John:Okay, game faces on, so to speak. Voices, game voices? That's not even a thing. Oh well.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Pragmatic is a show about technology and contemplating the finer details in their practical application.
John:By exploring the real world trade-offs, we dive into how great ideas can be transformed into products and services that impact our lives.
John:Pragmatic is entirely supported by you, our listeners.
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Vic:I am doing fantastic, how are you?
John:Just visit engineer.network/pragmatic to learn how you can help this show to continue to be made.
John:Thank you.
John:I'm your host, John Chidjie, and today I'm joined once again by my good friend, Vic Hudson.
John:How you doing, Vic?
John:I am also doing fantastic, in relative terms at least, because I'm enjoying marginally cooled air coming into my sound booth, which is great.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's certainly better than hot air coming in, or no air coming in, which is what I've been doing up until a few weeks ago.
Vic:Yeah, I remember you were pretty toasty the last time we recorded.
John:But anyway, yeah, hmm.
John:Yeah, I was. Yeah, sweat was dripping off.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It was not a pleasant experience.
John:I mean, recording with you was a pleasant experience, but just sweating in order to get to a site that you get cover of all the topics was enough to nearly not quite kill me,
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:but certainly make me question my decisions in life.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But anyhow, so one of the things that I've been working towards slowly has I've been stuck in this situation where I spent a lot of money building the sound booth.
John:Again, all patrons supported effectively, and the sound booth has been built now for six months.
John:But the problem was I built it and I got it done just before summer, and that was fine in the wintertime.
John:But then as we started coming into summer, it was getting too hot, and I'd sort of run out of money,
John:and I needed a chance to sort of financially recover a little bit from the podcast point of view.
John:And then by the time I had enough money to buy the spare parts, the other parts I needed to build the baffle boxes and the cooling system, it was then essentially the middle of summer.
John:So in January, February this year, which is, of course, summer in the Southern Hemisphere, it was way, way, way too hot to get out the circular saw, jigsaw, hacksaw, every saw.
Vic:All the sauce.
John:And actually build this thing properly.
John:So all the saws and all the little teeth and saws cutting through wood and all that sort of stuff.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And honestly, it just reached that point where I'm like, you know what, I'm just going to take this portable air conditioner on wheels.
John:And I built, I bought this, it's like a plastic, it's like cardboard, but made out of plastic.
John:And it's got like two layers on the outside and a little ribbed layer on the inside, and they're all pressure treated and glued together.
John:And this particular board, they often use it for like advertising signs and so on.
John:So I bought, I think it's called Core Flute Board, or at least it is here.
John:I don't know if there's a different name for it in other parts of the world.
John:But in any case, that's the stuff.
John:And I built a cowling or cover, I guess, that fits over the top of the air conditioner, the portable air conditioner.
John:So that's one of those things on four, we've got four little wheels and you wheel it from room to room.
John:In this case, it's not going far.
John:Anyway, so I've got this HVAC, 150 millimeter or six inch diameter HVAC tube that's been essentially taped to, you know, a very carefully crafted exit hole.
John:So that when you put the cowling over the top, it feeds nice cool air down this tube and into the sound booth,
John:making recording a heck of a lot more pleasant than it was before.
John:So that's great.
John:Recently then cut a rectangular hole in the bottom for one of the air vents that I've, that I purchased for this.
John:It is now unceremoniously jammed in that hole.
John:But hey, at least cool air is getting in here and I'm not, I don't know, I have sweat pouring off of me,
John:but because it's leaking like a sieve, it's probably only getting about 50, 60% of the air in here and there's no outlet.
John:So obviously if there's no outlet, it's going to bleed out through all of the little, and I say little gaps, they're huge gaps in the bottom.
John:But in any case, you won't be able to hear it.
John:I've done a whole bunch of noise reduction in post-production, but I can hear it as I'm recording,
John:but the noise reduction as we're talking through audio on Discord, you can't, you can't hear it.
John:And when I do audio noise reduction, it completely removes it.
John:You can't hear it either in the final result.
John:Otherwise I wouldn't be recording with it on.
John:Absolutely. Yeah, I'm still using Brussfree, or Brussfree, I don't know how to pronounce it,
John:but it's, it does a fantastic job and it just takes out normal background noise from the resistance in the dynamic microphones.
John:It's really, really nice.
John:So, and I've tested on this and it is, it is, you cannot, you really cannot tell the difference.
John:So hopefully now that the weather's cooling down finally, I mean, it's still a bit, you know, it's still warm-ish.
John:Like we had a warm-ish day today, but it was like, you know, high 20 Celsius, which is,
John:I'm not going to convert off the top of my head, but it's not, it's not super hot.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's, it's getting more pleasant.
John:Nighttime temperatures are dropping, which is nice.
John:So yeah, it's getting better.
John:So I'm getting back to the temperature where I can start building it.
Vic:>> Would you consider it fall there yet or is it just kind of late summer?
John:Oh yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely autumn.
Vic:Okay, so you're in the fall, okay.
John:Yeah, I'm definitely in the fall.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:We don't, we don't, obviously we don't call it the fall, but I like the idea of calling it the fall because all the leaves fall off the trees.
John:And I like that.
John:But most of the trees we have here are not siduous.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:They, they don't have that.
John:Like you look around, the trees, there's not a single tree in my yard that loses its leaves year round.
John:So yeah, pretty much.
Vic:>> So you're surrounded by evergreens.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But then most of Australia is evergreen.
John:We're the only, the only plants in Australia, the trees that lose their leaves.
John:I'm not, okay, I'm not a botanist, so maybe there's a few that lose their leaves, but I think they're all imported from overseas.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So yeah, we don't get that cold, I don't think.
Vic:Fair enough.
John:There's probably some, there's probably some in the alpine regions down around, alpine regions, you know, like snowy mountains.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Maybe there's some trees there that lose their leaves, but that's the only reason you would lose them.
John:It doesn't get cold enough here.
John:So anyway, but yeah, so autumn, fall, whatever you want to call it.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Heck yeah, we're in it and summer is over.
John:It can go and get bent because it was not fun.
John:It was horrible.
John:Is eagerly the right word?
Vic:Yeah, we're still kind of eagerly awaiting it.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Do we like summer?
John:What's the consensus?
John:I don't, I don't.
Vic:Well, here in Kentucky, so.
John:Well, what, well, what's summer like in Kentucky having never been?
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:Never been.
Vic:As with much of the United States at this time of year, but it's really bad.
John:Hmm.
Vic:Like in the central part of the country, especially like Kentucky and Tennessee.
Vic:We like to describe springtime in Kentucky as you get four seasons in one day.
Vic:So it's kind of like wintertime at night and you get spring in the morning,
John:Okay, well, there you go.
Vic:a little bit of summer in the afternoon, and then you're back to fall by evening.
Vic:[LAUGH]
Vic:Because like, just to give you an example,
John:Hmm.
John:Yeah, no, it doesn't sound that bad.
Vic:I think today's actually going to be a relatively cool day.
Vic:Well, no, here you go.
Vic:We have a low of 43 and a high of 67, that's in Fahrenheit, mind you.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I, I mean, if you're, you know, if you're high 70s going into 80s, that'd be annoying.
Vic:No, but.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But I mean, the thing is, it's funny, you know, Melbourne, they often say Melbourne is the, is the city in Australia that has four seasons in one day.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Brisbane doesn't.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's Brisbane these days is feeling a lot more like the tropics.
John:So I grew up in Rockhampton and Rockhampton's right on the Tropic of Capricorn.
John:I say right on it.
John:It's, you know, it's six or seven kilometers away from the actual marine, the actual 23 degree, half degree south, whatever it is.
Vic:Yeah.
John:Yeah, there's a big spire and he says, hey, you're right in the tropic.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And then, then you realize, oh, it's actually still out by several meters, but nevermind.
John:Anyway, it doesn't matter.
John:The point is that it's in summertime, it's really hot and humid and in a monsoonal sort of a summer that we've had.
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:And it was just hot and humid all the time and you get rain and it would just be hot and humid.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It would rain hot and humid.
John:It would rain and just go wash, rinse, repeat.
John:Everything was wet.
John:Everything was hot and humid all the damn time.
John:If you go in the pool, your towels would never dry.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:You'd hang them up and they just still be damp the next morning.
John:And it's just like, it just got really tiring.
John:So, and having had some flooring done in the house and such, we were just over it and just over summer.
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:So anyway, but this is all, this is all a digression.
John:All this is to simply say, my sound booth is actually relatively pleasant.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I wouldn't say it's really pleasant, but I just sort of like stopped for a second there and the air conditioner has now been running for about 40 minutes.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And honestly, it's starting to feel quite pleasant in here.
John:Like it's not cold, cold, but it's not stinking hot.
John:So it's working.
Vic:That's cool.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Yeah.
John:Hell yeah, it is.
John:Because I mean, after a while you build it and it's so damn hot, you can't use it.
John:And you're like, did I make a mistake building this?
Vic:[LAUGH]
Vic:That's a question that'll keep you up at night.
Vic:[LAUGH]
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:My son, my oldest son said to me, this thing's going to be stinking hot.
John:You're never going to be able to use it.
John:And I said, I'm going to air condition it.
John:He said, yeah, well, you're not going to be able to use it until you air condition it.
John:I'm like, yeah, well, we'll see about that.
John:Like he's 18 and I was just so mad keen to get this thing built.
John:And then I realized that it, unfortunately for me, my son was absolutely right.
John:I had always intended to air condition this thing.
John:It just took a bit longer and it happened through summer.
Vic:Yeah.
John:So, but that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Do yourself a favor and never let him hear you say that.
John:He may listen to this show and then that's it.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Oh, well, sometimes he actually has listened back to this show and he sort of said, yeah, you're funny.
Vic:Yeah.
John:And I'm like, am I?
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Oh, cheers.
John:Thanks, mate.
John:Anyway.
John:Okay.
John:I'm not sure.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:That's a compliment, mate.
Vic:Any time my kids, any kind of time my kids listen to any of my podcasts,
Vic:they always say, you're even more of a nerd than we realized.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:That's okay.
John:Well, you go, you take that as a compliment, take that in your stride.
Vic:I don't think they mean it as such, but.
Vic:[LAUGH]
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:That's what I would do.
John:I'd be like, I'd be like, oh, hey, RG, thanks, man.
John:That's nice.
John:Thank you.
Vic:There you go.
John:All right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Switching gears slightly.
John:I've got a few little things I want to catch up on and then we'll get stuck into the main topic.
John:It's not that big a topic, but still, it's a topic.
John:Anyway.
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:All right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So, I had mentioned on previous episodes, I was going to get more solar panels installed.
John:I currently have 13.2 kilowatts of panels feeding a three-phase 10 kilowatt inverter.
John:And I had applied for Energex to go to a full 15 kilowatts connected to the grid.
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:And Energex, who's the local power supply authority, after seven months of back and forth and back and forth,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:they have said, no, go away.
John:And I'm like, okay, I guess I will.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:So, I guess, oh, well.
John:One of the problems with connecting to a grid that has essentially got too much solar going into it,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:too many renewables, is that there's nowhere to consume it and there's nowhere to store it.
John:So, they are simply now rejecting it.
John:So, we in Queensland have reached that point.
Vic:So you can actually overload the grid with that nice, clean, green energy.
John:Well, people don't -- I don't know.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I mean, some people don't understand the way electricity grids work, right?
John:I mean, assume that they're lossless just for a second.
John:But you put power in, it doesn't just magically sit there.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It needs to be consumed.
Vic:Right.
John:So, either you consume it in a load and have that load do work for your money,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:or you store it in a battery, or you store it in pumped hydro,
John:or you store it in some way, either a chemical battery, mechanical battery, anything.
John:And, yeah, because if you produce power, the power has to be consumed.
John:That's it.
John:You can't just pump it in there and then, you know, it'll stay there until you need it.
John:And, unfortunately, there's so many people with so much solar on their roofs now
John:that the grid simply has nowhere to store it.
John:So, they're introducing laws to enforce anyone that has more than 10 kilowatts of load to have a disconnect switch.
Vic:Mm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So, they can send a master command out to your house to disconnect your solar from the grid
John:if the grid becomes unstable because there's too much power being forced into it.
Vic:Yeah.
John:So, yeah, some would say nice problem to have.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Others might say, "Well, that's what poor planning gets you,"
John:or actually there's a whole bunch of things you could probably say.
Vic:Mm.
John:But, irrespective, me being selfish for the moment, I got rejected by Energex.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Oh, well, shrug a doodle doo. I guess I got to get over it and move on with my life.
Vic:Mm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:If I wasn't connected to the grid, I could do whatever the hell I wanted,
John:but I'd also need to install batteries, and that's even more expensive.
Vic:I was getting ready to say, you could put in one of those Powerwall thingies and,
John:Yeah.
John:That is true, but I did the math.
Vic:and store all that good, clean, green energy for yourself.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:With one and a half electric cars, I would need two power walls
John:in order to ensure I had enough to charge my cars as well as power the house.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:If I had three days of bad weather in a row, I'd need two power walls.
Vic:That's a whole lot of batteries.
John:It is a hell of a lot of batteries, which is exactly why I haven't done it.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It would cost me somewhere in the region of about $30,000 to $35,000 to do that.
John:I don't have that kind of money up my sleeve.
Vic:That's Australian.
John:That's Australian dollars, yes.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:If you want to talk in other forms of fake money, I don't know what that is in Bitcoin.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But never mind.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:I have a love-hate relationship with Bitcoin.
John:Let's just be really clear for those people who think that I love crypto.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I do in some ways, and other ways it melts my brain a bit
John:because money isn't real and I just don't get it anymore.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But never mind.
John:I'm not trying to be an economist.
John:All right. Moving on.
John:Well, I guess the problem is that for Bitcoin to be--
Vic:I just wish it wasn't so dependent upon server farms heating up the planet and
Vic:consuming lots and lots of energy.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:That's my biggest knock against it.
John:See, my--
Vic:That, well, that and the Bitcoin bros, but.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I actually-- Yeah, I find Bitcoin, bros, to be more annoying than the technology.
John:The technology is actually fine.
John:It's just the way it's evangelized by some people
John:and the way that they talk to other people that aren't on board with it
John:is just quite embarrassing, and they don't realize how embarrassing they're being.
John:But anyway.
John:No, my issue with Bitcoin is not Bitcoin.
John:There's a lot of other--
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Well, like they call them coins, but whatever,
John:that are not Bitcoin, that are all--
John:that have board members and people buy, and they do initial coin offerings,
John:and then they do a traditional pump and dump.
John:They're very analogous to pyramid schemes, and it's all very dodgy.
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:And all of that is also crunched using--
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Well, not all of it, but many of them are crunched using proof of work.
Vic:I've kinda gotten the impression over the last few years that I think most of
John:[No audio]
Vic:cryptocurrency is basically just a different stock market people are playing in
John:Yeah, and a lot of it is.
Vic:these days.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:The thing with Bitcoin that's different is that there is no one that controls
John:or can control it.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Bitcoin, the only thing--
John:So Bitcoin is the only one I'm aware of that has a fixed limit,
John:and it is proof of work, and the only downside of proof of work
John:is that it does consume a lot of electricity or energy
John:when you're competing to win to find the block.
John:And honestly, you can choose whatever energy you want.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:If you're smart about it, you will mine off of free energy,
John:like solar panels.
John:If I had solar panels that are feeding into a very small battery storage system
Vic:Mm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:to drive a Bitcoin miner, that would be fine.
John:It's like that doesn't hurt anybody or anything.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Now you can argue if that's a good waste of--
John:like a good solar panel and batteries and some ASICs doing some mining,
John:you can have that philosophical discussion if you like,
John:but that's not heating up anything, except on a micro scale,
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I guess you could argue.
John:[No audio]
Vic:And you're not emissioning anything.
John:No, not really. No. No.
Vic:That's not a word.
Vic:Emissioning.
John:I mean--
Vic:[LAUGH]
Vic:You're not generating emissions.
John:No, but the problem is that people only see that piece of it
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:and they don't fully appreciate the other piece of it,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and the other piece of it is, well, I go to a bank
John:and I hand over a $20 note and so on.
John:So it's like the act of my doing that, that transaction,
John:it takes energy, printing that note, keeping that note in circulation,
John:destroying it, the person at the bank,
John:the person at the federal treasury, all of that all takes energy,
John:and people are just--we just accept, look, that's just the way it is,
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and they think, oh, well, there's no consequence.
John:It's like, yeah, but if you're transacting everything digitally
John:and through a blockchain approach where there's a distributed ledger,
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:you don't have any of that, and so you're saving all of that energy.
John:You don't have to expend it anymore.
John:And it's funny.
John:I mean, I covered some of this previously on previous episodes of Pragmatic.
John:It's not as clear-cut as people think,
John:and I find it extremely reductive and disrespectful to simply say
John:any kind of cryptocurrency is--and even particularly Bitcoin,
John:which gets caught up with all these other cryptocurrencies
Vic:Mm.
John:that are nothing like Bitcoin.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's like it's not a scam. It's not a pyramid scheme.
John:It doesn't fit any of those criteria.
John:Whether or not you think Bitcoin is good or bad,
John:you need to step back and consider all of the other implications
John:of using a normal monetary system.
John:And the other problems with the normal monetary system
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:is inflation and deflation and government intervention
John:and people fighting wars and all sort of other rubbish that goes on with it,
John:whereas Bitcoin, you can fight as many wars as you like.
John:It's never going to change.
John:So it's like the value of a sat--
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:Good times.
Vic:[LAUGH]
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Here's the funny thing with currencies, right?
John:Currencies are all meaningless. They don't mean anything.
John:Like the value of a dollar doesn't mean anything.
John:And because it's like you could argue,
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:"Well, Bitcoin's price has been constant.
John:It's just all the fiat currencies around the world that keep changing,"
John:which is, of course, as much nonsense as the argument is the other way around.
Vic:Mm.
John:It's like the U.S. dollar is the only currency in the world
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and every other currency fluctuates relative to it.
John:No, they all fluctuate relative to each other.
John:And when you see how all those values go up and down all the damn time
John:for all these different reasons, none of it makes a hell of a lot of sense.
John:It's all smoke and mirrors and puppeteering and BS in the background,
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and it's just very sad.
John:You can't take any of it with you, so what's the damn point?
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Never mind. All right. I want to talk about something else.
John:So I have some follow-up on an Apple Watch episode, 110.
Vic:Mm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Okay.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Now, every now and then my wife asks pointed questions,
John:and I not all the time but regularly do feel the need to answer them.
John:And one of the challenges she put to me is,
John:"You know, darling, you spend a lot of money on Apple Watches."
John:And I'm like, "Surely not. Surely that is not the case."
Vic:Oh, boy.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I mean, really. I looked down at this Apple Watch Ultra,
John:and I'm like, "Hmm. No, okay."
John:So I went and actually went through all of my receipts for the last nine years.
John:I have spent 6.4--or $6,400 Australian dollars,
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:which is $4,200 U.S. dollars on Apple Watches in the last nine years.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:How many watches have you had again?
John:Too many. I think I've had six.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:And, yeah, and I just--I thought about it, and I'm like,
Vic:Six, okay.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:"That doesn't even include the bands. That's just the watches."
Vic:Oh, right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Now, I never bought a watch without a band as part of it,
John:because you can't buy an Apple Watch from a store without a band.
John:So I say "without bands."
John:I mean, like, "Without bands, I bought in addition to what came with the watch."
John:Now, I don't want to do the math on the bands
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:because I imagine that number will be over $1,000 as well just for bands.
John:But, I mean, the reason I bring this up,
Vic:Mm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:rather than just to answer my wife's question,
John:I thought it would be instructive of--and let's just also be clear.
John:This is not a--this is a total amount spent,
John:but what I would do is I would sell the watch to help then pay for the next one.
John:So, in reality, I haven't actually consumed an entire amount of money.
John:But, yeah, you buy a watch, you wear it for two years, you sell it, it loses value.
John:So, you know, it's--you know what I mean, right?
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So, yeah, so I thought about it, and I'm like,
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:"You know what? For that kind of money,
John:I could have actually bought a really nice watch.
Vic:Mm.
John:Like, I could have bought a really nice watch that would have lasted like a long time."
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Because when you--yeah, I mean, seriously,
Vic:Yeah, but.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I could have bought a nice Longines watch, let's say, you know, or maybe a--
Vic:Yeah, but that watch isn't going to give you notifications and reminders and
John:Yeah, I know, but--
Vic:to-do items and phone calls and messages and.
John:Oh, no. I know.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And here's the thing.
John:In the last probably six to nine months of my life,
John:I have been tuning out notifications because it started to become triggering.
John:Like, it's starting to get to the point where I'm starting to resent notifications.
Vic:Mm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I'm starting to resent being plugged in all the damn time.
John:And there's part of me that, like, I'll get home and I will take off my watch
John:so that I don't get notifications because I just need a break.
John:And the thought occurred to me that, you know, when I was in a--
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So right now I'm in a technical lead role.
John:I don't actually have a team of engineers reporting to me at this exact moment.
John:So half of my career, I've been in people leadership roles
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:that are also technical leadership roles.
John:At the moment, I'm in a technical leadership role,
John:but I don't have anyone directly reporting to me.
John:I'm not counting the project teams and the projects that I'm running.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:You could argue I do have people reporting to me indirectly through project structures,
John:but let's not go there.
John:The point is I've reached that point where I essentially don't get hundreds of emails a day.
John:I'll get probably 20, 30 emails a day, and I'll get people messaging me from time to time,
John:but the volume of noise is dropping back, and I'm still finding it too much.
Vic:Yeah.
John:So I accept the fact that those things can be beneficial,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:but I just look at the numbers, and I think to myself, "You know what?
John:The longest a watch has been relevant--
John:sorry, relevant, supported, sorry, by Apple that has a battery that still works
John:is probably about six years.
John:Now, your mileage may vary.
Vic:Yeah, sounds right.
John:Your series zero, how long did it last?"
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Yeah, okay.
Vic:I think it's in a drawer somewhere with the screen popping off again.
John:So that's not--that's--okay.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:We need to define what lasting means, but if the screen's popping off,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I'm going to suggest that that doesn't last, and that's--funny that.
Vic:Yeah, no, actually I think I got rid of it because the screen was popping off and
Vic:then I was worried that it was going to catch the house on fire or
Vic:something one day, so.
John:This is a valid concern.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:That and Apple had stopped supporting it too, and it was abysmally slow.
John:Sure.
John:So there reaches a point after six years or so where your watch will no longer do anything.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It won't tell the time.
John:It won't give you notifications.
John:It essentially will not be supported by Apple, and you'll have something that you can't use,
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:and you could have put down $1,000 on this watch, let's say,
John:because as you know, Vic, I had a predilection.
John:It's like I had to have stainless steel or titanium.
John:I had one aluminum watch in the series zero, and after that I decided, no,
John:I went to stainless steel, and I couldn't go back.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I needed the sapphire glass because apparently I just bump stuff a lot.
John:Anyway, so now if I had have spent, it would have cost me less than that
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:to have bought a nice watch, and I'll bring up Longines
John:because I like the look of the Longines watches, but still,
John:I could have bought one of those, and that would have lasted 50 to 75 years,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and even with servicing costs, it would still be cheaper,
John:and it would still work after 75 years.
John:So I could hand that down to my kids, and this is the thing,
John:although I don't know which one.
John:I don't know if I'd hand it down to the one who pointed out this would be too hot in here.
Vic:It's an heirloom piece.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Maybe he doesn't get it, but I don't know.
John:We'll see.
Vic:Mm, next down the line.
John:Yeah, next year, yeah, my third born, yeah, that one.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Anyway, so I thought that was an interesting thought experiment,
John:and I'm not getting at anything specifically right now
John:because I still have my Apple Watch, and I still have my series three,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:which I wear now in a two-watch lifestyle because my son no longer wants it,
John:and I'm like, "Oh, fine. I'll have that."
Vic:Yeah.
John:So I have actually gone to a two-watch lifestyle, so I've got one for sleep tracking.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Oh, yeah, one more thing.
John:I'm not buying yet another Apple Watch, which I could get a 41-millimeter sports one potentially,
John:which I did briefly consider doing, and then I added up how much it costs to date,
John:and I'm like, "No, I'm not doing that."
Vic:Oh, I wouldn't buy a new one right now.
John:Not just for sleep.
Vic:I wouldn't buy a new one right now.
John:No, I wouldn't either.
Vic:Well, actually I don't think the reason I wouldn't buy a new one right now
John:Hmm.
Vic:affects you.
Vic:Have they disabled the, what was it, the, oh, the blood oxygen sensor.
John:No.
Vic:They haven't disabled that in your country, have they?
John:No, no, no, that's just--that's the United States only, so, yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Yeah, I wouldn't buy one here right now.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's one of those rare situations where being in America is a disadvantage for an Apple product.
Vic:Yeah.
John:There aren't too many cases where that is the case, but this is one of them.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:I cannot believe they've let this thing drag on the way they have.
John:It's a matter of principle.
Vic:Just send the dump trucks full of money and we'll resolve this thing, man.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:You've got your trillions of dollars in the bank, man.
Vic:I guess.
John:Come on. You might need that someday to fight off the Department of Justice.
Vic:[LAUGH]
Vic:Greedy bastards.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:Oh, my God.
John:Which we'll get to.
Vic:True that, true that.
Vic:Maybe they do need that money, I'll swear.
John:Maybe they do.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Oh, dear me. All right.
Vic:They're not making it sell in the Apple Vision Pros.
John:No, they certainly aren't, and come to think of it, we should probably talk about that too.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:[LAUGH]
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So, it's still not--at time of recording right now, it is still not available outside of the United States.
John:There are noises that it might be getting released in other countries in coming months,
John:possibly ahead of WWDC in June.
John:As far as I'm aware, it's all just speculation, though.
John:It's still only available in the U.S., at least that's my understanding.
John:So, one of the things I wanted to just mention briefly on Apple Vision Pro
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:is when we spoke about it last time, we talked about prism value,
Vic:Yeah.
John:and one of the things I just wanted to circle back on and correct myself on
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:was that I had said originally I believed at the time that prism value
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:was related to multifocal or varifocal or progressive lenses,
John:whatever the heck you want to call them, similar names for much the same kind of thing.
John:And it's not, so no, it is to correct for people that suffer from double vision.
John:So, that is something that the Apple Vision Pro does not support.
John:So, you can't get corrective lenses to attach inside the Apple Vision Pro if you have double vision.
John:I think it's a relatively rare condition, but irrespective, that's frustrating for people that have got it,
John:but it is, irrespective of that, it is not what I thought it was.
John:So, I talked a lot about barrel distortion.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So, when you've got a multifocal or progressive lens like I've got on my glasses,
John:you can pay more money, of course you can,
John:to get less barrel distortion beyond the center point of where you look through the glasses.
John:So, the very first, this is only my second set of progressive lenses,
John:and I'm due to get another set this year because these ones are trashed,
John:they're like three and a half years old now.
John:I got them during COVID, that was a fun time, but never mind.
John:Anyway, I paid extra for minimal barrel distortion,
John:because the first set I did, I just got the cheapest ones,
John:and you find you have to turn your head more, left and right,
John:because you can't, everything to the left and right of center,
John:beyond about maybe plus or minus 30 degrees from where your eyes are looking straight forward,
John:it starts to get very distorted, you get this barrel effect.
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:And it's just got to do with the refractive index of the glass.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So, the more expensive glass, higher refractive index, less barrel distortion.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So, you pay for the privilege.
John:But in any case, so I said in the last time when we talked about it,
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I said that I was going to let North Americans be the guinea pigs and tell me what the deal was,
John:and the other little tip that I was looking for was that the Apple Vision Pro's focal distance for vision is at 1.3 meters,
John:which is a pretty standard kind of a figure for VR headsets.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So, if I do, I would get, if I do go, so I am actually going to see the optometrist in another week's time,
John:because I've been putting off for too long, I've got to go and do it.
John:I will ask them that question, if the script will be good for use at 1.3 meters.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So, because I want to get some contact lenses because I'm going and hoping,
John:planning to go back to playing cricket for a few seasons while I still can.
John:So, that's another story.
Vic:That's cool.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So, yeah, apart from that, other things about Apple Vision Pro,
John:I think there's a lot of stories about people like returning them en masse.
John:I don't know how true that is, although I have heard they have got plenty of them in stock.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So, it does sort of suggest that they overestimated.
Vic:Yeah.
John:So, they're not taking the world by storm, it seems.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But then I think back to the original iPhone launch and they didn't either.
John:So, people loved them.
John:The people that had iPhones loved them.
Vic:I mean, you charge, what is it, 3,400 or 3,400?
John:I love mine.
John:3,400, yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Yeah, you charge 3,400 for a very expensive Gen 1 product.
John:Yeah.
John:No.
Vic:It's still struggling to find its use cases.
Vic:[LAUGH] And doesn't have a lot to do on it right now.
Vic:And I don't know, it's really funny.
Vic:People don't just clamor to buy them.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:No, they don't.
Vic:I mean, there was the initial wave, which was, I mean, let's be honest,
Vic:people that were gonna buy them no matter what anyway.
Vic:But then after that, things just really tapered off.
John:I think because I was thinking about this a few weeks ago,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I was listening to a podcast where some people had them
John:and they were talking about their experiences, of course.
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:And, you know, rather like when I sent you 3D photos,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:but you didn't have any way of looking at them, it's like,
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:"Well, this is a nice photograph of a cake, but, you know,
Vic:[LAUGH]
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:what do you want me to do with this?"
John:It's sort of like you can talk about it as much as you like,
John:but until it becomes more ubiquitous, there's a limit.
John:And not enough people have had enough VR headsets in their lives.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:There are people, many, many, many people who have never used a VR headset.
John:So, yeah, I would say that is true too.
Vic:I was gonna say, that I would say the overwhelming majority have never used it.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So, it's kind of like the smartphones back in the day,
John:like BlackBerrys were something that only business people had.
John:The majority of people hadn't used a BlackBerry,
Vic:Yeah.
John:which is probably the world's first really popular smartphone.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And it wasn't really a full-blown smartphone in the same sense
John:that a smartphone is considered these days to have started with the iPhone.
John:And even when the iPhone first came out,
John:the same thing could have been said of that.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So, I look at where we are with the Apple Vision Pro,
John:and it doesn't worry me.
John:It's like I think that this product is going to eventually be a success.
John:It's just that I've decided as much as I am excited
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and I would love to have one, I'm not going to buy one
John:on the basis that it's just not quite ready yet.
John:It's not quite good enough yet for mass adoption.
John:In the same way the original iPhone 2G, whatever you want to call it,
John:was before the 3G came out and then the 3GS,
John:and things really started to look up.
John:So, yeah.
Vic:Yeah.
John:[Audience member asks a question]
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Oh, yeah, sure.
John:[Audience member asks a question]
John:Yes, I think it was. Yeah.
John:[Audience member asks a question]
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Yeah, well, see, I was a freak.
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:I had one of my brothers-in-law was over in Vegas,
John:and I got him to buy me one from the Vegas Apple store,
John:an original iPhone 2G, because you couldn't buy them in Australia,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and I went through all the jailbreaking in order to activate it
John:to work on Telstra in Australia.
John:And so I was the only person I knew that had an iPhone,
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:That's hardcore.
John:and I was crazy.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It was amazing, though.
John:Beautiful technology. I loved the way it felt.
John:But you couldn't get anything for it.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It was unique in Australia at the time,
John:so the original iPhone was never even sold here.
John:I should have kept it as a collector's item,
Vic:Yeah.
John:even when the battery refused to charge.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:After a while it just died. The charging circuit was dead on it.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:No app store in those days.
John:No.
John:But anyway, so then I did over edge.
Vic:But you had the internet in your pocket.
Vic:And you could see a lovely checkerboard if you scrolled a page too fast.
John:Truth.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:But I bought the 3GS, and then the 3GS was really transformative.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But anyway.
Vic:Mm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:All right.
John:So we talked a little bit before about solar panels
John:and things electric and cars and so on very briefly,
John:but I also have another new toy,
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:because this one, however, is a little bit more practical in some senses.
John:It's a ride-on mower.
John:I actually invested in a Ryobi RM300E electric ride-on mower.
John:I also got the grass catcher and the trailer with it as well.
John:And we had a Makita push mower, electric push mower,
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:which had served us well for nearly three summers,
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and this was the summer that broke us,
Vic:Right.
John:because it was hot and wet, like I sort of said actually before,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:talking about the sound booth.
John:And the effect that it has on grass is the grass just keeps growing,
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and it's always too wet when you mow it.
John:It just glugs up, and the whole thing just turns into a green, gluggy, muddy mess,
Vic:Mm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and the grass catcher never really works properly,
John:so when you're mowing an acre, it also took a very long time.
John:So we used to have a ride-on mower like in this place.
John:It was a petrol-powered mower like 20 years ago.
John:We had it for about 10 years,
John:but it was costing us $1,000 every two years to keep it running in maintenance,
John:because it's a specialized engine.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's a small engine,
John:so these service shops made their money on charging you lots of money
John:to keep your mower running,
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and I couldn't strip an engine to save my life.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I'm an electrical engineer.
John:I'm not a mechanical engineer.
John:I'm not a mechanic.
John:I don't know--I don't want to know how to do all of that,
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:and that's just me.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I don't want to spend my weekends learning how to do it either.
John:So, you know, having said that,
John:I'm sure I could figure it out if I really applied myself,
John:but anyway, suffice it to say it got very expensive.
Vic:Right.
John:So the mower itself at the time cost us about $3,500,000,
John:and over the life of the mower it cost us another $4,500,000 roughly
John:in 10 years to maintain it.
John:So the whole thing was horrible,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and so we decided after 10 years that we would outsource it,
John:and we paid someone to come and actually mow the yard for us,
John:which wasn't cheap, but it was still cheaper than trying to maintain a
Vic:Yeah.
John:ride-on mower.
John:So fast-forwarding to today, this thing costs,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:with all of the other bits, in equivalent dollars,
John:almost the same amount of money as the ride-on mower cost 20 years ago.
John:So in the same kind of ballpark, but because it's electric
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and there's three electric motors, so you've got one drive motor
John:and one for each of the two cutting blades because it's a twin deck,
John:and it's a 30-inch cut.
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:So this thing will rip through the whole yard.
John:When the grass is under control, you'll get through the whole yard
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:in an hour, maybe an hour and 15 minutes.
Vic:That's cool.
Vic:Can you do that on a single charge?
John:Oh, yeah, easily.
Vic:That's cool.
John:You can do all that on a single charge and have plenty to spare.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's awesome.
John:Now, yeah, now the only downside, the only downside is this is the
Vic:That's cool.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:cheapest electric ride-on mower that you can get,
John:and it's the cheapest for a reason.
Vic:Yeah.
John:It has lead-acid batteries.
Vic:Uh-oh.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Yeah.
John:So there are many people that say after anywhere from two to four years,
John:those batteries are just going to die.
John:They're standard lead-acid absorbent glass mat.
Vic:Same thing as what's in our cars, right?
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Well, the ones in most people's cars are still wet cells, but, yeah,
Vic:Oh, okay.
John:these are AGM, so absorbent glass mats.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So you really can't do much with them, and when they die, they die.
John:So anyway, although -- yeah, anyway, so these particular batteries are not
John:going to last that long, but you can actually get lithiums to replace it,
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and the lithiums will last a lot longer.
John:And, yeah, you retrofit it yourself, it costs you about $800, $900 to retrofit it,
Vic:Mm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and then after that you should get five years of life easily out of them.
John:So, yeah, and that is still cheaper to maintain and replace batteries every
Vic:That sounds like the way to go.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:five years than it was to get my petrol-powered mower maintained.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So I still think that is a net win.
Vic:Everything's so quiet.
John:Oh, it is so much quieter, and the vibration is practically none.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's like -- obviously you get vibration from the cutting deck,
Vic:Yeah.
John:but because there's no pulleys, therefore there's no clutch,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:there's no -- like all those other moving parts, it's just so much simpler.
Vic:Right.
John:You can literally -- you pull out four locking pins, and you can drop the deck
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and remove it and change the mower blades if you want.
Vic:Mm.
John:It's so easy. It's incredible.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So, yeah, kind of loving it. It's my new toy, so yeah.
John:And it's a practical one, so that's good.
John:But anyway, so yes, so that's fun.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Mm. All right.
Vic:That's cool.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:I actually got to play with a zero turn for the--
John:Really? I've never actually driven one. What was it like?
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Gonna be using it going forward in the future, I think, for a while.
John:Yeah.
Vic:Due to circumstances I won't go into, because they're really other people's business.
John:Mm. Nice.
Vic:The neighbor lady across the street is in possession of a zero turn mower that used to belong to her husband, who no longer lives in the home.
Vic:And she approached me with a deal that I considered too good to pass up.
Vic:She was like, hey, if you do my yard too, I'll let you use the zero turn to do your yard.
Vic:And I was like, okay.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:It was an interesting experience.
John:Yeah.
Vic:There's a little bit of a learning curve on it.
Vic:I got a pretty funny video that the wife took of me doing my first few passes through the backyard.
Vic:I'll send you one when we get done.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Mm.
Vic:There's a little bit of a learning curve to it, but it was a pleasant experience.
Vic:I'm going to enjoy getting used to using it.
Vic:Started out pretty rocky.
Vic:By the end of the mow, by the time I got back around to see, like, I started in my backyard on purpose, because I was like, if I screw anything up, I want to do it back there.
Vic:[LAUGH]
Vic:I don't want to do it in her yard, and I don't want to do it in my front yard.
Vic:So by the time I got around to my front yard, I was doing pretty good.
Vic:And by the time I was finishing her yard, I was feeling really comfortable on it.
John:Okay.
Vic:So the next time I'm about, it should be a pretty pleasant experience.
John:Yeah, they're kind of the workhorse of people that do that sort of thing for a living.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So I can't think -- I think every time I've seen like -- yeah, like government council
Vic:That's, yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:or, you know, like the private -- like the people we used to have that would mow the lawn,
John:you know, like Joe's Lawn Mowing Service, they all use zero-turn mowers.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Like the one I've got is not a zero-turn. It's the traditional lawn tractor style.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But yeah, zero-turn, nice.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Cool. Well, I couldn't quite stretch to that, unfortunately,
John:because that was like an extra two and a half thousand.
Vic:Yeah, well, they're expensive.
John:Oh, yeah.
Vic:[LAUGH]
Vic:Right, yeah, they're expensive.
Vic:There's a reason I don't have one, and I probably never will have one.
John:Cool. All right. Very good.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:All right. I just want to talk a little bit about -- there's two more things,
John:and we're almost at the main topic I want to talk about.
John:I want to talk a little bit about OP3, which is the Open Podcast Prefix Project.
John:Have I ever spoken to you about this before? I can't remember.
Vic:I don't think so.
John:All right. Well, OP3 is a -- so there's one -- it's an initiative that was kicked off
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:in relation to -- but it's not part of -- Podcasting 2.0.
John:And it's -- so the guy behind it is a guy called John Spurlock,
John:and he developed this to run off of Cloudflare infrastructure.
John:And what it does is you put a prefix -- well, like any tracker that you have
John:in your podcast media files, you attach a tracker to the front of the MP3 file,
John:and then every time -- and then you put that in the RSS feed.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So when a downloader like Overcast does a client or Apple Podcasts grabs a copy
John:of your MP3 file, it first goes to the prefix, which is the op3.dev prefix,
John:and it registers an account as to where it's coming from, as in like country
Vic:Yep.
John:and time and date, yada, yada, yada.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And then it redirects you to the actual file, and then you download the file directly.
John:So it's like any other prefix for any other tracker.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But the difference is that this is -- it's fully open source,
John:so anyone can actually inspect the code, and basically it is not for profit.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So I started supporting op3 about a year and a half ago.
John:I haven't really spoken too much about it, but I probably should because when you're
John:with someone like -- because I've been with Libsyn as a media host for my MP3 files.
John:I was with Libsyn for a long time in two separate stints,
John:and I was also with Blueberry for a while, and I've also hosted my own on my own server
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:with no stats at all.
John:And I sort of -- stats are kind of -- when I'm not chasing sponsors,
John:stats are almost irrelevant.
John:But it is a nice litmus test to at least say, "C.A., is there something wrong?"
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Like when I put an episode up, and if I'm only getting a few hundred downloads
John:instead of a few thousand, it's like, "Okay, well, there's something wrong here.
John:What's going on?" So that's the first thing.
John:The second thing is it's nice to know if the show is growing or shrinking
John:as just a rough guide.
John:But the problem with download stats is that they can be very easily manipulated
John:such that it's like -- if you're doing it for advertising purposes,
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:there's more of a potentially malicious intent, shall we say,
John:with trying to amp up the numbers a bit to attract sponsors, but still.
Vic:Yeah.
John:Since I'm not doing that, I don't care about that.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But anyway, bottom line is -- so I donate $10 U.S. a month to John Spurlock,
John:to the OpenOP3 project, and there's a whole bunch of other sponsors
John:from companies or individuals.
John:I'm only sponsoring at the minimum level as a podcaster
John:because I'm getting benefit directly out of it.
John:So if you don't want to host your files on somewhere like Blueberry and Libsyn,
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:you want to do your own thing like me, or if you want to have
John:a truly independent open-source way of tracking your statistics,
John:have a look at OP3.
John:You don't have to donate anything.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's up to you.
John:But I just think it's been great, solid, reliable, and it gives you charts
John:that in many ways are better than Libsyn because you had to pay for Libsyn Pro
John:to get the pro-level statistics.
John:This is not quite as detailed as the Libsyn Pro, but it's damn close.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Libsyn Pro was--I'm trying to remember what it was,
John:but it was more than I was paying a month.
John:I was just getting basic stats.
John:I think I was getting like--I think I was doing--yeah,
Vic:That's, that's, yeah.
John:I was doing 5 plus 7--oh, 5 plus 2 was--so $7 a month times by 3 shows,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:so analytical, pragmatic, and causality because you have to pay at Libsyn
John:per show, whereas OP3, it's just like it's pay what you like sort of thing.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:You don't have to pay anything if you don't want to.
John:But, you know, anyway, so $10 a month is still much cheaper
John:than what I was costing at Libsyn.
John:And I'm hosting all of my files on storage in DigitalOcean in a bucket
John:backed behind Cloudflare.
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:So the whole exercise is not costing me as much as it used to,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:but at the same time I'm getting better statistics than I used to.
John:So I have no issue, you know, throwing money John Spurlock's way
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:to pay for the service because he gets a bill from Cloudflare.
John:The money goes to pay the Cloudflare bill.
John:So anyway, just thought I'd mention that.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:I'm looking at it.
Vic:This is pretty cool.
John:So I've got links.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:If you go to--yeah, I mean, if you go to the Engineer Network website
Vic:I'm looking at their example travel podcast stats page.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:and go to Causality, like select the actual show Causality,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:if you scroll right to the bottom, you'll see there's a link right at the bottom
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:that says simply Stats.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So if you select Stats at the bottom, you'll go to the OP3 page
John:that shows all the statistics for Causality now in OP3.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And these are open.
John:Anyone can look at them.
John:So if you've ever wondered how many downloads Causality gets,
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:so like I think the 30-day average is something like just over 4,000 downloads
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:an episode for Causality, for example.
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:And there's only stats in there for the last four or five episodes
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:because I've only been using OP3 for that long.
John:So I don't have in my prior statistics.
John:So yeah, anyway, there you go.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Have a look.
John:If stats are your thing and you're very curious,
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:then OP3 is a good way of doing it.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:The only downside of it is that some people will say, "Oh, yeah,
John:but then your stats are public."
John:And it's like, "Yeah, so what?"
John:Some people are very coy about how many downloads they get.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But anyway, all righty.
Vic:If you're, if you're chasing sponsors, then you kind of need them to be anyway.
Vic:Well, I don't guess they need to be public.
John:Well, the problem that you've got is that if you're chasing advertisers,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:there's this little club called the IAB.
John:And IAB certified statistics have a bunch of rules around it,
John:but you have to pay to be certified,
John:and it costs money to maintain certification, which I sort of understand,
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:but at the same time it's just another system for measuring what is a valid
John:download and what isn't.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So you've got like block lists and different things,
John:and John Spurlock has a whole bunch of that stuff.
John:He doesn't certify it as being IAB compliant, but it's pretty close.
John:So it's got all the common sense ones in there.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But I mean I honestly think if you're an advertiser these days,
John:advertisers don't trust anybody.
John:Well, the big ones don't.
John:So what they'll do is they'll say you have to use this prefix and add this
Vic:Yeah, true.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:prefix onto the episodes and they'll track it.
Vic:So they'll give you their own.
John:And it's gotten so bad with prefixes that some shows have got like --
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I think they were saying on Episode of Podcasting 2.0 they found one MP3
John:file that had 15 trackers appended to it, 15 redirects, if you can believe it.
Vic:Wow.
Vic:[LAUGH] That's a lot of redirecting.
John:It's ridiculous.
John:So, yeah, so my issue is that if there's no agreed standard,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:if the numbers can be gamed, then is it really a good measure for an advertiser?
Vic:True.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And the answer is, of course, no, it's not.
John:But it is for a lazy advertiser.
John:And the way it -- like the way the professionals do it is they'll say, well,
John:I'm going to give your show a shot because you say you've got 25,000 downloads,
John:you know, an episode or whatever.
Vic:Right, yeah.
John:Now, because of that, they'll then say, right, here's a promo code.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Now, you go and use your promo code in the episode and you say, oh, you know,
John:sign up to like Round Area, let's say.
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:It's a website building place, Round Area.
John:You may have heard of it.
John:And we're going to use coupon code Pragmatic Rocks,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and that will get you 50% off of Round Area for the next, you know,
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:people that sign up.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But the problem is that it's like download share
John:and mind share drives coupon code usage.
John:So, for example, let's say that another podcast,
John:let's say the Intentional Technology Show,
John:and on the Intentional Technology Show they have also got Round Area.
John:And Round Area coupon code for them is, you know,
John:Intentional Technology Show Rocks.
John:So people will listen to both Pragmatic as well as Intentional Technology Show.
John:And when it comes time to sign up for Round Area, they'll say, oh, well,
John:which was the first show that comes to mind,
John:the show that has the larger mind share,
John:and then they will go and put in the promo code from the other show, not mine.
John:So I don't get any credit for it.
John:So then it sets up as like a game between all the listeners
John:and then the show, the podcast hosts.
John:And it's like, well, if you sign up, you want to support the show,
John:sign up using my promo code, then you'll listen to the next show,
John:it's the same advertiser with a different code.
John:No, no, no, sign up with my promo code.
John:And the poor person is sitting there thinking,
John:I like both shows, what do I do?
John:And so what tends to happen is the big get bigger and the small get pushed out,
John:and that's the way that has happened.
John:So then they will say, so Round Area will then look at all their coupon code
John:usages and say, well, Pragmatic has got like three or four
John:and Intentional Technology Show has got hundreds.
John:And it's like, right, you know what I mean.
Vic:Intentional technology show.
Vic:[LAUGH] Yeah.
John:Yes, exactly.
Vic:Dear listener, when faced with this predicament, support the little guy.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But, I mean, I'm well out of that, and I don't necessarily want to go back
John:to doing that because it becomes part of that game, and I don't.
Vic:Yeah.
John:It's just it's tiring, you know, it's tiring because you're forever trying
John:to produce content and you're trying to produce content and appeal
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:to the listeners and say sign up for this, sign up for that.
John:All I say to listeners of my shows is if you want to help keep this show ad free,
John:you can help by becoming a supporter.
John:That's all you've got to do.
Vic:Yeah.
John:And you don't support on a, you know, necessarily you can choose
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:a whole bunch of different, you know, levels that you can support
John:at if you want to or not at all.
John:It's entirely up to you, different perks for different levels.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And, you know, the Podcasting 2.0 crew, and Adam Currie in particular,
John:really loves this whole idea of value for value where you don't even have bands.
John:You don't say here's a dollar a month, $3 a month, $5 a month.
John:It's like just give us what you want.
Vic:Yeah.
John:If you think I'm worth 50 cents, you give me 50 cents.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:If you think I'm worth $5 million, I'll happily accept your $5 million.
John:You know, it's like you pay, yeah.
Vic:It's on the way right now.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:And that's fine if that's the way you want to do it.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's not the only way to do it, but it is a way to do it.
John:And, I mean, I've, you know, I look at it like this.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:If someone really wants to give you money, they're going to do it.
John:And no matter which system you use, I don't think any one is better or worse.
John:I like the idea of being paid or people being showing appreciation
John:and paying like for an episode and saying, "Well, I really like this episode."
John:And like, for example, with Satoshi's and boosting,
John:and I know this goes back to the whole cryptocurrency thing,
John:but if you don't mind the contentiousness of it,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:for example, the last episode of "Causality," I got like in Australian dollars
John:the equivalent of a $46 boost from someone who'd loved the show.
John:And the comment was, "I need to listen to this again."
John:And I'm like, "Well, thanks, man. That's awesome."
John:Now, they're not a patron or anything like that,
John:and that's not advertising either.
John:And I have no idea when it's going to come in.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I have no idea if people are going to like what I do.
John:So I just keep doing what I'm doing.
John:People that are going to support me are going to support me.
John:Advertising is a very, very different game,
John:and it's a game that, frankly, I'm glad that I'm not playing anymore
John:because it just seems--it is a bit of a hustle,
Vic:It's a real hustle too.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and it seems a bit disingenuous in a lot of ways.
John:And so, yeah.
John:Anyway, all of this is to say, OP3 rocks.
John:Support it if you're interested in stats.
Vic:That's cool.
John:And, yeah, because honestly, I'm never going to give another cent to Libsyn.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I'm done with Libsyn.
John:Yep.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:And it's really easy to use too.
Vic:I mean, if you're already using something like Blueberry, you can do this.
John:Exactly right.
Vic:You're just appending a prefix to your URL.
John:So it's like you could use this on the entry level of Libsyn
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and use this as a prefix, and you will get better stats.
John:So, like, use Libsyn for your file hosting
Vic:Yeah.
John:and then just get all your stats somewhere else
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:if that's what you care about.
John:Anyway, enough said.
John:Enough said.
John:Advertising is what it is.
John:Okay.
John:I do want to quickly talk about something that's cricket-related.
John:So for people that hate cricket, you can skip this chapter if you'd like.
John:But I went to a Test Match.
John:Do you know what a Test Match is?
Vic:I do not.
John:Okay.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:No judgement.
John:That's fine.
John:It's just like when someone says it's the sixth out on the fourth inning
John:and I don't know what that means.
John:It's something to do with baseball.
Vic:Mm.
John:I don't know.
Vic:Oh, you know more than I do.
John:Really?
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:Okay, great.
Vic:Yeah.
John:There's a thing called an end zone, and I don't know what that means.
Vic:I really don't pay much attention to any of the sports balls or sports pucks or sports this or that.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But apparently someone who has a quarter on their back throws a ball
John:and they receive things.
John:Anyway, look, I am showing my complete ignorance of other sports,
John:but it doesn't--
Vic:That sounds very interesting.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:My God, I'm terrible at this.
Vic:No, not at all.
John:I'm terrible. I'm terrible.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:I'm sorry if I've just insulted all the listeners that love--
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I think that'd be NFL.
John:Fair enough.
Vic:I don't really have anything against sports fans these days,
Vic:but I just don't have any personal interest in it really.
John:Well, look, I've loved cricket ever since I was a kid.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And I used to go up to the nets and practice all the time,
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:play cricket with my mates.
John:And it turns out I'm terrible at batting.
John:I'm actually a pretty half-decent bowler.
John:I bowl right arm offspin, for those that know what that means.
John:And I grew up in Rockhampton, which is a downside
John:because Rockhampton's in the middle of nowhere, well, so to speak,
John:such that no big international teams would regularly visit Rockhampton.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:If you wanted to go to them, you'd have to drive for seven hours
John:and go to Brisbane, which is, of course, now where I do live,
John:so I can go and see international games any time I want.
Vic:Mm.
John:So the very first form of cricket, the first format of cricket,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:was referred to as a test match, and they still exist today.
John:And test matches go for five days maximum.
John:And you have two teams, and each team has 11 players
John:with a 12th man that's there in case someone gets injured.
John:And they generally run around, run the drinks out,
John:and substitute people when they need to go off and whatever, anyhow.
John:And there are two innings each.
John:So depending upon who bats well and who bowls well
John:depends on whether it goes for five days.
John:Some test matches have been over in a single day.
John:That's very rare.
John:Two days, sometimes three days is common.
John:Four days is also common.
John:Test matches that go to four or five days these days
John:are becoming a bit of a rarity.
John:But in any case, the form of cricket, the original form of cricket,
John:and some say the only true form of the game, if you believe that,
John:then, you know, yeah, I know, right?
Vic:Boy.
John:This is when you start religious wars about cricket.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Got the purist.
John:Yeah, the purists, right?
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:So they call the test matches the original and the best form of cricket.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And I do believe that test matches have a lot going for them.
John:But you need one thing with test matches,
John:and that is as someone who's enjoying the game, you need patience.
John:And not only that, you need up to five days in a row.
John:So for most people that work a full-time job,
John:getting five days off in a row to watch a single game
John:is a bit of a commitment.
Vic:Yeah.
John:But anyway, so when I was a kid,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I never saw an international test match ever, and I always wanted to.
John:I never saw a one-day international, which is strangely played in one day,
John:as the name suggests, or a T20, which is a 20 overs per side,
Vic:Mm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:limited overs game, it's over in three hours,
John:three and a half hours roughly.
John:So anyway, finally, at 47 years old, I went to a test match.
John:It was Australia versus the West Indies,
Vic:Mm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and it was played at the Gabba Cricket Ground,
John:which is in the suburb of Woolloongabba,
John:hence the Gabba,
John:which is the Aboriginal name for the area.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So the Gabba is our largest cricket ground in Brisbane and Queensland,
John:and I went there with two of my kids,
John:my daughter and my third-born, so my second son,
John:who just loves playing cricket.
John:So it was lovely to finally go to a test match.
John:I wrote a blog article about it on Tech Distortion.
Vic:That's cool.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It just took me a long time, but I finally got to it,
John:and it was beautiful being able to go with my own kids,
John:because my wife hates cricket with a passion.
John:She made--well, she hit it well in the first few months of our relationship,
Vic:Mm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:but then she cracked and confessed that she hated it.
Vic:See, you had the old bait and switch.
Vic:You had the old bait and switch.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:In that dimension, at least, yes,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:because, yes, she would come along and watch me play back when I was playing
John:in the Warehouse Cricket Competition.
John:This was going back 22 years ago.
John:And so, yes, when I was playing, she would come along and watch,
John:but I would find more and more excuses to her coming along,
John:and I sort of asked her one time.
John:I said, "Hey, what's--you haven't been coming along to as many games."
John:She said, "I need to break something to you."
John:I'm like, "Okay, here we go."
John:So, yes, but never mind.
Vic:[LAUGH]
Vic:It was a conversation that started with the phrase,
John:Something like that.
Vic:you know I love you, right?
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:It possibly was, yes.
John:But anyway, well, that's fine.
John:It's not everyone's game.
John:I absolutely understand that, and it does consume a lot of time,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:unlike some games that are over in an hour or two.
John:So I do understand why some people find it a bit much.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:That's okay.
John:But anyway, so, yes, finally went to a Test Match, had a great time,
John:and I wrote a long blog post going through all of that for anyone who cares,
John:which may not be very many people,
John:so we should probably move on to something that more people do care about.
John:What do you think?
Vic:Okay.
John:Yeah?
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Time for a sponsor?
John:I'm just kidding.
Vic:Sounds good.
Vic:Sure.
John:I'm kidding.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:I'd like to talk to you about a sponsor for this episode,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and that is the Department of Justice and an Apple antitrust lawsuit.
John:So, hmm, strange sponsor.
Vic:Mm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:All right.
John:So have you been following the antitrust lawsuit the DOJ raised against Apple?
Vic:Mainly just via the coverage from AATP.
John:Right.
John:Okay.
Vic:And I must concede I haven't heard the most recent episode yet.
John:Okay.
John:So I guess I wrote a long article about this, and I'm going to, you know, again,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I'll stand up and admit that I looked at incorrect numbers because my problem was,
John:when I originally did all this analysis, when it comes to the definition of, you know,
John:the definition of like--so antitrust is all about a company has a monopoly and not the game,
John:but they're restricting competition because they have a monopoly.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And so--if it's up to the DOJ, they'd probably send Tim Cook to jail if they could.
Vic:So we're not, we're not, we're not, we're going directly to jail.
Vic:We're not passing go and we're not collecting $200.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:They won't be able to, but good luck with that.
Vic:[LAUGH]
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Anyway, my God, anyhow, all right.
John:So here come all the monopoly jokes, man.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:They should have bought Mayfair when they had the chance and built some hotels.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Anyway, just don't land on it.
Vic:My family always played it with a huge pile of money under the free parking square.
Vic:Did you guys ever do that?
John:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we did.
Vic:If you ever land exactly on that, you get the pile of money.
John:Mm-hmm, yep, oh yeah, good times.
Vic:Yeah.
John:It's funny, though, people tweaking the rules.
Vic:I actually haven't played Monopoly since I was a kid,
Vic:but I remember it being a pretty fun game.
John:No, we played--like, we played it a few times.
Vic:A pretty intense game sometimes, but pretty fun.
John:We played it a few times during COVID, and my wife, being a ruthless former accountant,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:would tend to win almost every time.
Vic:Oh boy.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:And she said to me a couple of years ago--it wasn't that long ago, about 18 months ago, I guess--
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:"Oh, we should play another game of Monopoly."
John:And I'm like, "Why?"
John:"So you can kick our asses again."
John:And I was like, "No."
Vic:Wait, I got it.
Vic:Oh, you didn't start the conversation with, you know I love you, right?
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:That is generally not how I start conversations with my wife, unless--yeah, anyway, all right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:We're going to get back on topic.
Vic:Okay.
John:So when I did all my math and calculations and digging into all of this, one minor detail,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:because I'm not American, and in fact 96% of the world's population aren't American either,
John:but the problem is, of course, the Department of Justice is American,
John:and hence they are looking at this from a point of view of American statistics, not global statistics.
Vic:Right.
John:So when I originally wrote the article, which I do have an item on my to-do list to adjust the numbers,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:but it doesn't change the conclusion, but in the United States,
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:iPhones have a market share of about 60% of the market.
John:Now, that is not a monopoly.
John:That is a majority.
Vic:No.
John:It is just a majority, but it is not a monopoly.
Vic:Yes.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:There is a difference.
John:So globally, it is nowhere near that.
John:So Apple's influence is very U.S.-centric, and I mean, I've been an Apple fanboy for years.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I've got--like, I'm podcasting on a MacBook Air, an M2 MacBook Air.
John:I love this thing.
John:I have an Apple Watch on.
John:I have an iPhone.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I've got all the Apples except the edible kind because I don't like apples, but don't worry about that.
John:If you look at it from a global perspective, then in Q1 of--like, from Q1 2023,
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Samsung effectively, they own--they more qualify for being a monopoly--well, not a monopoly,
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:but certainly a big majority.
John:So Apple and smartphone sales globally, six out of the eight quarters in the last two years,
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:2022 and 2023, they were beaten by Samsung in terms of sales,
John:and their market share is about 20% globally.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So 20% globally and 60% in the United States, you know, do they really have market power over the remainder?
John:And there is no set--there's no set threshold, but if you are at 50%, would you say you have market power over the other 50%?
John:No.
John:If you've got 51%, do you have market power over the other 49%?
Vic:No.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Very, very slight.
John:Not really, not really.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's like, at what point does that break over?
John:And it's like somewhere between 75% to 80% market share, I would say you are at a point
John:when you could be considered to having your approaching monopoly.
John:And the thing that's interesting is going back to the last Department of Justice antitrust thing,
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:they had a go at Microsoft, and Microsoft had something like 90%, 95% of computers had a Microsoft Windows running on it.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's like that was a monopoly.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:That fit the definition of what a monopoly was, but this is not.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Yeah, yeah, I know.
Vic:You know the part that amused me about that is that in that whole thing,
Vic:they never really got bent about the fact that it was Windows on 90%.
Vic:It was just the bundling of Internet Explorer got everybody's panties in a wad.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's like--so this is the thing is I didn't want to spend too much time talking about the statistics
John:and the debate over what's a monopoly and what's not a monopoly.
John:It's just that, you know, the intention is are they restricting trade?
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Are they, you know--is what they're doing like--is it stifling competition?
John:Is it anti-competitive?
John:And so if you read some of the lines out of it, and I read through the whole submission from the DOJ,
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and I'll read some of it out here because I think it's useful just to--well, maybe--
John:I'm not going to try and poke fun at it, but I will point out the problems.
Vic:It's iPhone Monopoly.
John:So starting off, this is a quote.
John:"Unless Apple's anti-competitive and exclusionary conduct is stopped,
John:it will likely extend and entrench its iPhone monopoly to other markets and parts of the economy."
John:Sure.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Sure it will.
John:Next thing.
John:"This case is about freeing smartphone markets from Apple's anti-competitive and exclusionary conduct
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:and restoring competition to lower smartphone prices for consumers,
John:reducing fees for developers, and preserving innovation for the future."
John:And then the last one I will quote is, "By maintaining its monopoly over smartphones,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Apple is able to harm consumers in a wide variety of additional ways."
Vic:Yeah.
John:So all of that contains several references to exclusionary conduct, monopoly over smartphones,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and essentially control of the market, and hence the markets need to be free for smartphones
John:because of the exclusionary conduct, and there's not enough competition.
Vic:Yeah.
John:So the thing that's interesting is that if you look at the stats,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Apple's market share in the United States is dropping,
John:and if you look at the stats globally, it's been pretty average for a long time.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So there's no evidence that actually backs up that.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So the assertion is that if it's allowed to continue, it's just going to entrench its monopoly.
John:Well, forget that it's a monopoly because it's not a monopoly, but it's going to grow over time,
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and it's not growing.
John:That's been part of the complaint with Apple lately.
John:To compensate for the lower sales, they're jacking their prices up, right?
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So it's not actually--yeah, I know, right?
Vic:Right.
Vic:>> The services, man, services.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So there are lots of problems when factual inaccuracies are a lot of the DOJ's submission,
John:and so I wrote a whole article just called "Antitrust,"
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and I've got to tweak some of the numbers to make sure that that adds up.
John:I'll update that.
John:By the time this comes out, I probably will have done it.
John:But in any case, so they do actually have a reference to the Act
John:and how it interprets a monopoly.
John:So I will read this.
John:This is not out of the DOJ submission.
John:This is out of a reference to the original Sherman Act, which is,
John:"An unlawful monopoly exists when one firm has market power for a product or service
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and it has obtained or maintained that market power not through competition on the merits
John:but because the firm has suppressed competition by engaging in anti-competitive conduct."
Vic:Yeah.
John:So my problem is I wanted to break this down as to--apart from the fact that that wording is really clumsy.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:That's not actually the Sherman Act.
John:That is a legal interpretation made by a government body in subsequent years
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:because the Sherman Act goes back a long time.
John:So in any case, it goes back a ways.
Vic:A long time.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So I will start with it says "for a product or service."
John:So when they say "product," they don't mean that in a singular literal sense, like a single widget.
John:If you make the same widget and you make 100 widgets, they're exactly the same from the same supplier,
John:certified made by that supplier, then every widget by this definition would be a monopoly.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So clearly it doesn't mean a physical product.
Vic:Right.
John:It's more a product in the interpretation of a product class or a product type,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:maybe even a product category, but it's like in air quotes "smartphone."
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So if this thing is called a smartphone and it does all of the same sorts of features
John:but it's made by different companies, that's what they're really talking about.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So it doesn't--but it's not phrased that way.
John:So the problem is that you can't--so you can use the phrase "an iPhone monopoly,"
John:and that's actually a non sequitur because the iPhone is the iPhone.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's not a monopoly because you're the only company that makes the iPhone.
John:You could argue--of course they do.
Vic:Yes, Apple has a monopoly on iPhones.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And in the same--obviously, right?
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:This is the stupidity of the wording, right?
John:So the reality is that it's not. It's the product type.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So you could say it's a smartphone monopoly.
John:So one of the many things that I call out in this DOJ submission
John:is that they actually do use the correct wording later in the document.
John:They do actually refer to it as a smartphone monopoly,
John:which it isn't, although they assert that it is.
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:But you could also argue the same is true of service because I say product or service.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So similarly, you could say a service is really not a service but a service type.
John:And in the context of a smartphone, it could be text messaging, multimedia messaging, email, like whatever.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Like it's a service that is provided that goes with the device.
John:And for those ones I've listed, none of them qualify as being monopolies either.
John:When I sort of thought about this some more, it's like,
John:well, what did the Department of Justice really mean to say?
John:Because there's what they said, which was, you know, a bit average,
John:or as the cool kids these days say, it's a bit mid.
John:But you know what? It's fine.
John:They're just a bunch of people trying to do something that they don't fully understand.
John:But their intent, I think, if I were to extrapolate from the key points,
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:I would have phrased it like this.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So I'll quote myself from my article.
John:"All smartphones and personal computers shall be open to install and run applications, apps,
John:at the discretion of the owner and user of the hardware in question."
John:I actually think that that would resolve all of the non sequiturs and BS in the DOJ's submission.
John:If I had an iPhone and I could install any app I wanted on it, that would satisfy them, in short.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:That's not what they say in their submission, exactly, but that is what they are getting at.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Yeah, and you should not be, by extension, therefore locked to an app store where they skim money off the top,
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:which I didn't put in my little one-sentence summary, but, you know, one thing leads to another.
John:I should be allowed to do this if I want to, like I can on my Mac.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And this is what bugs me about this whole situation, is that Apple have this thing in their head
John:that the way it is on a Mac is the way it's always been.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And so I can sort of like install whatever the hell I want on my Mac, and it's at my own risk.
Vic:Boy, I'll bet you there's a contingent in there that would love to change that if they thought they could get away with it.
John:Of course, and they've added system integrity protection, they've added Gatekeeper,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:you know, a whole bunch of different technologies in recent years that make it,
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:where they add warnings and they say, "Oh, you know, you're installing this software from somewhere on the Internet, you know, could be bad."
Vic:Gotta click on the scare sheet.
John:Yeah, so whatever you want to call it, the scary dialog box and stuff that warns you,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:you know, the sky could fall, and then you click OK and nothing happens, and it's like, "Great, well, thanks, cheers."
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And it's like, but they don't stop you. But on iOS, you don't even get that choice.
John:You won't even see the app, it won't even get to you.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And so Apple will cite a whole long list of reasons to justify their restrictiveness on iOS.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Like, "Oh, it's a mobile device, you don't want bad actors on your mobile device
John:because it's connected through mobile phone networks and there's download restrictions and they could, you know, spam people."
John:It doesn't really matter.
Vic:They could bring down the whole cellular network with a rogue application.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Yeah, you see, it doesn't really matter.
John:And the reason that it doesn't matter anymore is because I think they've crossed,
John:the smartphone category has crossed the line from being a toy or a curiosity
John:or something just for tech nerds or rich geeks or like whatever people to play with as a thing.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's now become ubiquitous and people are reliant. They've become reliant.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Yes.
John:We as a culture, yeah, it's become a...
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:It's a utility.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:It's almost up there with electric and water.
John:Yeah, exactly. And this is the thing, no one seems to be talking about this,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:which is, you know, I look at all platforms that succeed,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and I've been thinking about this for years and I'm just never bothered to write it down until now.
John:So thank you, DOJ, for helping to crystallize my thoughts on this.
John:But anyway, I think that all platforms, no matter what they are,
John:will go through several stages of existence, at least the ones that end up going somewhere.
John:And when I say platform, I try to keep it generic because a mobile phone or a smartphone platform,
John:you could argue that, you know, like a smartphone is a kind of a derivative of a mobile phone,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and a mobile phone is a derivative of a telephone that was plugged into a wall, you know,
John:and the telephone plugged in the wall is a derivative of you yelling at someone from the next room, like whatever.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:You know, it's not... I'm trying to point out that, I mean, railroads, for example,
John:and I talk about railroads in the article, like railroads were a formative technology
John:and a platform, so to speak, to get people like goods and services and people around the world
John:and countries as well. So it's like I tried to keep it generic and say platform
John:because I genuinely believe that this is a generic life cycle that all of these things go through.
John:So I've sort of suggested there are six stages to this.
John:And the first stage is invention. It's got to start with invention.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:There was a time before railways existed. There was a time before phones and smartphones
John:and mobile phones existed. So these platforms did not exist. They were invented.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And then initially, you'll have people that will be the early adopters.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:They'll be the ones that, not just people, but companies as well.
John:So like, or even governments, like people that will see this technology that's been invented
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and realize that this is a platform that's going to be very useful for whatever reason,
John:but it's still fringe. Very little of it exists. There's not much there.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So you need to invest in it and build it out before it becomes really recognized as a platform.
John:So the next stage after that is competition.
John:So you're not the only person that thinks as an early adopter, it might be the first smart,
John:true smartphone you could argue, I think, in its form that we believe today was the iPhone.
John:But it was shortly followed by many, many more different platforms, different companies,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:all competing, and that's that competition phase.
John:And so after you've reached that level of competition and the platform has essentially been,
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:has spread far and wide, it reaches the point of ubiquity, at which point when you say to someone,
John:"Hey, have you seen this new smartphone, blah, blah, blah," they know what you're talking about.
John:And when these things become ubiquitous, they've become ubiquitous for a reason.
John:They make our lives easier. You get on a train, you can go from New York to Boston
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:in not a very long period of time. That's a good thing. People want to get around.
John:It becomes ubiquitous. "Oh, I'm just going to jump on the train and go from blah, blah, blah."
John:It becomes a thing. "I'm just going to make a call on my phone." It becomes a thing.
John:It's ubiquitous everywhere. And then after that happens, then we reach this point,
John:and this is a very fuzzy line, but at some point we cross from ubiquity to reliance.
John:And that's the point at which you take that away, things start falling apart.
John:You start relying on this technology. So people will say, "Well, there's this town on the railway line
John:and there's no clean water source, but there's gold," let's say, or "There's no food,
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:there's no crops in the area because it's in the middle of a desert," or "There's a place that's 5.1 kilometers
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:up in Peru," for example. I was reading about it a few days ago where there's a gold mine,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:but there's very little sanitation or anything like that, and they bring mercury to the place
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:to leech out the gold and extract and purify the gold. So there's now people dying of mercury poisoning
Vic:That sounds great.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and stuff like that. Yeah, good stuff. But it's like the place has no reason to exist.
John:It's become reliant on the train going past to deliver supplies.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So you take the technology away, they're reliant on it, so you can't not have it anymore.
Vic:Right.
John:It's going to have real-world impacts, and the smartphone has crossed this line.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It is now something we rely on. There are forms that you fill in to play on sports teams,
John:to do banking with. There are some banks that are fully virtual.
John:You can't actually go into a bank branch. They don't have any.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:They're purely dependent upon the computers and our smartphones, and everyone these days has a smartphone,
John:so everyone's like, "Well, we're going to use smartphones for ticketing now."
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So you want to get on a train, like around town. You want to get on a bus.
John:You tap on when you get on the bus, you tap on when you get off, and we'll charge your credit card.
John:It's like these things have become the only way in which certain things can be done.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Now, a lot of people say, "Oh, that's bad. That's terrible. You shouldn't do that.
John:There should always be a manual system and a manual workaround."
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:And maybe that's true, but that doesn't change the fact that we have become reliant upon them.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So we now reach the sixth and final stage, which is the one everyone hates, and that is regulation.
John:Now, there's no reason why you've got to wait until you're reliant on something before it gets regulated.
John:In fact, you probably shouldn't, but the truth is Apple has reached that point with its smartphones.
John:It is now we are reliant upon these devices, and so governments like the EU are going to legislate.
John:In the U.S., apparently they don't like to legislate.
John:They just like to throw antitrust lawsuits at big companies because they think it's fun.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I don't know, but either way, it's going to get regulated.
Vic:That's a party, man.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's a party, and one person's invited, and his name's Tim Cook.
John:Anyway, the thing is that it's inevitable. Where we've reached right now is absolutely inevitable.
Vic:Mm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Now, whether or not the Department of Justice should have raised an antitrust lawsuit or not, in my opinion, no.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:They should never have bothered because it doesn't qualify as a monopoly.
John:They don't really have market power, and if they really wanted to do something properly,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:they would have gone down the road of the Digital Markets Act or something similar to it.
Vic:Yeah, legislation, yeah.
John:That's what they should have done, legislated, and eventually they will do that.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But that's a different department, right? That's not Department of Justice.
John:So that's some other department in the government writing legislation.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But, you know, hey, it's fine. It's whatever.
John:But the point is that I genuinely believe that people should have the right to install what they want on their device.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's their device. They've paid for it. Stop telling them what they can and can't do on their damn device.
John:If they want to do it, they can. It's that simple.
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:App stores, you know, can exist. There's no reason why they can't exist.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But that cannot be the only way that you can put...
John:Because it's like Apple doesn't own my phone. I own my phone.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So, like, don't tell me what I can and can't put on it.
John:That is the essence of an open market, is that you have a device where you can openly choose.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It'd be like, I bought my house from Apple, so now I have to buy only the breakfast cereal that Apple has on their shelf.
John:And they only have one kind. It's called Froot Loops.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And I hate Froot Loops because there's too much sugar in it.
Vic:Yeah, yeah.
John:And it's like, oh, too bad.
Vic:And it's basically, yeah, and it's basically just as much a general purpose computer as anything else these days.
John:What?
John:It's become that. Exactly.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Yep.
John:And some people don't even have a computer. They just have a smartphone.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:They don't have a desktop. They don't have a laptop.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Because you can do practically everything on a smartphone now.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I mean, it's insane. It's great. It's amazing. It's incredible.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:You can shove a computer in your pocket, effectively.
John:Like young me, you know, hacking away on the VIC-20.
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:When you look at an iPhone now, it's like, my God, how far we have come.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's insane.
John:But it's like, but Apple need to snap the f*** out of it.
John:Because seriously, they have lost.
John:They will lose in the long term. They will not get their way.
John:They will have to allow side loading. And they are going to have to get over it.
John:Do you think the world will ever see a world where people are using the same technology as they are using it?
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I think so, too.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And I think all it's going to do is highlight.
John:Because what this is doing is it will highlight there are alternatives for people that didn't already know this.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But you know what? The majority of the world's population already knows that there are alternatives,
John:and they are using them right now. So it's like, okay.
Vic:And they're making themselves look so greedy and petty.
John:Do you think Apple will ever be able to achieve what they want?
John:Yeah, they are.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's really, it's a sad day, I think.
John:But ultimately, I think this antitrusting will fail.
John:They certainly won't achieve what they want it to achieve.
John:It will get dragged on for years, if not decades.
Vic:Mm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:All the while, legislation will be written that will actually do the job properly.
John:And Apple will be forced to do it if they want to sell phones in their own country.
Vic:Yeah.
John:It's just that is 100% inevitable.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Yeah, I would stake Bitcoin on it.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Anyway, so look, I am going to tweak the numbers.
Vic:That's a strong bet.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Yeah, really.
John:Honestly, I wrote that article a few weeks ago.
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:It's up on Tech Distortion. There's a link to it in the show notes. Feel free to read it.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I know everyone has had their own opinions on this.
John:And there was a bunch of talk on other tech podcasts. I won't name them.
John:But it's funny that some people sort of say, well, smartphones are different.
John:And so therefore, they should be treated differently to a Mac platform.
John:And I'm like, we're arguing over physical differences that don't make any sense anymore.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:You know, like.
Vic:No, it's just a historical precedent that the MAC has always been unrestricted.
John:Well, I mean, here's the thought experiment, right?
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:If I have a laptop and I give it a virtual keyboard and a touch screen, which do exist on non-Apple machines, this is not a revolutionary idea.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:You could argue that at that point you have got a large phone.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Yeah.
John:OK, if you've got an iPad, that's what an iPad is already.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:Now, I can't use the iPad as an example in this thought experiment because the iPad runs iOS.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's restricted by the App Store. So that's not a valid comparative.
John:So take that off the table. But look at a Microsoft Surface, right?
Vic:Yep.
John:Microsoft Surface has got a touch screen. You can type on it on a keyboard and you can get a 3G modem and you can use it as a phone.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:So the only real difference in an Apple laptop is it's not got a touch screen or a 3G modem.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But you could add both if you wanted to. So if you do that, then suddenly it's OK to have an App Store.
John:Does that make any sense? Like, it's like just, it doesn't make any sense at all.
Vic:Sounds kind of crazy to me, John.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:In some of these cases, the silicon in these machines is identical.
John:Like the iPad, iPad Pros have the same damn chip in it as a Mac, as a MacBook Air does.
John:So, like, it's not even the technology underlying it. It's exactly the same tech made by exactly the same company.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's just the software that's written on it is slightly different. That's it.
John:When I say slightly, I know it's actually quite different, but that's not the point.
John:The point is it is just software. So you cannot justify it based on its utility.
John:It does not make sense. But never mind. It's fine.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I guess I just find the whole thing to be almost bloody minded, to be honest, from Apple.
John:And it's disappointing. I am disappointed in Apple.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Yeah.
John:I think that they're trying to dig their heels into what is a lost cause.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:And they're making themselves look so bad.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And they just need to get over it.
Vic:It's getting hard to see the difference between the two.
John:Yeah. Yeah, they are. But...
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:[silence]
Vic:I need some of this stuff, man.
John:Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Exactly.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:A couple of other comments that I've heard around the traps is, you know, like,
John:Apple's treating the situation like they're still the underdog.
John:I don't know if that's necessarily true.
John:I don't think that they're projecting where the underdog, we're going to fight this thing.
John:That's certainly not the way it comes across.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:If that's their mindset, I don't know how you can have that mindset
John:when you've got trillions of dollars in the bank.
John:Because they haven't been a scrappy startup for a very long time.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So I don't even think that they're that delusional or that they're that high in their own supply.
Vic:No.
John:I don't believe that.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:No, I can't remember which host said this.
John:[silence]
Vic:I think it was Marco, but it's an entitlement mindset, man.
John:Yeah.
Vic:This whole thing exists because of us.
John:[silence]
Vic:So we deserve our pound of flesh for everything that runs through it.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's kind of funny, you know, because I was thinking about the...
John:There's so many analogies that make this look like an insane conversation.
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:Like, Apple has no leg to stand on.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Think about roads.
John:Our governments and private companies build roads.
John:Okay, there are rules that say what safety features a vehicle has to have.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:There's training about how to drive on those roads, sure.
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:But ultimately, the government doesn't force you to only buy cars through the government.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:You can buy what... Yeah, you can buy...
Vic:Through them, yeah.
Vic:They don't get a cut of the cars.
John:Well, there's flaws in this analogy because depending upon what country you live in,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:you can argue, well, they do have import duties or they do have company taxes and so on.
Vic:Well, yeah, I guess that's true.
John:But it's not... Yeah, it's not really the same thing.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Anyone can... So if I buy a car and it's sanctioned, like, it's legally allowed to be sold in this country
John:and I can buy it in this country, you know, brand new, secondhand, third, fourth hand, whatever,
John:depending on how much I've got, what sort of car it is, I can drive that on whatever road I want.
John:There are no restrictions.
John:So it's like the government can't tell me not to drive it on this one particular road
John:because they own the road. You could argue they own all the roads.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It doesn't... It does not make any sense at all.
John:The government have no right to tell you what road you are and aren't allowed to drive on
John:because the government built the roads for everyone to use.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So if the argument is Apple said, well, we only bought our phones so that Apple users can use them.
John:I guess that's an obvious thing to say, but it's like, yeah, but they bought the phone, they own the phone.
John:So you can't tell them they can only run apps that you say they're allowed to run
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Yeah.
John:because you don't have the right to say that.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Yeah.
John:If it doesn't run because there's a technical reason it doesn't run, that's not what I'm talking about.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:If it could run, but you've just chosen to say, well, I don't like it, so you can't have it,
John:that's none of your damn business.
John:It's not your phone, Apple, it's my phone. You have zero rights on my phone.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I mean, another part of this Apple situation that really irritates me as well is the music thing.
John:It's got the same problem.
John:Like I remember one time a few years ago, I woke up and I went to play a song in Apple Music
John:from one of these bands that you will probably never have heard of,
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Australian bands from back in the '80s called 1927.
John:So despite the name of the band, none of them were born in 1927.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It doesn't matter.
John:The point is I went to listen to this song and at some point in the prior six months
John:since the last time I listened to this band, there was a dispute
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:and the band pulled their music from Apple.
John:So now I go to play and I can't play the music.
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:That's right.
Vic:It's unavailable.
Vic:Even though you'd previously added it to your library.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Now people say, well, you're streaming it, you didn't buy it.
Vic:Yep.
John:And it's like, well, that's not true.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I actually had a CD of this and I had a CD that I bought back in the '80s
John:and what I did is I digitized it and then I uploaded that in through the whole iTunes Match thing
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:and something got balked along the way.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I have no idea why, but all I do know is that at some point it preferred streaming.
John:I switched libraries, I switched machines, something lapsed somewhere, something broke somewhere.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I don't honestly know what happened.
John:A DRM copy that I could only stream.
Vic:And your ripped copy got replaced by, yep.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Another time I went on a flight and I pre-downloaded a whole bunch of music to my phone
John:and then Apple had decided and iOS had just decided that because I had only four or five gigabytes
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:of free space left that they would just get rid of a whole bunch of my MP3s that I downloaded
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:specifically because I was going to be on a long flight to the US.
John:And it's like, I can't stream because I'm on a plane.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:You can't.
Vic:And you get on the plane and you're all ready to jam out and there's no tune.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It's stuff like that that really grinds my gears.
John:It is my phone, don't delete my stuff off of it.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I'll delete it when I want to.
John:And that's my music that I paid for.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:You will not just take it away because you, for whatever reason, you've just decided that you should.
John:Now, I realize that they're subtly different arguments and there's a lot of nuance there that I'm glossing over,
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:but it's symptomatic of the current way of living versus the way we used to,
John:which is you go and buy something and it's yours.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I buy my phone, I own it.
John:I buy the CD, I own it.
John:I can use them whenever I want, however I want because they're mine.
John:They don't belong to Apple.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:They don't belong to the artist because I own a copy of the music.
John:I can play it when I want.
John:I own a phone.
John:I can use it when I want.
John:And where things start falling apart is when companies stop realizing that that is what people want.
Vic:Yep.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And they start thinking, well, you know, we could do is not you should do.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So, yeah, you could have an app store, but now you become the gatekeeper and everyone hates the gatekeeper
John:and you want to set yourself up for failure.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And this was always going to happen.
John:It was only a matter of time.
John:Anyway, so I don't think I've got too much more to say about that.
John:So if you want to read the article on tech distortion, there'll be a link in the show notes.
John:Knock yourselves out.
John:And, yes, I will adjust the numbers and hopefully by the time you read it,
John:the numbers will be adjusted and none of that will matter.
John:But there'll be a copy of it cached probably somewhere on the Internet so you can go back and say,
Vic:There you go.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:you know, John, there was a time when you were wrong.
John:And I'll be like, yeah, I guess.
Vic:No.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But, oh, well, I fixed it.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:So go on, whatever.
Vic:It's gonna be, I won't say exciting, it's gonna be interesting to see how this
Vic:thing plays out over the next probably couple of years, I'll bet.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I'm not sure the word "interesting" is the one I'd use.
John:I'd say it's going to be farcical to watch, but okay.
John:I mean, I don't know.
Vic:Well, yeah, that's a good one too.
Vic:Entertaining.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:I actually don't know if I'm going to have the patience to follow along with this
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:because the whole thing just seems so ridiculous.
John:The premise is so ridiculous.
John:I keep having flashbacks.
Vic:Who's the head of the DOJ these days?
John:Oh, I don't know.
Vic:I don't even know.
John:I don't know.
Vic:I was thinking maybe we could get him and Tim Cook to settle this thing with a trial
John:Yeah, I was actually thinking, you know, I need to go back to the whole --
Vic:by combat, a la Game of Thrones style.
Vic:[LAUGH]
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Loser goes out the moon door.
John:well, geez, that's harsh.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:I was actually thinking, you know, we should go back to the whole Hamilton days
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:because now I've seen Hamilton the musical
John:and I understand a little bit more now of American history,
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:modern history anyway.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Yeah, we should do the whole Pistols of Dawn thing
John:in the middle of some swamp.
Vic:Mm.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:And I demand satisfaction or blah, blah, blah, whatever the heck it is.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:But never mind.
Vic:That always works out well.
John:Yeah, nothing goes wrong.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Whatever. Anyway, it's fine, really.
John:So if you want to talk more about this,
John:you can reach me on the Fediverse at chigi@engineered.space
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:or the network at engineered@engineered.space.
John:If you are enjoying Pragmatic and you'd like to support us
John:and keep the show ad-free, you can by becoming a premium supporter.
John:Just visit engineered.network/pragmatic
John:to learn how you can help this show to continue to be made.
John:Thank you.
John:A big thank you to all of our supporters.
John:A special thank you to our silver producers,
John:Mitch Bilger, Shane O'Neill, Lesley,
John:Callan Frodelius-Fujimoto,
John:Jared Roman, Joel Maher,
John:Katarina Will, Chad Juring, and Ian Gallagher.
John:And an extra special thank you to our gold producer,
John:Stephen Bridle,
John:and our gold producer known only as R.
John:Pragmatic is also a podcasting 2.0 enhanced show.
John:And with the right podcast player,
John:you'll have episode locations, enhanced chapters,
John:and real-time subtitles on selected episodes,
John:and you can also stream sats and boost with a message if you like.
John:There's details on how, along with the Boostergram leaderboard,
John:for this and all the shows on our website.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:If you'd like to get in touch with Vic,
John:what's the best way they can get in touch with you, mate?
Vic:Just look for me all over the Internet, just because someone.
John:Awesome.
Vic:I think the thing you can most reliably find me doing these days is streaming
Vic:games sporadically on the Twitch, as we cut someone.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Sporadic twitching.
John:That's how we know you're alive.
John:Excellent.
Vic:Sporadic twitching.
John:[laughs]
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:Oh, my God.
Vic:Sporadic twitching.
John:There you go.
John:No, that is not the show title.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:This is not the episode title.
John:Okay.
John:Mm.
Vic:No.
John:No.
Vic:I've struck out twice.
John:Yep.
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:That's it.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Third one, you're out.
John:Okay.
John:Special thank you to our supporters,
John:and a big thank you to everyone for listening.
John:And as always, thank you, Vic.
John:It's always great having you on, mate.
John:[no dialogue]
Vic:It is always great to be here.
Vic:Thank you for having me.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Moving on, and by saying moving on, I haven't got too much else to say.
John:I did, however, want to talk to you about, very briefly,
John:before we wrap this up, about Doctor Who.
John:And this is gonna be a spoiler warning for
John:anyone who hasn't watched the Christmas special, which was four months ago.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And anyone who hasn't watched any of the trailers for
John:the forthcoming season, this year in 2024, with the new Doctor.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So if you are one of those people, or if you are someone that does not like
John:Doctor Who and wonders why the heck Vic and I love Doctor Who, well, that's fine.
John:It's all good.
Vic:Okay.
John:All right, so I don't do spoiler horns.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So thoughts and comments?
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Would you like a spoiler sound?
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:No, I would not like a spoiler sound.
John:This is pragmatic.
John:We don't do sounds here, right?
Vic:Mm-hm.
John:This is chaos.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:We don't do sounds here.
Vic:Okay.
John:So thoughts on the Christmas special?
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Do you have thoughts on the Christmas?
Vic:I didn't think it was terrible.
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:I didn't think it was my favorite intro to a new Doctor story.
John:[LAUGH]
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:That is so delightfully politically correct of you.
Vic:I did enjoy it, and I am looking forward to shooting as the Doctor.
John:I didn't.
John:[LAUGH]
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:I liked him.
Vic:Some of the writing I thought was kind of weak.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:You think?
John:Yes, I would agree with that assessment.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:None of my complaints have to do with him or Ruby, or I can't remember.
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:I feel terrible.
Vic:What's the actress's name playing Ruby?
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I don't remember.
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:I thought they were fantastic.
Vic:I just, I don't think that they had a ton of great material to work with,
Vic:which was really ironic because I really felt like RTD kind of knocked it out of
John:Yeah, so that was the other thing.
Vic:the park with the tenant specials.
Vic:But then maybe he spent everything on those and he needed more time to recoup
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:before they made that Christmas special.
Vic:I don't know.
John:Yeah.
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Like I said, it wasn't terrible.
Vic:I did enjoy watching it.
Vic:It was a good, fun Doctor Who romp, but I just,
Vic:I felt like it wasn't the greatest new Doctor story.
John:No, I would echo your sentiments, but I'd be slightly more brutal.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:And I would say it was poorly written.
John:It was a bit, how should we say?
Vic:Yeah.
John:It was almost too childish, as in really,
John:Doctor Who has traditionally walked a fine line between being a kids show
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:that's a kids show and being genuinely scary.
John:And some of the best Who that you're gonna get is the stuff that is scary,
Vic:Right.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:not campy kid stuff that is meant to be cute and
John:funny that would make a four year old giggle.
John:But no one else is gonna like cringe maybe.
Vic:Yeah, I think they do.
John:There was too much cringing for me to enjoy that.
John:It's like there were moments, and I actually think that the two lead actors,
John:actor and actress, I think they've got chemistry, to be honest.
John:I actually enjoyed, they do, I think they do.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So I think that they've chosen well.
John:I have high hopes for both of them as how they act this season.
Vic:Yeah.
John:I just freaked out, cuz I'm like, I really hope that RTD brings his game for
John:this season in terms of the writing, because that was not a strong start at all.
John:That was not good.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:So my son, my oldest son who loves all of the Modern Who,
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:he's watched almost every episode of Modern Who since 2005.
Vic:Mm-hm.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:There were a few minutes left in the episode, he got up and
John:walked out of the room.
John:He hated it.
Vic:He didn't even watch the end.
Vic:[LAUGH]
John:He hated it.
Vic:Yeah.
John:He said, no, I can't do it.
Vic:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:I just can't, I'm sorry, I'm done.
John:I'm out.
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Some things that I do like about it and the potential for the future season
Vic:is while I don't think they nailed it or knocked it out of the park
John:Yeah.
Vic:in that particular episode, I like the idea of the premise
Vic:that we're going to start dabbling into some fantasy, so to speak,
Vic:and some supernatural because that's something that, like, I mean,
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Yeah.
Vic:I don't, what I'm about to say is going to sound like a really weird,
Vic:stupid statement, but like Doctor Who always tried to kind of ground itself
Vic:in sci-fi reality.
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:It wasn't-- there were monsters and there were bad guys, but there were aliens
John:Yeah.
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:and there was science or pseudoscience behind it all.
John:,
Vic:It wasn't just pure supernatural, magical fantasy type stuff.
Vic:So I'm interested in-- because I think that opens a lot of new doorways
John:and
Vic:for a lot of fresh stories and bad guys that we haven't really seen before
Vic:in Doctor Who, and I am very excited about that potential.
Vic:I don't really like that-- while I really enjoyed the specials
John:that's
Vic:with David Tennant and Catherine Tate, I don't really like that this
Vic:Mavity thing is sticking around, it seems like.
John:just silly.
John:Honestly,
Vic:But I think that, you know, that's RTD doing RTD.
Vic:He wanted to plant a seed that he can run with throughout the season, I guess,
John:when
Vic:so we'll see how that plays out, but I don't know.
Vic:Every time I hear "Mavity," I just like-- I kind of cringe a little.
Vic:No, they look pretty exciting.
John:I saw the trailers for this upcoming season, they didn't look that bad.
John:They looked like, that's not so bad.
John:They look good to me, so we'll see.
Vic:Mm-hmm.
John:And I'm really, really, really hoping that the Christmas special was just rushed.
Vic:Mm-hmm.
John:And they didn't, yeah, they just rushed it and it was undercooked.
John:I don't know.
John:But I wanna circle back to the whole, the three David Tennant specials.
John:Cuz I've gotta admit, I thoroughly enjoyed all of them.
Vic:Mm-hmm.
John:The first one was, I thought, had its moments where it was a little bit sluggish.
Vic:That was by far my favorite of the three.
John:But there was so much good, I guess I was just so
John:excited to see David Tennant and Catherine Tate back again.
John:I was like, the second episode was absolutely fantastic on the edge of.
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:Yeah, that was so good.
John:It was good classic who, it was, I just thoroughly enjoyed that.
Vic:Mm-hmm.
Vic:It was just nothing but an hour of sheer delight of David Tennant
John:And then the third episode.
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:and Catherine Tate just doing what they do best
John:I know.
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:and knocking it out of the park, man.
John:Yeah, that was so good.
Vic:It was funny, it was creepy, it was-- yeah.
John:It was so good.
John:It was classic who and I loved it.
John:And then.
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
John:It was creepy, yeah.
John:But then the third episode, I also,
Vic:Mm-hmm.
Vic:Neil Patrick Harris.
John:I'd probably say it was my second favorite episode, was the third one.
John:And as much as the actor's name, I'm feeling bad I didn't take notes on this.
John:You'll say his name and I'll know who you mean,
John:because he was the guy from Modern Family.
John:Thank you, Neil Patrick Harris.
Vic:Yeah.
John:He, I mean, he, the thing that I loved about his performance
Vic:Mm-hmm.
John:as the Celestial Toymaker was that he threw absolutely everything into it.
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:He did.
John:Like he did not hold back a single bit.
John:And I love it when actors do that and they can pull it off.
John:And he pulled it off, even though there were moments there when he was like
Vic:[laughs]
John:running around through unit HQ and to Spice Girls, which was just.
John:[LAUGH]
John:It was a bit much, but honestly, I still thought it was.
Vic:Almost as shocking as when we heard Britney Spears in "The End of the World."
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:[laughs]
Vic:They played it on the iPod jukebox.
John:Yeah, that one.
John:That's right.
John:Yeah, that's right.
John:Yeah, this is classic Earthrealm music from whatever.
John:It was like Toxic by Britney Spears.
Vic:[laughs]
John:Yeah, but yeah, but like watching him like running around to that and
Vic:Mm-hmm.
John:choreographed and everything, it was so ridiculous.
Vic:Mm-hmm.
John:But even though it was so ridiculous, somehow he still pulled it off in a way
Vic:Mm-hmm.
John:that was, it was both funny and almost a bit scary.
John:It's, it's, yeah, so honestly I have, I have very few complaints about that,
John:that episode, but I just preferred the second one better.
John:But at the end of it all, the thing,
Vic:Yeah.
John:the overwhelming feeling I had was, why did they only make three?
Vic:Yeah.
John:[LAUGH]
John:Please, I could have done with some more.
John:Yes, they could have and should have.
Vic:They could have done a whole season of that as far as I'm concerned.
Vic:Tennant's not even my favorite doctor.
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:He's probably like, I don't know, my second or third favorite doctor,
Vic:but I just-- I really enjoyed him in these specials, man.
John:Yeah, yeah.
Vic:Which I was honestly surprised by,
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:because there wasn't ever a point when I dreaded him coming back in these specials
Vic:when they dropped that surprise bomb on us,
Vic:which I was completely surprised by.
John:Mm.
Vic:I was completely out of the spoiler loops.
Vic:I didn't see that coming at all.
Vic:But near the end of his original run,
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:I was really kind of ready for him to go and kind of ready to move on,
Vic:because I just felt like it was getting to be way too heavy
Vic:and way too David Tennant-centric, for lack of a better word.
John:Yeah.
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:You know, it was too doctor-centric.
Vic:You know, his last handful of episodes, he had no regular companions,
Vic:and some of those stories weren't the greatest,
John:Yeah, that was good.
Vic:although "The Waters of Mars" was fantastic.
John:Yeah.
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:Yeah.
Vic:But once these things got started, I just-- I don't know.
Vic:In a lot of ways, he was still Tenn,
John:Mm.
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:but in a lot of ways, he was something else, too.
Vic:And I really enjoyed the "something else" that he brought to it.
Vic:And I enjoyed, you know, Donna once she'd gotten all her memories back
John:Mm.
Vic:and she was fully realized again
Vic:and the way that character had evolved and grown.
Vic:And I just-- I don't-- I've got mixed feelings on the whole.
Vic:There's two Doctors out there floating around now,
Vic:but I honestly wouldn't complain about a second parallel series
John:[BLANK_AUDIO]
Vic:about the Doctor and Donna's adventures.
John:[LAUGH]
Vic:[silence]
John:Exactly.
John:So, this is the thing that, you know, I mean, I understand that, and
Vic:Shudi Gatwa, I think.
John:I don't think it's wrong, and maybe it's just the nostalgia, but that's all there is to it.
John:So, I'm gonna mangle this, the new doctor's name.
John:Was it Naka, Nakani, Kut, Kut, Shudi, Shudi Gatwa, there we go.
Vic:Yeah.
John:I mean, he's young, he's bringing a lot of energy.
Vic:[silence]
John:He reminds me a little bit of Matt Smith in the sort of level of energy,
Vic:[silence]
John:the kind of youthful sort of energy he's bringing to the role.
John:Which is, don't get me wrong, I think that that is a good thing.
John:Whether or not he can pull it off or not, I'm still not sold, but
Vic:[silence]
John:I will be watching to find out.
Vic:Right.
John:But it's like, it's not that, because you can't just keep going back to Tenet over and over and over again.
John:You can't bring back all the old favorites all the time, nor should you.
John:I think Doctor Who's made its success and its longevity is based on the fact that they don't do that.
Vic:No.
John:They only bring them together for specials, and maybe that's fine.
Vic:Mm-hmm.
John:But there was just something about, like, the second and third episodes of that brief three that really,
Vic:[silence]
John:I actually was mourning the fact that that was the Who that I loved the most.
Vic:Yeah.
John:You know, like, so from 2005, so the first one, Christopher Eccleston, yes.
Vic:[silence]
Vic:Eccleston?
Vic:Yeah. Yeah.
John:He was amazing. David Tenet was amazing. Matt Smith was amazing.
Vic:He was.
John:Took me a while to get the hang of Matt Smith, but once I got the hang of him, I loved him.
Vic:[silence]
John:And then after that, yeah, he's a lot of people's favorites.
Vic:He's probably honestly my favorite Doctor.
Vic:[laughs]
John:A lot of people's favorite, I think.
Vic:Yeah.
John:And then things got a little bit too heavy too quickly.
Vic:[silence]
John:They wanted to break the mold and shake it up a bit for that very first season of Peter Capaldi.
Vic:Cabaldi.
John:And that turned a lot of people off. They softened him up after that.
Vic:[silence]
Vic:However, they did introduce Missy, which was fantastic.
John:They did, and Missy's awesome, but still.
Vic:[silence]
Vic:That's the thing.
John:And then I felt so frustrated with Jodie Whittaker because the material that they gave her and Shibnall really did, really squandered.
John:They squandered.
Vic:Yeah.
John:Yeah, she did.
Vic:I think she was a little bit of a stick so bad,
John:Yeah.
Vic:because honestly, I think that given better writings and production,
John:Yeah.
Vic:I think that she probably could have displaced Matt Smith for me
Vic:as my favorite Doctor.
John:Yeah.
Vic:The energy that she brought to what she had to work with
John:Hmm. Yeah.
Vic:was pretty fantastic,
Vic:considering what she had to work with was poo-poo.
Vic:[laughs]
Vic:You know?
John:So, I sort of, so having been through the Capaldi roller coaster and then the Jodie Whittaker sort of almost like a stalemate really,
Vic:[silence]
Vic:They wasted her so bad.
John:and it was like her acting talent and what she brought to the role was really undercut by poor writing and just nonsensical stuff.
John:They wasted her talent so much. I'm really frustrated with that because she could have done so much more with it.
Vic:[silence]
John:But irrespective, it's done now. So, we now move forward and having that brief taste of Tenet for a few episodes just made me realize how much we've lost in Doctor Who over the last six or seven years, maybe 10 years.
Vic:Yeah.
John:It's like that, that is what I found myself as I was watching those episodes.
Vic:[silence]
John:I'm like, "Why can't they make more?" And it's like, "Yeah, but they can't just keep going back doing the same thing."
Vic:You know what?
John:But it's like, "Yeah, but they used to do it so much better than they have." So, what's going on?
John:Hmm.
Vic:You know what I'd like to see happen more than anything?
John:Yep.
Vic:I don't know. Maybe it's possibly already in the works.
Vic:I don't know.
Vic:Like I said, I don't pay attention to any of the blogs anymore.
Vic:I only listen to the Doctor Who podcast when they're doing recaps
Vic:when the show is running.
John:Mm-hmm.
John:Yeah.
Vic:I listen to that too.
Vic:Matt Smith was undoubtedly my favorite Doctor,
Vic:but my favorite era was the Tenet era.
Vic:Because you had this RTD show running
Vic:and writing some episodes,
Vic:and you had people like Stephen Moffat
Vic:and a handful of other really fantastic writers
Vic:writing episodes. I'd really like to see Stephen Moffat
Vic:come back as a writer.
John:Yeah, so would I.
John:Yeah.
Vic:He wasn't the greatest showrunner in my opinion,
John:Yeah.
Vic:but I really love...
Vic:I've always loved a good Moffat-written episode.
Vic:[silence]
John:Well, I mean, he was behind the Weeping Angels, you know, like Blink.
Vic:Mm-hmm.
John:And he's.
John:Mm.
Vic:Well, and all the way back to even Season 1, you know,
Vic:the Unearthly Child and the Doctor dances and stuff.
John:Yeah.
John:That's true.
Vic:And I think...
John:Yeah.
John:Silence in the library.
Vic:I may be wrong about this, but I think that
Vic:the library episode, I think, was him.
Vic:You know, when we get introduced to River Song?
John:Yeah.
Vic:Yeah. And it just...
John:Yeah, or Riverstone was his, his, yeah.
Vic:So, so many great episodes came from his mind.
John:Mm.
Vic:And now that they're dabbling into
Vic:the fantasy and the magical and that type of element,
Vic:he's got a whole fresh new palette he could work with.
Vic:[laughs]
John:Yeah, well, potentially. I guess we'll see.
Vic:[silence]
John:But in any case, at the moment, that was all I really wanted to talk about.
John:I, I am, I'm nervous about the new season, but I am still looking forward to it.
John:I do, I want to give, I want to give it the benefit of the doubt and see if they can turn this around.
John:So, they've got, they've got good chemistry.
John:He's bringing a lot of youthful energy to the role, which is great.
Vic:Mm-hmm.
John:And honestly, I'm, I'm curious to see where it goes.
Vic:[silence]
John:I just hope that the RTD and his writing, and as a showrunner, does a better job than the last bloke.
Vic:Yeah.
John:It's hard, hard to do worse.
John:Anyway.
John:All right, so.
Vic:Yeah. I really honestly...
Vic:It is.