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641: We're Saving That for the Egg

 

00:00:00   Suffice it to say, there will be future ubiquity discussion on this program. Shocking, I know.

00:00:03   Shocking, I tell you.

00:00:05   We'll also be talking about Apple products in the future.

00:00:07   No.

00:00:07   What a surprise.

00:00:08   I've been thinking a lot recently about Apple is not in a great spot right now, or at least

00:00:16   the community doesn't really love where Apple is right now. And what does that mean for us as a show?

00:00:23   Because on the one side, my perception of the show is the three of us do our darndest to bring

00:00:31   our genuine and honest opinions about pretty much everything that we talk about, including when

00:00:36   Apple is, as the kids like to say these days, cooked. But does that really make for entertaining

00:00:42   and engaging programming? And I don't have any answers right now, and I'm just kind of throwing

00:00:47   spaghetti at the wall to see what happens. But I don't know what we're the three of us going to do,

00:00:52   because I don't want to just continually moan about Apple. And I don't think you two do either,

00:00:55   despite what this program leads you to believe. You know, all three of us tend to do this kind

00:01:01   of frequently, but that's not what any of us wants. Like, what are we going to do if Apple

00:01:04   continues to circle the drain? What if, what if Dub Dub sucks, then what are we going to do?

00:01:08   Well, I mean, as I think I said last time we just talked, talked about this, the show does,

00:01:12   since we follow Apple, the show tone also follows Apple. So when Apple's kicking butt and doing great

00:01:19   things, the show is excited about that. When Apple is not kicking butt and is doing not so great things,

00:01:24   the show reflects that as well. I think the good thing is that Apple is a big entity. And at any

00:01:30   given time, not everything is bad and not everything is good. So even when things are awesome, there's

00:01:36   always things to complain about. And even when things are terrible, there's still stuff that's

00:01:40   good and bright spots. So I felt like if we just, you know, it would be, it would be a sort of,

00:01:46   we would be doing a disservice to our listeners to pretend things are awesome when they're not.

00:01:50   And I think we've gone through this cycle. The show's been around long enough now that I think

00:01:54   we've gone through this cycle multiple times, uh, of things, certain things being really bad. I mean,

00:01:59   in fact, it's, it's kind of funny that the last time we went through something like this was

00:02:03   a cycle where the hardware was the thing we were griping about. The hardware was bad. They ruined their,

00:02:08   their laptops. Their, their most popular Mac hardware was bad for so long. And we complained

00:02:13   about it for so long. And here we are in this new era where the hardware is the best thing they're

00:02:17   doing. Uh, I mean, it's, you never know what's going to happen. And especially with the AI stuff,

00:02:22   it's just like a wild card and all of this, because nobody knows who the winner and losers there will

00:02:27   be. But anyway, I, I don't have a problem with it at all because I, I feel like it's always going to

00:02:32   be going in cycles and it's worth, uh, talking about the bad things as much as the good. I mean,

00:02:38   you know, from someone whose website is called hypercritical surprise, surprise. I don't mind

00:02:41   criticizing things. I just feel like we can do it in a constructive way. And there's lots of good,

00:02:45   exciting stuff happening as well. Like not just with Apple, but with the entire tech world. So

00:02:49   I think we'll, you know, we try to strike a good balance and WWC, like that's the story this year.

00:02:54   You basically nailed it. It's like, look, people are feeling bad. How, how, how does Apple react to

00:02:59   that? What do they do to try to turn this around? Get to the top of it. What do you do to try to turn this

00:03:03   around at WWDC? That is the story of this WWDC in, in, in more ways than one, as I'm sure we'll

00:03:08   discuss when WWDC comes along. Uh, but to pretend that it's not, and just to say, well, we're only

00:03:14   going to discuss the things we liked about WWDC. That's not, that's not the right thing to do.

00:03:17   Sure. Sure. I think, I think we'll, uh, we will ride this out and, uh, you know, happy days will come

00:03:23   again. And in the meantime, maybe there'll be a new Mac pro or something that will just make me happy

00:03:27   enough to not worry about everything else. Yeah. And to point out too, like we, we do focus on

00:03:33   Apple news because that is, you know, most of our, you know, computing world and our computing passions,

00:03:39   but the world of technology is much bigger than just Apple. We don't owe Apple coverage. Apple

00:03:45   earns coverage. If they have turned us off so much that we have nothing nice to say about them,

00:03:52   we'll just talk about other stuff after a while. Like that's just what, like we care about Apple a lot.

00:03:56   We hope they don't do that. We would rather talk about Apple because we like their stuff and we

00:04:00   like them, you know, uh, we, we like what they have stood for over time. Most of the, for the most part.

00:04:06   And we, we like their general ethos when it does well, but we are not an Apple show exclusively and

00:04:15   technology is not Apple exclusively. And so here's what always happens before WWDC. We have like the

00:04:23   trough of disillusionment with Apple for the year because we haven't had any fun products recently,

00:04:28   you know, like nothing, nothing has like juiced us with like Apple enthusiasm recently. So we're left

00:04:34   to wallow in the, the silence and realize like all the stuff that sucks about Apple. And then usually

00:04:41   what happens is WWDC comes up and we are really excited about what they just announced. And we get to

00:04:47   talk about that and it's interesting and it's fun. And then we, we, we have a little boost there.

00:04:53   Then the week after WWDC, we install the betas and half the stuff is broken and sucks and is done.

00:04:59   And then we go a little bit down, but for the most part, we're still held up by that,

00:05:02   that high of the WWDC announcements and, and all the new, the promise of what's to come.

00:05:07   Yeah. There's the world of possibilities that even if it's not there yet and the betas think it's

00:05:11   like, but there's a lot of possibilities and a lot of the, what could the future hold given these,

00:05:15   the possibilities that have been put before us?

00:05:17   Right. And then, and, you know, maybe we start seeing betas from app developers later in the

00:05:21   summer that take advantage of the new stuff and it's exciting and it's interesting. And then the

00:05:25   fall comes and we get the new product launches for the most part. Like we'll get like, well, you know,

00:05:29   the new iPhones and the Apple watches and whatever else comes out in any kind of fun Macs or

00:05:33   whatever else. Like, you know, we get those new AirPods, whatever it is. And so, you know,

00:05:37   so we have these kind of Apple seasons of both enthusiasm and honestly of relevance. And the

00:05:46   good thing is the world of tech is very big. And so if Apple is not earning our enthusiasm anymore,

00:05:52   for whatever reason, other things might, and we can talk about those. And if Apple wants to

00:05:59   start earning more enthusiasm from us, well, they're going to have to do some things differently.

00:06:03   And I don't think they care at all. Like they don't give two craps about us. So they're either

00:06:09   going to do it or not, and we'll cover it or not. But it doesn't mean anything bad for the show.

00:06:14   If Apple continues to anger and sadden us so much that we don't really talk about them as much,

00:06:21   and we start filling in with other stuff that does make us happy, that's fine. Like my entire

00:06:26   segment about restaurant stuff that has almost nothing to do with Apple. Apple has almost no role

00:06:31   whatsoever in my restaurant tech. And yet tons of stuff there has made me happy. We talk about

00:06:36   ubiquity stuff. We talk about, you know, other platforms. We talk about wiring and stuff like

00:06:40   that. Like that kind of stuff. We talk about home automation stuff. That has almost nothing to do

00:06:45   with Apple because their home automation stuff sucks. We talk about Sonos stuff. That has almost

00:06:48   something to do with Apple because Apple speakers suck. Like there's a lot of areas that Apple sucks.

00:06:53   And we talk about other companies that do great in those areas. And that's fine. Like that can be a lot

00:06:58   of what we do if over the long term, Apple continues to slide into areas that we don't really want to go.

00:07:05   It'll become a Johnny Ive AI pin show.

00:07:08   Can you imagine? I mean, it's possible. I can't imagine that'll be what happens, but it's possible.

00:07:14   It'll just be called the IO pin. Same product, different name.

00:07:16   I mean, this isn't the Accidental Apple podcast, even though that's oftentimes what it seems like. And to

00:07:21   your point, I mean, it is the Accidental Tech podcast. There are other things that we can talk about.

00:07:24   I don't know. It's just, I feel like in the past when we've had a malaise about things, it's often

00:07:31   been because, not always, but often been because they just make like product decisions that we don't

00:07:37   necessarily agree with. Whereas here, I feel like they're just acting like complete jerks. And that

00:07:43   has happened in the past for sure. But I feel like it's happening more frequently and more vibrantly,

00:07:49   for lack of a better word, than it typically does.

00:07:51   There's plenty of product decisions that we still disagree with, I think. There's a good

00:07:55   share of those as well. There's policy decisions for the company. Also, product decisions that I

00:07:59   think we disagree with strongly. Sometimes they just get overshadowed, I think, by the policy

00:08:03   decision.

00:08:03   That's fair. And I think that's the thing.

00:08:05   I mean, and we'll probably have more at WWDC when they show all their redesigned OSes and

00:08:09   we'll have lots of other product, a lot of opinions about those product decisions as well,

00:08:12   keep in mind also, like, we are hearing about Apple being jerks because we've had all these,

00:08:18   like, you know, court cases and things that are coming out in discovery, like internal communications

00:08:23   and stuff that are showing that they are basically like exactly as jerky as we all feared, like for

00:08:28   the worst. Like we thought, like, what, what's the worst, what's the least charitable interpretation

00:08:33   of their actions? Maybe, maybe that's, you know, surely they won't be that bad. And then we're getting

00:08:38   documentation that's showing, no, they were that bad. Like they're all the least charitable things.

00:08:41   That's what exactly what they were saying. And that's exactly their reasons for everything.

00:08:44   But if you look at any company, like we were seeing this insight into Apple now and we're seeing, wow,

00:08:52   Apple's being real jerks. Like, should we really feel good covering them? Who are we going to cover

00:08:57   instead? Google? Well, their executives are just as full of crap as these executives. Like they just full of,

00:09:02   they're full of different crap. You know, are we going to cover Microsoft? They're also full of

00:09:06   crap. Again, just different crap. Like every company is, you know, in order to be a CEO of a large

00:09:14   corporation, in order to, in order to rise those ranks and to get into that position, you're probably

00:09:19   a huge asshole on some level. That's just, you know, see also politicians, like to rise above a certain

00:09:27   rank, you are much more likely to be a huge asshole because only huge assholes can rise that high in those sorts of

00:09:35   systems most of the time. So if you look at almost any company, if you know anything about their leaders or about

00:09:43   their internal communications, the high levels, it's going to be mostly ugly. It's or there will be ugly stuff to find.

00:09:51   Um, and we just don't know most of the time because most CEOs are smart enough to keep that stuff out of

00:09:56   the public eye. Uh, so, but when you have somebody like, you know, some CEO who gets hooked on posting to

00:10:02   Twitter, for instance, and you know, they, they go off the deep end there, or in the case of court cases

00:10:07   that the company is too stupid to avoid, uh, that they get all this stuff coming out in discovery.

00:10:12   Well, that's, then you see, you know, that door is open. You get to see, wow, these people are real

00:10:16   jerks. Uh, but the reality is most people who run most companies are real jerks on some levels and we

00:10:22   just don't see it. So I think to, to some degree, and I know I've been, I've been all critical of Tim

00:10:28   Cook and I will continue to be because he is a real jerk, but to some degree, we kind of have to ignore

00:10:33   the people at the top of these companies and just focus on the products. Because if we only cover

00:10:39   products for which we can feel good about the leaders of those products, we're going to have

00:10:45   a really short list. And so I think it's much better to just say, you know what, our goal,

00:10:50   our job is not to focus too much on whether the executives of this company are being jerks or not.

00:10:55   Our goal is to focus on the products because that's ultimately what we enjoy about tech.

00:11:00   We don't need to be analysts for the executive teams of these companies most of the time. That's

00:11:04   not our job. That's not what we care about. That's not what we're amazing at. Although Tim Cook

00:11:08   should be replaced. But, you know, I know he won't be. That's fine. And I know people say he's the only

00:11:13   person who can fix the problem he's in, but he created the problem he's in and he's the only person

00:11:16   who can keep making it worse. I don't see any sign he can fix it. But anyway, we are here for the products

00:11:21   mainly. That's most of what gets us going. That's most of what we have the enthusiasm about.

00:11:26   The hardware, the software, the services even, the ones that are actually services and not just taxes.

00:11:32   We're here for that. That's the stuff that gets us excited. That's the stuff we love talking about.

00:11:36   That's the stuff that we have to like rationalize. Oh, do I can I buy the new Sonos speaker? It looks

00:11:41   so cool. You know, but that's that kind of stuff. That's what we're here for. And that's what our

00:11:45   audience wants to hear about most of the time. So we can keep talking like when Apple releases some

00:11:50   cool stuff in a couple of weeks at WBDC, we we all know. Yeah, you know what? Tim Cook's a jerk.

00:11:56   Like we know that the way they treat developers pretty rough. Like their relationship with developers

00:12:01   had never been worse than it is right now. Like pretty bad the way they view us, the way they

00:12:06   talk about us, the way they treat us. That's all terrible. So I don't love the idea that we're about

00:12:10   to do, you know, a puff week for their developer conference in a couple of weeks because this is

00:12:15   this is a time when I don't feel great about puffing Apple up, especially in regard to

00:12:18   developers. But at the same time, you know, the other day I was writing some code.

00:12:23   I love writing code. I was writing code up for my iPhone, for my iPhone app in Swift and Xcode.

00:12:29   I love writing code. Like that's all good. Like that stuff. I like all that stuff.

00:12:34   And so I think we have to compartmentalize on some level and say, you know what?

00:12:38   We will talk about these people being jerks sometimes, but we shouldn't talk only about that.

00:12:44   And that shouldn't prevent us from enjoying the output of these companies,

00:12:49   because for the most part, the output can be really cool and really good. And that's

00:12:54   the side of tech that we love. And we just have to ignore the fact that there's some jerks along the

00:12:58   way.

00:12:58   Well, on the critical side of it, I tend not to ignore it because I'm always looking for,

00:13:02   but why? Why does this product go unsatisfactory in some way? And the kind of digging we do eventually

00:13:07   leads back to people. It's like, well, now we kind of have to consider who was in charge of this and

00:13:12   where did they go wrong and how might things be fixed? Because, you know, it's not it's not

00:13:17   entirely a black box, especially with all this discovery and stuff. So I think we we, you know,

00:13:21   we cover it from all angles. But I think that's one of the reasons that we dig down into it. It's not

00:13:24   because we love corporate drama. It's because we're back solving from why are there no more ports on the

00:13:30   MacBook Pros? Why does the keyboard not work? These are product problems. And yet you do five why them.

00:13:36   leads back to specific people and decisions and policies inside Apple. And that's where we end up

00:13:42   sometimes. But, you know, hopefully we never have to dig that far. Hopefully there are, you know,

00:13:46   simple surface level decisions that are easily remedied and not years long sagas of badness.

00:13:53   But, you know, we're we're in one of the down periods on on some things, but we're in an upswing

00:13:58   on hardware. So, you know, maybe someday we'll be an upswing and everything upswing on hardware,

00:14:02   software and policies and leadership and developer relations. I'm not sure that has ever existed

00:14:07   for Apple or any other platform company, because always there's some part of it, you know, it's like

00:14:12   finding a bottleneck in your code. Once you get rid of one, there's just whatever the next worst one is

00:14:17   now the bottleneck. But, you know, stranger things have happened.

00:14:21   We can dream. All right, let's do some follow up. Thank you for indulging me, gentlemen. We have some

00:14:26   more details with regard to SSD longevity. An anonymous person writes, I've been a firmware engineer for one

00:14:31   of IBM's enterprise SSDs for a little over a decade now, and I've at times worked on the error handling

00:14:36   for powered off data retention issues. There are a few strategies a drive can optimize under the covers

00:14:41   to attempt to make data blocks at rest readable again. The problem with all of them is that they

00:14:45   require time to be able to evaluate what strategy is best and tweak it for all the program blocks.

00:14:49   So here's my advice. If someone is powering on an SSD that has been powered off for a while,

00:14:53   power the drive on and let it sit. How much time to let it sit is a function of how much data is on

00:14:57   the drive, how long and how long it was powered off. The process for tweaking the read parameters

00:15:02   for all the program flash so that reads can be successful could take a while. I can't comment

00:15:06   on how consumer grade flash controllers handle this, but it would boggle my mind if there was no practice

00:15:10   of internally moving data to avoid requiring the host applications to rewrite data. Hence my suggestion

00:15:15   of leaving the drive powered on to give these processes time to complete. I probably have too much

00:15:19   of a biased perspective for how SSDs should handle scenarios like this. It's nice to see someone

00:15:24   doing real world tests on the drive though. Also, there was an offhanded comment about storing an

00:15:28   SSD in the attic. Please don't do this. 104 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 40 degrees in the bananas

00:15:33   temperature scale, is typically what the NAND devices are rated at. Don't at me. We get everything wrong

00:15:38   but this. Let us have Fahrenheit. It's the only one we got right. Everything else is wrong.

00:15:41   It's typically what the NAND devices are rated at when reporting power off data degradation rates.

00:15:47   Keeping the drives in a cooler location will help in reducing data retention issues.

00:15:50   Keeping them in your attic will likely accelerate the issues.

00:15:53   This was put together from a little back and forth. I had over email with this person and

00:15:58   you know, so enterprise SSDs from IBM. I don't doubt everything that this person said about enterprise

00:16:04   SSDs from IBM, but what I was pushing back on is like, okay, but like, do you think the really cheap

00:16:09   like bargain basement consumer grade SSDs that we buy to try to save money to get the biggest drive

00:16:15   possible? Are they also doing this? And he's like, it would boggle my mind if they're not. I'm like,

00:16:18   well, maybe your mind should be boggled. But anyway, here's one perspective from someone who

00:16:23   actually knows that if you buy good quote unquote enterprise class SSDs, merely powering them on and

00:16:28   letting them sit there actually may do something to save things. Of course, the enterprise class SSDs

00:16:33   are probably more over provisioned than the consumer grade ones and have all sorts of features that

00:16:37   give them a higher chance of data retention. But anyway, I would still say,

00:16:40   uh, it seems to me that, uh, on average, without knowing the specific SSD that you have and whether

00:16:47   you've got a quote unquote good one or bad one or whenever on average, it seems like those clunky

00:16:53   old spinning platter discs may actually hold onto their data longer than an SSD, uh, in ideal conditions,

00:16:59   but you know, keep it in mind. But anyway, it's, it's good to know that enterprise SSDs do do this better.

00:17:04   Uh, we had, I'm sure many of you have seen this. Somebody recorded a video of the price is right.

00:17:10   Now, if you're not American, uh, the price is right is an hour long commercial that masquerades as a

00:17:16   game show and it is a staple. I was so old when I realized that. Yeah. Same. Uh, it, it is a staple

00:17:22   of American TV, especially if you're a child because it comes on at 11 o'clock. I feel like we just had

00:17:27   this conversation, but it comes on at 11 o'clock and it's a game show where you have to like guess the

00:17:32   prices of things. And, uh, and the Plinko is, is one of the most popular games, which John is sort

00:17:38   of kind of used in descriptions of AI or no, that was Pachinko, wasn't it? I'm sorry.

00:17:42   Very similar, but you should, you should describe prices, right? Rules because non-Americans don't

00:17:46   know. Okay. So the way this works is for contestants are brought up and they're shown a product and that

00:17:52   product is not, it's described, but they don't state the price. And so you are supposed to guess

00:17:58   what you think the price of that product is, but the catch is you have to be as close as you can

00:18:03   get without going over. So if the product is exactly a thousand dollars and let's say it was just the

00:18:08   three of us and I guess a thousand one Marco guesses 10 and John guesses 500, even though I was only $1

00:18:16   off, John is the winner because he was the closest without going over. This is a staple of American kids

00:18:23   lives when they're homesick from school comes on 11 o'clock. Perfect time to watch while you're sick.

00:18:27   And, uh, so during the, uh, the first round of this episode, they brought out a mixed reality

00:18:33   headset made by Apple. That's 256 gigabytes. I love how they described it. A mixed reality headset. Do you

00:18:39   think the contestants on the price is right and know what a mixed reality is? No. I mean, this is part of

00:18:46   the problem of the vision pro is like, how do you explain this to people?

00:18:49   Everybody look up because the first prize is coming on down. It's a mixed reality headset.

00:18:54   This 256 gig Apple vision pro headset offers an immersive 3d camera system that can display photos

00:19:03   and videos and videos, take calls and can be used to play games or watch TV.

00:19:08   Nice. Back up to go. Uh, goes to over if it's closest to the actual retail price without going over. Good

00:19:16   luck, everybody. Go ahead.

00:19:18   $1,000. Thank you, Tamia. $1,000. Leroy.

00:19:22   $750. $750. $1,750. $1,750. Ray. I'm going to say $1,001.

00:19:29   $1,001. Maria. $1,270. $1,270. $1,270. Good luck, everybody. Actual retail price is

00:19:39   $3,499. Yeah, this is a good example of what people think a quote unquote mixed reality headset

00:19:52   should cost somewhere around $1,000, $1,500. Because remember, they're all trying to stay

00:19:59   under it. So they're not going to be overshooting it. And yeah, that I mean, I was kind of surprised

00:20:04   that they were guessing that much because they're like, oh, this is a fancy product. Maybe this is

00:20:08   not a product for me. Like it's not saying how much they'd be willing to pay for it. They were

00:20:11   just saying, how much do you think this costs for somebody who's not you who's going to buy it?

00:20:15   Because maybe you have no interest in this. You don't even know what it is. But it's a thing. It's

00:20:19   a shiny tech thing. How much does it cost for the people who want to get it? And these people think,

00:20:24   oh, for those people, it's $1,000, $1,500. And they're very, very wrong. So it's just it really is

00:20:31   a condemnation. It's not saying how much would it have to cost for these people to consider it. It's saying

00:20:35   how much do they think suckers are paying right now for it? And they think suckers are paying

00:20:39   $1,500.

00:20:40   All right.

00:20:41   I think the two saddest things about this Price is Right appearance for the Vision Pro is like,

00:20:45   number one, Apple paid for this. Like as Casey said, the Price is Right is a giant commercial.

00:20:50   Like the companies whose products are on the Price is Right presumably pay for that. Or they certainly

00:20:57   give it to them for free. But I think they actually pay for it also. Because like,

00:21:00   when the show host describes the products, it just sounds like a commercial. Like it's

00:21:05   just a commercial for these products. So Apple presumably paid for this. And then and so Apple

00:21:12   is so desperate for Vision Pro marketing that they are going to this. And then secondly, it

00:21:18   just shows like how like, no regular people know what this product is. And if you tell them

00:21:24   it's $3,500, like they are out. Like there's just like, there is no chance of this selling

00:21:29   to the public.

00:21:29   I think they're already out at $1,500. But they're like, oh, for somebody who wants it,

00:21:33   it's probably a $1,500 thing. To be fair, if they if the Mac Pro is on the Price is Right,

00:21:38   people would be hilariously wrong there too. So I'm not, you know, in the realm of very expensive

00:21:44   things, regular people are often very far off. But there are cheaper Macs than the Mac Pro.

00:21:48   There are no cheaper Apple headsets than the Vision Pro.

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00:23:51   Hey, so fellas, what in the world are Johnny Ive and Sam Altman building? Do you want to tell me

00:23:55   about it?

00:23:56   Well, we had the, so when we recorded last week, the news had basically just broken about their

00:24:02   official announcement, not the news. We knew they were working together, but like that they're,

00:24:05   that OpenAI is acquiring IO and they put out the video. And so all we really had to go on was the

00:24:11   video they had put out and maybe one or two statements from them to press outlets. But pretty much

00:24:15   as soon as we finished recording, the very next day, everything in the tech press was like,

00:24:20   what are they making? What are they making? What is it? And all the rumor people come out,

00:24:24   I think they're making this. I think they're making that. So it's kind of good. We got to like,

00:24:27   you know, speculated about it before the input of the entire world. But there has been significant

00:24:33   input from all the usual parties about what is it that they're actually making. And unfortunately,

00:24:38   it's not great news for Marco's watch theory.

00:24:40   Because yeah, basically what they've said is like, it seems like it's not something wearable,

00:24:45   probably. They said, it's definitely not glasses. It's probably not something wearable.

00:24:49   And it seems like it's some kind of third device that you like have on your desk or maybe wear around

00:24:55   your neck or something. So it kind of sounds like the humane AI pin 2.0.

00:25:03   Well, so here's the interesting thing about it, because like in the days after OpenAI and Sam Altman

00:25:09   said stuff. So there's stuff you can take to the bank, even if they're going to be vague,

00:25:12   it's not a rumor, they're saying it. But then the rumor people came in and said, okay,

00:25:16   on top of what they told you, here's what I know about it. And they get much more specific. So the

00:25:21   Verge actually had a reasonable summary over here. So when in a leaked call reviewed by the Wall Street

00:25:27   Journal, Sam Altman, and so I'm, you know, the Verge is reporting this and it's from the Wall Street

00:25:31   Journal. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna say this is probably reliable. Altman told OpenAI staffers,

00:25:35   it's not a phone or glasses. So that's, let's take that to the bank. I mean, we knew it wasn't a phone,

00:25:40   it's not glasses. And you know, they mentioned that a Meta and Google have glasses. Altman also

00:25:48   indicated that I wasn't keen on a device that had to be wearable. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean

00:25:54   there's no wearable angle here. I've wasn't keen on. All right, whatever. Anyway, and it supposedly

00:26:00   will be part of quote, a family of devices and screenless family of devices and quotes screenless

00:26:06   is not. So this is from, you know, Wall Street Journal leaked call OpenAI, Sam Altman, I'm taking

00:26:13   this to the bank to say, uh, no screen. But they say family of devices. I'm like, how the hell you make

00:26:18   a family of devices, you know, put a screen on anything. But anyway, screenless family of devices,

00:26:21   not a phone, not a glasses. And I was cranky about wearability, but it doesn't necessarily mean that

00:26:26   it won't be wearable. But then you go on to the, the, the rumor people who are like, like Ming-Chi

00:26:31   Kuo is just like, let me tell you everything about this. And I knew everything already, including someone

00:26:36   like a quote tweeted his thing and drew a picture of it. And everyone's passing it around as if it's

00:26:41   like a real thing. He's like a mass production is going to start in 2027. Here's what it's going to be

00:26:45   assembled. He's just got everything he probably wants to know about. Uh, it's, it's slightly

00:26:50   bigger than AI pin. Uh, it's, it's, it's as compact and elegant as an iPod shuffle. It's like, it's

00:26:55   like, if you know all this stuff about it, just tell us what it looks like. But it's like, oh, I don't,

00:26:58   I can just tell you it's elegant like this and it's bigger than, it's bigger than a bread box and it's

00:27:02   smaller than, it's just, uh, anyway, one of the intended use cases is wearing the device around the neck,

00:27:08   says Ming-Chi Kuo. But then the leaked call from Sam Altman says, I wasn't keen on wearability.

00:27:12   It will have cameras and microphones for environmental detection with no display

00:27:16   functionality is expected to connect to smartphones, PC and PCs utilizing their computing and display

00:27:21   capabilities. Um, yeah. So I think the rumors are off to the races of like, uh, you know, we'll see

00:27:28   how, uh, close these, uh, these like supply chain guesses or whatever are, but we have at least, uh,

00:27:35   closed out some possibilities. I feel like we've closed out the watch. It seems like we've closed out

00:27:40   anything with a screen. I'm having a hard time letting that one go. If it's a family of devices,

00:27:43   because what kind of family can you make out of screenless things? How many different screenless

00:27:47   variations can there be? And then the wearability seems like not so much. That's why you were saying,

00:27:52   Marco, like I keep thinking of like one of those egg timers that shaped like an egg, you know,

00:27:55   you put, you put it on the desk in front of you. Cause like I was saying, like their whole,

00:28:00   their pitch in their video was like, isn't it annoying that when you use these AI products,

00:28:04   you have to get them up to speed on the crap you've been doing. Presumably the stuff you've

00:28:08   been doing in the real world, but maybe also stuff you've been doing on a computer. Wouldn't it be

00:28:11   great if that content, if our, if something had that context already and to have that context,

00:28:18   the thing needs to be like somewhere where it can hear you possibly see you possibly have some

00:28:26   connection to all of the other devices that you're using. So it can see what's on their screens.

00:28:29   Like again, setting aside any platform barriers that we know exist, this thing, it would be nice

00:28:36   if this thing could see everything on your phone screen and see everything on your Mac screen and

00:28:39   say everything, hear everything you're saying. And, and you know, record like if, if it had all that

00:28:44   context. So when you asked it something, it's not just like it was just born and has no idea what's

00:28:49   going on. It knows everything that's going on and it can do useful stuff. That's, that's the impression

00:28:54   I got from what they were saying. But then I think about our, so what hardware device do you make

00:28:59   that does that? And a little egg that you like, we're about to have a meeting. I'm putting down

00:29:03   my egg. All right. Now we can talk and the egg will watch us and listen to us and record it. I don't

00:29:10   know how this is not just like a Microsoft recall, but like not, no longer confined to your laptop,

00:29:14   but like Microsoft recall for the world. Um, anyway, uh, I found this speculation about foreign practice

00:29:21   really exciting, but I keep coming back to, uh, what I said last week, which is this is all well and

00:29:26   good, but this product entirely depends on the magic of the thing that is not the hardware.

00:29:31   It doesn't depend on its ability to see screens. It doesn't depend on platform integration. It doesn't

00:29:36   depend on how cool the hardware is. It doesn't depend on people are embarrassed to use it. What

00:29:40   it depends on is, is the thing inside there that's listening, able to do anything useful that people

00:29:45   want to pay for. That's all that matters. And so Johnny, uh, I hope all your efforts in making a

00:29:51   beautiful egg or whatever the hell you're doing is not a hundred percent wasted. Because like I said,

00:29:55   you make the best hardware in the world and you make it act like the humane AI pin. Nobody wants it.

00:30:00   Yeah, that's, that's like the, the more I hear her badly. I was super optimistic last week because we

00:30:06   had heard almost nothing. The more I hear about it now, I'm like, Oh, like it's like red flags all over

00:30:12   the place. Like it, and look, the world of tech is full of things that like, when you hear the rumor

00:30:19   version of it, it sounds stupid. And then you, and the actual product comes out and it's a hit

00:30:23   like that happens, that happens in tech. Like, so it's hard for us to say now, not knowing almost

00:30:29   anything about this thing. Like, yeah, it sounds like it's probably stupid now, but maybe, maybe it'll

00:30:35   come out and be amazing. The world of tech is also full of humane AI pins. And so you don't know,

00:30:39   like at this point, we don't know which one of those it is. That's why companies make these kinds

00:30:44   of bets because they don't know either. Well, I hope they know better than we do because like,

00:30:49   like again, with, with the hardware, we can think of all sorts of hardware that would be good,

00:30:53   but none of us can think of a thing inside the heart that would, that would be good other than

00:30:56   just fantasizing in a sci-fi type of way, because we haven't seen it, but presumably inside open AI,

00:31:01   they have technology we haven't seen. And I hope that technology inside open AI is within

00:31:07   spitting distance of making a good product because everything depends on that. And, and like I said,

00:31:14   if you have that, you can put it in a potato and people will buy it because it'd be like the potato

00:31:17   sucks, but man, inside it is a gene that you can do everything I want. And people will be dying for

00:31:22   that potato. Like they can, they would, they would sell a million of them. They'd be selling like

00:31:26   potato pancakes. I don't know. Wow. Wow.

00:31:31   Gracious. All right. Uh, well, no, for what it's worth, uh, this week's upgrade, uh, Jason and Mike

00:31:36   went back and forth about this and Mike was super duper enthusiastic and Jason was super duper not.

00:31:41   And one of the things I love so much about the two of them and upgrade is that they generally tend to

00:31:46   take a far less cynical eye to things than a lot of people, including probably the three of us.

00:31:51   Jason less cynical, Mike less cynical by that. Uh, I don't know. I don't think Jason is generally that

00:31:56   cynical, but Oh man, he was not having it on, on this episode. And I was here for it because it was,

00:32:04   that was amazing. It was quite funny. Yeah. I mean, because like I said, we, none of us have ever seen

00:32:07   anything that can do something that would make this product good. Uh, but it all depends on your

00:32:12   willingness to believe, okay, just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean nobody can ever do it.

00:32:15   maybe they've done it. And you know, I'm, I, in this case, I'm so much more willing to entertain

00:32:19   the possibility because unlike, you know, humane pin or rabbit are one, they make the thing that

00:32:26   would be inside there. And they're one of the leaders in the industry. So like who has the best

00:32:30   shot at it? One of the leaders in the industry. So I'm willing to entertain the possibility that they

00:32:34   have it. But until I see it, I'm not willing to say, you know, Oh, for sure. They're going to pull

00:32:40   this off because I, one of the things I've been thinking about since last week is if open AI had

00:32:45   something that would make this product desirable, I have a hard time believing they'd be able,

00:32:50   they would be willing to hold it until the egg is ready. Right. Like they'd be releasing it now as

00:32:56   like the, you know, just a new version of chat GPT with a new model or whatever. Like why would they

00:33:01   sit on it? Why would they hold it? Because in the end, despite what Johnny may think, the physical

00:33:05   form factor of this means almost nothing. Like it almost doesn't matter at all. Like,

00:33:10   and in fact, if you have this, it should be everywhere, not confined to an egg. Like, you

00:33:15   know, so it's just, I'm really, I'm really married to the egg thing here. I don't know. I didn't think

00:33:19   of this last week. Last week I was all potato. Um, and like, are they the type of company because,

00:33:24   you know, things are happening so fast in this industry. Are they the type of company that would

00:33:28   sit on this? Apple would for sure sit on it because that's the type of company they are.

00:33:31   But open AI is competing with Anthropic is competing with, uh, you know, uh, Google Gemini and

00:33:36   they're, they're just like one upping each other every week. So I have a hard time believing they'd

00:33:40   be like, okay, yeah, but we do have the real good thing, but we're saving that for the egg. So just

00:33:43   don't, don't show it in public yet. And so I'm not in that respect. I'm on Jason's side, which is

00:33:48   like, do they, but do they really have it? Or are they just going to hook up what they already have

00:33:51   to the egg and be like, now it's great, isn't it? And it'd be like, I guess it's a little bit

00:33:55   better. They don't have to type as much, but in the end it's still chat GPT. And with all

00:33:59   its, uh, foibles and limits. We'll see. Yeah. I don't know. I, I still think that the potential

00:34:04   here can be something really great. Um, I, I do think that like, you know, one concern Jason

00:34:10   brought up an upgrade was, you know, we've seen unedited Johnny Ive. Like we we've seen Johnny

00:34:17   Ive under Steve jobs produced like that team was the dynamic duo. They produced like so much

00:34:24   great stuff from that pairing because Johnny Ive, like many artists works better in a collaborative

00:34:32   form. Uh, and you know, it's better when he's like balanced by somebody with strong product

00:34:37   sense and the power to, you know, say no to him or, or to like, to be like on level with

00:34:44   him or, or to point him in a direction. Like to, because Steve job is, I need one of these

00:34:48   go and he'd be like, I'll make you the best one of those that I can make. But jobs is the

00:34:52   one pointing him in the direction, make one of these in other things. Like, you

00:34:56   know, when after jobs passed away and Johnny was given way too much power by Tim cook with

00:35:00   his amazing product sensibility, um, we saw like how Johnny Ive goes wrong. Like when

00:35:05   he had, when he was the most powerful person in his world and he was the most powerful person

00:35:11   making product decisions, we saw him go to extremes that were worse for the products in

00:35:17   a lot of ways. We don't know what the dynamic here is between Johnny and open AI and Sam

00:35:23   Altman. I'm guessing it's closer to uncontrolled Johnny than to Steve jobs, Johnny, but I don't

00:35:31   think it's all the way in that direction necessarily. Cause like, he's not the CEO of open AI and Sam

00:35:35   Altman does seem to be, to be pretty opinionated with products. So let's like, I think I'm, I'm willing

00:35:41   to see how this goes, but I do like, again, the more, the more I hear about this, the more I'm

00:35:46   like, Oh, that doesn't sound right. That doesn't sound great. Oh no. So we'll see. I still maintain

00:35:52   from last show that I think the best thing for Johnny, I have an open AI to try to make, if they want to

00:35:58   make a hardware ad AI device for personal use is a smartwatch, but it seems like that's probably not

00:36:04   what they're making and everything that I've heard about what they're making sounds worse.

00:36:08   So we'll see.

00:36:09   Well, when Apple buys them, they'll put it into the Apple watch. That'll be fine.

00:36:12   Yeah. Right. I mean, or, you know, it could also be, you know, when the Amazon echo first came out,

00:36:18   that sounded ridiculous. You're going to put an Amazon microphone in your house. That's listening

00:36:25   to you all the time for you to say it's wake word. What, who, what idiot is going to do that?

00:36:30   And now half the devices that we all buy and have in our houses have microphones and voice

00:36:35   assistants on them. That was something that sounded totally ridiculous and creepy and nobody would

00:36:41   ever do that. And then within a decade, it's ubiquitous. Everything does that. So this could

00:36:47   end up being like that. Like maybe, maybe there is something to the AI obelisk that you put on your

00:36:54   desk or wear around your neck. It's an egg Marco, whatever, but like maybe there is something to that.

00:37:00   But I, I don't right now, I don't see what that thing is like, but Hey, you never know.

00:37:07   That reminds me of the windows recall. Like I'm such a proponent of a life streams for so many

00:37:12   years and Microsoft comes out with an OS level feature of it, but a botch, the implementation

00:37:16   and the, and the marketing of it so badly that now everyone hates it. I continue to think a thing

00:37:20   that knows everything you're doing and listens to everything that like that is useful as long as

00:37:25   you feel like you're in control of it. And Microsoft failed that test with windows recall.

00:37:30   Like they keep trying to put it out and keep having problems and security issues or whatever.

00:37:34   The, you know, the open AI is a Johnny I've egg thing or whatever. It will be more useful if it

00:37:41   knows, like I said, if it, if it somehow magically could see everything that's going on all your

00:37:44   devices, but at the very least can listen to everything you're saying as you sit there at your

00:37:48   fancy bar in San Francisco and have cameras that sees you and like that makes a more useful

00:37:54   product. If the thing at the other end of it can do something useful with that information,

00:37:57   how do you pull that off? Like in the way that the, the Amazon echo did it somehow like overcome

00:38:05   the creepiness barrier, right? Like just that people see the value more than they worry about

00:38:11   the privacy invasion or that they trust that it's not doing, you know, and it is fascinating to me

00:38:15   that Microsoft blew this so badly with, with a windows recall because they're not a small

00:38:20   company and they know how to rule out products and they surely have to know what the objections

00:38:24   were, but they did so badly and they keep taking runs at it. I wonder how this is going to work

00:38:28   out because right now people have no problem chucking their whole lives into chat GPT because

00:38:32   they enjoy the results from it and they don't think about where a little of the information is

00:38:35   going. Uh, yeah, that's, that is another challenge here, but that's, these are all like

00:38:40   secondary and tertiary challenges to like, have they made a thing that people want to

00:38:43   use track GPT people want to use. So good job there. Uh, the egg we'll see.

00:38:49   Well, I was talking with Jason privately, uh, before he recorded like a while before he recorded

00:38:53   and he was saying to me, you know, similar things that, uh, Johnny is better when, you know, he's

00:39:00   reined in and the classic example of this, because it's me or the classic, my classic example of this,

00:39:06   because it's me is top gear versus grand tour. You know, these three dudes, these three old white

00:39:11   guys, uh, did top gear under the auspices of the BBC under the direction of the BBC.

00:39:15   And it was incredible. It, you know, there were problems, but by and large, it was one of my favorite

00:39:21   TV shows of all time. And then eventually one of them literally assaulted a crew member and they got

00:39:26   booted from the BBC and they went to Amazon and they made effectively the same, same show called the

00:39:32   grand tour. And it was mostly crap. If you ask me, or certainly not nearly as good as top gear was.

00:39:37   And I think, I don't know, but my strong theory is that nobody was there to tell them no. And that

00:39:44   was a problem because without those guardrails, they just, they, they, they were just not as good.

00:39:50   And I think Johnny, as all three of us have said, as Jason has said, I think Johnny needs those

00:39:54   guardrails and needs somebody to tell him no, or perhaps just point them in the right direction.

00:39:59   Like you were saying, John. So I don't know. We'll see what happens. I mean, it's, I'm very,

00:40:04   very skeptical and very, very dubious, but we'll see. I mean, Tom, we'll tell.

00:40:07   I give them a lot of leeway for a new product category though, because like laptops are an

00:40:11   established thing and we know what makes a good laptop. Nobody knows what makes a good egg. So

00:40:15   he gets it wrong because he overshoots and goes too extreme and make something with no buttons.

00:40:19   It's just like a smooth capacitive thing that you have to draw like figure eights on to make

00:40:23   work. Like people will complain that he went too far and made the hardware bad. But again,

00:40:27   if the thing inside it is magical, they'd be like, Oh, Johnny overcooked this one. And it's,

00:40:33   it's a awkward hardware, but man, the thing inside it, it's great. And it does look like a really nice

00:40:36   egg. So I feel like he has a safety net here of being in a new product category where there's no

00:40:43   established anything except for established failures. Right. And so he's, he's got, I put it this way.

00:40:49   I would much rather have him doing this project than like working on another Mac or something or

00:40:53   working on another iPhone for that matter. So, you know, he's, I feel like he is safely confined to

00:40:58   the frontier of technology rather than taking established product categories that he's grown

00:41:04   bored with and doing things that please him, but then make customers sad.

00:41:08   All right. There's an Alexa plus update reading from the verge. Amazon has officially launched its AI

00:41:14   powered Alexa plus, but it's only available to a small number of customers to start. Amazon spokesperson,

00:41:18   Christy Schmidt confirmed to the verge as shown on its early access page. Alexa plus also doesn't come

00:41:23   with all the features Amazon showcase during its recent devices event, like the ability to brainstorm

00:41:27   gift ideas, order groceries with your voice or access Alexa plus in your browser. There are some other

00:41:32   missing features that quote, don't yet meet Amazon standards for public release quote, according to a

00:41:37   report from the Washington post, Alexa plus still can order takeout from Grubhub using context from a

00:41:41   conversation, nor can it, nor can it identify family members around the house and give them reminders

00:41:45   to do chores. You won't be able to access kids plus features such as stories with Alexa either.

00:41:51   So this is disappointing. We talked about, uh, Amazon's announcement that they had taken their,

00:41:54   their quote unquote legacy voice assistant and totally overhauled it to be powered by LLMs to

00:41:59   be even better, which is exactly what Apple has been trying and failing to do with their legacy voice

00:42:04   assistant, which was already worse than Amazon's, right? Amazon just said they did it. Uh, they wanted

00:42:09   this big press store or whatever. And this is actually an older story, but still like, okay, but if you've

00:42:14   done it, shouldn't we be able to use it now and try it and see if it is what you say it is. And right now it is

00:42:20   barely rolled out to anybody. I've never actually even heard of anybody who has it and what is rolled

00:42:25   out to them is extremely limited. So I'm going to say that Amazon's, uh, celebratory announcement that

00:42:31   they had done this very difficult thing with their legacy voice assistant was perhaps a bit premature.

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00:44:45   All right, let's do a little bit of neutral. And speaking of top gear, the slate truck was,

00:44:53   that was a, um, overtime from a few weeks back. Is that right?

00:44:56   I think so. Yeah. Okay. Um, the slate truck, uh, which is the exceedingly cheap bare bones

00:45:03   electric truck. Well, depending on your definition of cheap, you know what I mean? Uh, relatively

00:45:07   cheap, relatively $20,000. It's cheap for a gas car, let alone an EV. Right. So anyways, uh,

00:45:14   top gear did a preview of it and that's a video preview, which we'll put in the show notes and it

00:45:20   looks pretty good for the most part. I mean, it's, it's not exactly what I would want personally,

00:45:24   but I very, very much respect the idea of giving you a blank slate and saying,

00:45:29   go forth, do what you want to do. Oh, you got it. Blank slate.

00:45:32   The good thing about the top gear video is like when we talked about it, it was just a story and

00:45:38   with some pictures and stuff. But when you see top gear reviewing, you're like, it's, this is a real

00:45:41   thing that a person can poke around. It's not finished, you know, but you see like, it's real

00:45:45   enough that they invited top gear to look at it and didn't embarrass themselves. So I have a one notch

00:45:49   more confidence that they were actually going to produce something. Yeah, very much so. And then,

00:45:54   uh, additionally, uh, Kevin Ayers writes that there's a slate truck competitor,

00:45:58   Telo, T-E-L-O, the all electric mini truck. And Kevin writes, it's not as cheap as the slate truck,

00:46:03   but the Telo is another new truck designed to consider. And that's telotrucks.com. All these

00:46:08   links will be in the show notes. Uh, the range is between 216 and 350 miles. The power is between

00:46:14   300 and 500 horsepower. The price after the, I think now discontinued $7,500 tax credit in the United

00:46:20   States is between 34 and $39,000. Um, this thing looks extremely weird because it's basically like,

00:46:29   if you were to look at the overhead of it, which they show in the dashboard at some point in a,

00:46:33   in a video we'll put in, uh, that DeMuro did, it looks as though they kind of just cut off the front

00:46:39   of a pickup truck. And as it turns out, it's just because there is no motor and they don't have a

00:46:43   frunk. They basically did just cut off the front of a pickup truck. Uh, but this thing is also very

00:46:48   innovative and very interesting. Uh, like I said, there's a video from Dr. DeMuro that we'll put in

00:46:52   the show notes. Uh, Kevin Cash writes, there's an active discord with the engineers and founders.

00:46:57   They've got their first prototype built and they're hoping to start building actual trucks next year.

00:47:01   Uh, again, not really for me, but very, very cool stuff. And, uh, one of the really neat things,

00:47:07   it was the Tello, I believe that did this is that it has basically a regular size, a small bed,

00:47:13   but a regular size, small bed. I forget the term for it. Despite the fact that it's about the same

00:47:18   length as a modern, uh, mini. I love that they made that comparison because they're like, Oh,

00:47:23   it's like a pickup truck and it's got a bed, but it's the size of a mini. And all I could think of

00:47:27   was the other picture you see on the internet, which is the size of the current mini compared to the size

00:47:32   of the original mini. And that itself is hilarious. So yes, it's great that it's the size of a mini,

00:47:37   but the mini ain't so many anymore, but you nailed it with like, it's a pickup truck with the front

00:47:40   knocked off to the point where it's hard to tell from these photos, but I believe if you were to

00:47:45   drive this thing slowly inching your way towards a wall, the first thing that hit the wall would I

00:47:49   believe be the tires. I think that's right. Yeah. Any part of the body. That's how little a front

00:47:54   this has. Presumably this will be crash tested and whatever, but it looks a little bit scary,

00:47:58   but yeah, it's, it is taking advantage of the packaging that you can only do with an EV

00:48:02   by making it like all passenger space, no front at all. And using the length of the vehicle that

00:48:08   they save for bed space. Now it annoys me that not annoys me. Like it makes sense that these

00:48:13   companies slate and tell over like Americans love pickup trucks, because for some reason they think

00:48:17   they're going to be picking stuff up, but what they actually want is a sedan. So we have to make

00:48:21   things that are pickup trucks, but are essentially sedans on the inside. So the people that buy them

00:48:25   can feel good about the truck, but that they're never going to use, or that they're going to protect

00:48:28   very carefully with the cover and never lived any putting anything like they, they have to do that

00:48:33   for fashion reasons or whatever, for whatever reason they have to make this. I look at this and

00:48:37   I'm like, I wish they would make a small, cheap EV that just holds people because most people in

00:48:43   America need to carry around people and not bark mulch and plywood, but whatever this, you got to do

00:48:49   what you got to do. So I, I, I enjoy the fact that there are two inexpensive EVs with small batteries

00:48:54   that companies are trying to make and sell in America. I don't enjoy the fact that they're

00:48:58   both pickup trucks, but apparently everyone else in America does. So good luck, Tello and slate.

00:49:03   Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing is, I think it was Demuro said that they had originally built the

00:49:08   Tello with the assumption that people would want a two seat or perhaps three seat cab and a little

00:49:14   more bed space in the back. But as it turns out, as they started talking to like, um, you know,

00:49:19   corporate buyers and things like that, they said, no, no, no, no, no. The crew cab, or that is to say the

00:49:23   four, uh, four person cab is what everyone wants, even at the, at the expense of, you know, having a

00:49:29   little itty bitty bed, which is bananas to me. I agree. I, I, with love and respect to pickup truck

00:49:35   owners, I, including some of our mutual friends, I don't get it, but to each their own.

00:49:40   I mean, some people need it. All right. And some people just want it. Cause it's a fun thing to

00:49:43   have, but so many of them sell that like, okay, the people who need it and people who want it for like,

00:49:48   just that, you know, a thing that they just want to have. And the rest of the people I feel like are

00:49:51   getting it because they like, like a fashion thing. Like if it was up to them and they were

00:49:56   on a desert Island, they would never pick a pickup truck. Like they don't actually have a personal

00:49:59   affinity for it, but it's like the thing to do, you know, culturally the thing to do or something.

00:50:05   And so they buy these pickup trucks that are essentially four door sedans. Like I just put

00:50:08   a picture in our Slack that I found recently showing what pickup trucks were like when I was a kid

00:50:12   and what they look like now. It just shows people want four door sedans, but they need to have like

00:50:19   this. It's, it's like skeuomorphism. Like it's, it's the part of the, part of the device that no

00:50:23   longer needs to be there, but is there anyway, reflecting the previous function of this device,

00:50:28   which is the actual definition of skeuomorphism. And yeah, I feel like the truck bed and pickups

00:50:32   is now skeuomorphic in most cases. The only downside to like these cool, cute, new electric

00:50:40   truck things is like, this all looks well and good, but like, will anybody actually buy these? That's

00:50:46   the question. Like it could be, it could have Palm Pre syndrome where like, you know, everyone tries

00:50:51   it and like, that's really cool. Wow. And well, what are you going to buy? Well, I bought a Ford

00:50:54   truck because it turns out like the reason why people buy trucks, there's a huge number of people

00:51:00   who buy trucks because where they live culturally, that's considered like a nice vehicle to have. Like

00:51:08   that is the default nice vehicle. Like you've made it in the world when you have your own truck.

00:51:12   It's like a rite of adulthood. Yeah, exactly. And so there's these huge parts of America that are like

00:51:18   that where like the default vehicle that most people aspire to have is a pickup truck. Even if

00:51:24   they don't really use the bed for much or hardly ever use it, but that's just, that is the default

00:51:29   vehicle. Second of all, there is kind of a tragedy at the Commons thing here where it's like you, like

00:51:34   the American vehicle size inflation is a real thing, especially on trucks. And when you are in an area,

00:51:41   like I live on Long Island, Long Island is full of trucks. Long Island is the South of the North.

00:51:45   It is full of trucks. Everybody here drives trucks. They're huge. They get them lifted. They get

00:51:51   massive new wheels and tires put on them to get them lifted even further. The things I see on the road

00:51:56   here are ridiculous. And the roads here are huge and they still don't fit on them. Like this is, I live

00:52:01   in truck area, like big time. I don't feel safe driving a very small, low sedan here. Most people

00:52:10   wouldn't. So if you launch these new tiny mini sized pickup trucks in most of America, where most people are

00:52:18   buying these massive, tall, blocky, heavy Ford and GMC and Chevy trucks like that everyone's buying,

00:52:24   you're not going to feel, you're going to feel like you're in a motorcycle in one of these things.

00:52:28   And so I think a lot of America is actually not going to be willing to buy one of these because

00:52:34   they're not going to feel safe because everything else in the road is so much bigger than them.

00:52:38   That's a big problem they're going to face.

00:52:40   Don't they get higher than sedans? I think these are taller than sedans. It's hard to tell from the photos,

00:52:44   but I do think they're like, I mean, look at next to the mini, look at the height of the driver's

00:52:47   head in the mini versus these things. They're not as big as the giant trucks, but they're actually

00:52:51   not as small as a Honda Civic either. So I think they have a shot. It depends. I mean, the real problem

00:52:55   is the weenie factor. No one wants to feel like they got a weenie car. That's why the smart cars didn't

00:53:00   do well here. Uh, I think the slate is, it has less weenie factor than the Tello. The Tello looks

00:53:06   weird and sci-fi-ish and maybe will only be purchased by like people in Portland or something.

00:53:11   Uh, the slate looks like slate is like mini macho and maybe, maybe among younger people,

00:53:17   uh, with like the, the whole, uh, K truck Japanese thing, maybe there'd be some niche for it, but I

00:53:23   don't know. Like that's up to these companies, marketing departments. Like they chose to make

00:53:26   these things. I think they could have had a cleaner win by making a small, small battery EV for the

00:53:31   people who currently buy the Prius, which like for, for all the love of pickup trucks we have,

00:53:36   there is a segment of people who want to buy small cars, small, inexpensive cars in America to get good

00:53:41   mileage. I think Toyota sells a lot of those cars and Honda sells a lot of Civics. Like that market

00:53:46   exists. It's just not the biggest market anymore. If I was aiming a small battery EV at something,

00:53:51   I would be thinking about them, but both of these companies instead are thinking truck. So here we are

00:53:55   or truck or whatever the hell the Tello is because calling it a truck is, it looks more like

00:54:00   something that would take you from base to base on Mars. Yeah, it's true actually.

00:54:04   Yeah. I don't, I don't see that one getting very far. I think, I think slate has a much better

00:54:08   chance of success. That's why I was so shocked to see Doug DeMiro do a video on the Tello. Cause I

00:54:13   think like, Oh, this is the thing that this will never exist. Like this is just a rendering. Like

00:54:16   this is not a real problem. It was a real vehicle that he could like go around and like, and it didn't

00:54:20   look like it was like made out of cardboard. So I'm like, wow, they got pretty far along.

00:54:25   All right. You did the unthinkable, John. You wrote two blog posts. Was it in as many days? It was

00:54:31   certainly within the span of a week. And I don't know what to do with myself because I'm not used to

00:54:36   even the new improved John writing that much on his blog. So tell me about Apple turnovers and Apple

00:54:42   turnarounds, please.

00:54:43   So we talked about Apple turnover, my posts where I was talking about how I lost faith in, uh, Tim

00:54:48   Cook's leadership, because there's a bunch of things that I could no longer believe Apple would do unless

00:54:51   leadership changes things that I thought they should do that. I just given up hope though of them ever

00:54:55   doing with current leadership. And that's what I talked about in Apple turnover. Uh, we talked about

00:54:59   an ATP episode six 39. Um, and then to, to go meta for a second here, uh, I kind of always wanted to do

00:55:08   a follow-up post because like the Apple turnarounds is why I think Apple needs new leadership.

00:55:12   And the next post I was going to do is like, I assume people would ask this and some people did.

00:55:18   It's like, uh, Apple needs a leadership and you're, you have no longer have faith that Apple will do

00:55:23   the things you think they need to do. What things, what, if they got new leadership, what would they

00:55:26   do? Like what, what do you actually want? Because you didn't say that in the turnar, of course,

00:55:29   you just say, I've lost faith, new people to come in, need to come in because I don't think

00:55:33   they're going to do these things that I want, but you didn't say what they were. So the obvious

00:55:37   follow-up post is, okay, if there was new leadership, what the hell would they do differently?

00:55:41   Like why, what, what, what was the point? What was it when, what is the thing that you want them to

00:55:46   do that you think they won't do with Tim Cook that you think they shouldn't do? And the meta commentary

00:55:50   is I was kind of planning this from the beginning. I'm like, won't this be clever? The first one is

00:55:55   called Apple turnover, which is at least a three-way pun, probably also four-way. Feel free to figure

00:55:59   that out amongst yourselves. Um, and then the next one was going to be, uh, well, just to pick out one of the,

00:56:07   common means turnover is when, uh, employees leave a company and are replaced by other employees.

00:56:11   That's turnover. And that's one, that's one of the past four possible definitions of Apple turnover.

00:56:15   Um, the next one was going to be Apple turnaround, which is when a company's in turnaround,

00:56:21   it's when like, Oh, things are going badly at the company. So they need,

00:56:24   things need to change. And so maybe they bring in new management or whatever.

00:56:28   like the example I gave in the article is that, uh, Apple in the nineties was in turnaround.

00:56:32   They were going down the tubes and they needed to get this thing turned around. And they tried a

00:56:37   bunch of stuff to turn around, including multiple new CEOs and eventually acquiring next. And they did

00:56:42   get it turned around, but they were in turnaround turnaround is either the last phase before the

00:56:46   death of a company or the, the beginning of the company having a resurgence. So that was my clever

00:56:53   idea. I'm like, Oh, right. I'll do Apple turnover. And then I'll do Apple turnaround.

00:56:56   I massively underestimated, uh, how confusing that would be for people to make two, to make two posts,

00:57:04   one called Apple turnover and one called Apple turnaround within like 10 days of each other.

00:57:08   Because everybody, when they see one of them, Marco snapped a good problem. They're like, Oh yeah,

00:57:13   I've already said that one. I saw that article. It's that Apple turnaround article, right? Or is that

00:57:17   Apple turnover? They just think it's the same article. So I had to do this embarrassing post. It was

00:57:21   like, I made a followup to my other post. You may have read the other one, but this is actually a

00:57:25   totally new post, even though the titles are very similar. So lesson learned, like, uh, honestly,

00:57:31   I'd do it again because I'm stickler for like, when I get an idea like this stuck in my head that I want

00:57:35   to do this series of posts that, uh, that sort of bookend each other and have multiple meanings. I

00:57:40   would do it again, but I just so badly predicted how confusing this would be. So I apologize to the

00:57:47   world, but I guess, sorry, not sorry. Cause I would do it again. Anyway, sorry for the

00:57:52   meta commentary and aside. Um, no, that's what we're here for that. That's, that's what the people pay

00:57:56   us for. Uh, what I want to go into now is, um, what, what, you know, also new leadership, what should

00:58:02   they do? What should they do differently? And I didn't want it to be like a thousand, you know,

00:58:07   page article here. I also wanted to be succinct, but there's a lot of stuff. So I'm going to go

00:58:12   through some things that I thought about. And if there's anything you want to add to it that you

00:58:16   think they should do differently. And in particular, as I tried to emphasize in the article, this is not

00:58:21   a list of all the things that Apple should do differently. There's tons of things that I think

00:58:24   they should do differently, but most of those things, I believe they can and will do differently

00:58:28   with current leadership. For example, the Mac pro that you hear me harp about. I don't think there's

00:58:32   anything about Tim Cook's leadership that precludes them making a decent Mac pro. Like they haven't

00:58:37   canceled, they haven't even canceled the product. And even if they'd canceled the product, I'm like,

00:58:39   well, they could always come around. Like there's nothing. Tim Cook is not dead set against making

00:58:43   a decent Mac pro to put it that way. He doesn't even care about it. Like, so that's just one

00:58:48   personal example. There's tons of things that they don't need new leadership to do. So this article was

00:58:52   entirely focused on what are the things that you think the current Apple is absolutely never going

00:58:58   to do that they should do and they need new leadership to do. So that's what I'm confining myself

00:59:01   to. Um, and I think I made that point well enough that people aren't saying, well, I also think

00:59:06   Apple should do X. It's like, yeah, they should. And they probably will someday, but they don't

00:59:09   you know, Tim Cook doesn't need to leave for that to happen. So the first, the most obvious one,

00:59:14   uh, which I titled the new deal for developers. This is the developer relations angle. This is

00:59:20   one of the most important things that it just seems like, uh, you know, I don't want to go into it too

00:59:25   much because we talked about so much on past shows and also on episode 639, um, that Apple's attitude

00:59:32   towards developers, uh, and their control of the platform. Like there seems to be no crisis or

00:59:39   regulation or anything that can happen that will change their mind about it. Uh, and it's things

00:59:44   that we've thought should be different for years and years. And it just seems like the only way this

00:59:49   is going to change is with new leadership. And on top of that, I would say that even if the current

00:59:54   leadership changes, their mind has a change of heart and says, you know what? You're right.

00:59:57   We've been jerks. We need to rethink this relationship. They've lost so much, uh,

01:00:03   I don't know, credibility with the community and people are so mad at them that it's hard for the,

01:00:08   it would be hard for those same people for the, for us to take them seriously. When they, they,

01:00:12   we've turned over a new leaf. We're going to be a new company. It's time for a new deal for

01:00:15   developers with Apple, but it's the same people. We'd be like, Hmm, I like the decision you say

01:00:20   you're making, but aren't you the same people who did X, Y, and Z new faces really help. That's one

01:00:27   of the reasons when a company's in turnaround, almost always new leaders are brought in. Even

01:00:32   if the new leaders aren't necessarily better or people like them more than the other ones, it's

01:00:36   like, you're not the guy who screwed this up or the gal who screwed this up. You're not the person

01:00:41   who's responsible for the crap we're in now. So to get to Marco's point about Tim Cook having the

01:00:46   expertise to fix the supply chain problem. Even if that's true, a lot of people would feel better

01:00:51   about, okay, but can we have the person who didn't cause this problem be the solution? Cause that would

01:00:56   make me feel better, right? You just, you just need new faces sometimes for credibility. And

01:01:01   particularly when it's a topic like this, which is Apple's relationship with developers,

01:01:06   that's a touchy feely thing. That's not just as simple as like policy changes, which would have to

01:01:10   be part of this, but this is like, how does Apple communicate to developers? How do they see the

01:01:15   relationship? And it's going to be like, even if all of Apple had a change of heart about this,

01:01:21   it would be so hard over so many years to essentially win us back. It's like the spurned lovers. Like

01:01:26   I've changed baby, right? Like this time it's going to be different. Whereas if you get new people in

01:01:32   there, even if it's like, even if it's like existing people, like say John Ternus takes over, it's like,

01:01:36   well, he's not a new person. He's always been there. But the thing is, John Ternus was not making

01:01:39   decisions about the app store. You know what I mean? So he is effectively a new face who never before was the

01:01:45   person who is the decider for app store issues. And so we would be like, oh, well, okay, at least

01:01:50   someone new is making decisions about the app store. And John Ternus is added towards developers is

01:01:54   different. And I tried to emphasize that like in this section, because this is what people always

01:01:58   ask to like, what was the problem? Is it just the 30% or 15? Like, what's the right percent? What

01:02:02   should it be? What I tried to emphasize in this section of the article is like, they could leave

01:02:06   their, the app store percentages and their cut exactly the same. If they actually change the

01:02:13   relationship, if they if, if customers, developers felt like Apple was supporting them and trying to

01:02:19   get their apps out and provided good service, like they could earn their 30 or 15%. And one of the ways

01:02:26   that I said they could do that is to do what they've essentially been forced to do in other regions of

01:02:30   the world, which is open up to third party app stores, or whatever. Because like, like I said,

01:02:35   I described it as the best way, perhaps the only way to make developers happy with the dealer getting

01:02:41   from Apple, because that's also another question. It's like, what would make developer happy? They're

01:02:44   so cranky. What do they want? Do they want everything for free? Do they want like Apple to pay them to

01:02:48   make stuff for this platform? What do they want? There's no, you don't need to really hash that out.

01:02:53   You could say Apple, keep your percentage exactly the same. Hell, raise your percentage. But if you

01:02:58   open the your platform to third party app stores, guess what that is? That's competition. And everyone

01:03:04   in that if you if they make as level a playing field as possible, they'll never be able to make it totally

01:03:09   level because of the platform. But if they make it as level as possible, they will have to compete

01:03:14   for customers because a customer who doesn't like Apple's cut, for example, will go to the Epic store,

01:03:19   store or the Google store or the Microsoft store or whatever other vendor is out there. All those stores will

01:03:25   have to compete for developers business. And can Apple sustain 15 to 30 percent? Yeah, if they provided a

01:03:35   really good business, if they, you know, allowed upgrade pricing or fixed all their APIs and made store kit

01:03:40   three, that's 10 times better, and allowed people to return refunds and gave developers respect and help things

01:03:47   get through review. And like, maybe we're more strict about review and had like a favorite program

01:03:51   for actual good developers versus junky stuff. And that like, once there's competition, people will

01:03:57   sort themselves out and Apple will know that it is succeeding when people choose to use to pay them

01:04:04   their 15 or 30 percent because of the benefits they're getting. Marco said this a million times of

01:04:09   like it's, you know, people always say, well, you hate all these things. But why do you continue to use

01:04:13   an app purchase? For a lot of people, even now, it is the best choice available. With competition,

01:04:19   we would be sure that not only is the best choice available, but like, there are other people competing

01:04:24   for it. So we know that like, well, they have a lower percentage in the Epic store. But they're not

01:04:28   as good about, you know, their turnaround time and app review isn't as good or their APIs for an app

01:04:35   purchase aren't as nice as Apple's because Apple has massively expanded it and does stuff like if Apple

01:04:39   had to compete with Stripe, for example. Like, anyway, that's what I tried to emphasize in this

01:04:43   section is a new deal for developers. And it is so not about Apple should take less money. It is

01:04:48   entirely about Apple should earn the money that it gets. And the way you earn that is by having

01:04:52   competition. And then people who are choosing you, you know, you're you're doing a good job because

01:04:57   people are saying, when I look at the totality of what is on offer from all the places, all the ways

01:05:02   that I can sell software for Apple's devices, I choose Apple because they have the best balance

01:05:08   of things. Now, if they left everything the same and not just the price, a lot of people would leave

01:05:13   Apple. But all I'm saying is that it's not like, oh, well, should they give it away for free or

01:05:17   whatever? I think Apple could earn almost any reasonable cut if they did a really good job and

01:05:24   all the stuff they're currently doing a terrible job with. Yeah, I think a lot of a lot of the feedback

01:05:29   we get, as you mentioned, is like people who say, well, if you don't like the 30%, what should it be?

01:05:33   Well, you know, what would be a fair cut? And, you know, people kind of say that, you know, derisively

01:05:37   as if like, we're just, you know, being arbitrary here. But to be clear, like, I don't actually think

01:05:45   that the 30 slash 15% cut in the current scheme is totally unworkable for a lot of people.

01:05:54   what I want, what I like, and to be clear, also, I'm also still staying with it, like,

01:06:00   even though I now could, you know, offer something on my website or something and, you know, for US

01:06:05   customers. And by the way, my customers have already started asking me to do that. I have gotten

01:06:12   multiple emails from people in the last week saying, can you please offer a web thing so I can subscribe

01:06:18   in a way that gives you more money?

01:06:20   A nerdy customer base. This is definitely like leading indicators.

01:06:24   Yes. And that show is like, this is going beyond just developers, like in the public sentiment here.

01:06:30   But anyway, what I want...

01:06:32   And just very quickly to jump in, you are uniquely well-suited to do that because you know how to take

01:06:40   money from people directly. That's how ATP membership works. Now, granted, you would have to rewrite some

01:06:45   things, but you've done the hard work already. So I don't think this would be... Tell me if I'm wrong,

01:06:50   but I don't think this would be that heavy a lift for you to make this work for Overcast.

01:06:53   It would be trivial. I have no doubt it would be trivial. I don't want to do it because I don't

01:06:59   want to support it and I think it's temporary. But if it turns out being long-term, maybe I will do it.

01:07:04   I don't know. But I am not pushing for my particular app to make 10 or 20 percent more money from those

01:07:11   purchases. Like, I am not... That is not the hill I'm dying on. What I want is for Apple to have the

01:07:19   best products by being forced to compete in a lot of areas that they are currently putting up

01:07:27   artificial barriers to prevent themselves from needing to compete. Because when you look at

01:07:33   the areas in which they have to compete, look at like their hardware. They compete in hardware with

01:07:38   a lot of other vendors out there. Look at the iPhone generally as a product. Like, if you ignore the

01:07:44   software situation, you know, for the most part, if you just look at the iPhone as a product, it's the

01:07:48   best. It is the best phone. Like, by all means, it is the best phone. Look at the Macs. For almost any

01:07:54   computing category, the Mac is the best computer. The Macs are a great example because you can see

01:07:59   almost identical-looking laptops for like half the price, and yet people are still happy to pay for

01:08:04   like the M4 MacBook Air because the hardware is that good. Like, Apple is charging so much more than 30%

01:08:10   more than its competitors for the M4 MacBook Air, and they earn that price by making a product that people

01:08:16   value enough to pay that and be happy with their purchase. Yeah. Look at AirPods, AirPods Pro.

01:08:23   These are incredibly good products because it's a very competitive market, and Apple has to compete.

01:08:29   One of the areas that I think Tim Cook sucks at is it seems like how much effort Apple puts into a

01:08:39   product line or a software, you know, option or a service option is inversely or is directly related to

01:08:47   how much competition they have in that area. A common pattern we see from Apple in the Tim Cook era is,

01:08:53   they really half-ass something, like Apple Music is a great example of this. Apple Music is a totally

01:09:01   okay streaming service. There are a lot of areas in which Spotify is better than Apple Music. Not all.

01:09:08   Spotify is worse than some, but there's a lot of areas. But Apple Music moves glacially.

01:09:14   Almost nothing ever gets better. It's a very old, kind of unreliable code base. And why? Why isn't Apple

01:09:23   being forced to push harder there? Well, thanks to the 30% stuff, they give themselves a huge price

01:09:28   advantage in that market. And thanks to certain integrations they make that other people can't make,

01:09:32   Apple Music has some advantages that third-party apps like Spotify don't.

01:09:37   And there's a lot of areas like, you know, iMessage is a great example. iMessage, when you compare iMessage,

01:09:42   kind of feature and experience-wise to something like WhatsApp, WhatsApp is way better than iMessage

01:09:50   at a lot of things. Again, not everything, but way better. But Apple doesn't really compete much

01:09:56   with iMessage. They have a very strong platform lock-in and they know that. And so they don't really,

01:10:02   they invest very conservatively in updating it or changing it at all. And you can kind of look

01:10:08   around. There's a lot of areas in Apple where they have this advantage they've given themselves

01:10:13   through technical means. And then they kind of take their foot off the gas. And the in-app purchase

01:10:19   system for apps and the entire app store, by the way, the app store sucks. The app store is terrible.

01:10:26   Like, so much about it is terrible. First of all, it still has just abysmal, terrible search.

01:10:34   What decade is this? Like, they have never had good search in the app store and it's only getting

01:10:41   worse over time. It's full of spam. It's full of scammy apps that have like super expensive weekly

01:10:49   subscriptions to do very simple, trivial things that trick you into signing up for. Like,

01:10:53   it's full of crap. Like all the stuff they say about protecting consumers, I know they released

01:10:57   their, their big new PR report about that. There's, that's really, I mean, they're sure letting a lot

01:11:03   through, like whatever, whatever their system is, whatever their numbers say that they're doing to,

01:11:07   to do us well here. Uh, they're sure letting a lot of, a lot of scams and terrible stuff through.

01:11:13   And so, and there's so much about the app store that is just terrible or incredibly mediocre and

01:11:20   hasn't been touched forever. Or when they do touch it, it's really half-assed and it's because they

01:11:25   don't have to compete. The in-app purchase system, again, it's very similar. Like the in-app purchase

01:11:30   system, like there's a lot about it that is, you know, they have certain features that could, if they

01:11:35   have it, if they do like a feature checklist comparison, they, they do okay. Not great, but okay.

01:11:41   But the actual experience of using it, so many, there's so many rough edges. There's so many like

01:11:47   rough details that, or pains in the butt that developers need to work around or work with

01:11:51   or adapt to. Or business models that you can't do because in-app purchase doesn't support them.

01:11:56   Right. Entire business models that we can't do or that we aren't allowed to do by policy.

01:12:00   And so there's so much there that is just really mediocre. The whole search ad system, you know,

01:12:07   Apple says that we don't contribute if we don't have their cut in our in-app purchases,

01:12:11   but also we have to keep paying to get people to install our apps now because search ads have

01:12:16   perverted that entire system. So they, they're also making money from us that way.

01:12:19   So they're like, there's a lot about the app store. That's just really kind of crappy or half-assed or

01:12:26   mediocre. And Apple doesn't have to compete at all. So they don't really put much, much into that.

01:12:31   You look at the amount of effort they put into like making these amazing like new M chips every

01:12:35   year for the Macs that are like having amazing gains, doing amazing things. That is an area they

01:12:40   have competition in and they do great work there. And all these little software fiefdoms that have

01:12:46   little to no competition because of policy or technical implementations on their end,

01:12:49   they just take their foot off the gas. They don't touch them. So it's, it's what I want from Apple.

01:12:56   If I'm looking for like, how do you turn around developer sentiment? It's not so much about,

01:13:01   oh, I want to pay 10% instead of 15%. I mean, yeah. When you have somebody in a job who's unhappy with

01:13:08   their job, you can give them a raise. That helps. But if they're unhappy for other reasons,

01:13:14   that's not going to really solve the problem now, is it? If you want people in, if you want developers to

01:13:19   be happy, what we really want is freedom. That's what, that's what developers really want. We want

01:13:28   to be freed from some of the rules that we think Apple shouldn't have. One of those rules is why

01:13:38   can't we have our own payments in our app or in a web page? Again, I think it's a stupid distinction.

01:13:42   Whether you link out to a website and kick back to your app or whether you have it in the app,

01:13:46   who cares? That, that is a distinction that I think judges and Apple and commentators keep trying

01:13:51   to make. And I think that distinction does not matter at all, but whatever, however you do external

01:13:55   purchases with an external system from an app, there should be no prohibition on that. An app should be

01:14:02   able to link out to a website for any reason and have any content shown there. An app should make money

01:14:08   however it wants, as long as it's not a scam. Like that's simple as that. And you can't say the app

01:14:14   store payment system is super safe and easy when it is full of scams the way it is. It absolutely is.

01:14:19   All those like antivirus apps on the app store. Again, all those like abusive weekly subscriptions

01:14:23   that are mostly scammy. Like the app store is full of scams. It always is. It always has been. So that's

01:14:28   a bunch of BS that they're keeping that out. So what we want is freedom. We want, let our apps just do

01:14:35   reasonable things that most reasonable people would assume apps should be able to do. And some of that is

01:14:41   business related. And some of that means Apple won't make that cut on everything, but that's how

01:14:46   you run a platform. It's actually healthy. You're not going to collect every single cent made on that

01:14:51   platform. Do the people who make web browsers collect a commission on every transaction that

01:14:57   happens across the entire web? No, that's, that would be ridiculous. Does AT&T collect a commission

01:15:04   on every transaction I make on my phone over their network? No, that would be ridiculous.

01:15:09   They tried to.

01:15:10   Like does, you know, PSEG, my, my local electric company here, do they get a commission on all the

01:15:18   work I do using their electricity? Of course not. That would be ridiculous. So yes, while Apple has

01:15:25   created this platform, they are being compensated for it in many other ways. And people who run software

01:15:32   platform companies should also be aware, although Tim Cook is not clearly, but they should also be

01:15:38   aware the value that software brings to their platforms, that it is, it is indirect value. The

01:15:44   iPhone is useless without apps. Nobody would buy an iPhone if all of our collective apps from all of

01:15:51   our developers were not on that phone. We give value to the platform. So what we want is freedom to do

01:15:57   reasonable things. And ideally, for the higher ups at Apple to show that they see that value, that they

01:16:05   actually agree that we bring indirect value to their platform besides just paying them directly.

01:16:12   Because that is a really, not only shallow and short-sighted, but just factually wrong view of the

01:16:18   developer relationship. And what that tells us is these high ups at Apple hate us. Like they,

01:16:24   they, they see us as leeches if we're not paying them. And that's incredibly disrespectful and

01:16:29   incredibly factually wrong. And it makes us feel like our work is, is worthless.

01:16:33   So the fact that Marco thinks this is why you need new faces, because having those same faces say

01:16:38   something different, Marco is going to be like, I don't know if I believe you.

01:16:41   I won't believe them. No, I really won't.

01:16:43   Yeah. Cause like it's, it's, it's, it's the same way. It's hard to believe somebody when you've,

01:16:47   when you like, you flip the bozo bit on them or whatever. Right. And it's, and again, it's not

01:16:51   everybody. Again, if John Ternus comes in as new CEO and makes all these changes, it's like, well, I

01:16:55   I'll give them better for the doubt because none of these decisions that we see in these discovery

01:16:59   transcripts or whatever, John Ternus is not involved in that conversation at all. He's in charge of the

01:17:03   hardware and the hardware is something we love. So we're like, maybe he'll do something differently.

01:17:06   So at least we give him like, uh, you know, a chance. He's got a clean slate to just be like,

01:17:11   now let's see what kind of decisions you're going to make. Maybe I'll believe you. But if the same

01:17:14   people change their mind, they're going to have an uphill battle. Uh, one of the other things I

01:17:18   listed here, um, it was like the app review and stuff. And like the whole frustration of feeling

01:17:22   like you're not conversing with a human at the other end of it. That's another thing. That's like a

01:17:26   competitive landscape of like, is essentially the customer support experience for app review

01:17:30   reasonable. Do I feel like they're trying to help me get my app out versus putting up ridiculous

01:17:35   barriers and having my livelihood hanging in the balance when there are other stores,

01:17:39   they don't have your livelihood hanging in the balance. If they reject you for some dumb reason,

01:17:42   you peace out and put your stuff up in a different store, you know, like that's the

01:17:45   beauty of competition. And the final thing I'll say is on the percentages and everything.

01:17:48   I didn't go into this here because it's kind of a tangent, but like

01:17:51   so many things could be different, uh, about competing app stores, including Apple's own.

01:17:57   If Apple wants to make more money, uh, like I was saying, like they could keep their

01:18:02   commissions the same. In fact, they could even raise them if they do everything else really well.

01:18:05   One way they could do that. Uh, and these are all like policy decisions that happen on large,

01:18:10   on large scales across the entire world is instead of it being 15% and 30% have a essentially a more

01:18:17   progressive tax. Let's say a competing app store opens, uh, that says you don't pay anything for

01:18:22   your first million dollars each year, but as you make more and more money, that percentage goes up and

01:18:27   up and up. So if you're making a hundred million dollars, you pay us 45%. But if you're making under a

01:18:33   million, you pay us 0%, uh, what kind of developers would that attract? Would Spotify leave and go off

01:18:39   on their own store because they make too much money? Or is it because their app is free and they don't

01:18:42   care? Would, you know, I'd like a more progressive tax, which is kind of what they did with the small

01:18:47   business program, 15 versus 30 or whatever. But like plans like that do a real good job of,

01:18:53   you know, we've always talked about making sure Apple makes its money from the whales who were like,

01:18:58   are satisfied essentially within app purchase and the huge volumes. And they're willing to pay 30%

01:19:02   because they're just making money hand over fist while not bothering to lose developer sentiment from

01:19:09   all these developers who are making essentially nothing as far as Apple is concerned, because you

01:19:12   never know which one of those developers is going to have the next big thing. And so you want as many

01:19:16   of those people who are making under a million dollars per year on your store as possible. And if they all

01:19:21   pay you 0%, what they were paying you before was practically nothing anyway. Like it's peanuts

01:19:27   compared, you know, like, I don't know what the breakdown is in terms of which, you know, the

01:19:30   diagram of which developers give them which money for how much things, but like we already know like 85%

01:19:35   of it is games. So we can just, anything that's not a game is already down there in the 15%.

01:19:39   Stuff like that, uh, you know, you're, you're open to, uh, to do different, make different decisions

01:19:45   there that may in fact make you more money. Having a higher top level tax bracket for the app store

01:19:50   could end up making you more money, even as you, uh, uh, massively reduced or eliminated the app

01:19:56   store tax for lower brackets. And if Apple doesn't want to do this experiment in an open competitive

01:20:00   field, other people will surely try it as just as Epic is now with like, there are various deals,

01:20:06   like come to our store, you get X, Y, and Z like competition. It, it solves that problem. I think

01:20:10   we may have spent too long on the, on the new deal for developers, but that, that was my first,

01:20:15   first point of thing they could do differently. And it's, and it's a no brainer. Like you need new

01:20:20   people to do it. They've shown they're not willing, they've shown they're not going to turn

01:20:24   around on this. Nothing that happens internally or externally will change their minds. And even if

01:20:28   they did turn over a new leaf, we would have a hard time believing that. Um, the second item I had a

01:20:33   hard time coming up with a heading for, but I called it a premium experience for premium prices. This is

01:20:37   the thing I'm always hammering on just because I'm willing to accept for the sake of this bullet point

01:20:42   that Apple's deal is that they sell you a product that costs more than their competitors. And they

01:20:47   try to justify that price. Like they do the example of the, like the Mac books or whatever.

01:20:51   That's how they make a lot of money. Their prices, their products are more expensive and they make

01:20:56   them better. So you're willing to pay that price. Uh, one of the ways that, that, uh, historically

01:21:02   brands that charge people a lot of money have been able to continue to do that successfully

01:21:07   is by really gaining a reputation for, I, I, I phrase it as standing behind their products,

01:21:14   but like products that do what they say they're going to do. So some stupid leather luggage brand,

01:21:20   they cost a whole jillion dollars. Like, why would anyone ever pay that much for a piece of leather

01:21:24   luggage? They say, well, I've had this one for 50 years. And when the strap broke after the 51st year,

01:21:29   they replaced it for free. So that's why I'm going to continue paying 10 times as much or the whole,

01:21:33   uh, uh, Terry Pratchett, uh, uh, expensive boots theory thing that, uh, I forget the details.

01:21:40   We'll find a link for the show notes, but the, uh, you know, uh, rich people can buy one pair of boots

01:21:44   for a hundred dollars and they'll use it for 10 years. Uh, and poor people will have to buy a new

01:21:48   pair of boots every year for $25. And the poor people end up spending up a hundred times more on

01:21:53   boots over their lifetime because they can't afford to buy the good pair. That's kind of the business

01:21:58   Apple is in. They sell premium products and they can, if they want to continue to sell premium products,

01:22:04   they really need to justify that price. And in tons of areas, they do this. Their hardware,

01:22:09   I think costs more and it is really nice. It's nice to look at. It's nice to feel. It actually is good.

01:22:15   Even when it wasn't fast, it was still nice. Even when it didn't have ports, the laptops were nice.

01:22:22   They felt good. They were pretty reliable. There wasn't lots of catastrophes. Pieces didn't fall off of

01:22:27   them. You can quibble with the features that were like Apple makes nice hardware. So I'm not going to

01:22:30   say this is a thing where Apple is falling down universally, but on the software front in particular,

01:22:36   Apple's products have long since stopped being that really nice piece of leather luggage that you know

01:22:42   is going to be dependable for 50 years. Uh, and this is essentially the balance between how much time

01:22:50   do we spend making new features and, and, uh, you know, adding stuff that is that, you know,

01:22:54   whatever the fad is of the day or redesigning all our OSs and putting in AI and how much time do we

01:22:59   spend on fixing bugs? And that balance, even though it seems like one of those things that like, well,

01:23:05   that's just a thing. They don't need a new leadership to do this. They can fix that at any time. But I

01:23:09   feel like maybe I'm in my, my, uh, 25 years in working in corporate America and software has influenced me

01:23:15   here. I actually think that this is not something as simple as like, Oh, we'll decide to put more

01:23:20   ports on our Mac book, which you don't need new leadership to do the balance between fixing bugs

01:23:26   and existing stuff and adding new features in the end always comes down to leadership because

01:23:31   everything in this industry is pushing you towards ignoring the bug fixes, ignoring the tech debt,

01:23:39   always chasing the new features. Sometimes you have to, like, we got to get on this AI thing.

01:23:44   We're already late, blah, blah, blah. Like there's, there's so much pressure to do that.

01:23:48   The only way to hold the line and not allow your, your products to crumble due to neglected tech debt

01:23:55   and bugs that just never get fixed is you need leadership committed to maintaining that balance.

01:24:01   Apple's current leadership, like for the past several decades, I would probably include Steve Jobs in

01:24:08   this as well has not gotten that balance right for a premium brand because the premium brand is supposed

01:24:15   to be the one that basic functionality always works. And by the way, over the decades, even the basis

01:24:21   functionality gets polished to a mirror finish. Copying files from one Mac to another in the finder.

01:24:27   I know there's a harp on this one. It's a feature that has existed since Apple talk in the eighties,

01:24:32   right? That feature should be polished to a mirror finish at this point. It is not. It is filled with

01:24:38   bugs. It is crappy. It is janky and nobody cares about it. And repeat for a million features on

01:24:44   whatever platform you care about stuff exists and mostly works most of the time, but because it's not

01:24:49   a glory feature, it net, the bugs never get fixed and no one ever spends any time making that a little

01:24:54   bit better. Obviously every year, you're not going to make it awesome and add tons of features. You

01:24:58   don't want feature bloat or whatever, but over the decade, an existing feature should have fewer bugs

01:25:05   than did at the beginning of the decade. And it should be nicer than it was at the beginning of

01:25:08   the decade. And Apple absolutely falls down on that. And that's not something that a premium brand should

01:25:13   do. So my second category of things that I think they need leadership for is to adjust the balance

01:25:19   between fixing bugs and polishing existing features and adding new features. And it's a difficult

01:25:25   balance, but I think, I think they're off. Like the one thing I saw it as like the last time Apple

01:25:30   publicly demonstrated that it's willing to sacrifice new features. Um, it willing to emphasize

01:25:38   software reliability at the cost of new features is how I put it because plenty of time they say,

01:25:43   Oh, we'll work on software reliability or whatever. Show me that you're willing to sacrifice a thing

01:25:47   that you wanted to do a marketable new feature publicly come out and say, we were going to do this

01:25:54   thing, but instead we're not. And we're going to fix bugs in this other thing. The last time that

01:25:58   happened was snow leopard, which everyone, uh, you know, glorifies this is wonderful. Let me tell you

01:26:03   10.6.0 was buggy as hell, but, and they, and there were new features like grand suspension dispatch

01:26:08   rolled out, like ever a whole review about it. Anyway, like I'm not saying buy Apple's marketing hype

01:26:12   about no new features in snow leopard, but they publicly demonstrated that they are willing to not

01:26:19   have things to show you on stage because they didn't, they have fewer things to show you on

01:26:23   stage. Cause you have a dental grand center of dispatch people like, Oh, I don't know what that

01:26:26   is. Right. Fewer things to show you on stage, fewer G whiz things. They look at this new thing.

01:26:32   That's in this new version of Mac OS. And the thing they were trying to sell you is, but we made the

01:26:36   existing stuff better. And even if they only made it a little better or whatever, that was the last

01:26:41   time they did. That was 15 years ago. And that, and even that demonstration is again, debatable what

01:26:47   they did. The, the, the balance is wrong right now. It's been wrong for a long time and it's causing,

01:26:53   uh, basic functionality to just rot. And it makes you feel less good. You feel like you're not getting

01:26:59   a premium experience or premium prices when it comes to software. Like I've always liked the Jason

01:27:03   survey things. Like how do people feel about software quality? Just look at the software

01:27:06   quality line versus the hardware quality line. I wish this things went back more than 15,

01:27:10   20 years, but like, it's not good. Uh, and then the Apple intelligence fiasco is another example of,

01:27:17   uh, them. I mean, in some respects, yeah, they are behind, they need to work on the Apple intelligence

01:27:22   stuff, but like they've shown they're even more willing to say, just announce something. We have to

01:27:28   show, do something like regardless of the reality behind it. Forget about fixing bugs and existing

01:27:34   features. They're willing to just, they need so badly to have something to show you. We're doing

01:27:38   the thing. We're in the mix. We're in the, whatever. And then they're falling down on that as well. Like

01:27:43   they turned the whole company on like what, drop what you're doing and try to add something that

01:27:46   uses Apple intelligence and still didn't do it. So certainly they weren't fixing bugs and,

01:27:51   you know, SMB file transfers and finder. Yeah. I don't know. It's, it's tough to say. I think

01:27:59   if I sat down and really had a proper think about it, I could come up with probably, you know, a list

01:28:04   of three things that I would prefer, but I, I certainly can't disagree with the two that you've come up with

01:28:10   so far. And, and I think the third in particular, I, in some ways, I almost wonder if it's the least

01:28:17   likely because, uh, this is, this is a, a delicious, delicious nectar that they've gotten

01:28:23   very used to, but, uh, a man can dream. So what is your third one here?

01:28:27   Actually, before I get to that one, I do want to throw in my, I always try to throw in a sports

01:28:31   analogy for the sports people. And I feel like this is actually fairly apt here. Again, my perspective

01:28:37   may be warped by all my years spent in corporate America, trying to argue for, uh, addressing tech debt

01:28:43   rather than adding new features and how hard that battle is and how you need leadership by it.

01:28:46   Otherwise it's never, ever going to happen. Um, and the analogy is adding features, when game wins

01:28:52   games, but fixing bugs wins championships. And if you don't know that the saying that that is a

01:28:57   mirroring, maybe that doesn't ring true to you, but like everyone wants to win the game. Everyone

01:29:01   wants to add the feature, have the glory, win the game. But the way you win championships is by fixing

01:29:05   those damn bugs and making sure the basic things that your, your stuff does has fewer bugs than it did

01:29:11   last year. And it gradually gets better over time. Not every year, not every two years, but over the

01:29:17   course of a decade, pick any feature of any of your platforms. And I just say, how was this a decade ago?

01:29:21   And how is it now? And if it's not better, or at least the same things are going wrong. And there

01:29:27   are so many examples of that. Anyway, rant over. Um, the final, the final one is again, another hard

01:29:32   time coming up with the title of this one. And this is, again, this is not an exhaustive list. This is just

01:29:35   what I came up with the top three, let's say, uh, growth, the hard way. So many of things that we

01:29:41   talk about are like, Oh, they need Apple needs growth and the iPhone is leveling off. And so they

01:29:46   need services revenue because that's growing. And look at the service revenue graph has been going

01:29:49   up, up, up for years and years and years. This is the source of Apple's growth. And as you know,

01:29:54   every company needs a source of growth because they're like cancer. And that's what the stock market

01:29:57   loves is cancer, constant growth, constant growth in the entire, until the entire planet has been

01:30:02   turned into paperclips. That's what the stock market wants. So they need growth.

01:30:06   And what everyone says is, well, there's no more growing with the iPhone because every,

01:30:10   literally every human on the planet who can't afford an iPhone caliber smartphone already has one.

01:30:16   Look at the iPhone sales, see how they were going up and up and up and see how they're not going up

01:30:21   and up anymore. And they're just level. It's a money machine, but like, that's not your source of

01:30:25   growth. We need a line that goes up. Service revenue is that line. Uh, and every time somebody says

01:30:30   that I feel like the world and Apple are giving up too easily on that iPhone line, because yeah,

01:30:38   the iPhone line has leveled off and yeah, most people in the world who have, who can afford an

01:30:43   iPhone caliber smartphone already have one, but they don't all have iPhones. In fact, worldwide market

01:30:48   share for iPhone is like 30% versus 70% for Android. And it bothers me that everyone is like, well,

01:30:56   Apple's never going to get any of any of that 70% like that. The resignation that the line between

01:31:01   Apple and Android is totally unmovable. Now, obviously Apple is probably never going to compete

01:31:06   for the cheapest of the bargain basement Android phones, but there are tons of Android phones that

01:31:11   are sold for iPhone prices, iPhone caliber, Android phones selling for iPhone prices. We may not prefer

01:31:18   them, but they're good phones. And more importantly, they're expensive phones.

01:31:22   Apple should compete for that. How about changing it from 70, 30 to 31, 69? Like if the numbers involved

01:31:31   here, it's not impossible to have more growth with the iPhone. It's not even like they have the majority

01:31:37   share. I mean, maybe in America they have like 60% or whatever, but worldwide. And by the way,

01:31:42   why shouldn't Apple attempt to go slightly down market to get some of that back? It's like,

01:31:48   maybe they just think they can never do it. But like Apple as a company seemed several years ago

01:31:52   to say, well, the iPhone thing's done. We are never going to get another customer that 70% is using

01:31:57   Android. We can never win their business. So just maintain our current sales at the level they're at

01:32:02   now. And let's concentrate on services revenue. It's like, you're going to give up 70% of the market for

01:32:08   the most important technology product of the last several decades, because you think it's just

01:32:12   immovable and you can never get it? Like, and again, it's not like they need to make a bargain

01:32:17   basement iPhone. Like compete with the Android phones that cost as much as the iPhone 16. Get

01:32:23   some of those customers. Like, oh, we can never get those customers. Why do you think you can never

01:32:26   get those customers? That's what I mean by growth the hard way. Don't just say, well, services are going

01:32:31   up. Let's just take our existing customer base and milk them for more money with services. And I don't

01:32:35   even begrudge them services because services is a good idea. Like I want them to have a lot of services that

01:32:38   Apple has. I'm glad that they have and I enjoy and use. But if that's your only source, as we've

01:32:45   discussed many times on past programs, services revenue is kind of uniquely corrosive to the spirit of the

01:32:53   company because it encourages you to extract rather than to please your customers. Like I have you now. You are

01:33:02   captive in some way. Can I get more value from the customers I already have versus why did that person choose a

01:33:08   Samsung Galaxy, whatever, instead of the iPhone 16 or maybe last year's? Why do they choose that? Why do

01:33:13   they why do they pick that phone instead of ours? What is it about they like about that phone that's

01:33:17   better? Is it something having to do with the app store? Is it is it simply the price? We're within

01:33:22   $50 to that phone. Is it like do they have different feature set? Like what is it that they like about that

01:33:27   Android phone versus ours? Can we get that customer? And then yeah, also maybe thinking about is that is

01:33:33   should the cheapest iPhone really be $600? Can we make a $500 phone that people actually want?

01:33:38   Is that possible? Can we go a little bit down market? We're not going to make a $50 phone or

01:33:43   something like that, like compete like 7030. 7030 is not a success that is not time to like,

01:33:50   oh, we're going to rest on our laurels and set down the scepter and say the iPhone is the iPhone wars are

01:33:56   done. And we are happy with a 30% because we have the most we have the most lucrative 30%. And they do

01:34:01   they have the most lucrative 30%. But you know, 31% that one that 1% growth at this point, they would

01:34:08   kill for it because their growth is like, totally flat or sometimes negative. So yeah, I this frustrates

01:34:15   me every time I hear about iPhone sales plateauing, because and again, it's not going to be a source of

01:34:19   growth, like sales, like service revenue, I don't expect it to say like this, suddenly, it's going to

01:34:22   turn around, it's going to be 7030 iPhone. Like I don't have any illusions that's going to happen.

01:34:26   But I do think that they shouldn't give up on it. And when I look at what they've been doing with

01:34:31   their products, it seems like what they've been doing is, can we all the people who are buying

01:34:35   iPhones, what is their price elasticity? Like can we increase the price of the iPhone $100 every few

01:34:40   years? And our existing customers will keep paying it. Like maybe they're selling fewer iPhones,

01:34:45   but for more money and just maintain that even line and iPhone revenue, it just doesn't it just

01:34:50   seems like they're giving up too early. So this is maybe the the weirdest, most wonky one, because

01:34:56   I'd never hear anyone else talking about this. And everyone just accepts the the breakdown. But

01:35:01   it bothers me that they've given up on it. Yeah. And this is an area where again, I think we have seen

01:35:06   Tim Cook doesn't know how to create new product categories very well. Nor does he have the product

01:35:14   sense or maybe has he yielded the product sense correctly or the right people to meaningfully

01:35:19   break into new markets that they're not currently in. He's been fine to like keep steering the ship

01:35:25   in the direction it's going and extract as much as he can along the way. But what areas have has Apple

01:35:31   broken into? Well, they've all been kind of accessories to the phone, like between the Apple

01:35:35   watch and the AirPods. I think those have been like the biggest new product category hits of the Tim

01:35:40   Cook era. Those are both great product categories. They're also both, you know, kind of accessories

01:35:45   in terms of, you know, revenue and numbers. And they're also both like obvious and also unfairly

01:35:53   locked in accessories to the iPhone. What new amazingness is today's Apple going to break into

01:36:02   for new categories? I think what we've seen pretty clearly is that they don't really have that in

01:36:07   them. OK, well, what can they what can they keep expanding into in the categories already in? As you

01:36:13   mentioned, like sell more iPhones to people who already buy smartphones, but don't buy iPhones.

01:36:18   Sell Macs to people who buy computers, but don't buy Macs. Like sell iPads in context where

01:36:23   we're not using iPads like there's lots of ways that Apple could attract new markets and

01:36:30   yeah, they might not all work out and they might not all have like the highest profit margins compared

01:36:36   to what they have now. But that is, as you mentioned, that's the hard way. It is more of what we think

01:36:43   of as like good Apple. It's more good Apple style to get more money over time by making better products

01:36:51   and selling more of them to more people. That is like Apple at its best when they're making awesome

01:36:58   products that people buy because they're awesome, not because they have to, not because they're locked

01:37:03   in in some way. They buy them because they're awesome. That's Apple at its best. And so I think

01:37:08   that's what I want to see more of. And I have very little confidence that Tim Cook's Apple

01:37:13   either prioritizes that or even necessarily can do that.

01:37:18   Yeah. I mean, I give them some credit for trying and various things, but in some respects,

01:37:23   the trying is like another like it's not connected, but it makes you like trying in a new category

01:37:28   shouldn't preclude you continuing to try to sell more Macs, continuing to try to sell more iPhones,

01:37:33   get the next one percent best customers in the phone market. Don't you know, don't go for the people

01:37:38   with who can't afford an iPhone for, you know, but like, can you get the next best one percent?

01:37:43   How much money is that worth? How much is the next best two percent of the most lucrative

01:37:47   cell phone customers in the world? I bet it's worth a lot, like one or two percent of a very big number

01:37:53   is still a lot. And Macs, same thing. Like it's almost as if they feel like they're they're Microsoft

01:38:00   in the 90s where they have like 90 something percent market share in the personal computer market.

01:38:05   And then you're like, well, where are we going to go? Where's the growth left? Like Microsoft really

01:38:08   was like at one point at the peak of their dominance. It's like, you know, the Wintel duopoly.

01:38:13   There wasn't a lot left to squeeze there. But 7030, there's plenty of room. And whatever the Mac

01:38:19   market share is, I don't even think it's crack 30 worldwide. Probably is far under that. There's

01:38:24   there's room to grow. And then if it's about making an AI egg, like who should be making the thing

01:38:29   that will eventually someday when we're all dead, take over from the cell phone, I would hope that

01:38:35   Apple would be trying to be in that conversation right now. Everyone else is trying to do that to

01:38:40   Apple with eggs and not working out so far. But like, where is Apple in that? Apple can't even get its

01:38:46   voice assistant to be as good as the previous version of the Amazon one. They're not well positioned to do

01:38:51   that. So, yeah. Anyway, as I say at the conclusion here, this list is not exhaustive. Blah, blah,

01:38:56   professional driver, close course. Do not attempt. Also, do not name your blog posts very similar to

01:39:02   each other's people think it's one blog post. But anyway, I did have enjoy making the graphics

01:39:07   for them. Obviously, the first one was upside down flag thing. I'm glad Casey identified it as a flag.

01:39:10   That's what I was going for. But I did not have the time or artistic ability to make it look like a flag.

01:39:15   But yes, it was like an upside down flag, upside down Apple logo flag, the rainbow one because it's the

01:39:20   best one. And this one, I'm not sure if you guys remember this, but if you're looking at the

01:39:23   Apple turn around thing, do you recognize what I was doing an homage to here?

01:39:27   It seems like you're trying to like have a spinner of some sort, but I don't know what specifically.

01:39:34   Marco, ring any bells?

01:39:35   No.

01:39:36   It's 100% like essentially traced from the back to the Mac announcement graphic. Do you remember that one?

01:39:43   Oh.

01:39:44   Oh, no.

01:39:45   So it was when, it was before they had the Mac roundtable, but it was like they had been ignoring

01:39:50   macOS for a long time.

01:39:51   That's when they brought a bunch of iPad features to it, right?

01:39:53   It was Lion. So they, it's questionable whether they're back to the Mac, WWDC or Macworld or whatever

01:40:01   it was really was back to the Mac. But that was the hype. The announcement graphic was,

01:40:05   let's get back to the Mac. And it was literally this. It was an Apple logo shaped hole with a silver,

01:40:11   shiny Apple logo rotating it exactly the same way. But instead of the black background,

01:40:15   what you saw back there was like a sliver of a lion's face. No one remembers that except for me,

01:40:20   apparently.

01:40:21   Nope.

01:40:21   So if you don't remember it, well, Casey, this guy, but anyway, I, I, I don't remember if we had a

01:40:27   podcast back then when Lion, I, maybe we didn't when Lion came out, but this is, this is an homage to

01:40:30   the back to the Mac, uh, pre Lion, uh, invitation graphic that Apple put up. But yes, obviously for

01:40:37   people who don't remember that it is literally an Apple logo turning around. Uh, yeah. Anyway,

01:40:42   uh, hopefully people read these articles. They're a lot less long wind than what I just said, but

01:40:47   I feel like all the information is in there as well.

01:40:50   All right. Thanks to our sponsors this week, Terminal and Notion. And thanks to our members

01:40:56   who support us directly. You can join us at atp.fm slash join. One of the many perks of membership is

01:41:01   exclusive content in lots of different forms. And our weekly bonus topic is one of these. It's

01:41:06   called ATP Overtime exclusive to members. This week on Overtime, we're gonna be talking about

01:41:11   Apple OS rebranding, possibly two different numbering schemes, uh, and our predictions for

01:41:16   the next Mac OS name. Uh, that'll be in Overtime today. You can join to listen at atp.fm slash join.

01:41:22   Thanks everybody. And we'll talk to you next week.

01:41:25   Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin. Cause it was accidental.

01:41:36   Oh, it was accidental. John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn't let him. Cause it was

01:41:45   accidental. Oh, it was accidental. And you can find the show notes at atp.fm. And if you're into

01:41:56   masterdom, you can follow them at C A S E Y L I S S. So that's Casey Liss. M A R C O A R M.

01:42:08   All right. So more restaurant tech MVPs. This is the segment I debuted a few weeks back.

01:42:36   Um, my favorite stuff as I was, I was working in and rewiring and cleaning out and fixing stuff in

01:42:43   the restaurant. So I, I first covered, you know, just ubiquity as a general concept and, uh, and a

01:42:49   lot of their products being used there. I then covered network cabling, um, and making my own cable ends

01:42:55   with some, you know, cheap Amazon tools. I hope that was your second MVP cables. Yeah. Wires. They

01:43:02   connect things. Woo. Yeah. I mean, a huge part of my work was like tear down old wires.

01:43:06   And put up new wires. Yeah. They're surprisingly, they're surprisingly important when you don't take

01:43:11   them for granted. Like just, I was thinking about them for various reasons that will get into a future

01:43:15   episodes in my own house. I'm like, you know what? There's a lot of wire in here that I don't really

01:43:19   want to deal with. I like it when it's there. I like having to not think about it, but there's a lot

01:43:25   of it. Yeah. And a lot of it is like the wrong wires or in the wrong places. Like if you have old

01:43:31   wire, if you're like, well, there's a bunch of coax and phone lines, like, well, I don't need any of

01:43:35   those anymore. You have knob and tube. Oh God. That's, that's even worse. No, I was fortunate

01:43:41   enough to have that. Anyway. So as I was crawling around, going through, doing, you know, mounting

01:43:47   things, going through attics and up above fridges and stuff and working inside of the audio gear,

01:43:54   uh, rack. One thing I constantly needed was light. I'm going to paste the chat, the link in the chat.

01:44:01   Now, this is a DeWalt cordless work light. The, the world of battery powered power tools

01:44:09   is incredibly rich with, with tons of options these days. I don't really have an opinion on

01:44:14   what, what system is best, whether you're a DeWalt person or, you know, Black and Decker or whatever

01:44:19   all the different options are, whatever your system of choice is for battery powered power tools,

01:44:26   get the led light that attaches to those batteries. So I link here to the DeWalt one. It looks really

01:44:34   simple. It is really simple. You stick it on top of one of your, one of the batteries that you

01:44:38   already have four or five of, and it provides light. And with a little pivoting head, I was

01:44:44   constantly using this. If TIFF was there, we were constantly trading it back and forth, doing whatever

01:44:49   we were doing. I almost bought a second one. We use it so much. Every time somebody like an electrician

01:44:54   or a contractor, every time they would come, they would borrow it to do their work. It was the hit tool

01:45:00   that every, and everybody was like, Ooh, I got to get one of these. Like everybody loved this basic,

01:45:05   like $50 LED light that attached to DeWalt batteries. I'm not going to recommend a lot of

01:45:11   like specific tools because those are very personal and different needs and everything. But whatever battery

01:45:17   system you use, get the light for it. It will become your most used tool. I guarantee it.

01:45:22   I think I was mentioning this on a rec gifts episode ages ago, but like one of the best gifts I ever got was the

01:45:28   headlamp that Merlin sent me, which I never would have bought for myself because it looks so dorky to literally

01:45:34   strap a light to your head. Oh my God, I use that thing so much because in scenarios where like

01:45:40   it's difficult to even find a place to put the light or your body would be blocking the light.

01:45:45   You know, it's great if the light is literally strapped to your forehead and anywhere you look,

01:45:49   the light shines. It obviously has way less light than this thing. This is like for big jobs and

01:45:53   eliminating large areas. But for example, if you were, let's say crawling around underneath your desk to

01:45:59   look at some of the aforementioned wires and you don't need to have a gigantic light lighting up the whole

01:46:03   area LED head strap headlamp thing. If you have never owned one of those and think it sounds ridiculous

01:46:11   and you would never use it and it's embarrassing, get one. It will change your life. Yeah.

01:46:16   And they're like, they're like 10 bucks. Like they're nothing. It's like this is, this is part of this product

01:46:20   I think is the magic of LEDs. Like I don't know what the DeWalt light looks like, looked like 50 years ago or

01:46:25   20 years ago before LEDs became common. They had like those plug-in halogen ones, which made a lot of light, but you know,

01:46:30   they were huge and hot and expensive. You had to plug them into the wall. You know, this is a very

01:46:36   different thing. Yeah. LED lighting is such a revolution. So you really need to change the way

01:46:40   you think of it. Although I do like the fact that this light that you link to, like it has like the

01:46:43   handle and the trigger. It's like, it's like a manly power to it. It's like, it's a light. You don't,

01:46:47   I just need the trigger. The trigger is the power button.

01:46:49   Actually I am. I know it's gotta be fun to pull triggers. Um, I also am in the DeWalt family,

01:46:56   but only because of the, uh, tire pressure inflator things that are in the trunk of all my cars.

01:47:02   Oh, those are great. Yeah. And I had a series of, I had a bunch of really, I had a bunch of cheap ones

01:47:06   from Amazon and they eventually just died from, you know, being in new England and having a rechargeable

01:47:11   battery in the trunk of a car. Eventually it dies. The DeWalt ones are just bulletproof. And I love that

01:47:15   they're replaceable batteries. Um, although honestly, none of the default batteries have ever

01:47:19   died. I so wish that my stupid, ridiculously expensive Dyson stick vacuum took one of the

01:47:25   adapters that lets you use DeWalt batteries with the, so many of them do, but apparently I got the

01:47:30   model that no one wants to make an adapter for it because the, um, the Dyson batteries, I bought the

01:47:35   first party Dyson battery because I was so terrified of her cheap knockoff batteries. And Amazon is so

01:47:40   expensive and also so terrible. And meanwhile, these DeWalt batteries just like, do not die. And

01:47:45   they're like Fisher price and are indestructible. Uh, I'm, I, I can't vouch for their tools cause

01:47:50   I'm literally just using them for tire inflators, but I can vouch for the batteries in the battery

01:47:54   system. Super chunky, super great. Uh, even like the color. Like, I don't know. I mean, I, I have no

01:48:00   idea like what, you know, professionals needs are in this area. Like if you're a contractor, I don't

01:48:05   know what your needs are, but for like a home casual user, I've been with DeWalt forever and it's

01:48:10   always been great. Like I've never had any private, I use their drills. I was actually,

01:48:14   what's really great is they have these really good blowers, like, like, like electric leaf blowers,

01:48:19   basically. They are remarkably good. You would think, how can electricity have this much power

01:48:26   compared to gas? And like, yeah, if you're like a professional lawn crew, maybe you'd need something

01:48:30   gas powered, but like for one person for your house, the blower that they make is really good.

01:48:37   Uh, I'll maybe go into that too. Oh, speaking of that and speaking of brands, like, cause I feel

01:48:41   like DeWalt is like, it's not an upmarket brand. It's like a, you'll find that at home Depot or

01:48:44   whatever. And I think like one notch below DeWalt in terms of getting even cheaper and more home

01:48:49   Depot-y Losey is, uh, Ryobi. I don't know how to pronounce it. You know, that company, like it's,

01:48:54   I think their color is green. Everyone's got a color. It's like super friends or whatever they have.

01:48:58   Every, every Makita is that, that, that bluish teal, uh, I think is like, they're red, gray and green.

01:49:04   Is it Makita red? I don't know. I don't know. I don't have their stuff. Um, Ryobi, someone thinks,

01:49:10   anyway, I don't even know how to pronounce it. That's how I'm familiar. But anyway, the reason I have

01:49:13   one of their products is because we got recently, I, I was compelled to get by one of my children,

01:49:17   surprisingly, and I didn't have any time to do any kind of research and I wanted to get the cheapest

01:49:21   one possible. Oh no. Yeah. I wanted to get the cheapest one possible. That's why I ended up

01:49:25   getting like the home Depot special for like, it's like literally the cheapest one they had.

01:49:28   But the thing that I got, as soon as I say these words, people's heads are going to pop up like

01:49:32   gophers who have fallen asleep and are not listening to the show anymore. Uh, and we'll see if you two

01:49:37   have any kind of reaction to it. I got a pressure washer. Ah, we have one. We have a

01:49:43   gas powered one, which I kind of hate. And I kind of wish it was an electric one.

01:49:46   Yeah. I got an electric one cause it's cheap and just go to YouTube, man. Pressure washer channels,

01:49:50   people who have no interest in anything like to watch people use a pressure washer to clean things.

01:49:55   It's very soothing. And my daughter wanted to pressure wash some stuff in our backyard,

01:50:00   but she's doing some kind of project back there or whatever. We don't have a pressure washer.

01:50:03   I didn't want to spend like Casey Shirley did for his expensive, fancy gas powered one. I just

01:50:08   like, what is the, what is literally the cheapest pressure washer you have that I think will do a decent job.

01:50:12   And so I got that and you know, it's, you know, it's going to happen. I'm a, I'm a suburban dad

01:50:18   who now finds himself with a pressure washer. I'm like, well, I get better set this up and I better

01:50:22   test it out to make sure it works. Okay. Hour and a half later, I have pressure washed the whole side

01:50:26   of my house, my shed, all my garbage cans, all the walkway. Like you cannot stop. Once you have the

01:50:32   power of the pressure washer, you're like, I didn't realize this thing was dirty, but I just did this

01:50:37   little test area. And you know what? The whole thing is dirty. So now it all needs to be pressure

01:50:41   washed. And it just, I pressure you, you were crimping the world with your crimper. Like you

01:50:47   cannot give a suburban dad a pressure washer. It is too dangerous. And especially if it's not gas

01:50:52   powered where it's fidgety, like this is just plug it in connected to the hose. And even just within

01:50:57   the realm where the, the, because you need to have both the hose attached to it and the electric cord,

01:51:01   there's only so far that those two things can reach in my setup. And still everything that I can

01:51:07   reach with that setup has now been pressure washed. And I still want to do more. I'm like,

01:51:11   I need to stop. Like, this is not my thing. My daughter's, I, after like an hour and a half,

01:51:15   I'm like, okay, it works. You can use it.

01:51:19   After you've burnt it out.

01:51:20   No, I got this special pressure washer pump saver stuff that you're supposed to put in it to keep

01:51:24   the hard water from destroying the pump. And of course, yeah, don't, don't get a dad, a pressure

01:51:28   washer or a mom, a pressure washer, or literally anyone who lives in the suburb and has property

01:51:32   and things do not get them a pressure washer because everything you own needs to be pressure

01:51:37   washed. And then we'll be pressure washed. Can confirm.

01:51:40   That's awesome. Well, anyway, uh, pressure washers are indeed a universal appeal and I can go even higher

01:51:47   than that. What's the, what's an even higher universal appeal for anybody with things or any

01:51:53   kind of cable work that you need to do. I'm running a lot of cables. There is one universal tool that

01:52:01   all cable work at some point needs and it might need in large quantities.

01:52:05   Cable ties.

01:52:06   It is the zip tie.

01:52:08   Oh, you're close. So, you know, a lot of the work I was doing was like, you know, replacing wires that

01:52:14   were like mounted onto the walls or in, in channels, like in the ceiling or, um, you know,

01:52:22   it's strapped to electrical conduit. Like, you know, they had like network wiring that was strapped

01:52:26   to electrical conduit piping. That's like across running across the ceiling, you know, those,

01:52:30   those like metal commercial electric conduits, like things like strapped to those things are strapped to

01:52:36   wooden beams and every, so everywhere are zip ties. So a huge part of this job was moving all the,

01:52:44   all the old cables by yes, cutting their zip ties.

01:52:47   You didn't undo them all.

01:52:48   No, you can't. Well, these, first of all, these have been there for a long time. They're very brittle.

01:52:51   A lot of them, like you, they can kind of just like turn to dust.

01:52:54   You just sneeze them and they snap off in your hand.

01:52:56   Yeah, exactly. Like they, they did not, it didn't take much to cut them. Um, a lot of them were also

01:53:02   like undersized for the job. It was like this little skinny, tiny zip tie holding up like a

01:53:07   huge amount of stuff. Like, so they, they were not going to be reused. Um, but anyway, so a lot of

01:53:13   zip ties and one thing I found, okay, well, when you suppose, suppose you have, you know, something

01:53:18   that you're attaching with the zip tie to a wall. Well, what holds the zip tie to the wall? I have

01:53:25   tried many things in this area.

01:53:26   Another zip tie?

01:53:28   Sometimes. I, one thing that matters a lot that helps a lot is zip tie screw mounts. So it's a

01:53:37   simple thing. It's basically a little plastic bracket with a screw hole in the middle and the

01:53:42   zip tie goes through the bracket and you use a screw hole to screw it into the wall. What this creates

01:53:47   is a very sturdy zip tie mount.

01:53:51   Wait, what do you, what kind of wall are you screwing this into? What is the wall made out of?

01:53:54   There's a lot of wood everywhere. This will not work in drywall at all.

01:53:57   Okay. Yeah. I was going to say.

01:53:59   No. And I, I don't, I don't believe in drywall anchors. They have disappointed me too many times.

01:54:03   There's a lot of YouTube videos about them, by the way.

01:54:05   I know.

01:54:05   This is what I'm watching on YouTube. Let's test these drywall anchors and see how they work with

01:54:09   this cutaway.

01:54:10   No, I know how they're supposed to work. I have been, I've had a lot of drywall anchors fail

01:54:16   on me. Um, and, and I just, I don't trust them. Like if I really need to use one, I will, but I

01:54:22   will avoid them if at all possible. I will try to find a stud or something else that I can screw into.

01:54:28   You should come to new England where there's no drywall in my house. It's just nearly 100 year

01:54:32   old plaster, which is not an improvement.

01:54:34   No, that's, that's worse than every way. Yeah. So anyway, no, no anchors for me if I can at all

01:54:40   help it. But, uh, so zip tie screw mounts are way better than any kind of thing based on adhesives.

01:54:47   Um, like I've tried and I'll get to those in a second. I've had, I found a really great adhesive

01:54:51   for a lot of things, but this is way better than most adhesives, uh, than any adhesive for like

01:54:56   mounting something to a wall made of wood or some kind of strong material. Um, and what's great

01:55:01   about these two, like one of the things that I was taking down sometimes was they make some

01:55:06   zip tie mounts that have a screw hole in the zip tie. So you tie it and then you screw through

01:55:14   like the loop, but it's all part of this. So that, but the problem with that is like, if

01:55:18   you then need to open the zip tie, you need to like unscrew the screw from the wall and then

01:55:23   screw a new one in. And so that's, that is not as good as these, if you have the space for

01:55:28   these little brackets. So in areas where like, so those, the ones with the built in holes that

01:55:32   you have to, that are like kind of single use screw in ones, those are great if you want

01:55:35   like the smallest thing possible. So like there are areas in the restaurant where wires need

01:55:40   to run in the dining room, like along a baseboard in the dining room to get to certain segments.

01:55:45   So for those, I used the single use screw ones cause they're way smaller, but in like utility

01:55:51   areas where aesthetics don't matter. I use these with the screws cause they hold way tighter

01:55:57   and they are way more sturdy. And it's easy to change the zip tie. If you're changing the

01:56:02   cables later. Now I mentioned adhesives in most cases, you don't need to use them, but sometimes

01:56:07   you do. And by far the best adhesive situation I have found is 3M VHB tape. Uh, VHB, I think it's

01:56:17   for very heavy bond, very high bond, something like that. Um, I first discovered this, uh, when I was

01:56:22   getting all those different phone mounts for my car. Uh, this is, I believe the, the type of adhesive

01:56:28   used by peak design for their amount, I think. So, and you can get VHB adhesive and VHB tape and all

01:56:34   sorts of different sizes, widths, you know, but what's great about VHB tape is it, once you stick

01:56:42   it on, it does hold very, very strongly. You know, it's not, it's not perfect. It's not going to hold

01:56:47   like, you know, more weight than science would allow, but like, it's a very strong adhesive. Once you put

01:56:52   it on, you can get these rolls of VHB tape that stick to pretty much anything. But if you have to then

01:56:58   take it off, you can generally do so without destroying the surface unless it's like, you

01:57:04   know, paint, like anything can ever paint off the wall. But like in most cases, like if you're

01:57:09   sticking it onto plastic or wood or metal or, you know, anything that's like a little bit more sturdy

01:57:14   than just paint, you can usually remove this if you need to down the road with like, you know,

01:57:21   some like, you know, diagonal pressure or whatever. Like there's, there's like, there are ways you can do

01:57:25   it that you don't end up destroying the surface and it doesn't leave residue behind. Like it kind

01:57:30   of comes, it's kind of like a tacky rubber texture. And so when you pop the thing off, if you need to

01:57:36   read, if you need to move it around or remove it, what you're getting is like, you almost like roll

01:57:40   it up into like a gum almost. So it's, it's a very practical adhesive that I've used this to like

01:57:47   mount things to walls, like to mount, you know, like there's like a Sonos player that like I first

01:57:52   stuck it to the wall here before I reinforced it with like some screw mount things. Um, there's

01:57:56   occasional like, you know, Oh, I had this thing needs to stick here. One of the biggest things I use

01:58:02   this for is strip lights from my favorite brand waveform lighting. Did I mention this yet? I don't

01:58:08   think so. I think you did. I thought you did. You're talking about waveform for sure.

01:58:11   Oh, you're talking about what the color temperature of the lights everywhere. And I think you might've

01:58:14   mentioned the strip lights at the time. Yes. So I won't go into too much detail. Um, but yeah,

01:58:18   basically waveform lighting who I love, although I did check earlier tonight and it appears that their

01:58:24   prices have all gone up dramatically probably from tariffs. And so that's not amazing, but I also know

01:58:30   it's probably not their fault. Thanks America. Um, but anyway, so they make really good stuff and I've

01:58:38   used their led strip lights in lots of different places and their strip lights in the strips themselves

01:58:43   come with VHB backing on them. But if you want to put it into any kind of other enclosure,

01:58:48   like they sell these like two, these like metal enclosures that to kind of like diffuse the light

01:58:53   a little bit. Um, those you need to stick yourself with some other method. Um, so I've used VHB tape

01:58:58   for those. I basically, I've used VHB tape for big and small applications all over the place and it has

01:59:04   been wonderful. It works like I use it in, in the freezers to, for certain things I get to in a little

01:59:09   bit. Um, it's been wonderful. So VHB tape thumbs up for me.

01:59:14   I wish I could remember the tape website I found. I found like this obscure website that looked like it was like

01:59:19   from like the late nineties, which was like, um, it's kind of like this to that there's like stick this to that

01:59:25   website where it's like, what do you need to connect together? What do you need to glue together? And you say, I have

01:59:28   metal and I want to stick it to wood and it tells you the glue to use. It was like that, but for tape, um, because I,

01:59:33   the prop, the problem that I was facing is kind of similar to what you were describing of like,

01:59:37   you want tape. That's going to be like good and sturdy and stick well, but also like not destroy

01:59:42   the surface and be able to remove it or whatever. And I didn't land on VHB, but whatever tape it

01:59:46   recommended to me, I had never heard of it. I think it might've been a 3M thing, but it was this really

01:59:50   weird kind of tape. And my application was in my non CarPlay cars. How do I wanted to get the,

01:59:57   the USB cord from the USB port somewhere in the center console up to where the, uh, the phone,

02:00:04   the magnetic MagSafe phone mount is on our cars, which is like clipped to a vent or whatever.

02:00:08   I don't want to get the cord up there with, you know, having it like nicely routed or whatever.

02:00:11   So now I have a situation where I need to tape a USB cable to essentially a plastic center console

02:00:19   of a dashboard. And that is actually a challenging environment because it's going to be baking in

02:00:25   the sun. It's going to be freezing in the winter. Um, it's, it's a difficult environment in there.

02:00:30   And also I don't want it to destroy my car. So maybe if I got something that stuck really well,

02:00:35   but like, let's say like the adhesive melted and liquefied in the sun and they would ooze out and

02:00:40   make everything sticky. Or let's say when I did want to remove it, it would just destroy the plastic

02:00:45   and there's no way I could get the stuff off. And whatever the weird tape it told me to get,

02:00:49   which was also black by the way, but not thick. Like this VHB stuff is it so far as held up in,

02:00:54   two different cars over many years really well. And I have had to remove it and you can successfully

02:01:00   remove it and it doesn't destroy the plastic and it doesn't come up. So the world of tape,

02:01:05   like I think this VHB thing is another great example of like, yeah, don't feel constrained by the three

02:01:09   kinds of tape that you know about and have had in your house since you were a kid. Tape technology

02:01:14   and varieties of tape. They're great. Like, don't just think about like, oh, you know,

02:01:18   gaffers tape and duct tape. And like you, maybe you're familiar with those and you use them,

02:01:23   but they have limitations. Sometimes you need a specific kind of tape that with specific

02:01:27   requirements for, you know, again, for like temperature and weather sensitivity and load

02:01:32   and being able to peel up. And usually you can find some weird tape that will do that. The problem is

02:01:37   it will cost you a bazillion dollars. I've been shocked at how much tape costs for my entire adult

02:01:41   life. And I continue to be so.

02:01:43   Well, this is not that expensive. I feel like if you need $18 for a roll of tape, that just seems like too much money.

02:01:49   Yeah, but I mean, like, but you like I've in the entire restaurant, I used one and a half of these and I used a lot of it.

02:01:55   When my kids were small, we bought them like a like a wooden cylindrical wooden thing that had like a rainbow color of

02:02:05   masking tape like on this big wooden cylinder, right? So they could just you know, it was like they're all on the same cylinder. So you could just peel off from

02:02:11   each one of them. And that lasted for like their whole childhoods. But then I look at that now. I'm like every roll of that masking tape was

02:02:18   like $8. Tape is so expensive. Why is it so expensive? Anyway, sorry.

02:02:26   I will say one of the waveform lighting things I did was especially nice. I forget whether I mentioned

02:02:33   this or not, but they have these light strips that are called dim to warm. And they if you use their film

02:02:38   grade dimmer, this is all very expensive. But if you use their their power supply and their film grade

02:02:43   dimmer, it starts out at one color temperature. And as you dim it, the color temperature gets warmer.

02:02:48   So that which is like how incandescent bulbs always look. So it looks really nice. And that like the

02:02:54   dimming experience of using the film grade dimmer with the dim to warm strip, it's the

02:02:58   smoothest, nicest, best feeling and looking dimming

02:03:02   experience of a light I've ever seen. We have them under the bar

02:03:05   illuminating some of the bar sinks. And you know, at night they want those to be pretty dim because the

02:03:09   whole room gets dimmer as you get later into the night. And so

02:03:13   it is a beautiful look. It looks nice and even and it does

02:03:17   not look harsh like LEDs at all because they start out warm and they just get

02:03:22   warmer and warmer as you dim it. So that's been a really nice one.

02:03:24   As I've been doing all of this, you know, install installing light strips,

02:03:29   running new audio cables, too. I've had to do a lot of wire stripping.

02:03:35   And let me tell you, I have found my my soul wire stripper. This, you know, when you have when

02:03:43   you have a good tool for the job, it really makes you feel good. And I have the the I think this brand

02:03:50   is pronounced Knipex, K-N-I-P-E-X. If you watch Project Farm,

02:03:54   it's Knipex. Oh, boy. Well, I'm not sure you're familiar with Project Farm.

02:03:58   If you've heard us talk about it in Erectifs, but it's that guy who tests a bunch of tools.

02:04:01   And this brand is very often featured and usually does pretty well in the tests.

02:04:06   Yeah, this this this was recommended to me by my brother-in-law who knows everything about

02:04:10   tools. At one time, an electrician came by to work on something

02:04:14   else and he saw that and he's like, oh, nice one. And he pulled out his and he had the exact same pair

02:04:18   and it was all like, you know, beaten up from, you know, months of use or whatever.

02:04:20   So I assume these are considered good by people. But anyway, this I have stripped so many wires as

02:04:28   part of this project. And these have just been fantastic. It's a well-made, like nice, weighty,

02:04:38   sturdy tool. All of the stripping blades are all sharp. The little pliers on the end are perfect,

02:04:44   like everything about it. It's just nice. And when you have again, when you have the right tool

02:04:49   for the job, not only do you feel really good, but it also just makes the job a lot easier. Like

02:04:55   nothing is more frustrating than when you're fighting your tools or there or you're being held

02:05:00   back by your tools. And a lot of times if you have like the wrong tool for the job or a really

02:05:04   terrible crappy one that happens when you have something by NYPEX, you never have the wrong tool

02:05:09   for the job. Like this, it's a really, this is just a really, like I have a few of their like

02:05:13   pliers and stuff. They're really good. So anyway, um, that was, uh, the, that was a great purchase,

02:05:22   like between the, the DeWalt cordless led light and the NYPEX wire stripper. Those are like the star

02:05:29   tools of the show. Um, as I was rewiring all of those things, I discovered, I forget how I found this

02:05:36   that, but I discovered the existence of WAGO connectors, W-A-G-O. Never use a wire nut again.

02:05:46   Oh, I don't want to show you the YouTube rabbit hole of these connectors because they are somewhat

02:05:50   controversial. Really? Well, we now have some of them in the restaurant, mostly for lighting and

02:05:55   audio, but it's probably fine. YouTube's going to YouTube, but you might want to look at some.

02:05:58   Maybe, maybe, maybe not. So, so WAGO connectors in short, they are basically alternatives to

02:06:06   wire nuts. Those little like hats that you screw onto twisted together wires to cap them. And

02:06:12   usually you might put tape around it to keep the, keep the cap on. If you're, you know,

02:06:15   not an electrician, wire nuts are fine. They serve their purpose. They have been around for a billion

02:06:20   years and they are simple devices that work better than you think they should. Um, especially if you

02:06:27   like screw them on properly, like wire nuts can be fine. Yeah. They're easy. Wire nuts are easy to do

02:06:30   wrong. That that's the thing. They're easy to do wrong and they don't always age well in certain

02:06:36   situations, depending on how they were done and what kind of conditions they're in. They're also

02:06:40   very difficult to change. So what, what often happens is, you know, over time, the wire nut in

02:06:46   your, you know, light switch box, you know, well over time, somebody puts in a dimmer switch or changes

02:06:50   things up or rewires things. And the nuts get taken off and things get retwisted together and put back on.

02:06:55   It doesn't quite sit the same way because it wasn't twisted on with the original twists and that

02:06:58   solid core cable and all this stuff. And so, you know, it, if it's not, if wire nuts are not done

02:07:03   really well, they can be pretty unstable and pretty unsafe. And they're also just kind of a pain in the

02:07:09   butt. So the way Wago connectors work, it's like a little tiny box. They, you know, connect whatever

02:07:16   you plug into them together electrically and they have one hole in the front per wire. And these,

02:07:23   these little tiny clips that you like, you lift up the clip, you put the wire in,

02:07:27   you close the clip down and it holds on really tight to that wire, whatever you need to connect

02:07:33   together. Like you can just plug one in and you can pop a little connector up, eject it and plug a

02:07:39   different one in. And it makes wiring projects so much easier than wire nuts. Also so much safer in a

02:07:47   lot of ways. Like if you're working on live wires, which you shouldn't be, if you can help it,

02:07:51   but sometimes you can't, if you're working on live wires, this is a way safer way to do it.

02:07:56   Even if you're not, like if you're just working on, or even, you know, you're just working on like

02:08:00   low voltage stuff, like, all right, well, let me just plug in this audio cable that I'm, I'm splicing

02:08:04   this audio connector onto this, you know, patch board or whatever. Using these for those connections

02:08:09   is just so much nicer than using wire nuts or tape or whatever else. Like don't use tape,

02:08:14   please. Right.

02:08:15   That's a case where you shouldn't look up the right tape to use because the answer is none.

02:08:18   Exactly. Yeah. The answer is you shouldn't be using tape to hold wires together. But

02:08:23   you know, if I believe me, I'm going through the restaurant, I've seen a lot of things.

02:08:28   But when I, when I do new connections or when I, when I'm working in an area, I put it in Waco

02:08:34   connectors. It has made things so much easier because like, I didn't know about them for the

02:08:39   first like month or so. And I was using wire nuts for things like joining together speaker cables and

02:08:44   stuff. And it just sucked. I, once I found these, it was like night and day difference. So Waco

02:08:49   connectors, I don't, I don't think I want to hear why they're terrible. Maybe I don't want to hear

02:08:53   that. I mean, I'm sure you can guess the whole thing is like, well, how well do they hold? And

02:08:59   you know, how good is that connection versus a properly installed wire or not? And there are

02:09:03   complaints about wire nuts as well, but like it's, it's a, for any new technology in the construction

02:09:08   business, there's always, it's always going to be controversial because like wire nuts have been

02:09:12   used for like a hundred years or whatever. And here comes something new that's different. And you'll

02:09:17   immediately, people immediately find the weaknesses of the new thing while maybe disregarding some of the

02:09:23   strengths and the first generation of these products will actually have problems. And anyway,

02:09:26   you can, if you're not interested in that type of YouTube videos and it's working for your thing,

02:09:30   I'm sure it's fine.