152: ‘The Greatest Mic Drop I’ve Ever Seen’ With Guy English

0:00:00Were you a Prince fan?

0:00:01I can't say that I was.

0:00:03I... obviously, you know, as someone who grew up in the 80s, it was impossible to miss him.

0:00:08And I watched tons of MTV.

0:00:09And so all of the songs from the 80s are totally ingrained in my head

0:00:13because I've watched them just all the time because I always, you know, watched MTV all the time.

0:00:19I liked him a lot. I cannot say I was particularly a fan.

0:00:21I came around to it later because like you, I was more of a...

0:00:26I always put him in the pop category a bit more, which I think is fair to say.

0:00:30And I was kind of probably like a more rock and roll-y kind of guy.

0:00:34But I mean, after I got out of that phase of like,

0:00:39you know, when you're a teenager, you tend to delete things into good and bad, a lot more.

0:00:45But yeah, once I got into sort of appreciating,

0:00:48oh man, he's immensely talented and he's had so much cultural impact in terms of other music and other

0:00:55just other bands, just the way they behave. It's like, he's amazing.

0:00:59Yeah, I tweeted something last night where it was a tribute. It was from when George

0:01:03Harrison died and his son

0:01:05had like a tribute and

0:01:07Prince played

0:01:09and didn't even sing. It was like Tom Petty and I forget who the...

0:01:14somebody else, Steve... George Harrison's son was on stage. Yeah, and Petty did most of the

0:01:18lyrics.

0:01:21But then Prince came on with this guitar solo at the end and it's just

0:01:25just like jaw-droppingly good.

0:01:27And I'd always heard, and some people on Twitter, most people just

0:01:31retweeted it, because it's an amazing performance, and it's just, I mean, it's

0:01:34just a great song, well played, and it's just an amazing ending.

0:01:38And then it's even better, because at the end,

0:01:40Prince knows he'd nailed it, and he just nonchalantly tosses his guitar up in the

0:01:44air, and it never comes down.

0:01:47What the hell happened to his guitar? And then he just...

0:01:50And he just saunters offstage.

0:01:54I've seen him perform, and he is incredible.

0:01:57I realize it's a guitar, not a microphone, but effectively it is the greatest mic drop I've ever seen.

0:02:02I mean, in addition to being a great song and a great performance, it is literally the best mic drop I've ever seen, because it doesn't come down.

0:02:08It's not.

0:02:09Yeah.

0:02:10And he rocks out like Jimi Hendrix style.

0:02:12Oh, absolutely.

0:02:12Which you're not accustomed to hearing, necessarily, in his songs.

0:02:16But he can do it, you know what I mean? He's like, "Oh, just in my back pocket I could beat the next Jimi Hendrix."

0:02:20But, uh...

0:02:21Yeah, it's just in his back pocket.

0:02:22Play a lot of funk and stuff.

0:02:23And then there was a couple people on Twitter who were like, "How can you, you know, to me, how can you not know that Prince is one of like the top 20 guitarists of all time, maybe like top 10?"

0:02:32And I didn't know. I knew he was great. I knew he could play a bunch of instruments. I knew he was a very talented musician, including the guitar.

0:02:39I knew that because people told me, but I didn't know it in the way you really know it when you actually see it.

0:02:44Yeah.

0:02:45And I realized then that all of those guitar solos on all of Prince's songs that are so amazing are him. And I didn't know that before.

0:02:51before. I just knew that they were... Well, half of the other instruments that are being played are also him.

0:02:56Right.

0:02:57That he's just doing it all, and in a way that's just, you know, almost

0:03:01impossible to comprehend.

0:03:03I think one thing that I

0:03:05could probably convince you to appreciate about him a lot is that, uh...

0:03:09remember when he had to change his name?

0:03:11He had to? Yeah, so the record label basically had him

0:03:15by the balls for producing albums under the name Prince, and he didn't like his deal.

0:03:20So he's like, "Screw it."

0:03:22And in the ultimate, "Fuck you."

0:03:25He's like, "I'm gonna change my name to this character."

0:03:28- I remember when he changed his name to the character,

0:03:29I didn't realize that it was a way out of his, like a--

0:03:32- It was 100% a way out of his like, "Screw you.

0:03:36You're not owning my masters, my music, I'm taking it.

0:03:40And you're not owning my name

0:03:41'cause I'm gonna change my name to something ridiculous."

0:03:43And he never bothered explaining to that.

0:03:45It's not like he went on all the shows and just told people.

0:03:47He was like, "Look, I'm doing that.

0:03:49I'm gonna keep focusing on my work same reason why he doesn't want all the YouTube stuff is he wants to basically be able to own

0:03:55All the distribution. Yeah, because he thinks artists want he thinks artists deserve to be paid and I absolutely I've been aware of his stance on that

0:04:03Last night, I mean like like half the people in the Western world last night, you know

0:04:09I mean I started let you know went to listen to some events to and not on Apple music

0:04:15I knew that you know first thing I tried and and I

0:04:19Instantly thought well, I guess I knew that actually, you know because he's not into that

0:04:23So we just started buying a bunch of stuff from iTunes. It was a

0:04:25Lot of fun good stuff. I posted a link today on during fire bottom if you saw it, but uh, just just like a random

0:04:33screenshot from a

0:04:36movie that Prince made in 1990 called graffiti bridge where he played like him, you know

0:04:41Like a sort of thinly veiled version of himself like a young songwriter and in 1990 the character he was you know

0:04:48composing a song on like a little Mac and Mac and and of course it and and it

0:04:54was totally legit it wasn't like a phony phony phony fake UI it was like a real

0:04:58app from the day of you know like a like MIDI tracking yeah MIDI tracking like

0:05:04trackers yeah so like the actual screenshot in the in the movie is

0:05:09actually like an actual song that he wrote it was like so you got like a

0:05:13little look at his prints his own like you know working set up workflow when

0:05:22he's like trying stuff out with a Mac yeah it's like Warhol drawing on right

0:05:25yeah right sketching on Mac paint right little nine-inch look at this screen

0:05:31it's tiny god what would it have been if it was an SCE I think they it was like

0:05:35that the guy who wrote the blog post was trying to figure out he'd nailed it down

0:05:38it was either an SCE or an SCE 30 yeah the SCE 30 didn't come out until like

0:05:43late in the year before the movie was made though so there's I think there's a

0:05:46much better chance that it was just an SE so that would have been just a 68

0:05:5168,000 chip I think I don't know if that if they had a 6820 but it wasn't until

0:05:56the SE's 68030 that the Mac really got fast so that was a pretty slow machine

0:06:03you know though you got it it says a lot about his forward-looking oh absolutely

0:06:09absolutely being an artist that he's like look I'm gonna try this crazy thing

0:06:12that probably sounded tinny and kind of crappy to him compared to all the other

0:06:16options he had, but he was fascinated enough to like, "This is cool, I want to learn how to do it."

0:06:22Yeah, and I'm sure the final output, you know, maybe didn't come right off the

0:06:25Mac, you know, in a lot of ways, because, you know, he played a lot of actual

0:06:28analog instruments, but maybe to get the composition right, it's that

0:06:33power of digital editing and the way that you can move stuff. I mean, we

0:06:40take it for granted to there and people who've grown up in an all-digital world, I could

0:06:48see why they take it for granted.

0:06:49But when you learn to be a writer like I did, where we didn't have word processors or computers

0:06:57at our disposal all the time.

0:06:59I used to actually, in high school, I used a typewriter to write stuff.

0:07:05And it's like when you think about when you're halfway through a thing and you really want

0:07:09move a paragraph or even just take out a sentence. If you realize you've just duplicated the

0:07:15same sentence twice, something that you wrote like the page before, and it's like you either

0:07:20have to retype the whole page or just live with it, you know, you start making decisions

0:07:26based on convenience rather than what it should be.

0:07:30Jared Polin Right. I mean, it really was, if you wanted

0:07:33to get, do anywhere near a halfway decent job, it was almost impossible not to type

0:07:38whole thing twice. How could you not make some sort of editing decision, you know, where you

0:07:44go through it with a pen and then retype it? And you would literally have to retype the thing.

0:07:48I mean, I'm sure music was the same way in a lot of ways, and that digital editing, the same way

0:07:53that it's revolutionized word processing, same way for music.

0:07:57Oh, I'm sure. Yeah.

0:07:59So I—

0:08:00Just like changing the tempo. Like, there's almost a third dimension to

0:08:07music that doesn't necessarily happen in writing.

0:08:09Yeah, totally. Yeah, I don't know. What I remember from those days, the early days of

0:08:15Mac around that time, is yes, yes, we were constantly running up against every single

0:08:21one of the limits of the machines. I mean, just stacks full of floppy disks all stuffed

0:08:28to within a few bytes of being full, a hard drive that was completely full. If you go

0:08:33go back even just a few more years. You didn't even have a hard drive. Everything was on

0:08:37the floppy drive. Severely RAM constrained. I mean, most of those devices, a lot of those

0:08:43early Macs only had a gigabyte or two gigabytes. My Mac LC in 1991 had four, a whopping four

0:08:52gigabytes, not gigabytes, megabytes, four megabytes.

0:08:54>> Megabytes, okay, good. That was, yeah.

0:08:55>> Four megabytes of RAM. So your RAM constrained, storage constrained, the storage was incredibly

0:09:02The hard drives were slow. The floppies were so slow you could hear them making the reads and writes.

0:09:07Yeah.

0:09:08I guess you could hear the hard drives too, but the floppies—

0:09:11I used to find that comforting.

0:09:12Yeah, definitely, because you knew—

0:09:14Something was working?

0:09:16It was comforting in a way you didn't think about until it went away.

0:09:19Right.

0:09:20And then you realized that if you think that something might be going wrong, you don't have that comfort.

0:09:28comfort like at least back then it's like if you thought something was going

0:09:32wrong like like a crash like maybe or the miss you know the system's locking

0:09:35up but you could still hear the thing you were hoping was being saved being

0:09:40written to you had hope that okay at least it's still writing yeah to the

0:09:44disk or if it locked up and all you could hear it like it were and then a

0:09:47clicking noise right there were certain oh yes you could definitely you did a

0:09:51big part of the diagnosis of any problem back then was what kind of what kind of

0:09:56mechanical go-but is falling apart. Right. Because there were certain... if it was

0:10:04perfectly repetitious, then that's a bad sign. Yes. That's like the same thing as

0:10:08going, oh yes, you could hear... sometimes you could hear it when a program had

0:10:12wedged itself into an infinite loop. And that was bad. But like there was a

0:10:17certain randomness to the sounds of like a file being written that it wasn't

0:10:22quite repetitious that that was soothing. Because we were seeking to the different

0:10:26sector, so you'd hear the...

0:10:28There was, it was more of an analog relationship. It was fundamentally a digital

0:10:32machine,

0:10:33but there was, you know, the actual spinning disk and

0:10:38the physicality of the

0:10:40ones and zeros being written to the disk

0:10:42gave it a certain,

0:10:44a genuinely analog dimension that came across in your relationship with it.

0:10:48I feel like there's probably a...

0:10:51I don't drive, so correct me, but

0:10:53like a manual versus automatic kind of...

0:10:55Yeah, I think so.

0:10:56Like you're very aware of the machine in one case,

0:10:59and in the other case you're kind of divorced from it a little bit.

0:11:01Well, and I think there's also a...

0:11:04if you compare it to driving...

0:11:05and I'm not really a car guy, but I do drive,

0:11:07but I think there's also, almost undisputably,

0:11:11a comparison to...

0:11:15as decades go on, our cars are more and more abstract

0:11:20in terms of just how much isolation there is from the noise outside, the shock absorption.

0:11:27And older cars, you really feel the road and you feel it's, you're just so much less removed.

0:11:33I mean, it's almost shocking sometimes when you look at a car from the 60s or 70s, let

0:11:38alone further, like how thin the doors are.

0:11:41You know, it's good.

0:11:42Everything was a lot more thinner and you just felt the road more.

0:11:45And it's more pleasing, I think overall, I mean, obviously, consumer money talks, it's

0:11:50It's more pleasing to have it abstracted, but in a way, as the driver, you're removed

0:11:55from the... just the feel of the road.

0:12:00Yeah.

0:12:01Did you show me that video?

0:12:03I don't know if I shared it with you.

0:12:05It's like an old 1950s Buick crashing into, I don't know what, like a modern smart car

0:12:10or something?

0:12:11No, I don't think so.

0:12:12And the Buick just gets destroyed.

0:12:16It was...

0:12:17Like the little guy just...

0:12:18so much better engineers now.

0:12:20- It's absolutely amazing the differences

0:12:23that they've made in the ability to--

0:12:27- Survive a crash.

0:12:28- I forget what they call it,

0:12:29the passenger, to keep the,

0:12:30to maintain the integrity of the passenger cabin

0:12:32and sacrifice the entire rest of the car.

0:12:35It's just unbelievable.

0:12:36Whereas in the old days,

0:12:37the whole car would just collapse like a can of Coke.

0:12:39- Yeah. - It's kind of sick.

0:12:41It really is. - The engine block

0:12:42would be like going right into your chest.

0:12:44- It's sickening too, because you think

0:12:46like those old time cars,

0:12:47the old cars were so heavy that they would be safer,

0:12:50but they just weren't,

0:12:50'cause the structure, the structural integrity

0:12:53just wasn't there.

0:12:54But it really is like it's just stepping on

0:12:56an empty aluminum can.

0:12:57It just, the whole thing just collapsed into itself.

0:13:00And it's--

0:13:01- Well, designed for different goals.

0:13:02- Right.

0:13:04- The ATP guys are like shaking their fists at us now.

0:13:07- Oh, I don't think so.

0:13:07I think Sir Cus is probably happy

0:13:09about the old Time Mac talk.

0:13:11- Ah, maybe.

0:13:12- They had a good segment recently where they were talking,

0:13:13I guess 'cause it was sort of,

0:13:15One of the recent episodes was the,

0:13:17hey, it's Apple's 40th anniversary.

0:13:19Let's look back at our first Macs.

0:13:22And I couldn't listen to Marco or Casey.

0:13:25- No. (laughs)

0:13:26- That's awful.

0:13:27- I honestly, I consider myself a Johnny Cam lately.

0:13:30- You are.

0:13:31- And I'm like 97. - 'Cause you're a graphics guy.

0:13:33Right. - Yeah.

0:13:33So, and he's, you know, anything after that,

0:13:38I'm like, come on, kids, get your act together.

0:13:41- No, that was one of those times

0:13:42where Syracuse, it was really, you know,

0:13:44It just felt like he was creepily picking the thoughts out of my brain because it was

0:13:51he was he actually started using a Mac a few years before me even though he's a few years younger than me

0:13:56just because my school, my high school only had one Mac

0:14:00and the longer I went I had like it was almost like they had classes for just like two or three of us

0:14:06in programming as like my last two years of high school there weren't it was only like two or three other kids in the class

0:14:12and I wanted a color display, so I used the 2GS.

0:14:17- Oh. - It was very--

0:14:19- That, I would have made that choice too.

0:14:21- Well, there was only one Mac, and it was,

0:14:24and I didn't want to, I guess I could have argued

0:14:26for equal time on it.

0:14:28I remember it was a class name named Elliot,

0:14:31but it was like, we were trying to decide

0:14:34which one of us would maybe use the Mac and who,

0:14:37and then there were a bunch of 2GSs in the lab

0:14:39that we could choose from.

0:14:41I guess if neither of us wanted to use the Mac,

0:14:43we could have both used the 2GS.

0:14:44But he seemed more interested in the Mac

0:14:46and I was fine to let him have it.

0:14:49And I played with it a little.

0:14:50And I remember playing with,

0:14:52especially with MacWrite and MacPaint,

0:14:56MacPaint in particular, and MacDraw.

0:14:59But even back then with MacDraw, even in 1989 or '90,

0:15:04I was instantly baffled by Bezier curves.

0:15:07- But if it, oh yeah.

0:15:09- I understood what it meant.

0:15:10I understood what a vector graphic could offer, and I was fascinated, but damned if I could

0:15:17navigate the interface. But Mac did, man.

0:15:20Well, the control points are like voodoo.

0:15:24So I learned the Mac.

0:15:25And I say that knowing the math and how to do it, but it's still, like, it's unintuitive.

0:15:29Yeah.

0:15:29Yeah, it's very unintuitive. And everything I learned about the Mac was just completely

0:15:33intuitive. I remember too—

0:15:36I didn't like the Mac. So I started on Apple II Plus,

0:15:41left the Apple II GS, then got into PCs.

0:15:46And for whatever reason, because I was a stubborn kid, I didn't like

0:15:54the Mac floppy disk. Because it had that

0:15:59latch, you know, like the 3.5 inch floppy disk. I just found it inelegant.

0:16:04I liked the five and a quarter ones because you could flip them over and use a hole punch and then you can get a whole second side.

0:16:10You could do that with the plastic ones too.

0:16:12But it was obviously harder to...

0:16:14It was harder to make the hole, you know?

0:16:15Yeah.

0:16:16Yeah.

0:16:16So it was dumb, but it was like a five year phase of my life.

0:16:21And I mean, I was getting into like hardcore Intel assembly programming and stuff at the time.

0:16:26But then I did a drafting class in high school because I like drawing.

0:16:34Turns out, not the same thing. But one of the things we have to do is work on a Mac, in a Mac Draw.

0:16:40Changed my mind very soon after that. I mean, the software was brilliant. I loved it.

0:16:47It was such a new, different experience.

0:16:53It's so funny too. I know Casey even mentioned it because Casey's way too young,

0:16:57but he was baffled by the fact that the three and a half inch ones were still called floppies, even though there was nothing

0:17:03floppy about them because they were in a hard shell.

0:17:05It's just one of those stupid names because what they did, I think long story short,

0:17:10there used to be eight inch floppies really coming back, and that predates my time.

0:17:15But then like in the Apple II era and what most of us in the 80s knew were the five and a quarter inch.

0:17:20I bet your parents have like a stack of five and a quarter inch floppies or yeah

0:17:25probably even five and a quarter inch floppies. No because I didn't have a computer in the house.

0:17:28Oh so, oh really? Yeah I've told this story before. Oh yeah you have, okay yeah.

0:17:34My parents refused to buy me a computer. This is why you made, this is why your career in

0:17:39technology went nowhere. A lot of my friends were getting computers. My friend Joey had an Apple

0:17:43Apple IIe, which I deeply coveted,

0:17:47'cause I, from the early days on,

0:17:50I perceived that Apple's computers

0:17:52were of superior build quality,

0:17:54and were made with an eye to design

0:17:57that the others weren't.

0:17:59But I would've taken any of them.

0:18:00I would've taken a Commodore, I would've taken,

0:18:02I would've taken any or all of them.

0:18:04But my friends were getting computers.

0:18:05They were all relatively expensive.

0:18:07The Apple in particular, some things don't change.

0:18:11But even like a good Commodore 64 was...

0:18:16- They weren't cheap.

0:18:17- They weren't cheap.

0:18:18And a lot of my friends had to push

0:18:20because their parents were like, "That's a lot of money.

0:18:23And you're not gonna use it enough.

0:18:27You're just gonna play games.

0:18:28We already have an Atari for games."

0:18:30My parents wouldn't buy me a computer

0:18:32because they said, "If we buy you a computer,

0:18:34we're worried that you're never gonna leave the house."

0:18:37- Yeah.

0:18:40I don't know if it was the right parental decision or not. I can't quite say, even in hindsight,

0:18:46I can't quite say I agree with him, but maybe because, you know, I didn't have a...

0:18:51I had a pretty good social life in high school, but maybe I wouldn't have had a computer at home.

0:18:56I think it's probably the right decision.

0:18:59Because I got so... well, because we're kind of similar, not entirely, but...

0:19:04I got...

0:19:06The first Apple II I got was...

0:19:08I think the second summer after I moved from England here, so I didn't really know a lot of people in Canada.

0:19:13And I basically spent the entire summer inside programming.

0:19:18And that became part of my--I don't know how to describe it--like a recharging.

0:19:23You know, when you need some alone time to go and do something just for yourself.

0:19:28And that lasted all during high school, which is when I actually became good at my--you know, what my trade is now.

0:19:33you know, what my trade is now. But yeah, there was a lot of time I just did not go outside,

0:19:38when I really should have. Like in the beautiful summer, I'd be like, "Maybe I'll just try fixing

0:19:45this little bug." In the summer between 10th and 11th grade, my high school shut down. The

0:19:53building had needed a lot of repairs, especially the roof. And the school district had another

0:19:58building. There was a middle school and in the decades prior that the population of the school

0:20:04district decreased such that they closed the middle school, put the fifth and sixth graders

0:20:09in the elementary school, and it went from three schools elementary, middle, and high school to

0:20:14just two buildings. An elementary school for one to six and a high school for seven to twelve. And

0:20:19in between 10th and 11th grade they shut down the high school and moved the high school to the middle

0:20:25school because it was a newer it was considered it was cheaper to fix up the

0:20:29middle school which had been dormant for like four or five years and shut down

0:20:35high school so the computer teacher

0:20:39didn't trust the movers with the computers and let students take the

0:20:44computers home for the summer so I got to take an Apple to GS home for the

0:20:50summer. Oh man, that's awesome. Yeah, it was awesome. And I had a job. I actually, the

0:20:56school hired a bunch of kids to help move the school, so I was working as like a mover.

0:21:04There's a couple good stories. That's pretty smart. Was that like a legit job? Like, they

0:21:08got paid minimum wage? Oh yeah, minimum wage, absolutely. I don't, it was whatever, I think

0:21:14minimum wage was. Well, it could have been just playing fast and loose, yeah. I think

0:21:17I think it was either $3.75 an hour or $4.25 an hour.

0:21:20$4.25 an hour.

0:21:21- That would make sense.

0:21:22- And backbreaking work.

0:21:23I remember moving the library.

0:21:25Oh my God.

0:21:26It's just like, 'cause what is heavier

0:21:29than a box full of books?

0:21:30Very little is heavier than a box of books.

0:21:34And it's just thousands of books,

0:21:36tens of thousands of books.

0:21:38Oh, it was awful.

0:21:39And we used to ride, it was like a two mile ride

0:21:42to go between the buildings.

0:21:44And we just had this big flatbed open-air truck,

0:21:48and we would just load it up with stuff

0:21:51and then find spots to sit.

0:21:54Open air, no seat belts or anything,

0:21:57just a bunch of kids on a truck.

0:21:59- Oh man, I love that.

0:22:00How old school is that?

0:22:01Let's hire some minimum-rich kids

0:22:06and just throw them in the back of a truck

0:22:08along with some books.

0:22:09- They also did hire some adults,

0:22:14like day laborer types.

0:22:15I mean, this is, I mean, people who just do moving,

0:22:18these are not highly skilled,

0:22:20this is like the bottom of the skill chain

0:22:23in the laboring world.

0:22:26And I remember the one day,

0:22:29when we were still moving the library,

0:22:31we had the card catalog.

0:22:33And so it was, you know,

0:22:35obviously this predates computerization

0:22:37of the card catalog.

0:22:38It was just this, do you remember what they look like?

0:22:40They just are like--

0:22:41- Oh yeah, yeah, totally.

0:22:42- Little tiny drawers. - They're like two whole

0:22:43punches on the bottom, like little cards that you pull out.

0:22:46Yeah.

0:22:46Yeah.

0:22:46And you'd pull it out and it was just filled with index cards.

0:22:49And the one guy, this guy, it wasn't a kid, it was an adult.

0:22:51He was like, what the hell is this?

0:22:52And we were like trying to explain to him that this is, these are like an index of

0:22:56every single book in the library.

0:22:57And he just takes a few out while we're on the road going like 35 miles an hour

0:23:01and just throws them up in the air.

0:23:04I just, I mean, I was into, I was an asshole as a teenager.

0:23:09I really was.

0:23:10And it did a lot of shit that I, in hindsight, I really feel like I needed,

0:23:13I need to be... I need a good smack.

0:23:17But I was appalled because I saw that as data loss.

0:23:23Some of the stuff I did, like vandalism or stuff like that,

0:23:25I wrote off just because it seemed ultimately harmless.

0:23:29- Whereas I felt like... - Yeah, put a bit of graffiti on a political sign.

0:23:33- Right. - But I mean, messing with books...

0:23:36Oh, that was never...

0:23:39- Burn a book and that's the worst. - Right.

0:23:42Like, I'll tell you, the same summer, so the same summer when we're moving,

0:23:46the old high school had a central courtyard

0:23:50so that classes on the inside got sunlight too.

0:23:53Right? So in other words, it's sort of an O-shaped building. It was rectangular, but

0:23:57like a donut.

0:23:59Three floors, central courtyard. And one of the classrooms on the

0:24:02third floor had, like, a janky old

0:24:06big-ass color TV, and it wasn't new at the time.

0:24:09and we dared each other to throw it out the window into the courtyard to see what kind of noise it

0:24:16would make. And ultimately, me and another guy took it. Neither of us would do it by ourselves,

0:24:22but we'd... And it was heavy enough that I don't know if I could have. It was really heavy. But me

0:24:26and another guy, I don't want to name them. Just in case. I don't want to put his name on the right.

0:24:32I can afford it. And another kid opened up the window and we tossed this big ass color

0:24:39TV out the window and it made the greatest noise. Oh my God, it was worth it. So I did

0:24:46that and I didn't feel at least a bit guilty about it. And then there was a discussion,

0:24:53there was a meeting later about the TV and did anybody know about the TV in the courtyard?

0:25:01Nobody could remember anything about that.

0:25:04That's weird.

0:25:05But the tossing the cards out of the card catalog, though, to me that was beyond the pale, because it's like data loss.

0:25:11Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's not...

0:25:15Yeah, the way you put it is just data loss.

0:25:18Have you seen that...

0:25:21I think on one of the BOS CDs that they shipped the OS on,

0:25:25like one of the demo movies was them tossing monitors off the top of their office block?

0:25:30block? No, I don't think so. Like, it was exactly what you described. They just

0:25:35dragged a bunch of old monitors up and they just threw them off the roof. Which maybe explains why they

0:25:42went out of business. But it was pretty funny. Ask Lisio about that. He'll probably

0:25:48has a link or something. Alright, I'm gonna see if I can Google it after the show.

0:25:52B.O.S.T.L. is tossing monitors off the roof. Yeah, so being a letterman addict probably

0:25:58didn't help either because tossing a TV off of a high floor of a building is a very Letterman

0:26:04like thing to do.

0:26:05Yes.

0:26:06The difference is that if the Letterman show tossed a TV off the roof, they bought the

0:26:10TV.

0:26:11Yes.

0:26:12Yeah.

0:26:13I controlled the environment.

0:26:14There's no way anybody's gonna get hit by that TV.

0:26:17I did not buy the TV I threw out the window.

0:26:23But I had a job.

0:26:24I had it was a full time job.

0:26:25We worked, you know, eight hours a day.

0:26:27I played tons and tons of basketball all summer long, filling in the gaps whenever it wasn't

0:26:33working.

0:26:34And then every other waiting moment was spent on the computer.

0:26:38And I thought that, you know, the fact that I held a job and still played recreational

0:26:41basketball all the time, and went to movies with friends on weekends and stuff like that,

0:26:47seemed to me like I was able to have a computer.

0:26:48But my parents were like, "See, this is why we can't buy you a computer."

0:26:51Even though I was doing all that other stuff, they somehow seemed to think that I was spending

0:26:55Ah, you turned out okay.

0:26:57Oh yeah, I don't know about that.

0:27:00Well, for the sake of this argument, yeah, yeah, whatever.

0:27:06The difference though, I would say this, and I think that it was the fact that I just didn't,

0:27:10like I said, I got to play with that one Mac in the lab enough that I saw what it was all about,

0:27:14and I saw the appeal, and I really saw the cleverness of having a system that was fundamentally a graphical user interface.

0:27:24But the idea of getting obsessed with user interface design just hadn't occurred to me yet.

0:27:30And the profoundness of the cleverness of the Mac's UI system, I needed to use it more to appreciate it.

0:27:43I don't think it had occurred to anybody yet, with the exception of the people that worked on the Lisa and the Mac.

0:27:50It seems that's one difference with Syracuse to me

0:27:53It seems like you listening to his early history of computing that he got he got that aspect of the Mac

0:27:59With almost maybe instantly but certainly with less exposure to it than I did I needed to own one

0:28:06Which is which I did when I got to college to had that Mac

0:28:10Like I said the aforementioned for four megabyte of RAM

0:28:1340 megabyte hard drive Mac LC and then I really really appreciated it

0:28:19So I liked the Mac, like I said, in the drafting class. I was like, "Okay, I get it. This is something totally different."

0:28:25But I didn't really appreciate one until I bought one immediately after the next acquisition.

0:28:33And then I was stuck with OS8 for a year.

0:28:39Nice.

0:28:40And I felt immediately like, "Oh man, I'm stuck with the top-earning system. It's not good."

0:28:46And then I learned all of the great things about it.

0:28:49So yeah, I do consider myself a Johnny-Come-Lately.

0:28:53But what I mean by "nobody had appreciated it,"

0:28:57I don't think the people at Xerox PARC were necessarily thinking about

0:29:01design the same way that Apple was when they went to actually try to implement

0:29:06first the Lisa and then the Mac.

0:29:08Yeah.

0:29:10Yeah, it's hard to say without using the--

0:29:13I've never gotten the chance to use the Xerox Star,

0:29:15but I've read enough about it and the work that Xerox did

0:29:18and seen it and kind of looked at it.

0:29:20'Cause I used to be a little bit more obsessed

0:29:24with the whole, that stupid, the angle that Apple,

0:29:27Apple really didn't even do anything with the Mac,

0:29:28they just ripped off Xerox, which legally isn't true

0:29:31because they actually got Xerox

0:29:33in exchange for a bit of Apple stock.

0:29:35It was totally on the up and up legally.

0:29:36They said, how about we give you a little bit of stock

0:29:39in the Apple computer and then let us--

0:29:41I just think that's a fast al argument. Yeah in general. Well, it's wrong matter who cares like no

0:29:46But it's at the time it was it at the time when there was more more arguments between you know

0:29:53PC sure at the time it was a point but I mean it's only it's only a point if you're

0:29:59Trying to make an appeal to authority argument, right?

0:30:03And I never got too bogged down and I mean somebody might be able to dig up some old usenet post that

0:30:09- I was very anti-old school Macos for a while. - I found it tiresome because I was 100% certain that I was on the right side.

0:30:24And it seemed to me like the people on the other side didn't really have anything to contribute anyway, so if they want to be wrong, they can be wrong.

0:30:32Like it wasn't worth trying to convince them there was what was what would be the point if you know if you can't see

0:30:37How superior this is then you know forget about it. I mean Syracuse I mentioned it

0:30:42I'm going and you had it too - what's that kind of thing? All right. Oh, yeah

0:30:47I

0:30:52Thought one of the things that I thought was I had to me

0:30:55Do you remember do you do you when you I don't know if you were too late?

0:30:59I mean ResEdit was still a thing in the...

0:31:01Oh yeah, yeah.

0:31:02ResEdit to me was...

0:31:04is maybe the...

0:31:06my favorite Mac program of that time.

0:31:09Loved it.

0:31:10Loved it.

0:31:11I...

0:31:12while being foreign to me, I love the idea of a resource fork.

0:31:15I love the idea of stuffing extra information in there.

0:31:19On the Windows side, they tried to do something similar.

0:31:24The EXE format is a flat format, but you can have resources appended to it.

0:31:30Right.

0:31:32But it's not the same thing as having an actual resource fork. Which is good and bad.

0:31:37Good in that it's just one flat binary stream.

0:31:42Bad in that you don't have the

0:31:48wants an express expressiveness of like a like a resedit or a multi resource file

0:31:54well and it did it in it the whole idea predated the era of universal the

0:32:03internet it's the internet that really solved the problem of every computer I

0:32:07think the internet I think the internet turned everything into the lowest common

0:32:12It did. That was...

0:32:13...a Unix binary stream thing.

0:32:15Right.

0:32:16It reset the clock in a lot of ways, in some ways negative, you know.

0:32:20Exactly. It's not to say that it meant the best thing won.

0:32:23It just meant, though, that there might be a good reason to go with the lowest common denominator solution of everything is just a single fork file.

0:32:31I was coming from OS/2 at the time, and even NT, which both had multiple resource file forks.

0:32:40Right. Like at that time, all of the file systems had followed what the Mac had done,

0:32:45which was like, okay, there's data in one segment, and then there's a bunch of other segments that have,

0:32:50you know, either metadata or, you know, what you guys call resource

0:32:55forks. The concept-- Extended attributes, which you still have to do. Conceptually, though, is what really-- it's not even the technical

0:33:00details of whether it was a two-fork, multi-fork file system, or if they had done something

0:33:05more of a hack, like let's say it's, or you know, like a lot like what we have on OS X now,

0:33:11where your app is really just a folder that the binder treats as a file, and the resources, you know.

0:33:17Just imagine if the original Mac had gone with the same thing, where it's a special magic kind of folder,

0:33:22and in the folder are all the resources, and every one of the resources is itself actually just a flat file.

0:33:27It's the conceptual design of having this one app that you could edit all that stuff with,

0:33:34with all these different resources so that even in the nerd mode of either being a developer

0:33:41or just being an enthusiast who wants to customize the icon for a file or an app or a folder

0:33:49or any of the other many many things you could edit and manipulate and res edit the fact that

0:33:57even when you did those things you were still within same the same gooey universe and you

0:34:03you didn't have to resort to a command line or something.

0:34:05Yeah, no, in some ways that's kind of like the small talk, like living in an environment.

0:34:10Yes, I do think so. I think in a strange way, even though the Mac, the original Mac,

0:34:15I don't think you would say the technical way was all that influenced by small talk.

0:34:20No, it's super different. But the concept is a little bit the same, right?

0:34:22Yes, that you stay completely committed to this limitation that you're self-imposing,

0:34:29and beauty will come out of it.

0:34:31Yeah. Yeah, I think so.

0:34:33And, you know, it's funny, Next used to do that with, like, apps that shipped even on OS X up until...

0:34:42Oh, I'm going to make up a number. 10.2? 10.3?

0:34:47Most of the apps would ship with Nibs, which were Next interface builder files,

0:34:52which you could open up in Interface Builder, which has since been merged into Xcode.

0:35:00And then edit the UI of the app that you...

0:35:03Like, if you didn't like the arrangement of dialog boxes, you could change it.

0:35:08Just like in ResEdit.

0:35:12These days, they've moved away from that.

0:35:15They all get compiled down into stuff that you can't edit afterwards.

0:35:20From a software reliability point of view,

0:35:27I think that's probably a good idea. But I like that the old west style of stuff was common between both platforms.

0:35:37The classic Mac OS was... and I'm not saying that it should have... in hindsight that it should have gone through to today.

0:35:46I mean, there's certainly some advantages to the Mac OS X philosophy of the design of the system.

0:35:53where things started getting locked down and some of the technical aspects of it

0:36:00were not as conceptually beautiful but more practical. That's when I first kind

0:36:07of became familiar with Syracuse. I would argue that back then it was

0:36:16mainly myths and I would argue the future looking pragmatism and he would

0:36:21argued that, well, it just sucks in terms of, let's say, window sizing.

0:36:25Right. And like, well, look, it's all done on the GPU, and they're doing a bunch of stuff,

0:36:29and it's going to get better. And he'd be like, yeah, but it sucks. And he was

0:36:33he was right. He's right. I think I'm also

0:36:37right, but the, you know. There was a beauty

0:36:41to the original Mac OS, though, that hasn't matched since, and I don't think everyone... I totally agree with you.

0:36:45And I completely agree with John Siracusa that iOS

0:36:49is closer, much closer than Mac OS X is to the...

0:36:53The original, anyways, yeah. I think now we're getting into

0:36:57more convoluted territory, where I'm not so sure.

0:37:01Well, the big difference, and this never would have made sense in the era

0:37:05of the original Mac. I don't think it ever would have

0:37:09occurred to anybody, even Steve Jobs, to lock

0:37:13the system down and not even allow you to...

0:37:17Like the ResEdit's a perfect comparison.

0:37:20There's never gonna be a ResEdit for iOS

0:37:23that lets you dittle with the icons for apps

0:37:26or other resources in it.

0:37:27'Cause that doesn't, there's another aspect of iOS

0:37:31that that would be philosophically opposed to.

0:37:33There's a sort of do not allow you to shoot your,

0:37:36like part of the design of iOS is to design a system

0:37:40that prevents you from shooting yourself in the foot.

0:37:42Even if you'd really, if you've got like a real itchy,

0:37:46you know, case athlete's foot and you just want to shoot yourself in the foot,

0:37:49you're not, you can't do it in iOS by itself. That just never would have

0:37:56occurred to anybody in the Mac OS era. Like I don't think the fact that, you

0:37:59know, I mean it wasn't like the machine shipped with ResEdit, you had to put it

0:38:03on your machine, but not even allowing you to do ResEdit or not allowing, you

0:38:08know, having a ResEdit that wasn't allowed to edit certain system files or

0:38:12something like that. It just didn't make sense. I mean, some of the hacks we would do, we would go right into it. Remember there was the system suitcase.

0:38:20There was actually, there was a, I mean, that's part of the things, one of the things that I say made the original Mac so beautiful is that the entire file system was, there was no crap.

0:38:32crap. There was like, or in his years went on very, very little

0:38:35crap. Like it was just a folder that said system folder and

0:38:39inside was a suitcase file called system. And that had all

0:38:43the resources for the system itself. And they're all neatly

0:38:46organized. There were no hidden folders or anything like that.

0:38:49The only hidden folder I can remember would be the desktop

0:38:52folder that had the root level of the hard drive. There was an

0:38:56invisible folder called the disk desktop folder, which is the

0:38:59actual location in the file system where everything you put

0:39:01on your desktop was.

0:39:03- Notably under the root of the disk, not under the user.

0:39:08- Because there was no user.

0:39:10- Right.

0:39:11Well, that's, I mean, this is why things got

0:39:13a little bit interesting when LSTAN came along, right?

0:39:15Like things got a little bit freaky.

0:39:18- Right.

0:39:18- And that's why we started,

0:39:20I don't remember if it was a beta that actually hid

0:39:23anything outside of user.

0:39:27- Oh, man.

0:39:28I think that they're wireless.

0:39:30I think they--

0:39:30floated but they went back and forth on a lot of those things yeah let me take a

0:39:36break while we're yeah you think so thank our first 41 minutes and we haven't

0:39:42even done a show yet it's our good friends at audible.com this episode of

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0:41:49sponsoring the talk show. I didn't even have this in the

0:41:53I do I always prepare very copious and well-organized notes for the show. I did not have tripped on memory lane

0:41:59Here's how much I like the Mac

0:42:01I like the Mac so much of when I was a freshman in college and finally owned one and had it I spent my entire

0:42:05Freshman year all of my free time

0:42:08Either playing games or hacking or diddling with the system resources and in res edit

0:42:14And didn't you know didn't go out drinking or anything like that?

0:42:19All I did recreation I just continued to play basketball. I played basketball and I sat in my dorm room staring at my Mac LC

0:42:25Just staring at it and we didn't have a network at the time

0:42:30There was no there was no internet in the dorms at Drexel University at the time

0:42:34So, you know what and modems were modems are so expensive. They were preposterous. We're like not a joke

0:42:39Yeah, there were preposterous what 91 90? Yeah 91 to 92. Yeah. I've told this story before too. We we wired up

0:42:48the dorm room Calhoun Hall at Drexel with

0:42:52Phone net I forget what they were called

0:42:55But there were these little and they were these were pretty cheap you could get them you order them out of the back of Mac

0:42:59World magazine or Mac user you may order these things get them get yours from Mac connection

0:43:04It was about 15 bucks and you'd get a little

0:43:06About the size of a mouse maybe even part smaller than the mouse of the day

0:43:12and it would plug into the serial port of your Mac and then it was a phone connector on the other side on the box.

0:43:20And so then you could use phone cable, just regular old telephone cable to create a local talk network.

0:43:26Oh man, Macs are good at that. So then you're playing video games again.

0:43:30Right, Spectre was the name of the, it was like a first person shoot, like a vector based, you know, pseudo vector based tank game.

0:43:38and we wired up the whole floor and we figured out, you know, and then we figured out that,

0:43:44you know, this is like the first time I learned how, you know, some electrical stuff work,

0:43:49that there's nothing really magical about phone cable. It's just copper. That's all it is. There's

0:43:55no, it's just copper and, you know, electrons move on it. There's, you know, and the colors are just

0:44:00to match up. There's nothing different about them. So, yeah, we figured out we could, we just ran

0:44:06speaker wire through the drop ceiling all around the the I forget what floor I

0:44:11was on the eighth floor seventh floor of Calhoun Hall and then just ran phone

0:44:15wire between anybody who wanted to get on the network or not you know and you

0:44:21don't have to do any soldering or any just you know connect the just make sure

0:44:24the cable and then just electrical tape it up so we had the whole floor wired up

0:44:29networking there was a chat app oh my god it was like the first time I ever

0:44:33had, I forget what it was called. Boy, somebody out there will remember it.

0:44:37But... >> For the Mac? It wasn't the... >> Well, you just had...

0:44:41>> Hotwire, was it? >> No, it was way before that. >> Way before that, yeah.

0:44:45>> I guess you'd have to know, you didn't have a user ID, you'd have a Mac name, though.

0:44:49So your Mac would have a name on the local TOTS network. So that's how you'd, you know,

0:44:53that was like your ID. But you could like effectively just send DMs to each other.

0:44:57Which was amazing. Of course, everybody does this all the time now,

0:45:01but it was like my introduction to text.

0:45:03Yeah, that is really cool.

0:45:05And it was all through a proper Mac interface.

0:45:07There was no, it wasn't like you had to go to a terminal type application or anything like that.

0:45:12It was great.

0:45:13And then we found out the kids on the floor above us had done the same thing.

0:45:16So did you bridge them?

0:45:19Yeah, there was a lot of trash talking about who was...

0:45:21Let's call it an internet.

0:45:22There was a lot of trash talking about who was better at Spectre.

0:45:25And so we ran some wire outside my room up to the one...

0:45:30Physically-created internet.

0:45:32Yeah.

0:45:33And then one day, the guy, I forget his title, but whoever it was, he was the guy who was

0:45:38in charge of that dorm.

0:45:40You know, like...

0:45:42I forget his title, but the guy that was in charge of that dorm?

0:45:45But he had like a name.

0:45:46That sounds like an 80s villain.

0:45:47Yeah, well, he was a nice guy.

0:45:50It was a very 80s movie situation where I got a knock on the door and was told to come

0:45:55down and meet him.

0:45:56And it was me and the guy above me who's...

0:45:58He said that...

0:45:59He said his smoking jacket was like one of those candy... with those candy cigarettes.

0:46:04The dorm faced south, or at least my side of the dorm faced south.

0:46:09And so it caught the afternoon sunlight.

0:46:12The afternoon sunlight came into our dorm room.

0:46:14He said he was coming up the street yesterday and noticed a very bright...

0:46:18This is where we screwed up is that we just used speaker wire instead of...

0:46:23We didn't really try to disguise it, and that the copper of the speaker wire really, it was bright.

0:46:28It like blinded him, and he saw like a very bright line between our dorm rooms.

0:46:32And when he got closer and figured out what it was, you know, that this is a fire hazard,

0:46:36and we've, you know, got to take this down immediately.

0:46:39And he obviously, and I tried to explain to him that, I think I'm correct, that it was not a fire hazard.

0:46:47I don't think there's enough voltage in it.

0:46:49Right, there's not enough voltage, you know. It's not a fire hazard.

0:46:52Also, not a dumb suggestion.

0:46:55No, not a dumb suggestion. And I could totally see why as someone with a job that, you know,

0:47:00Yeah.

0:47:01needed to deal with this. So we said, "Oh yeah, we'll get right on it. We'll take it

0:47:05right down." And all we did was take down the bridge between the two floors, of course.

0:47:10And hope that he didn't make any kind of spot inspection. Because it also seemed clear he

0:47:16had no idea. He, I think he, because he saw it, he thought it was a connection between

0:47:20my room and the kid above me's room, not a connection between like 30 dorm rooms.

0:47:25Right.

0:47:26Those were the days.

0:47:28Can't compete with that.

0:47:35Maybe could have used like a shielded wire a little bit more.

0:47:38What do we get?

0:47:40Yeah, I don't know.

0:47:41Yeah, I think we could have, you know.

0:47:44Money was a problem, though.

0:47:45I mean, this was a network that we, you know, other than everybody had a $15 box they had

0:47:49to buy themselves. And I would say the rest of it cost us about $10.

0:47:54Yeah.

0:47:55Wherever we went to buy speaker wire in bulk and electrical tape.

0:48:00I like that you stepped up from just using the tin that you can get from gum wrappers,

0:48:07burning off the paper side and then just using the tin and just wrapping it together.

0:48:12I'm trying to Google the name of this app, and I cannot find it. I don't know how to--

0:48:17because it was something that was only of use in the maybe late 80s, very late 80s and early 90s,

0:48:22it all predates the internet and it predates Google. So I know it's like impossible.

0:48:25You know what?

0:48:26You used to go to the chooser.

0:48:30I would think about like old school Unix names.

0:48:32Yeah, no, it wasn't a Unix name. It was a total Mac thing. It was a pure Mac.

0:48:36Not that it was a port, but like a riff on it.

0:48:39Yeah.

0:48:40It was like...

0:48:42Wasn't talk like something you could do?

0:48:44Local talk, but the...

0:48:46No, yeah, local talk was the protocol. But talk on Unix.

0:48:51Yeah, I remember talk. And there was like variants of it, like end talk and talk.

0:48:56Yeah.

0:48:57Amy and I used to use that extensively, because this is an entirely retro episode of the show.

0:49:05So Amy was in Pittsburgh and I was in Philadelphia. And even though it's still the state of Pennsylvania,

0:49:10It was still this is how ancient the early 90s were

0:49:13It was long distance phone calls were still a thing. So we used to write just by talking a few minutes a week

0:49:19We'd rack up $100 a month phone bill, which was massive

0:49:22college student

0:49:25There was no way to

0:49:27cost effectively

0:49:29Speak on the phone from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia

0:49:32and then we just got you know, we got email and we'd email each other and then

0:49:35when we discovered

0:49:38like talk and then talk but we had to use them like she had to use it from a

0:49:43Like a lab at Pitt at University of Pittsburgh

0:49:47She didn't have a computer in her dorm and eventually I think I got a modem soon enough

0:49:51But I think when we first started doing it, I might have had to go to the lab, too

0:49:54so we'd have to like schedule a time because you wouldn't be able to get in touch, you know, like

0:49:59like the whole idea of how do you start texting with somebody is

0:50:04is a totally different problem when you don't have the phone with you at all times.

0:50:09Yeah. There's no better sexy talk than scheduled time in the lab.

0:50:13Right. Yeah, but it worked. It was amazing.

0:50:18You could see what each other was typing at the same time, too. At least with one of them. The one we liked the best.

0:50:23Oh, like character by character? With the deletes? Yeah. I kind of missed that.

0:50:27And you could make jokes with it. It was good. It was a good way to make jokes where you would type something in and delete, delete, delete.

0:50:33Yeah, I'm of two minds to that.

0:50:36I'm kinda glad that people don't get to see

0:50:37what I was about to say.

0:50:38But I remember those apps when it was like--

0:50:42- You had to be careful.

0:50:43You had to be careful. - Yeah.

0:50:44I'd like a three digit ICQ code at one point,

0:50:52which I never used.

0:50:56Do you remember ICQ at all?

0:50:57- Yeah, I never really used it though.

0:50:59- Really, well, mostly PC thing.

0:51:02- Yeah.

0:51:03And I remember not getting, it was like a real eye-opener to me where I heard of it

0:51:07and I saw it, and I don't think I ever signed up for it.

0:51:09But it was like six months after I became aware of it when I realized that the name

0:51:15was a pun.

0:51:16Because I also remember IRC, and IRC was just Internet Relay Chat.

0:51:21And I did use that, of course.

0:51:23And then I thought ICQ was just the same thing where it had meant something, and I didn't

0:51:27realize that it was ICQ.

0:51:29Yeah, it's got a cute name.

0:51:32Which explains why I had no interest in using it.

0:51:35Yeah.

0:51:36Well, I also at the time did not have any interest in talking to people that weren't in front of me.

0:51:41[laughter]

0:51:44Which has changed as I have become employed.

0:51:48Are you still looking? Like you're still looking?

0:51:51I am. I'm tweeting. I'm going to tweet here. This is a live... This is a tweet live during the function.

0:51:55A live tweet.

0:51:56Anyone remember the name of the early 90s chooser extension for instant messaging on local talk?

0:52:00Let's see if Twitter can come to us.

0:52:05Can save the day?

0:52:07Yeah.

0:52:08Fill in the role of the live audience.

0:52:10Right.

0:52:12I just want to say we actually had a plan.

0:52:16Like I have an OmniOutliner document here about what we're going to talk about.

0:52:20Let's get into it.

0:52:21And you know what? The first one was Prince.

0:52:23Right. We did that.

0:52:25And we're still doing that.

0:52:27Well, what was next on your OmniOutliner? Was it the Ben Thompson Apple...

0:52:32Yeah, the Apple services stuff.

0:52:33Right. So, Ben Thompson...

0:52:34I don't want to drag you back to this, because I love the tript on...

0:52:36No! No, I've refilled it up. I'll just wait until my Twitter replies have the...

0:52:40Yeah, yeah, we'll get back to that.

0:52:41So, how would you summarize Ben Thompson? Ben Thompson had a great piece on...

0:52:47Ben Thompson as a person?

0:52:49No, no, no. The Ben Thompson.

0:52:51Ooh, I don't like that guy.

0:52:53Yeah, he's difficult.

0:52:56Hi, kid. Hi, kid. He had a good piece, his weekly free...

0:53:00He may take that to heart.

0:53:01His weekly free for everyone Stratechery column this week was... I thought really...

0:53:07It's always good, but I thought this one was particularly good.

0:53:09Yeah.

0:53:10More or less arguing that... All right. One of the things that makes Apple very unique,

0:53:16I'm going to try to summarize this very quickly, is that Apple doesn't have product divisions.

0:53:21There's no Mac division. The logical way for a company that sells what Apple sells would be

0:53:26be to have a Mac division, an iPhone division, probably a separate iPad division. Although

0:53:32there's, you know, you could argue whether the iPad would be in the, in the iPhone division,

0:53:38a new watch division, etc. And they don't. TV or accessories, TV, accessories division with TV

0:53:46being the thing. And they don't. That's not how the company has been set up. It, that's the first

0:53:51thing and probably the most important thing that Steve Jobs did when he came back in 1997

0:53:58was dismantle that sort of thinking and put in what's best called—I mean, this is the

0:54:04part where Ben can smart talk us because he actually knows the business school terminology.

0:54:12I love when you ask me to talk about this. I'm like, "Seriously?" I'm the dummy on it.

0:54:18I'm a pretty technical guy, but this side of... anyway.

0:54:21He calls it functional versus divisional.

0:54:23You just described divisional.

0:54:25Apple works as a functional structure.

0:54:28And, you know, there have been exceptions.

0:54:30The iPod division was sort of an exception to this.

0:54:33But they got rid of that.

0:54:36Well, wait. Let's define why.

0:54:40The iPod division was separate from that because it had its own OS

0:54:44and its own manufacturing thrust.

0:54:48Yeah, it made sense for it, and I think it

0:54:52sort of evolved naturally, and it wasn't really seen as an exception, but

0:54:56simply that it just made sense, especially in the early years.

0:55:00And I don't think it's overstating it that

0:55:04the decision to go with a

0:55:08stripped down version of OS X as the

0:55:12OS for the original iPhone instead of a muscled up version of the iPod OS or some other new

0:55:24OS in the mindset of the iPod OS.

0:55:31And in personal terms...

0:55:32PIXO.

0:55:33Right, exactly.

0:55:34What was it called?

0:55:35PIXO.

0:55:36PIXO?

0:55:37P-I-X.

0:55:38I thought it was...

0:55:39It's either P-I-X-O or P-I-X-I-O.

0:55:40I forget.

0:55:41Yeah.

0:55:42It was an embedded operating system, you know for that they'd license and heavily modified, right?

0:55:47I think I'm being fair in describing that as a and including all of you know, the early iPods as

0:55:56Evermore computer like electronic gadgets and then the other mindset

0:56:02it is and it just

0:56:05you know that the industry just had to wait until computers got small enough and cheap enough and and

0:56:11and ran with low enough energy to make ever more gadget-like computers.

0:56:17Right? The iPhone is a gadget-like Unix computer.

0:56:23I mean, it really is. It's a much better Unix computer than most of the servers of the earlier part of our lives.

0:56:31Well, going back to what we were talking about previously, when OS X first became a thing,

0:56:37became a thing. People were all worried about, like, "Well, Unix writes out these massive

0:56:42log files every night at midnight. You can't do that on a PC."

0:56:47You know, a few years later,

0:56:52it's appropriate to be using on a phone, because of a lot of the work that went into OS X and

0:56:57sort of taming Unix back to be, I guess,

0:57:02more focused or, you know, attributes.

0:57:07- I remember at the Macworld where the original iPhone

0:57:10was introduced, it was Macworld Expo January 2007,

0:57:14and it's the biggest sensation of all sensations,

0:57:17we don't have to go into that.

0:57:18But then there was, you know,

0:57:19the trade show was there afterwards.

0:57:20And I think I was doing a live episode of the talk show.

0:57:25I did it with Cable Sasser, Dan Benning.

0:57:32- Cable? - Wasn't there, and so--

0:57:34- Was Craig there too, or was it just cable?

0:57:36- I think it was just cable that time.

0:57:39- Yeah, 'cause you were in this glass booth, right?

0:57:42- No, it was a different one.

0:57:43We had an open, yeah, and we weren't in the glass booth,

0:57:46and we had an audience of people.

0:57:48It might've been after that one

0:57:51where we did it in the glass booth, which was weird.

0:57:56But we're out on the open show floor.

0:57:58The acoustics are terrible.

0:58:00I don't know where the audio is,

0:58:02but it was just, we obviously knew what we wanted to talk about.

0:58:04It just mean Cable Sasser talking about this amazing iPhone.

0:58:08And I just remember Cable came up and we had, you know, I don't know,

0:58:1150, 100 people in front of us and Cable said, how many people,

0:58:14how many of you guys are thinking you're going to buy one right away?

0:58:16And everybody's hand just shot up, like just shot up.

0:58:19I've never seen any product where every single person

0:58:23just needed to have one right away. It was amazing. But anyway,

0:58:29Just a small interjection.

0:58:31I couldn't buy one in Canada.

0:58:35I was there.

0:58:37I saw one.

0:58:38I bought it.

0:58:41All I could do, and I've told the story before, but all I could do for like a long

0:58:46time was slide to unlock to call 911.

0:58:49That was it.

0:58:51I spent a bunch of money on something so incredible.

0:58:54Oh, but you could use it as an iPod touch.

0:58:55The only thing I could do would be to call the police to arrest me for abusing a feature on my new phone.

0:59:00And you could use it on Wi-Fi.

0:59:02Not until after a jailbreak. Oh, that's right because that's right. I couldn't even jailbreak it at the time.

0:59:08I'm telling you all I could do is slide that thing. I totally forgot about that that you had to unlock the

0:59:13carrier unlock it. Yeah, you had to get it unlocked by AT&T before it would even work as a

0:59:20iPod touch. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, so I finally I

0:59:24I was, I...

0:59:25Sly Dudlock. I would have bought one too. I would have done the same thing.

0:59:28It was like me buying the Mac as soon as Jobs returned to the company.

0:59:33Or like, Next got bought. I was like, "Okay, I'm in. Let's see what you got."

0:59:37So, after the podcast, there was a friend at Apple who I'd known for a while.

0:59:41Still there, so I can't say who, but somebody... And I knew that they...

0:59:46He had disappeared for a while, you know, and just disappeared in terms of like,

0:59:52he was obviously working on something that was all-consuming and

0:59:55It turned out he was working on the you know, first version of it wasn't even called iOS yet

1:00:01And you know even then even though he could reveal that yes, this is what I've been working on

1:00:08He's you know, he's an Apple person. He still can't even off the record in private

1:00:11Just you know, and you know just commiserating after the show wasn't miked or anything

1:00:16But I had questions and he'd you know would Apple friends always let you ask questions

1:00:20they just sometimes don't answer them. You just have to get used to that. And I asked him, I was

1:00:25like, "Okay, so if it's running even the most stripped-down version of OS X conceivable,

1:00:31just really, really lighter weight and really take a hatchet to all sorts of stuff that,

1:00:36you know, the daemons and processes that run in the background." I was like, "That is going to

1:00:40take forever to turn on compared to an iPod or like a regular cell phone." And he just looked

1:00:49to me and smiled and he just said, "Yes," as though, "Yes, there's no way to avoid that,

1:00:55but what if you don't have to turn it off all the time?"

1:01:00>> Right.

1:01:01>> And I was like, "Oh." And I realized, "Oh, that is interesting." And that whole story was

1:01:06inspired by the way that most Unix machines were configured, that at the turn of midnight,

1:01:13just start doing a spew a whole bunch of automated system cleanup and log files and all this

1:01:20stuff and rotate on and do all this crazy stuff. And just because all the Unix machines

1:01:27we knew today did that doesn't mean that a one that was built for consumers would have

1:01:31to do that too. It's like you just step away and realize that that is a terrible assumption

1:01:36to make.

1:01:37And I always took that one step further in that

1:01:41A,

1:01:45they didn't give you swap space. Right.

1:01:49Just to explain that, if you use more memory than

1:01:53is available to you, typical Unix systems will try to make it

1:01:57available to you by granting you disk space to swap out portions of

1:02:01whatever you're working on.

1:02:05instead it would tell you, "You're getting very close to the limit here."

1:02:10And then there wasn't even three strikes.

1:02:14The second strike was like, "Okay, you're dead. I'll just kill you. Your app will go away."

1:02:19And that brought a new discipline to writing applications

1:02:24that was foreign to the Unix world, where you

1:02:29presumed that you had, if not complete control,

1:02:34at least you could marshal the system into doing exactly what you wanted.

1:02:41Right, especially once we got to the point where disk space was, if not

1:02:48infinite, was at least compared to RAM infinite. Once we started measuring

1:02:55hard disks in hundreds of gigabytes at least, maybe even the early, maybe even

1:03:00like 40, 80 gigabyte sizes compared to RAM,

1:03:04that's just humongous.

1:03:06And therefore Unix's game of we'll just pretend RAM

1:03:10is infinite and write out what you're using to disk

1:03:14and move from disk back into actual RAM,

1:03:16what we need on the fly could work.

1:03:18But that's exactly why in layman's terms in,

1:03:21I mean, and this just doesn't happen anymore

1:03:23if you have SSDs and it probably doesn't happen anymore

1:03:25just because you don't really,

1:03:26most of us don't need swap or at least don't need much.

1:03:30But in the days of spinning hard drives and low amounts of RAM, when your system started

1:03:34to slow down and you'd hear your hard drive or feel it going all the time, that's exactly

1:03:38why.

1:03:39Because it was constantly shuffling back and forth.

1:03:41Like it was a visual thing.

1:03:43I'm kind of glad we did that memory lane thing at the top of the show, because it gives a

1:03:47lot more context to this kind of stuff.

1:03:49Well, the other philosophical aspect of traditional Unix is that a process that starts running

1:03:56will run until it process the process itself decides, okay, I'm done. And now I'm leaving.

1:04:02And you could have bugs that would crash the thing. You as a user could take personal interaction and

1:04:09kill the process manually like the, you know, force quit it. But the system itself would do whatever

1:04:15it takes to make sure that bugs aside and user action aside, you will run forever if you want to

1:04:23run forever. And iOS, like you said, said you need to be ready to die in a moment's

1:04:28notice. Right. Traditional Unix operating systems bend over backwards in service of

1:04:35the applications that they're running. iOS bends over backwards for the user.

1:04:42Right. And for the interactivity. And so the idea as a proper iOS developer is if you have

1:04:49any data that needs to be saved, you need to save it constantly and at all times.

1:04:54At any time it changes, save it. Any time it changes, save it automatically.

1:04:59Because you might be killed at any moment and that's fair game. You may be

1:05:03killed and then the user may come back to your app and you're expected to be in

1:05:07the same spot. To pretend like nothing had happened. Yeah, I mean the home

1:05:11button used to just kill you. Yeah, every time, automatically. As soon as they hit the

1:05:14home button, whatever was running was... Yeah, and I love that discipline. I really do.

1:05:18Like in the time it took for the animation to go back to the home screen, you were expected to be completely cleaned up.

1:05:27Yeah, you would cut the boot.

1:05:30But so anyway, that decision, that fateful decision to go the cut down version of OS X root,

1:05:36effectively squeezed Tony Fadell out the door and sort of brought an end to that functional arrangement.

1:05:42And then in 2011...

1:05:44No, that would be a divisional arrangement.

1:05:46Yeah, the divisional arrangement, I'm sorry. And then, you're correct. And then in 2011, with the Scott Forstall ouster, it really ended it because effectively, I think it's fair to say that Scott Forstall ran an iOS division within Apple.

1:06:04Maybe that's a little too glib, but it's, you know, Forstall...

1:06:12Yeah, I don't know how to... maybe.

1:06:14Maybe.

1:06:15You know, and there were obviously some parts that were shared between OSs, but they tended

1:06:20to filter back and forth years later, right?

1:06:23And there was even an event the one time where they made that the theme of the event.

1:06:26It was called like the Back to the Mac.

1:06:28Back to the Mac.

1:06:29Back to the Mac.

1:06:30And it was, look, we created a bunch of these cool technologies for iOS in the last few

1:06:35years and it actually, these things would make sense on OS X and so we've taken them

1:06:39back to the Mac.

1:06:42opposed to today's I would say extremely functionally aligned Apple where Craig

1:06:54Federighi's team in charge of software is in charge of software and yes there's

1:06:59some divisions and it seems like the watch OS team is sort of off on its own

1:07:05but I don't think in a contentious way it's just in a they have to put their

1:07:10heads down. No, I don't think it's contentious. I just think it's early days. Right. Yeah,

1:07:15exactly. I think it makes sense for early days, that you sort of get to go off. I think

1:07:18you could probably say that Apple TV is kind of in the same boat, but Apple TV is, I believe,

1:07:25under Eddie, Kia. I think so, but I don't, I'm not entirely sure. I'm pretty sure.

1:07:34I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I'll bet you're right. And so Ben Thompson's argument is

1:07:48that this works great for devices. Apple has proven that it works great and it

1:07:52explains Apple's conti... you know, I wouldn't... anything can end because it

1:07:58all depends on actual execution. They have to... it's easy so long as you keep

1:08:03making great products. And that's actually a very, you know, the keep making great products

1:08:08is difficult in and of itself. But if you do, it's easy to keep them popular and to

1:08:13keep the integration between things that makes Apple stuff so, you know, famously fun and

1:08:23easy and attractive to use.

1:08:26Yeah. In some ways, I do think that it's folly to associate the success of one company with the prominence of one kind of model.

1:08:42Whether one company succeeds or fails has a lot more to do with other factors other than their particular model.

1:08:53Like, you can't-- I don't think you can look at any functional company and be like, "Well, they're bound to be like Apple."

1:08:59Because that's not the truth. Similarly, I don't think you can say that any company that follows a division, organizational pattern,

1:09:10is going to become like DuPont, which is his example.

1:09:16Right.

1:09:17Right.

1:09:18Ben's example is that—I think it's pretty interesting—is to compare Apple today to

1:09:27DuPont from like 100 years ago.

1:09:30Post World War I.

1:09:32DuPont became huge by building one, doing one thing, which was making gunpowder.

1:09:37And then—

1:09:38Turns out in World War I, that was popular.

1:09:43And then, post-war, they realized that gunpowder was, at a technical level, very similar to

1:09:48making paint.

1:09:50And a lot of stuff needed to be repainted because of World War I.

1:09:54And so they decided to...

1:09:56What seemed like a natural area of growth for the DuPont company was to expand into

1:10:00making paint.

1:10:01And yet, somehow, they ended up losing tons of money on the paint business because of...

1:10:07Even though it was similar to manufacture, the market was entirely different.

1:10:11Right.

1:10:12selling gunpowder they would sell to massive buyers.

1:10:15Like, well, I mean, obviously the military.

1:10:18Yeah, effectively I think most of the bullets.

1:10:20Buy a lot of bullets, you know.

1:10:21Selling paint, you'd be selling to Ma and Pa that are trying to like

1:10:25paint their house or their small business kind of thing.

1:10:29Very different marketing, very different packaging,

1:10:32very different distribution schemes.

1:10:34Right, and they ended up having to switch.

1:10:37And so they switched to a divisional.

1:10:40Divisional.

1:10:41Right, so there's a paint division and a gunpowder division in it and it worked out.

1:10:44And then that became the model for big corporations ever since.

1:10:52And now Apple is seen as the exception as opposed to a hundred years ago where Apple's functional arrangement would have seemed more natural.

1:11:00So the question is, should Apple services be split out into divisional?

1:11:07This is where this is the point of whole point of Ben's thing is that this works great for Apple with devices

1:11:12It is not working out well for them with services and Apple themselves that are executives on the quarterly call like three months ago

1:11:20emphasized their efforts into

1:11:23Services and it's Ben's argument is that they should they should split services out into a separate division

1:11:31Even account, you know, you even do a separate profit and loss for that division

1:11:35And--

1:11:37- Not even, I think, well, he equivalates on that

1:11:41a little bit, but, equivocates, I should say.

1:11:45But separate profit and loss would allow them to track

1:11:49the progress of the services division

1:11:54separately from the product division.

1:11:57- I can see, I'm not entirely convinced that he's right,

1:12:00but I can definitely see that--

1:12:01- Me neither.

1:12:02- I see that he might be, and the difference is

1:12:04that I think, and I think he makes this point too,

1:12:09but that the traditional divisional nature

1:12:13is what creates intercompany political conflict

1:12:17that blocks, it often leads to this is why a company

1:12:22never tends to disrupt itself.

1:12:27That if Apple had a culture like that,

1:12:30then the iPhone, they never would have even debated

1:12:34whether it was the iPod division that would make the iPhone,

1:12:36because of course they did because the iPod

1:12:38was the new hot thing at Apple at the time.

1:12:41And then the iPod division might have made,

1:12:43designed an iPhone that was designed to make sure

1:12:46that it didn't keep people from wanting to still buy an iPod.

1:12:49And just go forward a little bit more.

1:12:53Then if there was an iPhone division

1:12:56and Steve Jobs wanted to make a tablet,

1:13:00they would have been political resistance

1:13:03within the company of what if these tablets make people not buy as many

1:13:07iPhones and so on and so forth or the Mac in particular would say no way what

1:13:12a you know the MacBook MacBooks are the heart and soul and the only part of our

1:13:17business it's growing and clearly this tablet which you guys you want to even

1:13:22make a keyboard for is something that's going to how could it not how could

1:13:27every one of these that you sell for only $750 not mean that someone's less likely to

1:13:34buy one of our things for $1500.

1:13:36Right.

1:13:37Well, I mean, just look at the new smaller iPad Pro with the just, whatever, a couple

1:13:44of days ago updated MacBook.

1:13:46Right.

1:13:47I don't know.

1:13:52They're very much seem to be in the same spectrum to me.

1:13:54without question. I mean, it's, you know, and it's which one you prefer, but it's in

1:13:58a, in a, in a divisional. And I, you know, I know enough about Apple in time, you know,

1:14:04and I have enough friends who work there and you do too, that I'm not arguing that Apple

1:14:08is a company without internal politics and without grumbling between people who work

1:14:13on this and people who work on that. Or people who, even if what they're working on isn't,

1:14:20isn't even in conflict with each other. But a lot of times the most astute critics of

1:14:24things within Apple that are subpar are other people at Apple who work on

1:14:28something else who the whole point the whole reason they work at Apple and have

1:14:32a career at Apple is they tend to be very talented people with very high

1:14:35standards for how stuff works that they get the Apple way I'd even remove the

1:14:40the provision that they work on something else yeah I honestly thank

1:14:45people that work at Apple or their own worst critics that's a that's a

1:14:48fantastic point that is which is true honestly kind of what makes them right

1:14:52a great company. That's kind of the key.

1:14:55Right. And that sometimes when you talk to people at Apple, the people who I think are

1:14:58the best and the people who are like, "Oh, of course you're successful at Apple," are

1:15:02the people who—you're exactly right. They are the ones who know all the things that

1:15:06suck about the thing that they work on. And you say like, "Hey, the new body color is

1:15:10really great." And they'll be like, "Thanks, but I mean, come on." And then they know

1:15:13everything that's wrong with it. And it's like, "Oh, yeah, of course you work at Apple."

1:15:16And the people who want to brag about the stuff that they work on, you're like, "You're

1:15:19not gonna last long yeah you know I mean we're talking you know and you and I I

1:15:26think we were probably there together but talking to people who worked on

1:15:28early iPhones and telling them how awesome the touch interaction is and

1:15:32then they're like oh my god I can get it to go look if I do this and this it's

1:15:35way below 60 frames per second like they knew all the paths to get to to do

1:15:40something that would make scrolling or whatever drop beneath 60 frames per

1:15:44second and they're like that's this dog shit you know you just built them well

1:15:48they're always by the time it ships they're on to the next thing right

1:15:51exactly but that's exactly why they keep getting better year over year is that

1:15:54they're disgusted by the it's it's just as a I don't know as a broader metaphor

1:16:01do you cook ever yeah sometimes I cook a few things okay so you know when you

1:16:06cook and then you like, okay, whatever that burger

1:16:10didn't turn out as well.

1:16:11Okay.

1:16:12Sorry.

1:16:13But whatever, when you cook something and then

1:16:15you're, you're eating it and you're always, for

1:16:19me at least, I'm the harshest critic.

1:16:21I'm like, ah, it didn't work out so well.

1:16:22Oh, I could have left this a little bit more.

1:16:24These could be a little bit more tender.

1:16:26And everybody else is like, would you shut up

1:16:28and stop being a dick?

1:16:28Because I'm trying to enjoy the, you know, the

1:16:31meal and I'm always like, yeah, maybe next time

1:16:35I'll do this and that's just because that's the way of my words and I think at Apple with software or hardware

1:16:41I think that's what you're thinking. It's like kid that came out of the oven pretty good

1:16:45I'm happy

1:16:48Glad that shipped now

1:16:50You know, how do I improve on that? That's absolutely I mean Amy does most of the cooking here and that's absolutely how she is

1:16:57She's way way. She's her own heart's critic

1:17:00No

1:17:00And it's it just shows you if you're a good person a good worker who's focused on improving the product

1:17:05That's the way your mindset has to be and if you're a sort of self-centered person who's more worried about your own career or just just

1:17:13the way other people perceive you because you you're you're

1:17:17You know

1:17:18You have like an inferiority complex or something like that that then you're gonna you're gonna want to

1:17:24Make people think that whatever you've done is awesome and perfect and you know and laugh at the competition and stuff like that

1:17:33You can still laugh at the company. Well, yeah, sometimes they suck but you know what I'm you know what I'm I totally know

1:17:38I mean, yeah, it's like this

1:17:40There's a difference between laughing at them and discounting them

1:17:43Yeah, you still I still sometimes meet people at Apple who and I'm exaggerating but in some degree

1:17:49Seem to buy into the we're Apple. Whatever we do is going to be the best, you know sort of

1:17:55Thinking that the exceptionalism of Apple is just that's just the rules of the game are whatever Apple makes is excellent

1:18:02Just because it's Apple. No, that's not by fear. That's played heard and I'm

1:18:06Exaggerating that you know putting it in words like that

1:18:10but there's a certain mindset that you buy into that even a little bit and it's

1:18:14To me, it's a very dangerous way of thinking and it's a natural trap to fall into but the best people

1:18:19Don't have that mindset

1:18:26Let me interrupt the show breaking news to do to do to do to do the thing

1:18:30I was talking about the Ethernet old school not Ethernet except before Ethernet local talk

1:18:36But it did work over Ethernet ether talk to

1:18:38Ether talk was like local talk over Ethernet, but that was expensive. We couldn't do that in the dorm

1:18:44Anyway, the name of the app was broadcast

1:18:46It was awesome it was awesome

1:18:51Just put four words in a hat and guess that one

1:18:56- Broadcast, oh my god. - That's a good name.

1:18:57That's a great name.

1:18:59- I will see, I will do my best to find a link

1:19:01for the show notes that shows it.

1:19:04- So, what do you think about this service restructuring?

1:19:11- Well, I can kind of see it.

1:19:13- So in a follow-up piece that is,

1:19:15I don't think it's public.

1:19:18- No, it was on his subscriber-only newsletter,

1:19:23which we should-- - Maybe you should ask him

1:19:24to just make that public.

1:19:26Given all the time--

1:19:26- He's done it a few times, he really has.

1:19:28I've asked him and he's been like, "Yeah, whatever."

1:19:30- And now it's like a week old.

1:19:31I'll see what I can do.

1:19:32- Yeah.

1:19:33He clarifies some of his points.

1:19:37He gets a lot more detail into his thinking.

1:19:42And also acknowledges some of the,

1:19:48some trepidation, I should say,

1:19:53about switching services into its own division,

1:19:58but does bring out the point that Apple Retail

1:20:02was run as its own division for a long time.

1:20:06- Right.

1:20:07- Because running a retail division

1:20:09is fundamentally different than running

1:20:12hardware or software organization.

1:20:15Is that not true for services too?

1:20:19- Yeah, I almost think that the online services

1:20:22are very closely analogous to these stores,

1:20:25where the services are just glue

1:20:29that is there to make the devices better.

1:20:33The devices are still the fundamental business

1:20:36of the company, and the services are just a,

1:20:39the stores are just a way to get more of the devices sold,

1:20:43and the services are just a way

1:20:45to make the devices better once you own them.

1:20:48It's like what the stores are

1:20:49before you have the new Apple device in your hand,

1:20:52the services are to what you do with it

1:20:55after you've opened it and started using it.

1:20:57- Well, okay, so here's where I,

1:21:02I don't know if I'm even playing devil's advocate,

1:21:05but I'm gonna come at this from a different aspect.

1:21:09The stores, I mean, okay, saying the stores

1:21:16were just a way to push Mac products, okay.

1:21:19Fine. But are the services just a way to push the devices?

1:21:24Or are they a thing unto themselves? Which is what Apple has kind of been saying.

1:21:30But I think though that the... all of it is in further serving the Apple brand as a whole. Right?

1:21:39Because that's why the stores are nice. Right?

1:21:42the nicest stores, some of the nicest stores I've ever seen that sell any products anywhere,

1:21:47and that that they're famously... Don't go full Trump on this, but...

1:21:51They are! They are. I'm just joking.

1:21:54And they're very anti-Trumpian in their design. Yes.

1:21:57They're not ornate. They're the opposite.

1:22:00They are, you know, architecturally very minimalist.

1:22:03You know, but that famously, you know, that the earlier stores,

1:22:10I don't think they use the same material anymore, but they got a special kind of limestone from Italy that Steve Jobs had seen while

1:22:16traveling in Europe and

1:22:18All sorts of crazy stuff that they do to make every detail right and it's not like hey

1:22:22Let's there's no sense of cheaping out in the stores

1:22:25And I think that the services should be the same way where it's not like well

1:22:28This is just an afterthought to help that I think they should they should be thought of as these things that are first-class

1:22:33Parts of the Apple brand and the Apple, you know customer experience

1:22:40Okay, so what are the surfaces? Can you name them right then?

1:22:43That sounded like I'm challenging you. I know. I'm honestly

1:22:49I'm like, okay, what are they?

1:22:52Well, the one area one area where I disagree with Ben and we do it on the podcast occasionally is

1:22:57He has a lower opinion of Apple's online services than I do

1:23:01I actually think Apple's online services are a lot better than they get credit for and I think in many cases

1:23:08Many cases suffer from just the notion, the basic notion that people believe Apple makes great devices and crummy services.

1:23:17And by starting with that framework in their mind, they're a lot more likely to focus on the negative aspects of Apple services.

1:23:25And then secondly, some of them suffer from a bad first impression.

1:23:30And Maps is a great example of that, where a lot of people, some people, and real world usage, Apple Maps is off the charts.

1:23:37off the charts. It's way by far and away the most popular map service for iPhone

1:23:43and iOS users. And part of that is just by nature of being pre-installed, but

1:23:49secondarily it's gotten a lot better. And am I arguing that is it is as good as

1:23:54Google Maps? No, but I don't I don't use Google Maps anymore just because I never

1:24:01I never you know that that whole like I'll keep the app installed because if

1:24:05If Apple Maps lets me down, I'll use Google Maps.

1:24:08That hasn't happened to me in forever, at least since the transit came to New York and Apple Maps.

1:24:13And I think, inarguably, anybody who looked at Apple Maps,

1:24:17just the general state of how much is mapped and how much detail, it's much improved.

1:24:22So I'm not as down on services overall. I mean, Maps is just one example.

1:24:27But anything like that. Maps, iMessage, iCloud.

1:24:32- Well, wait, so let's take iMessage as a service.

1:24:37The value proposition of iMessage

1:24:43is that it's encrypted end-to-end.

1:24:45- And it works across all your devices.

1:24:49I mean, that's a huge value. - All your iOS devices.

1:24:51- Oh, and your Mac.

1:24:52- Okay, all your Apple devices.

1:24:55How do you ensure that that is true?

1:24:58Like, how do you put that into a web browser?

1:25:01I don't think they should.

1:25:03I wouldn't.

1:25:04- Okay, so that limits the value of the service

1:25:06to only Apple devices.

1:25:07- Right.

1:25:08- That's what I'm saying.

1:25:08- I see.

1:25:09- Like how do you break out services

1:25:11apart from the devices that they support?

1:25:13- Right, I see what you mean.

1:25:14You're saying--

1:25:15- You know, like how do you make a division

1:25:16that is all about, so Microsoft did it

1:25:18and you were on board for it with Azure,

1:25:23where they could just be like, you know what,

1:25:26screw Windows and Office,

1:25:27we're just gonna make an awesome service.

1:25:29- Yeah.

1:25:31than what Apple can do with the services that they currently run because they seem

1:25:38quite integrated with the devices or at least the notion that they have a trusted endpoint.

1:25:47And it kind of conflicts if you're going to start saying, "Hey," and you report your own profit and loss,

1:25:53and you're not allowed to expand to Windows or Android or the web.

1:25:59aren't you cutting your...

1:26:03Well, that becomes a strategy tax.

1:26:05You're cutting them off at the knees. You're saying, "We're going to count. We want you to be as profitable as you can,

1:26:09but we're setting rules that will prevent you from being as profitable as you could be,

1:26:13just as an independent entity." Because we think it serves the company's

1:26:17interests overall.

1:26:19Right. And I don't think they faced that

1:26:23with retail. Because it couldn't.

1:26:27couldn't really conflict with their...

1:26:30Yeah, there weren't any rules, there weren't any strategy tax type rules imposed upon the

1:26:36Apple Store that held them back.

1:26:39For example, I'm sure that if Ron Johnson back in the day had said to Steve Jobs, "Hey,

1:26:46some of these people are coming in and they want to buy Windows laptops too.

1:26:50Can we sell some Dell Windows, Dell laptops on a table across from the PowerBooks?"

1:26:55Jobs would have said, "You're fired."

1:26:57But he wouldn't have done that, though.

1:26:59That actually wouldn't have actually helped the Apple stores make more money.

1:27:04In theory, you could see how turning it into more of a Best Buy, where they sell anything and everything,

1:27:10defeats the whole purpose, which was to focus that by putting all the Apple stuff together and showing that it was different,

1:27:17actually made it more likely that they would sell them.

1:27:19But they did sell accessories that were not Apple.

1:27:22Some of them even competed with Apple stuff, like headphones.

1:27:26Yeah. Yeah. They still do.

1:27:30Yeah, they still do. They bought Beats, which is the biggest one.

1:27:35But they don't impose a rule on them that you can only sell Apple stuff like headphones.

1:27:40You can't sell a book that... What was the book that Jobs got yanked?

1:27:45Oh, that was one a long time ago. I forget which one.

1:27:48Yeah. That was funny.

1:27:50[laughs]

1:27:55I honestly admire the capriciousness of that kind of stuff.

1:28:01Did they use to sell books? Is that...?

1:28:04I don't know. But, I mean, you remember the story. I'm sure you wrote about it.

1:28:08Right. I do remember. I mean, it wasn't even that long ago, but I remember when they used to sell tons and tons of box software.

1:28:17Yeah, yeah

1:28:19Well some of her friends like Omni and you know Shipley like delicious master had some stuff. Oh, yeah

1:28:26We're definitely know people who I think BP edit was still on in boxes at the time. Oh, yeah. Yeah

1:28:31I'm Karen fact, I know that BB at it at some point was still in a box and when it was in a box

1:28:37It was in the Apple stores

1:28:38It's crazy. That's box software is a heard. I

1:28:43I mean people hit the App Store. Wow.

1:28:45The 30% you lose on the App Store is nothing compared to what you lost in box software.

1:28:52I mean we could do a whole show about it, but it's... and you know it from the games too.

1:28:56I mean it was exactly the same, probably even worse, because there was more money involved.

1:29:02But it... I mean you're literally buying spots to be like,

1:29:07"How much money is it gonna cost us to have it at foot level?"

1:29:11Part of the reason that like not even eye level like foot level. It's a protection racket. It was yeah, it was like, okay

1:29:18We'll take it but we're only we're gonna put it on the bottom shelf, which was like ankle level

1:29:22well, you gotta talk them into taking it right like dinners and like

1:29:26Like just flirty girls like the whole day was

1:29:32It's a nightmare. It's a night like talking to sales dudes. It's like not cool

1:29:40So I'm glad all of that aspect is gone. But at the same time, it's still not great in terms of actually getting the way the app stores are working.

1:29:50I don't want my box at the ankle level well, then you have to pay.

1:29:57Yeah.

1:29:58And it was exactly why apps were so expensive.

1:30:01It's full on, not a joke.

1:30:02It had to be expensive.

1:30:03no way to sell like even a relatively small app that you knew would appeal to

1:30:08like consumers and that you'd want to be like a consumer friendly price there was

1:30:11no way to like price it accordingly because so much money came off the top

1:30:15that you had to charge like $75 at just as a starting point if not more I don't

1:30:23know we can come back to this let me take a break and thank our next sponsor

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1:32:33Yeah, I don't know. Back to whether or not I agree with Ben. I don't know. It makes a good case.

1:32:38Maybe the answer is sort of a half and half, and I don't know. Maybe that's stupid.

1:32:43Maybe I'm trying to have it both ways. But maybe I would say not so much the profit and loss aspect of it.

1:32:51And again, iMessage is another example.

1:32:53How are they supposed to make money money on iMessage?

1:32:55There's no money.

1:32:56- Right. - You know.

1:32:57But if compared to these other chat services

1:33:00like WhatsApp and WeChat and stuff like that,

1:33:04I think if you broke iMessage,

1:33:05I mean, they can't strategically,

1:33:07there is no way to break it out,

1:33:08but just in terms of daily active users,

1:33:10which is like this measurement term

1:33:12that investors love to hear, at least at the moment,

1:33:15iMessage is worth billions.

1:33:17But there's no real way that they have a plan to make money.

1:33:20They're not gonna start shooting ads through iMessage.

1:33:23- I think, if anything, iMessage is one of the most obvious

1:33:28sort of counterarguments to breaking services out

1:33:37from the rest of the company.

1:33:40In that getting that blue balloon is awesome.

1:33:46- Yeah.

1:33:48And iMessage being part of the iPhone experience is huge.

1:33:53And so in his first piece, Ben argues that people buy iPhones for the software and hardware.

1:34:02And I agree.

1:34:03But iMessage is a big thing for me.

1:34:06It really is.

1:34:07I remember texting you back in the day, and it would cost us 75 cents a text.

1:34:13Right, because we were crossing the international border.

1:34:15We were crossing the international border talking about Mad Men or whatever.

1:34:20And that racked up pretty quick.

1:34:25And I like you, but I don't like you that much.

1:34:28That's a dollar.

1:34:30Yeah.

1:34:32But yeah, no, iMessage fixed that.

1:34:34So that's great.

1:34:37And yeah, sure, WhatsApp could and a bunch of other stuff.

1:34:38But I think iMessage is one of those things that ties closely to iOS or Apple devices.

1:34:41that ties closely to iOS or Apple devices that are used for better integration of services

1:34:52with Apple products.

1:34:54The whole thing about preferring blue bubbles to green bubbles, even if you take cost aside,

1:34:58even if it's US to US and so you know that it's out of your free bucket, is obviously

1:35:05subjective it bothers some people because it's sort of a if not classism

1:35:11it is some sort of a tribalism yeah tribal I was about to say tribe

1:35:18mentality so same thing tribalism which it just is innately offensive or maybe

1:35:25offensive is too strong a word but people object to it and for good reason

1:35:28right that human beings have this natural instinct to be tribal and it's

1:35:33It's that sort of thinking that leads, if you take it to the extreme, to intolerance,

1:35:39if not outright, racism, bigotry of what you want, what have you.

1:35:45That you really have to be conscious of it all the way up to the top level and that therefore

1:35:48it's just unsavory.

1:35:49And I get that.

1:35:50I really do.

1:35:51I joke about the blue bubbles and green bubbles sometimes.

1:35:53But I get it when there's people who really push back on that.

1:35:58I do get it.

1:35:59I honestly don't think that was an intentional design decision in order to ostracize anybody.

1:36:06No, I don't think so either.

1:36:07I think it was like, "Okay, these ones are costing money and these ones aren't."

1:36:09Yeah, and I think it was worth knowing, you know, who had them.

1:36:13Yeah.

1:36:14But there's an interesting objective version, you know, not subjective but objective advantage

1:36:21to it, at least one, which is that you know that the emoji you send are going to look

1:36:30the same.

1:36:31I just saw an article this week.

1:36:32I didn't link to it.

1:36:33I don't know why I didn't link to it from "Daring Fireball," but there was an article

1:36:35that somebody did a study that showed that people interpret emoji from different platforms

1:36:42differently and that certain code points like, you know, it's like face with, you know, grinning

1:36:47teeth and it has a different emotional effect based on the iOS version of it compared to

1:36:54the Android or Twitter.

1:36:56Right.

1:36:57And just subtle cues and it just…

1:36:59Because each render that…

1:37:01I don't know if everybody knows, but what you see on your screen is not what somebody

1:37:06else sees on their screen.

1:37:08And a face with grinning teeth on your screen may look…

1:37:13I don't know this, but let's say with two buck teeth on the other screen.

1:37:20So it looks like you're just having a wide smile on your screen,

1:37:25but you look like you're sending a hick, a stereotypical hick emoticon

1:37:33to the other person on the other screen.

1:37:34And when you're dealing with a particularly dense communication stream

1:37:43emoticons that becomes problematic right right users and I don't know that maybe

1:37:48people don't worry about it or I do a little bit because I find I always you

1:37:53know I mean it's shocker given my career I really it pains me to think that I'm

1:37:59not commute you know people aren't understanding what I'm trying to

1:38:02communicate as clearly as possible and have you ever you given into emoticons

1:38:08in chat? I don't think we do it. No, I've never did. An emoji have saved me from it.

1:38:15I've never really was a big user of like the ASCII art, you know, smiley faces. I

1:38:20mean, I'm not gonna say I never sent them, but I've just found them to be too

1:38:26silly, so I didn't. And yeah, I think I use them with my... I use emoji, though. I use

1:38:31emoji now. You know, I'm not gonna say like a teenager, but I, you know, use it

1:38:35quite a bit. I use it more in Slack than anywhere else. Yeah. I use them on Twitter now. Sometimes

1:38:41I'll, you know, I give a lot of thumbs up on Twitter. Oh yeah? Yeah, because it's, I

1:38:46find it to be exceptionally efficient, you know. Yeah. That's one, there's one that across

1:38:51the board nobody's going to misinterpret. It doesn't matter how you draw it, a thumbs

1:38:54up or a thumbs down. Yeah, it's not like a sailboat. It's like, what do you mean? Yeah,

1:38:59I find it to be... it's a great addition to our...

1:39:04you know, it's... obviously I thought it was silly at first, because I'm a curmudgeon,

1:39:09but once I opened my mind to it, I really thought, "This is great, this is a great improvement."

1:39:12And so much better than ASCII art, you know, colon...

1:39:16- Oh yeah, yeah. - colon, caraprance...

1:39:17- That's garbage. - Yeah.

1:39:19I mean, if I'm writing something, there's no way I'm going to use that.

1:39:22If I'm reacting to something, I feel better about it.

1:39:26I don't know if I've ever spoken about this.

1:39:27In recent years, I have spoken to, I think you would know, you're a close enough reader

1:39:31to know that in my writing, I don't really use a lot of exclamation marks.

1:39:34No, very, yeah.

1:39:36But in email...

1:39:37Count them on two hands.

1:39:39In email, I use them a lot.

1:39:40I use what I consider to be the friendly exclamation mark.

1:39:46And here's a perfect example.

1:39:50And it's a very common example is people often send me typo reports.

1:39:54I've spelled a word wrong or I've made a little markdown error error in the post where I

1:40:00Used the wrong parenthesis or I missed miss something and you see you know

1:40:04Like a raw URL that's clearly supposed to be a hyperlink and people will email me or Twitter me, you know

1:40:10And say hey, you got a typo. Well a lot of people it's it's you know, I think everybody knows this it consider

1:40:17Correcting someone's spelling or punctuation on the internet to be a faux pas that you're you the person pointing out

1:40:22the error are the jerk because you're pointing out you know, I

1:40:27love it. I would rather have 100 people tell me about a spelling

1:40:31error, I made on during fireball than to have it go uncorrected,

1:40:33because everybody thinks it's, you know, either either thinks,

1:40:37I'm sure someone else told him, or I don't want to be the jerk

1:40:41to tell to tell john that he has an error. So and I try to I

1:40:45can't I'd sometimes sometimes and if I post and then go make

1:40:48coffee or go run an errand and it's the error is up for an

1:40:51I get a lot of them and it's almost it's like I can't be bothered to thank everybody

1:40:56But if I fix it right away, I try to thank everybody and I'll often write fixed comma

1:41:02Thanks and put an exclamation mark after the thanks because to me that reads as very friendly and unambiguously

1:41:09What do I mean by fixed comma? Thanks exclamation point to me?

1:41:13It's I don't know. It's just maybe the way I read that exclamation point. It's fixed and a genuine. Thanks

1:41:19Whereas if I wrote fixed comma thanks period I can see how that would be misinterpreted

1:41:24Naughty as yes as dry. Yeah, thanks

1:41:28Yeah, thanks. Thanks. I think I think you only ever send me fixed

1:41:33Yeah, I don't give you that. I don't care. You know, you don't give me

1:41:36But I don't need it I find and I and and years ago, I mean, I don't know how many years ago

1:41:46I started doing that but it was uncomfortable with it because I'm so uncomfortable with exclamation part points to be to be

1:41:54To me a false sense of familiarity and friendliness, you know and and to me and for example in marketing materials

1:42:02Almost every single exclamation mark that's used in any marketing material is terrible

1:42:08It's a terrible and it means that whoever is is is right doing the copywriting is full of shit

1:42:13it is is it is exactly why some people think the word marketing is a dirty word

1:42:18and all good brands you know with good marketing either never use exclamation

1:42:24marks or almost never and when they do there's some kind of good argument for

1:42:29it right but find me an ad from BMW with an exclamation mark in it find me an ad

1:42:33from Apple with an exclamation mark in it it's nearly impossible so anybody out

1:42:37there and it's a oh and it's also a rookie mistake it's a mistake that

1:42:41that someone makes doing their own marketing when they're not used to doing marketing,

1:42:45because they think that they're infusing the material with enthusiasm when what they're

1:42:50really infusing it with is bullshit.

1:42:52An error of desperation, I'd say.

1:42:56Yeah.

1:42:57Yeah.

1:42:58Because they could say something completely accurate.

1:43:00Right.

1:43:01But when you put an exclamation mark, it's like you're trying to really call something

1:43:05out.

1:43:06with you in casual communication, especially

1:43:10these days, you know, it's just a friendly way

1:43:15of being like, oh, thanks.

1:43:16Like it, it.

1:43:17Long story short though.

1:43:19Think of it, I mean, it's, it's a modifier.

1:43:22If you're reading an outline out loud, it's

1:43:25a modifier on the way that that sound should

1:43:30be, right?

1:43:31Like it goes up.

1:43:32Yeah.

1:43:33Oh, thanks.

1:43:34Oh, thanks.

1:43:35Yes.

1:43:36Different things.

1:43:37And as I do more podcasts, or I don't really do a lot of podcasts, plural, but as I podcast more and more,

1:43:43I've grown lazy in my writing. Not lazy, but I've grown to appreciate the fact that I can use inflection on a podcast in a way

1:43:51that takes a lot more mental effort and prose to be unambiguous about whether you're being sarcastic or not.

1:44:00Or something.

1:44:01Yeah, well, you need to set it up.

1:44:03Also, I think it doesn't help you...

1:44:07OK, that's a bad way to start a sentence.

1:44:09But it doesn't help you that a lot of your—in your linked list, it's like one-word retorts, basically.

1:44:19So if you then write with brevity, it's read in the same voice as these one-word retorts

1:44:27that you use in middle-end class.

1:44:29Hmm. Yeah.

1:44:32I've used emoji on Daring Fireball a few times too, just like twice though.

1:44:36Have you? I missed that.

1:44:38Yeah.

1:44:39I haven't seen that. What side is that? I don't know.

1:44:42I need to look into it. There is some sort of...

1:44:45Not that I would use it frequently, but part of what makes me unlikely to use it frequently

1:44:50is the whole issue of...

1:44:52The rendering.

1:44:53and not even being able to control the long-term rendering on Apple and iOS devices.

1:44:57Who knows if and when they're ever going to redraw some of the clips.

1:45:00Yeah, Happy Face could be at Swastika like next week and you have no control.

1:45:05Right. I'm trying to see. I just sent you a link to this Verde story on the study that shows people interpreting emoji differently.

1:45:16It's the one with grinning teeth is a really good one, because it's on all the other platforms,

1:45:20And I don't know exactly which what the name of the it's grinning face with smiling eyes

1:45:25Yeah, and apples glyph makes it look like somebody who is oh, man

1:45:31You see it's not a smile and it's almost like you've just said the wrong thing

1:45:38Right, right like like the look you would give if you just mentioned somebody's son or like their mother

1:45:46Like, "Hey, how's your mother?" and then, like, you know, all of a sudden you remember that their mother died recently.

1:45:51Yes.

1:45:52Or something like that. The sort of grin you would make in that situation.

1:45:56Like a seething like, "Sorry about that."

1:45:58Whereas the Microsoft, Samsung, LG, and Google ones are all unambiguously a toothy smile.

1:46:05You know, it's all happy. They're all happy. Perfect example.

1:46:10And so there is, there's a value to iMessage in the fact that you, and maybe people don't think about it consciously,

1:46:15but you know what the other person's going to see.

1:46:20Well, wait. Doesn't that mean that our message should normalize to what these other guys are doing?

1:46:31Personally, I prefer the Apple logo. I think it looks better.

1:46:34And it's useful. It's useful in a way that I don't think that there's another...

1:46:37It is useful, but does it match the grinning face with smiling eyes?

1:46:43Well, the other thing is, but even with the other ones, this study assigned, you know,

1:46:49polled people on whether they think this is a negative connotation or positive connotation

1:46:52of the glyph, even among the other ones, there's a fairly wide variety.

1:46:56They're all positive and Apple's is negative.

1:46:58Oh, they're grouped way closer together, dude.

1:47:01But there's a difference.

1:47:02Like, the difference between Microsoft and Google is over a point on a five-point scale.

1:47:06I agree that there's a definite...

1:47:08Oh my god, are you... come on, dude.

1:47:10No, no, no.

1:47:11There's a four point difference between Microsoft and Apple in the negative direction.

1:47:16No, no, I'm not trying to argue that on the case of this particular one that Apple is

1:47:20not an outlier.

1:47:21Right.

1:47:22No, I'm not arguing that.

1:47:24But I'm saying though, even not counting Apple, it's interesting to me that the ones who agree

1:47:31on the basic sense of it still have a different...

1:47:34Oh, sure.

1:47:37And I think for most of the emoji that that's probably the case.

1:47:40I don't think any, you know, I think most of them, there is no outlier, but that there's still a...

1:47:47I agree. The other thing is context.

1:47:53Emoji very seldomly makes sense without any words around them, right?

1:47:59Or at least context of in a conversation.

1:48:02So while you could look at like, I don't know what this tested.

1:48:06It was like, "Okay, what do you think about each one of these emoji?"

1:48:09You could feel totally different given.

1:48:12The researchers surveyed online respondents on how they interpreted the emoji's sentiment,

1:48:17rating it on a scale from negative five, strongly negative, to plus five, strongly positive.

1:48:21I have, you know what, I'll tell you what, I don't think I've ever used this apple emoji.

1:48:29Our friend of the show, Paul Kefasis, he likes to use that emoji.

1:48:34As being...

1:48:37As a person who is an observer of the uncomfortable aspects of life.

1:48:45Yeah.

1:48:46Right?

1:48:47Uncomfortable is what that says.

1:48:49Right. He likes to document sort of the weird on his one-foot tsunami.

1:48:55Yeah.

1:48:56In personal correspondence, he will often…

1:48:59That's one person I know who has sent me that emoji.

1:49:04but getting faced with smiling eyes is the name of that emoji do you think

1:49:13Apple has accurately rendered that notion no I think not although so I

1:49:19well they like the but although uncomfortable I'm totally into yeah I

1:49:24think the problem with it is that it doesn't what it's not the eyes it's the

1:49:29grin because to me a grin I mean yeah maybe I'm wrong but to me a grin

1:49:34implies a smile, that a grin is a subset of a smile, whereas that is absolutely

1:49:39not a smile. No, that's like a... that's a drawn teeth kind of thing. Yeah, a tooth sock. It's like...

1:49:44it should be... like, the name of that emoji should be "embarrassed tooth sock."

1:49:49Yeah, yeah. Which I really... I firmly believe is a perfectly valid emoji to

1:49:57have. Yeah. And that's a great representation of it. Yeah, here's the

1:50:02of definite dictionary definition of grin it is a smile broadly especially in

1:50:07an unrestrained manner with the mouth open Dennis appears the example Dennis

1:50:12appeared grinning used cheerfully as a noun it is a broad smile so yeah

1:50:19definitely I think I think that the grinning teeth is inaccurately rendered

1:50:25but now it's too late or is it I don't know because if they change it then all

1:50:30All sorts of things, all sorts of ways that it's already been used are changed in meaning.

1:50:35[BLANK_AUDIO]

1:50:38>> Depends who you're talking to, and that's the problem, right?

1:50:40>> Right.

1:50:41>> Emoji are words that when I send them to you change meaning.

1:50:46>> Right.

1:50:47Boy, this show's really, I love it.

1:50:49>> This show's like all over the place.

1:50:50>> I love it, but it's nowhere near.

1:50:52>> This is nowhere near the list of stuff.

1:50:54>> We're getting into linguistics, I love it.

1:50:57Yeah, and that is sort of the... there is an advantage there to the old-school ASCII emoticon artwork, where it's a little bit...

1:51:04It's a little bit more defined.

1:51:06Right.

1:51:07Like, your semicolon might look different than my semicolon, but I still get... I know of stupid Winky when I see it.

1:51:14Right.

1:51:15I don't even know how it got here.

1:51:21I don't know.

1:51:23So...

1:51:25Oh, we're talking about iMessage and services and whether they should be broken apart.

1:51:29And so we get to ask...

1:51:31I also wonder...

1:51:33You got that to one specific emoticon.

1:51:35As I...

1:51:37As I wonder about the...

1:51:43That's actually... The one we're talking about... I'm looking at the study now. I should not...

1:51:47I'll link to this study in the show notes. I promise. I'm copying and pasting it now.

1:51:51They have examples of the ones with the biggest deltas. The grinning teeth one is

1:51:56not only as Apple and Outlier as the emoji, that particular the distance from

1:52:01which that there's no other emoji that they studied that has a spread like that.

1:52:07It just means something different. Yeah it's actually and I think concentrating

1:52:11on that one in particular actually you lose the general context of the study

1:52:16which is that even with the ones where they're generally all compliant with the

1:52:20description, people have a different interpretation of what they mean, or at least the sentiment

1:52:26of being positive or negative.

1:52:27Right, which I think is a super interesting point.

1:52:32I think diverged – and it's not a knock, but whatever – depict the most illustrative

1:52:38point.

1:52:40Because it's easiest to write about.

1:52:41Well, yeah, we'll look at that.

1:52:44That's clearly an outlier.

1:52:46And that makes you want to learn more about it.

1:52:50So it's really not a knock on them, but it really illustrates that people on different

1:52:55platforms will see different things.

1:52:58Ben Thompson, if he's listening, if he does listen to this show, he's probably screaming

1:53:02at us that we're not talking about stickers.

1:53:06Ben's a big fan and studier of the chat services, the ones that are cross-platform, like WhatsApp

1:53:11and WeChat.

1:53:14things have these things called stickers which are like emoji but they're custom

1:53:18to the service and it's just sending an image like an emoji and you know maybe

1:53:25around a holiday they'll come out with like a whole set of them about Christmas

1:53:28so instead of just like an emoji you've got like Santa Claus on a Christmas tree

1:53:31you can have a whole set of stickers all about Christmas or whatever or the world

1:53:35I was so down on that.

1:53:37But you know what?

1:53:43I talked to him over Slack, and sometimes I don't even care to actually respond to

1:53:49him, but I'll do one of those reaction emoji.

1:53:51Yeah, exactly.

1:53:52And I'm like, "Oh, Ben, you kind of got me on this sticker stuff."

1:54:01So I don't know.

1:54:03The more I talk about it with you, the more I'm starting to disagree with him.

1:54:07I wonder...

1:54:08Disagree with him?

1:54:09Oh, you should get him on the show, because he's a smart cookie.

1:54:11He's never done this show, has he?

1:54:13Yeah.

1:54:14What are you talking about?

1:54:16Is he?

1:54:18I'm pretty sure he's in this show.

1:54:19Well, let me look at the archives.

1:54:21You don't remember talking to Ben?

1:54:26It's like three times at least, dude.

1:54:31Alright, ten times.

1:54:35Ten times? No, maybe it's five.

1:54:39I just searched for Thompson on the page and it'll show up twice for each one

1:54:43because I'll mention them in the title and the...

1:54:47So it's five. You know what, he's never doing it again.

1:54:51I'll tell you that much right now. I didn't actually forget. He's been on twice since August

1:54:55of last year. He's probably on more often than I am.

1:54:59Probably. And four times in the last year.

1:55:02[laughs]

1:55:04What about Apple Music? Isn't Apple Music already sort of a standalone...

1:55:10Oh, man.

1:55:12And they have to sort of do profit and loss on that. I mean, they know how many subscribers they

1:55:17are, and they know how much they're paying, you know. Whether they actually count it and

1:55:22hold it accountable and have goals for it, and you're getting fired if you don't meet this

1:55:28the way some people would, some companies would in their divisions. Surely they know exactly

1:55:33how much Apple Music is making and how much it's costing and therefore they know whether it's

1:55:38profitable or not and they know what the delta is month to month. I mean and we know it because

1:55:43they leak things like the number of customers, you know, subscribers. It's very, very competitive.

1:55:50I honestly like... So getting back to the press tax, Ben's basic argument is that whatever gets measured gets fixed.

1:56:00There's no way they don't know if Apple Music is making or losing money.

1:56:05And it's not that they say that they don't have profit and loss in the company.

1:56:14It's that they report one level of profit and loss.

1:56:19which is a very different thing.

1:56:21I don't think that means internally that they don't worry about this kind of stuff.

1:56:26I messaged me...

1:56:29So they expanded what? iCloud Drive storage.

1:56:33Yes.

1:56:34There's no way they did that without considering profit and loss. No way.

1:56:37Well, of course not, because they charge for that.

1:56:39Right.

1:56:40In fact...

1:56:41Clearly, they've got some numbers.

1:56:43Yeah, and in fact, I'm telling you, the more I talk about it, the more...

1:56:47It's a great piece, but I still—the more I talk about it, the more I think I disagree.

1:56:52That that's—I totally agree that he has—he's identified a problem. I don't think his proposed solution is right.

1:56:59Because, to me, iCloud drives another example where they don't do profit and loss across, you know, the way other companies do.

1:57:07But you would never guess that by the way they charge for iCloud storage. Right?

1:57:13Based on the way that that they charge for iCloud storage you would think the opposite you would think this is a company where somebody

1:57:19In the iCloud division has a gun to their head that they're supposed to make a lot of money on this

1:57:23Yeah, because they charge more than anybody

1:57:27Yeah

1:57:29For what penny and there's another one to iCloud Drive to me works amazingly. Well, I

1:57:36Honestly in my experience and I know somebody out there is gonna disagree and think that I'm smoking

1:57:42Apple dope or something, but I find that it is up to Dropbox quality, which is

1:57:49invisible that I never if I'm editing, you know apps that I know use that use iCloud Drive like

1:57:56You know, I have a couple of important numbers spreadsheet

1:57:59At this point when I save stuff in numbers

1:58:03I know that it's there and I can go to a different Mac or a different device and it's gonna be there. It's just there

1:58:10That's not I still use Dropbox because I use it in different ways and Dropbox is more is a lot easier to use as a

1:58:15sort of junk drawer where you just put anything and everything and have it go everywhere and

1:58:20iCloud Drive to me still works best in the mindset of

1:58:24Hey the documents for numbers you go to numbers, you know, it's not really I don't really even though you can put arbitrary files

1:58:32And they're your iCloud Drive now. I still use Dropbox for that but just in terms of having the sync work just

1:58:38invisibly instant nearly instantaneously

1:58:40It's up there

1:58:42I think they get a bad rap for for problems that they had in the past and people either

1:58:47aren't giving it a fair look in with open eyes now or

1:58:50They're just too set in our mindset that apples, you know that anything related to iCloud sucks

1:58:56But what they charge for it, I think is it's almost crazy compared to what other people charge for storage. I think the storage rates are

1:59:04extrovertent

1:59:06The functionality seems to be really pretty solid at this point.

1:59:11I just can't believe that they couldn't charge a lot less than they should and if anything they should be because you know

1:59:22It's really only meant to be used on expensive Apple devices that have high profit margins

1:59:27It seems to me like iCloud Drive storage per gigabyte ought to be less than the competition not more than the competition because like

1:59:34Dropbox just to name one example all the money they're making is for people

1:59:37paying for Dropbox storage they don't sell $800 cell phones that with 40%

1:59:42profit margins that they can get other revenue from all they have is the

1:59:46storage whereas this is just one little thing so there's an example where I

1:59:50don't know I don't know how to do it they can make more money I guess I don't

1:59:56disagree with you but I mean you know if they've run the scenarios and they make

2:00:03Apple can make more money, you say.

2:00:04Yeah, exactly.

2:00:05If Apple can make more money and they run the projected scenarios.

2:00:09Right.

2:00:10And Molson and I often run it.

2:00:11For some reason Molson, in particular, and I, when he's on the show, always run into

2:00:14this where we end up talking ourselves into spending Tim Cook's money.

2:00:17Really?

2:00:18And I totally realize…

2:00:19Which is an easy and awesome thing to do because it's fun.

2:00:23Right.

2:00:24But I totally realize that the way you become the world's most profitable company is that

2:00:29you know, cut your losses and you, you know, you sweat the details.

2:00:34You make money.

2:00:35You don't piss money away here and there and that all sorts of ideas that we have involve

2:00:38Apple pissing a little extra money away here and there and then, you know, piss a little

2:00:43away here and there and then all of a sudden you're not the world's most profitable company.

2:00:46Well because ultimately, so the argument is that they should make iCloud storage cheaper

2:00:55Despite the fact that we don't know how many,

2:00:57like what the percentages of iOS device owners

2:01:02or Apple device owners are that subscribe to it,

2:01:06they should make it cheaper in order to make them happier.

2:01:10But we've already got a CUSTSAT number of like 98.

2:01:16Like maybe when that drops to like 89,

2:01:22maybe that's when you're like, okay,

2:01:24I almost think that Apple should know better than to trust the customer set because people... I do too

2:01:29And I actually think they do. People maybe don't have high enough expectations yet

2:01:34They don't expect to have infinite storage online

2:01:37And so therefore they don't judge Apple by that and therefore they say I'm completely satisfied with my iPhone

2:01:42Even though they only have five gigabytes of storage in their iCloud account

2:01:45Whereas I think Apple knows better than that and it even it just comes back to my hour ago story about being

2:01:51appalled when the guys just threw a handful of card catalog things up in the air like data loss data loss I

2:01:56Just breaks my heart knowing that there are people who don't can't put their entire photo library in their iCloud account because there

2:02:04They only take the free iCloud storage. Like I really really think that

2:02:08It I don't want to quite say there's a moral obligation

2:02:12But on some spectrum it is on some spectrum being in favor of avoiding data loss at all costs is a moral issue

2:02:18and and I really wish that more and more people would be able to you know

2:02:23reasonably serve their and save their entire photo and video library to their

2:02:27iCloud account because otherwise if they lose or break their phone they might

2:02:31lose lose photos and videos permanently I don't disagree with you and about that

2:02:38at all. What that costs, I don't know. But, I mean, there's always local backups.

2:02:49You have a people content.

2:02:51I know, I know. But not to get all capitalist on it, because I'm Canadian, so we should probably just nationalize every company.

2:03:04But doesn't the fact that they can make money on it, you know, like if people need this kind of protection, it's effectively insurance, right?

2:03:24Yeah.

2:03:25Can Apple not be in the insurance of your business?

2:03:29business I I think the best thing that Ben wrote in that piece was that the

2:03:34Draper quote was his name Draper or am I thinking of madman the guy that the management guy you said you

2:03:40You what what you measure it is what gets improved?

2:03:43That's the key

2:03:47You might as well have said it

2:03:50That's the don't you if you would never say that he would say the exact opposite I

2:03:59But I think that what Apple needs is better and more rigid measurements of their services.

2:04:07They should, and higher standards for them.

2:04:10I see fewer and fewer times that I see any kind of out of sync iMessages.

2:04:15I use iMessage all the time. I use it across a bunch of devices.

2:04:19And in my use, it is excellent. And in getting better, there's another one of those things where I just feel like,

2:04:25Don't judge it by how it used to be, but it's really gotten good at when I'm at my Mac.

2:04:30The iMessage aren't going off on my other devices because it sees that I'm active on my Mac.

2:04:36And texts that I've sent from my phone all day, if they're on iMessage, when I get to my Mac,

2:04:41they're waiting for me if I want to get back to it.

2:04:44But it's still not perfect. I just had an interaction with someone the other day, and I don't know why.

2:04:50know why but my text to this guy only go to my phone or from him they only go to

2:04:57my phone at least and they don't go to my my Mac and I don't know why they're

2:05:01blue and it seems like both devices are set up with the same phone number and

2:05:07the same Apple ID and whether he's sending it to my phone number or my

2:05:11Apple ID email address I don't know but everybody else's are synced between so

2:05:17So just, you know, 99 instead of 99.9% of messages syncing properly between devices,

2:05:25you know, maybe make it 99.99, you know, but measure it, you know, there's there ought

2:05:29to be a good I do always opt into the send Apple diagnostic stuff.

2:05:34So they, they're, hopefully they're measuring and they can they see that there's a glitch,

2:05:39you know.

2:05:41But that to me is the bottom line, not that it should be about dollars and cents and profit

2:05:45loss, but that they should pick better metrics and improve these services to those levels.

2:05:49What do you perceive as the services that Apple has that need the most work?

2:05:56I cloud sync has actually got better.

2:06:05Do you think it's good enough?

2:06:07As somebody who ships Mac software that saves to the cloud.

2:06:12This is your app Napkin.

2:06:14Yes, Napkin. We had some early reports where they were like, the files would clobber themselves when they were synced over the net. That was bad. But things have worked out better.

2:06:28Notes is actually a really great app. And I'm sorry to say that because I know you...

2:06:36No, I don't disagree at all. I mean, that's, you know...

2:06:40Well, you know, I don't want to tell you on your show that...

2:06:44Yeah, the new version of Notes is great.

2:06:46The version of Notes that debuted last fall with iOS 9 and the new version of Mac OS, El Capitan,

2:06:54because the old version of Notes only synced through IMAP and it was a terrible hack

2:07:00and acted like a terrible hack and was unreliable and the new one uses CloudKit, I think, right?

2:07:06I'm 99% sure that it's dogfooding CloudKit.

2:07:10which is not files in a file system like iCloud Drive.

2:07:14It is... I'm not quite sure what the word is, but it's...

2:07:19Asynchronous abstracted object permanence, I guess?

2:07:23Yes, that's a good way to say it.

2:07:25Well, it's a bunch of words. It's gobbledygook, really, but I mean, you know.

2:07:30But it's an API that developers seem to like, and it seems to work the way it's supposed to,

2:07:36which is, you know, exactly what a service should be.

2:07:40change your pace. Right. That it's, you know, it is it's a good API or a good

2:07:45enough API and it's reliable. So and it works at in the within the timeframe

2:07:50that you would hope that it would work where the note that you just pecked out

2:07:55and paste it on your Mac you pick up your phone and go and it's it's there on

2:07:59your phone. So it's you know it's a good example. iTunes and Apple music are...

2:08:06They're a mess. I mean, I don't even understand iTunes anymore. You had Eddie

2:08:18on the show recently and he was like, "Well, when you go to the Music tab, all

2:08:23you see is the music." And it's like, that's not the problem.

2:08:26Right. If I play an album that I own through Apple Music, I can click on the

2:08:32album art and click on a song on it and it'll start playing and then if I try to

2:08:38navigate to find like to play what's next and I click on an album that

2:08:42happens to have been included through my Apple music subscription the song will

2:08:47stop so I can't I can't go and add it to up next I don't whatever reason I don't

2:08:58know though how many that counts I agree that there are problems there and I

2:09:00I find Apple Music to be confusing.

2:09:03I don't understand it and I'm a very technical person.

2:09:06It triggers the "maybe I'm a dummy" thing that I think makes me a good designer

2:09:12and a good critic of design because I'm...

2:09:15Oh, I know I'm a dummy. But I'm also technical.

2:09:18I'm unable to understand overly complex interfaces and therefore I think I'm good at explaining why.

2:09:26It just is over the line of, "This doesn't seem to explain itself."

2:09:32I can start to understand the rules, but they're arbitrary and based on technical limitations rather than, like, interaction limitations.

2:09:40I don't know that that counts as being bad at services, though. I feel that it's more of a sign of being tolerant of insufficient user interface design.

2:09:50Well, the client expression of that service is suboptimal.

2:09:57By and large, I'm actually not that down on Apple services, per se.

2:10:07But I also don't think I rely on them as much as many other people do.

2:10:17Like a lot of people do collaborative document sharing over Google or calendar sharing.

2:10:26I don't have to do that.

2:10:30I don't know if I'm exposed so much to the negative sides of maybe where Apple is not

2:10:40quite at the forefront.

2:10:42Well, and the other thing, too, that plays into this and I often think about, and I don't

2:10:47know how much of it is a problem or not is that Apple is in a position where

2:10:52they benefit from the services of others you know so if there's collaborative

2:10:57aspects to Google Docs that you know Apple's pages or whatever else can't

2:11:05provide the fact is that you can get the full benefit of that while using an

2:11:09Apple product because Google Docs has you know iOS apps and and web a web

2:11:16version that runs in, you know, anywhere. And I think that's true for a lot of

2:11:20services, you know, it's, you know, that they've got the problem for Apple was

2:11:27back in the early, to cycle back to two hours ago in the show, the problem was

2:11:31back in the old days when Apple was so much smaller that the stuff, all this

2:11:35stuff didn't work on Apple stuff. I mean most famously, the best

2:11:39example I can think of was that at first Napster was a Windows only thing.

2:11:44And there's this amazing thing that was a sensation that lit the entire world on fire and

2:11:49Mac users were left out at first and then it was like we had like third-party clients that just used the Napster API

2:11:57Which were actually in some ways better because they were designed by Mac developers and had better interface

2:12:04But then as Napster itself the first class, you know

2:12:07The first party Napster would change things the Mac changes it you had to wait for the third-party developers making these sort of yeah

2:12:13That's the story of the Mac in the 90s.

2:12:15Right. And Apple doesn't have that problem anymore. Nobody does Mac second.

2:12:19No, no, no.

2:12:20Or iOS second, at least. Maybe Mac second, but not iOS.

2:12:23So I think it's a little different. And I don't think that they have to do all the services themselves.

2:12:28And in fact, I think that that kind of thinking, it sort of is what led to Microsoft's downfall,

2:12:34where to me, where Microsoft really fell off as the dominant, the company that really drove the industry

2:12:40every important sense was that institutionally they wanted to do everything.

2:12:45And anybody who had any kind of success, Microsoft would say, "Well, they're making money on

2:12:50that.

2:12:51Let's go do something that beats them."

2:12:53So they competed with Oracle.

2:12:56They competed with Sun.

2:12:57They competed.

2:12:58I mean, you name it, they competed with them.

2:13:00And they even...

2:13:01They won a lot of those fights.

2:13:03Right?

2:13:04They did.

2:13:05But it...

2:13:06Sometimes dirty, sometimes fair and square.

2:13:07I think it let them take their eye off the ball that they didn't have any, you know.

2:13:11I think trying to do it all is inevitably going to lead to failure.

2:13:15So do you think that's where Apple's going?

2:13:19No, I don't think so. But I think

2:13:23though that the mindset that they have to be as good as Google at all

2:13:27services is maybe the wrong way to look at it because maybe they don't.

2:13:31They just have to remain an appealing platform for Google to

2:13:35to make sure it remains a first-class citizen.

2:13:37And I don't see any signs that that's changed.

2:13:41- So what do you think about this Intel

2:13:48layoff kind of thing?

2:13:49Which seems like a weird segue.

2:13:50- Well, let me take a break.

2:13:52- I mean, the company did.

2:13:53- Let me take a break before we talk.

2:13:54That's a great way, a great final topic.

2:13:57Let me take a third break here

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2:16:29So Intel Intel announced that what are they laying off like 10% of their workforce 12 12 thousand people 12,000. Yeah

2:16:36I

2:16:39Think it's unsurprising I think you know and it's always funny I the number surprises me I

2:16:47I mean, so you were probably hip to the, I'm

2:16:52pretty sure you were hip to the industry back

2:16:57when IBM had its first layoffs.

2:16:59Like late 90s.

2:17:01Mm.

2:17:01You know what, actually this is before, I

2:17:06think before Apple got involved with them.

2:17:08But IBM was a powerhouse and they were like an

2:17:12old school company, like we don't do layoffs.

2:17:15Right.

2:17:16You work at IBM and you retire.

2:17:18It's a point of pride.

2:17:19Right.

2:17:20You're a company man.

2:17:20You get to watch.

2:17:21You would-- like, we set you up.

2:17:25And then they hit some times, and they did some layoffs.

2:17:29And this Intel thing kind of reminds me of that a little bit.

2:17:36Yeah, and especially because they were--

2:17:40especially going back to the '90s,

2:17:43you just cannot emphasize how--

2:17:45I know that they used the term wind tell but I was wind tell was the windows as the software and Intel is the CPU

2:17:51the wind tell duopoly was just so dominant in the industry in terms of

2:17:57Both what actual people were actually using which was Intel based computers with Microsoft software running it

2:18:05And where the money was going it was going to Microsoft and it was going to Intel. I mean you could have reaped all of the

2:18:13rewards of the 90s stock market just by putting money into

2:18:18Intel and Microsoft. Oh, yeah

2:18:20And it just seemed that sort of success over, you know a decade it after a while

2:18:28It's human nature to just see it as inevitable. You know that it's that they're always gonna Intel is always gonna be Intel

2:18:34And it just it you know

2:18:38I don't know going back in time and telling somebody in 1997 that Intel is gonna have massive layoffs in 2016

2:18:43I mean 2016 would sound like a long time off, but you would think wow something something weird happened in between now

2:18:49And then because that doesn't seem possible

2:18:51Well, I'm something where it didn't happen. I think a couple of things did I think that there's I think it's a multi

2:18:57Variable and that all of the variables all of them worked against Intel

2:19:03It's like it's like a perfect. Yeah, I can't think of really want just yeah

2:19:08Like all the ways that the industry has changed since since their heyday have all been against their their favor

2:19:15I mean, let's just recount them. I mean

2:19:19obviously one of them is the shift to the fact that PC sales have plateaued and

2:19:25Iran a decline because

2:19:28People are either using their old PC longer and the end their older PC is good enough

2:19:36performance-wise that we've reached, you know, maybe that's even a separate

2:19:40separate factor in that.

2:19:42A saturation point.

2:19:43Right, that we've reached reached a point where client-side computing is fast enough for most people most of the time.

2:19:50So there's no need to replace your older PC if it's still running based on performance reasons.

2:19:55Obviously and famously people are doing a lot more of their personal computing on quote-unquote mobile devices,

2:20:01which roughly does find means phones and tablets and the phones and tablets most of them

2:20:06overwhelming majority of them are using arm based chips, which Intel doesn't make

2:20:11And which funny enough they they sold they had like an arm. Yeah that

2:20:16Ex-scale was right. Yeah that they sold just before the cell phone. And now here's the thing though

2:20:22I wondered though that even keeping that I don't know that that would have saved them because one of the other factors is that arms

2:20:27aren't our Intel's business is based on the fact on the

2:20:30Idea that a significant portion of the cost of a PC is the CPU

2:20:36that that's you know, whatever however much the PC costs a big chunk of it is

2:20:42The the CPU and Microsoft's business used to be based on and to some degree still is but they've successfully moved away, you know

2:20:52moved away from this in a way that I don't think Intel has that that in the old days a

2:20:56pretty much the entire cost of the PC was an Intel chip a

2:21:00License for Windows and then a whole bunch of cheap components like hard drives and RAM and stuff like that. That was all

2:21:07Commodity based but I don't think that's everything else was a lot of software is software they can pivot

2:21:14better than Intel can being hardware and I but don't like like I

2:21:21I think that you can move on from being the OS provider and onto something else faster than Intel can move off from being the chip provider

2:21:29Right onto something else. Well and being a chip provider where the CPU is not a mere commodity

2:21:34It was a premier component. I mean and just look at the market. They both saw their legs cut out beneath them and

2:21:41Now what? We Mac users always think I always at least I always think of Intel stickers the Intel inside stickers in the context of that

2:21:49poor sap at the Apple press conference who asked Steve Jobs why the first, you know,

2:21:562006 or 2007. It had to be 2007, I think, because it had to be after the ones came out. 2006 was the

2:22:05year that the Switch was announced. And then 2007 would be when it came out. So the poor guy at the

2:22:11press conference in 2007 who asked why Apple's Intel-based MacBooks don't have an Intel.

2:22:17The same year's the iPhone

2:22:19Yeah, that's embarrassing. Yeah

2:22:22It's your you're worrying about the wrong thing, dude

2:22:26but just think about just think about the fact that

2:22:30the idea that the Intel chip is so important to the PC whether it's from HP or

2:22:35Dell or

2:22:38Compact back in the day or name that you named Sony, you know that they all put in a visible Intel inside sticker

2:22:46on the outside of the PC or the laptop. And I know that there were marketing, you

2:22:52know, deals and everybody took in there was money that it was involved. But the

2:22:55notion of putting a CPU maker sticker... Mac users laugh because Apple just

2:23:00wouldn't do it. But no phone has a Qualcomm inside sticker on it. It's just

2:23:06the CPU is reduced in importance. It's just another one of the components. Now

2:23:10it's obviously an important component and you can obviously spend, you know,

2:23:14higher-end phones have more cutting-edge CPUs, but it's just a different world.

2:23:19The idea of the CPU being so supremely or so extremely supreme to the what's in

2:23:28the device, it's just no longer the case, you know, and I they you know they can't

2:23:32expect to make hundreds of dollars from a CPU and a phone, right?

2:23:37Yeah, well, no, I don't...

2:23:41The Intel...

2:23:41I honestly don't know if they can expect me to make hundreds of dollars.

2:23:43out of my ass here and somebody will add a credit I'm talking out of my ass but I

2:23:48would guess that Intel makes more money from a $300 PC that gets sold today with

2:23:56an Intel CPU then then they would make from an ARM CPU in an $800 iPhone if

2:24:06they were to make the CPU for the iPhone I don't think well enough CPU if you

2:24:11sure because they'd be licensing the ARM IP.

2:24:16Right. And part of the revolution. Which they used to partially own, but they sold it.

2:24:21Right. Oops.

2:24:26I don't know where to go for NFL. I don't.

2:24:31They seem like they should go

2:24:36on to the server side. And I don't know enough about how those architectures work these days,

2:24:43but it seems to me that eventually a bunch of really low-powered ARM chips with SSDs attached

2:24:53could perform a lot of the web traffic that is mostly what needs to be served up today.

2:25:03Yeah, I don't know what the way forward for them is either, but I do think...

2:25:09I don't know if you need a super powerful CPU on the back end anymore.

2:25:14Like, maybe we've tapped out in terms of what a single CPU needs to do, and now we're looking

2:25:20at like a hive mind of CPUs.

2:25:25I just see that...

2:25:26I think that the way forward for them is probably not in making things for consumers, you know,

2:25:32whether it's the server or whatever other professional market, but that's the

2:25:35only way for a company like Intel to make high priced components. I think at

2:25:40the consumer level we've entered an era where those chips are all

2:25:45commodities now. Yeah. You know what? I've been a long-term

2:25:53term fan of IBM.

2:25:58And they got out when the getting was good.

2:26:02They sold off their PC industry to Lenovo.

2:26:07They gave up OS/2 probably 10 years too late, but their IBM.

2:26:10So they were supporting their customers for a long time.

2:26:16I'm going to cut you off before you start going into OS/2.

2:26:18I don't want to talk about OS2. I'm just saying that as a company, they've managed their business for like a hundred and something years.

2:26:24Right.

2:26:25And they've known when it's good to let go and they've made good on their promises.

2:26:35I think that them selling the ThinkPad business when they did was, in hindsight, a great example of skating to where the puck is going.

2:26:45that they were exactly right.

2:26:46They sold it not before it was too late.

2:26:49They sold it while it could still command a premium price,

2:26:52but they totally saw that that was going away.

2:26:54- And they went to a services business.

2:26:56And they had to cut a bunch of jobs, which is unfortunate.

2:26:59But IBM, I mean, they've been kicking it

2:27:04for like 100 and some odd years now.

2:27:06So, kinda hard to, like how do you argue with that?

2:27:11- Yeah.

2:27:13Well, that's about it from my list of topics.

2:27:15Anything else you want to talk about?

2:27:16I mean, we've been going on for a while.

2:27:18WWDC is really expensive.

2:27:20WWDC is very expensive.

2:27:22That's the last thing I wanted to talk about.

2:27:24So Apple finally-- and I mean that non-sarcastically.

2:27:28I really do think that they should be embarrassed

2:27:31that they announced WWDC dates only eight weeks before it

2:27:34actually happens.

2:27:36I think Apple's got to put on their big boy pants

2:27:39and commit to it.

2:27:42at least I would say four months in advance but at least 12 I think at least

2:27:4612 but anyway they at least 12 lucky you in advance no 12 weeks I was 12 12 weeks

2:27:5212 weeks but you know I before I'd skip between months and weeks there so so

2:28:01they announced WWDC dates it's exactly when everybody thought it was going to

2:28:05June 13th to 17th but a lot of people have noted that including me because I'm

2:28:13not buying it - I didn't enter the lottery I mean it's always easy for me

2:28:17to say because every year for at least since 2007 I've gotten a press pass for

2:28:21the keynotes and in recent years they've let the some of the people with press

2:28:26passes go to conference sessions and stuff like that but so I didn't even

2:28:31enter the lottery because I don't want to take the lottery spot from somebody

2:28:34who really, really wants to go and doesn't have the privilege I do of getting a press pass.

2:28:38Yeah, it's the same with me. I don't... not that I know I could guarantee a pass, but I do not.

2:28:44I will be there.

2:28:46I can talk to a lot of these people. It's fine. Like, I don't need a pass. I'd love to be there,

2:28:51but man, tight-seating, you know.

2:28:56It is... and it's funny. I knew that the prices for hotels in downtown San Francisco have gotten

2:29:02more expensive. And my thought was, because someone who goes to New York a couple times

2:29:07a year, I know that Manhattan famously, and to me rightfully so, is the greatest city

2:29:13in the world, says an American, but arguably the greatest city in the world. It makes total

2:29:20sense to me that Manhattan is the most expensive hotel city that I'm familiar with. And off

2:29:26the top of my head, it seems like not just for WWDC, but the last few times I've gone

2:29:30out you know for the last year or so every time I go out for an Apple event

2:29:33I stay in San Francisco it seems to me that like it's no longer a case of bad

2:29:37luck like the one year the the iPad event in the fall was coincident with

2:29:43the the I think it was the e3 gaming conference it was somewhat the big

2:29:48gaming conference that's in San Francisco I don't know if that's e3 or

2:29:51what the name of GDA GDA yeah the game developers conference GDC GDC GDC is the

2:29:59Association.

2:30:00But yeah, GDC.

2:30:01Sensationally, I mean, just tens of thousands of attendees.

2:30:06And it was like, holy cow, and it was held at Moscone, so it's all the downtown hotels.

2:30:12Super expensive.

2:30:13But it's been the case for the last few years where it doesn't matter whether it's June

2:30:17or March or September, it's expensive.

2:30:20And then somebody pointed out to me on Twitter that Bloomberg actually did a report in San

2:30:25Francisco is now the most expensive hotel city in the world.

2:30:30And it's exactly, it's not just me wanting to get a nice room at a cheap rate, it's actually

2:30:36like the truth.

2:30:37It's more expensive than whatever the city is in Switzerland, it's more expensive than

2:30:41New York.

2:30:42It's crazy.

2:30:43And it really puts a damper in the ability for us as a community to just say, "Hey, even

2:30:48if you don't get a conference ticket or even you're not a developer, you should come out

2:30:52to San Francisco that week anyway because all of us will be there together and people

2:30:56can show up, you know, people get tickets to my live talk show, people can, you know,

2:31:02talk in hotel lobbies and make friends and make contacts and schedule all sorts of other

2:31:08events but the sheer cost of it now is really, it's absolutely locking people out.

2:31:15I don't know what Apple can do about that.

2:31:17It's not Apple's fault.

2:31:18It really isn't.

2:31:19No, no, no.

2:31:20And there's been some suggestion that they could do it in Vegas and I don't think that'll fly

2:31:25It doesn't work and you know me. I love Vegas. Yeah, and I love Apple. Yeah

2:31:30I don't think it would work though. I know it's and and it's as a function of having tons of really high quality

2:31:38Hotel rooms at reasonable rates

2:31:42Vegas definitely has that I mean you get a for four and a half star room at Vegas almost all the time for under

2:31:48$200 a night

2:31:50And in terms of having conference space, there's a couple of options I think they have.

2:31:54I've never...

2:31:55WWDC is a little different than like a convention, but you know, there's a lot of places there.

2:32:01And I know that the Aria Hotel is building a new one.

2:32:04But I think it's for other reasons.

2:32:06I think it's off-brand for Apple, and I don't think it works for them in terms of...

2:32:10They have to move a lot of people, and honestly, a lot of people just come up to...

2:32:15A lot of Apple people come up because it's there.

2:32:19Yeah.

2:32:20they shuttle a lot of Apple people who are involved at WWDC in some degree or another,

2:32:24a still are in Cupertino during the week, either some of the days or every day, maybe just in the

2:32:31morning and then you know, get there.

2:32:32It's like, Oh, yeah, okay, I'll come in on a lap.

2:32:35All right. There's, there's an awful lot of cars shuttling forth from the south of Valley, up to San

2:32:40Francisco with Apple employees and back and forth during WWDC. Whereas if they held it, whether it's

2:32:46Vegas or any other city that required air travel it's everybody has to go and

2:32:51everybody has to stay there all week and it's a different thing it adds cost it

2:32:57adds commitment it adds disruption and anytime you do air travel like that even

2:33:02if it's not change in tracks serendipity yeah yeah maybe I'll just go and show up

2:33:06yeah well and it adds a day before and after just not even talking teardown and

2:33:12and stuff like that.

2:33:13It just means you've gotta go the day before

2:33:16and you've gotta leave the day after

2:33:18as opposed to if you're just driving an hour down there.

2:33:20You know, it's a little different.

2:33:22- Yeah, it won't leave the valley.

2:33:24- Yeah, I think, yeah.

2:33:26It's like if they could find another option in the valley,

2:33:28maybe, but you know, it's like in the old days.

2:33:32I never went to one in San Jose.

2:33:34Like the first WWDC I went to,

2:33:38it was already in San Francisco at Moscone.

2:33:40I went to a GDC in San Jose back in the old days.

2:33:45But you and I have friends, good friends, like Chris, your partner with Napkin at Aged and

2:33:52Distilled.

2:33:53I think he was probably at Adobe back then, right?

2:33:56Yeah, pretty sure he was.

2:33:57So back when he was at Adobe, the San Jose era WWDCs.

2:34:03Brent Simmons had been to a San Jose era WWDC.

2:34:08Regrees it in terms of you know the social aspects of it

2:34:12It was terrible because Santa's like the light, you know, they turn out the lights at five o'clock in the afternoon

2:34:16yeah, and so you just lose all sorts of

2:34:19Social serendipity

2:34:22Right, and I don't think it's big enough anymore. I really don't know. No, you can't do it there anymore

2:34:27But I'll tell you they could maybe open the other muscarine

2:34:30portions but quite frankly though in the early years of

2:34:34Daring fireball in the first at least five years that I went to WWDC

2:34:39I I wouldn't have been able to afford it if the hotels were expensive then as they are now no

2:34:44No, I mean

2:34:48It I find it obscene now and it hurts too. I find that air travel has gotten more expensive, too

2:34:55I don't know what the reason for that is

2:34:57but it may it may be specific to the Philly the SFO route and the

2:35:01the way that the airline options out of Philadelphia have changed since then.

2:35:05Maybe. But I mean it's becoming like a five grand

2:35:09adventure. I used to... One week cost you about five grand, I'm gonna guess. Yeah.

2:35:14It's really, it's almost sickening. Yeah, it's not to be gross, like crass about it.

2:35:22But I mean, that's like serious money. And for me, that's like really like, how do you spend that kind of money without

2:35:30Really thinking about is this worthwhile to attend?

2:35:33You could go to like a really nice a really nice vacation resort somewhere for a lot more money than to go there and have

2:35:40you know the

2:35:42Some bum urinating on the sidewalk in front of you, you know, yes. I love San Francisco, but let's face it

2:35:48It's not not a resort destination

2:35:50It's really crazy how expensive it is and I don't know what to do

2:35:54I bet Apple actually is a little concerned about that. But on the other hand

2:35:59It sell, you know, it sells out so fast that they have to have a lottery the last time they didn't have a lottery it literally

2:36:05Literally sold out in under a minute. Yeah, every single ticket for sale sold out in under a minute

2:36:11I think the last one I got to you texted me at like 830 in the morning

2:36:15And I was like, I just pressed ok until I managed to buy a ticket

2:36:20That was a couple of years ago, yeah

2:36:24I think I think this is yeah, this might be the second year of a lottery

2:36:29I think. But so it's not like they're not they're gonna have trouble filling out

2:36:34the the seeds. And I think for the student scholarships I know that they

2:36:39announced this year that they're going to institute they're gonna have travel

2:36:43plans or they're gonna help with travel for some of the student scholarships too

2:36:46which I can only say I can only assume includes a hotel I mean whether it's

2:36:51free or whether it's just discount or just a relatively you know for the

2:36:56students a relatively low reasonable price that includes the hotel accommodations.

2:37:02A student that can afford even half of what we've been seeing.

2:37:06Yeah.

2:37:07What park was, what, 400 bucks a night?

2:37:11At least, yeah. When I looked the other day, the park 55, which is to me the baseline hotel in the neighborhood,

2:37:19is $409 a night, which is insane.

2:37:23It's just insane.

2:37:27It's... a Parf 55... I like those guys.

2:37:31I do. But I mean, come on. $400 a night.

2:37:35It's a fine hotel, but it is... I feel like somebody's getting bribed to have it

2:37:39on the four-star list instead of the three-and-a-half-star list.

2:37:43And it's, you know, it was always like, "Well, it's not the best, but

2:37:47at $189 a night, I'd rather save the money, you know what I mean? And you could get a

2:37:52better hotel for $250 a night back then, but you'd think like, "Well, wait, I'm coming

2:37:57out for six nights. That's 50 and he had a fee. It's like almost 400 bucks. It's like,

2:38:01for 400 bucks, I'll stay at the park 55." But now that they've got the prices over $300,

2:38:07$400, it's like, "You gotta be kidding me. $400 a night to stay in this place that looks

2:38:11like it came out of..."

2:38:12Do you remember when the intercontinental just opened and it was like 10 bucks a night kind of thing?

2:38:17The park 55 reminds me it just seems to me like it was it's like the nicest hotel in East Berlin during the Cold War

2:38:25Because the the grotesque architect

2:38:29yeah, the brutalist architecture and like the way that they think that this is this is what we think a nice hotel is like

2:38:41It's just crazy. It's absolutely crazy. And there's no there's no more seat

2:38:44They used to be the other thing too is we've got you know amongst our pals and their little click that were friends

2:38:49We have somebody would figure out some way every year

2:38:52They go somebody would go through hotwire or yeah price line or something like that

2:38:57And they're like, hey if you go through hotwire and search for a hotel within one mile of this location

2:39:03There's there's a four star option and it's only a hundred and seventy nine dollars a night and I booked it and it's you know

2:39:10the such-and-such hotel which is you know right it's a great hotel and then

2:39:14everybody would quick do it and we'd get it you know everybody figure there's no

2:39:17more there's no secret anymore to getting a hotel in San Francisco it you

2:39:21know what that never worked for me because I'm Canadian and like whatever

2:39:24service they used it was probably kafasas and whatever service it was like

2:39:29yeah yeah us people only yeah okay get something full price it's crazy yeah I

2:39:37I don't know what Apple can do or anybody can do.

2:39:39- No, they can't fix that.

2:39:41- I can't help but think, and I could be wrong.

2:39:43I mean, it's only a bubble if it pops,

2:39:46but I can't help but think that some of the San Francisco

2:39:49go-go economy is a bit of a bubble

2:39:53and that it'll come back down to earth.

2:39:55'Cause I don't think it's the natural state of affairs

2:39:57that San Francisco is more desirable than Manhattan.

2:40:02You know, and I don't know--

2:40:05I like San Francisco a lot as a city, but no, I agree with you.

2:40:09I feel like one way or the other, either the economy pops and the prices go back down,

2:40:13or they build enough new hotels that the supply and demand equation changes.

2:40:20But somebody was saying on Twitter that there aren't really any plans for new hotels,

2:40:24that there's a couple, but no plans for hotels that would be sufficient

2:40:28to really change the overall supply and demand ratio.

2:40:31So we're stuck.

2:40:33Well who tells from what I mean?

2:40:35Try living there right? Oh, I thought our friends. Yeah, it's crazy

2:40:40Yeah, nobody likes that some of the suggestions people had on Twitter and they're reasonable and it's probably what I maybe it

2:40:47This is what I would do if I were if I you know couldn't afford it now

2:40:51if it was ten years ago in the early days during fireball is people are saying you can

2:41:00You could stay out by the airport for a lot less and take like an uber X into the city every day and take it back

2:41:07at night which sounds crazy because it's the uber is from SFO to downtown is is

2:41:11It's not cheap, but wait you think it's about 30 bucks a pop right and I'm

2:41:17My plan is to just stay down in Pacifica. Yeah, and that'll be about 20 bucks anyway

2:41:26My band and a lot of explain to my girlfriend and I'm sorry. I'm showing up at five o'clock in the morning

2:41:31I'm just gonna sleep in the garage

2:41:35It's just a sickening amount of money on one of the regular hotels. I've got one already

2:41:41I booked and the other thing too. The other last thing is that booking in advance was not any sort of

2:41:45benefit either

2:41:48Because I had a guess as to when the the WWDC would be it was right and I booked a hotel room months ago

2:41:55I think it was like January

2:41:57At a terrible rate

2:41:59absolutely terrible rate, but I know I like the hotel and

2:42:03I

2:42:06Was worried that if

2:42:08That it would might get so busy that it would be hard to get a room at any rate if I waited until after that

2:42:14It was announced and so I booked it not because hey, I'm gonna lock in a great rate

2:42:18I booked it because I thought well at least this way. I know I have a hotel at at least a

2:42:23Reasonable by today's standard San Francisco rate and then but it's refundable and I'll just keep searching and

2:42:29Hoping that maybe in the last week or two price, you know, there might be some deals

2:42:33I can if I can get a refund up until like Friday before

2:42:38WWC starts

2:42:40So when you check in and they ask you how many kids you want you're gonna say - right I?

2:42:45Always get to I cuz I'll have cool fine. Perfect. I'll have my friend guy from themselves

2:42:53(laughs)

2:42:55Yes, two queens.

2:42:57- Two queens.

2:42:59(laughs)

2:43:01- Guy English, thank you for doing the show.

2:43:06This has been a great talk.

2:43:07- John, it's always fun.

2:43:08- People can get all the Guy English they want on Twitter

2:43:12at G-T-E.

2:43:15- Yeah.

2:43:16- G-T-E.

2:43:20and I could see your great app napkin at Aged and Distilled.

2:43:25- The Mac App Store.

2:43:26- Yeah, or the Mac App Store.

2:43:28- I got a podcast still called the Deebook

2:43:30that you can check out, where we interview people

2:43:33about, oddly enough, computer history.

2:43:36- All right, with fellow longtime friend

2:43:38of the talk show, Rene Ritchie.

2:43:41- Yeah, that guy's not a dummy.

2:43:43(laughing)

2:43:45- Also, I don't know how, he's the nicest guy in the world.

2:43:49He's, yeah.

2:43:51- To me, just talking about all this stuff

2:43:53just turns you cynical.

2:43:55How do you not get cynical?

2:43:56And that son of a bitch Renee Richie does not have a--

2:43:59- He's like the Canadian's Canadian.

2:44:00He's just beyond it. - He is the Canadian's Canadian.

2:44:02Doesn't have a cynical bone in his--

2:44:04- It's one of the nicest people I've ever met.

2:44:06- All right.

2:44:07Thank you, Guy.

2:44:09- Thank you, John.

2:44:09- Have a good week.

2:44:10- You too.

2:44:11[ Silence ]