400: ‘Canadian Girlfriend Vibes’, With M.G. Siegler

0:00:00MG, can we still call it new? Spyglass is new, right? I mean, when did you start?

0:00:05So I started, yeah, go ahead.

0:00:09Well, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for returning to blogging.

0:00:14You're welcome. Thank you for continuing blogging and holding down the floor at all these years.

0:00:20Yeah, I started it in January, sort of ramping since then. Obviously I did this, as you all know, for a living.

0:00:30Many, many years ago, I've been blogging 20 some years, but was doing it professionally for a long time, TechCrunch and other places.

0:00:37And then I've always been doing it on the side, but medium, I was running the 500-ish publication there while I've been doing sort of my day-to-day job as an investor for the past 12 or so years.

0:00:48But yeah, I decided sort of coming into the new year that I was going to take it, going back to taking it more seriously again.

0:00:54So I decided that needed a new publication, a new URL. And so everything else historically is still there, of course, but I wanted to start fresh with something.

0:01:04And yeah, it's been fun ramping back up and getting back into it sort of on a daily basis.

0:01:10Obviously taking inspiration from yourself and a friend, Ben Thompson, and many others who are now doing this for a living.

0:01:18And I still have sort of my day-to-day job on the investing side, but I've been able to free up some time to be able to do this again more.

0:01:25Yeah. Spyglass.org. But of course anybody could just Google Spyglass, and at this point it's going to be your site.

0:01:32But Dave Weiner has always said, I mean, I think he's been saying it since before I even started writing during Fireball.

0:01:42I mean, that's how long Dave has been saying it, that there are natural born bloggers. And the reason I'm almost certain that he said it before I started is I remember thinking before I started writing during Fireball, I really think I could do this.

0:02:01I think this is my format. I think it's turned out pretty true for me, but I would definitely, but I've always thought that's true.

0:02:11And I think you are one. You're a good writer, period. And I enjoy your thoughts.

0:02:16But the blogging thing, I'm not quite sure what the difference is between someone who's a natural born blogger and someone who would have been...

0:02:24Like I always say, if I had been born a generation earlier, I would have aspired to be like a magazine or newspaper columnist.

0:02:30And I think the way I write is sort of like that. And I think you are too.

0:02:34I could definitely imagine a time traveling or an alternate universe, M.G. Siegeler, who was born 30 years earlier, being a columnist.

0:02:43But then the other thing about being a blogger to me is just sort of bouncing around to random topics sometimes.

0:02:50And the linking to somebody else's work as sort of the, hey, the main thing I want to draw your attention to is Joanna Stern's interview with Tom Boger.

0:03:00But here's my comments too. But the selflessness of... I'd almost rather direct... If you only have five minutes, go read Joanna's thing before you read mine.

0:03:10Because that's the main point of this post. And then maybe another post is here. Here's me throwing my thoughts out there.

0:03:16I totally agree with all of that. The only thing I would add, and I, again, I think that that's all right.

0:03:21The sort of the one other element of the quote unquote blogging mentality is like the ability to do it quickly, right?

0:03:29So unlike a columnist of yesterday, you'd have to wait to get edited. You'd have to wait till whenever the publication was going to run or print or whatnot.

0:03:38And now when inspiration strikes, I don't know how you operate exactly, but I'm very much of the mindset that when I read something in real time, my brain just sort of fires up.

0:03:50And then if I can get that down immediately, I can write so much faster than if I have to sort of sit on it for a little while and maybe I lose the inspiration for it.

0:03:58Yeah, that's definitely part of it too, is that you have to be able to work without a net, without an editor.

0:04:06I mean, for me personally, and most people I think who are bloggers end up not working within a publication structure.

0:04:13And so you've got to be your own filter. I know people who are. I think the way the whole world has evolved, it's actually not a good place to be.

0:04:25But I think back in the print era, it was common for there to be, especially in newspapers, writers who were not really great grammatically or terrible spellers.

0:04:39And it didn't matter because they had a copy desk who would patch it up and they'd be great.

0:04:44And it is one of those, I mean, we could go off on a whole discussion about the way journalism has become a sort of white collar college educated career.

0:04:54But throughout most of the 20th century, it was a blue collar. Most people, most working reporters and columnists at big city newspapers didn't even have college degrees period, let alone journalism degrees.

0:05:08It was sort of a lunch pail occupation. You sort of have to be able to do all that. But it's also just the, not just the copy editing too, but just this sort of the filter of is this worth posting?

0:05:20Is this interesting? Is this worth the length that's going into it? You just have to have your own ear for it. You have to be your own editor, which is just is what it is.

0:05:30But to your point about working quickly, it's like, to me, the worst. Oh, I just hate it when it's like, oh, we've got an eight o'clock dinner reservation.

0:05:42It's going to take us 20 minutes to go there. I've already made the family late. We've only got 19 minutes before, so we really should have left a minute ago.

0:05:50And I get an alert about something I really want to write about right away. And it's like, it can wait till after dinner. But God damn it, it just ruins my dinner knowing that I haven't already posted it right away.

0:06:03Oh, yes. That's very much my world. And the last thing I'll say on that is when you were talking, I reminded, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I know like before you were doing Daring Fireball, you had a "real job."

0:06:15And like me, I never studied to be a journalist. I sort of stumbled into reporting. I was working as a web developer and I was writing on the side and I had done a bunch of other random things in Hollywood and other places.

0:06:28But throughout my basically life, I've always been super interested in writing, but I was never going to do it as a reporter sort of professionally. I did a little bit for the school newspaper. I think you did a lot more than I did in that regard.

0:06:42But this is the thing, like I basically always do this and have always written on the side. And now again, going back to doing it more, like I would do it for myself, even if I couldn't publish on the internet.

0:06:54It's just a great advantage of the time that we live in that you can do this and that people are nice enough to want to read in some capacity, which you put out there. Because again, I would do this for myself. It helps me clarify my own thoughts.

0:07:07That's the single best thing about it from my perspective.

0:07:10I wasn't sure if I should save it for the end, but since we're talking about Spyglass now, and I wanted to have you on the show to talk about iPad stuff. There's a whole bunch of stuff I really want to talk to you about. But then you just popped in just the other day with the post about, I'm trying to find it here, because you're posting so prolifically. But the post about, I even texted you about it.

0:07:33Right, standing ovations.

0:07:36At Cannes. Right, and it's at the Cannes Film Festival. And I read three or four articles, a couple of them about Coppola's Megalopolis, which is sort of a mouthful.

0:07:48It's funny, have you, did you, he's been talking about this movie since the 90s. I remember being in college and him talking about it.

0:07:58It's been, it's like white whale sort of project, right?

0:08:01And it looks like a cool title. I think in print when you see it, not just in the title card for the trailer or whatever, but just it just looks like a cool word. But man, is it a mouthful.

0:08:15It's Megalopolis.

0:08:17I did link to it a while ago when sort of the initial reactions were coming out about, even before Cannes, about like the whispers of, is this actually any good or is it frankly quite bad? Because no one was buying it, right? There was no distribution, like no distributor stepping up.

0:08:32And so it led to the very tongue in cheek, which I've sort of felt bad about. Obviously, this is a creative person working on something, but it's just right there for the taking, Megalopolis.

0:08:41Yeah, that's where it is.

0:08:44But this Ovation inflation post, I noticed this, and this to me is being a blogger is, but I, for me, it didn't percolate to the top to where I'd write about it and be snarky.

0:08:57But it could have, I could have imagined myself doing the same thing. But there's every single article about the movies at Cannes this year, it mentions these standing ovations at the end, six minutes, five minutes, seven minutes.

0:09:12And you document this where even for the same movie, it's like there'll be like an article and it'll say that this movie at the end got a five minute standing Ovation.

0:09:22And then it's, yeah, but these other two films got six and seven minute ones. And then an article comes out about this movie, the same movie that just said somebody, the AP said got a five minute Ovation the next day.

0:09:32Now it says it got an eight minute Ovation.

0:09:35It feels like it's like the publicity agents are behind the scenes, like massaging these headlines.

0:09:41Oh, you know that they are, you know that it's the publicity agents and that they're, they don't see this as ridiculous. They see this as like a measuring stick.

0:09:51Oh, let's not say what they're measuring.

0:09:53But it is a great example of sort of blogging, right? Because yeah, like this isn't, this isn't necessarily what everyone thinks about me writing about, but it's just, this is right there.

0:10:04It's all, it's all in our social media feeds. It's like nonstop, especially in the world where these are algorithmically served up. So I liked a few and then all of a sudden I get bombarded with every single headline about the canned standing Ovation and all of the headlines have the number in them.

0:10:19And so I just see the number keeps changing for individual movies and it's like the Kevin Costner one, Horizon. It's gone up like four or five minutes over the span of the headlines and it's what is going on there?

0:10:33Well, and here's the other thing is the thing that made it percolate is I started thinking when I started seeing these from megalopolis, I started thinking, Hey, that's really long. That's, that's really uncomfortably long.

0:10:47You're standing there. Yeah.

0:10:49I would say three or four minutes is uncomfortably long. Right. And, but when you start talking 10 minutes, it becomes like an SNL skit, right? It's like the applause that never ends. If it's true, I'm just saying, even if we concede that it's true, I have never been to a fancy black tie can film festival premiere, but I get it.

0:11:12The whole cast is there. The creative team is there, the director, the writer, the producers, and some of them like Francis Ford Coppola. He's 85, I think.

0:11:24His wife, unfortunately, just passed away.

0:11:26And she had worked. Right.

0:11:28Yes. She made the documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now.

0:11:32She contributed to this film and obviously now posthumously, she did not leave live to see it come out. And it, even if it was a small film, not this sprawling self financed $120 million epic.

0:11:48It's Francis Ford Coppola. He's 85. He's made a new movie. He's on the Mount Rushmore of, and I mean, I know that that's one of those analogies where it's like, hey, wait a minute, if you're going to say Mount Rushmore, it's only four.

0:12:02So I, you could credibly put him on a list of four directors.

0:12:06Certainly in his 1970s movies.

0:12:09Right.

0:12:10He had, that's one of the greatest runs of anyone, probably the greatest run that anyone's had over sort of that, that short of span. But to your point on like the ovation thing,

0:12:17I also have not been to Cannes, so I don't know. I want to go now just to see these ovation, more than the films themselves.

0:12:22But the only thing I equate it to is I live in London now and I, and my wife and I do go to quite a bit of theater from time to time.

0:12:29And so they always have an ovation at the end of, at the end of a live theatrical performance.

0:12:34The longest I think I've ever seen though, is maybe like three minutes.

0:12:39Yeah.

0:12:40I can't imagine 10 minutes, let alone, but the end of that post, I think it was IndieWire brought together sort of the longest over history.

0:12:46There were ones that are over 20 minutes. Like what can that really be true? And their movie, so these, it was like, oh, with the longest one, I apparently was Pan's Labyrinth, which is a great movie, but I mean, is a 20 minute ovation worthy movie?

0:13:00Well, and everybody has been, even if you haven't, like I said, very few people have been to Cannes, but everybody has been to like a school production or like a school graduation.

0:13:10There are moments of our lives where we are emotionally connected to the people who are getting the applause could be our kids and you give them a thing, but it's, come on.

0:13:19I love my son, but after two, two or three minutes at his graduation, I'm, I'm going to turn to my wife and say, what the hell is going on here?

0:13:26I mean, your hands, your hands start to hurt after a while.

0:13:29Right. I mean, I'm, I know I'm not exactly a manual laborer here, but that's it.

0:13:34That would have been a perfect segue into talking about using the touch screen, building a touch screen Mac.

0:13:40All right, well, let's hold that. Let's hold that thought that, and I'll take a break first and I'll do a sponsor read, but it's, and then we'll come, we'll jump right into that.

0:13:48It's a good segue. Get me off this off topic stuff. Hey, let's start by thanking quite frankly, our longest running, most consistent sponsor.

0:13:56I love this company, not just because they sponsored the show so frequently, but it's just such a great product and that is Squarespace.

0:14:04Squarespace is the all in one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online, whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand.

0:14:13Squarespace makes it easy to create a beautiful website, engage with your audience and sell anything from products to content to your time.

0:14:22All in one place, all on your terms, man, that Squarespace has so much great stuff. They've got everybody starting to talk about stuff like AI.

0:14:32They've got a new guided design system that they call Squarespace blueprint, and you can choose from professionally curated layouts and styling options to build a unique online presence.

0:14:42But it's not using chat GPT where there's like a robot telling you what to do. It's just subtly giving you suggestions and guides and snapping things into place in a way where it's, you don't have to know it's AI.

0:14:55It's just smart algorithms, right? It doesn't really matter what it is behind the scene, but it's a really, really next generation stuff.

0:15:02And it really, really helps you so that when you're moving pieces around, they're not just like jumbles in random locations, but they snap into place in logical, smart positions.

0:15:14What else do they have? They've got flexible payments, their checkout accepts everything, credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, and in eligible countries, they've even got options now for the fancy stuff like after paying clear pay, all sorts of stuff like that.

0:15:29It's selling content that you can make a store, selling your time, you can put a schedule on your Squarespace site and have people book time for you.

0:15:42If you're like a consultant, you want to set up like office hours and charge time and consulting for stuff like that. You name it, you can do it email campaigns.

0:15:50It's not just websites, it's pretty much anything you want to do as a publisher on the internet. All of that stuff is built into the Squarespace system.

0:15:58Where do you go to find out more? Go to squarespace.com. You get a free trial, 30 days, no limits, no watermarks. It's the full fledged, full Squarespace experience for 30 days, no limits.

0:16:10You can see it all and then when you're ready to pay at the end of the 30 day free trial, go to squarespace.com/talkshow.

0:16:17Know the just slash talk show and you save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain squarespace.com/talkshow.

0:16:26Yeah, we better get to the iPad stuff because if I save it, we risk cutting it short.

0:16:33So new iPad pros. I mean the new iPad Airs, I actually give credit to Apple for not trying to pretend like there's anything fancy or interesting about them.

0:16:43They didn't even send me one as a review unit, which I'm sort of glad because it's one less thing to send back.

0:16:50I'm sure they seeded some to some people, but what's there to say?

0:16:55And even in the keynote, Turnus even said, he described the iPad Air as an iPad that gets hand-me-down technology.

0:17:04He didn't say hand-me-down, but effectively years old technology that debuted in iPad Pros.

0:17:09As it becomes more affordable, put it in the iPad Air. There you go. It's nice.

0:17:13We debated for a long time like why they kept the MacBook Air name around and we don't have to belabor this.

0:17:19A lot of people talk about this, but isn't doesn't it just seem like they should just call it the iPad again and not the Air,

0:17:23given that the Pro is now thinner and lighter. It's not like the legacy stuff with the MacBook Air again.

0:17:29That is great. Brand cache. People know it. So I get why they're doing that.

0:17:34iPad Air, just go back to iPad.

0:17:37Yeah, I kind of feel like they wrong-footed themselves marketing-wise there, but it's sort of like Ken Sigal.

0:17:50I'm not quite sure how to pronounce his surname, but he's a former Apple marketing ad person who's in his retirement,

0:17:57has commented from the peanut gallery on Apple's advertising, had comments about the crush ad controversy, which I put in quotes.

0:18:06But he's had a I don't know where it came from, but is saying it told Wired that he thinks Apple should drop the eye prefix,

0:18:14which to me makes it was he quoted out of context because that's the dumbest big change.

0:18:21You can't you can't possibly take the eye out of iPhone. You can't just call it Apple phone.

0:18:26I mean, it's just too much. I think there might be people at Apple who never liked the eye prefix, who wish they had done that from the start.

0:18:33But it's too late. But in the way that I something tells people, oh, this is an Apple product.

0:18:40Right. And the way that there are zillions of people who call their Apple watch the iWatch. Right.

0:18:46I mean, to this day. Right. And there were I think that a majority of the people who bought iPod touches the iPod,

0:18:54the thing that was called an iPod that was really an iPhone without the phone parts.

0:19:00I think there were more people who called it. I touched them who called it the iPod touch.

0:19:03I mean, they tried to call Apple TV, ITV, but the whole like, yeah, there's a branding issue.

0:19:09Yeah. Another ITV. But also, but I think what that is to a prefix air is to a suffix.

0:19:17It's a way of saying this is an Apple product or a Nike sneaker, I guess.

0:19:22But yeah, true. And now because I pit air and Mac MacBook Air, I guess it's like consumer grade.

0:19:30It's this is the sweet spot for most people. Right. That's what air means.

0:19:34MacBook Air. If you don't really know which MacBook to buy, just get the one that's called MacBook Air and you won't go wrong.

0:19:41And that's it is true. And that's what it means for iPad, too.

0:19:45If you don't really know which one to buy, you should probably just buy the iPad Air.

0:19:50But it is funny how it's all lost the original meaning from the original MacBook Air that Steve Jobs famously took out of the Manila envelope,

0:20:01where air meant crazy light and crazy thin. And because the iPad Air is thicker and heavier than the iPad Pro and the iPad Pro,

0:20:16the new ones, the the main advertising thing they're talking about is thinness.

0:20:20That was actually the main point of the crush ad crush. Right. Exactly.

0:20:25Was that it is you'd need a hydraulic press to make all this stuff fit into something five point one millimeters thin.

0:20:33And I know you saw the most recent rumor because you linked to it.

0:20:36I think was the information reporting that there's going to be the net, not this coming iPhone, but the iPhone a year from now will be thinner.

0:20:44So is that going to be the iPhone Air? No, I don't think so, because it's going to be more expensive, they say.

0:20:49Right. That's part of the route or whatever. Right. It would be iPhone Max or I guess Max has already taken.

0:20:55So I'm guessing ultra or extreme or some other new name. But it's it's it it leads into it is kind of funny that Air's lost its meaning in the same way that I supposedly originally meant Internet,

0:21:09like the iMac was the Mac for the Internet or something. And it's yeah, it just means Apple.

0:21:14It means it just means what it means. And it's just funny, though, because I think it's humorous that iPads get thinner as they go pro.

0:21:25And to the relief of Mac fans who were concerned about Apple's interest in the pro high performance market, MacBook pros now mean once again thicker and heavier and more powerful.

0:21:42It exemplifies the difference between how Apple views the iPad and Mac platforms that the word air and the word pro that on the one side pro just means nicer and thinner and also faster.

0:21:54But, you know, you could obviously if they wanted to make the iPad pro as thick or thicker than the iPad Air, it would have 30 hours of battery life or more.

0:22:07I don't know, could have 40 hours of battery life, right? Like they could make it a tank, right? Sort of like the 16 inch MacBook Pro is and it would last forever.

0:22:18Right. So, okay. So where are you at on this debate? I feel like I've been arguing about this on the Internet nonstop for the past week or so.

0:22:25Yeah. With Steven Sinofsky, who obviously has all sorts of interesting context in this debate as well, given his Microsoft background and having worked on Surface and Windows 8 back in the day.

0:22:36Where are you at on the debate of I mean, my stance is a little bit more nuanced. I would hope to believe but basically there's two sides.

0:22:48Should there be the touch screens on MacBooks and that's like sort of tangential to what I've been sort of arguing about, but it's basically driven by the new iPad Air, which I have and is great.

0:23:00Incredible piece of hardware, of course.

0:23:02Wait, iPad Pro, you mean?

0:23:03Sorry, iPad Pro.

0:23:05I screwed it up. iPad Pro, incredible piece of hardware, as everyone's noted.

0:23:09iPad OS is problematic, as most people have noted. It's so long into this lifespan of the iPad itself, we still have sort of some software issues.

0:23:19All I want and all I'm saying is for the option to be able to run Mac OS on it.

0:23:26They run the same chips now. It seems like it should be more than powerful enough, obviously with the M4 getting to this product first.

0:23:34There's no question about that. I mean, it even just recently came back up. I think, let me make a note, so I'll put it in the show notes.

0:23:42I think Stephen Hackett at 512 pixels linked to the guy, but somebody obtained the developer kit from the Apple Silicon announcement in 2020, which was like a little, I think it was like a Mac mini shaped box with an A12Z or A12X.

0:23:58But it was effectively the iPad system on a chip in a Mac mini box, and it was fine.

0:24:04There's no reason to think so.

0:24:06This one with the M4, which quite literally has clearly the best single core performance of any computer Apple makes and among the highest single core performance of any computers in the world.

0:24:19That's and single core performance is more important than multi core performance for most typical users. The web famously is all single core, right?

0:24:30Java, there's I don't even know. I have a computer science degree. I cannot explain why.

0:24:34But JavaScript is inherently single threaded or something. I don't know.

0:24:39There's when you load stuff in a Web page, single core performance is the most important thing.

0:24:44And it's clearly technically it could run Mac OS.

0:24:47So the iPad Pro is the best at this now. I mean, there's there's slight worry maybe about the ramp, but Apple still sells even MacBooks with eight gigabytes of RAM.

0:24:56Right. And now, of course, we know even though Apple doesn't tout it, that the higher the more expensive versions with higher capacity of 16 gigs of RAM right in the iPad Pro.

0:25:05Right. Definitely fast enough, obviously, to run anything that you could put from a Mac OS perspective on it.

0:25:12And so so where do you stand on this again? I'm not talking about touch screen max. It's a different topic.

0:25:18And I'm not even talking about using the touch screen. I would just envision a world where as a as a pro level consumer who wants to be able to do certain workflows on a device that I have with me always being.

0:25:33And I would like that to be the iPad Pro if I could just boot up Mac OS and not use the touch screen, not have to worry about reconstituting Mac OS to be touch ready.

0:25:43Just use it as a screen. Just use the great new LED OLED screen as a as a screen and not as a touch screen and run Mac OS on it.

0:25:52So here I think it's a great I think everybody who's in the blogging punditry podcasting game should send Apple a thank you note for giving us this topic, which is evergreen.

0:26:12And seemingly has a long future ahead of it as well. I've changed my mind to some degree on this, and definitely I you know, I think I have enough credibility that you know, and I think listeners people listening to me know I'm not doing it.

0:26:32To for the sake of being a contrarian I've honestly changed my mind because I just don't I don't play that game. I'm not going to take a contrarian take just for the sake of being a contrarian or if I do, I'll say it up front that I don't really mean this but let me play devil advocate for a second, but I really mean this where I've come around and I've been an ex.

0:26:53I think very vocal critic of iPad OS is limitations, where it's when it the way scaling up to to power usage, but I've changed my mind, I think to some degree, but I think it's complicated, and I do think the other the main thing I think, and it made me rethink this is why hasn't Apple done this why isn't Apple doing this, and

0:27:21the one thing that really started the gears turning for me to sort of change my mind on this. I think a year ago I would have been like, Yeah, I think that they should I don't think an iPad should dual boot Mac OS because I think rebooting the machine is you're talking about a

0:27:40that ship has sailed some of synopses points, right? That's but that yeah, it's it's just a way of thinking about computer devices that is you're thinking about something from like 1999 that you'd have boot partitions and you could reboot your Mac into

0:27:57BOS or install Linux on your power PC, Mac or or PC or whatever and you dual boot into things. It's, that's, that's not how Apple devices work in the modern age. But could there be like a Mac app or mode or something that would come up on the fly and I think a year ago, I'd be more in favor of it.

0:28:17But the thing that really got my gears turning was the fact that vision Pro shipped with this support for opening up a Mac window in vision OS. Now, the downside of using that as, as, hey, here's how moderate today's Apple in 2024 is thinking about bringing

0:28:41Mac stuff you need a Mac for two platforms that natively don't support whatever it is you want to do.

0:28:50The cynical take on all of this is that Apple's whole scheme of what has touch what doesn't have touch what runs Mac OS what runs iPad OS what the limits are, is all about somehow tricking people into buying more devices than they actually need that.

0:29:11And and at some point, yes, of course, Apple does want every customer to every customer who buys an additional Apple device that are there. That's their business. Right. So of course, they kind of want someone when you can sell to of course, yeah. But

0:29:26it long, they know this long term, making unsatisfied customers is not in their interest. And so if everybody this this, this cynical idea that it's all about selling a Mac and an iPad to people when if they would just do the quote unquote obvious thing, people could buy one of them

0:29:49and be satisfied for all of their needs. I think you're missing the fact that that if that were really true, that would mean they're deliberately making customers unsatisfied. And so that that's going to lead people to buy devices that aren't from Apple, that's going to make people say

0:30:09And that's a whole that we can get into that in a second with what Microsoft is doing with surface, but two prompts off of that for you. So one. Okay, yeah, agreed with this sort of the cynical take. Obviously, there's there's some truth to Apple, hoping that people will buy more devices, of course, but I agree. You're not going to be in business forever. If you are pissing off your customer base. I do think that people are getting more upset. Obviously, this is anecdotal. But you see, I feel like I'm going to be a little bit more

0:30:38of the cycle. And perhaps it's because they put the M4 chip in the iPad Pro. And so it's the fastest chip now that they have available. And yet you have to run sort of this operating system, which are a lot of people have problems with an iPad OS. So maybe there's more vitriol around it because of that. One other though, offshoot of what you're talking about. I sort of am now wondering if Apple's not just being stubborn to the legacy of the company. And this sort of goes to, you know, getting the best of the best of the best.

0:31:07And then there's the other sort of things that Apple has been doing. And I wonder if Apple isn't being a little bit too stubborn in their mentality around these things. And this being the prime example, but not the only one.

0:31:20Everyone knows that Steve Jobs loved the iPad, that that iconic sort of unveiling of him sitting on the chair, the leather chair, using this device as sort of the in between. Is there a space in between the dumpling, the

0:31:46dump trucks analogy, all of that sort of stuff. And so to go against that, and basically have to admit that for the iPad Pro to fully meet its full potential, it needs to run an old school legacy OS would be admitting defeat and going against the legacy of Jobs. And I worry that that's like the mentality right now and why they're not doing more.

0:32:08Well, I think that's a great point. And I worry about that, too. And I do think I'm usually I just I there's two types of people who comment about Apple, those who reach for the Steve Jobs would have or never would have first and the people who are reached for that last and I'm, I think that's one of the things that I'm really, really, really concerned about.

0:32:30I do think that in broad strokes, outside outside observers got Steve Jobs essentialness to cut to Apple wrong. It wasn't that he was the guy who invented all of this stuff and came up with all the ideas. He had good ideas, he had good ideas, he had good ideas, he had good ideas.

0:32:54I think that he was the guy who invented all of this stuff and came up with all the ideas. He had good ideas he had, obviously had is the best thing was the taste. But it's, it's more the things that I think they miss from him are much more subtle, I think they miss his impatience.

0:33:14I think the company moves much slower now. And because you kind of have to be a tyrant to get a company to move that fast you you do and I don't know that they have that. And there's a, in this case, a certain fearlessness that I wonder that if they lack and here's the perfect example, we're talking about like maybe having a Mac app on iPad pros,

0:33:43where you would be just an app or something, and you tap it and now you're in a Mac mode. The original iPhone, the what we now call music. Do you remember what the app was called? It was called iPod. The app was called iPod.

0:34:00That orange icon of an iPod. Right? Yep. And that is all part of the famous keynote unveiling. You know, it's not three different devices. It's one device and internet communicator, a widescreen iPod with touch controls and a breakthrough internet communicator. Or what did I just repeat one? I forget what the what was it? widescreen iPod with touch controls, breakthrough internet communicator. Oh, and a phone, of course.

0:34:26The most important part at that point, at that point, and now, of course, it's the one that the three I forgot, but, and famously, and then they said, they'd ask, aren't you afraid it's going to cannibalize iPod sales and everybody up and down the company swore? Well, we want to cannibalize our own products, because otherwise somebody else will, if we don't do it, somebody else will. And they clearly did it. I mean, the iPod, it's almost shocking how, how many how few years it took for them to just stop selling anything.

0:34:55called iPod. But almost biggest business for Yeah, or at least by quantity. I don't know that it ever. I forget how big it was by revenue compared to the Mac, because it was a very different compare, right? The iPods really got popular once they dropped to 199 for really good, really good iPods for $199. And Max are $2,000 and stuff like that. But by quantity, and by the number of users who only own one Apple product, that Apple product is a really good one.

0:35:24product, that Apple product being an iPod, not a Mac was huge, right? And I remember people used to say, partly because they've never put the word Apple on their stores, but you'd be in the mall, and you'd hear kids say, let's go to the iPod store, you know, that that's how well known it was. But just calling the app iPod, it was a way of communicating to you, you don't need an iPod, right? You just get this get this phone and your iPod is actually just an app on the on the phone. Do they

0:35:53would they do that today? I don't know. I don't I think they would tell us Yes, of course we would because they know that in hindsight, that was clearly the right decision. But is that the core problem today that that that they don't have that fearlessness right and like

0:36:14I like that you put it as fearlessness like the way I think about it is like the ability of jobs which obviously pissed off people internally is as has been well documented over the years of him his ability to change his mind right and so you can imagine that yeah, jobs totally believe that that the iPod sorry that the iPad should be a totally different device, you know, and never have a keyboard and even though of course they did launch with that ridiculous vertical keyboard thing for

0:36:44doing great email or whatever it was at the time but but we're a long way away from that but but jobs his ability to change his mind right he would hear an idea he would say it's shit and then a few months later it would be the idea that they're going with and it feels like you call it fearlessness I wonder if that's not the same exact thing of right like just being willing to go back. I strongly held beliefs.

0:37:03I now that I'm thinking about this on I'm thinking and I don't know maybe I'm wrong but I'm thinking that while jobs was there they made more mistakes than they've made sense but that that's actually.

0:37:18A good thing I like that that's a great framing and and again I'm sure people will point out the ways in which that's either right or wrong but it does feel right right it feels like they were taking more.

0:37:31Risks the right mix is to make few mistakes but to be pushing the borders and pushing new ideas bold new ideas frequently enough that some of them are never will be going to be mistakes and then just have the humility to recognize the mistakes and either.

0:37:52Retract them or fix them or do something and I think that's where jobs is fearlessness came from where yeah let's just call it iPod let's let's try to just completely.

0:38:05Cannibalize the iPod with an one app on this phone and if it didn't work out if the phone hadn't hadn't been a I know I think they were pretty confident it was going to be a success but they didn't know they and they certainly didn't know things like.

0:38:20How other carriers around the world would would accept that going forward I think Apple in some ways is surprised by the iPhones dominance of this entire industry is anybody just because the carriers were such an obstacle and if it hadn't worked out then back to OK I think Steve Jobs was confident we will go back to making great iPods.

0:38:46And so I agree with all that the counter to that point would be I expect if Apple were to make a counter to it would be like.

0:38:54Yes but that's the iPod which is like a widely used mass consumer usage of listening to music what we're talking about here with sort of a Mac OS app on the iPad.

0:39:08That's something that really only power users are ever going to have the desire to use and we don't want regular users to have to worry about that or think about that or think that that's the way that you have to graduate up to using a real a quote unquote real computer like that.

0:39:23Yeah alright but I still didn't answer your question which is where do I stand let me just make this point before I forget to make it but the that cynical point that Apple is only interested in supporting things like Mac in a window on vision and I think I've almost I don't want to.

0:39:47Call it a rumor but I'm fairly I would bet money that it WWDC next month they're going to announce even richer support for that either a bigger screen or like multiple Mac windows in the vision I've heard.

0:40:04That people inside Apple even since before it shipped to customers have been using a much richer version of the Mac whatever I always forget what it's called Mac display mode something like that Mac display.

0:40:17Remember what it's called either but I would be a part of like vision OS 2 potentially but but that that cynical oh but Apple will only support that if it means buying more devices is the fact that even if you're wearing this $4000 headset.

0:40:31If you want to do Mac stuff with this $4000 headset and an Apple trackpad which is the only trackpad that works with it and a Bluetooth keyboard although it works with any Bluetooth keyboard you need an actual Mac right in front of you to do it.

0:40:48I get it technically why that's I get it why that's it's not ridiculous and I don't think it's all about device sales but it does give credence to those who argue that all of Apple's decisions in this are informed by device sales and selling a vision pro and a Mac and an iPod.

0:41:09I mean iPhone and an iPad to everybody but that that got my wheels turning on this and because that's sort of what I'm thinking and I think a beefier vision pro clearly could this is where I'm thinking.

0:41:24Why does it require you to have a Mac in front of you right and it's like oh well it's an M2 I think it only has 8 gigs of RAM I forget maybe that's 16 I forget what vision pro has but.

0:41:35It's easy to imagine though it's easy to imagine an M4 version of it and clearly it's going to skip the M3 right.

0:41:43Gurman is saying that they don't even have plans to replace the pro one for years which I would assume if that's true that that means that there's a non-pro vision headset in between there's no way that the next vision hardware is scheduled for 3 years from now.

0:41:59A lighter cheaper version.

0:42:00Right something.

0:42:02But it's very Apple Silicon is so performant and that's this is sort of where Apple is caught by their own chip expertise and the fact that they're the ones who are the first to tell you how great their chips are right there's no doubt the Silicon is capable of it of running a virtualized Mac and if anybody.

0:42:19Anybody out there who's run any modern virtualization in recent I would say the last decade maybe 15 years it works great.

0:42:29It is especially if it's if you're not cross compiling like to run an Intel compiled operating system on arm this is all the same Silicon right it's all compiled for Apple Silicon it could run very efficiently it definitely could.

0:42:45I I just think though.

0:42:49I kind of I still I'd like to see them do it just have it be like an app but on the other hand it gets confusing so you launch that app on your iPad pro.

0:43:01And and let's just say that that app gets magical.

0:43:07Superpowers from iPad OS where it's allowed to stay running in the background or something you know.

0:43:13Things one of the great example keyboards attached to yeah if the keyboards.

0:43:19But then it's all you're supposed to be able like when your iPad pro is in the magic keyboard you're supposed to be able to just.

0:43:27Snap it off magnetically and just keep going something it's not supposed to as you snap it off make you wait a couple seconds or even if it happens quickly it's not supposed to vanish right if you're looking at Mac Safari while you're docked in your magic keyboard and you think oh I want to go downstairs.

0:43:49I don't want to take this whole thing I'll just pick the iPad up it's not supposed to change the interface instantly it's just it just disconnects and nothing changes on screen and now you're using touch it is.

0:44:01Contrary to the iPad experience to do it.

0:44:06I get that it's that seems like a sort of an extreme case though and again I just think you have to trust sort of that though even if it's a smaller base the power user base that sort of vocal about this.

0:44:19That they know they'll know what to do it and if they really really really want to do that.

0:44:25I think I think you can let them do that and just see how it goes okay and the one other thing here.

0:44:32If the reporting is is accurate and and german has hit been hitting his he's calling a shot Babe Ruth style as you as you alluded to.

0:44:41If they are actually working on touch screen Mac books.

0:44:45At some point they're going to have a touch version of Mac OS and so are they just waiting for that to come about.

0:44:56I would think that that probably plays into it because that's the other thing is Mac OS as it stands right now has no touch screen support at all.

0:45:06I could imagine them again other companies might do this but it's not the Apple way of thinking I could see them adding pencil support without touch if you have a pencil the pencil works on the Mac but your finger doesn't only the pencil.

0:45:22But now you're you're making more rules that people have to remember but as it stands right now.

0:45:28With Mac OS with no touch screen support it's it would be really weird to be using it on an iPad without the trackpad connected and.

0:45:42You can fake it now you can try it yourself and see what it's like by using like a VNC app there's a great one I love from a company called Adobe a called screens.

0:45:52Where you could just try the demo if you just really want to see what it's like to use a Mac on an iPad screens is a VNC app you run it on your Mac and then.

0:46:01As the server sort of and then on the iPad you're the client and you connect to your own personal Mac and now your Mac appears on your iPad scaled to fit the screen.

0:46:12And you can see what it's like simulating mouse clicks with your finger it's it works but it's not great and lots and I would say most it defines the difference between Apple and the rest of the computer industry the rest of the computer industry has lots and lots of things where it's like.

0:46:29Well it works but it's not great but it but but working at all is better than not working that's what most people think there's a lot of people that's a credible.

0:46:41Perspective to take on technology that being able to do it sub optimally is better than not being able to do it at all where is the Apple way is it's either a great experience or we'd rather not offer it at all.

0:46:54And I told I have a sweet totally agree with that I just think you only do it in the case where it's it's someone who's bought the $300 Magic keyboard.

0:47:05And it only operates in that environment after some silly first time disclaimer pop up about it and all this sounds very inelegant and I'm sure Apple would figure out a better way to do it.

0:47:15But that's a I mean just even if you just zoom back and you just think about how awesome would it be if you can carry around.

0:47:23Your $2000 whatever it ends up being for the highest end iPad pro.

0:47:29With the Magic keyboard.

0:47:32And it runs iPad OS for for the good stuff for the stuff that it's good at like entertainment watching shows and you can take it on the road.

0:47:39And it's great for that but when you need to get some work done in the old school ways that many of us unfortunately are just used to working it can boot up and run it as an app.

0:47:51Mac OS Mac OS and you can do what you need to do there and that's it and Joanna push Tom Boger on it and he said well I'll never say we don't change our minds and that is you know I could see.

0:48:07I would guess that either a one way of looking at it and and I think that so many people who are like like us you mean you and people who listen to the show people who read our sites nerds power users where everyone to call it the people who are frustrated by this.

0:48:23Federico Vitici who wrote was the biggest I made his own hardware to write made his own hardware to do it.

0:48:31Which is really great or just exemplifies how enthusiastic he is about the intersection of these things.

0:48:40I still think though that at a certain level we're we're overthinking this and thinking that Apple's got some kind of complicated scheme or that like it some people the cynical I've said this multiple times already on the show that it's all about trying to sell people an iPad and a Mac instead of just one.

0:48:59Other people think maybe there's other things they're thinking of but also maybe just listen to what they're saying and that's actually what they believe I actually think that if you if you're convinced Apple is.

0:49:15Blocking this for reasons they don't want to explain then you see Tom Bogers comments to Joanna Stern and you're like this guy is just being like a politician who doesn't want to answer the question.

0:49:29But if you just eat even if you don't believe me but just for a moment step back and think well what if Tom Boger really believes every word that he's saying and read it again it does hold water it holds water that they see the Mac as this device that because it is mouse pointer first.

0:49:47Has an interface that is not good for touch and Ben Thompson my dithering colleague wants to hear and I see that I see his point he said he would he would be happy if Mac books only supported touch just for scrolling and tapping buttons and links.

0:50:05I get it you know that if you just want to scroll or something and everybody has stories about their little kids who are so used to all over your screens all over their screens all over people their TVs I mean I'm glad my kid was born a little later my kids is halfway through college now so I miss that but my God it would have killed me if he.

0:50:26My older daughter is exactly like she will come up to if I'm sitting there typing on my Mac book in my lap she just just how would she not know that you can't touch it because she knows this is the iPad where she can touch it.

0:50:39I honestly do see that as the biggest reason that Apple might be eventually breakdown and add touch support to Mac OS is the inevitability.

0:50:50It's inevitable it's inevitable like kids grow up learning that and you're going to teach them to work to use the screen that you can't touch because you're an adult now.

0:51:00If it looks if it looks like a full color flat screen.

0:51:06Kids today think it must support touch and it largely it's true you get into a rental car if it looks like an iPad guess what it is it is like an iPad you can touch it right it'll just take 17 touches to try to make it actually work but yes yes touch.

0:51:21But so even if your rental car from Chevy has a touch screen well of course it makes sense that of five or six year old assumes that your Mac book which looks like a much nicer screen from a company whose logo means touch screen on all these other devices.

0:51:36Of course you think it has a touch screen so at that there might be a certain inevitability there and it might be that there it's a years long plan to get a future.

0:51:47You know to make us suffer still with iPad OS because German German has said that it coincides with Max getting OLED screens too.

0:51:56I could see it and and there are ways.

0:52:00To like the things I'm concerned about and I'm no longer worried except as like a like a 1% well you never know but I'm no longer worried that Apple doesn't see.

0:52:15The Mac as needing to remain the Mac and I'm sure there are ways and Apple prides itself Apple this is where Apple gets to be Apple and.

0:52:25Come up with clever solutions is how how do you support these small targets densely packed together nature of the Mac interface in a touch and support touch well.

0:52:41It was easy and people say well how come iPad OS supports a cursor and trackpad so well why can't the Mac support touch but it's it's much easier to go that direction.

0:52:52If you have an interface that's designed for touch with big targets for your fat fingers widely spraced spread apart.

0:53:00To keep you from inadvertently touching the wrong one then adding a precision mouse pointer well having a more precise pointer with a.

0:53:11Big interface is fine whereas vice versa it doesn't work we're having an interface where the red yellow green buttons in the window are very small very close to each other.

0:53:25I'm looking at my menu bar here on my Mac and all the little icons I have up on the upper right side of my menu if it were a touch screen they'd have to be further apart from each other but they were already getting dangerously close to my notch right so there isn't room to make them.

0:53:41I don't know Matt Burchler who has a great blog at Birch Tree was writing about the red yellow green buttons this week and hype just spitballing on a touch support for Mac and he had a clever idea and again there's all sorts of other ways to do it but his idea is if you added touch to the Mac.

0:53:57You'd keep the red yellow green buttons but when you touch that area it's almost with touch as opposed to a mouse pointer it would be like one button the whole red yellow green thing is like one button and would just open a little menu right there with close zoom.

0:54:14Minimize what if so everyone's talking about the really cool feature on iPad pro where with the pencil now it does like the shadow effect as you approach yeah right.

0:54:25You can envision a world where in a future hypothetical Mac book that has touch screen on it as your finger gets close those buttons in big and yeah and you can like sort of reach out and be able to actually touch them.

0:54:40Perhaps I do think that there is a that a core mistake that the nerd crowd makes is and I think it betrays a certain entitlement a sort of technical sophistication entitlement which is hey if you're going to call it pro and you're going to sell it for $2000 or more.

0:55:02I forget what a maxed out 13 inch iPad pro with the pencil with this more magic keyboard it's it's a lot to write 'cause the yeah the two terabyte thing is expensive if you're going to charge that much money and you're putting your most cutting edge the art.

0:55:18I would say the industry's leading edge silicon in it.

0:55:25You're obligated to make it for professional use cases software wise and that's was sort of the gist of my iPad pro review last week is that's not necessarily true and that's not the only way to go up market.

0:55:40The only the only way to go up market is not just to cater to advance technical users.

0:55:46You can just make things nicer right I mean that's and that's that's what they're doing with iPad it's just why is it thinner?

0:55:55Why did they make it so ridiculously thin?

0:55:57Why is it only 5 point?

0:55:58Why spend all those these engineering resources to to reduce an already?

0:56:04Thinest tablet on the market even thinner because it makes it nicer and that's something people are willing to pay for other people are willing to pay for and put a premium on.

0:56:15They still need to make iPad OS nice.

0:56:17Well, here's the other thing that's in there and this is where I'm still a critic is.

0:56:23I still feel like iPad OS is lost in the middle right where it just doesn't get their attention because the iPhone is the is the money maker.

0:56:38It's and it deserves the attention I'm not complaining that they're that they're they pay the most attention to the iPhone.

0:56:46It makes sense financially and it makes sense because of just how many users there are and how central it is to their lives.

0:56:53How many people the this the device that most Apple customers would consider their most important computing device.

0:57:01By quantity is the iPhone it's there there's a lot of people who you know this there's a lot of people who live on their iPhones.

0:57:08I know Jaws has everything but I know that I've talked to him I think I've asked to him on stage if he could only have one Apple device it would be his iPhone.

0:57:17That's his almost everyone would say that and I think that's right that obviously they they devote resources to what matters most I think to to people to the company to everything.

0:57:26And the fact that iPad OS directly came from iOS right it's still it's effectively still the same thing there's differences now and.

0:57:36A little bit in the development of it and obviously they hold things back and and waits but it's it's held back by that too because it came from it used to just be you just have to do.

0:57:47The changes to iOS and then they come to iPad OS and now there's a little bit more work involved and so that leads to even more sort of lagging behind I guess.

0:57:56Yeah and it there's just things like the example lots of people say and I think it I think it's I think there's a reason everybody cites it it's come up I don't know over and over and over again with reviews and commentary on the new iPad pros.

0:58:10But in Final Cut Pro with this two three thousand dollar hardware it's called Final Cut Pro it is a great video editing app it is totally credible to use for actual high quality professional.

0:58:28Work and you make a project you hit export and if you put the app in the background the export stops because iPad OS doesn't let apps chew through the GPU and CPU for background tasks.

0:58:42And that is a literal throwback to the nineties and the whole dilemma Apple got caught in.

0:58:51By wasting years of efforts on future OS efforts that never panned out while they let the classic Mac OS just sort of oh we don't really need to move that forward technically because we're working on pink or intelligent or Copeland or whatever there was it.

0:59:09I'm forgetting some that there were so many failed future OS attempts that they just assumed would be the future of their desktop computing world that they got stuck with an operating system that didn't have preemptive multitasking and you.

0:59:25But even then it you could put things in the background in the nineties with system seven and system eight and eventually system nine.

0:59:34It's the limitations of classic Mac OS thirty years ago with truly.

0:59:41At a hardware level comically I mean like our Apple watches blow them away on every spec I mean it's absolutely comical how how weak those computers were hardware wise compared to the things today.

0:59:59The lack of preemptive multitasking though was more like oh if something crashes it could lock up the whole system like your browser you know it was often web browsing because web browsing is so complicated.

1:00:09You just be browsing the web and all of a sudden the whole screen would freeze and you just had to power cycle and if God forbid you had an unsaved work in the background.

1:00:21But while you were exporting if you had some like a photoshop project or something and it was going to take a while you could command tab away and it would keep going it just didn't wasn't great multitasking with iPad it's even more limiting you literally can't put this.

1:00:36Complicated long running background process or process in the background you can't make it a background process.

1:00:45There's no reason that's not fundamentally changing iPad OS right that's not letting it that's not saying okay we'll just let you boot Mac right on your iPad the idea that the final it's it's just a lack of attention right Apple knows that it's silly.

1:01:01And if it was the most important platform in the company they'd have gotten to it and it's not so you bring up the browser one which is one segue just to one last thing about this specific topic which is that so.

1:01:15An offshoot of this whole back and forth argument was later a day later so I'm threads a friend of mine Tom Conrad longtime tech.

1:01:24Person executive he said Apple way back in the day brought up the notion also in the context of using the iPad pro is a power user what if they just made Safari work like it does on.

1:01:36Mac OS it's is that enough for most people because so many of us now use the web browser for so many of our daily.

1:01:45Routines work in and otherwise you and I right now recording through a web browser this podcast like what if Apple just let Safari run as it does on Mac OS.

1:01:56Neelay had a just he's getting so succinct on social media I think it was like three words but it equip on threads the other day where it's it's the browser it's Safari and I do think that's a huge factor I think.

1:02:14Putting aside.

1:02:15The Mac OS on iPad the scaling up the iPhone version of web kit to these to these tablet size computers is.

1:02:27Definitely a problem I run I don't know anybody who doesn't run into problems all the time I'm I'm John Gruber I'm supposedly an Apple expert but we.

1:02:37Are having some work done on our house and they use a thing called builder trend it's a really nice it's a portal though where we can pay bills we can check.

1:02:45Daily progress like they put pictures in of like the work they're doing it's it's just a portal where.

1:02:53They bill us they show us the work and my wife and I can check it I can't log in on my iPad I don't know why and I go to my Mac and I just type in my email and then I type in a password.

1:03:04So it works fine on Safari on Mac is just yeah and it's I don't know I don't know what it is and I've tried turning off the content blockers and whatever and it's and then I spend two minutes trying to fix it and I'm like why am I spending all this time on this I know it works on my Mac I'll just go to my Mac and pay the bill there and.

1:03:21But I constantly infuriating and Joanna Stern weighed in on the same sort of thread back and forth to it's just like she often uses the request desktop version right like that they have as an option and I tried that all the time to it works like.

1:03:35I don't maybe less than 50% of the time there's things that override it for some reason and then you got like the which Tom brought up the annoying.

1:03:44To use one of your old phrases the dick bar type thing that says basically you got would you want to open this in the app or it's always there for certain sites it's so annoying.

1:03:54Definitely and so I definitely think that's a problem I I think that there is.

1:04:01At we can argue about whether philosophically they should rejigger iPad OS from the ground up whether they should really do like a 2.0 version of iPad OS.

1:04:16And either start over from scratch or start with instead of a souped up iOS make a stripped down Mac OS I mean we can argue about that but keeping iPad OS as it is and just evolving it forward I would say one of the single biggest things they could possibly do to address a lot of these concerns.

1:04:39Would be to make web kit on iPad OS a complete peer to Safari Safari on Mac OS.

1:04:47And and I think that web kit needs to sort of up its game on stuff like the fact that we're using this thing called stream yard which is how I record the show and it requires a chrome browser doesn't work in Safari.

1:05:01I think I don't think Safari needs to support everything chrome does I there's a certain web developer zealot who thinks if it's out there in any browser all browsers should support it I think apples right to sort of slow pace some of this stuff but.

1:05:17Memory requirements and privacy and annoyance I think that they were right to the to make to wait a couple of years before bringing web notifications to the phone just to see how it plays out but.

1:05:31At this point you can't argue it's it's frustrating that you have to you can't use Safari to use these sort of zoom like podcasting call things and it does feel like if they did upgrade Safari to sort of Mac OS status on the iPad OS.

1:05:49It would alleviate a good number of tensions that people have right now and it's sort of seems just talking through it it feels like the exact point you made that it's sort of.

1:05:59Apple must know this but it's sort of like iPad OS is the in between one and it obviously came from iOS and it came from creating Safari that worked with touch and needing to change certain things about yet.

1:06:13Background test notifications all that sort of stuff so they created this version of Safari which is now transferred over to the iPad version as a result and really that probably should have gone the other way where it came from Mac.

1:06:28Yeah and it's these limits on background processing and stuff like that they're all they all make they still make complete sense on phone yet last night I I've still to this day still have not had my iPhone 15 pro.

1:06:43Run out of battery before I go to bed but I couldn't sleep last night I was I drank coffee too late in the afternoon and I was up really late watching TV.

1:06:52And I was on my phone while I'm watching TV and it got down when I time I went to bed it was like 2% which is I think the lowest I've ever gotten with my iPhone 15 pro.

1:07:03But you know I get it and the a series processors have because they're meant to be in phones they have fewer cores there the battery is obviously smaller.

1:07:14There's no reason why the iPad can't support final cut exporting from the background and just add something to the OS that shows like right now because I'm using the webcam.

1:07:28Talking to you when I look at my Mac menu bar there's a camera icon in the menu bar up there with the little icons with a green rectangle around it right and it's it's a very helpful little cute to tell me hey I'm on camera if is if the window were obscured.

1:07:43Just put something in the interface that says hey final cut pro is doing something in the background and it's not supposed this shouldn't be on all the time you're not supposed to do that now with record right they have the red thing when you're recording something like they can do that.

1:07:56Yeah and in fact that I've iPhone has has a better in a better spot for things like that in the interface because it has the notch or whatever we could the dynamic island just put something like even if you don't have an actual dynamic island for cameras just put something in the interface like that a little black.

1:08:18Pill or you make it whatever color you want but a thing where you could put hey there's a thing going on in the background right now that's it obviously technically possible would not.

1:08:28Fundamentally alter iPad OS at all would never once in a million years accidentally trick my dad into doing a battery depleting final cut pro export in the background right now I mean that's not going to happen on my dad's iPad.

1:08:47Right so it's actually a couple I was exporting this mega file on my final cut pro instance and I can't believe you didn't think of this case yeah yeah but I do safari is a big one but I do think that there is I think that the.

1:09:02I'll just leave it before I take another break for a sponge I'll just say that I do think Apple means it that them for now they don't want to add just.

1:09:12Throw in just a fine here's touch on the Mac without it and just little things like the way that I pads are so top heavy when they're in a laptop configuration because the iPad itself is.

1:09:27Where all the computer is and it's glass not plastic and it's thicker and so when you're using an iPad in a magic keyboard you can touch the screen and it screen doesn't really wobble I'm just touching this MacBook air that I'm recording on right now just touching the screen a little the whole thing wobbles like hell.

1:09:44Because I can raise and lower the screen as you can see I'm doing with one finger and it's I don't need to hold the base it just moves that which is really nice.

1:09:56I.

1:09:58I'm you take a break here I want to thank the opposite of Squarespace is a brand new sponsor I'm very very glad to have them they are called pine works pine works is a design and development agency building world class apps websites and digital products with good ethics and strong opinions.

1:10:16The core team is a tight knit crew Anthony Colin Jello Ryan Ireland who's a long time friend of the show long ago very long ago even edited episodes of the talk show.

1:10:29And Courtney Sabo met when they work together at happy cog over a decade ago happy cog I have fond memories of was a Philadelphia design studio who I was friends with a bunch of people there.

1:10:40Pineworks teams are small and focused yet flexible and expand to include other specialists their team has built some of the biggest apps on the app store like dark sky.

1:10:51Internal enterprise apps for Toyota wl gore and premiere and content focus websites for clients of all sizes most recently.

1:11:02Pineworks designed and built a custom warehouse management system providing accounting task and inventory management while integrating.

1:11:12With Amazon Shopify Etsy ship station and quickbooks I'll bet they integrate with even more than that but they wanted to keep the list short.

1:11:21I know some of these guys this is a great team wholehearted personal endorsement but they are paying me so it is a sponsorship but I really mean it these are good guys see their work and learn more about what pineworks can offer at pineworks.co.co and build something great together that's pineworks.co.

1:11:45Probably wraps up her iPad ranting was there.

1:11:51Let's move on to news this is this is breaking news from yesterday which is and it hits our intersection of pop culture and technology is the.

1:12:01Open ai scarlett-johanson beef.

1:12:06This is absolutely weirdly surreal story almost with life imitating art in the way like everyone is talking about.

1:12:15When they first sort of open ai announced gpt for and you know obviously alluded to her same altman sent the tweet which will get back to which is very problematic now but everyone is sort of talk about.

1:12:28Trying to dunk on sort of part of the announcement and didn't anyone watch the end of her it's not like a happy happy ending and all the end of humanity and all of this and now we actually have.

1:12:38The voice version if you want to call it that of scarlett-johanson samantha character called sky in the open ai ecosystem though they will claim now it's not.

1:12:50But has been taken away from us just like in her where samantha goes away now skies going away so they definitely use that voice.

1:12:59In their event last week was it last week i think it was a week ago right yep.

1:13:03Did they ever ship it i know i didn't get it but did some day that voice is out there they don't have yet the interface so i have access to gpt for.

1:13:15They do not get or at least i do not have access yet to the version that has the new.

1:13:20Audio back and forth interface it is the older version of the audio interface in in there the sky voice was live until they just pulled it.

1:13:30And it's been live since i want to say march i think is when they put it out there but it could've been even earlier than that with this whole.

1:13:38Now of course potential lawsuit from scarlett-johanson is we subsequently learned that open ai.

1:13:45Sam open directly had reached out to try to put a server to give her voice to this to this effort.

1:13:51They did have this this audio interface and they did have the sky voice that was already live and again i've used it.

1:14:00And we can debate how much it sounds like it but definitely in what they were doing with the demo.

1:14:04There was no denying and again omen tweeted this there's no denying that they were alluding to her and from the voice on down.

1:14:12And what.

1:14:15Johansson says in her.

1:14:18Public her public statement is really damning which is basically that couple months ago they approached her she gave it consideration she really apparently really thought about it.

1:14:32Decided against it.

1:14:34And then two days before their event.

1:14:37Sam ottman personally reached out to her people again.

1:14:41And i think she said in her statement that she didn't even have time to get back to them and then the event happened and it was out there and it was like whoa.

1:14:50I don't know i don't know who to believe i mean if we i have no reason not to believe her.

1:14:59Right i have reasons not to believe open ais version of the story.

1:15:05They have a system of i guess a a build up of occurrences that have happened over recent recent months that would lead you to believe that there's some things going on behind the scenes that we're not all privy to.

1:15:17And this may be the latest instance of that but like.

1:15:20Even so they are saying in the release the blog post to say just try to get ahead of this right and say look we we recorded these voices we have i think five or six of them.

1:15:31These are actors different actors that were using we can't name them for privacy reasons but we brought them to our headquarters we recorded their voices.

1:15:41And not none of them of course for scarlett johansson and so anything that sounds like her voice just as a coincidence.

1:15:50Again the problem is with that reaching out and then with the subsequent tweet and you actually link to this link me to this article from cnn from talking to a legal expert yeah yeah because i was sort of thinking okay.

1:16:03Is it illegal to have a voice it sounds like someone else right obviously if this if this person who they they can't name it does sound even a little bit like scarlett johansson what can you do about that right some people just sound like other people.

1:16:16But there is a apparently precedent in sort of a similar idea with bet mitler where.

1:16:22And they had one of our backup singers yeah for a they approach no but it's a approach right they approached her first she said no and then they approached one of our background singers and hired her and the commercial came out and sounded enough like her where people were saying hey bet i didn't know you did commercials and she goes i didn't.

1:16:42And she sent one yeah and then there was another one with i think tom waites right like that that sort of cited this example and also had a music that sounded like it was it was made by him but wasn't and so that's pretty bad president if you're open ai.

1:16:59I did not realize like that that was a case in its it's sort of a california specific thing it feels like where this this can be the case and so that's highly problematic.

1:17:09Even if you believe open ai stands that they recorded this person separately it's not scarlett johansson it's a coincidence that that she happens to sound like her.

1:17:18The fact that they were.

1:17:20The omen tweet is is the most problematic part of all that seems like because they can say all they want that is just a coincidence that sounds like her but if they were using it from a pool.

1:17:30Listening perspective even in the smallest stance to say this is like her and here's why like that's that's gonna be really difficult and this all this is such a compelling story for a number of reasons of course involving us.

1:17:44Make a celebrity involving the hottest start up in silicon valley but it's also plays into the broader narrative and scarlett johansson very smartly sort of brings us up.

1:17:54Which is that there's this fear within the creative community that open ai is coming for everyone coming for their jobs right and this is like the highest profile example of look if if open ai can do this to me just to one of the highest paid most well known actors actresses in the world.

1:18:11What's the stop this technology from doing this ever it's quite possibly per character the most consequence of tweet of all time i'm just looking it up.

1:18:22I because i wanted i know that he doesn't use capital letters but it is he did not punctuated at all so it's a three character tweet from sam altman on may thirteenth which was.

1:18:36The day of the event so i think it was while the event was actually live streaming.

1:18:41Right i think that's something like that yeah and i remember it it's last monday at one forty five eastern time which i believe was right when they were straight either right when they were streaming the event or right after.

1:18:55And it's just three characters h e r.

1:18:58And it's still live now yeah you can't delete it everybody knows it's out there but it really might prove to be legally.

1:19:08The most consequential per character tweet of all time.

1:19:12My favorite former tweet of this not quite of this nature but of the highest value ratio was formally i think ryan graves who ran was uber ceo for a while in the early days basically responded i think to a garrett camp tweet that we need someone to run.

1:19:26This new project that we have any responded something like i'm in and then tweet it up being worth several billion dollars.

1:19:33So that was the former version of this this is going the opposite way this might be worth several million dollars in the other way right but i apostrophe m space i and that's six and it and if you put a period that seven h e r is only three characters i mean.

1:19:51And it's hard you can you can imagine an emoji a single emoji tweet that might have some kind of consequences but but it wouldn't be legal on with the poop emoji has he done.

1:20:02Yeah this is this is incredible that this is if this comes back to any and like you said legal implications aside.

1:20:14The sort of societal implications they've already lost right that this horrible i don't work i don't i don't want to spend time talking about apples crush add.

1:20:28Door much about it but you know i do think that part of the nerve that got hit and i when i did write about it i do i still think that if apple had shipped that same add ten years ago and the what for sure.

1:20:42The same would have been saying the thing that could have applied to any ipad because at any point in the ipad history they've always been remarkably thin and flat and have.

1:20:53Contained a lot of creative things tools and possibilities.

1:20:58I think that it's this current moment of unease that that musicians are being replaced totally agree.

1:21:06It's it's it's happening in the same vein it's that was a mixture of apple now being the goliath where is before if they had run it and they were david you can do that.

1:21:16Even more so exactly what you're saying it's also because of this this unease about the.

1:21:23Technology wave and ai being at the forefront of that right now with that with this her and.

1:21:30Jet gpt four oh situation but the ipad is is just another form of technology which you know as we're about to hear about nonstop at wdc is gonna be able to power ai and so it's all plays in the same thing.

1:21:43Any other thing that plays into it and I don't think it's tangential I think it's of a piece is the.

1:21:50Financial titanhood of our tech goliath companies which I think I'm not saying it's not a problem but I think it's inevitable and it's sort of it's almost the theme of my career it's why I.

1:22:10Do what I do and I'm obsessed with what I'm obsessed with in why I write and podcast about what I write about is that.

1:22:18I think computers are the most amazing that I'm not saying the most important thing maybe it's running water vaccines or there's also antibiotics is all sorts of other great technological breakthroughs I mean the the toilet in running water.

1:22:32I'd probably I'd probably rather do without my computers for a couple days and without a toiletation.

1:22:38Let's write let many less millions die.

1:22:41Right I often have thought about I just got done watching apples franklin show at which I didn't think was that great.

1:22:49Alright it's like a lot of modern tv dramas could have been so much better as a two hour movie than a eight episode thing but anyway I've often thought well what if you met what if ben franklin time travel today what would I show what would how would you.

1:23:05Take thomas jefferson or ben franklin and amaze them with today's world I think it would be really hard to get them past our sinks and toilets.

1:23:14Right especially in philadelphia in the winter right like I don't have to go outside I just hit a button.

1:23:23You have a vision pro in your hands and you're like you can see anything like the screen is so big they do not care about that they just don't use the restroom and where does it go and it's just leaves your house goes out and I don't I feel like you'd have to spend days before you can get them to go to the airport with you you know what I mean you're like I want to take you to the airport I want to show you these things that fly in there like no no I want to poop again.

1:23:46Where do you go from there.

1:23:50Well with the money right and that's that's the thing and it to me it where I was going with this is computers are so revolutionary they're not.

1:24:00An extension of the industrial revolution it is a new revolution of the magnitude of the industrial revolution and we're still in.

1:24:11The early decades of it and AI this AI moment we're going through is another step change in in this transformation but computers.

1:24:20Are magic they are amazing and of course it makes complete sense that the most successful quote unquote computer companies.

1:24:33Are fabulously successful because they are making things that are fabulously useful and popular with people right and there's it's it's kind of interesting how diverse within the world of things we do with computers.

1:24:51Apple and Amazon and Google and Microsoft and meta are right they they all sort of have they're all very different from each other in certain ways but they all do these things.

1:25:03With billions of users right which is so of course they are huge but of course.

1:25:10These corporations with nation state levels of revenue and arguably I would say greater than nation state.

1:25:22Levels of cultural relevance right and attention and people pay way more attention.

1:25:30I just saw a poll today where 56% of people in the United States think the US is in a recession which is completely not true where the economy is actually booming.

1:25:42People think that the stock market is down there's 50% people just don't pay attention to stuff like that there it's all wrong but they know when Amazon Prime Day is.

1:25:55I mean but there's an uneasiness of this right where and and government for all the problems with government when it's democratic government is answerable to the public through elections.

1:26:08And these companies aren't and there's a discomfort with it I get it and then you see this sort of arrogance of ask grew scarlet Johansson will just use your voice anyway and it just is like.

1:26:20People are like yeah that's what I'm talking about that's it that's these guys are dirt bags.

1:26:25Well it doesn't even have to be necessarily nefarious because we see this the examples of this all the time where it sort of goes back to what we exactly we were talking about with just.

1:26:35Sort of what you choose to focus on like Apple not focusing on iPad OS right because they're so big and they're doing so many things like.

1:26:44This isn't that case because this is so high profile but there's so many examples of like where something looks like it's nefarious and the I like the big companies out to get him when really it was just like a.

1:26:55Sort of an overlooked decision and but the ramifications of it are no less huge to a work it a person who's working a certain type of job and I think you're right that this is.

1:27:07This is going to be a story this type of narrative arc is going to be a story for a long long time because it's like the most.

1:27:15Prominent example of a direct or what at least is perceived to be direct effective technology.

1:27:22Of new technology coming in in the form of AI which is obviously a very nebulous term it means a lot of different things but it has direct ramifications on people's livelihoods both good and bad but.

1:27:34The bad stuff is going to be the focal point in showcase of what what can actually come from these giant companies being in ingrained in our lives.

1:27:44Yeah I mentioned earlier I'll tie it back I mentioned that I think what app some of the things Apple misses from Steve Jobs are his impatience and his fearlessness right and you could say well then isn't that what Sam Altman did it's.

1:27:57Impatience I want the voice to sound like this and it's fearlessness let's go ahead and ship it and let's.

1:28:06Stipulate here that they really did hire some other actress and and didn't really think oh she's a sound alike for Scarlett Johansson but she's in that.

1:28:22Yeah right they sounding female voice yeah they're soothing or something but that that type of voice is what they're going for and so that's who they found let's just say that.

1:28:34And I I think there's I I hope that that's true because I I don't hope for malfeasance but I wouldn't bet on it I'm would not be surprised at all if this goes to lawsuit and there is discovery that there is no such actress.

1:28:51Who it has that would be something well I mean I I think it's unlikely but I would not be shocked and I don't want to wager on it but it has very strong yes I had I met a girlfriend this summer but you can't meet her because she lives in Canada.

1:29:06Vibes of yes we did hire an actress but we cannot tell you her name to protect her privacy but there is some truth to that right I know I'm laughing too but there is some truth to that where I imagine if they did name her I mean her phone be ringing off the hook and she may not want that and it might be detrimental to her career.

1:29:27To be the one who's like the same reason why the person who's Siri like they only found out much later than who would end up being right and well that yeah but in this case I'm going to random commercial or something at this case you in Hollywood today you don't want to be known as one of Scarlett Johansson's enemies.

1:29:43Right oh you're the you're the one who helped open a I rip off Scarlett Johansson's voice yeah let's hire you for a role right so I there is credibility to the fact that if their story is true that they do want to protect her her her name.

1:29:59And that they might have for her sake and that with she doesn't want to be named and that there's legal documents that they both agreed to willingly not I wish I could get credit for doing this voice know maybe everybody involved wants to keep her anonymous but.

1:30:13Even if it's true it's it's just such a bad look and I don't think I don't see Steve Jobs doing it that way I really so I think there's jobs either would have done a better job of talking her into doing it.

1:30:28Or if she said no would have known we have to go in a different direction we cannot we can't go this way because it may it'll make us look bad.

1:30:36I think you're right in the fact that Steve Jobs famously was like very very much in tuned with like creative culture and artists right and and certainly it will not necessarily actors and and actresses like music and art and all of that I would say though in the earlier days of Apple and we weren't around but.

1:30:58The rebellious streak like when you were talking I'm just reminded of course of like the idea of ask forgiveness not permission obviously being like a core ethos of.

1:31:09Of many companies but like Silicon Valley obviously takes it on and Facebook sort of did the version of that like move fast and break things right and it's sort of like.

1:31:17There is that that mentality where and and we talked about different context but it's like when you think about the earlier days of Uber right if they had like gone in and tried to work with the taxi cab companies would Uber exist right now and the reality is probably not right they would have been.

1:31:33Snuffed out or muted down to do like a shadow of what they ended up becoming and so there's two sides to this and I'm not saying that what open it I did open AI did is right.

1:31:45We don't know the full story but I think that I'm trying to give a sense of the mentality of like why you could see this conversation happening.

1:31:53Uber Uber is a very good comparison and I have friends and this is something that I think reasonable people could have a really good like.

1:32:01Political I don't know in today's world maybe there's never a good political debate at dinner.

1:32:07But I feel like it reasonable people who are largely aligned on their politics could have a pretty good disagreement over Uber's rise and I would say more than not working through the taxi companies.

1:32:20It's the way that they just sort of ignored the municipal rules right that every city has taxi medallions taxi medallions are famously expensive in New York City in particular but.

1:32:31In most cities there's a limit there's artificial scarcity on the medallions there I think in at one point at the peak they were worth millions and each one was worth millions in New York City.

1:32:44And they just sort of like as the hell with the laws were just going to do this and I have friends who at the time were opposed to this and it's not I'm not going to say they're.

1:32:54Do-gooders I don't agree with them but I see their point and I'm willing to listen and say yeah maybe that's wrong maybe you shouldn't just ignore the laws but what I see in Philadelphia in particular Philadelphia.

1:33:06Had really bad taxi cabs pre-uber and it was just it is it's like a municipal law thing where.

1:33:16Long story short New York has a very tightly regulated taxi industry down to the color not just that they have to be yellow but the shade of yellow all New York taxis are the exact same shade of yellow.

1:33:30Philadelphia it was they could be red white and blue there were different taxi companies had different colors.

1:33:36But New York also strictly regulated the inspection of taxis and taxis in New York oh the air conditioning doesn't work well then you're you're out of service so you're it's like new restaurant inspections.

1:33:48And see I'm not exaggerating Philadelphia didn't have tight inspection and so all of the almost all of the taxis in Philadelphia.

1:33:58From the pre-uber age where New York City taxis that failed inspection and then they just driving down the New Jersey turnpike and sell them to Philadelphia taxi companies.

1:34:07It was it I would say at the lowest point it was maybe 50% chance that you'd get air conditioning in a taxi cab I mean and Philadelphia gets really hot and humid in the summer and so.

1:34:20It just sucks I mean it was over and it was always the easiest way for me to get back and forth to the airport and it just sucks going it luckily it's not far the airport's really close to center city Philadelphia.

1:34:31But like rolling down the window in 98 degree heat with humidity it just sucked and guess what.

1:34:40The situation is so much better now and it's all because of uber the actual taxis are better but there are a lot fewer of them and I you know typically just take an uber and it's a nice clean usually at.

1:34:53Tesla and it's nice and clean and the air conditioning works and it doesn't have a bad smell it doesn't feel like I'm the other thing a lot of tech Philadelphia taxis were.

1:35:03Police cars that no long because it's the same that the old Crown Vic right it was the same car and you could tell when you were in a former police car and guess what the Philadelphia police department wasn't really known for being.

1:35:16Treating their cars treating the police cruisers delicately right I mean they were bad cars and uber change.

1:35:27That that whole industry for the better by breaking the same thing was true in San Francisco that's where a lot of the.

1:35:35The early the where the early company was based and and where they wanted to fix that they were same situation was in Paris where they maybe patch the idea of.

1:35:44In the past it's this is true of a lot of different places and it did have that effect.

1:35:49Again to your point you can argue like was there a different way was there a better way to go about that I mean.

1:35:55In hindsight perhaps but it's it's what changed it and and.

1:36:00There was there's a lot of regulatory issues that were forced to be changed as a result of.

1:36:07Of what they did and and subsequently a lot of different startups have tried to use like sort of this uber like mentality of what they did in that case in different markets in different verticals.

1:36:17And it either hasn't worked or there's been intense backlash and it's in part because what we're talking about but a macro level of like just technology and big companies in general are now sort of.

1:36:27Not necessarily the boogeyman I think people still highly regarded most of these companies from a consumer perspective but.

1:36:34On an individual like level and individual industry level like they are just viewed differently now because there's so much power and wealth and everything else accumulated with all of that.

1:36:45Right and it is certain point it comes to the government to enforce the laws if you want to say hey uber you're breaking the law then start arresting people and I remember reading stories that there were there were municipalities that were upset with.

1:36:57Uber's sort of ask forgiveness not permission stance and they would okay I'm did let's have a police officer download the uber app and hail an uber and then the guy comes over and issue a citation because you don't have a taxi license enforce it right it's.

1:37:14I see it and it's it's not exclusive to tech I was thinking when you said about the that sort of ask forgiveness not permission it hollywood itself has done that at times I is it a hundred percent true it seems like it 'cause I've seen it repeated by several cast members.

1:37:30But with the new Seinfeld unfrosted movie is it unfrosted or frosted unfrosted yeah yeah because the original pop tarts were were not frosted.

1:37:40Which I thought was a very good movie I really enjoyed it and I don't know why some people panda but I saw it is what it is I mean a lot of cameras people did you like 30 rock I felt like it was remarkably 30 rock.

1:37:56Yeah that sort of humor vibe yeah and pacing and absurdity but anyway it's for anybody who doesn't know it's a movie that takes place in the early sixties and it's sort of fictionalizes the creation of the pop tart with a.

1:38:12Exaggerated for.

1:38:14Parity sake rivalry between Kellogg's and post and they didn't get permission from Kellogg's or post really I didn't know that yeah no they and Seinfeld under parity laws yeah.

1:38:29Yeah it's it's in Seinfeld told this I saw him on a couple talk shows where he told the same story but that he was in a meeting with Netflix and they're like you you got permission for this right.

1:38:38And he was like oh yeah and what he did is he had the lawyer drop like a one page piece of paper talking about parity law and whatever fair use and it's like a one page document that says we're fine but it wasn't signed by anybody at Kellogg's.

1:38:52And he said I just gave them this letter and I don't know I don't think they ever read it I think they just assumed we'd done it and.

1:38:58It goes I I think we're fine I think we're going to sell a lot of pop tarts but I just didn't feel like I just wanted to make the movie so we went ahead and made it and I didn't really think we're going to get in trouble and I can't imagine that Kellogg's is mad about it right I mean.

1:39:10Yeah it's free publicity to bring that sort of full circle though to something you and I know well I think we've discussed in the past but it's it that just reminds me specifically of the notion was it.

1:39:23I can't remember and you'll remember if it was face time or I message itself but there was something where Steve Jobs launched one of them on stage and the question was asked when AT&T found out about it it's just when you guys did on yeah what do you mean.

1:39:38I think it was I message right I think I'm the I message one was they didn't tell AT&T it because obviously at the time the carriers are still thinking of SMS is a money.

1:39:50Although not so much in the US I've heard that described as why is I message disproportionately popular in the US as opposed to like you Europe or WhatsApp is more dominant and it's because in Europe and most other countries around the world.

1:40:07The carriers were still charging 10 cents per SMS long after the US carriers the US carriers kind of got into a unlimited texting oh AT&T has unlimited texting now we've got to have it too.

1:40:22They all have to match it yeah it became the table stakes thing for sure.

1:40:25And so everybody was freely SMSing and then when Apple layered oh if it's iPhone to iPhone it'll just go through this instead it just everybody just got onboarded to I message without any effort.

1:40:39Whereas in Europe and Asia where everybody was paying 10 cents for text as soon as WhatsApp came out they were like oh we'll switch to that.

1:40:49I remember that it used to be you can understand it I mean I've had a teenager and I've seen how much he texts and there were always those stories of people getting like $4,000 bills.

1:41:00Could you imagine in this day and age if you had to pay 10 cents for every text message sent?

1:41:06Oh my god that would be unbelievable all of us all of it not just teenagers me I mean hell I'd be I'd be on the hook for thousands right I mean it'd be crazy.

1:41:14Yeah no and I think you're conflating it with FaceTime which is when Steve Jobs said it was going to be open source or an open industry standard and then that never happened.

1:41:22But that was but so that wasn't but that's an interesting sort of jobs being jobs and being impatient and doing what it was and it wasn't something that would get somebody outside Apple to sue Apple.

1:41:36But what he did was he he never told the people on the FaceTime team it was I know this for a fact from talking to someone who was on the FaceTime team at the time.

1:41:44It was something that like during rehearsals for that keynote popped into Jobs's head and he was like yeah and he was like yeah we'll just you know and and he like ran through it like no we don't want to keep this proprietary let's just you know this is so great.

1:41:59I want to do this with everybody you know I want to do this FaceTime with everybody we'll just make it an open standard.

1:42:05And the whole thing with patents and the way they'd written none of it had been engineered with opening it in mind and therefore it's one of the and I think the patent situation is why it never happened.

1:42:17It wasn't like Apple thought twice about it it was just it it was just unfeasible but it was it was like the FaceTime team learned about that when Steve Jobs said it on stage.

1:42:28And they were like did you know this was it everybody's no no and they're like I don't I don't think we can open source this algorithm that's licensed from Dolby or something.

1:42:38So John I've got a hard stop in two minutes unfortunately because I'm sorry a nanny go who's looking over our little that is but we've got we've got a lot we didn't get to we can always do a part two if if you're game for it at some point I'm around.

1:42:51No that's that is that is a fine fine time to wrap that leaves all of WWDC for me to do another episode later this month.

1:43:00No that's a good wrap everybody can follow you where do you want people to follow you on social media?

1:43:06I guess I'm on I use threads more now than I use Twitter X X sitter whatever you want to call it.

1:43:14I use both those still so both just at mg sigler on those and then yeah spy glasses we talked about to kick things off.

1:43:21Spyglass.

1:43:22Spyglass.org great website so good to have you back don't ever stop blogging again.