MIX-13
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[00:00:00] James: Frank in the matter of three or four days. I've never seen so many high exciting comments and then deflating comments on one episode of this podcast that we did, because I aptly decided to put out this podcast on Monday, which we do every Monday, by the way. And you know, we record a few days early and we get real excited about topics.

And you got excited about a superconductor. Potential Superconductor, the LK 99. So I aptly named the episode last week, the Rise of LK 99, but we may want to change this episode to the fall of LK 99. Frank Kruger. 

[00:00:38] Frank: Yeah. Yeah. Um, well, it turns out LK 99 is more of a conductor than a super conductor. You know, we, we all wanna be super sometimes and we really.

Thought it was super. No. What it is is we really all hoped it was super because it would be wonderful to have, for all the numerous reasons I mentioned on the air, and I'm pretty sure I hedged. I hedged. But in my heart of hearts, I really thought we had it this time. But no, all our hopes are dashed. A few people have replicated it.

When they replicated it, it looked like the pictures neat. Um, It smelled like the pictures, tasted like the pictures, but, uh, ended up just working like a normal old hunk of metal. You know, put a current through it. It has some resistance. No super connectivity. It does float in a strong magnetic field, but it's more, it's more of like a, a dipole magnet.

It's just, it's just like a piece of, you could, you could get a piece of lead to do that if you tricked it. 

[00:01:42] James: Yeah. I mean, so. It is, you know, you know, there was excitement just around like any new product launch. There's a, there's hype, right? And the question is, does it, does the product at the end of the day, does the movie right live up to the hype?

We know that the Barbie movie did 'cause it was fantastic, but did anything else live up to the hype and yeah. LK 99, I. I did not, you know, there's a lot of people skeptical and I think that there's, there's always room in any scientific discovery for skepticism, which is why scientists and go to work trying to replicate it and trying to get it, uh, to work and, and to find the results.

So it was a pretty quick turnaround, I would say. Um, do you think there's any hope for LK 99? Like what's the next steps in this journey of the superconductor room temperature extravaganza? I 

[00:02:23] Frank: am not a chemist. I am not a physicist here, so I would just can say the latest news says no, not much for LK 99.

Um, but it was super fun to witness it all because I. With, even with the downfall of Twitter, it was still a very active like Twitter community of people, like labs getting together and labs being like, we ordered this material, that material, well, here's the shipping for it. People are doing tracking numbers.

They're like, we're grinding stuff in a pestle right now. It was very like 18th century science happening and it was exciting because we rarely get to see like, Science happen at such an accelerated pace. Science is usually, we invest $10 million a year into some research group and they publish four papers, and you do that for 50 years and maybe you get a drug out of it.

You know, that's, that's how science goes. And so it was fun to see like someone just put out a paper. Look at this magical material I made and my witches concoction and everyone else put their concoctions together. And then the material ended up being a little bit boring, sad science one. It was a very fun, rapid demonstration of the scientific.

Process. Here's a hypothesis, it's, it doesn't exist until it can be replicated. It's failed to replicate, so it doesn't exist. Uh, I'm still a sucker though. I'm still romantic. I'm still an optimist. I think we'll, we'll get one before I'm dead. We will have a room temperature, superconductor. 

[00:03:51] James: Yeah. No, I agree with you.

I think that this was super fun to watch and the news because honestly, how often has a. You know, superconductor been in the news in my lifetime, not that much that I can. Remember at least that like, was this, I mean, maybe 'cause I mean, not since we've been doing this, uh, podcast, at least because I feel like we would've talked about it.

Maybe there's one. Did we miss one at some point? 

[00:04:13] Frank: We missed one. Yeah, there was a covid one and everyone got excited because we were all in Covid times and we're like, oh, a Superconductor suite. And this one was even, um, It was room temperature, but you still needed to have the pressures at non atmospheric pressures.

So even that one was even a, a more, uh, a, a worse superconductor. That one didn't pan out either. So these come up. They just come up in cycles. But we really thought it was this one, or at, we thought it really thought it was this one. 

[00:04:41] James: It's okay. Well, our, our fingers are still crossed that one day we'll get our superconductor.

Uh, but thanks everyone for your kind. Ish comments on YouTube. We appreciate that. And for tuning in, of course, you can always leave comments for us anywhere. Uh, there's comments on the website. We have a contact button. Uh, or you can leave a comment on YouTube if you are watching this at a leisure date or in real time.

Uh, so it's always, it's always fun because I think that we get to put out these podcasts and we don't necessarily look back at them and reflect on them. We do on occasion. There's always, sometimes a follow up. We don't do too many follow ups, but I wanted to, um, Double click on your sadness. And, uh, about, about, about this one 

[00:05:20] Frank: that is, so Scott Hanselman of you double click?

Or is that a Microsoft thing? 

[00:05:24] James: I. It's a microsofty thing. Yeah, it's a, sometimes you got a triple click or quadruple click. Ooh. If you're really just really clicking, that's a little 

[00:05:31] Frank: personal. Don't, don't you dare. Right. Click on me. Click, click. I'm always the relationship's 

[00:05:35] James: over then. So much clicking happening.

Um, okay, so I wanted to talk about a few different topics today because Neat. We're in the middle of. Uh, we're in the middle of summer and we have holidays and we have adventuring. And Frank and I necessarily haven't been doing a lot of, uh, coding. We, we've been pressing some buttons. We've been clicking, we've been trying some new things.

Uh, I released officially, uh, an update. To my in-app billing library, uh, that's been in beta for a year and now is official and I've updated a thousand times. Uh, so, so that's out there with T .NET seven and MAUI support and all that. Goodness. Uh, Frank's been doing some vision stuff, but I thought what was fascinating about the world of software is we often talk about what we're building, but I wanna talk a little bit and we, we have a few different topics.

I think today we had one already, and this is the next one, is how sort of these mega. Pieces of software that we use, which would be maybe like X Twitter and YouTube for example, are going through mass experimentation, but also changing some of the fundamental pieces based on whether you're logged in, whether you turn on features or whether you do something else.

So let me break this down here and set this up and then have a discussion about it first. Because I think it impacts how maybe we design software or how we offer up features inside of our mobile applications. These are a little bit different 'cause they are web. But if you think about first X Twitter, I think that it's gone on an interesting journey.

Alan first came in and he was like, Hey, let's change it. So when you go to twitter.com, you see tweets, you see news, you see stuff going on. You understand what this product is, then. AI happened and he's like, no, don't do that. And then he actually got to the point where, as if you don't even log in, You can't see a tweet, so it is now a walled garden.

Now, something recently happened on Twitter, and I don't know if you know about this because it happened to me because at work I'm in logged into a lot of work comp, uh, work, YouTube accounts, and on those accounts we have our watch history turned off because often I can accidentally click on a video or do a thing and I don't want stuff in watch history and recommendations or anything.

And now on those accounts, when I go to youtube.com, it shows me nothing. It just says your watch history is off. Good luck, buddy. That's it. Like it won't show you anything at, at all. 'cause it's like, oh, we can't, we can't, we can't, uh, use your data. Yeah. So you don't get to get any recommendations or see any trending videos or anything at all.

And it's really funny because in the past on let's say the dot .NET YouTube, it would show me programming videos even though I don't have the watch history on, because. It knows that my account is programming videos, right? The videos that I mm-hmm. Am. That, that we put out on the channel so it would show adjacent programming things, but I don't even get that anymore.

It's wild. So I wanted to talk about these new walled gardens that are popping up all around us. 

[00:08:44] Frank: Uh, okay, good. I I wasn't sure if you were gonna blame AI for that or the No. Walled garden. It's, it's not the AI's fault. They're using AI for bad there. Yeah, they want their analytics so they can give you targeted ads so they get better quick through on their ads so you get more money on their ads.

It's how the internet has run since 1992. No, no, nothing. Nothing surprising there. So what is surprising is the growth of the walled gardens, and I don't know if this is an ebb and flow thing, you know, I remember the early social nets. I remember the BBSs, you know, CompuServe. I started my internet journey on CompuServe, which was a walled garden.

You had to pay $10 a month or whatever to be on CompuServe, and I started in a walled garden and then broke out into the internet. But I missed my walled garden because it was curated and it was nice. And you know, anything with a smaller group of people is basically better than a larger group under some, uh, conditions.

You know where I've noticed it is, um, when I'm doing competitive analysis for an app idea that I have. So I'll have some awesome app idea, James. All my app ideas are winners, but just to make sure that it's a winning app idea, I like to go to the app store and see what the competition's doing. And I'm looking for two things.

Are there competitors? Um, And, uh, if, if not that can be troublesome in both ways, that could mean there's no market for the app. But there's usually still apps, even if there's no market for the app or your idea is actually original, that that can be one reason. But usually there's some competitors out there, and I wanna try all the competitors apps, and I just go on an app buying spree, and I buy every app, even though every app is free now, they're all free.

Because the very first thing, you click on that icon and the very first thing it says is you gotta log in to proceed after this screen. So it's amazing how many apps have become walled gardens, and it's the freemium model, but it's not in the freemium model. You are supposed to give some free experience and they'll argue it's still freemium because they're not charging me, but they make me create an account and it's like, Accounts are the currency now in an advertising world and a tracking world, accounts are currency and that's, it's weird that the freemium model still, if it's, it doesn't feel free to me.

I don't wanna create an account, and so I'm terrible even when I'm doing competitive analysis where I should. Spend a hundred dollars and buy a bunch of apps just to see like how they go. And I certainly should be willing to create stupid account info for all these apps. I still say no, and I delete that app, and if you don't give me an actual experience right away, then I don't even look at your app as a competitor because I would never release my app that way.

But I wonder if my standards are different than everyone else's. But, uh, How do you feel about walled garden 

[00:11:35] James: apps? Yeah, you know, I think when it comes to apps, I think that's a great point because, you know, I think that we've had these walled gardens in like mobile games, for example, which end up putting up these barriers to hinder your progress unless you, I.

Do microtransactions and pay for stuff and do these things. I was just watching my niece play some, I don't dunno, animal slot machine gardening game. I don't understand it. Damn. There was like, 

[00:12:01] Frank: you got a nice 

[00:12:02] James: someone. Yeah, sure. There was like, yeah, there's like conquest happening, there's like 8,000 things happening and every time you wanna, you like, oh, you want fe like, and there's these numbers and it's just, it's not even like, uh, it's not even like coins anymore.

It's like, oh, do you wanna. Give the carrot two apples. A dollar 99, you wanna do a hundred apples, 9 99, 9, 9. It's like they're just putting the nu they don't even care anymore. They're just like, whatever. And I was like, that is wild. Because that, but that stuff has been around for a while, right? Where it's like, oh, you can, you can feed, uh, your, your bunny one carrot for the next 24 hours.

All it's gonna be real hungry in 24 hours. So maybe you want to give it this, but No, I agree with you. It's actually. Kind of bananas when you sometimes install an application that doesn't even seems like it needs an account or needs anything at all. You're like, I don't understand why this would even be doing this.

And then you're, you're forced to go down this route. Now I also am in the space where I, you know, just sign in with, uh, apple ID at this point and kind of do a fake one. However, I. I have probably installed a bunch of apps, been forced to, you know, try it out, create an account, and then that means I have a random account that's just lingering out there.

There's not like a way to delete anything. Now I feel like I just went through this where exactly what you're talking about. I can't remember what the app was, but it is, you know, just everywhere. You, you really can't, you can't get away from it in any form or fashion. Anywhere. But one thing that is peculiar to me is the opposite of all of this, which is like booking airfare, uh, which doesn't require like any information at the time of booking.

I mean, it does later. You gotta verify you need your birthday and stuff. Mm-hmm. But it's just like six, uh, it's a six digit code. Yeah. And it's just out there. Like, that's a great 'cause it's a great experience. That means like the barrier of entry for anything is, is, you know, out there. Right? But we were just thinking of this experience with my, uh, father-in-law, for example.

And like, we're just even trying to share photos, right? And how do we do this? And oh, is I gotta Google, we gotta get him an account. Oh, we gotta log in, can't he log in? What about his password? It's just like, oh, this is like, you know, You know? Yeah. Just out there. And it's just mind boggling to, to try to set all these different things up, which I think hinder, uh, certain folks from adopting it, including yourselves, or like my father-in-law who's not gonna sign up for a hundred accounts.

He's not gonna want to do this. So that initial block in the wall is what's really hurting, you know? And to me it's always, I think my favorite apps that were out there were like Overcast and maybe PocketCasts out there where it's like, I'm just a podcast app. Mm-hmm. Don't make me log in, like I'm just, just let me listen to podcasts now at some point where I want to synchronize something.

Or I want some premium feature or something else, then I will, you know, sign in and create an account. But, uh, you know, when I was using PocketCasts, it was like forever, right? The reason I wanted to sign in is 'cause I wanted to sign in on the browser and local, right? So that way it would synchronize stuff between the two.

But beyond that, yeah, it's mind boggling. 

[00:15:24] Frank: Yeah, and I'm sure everyone has their strategies. Like, yes, I can keep a second email account that I use when I'm doing research like this, but people do email verification oftentimes when you want to create an account, and that means I have to keep the email. I. Uh, account logged in on my phone, and then it's another account there.

I could use my personal account or my work account, but those email addresses already get spammed enough and I cannot control them. I don't wanna do it. I, I'm really curious what, like, what do the kids do these days? Do I, do they knope out like I do, or? Do they just create an account because that's sad If everyone's just creating all these various accounts.

What are the downsides of these various accounts? Honestly, not much. Um, make sure you use a unique password, so if it does get breached, it won't affect anything else. They'll probably sell your email. Even though though, if they promise not to, they definitely will sell your email to someone. So I guess I should get over it, but.

Nope. Right now in, in, in my stage in life, a I'll never release an app that works that way. Accounts are fine. Totally like you said, but you, that initial experience, the app should work out of the, out of the gate, and if it doesn't, I'm just a hundred percent, a hundred percent. Ouch. Yeah. Am I a hundred percent unless I bought an IOT device?

'cause those stupid things make you log into every 

[00:16:50] James: account. Yeah. That's the, that's the wild part, right? Which is, I was thinking about that. 'cause like our sauna app or whatever, like the very first thing you gotta do is like create an account. Like, you know what I mean? It's like, all right, you gotta, it's like, but every single thing that we do is.

Then link to a server Now, I don't know. And we're taking this conversation in a weird way of walled gardens. And then why do you serve? Why do, why are we always reliant on somebody running a server somewhere? Because that's what it feels like. And yes, there's plenty of servers, there's plenty of cloud services.

However, what happens when those go away? So your IOT devices, right? Like I was in. There's two things I'll talk about first. Like as I was in my Govi app, which Govi is like, and I have this like, you know, I have, uh, GOVI and I have this Madea app, and they're like the same app. Like all these iot apps are like all the same now they're like cookie cutter off the shelves.

'cause they're all doing the same thing, right? They're they're connecting to a Bluetooth thing. They're getting your wifi information, they're selling your geolocation because you need the geolocation to get the wifi information. That's the only way to connect to it. And you're like, oh my God. But the Govi app is like, Wild.

But then I was like, okay, like let me see what other things they have and like they don't even sell my device anymore. And I'm like, okay, is it discontinued? Will I still be able to connect to it? Like, you know, the little water sensors that we talked about before? I'm like, oh my goodness. Right? Like that's wild.

But then I think about it is, well, at least they have multiple apps that are out there. Like this sauna company they got. They're the sauna company, right? Like, they're not even the place that I bought the sauna from. There's some like off the shelf thing, like what if that goes down? Well, at least I can press a button.

But, you know, it's just like, well now it's meaningless. Like, why did I pay extra for this thing? But then you know about the Van Van Moof bicycles, van Moof, van Hoof, van Moof, no van, 

[00:18:33] Frank: who do not know about the v von Hoof. 

[00:18:35] James: Von Hoof, uh, VOF. It's a, it's an e-bike, uh, company that just filed for bankruptcy and their bikes.

Are all tied to an application. So to even unlock the bike and use it and set different things, you have to have an app. Yeah. And now these bikes are gonna be worthless because there's not a random server that can communicate to the bicycle. Talk about a walled garden. We're now, now we're just talking about the login.

The walled garden is this random server running over here that someone is paying for. Mean, everything's closed source, so it's not like you can just, someone's gonna spin up your own personal van, van oof, you know, bicycle, uh, server. But, oh my gosh, it's just, Bananas to me that, you know, it makes sense.

Like, you know, I think with my animal crossing app is a great example of, uh, a garden that was not walled at all because I didn't even have username and passwords. I had quids that were your user accounts because that was your idea. We talked about the podcast way back, but you could use everything in the app, everything at all.

You didn't really have a user account until you synchronized it. Right. And, and even then it was seamless to you. It's like, here it is. Right. Um, I like that idea. I like the idea of. I like the idea of almost like iCloud, where like iCloud could magically back stuff up for me. Mm-hmm. It doesn't even, mm-hmm.

I need, I don't need an, it just, it's just happening. Right. The only time I need to actually log into an account is when I need to go to another device or do something else. You know, like just magically synchronize some stuff and you know, apple and Google do that for you automatically. Why is it, why does this have to work this way?

I think is kind of, Mind-boggling to me in some way. Yeah. 

[00:20:19] Frank: Yeah. And it's tricky from like an engineering perspective. You say, well, if I'm ever gonna have data sharing between devices, then I might as well jump to server immediately. Yeah. Whereas an alternative engineering approaches, well, okay, I'll still do local data because I don't have sharing right now.

And then when we do want the sharing feature, oh, I'm gonna have to write this really nasty sync code. It's gonna be nasty because it wasn't designed that way from the beginning. But honestly, both are bad. Writing. Writing a server based app is hard. Um, 'cause networks can fail all the time and you have to design it for network failures.

I mean, yes, the file system can fail, but it's probably not going to, the chances of the file system failing are very slim. And if it does tos, the device. Both engineering approaches are valid and both suck. Both are terrible. I personally fall on the side of, if I want accounts, I'll add them later and deal with the sinking problem.

I was thinking like we keep saying walled garden and I was trying to kind of define it a little better in my head and I was like, well, my apps are. Old fashioned pay for app. You wanna use my app, give me some money, and now you can use my app in perpetuity for the rest of time until your device fries or something terrible happens with the oss 'cause I'm gonna keep updating it with oss.

Uh, is that a walled garden? I don't know. Like, it almost feels like the walled gardens is a little bit more personal. It's drawing in that account information. But at the same time, you could argue pay for apps are walled gardens. They just feel less icky because it doesn't have that personal information attached to it.

It's very transactional. Gimme some money. Here's an app you can use forever. Uh, I love that simplicity. We, we've talked in the past about subscription models and all that stuff, and we could take this podcast, we won't. 'cause we're already 22 minutes in about like automobiles that require subscriptions so that you can, not obviously right now, but unlock the doors hypothetically in the future.

Maybe something like that. You know, if you're leasing your car, maybe they will lock the doors. Uh, But it, it, it's mixed. So I, I guess I'll, I'll just bounce right back to you. Are are paid apps, walled gardens? I don't. And maybe we're just mixing metaphors. 

[00:22:44] James: Well, you know, I think with paid apps, which you know, is still pretty fantastical in some way 'cause it's like an opt-in.

It's like, you know, you buy something. The thing is that you can't try before you buy. Right. With, yeah. The app source. Now that's an app store restriction. And I'm pretty sure Windows phone had trials way back in the day, store after Windows, window Store eight. So even currently, I, I'm, 

[00:23:06] Frank: yeah, I'm pretty sure there's just a checkbox and people can get a one week or two week trial 

[00:23:11] James: or something like that.

It, it's a limitation of the, uh, of, of the store. 'cause I know they even have that like, on the switch. Mm-hmm. And on Xbox and, and there's trials of, of games. So I think that's the problem is that. They went towards, we want everything to be free and within .NET purchases and subscriptions. Yeah. Instead of, Hey, we're gonna invest heavily into this thing, but there's obviously possibilities to do free trials, because that's literally what a test flight is.

It's it. Lets you use the app for 30 days and then you don't get to your 90 days or whatever it is, and then you click on it. It's like, oh, can't do it. Right? It's just like some validity token that's in there. Maybe there's security implications. Maybe it's something else. I don't know. But I do think that is a, a flaw in the system that isn't checking that license on open and doing other things.

It's totally possible for them to implement that. Now that being said, the other workaround for you to do would then be to make it free and then put in your own. Free trial and I, I'm assuming this is allowed in the App Store, that you could then turn off all functionality kind of like, uh, Adobe or something like that after 30 days.

[00:24:18] Frank: Uh, not only is it allowed, it's encouraged. That's the way you should do a freemium app, and I'm actually quite okay with that. Uh, after years of doing this show and years of me thinking about my own apps, I think I am myself. All future apps will probably be freemium. But where freemium has gone wrong and what we've been discussing is that account creation, man, that's the dirty spot.

That's, that's the thing I don't want, if all those apps that I was doing competitive analysis for were true freemium, then I'd be able to use some subset of the features or all the features for a small amount of time, something like that. Um, and I, I think that's the usual trick that you do that, that seems the most common one, is you give the pro features for a couple days or something like that, and then.

Back those off immediately. Yeah. 

[00:25:04] James: Well and sometimes like there are these models, right? Like Instagram has this model where you can sort of tap on something, it'll open the browser, but then meta starts to lock stuff down even on Facebook. Yeah. It'll let you like almost scroll the page or doesn't let you do it.

Right. And obviously news outlets have been doing this for a while, or you get to one article on your IP for free or something. But like, you know, I think even now to this point, it's like, You know Heather, like after we watched the Bachelor bachelorette, like there's always great tweets that come out, right?

So she actually literally had to create an account so she can search Twitter for hashtags. Like that just seems like ridiculous, right? She doesn't tweet and do anything. She just wants to, to like, this is where the memes are coming from, right? Then if she shares it to me, I best be logged in because if I'm not logged in, then I get this thing right?

And same thing on Instagram. She sends me an Instagram. It's like, it's all of these things forcing you. And to me, I. It's a really poor experience for me to view a 280 characters or to look at a photo, and it just sort of upsets me in many ways. Like I would rather, you know, uh, you know, go somewhere else.

Uh, but, you know, these things are so mass that we can't do it. But I see that these trends, I think the, the fear that I have is that these trends start to seep into. All parts of software and apps and things that we're using on on a more daily basis. Well, 

[00:26:29] Frank: thank goodness these are natural systems and that nothing's gonna grow out of bounds, so we, they won't, we will create walled gardens up to a point where we get very annoyed with the walled gardens, and then someone will invent this thing called the internet or the free internet, where you can just go to any old thing and you'll see all the content for free.

It'll revolutionize. World, but it'll have to be reinvented every couple generations, every generation or so as we forget how to use the technology correctly. You know, what I'm actually expecting is things like Fortnite for like where, where is the Twitter in Fortnite? Like there should be a way to create a website or a social .NET on Fortnite.

Fortnite is already a social .NET. All your friends are on there. You go chit chat with them and all that kind of stuff. You go blow some things up, I guess. I don't know. I don't really play the game. But why aren't, why isn't that the new internet? You know? Like that's what the Metaverse should have been.

And there should have been a Twitter app inside there. And that Twitter app would start out free and all the content would be available. And then when it became big and money was involved, then it would become a walled garden. And then what? We'll repeat the cycle in 10 years. And it's just, it's just what we do because we're big dummies.

[00:27:40] James: I was listening to a piece, uh, on Roblox. Actually recently, because they just reported earnings talk about some of the new stuff they're gonna do. And I feel like the C E O listening to him, it sounds like that's what he wants Roblox to be. Mm-hmm. But again, Roblox, you gotta account, you gotta create something.

You gotta do a thing. Right. I'm also not a Roblox person. Am I gonna install, I don't even know how it works at this. Is it software you install? Is it like Lego Island? Like, I don't know, a soup, is it? I don't, is it something, is it like Fortnite? I don't know. Is it a web app? I do. I have no, no clue. But they have a lot of users and that's important and good, I guess.

Yeah, no, I think that is really, really kind of crazy to think about just how that software goes. And I think that it's sort of similar to, we see these cycles and it's cool, I talk topics about cycles, right? Because you know, people talk about fashion cycles, right? Like I literally saw like two teenage girls within a matter of like two hours at different stores wearing like a Nirvana t-shirt.

And like Jen, but, and I was like, wait a second, you're like 10 years old. Kurt Cobain, like committed suicide in like what, 20, 30 years ago? Whatever it was. I was alive. I went through that. Right. My sister was like into grunge, got me into Nirvana and Bush and like all these like nineties grunge bands and rock groups and like, um, I was like, wait, do you even know like what you're wearing?

I don't know. I hope so. I, I don't know. But you know, the lore, the history anyways, but these cycles, things occur and the crazy part is even talking of, of cycles of software and talking about paid software. Think about paid subscriptions for. Streaming services at this point, because all streaming services are one big app that have different types of pieces of content that you can watch, right?

Or you can do, or circuits you can create. And right now we're in this cycle of up upping every single price. They were like, they everyone wanted you to cut cords and then. It fanned out, right? It was like fanned out the content, diverse and it split across, and now you have a hundred different apps. Now you have a sign in and different things.

Nothing unifying them. Not even Apple could unify them. They tried so hard, right? It's close but not perfect. Mm-hmm. Same thing with Ruco. It's like good if it's like. All these different things and login mechanisms are all different. It's like, I think we just gave up maybe and now they're all gonna re implode and then come back together.

Like Hulu and Disney Plus are gonna be the same at some point. And I don't know, like, do I ever want it? I, you know, it's like, and then everything's expensive and then like, you know what hasn't changed though, in like 80 years? I dunno. I'm just gonna use 80 uhhuh. Did you know you could just plug in an antenna into your television and like just, you know, TV comes in just like from the, the waves.

Like they just come in the waves. 

[00:30:19] Frank: Is that magic? The waves are the aliens sending it to 

[00:30:22] James: us. Spectrum. The, uh, the blue and purple waves. The spectrum. Spectrum. Oh, lead waves. Okay. They're big. Uh, but you, you know, I, I, the, the, that's the crazy part is like crystal clear hd. Stuff just comes in. Yeah. And we have a Roku TV here 

[00:30:37] Frank: and, and in most parts of the country, not, not my part.

Oh. Uh, I don't know. Lemme see. Okay, let me, let me rephrase. I would need a very large antenna to get it. 

[00:30:48] James: Yeah. You, you gotta go to antenna web and then 

[00:30:53] Frank: I would, I would, yeah. The TV I would get also would be Canadian, which would be wonderful because I grew up watching Canadian TV over broadcast. I get your point though.

Yes. It, it's a, it's a reliable technology, but you know, those, those are broadcast stations that are spending a lot of money to pump that signal, that HD signal out into the air. And there will be a time in the future. Yeah. Like we'll always keep some broadcast open for something for, you know, world War III and that kind of stuff.

But I don't know how many broadcasters are gonna be willing to pay for the 'cause. It's literal, it's, it's like having a giant radiator on top of your house, just radiating heat into the atmosphere. That's what we, we make it sound cool. We call 'em radio antennas that it's a radiator radiating heat on top of your house.

And that's expensive anyway, so they might go away in the future at some point. But I, I take your point. 

[00:31:50] James: Yeah. Anyways, cycles. It's interesting and yeah, I feel like we're entering these. These gardens and like, you know, I think the, the gardens slowly evolve over time, like you're saying. Right. We kind of saw that with, with, uh, social nets that were like open and they grow by being open and then they close it down mm-hmm.

And wall it off. And we see that with the streaming services. They're growing and they're going here. And then, you know, just how even apps are evolving, like you're saying, where like the garden is to download it, sign in, pay for something right away, and, and get into it and, and, and to use the application.

And, um, and I think that can be problematic in many ways, right? As, as because it, because, because it, if everybody's starting to do it, then it can sort of be a slippery slope of everyone else wanting to, to go that route too. 

[00:32:39] Frank: So. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, I, I think we might be old men yelling at the clouds here because I feel like this battle was lost.

Like the moment you had to have an account to buy Photoshop, like Photoshop was up. I. Maybe. Okay. Adobe was a pretty early adopter of this whole subscription thing, but I felt like you could get a real copy of Photoshop for quite a while and now, unless you're gonna go pirate it or something, if you want an official copy, you need to be logged in to Adobe.

Yeah. So I think, I think, uh, we, we've. Which was always fine for me for like paying for it and the subscription. I just think we're in the dark timeline. The darkest timeline right now where you have to create an account to use a stupid I I was trying to use do a three D scanning app. That's why I was looking at three D scanning apps and they're all commoditized to the point where they're all free and they just require an account.

And I thought that 

[00:33:39] James: was.

Yeah, I think that that's hard. Um, I'll give you one alternative. If you want a Photoshop alternative, A photo P, that's my favorite photo. P P E A. Uh, it's great. It's all in the browser and you can pin it's a progressive web app. Um, yeah, no, I agree. I think it's a, it's a. It's a fascinating time that we live in.

Uh, and I'll, I'll see, see if it evolves how I create software or not. I am still a big fan of putting numbers on a screen for free with no login. Uh, so, you know, and, and I always tell people, try to create your application and worry about login last, right. Like implement login last. Right. You know, and 'cause that can really change your mind if you're to go into it with assumptions of.

I need, I have to have auth authentication as I have a log, I have to go down this route, right? Just mm-hmm. Build software With that, not in mind. I mean, it might be a requirement, you might have to do it, but if you block yourself up front, then you're in for a world of pain, because authentication is the least fun thing to put into your application at the end of the day.

[00:34:43] Frank: Well, I mean, and I'll, I'll say, I'll, I'll probably get a lot of people laughing at me, but. Accounts are hard, like data syncing with a server is hard every, every time you want data, you have to talk to the server and get something and all that stuff. The alternative that I was pitching before is just keep all your data local.

And you know what's easy to do? You take all that data, you shove them into a JSS blob, send that off to a server, download it on the other phone, download the jss blob, and then synchronize them. It's annoying, but it's not rocket science. And then you have this beautiful thing where your app can be perfectly offline, not requiring accounts, and then the moment people require accounts, as long as it's not a social .NET where they're doing a lot of.

User communication kind of stuff. But if it's standard thing, if you're just storing user, Put it into a Jason Blob and upload it to the server and don't even, don't, don't think too hard about it. I was in a group once when we, we were trying to write an app that, uh, just submitted a form so that people could apply for a certain government thing to get a place to.

Get money into place to stay. Anyway, simple app, simple form app. And they created this complex, uh, database schema with all these complicated stored procedures to upload this form. This form had 16 fields on it, like. 14 of which were just free text fields. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And they came up with a whole schema and I'm just like, no, Jason Blob that.

Upload it to the server store the JS blob, and then when you get around to it, you can download it and re-sync it and change it into what Our formats. That's my long-winded way of saying we don't need account logins for freemium maps. People don't do it. Freemium 

[00:36:28] James: should be free. Don't do it. I agree. I agree.

All right, well, I think we're just gonna cover that for this week. Uh, in general, kind of went in many, many fascinating ways. Um, but yeah, let us know what you think right into the show. Merge Conflict fm, there's a contact button. There's tweet buttons, there's all sorts of buttons over there that you click on or double click if you want.

And, uh, send it our way. Uh, if you want an exciting, uh, episode about how Frank and I watch our grass grow, uh, on our Patreon, uh, you can go to patreon com. Slash Emerge Conflict fm. And we talk about toilets and we talk about, um, gardening and we talk about old guy stuff in general, fruit and vegetable, and giving it away 'cause it grows and you can't eat it all so, so many tomatoes.

Well, Frank, I think it's gonna do it for this week's merge conflict. Uh, so until next week, uh, I'm James Montemagno. 

[00:37:24] Frank: And I'm Frank Krueger. Thanks for watching and listening. 

[00:37:28] James: Pace.