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140: ‘Apple’s 2015 Year in Review’ With Rene Ritchie

 

00:00:00   Did you get anything good for Christmas?

00:00:02   - The art of Star Wars, The Force Awakens,

00:00:06   which Serenity recommended and is really good.

00:00:08   - What was that?

00:00:09   Is that a coffee table book? - That's a book

00:00:10   that shows all the design process.

00:00:11   Yeah, that shows the design process they went through,

00:00:13   which I always find fascinating.

00:00:15   - It seems, how did they make the book,

00:00:18   how is the book already out?

00:00:19   - Well, they showed stuff that they've been working on

00:00:22   for years and years, like early concepts for the movies

00:00:24   and designs they did and things that changed an awful lot

00:00:27   and stuff that Abrams would come back and forth

00:00:29   while he was working on Star Trek to kibitz about?

00:00:31   - Kibitz, I would say kibitz.

00:00:36   Am I wrong?

00:00:37   I'm wrong.

00:00:38   - I don't know.

00:00:39   I probably got a little bit of Yiddish in mine.

00:00:41   - So like what changed?

00:00:45   I don't wanna go on Star Wars.

00:00:47   - I've only just started it because I've gotten so not used

00:00:49   to looking at physical media anymore

00:00:51   that it's a slow reading process for me.

00:00:53   But a lot of the early designs were just very different

00:00:57   and just the way they look

00:00:59   and some of the character ideas that they had.

00:01:01   I always get the feeling that Abrams writes

00:01:04   by the seat of his pants,

00:01:05   which is not my favorite characteristic of his.

00:01:08   - Yeah, I mean, I definitely,

00:01:10   I keep saying I don't wanna go all Star Wars on this.

00:01:14   I do think, I mean, that's his reputation.

00:01:18   I mean, I don't know him personally,

00:01:19   but I mean, it's certainly his reputation.

00:01:21   And it's like, as one of my friends put it,

00:01:24   that is that he inevitably heads into every movie,

00:01:27   like, production starts with the story 85% written.

00:01:32   Which, it's just, that's his style, you know?

00:01:35   And I don't know that it's ever gonna change.

00:01:38   - And you get wonderful set pieces,

00:01:39   and sometimes the story takes a backseat to them.

00:01:41   - I did like "The Force Awakens," though.

00:01:45   I don't wanna leave people without the, I mean--

00:01:48   - I've seen it four times, I love the damn thing.

00:01:51   - Would you have gone and seen it four times anyway?

00:01:53   I mean, you really like it that much?

00:01:55   I've seen it twice.

00:01:56   - I can't watch the prequels again.

00:01:57   I have an inability to watch, I can watch movies a lot

00:01:59   and I can't watch the prequels or Man of Steel.

00:02:01   Movies like that I just can't watch again.

00:02:03   So this to me, it has to be a good Star Wars,

00:02:05   for me to watch it repeatedly.

00:02:07   - Man of Steel, again, I don't understand how that movie,

00:02:12   I don't understand how that movie got made.

00:02:14   - They don't have a Kevin Fahey,

00:02:17   who just oversees DC's properties

00:02:18   and no one gives a shit.

00:02:20   - Right, it's like you somehow run that up the chain

00:02:23   at Warner Brothers,

00:02:25   Which is like where it ultimately falls, right?

00:02:28   - Act three, he's gonna heat vision

00:02:30   a bunch of Kryptonian babies.

00:02:31   Okay, go for it.

00:02:32   - I mean, it's not a terrible movie,

00:02:37   but it's not Superman, you know what I mean?

00:02:39   - Yes.

00:02:40   - And the whole idea of shooting it

00:02:42   with that incredibly weird color palette

00:02:46   is so bizarre to me.

00:02:49   I don't understand how that works.

00:02:50   - And now they have Superman versus Batman,

00:02:51   which might be a good movie,

00:02:52   but it's as dark and dreary as the Suicide Squad.

00:02:55   So I don't know how you have Joker in a world where Superman might as well be the Joker.

00:02:58   It's a very odd juxtaposition.

00:02:59   Yeah, I mean, there were definitely some good moments in the movie, but it's, I don't know.

00:03:04   Anyway, Force Awakens, I liked it a lot.

00:03:06   You know, I have some complaints.

00:03:08   I don't love it.

00:03:11   But again, I don't think that this is, this is no spoiler.

00:03:15   Again, I, you know, you leave your ears open if you haven't seen it yet, but you should

00:03:20   definitely go see it before you listen to the next episode of the talk show.

00:03:25   I feel like with this one, I feel like with, for example, with Spectre, I'll be very, very

00:03:30   cognizant of spoilers because I don't know that everybody goes to see it right away.

00:03:34   I feel like with Star Wars, you're sort of under an obligation where if you haven't seen

00:03:37   it by, say, the end of the calendar year, then it's on you if you're talking about spoilers.

00:03:44   I will just say that.

00:03:45   And I should say that this was a Star Wars movie to me and the other ones weren't.

00:03:47   So this to me is like the first real Star Wars movie we've had in almost 40 years.

00:03:51   Yeah, definitely.

00:03:52   I felt like it.

00:03:53   Well, I don't know.

00:03:54   I'm not a prequel hater

00:03:56   But I did I only want to rewatch coming up to this was because I watched them all a lot with my son when he was

00:04:02   younger

00:04:04   So I'm I've seen the prequels ton of times just because he liked all of the Star Wars movies

00:04:09   And I didn't hate any of them even the Phantom Men Menace. I didn't hate I mean obviously had a lot of complaints with it

00:04:16   but I

00:04:17   Didn't hate it and never redeemable moments in all of them or enjoyable moments in all of them

00:04:23   But the one that I definitely thought I liked the best was

00:04:26   Revenge of the Sith and so I rewatched that one before watching the

00:04:31   Despecialized editions of the original trilogy before seeing this and

00:04:36   even that one

00:04:38   Was even it gets worse as time goes on like I had a theory is that

00:04:43   The prequels and the special edition are George Lucas's punishment to us for liking Star Wars more than him. I

00:04:51   I'm so baffled that those movies came.

00:04:55   That's one of the things.

00:04:56   And I know I've said this before, but it's like,

00:05:01   I feel like the prequels, as they are,

00:05:06   without changing one thing about them,

00:05:09   make sense in a universe where George Lucas

00:05:14   didn't control Star Wars or had sold control of Star Wars

00:05:18   in the early 90s.

00:05:19   - To the guys at DC Comics.

00:05:20   And yeah, and something like that happened.

00:05:22   Like DC, you know, Warner Brothers and DC Comics

00:05:25   or some idiots at Fox did this.

00:05:29   And it's like, oh, what a crying shame,

00:05:32   what they've done.

00:05:33   It's baffling that he had complete authorial control

00:05:38   over the whole thing and that the guy who came up with,

00:05:41   you know, and deservedly so gets all the credit

00:05:44   in the world for the original trilogy,

00:05:47   that it was him who did this,

00:05:50   and that there's no indication that he was ever,

00:05:54   suffered any kind of severe head injury, or.

00:05:57   (laughing)

00:05:59   - Well, he wanted to do his experimental films,

00:06:00   and I think he kind of thinks we didn't let him,

00:06:02   that because of "Star Wars" he wasn't allowed

00:06:04   to make the experimental films he really wanted to make.

00:06:07   - That's the thing, I don't know if people know this,

00:06:09   but it's like, that's really who George Lucas was,

00:06:12   and if you look at like THX 1138,

00:06:14   or even like the student version of it before it,

00:06:17   they were really, really, I mean,

00:06:19   they're true art films in the '60s and '70s.

00:06:22   But that's not, I don't know.

00:06:29   I feel like he really likes the prequels.

00:06:31   I really do, when you listen to him talk.

00:06:33   I don't think that he was spiteful.

00:06:35   I feel like that's what he,

00:06:37   somehow that's what he decided he wanted to make.

00:06:39   But anyway, it doesn't hold up well.

00:06:40   And I also would say, most incredibly to me,

00:06:44   is that the effects really don't hold up.

00:06:46   Especially in the, well,

00:06:50   I didn't watch the other two recently,

00:06:51   but when I rewatched the Blu-ray version

00:06:54   of Revenge of the Sith, I was really kind of startled

00:06:59   'cause it had been several years since I'd seen it.

00:07:01   And I was really startled at how poorly

00:07:04   I thought the effects held up overall.

00:07:06   - But then when you watched,

00:07:06   'cause I did the same thing as you,

00:07:07   I watched the de-specialized editions

00:07:09   right before going to see The Force Awakens,

00:07:10   and those effects hold up great.

00:07:12   - Yeah, I mean, you can definitely,

00:07:13   even the ones where you know, like,

00:07:15   you can kinda see that it's not real,

00:07:17   maybe the stop motion on, like, a walker or something

00:07:21   isn't quite,

00:07:22   isn't quite right, but it,

00:07:27   the way that it fails, it doesn't get worse as time goes on.

00:07:30   - Absolutely. - Like, it fails in a way

00:07:32   that it failed right when they came out, you know,

00:07:35   or, you know, gets to, like, the 98, 99% marker.

00:07:38   And there's a certain charm to it.

00:07:40   - Yeah, absolutely.

00:07:42   - I think the biggest thing that really strikes me

00:07:45   about the prequel trilogy effects wise

00:07:49   is the uncanny valley of the fact

00:07:54   that almost everything was shot against a green screen.

00:08:00   And I can't-- - Almost a cartoon.

00:08:02   - You can pause any scene.

00:08:05   And just like the most mundane things,

00:08:07   like a meeting in Palpatine's office.

00:08:12   It's like they're just having a meeting in an office.

00:08:16   And I mean, we could go on and on and on about this

00:08:18   and talk about how the fact that,

00:08:20   how so many of the scenes were meetings in Palpatine's office

00:08:23   is a problem the whole time.

00:08:25   - Two shots just sitting on sofas.

00:08:26   - But it just, and you can freeze frame, pause the thing,

00:08:31   and I can't look at it and articulate logically

00:08:35   what it is that looks phony to me about it.

00:08:38   I can't, I don't know what it is,

00:08:41   but there's something, there is something to the whole thing

00:08:43   where it just looks like, you know,

00:08:46   like an inverse version of Roger Rabbit.

00:08:48   You've got all these real people in a cartoon world.

00:08:53   - Yeah, it reminds me of something you and Merlin

00:08:55   did a talk a long time ago, South by Southwest,

00:08:57   that I always loved, and it reminds me of what went wrong

00:09:00   with George Lucas is that he lost his inner editor

00:09:03   and he lost his external editor too.

00:09:05   There was no one to tell him yes and no,

00:09:08   no one that had the authority to do that at least.

00:09:10   He was just surrounded by enablers

00:09:11   and you can never do great work when people around you

00:09:14   are just saying, "Yeah, that's great all the time."

00:09:16   - Yeah, did we mention Lucas in particular at that talk?

00:09:18   - No, it was just about the craft of writing.

00:09:22   - Yeah, but it's definitely true.

00:09:23   I'll put a link in the show notes.

00:09:25   It's probably the high water mark

00:09:27   of my public speaking career.

00:09:28   (laughing)

00:09:29   - It was an awesome talk.

00:09:34   It was, I think I've said this before too,

00:09:36   like Merlin and I had this talk planned

00:09:38   and we had met the day before in his hotel room

00:09:41   down in Austin and we had a whole talk planned.

00:09:44   And then we were going on in the afternoon the next day

00:09:46   and in the morning we met again to go over it.

00:09:48   And we decided that it was total rubbish

00:09:51   and that it was a terrible idea.

00:09:53   And so we ripped it up and we decided

00:09:58   to do a different talk.

00:10:00   And at this point we were like 90 minutes away

00:10:03   from going on stage.

00:10:05   Well, not like when we decided to do that,

00:10:08   but like when we had completed like a draft of it

00:10:10   and we're like, well, let's run through it once.

00:10:12   And we ran through it once

00:10:13   and it took like 45 minutes, 50 minutes.

00:10:15   And we're like, oh my God, that was awful.

00:10:17   That was even worse.

00:10:18   And we're like, what do we do?

00:10:18   Do we go back to the one we threw away

00:10:21   or do we try to make do with this?

00:10:23   And we were like, oh shit, we don't even know.

00:10:24   We don't have a chance.

00:10:25   We only had 30 minutes before we went on stage

00:10:27   and we're like, this is gonna be terrible.

00:10:29   And then we were like, well, to hell with it.

00:10:30   It's just a panel at South by Southwest.

00:10:32   And so we went with the plan, you know, the new one.

00:10:35   And the second time we did it in front of the audience,

00:10:37   as soon as we finished, we looked at each other,

00:10:38   we're like, wow, that was great.

00:10:39   And ever since, I think more than any other public speaking

00:10:44   thing I've ever done in my life,

00:10:46   people come up to me still now and say,

00:10:48   that was pretty good.

00:10:49   - Yeah, it was an outstanding talk.

00:10:52   People should go listen to it if they haven't already.

00:10:54   - I'm not sure what the advice is though.

00:10:57   I feel like I'm giving people the advice

00:10:59   that if you ever do a run through of a talk

00:11:00   and it's terrible.

00:11:01   (laughing)

00:11:03   Stop. - Speak from the heart, John.

00:11:04   - You're all set, you're ready to go, go on stage.

00:11:07   Let me start, or anyway, the whole reason we're here

00:11:10   is we're gonna talk year in review.

00:11:11   Here we are at the end of 2015.

00:11:13   We did that, you and I did this last year on the show,

00:11:15   I thought it was great.

00:11:16   This is gonna be, we shouldn't have wasted any time

00:11:20   on the movie talk, 'cause there's a lot to talk about.

00:11:22   - Yeah.

00:11:23   - And that's, and year in review, let's,

00:11:24   and mostly focused on Apple, Apple's year in review.

00:11:30   Before we get started on that, why don't I take our first break and thank one of the

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00:13:45   So where do we start? I say we go, what do you say, chronological, right?

00:13:48   Yeah, absolutely. I think like the big thing this year is that for a couple years since 2012,

00:13:54   at least Apple hadn't had a spring event. So it was almost six months of no news up until WVDC,

00:14:00   and this year changed all that again. Yeah, it's like you can't please people because

00:14:03   in those years when they when they moved the iPad in like 2010, 11, I think even 12. Yeah.

00:14:14   New iPads came out in the early part of the year, spring, late winter, whatever you want to call it.

00:14:20   And then when they stopped that, like you said, we more or less started going until WWDC before we heard from them.

00:14:29   And people would complain, "What the hell are they doing? They've lost it. They don't do anything anymore."

00:14:34   Apple's not innovating.

00:14:35   Right.

00:14:36   Now when they do, it's, you know...

00:14:41   They've lost focus.

00:14:43   Yeah, they've lost focus. That's exactly it. Right. They're done.

00:14:47   The two things that were interesting to me at the beginning of the year was,

00:14:50   at the very beginning at least, was conjecture over Project Titan, which had just broken at the end of

00:14:54   the previous year, and yours and a few other people talking about the price of the gold watch,

00:14:58   because we had no idea back then what it was going to be.

00:15:01   Yeah, so like a year ago, that's really, you know, we knew that the watch was coming. We knew they

00:15:05   were going to have a gold one. Nobody knew what it was going to cost. And Titan, I don't know,

00:15:12   I don't know, it's anything different today than a year ago

00:15:15   regarding, that's the car for those of you

00:15:17   who don't keep Apple code names at the top of your head.

00:15:22   I don't know that any, you know, it's,

00:15:25   eventually it's gonna not be a secret rumor project,

00:15:30   but I don't know that anything happened this year

00:15:34   compared to last that makes it seem

00:15:36   any more-- - Just internal stuff.

00:15:37   - Yeah.

00:15:38   - The Gold Watch was fascinating to me

00:15:40   because this year more than any other,

00:15:42   it felt like Apple started segmenting their product line

00:15:45   and that caused an incredible amount of stress and anxiety

00:15:48   for the community because we were used to really

00:15:50   there being few products,

00:15:51   almost every one of them was for us

00:15:53   and now there were gold watches and one port MacBooks

00:15:56   and products that might be Apple products

00:15:58   but not ones that we would want

00:16:00   and that was very uncomfortable for a lot of people.

00:16:03   - I think that we, and to me it was, I don't regret it

00:16:07   because I thought it was fascinating to think about.

00:16:09   I had a lot of fun writing about trying to guess what the watch pricing was going to be.

00:16:14   In hindsight though, we've spent way more time thinking.

00:16:17   We collectively spent way more time thinking and speculating on what the gold

00:16:22   Apple watch additions mean for Apple and this watch as a product before they came

00:16:27   out. Then afterwards, like once they came out,

00:16:31   it's like the gold one,

00:16:33   the difference between our universe where the Apple watch edition exists and the

00:16:39   alternate universe where the gold one doesn't even exist, it's there's almost

00:16:43   no differences between those those two hypotheticals.

00:16:46   --They had a nice spike in sales when Apple Store Dubai opened and that's about it.

00:16:50   --Oh, I have no doubt. I have seen them. I saw one, I forget when, must have been

00:16:58   August when I was in Vegas for a few days in August and I saw one on

00:17:02   somebody's wrist there. And I know I've heard from readers who've seen them, you

00:17:07   here and there. But they're definitely rare enough that it's like when people do see somebody wearing

00:17:11   one that they think like, "Hey, I'll email Gruber and tell him I saw somebody wearing one." For

00:17:17   obvious reasons, it's pretty rare. I mean, because they're really, really quite expensive.

00:17:21   Yeah, for me, it was more the sign because as Apple gets complaints all the time that they

00:17:26   never do anything different. They don't take risks. They don't experiment. They should buy

00:17:28   this company. And these are products that do take those kinds of risks, whether they gold Apple Watch

00:17:34   in the long lens of history is good or not, at least they were willing to try something

00:17:38   different. And I like when Apple does that. I would say this with the watch in hindsight,

00:17:42   and I just, you know, as the year petered out, or played out, I guess I should say,

00:17:47   I feel very strongly that the best Apple Watch is the Sport Edition. And I don't even mean it

00:17:58   in the sense that you're getting the more bang for your buck. You know, the way that sometimes

00:18:03   when people do reviews of like a category of product and they say here's our pick for the best

00:18:11   it's not necessarily that they mean it's the best it's the best given the price you know like the

00:18:17   best car might be the honda accord somebody would say but they're not trying to say that it's

00:18:21   literally a better car than uh you know 110 000 you know top of the line mercedes s class they're

00:18:29   They're saying that given, you know, I'm saying flat out that I think the Apple Watch Sport

00:18:33   Edition is the best version of the watch, period.

00:18:36   Like full stop, don't worry about the fact that it costs less than the other ones.

00:18:42   Yeah, I mean, it's got a wide variety of looks.

00:18:44   It's got the silver, the black, the rose gold, the gold.

00:18:46   It's super light.

00:18:47   It's got probably the best taptic engine of any of the watches.

00:18:51   A lot to recommend it.

00:18:52   It's the taptic engine that to me makes me say that because on mine, my, you know, the

00:18:57   that I personally own is the black stainless steel one. The Taptic

00:19:01   Engine was never that great to start with. It wasn't broken. I wouldn't

00:19:07   call it broken. It just didn't feel great and it certainly didn't feel like

00:19:10   the demo ones that Apple had, which were like the platonic ideal of what this was

00:19:16   supposed to feel like. And quite frankly, just didn't feel as good to me as the

00:19:19   sport one that I have. I've got a review unit sport watch here. My son has a sport

00:19:24   edition. The taptic engine just doesn't feel as good. And the other factor is that as the

00:19:30   years gone on, the taptic engine in my black stainless one has gotten worse. It's just somehow,

00:19:36   it's not weaker, but it's like looser somehow. It's very hard to describe.

00:19:40   I just feel very strongly that the Sport 1 is a superior product.

00:19:46   Yeah, my black stainless steel is the same. I think we got ours at the same time.

00:19:53   - Yeah, I got mine right away.

00:19:54   - Yeah, the black stainless steel that I have is the same.

00:19:56   And I don't know if that's because it's early on

00:19:58   and there were some rumors that they shipped later

00:20:01   because there was trouble

00:20:02   with one of the Taptic Engine suppliers

00:20:04   and they had to ditch a bunch of the engines

00:20:06   and that's pushed a lot of the delivery dates out.

00:20:09   But the stainless steel watch I got

00:20:11   with the Hermes strap later on

00:20:12   has a much better Taptic Engine,

00:20:14   so hopefully they figured that part out.

00:20:15   - Yeah, so that's interesting to me.

00:20:17   So you got, my sport, or not my sport,

00:20:21   My personal Apple Watch is one that I ordered on the first day you could order, which was,

00:20:25   I think, April 10th. And I got it, you know, at some point in mid-May.

00:20:30   That's interesting that you, so you got the Hermes one, which is a stainless steel

00:20:38   Apple Watch. Even after all this time, I still get, I still want to call it Apple Watch steel,

00:20:46   just when talking about it, just to be clear, as opposed to Apple Watch as a generic platform,

00:20:51   which is... anyway. That's... well, maybe this year they'll fix it. But it's interesting to me that you

00:20:59   feel like you got a better Taptic engine in that one. Yeah, and it shipped with watchOS 2 on it,

00:21:04   so I'm guessing that it was later in the production. It wasn't just an original,

00:21:07   you know, one that I had to update when I got it out of the box.

00:21:10   So that's, to me, is one. And interesting to me, that's just... the only thing I don't like

00:21:20   like about the sport one is the I do wish that that that it had the state or

00:21:27   sapphire crystal instead of the glass totally understand why it doesn't

00:21:32   because of the price but just in terms of giving it a a wholehearted

00:21:38   endorsement as if you were gonna buy an Apple watch today which one would I

00:21:42   recommend the only thing that would keep me from wholeheartedly recommending the

00:21:47   sport ones is the fact that it doesn't have the sapphire display. But even my

00:21:52   sons, which he has worn very regularly throughout the year, it definitely has

00:21:57   scratches but they're very very fine and they are definitely not visible unless

00:22:02   you're looking for them, like holding it up to the light. And you know he's just

00:22:06   an 11 year old kid. He's pretty careful with his stuff but I mean it's not

00:22:09   like he, you know, hasn't exposed it to a lot of, you know, wear and tear.

00:22:15   - You've spoken about this before,

00:22:16   and it feels like the production quality

00:22:19   on the Apple watches is as good, if not better,

00:22:22   than any product Apple's released.

00:22:23   Like the diamond-like coating

00:22:24   on the back stainless steel one,

00:22:26   I thought I've scratched it several times,

00:22:28   and it's turned out that it's taken some steel

00:22:29   or some concrete off of something else,

00:22:31   and the watch itself underneath is fine.

00:22:33   - Yeah, that's true for mine as well.

00:22:34   I will say that with the DLC coating on mine.

00:22:37   And I sent you pictures a few weeks ago of mine.

00:22:40   It literally looks mint condition.

00:22:43   I really feel like in terms of scratches,

00:22:46   I could, if I cleaned it with just warm water

00:22:49   and maybe a toothbrush or whatever they say to use,

00:22:53   but just to clean it to get some little bits of sand

00:22:56   and stuff like that or dust out of there.

00:22:58   In terms of scratches, I think I could pass it off

00:23:00   as mint, like new in box.

00:23:02   It is that unbelievable.

00:23:04   And that's not true for any kind of normal

00:23:06   stainless steel watch.

00:23:08   - Yes, it's remarkable.

00:23:10   So what about the launch of Apple Watch in hindsight?

00:23:15   Got a lot of, I would say controversy.

00:23:19   I would say that there was controversy about it

00:23:21   just in terms of the fact that it wasn't in stores.

00:23:26   You had to make appointments to try it on in stores.

00:23:30   Even people who ordered right on day one had,

00:23:33   some people didn't get their watches till the end of May.

00:23:36   There were certain bands that didn't even ship until summer.

00:23:39   Lots of people complained about that,

00:23:43   but is that just the nature of a brand new product

00:23:48   that the first time they ever made a watch,

00:23:50   of course the rollout's gonna be like that.

00:23:52   - Yeah, I think we've seen that previously

00:23:55   with some things like the retina displays

00:23:57   and the early iPhones.

00:23:58   It created production shortages.

00:24:00   And the thing with Apple is that they sprint

00:24:02   at those deadlines.

00:24:03   It's not like they have the products ready way in advance

00:24:05   and they just accumulate them for months.

00:24:07   They ship them as fast as possible.

00:24:09   And sometimes when you do that, you overshoot,

00:24:11   like something doesn't work out.

00:24:12   And I have the feeling that whether it was some

00:24:14   of the leathers for some of the straps

00:24:15   that they had to swap out or some of the Taptic engines

00:24:17   that didn't have the yield rates that they needed,

00:24:19   they just didn't have enough of them on hand.

00:24:21   And that coupled with the fact that it was a new product,

00:24:25   it ended up being a goofy launch.

00:24:27   And it felt like everything that they did was sort of

00:24:29   an attempt to mitigate the problems

00:24:32   with getting that product on the market

00:24:33   as best that they could.

00:24:34   - In hindsight though, right now after Christmas

00:24:38   And obviously, everything I saw was that there were no supply problems with any of the watches

00:24:45   for the holidays.

00:24:46   And just talking, our friend, Craig Hockenberry, just posted a thing about it, the downloads

00:24:51   of his little free clicker app for the watch that spiked, huge, huge spike on Christmas

00:24:58   Day.

00:25:00   So at least some anecdotal evidence that a significant number of people got Apple watches

00:25:06   for Christmas, which was obviously the plan.

00:25:09   That's not shocking or surprising news.

00:25:11   But in hindsight, the fact that the April, May,

00:25:15   June timeframe was a rocky launch

00:25:19   in terms of having everything available when it was,

00:25:21   yeah, so what?

00:25:22   - Yeah, and it's, I don't wanna say it's concerning

00:25:26   because it's repeated, but we've seen that again

00:25:28   with things like the Apple Pencil,

00:25:29   which hasn't been available to launch with the iPad Pro.

00:25:33   They're getting a few in every now and then.

00:25:34   and again, brand new product,

00:25:36   and it's incredibly hard to coordinate the manufacturing

00:25:39   for all these brand new products all at one time.

00:25:41   And if Apple had their druthers,

00:25:42   they absolutely would want it all at the last time

00:25:44   because they'd sell far more that way.

00:25:46   - What's the availability on the pencil right now?

00:25:49   - Still drips, it's still coming,

00:25:50   they get a few in at a time and they sell out quickly.

00:25:53   - Well, we'll come back to that later,

00:25:58   but that's interesting.

00:25:59   I didn't know that that was hard to buy.

00:26:03   Looks like, oh yeah, if you go to apple.com today as we record

00:26:08   and try to buy from the website, it is available to ship four to five weeks.

00:26:12   Wow. Yeah.

00:26:14   Yeah, I kind of feel like that's the nature of some of these new things,

00:26:18   especially ones that really are sort of,

00:26:20   you know, like the watch or the pencil where it's it's not even just, well,

00:26:25   we used to have these, you know, hundred and.

00:26:28   160 some pixel prints screens,

00:26:32   and now we've gone to four times the pixels, 330 per inch.

00:26:37   This is everything about it is a new thing.

00:26:42   All of it, it's not just the tip

00:26:44   or whatever other sensors are in the pencil,

00:26:46   it's the whole thing.

00:26:47   - Yeah, everything has to be almost perfect

00:26:50   to get it all to land at the same time

00:26:51   and once in a while it's not perfect

00:26:52   and we see that with the watch, with the pencil,

00:26:55   things like that.

00:26:56   - So what do you think with the watch,

00:26:59   What do you think we're gonna see this coming year?

00:27:03   - If we just look at past activities

00:27:06   being the best indicator of future activities,

00:27:08   I think the watch ends up getting,

00:27:11   almost like what happened with the iPad 2

00:27:12   or the iPhone 3G where they just get better at making it.

00:27:16   And that manifests itself in it being lighter.

00:27:19   I don't know if it necessarily has to be thinner

00:27:20   because it's got that sensor stack on it,

00:27:22   but there'll be a new design

00:27:24   'cause that's what Apple does.

00:27:25   And my biggest hope, because some people are nervous

00:27:29   they have to change the casing every year.

00:27:30   I've got so many straps now,

00:27:31   my biggest nightmare is if the straps aren't compatible.

00:27:33   So I'm hoping that whatever they do with the watch,

00:27:35   we get a strap compatibility for as long

00:27:37   as we got 30 pin dock connector compatibility.

00:27:39   - Yeah, I would hope so.

00:27:41   But on the other hand, I don't wanna bet on it though.

00:27:44   I feel like that was at least their hope originally.

00:27:47   - Yes.

00:27:48   - I feel like they're not going to let that constrain them

00:27:52   if it means that they, if they feel like they could come out

00:27:56   with something really better,

00:27:58   that they would take that bullet in the early years of the product.

00:28:01   We'll see. I guess if I had to bet, I'd place a small bet that

00:28:07   whatever the Apple Watch 2 looks like, it'll be strap compatible.

00:28:11   There's some obvious gaps, like the first iPhone didn't have GPS, the first Apple

00:28:15   Watch didn't have

00:28:16   discrete GPS, it doesn't have discrete radio technology, and either you can't

00:28:20   just go on LTE or Wi-Fi.

00:28:21   You can go on Wi-Fi by itself, but it's not full on Wi-Fi.

00:28:24   So there's things like that, that once the thermal and

00:28:27   the power constraints go down low enough or they optimize well enough that they'll be able to build in.

00:28:32   Yeah, I don't know if we're there yet though. I feel like it's not going to be...

00:28:35   I feel like we're not set for a radical upgrade.

00:28:41   Well, they're trying. I was at a Starbucks and I had my Apple Watch on and the guy goes,

00:28:45   "Oh wait, I have the Samsung Watch and it's got 3G!" And he ran into the back and he ran out with it.

00:28:49   And it was the size of a small phone on his wrist. And the other one that had 3G, they didn't end up

00:28:54   being able to ship it. I forget which one that was but it was a recent watch

00:28:57   that was gonna come out. Oh, it was LG. LG's yeah, they couldn't ship it because

00:29:02   this stuff is really hard. Yeah, I can't imagine that they're gonna have

00:29:06   independent 3G yet. I don't know, I mean eventually it's going to happen. I

00:29:12   feel like one year out that's a bit much to ask. What I would really like to see

00:29:16   is just for now, I would like to see an Apple Watch 2 that remains a satellite

00:29:22   of your iPhone and just is way way way more robust in terms of having a fast

00:29:31   responsive connection between the phone and the watch. The S2 computer on a chip

00:29:36   is gonna be super interesting to see. Yeah and I feel like that's the area

00:29:41   where they are most likely and again this is just looking at the last you

00:29:49   know, the eight, seven, eight years of Apple, the post iPhone Apple, the thing

00:29:58   that they have most consistently been able to do in terms of year-over-year

00:30:02   improvement, just give them 12 months and see what they come up with, is improve

00:30:07   those, those, you know, the CPUs and chipsets inside these devices. Yeah, we

00:30:14   could talk about this later, but one of my biggest story of the year for Apple

00:30:19   was Johnny Suruji's hardware platforms team.

00:30:22   Just the work that they've done

00:30:23   that almost never gets any credit,

00:30:25   but from chipsets to storage controllers

00:30:28   to things like 3D,

00:30:29   they've just been knocking it out the park.

00:30:31   - Yeah, well, they don't,

00:30:32   it's not that they don't get credit and it's unrecognized,

00:30:35   but for the most part, so much gets written about Apple

00:30:39   and it almost all gets written

00:30:41   from the external perspective

00:30:45   of looking at the final product.

00:30:47   and complaining about those things that are exposed on the outside,

00:30:53   as opposed to trying to look at it from the inside out and say,

00:30:58   "Good God, this is remarkable what the graphics performance is like on this iPad Pro."

00:31:04   Or if you really—

00:31:06   If someone had asked you 10 years ago,

00:31:07   if someone had come and told you,

00:31:09   "John, Apple's going to be the most exciting chip design company in the world,"

00:31:13   we would have all thought they were crazy.

00:31:15   Well, yeah, I think so too.

00:31:17   definitely just because it wasn't part of their history and now it kind of is but it's it also it's more silent because

00:31:24   They they're only customers themselves

00:31:27   Yes, you know and they're not

00:31:30   They're not peddling these chips to other makers to do things with

00:31:34   Which is a huge advantage because they don't have to worry about profit for profit or loss on a chipset level

00:31:39   They don't have to support other like they don't have to support things like DirectX on their chips

00:31:42   And they don't support anyone else's architecture and they can cater to exactly what they want to do on a software

00:31:47   side like for 4k sorry 3 4k streams you know handled at once right even even you

00:31:53   know after a couple of years of these devices even if you look at the just

00:31:57   like the first iPad in 2010 so just go back at this point that would be six

00:32:04   years ago right because we got to kind of start thinking about I was gonna say

00:32:08   five just did 2015 - 2010 but it's I've been a half yeah yeah well five and like

00:32:13   ten twelfths. Just go back to that first iPad and I remember you

00:32:19   know being very impressed by how smooth the the whole thing was and like just

00:32:24   scrolling when I first got my hands on it. But clearly it wasn't you know it had

00:32:29   a lower resolution or pixels per inch density than the iPhone did it was only

00:32:33   like 133 right because then that went to 266 when they went red. You could

00:32:39   definitely see pixels. And it wasn't that fast. And then if

00:32:43   you had given me the the pixel count of the iPad Pro, and so

00:32:48   when do you think they'll they'll be able to make one of

00:32:50   these devices, an iOS device with a display with that many

00:32:54   pixels and have it you know, complete, complete 60 frames per

00:32:58   second responsiveness? I would have thought well, it's

00:33:00   possible, but I would have thought, you know, maybe like 10

00:33:03   years. And you know, it was it was only five years. So that,

00:33:07   you know, it was at least double what I would have guessed as

00:33:09   as a optimistic scenario.

00:33:14   - There's a funny story about, you know,

00:33:16   Steve Jobs wanting sushi at Cafe Max.

00:33:18   So he just told them,

00:33:19   go get me the best sushi chef in the world.

00:33:21   And they went and got him a great sushi chef.

00:33:22   And the same time he said, you know, I want some,

00:33:24   I don't understand these chip set things.

00:33:26   I just want, just get me the best chip guy in the world.

00:33:28   And they went and got him the best chip guy in the world.

00:33:30   And over the time they just kept accumulating

00:33:32   really, really good chip people.

00:33:33   And I think most of them still aren't publicly well known

00:33:35   that those people are working at Apple,

00:33:36   but the team they've assembled there

00:33:38   absolutely industry leading. I think we're gonna only see more and more

00:33:41   impressive stuff from them as time goes on.

00:33:43   Yeah and I really do feel like

00:33:47   that's what Apple Watch needs the most. You know, you can criticize,

00:33:53   you know, it's... there's a weird aspect to it in terms of watches being jewelry

00:34:00   and watches being, you know, anything that qualifies as jewelry being something

00:34:04   that people use to sort of signify their own personal sense of style.

00:34:09   And the fact that if you look at traditional watches, it's a product category where it's

00:34:16   almost an uncountable number of options.

00:34:19   Even if you just said, "I'm going to go to my local shopping mall and I'm going to buy

00:34:23   myself a watch," just in the stores in that one mall that you go to, the number of watches

00:34:29   that you would consider if you looked at all of them is, you know, you wouldn't be able

00:34:33   to do it in a day.

00:34:34   staggering and that you know with with serious variety in in the in the the

00:34:42   looks that you can go through and then with Apple watch the pitch is everybody's

00:34:48   gonna get a watch that's more or less looks the same and yes there are you

00:34:51   know there's a difference between the steel and leather and the sport bands

00:34:57   but the watch itself is fundamentally this identical capsule-shaped rectangle.

00:35:08   And you know there's a reason for that. I don't think that they can't... it's not

00:35:12   feasible for them even with the number of you know just think about the variety

00:35:15   of options they have given this limited design. That's a weird thing and

00:35:20   And for people, not to go off on a,

00:35:24   down the rabbit hole of round versus rectangular,

00:35:29   which is the way to go for smartwatches,

00:35:31   I think they went rectangular for good reason,

00:35:36   but just even given that distinction alone,

00:35:39   I understand that,

00:35:40   and there's a reason that people could criticize that,

00:35:42   but I don't think that that's the sort of thing

00:35:44   that they need to look at for Apple Watch 2.

00:35:47   I feel like the basic look and layout of it

00:35:50   is fine and that's absolutely not what's holding it back

00:35:54   from being more useful to more people.

00:35:56   - It was good enough for Leia and Jedi,

00:35:57   it's good enough for me.

00:35:58   (laughing)

00:36:00   - That was amazing.

00:36:01   That was you who tweeted that, right?

00:36:02   - Yeah.

00:36:03   - I can't believe I didn't see that screenshot more.

00:36:08   I hadn't seen that since Apple Watch came out.

00:36:12   So I'll put it in the show notes, I promise.

00:36:14   But Renee had posted a tweet,

00:36:16   a screenshot from Return of the Jedi

00:36:18   where Leia's risk communicator really does look like an Apple Watch.

00:36:24   I mean, not like so much that you would suspect that it was photoshopped onto the screenshot,

00:36:29   but it looks pretty similar.

00:36:31   Yeah.

00:36:32   Amazing.

00:36:33   So anyway, my hope for 2016's Apple Watch 2, which I'm guessing will probably come out

00:36:38   around the same time as last year's.

00:36:41   There are rumors already that there's going to be a March event this year again.

00:36:45   I would not be surprised if Apple Watch 2 comes out.

00:36:48   My guess is Apple Watch 2 will look very much like Apple Watch 1, case compatible, and that

00:36:56   all of the improvements will be pretty much from Johnny Cerucci's team, I think.

00:37:02   And of course, obviously software, you know, Apple Watch 3 to Apple Watch OS 3 to watch

00:37:11   OS 3 to take advantage of them.

00:37:14   - I agree and I think that the mistake

00:37:17   that we often make in technology is people say,

00:37:18   "I don't wanna buy a new Apple Watch."

00:37:20   Again, I just bought one last year,

00:37:21   but Apple's never targeted year over year.

00:37:23   I mean, they're happy if you wanna upgrade year over year

00:37:25   and there's some subscription things they're doing now

00:37:27   that is more geared towards that.

00:37:29   But traditionally, the second version is not meant

00:37:31   for the people who have the first version,

00:37:32   but for people who didn't, for whatever reason,

00:37:34   buy the first version.

00:37:35   And there's a lot of people who don't have Apple Watches

00:37:37   and those are the ones that they're gonna gun for

00:37:38   with the second.

00:37:40   - Right, and the criticism from people

00:37:41   who bought Apple Watch One is inevitable

00:37:44   and it will be vociferous.

00:37:46   But if you think about it from Apple's perspective,

00:37:48   and sometimes I think when I think about it

00:37:52   from Apple's perspective angle on an explanation

00:37:55   for why they're doing this, people get angry,

00:37:57   but they're still not being logical.

00:37:59   Like what else is Apple to do?

00:38:01   The only two options that they would have had

00:38:05   would have been not to release the Watch 1 last year at all

00:38:10   because there's a new one.

00:38:12   They knew that the 2 was coming out in 2016.

00:38:16   Which is true every year.

00:38:17   Yeah.

00:38:18   Which if you get locked into that type of thinking,

00:38:20   they would not release anything.

00:38:23   It would turn into Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory that's closed

00:38:25   and doesn't release anything, which

00:38:27   might be good for the privately held Wonka Chocolate Company,

00:38:29   but is not good at all for the publicly held Apple Incorporated.

00:38:35   And then what would be the other thing to do?

00:38:37   To not release Apple Watch 2, which they could do this year,

00:38:42   but just to make Apple Watch One users happy,

00:38:44   well, that's suicide in the tech world.

00:38:47   You can't just sell an old thing

00:38:49   so you don't annoy the people who've had it.

00:38:53   I mean, this is the, it's, you know,

00:38:55   I think Steve Jobs said it about as well as anybody could,

00:38:58   not really with a year over year upgrade,

00:39:00   but when the, back in 2007,

00:39:02   when the price dropped of the iPhone

00:39:05   two or three months after it first came out,

00:39:07   it was like, hey, this is technology.

00:39:11   It moves fast.

00:39:13   We're trying to make this as fast as possible

00:39:15   and sell it at the best price we can as fast as we can.

00:39:18   And we can't worry about breaking eggs along the way.

00:39:21   - No, and for the thing, people do get angry,

00:39:23   but for me, the explaining at least the best as we can

00:39:26   what Apple is thinking,

00:39:27   at least it lets people hate Apple intelligently.

00:39:29   Instead of hating them for superficial reactionary reasons,

00:39:31   they can listen to the explanation,

00:39:32   understand the point of view,

00:39:33   and then hate them for good reason.

00:39:35   - It does, it is.

00:39:39   I heard a lot of people say it.

00:39:41   I mean, I bought my stainless steel Apple Watch

00:39:46   with my eyes wide open knowing that it's probably

00:39:50   only gonna be good for a year.

00:39:52   And I'm an idiot, I just throw money away

00:39:54   on all sorts of Apple stuff.

00:39:56   I think the people who are sensible about it

00:39:59   and lots and lots of people I heard from said,

00:40:02   "I'm willing to wait a year to get my first Apple Watch."

00:40:05   Very sensible, very sensible take.

00:40:08   And if that's the type of personality you have,

00:40:10   you know, you're going to,

00:40:12   I think you're going to be very satisfied

00:40:14   with that patient.

00:40:15   Or people who are maybe slightly less patients

00:40:18   or maybe had more money willing to throw away.

00:40:20   People who said, "I'm gonna get one,

00:40:21   "but I'm gonna get the sport model

00:40:22   "because I bet I'm gonna wanna get a new one the next year."

00:40:26   All very pretty.

00:40:27   - Well, some people never want the Rev A board

00:40:28   and some people always wanna be on the ground floor

00:40:30   of a new technology

00:40:31   and there's different kinds of personalities.

00:40:33   Not everyone's the same

00:40:34   and you can sort of pick the one that you want

00:40:35   and it's up to you to make an informed,

00:40:37   rational adult decision.

00:40:38   - Yeah.

00:40:40   All right, one last prediction on the Apple Watch.

00:40:43   Do you agree that it'll probably be announced in March?

00:40:46   - Yeah, I think this year's March event

00:40:48   will pretty closely mirror last year's.

00:40:50   - Do you think that it will be more like the Apple

00:40:55   or the iPhone 3G or the 3GS?

00:40:59   - See, that's interesting because the 3G famously,

00:41:02   the Apple didn't count it as a full version.

00:41:04   It was a one comma product.

00:41:06   It wasn't the two comma product, that was the 3GS.

00:41:08   So it was basically what the iPhone was meant to be

00:41:11   from an internal, at least tracking perspective,

00:41:14   where I think Apple Watch hardware, to your point,

00:41:17   will be similar.

00:41:18   I don't know what they're gonna designate it,

00:41:19   but I think I'm in agreement with you on that.

00:41:22   It's gonna be more of a rounding out

00:41:23   the way watchOS 2 was then another leap forward.

00:41:26   - So which one do you think it's gonna be more like?

00:41:30   - I think it'll be more like the 3G.

00:41:32   And keeping in mind that Apple often has

00:41:34   a conservative version of a product

00:41:35   and a very aspirational version of a product,

00:41:38   and they have to figure out which one

00:41:39   they can reliably deliver any year.

00:41:41   I think they absolutely have both ready,

00:41:43   but I think based on the Apple Watch this year,

00:41:45   I think we'll get more like the 3G version.

00:41:47   - I wonder, I was kind of thinking

00:41:50   maybe it would be more like a 3GS.

00:41:52   Like maybe more like, to compare them,

00:41:58   more like the original iPhone didn't exist,

00:42:03   that we started with the 3G and we're going to the 3GS.

00:42:07   In other words, it'll look a lot--

00:42:08   - I think the iPad 2 is a better comparison.

00:42:10   Let me talk to this thinner.

00:42:12   I agree with you, I think it's the inverse,

00:42:13   'cause the iPhone 3G got a better radio,

00:42:15   but not a better processor.

00:42:18   And I think the Apple Watch 2 is gonna get

00:42:20   the better processor, not necessarily the radios.

00:42:23   - Right, that's what I'm thinking.

00:42:24   I'm thinking better processor,

00:42:25   and yeah, probably not better radios.

00:42:28   Well, we'll see.

00:42:29   I don't know, maybe I'm making sure of the two.

00:42:30   And maybe you're right that the iPad 2

00:42:32   is maybe the better example.

00:42:34   Although the iPad 2 is really largely

00:42:36   about making the thing thinner.

00:42:38   - Yeah, later. - I don't think we're gonna

00:42:40   see that with the watch.

00:42:41   I don't think we're gonna see a thinner version.

00:42:43   - I don't think we need to.

00:42:44   - Well, we will eventually, and I'm sure.

00:42:46   (both laughing)

00:42:49   We never need to.

00:42:51   I mean, there's,

00:42:52   but inevitably, they're going to get to a point

00:42:55   where Johnny Ive's team is going to start pressing the,

00:42:59   nah, we're gonna make it a lot thinner.

00:43:03   - Well, they typically make things thinner

00:43:05   because they wanna make them lighter

00:43:06   'cause lighter for them is essential to usability,

00:43:08   but things like the Apple TV, 3D Touch,

00:43:11   there are exceptions to that rule for them.

00:43:13   There's things that they believe are important enough

00:43:14   features or capabilities that they're gonna just blow

00:43:17   through the envelopes on that.

00:43:19   But they have a huge thermal,

00:43:21   my understanding is that the S1 runs as hot

00:43:23   as it physically can for that enclosure.

00:43:25   - Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised,

00:43:27   especially given how slow some things are,

00:43:30   that there's just no way.

00:43:31   So anyway, we'll see, I'm excited about it.

00:43:34   - There was something else that was really cool

00:43:35   about the March event, and that was sort of the coming out

00:43:37   of Jeff Williams, like he introduced ResearchKit,

00:43:39   and that was the first time we saw who's arguably

00:43:42   one of the most powerful people at Apple on the stage.

00:43:45   - Right, he went from beginning of the year,

00:43:47   had appeared on stage, and was sort of a,

00:43:52   you know, it wasn't a secret, I mean,

00:43:54   it was there on the press bios page for Apple executives,

00:43:57   but wasn't really known publicly.

00:43:59   By the end of the year, he'd been promoted

00:44:01   to Chief Operating Officer.

00:44:03   - Yeah, and had been on stage, I think he was at WWC,

00:44:05   he was definitely at the September event,

00:44:07   and he owned the watch this year, it was his project.

00:44:11   - Yes, that is actually true, and not well known,

00:44:15   and kind of a, I thought about this,

00:44:20   and I didn't write much about it,

00:44:23   but I thought about it when they made the announcement

00:44:25   a week or two ago about the executive,

00:44:29   not really changes, it's more or less promotions,

00:44:31   and like you wrote in your piece that I'm more sort of making official changes

00:44:36   that have been made internally for a while.

00:44:38   Like Johnny Suruji's stature within the company was SVP level in terms of,

00:44:43   you know, the respect that he has and,

00:44:45   and the understanding of how important it is.

00:44:47   It just wasn't reflected in his official.

00:44:49   You do the job before you get the title at Apple.

00:44:51   Right. And, and, uh, I was thinking about it with, um,

00:44:55   with Jeff Williams and clearly part of the,

00:44:58   the gravity of being named COO of Apple is that in the modern era, which again, I always

00:45:06   say is post next reunification, there's only ever been one other COO and that was Tim Cook

00:45:13   and we see, you know, what that meant for him. And, you know, it clearly meant that

00:45:19   he was number two and in line to take over CEO if anything happened to the CEO. And I

00:45:25   I think it's hard not to think the same with Jeff Williams.

00:45:29   And the other thing too that made me think about it

00:45:31   is that to my knowledge, when Tim Cook was COO,

00:45:35   he never really had the role over a new product

00:45:38   the way that Jeff Williams did with the watch in particular.

00:45:41   - Yeah, it was a different,

00:45:44   like the iPhone was the clear example

00:45:46   of the big new product category

00:45:47   and that Scott Forestall basically owned,

00:45:49   I mean, Steve Jobs owned everything,

00:45:50   but Scott Forestall was the closest

00:45:52   to not being Steve Jobs and owning a product.

00:45:54   And there's no sort of Scott Forestall

00:45:57   that's all been unified now.

00:45:58   And they do have Kevin Lynch,

00:46:00   but he's doing just the software.

00:46:02   And I think a brand new product,

00:46:03   it needs somebody to sort of incubate it

00:46:06   and take care of it as a specific new product

00:46:08   before it can get reintegrated

00:46:10   into the existing structure in Apple

00:46:12   that ships iPhones and iPads every year.

00:46:14   - Yeah, and I think that the operational angle on that is,

00:46:18   and again, I don't have the numbers off the top of my head,

00:46:22   But I think, I mean, the number of iPhones

00:46:27   they sold in 2007 was maybe, I don't know,

00:46:32   just a few million.

00:46:34   - Was in the millions, yeah.

00:46:36   - Of that first one until the one with the metal casing

00:46:40   was really, really small in the millions.

00:46:42   And I think they got to 10 million by the end of 2008,

00:46:47   which would be a full year of selling the original iPhone

00:46:50   and then six or seven months of selling the 3G.

00:46:53   But it was really--

00:46:54   - When they hit subsidies that it took off.

00:46:56   - Yeah, and it's really with the 3G

00:46:58   where production really ramped up.

00:47:00   And for all of our, like we just mentioned it

00:47:05   earlier in the show, all of the bitching and moaning

00:47:07   about the early production delays on Apple Watch

00:47:11   in April and May, here we are just, you know,

00:47:16   nine months later and we've gone through a Christmas

00:47:18   where there were no supply problems.

00:47:21   And they've sold way more Apple watches.

00:47:23   Well, we don't know exactly what,

00:47:24   'cause they're not, how many,

00:47:25   'cause they're not breaking them out.

00:47:27   But it's clear that they've sold way more Apple watches

00:47:31   in this first year than they did iPhones in its first year.

00:47:34   And it's just- - They were able to do it

00:47:36   internationally, which the original iPhone wasn't.

00:47:38   It was available in one country

00:47:39   and then maybe three or four countries

00:47:40   for most of that year.

00:47:41   - Yeah, that's also very true.

00:47:43   Yeah, and it's, again, and I'm not saying that,

00:47:45   I don't bring this up to posit that the Apple Watch

00:47:48   is on pace to be more popular than the iPhone.

00:47:52   I think it's clearly just because Apple as a company

00:47:54   and its products, that it's more of a cultural phenomenon

00:47:59   and it can make a new product known to people

00:48:03   in a way that it couldn't before.

00:48:06   And they've broadened their base of people

00:48:09   who consider themselves Apple customers.

00:48:12   - And the iPod, it took a while for the iPod

00:48:14   to ramp up till after it became available on Windows.

00:48:16   It took a while for the iPhone to ramp up.

00:48:18   The iPad ramped up incredibly quickly,

00:48:19   but then it also sloped down fast too.

00:48:22   And it feels like you're on a highway

00:48:23   that has a speed limit.

00:48:24   And regardless of how fast you accelerate,

00:48:26   there's still that speed limit.

00:48:27   So you can have initial bursts

00:48:29   or you could have a slow acceleration,

00:48:31   but all the products sort of get there in the end.

00:48:33   - I also think that with the iPad,

00:48:35   which I think sold somewhere between like 10 and 15 million

00:48:39   in its first year.

00:48:40   Don't quote me on that,

00:48:43   pretty sure that's ballpark. I remember being on a TV show Clayton Morris's show

00:48:50   with with people guessing at first-year sales and it was like me and Andy and

00:48:54   Atko and yes I think Jason Snell I forget who else was on but my guess yeah

00:49:00   Jason was on remotely and my guess was way higher than everybody else's and I

00:49:05   was still a little low of what actually turned out but even then I feel like

00:49:10   making that original iPad wasn't anywhere near as much of a stretch

00:49:16   operationally because they had three years under their belt of making iPhones

00:49:20   and the technology was fundamentally the same except this was bigger and so it in

00:49:24   some ways that makes it easier whereas with the watch here they are taking

00:49:28   these iPhone style chips and display technology and etc and making a really

00:49:37   really small thing with incredibly tight tolerance for so many of these things physically that

00:49:42   it was harder.

00:49:43   Yeah, I feel like it was...

00:49:45   And the iPad ran, it even ran what was called iPhone OS at the time, where with WatchOS

00:49:49   they created that separate interface layer for like the clock faces and for carousel

00:49:52   and for some other thing.

00:49:54   Right.

00:49:55   The other big difference I think is that there was also 10 years of phones before the iPhone

00:50:00   and 10 years of tablets before the iPad, so they sort of knew what the problems were that

00:50:03   they wanted to fix, where with the Apple Watch they entered the product category very quickly,

00:50:07   quickly. And there isn't as much evidence as what they don't have as much

00:50:11   information about what that product needs to be. They're sort of part of the

00:50:14   experiment for the first time.

00:50:15   Yeah. All right. Let's take a break.

00:50:17   I'll thank another sponsor and then we'll go like next up is WWDC, right?

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00:53:57   All right, WWDC.

00:54:00   - Well, there was one thing right before WWDC

00:54:02   that was super interesting and that was

00:54:03   Johnny Iov getting promoted to Chief Design Officer.

00:54:06   - Oh, that is true.

00:54:07   - New direct reports going right to Tim Cook.

00:54:12   Yeah, who was new direct reports? It was Alan Dye.

00:54:15   Yeah, and Hohworth. I'm forgetting his first name.

00:54:17   Richard?

00:54:18   Richard Hohworth, yes.

00:54:22   And that created this whole, "Ah, is Johnny Ive leaving? Is his role changing?"

00:54:25   It was, again, a lot of noise.

00:54:27   I think over the course of the year, no one even really thinks about it anymore.

00:54:31   No, I don't think so.

00:54:34   And I get the feeling, I don't feel like...

00:54:39   You know, again, would it be the biggest shock in the world

00:54:42   if he leaves in a couple of years?

00:54:44   I guess not.

00:54:45   I mean, you never know.

00:54:47   And he's obviously a very private person.

00:54:49   You don't really know.

00:54:50   If you don't know him, how could you say?

00:54:54   And this could then be seen in hindsight

00:54:56   as a precursor to that.

00:54:58   But my guess is no, because from what I do know of him

00:55:03   and what, you know, if it's obvious

00:55:05   if he's obsessive about design,

00:55:07   What else is he going to do?

00:55:09   Like, it seems to me like what he would want to do

00:55:11   if he could do whatever he wanted to all day, every day,

00:55:14   is run Apple's design team.

00:55:17   - Well, we saw that in the 60 Minutes special.

00:55:18   They showed everything from his little sketchbook

00:55:20   where he made the wash designs,

00:55:22   to the CNC machine spitting it out behind him,

00:55:24   to his glee over the giant glass panels

00:55:26   being installed at Campus 2.

00:55:30   - Yeah, yeah, the biggest pieces of curved glass ever made.

00:55:33   - Yeah. - That's pretty interesting.

00:55:35   - What a great job.

00:55:36   Yeah, and I feel like what the promotion of Dai and Ho-Worth really meant was that it frees him up from administrative and bureaucratic responsibilities.

00:55:51   That there are meetings now that instead of he attending, you know, Dai and/or Ho-Worth can attend.

00:55:58   And just things like for people on the design team,

00:56:01   like approving vacation schedules or whatever else,

00:56:03   or the kind of administrative stuff

00:56:05   that somebody has to be in charge of.

00:56:07   It's not him anymore.

00:56:08   And that he can--

00:56:09   - Yeah, and I think it's similar to what we'll talk about

00:56:11   with Phil Schiller later, where it removes bottlenecks

00:56:13   from the process of Apple as Apple scales.

00:56:15   - Yeah, I think so.

00:56:16   And I think it lets him,

00:56:18   it lets him spend more time on what he's drawn to,

00:56:24   as opposed to what he, you know, the paraphernalia,

00:56:27   the miscellaneous stuff that you have to do,

00:56:30   that's just sort of busy work.

00:56:36   I don't know, for lack of a better term.

00:56:38   - Yeah, there's two universal truths in big business.

00:56:40   That is, everyone wants more management and more power,

00:56:42   and then anyone who has it wants to get rid of it.

00:56:44   - Yeah, and maybe that's exactly what this was about.

00:56:47   And I kind of get the feeling that both Dai and Holworth

00:56:50   are very, very trusted by Ive.

00:56:52   And so it's not, I don't think there's any kind

00:56:56   Machiavellian aspect to it where they're angling to take over. I feel like, you

00:57:01   know, they're at the stage in their careers where they're looking for more

00:57:04   management and authority and I really do think it's as simple as that he just

00:57:09   wants to spend, you know, he's only got, you know, so many hours in the day every

00:57:14   day and wants to spend them obsessing over every, you know, design, period.

00:57:20   Whether it's... And their teams are fantastic, like the the ID team and the

00:57:23   teams. They said only two people have ever left ID over the history on the

00:57:27   Ives tenure and those teams know what they're doing. Yeah well and it's a very

00:57:31   small team. I mean if and if there is a bottleneck still within the company that

00:57:35   might be part of it but I don't know that it's it's you know I think it's

00:57:39   clearly one of those mythical man-month type things we're throwing more people

00:57:42   at it isn't going to make more better design come out. I like that in that 60

00:57:46   minutes special one of the things I really liked seeing was that they

00:57:49   brought out the 10 prototype iPhone 6s. Yes. From every size, you know, from four

00:58:02   inches up to, I'm not quite sure what that biggest was, probably six, but that

00:58:08   they had ten different iPhone 6 shapes. And I don't know that, I don't, I, you

00:58:14   know, they didn't turn them on so you couldn't see whether they were actually

00:58:16   like electronic device, you know, like working iPhones or were they just things

00:58:20   that you held in your hand? But they had all ten of them there for for them to

00:58:25   display. I thought that was pretty cool. Yeah, and it wasn't just about the size

00:58:29   but to Ive that was part of the entire product experience of having a device of

00:58:33   that size. Yeah, it's, you know, I believed it when I said that, you know, that was

00:58:41   the story that they told when they came out with the two, you know, the 4.7 inch

00:58:45   and 5.5 inch iPhone 6 sizes.

00:58:48   And they said, you know, we made 10 versions

00:58:52   from every size from 4.0 up to I think 6.0 inches.

00:58:56   And that these were the two that felt right.

00:58:58   But I thought it was pretty cool

00:59:00   that they still had them there and brought them out.

00:59:03   - Yep.

00:59:04   Everything else under tarps.

00:59:05   - Yeah.

00:59:06   I like the story.

00:59:10   It reminded me of the story from "The New Yorker"

00:59:13   which was the profile of Johnny Ive that came this year.

00:59:16   I guess that was this year, right?

00:59:17   - Had to be. - Had to be.

00:59:19   - Yeah. - It was right around

00:59:19   the watch launch. - Yeah, right around

00:59:20   the watch launch.

00:59:21   A truly, truly, almost book-length New Yorker profile

00:59:27   on Johnny Ive.

00:59:27   When he was in the, the guy who wrote it

00:59:33   was in the design lab, one of the tables,

00:59:36   several of the tables had those black shrouds over them,

00:59:39   and you could see that there was the outline

00:59:42   the shape of whatever it was. You could see like the vague shape of whatever it is they were covering.

00:59:47   But then there was one where it was completely flat.

00:59:49   It was just a table that was completely flat as though there was nothing on it.

00:59:52   Why was it covered up?

00:59:54   And then in hindsight, it was because that was the table that was going to be the Apple Watch display table.

01:00:02   Where as a profile, as a three-dimensional shape, it's exactly the same as Apple standard tables,

01:00:08   but it has a glass top that displays the Apple Watches underneath.

01:00:12   >> Yeah, and that pretty ingenious thing where the badges open up the drawers underneath the retail staff.

01:00:18   >> Yeah, yeah, very true. It's a very clever design. But I think it's fat and to me it's an emblem of

01:00:25   the way that design is truly a first-class practice at Apple. That it's exactly the same team

01:00:36   that is designing the tables that are in the stores to display the watch as who displayed

01:00:42   the watch itself, designed the watch itself, and who designed the packaging for the watch.

01:00:49   Right? They want to control the experience the entire way through the product's life,

01:00:55   basically. Right. The store itself is a product, including the lighting,

01:01:02   the surface that's used for the floor, the dimensions, the tables, the products themselves

01:01:10   are products and the packaging are products. And the process is whereby that goes from the table

01:01:16   to you in the bag and the entire thing is just brilliantly engineered. Yeah and I feel like

01:01:21   that's unique at that you know at Apple and I don't know I don't it's I think it would be very

01:01:26   difficult for other companies to replicate. Alright, June WWDC. Yes. I

01:01:36   would say the clunker of the bunch. I think that was a threefold

01:01:40   announcement fundamentally. iOS 9, Mac OS 10.11, Mac OS 10.11, El Capitan,

01:01:51   and Apple Music. And I think Apple Music has got to be considered the clunker of

01:01:56   a bunch. Yeah it was interesting because the first half it was all yeah and I

01:02:01   think watchOS too I think we saw that for the first time there but that was all

01:02:04   very engineering focused and Craig Federighi did his talk and I think Kevin

01:02:09   Lynch did the watch stuff it was Jeff Williams I forget and then it was an

01:02:13   incredibly abrupt change in tone when Eddie Q and then Jimmy Iovine and then

01:02:17   Drake came out on stage almost like a separate event that had been somehow

01:02:21   stuck together. Yeah, and it's funny to me or interesting because again treating

01:02:28   all of these things not as well that they it's easy to say to try to treat

01:02:35   the actual shipping products the things you buy the actual iPhone in your hand

01:02:39   the actual watch on your wrist as the only things that matter because that's

01:02:42   ultimately the most important thing but I find it instructive and it usually

01:02:47   pays off to treat everything from the actual events to the packaging to the ads to all

01:02:54   of it as looking for signs of, you know, is this as polished and coherent as it could

01:03:01   be? I think it's interesting, and again you can't prove a correlation, but it's interesting

01:03:06   that the announcement event of Apple Music at WWDC's keynote was sloppy and the actual

01:03:16   shipping Apple Music when it first came out was sloppy.

01:03:20   And not quite coherent.

01:03:23   Like a sort of lack of coherence.

01:03:25   - I think under Steve Jobs, he ran that show

01:03:29   and almost everything that went on during that show

01:03:31   was carefully scrutinized.

01:03:32   And I think Tim Cook lets people run their divisions

01:03:35   more than Steve Jobs did.

01:03:37   Maybe because Apple's so big now, he has to as well.

01:03:40   And they almost run like little companies,

01:03:42   especially iTunes, which has its own marketing,

01:03:44   its own events, its own developers.

01:03:47   It basically is its own company.

01:03:49   And when you see these things, I don't know how much

01:03:53   like someone like Tim Cook would play the Steve Jobs role

01:03:55   of saying, "No, you have to come out

01:03:56   "and you have to say this and I'm handling this

01:03:58   "and you're doing this."

01:03:59   And it is more open to each of the SVPs

01:04:04   to do their own thing.

01:04:05   And at the same time, some people just love

01:04:07   the traditional Steve Jobs keynote.

01:04:08   It's super polished.

01:04:10   There's some jokes, but it's super on point.

01:04:12   It's clear, it's concise.

01:04:13   And then Craig Federico gets laughs from making jokes.

01:04:16   So the next year we get more jokes.

01:04:18   And then they start talking about Eddie doing karaoke

01:04:21   and suddenly Eddie's doing a little bit of dancing.

01:04:23   And I think that they're trying to feel their way

01:04:26   into being a kinder, friendlier presentation,

01:04:30   but they don't know where that line is yet.

01:04:32   - Yeah, and I feel like that keynote in particular,

01:04:36   I think without question, this year's WWDC keynote

01:04:39   was the worst event Apple, the worst keynote,

01:04:44   not just call it an official keynote,

01:04:47   I'll just say keynote to include product introductions

01:04:50   like September's iPhone introduction.

01:04:54   It's the worst keynote that they've had since Steve died,

01:04:59   or maybe the worst one they ever had in the modern era,

01:05:02   because none of the ones with Steve were bad.

01:05:05   - Do you feel that the whole way through

01:05:06   or just because of the Apple Music segment?

01:05:09   I would say just because of the Apple Music segment.

01:05:11   But the fact that it ran so long,

01:05:13   even if the Apple Music segment had been coherent

01:05:16   and well thought out,

01:05:17   I think the fact that they blew so far past two hours

01:05:20   was a problem.

01:05:21   And I say this not just for the petty reason

01:05:27   that I really had to go to the bathroom by the end of it

01:05:29   and I was in the audience.

01:05:31   And just the fact that it's a long time to just sit.

01:05:37   I think like the unofficial rule

01:05:39   that they should be two hours at the most is good.

01:05:41   And I think it always plays out when

01:05:44   you see other companies that have

01:05:46   long events that go too long.

01:05:49   When it ends, you don't want the media,

01:05:51   who are giving most people out in the world,

01:05:54   their impression of it comes not firsthand.

01:05:56   Because even at a big place like WWDC, there's only 4,000 seats,

01:06:01   and most of them are conference attendees.

01:06:05   You don't want the first impression

01:06:07   to be from media people saying, "That was too long."

01:06:10   But the other thing that you usually can see

01:06:13   from other companies and that with Steve Jobs there,

01:06:16   you'd never, never happen,

01:06:17   is you see the internal politics playing out on stage.

01:06:21   The fighting over, you know, that stage time

01:06:24   is political capital within the company.

01:06:28   And whether it's good for the company or not,

01:06:30   that X number of people come out

01:06:33   and get X number of minutes for their thing,

01:06:36   they're all fighting for it

01:06:37   because they're fighting for their personal stature

01:06:40   or they're fighting for their products stature

01:06:43   within the company, as opposed to what is the best thing

01:06:46   for the company as a whole.

01:06:47   And I think Apple has, this year as well as any other year,

01:06:53   with Apple there are always products

01:06:57   that in and of themselves might be worth time

01:07:00   in a product introduction or a keynote

01:07:03   if there's a keynote coming up,

01:07:05   but get cut because there are so many other things

01:07:10   that are more worth it for them

01:07:13   if they're only gonna go for 90 minutes.

01:07:15   - Yeah, absolutely.

01:07:16   And I believe stuff was cut from this keynote.

01:07:18   Like my understanding is they wanted to get it down

01:07:19   to two hours, but especially the Apple Music segment,

01:07:22   it didn't even sound like it stayed on script,

01:07:24   which is something else that you don't see

01:07:25   in previous keynotes.

01:07:27   - Yeah, yeah.

01:07:29   Like, and you know, Drake's like inexplicable,

01:07:33   like, "What the hell? What was that?" I just remember going back to my notes and

01:07:38   it was like, my notes are like, "Drake!" And then it's like, nothing.

01:07:43   And some people who aren't us, who are very young and very hip, love that Drake was on

01:07:46   stage but I think when you look at it overall in terms of an Apple event, it doesn't become

01:07:52   part of the cohesive whole. Usually in a good one, it doesn't matter

01:07:55   whether the person, if it's some kind of famous celebrity or something like that, there still

01:08:01   is a there's you can see whether you agree with it or not whether it worked for you personally

01:08:06   you can understand what the point was that that person was supposed to get across if you could

01:08:11   cut it and it doesn't affect the event you should cut it and likewise like tim cook's segue into

01:08:15   baseball which was interesting but like you could have cut that entire uh we're gonna give them all

01:08:19   iphone stuff and ipad stuff out of the keynote and it would not have changed the event at all

01:08:23   yeah but i can see why they put that in though it was it was a way of emphasizing

01:08:30   with third party proof that the anecdote was that I forget what team it was if it was the Royals

01:08:36   or who but somebody in Major League Baseball had hit like a you know like their 100th career home

01:08:45   run and it landed in their own team's bullpen where the relief pitchers warm up over the home

01:08:52   run fence so the relief pitchers on the team were in possession of this ball which the player

01:08:56   obviously wanted to have. So the relief pitchers put together a list of, "Here's what we want

01:09:00   you to buy us and we'll give you the ball." And everything on the list was an Apple product

01:09:07   and a 50-gallon barrel of lube.

01:09:11   Yeah, it was great, but at almost a two and a half hour keynote, I think, again, you start

01:09:17   cutting anything you can.

01:09:18   Well, they showed it, but they also Photoshopped out the 50-gallon barrel of lube, which I

01:09:26   I understand why they did, because I understand that they kind of want to keep these things

01:09:32   G-rated, if not PG, and the 50-gallon barrel of lube maybe makes it a little bit more PG-13.

01:09:44   But good God, was that funny.

01:09:46   They kind of took out the funniest part of it.

01:09:47   I agree.

01:09:48   I do know.

01:09:49   I know what you're talking about, though, that if it's already going over two hours,

01:09:51   even that, you take out.

01:09:53   How much do they need to brag about that?

01:09:55   I found it worrisome though, I do. I honestly feel like, I kind of feel like the most worrisome thing as an Apple Watcher of the year was not any product in particular, but the WWDC keynote as a whole.

01:10:10   And that's something only Tim Cook can take control of, and unless he wants to take control of that, I don't think we'll see that change.

01:10:18   Like it's it was one of the unique things about Steve Jobs and it wasn't the most important thing.

01:10:25   It was just the most the thing that we on the outside got to see was that he had an innate and

01:10:31   uncanny talent as a showman that he was good. He those keynotes were all entirely in his head.

01:10:40   And of course, they've always been broken up into segments because that's how you do it.

01:10:44   but that he had this ability like from, you know, seat to watching,

01:10:50   you know, Phil Schiller come out and do the introduction for the new MacBook

01:10:54   or Power Book or whatever it was going back in time.

01:10:56   And then this and that he could just close his eyes

01:11:00   and just see how this whole thing would play out and feel as a 90 minute show

01:11:06   and could figure out things like, you know what?

01:11:11   let's not introduce this at the end as one more thing.

01:11:15   Let's move it up front and blow people away

01:11:18   right out of the gate, you know,

01:11:20   and could just see how that would play, you know,

01:11:23   and knew which, you know, I think, you know,

01:11:25   some of it's arbitrary and you can quibble with it,

01:11:27   but that he, you know, like a film director

01:11:29   could just sort of feel how, you know,

01:11:33   whether these scenes are good in and of themselves,

01:11:36   what do they combine to as a whole as a show?

01:11:38   And there was and and combine the showmanship with the absolute

01:11:43   unquestioned authority of I don't care who you are.

01:11:47   I don't care if you're, you know, senior vice president of whatever.

01:11:50   This thing that you want to get, you know, that we've been rehearsing

01:11:53   for two weeks and you, you know, want the stage time to do.

01:11:58   If I've decide the night before the keynote that that whole thing is cut

01:12:01   because it just doesn't play right.

01:12:03   That's it. You know, there's no, you know, tough luck.

01:12:07   And I kind of feel like, I kind of just feel like that whole Apple.

01:12:11   I don't know, I just feel like the whole Apple Music intro was that nobody was

01:12:18   there with the authority to say, you know what, Eddie, this just isn't, this isn't

01:12:21   ready.

01:12:21   There's very few things like a lot of people will say this wouldn't happen if

01:12:25   Steve Jobs was around and usually that they have, they have no idea what Steve

01:12:28   Jobs would have decided any moment or not.

01:12:29   But this is one of those few things where you can look back at the long history of

01:12:32   Apple keynotes and see that he had a rhythm and a pace and a delivery and a

01:12:36   concept for these things that, you know, was just beyond anyone else in the industry. And

01:12:41   we're not getting that anymore.

01:12:43   Yeah. Yeah, I really, I hesitate to ever pull that, play that card. But I would say that

01:12:50   that keynote and the Apple Music segment in particular, that's one of the few where I

01:12:55   would say that wouldn't happen if Steve was still around.

01:12:57   Yeah, well, it's one of the few things where you can do it because he was, there was no

01:13:01   one intermediating Steve Jobs and you. He was on stage and he was talking to the audience.

01:13:04   It was incredibly direct.

01:13:06   So it's not behind the scenes

01:13:08   and who was in charge of this and who did that.

01:13:09   It was Steve Jobs talking to us.

01:13:12   And I think that's an easy thing to talk about.

01:13:14   - Right, and I've heard it from people who work at Apple,

01:13:19   that Steve was the guy that he didn't just show up

01:13:24   and there wasn't somebody else organizing the show.

01:13:25   He really was putting the show together.

01:13:28   And I've also heard it from people who worked

01:13:32   at third party companies, but who were getting,

01:13:34   you know, were invited by Apple to, you know,

01:13:37   come on stage as, you know, you might,

01:13:41   and it's funny, it's always exactly the same,

01:13:44   which is that they get invited to come out,

01:13:45   they go into sequester.

01:13:47   It's like you're pretty much like locked into like Apple,

01:13:50   a very nice prison, and you rehearse and rehearse

01:13:54   and rehearse, and you have no idea

01:13:56   whether you're actually gonna be in the keynote

01:13:58   until, you know, like the night before.

01:14:01   And even then, you know, it might be you're in, you're out.

01:14:04   - Yeah, and their events team is absolutely spectacular

01:14:07   and they do a fantastic job,

01:14:08   but they don't control who's up on stage

01:14:10   for how long or saying what.

01:14:11   That's become the executive in charge of that thing.

01:14:14   And it's no longer just Steve Jobs.

01:14:16   - Right, and I do kind of feel,

01:14:18   bottom line is that it's sort of effectively a committee now

01:14:21   and it might be a small committee,

01:14:24   you know, Schiller, Eddy Cue, Shirley, Tim Cook.

01:14:28   You know, and I think I wouldn't underestimate,

01:14:30   Even though he's not on stage personally,

01:14:32   I wouldn't underestimate Johnny Ive's influence

01:14:34   on these things, on the events.

01:14:36   The fact that he does his in prerecorded films

01:14:41   is, doesn't make him less involved, I think,

01:14:44   in the structure of the events.

01:14:47   - Yeah, and even those, those videos used to have faces

01:14:49   and then used to have several people,

01:14:51   like Van Rietje would sometimes appear in them.

01:14:52   Definitely Bob Mansfield in previous years.

01:14:55   And this year it was just voiceover.

01:14:57   - Yeah. - And it was just Johnny Ive.

01:14:58   - Yeah, more cinematic, less documentary style,

01:15:02   and more, I don't know, like product,

01:15:07   like more advertising style.

01:15:09   - And to your point about Apple Music being a sloppy product

01:15:12   the thing to me is when they made that announcement,

01:15:13   when Jimmy Iovine said one single thought around music,

01:15:16   and you just start thinking about that

01:15:18   from an interface perspective,

01:15:20   and how many masters that has to save all,

01:15:22   like it has to serve all the traditional people,

01:15:24   like Jim Downer will have 40,000 songs on their hard drive,

01:15:27   has to serve people who only want to stream music.

01:15:30   They had a social network built into there,

01:15:32   so it has to be accessible.

01:15:33   And if you put that in a separate app,

01:15:35   no one is ever gonna open it by itself.

01:15:37   And it creates almost an impossible problem to be solved.

01:15:40   - Can I tell you a funny story I heard about Jimmy Yaupon?

01:15:43   - Absolutely.

01:15:45   - This is absolutely positively unverifiable

01:15:48   because this is like fourth hand,

01:15:51   maybe like a fourth hand story.

01:15:53   But in terms of the gist of the story

01:15:56   is that Jimmy Yovine, from people

01:16:00   who've had to deal with him within Apple, is eye rolling.

01:16:06   And that at one point when they were talking

01:16:08   about what to do with Apple Music,

01:16:10   he tossed out in a meeting the idea

01:16:14   that what if we get rid of apps, and when you just

01:16:18   turn on your iPhone, there's your music?

01:16:26   And they were like, "Wouldn't that just be like what the iPod was?"

01:16:30   And he was like, "No, no, it's still your phone, and you have the internet."

01:16:34   But you don't have to worry about apps.

01:16:35   You just turn on your phone, and there's your music.

01:16:38   - Streaming Taylor Swift, the mini, turn on your phone?

01:16:41   - I don't know if that's true or not.

01:16:44   I did not hear that from anybody at Apple.

01:16:46   I heard that from somebody who worked at Apple a long time ago

01:16:49   and still has friends at Apple.

01:16:50   - Yeah, that's the kind of stories where someone whose job it is

01:16:54   isn't to implement things on the atom or the bit or the pixel level.

01:16:58   We'll just throw those kinds of things out.

01:17:02   Turn on your phone and there's your music.

01:17:06   Punchier.

01:17:08   What was the event that Jimmy Yovine came out?

01:17:11   And was that the WWC keynote?

01:17:17   Yeah, well, he definitely came out during the WWC keynote.

01:17:19   And where he said something that seemed like a reference,

01:17:23   What was it? He was like a reference back to like a classic Apple moment and people applauded, but he didn't get it.

01:17:28   And he got confused and like turned around and looked at the slide.

01:17:31   Ah, no, I don't recall.

01:17:33   Oh, I forget. I forget the exact details of it.

01:17:37   But it was like, it probably wasn't one more thing.

01:17:41   But I can imagine that he was like, if he had said one more thing, and everybody like kind of clapped and applauded.

01:17:47   And he didn't even get that that was something that people who followed Apple for a long time would get.

01:17:52   And so he thought maybe something had gone wrong with the slides and something,

01:17:56   a glitch was on the slide behind him.

01:17:58   And that's why people were laughing to him inexplicably.

01:18:01   And so he got like, he paused and like turned around and looked at the slide,

01:18:05   but it's slide was right.

01:18:06   And then that only served to discombobulate him even further because now he,

01:18:10   now he had no idea why people were laughing. And it was very, very awkward.

01:18:15   It's always been hard to enculturate people into Apple.

01:18:18   And it's especially hard when you're getting this many new people,

01:18:19   but when these people come in at executive levels,

01:18:21   it's almost impossible.

01:18:22   So you have someone who's used to working in LA

01:18:25   and with Hollywood and with recording studios,

01:18:27   and you get them in a meeting with people

01:18:28   who've been making shiny boxes all their lives.

01:18:32   It's gonna be a clash.

01:18:33   - From the outside, it seems like maybe Angela Ornes

01:18:38   is doing well though.

01:18:39   - I think so.

01:18:41   I mean, this 60 Minutes was also a bit of her coming out.

01:18:43   And I always thought, I think we talked about it last year,

01:18:45   that she, because she was so vocal in her previous gig,

01:18:49   that she would be more of a spokesperson for Apple

01:18:51   and she would talk about retail more.

01:18:53   But apparently she's been hard at work behind the scenes

01:18:55   just melding the online and retail operations

01:18:58   and getting the new store concepts going.

01:19:01   It sounds like, it was funny because a couple of weeks ago

01:19:04   someone wrote an article saying,

01:19:05   "Where's Angela Ahrens?

01:19:05   Why she disappeared?"

01:19:07   And people on campus are like,

01:19:08   "Well, we see her all the time.

01:19:09   I understand the article."

01:19:11   - I kind of feel like people, there's,

01:19:15   you know, and again, I think it fits in

01:19:19   with a year in review

01:19:20   and talking about these events that this year,

01:19:24   there were more women on stage from Apple

01:19:29   during these events than ever before.

01:19:31   And that's a good thing.

01:19:35   And I don't think it is purely happenstance.

01:19:39   I think that it's something they're aware of internally.

01:19:43   I asked Phil Schuler about it on stage on the talk show

01:19:45   after WWDC.

01:19:48   Absolutely, they're aware of it.

01:19:49   But it has to be, it's not like we're going to find a woman to do this.

01:19:55   It's there have to be, the real problem is that,

01:19:58   wasn't that they didn't put women on stage,

01:20:00   it's that they didn't have women in positions where it was their products doing it.

01:20:06   Right?

01:20:06   >> Yeah, and not to make excuses for it, but Apple is an older company.

01:20:09   And older companies, they've had established people,

01:20:11   like Phil Schiller has been there for a long time,

01:20:12   Eddie Q, Tim Cook, all these people have been there for decades,

01:20:15   and they're amongst the best in the world.

01:20:17   where a new startup, they would have a much different demographic starting out

01:20:21   the gate than Apple would.

01:20:22   Right. It's not like they hire show people to

01:20:25   to present these things on stage at their event.

01:20:29   The products and services, whatever it is that they're announcing, are being

01:20:32   presented by the people

01:20:34   who are in charge of them and who know them best and who have shepherded them

01:20:38   through to existence. And so the fact that historically women

01:20:42   have been underrepresented on stage at Apple events

01:20:46   Doesn't mean that Apple has a problem picking who gets to go on stage in the event.

01:20:51   The problem is that they don't have enough women in positions of authority running teams within the company.

01:20:58   Yeah, or in their executive team, most specifically.

01:21:01   Right, who would therefore be the person to come on stage and do it.

01:21:05   You know, and obviously that's changing with Apple Pay.

01:21:09   Who's that? Her name escapes me at the moment.

01:21:12   I'm blanking on it too. Yeah, Apple Pay and Apple News.

01:21:15   Yes, both were represented by women, etc.

01:21:19   So for the people who are saying, "Well, where's Angela Ahrendts?"

01:21:22   Well, they're not going to bring Angela Ahrendts on stage to talk about a new Macbook or something like that.

01:21:27   It's not just, "Well, there's a woman on the SVP leadership team, therefore they should have her come out and do something."

01:21:34   It's only going to make sense for her to come on stage when there's some kind of retail news that they want to talk about.

01:21:42   And I think that's inevitable.

01:21:44   At some point, there's going to be something

01:21:46   that happens with retail that they're gonna wanna talk about

01:21:50   at one of these events.

01:21:51   And of course, it's gonna be her to talk about it.

01:21:53   - Yeah, retail or fashion,

01:21:54   and those are the things that Tim Cook used to speak about,

01:21:57   and they unfortunately cut those at the same time

01:21:59   they brought Angela Ahrens on,

01:22:00   because Tim Cook doesn't spend time on stage

01:22:02   talking about them anymore either.

01:22:03   - Yeah, well, I don't know about fashion though,

01:22:05   'cause fashion would be too,

01:22:07   I guess I could imagine, maybe with the watch,

01:22:10   that there would be something to do with the watch as a product that its relation to the

01:22:15   fashion industry would make sense to have Angela Ahrendts be the person to do it. Because

01:22:19   it's also I think inextricably tied to retail where it's not just Apple's retail but retail

01:22:25   in general and the partnerships that they have with fashion related retailers that aren't

01:22:32   the Apple store.

01:22:34   Yeah and it's you and I know because we have a lot of mutual friends there but there are

01:22:39   phenomenally talented women engineers at Apple and women program managers and

01:22:44   designers and developers and those people don't just don't get to talk on

01:22:48   keynotes. Right, whether you know at any male female doesn't even matter that's

01:22:53   just not Apple doesn't run those type of keynotes where dozens of you know

01:22:57   mid-level. You get an occasional Chris Latner like I think that was a huge

01:23:02   exception too I don't think anyone like Chris Latner had ever spoken at a

01:23:04   keynote before. As opposed to the afternoon State of the Union keynote.

01:23:09   Which is, you know, where he's been, he has spoken before and where you would

01:23:12   expect it. And this year we had the phenomenal woman in charge of clock

01:23:15   faces get a tremendous talk at the State of the Union this year. I remember that.

01:23:19   That was great. Anyway, I did think on 60 Minutes, I've seen Angela

01:23:25   Arnett speak before, especially after when she first got

01:23:28   hired and announced it and I was researching into it. But her stint on the

01:23:33   the 60 Minutes segment did reiterate,

01:23:36   boy, she's a remarkably cogent and thoughtful person.

01:23:43   - Yeah, no, and I agree,

01:23:43   but I do think that it's great that Apple is doing this,

01:23:45   and it's similar to when Tim Cook came out.

01:23:47   He said, because if it was just up to me, I wouldn't,

01:23:49   because I'm a private person,

01:23:51   but it's important to be a role model,

01:23:53   and I think it's important to have diverse people

01:23:54   up on stage in super successful positions

01:23:57   in super successful companies like Apple

01:23:58   to be those role models,

01:24:00   and you have to give them opportunity.

01:24:03   Craig Federighi wasn't great, his first WWDC,

01:24:05   but he's terrific now.

01:24:06   And Jeff Williams, two events in, much better presenter.

01:24:09   And if you give them these opportunities,

01:24:10   they could be just as phenomenal.

01:24:12   And it's a super deep bench.

01:24:13   Like you have, you know, Greg Joswiak, also phenomenal,

01:24:16   who didn't get any time, I don't think,

01:24:17   at all on stage this year.

01:24:19   But you also have, you know, the woman in charge

01:24:21   of iPhone marketing is phenomenal.

01:24:23   And there will be opportunities when they get stage time.

01:24:25   And it'll just make, I think,

01:24:26   the company better for everybody.

01:24:28   - Yeah.

01:24:32   What else about it at WWDC?

01:24:34   Anything else?

01:24:35   - Swift 2.0, and I think that's where they announced

01:24:37   that it was gonna open source.

01:24:40   - Oh, that is true.

01:24:41   It is when they announced that it would go open source

01:24:43   by the end of the year, and they did hit that.

01:24:45   I don't really have much to say about that.

01:24:49   I mean, I think I kinda covered that last week with Craig.

01:24:52   - A little bit. (laughs)

01:24:54   - Craig Federighi.

01:24:55   - Talk about stacking the guest deck.

01:24:56   - I don't think we need to cover Swift on this episode.

01:25:01   It's just suffice it to say it was a pretty big deal.

01:25:03   And it seems to be going very, very well.

01:25:05   - Yes.

01:25:06   Content blockers ended up being another thing

01:25:09   that enormous amounts of angst and stress was built over.

01:25:13   And again, at the end of the year,

01:25:14   we're hardly mentioning them.

01:25:16   - Yeah, and doesn't seem, you know,

01:25:18   doesn't seem to have really changed anything significant.

01:25:23   I think it's great.

01:25:24   I certainly, I enjoy running them.

01:25:26   And I do think that they make for a noticeable improvement,

01:25:31   but I don't think that they've bankrupted any,

01:25:33   or are even on pace to bankrupt any media properties.

01:25:37   - I'm kind of sad about that,

01:25:38   'cause I thought that was one of,

01:25:39   because the industry is just, it's horrible and intransigent

01:25:41   and that was one of the few things

01:25:42   that could scare it out of its complacency.

01:25:44   And I don't think it's done a good enough job

01:25:46   scaring them to their bottom dollars yet.

01:25:48   - Yeah, I feel like there was more talk about that

01:25:50   when they were, when it was first come out and,

01:25:55   or actually right before they came out, really,

01:25:57   when people thought, you know, good God, you know,

01:26:00   A week from now, 70% of our mobile is gonna disappear.

01:26:03   - Yes.

01:26:04   - But in hindsight, you know,

01:26:07   there was like a day or two where the App Store charts

01:26:12   were dominated by content blockers,

01:26:17   and then not so much.

01:26:19   - Yeah.

01:26:20   Hopefully next year that'll spike again.

01:26:23   - So what about the summer?

01:26:30   or anything over the summer?

01:26:31   I don't think so.

01:26:32   - There was some interesting stuff.

01:26:33   Out of nowhere an iPod Touch 6 finally came out,

01:26:36   a modern iPod Touch.

01:26:37   - Oh, that is true.

01:26:40   That was like July, right?

01:26:41   - Yeah. - It was like

01:26:42   the middle of July.

01:26:43   - Yeah, it didn't really do,

01:26:45   I mean, it was exact same design.

01:26:46   It did have a modern A7 processor.

01:26:49   So it's 64-bit.

01:26:51   And that was about all that came with it.

01:26:53   There was some new iPod colors as well,

01:26:55   but the iPod line didn't change at all.

01:26:58   - No.

01:26:58   Do you think that this might be it for the iPod touch?

01:27:03   - I think it's getting, I think the pressure

01:27:07   from the iPhones being more and more available

01:27:09   and affordable and the iPad mini being as popular as it is

01:27:13   kind of squeezes out the iPod touch in many ways.

01:27:15   It's still the cheapest, absolute cheapest way

01:27:17   to get to the App Store.

01:27:18   But I think the App Store now is a proven value

01:27:21   and people are willing to pay a little bit more

01:27:22   to get into it in order to get more functionality from it.

01:27:26   I was surprised by--

01:27:29   I think I've seen this from a few other places too.

01:27:31   But like when I think it was United or one of these airlines

01:27:36   was like, we're going to buy 10,000 iPhones

01:27:38   and give them to all of our gate agents and flight attendants

01:27:42   and et cetera.

01:27:45   That they weren't iPod Touches.

01:27:46   That it seems to me like it would make more sense for that

01:27:49   to be an iPod Touch, lower price.

01:27:52   Let's presume that there's some kind of workable Wi-Fi

01:27:55   in the airport that they can use.

01:27:58   That they wouldn't need to be a full,

01:28:00   why would you spend the extra money,

01:28:02   hundreds of extra dollars per unit for the phone

01:28:05   when it doesn't really make sense for them to be phoned

01:28:07   if they're just using them for that.

01:28:08   But that's what they're using the phone.

01:28:10   - Yeah, and it's probably a greater dynamic

01:28:12   where you have sort of existing carrier relationships

01:28:14   with enterprise companies

01:28:16   and they're buying them in the thousands.

01:28:18   And if people are still wondering

01:28:20   why they're 16 gigabyte iPhones,

01:28:22   that's one of the big reasons is institutional buyers.

01:28:24   So it's almost like they just move from Blackberry to iPhone

01:28:27   or to something else.

01:28:29   - But it wasn't, I don't know, to me it wasn't.

01:28:35   - And they're sort of like web portals.

01:28:36   All they do is access web portals or business to B2B apps.

01:28:39   So they need almost nothing but a web connection.

01:28:42   - Yeah.

01:28:43   Ooh, I just, her name just popped into my head.

01:28:46   Jennifer Bailey.

01:28:47   - Yes.

01:28:48   - It was killing me.

01:28:50   Jennifer Bailey is the Apple executive

01:28:52   who runs Apple Pay under EdiQ.

01:28:55   - Yes.

01:28:56   - Anything else in the summer?

01:28:57   - A whole bunch of other stuff, I think.

01:28:59   - Yeah.

01:29:00   But she was the one who was on stage, at least.

01:29:02   - No, I think that, I mean, there was a minor stuff

01:29:04   like Apple killed one-to-one,

01:29:05   but very little else happened

01:29:07   until the monstrous event in September.

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01:32:16   HelloPillow.com/talkshow. No "the." That's the URL. All right, September.

01:32:23   Yeah. Boy, I feel like maybe we should have started with this because it's...

01:32:29   It was a big event.

01:32:31   Well, they only did one fall event this year, so they put everything into it.

01:32:34   Yeah. In hindsight, I feel like that's probably smart. And I feel like the other thing too is to

01:32:44   go circle back to what I said about WWDC. I feel like they clarified the messaging and the

01:32:53   coherency of the event significantly. I can't help but suspect that internally they recognized

01:32:59   that the WWDC keynote was not up to their own standards.

01:33:05   And the September event might have been even extra sharp because of it.

01:33:09   Yeah, it was for everything that they covered, and it was so big they didn't even have time to cover OS X or the Mac.

01:33:15   They managed to get it done in, I think, four well put together segments.

01:33:19   Yeah. I mean, and, you know, if we're going to look back at the year, I mean,

01:33:23   I mean, you know, easily the biggest mistake I published

01:33:28   on "Daring Fireball" was the night before the event

01:33:30   predicting that there's no way they're gonna have

01:33:32   only one event for the fall.

01:33:35   - Well, they hadn't before.

01:33:37   It had been iPhone and iPods or something else in September

01:33:41   and then Mac and iPad in October.

01:33:44   - Yeah. - I think two years

01:33:45   or three years before that.

01:33:46   But this year they had no new Mac.

01:33:48   They had the 4K iMac, but they sort of showed that off

01:33:51   already with the 5K iMac.

01:33:53   theater before? Well, I think if they wanted to, they could have. I think the

01:33:57   easiest way that they could have done it would be to hold the iPad Pro for

01:34:01   October and have a separate event just for the iPad Pro and then to fill out

01:34:05   the event "Demo El Capitan" and boom there you go there's a little smaller

01:34:11   event in October and it wasn't ready to ship anyway so it wouldn't have even

01:34:14   delayed the shipping of the iPad Pro. Although they wanted to get El Cap out

01:34:18   earlier this year, I think it shipped on September 30th which would have pulled

01:34:21   it out of that event. Yeah, but it wouldn't have it would have been fine if they would have held

01:34:25   El Capitan. It wouldn't have, you know, if they wanted to. I think it's just that they didn't want

01:34:29   to. But there, you know, it wasn't just my argument that I don't think they're going to have just one

01:34:33   event wasn't just that they have had two events for years. It was that if they only have one event,

01:34:38   there's no way they're going to cover all this stuff. Yeah. And some of these things are going

01:34:41   to have to be cut. And so I was right about that, that that some of these things would have to be

01:34:45   cut and they would go through the fall without even even redemmelling the tentpole features of

01:34:50   of El Capitan on stage.

01:34:52   I was just wrong that they might be willing to do that.

01:34:56   But I think that's a good-- - They had a release date

01:34:58   in the sidebar of the email and the slide

01:35:00   on the stage. (laughs)

01:35:02   - Right, this is how little time El Cap got on that event,

01:35:06   that when they announced the shipping date,

01:35:08   it was a screenshot of,

01:35:11   I think it was for the iPad Pro, right?

01:35:13   - Yeah, it was the mail app,

01:35:14   and you can see it was a mail from Phil in the song.

01:35:17   - It was like Phil, yeah, like Phil,

01:35:19   It was like an email from Phil Shiller to Federighi

01:35:21   or somebody saying like, yeah, El Cap ship date

01:35:26   will be September 30th, top secret, don't tell anyone.

01:35:29   And it was just in the screenshot to the mail client.

01:35:32   (laughing)

01:35:34   - And then very quickly, they had to get that up

01:35:36   on Apple.com, so otherwise it would have been pandemonium

01:35:38   with everyone calling to see if that was serious or not.

01:35:40   - Right, was it a joke or was it not?

01:35:42   We sat together for that one, right?

01:35:45   It was me and you and Clayton Morris, right?

01:35:47   - Yes.

01:35:48   (laughing)

01:35:50   I remember when that came up and we were whispering

01:35:54   with each other, like, was that real?

01:35:55   Did I see that?

01:35:56   Do you think that's what they mean?

01:35:58   - Yeah, it was.

01:35:59   I mean, it started off with Jeff Williams and the watch.

01:36:02   And it's interesting 'cause they showed off new watch bands

01:36:04   that, you know, Johnny and I have had shown off,

01:36:06   I think, at a Paris show, fashion show earlier in the year.

01:36:09   And then they announced Apple Watch Hermes.

01:36:11   I guess the first real example of Apple partnering

01:36:15   with a fashion shop, outside of their own,

01:36:18   which was super interesting to me.

01:36:20   - Yeah, I think so too.

01:36:21   It makes me wonder about future things

01:36:27   like the car and stuff like that.

01:36:29   Will there be, and again, it would be interesting

01:36:33   even if it wasn't like to partner

01:36:35   with an existing car company,

01:36:36   but again, like maybe to partner with Hermes

01:36:39   and have like a car come out with an Hermes designed interior

01:36:43   or something like that.

01:36:45   - Yeah, I mean, again, they're gonna wanna have products

01:36:47   that are introductory, they get people in the door,

01:36:49   they're gonna have the product that most people

01:36:51   end up buying, which is usually the middle of the road

01:36:52   product, and they're gonna wanna have premium products.

01:36:54   People who want the absolute best,

01:36:56   and when you get to things like cars and watches,

01:36:58   with the absolute best, it isn't just about speeds and feeds.

01:37:01   - Wouldn't that be interesting?

01:37:02   I wonder, this had never really occurred to me before,

01:37:06   but in the way that they, for things like the car,

01:37:09   they have to be thinking in the scope of a decade, right?

01:37:13   That this thing got started at least three, four,

01:37:16   five years ago, maybe even more.

01:37:18   And it's probably at least three, four, five years away

01:37:23   from coming to market.

01:37:25   That this is something that they've had to think

01:37:27   in a decade long window for.

01:37:29   And in terms of what you and I talked about

01:37:35   earlier in the show about what was the point

01:37:38   of the gold Apple Watch edition models

01:37:42   and going through all this and selling these things

01:37:44   at these high prices for something that was going to sell in such low quantities.

01:37:48   I wonder if part of it isn't getting, you know,

01:37:53   rehearsing sort of going through the,

01:37:57   the bifurcated levels of product based on significantly different orders of

01:38:02   magnitude, different prices, um,

01:38:06   and partnering with companies and,

01:38:08   and creating truly luxurious, um,

01:38:13   materials using truly luxurious materials to separate these segments.

01:38:17   Not so much for the watch itself, but for the eventual car.

01:38:22   Because in the car, that's, it's going to be significantly more money and way more

01:38:27   important that there are maybe, maybe who knows, maybe the car will come out and

01:38:32   there's one model and it's, you know, $25,000 and that's it.

01:38:35   But somehow I don't think so.

01:38:36   Yeah, no, absolutely.

01:38:38   And that's why I think segmentation again was so important for Apple this year,

01:38:41   because as you get into, as you become a certain size,

01:38:45   your growth becomes limited,

01:38:46   you have to start segmenting.

01:38:48   And as you get into other product lines,

01:38:50   you can't just assume that they work the same way

01:38:52   that your existing product lines do.

01:38:53   Apple has been very canny about avoiding the pitfalls

01:38:56   that have hit a lot of other technology companies.

01:38:57   And part of the reason is that they sort of think

01:39:00   through these things, they pick something,

01:39:01   they focus on it, and they experiment

01:39:03   in a myriad of different ways,

01:39:05   including a lot of prototyping,

01:39:07   but also a lot of things like maybe like doing

01:39:09   Apple Watch from as a rendition or things like that so that when they get

01:39:12   into things like watches and things like cars they're not presenting them the way

01:39:16   they present you know an iPod shuffle they're presenting them within the

01:39:18   context of that product yeah I did think I do think it was interesting too that

01:39:25   by September you just mentioned you mentioned this a minute or two ago that

01:39:31   just it was a year after Apple Watch was initially unveiled but it was really

01:39:37   just May, June, July, August, so five months after it actually hit market where they had

01:39:45   all new bands and straps and didn't just add new bands and straps but actually replaced

01:39:51   some of the earlier colors, some of the pastels colored sport bands with, to my eyes, a much

01:40:00   more attractive overall lineup of colors.

01:40:02   And watch OS 2 is shipped five months after watch OS 1 which is very fast, you know apples

01:40:08   usual product rollouts

01:40:10   yeah, I

01:40:13   I'm more intrigued by the

01:40:15   hardware differences and the bands then then the OS because I kind of feel like watch OS 2

01:40:21   Calling it a 2.0 was

01:40:24   Is a little marketing II, you know, it's really sort of it was to me closer to here's the watch OS

01:40:31   we really had wanted to ship originally.

01:40:33   - Absolutely, it was around,

01:40:35   it filled in all the little gaps

01:40:36   that were obviously missing from the first one.

01:40:38   - Right, and there's a big difference obviously

01:40:39   with the native apps, you know,

01:40:41   third party native apps being able to run right on a watch

01:40:43   as opposed to just being projected on the watch

01:40:46   from your phone, like the original WatchKit apps.

01:40:49   But other than that, it's really hard to point to anything

01:40:53   in watchOS 2.0 that was really a 2.0 feature.

01:40:57   - Yeah, it's interesting though that it was,

01:41:01   they've sort of decoupled it.

01:41:02   You didn't have to wait for a new watch to get watchOS 2.0.

01:41:04   They were willing to use that sort of marketing lingo

01:41:06   with mid-cycle almost.

01:41:10   It just shows that the watch is a very,

01:41:11   they're treating the watch as a very different

01:41:13   sort of product than they have the phones previously.

01:41:15   - Yeah, I almost feel like, again,

01:41:18   part of it is that they've gone through the iPhone

01:41:21   to iPhone 3G transition within the first year

01:41:24   as opposed to waiting an entire year for it.

01:41:26   What was the other thing?

01:41:30   And the fact that so many, I mean, it's not even,

01:41:34   you don't even have to conjecture.

01:41:35   It's not like speculation or rumor

01:41:38   that some of the features, a lot of the features in WatchOS 2

01:41:41   were originally meant for WatchOS 1

01:41:44   because they showed them a year ago,

01:41:47   at the original watch event,

01:41:49   things like the additional watch faces,

01:41:53   like the, hey, pick your own,

01:41:54   choose your own photo from your photo library

01:41:56   and have that as your watch face.

01:41:58   They showed that in 2014, and it wasn't there when it shipped in 2015.

01:42:03   And some of the faces had the time travel already in them.

01:42:06   Yes.

01:42:06   Like all the stuff that we saw was just logical completions of the things

01:42:10   that had been set up in the first version.

01:42:12   Right.

01:42:12   It almost you know, the fact that time travel wasn't there originally,

01:42:15   almost it defeated the existence of the the crown.

01:42:20   Yes.

01:42:21   That the crown was meant to be there for that sort of, you know, here.

01:42:25   If you want to see where you're going to be later in the afternoon,

01:42:27   just look at your watch and spin the crown.

01:42:30   - And to your earlier point,

01:42:31   I mean, they weren't not capable of getting it ready

01:42:33   in that point, so should they have waited

01:42:35   until September to release it?

01:42:36   No, it was nice to get it out early

01:42:38   and they can add those things as they're going.

01:42:40   - Yeah, the other thing that I wanna talk about on that

01:42:44   is the rumors, and I don't doubt them,

01:42:48   but that optimistically they had hoped to ship the watch

01:42:52   a year ago, by the end of 2014.

01:42:56   And maybe you just need to have a goal like that to get it so that it does ship in early

01:43:01   2015.

01:43:03   But I feel like for these new products where they have these...

01:43:08   Just compare the pencil, which is less of a...

01:43:12   At least at this point, clearly not as big a deal as the watch.

01:43:15   But the fact that here we are going into the holidays and somebody who at December 14th

01:43:20   was like, "Oh, I know.

01:43:21   I want to get one more present for my significant other.

01:43:23   I'll get him an Apple Pencil."

01:43:26   do it in time, but with the watch you could because the watch got those kinks out of the

01:43:32   operational and the manufacturing system in the first half of the year rather than unveiling

01:43:39   in the in the fourth quarter.

01:43:41   Absolutely.

01:43:42   And it's worse for Apple because they lose the sales on those keyboards and on those

01:43:45   pencils that just aren't in aren't on the shelves.

01:43:48   Yeah, you can't.

01:43:49   That's I, I just feel like that's so much easier to sell.

01:43:55   Well, what the hell? I'll just get the pencil and the expensive smart keyboard while I'm

01:44:00   buying this $1100 iPad than later on. There's no doubt in my mind that if they had full

01:44:06   availability on those, they would have sold more of them than they will because some number

01:44:10   of people who did buy the iPad Pro and when they bought it wanted to buy the pencil, maybe

01:44:16   will never get back around to buying it.

01:44:19   Even when we've all heard stories about the original, like the, you know, the golden path

01:44:23   on the original iPhone that Steve Jobs demonstrated in 2007, how he had to stick to it or the

01:44:27   entire thing would have just collapsed on.

01:44:29   Getting those first products out is extremely hard and who knows what the internal dates

01:44:33   are for these things, but they get them out as soon as they can.

01:44:37   It was like you had to, it was something to the effect of like he had to demo Safari and

01:44:42   load the New York Times web page first and then go to mail.

01:44:45   And if he had gone to mail first and then tried to load Safari, like it wouldn't have

01:44:48   been enough RAM and it wouldn't, you know, full webpage wouldn't have loaded or something

01:44:52   like you know to that effect you had to do every one of those things in the right order

01:44:56   yeah and a lot of the stuff comes in hot now and whether that's because they're doing too much or

01:45:01   because they're on certain schedules it's hard to say but they do run absolutely as fast as they can

01:45:06   to get that stuff out um what else was in september so there was apple tv new apple tv

01:45:13   yeah ipad pro the pencil the apple tv was really strange for me because the apple tv uh they they

01:45:19   They haven't shipped one previously since 2012, March, 2012.

01:45:23   And they'd worked on a bunch of different ones.

01:45:25   They'd worked on set top boxes on like recording box.

01:45:27   I think like just a whole different,

01:45:28   the strategy for that Apple TV just kept changing

01:45:31   and they just didn't ship anything.

01:45:32   And finally, they sort of settled on this box,

01:45:34   which is all I ever wanted from them,

01:45:36   was just a better Apple TV that ran apps.

01:45:38   But because it took them so long to settle on it,

01:45:40   that product also came in hot and didn't have things like,

01:45:43   you know, Siri for Apple Music,

01:45:44   didn't have finished versions of the apps on it,

01:45:46   didn't even get the podcast app out.

01:45:48   So that to me was almost like a very strange,

01:45:51   maybe the strangest release for Apple in a long time.

01:45:54   - Yeah, especially given all of the,

01:45:56   to me at least, it's a really strong rumors

01:46:01   that it was heading into WWDC

01:46:03   that it was gonna be announced then.

01:46:05   And of course, we just said how long WWDC was,

01:46:09   there wasn't room for it.

01:46:11   But if there was any sort of thought in anybody's head

01:46:13   that well, maybe Apple TV just got cut from WWDC

01:46:16   just because of time.

01:46:18   I think the fact that it was as hard for them

01:46:21   to get it out by the end of 2015 as it was

01:46:23   shows that no, it just wasn't ready at the time.

01:46:26   - Yeah, and again, spectacular team,

01:46:27   super smart people working on it,

01:46:28   but I don't think a clear product direction

01:46:31   was set for it early enough in the development cycle.

01:46:34   - Yeah.

01:46:35   I'm liking mine a lot.

01:46:37   I really like it.

01:46:40   I like my old Apple TV, and most of the time

01:46:43   that I'm watching TV is spent using Apple TV.

01:46:46   - Likewise.

01:46:47   - But I find as it settles in and now it doesn't feel

01:46:53   like the new Apple TV to me anymore,

01:46:55   it feels just like this is Apple TV.

01:46:57   I really like it a lot.

01:46:59   I feel like there's still some fine tuning

01:47:01   to be done on the touchpad sensitivity.

01:47:05   But I like it a lot, I really, really do.

01:47:12   - I cut the cable cord several years ago

01:47:14   and it's the only thing that's connected to my TV now.

01:47:16   And I watched it almost all day, every day.

01:47:19   And my favorite thing about it is that

01:47:21   a lot of it can be updated server side.

01:47:22   So like the TV app shipped and it really wasn't finished.

01:47:25   It didn't do everything that the original TV app did.

01:47:27   But over time you can see it.

01:47:29   Like they used to sort the order of the shows

01:47:32   based on what you purchased.

01:47:34   Even if it was an old show that would never be updated,

01:47:36   it would sit on top and new episodes are coming

01:47:38   into other shows and you wouldn't be able to find them.

01:47:40   And now they fixed all that.

01:47:41   so kind of sorts based on recent episodes

01:47:43   and they've added the Siri for Apple music

01:47:46   and they're fixing a lot of it as it goes.

01:47:48   And it probably has, it's the best example.

01:47:50   I know it's also an iOS,

01:47:51   but it's the best example of my favorite feature this year,

01:47:54   which is last year or the year before it was extensibility.

01:47:57   And this year it's the on-demand resources

01:48:00   where they've got this whole philosophy now

01:48:01   of all the stuff you use all the time, frequently,

01:48:04   and all the new stuff is gonna be right there available

01:48:06   on the flash chips super fast.

01:48:09   And the stuff you don't use,

01:48:10   we're gonna keep up on the cloud

01:48:11   and then bring it down to you when you need it.

01:48:13   So effectively you have this,

01:48:14   you have the server side cloud worth of all this content,

01:48:17   but it doesn't slow down your machine when you're using it.

01:48:20   Not like my PS3, which I think took four hours of updates

01:48:23   every time I turned it on.

01:48:24   - I wonder how well games are doing.

01:48:30   The App Store for Apple TV is, I would call it vibrant.

01:48:35   And every time I take a look at it,

01:48:36   there's definitely new stuff.

01:48:38   And so there's, they absolutely have activity on it.

01:48:42   But are people actually using them?

01:48:47   I would say, I have to say, just to compare and contrast,

01:48:51   I would say with the watch,

01:48:52   they absolutely got developers to develop for it.

01:48:55   But I don't think many people are using third party apps

01:48:59   on their watch with much frequency.

01:49:02   - No, I agree.

01:49:03   - It just isn't a great platform for that yet.

01:49:05   It's too slow and it's too limited.

01:49:07   - Arguably, maybe it won't be the same kind of app platform

01:49:10   that the phone is when they figure it out.

01:49:12   - That might, it may well be.

01:49:14   And it doesn't necessarily mean that the watch itself

01:49:16   as a long-term device isn't useful or successful.

01:49:19   It just may mean that apps aren't a big part of that.

01:49:23   With the Apple TV, I think the potential is clearly there,

01:49:26   you know, for gaming and whatever else.

01:49:29   But it's hard to tell.

01:49:30   I don't know how to gauge that from our perspective.

01:49:34   - There's some hard stuff there.

01:49:35   Like they don't include a bundled game pad in it.

01:49:38   You have to get a third party game pad.

01:49:39   And because of that, they changed their minds

01:49:41   on whether you had to support,

01:49:43   whether you could just offer exclusive game pad games.

01:49:45   Originally you could, but then they said, no,

01:49:46   you also had to support the Siri remote,

01:49:48   which led to some gaming compromises.

01:49:50   And it's fantastic, I think ODR is,

01:49:52   a lot of things just don't support it yet.

01:49:53   Like I don't know if Unity or Unreal support it yet,

01:49:56   which means people can't just take their existing games

01:49:58   and dump them on Apple TV.

01:49:59   There's a lot of work involved in getting them to do that

01:50:01   sort of quick staging for the download

01:50:03   and then downloading the additional resources.

01:50:05   - ODR meaning the on demand resources.

01:50:07   - On demand resources, yeah, I apologize.

01:50:09   Yeah, so it's just a way of staging apps.

01:50:10   Like the idea of ODR is that you never want someone

01:50:13   on their TV to hit a button and say,

01:50:14   storage is full, please delete something.

01:50:16   'Cause that's a horrible experience on a console.

01:50:18   So you want it to intelligently manage all that stuff.

01:50:20   But the drawback is it has to download a really small file

01:50:23   in the beginning to see how much space there is

01:50:25   and how much else it has to pull down.

01:50:27   And that means that on the developer side,

01:50:28   they have to go through and slice up their app essentially,

01:50:31   so that it can deliver itself in chunks.

01:50:33   And that's new.

01:50:34   It's not just taking your existing game

01:50:35   and dumping it on the Apple TV.

01:50:37   - Yeah, Jonas just ran into that with the PS4

01:50:40   we have in the house where he got,

01:50:42   and it's funny because it was,

01:50:45   he got a couple of games from family members,

01:50:51   outside the family.

01:50:52   Like Amy's mom got him two PlayStation games

01:50:55   and got them on disc.

01:50:57   And I understand like as a gift why that's better.

01:50:59   It's an actual thing you can unwrap

01:51:02   and there's a tangibleness to it.

01:51:05   But I was thinking in the back of my head,

01:51:06   that's sort of a pain in the ass.

01:51:07   Like I kind of, you know, I'm kind of all,

01:51:10   I'm kind of done with putting discs in the machines

01:51:12   to watch movies or play games.

01:51:14   - Yes.

01:51:14   - And he was happy about it.

01:51:18   And I was like, oh, why?

01:51:19   And he goes, well, you know,

01:51:20   the PlayStation's getting full.

01:51:23   And in fact, when he went to play the one,

01:51:26   he actually, for the first time, ran into,

01:51:30   even though the game was given to him on disc,

01:51:32   it actually generated "You've got to make room on your PlayStation" because it didn't

01:51:36   even have enough space to download the patches for the game on disk.

01:51:42   And it wasn't a huge issue.

01:51:43   I mean, we just figured out just a handful of games that he hasn't played recently he

01:51:49   could get rid of, you know, ones that he had downloaded and make plenty of room on the

01:51:54   -- I think it has like a 400 gigabyte drive.

01:51:57   Didn't take much.

01:51:58   But like you said, it's not a good experience.

01:52:01   Yeah. And I kind of feel like long term.

01:52:03   Again, you know, think about this as we go down the road,

01:52:08   and like you said, like, well, maybe some of the, you know, like Unity

01:52:10   and some of these big gaming things don't support ODR yet.

01:52:14   It's not that it's not as important that they support it now

01:52:20   is that they support it eventually.

01:52:21   And within two or three years, if everybody does Apple and,

01:52:25   you know, give Apple TV another two or three years of,

01:52:29   you know, Johnny Cerucci's team's magic.

01:52:32   Yes.

01:52:32   And I'm not even making-- you know,

01:52:34   I don't want to go down the whole path of what's

01:52:36   the point where Apple TV is technically

01:52:39   competitive with the dedicated gaming consoles.

01:52:43   Or a Mac Mini for that matter.

01:52:45   Right, but I think it's narrowing the gap.

01:52:47   And I think it's the sort of thing where maybe it'll never

01:52:50   pass it, but the gap will continue

01:52:51   to get narrower and narrower, and therefore eventually will

01:52:55   be good enough.

01:52:57   Whether it's, you know, how good it is as gaming platform now matters, but how good

01:53:02   it's going to be overall over the next three, four or five years is more

01:53:06   important.

01:53:06   And getting ODR support eventually within the next year or two could make a big

01:53:11   difference, you know, three or four years from now.

01:53:13   Yeah, it's clearly a part of Apple's long-term strategy because Apple Music,

01:53:16   it's called Nearline and database parlance.

01:53:18   It's basically you prioritize frequently accessed and new data over, uh,

01:53:24   infrequently accessed and older data.

01:53:25   And they do it for Apple Music.

01:53:27   They do it for iCloud photo library,

01:53:28   everything that they're building towards

01:53:30   an entire environment that sort of abstracts away storage.

01:53:33   So you never have to get that little pop-up

01:53:35   saying you're out of room.

01:53:36   It'll just intelligently, almost like a fusion drive.

01:53:39   It'll just intelligently manage your storage back and forth.

01:53:42   But the compromises in general are super interesting.

01:53:43   Like they went with 10, 100 base T

01:53:45   instead of gigabit on the Apple TV.

01:53:47   And it's sort of, why would they do that?

01:53:49   But then it turns out the gigabit,

01:53:51   because of the speed, it'll spike a CPU

01:53:53   and could result in dropped frames

01:53:55   on something that's trying to do 60 frames per second,

01:53:57   1080p video or gaming.

01:53:59   So they went with a more conservative chip set

01:54:01   because the video they're streaming is not that big.

01:54:02   So they don't need that bandwidth

01:54:04   and this gives them a much better control

01:54:05   over how much load hits the processor.

01:54:08   And they didn't go with 4K

01:54:09   'cause 4K, you know, it's not a lot of penetration yet

01:54:12   and HDR might be coming to 4K.

01:54:14   So making this box, it obsesses a lot of people

01:54:17   but at the same time, they made a lot of

01:54:19   sort of smart decisions the way they make with the camera

01:54:21   and with other aspects of their products.

01:54:24   - Yeah, and I also think that they're designing

01:54:26   for the mainstream in a, you know,

01:54:31   let's keep this as simple as possible.

01:54:33   And the truth is very few people, if I had to guess,

01:54:37   very few people are hooking their Apple TV

01:54:39   up to ethernet, period.

01:54:41   It's WiFi all the way.

01:54:43   - Yeah, and 802.11ac is better for that because why,

01:54:47   I still plug my name because I just don't trust

01:54:49   WiFi connections for anything.

01:54:50   I get super annoyed when it stops in buffers

01:54:52   or it drops a signal or have to reboot the router.

01:54:55   But for those people 802.11ac is way more important

01:54:57   to have a stable Wi-Fi connection

01:54:59   than to have a faster ethernet connection.

01:55:00   'Cause you notice the problems with Wi-Fi

01:55:02   much more than you would with ethernet.

01:55:04   - Yeah, but you're not the typical person.

01:55:07   I mean, I don't know why.

01:55:07   It would be an interesting thing.

01:55:09   What do you think the percentage of people,

01:55:11   of all the people who've already bought the new Apple TV,

01:55:14   what percentage do you think are on Wi-Fi and ethernet?

01:55:20   I would bet at least 95% are Wi-Fi.

01:55:24   - You know, and Apple, I think you and I

01:55:26   were both talking about this at the event.

01:55:27   Apple has great numbers and all this stuff,

01:55:29   even if we don't always have them.

01:55:30   Like there's no Bluetooth keyboard support,

01:55:32   but it turns out like 2% of people use Bluetooth keyboard

01:55:35   and they're all developers.

01:55:36   - Right.

01:55:37   - So it wasn't on their priority list.

01:55:38   - Right, so we complained like hell about it

01:55:40   because we knew that when you hook up a new Apple TV,

01:55:43   you can just take a, you know,

01:55:45   find a Bluetooth keyboard nearby

01:55:47   and then you can enter all your passwords conveniently.

01:55:49   - Or the MacBook One that we completely forgot

01:55:51   to talk about too.

01:55:51   Like there's not a lot of ports,

01:55:53   but almost nobody connects their MacBook

01:55:55   to an external display.

01:55:56   It's like 4% of people or something, but it's all of us.

01:55:58   - Yeah.

01:55:59   I did forget about the MacBook One.

01:56:01   - I did too, it's just such a busy year.

01:56:02   - What was that?

01:56:03   That was March, right?

01:56:04   - Yeah.

01:56:06   - At the same event where the Apple Watch was reentered.

01:56:10   - And research kit, yeah.

01:56:12   - Well, hold the thought on that,

01:56:15   because I'll tie that into something else.

01:56:18   And, well, that's where we were talking about Apple TV.

01:56:32   I would say with games, I don't know if it's a hit yet or not.

01:56:36   I kind of feel like they made a mistake by rejiggering the rule on whether you can have

01:56:43   a game that demands a controller.

01:56:47   I understand why maybe they wouldn't want to.

01:56:49   Maybe the fear was that if they allowed that,

01:56:52   all the games would do it, and it would make the platform--

01:56:54   - Or I think the problem was that if someone bought it

01:56:56   and then found out they required a controller,

01:56:58   they'd get upset.

01:56:59   There was a hard way of telling people

01:57:01   you need a controller to do this.

01:57:02   - Well, that's fixable, though, in software, right?

01:57:06   That's not a very difficult problem to solve,

01:57:09   because the Apple TV itself knows whether

01:57:11   a gaming controller has been configured for it.

01:57:16   Yeah, and I think they were hoping to have that, but they just did not have that at launch.

01:57:21   So it knows, you know, the system knows whether there is a dedicated gaming controller paired

01:57:27   with it or not.

01:57:28   And if it's not and the app you're trying to buy requires one, it's very easy to put

01:57:34   up a prompt that says this game requires a gaming controller.

01:57:38   Do you still want to buy this?

01:57:41   Yes or no?

01:57:42   Well, don't don't put yes or no buttons up, but buy and cancel.

01:57:46   Don't get me started on yes and no buttons.

01:57:49   You know, I think that's coming.

01:57:50   I just think they don't they didn't have it in place that they flipped the rule.

01:57:53   Yeah, I guess maybe that might have been why.

01:57:56   Hopefully what my hope is that they they've changed the rule

01:57:59   because it just wasn't ready to support it yet and that they fully plan to allow it.

01:58:03   And you can see from some of the exceptions they've made

01:58:06   that they seem to be leaning in that direction.

01:58:08   Like they do allow you to sell a game that requires a dedicated piece of

01:58:13   hardware, period like guitar hero is allowed to require you to buy, you know,

01:58:19   the, the physical guitar hardware and.

01:58:22   Disney infinity is allowed to require the little infinity figurines, right?

01:58:30   Isn't there an infinity?

01:58:31   There is infinity for Apple TV, right?

01:58:33   Yes.

01:58:33   Um, I'm glad I either that or I had imagined it.

01:58:38   So like Disney infinity is an ingenious, I think an ingenious way to,

01:58:42   for, to,

01:58:43   to make money from a game is instead of like in-app

01:58:48   purchases, like recurring revenue, Disney infinity, like to unlock characters,

01:58:52   you actually have to buy the physical character as like a little action figure.

01:58:56   Yeah. It's like Lego dimensions and that other one that I keep forgetting.

01:58:59   So that's allowed it, but what's not,

01:59:02   what's not allowed is to require a generic gaming controller period,

01:59:07   but clearly some games absolutely positively need it.

01:59:10   Yes.

01:59:11   You know, and there's some platformers that have come out.

01:59:15   I forget the name of the one, but there's a platformer for Apple TV.

01:59:18   It's pretty popular.

01:59:19   And if you don't have a gaming controller,

01:59:21   the way their way around it is that the character sort of like just runs automatically.

01:59:26   And it turns into more of like a one button jump type thing when.

01:59:31   But the game is clearly meant to be played like a regular platformer

01:59:34   where you can have full control over going left, right, up, down.

01:59:36   - Yeah, I don't know if we want to get into

01:59:38   whole App Store tangent now,

01:59:40   but there's clearly heating up against limitations

01:59:43   of the old, because the App Store technology is ancient

01:59:45   and it comes from iTunes music days

01:59:47   and it needs to be overhauled and it's a huge process.

01:59:50   But you can't even, if I, right now, if I said,

01:59:52   John, this is an amazing Apple TV app,

01:59:54   I have no way of sending it to you.

01:59:56   I have to tell you to go to search and start typing this in

01:59:58   and maybe you'll get the right,

02:00:00   there are just so many things you can't do with the Apple TV

02:00:03   because it wasn't, it's the furthest extreme

02:00:05   from what the App Store was set up to do originally.

02:00:08   - Yeah, I wonder, I mean, it's just crazy though

02:00:10   that there's no way, and it's, you and I run into this

02:00:13   if you write websites where like if,

02:00:17   I don't know, if Electronic Arts has a game.

02:00:21   Well, if EA.com/nameofthegame points to their Apple TV game,

02:00:26   well, we can link to their website, obviously.

02:00:28   But there is no like Apple TV App Store thing

02:00:32   that we can link, we can't link directly

02:00:34   to the app.

02:00:36   - And even if I do, there's no,

02:00:38   I mean, they don't surface WebKit.

02:00:39   WebKit's a private API in the Apple TV,

02:00:41   so no one can see that and click,

02:00:42   they have to actually physically go

02:00:44   and start typing that in on their Apple TV anyway.

02:00:46   - Right, right.

02:00:47   And so, A, from the perspective of writing an article

02:00:50   about an app or a game for Apple TV,

02:00:51   we can't really link to it directly.

02:00:53   And B, if you're at your TV and you wanna get to it,

02:00:57   there's no way to...

02:00:58   (laughs)

02:01:00   It is weird.

02:01:02   It's a hard problem, I understand.

02:01:03   I'm not saying, this is one of those ones where I laugh

02:01:05   because it does seem silly, but I'm not laughing

02:01:08   because there's an obvious solution staring us in the face

02:01:10   and it just seems incomprehensible that they didn't,

02:01:13   you know, just do X.

02:01:15   - It's a longstanding issue.

02:01:16   Like if I'm on "Daring Fireball"

02:01:17   and you recommend a great Mac app

02:01:18   but I'm looking at it on my iPhone,

02:01:19   I can hit that Mac App Store link.

02:01:21   It doesn't help me at all.

02:01:22   The Apple Watch gets around it

02:01:24   because it's a slave device right now

02:01:26   or a companion device right now.

02:01:27   So it just transfers the app back and forth,

02:01:29   but I can't really get stuff off.

02:01:31   You know, I can download it to iTunes,

02:01:32   but it's sort of horrible.

02:01:34   And it makes you think that there has to be something

02:01:36   underway to allow for cross-platform

02:01:38   and even web-based purchases,

02:01:40   'cause there are all those iTunes preview pages up there,

02:01:42   and we just haven't gotten there yet.

02:01:44   - Yeah.

02:01:45   It seems like you oughta be able to do some things that,

02:01:48   you know, the path forward would be something like

02:01:53   the way with Kindle that,

02:01:58   you tell me about this great book

02:01:59   and send me a link to the Kindle page for the book.

02:02:03   And my Kindle isn't even with me.

02:02:05   My physical Kindle hardware is at home and I'm at work.

02:02:08   I can go and buy it now and Amazon will just say,

02:02:11   "Where do you want this to go?"

02:02:12   And I can say, "Just send it to my Kindle."

02:02:15   And when I get home, there it is, it's already on my Kindle.

02:02:19   It seems like you ought to be able to do something like that

02:02:20   with your Apple TV, where you ought to be able to,

02:02:22   if you're on a computer, there should be a web version

02:02:26   of the Apple TV app store,

02:02:29   that if you're signed into your iTunes account,

02:02:31   you can just buy an app or download it

02:02:35   to your Apple TV right from there.

02:02:38   - Absolutely, and they can even put up a prompt

02:02:41   if when you go to your Apple TV,

02:02:42   said you began a purchase on this,

02:02:44   do you wanna confirm this purchase now?

02:02:45   And you press yes, then it just downloads.

02:02:47   If they're really worried about people buying things

02:02:49   by accident for the wrong platform.

02:02:51   But it likens me, iTunes is archaic,

02:02:54   but it's got billions and billions of dollars

02:02:55   of transactions going over it.

02:02:57   So it's hard to just change it,

02:02:59   but it's a bridge that is sort of old and crumbly,

02:03:02   and they have to make sure that that second,

02:03:03   that new bridge is fully built out,

02:03:05   and then sort of carefully redirect traffic onto it.

02:03:08   It's not gonna be an easy swap, but I really hope,

02:03:10   sort of like how Apple.com this year had that big change

02:03:13   where store.apple.com just appeared,

02:03:15   and suddenly it was a modern website

02:03:16   with everything integrated.

02:03:18   I really hope the same thing has been going on for iTunes,

02:03:20   and one day they just flip a switch,

02:03:22   and we have a modern, elegant version

02:03:24   of the entire iTunes store stack for all the devices.

02:03:28   - I still get thrown off by the new store.apple.com

02:03:31   because it's so ingrained in me

02:03:34   that you have to go to a separate website

02:03:37   to buy stuff at Apple or see the prices for them

02:03:39   or something like that.

02:03:40   And the fact that you don't now, but you know.

02:03:43   - I click the shopping bag all the time

02:03:44   expecting there to be a store there that's just empty.

02:03:47   - That's a transition that that team,

02:03:49   that's the sort of thing because in hindsight,

02:03:51   it feels like, wow, this is the way it always

02:03:52   should have been that the team that did the work on that,

02:03:55   it's easy to overlook just how hard that is

02:03:57   to change something that again, like you said,

02:04:00   adds billions of dollars flowing through it

02:04:02   and make a change like that

02:04:03   and have it come off as well as it did.

02:04:06   - Yeah, just again, we woke up and it changed

02:04:08   and that's pretty much exactly

02:04:09   what you wanna have happen with that stuff.

02:04:12   - Before I do the last, I have one more sponsor then,

02:04:14   but before we do that, we should talk from the September,

02:04:18   we didn't even mention the iPhone 6S yet.

02:04:20   - Or the iPad Pro.

02:04:22   or the iPad Pro.

02:04:23   The 6S, you know, it's fantastic.

02:04:31   I don't think there's much to talk about in hindsight.

02:04:33   I mean, it's a terrific year over year upgrade

02:04:35   versus the 6.

02:04:36   Most people don't buy them one year after another,

02:04:40   but just in terms of keeping the incremental year over year,

02:04:44   it just keeps getting better every year.

02:04:45   Progress moving forward,

02:04:46   it's about as good an update as Apple's ever done.

02:04:51   - Yeah, and I think it's once again, an example of the,

02:04:54   you know, 'cause Apple goes to incredible lengths

02:04:56   with these phones and this year it looks the same,

02:04:58   but it's got 7,000 series aluminum.

02:05:00   The screen looks the same, but it's got double density,

02:05:03   chemically treated glass.

02:05:05   It is almost to the atom completely redesigned.

02:05:07   It's got the Taptic Engine inside it,

02:05:09   the A9 processor inside it.

02:05:11   It's got all the new rigidity to support the 3D Touch

02:05:14   because you're actually deforming the glass

02:05:16   at a microscopic level to trigger the pressure sensitivity

02:05:20   in the phone, it's got all these really cool elements in it,

02:05:23   but on the outside, it looks like last year's phone.

02:05:26   - I think, you know, and again,

02:05:29   maybe I'll sing a different tune a year from now,

02:05:31   but I do think if for somebody who is on a two year,

02:05:33   a very much more typical two year upgrade cycle

02:05:36   than the idiotic throw money away every year,

02:05:39   or one year upgrade cycle that you and I are on,

02:05:42   I think the S year is the better year to be on.

02:05:50   - Yeah, well, last time it was Touch ID time,

02:05:52   before that it was Siri.

02:05:53   - Yeah, and just little things like the lack of bendability.

02:05:58   Like I think the bend gate clearly was,

02:06:00   a year ago was overblown, but it is true,

02:06:05   fundamentally it is true that with a certain amount

02:06:07   of pressure you could bend the iPhone.

02:06:09   - But metal bends, yeah, it was physics.

02:06:11   - And that some people were running into it

02:06:14   in non-extreme circumstances,

02:06:17   that they weren't trying to be a jackass

02:06:19   and purposefully bend it, but it did get bent.

02:06:21   And it doesn't, you know, this phone doesn't

02:06:23   for a couple of reasons, you know, for the increase,

02:06:25   you know, the new aluminum, different structures inside

02:06:29   that, you know, little things like that.

02:06:30   Just, I don't think there was a single

02:06:33   faux scandal with the 6S.

02:06:35   - The two different processors was the closest we got.

02:06:38   - Yeah, right.

02:06:39   The closest we got was that they were sourcing the CPU's

02:06:43   from what, TSMC?

02:06:45   - Yeah, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and from Samsung.

02:06:48   and from Samsung and somebody initially came out

02:06:52   with some sort of benchmark where the Samsung one was worse?

02:06:56   Or was it different? - Well, so it was interesting.

02:06:58   It's an example of how like a little knowledge is dangerous

02:07:01   and chipsets have multiple characteristics

02:07:03   and multiple dimensions.

02:07:05   And on an artificial synthetic test,

02:07:08   you could run those chips flat out

02:07:09   and because of various things, including the die size

02:07:12   and the different manufacturing and how those chips work,

02:07:15   you could deplete the Samsung chip faster.

02:07:18   But that's only measuring how fast you can deplete it

02:07:20   running at maximum.

02:07:21   You're not saying, well, this chip is running hotter

02:07:22   for a longer period of time.

02:07:24   It's almost like you have two sprinters

02:07:25   and one is quicker off the gate,

02:07:26   but the other one is stronger in the finish.

02:07:28   And you're trying to measure two seconds in

02:07:30   who's a better sprinter.

02:07:32   - Right, that was it though.

02:07:33   The FOS scandal was that the Samsung one

02:07:34   would run your battery lower.

02:07:36   - Yeah, you got less battery life with the Samsung,

02:07:38   which is true in a synthetic benchmark,

02:07:39   but not true in real life.

02:07:40   - Right, and I feel like even,

02:07:42   I seem to recall that even the synthetic benchmark

02:07:44   that was used, other people ran it later

02:07:46   and didn't get results anywhere near as dramatic.

02:07:49   There were differences,

02:07:50   but it wasn't anywhere near as profound

02:07:52   as initially thought.

02:07:52   - Being on different cell towers would lead

02:07:54   to as significant a difference

02:07:55   as running those tests on those chip sets.

02:07:57   - All right, so I do feel like,

02:08:00   if you're only gonna get one every other year,

02:08:02   you're better off on the S cycle than the non S cycle.

02:08:05   - So that was one of the most interesting stories

02:08:06   for me this year was Apple's beginning

02:08:08   that iPhone upgrade program,

02:08:09   where they're starting to move,

02:08:11   like to starting to cater people

02:08:12   who do wanna get a new iPhone every year,

02:08:14   and also sort of building up their,

02:08:16   The trick for this is that you have to hand in your old iPhone,

02:08:19   which they can then sell in emerging markets.

02:08:21   So it helps out with their price differential

02:08:23   in those emerging markets,

02:08:25   but it also says here's the people

02:08:26   who do want the new iPhone every year.

02:08:28   And I know people say this almost sarcastically,

02:08:30   but it is iPhone as a service almost.

02:08:32   - Yeah, well, and I would compare it

02:08:34   to the very well established market

02:08:38   and high end, very lucrative market of automobiles.

02:08:43   And that leasing has long been established as something

02:08:48   that the car makers themselves,

02:08:49   that the car dealers themselves offer you.

02:08:51   I hear it, you know, as I start thinking about the fact

02:08:57   that professionally, it seems as though

02:08:59   I might be writing about cars sooner rather than later,

02:09:03   I've started paying a little bit more attention.

02:09:04   And I've noticed that a lot of car advertisements

02:09:07   only talk about leasing prices.

02:09:10   And you know, it's exactly analogous.

02:09:15   There's absolutely no difference,

02:09:18   except that the iPhone costs, you know,

02:09:22   like 800 to $1,000 and cars cost, you know,

02:09:26   20 to $100,000.

02:09:29   - And that was sort of one of the funny other faux scandals

02:09:31   was everyone was panicking.

02:09:32   What's Apple gonna do now that all the carriers in the US

02:09:34   have changed their structure?

02:09:35   They're not gonna be able to hide the price

02:09:36   of the iPhone every year,

02:09:38   ignoring that, you know, a Samsung Android phone,

02:09:40   the high-end Android phones cost the same price

02:09:42   that an iPhone, so it's a universal problem.

02:09:44   But also Apple and the carriers are never gonna let

02:09:46   that upfront sticker price show to consumers.

02:09:49   They're gonna have all these different deals

02:09:50   that you'll be able to partake in.

02:09:52   - Yeah, the worry over that was,

02:09:55   there's obviously some interesting thinking going on

02:09:58   and it is somebody's problem to solve and to manage,

02:10:01   but it is definitely a manageable problem.

02:10:05   And the fact that you see BMW commercials,

02:10:08   or you hear John Hamm pitching in Mercedes commercials,

02:10:11   and then the dollar amount that you hear at the end

02:10:13   is $400 or something like that.

02:10:16   Well, they're not talking about this.

02:10:19   Yeah, they don't tell you that's the cost on a Mercedes.

02:10:21   Yeah, that it's $83,000 to just buy it in cash off the lot.

02:10:26   Even now, they'll say it's like $279 every two weeks

02:10:29   or something.

02:10:29   Yeah.

02:10:30   [LAUGHTER]

02:10:35   But it's definitely manageable.

02:10:38   And it's definitely what--

02:10:40   to me, is the shift that it's--

02:10:45   it's obviously more of a financial strategy

02:10:48   than a product strategy.

02:10:50   And it's the product stuff that interests me more

02:10:52   about the iPhone and Apple.

02:10:53   But it's definitely interesting.

02:10:55   And I definitely think it's part of the--

02:10:57   and it's like you said, that it's just a generic sense

02:11:02   that it's not just nerds like us who

02:11:03   want a new iPhone every year.

02:11:05   that maybe I'm overstating just how rare you and I,

02:11:09   people like us are in terms of that,

02:11:10   that it is that sort of becoming

02:11:12   more of a mass market mindset.

02:11:14   - Well, and Apple's learning that.

02:11:15   I mean, we saw that with the gold color iPhone 5S,

02:11:17   and it turned out people cared more about having

02:11:19   the new color than a lot of other things.

02:11:20   And now the rose gold iPhone 6S,

02:11:22   people really wanna have the color that shows

02:11:24   that they have the new iPhone.

02:11:26   And we're gonna be going into the iPhone 7,

02:11:28   and if history repeats itself,

02:11:29   we're gonna have a new design now.

02:11:31   And that usually is another tripping point

02:11:32   for a bunch of people to upgrade again.

02:11:34   'cause Tim Cook said I think it was,

02:11:36   still only 30 or 40% of people had upgraded to a new iPhone.

02:11:41   So they have a huge potential market,

02:11:43   not only in people switching from Android

02:11:44   or getting their first phone,

02:11:45   but also in people turning over those iPhones.

02:11:48   - Yeah.

02:11:49   But other than that,

02:11:51   I don't know how much to say about the iPhone's success.

02:11:53   - Great iPhone, yeah. - Yeah, it's, you know,

02:11:56   great, that's it.

02:11:56   iPad Pro, should we save it for the next segment?

02:12:01   - Sure. - All right.

02:12:04   Our last sponsor today, our final sponsor,

02:12:06   is our good friends, The Broward Group.

02:12:10   Now their app, Ubar2, launched on the talk show last year,

02:12:15   and it was a great success.

02:12:17   So they're back with the new Ubar3.

02:12:20   That's just spelled U, like a lowercase u.

02:12:22   Just think of it like the Apple I, lowercase u,

02:12:25   and then an uppercase BAR.

02:12:28   It is a dock replacement for the Mac.

02:12:30   So we're talking-- this is like good old fashioned,

02:12:33   nerdy type of thing that people who listen to the talk show utility app for the Mac.

02:12:38   The purpose of Ubar is to vastly increase your productivity. Pro users love it and they also

02:12:46   use it to help family members or switchers because one of the things that Ubar does is you can

02:12:51   configure it and like any good nerd utility it is very configurable, super configurable. So one of

02:12:57   the ways you can do it is you can make it run like the Mac dock but like with extra features and stuff

02:13:02   like that. But you can also set it up to run as a Windows taskbar style dock. So for people

02:13:09   in your family who maybe have switched to the Mac recently and one of the things that

02:13:13   they struggle with are the ways, all the various things that they did through the Windows taskbar

02:13:17   that are different through the Mac, you can set Ubar up to run that way. And no matter

02:13:23   how you configure it, it looks great. Just like any great Mac utility, it doesn't sacrifice

02:13:30   visual design and aesthetic beauty just for the sake of, you know, nerd type features.

02:13:40   You know, if you want that type of stuff, if you want something ugly to do like that,

02:13:43   you know, go install Ubuntu or something like that.

02:13:45   This is for people who use a Mac and want their stuff to look beautiful.

02:13:49   So all sorts of shortcuts.

02:13:50   Here's some of the nerdy stuff you can do.

02:13:51   Hold down control when you click on an app and you can see the CPU and RAM usage for that app.

02:13:56   hold down shift and you can quit any app or close any of the individual windows

02:14:01   that are open within that app just by clicking it. Unresponsive apps if you

02:14:05   have an app that needs to be force quit get some red background already so you

02:14:08   can see it without even checking you know the force quit you know command

02:14:12   option escape window and all sorts of customizability you can adjust the sizes

02:14:19   there's themes you can just like the way that the system has light and dark

02:14:23   theme, so does you bar, you can even create your own custom theme. So it's almost getting into like

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02:15:03   10 bucks, and you get a great app.

02:15:06   And one more thing.

02:15:07   Maybe you remember this from when they sponsored the show before.

02:15:09   This is crazy to me.

02:15:12   But the developer of this app, Edward Brower,

02:15:18   that's where the Brower group gets the name from.

02:15:20   In addition to being a great app developer with a great sense of design and stuff like this as a side job, I laugh because this just seems crazy.

02:15:29   He designs and manufactures his own beautiful mechanical watches.

02:15:36   He's a watchmaker in addition to making that.

02:15:39   And he already launched his newest timepiece.

02:15:43   It's called the Mirage and it's available in three colors on the earlier episode of the show.

02:15:48   Each one is a limited edition of only 300 pieces and they all come with an engraved number on the

02:15:54   back. Really, really beautiful design on the dial. My very favorite thing about this watch is the

02:16:00   dial design or at least the dial combined with the hands. Really, really love it. Beautiful typography,

02:16:08   really nice, really nice. Just the layout and the proportions and the diameter is very, very

02:16:18   reasonable 40 millimeter diameter. This is not a big hack and giant watch, which a lot of modern

02:16:24   mechanical watches are. You just have to see yourself and hit the web. There's a separate

02:16:29   website for that. Brawer, B-R-A-W-E-R, timepieces.com and exact same code, Retina Groover.

02:16:38   You don't need to memorize a separate code. Now this is a serious watch. It's a mechanical watch,

02:16:43   the retail price $750. It's a great price for a mechanical watch. It's a lot if you're a casual

02:16:49   risk buyer, but this is totally within the realm of what a handmade mechanical watch is meant to

02:16:55   cost. But if you use that code "retnagruber" 40% off and shipping is free in the US and Canada.

02:17:02   So go check them out. Youbarapp.com, Browertimepieces.com, and on both of them,

02:17:08   you'll save a lot of dough if you use the code "retnagruber."

02:17:12   Love this guy.

02:17:15   He's a really, he's also very, very nice guy, Edward Brouwer.

02:17:18   And I've been emailing him about a little app that he's working on on the side next thing coming up.

02:17:24   Very, very nice guy, thoughtful guy.

02:17:26   But I kind of hate him because he makes me feel like it's the same way that I get so angry at you

02:17:30   sometimes, like when you are so productive and you know, like I feel like I struggle to get like,

02:17:35   like one or two good pieces on during Fireball and a podcast out in a week.

02:17:40   and then you have like 7,000 words on iMore and a comprehensive review of a new thing that only came out the day before and

02:17:47   like four or five podcasts. So you make me angry.

02:17:50   But this guy makes me angrier because he's running a full-time software business with a great app.

02:17:56   The differences between Ubar 2 and 3 are humongous. It is absolutely

02:18:01   remarkable. He's got a remarkable amount of new features in there in a remarkably short number amount of time.

02:18:07   And in the meantime, he also makes

02:18:10   Really nice and those watches are legit. I went took a look at them after the last spot and they're amazing

02:18:15   It's don't understand. I don't understand how he does that

02:18:19   They Renaissance people. Yeah, it makes me mad. I feel like it makes me feel like I'm running in slow motion

02:18:24   Apple the iPad Pro, yes, I

02:18:29   I don't really have much to say about I think it is absolutely remarkable. I think it is it it is

02:18:38   Maybe the best single best of iOS device

02:18:41   That's been made. I mean, I don't know how it's kind of a hard thing to settle

02:18:46   I mean I could make the case for the iPhone 6s - I could also make the case maybe for the iPad mini 4

02:18:53   Which we forgot to mention that came out in September

02:18:57   Which is a it's a great tablet - it is we just

02:19:01   We got one for Jonas upgrading a very old iPad for him and just looking at it. It's

02:19:07   perfect. It is, especially it's, it's to me, the difference

02:19:12   between the mini and the iPad Air is, are you old enough that

02:19:19   you that you want things to be bigger visually, because it's

02:19:22   the exact same number of pixels and the layouts identically, you

02:19:24   don't have to do anything as a developer to to to do for that.

02:19:27   It's just you want it smaller, you want it big. And I'm at the

02:19:30   point now, you know, with the eye medical issues aside, too,

02:19:33   but just at at the age that I'm at, I kind of want the bigger

02:19:36   one. It doesn't have the X in the processor either, but there's so few people are going

02:19:41   to actually push it to that limit. But for someone like, you know, for someone like Jonas

02:19:46   who has, you know, perfect vision as an 11 year old or almost 12 year old, it's clearly

02:19:51   the better iPad for him. He loves it. I mean, absolutely adores the size. I can make the

02:19:58   case for that too. But the iPad Pro, it's the performance on the device that just sort

02:20:05   startles me. I was joking I picked mine up in New York like I think you did and

02:20:09   on the way back I passed by the Microsoft Store and I could hear all

02:20:12   those Intel processors just just crying and maybe trying to jump off the table.

02:20:17   I want to write about this soon because I think it's been I think people have

02:20:25   taken it the wrong way is the angle of the that that this spells doom for Intel

02:20:33   in the long run. And it's not, and I know part of my argument for this as just making

02:20:39   it just like a sanity check and not just going by gut feeling or what I, you know, what I

02:20:44   think makes for an interesting story, but actually trying to measure it as using like

02:20:48   Geekbench scores and just showing that the iPad Pro beats the MacBook One.

02:20:55   But I mean, it's hard because this was a really good year for Apple Silicon. The Apple, the

02:21:00   The A9 is a real leap forward where Intel really struggled

02:21:04   to get the 10 nanometer process out and to get Broadwell,

02:21:08   'cause there's a Broadwell Y, which is core M,

02:21:11   I think is a marketing term in the MacBook,

02:21:13   and it's not a great chip.

02:21:15   So the iPad Pro hit it out the park while Intel,

02:21:19   during a year that Intel was struggling.

02:21:20   - So that, and that's a great point,

02:21:21   but I think that it's more, it's not so much like

02:21:25   one test of these two devices at this snapshot

02:21:30   time but it's the overall trend line and in the way that like intersecting trend

02:21:37   lines over a long period of time at the point where they intersect maybe that

02:21:41   you know maybe next year the MacBook one is faster than next year's iPad Pro but

02:21:47   if it is it won't be by much and three four or five years from now I don't

02:21:50   think there's any question and there's also the issue of being fast enough you

02:21:56   know that it's it doesn't even matter whether there's other Macs or Mac books

02:22:02   that get faster and and just in terms of looking at the trend line like just go

02:22:05   back three four five years and look at the original iPad or the iPad 2 or even

02:22:09   the iPad 3 and where they stood performance wise compared to the MacBook

02:22:15   Air's of the time and it was no comparison they were they you know in

02:22:20   terms of anything that you would measure like on Geekbench or something like that

02:22:22   that they were behind.

02:22:24   But that gap has narrowed steadily and steadily

02:22:27   as years go by.

02:22:28   The A9 chips and ARM chips in general, industry-wide,

02:22:36   are getting better faster than Intel chips

02:22:39   because the scale is just so much bigger.

02:22:42   I think it's also--

02:22:45   again, Apple has considerable advantage

02:22:47   in that they make their own chips.

02:22:48   Intel has to sell those chips at a profit,

02:22:50   and they have to support a variety of different,

02:22:52   like they have to run Windows, they have to run Linux,

02:22:54   they have to run OS X,

02:22:55   and you look at something like the A9X

02:22:57   and it can run three 4K streams at the same time,

02:23:01   and that would just grind a lot of,

02:23:03   even Intel-based Macs into the ground,

02:23:05   it just can't do that.

02:23:06   But Apple built those chips to do it,

02:23:07   they can purpose-build all those chips

02:23:09   for exactly what they wanna do,

02:23:11   and that gives them an incredible amount of flexibility.

02:23:13   And even in ARM, I mean, Qualcomm has been struggling,

02:23:16   Samsung has been struggling, they're their own fab,

02:23:18   They should arguably have way better chips than Apple,

02:23:20   but they just don't have the designers.

02:23:22   Apple's got great designers.

02:23:23   They've got the advantage of building exactly

02:23:25   for their hardware.

02:23:26   I mean, if they could run on Intel's 10 nanometer process,

02:23:29   I think we'd have the best chips in the world.

02:23:31   I think we already do, but we'd have even better ones.

02:23:33   - It's a good question.

02:23:36   It's such an interesting question as to why,

02:23:38   how can Samsung manufacture these for Apple,

02:23:41   but can't do it for themselves?

02:23:43   - It's the same reason why the candlelight ports

02:23:45   on a Galaxy phone.

02:23:46   They just, it's just not something that's,

02:23:48   They just don't have the people.

02:23:49   - It really is to me just eye-opening

02:23:54   when you use the iPad Pro that, you know,

02:23:57   that my complaints about it,

02:23:59   trying to use it instead of a MacBook

02:24:01   are almost entirely software-based.

02:24:03   It's just the design of iOS itself to me,

02:24:06   not being conducive to the sort of things

02:24:09   I wanna do on a Mac in terms of

02:24:11   how do I take advantage of this big screen

02:24:13   and how does, you know, like as much as,

02:24:15   I do like the split screen stuff

02:24:17   that they've added to iOS 9.

02:24:18   But to me, it's still not as useful as the way

02:24:25   that I can have multiple things on screen at once on a Mac.

02:24:29   And as I wrote my review, I'm frustrated

02:24:32   at the lack of keyboard navigability,

02:24:35   that if you're supposed to fundamentally be

02:24:37   able to use this device if you want while it's hooked up

02:24:40   to a keyboard, I don't want to have

02:24:42   to reach up and touch the screen to do some things,

02:24:45   because it really is exactly as Apple's been telling us

02:24:49   for a long time, ergonomically terrible.

02:24:52   - Yeah, my understanding is a lot of that stuff

02:24:53   just didn't make the cut for iOS 9,

02:24:55   but it has been and will be worked on.

02:24:57   - Yeah. - It sort of makes sense

02:24:58   that it has to be.

02:24:59   - Yeah, and I've heard from some friends within the company

02:25:03   that absolutely some of these things are a frustration,

02:25:08   like including the thing I observed about the fact that

02:25:14   When you command tab, the multitasking goes from left to right,

02:25:17   because they just put like a brain dead port of the Mac command tab switcher in.

02:25:22   And the new system wide, like double click the home button and touch the screen switcher,

02:25:28   goes right to left in terms of most recent to oldest.

02:25:33   Even though the old built in switcher that was there for iOS 7 and 8 was left to right.

02:25:41   - Yeah, you're colliding with the force press,

02:25:43   the force swipe on the iPhone 6S there,

02:25:45   'cause they wanted that,

02:25:46   the back gesture goes from left to right,

02:25:48   and so the force back gesture had to go from left to right.

02:25:51   - And what I heard after I wrote about some of this stuff

02:25:54   is, yeah, we know.

02:25:55   - Yeah. (laughs)

02:25:57   - So that's good. - Well, they hit it first.

02:25:58   I mean, the best thing about the iPad Pro right now,

02:26:00   and if you look at the 60 minutes segment,

02:26:01   how many of the executive team members

02:26:03   had iPad Pros in front of them,

02:26:05   is that it's gonna be almost like the Steve Jobs days

02:26:08   where anything that doesn't work

02:26:09   is gonna get immediate executive attention.

02:26:10   I don't trust that though.

02:26:12   I would just say that I don't trust anything I saw

02:26:14   in the 60 minute thing as indicative

02:26:18   of what they actually use.

02:26:19   I wouldn't be surprised, but I would take it all

02:26:22   with a grain of salt in terms of stage management.

02:26:24   - Although apparently some of them do,

02:26:25   like that has become at least for now their go-to machine.

02:26:28   - Oh, I wouldn't be surprised.

02:26:30   And I think it's a tremendous,

02:26:31   a meeting situation is tremendous.

02:26:35   It's almost where you'd rather have a device

02:26:37   that is less likely to distract you

02:26:40   And if you just wanna put up a notes app

02:26:42   and have it be full screen,

02:26:43   and I think it's tremendous for a scenario like that.

02:26:47   - Yeah, and it's interesting as a device

02:26:49   because we are hitting this point

02:26:50   where the MacBook has gone down

02:26:52   to be as close as possible to an iPad

02:26:53   and the iPad has gone up to be as close as possible

02:26:56   to a MacBook, but both of them,

02:26:58   both of them are still very separate things.

02:26:59   Like the MacBook doesn't have any real touch awareness.

02:27:03   It's not a touch friendly environment.

02:27:05   It's not really a mobile friendly environment.

02:27:07   And likewise, your frustrations with the keyboard on iOS.

02:27:10   And even though split screen is nice,

02:27:12   there's no multi window, there's no drag and drop.

02:27:14   There aren't any of these conventions

02:27:15   that are basically muscle memory to people like us now.

02:27:18   And you sort of, there's no middle ground.

02:27:20   You have to pick a side and neither side is perfect.

02:27:23   - I saw somebody on Twitter the other day

02:27:29   was posted a little video where they just said,

02:27:32   "Hey, finally saw iPad Pro."

02:27:33   You know, it was like somebody who hadn't seen one

02:27:35   in the store yet.

02:27:36   And it was like, here's how I tried,

02:27:38   not trying to be a jerk, but they videotaped it with their,

02:27:41   they shot video with their iPhone.

02:27:43   Here's me trying to attach a photo to a male.

02:27:46   And they had male on the left and photos on the right.

02:27:50   And they tried to tap and hold on a photo

02:27:53   and then drag it over across that divide.

02:27:55   And of course it didn't work.

02:27:57   - Yeah, again, you gotta figure that stuff is being worked

02:28:00   on, but it's like, do you touch and hold?

02:28:01   Do you afford, like, what is gonna be the affordance

02:28:03   for that sort of activity?

02:28:05   and they have to make sure it doesn't collide

02:28:07   with all the other gestures that are being used in iOS.

02:28:10   But I think all that is coming,

02:28:11   the last time I was on, I think we spoke about,

02:28:13   I have this long standing desire for iPad OS.

02:28:15   Like I think the same way there's watch OS,

02:28:17   the watch got its distinct thing,

02:28:18   and there's TV OS and the Apple TV got its distinct thing.

02:28:21   I'm glad that the iPad is getting some features now,

02:28:24   but I still think it needs that concept

02:28:27   of keep backboard, keep front board,

02:28:29   but take springboard and think of something

02:28:31   that really is tablet first

02:28:33   that takes advantage of things like the iPad Pro.

02:28:35   - Yeah, and that's the sort of thing.

02:28:38   It was definitely the last time you were on the show.

02:28:40   I couldn't agree more.

02:28:41   In fact, I agree more.

02:28:42   I agreed then, I agree even more now

02:28:45   that it's whether they asked what they'd call it.

02:28:47   No, I don't think they should call it that.

02:28:48   Just call it iOS.

02:28:49   But what it should be fundamentally though is iPadOS.

02:28:52   Is what if iOS was meant only for the iPad?

02:28:57   What should it be like and how do we do that?

02:28:59   How do we get from here to there?

02:29:02   And the iPad suffers the same problem

02:29:03   that the Mac App Store does,

02:29:04   and that it has a much more successful sibling.

02:29:06   So when you get resources, they go to the iOS App Store.

02:29:08   When you get resources, it goes to the iPhone

02:29:10   and then they're ported up to the iPad.

02:29:12   And now that we have broken through with split view

02:29:14   and with some of the keyboard stuff,

02:29:15   I hope that that continues.

02:29:17   And I know it's one of those things

02:29:18   where people inside Apple have the same arguments

02:29:20   that we have outside of Apple.

02:29:22   And I just hope that those people

02:29:24   start to get more sway within it,

02:29:26   because I think as a device,

02:29:27   if Apple is confident that this is the future

02:29:30   of personal computing for them,

02:29:31   I think they really need to give it

02:29:32   the attention it deserves.

02:29:33   - And that brings us to the single most important product

02:29:36   that Apple introduced in 2015, the smart battery case.

02:29:41   (laughing)

02:29:45   - I've been forcing myself to use it for the last week

02:29:48   and a half, I switched away from the iPhone 6S Plus

02:29:51   and been using the 6S with the battery case.

02:29:53   - Do you, would you, I, see if you got used to the Plus,

02:29:59   And if you like the Plus, I can't see how you could--

02:30:02   - I don't, but I like to make sure

02:30:04   that when I review a product, that I go back and actually,

02:30:07   'cause it's impossible to review a product properly

02:30:09   when you first get it, because there's enormous pressure

02:30:11   to get that review up, and not pressure from Apple or anybody

02:30:14   but just people don't care anymore after a couple of weeks.

02:30:17   They won't even bother reading it.

02:30:19   So I wanted to take a look at it

02:30:20   and I wanted to understand it

02:30:21   because if you want a bigger built-in battery,

02:30:23   you get the iPhone 6S Plus, it's what it's there for.

02:30:26   And it's nice because it's elongated

02:30:28   and it dissipates heat really well.

02:30:30   But there's a whole sort of,

02:30:32   and people think that Apple wants to make lighter phones.

02:30:34   They don't, they want to make thinner phones.

02:30:36   They want to make lighter phones.

02:30:37   They want to make phones that have great radio reception.

02:30:39   There's all sorts of trade-offs that you have to do

02:30:40   when you have things like batteries

02:30:42   and things like radios and phones.

02:30:44   So the iPhone 6, I think Apple again is very sincere

02:30:47   when they say that for some people,

02:30:49   it just wasn't enough to do things

02:30:51   that were more than an average day.

02:30:53   They wanted to give them the option.

02:30:54   And if you build that in, you can't take it off.

02:30:56   If you have a heavy phone that's twice as thick,

02:30:58   you can't pull that off when you don't need it.

02:31:00   So you make a case and then you want the case

02:31:02   that's one piece and you want a case

02:31:04   that doesn't interfere with the radio.

02:31:05   Maybe it even makes the radio better

02:31:06   because that way the radio doesn't have to ramp up

02:31:08   and use even more power when it's got a battery case on

02:31:11   'cause that defeats the purpose of a battery case.

02:31:13   And you sort of go through the requirements of it

02:31:15   and you end up with a case that doesn't look great,

02:31:18   but works really, really well.

02:31:20   And then you get this,

02:31:21   previously Apple only cares about design.

02:31:24   They don't care about functionality.

02:31:25   And they make something really functional and immediately get slammed for the design of it, which I think is endlessly interesting.

02:31:30   I spent, you know, definitely a full week with it. I think even longer. I was wearing it all the time.

02:31:35   And I keep thinking, if there's one thing I wish I'd mentioned in my piece writing about it,

02:31:44   is maybe a little bit more emphasis on feel, what it feels like as opposed to what it looks like.

02:31:50   because it definitely looks and I you know I I don't I don't think I held back

02:31:55   I think I called it funny-looking weird-looking it's definitely a

02:31:57   weird-looking I called it awkward and ugly but it definitely doesn't feel bad

02:32:02   and I without question think that it feels better in hand than any of the

02:32:07   mofie cases that I've ever tried because they make the phone feel entirely fat

02:32:12   from yes left to right they make you stretch your hand over it where this one

02:32:16   the hump sort of fells into your palm and your fingers go on either side so I

02:32:19   I would argue, and you know, if somebody, clearly this is the realm of subjectivity,

02:32:23   if somebody else would disagree, sure. But I feel very confident arguing that for me at least,

02:32:28   and I think for many others, it feels better than a Mophie style case. And if somebody else wants to

02:32:34   argue that it looks worse to them, I wouldn't disagree. And I, you know, that's subjective.

02:32:39   And I think Joanna Stern said it best in her review, all battery charging cases are ugly.

02:32:48   in one way or another and Apple's is not an exception.

02:32:51   It's a really, it's as to date an unsolved problem

02:32:55   to make a case that is a battery

02:32:57   that will contain a significant charge for the battery

02:33:01   that isn't ugly and thick.

02:33:04   - It's like the headset jack.

02:33:05   Right now a lot of headphones won't fit into it,

02:33:07   but what do you do?

02:33:08   You can't make a bigger hole

02:33:09   'cause you destroy the structure of the bottom of the phone.

02:33:11   There are problems that you just can't solve

02:33:13   in a good way yet.

02:33:14   - Right, I think that this is a very reasonable compromise.

02:33:18   And I think it's interesting,

02:33:23   and I like that Apple tried this.

02:33:25   I like that Apple decided it was better to do this

02:33:28   imperfections aside rather than not do it at all.

02:33:32   - And apparently they've been working on it,

02:33:33   like it came out late, like no one really expected it

02:33:35   to come out in December, and they've been working on it

02:33:37   for a long time.

02:33:38   And again, like people measure, oh, it's got like the MAH,

02:33:42   milliamps are lower in this than something else.

02:33:45   But that's not in context.

02:33:46   In context, it doesn't waste radio,

02:33:48   which saves a tremendous amount of battery.

02:33:50   And also, because Apple is Apple,

02:33:52   they can integrate it to the point

02:33:54   where it knows it's connected to a case

02:33:55   and not to an outlet,

02:33:57   so it doesn't turn on all the background processes

02:33:59   and start downloading and doing all the networking

02:34:01   that it would in another battery case,

02:34:03   which saves even more power.

02:34:04   So they sort of optimized for efficiency

02:34:06   and not for raw volume of battery.

02:34:08   - Yeah, and I kind of feel like I thought,

02:34:11   when I read reviews of it,

02:34:12   that a lot of them mentioned, and to me,

02:34:14   this is just, it's the wrong way of doing it,

02:34:16   is you have to understand what it's supposed

02:34:17   to be used for, but the test that a lot of people

02:34:19   tried to use was, all right, take an iPhone

02:34:22   that's completely down to zero and plug it in,

02:34:25   and how far do you get?

02:34:26   And you don't even, you know, the complaint was

02:34:28   it doesn't even get you back a full charge.

02:34:30   It doesn't get you back to 100%.

02:34:31   - Like 80% or something.

02:34:32   - That's not the use case of it, though.

02:34:34   The use case of it is not how far does it get you

02:34:37   from a completely dead phone, it's what is your battery life

02:34:41   if you, you know, if you're having,

02:34:43   what is your battery life like if you keep it in it

02:34:46   from the start of the day?

02:34:47   And the answer is it easily gets you through the whole day

02:34:51   of very heavy use.

02:34:53   - That's why it doesn't have a switch on it too,

02:34:54   because that's not something a human should be managing.

02:34:57   That's something the software should be managing.

02:34:59   - Right, whereas the thing, and like I mentioned,

02:35:02   it's the thing I personally prefer

02:35:03   than a battery charging case,

02:35:05   is a little pocket-sized external battery.

02:35:08   That's the sort of thing though,

02:35:09   where you do want to know how much, you know,

02:35:11   where the mega amps or whatever amps, M H W R,

02:35:16   where they, where that really matters.

02:35:18   Where let's say if I take one with me

02:35:20   and where my family's at Disney World all day,

02:35:23   where maybe I'll charge my phone up a little bit

02:35:25   and then give it to my wife

02:35:26   and let her charge her phone up a little bit.

02:35:28   - And maybe plug in your iPad for some time.

02:35:31   - In theory, yeah.

02:35:32   Or for one, the ones that would charge an iPad

02:35:35   I would call them bigger than pocket size.

02:35:37   But if you're carrying a bag around,

02:35:39   that's easily, you know, I can certainly see

02:35:41   why a lot of people do put them in their bag.

02:35:43   That's where that matters.

02:35:46   For something that's supposed to get you

02:35:47   all day battery life, even with heavy use,

02:35:50   the amount of energy that's in the Apple one

02:35:53   is more than enough.

02:35:54   The larger piece that I've seen,

02:35:56   and I think you've, I know you've seen these,

02:35:58   there's a bunch of people who've had like,

02:36:00   it's sort of like, this is the year Apple design

02:36:02   went to shit, and their arguments are more or less,

02:36:07   The battery case is ugly.

02:36:09   The Apple TV remote is symmetric,

02:36:13   so that it's hard to tell which way it's pointed.

02:36:15   - Yeah, they're incredibly ignorant pieces.

02:36:17   - The Apple Pencil Charge is like a big, skinny wang

02:36:22   hanging out of your iPad Pro,

02:36:24   and the MacBook doesn't have enough USB ports.

02:36:28   And they lump them all together, and they're like,

02:36:32   "There you go, Apple's going to shit."

02:36:33   And I would say that there is some merit

02:36:37   some of these complaints and there is no merit to some of these complaints and

02:36:41   some of them are not really an indi- they want to lump it all together and say

02:36:45   that Apple is losing its way without Steve Jobs and Johnny Ive is you know I

02:36:50   don't know you know not paying attention or something like that. Often an

02:36:55   arboretum somewhere in Belgium. Right and I don't think I think there's some merit

02:36:59   to some of the complaints but I don't think that any of them are worrisome

02:37:04   with the possible existence, exception of Apple Music.

02:37:08   - I think a lot of them are incredibly lazy

02:37:10   and just that they didn't try to understand

02:37:11   why the design was done the way it was

02:37:13   before they criticized it.

02:37:14   Some of the points are absolutely valid,

02:37:16   but Apple has always had a design

02:37:18   that you could criticize every year,

02:37:20   you know, pre-Steve Jobs,

02:37:21   after the second coming of Steve Jobs,

02:37:23   during Tim Cook's reign,

02:37:25   there's always been design elements that weren't great.

02:37:28   I mean, MobileMe again, famously under Steve Jobs.

02:37:31   The thing that's interesting to me is like, again,

02:37:33   And do people take the time to understand it?

02:37:35   There was criticism that the iPad Pro

02:37:37   had this empty space for the speakers

02:37:39   and they should have been filled with battery.

02:37:41   But then you sort of think,

02:37:42   how heavy would that make the iPad Pro?

02:37:44   And you are legally not allowed to ship batteries,

02:37:46   like lithium ion batteries of a certain size.

02:37:48   So it'd be great to have an iPad Pro

02:37:50   that you cannot ship to a customer.

02:37:52   And all these things,

02:37:53   or there was an article about how Apple

02:37:55   was posting a job listing for someone to use Avid

02:37:57   and Adobe Premiere.

02:38:00   And there was a whole article

02:38:02   even Apple doesn't want to use Final Cut anymore. And that was actually for the Beats office

02:38:06   in Culver City outside Los Angeles, which has only ever been using those products and hasn't

02:38:11   been integrated into Apple's play. So there's just like, those are like sort of lazy articles,

02:38:15   in my opinion. Yeah, well, you could, I totally agree with that. And I saw that about the

02:38:21   Final Cut Pro not being listed as a thing for the job. And it was beat. You can argue, though,

02:38:26   that it is still is damning against Final Cut Pro acts that somebody outside Apple wasn't using it.

02:38:32   it because they're, you know, that they showed, you know, without it, you know, that they

02:38:37   should have, that a Final Cut Pro X is what it should be, that they would have been using

02:38:40   it.

02:38:41   That every customer would use it, although Apple increasingly is not targeting every

02:38:43   customer with their products.

02:38:45   Yeah, I think a discussion of what's gone wrong with Final Cut Pro X is beyond the scope

02:38:48   of this episode.

02:38:49   Absolutely.

02:38:50   But it'd be worth talking about.

02:38:51   But the Apple Music, the control, yeah, there's absolutely things worth criticizing on.

02:38:55   The one that I find the most frustrating and the one I think is the most clearly talked

02:38:59   about is the Apple Pencil, which is that if you, and I swear to God, the Gizmodo article

02:39:05   was more or less, in terms of what's bad about Apple design and all the stuff in 2015, they

02:39:12   were like, "Apple Pencil, enough said." And it's just a picture of it charging while it

02:39:16   sticks off the table.

02:39:18   And the mouse, the charger and the mouse.

02:39:20   Oh yeah, the try it, and they lump that in. So that's a good one. The charger and the

02:39:24   and the mouse on the bottom. That's an interesting one. That's separate than the pencil, but they

02:39:30   lump them together. With the pencil, if you write for a site that is ostensibly focused on technology

02:39:36   at all, as Gizmodo supposedly is, and the only thing you're going to say about the pencil in

02:39:41   your article about its design is this is what it looks like when you're charging it from the iPad,

02:39:46   and not even mention that it is, I really think without any kind of hyperbole, that it's

02:39:52   revolutionized stylus input in human computer interaction. I used Wacom

02:39:57   tablets for 10 years and this is the absolute best stylus I have ever used.

02:40:01   Right, there have been ones that work on devices with, you know, very low

02:40:06   refraction because the surface is close to the glass, just like all of the

02:40:11   various styluses that work on all other iOS devices by capacitive. And there

02:40:16   have been Wacom things that work with lower latency and stuff but have all

02:40:20   But none of them they've reduced all of these trade-offs and it's you and when you talk to people who?

02:40:25   Who do artwork with this sort of stuff that?

02:40:29   They're just over the moon about the potential just feels like a pencil it is it is the best

02:40:35   Digital pen instrument I've ever used right again. I used this professionally for a decade

02:40:39   It is to not even mention it is it's just sad to me that you're not going to talk about the incredible

02:40:49   technology advances it has, just so you can make fun of it what it looks like when it's

02:40:53   charging.

02:40:54   But none of them, also none of them mentioned that the pencil ships with a little thing

02:40:58   so that you can charge it.

02:41:00   If you don't want to charge it that way because you think it looks stupid, you can charge

02:41:02   it just by, it's like a male to female adapter so that you can charge it by plugging in any

02:41:08   other lightning cord.

02:41:09   Yeah, that's what I use because invariably I charge my things at night and then I need

02:41:13   to charge both.

02:41:14   And once you've plugged in the iPad, you can't plug the pencil into it too.

02:41:16   So I just get that little dingus and plug it into the cable next to it.

02:41:19   Right. Um,

02:41:21   the better question is why did they design it the way they did where the

02:41:27   built-in charger is a male that,

02:41:30   that sticks that you would stick into the iPad and have the pencil stick out as

02:41:36   opposed to making the built-in one a female so that you could charge it into any

02:41:40   cable anywhere and then have an adapter to turn it into a male to do the

02:41:44   admittedly looks kind of silly when it sticks out of the thing charging.

02:41:49   And I don't know anybody who is involved in the development of the pencil.

02:41:54   So I say this just as a guess,

02:41:56   but I can't help but think that they debated this thoroughly and that the answer

02:42:01   is that in a pinch when you're using it and the pencil runs out of battery and

02:42:07   all of a sudden you're tap tap, you realize, Oh, this is out of battery.

02:42:11   The fact that you don't have to worry if you have an adapter with you,

02:42:14   that you can always just plug it into the iPad that you're obviously using right now,

02:42:18   because I'm talking about the scenario of you're in the middle of drawing something

02:42:22   and the pencil runs out of battery.

02:42:24   The fact that you can just stick it in no matter what,

02:42:27   because even if you lose the cap, the pencil has the male adapter.

02:42:31   You stick it in.

02:42:32   And 15 seconds later, 15 seconds later, you have 30 minutes of battery life

02:42:37   on the pencil.

02:42:37   Is there's the explanation.

02:42:41   because otherwise, if they did it the other way,

02:42:44   when you run out of power,

02:42:46   you might not be within spitting distance of a lightning cable.

02:42:53   It's interesting because the assumption when a lot of these articles get written

02:42:56   is that Apple is an idiot and they're going to tell you why,

02:42:58   instead of giving Apple the benefit of the doubt,

02:43:01   and especially these teams that have done such great work over the years

02:43:03   and figuring out why they may have done it the way that they did.

02:43:06   And when you look at all the lightning,

02:43:08   and it's interesting, all this stuff charges over lightning.

02:43:10   If they need data, they go to USB-C or something else.

02:43:12   But if it's just charged,

02:43:13   they're using lightning across the board right now.

02:43:16   And they're all innies, not Audis,

02:43:17   with the exception of the Apple Pencil.

02:43:19   So the first question to ask is,

02:43:20   why does it do it that way?

02:43:21   Not, oh, it's stupid, Apple's doing this.

02:43:23   They've lost everything.

02:43:24   It's why would they make this choice?

02:43:26   And yeah, you can, in 15 seconds, get right back to work.

02:43:30   And it also, the Audi is a much smaller package size,

02:43:33   and you don't want a little Homer Simpson head

02:43:34   on the end of your pencil that you can plug something into.

02:43:37   So it's got two tangible benefits

02:43:39   to making the product that way.

02:43:41   - I remember at the actual event itself,

02:43:44   maybe you were there with me, I know we were hanging out,

02:43:46   but at the event when we were watching the demo

02:43:48   and it was close to the end, it was at the hands-on area,

02:43:50   after the event, there's a hands-on area,

02:43:52   and I got introduced to the guy who's the developer

02:43:56   of that 3D drawing app, what is that?

02:43:59   - YouMake. - YouMake,

02:44:00   which is really, I'm gonna put that in the show now,

02:44:01   it's a really, really fascinating app,

02:44:03   it's like just unbelievable, like you just draw on screen.

02:44:07   - Like finger painting with industrial design.

02:44:09   - Yeah, exactly.

02:44:10   It's like finger painting combined with like clay modeling

02:44:13   to make 3D shapes.

02:44:14   And it's like someone at Apple was like,

02:44:17   "Hey, you gotta meet this guy.

02:44:18   "You gotta see this app.

02:44:19   "We've been working with him.

02:44:20   "We were so impressed.

02:44:21   "We brought him in early and had him hook it up

02:44:23   "to work with the pencil."

02:44:24   And he started giving us the demo,

02:44:26   but it was at the end of this hands-on thing

02:44:27   and he'd been demoing it nonstop for over an hour

02:44:30   and his pencil ran out.

02:44:31   And he just goes, "Oh, hold on."

02:44:33   And he knew he was only gonna give us

02:44:35   like a three minute demo.

02:44:37   So he didn't even charge it in for 15 seconds.

02:44:39   It was just, I don't know, five seconds in the port.

02:44:42   And then he pulled it back out and it was back to work.

02:44:45   And in an area where there weren't, you know, again,

02:44:48   there wouldn't have been any lightning cables nearby.

02:44:50   It was off in the corner of the hands-on area.

02:44:52   It's incredibly convenient.

02:44:54   - I almost always sketch at night.

02:44:56   I used to sketch all day, every day when I was younger.

02:44:58   And now I have very little time.

02:45:00   So I almost always sketch at night.

02:45:01   And several times I go to use the pencil and it's done.

02:45:03   I plug it in for 15 seconds.

02:45:05   I draw for half an hour, 45 minutes contentedly,

02:45:07   and then I just go plug it into the cable and I'm fine.

02:45:10   - Right.

02:45:11   It definitely looks weird

02:45:12   when it's sticking out of the iPad,

02:45:13   but you don't have to do it for long.

02:45:15   There's absolutely no reason to do it for long,

02:45:17   and it's incredibly convenient.

02:45:19   So it's convenience over elegance.

02:45:22   - And that's one of the things,

02:45:23   like Apple's really good at repercussion modeling.

02:45:25   They can look at decision A, decision B,

02:45:28   and what is the end result of those decisions.

02:45:30   And I can't help but think that

02:45:31   if people writing about Apple would spend a few minutes

02:45:33   doing that same sort of repercussion modeling, we get a much higher level of

02:45:37   criticism in the Apple community. The fact that the mouse charges on the

02:45:42   bottom, who gives a crap? That one really gets me. Who gives a crap? I mean, it's...

02:45:50   I don't know, it boggles my mind. Well the thing is, again, ask them what would you

02:45:54   differently while I put it on the back? Well then you have to cut a huge wedge

02:45:56   into the front of the device and your finger is gonna hit that every time you...

02:45:59   So what is the repercussions of moving it to another place?

02:46:02   Right, I actually don't like the shape of the magic mouse, period.

02:46:07   Agreed.

02:46:08   But, you know, as the ATB guys have covered in general, it really comes down to how you naturally grip a mouse.

02:46:13   And my mouse grip is just not really amenable to this design.

02:46:19   But I can see why people who grip it a different way would really, really like this mouse.

02:46:23   And if you do you don't want any kind of flat hump bump thing on the front of it

02:46:30   I mean and you need a flat plane

02:46:31   That's why the keyboard and the trackpad can charge in the rear because they have a flat plane across the block the back

02:46:35   Exactly, and I feel like the fact that they you know, well then they could have put the hole in the side

02:46:40   Well, then if you put the hole inside it looks like maybe you could use it while it's charging

02:46:44   but it's you know gonna be awkward and ungainly and

02:46:47   They don't it's better to just put it on the bottom and say no don't use it

02:46:51   while it's charging and it won't take long to charge and who cares. Just plug it in.

02:46:55   You charge it for a few minutes and you have a day's worth of... Right and it looks no worse while

02:46:59   it's charging than the old battery operated ones meaning I know they're all

02:47:02   batteries but when you used to have to put AAA batteries in. And if you had no

02:47:06   batteries you had to go to the store and buy the ones. It looks no worse while it's

02:47:10   charging than the other one did while you were replacing the batteries.

02:47:15   If anything it looks better because it's not missing a panel. It's just

02:47:21   ridiculous. Maybe one day Apple will redesign it and it will have a design that is conducive

02:47:26   to having a lightning port that works while you're doing it, but that would not happen

02:47:29   with this design and this design is what Apple could ship this year.

02:47:32   Exactly, and what they wanted to ship. The Apple TV remote being symmetric. I totally

02:47:39   agree with that. There's one where I'm like, I really wonder what the hell they were thinking.

02:47:43   I know that once you start feeling the buttons, you can tell that the volume button is one

02:47:47   big combined capsule shape and I've gotten you know I'm starting to get

02:47:51   better at that Siri button is dented but I think you said this right it's like

02:47:54   the home button you're we're just used to having it at the bottom and we're not

02:47:56   used to having a TV set on a home button and one has the word menu and the other

02:48:00   one has a glyph I think the whole thing is odd yeah I I really wish that I don't

02:48:05   know I have some I really wish that the home button was at the bottom and

02:48:08   centered just like on an iPhone and I really wish it was asymmetric in some

02:48:13   whether the whole thing is wedge-shaped,

02:48:15   sort of like a MacBook Air in profile,

02:48:19   or whether it's the fact that it's not rectangular,

02:48:22   or something, something so that as soon as you pick it up,

02:48:24   it's absolutely, positively, no thinking involved at all.

02:48:29   You know which way it's supposed to go.

02:48:30   - And that's not even the biggest issue for me,

02:48:31   'cause I pick up, I have these other horrible controllers

02:48:33   for my TV and Blu-ray player, and they have so many buttons,

02:48:36   I can't tell what is up and down either,

02:48:37   so I pick it up and I have to move it around.

02:48:39   But once I have it, I can pretty much find things.

02:48:41   With this one, because the buttons are symmetrically

02:48:43   Even when I'm holding it the right way I have to often double check is that really the stereo button?

02:48:47   Is that really the menu button and the home button at the bottom would in centered would make that a no-brainer

02:48:51   and then combine that with the fact that just running your thumb across it to figure out where the buttons are is

02:48:57   inherently I

02:49:00   Was gonna say destructive but that's not quite right but it inherently it makes well

02:49:05   It makes actions immediately take place with the trackpad

02:49:10   Like you can immediately start going fast forward or backwards or pause if you click by just trying to figure out

02:49:17   Is this the touchpad side or the slick bottom side?

02:49:20   But if you guess wrong and touch the trackpad side something happens to the video stream you're seeing already

02:49:25   And I know that the Siri button is indented, but I have held down that menu button and spoken to it so many times

02:49:30   It's

02:49:33   You know, I have to it's because you're not supposed to look at it

02:49:36   It doesn't seem, it's just, it should be designed so you don't have to look at it.

02:49:39   And it's not. So I would, I will bet that the next time we see a new Apple TV, that it'll come with a new remote.

02:49:49   It's a new remote too. Can't wait.

02:49:51   Yeah. And I really wonder how much of it, I know that they must have tested it in like real world testing scenarios,

02:49:57   like a dark room while you're on the couch. But I just wonder how much of it is from the fact that maybe it was designed with the lights on and looking at it.

02:50:05   And also, I mean, there's so much to get right.

02:50:07   Like they spent so much time just adjusting micro increments of getting the swiping gestures right.

02:50:12   That, you know, who knows how much time they spent on the buttons.

02:50:15   Yeah, but there's one where I feel like they definitely could have could have done better.

02:50:19   Absolutely.

02:50:20   MacBook One with only one port.

02:50:23   Here's one where this is maybe the product that I guess it's the one that was introduced earliest in the year,

02:50:28   where I still feel like we don't really know what Apple is thinking there.

02:50:33   you know, was it an engineering constraint or was it a statement?

02:50:37   You know, like we just don't think you should be plugging things into devices anymore.

02:50:43   And we're going to...

02:50:43   I loved Schiller's answer on the talk show after WWC where he said we wanted to make a MacBook that had no ports.

02:50:49   But and he didn't say this, but up until about October of this year, you couldn't inductively charge through metal.

02:50:54   A bunch of patents and a bunch of technologies came out late in the year that started to allow inductive charging through metal.

02:51:00   But you had to charge through a cable.

02:51:01   So once you have to charge for a cable, you need one cable.

02:51:03   And then if one, you have one cable,

02:51:05   you might as well be as multipurpose a cable as possible.

02:51:07   So we'll use USB-C that has data and has power

02:51:10   and can do all these other things.

02:51:11   But at the same time,

02:51:12   no one went and took away your MacBook Pro

02:51:14   or your MacBook Air.

02:51:15   So if you wanted multiports,

02:51:16   they would very kindly walk you over to the table

02:51:18   in the Apple store that has your multiport wonder machine

02:51:20   waiting for you.

02:51:22   - Yeah, there's one.

02:51:23   The complaints about that are more like,

02:51:25   it's not that they took away,

02:51:27   again, they didn't take away any of the products

02:51:29   that were already being sold.

02:51:30   So whatever you did like, you could still buy.

02:51:32   It's more like they didn't build the next generation machine that you wanted.

02:51:36   Yes. You wanted a retina MacBook Air and they didn't give you that.

02:51:39   Right. And if that's the same sort of thinking that, you know, would have led us

02:51:45   to have, you know, floppy drives for another decade or VGA ports for another

02:51:52   decade, which, you know, other companies writing, you know, making, you know,

02:51:59   Wintel notebooks will meet your needs

02:52:02   if that's where you're thinking.

02:52:03   But Apple, you know, you're on the wrong side of the fence

02:52:05   if that's what you want Apple to do.

02:52:07   - And there were concessions here.

02:52:08   I mean, they made the screen so thin

02:52:10   that they couldn't fit the Z-index

02:52:11   for a decent web camera in there.

02:52:13   They absolutely had some,

02:52:14   some things were just physical constraints on that.

02:52:17   And some things were economic constraints

02:52:18   because they use technology that,

02:52:21   I don't wanna say from the future,

02:52:22   'cause it sounds corny,

02:52:23   but it's a very progressive machine.

02:52:25   And things like the Force Touch trackpad,

02:52:27   it's cool, but it also means a physical mechanism

02:52:30   doesn't have to be under the track pit anymore.

02:52:32   It's just logic, and so they can make that incredibly thin,

02:52:34   which again translates into lightness.

02:52:37   So I could take this MacBook and like an iPad,

02:52:39   throw it in the inside pocket of my winter jacket,

02:52:41   and just, I did that the other day,

02:52:42   and just went to the coffee shop with it.

02:52:43   It has almost no appreciable weight.

02:52:46   - Yeah.

02:52:47   So, you know, I really can't see that

02:52:49   as indicative of bad design.

02:52:51   I would see this, the MacBook is indicative

02:52:54   of significantly different ordering of priorities.

02:52:59   - And I felt like all our friends had these handfuls

02:53:01   of adapters on Twitter all the time.

02:53:03   And I just really wanted, you know,

02:53:04   that's not the computer for you.

02:53:06   - Yeah.

02:53:07   - It's okay.

02:53:07   It's a computer for somebody else.

02:53:09   - You really, it's okay if you want a MacBook Pro.

02:53:14   - Absolutely.

02:53:14   I love the 13 inch MacBook Pro.

02:53:16   It's got the force touch trackpad too.

02:53:17   It is a great machine for anybody who wants to have

02:53:20   tons and tons of ports and accessories and things.

02:53:22   I think that more or less covers my list. Anything else you wanted to talk about?

02:53:30   Just the end of the year stuff, which is Williams, Schiller, and Sharuji's new roles, which we kind of mentioned obliquely at the beginning.

02:53:37   Yeah. Well, we mentioned Williams. Sharuji really, really, I really think, and you know this more than I do, you're better at sourcing, but it's really not a promotion.

02:53:47   It's a recognition of where he already, you know, what did you, how did you put it?

02:53:51   You do the work first and then you get the promotion.

02:53:53   Yeah. And there were so many people who were surprised that he,

02:53:55   like they just assumed he was an SVP already.

02:53:57   Right. Right. Like that, that wasn't official.

02:54:00   The part that maybe we don't know the answer to is the Schiller taking over

02:54:05   response or, you know, being named as being responsible for the app store.

02:54:08   Yeah. Um, which I don't think is,

02:54:12   and again, you know,

02:54:15   we're not in a position to know,

02:54:16   and the number of people who are is very, very few,

02:54:18   and they're not going to talk about it.

02:54:20   But whether it's seen as a gentle demotion of it for Eddy Cue,

02:54:25   I don't think so, but it did require,

02:54:29   I mean, technically it did require his bio to be rewritten

02:54:32   such that he's no longer listed

02:54:33   as being in charge of the app stores.

02:54:36   - Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting,

02:54:37   and again, a lot of this is technical detail.

02:54:39   Like the app store still runs on iTunes.

02:54:41   Those servers are not being physically moved

02:54:43   into Phil Schiller's office,

02:54:44   and the infrastructure and the backend CMS,

02:54:47   all the things that run the App Store,

02:54:48   that's all still iTunes plumbing.

02:54:50   And that's not being moved over.

02:54:52   What's being moved over is things like store management

02:54:54   and editorial, which are just historically

02:54:58   has been part of Eddie's work because that's what he ran

02:55:01   as part of the music and the movie business and the podcast,

02:55:04   which have had editors and store managers

02:55:06   since the inception of that business.

02:55:08   - Right, and some things like the stuff

02:55:09   that's clearly developer relations

02:55:13   has always been under Schiller, which is with an app store review.

02:55:19   Yes, app store review.

02:55:21   Like it is kind of crazy.

02:55:23   And like you said, I think it's really just the way that this evolved out of

02:55:27   going back to 2008, you know, when it was like, well, we've already got the iTunes

02:55:32   store and we're going to do an app store, we can build it on top of that.

02:55:36   And we've already got the credit cards and people already have accounts.

02:55:38   And we already know we already have the content distribution networks.

02:55:43   We already have all of this.

02:55:44   And so you go from there to here,

02:55:46   and you're left with a scenario where

02:55:47   the person who's in charge of developer relations, which

02:55:50   was Schiller, wasn't in charge of App Store or editorial.

02:55:54   Yep.

02:55:55   Because he's not in charge of movies editorial

02:55:57   or in charge of podcast editorial.

02:55:59   But it never would have been like that

02:56:00   if it had been designed from the ground up as a new thing.

02:56:03   If they had-- instead of building it on top of iTunes,

02:56:07   the iTunes-- what was once just the iTunes Music Store,

02:56:10   if they hadn't built from what started as that,

02:56:13   It never would have been under ed EQ in the first place,

02:56:15   I don't think.

02:56:16   - Yeah, and it led to a lot of issues.

02:56:18   For example, famously last year where Extensibility came up

02:56:22   from Craig Federighi's organization

02:56:25   from software engineering, great feature,

02:56:27   and it gets announced and it comes out.

02:56:29   And because when new features launch,

02:56:31   when a new version of iOS launches, it's a madhouse.

02:56:33   There's so many apps to review that they,

02:56:34   if they do not crash and they're not detected

02:56:36   to have any malware, they just go out.

02:56:38   And then anything that has got passed through review

02:56:40   is allowed to be featured by editorial.

02:56:42   there's no if answer but it's a binary state.

02:56:45   This app is approved,

02:56:46   we can feature it if we think it's a great app.

02:56:48   So they go through and feature all these things.

02:56:49   And that again is an Eddy's org.

02:56:51   And then later when things calm down,

02:56:53   everybody has time to say,

02:56:54   well, this is not exactly the experience that we wanted.

02:56:57   We didn't want anybody to put a calculator in widget space

02:57:00   because there's so high a RAM constraint.

02:57:02   There's such a big potential for crashes.

02:57:04   We don't think the average developer has the engineering,

02:57:07   like they don't know it's James Thompson who wrote,

02:57:08   you know, the doc or something.

02:57:09   It's just the average developer will not be able

02:57:11   to make a good app experience here.

02:57:13   So we'd rather not open that up as a possibility

02:57:16   and they reject it.

02:57:16   - They can't have a rule that says,

02:57:18   if you're as good as James Thompson,

02:57:19   you can write a calculator for the widget view.

02:57:21   And if you're not, you can't.

02:57:23   That's not enforceable.

02:57:24   - And they don't know

02:57:25   because they haven't made thousands of widget apps.

02:57:27   They've made one or two internally to test on

02:57:28   and that's not a big sub.

02:57:29   So then after a while, they see that this is great.

02:57:32   It's got obvious benefits and they go and rewrite the rule.

02:57:34   And that might actually be, it's a horribly ugly process

02:57:37   and it makes Apple look like they don't communicate

02:57:39   and it creates a lot of concern for developers.

02:57:41   But it gets, in a matter of two weeks,

02:57:44   you have this fundamental change in the App Store

02:57:45   that otherwise might take a whole revision of iOS

02:57:48   before you get to.

02:57:49   - Yeah, my hope though is that it's also a sign.

02:57:51   And not just that it's a more logical place

02:57:54   in the org structure for App Stores in general to be,

02:57:59   but my other sincere hope though is that Schiller,

02:58:02   because he cares about this stuff, and I know that he does,

02:58:06   that he will make it a high enough priority

02:58:09   that it will improve in ways that I think it very clearly needs to improve.

02:58:14   Yeah, there's some things that are like anything that's infrastructure based.

02:58:17   If people had complaints about the lack of analytics or the lack or how bad iTunes Connect worked

02:58:22   or the lack of resources being given to Mac App Store because they weren't at parity.

02:58:26   That's all under Eddy Cue because that's his team that does all that.

02:58:29   But App Review was under Phil Schiller.

02:58:30   And if you complained about the rejections or about developer relations, that was all on him.

02:58:34   But then there's this middle ground like who is in charge of upgrades

02:58:37   and who was in charge of trials and who,

02:58:40   that was split across several people.

02:58:42   Someone had to make the feature,

02:58:43   someone had to agree it was a great,

02:58:45   there was just a lot of confusion.

02:58:46   Maybe confusion's the wrong word,

02:58:47   but there was no clear authority on that.

02:58:50   And one of the things that I've been asking for

02:58:51   for a long time is just a clear VP of App Store

02:58:53   and now it's even better, there's an SVP of App Store

02:58:56   and a lot of the people now are aligned

02:58:58   straight under Phil and hopefully,

02:59:00   there's still gonna be a hard time.

02:59:02   You get a new engineer,

02:59:03   are you gonna put him on Mac App Store

02:59:04   when there's 800 things to be done on the iOS App Store

02:59:06   where all your money is?

02:59:07   That takes an executive who's gonna say,

02:59:09   this is important enough that I'm gonna expend

02:59:10   those resources in a business

02:59:12   that doesn't make us as much money.

02:59:14   Or they're gonna say, I know that we're making a fortune

02:59:17   and everyone, you know, Zynga's super happy

02:59:19   and Crandy Crush is super happy

02:59:20   and Clash of Clans is super happy,

02:59:22   but we have a legacy, we believe that this stuff is valuable,

02:59:25   that quantity is not what matters anymore,

02:59:27   quality is what matters,

02:59:28   and we're gonna make it our business

02:59:29   to make sustainable apps for any developers

02:59:31   because we believe that they're crucial.

02:59:33   That takes someone, a single person like a Phil Schiller

02:59:35   to drive through.

02:59:36   Yeah, and I really hope that that's a sign of it.

02:59:40   And that's how I'm taking that part of the year-end executive news.

02:59:48   I don't know what else to call it, because again, it's not really a reshuffling.

02:59:51   Maybe the only thing that got shuffled is the App Store.

02:59:54   And even there, it was really more that it got clarified that, okay,

02:59:57   this is something that deserves to be under one person,

03:00:01   not split across several organizations.

03:00:05   And I think internally, people would argue, and I don't think it's building a secret to say that

03:00:10   Eddie and Phil have different opinions on things, they're different people.

03:00:12   But it was sort of tacitly known that Phil Schiller, if he cared enough about something,

03:00:16   he would be sort of like the final word on things.

03:00:18   And now it's official, the same way Craig Federighi has iOS and OS X and Angela Aronis has retail and online.

03:00:25   Tim Cook has been consistently making, and then, you know, sorry, Johnny Ive has all, you know, ID and HI.

03:00:31   Tim Cook has been making Apple sort of more combined, more clear in their organization.

03:00:37   And this feels like something that should have happened a long time ago.

03:00:39   It's something that needed to happen.

03:00:41   Yeah.

03:00:42   And I wonder, you know, whether it's just, you know, maybe it was at the store.

03:00:45   Was this planned all along or was like the straw that broke the camel's back?

03:00:49   The weird Mac App Store signing, you know, we switched SSL versions and broke a whole

03:00:57   bunch of stuff.

03:00:58   And was that the straw that broke the camel's back?

03:01:00   - I think it's a lot, yeah, it's a lot of things.

03:01:02   'Cause that again, when you look at it in isolation,

03:01:04   it makes sense, you know,

03:01:05   they moved to a new certificate early

03:01:06   and people were using such old versions of OpenSSL

03:01:09   that it didn't work with, what is it, SHA,

03:01:14   I'm pretty sure SHA-2 or whatever, SHA-2.

03:01:17   - The details don't matter.

03:01:19   - No, no, absolutely.

03:01:20   - It's really just was, it never should have happened.

03:01:22   And it's funny, I'm still running into it.

03:01:24   I just launched an app that I use very infrequently.

03:01:27   It just launched it the other day

03:01:29   and I ran into the, you know,

03:01:31   now you have to sign into the app store again,

03:01:34   just to launch this app.

03:01:35   - I opened my MacBook Pro for the first time

03:01:37   in a month and a half, and none of them,

03:01:38   I hadn't rebooted, I hadn't upgraded to all those apps

03:01:41   were failing on me.

03:01:43   The thing that, to go back to your point previously

03:01:45   about none of these things are easy though,

03:01:47   I mean, it's, I don't wanna say it's easy,

03:01:49   but we can all say we want upgrades,

03:01:51   but at some point someone has to implement it,

03:01:53   or they want trials, and then you have to answer

03:01:55   the questions, how long is a trial?

03:01:57   If I download the app but don't try it immediately,

03:01:59   "Can I try it later?

03:02:00   "If I try it but get distracted, can I go back to it?

03:02:02   "If I delete it and download it, can I try it again?

03:02:05   "If I input a bunch of data and the trial runs out,

03:02:07   "can I extract my data?

03:02:08   "'Cause that's my personal information."

03:02:10   There's all sorts of questions that have to be answered,

03:02:12   but it felt like that process hadn't necessarily

03:02:15   been started or at least not fully explored.

03:02:18   And hopefully now when you go down the line

03:02:20   of those different things that people want

03:02:22   from the App Store, at least maybe there's a chance

03:02:24   that they'll be reconsidered.

03:02:25   - Couldn't say it better myself.

03:02:28   Anything else?

03:02:31   - No, I mean, Apple Pay expanded.

03:02:34   The other thing is I think it's smaller.

03:02:36   It's coming to China next year,

03:02:37   which is gonna be a big deal.

03:02:38   - What do you think, all right, last but not least,

03:02:43   a year from now when we're doing this for 2016,

03:02:46   is it gonna be easier or harder or about the same?

03:02:49   - I don't think it's gonna get any easier.

03:02:52   I think Apple is growing, and it sounds silly to say

03:02:55   that the world's biggest company is growing,

03:02:56   but they absolutely are.

03:02:58   And we're gonna get the iPhone 7 next year

03:03:01   and it's gonna be a redesign.

03:03:03   The iPad Air 3 is probably imminent by now.

03:03:06   We're gonna have whatever the next generation--

03:03:07   - Apple Watch.

03:03:08   - Yeah, the new Apple.

03:03:09   There's gonna be a lot of stuff

03:03:10   and there's gonna be server.

03:03:11   We didn't even talk about Jeff Williams and his medical.

03:03:14   He's running medical for Apple stuff too,

03:03:17   which could turn into something else entirely.

03:03:19   And who knows what we don't know about Apple

03:03:21   'cause they try out a whole bunch of different things.

03:03:23   They have their eye on a lot of different industries.

03:03:25   So I think next year, I don't think we'll get the,

03:03:27   like this year it was unusual in that we got

03:03:29   not just two kind of new products,

03:03:31   but two whole new app stores.

03:03:32   And that just doesn't happen.

03:03:33   So I don't think we'll have the same breadth of stuff

03:03:37   in next year, but I think we will get the next version

03:03:39   of all this stuff.

03:03:40   - Yeah, my guess is that we'll spend a lot less time

03:03:42   talking about new products

03:03:44   that you can actually hold in your hand

03:03:45   and more time talking about new integration software wise.

03:03:50   Like it'll be a little bit more of a nebulous discussion,

03:03:54   but more along the lines of health kit and stuff like that

03:03:58   and integrating the way that all of these things

03:04:03   work together more cloud.

03:04:04   - And offer iTunes and there's so much things

03:04:06   that they could be working on guest mode for the iPhone

03:04:09   or if they're gonna switch to all that displays

03:04:10   and whether they're gonna need night mode for that

03:04:12   because it's considered,

03:04:13   there's so many interesting things coming up.

03:04:16   - Yeah, well, thank you, Renee.

03:04:18   There is also, and if you haven't heard enough

03:04:20   about this year in review,

03:04:21   There is a giant feature at the iMore Year in Review,

03:04:26   where it links back to just about everything you guys did,

03:04:32   covering all this along the way.

03:04:33   I'll put that in the show notes.

03:04:35   What podcasts are you on?

03:04:37   What do you want people who like your voice?

03:04:38   Where can they hear more?

03:04:40   - I do a podcast with little known

03:04:41   Montreal celebrity Guy English called Debug.

03:04:44   We just had Nitin Ganatra, Don Melton,

03:04:46   and their Box of Wine back on.

03:04:48   and they talked about management at Apple and retention,

03:04:52   which is a follow up to a show that Michael Laupp did

03:04:55   with us a couple weeks ago on similar issues.

03:04:59   And to me, you've linked to Guy several times on that.

03:05:01   To me, that's one of the most interesting topics

03:05:02   about Apple now is how they manage their assets

03:05:05   and how they retain their people.

03:05:06   - Absolutely.

03:05:07   Guy said it years ago, just plainly, you know,

03:05:10   clearly that post Steve Jobs,

03:05:12   the number one problem facing Apple is retention of talent.

03:05:15   - Yeah.

03:05:16   I don't think it has become a problem, I don't think it's gone bad, but I think it remains the single biggest problem.

03:05:26   And one way we're seeing it, and I know that you've heard this, is the way that Project Titan is the car, apparently.

03:05:35   So we think is taking in so many talented engineers from across the company that it's created internal conflict of,

03:05:44   come on, you cannot keep taking, you know,

03:05:46   people who are working on things

03:05:47   that are just trying to improve what's already there

03:05:49   are already, you know, there's tension in the company of,

03:05:53   you know, the car people cannot take all of our A talent,

03:05:56   you know, going forward.

03:05:59   - Which is interesting because most people

03:06:00   haven't spoken about the car

03:06:02   in terms of a software stack yet,

03:06:03   and that's probably one of the most

03:06:04   interesting parts about it.

03:06:05   - Oh, absolutely, but it's also an interesting to think

03:06:08   that as Apple expands and does more products

03:06:10   that retention can be a problem,

03:06:12   not necessarily for the company,

03:06:13   Because let's say you have an A talent engineer

03:06:16   and she leaves from working on...

03:06:20   - Working on UI kit and going to watch, for example.

03:06:25   - Right, or going to the kernel of the operating system

03:06:29   for the car or something like that.

03:06:30   Well, Apple hasn't lost any talent,

03:06:32   but the iOS has, right?

03:06:36   So it's interesting to think of talent retention

03:06:39   not necessarily being a company-wide product,

03:06:40   but being a problem,

03:06:42   but a problem for just the existing products

03:06:45   as opposed to the new.

03:06:46   - And it's funny because with Steve Jobs on the iPhone,

03:06:48   it was, you can only take internal people.

03:06:50   We're not gonna trust anybody else with this.

03:06:52   And now with the watch and now with the car,

03:06:54   it's like, so you can have some of them,

03:06:56   but we're gonna fight you on the others.

03:06:58   - Right, so I think that's super interesting.

03:07:00   I also want to thank the four sponsors

03:07:03   we had for the show today,

03:07:05   the Brower Group who do the U-Bar

03:07:09   and their new Mirage mechanical watches.

03:07:13   Hello with their Hello Pillows,

03:07:16   hellopillow.com/talkshow.

03:07:18   Automatic, the smart dingus for your car,

03:07:22   and Harry's high quality razors,

03:07:26   blades, and shaving products.

03:07:28   Rene, thank you.

03:07:29   - Oh, thank you so much, happy new year.

03:07:30   - Yeah, may the force be with you.