The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Ah, what a week. It's still Friday. I guess WWDC is still going on, but I guess it's officially

00:00:07 ◼   ► sort of over in the sense that all the--

00:00:10 ◼   ► Yeah. Friday's normally the day. It's all rerun sessions at the show, and it's normally

00:00:18 ◼   ► the day where people start filtering out of town. The Friday drinking crowd is quite a

00:00:23 ◼   ► bit thinner than the Thursday night drinking crowd.

00:00:26 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:00:27 ◼   ► I think I've gone home on Friday most of the last few years

00:00:30 ◼   ► because my wife comes with me now

00:00:33 ◼   ► and she gets the shits of it a lot sooner than I do.

00:00:37 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:00:39 ◼   ► I always liked, like in the old days

00:00:41 ◼   ► when I would come out by myself,

00:00:42 ◼   ► I actually liked the Friday night

00:00:45 ◼   ► when like most, a lot of people were gone

00:00:48 ◼   ► or people left during the day

00:00:49 ◼   ► and local Californians could just drive or whatever

00:00:53 ◼   ► and then it was just like a nice quiet night

00:00:55 ◼   ► and a dinner where you didn't have to try to find,

00:00:57 ◼   ► "Ooh, where can we find a table for 11?"

00:01:00 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:02 ◼   ► And it was like, "Oh, this is nice."

00:01:03 ◼   ► And then you could relax and go home on Saturday

00:01:05 ◼   ► and it was normal.

00:01:06 ◼   ► - Yeah. - But now, I'm already home.

00:01:09 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:12 ◼   ► - Long journey back to the old home.

00:01:15 ◼   ► - The other thing that I was grossly wrong about

00:01:18 ◼   ► is I thought, "Well, since this will be remote

00:01:20 ◼   ► "and I'll be at home the whole time,

00:01:22 ◼   ► "even if I'm busy and I have a show

00:01:24 ◼   ► and I did have a show and it did occupy some time,

00:01:28 ◼   ► I thought, well, this year I'll get to watch

00:01:30 ◼   ► a lot of the sessions during the week.

00:01:32 ◼   ► I have watched no sessions.

00:01:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, the only sessions I've watched are clips on Twitter.

00:01:39 ◼   ► And I thought the same thing.

00:01:41 ◼   ► Not only did I not get to watch sessions,

00:01:44 ◼   ► I felt this was way more hectic

00:01:47 ◼   ► than it was actually being there.

00:01:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I thought the same thing too.

00:01:53 ◼   ► At a very high level, I would just like to start with the App Store stuff,

00:01:58 ◼   ► because it broke before WWDC.

00:02:02 ◼   ► And you-- and this is why I thought, well, let's talk to our old friend

00:02:06 ◼   ► Panzer, because Phil Schiller talked to you, and you had an interview.

00:02:10 ◼   ► And they tried to--

00:02:12 ◼   ► I'm not going to say they tried to clean it up,

00:02:14 ◼   ► but they tried to deal with it.

00:02:17 ◼   ► There was this controversy that was started with the Basecamp's new Hey

00:02:22 ◼   ► app being rejected from the store and for doing what seemed, you know, and again, we

00:02:28 ◼   ► could easily derail this entire show.

00:02:32 ◼   ► But let me see if I can summarize it very quickly.

00:02:34 ◼   ► Hey is an email service and app all rolled into one.

00:02:40 ◼   ► And the idea is you pay them $100 a year and you get your name at hey.com.

00:02:45 ◼   ► And then once you have that, you could download their app for other, you know, for iPhone

00:02:50 ◼   ► for Android or Mac or whatever, and then you'd log in

00:02:54 ◼   ► and then you can use the app.

00:02:56 ◼   ► And if you just download the app

00:02:58 ◼   ► and you don't have a Hey account yet,

00:02:59 ◼   ► it has the Netflix effect, which is my catch-all term

00:03:04 ◼   ► for you download the app and open it

00:03:06 ◼   ► and it has a username and password field

00:03:09 ◼   ► and a terms of service link or something like that,

00:03:13 ◼   ► and that's about it.

00:03:14 ◼   ► And they got rejected for that.

00:03:17 ◼   ► And that's how Basecamp works,

00:03:19 ◼   ► and that's how dozens and dozens and dozens

00:03:21 ◼   ► of software as a service type apps work.

00:03:24 ◼   ► And things that aren't even software as a service,

00:03:27 ◼   ► you know, like you buy like a Nest app

00:03:29 ◼   ► or something like that, you know, for your Nest thermostat.

00:03:32 ◼   ► Well, if you don't have a Nest thermostat,

00:03:33 ◼   ► the Nest app doesn't do anything because what can it do?

00:03:37 ◼   ► So they got rejected, they kind of,

00:03:42 ◼   ► I think in a very clever way, played this up

00:03:45 ◼   ► in such a way that it led to hundreds of accusations

00:03:49 ◼   ► that they did this on purpose as a publicity stunt,

00:03:52 ◼   ► which is really not the case.

00:03:56 ◼   ► And like they've said, I've seen DHH and Jason Fried

00:04:00 ◼   ► respond to people on Twitter, and they're like,

00:04:02 ◼   ► "Okay, let's just go with this for a second.

00:04:05 ◼   ► Your theory that we did this on purpose

00:04:07 ◼   ► requires us to have two plants in the App Store,

00:04:10 ◼   ► one who approved our initial version

00:04:12 ◼   ► and then a second one to reject it."

00:04:14 ◼   ► our bug fix update.

00:04:17 ◼   ► How would that work exactly?

00:04:19 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:04:21 ◼   ► Phil Schiller talked to you at TechCrunch.

00:04:27 ◼   ► And it did not, it was interesting.

00:04:31 ◼   ► It wasn't meaningless, but in some ways,

00:04:34 ◼   ► what he said actually generated more controversy.

00:04:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean,

00:04:39 ◼   ► look, at that point in time, it seems like

00:04:44 ◼   ► you know, we could talk about it, obviously, what they announced at the show, or sort of during, after the keynote, very casually announced some things about the App Store changing in some ways.

00:04:59 ◼   ► But at the time that I had my interview, you know, they had sent this letter, and I guess they sent it day and date with the press, to Basecamp.

00:05:11 ◼   ► And the letter, you know, outlined, it's essentially an App Store rejection letter, but public, right?

00:05:17 ◼   ► Because they sent it to press and I guess because of the timing that they sent it to the press, they sent it to Basecamp and they said that they got it only after they'd already seen it published publicly.

00:05:31 ◼   ► I think they were trying to avoid that by sending it to all the press and them at the same time.

00:05:35 ◼   ► In some ways I see their point because like, you know, certainly Basecamp is the party

00:05:41 ◼   ► that chose to go public, for lack of a better term.

00:05:45 ◼   ► You know, they chose to kind of litigate it publicly, so Apple probably felt justified

00:05:50 ◼   ► in some way in sending that letter to everybody, right?

00:05:54 ◼   ► But that letter didn't go out until after I had had my interview.

00:05:58 ◼   ► You know, I didn't see that letter until after I had had my interview already and my

00:06:02 ◼   ► and my article was essentially complete.

00:06:04 ◼   ► And I included the letter at the last minute

00:06:07 ◼   ► and then hit the publish button,

00:06:09 ◼   ► 'cause I had gotten it, along with all the press

00:06:11 ◼   ► and theoretically Basecamp all at the same time.

00:06:14 ◼   ► The letter though was essentially

00:06:17 ◼   ► an App Store rejection letter, right?

00:06:19 ◼   ► And it just laid out their reasons for rejecting it

00:06:22 ◼   ► and their case for the App Store working

00:06:26 ◼   ► the way that it does, and then sort of ended

00:06:29 ◼   ► paragraph about Basecamp having benefited from the App Store and not contributed any

00:06:37 ◼   ► revenue back to it, which I think is probably overall the most controversial thing about

00:06:41 ◼   ► it.

00:06:42 ◼   ► Or certainly seemed to engender the most developer reaction.

00:06:46 ◼   ► They're like, "Oh, we're only worth it if we make a lot of money for you," et cetera,

00:06:50 ◼   ► which we can talk about.

00:06:51 ◼   ► But I think that the one phrase from my piece, which was something that Phil said, was that,

00:06:55 ◼   ► Look, if the app opens on the store and doesn't do anything,

00:07:00 ◼   ► you know, it doesn't work, it doesn't do anything for you,

00:07:02 ◼   ► that's not what we want,

00:07:03 ◼   ► that's not the user experience we want.

00:07:06 ◼   ► Which is, none of what he said to me was anything,

00:07:10 ◼   ► as you said, it's like not anything super revelatory

00:07:12 ◼   ► because it's just them restating

00:07:14 ◼   ► what they believe the app store rules to represent, right?

00:07:17 ◼   ► They're like, look, this is why we put these rules

00:07:20 ◼   ► in the store, this is what we believe the store is about,

00:07:24 ◼   ► And Phil was just restating that stuff.

00:07:26 ◼   ► And I think people, because of the reader app rule,

00:07:29 ◼   ► and with Netflix and all of that stuff,

00:07:31 ◼   ► they really glommed onto that particular statement

00:07:35 ◼   ► about an app opening and not working.

00:07:37 ◼   ► And they're like, hey, what about these other apps?

00:07:38 ◼   ► Now, of course, in the Apple universe,

00:07:41 ◼   ► according to Apple's rules,

00:07:43 ◼   ► they already have a carve out for those apps.

00:07:45 ◼   ► And so the real argument everybody's making is like,

00:07:47 ◼   ► why is email not part of that carve out, right?

00:07:50 ◼   ► Or I guess you could extend that to,

00:07:52 ◼   ► Why does this carve out even exist?

00:07:55 ◼   ► But it's not like it was saying anything extremely new.

00:07:58 ◼   ► I felt it was newsworthy in that they

00:08:00 ◼   ► were holding to their stance, which is the angle I

00:08:03 ◼   ► took with my piece.

00:08:04 ◼   ► That's really what the news was at that moment,

00:08:07 ◼   ► is that Apple's not saying, hey, we've reconsidered,

00:08:10 ◼   ► or hey, we're going to change this thing because of hey,

00:08:14 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Phil was very much coming from the place of,

00:08:18 ◼   ► we have these rules for a reason.

00:08:20 ◼   ► we think that they are the right way to go

00:08:23 ◼   ► and we're not really going to be changing them

00:08:25 ◼   ► at this point.

00:08:26 ◼   ► And so that's the tack I took.

00:08:27 ◼   ► And I tried to report it straight

00:08:28 ◼   ► because I put a little opinion in there too

00:08:30 ◼   ► because I feel that people do want to know

00:08:34 ◼   ► what the people that are following this thing

00:08:38 ◼   ► regularly think about it.

00:08:39 ◼   ► But I didn't want to put too much of my own feeling

00:08:41 ◼   ► and passion or whatever into that

00:08:43 ◼   ► because I think the moment warranted it.

00:08:47 ◼   ► So, you know, I just think that it was such a hot button topic that even Phil saying,

00:08:52 ◼   ► "We're not changing our mind," it became kind of a magnet.

00:08:56 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it, is because it's a hot button topic, and...

00:09:03 ◼   ► I don't want to conflate something...

00:09:07 ◼   ► And again, I realize people's livelihoods are at stake, so I'm not saying it's trivial, right?

00:09:11 ◼   ► Like the Basecamp folks have put millions of dollars

00:09:15 ◼   ► into developing hay.

00:09:18 ◼   ► I mean, it's a huge, huge, huge, huge endeavor for them.

00:09:22 ◼   ► And I realized that these App Store policies

00:09:26 ◼   ► affect companies large and small.

00:09:29 ◼   ► So it's not trivial,

00:09:31 ◼   ► but I realized that in the face of a pandemic

00:09:35 ◼   ► that is re-raging out of control,

00:09:38 ◼   ► that in the face of protests on equality

00:09:43 ◼   ► and police brutality across the country

00:09:48 ◼   ► and literally also across the world,

00:09:50 ◼   ► but people are, this whole thing combined together,

00:09:57 ◼   ► a bunch of emotional powder kicks have made people

00:10:00 ◼   ► more sensitive to hot button topics, right?

00:10:03 ◼   ► That's my point, is that if hay had come out a year ago,

00:10:08 ◼   ► and in the exact same way,

00:10:12 ◼   ► with the exact same controversial aspects

00:10:14 ◼   ► about a rejection and policy and stuff like that,

00:10:17 ◼   ► I think that it would've played very differently.

00:10:21 ◼   ► I'm talking literally like three, whatever it was,

00:10:24 ◼   ► five days before WWDC,

00:10:26 ◼   ► but if it had been before WWDC 2019,

00:10:29 ◼   ► it would've played differently.

00:10:30 ◼   ► People are on edge, and of course they are.

00:10:33 ◼   ► all are and it's like you don't even really know it you think like you're normal and it's like

00:10:36 ◼   ► yeah i don't know you you just you're on edge we've been cooped up we're you know we're worried

00:10:42 ◼   ► about getting sick you know it's it's crazy you know it's it's and and so yeah i and i'm not

00:10:49 ◼   ► defending it i'm not even passing judgment on it but i think whatever phil schiller said whatever

00:10:56 ◼   ► the letter which was just like from the app store you know the closing paragraph about you know we

00:11:01 ◼   ► we see that you haven't contributed anything to the App Store, or your Basecamp app has been

00:11:07 ◼   ► downloaded millions of times and hasn't contributed any revenue to the App Store.

00:11:11 ◼   ► Sort of has that, if you want to, you can see it as that typical gangster threat of,

00:11:18 ◼   ► "Nice store you've got here."

00:11:20 ◼   ► - [

00:11:20 ◼   ► here. You know I think it was yeah absolutely and I think it

00:11:24 ◼   ► was the way that that was phrased in the letter. I

00:11:30 ◼   ► absolutely think that it was hey you've benefited

00:11:33 ◼   ► significantly from this app store. So yeah, I think it's

00:11:36 ◼   ► reasonable to say that we do not try to you know carve into

00:11:43 ◼   ► that business and we haven't for years right into the base

00:11:47 ◼   ► camp business because it's played by the rules that we've laid out and you've made every

00:11:52 ◼   ► dime of that and we have made zero dimes from that.

00:11:56 ◼   ► The least charitable—even if you ignore the whole threat subtext, which I think, as

00:12:02 ◼   ► you said, everybody's on edge, so you're going to read the worst possible motivations

00:12:08 ◼   ► into a lot of things, or a lot of people are right now.

00:12:11 ◼   ► But even if you ignore that, shave off the worst 10% of the way that you can read into

00:12:17 ◼   ► that, I think there's certainly a whole additional swath of people that weren't willing to go to the

00:12:23 ◼   ► extreme of like, "Oh man, this is a threat." And I know that David used the word gangsters, right?

00:12:31 ◼   ► Right.

00:12:31 ◼   ► And even if you don't go into that kind of realm, which is a very aggressive stance to take against

00:12:37 ◼   ► it, it still definitely reads as like, "Hey, if you don't contribute revenue to it, we're doing

00:12:45 ◼   ► you a favor."

00:12:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:46 ◼   ► This is a charity for you.

00:12:49 ◼   ► And I think that that's like the bigger thing that I think a larger cadre, a larger

00:12:55 ◼   ► tranche of people responded to, even if you ignore the sort of worst 10% of the way you

00:13:02 ◼   ► could interpret that.

00:13:04 ◼   ► And I think that that is basically, I do believe probably still because they were on edge and

00:13:08 ◼   ► all of that.

00:13:09 ◼   ► But you remember there are a lot of people, a lot of independent developers in the App

00:13:12 ◼   ► store where 30% is not just a cost of doing business.

00:13:17 ◼   ► It's a real difference between whether their kids eat or not or whatever, how much money

00:13:22 ◼   ► they make from the store, whether or not it's a sustainable business that they can do forever,

00:13:26 ◼   ► or whether it's something that they were able to do for a while and now can't do anymore.

00:13:30 ◼   ► And I've seen examples of all of that.

00:13:33 ◼   ► Developers who had a real strong business on the store and eventually just couldn't

00:13:36 ◼   ► make ends meet, couldn't make it work.

00:13:39 ◼   ► And their products were cool and great and interesting.

00:13:41 ◼   ► They had users and it wasn't like, oh, it was a failure. It was just like, I can't make the

00:13:46 ◼   ► economics work. And so when you're going to come into a scenario like that, I believe saying that

00:13:54 ◼   ► was accurate and in some ways fair to say, look, we don't take a cut of this business. Because I

00:14:02 ◼   ► think, honestly, that was a big critical thing. And it's certainly a part of the antitrust

00:14:06 ◼   ► discussion is, is Apple taking, is, are they rent seeking? Are they using the control of the app

00:14:13 ◼   ► store to take a cut of businesses that they had no part in building or have no real, you know,

00:14:20 ◼   ► part in maintaining? Right. And that that statement was really speaking directly to that

00:14:26 ◼   ► argument. It's like, look, we don't take a cut of this. Are they using as this is to me the right

00:14:33 ◼   ► way hopefully the regulatory approach will take is are they using as leverage to get

00:14:41 ◼   ► a cut of X, Y, and Z, companies large and small, whatever, but if are they using to

00:14:47 ◼   ► get as leverage something they shouldn't be allowed to use as leverage to get that?

00:14:54 ◼   ► Right.

00:14:55 ◼   ► Right.

00:14:56 ◼   ► That to me is the question that hopefully that's what the regulatory inquiries will

00:15:01 ◼   ► focus on.

00:15:02 ◼   ► And it's, to clarify it, you know, the thing that Schiller said about, "Hey, you download

00:15:09 ◼   ► the app and launch it, it doesn't do anything, that's not what we want," he wasn't saying,

00:15:14 ◼   ► and again, I'm not trying to be like a lawyer here and parse his words, but he's not saying

00:15:17 ◼   ► that that necessarily means it's against the guidelines of the App Store.

00:15:23 ◼   ► So everybody citing X, Y, and Z and the dozens and dozens of apps that you download and don't

00:15:29 ◼   ► really do anything unless you already have an account.

00:15:32 ◼   ► He wasn't saying it's not allowed.

00:15:33 ◼   ► He's saying, literally, that's not what we want

00:15:36 ◼   ► in an ideal situation that, you know,

00:15:38 ◼   ► in theory they would want an app.

00:15:40 ◼   ► And again, whether that's right or wrong,

00:15:41 ◼   ► that is what he said.

00:15:42 ◼   ► But that is the solution that they found,

00:15:46 ◼   ► that both sides found amenable to do this,

00:15:48 ◼   ► where the Hey guys added a pretty clever

00:15:53 ◼   ► and actually in theory useful feature

00:15:55 ◼   ► where now you can download the Hey app

00:15:58 ◼   ► and you can get a temporary throwaway 14-day email address

00:16:01 ◼   ► that you could use to sign up for something

00:16:04 ◼   ► that you don't wanna use a real email address

00:16:06 ◼   ► 'cause you suspect, hey,

00:16:08 ◼   ► they want my email address for this.

00:16:11 ◼   ► I know this is just gonna get me spam.

00:16:13 ◼   ► You could use their app, get a temporary one,

00:16:15 ◼   ► use it for 14 days,

00:16:16 ◼   ► but you still sign up on their website,

00:16:20 ◼   ► pay them and do this, and now it's in

00:16:23 ◼   ► and hopefully will no longer be controversial.

00:16:26 ◼   ► So I asked about this on my show with Jaws and Federighi,

00:16:31 ◼   ► and I didn't want to belabor the point

00:16:35 ◼   ► 'cause there's so much to talk about,

00:16:36 ◼   ► and we had a limited amount of time.

00:16:39 ◼   ► But I brought it up, and Jaws said something

00:16:42 ◼   ► that as he said it, I wasn't sure if it was a great answer,

00:16:46 ◼   ► and then I rewatched it afterwards,

00:16:47 ◼   ► and I thought it was a better answer

00:16:49 ◼   ► than I thought it extemporaneously

00:16:52 ◼   ► as we were doing the interview.

00:16:55 ◼   ► But he brought up the fact that the App Store,

00:16:59 ◼   ► that before the App Store, that getting your,

00:17:02 ◼   ► selling your software was way worse.

00:17:05 ◼   ► And I feel like I have to mention,

00:17:09 ◼   ► if there was something I should have followed up

00:17:10 ◼   ► on the point and didn't, is I was only thinking of it,

00:17:13 ◼   ► and I think it's what Jaws meant, but I'm not sure.

00:17:16 ◼   ► I think he was talking about the mobile landscape,

00:17:18 ◼   ► where pre-App Store, getting quote-unquote apps,

00:17:23 ◼   ► I mean, I don't even know if people called them apps,

00:17:24 ◼   ► but getting stuff all went through the carriers

00:17:27 ◼   ► and if you wanted to have,

00:17:29 ◼   ► I mean I don't even know of anybody

00:17:31 ◼   ► who had like third party email for phones

00:17:34 ◼   ► before the iPhone in the app store.

00:17:37 ◼   ► But if you did, you'd have to go through Verizon

00:17:39 ◼   ► and it would be like a Verizon branded thing

00:17:42 ◼   ► and then you'd have to completely separately negotiate

00:17:45 ◼   ► with AT&T and get, do something and have an AT&T logo

00:17:49 ◼   ► when your app starts and it's,

00:17:53 ◼   ► Software updates would all go through them.

00:17:55 ◼   ► And that's just talking two carriers in one country,

00:17:58 ◼   ► the United States, and that's what it was like

00:18:00 ◼   ► all over the world.

00:18:01 ◼   ► And the software was crappy because the APIs were crappy.

00:18:05 ◼   ► And yeah, the App Store blew that apart.

00:18:09 ◼   ► But that's 12 years ago.

00:18:12 ◼   ► That's a long time ago.

00:18:14 ◼   ► - That's a long time ago, yeah.

00:18:15 ◼   ► - And the App Store, it just is not the upstart

00:18:19 ◼   ► that is blowing up the idea of mobile software.

00:18:23 ◼   ► The App Store has become bigger,

00:18:26 ◼   ► and the idea of App Stores writ large on Android

00:18:31 ◼   ► through Google and Google Play,

00:18:33 ◼   ► and in China through the Chinese carriers

00:18:36 ◼   ► and variants of Android that don't go through Google,

00:18:40 ◼   ► that's the new world, right?

00:18:43 ◼   ► And that world is bigger and more dominant

00:18:46 ◼   ► and more a part of everyday life

00:18:48 ◼   ► for just normal everyday people

00:18:50 ◼   ► than the pre-2007 software landscape for mobile ever was

00:18:55 ◼   ► or even could have dreamed of being, right?

00:18:58 ◼   ► - Right.

00:18:59 ◼   ► - So that would be my comeback to that.

00:19:02 ◼   ► And then the other thing I think I have to mention

00:19:04 ◼   ► is that it completely, it really only makes sense

00:19:08 ◼   ► in the historical context of looking at mobile

00:19:11 ◼   ► and doesn't look at the historical context

00:19:13 ◼   ► of the Mac and desktop software, where,

00:19:17 ◼   ► and a lot of the same developers,

00:19:21 ◼   ► developers who were writing great Mac software

00:19:24 ◼   ► through the '90s and the 2000s and writing Cocoa apps

00:19:27 ◼   ► and selling them directly with no app store

00:19:30 ◼   ► and no 30% cut to Apple and building a good business

00:19:33 ◼   ► and having them promoted by Apple and stuff like that.

00:19:37 ◼   ► It certainly is not the truth

00:19:39 ◼   ► that you had to go through retail channels

00:19:41 ◼   ► where Ingram Micro was taking 70% of your price

00:19:45 ◼   ► to get a box software on a shelf.

00:19:46 ◼   ► - Right, yeah.

00:19:48 ◼   ► - There was a thriving landscape for indie independent,

00:19:51 ◼   ► and not just small indie developers,

00:19:54 ◼   ► but like a big startup well-funded

00:19:57 ◼   ► with millions and millions of dollars of VC money

00:20:00 ◼   ► could build software for the Mac using these APIs.

00:20:03 ◼   ► The last point I wanna make on this front

00:20:07 ◼   ► is on this issue of Apple benefiting from developers

00:20:12 ◼   ► with great apps in the App Store,

00:20:16 ◼   ► whether they make money from them or not, right?

00:20:19 ◼   ► And there's that line in that letter insinuates

00:20:23 ◼   ► that if Apple isn't making money from them,

00:20:26 ◼   ► just a direct income revenue coming in,

00:20:29 ◼   ► then they're not really benefiting.

00:20:31 ◼   ► And again, I think that, to me, it hearkens back

00:20:35 ◼   ► what I said about Jaws' comment and the indie Mac, or not indie, but just independent of

00:20:41 ◼   ► Apple, you know, not indie like meaning small companies, but just all developers, third

00:20:46 ◼   ► party developers.

00:20:48 ◼   ► That's good for Apple.

00:20:49 ◼   ► It was great for Apple when, and I really, I really mean it.

00:20:55 ◼   ► I don't know that there would be an iPhone without it, that part of the appeal and really

00:21:01 ◼   ► the very best technical thing that Apple acquired when Next came back. Maybe the best thing was the

00:21:08 ◼   ► leadership and Steve Jobs and the executives he brought with him, but at a technical level,

00:21:13 ◼   ► it was what became known as the "Coco frameworks." And that they let develop—it sounds like hype,

00:21:22 ◼   ► you know, that, "Hey, one person can write an app that does amazing things." But you wind up

00:21:28 ◼   ► with things like my friend Gus Mueller at Flying Meat,

00:21:32 ◼   ► who's one, you know, he runs a company with his wife,

00:21:35 ◼   ► but he's the only developer, and has written Acorn,

00:21:39 ◼   ► which is a legitimate Photoshop competitor.

00:21:42 ◼   ► Not saying it's feature for feature as deep as Photoshop,

00:21:45 ◼   ► but you can certainly, for me personally,

00:21:47 ◼   ► I use it where I used to use Photoshop, one person.

00:21:50 ◼   ► And because of Cocoa, because of how deep

00:21:53 ◼   ► these frameworks are, that's good for Apple, right?

00:21:57 ◼   ► It is good for Apple when developers are building apps that can only exist on Apple platforms.

00:22:05 ◼   ► Or if it is cross-platform, that it is a full-fledged, like, "Hey," which is a web-based thing and

00:22:14 ◼   ► has an Android app and a Mac app and stuff like that.

00:22:18 ◼   ► Apple benefits both ways.

00:22:19 ◼   ► It benefits when developers do things that take advantage of Apple's systems in a way

00:22:23 ◼   ► that can only exist on the Apple platforms, because then it's a distinguishing feature,

00:22:27 ◼   ► and then it benefits when cross-platform stuff is fully available and a great experience on the

00:22:34 ◼   ► Apple platform. Again, I'm showing my age, I guess, but I remember in the '90s when there

00:22:41 ◼   ► was an awful lot of cool stuff that was only on Windows, and it was a huge problem for Apple.

00:22:45 ◼   ► Huge.

00:22:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:47 ◼   ► And I mean, you know, all you got to do is look at gaming, right?

00:22:51 ◼   ► If you just want to pick one industry that drove, you know, technological advances and

00:22:57 ◼   ► high margin computer hardware businesses and all of that for decades, it's been gaming,

00:23:02 ◼   ► right?

00:23:03 ◼   ► And like a good portion of the reason the Mac wasn't dominant for a long time was

00:23:07 ◼   ► that gamers didn't buy Macs because they knew that they couldn't, you know, and I'm

00:23:11 ◼   ► making generalizations.

00:23:12 ◼   ► I know there are gamers on Macs, you know.

00:23:14 ◼   ► I'm a gamer.

00:23:15 ◼   ► but at the same time, it was driving the high-margin hardware business forward.

00:23:20 ◼   ► And Apple, you know, either for whatever reason, or for many reasons, I should say,

00:23:25 ◼   ► the reasons are there, which we don't need to go into,

00:23:28 ◼   ► chose not to kind of go after that, right?

00:23:30 ◼   ► And they went towards the creative professional and all of that stuff.

00:23:33 ◼   ► But if they had wanted to, say, capture the gaming market,

00:23:38 ◼   ► and if they had, you know, had a desire to, their strategy would have been different.

00:23:42 ◼   ► And it's the same thing with the App Store.

00:23:44 ◼   ► If they had wanted only direct revenue-generating apps on the App Store, their policies and

00:23:51 ◼   ► marketing would have been different.

00:23:53 ◼   ► But they knew, in their core, they knew that the numbers about how many apps were on the

00:23:58 ◼   ► store and how many developers supported it and how many major companies had an app for

00:24:05 ◼   ► the iPhone, even if they were not for-pay apps, even if they were free apps or extension

00:24:10 ◼   ► apps, all of those things benefited the iPhone ecosystem and drove the billions and eventually

00:24:17 ◼   ► trillions of dollars in sales of the iPhone.

00:24:20 ◼   ► There's just no getting around that.

00:24:23 ◼   ► Making that statement is one of those times where it's like, "This is technically true,

00:24:28 ◼   ► and it is fair to point out, but maybe it's not the right time."

00:24:34 ◼   ► And maybe it's a little disingenuous because you know very well that free apps and apps

00:24:40 ◼   ► that contribute no revenue to the store still drive hardware sales.

00:24:44 ◼   ► And just because the business overall has a much stronger mix of services revenues now

00:24:52 ◼   ► and app store revenue is a non-trivial component of that services revenue doesn't mean that

00:24:59 ◼   ► you're not still selling hardware by the bucket and that those apps didn't contribute to that.

00:25:04 ◼   ► And don't continue to contribute to that.

00:25:06 ◼   ► - And that that's the primary sustaining business of,

00:25:11 ◼   ► we're, you know, we Apple are selling the $1000 phones

00:25:15 ◼   ► and $500 phones and $700 iPads and $300 iPads

00:25:20 ◼   ► and $300 keyboards for iPads and Macs

00:25:25 ◼   ► that range from a thousand to $60,000.

00:25:27 ◼   ► - $600 wheels, you know.

00:25:29 ◼   ► - $600 wheels.

00:25:31 ◼   ► - A variety of items.

00:25:33 ◼   ► - Got a bunch of hair caught in my wheel,

00:25:35 ◼   ► I better get another one.

00:25:36 ◼   ► How much is that?

00:25:36 ◼   ► Oh, $100.

00:25:39 ◼   ► But that's the primary business that they're in

00:25:43 ◼   ► and that the services stuff is secondary

00:25:46 ◼   ► and that the specific aspect of services

00:25:49 ◼   ► that is taking a cut of third-party developers

00:25:52 ◼   ► writing stuff for your platform

00:25:54 ◼   ► is secondary on the secondary, right?

00:25:56 ◼   ► Like the main services push for Apple

00:25:58 ◼   ► should be their own services.

00:26:00 ◼   ► Getting people to pay for iCloud,

00:26:02 ◼   ► getting people to sign up for Apple TV+,

00:26:05 ◼   ► et cetera and so forth.

00:26:06 ◼   ► And so hopefully that's not lost,

00:26:09 ◼   ► but it's a good segue into WWDC

00:26:11 ◼   ► because I think it plays into it.

00:26:13 ◼   ► But let me take a break right here

00:26:14 ◼   ► and just thank our first sponsor.

00:26:17 ◼   ► Oh, I love this company, HelloFresh.

00:26:19 ◼   ► You can get mouth-watering seasonal recipes

00:26:22 ◼   ► with pre-measured ingredients delivered right to your door

00:26:25 ◼   ► with HelloFresh, America's number one meal kit.

00:26:30 ◼   ► HelloFresh makes cooking at home fun, easy, and affordable.

00:26:34 ◼   ► Break out of your dinner rut.

00:26:35 ◼   ► Oh, are we in a dinner rut here at the Gruber household

00:26:38 ◼   ► in mid-June, three to four months, five months,

00:26:43 ◼   ► six years into quarantine.

00:26:45 ◼   ► But HelloFresh can help you break out.

00:26:47 ◼   ► They have over 22 seasonal chef-curated recipes each week.

00:26:51 ◼   ► And you get to pick what's up for you,

00:26:54 ◼   ► what's right for your family, your household,

00:26:56 ◼   ► you, low-calorie options, vegetarian options,

00:26:59 ◼   ► family-friendly recipes, that's code for kid-friendly recipes, but they've got you covered.

00:27:06 ◼   ► They have more five-star recipes than any other meal kit, so you know you're going to

00:27:10 ◼   ► get something delicious.

00:27:11 ◼   ► You save time and stress effortlessly.

00:27:14 ◼   ► They cut out the stressful meal planning and prepping so you can enjoy cooking, get dinner

00:27:19 ◼   ► on the table in just about 30 minutes, sometimes even 20 minutes with their quick recipe options.

00:27:25 ◼   ► That's another thing you get to choose as you go.

00:27:28 ◼   ► You know your budget for time.

00:27:30 ◼   ► Average trip to the grocery store takes 41 minutes.

00:27:33 ◼   ► That's over 35 hours a year if you go once a week.

00:27:36 ◼   ► HelloFresh can cut that down.

00:27:38 ◼   ► And we all know with everything going on today,

00:27:41 ◼   ► cutting down on trips to the grocery store

00:27:43 ◼   ► is more important than ever, less stressful.

00:27:45 ◼   ► Ah, it's just so great.

00:27:47 ◼   ► Flexible, fit your lifestyle,

00:27:50 ◼   ► recipe options that are delicious and fit your needs.

00:27:54 ◼   ► And they even can throw in stuff like sides,

00:27:56 ◼   ► desserts, garlic bread, cookie dough,

00:27:59 ◼   ► all sorts of fun stuff.

00:28:01 ◼   ► And right now, HelloFresh is starting

00:28:04 ◼   ► at just $5.66 per serving.

00:28:08 ◼   ► Go to hellofresh.com/talkshow10.

00:28:12 ◼   ► That's talkshow10.

00:28:15 ◼   ► Hellofresh.com/talkshow10.

00:28:18 ◼   ► And remember that code, talkshow10,

00:28:20 ◼   ► during HelloFresh's sale,

00:28:22 ◼   ► and you could get 10 free meals, including free shipping.

00:28:26 ◼   ► That's hellofresh.com/talkshow10

00:28:28 ◼   ► and that code, talkshow10,

00:28:31 ◼   ► get 10 free meals including shipping.

00:28:34 ◼   ► My thanks to them.

00:28:35 ◼   ► So anyway, parlaying this into WWDC,

00:28:39 ◼   ► I think part of what's interesting about this,

00:28:42 ◼   ► and it really is to me a parlay

00:28:44 ◼   ► from this controversy over the App Store

00:28:46 ◼   ► and where Apple's focus should be

00:28:49 ◼   ► of if you get too caught up

00:28:51 ◼   ► thinking about the iPhone in particular

00:28:55 ◼   ► and that's where Hay's app got caught up.

00:28:58 ◼   ► The iPhone has direct rivals,

00:29:03 ◼   ► primarily, almost entirely now, the Android platform.

00:29:07 ◼   ► And something like Hay can run on Android

00:29:10 ◼   ► and it's largely the same.

00:29:12 ◼   ► And you can get caught up thinking

00:29:15 ◼   ► about the developer angle that way.

00:29:18 ◼   ► But Apple is really expanding,

00:29:20 ◼   ► and I think the watch in particular,

00:29:22 ◼   ► I know on my show this week with Federighi

00:29:24 ◼   ► and Jaws, I didn't spend a lot of time on a watch.

00:29:26 ◼   ► But the watch is so interesting to me

00:29:28 ◼   ► from a developer perspective,

00:29:30 ◼   ► because it's a very personal device.

00:29:34 ◼   ► And it really is, I know that that's sort of

00:29:37 ◼   ► what Apple said six, seven years ago

00:29:39 ◼   ► when they first introduced it, but it is.

00:29:40 ◼   ► A watch is a personal fashion statement,

00:29:43 ◼   ► and it's right there, it's literally touching your skin

00:29:45 ◼   ► when you're using it.

00:29:46 ◼   ► And they're adding it, I think it's really neat

00:29:51 ◼   ► the way that they're emphasizing the complications

00:29:55 ◼   ► as a way of personalizing it,

00:29:57 ◼   ► and face sharing so that you can,

00:30:01 ◼   ► if you have a face set up just the way you want it,

00:30:05 ◼   ► you can share it with a friend or a family member,

00:30:07 ◼   ► like, "Hey, how do you get your watch to look like that?

00:30:09 ◼   ► Here, let me show it to you."

00:30:10 ◼   ► But the other thing that's really interesting

00:30:13 ◼   ► about the watch in a broad sense

00:30:15 ◼   ► is there's no real competition for it.

00:30:18 ◼   ► I'm curious if you thought about that during the week at WWDC in that it fits in with the

00:30:25 ◼   ► landscape.

00:30:26 ◼   ► It's not like Apple Watch developers are this whole other ecosystem of developers.

00:30:32 ◼   ► It is the same developers who are writing iPhone apps and iPad apps and Mac apps.

00:30:37 ◼   ► Ben

00:30:48 ◼   ► and certainly people that were in that space before Apple and have now gone defunct or kind

00:30:57 ◼   ► of lost their way.

00:30:58 ◼   ► Then there's certainly major competitors that are trying to pour money into it, like Google,

00:31:05 ◼   ► obviously.

00:31:06 ◼   ► But it's become very clear that the competition the watch has is not against other people.

00:31:12 ◼   ► It is against its own usefulness.

00:31:14 ◼   ► It is against the desire for somebody or the sight line somebody has from not having one

00:31:22 ◼   ► to why would it be good for me to have one.

00:31:25 ◼   ► That's their major challenge in competition.

00:31:29 ◼   ► And I think that that's probably...

00:31:33 ◼   ► You could look at a lot of the announcements that were made at DubDub about the watch through

00:31:40 ◼   ► that lens and it starts to make pretty simple, straightforward sense.

00:31:45 ◼   ► The face sharing is definitely something that was lacking with the watch as some sort of

00:31:51 ◼   ► viral mechanic for sharing its usefulness.

00:31:56 ◼   ► Because the face is essentially the core of what makes it useful to most people.

00:32:00 ◼   ► You look at things, it tells you things, you can take actions from the face.

00:32:04 ◼   ► All of the initial wave of things that they thought were going to be useful like, "Oh,

00:32:08 ◼   ► they got a bunch of apps and you can scroll around and poke at it. Nobody uses that shit.

00:32:11 ◼   ► In all reality, they're edge cases. But the 80% use case, which is what Apple always cares about,

00:32:20 ◼   ► is the face. What is it telling me right now? What can it provide me quick access to,

00:32:27 ◼   ► like an activity or weather or calendar or radio station or whatever? And that face sharing thing,

00:32:37 ◼   ► while it seems like, "Oh, this is kind of a fun thing.

00:32:40 ◼   ► "Oh, cool," right?

00:32:41 ◼   ► It actually is the first time that the watch

00:32:43 ◼   ► has had some sort of potentially viral channel

00:32:46 ◼   ► for sharing directly its usefulness with other people,

00:32:51 ◼   ► because I don't actually believe that the watch sharing

00:32:54 ◼   ► is aimed primarily, it's aimed strongly secondarily

00:32:59 ◼   ► at people that own watches.

00:33:00 ◼   ► It's aimed primarily at people that don't own watches.

00:33:03 ◼   ► And it's aimed at saying like,

00:33:05 ◼   ► "Oh, look at this watch sharing thing."

00:33:07 ◼   ► It has a nice preview, it shows me the complications and the things that I could do on it if somebody

00:33:11 ◼   ► shared it with me.

00:33:13 ◼   ► And I can look at all these things I could do if I only had the watch.

00:33:17 ◼   ► And this watch sharing thing adds that sort of patina of usefulness to the whole enterprise.

00:33:27 ◼   ► And it acts as a genuine vector for telling people, "This thing is useful to you.

00:33:32 ◼   ► It shortens the onboarding time.

00:33:34 ◼   ► It keeps it useful long term so that they continue to be invested in the platform and

00:33:39 ◼   ► they buy new watches and all of that.

00:33:41 ◼   ► So I think that if you look at the announcements through that lens, some of them start to make

00:33:46 ◼   ► more sense.

00:33:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:48 ◼   ► And I just think it shows the way forward—or not the way forward, but it's a clarifying

00:33:57 ◼   ► notion for Apple that that this is a virtuous circle where

00:34:03 ◼   ► You're you're improving the watch in ways that makes the watch more valuable to the people who already have it

00:34:09 ◼   ► Makes it more likely that they'll buy a new one eventually that they'll recommend it to friends

00:34:14 ◼   ► And that they're gonna wear it and use it and like it and be like I feel naked without my watch

00:34:20 ◼   ► I want my steps. I want my but I want these complications that I've set up because my watch face was just for me

00:34:26 ◼   ► and that keeps people in the ecosystem.

00:34:31 ◼   ► It makes it more likely, you know,

00:34:32 ◼   ► if you have a watch, you wanna have an iPhone,

00:34:34 ◼   ► it makes it more likely you're in the iPhone,

00:34:36 ◼   ► and then Apple is selling three, $400 watches

00:34:41 ◼   ► and 500, $600,000 iPhones, keeping people in the system.

00:34:46 ◼   ► Apple's, you know, last I checked,

00:34:48 ◼   ► doing pretty well financially.

00:34:50 ◼   ► And again, famous, spending Tim Cook's money

00:34:53 ◼   ► is a very easy thing to do as an armchair quarterback.

00:34:56 ◼   ► I get it, I try not to do it, but at a certain level,

00:35:00 ◼   ► when you're literally the most profitable company

00:35:04 ◼   ► in the world, and by however you wanna do

00:35:07 ◼   ► the inflation adjustment, up there among the handful

00:35:11 ◼   ► in history, like going back hundreds of years

00:35:13 ◼   ► to the East India Trading Company,

00:35:15 ◼   ► you don't have to sweat the marginal,

00:35:20 ◼   ► let's see if we can get 30% out of the signups

00:35:23 ◼   ► from this software as a service thing on a phone.

00:35:26 ◼   ► Again, I'm not saying they shouldn't do it.

00:35:28 ◼   ► It's very easy to tell somebody else

00:35:29 ◼   ► when they have enough money.

00:35:33 ◼   ► It's not mine.

00:35:34 ◼   ► But they don't need it.

00:35:37 ◼   ► And I just think that the watch is really clarifying

00:35:40 ◼   ► as to how just getting buy-in from developers

00:35:45 ◼   ► to do things that really only make sense

00:35:48 ◼   ► in the Apple ecosystem is really good for Apple

00:35:51 ◼   ► in and of itself, even if they're not making any

00:35:55 ◼   ► 30% of this or that just by having developers making these complications for the watch.

00:36:01 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:36:02 ◼   ► Yeah, and the face sharing—or, yeah, face sharing.

00:36:05 ◼   ► I think that's what they're calling it.

00:36:07 ◼   ► But the face sharing situation, it allows—it's the first time that Apple—so Apple always

00:36:14 ◼   ► emphasizes on their site, obviously, "Oh, here's some third-party apps and things

00:36:17 ◼   ► that you can install, and here's all of our first-party features we built," right?

00:36:23 ◼   ► And some of those are cool, and some of the third party apps are neat, but the face sharing

00:36:27 ◼   ► thing is interesting because it doesn't currently, nothing like it currently exists even for

00:36:33 ◼   ► the app store.

00:36:35 ◼   ► Because the app store says, hey, here's some single serving, single compartment experiences

00:36:42 ◼   ► that you can download that may be useful to you.

00:36:45 ◼   ► Here's a calendar app, here's a game, here's a health app, et cetera.

00:36:51 ◼   ► But what the App Store doesn't have currently is, here's a package of things that are useful

00:36:58 ◼   ► to you together in this really compelling way.

00:37:03 ◼   ► Right now, the App Store doesn't have a way to download workflows to say, and to some

00:37:09 ◼   ► degree, shortcuts is that, but that's not really accessible to a major audience.

00:37:14 ◼   ► It's accessible to people that want to tool around with it, and it's very cool.

00:37:18 ◼   ► But as far as I am a, I don't know, I'm a CPA,

00:37:23 ◼   ► and I wanna get the best use out of my iPhone.

00:37:27 ◼   ► Oh, you need these seven tools, you know?

00:37:30 ◼   ► I'm an athlete, and I'm not only an athlete,

00:37:34 ◼   ► I'm a college athlete.

00:37:36 ◼   ► Okay, you need to download this education helper,

00:37:40 ◼   ► this thing to keep track of your classes

00:37:43 ◼   ► that's specifically designed for athletes.

00:37:45 ◼   ► You need to download this training app,

00:37:47 ◼   ► this nutrition app and this thing, right?

00:37:51 ◼   ► And that could be packaged together by the college

00:37:54 ◼   ► or by a developer or whatever.

00:37:56 ◼   ► None of that exists for the store.

00:37:57 ◼   ► It's all like lists of apps.

00:37:59 ◼   ► Like, oh, if you're a so-and-so, you need these 10 apps.

00:38:02 ◼   ► Okay, cool.

00:38:03 ◼   ► Now I gotta download 'em, figure out how to configure 'em,

00:38:06 ◼   ► understand what they do, you know, all of this, right?

00:38:08 ◼   ► It's a lot of labor.

00:38:09 ◼   ► Whereas the watch face is very interesting

00:38:12 ◼   ► because it says, hey, here's three different apps

00:38:15 ◼   ► from a developer, three different developers,

00:38:18 ◼   ► plus some first-party stuff from Apple,

00:38:21 ◼   ► swizzled together to create a best-case scenario

00:38:23 ◼   ► for a runner, or for a swimmer,

00:38:25 ◼   ► or for a person concerned with health,

00:38:27 ◼   ► or for a person that manages a complex schedule,

00:38:29 ◼   ► or for a person who does both, you know?

00:38:32 ◼   ► And here's some things that'll work for you.

00:38:35 ◼   ► And I think that's really cool and unique to the watch,

00:38:38 ◼   ► and it does what Apple does best,

00:38:41 ◼   ► which is say third-party stuff,

00:38:43 ◼   ► or what Apple at its best, I should say, does,

00:38:46 ◼   ► which is, hey, here's third-party stuff

00:38:47 ◼   ► that does amazing work.

00:38:49 ◼   ► We think this really shows off the cool stuff

00:38:51 ◼   ► that the platform is capable of.

00:38:53 ◼   ► Plus, here's some first-party work that we did

00:38:55 ◼   ► because we know this hardware intimately

00:38:57 ◼   ► and we knew we could push it to the limit

00:38:59 ◼   ► to do something like hearing amplification

00:39:02 ◼   ► or assistance or healthcare or whatever.

00:39:06 ◼   ► And I think that's a really interesting and unique thing.

00:39:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think I'm getting this right,

00:39:11 ◼   ► that one of the weird, not weird, but maybe in hindsight

00:39:14 ◼   ► was a weird limitation was previously

00:39:16 ◼   ► you could only have one complication from an app

00:39:20 ◼   ► on one watch face at a time.

00:39:22 ◼   ► And so you couldn't, if you're,

00:39:24 ◼   ► let's say you're a weather nut,

00:39:26 ◼   ► you couldn't have like three weather complications

00:39:28 ◼   ► from the same weather app on the same face at a time.

00:39:33 ◼   ► And, you know, again, that's like a, it's a niche

00:39:36 ◼   ► and it's like the sort of thing

00:39:37 ◼   ► that maybe Apple didn't think of is,

00:39:39 ◼   ► what if you are a weather nut? What if you really do want three different complications,

00:39:45 ◼   ► all about the weather on your watch face at a time? Maybe you're a meteorologist.

00:39:49 ◼   ► Or maybe you're a commuter, right? And you commute between two cities,

00:39:52 ◼   ► right? Or whatever. They have micro-components. I mean, look at Oakland and the Bay. I mean,

00:39:56 ◼   ► those are different weather ecosystems.

00:39:58 ◼   ► What if you don't live in the Bay where it's 71 degrees on cold days and 73 when it's hot?

00:40:08 ◼   ► But you commute there for work.

00:40:09 ◼   ► And then you go back to Hayward, where it's like 90.

00:40:11 ◼   ► And so there are definitely cases where you would want that, for sure.

00:40:17 ◼   ► Yeah. But I just think that the watch, even though it is sort of the...

00:40:21 ◼   ► Like I said, on my show, I had an hour with Federighi and Jaws, and we certainly spent the

00:40:30 ◼   ► least time on a watch. And not because it isn't deserving, but that it just had so much to say

00:40:35 ◼   ► about the Mac and other things, which you and I can get to in a moment, but I just think

00:40:40 ◼   ► it exemplifies that sort of how does app, the answer to that question of, well, you

00:40:45 ◼   ► know, why should Hey get to have an app in the App Store if they're not giving Apple

00:40:49 ◼   ► any money?

00:40:50 ◼   ► Apple gets stuff out of it when developers are engaged with their platforms, and it's

00:40:54 ◼   ► just ridiculous to pretend otherwise.

00:40:57 ◼   ► Can't necessarily put a dollar amount on all of it.

00:41:00 ◼   ► All right, let me take one more break.

00:41:01 ◼   ► We only have two sponsors for this show

00:41:03 ◼   ► 'cause it's sort of a special brief post-WWDC episode,

00:41:07 ◼   ► but it's our good friends at Squarespace.

00:41:10 ◼   ► Oh man, Squarespace, that's where you can start

00:41:13 ◼   ► building your website today, right at squarespace.com,

00:41:16 ◼   ► talking about software as a service.

00:41:17 ◼   ► You just pay them, you get a great website,

00:41:20 ◼   ► you have a great interface to do every single thing

00:41:23 ◼   ► you could possibly want to do with your own custom website,

00:41:26 ◼   ► from designing it to deciding what components

00:41:29 ◼   ► are a part of it, like if you want a blog,

00:41:32 ◼   ► you want to host a podcast, or maybe you have a portfolio

00:41:35 ◼   ► of stuff that you want to sell and actually do the commerce

00:41:38 ◼   ► on your website and sell it, you can do all of that

00:41:41 ◼   ► at Squarespace, analytics built in,

00:41:44 ◼   ► see who's coming to your website, where, from,

00:41:47 ◼   ► stuff like that, and it's just so professional looking.

00:41:52 ◼   ► All these templates to choose from, all WYSIWYG,

00:41:56 ◼   ► right there, you'd see it, you look at it,

00:41:59 ◼   ► What you see as you're designing it

00:42:00 ◼   ► is exactly what people will see when they're visiting it

00:42:03 ◼   ► because it's literally the exact same interface

00:42:06 ◼   ► except yours is the editing option

00:42:08 ◼   ► and the actual viewing one doesn't.

00:42:11 ◼   ► Really, next time you need a website,

00:42:12 ◼   ► somebody comes to you for help with a website,

00:42:15 ◼   ► get 'em started at Squarespace,

00:42:16 ◼   ► put an hour or two into it and see how far you get

00:42:19 ◼   ► and you really won't look back.

00:42:21 ◼   ► Where do you go to find out more?

00:42:22 ◼   ► Go to squarespace.com/talkshow.

00:42:26 ◼   ► And when you decide to sign up and pay,

00:42:28 ◼   ► Look, you get a free trial.

00:42:30 ◼   ► It lasts, I think like a month, it's crazy.

00:42:33 ◼   ► You get a great free trial.

00:42:34 ◼   ► Just remember that when you go to pay,

00:42:37 ◼   ► go to squarespace.com/talkshow

00:42:39 ◼   ► or just remember the code talk show

00:42:41 ◼   ► and you get 10% off your first purchase,

00:42:44 ◼   ► including up to an entire year, a whole year.

00:42:47 ◼   ► And if you do sign up for a year,

00:42:49 ◼   ► you also get a free domain name registration.

00:42:51 ◼   ► So my thanks to Squarespace.

00:42:53 ◼   ► Just remember the code talk show,

00:42:54 ◼   ► squarespace.com/talkshow.

00:42:56 ◼   ► code talk show, save 10%.

00:43:00 ◼   ► So the Mac is really moving the arm.

00:43:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, it is.

00:43:04 ◼   ► - I'm interested-- - Is that a finally?

00:43:07 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:43:08 ◼   ► - I think it is a finally.

00:43:09 ◼   ► I think it's probably not surprising in hindsight.

00:43:12 ◼   ► I think that they've hinted,

00:43:14 ◼   ► Apple does not like to say how long they've been working

00:43:17 ◼   ► on things that they've been working on.

00:43:19 ◼   ► They're secretive about everything,

00:43:20 ◼   ► including how many years certain endeavors have taken.

00:43:25 ◼   ► But they couldn't even help but say it this time,

00:43:28 ◼   ► like when they revealed that the emulation layer

00:43:31 ◼   ► is gonna be called Rosetta 2.

00:43:33 ◼   ► They even said that they've had the same,

00:43:35 ◼   ► some of the same engineers who worked on the PowerPC

00:43:38 ◼   ► to Intel Rosetta are working on this

00:43:40 ◼   ► and that they've been spending years on it.

00:43:43 ◼   ► And so one of the things that,

00:43:48 ◼   ► I know you've spent a lot of time recently with Mac Pro

00:43:51 ◼   ► and thinking about that, and you and I were there

00:43:54 ◼   ► and that handful of people who are invited to talk to Schiller

00:43:58 ◼   ► and Federighi and John Turnus about Apple's sort of,

00:44:04 ◼   ► hey, we painted ourselves in that thermal corner.

00:44:09 ◼   ► Let's get our way out of it.

00:44:10 ◼   ► We want to be a big part of the pro-workstation market.

00:44:14 ◼   ► How does this clarify the view for that for you,

00:44:20 ◼   ► of where Apple-- not just where they are right now

00:44:23 ◼   ► and what this means in the next two years

00:44:25 ◼   ► as they transition, but where they've been thinking

00:44:28 ◼   ► for the last four or five years on Mac hardware.

00:44:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I think it's certainly a,

00:44:35 ◼   ► it's interesting, 'cause I haven't,

00:44:38 ◼   ► as you mentioned, I've been kind of using a Mac Pro lately,

00:44:41 ◼   ► and I'm kind of playing around with it

00:44:42 ◼   ► and trying to think about it.

00:44:43 ◼   ► I'll probably write something about it.

00:44:46 ◼   ► I wanted to kind of wait until the first blush

00:44:48 ◼   ► of people that had had their chance to talk,

00:44:49 ◼   ► and frankly, until professionals

00:44:52 ◼   ► had it in their workflows for a bit so that I could ask around to people that I knew were

00:44:57 ◼   ► using it and kind of say, "Hey, how does it actually work?"

00:45:01 ◼   ► You know, not, "How do I think this thing's going to work?"

00:45:04 ◼   ► And not really a discussion about pricing value or all the initial stuff.

00:45:09 ◼   ► I want to know, did they do a good job?

00:45:11 ◼   ► Right?

00:45:12 ◼   ► Did this thing work?

00:45:13 ◼   ► And I think that when you look at it through the context or look at ARM through the context

00:45:17 ◼   ► of the Mac Pro, I think it's very interesting because a lot of people were saying like,

00:45:20 ◼   ► So who would buy a Mac Pro now and all that stuff?

00:45:24 ◼   ► I don't think we're gonna be seeing ARM processors

00:45:25 ◼   ► in Mac Pros for five years, personally.

00:45:29 ◼   ► - I disagree. - You think it'll be sooner?

00:45:32 ◼   ► - I think when they say two years,

00:45:34 ◼   ► I think within two years, it'll be everything.

00:45:37 ◼   ► I really do.

00:45:37 ◼   ► Now, whether that means they won't continue

00:45:39 ◼   ► to still have the Intel CPU option

00:45:42 ◼   ► in the Mac Pro in particular, I don't know.

00:45:48 ◼   ► I think that there might be an entirely ARM option for even a $25,000, $30,000 workstation

00:45:55 ◼   ► class Mac Pro within two years.

00:45:57 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:45:58 ◼   ► I really do.

00:45:59 ◼   ► Okay.

00:46:00 ◼   ► I think so.

00:46:01 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:46:02 ◼   ► I think the one thing that stood out for me, which matters for everybody, it matters for

00:46:09 ◼   ► all compute, but it especially matters for mobile compute is Johnny Ceruggi, Apple's

00:46:15 ◼   ► kind of head chip guy was saying, the phrase that he used was, it was basically incomparable

00:46:23 ◼   ► price per watt, right?

00:46:26 ◼   ► Right.

00:46:27 ◼   ► And that, or power per watt, excuse me, not price per watt.

00:46:30 ◼   ► They haven't mentioned pricing yet, but power per watt.

00:46:34 ◼   ► So basically you put in X amount of power into a current Intel processor and you get

00:46:38 ◼   ► back a certain amount of compute.

00:46:43 ◼   ► And then you put in the same amount of power to an ARM processor or their ARM processors

00:46:47 ◼   ► that they're going to be making or already are making and that we don't know about yet,

00:46:51 ◼   ► and you're going to get back more for the same amount of wattage.

00:46:54 ◼   ► And this is something that obviously if any chip people are listening to this, I'm sorry

00:47:00 ◼   ► that we're talking about it in like baby goo goo ga ga speak.

00:47:04 ◼   ► But I think a lot of people don't.

00:47:08 ◼   ► Definitely there was some discussion about it, but I think a lot of people kind of overlooked

00:47:12 ◼   ► that particular sentence just because there was a lot going on.

00:47:16 ◼   ► "Oh my god, they're armed, they're switching away from Intel, you know, oh my god, oh cool,

00:47:19 ◼   ► they're going to develop their own processors, you know, tightly integrated with hardware

00:47:23 ◼   ► and software."

00:47:24 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right?

00:47:25 ◼   ► But like I wrote a piece in…

00:47:26 ◼   ► I was looking at the other… after that presentation, I looked it up because it was essentially

00:47:31 ◼   ► the same kind of argument for the iPhone.

00:47:33 ◼   ► The argument that I was making at the time, this was… they just started shipping A-series

00:47:38 ◼   ► processors.

00:47:40 ◼   ► And so my argument was, look, the iPhone's biggest flaw is the battery, right?

00:47:45 ◼   ► And it's not really a flaw in that it's a mistake Apple made.

00:47:48 ◼   ► It's just a flaw in the system, right?

00:47:51 ◼   ► iPhones would be capable of so much more if they were more power efficient or if they

00:47:55 ◼   ► had more power available to them.

00:47:57 ◼   ► And the only way to do that, well, there's two major ways.

00:48:02 ◼   ► One way is develop an entirely new battery chemistry, which all companies on the planet

00:48:08 ◼   ► that have any interest in compute have been exploring to no avail yet.

00:48:13 ◼   ► There's some promising technologies, but like carbon nanotubes and everything else

00:48:17 ◼   ► is always on the horizon, and graphene and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?

00:48:21 ◼   ► There's always some new battery technology on the horizon somewhere, but none of it has

00:48:24 ◼   ► materialized.

00:48:26 ◼   ► So the other major way to do that, of course, is to get more efficient on the compute side.

00:48:32 ◼   ► And Apple has done that in a variety of ways, including moving their graphics frameworks

00:48:37 ◼   ► to write to the chip rather than having an intermediate layer,

00:48:40 ◼   ► like an OpenGL.

00:48:42 ◼   ► They've done a large amount of work, obviously,

00:48:45 ◼   ► optimizing their software to run on their own silicon,

00:48:48 ◼   ► which is a huge part of it.

00:48:50 ◼   ► And they've got-- you know, every time the iPhone comes out,

00:48:53 ◼   ► it's like, "Oh, better battery life. Better battery life."

00:48:55 ◼   ► It's like, "How are you doing this? It's the same battery," right?

00:48:57 ◼   ► And sometimes it's more battery in the casing, you know?

00:49:00 ◼   ► It's a few millimeters here, a few millimeters there.

00:49:03 ◼   ► You know, liquid battery technologies and, you know, all of that.

00:49:06 ◼   ► They're eking it out wherever they can.

00:49:09 ◼   ► Well, this I view as their big chance

00:49:11 ◼   ► to kind of push hard into that,

00:49:14 ◼   ► hey, what if we shipped a laptop with our own processor?

00:49:19 ◼   ► You know, one question is like,

00:49:20 ◼   ► oh, what if we shipped a laptop with our own processor

00:49:22 ◼   ► and had tightly integrated everything

00:49:23 ◼   ► and better security, all of that?

00:49:25 ◼   ► I think that's great,

00:49:26 ◼   ► but a lot of those points are kind of hard to sell.

00:49:29 ◼   ► What is really easy to sell is,

00:49:32 ◼   ► hey, we just came out with a laptop

00:49:34 ◼   ► that has all the same power as that Intel laptop

00:49:36 ◼   ► that you were thinking of buying,

00:49:37 ◼   ► but it's double the battery life.

00:49:39 ◼   ► Enjoy!

00:49:41 ◼   ► Right?

00:49:42 ◼   ► And like 100% improvement on battery life

00:49:44 ◼   ► is absolutely within stabbing distance,

00:49:48 ◼   ► you know, of an arm-driven portable.

00:49:51 ◼   ► And that's why I think that a lot of their focus

00:49:54 ◼   ► is gonna be on where they can get the biggest toehold

00:49:56 ◼   ► and gains and sort of own that market

00:49:59 ◼   ► and really just destroy the competition

00:50:02 ◼   ► for at least some period of time.

00:50:03 ◼   ► And that's why I think the focus

00:50:05 ◼   ► definitely going to be on MacBook Pros and all of that, you know, the portable lineup

00:50:08 ◼   ► first. But, you know, and that's why in my mind the timeline was like longer for the

00:50:14 ◼   ► Mac Pro, but also very exciting in the near term for MacBooks, you know, because I think

00:50:21 ◼   ► this will be the first time we've seen a generational multiplicative jump in a long time because

00:50:28 ◼   ► a lot of the underlying technologies haven't changed.

00:50:33 ◼   ► I feel like exactly like you do,

00:50:35 ◼   ► where I feel like you and I talking about this

00:50:38 ◼   ► is sort of like babies talking about nuclear physics

00:50:41 ◼   ► compared to people who really know the chips.

00:50:43 ◼   ► But on the other hand, I feel like we're at least

00:50:45 ◼   ► the babies who kind of have a sense

00:50:47 ◼   ► of how big a deal this is, and I really want to convey it.

00:50:49 ◼   ► And like, maybe it's a bad analogy,

00:50:52 ◼   ► but I feel like there's a lot of people

00:50:55 ◼   ► who are thinking about this wrongly along the lines of,

00:51:01 ◼   ► let's say instead of switching instruction set architectures

00:51:05 ◼   ► from Intel to ARM or x86 to ARM,

00:51:08 ◼   ► if Apple had bought AMD and they said,

00:51:12 ◼   ► "Okay, we've bought AMD.

00:51:14 ◼   ► "Now we own them and we're going to switch the Mac

00:51:17 ◼   ► "to AMD x86 processors

00:51:22 ◼   ► "and there's gonna be cost efficiency

00:51:25 ◼   ► "and we don't have to pay any kind of margin on it

00:51:27 ◼   ► "'cause we're gonna do these chips ourselves."

00:51:29 ◼   ► You know

00:51:30 ◼   ► It's not like that at all

00:51:32 ◼   ► That's not what they're that's not even close to what they're doing and that would have been big news and a big deal in

00:51:39 ◼   ► the market for PC hardware

00:51:41 ◼   ► And certainly would have meant a lot to PC PC gamers who like buying AMD chips if they were worried that Apple

00:51:50 ◼   ► Now that they bought AMD isn't going to sell them in that way

00:51:54 ◼   ► Etc and so forth that I don't even know if that was ever even on the table

00:51:58 ◼   ► But I just think that that's how some people are looking at this, like, oh, from a business perspective,

00:52:05 ◼   ► Apple's cutting Intel off, no longer has to pay Intel any kind of profit on these chips,

00:52:11 ◼   ► you know, which are expensive parts of a Mac, you know, 150 bucks or, you know, 200 bucks out of a thousand dollar MacBook Air.

00:52:17 ◼   ► And now they can cut that off and they have lower margin and maybe they're a little smaller and run a little cooler or something.

00:52:23 ◼   ► I don't think that's it at all.

00:52:25 ◼   ► I think it's like you said,

00:52:27 ◼   ► we're talking about a 2X factor.

00:52:29 ◼   ► We're talking about,

00:52:31 ◼   ► think about the fact that the iPad Pro

00:52:33 ◼   ► clearly out benchmarks MacBook Pros

00:52:36 ◼   ► and doesn't have a fan.

00:52:38 ◼   ► Like, what are they gonna do?

00:52:40 ◼   ► Are they gonna bring fanless design to the MacBook Pros,

00:52:44 ◼   ► which would be huge?

00:52:45 ◼   ► Or are they gonna keep the fans

00:52:48 ◼   ► and build chips that we've never seen from Apple

00:52:51 ◼   ► that can run to the point where they require a fan,

00:52:55 ◼   ► but imagine what they could do.

00:52:57 ◼   ► If that's what the A12Z can do without a fan,

00:53:01 ◼   ► what would happen if they built one that,

00:53:03 ◼   ► yeah, oh yeah, we're gonna keep the fans.

00:53:06 ◼   ► And it's in the same way we're like

00:53:08 ◼   ► a 16-inch MacBook Pro, typically,

00:53:10 ◼   ► even when the fan kicks in,

00:53:11 ◼   ► it's not like you hear a hairdryer going.

00:53:13 ◼   ► But I mean like a weird

00:53:19 ◼   ► schism in performance per watt that just does not, and also probably isn't really that analogous

00:53:28 ◼   ► to even the power PC to Intel shipped 15 years ago. It's more significant. Maybe another very

00:53:35 ◼   ► loose analogy that you could poke holes in very quickly is sort of thinking of electric cars and

00:53:42 ◼   ► vehicles as, "Oh, you just don't have to put gasoline in them anymore, but they ride the same."

00:53:49 ◼   ► So instead of pumping gas into them, you plug it in.

00:53:51 ◼   ► But then you actually get in one and press the gas puddle,

00:53:54 ◼   ► and you're like, oh.

00:53:56 ◼   ► Oh, this is totally different.

00:54:00 ◼   ► Oh, can I do that again?

00:54:02 ◼   ► I would like to stop this and start it again.

00:54:04 ◼   ► I would like to--

00:54:06 ◼   ► oh, right?

00:54:08 ◼   ► I feel like there might be that sort of moment when they reveal

00:54:14 ◼   ► even just the very first max that they have in order,

00:54:17 ◼   ► where you just look at them.

00:54:18 ◼   ► you'd be like, oh, this is very different.

00:54:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I'm excited about it for ways that,

00:54:25 ◼   ► I mean, like most of the time, honestly,

00:54:27 ◼   ► I work on either the iPad Pro now or a desktop, right?

00:54:30 ◼   ► And so for me, the battery power debate is like,

00:54:35 ◼   ► I mean, the iPad Pro's battery life is so amazing, you know?

00:54:38 ◼   ► That I'm already living in that world, right?

00:54:40 ◼   ► But plenty of people can't yet work on an iPad Pro

00:54:43 ◼   ► or want more flexibility, they wanna use a Mac, right?

00:54:47 ◼   ► for all of the reasons the Mac is so good.

00:54:50 ◼   ► You use it to tinker, try crazy new things,

00:54:53 ◼   ► build apps for one thing.

00:54:56 ◼   ► And I'm so glad that they're investing in that,

00:54:59 ◼   ► and I think a lot of people are,

00:55:00 ◼   ► but the fact is we have never seen a software hardware maker

00:55:05 ◼   ► ever that has fielded a chip design team,

00:55:10 ◼   ► set the rules for how the hardware is used,

00:55:13 ◼   ► and then built the software for that hardware.

00:55:15 ◼   ► It's always playing on somebody else's playground.

00:55:19 ◼   ► Even if they have influence, even if they've said,

00:55:21 ◼   ► "Oh, these are the specs that we want,"

00:55:23 ◼   ► they've never had that kind of down-to-the-roots control.

00:55:27 ◼   ► And it's always somebody else's job to do those things

00:55:31 ◼   ► and somebody else's responsibility

00:55:33 ◼   ► and ultimately somebody else's decision

00:55:35 ◼   ► and how to fabricate those things.

00:55:37 ◼   ► And sure, Apple has been doing that for a little while

00:55:40 ◼   ► with the A-series chips because they've been saying,

00:55:43 ◼   ► "Hey, here's exactly what we want.

00:55:45 ◼   ► build this. But we've never really seen that from a desktop manufacturer ever. You could

00:55:53 ◼   ► argue right now that every Windows laptop could work 10 times better if Microsoft also

00:56:00 ◼   ► made all the processors, right? Because those teams could integrate very deeply with one

00:56:05 ◼   ► another and make it work. But you're always dealing with like, either you've got underhead

00:56:11 ◼   ► or overhead, either power that you're utilizing or power that you wish you had or that you

00:56:17 ◼   ► aren't utilizing or power that you wish you had.

00:56:20 ◼   ► And I think that it's a very, very exciting thing to see what happens when they do that.

00:56:24 ◼   ► I mean, I think people at Intel, the smart people, are probably really, really worried

00:56:27 ◼   ► right now because the only reason they have to be able to sleep right now is Mac market

00:56:32 ◼   ► share because they're like, "Oh, it's a tiny part of the market.

00:56:35 ◼   ► We supply a ton of processors to a lot of different manufacturers.

00:56:39 ◼   ► agnostic, et cetera. But if you're able to launch a laptop that says, hey, this is 75

00:56:46 ◼   ► to 100% better than a competitor rather than the normal 20% that happens every generation,

00:56:52 ◼   ► it starts being a huge fucking problem for them.

00:56:55 ◼   ► You know?

00:56:56 ◼   ► Yeah. Well, and I think I touched on this on my show, and I just feel—and there's

00:57:02 ◼   ► only so far you can press with those guys. And I feel like Federighi was delightfully

00:57:06 ◼   ► like, yeah, we're totally committed to the Mac

00:57:10 ◼   ► and in a way that hopefully would reassure more people

00:57:14 ◼   ► than even just that huge slide from two years ago

00:57:17 ◼   ► with the big no that we're gonna just combine

00:57:19 ◼   ► the iPad and the Mac.

00:57:21 ◼   ► I just feel that there is a sense at the company

00:57:28 ◼   ► that they have a very, they're not doing things

00:57:32 ◼   ► redesigning the Mac Pro with a year or two ahead, you know, like the end of their foresight

00:57:40 ◼   ► for where they're going with the Mac is 2022 or something like that.

00:57:44 ◼   ► They're not going through this transition with, you know, like one or two years of Mac

00:57:50 ◼   ► hardware ahead of them.

00:57:52 ◼   ► This is a very long play.

00:57:53 ◼   ► I mean, decades at least, probably decades.

00:57:58 ◼   ► And what they're really thinking of is not, I think, is not just shackled to the history

00:58:04 ◼   ► of what is the Mac in the context of the PC market.

00:58:11 ◼   ► It is the broader sense of what do we need, what is the need for a computer workstation

00:58:18 ◼   ► at the highest levels of performance as an industry we can build.

00:58:23 ◼   ► Where's that going five, ten years from now?

00:58:27 ◼   ► What are the needs?

00:58:28 ◼   ► What jobs are there to be done that require the most possible graphics and CPU and now

00:58:36 ◼   ► neural engine compute going forward?

00:58:40 ◼   ► And I think that it really, I think that there's a sense that what the Mac is, the Mac is I

00:58:45 ◼   ► guess going to be Apple's answer in that regard.

00:58:47 ◼   ► And that's a very different problem domain than what is it that you do with an iPad or

00:58:53 ◼   ► an iPad Pro or your phone.

00:58:55 ◼   ► I mean, and it's not to diminish those things.

00:58:57 ◼   ► Like you, I know you just said it,

00:58:59 ◼   ► and I know you're really serious about it,

00:59:00 ◼   ► that you do a lot of your work on iPad.

00:59:03 ◼   ► I've done more work, more of my writing on a daily basis,

00:59:08 ◼   ► and emailing, and a lot of other stuff

00:59:10 ◼   ► that I would consider work on my iPad

00:59:12 ◼   ► ever since the update in March

00:59:14 ◼   ► that added trackpad and support.

00:59:16 ◼   ► It's delightful.

00:59:18 ◼   ► But I'm not, I know that I'm not pressing it as a computer.

00:59:21 ◼   ► Right?

00:59:22 ◼   ► And that's really what this is about in a lot of ways.

00:59:26 ◼   ► What do you need?

00:59:28 ◼   ► Why?

00:59:30 ◼   ► Maybe that's it.

00:59:31 ◼   ► Why?

00:59:32 ◼   ► Why still fight to make the Mac relevant?

00:59:35 ◼   ► Why not just make iPads and put the iPad on a laptop

00:59:39 ◼   ► and say, "We don't even have to have this other platform.

00:59:42 ◼   ► "We could simplify things greatly."

00:59:44 ◼   ► I think it's because they see a whole bunch of problems

00:59:47 ◼   ► that demand a computing platform

00:59:50 ◼   ► that has the most performance that they can get possible.

00:59:54 ◼   ► I think that's terribly exciting.

00:59:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, it is.

00:59:58 ◼   ► And that idea that there was,

01:00:03 ◼   ► certainly there's certain Apple applications,

01:00:06 ◼   ► especially neural engine work and ML work that,

01:00:10 ◼   ► and AR as a current example,

01:00:13 ◼   ► that tax iPad hardware, let's say, right?

01:00:17 ◼   ► 'Cause iPad hardware is currently

01:00:18 ◼   ► some of the most powerful you can buy from Apple, right?

01:00:21 ◼   ► And that--

01:00:22 ◼   ► Right.

01:00:23 ◼   ► They're certainly ones that hit the peaks there,

01:00:27 ◼   ► that tap against the boundaries of what the iPad does.

01:00:30 ◼   ► But the vast majority of what you do on it doesn't.

01:00:32 ◼   ► And some of that is related to the tasks, right?

01:00:35 ◼   ► You just-- you're not compiling an enormous application

01:00:40 ◼   ► with millions of lines of code with a bunch

01:00:43 ◼   ► of itinerant frameworks on the iPad Pro

01:00:47 ◼   ► that you would normally do on a Mac.

01:00:49 ◼   ► And there are certain things that developers do there.

01:00:51 ◼   ► There are certain things that graphics professionals do.

01:00:53 ◼   ► Obviously, you know, like with the Mac Pro,

01:00:55 ◼   ► like I've been playing around with a bunch of 6K streams

01:00:58 ◼   ► in Final Cut and things like that.

01:01:00 ◼   ► There are certain things that would overtax, you know,

01:01:03 ◼   ► would hit the cap of what's going on there.

01:01:06 ◼   ► And so when you say,

01:01:09 ◼   ► sometimes it could sound hyperbolic

01:01:12 ◼   ► that we literally don't know what these machines

01:01:14 ◼   ► are actually capable of, that's just true.

01:01:16 ◼   ► Like we don't know what an ARM-powered Mac is capable of yet,

01:01:22 ◼   ► because they've just never had the same set of constraints.

01:01:26 ◼   ► And that's one of the things about owning the hardware, obviously,

01:01:29 ◼   ► is that Apple can say, "Hey, these are the constraints that we have for the iPad."

01:01:32 ◼   ► Obviously, battery life is an enormous one.

01:01:34 ◼   ► It needs to drive this, you know, display.

01:01:38 ◼   ► It needs to drive these certain things, and it can--

01:01:41 ◼   ► It's essentially never going to be plugged in, you know, while it's being used.

01:01:45 ◼   ► of those constraints. And so the laptop thing is more of a known quantity because I think

01:01:52 ◼   ► we're going to see, "Hey, what does a laptop version of the iPad Pro look like?" But the

01:01:59 ◼   ► desktop aspect of it is going to be fascinating because we've never seen that. Like you mentioned

01:02:04 ◼   ► the Mac Pro and my timeline is based on this idea that the Mac Pro architecture as it currently

01:02:11 ◼   ► exists was actually designed to support ARM because there's no way that they would have

01:02:17 ◼   ► restarted two years ago at the time they restarted and not known that they were doing this.

01:02:23 ◼   ► So…

01:02:24 ◼   ► Right.

01:02:25 ◼   ► And I think that maybe in hindsight, and maybe someday we'll get the story, but maybe if

01:02:32 ◼   ► this ARM transition took them a little bit longer than they thought and maybe what they

01:02:36 ◼   ► had before didn't last quite as long as they wanted and that maybe part of that whole meeting,

01:02:44 ◼   ► you know, with me and you and Ena Fried and, you know, and they more or less pre-announced

01:02:53 ◼   ► the iMac Pro and said we're going to make an all-new Mac Pro and maybe that they figured,

01:02:59 ◼   ► you know, we do need, we have enough of a gap in between what we already have and where

01:03:03 ◼   ► where we want to go with our own silicon,

01:03:08 ◼   ► that we need to do something in the interim

01:03:09 ◼   ► and have like an awesome Intel-based iMac Pro

01:03:14 ◼   ► for TruePro performance, and let's ship the Mac Pro

01:03:18 ◼   ► that we have in mind based around Xeon stuff first.

01:03:22 ◼   ► But clearly, they built that.

01:03:24 ◼   ► I mean, the Mac Pro in particular, I mean,

01:03:27 ◼   ► absolutely, positively was built by Ternus's team,

01:03:32 ◼   ► knowing what they were doing deeply at a deep technical sense where they're going with their custom silicon

01:03:39 ◼   ► Yeah

01:03:41 ◼   ► Yeah terribly exciting. Yeah, it's it honestly is really really interesting because this stuff doesn't you know processor roadmaps are known

01:03:48 ◼   ► Right because those companies make processors and they got to tell their there. They got to tell the markets what's coming, right?

01:03:55 ◼   ► Hey, we got this new things and hopefully people are gonna love them and we're making great stuff and all these technical advances

01:04:01 ◼   ► But we kind of know when Intel is shipping three years out, right?

01:04:05 ◼   ► Or four years out.

01:04:06 ◼   ► And so you kind of--

01:04:07 ◼   ► Or when they hope to.

01:04:08 ◼   ► Right.

01:04:09 ◼   ► Right, exactly.

01:04:10 ◼   ► In an ideal world, this is what we'll be shipping.

01:04:13 ◼   ► But right now, this is the first time in a long time

01:04:17 ◼   ► where the arc under a major computing platform,

01:04:23 ◼   ► or the column under which you would fill in these,

01:04:26 ◼   ► oh, this is going to use the 9900,

01:04:29 ◼   ► and this is going to use the 7200,

01:04:30 ◼   ► and this is going to use whatever.

01:04:32 ◼   ► It's blank.

01:04:33 ◼   ► And we just don't know.

01:04:35 ◼   ► And that's exciting.

01:04:37 ◼   ► To a processing nerd, it's exciting.

01:04:39 ◼   ► But also to anybody who's interested in general purpose

01:04:42 ◼   ► computing, I think it's--

01:04:43 ◼   ► I thought that the other thing that was a little bit of a hint--

01:04:46 ◼   ► and I just think that there's way too many people who

01:04:48 ◼   ► were looking at these dev kits with the A12Z

01:04:50 ◼   ► and thinking that that's even vaguely what they're

01:04:53 ◼   ► talking about shipping.

01:04:55 ◼   ► You know, like, oh, well, I guess they'll come out with an A14

01:04:57 ◼   ► for the iPhone in September, and then there'll

01:04:59 ◼   ► A14M and that's just a slight variant for the Mac.

01:05:03 ◼   ► It's like, that's not what they're talking about at all.

01:05:04 ◼   ► - No, doesn't feel that way to me.

01:05:06 ◼   ► Interesting times.

01:05:09 ◼   ► - So what do you wanna talk about before we wrap up?

01:05:11 ◼   ► You wanna talk about my show?

01:05:12 ◼   ► - Oh, no, I mean, I thought your show went great.

01:05:15 ◼   ► I think the WWDC is an interesting topic, though.

01:05:19 ◼   ► Just like how the show went.

01:05:20 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, how they did it virtually.

01:05:21 ◼   ► - I think they did a good job virtually.

01:05:23 ◼   ► There's some people saying, hey,

01:05:27 ◼   ► they should do this from now on,

01:05:29 ◼   ► you know, just like forgo the physical one.

01:05:32 ◼   ► - I saw Marco Arment tweeted that.

01:05:34 ◼   ► Marco just doesn't wanna leave his beloved beach house.

01:05:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, he's off enjoying the warm Atlantic Ocean.

01:05:41 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:05:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know, I will just say,

01:05:45 ◼   ► I have been a guest at Marco's beach house.

01:05:46 ◼   ► I can just tell you that Marco at that beach house is,

01:05:49 ◼   ► he's like plugged into the matrix.

01:05:52 ◼   ► And like, it's like,

01:05:55 ◼   ► The dopamine coming into his brain is just,

01:05:58 ◼   ► he really loves it there. - Living his best life.

01:05:59 ◼   ► - It is paradise for him.

01:06:01 ◼   ► He just, yeah, he just does not wanna leave.

01:06:03 ◼   ► It's like June is beach time for Marco Orman.

01:06:07 ◼   ► - Yeah. - You know what I mean?

01:06:08 ◼   ► Like if WWDC's traditional month was January.

01:06:12 ◼   ► - He'd be out, he's like, "Let's go."

01:06:13 ◼   ► - You know when Knack World was?

01:06:14 ◼   ► He wouldn't, yeah, he'd be like, "Let's go, let's get--"

01:06:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause it's gonna be 72 in January in the Bay.

01:06:21 ◼   ► So. (laughs)

01:06:23 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Yeah.

01:06:24 ◼   ► I do wonder.

01:06:25 ◼   ► I wonder.

01:06:27 ◼   ► I don't think it's off the table

01:06:29 ◼   ► that this might permanently change WWDC in some way.

01:06:33 ◼   ► Certainly they'll still have the media for a keynote.

01:06:38 ◼   ► I still think that they like it.

01:06:43 ◼   ► I think they like the face-to-face WWDC.

01:06:47 ◼   ► Will this change how they do the presentations?

01:06:50 ◼   ► The other thing that is compelling

01:06:52 ◼   ► is a lot of, some developers are saying,

01:06:55 ◼   ► "I like these presentations better,"

01:06:57 ◼   ► because presenting directly for a camera

01:07:01 ◼   ► is giving these presentations a more intimate

01:07:05 ◼   ► and direct feeling than a presentation

01:07:08 ◼   ► that was meant to be delivered on a stage

01:07:10 ◼   ► in a convention room.

01:07:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, and honestly, I thought that the format

01:07:15 ◼   ► did a few things for me that I thought were very positive.

01:07:18 ◼   ► One, the presenters got their time to shine.

01:07:22 ◼   ► These are people that have worked on these projects.

01:07:24 ◼   ► They'd have worked for years sometimes

01:07:28 ◼   ► without ever talking about it once to anybody

01:07:30 ◼   ► on these things.

01:07:31 ◼   ► And they got a chance to--

01:07:33 ◼   ► the presentations on the stage are great and fine

01:07:35 ◼   ► and all of that.

01:07:36 ◼   ► And I know the videotaped versions of those are fine.

01:07:38 ◼   ► But those presentations are often extremely slide heavy.

01:07:42 ◼   ► And the presenter is de-emphasized,

01:07:45 ◼   ► for lack of a better term.

01:07:46 ◼   ► And in these, the presenter is definitely

01:07:48 ◼   ► right up there in the front.

01:07:49 ◼   ► You get to see so many really interesting, cool people present projects they've worked

01:07:53 ◼   ► on for a really hell of a long time at Apple, as I mentioned, sometimes in complete obscurity

01:07:57 ◼   ► or secrecy for years.

01:08:00 ◼   ► I think that was really fun.

01:08:01 ◼   ► That was really cool.

01:08:02 ◼   ► Their passion definitely showed, and I thought the presentations were more engaging for it.

01:08:08 ◼   ► And then for me, the other big thing that's positive out of this, and hell, I'm going

01:08:13 ◼   ► to ask Apple.

01:08:14 ◼   ► I don't know if they'll ever share how much data they have, but I tweeted that I'd bet

01:08:19 ◼   ► anything that this is the most inclusive audience for WW that they've ever had.

01:08:25 ◼   ► Because I know that Apple has gone through an extensive amount of efforts to try to get

01:08:29 ◼   ► students, developers of color, black developers, Latinx developers, LGBTQ developers to the

01:08:37 ◼   ► show physically, to take part in the show, to make sure that they are creating a welcoming

01:08:44 ◼   ► environment.

01:08:45 ◼   ► But there's only so much you can do.

01:08:46 ◼   ► And the show sometimes just feels homogenous. A lot of white dudes, you know?

01:08:50 ◼   ► Yeah. Well, and yeah, the biggest thing in literally 50/50 demographically in the world

01:08:57 ◼   ► is women and men and gender and LGBTQ. But just, you know, yeah, lots of white dudes.

01:09:05 ◼   ► And I'd imagine that people sort of quote unquote "participating" in this live week.

01:09:11 ◼   ► Sure, the videos are eventually available to everybody.

01:09:15 ◼   ► We've known that for a long time, or for some time now that they've been doing that.

01:09:20 ◼   ► But I think in this live, everybody's talking and interacting with one another, largely

01:09:26 ◼   ► using Twitter, to be honest, as a medium to share clips of—and you notice that there's

01:09:31 ◼   ► tons of clips of presentations now, whereas there used to be a chilling effect on that.

01:09:36 ◼   ► They're like, "Oh, don't share a lot of these, please."

01:09:39 ◼   ► That was like the general gist.

01:09:42 ◼   ► Don't share video recordings of the presentations.

01:09:45 ◼   ► Well, they don't.

01:09:46 ◼   ► There's a ton on Twitter now.

01:09:48 ◼   ► And I think they're really cool.

01:09:49 ◼   ► A lot of them show off really neat features.

01:09:51 ◼   ► And a lot of the discussion around them, if you look at them, there's a very diverse

01:09:55 ◼   ► set of developers taking part in this sort of live discovery of these features and conversations

01:10:02 ◼   ► about them that they just don't get if they watch the video a week or two later and all

01:10:07 ◼   ► All of the initial chatter about them has maybe died down or whatever.

01:10:11 ◼   ► I just think that there's a very interesting thing that happened here that would never

01:10:15 ◼   ► have happened because the in-person scenario is largely lottery-based, which doesn't sort

01:10:22 ◼   ► of allow for any intentionality in the mix, right?

01:10:30 ◼   ► Whereas this is just the opposite of that where it's everybody.

01:10:34 ◼   ► So by nature, you're going to get a more inclusive environment.

01:10:37 ◼   ► I thought that was really cool.

01:10:39 ◼   ► I've certainly, for a long time, I've wished, even as I attended the shows, it's like,

01:10:43 ◼   ► man, I wish this group was more inclusive across the board because it frankly gets boring

01:10:50 ◼   ► when it's the same people.

01:10:51 ◼   ► You know?

01:10:52 ◼   ► So I thought that was cool.

01:10:54 ◼   ► There's a simple cost factor too, right?

01:10:57 ◼   ► I mean, above and beyond the lottery and getting lucky to go is that airfare and a hotel or

01:11:04 ◼   ► an Airbnb or whatever.

01:11:07 ◼   ► Just putting a roof over your head and eating and getting around.

01:11:10 ◼   ► Yeah, and a lot of developers are going to self-select out of that because they're like,

01:11:13 ◼   ► "Hey, I've got a family.

01:11:14 ◼   ► I've got a job and I've got all this stuff."

01:11:16 ◼   ► So, it opens it up to them too.

01:11:18 ◼   ► Right.

01:11:19 ◼   ► And it's just the schedule is a factor on the student landscape where there's an awful

01:11:23 ◼   ► lot of students who maybe could go, would go, would try to go, even though it's limited

01:11:28 ◼   ► space and can't because they're taking final exams in the second week of June or something

01:11:33 ◼   ► like that, especially high school type students. I know college is usually done by June, but

01:11:39 ◼   ► a lot of high schools are still going. And now they're full-fledged, a 17-year-old teenage

01:11:47 ◼   ► developer is on equal footing for consuming WWDC with the middle-aged professional who's

01:11:56 ◼   ► been going for 15, 20 years.

01:11:59 ◼   ► It is absolutely diversifying in several senses of the word.

01:12:05 ◼   ► I also think it's really interesting, very Apple, not surprising to me, but definitely

01:12:09 ◼   ► surprised some people in that Apple used this as an opportunity to up their production values,

01:12:16 ◼   ► lower their production values. Oh, it's coronavirus time, people in quarantine, you know, our

01:12:22 ◼   ► presentations won't be as polished. The average presentation level, you know, production quality

01:12:29 ◼   ► wise is way up. That to me is the thing that seems hard. Like, I don't think Apple's as

01:12:36 ◼   ► concerned about the cost of putting on the massive convention because again, I don't

01:12:41 ◼   ► know if you know this, but Apple has a fair amount of money.

01:12:44 ◼   ► I was aware. I was aware.

01:12:46 ◼   ► Again, I'm not the one writing the check,

01:12:50 ◼   ► you know, but I, you know, I know how much less I paid to produce my show this year by not

01:12:57 ◼   ► renting out the California theater for one night, and it's a lot of zeros by my standards.

01:13:03 ◼   ► But I just think that the one thing about this year's show that to me would

01:13:11 ◼   ► make apples catch apples institutional I

01:13:14 ◼   ► As to hmm. This would be hard to go back on is production quality production quality is

01:13:22 ◼   ► Defines Apple in every way right like they they make the nicest watch bands, right?

01:13:28 ◼   ► You know what? I mean? They're their videos are supposed to be high production quality

01:13:34 ◼   ► You know, the keynote had was high production value quality from start to finish and was fascinating

01:13:40 ◼   ► Did you notice, by the way, the safety disclosures at the end? Did you watch it? I thought that was

01:13:45 ◼   ► really cool. I'm going to totally steal that. So if anybody from Apple listens to this,

01:13:48 ◼   ► I'm ganking it. But we're doing our virtual events this year. And it was inspiring to us to see,

01:13:54 ◼   ► like, hey, because we're going through all the same planning. We want to make sure that we pull

01:13:57 ◼   ► off our events safely. Even though they're virtual, there will be contact among production

01:14:01 ◼   ► members. And we want to make sure that's handled carefully. I thought that was a really cool touch.

01:14:05 ◼   ► Right. And I just, I really do, in a way that it just seems like they can deliver a production

01:14:14 ◼   ► quality of these session videos when they're delivered personally and staged entirely in a

01:14:22 ◼   ► way that is only meant to be delivered on video that simply cannot be done for something delivered

01:14:27 ◼   ► on stage to an audience of a few hundred people in a room. And I don't know how they go back on

01:14:33 ◼   ► that so I don't know I don't know what they do it also doesn't make sense to

01:14:38 ◼   ► just have a 5,000 person keynote and then say okay the rest of the week is

01:14:42 ◼   ► virtual yeah I agree I mean I don't I don't know what the exact path forward

01:14:48 ◼   ► is but I don't think a hybrid approach is out of the question for sure

01:14:53 ◼   ► yeah what did you think I wasn't sure I guess if I something I I wasn't I I

01:15:01 ◼   ► I hadn't rewatched the keynote yet when I did my interview with Jaws and and Federighi

01:15:06 ◼   ► and then I rewatched part of it and I kind of think parts of it weren't real.

01:15:12 ◼   ► I think that there was, you know, there were special effects in there.

01:15:15 ◼   ► Like I'm not entirely sure Craig Federighi was in the Steve Jobs theater for everything

01:15:20 ◼   ► where it looked like he was in the atrium, you know, and I'm not even sure that the screen

01:15:24 ◼   ► behind him was real.

01:15:25 ◼   ► It was, it's, but it was convincing if it wasn't real

01:15:29 ◼   ► and if it was real, it was done in a way

01:15:32 ◼   ► that was so polished that it almost didn't look real?

01:15:35 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:15:36 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:15:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, it could have just been touch up,

01:15:40 ◼   ► you know, visual touch up that kind of gave it that look.

01:15:43 ◼   ► Certainly, they chose a look for it that,

01:15:48 ◼   ► I guess you would call like new Apple video.

01:15:50 ◼   ► You know, it's certainly a little bit overexposed,

01:15:53 ◼   ► a little bit more contrast, graded that way.

01:15:57 ◼   ► Although it would be fun to like,

01:15:59 ◼   ► maybe engage somebody who does visual work

01:16:05 ◼   ► to kind of run down an examination of the keynote

01:16:10 ◼   ► and be like, oh, they definitely did this here, that there.

01:16:13 ◼   ► We know some people who might be down for that.

01:16:17 ◼   ► - I was talking to my friend Adam Lisagor

01:16:19 ◼   ► at Sandwich Video 'cause they did the editing for my show

01:16:21 ◼   ► And we were so busy with my show that we didn't really have a lot of time.

01:16:24 ◼   ► He was just like--

01:16:25 ◼   ► I was like, what do you think?

01:16:26 ◼   ► And he was like, it's interesting.

01:16:28 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

01:16:32 ◼   ► But I do think--

01:16:32 ◼   ► I think it was a success.

01:16:34 ◼   ► I really do.

01:16:34 ◼   ► I think it was compelling.

01:16:35 ◼   ► I think it was appley.

01:16:36 ◼   ► I think it was on brand and for Apple and engaging for people who watched

01:16:42 ◼   ► and very enjoyable.

01:16:45 ◼   ► And I just don't know where the line stopped between real drone shots of Apple

01:16:49 ◼   ► Park and what was virtual.

01:16:51 ◼   ► I mean, all to their credit,

01:16:53 ◼   ► where the special effects were like, I don't know.

01:16:56 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure a camera didn't really pass

01:16:59 ◼   ► through the ceiling, but it sure looked like it did.

01:17:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:17:02 ◼   ► A little Hitchcock situation going on there.

01:17:04 ◼   ► I think they definitely used an FPV drone for some of it,

01:17:10 ◼   ► which is a trend I've been following more.

01:17:12 ◼   ► You're gonna see this more and more.

01:17:13 ◼   ► I think you're gonna even see it in action films.

01:17:15 ◼   ► There's already been some action films that have used drones,

01:17:17 ◼   ► but specifically racing drones,

01:17:20 ◼   ► which is these drones that are capable

01:17:22 ◼   ► of these incredibly tight turns,

01:17:24 ◼   ► indoor to outdoor transitions,

01:17:26 ◼   ► moving through super small spaces and all of this stuff.

01:17:30 ◼   ► But you could tell it was also combined

01:17:31 ◼   ► with some crane work and some visual effects, for sure.

01:17:35 ◼   ► But I thought it was pretty nicely done,

01:17:37 ◼   ► given that they pulled it together

01:17:39 ◼   ► in essentially a couple of months.

01:17:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, at least,

01:17:44 ◼   ► I don't know when the hay maybe really occurred

01:17:48 ◼   ► to the WWDC planning crew, but certainly, you know,

01:17:52 ◼   ► March, you know, stuff got real, but--

01:17:56 ◼   ► - I think you'd be correct to assume

01:17:58 ◼   ► it'd be in March sometime, yeah.

01:18:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know, that's a lot to pull together.

01:18:03 ◼   ► It would've been an impressive thing

01:18:04 ◼   ► if they had decided a year ago

01:18:06 ◼   ► that this was gonna be entirely virtual.

01:18:07 ◼   ► I think for something that they pulled together,

01:18:10 ◼   ► you know, in three months was really, really,

01:18:12 ◼   ► hats off, you know, and budget be damned.

01:18:15 ◼   ► It's just hard to do in a compressed period of time,

01:18:18 ◼   ► no matter what your budget.

01:18:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, so it's sometime, right.

01:18:21 ◼   ► At some point, the money is not really the factor at all.

01:18:23 ◼   ► It's like, can you pull it off in that group of time?

01:18:26 ◼   ► And remember, too, that it's not just the keynote

01:18:28 ◼   ► and the splashiness of that,

01:18:29 ◼   ► and then presenting stuff online.

01:18:31 ◼   ► A lot of those things they had already had in place.

01:18:33 ◼   ► You know, obviously, the new developer portals

01:18:36 ◼   ► and updates to all of that stuff was in place.

01:18:38 ◼   ► But it's also all of the sessions with everybody

01:18:40 ◼   ► that they would normally do on stage,

01:18:42 ◼   ► you know, recording all of those individually.

01:18:45 ◼   ► I love that everybody had their individual desk pets.

01:18:47 ◼   ► They got to pick their own desk pets, it seems like, which was fun.

01:18:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:18:55 ◼   ► Well, anyway, thank you very much.

01:18:57 ◼   ► Good to talk to you.

01:18:58 ◼   ► Wish I would have seen you this week.

01:19:00 ◼   ► It seems weird that I haven't, but someday.

01:19:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I do miss having some questionable cuisine and pretty decent beers.

01:19:10 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:19:13 ◼   ► Lots of fried foods in WWDC week.

01:19:16 ◼   ► Lots of fried foods.

01:19:16 ◼   ► - Should we eat half of our body weight in prime rib?

01:19:19 ◼   ► Sure, why not?

01:19:21 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:19:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:19:23 ◼   ► Oh yeah, it's not even, it's not even, yeah, I know.

01:19:26 ◼   ► I was wondering why I didn't have the meat sweats.

01:19:29 ◼   ► I was like, something's missing.

01:19:30 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:19:32 ◼   ► - Good talking to you.

01:19:37 ◼   ► All right.

01:19:37 ◼   ► - Well, we'll toast to the house of prime rib

01:19:39 ◼   ► next year, hopefully.