Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And you know, guys,
Speaker 1: technology changes pretty darn quickly, and that's just in a
Speaker 1: normal time. During the pandemic, you've got a lot of
Speaker 1: other factors that are weighing in that can make things
Speaker 1: change even faster. And some of the episodes that I
Speaker 1: have recorded in the last few months have already needed
Speaker 1: some updates. None of them really need a full episode
Speaker 1: as an update, however, So today's episode is going to
Speaker 1: be about a collection of updates on things that I
Speaker 1: have covered in the past few months since the outbreak
Speaker 1: of the pandemic. The first episode that I recorded at
Speaker 1: home was in the series that I did about the
Speaker 1: history of PlayStation uh. The first one was actually PlayStation
Speaker 1: Part three and the second one was PlayStation Part four.
Speaker 1: And now since then we've had a brand new console,
Speaker 1: the PS five debut. It came out on Thursday, November twelve,
Speaker 1: and I am recording this on Friday. Also, for some reason,
Speaker 1: there is a guy in a hockey mask totally getting
Speaker 1: in my personal space, but we'll just ignore him for now.
Speaker 1: When I recorded those episodes, we had an announcement about
Speaker 1: the PS five and a few details about the console,
Speaker 1: but that was about it. However, now it's out, it's
Speaker 1: actually available for people to purchase, well kind of. We'll
Speaker 1: get to that, and we can talk about some of
Speaker 1: the specs of the PS five and how it contrasts
Speaker 1: with its chief rival, the Xbox Series consoles A, particularly
Speaker 1: the the Series X, although the Series S is also
Speaker 1: in play, and I'll be sure to talk about those
Speaker 1: a little bit as well, to give you some updates
Speaker 1: on on those. Now, first things first, we got to
Speaker 1: talk about how big this ding dang darn thing is. Now.
Speaker 1: I do not own a p S five yet. I
Speaker 1: do plan on getting one eventually, and I also plan
Speaker 1: on getting a Series X console eventually, but I'm not
Speaker 1: in a rush to grab them right now, which is
Speaker 1: probably a good thing. I've seen photos of the PS
Speaker 1: five and I thought, wow, that's really big once I
Speaker 1: had something to compare it to, particularly a photo that
Speaker 1: had Trish Hershberger in it. Now, she's a tech journalist,
Speaker 1: She's an awesome person. I've met her a couple of
Speaker 1: times great person, and she shared a photo of herself
Speaker 1: standing next to a PS five and said it's big
Speaker 1: enough to be considered about half of a Trish. Now.
Speaker 1: To be fair, Trish is a total Hermia from Midsummer
Speaker 1: Night's Dream. Though she be but little, she is fierce.
Speaker 1: And what I mean to say is that Trish is um.
Speaker 1: She's not very tall. The PS five, however, is tall,
Speaker 1: at least as far as consoles go. It's fifteen point
Speaker 1: four inches tall to be precise, that's just shy of
Speaker 1: thirty centimeters. It's also ten point two four inches deep
Speaker 1: or twenty six centimeters, and it's four point zero nine
Speaker 1: inches wide or approximately ten point four centimeters. Now, that's
Speaker 1: if you have it standing upright and not down on
Speaker 1: its side. You can have it either way, uh, depending
Speaker 1: on your setup. But no matter how you position it
Speaker 1: that right there is a chalker. It weighs in at
Speaker 1: fourteen pounds that's about six point four kgrams. So part
Speaker 1: of the early discussion about the PS five is really
Speaker 1: just that it's so large that it can actually be
Speaker 1: a challenge to fit into an entertainment set up, depending
Speaker 1: upon the size you're working with. It also has the
Speaker 1: white wing like sides and a black center of the console.
Speaker 1: That's led some people to call it a reverse ice
Speaker 1: cream sandwich, where you would have the ice cream on
Speaker 1: the outside and the cookie bread in the middle. There
Speaker 1: are actually two different models of the PS five. One
Speaker 1: of them has a four K Blu Ray optical drive
Speaker 1: and the other one does not. And the one that
Speaker 1: does have the drive is the one that's a touch chunkier.
Speaker 1: That's the one that's the four point nine inches wide.
Speaker 1: The digital only version is slightly more svelt. The Blu
Speaker 1: Ray drive version costs four dollars at least as the
Speaker 1: suggested retail price, and the digital only PS five is
Speaker 1: at three um digital only, being digital only delivery, the
Speaker 1: console is physical, but apart from the optical drive, those
Speaker 1: two systems are the same internally. They have the same processors,
Speaker 1: same memory, same same storage, same performance. This is one
Speaker 1: of the things that sets the two PS five consoles
Speaker 1: apart from the two new Xbox consoles. One of the
Speaker 1: features that got hyped in the lead up to the
Speaker 1: PS five debut was that the system would load games
Speaker 1: much more quickly than the PS four, and we didn't
Speaker 1: have very many details about what this would actually mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, what does more quickly mean? And fortunately the Verge,
Speaker 1: whom I referenced a lot for this particular part of
Speaker 1: the episode, they have a helpful table that breaks down
Speaker 1: how long it took the PS five versus PS four
Speaker 1: to load certain titles that are available for both platforms.
Speaker 1: And that's also a good reminder that early in the
Speaker 1: lifespan of these next generation consoles, we're going to see
Speaker 1: a lot of cross platform titles that are available either
Speaker 1: for the previous generation or the more fancy schmancy new
Speaker 1: generation of consoles. There will be and there are games
Speaker 1: that are made specifically for the new generation, but a
Speaker 1: lot of those titles are going to be available both
Speaker 1: for PS four and PS five, which makes sense if
Speaker 1: you're a developer, because you want to sell as many
Speaker 1: copies as you possibly can, and maybe not everybody's going
Speaker 1: after a brand new console just now. Anyway, onto the
Speaker 1: load times. To fire up the new game Spider Man
Speaker 1: Miles Morales and I can't wait to play that one.
Speaker 1: But to fire that up on the PS four takes
Speaker 1: about a minute and twenty seven seconds, but on the
Speaker 1: PS five it was just seventeen seconds. Owls Now that's
Speaker 1: not to say all loading times will have that dramatic
Speaker 1: a difference or will be that fast. Death Stranding, which
Speaker 1: is a game that's been out for a while now,
Speaker 1: will load up in a minute fifty seconds on the
Speaker 1: PS four, and the PS five does it in fifty
Speaker 1: four seconds. So the PS five is faster, definitely, but
Speaker 1: not every game is going to load as quickly as
Speaker 1: the New Spider Man game does. Moreover, if we see
Speaker 1: the PS five follow the same path as most hardware,
Speaker 1: it will only be a matter of time before game
Speaker 1: developers release games that tax the loading speed of the
Speaker 1: PS five, and we'll be back to waiting two minutes
Speaker 1: or more for certain titles to load up. That's just
Speaker 1: the nature of hardware and software, and it ties into
Speaker 1: an observation called Worth's law. Worth's law states that software
Speaker 1: is getting slower at a rate that's greater than hardware
Speaker 1: is getting faster. So the hardware is getting faster, but
Speaker 1: software is getting slower faster than the hardware is getting faster,
Speaker 1: if you follow me. Essentially, it's an observation about software
Speaker 1: bloat and how as software gets more sophisticated, it does
Speaker 1: not necessarily become more efficient as well anyway. Another related
Speaker 1: issue is in storage space. The PS five solid state
Speaker 1: drive is eight five gigabytes, but again according to the
Speaker 1: verge of that, only six hundred and sixty seven point
Speaker 1: two gigabytes are actually available for storage for games and stuff.
Speaker 1: The rest of that hard drive space is reserved for
Speaker 1: system data, or I guess I should say the rest
Speaker 1: of the solid state drive space as a reserved for
Speaker 1: that system data. The six hundred sixty seven gigabytes is
Speaker 1: a lot. That's a lot of storage, no doubt about it,
Speaker 1: But some recent games that have just come out not
Speaker 1: too long ago are truly enormous, topping in it more
Speaker 1: than a hundred gigabytes for just one title, and some
Speaker 1: of them are getting close to a hundred fifty gigabytes
Speaker 1: or more. When you take that into a count, the
Speaker 1: massive amount of storage really means you might only be
Speaker 1: able to have four or five Triple A titles stored
Speaker 1: on your PS five and ready to go at any
Speaker 1: given time, and other times you may have to uninstalled
Speaker 1: games in order to install a new one, so that
Speaker 1: makes things a little tricky. Now. The PS five does
Speaker 1: have a slot for additional Sony certified solid state drives,
Speaker 1: to be added in so you can increase your storage,
Speaker 1: but there's no word yet on when those will actually
Speaker 1: be available. Reviews of other elements of PS five performance
Speaker 1: are a little more modest. The console can put out
Speaker 1: four K resolution graphics with hd R and ray tracing
Speaker 1: and all that stuff, which is, you know, all about
Speaker 1: the visual appeal of this device, but these things only
Speaker 1: matter if one you happen to have a television that
Speaker 1: supports four K and HDR. If you don't, all that's
Speaker 1: going to be lost on you and to the people
Speaker 1: who are making the games have to be able to
Speaker 1: leverage those capabilities. They have to create assets in the
Speaker 1: game that use these features so that you can, you know,
Speaker 1: enjoy the benefits of them. So many of the reviews
Speaker 1: that I have seen uh say that the games definitely
Speaker 1: look better, but that the improvements and graphics are fairly subtle,
Speaker 1: Like the jump in graphic quality isn't as great as
Speaker 1: you have seen in previous generations, And that kind of
Speaker 1: makes sense to me. We're at a point of diminishing
Speaker 1: returns when it comes to stuff like graphics and video.
Speaker 1: There will always be room for improvement, but the jump
Speaker 1: from one generation to the next is going to be
Speaker 1: less obvious. It's not like going from eight bit graphics
Speaker 1: to sixteen bit graphics, or when we got up to
Speaker 1: sixty four bit graphics. Now the improvements are more polish
Speaker 1: than they are transformational. This isn't bad, mind you. It
Speaker 1: just means that the graphics are aren't necessarily a show stopper. However,
Speaker 1: the way the game's load and run seems to be
Speaker 1: spectacular based on the reviews. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: reviewers have said really good things about the new PS
Speaker 1: five controller. In the last PlayStation episode that I did,
Speaker 1: I said we had yet to see the controller. Now
Speaker 1: that we have seen it, folks are really digging it.
Speaker 1: The triggers on the controller have variable tension and haptic
Speaker 1: feedback built into them. Now that means that a game
Speaker 1: developer can create situations in which using the triggers feels
Speaker 1: different specific to whatever the context is within the game. So,
Speaker 1: for example, imagine you've got a game in which your
Speaker 1: character has a bow and they are drawing an arrow
Speaker 1: back with that bow, and the trigger that you're using
Speaker 1: is linking to that command to draw the arrow back.
Speaker 1: So as you squeeze the trigger, you feel an initial
Speaker 1: resistance which represents the tension on the bowstring. But let's
Speaker 1: say in another part of the game, you need to
Speaker 1: use the same trigger to just pick up a small item,
Speaker 1: and this time you feel very little resistance as you
Speaker 1: pull the trigger, which represents how easy that action is
Speaker 1: within the game to your character. So it's a neat
Speaker 1: way to add some immersive qualities to a game. You
Speaker 1: can stress that this thing that you're having your character
Speaker 1: do is harder for your character to do because you've
Speaker 1: increased the tension on the control itself. I think that's
Speaker 1: pretty genius. The controller can also make a lot of
Speaker 1: different kinds of vibrations. Gone are the simple days of
Speaker 1: the basic rumble pack. Now the vibrating motors inside the
Speaker 1: controller can be manipulated to simulate everything from you know,
Speaker 1: walking across crunchy leaves to flying through a war zone
Speaker 1: in a helicopter. And I think Sony is in better
Speaker 1: shape when it comes to exclusive titles for the PS
Speaker 1: five compared to Microsoft and situation with the new Xbox consoles.
Speaker 1: The pandemic has had an enormous impact on the development
Speaker 1: cycle for games, and it's also done a serious number
Speaker 1: on supply chain management. So it's actually pretty impressive that
Speaker 1: the console and any games are coming out at all,
Speaker 1: and not surprisingly, it could be a real challenge to
Speaker 1: find a p S five or an Xbox right now
Speaker 1: because supplies were limited due to that impact on production.
Speaker 1: But let's switch over to the Xbox for just a
Speaker 1: few moments, and switching is a good thing to start with,
Speaker 1: as one of the features on the new Xbox Series
Speaker 1: S and the Series X is the quick resume technology.
Speaker 1: So say you're playing a game and maybe you hit
Speaker 1: a spot where you're not making much progress and you're
Speaker 1: getting frustrated, so you decide you're gonna take a break
Speaker 1: from playing that game and switch to something else. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's another game, maybe it's a video, but the Series
Speaker 1: X will suspend your gameplay in the active game as
Speaker 1: you swap over to your other task. And then you
Speaker 1: let's say you load up a second game and you're
Speaker 1: playing that. Then you decide, you know what, I want
Speaker 1: to go back to my original game, So you back
Speaker 1: out to your little splash menu and you swap back
Speaker 1: over to the original game you were playing, and boom,
Speaker 1: you're right back in it, and it's super fast. The
Speaker 1: Series X and Series S are effectively putting their fingers
Speaker 1: on a page in a book for you, so you
Speaker 1: can just flip right back to that page without any
Speaker 1: real delay. You don't have to wait for the game
Speaker 1: to load back up into the system's memory. It's pretty
Speaker 1: impressive to see. And what's going on is that your
Speaker 1: game state from game number one is sort of flash
Speaker 1: frozen into storage memory on the Xbox, and this memory
Speaker 1: is really handy to the Xbox processor, so when you
Speaker 1: swap back to the game, the processor can just fetch
Speaker 1: the game state from memory rather than having to root
Speaker 1: around in the solid state drive for that information. As
Speaker 1: a feature, I think it follows under the quality of
Speaker 1: life category. It's not transformational, but it's really nice to have.
Speaker 1: The quick resume feature can accommodate between four and six games,
Speaker 1: depending on how complex those games are. One big selling
Speaker 1: point for the Xbox. Something that has been important since
Speaker 1: the very beginning is backwards compatibility. Sony has had a
Speaker 1: kind of spotty past when it comes to supporting games
Speaker 1: from older consoles. The company has made more dramatic departures
Speaker 1: from older system architecture, which makes it harder to adapt
Speaker 1: older games to later systems. The p S three in
Speaker 1: particular was a real challenge because the microprocessor architecture, while powerful,
Speaker 1: was very different from earlier PS state systems. So the
Speaker 1: Xbox follows a philosophy that's much closer to what we
Speaker 1: see with PC games, which really should surprise no body.
Speaker 1: And one of the attractions of the Series X and
Speaker 1: Series S consoles is that you can play older games
Speaker 1: on those systems and you'll end up getting an enhanced
Speaker 1: upscaled experience in the process. So you can pull up
Speaker 1: a real classic game like I don't know, Crimson Skies,
Speaker 1: I hope, and it should look pretty good. It's not
Speaker 1: going to magically, you know, convert up to four K resolution.
Speaker 1: It doesn't. It's not gonna measure up to the level
Speaker 1: of graphics you would see with a brand new game release,
Speaker 1: but it will look better than it would on the
Speaker 1: old original Xbox in theory. Anyway. I haven't actually tested
Speaker 1: this out because I don't have an Xbox yet. I
Speaker 1: just really like that game, you know, Crimson Skies is
Speaker 1: an awesome game, and I really want to play it again.
Speaker 1: Remake Crimson Skies, Xbox, go and go and make a
Speaker 1: you know, a new current generation version of Crimson Skies
Speaker 1: that game is amazing. Now, I allude did to it earlier,
Speaker 1: and I've talked about it in other episodes. But Microsoft
Speaker 1: has taken a different approach than Sony has with the
Speaker 1: two tiers of Xbox consoles. So the Xbox Series X
Speaker 1: is the one that has the optical drive, and it
Speaker 1: costs four dollars, just like Sony's top level PS five,
Speaker 1: but it also is a more advanced machine than the
Speaker 1: digital only Series S is. The Series X has more
Speaker 1: data storage, it's got a faster processor, it can support
Speaker 1: four K gaming. The Series S is limited to fourteen
Speaker 1: four DP resolution for gaming. So while the two models
Speaker 1: of the PS five are identical except for one of
Speaker 1: them has an optical drive, the Series X is better
Speaker 1: future proofed than the Series S is. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: the Series S comes in at two dollars, which makes
Speaker 1: it one hundred bucks cheaper than the least expensive PS
Speaker 1: five one that doesn't have an optical drive. Also, the
Speaker 1: Series S and the Series X have a one terabyte
Speaker 1: storage expansion slot, where you can purchase uh an extra
Speaker 1: SSD up of a terrabyte and plug it into the
Speaker 1: back and thus more than double the amount of storage
Speaker 1: in your Xbox I think Microsoft is going to struggle
Speaker 1: a little bit on the game front, at least for
Speaker 1: new games, because many titles that were meant to debut
Speaker 1: along with the console have since been delayed by at
Speaker 1: least a few months. And again that's largely the pandemic
Speaker 1: having an effect in addition to the normal issues we
Speaker 1: see with game development where there can be delays. But
Speaker 1: Microsoft also has game Pass, which is a subscription based
Speaker 1: service that gives players access to more than one hundred
Speaker 1: titles if they subscribe to it. So rather than buying games,
Speaker 1: you subscribe to the service and that gives you access
Speaker 1: to these games and you can play stuff that maybe
Speaker 1: you overlooked or maybe you never had the cat to
Speaker 1: buy that particular title back in the day, and a
Speaker 1: lot of game journalists refer to it as the best
Speaker 1: deal in gaming, and it's kind of hard to argue
Speaker 1: with that. So let's say that I, Jonathan Strickland, have
Speaker 1: recently upgraded my television because honestly, the one I have
Speaker 1: right now is an outdated, regular old h d t V.
Speaker 1: It's not even a smart TV. This hd TV is
Speaker 1: from several years ago, works just fine, so I've never
Speaker 1: replaced it. But let's say that I go ahead and
Speaker 1: I upgrade. Now I've got a decision to make. Do
Speaker 1: I go with the PS five or do I go
Speaker 1: with the Xbox. This is legit a tough question for me, because,
Speaker 1: for one thing, I'm I'm an Xbox die hard fan,
Speaker 1: but I don't you know, I don't immediately fall into
Speaker 1: a camp of Xbox good, PS five bad. The new
Speaker 1: games for the PS five look insanely good, Spider Man
Speaker 1: in particular, and Microsoft looks to lag behind a little
Speaker 1: bit due to those production delays. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: the game Pass deal is fantastic, and I'm all a subscriber.
Speaker 1: But by that same logic, I could just continue to
Speaker 1: access game Pass on my Xbox One and then wait
Speaker 1: around a little bit longer to upgrade to a series console.
Speaker 1: In fact, I would probably do that even if I
Speaker 1: had the brand new, fancy television. I would probably get
Speaker 1: the PS five to start off and have a goal
Speaker 1: to get a series X later in the future. Now
Speaker 1: that's a moot point for me because I do not
Speaker 1: currently have a four K TV, so a lot of
Speaker 1: these enhancements would not matter. I wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: see them because my television wouldn't be able to show them.
Speaker 1: And also I don't have a whole lot of time
Speaker 1: to play a lot of stuff right now. That's just
Speaker 1: a bummer. But when we come back, I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk about something else that needs to be updated, a
Speaker 1: video streaming service that I covered during the pandemic that
Speaker 1: ain't round here no more. But first, let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break on August, which feels like a million years ago.
Speaker 1: I know everyone says that, but man, it feels like
Speaker 1: this year has just lasted forever. Well anyway, On August seventeenth,
Speaker 1: I published an episode about Quimby, the streaming video platform
Speaker 1: that had been in development for a couple of years
Speaker 1: and had some big names in technology and entertainment behind it.
Speaker 1: And that episode is called Quimby Quibble if you want
Speaker 1: to check it out. I talked about how the original
Speaker 1: concept for Quimby, which would feature short form videos that
Speaker 1: lasted about ten minutes each, was intended to go after
Speaker 1: a market of folks, mostly young folks, who are looking
Speaker 1: to pass the time while waiting to do other stuff
Speaker 1: like maybe they're on a train, or they're waiting in
Speaker 1: line for a coffee or whatever, and how the pandemic
Speaker 1: was eliminating the very use case that Quimby was based
Speaker 1: off of, and I concluded with some skepticism about the
Speaker 1: long or viability of the platform, which I didn't think
Speaker 1: was particularly promising. Well, it's been a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: since the announcement in late October, but Quimby is sadly
Speaker 1: officially shutting down, and I hate that. I was right
Speaker 1: to be skeptical, and let's be fair, it was the
Speaker 1: only reasonable point of view to take given the circumstances.
Speaker 1: So I'm not really giving myself any credit here. It's
Speaker 1: like looking at the ocean and saying, I bet it's
Speaker 1: wet in there. It was kind of obvious on the
Speaker 1: face of it. I take no pleasure in the failure
Speaker 1: because I think Quimby was giving a lot of really
Speaker 1: creative people an opportunity to do what they love to do,
Speaker 1: and seeing something like that go away just stinks. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, I think the decision to pull
Speaker 1: the plug was the most responsible thing to do. So
Speaker 1: we're going to take a look at the short span
Speaker 1: of time from August to October to see what happened. Now,
Speaker 1: let me give a super quick recap of Quimby. I
Speaker 1: already mentioned the use case for the platform the short
Speaker 1: form videos of about ten minutes in length. Some projects,
Speaker 1: like some of the videos on Quimby, were a lot
Speaker 1: like a television series, with each episode being ten minutes
Speaker 1: right in a ten minute episode, but some were more
Speaker 1: like feature films that got divided up into ten minute chapters,
Speaker 1: which presents a challenge when crafting a story, but we'll
Speaker 1: get to that. Some were fiction, some were in the
Speaker 1: reality TV space. Some fell into the category of news
Speaker 1: or coverage of stuff like sports or lifestyle. It was
Speaker 1: a pretty broad approach to entertainment as a whole, just
Speaker 1: that it was all in a bite sized form factor,
Speaker 1: and the guiding logic was that people are using their
Speaker 1: phones to watch stuff more than ever, and frequently do
Speaker 1: so to fill up time where they normally would be
Speaker 1: doing nothing or at least nothing much. Quimby was meant
Speaker 1: to tap into the psyche of the TikTok fan base
Speaker 1: or snapchat platforms that excel in the present sentation of
Speaker 1: short form video clips. But Quimby would marry that with
Speaker 1: the original programming and high production value that you find
Speaker 1: in services like Netflix. So yeah, kind of bringing together
Speaker 1: the Netflix model and putting that with the TikTok model,
Speaker 1: though the videos on Quimby were really, on the whole
Speaker 1: much longer than anything you would have ever seen on TikTok.
Speaker 1: On top of that, the service had a mobile specific
Speaker 1: feature that many saws nothing more than really a gimmick,
Speaker 1: and some folks just outright hated it. And it was
Speaker 1: called Turnstile, and it let you switch between portrait viewing
Speaker 1: and landscape viewing on a mobile device, and all the
Speaker 1: content would be produced with this in mind, so that
Speaker 1: you would get a full frame presentation in either format.
Speaker 1: In other words, you wouldn't get black bars on top
Speaker 1: and below the video. When you switched it over to portrait,
Speaker 1: it would become a portrait view, and it would be
Speaker 1: design in such a way where theoretically, at least you
Speaker 1: weren't missing anything important. But you have to remember that
Speaker 1: in portrait view it means that you have a narrower
Speaker 1: view of what's going on, so some stuff that would
Speaker 1: typically be in frame might not even be on camera.
Speaker 1: So the service really was going all in on the
Speaker 1: mobile centric presentation of video. The two main people at
Speaker 1: the helm of Quimby were Jeffrey Catzenberg, former Disney and
Speaker 1: DreamWorks executive and Meg Whitman, former CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprises,
Speaker 1: and in the year leading up to Quimby's launched, they
Speaker 1: both appeared on stage together at various conferences and events
Speaker 1: pitching the service, talking about taking aim at a market that,
Speaker 1: while I wouldn't say was underserved, hadn't been explicitly catered to.
Speaker 1: I mean, people watch videos on mobile devices all the time,
Speaker 1: but Quimby was meant to fit neatly into that style
Speaker 1: of viewing from the get go. So the thought was,
Speaker 1: if we make content designed to be watched on mobile
Speaker 1: devices in short spans at high production value, you we
Speaker 1: will hit that sweet spot for people who are already
Speaker 1: using their devices to do that, but the content doesn't
Speaker 1: conform to the use. Quimby launched with a free trial period,
Speaker 1: after which users would be asked to choose a subscription plan,
Speaker 1: and there were two available here in the United States.
Speaker 1: The lower plan was four dollars nine cents a month,
Speaker 1: and that gave you access to add supported videos on Quimby,
Speaker 1: so you still had ads between videos. For seven a month,
Speaker 1: you would get the videos, but with no ads, the
Speaker 1: content was exclusive to the platform, and it was highly produced.
Speaker 1: Like I said, you wouldn't find it anywhere else. But
Speaker 1: the question was would the variety and quality of content
Speaker 1: be enough to convince a large enough subscriber base to
Speaker 1: make the operation profitable. Producing content is really expensive, whether
Speaker 1: you're funding it directly or you're negotiating with content creators
Speaker 1: who fund production in return for a contract with the platform.
Speaker 1: There was little hope that quimby would operate at a
Speaker 1: profit right away, as just the cost of making stuff
Speaker 1: would mean there would be a growing gap to cover
Speaker 1: with revenue before it could turn a profit now. In
Speaker 1: my previous episode about Quimby, I talked about how the
Speaker 1: service was on uncertain ground. Even back in July, just
Speaker 1: a couple of months after the service had launched, news
Speaker 1: outlets like The Verge reported that quimby was losing around
Speaker 1: nine of users once the free trial concluded, at least
Speaker 1: for those users who signed up during the first few
Speaker 1: days of the app becoming available. Actually, it's a little
Speaker 1: worse than that. The opening sentence of that Verge article
Speaker 1: says streaming service Quimby only managed to convert a little
Speaker 1: under ten percent of its early wave of users into
Speaker 1: paying customers, says mobile analytics firm Sensor Tower. So imagine
Speaker 1: you have ten people together and you give each of
Speaker 1: those ten people a a slice of your delicious homemade pie,
Speaker 1: and afterwards you ask any of them who here wants
Speaker 1: to buy a pie so you can take it home
Speaker 1: for your family, and only one of them takes you
Speaker 1: up on the offer, and even that person is not
Speaker 1: super jazzed about it. That's not great, and it's way
Speaker 1: worse when that apple pie is actually a streaming video
Speaker 1: content service with nearly two billion dollars of investment behind it. That, uh,
Speaker 1: that's some apple pie. Still as bad as that sounds,
Speaker 1: the Verge piece goes on to explain that in the
Speaker 1: grand scheme of business, this isn't as big of a
Speaker 1: disaster as it seems like. On the face of it,
Speaker 1: an eight percent conversion rate, that is, getting eight percent
Speaker 1: of your audience to commit to a paid subscription isn't
Speaker 1: the worst, but compared to other services like Disney Plus,
Speaker 1: it was pretty far behind. Disney Plus had an eleven
Speaker 1: percent conversion rate. So on the face of it, you
Speaker 1: might even say, well, that doesn't sound like it's that much.
Speaker 1: I mean, eight percent to eleven percent. What's the big deal? However,
Speaker 1: it had You gotta look at the scale. Quimby signed
Speaker 1: up nd people in the first few days of going live,
Speaker 1: and that meant that about seventy two thousand of them
Speaker 1: converted into subscribers. But Disney Plus nine point five million
Speaker 1: people signed up for a trial for Disney Plus. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't just that it was a larger percentage of
Speaker 1: a conversion rate, it was also a much bigger scale.
Speaker 1: Quimby tried to recover as it became clear that the
Speaker 1: mobile centric focus was more of a an albatross around
Speaker 1: the company's neck rather than a selling point. Quimby began
Speaker 1: to work with set top box devices to produce apps
Speaker 1: for them so that people could watch the content of
Speaker 1: Quimby on their televisions rather than just on their phones
Speaker 1: or tablets, and at first the solutions involved services like
Speaker 1: Apple Airplay or Google Chrome Cast to you know, cast
Speaker 1: the content of a phone or tablet to a device
Speaker 1: that's connected to a television. Just before word came out
Speaker 1: that Quimby was going to shut down, Variety reported that
Speaker 1: the company had created apps for Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV,
Speaker 1: and Google TV Slash Android TV. In addition, the company
Speaker 1: had been in negotiations with Roku to get on there
Speaker 1: as well, but all that focus on the mobile experience
Speaker 1: was a real issue for the company. We'll never know
Speaker 1: if Quimby would have thrived in a world that wasn't
Speaker 1: hit by the COVID nineteen pandemic. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it still would have faced an uphill battle even without
Speaker 1: the pandemic, but it is clear that the pandemic really
Speaker 1: shaped how people were accessing media because most of us
Speaker 1: just weren't out and about as much and had less
Speaker 1: of a need to be glued to our mobile devices. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the company spent money on some fairly luxurious digs for
Speaker 1: a corporate headquarters. Now, arguably, in the business that is
Speaker 1: show this is a necessity, as having a cool space
Speaker 1: is a great way to impress potential content partners and
Speaker 1: to get them on board. I've seen it happened at iHeart,
Speaker 1: in fact, so you could argue that this is understandable,
Speaker 1: but it's also an expense and a pretty hefty one,
Speaker 1: and in a business where things are not going so hot,
Speaker 1: it can be something that critics will point to when
Speaker 1: they discuss bad decisions. However, if Quimby had been successful.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure the nitro coal brew on tap or
Speaker 1: the sleek glass offices would have merited much discussion. I
Speaker 1: don't know that anyone would have pointed it out. Perhaps
Speaker 1: in an act of desperation, Quimby tested out a freemium
Speaker 1: version of its service in Australia and in New Zealand.
Speaker 1: So there you could sign up for a free account
Speaker 1: and you could watch ads supported Quimby content to your
Speaker 1: heart's content. You could still sign up for a paid
Speaker 1: subscription and you could go add free as well. Perhaps
Speaker 1: the company was dipping its toe into the water to
Speaker 1: see if, may be it could entice enough users to
Speaker 1: adopt the service if ads were the only revenue generating
Speaker 1: avenue for the basic subscription. But it turned out that free,
Speaker 1: just I guess, wasn't cheap enough for people, because the
Speaker 1: offer did not receive that many takers, and as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, Quimby didn't really try it anywhere else.
Speaker 1: So a little more than six months after it launched,
Speaker 1: and after raising more than one point seven five billion
Speaker 1: dollars from investors ranging from the Walt Disney Company to
Speaker 1: JP Morgan Chasing Company to the Chinese mega corporation, Ali
Speaker 1: Baba Katzenberg called an employee meeting to break the bad
Speaker 1: news the company was going to shut down. The three
Speaker 1: million dollars of cash on hand would be redistributed to
Speaker 1: the various investors, which raised questions from content creators about
Speaker 1: how or even if they would be paid for their work,
Speaker 1: questions that, as far as I can tell, have not
Speaker 1: mostly been answered, which is pretty darn rough now. Depending
Speaker 1: upon which report you read, the announcement either wasn't a
Speaker 1: surprise to most employees or it came as a total shock.
Speaker 1: It seems like there's a bit of a discrepancy there.
Speaker 1: It's hard for me to imagine it as shocking. Not
Speaker 1: only was the company facing the challenges I had already mentioned,
Speaker 1: it was also doing so in an environment where content
Speaker 1: creation was either screeching to a halt or having to
Speaker 1: change dramatically to work within the pandemic era. Quimby had
Speaker 1: spent a lot of money on content production early on.
Speaker 1: They frontloaded the service with a lot of original programming
Speaker 1: to attract users. But a service like Quimby needs to
Speaker 1: generate new content to refresh offerings on a regular basis,
Speaker 1: and the pandemic just isn't a great time to try
Speaker 1: and produce studio quality video content. A lot of people
Speaker 1: have adjusted to working from home studios or at least
Speaker 1: very limited sets in local aations, but it is still
Speaker 1: hard to do, and there's still a risk of someone
Speaker 1: getting sick, and if someone does get sick, that can
Speaker 1: shut down an entire production for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: It was a pretty bad scenario, perhaps a worst case one.
Speaker 1: And maybe it's more accurate to say that people were
Speaker 1: surprised at the timing of the announcement, not that it happened,
Speaker 1: but just that it happened so early. Quimby had just
Speaker 1: secured apps on those set top boxes I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: and it had raised an enormous amount of investment money
Speaker 1: that there was kind of a general belief that could
Speaker 1: at least be able to stick around a little bit
Speaker 1: longer to see if perhaps it can make everything work.
Speaker 1: But Katzenberg made the decision to call it quits in
Speaker 1: order to avoid losing more investor money. And that was
Speaker 1: probably a pretty wise decision on his part, because I
Speaker 1: suspect he will want to launch other businesses in the future,
Speaker 1: and it would be way easier to do that if
Speaker 1: he wasn't burning bridges. Between now and then, around two
Speaker 1: people lost their jobs as a result of Quimby shutting down.
Speaker 1: And then there are the various production studios, the content creators,
Speaker 1: the crews, and all the other people who are impacted
Speaker 1: because their work was for projects that were based on Quimby.
Speaker 1: Behind the scenes, there was a lot of turnover at
Speaker 1: the executive level, with stories leaking that working with Whitman
Speaker 1: and Catzenberg could be challenging. Catzenberg in particular, has a
Speaker 1: reputation for micro managing. The service will continue operating until
Speaker 1: December one, when it will then all shut down, and
Speaker 1: I think it's a shame from multiple perspectives. It is
Speaker 1: a huge challenge to get something made with real production value.
Speaker 1: If you're a content creator, there just aren't that many opportunities.
Speaker 1: For every TV show or film that you see, there
Speaker 1: are hundreds of ideas that never make it, and some
Speaker 1: of them never even get a chance. Some of them
Speaker 1: are just never even glanced at. So anytime there is
Speaker 1: an opportunity for a creative person to realize their vision,
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of special. And Quimby also created
Speaker 1: an interesting challenge. It's not necessarily a good challenge, but
Speaker 1: an interesting one. And that's this. With content divided up
Speaker 1: into ten minute videos, you have to structure your story
Speaker 1: to fit the format. Now, ideally you would end a
Speaker 1: video in such a way that people would want to
Speaker 1: see the next episode or the next segment of your movie.
Speaker 1: So if you make a movie that's essentially twelve ten
Speaker 1: minute long videos, that means you've got to craft eleven
Speaker 1: cliffhangers that lead towards a satisfying conclusion. It becomes the
Speaker 1: Dan Brown novel of films. And this is really hard
Speaker 1: to sustain. I think of shows like twenty four, a
Speaker 1: television series in which episodes take place in real time
Speaker 1: over the course of twenty four hours. Uh that's a
Speaker 1: twenty four episodes per season, with each episode lasting one hour.
Speaker 1: The beginning and the end of a season of twenty
Speaker 1: four hends to be pretty amazing, and the middle tends
Speaker 1: to be less amazing, as writers are trying to find
Speaker 1: out ways that they can keep the momentum going from
Speaker 1: episode to episode in order to get to their conclusion.
Speaker 1: I imagine the same thing was true for a lot
Speaker 1: of Quimby creators. Still, this segment is for you, Quimby.
Speaker 1: We hardly knew ye. In fact, some of us didn't
Speaker 1: know ye at all. Next, we'll look at a few
Speaker 1: other stories I talked about after lockdown and how things
Speaker 1: have changed in just a few months. But first let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break. One of the other series of
Speaker 1: episodes that I tackled while working from home was about Panasonic,
Speaker 1: and this should be a pretty quick update right here.
Speaker 1: Panasonic's president at the time of those episodes was a
Speaker 1: man named kasu Hiro Suga, who technically he's still the
Speaker 1: president right now, but he had the unenviable task of
Speaker 1: reversing Panasonics slide into losses under the leadership of the
Speaker 1: previous president, Fumio Otsubo. Now where it comes that Suga
Speaker 1: plans to step down by June of one. His replacement
Speaker 1: will be Yuki Kusumi. Kusumi, like Suga, worked largely in
Speaker 1: the automotive component division of Panasonic. The company also announced
Speaker 1: that by twenty twenty two, it would change the company's
Speaker 1: structure and convert it into a holding company, with each
Speaker 1: division within Panasonic operating more as its own separate entity.
Speaker 1: And the intent here is to make it more clear
Speaker 1: what the deliverables are for each division within the company,
Speaker 1: and also to free up leaders to make their decisions
Speaker 1: more quickly and without any bureaucratic red tape. Now. I
Speaker 1: also did an episode about TikTok, the video social networking
Speaker 1: service that I mentioned earlier. In this episode, when I
Speaker 1: was talking about Quimby and when I last left off
Speaker 1: about TikTok, I mentioned that there was this growing pressure
Speaker 1: for TikTok to split off from the Chinese parent company
Speaker 1: Byte Dance, and that there were a few American company
Speaker 1: suitors that were toying with the idea of an acquisition.
Speaker 1: The deadline for severing ties to that parent company in
Speaker 1: China fell in mid November, which is you know now ish.
Speaker 1: In fact, as I recorded, that deadline was yesterday, November twelve.
Speaker 1: UH News recently broke that TikTok's deadline has now had
Speaker 1: a fifteen day extension. This was not because of some
Speaker 1: sort of leniency granted by the US government, but rather
Speaker 1: because the US government failed to do anything after the
Speaker 1: deadline passed and then negotiated a new deadline. But to
Speaker 1: be fair for those of US not paying attention, the
Speaker 1: US government has had a few other concerns going on
Speaker 1: right now, including the aforementioned pandemic and the fall out
Speaker 1: of the twenty twenty election, and boy, howdy is it
Speaker 1: a fun time to be paying attention to politics now.
Speaker 1: There wasn't so much threat of things changing significantly for
Speaker 1: TikTok anyway, even if the government had tried to go
Speaker 1: through with this deadline, because in various court cases, federal
Speaker 1: judges have decided against the Trump administration and blocked the
Speaker 1: orders that the administration was was leveling to ban US
Speaker 1: companies from having transactions with TikTok. In other words, advertisers
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to advertise on TikTok's platform, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, and those orders were struck down in federal courts.
Speaker 1: So with those judgments in place, the government really didn't
Speaker 1: have a whole lot of pressure that it could put
Speaker 1: on TikTok. So it's kind of like someone saying, you'd
Speaker 1: better not do that again, or I'll tell you not
Speaker 1: to do it again. It's hardly an intimidating threat. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: China has grown quite hostile to this whole situation, and
Speaker 1: since any deal would require cooperation between China and US
Speaker 1: companies and authorities, that presents a big challenge as well.
Speaker 1: Now what do I think about all this, Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm still not a huge TikTok fan. From the perspective
Speaker 1: of personal security and privacy. I think it's fine for
Speaker 1: what it's doing except for that security and privacy side.
Speaker 1: But that's like all social networking sites, right. TikTok collects
Speaker 1: a lot of information about users, and that information is
Speaker 1: going to a company, in this case a company that
Speaker 1: happens to be owned by a Chinese parent company. That
Speaker 1: does cause me a little concern, But then I also
Speaker 1: feel concerned regarding US owned social networking sites. Do I
Speaker 1: feel TikTok is more dangerous than say, Facebook, No, I
Speaker 1: actually think Facebook is at least as big of a
Speaker 1: concern as TikTok, and probably a bigger concern from a
Speaker 1: security and privacy point of view. And and it's it's
Speaker 1: potential to do things like undermine the democratic process. I
Speaker 1: think Facebook's the bigger threat. But this is all complicated
Speaker 1: by the fact that the timing of the US government's
Speaker 1: escalation in opposition to TikTok seemed to fall in line
Speaker 1: with a big prank that the TikTok community pulled on
Speaker 1: the Trump campaign staff during the lead up to the election,
Speaker 1: and that has led some people to hypothesize that the
Speaker 1: US scrutiny is fueled not through some concern for national security,
Speaker 1: but rather due to vindictiveness. Now I have no idea
Speaker 1: what's going on at this point. If I'm being honest,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the motivations are. Really. The whole
Speaker 1: thing is a big, confusing mess. What I do know
Speaker 1: is I'm just about fed up with all social networking
Speaker 1: sites out there. In fact, I got off Facebook, although
Speaker 1: admittedly I'm still on it. Are a lot so I'm
Speaker 1: not free of it. Oh. Another story I talked about
Speaker 1: was Epic Games versus Apple, and here's a quick rundown.
Speaker 1: Epic Games publishes many games, among them one called Fortnite,
Speaker 1: which is available on lots of different platforms, including Apple's iOS.
Speaker 1: Epic has micro transactions within the game. The game itself
Speaker 1: is free to download, but then micro transactions are how
Speaker 1: Epic makes money off of it. So players can spend
Speaker 1: real world money to buy digital assets to customize their
Speaker 1: characters in Fortnite. You give them specific costumes and dances
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. Apple's policy is to take
Speaker 1: a cut of all transactions that occur within apps that
Speaker 1: are in the Apple App Store, a thirty percent cut.
Speaker 1: In fact, Epic Games decided to try and sidestep this,
Speaker 1: and that gave iOS players an option to buy in
Speaker 1: game currency separately from iOS, so you could get more
Speaker 1: in game value for your real world dollar, because there
Speaker 1: wasn't a markup to compensate for that thirty cut that
Speaker 1: Apple would have taken otherwise. Then Apple went nuclear on
Speaker 1: Epic for violating terms of service, and they removed Fortnite
Speaker 1: from the Apple App Store. And then they said to Epic, hey,
Speaker 1: anything you guys are working on, we are no longer
Speaker 1: going to support in iOS. And since that happens to
Speaker 1: include game engines like the Unreal Game Engine, which Epic
Speaker 1: is responsible for, and since many other game developers rely
Speaker 1: on that particular game engine to power their own games,
Speaker 1: this represented a huge problem. So Epic sued Apple for
Speaker 1: anti competitive conduct. Apple filed a couple of counterclaims on Epic,
Speaker 1: saying that Epic was intentionally interfering with Apple's business. The
Speaker 1: judge would throw out Apple's counterclaims, saying that Apple was
Speaker 1: on the losing side of this particular argument, But the
Speaker 1: story is far from over. However, it did represent a
Speaker 1: set back for Apple. Also back in October, a judge
Speaker 1: found in favor of Epic when it came to the
Speaker 1: banning of that game engine I mentioned, the Unreal engine.
Speaker 1: The judge restrained Apple from removing support for the engine,
Speaker 1: which was a huge win for Epic. You might even
Speaker 1: call it an Epic win, but the judge didn't go
Speaker 1: so far as to grant an injunction against Apple that
Speaker 1: would have seen Fortnite get returned to the Apple App Store.
Speaker 1: One judge proposed a trial date for the summer of
Speaker 1: one to settle the whole thing, but so far both
Speaker 1: Epic and Apple have indicated that they would really rather
Speaker 1: have a case where a judge decides the outcome as
Speaker 1: opposed to a jury trial. So we'll see what happens next.
Speaker 1: And a couple of other real quick updates on the
Speaker 1: update on the deep fake story I did. While deep
Speaker 1: fakes didn't really play that much of a role in
Speaker 1: the lead up to the election in the United States,
Speaker 1: there were fears that we would be flooded with fabricated videos,
Speaker 1: but those proved largely be unfounded fears. There was no
Speaker 1: shortage of misinformation, and there were plenty of misinformation video clips,
Speaker 1: but these were mostly video clips that were taken out
Speaker 1: of context, so they were actual video clips of real people,
Speaker 1: not deep fakes, but they were edited in such a
Speaker 1: way to make it seem like a person was saying
Speaker 1: something that they weren't really saying. So we didn't see
Speaker 1: a big influx of deep fakes, but we were still
Speaker 1: flooded with lies in misdirections. So yeah. I also did
Speaker 1: an update on the G four TV episode I recorded
Speaker 1: much earlier, and I did a little talk about the
Speaker 1: network's upcoming resurrection currently scheduled for Since that update, there's
Speaker 1: been a couple of others. There were rumors that Olivia
Speaker 1: Munn is in talks to potentially return as a host
Speaker 1: of a G four TV program. I think that could
Speaker 1: be great if all parties can find agreeable terms. G
Speaker 1: four has also continued to put out casting calls for
Speaker 1: new shows, including a casting call that was a video
Speaker 1: that had original G four TV and and before that,
Speaker 1: Tech TV host Adam Sessler as a character called Crazy
Speaker 1: Adam calling for people to come on down and submit applications.
Speaker 1: I'm certain there are a lot more updates. I could
Speaker 1: probably tackle, but these were the ones that really stood
Speaker 1: out to me. Since my office went into lockdown on
Speaker 1: March that also was a Friday, So I left the
Speaker 1: office on Friday the thirteenth, and I'm recording this episode
Speaker 1: on the next Friday. How about that. Now, I plan
Speaker 1: on dipping into the archives now and then and giving
Speaker 1: up dates on old Tech Stuff episodes. Some of the
Speaker 1: episodes that I've done about companies are now a few
Speaker 1: years old at this point, and those are almost certainly
Speaker 1: due for an update, at least for the companies that
Speaker 1: are still around today. But if you guys have any
Speaker 1: suggestions on episodes that I should follow up on, or
Speaker 1: even brand new episode ideas, let me hear them. The
Speaker 1: best place to get in touch with me is over
Speaker 1: on Twitter. Just tweet at the show text Stuff h
Speaker 1: s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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