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0:00:03From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 30.
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0:00:27My name is Jason Snell.
0:00:28I normally don't read this part of the show because Myke Hurley does, but Myke is on vacation.
0:00:33And so he couldn't take it. Two episodes in a row where he and I spoke to each other in
0:00:38person face to face across the table and he just couldn't take it. He cracked up and had
0:00:43to be sent away for some rest and relaxation to get his head together. So instead I have
0:00:50a guest star visiting me and I believe this is the first time that he and I have shared
0:00:56a tech podcast together, although we've been on many episodes of The Incomparable and other
0:01:01things together.
0:01:02It's your favorite from ATP.
0:01:04It's John Syracuse.
0:01:05Hi, John.
0:01:06I'm pretty sure we did a five-by-five special about an Apple event or something.
0:01:11Oh, that could be.
0:01:12We were both there.
0:01:13That could be.
0:01:14That's possible.
0:01:15I just think it's funny.
0:01:16We should just talk about Miyazaki just in case, though.
0:01:17Oh, yeah.
0:01:18We could do that.
0:01:19I'll just make sure.
0:01:20There are some people who are very angry when Myke and I talked about movies that he hasn't
0:01:24seen that I've made him watch.
0:01:26"I didn't sign up for this!" And it's like, well, we put it at the end, you could, like, tune...
0:01:30Just stop it if... Did you put it after the song? Oh, wait.
0:01:33Yeah, we do have a song. We have a little song. We could have done that.
0:01:37We haven't done... We don't have a post-show kind of thing like you guys do.
0:01:42I should ask Marco this and not you, but is there a philosophy behind the ATP
0:01:47when the theme song goes? Because on the incomparable, I always consider, like,
0:01:51anything I put after the the music is like literally not essential like like
0:01:57this is all optional material after this point yeah we got an interesting email I
0:02:03guess we'll probably talk about in the next ATP but someone emailed and said
0:02:07they thought their podcast client wasn't working like it works with every show
0:02:11but with ATP for some reason it's like it's jumping around or he thought he had
0:02:14finished a little bit it sounded like it was starting again so a maybe this
0:02:18person has some weird problem with the Apple podcast app or be there confused
0:02:21by the fact that when they think they've finished an episode and they've heard the song, that
0:02:25they go back to the episode and there's still more to play.
0:02:29There is a philosophy.
0:02:30It's basically a tech podcast.
0:02:32We talk about tech stuff.
0:02:34We do all the sponsors and all the tech stuff that we want to cover before the song.
0:02:39Then the song comes, and afterward is kind of talking about the show that we just did,
0:02:45but also any sort of non-tech stuff.
0:02:47So if we just want to talk about Cars, it's going to be in that part.
0:02:49If we want to talk about our feelings being heard on Twitter, it's going to be in that
0:02:52part.
0:02:53Sometimes it's carryover tech stuff because we're talking about the tech stuff we just
0:02:56did in the main part of the program.
0:02:58And so it's like, well, you just continued talking about tech.
0:03:00Why was that even there?
0:03:01Or if we didn't get to a tech topic, it'll be back there.
0:03:04But it's all kind of like more casual, retrospective, and it's like a grab bag.
0:03:09So there is a philosophy, but it's super loose.
0:03:11Yeah, I get it.
0:03:12And I get why people would be confused.
0:03:14But what you don't want to do is create what something that Dan Benjamin started and that
0:03:18I do and we occasionally do on relay as well, which is the after dark bonus track B-side
0:03:24kind of thing. Because that's like, then you're really saying it's like this is for
0:03:27super fans only. And what I like about ATP and how you guys handle it is like look, there's
0:03:31the show and then there's some other stuff we're also going to talk about that you get
0:03:33to listen to. But it's not in the show. It's not the sponsors. It can be off topic. That's
0:03:40why I find it funny when people complain to you guys about what you do in the post show.
0:03:43Because it's like literally this is bonus people. We could have just ended the show
0:03:47when the music stopped. I think some people don't know that part of the show exists because
0:03:51they just hit stop after the song, and I always wonder about those people. But there is extra,
0:03:54extra stuff. For the live listeners, we have all sorts of BS that would probably go in,
0:03:59you know, the bonus track type of thing in "Comporal Parlance," but that we just don't
0:04:03even release. So that does still exist, but it's only for the live listeners, and there's
0:04:06very few of them. Right, that's true. Relatively speaking, very few. And they have their own
0:04:11bootlegs and things like that too, which is pretty serious. Pretty serious stuff. On this
0:04:16show we usually do some follow-up. I have one item of follow-up. Would you like to hear
0:04:19it?
0:04:20Go for it.
0:04:21Well, this is #MykeWasWrong because in previous episodes Myke has been talking about being
0:04:26right and he's like a pusher, but what he's pushing is iPhone 6 pluses and I just wanted
0:04:35to mention that I wrote a piece on six colors. It'll be in the show notes which I should
0:04:39say you can find at relay.fm/upgrades/thirty or in the podcast client you're listening
0:04:44to right now called "Two Weeks with the iPhone 6 Plus" where I wrote about the fact that
0:04:50I've been using it for the last two weeks. When I was in Europe, I used it because I
0:04:53had an unlocked 6 Plus that I had access to. And in the end, I decided that the only thing
0:04:58I really liked about it was the fact that the battery was… battery life was better.
0:05:03And otherwise, I found… when I came back and I switched… and literally, Jon, I'm
0:05:08standing in the line at customs at the airport and I've got my iPhone 6 turned on and I'm
0:05:15using it. And I found myself grasping it with two hands, almost like I'm huddling near
0:05:22a fire to stay warm or something like that. And I realized over two weeks I'd built
0:05:26up this gesture that was me kind of clutching the phone in order to not drop it because
0:05:31it was so huge that I needed the extra hand in the other corner. So what I'm saying
0:05:36is I learned something about myself which is I do a lot of one-handed phone checking
0:05:42and stuff with my thumb and it totally doesn't work on the 6 Plus because I can't even reach
0:05:47the bottom right corner with my thumb on the 6 Plus. And then even Myke said that he does
0:05:52a lot of kind of like gymnastics to get the phone in the right position to press certain
0:05:57things in certain places on the phone. It's like it's too much. It's too much. So I appreciated
0:06:02my time with the 6 Plus. It was great having an unlocked phone in Europe because there
0:06:05There is some great—you can buy—I bought for 20 pounds. I bought a SIM card that was
0:06:09unlimited data for 30 days, and I was only there for 14 in the UK and Ireland, where
0:06:14I went. And that was all great, but I have to say that I—for myself, I think I made
0:06:19the right decision in getting the 6 Plus and not the—or getting the 6 and not the 6 Plus.
0:06:24I read your thing already because I had a sneak preview of—
0:06:26Look at that.
0:06:27As soon as it was posted, it appeared in—what, it appeared on Twitter, in my Slack feed?
0:06:30Yes, I already read it, and I've heard Marco on ATP talked about his experiences with the
0:06:356 Plus also in Ireland.
0:06:38And I've never had the opportunity to try one.
0:06:40I've held one in the store, but I've never lived with one for any period of time.
0:06:43I would imagine that what would happen is, like, even with my 6, which is bigger than
0:06:48my series of iPod touches that preceded it, I tend to use it like a little iPad sometimes,
0:06:54mostly because my actual iPad is an iPad 3 and it's really slow.
0:06:56So if I'm doing anything like playing a game where the framerate isn't quite so good on
0:07:00my iPad 3 or doing a web page that's JavaScript heavy or something, sometimes I use it like
0:07:06a little iPad.
0:07:07You know, I'm laying down in my bed and I'll put it on my chest like a little iPad and
0:07:10hold it with two hands.
0:07:11It is a very small iPad.
0:07:12I would imagine a 6 Plus would be a little bit closer to being like an iPad and maybe
0:07:18make me use my iPad even less.
0:07:19But if I had an iPad Air 2, I don't know if it would contend.
0:07:24And like you said, I don't, you know, the biggest issue for me is how big the darn thing
0:07:28is just portability-wise, wrapping my hands around it, sticking it in my pockets as Marco
0:07:33was finding the difficulty of just sitting uncomfortably. It doesn't fit in your pockets
0:07:38in the normal way and you have to change how you sit or like he said, I think putting it
0:07:41on the table instead of keeping it in your pocket.
0:07:42Yeah, I found myself putting it on the table too, which is weird because I don't do that
0:07:46and I found myself putting it on the table because it's like, "Wow, I could put this
0:07:50back in my pocket but that's... Nah, I'll just leave that."
0:07:53You have to stand up to get it into your pocket and putting it in your table is dangerous
0:07:56because it's more susceptible to spills. And you mentioned that Myke had dropped his
0:08:01a bunch of times, although I don't know if he also dropped his 5 and 5S or whatever.
0:08:04Yeah, I thought that was a weird thing where he actually admitted—I mean, to Myke's
0:08:08credit, he admitted all the flaws and things that he had learned to live with with the
0:08:126 Plus, and dropping it is definitely one of them. I said to him that I was using the
0:08:18Maps app to get to my friend's house in London where I was staying. I got off the
0:08:22tube. I've got the data plan because I bought the card in a vending machine at the baggage
0:08:26claim and it was five pounds. I knew what the cost, the regular cost was. It was five
0:08:31pounds more and I was like, "Well, this way I'll have data and I can be sure of the right
0:08:35way to go to get to my friend's house." So I'm out there and I'm looking at the map set
0:08:39and I realize that I can't reach my thumb across it and I'm trying to like move it into a different
0:08:43position and I'm holding my suitcase with one hand. So I'm trying to do this one handed
0:08:48and I realized I just couldn't do it. I had to stop and put the suitcase down and do all
0:08:53of that. And I told this story to Myke, and he said, "Oh yeah, you'll get more confident
0:08:58in holding it in those weird positions where it feels like it's about to drop, but also
0:09:01sometimes you drop it."
0:09:03That's not a good thing at all. You'll get more confident, and then you'll drop it more.
0:09:09That, yeah, yeah. I didn't think—it was a very strange statement for him to make.
0:09:14Like, "Well, you drop it, but you got it in a case, and it's fine."
0:09:17My six has taken the tumble many times, but not out of my hand. It's always like, "I'll
0:09:21it on my nightstand and then somehow it will get knocked off my nightstand by myself or
0:09:25a pillow or a child or it'll be... it's always being knocked off of things into cracks between
0:09:30furniture. I guess I'm always sort of balancing it precariously on the edges of the side of
0:09:35sofas and ends of tables. None of them have done any damage other than to put a tiny little
0:09:39nick in my leather case in the corner and it's really annoying me. But I'm resisting
0:09:43buying a new whatever the heck it is $80 leather case just because I have a nick in the corner.
0:09:47I should say there's also a funny thing that Doug Beale in the chat room just mentioned
0:09:50which is Georgia Dow from iMore pointed out that she has a case that she stuck this little
0:09:57like elastic hand strap on the back and everybody who's an iPhone 6 Plus user was like checking
0:10:03it out. You can like pass your fingers through it and hold it like...
0:10:07Yeah, yeah, I was thinking having it like any kind of handle or a knob or a strap or
0:10:12a loop or a, you know, a thing to put one or two fingers through. Those are all good
0:10:17things.
0:10:18And I thought it was funny that everybody was cheering that hand strap thing because
0:10:24it was a combination of being a very clever hack to hold the phone better and to be complete
0:10:29failure because you have to stick a thing on the back of your case.
0:10:33If you got an even bigger strap, perhaps it could fit all the way around your wrist and
0:10:37then you'd have a little screen on your wrist.
0:10:39I don't know.
0:10:40I'm just thinking out loud here.
0:10:41That's a crazy idea.
0:10:42Well, at that point, I think you just get an iPad and you get that and you go full on
0:10:44with that Velcro ball thing that Myke and I were talking about.
0:10:46Did you read that?
0:10:47article about the, you know, one of the things where Apple was opening up to the
0:10:52press and they mentioned how one of the early Apple Watch prototype things was
0:10:57literally taking an iPhone and putting a velcro strap on it and strapping it to
0:11:01your wrist. Yeah, with a, with a, like an emulator of a watch on it. A little
0:11:05picture of a watch in your eye. Yeah, pretend that, I wonder if they like skin tone around it.
0:11:10It's gonna be the Apple Watch 6 Plus, just watch. Myke will be telling
0:11:12everybody he's got here, they've got to get that. They're like gauntlets really, you
0:11:15You just put them on these huge glass things on the top of your forearm.
0:11:19Then you don't drop it because it's tied to your body.
0:11:23And you can defend against attacks with swords by just putting up your forearm.
0:11:27That's true.
0:11:28That's true.
0:11:29It's like you're becoming Iron Man at that point, really.
0:11:31I should mention Stephen Hackett also wrote a thing, and Marco Arment is in the process,
0:11:36I believe, of writing something too about the six-plus thing.
0:11:39So I think it's great that not everybody has the chance to test drive a different phone
0:11:43model for a couple of weeks. And so I think that's one of the reasons we write this stuff
0:11:47is to say, "Well, look, here's what we noticed when we did this." I think since not everybody
0:11:53can do that, that if it informs people a little bit about what their choices are, they're
0:11:57definitely going to be able to hear both sides of the argument because it didn't work for
0:12:01me, but I know it works for Myke and Steven Hackett. I'm yet to hear exactly. I think
0:12:05Marco is sort of -- he sees a little bit more of the pros and cons of both of them. So I'm
0:12:10looking forward to his.
0:12:11hear that ATP episode where you talked about the OOL trip and everything?
0:12:14I have heard the—I've heard like half of it.
0:12:18Yeah, because he talks about the 6-plus extensively in there. This is going to be—sometimes
0:12:23there is a blog post that he comes on ATP and talks about, and sometimes you talk about
0:12:26it in something ATP and it becomes a blog post. And this is one of those.
0:12:28I like that. I like it when the—you've talked about that before. It's like the
0:12:31podcast that's sort of your thought process. It's like before there's a draft, there's
0:12:35you talking about it on the podcast. And I do that a lot. Yeah, I actually listened
0:12:39first like half hour of ATP and then I skipped to the Twitter stuff in the post show because
0:12:45I knew we were going to be talking and I had that as one of my things I might want to talk
0:12:48about so I have to skip back and again maybe I'm that guy who wrote to you. So I don't
0:12:53understand ATP it skips all over.
0:12:55He thought it was something wrong with his podcast app like the V. I don't know. He
0:13:00may be right. Maybe he does have a problem with his podcast. I don't know. I want to
0:13:03do tech support over email.
0:13:04I think you guys have just confused him. I hope he should use Overcast. That's what
0:13:08Mark, I should say, yeah, I can solve that for you.
0:13:12So anyway, that's the follow-up.
0:13:13We'll leave the rest for when Myke comes back.
0:13:15Let me take a break for our first sponsor.
0:13:17You know how this works, right?
0:13:19You do this every week with Marco.
0:13:21I'm there when it happens, if that's what you mean.
0:13:23And he has to read the-- he has to read the sponsor.
0:13:24Well, I'm going to do that now.
0:13:26So--
0:13:26Good luck.
0:13:27Thank you.
0:13:27Thank you.
0:13:28Here I go.
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0:15:49So have you been reading the Steve Jobs, the new Steve Jobs book, the Becoming Steve Jobs?
0:15:54I just started it. I'm about 10% through.
0:15:57Well, you know, so that's a couple chapters, maybe?
0:16:01Yeah, I don't know. All I know is Kindle percentages now. I have no recollection of pages.
0:16:06I know. Well, you can see the chapters as you go through the chapters. I just finished it.
0:16:09I finished it on the flight back from Ireland.
0:16:13And I think it's pretty good, actually.
0:16:18And I say that as a preface because I have lots of criticisms of it.
0:16:21And I'm looking forward to your book report when you're done with it.
0:16:28I don't know if you formed any initial thoughts about it going in, or if you are--
0:16:33are you expecting much?
0:16:35Or have you accepted the hype that this is going to be the cure to the Isaacson book?
0:16:39Well, I'm only 10% through.
0:16:44But I do have an opinion immediately of the book.
0:16:47And now it has to, like, if it changes as the book goes on, I will change my opinion,
0:16:53but already I feel like I have this book's number.
0:16:57And it's not, I like it better than the Isaacson book so far, but there's, you know, having
0:17:02just read 10% of it, what I'm reading now is the early parts about Apple's childhood,
0:17:10starting the company with Woz, doing the Mac project, getting Scully.
0:17:15Like, you know how many times I've read that story?
0:17:16I've read about a million magazine articles on it.
0:17:20I've read tons of books about it.
0:17:22From every conceivable angle, I've watched documentaries about it.
0:17:26Just like, I've seen that story a lot, right?
0:17:29So the odds of there being something new in there are slim.
0:17:33The Isaacson book, one of the few things that it had going for it, is that it had a lot
0:17:36of, you know, it was the authorized one, and it had a lot of inside access to people who
0:17:41previously didn't have access to it.
0:17:42But not much is new in there.
0:17:44So all I've got to go on so far in the book is sort of like tone and purpose.
0:17:49And the tone and purpose bother me a little bit because the book is kind of being presented
0:17:54as a reaction to other books or popular narratives, which I guess is one way you can go with it.
0:18:03It's not really what I'm looking for.
0:18:04What I was looking for out of the Isaacson son is like, Isaacson book is sort of a definitive
0:18:10biography where you just get all the facts and lay them out documentary style.
0:18:16If you do have an agenda, I want you to hide it better, like really well, you know?
0:18:22Again, my favorite biography ever is The Power Broker, which definitely has an agenda, but
0:18:28it's just so massively supported by just fact after fact, interview after interview.
0:18:33Like, it's not just asserted.
0:18:37And this book, a lot of it is like, "Here's what happened," which of course I know all
0:18:41the stuff already, and then a line from the authors saying, "People always say this,
0:18:48but really, Jobs is like that.
0:18:50Just asserted."
0:18:51And then more events took place.
0:18:53And it's like, "Well, wait a second.
0:18:54Those events don't support that at all.
0:18:56They could?
0:18:57That is a plausible interpretation of events, but you can't just say it.
0:19:00People always say that Steve Jobs is really mean.
0:19:02But actually, he's kind of like, it doesn't fit.
0:19:05So it reads like, that's why people are on it as like a defense of Apple, that it is,
0:19:12you know, some people say mean things about Steve Jobs, but actually he wasn't that bad.
0:19:16And then more events.
0:19:17It's like, it just, it's not apologetic so much as like a book with an agenda not particularly
0:19:25well supported by the facts.
0:19:27Because the facts are the same as the facts in everything else.
0:19:30Especially in this early part of the story, it's just, it's a different interpretation,
0:19:35really delved into, just used as like a, like a premise. They'll just lay that out in a
0:19:40one sentence thing, or at the end, the one sentence thing that says, "Even though these
0:19:43are the same events that everyone else has recorded, they're really not that bad," and
0:19:46it shows that he's not really that bad a guy. "Well, wait a second, you just came to a different
0:19:49conclusion with the same facts, but then you didn't explain how you came to your conclusion."
0:19:53So...
0:19:54I think, um, I think one of the problems here, and again, you've only read the beginning
0:19:57of it so far, is that this is a book that's got its strong areas. And then it's got the
0:20:04obligatory parts. So like you can't tell the Steve Jobs story, right? Except, well
0:20:10you can, but it's harder to make that case if you don't tell that early part. But these
0:20:17guys didn't know Steve Jobs then. So they stepped through it and I think what they do
0:20:21is they throw in some things that they feel like they're going to prove later.
0:20:25Yeah, we'll see. But so far, they go through the facts, and then they boldly assert that what they have just retold demonstrates something about Steve Jobs that it does not demonstrate at all.
0:20:40And they frame it in a way of, like, when other people have told the same story, they have concluded this. But really, Steve Jobs is like X.
0:20:48Why? You just told the exact same story as everyone else. What is leading you to believe that he's really like that?
0:20:53that. And if they explain it later in the book, then obviously, you know, well, my opinion
0:20:56might change, but they're not, they don't allude to future events. They just sort of
0:21:00say, you know, they'll go back and tell an old story and they'll say, "Well, you know,
0:21:04what about the time when he was crying in the parking lot? That shows something." No,
0:21:08that perfectly fits with the narrative. Like, it's like they're reframing the exact same
0:21:13things in a more sympathetic light merely by saying that, merely by saying that we,
0:21:17the authors, are more sympathetic to, to this scenario. Like, we are not going to, in the
0:21:22In the same way that something that's going to be sensational would demonize him for the
0:21:25same events, they'll say, "And this shows that he's an egomaniac and a jerk and every
0:21:30misery in his life he deserves."
0:21:34That's going in one extreme.
0:21:35This is going the other extreme and saying, "Despite all these terrible things that he's
0:21:38done, he was a human person with feelings too, and we shouldn't be so mean to him.
0:21:44And he really wasn't as bad as everyone says because he really loved his kids or whatever."
0:21:47It's like, I'm not impressed so far, but so far it hasn't set its foot wrong in the ways
0:21:53that the Eisling book has, particularly because this book didn't have the kind of access the
0:21:56Eisling book has.
0:21:57So automatically I'm inclined to say, "Well, you're writing another Steve Jobs book so
0:22:01far.
0:22:02That's fine.
0:22:03The Second Coming of Steve Jobs is another Steve Jobs book.
0:22:05That's fine."
0:22:06I don't fault them for saying, "You had this one chance to write the definitive biography
0:22:11of Steve Jobs and you blew it," because they didn't and they don't.
0:22:13So if Justin's up and we get another Steve Jobs book, that's fine too.
0:22:16assets are Brent Schlander's relationship with jobs, which begins later, right? So he
0:22:24doesn't, he can't bring those assets to bear here. And then there are other assets
0:22:27are that they got people from Apple to talk who haven't really talked about personal
0:22:33stuff about Steve. And that's all at the very end. So they, they're really limited
0:22:38in what they want to do. They want to tell this whole story, but they've got these
0:22:41very narrow kind of angles into it based on one reporter's kind of weird relationship
0:22:50with Steve Jobs and through their Apple access at the end. And so there are lots of kind
0:22:56of weird holes and I think as it goes, it tells, you know, they do have this take and
0:23:04when there's a little bit more to back it up, I feel like they're at least making
0:23:09argument that, I mean, the thesis of the book is very clearly like a lot of the people who
0:23:14think that Steve Jobs is a monster are thinking about back when he was in his early days when
0:23:19he was truly monstrous, but that later he was not quite so monstrous and you should,
0:23:24you know, and he mellowed out a lot and was not the same guy and learned a lot. And so
0:23:29there's a story arc to his professional life as well as his personal life that he learned
0:23:33and he grew and he changed and he did some terrible things when he was in his 20s, but
0:23:39he wasn't that same guy the last 10 years of his life. And there is some evidence there.
0:23:44They seem to even assert that when he was young, at his very youngest, like the crying
0:23:47in the parking lot story, they're saying, "Even the people who say he was a monster
0:23:50when he was young, see, he actually went after the parking lot and cried." And that totally
0:23:54fits with the narrative of people calling him a monster. It is not an aberration, it
0:23:58is not a counterexample, that's part of the whole thing.
0:24:00Keep reading it, because I think that they are a little more even-handed with that in
0:24:06presenting that he was totally messed up. And actually they have a really interesting
0:24:09thesis which is that he never had a mentor. He was basically, he was a spoiled child.
0:24:14He was always allowed to do anything. And then the people he surrounded himself first,
0:24:20what is it, Myke Scott and then John Scully. They're like, his argument is these guys were
0:24:24terrible mentors. They were not capable of mentoring Steve in any way. And then it extends
0:24:30to sort of saying that the person who really gave that connection to him was Ed Catmull
0:24:37and also John Lasseter to a certain extent. And they were people where there was actually
0:24:40a better relationship and fit and they helped him improve and become a better manager. You
0:24:46know, again, I think they do an okay job of making that case. I don't know whether I entirely
0:24:50buy it, but I think it's an interesting take on jobs. But again, they can't tell that part
0:24:55until they get to that part of the story. And so for me, I mean, that's, I think that's
0:24:59That's why there's that first little prologue where it's like, "Hey, this is when I knew
0:25:05Steve Jobs," because then they can't do that for a long time, so they have a little flash
0:25:10forward.
0:25:11Yeah, there's a little bit of the Gonzo journalism thing where the story is a little bit about
0:25:14the author.
0:25:15Yeah.
0:25:16It's in first person.
0:25:17They're two authors, but one of them is in first person.
0:25:18The weird collective singular first person dual author.
0:25:22But it's like, "Let me tell you about my meeting with Jobs and what it was like in our
0:25:26relationship."
0:25:27Well, I don't really care about one half of that relationship, right? I don't really care.
0:25:31Except maybe to the extent that it's illuminating about his character, but I don't know.
0:25:37So far, not a lot of insights in the book. And even the part that you're talking about,
0:25:43like with the mentor, like, "Oh, he needed to have a mentor and he didn't have one," or whatever.
0:25:46As an explanation of what happened, that's fine. But because the book is framed as a comeback
0:25:54against the popular narrative, that explanation reads more like an excuse.
0:25:59Like, "See, he wasn't a bad guy, he just didn't have a good mentor."
0:26:04And it's because the book is framed as a sort of defense or a balancing off of everything
0:26:10else that it comes off more apologetic.
0:26:14Because that's not like, "Boo-hoo, he didn't have a good mentor."
0:26:18That doesn't...
0:26:19His behavior is what his behavior is, and there's nothing...
0:26:21You can explain the circumstances surrounding it, but you can't use that to fight back against
0:26:27what you consider unflattering narratives, because everyone agrees on the facts, it's
0:26:32just the interpretations, and it's not as if, you know, you didn't have this extra piece
0:26:36of information.
0:26:37Let me tell you this piece, and that will change things.
0:26:39Every new piece of information that gets added just fits into the exact same puzzle piece
0:26:42that ever—the same picture that has been drawn by every book.
0:26:45It's just piling on some more information.
0:26:47It's remarkably consistent, and it's all just how you interpret it.
0:26:50How do you balance the good against the bad?
0:26:53Because he was a complicated person.
0:26:54He wasn't all good, and he wasn't all bad.
0:26:56He did good things.
0:26:56He did terrible things.
0:26:57How do you balance it out?
0:26:59And yeah, I don't know.
0:27:00I'll finish the book.
0:27:01I will talk about it in ATP.
0:27:02But I am the type of person who feels
0:27:05like he can give a book report on a book
0:27:07after reading the first chapter, which is obviously
0:27:09what you should not do.
0:27:11Well, so I also think it's worth mentioning.
0:27:15I do wonder sometimes if Apple endorsing this book
0:27:18does this book any favors.
0:27:19Because--
0:27:19Oh, no.
0:27:20Well, that's the worst.
0:27:21Right?
0:27:22Because it's setting it up as being an apologetic hagiography of business, which I don't think
0:27:26it is.
0:27:27But again, they got the Apple access and they got people, in fact, even in the book, I think
0:27:32Eddy Cue condemns the Isaacson book in this book, which is kind of funny.
0:27:36And they should.
0:27:37That's fine.
0:27:38I condemn that book too, but it's kind of like what I said about a regulatory agency
0:27:41who's an ADP a while back.
0:27:42If you are a regulatory agency and the companies you regulate are applauding something you
0:27:47do, chances are you're not doing your job well.
0:27:49So I'm not saying that biography is supposed to be a regulatory agency, but if you're writing
0:27:54a biography about the famous leader of the world's biggest technology company, the world's
0:27:59biggest company, period, and that company heartily endorses your book, you should be
0:28:04thinking to yourself, "Wait a second, what did I miss?"
0:28:06Because there should be something in there that they shouldn't be wholeheartedly endorsing
0:28:12your book.
0:28:13They should be endorsing maybe some parts of it because other books have been worse.
0:28:17can condemn the Isaacson book, but once they're sort of, like, in the press endorsing your
0:28:23biography, it really undercuts, like, your credibility, whether it's fair or not. Like,
0:28:27it could be a perfectly balanced book. It just seems like, yeah, that—if I was the
0:28:31author of the book, I'd be like, maybe just, you know, not so much on how much you love
0:28:35the book because it makes me seem like a shill.
0:28:37Yeah, yeah. The other thing—so the other thing that's bothering me, and I've got
0:28:40a little list here which I'll go through really quickly, is—and, you know, this is
0:28:44anything that you see that's reported that's something you know a lot about, you see the
0:28:49mistakes and you think, "Oh, that's really oversimplified," or "They got that wrong
0:28:53a little bit." I don't think these mistakes necessarily make the book's overarching
0:29:00value less or more and the point they're trying to make stronger or weaker, other than
0:29:06to say that it gives me pause, that there are so many little problems I have with it
0:29:11that I feel like, were they afraid somebody was going to leak it if they hired a fact
0:29:15checker or something? Because there are a lot. Not only, yeah, I mean, a capitalized
0:29:20Mac roll with a capital W, which really bugs me. And they say that St. Quentin prison is
0:29:24in San Rafael and it's really not. And they say that there was a black iBook and it was
0:29:28a black MacBook, you know, Mac nerd stuff. But they say, at one point they assert that
0:29:35the clone strategy failed because clones were cheap and tarnished Apple's mystique as
0:29:41as a maker of premium hardware, which I think is an interesting argument because my recollection
0:29:45of the clone era is that Apple's hardware wasn't very good. And so when you let other
0:29:52people make clones, then people had no reason to buy Apple hardware. There were cheap clones.
0:29:59There were nice clones too.
0:30:01That sentence was probably off by itself in the book though. You know, is this quote right
0:30:04from the book "The strategy failed too?" "The availability of cheap clones tarnished
0:30:08Apple's mystique is to make your premium hardware, period." I bet the next sentence moves on
0:30:11to the next topic. Like, they just flat out say, "Strategy failed, and the availability
0:30:17of cheap clones tarnished Apple's mystique." Moving on. Like, is that it? That's the story
0:30:22of the clones? If you had to summarize the story of the clones, that's not how I would
0:30:26summarize it in a single sentence, right?
0:30:27No, but I think it feeds the narrative they want to tell in a very simple way, but I think
0:30:32it's not true. And it's also a snowball. As these mistakes and things that I dispute
0:30:37some of them are factual errors and some of them are assertions that I think are wrong,
0:30:40but you know, the more of them I see, the more like momentum I get of like, okay, that's
0:30:45not right and that's not right. And that happened to me when I read this. They talk about how
0:30:49the BOS is designed to, it says to also be able to use the existing Macintosh OS and
0:30:55then thus operate like a Mac clone. BOS is a separate operating system. It could run
0:30:59on Mac hardware. It did not use the Mac OS.
0:31:02**Matt Stauffer:** Right. So that's, that's where you have to sort of decode from like
0:31:05non-tech person speaking, like, "I think what they're getting at is that both ran on PowerPC.
0:31:10I'm pretty sure that's what they're getting at, but it is so mangled that it's just totally
0:31:13false." It comes out backward from what they're doing.
0:31:16You can kind of decipher it. The great one in the Isaacson book is the idea that they
0:31:20bought NeXT and then never used the NeXT operating system. As such a pivotal, not just a techy
0:31:25detail like, "Oh, who cares about the tech?" These guys get this way.
0:31:26That's just a pivotal part of the entire acquisition of NeXT. It's like, if you got that wrong,
0:31:34That's not a little thing.
0:31:35That is the most important acquisition Apple has ever done
0:31:38to find the entire future of all their products,
0:31:39including the phone, including the watch,
0:31:41including the iPad, and you're like, man, never use that.
0:31:43- These guys did get that part right.
0:31:45Because it fits, also it fits their thesis to say,
0:31:47this was the key acquisition, not just for Steve Jobs,
0:31:50but because that technology was the bedrock
0:31:52of all of the future Apple products.
0:31:53Yes, that's right.
0:31:54- It's not asking for them to be tech geniuses
0:31:57to figure that out.
0:31:57Like that, if you know any, like, it's the basics, right?
0:32:00And so the BOS thing, you can kinda tell
0:32:02someone somewhere, like the right idea was in there and it just came out wrong
0:32:06in the thing and assertions about the clones they don't understand they
0:32:10weren't there they weren't in the thing whatever like yeah yeah they said they
0:32:14said John Rubenstein's company powerhouse systems big Mac clones which
0:32:18I think I think they're thinking power computing I don't think powerhouse
0:32:21systems ever made a Mac clone I think they were PCs that ran next step but
0:32:25that that's in there oh they talk about fitting your narrative they suggest that
0:32:32Steve Jobs was waiting in the wings for that appearance at Macworld Expo and the
0:32:36Gil Emilio gave a long droning speech and everybody was just impatiently
0:32:41waiting to get to Jobs and Jobs had to wait which is I don't know if that's
0:32:44true or not the story I always heard is that Jobs made them wait as a power move
0:32:48he got there late and Emilio had to stretch and look bad and really be
0:32:53boring because he couldn't speak extemporaneously to save his life but
0:32:58they don't tell it that way they tell it this opposite way that it's like you
0:33:01know, "Come on, get out of the way, old man. Steve Jobs coming through." And that's not
0:33:05my understanding, because my understanding with Steve Jobs was kind of being a jerk and
0:33:09didn't show up.
0:33:10This is a great example. So I've read that version of events as well, and then here's
0:33:16this other version. I don't know which one of those is true. Find the people who are
0:33:19there and ask them for crying out loud. You know what I mean?
0:33:24Because those are completely opposite stories of the same events.
0:33:27Right. If only there was some way we could determine which one of those stories is more
0:33:30But you're rather than reading because I've read I've read very variations on what happened in that particular keynote and
0:33:35Usually there is one source who says yeah, he totally made Emilio wait and the other ones like yeah, Emilio just went on to like and
0:33:44This surely there was more than two people there surely you can get one more than one and then zero sources here
0:33:49This is just like again
0:33:51I never want to get the impression when I'm reading one of these books that the person writing the book
0:33:55Simply read one of the other seven books
0:33:57I've read on this topic and like summarize it like a book report. Like there's no sourcing,
0:34:01there's no footnotes, there's no person they talk to. They just say this is what happened
0:34:05and it's like yeah I read that in a magazine article once too.
0:34:08Well I've got one better for you. This is another statement of fact which is they essentially
0:34:13say the iPhone proved to be original iPhone proved to be a tougher sell than many would
0:34:17have imagined. People had expected something that would support video games and reference
0:34:20books and fancy calculators and word processors and financial spreadsheets right out of the
0:34:23box. The phone they got couldn't yet do that. Now this is the narrative of the iPhone wasn't
0:34:28any good until the App Store because the App Store was really great and that was a lesson
0:34:32Steve had to learn that he had to turn it around and bring the apps. That's the story
0:34:35they want to tell. But I have no recollection at all of people being cool on the iPhone
0:34:41when it came out because it didn't run third-party apps. We wanted it to run third-party apps
0:34:45but my memory of that first nine months of the iPhone or whatever it was, we were pretty
0:34:50happy with the iPhone.
0:34:51Yeah, the best part is, like, so, video games, maybe, uh, reference books, borderline fancy
0:34:57calculators, maybe, but word processors?
0:34:59Are you kidding me?
0:35:00People played games on their phone.
0:35:01They played Snake, right?
0:35:02You played the little, like, you know what I mean?
0:35:05No one expected a word processor on your phone before the iPhone, and the iPhone was released
0:35:10like, "Well, it's great, but it's not a word processor."
0:35:12Were people doing word processing on their Motorola Razr?
0:35:14No, that's crazy talk.
0:35:16It reveals their, they now believe,
0:35:20that they've rewound history and said,
0:35:22I always knew that phones would always be like this,
0:35:24and it doesn't make any sense.
0:35:27People were going crazy for the iPhone,
0:35:28the fact that it could do any of the things it did,
0:35:31and I think only the tech nerds were like,
0:35:34boy, it would be great to write applications to the stone.
0:35:36But the world at large didn't even think of it.
0:35:38I remember in the Mac world,
0:35:41the Mac world, the keynote when it was announced,
0:35:45Cable Sasser and John Gruber did a podcast.
0:35:47And at one point, Cable said, can we write apps for this phone?
0:35:50Because that would be awesome.
0:35:51The only people who were thinking
0:35:53about writing apps for this were Mac software developers
0:35:56and stuff like that.
0:35:57The general plus, USA Today wasn't like, well,
0:35:59this phone is great.
0:36:00But if you can't word process on it, forget it.
0:36:02If it only had apps like no other phone, then--
0:36:06Well, if the phones did have apps, you could download it again.
0:36:08You could download the Snake game or whatever.
0:36:10But financial spreadsheets and word processors?
0:36:13Come on.
0:36:14No, they're trying to fit it to a narrative.
0:36:16And honestly, those things bothered me more
0:36:18as I read this book, the idea that they are really
0:36:21kind of rewriting parts of history to fit their thesis
0:36:24and to fit their narrative, than the factual stuff.
0:36:26Like I said, later in the book, they
0:36:28say that the iPhone 3G had a faster processor,
0:36:32and that's not true.
0:36:32They say the iPad 2 had a flash.
0:36:35iPads never had a flash.
0:36:38You think that's-- do they mean like flash memory?
0:36:40Then you try again, you're trying to decode it.
0:36:42They can't possibly mean like a light that blinks, because--
0:36:44That's what they do. They also suggest that the reason that the iOS didn't support Flash is because Adobe angered Steve earlier by either not supporting Next or by building some software for Windows or something.
0:37:00I don't think that was really the motivator.
0:37:02Well, that might be true, but if it is, get a quote from somebody who says, "Yeah, we were in a meeting with Steve and he said we're not going to put Flash on iOS."
0:37:08We had it ready to go.
0:37:09You have to source it.
0:37:10You can't just say Steve Jobs was added--
0:37:12because Steve Jobs has been mad at Adobe many times,
0:37:15reportedly, over many things.
0:37:16But is that why he decided to do this feature of this product?
0:37:18You have to source that.
0:37:20You can't just say it.
0:37:21And the last one, which just made me laugh
0:37:23that I put it in the notes here, is
0:37:24that it is one of the most baldly, factually incorrect
0:37:27things.
0:37:28And I just wonder, again, did anybody--
0:37:30it would have been so easy for them to hire a Mac nerd,
0:37:32essentially, to just fact check this and clear this stuff out.
0:37:35Or look stuff up in Wikipedia.
0:37:37- Exactly, 'cause they say, "On October 17th,
0:37:39"several hundred people attended a memorial service
0:37:41"at the Memorial Church on Stanford University's campus.
0:37:43"The iPhone 4S had been introduced two days earlier
0:37:45"in the company's first public event after Steve's death.
0:37:48"The event took place the day," now this is me talking,
0:37:50"the event took place the day before Steve Jobs died."
0:37:53It did not take place after Steve's death.
0:37:54It was not the first event after Steve's death.
0:37:56They introduced it with an empty chair in the front row
0:37:59for Steve, and he died the next day.
0:38:02That was, it's just, it's so basic,
0:38:04and that is not a far off historical event.
0:38:06that's a couple years ago and they just got it wrong. And, you know, I don't know,
0:38:12it doesn't speak well to the rest of the book. Again, I think that this book is fine,
0:38:16but making all these mistakes, I'm just a little baffled by it. And I wonder whether
0:38:20they were just terrified that it was all going to leak and they didn't want to share it
0:38:23with anyone, but it's like simple stuff that doesn't really matter to your overall
0:38:26thesis in a lot of cases, but you could have done a little extra work and made these mistakes
0:38:32all go away and have people query you on like what's your reasoning for saying that the
0:38:37clones were like this or what's your source about Gil Amelio spending a lot of time on
0:38:43stage because he loved the spotlight, which is not true.
0:38:46Yeah, or saying like do you have different sources than this? Did you just read this
0:38:51in another book or magazine article or did you talk to somebody about this? Because like
0:38:54you said, his relationship started around the next year, so everything before the next
0:38:58year he has to be getting from somewhere. Is he just getting it from other books and
0:39:01magazine articles? That's fine, but if he's going to have different conclusions or certain
0:39:06different facts about it, I keep thinking maybe just take the part that is relevant
0:39:10to you and release it as a really long magazine article or a couple magazine articles. Why
0:39:14do you need to make a book out of it and pad it out with the stuff that you weren't around
0:39:16for by just summarizing other people's work? And to some degree, if you go back and read
0:39:20all these books, you read Infinite Loop and Second Coming Steve Jobs and Revolution of
0:39:24the Valley and what is the other one, East of Eden, and just like there's a million of
0:39:28books around that time, Accidental Empires, they all talk about the same series of events
0:39:34from different angles and they're contradictory. Like, they're dancing around the truth. And
0:39:41I tend to value more the ones that have direct quotes from people who were there, not because
0:39:47their version of events is necessarily correct, but because at least I'm getting one actual
0:39:54So if I I feel like if I can get all of the first-hand perspectives of an event
0:39:59No, one of those accounts of the event will be completely accurate
0:40:02But if I know all of them I can kind of get a picture of what they're circling
0:40:05You know what? I mean? Like that's the only way to know what really happened
0:40:08No one person is going to tell you but if you take together everybody's event and keep in mind what their motivations were
0:40:13how that how that event affected their lives and how you know, like
0:40:17That's the only way to know the truth of history
0:40:19history. You can't—and that's why you maybe need a thousand pages to do a biography
0:40:23of Robert Moses—you have to just get every possible angle and build the truth by sort
0:40:28of coloring in the area that's not the truth and coloring in all the people's biases
0:40:32and all the people's reports, and what's left is the truth in the middle.
0:40:35Yeah, I feel like—I said this after the Isaacson book, and I feel like I have to say
0:40:40it again after this book, which is it is gonna be source material for hopefully another Steve
0:40:49Jobs book that may not be a popular book. It might even be scholarly. I don't know.
0:40:52But I feel like there's like a true story of Steve Jobs book yet to be written. It's
0:40:56definitive. And it's going to have to end up taking the material from these books that
0:41:01was actually reported. So in this case, it's going to be the first-hand accounts from the
0:41:05Apple people and the first-hand accounts from the first person one of the two writers and
0:41:10use that as raw material. Use the raw material from Isaacson where he's reporting what people
0:41:15are saying, and from these other books and other contemporary reports and putting it
0:41:19together into something that puts it in a hole. Because for now, what we end up with
0:41:26is these books where we can pick and choose some things that seem like they're facts
0:41:31or at least they're a particular person's take on it. But I don't feel like there's
0:41:36a book that I can point to and say, "Ah, that's the one. That's definitive," because
0:41:39they're not definitive. They've got little bits that might hint at the truth, but then
0:41:45And there are a lot of other little bits where I feel like, "This is a fun story, but I've
0:41:49literally read this story a dozen times before."
0:41:51Yeah, they need to get to these people before they die, too.
0:41:54So that's one angle.
0:41:55And the second angle is, after these people die, you'll probably be able to maybe get
0:42:00access to all their emails and correspondence.
0:42:03That's where, in the case of the Robert Moses book, a lot of the times you're going through
0:42:08public records, public speeches, letters written to people that are only revealed after everyone
0:42:13everyone involved is dead because you're not going to see someone's personal letters
0:42:16until the family releases them or whatever. The same thing with personal emails. So you
0:42:20need to get the people—interviews with the people while they're alive, and then after
0:42:24everybody dies, you need to get all the correspondence, and then you can build a true history around
0:42:28this type of thing.
0:42:29Yeah, like a Stanford University oral history project that goes and interviews—and for
0:42:35all we know, they did this—but goes and interviews all the people who were involved
0:42:38in Apple in the first decade of the 21st century and says, "We're going to put this under
0:42:43lock and key until 50 years from now or until after you die. Or whatever circumstances you
0:42:49want.
0:42:50And you've got to get their business correspondence, all the paper before there was email. Can
0:42:54you imagine how much stuff is in emails, even just in the short amount of time that email
0:42:58existed for Apple's life? That is going to be way more illuminating than interviewing
0:43:02the same three people who are willing to talk for the umpteenth time.
0:43:05Right. I actually did a story in my college newspaper. We did a story about the guy who
0:43:11was one of the founders of the university and when he died his oral history interview
0:43:15was released and he said many unkind things about lots of people. It's kind of fascinating
0:43:22and that's the kind of thing that you don't ever want to say when you have to deal with
0:43:25the consequences. You wait until everybody's dead and then at least the historians can
0:43:29make some sense of it all. I don't know. Well, I think I'm happy that I read it. I wish it
0:43:36was better. I get, I appreciated their argument, which is basically like people who feel like
0:43:43Steve Jobs was always that one guy and didn't grow as a person in his time away from Apple
0:43:52and came back and then was successful. You know, their argument is, yeah, he did grow.
0:43:59I suppose you could look at his first tenure at Apple and his tenure at Next and then his
0:44:03his second tenure at Apple and say, hey, this guy obviously
0:44:05figured some things out.
0:44:07They try to explain what those things are.
0:44:09I think everybody can judge for themselves
0:44:11whether they're successful or not.
0:44:13Yeah.
0:44:13I think I might come to a different conclusion.
0:44:16It's clear that the results were different,
0:44:17but I'm not entirely convinced that the results were
0:44:20different because the guy changed that much.
0:44:22He did change.
0:44:23He made different decisions and acted in different ways
0:44:25and surrounded himself by different people,
0:44:27but a lot of it has to do with circumstances.
0:44:29Yeah.
0:44:29You know what I mean?
0:44:30I think their thesis-- and I'm not entirely sure.
0:44:33buy this. They really want you to believe that not just failing at Next, but being around
0:44:40Pixar but not being deep down in it because he couldn't be, because he wasn't a filmmaker,
0:44:46that that experience gave him that secret sauce that he didn't have before. And I'm
0:44:52not sure I buy it, but I mean, and Pixar is magical, so that's what they're kind of going
0:44:56for, but I'm not sure I really buy it.
0:44:58Well, see, like, even if you had an interview with Steve Jobs himself and where he said,
0:45:01know what really changed me was going to Pixar and now you know if he just
0:45:04repeated that word for it even that doesn't mean that's the case that
0:45:06exactly that's what he believes right so you really have to get all angles of it
0:45:09and like the stories from both you know the jobs one and two errors of Apple are
0:45:15so similar in so many ways they're just framed differently because now it's like
0:45:19you know he was a CEO and picked the whole board himself right so I'm fired
0:45:24again if if the original Steve Jobs was in the same position that the second
0:45:30around Steve Jobs was in, maybe he would have been just as successful.
0:45:34Maybe he was just set up for failure because he brought in the adult supervision because
0:45:38he didn't trust himself to do all this stuff.
0:45:41He was always going to be—Bose was in charge of him, to use his language.
0:45:47And he was never going to succeed in that thing.
0:45:49And that, I think, is one of the most fascinating things, where how many people have this—how
0:45:55How many potential Steve Jobses are crushed by the fact that they never get into the position
0:46:01where their assets are allowed to result in good outcomes?
0:46:07They're only ever put in, and it's the same guy in both positions, you know what I mean?
0:46:10And this one person happened to have, you know, there's no second act in American life,
0:46:14so whatever, he had a second and third act, and we got to see, it's kind of like running
0:46:18the trial, you know, that, right, we get to run the trial three different times.
0:46:23I'm gonna put the same guy in three different situations and let's see what what happens and what's different right now
0:46:27He's not obviously the same guy but like the entire like the transformation premise that his time in the wilderness changed himself
0:46:34Fundamentally that it was that that made it when he was when he came back. He was able to do things better
0:46:39I think there's some of that but I think there's an equal amount of
0:46:42same impulses same guy in
0:46:46Maybe now wise enough to know that for him to succeed. He needs to put himself in a different situation
0:46:52situation. Yeah, and it's also untestable. Yeah. Well, you know, the Steve Jobs clones
0:47:00that they have underneath the giant circular ring, those will sprout in a couple decades.
0:47:05Once we break through to the parallel universes, we'll be able to see all the different outcomes
0:47:09and find the perfect universe. Let's take a break. I've got another sponsor to tell
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0:49:05a good friend.
0:49:07One thing, Jon, that I thought about, and I thought that I do all these, you know, podcasts
0:49:11like Upgrade with youngins who don't remember back in the olden times. One of the things
0:49:17that when I read a book about Steve Jobs that I realized is the narrative takes us away
0:49:21from Apple. And I think in the public consciousness, there's this thought that Steve Jobs left
0:49:26Apple and it all went to hell and then he came back. And it's almost like they can
0:49:29compress it, like it took a year or something and then he turned around, but it was like
0:49:32a decade. It was more than a decade that he was gone. And although they ended that period
0:49:39of time, Apple did, on the brink of complete oblivion. And there's a fun section in the
0:49:44book about Fred Anderson taking over a CFO and walking in the door and thinking, "Oh,
0:49:49my God, what have I done?" But, you know, that missing decade when Steve Jobs wasn't
0:49:55there, you know, that's when I became a Mac user. That's when I became somebody who devoured
0:50:00all the Mac magazines and that's when I decided that I wanted to write about
0:50:03Apple for my profession. So it couldn't have been all that terrible and I feel
0:50:09like that decade has now just been kind of like thrown into the into the trash
0:50:12as a failure. You know, I assume you became a Mac user during the same
0:50:16period unless you're right at the very beginning, you know, because Jobs was out of there in '85.
0:50:20How could you not know this about me? I had the original Mac in '84.
0:50:24Did you have it in '84? Did you get it right then?
0:50:27- Oh, okay, all right.
0:50:28I assume that a lot of original Mac owners
0:50:31were actually like, well, it was 85,
0:50:33or well, it was the 512, but you're right,
0:50:34you had the 128, so it was 84.
0:50:36Okay, so you came in there,
0:50:38and then Steve Jobs abandoned you, or was sent away.
0:50:41- Here's the, I mean, so at that,
0:50:43what was I, nine or 10 that year?
0:50:45So my recollection of that period was,
0:50:48I got the first Mac, and then I got issue number one
0:50:50of Macworld that told the story of the first Mac.
0:50:53They gave me a backstory for this.
0:50:54- With that picture of the team.
0:50:56Yep, they gave me the backstory on this amazing machine that I had.
0:51:01And at that point, from my kid's perspective, there was this amazing team of people.
0:51:07And Steve Jobs was not elevated to the degree that he is now in that story.
0:51:11It was all about the Mac team.
0:51:12And yes, he was the leader of the Mac team, and he was the figurehead, but it was like
0:51:17a team effort.
0:51:18And they made this amazing thing, and this amazing thing went out into the world.
0:51:22from my perspective as a kid, then this company kept making new versions of this amazing thing.
0:51:27I don't know if I even noticed that Steve Jobs had been kicked out of the company because
0:51:30corporate politics are not interesting to a 10 or 11-year-old.
0:51:35All I knew was that I was reading Macworld and eventually reading MacUser, and every
0:51:40issue they would have some new technological development related to the Mac that I would
0:51:45be excited about.
0:51:46And they added color with the Mac, too, and they kept making new machines.
0:51:51That's what interested me.
0:51:52And I was too young to think, "What comes after the Mac?"
0:51:58I didn't spare a thought about it by the time I was old enough to care enough about Steve
0:52:02Jobs having been gone.
0:52:03I read all those stories and it's like, "Well, you know, he was a loose cannon and it could
0:52:08never last."
0:52:09And Jean-Louis Gasset is my guy because he wanted to add slots and I think that's cool,
0:52:15right?
0:52:16You know what I mean?
0:52:17It seemed fine to me.
0:52:18Only later, as the company starts to go down the tubes, you realize, "Wait a second.
0:52:21This is a company that is iterating on a great idea, but is losing the plot.
0:52:28It doesn't understand what it is that made the Mac great."
0:52:33And when faced with any kind of challenge, like, say, Windows, it had no idea what to
0:52:37do.
0:52:38It just flailed wildly.
0:52:39Eventually, it almost became bankrupt.
0:52:41Then I'm just begging for them to buy BOS or something, anything to rejuvenate this
0:52:45company.
0:52:46there when I was a kid it was all about the Mac the next Mac that was gonna come
0:52:51out and every new Mac was amazing like the the SE was amazing the Mac - oh my
0:52:56god color like hot power books the power books right for Billy exactly that was
0:53:00that was not Steve Jobs saying the keyboard pushed back with a trackball in
0:53:03the middle it's like what like that to find the laptop and just all the crazy
0:53:07frog design things Merrick was the whole issue of macworld where they had frog
0:53:11design do like this is what the Mac the future could look like I was I was
0:53:13eaten that stuff up. It was like, "Yes, that's cool."
0:53:16I hated that issue so much. But yeah.
0:53:18I know, well...
0:53:19Because the way it was framed was like, "Hey, Apple's designs stink now, so we hired Frog
0:53:23Design. Macworld is here to fix Apple for you."
0:53:26Right. If Apple made computers out of latex foam, they could look like this.
0:53:31They could look like this. MacUser, we did a story that was the things from the Apple
0:53:36archive that were the products that were like the concept products that never existed, but
0:53:39At least they were like, from Apple.
0:53:41And similarly, they were like, wow, that's weird.
0:53:44Probably a good call.
0:53:44Knowledge Navigator was one of the first things
0:53:46I remember seeing go, Apple has no idea what it's doing.
0:53:48No.
0:53:49When it came out, it's like, seriously, guys?
0:53:51But the guys who were up becoming Steve Jobs,
0:53:53they're business reporters.
0:53:54So they say basically, the IBM PC came out,
0:53:57and then Apple was irrelevant.
0:53:59And Apple remained irrelevant for a decade.
0:54:00And I think, well, wait, that was the entire period where
0:54:03I fell in love with the Mac, decided
0:54:05I want to read about it voraciously,
0:54:07and then write about it.
0:54:08And they're just like, yeah, it's irrelevant.
0:54:09from a business reporters perspective it was kind of irrelevant but from a user's perspective
0:54:14it was the we were then you know the 10% of people who chose to be different and and we
0:54:19love those new Macs that came out in the power book was super influential it goes against
0:54:23their narrative to say oh Apple did some interesting things when Steve Jobs wasn't there but you
0:54:27know I it makes me mad now somebody recommended infinite loop which I haven't read which says
0:54:32that they they do well somebody else on Twitter you also recommended infinite loop yes yes
0:54:36That's always my go-to for like, you want to read early Apple history, the best book
0:54:40I found that encompasses all of the early, I think it ends with the iMac.
0:54:43Yeah, so it gets--
0:54:44Infinite Loop is the best one.
0:54:45It gets the lost decade, it gets the decade where a lot of books that are about Steve
0:54:50leave Apple.
0:54:51It's about Apple.
0:54:54So I'm going to read that one because I think that might be the thing that hits the spot
0:54:58for me.
0:54:59But I just think it's really funny that it gets cast off with a hand wave and it like
0:55:02encompasses for me the entirety and for you almost the entirety of that time when you
0:55:08become like really obsessed with the Mac and care about it.
0:55:12But there were so few of us though. That's why it gets brushed aside because it is not
0:55:15a pop like the popular story is Apple comes from nowhere and as the Apple says ignites
0:55:21the personal computer revolution blah blah blah and makes a bunch of rich people. That's
0:55:24a popular story just because hey you know like one of the first big tech millionaire
0:55:28type stories, right? And the second story is, "Research into Apple becomes the biggest
0:55:32company in the world." In between there, it's only an interesting story for people who are
0:55:36interested in technology, because there were just so few of us, and we were looked upon
0:55:40as crazy people, because only we could see the things that were better about this computer.
0:55:45For us, it's like, how can you not see how different this is than Windows 3.1? Like,
0:55:50are you serious now? Like, you think these are equivalent? Yeah, they both seem to have
0:55:53mouse basically the same right what like and and it was like this this nuanced
0:55:58distinction that made us kind of snooty and weird and it's clear that's not what
0:56:02the world wants and we sort of hung out in obscurity really interested in this
0:56:10one little company making a small number of computers that were increasingly
0:56:14irrelevant and yet that company continued to make very interesting
0:56:19exciting good products right up to the point where it stopped really doing that
0:56:22had and then kind of, you know, crumbled into dust. Like business-wise, the company didn't
0:56:27have its act together, but product-wise, it was doing amazing things.
0:56:29It did. I mean, in the chat room, we have a quote from the New York Times from 1993
0:56:34pointing out that during Scully's reign, company sales went from 800 million a year
0:56:37to 8 billion a year. I mean, they did grow, but they also became increasingly irrelevant.
0:56:43But I feel like there was a really good period in there where they were doing interesting
0:56:46things. But, you know, this is what you said. What's the -- think about it this way. What's
0:56:51the market for becoming Steve Jobs. I feel like there's really two markets there. There's
0:56:55the market of people who just love Apple and want to read about Apple and they're the tech
0:56:58nerds. And then there's the market that's the business media market, which I think these
0:57:04guys, given their background, that is really what they're targeting here. This is a book
0:57:08that's going to be read by people who want to learn lessons about how Steve Jobs dealt
0:57:13with adversity and how he built such a creative team and all of that. And for us Apple nerds,
0:57:19look at this book and say, one, we say things like, "I can't believe that they said that
0:57:25the iBook was black because it was the MacBook," which, again, the business people, they don't
0:57:29care. They don't care at all. But we're just trying to glean the stuff that we think is
0:57:32interesting out of it because we think the technology story is interesting there. That's
0:57:37probably not what that book is meant for. That book is by business journalists and it's
0:57:42trying to make a lot of money from people who want to get inspiration from the life
0:57:46of Steve Jobs because they believe that they can be the next Steve Jobs, or they can learn
0:57:51how to be a good CEO by reading a lot of business books. And I think that's some of the conflict
0:57:57here. And I realized that as I read that statement, but I still kind of got offended because it's
0:58:01like, "Hey, you were just casting off this whole period where I got really excited about
0:58:06this stuff and then wanted to read about it and wanted to write about it." And you're
0:58:09like, "Yeah, it was irrelevant. Forget about it." But from their perspective, it totally
0:58:12was. I get it.
0:58:13Yeah, a more tech-focused angle would focus on what are the similarities between the Apple
0:58:21of that era, the Sculley Apple, like the things that Apple did well.
0:58:26The PowerBook is a great example.
0:58:27It is like the iPhone in that it sort of redefined the form factor of an existing product.
0:58:32And it was hot.
0:58:33I mean, it was like--
0:58:34--of a laptop.
0:58:35I remember reading stories about famous people spotted with PowerBooks.
0:58:40It was like the cool thing to be seen with in 1992.
0:58:44Right.
0:58:45And after that, every laptop eventually
0:58:47looked like a power book.
0:58:49It was in the same way that eventually every phone looked
0:58:51like an iPhone, roughly speaking.
0:58:54And so the thing to compare would be like,
0:58:56what is different?
0:58:57How did things-- how did they snatch defeat
0:59:00from the Jaws victory and the Scully error and the reverse?
0:59:03Because it was like the company that Jobs had founded
0:59:05had these good qualities.
0:59:06I mean, again, Jobs came and took over.
0:59:08He didn't fire all the employees and start a new company.
0:59:10The people who did all this stuff,
0:59:12like Johnny Ive was there, right?
0:59:13They had him slapping ugly plastic cases
0:59:16around performers, right?
0:59:17Like, you know.
0:59:18- Yeah, well, he did the E-Mate and that was interesting.
0:59:20And he put that little green triangle on the G3.
0:59:24- Yeah, he did the beautiful Newton MessagePad 110, right?
0:59:27Like, they were in, he did the 20th anniversary Mac.
0:59:31Like, those people were all in the company.
0:59:33All these people that did these amazing things,
0:59:35they just were not being utilized.
0:59:36And that's the story.
0:59:38It's not so much-- when Steve Jobs was gone,
0:59:41the company couldn't do any good.
0:59:43And when he came back, they did better.
0:59:44How?
0:59:44He didn't do the work himself.
0:59:45Those people are already there.
0:59:47And so it's, again, in the same way
0:59:49that Steve Jobs was set up for failure,
0:59:51you had all these amazing, smart people who
0:59:53were ready to do great things.
0:59:55And then management, they did great things
0:59:58in spite of management towards the end there, not because of.
1:00:01Like, they were not--
1:00:02the priorities were lost.
1:00:03And again, you have Scully as the CEO didn't quite know.
1:00:06The board then also gets a lot, I think, needs to take a lot of the blame. To use that jobs
1:00:12term again, I think the board were a bunch of bozos because when they got rid of Scully,
1:00:17not to bring sports into this for a minute, so forgive me, but there are stories about
1:00:23teams that fire their coach and they fire their coach because they know who they're
1:00:27going to hire. And then there are those teams, usually bad teams, that fire the coach and
1:00:31then think, "Okay, now let's start looking for a coach." And I feel like that's what
1:00:36the Apple board was like here, which was, "Okay, we got to get rid of Scully." And
1:00:40then they were like, "Now what? Hey, Michael Spindler sold a lot of computers in Germany.
1:00:45Let's try him out."
1:00:46**Matt Stauffer** Do you guys know anybody who knows anything
1:00:48about computers?
1:00:49**Brett Harned** Gil Emilio, he's got a PhD and knows about
1:00:53semiconductors.
1:00:54**Matt Stauffer** We could hire an artist. We got to turn around
1:00:57here. We need to get a turnaround specialist to come in. That's all it takes. You don't
1:01:00You don't need to know anything about Apple.
1:01:01You just know how to turn companies around.
1:01:02It's just a ship that's leaking from that.
1:01:05That is, they do tell that story well.
1:01:07The Apple's a ship and it's got a leak and it's my job to get it to save harbor and then
1:01:11he walks away and everybody looks at each other and says, "What about the leak?"
1:01:15Like, "Kill.
1:01:17Oh, kill, Emilio.
1:01:18Fascinating, fascinating."
1:01:19But so I think the board takes some of the blame because they made that moment where
1:01:22I was like, "Okay, Scully, it's not working.
1:01:23We need to do something else."
1:01:24Like, could they have made Apple—could Apple have not maybe gone so far down in flames
1:01:31if they had brought somebody in who had a clue?
1:01:34Maybe, maybe not.
1:01:35But they didn't bring in somebody who had a clue.
1:01:36They brought in Spindler and Emilia.
1:01:40To be fair to Scully, Apple was in essentially a losing position by the time they kicked
1:01:46Steve Jobs out.
1:01:47Like, there was not—even if they had just merely maintained, like tried to—and they
1:01:52And it did to try to maintain the course or whatever.
1:01:55The IBM PC was a real problem for them.
1:01:58Because you and I both know, once the momentum started to go, once the conventional wisdom
1:02:02became that the Mac and Apple are oddball, and the rest of the world and serious business
1:02:08people are always going to use PCs with Windows and Dot, that narrative is a big problem for
1:02:15the Mac.
1:02:16And Apple, even if Steve Jobs had been there, Apple would have needed to do something dramatic
1:02:19to turn that around.
1:02:20So Scully did nothing to turn it around.
1:02:23Scully was like, "Let's go with it, fine.
1:02:24We will be the boutique high end.
1:02:26We're going to go after the artists.
1:02:27We're going to go after desktop publishing."
1:02:29Like, just, you know, they went in the direction they could go in, and they milked that.
1:02:32But they didn't have, you know, as Steve Jobs would say, "Milk the Mac for all it's worth
1:02:36and get started on the next big thing."
1:02:38They milked the Mac by fleeing from the fight that they just didn't want to engage in at
1:02:41all, and they had no next plan.
1:02:43They had no next thing to replace it.
1:02:44So they were just like, "Gettin' all the gettin's good," or whatever the expression is, right?
1:02:50They did do-- I mean, they took a--
1:02:52Well, the Newton was their attempt at that.
1:02:54Well, so I mean, this is--
1:02:55and I don't necessarily believe this,
1:02:57but let me say it just to try it on.
1:02:59As a defense of John Sculley, it's like, OK,
1:03:01what was John Sculley's approach here?
1:03:03They created premium-priced products in specific markets
1:03:06where they did well and that they could charge that extra
1:03:08money.
1:03:09And they did well with that.
1:03:11And they were profitable for a long time with that.
1:03:13Well, they did well, but not in big picture.
1:03:15Like, they found their niche, their corner of the market,
1:03:18and they said, we can wring a lot of money out of this.
1:03:19because it's a lucrative corner of the market, but they had no sort of endgame.
1:03:23They had no... it was like a sustainable business.
1:03:25If you're Scully, the battle's already lost, you're never gonna be the IBM PC.
1:03:29So instead you're like, "Look, we can build a business off here in the corner," and all that.
1:03:33And then, to Scully's credit, he's like, "Let's do a handheld computer."
1:03:37That's a really good idea, right?
1:03:38That was his vision, and that's the amazing thing.
1:03:41All right, so two things there.
1:03:42One, all the battles are already lost, we're never gonna be the IBM PC.
1:03:45He was in there early enough that that wasn't true.
1:03:47He didn't have to be that fatalistic like in hindsight. We can say oh well like the thing they were set up
1:03:52They needed to do something big, but in the beginning
1:03:54You know in 85 when Steve Jobs is just out the battles not entirely lost at that point
1:03:59It is still winnable with without Steve Jobs if you if you took it, but he's like no
1:04:03We're not even going to try for that battle right and then the Newton that just goes to show like
1:04:08He wanted to be a technical visionary like he wanted to show off his tech chops
1:04:12and he had a reasonably good idea about the whole personal digital assistant thing and
1:04:16And the people at Apple were so amazing that they actually did make, they came really close
1:04:21to everything that we know would eventually define the future of mobile computing with
1:04:25the Newton.
1:04:26Like they were so ahead of their time.
1:04:27They were just a little bit too early and made a couple of few mistakes and the company
1:04:34wasn't really behind them and they really shouldn't have launched when they launched.
1:04:37Like just, you know, the Newton was close.
1:04:41And the fact that Newton was that close, with such a vague, not incompetent leadership,
1:04:47but with sort of fumbling leadership, it just shows how much talent there was sitting there
1:04:51on Apple.
1:04:52How many talented, passionate people who were just waiting to be asked to do something great,
1:04:55that they just misfired by a little bit, and then it went off the side and it ricocheted
1:04:59and just kind of fizzled out into an egg-crackle's poof of dust, just like the drawings on a
1:05:05Newton.
1:05:06Eat up Martha.
1:05:07Right, and so like, you know, it just, it's, it's, that's why I think it wouldn't have
1:05:12taken, you didn't need Steve Jobs to turn things around against the PC. You just needed
1:05:17somebody who had a little bit more of a clue about what this, the situation would be like.
1:05:21Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's, it's an interesting, it's, this is why I'm fascinated by that period.
1:05:27Cause there's like, it's not like it was a total void and there were tumbleweeds blowing
1:05:30through. There was interesting things that happened there and they weren't successful
1:05:33really, but they were interesting. And I literally, my first month on the job at MacUser as an
1:05:42intern was when they introduced the Newton. So I was boarding a sinking ship, let me tell
1:05:50you. Let me tell you. And it was fascinating, but that was, by the time I got to MacUser,
1:05:57I remember my first briefing at Apple was for the, was it Quadra 630? I want to say
1:06:03it was not a four digit number, so it was not a Power Mac.
1:06:06And I was there for the Power PC transition,
1:06:08but it was like a Quadra 630, I wanna say,
1:06:10which is weird, it had the TV tuner,
1:06:12and it had like a motherboard
1:06:13that you could slide out the back, which was weird.
1:06:16And I think of that era, and I think that was when things
1:06:20really started to get strange at Apple.
1:06:22That was when they did the Mac TV.
1:06:24They launched all the Performas,
1:06:2780 billion different Performas.
1:06:29- They were selling them through Sears,
1:06:31it was a confusing time.
1:06:32And the one at JCPenney had a different number than the one at Sears because maybe the bundle
1:06:35was different of like software that they put on them. It was a very confusing time and
1:06:40that's actually when I entered. And so I think about that period now and I didn't get to
1:06:45see as a professional, I didn't get to see even the heyday of the Mac. It was really
1:06:49all starting to spin apart in what was that, the summer of '93.
1:06:55Yeah. And thinking about the Newton, like again, how close it was, the fact that so
1:07:00The Newton didn't quite hit its mark, and then more or less hot on its heels came the
1:07:06Palm to show that you were just off by a little bit, Apple.
1:07:11The Palm was just so much more primitive and so much smaller and so much cheaper.
1:07:17The business narrative then was, "See, Apple?
1:07:19You tried to make this big, fancy, expensive thing that can do a lot of stuff, when really
1:07:22you should have just gone cheaper, because the most important thing was small, cheap,
1:07:26lightweight."
1:07:27That was totally the narrative that Apple had decided to go sort of like everything in the kitchen sink.
1:07:35We're just going to make everything a revolution and this is a platform that can replace the Mac and it's this amazingly powerful thing.
1:07:40And there's data soup instead of files and it's just like, why don't you just do some handwriting recognition?
1:07:44Why don't you just do graffiti on this little dedicated area?
1:07:47We're not even like you right on the screen.
1:07:48It's like, why didn't you just do the stupidest thing?
1:07:51Like you dummy Apple, you're always trying to do these sort of highfalutin, like amazing.
1:07:56Everything's got to be a revolution like the Mac.
1:07:58What dummies you are.
1:07:59When Steve Jobs came back and his first big breakout product, maybe not the iPod, but
1:08:04certainly the iPhone, they did exactly what the Newton was trying to do.
1:08:07We're revolutionizing everything.
1:08:09We are going to make the most amazing thing you've ever seen.
1:08:11No, we're not going to make you write in a little area.
1:08:12No, we're not going to make you use a pen.
1:08:14The iPhone was the Newton strategy, not the Palm strategy.
1:08:18It was the Newton strategy where they actually did it.
1:08:22The business narratives love to just find out
1:08:25who the winner is in the market and then retroactively make
1:08:27a narrative that says, this is the way you should do things.
1:08:30If you're going to do something, you
1:08:31should always make the simplest, most primitive things possible.
1:08:33Don't reach for the stars, because you'll never hit them,
1:08:35and it's pointless.
1:08:36And it's like, they hit it with the Mac.
1:08:38They hit it with the iPhone.
1:08:39Maybe they'll hit it with the watch.
1:08:41Maybe not.
1:08:41But the iPhone was just totally the Newton strategy and not
1:08:44the Palm strategy.
1:08:45And now, what is the business narrative around--
1:08:47I guess the business narrative around the iPhone
1:08:49is Steve Jobs' magic.
1:08:50I don't know.
1:08:51Well, I do think that one of the good things, and I think I said this when the Isaacson
1:08:54book came out too, is one of the positive things about all these Steve Jobs biographies
1:08:57and being pitched at business people and being taught in business schools and all of those
1:09:01things is I feel like, yeah, if they take away Steve Jobs as magic, then what can you
1:09:06do? You know, be magic. But I do think like for all those years where they said, "Look,
1:09:12what Apple did, don't pay attention to it. The answer is not to do, you know, interesting
1:09:17things. The answer is to go as cheaply as possible." And like the antithesis of what
1:09:20Apple was always about. And Apple's success has made it hard to go down that path and
1:09:27ignore what Apple has done. And so even though I don't entirely agree with a lot of these
1:09:31books or even some of the premises that they have, I think it's interesting that we may
1:09:36end up with a generation of business people who have values that are maybe a little closer
1:09:42to Apple in a way that would not have been the case with anybody coming up in the '80s
1:09:4890s when Apple was like poisoned. Well the lesson should not be like I hope the
1:09:54lesson at this point is that conventional wisdom is often wrong. Yeah.
1:09:57So like don't do it like you need to license your operating system. Well no
1:10:00you don't. You need to do what Steve Jobs does. Well no you don't. What you need to
1:10:03do may be entirely different than what Bill Gates did, what Steve Jobs did the
1:10:07first time, what Steve Jobs did the second time. Like that should be the lesson not
1:10:10whatever the most recent successful thing is. Do that. That's what all leaders
1:10:14should do. The lesson should be that a wide variety of strategies can and have worked,
1:10:20and you should really just not look back and say, "I need to do whatever Facebook did,
1:10:27because I want to be the next Facebook." Hopefully that is a lesson that anyone with
1:10:33a long view would take. And you're right that having lots of these different stories kills
1:10:37the previous narrative that you have to just make the software as high margin and you need
1:10:42to license your operating system.
1:10:44Because for the longest time, Windows was so dominant
1:10:46that it was like, Bill Gates has defined the business
1:10:49model for the future of technology.
1:10:50Right.
1:10:50Be Microsoft.
1:10:51Right, exactly.
1:10:52And that was the only possible-- either be Microsoft
1:10:54or be bought by Microsoft.
1:10:56And then Apple killed that one.
1:10:57But now it shouldn't be like, oh, you
1:10:59got to do the Apple strategy.
1:11:00No, we need someone else to come along and kill the Apple
1:11:02strategy by doing whatever the opposite of Apple is
1:11:05and being fabulously successful when we're old grandparents,
1:11:08right?
1:11:09Although I would rather have today's up and coming
1:11:12business people look at Apple and say, "Hey, Apple cares about design and is trying to
1:11:16build products that people want to buy instead of just assembling technology together, and
1:11:21that's what we should do when we build products." I feel like that would be a good lesson for
1:11:24people who want to be tech people to learn. I think that some up-and-coming tech people
1:11:29have learned that lesson, as opposed to the old lesson, because the old lesson was literally
1:11:32like, "Just take a bunch of crap, make it compatible, sell it for as cheap as you can,
1:11:38and then move on to the next thing."
1:11:39That's our bitter Mac user perspective.
1:11:41But I think it builds.
1:11:42Because Bill Gates' lesson really was the old owning control mantra from Apple.
1:11:49It's really important for you to understand what your power position is in the market.
1:11:58You need to be the master of your own destiny.
1:12:01You need to make sure IBM lets you license MS-DOS to other people.
1:12:05Stick that clause in your contract, because that will make the future of your company.
1:12:08need to be shrewd about your business and understand where the value is in the future,
1:12:14right?
1:12:15And that argument didn't go away.
1:12:17Steve Jobs did all that in his second run at Apple.
1:12:20He made sure that his business arrangements and everything were set up.
1:12:23It didn't mean his exact same thing, but he made sure that he controlled the platform,
1:12:28that his deals with the carriers were so lopsided so that he controlled the experience with
1:12:32the whole app store so that Apple could control the applications, the security and viruses
1:12:37and all this other stuff, right?
1:12:40That was him playing up the Bill Gates lessons.
1:12:41And then of course, the Apple lesson is, at this point, technology is ubiquitous enough
1:12:45that it's like a consumer product and you have to incorporate design, right?
1:12:49And then maybe the Apple Watch lesson is you have to incorporate fashion or whatever.
1:12:52The next one is going to be, I learned the Bill Gates lesson, I learned the Steve Jobs
1:12:56lesson, I learned the Apple Watch lesson, and then I'm going to build on that.
1:12:58So they really do, it's not like one counteracts the other, it's you have to learn all the
1:13:02lessons and incorporate them, possibly in a different way.
1:13:05Like the lesson Steve Jobs learned from Microsoft of like seeing how their position at the top
1:13:12of the market was only possible because of the smart moves they made early on about which
1:13:18parts they controlled and which parts other people controlled.
1:13:21Apple took that lesson to heart and used it for hardware, saying we don't have to own
1:13:26all the factories, but we have to make sure all our dealings with the people who make
1:13:30hardware for us are such that we are in the position of power always, that we control
1:13:35again, you know, if they make our max will have this discussion all over again of like,
1:13:39we don't even want Intel making the chips because that is too much of taking control
1:13:42out of our hands. So they're sort of using the Microsoft strategy that they did with
1:13:44software and controlling the market through software and doing it on the hardware side.
1:13:50Yeah, and in reality, you know, the sad thing, not to be a little cynical, but the lesson
1:13:59people are going to take most people are going to take from things like this is, oh, I'm
1:14:03to just do that, which is not, you know, I'm going to do what Steve Jobs did, which is
1:14:06not...
1:14:07They're welcome to try, I mean, but like, I mean, you know, it's not like these are
1:14:11all possible models that can work, but if you're looking, if you're just looking to
1:14:14have a successful business, almost any of these strategies can work if you execute them
1:14:19well.
1:14:20If you're looking to become the next Apple, the next Facebook, the next Microsoft, you
1:14:23will probably need to incorporate the lessons of all the past people and do something and
1:14:28repurpose them for, you know, the modern age, which is going to be different than the situation
1:14:33was for any of those past people.
1:14:35Let me, let me take a break for our last sponsor. It's MailRoute. If you imagine a world without
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1:16:22MailRoute for keeping my mailbox spam-free and for being a good friend of Upgrade and
1:16:29of Relay FM. Thank you, MailRoute. So John, at dinner at the UHL Conference,
1:16:38at the big banquet, I was sitting with Myke and with Marco and Tiff and with Georgia and
1:16:44Serenity was at a different table, I think. A bunch of people. A bunch of really good
1:16:49people. And John Gruper appeared with one of those little telepresence robots, and he
1:16:56actually fell off the stage as a robot. So he'd had too much to drink, I think. But we
1:17:01were discussing a concept that you and I have talked about before, which is the argument
1:17:07about what's a robot and what's not a robot. And so I wanted to ask you briefly, before
1:17:14we wrap the show, are you willing to discuss a few posits in the robot or not genre?
1:17:23Tim Cynova If you insist, but if we're ever going to
1:17:26have our own podcast about this, we're just stealing our own thunder.
1:17:28David Schanzer Or are we promoting? I'm just going to limit
1:17:32it, but I'm excited about the possibility that we could do a podcast in which we determine
1:17:36whether things are robots or not. But I wanted to… So this is where it started, is we had
1:17:44the incomparable draft about… We had computers and we had robots. And the computer draft
1:17:49was recorded first and somebody picked Kit from Knight Rider as a computer. And so then
1:17:53in the robot draft, somebody tried to pick Car, the evil Knight Rider car, and I said
1:18:00that wasn't a robot. And that led to an entire discussion that we had over dinner
1:18:06in Ireland because we're really exciting people about what--
1:18:08Are you leaving out the most important part
1:18:11of your selection?
1:18:12Oh, and then later, Steve, Let's drafted the '80s dance,
1:18:15the robot.
1:18:15Yes.
1:18:16And I said that was a robot.
1:18:17Yes.
1:18:18Let's repeat this again for the audience.
1:18:20Yes.
1:18:21You said that the robot--
1:18:22The dance, the robot was a robot.
1:18:23--the dance from the '80s is a robot.
1:18:25Yes.
1:18:26I did say that.
1:18:27That led to me yelling at you about not knowing what is a robot
1:18:31and what is not a robot.
1:18:32I admit that that was indefensible,
1:18:33but I felt like Steve--
1:18:34I had to give something to Steve at that point. I felt like he needed it.
1:18:37No, that's true. That's a strong point on your part. So without getting too far down
1:18:43here because I want this to be a promotion from our glorious new podcast that we will
1:18:47do at some point, maybe possibly, about whether things are robots or not, leaving the fact
1:18:55that the robot that's a dance is totally not a robot aside, what do you think of this question
1:19:00that, and this was one of the most divisive things at dinner, was that Kit, okay, from
1:19:07Knight Rider, is an intelligent car. So it's mobile on its own. It's got a voice. It can
1:19:14think for itself. It can talk to others. But it doesn't have like arms or anything. It
1:19:18just kind of is a self-driving car that's intelligent. So this is what I want you to
1:19:24think about and tell me is, what makes something a robot versus not a robot?
1:19:29Because I view KIT as a computer--
1:19:31It's going to kill the whole podcast.
1:19:33Oh, all right.
1:19:34Well, I mean, I just think one of the questions
1:19:37is about vehicles.
1:19:38Because the argument that I made was, if you think KIT
1:19:41is a robot, then do you think the USS Enterprise is a robot?
1:19:43Because it, too, is a vehicle with an intelligent computer
1:19:46that can even create its own sentient beings
1:19:48and its holodeck if it wants to.
1:19:51Yeah.
1:19:52As I think we discussed when thinking about this podcast
1:19:57robot or not. In the first episode, you would imagine that we would have to sit down and
1:20:03hammer out the definition of a robot, and then all subsequent episodes would simply
1:20:06be applying this definition to other things in a boring way, because once we've defined
1:20:10it, there's no point in having any other episodes. If we can come to an agreement on what a robot
1:20:14is, it's obvious what, you know, so... We also need to disagree about the definition
1:20:19of what a robot is, or there's also the podcast that's not that interesting.
1:20:21Yeah, but then that's like, that's intractable, like if we're going to convince each other
1:20:24or whatever. Interesting.
1:20:25So do you want me to make a ruling on Kit versus the Enterprise?
1:20:28Well, I mean, I don't know.
1:20:30I feel like I feel like that that is an interesting debate to have about it.
1:20:34A an autonomous vehicle that is itself sentient.
1:20:38Is that a robot? Because what makes a robot a robot?
1:20:41Is it that it is mobile and intelligent or is it that it it sort of appears like a human being?
1:20:48Well, let's let's do something easy just as a proof of concept here.
1:20:51The telepresence robot that John Gruber was driving around the stage at UHL.
1:20:55Robot or not?
1:20:56Not a robot.
1:20:57Not a robot!
1:20:58Because, all it is is a piece of hardware, it's an iPad on a stick with John Gruber.
1:21:03If you could put John Gruber inside there, and that's the only place John Gruber existed,
1:21:06then we're talking about robots.
1:21:08Interesting.
1:21:09But John Gruber is not inside the thing.
1:21:11No.
1:21:12It is merely just an iPad on wheels, and he's sitting comfortably in his house.
1:21:16Okay.
1:21:17That's good.
1:21:18But if John Gruber only existed inside that little stick on wheels?
1:21:21Robot.
1:21:22Inside, yeah, okay, so now let me follow this up just a little bit.
1:21:26Again, just, we're workshopping here.
1:21:28If John Gruber's brain was put in a computer, but it was like in a mainframe, like they
1:21:34have on television whenever they have to hack something, it's a mainframe.
1:21:37It was a big supercomputer somewhere that was just large enough to hold the entirety
1:21:41of John Gruber.
1:21:44But it was like in a big bunker in like underneath the Rocky Mountains.
1:21:49But it was connected to the internet to that telepresence robot on stage in Ireland.
1:21:53Is that a robot or is that just a computer that's controlling a thing?
1:21:58Is that different?
1:21:59Yeah, that's different because the big mainframe thing is not a robot.
1:22:04Again, it would have to be the only place that John Gruber exists would have to be in
1:22:07that thing that's moving around.
1:22:09I think we're making progress.
1:22:10I think we're making progress.
1:22:11the Arumba robot or not? Sure. Okay, so it doesn't have to be sentient, but I mean...
1:22:18No, I mean, yeah, otherwise we can only talk about science fiction.
1:22:23Right, okay. Because we don't have any actual sentient machines, so... That's good. Is Siri a robot? No.
1:22:29Good. I think this proves just how brilliant the robot or not is. What about love? Is love a robot, Jason?
1:22:36That's an interesting question, Jon. Webster's dictionary defines love.
1:22:42What is love, Jason? Baby, don't hurt me.
1:22:44Love is a robot.
1:22:45Don't hurt me. No more.
1:22:47All right. Well, Jon, it has been a pleasure having you on Upgrade. This was actually a
1:22:52lot of fun. And you'll be happy to know that in the great tradition of Upgrade, we have
1:22:56lots and lots of things on the show notes that we didn't get to. But that's fine. That
1:23:01always happens.
1:23:02Robot or not is at the bottom. We got everything, didn't we?
1:23:03I skipped some stuff in the middle, because we've been going on.
1:23:07Oh yeah. We talked about the old times. We complained about books. We did a lot of good stuff.
1:23:13So, thank you so much for coming on. I had that thought when Myke said, "I can't do this. I'm going to be on vacation. I have to go to Dracula's castle."
1:23:20He's so lazy, isn't he?
1:23:21Yeah, I mean, some of us take our microphones with us when we go on vacation.
1:23:25Seriously, like, what's his problem? Like, he can't do a simple podcast? Like, what else does he have to do with his day?
1:23:30He's on vacation with his girlfriend and I think that unlike us who are old married people,
1:23:36he needs to not tell his girlfriend, "I'm going to go away for two hours and do a podcast."
1:23:43He does one podcast a month, right?
1:23:44He's not busy at all.
1:23:49He does more podcasts than I do, which is shocking.
1:23:53But it's good because when people say, "Oh my God, I can't believe you do four podcasts
1:23:56a week," I go, "Yeah, you should meet Myke."
1:23:58Myke does four podcasts a day.
1:23:59Have you checked that he's not twins or triplets?
1:24:02Well I can't prove that because I only ever saw one of him.
1:24:04I have seen him in real life and in fact just did, but you can't prove that there isn't
1:24:11another one.
1:24:12Right, well if you saw him at Ool and you saw him for five minutes and then you saw
1:24:18him five minutes later and you realized when you previously saw him he didn't have a beard
1:24:20but now he does, you're like, "Wait a second.
1:24:23You couldn't have grown that beard that fast."
1:24:24You would really recognize if Myke didn't have a beard, because it is a prominent beard.
1:24:30That's what I'm saying.
1:24:31Maybe one of the Mykes has a beard.
1:24:34Yeah, well, that would not be a sufficient – you couldn't take that Myke as his duplicate.
1:24:39Next time you see him, just put your hand in there and pull really hard, because that
1:24:44could be fake.
1:24:45Interesting.
1:24:46Interesting.
1:24:47Well, so this is my point, is that if Myke does have doubles, he didn't bring them
1:24:50with him, so far as we know.
1:24:52they had the same beard that he had. They were not beardless. He must leave the beardless
1:24:57mic duplicate at home just to record and sends the beardy one out in public.
1:25:01Well, anytime he wants to briefly have a normal life, I'm happy to fill in.
1:25:06Well, I appreciate that. And it was fun to talk about computer things with you, which
1:25:08we've talked about before, just not when we were recording on a podcast.
1:25:11Yes, that is definitely true.
1:25:13That was a nice thing. So thank you. And of course, everybody should, I don't know why
1:25:18they wouldn't have already done this but they should listen to the Accidental Tech Podcast
1:25:23which you can find on iTunes or at ATP.fm.
1:25:25Sing a song, go ahead.
1:25:29And John is on Twitter, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Siracusa.
1:25:34You got it.
1:25:35Ah, I know it well.
1:25:37And as always, this episode, always and forever, will be at relay.fm/upgrades/30 or the show
1:25:46Show Notes are in your podcast app of choice.
1:25:49Myke will be back next week with me.
1:25:51Thank you once again to our sponsors, 1Password, GoToMeeting, and MailRoute.
1:25:56And thanks to everybody out there for listening.
1:25:58We will see you soon.
1:26:01Is Myke going to be re-energized when he comes back?
1:26:16drained of all blood because he visited Dracula's castle.
1:26:18Hmm. I didn't know that he was there. Yeah. Yeah, he was high in the Carpathian
1:26:22Mountains. Dracula was my senior class play. I know every time he mentions that he's going
1:26:27to Romania, I say, "Oh, it's a remote region in Romania," because that's what Transylvania
1:26:32is. That was one of my lines. "Where's Transylvania? It's a remote region in Romania."
1:26:36What do you think about that when you see your kids doing activities at school and you're
1:26:40like, "You're going to remember some stupid part of this activity that you're doing for
1:26:43rest of your life. So whatever line you have in the school play, be prepared to know that
1:26:48when you're 40.
1:26:49Forever. That's right.
1:26:50I hope it's a good one.
1:26:52Yeah. It's a remote region in Romania.
1:26:54Yours, I don't know how you did on that.
1:26:56No, actually, I think in that play I had the most dialogue, but I wasn't one of the stars.
1:27:00I was like the guy who owned the house where the play takes place. So as the host, I kept
1:27:05appearing and saying things that were sort of like either expository or just moving the
1:27:10the story along. And so I had lots and lots of dialogue to say that I had to memorize.
1:27:15I've never done anything like that before. But yet my character was not particularly
1:27:19interesting in any way. I was not Dracula. I was not von Helsing.
1:27:23It was setting you up for your career as a journalist.
1:27:26Yeah, that's right. I was just the guy there saying, "Hey, this is my house." And, "Oh,
1:27:31Transylvania? That's a remote region in Romania."
1:27:34I meant in the way that it was not setting you up for your career as an actor.
1:27:38Yeah, oh certainly. Well, that was the perfect part. Actually, you could argue that having
1:27:42me have lots of dialogue was maybe not the best choice, but, you know, it was the part
1:27:48I was born to play. Mr. Generic Exposition Guy. No acting required. Just read the lines.
1:27:55And so I did.