driving used to feel like before it was all automated and before some of the soul was taken
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out of it. And I don’t mean that to be insulting. I just feel like it’s a very different animal with the Tesla.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I tell you what, you know, when we were out that morning on New Year’s Eve, I drove us
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from cars and coffee to where we had breakfast. And every time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I gave that Tesla, this was underscores Tesla, every time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I gave that Tesla a little bit of my right foot, it just put a humongous smile on my face because it is just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey frigging intoxicating, having infinite torque from no RPM. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unbelievably intoxicating. And so to that end, I wonder if I had a Model S,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I would get over it a lot quicker than I expect.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I sure did. I mean, like, I’m telling you, like, like when I, going from the M5 to the Model
⏹️ ▶️ Marco S, I really was afraid that I would really miss like the sporty,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, V8-ness of the M5 and shifting the gears and everything. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really didn’t. Like I thought that would, I was very worried about that. And it was a complete
⏹️ ▶️ Marco non-issue as soon as I started driving the Model S, I’m like, oh my God, this is so good. Now, that being said,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you theoretically were to do your like little gas car for a fun
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weekend reminding yourself that you exist, if only there was someone else in your household
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who was looking for a new full-size sedan.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you saying, Erin gets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, Erin can make her own car decision, of course, but maybe Erin could get a Model
⏹️ ▶️ Marco S, because that’s the size and class of car that I believe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco she wants the space from. And then you, for like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you go to work, you know, you could leave the Model S at home for, you know, because Erin’s with Declan during
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John workday, right? So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, there’d be the car seat in that one. And then you ride your little S2000, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is probably not that expensive today because they’re not that new. You ride your S2000
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to work or a Miata or something, and you have your fun little rocket engine car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a stick with three pedals. And that’s you remind yourself that you like car’s car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then you have the Model S as the other car in your family that Aaron drives most of the time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that you slowly fall in love with.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s funny you mention that for a couple of reasons. First of all, I’ve barked up this tree with Erin and she has told me on no uncertain
⏹️ ▶️ Casey terms that there’s no way she would be spending that kind of money on a Model S. Now, it’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of funny because her money is my money and my money is her money. It’s all really our money, but be that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco may. Oh, it’s a joint decision, obviously.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. But yeah, she said no way. She has no interest in it. Not because she doesn’t think it’s nice. I mean, she’s driven
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Underscore’s car once or twice as well, and I think she really liked it, but she just does not feel like it’s the right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey value for money. Because I don’t think it is value for money. Well, so as an automobile
⏹️ ▶️ Casey alone, I don’t think it’s a very good price performer. As a glimpse of the future, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco But… How much money do you put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your car for all these repairs?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Don’t even talk to me about that. It’s a very sore subject and it’s too soon.
⏹️ ▶️ John this disposable income?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco For the price
⏹️ ▶️ John of Casey’s used BMW, you can get a his and hers Honda Accord, which are
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey highly recommend. And then take the hundred grand that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey were going to
⏹️ ▶️ John spend on the Tesla and buy a used Ferrari. Done and done.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh, talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, right.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s your fun. You have two very large cars, both of which can carry all of
⏹️ ▶️ John your stuff and all of your children. And then when Casey wants to feel connected to, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the living, breathing heart inside him, I don’t think your heart breathes. You know what I mean? have a Ferrari.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’m going to say going to the cars and coffee thing I did not having despite having driven and
⏹️ ▶️ John been driven in Tesla’s which I think are great. And you know and I would recommend anybody who
⏹️ ▶️ John wants to buy one whatever. I still love all those cars. I still want a Ferrari. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ John in 20 or 30 years I’ll eventually want an electric Ferrari but right now I want
⏹️ ▶️ John I want a gas one. That’s what I want. Please send me that now. If I had 100 grand, there
⏹️ ▶️ John is no way I would be looking at like, if I had 100 grand that I was forced to spend on a car,
⏹️ ▶️ John I would be looking at Ferraris because it would be like, I can’t Can I can I get a used Ferrari for 100
⏹️ ▶️ John grand this season? I think I can.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Can you afford to maintain 100 grand Ferrari
⏹️ ▶️ John when it stops working? I’ll just look at it and enjoy it. Like it’s a piece of art. Like like that guy. You know
⏹️ ▶️ John that guy who put the old Ferrari like inside his house? Remember that? Yep, yep, yep, yep. Right. I
⏹️ ▶️ John can relate to that guy. I probably wouldn’t do that, but I can relate to that guy because
⏹️ ▶️ John even when it’s not moving, looking at it would make me happy. And a Tesla, when it’s not moving, looking at
⏹️ ▶️ John it, it’s a fine looking car. Like, don’t get me wrong, it’s not an ugly car, but it does not make me happy in the way that
⏹️ ▶️ John looking at a Ferrari does. So I still, I would still spend that kind of disposable income
⏹️ ▶️ John on a completely frivolous and impractical car. Not even pretend, like, because I don’t want a practical
⏹️ ▶️ John car for a hundred grand I want a car that no one should ever own and that’s a Ferrari.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well do you remember it was a few years ago I’ll put a link in the show notes Doug DeMuro who at the time was with Jalopnik
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not sure if he still is he bought a Ferrari he bought it this article was written
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in December of 14 he said he had it for a little under a year and put 5,000 miles on it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he spent about $13,000 between depreciation maintenance everything else so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s $13,000 a year So it’s like about
⏹️ ▶️ John the same amount as your BMW then, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, that cuts deep. That cuts deep.
⏹️ ▶️ John Did the engine explode at any point on his Ferrari or no?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think so. It’s been a while since I’ve read this article, but my engine didn’t exactly explode. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John just had a- It would have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey relatively catastrophic failure.
⏹️ ▶️ John If it starts to eat itself and makes small pieces of metal, that’s bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, it didn’t start to eat itself, you big jerk. It’s just the vanos system kind of forgot how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to work. No big deal. And then the water pump kind of forgot how to work. No big deal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pretty sure my car has neither of those for
⏹️ ▶️ John the record. Yeah, it has it has some kind of water pump probably for the cooling of the batteries. That’s true. There
⏹️ ▶️ John are far fewer things that can go wrong with electric car like I’m totally on board with the electric I will get an electric car as soon as they
⏹️ ▶️ John come down to my price, which could be a while this rate. But but yeah, like I’m I can
⏹️ ▶️ John I can relate to Casey both a and not in the absence of money falling on my head.
⏹️ ▶️ John hard for me to justify, as is apparent by my car purchases, spending that much money on a car, period. And if
⏹️ ▶️ John I had that kind of money and I was forced to spend it on a car, I would be thinking way more frivolous
⏹️ ▶️ John than a Tesla. Which is, like, it sounds extravagant, but the Tesla is an eminently
⏹️ ▶️ John practical car. It is not a frivolous car. It will not cost you 13 grand in repair bills. You do not
⏹️ ▶️ John need to hire a special Italian to do your repairs
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey It costs a million
⏹️ ▶️ John dollars. There’s nothing in the car to go wrong, for the most except for the infotainment system that can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John find podcast art like and the door handles yeah and the door handles It is a pretty darn boring car
⏹️ ▶️ John for that amount of money. Don’t you buy the Model X though, it’s gross.