0:00:00We don't have much to talk about,
0:00:01just the whole year in review.
0:00:03- Short show, like usual.
0:00:04- Yeah.
0:00:05(laughing)
0:00:06I predict it'll be shorter than usual
0:00:08because we're focused.
0:00:10Lean, mean, we have an outline.
0:00:12We have a focus.
0:00:14But I forget, is this the third year in a row,
0:00:16fourth year in a row?
0:00:17- Something like that, yeah.
0:00:18- It's a tradition at this point, that's for sure.
0:00:21But let's look back, Apple's 2020 year in review.
0:00:27Before we do, let's talk about some current events,
0:00:31just to get 'em out of the way.
0:00:32We can't do this show without mentioning
0:00:34this Apple car thing.
0:00:36- Yeah.
0:00:36(laughing)
0:00:38- Maybe some other stuff.
0:00:39But anyway, what, two days ago, yesterday?
0:00:42I have seriously, like one thing I have not anticipated
0:00:46post-election is that the weird sense of time
0:00:49is gonna get worse.
0:00:50- Yeah, yes.
0:00:51It's like that movie, that Christopher Nolan movie
0:00:56where time gets slower and faster at the same time.
0:00:59(laughing)
0:00:59Not Inception, the other one.
0:01:01- And not Tenet either.
0:01:03- Interstellar, Interstellar.
0:01:04- Yeah, yeah.
0:01:05Have you seen Tenet, by the way?
0:01:09- I tried.
0:01:10I have this thing with Christopher Nolan movies
0:01:12where I love the first 80%
0:01:14and then he just never lands it for me.
0:01:16So my favorite one is Memento
0:01:17because he does the ending at the beginning.
0:01:19- Ah.
0:01:20Yeah, but what about The Prestige?
0:01:22Everybody loves The Prestige.
0:01:23- Yes, yeah, The Prestige is,
0:01:25it's more classical for him, I think.
0:01:27He doesn't try to do the weird ending thing.
0:01:30- Yeah, I enjoyed it.
0:01:31My son and I watched it two nights ago.
0:01:33It is interesting, it is so interesting.
0:01:35I do this thing with movies
0:01:37and I've gotten really good at it
0:01:39and maybe it's just a good luck, I don't know.
0:01:41But I've really tried to stay spoiler free.
0:01:44I've largely stopped watching trailers, period,
0:01:47because it's like the movie industry has gotten,
0:01:50even for like good movies,
0:01:51they spoil the whole movie in the trailer.
0:01:56It's the worst trend.
0:01:57I mean, they must have some kind of metrics
0:01:59that show that it gets people
0:02:00to rent the movies or whatever,
0:02:03but trailers spoil everything, in my opinion.
0:02:06So I try to--
0:02:07- There's this huge Zemeckis thing where he,
0:02:08I believe it was Zemeckis,
0:02:09where he believed that he should show everything
0:02:11in the trailer because people like eating McDonald's.
0:02:14They want to know what they're getting
0:02:15and I just find that totally opposite
0:02:18of what I want in a movie.
0:02:20(laughing)
0:02:22- Some people must like it.
0:02:24I hate it.
0:02:24I'm like, "Oh, why would they show that?
0:02:26"Oh, terrible."
0:02:27- And it's worse for me because I'm a dummy.
0:02:29So I can watch a trailer and I don't realize things,
0:02:31but I watch it with my podcast partner, Georgia,
0:02:33and she has one of those Sherlock Holmes Mind Palace things
0:02:36where she's like, "Oh, they're wearing this different outfit
0:02:38"in this part of the trailer, so this person lived,
0:02:39"this person died, and they obviously committed this crime
0:02:41"and then she can't watch the movie."
0:02:42- Yep, exactly, exactly.
0:02:44Oh, anyway, the neat things.
0:02:46So I bookmark.
0:02:47I'm like, oh, I run into somebody says,
0:02:49"Here's a review of this movie I know I don't want to watch."
0:02:52And so I bookmark it for the future,
0:02:54and then after I watch the movie,
0:02:56I may not even remember that I did,
0:02:58but I'll go to PitBoard and see if I,
0:03:00hey, did I have any bookmarks for Tenet?
0:03:02Oh, here I did, yeah, and I read a couple reviews.
0:03:04And it was funny because multiple reviews of Tenet,
0:03:08which originally came out back in August
0:03:10in a very poorly considered manner in theaters,
0:03:14multiple reviewers said the same thing,
0:03:19which was that this movie can't really be spoiled
0:03:22by talking about the plot.
0:03:24And I know that sounds crazy,
0:03:26but if you've seen the movie, you'll agree.
0:03:28And multiple reviewers said that.
0:03:30So I'm not even that worried about spoiling anything
0:03:32here talking about Tenet.
0:03:34It is, and it is sort of a fascinating idea
0:03:37that you can make a plotted movie with a plot,
0:03:40and it really can't be spoiled.
0:03:42I'm glad I watched it.
0:03:44I'm glad Christopher Nolan is out there making movies.
0:03:47- Same.
0:03:48- It is frustrating, and it is,
0:03:51my analogy to my son is that it's sort of like
0:03:56a very talented, extremely talented movie maker
0:04:02who's so good at the art of cinema
0:04:04that he's made a movie about one plus one equals three.
0:04:07And it's very convincing because he's so good at it,
0:04:11but you know it's not right.
0:04:12But you can sit there, if you'd sit there
0:04:15and try to tie yourself up in knots thinking about
0:04:18the time travel aspect of Tenet,
0:04:21it's never gonna, he's so good that you think like,
0:04:25oh, if I think about this hard enough,
0:04:27or maybe if I get out of some pen and paper
0:04:30and start drawing this, it'll add up.
0:04:33And it's like, no, no, don't hurt your brain.
0:04:37- Did you ever watch Pitch Meeting on Screen Rant?
0:04:39- Yes, yes, that's a great--
0:04:41- The Pitch Meeting for Tenet was fantastic.
0:04:43I like it when he makes fun of movies I don't like,
0:04:44but I like it even more when he makes fun of movies I do like.
0:04:46- All right, I gotta write this down for the show notes.
0:04:48Pitch Meeting Tenet, I'll bet that he did a great job.
0:04:52- Yeah, yeah, I don't wanna spoil that for you,
0:04:53but it's terrific.
0:04:55- But I'm still glad I watched it, that's the thing.
0:04:57And I get it why some people, I don't know that,
0:05:00I haven't seen anybody say,
0:05:01this is my favorite Christopher Nolan movie.
0:05:03I haven't seen that.
0:05:04Maybe there's somebody who thinks it.
0:05:06I've seen some people who I think are sort of,
0:05:09they're a little angry about the pretension of it,
0:05:12and it's like, I'm okay with it
0:05:14because it's the pretension,
0:05:16he's not like submitting it to the Nobel Committee
0:05:19in physics to try to act like it does add up.
0:05:22He's not saying one plus one actually equals three.
0:05:25He's just made this movie like,
0:05:26what if one plus one did equal three?
0:05:29And it's kind of a neat movie.
0:05:30So anyway--
0:05:31- My thing with Nolan is that he violates
0:05:32one of my favorite rules of storytelling,
0:05:34which is if you put a gun on the mantle in act two,
0:05:36you gotta shoot somebody before act four starts.
0:05:39And movies like Inception, they're folding cities in half,
0:05:42and someone says, don't do that.
0:05:44You'll attract negative attention.
0:05:45And so I think they're setting this up,
0:05:46almost like when they tell Neo,
0:05:49you don't have to worry about dodging bullets in the future.
0:05:51And then you get to the end and they're being attacked
0:05:53and nobody ever fold,
0:05:54and I've been waiting the whole movie
0:05:55for them to start folding cities,
0:05:57which is like The Matrix at the end
0:05:58if Neo doesn't start catching bullets.
0:06:00I just feel what happened at the end of the movie.
0:06:02- Oh. (laughs)
0:06:05Yeah, he does it.
0:06:06- It's like, you didn't give me what I wanted.
0:06:08- Yeah.
0:06:09Yeah, maybe.
0:06:10Yeah, he's not, it's hard to say.
0:06:12I'm glad he's out there, but you know.
0:06:13- Me too, me too.
0:06:14- Unsatisfying.
0:06:15What I did afterwards is after watching,
0:06:19as a palate cleanser for Tenet,
0:06:21I watched Ocean's Eleven for like the 30th time.
0:06:26Because in some ways,
0:06:29that was the exact palate cleanser I needed,
0:06:32where it's like, just give me something
0:06:33where there's like some kind of complicated plot,
0:06:37and it might be cockamamie and completely unrealistic,
0:06:40but it does add up, right?
0:06:43- Yes.
0:06:44- You know.
0:06:45- Yeah.
0:06:46I watched the McTiernan movies afterwards.
0:06:47I watched Hunt for October and Die Hard
0:06:50and Predator, I think.
0:06:51Because those are all very like, this is what's happening,
0:06:54I'm setting this up and I'm delivering it to you.
0:06:57- Yeah, McTiernan, oh man,
0:06:59you know how I feel about Die Hard.
0:07:00- They're way too simple for today.
0:07:02I think today they confuse sophistication with complexity,
0:07:04which is a problem, but they're very simple movies,
0:07:07but they really pay off.
0:07:08- Yeah, yeah, and again, I'm gonna spoil it.
0:07:10If you haven't watched Die Hard,
0:07:12then you shouldn't be listening to the podcast.
0:07:13- No.
0:07:14- But like, one of the great Chekhov's guns
0:07:18of movie history, which is the whole,
0:07:21that's the whole principle, if you see the gun
0:07:23on the mantle, it has to go off,
0:07:25is the movie opens with John as a nervous flyer
0:07:30and the guy says, "Ah, here's what you do.
0:07:34"As soon as you get to where you're going,
0:07:36"take your shoes off and let your toes feel the carpet."
0:07:39Which doesn't even make sense, I've never heard that.
0:07:43I don't think that would help,
0:07:44'cause it's not like you're on the airplane.
0:07:46It's just an excuse to get him to take his shoes off,
0:07:48but then it pays off.
0:07:50It's like, wouldn't it be great if the protagonist
0:07:57of the movie had to do the whole thing barefoot?
0:08:00It'd be like, yeah, that'd be--
0:08:00- And even like the watch, they set up the watch,
0:08:02they set up every payoff they set up carefully
0:08:04during the movie.
0:08:05- You know the watch, there's a deleted scene for that.
0:08:08Have you ever heard that?
0:08:10- I think so, yeah.
0:08:11Yeah, so there's a scene that they deleted
0:08:13where the crew first, the grouper crew actually,
0:08:18first gets in there and they're down in the basement
0:08:21and they all have the same watch
0:08:23and they're synchronizing their watches.
0:08:26And they took it out because it was shot
0:08:31in the parking lot underneath and when they shot it,
0:08:35they hadn't yet figured out that the limo driver
0:08:38was gonna stay down there.
0:08:40And so it was like it introduced a minor continuity error
0:08:43because later on they were like,
0:08:44here, here's what we could do with the limo driver.
0:08:46We could have the limo driver be underneath
0:08:48in the parking lot all along.
0:08:50And McTiernan was like, ah, that's brilliant.
0:08:52But then he's like, ah, but what about that scene
0:08:54we shot down there where there is no limo?
0:08:56And they're like, ah, and they're like, well,
0:08:58we could just, it's just synchronizing watches.
0:09:00We could take it out.
0:09:01And then the only thing that doesn't really add up afterwards
0:09:03is the, hey, all these guys have the same watch,
0:09:06but that would have had more of a payoff
0:09:08if you've seen the deleted scene.
0:09:09- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:09:11- Well, there we go, there's 15 minutes.
0:09:14(laughing)
0:09:16- We're going great.
0:09:18- We're doing fantastic.
0:09:20Apple Car.
0:09:21So out of nowhere, Reuters yesterday.
0:09:25- Well, it was before then.
0:09:26So it was a couple days ago that,
0:09:28I was, Economic Daily or something,
0:09:31one of the Asian newspapers said that the Apple Car
0:09:33was gonna come out in 2021 and nobody believed it.
0:09:37And then Reuters followed up two days later saying,
0:09:40it's 2024-ish.
0:09:41- 20, I didn't see that there was one for 2021.
0:09:45But so things that I know,
0:09:49and I could say we collectively know,
0:09:51we know that Project Titan is still a thing.
0:09:55I don't even, I think that it's actually still called
0:09:57Project Titan.
0:09:58We know some of the people involved.
0:10:00We know that Apple has a lot of people working on it.
0:10:06- We know it has something to do with cars
0:10:09and might just be autonomous driving systems, period.
0:10:12And maybe they would work with a company.
0:10:15Like maybe they would work with BMW or Toyota or Honda
0:10:19or multiple, who knows.
0:10:21Maybe they'll build their own car.
0:10:23Maybe they're just building smarter Roombas
0:10:26that will autonomously--
0:10:27- Well, I think the first version,
0:10:28like I think it's well known now that Johnny Ive
0:10:30and the ID department made actual car designs
0:10:32for the very first version under,
0:10:36I'm blanking on his name before--
0:10:39- Doug Field.
0:10:40- No, before Doug Field,
0:10:41Apple's Vice Senior Vice President of Hardware
0:10:43that I, for some reason, embarrassingly,
0:10:45the one that took over from Bob Mansfield
0:10:47when Bob first left.
0:10:48And I'm embarrassingly blanking on his name at the moment.
0:10:51But he was running it and they had car designs
0:10:53and they had a whole team ramp up.
0:10:55And they took over a lot of guys from the iPhone team
0:10:58and a lot of old iPhone engineers came back to it.
0:11:01And then it moved over to Bob Mansfield
0:11:04and they sort of started redoing everything.
0:11:06And it sounded more abstract,
0:11:07like it was doing a lot of computer vision
0:11:10and environmental ingestion and AR and AI.
0:11:13And now just before this report,
0:11:15the story was that it got moved over to John G. and Andreas
0:11:19machine learning artificial intelligence organization
0:11:22and Mansfield was retired, retired again.
0:11:24- Yeah. (laughs)
0:11:26Well, we don't, you know,
0:11:28I feel like now you're going into things we kinda know.
0:11:32Right? - Yeah.
0:11:33- We kinda know that there were prototypes
0:11:35and how far along they were and there are rumors that,
0:11:38- Dan Riccio, sorry, Dan Riccio.
0:11:43- How much of it was going to be just a car
0:11:47and how much was gonna be self-driving and what level
0:11:50and when did they expect to ship?
0:11:51And even if everything had gone exceedingly
0:11:55according to plan, which obviously it didn't,
0:11:59you know, it doesn't seem like it's possible at this point,
0:12:03like that, let's say an initiative that was going strong
0:12:07in 2015 or 2016 and maybe could have shipped a car by today,
0:12:12by the end of 2020, that those cars would drive themselves.
0:12:16That's, you know, my honest estimation,
0:12:19and I know this is one of those like 640 kilobytes of memory
0:12:22ought to be enough for everybody.
0:12:24I don't think that you and I and most of the people
0:12:26listening to this are ever gonna live to see
0:12:29fully self-driving cars on the road.
0:12:32- Yeah, I mean, the definition seems to keep moving
0:12:35for what that is anyway.
0:12:36- Right, I mean like, you know,
0:12:38I'm talking full Knight Rider, talk to your Apple Watch car,
0:12:43come get me, and the car just drives from wherever it is
0:12:46and to wherever you are and,
0:12:48- To Hopsing Laundry Mat,
0:12:49- Right. - to your home after.
0:12:51- Right, I mean, it's, you know,
0:12:53I don't think we're gonna have it.
0:12:55I'd love to see it happen, I don't think it will,
0:12:58but anyway, it obviously wasn't gonna happen by now.
0:13:01But anyway, the Reuters report says Apple's full steam ahead
0:13:04that they're hoping to ship cars by 2024.
0:13:09Maybe it'll be delayed 'til 2025,
0:13:11and at this point, five, four, five years out,
0:13:14it's like, yeah, no shit, it might be delayed to 2025.
0:13:18Like if you have something that is like a thousand person,
0:13:23I don't know if there's a thousand people working on
0:13:25Project Titan, but maybe there are.
0:13:26I know there's hundreds, you know,
0:13:28but if you have hundreds of top engineers and AI talent
0:13:31and mechanical engineers making the actual car,
0:13:35working on something that optimistically you think
0:13:38is still four years out, yeah, it might be five years out.
0:13:42(laughs)
0:13:43That line in the report just made me laugh.
0:13:45- And what's like the 1.0 anyway?
0:13:47Like what are the features that qualify
0:13:49the minimum delightful, like the delightful product
0:13:51that you're gonna ship?
0:13:52- Right, but man, oh man, did that make people's ears
0:13:55perk up, you know, 'cause it's like, ooh.
0:13:59- Apple stock up, Tesla stock down,
0:14:00I mean, that's how it works.
0:14:02- Did that really happen?
0:14:03I didn't even, but see, that's just crazy.
0:14:06And it really is.
0:14:07You know, I've been on the CNBC a couple times
0:14:12the last couple months.
0:14:14They asked if I would be on today to talk about the car,
0:14:16and I had to politely decline,
0:14:19'cause what the hell am I gonna say?
0:14:22I'm like, I love, I wouldn't say I love it,
0:14:25but I enjoy stretching myself on these CNBC appearances
0:14:29to talk about things Apple has announced and are out,
0:14:33and to give my thoughts and help people think about them
0:14:36the way I think they should.
0:14:38I don't mind coming on a podcast like this
0:14:41and spouting off about this car I know nothing about,
0:14:43but there is no way in hell that I wanna go on TV
0:14:47and talk about a car that I don't know anything about,
0:14:51because of exactly what you just had.
0:14:53I don't wanna play any role in Apple stock going up
0:14:57or Tesla stock going down or any of that nonsense.
0:15:00I wanna stay as far away from that as possible,
0:15:03'cause nobody knows.
0:15:05I feel like, who knows?
0:15:08Why would this report come out now?
0:15:11I have no idea, but it was so strange to me, timing-wise.
0:15:15- Yeah, especially Reuters, because that's not,
0:15:17like that's not one of the usual rumor or leak channels.
0:15:20That's, it's not even one of the business publications.
0:15:23Like it wasn't a Bloomberg story.
0:15:24It wasn't a Wall Street Journal story.
0:15:26Reuters seems very specific.
0:15:28- Yeah, and then you, right before,
0:15:30it's a good thing we delayed recording until now,
0:15:33but it looks like three hours ago,
0:15:35Elon Musk tantalizing tweet says,
0:15:38"During the darkest days of the Model 3 program,
0:15:41"I reached out to Tim Cook to discuss the possibility
0:15:44"of Apple acquiring Tesla for 1/10 of our current value.
0:15:48"He refused to take the meeting."
0:15:50- Yeah.
0:15:51- And that's the whole, that's the whole tweet.
0:15:53- Well, it was a response.
0:15:54So the person who was responding to you
0:15:55posted some pictures from the Reuters article,
0:15:57and the Reuters article was playing up
0:15:58some revolutionary battery technology from Apple
0:16:00that I think if anybody took two minutes to research it,
0:16:03would show that it wasn't revolutionary battery technology,
0:16:05at least not as described,
0:16:07and that seemed to trigger Elon Musk a little bit,
0:16:09'cause he's saying, "We've been using these batteries
0:16:11"for years on our mid-range cars."
0:16:13(laughing)
0:16:14- But it's another one of those, like,
0:16:18I mean, Twitter is exceedingly good
0:16:20at a Fermat's Last Theorem type tweet.
0:16:24Like, that tweet demands so much more attention.
0:16:29Really?
0:16:31Like, did you really get in contact with Tim Cook?
0:16:33Did he really not take the meeting?
0:16:35- And I forget who pointed it out.
0:16:36It might have been Neil Seibart that said
0:16:38that this would have been last year, or 2018 or 2019,
0:16:43when Project Titan was well underway already,
0:16:45and Tesla doesn't seem to have any problems
0:16:48that Apple would have been able to fix.
0:16:50- It's one of those somewhere in the 999 nos
0:16:55for every yes, right, is that Apple is not
0:17:00a Berkshire Hathaway-style conglomerate that just owns,
0:17:05like, in some sense, you can say,
0:17:08well, clearly this was a mistake if it's all true, right?
0:17:12And again, that's a big if, with Elon Musk
0:17:14as the, let's say, unreliable narrator.
0:17:18Not that he's a liar, just that you can't necessarily
0:17:22take it as, there's a lot of ways to be
0:17:25an unreliable narrator that don't involve lying.
0:17:27- You don't know what his agenda is with a tweet.
0:17:29- Right, and how sharp his memory is, you know.
0:17:33- And it's also, it's his opinion of what happened.
0:17:37- But if you just took that as the,
0:17:39if you said, okay, if you looked into it
0:17:40and it was all verifiably true, you could say,
0:17:43well, then that's clearly a mistake.
0:17:44Apple should have acquired Tesla for 1/10 the price
0:17:48and held it until now, and now they could,
0:17:50if they wanted to, spin it off and make 10 times.
0:17:55But that's not Apple's business, right?
0:17:58And, you know, and there was, you know,
0:18:03a lot of people threw that out as a, like,
0:18:08what was, I guess it was 2013 was sort of the low point
0:18:12of the post Steve Jobs, hey, this is,
0:18:15Tim Cook isn't cutting it, they need a product person,
0:18:17they should acquire Tesla and let Elon Musk
0:18:20take over the company, you know.
0:18:22And in very broad strokes, you can see the thinking,
0:18:27you know, that Elon Musk and Steve Jobs are similar,
0:18:30you know, they're founder/visionary people,
0:18:35and you could say, well, Apple needs that sort of person,
0:18:38but it's very different when you're not the founder
0:18:41of the company, right, you know, like, you know,
0:18:43Thomas Edison was one of those people.
0:18:45I don't know that if you could reanimate Thomas Edison
0:18:48from the grave that he would be a great CEO of Apple, right?
0:18:52- And also, Steve Jobs, you know, he was maniacally focused
0:18:56where Elon Musk has, Elon Musk is focused on Mars,
0:18:58but that constitutes 10 different companies for him.
0:19:01- Right, Elon, my point with these founders,
0:19:05these unique visionaries, is that they all are
0:19:10inherently the chiefs of the companies
0:19:14they were meant to be the chiefs of
0:19:15because that's why they created them, right?
0:19:18- Yes, and the culture around them.
0:19:19- Right, Jeff Bezos is obviously tremendously successful,
0:19:24and Amazon is, for all of it, the things you complain about,
0:19:29you know, there's certainly many things
0:19:31you can take issue with, or even Zuckerberg, right,
0:19:34a company that we can all agree there are a lot of things
0:19:36we can complain about with Facebook.
0:19:39Neither one of them would be good at all
0:19:42as being the CEO of Apple, or of the other company, right?
0:19:45You wouldn't want--
0:19:46- Both of them have tried to make phones
0:19:47with disastrous results over the years.
0:19:49- Right, like, you know, I don't think any of these CEOs
0:19:53would be good at taking over the other's company,
0:19:55except maybe for Cook, who is not a founder, right?
0:20:00Cook would be the one who you could say,
0:20:02well, if he wanted to be the CEO of Amazon,
0:20:04he'd probably be a lot better at being the CEO of Amazon
0:20:07than Bezos would be as the CEO of Apple.
0:20:10But they're just, you know, the companies are formed
0:20:12in the creator's image, and Elon Musk is the CEO
0:20:16of the companies he was meant to be in charge of, you know?
0:20:18SpaceX is very Elon Musk-y.
0:20:21- Yeah, and The Boring Company, and Tesla,
0:20:23and Starlink is just so many,
0:20:26but they all have that uniform goal.
0:20:28And also, whenever I see this, I also wonder
0:20:30what it would've been like if Steve Jobs
0:20:32had a Twitter account.
0:20:33- Oh, I don't think he ever would've been in,
0:20:37I don't know.
0:20:38It is an interesting, could he have gone--
0:20:42- Sort of like midnight emailing Steve Jobs
0:20:44had a Twitter account.
0:20:45- Right, I don't know.
0:20:47I mean, and Twitter was out by, you know, in 2006, 2007.
0:20:52It just wasn't as much of a thing.
0:20:55- Yeah.
0:20:56- I don't know, I don't see him ever getting into tweeting.
0:21:00- Yeah.
0:21:01- I would see it more like, sort of like the way
0:21:03Schiller and Cook tweet, you know,
0:21:06and it's like when there's something new,
0:21:07there's a tweet from the account.
0:21:09And he might be interested enough to single,
0:21:11you know, be the one who actually writes the tweet,
0:21:14but it's not like, I wouldn't be like Elon Musk
0:21:17making trouble in tweets.
0:21:19- 'Cause back when I was on the other side of the fence,
0:21:21like when I worked in marketing and we hired PR people,
0:21:23one of our most stressful periods was whenever a CEO
0:21:26got on an open mic.
0:21:27That was just the potential for disaster.
0:21:29And I remember like the, Eric Schmidt would do that,
0:21:31and the co-CEOs of RIM would do that,
0:21:34and he would just see the ghosting of the PR people
0:21:39as they would try to stop it every time,
0:21:40and it would go terribly every time.
0:21:43And I don't know what happens at like Tesla or Facebook
0:21:45when they let, you know, Elon or Mark on an open mic,
0:21:47but Apple's got a much better apparatus for that.
0:21:51- Yeah, they're much more disciplined.
0:21:53That's very true. - Yes.
0:21:54- Here, let me take a break before we go on
0:21:57with the year in review and thank our first sponsor.
0:21:59Let me, what a great company.
0:22:01I love this app, Things.
0:22:03T-H-I-N-G-S, Things.
0:22:06The To Do Task Manager app that's been around now,
0:22:10it's one of those apps that it's like,
0:22:12I still think of it as a new app,
0:22:13and it shows how old I'm getting maybe, 'cause it's not.
0:22:18It's been around for a while.
0:22:19Great, great app for all of Apple's platforms,
0:22:23the Mac, for iOS, the phone, and iPad.
0:22:26The idea behind Things, when you want to achieve a goal,
0:22:29you gotta have a plan, and it is a great way
0:22:32to organize it.
0:22:33The idea is very simple.
0:22:35They have projects.
0:22:36You create projects for your goals.
0:22:38You add steps in a project to help you reach your goal,
0:22:42and you can schedule those tasks
0:22:45for when you want to work on them
0:22:46or when you need to work on them.
0:22:48And then every morning when you wake up,
0:22:50Things already has a list of to dos for the day.
0:22:53You can just look right at today.
0:22:55It tells you, based on everything you've already put
0:22:58into Things, what you need to do today.
0:23:01You can just spend a few minutes reviewing that list.
0:23:03You can drag those to dos in the order you want to do them,
0:23:07which to me is like, oh, that is like the one thing I need
0:23:11in any to do type organization app
0:23:15that I want to even try to use.
0:23:18If I can't just drag them to reorder them,
0:23:20I'm already like, ah, I'm out, 'cause that's how I think.
0:23:24Things lets you do that,
0:23:25and then you just get on with your day,
0:23:26and it doesn't matter what device you're on.
0:23:28Everything syncs through the cloud,
0:23:30so whether you are on your Mac,
0:23:32whether you're on your phone, you're on an iPad,
0:23:35it's all there, and Things is beautiful,
0:23:39and they have always integrated with the system
0:23:43in a very cohesive way,
0:23:44so like when stuff like Notification Center
0:23:48and widgets and stuff like that,
0:23:52it's like they're always right on top of it
0:23:54as dedicated, focused.
0:23:56Like the Apple platform isn't just one of the targets
0:24:00for the Things system.
0:24:01They are Apple developers, true and true.
0:24:04That's the only place where Things exists,
0:24:05and so they embrace all that stuff when it's new.
0:24:09It is just a great app.
0:24:10So what do you do to get Things to try it?
0:24:13Download a free trial for your Mac,
0:24:16fully native on the Apple M1 Macs, of course,
0:24:20because like I said, they stay up to date
0:24:22with all of the latest Apple technology
0:24:25at culturedcode.com/things.
0:24:27Just download it to your Mac, totally free to try,
0:24:30great place to start, or go to the App Store
0:24:34and just search for Things.
0:24:36Could not be easier, T-H-I-N-G-S on the App Store,
0:24:40and you will find Things.
0:24:43There you go.
0:24:44My thanks to Culturedcode for sponsoring the show
0:24:46to promote Things, their terrific app.
0:24:49All right, before we go to the year in review,
0:24:57the other thing we should probably talk about
0:24:59over the last week is the is Chrome bad?
0:25:03- Yeah. (laughing)
0:25:05- Our friend, the great Lauren Brikter surfaced.
0:25:09And now Lauren Brikter, everybody has to introduce him
0:25:12as creator of Tweety, Letterpress, the great app.
0:25:17- He wrote the GL stack for the original iPhone,
0:25:19as far as I can recall.
0:25:20- Yeah, the literal, truly invented Polder refresh
0:25:24as a mechanism, which is one of those things now
0:25:27that is so part of the oxygen of touch-based systems
0:25:30that it's hard to believe it had to be invented,
0:25:33and it wasn't there from the beginning.
0:25:35- He wrote UIKit for the Mac before Apple did,
0:25:38and I believe he's probably written UIKit for OpenGL,
0:25:41sorry, for WebGL already, knowing him.
0:25:43- Well, he wrote a website called chromisbad.com,
0:25:47and it got a lot of attention.
0:25:49And it was funny because I wouldn't think
0:25:52that Lauren's accomplishments are from that long ago
0:25:55that people wouldn't remember,
0:25:56but when it hit Hacker News, people were like,
0:25:57"Who is this guy?" (laughing)
0:25:59- Yeah. (laughing)
0:26:00It's like when Tweety came out,
0:26:01and people were like, "Who could write an app like this?
0:26:03"Who is this person?" (laughing)
0:26:05- But the gist of it was that Lauren had seen
0:26:08a couple of Macs, like his wife's MacBook Pro
0:26:11and some other Mac in their household
0:26:13that had been having very strange performance problems
0:26:16where everything was slow, scrolling was slow,
0:26:18typing was slow, and nothing out of the ordinary
0:26:21was listed as consuming resources in activity monitor.
0:26:25It's just that one of the ways it would manifest
0:26:28was that the Windows Server, which is part of the system,
0:26:33would be taking up excessive CPU.
0:26:36But there wasn't some app that you could say,
0:26:38"Oh, and it's this part of Chrome."
0:26:41Long story short, he deleted Chrome,
0:26:44deleting all traces of Chrome, restarted,
0:26:48and this fixed both of his machines.
0:26:51He made this website, said, "I don't know what it's doing.
0:26:55"Something that Chrome installs in the background
0:26:58"is doing something, I don't know what it is,
0:27:01"but it doesn't show up in activity monitor,
0:27:03"and when you do these steps to delete
0:27:06"all traces of Chrome and use a different browser,
0:27:10"the problems go away."
0:27:12And an awful lot of people are like,
0:27:16"Holy crap, this fixed my Mac."
0:27:18- Yes.
0:27:19- Including you, right?
0:27:21- Yeah, yeah, me, Ben Thompson, your partner on dithering.
0:27:25- Yeah.
0:27:26- Several people who are super smart.
0:27:27And the thing was that Lauren suggested,
0:27:30Google has this thing called Keystone,
0:27:31which is their updater that originally came out
0:27:33with Google Earth, and like 11 years ago,
0:27:35Wired saw it and called it evil.
0:27:37And they won't use the system updater,
0:27:39they won't use Sparkle, they just have to do their own thing
0:27:42because they want to continuously update Chrome
0:27:44in the background.
0:27:45And Lauren's theory was that Keystone
0:27:47would try to start up, have a problem,
0:27:49the process would never spawn an activity monitor,
0:27:52but it would just churn Windows Server,
0:27:54it would just thrash it until everything else stopped.
0:27:56And then if you'd go in and not just delete Chrome,
0:27:58but go through all your library files
0:28:01and delete anything with Keystone in it,
0:28:03this would stop happening.
0:28:04And to their credit, the Chrome team
0:28:06and the Chromium team jumped on this immediately,
0:28:08they said they'd never heard of it,
0:28:09but they're gonna look into it,
0:28:11and they have a bug filed now,
0:28:12and they're asking people for help and for documentation
0:28:15and for use, like for test cases and all that stuff.
0:28:18But it fixed my problem.
0:28:20I work on Embargo the same way you do,
0:28:21and I would have this problem,
0:28:23Windows Server would ramp up and I wouldn't be able
0:28:25to get Final Cut to let me finish editing my videos,
0:28:28and it was incredibly stressful,
0:28:29I wanted to throw my computer.
0:28:31And I have not had that problem since.
0:28:33Even uploading my videos,
0:28:35like I know this is a complete post hoc ergo
0:28:37propter hoc fallacy, but I used to have like failures
0:28:40three or four times after uploading videos,
0:28:42and I haven't had a single one yet.
0:28:44So it really is night and day.
0:28:47- I don't wanna go full John Suricusa rant here,
0:28:50but he did it so beautifully on ATP recently,
0:28:54but it's like this whole thing,
0:28:55but yet it's so unsatisfying,
0:28:57'cause we don't have a, oh, here's what's going on, right?
0:29:02And we should.
0:29:08I'm kind of shocked, and I haven't really written about it
0:29:11on Daring Fireball, because my first thought
0:29:13when the thing broke was, well, this isn't right.
0:29:17And like, Lauren has since adjusted the text
0:29:21of the Chrome is Bad webpage to--
0:29:23- He was super angry when he wrote it.
0:29:25- He was, and he had a thing that alleged
0:29:27that the keystone was hiding itself from Activity Monitor,
0:29:32which clearly-- - They called it malware.
0:29:35- Well, there it's a little bit more of a judgment call,
0:29:38but the hiding itself from Activity Monitor
0:29:41is a serious allegation,
0:29:44because it would require deliberate malfeasance
0:29:49on the Chrome team's part to hide it,
0:29:52and it implicitly alleges
0:29:55that there's a gaping security hole in Mac OS
0:29:59that allows for a background utility to hide itself.
0:30:05- Well, I understand, because it would never have surfaced,
0:30:07like it was thrashing Windows Server so badly
0:30:09it never showed up.
0:30:10If that wasn't a problem, it would have shown up
0:30:12and he would have seen it, but he never saw it
0:30:13because of the problem.
0:30:14- Yeah, I don't think he lied,
0:30:15and I don't think he, maybe it was a little sloppy,
0:30:20but he didn't lie.
0:30:21It's that he was trying to, what he was trying to say
0:30:24is what we've just said on this show, me and you,
0:30:26is that it's not that it hid itself in that malware sense.
0:30:30It doesn't show up in Activity Monitor.
0:30:35So hide was the wrong verb, to be sure.
0:30:37But what's weird about this is that we,
0:30:40clearly something is going on.
0:30:43There is, something is going on here.
0:30:46There's way too many people who have just erased
0:30:50all traces of Chrome and had very similar problems vanish.
0:30:55- Yes.
0:30:56- You know, like Ben Thompson, really,
0:30:59he spent months where he was dying
0:31:02because he just was like, I should just,
0:31:03he really would have bought a new computer,
0:31:06but didn't only because he knew the M1 Macs were coming out,
0:31:10and so it wasn't a good time to buy a computer,
0:31:11and he chalked it up to Catalina.
0:31:13But here we are weeks later,
0:31:15and still nobody has put a finger on what it is.
0:31:18But it seems like too many people have had,
0:31:22it's so unsatisfying.
0:31:24And I'm very surprised with the number of,
0:31:29it seems prevalent, and clearly this is the thing
0:31:32that didn't affect everybody, right?
0:31:35And I think that's, you know, that should go without saying.
0:31:38If every single person with Chrome on their Mac
0:31:40had this problem, the Chrome team itself would have it,
0:31:44and they'd fix it.
0:31:44- Yes.
0:31:45Well, that's the thing about, like,
0:31:46modern software is so complicated
0:31:48and depends so much on initial conditions,
0:31:50settings, other programs you have installed.
0:31:52Like this could be a pure Chromium issue,
0:31:54Chrome issue, Keystone issue.
0:31:55It could involve certain versions of macOS,
0:31:57certain other utilities, or systems that you have,
0:32:00or sorry, or tasks that you have running.
0:32:02It could be a big complicated mess,
0:32:04and just removing Chrome removes a little,
0:32:07one part of that enough that everything starts moving again.
0:32:09And that's really hard to fix.
0:32:11But to Lauren's, one of Lauren's original points
0:32:14is that Chrome doesn't have to update this way.
0:32:16Google chooses to have it update this way,
0:32:18but they could be using a standard updater
0:32:20that allows you to consent to updates,
0:32:23because this doesn't even ask your permission
0:32:25to update Chrome.
0:32:26It just does it in the background,
0:32:27which is a service to some people,
0:32:28but is anathema to other people.
0:32:30- That to me is, that's the, me, my as yet unwritten
0:32:35take on doing Fireball, is that the problem here isn't,
0:32:39well, I would love to know what the actual
0:32:42technical problem is, and hopefully there is one,
0:32:44and we'll get to the bottom of it.
0:32:46Well, there obviously is a problem.
0:32:50And whether it's actually Chrome's fault,
0:32:52or whether it could be that Chrome is only doing things
0:32:55that they technically shouldn't cause this problem,
0:32:58and the bug is in Windows Server itself,
0:33:02getting tickled in a certain way that triggers this bug,
0:33:06it could be that the bug is Apple's,
0:33:08and it is in Windows Server,
0:33:10and hopefully we'll figure out what that is.
0:33:12Somebody's gotta figure it out, this is maddening.
0:33:14Even though I'm personally not affected by it,
0:33:16I'm like, huh, I've got Chrome,
0:33:18and I'm sure most people who have Chrome haven't seen it.
0:33:21- And I want to use Chrome, to be clear,
0:33:22there's so many websites that work best with Chrome,
0:33:25it would be better for me if I could use it.
0:33:27- But this wouldn't be an issue if there is fault,
0:33:32there is with certainty fault on Chrome's part,
0:33:35and that's that their software update system
0:33:38is, in my opinion, by design, disrespectful.
0:33:43It's not the way things work on the Mac.
0:33:46Even Apple's own software, like,
0:33:48and as much as people want to,
0:33:50some people want to say that Apple is sort of
0:33:52like authoritarian, that they dictate to people,
0:33:57that people are resistant to get into the Apple ecosystem
0:34:00because Apple tells you how to do everything,
0:34:02and they want you to update everything, and blah, blah, blah.
0:34:05And it's like, Apple is actually extremely respectful
0:34:08of your computer being yours,
0:34:11and almost nothing that they do is mandatory.
0:34:17I mean, there might be some very rarely invoked,
0:34:22I mean, like, maybe once ever security things
0:34:25that they can do remotely, you know,
0:34:28like if they detect malware, they can push certain things
0:34:32to stop a malware infection from spreading further,
0:34:39but they almost never do that.
0:34:40Like, OS updates, you have control over them,
0:34:44and they do steer you when you set up a new device
0:34:48through a process that encourages you
0:34:51to turn on automatic updates,
0:34:53and they do have automatic updates for iOS,
0:34:57and for watchOS, and even MacOS,
0:34:59that if you do allow it to happen,
0:35:02and they do encourage you to turn it on,
0:35:04tries to do things in an intelligent way
0:35:07where like your phone will say,
0:35:08okay, iOS 14.1 is out, and Apple has pushed it,
0:35:14and you've got automatic updates on.
0:35:16It'll download it while it's on WiFi during the day,
0:35:20and will install itself and restart overnight
0:35:23at like four in the morning,
0:35:25so that you're never interrupted,
0:35:26and you wake up, and your phone will say,
0:35:28you're now running iOS 14, welcome to iOS 14.
0:35:32But it's also very easy.
0:35:35You don't have to like dig into the command line
0:35:38and type a defaults thing to turn it off.
0:35:41Like it's a nice, friendlier, big blue button
0:35:46that says turn allow auto updates,
0:35:49and it's sort of a less friendly not now underneath
0:35:54to say not now, I'll do it manually.
0:35:57But it's not hidden, right?
0:35:59- Well, even on my Mac,
0:35:59it's been trying to install Big Sur for a month,
0:36:01and I just don't let it.
0:36:03It needs me to push certain buttons to do the auto update.
0:36:06It's downloaded it.
0:36:06It's already, it keeps popping up saying,
0:36:08hey, you have an update.
0:36:10I ignore it, and I'm fine.
0:36:11I'm not upgrading this machine.
0:36:12It's this, and in fact, my, hey, this is an older machine.
0:36:16I should be, I'm gonna wait a couple of months
0:36:18before I update it, if ever.
0:36:20Turns out that these old 2014 MacBook Pros
0:36:24actually had a problem with Big Sur
0:36:26where it was bricking them.
0:36:27Like it wasn't even like, it was like,
0:36:29you have to like take it in to get service to get out of it.
0:36:31And it's like, well, that's why I don't update automatically.
0:36:34So the only hitch is I do have a red,
0:36:37I have a red badge for software updates.
0:36:40- Yes.
0:36:41- That's it.
0:36:43But otherwise, I don't have to update it, you know?
0:36:46And most Mac apps don't update automatically
0:36:51in the background when the app's not running.
0:36:54The app is running when you launch it
0:36:56and you double click it,
0:36:57and that's when most third party apps
0:36:59that you don't get through the App Store update.
0:37:03And they, you know, a lot of third party Mac apps
0:37:05use the same framework called Sparkle.
0:37:07- Yes.
0:37:08- Everybody listening to this podcast has almost certainly
0:37:11seen a Sparkle app.
0:37:13It's, you know, and it just, there's an update available.
0:37:17Do you wanna download it now?
0:37:18You download it now, and then it downloads
0:37:20and you click install, and then the app quits
0:37:23and it launches itself again, and you've got the new version.
0:37:26And it's all under your control.
0:37:27And if you don't want it, you could not do it.
0:37:30And you probably have a preference to say don't even check.
0:37:34- Yep.
0:37:35- And if you do use the App Store,
0:37:36you can turn off auto updates in the App Store too
0:37:39and install those manually, which is what I do
0:37:41because I don't want my apps to install.
0:37:43I'm volunteering to give myself the chore
0:37:47of purposefully looking.
0:37:49And that is the Macintosh way,
0:37:53and that is inherited by iOS.
0:37:56It's also the iOS way.
0:37:58It should be, and I mean this in a sort of ethical sense,
0:38:03it should be up to the user whether and when
0:38:07they're updating and what the app is doing
0:38:10in the background.
0:38:11Like the flip side of it too is you should be in charge,
0:38:14you should be in control of when your apps update
0:38:17if you want to.
0:38:18And on the flip side is when you drag,
0:38:21when you're like I don't want this app anymore,
0:38:23and you drag it to the trash on the Mac
0:38:26or delete it from your home screen on iOS,
0:38:30you should know that there's nothing left behind
0:38:33that is doing anything.
0:38:34Like are there preference files and stuff like that?
0:38:37Well in some ways that's actually a feature
0:38:38that those get left behind.
0:38:40So if you reinstall it, your data is still there.
0:38:44But in terms of the actual software that runs,
0:38:47it shouldn't be there.
0:38:49There should be nothing left behind.
0:38:51And the way that Chrome is designed
0:38:53where it installs like little invisible background agents
0:38:57outside your applications folder and sets launch daemons
0:39:02so that when you restart it runs,
0:39:05you can delete chrome.app,
0:39:07but when you restart your computer,
0:39:09it's still running the software updater in background
0:39:13once every 3,000 seconds or something like that.
0:39:16- Yeah.
0:39:17- That to me is wrong, it's wrong design,
0:39:22and it's disrespectful and presumptuous.
0:39:25It is them saying, it's the Chrome team saying,
0:39:28"We know better than you how your Chrome should update.
0:39:33"You're better off, we know you're better off
0:39:37"always having your Chrome up to date,
0:39:40"and so we're going to install this for you
0:39:42"and have it happen automatically."
0:39:44And if they didn't have that design,
0:39:46no one would be throwing shade at them
0:39:48for this Chrome is bad scandal.
0:39:51- And I know some people immediately will say,
0:39:52"Well Apple doesn't give you an on/off switch
0:39:53"on your AirPods Max, so Apple's doing the same thing."
0:39:57And I think the difference is just the intention.
0:40:00Apple knows that for a lot of people,
0:40:02these are a wireless product,
0:40:03and if you forget to turn them off,
0:40:04you'll drain your battery, it's a bad experience.
0:40:07So they'd rather just use the accelerometer
0:40:08to power them down for you,
0:40:10and then when you put them back on, they just work.
0:40:12So to me, it's not the system per se,
0:40:15it's the intention and the consideration
0:40:17behind it that matters.
0:40:19- Yeah, so that's my take,
0:40:21is that they should not have this design
0:40:23for software update on the Mac.
0:40:24I don't think they're going to reconsider,
0:40:28but it's never made me comfortable.
0:40:31I don't like it, and I also think
0:40:33that they should document it,
0:40:34if they're going to go this route.
0:40:36They've decided purposefully,
0:40:39it's not like Google is some small, tiny upstart
0:40:42that doesn't have the resources to document how it works.
0:40:45- Yeah, it's open source on Windows, right?
0:40:47It's fully transparent on Windows, but not on Mac.
0:40:49- Right, and there are other apps,
0:40:51and let me just say this before I forget,
0:40:53'cause I want to mention it.
0:40:55So just to name one friend of the show,
0:40:57our good friends at Rogue Amoeba,
0:41:00who make audio software for the Mac,
0:41:02everything from Audio Hijacked to Piezo to Sound Source.
0:41:07Their software, which does very complex,
0:41:12at the high end, like with Audio Hijack,
0:41:14needs stuff that runs outside.
0:41:21It can't just be done as a simple app,
0:41:23to do the sort of audio processing
0:41:25where you're grabbing audio from another application
0:41:27and filtering it into this.
0:41:29Like the whole point of the app
0:41:30is that they're doing things that are outside
0:41:34the capabilities of a simple app that you double click.
0:41:39And so they have very copious instructions and installers
0:41:42to help you do this as best they can
0:41:45to make it as friction-free as possible.
0:41:47- And they are so considerate, their installers.
0:41:49I was gonna bring them up
0:41:50because they are just above and beyond.
0:41:52They've thought through every sort of convenience
0:41:54that you could imagine for those installers.
0:41:55- Right, so they need to have an installer
0:41:59and they need to be running something
0:42:01in addition to a double clickable app.
0:42:04And they explain it all.
0:42:06They make it as easy as possible.
0:42:08They tell you what they're doing.
0:42:10They tell you what they've done.
0:42:11They tell you what needs to be updated,
0:42:13when it needs to be updated.
0:42:16And if you ever decide, I'm out, I don't want this anymore,
0:42:19they make it completely easy to uninstall all of it.
0:42:23And then it's like they were never even there.
0:42:26And Chrome doesn't need to be running
0:42:31in the background like that.
0:42:32It doesn't need to have launch agents
0:42:34and they don't document it
0:42:35and they don't make it easy to uninstall it.
0:42:38Very disrespectful.
0:42:40Anyway, you're in review.
0:42:44Here we go.
0:42:45- What a year.
0:42:49I was looking back, so I made an outline.
0:42:51And the funny part is, the pre-pandemic part of 2020,
0:42:56Apple did nothing.
0:42:58I was like, so--
0:43:00- I mean, they did stuff,
0:43:01but there was no consumer-- - Right.
0:43:03(laughs)
0:43:05So I do see, what did happen in that?
0:43:08So January 'til the beginning of March,
0:43:11I forgot about Richard Plepler coming from HBO.
0:43:15- Yeah.
0:43:18- Yeah, I guess that's interesting.
0:43:20And it does sort of tie in to,
0:43:23I know Ben and I have talked about this
0:43:24on Dithering quite a bit.
0:43:26And MG Siegler, one of my highlights of the year
0:43:30on this podcast was MG's idea that Apple TV+
0:43:35is the new HBO, which is like, oh, come on, that's too.
0:43:38And it's like, wait, maybe.
0:43:40Like, it actually kind of is.
0:43:42I'm a fan of Apple TV+,
0:43:46but even for me, that was a bit too far.
0:43:48And then I was like, no, now that I think about it,
0:43:50I think maybe.
0:43:52'Cause it's both the fact that Apple TV+
0:43:54is a little more careful, and it's like,
0:43:55we're not gonna have the most shows,
0:43:57but we're gonna try for the best shows.
0:43:59And combined with Time Warner doing everything
0:44:02in their power to dilute the HBO brand.
0:44:06So maybe.
0:44:07- Christina Warren, who's been on the show before,
0:44:11brilliant, also said it's like NBC at its heights.
0:44:13And they have the comedies,
0:44:15but they also have the dramas,
0:44:17and they have the edgier stuff like LA Law.
0:44:19It's almost like a classic TV channel program.
0:44:22- Maybe, yeah, I don't know.
0:44:23But really, there wasn't much going on,
0:44:26nothing consumer-facing.
0:44:28And then I recall, I forget if it was in March
0:44:34or if it was the end of February,
0:44:36but I had Federico Vittucci on the show,
0:44:38and it was when Italy was like the hotspot
0:44:42in outside China in the world.
0:44:45And I don't regret it.
0:44:49It's not like I'm embarrassed by my take,
0:44:51but it was very decidedly,
0:44:54hey, how weird is it that Italy got hit hard
0:44:57by this bug like this?
0:44:58Good luck, I hope everything works out for everybody.
0:45:01But it was definitely an assumption
0:45:05that did not hold up very well,
0:45:06that Italy was an outlier,
0:45:09and did not take long for that to be shown
0:45:14as a pretty bad assumption.
0:45:18Like you've noted here that in that time period,
0:45:22Apple's ended trips to China and started closing stores.
0:45:25I forget, when did they start closing stores
0:45:27because of COVID?
0:45:29- I think it was starting in February
0:45:30and then moving into March.
0:45:32And I know Michael Stiebler on 9to5Mac
0:45:34has been really good at pointing this out,
0:45:36but Apple has one of the best COVID response teams,
0:45:40I think, anywhere.
0:45:41You can almost always see by the Apple Store closings
0:45:43what the actual cities should be doing and aren't doing,
0:45:46because they open up and close down on really good data
0:45:49with really good timing.
0:45:51And I think we should all just be following his tracker
0:45:53because it would give us much better information
0:45:55than any government has been giving us.
0:45:56- Yeah, and I think it's as simple
0:46:00as that they are striking the very correct balance
0:46:05between, yes, we would like to be open
0:46:10because we would like to be selling stuff
0:46:12and we would like for our employees to be doing their thing
0:46:17and we want our customers.
0:46:19Everybody's happy when we're selling stuff if it's safe,
0:46:23but if it's not safe, we don't want anybody
0:46:25doing anything risky that they shouldn't do.
0:46:32What is the correct balance between wanting to be open
0:46:36but also wanting to do the right thing?
0:46:38And I think Apple has sort of struck it.
0:46:40I think Josh Centers at Tidbits has called it,
0:46:43he's talked about that too,
0:46:45that it's sort of like the Apple Store index,
0:46:47that where Apple stores are open is a really good indication
0:46:52of where things are spiraling out of control.
0:46:54- Yes, yeah.
0:46:56- In hindsight, for the year,
0:46:59like ways that this year went off the rails,
0:47:02it didn't take too long into the end of April
0:47:06where before it started sinking in
0:47:08that this might be the whole year.
0:47:10I mean, but I didn't anticipate,
0:47:15even if that was the case,
0:47:18if this whole thing had gone like it did really badly,
0:47:23that there would be so much back and forth, right?
0:47:27And if we just take Apple stores as the index,
0:47:29that they'd be opening and then closing
0:47:32and then opening and closing
0:47:34and waves spreading around the country
0:47:38and around the world and North America,
0:47:40it just didn't anticipate,
0:47:43I really just did not anticipate how it would ebb and flow.
0:47:47- Yeah, well, I think the culture clash
0:47:50with a lot of Western countries was not anticipated.
0:47:53They just the way that we would handle it.
0:47:55I think a lot of people just assumed
0:47:57that we would be the best in the world
0:47:59at handling everything and it would not be a problem
0:48:01and we would be helping those poor other countries
0:48:04get through their troubles
0:48:05and it just turned out completely opposite.
0:48:07- Yeah, it's really strange, but it was--
0:48:10- Like we were anticipating a March Apple event.
0:48:12I think all of us thought that there would be,
0:48:15as usual, a March Apple event.
0:48:17We'd all go to Cupertino or wherever they chose to hold it
0:48:20and we would see a bunch of products and announcements
0:48:22and it would be business as usual for the year.
0:48:24- Yeah, and well, and the other thing too,
0:48:26they clearly affected Apple.
0:48:29I mean, they've said this.
0:48:30We don't have to be insiders to know it.
0:48:32They've talked about it publicly,
0:48:35but the way that it hit China,
0:48:38it literally, like an engine seasoning up,
0:48:45it just totally shut down the entire supply chain.
0:48:48I mean, just shut it down.
0:48:50- And also their ability to go there
0:48:51'cause usually they are doing pre-production.
0:48:53They work well ahead of a lot of products
0:48:55and they're doing pre-production
0:48:56and that involves a ton of Apple people going to China,
0:48:58being there on the floor, checking prototypes,
0:49:00doing feedback, monitoring quality,
0:49:02doing, it's a very, well, we talked about this before too,
0:49:05right, like Apple books out entire airline flights
0:49:08routinely to the biggest customers
0:49:09and that all just stopped.
0:49:10- Right, right, like however many employees
0:49:14in normal times are shuttling back and forth
0:49:17between SFO and China, it's, you know,
0:49:21it was that they, after standing order
0:49:25of 50 business class seats a day or something like that.
0:49:28- Yeah, it was some ridiculous number that you doubled it
0:49:31up still, like ridiculous number.
0:49:32- Right, and it was like on United or something,
0:49:35I think it was United, but, and then somebody--
0:49:38- Yeah, someone photographed it at one point
0:49:41and posted it and Apple had it taken down.
0:49:42- Right, well it was like, no, it was, yeah,
0:49:43it was like a United internal sales presentation.
0:49:46- Yes.
0:49:47- Some poor soul at United didn't realize
0:49:52that Apple considered that confidential.
0:49:54- Yeah.
0:49:56- But like somebody pointed out to me, they're like,
0:49:58in addition to like, when I expressed my,
0:50:01okay, I guess I believe it, but if you do the math,
0:50:03that's just an enormous number of seats in the plane.
0:50:08And yes, they don't necessarily aren't doing it every day
0:50:11and if they have all 50 and they're like,
0:50:12well, we only have 10 people going to China today,
0:50:15they, I guess, release those seats
0:50:17and, you know, the United customers can,
0:50:20maybe you get, you're very lucky,
0:50:22you get a free upgrade from coach to business class,
0:50:26you know, for a trans-Pacific flight,
0:50:29I mean, what a delight that would be.
0:50:31But so it doesn't mean they have 50 people doing it
0:50:34every day, but they're certainly close enough
0:50:36that they keep the standing order.
0:50:37But the thing that was the real eye-opener for me
0:50:39was that somebody pointed out, like, that's just United.
0:50:42Like, you know, the people who, you know,
0:50:44some people prefer it 'cause they wanna get the points,
0:50:46but other people who, you know, prefer comfort
0:50:50fly other airlines.
0:50:52- Yeah.
0:50:53- Like the Asian airlines and you get a better,
0:50:56you get a better experience.
0:50:57They're like, and, you know, and they have the discretion
0:51:00not to have leaked how many seats Apple has on those points.
0:51:03Well, anyway, all those flights weren't even taking off,
0:51:07let alone being filled with Apple employees.
0:51:10- Yeah.
0:51:11- And in hindsight, so again, speaking now,
0:51:14me and you speaking in December, Apple made it work.
0:51:18I mean, this is, has been, I don't know what, if anything,
0:51:23in theory, Apple wanted to ship in 2020 and didn't,
0:51:27but, you know, like, let's say like this,
0:51:29the tiles project, right?
0:51:30Like, I don't know, there's a couple of,
0:51:32what else is rumored?
0:51:34The tiles thing and the headphones.
0:51:36- I mean, the AirPods Max were one of those things
0:51:38we didn't think that they were gonna ship
0:51:39and they still got them out. - They still got them out.
0:51:42- Yeah.
0:51:42- Damn if they didn't make it work.
0:51:44I mean, it's really, really quite remarkable, but.
0:51:48- They updated almost everything.
0:51:51What do you think the March event would have been?
0:51:53So what they did is they had a remote press briefing
0:51:57on March 17th and I don't think, I'm 99% sure,
0:52:02I just looked at my notes before the show,
0:52:04that this wasn't something, it was only press only
0:52:07who got to watch it.
0:52:08It wasn't streamed.
0:52:09- Yes.
0:52:11Yeah, they hadn't got that.
0:52:12I think it would have been almost identical
0:52:14to the 2016 March event where they announced the iPhone SE
0:52:17and back then the 9.7 inch iPad Pro
0:52:19and it would have just been the second iPhone SE
0:52:22and the new A12Z iPad Pro.
0:52:24- Yeah, so what they did announce on March 17th
0:52:26was updated MacBook Airs where the real,
0:52:30there was some kind of Intel 10th generation,
0:52:33blah, blah, blah and it was like.
0:52:35- Ice lake, yeah.
0:52:36- But it was really, it gets the good keyboard
0:52:39that had just come out a year ago,
0:52:41as you and I speak right now,
0:52:43a year ago in the 16 inch MacBook Pro.
0:52:46- Yes.
0:52:47- And it was like in March, they were like,
0:52:49okay, you know the good keyboard,
0:52:50now it's in the MacBook Air
0:52:52and they could have stopped right there.
0:52:54The iPad Pros got updated
0:52:57which in one of the weirdest updates for the iPad ever,
0:53:02right, 'cause it was like,
0:53:05they've never done this before instead of,
0:53:07they didn't go to it, they skipped the whole A13 generation
0:53:11and went from the A12X to the A12Z
0:53:15and the A12Z really was just enabling
0:53:19the eighth GPU core, right?
0:53:23- Yeah, it was higher bin
0:53:24because their yields were good enough
0:53:25that they didn't have to worry about
0:53:27you know, the expense of those chips.
0:53:29But it also, I wonder if they were just so busy with M1
0:53:33and the A14 that they didn't have time
0:53:36to make the A13X and they still wanted to get LIDAR
0:53:40out on the market as early as possible.
0:53:42- I guess that's the thinking.
0:53:44If I had to guess as what my theory is,
0:53:48is that yeah, that they,
0:53:50the A12Z or X was so good
0:53:55that they could easily not ship an A13X
0:53:59and iPads, iPad Pros are, nobody's gonna say,
0:54:04oh, this is starting to feel pokey.
0:54:06- Yes.
0:54:07- It was a simple, the move from the X to the Z
0:54:12going from seven cores where if you take out your microscope
0:54:16and look, there's eight cores, but only seven were enabled
0:54:18was clearly a binning issue, right?
0:54:21Where they just got better at making them
0:54:23and like, yeah, we can just guarantee all eight of them
0:54:25were are good to go.
0:54:27And the real big hardware change
0:54:29was going from a tiny little like old,
0:54:33just single lens camera to a bigger square.
0:54:37Okay, now it's a whole camera system with LIDAR.
0:54:42Which again, why though?
0:54:44Like that's my takeaway now lo these 10 months later
0:54:49is why, why care about getting LIDAR out for the iPad Pro?
0:54:55Like I still don't see what the advantage,
0:54:58what the point of that was.
0:54:59- I just think it's them,
0:55:02'cause it was gonna come to the iPhone
0:55:03and it still is, you and I've heard rumors for years
0:55:05about a much better camera app
0:55:07that tied into the whole AR system
0:55:09and it still hasn't come out.
0:55:10And that was the rumor,
0:55:12because the iPad Pro was so strange for other reasons,
0:55:15like the camera team didn't enable portrait mode,
0:55:18even though it has LIDAR.
0:55:19So if you hit the portrait mode button
0:55:21and you're using the rear cameras,
0:55:22it actually flips around
0:55:23and switches to the true depth camera front facing,
0:55:26which is a really weird experience.
0:55:28It just felt like they wanted to get this iPad out.
0:55:30They didn't have time to do everything.
0:55:32So they just shipped it, which is really super odd.
0:55:35But my only guess is that they need to get this technology
0:55:38out so that we're all, developers especially,
0:55:41but we're all using this stuff far enough advanced
0:55:44that they can get it into the iPhone
0:55:46and then into whatever wearable products
0:55:48they're thinking about for next year.
0:55:50- I guess it's just hard for me to see it.
0:55:55And it's like, maybe there's a market in AR software
0:55:58for iOS and for the phone that I'm just not seeing.
0:56:01Like I know that you can get like the Ikea app
0:56:03and drop a Kerfloggen chair in the middle of your living room
0:56:08and see what it looks like.
0:56:11And I've played with that and there's some cool stuff,
0:56:14but maybe people are using that more than I think.
0:56:17Like I've-- - I don't think so.
0:56:18Like I don't think they needed to ship this.
0:56:19Like honestly, I don't think we would have noticed
0:56:21if they hadn't updated the iPad Pro
0:56:22because the Magic Keyboard, which was the biggest deal,
0:56:25and the cursor support worked with the A12X version
0:56:29as well. - Right, right.
0:56:30To me, the more interesting use of LiDAR
0:56:34as we know it now in these devices
0:56:37is just as an extra aid for the regular camera system.
0:56:42Which is what the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max do.
0:56:47Is that they will-- - And the iPad does not do.
0:56:50- Right, that they'll use LiDAR in low light situations
0:56:55to help with autofocus.
0:56:57And they only need it in low light
0:56:59because when it's not low light,
0:57:01the regular camera lens needs no help.
0:57:03It autofocuses so fast that the LiDAR's too crude to help.
0:57:08It's like, yeah, just pitch in when it's dark
0:57:11and that's good enough.
0:57:13But the iPad doesn't do that.
0:57:16And I did ask, I remember, not that I'm,
0:57:20it was all that, (laughs)
0:57:23not that it wasn't an obvious question,
0:57:25but I remember in an off the,
0:57:27talking with people at Apple off the record
0:57:29being briefed on the iPad, I asked about,
0:57:32well, does this LiDAR sensor in the iPad Pro
0:57:35help with autofocus with the regular camera?
0:57:38And the answer was, well, that's an interesting idea,
0:57:41but no. (laughs)
0:57:43- And I assumed that meant it was coming this fall,
0:57:45but it didn't come this fall either.
0:57:46- Right.
0:57:48That's an interesting idea is always,
0:57:51that's like the best you ever get from them. (laughs)
0:57:54- Yeah, yes. - It usually means,
0:57:56it usually means, mm, I'd like to say something, but I can't.
0:58:01And I guess it's not coming to these iPad Pros.
0:58:05- Which I don't get because if they've built it now
0:58:06for the iPhone and they're still like,
0:58:08iPad OS and iOS are still synonymous systems.
0:58:13I was surprised they didn't update the camera app
0:58:14in iPad OS 14 to just do all this.
0:58:17- Or at least like in 14.1 or 14.2
0:58:21because there's always,
0:58:22we're starting to see a pattern now
0:58:25where the 14 or whatever the new integer is,
0:58:29.0 is very specifically cut off in August for the phones,
0:58:34for the new phones.
0:58:38And it's the .1 update that is really the .0,
0:58:43or what we used to think of as a .0.
0:58:47It's like the .0s are somewhere between beta and real.
0:58:52And in fact, going back to our Chrome talk a couple
0:58:55of minutes ago, Apple doesn't even push the 14.0
0:59:00or 13.0s to people as like an automatic update.
0:59:04Like there's this weird internal criterion
0:59:08that they don't want to talk about
0:59:10as to when they decide to push the,
0:59:14okay, yeah, here's your red badge for upgrade,
0:59:18get the new version of the OS.
0:59:20And the .0s usually aren't it.
0:59:23- I just assume it's the emoji update.
0:59:25That's the thing everyone cares about.
0:59:27- You know that that's true.
0:59:28When they really want you to update,
0:59:31when they're like, yeah, this is rock solid.
0:59:33This is actually pushing this update out
0:59:36is going to cut down on our tech support
0:59:39and Genius Bar appointments, not increase them.
0:59:42That's when they're like,
0:59:43and here's a bunch of new emoji.
0:59:45- Here's a new emoji, yeah.
0:59:47- So I know it wasn't much else from that though.
0:59:50I don't really have much to say.
0:59:51I have nothing to say about the MacBook Air,
0:59:53that the Intel one, other than that,
0:59:55the keyboard was better.
0:59:57I can say one-
1:00:00- It was trash, but the keyboard was better.
1:00:02- One year later, the return of scissor key switches
1:00:06in the keyboards has to be considered a triumph.
1:00:09We now no longer talk about bad MacBook keyboards,
1:00:13except as a very faint memory of the-
1:00:17- It's a faint and painful memory.
1:00:18- Right.
1:00:20April 15th, the iPhone SE 2 came out, second generation.
1:00:25I can only presume that if,
1:00:27that the plan was to announce that all at one March event,
1:00:31that it would have been the iPhone SE,
1:00:34the tweaked iPad Pro's and the MacBook.
1:00:39And it just wasn't because of COVID.
1:00:43That's what I think.
1:00:44- And the odd thing to me is that they had
1:00:46really well-produced videos for the iPad Pro.
1:00:48They had Craig Federighi showing off the keyboard
1:00:51and the cursor, and they had a video with developers
1:00:54showing off different parts of AR,
1:00:55and there was nothing for the iPhone SE.
1:00:57Like, as far as I can tell, no Apple presentation at all.
1:01:00- Well, I guess we should talk about that.
1:01:02I guess that the bigger part of the March announcement
1:01:04wasn't really the iPad Pros, but the Magic Keyboard.
1:01:07And the Magic Keyboard, what makes it magic,
1:01:12it is a nice device.
1:01:14I really like it.
1:01:15It's one of my- - Me too.
1:01:16- It would be one of my top picks of the year
1:01:18as an Apple product, but it's not just the keyboard itself,
1:01:23it's the iPad OS update that enabled
1:01:27a real mouse cursor system, system-wide,
1:01:32which was like 13.3 or something like that.
1:01:36- Yeah, they didn't even wait for 14.0.
1:01:39- Right, they just released it, and it just worked.
1:01:43Apps had to be updated to really support it,
1:01:47but even with doing nothing, it was still pretty usable.
1:01:50Like, it just clicks, equals a touch,
1:01:53and all of a sudden, you and I,
1:01:56we could just interrupt people right here,
1:02:00tell people, you can listen to me and Rene argue
1:02:05about touch screen Macs, and if iPads can add mouse support
1:02:10without messing things up,
1:02:12why can't Macs add touch screens the same way?
1:02:16You need a whole 38 minutes of us talking about it,
1:02:19and you can go see it on Rene's YouTube channel,
1:02:22'cause there it is.
1:02:23- That's terrific, but the thing that I thought
1:02:27was super fun about this was,
1:02:29because it leaked, people found it in the firmware,
1:02:31and everyone just assumed it was such a big change,
1:02:33it would have to be iOS 14.
1:02:36- Yeah, definitely, yeah.
1:02:37The rumors just all jumped to the conclusion
1:02:41that it was iOS 14, and they were just like,
1:02:43"Nope, right here in the middle of March."
1:02:47With a new keyboard, they just shipped it.
1:02:49- Right, and it's great, it really is.
1:02:51I use my iPad so much more than I ever did before.
1:02:55It is my kitchen laptop.
1:02:58I go days at a time without taking my iPad
1:03:01off the Magic Keyboard.
1:03:03It was neat because I had the trackpad
1:03:06and external keyboard support,
1:03:08I mean, the external keyboard worked before,
1:03:10but without a trackpad, it was always,
1:03:12it's just amazing how much more useful it is.
1:03:15Like, when your hands are on the keyboard
1:03:17to have a trackpad right there
1:03:19and not have to reach and touch the screen.
1:03:21But the Magic Keyboard is so good at it.
1:03:26And in a way where they didn't cripple
1:03:29the support for just using an external trackpad
1:03:35or Bluetooth keyboard to get you,
1:03:38like, the only good way to use it
1:03:41is to buy this $170 Magic Keyboard or whatever.
1:03:44How much is a Magic Keyboard?
1:03:46I think it's--
1:03:47- I just wanna call it $300, I don't remember exactly,
1:03:49but it's incredibly expensive.
1:03:50- It's very expensive.
1:03:52But they've made just regular,
1:03:56if you just use a Bluetooth mouse or a Magic trackpad
1:04:01from a Mac that you have laying around
1:04:03and whatever third-party keyboard you want,
1:04:06they've made it as good as it could be
1:04:08with Bluetooth and iPad, you know,
1:04:11but the thing that I've gone back and forth
1:04:14over the months of 2020 trying, you know,
1:04:18using mechanical keyboards and stuff with my iPad
1:04:22and going back to the Magic Keyboard,
1:04:23the thing that is so, that truly is the magic part of it
1:04:26is that you never have to pair and unpair it, right?
1:04:29Like, when I'm using a Magic trackpad,
1:04:33just the standalone trackpad and a keyboard,
1:04:36I might like the keyboard better
1:04:37'cause it's a clicky mechanical keyboard,
1:04:39but I pick my iPad up and I go off
1:04:44and it's still connected, right?
1:04:45And here's where it's like you want, in theory,
1:04:48you want Bluetooth to have as good a range as possible,
1:04:52but it's like the better Bluetooth's range is,
1:04:54the more likely it is that I've wandered several rooms
1:04:57apart from my kitchen and I tap on something
1:05:00to type a URL or something and I can't,
1:05:04I don't have an on-screen keyboard, why is it,
1:05:06oh, it still thinks it's connected to the Bluetooth keyboard.
1:05:09- Yeah.
1:05:10- And that's how my mind thinks.
1:05:12It's like you still think you're connected
1:05:14and it's like, no, I am connected,
1:05:16that's why there's no on-screen keyboard
1:05:18and I gotta go up to Control Center
1:05:20and turn on airplane mode, give it a second,
1:05:23turn off airplane mode and then it all works.
1:05:27It always takes me out of it,
1:05:28whereas when I'm using the actual Magic Keyboard accessory,
1:05:32as soon as I take the iPad off the keyboard,
1:05:35the iPad instantly knows, okay,
1:05:37now I'll give you the on-screen keyboard
1:05:40and it never interrupts your flow.
1:05:42It is-- - It's like a dock,
1:05:43it's like two states and I think Federighi
1:05:45shows that off right in that initial video
1:05:47where you come, you slap it down, it's docked,
1:05:49it's your keyboard, you pick it up, you walk away,
1:05:52it's undocked, it's no longer your keyboard.
1:05:54- It is a terrific experience, it really is,
1:05:57it is so very strange, it is in fact $300.
1:06:02- Yes.
1:06:04- I think that the 13-inch one is an extra 30 bucks, right?
1:06:09It's like $329?
1:06:10It doesn't seem right, does that seem right to you
1:06:15that you have to pay more for the bigger one?
1:06:18- I guess big means more, I don't know.
1:06:20- But it's like you get-- - In your inventory psyche.
1:06:21- You get the same number of keys, you know?
1:06:25- Yeah, they're just cramped closer together on the 11.
1:06:28- It does seem weird, oh, it's $350,
1:06:30so it's $299 for the 11-inch and $350 for the 12.9-inch.
1:06:35That doesn't seem right to me, but either way,
1:06:38it is a premium price.
1:06:39I have to say though, if you really want to use your iPad
1:06:43as a laptop, it's worth it, it is.
1:06:46- Yes.
1:06:47- And as the year has gone on,
1:06:49I see that as money well spent,
1:06:51and this is for me a person who still,
1:06:54even now that I'm more in love with using the iPad
1:06:56than ever before, easily still the first Apple platform
1:07:00I would ditch from my life if somebody came to me
1:07:03in some kind of bizarre, sicko, hostage situation
1:07:08and said, "You have to get rid of one of your Apple devices
1:07:10"and never use it again."
1:07:11The iPad would still be the first one I would get rid of.
1:07:14- In a bizarre Christopher Nolan movie,
1:07:15if you were forced to choose, the iPad would go first.
1:07:18- Right.
1:07:19Tenet 2.
1:07:23- Yeah.
1:07:24- It's really, what a successful product.
1:07:28And as the months have gone on,
1:07:30I'm only more keenly aware of how very nice it is.
1:07:34I don't have much more to say about it though.
1:07:38- No, I think it was a terrific,
1:07:39really good start to the year.
1:07:40- Yeah.
1:07:41Next up would be,
1:07:43I don't think there was anything else, still WWDC.
1:07:47- Yeah.
1:07:48- And so there's the run-up where it was like,
1:07:51I forget when they announced it,
1:07:52but they pulled the trigger pretty early and just said,
1:07:54"You know what, we're not gonna have,
1:07:56"we're gonna, you know."
1:07:57About as early as they usually ever announced WWDC
1:08:00and they just said,
1:08:01"You know, we're gonna do it all virtual this year."
1:08:04- And people weren't sure
1:08:06because Google just flat out canceled IO.
1:08:08- Right, and Facebook was going,
1:08:12Facebook like wavered on their developer conference.
1:08:14- On F8, yeah.
1:08:15- Yeah, and then they were like, "Ah, forget it.
1:08:17"I don't know, we're not gonna have it."
1:08:19- Microsoft did a virtual one,
1:08:21but it was very different than what WWDC ended up being.
1:08:23- Yeah.
1:08:24WWDC, in hindsight,
1:08:27it's really kind of remarkable
1:08:31that it was only three weeks later
1:08:37than it probably would have been
1:08:38if it had been held for real.
1:08:40And how high the production values were
1:08:44and how popular it was, how well received.
1:08:47I mean, it was so well received
1:08:50that I would say there's more people
1:08:54that I observed who said,
1:08:57"I hope that this is what they do every year
1:08:59"than the other way around."
1:09:02- And developers were angry at Apple going into WWDC
1:09:05because of all the things with Hey and with,
1:09:07I forget the account that got canceled.
1:09:09So there was a lot of developer relations
1:09:13sort of a fix-up to be doing,
1:09:15but it seemed like when WWDC hit,
1:09:17a lot of that got put aside.
1:09:19- Yeah, it was a remarkably successful WWDC,
1:09:22even with the complete inversion
1:09:26of it being a real-world, traditional,
1:09:30multi-thousand attendee conference
1:09:32in a big convention center,
1:09:34to being completely virtual.
1:09:37It was very well received.
1:09:39And content-wise, all sorts of stuff
1:09:44that I think was also very, very well received.
1:09:46It was a very good year for Apple's platforms.
1:09:49- And they kept the fun part.
1:09:51When the different engineers and program managers
1:09:54showed up to do their sessions,
1:09:55they all had different sort of Easter eggs
1:09:57on the desks and in the background,
1:09:59and different sort of fun things in it.
1:10:01And perennial friend of the show,
1:10:03Serenity Caldwell, did these daily wrap-ups
1:10:05from the evangelism team on what happened every day.
1:10:08- They were so good and so tight.
1:10:11It was like, today's news in 60 seconds or 90 seconds,
1:10:15or some unbelievably short period of time.
1:10:19I was like, I know her.
1:10:20She used to be at my show.
1:10:22Yes, this is really good.
1:10:24And it was like a virtual Serenity Memoji.
1:10:27- Memoji, yeah.
1:10:28- Yeah, and it was like, that looks like her.
1:10:30- Yep, and they all had that.
1:10:31All the engineers, all the program managers
1:10:33had their little Memoji with the computer
1:10:34and the stickers and everything.
1:10:36- I think that, I think that,
1:10:40I don't know, I honestly don't,
1:10:44I could see this going either way.
1:10:45Like, is this, COVID aside,
1:10:48I mean, 2021, I think that is probably
1:10:51going to be virtual again,
1:10:52because I don't see, they might as well plan for it.
1:10:56And it's not that it seems like madness
1:11:00to plan on having a real world,
1:11:025,000 person convention in June,
1:11:04but it just seems so ill,
1:11:05it just seems like unlikely to be advisable, right?
1:11:08Like, late May rolls around and COVID really is so,
1:11:13you know, if it's really just like,
1:11:17what's the most optimistic, realistic scenario
1:11:19for late May around the world?
1:11:21Imagine that in your mind,
1:11:23there's not much, hotspots are down,
1:11:24vaccinations have largely helped mitigate this.
1:11:29I still don't think you want to put 5,000 people
1:11:33from around the world in a convention center together, right?
1:11:37And it's like, vaccines aren't a guarantee, right?
1:11:40It's like, you know, that's not the way they work.
1:11:43- And that's if enough people take them,
1:11:44which, you know, we still don't know
1:11:46what the supply and the take.
1:11:47I think optimistically, we've heard maybe by the summer,
1:11:49things will be better.
1:11:50So maybe the September events are being thought of
1:11:53either way, but I can't imagine
1:11:54they're thinking about that for June.
1:11:56- Yeah, so I would have to guess that WWDC 2021
1:12:00is almost certainly going to be a virtual event
1:12:03like last year's, and will, you know,
1:12:07but let's flash forward another year, like, let's, you know,
1:12:11and I think it's very realistic to think that by June 2022,
1:12:14COVID is past tense, and we were like, ooh, remember that.
1:12:18Is WWDC permanently a virtual event?
1:12:22I don't know how to predict on that
1:12:24because I could see it both ways.
1:12:26I think there's aspects of the in-person experience
1:12:29that are irreplaceable.
1:12:31From my personal perspective in the media
1:12:34and getting to talk to people in person,
1:12:38I mean, I'll still talk to Apple people in person.
1:12:40They'll still have press events.
1:12:42The keynote may well involve, be more like a traditional,
1:12:45in a virtual post-COVID world,
1:12:48might be exactly like the iPhone events
1:12:50where the only people who attend in person are the media,
1:12:54right, and it's at the Steve Jobs Theater
1:12:57and, you know, with 300 or 400 people
1:13:00instead of 5,000 people.
1:13:02So that aspect of it, I'm sure, will still be, you know,
1:13:08replicated post-COVID.
1:13:10It's the fact that there's so many people
1:13:12in the developer community who I know
1:13:15and both at a personal level but at a professional level
1:13:20where I hear things and I learn things, you know.
1:13:24There's certain aspects of real-world interaction
1:13:27and trust that don't happen without being real,
1:13:30and I would miss that.
1:13:32- I still remember when iOS 7 was announced,
1:13:34me, you, Guy English, Lorne Briktor,
1:13:36and a couple, you know, GPU-savvy friends
1:13:39standing in a bar trying to figure out
1:13:40how they were injecting all the transparency
1:13:42and Gaussian blur into the system,
1:13:44and you just can't do that virtually.
1:13:46- I do remember that, yeah.
1:13:48My guesses were pretty bad, but yeah,
1:13:51I see in Lorne and Guy try to figure that out.
1:13:53It was pretty good, yeah, and watching Lorne, like,
1:13:55move his thumb up and down just to--
1:13:57- Yes. - Yeah, I don't know.
1:13:59What do you think?
1:13:59What's your gut feeling on the long, you know,
1:14:01what Apple's thinking about this?
1:14:04- I think, well, and I say think, but I also mean hope
1:14:07because, you know, someone newly indie,
1:14:09the idea of having, you know, I still have no idea
1:14:11how to save or spend on any of this travel stuff myself
1:14:13'cause I don't have a giant media company
1:14:14paying for everything anymore,
1:14:17but I think a hybrid model,
1:14:18just given how good the production value was,
1:14:21like, I went back and looked at some previous events,
1:14:23and the stage experience is great,
1:14:25but it doesn't look as visually stunning
1:14:27as what they did this year,
1:14:29and I'm sure we'll get into how they progressed
1:14:30and got better and better at the events over time,
1:14:33but they really started upping the ante
1:14:35on how you could do these sorts of things
1:14:37as stream-only events,
1:14:39and I think for the consumer stuff,
1:14:41it still makes a lot of sense to present that,
1:14:43and for developers, because 5,000 isn't, you know,
1:14:45out of the millions of Apple developers,
1:14:47the amount they can reach through a virtual event
1:14:49is just significantly higher,
1:14:52that I wouldn't be surprised if they have a hybrid model
1:14:54where people do come gather for things
1:14:57that they really need to, like,
1:14:58for brand new products that require hands-on
1:15:01or they want to give you, like, a tour
1:15:03of the audio facility or eventually,
1:15:04maybe an AR facility or something.
1:15:06I think that'll make sense to do in person,
1:15:08but I think as much as possible,
1:15:10if they can project this sort of stuff to the world,
1:15:13it just invites everyone in
1:15:15to, like, a really first-class experience.
1:15:17- I feel like with the keynote,
1:15:20or let's say keynotes, plural,
1:15:23because, you know, the iPhone event is always a keynote
1:15:26and the Apple Watch event this year,
1:15:28which was separate from the iPhone, et cetera,
1:15:30the keynotes, I think, are different.
1:15:33I mean, they clearly are different,
1:15:35but I don't know that I, even as somebody
1:15:38whose job it is to be tuned into them,
1:15:40I wouldn't say that they're better or worse.
1:15:43They're just very different.
1:15:45- They're like plays versus movies or TV shows.
1:15:47- Right, and yeah, and I think Apple,
1:15:52I think Apple really likes the production value playfulness
1:15:56of these virtual ones and the control it gives them,
1:16:00and I'm sure it's a little bit of a breather for them
1:16:02that they're not live, and so nothing can, you know--
1:16:05- Their face ID can't go wrong.
1:16:07- Right, and they can, you know, like,
1:16:09they go to, you know, if it's a Monday morning keynote,
1:16:12they go to bed Sunday night, and they know it's already,
1:16:15you know, somebody's just gonna hit the play button,
1:16:17and it streams, and they've got
1:16:20the streaming stuff down cold, right?
1:16:22I mean, they sleep more soundly the night before a keynote
1:16:26than they did when it's live,
1:16:29but I do think Apple genuinely, truly appreciates
1:16:34the intangible benefit of an enthusiastic live audience,
1:16:40and that there's, not just for the people in the room,
1:16:46which again is limited to 5,000 out of, you know,
1:16:49an intended audience of, you know, I don't know,
1:16:51millions, really, but that it gives an energy
1:16:54to the presentation, even to the people
1:16:56who are watching from home, you know?
1:16:58- Craig's jokes are just night and day
1:17:00when that audience is there to react to them.
1:17:02(laughing)
1:17:03- Right, they had to switch to like a romance shot,
1:17:07you know, of him opening up the MacBook to get it back.
1:17:10- Or just the crack marketing team stuff.
1:17:12- Right, it just doesn't, it's different,
1:17:15but I feel like the actual sessions for WWDC,
1:17:18which is actually the meat of the conference
1:17:21as a developer conference, right,
1:17:23were clearly night and day way better this year
1:17:28without an audience, without being on stage,
1:17:32because it's just more, they were meant
1:17:36to be watched remotely on a, you know,
1:17:39you're watching in the developer app on your Mac
1:17:42or on your iPad or on your Apple TV or whatever,
1:17:44but that's how they were shot,
1:17:47as opposed to when they're delivered live
1:17:50and it's for the people in the audience in the room
1:17:54and the slides.
1:17:56It's not that they were bad that way,
1:17:58but they're just clearly better this way
1:18:00and as the fact that they're all delivered
1:18:05by the actual engineers who work on these technologies,
1:18:10right, if it's like, you know, what's new in core text,
1:18:14you know, and you're talking about
1:18:15all these great new features for right to left languages
1:18:19and stuff like that, the person who is delivering the session
1:18:24is the person who's just spent a year
1:18:26or maybe two years or three years working on it
1:18:29and they know it and they're excited about it
1:18:31and now they're getting to deliver it
1:18:33and they always, it always amazes me
1:18:36how well they do every year, you know,
1:18:38because it's not their job.
1:18:39Their job, 51 weeks of the year,
1:18:41is being the super nerd on whatever it is
1:18:45they're the super nerd about in Apple's platforms
1:18:49and in one week of the year, they're presenting
1:18:52and I know it takes more than a week.
1:18:53I actually, that takes away from how long I know
1:18:55they put into the sessions, you know,
1:18:57but for a few weeks a year,
1:18:58they're doing this to do one session.
1:19:00It's more comfortable, I think, clearly,
1:19:05however awkward it is for an engineer
1:19:07to suddenly be in a pristine Apple staged room
1:19:12where they held all these sessions with a camera crew.
1:19:15- It's probably easier than code review.
1:19:18- Well, maybe, but it takes away
1:19:22the stage fright aspect of it though, right?
1:19:24Like where you're not in front of an audience
1:19:27of hundreds of people in a blackened,
1:19:32stage-lit, theater-lit conference room, right?
1:19:37- Yeah.
1:19:38- Everybody, I mean, I do my live show once a year.
1:19:41I mean, I speak publicly a little bit more frequently
1:19:46than most people and it makes me nervous as hell
1:19:50every single time.
1:19:52I mean, it just takes away one thing
1:19:56that they're not suited at and it's just a better format.
1:19:59So I mean, the sessions, I honestly didn't see one comment
1:20:04from anybody that wasn't along the lines of,
1:20:07oh my God, the sessions are so much better this year.
1:20:09They're just more comfortable, it's just easier to edit
1:20:14and cut between screenshots and video of the screen,
1:20:18of the technology being shown off and the speaker.
1:20:23And it was delightful and it felt like it was,
1:20:26you got so much more of a sense of the presenters.
1:20:31- Did you get any feedback on this?
1:20:32The only thing I didn't hear about
1:20:33and didn't follow up on is the labs
1:20:35because those, I know they tried to do the best they could
1:20:38virtually, but that was such a hallway filled with people,
1:20:41talking and interacting with the engineers,
1:20:44showing them their apps back and forth.
1:20:46And I'm guessing that all just transpired
1:20:48over WebEx this year.
1:20:50- Yeah, I didn't--
1:20:50- But it must feel different than being live.
1:20:53- I didn't really hear much about that, yay or nay.
1:20:56It has-- - Yeah, me either.
1:20:57- Yeah, I can't help but think that there's,
1:21:00that part of what's missing from that lab experience is,
1:21:05it can't be replicated over WebEx, right?
1:21:10- Yeah.
1:21:10- It, you just always, and again, it's not,
1:21:14it sounds shady that they're trying to cover their ass
1:21:17and that's not what I'm alleging,
1:21:19that there are things that if you can grab the ear
1:21:23of somebody who works on core audio for your audio app
1:21:28and show them the bug right there,
1:21:30you might get them to say something
1:21:32that they wouldn't put in writing in a radar.
1:21:35And again, it's not because what it was
1:21:38is something that would get them in trouble
1:21:41if they put it in writing.
1:21:42It's just, it's like I said about just human interaction
1:21:46and trust, you just get something and they might say,
1:21:48ah, you know what, I know, how are you doing this?
1:21:52Are you doing this with blah, blah, blah?
1:21:54And it's like, yes, that's exactly what I'm doing.
1:21:56It's like, ah.
1:21:57- There's a lack of formality and intermediation
1:21:59that just occurs in person.
1:22:01I think, and they might say, ah,
1:22:02I think there might be a bug there.
1:22:04I'm sorry, do you have a radar?
1:22:06Yes, here's my radars.
1:22:07Okay, I'm gonna take a note of this.
1:22:09I will look at them, but in the meantime,
1:22:11if you do it this other way,
1:22:13I think you might have a workaround.
1:22:14And you just hear stories that come out
1:22:16of lab interactions like that
1:22:18that I bet are less effective.
1:22:21Is it a reason to hold 5,000 attendee WWDC in San Jose?
1:22:26I don't know.
1:22:27- Yeah, no, I don't know either.
1:22:30But you know, it's like someone going up and saying,
1:22:31yeah, I've made your framework cry and here's how.
1:22:34- Yeah.
1:22:35(laughing)
1:22:36All right, let me take a break,
1:22:39breaking after WWDC and thank our next sponsor,
1:22:42and it's our good friends at Linode.
1:22:44Oh, man, do I like Linode.
1:22:46Linode is where Daring Fireball is hosted.
1:22:48It is a fantastic web service.
1:22:51I use like a thimbleful of the variable ocean of technology
1:22:55that Linode has available for much more complicated websites
1:22:58and services than Daring Fireball.
1:23:00But it's so delightful.
1:23:03What a great service.
1:23:04Whether you're working on a personal project
1:23:06or managing truly integrated scale infrastructure,
1:23:10you deserve simple, affordable,
1:23:11and accessible cloud computing solutions
1:23:13that will take your project to the next level.
1:23:16You can simplify your cloud infrastructure
1:23:18with Linode's Linux virtual machines
1:23:20to develop, deploy, and scale your modern applications
1:23:23and websites faster and easier.
1:23:26Now, you can get started on Linode today
1:23:28with $100 in free credit just for listeners of the talk show.
1:23:33That's no exaggeration, $100 in free credit.
1:23:36When they first offered this, I double checked it
1:23:38just to make sure I wasn't misreading it
1:23:40'cause I didn't wanna get 'em in trouble
1:23:41if it was like $10 and somebody typed an extra zero.
1:23:44But it's true, $100 free credit.
1:23:47Get all the details on how to get it
1:23:49at linode.com/thetalkshow.
1:23:53Linode.com/thetalkshow.
1:23:56They've got 11 global data centers,
1:23:5824/7, 365 human support.
1:24:01That 365, the hell, that's coming up
1:24:03by the time you listen to this.
1:24:04These are the days of the year where, you know,
1:24:07363 calendar support versus 365, you know,
1:24:10Christmas, New Year's, days like this coming up.
1:24:13They're there standing by ready for you
1:24:16in case you're working on New Year's Day,
1:24:17but you should probably take off.
1:24:20But they're there if you need 'em.
1:24:21Everything you can do, you can use your $100 in credit
1:24:24on their S3-compatible object storage,
1:24:26which just came out in 2020 on managed Kubernetes and more.
1:24:31So once again, the URL is linode.com/thetalkshow.
1:24:36And once you go there, they just click
1:24:38on Create Free Account.
1:24:41There's a big button.
1:24:42That's how you get started.
1:24:43My thanks to Linode.
1:24:44- So we buried the lead on this entire WWDC thing, Jon.
1:24:49- Which was?
1:24:50- Apple Silicon.
1:24:51(Jon laughs)
1:24:53- I don't know, I don't know, when do we talk about it?
1:24:55Do we talk about it at WWDC or do we talk about it
1:24:58at the end of the year as the last thing of the year?
1:25:00I mean, it's--
1:25:01- Well, they at least announced it,
1:25:02and the best thing about that is we didn't have to put up
1:25:04with rumors about Apple Silicon anymore.
1:25:06- Right.
1:25:07It was, it turned out much like I thought,
1:25:12which was that performance was going to be really stunning.
1:25:19Like, and I was like, am I mistreating?
1:25:22I actually, I don't do this a lot,
1:25:23but I went back and watched the WWDC keynote again,
1:25:27leading up to the actual M1 announcement
1:25:29to watch Johnny Cerucci's part again,
1:25:32'cause I was like, when I watched that,
1:25:34it seemed to me like he was saying,
1:25:36I would love to tell you more, but we're building,
1:25:39and I think I was right.
1:25:42Like, he said was, look, we started with iPhone chips,
1:25:45and I guess the iPad, you know, iPhone and iPad.
1:25:47And then he said, we took what we knew about those
1:25:51and we shrunk it to make Apple Watch.
1:25:55- Yeah.
1:25:56- And now we're doing the opposite.
1:25:57We're going bigger to make this for Mac,
1:26:00whereas opposed to we're just gonna put A13
1:26:04and A14 chips in Macs.
1:26:06- He said a family of SOCs.
1:26:07- Right, and like the closest he got to saying
1:26:12what they wanted, what they were going to do
1:26:14was to say that we make these chips to suit the devices.
1:26:19And in the same way that the A series chips
1:26:22would be too big, too hot, too battery,
1:26:25and overkill for use in a watch,
1:26:28they're not good enough as is for use in the Mac.
1:26:33I mean, and that's not to say they're bad,
1:26:34they're just not meant for it, right?
1:26:36They don't have, they're not meant
1:26:37for high-capacity storage.
1:26:39- Yeah, no, for sure.
1:26:42I think the key thing, though,
1:26:44well, first it was great to see Cerucci.
1:26:45I think it's the first time we've seen him
1:26:47in an Apple presentation.
1:26:48But the thing that I thought was so interesting
1:26:51was that it showed that Apple had been building
1:26:53this scalable architecture,
1:26:55because a lot of companies make one-off chips.
1:26:58Like Qualcomm makes a chip for the phones,
1:27:00and then they've been rehashing old phone chips for watches,
1:27:03and that never took off.
1:27:04And Apple's been very good about not becoming
1:27:07like an Intel, like a merchant silicon provider
1:27:09who has to see all these different companies
1:27:11and make unique chips for all these different needs,
1:27:14because that's really inefficient,
1:27:16and I didn't want Apple to become
1:27:17an internal silicon merchant
1:27:19that had a bunch of different clients,
1:27:21competing clients within Apple.
1:27:22And instead, we get like an A13
1:27:25that goes into the iPhone 11,
1:27:27and then that core architecture goes into the S6
1:27:30for the Apple Watch, and then the A14 goes into the iPhone,
1:27:33and the equivalent of an A14X
1:27:35with a bunch of extra Mac IP goes into the Mac.
1:27:38And that whole idea of building an architecture
1:27:40over several years that could scale that dramatically,
1:27:43I think is a really, really smart investment
1:27:45on Apple's part.
1:27:46- Incredibly so.
1:27:48I mean, it's just, and now we see it.
1:27:49I mean, we still can't, even here we are a month later,
1:27:52and we still can't stop raving about it.
1:27:55- But they promised a two-year transition,
1:27:57which I also thought was interesting.
1:27:58It was so similar to what Steve Jobs promised
1:28:00with the PowerPC to Intel.
1:28:01- Right, and how much of that is under promising
1:28:03and over delivering and giving themselves leeway,
1:28:06and how much is it really going to be two years?
1:28:09Like, do they really know?
1:28:10I don't know.
1:28:11- Well, they did give us an iMac since then
1:28:13that was on Intel, so.
1:28:14- Right, well, you're skipping ahead to August.
1:28:17- Oh, sorry.
1:28:18- The least interesting update of the year.
1:28:20- Yeah.
1:28:21- What else is there to say about the M1?
1:28:25Or at least from WWDC's perspective.
1:28:27I guess the thing that I would say is,
1:28:29and I don't think they did this to purposefully sandbag it.
1:28:33I just think, I think that the one thing
1:28:38that colored the actual hands-on,
1:28:42oh my god, you've got to see one of these M1 Macs
1:28:45astounded jaw-dropping reviews,
1:28:49was that the developer kits didn't really offer that hint.
1:28:54Right, the developer kits running on the,
1:28:58what were they, A12Zs?
1:28:59- A12Z, yeah.
1:29:00- Just like the iPad Pros.
1:29:03Or fine computers, the developer kits are Mac Mini,
1:29:06look, they don't call them Mac Minis, I don't believe,
1:29:09but they're Mac Mini look-alike developer kits
1:29:12with an A12Z inside.
1:29:14- And extra RAM.
1:29:15- And extra RAM, and they're fine, and I don't have one.
1:29:19Did you get one?
1:29:19You didn't get one, did you?
1:29:20- No.
1:29:21- I didn't get one either, 'cause it just, I asked.
1:29:23I think I talked to Panzorino about this,
1:29:25but like, you know, most people in the press
1:29:30wouldn't even think about it.
1:29:31It's not a product, you know,
1:29:32but I am a developer too, sort of.
1:29:34I don't really have an app that I would use this for.
1:29:36It would be more, and I, you know,
1:29:39when I asked people at Apple, should I order one,
1:29:43their answer was very accurate.
1:29:45They're like, nah, don't bother,
1:29:47'cause it's not indicative of what you're going.
1:29:49It's not gonna give you a heads up on anything.
1:29:51You're not gonna have a leg up on what this is gonna be like.
1:29:55I was like, okay, 'cause it's less for me to deal with.
1:29:59And the last thing, honestly, the way it turned out,
1:30:01the last thing I would've needed in the second half of 2020
1:30:04is more Apple hardware to set up, install, and run,
1:30:09and test, and observe.
1:30:10But the fact is that those dev kits don't really,
1:30:15they're not astounding.
1:30:16I mean, they're sort of like peers to the Intel iMacs
1:30:20that are Mac minis that we know,
1:30:21and if anything, there's some bugs and some shortcomings
1:30:24and some things that aren't that great.
1:30:26They're probably worse overall.
1:30:27- One thing that was interesting is that they ran
1:30:30the Microsoft stuff under emulation
1:30:32better than Microsoft was running it
1:30:33on their own Qualcomm hardware.
1:30:38You mean like with the Surface hardware?
1:30:40- The dev kit, yeah.
1:30:41Well, Windows X, I think, I forget what they're calling it,
1:30:43Windows 10 for ARM on Windows X hardware
1:30:46was running better on emulation.
1:30:48(laughing)
1:30:50On the dev kit.
1:30:51- That's very, it's just,
1:30:54even which dev kits I'm saying aren't even that good
1:30:58compared to the M1, which is really,
1:31:01it shows you how big a leg up.
1:31:02But it really did, and it is different
1:31:05from the Intel transition,
1:31:07where the Intel transition, they gave out these dev kits
1:31:09that were running in these hollowed out shells of Mac Pros
1:31:13with like just a generic Intel PC inside,
1:31:18and they flew.
1:31:20They were like, oh, wow, Mac OS X already,
1:31:24like the OS itself, which had been compiling for x86
1:31:27all along in a secret lab, flew right from the start.
1:31:32And just going to these generic Intel developer level
1:31:37hardware machines, it was like,
1:31:39all the developers I know were like,
1:31:41we have work to do, there's lots of assumptions,
1:31:42and the apps need to be improved, blah, blah, blah.
1:31:44But basically, they were very, very fast.
1:31:47This Intel transition is going to be high performance.
1:31:50Whereas that wasn't indicative
1:31:52from the developer kits this year.
1:31:54And then when the M1s did ship,
1:31:56and the performance was holy shit,
1:31:59everybody was like, where did this come from?
1:32:03And color that with, and again,
1:32:05I'm skipping ahead to the M1 part of this show,
1:32:07but color that with the, everybody wanted to sort of say,
1:32:12okay, we know x86 performance on PCs,
1:32:16because that's what everybody's been using,
1:32:18even on a Mac now for 15 years.
1:32:21And we know what ARM performance for PC class notebooks is,
1:32:25because Windows has been shipping on ARM for a while,
1:32:30and it's kind of cruddy, how good could this be?
1:32:33And it's like, no, no, you're thinking about it wrong.
1:32:37But anyway, we can hold that for later.
1:32:38The other thing to talk about,
1:32:40if we're gonna look back at the summer,
1:32:41is what you alluded to.
1:32:42It started a little bit with the hay fiasco
1:32:45the week before WWDC,
1:32:49then sort of rolls over to what was the news in July.
1:32:53It was the antitrust hearing in front of the House,
1:32:56in Congress, where Tim Cook was there.
1:32:59And to me, it's not that the hearing itself
1:33:04was all that worth revisiting,
1:33:06it's the, that's a moment where you could say,
1:33:10look, the US, we know the EU was looking at Apple,
1:33:15along with the other big five tech companies.
1:33:18It's not a Trump thing, it's not a Biden thing.
1:33:26There is sort of bipartisan,
1:33:27it's one of the weird issues in the entire country,
1:33:31where there's sort of bipartisan consensus
1:33:34that it needs to be looked at.
1:33:37There was a weird partisan slant
1:33:40on which aspects of which companies
1:33:43are deserving of scrutiny,
1:33:45but there's general consensus on both parties
1:33:48that, hey, we need to look at this.
1:33:50And with Apple, it's the App Store.
1:33:53- The thing that was instructive to me
1:33:54is that we had them gavel it in fairly normally.
1:33:58The Democrats went after the way
1:34:00that the companies treated their partners
1:34:02and their competitors.
1:34:04The Republicans largely went after this idea
1:34:06of conservative bias,
1:34:08which seemed like a lot of stagecraft,
1:34:10because at the end, they just gaveled it off saying,
1:34:12you know, antitrust breakup.
1:34:14So it sounded like they had an agenda
1:34:15that was completely different than the talking points.
1:34:17But the CEOs themselves, Mark Zuckerberg
1:34:20was just all up in everybody's face the whole time.
1:34:22Jeff Bezos did the mute button thing
1:34:24and acted like he never understood how Amazon was run.
1:34:27Tim Cook wore clothing like Amy from Brooklyn Nine-Nine,
1:34:30where it was just zero contrast,
1:34:32and they actually forgot he was there for about 45 minutes.
1:34:35And Sundar Pichai just got nailed
1:34:37left and right by everybody.
1:34:39- Yeah, that would be my summary of it too.
1:34:41Tim Cook is, I wrote recently,
1:34:50I forget what it was even in reference to,
1:34:52I went during Fireball, but oh no,
1:34:53it was his terrific podcast interview with Alex,
1:34:57Outdoor, Outdoors, I forget if it's singular or plural.
1:35:01But where he seemed more himself
1:35:05and a little bit less guarded.
1:35:07He's very-- - He talked like he talks
1:35:09in real life, which was really nice to hear.
1:35:10- He's very, very cautious in his public speaking.
1:35:15And it has served him very well.
1:35:20He's been involved, how many things can you,
1:35:24how many times have we ever thought,
1:35:26oh, Tim Cook's really put his foot in his mouth this time.
1:35:30Never, really?
1:35:31- Well, even angry Tim Cook, when he got upset
1:35:34and said, I don't give a damn about the ROI
1:35:36when it comes to accessibility and the environment,
1:35:38was like, fiery Tim Cook, and I was all there for that.
1:35:40- The bloody, he called it bloody.
1:35:43- Yeah, the bloody ROI. - The bloody ROI.
1:35:45Which, you know, I--
1:35:46- That's like the most revved up I've seen him.
1:35:48- Yeah, I wasn't aware that that was,
1:35:50that the mild curse words from England
1:35:55are popular in Alabama, but--
1:35:57- Yes. - It makes me realize
1:35:58that he almost said, my feeling was that he almost said
1:36:01a different word, grasped onto bloody
1:36:04and quickly ran through the algorithm,
1:36:08and it was like, even in your hot-blooded anger,
1:36:10it's like, that's fine, and used it.
1:36:14Yeah, you don't see that very often.
1:36:15But his, you know, and it's funny, you know,
1:36:18in the alternate world where Steve Jobs hadn't gotten sick,
1:36:21and was he, would he still be the CEO?
1:36:23I mean, there's, you know, we could do a whole show
1:36:25on what would be going on, but in a world
1:36:28where Tim Cook is the one, or Steve Jobs is the one
1:36:30testifying at that hearing, I don't think he wants
1:36:34to be there. - No.
1:36:36He was so a little patient for them.
1:36:38- I think in theory, in that world, or, you know,
1:36:41whether you wanna say, what if Steve Jobs
1:36:43was still alive now, or if you wanna say,
1:36:45what if this hearing had happened 10 years ago,
1:36:47whichever way you wanna spin it, I think that Apple
1:36:50would have wanted Tim Cook to be the one testifying
1:36:52either way, but they, you know, for the publicity angle,
1:36:57I don't think that would have flown, you know,
1:36:59like, I think Bezos in particular didn't really wanna do it,
1:37:03but that they really wanted the CEOs, you know.
1:37:08- Well, I think, though, if Tim Cook had become CEO,
1:37:10and Steve Jobs had become the executive chairman,
1:37:12and just stayed in that position for a long time,
1:37:14it would have been similar to Google,
1:37:15where Sundar Pichai showed up, and not Larry and Sergey.
1:37:18- Right, and I think so, too, and you could say,
1:37:19well, what do you want, he's the CEO, he is the, you know,
1:37:22he's taken over, you know, he is in charge
1:37:25of the company now, so I think that that's possible.
1:37:28I just don't see Steve Jobs as being so on message, like,
1:37:33you know, he couldn't bite his tongue,
1:37:37and you saw with Bezos a bit, like, Bezos was the one
1:37:41of the four who, and he never said anything
1:37:43that was scandalous, but there was the one, like,
1:37:47the one moment where he was like,
1:37:51do I need to explain to you how business works, negotiation?
1:37:54It was like somebody, you know, the question was something
1:37:57along the lines of, well, it might have even been with Apple,
1:38:00maybe, you know, with the whole issue where Apple,
1:38:03with Amazon Prime, and getting it on Apple TV,
1:38:07but it was something with, like, you know,
1:38:11you guys were holding back on Amazon Prime streaming video,
1:38:14and this other company, whether it was Apple,
1:38:16or it doesn't even matter, but they had this other thing,
1:38:18and then when they gave you the thing,
1:38:20you gave them the access to the Prime,
1:38:23and Bezos was just like, yeah, that's negotiation,
1:38:25like, do I need to explain this to you,
1:38:27that this is how you do business?
1:38:30Like, you have something?
1:38:30- Yeah, you and Ben covered that really well
1:38:32on dithering when it was happening.
1:38:33- You have something that I want,
1:38:34and I have something that you want,
1:38:36and then we just sort of, you know, nudge each other
1:38:38until we're both equally dissatisfied
1:38:41with the deal, and then we walk away.
1:38:43And it, you know, and he wasn't, you know, again,
1:38:47there was no scandal about it,
1:38:48it wasn't like Bezos humiliates, you know,
1:38:50Congress person in front of the hearing,
1:38:53but you could see his mind, he was thinking about it.
1:38:56- Yeah. - He was like,
1:38:57I can't believe I'm answering this question.
1:39:00- He's like, I have more disposable income
1:39:01than your country is worth right now,
1:39:02I could buy you, but I don't have the time.
1:39:04- But it's, you know, it, my point,
1:39:09bringing it up for the year in review,
1:39:10is that we're not done with this yet, right?
1:39:12Like, I don't know where this goes, I do think that--
1:39:17- Well, we've seen Facebook,
1:39:18and Facebook has already been charged,
1:39:20and Google, I think, three or four times now.
1:39:23- At least. - In the last couple weeks.
1:39:24- Who knows what's happened
1:39:25while we've been recording, René?
1:39:28There might be up to five antitrust suits.
1:39:30- Yeah, and they even got charged with the 30% and not Apple,
1:39:34it's like it's a whole weird world.
1:39:35- Yeah, it's, you know, but Apple's got less of a deal
1:39:40- They've got less to lose,
1:39:41I think that they've got less that's controversial.
1:39:44I don't think, I think it's a lot harder
1:39:48to accuse them of having a monopoly to abuse,
1:39:51like you really have to kinda bend over backward,
1:39:54and again, there's like the lowercase m monopoly
1:39:58of you just have a very strong business
1:40:01with a dominant position in the industry and the marketplace,
1:40:05in which case you say, yes, Apple has a dominant position
1:40:08in the mobile smartphone marketplace.
1:40:10- Especially in the US, not so much in Europe,
1:40:12especially in the US.
1:40:13- And even globally, they certainly have a monopoly
1:40:16of profit on selling cell phones.
1:40:19- Yes.
1:40:20- A greater than 50% share of profit,
1:40:22but that turns out not to be like a legally defined thing,
1:40:26like having a, you know, if you don't sell over 50%
1:40:31of the actual units, that's not a monopoly.
1:40:34And it's all--
1:40:36- And I mean, the fashion industry should be disassembled
1:40:37if profit is the consideration.
1:40:39- Right, it's, but again--
1:40:42- Or the makeup industry.
1:40:43- A lot of this isn't about the letter of the law,
1:40:45but the politics of it, you know,
1:40:47and the politics is, you know, it's hard to predict.
1:40:52And the policy--
1:40:54- The thing that concerns me is that the EU has shown
1:40:56like their willingness to, for example,
1:40:59investigate IE's dominance until Chrome becomes
1:41:01the dominant web browser and there's no rendering engines
1:41:04left, so like the results of their actions, I think,
1:41:06are unclear even to them.
1:41:08- Well, and with the EU, and in some ways,
1:41:13my stance is that the EU's heart is in the right place
1:41:17and that they are very consumer focused,
1:41:20but it doesn't necessarily come out of the legislation.
1:41:24I mean, all of these cookie banners that you have
1:41:27to click through on websites all the time
1:41:31to comply with, what's the law, the--
1:41:33- Yeah, and the GDPR.
1:41:36- Yeah, that hasn't really improved the,
1:41:40the way it manifests itself is it's made things worse.
1:41:44It's given you all these stupid things to click through.
1:41:46Like that's not--
1:41:47- Or it's removed American websites from Europe
1:41:50and just can't afford or won't,
1:41:52don't have the resources to comply with the regulation.
1:41:53- Right, to comply, you know.
1:41:55So, you know, there's a definite fear that they'll,
1:41:58with good interests at heart, will mandate things
1:42:02that do not make the experience better for actual users.
1:42:07We shall see, but it, you know--
1:42:09- And then Facebook's response has been
1:42:10just to throw everybody else they possibly can
1:42:12into the fire in front of them.
1:42:13(laughing)
1:42:16- It is, you know, like Google, it, you know,
1:42:20Ben and I have talked about this a lot,
1:42:21like Google is more exposed in more ways
1:42:24and has probably done more of a classic abuse of,
1:42:29you know, using their dominance in web search to benefit,
1:42:34you know, their clear monopoly in web search
1:42:36to benefit their other businesses
1:42:38is a classic illegal bundling.
1:42:40But the real villain here is Facebook.
1:42:43Like everybody sort of agrees.
1:42:44- Yeah, I have this analogy that's terrible,
1:42:46but I keep trying to make it work,
1:42:47and that is that Apple is a fine dining restaurant
1:42:49where you come in, you pay a premium,
1:42:51you tend to get really good meals,
1:42:53then you pay your check and you leave.
1:42:55Google, you come in, you get a free lobster dinner,
1:42:58but then they expect you to put out.
1:42:59They just think that the lobster is so good,
1:43:01you'll be willing at the end.
1:43:03Amazon is like the ultimate Uber Eats experience
1:43:07where you just pay them
1:43:08and they deliver anything you want to you.
1:43:10And Facebook will let you come in and graze
1:43:13as much as you want for free,
1:43:14but you have to be naked and be willing
1:43:16to let them probe you.
1:43:17(laughing)
1:43:19And that's the different experiences they're all providing.
1:43:21- It's gonna be interesting to see how it turns out.
1:43:24You can see Apple, and you know, again,
1:43:28this might be the way the system works,
1:43:30you know, that the political pressure comes down
1:43:33and Apple makes changes.
1:43:35You know, like, would we have this small developer program
1:43:38at the end of 2020 if it wasn't for the serious
1:43:43federal eyeballing of Apple's control over the App Store
1:43:48and the App Store economy?
1:43:50- Yeah, and the new dispute mechanism
1:43:52and several of the other changes they've been making lately.
1:43:54- Right, I'm gonna say no,
1:43:56or at least we wouldn't have all of them.
1:43:58And even if they were in the works,
1:44:00I mean, it's hard to say, you know,
1:44:01it's hard to deny that it certainly looks like
1:44:04there's a cause and effect of,
1:44:06there's antitrust regulatory pressure on this,
1:44:10and Apple has made very clear moves in very real ways.
1:44:14Like the small developer program,
1:44:16I know that a lot of people looked at it and are like,
1:44:18well, you know, all these, there's a handful of companies,
1:44:21you know, these big game companies,
1:44:23and they make way more than a million dollars,
1:44:25and it has nothing to do with it.
1:44:27But there are so many developers,
1:44:29like it's not just PR spin,
1:44:30there's an awful lot of developers who are like,
1:44:32no, this is a huge deal.
1:44:34The difference for us is that we could hire
1:44:39an entire new engineer with the money
1:44:42that will be saving between 15 to 30%.
1:44:45- And it's also like, the App Store,
1:44:47the original model as conceived by Steve Jobs
1:44:49and the team is 10 years old,
1:44:50and it deserves to be reconsidered.
1:44:53But also I think, you know,
1:44:54Apple made this promise to investors
1:44:55that they double services income by 2020,
1:44:59and the App Store is a big part of services revenue,
1:45:02and they made that goal.
1:45:03And I think it was very telling,
1:45:04they didn't promise to do it again,
1:45:06because that cut off a lot of flexibility
1:45:08they had around the App Store, I think,
1:45:10until that happened, and now they have a lot more.
1:45:13At least they don't have the expectation
1:45:15around it that they used to have.
1:45:16- Well, and that brings me to my last issue
1:45:19on this whole summer of,
1:45:21and you know, second half of 2020,
1:45:24antitrust regulatory pressure,
1:45:25is the Apple angle on it.
1:45:28The other thing in addition to the App Store
1:45:29is the deal with Google to make Google search
1:45:33the default for Safari,
1:45:35which I know isn't quite a pay for play thing.
1:45:38It's not like, okay, you pay us X billion,
1:45:42and Google search remains the default search in Google.
1:45:47It somehow is--
1:45:50- It's like an affiliate fee or referral fee.
1:45:52- Right, it's accounted for by how many searches
1:45:56actually go through Google from the Safari field.
1:46:00- It was a startling amount of,
1:46:01I did not expect it to be anywhere nearly as high
1:46:04as the amount of traffic they delivered to Google.
1:46:06- Right, and it's, you know,
1:46:07they still haven't released the money yet, right?
1:46:09It's like the deal is still secret,
1:46:12and there's something that came out from like,
1:46:13we know the number from a legal,
1:46:16like the, bizarrely, it came out of the Google
1:46:20Oracle lawsuit over Java,
1:46:24and it was, I don't know how many billion dollars,
1:46:26but it was like back in 2014.
1:46:28Goldman Sachs has estimated it at like 18 million,
1:46:33I think, for 2020, or maybe that's the estimate
1:46:36for upcoming for 2021.
1:46:38But it's reasonable to assume that Goldman's estimate
1:46:42is at least in the ballpark,
1:46:44and it's somewhere on the order of at least 10 billion,
1:46:49probably closer to 20 billion.
1:46:52You know, call it 15 billion,
1:46:54say Goldman's off by a few billion,
1:46:57you know, what's a billion here and a billion there?
1:46:59But $15 billion a year is a significant portion of Apple's,
1:47:04and this is where I'm going with this,
1:47:06is Apple puts that under services.
1:47:09And it's like the dark matter,
1:47:12the iceberg, the part of the iceberg under the water
1:47:15for Apple's services revenue is this thing
1:47:19that people don't think of as an Apple service.
1:47:21People think of Apple services as these things
1:47:23with brand names.
1:47:25You know, Apple TV Plus, and the new Apple One bundle,
1:47:30and Apple News, and the Apple Arcade,
1:47:33and you know, all these new things
1:47:35that they've been coming out with,
1:47:36which are Apple's, and Fitness Plus, and blah, blah, blah.
1:47:39And it's like, oh yeah, and the biggest moneymaker
1:47:40is the fact that Google is the default search engine
1:47:43in Safari.
1:47:45- Yeah, it's pure profit.
1:47:46- It's, well, pure profit, except that they do,
1:47:49it is this weird feather in the Safari team's cap, right?
1:47:54Like, you don't think of Safari and WebKit
1:47:56as being this big moneymaker for Apple, right?
1:47:59You think of it like,
1:48:00like does the Finder team make money for Apple?
1:48:03No, they're--
1:48:04- It was famously Firefox's almost entire income
1:48:06was the same sort of Google search placement forever,
1:48:10or for years.
1:48:11- But I think you can directly make the argument
1:48:12that Safari is one of the most profitable software endeavors
1:48:17on the planet, because it keeps people,
1:48:20you know, and it's not like,
1:48:23they're not doing anything nefarious,
1:48:24they're not trying to make you search Google
1:48:28more than you would otherwise.
1:48:29And if anything, they've added more features
1:48:32that when you type in the URL field,
1:48:36that some things get answered without going through Google.
1:48:39You know, like if you start--
1:48:40- They're abstracted away by the Apple knowledge base.
1:48:42- Right, and you know, things like sports scores,
1:48:44or the weather, or something like that
1:48:45don't even go to Google.
1:48:46So if Apple really wanted to throw as much traffic
1:48:50through this deal as they wanted to,
1:48:51it actually would work differently,
1:48:53but it's very, very profitable.
1:48:54But it is very much in the bull's eye of the regulators
1:48:59looking at this as something that is actually illegal.
1:49:04- And if it just came, I'm skipping ahead,
1:49:06but it just came out this week
1:49:07that Google also had a Blue Jedi deal,
1:49:10code name Blue Jedi deal with Facebook.
1:49:12Turns out it wasn't R2 or 3P, it was Blue Jedi.
1:49:15And where they had a deal with advertising
1:49:18and Facebook as well.
1:49:20- Ah, huh, I thought it was--
1:49:23- Four letter word, Jedi.
1:49:25- Jedi, hmm.
1:49:27Well, I lost that bet.
1:49:28Good thing I didn't put money on that.
1:49:30But anyway, long story short,
1:49:33I think that Apple is looking at,
1:49:35and I'm sure they have to be realistically looking at,
1:49:37we might need to cancel this deal, you know?
1:49:40- Yeah.
1:49:41- Like we might have to, you know,
1:49:43this money might be going away,
1:49:45and it's a huge chunk of their services.
1:49:47And I think that's a big reason
1:49:49why they're not making any promises
1:49:50about future services revenue.
1:49:52And they've built up their own services,
1:49:55the ones you think of as Apple services,
1:49:57to all be good businesses, and it is doing, you know,
1:50:01their services division would be fine
1:50:03if the Google money went away,
1:50:06but it would take a huge hit.
1:50:07- Yeah.
1:50:09- And people, you know, investors who are looking at it
1:50:11would need to understand, well, this, you know,
1:50:13this has been taken away by regulators.
1:50:16- And my understanding is despite, you know,
1:50:19we're making complaints about magic keyboard costs,
1:50:21but my understanding is that Apple's hardware margins
1:50:22are significantly down from what they were years ago,
1:50:25and services is making that look normal
1:50:27because of how high services margins are.
1:50:30- Well, and again, I'm not a financial analyst,
1:50:32but it's like, you know, as long as you assume
1:50:35that Apple isn't committing perjury,
1:50:37or whatever the crime is of submitting false information
1:50:42on their quarterly reports, I guess perjury is wrong,
1:50:46but-- - SEC violations.
1:50:47- Yeah, securities fraud, right?
1:50:49I guess that would be classified as securities fraud.
1:50:52Their margins are, they're more regular
1:50:57than a $5,000 watch, you know, like 38.7% margin,
1:51:0339%, you know, high 38 decimals to 39%,
1:51:12every single quarter, quarter after quarter.
1:51:14- But that used to be mostly hardware profit,
1:51:17and now there is a significant amount of services revenue,
1:51:19and it hasn't gone up, which indicates
1:51:21that hardware margins are not up at all.
1:51:23- So if the margins on services are higher than hardware,
1:51:26which they have to be-- - Like 60%, yeah.
1:51:29- And the company's margins are exactly the same,
1:51:33that means the margins on hardware have gone down.
1:51:35And I know people find that hard to believe,
1:51:38they're like, but wait, aren't they selling
1:51:39$1,300 cell phones now?
1:51:40And it's like, yeah, but their $1,300 cell phones
1:51:42are actually packing an enormous amount of,
1:51:45and again, they're not selling them at a loss,
1:51:47they're not breaking even on an iPhone 12 Pro Max,
1:51:50but they really-- - They're putting
1:51:52more expensive parts in.
1:51:53- They really are very expensive devices.
1:51:57And again, poor, poor Apple, you know,
1:51:59maybe their margins, you know, here we are,
1:52:02oh my God, their margins on iPhones
1:52:04might be down to like the low 30s.
1:52:06Oh, you know, it's all good.
1:52:11They're not going into the red,
1:52:13but it's definitely something to look at if, you know.
1:52:15And you're always asking for a bit of luck
1:52:20if you're hoping that investors pay attention
1:52:22to the details, you know.
1:52:24It's like, for example, should Tesla's stock
1:52:28have taken a hit on Apple car rumors this week?
1:52:31No, it should not have. - No, no.
1:52:33- It did, so it's very possible that something,
1:52:37you know, there could be some kind of like,
1:52:39hey, this agreement between Apple and Google
1:52:42for default search is over,
1:52:43there's no more money changing hands,
1:52:46and Apple services takes like a 15 to $20 billion annual hit.
1:52:50Anybody who's not paying attention might see the news
1:52:53as Apple services is in the tank, and you know,
1:52:56there goes, there goes the stock.
1:52:59Yeah, what else we got?
1:53:02We got the whole second half of the year.
1:53:03I don't know how we're gonna--
1:53:04- Can I make fun of Epic and Fortnite quickly?
1:53:06- Yeah, I think we got to before the summer's over.
1:53:08- Yeah, so this was interesting to me
1:53:10because in the beginning, I liked what Epic was doing.
1:53:13Like, it seemed really well calculated.
1:53:15They made this Epic drop where they said
1:53:18that they were gonna stop paying Google and Apple
1:53:20the 30% that they were demanding,
1:53:22that they were gonna put in their own
1:53:23payment processing system, you know,
1:53:26in violation of the terms of services,
1:53:28and then Apple and Google removed them from the stores,
1:53:31and Epic sued Apple, and I thought, you know,
1:53:34they've really got this plan, they've got everything going.
1:53:36Then they sued Google too, even though Google
1:53:39allows you to sideload, and I started thinking,
1:53:41what are they doing?
1:53:44And then not to fast forward too far ahead,
1:53:45but they got to the point where a judge said,
1:53:47okay, let's put everything into,
1:53:50you know, we'll put all the profits into,
1:53:53you know, a special fund, and at the end of the case,
1:53:56we'll figure out who they go to,
1:53:57and that would mean that everyone
1:53:58could keep playing Fortnite on iOS,
1:54:00everyone would still be happy, and Epic said no.
1:54:03And at that point, I'm like,
1:54:04this really wasn't that well planned, was it?
1:54:06- Yeah, I'm not sure, you know,
1:54:08and you know, there was a lot of fireworks at the beginning
1:54:13with the surprise move of Epic that they had,
1:54:18effectively, you know, and I don't mean this
1:54:20in the malware sense, but it just,
1:54:22in the allegorical sense, a Trojan horse
1:54:24built into an app, a version of the app
1:54:26that had already gotten approved,
1:54:28and they could flip a switch remotely, you know.
1:54:30Have the app take payments.
1:54:32I don't know what they really want, you know,
1:54:38like, I'm sure they would just take it
1:54:40if the legal system said, yes, Epic,
1:54:44you get everything you're demanding right now,
1:54:46Apple has to, has, you know, 12 months
1:54:49to enable third-party app stores on iOS,
1:54:55and the Epic app store, game store is legally mandated
1:55:00to be one of the ones that's approved.
1:55:02You know, I'm sure Epic would say, yeah, sure,
1:55:04oh my God, I can't believe that worked, right?
1:55:07That's great.
1:55:08But they know that's not gonna happen.
1:55:09It's not gonna happen like that.
1:55:11Like, what do they really want?
1:55:12I don't know, and you're right, I think,
1:55:15that the judge's offer of let's just go back,
1:55:20run, you know, comply with the rules,
1:55:24and all of the money from Epic's apps,
1:55:29which is primarily Fortnite, would go into escrow,
1:55:33and we'll, you know, when the lawsuits are finally settled,
1:55:37you know, then we'll figure out what to do with it.
1:55:39The fact that they were like, no, we'll just stay out,
1:55:42you know, and I guess some people think
1:55:44that that's just them sticking to the principle,
1:55:47that, you know, that they lose the moral high ground,
1:55:50the principle high ground of we're the ones
1:55:53standing up to Apple on this.
1:55:56But I don't know, it doesn't play,
1:56:00it didn't seem like that to me when it was fresh,
1:56:02and now that we're at the end of the year,
1:56:04and it's sort of settled in as old news,
1:56:07it just feels spiteful, right?
1:56:09Like, does it seem to you, I mean, again--
1:56:11- No, yeah, I think it goes back
1:56:13to what we were talking about with founders
1:56:15are different than CEOs, and Tim Sweeney seems
1:56:17to be acting like a hyper-aggressive founder,
1:56:20and not a CEO who would probably have
1:56:22the best interests of his Epic Unreal Engine customers,
1:56:26you know, and their shared iOS customers,
1:56:29and a much higher priority than him trying to,
1:56:32I got the whole vibe from them,
1:56:34it's like they didn't wanna take the,
1:56:36like the App Store foot off any developer's neck,
1:56:39they wanted to make enough room
1:56:40to put their foot down as well,
1:56:42and that's a whole different sort of vibe
1:56:44than I think most people were expecting.
1:56:46- See, I don't get that.
1:56:48Like, I don't feel like they want to be the new,
1:56:52you know, we've got your foot on your throat,
1:56:54I just feel like if there's,
1:56:56the most innocuous explanation I can think of is
1:57:01that like, Tim Sweeney and Epic really,
1:57:05literally don't see anything problematic
1:57:08with the state of like, Windows PCs,
1:57:12and the way software is installed and works on it, like--
1:57:16- But they're very, on Windows they were very interesting,
1:57:18because they went after Steam hard,
1:57:23like they signed exclusive deals,
1:57:25and they would give discounts if you had the,
1:57:28if you used the Fortnite engine on their game store,
1:57:30and yes, they charge less of a percentage,
1:57:32but they still charge a percentage,
1:57:34and they had a bunch of scandals
1:57:35where they were taking stuff that was created
1:57:38by people on the Fortnite platform,
1:57:40and just not sharing any revenue from it at all,
1:57:43like different dances and emotes,
1:57:44and the things that have, Ben explains it so well,
1:57:46like zero marginal cost to them,
1:57:49pure profit and just keeping all of it,
1:57:51so it seemed like they were, I said this before,
1:57:53I know there are huge problems on the App Store,
1:57:55and a lot of things that need to be fixed,
1:57:57but this was just not the Batman
1:57:59that anybody wanted or needed in this case.
1:58:01- No, and you know, and again,
1:58:03it could easily devolve into an hour-long discussion,
1:58:06but my take of describing iOS as an app console,
1:58:11which was probably, it somehow inadvertently,
1:58:16my biggest controversy of the year.
1:58:18- It's exactly what Steve Jobs announced today.
1:58:20From the beginning, it was announced as a console.
1:58:23- The problem with it, clearly in hindsight,
1:58:25I know I've talked about it before,
1:58:26but clearly, it's just traditional linguistic problem
1:58:31where some people literally really believe
1:58:35that the word console implies games,
1:58:38that if it's not for playing games,
1:58:41it's not a console, period,
1:58:43whereas that's why I'm calling it an app console.
1:58:45It's like a game console, but instead of games,
1:58:47it's any kind of app, but it's exactly--
1:58:49- And that doesn't mean it's right.
1:58:50It doesn't mean it should be a console today,
1:58:52it just means that it was designed
1:58:54and it was run like a console.
1:58:54- Right, and it's like,
1:58:56I tried to explain it as best I could,
1:59:00and there's some people who are like,
1:59:01"Lol, you think it's like PlayStation.
1:59:03"You think iPhone's like PlayStation?
1:59:04"People put their lives in their iPhone."
1:59:06And it's like, no, no, I see what you're saying,
1:59:08that your iPhone is like where you live
1:59:11your entire online life, your business
1:59:13and your socialization, and all of this is there,
1:59:16and it's way more important to you than your PlayStation.
1:59:19- And some of the reason for that is because of the safety
1:59:21that's created by having it run as a console
1:59:24and not as an open computing environment.
1:59:25I mean, that cuts both ways as well.
1:59:26- But it's like, that's the basic idea,
1:59:29and having Epic be the one to fight it out
1:59:31and have them say, "Oh yeah, we're totally cool though
1:59:33"with Xbox and Nintendo and PlayStation,"
1:59:36really undercuts the argument.
1:59:40And the judge has been very clear about this.
1:59:44- Yeah, she's brilliant.
1:59:45- Yeah, she really is.
1:59:46- She saw through all of BS by everybody.
1:59:48- Yeah, and I remember the one part where she was like
1:59:50grilling them on this, "Why are you holding Android and iOS
1:59:55"to this entirely different standard
1:59:58"from the game consoles?"
1:59:59And they're like, "Well, you can't play your Xbox on a bus."
2:00:02And she immediately was like,
2:00:03"You can play your Nintendo Switch."
2:00:05And it was like, "I'll just sit down now."
2:00:08- Yes, yeah, she was like, "Are you gonna do better
2:00:10"on the second part of this hearing?"
2:00:12It's like, "I don't even know."
2:00:13Like, you said the quiet part out loud.
2:00:14- Yeah, I don't know.
2:00:15I wonder, I don't know what 2021 has in store
2:00:18for the Epic Apple lawsuit, but I just, I don't know.
2:00:21I don't think anything's gonna come of it, to be honest.
2:00:25- If this was a cadre of, like,
2:00:27we probably had a lot of the people, like Spotify,
2:00:29that are teaming up, and now Facebook has filed
2:00:32in support of Epic, these are a cadre of billionaires
2:00:36who are super angry at the trillionaire.
2:00:39And I would much rather prefer this be a group
2:00:42of independent app developers who know what they want
2:00:45and need litigating this than people who are worried
2:00:48about which of their Ferraris they're driving out
2:00:50on the highway paid for by trillion dollar companies again.
2:00:53- And, you know, just to tie it back to something
2:00:56from the early part of the show, it's like,
2:00:58think about like with Chrome on macOS.
2:01:02Like, on macOS, it is the idiom,
2:01:05it is the culture, it's the expectation
2:01:09that when you install a web browser
2:01:12in your applications folder, if you want to uninstall it,
2:01:15you just drag it to the trash, and then it's all gone
2:01:17and there's no software running.
2:01:19But it turns out that's just the culture
2:01:21and there's no technical requirement,
2:01:23and so Chrome takes advantage of this
2:01:25and has like this background software updating agent
2:01:28that stays installed if you just trash googlechrome.app.
2:01:34On iOS, that literally can't happen.
2:01:37I'm not saying that somebody can't happen
2:01:39in a way that somebody couldn't find a security exploit,
2:01:41but any app that could install something that remains
2:01:45even after you delete the app is doing so
2:01:47by literally exploiting a security vulnerability,
2:01:51and if Apple found out about it,
2:01:52they would close the vulnerability
2:01:54and cancel the developer's developer account.
2:01:59It's not like you as a developer are asked to be nice
2:02:04and when your app is deleted, there's nothing left of it.
2:02:08You have no choice, and that is a huge benefit.
2:02:12And to me, the whole Epic thing comes down to,
2:02:15not Epic particularly, but Epic's argument
2:02:17over this isn't right, that Apple controls the App Store
2:02:22this way is completely missing,
2:02:25that that's a tremendous benefit.
2:02:28It's got trade-offs, right?
2:02:30'Cause sometimes you want your rogue Amoebas
2:02:32to be able to do stuff, and rogue Amoeba
2:02:34can't do rogue Amoeba stuff on iOS
2:02:37because apps on iOS can't do that.
2:02:40Again, to circle back to an example from earlier on this show
2:02:44rogue Amoeba's a perfect example
2:02:45of what we lose with the control.
2:02:48You gain some, you lose some,
2:02:50and it ultimately is sort of Apple's argument
2:02:54for why some of our computing devices
2:02:57like iPhones and iPads work this way,
2:02:59and why the Mac works this other way.
2:03:02Here's our platform where you are
2:03:03allowed to shoot your foot.
2:03:05- There's this huge problem, I think,
2:03:07a lot of, especially in like Twitter and internet culture
2:03:09in general doesn't like multiple truths,
2:03:10but quite often we have these situations
2:03:12where there are multiple truths,
2:03:14like people deserve choice, and does that mean
2:03:16that you should have the choice of running
2:03:17whatever you want on your iPhone,
2:03:19or does that mean that consumers should have the choice
2:03:21of a managed environment with the iPhone
2:03:23versus an unmanaged one with Android,
2:03:25and are you taking away consumer choice
2:03:27if you turn the iPhone into a non-managed environment?
2:03:31It's like this whole thing where there's 90% of,
2:03:3490% of the things that Apple does really benefit
2:03:36mainstream consumers, but really irk the nerds.
2:03:39The nerds have all the traditional computers,
2:03:40but they still want the stuff that Apple makes
2:03:42because it's really nice, but then they want to change it
2:03:45and make it more nerd-like, which is a disservice often
2:03:48to the 90% of the mainstream customers.
2:03:50And even in this case, like I really,
2:03:52I'm sympathetic to the idea that Apple
2:03:54should allow sideloading, because that way,
2:03:56theoretically, if VPNs are banned in China,
2:03:58or TikTok is banned in the US,
2:04:00that doesn't stop people from loading them up,
2:04:03but practically, the servers behind the VPNs
2:04:05and behind TikTok would be cut off,
2:04:07and so the app wouldn't really help you,
2:04:09and it would just be an extra vector
2:04:11for getting on the machine.
2:04:12And I don't know what the right answer is,
2:04:14I just know that if you're talking about it
2:04:15in black and white terms, you probably haven't thought
2:04:17about it deeply.
2:04:18- Right, well, or just look at what's come out
2:04:20with Facebook, you know, and if Facebook
2:04:22could encourage users to sideload Facebook.app,
2:04:25then Facebook.app sideloaded could get away
2:04:28with whatever it can get away with,
2:04:30and wouldn't have to--
2:04:31- Or their VPN that they were putting out there
2:04:33that monitored us. - Right, right!
2:04:33Which they've literally, it's not just like speculation,
2:04:37have been shown, and like Australia is taking them,
2:04:40you know, to court over, that they used to spy
2:04:43on their users, and because they were spying,
2:04:46using it to spy on all of what they did on their phones,
2:04:49used it as competitive information to say, yeah,
2:04:52hey, this WhatsApp thing is both A, really popular,
2:04:55and growing really fast, we should buy it for $20 billion.
2:04:59We've got the data from the users of our VPN spyware.
2:05:03You know, and if that's, there's--
2:05:05- And when Apple blocked it, they abused
2:05:08the enterprise certificate to let people load it.
2:05:09- Right, so we know what they would do
2:05:11if they could do sideloading, 'cause they've showed us.
2:05:13And, you know, yes.
2:05:15- They've told us who they are.
2:05:16- And it's, you know, and you could say,
2:05:17well, hey, the Mac's okay, and I agree,
2:05:19it wouldn't be the end of the world,
2:05:20but it's like, you have to admit,
2:05:23even if you think that the trade-offs would be worth it,
2:05:26that there are trade-offs, you know.
2:05:28- Yeah, yeah, like you could argue
2:05:30that the App Store is phenomenally successful,
2:05:32and therefore should change, but you could also argue
2:05:34that maybe those changes would have prevented
2:05:35the App Store from being more successful
2:05:36than the Google Play Store is, in terms of
2:05:39developer revenue, for example.
2:05:40Nothing is an evacue.
2:05:41- We gotta pick up the pace here.
2:05:42I'm gonna take a break and thank our third
2:05:45and final sponsor of the show, Squarespace.
2:05:47Oh, boy, this episode is brought to you by Squarespace,
2:05:50as have been many episodes of the talk show
2:05:53over the last year.
2:05:54It is a long-standing, great sponsor of the show.
2:05:58And if you need to start building a website today,
2:06:02you can go to squarespace.com.
2:06:04And if you know somebody who wants to start building
2:06:07a website, and you know, New Year's resolution's
2:06:09coming around, this is time of year when maybe,
2:06:11you know, that's one of your things,
2:06:12you want a new website, you wanna update an old website,
2:06:15somebody you know wants to do that,
2:06:17go to squarespace.com, remember the offer code,
2:06:19talk show, just T-A-L-K-S-H-O-W, at checkout,
2:06:23you'll save 10%.
2:06:24Look, Squarespace websites, they look great,
2:06:27they have got so many templates to choose from,
2:06:31in so many styles, and they're all ready to go,
2:06:35and they're all customizable.
2:06:37So if you want to add a store and a podcast,
2:06:40or you don't want a store or a podcast,
2:06:43you're building a portfolio site to show off your artwork,
2:06:46or something like that, all of it is built in,
2:06:49they're all components that you drag and drop right there,
2:06:52in the website itself, dragging around, right there,
2:06:56WYSIWYG, intuitive, easy to use, no code,
2:07:00you don't have to know the difference between HTML
2:07:02and JavaScript, or JavaScript and CSS,
2:07:06but if you do, if you do know the difference,
2:07:08and you do want to look at the actual code,
2:07:10you can do that too, just scales up
2:07:14to your level of expertise,
2:07:16they've got great award-winning tech support.
2:07:19Here's what you do, you get a free trial, 30 days,
2:07:21go to squarespace.com/talkshow, that's how you start.
2:07:25Build your website, there's no marker on it
2:07:29that says this is a Squarespace demo site,
2:07:31it's for real, for 30 days, free of charge.
2:07:34When you decide to sign up, keep the website going,
2:07:37just remember that code, talk show,
2:07:39when you pay, you get 10% off your first purchase.
2:07:41So go to squarespace.com/talkshow,
2:07:44remember that code, talk show, when you pay, and that's it.
2:07:47My thanks to Squarespace for continuing to support the show.
2:07:50All right, long story, let's just cut out
2:07:52the iMac from August, forget it.
2:07:54Gone.
2:07:56- I mean, nothing happened in the fall anyway, right?
2:07:57- Yeah, nothing else.
2:07:58No, but I think we, I don't think we're doing short,
2:08:01I mean, you know, this stuff is fresher in memory,
2:08:03we've talked about the hardware,
2:08:08but the announcements, you know, so let's go through.
2:08:10First one was the iPad Air and the Apple Watch Series 6
2:08:15and Apple Watch.
2:08:16- Can I just give you credit for a second here,
2:08:17because you had a really good explanation
2:08:20for how Apple was staging these events,
2:08:21because a lot of people were saying,
2:08:22oh, there's no way they won't do the iPhone,
2:08:24there's no way they won't do the iPhone
2:08:25with the Apple Watch, there's no way
2:08:28they'll do more than one event,
2:08:29there's no way they'll do three events,
2:08:31and you explained it early on as sort of Apple
2:08:33arranging their fall TV schedule.
2:08:36- Yeah, I think it really stands up,
2:08:38and I think the one, everybody was like,
2:08:40well, they gotta be done now,
2:08:41what are they gonna do with this Mac?
2:08:43They said there was a Mac,
2:08:43I was like, they'll just do another episode of the show.
2:08:46- Yeah, yeah.
2:08:46- Yeah, it's sort of like, you know,
2:08:48and like, if you're familiar with like 60 Minutes, right,
2:08:52like the news show, you know,
2:08:54they might have three segments of roughly 20 minutes,
2:08:57you know, for the hour-long show,
2:08:59but the segments are clearly produced in a way where like,
2:09:03oh, the segment we're doing on the profile
2:09:06of Jeff Bezos is taking longer than we thought,
2:09:10we'll use this other, you know,
2:09:11if they're not meant to go together.
2:09:13And I think these events were like that,
2:09:16they're like, okay, we'll do, you know,
2:09:18we'll do 40 minutes about the iPad and the 8th generation.
2:09:22- Which didn't even ship until after
2:09:23they announced the iPhone.
2:09:24- Right, which was weird, you know,
2:09:26but the phones aren't ready,
2:09:28but if it would have been ready,
2:09:29they would have been, they could have put it in
2:09:31as part of the show. - Yeah.
2:09:32- And you know, and it's funny,
2:09:35it's a good show and it has that flavor,
2:09:39like it's like, oh, another episode of the Apple event show.
2:09:42And you know, you're cruising around the Apple Park
2:09:47and the spaceship and you know,
2:09:50it feels like a TV show.
2:09:54- And it just got better episode,
2:09:55like they did that really cool shot of zooming in
2:09:57from Jeff Williams' watch coming out
2:10:01and then they did all those different transitions
2:10:02and the drone shots.
2:10:05It felt like the same show,
2:10:06but they kept getting better and better at making it.
2:10:08- Yeah, the other thing I would say,
2:10:09and who knows, maybe if they keep this up
2:10:11and this is how they do shows going forward,
2:10:14we'll look back at the ones from 2020
2:10:16and see them as crude.
2:10:18You know, I always think like whenever you buy
2:10:20like the omnibus edition of a comic strip,
2:10:24like Calvin and Hobbes or the early--
2:10:27- The Bloom Counties.
2:10:28- Yeah, or the Peanut strips, you know.
2:10:30- Yeah.
2:10:31- And you look at the first,
2:10:32especially Peanuts in particular,
2:10:33because the Peanuts ones evolved over like a decade,
2:10:37but they were like ones from like the '50s,
2:10:39like for 10 years where all of the characters look weird.
2:10:42You're like, man.
2:10:43- Even Garfield, he's horrific in the first few.
2:10:45- Yeah, Garfield, early, you know,
2:10:47in my opinion, probably the best of the best
2:10:51is Bill Watterson in Calvin and Hobbes.
2:10:53He's just the best written,
2:10:54it's just the pinnacle of the art form.
2:10:56I mean, most people seem to agree.
2:10:58And he's also probably the best illustrator.
2:11:01He's just amazing.
2:11:02- Yes.
2:11:03- And he would really show off and do like one of the--
2:11:05- Like the Spaceman Spiff, yeah.
2:11:06- Or the dinosaur ones,
2:11:07or Spaceman Spiff versus the dinosaurs.
2:11:10It's like, oh my God, he's like super amazing, talented.
2:11:14The first year of Calvin and Hobbes,
2:11:16they look a little weird, you know.
2:11:18They have to, it takes a while to get your legs
2:11:20underneath you and figure out who these characters are
2:11:23and what the style is.
2:11:24It's like that with most TV shows too,
2:11:27like the first season of a show
2:11:29often just looks weird in hindsight,
2:11:31'cause they haven't quite figured it out.
2:11:33I don't know.
2:11:34- If I look at a video from older than a month,
2:11:35I can't believe how terrible it looked.
2:11:37(laughing)
2:11:38- Well, you know.
2:11:39But I don't know.
2:11:42I feel like Apple somehow, maybe it's hiring talent.
2:11:46If you throw enough money at it and you're discerning
2:11:48and you hire the right people, they got it.
2:11:50But that September event, again,
2:11:55I don't think we need to spend much time on it.
2:11:58Series 6 Apple Watch, not really that different.
2:12:01It adds the blood oxygen sensor.
2:12:04If anything, I almost feel like it was badly timed
2:12:08because blood oxygen levels are a COVID thing.
2:12:13And clearly, that's not why the 2020 Apple Watch has it,
2:12:18but that's how people think, right?
2:12:21- Same with the hand washing.
2:12:22- Yeah, well, hand washing,
2:12:24they did probably squeeze in for that.
2:12:26Like, I don't think there would be a hand washing feature
2:12:27if it wasn't for COVID, do you?
2:12:29- No, no, for sure.
2:12:30No, I mean, one interview they said that it wasn't
2:12:32because of that, the other interview they said it was.
2:12:34So I think it probably had to have been.
2:12:37- But it doesn't require a special sensor, right?
2:12:40It's not like they have a hand wash sensor.
2:12:42They're just using the accelerometer and the microphone
2:12:45and a bunch of other things to create a--
2:12:46- Every time I make pasta and I'm sizzling onions
2:12:48and turning the salt thing, it starts counting down
2:12:50for my hand wash.
2:12:52- I had to turn the feature off.
2:12:53I found it too patronizing.
2:12:57- Yeah, it's patronizing.
2:12:58It's like, ah, come on.
2:12:59And it's like, you know, if I come in from outside, yes,
2:13:04I'm gonna wash my hands for 20 seconds and it's fine.
2:13:08If I go to the bathroom,
2:13:09I'm gonna wash my hands for 20 seconds.
2:13:10There's times though where I wash my hands,
2:13:11I really am just rinsing them.
2:13:13And then it's like, hey, why'd you stop?
2:13:15- Like when you're in the kitchen.
2:13:16- What was this, a quick rinse?
2:13:17And it's like, yeah, I'm done tapping my watch
2:13:19to tell you what was going on here.
2:13:22- You're not my dad.
2:13:22- Right, and before my watch could tell me
2:13:24if it was 20 seconds,
2:13:25I'm pretty sure I was thoroughly washing my hands.
2:13:29Trust me, I was paranoid.
2:13:31You know, we're all germaphones.
2:13:32- Same.
2:13:33- Yes.
2:13:34But you know, it's just a talkier for the Apple Watch.
2:13:40- Yeah, yeah.
2:13:42And the SE was interesting in that it wasn't as low cost
2:13:45as the Apple Watch 3 was the previous year,
2:13:48but it was less expensive,
2:13:50but it was missing like my favorite feature,
2:13:51which is the always on.
2:13:52- Yeah, but I kind of feel like
2:13:55that's very purposeful.
2:13:56Like, we don't know what they're gonna do with it,
2:13:58but one thing that I think is part of
2:14:01when Apple uses the SE name
2:14:05is that it's meant to last for a few years.
2:14:09Like, so the first iPhone SE was sold for years.
2:14:12I believe this one is going to be sold
2:14:14for quite a few years, right?
2:14:16And so they--
2:14:17- Like a four-year cycle?
2:14:18- At least, you know,
2:14:20or at least until people stop buying it, you know?
2:14:23How long will people who are averse
2:14:26to technological change?
2:14:28Like my mom, my mom just got the new iPhone SE
2:14:32a couple weeks ago 'cause she needed a new iPhone.
2:14:34Her battery was really gone.
2:14:36And she, there was nothing,
2:14:37literally nothing I could do or say
2:14:39to get her to want to try Face ID.
2:14:42Where I haven't seen her all year,
2:14:44I couldn't talk her through it in person.
2:14:46She's like, "I just want one just like my old phone."
2:14:48I was like, "You know what?
2:14:48"Okay, you're happy."
2:14:50You know, it was like meant for her.
2:14:51She wants a button and she wants to use her thumb.
2:14:54And there it is.
2:14:56And for years to come, now Apple has the iPhone SE too
2:14:59that they can sell to those people.
2:15:01I kind of feel like that's what the Apple Watch SE
2:15:04is going to be.
2:15:05Like, 'cause right now with the iPhone,
2:15:09or the Apple Watch Series 3 as that 199 cheapest watch,
2:15:14it sticks out because it doesn't look like the other watches
2:15:19and they have to still do the goofy thing
2:15:21where they're like, "Sure, this is a 42 millimeter,
2:15:24"or a 40 millimeter strap,
2:15:26"but it also fits the 38 millimeter iPhone
2:15:28"or Apple Watch 3."
2:15:29It sticks out.
2:15:32Whereas if it goes as I expect,
2:15:35and next year they stop selling the Series 3
2:15:39and the SE becomes the 199 Apple Watch,
2:15:42they all look the same,
2:15:43they all have the new widths for the lugs,
2:15:46and it all makes a lot more sense.
2:15:49And then maybe the SE stays for another year after that,
2:15:52and it's only $179 or something like that.
2:15:57- Yeah, for sure.
2:15:58- But I feel like missing the always on display is,
2:16:02and I'm sure it is actual cost saving,
2:16:04but it is a way that it is permanently, easily,
2:16:09here's a reason why you might wanna spend an extra $100.
2:16:12Right? - Yeah.
2:16:15Yeah, it's like missing the modern design
2:16:16on the current iPhone SE.
2:16:18- Yeah, it just is this thing,
2:16:19and you can be shown very clearly right there in the store.
2:16:24Look, on this one, when you move your watch away,
2:16:26it just goes black.
2:16:27On this one, it stays on all the time.
2:16:29- Still tells the time, like a watch.
2:16:31- iPad Air, eh, nice.
2:16:36You know, I feel like I'm,
2:16:38as we rush through the second half of the year,
2:16:42I'm blowing off a very nice iPad upgrade,
2:16:46and very, you know, the iPad Pro, as we know it,
2:16:51is now a lower cost iPad for more people at a lower price,
2:16:56and it works with the Magic Keyboard.
2:16:58We've already said nice things about--
2:17:00- Touch ID instead of Face ID,
2:17:02so again, it's easily differentiated.
2:17:03- Right.
2:17:05You know, but what are you gonna say about it?
2:17:07It's not new, you know?
2:17:09- It got A14 technically first,
2:17:11but didn't really ship with it first,
2:17:13but they did the segment on it.
2:17:14- Right, which was weird, and I still would love to know.
2:17:18I don't know.
2:17:19I don't know if you asked around.
2:17:20I don't know, but like, did they really hold it back
2:17:25just to wait for the iPhone, or did they just like,
2:17:28well, we'll pre-announce it?
2:17:30Like, I kind of have the feeling,
2:17:32and my honest belief is if they wanted to,
2:17:35they could have released the iPad Air earlier, and didn't.
2:17:39- Yeah, I still go back to your theory,
2:17:41where they had all these sort of Post-It notes
2:17:43with the different products in,
2:17:44and they just had to arrange them
2:17:45to fit three different events,
2:17:47and they didn't want to announce the iPhones early,
2:17:50because they're in the habit of announcing the iPhones,
2:17:52and at least some of them ship within that 10-day window,
2:17:56so they couldn't do the iPhones in September.
2:17:58They were gonna do the Apple Watch anyway,
2:18:00and the iPad Air just fit in there,
2:18:01and there's much less pressure,
2:18:03much less time sensitivity, at least,
2:18:05so I think if they could have shipped it earlier,
2:18:07they would have.
2:18:08They probably just didn't have everything ramped up
2:18:09because of all the manufacturing overhead from COVID.
2:18:13- Yeah, they announced the Apple One bundle,
2:18:16even though it was forthcoming,
2:18:18and Fitness Plus included amongst it.
2:18:22In a very, what to me was a strange segment.
2:18:25It was only like, it was seriously like 90 seconds.
2:18:28It was like this big thing that we thought
2:18:31was gonna be a major segment of the show,
2:18:33if it got announced, and instead it was like,
2:18:36hey, we're coming up with this bundle.
2:18:38Seems like we should have announced a year ago,
2:18:40but we've got it this time, and it is a good deal,
2:18:43and that's it, gone.
2:18:46- Yeah, and in the US,
2:18:47it doesn't include subscription hardware,
2:18:49which is already a thing that they do,
2:18:50which I think was-- - Right, right.
2:18:52- Or AppleCare, which I think would have been
2:18:54the bigger parts of the deal.
2:18:56- Well, and I wonder, too, to tie it in
2:18:59with the regulatory scrutiny that they're under, right?
2:19:02Like there's something,
2:19:03is that because they don't want to do that?
2:19:06Is that because they-- - Yeah, or bundling,
2:19:08they're worried about. - Right,
2:19:09that they haven't gotten to it yet,
2:19:10or is it because they're just worried
2:19:13that they don't want, that they would face
2:19:16some kind of regulatory scrutiny over,
2:19:18oh, you're taking-- - Why does Apple Music come,
2:19:20but not Spotify? - Right, you're taking
2:19:22your hardware, successful hardware platform,
2:19:25and using it as a way, as a cudgel,
2:19:27a competitive cudgel to sell these services, you know?
2:19:31- Yeah, yeah. - Because surely,
2:19:33and that would be the thing,
2:19:34is just make it a monthly payment,
2:19:36and it includes a new iPhone every two years.
2:19:39- Yeah, that's sort of what everybody wants,
2:19:41but I think you're right. - Yeah.
2:19:42- I was surprised, though, that Fitness Plus was,
2:19:44I thought it was gonna be good,
2:19:46just because the production value looks so high,
2:19:47and it turned out to be better than I thought it would be.
2:19:50- Everybody, that seems to be the consensus on it, right?
2:19:52I mean, the consensus is that it is, you know,
2:19:57people oddly, to me, oddly complain
2:20:01that it requires an Apple Watch.
2:20:05You can do it without it, it just,
2:20:06I think it loses everything special about it
2:20:08if you don't have the Apple Watch.
2:20:09- Right, but everybody, you know,
2:20:12I don't know, it's like people still seem to be surprised
2:20:15that Apple is good at the content thing, right?
2:20:18It's like, and again, it's like,
2:20:20first impressions matter so much,
2:20:22and it's like, Carpool Karaoke was like,
2:20:24their first original content, and it, you know,
2:20:27it was Carpool Karaoke. - And that app show,
2:20:29forget what the app show was called.
2:20:30- Right, it's called Planet of Apps.
2:20:31- Planet of the Apps, right.
2:20:33And it turns out those two shows are in no way indicative
2:20:38of what Apple original content for Apple TV+ would be like,
2:20:44but they set expectations so low,
2:20:47and I still feel like they haven't recovered, you know,
2:20:50that people still haven't gotten it through their heads
2:20:53that no, this is seriously like,
2:20:55you can argue that it still is not as good as HBO,
2:20:59but it's like in the ballpark, right?
2:21:01Like Ted Lasso is-- - Ted Lasso, yes.
2:21:03It could be one of the best shows of the year.
2:21:04Could easily win best show of the year.
2:21:06- You know, really, really might,
2:21:07and you know, the morning show,
2:21:10deservedly of great acclaim and won a bunch of Emmys.
2:21:13You know, it's not all Planet of the Apps.
2:21:19It really isn't. - No.
2:21:20- And I feel like Fitness+, in a way,
2:21:24I know that this is a little bit diminishing,
2:21:26'cause I know that they've got this interactive stuff
2:21:28where you see your live metrics from your watch
2:21:31on screen as you're doing it, but it is--
2:21:34- And the burn bar.
2:21:35- It is sort of, it's like a modern day version of,
2:21:39okay, we have the Apple TV+ channel
2:21:41where we show mostly fictional dramas like Ted Lasso
2:21:45and the morning show and stuff like that,
2:21:48and now we have a fitness channel, right?
2:21:51It's like, you know, Fox has the regular Fox,
2:21:56and then they have Fox Sports, right?
2:21:58And that's where they show nothing but college basketball,
2:22:01and hockey, and sports news, and stuff like that.
2:22:05Well, now it's sort of like Fitness+
2:22:06is the new second channel of Apple original content,
2:22:09and it's just exclusively dedicated to these fitness shows.
2:22:13- Yeah. - But that it's--
2:22:15- It does sort of push forward that thing
2:22:16that Tim Cook said at the beginning of the year
2:22:18that was sort of, I don't know if it was controversial
2:22:19at the time, but when he was doing that interview
2:22:22with Kramer and said that he thinks that looking back,
2:22:24Apple will be best known for being a health provider.
2:22:29- Yeah, it's very serious endeavor, you know?
2:22:32And I really do think they take it too.
2:22:37I mean, that's not how I think of Apple,
2:22:39but I believe Tim Cook, right?
2:22:41Like, I believe that he thinks that way, you know?
2:22:44It is unusual, I don't know.
2:22:48Again, I don't say it's a bad idea,
2:22:51but I'm not as surprised as some people seem to be
2:22:55that Fitness+ is as well regarded as it is.
2:22:58- Yeah, no, I'm really enjoying it,
2:23:00and again, I thought I would,
2:23:01and I'm enjoying it more than I thought I would.
2:23:04- And very much personality-based, right?
2:23:06Like, it's, you know, it is not like reality TV
2:23:10in so far as the most shows that people consider reality TV
2:23:14are about like gossipy type stuff,
2:23:17and it's the opposite where it's all sort of G-rated,
2:23:20but it is like reality TV where it's very personality-driven
2:23:25that these people are like, they're the same sort of
2:23:28personalities and diverse backgrounds,
2:23:33but all young and attractive.
2:23:35- Well, they have like, they have a 60-year-old,
2:23:39one of them is a 60-year-old trainer,
2:23:40and they're all super engaging.
2:23:42- Yeah, but that's also sort of like reality TV, right?
2:23:45Where there's always like some old,
2:23:47just like an old guy on Survivor, right?
2:23:49- Yes.
2:23:50- You know, 'cause it is, and they are,
2:23:54you know, it's all what Apple says on the tin, you know?
2:23:57They want everybody to feel welcome,
2:23:59and if you are like a serious spin cyclist
2:24:04who's been doing it for years,
2:24:05and you're, you know, you spin at a truly expert level,
2:24:10there are classes for you,
2:24:12and if you've never gotten on a spin bike in your life,
2:24:15this is a great way to get started,
2:24:16and you should feel just as welcome.
2:24:19And again, I feel like that's been Apple's approach to,
2:24:23you know, the what business does Apple have
2:24:25doing this aspect of it is, to me,
2:24:27that's sort of been Apple's approach to computers, right?
2:24:29Like, that we can, we truly believe we can make a computer
2:24:34that is good for somebody
2:24:36who doesn't know anything about computers,
2:24:38and also that the same machine
2:24:41could be a great computer for a programmer.
2:24:44- Yeah, yeah, they can make a computer that,
2:24:48for everyone who has always felt alienated
2:24:50and inaccessible to normal computers.
2:24:52- Right, it's, you know.
2:24:53- Or intimidated, yeah.
2:24:54- It's the computer for the rest of us
2:24:56was the slogan for the Mac,
2:24:57and it's like the fitness class for the rest of us,
2:24:59but it also includes--
2:25:00- And they have like the sign language little bits in there,
2:25:02and they do every, you know, and it's just really,
2:25:04and they have people doing crossovers
2:25:06with the other trainers,
2:25:07so you always see people you know,
2:25:08and it's really well thought out.
2:25:10- Yeah.
2:25:11Next event, October 13th, a high-speed event,
2:25:14HomePod mini, all of the iPhones and MagSafe.
2:25:18- The word 5G more than I've ever heard it
2:25:20in my life before, since.
2:25:21- 5G, 5G, 5G.
2:25:23- 5G, yeah.
2:25:25- And believe it or not,
2:25:26the HomePod mini doesn't even support 5G.
2:25:29- No.
2:25:30- There's no way, we can't just go into detail on this.
2:25:33What are your high-level takeaways
2:25:35now that we're months out from the iPhone 12 event?
2:25:38What's your takeaway on the iPhone 12 lineup?
2:25:40- I think it's really good.
2:25:43I think it showed Apple expanding,
2:25:45like if you think they originally had one iPhone,
2:25:46and now they're up to four iPhones,
2:25:48five if you include the iPhone SE.
2:25:50I think the iPhone mini was an interesting experiment,
2:25:52because the original SE was both smaller and less expensive,
2:25:55and now we have a separate iPhone that's less expensive,
2:25:58and a separate iPhone that's smaller,
2:26:00and that sort of lets Apple start testing segmentation,
2:26:03because whenever any market gets big,
2:26:05like the car market, you have to start segmenting,
2:26:07or you just stall growth.
2:26:09So I think, and again, now the,
2:26:10I know some people hate this,
2:26:11but the Max model now has more features
2:26:13than the regular Pro.
2:26:14But that again is part of that segmentation.
2:26:17So I think it's a very successful product.
2:26:21I think the 5G thing is still not,
2:26:23it's not ready for prime time, but they had to do it.
2:26:26And I think it was good they kept the pricing
2:26:28on the Pros the same, even if because of OLED and 5G
2:26:31and all of that, the pricing on the regular ones went up,
2:26:34and I hope that's sort of a temporary thing.
2:26:37- I like the, I still haven't ordered a new iPhone.
2:26:42I'm about to, I'm just waiting now for Christmas to be over,
2:26:45'cause it's for me, so I don't need it for Christmas.
2:26:47So I'll just wait and won't add to the holiday shipping.
2:26:50But I'm gonna get the regular iPhone 12.
2:26:54Not the mini. - Oh, interesting.
2:26:56- For me, it was like I, the first--
2:26:58- I thought you'd go mini.
2:27:00- It was very close.
2:27:01That's what it came down to for me.
2:27:03And it was the hardest decision.
2:27:05Most years, it's like, oh, I do see the appeal of this,
2:27:08but I want this.
2:27:09Like last year, it was easy.
2:27:10I wanted the regular 11 Pro.
2:27:12Max is too big.
2:27:14And last year, the Max didn't even have any extra features.
2:27:16It was just big.
2:27:18- Every designer I know went mini.
2:27:20I think it really appeals to designer culture.
2:27:22- Yeah, this year was the toughest,
2:27:24'cause all four were appealing, right?
2:27:26Like the one that would fit with the phone I bought
2:27:29every single year previously would be the 11 Pro,
2:27:32that, you know, the roughly regular size
2:27:35with the best possible camera.
2:27:37And honestly, it's just like,
2:27:39I just don't like the feel of it as much.
2:27:41I don't think it's bad.
2:27:42I just love the feel of the regular 12 better,
2:27:46and I'm kind of over the 2X camera.
2:27:50Not that I, you know, if they just would add that camera
2:27:53to the regular aluminum 12, I'd like it better.
2:27:56But I'm willing to live without it,
2:27:57and I kind of feel like, look,
2:27:59for at least the next few months,
2:28:00I'm not going anywhere anyway,
2:28:01so if I do get a new phone,
2:28:03I don't really need the best possible camera.
2:28:05So the Max, but it was the most tempting,
2:28:08the biggest phone has ever been,
2:28:09because the camera's better
2:28:11than the big one ever has been, but I just can't.
2:28:13It's not for me, you know.
2:28:16- So I had the same, I had the opposite problem
2:28:17where I was torn between the iPhone 12 Pro
2:28:20because I love the telephoto and the iPhone 12 Pro Max,
2:28:24which is just too big, and I ended up going with the Max
2:28:27because I really wanted that camera.
2:28:29And the 65 millimeter was interesting.
2:28:31I really wanted 4K 60 Dolby Vision
2:28:35because I use it for B-roll for my videos,
2:28:37and the ability to do 60 frames per second
2:28:39means I can use it for slow-mo,
2:28:41which is really important for me.
2:28:43And then when I saw Sebastian DeWitt's article
2:28:46on what that sensor is really capable of
2:28:49once you get some of the computational stuff
2:28:51that's auto-correcting everything out of the way,
2:28:53and especially with ProRAW, I was just sold,
2:28:55and I said I'm gonna live with this tiny tablet
2:28:58just to have that camera.
2:28:59- So that's where you went, you went Pro Max?
2:29:00- Yeah, I ordered the Pro Max, yeah.
2:29:02- See, I see the appeal of it,
2:29:04and it's the most appealing the biggest phone
2:29:06has ever been to me, but I still, I don't want it.
2:29:10I mean, it's just not for me.
2:29:11But all four were appealing to me,
2:29:14and it's like, all right, I cut off all the pros.
2:29:17All right, I'm gonna give,
2:29:19just move away from the 2X lens,
2:29:20even though I do love it, and I will miss it.
2:29:24Then it just came down to the regular 12
2:29:25and the 12 mini, and it was close.
2:29:28And you know, my eyes, as a 48-year-old,
2:29:34it's close, but it's like my eyes have gotten better
2:29:37in the last few years, just long story short,
2:29:40but it's actually better than it was just a few years ago.
2:29:42And I do see it fine, but it's not the greatest.
2:29:47And to me, the thing that really pushes it over the edge
2:29:50is like when I'm wearing glasses,
2:29:53or I don't have my glasses on, and I'm holding it up,
2:29:56and it's like when I'm using it as a camera,
2:29:59it's like I have progressives,
2:30:00so if I'm holding it down to read, I can see it better.
2:30:02But if I'm holding it up to take a picture,
2:30:04then I don't see it as well,
2:30:06and being a little bigger makes it better.
2:30:08And then typing, it really does, you know, guess what?
2:30:12It's nicer to type on a slightly bigger on-screen keyboard.
2:30:15But it was the closest, it was so close.
2:30:17And I feel like--
2:30:18- I was like the Max or the Mini.
2:30:20That was the thing with me,
2:30:21is I discounted the ones in the middle,
2:30:22and the Mini was just so appealing.
2:30:24And I think for people who the iPhone
2:30:26isn't a primary computer, the Mini is so much win,
2:30:29and the Max, if it is your primary computer,
2:30:32is so much win at the same time.
2:30:33- But it was close.
2:30:34But the winner for me this year is the regular iPhone 12.
2:30:37It's like the combination of weight,
2:30:39and a big difference to me with the 12
2:30:42versus the 12 Pro is the weight, in addition to feel.
2:30:45Like, I just love the feel better,
2:30:47but part of the feel is the weight,
2:30:49and it's like, ah, but man.
2:30:51- That was so interesting to me,
2:30:52because every year, I always have people tell me
2:30:54Apple should just double the battery,
2:30:55and I'm like, you know how heavy that is?
2:30:57Like, it's got a bunch of other problems.
2:30:58Like, it's not RF transparent, it increases the heat,
2:31:00but it's heavy, and they're like,
2:31:01oh, I can just hold up a phone.
2:31:03And then all these people can look at the Pro
2:31:04like that's too heavy.
2:31:06Like, yes.
2:31:07It turns out that a light phone is part of usability,
2:31:09because you can play games,
2:31:10and watch videos, and read books longer.
2:31:13- MagSafe, what's your takeaway on MagSafe now,
2:31:15a couple months in?
2:31:17- I'm optimistic and disappointed at the same time.
2:31:20Like, I think the idea is great,
2:31:22and I think especially if Apple's gonna go portless
2:31:24in the future, MagSafe is a really good way
2:31:26to sort of ease us into that thing,
2:31:28but I'm still super salty about the loss
2:31:30of the charger in the box.
2:31:32But especially that both chargers,
2:31:35the MagSafe and the MagSafe Duo,
2:31:36do not come with the AC adapter in the box,
2:31:40to me, is just ridiculous.
2:31:41- Well, and the Duo in particular, 'cause it's $130.
2:31:45It's a $130 charging mat that doesn't come
2:31:47with an AC adapter, it's ridiculous.
2:31:49- Well, it was clearly made for a year
2:31:51when they thought travel was gonna be a huge thing,
2:31:53and for people who had a huge Apple affinity,
2:31:55were not price-conscious,
2:31:56and just wanted something really convenient
2:31:57to fold up and carry with them when traveling,
2:32:00but we did not get that year.
2:32:01- But even then, it should come with the AC adapter,
2:32:03if it's $130, it's ridiculous.
2:32:05- Absolutely, absolutely.
2:32:07- Probably my biggest thumbs down of the year
2:32:09for all of Apple products is the Duo charger,
2:32:11'cause I don't think it's that great.
2:32:12I feel like it feels chintzy.
2:32:14If it costs 50 bucks, then I'd say, oh, sure,
2:32:17go buy one and put it in your travel bag,
2:32:19but at $130--
2:32:20- And it's cumbersome.
2:32:21- Yeah, it's very cumbersome.
2:32:23They made the watch side way more cumbersome
2:32:25than any other watch charger,
2:32:27because they put a big magnet around it
2:32:29that doesn't do anything except keep it closed
2:32:32when you cinch it up,
2:32:33and it doesn't come with the AC adapter,
2:32:35have I mentioned that?
2:32:36It's ridiculous.
2:32:38- And the wallet, I'm sort of mixed feelings on.
2:32:40Peter McKinnon turned me around a little bit on it,
2:32:41because he's a leather maker,
2:32:43and he went through how well-made it is,
2:32:45and how it doesn't always fall off
2:32:47if you treat it like that sort of leather wallet,
2:32:50but I'm still someone who needs more than two cards,
2:32:52so I think it's got, again, it's one of these products
2:32:54that Apple has put out that appeals to a very small part
2:32:57of a very highly invested Apple ecosystem owner.
2:32:59- Yeah, and I kind of feel like they're,
2:33:01you know, it's like here's their very opinionated
2:33:03take on a wallet, where you only have two or three cards,
2:33:06and you don't need your Apple card, of course,
2:33:07because your Apple card can just live on your phone,
2:33:10so there's, you know, that's why you can get away with,
2:33:12it's like, ah, but I need a gym card
2:33:13and a driver's license in there.
2:33:15- Yeah, my license, my medical card.
2:33:16- And it's like you're already over the limit,
2:33:18but it's like, well, here's how, you know,
2:33:20at least other companies can take it apart
2:33:22and figure out how to make an adapter that fits on it.
2:33:25- And some of the Belkin stuff is good.
2:33:27That's why I'm optimistic about it.
2:33:29Some of the stuff that we see coming out is really good.
2:33:32- I think iOS 14 has been a terrific update,
2:33:37and I don't know, you know,
2:33:40again, we could do a whole hour
2:33:43on what's great about iOS 14.
2:33:45To me, the big win is the widgets,
2:33:48and I feel like Apple really nailed it.
2:33:50I feel like the way that people are happy
2:33:53to futz around and make widgets,
2:33:55and that Widgetsmith is a smash hit,
2:33:57and it became a TikTok thing,
2:33:59and people just love customizing their home screen,
2:34:02and the way that shortcuts can double,
2:34:05as you could just make a shortcut that opens an app,
2:34:07and therefore you can put any app icon you want on it,
2:34:10and it's a quick little easily understood hack
2:34:13to make custom icons for any app you want,
2:34:17and then you can hide the actual app in your app library
2:34:20and have this super minimalist thing.
2:34:23I haven't really gone, that's not for me anymore,
2:34:26but that's the sort of thing I loved doing
2:34:29with my Mac in the early '90s.
2:34:31I loved making custom icons and customizing all of that,
2:34:35and so it's exactly the same mindset
2:34:38of doing custom apps, icons, and customizing my desktop.
2:34:43I remember when you only had a desktop pattern
2:34:47on system seven, and you couldn't have a whole picture
2:34:52on the background, but there were third-party utilities
2:34:54that would let you do it,
2:34:55and of course I did because it looked so much cooler,
2:34:58and it's like I totally get that mindset,
2:35:00and I think it is so awesome that I was 14,
2:35:04has given that level of enthusiasm
2:35:07to younger people today who,
2:35:12the phone is the main computer, and it is--
2:35:16- And they're improving it, like the latest beta
2:35:18stops you having to do the whole round trip
2:35:19through shortcuts each time.
2:35:21- Right, right, and it's not just for the app launching.
2:35:24They've actually, that's the other thing,
2:35:26if I want to go the other way and put on my old man hat,
2:35:29shortcuts has taken a huge step up
2:35:33at being a sort of serious automation tool,
2:35:37like in a way that I was very skeptical
2:35:40it would ever keep getting better, but it is,
2:35:43and it's gotten a lot faster.
2:35:45There are a lot of stupid things that's like,
2:35:48why is this slow to just make a list of these 10 things
2:35:51and show a thing, and it's like, why does it take forever?
2:35:53It's like, now it runs as fast as you think it can,
2:35:56and why does this bounce me over to the shortcuts app
2:35:58if it's just gonna show a dialog?
2:36:00Now it doesn't, it just runs right there,
2:36:03and you can make little programs.
2:36:05You can be, and to me, that ability to be
2:36:09like your own designer who can make the phone
2:36:11look exactly the way you want
2:36:13as it gets you into user interface design
2:36:18in a way that shortcuts can let you be a programmer
2:36:21and make a little program that does some stupid thing
2:36:23just for you that makes you happy
2:36:25is a great way to get you into programming.
2:36:28And so to me, the two best things about iOS 14
2:36:31are the shortcuts improvements and the widgets,
2:36:36which let people-- - It's so good.
2:36:37I don't know if I'm talking to Federico Vittucci,
2:36:39Rosemary Orchard, or Matthew Casanelli anymore,
2:36:41or their shortcuts.
2:36:42They could have set up a shortcut
2:36:43just to handle our conversations.
2:36:45- And it makes me so happy that Apple
2:36:46has taken a keen interest in this
2:36:49and that they're listening, you know,
2:36:51they see people's enthusiasm for it
2:36:53and jumped on it, like you said,
2:36:54to make it so that the, you know,
2:36:57everybody was afraid when everybody customized
2:36:59these shortcuts that Apple was gonna take it away.
2:37:02- Yeah, just snatch it. - Right, and be like,
2:37:04"Oh, we didn't think that you would use these shortcuts
2:37:07"to launch an app just to make custom icons
2:37:09"for Instagram or whatever, so we're gonna disable that."
2:37:13And instead, they made it better
2:37:15and fixed everybody's complaint
2:37:16that it boomeranged you through the shortcuts app,
2:37:19and it's like, ah, they're encouraging
2:37:21this level of tinkering.
2:37:22I think that's great.
2:37:24- And my thing is, as much as Siri's Assistant
2:37:27is still a frustratingly inconsistent experience,
2:37:29the on-device intelligence has been great.
2:37:31Like, I just replaced most of my home screen
2:37:33with those Siri-selected app widgets,
2:37:35and almost every time, an app I want
2:37:37is always right there waiting for me,
2:37:39and I never have to move home pages anymore.
2:37:41- The one for me, and it's on-device, clearly,
2:37:45'cause Apple's been very clear
2:37:47that the Photos library management stuff happens on-device,
2:37:51and on the Mac, going back to earlier in the show,
2:37:54in Activity Monitor, you can see Photos library
2:37:56running in the background sometimes.
2:37:59I don't have a lot of widgets that I use.
2:38:01I have a weather widget from Weatherline,
2:38:02which is a great third-party app,
2:38:04and their widgets, by the way, have really gotten,
2:38:07they started out great, but now they're even better,
2:38:09where they have, in that same little tiny widget,
2:38:11they have your next three hours,
2:38:14and then the next three days.
2:38:15Side-by-side, oh, Weatherline's a great weather app.
2:38:17- Yeah, it's so good.
2:38:18- The built-in Photos widget, and I mean this sincerely,
2:38:22and I don't think I'm a sappy person
2:38:24who's prone to purple prose, it's life-changing.
2:38:28I just have this little, wide, two-by-four widget
2:38:32at the top of my second home screen
2:38:34with the built-in Photos widget,
2:38:36and it just, every day, shows me an old photo
2:38:40from 10 to 15 years ago,
2:38:43and they're the most amazing pics you could imagine,
2:38:46and it's like, it's just a--
2:38:48- So mine is a mixed blessing,
2:38:50because I get the exact same thing,
2:38:51like I'll get pictures of my Godkids
2:38:53that just melt my heart, and then I'll get a picture
2:38:56from one of the events that you and I were at
2:38:58that we can't go to this year,
2:38:59and I feel like it's trolling me.
2:39:01- It's really been great for me, seeing family,
2:39:03and it just, the machine learning on it is clearly driven,
2:39:08'cause I'll go open it up,
2:39:10and the ones that they picked to show in the widget
2:39:12are invariably the better pictures, you know?
2:39:14- Yes, and I just share them, like, right away.
2:39:17I never used to share photos like that,
2:39:18but it'll show me a photo from three years ago,
2:39:20and I immediately message, send,
2:39:21and people are like, "Oh, it's so cute."
2:39:22- And when it shows me ones from the longest ago
2:39:25that are in my library, where my son is now,
2:39:29he's about to turn 17, believe it or not.
2:39:32- Wow. (laughs)
2:39:33- I was shooting 35-millimeter film until he was,
2:39:37I forget how old, but like,
2:39:38the first two to three years of his life,
2:39:41most of my photos of him as a baby
2:39:44were shot with a 35-millimeter film camera,
2:39:46and I scanned the negatives.
2:39:48And it's probably a stupid thing, but I just kept them all.
2:39:52So if I shot 36 images, and you know,
2:39:56maybe, you know, 18 of them were worth keeping,
2:40:00I just kept the other 18,
2:40:01even if they were like the back of somebody's head.
2:40:03'Cause it's like, to me, it's like,
2:40:04"Well, I paid to get the film developed, I'm gonna keep it."
2:40:07Whereas if it was a digital photo,
2:40:08I'd be like, "Gup, delete, delete, delete."
2:40:11The photos widget never shows me those images.
2:40:14And it's not just which ones I've like,
2:40:17hearted in the photos app.
2:40:19It just has the machine learning to know that,
2:40:23"Oh, that's a bad picture."
2:40:25- Yeah, that whole on-device intelligence group
2:40:28just killed it this year.
2:40:29They did such good work,
2:40:30and it goes through the entire system.
2:40:32- I've talked to a few people who've said the same thing
2:40:34about the photos widget, and it's like,
2:40:36I didn't expect,
2:40:38I expected it to be something that I would delete.
2:40:40I was like, "I don't know why they're showing me this
2:40:41by default." - Yeah, same.
2:40:42- If you did delete it and didn't give it a chance,
2:40:44that would be like my tip of the week,
2:40:46would be put the photos widget
2:40:47back on your second home screen and give it a chance,
2:40:50and just spend a week or two and just look at the photos.
2:40:54It surfaces for you.
2:40:56It's really amazing.
2:40:58- Yeah, I actually graduated it to my first home screen,
2:41:01and I have it in the stack, and every once in a while,
2:41:04it just comes up, and every time, it's fantastic.
2:41:06- All right, we're propping up on the legal limit
2:41:09for a podcast length.
2:41:10- Okay.
2:41:12- So we're gonna have to cut--
2:41:13- One more thing?
2:41:14- One more thing.
2:41:15Was there anything else that Apple released this year?
2:41:18I can't remember at this point.
2:41:20- Just the HomePod Mini,
2:41:22but I think it's the HomePod Mini at this point.
2:41:24- The M1 Max, we've talked about it the most recently.
2:41:27I don't feel bad cutting it short.
2:41:29It's, to me, the most amazing thing
2:41:32that Apple's done in years, hardware-wise.
2:41:35- Yes. - It is a home--
2:41:36- And not just Apple.
2:41:37I'd say it's one of the best things in processors
2:41:38in the last decade.
2:41:39- Right, it really is.
2:41:40It's like a reaffirmation in the belief
2:41:44that computers can keep getting better, right?
2:41:47It used to be axiomatic, and then it's like
2:41:50it stopped happening, and we just sort of got beaten
2:41:53into submission, and it's like, ah, yeah,
2:41:55I guess computers don't really get better,
2:41:57and when they do--
2:41:59- Well, it was like the core.
2:42:00Like, when Intel came out with core, it was a revolution.
2:42:02For what, like, they were in the tank, it was a revolution,
2:42:04and it just changed everything.
2:42:05I feel like M1 just changes everything,
2:42:08not just at their high performance.
2:42:09The high performance is almost like incidental
2:42:12to the design philosophy that resulted in M1,
2:42:14but just using a Mac, everything is as instantaneous
2:42:17as using an iPad, and the quality of life is, to me,
2:42:20even as impressive as the battery life that we're getting.
2:42:23- Right, because you know you're doing so much more, right?
2:42:25And it's like that it's unlike the iPad
2:42:28where you know apps aren't getting frozen in the background.
2:42:32- Or jettisoned every three minutes.
2:42:33- Right, yeah, exactly.
2:42:36That you are actually getting virtual memory in it,
2:42:40swapping memory to the SSD, and you can't even tell,
2:42:43because it's like the performance of getting it back
2:42:46off the SSD is so fast that it's faster than the RAM
2:42:51on computers that we're used to.
2:42:52It's like, it's just really amazing.
2:42:56I don't know, and--
2:42:59- It makes you happy.
2:43:00Like, it makes me smile using the Mac.
2:43:02And I have not seen a beach ball.
2:43:05It's like if someone had made a trailer for the movie
2:43:07and they would say like, imagine, imagine a world
2:43:10without beach balls, it would be beautiful.
2:43:13I've totally bought into that.
2:43:14I've not found a way to beach ball it yet.
2:43:15- I did once, I forget what I did.
2:43:17And I was like, I should write this down.
2:43:19And I can't remember--
2:43:20- It's probably an Electron app.
2:43:22- Well, and it's, you know, in terms of ending this show
2:43:25and ending our look back at Apple's 2020.
2:43:28Well, they did release the HomePod, or not the HomePod,
2:43:33the AirPods Mac.
2:43:34- AirPods Mac.
2:43:35- Forget 'em, you know.
2:43:36We don't have time for that.
2:43:39- No, I like on their AirPods Pro for your over here.
2:43:43- Yeah, but do I really, it's just--
2:43:46- The case is funny, but that's a whole other show.
2:43:48- The case is actually, it really is baffling.
2:43:52The more I think about it,
2:43:54and now that they've sort of settled in,
2:43:56and when you really look at the case
2:43:58and you can see how it's just sort of a origami project,
2:44:02you know, that it's--
2:44:03- Yes.
2:44:04- If you cut off a piece of this cover from an iPad case,
2:44:08it's like if we just took this rubber
2:44:10and cut it like this, you could fold it.
2:44:12And it's like if--
2:44:12- It's like chaps, it's like putting chaps on an,
2:44:15like there's holes in the bum area,
2:44:16like it's just so strange.
2:44:18- If it was like a college design student's thesis project,
2:44:22like here's how you could make a headphone pouch
2:44:27out of a single piece of leather or rubber,
2:44:32and you would save material because it's all one piece
2:44:35and you'd only have to attach it here and here,
2:44:38it would be like A plus.
2:44:39This is an A plus student project, this is genius.
2:44:42- But the cutout doesn't line up with the lightning port,
2:44:44which is something that I would just drag Samsung for.
2:44:47I did for years.
2:44:48- So I figured it out.
2:44:48It does line up with the headphone port
2:44:52if you tuck the steel arms all the way up into the headband.
2:44:55- Oh, okay.
2:44:58- Well, but who wants to do that?
2:45:00If--
2:45:01- No, I don't.
2:45:01- The comfortable size for the headphone
2:45:03is with the stems an inch down,
2:45:05aren't you going to leave them there?
2:45:07Like that, it's almost worse.
2:45:09Like I know people are dunking on them
2:45:11because the lightning port doesn't line up with the notch.
2:45:14Can you believe we're gonna go longer on the iPad,
2:45:16the AirPods pouch than the M1 Macs?
2:45:19But here we are.
2:45:21No, but I know everybody's dunking on them rightfully
2:45:23because the lightning port doesn't line up with the notch
2:45:26for the lightning port,
2:45:28but it does if you tuck the bars in.
2:45:30- But that's worse.
2:45:31- But the bars being sort of stiff and resistant
2:45:35and holding their position
2:45:36is literally one of the top selling points they mention
2:45:40about the device.
2:45:41So they're like, one of the great things about this device
2:45:44is that these stems don't have notches
2:45:47and have this premium feel and they hold their place.
2:45:50And then once you have it sized in place
2:45:53and it'll hold its position,
2:45:55the lightning port will never line up with the notch again.
2:45:59- It would have been more Apple to me
2:46:01if there was no case.
2:46:01Like that would have made more Apple sense
2:46:03and people would have dragged them for that as well,
2:46:05but I would have at least said, well, that's Apple.
2:46:06- Right, it would have.
2:46:08Nothing is better than something bad
2:46:12from the Apple mindset.
2:46:13It's better to have no touch at all on,
2:46:16you knew I was gonna go here,
2:46:18better to have no touch at all on the MacBooks
2:46:21than to have bad touch, right?
2:46:24That's the Apple mindset.
2:46:26So I actually agree with you.
2:46:28I think it would be better.
2:46:29And I honestly believe, I really do wonder,
2:46:32the number has to be greater than zero.
2:46:35At least one person out there
2:46:37is going to throw away the pouch
2:46:40thinking it was the packaging.
2:46:42- Yes, yes.
2:46:43- I guarantee you, it is so close to--
2:46:46- David Pogue's wife is gonna throw it away.
2:46:47- It is so close to being really premium packaging
2:46:52that you throw away, not a really crappy pouch
2:46:55that somebody is gonna mistake it for it.
2:46:58It's so bizarre.
2:46:59- 100%.
2:47:00- All right, there we go.
2:47:03Year in review, wrapped up under the legal three hour limit.
2:47:06René, everybody, I enjoyed being on your show
2:47:10a couple times this year, but the most recent one--
2:47:12- Well, thank you.
2:47:13- I swear to God, not joking.
2:47:15I'm gonna put it in the show notes.
2:47:16We had such a great time talking about touch screens
2:47:20and whether or not they should or will ever come to the Mac.
2:47:23I will put a link to the show.
2:47:26Your whole show, though, is over there on the YouTube,
2:47:28youtube.com/reneritchie.
2:47:31Very easy to remember.
2:47:32Thank you for making it just your name.
2:47:35Oh, anything else you wanna promote?
2:47:38What else you wanna promote?
2:47:40- No, that's it, and I did start a new podcast
2:47:42with Georgia Dow called Apple Talk
2:47:44where she talks about the psychology
2:47:45behind all the technology, and I just try to shut up
2:47:47and learn all I can.
2:47:48- And everybody, the best way to find that, I'm sure,
2:47:50is to go to your favorite podcast app
2:47:51and just search for Apple Talk.
2:47:53- Yep, or youtube.com/appletalkshow
2:47:56'cause Apple Talk was taken.
2:47:57- But then you can, wait, wait, youtube.com/--
2:48:01- Apple Talk Show, all one word.
2:48:03- Oh, Apple Talk Show.
2:48:04Oh, now you're stepping on my toes here.
2:48:07- I didn't mean to.
2:48:08I was trying to get Apple Talk,
2:48:09and YouTube made it so difficult,
2:48:11and I'm still trying to pull some strings
2:48:13and see if I can get it shortened.
2:48:13- Do you know who the talk show Twitter account,
2:48:17it's all, it's actually died down
2:48:20'cause I feel like everybody who makes the mistake
2:48:21has maybe learned, but the mistake people make
2:48:24is I get people talking to the talk TV show,
2:48:29which is like a morning gossip TV show,
2:48:34and it's definitely a different audience.
2:48:37(laughs)
2:48:38- Apple Talk was a Serenity Caldwell idea
2:48:40'cause she's brilliant at naming,
2:48:41and she was kind enough to let us use it.
2:48:43- Well, people can check it out.
2:48:45I will thank our three sponsors today,
2:48:48Things from Cultured Code, the great task manager
2:48:52for Mac and iOS, Linode, which is a great web hosting service
2:48:57that I use for Daring Fireball,
2:49:00and of course, Squarespace, where you can host
2:49:02and build a website with stuff like podcasts,
2:49:05podcasting, and store, online store,
2:49:08and everything else you wanna do at Squarespace,
2:49:11so my thanks for that.
2:49:12Renee, have a good holiday season,
2:49:16and I almost can guarantee,
2:49:18I feel like we can't do worse.
2:49:19You're gonna have, I'm gonna wish you a better 2021
2:49:22than you had a 2020.
2:49:23- Oh, thank you.
2:49:25Likewise, and happy holidays to you and yours.
2:49:26(laughs)