147: Outside the Zone of Secrecy

0:00:00[Music]

0:00:08From Relay FM, this is Upgrade episode 147. Today's show is brought to you by

0:00:14Encapsula, Smile, and Jamf Nail. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by

0:00:20Mr. Jason Snell. Hey Myke, how's it going? Good Mr. Jason Snell, how are you?

0:00:25I am just fine. I'm keeping cool. Keeping cool, man.

0:00:29We'll talk about why in a moment because Jason, we have our #SnailTalk question.

0:00:33It comes from John this week.

0:00:35That's right. Can't talk about the weather. Not enough time to talk about the weather, Myke.

0:00:37There's never enough time.

0:00:38John would like to know, "If Siri on your iPhone had to take the personality of a fictional character,

0:00:45who or what would you like it to be?"

0:00:47This is a tough one. I thought about many great butlers.

0:00:52I thought about maybe Alfred from Batman.

0:00:54Oh.

0:00:55That might be a good one.

0:00:56Oh, he could call you Master Snail.

0:00:58That's right. It would be Master Jason. Master Jason.

0:01:02Oh, yes.

0:01:03Yes, Master Bruce. But I'm going to say Max Headroom. Why not? He's a digital personality

0:01:08and I love him and he would be, that would be hilarious to have Max Headroom do my bidding

0:01:12for me.

0:01:13I, uh, John wasn't asking me, but if he was, I would maybe go with Jarvis. I am as

0:01:21Jarvis. I just like the whole, the whole voice, you know. I can't remember, who's the

0:01:26his name who plays Jarvis. He was a British actor who was in a Wimbledon movie.

0:01:30Paul Bettany. Paul Bettany, that's it. Yeah, I think he's

0:01:33got a good assistant voice. I like the Jarvis voice.

0:01:37Alright. Do you ever think that Apple would do this

0:01:40one day? Like that they may do voices? I don't think Google does it either. I feel like it's

0:01:44unlikely considering now, these days, how much brand stock there is around these characters

0:01:51that these companies create. It's just, I mean, I think the goal now is

0:01:54to have the voice to sound as natural as possible and that requires somebody to record like

0:01:58every possible breath and sound combination in the language that it's being used for

0:02:05and that's really hard. I mean I know the GPS's have done it but the GPS vocabulary

0:02:09required is a lot less and then they kind of punt when it comes. Like the Homer Simpson

0:02:13voice in the GPS doesn't tell you the name of the street I think. It just says turn left

0:02:17at this street right because it doesn't they can't do it. So I do think this is inevitable

0:02:21though, that this will happen. Somebody will, this stuff will advance to the point where

0:02:26they'll be able to take probably existing recordings of people's voices and do magical

0:02:31things with them and chop them up and turn them into this, like to make any voice speak

0:02:36any text. And then when that happens, then it'll be on all of these assistants too.

0:02:40But I think we're a long way off from that.

0:02:41So I, do you know what, I was thinking to myself that they, that Siri wasn't still a

0:02:45human but I guess it has to be, right? Like I was wondering like, oh, have they created

0:02:49some kind of technology now to just guess these things, but I guess it's a mismatch

0:02:55of like somebody records a bunch of stuff and then a computer can sing it all together,

0:02:59but there still needs to be the person at the beginning.

0:03:02Yeah, I think so.

0:03:03Because the new Siri voices, they sound like new people, right? They don't sound like

0:03:07refreshed versions of the old voices.

0:03:10Definitely.

0:03:11So it's very interesting.

0:03:12They're new people.

0:03:14Some super weird follow-up today.

0:03:18Chris Latner has left Tesla.

0:03:22Now this is a big surprise, he kind of just announced on Twitter, turns out Tesla isn't

0:03:27a good fit for me at all.

0:03:28I'm interested to hear about other roles for a seasoned engineering leader.

0:03:32There is also this funny thing to me in which Chris Latner is somehow trying to find work

0:03:37on Twitter.

0:03:38Like I feel like someone of his caliber could, I don't know, I figured that he just has people

0:03:43he could call?

0:03:45That was really weird to me, and not only this, he has a resume which is online?

0:03:52Yeah, it's very old school.

0:03:54All of this is, which is very strange to me, that again, Chris Latner would need to have

0:04:02a resume?

0:04:03Yeah, and that he details in his resume, he uses that as the way to detail what happened

0:04:10at Tesla, which is also weird.

0:04:12Yeah, well, okay, so it did.

0:04:14and passive aggressive. No, it still has some of it there, but it's what an idea like you

0:04:18work somewhere for less than six months and what you do is you update your resume to say,

0:04:21"I worked here for less than six months. Here's everything we accomplished." And then the

0:04:25part that got deleted is at the end.

0:04:27Which was in the end, Elon and I agreed that he and I did not work well together and that

0:04:32I should leave, so I did. That's what that was what his resume said for a little while,

0:04:37but it's gone now, right? Like I think that was that because it circled around the internet

0:04:41lot and he probably got a call from a lawyer and then had to take it down. This is so weird

0:04:48to me. Like, you think about what it must take to get somebody like him to leave Apple

0:04:57and then it's all undone again. And I understand that it can be difficult for some people to

0:05:03work in some cultures or of course there can be interpersonal relationships that can be

0:05:08tricky, but for it to break down in six months you'd figure that they might have at least

0:05:13had an idea about this before they hired the guy. I assume him and Elon spoke.

0:05:19Sometimes I think you can't… We talk a lot, I think as people who are dealing with

0:05:26employment, there's a lot of discussion about how do you find somebody, how do you

0:05:30interview somebody, how are you sure, if you're coming into an organization, what's the

0:05:36corporate culture like. But I think the truth is that it's always a huge leap of faith.

0:05:42That it's just like, "All right, let's give it a try. This sure sounds good." And

0:05:49inevitably I think there are going to be things you discover that are terrible that you didn't

0:05:54know because they didn't want to tell you. And you'll figure it out and you adapt and

0:06:00you figure out like, "Okay, this is a place I can work." But some percentage of that

0:06:04time it's going to not be. I do think that that's the truth. I think that all the due

0:06:08diligence in the world won't change the fact that maybe when you are all the way in it

0:06:14and you're working and the charismatic billionaire founder who still operates the company is

0:06:20also there and it turns out that just when the rubber meets the road, to use a car metaphor,

0:06:28it doesn't work. It doesn't work in that environment of doing the real work. And that

0:06:33seems to be what happened here is that Chris Latner had his ideas about how it should work

0:06:39and Elon Musk had his ideas about how it should work and in the end who wins that? It's

0:06:45going to be the guy who owns the company.

0:06:47Yeah, well obviously, I mean, they're not going to be like, "Chris, you're really

0:06:50good. I'm off." And then Elon leaves because he thinks Chris Latner's were great. I get

0:06:57it.

0:06:58Well, the other way to do it is to say, "I hired you because you're really good and

0:07:01we needed somebody to manage our software team for Autopilot. And even though it's

0:07:08not the way I would do it, I'm satisfied that you have us on a good path here. And

0:07:14so I'm going to let you do your job. But obviously Elon Musk feels like, and there

0:07:20are lots of extenuating circumstances. Maybe it was a bad, maybe Latner was a bad fit for

0:07:23the team. Maybe the things that Latner talks about being proud of doing at Tesla were things

0:07:29that the people at Tesla were unhappy about. Maybe they, you know, the fixing of autopilot

0:07:35did some things that frustrated the people who've been at Tesla a while. Or maybe they

0:07:40were asked to provide more. Maybe the reason that it was so messed up to Latner's mind

0:07:46when he came in was because they were always being pressured by people like Elon Musk to

0:07:52to do more quickly, and Lattner was trying to fix the mess that that created. And I could

0:08:00totally see that coming up with, clashing with Musk the next time he again asked for

0:08:06something kind of impossible and impossibly quickly, and Lattner says, "No, we've got

0:08:10to do it the right way." And I mean, I don't know, there are lots of different explanations

0:08:14for what went on here. But when you've got that charismatic, opinionated, actively managing

0:08:20a company owner of the company who is probably used to asking for the moon. I mean, we know,

0:08:26we cover this on Lift Off all the time that Musk is a guy who has this horrible habit.

0:08:32He's a very impressive person and I really appreciate what he's done with Tesla and

0:08:36SpaceX. But despite that, I will say he has this problem with over promising and under

0:08:42delivering. He hypes his stuff. He says it's happening too soon and then it's never the

0:08:48case. The real time frame is never what he says it's going to be.

0:08:51And this is publicly, right? Like he tweets this stuff.

0:08:54Yes. Yeah, we're going to go to Mars in 18 months. We're going to ship the Tesla

0:08:58Model 3 in a year and a half. We're going to… and they're invariably late because

0:09:03he's over-promised. And it's not like they aren't doing it and that they have

0:09:07been very successful, but he talks a lot. And I would imagine that can be corrosive

0:09:12on the people who work for him because he's probably, those unrealistic schedules are

0:09:18probably, they're being pushed about why they don't meet them or worse I think in some

0:09:24ways they're being pushed to meet schedules that everybody knows aren't realistic. So

0:09:28they're doing all this work to try to get something done that is not actually going

0:09:31to be done by the time that everybody's acting like it's going to be done. So I mean that's,

0:09:36I never really thought about it this way but because I've been thinking of like Tesla

0:09:40and Elon and SpaceX and Elon Musk's pronouncements from the outside but from

0:09:45the inside I don't know that that could potentially be a really bad thing for

0:09:49the people who work for him I don't know. Well whatever it is there is an

0:09:53incredibly talented software engineer out in the world now roaming the

0:09:57wilderness and as much as we've made fun like the guy is incredible and I

0:10:03don't expect that you listen to this show Chris Lattner but if you do good

0:10:07luck to you. I'm sure that you'll land literally wherever you want to because you can. Wherever

0:10:14you want to go, man, just go there. Also, as somebody who made the decision to leave

0:10:19Apple where he was probably quite comfortable, my guess, maybe there was something going

0:10:25on there, but my guess is that it was probably more that he thought that he wanted another

0:10:29challenge and he wanted to do something new. If that's the case, and then he goes to Tesla

0:10:35and there's six months and then he's out of there. I do wonder if maybe he would be better off taking

0:10:41a year, do some more woodworking, because I know that's his hobby, and think about what he really

0:10:51wants his next thing to be rather than jumping into something else. Because this is two major

0:10:56career moments in a very short time for him. My armchair advice would probably be don't rush into

0:11:04to anything else if you don't have to, and I kind of assume he doesn't have to. And

0:11:10maybe sit back and recharge a little bit because he obviously went straight from Apple into

0:11:15Tesla.

0:11:16And, you know, we know he likes to do podcasts, so in the intervening time, Chris, if you'd

0:11:20like to start a show, just send me an email, mike@relay.fm. We can help with that. Jason,

0:11:28you're recording on an iPad today in a way?

0:11:34You know, in fact, my iPad is not involved at all right at the moment, although it probably

0:11:38will be before all is said and done.

0:11:40See, I'm in Arizona, visiting my mom, picking up my daughter from her summer camp.

0:11:45Hotest place in the world is my understanding.

0:11:48It's been about 115 degrees Fahrenheit every day.

0:11:51Gets down to...

0:11:54The low temperatures in the morning here are hotter than it has been at home the entire

0:11:58time since I've been here.

0:12:01So yeah, it's the face of the sun, basically.

0:12:04on the face of the sun. So I came down here and I didn't want to bring a laptop, I just

0:12:09wanted to bring my iPad. And so I have a bunch of different methods of trying to record podcasts

0:12:14and edit podcasts using my iPad. For this one, what I did was I brought my little Zoom

0:12:20recorder down. So I'm recording this microphone on the Zoom recorder. You're hearing me through

0:12:27on Skype as we talk through my headset microphone, which is attached, we're talking over my iPhone

0:12:32actually on Skype and I had a setup that didn't work because I think I have an

0:12:39unshielded charging adapter that was making horrible noise that wasn't there

0:12:44when I tested with regular power adapters at home. I was gonna route try

0:12:48to route my my microphone back to you over Skype so you would hear the same

0:12:53microphone that I'm using for the episode just to make it sound better for

0:12:57you but that didn't work because of the the power shielding problems so I'm

0:13:00still toying with this. The dream, of course, is to record my end, have you hear my good

0:13:06microphone, and for me to be able to get that recording all happening simultaneously. And

0:13:12I haven't quite gotten there yet, but it's in the ballpark.

0:13:16We were hoping today that we'd come to the show with a solution, you know, for the round

0:13:21trip iOS thing, but what happened instead is Jason got on the phone and it sounded like

0:13:26there were, I don't know, like just tons of tiny animals screaming at us.

0:13:30Little electrical monsters. Yeah. Yeah. It was bad. The, um, yeah, yeah, the unshielded,

0:13:36uh, so I, the work proceeds. I have another, I, what I didn't do is I brought, because

0:13:41I recorded another podcast while I was down here and, um, I wanted to bring two of my,

0:13:46um, matched and better microphones down, but the other thing I could have done is brought

0:13:51the Audio-Technica microphone down and that's the one that would let me plug in, I'd plug

0:13:56it into my iPhone or my iPad via USB and also record on the Zoom recorder because it also

0:14:01has an analog, an XLR connector. And in hindsight, that's probably what I should have done. And

0:14:06if I wasn't recording that other podcast while I was down here, I would probably have done

0:14:10that. It's just bringing the Audio-Technica down. That was the original idea. But I decided

0:14:13to get a little more ambitious and that didn't work. So we were reverting back to actually

0:14:19we recorded one episode of Upgrade, I think, in this exact setup that I'm doing now. And

0:14:24it worked fine. It sounded fine.

0:14:27The work marches on, Jason. You're leading the way.

0:14:30Yes. The dream continues. It's still unfulfilled. One day, Myke. One day.

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0:16:16now for their support of this show. So the outline, somewhat ironically, published a

0:16:24big piece this week detailing a presentation about Apple's security practices. So there

0:16:32was this big presentation that Apple put on and it looks like they are doing this for

0:16:38many employees. I assume that this is like a multi-day thing where they're bringing people

0:16:42in and everybody I expect is supposed to see this presentation. It's titled "Stopping

0:16:47Leakers, Keeping Confidential at Apple." The presentation was conducted by three members

0:16:52of Apple's global security team. Can we just take a second to focus on the really

0:17:00weird, like really weird, I think somewhat uncomfortable irony of this?

0:17:06You have a leak leaking leaks about leaks basically leaks of leaks telling you not to leak it leaked

0:17:13I I was thinking like put myself in the mind of the person who did this I that that's exactly what I think somebody did was say

0:17:20Probably that they were kind of offended that they're asked to go through this secrecy

0:17:24Thing and yeah, like, you know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna show them

0:17:29I'm not gonna leak any real secrets

0:17:32but I'm going to leak their secrecy presentation because I remember that from times as a manager

0:17:38and before I was a manager that we would have company things that were mandated and people

0:17:42would be like really cynical and unhappy and why are they making us do this and I get that.

0:17:49I know that attitude. I recognize that attitude. I can imagine somebody like that doing this.

0:17:55Absolutely. So they, in fact, it may be a little protest I would imagine by somebody

0:18:00who says, who's thinking that Apple employees need to not be treated like suspects by their

0:18:05own company.

0:18:07We'll come back to that point a little later on. But can you imagine being one of the people

0:18:13giving this presentation to see it detailed on the web? Can you imagine? Like the fury

0:18:18that you would have at that point? I don't even know if it could be measured.

0:18:23It sounds like they actually recorded it. That they, like, there's an audio recording

0:18:27that they had of the whole presentation.

0:18:29Which is…

0:18:30Like a bootleg.

0:18:31Even more bizarre.

0:18:34Also the goal of the person that does this, like the person that leaks this, you are really

0:18:40playing with fire at this point.

0:18:43This may actually, you know, from the people that are making the decisions, this may get

0:18:49you in more trouble than if you leaked an iPhone part.

0:18:53This is so far into the rabbit hole of stuff that Apple does not like to get out in the

0:18:58world.

0:18:59This is an act of employee defiance, I would say. As opposed to, like, leaking info is

0:19:07not an act of employee defiance, I would say. I think it's usually an act of, talking about

0:19:13people who are sort of like Apple employees in Cupertino, not talking about people who

0:19:17are factory workers in the supply chain. But in Cooper Tino, I think leaking, we talked

0:19:24about like, what are the motivators for leaking stuff? And I think sometimes it is an act

0:19:30of rebellion against a decision you feel that was made in error. And you want to get a furor

0:19:37of you know, I can't believe they're removing the headphone jack. Let's get it out there.

0:19:41There'll be a protest and they'll ignore it. And then a lot of times I think it's just

0:19:46an active ego where it's just like you know the secrets and other people don't and it

0:19:49makes you feel really good to be a tipster, to be a leaker and know, you know, knowing

0:19:56isn't enough for those people. They want to share it with the world like the act of knowing

0:20:01a secret is fun but the act of sharing a secret with someone else makes you feel special.

0:20:08So I think those are very different motivations than this which is an act of defiance. This

0:20:12This just reads to me as an employee who is saying, "You're going to treat us like potential

0:20:18criminals, basically."

0:20:22And they're offended by that, and so I'm going to show you.

0:20:25How do you like it?

0:20:27And that's what's going on here, I think.

0:20:28Yeah, they talk about it in the article that apparently in the presentation, it is discussed

0:20:34that Apple is well aware that the majority of leaking doesn't come from a malicious place

0:20:40when it comes from Cupertino.

0:20:41It's like people that are excited about the thing that they're working on in a lot of

0:20:45cases and want to share it, and that's where problems can start to pop up.

0:20:50Yeah, I suppose that is true.

0:20:54I'm not entirely sure that the leaks in Cupertino are happening.

0:20:58I think the people who are truly excited about what they're working on and want to share

0:21:02it with people they know because they're super excited, I would imagine that the corporate

0:21:06culture has done a pretty decent job of having them realize you don't do that, right?

0:21:11But maybe some of it is that.

0:21:13There is a statistic that came out in this thing, which I really struggle to believe,

0:21:17but I do because why would they say it in this internal meeting, that as of last year

0:21:23there are now more breaches that come from inside Apple's campus than there are that

0:21:27come from the supply chain.

0:21:29I can't get my head around this.

0:21:31Yeah, I kind of don't believe it, but...

0:21:35Why would they lie about it?

0:21:36It just seems like a weird thing to say, you know?

0:21:40They're not saying it publicly.

0:21:41It's something to scare employees about, and it depends on how you count, right? I

0:21:45mean, they may be counting instances that are multiple instances by the same person.

0:21:54Who knows? Or maybe they're right. It doesn't seem right to me, but maybe they're right.

0:21:57It certainly is a number that serves their purpose in scaring their employees. Because

0:22:02here's the thing. This sort of presentation serves two purposes, right? On one level,

0:22:07a corporate reminder of secrecy is our value, is part of our corporate values. We want to

0:22:13keep these things secret until they're released. They've restated the thing that I've heard

0:22:16other people say, which is, you know, it makes your co-workers sad when you steal their thunder.

0:22:23So they're trying to get, it's the appeal to your friends and colleagues at the company.

0:22:30So that's fine. I get it, like, trying to remind everybody what the ground rules are

0:22:35and why we keep things secret at Apple and all of that, I get it. But the other part

0:22:40of this presentation is fear, right? The other part of this presentation is to take your

0:22:45employees and say, "We're watching you and you will get fired if you release information."

0:22:51And that's just a fact, that's part of what is going on here and I can see why people

0:22:58would take umbrage at that. Again, I feel like ultimately the motivation for people

0:23:03the leak is because they have something that no other people, you know, nobody else knows

0:23:08and they just, they gotta let it out because it's just too good. But I am really skeptical

0:23:15about how many of these rumors are coming from somebody telling a friend a hint of what

0:23:19they're working on versus somebody, you know, basically emailing a reporter and saying,

0:23:24"I have a leak for you," because they wanna know, you know, they wanna see that story

0:23:28and know that they were the source of the leak.

0:23:30Yeah, either or. I mean, it's still information getting out that I don't want to get out because

0:23:34I imagine that like, you know, a lot of these conversations, they go to reporters, right?

0:23:40Like they might not necessarily be someone writing a cold leak, but like two people in

0:23:45a bar, one of them's in the press, one of them works for Apple, they're having a chat

0:23:48and then, you know, information. So like I was thinking, right, like what we consider

0:23:52leaks and how they're classified because I am very aware that there are lots of people

0:23:58in the media that get tips that don't report them as such but will speak about the thing

0:24:03that they're aware of. And I wonder if Apple is aware, like they listen, they hear these

0:24:07things, they read these things, and they're like, "The only way you know that is someone

0:24:12told you." Right? And where it's maybe not being reported as a, "Here is something from

0:24:17Ming-Chi Kuo who spoke to the supply chain." But like, they're still aware that there's

0:24:22like this stuff is getting out there, even if it's being reported differently. That was

0:24:26something that I was wondering about when trying to think, how are they coming to this

0:24:29conclusion that there is more stuff coming from inside of Apple.

0:24:33But some of the specifics around this, and how things have changed over time, are really

0:24:38interesting.

0:24:39So the presentation spoke about Apple hiring investigators all over the world who are tasked

0:24:44with preventing information from reaching competitors, counterfeiters, and of course

0:24:47the press.

0:24:49They hunt down leaks if and when they do appear to stop them, and a number of these investigators

0:24:54have previously worked at agencies like the NSA, the FBI, and the Secret Service, which

0:25:00is pretty intense.

0:25:05So they've all got the dark jackets and dark suits and sunglasses, right?

0:25:10I think they've got to.

0:25:12Right?

0:25:13I mean, what else would they dress like?

0:25:16Like they've all got earpieces.

0:25:17Apple security.

0:25:18Yeah, Apple security.

0:25:19That's how it works.

0:25:20One interesting tidbit that came out, which I think might have been part of the reason

0:25:23why this whole double down on secrecy in this team was set up is they tell a story about

0:25:29how enclosures of phones leak. So like from the supply chain, these like the physical

0:25:35bodies of the devices and they get out into the world, right? So people can buy them and

0:25:41so that they're like coming out of the factory, they've been stolen from the factories. And

0:25:44Before the iPhone 5C was announced in 2013,

0:25:49Apple had to purchase back 19,000 of these enclosures

0:25:54that had gotten out of the factory

0:25:56to stop the world from getting them.

0:25:59And then between announce and the phone being released,

0:26:02they bought another 11,000 of them.

0:26:04So this is like to keep these away from the web effectively.

0:26:10So they don't want the pictures getting out.

0:26:12So these things are being stolen,

0:26:14being smuggled like it talks about some of the ways that people try and get them out

0:26:17of the factories, but Apple buys them back if they find them. And then Tim Cook did this

0:26:25double down on secrecy thing. So in 2016, only four enclosures were stolen out of 65

0:26:32million devices being produced. That is a significant difference.

0:26:38It's clear that Apple has gone to its partners in the supply chain and has instituted a whole

0:26:43bunch of policies in terms of searching and having security on site, searching employees,

0:26:49having security on site.

0:26:52And that's, yeah, it seems, and it seems to be working at least to a certain degree.

0:26:58It's hard to do this because there are so many different places where the parts are

0:27:03feeding through in Apple's supply chain that it can be a challenge to do this.

0:27:08But they, you know, they, they spend a lot of money on the factories.

0:27:12can spend a little bit more money on more security.

0:27:16And so that's an interesting, interesting to see that that's something that's going

0:27:20on here is trying to plug the leaks in the supply chain.

0:27:26And I mean, to be clear, this is something that a lot of the leaks in the supply chain,

0:27:32my understanding is have a couple of sources.

0:27:36And one of them is there are people who are running their businesses and Apple is not

0:27:40their only client, and there is some horse trading of information that goes on among

0:27:44suppliers. That's one way information gets out. The other is that you've got people

0:27:49who are oftentimes quite poorly paid, poorly compensated for their work, and they get offered

0:27:57a shocking amount of money, given what their wages are, to spear it away apart from an

0:28:03Apple product line. It's very hard for those people to say no. There are a few ways that

0:28:08Apple can approach that, right? Apple can approach that by fixing, you know, the, the

0:28:14however method they're using to spirit away the, the, the case. They could also make it

0:28:20maybe a little less worth it by paying them better. And hopefully they're doing both of

0:28:26those things.

0:28:27Yeah, apparently there have been stories of people being offered somewhere between three

0:28:32to twelve months of their salary in exchange for getting a part of the factory.

0:28:37Yep.

0:28:38But the thing is these these workers are paid about three hundred and fifty dollars a month like what is the equivalent now? I

0:28:45Don't know if that's good or bad. It sounds bad to me. I assume it's not amazing but like in perspective

0:28:53I don't know. I

0:28:54Look, I haven't been able to do enough research honestly to know how competitive Apple are now

0:29:00I assume that they're better than they used to be or better than most people or maybe we'd hear about it more

0:29:05Maybe it's just one of these things that now nobody talks about

0:29:08But it doesn't seem like a lot of money

0:29:10Really, but again, I don't know what that what that would get you

0:29:14In these places in China, but you can see why if you're offered a year's worth of salary

0:29:21To sneak a piece of metal out of a building how enticing that would be

0:29:26But now Apple is screening like the TSA. I think it said that like in their factories

0:29:32They're screening more people than the TSA does like on the whole on the whole

0:29:36because, and I don't know, there's something about all of this which is a little uncomfortable,

0:29:46I think, in places. Like, one that this presentation is existing and then two when you start thinking

0:29:54about what happens in the supply chain, it feels uncomfortable to me and I don't really

0:30:01know how I feel about it. Like is all this worth this? I don't know. Like I know that

0:30:07the, like it's all so heavy, right? Like I understand the surprise and delight thing

0:30:14and I know that because of the way that Apple is secretive it's what gives me a newer job,

0:30:20right? Like the way that they protect their products builds intrigue and makes it interesting

0:30:26for people to listen to. So like I obviously, you know, I appreciate it from that perspective

0:30:31but I see things like this and I'm like, "Wow, it's a lot of effort." But if that's what

0:30:37makes you the biggest company in the world, you know, of course this is what you focus

0:30:42on. But at the same time, it's like, "Boy, I really hope you're doing this ethically

0:30:47and correctly and right for the people that are being impacted."

0:30:50Yeah, it's, um, I don't know, it's one of those things where it's hard to imagine Apple

0:30:57just saying, "Oh, whatever." Like, every corporation has secrets and things that it

0:31:02wants to maintain internally, and they have sometimes good reasons for that, sometimes

0:31:07not as good reasons. It's hard to imagine Apple giving up on secrecy and just letting

0:31:12everybody like…

0:31:13Let it fly.

0:31:14You know, a company wants to be able to tell its story, and I understand that, but you

0:31:22do end up in these uncomfortable situations where you've got employees who expect a level

0:31:30of trust and yet you've also got evidence that some employees cannot be trusted.

0:31:35And so what do you do?

0:31:37And it's a difficult situation at that point because if you're somebody who would never

0:31:41leak and you are forced to sit through a security thing, right, I could understand the righteous

0:31:46indignation of like, why am I being treated as a potential leaker here, even though there's

0:31:53evidence that some of your colleagues are absolutely leakers, which is why I think it's

0:31:58interesting more from an Apple standpoint than from an external standpoint. Because

0:32:03as a journalist, I kind of don't really care about the argument that we don't want to,

0:32:13please don't report this fact about Apple because it would make some people sad, right?

0:32:18It's like, well, that's too bad. But internally, the argument that it makes, what you're doing

0:32:25is you're running down your co-workers' efforts and all their hard work by leaking. And that's

0:32:34what you should feel bad about. That's where your guilt should come from, is that it's

0:32:39not because this company is this big, rich company and you're letting down the company

0:32:42in the company is important above all. It's you're letting down your friends who work

0:32:47here by leaking the stuff that we're working on. And I could see how that could be effective

0:32:52as guilt, but yeah, it's kind of icky too because it makes everybody feel like they're

0:33:02being surveilled and like they're being treated as a suspect even if they're innocent.

0:33:10It says apparently that these investigations that are carried out inside of Cupertino to

0:33:16weed out the people that are linking to the press can take up to three years to complete.

0:33:23And they mentioned recently two cases that they've stopped. One person who worked in

0:33:27Apple's online store and another person in iTunes and that they are gone.

0:33:34I've heard that there have been a couple, maybe it's these two, I don't know, but I've

0:33:39heard through the grapevine that there have been some… A lot of times when somebody

0:33:45gets let go for cause, there's a code of silence. They just disappear and nobody talks

0:33:53about it. Maybe behind the scenes they talk about it, but officially the company doesn't

0:33:59talk about it. The company is just like, "They're gone. We're not going to talk about it."

0:34:03And the employees can all talk, but the company is not going to say anything about it. These

0:34:08things that I've heard through the grapevine are that Apple did a couple of kind of high-profile

0:34:11terminations where they wanted everybody to know that this person was being fired because,

0:34:19you know, they wanted people to see the consequences of being found out as being a leaker, I think

0:34:26is the implication there.

0:34:28Effectively being put in the stocks inside of the garden, right? Like, you know, everyone

0:34:34gets to come and throw tomatoes at the guy.

0:34:37made an example of like you know security people come to your desk and walk you out

0:34:41and you're never seen again and the word gets around and that you know that is maybe effective

0:34:47but again it gets back to at that point you're just trying to strike fear into people.

0:34:50That when I worked in the bank that's how people were fired. If you were being fired

0:34:55because you were up to no good your manager and a manager from another branch would come

0:35:00in to the office and they would do it in front of people. They would come into the office

0:35:04they would stand in the room that you're in there make you shut down and they would walk

0:35:07you out of the building for this exact reason. That's why it was the policy, because you're

0:35:12supposed to discourage people stealing money, so when you would fire someone, you would

0:35:17embarrass them. So it was a way to show everybody else, "Please do not do this, because you

0:35:23don't want to be that person."

0:35:25And the downside there is that you're creating potentially an environment that is full of

0:35:30fear and do you want a paranoid, fearful environment? Is that the best work environment? At the

0:35:35same time you also don't want people stealing money from the bank. Right? So, that's the

0:35:42challenge. I've also heard through the grapevine that some of the leaked sources may have been

0:35:50a little less intentional. I've heard that there is some shared information. We talk

0:35:57about these message boards and things like that that Tim Cook posts to and their mailing

0:36:01lists internally at Apple and things like that. I have heard too that there are some

0:36:05places where more sensitive information used to get discussed and the discussion groups

0:36:13were wider maybe than they needed to be. And that's almost like an IT issue where people

0:36:21who didn't really need to know got to see it and then those people who weren't really

0:36:26directly involved were like, "Oh, did you know that this is going on?" And that some

0:36:30of the sources of the leaks may have been indirect and solved by closing down or dramatically

0:36:39reducing the amount of data that is shared in email or message boards or whatever internally,

0:36:48if at all. So it sounds like that that's been some of the doubling down on secrecy

0:36:52has been sort of compartmentalizing a little more at Apple and doing a little less kind

0:36:57of easygoing, kind of oversharing of what's going on. So I don't know. It's a tough problem,

0:37:04right? Because there's so many different paths that information can take. And you know, companies

0:37:09would like, you know, believe me, I've experienced this, I'm sure you experienced this, companies

0:37:14would like to control all information that their employees receive about what's going

0:37:19on at the company. But the fact is, employees are full of people and they talk. The employees

0:37:25are people, they talk, businesses are full of them, and companies can't control it.

0:37:31So even though they want to, they can't.

0:37:33Even if you institute red zones, which are hallways and public areas, as is described

0:37:38at Cupertino, do not talk in the red zones.

0:37:41Yes, do not speak.

0:37:42But yeah, this was just, I encourage people, there's way more than we're going to get

0:37:46to today in this piece. There's just all these really interesting tidbits that are

0:37:49inside of here that I recommend people go and read this article. It's really well

0:37:53it

0:38:07show notes if you want to go and check it out for yourself.

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0:39:39of this show and Relay FM.

0:39:41So this week, later on this week,

0:39:46marks the 10th anniversary of the official release

0:39:51of the iPhone in North America.

0:39:55So, you know, earlier on this year,

0:39:57we were talking about the 10th anniversary of the debut and now we are at the 10th anniversary

0:40:04of people actually getting them in their hands. And there have been a couple of interesting

0:40:09stories popping up over the last couple of weeks and there are two notably that I want

0:40:15to talk about today. One is an event that was held at the Computer History Museum in

0:40:20California. I really wished that this would have lined up with when we were all in San

0:40:26as a but hey ho and another is a Wall Street Journal kind of mini documentary. One of the

0:40:31reasons I find both of these so interesting is they usher in the return of an old friend,

0:40:38Scott Forstall. He's back baby. How interesting to see him appear.

0:40:44He's back. He's back and somebody pointed out he's back in the same shirt he wore

0:40:48on stage a few years ago.

0:40:50But actually in the presentation, the Computer History Museum, the presenter remarks on the

0:40:56fact that he wore it at WWDC in 2012 and forst all gives the jobs line of like, "If I find

0:41:03something I like, I buy ten of them."

0:41:05Amazing.

0:41:06So, I recommend that people go and consume both of these things.

0:41:12is a video on Facebook of the Computer History Museum talk and there is a video on the Wall

0:41:21Street Journal that they did, right, so you can go and check those out. But I wanted to

0:41:28talk about Scott Forstall a little bit because I'm assuming his NDA is up now because we

0:41:34haven't heard from him since he left Apple, was it five or six years ago, something like

0:41:39that with the maps thing. He's not said a word and he popped up a little while ago when

0:41:46he was becoming a Broadway producer funding Broadway shows and he talks about that which

0:41:51is actually really nice. The opening segment for him with the Computer History Museum piece

0:41:57is really interesting. He's kind of just talking about his life telling some stories about

0:42:00him as a person. And it seems that he's really found a passion of his with these Broadway

0:42:06shows, but we haven't heard anything from him in regards to technology at all. But here

0:42:13he is.

0:42:14It's five years. I wonder if he had a five-year thing or if he just decided he would stay

0:42:19silent and not talk. And this is a good opportunity with the iPhone anniversary. He's obviously

0:42:25a main – one of the main participants who's left, like him and Tony Fidell. And there

0:42:31are some, but there are a lot of them who are still involved and still at Apple and

0:42:35can't really talk about it. So I do wonder, because it has been five years since, or coming

0:42:41up five, it's not quite five yet, I think it's five years in September when he left.

0:42:47But I guess it's safe to assume that if there was a clause which he couldn't speak, you

0:42:53would assume that's up, right? The guy's not gonna--

0:42:55Well, he's talking about what they were doing at Apple, right? So yeah, and I don't know

0:42:59whether there's a "don't talk about it" kind of thing that was in his deal or not.

0:43:07Sometimes what you end up with is a "don't talk about the trade secrets." Sometimes

0:43:11you end up with a "don't disparage the company for some period of time." There are

0:43:15different deals, right? Maybe so, but he's talking now. I wouldn't put it past him

0:43:20that he just didn't feel like talking. He didn't talk for a while and then everybody

0:43:27like, "Oh, Forrestal's not talking." And then when his contract was up, like, nobody asked

0:43:31him. And he was like, "All right." But yeah, he's saying stuff now. And I would say, one

0:43:37of the things that struck me about his participation at the Computer History Museum is that he

0:43:42was given some opportunities to throw bombs at Apple and didn't.

0:43:48He does not appear in any way to be bitter.

0:43:52Well, or if he is, he's not gonna, like, yeah, it certainly comes across that he's

0:43:59kind of like moved on with his life and doesn't, you know, he's not there to be catty and

0:44:04angry and that's good.

0:44:09I get the sense that Tony Fidell is a lot more bitter than Scott Forestall is.

0:44:14Yeah, it, 'cause you know, there's a couple of instances where the presenter who really

0:44:20sounded to me like John Gruber and it was like freaking me out every now and then and

0:44:24I remember that it wasn't him. John Markoff is the presenter.

0:44:28John Markoff, yeah, he was the writer at the New York Times, tech writer for many, many

0:44:31years.

0:44:32So he had some excellent questions and like, you know, some of them like, you know, he's

0:44:36asking I think really valid questions like, you know, when you look at the phone now,

0:44:39do you see anything in there that annoys you? And he's like, of course, I'm a designer.

0:44:43Everybody does this. He says like, and I like that he said that there were things that I

0:44:46was using when I was there that I wasn't happy with that I had done. Like this is

0:44:51just the mark, this is just like the what happens in a designer's mind. So stuff

0:44:55like that that we're talking about where like he has a really easy shot to be

0:44:58like I hate this non-skemothic design right because they bring that up as well

0:45:02but he doesn't he's like this is just the way that things are. There wasn't

0:45:06like and I wasn't expecting this like a ton of scoops in this right like whoa

0:45:10things we never knew before but there are like little details and stories that

0:45:15haven't been told that he can tell.

0:45:18You know, like one of them, I didn't know this,

0:45:19the original multi-touch demo was a table-sized display

0:45:23that was used as a projector to control a Mac.

0:45:27That was the original technology.

0:45:29That's what it was doing.

0:45:30And this was what they were trying to turn into a tablet

0:45:33and then the story that everybody knows

0:45:34then the tablet project was turned into the phone.

0:45:37- Yeah.

0:45:38- Even the idea that this whole multi-touch thing

0:45:40and the tablet project began

0:45:42because Steve hated a guy at Microsoft,

0:45:44Which is hilarious. He had a personal vendetta against this person that was a mutual friend

0:45:51who was working on some tablet project on Microsoft and he was like, "No, I hate this

0:45:56guy. We're going to do one." And I love that as a reason to create, to start the

0:46:02wheels in motion, to create probably the most successful and influential computer product

0:46:07of all time, the iPhone, came from a personal vendetta that Steve had with a guy who kept

0:46:13Which is amazing.

0:46:15I really recommend that people watch or listen or however you want to consume this thing

0:46:20because there's great stories in here.

0:46:22There's a story where he talks about the first demo that they gave to Singular, AT&T, and

0:46:27just the story of Steve and Scott going and doing this.

0:46:32And it did strike me at this point that there were books, right, and there are folklore

0:46:40stories about all of these products but not a lot of them include Forstor and if I was

0:46:47him I would want some of these out in the world so that when people think about the

0:46:54iPhone they remember how incredibly influential he was to the project and that now it's the

0:47:01tenth anniversary maybe it's time to share some of those details and something that I

0:47:07I found striking between both the Computer History Museum talk and the Wall Street Journal

0:47:13documentary. He's talking about the same stories in both of these. So like, if you've watched

0:47:19one, you will have heard in the other one where he talks about something else, but it's

0:47:22the same thing. Like he talks about the same types of things. And I wonder if, you know,

0:47:27I mean, I don't know, I don't know the guy, I don't know how he feels about this, but

0:47:31he deserves to have his place in history when it comes to talking about the iPhone. But

0:47:36there hasn't been a lot of him in those stories, like these folklore stories.

0:47:41Yeah, it's funny, I was thinking about this, because we have lots of stories about the

0:47:50original Mac, we have some stories about the iPod. There is an amount of time that has

0:47:55to pass where the act of creation of these influential products goes from being a trade

0:48:01secret to being history and not worth—not relevant in terms of the current state of

0:48:07the art, but incredibly relevant in terms of the cultural and historical value. And

0:48:16the challenge is that—I mean, this is actually a perfect connection to our previous topic—that

0:48:22you've got a company where secrecy is everything. Everything is siloed, everything is kept secret.

0:48:28And that's, we could say that's fine for building that product. But what does it mean in terms

0:48:35of our understanding of how that product came to be built? You have to end up relying on

0:48:40the stories told by the people who were there years after they left, because that's the

0:48:45only way to do it. It's unlikely that Apple is going to, you know, retain and declassify

0:48:53all of the emails and whatever else, right? That's not going to happen. It's going to

0:48:57up being personal recollections that are going to be how the iPhone, which is an incredibly

0:49:02influential product in the history of technology, and maybe even in the history of the world,

0:49:08how it came to be. And this is, what's interesting about this is this is kind of the start of

0:49:14it. There have been some stories in the past, but like, it will take some time. And the

0:49:21stories are going to get way more interesting when it's Phil Schiller talking about his

0:49:25time at Apple when he leaves Apple if he ever just decides to do that right to

0:49:29leave and to talk about it when Tim Cook is reflective in his retirement about it

0:49:36like Johnny's memoir right Johnny's memoir it's gonna be it's gonna be the

0:49:41most beautiful book ever published no one will be able to afford it but it

0:49:45will be really great information no it would be on the highest quality paper

0:49:49and it will be yes indeed. So all of that will change our opinions but we're in the early days

0:49:57of it now. I think it's great that there is a Computer History Museum. I think this is important

0:50:01but it is this funny case of having to start lifting the veil on stuff that was secret only

0:50:07by sort of waiting for people to pass outside of the zone of secrecy and then be able to talk about

0:50:14it. So it's fun to hear these stories. The nice thing about the early versions of these

0:50:20histories is that the time is so recent, it's only 10 years, that it feels a little bit

0:50:27like a little bit more current. And even if there's a better, clearer picture done 10 years

0:50:35from now or 15 years from now, it won't seem as immediate then. It'll seem like ancient history.

0:50:41I wrote a 20th anniversary of the Mac story and a 25th anniversary of the Mac story.

0:50:47And those, you know, it was ancient history by then.

0:50:52And this is 10 years of the iPhone.

0:50:53It doesn't feel like ancient history.

0:50:55It feels almost like yesterday.

0:50:58It's been really interesting to hear from Scott.

0:51:00I miss him now when I hear him.

0:51:03Like he was such a great storyteller and he really would, he's still continuing to talk

0:51:08about the product with such passion.

0:51:11Would you say he's a blowaway storyteller, Myke?

0:51:13- He was blowaway.

0:51:15You know what I think is funny, like hearing from him now,

0:51:18like just how things change over time.

0:51:21Like I think that there has been a vilification

0:51:24of Scott Forstall in a lot of ways since he left Apple,

0:51:27you know, because Maps was such a debacle

0:51:30and then people got tired of the design

0:51:32that he was spearheading and it's like

0:51:34it all got pinned on him as if like if he never left,

0:51:37we would still have felt on our iPhones,

0:51:39which I don't think is true.

0:51:41But like there was this whole,

0:51:43all this stuff was pinned to Falstool

0:51:45and 'cause he could never defend himself,

0:51:47it kind of stayed that way.

0:51:49And it's when I hear him now again talking and presenting,

0:51:54I'm reminded about how great he was

0:51:57in the world that we saw him in, right?

0:52:00Like again, I don't know what he was like behind the scenes,

0:52:03I have no idea.

0:52:04But it's interesting to see him again

0:52:07back in the role that I know him

0:52:10and remember how much I liked him when he was on stage.

0:52:15Like the affection that we have for Federighi now,

0:52:19we had for Forstahl then.

0:52:20- I don't know if that's entirely true.

0:52:22I think Federighi is much more of a folk hero to nerds.

0:52:26- In a different way. - Because he is a giant nerd.

0:52:28- In a different way. - And Forstahl,

0:52:29but Forstahl was the embodiment of iOS for a long time.

0:52:34And he fulfilled that role and you're right,

0:52:40there is a simplification that happens because he left the company and there were major changes and

0:52:46he became a representative of those changes and yeah, he absolutely became a character in the

0:52:54story. I was thinking he's a little bit like a character who got written out of a TV show

0:52:58and then he returns for the reunion episode and you're like, "Oh yeah!

0:53:02I love that guy! I remember him!" Yeah, exactly right.

0:53:07So the Wall Street Journal brought together three former Apple vice presidents or executives.

0:53:12So they brought Scott Fossel, Tony Fidell and Greg Christie together to create a 10-minute

0:53:16video documentary on how the iPhone was born. And again, we've heard some of these stuff,

0:53:21you know, in different ways before. And it is really weird to me now to imagine

0:53:26how much time Apple clearly put into trying to create an actual telephone

0:53:33by using the interface of the iPod.

0:53:35Like, this started off as, we want to create

0:53:38something that makes calls. Like, that was

0:53:41the project.

0:53:42Yeah, it was an iPod phone. iPod phone is what the original idea was.

0:53:45It's what if we took--the iPod is gonna get cannibalized by phones

0:53:48because there are all these phones that are adding MP3 player

0:53:51features. So what if we make the--use our--use--leverage

0:53:54our power in this market because everybody loves their iPod

0:53:57to make an iPod phone. That was absolutely the original

0:54:00conception here.

0:54:01And it's mind-boggling to think of today that that might have been what it was gonna be, right?

0:54:07It's the faster horse thing, right? I mean, it's literally, it is, that is the thing, is what if we just take an iPod and evolve it a little bit so it can make calls?

0:54:13And the funny thing is, what worked so great for the iPod, which is the click wheel interface that every iPod had,

0:54:19was actually one of the things that prevented the existence of an iPod phone, because you ended up with like an old dial phone or something,

0:54:28You couldn't pick numbers and stuff with the iPod interface.

0:54:32It was really bad.

0:54:33You would have to sync with a contact list, but how do you dial a number that is not in

0:54:37your contact list with this?

0:54:39You're spinning around and picking numbers, and how do you send a text message?

0:54:43It's like you're spinning around to pick text.

0:54:44It was really bad.

0:54:46Everything that was good about the iPod failed you when you needed to be this.

0:54:51That seems to be where they ran aground.

0:54:52Even Tony Fidel said, it was very clear to them, that there was no way that interface

0:54:57was actually going to be usable on a phone.

0:54:59So, but that's where they started from.

0:55:01And then there came this other path,

0:55:03which was what if we use the underpinnings of OS X?

0:55:06What if instead of building up from the iPod,

0:55:07we build out from the Mac or down from the Mac

0:55:11to make a device?

0:55:13And that was the answer.

0:55:15And that was that moment of revelation

0:55:19where they went and made a product

0:55:22that was for the future instead of a slight life extension

0:55:25on the iPod.

0:55:27There was a point apparently in the creation of the software in which Steve Jobs, who was

0:55:35unhappy with how the project was progressing, gave Forstor and Christy an ultimatum to either

0:55:39have something good to show to him in two weeks or it goes to another team.

0:55:43Now I don't know, I can only assume this is hyperbole, but Forstor said that it led to

0:55:50the team putting in 168 hours a week for two weeks.

0:55:55That's 24 hours a day.

0:55:57It's all the hours, yeah.

0:55:58That can't be possible, right?

0:56:02I think what that means is that basically everybody was said every waking hour has to

0:56:09be here, and probably people slept and showered maybe at Apple, or they went home and slept

0:56:18and showered and then came right back, and they were probably always people there all

0:56:22the time.

0:56:23did say that Christie was getting hotel rooms for people across the street so they could

0:56:29just go backwards and forwards. So yeah, I assume that what it meant was they weren't

0:56:33working for 168 hours a week, but for those 168 hours when they were awake, they were.

0:56:40Every waking hour, yeah, I think so, for two weeks. Which, you know, on a big important

0:56:46project, a burst like that is not unreasonable. I think the problem that I've got with a lot

0:56:52of the Silicon Valley culture is when you're expected to spend all of your personal time

0:56:56at your job all the time forever, but this is one of those kind of legendary moments

0:57:01of everybody put it in high gear for two weeks and this is all they did and this is what

0:57:05they got was, you know, what they had to show Steve Jobs in two weeks.

0:57:09And then again another story I like from this is that in late 2006, the end is in sight

0:57:14for iPhone OS, but the keyboard apparently was terrible. Like, you would give up trying

0:57:21to write an email on it, Falstool says. So he froze development on every other part of

0:57:27the OS and everybody was focused on building a better keyboard, like he gave a time out

0:57:31of a week or whatever, and then people would come in and present their keyboards, and then

0:57:35one engineer created the predictive keyboard. The idea that the keys, the actual, like the

0:57:41touch targets for the keys, are changing as we're typing but you don't see it, it visually

0:57:46stays the same, but using algorithms and predictive technology, the key areas change. So it's

0:57:53predicting what letters you want to type next, and as long as you hit somewhere near them,

0:57:58it's like, "Oh yeah, we know what you want." And then somebody created that and they were

0:58:01able to ship with that. I found that really, really interesting. And I love the idea of

0:58:07him being like, "Nope, everyone stop what you're doing. This thing is terrible."

0:58:11Well, they were terrified of it. That was the, um, they made this decision to go with

0:58:17the all-touchscreen interface and the keyboard became this kind of terrifying thing. Because

0:58:21if you think back to then, like, their competitors all had physical keyboards. Like, BlackBerry

0:58:25was the king. They ruled with their physical keyboard. The Palm Trio had a physical keyboard,

0:58:31little chiclet buttons. So they were making this opinionated product, which is great.

0:58:36It's like, nope, we want to use that screen space. We don't want to put a keyboard down

0:58:39there. But then, how do you get text input to not be terrible? And that was really scary.

0:58:45And I do remember when they rolled it out that that was one of the things that they

0:58:48were very proud of in talking to the press was that the keyboard actually is making guesses

0:58:57about what letters you're going to be pressing, even retroactively, I believe, where it'll

0:59:03see what word you're spelling, and it's a misspelled word, and it looks back to where

0:59:07you hit that letter and goes, "Oh, you probably met this other letter, which is a word," and

0:59:11then that's how autocorrect will behave, or at least I think it still behaves that way.

0:59:16And that's just very clever stuff, and that was a good breakthrough for them, because

0:59:20if that keyboard was unusable, that would be the end of the product. Like, the jig would

0:59:25be up. And although we can still debate software keyboards and how easy they are to use and

0:59:30how frustrating it can be, they were good enough to push the phone market over the edge

0:59:37and it will never come back.

0:59:41And then to tie these two topics together, like to relate it back to the secrecy thing,

0:59:46they were talking about, so Greg Christie, who was in the team, they were creating the

0:59:52iPhone OS, right? Him and Falstor were talking about the fact, and Fidel actually, the three

0:59:57of them, because they're kind of across the whole project, are talking about the fact

1:00:00that the hardware and software teams did not see what the Apple team was working on, and

1:00:05said that while this was tricky, it worked because nobody knew what the iPhone was going

1:00:11to look like before it shipped.

1:00:13And so they knew at the time this was going to be a difficult thing to try and do, right?

1:00:18Like this was tricky, this was hard, you have to make the thing with having very little

1:00:21information about what the other team's working on, but it meant that they were able to keep

1:00:26it super locked down and it didn't get out.

1:00:27Yeah, it's true.

1:00:28And in the end, they knew that the screen was going to be this size and multi-touch

1:00:34and that they were having these buttons.

1:00:35That's all they needed, right?

1:00:37- Clearly, right?

1:00:39Like, wherever it would have been better or worse

1:00:41or whatever, if they would have known,

1:00:43what we know is we had a fantastic product, right?

1:00:45Like, they were able clearly to find a way

1:00:47to make that work for them.

1:00:49But yeah, I mean, this 10 years of the iPhone thing,

1:00:51it's kind of wild for me because this is the first one

1:00:56of the big Apple products that, you know,

1:00:58I was around for and interested in when it was created.

1:01:02You know, like this is my history now.

1:01:05You know, like the Mac was a thing before me

1:01:08and before I was interested in these types of things.

1:01:13But the iPhone, you know, I remember,

1:01:15I have vivid memories of watching the first keynote.

1:01:18Like I remember where I was.

1:01:19I remember what was going on when I saw it

1:01:21because it was such a groundbreaking moment for me.

1:01:24And, you know, I know I watched that video like 10 times

1:01:26and like all of that stuff.

1:01:29This is my history now.

1:01:30And that's, it's really exciting.

1:01:33- I remember where I was too, Myke.

1:01:35- Don't do it, Jason.

1:01:36I don't want to talk to you about this.

1:01:38(laughing)

1:01:40- No, I was at Mac World Expo watching Steve Jobs

1:01:43and Vail the iPhone, that's where I was.

1:01:45- I'm sure you were.

1:01:46- But no, it is something to have a milestone

1:01:50that you actually remember.

1:01:51That totally changes it.

1:01:53That's part of growing up and getting older

1:01:55is that you start, everybody tells you about history

1:01:57history things, history was things that happened before you were alive or that you didn't pay

1:02:02attention to, right? And then all of a sudden something is kind of historic and you're like,

1:02:07"Oh yeah, I actually was there for that and remember it." And then that's like a really

1:02:11different experience and that's where you are. In fact, when did the prompt do its episode

1:02:18about the iPhone keynote?

1:02:22I assume it was five years ago, but I can find it.

1:02:28Were you guys doing the prompt five years ago?

1:02:30I think we were, yeah.

1:02:32Wow.

1:02:33How about that?

1:02:34Yeah, I know, right?

1:02:35Yeah.

1:02:36We started the prompt in 2013, so not five years ago, but yeah, many years.

1:02:41So it was probably like the seventh anniversary or the eighth.

1:02:43Seventh anniversary maybe three years ago, four years ago, something like that.

1:02:46And that's a good episode, by the way.

1:02:48People could listen to that.

1:02:499th, 2014, so it was three years ago.

1:02:53Imagine an episode of The Incomparable, except instead of talking about a movie or a TV show,

1:02:57talk about a keynote. That's what that episode of The Prompt is. It's great. It's a lot

1:03:00of fun. Yeah, it's a... I've been... Because this is the product release, right, because

1:03:07there was six months between announcement and release, I've been thinking back to my

1:03:13original review of this, which is still online at Macworld.

1:03:16And it's, uh, the funny thing about it was that I had to review it at camp.

1:03:24Cause we were going to a summer camp up in the mountains, um, with my family.

1:03:28And so, uh, we literally like got the iPhone and then the next day I went to

1:03:34the camp and so I actually wrote the article in a tent and had to drive about

1:03:40half an hour down the mountainside to get signal so that I could email it to the office

1:03:49to post.

1:03:50It got four out of five.

1:03:52It got four mice.

1:03:54Four mice, yeah.

1:03:55It had some issues, but it was pretty great for a first attempt.

1:03:58It was, well, you know, thinking back to it now, it was the thing that I thought most

1:04:03notable about that product was that it was really good at everything it tried to do.

1:04:08And this is a, it's gone on to be kind of a hallmark of Apple at points.

1:04:15And I think when we criticize Apple, sometimes this is the thing that we criticize about

1:04:18Apple is there are two ways to make a product.

1:04:22Okay, there are not.

1:04:23It's a spectrum.

1:04:24But one end is, it doesn't do everything, but everything it does, it does well.

1:04:28And at the other end is, what doesn't it do?

1:04:31None of them are pretty good, right?

1:04:33They're all just kind of mediocre, but it does lots of things.

1:04:36And in my mind, the quintessential Apple product is a product that does a limited number of

1:04:41things very well.

1:04:43It's a targeted, very specific thing.

1:04:45And with the development of the iPhone, there was obviously an incredible amount of discipline

1:04:50for them to say, "If we can't do it well, we're just not going to try.

1:04:55We'll polish the hell out of the things that are good and everything else, we're just going

1:04:59to punt."

1:05:00And say, "Nope, we don't do that."

1:05:02text or MMS like photos via text message

1:05:06nope we're just not going to do that it's just not their third-party apps but

1:05:11how about the web but the web is good use the web we're not going to do that

1:05:14and so that's what the iPhone is it does what it the original iPhone does what it

1:05:19does and that's all it does and it was very good at that so that was my that's

1:05:24my take on it but it was funny to use a a a phone that like I had to drive not

1:05:31not just to turn in the story, I had to drive to use the phone because there was no service

1:05:35at the camp. So I had to make calls and stuff like, "Hey, I'm on the iPhone." And the other

1:05:39thing is where did that iPhone come from? There were those long lines and there was

1:05:43no review program for iPhone beyond your Walt Mossberg, David Pogue kind of contingent of

1:05:50highest level friends of Steve Jobs, basically, people Steve Jobs trusted. And so we had to

1:05:58get people to wait in line. So we had a bunch of people waiting in lines, iPhone lines,

1:06:02to buy iPhones so I would have one to review. And that's my other story here. I hope that

1:06:08he tells it at some point this week. But Brian X Chen, tech reporter for the New York Times,

1:06:14was one of our junior editors then, and I believe we had him wait in an iPhone line

1:06:18all day. And he wrote stories about the iPhone line, we did coverage about the iPhone lines,

1:06:25ultimately he brought back an iPhone, which I then took and reviewed.

1:06:30Thanks, Brian.

1:06:32Thanks, Brian. And yes, I should have told that story without the name. And that writer

1:06:36grew up to be Brian Chen of the New York Times. But yeah, those were—it's funny. Ten years

1:06:43ago now, it's kind of hard to believe. But it was a big deal. Everybody was really curious

1:06:47about it. I mean, that's the other thing I remember is having it at camp. So I had

1:06:50it around all these people, just random, regular UC Berkeley graduates, basically people, just

1:06:58parents and their kids and stuff. And everybody, like that six months had built the hype so

1:07:04much. Everybody wanted to see it and see what it was like, because it was unlike anything

1:07:08they'd ever experienced. A lot of those people had Blackberries and things like that, or

1:07:12they just had little candy bar phones. And then they saw this thing with a bright color

1:07:15screen and it was not written by any stretch of the imagination, but still way higher resolution

1:07:20than a computer screen in terms of the pixel density looked great and that multi-touch

1:07:26interface is like nothing that almost anybody had ever seen before because we'd all been

1:07:30using like little capacitive touch things with a stylus and so it was it did it blew

1:07:36people away I remember that.

1:07:37Pinch to zoom wasn't a thing right like all of this stuff was new.

1:07:42Yeah.

1:07:43So happy birthday iPhone.

1:07:45Yeah happy birthday 10.

1:07:4810.

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1:09:30Jason, it is time for #AskUpgrade. Rajeev would like to know, what are the chances that

1:09:39there will be a new Apple TV with 4K released this year? Rajeev would love to have Amazon

1:09:45Video and Netflix 4K content available on his Apple TV. Jason, do you think we're going

1:09:49to see this?

1:09:51Yeah, I would probably put, would I put money on it? I don't know. I think it's a better

1:09:57than 50% chance. I think the challenge is not doing it, but technically in the box,

1:10:05but what the content is. There's limited 4K content available via Netflix and Amazon,

1:10:12but if you're Apple, you want to have 4K content on iTunes when you roll this out. Is that

1:10:18available? Is there enough? If I look at Amazon's catalog and Netflix's catalog, there's not

1:10:25a lot of 4K content. There's some, but there's not a lot. So if Apple's going to do it, other

1:10:30than to check a box and be like, "Yes, we're thinking about the future and we are supporting

1:10:354K for TVs that have it." If you've got a 4K TV, hooray. But it does make you ask the

1:10:42question, "Okay, you've got a 4K box. What does it do?" And if you're Apple and you've

1:10:48got all of your content in the iTunes store, what of it are you going to be able to make

1:10:574K and is it enough to go out and say, "Look, there's a reason why this is good."

1:11:00So I feel like that's the missing piece is you can't – well, they can.

1:11:05Ideally you wouldn't announce a 4K Apple TV and not announce a pretty decent catalog

1:11:12of content available on iTunes.

1:11:14I think just saying some apps like Netflix and Amazon will support 4K, yay, and then

1:11:20move on because Apple's their own content provider too and they need to be in that business

1:11:25I think in order to justify their product having that feature.

1:11:29Do you think it's likely that they would do it even if they didn't have a ton of iTunes

1:11:33stuff just so that they can say that their box has 4K so it stacks up on charts and then

1:11:38they can just have companies like Amazon and Netflix put their stuff on?

1:11:44it worth it for them to make a 4K Apple TV even if there isn't iTunes content?

1:11:50Like I said, I think it's a lot less worth it. It checks the box, right? It lets them

1:11:54say they've got a 4K device. I just feel like if I was at Apple and we had a 4K Apple TV

1:12:01piece of hardware ready to go, I would really be trying to get the iTunes people to make

1:12:08some deals where some content was going to be available on iTunes in 4K for the first

1:12:13time on any platform and try to go out with a… it's a much better story if there's

1:12:194K content on iTunes, I guess is what I'm saying. Much better story. Not impossible

1:12:24without it, but it's a much better story with it.

1:12:27Tangi wants to know, "Currently, in our opinion, what is the best keyboard available

1:12:31for the 10.5-inch iPad Pro?" What do you think?

1:12:34keyboard? Yeah, that's it. That's it. First, right off, if it's custom designed for the

1:12:4110.5, it's the only. There is the Logitech One. By all accounts, it is no good. It's

1:12:48horrific, Jason. I bought one and returned it. I've been talking about it on connected

1:12:54a little bit, but I used it for five minutes and knew I would never want to use it again.

1:13:00It's absolutely everything I loved about the Create in the Inverse.

1:13:05Just not a good product.

1:13:06So I would say that right now the only real option is the smart keyboard and I'm using

1:13:14it and mine is exactly what I'm expecting it to be because I've used a smart keyboard

1:13:19for nearly two years, right?

1:13:21I've always had at least one of my iPads with a smart keyboard on it and I'm fine with it.

1:13:25I actually quite like the keyboard.

1:13:26It does what I need it to do.

1:13:29If you're looking for one right now, go for that.

1:13:31Otherwise, you know, any Bluetooth keyboard will work, right?

1:13:35You can get a stand.

1:13:37Anything will work.

1:13:38But if you're looking for something that attaches to it and is meant for it and treats it as

1:13:43a package, your only option right now really is the smart keyboard that Apple make.

1:13:48And it's good.

1:13:50It's very good.

1:13:51I think so.

1:13:52Richard wants to know, "Do you think Apple would ever buy a company like Disney so that

1:13:56they could fill their Apple TV service of exclusive content?

1:14:00No. That's my short answer. Disney is a huge company. I don't see it. I don't see them

1:14:06buying Disney. I don't see them buying Netflix. I don't see them buying Time Warner to get

1:14:13HBO. AT&T is trying to buy Time Warner. Do you think this is purely just because of the

1:14:17complexity of trying to have a company like that in your portfolio?

1:14:21I think it's a question that a few weeks ago might have been a better question to ask.

1:14:29Although, I think Disney is the wrong... I mean, it's just the complexity of a company like that.

1:14:35Does Apple want to own theme parks? No, they don't.

1:14:37I can see why if you're asking that question, you would go with Disney because of their incredibly close relationship.

1:14:43And the fact that... Does the Jobs family still own that as well?

1:14:47Like, the Jobs family still owns a big chunk of Disney?

1:14:51Yeah, well I don't know if they divested, but at one point Steve Jobs was the single

1:14:57biggest shareholder. Not that he had anything close to a majority, but because of the Pixar

1:15:02deal was in stock. But I just, in general, the question has always been, "Buy or build?"

1:15:08A company like Disney is already so diversified that why would Apple want to be in that business?

1:15:13And Apple buys a whole company with ESPN and Disneyland and all of that just to get some,

1:15:21know, video production? Seems like madness to me. So what they did was say, "We don't

1:15:28need to buy. We can build." And they hired two incredibly well-thought-of TV executives

1:15:34and said, and presumably are going to give them a big budget and say, "Build us a service."

1:15:38And I think they will. I don't think there's a huge barrier there. Honestly, I think if

1:15:44you've got the money like Apple has, you can build something that's like Netflix

1:15:47or HBO or Amazon in five years. I think you can. Amazon Prime. A video service with good

1:15:54content in it that's exclusive that people want to pay for. I think you can do that.

1:16:00Maybe I'm being naïve about how the TV industry works, but when I look at it, I feel like

1:16:05this is something that you can solve with money and talent. And that it's not one of

1:16:08these things where Netflix has erected a barrier and it's now impossible to make. And in fact,

1:16:12can buy from those studios. I would imagine that Disney will supply Apple with content

1:16:17for their service, right? They don't need to buy Disney, they just need to pay Disney

1:16:20to do what it does well. So, I think that's what will happen.

1:16:24Yeah, I assume it might be trickier for Apple to try and maybe buy exclusive rights to content

1:16:31and stuff like that with a provider just because of companies are hesitant of Apple because

1:16:35of what they did to the music industry, right? Like, I feel like that that is still there.

1:16:39I think it's part of the reason why the Apple TV did not launch with an over-the-top service.

1:16:44I think that that might be part of it, is that Apple believes that it can negotiate

1:16:48the way it wants to negotiate, and companies are hesitant of Apple because they don't want

1:16:53to become the music industry.

1:16:55I think that makes it trickier for them, so maybe it does just make sense, as you say,

1:16:59for them to just do what Netflix is doing.

1:17:01Netflix is also struggling to negotiate with some companies, so they're like, "Screw it,

1:17:04we're going to make our own shows and they're going to be awesome and everybody's going

1:17:07want them so we'll make money that way. Josh asked, "Does the files app in iOS 11 allow

1:17:14you to open files other than photos using the USB or SD adapters?" So the adapters,

1:17:20the lightning adapters that you can buy. I didn't know the answer to this question. I

1:17:24believed I knew what the answer would be and then over the weekend Federico Fittucci confirmed

1:17:29it for me that when you plug in the adapters that would open up files they still, like

1:17:36the camera connection kit for example, which has USB on it, it still opens the Photos app

1:17:40on iOS 11. Have you done any testing of your own on this, Jason?

1:17:44Yeah, it doesn't do it. That's a real shame.

1:17:46That's a real shame. I think Apple's attitude is probably that everything's wireless and

1:17:51why would you need a memory card for anything, but it's like, well, why do you have an SD

1:17:54card reader that you sell? Well, it's for photos. It's like, did you know that there

1:17:59are other devices? Did you know you make an iPad Pro, which is a professional? I mean,

1:18:03The thing that got me, and I actually did ask when I had a briefing about the iPad Pro,

1:18:06is like, this is a product for businesses, right?

1:18:09For business people, for workers.

1:18:11Do you not understand that workers still have things on thumb drives and stuff?

1:18:20That sometimes you're in a hotel room somewhere getting ready for a presentation and there's

1:18:24a file on a thumb drive, and you have that moment where you're like, "Oh, I have an iPad,

1:18:30so don't give that file to me.

1:18:32instead let's find a computer that can read it and then you can email it to me or AirDrop

1:18:37it to me and then I'll get it."

1:18:39And it's like, "You've got a card reader, you've got a USB adapter, you've got a file

1:18:44browser.

1:18:45Why don't you let them work together?"

1:18:47It does not seem to be a stretch, especially since you're making the iPad Pro.

1:18:52I would love to see them do this.

1:18:54There's still time, maybe some point in the future, but just realize there are these devices

1:19:00is Federico is showing me one, like there is a lightning thumb drive, right? Like, I

1:19:07would love to be able to use stuff like that without needing this weird app, right? Luckily

1:19:12you have that, um, those wireless SD cards and you need to use like, because you know,

1:19:17you want to transfer, but you have to use these weird applications because you can't

1:19:21get the audio files, the audio files that you need for this very episode, you cannot

1:19:25- You have to plug them into anything and get it.

1:19:29You have to send it through this weird application instead.

1:19:32It would be great if we could just have

1:19:34this stuff accessible to us.

1:19:35Yes, it's niche case, but the iPad Pro is a niche device.

1:19:39It should be, right?

1:19:40That's what it's, you know, I know more people buy it

1:19:42than kind of maybe how it's intended,

1:19:44which is like an iPad to do work on.

1:19:46People buy them because they just want the newest,

1:19:47the greatest, and the best iPad.

1:19:49But like understand, you know, people wanna use this stuff.

1:19:52They wanna get this stuff.

1:19:55you have an app called files. Rajeev is back with another question. Do you think that Apple

1:20:01would produce and release mature rated material through Apple Music or their Apple TV service?

1:20:07And when I heard this question I was reminded of something that we haven't heard about for

1:20:11a long time which was reported on last year that Dr Dre was working on a TV show which would be

1:20:20mature? Do you remember this? Yeah. So do you think that Apple, because I mean Apple

1:20:26in the past have been historically anti-mature I think would maybe be a way to put it. Do

1:20:32you think that they would themselves make stuff like this? I mean we've heard about

1:20:38this Dr. Dre thing but we don't really know how it's going to pan out if at all. But do

1:20:41you think that they would make something like a Game of Thrones? Absolutely. You don't think

1:20:47that you think that this is like well they're gonna make mature TV content

1:20:50because it's what people want? Yeah I love I love the questions this week

1:20:54because it's so many of these conventional wisdom things about Apple

1:20:56where I'm just gonna go and say nope like like are they gonna buy Disney no

1:21:00they're not are they gonna be afraid about things with mature content and

1:21:04themes no I don't think they are I don't think you again I don't think you hire

1:21:08those development people and say let's keep it rated PG I just I don't think you

1:21:15do. I don't think you build a service. Look at what's on Netflix. Look at what's on HBO.

1:21:20You don't build a service. Apple is not building a family video service for family viewing.

1:21:28I don't think that's their marketing approach here. I think Apple is going to build a real

1:21:34video service with a diverse set of programming that is going to be considered sort of premium

1:21:41quality programming and what shows are on those services. It's Game of Thrones, it's

1:21:51House of Cards, it's Orange is the New Black, it's the Marvel, even the Marvel shows on

1:21:57Netflix are way rougher than anything that would be on network TV. And I think that's

1:22:03just where we are.

1:22:05Or in the cinema.

1:22:06and they'll have parental controls and stuff, which they already do. And that's just, I think

1:22:13that's absolutely what they're going to do. And I think this perception that Apple is never going

1:22:18to do anything that isn't inoffensive in terms of content. I'll point out that iTunes sells all that

1:22:25stuff and Apple's platforms show it via Netflix and HBO and things like that. It's all there.

1:22:33unless Apple does something completely weird and says, "Oh no, our service is going to

1:22:37be the family-friendly streaming service," but I just don't see it. I don't think that's

1:22:42how they'll do it. I think they'll have family-appropriate stuff and more mature content stuff and it'll

1:22:47all be labeled and that's going to be how it is. I don't see how you compete in this

1:22:51market. I don't see how you compete with Westworld and Game of Thrones and House of Cards and

1:22:57do it rated PG. I just know.

1:23:01And finally today, Chris asks, "Jason talks about being a freelancer and podcaster, but

1:23:08not about running a large podcast network. Is The Incomparable much time and work for

1:23:12Jason?"

1:23:15The Incomparable is not a large podcast network.

1:23:18Okay, let's say it's large in the amount of shows and people, which I know from experience,

1:23:26working with a large group of people can bring with it a lot of work, just inherently in

1:23:31the fact that you have a lot of people to help and manage and work with.

1:23:36Well you know the shows that are on the Incomparable Network that are not mine or that I'm not

1:23:40involved with, it's essentially self-serve. Like I don't have to work with Joe and Dan

1:23:46on Defocused. They got it. They do it and it works fine. I don't have to work with you

1:23:53on the Ring Post.

1:23:55I'm off in my own little world like over there.

1:23:59- Yeah, so The Incomparable's a hobby.

1:24:03It does bring in a portion of my income,

1:24:06mostly for the main show, but it is a small portion.

1:24:11There is some work there, there's some technical work

1:24:14in terms of getting podcasts up and running.

1:24:16There is also some work in terms of,

1:24:19we have our membership program, so every quarter,

1:24:24my wife and I have to do some accounting

1:24:27and bookkeeping and payments to the hosts for their shows that have been supported by members.

1:24:33But, you know, it's not... there are a lot of shows on the network, that's true, but it's not something that I tightly manage.

1:24:41I just try to keep the trains running and help where I can and do the shows that are the shows that I do there.

1:24:49And in most cases, it's a labor of love.

1:24:54The main incomparable show is also something

1:24:56that is part of my living.

1:25:00But it's not a huge part.

1:25:01And most of the other shows, the membership support essentially--

1:25:06it basically goes to allowing the shows to exist and maybe

1:25:10throw a little bit back to the host.

1:25:11But a lot of it is like, we can afford

1:25:13to pay somebody to edit the show, which

1:25:15is how the show happens.

1:25:16Random Trek is like that.

1:25:18Total Party Kill and Game Show are kind of like that now too where there's support there

1:25:23and the support really goes to the fact that I don't have to edit those shows anymore.

1:25:28We can pay somebody to do it because I don't have the time to do it because I'm out on

1:25:31my own doing my own stuff.

1:25:34But it's not a large, I would say, not a large broadcast network in any term except for maybe

1:25:39how many shows are on it.

1:25:41They're all great shows though.

1:25:45All the great shows.

1:25:46They're all the great shows.

1:25:47Yeah, I guess it's difficult to see from the outside, because I talk about running

1:25:54a podcast network, but Real AFM is more focused as a business.

1:25:58It's your job. Real AFM is your job. The incomparable, it's not my job. It is basically

1:26:04my hobby, or you could say it's a very small side project. In fact, I would argue, and

1:26:10I think I mentioned this on free agents at one point, I probably spend, if you calibrated

1:26:15many hours you spend and how much money is a result of that, it would be very clear then

1:26:21the incomparable as a laborer love because I do spend more time on it that probably is

1:26:25justified in terms of what I get paid. But it is the thing I love to do. I don't have

1:26:29– it is kind of my hobby. People are like, "Oh, what hobbies? What do you do when you're

1:26:33not doing podcasts and writing things?" And the answer is no, that's like I spend

1:26:37time with my family.

1:26:38Other podcasts and other writing things.

1:26:41then I do podcasts and writing. I am fortunate to be able to do the things that I like to

1:26:47do and want to do as my job. And so, it all just kind of gets intermingled.

1:26:52You're saying, like, about, you know, "Real AFM is my job and the incomparable isn't

1:26:58so much your job." Like, I think Real AFM is more your job than the incomparable is

1:27:02your job, right?

1:27:03Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, in terms – certainly in terms of how I make my living, it is. And

1:27:10thanks to our sponsors. Sponsors and listeners, thank you. We need you both. Keep coming,

1:27:16all of you. Absolutely. Well, a lot of the incomparable shows have the listener part.

1:27:21They just don't have the sponsor part, and that's fine, right? So, yeah. No, I'd say

1:27:27Relay and Six Colors are my jobs, and the incomparable is sort of a part-time job and

1:27:35sort of a hobby. I don't know if you noticed this, Jason, but

1:27:39I tried to skew the Ask Upgrades to you this week.

1:27:43Because I know I took them all last week so you can...

1:27:46It was Ask Myke last week.

1:27:47It was Ask Jason this week.

1:27:49TV.

1:27:50Oh good.

1:27:51Lots of TV was in there.

1:27:52Lots of TV.

1:27:53It's good.

1:27:54If you want to find our show notes you can go to relay.fm/upgrades/147.

1:27:56If you'd like to support our sponsors, which again we really appreciate when you do, go

1:28:02to check out the great folk over at Encapsular, Smile and Jamf Now.

1:28:07If you want to find Jason online, he's over at Sixcolors.com, TheIncomparable.com, he

1:28:12hosts a bunch of shows at Relay.fm, and he's on Twitter, he's @JSNEL, J-S-N-E-L-L-L.

1:28:18I am, I'm Myke, @I-M-Y-K-E.

1:28:22Thank you so much for listening.

1:28:24We'll be back next time.

1:28:26Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow.

1:28:28Hydrate, stay out of the sun, everybody.

1:28:30Stay cool.

1:28:31Stay frosty.

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