0:00:00No, seriously, do you do you do you wear polarized sunglasses? I have sunglasses
0:00:04I don't even I don't think they're polarized because I buy I buy the cheapest ones possible
0:00:08Because I sit on them and I lose them and so I gave up buying nice ones polarization. I don't I'm not an optician
0:00:15I'm not an optics guy, but the basic idea though, it sounds kind of crazy. Do you know what that how they work?
0:00:21They're like blinds like horizontal blinds on the lenses. They're there, you know, I don't even think that you can see them with the naked eye
0:00:28But the idea is that it makes your glasses blind, and then without reducing visibility,
0:00:34it reduces glare. And so, for example, people who work on the water, like fishermen,
0:00:42love polarized sunglasses because it cuts down on the glare from the water in front of them.
0:00:48But you know if you have polarized sunglasses or not, because if you look at your iPhone,
0:00:54it it or any kind of like LC oh it looks different it looks crazy it's like all
0:00:59rain so that I do then I do yes I do have polarized you do have polarizes I
0:01:03must cuz my phone looks looks freaky and at first the first time I noticed that I
0:01:08thought that it was something wrong with the phone and then I realized I had
0:01:12bought new sunglasses yeah that's exactly it's exactly how how this came
0:01:19into my mind I actually what happened is I I had Marco Arment on the show last
0:01:23week. And I heard an episode of his show from weeks ago where he was talking about the Warby
0:01:30Parker glasses and sunglasses and said that he likes polarized sunglasses. And I thought,
0:01:37in the middle of listening to the show, that's crazy. How can someone who uses an iPhone all the
0:01:43time, as I presume Marco does, use polarized sunglasses? To me, the debate between whether
0:01:48you get polarized sunglasses or not is over now that we carry iPhones with us all over the place.
0:01:53Because it looks bad on your iPhone?
0:01:55It makes your iPhone look crazy. To me, it makes it look unreadable. I could not bear
0:02:01to use my iPhone with sunglasses on. And yet, I have my sunglasses on and I use my phone out in,
0:02:07what do they call that, daytime. And I wanted to talk to Marco about it, but we ran short of time
0:02:14because we did a quick show. So I didn't get to bring it up to him. Is the effect the same
0:02:19in the casino? I would bet that it is, given that, given all the video poker machines, I'm sure.
0:02:27I'm just trying to think of where you would be most likely to be using them.
0:02:29Well, and then the further confusing it in the casino is, you know, if you start seeing
0:02:36wavy lines and stuff, you're never quite sure if it's your glasses or... How long have I been here?
0:02:41Yeah, how long? It's the last time I saw the sun.
0:02:45[laughter]
0:02:46Right.
0:02:47What was that guy next to me smoking?
0:02:51You just never know what it is that's causing the waving lines in Vegas.
0:02:57But anyway, that's actually what happened to me today that reminded me that—to bring
0:03:04it up with you, because I didn't bring it up with Marco—is that a couple weeks ago
0:03:07I had Amy's old first original iPod out, the one with the wheel that actually spun.
0:03:14I don't know, for old times' sake.
0:03:15And I think it was because it was like some kind of--
0:03:18I don't know.
0:03:18Yeah.
0:03:19I don't know.
0:03:19I got it out.
0:03:20There was some air pressure, wasn't there?
0:03:20Yeah.
0:03:21I got it out, posted a picture on Instagram,
0:03:23got a couple hundred likes.
0:03:25It's a beautiful device.
0:03:26It really is.
0:03:27It looks ancient now because it's so crazy thick,
0:03:30because it has a big hard drive in it.
0:03:31But I had it out, and it was in my office
0:03:36here next to my desk, next to a window in the sunshine.
0:03:39And Amy was in here telling me something
0:03:41before she ran out for an errand.
0:03:42And she was like, why did you leave this?
0:03:44because it's hers, not mine, actually. That's the other thing. She got mad at me when I posted the
0:03:47Instagram because I made it look—I didn't say anything on Instagram. She says, "That's mine,
0:03:53not yours." And so there, you know, there I'm sleeping.
0:03:58You jacked her image.
0:03:59Yep. Sleeping on the couch for three nights.
0:04:01Yeah.
0:04:02But then she got mad at me because I wrecked it because I left it out in the sun for a couple
0:04:07of weeks. And I looked at it and it didn't really look weird to me. And then she goes, "Oh, is that
0:04:12at these sunglasses. Because it actually made the original iPod with her polarized sunglasses,
0:04:22it made it look as though it had a color screen, like a rainbow.
0:04:26Yeah. Yeah.
0:04:27I was like, "Oh, well, that would have been... " Now, that actually would have been... To
0:04:31me, if you borrow your wife's original 2001 iPod and literally wreck it, it still works.
0:04:38That's the thing that's amazing to me, is that if you can find a firewire cable, it
0:04:42works. If I had actually wrecked it, that would justify some anger.
0:04:45So you're okay going blind as long as you can continue to look at your,
0:04:50going blind in the long term, as long as you can continue to look at your iPhone
0:04:55with crystal clarity right now?
0:04:57I don't think non-polarized, unpolarized, whatever the word is, normal sunglasses
0:05:02are driving me blind. I think it's, you know, just you have to put up with a little bit more glare.
0:05:11I actually am—you might be in the same situation. We're of similar vintage. I actually am having
0:05:18trouble. I'm starting to get the presbyopia, whatever it's called, in my left eye, not my
0:05:25right eye, though, which I don't know if it's better or worse. I got it all through my body.
0:05:30What's it called? Is it presbyopia? I looked it up a little bit, and then I got scared and stopped.
0:05:38I had to finally buy a pair of those cheaters reading glasses. Just like cheap grocery store ones.
0:05:45How do they work? What did they do?
0:05:48It just makes it easier to see things close to you.
0:05:50How? I always thought they just magnified.
0:05:53It's good, yeah. I mean, that's the same thing.
0:05:56Yeah, but if I can't--
0:05:57That's what reader glasses do.
0:06:02As you can see, I'm really well informed about it.
0:06:08Yeah, we should really be having this conversation.
0:06:10Ophthalmology.
0:06:12But you wear contacts.
0:06:13I do.
0:06:14Yeah, so do I. I'm practically blind without them.
0:06:18Right, so I think that's what--
0:06:19I think that long range, that's what I think I need to do,
0:06:21is I need to get some kind of pair of glasses
0:06:24that I take around with me and put them on to read.
0:06:27Yeah.
0:06:29It's a problem in restaurants now, in low light situations.
0:06:32Trying to read a manual.
0:06:36And I know now what my parents went through and why they—it always seems so annoying.
0:06:42Just put the damn glasses on like an idiot.
0:06:45I had no sympathy for my dad when he went through it at all.
0:06:48None.
0:06:49Right.
0:06:50I didn't either.
0:06:51I remember when my dad got his first pair of—my dad wears glasses and has his entire
0:06:56adult life, I believe.
0:06:57I don't think I've seen a picture of my dad without glasses on since he was like a
0:07:02teenager.
0:07:03I remember when he got bifocals and he really was struggling with them because it's weird.
0:07:09You have to like hold things at a weird angle and stuff and see he was like lifting them on,
0:07:13lifting them off and I had no sympathy for him whatsoever. Making fun of them. Yeah.
0:07:21I gotta look this up. The arrogance of youth.
0:07:24What's it called? It's like presbyopia or something? I don't know.
0:07:29presbyterian no i think it's presbyopia
0:07:36yeah presbyopia usually occurs beginning around age 40 when people experience
0:07:41blurred vision near vision when reading sewing or
0:07:44working at the computer karen karen got it before i did and she
0:07:48started wearing she'd never won glasses and her
0:07:50vision was perfect which i always found irritating to begin with and then she
0:07:55also kept saying things like i think it'd be kind of cool to wear
0:07:57glasses. I think I'd look good in glasses. You're not going out and getting like blank glasses to
0:08:03wear just to look like, just stop it. But then she got the reader glasses and like the first time I
0:08:11saw her wearing them, I'm just like, I go in and she's lying in bed, she's reading a book with
0:08:15those glasses on. I'm like, "Oh, hey." Hey there, librarian. We had a kid in high school. We had a
0:08:23kid in high school. I'm not going to name names. I'm 99.9% sure he does not listen to the show.
0:08:30But, you know, why name a name? He came in wearing glasses one day in high school,
0:08:40I don't know, 11th grade, 12th grade. And so you don't want to say anything. You don't want to be
0:08:44the guy who makes fun of someone because they start wearing glasses. I actually had to start
0:08:48wearing glasses in high school. I also got contacts, so most of the time I didn't look
0:08:54different. But, you know, I just—you don't want to be mature about it. You don't want to act like a
0:08:59fifth grader. But like within a day or two, it turned out that he didn't have prescription
0:09:03glasses. He just had glasses, and he literally said, "I think they make me look smart."
0:09:09And then we just tore into him. I mean—
0:09:12Jared: Of course.
0:09:12Pete: Oh, it's like off to the races because all of a sudden, instead of making fun of somebody
0:09:16for having, you know, a legitimate problem, you can...
0:09:19Yeah. Well, I've had bad eyesight since fourth grade, so, you know, I don't want to hear it.
0:09:23Like, I've, you know, I've had to live with... I've had to live with this pain for a long time.
0:09:28You're gonna just wear them because you think they look good.
0:09:32I've told this story before. This is one of the... this might be the funniest thing that
0:09:35ever happened to me in my life, and I think I've told this story on this show before,
0:09:40but I bet it was years ago, so why not rehash it? It was sixth grade,
0:09:44and his kid, Dwayne, I'll name him Dwayne. Dwayne and I got sent down to the nurse together for the
0:09:51annual kids go down two by two and you gotta get your eyes checked, right? And I don't know why
0:09:57they send you two by two. I don't think the nurse was very good with children, so she couldn't
0:10:01handle very many at a time. And so, the lights are real low in the room because it's set up for
0:10:06like eye exams and there's a chair to wait and it's about halfway like between, there's like a
0:10:11piece of tape on the ground where you stand and then there's a standard eye chart. And she said,
0:10:17you know, "Who wants to go first?" And Duane went first. I took a seat. I took a seat. I'm halfway
0:10:22to the sign and I thought, "Well, you know what? This would be so easy to cheat because—and this
0:10:26is the way my brain works—is, look, I'm halfway there. I can just memorize the bottom line."
0:10:31I don't know. So, I'm thinking about, you know, how, why wouldn't they, you know, proctor this
0:10:40exam a little bit more on the up and up. In the meantime, and remember how they used to do it,
0:10:44they'd like have you read. And it was the same thing every year. You have, you know,
0:10:48see which line you can read, cover the other eye, do it with the other eye. And then they,
0:10:52at our school, they used to give us a pair of glasses. And they were, they're like, they look
0:10:56like Warby Parkers now. They're like, I guess, you know, they're like, what looks cool now,
0:11:00like black chunky glasses. But like in the '80s, they were the worst glasses you can imagine.
0:11:04And they were real thick. And it was the same pair. They just put them on, and then what do
0:11:09you see?" And when I'd put them on, it's like you could almost see nothing. I mean, the whole world
0:11:13just—it's like Vaseline on your eyes. And this is the sixth grade, same school all six years,
0:11:19so it's like the sixth time I've done this. And I'm sitting there, and I'm bored, and I'm
0:11:23listening, and she's like, "What about this row? What about this row?" And Duane can't see any
0:11:29other rows. He couldn't even see the big E at the top. And I started giggling. And then she had him
0:11:37cover his other eye. And it was the same thing. He couldn't read a damn thing on the eye chart.
0:11:43And I was just dying. I was like, "Oh my god, this—he's
0:11:47like, blind." And then she goes, "What if you try these on?" And she gives him this pair of glasses
0:11:55that everybody had to try. And he goes, "Oh, wow!" And I just died. I just like, fell out of
0:12:04my chair laughing. And Dwayne is like, "I didn't know I was supposed to see like this."
0:12:10[Laughter]
0:12:10Jared: Dwayne has not seen the board in like, three years.
0:12:14Pete: And the nurse turns to me and she goes, "Do you think something's funnier?" And I said,
0:12:19"He can't see anything!" [Laughter]
0:12:25And he had, Dwayne had good parents, you know, I think his mom was even a nurse, you know,
0:12:29and nurses kids are always, you know, it's not like he didn't have healthcare or anything.
0:12:33I just, like, never reported it. He never, like—
0:12:36Jared: Only noticed.
0:12:36[Laughter]
0:12:37And somehow, I don't know if he had had a really bad year between fifth and sixth grade,
0:12:41if he'd, you know, been absent the year before when they did the same thing.
0:12:45But lo and behold, like two days later, Duane comes in wearing the thickest glasses you've ever seen.
0:12:53[Laughter]
0:12:55Oh my God.
0:12:56Jared; Yeah. Hank's got glasses too. He doesn't have to wear them that much. I'd say it's pretty
0:13:02good. It's just mild, but... Is it distance or close? Distance. And, man, the first pair that he got
0:13:10was with Spider-Man glasses. Oh, I remember seeing a picture of him with those. That's cool. Yeah,
0:13:16they were, and they were awesome, because they were very subtly Spider-Man. The case was kind
0:13:21of Spider-Man-dubbed, but the glasses themselves looked like sort of Warby Parker-ish, except they
0:13:27just had a little spider web on the things on the side. I thought, "Oh man, I'd wear those."
0:13:34I see a lot more kids at Jonas's school wearing glasses than when I was a kid. When I was a kid,
0:13:39it just seemed pretty rare. There were only a handful of kids who wore glasses.
0:13:44Yeah.
0:13:44It seems pretty common. I can't even wait to see what happens to these kids. They say that
0:13:48standing, being a foot away from a glowing computer screen for hours a day is bad for your
0:13:54your eyes. Can you even imagine how much worse it's gonna be for these kids? I can't even
0:13:59imagine. Yeah, our kids are gonna need corrective surgery. Because I feel like with us, like
0:14:03we were, I mean even when we were playing video games like in an arcade or something,
0:14:06I mean the CRTs were so fuzzy you didn't really have to focus that what that closely. Yeah,
0:14:11I think that was good for us. And you couldn't afford to play for, you know, as long as they
0:14:16can now. I always think of that, I do think of that whenever that people complain about
0:14:23in-app purchases. It's like, do you realize how much money it cost me to play video games?
0:14:27I worked as a teenager. I worked at a video arcade.
0:14:30Oh, man. Living the life.
0:14:31Man, I just spent everything at the place.
0:14:35Yeah, you just left everything.
0:14:36But the cool thing was I had the key to the place.
0:14:39You left without a paycheck every week.
0:14:41Yeah, basically. But I had the key to the place. And so, like, on Saturday night,
0:14:46I would take my friends, and when it was closed, we would just go down and open it up and lock the
0:14:51door and just stand there and play video games. What was your favorite video game in that arcade?
0:14:55Ah, my favorite of all time, I'm not sure if it was in that one or not, was Tempest.
0:15:00Oh, that's a good game. I loved all the ones, all the vector art games. Yeah.
0:15:06Yeah, those were all good. Yeah. Star Wars. Yeah, the Star Wars one. Battlezone.
0:15:13Battlezone was a, yeah. I guess Asteroids was vector graphics too. Never really thought about
0:15:19that. But now that I think about the way that asteroids looked, I think it was.
0:15:23Yeah. And there were a number of asteroids ripoffs that were pretty good, too.
0:15:27Yeah. I remember my favorite neighborhood arcade growing up had Spy Hunter, always a favorite,
0:15:36and Yi-Ar Kung-Fu. I know Dan Benjamin and I talked at length about Yi-Ar Kung-Fu years ago
0:15:46on the show. He was a big fan. You remember that game? I don't, because I missed that phase.
0:15:52Yeah. That whole fighter thing came a little bit after my time.
0:15:56Yirr Kung Fu was like one of the first ones. If you Google it after the show,
0:16:02and you'll see from the graphics quality that it was pre-Street Fighter.
0:16:09it was a lot more like pac-man era graphics even had like that i know it was made it might have
0:16:16been made by the same company as as pac-man because it had that same exact same high score font
0:16:21same basic idea though where you fight you know two guys fight side by side but it was
0:16:28it was an older older version of it great game oh man arcades anything going on this week
0:16:38No, I don't think so.
0:16:40All right, I'll take a break.
0:16:41Let's get it out of the way.
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0:19:03Back plays.
0:19:04So what have we crossed off the list so far?
0:19:09Polarized sunglasses and arcades.
0:19:11Yes, arcade games.
0:19:13And presbyopia.
0:19:14Well, here's the weird thing.
0:19:18I didn't know this.
0:19:22So with my left eye, if I close my right eye, I actually really—to be honest, I can't
0:19:26read my iPhone anymore if it's just with my left eye.
0:19:30If I close my left eye, I can read it with my right eye, just like I've always done
0:19:34before.
0:19:35And for some odd reason, with both eyes open, it looks even better.
0:19:39I don't know how that works.
0:19:41Even though my left eye can't focus it, it somehow looks better in my head with both
0:19:46eyes open.
0:19:49But obviously, if it's just happened in my life, if it's happened in my left eye in the
0:19:52past year, my right eye is probably, I don't know, whatever it is in there, whatever mechanism
0:19:59it is in there that lets you focus both at long distance and short range, it's probably
0:20:04all rusted out.
0:20:06It's like one loose screw in there.
0:20:10Yeah, it's like the Millennium Falcon hyperdrive.
0:20:18I had no idea, but I thought, too, the thing is that at a distance, my left eye was also
0:20:24a little blurry.
0:20:25And I thought, "Oh, I just need a new prescription."
0:20:28And so I went to the eye doctor and got in there like, "Yep, your left eye got a little
0:20:32worse since last year.
0:20:33You need a new prescription.
0:20:34Here you go.
0:20:35Here's a sample contact lens.
0:20:37Try this out."
0:20:38I tried it out, and close distance stuff got worse, like way worse.
0:20:42And I was like, "Uh-oh."
0:20:44So I went back.
0:20:45And it takes a lot for me to go back to a doctor.
0:20:47And I was like, I just thought everything was blurry.
0:20:50And I got this new thing.
0:20:51And I have to tell you, I see great at a distance with this new contact lens, but reading is
0:20:56worse.
0:20:57And the eye doctor looks at me and he's like, "Uh, yeah."
0:21:00He's like, "That's how it works."
0:21:03The stronger the near-sighted prescription is, the worse it makes the inability to focus
0:21:11at close levels.
0:21:14now I'm so old that I have to choose between what I want to be able to see.
0:21:20Jared: Yeah.
0:21:21Pete: It's pretty sad.
0:21:22Jared; I know. At this point, any Native culture worth its salt would have just
0:21:31piled some sticks around me and just left me there. Continued on without me.
0:21:35Pete; Just left a little marker.
0:21:38Just so I could pass away peacefully without being eaten by the animals.
0:21:43So I'm—
0:21:48And yet here I am.
0:21:49I'm 41, I think. Yeah, 41. And I've always felt—I've felt so good for years that Derek Jeter is still
0:21:58playing. Now, Derek Jeter's one year younger than me. He's 40. But he's still the starting
0:22:02shortstop for the New York Yankees, and he's retiring after this year. However much better
0:22:11physical condition Derek Jeter has always been in me as him being a world-class athlete
0:22:17and me being a guy who sits in a chair, the difference at age 40 to 41 is profound. He's
0:22:27the starting shortstop for the Yankees, and I can't read my iPhone."
0:22:30[Laughter]
0:22:34Like, I really feel like this is the beginning of the part where you just—everything—I
0:22:39just start falling apart.
0:22:40[T
0:22:45to, if I was ever gonna get back in shape, or get in shape of any kind, I needed to start.
0:22:50It was 10 years ago.
0:22:51I needed to start.
0:22:52Yes, I needed to start a long time ago, but now, like, that's now for sure I need.
0:22:56So I started exercising again, and I went to the doctor, and I had everything, I'm having
0:23:01everything done.
0:23:02Wait, you did have everything done?
0:23:04Every possible, every possible test is being run.
0:23:08Some of them, some of them will take, you know, months to complete.
0:23:12complete. Can we do a special episode of the talk show with a camera for this?
0:23:15Nobody wants that. Nobody wants that. I think this could be a very special episode. The doctor
0:23:21doesn't want to be there. Nobody—I don't want to be there. Your listeners definitely don't want
0:23:28to be there. Did you see that Saturday Night Live skit this year about the guy who asked
0:23:34his doctor if he could check if he has a Darth Vader up his butt? No. I don't want to spoil it.
0:23:41It's worth it though. Honestly, I'm just gonna write down here at Google, "SNL Darth Vader up my butt."
0:23:51Speaking of Star Wars...
0:23:54Oh man, going to doctors is fun.
0:23:56Yeah, speaking of Star Wars...
0:23:59New X-Wing. Which is what everybody's talking about,
0:24:03even though the whole thing was supposed to be about a charity.
0:24:05Exactly. I thought of that too after I leaked it today.
0:24:09Hey, look at the X-Wing!
0:24:10And it really sounds like a great cause, like a truly great cause.
0:24:13I think it's awesome. I love it. I think that these little teasers where they're shooting them
0:24:24on these practical sets, and I know that they said, you know, it was a thing they said when
0:24:28they announced they were going to do episode seven, and they were going to, you know, with
0:24:33J.J. Abrams directing, and they even said right up front, "We're going to dial a little back on the
0:24:38computer graphics and dial it back up a little bit on the practical special effects. But
0:24:43actions speak louder than words and just seeing something like a real full life-size X-wing
0:24:48is awesome. Because I remember a story when we were kids, and I don't know if it was
0:24:56after all three movies or just after, you know, somewhere in the run when Star Wars
0:25:01was, you know, the original trilogy was being made. I remember seeing a story in a magazine
0:25:04about a guy, you know, and they built, you know, practical sized x-wings. And it might
0:25:11have been like 19, you know, after the 1977 original. And some guy in California bought
0:25:17one of them and put it in his backyard. He like, you know, he just like bought it. And
0:25:21there was a guy who had like a life-size x-wing in his backyard. And I, as a kid, all I could
0:25:28think is that is the coolest thing I have ever heard in my life. And if I had that,
0:25:32I would go in and sit in the X-wing every day.
0:25:34Yeah.
0:25:35No, I'm kidding.
0:25:36Now as an adult, I look back and I think, "I can see being stupid enough to buy it
0:25:43if I had a backyard that could fit it.
0:25:45And I can see being stupid enough to pay someone to put it there."
0:25:48And then the next day I would wake up and think, "What the hell am I going to do with
0:25:52the X-wing in my backyard?"
0:25:53Because it doesn't go…
0:25:54What did I buy last night?
0:25:59it did a couple of years ago or maybe a little bit more there was a project going on to build
0:26:05a full-size Millennium Falcon. Oh, I saw that. They were like building it in the forest or someplace.
0:26:10I can't remember where they were doing it, but they had like they had bought some land
0:26:14and they were building a full-size Millennium Falcon. I wonder like what did they do with
0:26:22like the full-size Millennium, the real full-size Millennium Falcon they built back in '77.
0:26:27I presume they kept it around for the next two movies, and so the one you saw in Empire
0:26:34was the same one.
0:26:35I'm not sure.
0:26:36Was there ever really a full-size one built?
0:26:38Because they might have just done the door and done the rest with a matte painting.
0:26:44I think that there's something pretty big in the scene where they're loading up…
0:26:51Yeah, I don't think it's a matte painting.
0:26:55But I don't know if it's truly full-size and articulated from every angle, but the
0:27:00one in Mos Eisley where they're getting on the ship and all of a sudden it's like
0:27:05a race against time because the stormtroopers are setting up—they come in and just set
0:27:09up guns.
0:27:14But that's clearly a pretty big physical thing there.
0:27:19And think about it like when they're shooting off the minox inside the dinosaur in the asteroid
0:27:26in the next movie.
0:27:27And on Hoth, there's a pretty big—you know, when Chewie's up there fixing it.
0:27:31Yeah, there's a big Millennium Falcon.
0:27:32Again, it may not be articulated on all sides.
0:27:36I don't know.
0:27:37But visually, the Millennium Falcon was represented by several models in external and internal
0:27:42sets.
0:27:43For Star Wars, a partial exterior set was constructed, and the set dressed as docking
0:27:48Bay 94 and the Death Star hangar.
0:27:52Oh, do you think... were they not able to move
0:27:56that and then they changed the most-icely docking bay to
0:28:00become the Death Star? That would be cool. Oh, maybe.
0:28:04I bet maybe they did. Is that what that says? Is that what that says? It would be cool if that's what it says.
0:28:08Yeah, because docking Bay 94, that was the most-icely...
0:28:12Yeah. But it does say "Partial Exterior Set."
0:28:16So so anyway new x-wing I think it's pretty cool. Yeah
0:28:20I'm kind of I'm kind of pro these movies. I know some people are
0:28:25concerned I think a lot of people our age have a
0:28:31Subscribed and it's a sensible
0:28:34Maxim but the fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me
0:28:39And so they are not going to get excited about the new trilogy until until after it comes out. No way know how
0:28:46I think there's no chance that it's not going to be better than the last three.
0:28:51And the last three left such a bad taste in my mouth that I'm happy to have pretty much anything.
0:28:57I got confused by your sentence because of the two negatives, but I agree. Right? You said,
0:29:04"There's no chance that it's not going to be better," which means it has to be better.
0:29:09Yes.
0:29:10I think that I agree. I know Larry Kasdan's involved on the screenplay
0:29:16Abrams is good. Yeah, you know, I think Abrams worst movie is better than than those. Yes
0:29:24We've said this before I've said this numerous times whenever Star Wars comes up on the show though
0:29:28You have to understand though that for like our kids generation
0:29:32the
0:29:33The they're all blur together my son Jonas still has no idea which ones are the old ones in the new ones
0:29:38And I'm like, "How can you not tell the difference that there are three movies that are very,
0:29:43very different?"
0:29:44And that when I was your age, we thought Return of the Jedi was the bad one.
0:29:49And now we think, "Oh, that was a great movie!"
0:29:52Yeah, really.
0:29:54Hank still has not seen the prequels.
0:29:57You're hardcore!
0:29:58I am.
0:29:59Yeah, I mean, for the…
0:30:01He's not as…
0:30:02He loved the Clone Wars TV series.
0:30:06And he's seen the first three movies and then I was like and then I was finally I was like
0:30:11if you want to we could watch the other movies and it's like now you insert you and John
0:30:16Sira are like the founders.
0:30:18But for a while it was it was a very when he was really kind of into the he was into
0:30:22the movies themselves for a while before he got into the the Clone Wars show and I think
0:30:28at that point he asked it was he asked a lot of questions about the other three movies
0:30:32and I was like, "They're not any good. Well, we don't have them. They don't exist."
0:30:41I do. I worry about those movies because they came from the same guy.
0:30:51And it's, you know, talking about getting older, you know, and there's—I don't even know how
0:30:57true this is. I'm not a doctor. But they say that like, you know, I for within every few years,
0:31:02every single cell in your body dies and is replaced throughout the cycle of life. So like,
0:31:08I don't know, within like 10 years, every cell in your brain has died and been replaced, you know,
0:31:13and I, you know, I think hopefully, you know, that they, you know, the reason you can have any kind
0:31:17of memories that last longer than that is that, I don't know, the way shit gets stored is, you know,
0:31:24Like, "Hey, I'm going out. I've got a memory of Dig Dug in 1984." And then the new
0:31:30neuron comes in and goes, "All right, got it. I got it." Right? But I don't know. There is something—
0:31:36Nice job. Enjoy your retirement.
0:31:38There is something that happened to George Lucas as he got older that is just very—I mean,
0:31:44he might be—he seems like a very nice man, and I think he's had a very happy life. But as an artist,
0:31:50the guy who made THX 1138 eventually made The Phantom Menace is just mind-boggling.
0:31:57And that it wasn't because, "Ah, it's like a work for hire, you know, it's like I, you know,
0:32:02got to do it for the money." It's like he funded the whole thing himself.
0:32:05He got to do it exactly as he wanted. Like, he set everything up. And that's what was so…
0:32:13that to me is why those movies were so profoundly disappointing, was that
0:32:19it always impressed me that in a very different way than like Stanley Kubrick, that he was a guy
0:32:24who wanted to do things his own way outside the studio system. You know, I always thought it was
0:32:29cool. Everybody knew, you know, he wasn't Los Angeles-based. He was in Northern California,
0:32:33nobody else was up there making movies. And that he created this amazing franchise that and set up
0:32:41the licensing in such a way that he got all the money from it so that he would never have to go
0:32:46to the studios for money to make a movie again he could just make whatever movies he wanted to
0:32:50and then he made they used it to make howard the duck and the phantom menace
0:32:54yeah i mean he had no one to answer to other than himself jonas watched howard the duck at his
0:33:03grandparents house uh oh my god really a couple of months how did that happen i don't know i asked
0:33:09him it was like i think he was there he was being babysat for the you know weekend being watched for
0:33:13for the weekend while Amy and I were away, and I don't know, it was on Netflix or something
0:33:17like that, and they're like, "Well, let's watch that!" It's about—and I tried to
0:33:22explain to them that it was from the guy who invented Star Wars, and you wouldn't believe
0:33:25me.
0:33:26[Laughter]
0:33:27So, we're at half an hour in. We should probably talk about Apple eventually.
0:33:32Yeah. Hey, financial results came out today.
0:33:35Yep, they sure did.
0:33:37Well, today for us, not today for the people, the suckers listening to this later in the
0:33:42It's probably not going to come out until Thursday or something like that.
0:33:46People should listen to this live.
0:33:47I mean, I don't know why they don't.
0:33:49Yeah, should I do that?
0:33:50You know, the ATP guys have that.
0:33:54It is helpful as I'm listening to ATP and they either make a mistake or they can't
0:34:01think of something, that they don't have to interrupt themselves and Google it.
0:34:04They just keep their eye on the chat and so, but, you know.
0:34:08It's kind of amazing.
0:34:09And it sort of reminds me of the podcast equivalent of like on a live TV, the way the anchor always
0:34:17has an earpiece and a director or somebody offstage can tell them things, you know, so
0:34:23that the person who's on air doesn't have to interrupt the show.
0:34:28Like it works.
0:34:29And I remember having it with the old talk show with Dan Benjamin for a while.
0:34:33Not a long stretch, but for some stretch we had like an IRC channel or something like
0:34:38that.
0:34:39helpful. I don't think I could do it though, because I think the reason it works for ATP
0:34:44guys is that they record on a very regular schedule. You know, there's like, I don't know,
0:34:49every Wednesday night at 9 Eastern they're on and I don't think I've ever recorded two episodes of
0:34:54the show at the same day and time. Right? Jared: I can vouch for that.
0:35:00Pete: Like, sometimes…
0:35:01Jared; The ones that I've been on.
0:35:03Pete; I'm like, are you up at midnight? Because I'm wide awake. It's 3 AM Eastern,
0:35:07but it's only midnight out there. Are you good to go?" And you're like, "Yeah!"
0:35:11Do you remember being disappointed? I was disappointed when I found out that, like,
0:35:20the Tonight Show wasn't live. Yeah. Although, well, let's see. Growing up in New York,
0:35:31Saturday Night Live was live. Yes, yes. Which was great. That was always crazy. And it was
0:35:37always great to see them crack up and stuff like that. Those were always the moments that
0:35:42you remembered. But yeah, but that was basically, well, I guess, no, they're all like that.
0:35:50Like Letterman's not live either. No, nobody's live anymore. The Tonight Show used to be
0:35:54live on the East Coast. And then I think at some point in the '60s, they switched. Or
0:36:02maybe it was when they moved to California in the '70s, when they moved from New York
0:36:05to California in the '70s. Maybe that's when they switched. And it just felt like a bit
0:36:13of a cheat. But then I started thinking of it as more like knowing a magician's magic
0:36:19trick. Like at first, it ruins the illusion. And then you think, "Hey, this is pretty
0:36:22These people, they're clearly pretending—they don't lie, they don't tell you it's live,
0:36:27but they're acting as though it's late at night somehow.
0:36:29Yeah. But that was weird. I went to a Letterman show once, back when he was on NBC,
0:36:39and it was like at four o'clock in the afternoon or something.
0:36:42Right. Not late at night at all.
0:36:44But yeah, but they kind of—I mean, they tongue-in-cheek. He does a tongue-in-cheek
0:36:49thing, pretending that it's a night, you know, that he has to stay up until 11 o'clock to show.
0:36:53Right, or like on election night he'll make jokes as though he knows who won the election.
0:37:01Yeah, right.
0:37:03So, financial results came in. Is that where we were on?
0:37:12Yes, that's what we were on.
0:37:15I hardly really looked at them. It seemed like they were more or less kind of sort of
0:37:19in line not shocking
0:37:21Financially good iPhones
0:37:24Pretty good a little bit. I think iphone a little higher than expected. Yeah
0:37:29Margins are still great
0:37:32Higher than expected and that was that's been the thing
0:37:34Like that that during the rundown of the stock like the the great 2013 apple depression
0:37:43was always about the margins, that the margins are going to collapse. They can't, you know…
0:37:47Right.
0:37:48And part of it was because they'd had a run for a couple of, maybe even over a year,
0:37:53where they had insanely high margins. I think maybe, who knows how much of it was just…
0:37:58Remember when they bought all the LCD screens and a bunch of RAM in advance?
0:38:04It was like somehow that bet paid off huge, and they had like 40-something percent margins
0:38:10for a while. And part of it was just that that was a fluke in terms of being high. And they kept
0:38:16saying it was a fluke, like, you know, this was all, you know, we'll take the money, but this is
0:38:20a surprise. Normally they should not be this high. And then part of it was, you know, just, you know,
0:38:26bad luck that it, you know, went down a little bit. But then I know there was a lot of speculation
0:38:31for a while that the margins were going to compress, I think is what they say.
0:38:36Yeah, but no. And the only, it's like the only real question is the iPads are down again.
0:38:45Yeah, iPads down, well it's two things I think, and I think that maybe they're related, I don't
0:38:51know. iPad is down 10% year over year or 9%?
0:38:55I think it's 20.
0:38:55Oh really? Well, all right.
0:38:57I think so.
0:38:57Well, Macs are up 18%, and Macs being up 18% is even more impressive because,
0:39:04because according to most, like IDC and other people who track the whole industry, the industry
0:39:10as a whole is still down 2% for the same quarter.
0:39:14So in an industry where like Windows PCs or I guess including the Mac, including all Mac
0:39:20and Windows, who knows, all Windows PCs must be even worse if the Mac is up to 13%.
0:39:25Down even further, right.
0:39:27Right.
0:39:28And I think that's kind of surprising because I feel like a couple of years ago when the
0:39:32iPad was 2011, 2012, when the iPad was early days and was clearly a hit, I think everybody,
0:39:41including me, was sort of thinking about how is this, as the iPad gets more powerful and
0:39:47more popular and more familiar, how is that going to affect Mac laptop sales?
0:39:52It's probably going to be like a sort of slow decline.
0:39:56It seems like it's the other way around.
0:39:58I don't know.
0:39:59Yeah.
0:40:00Yeah, it's interesting.
0:40:01interesting I don't know exactly I mean I think well I think some of the
0:40:05negativity about Windows machine sales is Windows 8 yeah it's just not I mean
0:40:13often those kinds of upgrades drive sales and it's having almost you know
0:40:18it's having a negative effect this time because everybody hates it I really just
0:40:22don't think if you went back to like 2011 and the early days of tablets and
0:40:26you know mobile phones you know growing gangbusters I just don't think I would
0:40:30have believed that come 2014 the Mac would still see 18% year over year.
0:40:35Yeah, I wouldn't have thought that either.
0:40:37It does my heart well though because it's great to see the Mac doing well.
0:40:41Yeah. I liked that ad. Did you like the stickers ad?
0:40:46Yeah. I liked it a lot.
0:40:48Yeah, and I noticed that little flash of the old logo was great.
0:40:54The old logo came up twice. So this is a new commercial that Apple, they call it a short film.
0:40:59It happens to be exactly 30 seconds long.
0:41:02But, I don't, you know, alright.
0:41:05And you'll see it on TV.
0:41:07They're going to pay money.
0:41:09In between segments of a show.
0:41:11In between commercials, they're going to pay to broadcast a 30-second short film
0:41:18about one of their products.
0:41:23Well, if they're not going to do it, then who is?
0:41:25is if you haven't seen it it's just 30 seconds of almost like stop-motion
0:41:31animation almost it's just I don't know if they're a bunch but it's just a whole
0:41:34bunch of very very quick cuts I think maybe less than a second each of MacBook
0:41:43I think mostly MacBook Airs but then it's all Mac it's all MacBook Airs oh I
0:41:47thought at the end they switched to bigger really because I thought that the
0:41:50whole ad was about the error because it's like everybody's favorite.
0:41:57Maybe it's two different sizes of MacBook Airs.
0:42:00But with all sorts of custom stickers decorating the outer Apple logo case.
0:42:07They never show the screen.
0:42:08It's always just the Apple logo.
0:42:12Some of them I've seen before, some of them pretty clever.
0:42:15But then I noticed the one about halfway through, it's like a pixel art version of the old
0:42:21six-color Apple logo that you put over the Apple logo on the MacBook, and then when the
0:42:27Apple logo lights up, it lights up the decal.
0:42:31I saw that one at first, and I thought, "Oh, cool.
0:42:35That's a neat way to sneak the old Apple logo into an ad."
0:42:38But then at the very end of the ad, it very quickly cycled through different styles of
0:42:43Apple logo, not on a MacBook, just the Apple logo, including the old six-color Apple logo.
0:42:49And I found that really interesting.
0:42:51I got some pushback.
0:42:53I wrote about it and I said something.
0:42:54What did I say?
0:42:55I said it pretty well, so I should probably just rip myself off.
0:43:00I wrote, "People have been decorating their laptops with stickers and decals ever since
0:43:04they became consumer products.
0:43:07You didn't see many stickers on them when they cost $5,000."
0:43:10I think the first time I tried to buy a PowerBook, it was $6,000.
0:43:14And I was like, "Wow, that isn't going to happen."
0:43:17And I don't think we need to commission a demographic survey to state that younger people
0:43:22are more likely to do this than older people.
0:43:24It's no coincidence that the spot is debuting in back-to-school season.
0:43:29In the old days, Apple didn't have to worry about conformance.
0:43:33Just owning a Mac made you stand out from the crowd.
0:43:35But what happens now when everyone you know has a MacBook and every MacBook looks the
0:43:39same. Something like this commercial is what happens. Some people push back on Twitter,
0:43:45like, "Everybody you know has a MacBook," and it's like, you know, obviously something
0:43:50like that doesn't literally mean everybody. But I'll bet it's the case at a lot of schools
0:43:55that there are, you know, whether it's high school or college, where it seems like everybody
0:44:01you know has a MacBook. I don't know. I've seen those pictures. You see those pictures
0:44:06of lecture halls.
0:44:07Yeah, I mean that's been happening for years. Yeah before
0:44:10As these market changes happened in the PC market where where PC started falling in Apple and Mac started rising
0:44:17Yeah, and I think that's you know that women
0:44:20Like younger, you know teenagers and college students. It's even more profound
0:44:25So yeah, take every word everyone with a grain of salt
0:44:29But if it seems like most of your friends all have Mac books all Mac books
0:44:34you know, especially from the back look exactly the same, you know, the air the pro that they're all just aluminum with a white logo
0:44:41I mean, I think it's a cool look but you know as a kid that's there's a sort of
0:44:46Resistance to that sort of conformance
0:44:50Yeah, I'm not a fan of the plastic covers
0:44:55What plastic covers every once in a while?
0:44:57I'll put a put a cover on my iPhone
0:44:59But I just because I feel like I'm gonna drop that but I don't on a MacBook
0:45:03I don't like the plastic.
0:45:06Dave: Yeah, and I don't think you need to protect it.
0:45:09Well, the other thing that's interesting about that commercial is it shows a bunch of them that
0:45:14are beaten up, literally dented, scratched, well used. And that's pretty interesting because,
0:45:22to my knowledge, I think Matthew Panzareno pointed this out, I don't think Apple's ever advertised
0:45:26with well-worn versions of their machines.
0:45:30No, no, nothing.
0:45:33But they've talked about it before, like, Jonny Ive at least has in those videos he
0:45:38shoots from the weird white universe he lives in.
0:45:43You know, it's like where that guy who runs the Matrix is running the Matrix.
0:45:49Sure.
0:45:50You know, that they choose these materials for how they wear, you know, and that it should
0:45:56be like a pair of, you know, good old pair of boots or blue jeans or something like that,
0:46:01you know, that it should look better as it ages. But they don't show it like that.
0:46:05But I do think there's a truth to it, you know. And I think that especially, you know,
0:46:09a phone is different because it's got glass and can, you know, that's the glass, all
0:46:13things are off with that. I don't use a case for my phone, but I don't blame anybody
0:46:16who does because glass. Whereas, you know, MacBooks are, in my experience, extremely
0:46:21rugged.
0:46:22Yeah.
0:46:23Absolutely.
0:46:24Especially since they've switched to SSDs.
0:46:31I think that the aluminum, I think that it's kind of neat.
0:46:34I think Johnny Ive probably liked that ad.
0:46:36I think he liked probably seeing him beat up and worn in an ad.
0:46:40Because I do think they designed for that.
0:46:43Yeah.
0:46:44Does your kid have a Macbook?
0:46:45He uses a very old Macbook Air.
0:46:48Yeah.
0:46:49my old Macbook Pro and man, he's rough on that thing.
0:46:52[laughter]
0:46:55Like physically rough or like rough like?
0:46:58Everything. I mean, it's, you know, and he's like, he spilled a drink on the keyboard and
0:47:05now I gotta figure out how to get the keys off to click 'cause they're sticky now.
0:47:08Like underneath, they're sticky. It's easy to clean the top of them, but now they're like...
0:47:13Yeah.
0:47:14The touch, I would not type on that thing.
0:47:18[laughs]
0:47:20Jonas has a bit of a passive-aggressive streak to him, where he's taken now to showing me some Minecraft mods.
0:47:30They're called "shaders," and they totally change the way the game is rendered.
0:47:35And he says, "Look, this one is meant for old MacBook Airs to make it look better, and it's still laggy."
0:47:44[laughs]
0:47:46"Wow, isn't that interesting?" And then he's like, "But this one's actually all right,
0:47:50even though it wasn't meant for an old MacBook." But this one's… well, and he goes, "Well,
0:47:57it's laggy, but it's not as laggy." And I do kind of feel bad, but in the sense that
0:48:03somehow I'm proud that he cares about frame rate and…
0:48:08Right, right. No, I get that. I get that too.
0:48:10Right. Like, we have got a great running gag in our house, where like… because it's… well,
0:48:15you guys are three too so it's there's never a tie somebody's always going to win and so like one of
0:48:20ours is um standard def video on the tv amy doesn't really notice doesn't really seem to care jonas
0:48:28jonas acts has always been poisoned like a spit take like you expect me to watch this
0:48:38i don't think ken notices the video quality that much maybe that's because he's not wearing his
0:48:43glasses, but he definitely—frame rates or buffering drive him berserk.
0:48:50Oh my god. God help you if something is buffering on Netflix or something.
0:48:55Anything drops below 60 frames.
0:49:00When are we going to move to another country where they have better—
0:49:0360 frames per second. When I was a kid, we had eight pixels on the screen.
0:49:07And a black and white TV.
0:49:12Our Atari 2600 literally had a switch you could flip that said,
0:49:17you're playing on a black and white TV.
0:49:20Remember that? It was a switch. It was like B&W.
0:49:23And it was like, I guess it somehow would, you know, only choose
0:49:26shades of gray. Right. Things that would make it.
0:49:31My first video game console had a mode for black and white TVs.
0:49:38Anything else on the quarterly finances?
0:49:42Just that they are looking forward to having a big fall.
0:49:45Oh, is that what they said?
0:49:46I didn't see it.
0:49:47I see it.
0:49:48We're recording at a time where I have not seen the conference call, which is usually
0:49:55where more information comes out.
0:49:57So they've dropped a hint that they expect to have a big fall.
0:49:59Yes.
0:50:00Oh, and the other thing, which, you know, we've been hoping for and kind of expecting
0:50:06And then the other thing I thought was interesting was that Tim Cook said that the growth in
0:50:12the iPhone 5c, you know, they don't give out, they don't break out how well each iPhone
0:50:17does, but he said the growth this quarter in the iPhone 5c tier was higher than the
0:50:23growth in either the 4s or the 5s tier.
0:50:28So right, in other words, not, you know, obviously there was no previous 4c to compare against,
0:50:35But it was the pricing tiers.
0:50:37Yes.
0:50:38Yeah.
0:50:39So it was…
0:50:40Compared to the 4S a year ago, I guess.
0:50:43Compared to the 4S a year ago, correct.
0:50:45Right.
0:50:46Yeah.
0:50:47Yeah, I think that's interesting, especially since there were a lot of people who were
0:50:48sort of chalking the 5C up as a failure, as somehow that it was…
0:50:52Right.
0:50:53That's the…
0:50:54Yeah.
0:50:55And it's only…
0:50:56You know, it's arguably a failure in that I don't think…
0:50:59They didn't sell as many as Apple thought they were going to sell.
0:51:02Or maybe they didn't sell them as many as they thought they would in the first quarter,
0:51:05but maybe for the year as a whole.
0:51:07Yeah.
0:51:08Or I guess it's only been nine months or so.
0:51:10But it's still like it's like the fourth or fifth best-selling phone.
0:51:15I see a lot of them.
0:51:16I really do.
0:51:17I've started.
0:51:18Yeah, I've still you keep seeing more and more.
0:51:21Yeah, I think, you know, I don't think Apple, I know from talking to some people at Apple
0:51:26that they don't they don't they don't have a crystal ball.
0:51:29They don't they didn't know exactly how many like talking to them last year when they
0:51:32first announced them and to me the part that stuck out right on day one was that
0:51:37i think it was at 199 or was it 299 there was one price where you could for the exact same price
0:51:44carrier subsidized you could get either the 5s or the 5c you could get like the best 5c or the
0:51:50worst 5s at i think okay i don't know if it was 199 different just different um amounts of memory
0:51:58Yeah, yeah, you know, and the 5S has, it was like the 16 gigabyte 5S versus the 32 gigabyte
0:52:075C.
0:52:08It doesn't matter.
0:52:09I could be wrong on that.
0:52:10Don't even email me.
0:52:11But, you know, something like that.
0:52:13You get a 32 gigabyte 5C or 16 gigabyte 5S at the exact same price.
0:52:18And I thought that was interesting because that's, it's like for some people who,
0:52:23someone who's less informed, you know, might be that's a difficult decision.
0:52:27And how did they think that was going to break out?
0:52:29And they're like, we don't know.
0:52:32We really don't know.
0:52:32We have some estimates, but until we put the stuff out,
0:52:36we're always a little surprised by which exact configurations
0:52:42sell better than others.
0:52:44There's some consistency year over year,
0:52:46but sometimes you can't predict it.
0:52:48So I think they're probably a little surprised
0:52:50that the 5C didn't sell great right off the bat.
0:52:54And maybe they're a little surprised that it has legs as strong as it does.
0:52:58But I think there's an easy explanation.
0:53:02The one that people who are enthusiasts are going to buy is always going to be the top
0:53:08of the line.
0:53:09The brand, yeah, the real new one.
0:53:10Right.
0:53:11That you care about things like that the camera is a little better, has an extra half stop
0:53:16of exposure, and you care about the fact that the AA-7 is a faster CPU.
0:53:21CPU. I mean, every day, my life is better every day because my phone runs 64-bit.
0:53:26I can't believe there's people out there running a 32-bit cell phone.
0:53:30If I had a 32-bit cell phone, I probably couldn't read my phone with either eye.
0:53:36I'd just kill myself. That's what I'd do.
0:53:38That's what I would do. But no, you know what I mean? We think about things like that,
0:53:43and then we do stupid things like go get in line on day one to buy one so that we can have it the
0:53:49first day that it comes out. Whereas people who are not like that, like just buy a phone
0:53:55whenever their old one breaks or whenever they feel like their old one, "Man, I'm
0:53:59sick of this old phone. I've got to get a new phone." And then they go in and they're
0:54:03like, "Wow, I like that pink one. That looks cool. I'm going to get that one." And
0:54:08they don't care about the fact that the camera is one-year-old. And so of course it
0:54:13makes sense that that's the one that—I think in hindsight, it now makes sense that
0:54:17the one that would do better year over year.
0:54:21Be more like a more of a slow burn.
0:54:23Right. And it still looks new. It looks like a new phone. Whereas like a year ago,
0:54:29if you were going to buy the mid-tier phone, you were getting the 4S and it kind of looked
0:54:32a little older and just kind of looked like a year old phone compared to the 5S. Whereas the 5C
0:54:41looks just as new, just a different style.
0:54:45There was another, there was a rumor about, did you see this? I can't, was it the Wall Street Journal?
0:54:49That Apple was ordering 60 to 80 million big phones.
0:54:58Oh, I saw something about this, right?
0:55:00Some huge number of...
0:55:01Right. Whereas like they...
0:55:03Phones for the phone.
0:55:04You know, like, I think like last year in the fall they sold like 50 million?
0:55:07And so like...
0:55:09Something like, yeah.
0:55:1060 to 80 is like a huge spike. Yeah, I saw some stuff on Twitter about that where it's like,
0:55:14one rogue report that they're ordering 80 million iPhones now means that, you know,
0:55:21six months from now when they report the holiday quarter…
0:55:23Jared: It's still 75. It's a disappointment.
0:55:26[Laughter]
0:55:26Yeah, anything less than that is going to be a huge mess,
0:55:29no matter how much higher it is than what it actually was a year ago.
0:55:33Let's, well, hold that thought. I'm going to do a sponsor read, and I want to hold that thought on
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0:58:30them all right big iphone um i i might be a week or two behind but on atp syracusea brought up i
0:58:40thought a great question and i was like how come nobody's talking about this they're talking about
0:58:44you know this there's this pervasive rumors that there's gonna be too big our iphones 4.7 inch and
0:58:49and 5.5 inch. How come if there's going to be a 5.5 inch iPhone, where are the component
0:58:58leaks? Because there's all sorts of component leaks, purported at least, for the 4.7. And
0:59:04they're from people who've had, like a year ago, when they had component leaks of things
0:59:10Things like the gold back of the 5s were pretty much spot on.
0:59:17But there's no…
0:59:18And there's…
0:59:19So, you know, the 4.7-inch new iPhone seems to be tracking exactly on pace leak-wise as
0:59:29the last two or three years of iPhones, which to me it makes it seem like a slam dunk, like
0:59:34unless something goes wrong.
0:59:38It seems like that's going to be a new product soon.
0:59:42But there's nothing.
0:59:43I haven't seen anything.
0:59:44There have been screens that have come out for the 4.7.
0:59:47There have been cases.
0:59:48Nothing for the 5.5.
0:59:50And then Reuters had a story last week-- I think it was Reuters.
0:59:53Maybe it was Businessweek.
0:59:54But one of them had a story that said that the 4.7-inch iPhone 6
1:00:00is going into production now, meaning July,
1:00:03and that the 5.5-inch one is going into production next month, meaning August.
1:00:08But you might think, well, if it's a month behind, then maybe the leaks are going to start coming soon.
1:00:16But the leaks for the 4.7-inch phone came more than a month ago.
1:00:19Started a long time ago.
1:00:20Right. They started months, plural, ago.
1:00:24I mean, of course it makes sense that they would pick up if it is entering production.
1:00:29But I don't know.
1:00:30There's something about this 5.5-inch thing
1:00:33that, to me, is starting to sound like it
1:00:35isn't going to happen.
1:00:36Well, it seems kind of crazy to think that they would
1:00:38have phones in three sizes.
1:00:40I don't know.
1:00:42That seems too--
1:00:45I've said it before on numerous times.
1:00:47It just seems like it's--
1:00:49And to introduce two at the same time seems very odd.
1:00:52Yeah, it seems like it would make
1:00:53Phil Schuler's head explode.
1:00:55From a product marketing perspective,
1:00:56how do you frame it?
1:00:58How do you frame the story?
1:00:59Like with the iPads, they've got the same specs, same camera,
1:01:06same CPU, same pixel dimensions.
1:01:09It's just you want one bigger or smaller,
1:01:11and you have to pay an extra $100 or $129
1:01:14or whatever the difference is for the bigger one.
1:01:16And it somehow seems to make sense in consumer minds
1:01:19that you pay a little more to get a bigger one,
1:01:21pay a little less to get a smaller one.
1:01:23Or maybe it doesn't.
1:01:24Maybe that's why iPad sales are down.
1:01:25I don't know.
1:01:26But it somehow comes across as feeling fair.
1:01:30Whereas if they come out with two new iPhone 6s,
1:01:32and they're like the same A8 system on a chip,
1:01:36the same new and improved camera, the same thinness,
1:01:40and one costs more than the other, well, which one costs more?
1:01:44I'd rather have the smaller one.
1:01:46So would I.
1:01:47Right?
1:01:47It doesn't seem to me like you should pay more for a bigger one.
1:01:51So that doesn't make any sense to me.
1:01:53But maybe we're in luck.
1:01:54Maybe this will be the year where I don't want to buy the most expensive iPhone.
1:01:57I mean, particularly because they've approached this so slowly and carefully to date.
1:02:03Yeah.
1:02:03Jumping up to 5.5 inches seems unnecessary.
1:02:07And they're still growing sales.
1:02:09I mean, it's not like, you know, if it was the iPad, maybe then we might think,
1:02:15okay, well, sales are falling.
1:02:16Maybe they need to do something else.
1:02:19But, you know, it's not like they have a big problem selling iPhones.
1:02:24Yeah, these four-inch iPhones are only selling in record numbers.
1:02:30And conversely, I don't think it makes any sense, product marketing-wise, if there's
1:02:34two, for one to be like an A tier and one to be the B tier.
1:02:39Because there's some number of people who are going to want the other one but want the
1:02:46other specs, right?
1:02:48Somebody is going to say, "I want a top-of-the-line iPhone."
1:02:50And if the top of the line one is the 5.5 inch and the mid-tier one is 4.7 inch, like
1:02:56the 5C equivalent class spec-wise, well, I'm going to be upset because I don't want a
1:03:035.5 inch iPhone.
1:03:04Even though I've spent half an hour at the beginning of the show talking about how I
1:03:07can't read my iPhone, I don't want it.
1:03:12I'd rather not be able to read my phone than carry something that big.
1:03:19I don't get it.
1:03:20they could do it you know and then if you know like let's say that the 5.5 inch one has a better
1:03:24camera than the 4.7 inch one well that i mean that's gonna make me angry right i just don't see
1:03:31it it doesn't make any never made any sense to me like the iphone i don't know i'll i'll wait and
1:03:37then and then do they still they sell four phones or do they sell or does the yes it doesn't make
1:03:44make any sense. If they switch to a thing where the new iPhone 6 is out and it has
1:03:50now it has a 4.7 inch screen I don't that doesn't sound good to me I like 4
1:03:56inches but I'll try it and it does sound reasonable and it just maybe you know as
1:03:59batteries get bigger you know you know maybe I'd be happy with it and I'll
1:04:03think you know what I kind of like having a bigger phone and you know yeah
1:04:08you know like I said my eyes are getting worse maybe maybe I mean well and when
1:04:12When the 5 came out, it was physically smaller than the 4s.
1:04:16Right.
1:04:17It was a larger screen, but in terms of volume,
1:04:20it was actually a smaller phone.
1:04:21Right.
1:04:22And--
1:04:22So I would hope they would do something like that again.
1:04:24Yeah.
1:04:24It felt like a fair trade-off.
1:04:26Yeah.
1:04:27Whereas going to 5.5 is just ridiculous.
1:04:30Although, I'm not saying, no, that I
1:04:32can't believe that other people would want a device like that.
1:04:35I totally understand that some people love them
1:04:38And that there is like a sweet spot between,
1:04:42I don't need a tablet and a phone.
1:04:44I just have this one device.
1:04:45I know it's not for me.
1:04:47I've seen such similar devices.
1:04:49I can't imagine carrying them around, carrying it around
1:04:51in my pocket everywhere I go.
1:04:53So I just don't see it.
1:04:56I do think that also, though, and with the discussions--
1:04:58no joking aside about my presbyopia--
1:05:04it does raise the question, though,
1:05:05of what is the point of getting a bigger screen?
1:05:08Is it to make everything bigger so that you see the same amount of text, but now it's
1:05:13bigger?
1:05:14Or is it to put more on the screen and keep the text the same size and now that you can
1:05:19have more text at the same time?
1:05:23I think the answer is maybe both.
1:05:25A little bit of both.
1:05:26Right?
1:05:27With the settings, you know, like with the, um, um, what do they call it?
1:05:31Oh, so you get one or the other?
1:05:33They don't call it adaptive text, but there's, you know, with iOS 7, they introduced the
1:05:37thing where you go into general text size and you can make text bigger system-wide and maybe
1:05:45you know it always seems to me like when you make it bigger on the current iphone it just takes up
1:05:51too much space maybe with a 5.5 inch phone that it would be a great option for people with
1:05:56failing eyesight that i i could see that as a great product but i just i still don't see how
1:06:02they sell it alongside the 4.7 inch at least at the same year it just seems like a lot to sell
1:06:09yeah i don't know that to me i'm i'm leaks even though there are leaks coming out i feel like we
1:06:15know less about what they're going to announce iphone wise than in years many years i can't even
1:06:22remember the last time that we that i've had so many questions yeah because last year about this
1:06:27time we had oh well I don't know if it was quite this time certainly by August
1:06:32we had seen the 5c I had already written my review no no we didn't see the 5c did
1:06:41we know but I thought we saw the shells oh I thought we only saw the 5s the the
1:06:45metal ones I didn't think we saw the plastic ones although maybe we didn't
1:06:48they were white may I think they were white yeah but we didn't see all the
1:06:51colors I don't think I think we just saw like a white plastic one yeah yeah I
1:06:56I do remember something like that. So we're in agreement. Number 5.5 yet, anyway.
1:07:03I don't know. And then there's people saying, the rumor is saying that it's a month behind
1:07:08or that it might come early next year. They wouldn't announce that in September then. That
1:07:14seems weird that they would do that. Like, if it's three or four months behind, it seems to me like
1:07:19that's a non-starter. It should either be at the same time and therefore in time for the holidays
1:07:27or like six months later. You could maybe do it in April or something like that, like when they
1:07:33announced the first couple of iPads. But the holidays, it's such a weird blip on their quarter.
1:07:40I mean, you can see it every time they have these, like today, every time they do the quarterly
1:07:44finance announcements. It's such a weird blip. They're such a holiday heavily company that
1:07:51it just doesn't make sense that they would have something that would debut in, I don't know,
1:07:55January or something like that. And they can't announce it in September because then people would,
1:07:59you know, it's the whole Osborne effect thing. Like they're not going to want to buy the 4.7 inch one
1:08:04until they can see the 5.5 inch one and make a side by side comparison.
1:08:10or they can't just have five point—you know, we're not going to sell it until January,
1:08:14but we'll put them in the stores so you can see them. Well, then if people love them,
1:08:18then, you know, what? They're going to—did they wait? That doesn't make any sense. You don't show
1:08:24people something unless you can sell it to them. I just don't get it. Something just doesn't happen.
1:08:29Some of those rumors came from Ming-Chi Kuo—I'm sure I'm pronouncing that wrong—who is held up as,
1:08:37like one of the really good rumor sources. And used to work for Digitimes. Now works for KGI
1:08:48Securities. Wouldn't that be funny if-- I don't even know if it's a he or a she.
1:08:52It's a he. All right. He got fired from Digitimes for his poor track record.
1:08:58And he's gotten a number of things correct, but he's also gotten a number of things
1:09:03completely incorrect because last year he said that the iPhones was going to be announced at
1:09:07WWDC. Right. And he's the one saying that the iPhones delayed, you know, the big iPhones are
1:09:15delayed and won't be coming. It might not come until next year. I think that if the 5.5-inch
1:09:22iPhone is delayed, maybe they were working on it, maybe it is delayed for whatever reason,
1:09:28That means it's pushed back a year.
1:09:30That's what I think.
1:09:32Yeah, I would think so, too.
1:09:34They are not going to do something
1:09:35like two, three months after the initial one.
1:09:38So here's the thing.
1:09:39Here's what I can't wait for then.
1:09:40Imagine this scenario.
1:09:42September comes.
1:09:43There's a big iPhone event.
1:09:44The Yerba Buena Center is rented out.
1:09:47They put up some kind of big colorful poster.
1:09:51I fly out there.
1:09:52We have a big dog and pony show.
1:09:57And the only new iPhone they announce is a 4.7 inch iPhone 6.
1:10:04It doesn't matter how awesome that phone is.
1:10:07How many people are going to say, where's my 5.5 inch iPhone?
1:10:11Right?
1:10:14I mean, it's like the can't win situation that Apple is in.
1:10:18I don't see how they could do this.
1:10:23It still doesn't make sense to me how they would do both.
1:10:25But if they don't do both, there's going to be some number of people who are outraged
1:10:29and are going to say that they are out of touch, they're going to disappear in 60 days
1:10:35if they don't get a 5.5-inch phone out.
1:10:43Did they disappear after that 60 days?
1:10:46I wanted to know if someone would ask on the conference call.
1:10:49Are you guys still in business?
1:10:52I guess he, Trip Choudhury, does not get on the conference call.
1:10:55It would be great if he did.
1:10:56He does not get to answer, to ask questions on the conference call.
1:10:58Oh my god, can we Kickstarter that?
1:11:00I would totally Kickstarter a project to get Trip Choudhury onto the, uh, every conference
1:11:08call.
1:11:09You know, at least for the next four.
1:11:11You know, we'll pay whatever it costs and we'll get Trip Choudhury on every—he gets
1:11:15one question on every call.
1:11:17He'd just take Gene Munster's spot, right?
1:11:22is just going to ask about Apple TV.
1:11:24Tim "Lucky" Johnson He's going to ask you, yeah. You know he's
1:11:26going to burn a question on the Apple TV.
1:11:27Pete: Yeah. Let's give one to Tripp Choudry. Tim, Tripp Choudry here.
1:11:32Tim "Lucky" Johnson Are you still in business?
1:11:33Pete "Lucky" Johnson Are you still in business? I've got you
1:11:35penciled in for disappearing in early June when you didn't release an iWatch thing.
1:11:41Tim "Lucky" Johnson Ah, that guy.
1:11:42Pete "Lucky" Johnson This is Tim. I don't do impressions. This is
1:11:48my Tim Cook Southern accent. This is Tim.
1:11:49Tim "Lucky" Johnson I'm going to take that question.
1:11:50No, we're still here.
1:11:53[Laughter]
1:11:53Talk to you next quarter.
1:11:59[Laughter]
1:11:59Pete: Yeah, I don't know.
1:12:02No.
1:12:02[Laughter]
1:12:02Jared: Check in in 90 days.
1:12:03Pete; Well, check in.
1:12:05Hopefully.
1:12:05Jared; Yeah, right.
1:12:07Pete; If we can keep the lights on.
1:12:10Jared; The other, one other thing from the, that I heard on the little bit of the conference call
1:12:18that I heard before we got on the air was that, well, the iPad sales were down overall.
1:12:26They were up about 50% in countries like China and India, which was interesting. And they
1:12:33were down in the mature countries or developed nations.
1:12:39They call them BRIC countries. B-R-I-C. Now what is that?
1:12:44Brazil, India, China.
1:12:45What's the word?
1:12:46Yeah, Brazil, Russia, India, China. Brazil, Russia, India, China. It sounds like four random countries.
1:12:54Which is, yeah. Although they're—except that they're both—all four are enormously populous, right?
1:13:01Right. Yeah, so those four countries, it's way up. And isn't that exactly the—those are exactly the
1:13:12sort of countries where I feel like everybody said they would never sell any iPads.
1:13:20Well, and that they also are like the sort of countries where everybody was saying last
1:13:25year when the 5C came out and wasn't cheap.
1:13:29You know, that everybody's saying, "Oh, they're going to make a cheap iPhone."
1:13:32And it came out and it wasn't.
1:13:33It was, you know, it had nothing to do with the cost.
1:13:36It had to do with having the mid-tier occupied by a new device at the same price point instead
1:13:42of a year-old device coming down.
1:13:45That's all they did.
1:13:46It had nothing to do with the price.
1:13:48It was about replacing the middle tier with a new phone rather than…
1:13:54And one that was probably cheaper to build.
1:13:56Yeah, I think so.
1:13:57So it helped their margin.
1:13:59Right.
1:14:00I think, because, yeah, I think that there's something… yeah, there's something to
1:14:03that where I think that the refined aluminum, if they had held the past pattern instead of the 5C,
1:14:11the 5C wouldn't exist and the iPhone 5 would still be sold at that point, which is what the 5C is
1:14:18internally. Which also, I guess, if we want to speculate about iPhones, do you think there's
1:14:25going to be an iPhone 5CS, which would be an iPhone 5S in a plastic case?
1:14:31No, I would.
1:14:32Mmm, I don't know if they're gonna call it a 5CS because it's starting to get like a
1:14:36mouthful.
1:14:37No.
1:14:38To me, the simplest thing is that the 5C drops down, the 5S drops down, and you get a 4.7
1:14:43inch.
1:14:44Yeah, but I kind of feel like the pattern they set last year is they don't want to sell
1:14:48the nice metal case or, you know, exterior.
1:14:53In the middle?
1:14:54In the middle.
1:14:56I do feel like...
1:14:57I feel like that year was a setup just to get to the point where the plastic case is
1:15:03on the bottom level.
1:15:04Yeah, maybe.
1:15:05It could be.
1:15:06It's either one or the other.
1:15:07That's a good point.
1:15:08It could be about that they needed to get it out one year in advance before it troubles
1:15:11down.
1:15:12Yeah.
1:15:13It could be.
1:15:14It could be.
1:15:15I don't know, though.
1:15:17I'm not so sure about that.
1:15:19I don't know either.
1:15:20I think it's sort of about—see, my guess is that it's sort of about setting your
1:15:26expectations for which one will cost more before you even turn them on.
1:15:31That you can look at a 5C and a 5S side by side while the screens are off.
1:15:36And I think most people would be able to guess which one's more expensive than the other.
1:15:40Whereas my 5S, the current 5S, pick your favorite color versus the iPhone 6, this 4.7 inch iPhone
1:15:516.
1:15:52I don't know that you'd be able to do that.
1:15:55If you just purely like bigger devices, I guess you'd think this one's nicer.
1:15:59But if you like smaller devices, you might think that the 5S is.
1:16:04Whereas if they put the 5S internals into a 5C-style plastic case, then it sets that
1:16:10up.
1:16:11I don't know.
1:16:12That's a good question.
1:16:13That's one of the things I'll be looking forward to next month, or September, I guess.
1:16:16The brick countries.
1:16:18No, I think that everybody said last year that they need to sell a cheap iPhone for
1:16:23China because people in China per capita don't have a lot of money. What do they call them?
1:16:29Emerging markets? Is that the term?
1:16:31Emerging markets.
1:16:32Right. And I don't think Apple thinks there are such things as emerging markets. I really
1:16:38don't. I think the way they approach it is that there's people who can afford iPhones
1:16:43and people who can't. And I don't mean it to be flippant, but the fact that the average
1:16:49person in China maybe can't afford an iPhone 5c or probably can't afford an iPhone c, let's
1:16:55face it. Doesn't mean that there aren't millions and millions of people in China who can because
1:17:01there's billions of people in China.
1:17:05The other thing they did in the spring was add an 8GB iPhone 5c.
1:17:10Yeah. That's a little weird. I kind of...
1:17:13I wonder if that had anything to do... if that had much to do with it.
1:17:16Boy, I just can't believe I can't believe that the difference from Apple's perspective between 8 and 16 gigabytes is
1:17:23So much is enough to warrant that it just seems miserly
1:17:27Yeah to give 8 yeah
1:17:30Cuz it's you know and and you know and put a camera in it that can shoot high-def video and stuff
1:17:36It's like wow, that's it just seems miserly
1:17:38I mean, I was looking I was looking at Amazon had a sale on Kindle fire last week and I was looking at them and
1:17:46And it's like the price difference between the--
1:17:49I think there was an 8 gigabyte and a 16 gigabyte.
1:17:51And the price difference between the two was like $20.
1:17:53And even then, you've got to figure that's just--
1:17:57the cost difference can't--
1:17:58I bet it's less than $20.
1:17:59But that's--
1:18:00Oh, yeah.
1:18:00You can't-- how can you price them $5 apart or whatever?
1:18:04Yeah.
1:18:06And I know RAM is the same way.
1:18:07And that's another John Siracusa frequent complaint,
1:18:11that Apple always shortchanges the devices on RAM,
1:18:15that the five--
1:18:17I think we still only-- I don't know.
1:18:19Whatever we have, we all wish we had more.
1:18:21I think we only have one gigabyte of RAM
1:18:23in the current ones.
1:18:24I think that sounds right.
1:18:27And it comes back to ByteApple in the long run
1:18:32at the tail end, like when somebody with a 4S
1:18:35upgrades to iOS 7, and it feels like their phone is
1:18:39running slower.
1:18:40Like the number one thing Apple could
1:18:42do that would make that better-- he
1:18:45thinks and I agree would be if if they had doubled the RAM all along like if
1:18:52every single iPhone had shit maybe excuse the first generation one because
1:18:56you know I was crazy I can't believe they built this thing but if like the
1:19:01last few years of iPhones had had more like if they had gone to a gigabyte in
1:19:05the years when they had 512 megabytes and if these ones now that have a
1:19:09gigabyte had two gigabytes it would I think it would give them a lot more head
1:19:14room down the road for the last supported iOS update they're going to give.
1:19:20Yeah.
1:19:21Because it's sort of a no-win situation for them, where if they cut them off earlier,
1:19:24everybody would be like, "Wow, I just bought this phone two years ago, and I already don't
1:19:27get the software update."
1:19:29But then they get the software update, and if it makes their phone feel slower because
1:19:32they don't have enough RAM, because it's optimized for the brand new, you know…
1:19:38The first priority is to make it awesome on the top-of-the-line iPhone, which has more
1:19:42RAM.
1:19:43then they get bitten.
1:19:45I know you get a limited edition,
1:19:48limited edition, like 256 gigabyte iPhone,
1:19:52but my wife and I both have a 16.
1:19:55We've been eking by on 16.
1:19:58So when I got the first iPhone,
1:20:00we both had four gigabyte iPhones.
1:20:03We were, you know, speaking of limited edition,
1:20:06that was a real limited edition phone.
1:20:10And I used that for two years.
1:20:12And towards the end, it got really painful.
1:20:15And I'm at the same place now with 16 gigabytes.
1:20:18I was just like, I can't do it anymore.
1:20:21And I don't know.
1:20:22I just spent it.
1:20:23It seems like at some point, I mean, they got to jump up.
1:20:26I could--
1:20:27I could--
1:20:27I think I--
1:20:28The base phone is 32.
1:20:29I could definitely get by with 32.
1:20:31I don't think I am right now.
1:20:33I think if I check, I think it's somewhere in the 40s.
1:20:38My iPhone is filled up to somewhere around 40 gigs.
1:20:40So I'm using upwards towards the 64.
1:20:43But there's a whole bunch of crap I could delete, I think.
1:20:46Yeah.
1:20:46Well, that's how-- and that's how--
1:20:48I had a 32 gig 3GS.
1:20:50And it was just like--
1:20:52I never even came close, particularly
1:20:55during that time period.
1:20:56And I felt like I was loading it up with movies and stuff,
1:20:58and I was never watching them.
1:20:59And I thought, well, why am I doing this?
1:21:01So I kept getting 16 gig phones after that.
1:21:05And now I finally got to the point where, OK, now I
1:21:07can't even get stuff on there, have all the stuff that I want.
1:21:10that I really need on there.
1:21:13I will point out before I take a final break
1:21:15for our third sponsor, I will point out
1:21:18the obvious tension between the fact that half an hour ago,
1:21:21we were singing praises of Apple's 39% profit margin.
1:21:25[LAUGHTER]
1:21:25Right.
1:21:26And now we're telling them that they
1:21:28should double the RAM and flash storage in every single model
1:21:34across the board.
1:21:36Somewhere at Apple, there's somebody who's listening--
1:21:38Podcasting!
1:21:40Somebody is sitting there listening and smiling and saying, yes, you cannot have it both ways.
1:21:45Yeah, podcasting makes it easy. Just give everybody double the RAM.
1:21:50Double the RAM. It's only 50 million phones. There is a secret to 39% profit margin.
1:22:02Sure. Right. Right. But I feel like I'm looking at a new-- my wife's getting close to needing a
1:22:09a new MacBook and I'm going to be there probably next year.
1:22:12And I just can't sanction getting a four gigabyte--
1:22:16four gigabytes of memory anymore.
1:22:18Oh, no.
1:22:19And 128 gig drive.
1:22:21No, I think--
1:22:22I don't know.
1:22:23Yeah, I think it's got to be more than that.
1:22:25Well, for me, it's--
1:22:26So I got to go 8256 and--
1:22:29Boy, I don't know.
1:22:31It's like modern web pages are just--
1:22:33like when you look in Activity Monitor
1:22:36and you see how each tab now gets to show you
1:22:39how much RAM it's using.
1:22:40It's like, it's crazy.
1:22:43Not crazy, but you need more than four gigabytes.
1:22:45And it just seems, again, we're getting old.
1:22:48Four gigabytes of RAM sounds like,
1:22:51it still sounds to me magical.
1:22:52'Cause it's the magical barrier
1:22:55where you need 64-bit processing for one process
1:22:59to address that much space.
1:23:00And I knew about that limit, but like, you know,
1:23:04the 90s or even the 2000s, it just seemed like some beautiful Shangri-La of the future,
1:23:09when you would have that much RAM. Meanwhile, I'm paying for 8-megabyte memory chips with my last
1:23:17dollar to load up an old Mac LC with 16 megabytes of RAM. And it just seems crazy that now we're
1:23:29saying, "I cannot get by with 4 gigabytes of RAM." But that's how it goes.
1:23:33Yeah, live like this.
1:23:34Right?
1:23:35At some point, I guess, we'll be talking about terabytes of RAM.
1:23:40Our kids.
1:23:43I will say this.
1:23:43One last point, though, about it, though,
1:23:45is that, yes, obviously, there's some tension there
1:23:47between the profit margins and doubling the RAM and flash
1:23:52storage on every single device.
1:23:54But on the other hand, we do know
1:23:56that Tim Cook, in particular, and Apple as an institution,
1:23:59is very, very fanatical about customer satisfaction.
1:24:03And again, I'm just ripping John Syracuse off here,
1:24:07but customer satisfaction is definitely
1:24:09tied to the amount of RAM in your device,
1:24:12especially one or two years down the road.
1:24:16So it's a multi--
1:24:19it's like one of those three-way tugs of war.
1:24:22If there's one thing that maybe they
1:24:23would be willing to sacrifice a bit of long-term profit margin,
1:24:28just a bit. A bit of long-term profit margin for customer satisfaction seems like the type
1:24:33of trade-off that they would see as worth it because customer satisfaction is a long-term
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1:27:49What were we talking about?
1:27:50Something about iPads, iPhones. Oh, Jamming More Ram in for free.
1:27:55Yeah, Jamming More Ram in for free.
1:27:57But it's got to go up sometime. And I feel like we're close to an inflection point.
1:28:03Yeah, yeah.
1:28:06And you really can take use of it.
1:28:08I mean, I hate to say it, but the device is still-- everything is always RAM-starved at
1:28:15this level.
1:28:16Oh, yeah.
1:28:17You know, you don't see it as much as you used to, but you switch from one app to another
1:28:21and then do another, and then you go back to Safari and your tabs have to reload, because
1:28:24Safari had to give up its RAM and flushed all the tabs and just remembers the URLs.
1:28:31you're in the supermarket and you get crummy cellular reception in the dairy aisle and
1:28:37now your tab doesn't reload as fast. You know, it happens, you know? Whereas if you had double
1:28:42the RAM, your tab would still be there because you loaded it before you went to the supermarket.
1:28:46I do a lot of my reading in the supermarket.
1:28:49Is there something they do in building a supermarket that shields cellular connections?
1:28:54I don't know.
1:28:55Because it seems like every time I go to the supermarket, I get a worse connection than
1:28:58almost anywhere else.
1:28:59Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's those shelves that they use or something like that.
1:29:02It's the milk.
1:29:03Yeah.
1:29:03All the liquids.
1:29:05Yeah.
1:29:07Absorbing the signal.
1:29:10Not a scientist.
1:29:14You're not a doctor and I'm not a scientist.
1:29:21You know, there's something I wanted, a customer satisfaction thing I wanted to talk about.
1:29:25Oh, yeah. And he mentions that, and I don't know if he said customer sat again this time,
1:29:31but they beat that drum throughout that conference call every single quarter.
1:29:36Well, I think that they see it as a way of trying to prove scientifically, however much
1:29:47a customer satisfaction survey can be held up as science, but it's certainly better than just
1:29:51empty words, that people like Apple products, on average, better than other people like
1:29:59competing products from other companies, which is a long-term advantage.
1:30:06It's a way of saying we're not in a commodity.
1:30:10A big portion of these markets that we're in, laptop computers, tablets, cell phones,
1:30:17is a commoditized market.
1:30:19But where we're operating is not a commoditized market in that there's a sizable demand for
1:30:25the non-commoditized products at the high end of these markets.
1:30:31Do you have a lot of people you see with Kindle fires?
1:30:36No, I don't see many Kindle fires.
1:30:39That might be a Seattle area thing.
1:30:41Yeah, and I always wonder if it's more the area that I live in.
1:30:45I see and I also see just like a lot of people buying them as cheap tablets for their kids
1:30:49Hmm like they fake I think they some some people think well
1:30:54They think that I should get the cheapest one because it's just for the kid and then they also think that
1:30:58He's probably just gonna drop it and yeah, I don't want him dropping an iPad. Yeah, that's interesting
1:31:03I wonder how the decline in year over year. I iPad sales already
1:31:09I mean already I mean like in the life of the product I I
1:31:13I think part of it is that people, when they get a tablet, if they keep using it, they
1:31:18use it a lot longer than they use a cell phone, and it's more like laptop in terms of replacement
1:31:24cycle.
1:31:25Yeah, I guess so.
1:31:28And B, maybe, you know, this is a case where the iPad has become too expensive, you know,
1:31:36that maybe, I don't know how many of these, I don't know who else is selling a lot of
1:31:40But if people are buying them, like you said,
1:31:43for kids and stuff like that, that's a great reason
1:31:47to buy a $250 device instead of a $500 device
1:31:50if you're giving it to a kid who--
1:31:53look at the way things like a DS are constructed, the Game Boys.
1:31:59They're made to be handled by children in ways that iPads are not.
1:32:07I don't think iPads are particularly fragile for tablets,
1:32:09but they do have a glass screen and they're not, they don't look rugged.
1:32:13Right. So they're just more expensive to replace.
1:32:17Right. And it's not like iPad sales have collapsed. It's just a drop. But, you know,
1:32:21it just seems worrisome at a time when I think most of us thought that they'd still be going up
1:32:26just because more and more people would be buying their first tablet.
1:32:28Yeah. It's hard. I mean, I, you know, I always want a new one. So
1:32:36I find it odd that not everybody else does.
1:32:40Here's an interesting customer satisfaction angle.
1:32:43And it's like a long-term thing, is that it's a belief.
1:32:50And I think this applies at a consumer level
1:32:53and at an enterprise level.
1:32:54I don't want to spend a lot of time on that IBM thing.
1:32:57But Apple has long had the knock against it
1:33:02that they charge too high a prices,
1:33:04and that they, you know, they're greedy and that they make these obscene profits and they charge
1:33:09too much for everything. And that their stuff is just too expensive, right? And in some, you know,
1:33:17there were some times in the late 90s, early 2000s, where like, you know, pound for pound,
1:33:21maybe the Mac was more, you know, a comparable Mac was more expensive than a comparable PC.
1:33:26But especially in the Intel Mac era, you know, that's, that's, you know, long ago been turned
1:33:32around where it's like there's been a lot of times where you know to come to to
1:33:36get the same spec I remember when the Mac pros came out last year the new ones
1:33:39I guess that was earlier this year you know people tried to configure the same
1:33:44type of thing from Dell and it wasn't gonna come in a cool case like the Mac
1:33:48Pro and it was way more expensive right and and laptops to like well sure Apple
1:33:53starting laptop price is $899 and you know there's a lot of companies that
1:33:58sell, you know, $299, $399 PC laptops. But to get the same specs, it actually would cost
1:34:03more, and you'd get a lesser build quality. Not really fair. But people have that belief,
1:34:10and I think that when they see little things, they're viewed through that prism. And here's
1:34:15an example. I was at a family thing a couple weeks ago, and somebody, you know, outdoors,
1:34:23barbecuing or drinking beer, you know. And somebody had mentioned, and it wasn't in the context of,
1:34:29"Hey, I know you write about Apple." It was just people were talking about iPhones and it had
1:34:35nothing to do with me being present. I was just a fly on the wall. It wasn't, you know, complaining
1:34:41to me about it. But it was somebody, a woman who was complaining because she still had an iPhone 4
1:34:49or 4S. I don't know which one, but it had the 30-pin adapter and the thing. But her husband had just
1:34:53gotten a new iPhone, and his came with Lightning, a Lightning adapter. And she was like, "Why
1:35:00did they do that?" And her perspective was that they did it only to get them to buy a
1:35:05whole bunch of $29 Lightning cables, and that it was a ripoff. But her annoyance was real
1:35:13in terms of like, now a single charger in the kitchen doesn't work for both of them.
1:35:17And it's a short-term problem. I just kept my mouth shut. This is one of those things
1:35:22or people wonder, like, "What does John Gruber do in that situation?" You know what I do? I just
1:35:28pick up my beer and I take a sip, and I keep my mouth shut, and I look around and make sure that
1:35:34my dad doesn't do something stupid and be like, "Well, John knows everything about Apple John."
1:35:39You know, I'm like ready to bolt from the chair and maybe go join the wiffle ball game or something
1:35:45like that. Like, I do not want to get involved. I do know. I can explain to you now, you know,
1:35:50know, that it is, you know, if they don't do it, then we're stuck with 30-pin adapters
1:35:56forever. And the 30-pin adapter was actually kind of gross. It was like a weirdly, unappley-type
1:36:02port.
1:36:03That's it. I mean, people complained about that adapter for years.
1:36:07Yeah, but it was weird. And it served them well, technically.
1:36:09And then they replaced it. It's like, "Oh, they replaced it."
1:36:11Right. And they replaced it with a port that is much better in every way than 30-pin and
1:36:17much better in every way than micro USB. It's more sturdy, it works up and down, which is
1:36:24amazing, and annoys me even more when I have to deal with USB stuff now. And, you know,
1:36:32they can either make a port that's better, or they can never make a new port. And Apple's
1:36:38way is to do something better. And within a few years, all the phones that are in use
1:36:42and all the iPads that are in use will all be on Lightning and nobody will have that
1:36:45But I do understand it's annoying. But she, you know, didn't, never even entered into
1:36:51her, the discussion. It never even occurred to her that the lightning adapter on her husband's
1:36:55phone was better. That's the thing that she completely, clearly did not see, just
1:37:01completely missed. All she could see was that it was totally different, totally incompatible,
1:37:06and therefore obviously a money grab. And the thing that I think hurts Apple in that
1:37:12regard. I don't think that even enters Apple's mind at all. I think whatever profits, I think
1:37:17they do make nice profits on $29 Lightning adapters or $19, whatever they sell them for.
1:37:21But I don't think materially that they add up to, you know, any significant part of their…
1:37:30Significant line item, yeah.
1:37:31Right. But I do think there's a customer satisfaction angle
1:37:34on there where…
1:37:35It makes the experience better.
1:37:37Right. Well, no, but that it hurts. When you use a lightning
1:37:44adapter, it does help your customer satisfaction. And I
1:37:47think it, you know, if it's the only device you have, instead of
1:37:50them using it instead of micro USB is why Apple gets better
1:37:53scores. But I do think there's a negative thing where people
1:37:57think they did this just to practically steal $29 from me.
1:38:02Like, I feel like maybe they, they should rethink their
1:38:06pricing policy on things like extra adapters and and
1:38:12should destroy their margins further again i'm giving them advice that it
1:38:15will hurt their profit margins but i feel like whatever damage it would
1:38:19do to their profit margins to sell things like lightning adapters and
1:38:25you know everything that they sell for 29 dollars or less
1:38:31all of those things if they you know really drop the price on a lot of those
1:38:34things and sold them closer to cost, the goodwill would be more valuable than whatever hit it
1:38:41would take to their profit margins, is my theory. Now, again, there might be some guy
1:38:45at Apple with a spreadsheet…
1:38:46And he's shaking his head.
1:38:49Yeah, right. I ran the numbers. You're wrong.
1:38:53And he doesn't even have an office chair. He just sits on a throne of $100 bills. It's
1:39:03A billion dollars in cash.
1:39:05It's that mountain of cash that the Joker set fire to in the Batman movie.
1:39:10He's just sitting there up top there counting and lightning adapter.
1:39:14One of those green eye shade things on.
1:39:18But I do.
1:39:19I think people have this notion that Apple is out to nickel and--
1:39:23not nickel and dime yet, because it's not quite nickel and diming.
1:39:27I do think people know that, that they don't--
1:39:30I think that's part of the reason people are switching to Macs, is that you don't open your Mac and get nagged to buy
1:39:35antivirus and stuff like that. You open your Mac and they don't ask you to buy anything else. So it's not nickel and diming.
1:39:41It's something else, but that it's, you know, that they're looking for money.
1:39:46Right. And that this stuff is way too expensive.
1:39:49And I think also it's maybe partly because they know who to blame, they know to blame Apple. Whereas in the old days,
1:39:57It was notorious that every brand of phone had a different custom adapter for power
1:40:02Yeah, and that if you lost it god almighty or you know
1:40:05you'd have to go into the Verizon store AT&T or everybody your phone and
1:40:08Show them your phone and be like I need a model to each model
1:40:12You had to be you couldn't just say I got a Nokia you'd be like here's my here is my phone
1:40:16You know and they'd be like, oh you need the
1:40:19XL 47 8 yeah, that'll be $50. Yeah, it was they were crazy expensive
1:40:25Or if you wanted to do so, you'd get one if you wanted to buy a second one so you could charge your phone at work and keep your other one at home or something like that.
1:40:34They were super expensive, way more expensive than Apple's. But I feel like when it's your carrier doing it, you don't even think to complain about it because you know they're going to screw you.
1:40:42Whereas I think people feel like Apple shouldn't be screwing them.
1:40:45screwing them. We had collected so many of those dock connector cords that I just, you know, I had
1:40:53them lying all over the house, so you could power a phone anywhere. And now we're at a low point
1:41:00again until I build up my inventory. And somebody the other night, just like a friend who lives up
1:41:06the street, said they wanted to borrow one of those cables, like a lightning cable for a week.
1:41:11and I was like, "Well, they can't have one of mine." You've got an extra one. You can give them yours,
1:41:18but I'm not parting with any of mine. I don't like them. I don't like them that much.
1:41:23I got one more thing. Do you hear this thing that
1:41:28Ryan Block and—
1:41:34The Comcast thing?
1:41:38Yeah. Where they—
1:41:39I didn't-- I can't-- I couldn't listen to it because it just-- those kinds of things make me cringe.
1:41:45I only listened to about a minute for the same reason.
1:41:48Yeah. But, yeah.
1:41:51So Ryan Block and Veronica Belmont, who-- they got married a couple years ago,
1:41:57and they decided to cancel their Comcast service. And apparently, Veronica was on the phone,
1:42:06was going to, you know, and that's doing one for the team is calling, you know, that's
1:42:10one of those things where when you're a couple, when one of you decides, "I'll call Comcast,"
1:42:16you know, you don't have to do the dishes that night, right? And she called just to
1:42:23say, "We want to cancel our Comcast service." I don't know, it doesn't even matter. I don't
1:42:27know if they're replacing it with Fios or something like that. But number one, you know
1:42:32that those two know what they're doing.
1:42:34Co-founder of Engadget and the host of more tech TV shows
1:42:43than anybody I know probably are making an informed decision
1:42:48to cancel Comcast.
1:42:49And she just couldn't get the guy to cancel their service.
1:42:53And then had to hand the phone over to Ryan,
1:42:56and he started recording a call.
1:42:58And it's just absurd.
1:42:59I mean, if you can take things like this and you haven't,
1:43:02you should just Google Ryan Block and Veronica Belmont, cancel Comcast. It went viral, as they
1:43:09say, because the guy was just absurd. The guy was like, "Why do you want slower internet?" And Ryan
1:43:16Block was like, "Why won't you just cancel my service?" And he's like, "I'm trying to understand
1:43:21why you want to get slower internet." And he's like, "I'm trying to understand why you won't
1:43:27Cancel my service just cancel it. That's all I want to do
1:43:31And it went on and on it was like 10 minutes long and and the thing that's great is it went viral and the thing
1:43:37about that is uh
1:43:39The they had to like address it like Comcast chief operating officer had to address it and say that it was painful to listen to
1:43:45This call and I am not surprised that we've been criticized for it
1:43:49Respecting our customers is fundamental and we fell short in this instance. I
1:43:54I know these retention calls are-- I guess it's an internal memo. It's not really meant for public
1:43:59distribution. These retention calls are tough, and I have tremendous admiration for our retention professionals
1:44:04who make it easy for customers to choose to stay with Comcast.
1:44:08Oh my god.
1:44:09That's so awful. That's so-- that's actually even worse.
1:44:13A number of sites-- and I forget where I read it, probably The Verge or someplace, but it wrote about the economics behind
1:44:20these people's jobs and
1:44:23Basically their whole incentive their whole compensation package is wrapped up in the number of people that they can convince to stay
1:44:30You know
1:44:31I thought that I just thought it from listening to the part of the call I heard was that the guy was into it enough
1:44:36Or he was clearly not just getting an hour, you know, you know, yeah bucks an hour
1:44:40It was he was invested. It was a car salesman. Yeah, it's the reverse. Yeah, it's a
1:44:45Like I'd say it's like a car salesman. It's like selling. It's like they're selling it all over again
1:44:50Right, but it's weird because it's like and car salesman. I'm sure you know, it's infamous famously shady
1:44:56you know operators and they know all sorts of tricks, but it's like
1:45:00And I'm sure they take advantage of some people who come in naive or who are timid
1:45:08You know not that you and I are you know tough guys
1:45:12Right, but it's like if we were in a car dealer you and I are going out to buy a convertible to spend it
1:45:19you know, take a summer road trip and we're going to buy a convertible. And you and I go in,
1:45:22and we don't like what we're hearing. And we start walking out the door, and the guy tries to keep us
1:45:27from walking out the door. We're still walking out the door, right? You can just walk out, you know,
1:45:32as shady as a car dealer, you know, dealer can be, you know, you can just keep moving your feet,
1:45:36and eventually you are out the door and you're not listening to them anymore. Whereas if you
1:45:40are already hooked up, that's the thing. You're hooked up to auto bill Comcast $100 a month.
1:45:47And even if you call your credit card and say don't pay them they're gonna you know
1:45:51It's they're gonna put your account in collection until they officially disconnect you
1:45:54You've signed a thing that you're sending them $100 or you know
1:45:59150 dollars a month you need them to do this and if they won't do it, what can you do?
1:46:03This is such rotten double-speak
1:46:07And Jackie Chang had posted on Twitter that a reminder that and I forget the names of these services
1:46:13But those services that you get people to do like a task for you test. Oh, yeah
1:46:17Yeah, you can you can actually call those guys and have them like just gonna you know
1:46:21Just gonna call Comcast and disconnect your come test for you
1:46:25So if you don't want to sit on the phone with that guy this you know
1:46:30And it just ties right in with me Lincoln to the the George Orwell
1:46:34Politics in the English language like who make it easy for customers to choose to stay with Comcast
1:46:42If that's not the most
1:46:44Rotten
1:46:47Double speak I've ever heard that is so much more evil than if he just flat-out said
1:46:54Who make it difficult for customers to leave disconnect, right?
1:46:59Right because it's exactly what it means it is exactly it is like like three plus three on one side and six on the other
1:47:10Who make it difficult for customers to leave Comcast
1:47:14We have you you have Comcast right I do I live in Comcast country, yeah, I'm in cable town, right and
1:47:25Literally our Skype call is getting quick creaky. I
1:47:29Swear to God you can't make this up
1:47:33You're starting to sound
1:47:37I swear to God.
1:47:44I kind of pat myself on the back because we have here in Tacoma, I've said this before,
1:47:49we have city provided internet service.
1:47:53And so I don't have to use Comcast, but I do for our, we have a landline.
1:48:01We in Philadelphia have a Comcast-provided city.
1:48:05Have I told you, they literally have the tallest skyscraper in Philadelphia that is the Comcast
1:48:13Center.
1:48:14They have just bought a plot of land a block away, and they are going to build a new tallest
1:48:20skyscraper.
1:48:21Your internet should be super fast.
1:48:24Yes, thanks to them building two skyscrapers.
1:48:27non-disconnectable. Anyway, what a rotten, what a rotten, rotten company Comcast is.
1:48:38This is terrible. I don't know. That's it for me for this week, though. You got anything?
1:48:43Okay. Did you talk about the Microsoft layoffs?
1:48:46Oh, no, I didn't. Yeah, we could do that.
1:48:49Yeah.
1:48:50And that's home.
1:48:5118,000 people over the next year.
1:48:5412,000 don't count because they're from Nokia.
1:48:59Yeah, they don't count.
1:49:02You know, I hate to make jokes about--
1:49:04Poor Finland.
1:49:05You know, I don't want to make jokes about layoffs.
1:49:07Because I'll bet there's got to be somebody who listens
1:49:10to the show who's one of them.
1:49:11So I've lost jobs, and it's not fun.
1:49:16I tried to get laid off for years, it didn't work.
1:49:19[LAUGHTER]
1:49:22It's the worst.
1:49:23It never happens to the people who want it.
1:49:24No, it never happens to the people who deserve it.
1:49:27It's like, "We're going to have some layoffs.
1:49:31Here's the list."
1:49:32Yes!
1:49:33And then you raise your hand and you're like, "What about buyouts?
1:49:35Maybe we could have molds.
1:49:37Maybe we could have buyouts, too."
1:49:40Early retirements?
1:49:41They knew I was going to leave.
1:49:42That's why they didn't lay me off.
1:49:46Yeah, it's kind of sad.
1:49:50Yeah.
1:49:51I mean, they kind of need it as a business,
1:49:53but it's never good for the people in it.
1:49:56No.
1:49:57And it's humbling, because I think it's not that many years
1:50:03ago when the idea of a Microsoft layoff
1:50:05would have been unthinkable.
1:50:08And it's a reminder, a wake-up call to everybody else.
1:50:12For companies like Google and Apple and Amazon,
1:50:15who are the big tech companies of the last decade,
1:50:20and who've never had a layoff.
1:50:23If it could happen to Microsoft,
1:50:24man, it could happen to anybody.
1:50:25I mean, Apple's had layoffs, but never like a mass layoff,
1:50:28and it hasn't been, not in the modern era of Apple.
1:50:32- Yeah.
1:50:32- You know, you gotta be careful about getting fat.
1:50:38- Tell me about it.
1:50:39(both laughing)
1:50:44Did you read Ben Thompson's piece on breaking Microsoft up?
1:50:49Yeah.
1:50:50That was a good piece.
1:50:52I don't think it's going to happen.
1:50:54No, I don't think so either, because I
1:50:56think if it would have-- if that was on the table,
1:51:00it would have happened instead of this,
1:51:02and would have happened maybe coincident with Satya and
1:51:07Nadella taking over.
1:51:08You know what I mean?
1:51:08I think that's an alternate universe.
1:51:10What do they do post-Balmer maybe is break it up,
1:51:14Whereas now, I don't think that they would do that.
1:51:17I don't know that that's the answer.
1:51:19So just to recap, his theory, I mean,
1:51:21his idea is that Microsoft is turning into a services company
1:51:25so that the hardware and operating system part
1:51:28should be put into a different company and run separately.
1:51:35Yeah, it does make sense.
1:51:37And there's a certain--
1:51:39what's the word?
1:51:41It just doesn't make sense.
1:51:42They're at odds with each other, where
1:51:44there's a part of Microsoft that sees it as a company that
1:51:47provides software to OEMs, and now there's
1:51:49a part of the company that sees itself as an OEM.
1:51:53And that's just not compatible.
1:51:55And they can kind of yada, yada, yada it
1:51:57to make it seem like it's compatible,
1:52:00because the revenue and profits are still coming in.
1:52:03But at a common sense level, it just
1:52:05doesn't make sense that they can be providing these software
1:52:08to companies to make mobile devices,
1:52:11and they're going to make their own mobile devices
1:52:14without favoring one or the other.
1:52:16And everybody who's tried it, it never works.
1:52:18So Google provides software to OEMs with Android,
1:52:21and they make their own Android devices.
1:52:23But very few people use Google's Android devices.
1:52:26They've never really taken off.
1:52:28And if the Nexus, in some alternate world
1:52:30where the Nexus phones are huge hits,
1:52:35Samsung isn't going to be using Android.
1:52:38It just wouldn't work.
1:52:40And like, go back to the 90s, when Apple licensed the Mac OS, it just didn't work.
1:52:49Yeah, so it's an interesting idea, but there's too much institutional...
1:52:55I mean, there's no way they could get rid of Windows.
1:52:59No, I think, you know, and I don't think it needs to...
1:53:02I just think Windows could be run as its own division,
1:53:04division but i think that they should stop thinking of the windows division as anything other than
1:53:08legacy just let it be what it is and it's pc operating system in an ever shrinking market but
1:53:13that is huge and it's probably you know eventually going to level off like the shrinkage you know if
1:53:19like i just said to you the idc for this past quarter is that the pc market shrank two percent
1:53:23year over year it seems like maybe the bleeding is over you know i think it's going to keep dwindling
1:53:27and it's going to keep dwindling in terms of the overall pie chart of computing devices because
1:53:34it's not just that smartphones and tablets are replacing PCs, it's that we're adding
1:53:38multiple devices that are what used to be thought of as a PC, and that the share of them that are
1:53:46traditional PCs is getting smaller, in addition to the fact that people are buying fewer actual
1:53:51units year over year. But just let it run. And I think that's the problem. The whole basic problem
1:53:56with Windows 8 is trying to please two groups at once, whereas if they had just made a Windows 8
1:54:02that was like Windows 7 like here if you have a traditional laptop or a desktop
1:54:08PC here you go here's a new version of Windows better than ever and we've got
1:54:13this other entirely new mobile operating system yeah but it's weird now it's
1:54:20weird now that they you know they're his Nadella's whole memo was about you know
1:54:24we're now a company that helps people get things done and they still have all
1:54:30this entertainment stuff. They did Nix making TV shows.
1:54:36Yeah, they've always had that. They still have the Xbox, which does not
1:54:40seem that that does not fit into that mandate at all.
1:54:43Yeah, and I think, you know, I've had that thought too. I've tossed out ideas, and
1:54:47I've thought like, "Hey, if Netflix commissions TV shows, why doesn't Apple
1:54:50commission TV shows, you know, for Apple TV and have, you
1:54:53know, new Kevin Spacey show that's only on Apple TV?"
1:54:56But you know what? That way lies lack of focus.
1:54:59I'm not saying Apple would never do that particular thing, but you know, they certainly can't do all of them, you know
1:55:05And I don't know making making TV shows was you know, never what Microsoft was good at
1:55:11I've just I've always found that this whole thing that the
1:55:13these companies think that they need to do everything to be
1:55:17Counterproductive but
1:55:20What do I know? Yeah
1:55:22well
1:55:22I do think that there's it's always seemed like that way to me like I thought it was crazy in the 90s when when
1:55:28Microsoft started jointly with NBC, the MSNBC.
1:55:32I was like, what are you doing?
1:55:34Why would you want to make a CNN competitor?
1:55:37You're Microsoft.
1:55:38You know what I mean?
1:55:39Like I can see why somebody would want to make
1:55:41a CNN competitor, right?
1:55:43I can see why multiple people would,
1:55:44but why would Microsoft?
1:55:46Why do you feel like you need everything,
1:55:47including a news channel and the whole thing,
1:55:52wound up not working out that well.
1:55:54I mean, MSNBC is a fine network,
1:55:57But I mean, Microsoft, the MS and MSNBC hasn't stood from Microsoft for, I don't know, the
1:56:02better part of the decade.
1:56:03I mean, they've been out of that forever.
1:56:05It was very strange.
1:56:09We should have a Kickstarter for us to buy Microsoft.
1:56:13I did see that their stock, they did quarterly results today too, and they missed, but only
1:56:19missed because of Nokia, the Nokia division, which did a little bit worse than expected.
1:56:26the stock market reacted with no reaction whatsoever.
1:56:30No, I mean, I think it's right.
1:56:32I don't think anybody should have been surprised by that,
1:56:33right?
1:56:34I think common sense prevails.
1:56:35I don't know.
1:56:36Before we started recording, it looked like after hours,
1:56:38Apple was about even, too.
1:56:40I don't know if it's still true, but that's always kind of--
1:56:43that's getting weird, like having the stock market not
1:56:46panic after hours, no matter what happens with Apple.
1:56:51Yeah, it seems like that whole thing has kind of turned a bit.
1:56:56They seem to be a little bit more happy with what's going on, despite, you know, I mean
1:57:03the usual suspects are still being jerks, but...
1:57:05Yeah, it looks like it's nice and even.
1:57:08It's sticking around $94.
1:57:13You know, was it bad?
1:57:14I think it was Ben Thompson who was on the show a couple weeks ago, and I thought it
1:57:18made a very keen observation that I've never really heard before, which is that the stock
1:57:21market rewards the gut feeling that even if you screw up, you being the company that they're
1:57:29evaluating in a process, even if you screw up, you'll still be in business. And that's where
1:57:35Apple got hurt for years and years, where there used to be this consensus that Apple was always
1:57:42on the precipice and one slip away from the whole house of cards falling under. And I feel like that
1:57:50they've, you know, none of these dire things have happened like margins collapsing or whatever,
1:57:54and everybody's sort of gotten the idea that, hey, Apple could screw up, you know, like they
1:57:58could release an iPhone 6 that is not that popular, and they are not going to go under.
1:58:03You know, they could have the next, you know, the next Mac cube come out and,
1:58:07you know, wouldn't be good, wouldn't be good news, but it's not going to,
1:58:12you know, it's not a house of cards that's going to fall down, it's a sturdy foundation.
1:58:17And it only took them 35 years to realize that.
1:58:20Right. Slow learners.
1:58:23Yeah.
1:58:24All right, Jon Moltz, thank you for joining me.
1:58:28Thank you.
1:58:28People can find to get more Moltz at... To get the full Moltz treatment is what they can get.
1:58:34At verynicewebsite.net. Is that correct?
1:58:40That is correct.
1:58:41Verynicewebsite.net for the full Moltz treatment. You've got
1:58:45uh uh i'm gonna turn this car around turning this car around turning this car around great
1:58:53podcast with uh a couple of guys uh well there's john armstrong yep and
1:59:00lex friedman lex friedman that's it i was at the tip of my tongue
1:59:06what you feel is not casey let's not casey less um and they can get you there and what are you
1:59:13on the Twitter. You're @Moltz, right? At Moltz. At Moltz. Right. You know what I wish you could do?
1:59:18All your jocularity. I wish that I could specify for certain iMessage users that just use the last
1:59:26name. You know, like, I messaged you, I was going to be late for the show, and it says "John M." Well,
1:59:31I got so many Johns. I got John Syracuse in there. I mean, I don't want to... I don't see you as
1:59:36John M. You're not John M. You're Moltz. No. I'm Moltz to everybody, basically. But it's got to be
1:59:41the same for me with you. If I text you, you don't want to see John G. You're like, "Who the hell is
1:59:46that?" Nobody calls me John G. Not since first grade. The curse of the Johns.
1:59:52Yeah.