323: A Slightly Smaller Thumb
25 Apr 2019New T-shirts, potential threats to the podcasting landscape, and the latest Marzipan reports.
Episode Description:
The ATP store is back with new designs! Only available through May 12! Order now!
Our thanks to The Iconfactory for helping us out with the T-Shirt designs this year.
- Pre-show: Amazing refrigerator episode of Reconcilable Differences
- ATP Store
- Follow-up on Intel exiting the cellular-modem business:
- Thoughts from anonymous Intel tipsters
- Thoughts from an IP lawyer
- Luminary's missteps
- More from Gui Rambo
- Post-show: Quarterbacking WWDC
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Chapters
- John’s amazing fridge podcast
- New T-shirts! 🖼️
- Thanks, Iconfactory! 🖼️
- More on Intel-Qualcomm
- Sponsor: Rightpoint
- Luminary
- Sponsor: ExpressVPN
- Old-growth podcasts
- Sponsor: Linode (code atp2019)
- More Ramboleaks
- Ending theme
- Post-show: Big WWDC?
John’s amazing fridge podcast
⏹️ ▶️ John I have plenty of nerd shirts to wear. I’m not going to be wearing any of my own shirts. I don’t even
⏹️ ▶️ John put these, you know, when I get copies of the shirts that I like, I don’t even put them in my drawer
⏹️ ▶️ John as they go directly into storage. You would, you would. Why buy them then?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because I need to have them for the collection. I want to know this was the shirt that we made
⏹️ ▶️ John at this time. And you know, I’ll probably wear them when I’m like old and retired and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So your plan is when you’re old and retired to unlock
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your storage vault of old unworn podcast t-shirts, mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for podcasts that won’t exist anymore. Well, no,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just for my, I mean, all the other podcast shirts I wear, but for our podcast, for
⏹️ ▶️ John ATP, I don’t wear those now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Why don’t you get two, and wear one, and keep one in the vault?
⏹️ ▶️ John It feels weird wearing your own podcast shirt.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh, I have no qualms. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John definitely, it’s right in Casey’s wheelhouse, obviously, but for me,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it just doesn’t feel weird.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, slow down. Why is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John it right in my wheelhouse?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like we can- It just is. You love wearing your own podcast shirts. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lie. That’s true. So you’re okay with wearing all other podcast shirts except for
⏹️ ▶️ John basically? ATP or Rectifs. I wouldn’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John there was a Rectif shirt, I wouldn’t wear it. And there is no Robot or Not shirt, even though they try to pass off the Robot and Compro shirt as
⏹️ ▶️ John a Robot or Not shirt. It’s not. Anyway. Oh my God.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You have to make a fridge shirt for Rectifs.
⏹️ ▶️ John We don’t have any shirts for Rectifs. Like the problem with the Rectifs logo is it’s just two generic circles, but already it’s got like,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s like three colors, plus you got like a gradient background that you can’t really do in shirts, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Make it like one of those engineering drawings where it’s like an isometric view of a fridge with the measurement
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lines on each side. And like, it’s like, you know, 30 inches wide. Like the exploded classic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like an engineering drawing of a fridge with the measurements on it, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the different nitpicks and problems that you had, maybe the doorway.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is a rectus topic, I gotta tell you about this story of me trying to buy this washer to
⏹️ ▶️ John adjust the door. It’s an ongoing saga. Let me put it in rectifs right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for anybody who has not listened to the latest episode of Reconcilable Differences or Rectifs, oh my god, willing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to it, oh my god. Oh, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there. It’s so good. If you like John at all,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to listen to it. It is as close as we’ve come in the last X years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to another episode of Hypercritical.
⏹️ ▶️ John See, people said that, But if I did that for Hypercritical, like at Hypercritical I always had outlines. First of
⏹️ ▶️ John all, the story would have gone somewhere, which I get is part of the humor in it that doesn’t actually go anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ John really. But like there would be a better structure to the story and I would be going somewhere with it more
⏹️ ▶️ John than I was. Because honestly, there was supposed to be just a mini topic, like it wasn’t the plan. And it would have been so much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would even say it is better than Hypercritical.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Ooh. That’s how good it is.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re used to the more rambling thing, because like in Hypercritical it would have been pre-planned sometimes the spontaneity and
⏹️ ▶️ John like the humor of it like going on way longer than anyone thought it would like that wouldn’t happen in hypercritical you know I mean because because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s planned out so it’s definitely a different style but honestly I didn’t mean to talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John it that long it just happened
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the fact that it wasn’t planned out makes it even more impressive because it sounds like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you did plan it out it like it’s you’re so prepared to tell this amazing story it’s not preparation
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I didn’t even talk about the mini fridge this
⏹️ ▶️ John week you’ll hear about the mini fridge it’s not there’s much to tell but I didn’t even get to
⏹️ ▶️ John include all the relevant boring details. I don’t need to see it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Dottie. I lived it. you
New T-shirts!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You have a back. We would like to put our shirt on your back. We are selling t-shirts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they will also cover your front. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sure you know that.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s practically two shirts for the price of one. One shirt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a back shirt. It’ll even cover the top few inches of your arms. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple will just replace your top case but we’ll cover your whole body.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The sad thing is I was trying to leave Marco a clean edit because I felt like that joke totally fell on its face but now now we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John here we are. He’s got a
⏹️ ▶️ John clean place to put in the crickets. Don’t worry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh gosh. All right. Well, anyway, so we are selling shirts because it is WWDC time. Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so here’s the thing. Every year when ATP starts thinking about shirts, which is somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the February to May timeframe, depending on how on the ball we are, we always kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of look at each other and just scratch our heads and wonder what are we going to do this year?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And on occasion, one of us will have an epiphany. I think that the ultimate example of this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from years past was Marco’s epiphany about the watch themed shirts?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like the ones that came in like the different metals and the gold. We had sport,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just ATP shirt and ATP edition. That’s right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the edition one had like, I think it was real gold foil. It doesn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco matter. It wasn’t actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco real gold. Like we tried to get real gold. Oh, is that what it was? It was real gold colored. Yes, it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gold colored, like metallic foil print instead of like, I asked about like getting gold leaf.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it would actually be real gold, but that was apparently impractical.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So this year we didn’t know what to do. We had no particularly great ideas. And then one, Mr. John Syracuse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey came out of the woodwork and said, I have not one, but two ideas.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we are selling two new shirts. We are also bringing back some of our favorite older shirts, which we’ll talk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about in a moment, but the two new shirts, one of them is the butterfly keyboard shirt. John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am happy to describe this. Well, both of these, but I feel like since you are the artiste, if you would like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to describe both of these. The floor is yours.
⏹️ ▶️ John I want people to overthink it too much. So a butterfly keyboard shirt, obviously, you listen to the show, you know what the butterfly keyboard is, you know
⏹️ ▶️ John why it’s related to the show, this this seat is an homage to everyone’s
⏹️ ▶️ John favorite keyboard, the keyboard, we’d love to hate the butterfly keyboard, it’s got the letters ATP on butterfly
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard key caps, and it’s got a butterfly on it. And that’s basically it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s got the name of our show. And I feel like if you wear the shirt and people see it on you and they understand
⏹️ ▶️ John it and you understand that there will be a kinship there because it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco obvious what the hell is about
⏹️ ▶️ John because otherwise, they’re like it’s letters in a square and a butterfly. I don’t get it. Anyway, I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a clever shirt and it’s very tasteful. Indeed,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and so that will be available in silver and white, just like Max
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are or were. And then we have another shirt. John was very enthusiastic about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. And who am I to stand in the way of John Syracuse. So John, tell me about your baby.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is kind of like, you know, my, the shirt design I had a couple of seasons or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John ago with the Pro Max all lined up and we have a variant of that available for this year as well.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, there’s a new Mac Pro coming sometime, any day,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco any day now,
⏹️ ▶️ John which means that this is the last opportunity to
⏹️ ▶️ John celebrate the Pro Max that existed up till that point. We already have the lineup of the Pro Max
⏹️ ▶️ John thing here. Here are some notable Pro Max in the past, and soon we’re gonna get a new one, right? So this is the last chance you have
⏹️ ▶️ John to buy this old Pro Max shirt. For this particular shirt, I said I wanted to,
⏹️ ▶️ John I wanted to say goodbye to the trash can. I wanted to have a tribute to the trash
⏹️ ▶️ John can. I wanted to recognize the trash can, and I wanted the trash can to go away.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if there is no Mac Pro announced at WWDC, I will feel the trash can looming
⏹️ ▶️ John over me vengefully as just haunting me, just like not letting me
⏹️ ▶️ John be free of it ever. Anyway, all those ideas are encompassed in this fever dream of a shirt,
⏹️ ▶️ John a trash can of Mac Pro with gigantic vengeful angel wings
⏹️ ▶️ John and the name of our show. And because it looks a little bit like a biker tattoo, this design is on the back of
⏹️ ▶️ John the shirt, right? So it’s the big logo is on the back and on the front, It’s just got a little tiny ATP logo in the corner.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it does really look like, kind of like a motorcycle gang shirt, but it’s about a nerd podcast about a pro
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac computer that stuck around way too long and is with us still. But maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John going away, but maybe not. Anyway, that’s the shirt.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Then we are additionally reissuing the ATP logo shirt, which is the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one that we are, in the past anyway, most proud of. I think we really love that one. Additionally, the ATP
⏹️ ▶️ Casey polo, which I fought tooth and nail for, and you guys were kind enough to prove me at least slightly right by buying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at least a few of. The monochrome Pro Max shirt is coming back. The ATP hoodie
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is coming back, which is a personal favorite of mine. The ATP hat is back and then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the enamel pins never actually left. However, as of a couple of months back, or maybe even a few months
⏹️ ▶️ Casey back, they do have locking pin backs now so you don’t lose them as I did with one of mine. Here’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing listeners, this is where I guilt everyone to some degree. This is the time to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey order shirts. Don’t put it off because you’ll forget. There’s only going to be a couple of weeks when you can do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. Do it now. If you are at all interested in any of these, please, in a safe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey manner, stop what you’re doing. Pause the podcast and take a look at atp.fm.com.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Don’t be that person that says, oh, I forgot and I have a birthday for a friend coming up and this person really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wants it, is there anything? No, there’s nothing we can do. Please be smart. please safely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pull the car over, stop running, and go to atp.fm. We’d really appreciate it. You
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can order until May 12th. For Americans, you should be able to get these in time for WBDC.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am not guaranteeing that by any stretch, but it should work out. That’s why we timed it the way we did.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, atp.fm.com. Don’t be that person that regrets having
⏹️ ▶️ Casey missed it. I’m talking to you now. atp.fm.
Thanks, Iconfactory!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, these shirts, John, I was going to say we, but really it was John, had the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey epiphany to do these two shirts. And we didn’t know who to turn to. And then we thought, hey, wait a second,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we have some friends at the Icon Factory. And you know, you may know the Icon Factory from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of the great apps they’ve made over the years. We’ve talked about Linnea. Xscope is one of my favorite little utility
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apps that I use constantly to measure things on screen and get colors and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things of that nature. Yep, me too. They make Twitterific, they do all sorts of things. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so IconFactory, in short, makes products for designers and developers because they’re designers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and developers, and they’re the ones that helped us with the designs for these shirts. And they did an incredible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey job and we really thank them for it. So if you want to check them out, iconfactoryapps.com. You
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, these guys have been around for 20 years, actually more than 20 years, and they got their start by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doing Macintosh icons that quote, don’t suck, quote. So they’ve done Star Wars Copeland style stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They’ve done a 32 by 32 pixel Millennium Falcon, which was very, very good. And I’m not even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the biggest Star Wars fan and I thought it was very good. They’re still designing software for other companies and for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey podcasters and for themselves. So hey, you should really check out their stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And additionally, they have a Patreon these days if you wanted to get some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sweet, sweet iconography swag and stuff of that nature. So you can check out their website
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at iconfactoryapps.com. You can also check out their Patreon at patreon.com slash iconfactory.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And hey, give them a look. Iconfactory is great, great people. They really saved
⏹️ ▶️ Casey our backs on this one. And they saved your back if you order the ATP Mac Pro shirt. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and your front and your front as well.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, let me explain a little bit of what the the iconfactory Patreon like, you know, companies
⏹️ ▶️ John have 20 years, the Patreon is really like a return to what I knew iconfactory
⏹️ ▶️ John for back in the day. I, before I ever met anyone at the company, I would go to their website.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the reason I would go to their website is because they had icons, like it’s right there in the name, Icon Factory. I
⏹️ ▶️ John used to collect icons on my Mac back when they were actually tiny little pixel art things and not the giant
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac OS X icons. And you could just go there and every once in a while, they’d have a new bunch of icons
⏹️ ▶️ John for some pop culture property, Star Trek icons, Star Wars icons, cool looking folders,
⏹️ ▶️ John things that look like the Matrix when that thing came out. And also their website used to have this cute little animation of
⏹️ ▶️ John the icon factory and little people inside. It was just like free stuff back when I was a young person
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Internet and I liked icons and wallpapers and free stuff. And that’s why I would go to the icon
⏹️ ▶️ John factory. I think they had apps that back then maybe they even had an old version of X scope.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t remember. And of course they made icons for other people. And by the way, I know they’re kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John secretive about their clients or whatever. But if you’re listening to this program, chances are very, very
⏹️ ▶️ John good that you have seen icons that the Icon Factory made, but they don’t really talk about that that much. But anyway, what
⏹️ ▶️ John I knew them for is a place where you go to download free icons and wallpaper. And it didn’t occur to me because
⏹️ ▶️ John it was like the 90s. Like, how do you stay in business if the only time I go to your website is to get free stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John from you? Well, Patreon is the answer to that. They’ve been doing all that stuff for other people. They have a huge set of apps that you can check out and
⏹️ ▶️ John I highly recommend Twitter. I think it’s really cool. And Xcope, if you don’t know what that is, If you’ve never seen an app like
⏹️ ▶️ John it, check it out. You may find it indispensable. But anyway, what about the icons in the wallpaper?
⏹️ ▶️ John Where are the kids going to go to get free icons in wallpaper? The answer is the Patreon. This lets them continue
⏹️ ▶️ John to do that. You don’t just get icons in wallpaper. They do other things. They have
⏹️ ▶️ John a Discord. They have a podcast. You get discounts on their products. For example, they did a cool, they’re doing t-shirts too,
⏹️ ▶️ John for themselves. They did a cool dog cow t-shirt. If you’re a Patreon member, you get a discount on that t-shirt.
⏹️ ▶️ John The highest tiers of the Patreon, you get discounts on their professional services. So if you support their Patreon, it turns
⏹️ ▶️ John out that you want them to design a t-shirt for you, you can get a discount on that service.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s really like the old icon factor that they used to know before they went corporate
⏹️ ▶️ John and started having all their own applications and
⏹️ ▶️ John doing all this work for these big wood clients, as they say in the Patreon thing, bringing back the fun. So
⏹️ ▶️ John definitely check it out and throw a couple bucks their way. And they, and it’s like, it’s like every, is it every month
⏹️ ▶️ John I think? Every month they put in new stuff? I don’t know, but if you sign up, you will get all the stuff they have
⏹️ ▶️ John released in the past. So you can download the Game of Thrones folders, the icons they made, the Captain Marvel stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it just keeps adding up. So check out the website, patreon.com slash icon factory.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I have to say, speaking of their professional services, we work with them to do the t-shirts, mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John because these designs were out of our artistic reach, basically. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I probably could have hacked something together, but it wouldn’t have been as good. And I didn’t even want to
⏹️ ▶️ John attempt it, because I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like, and I didn’t feel like I could execute that without a lot of pain.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I sent, like, I did a mock-up in between eating my breakfast and going to work. Like, that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John time I made these mock-ups, and then I just wrote up a description and threw them over the fence to Icon Factory, and they were so nice
⏹️ ▶️ John and worked with us, worked with me, let’s be honest, to go back and forth via
⏹️ ▶️ John email 700 times until the wings on the stupid Mac Pro Angel were just the way I wanted them.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey You guys, guys, this is not an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco exaggeration. If you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can imagine having John Syracuse as your design client, like it’s exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what you’d expect it to be, right? So for them to endure all of that and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not fire us, and I think we’re even still on friendly terms, it’s really saying something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It really says like they can work with anybody and they’re really good.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like in some ways, yes, I’m a nightmare client because I have these very particular needs, In other ways, I feel like I’m an ideal
⏹️ ▶️ John client, because I’m able to articulate my ideas and tell you precisely in what way they have to change.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, Flash, they all say that. Yeah, at a certain point, the designers are like, do you want to draw these stupid wings? I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John sure they got to that point, because in my mind’s eye, I see them at a certain point, and I’m like, let
⏹️ ▶️ John me just draw the wings for you. But I can’t, that’s why we’re hiring them to do it. So I just have to keep
⏹️ ▶️ John describing them. I remember at one point I was describing that the tips of the wing feathers should be a slightly
⏹️ ▶️ John different shape. And they did it, they changed the shape. and they’re better for it. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John Icon Factory is great. All their icons and wallpapers are great. Throw a few bucks their
⏹️ ▶️ John way, because that will let them continue to do all these kind of fun projects.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and if you want to hire them for professional services, I’ve actually done that. I’ve hired them, and they are wonderful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to work with. They are just both amazing designers and amazing developers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Their apps, like Linnea and Twitterific, The level of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quality you get in the coding and the engineering of those apps is stellar. And then also the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design services are just like, they’re the best, like they’re simply the best. I don’t know of better designers out there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than IconFactory. So if you need to hire anybody for that kind of stuff, I highly suggest you check them out.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not exaggerating when I say they are the best icon. I know it’s so dumb, it’s like IconFactory,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, they do so much more than make icons, but they made some of my favorite icons of all time. Like I still have back
⏹️ ▶️ John in these giant archives, my collection of old classic Mac 32 by 32 icons
⏹️ ▶️ John made by the Icon Factory, and they are amazing. I still love them to this day. They’re really good at making icons.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, I specifically wanted, I had a specific designer at Icon Factory
⏹️ ▶️ John that I wanted to do these shirts because I loved his work so much and I have for so many years. So they’re the best.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I forgot to mention BitCam. It’s another one of their apps. It is so much fun. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco turns your camera into a live viewing one-bit camera. one bit camera so it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you only get black and white pixels and they have color modes also but like the thing it’s really known for is like you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only get black and white pixels and it looks so cool so retro like it looks it’s made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to look like the original Macintosh in that kind of style and the detail work they’ve done is incredible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s again one of the things like the engineering behind it is incredible and it’s so much fun to play with so and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even their website for it is made to look like an old website like it’s so cool so yeah definitely check out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ATP.FM. Slash store.
More on Intel-Qualcomm
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, moving on, let’s do some follow-up. And we begin with two, I think it’s two different,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Intel people, anonymous Intel people writing in. The first to say, “‘Regarding the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Intel slash Qualcomm news, “‘everyone assumes one of the main factors “‘was our delay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on 10 nanometer, which yes is a mess, “‘but Intel was actually planning on fabbing “‘their 5G chips
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at TSMC. “‘I certainly don’t know the whole story, “‘but the manufacturing process was not a factor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey “‘in why the 5G stuff fell down.’”
⏹️ ▶️ John I think we might have actually covered that in an old episode about Intel fabbing. Maybe it wasn’t modem chips, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John it was something else at TSMC. But yeah, the things are grim there. It’s, I guess, good to know
⏹️ ▶️ John that the 10 nanometer thing wasn’t a factor. But because Intel has to form that out to another company,
⏹️ ▶️ John that further reduces their margins because Taiwan Semiconductor also needs to make a profit on this job that
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re doing. And it just makes it less attractive to be in the cell modem market,
⏹️ ▶️ John which brings us to our next tip here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. So a different tipster writes in, imagine committing a significant percentage of your company’s resources to a business
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with slim margins, and then gifting those margins to Qualcomm in the form of patent royalties.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we’re going to talk more about that in a minute. But what I took from this is that there was not a lot of money to be made and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yet they were throwing a whole lot of manpower at it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also, I love that we have an Intel tipster now because, you know, fittingly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re about two years later and worse than our Apple tipster.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, yeah, they’re just adopting the tipster name because they’ve heard it on the program.
⏹️ ▶️ John This kind of gets back to what I said last show, but it is like a low margin business and it’s not as great
⏹️ ▶️ John as selling awesome server chips that only use your intellectual property and you don’t have to pay Qualcomm patent royalties
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. But the business of selling big, hot, multi-core
⏹️ ▶️ John x86 chips on 14 nanometer processes is not going to last forever. If they just keep abandoning every
⏹️ ▶️ John other potential future market, any other market with growth potential, they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John just be left with their big, hot, 14-nanometer x86 chips. And eventually, no one will want them
⏹️ ▶️ John have a better future plan. I’m sure they do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sure. All right. And then we had a really interesting email
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from Chris Banos, who is apparently an IP lawyer. And there is a lot of information here. And I’m going to try to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey summarize it as best I can by just selecting some passages to read. So Chris writes, Qualcomm’s patents
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in this dispute are part of the International Telecommunication Union 4G and 5G standards.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One of the rules of the ITU, that’s the International Telecommunication Union, is that if you submit a patent for inclusion
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a standard, you must agree to license those patents in a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory basis,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which they abbreviate as FRAND, to all industry participants. Qualcomm has decided to license its patents
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with a royalty based on the final cost of the retail product including their technology, which we knew. Apple has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey argued that this approach neither fair nor reasonable, which is why the FTC, the Federal Telecommunications Commission.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Federal Trade Commission. Thank you. That’s what I said. Thank you for the safe. Has also gotten
⏹️ ▶️ Casey involved in the US. So Chris goes on to say basically, hey, if you have an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone that’s 64 gigs and an iPhone that’s a half terabyte, those iPhones have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the exact same Qualcomm chip inside, but the royalty will be higher on the iPhone with more storage,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even though the chips are the same because the royalty is based on how expensive the device
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is. So where this gets kind of interesting and squiggly is that even though Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stopped paying its royalties to Qualcomm because they felt like it was BS, and they also asked their suppliers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to stop paying royalties, like Foxconn for example, Intel was actually still paying royalties for the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey modem chips that it would make for Apple. And finally, if and when Apple starts manufacturing its own modem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chips, Chris writes, Apple will still have to pay royalties to Qualcomm regardless of whether or not it buys botoms for Qualcomm
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or manufactures them itself. Chris also writes, one detail that would be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very interesting is whether Apple has agreed to not volunteer evidence to the FTC in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exchange for better royalties. Maybe Qualcomm thinks they’re in a somewhat precarious spot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Apple could probably push them off the cliff in the sense that they would be in a really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bad spot, but maybe Apple said, hey, you know, we’ll just kind of forget about this stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you promise to give us a better deal. How’s that sound?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if if Apple needs to testify like the the practices they were doing of like, yes, we’ll license
⏹️ ▶️ John our patents to anyone who asked. But are the terms of our license are so onerous. I mean, like percentage
⏹️ ▶️ John of percentage of total cost to do a total price. Do you think you are Oracle charging a percentage of
⏹️ ▶️ John revenue for your database product? That’s a corporate I.T. joke for you.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s it’s, you know, the which is what I was getting at last time, I was saying that Qualcomm
⏹️ ▶️ John has to license it to people, like they have no choice because they agreed to this whole thing, but it’s, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John what is fair and reasonable? Is it reasonable to charge a percentage price of the product,
⏹️ ▶️ John is that fair? That’s what the case is about, and I don’t know. But the point is, whether Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John testifies or not, everyone knows how Qualcomm is licensing these things. Like, I don’t think it’s a secret. I don’t think you
⏹️ ▶️ John need Apple to testify, and people won’t realize that’s how they’re licensing stuff. But
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, that’s a thing that could have gone on. We don’t, because the deal between Apple and Qualcomm was like
⏹️ ▶️ John secret and it appears that Apple lost and a lot of money changed hands and we know that Apple came away with
⏹️ ▶️ John patents and it’s like, well, it doesn’t matter that Apple came up with patents, they would have needed to get them anyway and Qualcomm would
⏹️ ▶️ John have to license them, yes, but under what terms, right? So maybe the deal is we’ll give you these licenses
⏹️ ▶️ John for better terms, maybe not a percentage of total cost or whatever, because now you’re like a, you’re a
⏹️ ▶️ John self-motive manufacturer yourself, you’re not putting someone else’s things in your product.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a big legal mess, but bottom line is I still feel like everybody lost in that one, but long term,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple may be the biggest winner because especially if Qualcomm loses the FTC case because
⏹️ ▶️ John the end of it all, Intel doesn’t get to sell anyone modem chips. Qualcomm doesn’t have Apple as a customer anymore, and
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s got a free, not free license, but the other, the other meaning
⏹️ ▶️ John of free license, they are free to make their own very own modem chips because now they have
⏹️ ▶️ John a license to the patents, hopefully under are better deals than they had before.
Sponsor: Rightpoint
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco rightpoint.com slash careers. Thank you so much to RightPoint for sponsoring our
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco tell me about Luminary. What is this all about and what is this big brouhaha about? Apparently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some people are blocking Luminary from getting to their shows. What’s going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s hard for me to talk about this objectively, because Luminary is both a direct competitor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to Overcast and doing things in a way that rubs me the wrong way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in every possible way. And so it’s hard for me to be objective about this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to talk about it in general terms. Maybe John will help me out here. But the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basic gist of it is Luminary is this new, very heavily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco VC-funded startup. They have $100 million in funding so far, and because that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only their round one, I expect them to raise a lot more, probably within the next six months to a year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So figure a few hundred million dollars, probably, of money going into this. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of the money is seemingly being spent on a tremendous staff, but mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on content deals. I believe they said they had something like 40 engineers making the app,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which I can’t even really picture how 40 people make a podcast app. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know how big companies work, and to me 40 is big. Anyway, and mainly they’re doing content
⏹️ ▶️ Marco deals where they are paying significantly famous
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or popular or big podcast producers or celebrities to make podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that exclusively work on their app, and all this is being paid by a kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Netflix or podcast style model of they want you to pay eight bucks a month to get access
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the premium content. but it’s also a podcast app that anybody can use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that accesses the world of free podcasts like what other podcast apps do. So it’s basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very heavily funded, heavily armed podcast app that has a premium tier for eight bucks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a month that’s full of big names that they want you to subscribe to. And of course the whole app very heavily promotes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that content that’s theirs and everything else. So I have lots of feelings about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this. None of them are very good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The only thing that I think is a saving grace here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that this kind of idea has been tried and is still being tried, but has never really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gotten very far off the ground. Like the biggest example of this that is established
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so far is Stitcher Premium. And back, you know, a few, what is it, a month ago, two months ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when Gimlet, when Spotify bought Gimlet and Spotify’s doing basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same thing, but in a little bit different scale. But we talked about this a little bit back then, of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the idea of having paid podcasts that only work in one app,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of on a premium model. That idea has been around for a while, and Stitcher
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Premium is, as far as I know, the biggest example of this to date. It’s fine. Stitcher Premium does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay. It has a fine audience. it attracts some celebrities
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and some names and some content is only there, but it has not gotten big enough to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where it’s really doing significant damage to the rest of the podcast market. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it doesn’t really affect us at all. Like us being the ones out here in the rest of the world. If you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco choose not to use Stitcher to be your podcast app and if you,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you want to keep listening to podcasts like this that are on every podcast because we are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually like open RSS feed based podcasts, which it’s like we’re the kind that used to be the only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guide. Then anyone else doing these other things shouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco affect us at all. And so far they haven’t. What makes Luminary a little bit scarier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just the sheer amount of money and heft
⏹️ ▶️ Marco behind it at launch. Like this is very, very heavily being pushed because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have such a big budget, such a big staff, such big content deals right out of the gate,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that this is… I would say this Luminary is actually an even bigger threat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to open podcasting than Spotify appears to be at the moment. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over time that may change. Spotify is huge and they really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a lot of people behind their music service so they can wedge those into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the podcast service more easily than something that’s getting off the ground from scratch like Luminary. But Luminary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is so hard, like aiming at the podcast market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with such big content deals and trying to really redefine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcasts to be co-opting the free world of podcasts very heavily with what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re doing in their little private garden there. Much more heavily than Stitcher Premium did.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Audible also does something similar, but Audible is not really like a heavily podcast-oriented brand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or service, it’s mostly based on audiobooks, and so Audible has their own thing, but it’s, again, like, these services
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exist, they do fine for themselves, but they don’t attack podcasting. They kind of operate on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their own, they don’t really affect us. But Luminary really does seem like it’s attacking us, and this has been made worse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by, over the last month or so, in the lead-up to their launch, which was, I think, yesterday,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the lead-up to their launch, their founder, I think it was his founder,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made a bunch of really tone deaf comments and tweets and blog posts,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically attacking the world of ad funded podcasts and saying that it was unnecessary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and podcasts shouldn’t be paid via ads with the conclusion that instead,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcasts should be paid by Luminary and their private service and they should be locked into Luminary. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that rubbed everyone the wrong way because, well, of course. And so it’s all tied up in all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this. So the launch was a little bit colored by that, which really annoyed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of people online. And the service in general, the concept of it, I really find quite
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hostile. And then the news that came out this week is that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco literally the day before, a few days before they were gonna launch, Gimlet and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the New York Times asked them not to include
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Gimlet Media Shows And the New York Times is the Daily Podcast, which, in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco case you aren’t familiar with the Daily, it is one of the biggest podcasts in the world. It is like, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge. It’s like this American Life type show. Like it’s a massive show. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s either number one on Overcast, or it’s certainly within the top two or three. It is a huge,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge show. And Gimlet shows also are very, very big, especially the Reply All. That’s, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think, their biggest show. These are like, you know, top 10 shows. And so to have Luminary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco launch without those is, it certainly hurts. It’s not gonna like kill them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it certainly doesn’t look nice. There have been a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco written about this already. There’s a lot of questions about like, can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they even block them? Like does the New York Times and Gimlet, do they have the right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to tell a podcast app maker that’s just reading their feed and serving their content from their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feed, the ability to say, no, you can’t do that for just us, even though we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco publishing this feed. I don’t know, and I don’t wanna, I’m not at all qualified to answer that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco question. And this is probably all gonna get worked out within a week anyway. I’m sure they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna come to some deal, and that’ll be it. So I don’t think it’s worth focusing too heavily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on that part of the news, just because I don’t think it’s gonna be around for very long. But otherwise, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the idea of these companies asking Luminary not to include their feeds is
⏹️ ▶️ John actually interesting, regardless of how long it lasts or how it resolves for a couple of different reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ John The first is, it kind of reminds me of back in the early days of the web, and actually even
⏹️ ▶️ John in some of the not so early days of the web, where websites would
⏹️ ▶️ John send like angry webmasters, as we called them, would send angry emails to certain people and say,
⏹️ ▶️ John you are not allowed to link to our website. Do you remember, do you guys remember
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that? I have occasionally gotten an email like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’d have like a blog or a homepage or you’d write something and you would link to like the Warner
⏹️ ▶️ John Brothers website or something. And then some lawyer would send you a thing that says you don’t have permission to make a link to our website.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because they didn’t understand how the web worked. It just seemed like, I don’t know, they were being hacked, I have no idea. But like
⏹️ ▶️ John literally on your own webpage you can’t make a hyperlink that leads to our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco webpage. Right, or they would ask you not to deep link, which just means linking to anything that wasn’t the front
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John page basically. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, it’s a URL. I’m linking to it. What’s the problem?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, which is only slightly more stupid than the idea that you could ask somebody,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not allowed to crawl our RSS feed, right? Because it’s like, what now?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like saying you can’t make requests to public-facing URLs
⏹️ ▶️ John that we have. As a permission thing, as in you’re not allowed to link to us, and you’re not allowed
⏹️ ▶️ John to crawl our thing, it’s fairly ridiculous. But the other aspect of it
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s interesting is, okay, well, you can say whatever you want, but quote unquote physically speaking or
⏹️ ▶️ John technically speaking, these, you know, the New York Times and Gimlet
⏹️ ▶️ John can attempt to block Luminary. As in, you don’t have to send them an email that
⏹️ ▶️ John says, please don’t crawl our RSS feed. What if you look for Luminary’s user agent and block them? Well, then Luminary
⏹️ ▶️ John changes the user agent. What if you look for their IP? Well, they changed their IP. What if you use machine learning to try to
⏹️ ▶️ John detect their access pattern and block them? Like it’s a cat and mouse thing that will go on forever, but there’s nothing saying
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t do that. You can make the software that runs your website do any old
⏹️ ▶️ John thing you want. You can make it return a 500 error on every 15th request. You can do whatever you want. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John your website. Like there’s nothing legally speaking or technically speaking that’s stopping you from having
⏹️ ▶️ John a perpetual game of cat and mouse with the Luminary Podcast Crawler thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John If that’s what you want to do. It seems to me that by them asking, potentially
⏹️ ▶️ John also backed up by lawyers that they’re not pursuing what I hope they know would be the futile and resource
⏹️ ▶️ John draining technical approach, but just be saying, we’re not letting you. So don’t do it because
⏹️ ▶️ John the same lawyers that sent those emails saying, you know, to link to our website are going to come and get you and say, we said your knowledge to
⏹️ ▶️ John crawl our SS feed. And that would be a fun legal case because it makes no sense legally speaking. Like it really doesn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it would just be so much more straightforward for them to attempt to block them and just
⏹️ ▶️ John hire 25 people. All they do is figure out which new ways luminary is finding to sneak their
⏹️ ▶️ John their RSS feed and then try to block Them again, and then they’d block legitimate people and people would complain it would go on forever and it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John be hilarious So that’s that’s I feel like that aspect of it is fun
⏹️ ▶️ John because it harkens back to the old days and like tries to get it like the
⏹️ ▶️ John the not ethical but like The spirit of putting something on the web is one thing
⏹️ ▶️ John But the technical reality of it is that you can do whatever the heck you want and you can ask for whatever you want and Lawyers
⏹️ ▶️ John can ask for whatever they want, and it just goes off into a whole big thing. But the second part of it that I think is interesting is
⏹️ ▶️ John the idea that things like Luminary or Stitcher Premium or Spotify
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, like these services that say, we’re gonna get critical mass by getting a bunch of money,
⏹️ ▶️ John hiring a bunch of celebrities to make podcasts that we think people will want because they’re filled with celebrities. And then once we get enough people
⏹️ ▶️ John playing us X dollars a month, we’ll use that massive bankroll
⏹️ ▶️ John of money to give to other podcasts to make them more exclusive and just build on itself. And eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John we will own podcasting because everyone will go through us. We will be in the middle taking a cut of
⏹️ ▶️ John everything and the open podcasting world will be dead and we will be the Facebook of podcasting, right? That’s what everyone’s
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to do. And Luminary doing this, like it’s interesting to
⏹️ ▶️ John see current vendors of popular podcasts, even Gimlet, which is on
⏹️ ▶️ John that same train of trying to become the Facebook of podcasting in a different form, fighting
⏹️ ▶️ John back against someone else trying to do the same thing. You’re gonna be the Facebook of podcasting, I’m gonna be the Facebook of podcasting.
⏹️ ▶️ John And how do you fight back? Fight back not by like, you know, one way to fight back is we have better shows
⏹️ ▶️ John and people will wanna pay us and not pay you and yada yada. But if you already have popular shows,
⏹️ ▶️ John even popular shows with open RSS feeds, by trying to deny them to your competitors
⏹️ ▶️ John for the Facebook of podcasting, you can weaken them. And so, you know, we
⏹️ ▶️ John just sit here and complain about like, we like open podcasting, we don’t like the variety, something we can do about it other than just like,
⏹️ ▶️ John voting with our feet and continuing to listen to open podcasts with an open podcast player, but we don’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John have any power to affect luminaries fortunes, right as just one dinky open podcast,
⏹️ ▶️ John who cares? But these companies do it’s like we own reply all that we own
⏹️ ▶️ John the daily, and you can’t have them and that would make someone not want to download the luminary
⏹️ ▶️ John app like the luminary app is like a little Trojan horse like it’s a podcast app but apparently 40 people make presumably it’ll be a good
⏹️ ▶️ John podcast app right but imagine if you downloaded a podcast app and couldn’t get reply all like the show all your
⏹️ ▶️ John friends are talking about it’s like those podcast apps sucks why the hell can’t I get reply all and you chuck it out before you even know
⏹️ ▶️ John that luminaries actual plays they want you to pay eight bucks a month like maybe you probably know that on launch because they probably throw in your face but
⏹️ ▶️ John either way you can’t get people to use your app if it’s viewed basically as a broken podcast player
⏹️ ▶️ John so if this gets worked out in a week that doesn’t make a difference. But I think it’s an interesting salvo
⏹️ ▶️ John in the Facebook of podcasting war fighting against each other to say, we’re going to make
⏹️ ▶️ John it so your secret proprietary Trojan horse podcast app is less attractive to everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John because we want to stop you because we want to be the Facebook of podcasting. And so these two giants are going at
⏹️ ▶️ John it like those whatchamacallits from the Godzilla trailer. And we’re just sitting back here
⏹️ ▶️ John cowering in our little caves or buildings or whatever. Continuing to listen to the podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ John on podcast clients that can download all podcasts. And in theory, if, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the New York Times wanted to be mean, they could start blocking anybody they want from downloading the daily, but at a certain
⏹️ ▶️ John point you have to let somebody download it, otherwise it stops being the world’s most popular podcast. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I think this is an interesting new phase of this war. I don’t like the idea that there are
⏹️ ▶️ John big enough parties to affect each other like this, but I feel like we are no longer really
⏹️ ▶️ John participants and are just sort of bystanders.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And at some point, I feel like these shows like ascend into a level
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at which they’re no longer even really podcasts anymore. Like if something goes behind a paywall, it’s only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco available in one app, first of all, they’re gonna lose most of their audience. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know of any shows that have done that and succeeded
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at that. And maybe that will change over time, I don’t know. but so far, like, that seems like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a death sentence for your audience. Like, if shows like build up a big audience,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then they get some deal with some app, they go to that app, and their audience just vanishes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because almost no one goes over to it. And then they quickly realize like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this was a bad idea because not only, like, you know, you might get some money for the content deal, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s usually like, you know, upfront or one time or dependent on ongoing performance. And at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some point you realize like, oh crap, we would have made more money just continuing to run ads
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or run our Patreon or whatever outside of this one exclusive app. And furthermore,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s lots of value to having an audience, like for instance, selling merchandise,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going, like having live events, and just continued listenership. Where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re, you know, if someone gives you a bunch of money and you come to their app, and you go and you lose 90%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of your audience, like that better have been a lot of money to make that worth it and it usually isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quite worth that because then what ends up happening is this audience that you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco built up over years or whatever is gone and it’s nearly impossible to get them back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so you’ve lost a tremendous amount of value that way. That’s very, very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard to rebuild quickly.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I always wonder about these big shows. Like so there’s VC money and you can pay for celebrities to make
⏹️ ▶️ John podcasts, right? But we’re already seeing this play out. If
⏹️ ▶️ John you are a celebrity and you’re going to do a podcast, like the fact that there are people in the middle,
⏹️ ▶️ John I keep trying to avoid the gender term middleman, but that’s what they’re called. If there’s a middleman there
⏹️ ▶️ John like taking a cut and supposedly doing something for you, like they wanna become the Facebook of podcasting where
⏹️ ▶️ John they collect all the money and they give you some percentage of it, right? It’s like, what are you getting
⏹️ ▶️ John in exchange for that? Like in the end, if you are a celebrity and you are so popular
⏹️ ▶️ John that lots of people wanna listen to your podcast, you could certainly make more money if you didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John give a cut to Luminary or any of these other things. And you’ve seen some celebrities do this. Like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not that hard to make a podcast. We’d do it. Like, you know, even how hard could it be if we do it?
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, I’m listening to the Conan O’Brien podcast, right? And I think what they were, a lot of those people have their own sort of production companies, whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s like, if you’re a celebrity and you wanna make a podcast, make a podcast. You hire like
⏹️ ▶️ John three people to handle all the details for you, which is like a drop in the bucket for your
⏹️ ▶️ John celebrity money, because you’re already rich and you know you’re gonna get tons of listeners because you’re like Conan O’Brien
⏹️ ▶️ John or something and you’re really funny and you’re already famous, right? There’s practically no risk. Why
⏹️ ▶️ John would Conan O’Brien go to Luminary? Like Marco was saying, maybe they drop a bucket of money on his head, but that’s not a sustainable
⏹️ ▶️ John model for Luminary because they can’t keep doing that. And even if they did keep doing that, at a certain point, at least celebrities are going, wait a second, why
⏹️ ▶️ John are we giving some large percentage of our best podcast income to Luminary.
⏹️ ▶️ John they doing for us exactly? Right? And hopefully they would have that realization before all the listeners are locked in and they
⏹️ ▶️ John really have become the Facebook of podcasting and just all the users are there, right? But it’s just, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John already celebrities know, if you wanna do a podcast, just do a podcast. Like you don’t have to, you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John need, it’s like, well, we would do a podcast, but we need some, you know, company in the middle to take 30% of all
⏹️ ▶️ John our money. No, you don’t. You absolutely do not. You can do it on your own, especially if you already have a production
⏹️ ▶️ John company or something, it’s not that complicated. You need like, you know, a couple of people and you’d be
⏹️ ▶️ John fine. So these, these companies trying to do this with the proprietary podcasting, like they get all this money and
⏹️ ▶️ John they can get celebrities, but I think they can only do that because celebrities don’t really know what podcasting is or they’re just kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of on the edge of knowing what podcasting is. Eventually everyone will figure out, oh, we don’t need these people.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, and maybe that’s optimistic because you could say the same thing about recording or you don’t need record labels. You can just do it all yourself. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like recorded music and everything involved in the promotion of that is so much different than podcasting.
⏹️ ▶️ John It really is more like blogging. You can make your own blog, and
⏹️ ▶️ John you really don’t need a staff of hundreds of people. And I think we’ve proven that. That is a thing that you can do. If you can write well, and
⏹️ ▶️ John you can write, you can more or less do it on your own. And it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John easy, and you’re not going to be a famous celebrity for it, probably. But you can do it on
⏹️ ▶️ John your own. Same thing with podcasting. With recording, you need a studio, and you need instruments, and you do need
⏹️ ▶️ John some form of promotion. Anyway, I’m hoping that the world of
⏹️ ▶️ John people who are famous people who are guaranteed to have a huge podcast audience will very quickly
⏹️ ▶️ John realize there’s no reason to get into bed with Luminary
⏹️ ▶️ John or Stitcher or Spotify or any of these things. It’s not saving you,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not like, well, I just don’t wanna worry about it, I just wanna cash the big check. You can basically not worry about it and cash the
⏹️ ▶️ John big check already. just hire three people or take three people from your existing production company
⏹️ ▶️ John or staff and have them do it. The people who stand to gain here are the people who are trying to get the critical
⏹️ ▶️ John mass of users and get them all paying $8 a month and eventually become the only place where any podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ John are and podcasts stop being podcasts and start being luminary casts or whatever the hell they would be called. That’s the goal
⏹️ ▶️ John of all these companies, right? They wanna screw all of us, including the content creators, because if that’s the case,
⏹️ ▶️ John then you can’t go make your own podcast because who could listen to it because everybody uses the luminary app because that’s the only way to listen a quote unquote
⏹️ ▶️ John podcast. Uh, you know, so I’d, some days I feel optimistic that
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s never going to happen because all these companies, business plans are doomed. And sometimes I feel pessimistic because we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John seen the same thing happen in so many other industries, despite it being a terrible idea. So I don’t know. We’ll see
⏹️ ▶️ John how this, uh, this plays out. But I, I kind of enjoy the idea of, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John big Titans fighting against each other with their, with their big guns. Uh, hopefully they’ll all die.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and I think we did see a similar mechanic play out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somewhat with the rise of online video, in the sense that there were all these different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco video startups, even after it was pretty clear that YouTube was winning, but there were all these different video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco platforms that tried to make certain deals with certain providers or creators
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for exclusivity. I mean, heck, they still try today to try to break YouTube’s dominance.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they’ll throw a bunch of money at some celebrity or big YouTube creator to say,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make exclusive videos on our platform. Look, Instagram TV just launched not that long ago
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and tried to do the exact same thing. And there is some Yahoo thing a couple years ago. Everyone’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always trying to attack YouTube and take people away. And what the celebrities
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or creators who go there quickly realize is, again, the cost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of losing or abandoning their audience, their existing audience, is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so high that it’s not worth whatever they’re being paid as part of the content deal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Similarly, if you are starting from a small audience, or suppose you’re a celebrity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that doesn’t yet podcast at all, and you go try to create a podcast on Luminary as part of some content deal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they make with you. Suppose you build up an audience on Luminary. Then suppose in a year and a half,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Luminary shuts down. You are screwed. your audience can’t move anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else. You can’t redirect that podcast feed somewhere else. Like, you’re just screwed. Like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are so much better off owning that podcast right from the start and making it a general purpose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcast that can play in all podcast players instead of making some deal with like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one company somewhere that can only be heard in this one spot even though you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco creating a medium that should be able to be widely distributed everywhere. Like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just it makes no sense strategically for any creators to take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco deals like this if you think at all about your long-term strategy or your audience.
⏹️ ▶️ John The situation with people leaving YouTube because some new video startup gave them a sweet deal, we’ll pay
⏹️ ▶️ John you millions of dollars to be the flagship person on our new video service, that’s an even
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s even worse than the situation in podcasting because in podcasting you’d
⏹️ ▶️ John be you’d own your own podcast scene and then Lumineer would come along and is stop owning your own podcast feed. Come and
⏹️ ▶️ John do your stuff exclusively on us and here’s a bucket of money. You’re going from completely owned and open to this
⏹️ ▶️ John other place where they’re giving you lots of money. In YouTube, people are already stuck in basically the Facebook of video,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is YouTube. Where YouTube’s already taking a big cut and telling them exactly what they can and can’t do. They’re already under someone’s thumb.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re so desperate to get out that they’re gonna go for like a slightly smaller thumb. Like, you know, we’re under YouTube’s
⏹️ ▶️ John thumb. Your thumb looks like it might not be quite as heavy. Can we get under your thumb instead? like just anything
⏹️ ▶️ John to get out from the big YouTube thumb. And it doesn’t work because YouTube is the YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ John of video. YouTube is the Facebook of video, whatever. And they go someplace else and their audience
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t want to follow them and the thing fails and it all falls apart. But they’re not even, you know, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John being attracted away from already a bad situation. Whereas in the podcast world, Luminary is gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John attract people away from what I hope everyone realizes is a great situation where
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not under anyone’s thumb and you can do whatever the hell you want. and it’s not really that much of a lift for anybody. Certainly not
⏹️ ▶️ John for celebrities. A bunch of just random people off the street can make a podcast, anybody can. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John celebrities, if you wanna make a podcast, come to the ATP Podcast Production Studio.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey We will make your podcast for you. We will take a
⏹️ ▶️ John whole pile of money. No, we’ll just pay each of us a million dollars a year it’ll still be less than you’d
⏹️ ▶️ John end up paying luminary.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of the reasons that I don’t think the sky is falling here, not only has podcasting been around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a very long time, and we’ve seen efforts like this come and go,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or come and not go, but kind of just be off on the side, like Stitcher Premium or like Audible’s original, stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that. But also, you know, when YouTube took over video,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco video was a heck of a lot younger in its online progression than podcasting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is now. Like, video was in a way worse spot. Like, YouTube started becoming popular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around 2004, I think. Video was in a way worse spot back then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than where podcasting is now. And so there was much more opportunity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for something like YouTube to lock it up because it was so early in its maturity.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But podcasting is really mature. It’s been here for a very long time. It didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just start a few years ago when Serial came out. Like it’s been here a while. It’s very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco durable. It’s like a hardwood tree. Like it grew very slowly. It’s very old. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like the ecosystem is very durable in wanting to keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco its current structure. There’s a lot of forces that point that direction.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I think anybody who tries to break podcasting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has a really uphill battle ahead of them because there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much less of a problem that needs to be solved. As you said, John, not a lot of podcasters and podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco listeners are wanting to change the way things are. Not a lot of us are like, you know what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we want? We want less choice in apps, harder economics, and less ownership of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our audience. Like, nobody wants that. Like, I remember, like, I even, I was, I,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few years ago, I think I mentioned this on the show before, a few years ago, I had this idea of making this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overcast feature that would kind of like be like the old readability model of like, you pay overcast, say, 10, 20 bucks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a month, and I split up the payment between participating shows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you listen to. So if Relay participates and then you listen to three Relay shows,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then part of that $20 a month that you would pay would go to Relay. And so I had this idea, of course, because it’s an obvious
⏹️ ▶️ Marco idea. And I went around to every podcaster I know. I talked to the Relay people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I talked to some bigger podcasters. Like I talked to Roman Mars from 99% Invisible. Steven Kupryk I didn’t know that. Aron Rubin
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I talked to everyone who I ever had an email address for or anything. I went to all the podcasters big and small
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would you participate with your shows? Which would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just mean like accepting the money basically. And the universal reaction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got from everybody was not what I expected. Everybody basically said,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah I guess I’d accept the money, but I wouldn’t really want to promote it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the reason why is because all of these shows, big and small, they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their own game going. They have their own setups. They have their own monetization. You know, they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Patreons or memberships or their own thing. They don’t want middle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people getting in the way. And part of the reason I wanted to do a plan like that was I figured
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would give podcasters an incentive to promote Overcast, to say like in their shows, like, hey, go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco subscribe to us on Overcast, and you know, or whatever. But the incentive was not that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Their incentive instead was, no, we want to promote our own stuff. We want to promote our own Patreon,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our own membership, whatever. like we wouldn’t want to promote that. And it totally like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco killed my willingness to do this idea. Because like I quickly realized, oh, A,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re right. B, this would have been a lot of work I don’t wanna do and a lot of administration I don’t wanna do because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nobody wants other people handling their money if they can help it. And I don’t wanna be the person handling other people’s money if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can help it. And of course, what really killed it ultimately also was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could not figure out any way around Apple’s 30%. And so it would have to be like, Apple taking 30% of the money,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overcast taking at least 10% to make it worthwhile and cover admin costs. And so then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like, are you gonna pay 20 bucks a month and only know that 60% of it is going to the podcasters?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like that’s kind of terrible. And so like all these factors combined to make me not wanna do this idea
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after all. But the point is, podcasters already today, they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their own stuff going. If they’re big enough to move audiences,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or if they’re big enough for people like Luminary to notice them and want them to be on their platform,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re also big enough to make their own money whatever way they want, whether it’s ads, whether it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco memberships, Patreon, stuff like that. They don’t need people like Luminary getting in their way and becoming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco middlemen and taking a cut of their money and taking control of their audience and control of their revenue streams.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Podcasters don’t want that. The only podcasters that could benefit from that are very small podcasters.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this is part of the reason why I wanted to do this. I figured it’s a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easier for a podcaster to opt in to taking money from this kind of plan than to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco set up their own Patreon, or to set up their own membership thing, or to sell ads if they’re too small to sell ads.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I figured this could help small shows. But the problem is, and this is kind of the anchor model of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seeing if you can get a whole bunch of them to matter, but the problem is shows that are so small that they can’t sell their own ads,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or are too small to have their own Patreons or whatever, they’re also too small to move markets.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re too small to move people over to new platforms en masse. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can’t have that kind of effect only by appealing to those kind of small shows.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we don’t really have to worry about that either. So all this is to say, again, similar to when we were talking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the Gimlet thing, I don’t think this is going to work in the way they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think it will. I don’t think, I mean, first of all, there’s the question of whether people even want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to pay eight bucks a month for even more subscriptions. It’s like, it’s another
⏹️ ▶️ Marco content subscription really. And I don’t know anybody who listens to podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who says, I need more podcasts to listen to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Everyone who listens to podcasts seems to have no trouble finding podcasts on their own,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so many so that they don’t have enough time to listen to them all. Because there’s so much great podcasting out there. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcasting has such a massive surplus of amazing content available for free
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in every podcast app, that this is solving a problem that we don’t have. No one’s saying, hey, can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we get more podcasts behind a paywall, please? No one wants that. So I don’t think this is going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco succeed for lots of reasons, but if this actually does become a thing that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably still gonna be off to the side the way that Stitcher Premium and Audible are today,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think we’re gonna have anything to worry about because the way the open podcasting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco world works, and I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again, we can keep making this show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and publishing it on our own website, in our own RSS feed, and you can keep listening to it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in any app you want, whether it’s Overcast or some other app that reads public RSS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feeds, there’s lots of apps that do it. And if there isn’t one, you can make one. And no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one has any say over that. There is no one who can lock that out. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so as long as there are enough people who listen to podcasts in the open ecosystem,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which there sure are a lot, and as long as there are enough podcasters who still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make podcasts in the open ecosystem, and there sure are a lot, and there’s huge incentives
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and money keeping them there, then it’s fine, then they can’t attack us.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The only thing that can attack us and can cause the kind of damage that Facebook and YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to their respective mediums is if something massively changes about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the situation of the current open podcasting world. So either way fewer people listen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to podcasts for some reason, which I don’t see happening, or the ad market entirely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco collapses, which I also don’t see happening because it’s really strong for good reasons. There’s good bones under
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. There’s good response rates and everything. Podcast ads work really well. That’s why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people have been buying them repeatedly for so long. And so, unless some major
⏹️ ▶️ Marco factor collapses about the open world of podcasting, we’ll be fine. We are strong.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are made of slow growth hardwood. Like, we are really strong. The foundations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are all strong. None of the indicators in the market suggest that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trouble could even be brewing ahead. Like, we’re doing great the way we are. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if something like this can open up and go off to the side and do its own thing and throw a bunch of money at a bunch of celebrities for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a brief time, fine. That’s probably not going to affect us at all. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so as long as we keep making this show and shows like this, and as long as you all keep listening
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to shows like this, in apps like this, they don’t have any power over us.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No one can stop us from doing this. All that can stop us is you and us. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hopefully we won’t do that. And finally, before I finish this rant, I will just say, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco world of big, these huge podcasts, big podcasting,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t listen to any of them. And I bet I’m not the only one. Like, yeah, they have a lot of listeners,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the biggest podcasts in the world, like if you look at the amount of listeners the biggest podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the world have, and then you look at the numbers from all the various surveys of like how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many people in the world listen to podcasts, there is no podcast that has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like 40%, 50% of the market. None of them are that big. The reality is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people listen to all sorts of podcasts, big and small. And while I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably one of the few people that doesn’t listen to any massive shows, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I literally listen to no massive shows. Like I think the biggest show I listen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to is Hello Internet. And like, whenever people have issues about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dynamic ad insertion, that all the big publishers are doing, like I have to rely on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my users to tell me whenever there’s a problem with dynamic ad insertion. Because I listen to zero podcasts that use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dynamic ad insertion. Which means I listen to zero podcasts from any of the big publishers. NPR,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Slate, like all the, like zero. Because frankly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I find most big produced podcasts boring. To me, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like reading Reader’s Digest. It’s like I’m killing time here by listening to this, but I’m not,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I get to the end and I feel like I’ve had candy for dinner. It’s like I need intellectual nutrition
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I just didn’t get it. Like I get to the end of, or if I even can get to the end, and there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much fluff. There’s like, I listened, I don’t wanna point fingers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but there was an episode of a big podcast that everyone pointed me to last week and so I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco finally went and listened to it and I could barely get through it because there was so much overhead
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and fluff and wasted time and promos and ads And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the end, and they’re so like, fakely produced, like, they try to sound like they’re casual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talking to you, but you know it’s all written ahead of time, it’s all, you know, scripted, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can just feel the money being set on fire around you as you listen to this massive bloated show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then at the end, I’m just like, I got nothing out of that. That was valueless, why did I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco listen to that? Like, I don’t listen to any of the big shows. The great thing about podcasting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that you can listen to what you want. There is something out there about what you want.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you wanna hear an hour of weekly news about pens,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a great podcast about that called The Pen Act on Relay FM. There’s something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for everything. There’s something for every interest. I don’t have time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to listen to any of those big shows because I have so many shows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about things that interest me a lot more. that are made at smaller productions. I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so many shows that I love that I don’t have time for anything I merely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like. The reality of podcasting is it’s such a huge and diverse world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that if all the big shows, you know, if some big portion of them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got up and did their own crazy thing, I think we’d still have something over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here. I think we’d still be okay. And whether we would be or not,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d still be here. And if any of you want to still be here, you can still be here too and nobody can stop us.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want to burst your inspirational bubble, but
⏹️ ▶️ John the dawning of the industrialized timber industry, they clear cut all those old growth forests,
⏹️ ▶️ John which was stupid, but they did
⏹️ ▶️ John because they had the technology. And I think that’s actually like not far be it for me to give advice
⏹️ ▶️ John to these companies that are trying to become the Facebook of podcasting, but there is a strategy that will work if anyone
⏹️ ▶️ John is daring enough to do it. It’s the same way they did it in all the other industries. People were asking in the chat
⏹️ ▶️ John room before about, like the reason a celebrity would go to Luminary is because Luminary jumps a bucket of money on their
⏹️ ▶️ John head. And as Marco pointed out, like, yeah, they’ll give you more money than you could have made on your own for the first month
⏹️ ▶️ John or year, because Luminary is giving you basically VC money at that point. It’s not, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the math doesn’t work out. It’s not as if it is a sustainable relationship where Luminary gives you millions and millions of dollars
⏹️ ▶️ John more than you would normally get. And then Luminary is also profitable. No, they’re burning VC money to do
⏹️ ▶️ John that, right? The strategy that would work, and you know, Luminary, Marco mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ John how much money Luminary is spending on this. You have to be, like so many businesses, so many other
⏹️ ▶️ John businesses, you have to be willing to spend, or rather your investors have
⏹️ ▶️ John to be willing to spend lots and lots of money for a really long time.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because during that time, you’re going to be giving money to celebrities and other popular podcasters, way
⏹️ ▶️ John out of proportion to their value that they would get outside. Because that’s the only way you keep them. The only way you keep them is you
⏹️ ▶️ John say, work with us because we’ll give you more money than you can make on your own. Even after our
⏹️ ▶️ John cut, we’ll give you more money because we’re not giving you, it’s not a sustainable business, we’re giving you our investors money, right? We’re
⏹️ ▶️ John funneling that money into you. If you can keep doing that long enough, it’s in the interest of all the most
⏹️ ▶️ John popular shows to be on your network, because it’d be like, we could make seven times as much money. Yeah, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John taking a cut too, but we’re still making seven times as much money. I don’t know how they’re making it work, but let’s go for that ride. Eventually,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you get all the most popular podcasts in like that, and you could only get them on
⏹️ ▶️ John your platform, and you grow the user base of podcasting, which I think is the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that, another thing you’re missing, Marco, is the idea that the people listening to podcasts now is a tiny fraction of the potential audience for podcasts.
⏹️ ▶️ John So take the entire current podcast audience and let them never change, and just take the whole rest of the potential podcast
⏹️ ▶️ John audience and have them all go to MegaLuminary that has billions of dollars in VC money.
⏹️ ▶️ John The only reason anyone would ever invest billions of dollars of VC money into this crazy plan is they think,
⏹️ ▶️ John at the end of it, we will own podcasting and owning podcasting is a business as big as
⏹️ ▶️ John Facebook or Apple or Amazon, right? I don’t know if that’s actually true. It probably isn’t true,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is why this will probably never happen, but that is the winning strategy in most of these sort of winner take all, potential winner
⏹️ ▶️ John take all situations with network effects is put money in
⏹️ ▶️ John so much money that it the self interest of all of the most popular content producers
⏹️ ▶️ John pulls them all into your platform until there’s nobody outside your platform. Then you turn
⏹️ ▶️ John the screws YouTube kind of did that as well only did it more organically they didn’t pull in all the people they invented the people
⏹️ ▶️ John but once they invented them like they realized they’re all trapped. They’re all like, and we’re really popular and we We
⏹️ ▶️ John should, oh, it’s too late. You’re in YouTube. So that’s a slightly different
⏹️ ▶️ John strategy. But like for this thing, for like, you know, spoken word, audio, or whatever, you could put enough money
⏹️ ▶️ John in to get critical mass so that Luminary essentially becomes podcasting, right? And then it won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John matter what anyone else does because you will, and that’s, you know, it makes sense
⏹️ ▶️ John for everybody involved because the people who are just there for the ride would presumably cash out with their millions at the end of it and be
⏹️ ▶️ John like, well, we destroyed podcasting, but we made a lot of money along the way. and they would just go on their way, it would be fine. And then Luminary
⏹️ ▶️ John would own podcasting and you could try to claw it back or whatever. I don’t think Luminary has that
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of money. They have enough money to get a bunch of popular shows and then fizzle. Like that’s, you know, the hundreds
⏹️ ▶️ John of million dollars is not enough because as much as I said, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John in the podcasters would be like, well, we can make seven times as much money. They also kind of know, yeah, but when
⏹️ ▶️ John does that ride end? And is this sustainable? People can do the math. You really have to have so much money and you
⏹️ ▶️ John also have to kind of be ruthless and realize, I don’t care about the health of podcasting. All
⏹️ ▶️ John I care about is that I’m going to make a huge amount of money for a short period of time and then I’m going to
⏹️ ▶️ John disappear or whatever. And a lot of content creators are just not bound for that. But, but I think that’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s still things to fear because the potential audience for podcasting is huge, which means there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of other
⏹️ ▶️ John people out there that can be, could be pulled in, and you can get them by just dumping money on content creators.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, So far, by the way, no one has come and dumped a bucket of money on our head. But
⏹️ ▶️ John in our case, I think it would actually take a lot of money. But everyone has their
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco price. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John if anyone wants to fund a luminary-like business with literal hundreds of billions of dollars, you can own podcasting.
⏹️ ▶️ John And at the end of it, I hope it was worth it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, you said something earlier that I want to get back to. You mentioned that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco current market for podcasting is only a fraction of what it could be. I’m not sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how tiny that fraction is. I mean, I could be proven wrong in this, obviously.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m frequently proven wrong by underestimating how big something can get, but if you look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at things that are kind of nearby, like talk radio, talk radio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is huge, but it’s not as huge as TV. It got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big up to a point, and then it, I don’t think talk radio is massively
⏹️ ▶️ Marco growing. It’s not spreading hugely, doubling every year or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else, and I don’t think anybody’s assuming that at some point every person in the world will listen to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talk radio. It reached its natural point, its natural market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco share probably at least a decade ago, or probably many decades ago, and then it just kind of leveled off,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s fine. And it’s not tiny, it’s not dying, it’s just fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And podcasting, every medium has that point. Magazines never got bigger than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a certain size and now they’re probably declining pretty sharply now because of the internet but like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcasting like every medium has like a natural saturation point
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Podcasting Might not like it’s already bigger than most people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think and we might be near the saturation point already I don’t know. No one knows that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet. If you assume it’s gonna get as big as Facebook I think you’re gonna be disappointed. If you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco assume it’s gonna even get as big as video of any sort, YouTube or TV, I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s gonna get anywhere near it. I think video is always gonna be way bigger than podcasting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, you look at where podcasting is already and it’s already massive. It’s already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way bigger than most people think it is. We might be closer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to its saturation point than a lot of people might be thinking. And I don’t think it’s saturated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet, But I also don’t see it exploding the way something like YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, a lot of it is bound up in technology. And it’s difficult to find analogs, because
⏹️ ▶️ John radio had to compete with television and movies eventually. And obviously, radio used to be bigger. But if you
⏹️ ▶️ John were to do a survey and say, if you were to go back in time to a pre-podcast
⏹️ ▶️ John time, a post-television and movies but pre-podcast time, like the early 90s or something,
⏹️ ▶️ John and say, what percentage of the US population listens to the radio more than once,
⏹️ ▶️ John at least once a week. That percentage would be pretty high because all of our cars come with radios in them
⏹️ ▶️ John and there were tons of radio shows and it’s not saying which particular show, but it’s saying do you listen to the radio
⏹️ ▶️ John at least once a week? That would be a pretty high percentage. And even though we all have televisions,
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like that is a reasonable comparison because televisions and movies and all that stuff still exist, but there are many situations in which
⏹️ ▶️ John audio is the better or only option like when you’re driving or if you’re just hanging around
⏹️ ▶️ John in the house and doing chores or whatever, you might have the radio on, right? So I feel like that is a rough
⏹️ ▶️ John estimate of the total audience. And according to the thing I just Googled in two seconds, who knows how
⏹️ ▶️ John accurate this is, the percentage of the US population that has listened to a podcast,
⏹️ ▶️ John listened to a podcast weekly is 17%. And I feel like that is way below the percentages that listen to
⏹️ ▶️ John the radio at least once a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco week. I’ve heard significantly higher
⏹️ ▶️ John numbers than that. This is the 2018 podcast. Now it’s higher if you go, how
⏹️ ▶️ John much, what percentage of the population has ever listened to a podcast in their lives, that’s 44%. Oh, okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John How many listen to it once a month, it’s 26%, but how many listen weekly is 17, but I think if you listen, how many listen to the radio
⏹️ ▶️ John weekly, way more than 17. So yes, there is a saturation point and it’s not like Facebook, but it’s not 17%, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s the US, which is, you know, country with lots of radios, basically, and lots of people have the capacity
⏹️ ▶️ John to listen to podcasts, right? So it’s not, you’re right that it’s not, it’s a good point that it’s not like, it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John like cell phones or Facebook where your total addressable market is the entire
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think it’s 70%. So I think there’s definitely more audience to come.
⏹️ ▶️ John And honestly, like, we’ve mentioned this a few times, like, when this has come up,
⏹️ ▶️ John even though we all find it easy to listen to podcasts, it could be easier. Not that I’m saying
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s Overcast’s fault or something, but like, you do need to know they exist and understand that there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John an app for it and understand how to use the app and stuff like that. Apple installing a podcast app by default
⏹️ ▶️ John is good, but smartphones themselves are fidgety. And like, there are still more barriers than the radio,
⏹️ ▶️ John where again, if you bought a car, you got a radio with it at a certain point, whether you wanted it or not. And you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John people figured out how to turn them on and tune and that was basically it. Like, so there are other barriers that could keep the saturation
⏹️ ▶️ John point lower than radio. But you gotta think eventually all of that will be overcome. We should be
⏹️ ▶️ John able to at least get to radio levels of penetration. post-television and movies
⏹️ ▶️ John radio levels of penetration.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Didn’t you write a blog post, Marco, once in your past? Now, didn’t you write a blog post
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about podcast money is coming or something like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco that? I checked with you before, I couldn’t find
⏹️ ▶️ Casey money is coming. Right, that’s what I, I could swear that this was a post I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John read and I could not find it, which means
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not big enough apparently. Yeah, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wasn’t the title. They need more money. Yeah, yeah, it wasn’t the title. It was like an off-hand remark in some other post.
⏹️ ▶️ John Obviously, it should have been the title.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the line everyone remembers. I don’t know. It’s just I feel like that was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very much a solid prediction that I think the big money is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey absolutely coming. The question is just whether or not it will change the landscape. And obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s what we’ve been discussing for the last half hour or whatever it’s been. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m curious to see where this goes. Obviously I have a vested interest in it because this is my livelihood.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I don’t know. Every time I start to get optimistic about it, I think, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t underestimate what money can do and then I get sad about it. Then I think, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as you guys have said, this ship has kind of already sailed and it’s unlikely that any one group can really take
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over this entire industry. But I don’t know. I flip-flop so often back and forth about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. But I do know that I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey particularly care for this exclusivity that is becoming very trendy these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey days. And I hope that the three of us are never put in a position that we feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like we need to do some sort of exclusive thing in order to continue to be compensated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the work we do for this show. And certainly, sitting here now, knock on wood,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s nothing that indicates that we’re at that point, but you never know what the future will bring.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, if you want to be optimistic, after I got my whole investment thing, you can go go back to Marco’s point, whereas,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, well, combination. So if you put enough money in, you can
⏹️ ▶️ John take over podcasting, but the only way anyone will ever put in that amount of that amount of money
⏹️ ▶️ John is if owning podcasting is worth more than the amount of money they put in. So
⏹️ ▶️ John if if the total market total addressable market of podcasting, the total amount of, you know, what do
⏹️ ▶️ John you get if you own podcasting? If that amount of money is not enough for you
⏹️ ▶️ John to make up for how much money you’d have to put in to own it, then no one ever will own it. Because no one is ever going to
⏹️ ▶️ John just keep funneling in money unless they have some kind of math that says, and once you own podcasting, boy,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ll be Facebook. And you won’t, right? So you’ll be less than Facebook, but still,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’ll be worth those billions you put in. I don’t think anyone has done that math. And these companies that are putting in this money, they’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think their bet is maybe it doesn’t actually take that much money. Maybe we get one or two good shows, and
⏹️ ▶️ John a couple hundred million dollars and make a cool app and have lots of marketing, we could probably take over podcasting.
⏹️ ▶️ John And thus far we think, you’re probably not gonna take over podcasting. Maybe you’ll make some
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of sustainable business, maybe there’ll be consolidation, right? And it’ll all get, Spotify
⏹️ ▶️ John will buy these things up or Luminary will buy things up and maybe the consolidated one will be big enough. This is all
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of going on over there. But no one has come in with the billions and billions and billions.
⏹️ ▶️ John They just say, look, we’re coming in and we’re gonna own it. Even Amazon, probably the
⏹️ ▶️ John most textbook example of pouring tons and tons of money into a business. They’re like, oh, I know we’re not making much profit
⏹️ ▶️ John now, but boy, if we own this business, you know, 10 or 20 years from now, we’ll start turning that dial and all of a sudden the profit
⏹️ ▶️ John comes in. It took them a long time to get to the, a long time and a lot of, you know, a
⏹️ ▶️ John lot of years and quarters of not particularly good profits or no profits at all to get to the
⏹️ ▶️ John point where they could start to turn the dial and say, now we can start turning a profit. But, you know, they did that with slow organic
⏹️ ▶️ John growth. Someone known came out of the, you know, came out of nowhere and said, I’ve got $300
⏹️ ▶️ John billion so you can own online retail. They started small and built up and built up and built up and
⏹️ ▶️ John built up and didn’t make big profits and built up and didn’t make big profits and built up and built up and kept reinvesting and
⏹️ ▶️ John then they became Amazon. These companies are coming in with a bigger bang than Amazon and Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ John started small and just, you know, selling books or whatever. But I don’t think their bang is big enough to own
⏹️ ▶️ John podcasting, like to Marco’s point that they’re late and maybe owning
⏹️ ▶️ John podcasting is just not worth what it would take to pay everybody to get in on this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Although if someone wants to try to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars, we’ll help you try. Absolutely.
⏹️ ▶️ John The name of our exclusive podcast will be Why Your Podcast Network Is Going to Fail While We Take Millions of Your Dollars.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a very contrarian angle. They would love it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m sure they’ll just line up for us. Mm-hmm.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, we should probably do something that’s a little less navel-gaze-y. So our friend, Gary
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Rambo, has posted some more stuff over the last few days. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know that we need to go on and on about this for too long, but let’s just kind of at least talk about it for a minute.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey watch authentication beyond just computer unlocks. So for those of you who maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t have an Apple watch or think they’re too cool for Apple watches, my co host,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the idea here is that if you have a reasonably modern Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but nevertheless, it can be older than the Macs that have like touch bars and things. You can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use your Apple watch to optionally unlock your Mac. So you sit down at your Mac and you like hit the keyboard or you know, open up the lid,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it’ll pause for a couple seconds and see if your watch is physically near it. And if so, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if the watch is unlocked, it will go ahead and unlock your Mac, which is super convenient and is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t even really think about this until recently when I was hearing somebody talk about it, maybe it was Jason and Mike, but, um,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or I guess Jason Snell on upgrade, but one way or another, it is something that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey works almost every single time of all the magic that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has promised us over the years. This might be this an iMessage, which I know some people have not had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good luck with iMessage, but I always have. This and iMessage are probably the two most reliable Apple things that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I use on a regular basis. And so the idea here that Guy has come up with,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or that he has discovered, is that you can potentially use the same mechanism for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other things where a Touch ID equipped Mac would allow Touch ID to work. So an example of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is maybe authenticating with sudo in the terminal. Maybe this would be something like a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one password or something like that. And I would love to be able to authenticate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with one password via my watch. That would be extremely cool. So this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of those classic Apple things that as soon as you hear about it, I feel like it’s a smack of the forehead. Oh, of course they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would do this. Why wouldn’t they? But I didn’t think about it until Guy Rambaud had posted this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing on 9to5Mac. So I am really into this. This is the first of a few that we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talk about, but any thoughts from either of you guys, even though you don’t believe in the Apple Watch?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think there’s strong competition for this from Face ID. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John Face ID is so fast. Like I’ve done the Apple Watch unlock and reliability
⏹️ ▶️ John been great for me, but more importantly, it’s not as fast as Face ID. It’s just not. Even
⏹️ ▶️ John when it works, I feel like there’s a little bit more lag than that. So it’s a good
⏹️ ▶️ John idea and they should make it better and this is definitely a great way for authentication to work. But Face ID is also
⏹️ ▶️ John a great way for authentication to work. So they should do all these things. And when you were describing this, I was
⏹️ ▶️ John picturing in my mind Marco with an Apple Watch strapped to his bare ankle.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco So he can do the convenient
⏹️ ▶️ John unlock stuff. But it’s got to be touching your skin, right, to stay
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco unlocked. So it would
⏹️ ▶️ John just be like under his sock, but he’d be wearing his fancy watch. But still, because he would be in proximity, he could
⏹️ ▶️ John use it to unlock all his stuff. That’s amazing. It would be like you’re under house arrest by Apple all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, I’m assuming this would be obviously more than enough encouragement for you to shoe your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fancy man watches and use an Apple Watch instead?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I don’t think so. He’s wearing it on his ankle. We already covered that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s what it’ll be. All right, moving on. Siri shortcuts, screen time, and other iOS features coming
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the Mac with 10.15, which is the next version of Mac OS, we assume. There’s been a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of discussion and actually upgraded was a really good example of this, is what does that really mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Siri shortcuts? Because Siri means everything to everyone these days as to shortcuts. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it sounds like Siri shortcuts is the only thing that Guy had spoken about directly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but then he pontificated that, oh, well, if you’ve already got Siri shortcuts where you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say, where you can set up like a, Hey, dingus resume overcast, and it will do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, why wouldn’t you allow all of shortcuts? You know, the thing that was once known as workflow, why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wouldn’t that come to the Mac? And this scares a lot of the old timey Mac users
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because that makes all of us, Well, that not me, but it makes John wonder perhaps if, if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something like Automator or AppleScript will go away, then again, it appeals to the new Mac users, like the Mike
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hurleys of the world who don’t really want to worry about Automator or AppleScript or stuff like that, and maybe you could, you know, use,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use shortcuts in the Mac, which would be really exciting. I, I think I’m enthusiastic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the idea of shortcuts coming to the Mac. I don’t really use AppleScript personally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I have a few times in the past, but It’s not something I use often. And I do use shortcuts sort of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot. Now, naturally I’m perfectly happy doing other sorts of scripting and coding on my Mac, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it’s a good thing to give, to make a more approachable. Uh, way for automating
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your Mac. Now, again, we’re, we’re extrapolating quite a bit from the thing that, that he had said, which was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just Siri shortcuts, but I know Siri shortcuts doesn’t really do much for me. I almost never use them even on my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phone shortcut shortcuts. So that I’m interested in. So John, how do you feel about this?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, shortcuts seems like a cleaner, more modern version of automator. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John and in general, like screen time and other features that are on iOS, like it always seemed weird to me. Not weird because
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re used to it by now, but like features coming out on iOS and the Mac doesn’t get it for no good reason. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John screen time is perfectly appropriate for the Mac. You’re in front of a screen and it would be great for the OS
⏹️ ▶️ John to keep track of what apps you’re using. There have been third party apps that do that for a long time. Marco makes It’s one that will quit
⏹️ ▶️ John an application if you haven’t used it in a while or if you’re using it too much, I forget. If you haven’t used it for a certain
⏹️ ▶️ John amount of time. Yeah, anyway, and so great, Apple makes an OS level feature that tracks
⏹️ ▶️ John all that for you, not on the Mac for no reason. So it’s great that that’s coming. Series shortcuts is, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John shortcuts in general is similar in that you see it on a phone or an iPad and you’re like, oh, I see, you get a series
⏹️ ▶️ John of steps and you can connect them together and it almost looks like Automator, right? Like I’m sure the
⏹️ ▶️ John workflow people are probably inspired by things like Automator because there’s been prior art in this area.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why is it not on the Mac? Well, on the Mac, you’ve already got Automator, so why do you need this? Well, because Shortcuts is newer and it does newer
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. And granted, it mostly communicates with iOS apps, but soon those are coming to the Mac too, so it makes perfect
⏹️ ▶️ John sense that eventually all those things that are on iOS will come to the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John As for whether it’s actually a replacement for Automator or a replacement for AppleScript, I think I talked about this when I was on Automators,
⏹️ ▶️ John there is still a place, especially on the Mac, for
⏹️ ▶️ John a true successor to AppleScript. Like, AppleScript is probably not long for this world for a variety of reasons,
⏹️ ▶️ John and honestly speaking, I’ve never been a big AppleScript fan, but I’ve always been a fan of what it can do.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so having a cool GUI tool like Shortcuts, where you connect together blocks and do conditionals and do sort of like
⏹️ ▶️ John toy programming and like, you know, make an easy way to make auditation,
⏹️ ▶️ John definitely should exist. In fact, I think there should be an even easier way. Like I feel like shortcuts is kind of in the middle, but there
⏹️ ▶️ John also should be a harder way and should be officially supported in a good well-behaved Mac app should
⏹️ ▶️ John support all of those things. Not just you can only use shortcuts to automate this app. Like shortcuts
⏹️ ▶️ John should be a friendly shell around, like you should be able to essentially write programs with real code
⏹️ ▶️ John that hook into the same things that shortcuts hook into, right? Like with like an API, like what I’m basically describing as a
⏹️ ▶️ John modern successor to AppleScript. So I hope that eventually exists. Shortcuts is not it, but
⏹️ ▶️ John Shortcuts definitely has a role to fill, so it should be there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Next and finally, we have WWDC 2019
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for developers, and that includes new Siri intents for media playback, search, voice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey calling, event ticketing, message attachments, train trips, flights, airport gates, and seat information. Tell me more,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ladies and gentlemen, about media playback. Obviously, we don’t know anything, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would love to be able to say, hey, Dingus, play you know, such and such
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by so and so on Spotify. And I know that there are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey competitive reasons why Apple would never want to allow that. But my second most requested
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Siri intent would be, hey, dingus play the latest episode of accidental tech podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on overcast, which I would also love. So, Marco, I know you don’t really know anything, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how do you read into this? What was what was your take on this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean I have my optimistic take which is like you know if they’re if they’re gonna say like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco media playback intense that to me sounds like it’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna be really good for me because you know like if right now like I mean I guess it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco depends a lot on implementation details like sure current series shortcuts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are so extremely limited you can’t even have like a parameter in them that changes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So for instance, Overcast has a shortcut that you can set for setting the sleep timer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When you create the shortcut, I have to specify how long you’re setting it for.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So when you say, you know, if you create a shortcut to, you know, set the sleep timer for 10 minutes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can’t then use the same phrasing to say, set the shortcut for 30 minutes, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco set the time for 30 minutes. Like, any shortcut you create cannot have parameters that change.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is fixed in whatever parameter set it was created with. So even in places where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there are obvious like slots for a variable to go where like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want to do the same thing that I already have a shortcut for but with a different value in place of the value that’s there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can’t do that in today’s system. And so the idea of like a general-purpose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overcast shortcut, you can’t have a shortcut that says play a playlist in overcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then each time you invoke it specify a a different playlist. You can’t do that. You can’t specify different podcasts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like everything has to be separate. If you want a shortcut, one to open up the latest episode of ATP
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and one to open up the latest episode of upgrade, you have to make two different shortcuts for that, but two specifically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different phrases that, you know, you have to use those exact phrases to get that exact variable and that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So anything that goes beyond what we have today has to address
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. Be like number one, like that to me, like if you want to make media playback
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better, you have to first address that. And then once you have like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the variables, which by the way, like the structure with which you create
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the shortcuts in the code does have that, like you do specify
⏹️ ▶️ Marco places where you’re having variables. There’s just no interface for people to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco create them where those variables are flexible. And there’s no ability seemingly for you to call
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them or to summon them with your shortcut phrases with different variables in them. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the structure in the code does seem to be there to support that, so hopefully we’re getting that. But anyway, so for media
⏹️ ▶️ Marco support to be useful, you need that first. But then beyond that, there has to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some way for Overcast to provide to Siri a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco list of what you can be talking about. So if there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a parameterized shortcut with a variable that’s like a name of a podcast, so that you can just say,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hey, hey, dingus, play podcast X in overcast, where you didn’t previously create
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shortcut for that. There needs to be a way for overcast to tell Siri either in advance,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or maybe very quickly in response to that. Here’s a list of things they could be asking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about. And here’s all the you know, all these phrases of like, basically every podcast you subscribe to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, here’s the things that the user might ask about. And so that way it can support
⏹️ ▶️ Marco parameterized queries properly and quickly and responsively. None of that infrastructure exists
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet. And so I hope that what they’re actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talking about here is that kind of thing that then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could be used for all sorts of things. Like once you have that, you can do a lot of different intent styles.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Number one being media playback, really like that’s the I think the most commonly used one in practice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I hope that’s really what this is about. And if media playback happens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be a result of that, great, I’ll take it. But what we really need first is for Intents
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to basically have like variables and things that can change, like parameters that can change
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in them every time they’re invoked. Once we have that, it blows the doors open.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, we also hear some news about Marzipan from Guy. Integration with the touch bar menu bar, including
⏹️ ▶️ Casey keyboard shortcuts should be possible. Multiple windows should be possible. view apps ported from iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will have the ability to be resized by dragging the divider and its position reset
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by double-clicking the divider, just like native Mac apps. That’s exciting and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slightly surprising. I mean, I guess it makes sense if you really embrace auto layout. Enabling Mac support for an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey existing iOS app is as easy as checking a checkbox in the target settings next code, much as you would to add
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad support to an iPhone-only app, in theory. Am
⏹️ ▶️ John Just like when you recompile for x86, that was a checkbox too, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mm-hmm. And then C. John Smith added, so the Marzipan SDK
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is just the iOS 13 SDK all along, a checkbox in your iOS project settings.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What will that mean for the separation between UI kit and app kit? The iOS SDK
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t include Mac frameworks like App Kit, AppleScript, et cetera. So how do you get those sorts of things into a Marzipan app?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t think any of us really know, but it’s an interesting point.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the one checkbox thing, you can say the exact same thing about iPad apps. like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you have an iPhone app and you want to make an iPad app, you can go into the target
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing and you can check works on iPad too. And you can hit build and run and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it will build and it will run and you will get a blown up iPhone iPhone app on your iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you don’t have to make any other changes and you can have an iPad app technically.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, if it’s like a feature checklist, you can say check. I have an iPad app and it is really that simple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so if if the marzipan target works the same way where you can just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco check another box in that list and say works with iPhone, iPad, and marzipan, great! You can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco build and run, hit that checkbox, build and run, and probably with no other work have a Mac app.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now the iPad app that you get out of doing it that way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looks ridiculous and isn’t very good. Like you’ll have like everything is full screen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like all your iPhone controllers will be blown up to full screen. Everything will be like full screen transitions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back and forth with navigation and everything. Everything’s sliding up, taking over the whole screen, sliding down, taking over the whole screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you know, nothing is taking advantage of the screen size. There’s a lot of built-in iPad functionality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you weren’t taking advantage of. So to make a good iPad app, you have to do a bit more work
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Could you even get that checkbox thing through the store though? Because as soon as you said you can check
⏹️ ▶️ John a checkbox and get a Mac build of it. The icon assets alone that
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re missing would probably mean you couldn’t pass app review with your checkbox-enabled iPad app,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Like, don’t you need different icons?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It will show a bunch of warnings when it builds, saying you don’t have the right icons in your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John will it just scale the other ones for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you? Yeah, I think it will actually just scale them. So I don’t think, and I don’t think they actually would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John reject you for that. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John rejected by Apple for blurry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I don’t think they do that. Anyway, so like, you can make an iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app with one checkbox, but to make it a good iPad app, you have to do a bit more work. You have to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they provide APIs for you to do that. They provide things like the split view controller,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which you mentioned a minute ago, which is like the thing that allows you kind of like mail to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a left pane and a right pane. And the left pane is like a list, and you can click a thing on the list
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the right pane changes. It’s the detail view. So there are like extra things. There’s popovers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s the different ways you can present a pop-up view controller that doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco take over the whole screen. So you can have the little sheet in the middle of the screen. So the iPad API basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco allows you to take an iPhone app and do a few changes to make it a much better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad app than the initial version that you just click the checkbox and ran. What I think all of this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sounds like is a very similar thing for making an iPad app into a Mac app,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where you hit that checkbox for the marzipan target, and you can hit build and run and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will probably just run and you will probably have what basically feels like the crappy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco home app that we have today on Mac, which is this awful like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad app in a window and which is an even more egregious example because even the regular home
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app in its native home on the iPhone is still terrible and confusing. But regardless,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, you’re going to be able to hit that one checkbox and have an app with no other their effort probably. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re going to need to put in some effort to make it a halfway decent, visually passable,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco functionally passable Mac app. But it does seem like, a combination of this reporting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and as well as Steve Trout and Smith’s various blog posts about how he’s been playing with the existing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marzipan stuff in Mojave and all the different APIs that are there to do things like make Mac toolbars
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s all there now. He’s been playing with it over the last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco couple of months, in these various blog posts. So it’s going to be the same thing as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making the iPad app decent, which is you will have to take advantage of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few new Mac APIs that will take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your iPad app and make it a little more Mac-like. And if you do a really good job, you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make a really good app that way. a lot of that support’s already there, like from what shipped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a year ago. So, they’ve had another year to work on it, and presumably they’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make a much bigger push this summer, and maybe they’ve brought more of their own apps over with Marzipan.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, I’m actually really excited about this reporting, because it sounds like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever version of Marzipan we get this summer is not half-baked. It sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it is, you know, at least three quarters baked. It sounds like it’s like, it’s providing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of possible functionality with probably minor changes. Like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, like Steve TS was able to get things like native toolbars and everything with no tool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco support, because he’s hacking it all, and with seemingly very little code change.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, when we actually have the real tools that allow us to do this much more easily,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s gonna take no time at all. So again, it’s gonna be just like making iPad apps, where like, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you just put 5% more effort in to your iPad app, you can have a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty nice Mac app. And that’s, I’m just, I’m very much looking forward to that because it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did basically work that way on the iPad. And now we’re gonna have that same thing happen to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac where not every Marzipan app is gonna be good, just as not every iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version of a previously iPhone app is good. But I think Apple, it sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sounds like Apple is going to be giving us the tools such that those of us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who care to make good Mac apps out of our iPad apps, we’ll be able to do it pretty easily.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s really cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John I like to see this integration of the touch bar and stuff like that. The question about AppKit
⏹️ ▶️ John and how you might access actual Mac frameworks from a Marzipan app is interesting because the easiest
⏹️ ▶️ John way to add integration to lots of Mac features quickly is to provide shims to get
⏹️ ▶️ John to the existing AppKit functionality. But
⏹️ ▶️ John the toolbar stuff, I think, and stuff that he’s been demoing his blog post isn’t doing that. I just feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John the way forward is not to provide shims to carbon, cocoa, whatever random stuff that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Mac now, but just to make all this stuff in UIKit. That’s what I assume they’re doing, which
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll see when this stuff gets disassembled. They’re not going to reimplement the menu bar, I assume.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s going to be the same old menu bar. It’s just you’re going to be able to populate menus from marzipan, but you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not populating memory menus using an entirely new code base to control the menu bar, I have to assume.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this is going to be a little bit of a stew. But the real question is, from your own
⏹️ ▶️ John code inside your own app, can you just start using AppKit at that point? If you just write that code and
⏹️ ▶️ John include AppKit and start going off, will it compile and run? And
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know the answer to that. Maybe Steve Trout and Smith already knows, but I don’t know yet. I’m sure that will
⏹️ ▶️ John feature prominently in the Marzipan sessions. By the way, we need to have at least three or four shows where we
⏹️ ▶️ John try to figure out what the hell they’re going to call Marzipan.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What if they just call it Marzipan?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because we’ve been calling it this for a year, and I just feel like that one’s not gonna, I mean, they call it Jaguar
⏹️ ▶️ John Jaguar, no, sorry, they call it Jaguar Jagwire, that’s what they call
⏹️ ▶️ John God. But that was the last time I can recall a fanciful code name
⏹️ ▶️ John making it all the way through, and it led to a series of cats over the last several years. And Android’s already got
⏹️ ▶️ John the food, the sweet food thing going on with its alphabetical
⏹️ ▶️ John candy OSes, so I really hope they don’t call it Marzipan.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I honestly like I can’t think of the kind of name they could give it because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John like. I’m sure they come with all sorts of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible names. I know, but like you can’t call them, you can’t just call it a Mac app because it’s, I mean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe they could, but like. You just call it UIKit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John That’s what I was gonna say.
⏹️ ▶️ John UIKit is UIKit is UIKit. It’s the new UIKit. I mean they could add another letter. UIKit
⏹️ ▶️ John for everyone. So you say okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh wait. App works with you know iPhone, iPad, and UIKit?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I’ve got it. We already know the answer to this, right? It’s UIKit Plus. Plus is an awesome word. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it would just be App Works with iPad. No, we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey talking about the name of the framework. At
⏹️ ▶️ John WNBC, there’s going to be sessions to say, learn about, essentially, the Mars Bandits game, how you can
⏹️ ▶️ John port your iOS apps to that. But what is the name of the framework? It’s not a name that consumers would be faced with. It’s a name that developers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would be faced with. Absolutely, UIKit for the Mac. Or UIKit for Mac OS, really.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you were so adamant on Apple Video, too. Yeah, well, that’s true. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John it is UIKit for the Mac, but I think it would just be called UIKit. The sessions may be called
⏹️ ▶️ John using UIKit on the Mac or whatever, but obviously the actual framework, I’m assuming, will still just
⏹️ ▶️ John be the headers or whatever. The import statements will just be UIKit
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever, like it is today, I assume. But the name for the,
⏹️ ▶️ John like what’s on the slide, the name for the effort? I guess they could say UIKit for the Mac. I keep thinking they’re going to try
⏹️ ▶️ John to go for some kind of universal thing because it’s not just for the Mac. It’s also for TVOS, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John In theory, is it? Yeah. Well, it’s the Apple Arcade thing was like the
⏹️ ▶️ John games will be available on on iOS, iPad, on the iPad, iPhone, Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple TV. And I know like games don’t use much of you, Ike, but but the bottom line is to launch
⏹️ ▶️ John anything on any one of these platforms. You have to essentially have an application that can run on these platforms that are subtly different
⏹️ ▶️ John in interesting ways, even if it’s just a very, very thin wrapper on unity or whatever. So I assume
⏹️ ▶️ John there is actually a way to make to easily build from a single code base,
⏹️ ▶️ John something that runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and tvOS.
⏹️ ▶️ John But we’ll see. That’s what WC is all about. I’m speaking of leaks like this was just more days of leaks about you know, more features
⏹️ ▶️ John and the WC leak is like, here’s what they’re gonna announce at WC. I noticed no mention of the Mac Pro, but it’s fine. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t have that info. John is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so worried you guys. I’ve never seen. I’m very worried. The only thing I’ve seen in you get more stressed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about than the Mac Pro is any sort of plane travel. That
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey thing I can think
⏹️ ▶️ John of. This is a combination of
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey both. Yeah, exactly. We should
⏹️ ▶️ John do this last item before we wrap up the AR thing. New Swift only
⏹️ ▶️ John framework for AR. Swift only framework. It’s time for that because we’ve got ABI stability finally. So we can start
⏹️ ▶️ John introducing Swift only frameworks. This will be for augmented reality and a companion
⏹️ ▶️ John app that lets you make AR stuff visually, human pose detection, so that’d be neat. You know, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John sure they’ll have some fun demos with that where people do weird poses on stage. And
⏹️ ▶️ John for game developers, the OS support for controllers with touchpads and stereo AR headsets.
⏹️ ▶️ John Who makes a stereo AR headset that works with iOS devices? Maybe somebody already does, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or maybe it’s like just a way to strap your phone to your face, like those various efforts. but I don’t think we’re gonna see Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John glasses this year, but Apple continues to lay the groundwork for Apple’s glasses.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, thanks to our sponsors this week, ExpressVPN, Linode, and RightPoint.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we will see you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. And you can find
⏹️ ▶️ John the show notes at ATP.FM And if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John into Twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse It’s accidental, they
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to Accidental, check
Post-show: Big WWDC?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Man, this is going to be a big WBDC. I really,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is going to be huge. I mean, we haven’t even talked about like, you know, possible laptop things. Like, geez,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is going to be big.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I was talking to a friend of mine that works at Apple and actually I was talking to two different people that work at Apple and I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey saying to both of them separately, you guys are kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey screwed. Everyone, everyone thinks that their favorite thing is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey coming this year. I’m talking to myself as much as I’m talking to anyone else. You know, John thinks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he’s getting his Mac pro. I think I’m getting improvements to files on the iPad and, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, there’s probably a million other things that I’m not even thinking about that I want. Marco is getting his Siri intent.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like everyone wants stuff this year and I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how Apple can’t, I don’t know. I don’t see a future where Apple doesn’t disappoint us
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because everyone wants everything and they will not give us everything. They can’t so then what
⏹️ ▶️ John I can easily trim here’s what we can trim all right, so the Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John Mars a fan of the Mac Pro. I have to be there I think you can get away with the media intent, but forget
⏹️ ▶️ John about the laptops I don’t know. I I just did your WWDC
⏹️ ▶️ John in a keynote I mean you could fit the laptops in there if you really cram them But I feel like there’s just no room with my
⏹️ ▶️ John giant Mac Pro reveal with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it matters a lot like how much they try to make the WBDC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keynote also like patch things up with pro users. Because they might not, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it might just be focused on developers even though developers are a huge segment of their pro users, but like they might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just, you know, they might have so much on the software front that they don’t want to, you know, mix the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco messages, they don’t have time. You know, like last summer, they released laptops last summer, but they didn’t announce
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them at WBDC and they released them like in July. So they could, I do expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new laptops are coming pretty soon.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hearing enough rumblings on that front. I do think they’re coming pretty soon, probably this summer, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it could be another one of those July
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John releases instead of
⏹️ ▶️ John June. They don’t necessarily need to be on stage. I mean, because I feel like you could do this, if
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mars Advanced Office is as big as it’s going to be, that could be practically your whole keynote.
⏹️ ▶️ John well, it’s hard to… Plus the macOS, you know what I mean? They’ll do the
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac thing and they’ll do the iOS. We’ve had keynotes like that where there’s no hardware and it’s just basically like, here’s the new versions of
⏹️ ▶️ John the OS’s and there are headlining features for the new versions of the OS’s and that’s it. And it’s plenty with Marzipan.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but I feel like with Marzipan, like it’s a whole ton of work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s mostly like under the hood. And there actually isn’t gonna be that much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to show off in a keynote.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you’re gonna wanna see how you can take your app from iOS and make it a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John app. How do you deal with menu bars and menu commands and insertion points and cursors and toolbars
⏹️ ▶️ John and all these Mac-isms. Like how do you get
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco them into your UI kit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco application? That’s State of the Union and session type stuff. That’s not keynote
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. But in the keynote, you show off apps that use those features. Look at this app. Doesn’t it look like an app app?
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac app? Ha ha, it’s actually a Marzipan app. And here’s the new Marzipan version of Messages. And you can actually send with lasers. Speaking
⏹️ ▶️ John of lasers, plenty of things to show of all their Marzipan apps and how they no longer look like garbage.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the keynote for. And then State of the Union is how did we do this and how can you do it to your app?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I guess that’s fair. But yeah, ultimately I think like, if new laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are coming this summer, like they were able to do a July release last summer because they were just speed bumps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There was almost no change. But the ones that sound like are coming this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco summer might be the changed ones with like the whole new keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John type. Six inch new keyboard, the whole nine yards. They would definitely want to have an event for that because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty big. That would be announced at an event.
⏹️ ▶️ John They could do like they did with the new iMacs. It’s bigger than the new iMacs, and they had separate press events on
⏹️ ▶️ John various coasts for that, they definitely do that for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop. I think it’s way bigger, it’s way more important than the iMac, because the iMacs, again, speed bump. This is going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to, these are gonna look visually different. It’s gonna be a different model, so I think they’re gonna wanna announce
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it at an event, but they don’t have any events in the summertime. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no event between WBDC and September, usually. So if they’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco release these in the summertime, we’re probably gonna hear about it then.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, you could fit it, I said you could fit it in the keynote, especially if it’s just the 16 inch. You do all the
⏹️ ▶️ John OS stuff. Here’s the new OS, here’s Mars Band, maybe here’s a couple of Swift features, maybe, you know, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Then you do the one and only new laptop, which is a 16 inch with the new keyboard and everyone’s excited
⏹️ ▶️ John by it, and then you end with your Mac Pro teaser.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know what to bring to the keynote, because John and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are gonna be there, and presumably we’ll be seated either next to each other or near each other.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t know what I’m going to do if you do not get your Mac Pro teaser. Like, do I give you tissues?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do I give you a Sprite? Do I give you actual
⏹️ ▶️ John alcohol? Listen, if there’s no Mac Pro news at WWDC, my consolation
⏹️ ▶️ John prize will be seeing tons and tons of people wearing my vengeful Mac Pro, trash can
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro angel T-shirt. As I walk down the hallways, I just wanna see everybody’s backs, just these huge
⏹️ ▶️ John wings just spreading out and this huge thing just looming over all of us a demon from hell. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco what it will be.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’ll be this goddamn trash can. It’s been with us for, then it’ll be like seven years.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if they have a teaser, then I will look at those same wings and say, goodbye trash
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can. JS Fly off into the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my god. I say this, you know, snarky and in a jokey way, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I actually am genuinely somewhat worried for your well-being if you don’t get a teaser during this
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, 2019 is long. Any day can be a Mac Pro day in 2019. Summer is not the end of 2019.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like there’s still time. I just, last year I was kind of, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John not heartbroken, but I was disappointed when I learned before WWDC that basically
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t expect any Mac Pro stuff at WWDC. And then I was like, okay, fine. I can,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s disappointing, but next year it’ll happen. And now it’s time for it to happen
⏹️ ▶️ John in 2019. If it doesn’t happen to WWDC, it’s just, God, I just wanna be in an audience.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wanna see, you know what I mean? Because if they do it in a press event that I’m not gonna go to or be
⏹️ ▶️ John invited to, it’s not the same as me just looking at a webpage. I wanna be in an audience.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you remember when the trashcan was announced? I don’t remember which WWDC it was because it was 34 years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John ago. I do remember when it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey announced. I think it was Schiller was up there and-
⏹️ ▶️ John Can’t innovate anymore, my ass.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, that was, that’s right. I forgot that was that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyway, what I was going to bring up though, was that it was a relatively,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, quiet part of the keynote. Cause it was just chiller talking. And then if I recall correctly, there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was just, just unbelievable base with the volume
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco cranked past 11 to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like 25. And it was, it, as much as I love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to snark about the Mac pro, like it was impressive, just sitting in that room,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey witnessing this happen was impressive. And of course, all these nerds, like even me, I don’t, I, even then I didn’t really care
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the macro, but I was swept up in the moment cause it was freaking cool. And so in that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sense, I, I really do hope that you’re there for some sort of teaser reveal or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John I remember that presentation. It was great. Like how the dramatic, dramatic music in the video and they’re showing, and
⏹️ ▶️ John I was doing the thing where they show it like really close and you can’t even tell what you’re looking at. Cause like the whole thing is still on the screen and the fan
⏹️ ▶️ John blades and all and all the other things. But then once they get to the part where they’re talking about it and the music
⏹️ ▶️ John part is over, they showed a picture of it next to the Tower Mac Pro and it looked like a Lord
⏹️ ▶️ John of the Rings forced perspective thing where there was a full-sized human but he’s really far away from the camera so he
⏹️ ▶️ John looks like a hobbit. We’re like, is that graphic right? Because it looked next to a
⏹️ ▶️ John cheese grater tower, it looked comically small. It was like, that’s not how big it
⏹️ ▶️ John actually is though, right, is this meant to be humorous? I was like, nope, that’s how big it actually was.
⏹️ ▶️ John We say trash can, but it would be the world’s worst trash can.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco You’d fill it with three balls of paper. It’s very small.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that turned out to be a problem long-term for Apple. And so I remember seeing that slide and going,
⏹️ ▶️ John all right, so, yeah, that seems small. But it was cool. It was definitely cool, and it was out there. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it was in a Lucite tube, kind of like the original iPhone, where you could look at it and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In fact, we had an episode about a week earlier where you said, it’s not like they’re gonna have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Mac Pro out in the tube, like out after the keynote, and then they did exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that. Ah, yeah, that’s right.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, remember at that point, we were in the phase where it was like the cheese grater was
⏹️ ▶️ John not being updated, and I was posting a case for a true Mac Pro successor, and unlike
⏹️ ▶️ John now, there was no point where Apple had a meeting and said, hey, guess what, we’re making a new Mac Pro. So it was totally
⏹️ ▶️ John up in the air whether we’d ever see a new Mac Pro at all, unlike now where Apple has said they’re gonna make one, It’s just a
⏹️ ▶️ John question of when. So that was, you know, that was totally out of luck. That was another thing that made that reveal great. It was, we were
⏹️ ▶️ John in a situation where we were like, I guess Apple’s just not doing Pro Macs anymore, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And they, you know, and they were, and that’s why it was exciting. You know, the excitement faded as the years
⏹️ ▶️ John moved on and the Mac Pro still couldn’t output to a 5K Retina display.