The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► You had a baby.

00:00:01 ◼   ► - Yes, little Mazie's almost seven months old.

00:00:05 ◼   ► So, and it just, I mean, it's been a complete whirlwind

00:00:07 ◼   ► as I'm sure you know from years ago,

00:00:09 ◼   ► but yeah, my brain is all sort of all over the place.

00:00:14 ◼   ► - It looks like the last time you were on the show

00:00:16 ◼   ► was April, 2017.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Is that crazy?

00:00:19 ◼   ► - Wow, so yeah, two years ago.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Yeah, that's again, if I condensed the past seven months

00:00:26 ◼   ► into like 10 seconds, that seems about right.

00:00:29 ◼   ► I am following along with young Maisley on the Instagram

00:00:34 ◼   ► and she looks delightful.

00:00:36 ◼   ► - Thank you, yeah, I think Megan and I obviously

00:00:40 ◼   ► both run that account, but she does more of the posting,

00:00:44 ◼   ► I would say, it's always funny, she notes sometimes

00:00:46 ◼   ► how avid of a follower you are, which we appreciate.

00:00:50 ◼   ► - Sometimes I feel like a hypocrite

00:00:54 ◼   ► for being such a vocal Facebook critic

00:00:56 ◼   ► and still enjoying Instagram.

00:00:59 ◼   ► And other times when it can be so personal like that,

00:01:02 ◼   ► I'm like, you know, I'm willing to,

00:01:04 ◼   ► I'm willing to eat this hypocrisy for the time being

00:01:08 ◼   ► because I feel like I'm getting something out of this.

00:01:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm right there with you.

00:01:13 ◼   ► And I mean, I know you were very early, I would say,

00:01:16 ◼   ► on that, ahead of that trend, right, with Facebook.

00:01:19 ◼   ► Did you ever even sign up?

00:01:20 ◼   ► - Nope. - I know you have Instagram,

00:01:21 ◼   ► but not Facebook itself. - No, I've never once

00:01:22 ◼   ► signed up for Facebook.

00:01:24 ◼   ► - And that looks pretty prescient these days.

00:01:28 ◼   ► But yeah, even those of us who are sort of now

00:01:31 ◼   ► more vocal critics in the later years

00:01:33 ◼   ► after everything that's went down

00:01:34 ◼   ► the past two years with Facebook,

00:01:36 ◼   ► still can't quite wean myself off of it,

00:01:39 ◼   ► mainly for family reasons, like my mom uses it a ton,

00:01:42 ◼   ► and so it's the way she follows Maisie and everything.

00:01:44 ◼   ► But also, yeah, Instagram still remains

00:01:47 ◼   ► just an awesome network, and so it's hard

00:01:50 ◼   ► not to have that hypocrisy, I guess.

00:01:53 ◼   ► - You know, and I, yeah, and so I hear it loudly admitting

00:01:57 ◼   ► that I use Instagram. I'm not sure that Instagram at this point, especially once Kevin system

00:02:03 ◼   ► and whoever the other co founder was decided to leave my career. You know, our Instagram's

00:02:12 ◼   ► privacy policies and data retention any better than Facebook is really is it really worth

00:02:17 ◼   ► thinking of Instagram as an independent entity of Facebook? I think probably not. So I mean,

00:02:22 ◼   ► Again, I'm not trying to do a holier than now

00:02:25 ◼   ► or better than now thing,

00:02:27 ◼   ► but I think that not having ever signed up for Facebook

00:02:30 ◼   ► is a lot easier than quitting

00:02:32 ◼   ► just because of the things you say.

00:02:34 ◼   ► So my mom, I don't even know if my mom's on Facebook.

00:02:36 ◼   ► I don't think she is, but I know I have family.

00:02:39 ◼   ► I've got my sister, I'm sure she is.

00:02:41 ◼   ► I think it would be, there is no awkward moment

00:02:43 ◼   ► where I've stopped liking her pictures of her kids

00:02:46 ◼   ► on Facebook because I never was in the first place.

00:02:49 ◼   ► - Right.

00:02:49 ◼   ► - It's that, and it's also, you know,

00:02:52 ◼   ► all the services throughout the years,

00:02:53 ◼   ► there's still a number of ones that I've like,

00:02:55 ◼   ► offed in through Facebook, where I'll come across,

00:02:57 ◼   ► you know, something that I'm trying to log into,

00:02:59 ◼   ► and I'm like, God, I, and I don't have like,

00:03:01 ◼   ► the password saved in one password or whatever,

00:03:03 ◼   ► I'm like, what is, what is my password?

00:03:05 ◼   ► And then I realize, oh, I offed in through Facebook,

00:03:07 ◼   ► and it's like, I probably have a dozen services like that.

00:03:10 ◼   ► - I did a bunch like that with Twitter,

00:03:12 ◼   ► just for the, I thinking like, well,

00:03:15 ◼   ► I know I've got my Twitter account secure, quote unquote,

00:03:18 ◼   ► But I really don't now that I think about it, because they use the phone number as the

00:03:22 ◼   ► second off.

00:03:23 ◼   ► That's really not that great.

00:03:26 ◼   ► So in hindsight, but this is like three, four years ago, I felt like my Twitter was very

00:03:30 ◼   ► safe.

00:03:31 ◼   ► And so I'd sign up for accounts in news services using my Twitter ID and have since

00:03:37 ◼   ► come to regret that every time.

00:03:39 ◼   ► And I'm slowly, but when I realized that I like unwind it and see if there's, is there

00:03:43 ◼   ► a way that I can magically switch to a regular login for X, Y, or Z service.

00:03:49 ◼   ► Yeah, and I'm the same way, and obviously to a greater extent with Facebook given all

00:03:53 ◼   ► we're talking about, but it's just like, you know, when you're signing up for all these

00:03:58 ◼   ► new services as, you know, as I had to back in the day as a journalist and now as an investor,

00:04:03 ◼   ► obviously still signing up for almost as many, if not more, and it's like, am I going to

00:04:07 ◼   ► enter my email and come up with a password every single time for something that I may

00:04:11 ◼   ► maybe gonna use once, and so it's so enticing

00:04:14 ◼   ► to just click the button of sign in with Facebook

00:04:16 ◼   ► or Google or Twitter, even now.

00:04:19 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:04:20 ◼   ► It's funny that Apple never got into that.

00:04:22 ◼   ► There has never been a sign in

00:04:23 ◼   ► to third-party services with your iCloud.

00:04:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, they would have been,

00:04:28 ◼   ► I mean, especially these days,

00:04:30 ◼   ► they could certainly upsell that as a strong security

00:04:34 ◼   ► and privacy component doing something like that

00:04:37 ◼   ► with your iCloud account.

00:04:38 ◼   ► I think they should do that.

00:04:40 ◼   ► I don't know why they why they don't I mean, it's not technically easy

00:04:43 ◼   ► I'm sure but it seems like a huge thing that they could offer. Yeah, it's just a just a thought

00:04:49 ◼   ► As we go through all the privacy

00:04:52 ◼   ► The privacy wars that's what we'll look back on this era as

00:04:56 ◼   ► so anyway

00:04:58 ◼   ► The whole parent game is treating you well

00:05:00 ◼   ► Yeah, it's every day is is something new and crazy

00:05:04 ◼   ► But it's I feel like I have my feet at least a little bit under me until something changes tomorrow

00:05:09 ◼   ► But yeah, it's good at seven months. Let me think about this is she's she's probably she's rolling over for sure, right?

00:05:15 ◼   ► Yeah, she rolls around not crawling yet. Yeah, she's mainly sleeping through the night, which is awesome

00:05:21 ◼   ► Some nights obviously are different. She's also teething so that can affect that a little bit and

00:05:26 ◼   ► But yeah, it's it's uh, it's it's pretty awesome

00:05:29 ◼   ► It's a long time for me. My son is 15 feels like a very long time

00:05:34 ◼   ► And so he's our only kid but but the teething thing was interesting because you think well, yeah, but I'm sure that hurts

00:05:40 ◼   ► But then it's like when their gums hurt it it is like must be excruciating

00:05:45 ◼   ► It makes sense that it would be like there's a tooth cutting through their gum

00:05:49 ◼   ► But then the other thing is that you kind of feel like like a genius doctor on TV. You're like I've got it

00:05:55 ◼   ► It's teething and it's like right, right

00:05:57 ◼   ► Ice cold pacifier, you know that's in the freezer get that and and let her suck on this

00:06:03 ◼   ► You know ice cold thing or put a little bit of that or a gel or whatever it was

00:06:07 ◼   ► Works and you're like, holy crap. I solved the problem

00:06:11 ◼   ► Yeah, when when she was first going through it, of course, we were like what is going on? Why is she crying like?

00:06:17 ◼   ► She's been fed. She's been changed all going through the checklist and then it's like you just put your finger in her mouth

00:06:22 ◼   ► It's like oh, yeah, that's why yeah

00:06:24 ◼   ► My other thing too is is around that age

00:06:28 ◼   ► It's one of my favorite like to me like holy crap parenting moments was the beginning to roll over because

00:06:35 ◼   ► There's like newborn and newborn. It's like I don't know that those weeks are a blur and it's like oh my god

00:06:42 ◼   ► We've got a baby. We've got a baby and it's like you just

00:06:45 ◼   ► You know and then all of a sudden you're like a month in and the kid feels sturdier you feel more confident

00:06:51 ◼   ► You know, yeah, and and you you get used to being able to put the baby down

00:06:55 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:06:58 ◼   ► Walk away and do something and then come back

00:07:01 ◼   ► and the baby is right where you left them.

00:07:03 ◼   ► It's like you can put a cup of coffee down

00:07:05 ◼   ► and then you could go do something

00:07:06 ◼   ► and when you come back, the cup of coffee is still there.

00:07:09 ◼   ► Once the kid starts rolling over,

00:07:11 ◼   ► it is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what do we do?

00:07:13 ◼   ► What do we do?

00:07:14 ◼   ► We can never put this kid down.

00:07:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, so we have this product called Nanit,

00:07:20 ◼   ► which is like a newfangled baby monitor.

00:07:22 ◼   ► So it's a camera that overlooks the entire crib

00:07:25 ◼   ► so you can get a bird's eye view of the whole crib.

00:07:27 ◼   ► And it runs all night and it's, and it actually, you know,

00:07:30 ◼   ► it has iPhone and iPad apps.

00:07:32 ◼   ► So we basically have an iPad that sits at the bedside

00:07:36 ◼   ► so we can sort of monitor and just when, you know,

00:07:38 ◼   ► I'll jolt up at 4 a.m. and wonder like,

00:07:40 ◼   ► how's Maisie doing?

00:07:41 ◼   ► And then I'll just look on the monitor and I can see.

00:07:43 ◼   ► And, but what's really funny about that is now

00:07:46 ◼   ► with her rolling and just moving around, I mean,

00:07:48 ◼   ► she does at least, I would say three full turns a night,

00:07:53 ◼   ► just like it's not even clear how she does it with, you know,

00:07:56 ◼   ► given her length and sort of the size of the sides of the crib. But it's like,

00:08:00 ◼   ► she's, she's like a clock moving around the thing.

00:08:03 ◼   ► Curly from the three Stooges down there on the ground.

00:08:05 ◼   ► Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly right. Um, yeah. So it's, it's funny to watch though.

00:08:11 ◼   ► The next one coming up and then, and then it,

00:08:14 ◼   ► to me it's just the biggest landmark is the first day you come in and she's

00:08:18 ◼   ► standing up in the crib. Yeah. Uh, yeah.

00:08:22 ◼   ► Because the thing about it is it's like you think well you're gonna be blown you you you and your partner are gonna be blown

00:08:26 ◼   ► Away, the parents are gonna be like, whoa

00:08:28 ◼   ► You know the baby standing up but the thing with at least with Jonas was he was like, yeah, look at me

00:08:34 ◼   ► Look at me. I got something now. I've got something. Yeah, he's just giving us this look like I've got a super game has changed. Yeah

00:08:41 ◼   ► I'm very happy for you. Thank you. Thank you

00:08:47 ◼   ► I I don't know what you want to get started with but I was gonna start with Apple in the original content

00:08:52 ◼   ► stuff and I thought you you've had a lot to say about it since their event you know I missed that

00:08:57 ◼   ► event yeah I was gonna ask you I didn't I it seemed like you didn't that was what is that one

00:09:02 ◼   ► of the only ones you've ever missed then I missed since I started getting press invitations around

00:09:09 ◼   ► 26 2006 or so maybe 2005 like with Macworlds I've missed two I had I had eye surgery

00:09:21 ◼   ► a couple years ago, like 2014, and Quinton was not allowed to fly. And then this last

00:09:27 ◼   ► one I missed because we had a long-standing vacation for my son's spring break that I

00:09:32 ◼   ► didn't want to miss.

00:09:33 ◼   ► Got it. So that's interesting. So like me, and I, you know, I haven't been, I haven't

00:09:37 ◼   ► been to one in a while. I used to go, so, you know, there's this whole interesting dynamic

00:09:42 ◼   ► with obviously the place I've worked for the past six years now has been GV, which is Google

00:09:47 ◼   ► so Google's our only LP.

00:09:49 ◼   ► And I think the Google-Apple relationship these days

00:09:51 ◼   ► is a lot better than it was,

00:09:53 ◼   ► but there was a time there where I was still working

00:09:57 ◼   ► in the earlier days at GV

00:09:58 ◼   ► and I was still going to the Apple events,

00:10:00 ◼   ► but those sort of invites dwindled over the years.

00:10:04 ◼   ► And also, of course, I have a day-to-day job,

00:10:06 ◼   ► and so the Monday morning event is not very conducive

00:10:11 ◼   ► to the Monday morning VC partner meeting.

00:10:13 ◼   ► So I haven't been to one in, I don't know,

00:10:17 ◼   ► like three or four years in person.

00:10:19 ◼   ► I watch them all when they're live streaming.

00:10:21 ◼   ► I think they're all live streaming these days, right?

00:10:22 ◼   ► So I don't watch them often in real time,

00:10:25 ◼   ► but I'll watch the, you know, the after,

00:10:28 ◼   ► play it afterwards.

00:10:29 ◼   ► And so I've seen them all, but yeah,

00:10:31 ◼   ► it's been a long time since I've been in the room.

00:10:32 ◼   ► So interesting that we'll have the same perspective

00:10:36 ◼   ► being from afar.

00:10:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I wonder how different that would be,

00:10:40 ◼   ► especially for this last event,

00:10:42 ◼   ► which I thought was so strange.

00:10:43 ◼   ► - Yes, very strange. - And deliberately so.

00:10:45 ◼   ► Like I don't think they messed up and it was strange.

00:10:48 ◼   ► I think they plotted out a very unusual event.

00:10:51 ◼   ► Do you watch the Game of Thrones?

00:10:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh yes.

00:10:55 ◼   ► - So I'm a Game of Thrones watcher.

00:10:57 ◼   ► And I'm just, I don't wanna spoil anything.

00:11:01 ◼   ► So anybody out there who's either got it queued up

00:11:04 ◼   ► or hasn't watched yet.

00:11:05 ◼   ► - I've already said a couple things online

00:11:08 ◼   ► and people are like, you know, I tweeted out a GIF

00:11:10 ◼   ► and like people are so pissed.

00:11:13 ◼   ► - You gotta be careful, you know what I mean?

00:11:14 ◼   ► you know. But the one thing that hit me watching it this week, and you know, for those of you

00:11:23 ◼   ► who don't know, and I can't even believe how that is possible, Game of Thrones is this

00:11:26 ◼   ► incredibly popular show on HBO. It's in its eighth and final season. I think that there's

00:11:32 ◼   ► only six episodes this season? Is that correct?

00:11:35 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, six. And that was the third. This week's was the third. So right. So we're halfway

00:11:39 ◼   ► through. So there's only three episodes left of this incredibly long running epic tale with

00:11:46 ◼   ► literally 5060 characters, maybe more. Like somebody who runs like the Game of Thrones wiki

00:11:52 ◼   ► is like bursting or laughing right now. Right? Main characters mean, but the thing that really

00:11:59 ◼   ► hit me was the I think HBO gets it right. HBO still releases the show that good old fashioned way

00:12:07 ◼   ► where Sunday at 9 o'clock p.m. your local time it hits HBO and if you're streaming it I don't know

00:12:14 ◼   ► if they how they do that like do they just go by your time zone like if you're in California and

00:12:18 ◼   ► you've got like you know so it goes up at east coast 9 p.m east coast time so 6 p.m on the way

00:12:24 ◼   ► you can watch it at six o'clock all right I think I remember that from the sopranos I was I happened

00:12:28 ◼   ► to be in California for some probably an apple event when the sopranos finale went on and I

00:12:34 ◼   ► Now that you mention it, I think we did watch it like six.

00:12:37 ◼   ► Could you imagine if they didn't do that with social media and everything?

00:12:40 ◼   ► Like, yeah, they would be up in arms. Yeah, I think they have to do that. Yeah,

00:12:43 ◼   ► it's like a sporting event. Right. As opposed to Netflix, which has when they, you know,

00:12:49 ◼   ► like a new season of Stranger Things comes out, it is just like, boom, there's 10 episodes of

00:12:55 ◼   ► Stranger Things. If you'd like to watch them all in a row, go ahead, you know, make make some coffee.

00:13:00 ◼   ► I like the HBO way better.

00:13:02 ◼   ► - So it's interesting.

00:13:03 ◼   ► I wrote a post about this probably a few years ago

00:13:06 ◼   ► at this point already, because I was thinking

00:13:07 ◼   ► about the exact same thing.

00:13:09 ◼   ► And I was thinking about it actually in the context

00:13:11 ◼   ► of "Stranger Things," which is a Netflix show, of course.

00:13:13 ◼   ► It's, I think, coming back for its third season this year.

00:13:15 ◼   ► And I think it was after season one, it became

00:13:18 ◼   ► like a phenomenon.

00:13:19 ◼   ► And the weird thing about it was the weird thing

00:13:22 ◼   ► about all Netflix shows that they dumped them all at once,

00:13:24 ◼   ► dating back to "House of Cards," right?

00:13:26 ◼   ► When it was a completely new approach to do this.

00:13:29 ◼   ► But with these sort of these cultural phenomenon things that take over like Stranger Things,

00:13:33 ◼   ► it's fascinating because when they're dumped all at once, the water cooler effect is very different

00:13:41 ◼   ► because there is no episode by episode talking about it. I mean there is, but it's not coordinated

00:13:47 ◼   ► or synced because everyone's in a different place, right, depending on how fast they're watching it.

00:13:52 ◼   ► And so it almost, I agree with you for a good portion of shows, again these ones that are sort

00:13:59 ◼   ► sort of these cultural moments, I think that it sort of is almost behooves them to do the

00:14:05 ◼   ► Netflix or sorry, the HBO model, where you release them at a regular cadence, just to

00:14:10 ◼   ► build up anticipation. And again, to be able to talk about them with other people in real

00:14:15 ◼   ► time, and all be sort of coordinated around the same thing versus trying to talk about,

00:14:20 ◼   ► you know, 60 hours of content in one fell swoop is is impossible.

00:14:24 ◼   ► Right. And House of Cards. Well, I would say Stranger Things, too. They're both classic

00:14:32 ◼   ► serial melodrama, where, you know, dating back to the 1800s, when Dickens would be writing

00:14:41 ◼   ► his, you know, what we now think of as novels, they were all published serially chapter by

00:14:45 ◼   ► chapter in I don't know if they were magazines or newspapers, but you know, but you'd read,

00:14:50 ◼   ► the next chapter of A Tale of Two Cities, and it would end with some kind of cliffhanger,

00:14:55 ◼   ► and then all of a sudden you're there, you know, your fists in anger. Get me next week's issue.

00:15:00 ◼   ► It's no different, you know, than, you know, certain famous episodes of House of Cards where

00:15:08 ◼   ► crazy things happen at the very end of the episode. Stranger things, certainly, you know,

00:15:12 ◼   ► there's, you can see it that you're not meant to start the next episode. You're meant to,

00:15:16 ◼   ► you're meant to absorb that bizarre ending. I totally agree with you. And right, especially

00:15:21 ◼   ► for these cliffhanger endings, it's like if you can go on to the next one, what is the point of

00:15:24 ◼   ► the cliffhanger? Either cliffhanger or like big shocking reveal. Yes, totally, totally. And so

00:15:30 ◼   ► I wouldn't be shocked. And I think there's already been rumors of this. Maybe they've even talked

00:15:35 ◼   ► about like some of the upcoming shows may, you know, go back to that model. I mean, I know

00:15:40 ◼   ► Netflix in the past has said that they don't want to do that, but sort of like they don't want to

00:15:44 ◼   ► release movies in theaters and now they had to do that for Academy Award reasons, right?

00:15:49 ◼   ► I feel like I would be surprised if they didn't eventually sort of cave to the creators in this

00:15:55 ◼   ► regard and be like, if a creator just really wants to have that type of experience for their

00:16:00 ◼   ► audience, like, why not allow them to do that? I think that that's a no-brainer. And then, you

00:16:05 ◼   ► know, once it's out there in the world, then you can stream it and like, so people watch it after

00:16:08 ◼   ► the fact and stream them all at once. But if you're watching in real time, just do it at a

00:16:11 ◼   ► regular cadence release them and it really seems to me I mean part of it is that I enjoyed

00:16:17 ◼   ► the anticipation. Yeah, I like that. You know, it's the same way of like being a sports fan

00:16:21 ◼   ► like it neat like when your team gets in the playoffs and you know when the next game is,

00:16:27 ◼   ► you know, yeah, it's neat to have that looking it's like something to look forward to all

00:16:31 ◼   ► week long. I like yeah, that comes Sunday. I've got a next episode of Game of Thrones

00:16:35 ◼   ► and I totally agree and it also it it allows those individual episodes to sort of stand on their own

00:16:42 ◼   ► more they're not cheapened because you know that you're just like an onslaught and you won't

00:16:46 ◼   ► remember everything there's also like the added benefit of just being able to talk about it for

00:16:51 ◼   ► a week right like those some of the things that I love now are you know the ringer does their

00:16:55 ◼   ► after show for game of thrones they've been doing it for a while they used to do it on HBO itself

00:17:00 ◼   ► and now they do it on Twitter, actually. I think it's Talk to Thrones. And right after it ends,

00:17:06 ◼   ► they get on, they just go on Periscope or whatever, and just it's a roundtable discussion.

00:17:10 ◼   ► And it's like, those things are great. And you cannot do that when you just dump all the

00:17:13 ◼   ► content at once. Right? It is, you know, we're losing, collectively, our shared experiences,

00:17:19 ◼   ► you know, like, you know, I mean, but I'm not that this is not a genius observation. Everybody

00:17:22 ◼   ► talks about this. But the fact that, you know, TV used to be entirely there was no streaming in the

00:17:27 ◼   ► old days and there was no TiVo, there were no DVRs, everybody watched Happy Days at eight o'clock,

00:17:33 ◼   ► whether you liked it or not. But combine that, like the internet is why we've lost a lot of that

00:17:42 ◼   ► simultaneous viewing, but when we do, we get to share it together with Twitter or whatever.

00:17:50 ◼   ► Yes. Yeah. Um, and so I feel like,

00:17:55 ◼   ► cause a lot of people are talking, you know,

00:17:56 ◼   ► given the end of game of thrones now about this being the last one of these,

00:18:00 ◼   ► right? That last sort of show, there will still be sports of course,

00:18:03 ◼   ► but the last show that sort of this, uh,

00:18:05 ◼   ► come together moments for multiple people because so many people are watching it.

00:18:10 ◼   ► You know,

00:18:10 ◼   ► tens of millions of people every single week are watching it at the same time

00:18:13 ◼   ► basically. And that will that ever happen again? And I do think like,

00:18:16 ◼   ► I think that's a huge opportunity for something like Twitter,

00:18:19 ◼   ► potentially Facebook and some of the other

00:18:21 ◼   ► straight social services

00:18:23 ◼   ► because there is this like, you know, there it's the the best example of sort of the second screen thing where in sports is another example

00:18:31 ◼   ► Of it where these things that are happening in real time and people want to talk about them

00:18:34 ◼   ► It feels like they can be the glue that that sort of makes that happen

00:18:39 ◼   ► But you can't do that if everyone's not watching it at the same time. Yeah, so

00:18:46 ◼   ► Here's just a funny example. So the Sixers I'm kind of falling in love with the Sixers

00:18:50 ◼   ► I've been out of the NBA for a number of years other than as a casual fan, but I'm yeah

00:18:54 ◼   ► I want to have you know, this is that's my home team. I like your Sixers. I like these guys

00:18:58 ◼   ► I like the weird that it's a weird team just in terms of how they're put together

00:19:02 ◼   ► And they're playing last night

00:19:06 ◼   ► Up in Toronto down one right him to know and they're the Sixers are blowing a lead it not blowing it

00:19:11 ◼   ► But the Toronto hit a couple of three pointers and the Sixers missed a couple of shots and

00:19:15 ◼   ► all of a sudden, you know, a comfortable nine point lead was down to three, right fouled.

00:19:20 ◼   ► There's 3.8 seconds left Sixers only have a three point lead and our power went out.

00:19:24 ◼   ► I was just like, what the hell just happened? I and we've lived at this place now for two years

00:19:33 ◼   ► power has never gone out. There was no there were no storms in the area. It wasn't it wasn't

00:19:37 ◼   ► actually a very nice night. I was like, I guess the power's out. And then I went outside.

00:19:42 ◼   ► We have like a townhouse, so we have a whole bunch of neighbors. And I go out and every

00:19:46 ◼   ► single guy, every single man who lives on our block was out there. And everybody's like,

00:19:51 ◼   ► what happened to the Sixers? What happened to the Sixers? And somebody had it on their

00:19:54 ◼   ► phone. They're like, Sixers won. They won by four or something like that. And we're like,

00:19:57 ◼   ► all right, what the hell's, what the heck's going on with the power? Like the first thing

00:20:01 ◼   ► we all asked was what happened with the Sixers. And I thought, you know, this is kind of funny.

00:20:05 ◼   ► I would be doing this on Twitter, but I wouldn't be doing it with my neighbors, but it's just kind of a nice moment

00:20:09 ◼   ► Have a little neighborly friendship there and everybody was I like that. Yeah a good bad thing

00:20:15 ◼   ► It's sort of this also reminds me of something else

00:20:18 ◼   ► I've sort of been thinking about and wrote about recently where so in a world where we're moving away from this

00:20:24 ◼   ► Imagine if there's a way and so a lot of people I haven't seen it yet

00:20:28 ◼   ► But a lot of people obviously are talking about event the new Avengers movie, right?

00:20:31 ◼   ► Obviously, it's hard to see movies with babies, but I'm still getting used to that.

00:20:37 ◼   ► So I think we're going to try to go this weekend.

00:20:39 ◼   ► But anyway, so I can't spoil anything for anyone.

00:20:41 ◼   ► But everyone's talking about the resurrection of the movie theater, right, after years and

00:20:45 ◼   ► years of declines.

00:20:46 ◼   ► And now it made over $350 million, I think, at the US box office, right, over the weekend

00:20:50 ◼   ► and well over a billion dollars worldwide.

00:20:52 ◼   ► So it's like the resurrection of the movie theater.

00:20:54 ◼   ► And I think this ties into what we're talking about because I had been thinking about what

00:20:59 ◼   ► What if they did Game of Thrones the last season, they just released it at least to

00:21:04 ◼   ► start, at least for, you know, maybe on a Thursday night before the Sunday premiere

00:21:08 ◼   ► on HBO, if they just released it in theaters nationwide.

00:21:11 ◼   ► Like how much money could HBO have made, you know, from their perspective, but also what

00:21:15 ◼   ► a cool like cultural, you know, experience again, right?

00:21:18 ◼   ► You get to go to a movie theater and watch this very cinematic show on a giant screen

00:21:24 ◼   ► with hundreds of other people around you and people are cheering and popcorn and all that,

00:21:28 ◼   ► the great things about sort of the old school movie going experience you know can be brought

00:21:34 ◼   ► back to life by things that are this this big in this culture a little culture really

00:21:40 ◼   ► relevant it feels like it would be something one of my favorite stories about the the group

00:21:47 ◼   ► cinematic experience is your movie fan I bet you've seen that if you raging bull yeah so

00:21:54 ◼   ► So Raging Bulls, Martin Scorsese's 1980 boxing movie about, what was his name, Ray?

00:22:00 ◼   ► - Ray LaMota.

00:22:01 ◼   ► - Tragic movie overall.

00:22:03 ◼   ► Tragic tale of a man who's sort of a broken man.

00:22:07 ◼   ► A bad man, really.

00:22:08 ◼   ► But it's a very sad movie, mostly.

00:22:10 ◼   ► First time I ever watched it, I was by myself in college.

00:22:14 ◼   ► I had a job interview in like Virginia.

00:22:17 ◼   ► And so this company flew me down and put me up in a hotel

00:22:21 ◼   ► and I had an interview the next day.

00:22:23 ◼   ► And I had nothing to do.

00:22:24 ◼   ► I was like 19, had nothing to do, and put on HBO,

00:22:28 ◼   ► and I looked at it and it said like,

00:22:30 ◼   ► "Raging Bull" was coming up.

00:22:31 ◼   ► I was like, "I've never seen that, I'll watch that."

00:22:33 ◼   ► And I watched it all by myself, lonesome hotel room.

00:22:36 ◼   ► - Very depressing black and white.

00:22:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I was just, I was into it.

00:22:40 ◼   ► I would say I enjoyed the movie,

00:22:43 ◼   ► but I didn't enjoy the experience.

00:22:45 ◼   ► I really felt pretty low afterwards.

00:22:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:22:49 ◼   ► - And then I've watched it a couple of times after that

00:22:52 ◼   ► in the intervening years in college,

00:22:54 ◼   ► it's just as a huge Scorsese fan.

00:22:56 ◼   ► But then at one point in the mid 90s,

00:22:58 ◼   ► I think I might've still been in college,

00:22:59 ◼   ► but maybe later in the 90s,

00:23:01 ◼   ► Roger Ebert came to Philadelphia and was hosting,

00:23:05 ◼   ► he was hosting a screening of "Raging Bull."

00:23:08 ◼   ► It might've been like the 25th anniversary

00:23:10 ◼   ► or 15th anniversary or something.

00:23:12 ◼   ► And he didn't do the thing that he sometimes did

00:23:14 ◼   ► where he would allow people to say stop

00:23:16 ◼   ► and then you stop the movie

00:23:17 ◼   ► and then have like a discussion about what's going on.

00:23:19 ◼   ► And we just watched it straight through

00:23:21 ◼   ► And then we had a discussion led by Roger Ebert after the movie and it was packed.

00:23:26 ◼   ► It's a really nice theater over at Penn, sort of like a lecture hall style thing.

00:23:30 ◼   ► It was a great picture. Great sound. Here's the thing that blew me away. Raging bull is hilarious.

00:23:35 ◼   ► It is. There are scenes that are so funny. I mean, just like it, but never like three,

00:23:43 ◼   ► four times I watched it before that never left once because I wasn't in a theater full of people.

00:23:47 ◼   ► right? It's like one of the scenes where, uh, Patsy, Joe, Patsy's having family,

00:23:52 ◼   ► some kind of family meal and his kids screwing around with a spaghetti or something. It's

00:23:55 ◼   ► but you would never know it if you're not in a room full of people. It's the shared experience

00:24:00 ◼   ► is different than the, the, the solo experience. Yeah. And I, and I totally agree. And you know,

00:24:06 ◼   ► these, the, yeah, you get sort of different social cues just in a vibe, right. Of being in a,

00:24:11 ◼   ► being in that type of experience. And I do feel like all the, the Hollywood has a bunch of issues

00:24:17 ◼   ► and we can talk about them in relation to Apple, but I think that there's a way to sort of

00:24:22 ◼   ► to utilize what is great about the theaters in our new fangled era. And I think we're getting close

00:24:29 ◼   ► to it, but we're not quite there yet. And maybe the Avengers like the fact that that it's so big,

00:24:35 ◼   ► maybe it tips it over into figuring out how to better utilize these shared spaces to do

00:24:39 ◼   ► content like this. My Avengers story, I'm going to break your heart here. Newborn dad. It's the

00:24:46 ◼   ► It's the first Avengers movie that I didn't go see with my son because he wanted to go

00:24:49 ◼   ► with his friends.

00:24:50 ◼   ► Oh yes, that would be extremely sad.

00:24:53 ◼   ► I mean, I'm gearing up for all the fun stuff that we're going to get to do in the next,

00:24:57 ◼   ► you know, many years, but all the Disney movies, right?

00:25:00 ◼   ► The Pixar movies, Harry Potter, all that kind of fun stuff is what I'm greatly looking forward

00:25:06 ◼   ► to.

00:25:07 ◼   ► And then I know that at one point it'll get to the point you're at.

00:25:11 ◼   ► I'm telling you the truth mg I choked up because he he's such a good kid and he knew you know

00:25:18 ◼   ► He knew that it's a thing that we had and I was already planning on getting tickets for us

00:25:21 ◼   ► And he didn't ask if he could go what he did is he texted me and just said hey

00:25:25 ◼   ► Some of my friends are getting tickets to go see the Avengers

00:25:28 ◼   ► Yeah, and I immediately just wrote go, you know exclamation mark and I went up and said hey, you know

00:25:34 ◼   ► You need help ordering, you know, you know, do you want my credit card? What do you need to do?

00:25:38 ◼   ► You know and I was like just go, you know, I was like do not worry about me

00:25:41 ◼   ► But then I went downstairs and had a sob

00:25:43 ◼   ► Okay, that's one of my note for me to remember number one I mean and Joan Jonas has always been

00:25:53 ◼   ► He's a gentle kid. He really is he always was he was never like a rough-and-tumble kid

00:25:58 ◼   ► And so we let him watch movies that a lot of other parents wouldn't let watch

00:26:04 ◼   ► Movies at a pretty young age and I don't you know, he it wasn't like we were pushing him on him

00:26:09 ◼   ► I just think he was fine. I think other parents, you know other parenting styles

00:26:12 ◼   ► I pass no judgment, but Jonas watched movies like Star Wars and stuff starting at like the age of three or four

00:26:17 ◼   ► So he was in kindergarten. He'd already seen Iron Man

00:26:21 ◼   ► and

00:26:23 ◼   ► I went I told him that he had a dentist appointment in the afternoon. So yeah, I'd be picking him up at lunch

00:26:28 ◼   ► And I went to get him at lunch and I said we're not going to the dentist

00:26:32 ◼   ► I got tickets for Iron Man 2.

00:26:34 ◼   ► Like really and I was like, oh yeah

00:26:38 ◼   ► And we went to see Iron Man 2 and I didn't I'm not like I was never been a prankster parent

00:26:45 ◼   ► I've never been you know

00:26:46 ◼   ► And like I was telling a friend of the show John Moltz about this and he was like well

00:26:50 ◼   ► That's better than the opposite the type of parent who says hey, we're going to see our

00:26:59 ◼   ► the jokey parent, I just didn't trust him to have a good poker face with the teacher

00:27:04 ◼   ► because I kind of didn't want to be the dad who the teacher knew was taking kids to see

00:27:08 ◼   ► Iron Man on a Friday afternoon.

00:27:09 ◼   ► That's amazing. I am totally stealing that. Hopefully, Maisie's not listening to this

00:27:14 ◼   ► in six years or something and I'll be able to surprise her.

00:27:19 ◼   ► Parenting tips from Sean Gruber. All right, let me take a break here and thank our first

00:27:25 ◼   ► sponsor. They're back from last week. Things, one of my very favorite apps. Last week, I

00:27:29 ◼   ► told you a lot about their Mac app. This week I'm going to tell you a little bit more about

00:27:33 ◼   ► their iOS app. But look, things is a long standing, multi time Apple design award winning,

00:27:39 ◼   ► basically a to do app task manager, something to organize everything from like a shopping

00:27:43 ◼   ► list to bigger projects. beautifully designed has always been beautiful with truly native

00:27:48 ◼   ► apps for the Mac, iPhone, iPad, they have a great Apple Watch app, simple to use as

00:27:53 ◼   ► lots and lots of power. And this power extends to their iOS apps in a big way. You know,

00:27:59 ◼   ► that feeling where you want to accomplish something, you got something to do, but you

00:28:02 ◼   ► think I'll just wait till I get back to my Mac. I do this all the time with a lot of

00:28:06 ◼   ► things. We could turn this whole show into that. Well, that's something that things wanted

00:28:11 ◼   ► to address and they really went deep on how they can reduce that friction on iPhone and

00:28:15 ◼   ► iPad and make you just do it right. Be able to do it right there. And so their apps are

00:28:19 ◼   ► full of clever solutions to help you achieve this, but they want me to tell you about just

00:28:23 ◼   ► two. The first is the magic plus button. This is brilliant. I never would have thought of

00:28:28 ◼   ► this and it gets super clever. Something you do all the time in list apps of any kind,

00:28:32 ◼   ► any kind of app where you make lists, you insert new items, but you want to put them

00:28:35 ◼   ► in a certain spot. In most apps, it's really cumbersome. You do the plus button, you enter

00:28:40 ◼   ► your to do item text, and then it's all the way at the top, right? But you want it somewhere

00:28:45 ◼   ► else. So then you have to tap an edit button and then there's like a little drag handle

00:28:49 ◼   ► that shows up and then you can drag it down to where you want it to be. What a pain. In

00:28:53 ◼   ► things you can drag the plus button itself to where you want your to do to go. So you

00:28:59 ◼   ► just go to the plus button, drag it down into the list and let go when it's at the right

00:29:04 ◼   ► spot type your to do boom, you're done and it's in the right spot. Brilliant. What a

00:29:09 ◼   ► great shortcut. Here's the other thing they have full keyboard control on the iPad. So

00:29:14 ◼   ► if you use your iPad with an external keyboard, you know that most apps don't have great keyboard

00:29:18 ◼   ► support. That's from things a little read for me. I would say that is an understatement

00:29:25 ◼   ► to say the least. Things is incredible in this regard. They've got loads of shortcuts

00:29:29 ◼   ► for creating to do's setting dates, adding tags, filters, and so on. You can list all

00:29:35 ◼   ► the commands. Now this is something system wide on the iPad. You just hold down the command

00:29:39 ◼   ► key and you wait a little bit and you get little HUD display that tells you all the

00:29:43 ◼   ► available keyboard shortcuts, which is a really great idea as system wide, but it's not

00:29:48 ◼   ► that great if you don't have a lot of shortcuts. Well, things does. You can learn them very

00:29:52 ◼   ► easily. Just hold down the command key. All of this stuff is accessible from the keyboard

00:29:57 ◼   ► and you can use your arrow keys to select items. You shift all the stuff that works

00:30:01 ◼   ► on the Mac. It all works on things on the iPad. You shift with the arrow keys to select

00:30:06 ◼   ► multiple items. You can move items up and down and list all by the keyboard. It's great.

00:30:12 ◼   ► Even their popovers are fully accessible from the keyboard. There's a really cool feature

00:30:16 ◼   ► called Type Travel, you simply start typing where you want to go, like the name of a project

00:30:20 ◼   ► or an area or another list, and you're automatically just taken there just by typing the name of

00:30:25 ◼   ► it. It's amazing how much you can do in things without even lifting your hand off the keyboard,

00:30:30 ◼   ► which is a huge deal once you've got your iPad propped up and you've got a hardware

00:30:33 ◼   ► keyboard connected. It is seriously a very, very powerful peer to the Mac app on the iPad.

00:30:39 ◼   ► I wish more iPad apps would take this sort of keyboard support as seriously as things

00:30:46 ◼   ► does.

00:30:47 ◼   ► So those are just two examples of how things deliver a powerful experience on iOS and there's

00:30:51 ◼   ► so much more.

00:30:52 ◼   ► Head over to thingsapp.com and you can get things for iOS, try it for yourself and you

00:30:59 ◼   ► can also download a free trial for the Mac at thingsapp.com.

00:31:04 ◼   ► Check it out today.

00:31:05 ◼   ► One of my favorite apps, I use it every day.

00:31:08 ◼   ► I really do.

00:31:08 ◼   ► All right, so let's go back to Apple in this.

00:31:12 ◼   ► What do you think Apple's gonna do on this front?

00:31:13 ◼   ► And do you think Apple's gonna go HBO style

00:31:15 ◼   ► and release shows once a week?

00:31:16 ◼   ► Or you think they're gonna go Netflix style and dump them?

00:31:18 ◼   ► - I would guess that they do more HBO style.

00:31:24 ◼   ► I don't know why exactly I feel that way

00:31:27 ◼   ► other than I think that's what they should do.

00:31:29 ◼   ► I think given what we know now

00:31:31 ◼   ► or what we think we know what they're trying to do, right?

00:31:34 ◼   ► There's obviously a lot still to be determined,

00:31:36 ◼   ► including price and a bunch of other key things,

00:31:39 ◼   ► but it does seem like it's less,

00:31:42 ◼   ► and people have been saying this, right,

00:31:43 ◼   ► that it's less of a Netflix competitor

00:31:45 ◼   ► and more of an HBO type play

00:31:47 ◼   ► and also more of an Amazon type play, right,

00:31:49 ◼   ► where it's like the channel bundling on top of everything.

00:31:52 ◼   ► And so given all of that,

00:31:54 ◼   ► I do think that the HBO model makes a lot more sense.

00:31:58 ◼   ► Do you think so too?

00:31:59 ◼   ► - I do too.

00:32:00 ◼   ► And I know, I'm sure that there are some people out there

00:32:03 ◼   ► who love the Netflix style.

00:32:04 ◼   ► They love the dump and they're gonna say,

00:32:07 ◼   ► well, Jon, if you wanna watch it once a week,

00:32:08 ◼   ► just pick a time, pick your favorite day of the week

00:32:11 ◼   ► and watch one episode of Stranger Things,

00:32:14 ◼   ► dole them out yourself one episode at a week.

00:32:17 ◼   ► But that's part of the experience

00:32:19 ◼   ► isn't just me watching once a week.

00:32:21 ◼   ► It's like what you and I have been talking about here.

00:32:23 ◼   ► It's this collective experience and shared,

00:32:26 ◼   ► give it a day or two for people to catch up

00:32:28 ◼   ► and you can start reading stuff on Twitter

00:32:30 ◼   ► or the recaps and stuff like that.

00:32:33 ◼   ► see what people think is going on.

00:32:35 ◼   ► - I also think it gives them a nice leverage point

00:32:38 ◼   ► of if they do, if they are in fact,

00:32:40 ◼   ► it seems like they're doing the upsell of the other channels

00:32:43 ◼   ► if you do it this way, you're basically giving people

00:32:46 ◼   ► an avenue to come into the app every single week, right?

00:32:49 ◼   ► To catch up with the show and then afterwards

00:32:51 ◼   ► they have to watch something else

00:32:52 ◼   ► or they're likely going to, you know,

00:32:53 ◼   ► some people of course won't, but a lot of people will

00:32:55 ◼   ► and because they can't watch that very next episode

00:32:58 ◼   ► of what they were just watching, maybe they'll poke around

00:33:00 ◼   ► and be like, oh yeah, we should watch

00:33:02 ◼   ► What's next on Showtime right or?

00:33:04 ◼   ► Check out one of these other shows on Apple TV or whatever

00:33:07 ◼   ► But yeah, if you could definitely if they if if the if they can steer you towards, you know, I forget if CBS is

00:33:15 ◼   ► Already signed up for the TV app, but you know, maybe check out the Star Trek that you haven't haven't watched yet or something like that

00:33:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know. I just feel to me that the Netflix style is

00:33:26 ◼   ► it's almost tragic, you know that they make these wonderful shows and

00:33:31 ◼   ► and don't give them the space to breathe.

00:33:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you run across it too.

00:33:37 ◼   ► It's like Megan and I,

00:33:39 ◼   ► like every time we sit down to watch something,

00:33:41 ◼   ► if we don't have something in mind,

00:33:43 ◼   ► it's just like we're going through the Netflix app

00:33:46 ◼   ► and it's like, I mean,

00:33:48 ◼   ► I can't believe that this person's in this thing.

00:33:50 ◼   ► Like I've never even heard of this.

00:33:51 ◼   ► Like can't believe this person's in this thing

00:33:52 ◼   ► and I've never heard of this.

00:33:53 ◼   ► There's so many, so many things.

00:33:56 ◼   ► And it really, I mean, it's like,

00:33:57 ◼   ► it's not only the, you know,

00:33:59 ◼   ► sort of the abundance of choice problem.

00:34:00 ◼   ► It's like that to such an extreme that I don't know,

00:34:05 ◼   ► I don't even know what the end game is of that, right?

00:34:09 ◼   ► Do they get so good at the algorithms to recommend to you

00:34:12 ◼   ► that it doesn't matter, and so they have people

00:34:14 ◼   ► to watch all of these things?

00:34:16 ◼   ► It seems like they, I just feel like that's untenable.

00:34:19 ◼   ► At some point, we're going to hit a limit

00:34:21 ◼   ► of how many shows they can actually have.

00:34:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, like I wrote the other day, writing about this,

00:34:27 ◼   ► I described Netflix's catalog as effectively infinite,

00:34:30 ◼   ► I didn't expound on that but I don't think I need to write like I think even if you were

00:34:37 ◼   ► independently wealthy or retired and

00:34:40 ◼   ► It could literally just wake up and start watching Netflix and then go to bed and wake up and watch Netflix

00:34:47 ◼   ► You'll never catch up. Yeah, you'll you'll go further behind once you you know by day one

00:34:52 ◼   ► You'll be further behind than you were when you started

00:34:55 ◼   ► Yeah, and I sort of wonder if I guess that so eventually all of the players are you would presume

00:35:00 ◼   ► Most of them are going to pull their content right like friends

00:35:04 ◼   ► They just resigned but it was a massive deal and Disney is pulling all their content as we know to do Disney Plus and so

00:35:10 ◼   ► Eventually, it's just not gonna be tenable to have all of these other bits of content

00:35:14 ◼   ► And it's all gonna be Netflix content. And what are they doing right now?

00:35:17 ◼   ► They're building up a library of content

00:35:19 ◼   ► The world has never seen before the size of which the world has never seen before and so

00:35:24 ◼   ► It won't matter so much if all these people pull off their content because you have so much else that you couldn't possibly watch

00:35:30 ◼   ► Yeah, it's in some ways. I really feel like

00:35:33 ◼   ► Like anything successful they you know HBO

00:35:38 ◼   ► It is sort of like Showtime, but it's different. I mean, it's the same basic idea

00:35:44 ◼   ► It's it started life as a cable channel that you have to pay extra money to and they have a bunch of real

00:35:50 ◼   ► theatrical movies available at any given time and sometimes they have boxing and

00:35:55 ◼   ► you know, but have you know in recent years have really made a name by their original content and

00:36:02 ◼   ► But HBO is HBO, right? They've sort of made their own brand Netflix even more so because they're

00:36:08 ◼   ► undefined by any previous

00:36:10 ◼   ► tie to to real quote unquote real TV

00:36:14 ◼   ► It's its own thing. Like it's it's not that useful to me

00:36:18 ◼   ► I don't think it'll in the long run to compare Apple TV+ to Netflix or

00:36:22 ◼   ► And Netflix is just it's just bizarre. But if you're gonna compare it to anything

00:36:26 ◼   ► I almost feel like the only thing you can compare it to is YouTube

00:36:29 ◼   ► Because YouTube content is very different than yeah Netflix content

00:36:34 ◼   ► But but the thing that's unique about those two is that they are literally infinite content wells and they promote

00:36:41 ◼   ► You know, they try to get you to just keep going right you get to the end of a video

00:36:46 ◼   ► But their guesses are pretty good. Usually, you know the little things on the right on YouTube are usually pretty appealing to me

00:36:52 ◼   ► After I've watched something. Yeah, that's that's a good way to frame it. I you know, they are both

00:36:58 ◼   ► similar in the infinite content you almost feel like

00:37:02 ◼   ► Do we do we get to a state of equilibrium?

00:37:04 ◼   ► Because we I think we all agree that everyone's going to have a subset of these, right?

00:37:09 ◼   ► So everyone already has YouTube because it's free those that there's obviously the YouTube red stuff

00:37:13 ◼   ► But just say you have YouTube because it's free everyone has Netflix, of course because you basically need to these days

00:37:18 ◼   ► A lot of people probably the majority people are going to get Disney Plus

00:37:22 ◼   ► Apple TV Plus would probably be a smaller subset not too dissimilar to how HBO is a smaller subset

00:37:30 ◼   ► But then I wonder like is there a mechanism between the types of content and/or the stars of these things that they move

00:37:39 ◼   ► between them sort of fluidly, right? So someone might break their career on YouTube, and then get

00:37:44 ◼   ► a Netflix show, and or then get and then if their Netflix show works, do they go to the prestige

00:37:50 ◼   ► show of HBO and or Apple TV plus type thing? Does it does it sort of play out that way? I

00:37:55 ◼   ► think Netflix would not like that YouTube certainly wouldn't like that. But it's almost

00:37:58 ◼   ► feels like that's that's a ladder you can you can sort of see forming. Yeah.

00:38:04 ◼   ► I've seen a very frequently asked question for me in the last month is or at least maybe

00:38:12 ◼   ► it's weeks because I forget when Disney unveiled Disney plus but post Disney plus announcement

00:38:18 ◼   ► and the first time I got the question I thought it was so I see the appeal from a consumer's

00:38:23 ◼   ► perspective but I it seems so outlandish from Disney's perspective that I can't believe

00:38:29 ◼   ► anybody would ask but I've since been asked at least half a dozen times is do I think

00:38:33 ◼   ► Disney and Apple work out some kind of deal where you can pay 10 bucks a month and get

00:38:38 ◼   ► Apple TV plus and Disney plus. Yeah. And the consumer angle is, uh, is obvious. It's subscription

00:38:46 ◼   ► fatigue and, and both, both just from the purely rational perspective of wanting to

00:38:54 ◼   ► minimize your monthly subscription expenditure and the more subjective sense of just the

00:39:04 ◼   ► sense of feeling like you're getting nickel and dimed. Yep. So I see the appeal of that,

00:39:10 ◼   ► but I don't see why Disney would ever go for that at a sum of money, you know, at at at

00:39:16 ◼   ► 699 for the regular subscription, they're already being super aggressive, like, yeah,

00:39:20 ◼   ► They're not going to cut into that by partnering with Apple.

00:39:24 ◼   ► They don't need to.

00:39:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, you could argue-- because Bob Iger is obviously

00:39:28 ◼   ► still on the board of Apple, and that was brought up recently

00:39:30 ◼   ► as like, is that a conflict?

00:39:31 ◼   ► And he still says no, and we'll see how that plays out

00:39:34 ◼   ► as things move forward.

00:39:35 ◼   ► But I think--

00:39:37 ◼   ► That's what they used to say about Eric Schmidt.

00:39:39 ◼   ► They used to say about Eric Schmidt and Google.

00:39:41 ◼   ► And so I have a feeling that will play out maybe

00:39:43 ◼   ► in a similar way.

00:39:44 ◼   ► Who knows, because Bob Iger is set to retire at some point

00:39:47 ◼   ► in the next couple of years if he doesn't extend again,

00:39:49 ◼   ► which seems like he's not.

00:39:50 ◼   ► Anyway, the subscription fatigue thing is interesting.

00:39:53 ◼   ► I do think that a bunch of them will end up partnering.

00:39:56 ◼   ► So like we've already seen this in cross-content pollinization with like Spotify teams up with

00:40:02 ◼   ► Hulu, right, to do like sort of a package offering.

00:40:05 ◼   ► And so would we see that between bundles?

00:40:08 ◼   ► Obviously Disney's going to do their own bundle with Disney+, ESPN+, and then Hulu.

00:40:15 ◼   ► But do they cross-pollinate and have different offerings?

00:40:18 ◼   ► I think no, and again, I think from Apple's perspective,

00:40:21 ◼   ► they want to try what the Amazon model has been

00:40:24 ◼   ► of just upselling the channels,

00:40:26 ◼   ► and maybe they sell them at a different rate or a discount,

00:40:30 ◼   ► and maybe there's been some whispers, right,

00:40:32 ◼   ► that they can figure out a way to bundle

00:40:34 ◼   ► some of those together to create their own

00:40:37 ◼   ► like newfangled like HBO Plus stars or something like that.

00:40:40 ◼   ► Maybe there is something to that,

00:40:41 ◼   ► but I don't think, yeah, that Disney and Apple TV+,

00:40:46 ◼   ► Disney Plus and Apple TV Plus will bundle together

00:40:48 ◼   ► unless one of them just isn't working

00:40:51 ◼   ► or both of them are not working

00:40:52 ◼   ► and they need a way to sort of change the sales equation.

00:40:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, I still think, I had Peter Kafka on

00:41:01 ◼   ► a couple weeks ago to talk about this stuff.

00:41:03 ◼   ► And he remained, not convinced,

00:41:06 ◼   ► but his bet is still on Apple releasing Apple TV Plus free.

00:41:11 ◼   ► That they're not going to charge--

00:41:13 ◼   ► - So yeah, I was listening to that.

00:41:15 ◼   ► And I would love, yeah, I know your perspective

00:41:17 ◼   ► is different on this and mine is too.

00:41:18 ◼   ► I don't think, I think there's no way they do it for free.

00:41:22 ◼   ► I think that they have some parts of it that might be free,

00:41:26 ◼   ► like one show, but given the whole narrative right now

00:41:30 ◼   ► is around services, I think it would just undercut

00:41:33 ◼   ► their argument that they're trying to make to Wall Street

00:41:36 ◼   ► and everyone else that they're a services company now

00:41:39 ◼   ► if they just release this for free.

00:41:40 ◼   ► Like yes, it would be good lead gen to do this channel

00:41:44 ◼   ► selling model, which is maybe the real moneymaker, but I don't, I just,

00:41:48 ◼   ► I don't think that that's what they're going to do.

00:41:50 ◼   ► I think that it's going to be a definitely a paid offering.

00:41:54 ◼   ► And I think that they'll have their own bundle, which they will be, you know,

00:41:57 ◼   ► there's sort of one more thing when they talk about it further in the fall that

00:42:00 ◼   ► they'll have iCloud mixed with this mixed with some other things to be able to

00:42:04 ◼   ► bundle together.

00:42:04 ◼   ► Right. It's like, it is, it's,

00:42:08 ◼   ► I'm not complaining because it is fantastic grist for a podcaster and a,

00:42:14 ◼   ► and a commentator on the company

00:42:16 ◼   ► that they had this announcement

00:42:18 ◼   ► where they brought out all these stars

00:42:20 ◼   ► and then never told us if they're gonna pay charge for it

00:42:24 ◼   ► or if they are what.

00:42:26 ◼   ► So in a sense, I'm not complaining

00:42:29 ◼   ► because this is fantastic.

00:42:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:42:33 ◼   ► I'm gonna get hours out of this all summer long.

00:42:35 ◼   ► This is great.

00:42:36 ◼   ► I can see it either way.

00:42:37 ◼   ► And then I kind of feel like Peter had me convinced

00:42:40 ◼   ► like, yeah, they're just gonna release this for free

00:42:42 ◼   ► to get people in the boat

00:42:44 ◼   ► And his basic idea isn't that Apple is magnanimously going to make Apple TV plus free of charge.

00:42:52 ◼   ► His theory is where they want the only place where they want to make money in TV is selling

00:42:56 ◼   ► the other subscriptions with their 15% cut.

00:43:00 ◼   ► Right.

00:43:01 ◼   ► So right, get you in the Apple TV app by selling you on the Jennifer Aniston morning show.

00:43:07 ◼   ► And you find out all your friends are talking about that show.

00:43:10 ◼   ► And so you go and watch it and then you're in the app and you're a button click or two.

00:43:18 ◼   ► And you know, if you have an Apple TV, a couple of awkward swipes, you're a button or two

00:43:25 ◼   ► from signing up for other those channels as they call them.

00:43:32 ◼   ► And then you're on the hook for recurring revenue because now you're paying through

00:43:37 ◼   ► your iTunes account, you're paying 10 or 15 or $20 a month to get ESPN and Hulu and whatever

00:43:45 ◼   ► other channels you've decided you want to, you know, CBS interactive, whatever the CBS

00:43:49 ◼   ► thing is called, which right, I keep procrastinating. I want to watch that Star Trek show and I

00:43:53 ◼   ► keep procrastinating on it because I'm waiting for this TV app to do it so I don't have to

00:43:57 ◼   ► manage a different account.

00:43:58 ◼   ► I'm 100% with you there too. What if they did something like if you bought the Apple

00:44:05 ◼   ► TV for $200. This is baked in for a year. But if you're going to, because we already know this app

00:44:12 ◼   ► is going to exist on Samsung TVs and Roku and a bunch of other Amazon. Yeah, right. And so

00:44:20 ◼   ► what if then it's a paid thing? Because like, how could they do that? I mean, you could say that

00:44:24 ◼   ► they could do that for free because it's still trying to do the channels upsell, but that seems

00:44:28 ◼   ► a lot more murky. I don't think that they're going to do it for free across the board. I could see a

00:44:34 ◼   ► world in which they release it in a way that sort of appears to be free because it's baked into,

00:44:40 ◼   ► if you buy Apple TV hardware, maybe the iPad, maybe they have some sort of deal on it,

00:44:44 ◼   ► maybe you get six months free or something like that. But I also just think from the

00:44:48 ◼   ► other perspective, like the creator's perspective, I think they think that they're making, you know,

00:44:53 ◼   ► very prestigious programming. And I don't think that they want to be tied to sort of a free

00:44:58 ◼   ► offering necessarily knowing that the end game of that is probably not not a good a good outcome

00:45:05 ◼   ► ultimately if apple ever decides they're not going to pay you know all the money to them

00:45:09 ◼   ► just out of their their pockets yeah i don't know you know and and surely there is going to be

00:45:19 ◼   ► i say this because but apple often surprises us these days and doesn't do the obvious thing well

00:45:24 ◼   ► one thing i'll just say is that peter had me convinced that maybe they'll just give it away

00:45:28 ◼   ► And then I like the next morning woke up and I was just like that can't be for all the reasons you said

00:45:33 ◼   ► And then I thought well what's what's the most obvious apple thing to do and I thought well the

00:45:38 ◼   ► most obvious apple thing to do would be to charge way more than anybody thinks

00:45:42 ◼   ► Right like charge charge enough per month that there will be like gasps in the audience

00:45:49 ◼   ► And it feels premium then and like, you know, there's trickle-down effects of this even if they don't

00:45:54 ◼   ► I mean, even if the model is ultimately what Peter's saying, and I agree with that, that it is

00:45:59 ◼   ► likely to upsell these subscriptions for the channels, and it's the same thing that Amazon

00:46:03 ◼   ► does, the difference is Amazon gets away with it being sort of quote-unquote free if you have Prime,

00:46:09 ◼   ► which everyone does, right? Apple doesn't have the equivalent of that, so the only way I could see

00:46:13 ◼   ► that working is if they baked in, you know, eventually when they have their Apple Prime

00:46:17 ◼   ► thing, this is one subset of that, and so it's sort of considered free even though it's baked

00:46:21 ◼   ► into that. Right, right, maybe something like that. Yeah, that's what I think is I think

00:46:25 ◼   ► that what Apple needs is their equivalent of prime, where you it to, you know, to get

00:46:32 ◼   ► everybody paying a greater than $10 a month monthly fee, but less than 10 plus 10 plus

00:46:39 ◼   ► 10 to get the news and to get the arcade and to get the TV and of course to get music,

00:46:45 ◼   ► you know, the original Apple media service.

00:46:48 ◼   ► - Right.

00:46:49 ◼   ► - So, you know, if you had music, news, arcade,

00:46:53 ◼   ► they didn't give a price for arcade either,

00:46:55 ◼   ► but I'm guessing that might be as if it's the only thing

00:46:57 ◼   ► you sign up for.

00:46:58 ◼   ► I'm gonna guess $10 a month, and if TV's $10 a month,

00:47:01 ◼   ► now you're up at 40 bucks a month,

00:47:02 ◼   ► and if they sold the whole thing for $25 a month.

00:47:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, great deal.

00:47:06 ◼   ► - And you got all of them.

00:47:07 ◼   ► You got all four of them.

00:47:08 ◼   ► All of a sudden, it feels like a good deal, right?

00:47:11 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:47:12 ◼   ► - That feels like a really good deal.

00:47:14 ◼   ► - And maybe you can mix and match, I don't know.

00:47:16 ◼   ► But if you could just, like if you really don't want

00:47:18 ◼   ► the news or you don't play games, you don't want the arcade,

00:47:21 ◼   ► you just want TV and music, if you could get it

00:47:24 ◼   ► for less than 20, if you could just pay 15

00:47:26 ◼   ► or something like that, that might be, I don't know,

00:47:29 ◼   ► that might be a way around it.

00:47:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I could totally see that happening.

00:47:31 ◼   ► I'll give one other quick argument on,

00:47:35 ◼   ► of what Peter's trying to argue for that I could see is,

00:47:38 ◼   ► okay, so I was actually just reading an interview

00:47:40 ◼   ► with Oprah, I think it was in The Hollywood Reporter today,

00:47:44 ◼   ► She talked a little bit about Apple.

00:47:46 ◼   ► It's mostly other stuff, but a little bit in there.

00:47:48 ◼   ► But it was interesting to me because she reiterates

00:47:50 ◼   ► what of course she famously said on stage,

00:47:52 ◼   ► the billion pockets y'all.

00:47:53 ◼   ► She sort of talks about that a little bit again.

00:47:58 ◼   ► And the way that she talks about it is that basically

00:48:00 ◼   ► why she's so excited to work with Apple

00:48:02 ◼   ► is because they open up an audience

00:48:06 ◼   ► that is unparalleled in size

00:48:07 ◼   ► because of the device reach, right?

00:48:09 ◼   ► And so you could see a world in which Apple

00:48:12 ◼   ► is selling to Hollywood that exact thing,

00:48:15 ◼   ► and I'm sure they are, right,

00:48:16 ◼   ► that that's the main selling point,

00:48:17 ◼   ► that we have a billion devices out,

00:48:20 ◼   ► a billion plus devices out there,

00:48:22 ◼   ► and you can access all of them.

00:48:23 ◼   ► And so if they're trying to say

00:48:26 ◼   ► that reach is the most important thing,

00:48:28 ◼   ► of course free would be the easiest way

00:48:31 ◼   ► to get to that full reach.

00:48:33 ◼   ► And so that's really the only argument I could see

00:48:37 ◼   ► them making for doing it as a free service.

00:48:39 ◼   ► if they're saying, "Hey, so this thing is gonna be free,

00:48:42 ◼   ► but we're gonna launch it to a billion plus users

00:48:46 ◼   ► or several hundred million users,

00:48:48 ◼   ► and you're gonna have access

00:48:50 ◼   ► like you've never had before to eyeballs."

00:48:53 ◼   ► But still, I think that that is a short-term gain

00:48:55 ◼   ► for sort of long-term pain

00:48:57 ◼   ► for anyone who's thinking savvy enough about it.

00:49:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, and my dream, and I've been so beaten down

00:49:05 ◼   ► by the five gigabyte free tier of iTunes

00:49:07 ◼   ► that I no longer have any vim and vigor

00:49:10 ◼   ► when arguing about it, but my dream would be

00:49:12 ◼   ► if they slipped iCloud in there too,

00:49:14 ◼   ► into this Prime thing and sign up for this stuff

00:49:17 ◼   ► that you think is fun, like listening to unlimited music

00:49:21 ◼   ► and watching cool TV shows, and you'll get an upgrade

00:49:24 ◼   ► to your storage tier in iTunes,

00:49:27 ◼   ► and you'll be able to have all of your photos backed up

00:49:32 ◼   ► in the cloud, which is like a good, healthy thing

00:49:34 ◼   ► that nobody really feels like it's a fun way

00:49:37 ◼   ► to spend $2.99 a month to get an upgrade to iCloud.

00:49:42 ◼   ► But it should be great.

00:49:43 ◼   ► And Apple is the unique structure of Apple

00:49:46 ◼   ► where they don't have financial silos,

00:49:50 ◼   ► you know, where there's nobody who's in charge of iCloud

00:49:55 ◼   ► who's gonna be mad because it was his independent,

00:49:58 ◼   ► his or her independent fiefdom.

00:50:00 ◼   ► In fact, it's the same guy, it's Eddie Q, right?

00:50:02 ◼   ► So like, Eddie, make this happen, right?

00:50:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, they are uniquely positioned to do that.

00:50:07 ◼   ► You're totally right.

00:50:08 ◼   ► And you could even see them harkening back

00:50:10 ◼   ► to the old school iLife suites,

00:50:13 ◼   ► where they bundle things together

00:50:15 ◼   ► and offer it in an experience mode,

00:50:17 ◼   ► not so much all these things individually.

00:50:20 ◼   ► It's all about having fun, like you say.

00:50:22 ◼   ► - So that would be,

00:50:24 ◼   ► and I just feel like it would be a nice,

00:50:27 ◼   ► it would make the overall experience

00:50:29 ◼   ► of the typical user so much better,

00:50:31 ◼   ► and just by having all of their photos in the cloud.

00:50:34 ◼   ► And I guess I misspoke a couple episodes ago

00:50:38 ◼   ► and like I put forth the hypothetical theory

00:50:43 ◼   ► of a person who's buying a new iPhone

00:50:45 ◼   ► and they've got more than five gigabytes,

00:50:46 ◼   ► way more than five gigabytes of photos and videos.

00:50:49 ◼   ► And I thought, you know, I think I put it in a way

00:50:52 ◼   ► that made it sound like they were screwed.

00:50:54 ◼   ► They're not, if you go to the Apple store

00:50:56 ◼   ► and you don't have a backup that has all of your stuff,

00:50:59 ◼   ► they'll do it for you right there in the store

00:51:02 ◼   ► through, you know, like a Mac or something

00:51:04 ◼   ► They'll get your all of your stuff off your old phone no matter how much it is onto your new phone there in this store

00:51:08 ◼   ► But a how many people do that?

00:51:10 ◼   ► I mean there must be millions and millions of people who have no idea that they could do that at the Apple Store

00:51:15 ◼   ► And B. It doesn't solve the other problems that like us that backup solves like if your phone

00:51:21 ◼   ► Is lost or stolen or broken?

00:51:24 ◼   ► You know

00:51:25 ◼   ► There's nothing you can do like you leave your phone in a cab and you got to go get a new iPhone if you don't

00:51:30 ◼   ► a backup, you've just lost your photos. Like there's digital tragedies that happen every day

00:51:34 ◼   ► that could be solved if everybody just had a wee bit more iCloud.

00:51:40 ◼   ► Trenton Larkin And, you know, the ultimate extension of this is,

00:51:43 ◼   ► of course, then including sort of a rolling iPhone subscription where you get a new device

00:51:49 ◼   ► every few years, right? Dave

00:52:00 ◼   ► Amazon Prime like, you know, here, just give us this money on a regular basis and we'll

00:52:06 ◼   ► keep throwing TV shows at you.

00:52:08 ◼   ► We'll keep throwing new iPhones at you every two years.

00:52:11 ◼   ► How awesome would that be if like they had a service that was so seamless that basically,

00:52:16 ◼   ► you know, you check a box, you say, I want a new iPhone every year or I want one every

00:52:19 ◼   ► other year.

00:52:21 ◼   ► And when that time comes and when the launch date hits, you basically get a package in

00:52:25 ◼   ► mail with your new iPhone with all of your data already on it. Because they just did sort of a

00:52:31 ◼   ► quick, you know, data transfer for you and sold you basically, you know, stop using your iPhone

00:52:37 ◼   ► after midnight tonight and tomorrow morning, you're going to get a brand new one with all

00:52:40 ◼   ► of your data sync from your iCloud account. How great of an experience would that be?

00:52:44 ◼   ► That would be pretty great. I mean, Amazon does a great job with that. Like when you buy like a new

00:52:49 ◼   ► Kindle Kindle. Yeah, it comes. I just got the latest and gray. I'm on like an every four years

00:52:54 ◼   ► Kindle cycle. But it's nice because if you wait like four years, you really get like

00:52:59 ◼   ► the screens are, you know, the backlighting on the screen is way better. And I'm always

00:53:05 ◼   ► impressed by that. But I kind of feel like part of that is scale that they don't, you

00:53:09 ◼   ► know, the iPhone comes at such scale, they couldn't do it. But maybe if you had this

00:53:12 ◼   ► nice subscription service, they could afford to do it even at their scale. It would be

00:53:15 ◼   ► really very, very nice just to open the box and have it already have your stuff on it.

00:53:21 ◼   ► - Yes, I think you were talking about that

00:53:23 ◼   ► in a recent podcast, maybe even your last one,

00:53:26 ◼   ► where you talked about how good the backup service

00:53:29 ◼   ► has gotten via iCloud versus syncing on a computer.

00:53:33 ◼   ► And it's funny because I almost feel like the opposite.

00:53:36 ◼   ► So I just bought actually Megan a new iPhone,

00:53:39 ◼   ► basically to get the best camera.

00:53:41 ◼   ► So I bought her the XS to be able to get the best camera

00:53:46 ◼   ► for taking pictures of the little one.

00:53:48 ◼   ► And she's so reluctant to install it.

00:53:50 ◼   ► just sitting in a box right now,

00:53:52 ◼   ► because she doesn't want to take the time

00:53:53 ◼   ► to go through and do the new device sync thing.

00:53:57 ◼   ► And I agree, it is a lot better than it used to be,

00:53:59 ◼   ► of course, you can do most of it over iCloud,

00:54:01 ◼   ► and it is relatively fast,

00:54:02 ◼   ► but there are just little things

00:54:05 ◼   ► like that they don't transfer every single password,

00:54:08 ◼   ► and so there are some services

00:54:09 ◼   ► that you have to log into again,

00:54:11 ◼   ► and it's just like that inhibiting factor stops,

00:54:14 ◼   ► I think, people from doing upgrades, for sure.

00:54:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's certain services that obviously,

00:54:18 ◼   ► I guess they're not storing their passwords

00:54:21 ◼   ► in your keychain.

00:54:22 ◼   ► I would hope that they're not really storing

00:54:25 ◼   ► your password at all, that they're,

00:54:26 ◼   ► instead of using the keychain,

00:54:27 ◼   ► they're using some kind of localized token

00:54:31 ◼   ► that couldn't be reused.

00:54:32 ◼   ► I really hope that the apps that do this

00:54:35 ◼   ► are not just stored in a password on their own,

00:54:37 ◼   ► like in your preferences file or something.

00:54:40 ◼   ► Although you'd think that would transfer,

00:54:41 ◼   ► but, or they do, for some reason,

00:54:45 ◼   ► some of these apps and services seem to want to create

00:54:48 ◼   ► a unique identifier based on you and your device.

00:54:51 ◼   ► And so when you go to a new device,

00:54:53 ◼   ► you gotta re-log in and then, yeah, you're right.

00:54:56 ◼   ► It's as good as it's gotten,

00:54:58 ◼   ► it still is a couple of weeks of pain.

00:55:01 ◼   ► And then there's always the ones that you forget about.

00:55:03 ◼   ► You know, like, I don't use our Nest app very frequently,

00:55:08 ◼   ► but then it's like, I'll just go, you know,

00:55:09 ◼   ► like after like a month, I have a new iPhone.

00:55:11 ◼   ► I go to the Nest app and it's like, I'm back.

00:55:13 ◼   ► I don't even remember if Nest is one,

00:55:15 ◼   ► but there's just those apps that you use like once a month

00:55:18 ◼   ► And it's just like always the worst moment. Yeah, right. You need to ask minor the credit card apps

00:55:23 ◼   ► It's like I want to I want to see if this payment went through. Yeah. Yeah, and it's like I log it

00:55:27 ◼   ► It's like oh my god. I forgot. I haven't installed it yet on the news phone like blah blah blah

00:55:31 ◼   ► Yeah, oh, I know one uber for some reason uber doesn't just do it

00:55:34 ◼   ► And of course the first time you notice right the first time you notice is when you're trying to get an uber

00:55:39 ◼   ► Why else would you over do open the uber app? Yes, exactly

00:55:42 ◼   ► Yeah, right

00:55:43 ◼   ► And so it's like we're we're seven minutes away from our dinner reservation

00:55:47 ◼   ► And I'm like and you have seven minutes of typing in a password. Yeah, and it's confirming this and that

00:55:53 ◼   ► It's like oh my god. Jesus. There's probably like Ubers have just driven by my house already. I already missed them

00:55:59 ◼   ► like

00:56:01 ◼   ► All right, let me take another break here and thank our next sponsor it's a good time to break

00:56:06 ◼   ► It's Linode I love this company Linode

00:56:13 ◼   ► Let's you instantly deploy and manage SSD servers in the Linode cloud

00:56:17 ◼   ► I used to pronounce it line node because that's what it looks like

00:56:20 ◼   ► But of course, it's pronounced Linode because it's Linode like Linux

00:56:23 ◼   ► So me big dummy who doesn't know how to pronounce things blew that one the last time they sponsored the show

00:56:29 ◼   ► But it looks like line ode l in ode

00:56:31 ◼   ► You can get a server running in seconds with your choice of Linux distribution resources and a choice of 10

00:56:39 ◼   ► Node locations around the world. They're very proud to announce their newest data center in

00:56:43 ◼   ► Beautiful Toronto, Canada. It's built using their most up-to-date hardware their next generation network backbone

00:56:49 ◼   ► Linode Toronto allows users to comply with in-country data protection

00:56:54 ◼   ► Requirements while taking advantage of all Linode technology and tools very big

00:56:59 ◼   ► But that's a very big thing in today's modern world

00:57:01 ◼   ► Back in the early days internet didn't matter where your server was

00:57:04 ◼   ► But now we've got all these laws around the world, which is good

00:57:07 ◼   ► But it certainly is it makes things tricky when you're setting stuff up if you've got to have your stuff in Canada now you can do

00:57:14 ◼   ► it

00:57:16 ◼   ► It's a great service. It really is. I'm a paying customer

00:57:18 ◼   ► I wouldn't say that if if if it weren't true, it's nothing to do with them sponsoring the show

00:57:24 ◼   ► I think they they are seriously the best hosting company out there today

00:57:27 ◼   ► Here's what you get you get a $20 credit for all new customers just for coming from the show

00:57:33 ◼   ► You can build it all on Linode

00:57:35 ◼   ► Everything from a dedicated CPU, distributed applications, hosted services, websites, anything

00:57:41 ◼   ► you need, you can do it there. Everything uses SSD storage, 40 gigabit network, industry leading

00:57:48 ◼   ► processors, and again, you get to pick from 10 worldwide data centers where you want your stuff

00:57:52 ◼   ► hosted. Their next one, their 11th, is coming in Mumbai, India by the end of this year. So when I

00:57:59 ◼   ► say worldwide, I mean it. That is about as far away from East Coast US as you can get. And you

00:58:04 ◼   ► And you pay for what you use with hourly billing and plans and add-on services.

00:58:08 ◼   ► You can deploy your infrastructure effectively.

00:58:11 ◼   ► If you need to burst, if you're expecting huge traffic, you can budget for that and

00:58:16 ◼   ► have it burst.

00:58:18 ◼   ► They have a brand new cloud manager with a hugely improved user interface at cloud.linode.com.

00:58:24 ◼   ► They have their own API for doing all sorts of nerdy stuff with your server and an officially

00:58:28 ◼   ► supported Python command line interface.

00:58:31 ◼   ► the most popular scripting language that you could do for something like that and they're hiring.

00:58:36 ◼   ► Go to linode.com/careers if you're the type of person who might be interested in working for

00:58:41 ◼   ► a world-class hosting company. If you're a nerd, you know, sysadmin type looking for work, go check

00:58:48 ◼   ► out linode.com/careers. Probably a lot of you listening to this show. So again, you get a $20

00:58:53 ◼   ► credit when you use this promo code talk show 2019 know the just talk show 2019 you get

00:59:01 ◼   ► $20 credit you can start with a $5 a month plan and get a fantastic server really really

00:59:08 ◼   ► effective server for five bucks a month with a $20 credit you get four months free four

00:59:12 ◼   ► months so my thanks to them go to linode.com slash the talk show so the URL this is tricky

00:59:19 ◼   ► You got to be smart linode.com slash the talk show as the URL to go to

00:59:24 ◼   ► But then when you check out you want to get that $20 credit its talk show

00:59:28 ◼   ► 2019 my thanks to Linode in my opinion the best hosting company in the world. I mean it

00:59:35 ◼   ► Anything else on the original content front

00:59:39 ◼   ► so the only thing I was gonna

00:59:42 ◼   ► Ask you for what you think about this because like I feel like no one's really had a good

00:59:49 ◼   ► high level take at least that I've read about it. But so obviously there's the famous thing I think in Walter Isaacson's book about

00:59:55 ◼   ► Steve Jobs when he's on

00:59:57 ◼   ► You know, unfortunately, of course his deathbed talking about that. He finally cracked cracked it right with regard to Apple television and

01:00:05 ◼   ► It's pretty clear I think to anyone who's been watching this long enough that's what they're launching

01:00:12 ◼   ► Now is not what they actually intended to launch or what Steve Jobs was sort of referring to when he said they cracked it

01:00:18 ◼   ► It seems more likely that that was sort of an interface or some sort of software mixed

01:00:26 ◼   ► with the ability to work with Hollywood to create sort of the perfect new package that

01:00:32 ◼   ► would ultimately replace cable.

01:00:34 ◼   ► And you could argue that maybe it just wasn't the right time, you know, when that, when

01:00:40 ◼   ► unfortunately it passed away in 2010, right, so nine years ago already, it was just not

01:00:45 ◼   ► the right time for that to happen.

01:00:48 ◼   ► And maybe now is with our just enough time has passed and obviously cable's under immense

01:00:53 ◼   ► pressure and just things are unbundling and so maybe now is the right time.

01:00:58 ◼   ► But it still seems like it's not exactly what Apple would have envisioned to do.

01:01:02 ◼   ► And I think you could just see this by reading the reports over the years of at EQ meeting

01:01:06 ◼   ► with so and so and so and so and Hollywood executives and they're not agreeing to sign

01:01:11 ◼   ► up for this thing.

01:01:12 ◼   ► And you can even see it in the product that it looks like they're releasing.

01:01:14 ◼   ► And I know you and I had a funny back and forth.

01:01:16 ◼   ► think Kafka got involved too on Twitter, where it's basically like, can you actually launch any of

01:01:22 ◼   ► these services like the Hulu service right from within the TV app? And it seems like no, instead

01:01:28 ◼   ► it kicks you out into it again, right? So it's not seamless at all. No. All right. Let's there's

01:01:35 ◼   ► a lot to unpack there. And this is a good topic. All right. I think that the I cracked it line is

01:01:42 ◼   ► I think there was no there there. I don't know what he was thinking. I,

01:01:46 ◼   ► he might've had an idea. There might've been something,

01:01:48 ◼   ► but I don't think people have read into it like from its last theorem.

01:01:51 ◼   ► You know what I mean? Like it's just cause it's,

01:01:53 ◼   ► we like to think that Steve jobs and,

01:02:00 ◼   ► and maybe there are moments,

01:02:01 ◼   ► there are moments in Apple and computing personal computing history where he,

01:02:05 ◼   ► he probably did have a Eureka moments, right?

01:02:08 ◼   ► of he's got it, you know, do do something. Yeah. I don't know what he was thinking of.

01:02:15 ◼   ► It would be fascinating to someday get exactly what was it? Was it just something about,

01:02:21 ◼   ► you know, for all we know, it was the goddamn remote control. You know, I mean, it's like,

01:02:25 ◼   ► we're gonna put a touch pad on the remote control. And it's gonna be bizarrely symmetric.

01:02:32 ◼   ► It could have been a terrible idea. I don't think I think everybody read into that. And

01:02:36 ◼   ► was the way it was written was I mean it was just it was such a throwaway line

01:02:40 ◼   ► yeah and jobs of course was characteristically super confident I got

01:02:47 ◼   ► it I don't think there was anything there and if he did or or maybe he had a

01:02:54 ◼   ► brilliant idea and they just could never get the content people on board you know

01:02:58 ◼   ► so here's what I'll say I'll just say this in the it was 2011 when he died in

01:03:04 ◼   ► In the eight years since then,

01:03:06 ◼   ► I don't think Apple's done anything to crack it.

01:03:08 ◼   ► So whatever his idea was,

01:03:09 ◼   ► either they didn't listen to him or it didn't work.

01:03:12 ◼   ► - Okay, so I agree with all of that.

01:03:15 ◼   ► And I think that that's probably,

01:03:17 ◼   ► you know, that is sort of the Occam's Razor thing of that.

01:03:22 ◼   ► There is some combination of,

01:03:25 ◼   ► he had just seen the latest work that they,

01:03:28 ◼   ► you know, that team was working on,

01:03:29 ◼   ► and it looked like it was in a good position,

01:03:32 ◼   ► but they weren't able to get sort of the, you know,

01:03:34 ◼   ► the Hollywood players on board

01:03:35 ◼   ► and so they could never launch what they wanted to do.

01:03:38 ◼   ► I'd also heard way, this is years ago, but back in the day,

01:03:41 ◼   ► I'd heard about what they effectively launched

01:03:43 ◼   ► as the remote control that now everyone hates

01:03:46 ◼   ► is the touch remote control.

01:03:47 ◼   ► I had heard about this years ago before it launched.

01:03:49 ◼   ► I'd heard about it as a slight,

01:03:51 ◼   ► it sounded when it was described to me as slightly different,

01:03:53 ◼   ► more sort of almost more akin to the magic track pad,

01:03:57 ◼   ► just a bigger full on track pad type of thing.

01:04:01 ◼   ► And it ultimately became a smaller thing and more remote

01:04:05 ◼   ► and with a few buttons, of course,

01:04:06 ◼   ► which presumably Jobs wouldn't have wanted.

01:04:09 ◼   ► And so I think you're right that it's a combination

01:04:14 ◼   ► of all of these things, that he thought he had

01:04:16 ◼   ► some interesting conceptual new way to interface with a TV.

01:04:21 ◼   ► He thought he had a new UI for the TV.

01:04:23 ◼   ► And then he thought that once the Hollywood executives

01:04:26 ◼   ► saw this package, that they would have to drop

01:04:29 ◼   ► what they were doing and agree to it

01:04:31 ◼   ► in the way that they did with iTunes, right?

01:04:33 ◼   ► - Right, but I think the bigger picture

01:04:36 ◼   ► of where we stand today in 2019

01:04:38 ◼   ► and with this new TV app coming up is this,

01:04:42 ◼   ► are you bouncing back and forth to multiple apps?

01:04:45 ◼   ► You know, and they definitely, I don't think they,

01:04:49 ◼   ► I always say this, I don't think Apple ever tries

01:04:51 ◼   ► to mislead, I think that their marketing,

01:04:54 ◼   ► product marketing is scrupulously honest.

01:04:55 ◼   ► Now, do they highlight the good

01:04:57 ◼   ► and not talk about the bad?

01:04:59 ◼   ► Of course, you know, they're marketers, but they don't lie. And so I think that that day

01:05:06 ◼   ► one, there were some pages on the webpage, apple.com that made it sound as though that

01:05:13 ◼   ► when you went into this TV channels product, you wouldn't be bouncing between different

01:05:17 ◼   ► apps that if you've got these channels and you want to go from the CBS interactive Star

01:05:23 ◼   ► Trek to Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale, you would just skip from the one show to the other,

01:05:30 ◼   ► not skip from the app between apps. I forget the exact language. It doesn't matter. And

01:05:36 ◼   ► within 24 hours it was subtly changed to not indicate that. I think it was a miscommunication.

01:05:43 ◼   ► I don't think it was an attempt to mislead because everybody's going to know eventually.

01:05:46 ◼   ► There's no point in lying. I just think that the original copy was written by someone who

01:05:50 ◼   ► who was thinking along the lines of us

01:05:52 ◼   ► that it was supposed to work this way.

01:05:54 ◼   ► Because bouncing between apps on Apple TV is not great.

01:05:59 ◼   ► - No, so right, and that's sort of my point.

01:06:01 ◼   ► Like I think you're right with all of that, 100%,

01:06:03 ◼   ► but I also think that what they wanted

01:06:06 ◼   ► in their ideal state to do is what we're talking about.

01:06:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:06:10 ◼   ► - And even going, talking about Kafka again, right?

01:06:12 ◼   ► His report before this event,

01:06:14 ◼   ► the most interesting thing about that report

01:06:16 ◼   ► that he had back then was that Apple would actually

01:06:19 ◼   ► be hosting a lot of this content, right?

01:06:21 ◼   ► From their own servers.

01:06:22 ◼   ► And that would imply, of course, that they were then

01:06:24 ◼   ► just going to serve it up in the TV app

01:06:26 ◼   ► and not make you go into a separate app,

01:06:28 ◼   ► because why would they host that content for a separate app?

01:06:31 ◼   ► They would do it in their own app.

01:06:32 ◼   ► And so they are obviously going to do that,

01:06:33 ◼   ► it seems like, for a few different content partners.

01:06:36 ◼   ► But really, for it to be a seamless experience

01:06:39 ◼   ► and something that's great, they need

01:06:41 ◼   ► to do it for all of the content partners,

01:06:42 ◼   ► and they clearly just couldn't get there.

01:06:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, just as to be a user interface nerd,

01:06:49 ◼   ► there is a conceptual complexity

01:06:52 ◼   ► to bouncing between apps on Apple TV.

01:06:56 ◼   ► There's just an extra cognitive load to that.

01:07:00 ◼   ► In a sense, they're competing against Netflix,

01:07:04 ◼   ► where Netflix is its own universe.

01:07:06 ◼   ► And once you're in Netflix, you only bounce between shows.

01:07:10 ◼   ► You're not bouncing out between apps.

01:07:13 ◼   ► And like, I don't think the problem is that there needs to be a better app switching interface.

01:07:19 ◼   ► I just think that the natural unit on on Apple TV, if everybody would just agree to it is

01:07:26 ◼   ► the show, not the app.

01:07:29 ◼   ► Yes.

01:07:30 ◼   ► 100% right.

01:07:31 ◼   ► And I think this is this is sort of why I think I feel like Apple's game plan after

01:07:37 ◼   ► a decade of sort of failing to convince the Hollywood players to go along with their vision.

01:07:43 ◼   ► I think they tried to do an end run around, which is basically like, okay, you guys know apps,

01:07:47 ◼   ► you make them for the iPhone, you make them for the iPad. Now you'll make them for the Apple TV.

01:07:52 ◼   ► And then they thought that eventually they would convince them that this isn't sort of the best way

01:07:57 ◼   ► to do it. The best way to do it is to have a unified sort of cable guide interface,

01:08:02 ◼   ► right, recreating sort of the cable bundle via contents that they could serve up. They can do

01:08:07 ◼   ► recommendations all from within this TV app, and they still just aren't there yet. And now they have

01:08:12 ◼   ► a separate problem, which not only are all of the Hollywood guys not fully on board with that,

01:08:17 ◼   ► they have the Netflix problem, which is that Netflix is always going to be a separate app,

01:08:21 ◼   ► they will never agree to be a part of this. Yeah, I don't I wonder, I, I would guess that they

01:08:27 ◼   ► asked. I mean, they obviously talked to Netflix. And you know, who knows what the, you know,

01:08:31 ◼   ► who knows what those negotiations were like with where Netflix decided we're going to stop taking

01:08:36 ◼   ► iTunes signups

01:08:38 ◼   ► But like I I've I say reported but I've written this and I can I can say it as fact

01:08:44 ◼   ► Or pretty close to fact that Netflix had a sweetheart deal where they were only paying

01:08:51 ◼   ► 15% instead of 30% for a lot longer than then then then that was a they started talking about it

01:08:57 ◼   ► You started talking about it as a hey you pay 30 for the first year and then 15 thereafter like I think and I this

01:09:04 ◼   ► I think I'm pretty sure that Netflix's deal was 15 from the start

01:09:08 ◼   ► It was there was no first year of 30 and then 15

01:09:12 ◼   ► It was like for a while Netflix had they just you know for iTunes signups Apple only took 15%

01:09:17 ◼   ► Who knows why they stopped that?

01:09:19 ◼   ► I guess they talked to Netflix and just tried to talk them into getting into the TV app

01:09:25 ◼   ► But I think Apple's smart enough to know that there's no way Netflix is gonna go for that

01:09:29 ◼   ► Well, I mean there's a very obvious reason why beyond just the monetary aspect of it

01:09:34 ◼   ► Netflix's entire business is built around data collection to write to be able to serve up recommendations and create shows based on you know

01:09:41 ◼   ► What people want and so is Apple going to serve up a hundred percent of the same data collection?

01:09:46 ◼   ► Even if they serve up a lot of it

01:09:47 ◼   ► They're not going to have the same granular level of detail that you would get within the Netflix app

01:09:51 ◼   ► So why would Netflix ever agree to that? Right?

01:09:53 ◼   ► Yeah, and and just being and and giving up the control over being able to get the data that they want, you know

01:10:00 ◼   ► Like, you know if they want to know how much how many times people pause a show, you know

01:10:05 ◼   ► They could do it because they add it's their own app

01:10:07 ◼   ► The only way to watch it is in their own app and if that's interesting to them, you know

01:10:11 ◼   ► You know if they want to say if they want to do an algorithm and say hey

01:10:15 ◼   ► These comedy specials that people tend not to pause do better than the ones that people pause a couple times

01:10:22 ◼   ► you know this guy or this woman, you know had a comedy special that and

01:10:25 ◼   ► People I don't know if that's useful or not. I'm just saying that if they

01:10:29 ◼   ► But that they've got data nerds looking at that, right?

01:10:32 ◼   ► It's exactly like the whole the whole moneyball aspect of baseball if you want to figure out if a guy who's left-handed

01:10:37 ◼   ► You know tends to hit the ball to in between shortstop and third base and that's worth an extra, you know

01:10:43 ◼   ► Two wins a season you can do it if you have the data, right?

01:10:47 ◼   ► But you've got to have the data. You just have to have yeah for sure and

01:10:51 ◼   ► this is you know, it gets into it where it's not just having the control and wanting them

01:10:57 ◼   ► in your app. So you have the control. You're also fighting Apple's institutional stance

01:11:01 ◼   ► on privacy where Apple can say, Hey, you should you you know, Mr. Hulu executive should let

01:11:09 ◼   ► us have your shows put your shows right here in the TV app without making people jump out.

01:11:13 ◼   ► It's great. It's all private for the user. That's not a selling point. It's a selling

01:11:19 ◼   ► point to the user. It sounds, you know, from Apple's perspective, it seems like a selling

01:11:24 ◼   ► point that everybody should get on board with. But from the perspective of somebody who is at a data

01:11:29 ◼   ► hungry company, that is not a selling point. That is a selling point. And I mean, that speaks to

01:11:37 ◼   ► what I think, you know, what happened with Apple news plus to write, like, why is the New York

01:11:40 ◼   ► Times and everyone like everyone was was focused on this 50% cut, which is obviously ridiculous,

01:11:44 ◼   ► but it's also it's just, they weren't going to share the subscriber data. So like, why on earth

01:11:49 ◼   ► Were they ever, you know, you, you were basically giving up, uh, the goose if,

01:11:54 ◼   ► if you're doing that for, as these, these content companies.

01:11:56 ◼   ► So I think they would be foolish to do that. And it's just to a much greater degree with the, uh,

01:12:01 ◼   ► with the Netflix's of the worlds, because they are so sort of data focused, even though it may not

01:12:06 ◼   ► seem like that on the surface of it. I just, I think the bad news is we're stuck bouncing

01:12:10 ◼   ► between apps. It's the bottom line. I, yes. And they can make it as, try to make it as

01:12:15 ◼   ► seamless as possible, but I don't see any way around it.

01:12:19 ◼   ► Yeah, the only way, and this sort of speaks to their original content, right? Another part of

01:12:26 ◼   ► the reason why you would do it is if you needed leverage over, obviously, again, going back to the

01:12:33 ◼   ► notion that EdiQ and whatnot have been having these conversations for a better part of a decade

01:12:38 ◼   ► at this point and haven't really been able to break through with the Hollywood executives on

01:12:43 ◼   ► on the content side of things.

01:12:44 ◼   ► And so it's a lot easier to have sort of those types

01:12:47 ◼   ► of conversations if you're also a content creator

01:12:50 ◼   ► who has must-have content and you have, more importantly,

01:12:54 ◼   ► the user base that these content creators need to access.

01:12:57 ◼   ► And so I think Apple's probably now holding out hope

01:13:00 ◼   ► that there's some combination of everything

01:13:03 ◼   ► that they're doing, the culmination of all these things

01:13:06 ◼   ► that launches in the fall, and after like sort of

01:13:09 ◼   ► a two-year span of doing this and being successful at it,

01:13:12 ◼   ► that they're able to get some degree of leverage again

01:13:15 ◼   ► over having different types of conversations.

01:13:18 ◼   ► But I just don't think Netflix is ever going to

01:13:21 ◼   ► to be in play for that.

01:13:23 ◼   ► - I still think it is fascinating,

01:13:27 ◼   ► if you really just pause and think about

01:13:29 ◼   ► what does Apple do, what has Apple always done,

01:13:31 ◼   ► is they sell devices, they sell computers,

01:13:34 ◼   ► and that's where they make money.

01:13:35 ◼   ► That's where they've always made money.

01:13:37 ◼   ► And they've had, famously,

01:13:41 ◼   ► They made iTunes for Windows,

01:13:44 ◼   ► but the only reason they made iTunes for Windows

01:13:46 ◼   ► was to allow Windows users to use iPods.

01:13:48 ◼   ► So they were still selling a device.

01:13:51 ◼   ► It was all, you know, whatever that are,

01:13:54 ◼   ► you know, that's a famous Steve Jobs story

01:13:56 ◼   ► that Steve Jobs was opposed to it,

01:13:58 ◼   ► and Phil Schiller and a few others were adamant about it,

01:14:02 ◼   ► and he would eventually, I think it's an Isaacson story,

01:14:05 ◼   ► too, he was like, all right, whatever,

01:14:06 ◼   ► just go ahead, don't tell,

01:14:08 ◼   ► just don't talk to me about it anymore.

01:14:10 ◼   ► You know, but it wound up turning the iPod from a nice little Mac peripheral into a

01:14:16 ◼   ► Piece of pop culture, you know something that everybody knew, you know, literally I remember at the time

01:14:23 ◼   ► You'd be walking in the mall and I'd hear kids say I want to go to the iPod store. Yep

01:14:28 ◼   ► But it's you know still backed by hardware and you know, they've got Apple music for Android

01:14:34 ◼   ► I'd love to know how well that's doing. Yeah, really would yeah, you never hear about it

01:14:40 ◼   ► I don't but I've got it on my pixel. It looks pretty good

01:14:44 ◼   ► It certainly looks more like an Android app than Google's apps look like iOS apps to be honest

01:14:50 ◼   ► And so it's and as opposed to iTunes which never really looked like a native Windows app that makes sense

01:14:56 ◼   ► right because they have the deals with the music labels and they want to be able to compete with Spotify and they you know,

01:15:02 ◼   ► There's there by some accounts. I think ahead in the US but still pretty far behind worldwide

01:15:06 ◼   ► right and and androids obviously key for worldwide distribution and all that stuff right it doesn't seem like

01:15:12 ◼   ► Apple music for Android ever need they never needed to be concerned that this is gonna affect iPhone sales

01:15:19 ◼   ► Yes

01:15:20 ◼   ► Whereas with TV what they're doing now by partnering to get this stuff baked right into these quote-unquote smart TVs is

01:15:28 ◼   ► definitely

01:15:31 ◼   ► Deflating the the appeal of owning an Apple TV puck

01:15:35 ◼   ► Yeah

01:15:37 ◼   ► I agree 100% and I think we've probably even talked about this before I know like I have long talked about this

01:15:45 ◼   ► The Apple TV device is fascinating to me because it feels like the ultimate device in that Apple keeps being

01:15:53 ◼   ► Just a bit off of where they should be with it

01:15:56 ◼   ► where

01:15:58 ◼   ► You know, obviously the I think it's sold pretty well

01:16:02 ◼   ► It's not sort of selling as well as Roku and some of the other cheaper cheaper sticks and things like that

01:16:07 ◼   ► But it's been around for a long time now and in a bunch of different iterations

01:16:10 ◼   ► And it seems like they've always been just on the cusp of doing something really interesting with it

01:16:14 ◼   ► most recent versions of it were more interesting because of

01:16:18 ◼   ► The fact that it's obviously fully running, you know

01:16:21 ◼   ► their own variation of iOS now and it has the a system chips in it and so it can be an iOS device and it can

01:16:29 ◼   ► run software just like an iOS device was and namely it can run and this speaks to another

01:16:34 ◼   ► part of the services package games.

01:16:37 ◼   ► But they haven't done games in a way that's at all compelling on the Apple TV even though

01:16:41 ◼   ► they have them.

01:16:42 ◼   ► They have the App Store.

01:16:43 ◼   ► And I think the biggest inhibiting factor right now, the games, yeah, they're not the

01:16:47 ◼   ► hardcore games of Xbox or PlayStation.

01:16:51 ◼   ► That's not to say that they couldn't be though necessarily given the power of these chips

01:16:54 ◼   ► these days, but the biggest factor is the controls.

01:16:57 ◼   ► That they don't have their own control.

01:16:58 ◼   ► I know they offer third-party ones in stores or whatever.

01:17:01 ◼   ► Apple needs to make their own controller.

01:17:03 ◼   ► And this can, I mean, we can go off on a tangent on this.

01:17:05 ◼   ► I would argue that that's why beyond the obvious,

01:17:08 ◼   ► the most, the crown jewel of buying the IP of Nintendo,

01:17:11 ◼   ► Nintendo makes great controllers too.

01:17:13 ◼   ► Imagine buying Nintendo to get access

01:17:14 ◼   ► to their hardware IP around controllers

01:17:17 ◼   ► and launching something that way.

01:17:19 ◼   ► - I think that the Steelcase controller is like 60 bucks too.

01:17:22 ◼   ► - And is it, have you ever used it?

01:17:25 ◼   ► Is that any good?

01:17:25 ◼   ► - I have one, I bought one.

01:17:28 ◼   ► It feels a lot like an Xbox controller, which is my least favorite.

01:17:30 ◼   ► And I say this as somebody who retired from active video game playing a while back.

01:17:40 ◼   ► I spent a lot of time playing the Wii when Jonas was younger.

01:17:43 ◼   ► So the Wii, the original Wii, was the last video game system that I spent what I would

01:17:48 ◼   ► consider a lot of time playing.

01:17:49 ◼   ► And I never really loved the Wii controls.

01:17:53 ◼   ► I thought they were clever with the pointing and the waving and stuff like that.

01:17:56 ◼   ► Like when I played Mario Kart, I didn't wave, you know, I didn't tilt the thing, right? But I'd never liked the Xbox controller

01:18:03 ◼   ► It's it's okay

01:18:04 ◼   ► It feels the Steelcase one for Apple TV feels like a generic

01:18:08 ◼   ► controller like if you were making a controller for a TV show and you and and the lawyers came and said

01:18:14 ◼   ► Don't show a PlayStation controller don't show Xbox

01:18:18 ◼   ► And they're like just make like just have the ID team make up like just a generic video game controller

01:18:24 ◼   ► That's exactly what it feels like it's okay, but it just feels like a kick in the pants that you're buying this box

01:18:30 ◼   ► That's so much more expensive than a Roku or a fire thing

01:18:35 ◼   ► from Amazon and if you want to play games

01:18:38 ◼   ► You've got to spend 60 bucks on a controller and that's one controller

01:18:41 ◼   ► that uh, your statement reminds me of when I was a kid and I used to go over to a friend's house who had

01:18:46 ◼   ► the Nintendo 64 and

01:18:49 ◼   ► One of the controllers and that that council council famously had four control reports

01:18:54 ◼   ► but we for some reason we always had one that was a generic one not paid by

01:18:58 ◼   ► Nintendo and whoever had to use that one was sort of you know, the runt of the litter

01:19:02 ◼   ► It's like oh god fine. I'll use this one

01:19:05 ◼   ► but yeah

01:19:06 ◼   ► I could see how that that feels like that with the the sort of controllers because Apple doesn't make them first party and really should

01:19:12 ◼   ► And I think that that's to me like the gaming service that they announced is very interesting

01:19:17 ◼   ► I think that it's super compelling. I could see why it's compelling to game creators

01:19:22 ◼   ► We're in this world of iOS games have been in the race to the bottom

01:19:26 ◼   ► You know

01:19:26 ◼   ► They have to be 99 cents or do in-app purchase or they're basically done for and so this is a way to

01:19:33 ◼   ► Sort of battle back against that but I still feel like a huge component of this should be at least

01:19:38 ◼   ► Leveraging that box that you have in your living room

01:19:42 ◼   ► Which is the Apple TV and the only way that they do that I think is with a really great controller

01:19:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's more powerful as a computer than the we not that we the switch which we have

01:19:53 ◼   ► I think for sure it is. I don't even think it's close. I know there's rumors

01:19:57 ◼   ► That seem pretty good that that Nintendo is gonna come out with like a switch to which is like

01:20:02 ◼   ► Just new hardware like not a new platform. So all the games will work, but it's just gonna be like a faster Tegra

01:20:07 ◼   ► CPU because the one they have in there is a little underpowered

01:20:11 ◼   ► Yep

01:20:12 ◼   ► And it's you know and way that people love their switch and that switch games are super fun to play and they all look great

01:20:17 ◼   ► And they don't feel slow and you know

01:20:20 ◼   ► It's they're definitely in that same boat with the switch and Nintendo's success with it as showing that you don't have to compete with

01:20:27 ◼   ► PlayStation and Xbox in that the way that they are really competing against gaming PCs

01:20:34 ◼   ► You don't have to get into that whole area

01:20:35 ◼   ► Yep, and so right so that and that seems like the avenue that Apple is sort of likely to take I assume

01:20:42 ◼   ► that it's more not casual but just sort of different than then yeah the hardcore

01:20:49 ◼   ► PC games and I think that that's a smart approach we'll see what the price point

01:20:55 ◼   ► ends up being you you mentioned ten dollars I wouldn't be shocked if they do

01:20:57 ◼   ► it a little bit more than that like 15 or something it sort of depends on you

01:21:01 ◼   ► know what what they have in store when they when they launch with with whatever

01:21:05 ◼   ► they're gonna launch yeah that's a big one too but the way that they're not

01:21:09 ◼   ► Allowing any and that you know anybody who's competing in that in that anybody who's got a game in Apple arcade. Yeah, that's it

01:21:16 ◼   ► You're no game. Yeah, no in-app purchase. I think that's great. I think it's gonna work with Nintendo, right?

01:21:22 ◼   ► It was well

01:21:23 ◼   ► It was sort of a weird thing that instead the Super Mario run thing

01:21:25 ◼   ► Was weird in my in my mind like I get what they were trying to do with it, right?

01:21:30 ◼   ► You could get it for free and then you paid one time fee and then you unlocked it and there was no more in-app

01:21:35 ◼   ► I think they didn't do as well as they were probably expecting to do with that

01:21:39 ◼   ► And now Nintendo's success stories and mobile have been just in-app purchase, right? It's like that

01:21:44 ◼   ► The fire emblem thing and animal crossing. I always like the notion of what Apple and Nintendo

01:21:50 ◼   ► We're trying to do with that right not trick anyone not not allow kids to

01:21:53 ◼   ► To bot have to spend an arm and a leg and just be constantly milked for more and more more of their milk money out

01:21:59 ◼   ► Of it, right?

01:22:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I totally appreciate that and it's you know

01:22:05 ◼   ► It's the right thing to do even if they are leaving money on the table

01:22:09 ◼   ► I don't know the slot game of the slot machine of vacation of video games on mobile is it?

01:22:13 ◼   ► it's maybe it's beneath the whole privacy stuff with Facebook and you know

01:22:19 ◼   ► It's not like the Facebook stuff is like getting Donald Trump and brexit in elections, right?

01:22:27 ◼   ► It's changing the course of 21st century world history

01:22:30 ◼   ► the people spending 20 bucks a month on Candy Crush isn't but

01:22:35 ◼   ► So it's low down on a list of our industry problems,

01:22:38 ◼   ► but it is a problem.

01:22:39 ◼   ► It's not right.

01:22:41 ◼   ► - And it also sort of started with Facebook as well, right?

01:22:43 ◼   ► - Right.

01:22:44 ◼   ► - And Farmville and all those things back in the day.

01:22:46 ◼   ► Like that's how people originally,

01:22:48 ◼   ► that's where the whales came from.

01:22:50 ◼   ► And then they moved on to mobile.

01:22:51 ◼   ► But yeah, this was,

01:22:53 ◼   ► this all ties back to Facebook in the end, unfortunately.

01:22:56 ◼   ► - Did you see that thing a couple of months ago

01:22:58 ◼   ► where there was a lawsuit about their games

01:23:00 ◼   ► and that they had, as part of the discovery,

01:23:02 ◼   ► They had chat transcripts from Facebook employees who were talking about like, "Hey, there's

01:23:08 ◼   ► a..."

01:23:09 ◼   ► Oh, the whale thing. This was about the whale thing, right?

01:23:11 ◼   ► Yeah. Somebody's... What's it called when you blank a charge? You're arguing.

01:23:17 ◼   ► Right.

01:23:18 ◼   ► What's the word? Dispute.

01:23:21 ◼   ► Yes.

01:23:22 ◼   ► There's a dispute of a charge. It's a 15-year-old girl who racked up $4,000 and stuff. And it's

01:23:30 ◼   ► Well, is she really 15 or 14 and it's like I don't know she doesn't really look it

01:23:35 ◼   ► So they're you'd say like it doesn't really look like she's 15

01:23:38 ◼   ► it's just that that you know, that's the minimum age had to be and

01:23:41 ◼   ► You know and they have all this proof that Facebook knew that kids

01:23:45 ◼   ► Didn't realize they were playing with real money that they really thought that it was a virtual currency

01:23:50 ◼   ► Which of course isn't it actually does is not that hard to believe with all these games that have for sure

01:23:55 ◼   ► They have coins and yeah, and literally like four thousand dollars like like

01:24:00 ◼   ► Not like, "Oh, your kid ran up 40 bucks."

01:24:03 ◼   ► Like, "$4,000!"

01:24:05 ◼   ► And they're just like, "Ah, let it go.

01:24:06 ◼   ► No, no, don't do a chargeback on that one.

01:24:09 ◼   ► We'll keep that one."

01:24:10 ◼   ► It's like, you're a bad person.

01:24:12 ◼   ► That's bad.

01:24:14 ◼   ► Anyway.

01:24:15 ◼   ► - And yeah, and Apple, I mean, that was a big,

01:24:18 ◼   ► that was the subtext.

01:24:19 ◼   ► I think Benedict Evans wrote about this too,

01:24:20 ◼   ► which I agree with.

01:24:21 ◼   ► The subjects of this whole event was

01:24:23 ◼   ► not only the services thing, but it's also privacy

01:24:26 ◼   ► and sort of doing the right thing

01:24:29 ◼   ► with things like this, right, even to the point where that one of the more surprising things,

01:24:33 ◼   ► which I thought was fascinating was that they kept talking up in every single instance how

01:24:37 ◼   ► they were, there was family sharing on all of these services, right? Yeah, so yeah,

01:24:41 ◼   ► once and everyone can access it in your family. Yeah. And you know, it wasn't you don't, you

01:24:46 ◼   ► didn't have to even really be paying attention to the event to see that they were putting up the

01:24:50 ◼   ► same slide with the same seven bullet points, you know, family sharing and private and kid friendly

01:24:57 ◼   ► and, you know, whatever the list of seven things were, it was the same for news, it was the same

01:25:03 ◼   ► for games, it was the same for TV, etc, etc. I mean, it's it's obviously something they're

01:25:08 ◼   ► hammering home that they believe in. I really do think they believe in it. And I also think that

01:25:12 ◼   ► they think that this is this is appealing. Yep. To quickly tie back to your point about so Apple TV,

01:25:21 ◼   ► the device because they're releasing the service on all these other TVs, and they're really

01:25:26 ◼   ► undercutting their argument for Apple TV. It feels like they obviously have to know that. And so what

01:25:31 ◼   ► is their plan going forward? Do they do something where it's more like a full fledged, more full

01:25:37 ◼   ► fledged gaming service with a controller and something to upsell? Do they package Apple TV's

01:25:43 ◼   ► Plus like we were talking about to try to sell, you know, sort of the more hardcore Apple users?

01:25:50 ◼   ► Do they do something entirely different? Like I think, you know, you and I have talked about in

01:25:54 ◼   ► in the past, like they really dropped the ball

01:25:56 ◼   ► with the opportunity to use this device

01:25:59 ◼   ► that people had in their homes,

01:25:59 ◼   ► either as a precursor to Alexa or as a Euro type thing,

01:26:04 ◼   ► where they could have just had this hardware

01:26:08 ◼   ► and used it for all these other things

01:26:10 ◼   ► that we'd now use hardware for,

01:26:11 ◼   ► and they had this thing right there for the taking

01:26:13 ◼   ► and just didn't do anything that interesting with it.

01:26:15 ◼   ► So do they do that now and make it a more interesting box?

01:26:18 ◼   ► Because they really need to make a key value sell

01:26:23 ◼   ► on buying a $200 box when you don't need it anymore

01:26:26 ◼   ► for anything.

01:26:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, I totally agree.

01:26:29 ◼   ► And I don't know, I think it's a tragedy.

01:26:31 ◼   ► I've talked to, and in fact, I don't know anybody privately

01:26:35 ◼   ► who even argues otherwise.

01:26:36 ◼   ► I mean, somebody at Apple must think it's a bad idea

01:26:39 ◼   ► to be in the router WiFi business.

01:26:40 ◼   ► But I know so many people, friends who are former

01:26:43 ◼   ► Apple employees, just outside observers,

01:26:46 ◼   ► everybody thinks it is just like a heartbreaking mistake

01:26:49 ◼   ► that Apple has abandoned the airport business

01:26:52 ◼   ► because this whole, that they've gotten out of the business

01:26:57 ◼   ► right as online privacy has become something--

01:27:03 ◼   ► - Exactly, you wanna talk about a privacy argument,

01:27:05 ◼   ► make that argument, yeah, seriously.

01:27:07 ◼   ► - It's foremost on their public statements

01:27:10 ◼   ► that Tim Cook talks about privacy every single time

01:27:14 ◼   ► he's in public, every interview, everything.

01:27:16 ◼   ► I mean, he obviously means it.

01:27:18 ◼   ► It is obviously strategically central to Apple right now

01:27:23 ◼   ► and going forward.

01:27:26 ◼   ► It's hard to see how that's going to change.

01:27:27 ◼   ► It's not, and they've, you know, to have this ally,

01:27:31 ◼   ► if you are as a consumer concerned about your privacy

01:27:36 ◼   ► and your online privacy,

01:27:37 ◼   ► to be able to buy a router that you can trust

01:27:40 ◼   ► and that isn't going to,

01:27:42 ◼   ► if it does listen to voice commands,

01:27:44 ◼   ► that you really do believe that they're not,

01:27:47 ◼   ► that they don't have an army of employees who listen. And when somebody says something funny,

01:27:53 ◼   ► they pass it around, which is a story, I think the information or somebody broke about Amazon,

01:27:57 ◼   ► that they've got this army of humans who are backing up these commands to figure out when

01:28:02 ◼   ► something goes wrong, to listen to it and then figure out how to correct it. And they're sharing

01:28:06 ◼   ► this stuff and that they have access to your home address and just crazy stuff. I would really trust

01:28:13 ◼   ► Apple in that regard. And to have them not be making a router of all the products that

01:28:19 ◼   ► could really, really affect the privacy of every single device on your network, it's

01:28:23 ◼   ► just central to it. And then it's heartbreaking. And yeah, they could tie it together and say,

01:28:29 ◼   ► just buy this one thing. It's not that big. And you can put it in your living room. And

01:28:34 ◼   ► it also play games and shows, show TV shows and original content and stuff.

01:28:38 ◼   ► Yep. And has Siri baked in and has all this, you know, all this other stuff that they could

01:28:42 ◼   ► with it and they just weren't able to pull it all together for some reason to have the foresight to

01:28:49 ◼   ► be able to do that. But I think that that stuff is still in play, maybe not the router stuff,

01:28:55 ◼   ► given what you're talking about. But some of those other elements with the sort of,

01:29:01 ◼   ► I think everyone agrees that HomePod has not been a success. And so the rumors are that they're

01:29:07 ◼   ► working on a smaller version or something, but like, why not just bake it into this device?

01:29:11 ◼   ► Then make make a reason for people to have this device again or at least some some sort of compelling argument when?

01:29:17 ◼   ► You know why you would buy this when you are about to launch your service

01:29:21 ◼   ► Which is the focal point of this on all these other devices? Yeah, I don't know with the router thing

01:29:26 ◼   ► I just want to know I want to know like what are we supposed to buy?

01:29:28 ◼   ► You know, I mean I have I mean they're not sponsoring this week's show. I have ero. I've had it for years

01:29:33 ◼   ► I like yeah, I love you, too. You know

01:29:35 ◼   ► So I you know that way if somebody asked me what I should buy I would honestly again

01:29:40 ◼   ► They're not sponsoring this week's show, but they have sponsored many times.

01:29:43 ◼   ► So take it with a grain of salt if you wish or a disclaimer.

01:29:46 ◼   ► But my honest advice to like a family member who said, Hey, I need, I want to

01:29:49 ◼   ► get a new wifi thing. I would tell them to get Eero, but like, what does Tim Cook

01:29:54 ◼   ► have at his house? You know, what does Phil Schiller have? I mean, do they just

01:29:58 ◼   ► pay to have like, uh, professionals and enterprise grade stuff? I mean,

01:30:05 ◼   ► likely maybe, but maybe not. I mean, do they have that in, what do they have

01:30:09 ◼   ► Yeah in there. What do they recommend their family members? Right, right, right. I I don't know

01:30:14 ◼   ► It was just it's just a bizarre product to get out

01:30:17 ◼   ► I and I see how it might have been a tough business because it's it's just like the problem that TiVo

01:30:23 ◼   ► Always had where they're trying to get you to buy this DVR

01:30:27 ◼   ► But the cable company gives you a DVR Steve Jobs talked about this at length

01:30:30 ◼   ► right in the book about the problems getting into TV is that the problem is they're competing they get anything you want to sell people is

01:30:37 ◼   ► competing against a box they get from the cable company for quote-unquote free.

01:30:41 ◼   ► Yep. You know, I mean the modern opportunity is that, you know, as opposed to 15 years

01:30:46 ◼   ► ago, the modern opportunity is that there's a growing number of people who don't have

01:30:51 ◼   ► the box from cable company. They only have internet service. So there's your opportunity.

01:30:55 ◼   ► But on the router front, everybody gets, you still have to have internet. You can't, you

01:30:59 ◼   ► know, that's the cord you can't cut. Yes. So that's a good point. And yeah, I totally

01:31:04 ◼   ► - I totally agree, like that's what,

01:31:05 ◼   ► when we were talking about the Steve Jobs,

01:31:07 ◼   ► I finally cracked it thing,

01:31:08 ◼   ► it sort of seems like this day and age

01:31:10 ◼   ► would be a lot easier to sort of start from scratch

01:31:12 ◼   ► because the cable box is not so ingrained,

01:31:15 ◼   ► but it took just time for that to happen, right?

01:31:17 ◼   ► And you're right with the router thing too,

01:31:19 ◼   ► but I feel like just what you were talking about earlier,

01:31:22 ◼   ► the argument now is the privacy argument.

01:31:24 ◼   ► And that's a super compelling argument

01:31:26 ◼   ► to a lot of people, right?

01:31:27 ◼   ► And you just say like, Apple got out of that business

01:31:30 ◼   ► for probably the right reasons

01:31:31 ◼   ► from a bottom line perspective

01:31:33 ◼   ► and from their own perspective and focus and whatnot.

01:31:35 ◼   ► But now you can make the argument

01:31:37 ◼   ► that that would have been their single greatest

01:31:39 ◼   ► sort of strength with regard to the privacy

01:31:42 ◼   ► and security argument.

01:31:43 ◼   ► And so even if they're not making a ton of money

01:31:46 ◼   ► off of these devices, now that we have services narrative,

01:31:49 ◼   ► like what would be better than having some sort of security,

01:31:52 ◼   ► like Eero offers like security services

01:31:54 ◼   ► right through their box.

01:31:55 ◼   ► And so why would Apple not do that?

01:31:57 ◼   ► They of course would, and they probably wish

01:31:59 ◼   ► that they could do that now, but they pulled back.

01:32:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, who knows what they're gonna do now

01:32:04 ◼   ► that they're an Amazon subsidiary,

01:32:05 ◼   ► but their last year or so, their Eros,

01:32:09 ◼   ► just listening to what they tell me to promote

01:32:12 ◼   ► on the podcast reads there,

01:32:14 ◼   ► their add-on EroPlus service was clearly a central,

01:32:19 ◼   ► their big idea that they had.

01:32:22 ◼   ► I don't know if they were selling

01:32:24 ◼   ► the hardware break-even or whatever,

01:32:26 ◼   ► but the hardware's fair enough priced

01:32:28 ◼   ► that I wouldn't be surprised that to make money,

01:32:30 ◼   ► it was the service.

01:32:31 ◼   ► Yep, yep services services services

01:32:34 ◼   ► So, I don't know what else you you you wanted to talk about

01:32:39 ◼   ► But that that sort of I think is an interesting segue into a question I had for you. Okay, I love questions for me

01:32:44 ◼   ► So one thing, you know now that I'm so far removed from my reporting days, you know going on

01:32:51 ◼   ► I don't even know how long it's been eight years or something since I've been a day-to-day reporter and and obviously I was covering Apple

01:32:56 ◼   ► A lot back in those days

01:32:58 ◼   ► But I came into Apple in a very different vector than you did where you know, you've been

01:33:02 ◼   ► Sort of, you know following the company obviously since since you started writing on the internet

01:33:07 ◼   ► But um, you know before that as a it's just a fan and the user

01:33:10 ◼   ► and I came in in a very different sort of position where you speak to the

01:33:14 ◼   ► iPod the iPod was the the thing that hooked me into it when I was still a Windows user, right and that's how

01:33:19 ◼   ► The the whole halo effect thing and then I started buying

01:33:23 ◼   ► Apple products after I bought that initial iPod

01:33:26 ◼   ► But I was like a hardcore Windows user went to the midnight launch of Windows 95 you and and things like that

01:33:31 ◼   ► And so I came into it much later

01:33:33 ◼   ► But then I felt like the timing ended up being good from my reporting days of like figuring out that this is like the company

01:33:39 ◼   ► That's really you know was the underdog but seems like it's gonna come roaring back

01:33:43 ◼   ► And of course that happened and became the most valuable company in the world yada yada

01:33:46 ◼   ► So these days when I'm looking at the company again from afar and I've been out of the day-to-day for a long time now

01:33:52 ◼   ► But I do see a company that you know is unquestionably slipping at the edges

01:33:58 ◼   ► But I do wonder what your perspective is as someone who watches it more closely on a day to day

01:34:03 ◼   ► and I obviously get a sense of it reading, you know during fireball, but

01:34:07 ◼   ► What do you think?

01:34:08 ◼   ► Do you think that there's a risk that this sort of slipping at the edges with things like the the MacBook keyboard?

01:34:13 ◼   ► You know on down home pod all these other sort of little things that are just sort of slight misses - it's a pretty big misses

01:34:20 ◼   ► Do you think that it becomes this thing that leads to an internal sort of rot for lack of a better word within the company?

01:34:27 ◼   ► That's a very good question. I worry about that a lot

01:34:30 ◼   ► I think that's that the stability at the executive level which is really pretty extraordinary

01:34:35 ◼   ► Helps, I mean Tim Cook's been there for a while. Phil Schiller has been there the longest of anybody

01:34:41 ◼   ► I think Schiller was the only one who's I believe who's still left on the executive page who was there before

01:34:47 ◼   ► The next as I call it the next reunification

01:34:50 ◼   ► Eddie Q lifer and Johnny I've of course and Johnny was of course there yeah well

01:34:55 ◼   ► I don't know what I'm talking about there's a couple no but that I see but

01:34:58 ◼   ► the fact that there are that these top people like Eddie and Phil and Johnny

01:35:03 ◼   ► who've been there since before Steve Jobs came back to the company and are

01:35:06 ◼   ► still there helps in some ways at maintaining you know Apple is Apple but

01:35:13 ◼   ► But I do think that, I think it's too easy

01:35:18 ◼   ► to lose your edge when you're on top.

01:35:22 ◼   ► It's being the scrappy underdog kept them,

01:35:26 ◼   ► I think kept the whole company down to the smallest details

01:35:30 ◼   ► on edge because they couldn't afford, you know,

01:35:34 ◼   ► I don't wanna exaggerate too much.

01:35:38 ◼   ► But I think that if they'd had this keyboard problem

01:35:41 ◼   ► Circa 2005 2006 it would have been a much bigger problem that they couldn't afford to have

01:35:48 ◼   ► Unreliable keyboards. Yes. Yeah, sure because people would just go right back to Windows, right?

01:35:55 ◼   ► Yeah, you know and now they feel like they've got them I feel and I feel like they might underestimate like I

01:36:01 ◼   ► Don't want to focus too much on the Mac because your question was about Apple as a whole but the Mac is in a precarious

01:36:08 ◼   ► place in my opinion because

01:36:10 ◼   ► because I think an awful lot of the growth,

01:36:14 ◼   ► if not the majority of the growth in Mac users

01:36:17 ◼   ► in the last 10 years, aren't really Mac users

01:36:21 ◼   ► in my sense of the word,

01:36:22 ◼   ► where they're not deeply entrenched in the Mac ecosystem.

01:36:25 ◼   ► Just to name one type of user would be like a web developer

01:36:31 ◼   ► who mostly uses Safari or Chrome, often Chrome,

01:36:36 ◼   ► and a terminal window.

01:36:38 ◼   ► - Yep, yep.

01:36:39 ◼   ► And, you know, I forget the name of the text editor,

01:36:44 ◼   ► but there's a cross-platform text editor.

01:36:46 ◼   ► I forget if it's called Sublime Text or whatever,

01:36:48 ◼   ► but it's cross-platform.

01:36:49 ◼   ► It's not deeply integrated with the Mac in any way,

01:36:53 ◼   ► like the way PVEdit is or the way Xcode is.

01:36:55 ◼   ► That person can easily switch to another computer.

01:37:01 ◼   ► I think there's a lot of casual users

01:37:03 ◼   ► who mostly use stuff in Safari,

01:37:08 ◼   ► you know, Safari mail. I mean, messages is a big one. But if they do their messages,

01:37:12 ◼   ► if they still have an iPhone, they can switch. I don't know how many people who use, you

01:37:16 ◼   ► know, iMessage also, you know, count on being able to do it from their Mac. But there's

01:37:20 ◼   ► an awful lot of Mac users who've grown, you know, come into the fold in the last 10 years

01:37:25 ◼   ► who would have a fairly easy time switching to another anything with the web browser.

01:37:31 ◼   ► And, you know, a couple of these generic things as opposed to like me, I would be lost, I

01:37:35 ◼   ► would be completely lost not using the Mac because I use it in ways that are specific

01:37:40 ◼   ► and only and unique to the Macintosh. So this keyboard thing, I hear it from people. I hear

01:37:45 ◼   ► people who say, well, I, you know, yeah, I had the second, I got a second one, it went

01:37:49 ◼   ► bad. So I got rid of it and I switched to ThinkPad or something. You know, just like

01:37:55 ◼   ► that. That's would be very, very difficult for me. You know, I don't think we're seeing

01:38:00 ◼   ► it yet in Mac sales in their quarterly statements, but the reputational harm is there.

01:38:05 ◼   ► I do. I don't know. Is it rot? Is it arrogance? I think some of it might be a little arrogant.

01:38:13 ◼   ► I mean, the keyboard thing is pretty exemplary of it. I think it's really I don't, I've written

01:38:20 ◼   ► a fair amount about it, you know, recently, and I've had said some pretty strong things

01:38:25 ◼   ► like it's off quoted that I said, it's the biggest mistake in Apple's history. And I

01:38:30 ◼   ► put an asterisk an hour or two later to say modern history. I don't think well, people

01:38:36 ◼   ► were it was a fun Twitter discussion. People were tossing stuff like that out. MobileMe

01:38:40 ◼   ► was not a good launch. Right. But it gave way to iCloud. Yeah, everything that sort

01:38:45 ◼   ► of Well, they fixed it. You know, as soon as it launched, Steve Jobs famously held a

01:38:48 ◼   ► town hall meeting, right? He said, Hey, what somebody tell me what is mobile me supposed

01:38:52 ◼   ► to do? And then somebody some brave soul raised their hand and said, it's supposed to do x,

01:38:57 ◼   ► Y and Z. And he said, yes, that's a good description. So why the hell doesn't it do that? Silence,

01:39:04 ◼   ► you know, fix it. Get it. But the other thing is that mobile me being crummy didn't do reputational

01:39:10 ◼   ► harm to Apple because their reputation was already a company that is not good at online

01:39:14 ◼   ► services. Yep. Yep. And the same thing with paying and right. Like all of those things.

01:39:18 ◼   ► Yeah, totally. And this is this hits at their fundamental, like goes back to the earliest

01:39:23 ◼   ► days the company like creating hardware, differentiated hardware mixed with software, and they have

01:39:29 ◼   ► messed up the hardware component to the point where, yeah, I mean, the Wall Street Journal

01:39:33 ◼   ► is writing giant stories about it. So I, again, I love the Mac at a deep level. And I know

01:39:41 ◼   ► a lot of people do. I think the Mac still has lots of diehard Mac users who know tricks

01:39:46 ◼   ► and really and use lots of third party apps and stuff like that. The traditional Mac user,

01:39:52 ◼   ► the type of Mac user who back in the day would read Mac user

01:39:55 ◼   ► magazine, get a magazine just to just to read about what's new

01:39:59 ◼   ► and stuff like that enthusiasts. But even for it's not a bad

01:40:03 ◼   ► thing. I just think it's dangerous for Apple because the

01:40:05 ◼   ► other type of user the casual user who just uses it at a very

01:40:08 ◼   ► thin veneer level, right? And easily switch. And the reason

01:40:12 ◼   ► but why did they use a Mac even though Macs are quote unquote

01:40:14 ◼   ► expensive because they had a reputation as being the best

01:40:16 ◼   ► even if you didn't really care about the software that much you

01:40:18 ◼   ► just wanted a web browser. If you really buy laptops based on the hardware, which is different

01:40:25 ◼   ► than me, to me, it's the ecosystem, I'd rather have a bad laptop running Mac OS 10, than

01:40:29 ◼   ► a perfect hardware laptop running Windows, I would because that's just that's what I

01:40:34 ◼   ► need to do for my work. But I I'm not saying the other people are crazy. I think, you know,

01:40:38 ◼   ► they have a point. Yeah, it's Apple's reputation was it was the best. It was the best laptop

01:40:44 ◼   ► you could buy. So that's fascinating, because obviously, it was the web browser that sort

01:40:48 ◼   ► of also allowed Apple to take off, right?

01:40:52 ◼   ► Because all of a sudden, the software didn't matter

01:40:55 ◼   ► as much as long as you had access to the web browser.

01:40:57 ◼   ► And so if that was both the entry point

01:41:00 ◼   ► and now it's also the exit point, of course,

01:41:02 ◼   ► potentially for these casual users that you're talking about,

01:41:05 ◼   ► like anecdotally, you see a lot more surface tablets

01:41:09 ◼   ► out and about, right?

01:41:11 ◼   ► Because it seems like a well-designed machine.

01:41:14 ◼   ► Yes, it runs Windows, but most people are just using it

01:41:16 ◼   ► for the web browser.

01:41:17 ◼   ► No, it's very true. I definitely see more surfaces out there. Microsoft is quietly,

01:41:23 ◼   ► they've kind of created their own Mac in a sense, right? It's like where the Mac was

01:41:27 ◼   ► back in the day. Like, you know, there's not a lot of them. You don't see, you're not going

01:41:31 ◼   ► to see that picture of the college classroom where with all the illuminated 500 students

01:41:38 ◼   ► have a windows logo on their laptop. But you go into a coffee shop and you're going to

01:41:43 ◼   ► see a couple of them. So let me ask you an offshoot of that, which is that of what you're

01:41:48 ◼   ► just talking about. Do you think because my sense is, I think one way to easily explain what is

01:41:54 ◼   ► happening is that sort of what you what you're suggesting where they're at the point of success

01:41:59 ◼   ► now and it's like, are they focusing on the right stuff? It also feels like those the hardware got

01:42:07 ◼   ► to a point where it was so good that it almost felt like they started tinkering in a way that

01:42:11 ◼   ► that was over-engineering.

01:42:12 ◼   ► And I think the keyboards are a great example of that.

01:42:15 ◼   ► They created an entirely new, you know,

01:42:18 ◼   ► the famous butterfly mechanism

01:42:20 ◼   ► to be able to create a new style of keyboard

01:42:23 ◼   ► that they, at the time, you know,

01:42:25 ◼   ► I remember there was a Johnny Ive video about it, right,

01:42:28 ◼   ► about how the pushdown was more evenly distributed

01:42:31 ◼   ► across the key, right?

01:42:32 ◼   ► - Right, if you push at the corner of the key,

01:42:35 ◼   ► the whole key goes down.

01:42:36 ◼   ► - Right, the whole key goes down.

01:42:37 ◼   ► And so, and that, of course,

01:42:38 ◼   ► they did a great job with that with the track pads, right?

01:42:40 ◼   ► And so it seems like they actually over-engineered

01:42:45 ◼   ► the product where they thought they were obviously

01:42:49 ◼   ► doing it for reasons to make it more reliable.

01:42:51 ◼   ► The exact opposite ended up happening.

01:42:53 ◼   ► And I feel like you can see this

01:42:54 ◼   ► in more and more of the products.

01:42:56 ◼   ► And I think the touch bar is an ultimate example

01:42:58 ◼   ► of this too, right?

01:42:59 ◼   ► Like that is, it's like a thing that the Jeff Goldblum,

01:43:03 ◼   ► Jurassic Park quote, right?

01:43:04 ◼   ► Where it's like, they became so preoccupied

01:43:07 ◼   ► with whether or not they could,

01:43:08 ◼   ► They didn't stop to think if they should type situation.

01:43:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, and there's a couple of other aspects

01:43:13 ◼   ► that tie into that too, that I find a little worrisome.

01:43:16 ◼   ► So like, I don't think I'm alone here.

01:43:19 ◼   ► I feel like there's two types of people

01:43:21 ◼   ► with the arrow key layout.

01:43:22 ◼   ► There's the people like me who really miss

01:43:24 ◼   ► the upside down T, and then there's people

01:43:27 ◼   ► who maybe don't care.

01:43:28 ◼   ► I don't think there's anybody who thinks

01:43:30 ◼   ► that the new layout where the left and right keys

01:43:32 ◼   ► are full height keys is a better design

01:43:35 ◼   ► for those arrow keys.

01:43:37 ◼   ► Why would they change that? Well, I think it's very obvious and to me it's a little worrisome

01:43:42 ◼   ► I do think that the new layout looks better because the keyboard looks better

01:43:48 ◼   ► Aesthetically without those gaps above just two of the keys and instead it's a perfect rectangle

01:43:53 ◼   ► Yeah, but it doesn't work better and that's in direct

01:43:57 ◼   ► Contradiction to the famous Steve Jobs quote that design most people think it's just what it looks like design is how it works

01:44:05 ◼   ► Well, yep that the new arrow key layout does not work better if you use arrow keys a lot and I do while text editing

01:44:12 ◼   ► I use them all the time

01:44:14 ◼   ► It's it's not better. It's worse. It's no doubt. It's worse

01:44:17 ◼   ► It just looks better and I find that very worrisome that there's a and again, I'm not blaming Johnny

01:44:22 ◼   ► I've personally maybe he had nothing to do with it. Maybe he did maybe he's the one who insisted

01:44:26 ◼   ► I don't know

01:44:27 ◼   ► but somewhere in his group is somebody who

01:44:31 ◼   ► Felt strongly enough about how the keyboard looks with full height left and right keys and won the argument

01:44:37 ◼   ► you know and I think the other key just go to the other corner of the keyboard and

01:44:42 ◼   ► The lack of a hardware escape key again

01:44:45 ◼   ► I'm sure most users never touch the escape key

01:44:49 ◼   ► But the users who do use the escape key like developers who use code editors that have the escape key caught, you know map to

01:44:56 ◼   ► Code completion or something like that

01:45:00 ◼   ► Use it all the time and not having a hardware escape key on the touch bar keyboards is driving those people nuts

01:45:06 ◼   ► It's not better. It is definitely not better

01:45:08 ◼   ► It is worse and with that would the touch bar look a little worse with an escape a real escape key

01:45:13 ◼   ► There and only have it replace the f1 through f whatever's I guess it would look a little less clever

01:45:20 ◼   ► But it would work better

01:45:22 ◼   ► That's it's all very worrisome and that is completely aside from the fact that these keyboards have a

01:45:29 ◼   ► don't work. So that leads to the, I think, what is sort of the ultimate question right

01:45:35 ◼   ► now, at least in my head. And so it's not like a unique idea to me, of course. But like,

01:45:39 ◼   ► I do think that this is something I keep coming back to when I'm thinking about these, like,

01:45:43 ◼   ► sort of higher level discussions. So you mentioned, and it's perfect in that you mentioned, you

01:45:47 ◼   ► know, like, Phil Schiller, Johnny Ive, Eddy Cue, Tim Cook, all of these people have their

01:45:52 ◼   ► roles at Apple and have had them for 20 years, in some cases, 25 years, in some cases, right.

01:45:57 ◼   ► And even Tim Cook's, while he's now CEO and has been for a long time at this point, he's

01:46:01 ◼   ► still a logistics guy and an operations guy, right, at his core.

01:46:06 ◼   ► So they don't have, it seems, they obviously do have people, but they don't have the one

01:46:11 ◼   ► product person.

01:46:12 ◼   ► They have Johnny Ive, who's design, they have Phil Schiller, who does marketing, and a lot

01:46:16 ◼   ► of them, and I know he tries to sort of bridge into the product decisions in some cases,

01:46:21 ◼   ► right, and I think many of them do, but they don't have that one sort of head of product

01:46:26 ◼   ► person that I'm aware of at least who sort of makes those ultimate calls which you think could

01:46:31 ◼   ► alleviate at the very least some of these questions and have they had that person since

01:46:37 ◼   ► Steve Jobs has been gone and so is it as simple as that? Maybe you know like I know that you know the

01:46:46 ◼   ► entire internet was for three or four years after his probably starting from when he first got sick

01:46:53 ◼   ► even, right? It wasn't even when he died. It was when he first had to take like a medical leave.

01:46:57 ◼   ► You know, the internet was full of Apple will never survive without Steve Jobs. Apple,

01:47:03 ◼   ► you know, doomed without Steve Jobs or doomed to doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, you know,

01:47:07 ◼   ► talk about infinite content, you could start reading those articles from that era and never,

01:47:12 ◼   ► he'll die before you read all. And they were wrong. Obviously, Apple soared to

01:47:17 ◼   ► untold greater heights afterwards. I so that's right. We all agree that that is that is

01:47:22 ◼   ► absolutely true. Just look at the stock price, look at the valuation of the company, look at the

01:47:25 ◼   ► amount of money they're making. By all vectors, that's true, right? But you could argue that that

01:47:31 ◼   ► was just sort of this period of when everyone kept doing their jobs as they were supposed to be doing

01:47:37 ◼   ► from Tim Cook on down now that he had the new job, but still operations on down. And they were set up

01:47:42 ◼   ► in such a way that this would always become, not always, but in many cases would become this

01:47:48 ◼   ► ultimate company because they could execute on those ideas. And I know that this is sort of a

01:47:53 ◼   ► cliche, but pointing to the when they ran out of sort of the pipeline, would they ever be able to

01:47:59 ◼   ► get out of that? And you could argue that they've even done that pretty well. They didn't have the

01:48:03 ◼   ► Apple Watch correct at first, but then they've been able to back into it. And the AirPods are

01:48:07 ◼   ► a great product, right? But it still sort of feels like they have all of the talents around the table,

01:48:13 ◼   ► but they don't, they're missing just one piece. It's sort of like I'm reminded of the,

01:48:17 ◼   ► Remember swingers the movie from the 90s? Yes at one point there

01:48:20 ◼   ► there are two of the guys that are like trying to have a conversation with the Mikey character of like you're this bear with these

01:48:25 ◼   ► Big fucking claws and you don't know what to do with these fucking claws

01:48:28 ◼   ► And I feel like that's sort of like Apple these days

01:48:31 ◼   ► They have all the pieces in place, but they're not quite sure what they should do with them

01:48:36 ◼   ► And so they're trying all these different things, but there is no

01:48:39 ◼   ► Sort of killer next thing and maybe there never would have been right even with Steve

01:48:43 ◼   ► Who said who could say that there would have ever been that thing?

01:48:46 ◼   ► But they have this great team in place and they're executing on certain parts of it where they need to they just don't quite have

01:48:53 ◼   ► The thing to tie it all together to make the exact right calls in all of these circumstances

01:48:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I've said this before I forget

01:49:01 ◼   ► which episode I

01:49:03 ◼   ► I

01:49:05 ◼   ► Do feel like one of the things that they're missing with Steve Jobs isn't the creation of big new thing and and watch an air

01:49:12 ◼   ► pods are good examples. They, they could do it without him. I feel like maybe, and he

01:49:17 ◼   ► was good at that, of course, he famously good in, you know, world famously good. But the

01:49:21 ◼   ► other thing that he was so good at was putting his finger on what was wrong. And saying this

01:49:27 ◼   ► is wrong, fix it and holding people responsible. And I know, again, it is dangerous territory

01:49:35 ◼   ► for an Apple commentator podcaster to get into this. It wouldn't have happened if Steve

01:49:39 ◼   ► Jobs was still around I right would like to think that I have over the last seven eight years

01:49:45 ◼   ► Done a very good job of dancing around that

01:49:49 ◼   ► Using it, you know talking about it when it's apt not not pretending like it's you know

01:49:54 ◼   ► Like there is no difference between not having them but not overusing it

01:49:57 ◼   ► But I cannot help but think that this keyboard thing would have been fixed sooner that I really feel like he was good at

01:50:04 ◼   ► At some point, you know again, I don't think the problem was shipping this this keyboard in the first place

01:50:09 ◼   ► And I've had arguments with Twitter on people. They're like they should have known this keyboard was crap from the beginning

01:50:14 ◼   ► I'm sure that in their development of it the keys weren't getting stuck

01:50:18 ◼   ► I don't know what rate the keys get stuck

01:50:20 ◼   ► But it's a low enough rate that I can see how it went through development and came out and it seems like different keyboards are

01:50:26 ◼   ► Better than others. It seems like the people

01:50:29 ◼   ► Anecdotally, it seems like people who have the regular MacBook the one port MacBook don't seem to have the problem as much as other people

01:50:36 ◼   ► I don't know why but that's the one that shipped with it first

01:50:38 ◼   ► I believe because it needed to be so thin because the device is so crazy thin

01:50:41 ◼   ► But at some point in the three years since they've switched to this keyboard

01:50:45 ◼   ► And again, even if the data doesn't back it up

01:50:50 ◼   ► but I pretty sure that it does that the data shows that these keyboards are

01:50:55 ◼   ► Far less reliable than apples all of apples previous MacBook and power book keyboards to the dawn of time

01:51:00 ◼   ► Even if the data doesn't back it up though, even if somebody can say look here's our support rate

01:51:06 ◼   ► It's this, you know, it's three point seven percent and it used to be three point five percent

01:51:11 ◼   ► So it's two tenths of one percent difference, you know from the previous generation, right?

01:51:16 ◼   ► Even if that's the case the reputational harm is obviously real because people are talking about it

01:51:22 ◼   ► Joanna Stern is mocking them in her Wall Street Journal column with an actual keyboard that

01:51:27 ◼   ► is actually have as keys that don't work.

01:51:31 ◼   ► You know, Casey Johnston has, you know, of all people to buy another, I saw her Mac.

01:51:37 ◼   ► Yeah, she bought the newer one.

01:51:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:51:39 ◼   ► And started having spacebar problems.

01:51:42 ◼   ► You know, think about that in the context of, you know, you talked about the mobile

01:51:46 ◼   ► me famous you know town hall thing that they did internally and and Steve Jobs was irate but there

01:51:53 ◼   ► was also that famous story right of when Walt Mossberg gave the one bad review and like you

01:51:58 ◼   ► know and Jobs said like Walt Mossberg is is you know talking shit about this thing like

01:52:03 ◼   ► so why aren't they doing that now right right like and I can't help but fear I I have reason to

01:52:09 ◼   ► believe I don't want to go into it it's all like third maybe fourth hand it is like so far whispered

01:52:14 ◼   ► Down the alley that it's not even worth taking as anything other than hope

01:52:18 ◼   ► But I have heard that there is a new keyboard in the works

01:52:23 ◼   ► And I don't know if it's I don't know if it is all a butterfly

01:52:27 ◼   ► I don't know what it is, but I've heard it has a bit more travel

01:52:29 ◼   ► I think they might be going back to the upside down T on the

01:52:33 ◼   ► Arrows, I think yeah, but I don't know how soon it's going to come out and and I

01:52:40 ◼   ► Think that's part of the problem too with with today's Apple. Is that they if it's not the iPhone?

01:52:47 ◼   ► It's not that they don't care. It's not like they're you know, and I feel like they're cautious about becoming over

01:52:53 ◼   ► Reliant on the yeah overly reliant on the iPhone and that's why they're pushing into services and they realize that then maybe you know

01:53:00 ◼   ► They've reached peak iPhone years ago

01:53:02 ◼   ► but

01:53:04 ◼   ► They just don't seem to be able to muster. Yeah

01:53:08 ◼   ► For anything they still have to make decisions and write the day right still the most important decisions while it's maybe a fading

01:53:15 ◼   ► Well, it's maybe peak iPhone still the most important decisions have to be around the right

01:53:19 ◼   ► So so, you know somebody there they've they've put a new keyboard into I mean

01:53:24 ◼   ► Even if there were no problems with the keyboard they tend to switch, you know update keyboards every four or five years anyway

01:53:29 ◼   ► So, I mean, it's not like it but it just doesn't seem to me though that they treating this keyboard thing with the pants on fire

01:53:37 ◼   ► Intensity that they should have and that they're like, well, it's just the MacBook lineup. So we'll get to it

01:53:42 ◼   ► well, we'll get a new keyboard into the works, but you know

01:53:46 ◼   ► This might be a 2020 thing or something by the time it ships and who knows how long it'll be before it ships across the entire

01:53:51 ◼   ► Lineup because they do things like let the MacBook Air sit

01:53:55 ◼   ► Unchanged for three or four years while they wait for Intel to come up with a chip that they like etc

01:54:00 ◼   ► And so a large part of this is obviously just Apple operating at a scale that's unheard of and certainly for them

01:54:06 ◼   ► you know, like 10 years ago, it was a much smaller scale. And so they didn't have to worry,

01:54:10 ◼   ► let alone 20 years ago and whatnot, as much about just, you know, the word matriculating out about

01:54:16 ◼   ► problems with things and they just didn't, they weren't doing as much, right. And so there wasn't

01:54:19 ◼   ► nearly as much ground to cover. But it also feels like this is all related to, I guess, when I,

01:54:25 ◼   ► when I listened to you talk about it, the phrase I think about is like reading the room. And it's,

01:54:31 ◼   ► in this case, the room is sort of the world, right? But they're, they're getting, they seem

01:54:34 ◼   ► to be a little bit worse these days at reading the room with regard to like doing things like

01:54:41 ◼   ► not only the keyboard, which is an extreme example, but even things on down the line, like,

01:54:46 ◼   ► you know, they obviously screwed up with the with the Mac Pro. And, and, you know, you could argue,

01:54:51 ◼   ► there were all sorts of reasons for that. And I'm sure there's lots of valid arguments for that.

01:54:54 ◼   ► But they they're not thinking through sort of the second, the second tier effects of these

01:55:00 ◼   ► decisions that they're making necessarily. And again, just at a higher level, reading the room

01:55:05 ◼   ► about like, what, what they should sort of be focused on. And that's easy for us to say from

01:55:10 ◼   ► afar, of course. But I do feel like we're seeing the degradation of various parts and products in

01:55:17 ◼   ► some cases, because they're not quite reading the room, right? Yeah, maybe HomePod is a good example

01:55:22 ◼   ► of that, too. It just in terms of, I like it. I think it sounds great. I really love having two

01:55:28 ◼   ► of them in our kitchen. I think it sounds it it occasionally just startles me how good it sounds

01:55:33 ◼   ► but it's 350 bucks a pop. I got 329 or 329 a pop now. And just in terms of reading the room

01:55:42 ◼   ► and reading you know like and who knows you know they're all Bezos numbers but you know Amazon says

01:55:47 ◼   ► is the best-selling sound system in the world you know and it's the $49 or whatever you know the one

01:55:52 ◼   ► that who knows what they're selling but they're clearly selling in quantity and this seems to be

01:55:56 ◼   ► the sort of fun purchased, you know, like I want to be able to talk to my speaker and tell it to play music that people

01:56:02 ◼   ► Seem to want to spend like a hundred dollars on yeah, and I mean I write I wrote exactly about this this thing before it launched

01:56:10 ◼   ► Thinking it's it's basically I'm sure it'll be a good product and it is a good product. It's just this

01:56:15 ◼   ► It's a mixture of the wrong strategy

01:56:17 ◼   ► Sort of mixed with that that leading them to create sort of the wrong price point of a product

01:56:22 ◼   ► right? Because, and they could argue with their history that they've always created products

01:56:26 ◼   ► that are more expensive and more focused and or whatnot. And that's fine. And that's fine until

01:56:31 ◼   ► it's not, it's not correct anymore. It's not always to say that the same thing that worked

01:56:36 ◼   ► in the past is going to work in the future. And I think you could, if you were reading the room

01:56:39 ◼   ► correctly, as you know, like some of us could from outside of the company and, and you know,

01:56:44 ◼   ► obviously a lot of people have said this, but like, I feel like you can read the room correctly

01:56:50 ◼   ► and then get to what the sort of correct combination of things you should be focused on is. And

01:56:57 ◼   ► I go back to again sort of a head of product or whatever sort of person in charge of that

01:57:04 ◼   ► specific part of the company should be able to sort of at least steer the right direction

01:57:08 ◼   ► for them.

01:57:09 ◼   ► Yeah. An interesting what if scenario that I was talking to somebody who actually works

01:57:14 ◼   ► at Apple, you know, but, you know, but a friend just as an interesting what if so to make

01:57:21 ◼   ► a new lower tiered, you know, $750 iPhone in the 10 class family, they made the iPhone

01:57:28 ◼   ► 10 R. And I think the 10 R is doing pretty well. I don't think it's the new five C. I

01:57:31 ◼   ► think it's doing pretty well. Yeah, but it was it's an all new device. They they went

01:57:36 ◼   ► crazy on the screen and like for cost purposes, they didn't want to go OLED like the 10 s

01:57:42 ◼   ► and 10s max. They went with an LCD screen, but to get it to go as close to the edges

01:57:49 ◼   ► as they did all the way around all four sides was a tremendous effort. It's crazy what they

01:57:56 ◼   ► did. Neil, I believe, uh, took a microscope with his XR review to, to show what they're

01:58:02 ◼   ► doing at the corners. And then when you look at a, like a Google pixel that has fake rounded

01:58:07 ◼   ► corners, right? You see it just how it's like, wow,

01:58:11 ◼   ► Literally cutting corners. Yeah, just cutting corners, right?

01:58:13 ◼   ► What if though?

01:58:16 ◼   ► instead of spending all that effort on the 10r they had done it for the

01:58:20 ◼   ► Lower priced iPads instead and you could have gotten you know with these iPads

01:58:25 ◼   ► They just released a couple of weeks ago like the new mini

01:58:27 ◼   ► the new

01:58:30 ◼   ► 9.7 model Pro. Yeah, what if they had gone and done or sorry the air it's not yeah

01:58:38 ◼   ► You know, they obviously didn't they obviously took a very cost-efficient thing and said we'll just take the existing industrial design

01:58:46 ◼   ► and we'll just update some components and

01:58:48 ◼   ► You know, why didn't they go full 10 are on those devices and it's because I think

01:58:53 ◼   ► Institutionally, I think clearly could have the company has more money than God

01:58:58 ◼   ► It just isn't it it's not enough to get their interest right like they're just only the iPhone gets that sort of attention

01:59:07 ◼   ► Yeah, that's an interesting interesting question

01:59:10 ◼   ► Because I'm in the mind of like so I was I'm a huge iPad

01:59:13 ◼   ► Minifan and have been forever and all I wanted is exactly what they finally gave us right the updated internals to the exact same

01:59:21 ◼   ► Form factor and then so I'm super happy with that

01:59:24 ◼   ► Wouldn't you be happier though if it went corner to corner? I?

01:59:27 ◼   ► Think yes, right so yes

01:59:31 ◼   ► But with a caveat that I don't and this is a whole nother

01:59:35 ◼   ► You know can of worms, but I don't love the new iPad. I'm using it right now

01:59:39 ◼   ► I don't love the new iPad Pro design. Hmm. I like the rounded sort of back

01:59:45 ◼   ► Form factor more of the old iPad Pro. I love the screen, you know, obviously it's better not to have the the bigger bezels on the

01:59:52 ◼   ► You know the front of the screen

01:59:54 ◼   ► But would I trade that for the a different back or the flatter sort of sides?

02:00:00 ◼   ► I don't know maybe but an offshoot of your your question too is like

02:00:05 ◼   ► I think I'm not alone in a lot of people are saying this and and I think you're talking about this with

02:00:09 ◼   ► Moltz last week right like where a lot of people still want the SE right a version of the SE what

02:00:15 ◼   ► should Apple make the iPhone mini you know some version of the SE again versus doing a 10R type

02:00:22 ◼   ► thing because another problem with so I just I mentioned you know that I bought for for Megan

02:00:26 ◼   ► uh the the 10s uh the you know the smaller one not the max and um I was very sort of torn by that

02:00:33 ◼   ► because right now she has an iPhone 8 and she likes that size. She didn't want a bigger size.

02:00:39 ◼   ► I know the XS is fairly close. It's just a bigger screen, obviously, but it's still bigger. And she

02:00:45 ◼   ► didn't want bigger. And there's a lot of people in that camp. And instead they made the XR,

02:00:49 ◼   ► which is actually bigger than the XS. Right. And so another question like would that,

02:00:56 ◼   ► would it have behooved Apple more to do a small, you know, who's to say exactly. But I do think

02:01:02 ◼   ► that these are interesting questions that you hope that they're debating quite rigorously internally.

02:01:06 ◼   ► JS Yeah, when you're the only company that makes iPhones,

02:01:09 ◼   ► is three sizes enough? I mean, I don't know. And really, the 10R to me isn't really a third size.

02:01:16 ◼   ► It's…

02:01:17 ◼   ► JS Yeah, it's something different.

02:01:19 ◼   ► JS Yeah, it is something different. There really are only two sizes of iPhones, you know. And

02:01:24 ◼   ► if you're the only company and you're selling it to, you know, hundreds of millions of people,

02:01:29 ◼   ► maybe there should be more, you know, it's it's almost on you. It's highly unusual that

02:01:34 ◼   ► that one company with so much at stake only makes two devices, you know, two, three devices for the

02:01:40 ◼   ► entire lineup. Yeah. Especially given like, look at how many iPads they make, how many different

02:01:47 ◼   ► versions of the iPad they like they've the mini, the air, the pro, the regular, so they have more

02:01:53 ◼   ► skews of the iPad, right? Yeah. Yeah, they do. And they're very different sizes, much more variety in

02:02:00 ◼   ► the sizes than there are on the on the phone. Yeah, I don't know. It's, it's, it's unusual.

02:02:06 ◼   ► Let me take a third break here and thank our third and final sponsor before we run way too long. It's

02:02:10 ◼   ► our good friends at Casper. Casper products. They make sleep products. They make mattresses. They

02:02:15 ◼   ► make sheets. They make everything you need for sleeping pillows. Look, you spend one third of

02:02:19 ◼   ► of your life sleeping. I spend way more than a third of my life sleeping. MG spends less

02:02:24 ◼   ► than a third of his life sleeping because he's got a baby. But no matter how long you

02:02:27 ◼   ► can sleep, you should be comfortable when you do make the most of that time. The experts

02:02:32 ◼   ► at Casper work tirelessly to make a quality sleep surface that cradles your natural geometry

02:02:37 ◼   ► in all the right places. The original Casper mattress combines multiple supportive memory

02:02:42 ◼   ► foams for a quality sleep surface with the right amount of sink and bounce. It's a great

02:02:46 ◼   ► product. We've got one from when they first started sponsoring the show here. It's in

02:02:50 ◼   ► my son's bedroom. It's as good as new. I don't know how many years Casper's been sponsoring

02:02:54 ◼   ► the show, but that mattress we got when they first started and it still is a fantastic

02:02:58 ◼   ► mattress brand new. Feels like it. It's got a breathable design. It helps you sleep cool,

02:03:04 ◼   ► regulate your body temperature throughout the night. Super well regarded. It's got high

02:03:09 ◼   ► marks at Casper's own website, Amazon and Google. Really it's become America's internet

02:03:16 ◼   ► America's favorite Internet mattress. They've got two other mattresses now though. The wave

02:03:20 ◼   ► and the essential. The wave features a patent pending premium support system to mirror the

02:03:24 ◼   ► natural shape of your body. It's our high end product. And then the essential has a

02:03:29 ◼   ► streamlined design at a price that won't keep you up at night. It's a lower price, but it's

02:03:32 ◼   ► still a fantastic mattress. They also have a wide array of other products, pillows, sheets,

02:03:38 ◼   ► all that sort of good stuff. We've got a whole bunch of it from Casper. It's all really,

02:03:42 ◼   ► really high quality stuff and it's all designed, developed and assembled right here in New

02:03:46 ◼   ► United States. They've got affordable prices because they cut out the middleman. They don't

02:03:50 ◼   ► have mattress stores. They don't sell to some retail type thing and then you got to go in

02:03:54 ◼   ► there and pay a markup. They sell direct to you and it's all delivered. These mattresses

02:04:01 ◼   ► come to your door and these little tiny boxes. How in the world is that a queen or a king

02:04:05 ◼   ► size mattress in a box like that? You'll find out when you open it up, follow their instructions

02:04:09 ◼   ► and it sucks all the air out of the room and just grows into a giant mattress. It's amazing.

02:04:14 ◼   ► We've got free shipping and returns in the US and Canada.

02:04:19 ◼   ► So you can be sure of your purchase.

02:04:21 ◼   ► With their 100-night risk-free Sleep On It trial, get it, sleep on it for three months,

02:04:26 ◼   ► and if you really don't like it, they'll take it back, no questions asked, give you all

02:04:30 ◼   ► your money back.

02:04:31 ◼   ► That's how confident they are.

02:04:32 ◼   ► Here's their special offer for you.

02:04:34 ◼   ► $50 toward select mattresses by visiting casper.com/talkshow.

02:04:40 ◼   ► Casper.com/talkshow.

02:04:43 ◼   ► And the same thing as the URL slug, just use that code "talk show" at checkout.

02:04:47 ◼   ► That's casper.com/talkshow with special code "talk show."

02:04:51 ◼   ► Terms and conditions apply.

02:04:53 ◼   ► 50 bucks towards select mattresses.

02:04:58 ◼   ► I don't know.

02:04:59 ◼   ► Do you think I gave a good answer to that about the state of Apple?

02:05:02 ◼   ► I think so.

02:05:03 ◼   ► I think it's very complicated for a number of reasons, of course, but it is, I'm curious

02:05:13 ◼   ► what feedback we'll get on this, right?

02:05:15 ◼   ► Because it's like, it is the discussion about, is Apple doomed, sort of, but it's also much

02:05:20 ◼   ► more nuanced than that.

02:05:21 ◼   ► And I feel like it is just, it's a very long discussion that's going to go on for years

02:05:25 ◼   ► and years and years.

02:05:27 ◼   ► And it's not like Apple is, I mean, the size and the scope at which Apple now operates,

02:05:35 ◼   ► they're going to be around if everything went wrong.

02:05:38 ◼   ► If the keyboard situation happened on every product across the line, they would still

02:05:43 ◼   ► be around for another, you know, like 40 years, 50 years.

02:05:46 ◼   ► So much capital, they have so much cash in the bank.

02:05:50 ◼   ► It's silly to talk about a company being doomed, but it is interesting to think about which

02:05:54 ◼   ► way the giant oil tanker of a vessel is sort of moving, right?

02:06:00 ◼   ► They could turn into the Apple that anti-Apple critics have always said was Apple, which

02:06:06 ◼   ► is that people just buy it for the Apple logo.

02:06:08 ◼   ► People buy their crap products for the Apple logo.

02:06:10 ◼   ► That's it.

02:06:11 ◼   ► They just think it's cool.