0:00:00We were at the Foo Fighters concert today.
0:00:02That was fun. I didn't know who Foo Fighters were.
0:00:05You really didn't?
0:00:06I did. I was just like, "Who are these people?"
0:00:09I'm so used to some of the Steve Jobs people, like Norah Jones and John Mayer.
0:00:16It's like, "Who is this band?" I didn't know that.
0:00:19It just tells you how old I am.
0:00:21No, that was a big one for me.
0:00:23I've come to a bunch of these where there's guys.
0:00:25And I like John Mayer. How do you pronounce it? Mayer.
0:00:28He's John Mayer. The CEO of Yahoo is Marissa Mayer.
0:00:31Even though they spell it the same way.
0:00:33I appreciate him. I do think he's like amazingly gifted guitarist.
0:00:39Like, just amazing.
0:00:41But I don't really love his music.
0:00:42Foo Fighters is actually one of my favorite bands.
0:00:44So I was really kinda like blown away.
0:00:46So they just really wanted to make you happy.
0:00:48Yeah. No, you know what? I think it was to make my wife jealous.
0:00:50Because this was like the first time.
0:00:52Like, she's not really into all this stuff.
0:00:54Maybe she wants a new iPhone, but she doesn't really care.
0:00:56really all that excited about Apple. And now today's the first time where she's like, I
0:01:01think she was pretty jealous that I was there and she wasn't.
0:01:03Wow. You know, a lot of people enjoyed it. I was just tweeting. That's all.
0:01:09So I'm here today joined by Om Malik. What's your title? What is your title?
0:01:15I'm just the founder of KGO. No title.
0:01:17No title. You're just Om.
0:01:19Yeah.
0:01:20Om. And, you know, one of the things I wanted to talk to you about is you have—now, it
0:01:24your name. Your name is Om. It's just spelled O-M, but that's your Twitter handle. Do you get a lot
0:01:29of garbage just because it's only two characters?
0:01:31Oh, you have no idea. I am big in Indonesia. It's just like I have no idea what it means in the
0:01:40language they use there, but it's like a very common phrase and like my my ad replies are
0:01:47pretty useless at this point.
0:01:48Ah, right.
0:01:50Because I forget who I know who has there's one guy I know who has one of the rare one character
0:01:55Twitter names Kevin Chang
0:01:59Yeah, because he's got at K right right right and his his replies feed is
0:02:06It it makes your head brain almost blow up because it's just the most random gibberish
0:02:12It looks like somebody like our cat was yeah standing on a keyboard. I should send you some of the screenshots
0:02:18I'll have to look for it. Yeah, so um last week before we get to the Apple stuff that we were at the Apple event
0:02:24We're recording live or not live really but together in the same room, which is unusual for the talk show
0:02:30Usually I do this over Skype. We're here together in the beautiful
0:02:34mule radio network
0:02:37Studio here in San Francisco. It's pretty awesome. It is it's actually a very swank setup
0:02:43But before we get to today's stuff
0:02:46I want to talk about last week. Now last week, the three things that I thought I could think
0:02:50of, there was Motorola had an announcement. And it's to me that sort of like in hindsight,
0:02:55it's sort of like, who cares? Really? I mean, is this or any of those phones memorable?
0:02:59I don't think so.
0:03:00I don't even know why some why they bother at times, I think they should focus on one
0:03:06or two things instead of trying to do too many things. All these companies just do so
0:03:12much like for without any idea why they're doing it. What is their market? What's their
0:03:19approach? It just is frustrating to see really smart people make bad decisions.
0:03:27Next up speaking of bad decisions, Nokia. Same day. And that stuff broke last week while
0:03:35I had John Moltz on the air and we kind of, oh no, no, it was the Amazon stuff that broke
0:03:38while we were on the air.
0:03:39But anyway, Nokia announced their stuff, two new phones,
0:03:42and really, at first everybody had a thing like,
0:03:47well, what's the shipping date and what's the price?
0:03:50And then as the days went on, it kind of became clear
0:03:52that they don't even know.
0:03:54- I think the biggest sign for a company in distress
0:03:58and a product which is not gonna work
0:04:00is when they don't let you touch it, right?
0:04:03Like, if you have a real product which is gonna ship,
0:04:07can buy, you let people check it out, people use it. They won't let people do it, which tells me it is not happening anytime soon. And guess what? In announcing this, whatever little sales of Windows phones they were going to have, they've killed it.
0:04:24Right. It really just seems bizarre. Like, as bad as it would be if you were Nokia and
0:04:31your phone isn't ready yet, here on September 12, 2012, your phone is not ready yet, whether
0:04:38it's the software or the hardware or whatever, but it's not quite ready. And you have to
0:04:41sit here and watch Apple unveil the new iPhone 5 and start selling it two days from now and
0:04:48shipping it nine days from now and watch all these sales rack up. And you've got to sit
0:04:52there and wait until your thing is ready, I still would be better than what they did,
0:04:58which is they made an announcement which did get a lot of attention, but I don't see—if
0:05:03they're not going on sale until November, I don't see how that—it just seems like
0:05:07a disaster. You called it a—I think you called it a shit show?
0:05:09Yeah, pretty much. That's exactly what it is. I do think that Nokia, as a company whose
0:05:17expertise. I've covered Nokia since maybe '96 and like very faithfully. I've always enjoyed their
0:05:25products, love their phones. I used to be the only reporter out there talking about Nokia when the
0:05:31razor was the shit, right? And I always felt as a company they knew how to make great products.
0:05:40They knew they had a great logistics team. They knew how to put products together, get them out
0:05:46to market in time built to scale.
0:05:49I don't know what happened.
0:05:51Ever since the new CEO came, Steven Elop,
0:05:54the company lost the ability to do just that.
0:05:57Forget building the new software.
0:05:59I can understand having crisis of confidence
0:06:02on your operating system and your product,
0:06:05you know, roadmap, but how can you not be able
0:06:08to ship the only thing you do?
0:06:10You only make phones and you can't get them out on time.
0:06:13I mean, somebody should be fired
0:06:15and it should start at the CEO and then the board.
0:06:18Like I just think the whole board has to go
0:06:21because they're letting this nonsense go on
0:06:23with an iconic brand of our time.
0:06:26I love Nokia and to see it die the way it is dying,
0:06:30it just is unreal.
0:06:31The last time I saw a brand like this die, digital.
0:06:36Remember them? - Yeah.
0:06:37- What a great laptops they used to make.
0:06:40Nobody bought them. - Right.
0:06:42- It's the same thing with Lumia in my opinion.
0:06:44And then they got caught faking up the photos and the videos from the device.
0:06:51Now, it all kind of—it's not excusable, but it makes sense.
0:06:55It's because the software wasn't ready.
0:06:57You know, so they had to make these promotional videos before the software.
0:07:00But the whole thing is that they've rushed this announcement to the degree that they
0:07:04somehow convinced themselves that it was okay to shoot a demo video showing the image stabilization
0:07:11of the video not using the actual phone itself, you know, because it's like that one bad decision
0:07:20to, "Well, come hell or high water, we're going to announce it the first week of September,
0:07:25whether it's ready or not," leads to all of these other problems as a direct result. Like,
0:07:30once you start with that rotten decision, now you've got phones that you don't let the
0:07:35the press handle at the event. You fake the camera stills and videos. You've got a ship
0:07:44date that's two months out, maybe, if they're lucky.
0:07:50So the way I think about it, Jon, I think it's they're working from position of weakness,
0:07:57right? They're always playing catch up. So they never really will catch up. I think that's
0:08:02That's the problem.
0:08:03They have done everything possible to try and catch up with Apple and Android, and they
0:08:09haven't been able to.
0:08:11And that just is a problem.
0:08:12Right?
0:08:13Like, instead of trying to, like, they have a lot of great people at Nokia.
0:08:19I still talk to many of their employees.
0:08:22There's a lot of smart engineers in there, smart software people, smart UI people.
0:08:27I love many of the people I know there.
0:08:30Unfortunately, the company is unable to leapfrog its own shortcoming.
0:08:36I think it just is now we've hit a point of just like it doesn't know how to go forward.
0:08:42I think it just is stuck.
0:08:44And like you said, it just comes down to simple execution that they no longer seem able to
0:08:49ship a phone on time.
0:08:51And say what you will about Samsung.
0:08:54Samsung has come from a position where when the iPhone shipped five years ago was not
0:08:59one of the leading phone makers, maybe by numbers, but they weren't really known for
0:09:03smartphones, certainly. I think that somebody showed on Twitter the other day the picture
0:09:08Steve Jobs showed of, here's what today, this is five years ago in 2007, here's what today's
0:09:14leading smartphones look like, and they all look the same. And it was the Motorola, was
0:09:20it the Q? I think it might have been the Q or the Blackjack, but it was a Motorola, a
0:09:25Palm, a Blackberry, and a Nokia. Those were the four. And think about what's happened
0:09:32to all four of those companies in the last five years. Palm's out of business. They're
0:09:36gone. RIM is circling the toilet. Motorola got sold to Google and really saw its leadership
0:09:48in handset numbers really diminish. They're really nowhere. They're not even the leading
0:09:54Android handset maker. I don't even think it's even close. And then Nokia is the last
0:09:59one. And boy, it really seems like, you know, the only reason that they're not as in bad
0:10:03a position as the other three is that they were so far ahead. They had so much farther
0:10:08to fall.
0:10:09Dr. Asad Khattak So I think the the game of, you know, smartphones
0:10:14is that of scale, right? Like Apple has scale, and Samsung has scale. Because they have scale,
0:10:21can introduce interesting complex technologies into their devices, make them interesting,
0:10:28and sell to the people and still make money.
0:10:31Whereas smaller companies are always working on razor thin margins, which is really hard
0:10:37for them because they're always, all these little guys are in a position of weakness,
0:10:41right?
0:10:42Like Samsung has scale because they own so much of the supply chain.
0:10:48make the chips, the screens, the flash memory, the whole nine yards, right? So they can bring
0:10:55scale there. And Apple has bought the future supplies for it. So they have scale. Whereas
0:11:02all these other guys, they don't have scale. If they don't have scale, they don't have
0:11:05margins. If you don't have margins, you're not going to be in the business. I mean, it
0:11:08just is, you know, they're all on the long road to nowhere. That's the bottom line right
0:11:14now.
0:11:15Nokia was the one company that really should, maybe even should still today be in a position
0:11:20to manage that sort of scale, because they've shipped, I think literally in their history,
0:11:25billions of phones. I think that they've shipped over a billion phones, I mean of some sort
0:11:29or you know, some kind of mobile phones. Maybe they're not smartphones, but they know how
0:11:33to ship at scale.
0:11:34People always thought of them as a phone company. They're actually a logistics company. They
0:11:39had the best logistics amongst all mobile phone makers. That's why they went, but they
0:11:44They got addicted to making those cheap feature phones so much that they forgot where the
0:11:50money comes from.
0:11:51They just looked at the raw numbers.
0:11:52This is the classic spreadsheet jockeying which happens to companies.
0:11:59I just feel bad.
0:12:00There's just so many great people.
0:12:02On the upside, all these great engineers are leaving Nokia and starting companies and thinking
0:12:07innovative things.
0:12:09So that might actually help out their home country a lot more in the future.
0:12:13Right? Like maybe they're worth more just as the talent broken out.
0:12:17Yeah.
0:12:18Doing new things.
0:12:19I think Finland has some of the best engineers.
0:12:21So you could see some interesting innovation coming out of there.
0:12:26I just heard from somebody who's making some kind of an electric racing car
0:12:31and they're from, you know, Finland and they're going to come see me in a couple of weeks.
0:12:35Pretty fun to see what they're doing.
0:12:38I think, and you know, one of the things that's fun about getting together for an event like this
0:12:42when I fly into town and I get to see a bunch of people I don't see on a regular basis face
0:12:46to face is, you know, we just start geeking out and talking, you know, phone stuff or,
0:12:51you know, whatever's on our minds. And I'll tell you what, I mean, everybody I talked
0:12:54to today, I mean, it's almost unanimous. They'll say everybody feels bad about Nokia's future
0:13:00and feels that they've really botched this year's new Lumias, that they, you know, the
0:13:06timing is just off. They botched it. But everybody, it's almost unanimous, agrees that they're
0:13:11the only company that is competing with Apple in terms of quality of fit and
0:13:15finish for the devices. Before you even turn it on and talk about the
0:13:20software, just the phone is off, it's in your hand, it's arguably, you know, as good
0:13:25as any phone on the market. Always has to be. I still have all my Nokia
0:13:29phones. I don't want to throw each one of them away. Like, I love... they did the...
0:13:33they still work. Like, nothing has gone wrong. Yeah, you don't have one of them.
0:13:38You gave me, you sent me an E72 a couple years ago and I never sent it back to you.
0:13:42That's okay, you can have it.
0:13:44Maybe we can send it to the cell phone museum or something.
0:13:48And then the other big announcement last week was Amazon.
0:13:52Now there's a company who I think, I really think that they have their act together.
0:13:55And you wrote something nice on, I like the piece you wrote on your,
0:13:59your om.co website, which is amazingly short URL.
0:14:05Yeah.
0:14:05It's kind of awesome.
0:14:07But you said it was pretty short, but you more or less just said that you think Jeff, Jeff Bezos is the the heir apparent to Steve Jobs in the industry.
0:14:16It was a little uncomfortable thing to write, right? You know, it was like I wasn't, you know, having been an Apple watcher for a long time. I felt a little queasy writing that because you know, there is one Steve Jobs, but I think there is only one Jeff Bezos. There's very few people like him, who are
0:14:37were willing to be wrong in public.
0:14:41Steve was willing to take chances,
0:14:44and that's what made him Steve.
0:14:45Like, yes, he was a perfectionist and all those things.
0:14:49And Jeff is willing to take chances on things
0:14:52which may look completely outrageous.
0:14:55Like, you know, seven years ago,
0:14:58Amazon Web Services and Amazon Cloud Services
0:15:01didn't make much sense to a lot of people,
0:15:04but it made sense to him and his team.
0:15:07and look how they're changing the economics of startups.
0:15:10And same thing is with Kindle.
0:15:11When the Kindle came out, the idea was like,
0:15:14who wants to read?
0:15:15The e-readers were like so maligned at that time.
0:15:18And they kept trying and trying till they got it right.
0:15:21And I think this is what I like about them,
0:15:24is that if they believe in something in the long term,
0:15:27they actually try.
0:15:28I wish they made more money like Apple,
0:15:30but hey, that's another story for another day.
0:15:34- Yeah, they've obviously got some kind of,
0:15:35They've got a plan in that regard. I don't know what it is. I don't see it, but they've, you know, they're clear.
0:15:40I guess the way I'll put it is that they're not making much in profit, but they don't seem to be trying to make much in profit.
0:15:49It's not like they're trying and falling short. It seems like they're kind of shooting for this
0:15:53growth and revenue growth and
0:15:56kind of
0:15:58just get enough profit to keep it in the black. That seems to be their goal, and that's what they're hitting.
0:16:04It seems like a weird strategy to me, but it doesn't seem like they're failing.
0:16:09>> Right. You know, I like what you wrote, which was like very,
0:16:12which is actually pretty insightful that Jeff Bezos is special mostly because
0:16:22he's not trying to be Steve Jobs. I think a lot of people forget that
0:16:27being original is much harder than being a copycat.
0:16:30Right, like you're never gonna be the next Bob Dylan if you're trying to make your voice sound like Bob Dylan.
0:16:35Like, you've gotta make your voice sound as unique as Bob Dylan's.
0:16:40You know, it's the only way. And so it's a weird way, like the only way to be like Steve Jobs is to not be like Steve Jobs.
0:16:47But to have his sort of aspects of his personality.
0:16:52Like, that you see these things that nobody else sees and you don't care if everybody thinks they're wrong.
0:16:57If you think they're right, you're just going to pursue it doggedly until you get it done.
0:17:03And I totally see that with Bezos.
0:17:05I also, like, agree with what you said, where he's not afraid to be wrong.
0:17:09And if he is, he's going to fix it, or try to fix it at least, and not just go into denial
0:17:17and pretend he's not wrong.
0:17:18So I thought, for example, with the Kindle fires last week, after having watched the
0:17:22announcement event, I almost—he didn't say he was wrong, but I kind of think he did.
0:17:27It seemed like maybe he took the criticism to heart that last year's Kindle Fire was
0:17:31really rather poorly reviewed just as a gadget in terms of the interface and how laggy the
0:17:38screen is. And so I feel like he really emphasized that a couple times in the event last week
0:17:45where he said, "Last year we tried to be the best tablet at a certain price. This year
0:17:50we're trying to be the best tablet at any price." And they put the work in and put in
0:17:55a really nice IPS display with really nice at least retina-ish quality resolution. He
0:18:05said, you know, they said in the event that the lagginess was not there, but I saw, you
0:18:10know, it seems like the reviews are a little mixed from the people who had hands-on, but
0:18:13at least they're trying.
0:18:14Right. I mean, I played with it for about 20 hours. I had it for three days.
0:18:20The new one?
0:18:21The new one, the Kindle Fire. They sent me one.
0:18:23Oh, I didn't know that.
0:18:24I wrote a review as well.
0:18:26I'm actually a pretty balanced review in my opinion.
0:18:31Had I never used an iPad and had an iPad not existed,
0:18:35it would actually be okay device to buy for me.
0:18:39I'm not talking about other people.
0:18:40I am so, I use iPad as my primary computer.
0:18:45So I'm just a little bit biased in that sense.
0:18:49However, there's a lot of challenges.
0:18:51The Silk browser isn't up to the snuff.
0:18:54There is a lag, and it's perceptible,
0:18:57but the email client is pretty shoddy.
0:19:01However, if you are an Amazon digital content buyer
0:19:05like I am, man, that thing is pretty good.
0:19:09The books are quick to access.
0:19:12Amazon Cloud Player is pretty awesome.
0:19:15The Amazon Prime is with videos is great.
0:19:18All those things are great.
0:19:20It's easy to hold in your hand.
0:19:23The battery life is pretty decent.
0:19:25The Wi-Fi is pretty decent.
0:19:27However, I just feel that for all those purposes,
0:19:32$200 is just too much.
0:19:33I think they should be giving it away to people
0:19:37who have Amazon Prime for free.
0:19:39Right.
0:19:41I wonder how strong--
0:19:42they must have thought about that,
0:19:44or at least offered it at a profound discount, too.
0:19:48And I know that he said explicitly during the event
0:19:51and even in an interview afterwards, Bezos, that they reject that razors and blade business
0:19:58model where you lose money on selling the thing up front and then make it up by selling,
0:20:02you know, the blades. And I mean, in the tech industry, that's the printing model, right?
0:20:07You sell the printer at a ridiculously low cost, and then you make all of your money
0:20:11by selling ridiculously overpriced ink and toner. I mean, HP even sells paper. I wonder
0:20:18much paper HP sells, but by selling the stuff that you put in the printer. And he says that
0:20:25they reject that, so that they've priced this thing so that—I get the feeling like what
0:20:28he's saying is that in terms of like when you buy a Kindle Fire from Amazon, they make
0:20:34about as much money on it as they do when they sell you anything on Amazon. A little
0:20:39bit. A little bit of profit.
0:20:41Right. Well, I thought, you know, it would make sense that if you buy a lot of books,
0:20:46I do buy a lot of books from them and it would make sense for them to make me more addicted
0:20:53to buying books on Kindle Fire by creating an even more addictive buying experience.
0:20:59And I think if they tune their business model around that, this thing could actually be
0:21:05pretty okay for them in my opinion.
0:21:07I do like what they've done so far though.
0:21:09I wouldn't dismiss it.
0:21:11I have a lot of respect for that company.
0:21:14They haven't copied Apple.
0:21:17They haven't just followed the Android herd.
0:21:20They've done their own thing.
0:21:21And I think that has to be lauded.
0:21:24You have to applaud people
0:21:26who are trying to do something different.
0:21:28And on top of that, they're actually putting a product out
0:21:32in the market which you can actually buy
0:21:33and not talk about it.
0:21:37- And it's so funny that we have to praise them for that.
0:21:39- Yeah.
0:21:40It's so frustrating.
0:21:43Like for the longest time I've always wondered,
0:21:45it's like why do you call your event a launch event
0:21:49when the product is not in the market?
0:21:51Like just say we are announcing this product, that's it.
0:21:54End of story.
0:21:55It's just, it's like, it's my pet peeve, you know.
0:21:58It's been, and it's not since today,
0:22:00like almost in 15 years, I've always wondered,
0:22:03like okay, maybe my understanding of English language
0:22:07is very literal, but that doesn't make any sense to me.
0:22:10- Right, and it almost comes back to the literal meaning
0:22:12of the verb launch, right?
0:22:15Where if there's like a ship,
0:22:17and you're gonna have that ceremony
0:22:18where you break the champagne bottle against it,
0:22:20and like people wanna see the boat go in the water.
0:22:23- Yeah, it's like, you know, if it's sinking, it's okay.
0:22:25- Or like a launch event for like NASA, you know?
0:22:27It's like people want the rocket ship to go up in the air.
0:22:30They don't wanna see just, well, you know,
0:22:32it'll be ready in a couple of weeks.
0:22:33- Yeah, I will let you know.
0:22:34- Thanks for coming, though.
0:22:35- Yeah, I don't know.
0:22:38- All right, let me, well, you know,
0:22:40one more thing on Amazon is the other thing
0:22:42that strike me, and as the week has gone on, it really seems, and today's Apple event sort
0:22:47of clarified it even further with the second half of the event today, is just how US-centric
0:22:53Amazon's approach is, at least for now. Like, they really only sell the Kindles in the US,
0:23:02especially the Kindle Fire, and the reason why, and this baffled me last year. I was
0:23:07definitely lost. I just thought maybe they just didn't have their act together. But now
0:23:10Now I see that it's not because they don't want to sell a Kindle Fire to anybody.
0:23:18They only want to sell a Kindle Fire to someone who is likely to buy a lot of music and books
0:23:24and TV shows.
0:23:25And so if you live in a country where they don't have movies and TV shows, they won't
0:23:29even sell you the device because they're not going to make money.
0:23:32I do think they sell Kindle readers across the world.
0:23:35Yeah, the reader, I guess they do.
0:23:37I guess that's because the rights to books are so much less inter tangled with stupid
0:23:43bullshit and laws as movies and music.
0:23:47Music and movies are way more region controlled.
0:23:51I mean, just think about the way DVDs work with the stupid, the region coding, so you
0:23:57can't even play the same DVD in one country as another.
0:24:00The one thing, you know, I will applaud Amazon for that they were not a gadget company three,
0:24:07years ago, or maybe five years ago. Now they're a full on gadget company. And that's kind
0:24:12of pretty telling how much they have some other cool stuff, you know, they're working
0:24:17on down in Cupertino.
0:24:19Yeah, and it's, they also a couple of years ago, were not really a digital content company
0:24:26either. I mean, they really started as I mean, I I'm so old, I used to, I still think of
0:24:30them as starting as a bookstore that all they sold was books. But just broaden that a little
0:24:35bit, they started as an online retailer, warehouses full of physical goods and a website where
0:24:42you could find them, buy them easily, and review them. And then, you know, two days
0:24:49later there's a knock on your door and there's the thing.
0:24:56But I'm curious how hard they're working on expanding the movies and TV shows and stuff
0:25:02like that to more countries like Apple has? I would think that they must, but maybe it's
0:25:07just a much harder problem than I'm thinking.
0:25:10I think it's a pretty complex problem. They are in UK now, and they are in Europe. They're
0:25:17making a headway there. They're competing with Netflix in Europe. But it's not that
0:25:22easy. I mean, we like to think it's very easy. But the rights and all, it's a mess. And I
0:25:28would give them full marks for trying.
0:25:30And in a year, this is the great thing about Amazon.
0:25:35Amazon of today is going to be very different
0:25:38from the Amazon of a year ago,
0:25:40and next year it'll be an entirely different thing.
0:25:43I think that's one of the things
0:25:44which I like about that company
0:25:46is the ability to constantly change.
0:25:49- Totally see that.
0:25:51Well, I'm gonna take a break right here.
0:25:52I'm gonna tell you about our first sponsor.
0:25:54Our first sponsor, back from last week,
0:25:56is Frank and Oak. Frank and Oak is an online retailer that helps men look good. They sell
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0:26:21get in. They got overwhelmed. That's part of the reason they're back on the talk show
0:26:25again is because they were so happy with the demand, but they also want to apologize. I
0:26:30want to make it clear to anybody who went to their website last week and couldn't get
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0:27:06and that will let you in and you can check out their great menswear. And I personally
0:27:14guarantee that if you go there, you find some clothes you like, you're going to look better
0:27:17than you did before.
0:27:18Are you wearing that outfit?
0:27:20No I'm not right now. I couldn't get in.
0:27:22Okay. I'm just joking. Maybe they should call Amazon. Yeah, maybe. But I am buying clothes
0:27:29from there. I'm not wearing the shirt, though. They make clothes for like slightly larger
0:27:35gentlemen? I don't know. I bet they have a wide range of sizes. Okay. You know, I'm just
0:27:42worried about my size. Oh, you look great. Well, my shirts, I don't fit into those slim
0:27:48card shirts like you do. No, I bet they have something. I bet you'd like it. You're a very
0:27:55stylish man. I'll definitely check them out. You're a watch guy too. I am. I love watches.
0:28:01You always have an interesting watch. Yeah. I like little life. You need to have a little
0:28:08analog. We are too digital in our lives. Yeah, I wear an analog watch as well. I like artisanal
0:28:14I like people who make things with hands and you know, the craftsmanship is is something we need to celebrate in our society
0:28:21We just are like so mechanized and so mass-produced that we don't appreciate
0:28:26Little things people do with their hand. I totally agree with that. I
0:28:32Feel like it's like everything like I always feel like it's at the extremes that everything is most
0:28:39Interesting at the biggest or at the smallest
0:28:42You know the newest stuff the oldest stuff. That's where stuff is most interesting, and I feel like that's a good point
0:28:47I kind of feel like the stuff like the iPhone where there's like 20 million of them on a ship
0:28:52On an airplane coming out of China. That's interesting, but like a watch that was put together by hand
0:28:58You know by a guy just putting all these putting this whole thing together piece by piece
0:29:04That's fascinating too. I I go look for old vintage watches
0:29:09I like I spent a lot of time looking for that. That's one like my one like I gave up smoking drinking
0:29:15So I got to do something kind of have some kind of everybody needs advice like yeah, so antique watches is what I look for yeah
0:29:23So let's let's get into today's Apple event and while we're talking about watches
0:29:29Let's do it in in sort of the opposite order Apple did where I?
0:29:33The one thing I came away thinking and I don't I can't ever recall an Apple event that was quite like this where it
0:29:39really was two events. It was two very distinct events separated by like a
0:29:44halftime where the first event was iPhone 5 with Phil Schiller and Scott
0:29:49Forstall and then that was it. It actually almost felt like it was over.
0:29:53Was there a moment? I thought maybe it was over. I really did when Tim Cook came
0:29:57back out and then he says now we're going to talk about iPods and music and
0:30:03Jaws comes out and EdiQ come out and it was like a second event. So let's do
0:30:08that one first. Let's do the iPod and iTunes and the music stuff first. Because one of
0:30:15the casualties of today's announcement of new iPods is that whole market of using an
0:30:22iPod Nano as a wristwatch because they've gotten rid of that sort of watch size Nano.
0:30:30I don't know that that was a very big market. I think if it was a big market, they wouldn't
0:30:34have gotten rid of it. But it's one thing like a whole couple people filing out of the
0:30:40hands-on area, like everybody sort of had, "Hey, wait a minute. This means all those
0:30:44wristwatch things are dead."
0:30:46>> Or I would say there's a premium on them now. I think in those terms. That's the thing
0:30:51with watches is the older they get, the rarer they become, the more expensive they get.
0:30:56So maybe you should run to the iTunes store and get a couple of those Nanos.
0:31:01>> Did you ever try wearing a Nano as a watch?
0:31:03there. It's too digital for me. Like I'm not like I have enough digital watches around
0:31:08me that I don't need another one on my wrist.
0:31:10I bought the one on Kickstarter. I think it was the TikTok. And I bought it knowing that
0:31:17I wasn't gonna like it. I bought it because I wanted I thought it was a great idea. And
0:31:21I just love the idea of a couple of guys making their own hardware. And, you know, I just
0:31:27liked I just love that. Sometimes I back Kickstarter projects that I don't really want myself, but
0:31:31I just want them to succeed. So that's why I did it. And I tried it and it's, you know,
0:31:36it failed for the exact reasons that I thought it would is I can't stand having a watch where
0:31:42the time isn't always displayed. You have to hit a button to wake it up. It's like that
0:31:45defeats the whole point. If I was willing to do that, I would just take my phone out
0:31:49of my pocket and hit a button, which is what everybody who doesn't wear a watch does to
0:31:52find out what time it is.
0:31:53I do the same thing on Kickstarter.
0:31:56I just support a lot of projects.
0:31:59You know, most like sometimes I look for electronic music
0:32:03projects, gadgets, whatever.
0:32:05It's just, I kind of feel it's the same thing I have
0:32:07about artisanal stuff.
0:32:09There is very few people who are very creative
0:32:11in this world.
0:32:12We have to support them.
0:32:14And you know, that watch didn't do the trick for me.
0:32:18I do know people bought them like in, by the loads
0:32:22and I love the TikTok guys, they're pretty creative.
0:32:25Bon Scott Wilson is the name, I think.
0:32:28He's just such a great designer.
0:32:30Like that product he did was just awesome.
0:32:33Yeah, I don't know.
0:32:35I think maybe it can come back after a few years,
0:32:39they can bring it back, the iPod Nano or something.
0:32:43I don't know, there's a lot of talk about the wearable,
0:32:47you know, wrist computing, and like,
0:32:49I just wonder if we might see a comeback on iPod Nano.
0:32:54I wonder.
0:32:55I don't know.
0:32:55See, I think that was the other problem.
0:32:57The other fundamental problem with that whole idea
0:32:59of wearing a Nano as a wristwatch
0:33:00was that the Nano, because it wasn't designed for that,
0:33:04didn't have any kind of wireless connectivity.
0:33:10I feel like the whole idea falls short
0:33:14if it doesn't have any actual digital information on it.
0:33:17it had was time, really, and, you know, and songs that you had already loaded on it. Whereas,
0:33:23and it's slipping my mind right now, but I've already backed them. There's a Kickstarter
0:33:27project for this watch that's-
0:33:28>> Pebble.
0:33:29>> What?
0:33:30>> It's called Pebble.
0:33:31>> Pebble. That's it. Right. The Pebble watch, which uses like this, not quite E Ink, but
0:33:35it's like E Ink, so it's low power and it can stay on all the time. But it uses Bluetooth
0:33:42so that it can communicate to smartphone and stuff like that. Again, I don't know that
0:33:47I'm going to really love that Pebble watch. I think it's too big. I kind of don't really
0:33:51even like digital watches. I kind of like an analog watch. But I did—I've supported
0:33:56them because I do want to see them thrive, and I love the idea of a small startup taking
0:34:00a shot at a big problem like that. But I feel like they're on the right track in a way that
0:34:05the Nano as a watch never could be because it actually has the Bluetooth and is communicating.
0:34:10You know, you're getting data.
0:34:11I think these days, if you're making devices and they don't have networking, or like they
0:34:16don't have connectivity built into them,
0:34:19they're pretty pointless.
0:34:20Like I just feel pretty strongly about that.
0:34:23I don't really, like one of the biggest,
0:34:27one of the things I have is this Sony camera,
0:34:29Sony NEX5, and it doesn't have built-in wifi,
0:34:33and I have to use like, iFi and all those other hacks
0:34:37to make it work, and it just is like,
0:34:40it's just not a seamless experience.
0:34:42I wish they had, and which is why I always end up
0:34:45using my iPhone for taking pictures,
0:34:47just because it's just so much more convenient.
0:34:50You can just take pictures and boom, share them,
0:34:53upload them, do whatever.
0:34:55And I think that's the key difference.
0:34:57- I sort of agree.
0:35:00What'd you think of the new iPods today?
0:35:02- So I love the new iPod touch they introduce.
0:35:07My nephews and nieces are getting that,
0:35:13instead of getting an iPhone.
0:35:14I was considering sending them an iPhone,
0:35:17but I think the iPod Touch is just a good option.
0:35:22And I think it could have a pretty serious impact
0:35:27on the at-home gaming business, the consoles.
0:35:34I think it's very powerful.
0:35:36It has AirPlay built into it.
0:35:38It can have an impact.
0:35:39Like, you know, if they could do,
0:35:42if Apple could sell the iPod TV for cheaper,
0:35:47like for $49, they could actually have
0:35:50a serious console competitor.
0:35:53I really like that.
0:35:55The other, the iPod Nano, I don't know.
0:35:59Like, I'm not, I never really cared for that product,
0:36:02and this one too, I'm not all that impressed by.
0:36:06- I think one of the things that's interesting is,
0:36:09So one of the things I've seen already, you know, there wasn't really much of a surprise with the
0:36:14iPhone 5. But now that we've seen it, and it's official, here's what it really is. And there's
0:36:18sort of the backlash against it. The negative take that I've seen is it's, there's nothing new here.
0:36:24It's just the same thing it was, but better. And I'd say, duh, that's, you know, when you have like
0:36:31the most popular product in the history of the tech industry, you know, you probably don't want
0:36:36to change it that much. But as much as the iPhone, I really do think you could argue, and I don't I
0:36:42don't mean that I mean, this is a compliment, not as a complaint that it's the exact same idea as
0:36:46the original iPhone from five years ago just improved year over year over year, one year at a
0:36:53time, faster, better screen thinner, lighter. Compare that to the iPod nano where it really when
0:37:02they showed the history of the device, it's like they really are all over the place, you
0:37:06know, in form factor and dimensions and even in terms of like, just what is it meant for?
0:37:13Like is it should it be able to play video and it didn't and then it did and then it
0:37:18didn't and now it does again. It's like that's a pretty big feature that they just keep,
0:37:22you know, that they're using the same name, but they're really inventing like all new
0:37:26products for this thing every year or two.
0:37:29Yeah, you're right about that. I was surprised by the use of color yellow.
0:37:35It's like, what's with the yellow, man? Like, I mean, I don't want a yellow device. I'm sorry.
0:37:40Yeah, I would never buy. I would have to say yellow would probably be the last one I would buy.
0:37:44Like, you have to be a really special person to buy a yellow device.
0:37:48I wonder, do they call it yellow? I'm not even sure. Do they call it yellow or do they call it gold?
0:37:52Whatever. They might call it some ridiculous name, but it's still yellow.
0:37:56- Yeah.
0:37:57- You know, so one thing which the observation I had
0:38:00over the event today, especially from the iPod spectrum,
0:38:05is that how much of the unification of design
0:38:09and manufacturing process and materials
0:38:12has happened across all Apple products,
0:38:14very, very anodized aluminum, very simple,
0:38:18you know, the lines are very laser cut, very straight.
0:38:23Everything has that uniformity.
0:38:25I think that's something very unique this time I saw,
0:38:29which is pretty interesting.
0:38:31I think the only thing which actually looks
0:38:32out of place now is the iPad.
0:38:35- Yeah, maybe, a little bit.
0:38:37- The iPad One was actually more closer
0:38:40to this design language than the new one.
0:38:44- Yeah, and one thing with the iPhone and the iPod Touch,
0:38:49for the first five years, up until today,
0:38:51if you looked at them straight on,
0:38:53Well then they did look a lot like the same thing, you know, it's the same exact sort of thing.
0:38:58But then when you turn them around and look at the back, they looked totally different.
0:39:02Although always from the beginning, where the iPod Touch always had this sort of classic iPod shiny metal back, like the fingerprint smudge material.
0:39:15And the iPhone always had, is varied, you know, the original one was that bead-blasted aluminum or whatever,
0:39:23and then there were the two years where they had the black plastic, and now it was glass with the iPhone 4 and 4S.
0:39:31But now, they seem to be, like you said, there's a very... the colors are different, but there's a very similar material aesthetic.
0:39:41You know, the same exact aluminum.
0:39:44So somebody I spoke to, like not, you know, it's like not, I don't know enough to kind of write a blog post about it,
0:39:52but apparently I'm told that Apple currently has some of the best materials engineers in the world working for it.
0:40:01I would be surprised by that.
0:40:03And that is why you can see this uniformity.
0:40:06uniformity, so they've actually,
0:40:09just as they spent a lot of money making their own chips,
0:40:12they have spent a lot of time making their own
0:40:16like material decisions, and you can see it.
0:40:18And the Retina Display MacBook Pro is actually
0:40:24like the epicenter of this design language,
0:40:27of this product design language,
0:40:29which is something very unique.
0:40:31I haven't seen it in many other products,
0:40:34Except maybe I've seen it like when you look at the high end cars, they do that.
0:40:39They have very similar materials they use across the board.
0:40:43Like companies, once they start using carbon fiber, it starts to become part of their whole
0:40:49manufacturing process.
0:40:51So that's one thing I noticed in this presentation today.
0:40:54Yeah, did you catch the part in the design video for the iPhone 5 where they talked about
0:41:00- You talk about the diamond cutter that cuts the,
0:41:03they call it the chamfer, that slight edge,
0:41:07slight diagonal edge that takes the sharpness
0:41:10off the sides.
0:41:11And when you look at that part of the phone,
0:41:17it's really kind of stunning.
0:41:19It's just this tiny little edge,
0:41:22and it is so impossibly shiny.
0:41:25It actually looks shinier than the glass.
0:41:28- You know, it's amazing.
0:41:30Like they have done such interesting work
0:41:33on manufacturing production materials.
0:41:37I wish I could talk to those guys.
0:41:40- Yeah.
0:41:40- They just never let you talk to those guys.
0:41:43They are just, like that is, in my opinion,
0:41:45that is the real work Apple's doing.
0:41:48You know, we get all caught up in the features
0:41:51and how fast the processors is,
0:41:53but I get totally excited about all these,
0:41:57like, you know, manufacturing nerdiness a little bit.
0:42:01It's like that. I think the iPad,
0:42:05sorry, the iPod Nano is an interesting
0:42:09product. I just am not something I'm going to
0:42:13think about a lot. No, not me neither. I will say this though too, though.
0:42:17Now that it has a slightly bigger screen, I know that the last year's model had
0:42:21the iOS-style interface. But now
0:42:25that it has a bigger screen and it has a home button, it really does feel like a tiny little
0:42:31iPhone. And it's not running iOS, as far as anybody knows. I think it's the same embedded
0:42:37OS as the old Nanos. But it so clearly shares the same physics algorithms as iOS. Like when
0:42:45you're in the settings app and you scroll down and you get to the bottom, the bounce
0:42:50is like it's the iPhone bounce. And when you stretch at the top of a scrolling list, it
0:42:55stretches the exact same way that a list of, I mean, it could not feel more like iOS.
0:43:01I mean, that's the experience they have to offer, like, across the board. Otherwise,
0:43:05like, what's the point of having a design philosophy and design language when all your
0:43:11products are not unified around that?
0:43:14Do you think it would make sense in a year or two, if they could, to make a device like
0:43:18that the iPod nano but that did run iOS so they could open up apps for it?
0:43:23Yeah, I think they should do that and in fact connectivity should be part of it.
0:43:29Like I just believe no apps, so this is the law, this is I've been talking about
0:43:35this for a very long time. In order for a device to be successful it has to have
0:43:39two elements. It has to have connectivity and it has to have usability. Usability
0:43:45comes from services. In case of Apple, those services are apps. And connectivity is what
0:43:52makes those services alive. And more services you have, the more you use your device, the
0:44:00more you use it, the more you want it, the more you're likely to break it or buy an upgrade.
0:44:05So that's the key thing. That's the philosophy they need to have. I'm pretty sure that's
0:44:10the philosophy they have. We just don't know it.
0:44:12I don't think that you would ever want to type on a device like that.
0:44:16Like, I think it would have to be, like, not the iPhone's version of iOS running smaller.
0:44:22It would have to be like a new branch, you know, in a way that there are iPad apps and
0:44:27iPhone apps.
0:44:28There would have to be, like, Nano apps.
0:44:29I don't know.
0:44:30For lack of a better word.
0:44:31Well, I don't think you don't need many apps.
0:44:33You just had iPad, sorry, iPod Nano with a network, with a Wi-Fi connection with Siri.
0:44:40Right.
0:44:41Siri played this song.
0:44:42Yeah, voice as your input instead of a keyboard. I think games could be interesting on it,
0:44:48but like information, status information, stuff like that. I think the form factor is
0:44:53interesting, but as it stands, it's, you know, just...
0:44:56I do think this is one bit I would say Apple is a little lagging as a company is that they
0:45:02don't think of services as engagement, right? Like, sort of like, you know how the Facebook
0:45:10people send you these stupid notifications all the time so you keep using Facebook, even
0:45:16though you hate it, they have worked really hard on making us dopamine addicts. And Apple
0:45:22needs to kind of work on something similar to keep people using those devices all the
0:45:26time. I just, like that's my, at least that's how I think about it.
0:45:31And the new iPod touch, it's so remarkably thin and light.
0:45:36I mean, did you play with it?
0:45:39- I did play with it for like two minutes.
0:45:41Like there are too many people.
0:45:42- I, there were, it was a lot less crowded
0:45:45around the iPod touch than the iPhone,
0:45:46so I spent more time with the iPod touch.
0:45:48It's so impossibly thin.
0:45:53- Yeah.
0:45:54- It really is.
0:45:55And people were saying over and over again
0:45:56that they kinda couldn't believe that it was,
0:45:57this was the actual, this is what it really is.
0:45:59It's almost hard to believe.
0:46:02- Yeah, you can touch it.
0:46:03You don't have to hide it behind a glass.
0:46:07- And I'm a little surprised,
0:46:10and I know that it leaked out before the event
0:46:12and that there were some whispers over the last week.
0:46:14Like 9to5Mac had it, and they always get it
0:46:17from these SKUs that go into the Apple retail system,
0:46:20and that when these SKUs for new iPods show up,
0:46:24it's almost like a sure sign
0:46:26that their new iPods are coming very soon.
0:46:29But the reason I found it hard to believe, and I was a little skeptical all the way up
0:46:32until they actually announced it, was that I still found it unusual to announce the iPod
0:46:37Touch with the new 4-inch screen and radical, major new features at the same time as the
0:46:44iPhone that it's based on.
0:46:49I didn't even think there were going to be iPod Touch updates.
0:46:52No, well, I wasn't sure.
0:46:54I don't know.
0:46:55And the reason why...
0:46:57not that it makes the new iPhone 5 look bad, but it's like the iPod touch was always thinner
0:47:05than the iPhone because it, you know, there's all sorts of antennas they don't need to include.
0:47:09And I guess it probably needs a smaller battery because it doesn't have to power those antennas.
0:47:15So I've always thought, boy, wouldn't it be, wouldn't it be, not even wouldn't, but won't,
0:47:19because I know Apple moves towards thinner and lighter. Won't it be great when the iPhone
0:47:24is that thin and light. And that's what the new iPhone 5 is. It's as thin and light as
0:47:29the old iPod touches. And immediately they've already upped the bar with these new iPod
0:47:34touches, which are way thinner and just--I almost hesitate to say too light, but if there
0:47:42is such a thing as something that's too light, it's these things. They almost feel like they
0:47:46wouldn't fall at the full rate of gravity.
0:47:48- So iPhone 5.5 will be pretty thin.
0:47:52Like it will be thin like this, like the current iPhone 5.
0:47:57But it will have a lot of things which will be different.
0:48:00And the number one thing which will be different
0:48:02will be the battery.
0:48:04I can tell you they are going to spend next 12 months
0:48:08focusing on battery power.
0:48:09They are, I know the Apple people have been talking
0:48:13to a lot of the battery companies and technologies
0:48:16and they've been doing a lot of research,
0:48:19and they're not alone, a lot of companies are,
0:48:23but that would be their main area of focus,
0:48:25and the lessons they learn from the iPod Touch usage
0:48:29are going to help them make the iPhone battery
0:48:33act more smartly, because it's like software
0:48:38and battery design, and they will need to figure that one out
0:48:41and the reason I bring that up is that two years ago,
0:48:45Apple's biggest weakness was its radios,
0:48:50like wireless radios.
0:48:51And then in two years, and what they launched today,
0:48:54people have completely glossed over
0:48:57like how difficult it is to support
0:49:00so many different standards in such a thin device
0:49:04using a very smart networking, radio networking technology,
0:49:09that has happened in the last two years.
0:49:12And I think they've worked systematically on it.
0:49:14I think that's what I find impressive.
0:49:17It is not something people glom onto,
0:49:21but it's a very hard challenge.
0:49:22And battery is the next hard challenge.
0:49:24So yes, in two years you will have an iPhone
0:49:29which will be like as thin as an iPod Touch,
0:49:32and it will have the same battery power,
0:49:34probably more than what we have today.
0:49:37I do believe that their next big breakthrough
0:49:40is gonna be on batteries.
0:49:42- I wouldn't be surprised.
0:49:43got to be, because it has to be, I know it is, it's the biggest thing inside the phone.
0:49:48And so if they, you know, it's going to be the sticking point toward getting them smaller
0:49:53and lighter. I mean, and that is one thing that when you put it in hand, and you know,
0:50:00it's obviously, you hold it in your hand, it does feel taller than your iPhone, than
0:50:05the old iPhones. And it definitely feels like the top of the screen is farther away. But
0:50:10side to side, because it is the same size as the iPhone, it still feels like the iPhone 4 and 4S.
0:50:16And to me, it's a much more comfortable size just holding it in one hand than the bigger Android
0:50:22phones and like the big Windows phones. Like I really find those uncomfortable. Not uncomfortable,
0:50:29but just not as comfortable to use. It just seems like they beg to be used, those bigger phones,
0:50:34the way that Android phones have gone to four and a half inches or five inches even in some cases,
0:50:39They beg to be used with two hands all the time, not one hand.
0:50:42So I don't use too many Android phones, not because they're bad phones.
0:50:47It's just as their keyboards just don't, are not very inviting.
0:50:53That's like, that's my big thing is like, yeah, I have all those phones.
0:50:56I like, you know, I like some of the work Google's done with this Nexus devices.
0:51:01And they're pretty, you know, they're well made devices.
0:51:04They're fast, they're powerful.
0:51:06The OS is not iOS, but it's pretty good.
0:51:13And a lot of people are writing applications for it.
0:51:17But I just find little things are not there.
0:51:20Like the email client is not very good, even though it's
0:51:23Google built in.
0:51:24Or the keyboards are not all that great.
0:51:29But beyond that, I think the key thing on the new size iPhone 5 is actually going to
0:51:41be our ability to deal with excess information on the screen.
0:51:47I think people always forget.
0:51:50More information you cram on the screen, it kind of is a shock to the system.
0:51:56Which is why I think the bigger Android take a little time getting used to.
0:52:01It's because there's just more stuff crammed onto the screen.
0:52:05And I think the, it's, I'm looking forward to using my iPhone 5 whenever it comes to
0:52:12market for me.
0:52:13I'm still unconvinced whether it's, I still, I wonder whether it's not just a, look, marketing
0:52:22wise, we kind of need to be at four inches because this is...we know people don't buy
0:52:28on specs, but if everybody else is making four-inch phones, we kind of need a four-inch
0:52:33phone, and that it's not really going to make that much of a difference. People are not
0:52:38going to, when they upgrade, they're not going to say, "Wow, I really appreciate the extra
0:52:41size here."
0:52:43So if I was not writing about Apple and iPhone and devices, I probably would not rush out
0:52:51and buy it just because it's got a four inch display.
0:52:54- Right.
0:52:55- It's just not like a decision making thing for me.
0:52:58I was like, yeah, okay, whatever.
0:53:00- Well anyway, I guess that brings us to the iPhone 5
0:53:02since we've been talking about it.
0:53:04And that was clearly the big announcement today.
0:53:06- Yeah.
0:53:07So before we go to the iPhone, though,
0:53:10I would say thank God for upgrading the iTunes.
0:53:14Oh my God, that thing had become such a pig.
0:53:18- It really did.
0:53:19And you know what? It kind of reminds me of a little...
0:53:21And I'd heard, I had not seen, nobody had shown me,
0:53:24I had no little birdies had filled me in as to what the new iTunes looked like.
0:53:28But I was told, I've been told by a couple of people that, yeah, this is like a serious,
0:53:32this isn't like wink, wink, nudge, nudge. It's an update.
0:53:36It's a real rethinking of what the iTunes app for Mac and Windows should look like.
0:53:41And I, you know, I haven't used it yet, but I really, from what I saw,
0:53:47boy, it really does seem appealing. It's very stylish. And I have to say, like, from a UI
0:53:52perspective, it doesn't really seem like anything I've seen before. It seems like a new type
0:53:58of app. Like, Apple has all these apps that have, you know, and third-party apps, too,
0:54:03but the same layout as iTunes, old iTunes. Sidebar on the left in a column that's narrow,
0:54:11and then you click something in that sidebar on the left, and it fills in the right with
0:54:16what that is. And that's how mail works, that's how all sorts of other apps work. And it really
0:54:26seems like that's also the best measure of how complicated iTunes got, is because that
0:54:32source list got longer and longer and longer before you even got to the stuff that you
0:54:39make, like playlists and stuff like that. But just in terms of how many items are in
0:54:43there in a default installation of iTunes. It was this, that, the other thing.
0:54:46It's all gone. And now it's just one big window. So it looked a little bit like
0:54:51audio to me. Like I couldn't put my finger on it, but so I tweeted out, I
0:54:58asked people, this looks a little familiar and like a lot of people
0:55:01tweeted out saying it looks like audio and I went and checked and it does. And I
0:55:07I just feel like, oh God, let me try this,
0:55:10because I hate my current iTunes.
0:55:13It's like just completely, utterly useless.
0:55:17It's slow, and I can't access.
0:55:19And you know, I just think the idea of playlists
0:55:23as we know it needs to be reinvented completely.
0:55:27- Well, but I, you know, hold your thought on that,
0:55:30because one thing, unless I missed it,
0:55:33the hands-on area did not have anywhere
0:55:34where you could play with the new iTunes.
0:55:36- No. - No.
0:55:36So that's, and that does make me wonder about the timing of the announcements today.
0:55:41Is that why, it seems unusual that, seems a little weird that they announced the new
0:55:45iTunes but it's still.
0:55:47October.
0:55:48Yeah, or late October even?
0:55:49Yeah.
0:55:50Or did they say October?
0:55:51I'd say sometime in October.
0:55:52Well, it's, you know, it's well over a month away.
0:55:54Yeah.
0:55:56And they didn't have it in the hands-on area.
0:55:59I saw that there's a new seed which was, came out.
0:56:03Oh, so maybe they do?
0:56:04I didn't, I've been offline all day.
0:56:06I don't know. I haven't checked it. Like, I'll probably go home and try it.
0:56:09But it really does seem like they've, in addition to just reducing visual clutter in the interface,
0:56:16they've also really seemed to have done so with a specific goal in mind, which is to get you back
0:56:22to just using the app to play music, and maybe secondarily watch movies. And not have it be this
0:56:31app that was a device manager for gadgets. You know, these gadgets that you tether to your
0:56:38computer and you do all this stuff to do that. It's sort of gotten away from that and it's back
0:56:42to use this app to play music.
0:56:44So one observation, I thought it would be very cool if Apple did visual playlist making
0:56:54capability drag and drop because now we have such good touch on our laptops that you can
0:57:01actually swipe and touch and create like visually create playlists versus creating like those
0:57:07manual add to the playlist kind of nonsense.
0:57:10So I am really looking forward to playing around with that whenever it comes out.
0:57:17That's my, that's my, whew, that was on my wish list and I got it.
0:57:24There's a, I forget what they call the new feature though, but it's the one that's like
0:57:28add to your list now or something like that, play now.
0:57:32It's like if you're in the middle of a playlist, but you're going through...
0:57:35Up next.
0:57:36Up next, that's it, that's it, up next.
0:57:38That to me is, I've thought of that feature, but never really thought it through enough
0:57:44to like actually like write about it or ask for it.
0:57:47I just know I can remember many times being in that situation where I'm playing music,
0:57:51I have a playlist that I don't want to stop playing, but I'm just digging around my iTunes
0:57:56and I say, "Oh, I'd like to hear this song right now, or next at least."
0:58:01But I don't want to stop the playlist, and I don't want to add it to the, you know, like
0:58:05maybe it's a smart playlist and the smart playlist doesn't even have this, it's not,
0:58:09I don't want to, I can't add it to the playlist.
0:58:14Maybe that's where people also met with the Pandora-like service that Apple was going
0:58:19to launch, which is like the same feature.
0:58:23I would love to have Pandora features on my own library.
0:58:28I mean, it's so hard to some-- the genius hasn't really
0:58:31been genius for a long time.
0:58:34I mean, that's how I feel.
0:58:35They needed to improve that as well.
0:58:38So maybe that comes out in the app as well,
0:58:40the next version of iTunes.
0:58:42And I'm curious what the-- I don't think they've shown it.
0:58:44I'm looking at the website right now.
0:58:46curious what the Windows version will look like. I don't care. Yeah, who cares? I
0:58:52know a lot of people have been asking me, the readers have been asking me, what do
0:58:56I think they're gonna do about Windows RT since Windows RT doesn't run the
0:59:00desktop Windows apps? And I think the answer is that if you have a Windows RT
0:59:04device you don't get iTunes. Because you're not going to use it. The whole
0:59:07reason they have it for Windows is so that you can use a Windows PC to manage
0:59:12your iPods and your iPhone not through iCloud. And I think that now they're getting to the
0:59:17point with iCloud where they don't really care. If you have a PC, they would love for
0:59:21you to buy an iPhone, but I don't think they care so much about you being able to tether
0:59:26it to your PC. You go through iCloud. But they did say, though, it's coming out for
0:59:35PC too.
0:59:36- You know, I think the thing with the PC, iTunes,
0:59:40was that I always felt actually it worked better
0:59:49than the Mac one.
0:59:50- Really?
0:59:51- Yeah.
0:59:51- Huh.
0:59:52- I just like, it just felt more robust and less--
0:59:56- I've never even tried it.
0:59:57- No, I tried it a few times.
0:59:58- In 10 years, I don't think I've ever tried iTunes
1:00:00on a PC.
1:00:01- Yeah, it's like I have one PC which I kinda
1:00:04our tings on. I also really thought that the demo of the mini player was really
1:00:09fascinating because it seemed to me like I could leave my iTunes in that mini
1:00:12player state almost all the time and you just type and I like that the live
1:00:17search I like the way it looks the search results they didn't say it and it
1:00:23is sort of a different visual treatment but it kind of reminds me of the iPad
1:00:27interface with the popover for the results you know like you've just got
1:00:30this little tiny thing you type in a field and then here's the results click
1:00:34on it and you're playing it. So I missed that part. I was busy taking pictures and uploading
1:00:41them. So the scuttlebutt though, and iTunes kind of plays into it, the scuttlebutt is
1:00:47that it, that Apple didn't really decide, Apple has a lot of stuff to announce. As of
1:00:53before today, they had a lot of stuff they wanted to announce in the next month or two.
1:00:58And that they've been maybe thinking about two events. I mean, clearly the big thing
1:01:03that everybody is expecting and that has not yet been announced is this iPad mini thing,
1:01:08iPad Air, whatever you want to call it. And that they've more or less felt like they had
1:01:16a lot of options as to how to do it. Should they announce the iPhone all by itself like
1:01:21they did last year? Should they, obviously the way they did go, announce the iPhone with
1:01:26the iPods and have a music event with the iPhone? Or should they have a music event
1:01:32next month with the iPods and this new miniature iPad and call that the music event. And I
1:01:39feel like, and from what I've heard, a couple people have heard is that the decision on
1:01:43that didn't get made until relatively late. I mean, not last minute, obviously, just from
1:01:49the polish and the precision of the event they made it. But, you know, relatively speaking,
1:01:57much as, you know, whatever time it takes to put on an event of that level of polish,
1:02:03that's when they made the decision. And I think it kind of fits with the fact that iTunes,
1:02:09the app, is not ready yet. So I thought maybe, you know, it seems a little weird. And the
1:02:13iPods aren't coming till next month either.
1:02:15>> Yeah. You know, this is not -- the Apple is changing, clearly. So things are going
1:02:21to be a little different. I'm pretty sure you have a better idea on what's going on
1:02:26and how this works than I do.
1:02:29What are your thoughts?
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1:04:38- All right, we're back.
1:04:41So, the iPhone.
1:04:42It starts with Shiller, I guess he said a little bit,
1:04:48but then he more or less says,
1:04:49"Here, let me show it to you."
1:04:51gestures and this pedestal, I guess for lack of a better word, rises out of the floor and
1:04:58starts spinning around. And like I was sitting next to Dan Morin from Macworld and I just
1:05:05said, you know, where do you buy, where do they buy something like that? Because you
1:05:08can't just go to the store and buy the pedestal that rises out of the floor. It almost was
1:05:13like something out of like a James Bond movie, you know, like that's where his watch comes
1:05:17out of. This crazy over-engineered pedestal that comes out of the floor and they've got
1:05:24these little micro spotlights just to hit the phone.
1:05:30That was pretty cool.
1:05:31I thought so too. And I think people got it too because there was a lot of people laughing.
1:05:37It was very well done. They did it to the nines. The way that it rotated was super smooth.
1:05:47It was timed perfectly with the movie behind it, like where when the iPhone was exactly
1:05:52sideways to the audience, the phone on the video behind it was sideways to the audience.
1:06:00But it seems crazy because it only was up there for like a minute.
1:06:02It was up for like a minute, it spun around twice, and then it went down.
1:06:05So like somebody at Apple like had the job of like engineering this robot pedestal for
1:06:12one minute in one event.
1:06:15the luxury of having a couple of hundred billion dollars lying around.
1:06:19I do think so. And then to fast forward all the way to the end of the event, when The
1:06:25Foo Fighters came out, I had this thought, Tim Cook's up on stage and he's saying, you
1:06:30know, we love to have an act. You know, music's the heart of the company and DNA of the company.
1:06:34We always like to end with one of our favorite acts and we have one of those acts today.
1:06:38And then they put a Foo Fighters album up. So I knew it was The Foo Fighters and everybody,
1:06:42I started getting excited. But I thought, "Well, how are they going to come out?" And
1:06:45I thought, "Well, you know, here's what I thought. I thought maybe it wouldn't be the
1:06:48full band, there wouldn't be drums, maybe just the lead singer, Dave Grohl, would come
1:06:51out with a guitar, and one or two of the other guys, maybe with guitars, they'd walk out
1:06:56on stage, you know, but that wouldn't be the full electric setup because there was clearly
1:07:00nowhere there where that could be." And like years ago, like I forget if it was a John
1:07:05Mayer or one of those things, but it was in a Moscone event, though, which is a much bigger
1:07:10huge stage. He came out like from the side like on a thing that rotated around
1:07:15from the back or maybe that I forget who I was but but there was room for
1:07:20something like that and here all of a sudden the screen goes up and this
1:07:24platform comes out again so super smooth this moving platform that the band was
1:07:30on and I asked at the the hands-on area and at somebody at Apple said that yeah
1:07:39that was custom too. They built that just for the thing.
1:07:43Well, that's pretty impressive. That was pretty impressive. I was
1:07:48like taken aback for a minute. It's like, wow.
1:07:50I think the way you put it, though, is good is that those
1:07:54are the sort of little touches that you can do when you've got
1:07:56$100 billion in cash.
1:07:59So I enjoyed myself. It was just like for a few minutes, it felt
1:08:06like, damn, these guys worked really hard to make this happen.
1:08:09Yeah. And I think they do work really hard in presentations. It's not as... There's a lot of work which goes into it.
1:08:17My two cents.
1:08:20I do too. And I've been thinking about this, and I've been thinking about it in the context of Amazon last week, too, that I think that there's a really strong correlation between a company that's able to put together a cohesive, smart,
1:08:38easy to understand presentation for a product and the fact that the product itself is actually
1:08:44thoughtful and cohesive and well thought out. Like there is, you know, and it's, you know,
1:08:50and I, sometimes I worry, I think, well maybe that's just because I'm so close to Apple
1:08:55and Apple does both those things well, does good products and does good things. But I
1:08:59thought Amazon's thing last week showed that it's, you know, it's true for other companies
1:09:03too, where a really strong presentation from Bezos and a really easy to understand message
1:09:10of why you would buy these Kindles and who they're for.
1:09:14Right. And I think if you look around in the fashion world, you can say like there's like
1:09:20if you go to a Tom Ford show, and the way the stores are the products are not that I
1:09:26will ever fit into one of his outfits. But, but there is a cohesive thought process like
1:09:32It starts from the very top and goes right the way to the bottom and it is across product
1:09:39presentation experience.
1:09:43People don't quite give the importance to the experience part of Apple or any company
1:09:49like Apple.
1:09:51You go to Herman Miller's products.
1:09:54When you buy an Eames chair, it is an experience.
1:09:58You don't just buy wood.
1:10:01buying a certain kind of an experience. It doesn't matter whether it costs 20
1:10:05bucks or $200,000. It is about creating that experience and that experience is
1:10:12your inbuilt sensibility. You need to have it inside you to actually be able
1:10:17to project it to the rest of the world. And I think that's what Amazon showed
1:10:22last week. And I, you know, there's even like a rhyme and a reason to the
1:10:26people who get trotted out. Now Amazon did it with one man. It was just Jeff
1:10:30Bezos and he didn't call anybody else out and that's one way to do it and I think in
1:10:34the past Apple has had events like that with Steve Jobs. Now they're not, I don't think
1:10:38they're ever going to have an event like that again. I think now it's a team player, team
1:10:43player type thing. But it's, it's almost like parentheticals or layers of a hierarchy where
1:10:48at the top level there's the root level and that's Tim Cook. And then he says, okay, now
1:10:54we're going to talk about new iPhone 5. Here's Phil Schiller. And so Phil then is like one
1:11:00layer down in the hierarchy and his thing is the iPhone. And then in the middle of his
1:11:05thing, to talk just about the software, then it goes to Scott Forstall. Then Forstall leaves,
1:11:12Phil comes back out to close his parentheses, and then Phil leaves and Cook comes back out
1:11:18and you're back at the root level. And then it starts all over again with the iPods and
1:11:21iTunes with Eddy Cue and Joswiak and with Jeff Robin coming out to demo the new iTunes.
1:11:29guys come out for a specific reason, and when they leave, the guy who introduced them comes
1:11:33back out until you get back to Tim Cook at the end, and it's all over. Compare that to
1:11:37Microsoft and at the Windows 8, again, to borrow your technical term, shit show, a couple
1:11:44months ago, where it's like, there was no logic to it, but yet it was, it just seemed,
1:11:49it was almost like the internal politics of the company laid, just exposed, where here's
1:11:55the people who need to come out because they want to come out, but there didn't seem to
1:11:59be any logic to it. Here's one guy showing the one tablet, and here's another guy who
1:12:02comes out to show a keyboard, and then here's this other guy who comes out to show a different
1:12:06type of keyboard. And then the tablet didn't work. And now here we are months later, and
1:12:16it's not just that their presentation wasn't good. Now we're at a point now with Windows
1:12:218 and Windows Phone 8 where is it going to ship on time? Are they going to have these
1:12:27things ready for the Christmas season? It seems like it's a question.
1:12:34You know, confusion is not just in your mind, it's everywhere.
1:12:37Right. But I always look at those things and I always think it's me. And it's just like
1:12:41when I was a kid, it goes back to when I was a kid, and if I ever read a book that was
1:12:45like above my grade level, and I didn't get it, I just thought, "Well, I'm just not smart
1:12:50enough," or "I'm not a good enough reader yet. This is beyond me." And I just always
1:12:54would blame myself. Or like if I stayed up late and I got to watch a TV show with my
1:12:59parents that was on late and it was like an adult show and I just didn't get it. I just
1:13:03didn't understand what the heck was going on. Just always thought it was me and I still
1:13:07feel that way. Like I watched that Microsoft event and I got like halfway through before
1:13:11I started blaming them. Like halfway through I was like, you know, I'm just so unfamiliar
1:13:15with Microsoft. I'm just so used to Apple. I don't get this. It just doesn't make any
1:13:19sense to me. And then I got halfway through. I was like, you know what? This is just a
1:13:22mess.
1:13:23I had a great editor when I was at Forbes.com, David Chirvak.
1:13:29He taught me the most important lesson of my life.
1:13:32He said, "You're going to write about technology, you're going to write about companies, you're
1:13:37going to write about money, but you always have to remember everything, companies, products,
1:13:44they're all about people.
1:13:46Companies are people.
1:13:47You're not writing about an institution.
1:13:50you're writing about people, you just don't know it.
1:13:53You'd pay attention to the people
1:13:55and their own internal politics
1:13:57and their own internal confusion,
1:14:00that's the company right there for you.
1:14:01And that's exactly what, intuitively,
1:14:04you're getting onto that, glomming onto that thing.
1:14:07When you look at the Nokia people, right,
1:14:10like five years ago, they didn't have
1:14:13that level of confusion, except they had
1:14:15a certain type of a CEO who was so metrics driven,
1:14:19whose background was law, and the guy who was pulling,
1:14:24who was the puppet master, was finance guy.
1:14:28So they were only gonna do things which made sense to them,
1:14:31and that sprinkled across--
1:14:32- Things that made sense in a spreadsheet.
1:14:34- Right, and that's exactly what it is.
1:14:36It's like, companies are people.
1:14:39People make things, companies don't make things.
1:14:41It's like, how is that so difficult for people to understand?
1:14:46The other thing about today's presentation,
1:14:48which I've seen it every single time,
1:14:50between various product groups,
1:14:52you know, Phil Schiller, Foerstahl,
1:14:54and all these people come and go,
1:14:56there is that little video from Johnny Ive
1:15:00and Bob Mansfield, tells you those are the guys
1:15:03who are making it happen,
1:15:05while these guys are making it happen.
1:15:07So there is like a connective tissue
1:15:10that is design, manufacturing,
1:15:12and the internal hardware technology.
1:15:15I think that's very important for the company.
1:15:17Yeah, and I almost feel like you could feel the pride that they have in it. Like, every
1:15:24once in a while they get caught up in some of these details, like the emphasis on the
1:15:27sapphire lens on the thing, and it's like, all that anybody really cares about is does
1:15:33the camera really take good pictures. But they're so, you know, and it looked awesome.
1:15:37It's my favorite part of that, one of my favorite parts of that video of how they're making
1:15:40it. I like that part with the laser cutter, and I like that part where they take the sapphire,
1:15:44it up into a bunch of circles and then they have that like little suction cup
1:15:48thing coming and picking them off and moving them down. So those two are
1:15:52like my favorite like just watching them like this the stuff they do it just
1:15:58amazing I'm like I'm always amazed at the engineering which goes into the I
1:16:02like I was so obsessed with the retina display MacBook Pro not because it's a
1:16:09great laptop I just was like look at that engineering like the very idea that
1:16:14you're going to engineer the whole damn thing so that it looks a certain way and it works a certain way and it
1:16:20Like nobody does that like, you know, that's that's the problem
1:16:24I think did you catch the part in the video where they said that like, all right, here's one
1:16:30iPhone 5 frame comes down in the pipe
1:16:33let's take a snapshot of it and analyze exactly the dimensions that it got cut and
1:16:39and you know that this one piece of aluminum is cut and then you go over and there's like here's the camera and they have like
1:16:4637 cameras that they've imaged and they pick the one that is the most ideal fit for this particular iPhone
1:16:53Frame I mean that's crazy. I'm pretty sure they're all the same
1:16:58I it almost defies belief, you know, but that you know, why not though if it's gonna do it
1:17:03Why not? I guess there is some variant like they said they're measuring these things down to the micron
1:17:07And so if there's like a micron or two difference in this one and that one and there's a micron or two difference in
1:17:15This iPhone 5 frame and this iPhone 5 frame. Why not pick the one that's the
1:17:21Down to the micron better fit right, but it is obsessive
1:17:25I mean it really is and it shows that it shows in the result. It's nothing wrong with that
1:17:30I think the the a lot of people don't know this the sapphire
1:17:34Glass is what is on the cover on on these on these high-end watches, right?
1:17:39And that's I think I was just like when I was watching that it's like wow
1:17:43They really were paying attention like the scratches on on the lenses are a problem and they pick the right solution
1:17:51I and I do think I think the comparison to like just to sort of bring the show full circle
1:17:55But to go back to the high-end watches I do kind of feel like that's
1:18:00The level of craftsmanship that they're bringing to this and we haven't really you and I haven't we should probably bring the show to
1:18:06Him but we haven't really talked about the iPhone 5 itself. Yeah, we should talk about it
1:18:10I mean, I want to know what do you think like literally I think like everybody else
1:18:15I want to know what you think, you know, I I don't know. I guess my first impression is just that it's
1:18:21Almost startlingly lighter weight
1:18:25I mean, it really, you know, looking at the numbers in grams just doesn't seem to do justice
1:18:31to when you put it in your hand and just sort of bounce it up and down, how different it
1:18:34feels.
1:18:39Other than that, you know, it's just a nicer, newer, faster iPhone.
1:18:43And I don't mean that to say that I'm disappointed.
1:18:45It's, you know, it's like what last year, you know, this is what they do, you know.
1:18:49I love the internal work which has gone into it.
1:18:53I love the radio engineering they've done, which is pretty amazing. Kudos to them. The
1:18:59new chip, A6, is pretty—again, the kind of stuff nobody really cares about.
1:19:04Yeah, but you know what they're going to care about is when everything is twice as
1:19:06fast. And I was talking to Anand from AnandTech, and whenever I see him at these events, I
1:19:13always check with him because he knows these components.
1:19:16Like, inside out.
1:19:17Inside out. And he said, yeah, if that's—the description of the chips they're using for
1:19:21the A6 is, yeah, that should be twice as fast as the 4S, which is huge.
1:19:26Pretty big deal. Like, such a tiny package.
1:19:28I've mentioned this before, and it really, you know, it because I do a lot of web
1:19:33surfing, I read a lot of websites on the phone. It's one of the main things I do. I
1:19:37would buy an iPhone if the only app it had was Safari. I wouldn't be happy. I would
1:19:41miss all the other stuff, but I could get by. And it's like, it's easy to forget,
1:19:46because we're often waiting for the network if you have spotty connection or
1:19:50whatever. But it's easy to forget just how much of the time it takes when you're
1:19:54loading a web page is the phone rendering the HTML. Like, it's actually—because our
1:20:00computers have gotten so fast at it that they don't take much time to render a page.
1:20:05Whereas the phone still does. Like, when you load the newyorktimes.com, it takes time for
1:20:10the phone to just render it, let alone the network. So 2x improvement in speed is huge.
1:20:17I think I want to know what they do next, like what kind of engineering, internal engineering
1:20:23they do next.
1:20:24I'm still very obsessed about that.
1:20:26I think, you know, let's, like before we go, I think we should, we should really take a
1:20:33minute and applaud the radio engineering which has gone into it.
1:20:37Like that's just multiple bands across multiple networks.
1:20:43More Wi-Fi.
1:20:44Yeah.
1:20:45think that is yeoman's work.
1:20:47And it's smaller.
1:20:48Yeah.
1:20:49And I think those are the people will get no credit,
1:20:53or they're never on stage.
1:20:55Nobody talks about them.
1:20:57But those people who worked on the networking--
1:21:02networking is the blood and nerves of any connected device.
1:21:09And I think that is so important.
1:21:12I was just blown away by the amount of stuff they've crammed into that little device.
1:21:17Yeah, and I also wonder, now it supports Bluetooth 4.0, which is, I don't know much about, but
1:21:25everybody tells me, everything I've seen about it, is that it's really going to be a big
1:21:29deal because it's so low power.
1:21:32And you can just leave it on.
1:21:33You can just leave it on instead of worrying about turning it on, turning it off.
1:21:37You leave it on, and then other Bluetooth 4.0 things can just push stuff to your phone
1:21:42or whatever device has it because it's always on, and then you always have it, and you're
1:21:46not using this sort of—and it's just so low power that you don't have to worry about
1:21:51leaving it.
1:21:52But they didn't have any demo.
1:21:53They have Bluetooth 4.0, but they didn't have anything to demo with it.
1:21:57So that's what makes me—they wouldn't have put it in if they don't have uses in mind.
1:22:03I think music is number one, in my opinion.
1:22:05I think you can have Jawbone, like Jambox.
1:22:10Like I listen to it all the time,
1:22:13like when I'm in the bathroom,
1:22:15turn on my, pipe my music through Bluetooth and it's okay.
1:22:20But it runs down the phone really fast.
1:22:23It just is, I have an older phone.
1:22:25But I think there is that.
1:22:28There is also, you can do a lot of Bluetooth
1:22:31to Bluetooth connectivity.
1:22:34like you can do file transfers, which is important.
1:22:38Like there's a lot of applications which are gonna come up.
1:22:41It might actually be, you know,
1:22:44Bluetooth might actually have its moment
1:22:46under the sun right now.
1:22:48It's a technology which is always delivered less
1:22:51than it should have.
1:22:53- The other thing that I would point out,
1:22:57just as one big, like, yeah, in person,
1:23:00it really, really stands out, is the display.
1:23:03and that it, to me, instantly looks better than the iPhone 4 4s display in a couple of
1:23:09regards. First, the integrating the touch sensors into the same layer as the display
1:23:19absolutely noticeably puts the pixels closer to the surface. And that was the thing I really
1:23:25focused on two years ago when the iPhone 4 came out, was how much closer to the surface
1:23:30the pixels were than on the original iPhone and the 3G and the 3GS. I feel like this is
1:23:38that big of a -- it's as big again a leap towards painting the pixels on the surface.
1:23:43Like, it's as -- to me, as big a step forward as the retina display, the original one was,
1:23:49to getting the pixels on the surface, this one is again. I sat there at the table in
1:23:55the demo area and like held the phone sideways and I'm like it's pretty thin
1:24:00it's really thin and now I look at my own personal iPhone 4s right here and I
1:24:05see all this parallax between the the glass and the pixels underneath so let
1:24:10me ask you a question what's your take on the connector I think that the could
1:24:15the new connector is long overdue I can't believe that they lasted the old
1:24:19one lasted as long as it did I think it's ugly and I think it was an Apple
1:24:23like design and I think that it was a bunch of compromises to that made sense
1:24:29in 2003 but the it's just it was just ugly I mean it had sharp edges it was
1:24:34all exposed it makes the the hole in the phone is way too big it's always filled
1:24:40with dust and it's like real gross in there it just looks weird yeah I just
1:24:44always thought it was a weird-looking adapter so I think that it's just been
1:24:50long overdue to be replaced. I mean, compared to the original, like the
1:24:53original iPod shipped in 2001 with FireWire because it was Mac only and all
1:24:58Macs had FireWire. FireWire was a really nice port. It was, it had like a shape
1:25:05that you couldn't put it in wrong and you couldn't guess wrong and it went in
1:25:09and made like a nice, it was a nice feel and now it was thick and you wouldn't, you
1:25:13know, none of the modern iPods or iPhones could ever use a FireWire
1:25:16connector. It's two or three times too thick. But it just was an i... To me, that's an
1:25:21i-apple-like port firewire. And USB is just a little weirder looking. It's not
1:25:27as nice. It's not bad. For the PC industry, it's actually a pretty good-looking port.
1:25:31But I thought even just a USB plug is better looking aesthetically than the
1:25:38i... than that 30-pin connector. So I'm really just surprised it took them this
1:25:42long. And the new one, the Lightning port, to me is the epitomized. The epitomized is
1:25:48what I expect from an Apple custom-designed port, meaning you can put it in upside down.
1:25:53There is no upside down. You just put it in, and there's nothing sharp. The corners are
1:25:58rounded off. And it just feels nice when it goes in. It doesn't feel like brittle. Like
1:26:04it's—the other thing about the 30, the old 30-pin, it was always like metal on metal
1:26:07when you're putting it in. Never liked it.
1:26:09So is this like, is it a pre-approved, like a standard connector for other devices too?
1:26:16No, I don't think so any more than the 30 pin. I think it's every bit as proprietary as the 30 pin connector.
1:26:22Wasn't there like something like Europe, European Commission wanted them to conform to...
1:26:28Yeah, I actually don't know how they're getting around that. I think that in Europe there's some kind of law that you have to use like a standard connector,
1:26:36which more or less means you have to use either USB, micro-USB or mini-USB. I have no idea
1:26:43how they're getting around that. Maybe by shipping a free adapter. I think maybe that's
1:26:46the loophole, is that as long as you have an adapter, you comply with the law.
1:26:52I don't know. I think I'm a little bummed out about all my accessories are going to
1:26:58be pretty useless now. You have a lot of accessories? See, I don't have a lot of accessories.
1:27:02I have a lot of stuff. It's just like, really? I mean, god, like, you know, so like, that
1:27:08would prevent me from buying a new phone. It's just like, oh, I'll have to change this
1:27:13and that and like, oh my god, I don't want to do that.
1:27:16So you're not gonna buy it?
1:27:17Well, I'm not gonna buy like, you know, like, I don't know.
1:27:22I do think and I really do believe it. I don't think it's BS spin just to get you to buy
1:27:28adapters and get on board with it. I really do think that they couldn't make that it was
1:27:32limiting how thin they could make the devices. And maybe they could have made this new iPhone
1:27:405 with the old dock connector, but I don't think there's any way that they could have
1:27:44made the new iPods, any of them, the Nano or the Touch with the dock. It's just they're
1:27:50too thin. The new iPod Touch is so thin, there's no way that they could have made it with the
1:27:56old adapter. I think they could have easily gone the route of micro USB and it would have
1:28:02have been okay. I mean, you didn't really have to do a lot of things there. I mean,
1:28:06like, will people buy non-Apple accessories if it has micro-USB? Probably not.
1:28:13Well, that is a good question. Would they lose something if they had gone with micro-USB?
1:28:19I think this one might be stronger. I think one of the problems with micro-USB is it's
1:28:22hard to make a dock. And I've heard from other people who've had phones, because I
1:28:27speculated—I think it was actually on an old episode of the talk show where I said,
1:28:31ranting about how ugly the 30-pin adapter is,
1:28:35and maybe they should go with something like micro-USB.
1:28:38And somebody said that if you have a phone
1:28:39that has that port, and you have a dock for it,
1:28:42it gets bent very easily.
1:28:44- Okay, I'll give you that.
1:28:47- So I don't know, but I can't vouch for that,
1:28:49'cause I don't have a dock with micro-USB.
1:28:52- But that was it, that was my one quibble for now.
1:28:55- Well, I think it was overdue,
1:28:56and I feel like the longer they waited,
1:28:58maybe, I still think it would've been better
1:28:59if they could've moved sooner,
1:29:01because then there'd be fewer... the longer they waited, the more peripherals that were out there,
1:29:05the more cars there were with the car kit, you don't need this adapter.
1:29:09And I don't know, I wonder how many of those adapters people will need,
1:29:16because the other thing you might need, maybe you could just get by with the cable,
1:29:19because all you, you know, the cable that comes with the phone has regular USB on one side
1:29:25and the new port on the other, so for all of your power chargers and stuff like that,
1:29:30As long as you're plugging in USB, you don't need an adapter.
1:29:33Right.
1:29:34You know, I have one observation on the iPhone from a business perspective.
1:29:39I think from 3GS to-- we went from 2G to 3G, it was an obvious upgrade.
1:29:49From 3GS to 4, it was an obvious upgrade.
1:29:534S to a 5 is not really that clear an obvious upgrade.
1:29:59I think Apple may have some work cut out for them.
1:30:02Well, I've long thought, though, I really think that they design with the two-year contract
1:30:07in mind, and I feel like they're not really shooting to have a phone.
1:30:11I do.
1:30:12I'm an idiot.
1:30:13I'm a total idiot.
1:30:14I'm going to buy a new one every year.
1:30:15I've bought one every year so far.
1:30:16But I'm not nowhere near a—I'm not even close to being a normal iPhone consumer.
1:30:21I think for normal ones, they are very, very keenly looking at the two-year contract cycle
1:30:28and getting people to, you know,
1:30:31I don't think they expect people
1:30:34with an iPhone 4S to upgrade.
1:30:35Just like, I don't think they've ever expected people
1:30:38with last year's phone to get the new one.
1:30:40I really don't.
1:30:41- Right.
1:30:42Well, I think that would be,
1:30:44still, I do think that would be something to watch for,
1:30:46like over the next couple of months.
1:30:48The most interesting news, in my opinion,
1:30:51of the entire day, the free iPhone 4.
1:30:54It looks like 4S.
1:30:57- Right.
1:30:58as all your friends have a, you know,
1:31:01you will never feel like--
1:31:02- Right.
1:31:03- Like lesser person because you have an iPhone 4.
1:31:06- Right, in terms of the iPhone as a status item.
1:31:08- Guess what, who, it basically is the worst news possible
1:31:12for Nokia, Windows 8 ecosystem,
1:31:16and the Blackberry ecosystem.
1:31:20I'm not so sure how it impacts the Android,
1:31:23but the two weakest players should be really worried
1:31:26about the free iPhone 4?
1:31:28Yeah, and I still wonder how many of those they sell.
1:31:31And I know that the best-selling model is the highest one.
1:31:34And the best-selling model for the next 12 years
1:31:36assuredly is going to be the iPhone 5,
1:31:39even though it's more expensive.
1:31:40But I do think that those free phones are-- I think
1:31:45they're definitely important.
1:31:46And I still think a lot of people-- it's a lot of times
1:31:49people maybe even go into the store thinking
1:31:50that's what they're going to get.
1:31:51You know, I'm going to get that free iPhone 4.
1:31:53And then they get talked into a $99 upgrade to the 4S.
1:31:57Look at all these MVNOs we have out there.
1:32:00Sprint has a bunch of them.
1:32:02There is prepaid contracts.
1:32:05I mean, iPhone 4 on prepaid contract for two years.
1:32:08Well, and the other big thing with the iPhone 4 taking over
1:32:12as the free one is that now they've
1:32:16got it at Verizon and Sprint.
1:32:18Because the 3GS was only GSM.
1:32:21So in the US, it was only at AT&T. Now they've got one at all three of the major carriers.
1:32:27And I think that's a huge factor.
1:32:29So now you can go into a Verizon store and get a free iPhone.
1:32:32I think that is probably the quiet earthquake that was unleashed in the market.
1:32:40That would be fun to see what that does.
1:32:42And I also think that it does, it tightens up, I mean, and 3GS served Apple very well.
1:32:48I mean, it's, you know, it's the first iPhone that they did the thing where they keep it around year after year after year.
1:32:54Who knows how many gazillions of them they had, but it really was long in the tooth.
1:33:00Didn't have a retina display, and it didn't look like an iPhone. Like, I feel like this sort of,
1:33:04this form factor, this
1:33:07rectangles and sort of straight edges look,
1:33:10sort of has become the iPhone brand. And now all iPhones that you can buy today have that same visual brand.
1:33:17Like it doesn't need a logo on the front. There's no Apple logo on the front.
1:33:21It doesn't say iPhone on the front because the phone itself is the representation of the brand.
1:33:26Right. Yeah, it'll be fun to see how that does.
1:33:30You know, there's a lot of second-tier carriers who would make a lot of money off that thing.
1:33:36Just wait and see. Like, all these regional carriers, they will sell a ton of those.
1:33:42I'm pretty excited to see the outcome of that move.
1:33:46So the other the other change too, and you were praising their antenna design, you know across the board
1:33:52But now they've gotten away from the external antenna design where now the X side the outside is still metal, but it's a
1:33:58It's all just unibody. It's all just there for the frame
1:34:01Which means there's no longer any kind of
1:34:06Need for a bumper or a case for that and 10, you know the whole antenna gate
1:34:11attenuation issue
1:34:13So Apple isn't selling bumpers anymore
1:34:15are the bumpers are maybe they're still selling them for the older ones but
1:34:19there's no bumpers for this phone no this was I I have no idea what they're
1:34:24selling for this one I'm gonna be waking up at like midnight on Friday and put in
1:34:31my order in like everybody else so I have no clue till then you know the
1:34:37The other thing which is interesting about this event was, I just still think that the
1:34:49end-to-end unification of the production and the design language and manufacturing processes
1:34:56is going to drive down the cost of doing business for this company.
1:35:01I think that's the main thing.
1:35:03I think it's the key part of their insane, compared to everybody else, profit margins,
1:35:08is the way that they get these sort of... spend a ton of money to make the first one,
1:35:18but then make so many of them that it gets cheap.
1:35:22And another thing, one other... I keep thinking of other things from my notes here, but another
1:35:25thing, this is the first time this year that the iPod Touch, the new iPod Touch, has the
1:35:31exact same display as the new phone. So like the fourth generation iPod Touch had a retina
1:35:39display and it had the exact same size and pixel density as the iPhone 4 and 4S. But
1:35:45it wasn't the same display. Anybody who's ever looked at an iPod Touch and an iPhone
1:35:494 or 4S side by side knows the colors are a little bit more washed out. Just isn't quite
1:35:53as nice. I double checked with the PR at the hands-on area. What JAWS React said on stage
1:35:59which was exactly true, it's the exact same display.
1:36:03And it's surely more expensive,
1:36:05and I think that's why the starting prices
1:36:07on those new iPod Touches are higher,
1:36:09that they don't have one of those at 199.
1:36:11But there's gotta be a huge efficiency there
1:36:15where they're only making one four-inch display.
1:36:19And no matter how many millions of each device they sell,
1:36:23it's one display, and they just keep cranking them out.
1:36:27- And they have two chips, A5 and A6.
1:36:29A6 at the top, and low end is all A5.
1:36:33Like they're using up whatever is,
1:36:36and like next year everything will be A6.
1:36:38It's like exactly what Intel used to do, right?
1:36:43Like charge a lot of money for the Pentium 3s
1:36:46and Pentium 4s, and the Pentium Celeron
1:36:49was selling cheaply.
1:36:51- But then two years later you used that same technology
1:36:54that was the high end.
1:36:56- But to do something else.
1:36:57- Now you're making it as the low end,
1:36:58but you can make it, it's almost like you can make it
1:37:01with your eyes closed.
1:37:02- Right, they got Moore's Law working for them.
1:37:04- Om, thank you for being here.
1:37:06- John, honored to be on your podcast, it's a great show.
1:37:09I listen to it every week and thrill of my life to be here.
1:37:14- I wish I could do this every week
1:37:16and have my guest here in person.
1:37:17I feel like this was much more personable.
1:37:19I hope it sounds like that when you're listening to the show.
1:37:23It's way better than doing it over Skype.
1:37:26- Absolutely, and see you in San Francisco relatively soon.
1:37:30- Yeah, I think so.
1:37:31- Yeah, take care. - I think so.
1:37:33All right. - Thanks.