347: ‘After Steve’, With Tripp Mickle

0:00:00Let me just say right off the bat that I'm not sure I've ever seen a book that spoils itself

0:00:04based on the subtitle alone.

0:00:06Jon Moffitt By that you mean it's easy to judge it by the cover and dismiss it or what?

0:00:13Jon Moffitt Well, not dismiss it, but the cover is very opinionated. And reading the book, I think

0:00:30I've never written a book, so I don't know how titling and subtitling a book goes into projected

0:00:37sales and stuff like that. And I can imagine that there's some idea that with that subtitle,

0:00:43the book might spark more interest right off the shelf than if it was just called After Steve with

0:00:49no lost-its-soul part. Or After Steve, how Apple became a trillion-dollar company, right?

0:00:57It's the lost-its-soul is the, "Hmm, that's pretty sharp."

0:01:01Jon Moffitt Right. And it's funny, when you go into the contract phase with the book,

0:01:09or at least in this case, in my experience, and I literally only have one experience because I've

0:01:12only written one book, it wasn't like the title was there. The title was born out of

0:01:17really deep thought about what the structure of the book should be and what the book should be

0:01:24about and what story it was going to tell. So, the contract didn't dictate that it wasn't based on

0:01:32the title. So, it's interesting to think about like, "Oh, well, the title is designed to get

0:01:37sales." Honestly, in my mind, that's a bit of an afterthought. The title is more designed to

0:01:43reflect the reporting in the book, but also be provocative enough that people look at it and say,

0:01:48"Well, that seems interesting. It at least made me think or have some feeling." Some people have said

0:01:56the book made them angry or riled them up. And they said that that would be the case in their eyes.

0:02:03Whether you loved Apple or had issues with Apple, which I'd rather people feel one way or the other

0:02:10after reading it than just kind of set it aside when they're done. I get the feeling. Yeah,

0:02:16I'm sure you're hearing it more than me as the author, but I've heard that there are people who

0:02:21are not happy about the book. Just a general sense, but I don't know that, again, that's not a

0:02:26condemnation of the book. Maybe any properly written book about this era, about a secretive,

0:02:34very secretive company, if the book is well reported, it's going to report things that

0:02:40people did not want to be public and therefore, of course, it's going to make them angry.

0:02:46Or not angry. Maybe angry is the wrong word, but just wish that the book didn't exist.

0:02:50Right. Right. I mean, yeah, you're writing about a corporation that really has what I call a corporate

0:02:58emerita, right? That everybody who kind of goes in and out of Apple believes that you don't talk

0:03:02about Apple. And you can certainly, if you're an alumni of Apple, you can become a pariah if you

0:03:11violate those kind of basic principles. And so you're kind of as a reporter or writer, when you

0:03:17unearth things, I just always felt like, well, that's just not appreciated because it violates

0:03:22the very kind of foundation of the way they think about how they reveal information to the world.

0:03:28So as background for people who aren't familiar with your byline,

0:03:32you currently are a reporter for the New York Times, but previously you were at the Wall Street

0:03:38Journal. Correct. Correct. And much of this book is born out of my reporting while I was at the

0:03:46Wall Street Journal. And when you were at the Journal, your beat exactly was, was it Silicon

0:03:53Valley in general? I mean, I know you personally from a couple of Apple events. I know we were

0:03:58introduced, I think by Steve Dowling. We met when you did a talk show at WWDC several years ago.

0:04:05I was talking with, I think it was your audio producer, a little bit about some of the app

0:04:11experience, because I think he was, am I correct? And remembering that he did a documentary about

0:04:16app developers and some of the challenges that they'd run into and dealing with the 30% fees or

0:04:23something like that. Anyway, I recall being there for one of the talk shows and having a chance to

0:04:28talk with you before you did the big show. And it was such a thrill to be there and see just how

0:04:35packed the house was for that. I mean, people just really turned out for it. It was fun to see.

0:04:39Yeah, it'll be interesting to see when or if that ever happens again. That was the documentary for

0:04:45those. I'll just toss it out there before I forget app, the human story by Jake Shoemaker. And yeah,

0:04:51he for years shot the video version of the show. And I say it in the past tense, but it could

0:04:59happen in the future tense at some point again, but I do remember that. But what was your purview?

0:05:03Was it just, was it super focused on Apple? It was strictly Apple. The Journal has an

0:05:09Apple reporter. The Times has an Apple reporter. Reuters has an Apple reporter. I mean, there

0:05:13are, you know, there's a sensibility here among large papers that these large companies have such

0:05:20outsized influence over our lives in the world that you really need at least a single reporter

0:05:27devoted to it. And in the case of Amazon, the Journal has a couple of reporters. And in the

0:05:31case of Facebook, I think there are probably about four people that hand off coverage of Facebook at

0:05:37the Journal. And I think that's just a reflection of its its impact on society. Yeah, Bloomberg,

0:05:42of course, has Mark Gurman, amongst others who cover the Apple beat. I kind of knew that. But,

0:05:47you know, I feel like it's worth clarifying. But so here's my next question. And it's a meta

0:05:51discussion. You are a full time reporter for a major publication, and your beat is Apple. But

0:06:00you have the idea that you would like to write a book about Apple. How do you draw the line between

0:06:06what you're reporting for the paper and what you're reporting to collect for the book?

0:06:12The line is actually pretty clear and well defined. And in this instance, it was,

0:06:19it was, you take a sabbatical, essentially a book leave. I took mine in summer of 2020,

0:06:27and took about seven months off. And that's when I really rolled up my sleeves and did a lot of the

0:06:32reporting that's in this book. Now, there's other reporting that's in the book that anybody who may

0:06:37have read stories over the years from the Wall Street Journal can tease out is based or was in

0:06:45articles that the Journal had at the time when I was covering Apple. Like for example, there's

0:06:49a guy inside Apple called the blevenator, Tony Blevins, who's just a master negotiator. And I

0:06:55wrote a profile of Tony Blevins while I was at the Journal. And there's a few pages that highlight

0:07:02some of his work at Apple. So it does kind of blend and overlap. But really, the writing and

0:07:10the bulk of the reporting took place in that seven month period that I took off on on book leave.

0:07:14And how, again, I'm fascinated by stuff like this. And I don't want to spend a ton of time about I

0:07:20want to talk about the actual content, but I'm curious what because there is a ton. Here's my

0:07:25favorite thing about the book. The book is clearly deeply researched. And I mean, do you have a count

0:07:33of how many actual sources I think maybe in the forward you mentioned how many how many people

0:07:37Jared Ranere: It's, it's 200 plus and that's that spans former and current Apple employees,

0:07:45friends, family of the two central characters, Johnny Ive and Tim Cook, advisors to Apple

0:07:51consultants. I mean, it's, it's, it's a real cross section of, of the world in and around the company.

0:07:58And it shows it really does. And it is a, a nourishing read, in terms of how deeply reported

0:08:08it is, I think, you know, as we mentioned at the outset, I think that you and I could possibly

0:08:13quibble about the punditry aspect of it, the the whether or not Apple has lost its soul. But I don't

0:08:20think and I think this is what I'm saying to my list, the listeners of the show, if if, if the

0:08:25idea of how Apple lost its soul, immediately turns one's mind like, Hmm, is this book a hit piece,

0:08:33I would say it is not it is in the, you know, reasonable people might reasonably disagree about,

0:08:40like I said, the punditry aspect of it, but the reporting aspect is fascinating. And there's

0:08:45so much new stuff in here. And firsthand stuff that it's sort of, again, I know, you're not going

0:08:51to give up confidential sources. So I'm not even gonna ask, but there are some anecdotes that are

0:08:55relayed in here, where it's like, who could, you know, there could not have been that many people

0:08:59in that meeting. Who spoke to trip about this? It's, it's pretty, it shows. Yeah, well, it was

0:09:08designed to be to be a real narrative nonfiction. Yes. So, you know, to have real arc and to bring

0:09:16the reader forward, and to have broad appeal. So, you know, my hope is that there's something

0:09:21in here for, for people who follow Apple closely and for people who don't, I mean, you know, if

0:09:29your listeners because, you know, I know, most of the people who follow your your words on are real

0:09:34Apple enthusiasts, if their family members don't understand why they're enthusiastic about the

0:09:40company, or don't really understand Apple, I'm hopeful that there's something in here for them

0:09:44as well. And so it's really designed to have broad appeal. What what tools do you use, like when

0:09:51you're conducting 200 interviews and collecting this and trying to organize all of this information

0:10:00you you've collected through your reporting into a narrative? What what's like what what what app?

0:10:06What software do you use to collect the notes and and sort of start organizing this or? And what do

0:10:14you use to write? I'm gonna, I'm gonna turn that on its ear a little bit and say that there's

0:10:20there's very much an aspect of this is very analog. And part of that was the consequence

0:10:24of the pandemic. It was when I was reporting this, it was a little difficult. So for example,

0:10:29when I went to Robbersdale, Alabama, to visit Tim Cook's hometown, it was really hard to, you know,

0:10:35to reach out to people ahead of time. And there was some weariness at that point, you know, mid

0:10:39pandemic about seeing people. And I, I literally drew a map of people who went to high school with

0:10:47Tim Cook. And then, you know, I drove around to their to their houses and like knocked on their

0:10:52doors and asked if they'd be willing to talk to me and left notes in their mailboxes. So there's

0:10:58an analog aspect of this. And then there's to your point, like, how do you keep track of everything

0:11:03else? I used Evernote a good bit, you know, because I had it at the ready and I was able to

0:11:08to leave notes because sometimes you're out on a run and you're like, oh, you know,

0:11:11that'd be a great sentence in chapter 20 or something like that. And you just want to be

0:11:16able to punch that in really quick. And then, you know, Google Docs and Microsoft Word actually

0:11:24became a primary tool during this. And Scrivener is where I did the bulk of the writing. Scrivener

0:11:30is a fantastic tool if you're embarking on a project like this.

0:11:35Trenton Larkin Scrivener, I am familiar with Scrivener and have never really used it personally.

0:11:40But the one thing I've heard from people who are devoted to it is that it really is,

0:11:45it's super, it seems super useful for organizing a big writing project, you know, that it maybe it's

0:11:51not an outliner in a traditional, this is a product that just does outlining, but it does sort of let

0:11:58you sort of outline in a lowercase o sense of the word outlining. You know, this makes a chapter,

0:12:08right? This Ted, and then that's a story. And then this chapter comes before this chapter, because

0:12:13that's, you know, it happened this way chronologically is, is that a good way of putting

0:12:18it? That's, yeah, that's a good way of putting it. The one thing that I found most beneficial

0:12:24of using it was I, at the outset of this, I went back and read like, every clip from major and even

0:12:32minor outlets about Apple over the span of a decade. And then I realized, crap, I got to go

0:12:36back further and read clips about Johnny and Tim as well, like profiles of them over the years. And

0:12:41I was able to put those in kind of a window off to the side. And then I could open and access those

0:12:47really easily. And you can have a split window where you're looking at the at the at the old news

0:12:52clip at the same time, you're looking at at what you're writing. So you can you can refer pretty

0:12:58quickly to to kind of source material in a seamless fashion. All right, let me take a break

0:13:04here and thank our first sponsors are good friends. Oh, do I love this company? Linode, that is where

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0:14:42There's I, what, let's start with the, the, the sort of structure of the book is sort of a,

0:14:50sort of a dual biography, right? Like the two main characters are clearly,

0:14:55I mean, you can see from the cover it's Cook and Johnny Ive, right?

0:14:58Correct. I like to think of it as like, it's like three biographies in a way. It's like

0:15:04a corporate history, you know, a biography of Apple and its totality. So there may be

0:15:10some material that's very familiar to so many real listeners, but then also hopefully ample

0:15:16fresh material and a fresh look at both Tim and Johnny themselves. The, after Steve Jobs died,

0:15:22there was, and you know, it's, you mentioned all the, you know, the previous examples, Disney,

0:15:29Polaroid with Edmund land, who else companies with a strong founder, Sony.

0:15:35So, Sony would be the other one that, you know, I mean, these are all intimately familiar to

0:15:39Jobs himself just because of his, you know, knowing the leaders of Sony, admiring Edwin

0:15:48land and upgrading Polaroid for throwing him out of the company. And then in the case of Disney

0:15:52being a large shareholder, he was intimately familiar with their own struggles after,

0:15:57after Walt's death. Right. And, you know, obviously became, you know, just sort of,

0:16:03not really coincidentally, but the way that with Pixar, like one of my, one of my recurring themes,

0:16:11like to me, it's, it's the story of this whole last few decades of what we now call big tech

0:16:17is the sort of computerization of everything like computers are so powerful and so profound that

0:16:24just about everything that could be a computer is becoming a computer and something like making an

0:16:29animated movie has gone from being this incredibly labor intensive hand analog thing, right? Like

0:16:36where the classic Disney animation from the 20th century was drawn by artists at a desk on actual

0:16:43cell. You know, it was very analog to purely computer driven, but that, you know, famously,

0:16:50as we all know now drove Jobs to have a relationship with, with Disney. So his,

0:16:56you know, familiarity with that company was, was, was more than just a superficial.

0:17:01Absolutely. Yeah. It's funny you say that I actually read an article for, if you'll forgive

0:17:07a brief digression about people mistakenly turning Sabbath mode on their ovens and getting locked out

0:17:13of their ovens because your oven's essentially a computer now too. So for those who don't know,

0:17:18Sabbath mode is designed for observant Jews to be able to kind of maintain a temperature through

0:17:24the Sabbath and through the Holy holy celebrations. And then there were, there were, I guess,

0:17:29people who weren't Jewish who accidentally pushed the button and all of a sudden couldn't get back

0:17:33into their oven. So computers are everywhere. I've mentioned that recently when I was talking

0:17:39about the Apple's new studio display, which itself is like an iOS computer or like an Apple TV,

0:17:45like it actually, it, the display runs an operating system and gets firmware updates,

0:17:49which is kind of mind blowing, but, you know, it's easy to understand why, but a couple of weeks

0:17:54ago, my review unit, the audio was glitching out. It, it, you know, it has these great speakers,

0:17:59but everything I was playing was just like that. It, you know, like that type of audio.

0:18:05And I unplugged it from the computer. I did everything I could other than unplug it from

0:18:11the wall, but that's ultimately what I had to do. And then you plug it back in and it actually

0:18:15boots up, you know, like, like when your Apple TV starts up, it doesn't take a long time. It's,

0:18:19it's not like a full version of iOS takes, but still you don't think of a monitor as being this

0:18:25thing that has to boot, right? The computer boots and you see it boot, but now the display itself

0:18:31boots. And my analogy was my, my refrigerator, you know, if that's how Apple is going to make this,

0:18:35they should, and they don't want to put a power button on it, which is a very Apple like thing

0:18:41to do. They should be damn sure. It doesn't need to be yanked out of the wall socket. You know,

0:18:47like my refrigerator is also a computer. I've got a little touch screen in there. You can control

0:18:52how much ice it makes and set the temperature and stuff like that. And, you know, we've had this

0:18:57refrigerator now for over five years. I've never had to pull the, pull the plug on it. You know,

0:19:02that's, that's what you expect from a refrigerator. Yeah. Well, you're lucky you haven't had to pull

0:19:08the plug. I bet it will happen at some point, you know, that, that, that's, that's where we're

0:19:11headed, I guess, with the computerization of everything. So how, how, how quickly did you

0:19:18narrow the idea down to telling the story of Cook and Johnny Ive? It's a bit reductive, but

0:19:27I've seen other people argue, but it's also, I think the, the most effective way to understand

0:19:36what Jobs had in mind for Apple, you know, after he left. And it's also, there, there,

0:19:43there's certainly stand-ins for the two, the two poles inside Apple that make Apple so successful

0:19:50as a company. And that's this, this creative aspect of the company that's been such a force

0:19:55and come up with so many revolutionary product ideas and revolutionary advertisements and

0:20:01everything else. And that's where Jobs spent so much of his time. And then the operational side

0:20:05of the company that's, that's been able to take the handoff of the designs and engineering and

0:20:12make those products come to life. Not just like, you know, one perfect product, but like a hundred

0:20:18million plus products coming off a factory line. I mean, that's, that's a remarkable achievement

0:20:24and very few companies can do that. And almost none can do it at the level that Apple does.

0:20:29I've heard from a few friends who've, who've made the, I forget what they call it. I think

0:20:37the internally there's some kind of name for it, but the, the San Francisco to China flights,

0:20:43you know, and there was a story, remember the story a couple of years ago where one of the

0:20:48airlines seemingly thoughtlessly leaked that, you know, like that Apple has like a standing order

0:20:56of like a hundred business class seats every day on the, on the flights across the Pacific ocean.

0:21:01Brian Kardell Yeah. Oh, and United. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:21:04There's a rumor at one point that they were buying out entire planes so that you couldn't have people

0:21:09sitting behind their staff and like looking over their shoulders. I never got to the bottom of

0:21:14whether that rumor was true or not. And forgive me for like flaming it, but, but it is interesting

0:21:18to think about like the fact that they could reserve extra seats just to protect the secrecy

0:21:23of work as people might be traveling to and from China.

0:21:27Ted

0:21:40and other facade of, you don't need to worry how we made this. Here's the thing. And it is,

0:21:48you know, in the same way that the devices themselves at their best are wonderful little

0:21:55objects that, that you can look at in the minutest of details and appreciate these fine things,

0:22:01the story behind them, they try to present similarly, right? And it's like, they don't

0:22:07really talk about how they do stuff and the scale of it. But when you think about like

0:22:13a hundred people a day flying across the Pacific ocean, it's, and I know that they don't necessarily

0:22:17use those seats every day, but it's, there's a lot of people who work at Apple in California,

0:22:26who spend a lot of time in China and it's, it's

0:22:30Brian Kardell Historically, you're like right now,

0:22:32we're obviously going through a strange time and that's not, that's not as easy to pull off and,

0:22:37and so there's a lot of demand in China for, for people who are bilingual and can provide,

0:22:44provide some of the same engineering expertise on the ground that they once got. They, they want,

0:22:50once we're able to send people over to do a lot of that work. So there's been some reshuffling

0:22:55and a bit of a shakeout as a consequence of the pandemic.

0:22:58Pete: And it's, when you think about it, I know that you can easily do the back of the,

0:23:04back of the envelope math. I forget what it is, but you've got it in the book where it's like,

0:23:07how many iPhones they sell per minute, you know, just all day, every day around the world. It's,

0:23:13you know, like, I don't know, like a couple hundred every minute or something like that.

0:23:17Brian Kardell Yeah. I can't, I don't have the figure right

0:23:20in front of me, but I think the analogy I compared it to is that, you know, they're selling

0:23:24at this point, like thousand dollar devices at the rate McDonald's sells Big Macs, which is just

0:23:29crazy, right? Like a Big Mac costs five bucks. I mean, it's, it's nuts that they're able to,

0:23:35to move those units as fast as they do. Pete: Right. And it's, it, it, it, it's,

0:23:42it's like the old adage. I know, I know I've heard Bill Gates be credited with it, but it's probably,

0:23:47you know, something that's been floating around forever, but that we, we tend to underestimate

0:23:53how much, overestimate how much we can do in a year, but underestimate how much we can do in a

0:23:57decade. And just reading your book and sort of looking back at it and thinking about it,

0:24:04it boggles the mind how different Apple's operations were before Tim Cook got there.

0:24:09And I know that that's, you know, we're talking 20 some years at this point, but

0:24:13they weren't doing anything in China. They had factories in California, they were

0:24:19factories in Singapore, they had, it really was in hindsight, it was a mess.

0:24:24Matthew: It was, it was total mess. I mean, if, if anything, that, that may, I mean, for all the,

0:24:31all the praise that's been lavished on Jobsford, coming up with the string of hits that he came

0:24:36up with in that period, perhaps his, his, his greatest skill was finding, you know,

0:24:42uber talented individuals in various specific arenas and putting them to work. And

0:24:49Tim Cook is emblematic of that. You know, I think one of my favorite stories in working on the book

0:24:55was that when Jobs interviewed Tim Cook and he was about to leave and take this job for Apple,

0:25:00his boss at Compaq brings him in and says, and says, "Tim, like, I was planning on retiring in

0:25:05the next couple of years, but I'll walk out the door right now if you'll just stay and take my

0:25:10job." And I asked him, I was like, "Why would you do that?" And he goes, "Well, I'm a shareholder,

0:25:14and he was the best, best hire I'd ever made. And I knew that if we kept him, the share price would

0:25:19increase, and that was better for me than staying in my job." But I think that just testifies to how

0:25:24skilled he was in that period of his life at bringing efficiency to a supply chain. And that's

0:25:31certainly what he brought into Apple immediately. And that's why Jobs ultimately tapped him to

0:25:36lead Apple after his death. Do you think in the world where Tim Cook wavered on that decision

0:25:45and maybe took him up and stayed at Compaq, is Compaq's fate different in that universe

0:25:52because Tim Cook was there? Like, is he that good? Or was that, I tend to think no, because I don't

0:26:01see, he could have helped them operationally, but I don't see how Tim Cook's presence leading

0:26:05Compaq would have saved them from the fate of the ultimate fate they have, which is sort of

0:26:10irrelevant. Well, yeah, and the stagnation of the PC market, right? I mean, if you think about it,

0:26:18what was the PC markets I'm doing in many ways was the revival at Apple itself from the iMac

0:26:26all the way to the MacBook Air and the way those two products in particular in the computer world

0:26:31changed people's perception of what a computer should be, you know? One, you know, in the iMac

0:26:39showed that a computer could actually be kind of fun to have, and then the other later showed that

0:26:44you didn't have to lug, you know, I don't know, a cinder block around on your shoulder every single

0:26:49day. Yeah. I remember the, were you there for the keynote where they introduced the Air and Jobs

0:26:56pulled it out of the Manila envelope? No, I was actually writing about the Olympics in that day

0:27:04and age. That was a different lifetime for me. It was just a pinnacle of showmanship, and it's like,

0:27:12in hindsight, it's like, well, so big deal. Everybody's laptop today could fit in a sufficiently

0:27:18large inner office mail Manila envelope, but at the time it seemed ridiculous, right? It was like,

0:27:26laptops are not this thin. And I guess the other thing that sticks out about that sighting, if you

0:27:31want to cite the iMac and the MacBook Air, which I think is a good one-two punch of the evolution

0:27:40of Apple's design, to me, there's a big difference between the two, which is that the iMac ultimately

0:27:46was very trendy and that translucent candy colored plastic look, it obviously became a sensation.

0:27:56I remember like going to Target and you'd, you know, there'd be like an $11 alarm clock and it

0:28:01was made out of clear blue plastic. Why? Why? Like everything you could make, you could buy like a

0:28:08coffee maker and it was made out of clear blue or pink plastic or something like that. And it was

0:28:14like, there's nothing inside this device that is good to look at, you know, like part of the appeal

0:28:19of the iMac was that it was supposed, you know, the internals were worth showing off, right?

0:28:23But it was ultimately trendy. And, you know, I think that's what the doctor ordered for Apple,

0:28:30famously. It's not like your book is, you know, making an original point that the iMac

0:28:35marked a turning point of Apple, you know, having, you know, having a hit product that they'd sorely

0:28:41needed, but it wasn't that long until the MacBook Air. When did the first MacBook Air come out?

0:28:47Was it? What? Circuit 2007? Yeah. Am I crazy? Yeah, that sounds about right.

0:28:53You know, so about a decade, a little bit less than a decade, but with the i, with the MacBook

0:29:00Air, they kind of hit with that aluminum, which you go into in the book about the tooling that

0:29:07they had to invest in to get these one piece aluminum cases. I'm not going to say it's forever.

0:29:15I'm not saying that 20 more years from now, we'll still have computers that are made out of aluminum

0:29:20that look like that. I mean, you know, everything changes in the computer world, but it's much more

0:29:24of a timeless design that is sort of the opposite of trendy. It's like a classic Rolex watch or

0:29:33something where, or a Porsche, you know, Porsche 911, where, okay, you know, the cars evolve

0:29:38constantly and they're way different than they were 30 years ago, but you can just see there's

0:29:43a sort of just a visual DNA, oh yeah, that's a Porsche 911. I mean, to this day, I mean,

0:29:51that's still the signature look of the MacBook product line, whether you have a Pro or an Air,

0:29:57right? It's still on that legacy foundation that was introduced back then.

0:30:01Well, and the other thing is, you know, and again, not accusing anybody of copying per se,

0:30:05but it's so pervasive that it's sort of the default look for all laptops. And I know,

0:30:10you know, there are certain brands like ThinkPad that have a very distinctive look that's very

0:30:14different, you know, with their black plastic type look, but for the most part, like if you're

0:30:19watching TV and the people on TV have a laptop in front of them, like the sports people in the booth

0:30:25or whatever, it doesn't matter what brand it is, if it's an Apple or not, it probably looks like

0:30:29a MacBook Air. Yeah, absolutely. To get back to what, like compacts or HPs look like that a lot

0:30:35right now, right? Am I crazy? No, no, they all do. That kind of like silver finish and everything

0:30:42else. So yeah. I always thought that that was something that Jonny Ive was moving to from the

0:30:52get-go. Like, it's not like he ever told me this. I don't think he would, but it seems to me though,

0:31:01and listening to Jonny's public remarks and talking and the way he talks about products,

0:31:09it seems to me, and seeing what he seems to want to be doing at Love From, which we really haven't

0:31:16seen much come out of that yet. So we don't know who's to say where that's going. I guess maybe we

0:31:21can touch back on this towards the end of the interview and see what you think. But it seems

0:31:25to me like he's interested in building things that are not transient in terms of their relevance.

0:31:32And that's why he does things like design chairs. Every designer seems to at some point design a

0:31:40chair. Yeah, I know. I think he's looking to reach beyond the confines of the world that he was

0:31:50resigned to live within for such a long time. I think that's acquired a little bit of the

0:31:55restlessness that he was dealing with in his latter years at Apple was working with the same

0:32:02form factors he'd been working with for a long time and having a desire to move on to something

0:32:08else. And that's probably part of the reason he poured a ton of time into like a camera. And it's

0:32:13part of the reason right now I love From. I'm sure he's invigorated by working with Ferrari and

0:32:20working on leather goods and anything that they're doing on the auto front. I'm not clear on what

0:32:26they're doing on the auto front, but I know he's gonna be able to have some influence over that.

0:32:31Yeah. And you know, and his pal Mark Nusen designed a car quite a while ago, which is sort

0:32:38of a fascinating design and it kind of looks appley you can kind of see how Johnny Ive and

0:32:46Mark Nusen are of a like mind. You could see why they're such close friends and collaborators.

0:32:52But it's, you know, and that's obviously, I mean, how much of that do you think you got into in the

0:32:58book with Project Titan at Apple? Probably not enough to satisfy your listeners. But because

0:33:06much of what I've focused on in delving into Project Titan was the waywardness of the project

0:33:13and the struggles and the political infighting that occurred that help explain why that project

0:33:20still, you know, still is still struggling to shake itself out. And a lot of that is rooted

0:33:26in the tension between some of the engineering vision for it led by Dan Riccio and then Johnny

0:33:33Ive's own ambition to really pursue full autonomy. I mean, there was a bit of a breakdown after that

0:33:39and a lot of political infighting and this giant organization that got built up and spun up really,

0:33:45really quickly by Apple standards with a lot of external people. And that was a difficult thing

0:33:51for the company to deal with. I think it still is. I mean, because it still is an ongoing concern.

0:33:57It still is an ongoing division. As Tim Cook says, autonomy is an area of interest. I think

0:34:03something to that effect. One of the most interesting things Tim Cook has ever said publicly

0:34:11was at one point before the watch came out and somebody asked like, "Hey, there's rumors you guys

0:34:15are making a watch. What do you think of that?" And he goes, "The wrist is an area of interest."

0:34:19And it was like, that's like you kind of gave it up there, like which is on Apple-like, but it

0:34:26wasn't like he said it offhandedly. He was very deliberate about it. But it's sort of like in the

0:34:31way that whenever there's a new area that they're going into there, they can be a little bit freer

0:34:36to talk or hint about it because they're not spoiling their own sales with the famous

0:34:41Osborne effect, right? Like if they've got like a brand new revolutionary iPad in the works,

0:34:47they're not going to talk about it until it's ready to ship so as not to decrease interest in

0:34:52the iPads that are currently on the market or the iPhone or whatever product. But when they don't

0:34:58sell anything for the wrist, he could say something intriguing like that and go on.

0:35:01The car thing is such a fascinating story though, because it's so secretive, but we know there's so

0:35:08much turnover, right? Like one of the things that can't really be held completely secret is when,

0:35:15you know, thanks to like LinkedIn and just it's human nature, right? Like just because you worked

0:35:21at Apple doesn't, you know, there is a code of Omerta, but if you leave and go to another company,

0:35:27people find out, right? And there's been so much turnover within the Titan division at the

0:35:32executive level that it's, and unlike any other division at Apple that I'm aware of, I've never

0:35:39heard of anything like that. No, no. And it, because you haven't seen the influence of

0:35:46external hiring either for many other projects. And for people at Apple, that was a real struggle

0:35:51was all of a sudden you had a division that was a thousand people strong, many of whom were not

0:35:57from the Apple culture. And so there was this internal friction between

0:36:02people who had grown up at Apple and understood how Apple pursued product development and kind of

0:36:10defied or sought to defy like the basic understanding of like what people thought

0:36:17a product in that arena should be. And those who had been working in autonomy for a long time and

0:36:23knew the problems and said, yeah, but you can't just say, we'll fix this or we'll get around this,

0:36:29like this has existed. And that was a constant push and pull between those two forces.

0:36:34Trenton Larkin I mean, I guess fundamentally the overarching

0:36:39story and the overarching doubts continuing even today as the company is, you know, it's super

0:36:45successful, the most profitable company in the world. There seemed to be firing on all cylinders

0:36:51with their existing product line, but the what's the next big thing, right? And when Jobs died,

0:37:00the argument was, you know, he was the one who drove them to make these new things at this

0:37:07incredible pace with this incredible panache and to debut with something like the iPhone that just

0:37:13blows people away. And then just a few years later to turn the iPhone technology into the iPad,

0:37:19which has obviously gone on to be an enormous hit and a huge part of people's daily lives.

0:37:24Can they do it? You know, can they keep doing that without them? And part of my writing has been to

0:37:32sort of remind people that even when Steve Jobs was alive and well and firing on all cylinders,

0:37:38Apple didn't come out with new products very often. It is still, it was always a rare thing,

0:37:43right? Like what did they have in the Jobs 2.0 era at Apple after they reunified with Next? The iMac.

0:37:52Brian Kardell The iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad would be the

0:37:56four I would point to and I would point to those largely because of their cultural significance,

0:38:01right? I mean, when you talked about like the way the iMac was such a cultural sensation that

0:38:06there were alarm clocks designed like that, you know, with the iPod, it really changed the way

0:38:12people listen to music. iPhone obviously is indispensable to everyone's life to this day.

0:38:17And then the iPad is become an extension of the iPhone and is how many people begin their days

0:38:25and end their days, whether it's reading a magazine or a newspaper in the morning or,

0:38:28you know, watching a movie in bed at night. Steve McLaughlin

0:38:32Yeah, and you know, I would throw from my perspective, I would throw Mac OS 10,

0:38:36the operating system in there. But I also get it though, that from most people, they don't really,

0:38:43you know, people go into the Apple Store not to buy a Mac OS 10 machine, they go in to buy a Mac

0:38:48Book, right? That's what it's the overall product. And I think Apple has always gotten that. So in,

0:38:54in the years since Jobs died, there's Apple Watch, right? That's, that's the one

0:39:02big loot and launch. Jared: Yeah, and really, I would, I don't know,

0:39:08I would broaden that and say the wearables category because with it, when they were,

0:39:12when they were thinking about the Apple Watch, and the book is into this in some detail, they,

0:39:16their aspirations were for it to liberate you from your phone. And as they were thinking about,

0:39:22well, if it's going to liberate you from your phone, what else do you need?

0:39:25That was when they began their earliest conversations about having a Bluetooth headset.

0:39:30So AirPods are really an extension of Apple Watch. I mean, they're kind of interconnected. So

0:39:35that is, yeah. And when you look at what they've done over the past decade, that is the

0:39:41new product category that they they've embarked on.

0:39:44Yeah, AirPods is, I have to remind myself that it should count as a major launch because I do think,

0:39:51I think it's changed, you know, it's, you see them everywhere, right? I mean, you can,

0:39:57and it is funny, like you go into it in the book, too, talking about the original

0:40:01iPod from 2001. And that there was pressure within Apple to have black headphones, because that was

0:40:09sort of the, you know, if you're only going to include one set of earbuds with with a mobile

0:40:15music player, Sony was sort of the state of the art and the Sony look was black. And Johnny,

0:40:22I've and his team pushed for no, we're going to do this thing, it's going to be white, it's going

0:40:26to be a white device, and we're going to have white headphones. And then right, and then that becomes,

0:40:33you know, significant, obviously, when they develop the silhouette, I mean, that becomes like,

0:40:38part of the reason that decade, that product became such a cultural sensation.

0:40:42Yeah, yeah. And that was a long running ad campaign, too. And I just I always think of it,

0:40:46because it was print, it was TV, it worked just as well, like at a billboard in a subway station,

0:40:53as it did in a 30 second spot during, you know, a football game or, or something like that. But it

0:41:00really was distinctive, where you had these bright primary colors for the background, black silhouette

0:41:05of a person, and then these iconic white headphones, you know, with the cable, but it's

0:41:10funny thinking about how AirPods to me have been so normalized, like when I see a show now, but we

0:41:16were just what I don't know if you watch the Ozark on Netflix, my wife and I are addicted, and it's

0:41:21coming to a close. But there's a one of the main characters was listening to music for a whole

0:41:27episode. And she was like on like a long road trip. And, but she's using wired earbuds with

0:41:33her iPhone. And I'm like, that's that does not seem like 2022. Get that, get that woman some AirPods.

0:41:39Right, right. It's funny, because Apple has been deemed for like having too much AirPod exposure

0:41:45and the morning show and some of their other programming, right. But it but in a way, they're

0:41:50they're a better reflection of reality than then say, like Ozarks are where you've got this wired

0:41:56headset, because that you just don't see that that often if you're commuting anywhere in any kind of

0:42:00major metropolitan city, right? Or especially for a younger character, you know what I mean? Like,

0:42:05you know, maybe the older you are, the less likely you are to jump on the newest thing. But I don't

0:42:11know, you just don't see them too much in the city anymore. I mean, wired headphones, it's it's pretty

0:42:17pretty interesting. The watch is something though, that you get into a great length, you had an excerpt

0:42:25from the book that ran in the New York Times last weekend, I believe over the weekend talking about

0:42:29that. So let's get into to that aspect. And I do you think is it fair for me to say that,

0:42:38that your take is that there was some fundamental tension as to what the what the purpose of the

0:42:47watch was, and that Johnny Ive, in your view, saw it primarily as a fashion item?

0:42:53That's probably overstating things slightly. I mean, Johnny was also involved in some of the

0:42:58human interface aspects of the fitness rings and everything else. So it'd be short checking him to

0:43:06say that he's solely saw it as a fashion item. But when it came to marketing the product,

0:43:12that was where his emphasis and priority was, in part because he really believed that if it was,

0:43:19if the product was rejected by society's tastemakers, by the fashion world,

0:43:24that it would never be accepted by anyone. And it was interesting to come into the whole thing

0:43:29because, and into the reporting process, because I was inclined to believe that that was foolhardy

0:43:34and, you know, mistaken emphasis on his part. And I came out the other side after talking with a lot

0:43:41of people, both from the world of fashion and from the world of Apple, people who were sympathetic to

0:43:48Johnny's vision for leading with or putting an emphasis on fashion and the marketing.

0:43:54And I left persuaded that that actually was probably the right instinct. And maybe

0:44:00the fault in all of it was leaning too far into that. And I don't know if leaning too far into

0:44:07that was a consequence of maybe the, of the watch not being functionally sophisticated enough to put

0:44:14the emphasis elsewhere yet. I mean, if you remember, here was a time piece that didn't tell

0:44:18time half the time. That's a lot of times in one sentence, but you know what I'm saying? Like you

0:44:23had to flick it towards your face in order to see what time it was because the battery power was so

0:44:29insufficient that they really needed to manage that. But with the fashion thing, the reason I

0:44:33came around to believing that Johnny had some point in emphasizing it is this scene that a

0:44:40lot of people directed me to in Devil Wears Prada, which I had watched but not paid that

0:44:45close of attention to, where Anne Hathaway's character gets upbraided by the Anna Wintour

0:44:50character. And she's, she's just savage because she has on a blue sweater and she's dismissive of

0:44:58fashion. And she's told, well, look, that's cerulean blue. If you knew anything about fashion,

0:45:04you would know the only reason that that's being sold at the Gap or wherever she had bought it

0:45:09was because it was introduced on Runways two years earlier. And that set the tone that this was going

0:45:15to be the it color for the foreseeable future. And that's, that's something that a lot of people

0:45:21that Apple pointed to and just said, like, this is why we needed to put the emphasis there because

0:45:26otherwise, people would say, you know, in the fashion world might have dismissed this as a

0:45:29computer on the wrist, and it would have never taken flight. So I'm sympathetic to that view.

0:45:35I think there's there's validity to it. I love that scene from that movie. I've I think I've

0:45:39seen it on I know I've seen the movie, but I've seen that scene pulled out on YouTube a few times

0:45:44and it's it it's it makes you think it makes you realize that it's there's more to it. Like that's

0:45:50obviously the Anna Wintour Streep's characters point is that this is not as superficial as you

0:45:57think there's there's a real thing here. And there's an expertise she gets into like that

0:46:01being an expert, you know, the expertise it takes to reproduce a color exactly and to to

0:46:06weave a certain fabric a certain way. One of the things I think you get into in the book was is,

0:46:12is the idea of was the watch ready to launch when they launched it, and that it seems and I think

0:46:19you just touched on this a little bit with with talking about why did Johnny Ive want to lean into

0:46:25the fashion side of it and how it looks was out of a concern that how it worked wasn't good enough yet.

0:46:33Right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a scene in the book was pretty telling where

0:46:38one of the central engineers who was who was the lead engineer on the project pulls Jeff Williams

0:46:45aside just on the cusp of them pushing to try to get this thing out the door and announce it and

0:46:51says, "Hey, Jeff, you know, let me ask you a question. If you came to work today and you forgot

0:46:57your iPhone, what would you do?" And Jeff said, "Why turn around and go get it because I need it

0:47:02all day." And he said, "Well, if you forgot your watch, what would you do?" And Jeff coped to the

0:47:07thing that he would he would go and get it, he would go and get it at the end of the day, you

0:47:11know, and the engineer looks at him and says, "Well, that's that's the point. This this product's

0:47:15not ready. People don't need it yet." And for people who had been raised in in the jobs world,

0:47:22that was a fundamental aspect of what they needed to do was create a product that people

0:47:29immediately recognize there was some need for. And there's a real sense among some people inside

0:47:34Apple that that this product was not there yet. I think in hindsight, that's true. I believe that.

0:47:41I've mentioned that I think it needed another year. But because and I really do think that the

0:47:47as they called it the series two, even though they never called the original the series one,

0:47:52because then it sort of complicated where they came out with a series one that was like an

0:47:57upgraded version of the series zero for lack of a better, a better term for the original.

0:48:03But I also understand it was a time of inordinate, unprecedented stress within the company because

0:48:11of the timeline of Steve Jobs is passing. I think coincidental to that was the sort of 2013 era,

0:48:23Samsung is taking over this market and it Samsung is on the upswing. Apple can't do it just like we

0:48:32all predicted Apple can't do it without Steve Jobs. Samsung is the one who's innovating.

0:48:37You know, that's that's the the famous ad lib by Phil Schiller at WWDC introducing the the Mac Pro

0:48:44can't innovate my ass, right? Right. And then yeah, that just spoke to the

0:48:49unrelenting pressure externally and the deep skepticism that everyone at Apple face that

0:48:56they could they could do without Steve Jobs, right, which is got to be got to be exhausting,

0:49:02right? Because one of the things that I hope that people get out of this book is that these

0:49:07are people who who had a deep connection with Steve, they worked with him every day. You know,

0:49:12we all know that Steve Jobs could be an asshole, but these people loved working for him. And that

0:49:16was why they woke up in the morning. And so there was there was just real profound grief in the wake

0:49:22of his death. And I just don't think that that's something that we think enough about as we think

0:49:27about a company is like the individuals and some of the some of the just basic, you know,

0:49:33hardship that they went to as human beings in the aftermath of that.

0:49:36Yeah. And I just think, you know, if they aired on the side of pushing the Apple Watch out one year,

0:49:44maybe before they should have, I think it's understandable. And maybe, maybe it still was

0:49:50the right decision to do overall. I mean, and you know, in the success the watch has had since then

0:49:55would would sort of, you know, back that up to some degree. But that it in the same way that like,

0:50:01when when Jobs first came back to the company, and they did the think secret ad campaign, or think

0:50:06different ad campaign, which wasn't about pushing products, but was just a pure brand message,

0:50:12right? Was

0:50:14Yeah, it was about redefining the company's image publicly, right? So they're not perceived as a

0:50:19beleaguered, beleaguered company on the brink of bankruptcy anymore.

0:50:23Right? Or maybe even certainly redefining the then current narrative around the company,

0:50:30but not really redefining but reasserting what it really was, you know, right? Like the idea wasn't

0:50:36that this is the new Apple, this is a fixed Apple from from the hiccups of recent years, but we're

0:50:43we're, we're clarified in our thinking of what it is we're here to do. And this is the way we

0:50:49should think about it. And in some sense, if they pushed if Tim Cook pushed to get and Jeff Williams

0:50:57to launch Apple Watch, let's just say one year before they should have technically,

0:51:03maybe it was worth it to assert that they can still launch a major new product when when they

0:51:09did and that for morale and for you know, the the the what the what the outside world thinks of

0:51:17Apple is they can still launch new things. But right, it's certainly relieved and alleviated

0:51:23a lot of pressure externally, but by the same token, once it was released, when it didn't

0:51:30measure up to internal and external expectations in terms of sales, then then they also took it on

0:51:38the chin for that as well, which is, which is unfortunate because to your point with persistence,

0:51:44that product is improved its capabilities and its functionalities. And you don't see it as often as

0:51:50you see AirPods when you're commuting to work, but you see it a lot. If you're if you next time you

0:51:55sit down at a restaurant, look around and see how many people have on a on an Apple Watch. It's,

0:51:59it's it's got to be at least a third of the restaurant, if not more. I mean, that's

0:52:03that's pretty deep reach for a product like that. Yeah. And I think that they did.

0:52:08One of the knocks against the whole idea was the idea that people don't wear watches anymore,

0:52:13especially you know, the younger people are the less likely they are to wear a watch that watch

0:52:18wearing was was at an all time low, especially for you know, people in their 20s at the time,

0:52:24or even younger, like teenagers. And you know, the response is, why would I want to wear a watch? I

0:52:29have a phone in my pocket, it tells me the time it's almost like the world you know, like for time

0:52:33telling the whole world went back 100 years to pocket watches. But I get it. I'm always been a

0:52:39watch where I've worn a wristwatch since I was a teenager. It's I feel naked without a watch on my

0:52:45left wrist. But you know, I realized that that's a habit and I totally get the idea of why have

0:52:52another thing to charge? Why have another thing to worry about? If I want to know what time it is,

0:52:56I just take my phone out and I'm taking my phone in and out of my pocket 1000 times a day anyway.

0:53:00Right. And I read Yeah, but they almost had to like recondition the world to accept that like,

0:53:08watches have value. Yeah, yeah. And that you might want to have one like, I think that's part of the

0:53:14ubiquity of seeing Apple watches on men's and women's wrists. Everywhere you go,

0:53:20every restaurant you go to, or you go to an airport or something like that. And if you do

0:53:24look for people wearing Apple Watch, you're going to see a lot of them. And I think it's a lot of

0:53:28people who weren't wearing a watch previously. Yes, sure. There's definitely people who did and

0:53:34have switched to an Apple Watch. But I think that to be a success, they kind of had to reinvigorate

0:53:40the idea that you might even want to wear a watch. Right, which gets you back to fashion, right?

0:53:46Because that's the industry that had the deepest connection to timepieces up until that point. I

0:53:55mean, what else could you have leaned on in order to kind of bridge that gap and sell this product

0:54:00into into a world that had largely abandoned wearing timepieces. And you know, there is

0:54:05technology in traditional watches. I just actually by coincidence linked to a thing the other day on

0:54:11during Fireball, some somebody had just a wonderful, wonderful online, almost like a little mini book,

0:54:17but animated, explaining how a mechanical watch works with all these little animations. It's just

0:54:23absolutely fascinating. And, you know, it's technology, right? Like having a Rolex Submariner

0:54:30that can go 300 meters under the surface of water and still remain airtight. That's technology. You

0:54:37know, I mean, how many people who actually buy a Rolex go 100 meters deep in the ocean? I mean,

0:54:43probably 0.001. And you know, the one is James Cameron. It's not something people typically do,

0:54:53but the technology is there and people, you know, it is a technology product, but

0:54:56primarily, it's, you know, they're sold as fashion, their jewelry, right? You go,

0:55:01when you want to buy a Rolex, you go to a jeweler, you don't go to, you know, a technology store.

0:55:07All right, let me...

0:55:08Jared: Right. And, oh, yeah, we can pick up when you come back. But I have some thoughts on that,

0:55:13because I think one of the interesting things was delving into the history of time and timepieces,

0:55:19because it provided both a lens into the deep thought that goes on inside Apple as they pursue

0:55:25a product, but then also this kind of weird, I have this weird thing about empires and time

0:55:31that I'd love to talk to you a little bit about as well.

0:55:33All right, put your finger on that. Let's come back to it after a moment. I'm going to tell

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0:57:44All right, you were talking about time.

0:57:47Tim Cynova Right. Right. I think one of the more interesting

0:57:51days that I spent while I was reporting on this was when I went to the Greenwich Observatory in

0:57:57London because I was trying to walk in the footsteps of the designers as they were trying

0:58:03to learn more about history and history of timekeeping and everything else. And I met

0:58:07with this guy who's got a great book called About Time. His name's David Rooney. He's studied the

0:58:14history of time for, you know, most of his life. And he was talking to me about how central developing

0:58:23the mechanism to tell time accurately was to the construction of the British Empire. And it was

0:58:30just like an interesting thing. So, like all the ships would come into the Greenwich Observatory,

0:58:35they'd get the timepieces that they had on the boat tuned and dialed correctly,

0:58:40and then that allowed them to navigate the world and build out the British Empire.

0:58:44And for me, what was interesting about this is Apple was embarking on this journey to

0:58:49create its own timepiece. And at the same time, it was building an empire of its own.

0:58:54If you think about it, it's really become a borderless country. And I just, I don't know,

0:58:59it was just something that was like an interesting and slightly unique spin on history, like,

0:59:06corporate history was ape being, you know, real history from years earlier.

0:59:10Dave Asprey At some point, technology as generation,

0:59:14as humans, genera, you know, whatever, whatever was invented before you were born doesn't seem

0:59:19like technology anymore. Right? Like, I often think about that, like, if you could time travel

0:59:24and bring, say, Ben Franklin to the present day and show them around. And it's like, you might

0:59:29think he might be, wouldn't you love to show them the iPhone? And it's like, I always think, like,

0:59:33wouldn't he be most impressed by like indoor toilets? Like, you could just

0:59:37Ben Franklin be true. Yeah, right. That probably would be the

0:59:42thing that he'd be like, wait, I don't have to go outside anymore. That's fantastic.

0:59:45Dave Asprey You just go right in there, and you hit a button,

0:59:49and then it just goes, where's it go? Where's the waste go? And it's like, you just say it just

0:59:54goes out into the city, there's special pipes, it goes to a facility. And it's, you know,

1:00:00wouldn't that be the most one of the most amazing things? Or even just all of indoor plumbing,

1:00:04right? You just have a sink, you could just get clean, cold or hot water anytime you want, just by

1:00:09turning a dial. You just don't think about it as technology. But you're talking about the

1:00:16shipbuilding history of timekeeping is I've heard too that like the standardization in the US was

1:00:21driven by the railroad companies. Because it before railroads, there was really no reason

1:00:30to worry about whether, you know, like, let's say, you know, there's a big clock on Independence

1:00:36Hall here in Philadelphia. And, you know, if you want to say that's and there's one on our city

1:00:40hall, too. And if those clocks are four minutes different than a clock in New York City, well,

1:00:47who cares, right? But then all of a sudden, with railroads, it kind of mattered, right? Like,

1:00:52if a train was supposed to come in at five o'clock, you kind of needed it to be at the same,

1:00:57you know, to the people in New York and Philadelphia had to have their watches at the same

1:01:01time. Right. And that's why, at the outset of the watch project, they were so determined to make

1:01:07sure that this was the most accurate timepiece that had ever been built. Because if they didn't

1:01:13achieve that, then they would be violating the legacy of the problem tradition of time and why

1:01:21it was so important to the development of society. That's it's a curious thing. And I know even now,

1:01:26years later, people still mention that and we're still sort of circling around this, the

1:01:31introduction of the original Apple Watch. And there's the fashion angle, which I still want

1:01:35to get back to. But one of the pillars, as it was announced in September of, I believe, 2014,

1:01:43and then it shipped in like April, May 2015. But in September 2014, when they introduced it,

1:01:49one of the pillars was, they reiterated it. This is the most accurate watch in the history of the

1:01:55world. This is the most accurate watch, the most accurate time piecing. I think Johnny Ive himself

1:02:01might have narrated part of that in his introduction video. I've heard people like roll

1:02:06their eyes, like who cares, right? Like who's ever been worried about whether it's the most accurate

1:02:10watch in the world, but it clearly meant a lot to Apple. And they don't really talk about it anymore.

1:02:15But I see as a watch person, I get it. I get why they were saying that.

1:02:20Matthew: Right, right. Because if they couldn't deliver on that very basic thing, then

1:02:26they weren't fully honoring the tradition of it. And they were deeply aware that this was one of the

1:02:35most unique products they'd ever embarked on because it was one that was familiar to everyone.

1:02:40Whereas, you know, if you look at the iPhone, yes, there were mobile phones, but there was nothing

1:02:45like what they introduced at the time. And so, it changed our very understanding of what a phone

1:02:51could be. And I guess this had to bridge our understanding of what a watch was and take us to

1:02:59what a watch could be. And so, they were very aware that they were moving into something that

1:03:04was pre-existing and that people came to with their own pre-existing notions of what it should

1:03:11be and what it should do. One of the fascinating things, and it gets to the heart of this,

1:03:17is it a fashion object? Is it a tech object? Is it a fitness object? And the answer to all of them

1:03:23is yes, right? It's one of those trick questions where it's all of the above. But what mix do you

1:03:29think about it? But one of the things that I can't think of anything else that was like it is the way

1:03:35that it launched with three distinct tiers. They called it at the time the Apple Watch Sport,

1:03:41which was the aluminum model, which is really the base model. Then there was just plain Apple Watch,

1:03:46which was stainless steel. And instead of being like $400, $500, it was like $700, $800. And then

1:03:56the, I guess the most controversial angle of it was the Apple Watch Edition, which was made out of

1:04:03solid gold and started at $10,000 and sold up to like $17,500 or something like that. Yet all three,

1:04:13like you could go in and buy a $17,000 gold Apple Watch, and I could go in and buy a $400,

1:04:21or maybe it was $500 Apple Watch Sport made out of aluminum. And in terms of technology,

1:04:27they were exactly the same. There was no battery life difference. There's just slight difference

1:04:34in terms of the screen being sapphire on the higher end models and thus far more scratch

1:04:40proof. And on the lower end models, ionized glass or something they call it. But it's still like the

1:04:46same screen underneath the actual glass or sapphire. And that-

1:04:51I've even been told that the bill of materials costs between difference between stainless steel

1:04:57and aluminum is borderline negligible. So the profit that Apple's re reaping on that model

1:05:04alone to this day is outstanding. So yeah. But I'm also sitting here with a stainless steel watch on

1:05:12my wrist. So you can feel the difference and some people are willing to pay out for it.

1:05:18Yeah, I have the titanium one because I'm an idiot. But I do, I like the way it looks. I just

1:05:25like the way that the titanium looks and I buy one and keep it for a few years. So it's worth it. But

1:05:29this was obviously, it baffled people outside the company. And another weird thing about that

1:05:35introduction was that they didn't talk about pricing at the introduction. They didn't say

1:05:40what any of these, I think they said the starting price and that was it. But they didn't even say

1:05:46which model was the low end one. And I remember in that interim between the announcement and

1:05:54about six months before it shipped arguing with people and trying to- it was fun to be

1:06:00a pundit in the Apple space because there was lots to speculate upon. It's kind of fun to be

1:06:08in my seat when Apple leaves a lot of stuff left to the imagination. That's the job of

1:06:15the guy who writes Daring Fireball. But there were a lot of people who thought that the

1:06:19sport models would cost more than Apple Watch because they had an adjective and they thought

1:06:25maybe ionized glass. They were so, you know, was even better than Sapphire and that it was meant

1:06:31for an active lifestyle and therefore it would cost more. And I was like, no, you don't understand

1:06:35the watch world. The watch world is very simple. Stainless steel is better than aluminum. That's

1:06:39it. That's more expensive. But I'm curious how much reporting you did on the conflict within Apple

1:06:49about that launch strategy of going all the way from $400 to $17,000 for the same product.

1:06:59Matthew 4 My reporting was less focused on conflict internal or any internal conflict over pricing.

1:07:10It was more focused on two things that I thought were interesting, you know, around the watch

1:07:16project. And one of which is, you know, the fact that they embarked on all those three different

1:07:22plus the array of watch band materials that they designed made that they had to have a support team

1:07:30to build out all of those support team of engineers and operations figures. And this

1:07:39ability of Johnny Ive to keep the studio kind of, I guess, protected and guarded and really curated

1:07:49in terms of who had badge access to the studio and this principle that was understood and these

1:07:56rules that were understood that had been abided by everyone who had access over the years, this

1:08:01idea that you don't talk about costs in the studio, that suddenly began, those lines began to get

1:08:08blurry because you had people who were coming into the studio who weren't indoctrinated in that and

1:08:13it became harder to keep the group that had access and badge access as carefully curated as it had

1:08:21been in the past. So there's one moment in the book where there are a couple of designers who

1:08:26are in a meeting with some ops and engineers guys and the ops guys are like, "Well, if we

1:08:30cut the crown with this system, we'll save this amount of money and it's totally worth it. And

1:08:37look, you can't see the difference between the two." And the designers are looking at them going,

1:08:41"No, no, no, that's something Samsung would do. That's not something Apple would ever do."

1:08:45And it's partly an outgrowth of being so ambitious in terms of how many SKUs they were undertaking,

1:08:53SKUs being the different array of and variations of the watch they were undertaking at that time,

1:09:00and how that created some tension and kind of wrinkles in a well-designed and well-ironed and

1:09:09operating system that they built. Yeah, and compare and contrast with just the original iPhone where

1:09:15there was one color. I mean, there were like, I guess, storage configurations, right? It was like

1:09:2164, 16 gigs or 8 gigs even. I think they even had an 8 gig original phone, but it was like you go

1:09:28like 8, 16, 32 gigabytes, but that was it. Your only option was how much storage do you want in

1:09:35it. Every box looked the same. Every iPhone looked the same. Apple didn't even sell cases at the time.

1:09:41I don't think they foresaw the way the world actually evolved where 98% of people put their

1:09:48phone in a case and keep it in a case until they stopped using it. It was one thing, right? And we

1:09:53just make as many of this one thing as we possibly can and go versus the watch just not that many

1:10:00years later with not quite infinite, but borderline, right? Three tiers of materials, two sizes of

1:10:08watch, 38 and 42 in each material. And whichever watch strap you want as a customer, you could

1:10:17configure the steel watch with that strap or an aluminum watch with this other strap or buy a

1:10:23couple extra straps. And all of it was there at the beginning. It wasn't just here's the one Apple

1:10:28watch go. Right. Right. And it was probably the right decision, right? If you don't want everybody

1:10:36to be walking around feeling like a cyborg with the same exact thing on their wrist, like you have

1:10:41to give them some variety and some choice as to how they want to configure it and personalize it.

1:10:47By the same token, I don't know that in embarking on that strategy, it was understood what the

1:10:54consequences of that would be to kind of the internal operations of the company, namely the

1:11:00design studio, which was really spearheading and driving its project. One of the stories I want to

1:11:07touch on is we mentioned this before we started recording, but a saga of the last decade at Apple

1:11:14that isn't really in the book is the saga of the butterfly keyboards. And the maybe to a lesser

1:11:21degree with the same Mac books, the, the port story, I think fame, you know, maybe exemplified

1:11:28by the no adjective 12 inch MacBook that just had one port, one USB C port, that was for all data

1:11:36and power. And I'm curious why, you know, it's not that it's a conspicuous option. It's a nice

1:11:43thick book full of chock full of reporting, some stuff had to be left out. But I'm wondering

1:11:49why that didn't play a bigger role in them. I mean, the honest answer is you really do have

1:11:54to make choices as you're working on this. And a lot of my choices were driven by how,

1:12:00you know, tight and close the focus was on Johnny Ive and Tim Cook and what their core concerns were

1:12:09during this period. And in doing that, you know, I certainly did some reporting on the butterfly

1:12:18keyboard fiasco. My reporting found, and John, you know, this world honestly in many ways better than

1:12:24I ever could, it found that, you know, some of the fault for that was, was laid at the feet of some

1:12:30of the engineers. And it didn't seem that, you know, that it fell at the feet of Johnny and that

1:12:37he didn't personally drive a lot of that. But more than that, I mean, if you're looking at,

1:12:42and I've seen a lot of the chatter around us in social media, if you're looking at

1:12:48you know, the flaws that Johnny might have had or the mistakes he might have made in terms of form

1:12:54over function, I felt like that was best revealed through his work on Apple Park and the experience

1:13:02of employees once they got into Apple Park. So, I thought that there was a way and that, of course,

1:13:08is a major thread of the book that goes from beginning to end, that there was a way to touch

1:13:12on it through that because that was such a seminal effort for Apple during this decade. And when

1:13:19you're making these choices, a lot of what you're thinking is, okay, what are people going to look

1:13:23back in 10, 15, 20 years from now and say like, that was an important moment during that period

1:13:30at Apple. And I know that the butterfly keyboard feels important to a lot of people because they

1:13:38dreaded having to plug and unplug all the dongles in and out of their computer or, you know,

1:13:43got frustrated that the keyboard didn't work the way that they wanted to. But I think ultimately,

1:13:48when people look back on it 10, 15 years from now, that's not going to be something that they

1:13:53think about. But that Apple Park is something that's going to still be big on people's radar

1:13:59because it's such a unique building. Well, I think it gets to what I said earlier about Johnny

1:14:04I've been driven to design things that weren't transient, right? And what is more permanent

1:14:12than a building, right? That's about as permanent as anything a human can help to design and build.

1:14:19I mean, and I, you know, I mean, honestly, I mean, it sounds ridiculous, but I, the, it seems like

1:14:27a safe assumption that, you know, Apple Park is going to be there and look like that long after

1:14:33you and I are gone, right? Like 70, 80 years from now, isn't that still going to be Apple's

1:14:38headquarters if Apple is still a concern, you know? Yeah, so long as it doesn't, you know,

1:14:44fall to fall victim to the same fate that like Sun or some of these other giant companies did

1:14:49right before they built their giant headquarters. You know, it doesn't seem like Apple's on a path

1:14:55to stumble in the near future, but you never know long term. I almost think with a building so

1:15:01striking and such a incredible, you know, it really is a park. It is it's this huge thing that even

1:15:08if something, if Apple over the next 20 years falls into decline and irrelevance, that it's

1:15:17more like the classic skyscrapers of 100 years ago, you know, like the Chrysler building. I don't

1:15:22even know if the Chrysler Company still occupies the building, but the building is still there,

1:15:26right? The Sears Tower is no longer called the Sears Tower. Sears is not a retailer anymore.

1:15:33The whole chain has gone away, but the skyscraper is still there. You know, like I almost feel like

1:15:39that's what Johnny Ive was building, a building that might have more permanence than Apple itself.

1:15:44Yeah, yeah. And also in doing so, it kind of became a manifestation of some of

1:15:53some of the physical manifestation of some of the flaws that dogged Apple over this decade, right?

1:15:59I mean, it's both breathtaking and stunning. And I know you've walked the halls there,

1:16:07and they're just things that you see as you walk through the place that you're like,

1:16:11this just does not exist anywhere else. And it took a tremendous imagination to pull it off.

1:16:15And then there are also there were these frustrations that occurred when people first

1:16:20moved in there, including the fact that, you know, chatter would just ricochet down the halls

1:16:25in such a way that they had to come in and put in sound machines to dampen the noise because that

1:16:30wasn't anticipated. So yeah. It is, you know, and there was, I know, I don't even know how this got

1:16:36resolved. But I know that when it first opened, it there was a lot of consternation that it was being

1:16:42dictated that you had to use a certain type of chair. And, you know, it was like a Johnny Ive

1:16:47designed chair. And I certainly am picky about my chairs. I think most of us who have, you know,

1:16:53some sort of desk job, at some point, a lot of people learn to get a get a good comfortable chair

1:17:00and your body will thank you for it. But the chair that is comfortable for you to sit in for 810,

1:17:07maybe more hours a day, you know, obviously, some people at Apple during crunch periods are putting

1:17:11in incredibly long hours. Your comfortable chair is not necessarily my comfortable chair and people

1:17:17really, really, really care about it. And here was this thing where they're like,

1:17:21Johnny likes these chairs. So, here's your chair.

1:17:23Jared: Yeah, yeah. And the doubt about it, there's almost something like almost like a little

1:17:29Howard Roark like that, or Frank Lloyd Wright or something like that. Very insistent that the

1:17:34furniture goes with the architecture, which is a bit impractical to your point when you're there

1:17:40to do a job and spend your work day and you want to be as comfortable as possible.

1:17:44Do you think I mean, all right, let me take one last break. I have one more sponsor. Let's do

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1:19:12monetize your membership with Memberful. So, obviously, a big part of this book and a big

1:19:18part of this post-jobs era at Apple is that Johnny Ive is no longer there, right? It was,

1:19:25do you think, I'm not sure he would have lasted as long as he did if he didn't have the Apple

1:19:34Park project to focus on. And I think so. I mean, he tried to leave in 2015. I mean,

1:19:42he was fatigued and weary after the launch. He walked into Tim Cook and basically said,

1:19:46you know, I'd like to go and they ultimately came up with an arrangement that he would be there part

1:19:53time and continue to work on new things. So, Apple Park and the car and augmented reality efforts,

1:20:02things that were forward-looking rather than refinements of the existing product line.

1:20:09Pete: Right. And do you think, I mean, let's go all the way back to the cover of the book.

1:20:15Tell me, make the case for why you think Apple lost its soul.

1:20:19Chris: So, the subtitle is twofold, right? I mean, the first part of it,

1:20:23how Apple became a multi-trillion dollar company refers to the Tim Cook thread of the book. And

1:20:29then the flip side of that is how it lost its soul. Jobs called Johnny Ive his spiritual partner,

1:20:36they were essentially creative soulmates. Ive walks out the door in a way they literally lost

1:20:43their soul in that essence. But in a metaphorical way, the reason Johnny left was he grew disillusioned

1:20:51inside this company that he loved because in the Jobs era, it was a place where art was really

1:20:58designed to lead to commerce and increasingly in the Cook era, it's become a place where

1:21:03commerce dictates art. Pete: What do you think exemplifies that?

1:21:08Chris I think I hit on this a little bit earlier when we were talking about the watch,

1:21:12but you start to have people coming into the design studio, which people on campus called

1:21:18the Holy of Holies, and raising concerns about cost. You have limitations in terms of the

1:21:25projects you can undertake because Apple's so big after jobs stuff that they really need to

1:21:31only embark on and pursue products that have the potential to be at least a 10 billion dollar

1:21:37business. And that becomes a metric internally and that's why they explore these giant categories

1:21:42like healthcare, auto, and energy because they know that they've really saturated the electronics

1:21:50market and they need to move into something else to satisfy Wall Street. So, those are the tensions

1:21:56that take place internally that they're dealing with. Somebody put this in, I mean, this is not to

1:22:02knock Apple, this is a manifestation of the kind of growth that many Silicon Valley companies have

1:22:08been wrestling with. You can look at Google and see some of the same challenges there as well,

1:22:14but as you get bigger and bigger, it's hard, I mean, it's impossible to be the same nimble

1:22:20company you once were and to pursue some of the things and take some of the risks that you might

1:22:26have done in the past. It's, the phone is such a fascinating product and I, you know, it, and I

1:22:36think we touched on it earlier when we talked about the scope of the manufacturing effort in China to

1:22:43make this many, you know, hundreds of millions of these things a year and it's so labor intensive,

1:22:49right? It's not like an iPhone is assembled by robots yet, I mean, maybe someday, but right now

1:22:55it's incredibly labor intensive and it's effectively these city-sized factories to fill these

1:23:03boats with enough iPhones to satisfy demand. It's just unbelievable. It really is, I think,

1:23:09without question, the most successful consumer product in the history of the world. I don't know

1:23:15what else you could compare it to. I mean, it's like you have to go back to like the East India

1:23:19trading company, you know, centuries ago to find anything that's that successful, but then again,

1:23:25you know, and it's like, so that's, it's sort of like the ultimate goal. I've always said that the

1:23:29iPhone introduction in 2007 was the canonical ideal Apple keynote, right? Everybody went, goes into,

1:23:38before the iPhone went into every keynote hoping, I hope that Steve Jobs has the biggest surprise

1:23:43of all time and, you know, ready to, ready to blow our minds with something that's been kept under

1:23:49wraps and will change the world. And, you know, you can't do that every year. You know, you can't

1:23:55do it twice a year or three times a year or however many times they have these keynotes. It doesn't

1:23:59work that way. Ideas like that don't come along very often, but here's the one where the actual

1:24:04keynote blew everybody away and then turned out to be a product that people loved and changed their

1:24:11lives and became this true. I mean, just almost unfathomable juggernaut of financial success,

1:24:19right? I mean, I know a lot of times people misspeak when they're talking about millions

1:24:23and billions or even trillions, because it's like your brain files them all under like gazillions and,

1:24:29you know, it's easy to misspeak, but you're, you're off by a, you know, a factor of a thousand.

1:24:33If you misuse millions for billions, but you start looking at the money, it doesn't make sense to a

1:24:38normal human being. You know, like that must clearly be part of Tim Cook's genius is that he,

1:24:44he can think in terms of trillions of dollars. I can't.

1:24:48Jared I can't. Yeah. Yeah. We haven't,

1:24:50we haven't spent a lot of time talking about him, but that's, that's his great gift is,

1:24:54it is his mastery of numbers and his precision with those. But that's why,

1:25:00that's why Apple has been able to go from making on the order of 20 million iPhones a year around

1:25:05the time of job staff to 200 million a year. And that's, that's a staggering increase over,

1:25:11over the span of a decade. Right. And, you know, and you start thinking about, you know,

1:25:30have every quarter, lots of new people to the iPhone, but it's clearly sort of maxed out in

1:25:39terms of how big it could get. And it, and like, to your point, it leaves Apple in a very different

1:25:46position than they were in pre iPhone as to what can move the needle for the company. Right. And

1:25:56it's funny looking back at the, the iPod era of 2001 to, and I know they kept selling them after

1:26:04the iPhone came out, but effectively in hindsight, the iPhone was the end of the iPod, right? Because

1:26:10everybody just plays their music and podcasts on their phone. It was only, that's only like a seven

1:26:17year period, which is kind of mind boggling because it felt like a whole era. But it's like

1:26:23the biggest the iPod got in that era, by today's Apple standards is not even that big, even though

1:26:29we all felt it was this cultural phenomenon. You know, it was sort of more like, you know,

1:26:34like what AirPods are today. It's a nice business, but it's probably about as small as it could be to

1:26:40actually be worth Apple doing. Right. Right. The interesting thing, like, as we talk about this

1:26:46and talk about the scope of, of what they're manufacturing is the schedule that they have

1:26:52to keep to do it. It's very, very precise. And you know, we were talking about Johnny Iovin,

1:26:58what does it mean for art no longer to lead commerce? I mean, there was a moment, you know,

1:27:03after the iPhone was born, they're still making iPods and he had an idea for how to talk to

1:27:10somebody who he was telling, he was lamenting, because he had an idea for a design change to the

1:27:17iPod that was like two weeks too late to meet the schedule. And that meant that like, he couldn't

1:27:25introduce it for a whole year, by which point it might be stale and not work. And those are the

1:27:30type of sacrifices that all of a sudden you're having to make. It limits your creativity when

1:27:37you're doing things at scale in the way that Apple has to do them because of how big it is.

1:27:43Yeah, I love that story. That's one of the, I have that one highlighted in my copy of the book,

1:27:47but I loved it because I'd never heard that before. But, and I can't, I can't say that I know

1:27:53Johnny Iovin well. I've met him a few times, but I think I understand his, to some degree,

1:27:59his frustrations under post-iPhone, post-Steve, Apple with the size. And I think that, you know,

1:28:09like, is there possibly, I, the feeling I got from that anecdote in your book is that it wasn't just

1:28:15that he came up with the idea too late. It was that he came up with it at literally the worst

1:28:20time on the entire calendar. Like, you know, at least if he had had the idea three months later,

1:28:27it's like, well, we've only got nine months to go. Whereas it was two weeks after the point of

1:28:31no return for this is where it's locked in for September launch. And literally then 50 weeks

1:28:37before it could be brought to bear and the next one around, you know, it must be frustrating.

1:28:47And you also, I know this is not a new story, but like the story about with the original iPhone,

1:28:52where when Steve Jobs introduced it at Mac world expo in January of 2007, it had a plastic screen

1:28:59and shortly thereafter jobs, you know, carrying around prototypes, realized his keys were

1:29:07scratching up the screen. We've got to get it to glass. The thing was already announced,

1:29:11had to ship in June and they made it happen. You know, with Corning, he calls the Corning,

1:29:18talks to the CEO, says all of your glass sucks. And which of course, who does that? Right. Except

1:29:25for Steve Jobs. And instead of hanging up on him, the Corning CEO is like, well, we do have this

1:29:30thing called gorilla glass that we're working on. And then they make it happen. Right. And there's,

1:29:35there's Tim Cook, right? Like coming into that, you know, Tim Cook's role in that early 2007 is,

1:29:43it's not like a minor change. Like, Hey, let's change the color of the plastic a little bit,

1:29:49you know, or the color of orange underneath the mute switch. Let's, let's, let's go with

1:29:54a different shade of orange or something like that. It's an altogether different material for

1:29:58the screen on a device that was all screen. And they made it happen. I feel like that's exactly

1:30:06what Johnny I've just profoundly missed about the earlier days, you know, that you could come up with

1:30:15an idea like that and make it happen because the scale that Apple was operating at was so

1:30:20much smaller. Right. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. No, you're right. I mean, that's, there was a nimbleness

1:30:28that afforded them time to make changes or pursue something that in later years, they just couldn't.

1:30:37I mean, I don't know what you, the HomePod, it's like a great example of this, right? Like,

1:30:41what value does that really add to Apple's profitability and its bottom line? It would

1:30:49be hard to sell enough speakers to add enough zeros to what they make on an annual basis

1:30:57for a product like that to be worthwhile. Yet at the same time, they had to kind of jump into that

1:31:02because Amazon was there. So there were competitive reasons to jump into it. But from a pure business

1:31:07standpoint, there was no real reason to be in that business. Yeah. And then they got out of it

1:31:12in a very un-Apple-like way where they were just like, you know, just sort of, well, we're gonna,

1:31:17we're gonna stop making the big HomePod. And now if you'd like one, just, you have to get the HomePod

1:31:22Mini and that's it. And it just sort of, it was just sort of like a sad little wah wah, you know.

1:31:28And it's unlike Apple not to stick with something, right? Like you mentioned that with the Apple

1:31:34Watch where, okay, maybe the first one was arguably underpowered, maybe almost inarguably

1:31:41a little bit underpowered, didn't have quite the battery life it should have. And they just were

1:31:45already hard at work on the next years and the next years and the next years. And every September,

1:31:51there's a new one with better battery life. And eventually it was only a handful of years before

1:31:55they got to what they clearly wanted to do all along, which is keep the time on the watch

1:32:00all the time, even if it's like in a reduced power state where the second hand doesn't rotate,

1:32:06but you can at least glance at it and see the time no matter what. They didn't do that with HomePod.

1:32:11And I, you know, I don't think you have to, you don't need lots of sources inside Apple to sort

1:32:16of figure out that they just sort of looked at it and at some point Tim Cook's side of the

1:32:21organization said this just isn't worth it for us, you know. However.

1:32:24Tim Cook That one was undermined so much by the

1:32:29challenges with Siri and then the struggles internally working across different silos

1:32:37inside the company, right? Getting the Siri team and the software team and the design team to kind

1:32:41of all work harmoniously to make something that was fully thought out. Yeah, I was told repeatedly

1:32:47in my reporting was just a real, a real challenge. One of the things that comes across I and

1:32:52Tim Cook, to me, is inscrutable from the outside in a way that Jobs wasn't. I mean, clearly when

1:33:05Steve Jobs was on stage doing an introduction, you know, he was in showman mode and had a different

1:33:13persona. And certainly, you know, the fact that he could be abrasive, Kurt, however many other

1:33:23adjectives you'd like to describe how he worked internally and demanding, right? It's clearly

1:33:29demanding, but it would come out on stage sometimes. I mean, I love the story of the keynote.

1:33:35I forget which year it was, but it was towards the end of Jobs's career there. But they had some kind

1:33:41of demo at, I think, WWDC because it was a big, big, big room with thousands of people. And the

1:33:47Wi Fi demo didn't work for like the new iPhone that he was introducing. And his persona on stage

1:33:56changed. And you could kind of see the real Steve Jobs, or at least that other side of the real

1:34:01Steve Jobs. And then they went on with some other demo and he came back out and said, "We've figured

1:34:07out what's going on. It's you people out in the audience. There's 400 pocket Wi Fi networks set up

1:34:14for people who were live blogging the keynote. I need you to shut them all off." And do you remember

1:34:21this? Oh my God, this is real. And if you're sitting next to someone who has one, make them

1:34:28shut it off. If you guys want this demo to continue, you're going to shut off these Wi.

1:34:33You know, like Tim Cook never has a moment like that, right? Like in public. He is,

1:34:40but he's also just so...

1:34:42**Matt Stauffer** Steady and skilled. I mean, to your point,

1:34:45one of my favorite moments in the book is, you know, in his dealings with Trump and how masterfully

1:34:51he managed both external messaging and his messaging to Trump. He had this day he was

1:34:57gearing up to go in for a meeting with a bunch of other CEOs. He was seated right to the right

1:35:02of Trump in preparation for that Apple leak to Axios that he was going to confront Trump over the

1:35:09immigration order. And then, so all the Trump administration people are coming in going like,

1:35:16"Oh my God, this is going to be such a disaster. Like Trump's going to load on camera and chew out

1:35:22the CEO of Apple." Like they were in full preparation to go into damage control mode.

1:35:28And they go through this entire meeting, nothing happens. And as he's kind of breezing his way out

1:35:34the door, Tim Cook says someone quietly to Trump, "I wish you would put more heart into your

1:35:39immigration strategy and immigration policy." And then that becomes a headline in Axios later.

1:35:45In the day that he "confronted" Trump and everything else. And it was conveyed and relayed

1:35:52back to, you know, a workforce in Cupertino that was really agitated about this. But I think there's

1:35:58just some artfulness to Tim Cook's ability to kind of navigate situations like that. And it flows

1:36:04directly from the inscrutability you talk about. It's a real asset of his.

1:36:08Jay Famiglietti And he really is just unflappable. But you hear these stories. There's the famous one

1:36:16with, I'm drawing a blank on his name, the operations person and they—

1:36:22Tim Cook Sabikhan

1:36:22Jay Famiglietti Yeah, Sabikhan. And somebody's got to get to China to figure this out. And

1:36:26five minutes later, he turns to him at the same meeting. He's like, "Why are you still here?"

1:36:30And he's like, "Oh, I get it." And he just gets up, pulls his chair back, gets in a car,

1:36:36heads straight to SFO to get on the next flight to China and doesn't even have like a bag packed.

1:36:41He's got like what? Like his MacBook. That's it. He's just gonna buy clothes at the airport or when

1:36:46he lands in China. But that's, he's like, "Oh, I get it. I understand how important this is to you.

1:36:54And therefore, I'm going right to the airport." You don't see that Tim Cook in public.

1:36:58Tim Cook No. But also, what is that Tim Cook, right? Like if you get a job

1:37:04upbraiding a bunch of journalists around their Wi-Fi all in is diplomatic of the same character

1:37:12he was, you know, reprimanding staff behind the scenes. But with Cook, you're talking about

1:37:17somebody who people had, you know, people who worked for him on a lot of trepidation,

1:37:21bringing new people in to present to him because he was known to take a deck and flip through it.

1:37:27And if he was unsatisfied with it in the middle of somebody providing a presentation about it,

1:37:31he would flip the page and literally say, "Next," in just like the iciest, coldest fashion. And it

1:37:38would cause young staff to like leaf in tears, right? So, it's not like mean, and he's not

1:37:44yelling at somebody, but it has an equally chilling effect and sets a high bar that

1:37:52causes staff to work their ass off to meet it.

1:37:56Jay Famiglietti An enormous amount of what he's, you know, he's famous for operations, but he's got

1:38:01his right-hand man, Jeff Williams, who's so Cook-like in so many ways, it's kind of bizarre

1:38:08to run operations. But it seems like in the post-Steve era of being a CEO,

1:38:14perhaps the biggest change in Tim Cook's responsibilities to me seems to be

1:38:23politics. And that's both outside Apple, like, you know, having four years of Donald Trump in

1:38:29the White House and dealing with that as the CEO of America's leading, most profitable company and

1:38:37a technology, you know. And the way, you know, it's not just Trump's personality he had to deal

1:38:42with. It was with Trump waging a trade war with China and not having China decide to reciprocate

1:38:51by punishing Apple. Apple kind of sailed through that, you know, as Huawei was being blacklisted

1:38:57around the world from, you know, being, you know, like supplying 5G antennas and stuff like that.

1:39:03Apple didn't really suffer from that. There was no reciprocation towards Apple from China. And,

1:39:07you know, I think that's to Tim Cook's credit. But then there's the politics inside the company

1:39:11as well, which is a lot of what your reporting is about. There's, to me, one of the most interesting

1:39:17stories that I have never heard before is some of the backstory between the Beats acquisition.

1:39:25What's, what, tell me something, like, what to you in your reporting was most interesting about the

1:39:30Beats acquisition? For god's sake. For god's sake. For god's sake. For god's sake. For god's sake.

1:39:32They met, I just didn't expect, and like none of the people from Beats who were acquired expected

1:39:37was to go into Apple and find out that Apple was already well on its way in terms of building out

1:39:44its own subscription music service. And so they thought they were coming in, bringing this product

1:39:51in Beats Music that was going to be the foundation for Apple Music. And Apple was already hard at

1:39:56work at developing its own version of that. And so they wound up having to fuse the two together.

1:40:03That surprised me. I just, I didn't anticipate that. I didn't realize that was something

1:40:07they were at work on because much of their public positioning around subscription music services was,

1:40:13we think people should buy their music. We don't believe in people just subscribing to music on a

1:40:19monthly basis. Right. That people want to own their music. And it's, you know, they've, that's

1:40:26a hard thing for a company to move from because I think they really meant it. And they did build

1:40:33a phenomenal music store, you know, and rejuvenated the music sales industry at a time when

1:40:43the competition wasn't really CDs, it was piracy. Right. And, you know, got money, got people buying

1:40:49albums and buying singles. I mean, they brought back the single, which hadn't really been a thing

1:40:54since like the 1960s. My mom, I remember growing up, my mom had a bunch of, she was much more of

1:40:59a singles purchaser in her single life than an album purchaser. So we, we just had hundreds and

1:41:05hundreds of singles from like the Beatles and the Stones. And that's what our household record

1:41:10collection was like, but it was she, and my mom's perspective was exactly like what Apple wound up

1:41:15doing with the iTunes store, which is why would I buy the whole album? I only wanted these two songs,

1:41:19but you know, to, to admit, not that admit defeat, but admit that times and tastes are changing. And

1:41:24if they want to stay relevant, I mean, at this point, just a few short years into the Apple music,

1:41:29era, it would be almost sad if, if they didn't have a streaming music service and were still

1:41:37only selling songs on iTunes, because that's just not how people listen to music now. And if anything,

1:41:42it's, I was just gonna say that, I mean, they nearly lost kind of, I don't know, this thing

1:41:48that they took so much pride in, which was their, their connection to the music industry, you know,

1:41:53because Spotify was sailing past it at that point. They were almost a beat too late to the party.

1:41:59They got there literally just in time. Granted, the product was a little bit flawed at the outset.

1:42:04I think one of the fascinating things about that is it didn't matter, you know, that it was flawed.

1:42:08People still wound up subscribing at levels that exceeded their own expectations internally.

1:42:13Pete: But they're, they are number two to Spotify, which must rankle. And, you know, it's,

1:42:20it's a weird spot for Apple to be in, in my opinion, because it's not, it's not a failure.

1:42:25It's not something they should move on from. It's not, you know, like the HomePod. It's,

1:42:30it, but they are number two. And there's a sense, I think, that they should be number one,

1:42:36but they're not. And I'm curious how that's, how you think that sits inside Apple.

1:42:42Jared: I'm sure they're dissatisfied with that. I mean, you could chalk it up to the fact that

1:42:48Spotify's numbers are greater as a consequence of Android users being subscribers, and that Apple

1:42:54has not really shown a full willingness to go beyond the walled garden, but that's still core

1:43:03to what they believe should be, you know, their subscriber base. And then when you look at their,

1:43:08their, their long-term strategy, as Mike Gorman's reported over at Bloomberg, there's this increasing

1:43:14push towards a full subscription offering, an Apple subscription offering in the future,

1:43:20all I am is on Prime. And then maybe there's some pricing advantage that they can, they can secure

1:43:25over, over Spotify that it gives them a leg up. But so long as Spotify is still relying on Android

1:43:31users, they're never globally going to be able to surpass them because Apple has so many fewer

1:43:36subscribers worldwide than, than Android does. Yeah.

1:43:39And for reasons that I don't, I think are very hard to put your finger on Apple's foray into

1:43:47Apple Music on Android has never really gained traction to my knowledge. I don't know what the

1:43:54numbers look like inside Apple, but it doesn't seem to me like anybody on Android really gives

1:43:59much thought to Apple Music as opposed to when Apple made the decision 20 years ago to move the

1:44:08iPod to Windows and gain tremendous, you know, that that's what made the iPod explode in

1:44:14popularity was going beyond the Mac as, as the, the computer you had to use with an iPod to,

1:44:22okay, we'll, we'll support any computer and we'll make, we'll make iTunes as good as we can make it.

1:44:26And people actually liked using iTunes on Windows which I know people find hard to believe is with

1:44:31all the complaints over the way that music app works now, but it was, it was just, you know,

1:44:36Jobs described it as a glass of ice water to people in hell and, you know, it, I don't know,

1:44:41it never, it hasn't taken off. The, the, one of the anecdotes, well.

1:44:45I was going to say, go with the anecdote, but I was going to say it's funny because like

1:44:48Apple's whole ethos when it comes to like taking on big projects is, you know, taking whatever

1:44:54conventional wisdom might be out there and, and bringing a whole new perspective to it that allows

1:45:01them to leapfrog whatever existing products exist, but they still seem so wedded internally to the

1:45:07walled garden and the walled garden ethos that it's been hard for those who advocate making a

1:45:14service available on Android to really get that service to be treated with the same kind of tear

1:45:21and concern that they would bring to the native, the service on native Apple.

1:45:26There's an anecdote in the book when, when the Beats deal was, I guess, sealed, you know,

1:45:31or nearly sealed and it came down to the question of titles, you know, what, what would Jimmy

1:45:36Iovine's title be at Apple? And it, I think that what, what it's.

1:45:44So there was, there was the, the idea was floated of him being called chief,

1:45:48chief creative officer.

1:45:49Right. Chief creative, a new title created just for him, sort of like the way that the chief

1:45:54design officer title was created specifically for Johnny Ive and Phil Schiller objected to it on the

1:46:00grounds of something to the effect of what are the rest of us not creative. And it's like, that's,

1:46:08that's the sort of, that's the internal politics that I see as Tim Cook having, you know, I think,

1:46:14you know, from the outside and having read the book and from my perspective, navigated very well,

1:46:20but there are big personalities within Apple. Right. And you don't think that because Apple's

1:46:26ethos is sort of it's Apple that makes the products. You don't put people's names on the

1:46:31products. There's very few people who get credited, you know, in a keynote it's,

1:46:35it's Apple who does this, but within the company, there's definitely big egos.

1:46:40Yeah, certainly. Certainly. I mean, I think the, you know, there's a whole chapter that deals with

1:46:46one of the biggest egos that Apple ever had, which is Scott Forstall and, and how that ego and some

1:46:52of his swagger and some of his political, I don't know, their infighting and some of the political

1:46:57bloodsport behind the scenes during the jobs period when jobs was kind of uber ego and kind

1:47:02of made sure everybody was balanced correctly, came back to bite Forstall after jobs, after jobs

1:47:09stuff. Yeah. What's, what's your take on Forstall's ouster? It's clear based on my reporting that it,

1:47:17it was related to maps, but it was not because of maps and that's a fine line. But, you know,

1:47:23Forstall famously told Cook that he wouldn't apologize for the maps thing. Right. The rationale,

1:47:31according to people close to Forstall, is that he felt that if an apology was issued,

1:47:38it would have a negative effect internally on the workforce and lead, lead staff to,

1:47:45to shy away from being ambitious and pursue something ambitious and, and maybe not,

1:47:52not embarking on a project because they didn't want to be reprimanded publicly or shamed publicly,

1:47:58which is, which is like an actually, that's like a sophisticated rationale. It's not like,

1:48:02no, I don't want the embarrassment of apologizing. It's like, hey, what are the long-term consequences

1:48:07of an apology and leaning into kind of the Antinogate philosophy of jobs. But ultimately,

1:48:13when it came down to it, he just didn't, he, he battled so much with his peers and was seen and

1:48:24perceived to be somebody who was a collegial that in this new Tim Cook era, where there was going to

1:48:31have to be product developed by consensus, he didn't fit. Not to mention, and I don't know the

1:48:36answer to this. I mean, he was, he was one of the few people that his peers considered to be,

1:48:41be the one who thought he could also be CEO. So, so that, that that's another factor there. Like,

1:48:49you know, if you're Tim Cook and you're taking over the reins and there's one guy at the,

1:48:53the round table, so to speak, because there's what, 10, 10 to 12 people who meet every Monday

1:48:58and make the decisions for the company. And there's one guy who thinks he can do the job.

1:49:01Does he pose a threat to you or not? Yeah. That's an interesting

1:49:05side angle on the Forstall saga. I, my understanding, and I think, I think we're

1:49:11largely in agreement here is that if maps was, if the maps launch mattered at all, it was only as

1:49:18the straw that broke the camel's back. You know, that, and I think that the, the, there's a common

1:49:25misconception that that was the whole thing, that maps was so bad and Forstall wouldn't apologize

1:49:30out of obstinance. And so, you know, he was, he was canned, but I think it was, I think what happened,

1:49:37I think the fundamental error that Scott Forstall made was that he vastly underestimated how much of

1:49:45his political clout outside his group was because he was Steve's software guy. And that it was,

1:49:55it was, I think he conflated Steve's clout and authority with his own and got blindsided by the

1:50:05fact that his peers at the company at the SVP level didn't like him and didn't like working

1:50:12for them. I mean, it's been reported elsewhere, but for a long time that, that at some point,

1:50:17Johnny, I've told Tim Cook, I'm not meeting with him anymore, which seems like a problem.

1:50:21Tim Cook Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they'd, they'd famously

1:50:25had to dust up over the year in the Watergate saga because Forstall thought it was his fault.

1:50:31Then when he found out it was because of the hardware, he kind of, he brought some internal

1:50:37shame on Johnny that wasn't appreciated. So, there was just bad blood there that had built up over

1:50:42the years that people could make peace with because Jobs was there to pacify everybody.

1:50:48But when John was just taken out of the equation, you know, they, everyone turned,

1:50:53turned on Scott and he was, he was ultimately fired.

1:50:56Trenton Larkin Here's my last question. To me,

1:50:58I've always compared Steve Jobs's role at Apple to that of a movie director that, you know, that,

1:51:04that the director maybe doesn't, doesn't write the screenplay, doesn't operate the camera,

1:51:10doesn't appear on as an actor on the show, but it's the director who is saying, this is what it

1:51:19should look like. This is good enough. That's not good enough. Do another take. Not good enough. Not

1:51:24good enough. Okay. That looks good enough. It's the arbiter of whose taste is it? Who's ultimately

1:51:30saying, okay, this is what we should do. This is how good this effort is. I don't, I don't,

1:51:35you know, obviously this is not, I don't think that's like a deep insight into Steve Jobs's

1:51:40role at Apple, but who's that person after Steve Jobs? Right? Was it, I think for a while, it was

1:51:48pretty clear that in the 2011 to 2015 era, that person was Johnny Ive, right? And that was part

1:51:56of Johnny taking, after Forstall was ousted, taking over the role of software design in

1:52:01addition to hardware design. John "Slick" Baumgartner Correct. Yeah. I think there's

1:52:06a strong case to be made that he became the person driving product forward. And that's why the book

1:52:11spent so much time writing about the watch because, because he did drive that product. And that's,

1:52:16that's why Apple had a new product category in that period. I think it's an open question of,

1:52:22of who is that at this point? And does Apple need an individual or can it do it by consensus?

1:52:27You know, I think increasingly product marketing has a much bigger voice in what Apple's doing on

1:52:32the product side of things. But does it, you know, is Jaws that person? I don't know. I think we're,

1:52:37I think there's still a bit of a shakeout and people may find it unsatisfying in the book

1:52:42because the book ends in 2019. But I do think Apple needs that type of figure. And even Johnny

1:52:50was, he wasn't quite, he wasn't the director that Steve was, right? Because he benefited from Steve's

1:52:57other direction. Right. I, you know, and I know it's again, an overused analogy, but that they were

1:53:02sort of like Lennon and McCartney where they made each other better and tempered each other's

1:53:08weaknesses. You know, they, they built up each other's strengths and tempered each other's

1:53:13weaknesses. And one without the other was, you know, the Lennon and McCartney both had great

1:53:20solo songs afterwards, but nothing that was like their collaboration with the Beatles.

1:53:24And you could argue, you know, I think a lot of people have that, that a lot of the

1:53:29designs that people raise an eyebrow about in the last 10 years at Apple, maybe a little bit too

1:53:36much Johnny and not enough Steve. And, you know, it's obvious that Steve isn't there. So of course,

1:53:40there's no Steve into it, but that you can kind of see it, you know?

1:53:44Tim Cynova Yeah. I think it's a great question. I'd take that even further back. I mean,

1:53:50the entire history of Apple is built around pairs. I mean, it was, it was Woz at Jobs who,

1:53:56who created the company. It was Jobs and Johnny who revived it. It was Johnny and Tim, I'd argue,

1:54:04over the past decade who sustained it and ensured it and endured after Jobs' death. And I think the

1:54:11question now is, it's Tim and who who lead it forward. I mean, you could, you could make the

1:54:16case just based on what they've been doing and succeeding in lately that maybe it's Johnny Shrooji

1:54:20that Steve Jobs had his Johnny and now Tim Cook has his Johnny and that chips and Apple's

1:54:27sophistication and chip design are going to be key to what it's able to accomplish over the next decade.

1:54:33Pete: You close the book talking about, we mentioned Omerta and the sort of code of silence

1:54:38at Apple. And, you know, I think one, you know, you could stretch any, any analogy to the Mafia

1:54:45is going to, going to wear thin eventually because they're not, it's not a criminal enterprise at

1:54:50Apple. Although I guess the EC might, might disagree to some degree. But part of it to me is

1:54:56it's, it's not just fear, right? Like one thing I've learned over my career is it's, I used to

1:55:02think sometimes when people would leave Apple and go elsewhere, that they still wouldn't talk about

1:55:08their time at Apple because they wanted to leave the door open to go back. And I know I have many

1:55:14friends and even more acquaintances, sources who've been at Apple, left and then come back. You know,

1:55:22it absolutely happens. It's a regular thing. That's how people build a career, you know,

1:55:27in the industry. But I've, I've learned over the years that even people who I don't think have any

1:55:34plans to come back, who've, you know, for, if they're young enough, they're just, they've built

1:55:39something else and maybe taken a position of prominence or, or, or founded a startup or

1:55:44something like that. Or maybe they're just retired, right? Like I did my time. I made

1:55:48plenty of money from stocks and, you know, not going back, but they still don't really talk

1:55:52about it publicly. Cause I think it's, it's not a fear. I think it's, it's a personality, right?

1:55:58That they're a certain type of person and they respect that, that code of silence. And I'm

1:56:05curious if you detect that in your, with, with how many sources you spoke to for the book,

1:56:10if you detect that. Yeah, I mean, they, they, they take sort of a vow of silence, right? And I think

1:56:18there's a, there's a concern about being ostracized. So whether you want to go back to Apple or not,

1:56:23you still have lots of friends there. And if you become somebody who's known as a talker,

1:56:28you run the risk of being ostracized by that community. I think one of my favorite stories

1:56:34early, early on in, you know, in, in coming into the world of Apple and learning about it

1:56:39is that Apple didn't really have much of an alumni network or meetings, like in the same way that

1:56:44ex Googlers have, where they still get together and connect. And, and, and they, somebody spun up

1:56:52one of these meetings one time and a bunch of the Apple alums are there and they didn't know what to

1:56:58talk to each other about because it was kind of verboten. Like you didn't, you didn't, you didn't

1:57:02talk about like what you did at Apple. So like here, the very, the very reason that you're all

1:57:07connected is because of the company and yet you weren't, nobody was willing to be like,

1:57:12"Oh, and I worked in finance and here's what I did." So yeah, I mean, it, it, it's amazing the

1:57:18degree to which people buy into that and how long it's sustained and held. And I think it's

1:57:25fascinating to watch the company now at like 140,000 plus employees and lots of new employees

1:57:31trying to hold on to that ethos and it's becoming harder and harder for them to do.

1:57:37Pete: Yeah, I think so too. And I think we've, we've seen some cracks in that over the, the

1:57:43COVID era of things leaking to the press that typically didn't leak before, you know, the,

1:57:50The Verge had a bunch of stories from Apple's internal Slack messaging group about work from

1:57:56home policy and stuff like that. And, you know, conversations that never would have typically

1:58:02hit the press starting to hit the press. And I, I do, you know, it's like I'm turning into the

1:58:09old man on the porch yelling at the clouds, but it's, you know, it's clearly younger people,

1:58:14you know, who, who grown up with different, a different set of expectations. I mean,

1:58:18and I think a company culture has to, has to evolve, right? As times change,

1:58:25company culture has to, I mean, what, how can a company stay exactly the same? The trick is,

1:58:30how do you hold on to the parts that you need to hold on to and how do you let go of the other

1:58:35parts? Jared: 100%. And I think I give full credit to Tim Cook for finding a way to do that because

1:58:41they're still having tremendous success. What's your sense of the success of Apple University?

1:58:47Jared It depends on who you talk to. If you talk to old timers at Apple, they think who have like

1:58:53come back, I don't know, I presume you've talked to some of these people who've come back and

1:58:57rejoined the company and gone through a bit of an orientation. They, they think it's a little,

1:59:03I guess, passe or maybe it leans too far into some of the jobs ethos and, and, and highlights

1:59:11what Apple aspires to be, but it's disconnected from what Apple is in present day, but it still

1:59:18has value. You know, I, you know, you go through orientation anytime you join a new company and

1:59:23that's a tremendous resource to have. But I, I, I mean, I would love to give through it and learn

1:59:29what they teach people. I'm sure there's, there's learnings from it that they can benefit other

1:59:34corporations as they're trying to preserve and protect the culture that they've created.

1:59:38Pete: Yeah, my, I, my sense, I don't have a great sense of it. I think it's about as successful as

1:59:45it could be, but that ultimately in a business of tech in a business like Apple's where it's

1:59:53about technology, every, every new challenge is sufficiently unlike the previous challenges that

2:00:01it's that, that, that historical perspective isn't as useful as, as I think Steve Jobs had hoped when

2:00:07he, when he initiated the program. You know, that it's, it's, each new challenge is its own

2:00:14challenge and the reason it's a challenge is because it's, you know, if it was easy,

2:00:18if it was easy to apply a previous lesson, it wouldn't be a challenge.

2:00:22Jared; Right, right. But it, but it, it does help people who are arriving at the company

2:00:29understand or deepen their appreciation for some of the legacy thought process of taking

2:00:36conventional wisdom and trying to find ways around it.

2:00:40Pete; You've been very, very generous with your time. I want to wrap up. I'm gonna,

2:00:44I'm gonna offer, there's one thing I have to, I just have to mention this because I don't,

2:00:47again, I've never heard this before, maybe it's been out there, but to me, the single most

2:00:51surprising little tiny detail in your book is that at least at one point, Tim Cook's favorite beverage

2:00:56was Mountain Dew. Jared; Oh yeah. Yeah, they flew it over to Asia and just, just a habit there for

2:01:03him, you know, which is, which is wild because he was also a hot nut. He was like eating, you know,

2:01:08baked chicken and broccoli for most meals. So, there's this inherent disconnect between

2:01:14his favorite beverage and kind of the food he consumed.

2:01:16Pete; Right. He's hitting the gym every day at four in the morning and he's, you know, he's

2:01:21obviously very fit. He's been involved, you know, famously eats well, but his favorite beverage is

2:01:26perhaps the most, you know, similar to like battery acid soda on the market, but also

2:01:33super high in caffeine. Jared; Right, right. Yeah, yeah, they made sure that they had like a case of

2:01:39it when they flew over for this big meeting because they knew he would expect it when he was

2:01:44there. Pete; What else? Can you, can you give me one more story that you're really, that you're

2:01:48really proud of in the book? Jared; I just think there's two interesting things about,

2:01:52about these, these guys that are worth thinking about. One, like, I didn't expect to find out on

2:01:57my visit to Robertsdale, Alabama that, that Tim Cook is somewhat of a pariah in his own town.

2:02:02I'm from the Southeast. Typically, when somebody achieves what he has accomplished from a small

2:02:08town, everybody is like local boy done good and happy to talk about him. But because he put a

2:02:15spotlight on racial tensions in the town by telling a story about a cross burning, there,

2:02:21there's real, I don't know, there's real kind of disdain there for him, which I was surprised by.

2:02:27That's not something I anticipated. On the flip side, on the Johnny side, I don't have the answer

2:02:32to this, but I think it's fascinating that people who have worked with him for many years question

2:02:36whether or not he has like x-ray vision or a different, or different like sophistication with

2:02:42his eyesight than the rest of us. And there's this, this probably my favorite anecdote in the

2:02:46book is there's this moment where he and a colleague from operations are flying, traveling

2:02:52back from China and they show up at the airport and they're sitting at the bar and he looks down

2:02:57this, this steel bar, this metal bar, and he grumbles, "I can see every seam in this bar."

2:03:05And the guy looks at him and he looks down at the bar and all he can see is smooth metal. And he's

2:03:09like, "Your life must be miserable," you know? And nobody really knows, like, you know, does he

2:03:15see things different? But it goes all the way to the point of like, I think in his studio, he's got

2:03:19a glass table set up on four freestanding legs and he would just come in one day and be like, "Oh,

2:03:27the table's bowing in the middle. We need to replace it." And everybody would look at it and

2:03:31be like, "I literally can't see anything." But he was convinced it was bowing and nobody wanted to

2:03:36question it because it just seemed like he could see something that the rest of the world couldn't.

2:03:40Pete: Yeah. The actual quote from your book is, "Your life must be fucking miserable."

2:03:45Jared: Yeah. I wasn't sure if that was kosher on the podcast.

2:03:48Pete; If Johnny Ive said it, I think we can let it fly without getting the explicit label on the

2:03:55podcast. But I do think that's true though, right? And it's the curse of anybody who has an eye for

2:04:00something. Like, I'm personally deeply afflicted by a profound dislike for the font Arial, the

2:04:09Helvetica knockoff. And I see it everywhere. What Johnny Ive can see to just about anything

2:04:15mechanical, I see Arial everywhere that it's used and every place where it's used, it would look

2:04:22better if it was Helvetica. And it is, it's a curse. It's a minor curse because it's like the

2:04:26most popular typeface in the world because you start up anything on Windows and what's the

2:04:31default font? It's Arial. So, people use it everywhere, but I see it every time. And I can't,

2:04:37I wish I could, if I could sever that part of my brain as in the TV show Severance, I don't want to

2:04:43forget what I do when I work, but if you could make it so that I no longer notice when people

2:04:48use Arial, it would make my life a little better. Jared; You need like a Chrome extension that will

2:04:53just change your, like everything on your computer to some other font.

2:04:57Pete; I've thought about that. I've done that though. I've used Fontbook on the Mac. You can't

2:05:01do it on iPhone, but I've disabled Arial, which would fill it in with Helvetica, but now they've

2:05:06changed it in the most, I don't want to go off, but you can't disable Arial anymore. It's like

2:05:11a system font that can't be turned off. But anyway, Tripp, thank you for the time. And I

2:05:15really do. I enjoy the book. I don't necessarily agree with all of your conclusions in it, but it

2:05:20is remarkably deeply reported. And I really do mean it. Not just because you're here as a guest

2:05:26on the show. People who listen to this show and like this, they really should get the book and

2:05:31read it because there's just so many little things that have never been reported before.

2:05:38Really. And the fact that you did so much of this reporting during COVID is even more impressive

2:05:43because it's like you said, like a lot of this is reporting. People underestimate just how much of

2:05:48reporting is just actual gumshoe, get your ass to Alabama or just go knock on doors, put slips of

2:05:58paper in their mailbox and talk to people. That must have been so hard during COVID.

2:06:02Yeah, yeah, it was an adventure by the same token. I had no FOMO because nobody was doing anything

2:06:08fun while I was sitting there writing this book. And it kind of was. Maybe I still, if I was ever

2:06:13going to write a book, maybe that was the time to write a book. Yeah, absolutely. Next pandemic,

2:06:20you can sit down. After Steve is the name of the book. And it's Tripp Meckle. You can buy it

2:06:26everywhere that books are sold. I would like to also thank our three sponsors today. We had

2:06:31Collide, where you can manage your company's fleet of laptops, whether they're Linux, Mac or Windows,

2:06:38where you can monetize your passion with membership. And Linode, the hosting company

2:06:42where I host Daring Fireball. Go check them out. Thank you, Tripp.