26: Steve Wouldn’t Eat An Energy Bar, with John Moltz
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Moltz, you had the article in the magazine. I really liked that. I say this with no hyperbole,
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but it's my favorite article from the magazine thus far. Five issues.
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Wow. I should get off right now.
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Yeah. It's pretty good.
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It's all downhill from here. There's no way this conversation gets any better than that.
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I'm not going to spoil it, but everybody, if you're not reading the magazine, I mean, they're nuts because they're not hooked up right now.
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There's some great, there's just been some great pieces in there.
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Jason Snell's piece this week was particularly good.
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You know what?
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I haven't read that yet because I've been reading late last night.
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Yeah, well, good, because that's why you think mine's better, or why you think mine's
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I read yours.
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There's no question his is better.
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I was an issue behind, and so I read issue four, and then I opened up issue five, and
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I read your piece and chuckled.
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Then I opened his, and I saw where it was going, and it was real late, and I was sleepy,
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and I was like, "You know what?
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This is not, I'm going to read this one tomorrow."
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It was a little heavy.
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But yeah, it's great stuff going on in there.
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- Yeah, no, it's a good read every time it comes out.
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Every two weeks, right?
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- Every two weeks, I believe.
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And you know what, I guess I have a,
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I guess I'm just, it's weird,
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'cause it's like a big circle of my friends.
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Like, 'cause Glenn was on the show two weeks ago.
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Now, you're on, what's-his-name has been on already.
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You know the guy Marco Marco has been on the show that guy
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But it's you know, it's just really good and I think it's funny how it it's it has come out and it's a new thing and
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So what five issues two weeks?
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So it's like been like ten weeks like a month and a half two months two and a half months or so since it debuted
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It's like starting to settle in and you know, I don't think it's a hit but it's clearly successful
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It's exceeded Marco has admitted that it's you know, it's it's above, you know, like the minimum
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Number of paying subscribers that he thought he needed. Yeah
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But but we should point out that publishing on the iPad is dead, right?
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And now publishing on the iPad is dead because it's too bad. It's too bad. He got in because it's a because it just died
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And it's just there's a couple of things that to me make it so
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It it's such a neat fit to compare and contrast with the daily
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even just starting with the names, you know that they have these both have these sort of
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Overly generic names right the magazine the daily one of them is this huge 25 million dollar a year
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operation from
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You know what most many people would argue is like the most evil
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Evil publishing corporation in the world Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. And then the other is you know a tiny little
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one-man operation equally evil
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You know, well, it's a two-man two-man now - now - now - now - man. Yeah, so closer inching closer to
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And I just you know, it's - I was I shouldn't be surprised
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But I was surprised at when the dailies demise was announced. I guess on Monday
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Just how quickly so many people jump to the conclusion that it was proof that iPad publishing is impossible
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I mean, that's actually what Felix Hammond used. He actually used the word impossible. Yeah. Yeah, I think he's a little he's a little chastened about that now
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To his credit. He is a I think noted that maybe he was he went a little far
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Yeah, and you know and he's a normally he's a really really
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Fairly reasonable guy right? Yeah, he's very good. He's really be you know he's
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You know usual financial coverage is spot-on. He's one of my favorites. I thought he covered the the whole
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Unfortunate fiscal collapse and almost a black hole cratering of the entire global economy
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Four years ago all as well as anybody I really did I really felt like he was one of my go-to guys to like
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Tell me what the hell's going on and tell me that I shouldn't just
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cash in and get gold and put it in
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Put it in my mattress and buy a shotgun
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You haven't done that. No, I didn't my dad seemed like oh is that ready? Okay. Okay. You seem like you might do that
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You know you seem like the type
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It was you know I considered it. Yeah, well. It's worth thinking about
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But yeah, he really jumped to the ultimate conclusion that it was proof that it's that it's impossible
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And I think you know, it's
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It all comes back to a lot of these other theories about disruption that that you know that like the whole Clayton Christensen
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what's his book called the
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You know the guy I don't know that guy you got it let him up
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Can't believe I'm drawing a blank on his book name
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Tim Cook's a big fan.
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Disruptive innovation?
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Is that the...
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That's not the name of the book, though.
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That's not the name of the book.
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Innovator's Dilemma.
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I know that one.
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Yeah, I haven't read it.
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Or know of it.
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I've heard people talk about it, which is all I need to know.
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That's right.
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But his big theory is always that it's like a mammals versus dinosaurs thing, and that
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the disruption always comes from the low end.
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great case examples about what put steel industry out of business were these little places that
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just melted down junk steel.
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They eventually got so good at it and so efficient at it that they ended up being a far cheaper
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way to manufacture high quality steel than the traditional steel foundries, et cetera,
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et cetera, et cetera.
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you're always, the disruption always is dismissed by the entrenched because it
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looks inconsequential or cheap or low-end or something like that. And I
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think it seems likely that the eventual disruption of Apple, if it ever happens,
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would be similar, right? Yeah. From some corner, the unexpected corner, and not
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from Microsoft, not from Google, but some other place. Right, some other place
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that you would never expect and that will be dismissed for, you know, possibly for good
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reasons, you know?
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And I've spoken about this before, but it was like in the New Yorker profile of Clayton
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Christensen.
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He said one of the things that he's wrong about—and I love a guy.
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You get big points in my book.
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Anybody who's supposed to be a guru but talks about the times that they're wrong,
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to me that's like two pluses right there in terms of their credibility.
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And he admits he was totally wrong about the iPhone that he predicted when the iPhone first
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came out that it wasn't really going to have much of an effect on the phone industry because
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it was a high-end product, that disruption was going to come from the low end.
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In hindsight, years later, he admits he was wrong because what he didn't understand
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at first – and I think this is a brilliant insight – is that the iPhone wasn't really
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a high-end phone. It was a low-end portable computer. It's like this crummy little 3
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a half inch screen laptop, but because it's so small and tiny and lightweight and lasts
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all day and has wireless internet everywhere you go, it completely disrupted the computer
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industry and the phone industry at the same time because you didn't need a phone if you
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had the iPhone, which is, I think, a brilliant way of looking at it.
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I'm not saying that Marco's "the" magazine is going to itself put other magazines out
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of business. But to me, it's the exact sort of thing that fits in with that line of disruptive
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thinking, though. Things like the magazine are where the future is. And I can totally
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see how if you pitch that to somebody at News Corporation or Time or something like that,
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that they would just dismiss it. And they would say, "It's just some guy every two
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weeks putting out five 750-word essays, that's nothing.
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That has nothing to do with what we're trying to do.
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I would say, no, it has everything with what you're trying to do.
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Which in a nutshell is exactly what's been wrong with the traditional publishing industry's
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response to the internet.
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It's the whole thing all over again.
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No one trusts blogs.
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No one trusts independent reporters.
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They want a big organization like ours with editors and managers and a whole advertising
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And the same way too that most traditional…
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If you just tell me, you don't tell me the name of the publication, but just say, "This
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is a big name publication with national circulation.
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They've been around for a long time.
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Is their website any good?"
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I'm going to guess no.
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to most existing traditional publications have really bad websites.
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Without, yeah. Almost without exception.
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And they were especially bad at first, like 1996, '97, '98. They just didn't get it. And,
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you know, I remember, I mean, and there were big ideas from even new things,
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things that weren't rooted in the past, but which were from people rooted in the past. Like,
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Again, I'm thinking of Slate in particular, which was all staffed with people from traditional
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backgrounds and weekly magazines.
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Wasn't it jointly with Microsoft at first?
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It was like when Microsoft in the '90s was into trying to become a media company when
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they got involved with MSNBC for MSNBC, and they co-founded a magazine.
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And the thing I remember thinking was so weird is like when Slate debuted, it was all it
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was was a website.
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There was no print version.
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It was just a website and yet they still had weekly issues.
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And you'd be like Wednesday and here's the new issue of Slate, come back next Wednesday.
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That you get locked into this way of thinking.
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And Slate is still around.
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They're still doing good work, but they obviously abandoned that issue idea.
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And it's hard.
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really hard when you think in terms of issues, it's really hard to sort of zoom back and
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think about a new medium.
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So, one of the questions I wanted to talk to you about, which I've been thinking about
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just the last few days, because everybody keeps talking about Apple's eventual decline.
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So many people think it's already happening for some strange reason that I, it's beyond
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my comprehension, but I think about this and I wonder if it's going to be easier for us
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to see that or harder for people like us to see that.
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You know, that is a very good question. I do think about that all the time. I would
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like to think that we would see it, like you and I, and guys, you know, people who like
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I like to have on the show, like MG.
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But I wonder, I do wonder, that whether we've got even, you know, that we think we're
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I would think that we would see it.
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One of the reasons I think that is because in the past few weeks, there have been a couple
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pieces published that are sort of thoughtful looks at things that Apple is good at and
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not good at.
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I forget the name of someone who you linked to just yesterday or the day before, but it
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was about Apple's seeming inability to get cloud services done really correctly.
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And I thought your conclusion was exactly right.
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That doesn't seem like buying Twitter is really the right solution to that problem.
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But it's true.
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to be for whatever reason a blind spot for them. And then the other piece was Michael Lop's piece on
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Forstall leaving and how innovation really often needs argument. And that he wondered if getting
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Getting rid of forestall means that there would be less argument and if that was a good
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thing for innovation or a bad thing for innovation.
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Then maybe the contention within the upper ranks, maybe it was unpleasant day-to-day
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to deal with, but maybe it was the best thing for the company going forward.
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I just lumped both those pieces in my head together because I thought that they were
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thoughtful pieces on, "Okay, maybe these are blind spots of apples that could be concerning
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in the future," without being over the top, "Oh, apple's doomed."
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And this is the obvious sign of their decline.
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I've mentioned this before, I think for a long – I think it's been a long time,
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but probably on the show.
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Maybe it was the old show with Dan.
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But I have long thought that it's like this sort of—theory is giving it way too much
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credence, but let's call it my theory of first impressions.
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And that we are hooked up evolutionarily.
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Primarily, all of the things we really ever cared about were a small circle of the other
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human beings you'd ever possibly encounter.
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There's that number of—like 150 is like the most number of people you can have any
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kind of emotional bond with.
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And we're hooked up to –
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Or five, five in my case.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Right there with you, buddy.
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I was exaggerating.
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I was going to make a joke about that there's a reason that we each only have one kid.
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It's only so much love to car.
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It's actually two.
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But my theory is more or less that we're hooked up to—you meet other people, and
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if it's somebody you haven't met before, you should have a good instinct. You should
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be able to make a good first impression, an accurate first impression. Is this someone
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you should trust? Is it someone you shouldn't trust? Is it someone you like? And not that
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never wrong and not that first impressions sometimes aren't surprisingly misleading.
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But in general, we're really good at that, and I think there's really strong evolutionary
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reasons to be like that. But I also think that first impressions solidify very quickly.
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And when you're dealing with people, people don't change that much, right? Once you
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get to know someone, don't even—I'm not even talking about your 30-second first impression,
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but like, I just met you, you're the new guy in the office,
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and we meet, and over the course of a couple of weeks,
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we get to know each other.
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10 years from now, you're not gonna be that different.
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You're still the same person,
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unless you get hit in the head or something like that.
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But that's often very hard to deal with.
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Like, if you've ever met anybody who's had a head injury,
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it's often, it'll throw you off,
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because you think that they're the same,
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and because they're not,
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it's really hard for families to deal with that.
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I mean, I know how to make light of it.
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And I think that a lot of people, when it comes,
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we're not hooked up to deal with something like Apple,
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which is an incredibly different company
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than what it used to be.
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But so many people, especially business people,
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investors and business writers,
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investors, writers, and stuff like that,
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have this impression of Apple from the '90s.
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that is, that's still what they see as Apple.
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And there's just nothing that's gonna,
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we're gonna have to wait until they get so old
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that they retire before it really,
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the company really shakes that.
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- And that it's still seen as this little guy
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or the upstart or the deviant from the norm in the industry.
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And so you still see people talking about Apple
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like that when Apple gets in trouble
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that they could go under or go down
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or just completely collapse.
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Like, that's actually impossible at this point.
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Apple is so big and so successful
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that the worst thing that would happen, I think,
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is stagnation, right?
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Like, sort of more or less what's happened to Microsoft.
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- And that's the other thing that people tend to do,
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is they wanna apply, and they always wanna do this,
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they wanna apply something that happened in the past.
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They wanna say that the PC wars between the Mac
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and Windows are exactly the same
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what's going on between iOS and Android right now.
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And none of these things ever repeat themselves exactly the same way.
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And they want to say that, "Oh, Apple's the new Microsoft."
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Or that Android's the new Windows and iOS is the new Mac.
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But the numbers are so staggeringly different that it doesn't make any sense to think
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of it that way.
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And the whole industry is different too.
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I mean, it's not as hard to code.
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I think, and I don't know the reasons for this particularly, because I'm not a coder, but back in the 90s, it was much more of a trial to try and move code between Windows and the Mac than I think it is today trying to do.
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It just seems like it's easier for the, there's a lot more cross-development going on.
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Right. No, I definitely think so.
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I don't know why that is, but it doesn't seem like it's as big a deal to try and say, "Okay, well, we wrote this for iOS, let's write it for Android," or vice versa.
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Whereas nobody did that back. A very limited number of large applications were coded for both platforms back in the '90s.
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Yeah, I think that there's some—that's actually probably a good question for the
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whole show. But I think part of it is that back then computers were so meager technically,
00:18:49
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so much slower CPU, so by today's standards, such incredibly tiny amounts of RAM that you
00:18:57
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really kind of had to write good software down to the metal or as close above the metal
00:19:04
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►
as you could get to make it efficient.
00:19:07
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It was really hard to have an abstraction layer that was cross-platform because it involved
00:19:13
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►
even a little bit of overhead.
00:19:17
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►
You just couldn't afford any sort of inefficiency like that.
00:19:25
◼
►
That's a good segue, though, this whole idea of what would an apple decline look like and
00:19:34
◼
►
is getting rid of forestall to alleviate contention, good or bad, in that direction.
00:19:41
◼
►
Leads right into probably the biggest thing this week is this extensive interview with
00:19:45
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►
Tim Cook in Bloomberg Business Week.
00:19:51
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►
I don't know what you call it.
00:19:53
◼
►
Bloomberg Business Week.
00:19:54
◼
►
It's Bloomberg Business Week.
00:19:55
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►
I get really confused about the two because they look totally different.
00:19:58
◼
►
But Bloomberg owns Business Week.
00:20:00
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►
And the interview, I guess, is in the magazine.
00:20:01
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It's probably going to be the cover story.
00:20:05
◼
►
And they broke it across 11 pages.
00:20:06
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►
You have to click 11 different web pages.
00:20:08
◼
►
But then if you go to Bloomberg.com, you can get the exact same article all on one nice
00:20:13
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I don't understand.
00:20:14
◼
►
He's talking about not getting it.
00:20:17
◼
►
But they cover that in the article.
00:20:19
◼
►
There's a part here where he sort of asked about Forstall.
00:20:27
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►
What does he say here?
00:20:32
◼
►
The question is, "In the past few weeks, you replaced two members of your senior executive
00:20:36
◼
►
team, mobile software head Scott Forstall and retail chief John Browett.
00:20:41
◼
►
How did these moves make Apple better, which is a polite way of saying what was wrong?"
00:20:45
◼
►
And that's actually, that's not me adding that aside.
00:20:48
◼
►
actually the question he asked Cook. Cook says, "The key in the change that you're
00:20:52
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►
referencing is my deep belief that collaboration is essential for
00:20:55
◼
►
innovation." And I didn't just start believing that. I've always believed that.
00:20:58
◼
►
It's always been a core belief at Apple. Steve very deeply believed this. So the
00:21:04
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►
changes, it's not a matter of going from no collaboration to collaboration. We
00:21:08
◼
►
have an enormous level of collaboration at Apple, but it's a matter of taking it
00:21:11
◼
►
to another level. You look at what we are great at, there are many things, but the
00:21:15
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►
The one thing we do, which I think no one else does, is integrate hardware, software,
00:21:19
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►
and services in a way that most consumers begin to not differentiate anymore.
00:21:24
◼
►
They just care that the experience is fantastic, blah, blah, blah.
00:21:29
◼
►
But then he talks – all right.
00:21:30
◼
►
Here's what he says.
00:21:31
◼
►
This is Kim Cook continuing.
00:21:33
◼
►
He says, "You don't have silos built up where everybody is trying to optimize their
00:21:37
◼
►
silo and figuring out how to grab turf and all of these things.
00:21:41
◼
►
It makes all of our jobs easier, so we're freed up to focus on the things that truly
00:21:45
◼
►
I mean, that to me, he doesn't mention Forstall, but clearly that's talking about Forstall
00:21:50
◼
►
who had the silo iOS.
00:21:56
◼
►
And it also sounds like Microsoft to me.
00:21:59
◼
►
Not that I know that well how Microsoft is structured and if that kind of thing goes
00:22:04
◼
►
on, but they do have that review system where they fit everybody into a bell curve.
00:22:12
◼
►
Even if you did great, if they think someone did better than you, you're going to get forced down.
00:22:18
◼
►
So there's like a top 10% that does really well, and there's the meat of the bell curve that's 80%,
00:22:26
◼
►
and then the other 10% are all the way forced down to the bottom.
00:22:29
◼
►
Yeah, what's that called? I actually wanted to talk to...
00:22:33
◼
►
Forced ranking is one thing I've heard of.
00:22:36
◼
►
Yeah, stack ranking or something like that.
00:22:37
◼
►
Something like that, yeah.
00:22:38
◼
►
I actually wanted to talk to Lop about that.
00:22:41
◼
►
I have to have him back on the show, but I forgot to when he was on because he's the
00:22:45
◼
►
only guy I know who knows anything about engineering management.
00:22:49
◼
►
But I would love to get his opinion on that.
00:22:50
◼
►
But it seems like one of those "be careful what you test for" type warnings.
00:22:57
◼
►
The idea is that if you're a product manager at Microsoft and you have a five-person team,
00:23:04
◼
►
When it comes time to give the reviews,
00:23:05
◼
►
you give like one gold star to give out,
00:23:09
◼
►
two goods, and you have to give out two bad,
00:23:12
◼
►
you know, sad faces.
00:23:13
◼
►
You have to.
00:23:14
◼
►
So if you've recruited a team of five all-stars,
00:23:18
◼
►
which you would think would be a great way
00:23:19
◼
►
to make a great product,
00:23:21
◼
►
you've gotta give two of them bad reviews.
00:23:23
◼
►
You have to.
00:23:24
◼
►
And so what you end up getting,
00:23:25
◼
►
everybody seems to agree,
00:23:28
◼
►
is that it doesn't really reward excellence
00:23:31
◼
►
at what you're doing,
00:23:32
◼
►
It rewards excellence at getting your product manager
00:23:36
◼
►
to give you the gold star.
00:23:38
◼
►
- Yeah. - Right?
00:23:39
◼
►
It's like you're gaming the game.
00:23:41
◼
►
- I think it's broader than that.
00:23:42
◼
►
I don't think they force it down to the team level.
00:23:46
◼
►
So I don't think you'd get a situation
00:23:48
◼
►
where there are five people and somebody gets screwed
00:23:51
◼
►
even if all five did pretty well.
00:23:52
◼
►
- No, it does, honestly.
00:23:54
◼
►
Read the-- - Is that right?
00:23:55
◼
►
Is that right? - Yeah, it really is.
00:23:56
◼
►
It really is.
00:23:58
◼
►
- 'Cause I worked someplace
00:24:00
◼
►
that was going to implement this system,
00:24:02
◼
►
and people were just up in arms about it
00:24:04
◼
►
and they eventually backed off of it.
00:24:05
◼
►
And it was going to be more corporate-wide
00:24:10
◼
►
from what I remember.
00:24:13
◼
►
At least our implementation of it
00:24:14
◼
►
was going to be more corporate-wide.
00:24:17
◼
►
- I'll send you a link, but I'll tell you.
00:24:18
◼
►
- But yeah, okay. - That's how it works.
00:24:19
◼
►
And so you end up with the situations too,
00:24:21
◼
►
where let's say you are really good at what you do,
00:24:23
◼
►
you're a really good programmer,
00:24:25
◼
►
and you're thinking about switching to a new team.
00:24:28
◼
►
Well, it's to your interest to go to that team
00:24:30
◼
►
if you know there's a couple of turkeys on the team.
00:24:32
◼
►
Because if you're just looking out for your career
00:24:35
◼
►
because you're gonna shine.
00:24:36
◼
►
Whereas if you're looking at a team
00:24:38
◼
►
where you know there's a couple of other superstars there,
00:24:41
◼
►
you might think, well, this might hurt my career
00:24:43
◼
►
because I don't know that I can get a ranking better
00:24:47
◼
►
than those two guys 'cause they're awesome.
00:24:50
◼
►
It just seems terrible.
00:24:52
◼
►
It seems counterproductive.
00:24:54
◼
►
- But it's also true.
00:24:55
◼
►
I think it's an interesting contrast though
00:24:57
◼
►
at the senior management level though
00:24:58
◼
►
where Microsoft is organized in a way
00:25:00
◼
►
that I think most companies are, by product divisions.
00:25:04
◼
►
Steven Sinofsky was the head of Windows 8.
00:25:08
◼
►
And he had nothing to do with the phone.
00:25:11
◼
►
Like I remember asking him,
00:25:12
◼
►
'cause I got to speak to him a little bit
00:25:13
◼
►
at the thing in New York a couple weeks ago
00:25:15
◼
►
at the Windows 8 launch event.
00:25:16
◼
►
And they had done a thing,
00:25:19
◼
►
I think it was Thursday in New York,
00:25:20
◼
►
they were debuting Windows 8.
00:25:22
◼
►
And then Monday in San Francisco,
00:25:24
◼
►
they were debuting Windows Phone 8.
00:25:27
◼
►
And I just, just offhandedly, I asked if he was,
00:25:30
◼
►
you know, just, you know,
00:25:31
◼
►
the way he'd chat about the weather and travel.
00:25:33
◼
►
Did he have to hop on a plane
00:25:36
◼
►
and go all the way back to the West Coast
00:25:37
◼
►
for the Monday thing?
00:25:39
◼
►
And he goes, "Nah, nah, I have nothing to do with that."
00:25:40
◼
►
So he wasn't even going to it.
00:25:42
◼
►
And I kinda thought that, you know,
00:25:45
◼
►
but Apple is organized in a very opposite way,
00:25:49
◼
►
especially now that Forstall's gone.
00:25:51
◼
►
Like, maybe Forstall was an equivalent of Sanofsky
00:25:53
◼
►
where he was in charge of an operating system, iOS.
00:25:56
◼
►
But now, it's not like that at all.
00:26:02
◼
►
Johnny Ive is in charge of all design, design of everything.
00:26:05
◼
►
Bill Shiller is in charge of all marketing.
00:26:07
◼
►
It doesn't matter.
00:26:08
◼
►
If Apple is in charge of iPhone marketing, iPad marketing, Mac marketing, if Apple comes
00:26:13
◼
►
out with something totally new, if they come out with the Apple-branded car, Bill Shiller
00:26:18
◼
►
is in charge of the marketing of it.
00:26:19
◼
►
Johnny Ive is in charge of the design of it.
00:26:25
◼
►
It's a very different organization, and I think it's an open question whether that's
00:26:34
◼
►
the better way to do it.
00:26:37
◼
►
The counterpoint I thought of to Lop's argument is that when you reach a point where one of
00:26:45
◼
►
the people creating the argument is so difficult that you either lose...
00:26:54
◼
►
It becomes harder to get good people in the other positions.
00:26:59
◼
►
Because a lot of people don't want to deal with that crap.
00:27:02
◼
►
They don't want to have to have an argument every time they go into a meeting.
00:27:08
◼
►
And I think it had something – I mean it played a part in the thermostat boy.
00:27:19
◼
►
Him leaving and I think it seemed like it was playing a part in Big Bob Mansfield leaving.
00:27:25
◼
►
I am so glad you called him Big Bob Mansfield.
00:27:28
◼
►
I always call him Big Bob Mansfield.
00:27:31
◼
►
And the whole way that this has played out has been a little surprisingly open for Apple,
00:27:37
◼
►
It seems like the Mansfield thing is- Well, it just became kind of obvious, right?
00:27:43
◼
►
I don't know that they were so open about it necessarily as it just was like, "Oh,
00:27:47
◼
►
Mansfield on his way out.
00:27:49
◼
►
Oh, Forestdale's leaving.
00:27:50
◼
►
Mansfield's going to stick around for a little while."
00:27:52
◼
►
And head up a new- And head up an entirely new organization.
00:27:58
◼
►
But there also were reports, I forget who had it, but somebody had sources who wouldn't
00:28:03
◼
►
be named, but they're familiar with the situation as they say, that Johnny Ive was
00:28:11
◼
►
refusing to go into any meeting where Forrestal was going to be.
00:28:15
◼
►
I think they said the same about Mansfield, didn't they?
00:28:17
◼
►
Or maybe not.
00:28:18
◼
►
Or at least that he didn't like going to meetings with Forrestal.
00:28:22
◼
►
And so, while I understand the argument, I've got nothing.
00:28:26
◼
►
I like a good argument, but when you have someone who's so difficult that he's actually
00:28:31
◼
►
pushing other people, very talented people, particularly if they talk about Mansfield.
00:28:36
◼
►
Cook talks about him in that interview.
00:28:38
◼
►
He is really probably the best hardware manager anywhere in the technology industry.
00:28:46
◼
►
He's just got to be, right?
00:28:47
◼
►
I mean, because they make the best hardware and the guy seems pretty bright.
00:28:52
◼
►
Since he's been there, they really have made an enormous number of innovations.
00:28:58
◼
►
thinking about this whole move to these systems on a chip, the way that they deal with batteries
00:29:07
◼
►
I mean, we made fun of that when they did that.
00:29:09
◼
►
I guess it was the last Macworld, right, where Schiller was the keynote.
00:29:14
◼
►
And the big announcement was that they were integrating the battery.
00:29:19
◼
►
They would no longer have removable batteries in 17-inch MacBook Pro.
00:29:25
◼
►
they did the big video was a video about battery technology, which was really not as exciting
00:29:32
◼
►
as two years earlier when they announced the iPhone, obviously. But at the same time, it
00:29:39
◼
►
turned out to be their battery technology is a really important part of their business.
00:29:43
◼
►
Yeah. There's a self-congratulatory angle on all those behind the scenes talking to
00:29:50
◼
►
– here's Johnny Ive talking about how beautiful it is. Here's Bob Mansfield talking
00:29:54
◼
►
about how amazing this battery is. There's sort of a who cares aspect to it. There's
00:30:00
◼
►
a reason why they show it to the press at these things, even though they're super
00:30:04
◼
►
high production values. They're not like when they put the commercials on TV for Christmas,
00:30:08
◼
►
they're not showing – they're not trying to get people excited about the battery integration.
00:30:12
◼
►
Tim Cynova Wouldn't that be great? Like Monday Night
00:30:17
◼
►
Football ad with big Bob Mansfield talking about a battery?
00:30:21
◼
►
Or maybe they did the one that maybe the closest they've come to that was when they first switched to Intel processors
00:30:27
◼
►
And they had that thing with the Postal Service song
00:30:30
◼
►
Remember that Oh God they had it they had a commercial
00:30:35
◼
►
Apple I'm gonna have to google this later the band the band the postal service the band is called the postal
00:30:43
◼
►
Yeah, yeah, no, I know I know or or maybe that maybe it was like a ripoff
00:30:47
◼
►
It was a argue. It was arguably a ripoff of some music video. They had a commercial that showed like
00:30:53
◼
►
CPUs coming down an assembly line, you know with these yeah robotic things cutting them up and there was a vaguely
00:31:01
◼
►
I don't know. But anyway, that was maybe the closest they came. Yeah, I was trying to get people excited about Intel CPUs
00:31:09
◼
►
But it is interesting though
00:31:12
◼
►
Because I do think there's insight to be gleaned from these things about what Apple honestly thinks is important and what they're proud of
00:31:19
◼
►
You know it they're they're very quiet they don't say much but when they do say things I do
00:31:28
◼
►
Think and I think is one of the things that a lot of people don't understand about Apple. They're they're
00:31:32
◼
►
surprisingly forthcoming
00:31:35
◼
►
I keep thinking I haven't written about it
00:31:38
◼
►
but I keep thinking about, also going back to the switch
00:31:42
◼
►
from PowerPC to Intel, it was a WWDC keynote.
00:31:47
◼
►
It did take everybody by surprise.
00:31:50
◼
►
Every, you know, it's long been rumored,
00:31:52
◼
►
but it was only like the Friday before
00:31:54
◼
►
when the Wall Street Journal said,
00:31:55
◼
►
"Yeah, this is gonna happen."
00:31:56
◼
►
And everybody was sort of like,
00:31:57
◼
►
"Whoa, how's that gonna work?"
00:31:59
◼
►
And on stage, talking about it,
00:32:03
◼
►
Steve Jobs's explanation was more or less
00:32:06
◼
►
this argument about power per energy performance per, not just sheer performance, but performance
00:32:16
◼
►
divided by energy consumption. And that this was the future of computing, and that these
00:32:23
◼
►
Intel CPUs they were switching to gave them so much more computing power per watt of energy
00:32:30
◼
►
burned. Which, if you think about it, and he was very passionate about it, and it was
00:32:36
◼
►
almost like, "Come on, Steve." But if you think about it, isn't that exactly—shouldn't
00:32:43
◼
►
the guy who listened the most intently to that, shouldn't it have been Paul Otellini?
00:32:50
◼
►
Because isn't that exactly where Intel has now found itself behind the curve? And that's
00:32:55
◼
►
whole revolution with these ARM processors for phones and tablets is not sheer performance,
00:33:02
◼
►
right? I mean, the high-end iPad 4 is, in terms of benchmarking, way slower than the
00:33:11
◼
►
cheapest MacBook, right? It's not that fast as just a sheer processor. It's about battery
00:33:19
◼
►
life and this this new division of performance versus energy consumption
00:33:24
◼
►
and heat right and when it's cook Steve Jobs really laid it all out in the line
00:33:31
◼
►
back and I don't when was that 2006 2005 I mean he really like spelled it out
00:33:36
◼
►
yeah what does cook call he did it in that little video so NBC also had a
00:33:46
◼
►
a short cut of what is going to be on tonight, right, is I think it's on tonight.
00:33:51
◼
►
Yes, it's on tonight on the Rock Hard show. Brian Williams, Rock Hard. Isn't that the
00:33:58
◼
►
name of the show?
00:34:00
◼
►
No, it's not, is it? I don't know. I really don't know.
00:34:08
◼
►
All right, let me look it up. Oh, it's Brian Williams Rock Center.
00:34:13
◼
►
There we go.
00:34:14
◼
►
All right, Brian Williams Rock Hard is a different show.
00:34:17
◼
►
That's a different show. It's on later. What does he call the processors? Because
00:34:26
◼
►
they – he has a funny word for – he doesn't say processor. He says like brain or something.
00:34:32
◼
►
Engine. That's right.
00:34:33
◼
►
I think he's talking about – I think that's his – I think he's talking about the operating
00:34:37
◼
►
system, not the processor.
00:34:40
◼
►
it's made in the USA. That must mean that, I think he means that the engine is the, I
00:34:48
◼
►
But where are the processors made? I mean, they bought, they're designed, they designed
00:34:55
◼
►
Because they bought that company, and I guess I thought they also made them.
00:35:00
◼
►
It's all very secretive, but I know Samsung is still making them for, you know, that's
00:35:03
◼
►
that whole awkward relationship with Samsung that they've got this almost Shakespearean
00:35:11
◼
►
sort of duality. Now, I know Samsung has like a chip fab in Texas where they make some,
00:35:17
◼
►
but I don't know if they make them all. It seems kind of crazy like the way everything
00:35:22
◼
►
hopscotches all around where they make the glass in Kentucky and then send it over to
00:35:27
◼
►
China and they make the CPUs in Texas and then send them over to China and then they
00:35:31
◼
►
They put them all together and then send the phones back to the US.
00:35:36
◼
►
I thought he was talking about the operating system though.
00:35:39
◼
►
Maybe you're right though.
00:35:40
◼
►
Maybe he was talking about –
00:35:41
◼
►
I thought he was talking about the processors but –
00:35:42
◼
►
Well, I don't know.
00:35:43
◼
►
It could be either.
00:35:44
◼
►
I don't know.
00:35:46
◼
►
But that's the other thing that he announced is that they're going to start trying to
00:35:51
◼
►
do a little more manufacturing in the United States.
00:35:54
◼
►
And today, there was also an announcement that Foxconn is going to.
00:35:57
◼
►
So I don't know if those two things are the same.
00:36:00
◼
►
"Yeah, that Foxconn is going to open or do more manufacturing in the US." I don't know
00:36:07
◼
►
if they do any here currently, but so we're going to get some of that great Foxconn job
00:36:13
◼
►
action. So if you're looking for a sweatshop job, it's not really a sweatshop, but just
00:36:29
◼
►
Another one to file under, "Be careful what you wish for."
00:36:32
◼
►
Yeah, right.
00:36:33
◼
►
Wouldn't it be great if we –
00:36:34
◼
►
Bring those jobs back to America.
00:36:42
◼
►
And that's the other thing that I feel fairly confident that someone will predict that Apple's
00:36:49
◼
►
decline – another sign of Apple's impending decline is that they're bringing jobs to
00:36:55
◼
►
the United States.
00:36:56
◼
►
Anything they do differently is a sign that they're declining.
00:37:00
◼
►
And I could see sort of your argument there because you'd be saying, "Well, that means
00:37:04
◼
►
they're going to have to be more expensive," and whatever.
00:37:11
◼
►
There is room for a reasonable argument, but at the same time, I think ... And this is sort
00:37:16
◼
►
of the whole problem with these arguments is that because of Apple's track record and
00:37:21
◼
►
because it still has basically the same core of good executives that it's had.
00:37:29
◼
►
And the right guy leading the company, I trust their ability to execute.
00:37:37
◼
►
And to accept all these counterarguments, to say that the company is surely in decline,
00:37:44
◼
►
you have to sort of throw that out.
00:37:45
◼
►
You have to say, "No, only Steve Jobs was the only one who was worth a damn in the company
00:37:51
◼
►
and everybody else's a mouth breathing uber.
00:37:57
◼
►
So I don't get, I mean, obviously.
00:38:00
◼
►
Actually, I don't get that.
00:38:04
◼
►
And I think the, I mean, what was your overall impression of the interview?
00:38:08
◼
►
I thought it was pretty good for how these things are done.
00:38:12
◼
►
Yeah, I do too.
00:38:13
◼
►
To a certain degree, these are all puff pieces.
00:38:16
◼
►
He wasn't really throwing anything terribly difficult, but it also wasn't complete softballs.
00:38:23
◼
►
Ideally, you'd love to get some –
00:38:27
◼
►
They know – yeah.
00:38:29
◼
►
I mean, he didn't bother asking anything about future products.
00:38:33
◼
►
Ideally, to satisfy our curiosity, we'd like to know stuff to a level of detail that
00:38:39
◼
►
is outside Apple's interest in sharing.
00:38:43
◼
►
cook is not a dim bulb, and so he's not going to do that. But I feel like in terms of the
00:38:48
◼
►
line of what he might be willing to talk about, I felt like the interview was very well done
00:38:55
◼
►
and that it went up to that line and kind of filled it in.
00:38:58
◼
►
Right? Like, you're not going to-- Apple's not going to let somebody follow a product
00:39:03
◼
►
development team around for six months and document exactly how they actually do it.
00:39:11
◼
►
Interesting tidbits. I mean, it makes sense if you think about it, but I hadn't thought
00:39:14
◼
►
about it this way. It was where he said that 80% of the company's revenue from this quarter
00:39:19
◼
►
is coming from products that were released within the last 60 days.
00:39:24
◼
►
Which is, it's kind of amazing.
00:39:27
◼
►
You don't really, yeah, you don't really think about that because they did turn the
00:39:29
◼
►
whole iPad line over.
00:39:32
◼
►
And, and release the iPhone 5.
00:39:33
◼
►
With the exception of the iPad 2. Right.
00:39:36
◼
►
Oh, that's true. That's true.
00:39:38
◼
►
But I suspect I very much – well, I don't know.
00:39:41
◼
►
Well, that's interesting.
00:39:42
◼
►
I wonder if you – I mean I'm assuming that that statistic is – he's not overemphasized
00:39:49
◼
►
or – does that mean that seemed bigger than it really is?
00:39:55
◼
►
No, but I don't think that I've had – I think it's successful.
00:39:57
◼
►
I've said before that's the only reason why they would keep it around is that people
00:40:01
◼
►
are buying it.
00:40:02
◼
►
Whether it's they're still buying it with the mini available, was it the price that
00:40:06
◼
►
making them buy it or was it the fact that they really wanted the 10-inch size and they
00:40:10
◼
►
just want the cheapest one?
00:40:11
◼
►
We'll know the answer to that if it sticks around.
00:40:14
◼
►
But I think Tim Cook, that's the sort of thing that I don't think he would misspeak
00:40:22
◼
►
Yeah, I don't think so either.
00:40:23
◼
►
He might get loosey-goosey about what's the "engine" of the phone.
00:40:27
◼
►
That might be something that he's just going to wave his hands about.
00:40:29
◼
►
When it comes to things like where 80% of the revenue is coming from, I think the guy's
00:40:36
◼
►
like a living, breathing spreadsheet.
00:40:39
◼
►
- I think it's probably scary how much of that stuff
00:40:42
◼
►
he's got in his head at any given moment.
00:40:45
◼
►
That was the thing I kinda looked for is,
00:40:47
◼
►
he seemed to, I'm trying to think of all the examples.
00:40:50
◼
►
He used a word, a buzzword that he apologized for using.
00:40:55
◼
►
- Best of breed?
00:40:59
◼
►
- Best of breed, yeah, he used it, yeah, so yeah,
00:41:01
◼
►
he used that, but he at least caveated that
00:41:04
◼
►
with saying, by saying that he hated it.
00:41:06
◼
►
And there was one other sort of buzz wordy thing that he used that I would, I mean it's
00:41:12
◼
►
stupid to do this, but I thought, well, if that was something that Jobs would have said.
00:41:18
◼
►
But then the other, I was pleased that he used the word crappy.
00:41:22
◼
►
When talking about keyboards on netbooks.
00:41:30
◼
►
And I thought that was – it seemed – I looked for little clues about his character,
00:41:39
◼
►
Just to see what kind of guy he is.
00:41:41
◼
►
I guess that is the interesting thing.
00:41:42
◼
►
One of the interesting things about him is that he is a bit of a cipher.
00:41:45
◼
►
And I felt like the interviewer – what's his name?
00:41:48
◼
►
I want to give him credit because he did it.
00:41:51
◼
►
I'd not – Trangle –
00:41:53
◼
►
He's kind of got like a hard-to-pronounce name.
00:41:56
◼
►
We'll just call him Josh.
00:41:59
◼
►
Josh Terangel, editor of Business Week.
00:42:04
◼
►
You're the perfect person to try and figure out how to pronounce this name.
00:42:10
◼
►
We should go grade school style.
00:42:12
◼
►
We'll just call him Josh T.
00:42:14
◼
►
Josh T. Mr. Josh.
00:42:17
◼
►
Do you have other Johns in your class growing up?
00:42:22
◼
►
Are you kidding me?
00:42:23
◼
►
We had three.
00:42:24
◼
►
John was still – you know John?
00:42:25
◼
►
Why is John not a popular name anymore?
00:42:26
◼
►
It's a great name.
00:42:27
◼
►
It's the best name.
00:42:28
◼
►
I wasn't crazy about it, but okay.
00:42:32
◼
►
I think John's the best name.
00:42:33
◼
►
You got your John Adams.
00:42:35
◼
►
You got your John...
00:42:36
◼
►
That's true.
00:42:37
◼
►
Yeah, no, I have some great people, but...
00:42:38
◼
►
You got your John Kennedy.
00:42:40
◼
►
It's a great name.
00:42:41
◼
►
Anyway, but we had three.
00:42:42
◼
►
We had John G. That was yours truly.
00:42:46
◼
►
John T. and John R. I always wondered what would happen if you had two with the same
00:42:54
◼
►
I don't know how we would have...
00:42:56
◼
►
They had to fight it out.
00:42:58
◼
►
They put them in a pit with a couple of sticks, pointed sticks, and let them go.
00:43:04
◼
►
So no, I always just, I mean, not at that age, at grade school age, but I just eventually
00:43:10
◼
►
became Moltz.
00:43:12
◼
►
Yeah, same here.
00:43:13
◼
►
I've always been Moltz.
00:43:14
◼
►
Yeah, I've always been Gruber.
00:43:16
◼
►
Let me take a break here and read a sponsor.
00:43:21
◼
►
We have one big sponsor this week.
00:43:22
◼
►
It's Tonks Coffee.
00:43:24
◼
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You ever heard of the Tonks?
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I have heard of the Tonks.
00:43:27
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It's the best.
00:43:30
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It's a great gift.
00:43:32
◼
►
I got some correction from last week.
00:43:36
◼
►
I was talking with Merlin and I said, "Maybe this idea of giving somebody a subscription
00:43:41
◼
►
to a thing that comes in the mail, maybe it's got a bad rap as a holiday gift because of
00:43:45
◼
►
the Christmas Vacation movie."
00:43:48
◼
►
I think I said that he got the cake of the month club.
00:43:52
◼
►
It's a beloved holiday classic.
00:43:53
◼
►
My wife and my son were both appalled that I didn't remember.
00:43:57
◼
►
What Clark Griswold got from his boss was a subscription to the Jelly of the Month Club.
00:44:06
◼
►
As Cousin Eddie said, it's the gift that keeps on giving.
00:44:09
◼
►
Well, Tonks coffee as a gift idea for the holidays, it's the real deal though because
00:44:14
◼
►
it's not some shitty jelly.
00:44:16
◼
►
It is the best coffee in the world.
00:44:22
◼
►
And giving somebody something that they're actually going to use.
00:44:24
◼
►
It's presuming that you've got someone in your friend or family who drinks coffee.
00:44:28
◼
►
And if they don't drink coffee, I mean, what's wrong with them?
00:44:31
◼
►
Because it just came out – that's the other thing – it just came out last week
00:44:34
◼
►
that the more coffee you drink, the better you are.
00:44:36
◼
►
I don't know.
00:44:37
◼
►
That's what I took from that.
00:44:38
◼
►
No, not the –
00:44:39
◼
►
Demonstrably true.
00:44:41
◼
►
It was – some kind of study came out that drinking copious amounts of coffee is on the
00:44:46
◼
►
whole good for your health.
00:44:49
◼
►
And it's integral to writing a good web blog, right?
00:44:53
◼
►
Oh, exactly.
00:44:54
◼
►
I mean, it's—well, you know what?
00:44:55
◼
►
And somebody else pointed out to me on Twitter that they said, "Good peace on the daily,
00:45:02
◼
►
but you missed what was surely the core of their failure," that they obviously did
00:45:06
◼
►
not have over-caffeinated fizzy water—or over—not caffeinated, over—
00:45:14
◼
►
Fizzy water.
00:45:15
◼
►
Yeah, what do you—
00:45:17
◼
►
carbonated fizzy water, fussy coffee, and clicky keyboards. They must have been missing
00:45:22
◼
►
at least one of the three, possibly all three.
00:45:24
◼
►
**BEN HONG:** Probably all three.
00:45:25
◼
►
**Ezra Klein:** Probably all three, given what it was. But
00:45:29
◼
►
those are my keys to success on the internet. Overcarbonated water, fussy delicious coffee,
00:45:36
◼
►
and clicky keyboards. I would put the coffee first, frankly. I mean, if I could only have
00:45:41
◼
►
one of the three, I would put the coffee first. I could get my work done with a shitty keyboard
00:45:46
◼
►
And with flat water or juice or something like that not really sure how I did get anything going without the coffee
00:45:52
◼
►
Tonks is the best they get it from all over the world. It is it
00:45:56
◼
►
It's great coffee. And if you're lazy like me, you don't have to leave the house
00:46:00
◼
►
I mean this fits right in with your piece in the magazine. You don't have to go anywhere, right?
00:46:04
◼
►
You've got a poly you can get deliveries come into your office, right? You've got like a policy there with the wife
00:46:09
◼
►
So the tongs slip it under the door comes right in. Uh
00:46:13
◼
►
up through December 16th. You can order it in time for the holidays. Go to tonks.org,
00:46:19
◼
►
T-O-N-X dot O-R-G. Sign up. You can get a free sample for yourself. It's a great gift idea.
00:46:27
◼
►
If you don't have the Tonks, everybody should have the Tonks. I just don't understand why
00:46:32
◼
►
some people haven't signed up for it yet, really. Thanks to them for their continuing
00:46:35
◼
►
support of the talk show.
00:46:36
◼
►
This is my thing for Christmas for myself that I'm trying to arrange is to up my coffee
00:46:43
◼
►
game. And I think this is going to be an integral part of this because on my Amazon wish list
00:46:51
◼
►
is the Arab press.
00:46:54
◼
►
Yeah, I gotta get on the Arab press thing.
00:46:56
◼
►
I'm switching to talks too.
00:47:00
◼
►
When I was out for the show that I did in Los Angeles with Sandwich and Ryan Johnson,
00:47:07
◼
►
a Looper director a couple of shows ago, because we did that show right there in the Sandwich
00:47:11
◼
►
studios there in Los Angeles. One of the guys who works with Adam there at Sandwich Video,
00:47:18
◼
►
JP, volunteered to make me a cup of coffee. I was not familiar with the AeroPress. Of
00:47:24
◼
►
course, it was Tonks because I believe they're—I'm not sure if I can say this, but I think they're
00:47:28
◼
►
working on a sandwich video for Tonks. It's all a part of the Tonks family. He made me
00:47:36
◼
►
an AeroPress cup of coffee. It really was one of those pulp fiction moments of like,
00:47:41
◼
►
That's a good cup of coffee.
00:47:47
◼
►
It really set me off like I lost my train of thought.
00:47:51
◼
►
It's like, "This is really, really delicious."
00:47:55
◼
►
The other thing, too, that's fun about getting into coffee is you can really nerd out on
00:47:59
◼
►
it and it's not expensive.
00:48:00
◼
►
You know what I mean?
00:48:02
◼
►
I'm always afraid.
00:48:03
◼
►
I never drink wine because I'm afraid that if I get into it, all of a sudden I'm buying
00:48:07
◼
►
$85 bottles of wine.
00:48:09
◼
►
I don't want to get into something like that.
00:48:11
◼
►
You know what I mean?
00:48:13
◼
►
All you need is boiled water and coffee beans.
00:48:17
◼
►
You could get a nice little fussy kettle.
00:48:23
◼
►
What's a tea kettle cost?
00:48:24
◼
►
It doesn't cost a lot of money.
00:48:25
◼
►
You're not getting into some kind of thing where you can't pay your Amex every month.
00:48:33
◼
►
I want to get one of those tea kettles.
00:48:34
◼
►
I want to get a tea kettle that has the long, skinny spout.
00:48:39
◼
►
Have you seen that?
00:48:40
◼
►
This seems like all the real – that's the way you make a fussy coffee.
00:48:43
◼
►
It's got like a real skinny spout.
00:48:45
◼
►
Mine has a big fat spout.
00:48:47
◼
►
It's just like an unfussy tea kettle or water kettle, whatever you want to call it.
00:48:53
◼
►
I feel like I got to up my tea kettle game.
00:48:56
◼
►
I wonder if Tim Cook drinks coffee.
00:49:01
◼
►
I would bet he seems like – I don't know.
00:49:07
◼
►
I would hope so.
00:49:08
◼
►
Yeah, I don't know. They say he eats a lot of energy bars. That used to be the other
00:49:15
◼
►
thing that was in all the profiles of him. He gets in early, leaves late, eats a lot
00:49:23
◼
►
of energy bars.
00:49:28
◼
►
Steve Jobs never would have eaten any energy bars.
00:49:32
◼
►
One of the other things…
00:49:36
◼
►
- Company in decline.
00:49:37
◼
►
- One of the little things I noticed in the article was,
00:49:43
◼
►
A, unless I skipped it, they never actually got back
00:49:47
◼
►
to talking about John Browatt.
00:49:48
◼
►
- No, no, I don't think he did.
00:49:51
◼
►
It's like he really just focused on Forstall
00:49:54
◼
►
and glossed over Browatt.
00:49:56
◼
►
- Right, it's this whole thing here with Forstall
00:49:58
◼
►
and a big explanation, which is really, I think,
00:50:02
◼
►
about as open as they were going to get about what was going on there.
00:50:06
◼
►
I really do mean it.
00:50:07
◼
►
I mean, they're obviously not going to get into specifics.
00:50:12
◼
►
And he kind of went out of his way euphemistically not to mention Forestall by name.
00:50:17
◼
►
There's like a gentleman's agreement to all of this.
00:50:22
◼
►
Who had the podcast where they were talking about the severance agreements?
00:50:27
◼
►
I think it was Siracusa on hypercritical when it first broke.
00:50:34
◼
►
And he was talking about these – there's like a term for these type of agreements.
00:50:38
◼
►
It's like a gardener's claws or something like that, a gardening severance or something
00:50:47
◼
►
And that they –
00:50:49
◼
►
It's a tradition.
00:50:50
◼
►
You know what?
00:50:53
◼
►
Something like that.
00:50:55
◼
►
But the gist of it is, it's like an old term from England, and the gist of it is that it's
00:50:59
◼
►
in the contract that the company, if we decide to get rid of you, we can pay you this gardener's
00:51:04
◼
►
thing where you're just going to stay at home and garden, but you're going to be on the
00:51:09
◼
►
payroll at your regular salary for a year.
00:51:11
◼
►
But we don't want you to even come into the office.
00:51:13
◼
►
Don't come in.
00:51:16
◼
►
But we don't want you to go to a competitor.
00:51:19
◼
►
I tried to get one of those for years.
00:51:21
◼
►
Finally, I just had to quit.
00:51:25
◼
►
It's one of those things where when you get to a certain level of achievement, everything,
00:51:29
◼
►
it's like, it must be nice. You know what I mean?
00:51:32
◼
►
You know, what do they call them? Golden parachutes, too?
00:51:34
◼
►
Golden parachutes, right.
00:51:35
◼
►
Normal people, when you get fired, you know what I mean?
00:51:38
◼
►
No. Yeah, you just get fired.
00:51:39
◼
►
You get weeks, right? You get like two weeks of pay. You get – maybe if you're lucky,
00:51:44
◼
►
you get four weeks of pay, you know?
00:51:48
◼
►
You know, like when you reach the executive level and you get fired, you get tens of millions
00:51:56
◼
►
You know, and I don't mean to laugh.
00:51:58
◼
►
I really don't.
00:51:59
◼
►
I mean, like, sometimes I worry about things like that.
00:52:00
◼
►
I just think, like, it, like, I don't think Scott Forstall listens to the talk show, but
00:52:05
◼
►
the odds that he listens to the talk show, it's definitely somewhere above zero, right?
00:52:10
◼
►
I mean, it's—
00:52:12
◼
►
Maybe it's one percent chance, right?
00:52:13
◼
►
And so, I always, sometimes I think, like, I don't want to sit here and, God, you know,
00:52:17
◼
►
maybe he's at home, you know, wet gardening, right?
00:52:19
◼
►
Bored out of his mind.
00:52:20
◼
►
Jesus Christ, I'm going to listen to podcasts, and then here we are laughing about the fact
00:52:24
◼
►
that he got fired. I mean, I really don't mean to make light of it.
00:52:28
◼
►
I really do think, in a way, I think that there's a sad story there where I think
00:52:32
◼
►
that this is a guy who's been taken away from his life's work. And I mean this without
00:52:38
◼
►
any – I'm not making fun. I'm trying to be serious here. But it's not like the
00:52:47
◼
►
Yeah. He doesn't have to – his family doesn't have to switch to store brand corn
00:52:53
◼
►
Plus, he seems like a guy like that, he's going to do something else.
00:53:00
◼
►
He's going to land on his feet and he's not going to be sitting around in his bathrobe
00:53:07
◼
►
watching his shows for a couple of years just cycling into a spiral of booze and depression
00:53:16
◼
►
and pills like we would.
00:53:22
◼
►
He's already talking to – and you know he's already out there talking to people
00:53:27
◼
►
like figuring out what the next thing is going to be.
00:53:30
◼
►
There's a reason that he got to be the senior vice president of Apple.
00:53:32
◼
►
Yeah, exactly.
00:53:34
◼
►
He got up there.
00:53:35
◼
►
He clawed his way up there and probably murdered a bunch of people to get there.
00:53:38
◼
►
He's going to do it again.
00:53:40
◼
►
God, I really don't want to think about how I would deal with something like that.
00:53:44
◼
►
I really wouldn't.
00:53:45
◼
►
But he stepped in and took your blog away.
00:53:51
◼
►
The word that comes to mind …
00:53:53
◼
►
You're done.
00:53:54
◼
►
Every once in a while, I see words and the word I'm seeing right now is in big, futura
00:54:01
◼
►
bold all caps that says intervention.
00:54:13
◼
►
Trip to the health clinic, you know what I mean?
00:54:17
◼
►
Do you have martini glasses in your bathroom like we do?
00:54:22
◼
►
Last night's martini glasses?
00:54:27
◼
►
So, you still – you got a ways to go then?
00:54:31
◼
►
Get a catch up?
00:54:33
◼
►
I won't say though that I –
00:54:35
◼
►
Keep up with the molts.
00:54:37
◼
►
I won't say though that I don't occasionally lose one.
00:54:39
◼
►
Where is it?
00:54:41
◼
►
I just don't take it into the bathroom.
00:54:44
◼
►
The other thing I noticed in the same segment, so they never actually got back to talking
00:54:50
◼
►
about John Browett. It just seems like that was just like...
00:54:53
◼
►
I don't think he ever... I mean, yeah, I don't think he barely talked about him at all.
00:54:56
◼
►
I honestly, though, in a sense, though, if I had... If there's one of my complaints,
00:55:01
◼
►
one of the things that's occurred to me, and I don't think... I don't know. I feel like
00:55:04
◼
►
I'm only good at finding these things afterwards. I'm not saying I would have done a better
00:55:08
◼
►
job if Apple had said, "Look, you want an hour with Tim Cook?" And I, of course, would
00:55:12
◼
►
have said yes, but I don't know that I would have done a better job than this guy. I really
00:55:16
◼
►
don't. Because I just start drawing blanks. I'm not good. I think very, very slowly,
00:55:22
◼
►
and I think to be an interviewer, you've got to think fast. But it occurs to me, though,
00:55:25
◼
►
that I would have liked him to go back to Browitt, because the Browitt thing, to me,
00:55:30
◼
►
is all on Cook. Right? Like, the Forstall situation has obviously been simmering literally
00:55:35
◼
►
for over a decade. Right? I mean, Forstall's been there forever.
00:55:38
◼
►
And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,
00:55:39
◼
►
and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,
00:55:40
◼
►
and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,
00:55:41
◼
►
and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,
00:55:42
◼
►
and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,
00:55:43
◼
►
and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,
00:55:44
◼
►
around and show them the door.
00:55:47
◼
►
The whole thing with Ron Johnson leaving happened after Jobs died.
00:55:52
◼
►
Who knows whether there's any truth to it or not.
00:55:54
◼
►
I think it's ridiculous, but there's some speculation that Johnson wanted the CEO job
00:55:59
◼
►
at Apple and that when it was clear that it was going to go to Cook, well, then he was
00:56:03
◼
►
out because there was no –
00:56:04
◼
►
That doesn't seem – he doesn't seem like a good fit.
00:56:07
◼
►
He doesn't seem like the right guy.
00:56:08
◼
►
It doesn't seem like it would ever be in the cards, that the retail guy would ever
00:56:14
◼
►
In theory, you could see Johnny Ive, the design guy, if he wanted to be CEO, would it play
00:56:21
◼
►
if they said, "Hey, Cook is retiring.
00:56:23
◼
►
Johnny Ive is the new CEO."
00:56:25
◼
►
I think that would play.
00:56:27
◼
►
I think Schiller would play.
00:56:29
◼
►
I've said this before many times that what people think of as marketing is not what Apple
00:56:37
◼
►
thinks of as marketing.
00:56:38
◼
►
He's not just in charge of ads and stuff like that.
00:56:42
◼
►
If you know what Schiller does, it would totally play that he could be the CEO.
00:56:46
◼
►
The retail guy, no matter how good their retail is, it just doesn't play.
00:56:51
◼
►
But anyway, he did leave after Jobs was gone.
00:56:55
◼
►
The whole thing of how do we replace Ron Johnson and keep the retail thing going was all on
00:57:00
◼
►
As soon as it was announced, everybody who was familiar with those shitty stores that
00:57:05
◼
►
Broward ran in England, I forget what they were called, but everybody in the UK, they
00:57:11
◼
►
And everybody in the UK who knew him was like, "What the hell is Apple doing?
00:57:14
◼
►
This guy's stores suck!"
00:57:17
◼
►
They're like the whole reason the Apple stores are successful.
00:57:19
◼
►
They're like the anti-Apple stores.
00:57:22
◼
►
And I was like, "Well, I don't know.
00:57:23
◼
►
Maybe the guy…"
00:57:25
◼
►
That's what I thought, too.
00:57:26
◼
►
I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.
00:57:29
◼
►
I thought, "Well, maybe he…"
00:57:30
◼
►
It turns out I was wrong.
00:57:32
◼
►
It turns out that the snap judgment from the people in England was exactly right.
00:57:35
◼
►
The guy was like, "Hack!"
00:57:36
◼
►
Which just seems weird.
00:57:38
◼
►
It just seems weird.
00:57:39
◼
►
like if you got Tim Cook in front of you and you can ask him about it, I feel like something
00:57:45
◼
►
along the lines of, "Look, this guy's stores in England. He came from these stores
00:57:48
◼
►
that are unlike apples."
00:57:50
◼
►
Yeah. You want us to, what did you see that you thought might be …
00:57:53
◼
►
Right. Exactly. Right.
00:57:56
◼
►
That would explain that initial decision.
00:57:58
◼
►
Right. I feel like he could have held his feet to the fire there on Broward a little
00:58:01
◼
►
bit more. Whereas the forestall thing, they did cover it well, but he didn't get back
00:58:05
◼
►
I guess they think that the forestall thing is more interesting, but—and I can see that,
00:58:11
◼
►
but also in a way, it's more interesting to figure out what happened with Browet, like
00:58:16
◼
►
how that went wrong.
00:58:19
◼
►
And I kind of feel like if there is like a—like you said earlier, like looking for chinks
00:58:24
◼
►
in the armor and—
00:58:26
◼
►
Yeah, because that would seem like a bigger one than the forestall situation.
00:58:32
◼
►
I wonder about the – it's obviously mostly speculative.
00:58:36
◼
►
We don't know the internal, but the speculation is that we do know that Cook is a big numbers
00:58:40
◼
►
guy and he's an operations guy.
00:58:45
◼
►
We know that some of the things that this Broward guy did when he was in charge of Apple
00:58:49
◼
►
retail seemed sort of operationally, like cutting back hours, doing those tricks where
00:58:55
◼
►
you make sure nobody gets more than 37-and-a-half hours.
00:59:00
◼
►
You don't have to treat them as full-time employees and stuff like that.
00:59:04
◼
►
Anyway, stuff that made the employees – that wasn't good for the employees and sort of
00:59:07
◼
►
put like a – if gone in that direction would make the stores a worse experience.
00:59:14
◼
►
But at a bean counter level, seemingly makes sense.
00:59:18
◼
►
Makes sense if you're looking at the store through an Excel spreadsheet instead of actually
00:59:22
◼
►
being in the store.
00:59:26
◼
►
And that's sort of like the fear with Cook, right?
00:59:28
◼
►
That he's the numbers guy and that he's going to start running the company in a numbers-focused
00:59:36
◼
►
As opposed to Steve Jobs, who came in and he was mad.
00:59:41
◼
►
The first stores opened up and he was pissed about the scuff marks on the floors.
00:59:46
◼
►
And so he like, I don't know if he went there himself, what the story is, but they
00:59:50
◼
►
They went to Venice and got some kind of like, you can only get it in Venice granite stone
00:59:58
◼
►
that they polished a certain way to make this, that's what we're going to use for the floors
01:00:03
◼
►
from now on.
01:00:04
◼
►
It doesn't make any financial sense at all.
01:00:07
◼
►
But god damn it.
01:00:09
◼
►
Get some yacht wax.
01:00:11
◼
►
But god damn it, the floors are nice.
01:00:14
◼
►
Some Italian yacht wax.
01:00:17
◼
►
Shine the floors up.
01:00:18
◼
►
I like the story about him talking to Steve about being about taking over.
01:00:26
◼
►
And I'm trying to fight it right now, but where eventually he kept asking him like,
01:00:34
◼
►
you know, is this what you want to do?
01:00:35
◼
►
Because he was going to, so Jobs is going to become chairman of the board and Cook would
01:00:41
◼
►
be CEO, right?
01:00:42
◼
►
Is that the way that was going?
01:00:46
◼
►
And then he kept asking me, I'm sure this is what I'm doing.
01:00:48
◼
►
And finally he said, "I'm sure.
01:00:50
◼
►
Stop asking me."
01:00:51
◼
►
I didn't even want to block quote it because I didn't want to spoil it in the article.
01:01:03
◼
►
It's way at the bottom.
01:01:04
◼
►
So if any of you out there started reading this long interview and got halfway through
01:01:08
◼
►
it, really stick with it.
01:01:11
◼
►
Here's the part.
01:01:14
◼
►
This is Cook talking.
01:01:17
◼
►
One weekend, he called me and he said, "I'd like to talk to you."
01:01:21
◼
►
This was in the summer of '11.
01:01:22
◼
►
I said, "Fine.
01:01:24
◼
►
In typical Steve fashion, he said, "Now."
01:01:27
◼
►
I'll be right over.
01:01:28
◼
►
I go over to his house and I still remember how he started this discussion.
01:01:32
◼
►
He said, "There has never been a professional transition at the CEO level in Apple."
01:01:36
◼
►
He said, "Our company has done a lot of great things, but it's never done this one.
01:01:39
◼
►
The last guy is always fired and then someone new comes in."
01:01:43
◼
►
He goes, "I want there to be a professional CEO transition, and I have decided, and I
01:01:47
◼
►
am recommending to the board that you be the CEO, and I'm going to be the chairman."
01:01:54
◼
►
It's really good.
01:02:01
◼
►
I hope they're able to keep up crazy stories like this.
01:02:10
◼
►
No, Jobs is gone, but just like, and I don't know how you do that.
01:02:14
◼
►
Cause it's like, it's little stuff like that that makes it, I mean,
01:02:19
◼
►
everybody loves stories like that.
01:02:20
◼
►
And having worked at a company, those are, those are always the best.
01:02:25
◼
►
I mean, you just, if you have a story like that, it really, it sounds stupid,
01:02:30
◼
►
but it actually helps build the culture of the company.
01:02:34
◼
►
If you, if you can tell crazy stories, you know, just great nutty things about
01:02:38
◼
►
I mean, stuff that's fun, not people getting—well, I mean, it's also kind of fun to hear about
01:02:44
◼
►
people getting fired in the elevator, but—
01:02:46
◼
►
There's the old one about Cook.
01:02:48
◼
►
The one—and you don't hear these stories anymore, but there's the one about—something
01:02:53
◼
►
was going wrong in China, and he said—pointed to the one guy at the meeting and said, "Okay,
01:02:59
◼
►
you're the one to fix it."
01:03:00
◼
►
And then like five minutes later, looked up and said, "What are you still doing here?"
01:03:05
◼
►
And the guy literally just—
01:03:06
◼
►
That was a good one.
01:03:07
◼
►
I got the hint and didn't even stop it.
01:03:09
◼
►
- Where are you on a plane?
01:03:10
◼
►
- Right, that's what they said the guy did though.
01:03:12
◼
►
He didn't even go home.
01:03:13
◼
►
He got in his car, told his wife, "I gotta go to China."
01:03:16
◼
►
And he just drove to San Jose Airport
01:03:19
◼
►
and booked a ticket to China.
01:03:22
◼
►
- We'll buy some clothes there.
01:03:23
◼
►
- Right, yeah, it's probably cheap.
01:03:26
◼
►
- Guy spends two weeks in China wearing ill-fitting clothes.
01:03:34
◼
►
- A jumpsuit.
01:03:35
◼
►
I'll get one at the factory.
01:03:39
◼
►
Oh man, anything else going on this week?
01:03:44
◼
►
Twitterific 5 came out.
01:03:45
◼
►
Yeah, I haven't gotten it yet, but I will.
01:03:50
◼
►
Because I do enjoy the Twitterific.
01:03:52
◼
►
Is that your Twitter client of choice?
01:03:54
◼
►
I go back and forth.
01:03:57
◼
►
I use, but I do use both.
01:03:58
◼
►
I use Tweetbot and Twitterific.
01:04:01
◼
►
It's really good.
01:04:02
◼
►
And on iOS I use both.
01:04:04
◼
►
Yeah, it's really good and I kind of feel like they're doing a skating to where the
01:04:11
◼
►
puck is going to be thing with the aesthetics of the app.
01:04:18
◼
►
I know that the whole skeuomorphism thing, it's such an overused word and it means more
01:04:24
◼
►
than just the textures, right?
01:04:28
◼
►
There was an interview with Lauren Brikter of Letterpress fame with Erica Ogg, by Erica
01:04:35
◼
►
Ogg in Gigaome this week.
01:04:37
◼
►
He mentioned it, that skeuomorphism is more than just the visual textures and putting
01:04:41
◼
►
stitched leather.
01:04:42
◼
►
It's the things like when you turn a page and it looks like a piece of paper as you
01:04:46
◼
►
turn the page.
01:04:47
◼
►
Whether it's good or bad, it's more than just what it looks like.
01:04:52
◼
►
I feel like Twitterific, this new version 5, is going in this opposite direction of
01:05:00
◼
►
just talking about the textures and stuff like that, sort of taking them all out and
01:05:04
◼
►
going in this minimalist, flat, the least chrome you can get away with.
01:05:15
◼
►
Windows 8 is obviously in that direction, but this doesn't look anything.
01:05:19
◼
►
There's more than one way to do it.
01:05:20
◼
►
Do you know what I mean?
01:05:22
◼
►
concept but it's nicer.
01:05:26
◼
►
In the same way that like, well here's a good example, like the difference between
01:05:32
◼
►
Apple's Aqua interface and the Windows Vista interface, which were both largely based on
01:05:39
◼
►
this sort of plasticy, translucency, glass, shadows, transparency sort of aesthetic. You
01:05:48
◼
►
You can go very different ways with it.
01:05:50
◼
►
One can look pretty good and one can look like you got it at Kmart.
01:05:55
◼
►
There's different ways to do minimalism too.
01:06:00
◼
►
I do feel like that's what Johnny Ive has been talking about when his little hints about
01:06:05
◼
►
the aesthetics of the OS and the little nose crinkle he made when the guy from The Guardian
01:06:12
◼
►
asked him about – I think it was The Guardian or whoever it was – asked him about the
01:06:15
◼
►
stitched leather that is not really being true to the hardware.
01:06:20
◼
►
Twitterific Five, I think, is a really interesting example of that.
01:06:23
◼
►
I kind of feel like Icon Factory has jumped ahead of the state of the art for aesthetics.
01:06:32
◼
►
Letterpress is another example of that.
01:06:34
◼
►
Do you play the letterpress?
01:06:38
◼
►
Have we played yet?
01:06:39
◼
►
We have not played.
01:06:40
◼
►
No, we probably should.
01:06:42
◼
►
That should be my new rule for getting people on the show.
01:06:43
◼
►
We've got to play.
01:06:44
◼
►
letterpress.
01:06:45
◼
►
But, yeah, letterpress is another example of that.
01:06:50
◼
►
That's where it came up in Lauren's interview with Erica, that there's obviously this
01:06:55
◼
►
minimalist aesthetic.
01:07:00
◼
►
But it doesn't mean undesigned.
01:07:03
◼
►
It's harder to explain because when something is like a visual texture, the design jumps
01:07:08
◼
►
right out at you, whereas it's more about the subtleties.
01:07:12
◼
►
But when you move tiles around in letterpress, it's not like there's nothing going on.
01:07:17
◼
►
There's something very fancy going on where it sort of jiggles and it's at a jaunty little
01:07:23
◼
►
>> And even when you fire it up and it does that little rotating thingamabob, whatever
01:07:29
◼
►
You know what that is?
01:07:30
◼
►
It's the 8-bits logo.
01:07:32
◼
►
>> Oh, that's right.
01:07:35
◼
►
It's 8-bits.
01:07:37
◼
►
rotates is it goes seven times clockwise, and then the eighth goes counterclockwise,
01:07:43
◼
►
and then it will go seven clockwise.
01:07:46
◼
►
For the – that sounds like the thing from Indiana Jones.
01:07:53
◼
►
Take one back for the Hebrew God.
01:07:56
◼
►
One back kalam.
01:07:57
◼
►
Yeah, exactly.
01:07:58
◼
►
They're digging in the wrong place.
01:08:01
◼
►
I've got to play you in letterpress.
01:08:02
◼
►
But anyway, letterpress is another example.
01:08:04
◼
►
Again, Letterpress and Twitterific5 are both super, super distinctive.
01:08:09
◼
►
Don't look anything at all like each other, really, except that there's a sort of – I
01:08:15
◼
►
There's something to it.
01:08:17
◼
►
It's kind of hard to talk about, but I feel like there's a shared sense of this is where
01:08:22
◼
►
Tim Cynova - Sensibility, yeah.
01:08:23
◼
►
Eric Michael Rhodes - Yeah.
01:08:24
◼
►
I really think that they did good work.
01:08:27
◼
►
I feel like congratulations to all our friends there.
01:08:31
◼
►
Tim Cynova - Yeah.
01:08:32
◼
►
Apple seems to get that kind of,
01:08:34
◼
►
I mean, that was another thing in the interview,
01:08:36
◼
►
was that he was talking about,
01:08:37
◼
►
held up an iPhone, I guess this was in the,
01:08:41
◼
►
maybe the scene with, in the NBC interview.
01:08:45
◼
►
- And he held up the iPhone and talked about
01:08:46
◼
►
how the face of it-- - With rock hard Brian Williams.
01:08:50
◼
►
- How the face of it is the operating system,
01:08:54
◼
►
I forget exactly what he said, but just that,
01:08:56
◼
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you know, and we've, you've talked about this before,
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but how it's just, it's like a glass,
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and you just have a glass front and then you're interacting with the operating system right
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there and that's the that's their design ethic right so I say we call it show all right I
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want to say one thing I never mentioned this is one thing I just don't mention it here's
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the thing I want to talk about the the sponsorship thing anybody out there listens to the show
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you got a product or a service that you think the talk show audience would be interested
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in, get in touch. I don't really have a good mechanism for this. I have a really nice little
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page for Daring Fireball sponsorships. People go there and they can see the schedule and
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there's a little email address. I don't have anything like that for the talk show and I
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feel like it's ... I don't know. I got to set something up.
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In the meantime, just go to the Daring Fireball sponsorship page. Go to Daring Fireball, click
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on sponsorships. Just click the email there and tell me that you want to sponsor the talk
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show instead of Daring Fireball. I've got some good guests already lined up, not molds,
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guests for the next couple of episodes.
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And there's a couple of sponsorship spots open on all of them.
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So anybody out there, if you've got a product or service that you want this audience to
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know about, get in touch.
01:10:14
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John Moltz, thank you very much for being here.
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Oh, you're welcome.
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You're the best.