00:00:00 ◼ ► Nothing going on this August. I don't know. It's like the worst DC Universe movie ever and I'm just afraid what the Snyder Cut's gonna be
00:00:07 ◼ ► What's going on with that thing that's that's crazy right is that nuts I only following that loosely and it's like I
00:00:16 ◼ ► Have I'm like the rare person like and I think that this is going to be the theme of the episode
00:00:26 ◼ ► Yeah, and Zack Snyder seems to be a very polarizing filmmaker and my take on Zack Snyder is sort of in the middle
00:00:33 ◼ ► Like I feel like I'm like the one fan of superhero movies who's like, I guess I mostly like them
00:00:45 ◼ ► Everybody can be wrong is my takeaway. I think Twitter hates the idea that multiple people can be right and or wrong
00:00:55 ◼ ► But I think Justice League was a bad movie and I think this lighter cut gonna be a bad movie
00:00:59 ◼ ► I can't remember I honest to God. This is the truth. I can't remember if I watch Justice League
00:01:09 ◼ ► I don't still don't think I still think that the only good Superman movie ever made was Richard Donner's original. Yes, man
00:01:24 ◼ ► and it's like what a bold move just doing away with the theme music and going with a new one and it worked for me and
00:01:36 ◼ ► But then you know, it's the false apart. So anyway, the whole thing with the Zack Snyder cut of the movie is that
00:01:55 ◼ ► They didn't want him doing this anymore because his previous movies were doing so badly both, you know
00:02:01 ◼ ► But in terms of public reaction and then his father passed away and they sort of used that as a way to move him aside
00:02:07 ◼ ► In the middle of production who'd made the X Avengers right, but that's in the middle of production. Yes
00:02:13 ◼ ► Yeah, or maybe more than past the middle of production. Yes. It was before the reshoots, right?
00:02:19 ◼ ► And Joss Whedon isn't just a director if anything he's better known as a writer. I mean, he's a filmmaker
00:02:30 ◼ ► And he's obviously helmed as directors and inordinately beloved in popular movies, but he is a writer. So, you know that he's not gonna
00:02:37 ◼ ► He's not at somebody's just gonna come in and say okay. Give me the script. I'll start I'll just pick it up, you know
00:02:47 ◼ ► mismatch mishmash and now the cast are coming forward and just saying he was terrible and the producers were terrible and the whole thing was a
00:03:07 ◼ ► I was gonna say you take your seat and let the film star but nobody does that anymore, right?
00:03:26 ◼ ► Are just petty politics and gossip and you know people get into digs in and then there's some where it's like
00:03:48 ◼ ► Disaster behind the scenes and that's not even like gossip. That was just like just flat-out
00:03:58 ◼ ► Probably never should have made this movie in the first place. I think Disney said that
00:04:11 ◼ ► I believe it averted the cinemas called Arlo Finch. No, I'm so it's not Arlo Finch. I'm sorry
00:04:16 ◼ ► It's Artemis Fowl, not not Arlo Finch and it was hugely controversial for not being a like the book
00:04:24 ◼ ► But Harry Potter is a supervillain and towards the end of it you start to see some redeeming qualities
00:04:29 ◼ ► And that was the actual movie they made but then when they realized they were putting it on streaming
00:04:34 ◼ ► They knew they couldn't just put it up like that because in a movie theater you pay your money up front and you're forced to
00:04:39 ◼ ► Put up with the movie until the end and they figured that gave them time to redeem the character
00:04:44 ◼ ► But on streaming if the kid was unlikable in the beginning people would just click off immediately
00:04:59 ◼ ► So through the entire first half of the movie you almost never see anyone say anything on screen. Yeah, that's that's an interesting story
00:05:06 ◼ ► That is interesting that you kind of have to write streaming stuff in a different way, right? Yeah
00:05:27 ◼ ► Yeah, they're kind of finally getting away from the beat. Is there anything left beats branded other than their beats headphones?
00:05:37 ◼ ► So what do we so the gist is that the until recently or until yesterday the big station on Apple music was beats one
00:05:51 ◼ ► Which is odd because when they meant when they said beats one originally a lot of us thought that meant there was going to be a beats
00:06:04 ◼ ► Yeah, but I wonder if that's why they're doing this now. I don't know. Maybe that's still
00:06:14 ◼ ► Want to say which is all of a sudden seems like a long time ago. They had they got two things
00:06:20 ◼ ► They got a big profitable headphone business and they got a streaming music service that they parlayed into
00:06:31 ◼ ► always thought and still think that they bought it primarily for the streaming thing and in both in terms of a
00:06:51 ◼ ► 2001 2002 when Apple launched the iTunes music store. I'm not gonna say they hoodwinked the music labels, but they
00:07:08 ◼ ► Negotiated terms that would have allowed them to sell these music the music everywhere and the music labels
00:07:19 ◼ ► But it only works on the Mac and the Mac is a niche market with like under 5% market share. So why not?
00:07:26 ◼ ► Experiment with Apple at the most this will ever be 5% of the market if everybody on a Mac
00:07:42 ◼ ► But anyway apples then, you know growing influence in the music industry led them to be grew
00:07:50 ◼ ► Viewed with suspicion rightfully so right like well, let's be careful negotiating with Apple. So I've always thought Apple
00:08:09 ◼ ► But you negotiated with them and we can buy them and so now we've bought them and now we have these licensing deals that were
00:08:30 ◼ ► I don't think they also just really like Jimmy Iovine and relationships and his vision for curated music because it was very anti
00:08:42 ◼ ► and that's where I was going next was that even if those deals were severed or severable or
00:08:47 ◼ ► Expired which at this point again if it's six seven years since it happened probably did
00:09:15 ◼ ► And it's interesting because they they've had beats one for a while now and they're launching beats hits
00:09:25 ◼ ► They seem to feel like they already have a lock on the hip-hop market or not a lot but a huge share
00:09:34 ◼ ► But that's very modern hits or neck or what's tomorrow's hits driven and the hits channel is gonna focus on
00:09:40 ◼ ► music hits from the sixth and seventies eight sorry eighties nine eighties nineties and two thousands and
00:09:46 ◼ ► Country is going to be based in Nashville and focusing on a very different music scene for them. Hmm
00:09:52 ◼ ► Yeah, you know, I guess that's just the nature of the game. What do you think about what's the deals now with Beats headphones?
00:09:59 ◼ ► Do you think that that just continues or do you think that this does this make this is raise your?
00:10:14 ◼ ► I think John Prosser published something a while back saying that they were actively deprecating it
00:10:17 ◼ ► But if just if you look at the evidence that we have they're replacing more and more of the Beats line with AirPods branded
00:10:24 ◼ ► Devices and AirPods branded devices are far more popular than any of the Beats branded devices
00:10:30 ◼ ► I think initially they liked the Beats brand because it had a very good demographic for them. They were very there was popular
00:10:37 ◼ ► Culturally significant they were selling a lot but then AirPods came along and there I don't know what else to say it
00:10:44 ◼ ► They've just become an entire subculture and that has greater value than I think them keeping the Beats
00:10:50 ◼ ► Label around and if rumors of new over the year and around the ear AirPods are true then it seems
00:11:00 ◼ ► Yeah, and there's always there's a part of me too that always thought and I think it's almost certainly true
00:11:21 ◼ ► Yeah thing and it was sold at a premium, you know that it was, you know, you know juicy profit margins
00:11:34 ◼ ► We're if they lost their headphones or wanted a new pair they were gonna buy another pair of Beats
00:11:38 ◼ ► You know, it's that they start by saying, you know, what Beach should I buy as opposed to which headphones should I buy?
00:11:47 ◼ ► But it's just weird for Apple to have a subsidiary like that, right? It's just not something they do
00:11:53 ◼ ► They're not a conglomerate that owns a bunch of sub brands. There's like file maker in this right and even file maker
00:12:01 ◼ ► You know a file maker as an independent company is truly ancient history by anyone's standards of this industry, right?
00:12:27 ◼ ► It's you know and then again if you go around and just pull a thousand people and how many of them have heard of Beats headphones
00:12:41 ◼ ► If you talk to people who are listening to me and you right now on this show. Yeah, sure
00:12:45 ◼ ► They've heard of file maker, but even there I mean how many people do you know who are still using file maker on a regular basis?
00:12:58 ◼ ► You know anything with beats for me is that they've always done things that I think is beyond what Apple would do like they have
00:13:04 ◼ ► Headphones in every Olympic team color. Yeah, or Mickey Mouse branded headphones, which are deals. I don't see Apple making with AirPods
00:13:11 ◼ ► Yeah, totally and it gets them it also I think gets them a certain segment of the market who you know
00:13:21 ◼ ► Wouldn't buy wouldn't buy an an Apple pair of headphones, even if it worked it was advertised as working with Android
00:13:31 ◼ ► Would buy beats and so it is you know, it's but but on the whole I just don't see it as going away
00:13:59 ◼ ► But supposedly at least a third, you know, the big new one the over the ears type thing
00:14:15 ◼ ► You've got the AirPods Pro which are noise cancelling but the same basic idea as regular AirPods
00:14:36 ◼ ► It's for me is just saying like AirPods X because I try to say this with the processors
00:14:43 ◼ ► I was trying to say a 12x yesterday and I kept saying a 1210 and apples destroyed any ability for me to distinguish what that
00:14:55 ◼ ► Leah at least Microsoft's very consistent. They use a lot of X's but they're always access
00:15:16 ◼ ► Let me take a break before we dig into the meat of the show and thank our first sponsor
00:15:24 ◼ ► I'm Ted. I keep saying that over and over again and it's like this whole year for better for worse
00:15:29 ◼ ► Not even getting to the worst but just the basic notion of it. It's it's Groundhog Day year, right?
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00:15:38 ◼ ► This 2020 is it we all have a lot more time on our hands. I'm telling you if you one of the things on your
00:15:46 ◼ ► I should do while I'm mostly at home still stuck in quarantine if one of them is to make a new website or update an
00:16:03 ◼ ► registration to picking a template to modifying the template to picking which sort of components you want on a website like is it a blog is
00:16:20 ◼ ► You could do it just one of them you could host a menu just about every restaurant every small mom-and-pop restaurant
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00:17:19 ◼ ► Squarespace.com slash talk show and that same code talk show when you sign up gets you 10% off your first purchase. I
00:17:50 ◼ ► Step he's long time. I don't even know they don't even say how long he's been the senior vice president of worldwide marketing
00:17:59 ◼ ► Don't know when they lost the product, but it's the same job. I think when jaws became VP of product marketing. Hmm, maybe
00:18:06 ◼ ► I'm not quite sure what that means. But like a lot of companies that probably mean something inside Apple
00:18:23 ◼ ► Phil Schiller heading into retirement or is he really going to be around for years to come with the App Store and
00:18:40 ◼ ► But they're not I mean Mansfield try to get out and they brought him back in so I really know
00:19:01 ◼ ► You know not probably not quite certainly nobody's up there with Steve Jobs. Nobody anymore is up there with Tim Cook
00:19:21 ◼ ► Think when Johnny phone intros for years that yeah most popular visible positions to do
00:19:27 ◼ ► Every time whether there were a couple of years were early on, you know, where Steve Jobs was out on medical leave
00:19:55 ◼ ► In fact, maybe still to some degree that's true that every single iPhone has either been introduced on stage by Steve Jobs or Phil Schiller
00:20:07 ◼ ► I think that's the first variant client grants the right president not new vice president of iPhone marketing, right?
00:20:13 ◼ ► Oh, so she's got the she took Josh Joss's old title. Is that true? I didn't know though Joss was VP of product marketing
00:20:19 ◼ ► And he had a bunch of VPS under him like Stan was vice president of Apple watch marketing cayenne's vice president of iPhone
00:20:49 ◼ ► The pro is obviously the one that's the hero in the lineup. But the iPhone 11 is the one that's the
00:21:01 ◼ ► I think just Schiller loved the cameras so much too and the 11 Pro was all mostly about the cameras. Yeah
00:21:07 ◼ ► Yeah, because it was the first one to have three. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah and the sweater mode
00:21:16 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't want to because you know and it's weird it's you know, I don't know what you call it
00:21:31 ◼ ► I don't feel I honestly don't feel like it's time to talk about Phil Schiller in the past tense
00:21:42 ◼ ► I have here for the rest of this podcast the App Store is go where are going to mention it once or twice
00:21:59 ◼ ► You know, the thing is that the senior vice presidents at Apple are all overloaded. They would all be presidents
00:22:09 ◼ ► And if you look at Eddie's desk or Phil's desk previously the the sheer quantity of things they had to deal with
00:22:15 ◼ ► Was ridiculous, which is why I think they were aggressive in getting a whole new range of vice presidents under them
00:22:24 ◼ ► You know the the senior vice president of worldwide marketing and not having to deal with the App Store and with events in
00:22:36 ◼ ► There's gonna be a lot going on right now you keeping those two things just much appreciated, right?
00:22:41 ◼ ► So the two things that are still on Phil Schiller's plate as an Apple fellow are the App Store and Apple events
00:22:51 ◼ ► Aspect of Apple's business. I think I think it's fair to say that it's obviously up for argument and the highest profile
00:22:59 ◼ ► Aspect which I think is inarguable right the Apple introduction events, especially the fall one for new iPhones
00:23:07 ◼ ► And you know any other special events they deem necessary throughout the year are obviously the highest proof
00:23:17 ◼ ► Right. I mean it's and that's only the events we see but that organization also is huge and does a ton of other things from developer
00:24:00 ◼ ► We'll get back to having public events without I mean, you know for the long way or the short way eventually
00:24:15 ◼ ► I don't think anybody really complained about it when it happened. It was like wow, this is you know, maybe there were things we were surprised
00:24:20 ◼ ► They did it this way or that way but now watching is more time has gone on and more companies have done things
00:24:38 ◼ ► We're just not there. So there is no that the and I feel like it's fair to say, you know that that's
00:24:51 ◼ ► Like yeah, I don't think it was ever even on the table for Apple not to have WWDC in some way online
00:25:05 ◼ ► Doesn't always do like the new version of Android is just announced at some point and they do three betas and then it's live
00:25:13 ◼ ► Right and Facebook, you know, I'm not saying that you know, their developer conference has developers and there are things that
00:25:37 ◼ ► and again this will tie in to the remainder of this episode but the App Store and the message from Apple to third-party
00:26:06 ◼ ► Samsung's event I saw mixed reviews of Samsung's event. I couldn't watch the whole thing, but I saw some clips
00:26:12 ◼ ► I thought it was I mean it wasn't unprofessional, but I thought it was really bad. I thought there were aspects of it that were just I
00:26:23 ◼ ► No, the thing is and a lot of people say oh, it's because it's 2020 or it's because you know
00:26:36 ◼ ► And I knew some of the people who were working at Samsung at the time and they said basically
00:26:39 ◼ ► They got the script on the teleprompter was the first time they ever saw it and they tried their best to say it out loud
00:26:44 ◼ ► And that's apparently what happened again this time and just it must be five or six years later
00:26:55 ◼ ► There were there were two main co-hosts sort of like news anchors at a desk there there was an Asian woman on the left and
00:27:06 ◼ ► You know lots of points for diversity with you know a woman and a man and an Asian and a black
00:27:26 ◼ ► I mean and some of what they were reading where I mean they were clearly just reading and it was very, you know
00:27:36 ◼ ► I believe it was I believe that's the first time I saw that stuff because the script keeps getting and there also
00:27:40 ◼ ► Samsung America fights with Samsung Korea over who's gonna be in charge of things or who's gonna do things and you can't run a company
00:27:48 ◼ ► That way it's not a unified vision for an event right and that it it highlights to me and I you know that
00:27:57 ◼ ► Apple's WWDC was certainly more diverse and who got screen time then you know in there and their
00:28:27 ◼ ► Divisionally where each division is are arguing for time in the keynote whether they deserve whether that works for the company's benefit or not
00:28:36 ◼ ► You know and it's time for somebody from the Xbox division to come up and speak even though there's nothing new for the Xbox this year
00:28:47 ◼ ► And and sometimes that's very transparent and the lack of a divisional nature within Apple sort of has always helped them avoid that
00:28:54 ◼ ► But the thing about Apple and the people you see in their events is that it's always people who are responsible
00:29:03 ◼ ► Yes directly for the thing that they are telling you about, you know, and if it's somebody telling you about the new
00:29:19 ◼ ► It's somebody who's directly involved in the development of the air pods product. It's not just let's pick somebody to talk about it
00:29:30 ◼ ► If the power went out and you were stuck in an elevator with them and they had no prep like no preparation time
00:29:39 ◼ ► Right, that is it's very true, right and you know that they're they're obviously involved in picking out these sort of bullet points
00:29:50 ◼ ► So I really do think that you know having seen a couple of other things and I'll throw in the Democratic National Convention
00:30:21 ◼ ► And they're doing you know, it's to me a credible job, you know, basically you're not putting on a live show anymore
00:30:31 ◼ ► They're doing okay, but it's not they're not doing great. I think what Apple did with WWDC like
00:30:37 ◼ ► WWDC is the only thing that's happened so far in 2020 that used to be live wasn't live at all and
00:30:45 ◼ ► Afterwards had a lot of people saying oh, this is probably what they're gonna do forever. Even when COVID is over
00:31:00 ◼ ► Exactly that like and Samsung had terrific products like they like you you can either like them or not like them think they're boring or
00:31:12 ◼ ► Where Apple didn't have any like no products that required atoms like at this life in the developer kit
00:31:22 ◼ ► Expertly done. Yeah, and it you know things that were awkward or just I don't remember anything, you know
00:31:29 ◼ ► It was all very smooth and rehearsed and well tight and tightened up like I with the Samsung
00:31:39 ◼ ► You know and it would hopefully they weren't because I think it would you know, they were too close, you know
00:31:47 ◼ ► But there were times where their banter back and forth was just so poorly edited where it's like I really hope that this is just
00:31:54 ◼ ► Poorly edited back and forth banter because if they really were together, this is excruciating
00:32:00 ◼ ► It was well usually like there's a couple things that I always dunk on Samsung for every year and one is they they're very different
00:32:08 ◼ ► They always do pre briefings which means like if it was me and you we would go to Samsung a week or two weeks before
00:32:28 ◼ ► So like Marquez and everybody's videos go live and now I no longer know if I should be watching the event
00:32:36 ◼ ► Where typically they spend like a they have a 20-minute speech about how they're the most innovative company in the world
00:32:44 ◼ ► I don't hear that from any CEO when I'm a captive audience and they had like a two-person interview this time
00:32:48 ◼ ► Which which wasted my time in exactly the same way. I I just don't I just show me the products and tell me why I should
00:32:58 ◼ ► Embargo a day afterwards. It's very strange. Yeah. Yeah, we're after the show anything that makes it just more literally possible like a
00:33:13 ◼ ► Hope not just because I it's one of the things where you just want to see it's like when Batman comes out one last time
00:33:20 ◼ ► It just gives you that rush and if he was had the opportunity to do something that he loved
00:33:25 ◼ ► Like talk about new photographic technology or new audio technology or a big change to the App Store
00:33:31 ◼ ► Which I'm sure we'll get into soon and he could do that on stage. I think it would be terrific
00:33:38 ◼ ► You know sort of enjoying the past ones not knowing that that way they were gonna be that yeah
00:33:57 ◼ ► Apple's events have evolved over time and and when you go back and watch the Steve Jobs era ones
00:34:13 ◼ ► Incrementally year after year event after event, but they've gotten a lot more polished. They've gotten a lot more Hollywood
00:34:26 ◼ ► But one of the other differences is that there's a lot more people who get stage time now
00:34:37 ◼ ► like there were times in the past where it really, you know, especially in the jobs era where it was
00:34:48 ◼ ► You know, it's like when the iPhone got introduced and it's like well, let's bring Eric Schmidt from Google
00:34:53 ◼ ► And Jerry Yang from Yahoo to talk about the weather app that we're using Yahoo weather for oh and who can forget?
00:35:06 ◼ ► God, I'm blanking on it. Oh, yeah, that was those are always terrible Stan the man with the worst the worst on stage
00:35:35 ◼ ► Change that I've noticed but most people don't seem to comment on but I think it's only for the better
00:35:54 ◼ ► here's you know and and just down the line and and the WWDC coach keynote credited every single person who appeared by name and
00:36:06 ◼ ► they're you didn't really have to see their title because whatever they're talking about is what they work on but I
00:36:13 ◼ ► there's a certain strategy to that to become less reliant on Phil Schiller individually and
00:36:19 ◼ ► You know Craig Federighi and you know, it's not just Tim Craig and Phil doing everything every time
00:36:30 ◼ ► Well, it's so different because you would if you I watched the old events quite a lot and when they were at Town Hall at
00:36:40 ◼ ► Steve would just say and Phil's gonna tell you about it or even Johnny's gonna tell you about the new unibody and you'd literally see them
00:37:10 ◼ ► and it makes me a little annoyed because they're obviously not paying close attention to my WWDC talk shows, but
00:37:22 ◼ ► And I and but he was on my show afterwards and I brought it up and I remember that which it was
00:37:37 ◼ ► But we were still in San Francisco and I asked Phil about hey, this is the first time I think in a long time
00:38:04 ◼ ► the number two after Tim Cook at WWDC where they're talking about their software platforms and
00:38:27 ◼ ► He just had so many hardware products at that show and he capped it off. I think with the home pod
00:38:33 ◼ ► I remember that that was a tough demo because I remember he even acknowledged that it was a tough demo because it's like
00:38:38 ◼ ► We've done all this advanced stuff to make it sound good in the living room and now we have to simulate it for you and have
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00:40:54 ◼ ► Boy it's a lot John. Hey, you know what before we go on to app so we should just say I I think that in addition to
00:40:59 ◼ ► Because he's been on stage so much the Phil Schiller moving on from being in charge of product marketing to its title of Apple fellow
00:41:30 ◼ ► And it you know, I'm not just saying this in the self-serving way that jaws has been on my show a couple of times
00:41:44 ◼ ► The amount of time he's been on stage is not proportionate to his influence within that marketing division
00:41:51 ◼ ► You know, he's just you know, humbly allowed himself to be mostly offstage over the years
00:42:06 ◼ ► Yeah, and he's also one of the smart like in my old career when I worked in product marketing
00:42:11 ◼ ► I was an enterprise but most of the marketing people that you dealt with were salespeople
00:42:18 ◼ ► They would tell you it had any feature and if it didn't have it that you know that the sky was limit
00:42:22 ◼ ► They just wanted to make sales and Apple's marketing is not like that at all. He's an engineer
00:42:47 ◼ ► individually, but really is more about the entire division that people's the layperson's
00:43:13 ◼ ► Do you you know that you know that you're like the in-house ad agency for the products that you know?
00:43:20 ◼ ► That is how marketing works at some companies and maybe how marketing works at a lot of companies
00:43:31 ◼ ► But I always said that when his title was direct or senior vice president of worldwide product marketing
00:43:37 ◼ ► The product was more important than the marketing. Yes, and they're involved from the conception forward
00:43:58 ◼ ► Tremendous person to have like I've spoken to her in the off-the-record briefings after events, but it's always in the context of
00:44:20 ◼ ► Intricate knowledge of how this really works to explain it to you in the way that I know will answer your question, you know
00:44:26 ◼ ► But she handled the a-12 announcement two years ago in September and she knows the SOC everything on deeply technical levels
00:44:47 ◼ ► Testifying before Congress and they're like, let me take a note of that and I'll have someone get back to you
00:44:54 ◼ ► Right, it is never like I need to get I need to talk to somebody and I'll get back to you with an answer
00:45:01 ◼ ► It's they know the answer and they're just you know, like good teacher figuring out how do they had you know pedagogically?
00:45:12 ◼ ► like the industrial design team like they they feel an ownership of the iPhone's design and the hard engineering team feels an ownership of how
00:45:19 ◼ ► It gets produced and the software and interface people feel ownership of how it runs and how it looks
00:45:27 ◼ ► Keep in constant contact with all of it and make sure all those components end up to be a cohesive thing
00:45:36 ◼ ► Yeah, and I do think you know in a broad sense it it gets to the advertising part the packaging part
00:45:46 ◼ ► Management part which you know is inherently nebulous right? Like what is the Apple brand worth?
00:45:54 ◼ ► Forbes or somebody comes up with a number every year and says, you know, here's here's what these top brands are worth
00:45:59 ◼ ► You can't that's just BS right? I mean, but you can't really put a dollar amount on it. It is so nebulous
00:46:10 ◼ ► It does get to the heart though of what I think good marketing is good marketing is inherently honest
00:46:36 ◼ ► Ideas the way to present it to the public falls out of that because you just describe it, you know
00:46:58 ◼ ► User relevant this will actually change what you do in your personal life when you take photos of your friends and families
00:47:12 ◼ ► Photos, you know, but it's exactly that it's like a good bad marketers will take a product
00:47:17 ◼ ► No one wants and try to con them people into buying it right and you know bad good marketers
00:47:32 ◼ ► And that's why I think they've had the success that they have right and it is also very contrary to these sort of
00:47:45 ◼ ► Overrated overpriced and sold by hype. I mean, I'm not trying to a bunch of diluted cultists
00:47:53 ◼ ► Yeah, or you know even to a lesser to ground trying to trying to be a little bit more generous to the viewpoint
00:48:13 ◼ ► You know argue that like a Lexus or an Acura is just a bunch of better plastic on a Honda or Toyota
00:48:24 ◼ ► You just buy the Honda Accord instead of the the Acura you're just paying for hype or whatever
00:48:32 ◼ ► There's that mindset towards Apple and I really think that that's that's I disagree with it
00:48:39 ◼ ► But I also think you're if you start with that perspective you're going to misunderstand with what this entire
00:48:46 ◼ ► Division within Apple does and what their role is and why they're the ones on stage telling us about these products
00:49:00 ◼ ► So for some like an absolute and we'll get to this in a minute an absolute open computing environment is incredibly valuable
00:49:16 ◼ ► But they also don't understand why anybody would want that and I think the the hard part is understanding your subjective view
00:49:23 ◼ ► Not mistaking it for an objective view, but also understanding and respecting that other people have very different views and priorities and values
00:50:44 ◼ ► but it takes the input from your game controller and it effectively turns your net connection to the Xbox into the
00:50:53 ◼ ► HDMI connection that you have with a real, you know, it's just replay if you think of it as replacing
00:51:07 ◼ ► You can even then like you can press play and pause and do even like our Bandersnatch on Netflix
00:51:12 ◼ ► You could interact with it is really just the bits and and the video and audio is for a gaming experience
00:51:24 ◼ ► It was somewhat highly publicized test flight beta where I presume they filled up the 10,000 spots very easily
00:51:31 ◼ ► But they could only do one game even in the test box environment. They could only do Master Chief for the halo game
00:51:39 ◼ ► Android they did have multiple games. Yeah, and they will in the eventual service is going to ship with hundreds of games
00:51:51 ◼ ► This is something I don't know enough about I don't think that test flight betas still go through
00:52:20 ◼ ► Would guess if it was actual online gambling, you know, if you could play real money blackjack in the app
00:52:34 ◼ ► So it goes through but even there the rules against having like I forget the exact app store
00:52:41 ◼ ► Guideline rule but effectively you cannot have a game an app that contains multiple games
00:52:51 ◼ ► You can have any sorts of stories except for an app or game store and we know where they draw the line on that
00:52:57 ◼ ► I don't know. I mean obviously there are for just to name an example. There's solitaire games
00:53:03 ◼ ► There's you know a hundred different ways to play solitaire. You can have a solitaire game that offers a hundred game options
00:53:10 ◼ ► You know that are different types of solitaire games that doesn't run afoul of it, but you can't have a solitaire game. That also
00:53:17 ◼ ► Is a pac-man game? I don't know where the line is drawn. I don't know this distribution
00:53:25 ◼ ► Maybe even if you're Hasbro, you could have a couple of your own games in an app, right?
00:53:30 ◼ ► I can't be distributing third-party content, right? Right makes it a store so you could make a casino game
00:53:48 ◼ ► They Apple apparently either Apple drew the line I presume or Microsoft voluntarily drew it
00:54:05 ◼ ► Bottom line is Microsoft said well, we don't see a path forward for this. So it's gonna be Android only and we're giving up
00:54:52 ◼ ► They're gonna have like a hundred games, you know, Halo and this and that and they're all real Xbox games
00:54:59 ◼ ► $15 a month and you can keep playing all these games and they'll add more games as they become available. I don't think this is about
00:55:18 ◼ ► You know, I think everybody's jumps to the conclusion then, you know, not wrongly. It's not it's not idiot
00:55:23 ◼ ► Idiotic just to just start with the assumption that it's about money. That's actually usually a good assumption, right? You're good
00:55:31 ◼ ► You'll be right more often than wrong if in any of these disputes your first guess is I'll bet it's about money
00:55:38 ◼ ► You're probably I think in this case ultimately about money. Is it short term about money? Is it long term about money?
00:55:48 ◼ ► I don't think it is I don't you know, and I think that at first thought you're thinking like well
00:55:56 ◼ ► like the way Netflix used to work for years and years was you could sign up for Netflix at
00:56:01 ◼ ► Netflix.com and have a Netflix account and then get the Netflix app on your iPhone and sign in and then you're into Netflix and
00:56:09 ◼ ► Apple doesn't see a penny and you're watching movies for years to come and that's that or
00:56:14 ◼ ► You could download the Netflix app on your iPhone and you don't have a Netflix account yet and you could sign up in the app
00:56:21 ◼ ► Through the in-app purchasing and you've got a subscription to Netflix and that subscription works
00:56:32 ◼ ► But your monthly subscription goes through your Apple account. I was gonna say iTunes account
00:56:41 ◼ ► But you know, it's just another subscription those subscriptions are still there. I know for a long time
00:56:47 ◼ ► I they don't really publish top-grossing but for a while after Netflix said, you know what?
00:56:53 ◼ ► We're not going to offer in-app subscriptions anymore. We're just gonna do this on our own
00:57:02 ◼ ► One or two on the list of the top grossing apps in the App Store because so many people signed up for their Netflix
00:57:09 ◼ ► Subscriptions in app and I don't think Netflix will ever get rid of it because it would be so disruptive
00:57:24 ◼ ► I don't know what the breakdown is but lots of people who watch Netflix on their iOS devices already had their Netflix subscription
00:57:40 ◼ ► I don't think that was it at all. Let alone going more hardcore and saying we're only gonna let this on
00:57:52 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't because now there I I don't think I think even Microsoft would be like well, that's that's you're asking too much
00:57:59 ◼ ► You know, we're gonna sign up a gazillion of these people right on our Xbox. I don't think I had anything to do with any of that
00:58:05 ◼ ► I think they've already done it haven't they for the Microsoft has other subscription services like
00:58:09 ◼ ► For office 365 and I believe they've come to agreement with Apple about that. So it's not like it's something that's more like
00:58:22 ◼ ► And I don't think it is ever sat right with app with Microsoft that the Microsoft 365 stuff does offer in-app
00:58:31 ◼ ► You know and some percentage of the users using them have signed up that way and Apple is seeing
00:58:39 ◼ ► Even though a lot of other users almost certainly most by you know overwhelmingly most I would assume
00:58:57 ◼ ► You know again, that's a dangerous thing to say to call something a computer in this discussion. Yeah
00:59:05 ◼ ► I don't think that was it at all. And I think that everybody has sort of come to the conclusion that you know
00:59:12 ◼ ► There probably isn't and I think I have Microsoft statement on this sort of made it clear
00:59:17 ◼ ► I know you had a great video on this. So anyway, I'll leave it to you to pick this up. I
00:59:27 ◼ ► Streaming video for some reason. Sorry, let me start that again apps in general and games in
00:59:33 ◼ ► Specifics seem to be treated differently just in general even on Android which is famous for allowing side loading and allowing different payment options
00:59:41 ◼ ► Has very strict policies about games, you know, which again really we'll get to in a minute
00:59:46 ◼ ► But streaming games are going to be hugely disruptive because you're paying $15 of a month
01:00:08 ◼ ► Spotify and they don't review every song and they don't review every movie or every TV show and all of those have parental guidance ratings
01:00:15 ◼ ► already, you know, they're either have mature lyrics or they have adult content or they have PG or or whatever it is and
01:00:21 ◼ ► Anyone that gets respected within parental guidance controls, so that's not an issue either
01:00:26 ◼ ► it's just that these are streaming games instead of streaming video or or streaming audio and I
01:00:33 ◼ ► Honestly think and just overall, you know, like there's no mustache twirling villains in this
01:00:39 ◼ ► It's not like Apple is sitting there going. Ah ha ha ha we're gonna we're gonna rule this universe and and
01:00:47 ◼ ► It's everybody has their own best interest in mind and projects those into what's best for the customer
01:00:54 ◼ ► Even if we as customers sometimes think that's that's not really best for us. So I think they're being
01:01:02 ◼ ► approach game streaming and Apple doesn't have a game streaming service and some people say that's why but
01:01:09 ◼ ► Apple didn't have a music streaming service when they allowed Spotify on and didn't have a video streaming service when they had Netflix on
01:01:18 ◼ ► It's just I don't think I don't it's one of those things where we discussed just between us earlier
01:01:39 ◼ ► but just the idea of in-app purchases and the idea of streaming video is nothing that anybody really thought of and
01:01:50 ◼ ► Obliterated in the media during the two or three weeks. It takes them to think these things through
01:02:04 ◼ ► political and it's political in the sense of the broadest sense of the word where it's both
01:02:12 ◼ ► Electoral politics and it's what a lot of people say they hate about politicians in general
01:02:39 ◼ ► Brand affinity rankings right that they don't they people aren't hooked up for the way they communicate
01:03:00 ◼ ► To a question you don't want to answer right and politicians ready to answer yet, right?
01:03:31 ◼ ► Which went to Business Insider and everybody just quoted Business Insider, but they were giving it to other outlets
01:03:53 ◼ ► But Apple had given it to Mark Gurman back in March in the context of was it stadia was a Google stadia
01:04:07 ◼ ► Somebody gives you an answer and you just assume their answer is an answer to the question
01:04:24 ◼ ► Gaming services can absolutely launch on the App Store as long as they follow the same set of guidelines
01:04:35 ◼ ► Appearing in charts and search and so everybody, you know, that is Apple's statement and everybody read that and thought well
01:04:45 ◼ ► How does that possibly work for a streaming service and everybody immediately went to the streaming video like Netflix and Spotify?
01:04:52 ◼ ► And you know just to name the two big ones which by the size of their libraries. It's impossible, right? It really would be a
01:05:17 ◼ ► That they follow the same guidelines applicable to all developers including submitting games individually for review and appearing in charts and search
01:05:36 ◼ ► Game Pass be in the App Store what Apple saying is native iPhone games can be in the App Store
01:05:46 ◼ ► We don't allow game streaming, but they don't want to say this. They don't want to say it
01:05:53 ◼ ► For example, like the things on Spotify don't show up in App Store in the Apple music charts, obviously, right?
01:05:59 ◼ ► But you know they if they choose and Netflix famously chooses not to but if they choose
01:06:03 ◼ ► They can integrate and have it show up in Siri search and have it show up in up next and do all sorts of things
01:06:09 ◼ ► Like the TV app interface for example. Yeah, but it's always there's ways of handling this
01:06:13 ◼ ► It's almost like that that the whole thing is beside the point, right? It's not really what they're saying is
01:06:22 ◼ ► Reviewing individual titles or being in charts and search. It's they're just saying there. Here's some good things about native iPhone games
01:06:30 ◼ ► Yes, right native iPhone games are reviewed individually and they do appear in our charts and search
01:06:42 ◼ ► It's you know, I think it's mostly about control and there once you start to talk about platform control
01:07:18 ◼ ► Xbox game pass on their iPhone or iPad if it were available is a minute they wouldn't spend playing a
01:07:36 ◼ ► These are games that all require Xbox controllers and yeah, and Apple is the one who allowed iOS to have great
01:07:42 ◼ ► You know first-class support for literally the Xbox controller and the PlayStation controller
01:07:47 ◼ ► But like you're on the bus going to work and you take out your phone to play a game for a while
01:08:01 ◼ ► And yes, there's like a thing that you can snap on to the sides of an iPhone to turn it, you know
01:08:09 ◼ ► But again in in a lot of contexts where a lot of people spend a lot of time playing games even people who love
01:08:20 ◼ ► You're not going to just you know while you're waiting in line to buy something at a store where there's a long queue
01:08:25 ◼ ► You're not going to set up your phone as a switch for 90 seconds to play a little bit of Xbox
01:08:37 ◼ ► Also, everybody's like well now it's it's all about Apple arcade because Apple has a subscription thing
01:08:45 ◼ ► Yeah, and they want you to they want you to spend five dollars a month on Apple arcade not this but then again now
01:09:00 ◼ ► Which is almost five dollars a month for a thing that they don't have any production costs for at all
01:09:10 ◼ ► so it would only be two dollars and twenty five cents instead of but two dollars and twenty five cents a month as
01:09:30 ◼ ► The thing that gets me with all of these analysis and it's gonna bleed into epic too is that
01:09:34 ◼ ► These a lot of things that people accuse Apple of being in it for the money or turn to these massive
01:09:43 ◼ ► It's this fundamental error of always assuming that you are the majority and it happens on Twitter a lot too where anyone who has a strong
01:09:53 ◼ ► opinion and it's it's these are not big numbers for Apple and I've joked about this before like when people accuse Apple of doing
01:10:05 ◼ ► Literally cushion change for Apple compared to iPhone profits most of these things like the the Xbox game pass thing is not a mainstream concern
01:10:13 ◼ ► I fully believe streaming gaming is inevitable the same way streaming video and audio is and they'll have massive mainstream appeal
01:10:19 ◼ ► eventually, but right now Apple's problem isn't understanding and coming up with policy and
01:10:30 ◼ ► Stadia it's just figuring out handle handle it how to handle it in general and once that happens all of this will be folded in
01:10:42 ◼ ► Concerns and the lowest amount of margin problems. They just get an incredible amount of online attention
01:10:50 ◼ ► I do think though that Microsoft must have thought that it was going to be about the money
01:10:55 ◼ ► Because they clearly thought they had a pretty good chance and I kind of think they assumed that this was going to be worked out
01:11:05 ◼ ► And I think the number of people who are privy to the actual negotiations is very small and on both sides
01:11:22 ◼ ► But I really think that Microsoft went into this thinking it would be a fight over where between 30 and 15
01:11:28 ◼ ► And what level of prominence the in-app signup needs to have and those sort of things and then Apple was like no
01:11:35 ◼ ► We really we don't even want your money. You know, we don't want it. We don't want if we don't even want 30% of this
01:11:48 ◼ ► Because I think if they'd known it going in I think that you know, they wouldn't have wasted the time developing it
01:12:14 ◼ ► I'm underselling the differences, you know iOS users are more willing and likely to spend money than Android users
01:12:22 ◼ ► And so just counting up the number of Android devices in use versus the number of iPhone and iPad devices in use
01:12:29 ◼ ► Doesn't give you an accurate picture of all of the market and to me the the real eye-opening number recently was David hannemeyer Hansen's
01:12:39 ◼ ► Posted last month that was part of his testimony to Congress in the antitrust hearings about hey and
01:12:45 ◼ ► That now this is post launch of hey and after they had you know a month or six weeks of
01:12:55 ◼ ► And they have you know, they have an Android version that I use I still use. Hey the email
01:13:00 ◼ ► I have it on my phone and I have it on my pixel 4 and it is as good. It's very similar app because
01:13:08 ◼ ► The base camp company they the way they develop software is sort of a web app first and that especially the iPhone version
01:13:16 ◼ ► I don't want to have but it's not quite a web app and wrapped in an iPhone thing the iPhone app in particular is
01:13:25 ◼ ► If you it's very very similar design you can see how they the Android version in the iPhone version are it's like
01:13:50 ◼ ► I'm not sure what that number means because it could mean that they have an Android phone but use a Mac which I think would probably
01:13:57 ◼ ► Especially for their audience is quite possibly a large number of their Android users because they're using Android phones
01:14:17 ◼ ► Which isn't what you think of as the market share for you know, this certainly it's not
01:14:28 ◼ ► You know that the number of people who pay for services like a $99 a year email service is way higher on
01:14:37 ◼ ► Yeah, absolutely. Well the market that's that's one of the things you get into and you're discussing how much dominance someone has over a market
01:14:44 ◼ ► Apple share is tiny. I think it's like 20 something percent in some countries in Europe. It's
01:14:50 ◼ ► Infinitesimal there's some countries where just Android is vastly vastly more used and it goes down
01:15:05 ◼ ► but one of the research firms said it's like 83 percent of American teens have them and the other and two more percent want them or
01:15:16 ◼ ► Who does who does Xbox streaming gaming appeal to if they really want to attach to North American teens?
01:15:26 ◼ ► Demographics and just go by who spends money. Well, you want to be on the iPhone and if you go by the age demographics
01:15:37 ◼ ► So whatever their internal spreadsheet was on the number of people they expect to be playing Xbox game pass on
01:16:03 ◼ ► All I can tell you is you have a choice you can either have Xbox game pass on iPhone or have it on Android
01:16:08 ◼ ► And he would before you even finish the sentence. He'd say oh, I thought yeah, because there's more with their own apps, right?
01:16:15 ◼ ► Like they've been making mobile versions of their products or iPad before they've been picking them from right? There's more money
01:16:34 ◼ ► And we can get into this idea that iOS in the broad sense is a console like system for apps
01:17:06 ◼ ► Xbox game pass, you know and even Microsoft didn't you know as far as I know there was no
01:17:22 ◼ ► They're not taking Xbox and Xbox doesn't have a version of PlayStations game streaming thing
01:17:41 ◼ ► It's the same subscription fee some of the games you download to your PlayStation and you play them as a downloaded game like other
01:17:48 ◼ ► PlayStation games but some you can just stream especially the older ones that are smaller and he can just
01:17:59 ◼ ► You can just like go pick it and stream it and I'm like really you're and it was like the first time I saw somebody
01:18:21 ◼ ► But there's no way Xbox is going to host game streaming from another company and yet people you know
01:18:30 ◼ ► So it makes sense and what the hell was Microsoft thinking that Apple was going to allow a game streaming service on their game platform
01:18:37 ◼ ► And whereas others are just saying what are you nuts iOS is nothing like a game platform
01:18:48 ◼ ► But you know if you go back and watch the introduction, you know when Steve Jobs introduced the App Store
01:18:56 ◼ ► yeah, and that's so I I've you know, I've been talking about this on dithering with Ben Thompson and
01:19:03 ◼ ► Arguing with people very nicely. It's actually been a very fun and it's you know, it reinvigorated my belief that human beings are capable of
01:19:14 ◼ ► The problem that I've gotten into by making this argument that not really that iOS is like a console
01:19:25 ◼ ► Conceptually and was right from the beginning is that some people hear console as a word and they immediately
01:19:32 ◼ ► Go to game console that you don't have to say that it that game consoles aren't a type of computing console. They are
01:19:40 ◼ ► It's it's like dropping the teller from telephone. It's the same word. I say I'm gonna call you on the phone
01:19:49 ◼ ► It's the same thing. I say iOS is a console and there's a lot of people who hear me saying I've
01:19:56 ◼ ► iOS is exactly like switch and Xbox and PlayStation 4 no more than that no less than that exactly like that and they say that's
01:20:04 ◼ ► Nonsense and that is that would be nonsense if that's the way you hear it. That's not the way I mean it
01:20:10 ◼ ► I mean console in a broader term and it's just that game consoles are the ones that have been around for decades and have
01:20:21 ◼ ► Well, and also it's how we view it as opposed to how the vendor views it Apple clearly views
01:20:28 ◼ ► You can think they're completely wrong and out to lunch and bananas and you can view it as it should be an open console
01:20:39 ◼ ► HoloLens was closed and they couldn't have the Unreal Engine on it and they went to war with Microsoft over that
01:20:49 ◼ ► We look at the Xbox like it's okay to be a console but most of these game consoles have web browsers
01:20:53 ◼ ► You can get Skype you can get Netflix you can get a host of apps that aren't video games on them as well
01:20:59 ◼ ► And they are literally inside almost the same as any computer that you would use to run general-purpose apps
01:21:05 ◼ ► It's just the philosophy behind them is different right and with the Xbox in particular and again, right?
01:21:11 ◼ ► I don't want to get into like a college, you know sit around smoking dope, you know talking about the philosophy nature of what's the nature?
01:21:48 ◼ ► And sell Windows games using the console model and if you took the Xbox even today if you took it out of the
01:22:15 ◼ ► You you know, you'd have to like look at the actual green boards and see if there's some small print that says that
01:22:20 ◼ ► It's the might, you know, it says something is stamped Xbox, you know before you could tell it apart
01:22:29 ◼ ► Much like I didn't even know that was possible but much like how much like how Apple shares operating system
01:22:36 ◼ ► Core a core OS across its platforms the Xbox runs a variant of Windows 10, you know, and so people say, okay
01:22:44 ◼ ► So there's a web browser, but nobody uses it as their main web browser, but that's just by design, right?
01:23:03 ◼ ► have the Xbox run things like an email client and they're a good version of a web browser and
01:23:14 ◼ ► that they don't let things like that go through and that they don't it isn't designed to run in a
01:23:24 ◼ ► Read the news on your Xbox, but it certainly could it's just limiting, you know, it's sort of like an alternate universe where?
01:23:34 ◼ ► 2008 Steve Jobs who was still on the fan or I guess it would have been 2007 Steve Jobs is still on the fence of
01:23:42 ◼ ► Whether they should have third-party native apps at all. What if Apple has said okay, but only games
01:23:48 ◼ ► Where you know, no native apps was the original iPhone message you we have a sweet solution where you can write web apps
01:24:06 ◼ ► Same will partner with Netflix like we do with YouTube and you'll have like a Netflix app, right?
01:24:14 ◼ ► There's the you know, it obviously would have been leaving a lot of opportunity on the table
01:24:20 ◼ ► But in theory, there's no reason they couldn't have done that, you know, and then what would be the argument now?
01:24:31 ◼ ► It isn't a console that then saying it shouldn't be a console and I think that's what right sometime it does
01:24:41 ◼ ► Means something specific to games to some people and when I explained that I don't mean games specifically
01:24:47 ◼ ► I mean the model then they say oh, okay. I see what you mean now. I thought you just an infotainment center
01:24:54 ◼ ► I don't but if you know and somebody looked at the some of some smartass looked in the dictionary and the dictionary has an entry
01:25:07 ◼ ► And they're like well that you know, that means a dictionary says it's just for games and I said well, okay the same dictionary
01:25:20 ◼ ► So but they're dedicated consoles like air people who control aircraft and stuff in there are purpose-built consoles for almost everything across industries
01:25:41 ◼ ► Angle which again that is a whole thing that we could talk about for hours and will be talking about for hours and hours
01:25:53 ◼ ► Podcasts to come and it's a great argument and then what makes it a great argument is there's validity to multiple
01:26:02 ◼ ► But even without the argument of whether Apple should be treating it the thing that I have noticed is
01:26:28 ◼ ► Angry about it. It is very it's an electric reaction and they are offended and it really does
01:26:44 ◼ ► you know certain chips that Microsoft wanted introduced into PCs for safe boot, you know, and
01:26:49 ◼ ► Well jobs and was were arguing about whether it should be a sealed appliance right open computing platform decades ago. Yeah
01:26:57 ◼ ► Yeah, and you know, I've heard I saw some people say well, you know, you shouldn't use the word console that means games
01:27:05 ◼ ► You know like your refrigerator might have a computer in it, but you don't install apps on it, right?
01:27:15 ◼ ► You know that that it's sure my dishwasher. I have my dishwasher actually is some sort of computer and I hate it
01:27:21 ◼ ► I really do saying that I'm sure there must be an Android fridge out there and someone's installing apps on it right now
01:27:26 ◼ ► Well, there is remember Tim Cook made fun of Samsung for making it or maybe I forget if they came out with the fridge after
01:27:46 ◼ ► Consoles and there are the consoles that have been established for longer iOS is an app console. It always has been and
01:27:54 ◼ ► But a lot of you hate that word. I mean you could call it unmanaged versus managed computing environments
01:28:11 ◼ ► Asterisk like a footnote that says but right now Apple makes everything go through the App Store if they would just like erase this
01:28:31 ◼ ► that does things that aren't going through the App Store that Apple would never approve and
01:28:46 ◼ ► They're completely not really looking at how it's been run every single step of the way since it came out
01:28:52 ◼ ► What they're looking at and where they're not necessarily crazy is that at a technical level?
01:29:02 ◼ ► Not that it wouldn't take work. Not that Apple has to erase like one line of code. That's like an if statement if
01:29:08 ◼ ► If iOS then yeah if iOS then this and just erase that and then all of a sudden it's exactly like the Mac
01:29:24 ◼ ► You know the Mac where you can just download an app package from a website and click one
01:29:41 ◼ ► Well, of course, they don't you know, that's not really a pleasant word. I don't really think you hear Xbox and
01:29:52 ◼ ► Yeah, I think it's also really important to point out that most of the time when we have these discussions is with incredibly technologically savvy computer-literate people and
01:30:01 ◼ ► Going back to what I said earlier everyone mistakes themselves for a majority and they just believe
01:30:06 ◼ ► Deeply that what they say reflects the opinions of most people even when it's totally not the case and we've had open computing environments for
01:30:15 ◼ ► Decades and one of the things that Steve Jobs was most ardent on was making computers ever more accessible to ever more
01:30:25 ◼ ► his vision of doing that was making them easier to use by making them more controlled and when you when you step through Apple to
01:30:33 ◼ ► To the iPhone and iPad which which he thought were far more important to mainstream people then then the Mac even
01:30:46 ◼ ► They like he didn't think that humans should have to manage or deal with that complexity and he believed that a lot of people found that
01:30:53 ◼ ► Off-putting if not alienating it made them feel dumb and that they deserve to have these as tools not as
01:31:08 ◼ ► And it's also an important part of this argument that I think gets left behind is whether the iPhone as a platform is
01:31:15 ◼ ► Successful whether people are more willing to spend money on it whether it's adopted by users who are more willing to spend money on it
01:31:29 ◼ ► I always test against Android I always look and say well Android doesn't have these things
01:31:35 ◼ ► So show me the app that can exist under Android that can't exist under iOS that is changing the world and improving lives
01:31:46 ◼ ► Emulators and all sorts of things but all the big ones like Instagram and Lyft and you know
01:31:53 ◼ ► Just any almost any app you can think of is on the iPhone almost always first quite often still
01:31:58 ◼ ► More polished than it is on Android and more available to people and by changing it by making it
01:32:07 ◼ ► They tell me what they want and I said, but so you want the Google Play Store and they say yes
01:32:13 ◼ ► Reconciling those statements. It seems to be really hard for people to me one of the concepts
01:32:34 ◼ ► When you do and again, it comes back to one of the most recurring themes and everything
01:32:42 ◼ ► People it's like you said earlier about Twitter if people want it there to be an answer
01:32:50 ◼ ► The answer is actually 57 and it's mostly towards a hundred but there's actually 43 good points on the other side
01:33:09 ◼ ► It's just but one of the positives is it makes it more accessible to people who don't understand the
01:33:28 ◼ ► But I think that that's sort of and I think this I think a lot of people who are arguing that iOS
01:33:35 ◼ ► Should be should not is but should be less of a console and should be more open or are just completely
01:33:42 ◼ ► overlooking completely the advantages that it has to many many people that it's not that it's I think there's so many people making the
01:34:16 ◼ ► And and the console model if you go back and again this also comes to one of my big themes
01:34:21 ◼ ► Is that where you start from matters because it colors how people see things going forward
01:34:28 ◼ ► And if you think about game consoles you think about like the Atari 2600 and the original Nintendo NES system
01:34:54 ◼ ► And if you turned it on without a cartridge in nothing happened, you didn't even there wasn't like a system, you know
01:35:05 ◼ ► Without a cartridge in the cartridge slot. There was nothing and you put asteroids in and
01:35:11 ◼ ► I think yeah with the 2600 they used to even recommend strongly that you turn it off take the cartridge out
01:35:22 ◼ ► Yank cartridge out and put it back in and I was so deathly afraid that she was gonna break you
01:35:45 ◼ ► But the name original trauma the idea of how do you install asteroids was very obvious you put the cartridge in the slot
01:35:51 ◼ ► Yeah, how do you uninstall it? Well, you take it out and then you put Space Invaders in
01:35:59 ◼ ► Where we've gotten today with the Xbox PlayStation and switches obviously incredibly more powerful
01:36:05 ◼ ► Computer systems and you can install things in more complicated ways, but that basic model is still there where you get the app
01:36:14 ◼ ► From an official source and it's completely encapsulated and the assumption that the game even on a completely
01:36:28 ◼ ► Which is the most you know in the PlayStation 5 the most advanced game console computers ever made
01:36:38 ◼ ► The game isn't going to like overwrite the system and create a launch item so that the next time you turn on your PlayStation 5
01:36:46 ◼ ► whatever game you just bought now puts up a pop-up menu every time your system starts up and
01:37:05 ◼ ► It's they're all and everything's neatly encapsulated and if you delete the game you delete all traces of the game
01:37:12 ◼ ► You can't even get your game into the platform unless you comply with the rules, you know that that are
01:37:19 ◼ ► Voluntary or otherwise whether they're sandboxing hardware things people just assume that that's the case because that's where game consoles came from because they used
01:37:27 ◼ ► to literally be enforced by the fact that it was a hardware cartridge and the fact that iOS and Android look like
01:37:37 ◼ ► derivative computers that just happen to run in your pocket and you know that there's a Linux kernel on the
01:37:48 ◼ ► Kit and app kit are similar and a lot of the frameworks like Swift UI are literally exactly the same
01:38:09 ◼ ► There's nothing that can be done through an app you get through the App Store that will mess up your system or leave behind
01:38:15 ◼ ► Traces or all of a sudden you get weird pop-up menus every time you get a phone call because you installed a thing from Facebook
01:38:23 ◼ ► Doesn't happen right and whereas on our Macs and PCs stuff like that happens all the time
01:38:34 ◼ ► Understand just how much of an appeal that is, you know, yeah, it's that it's that joking cliche
01:38:45 ◼ ► Apple really didn't do much with the App Store that there were ways to download apps and there were ways to buy apps
01:39:02 ◼ ► $48 sticky app that crashed constantly and me trying to remember which of the eight different web stores I bought it off of
01:39:19 ◼ ► That's generated their success for four years is that they figured out a way to package
01:39:25 ◼ ► To package technology in a way that had massive mainstream appeal and the App Store is or an Apple product in the same way that
01:39:32 ◼ ► it's like a bunch of sort of quirky hard to use disparate technologies and made a cohesive product out of it and
01:39:41 ◼ ► I think looking at it differently than that is non helpful and I'm not saying that I agree with how it's run
01:39:48 ◼ ► 2020 is very different than 2008 and that there are strong arguments for changing the percentage base because
01:39:55 ◼ ► It's really not that much money for Apple people have this idea that Apple's fighting over this
01:40:06 ◼ ► It's very low single digit for a company that makes hundreds of billions of dollars all the time
01:40:19 ◼ ► But it's it's not because I think there's anything fundamentally broken with the App Store
01:40:26 ◼ ► Requires a more flexible approach just because the world is becoming a more chaotic place
01:40:32 ◼ ► But I think a lot of this and this is where I get into a lot of trouble from a lot of people
01:40:57 ◼ ► Movies and videos transformed by Netflix and music by Spotify the same forces are being applied to apps and games
01:41:07 ◼ ► But I think it's making a lot of developers who want to have successful apps angry in the same way
01:41:13 ◼ ► It makes a lot of youtubers who want to have huge audiences and don't have them really angry and all of these things
01:41:26 ◼ ► And just I don't think it would change like I think Apple could give developers almost everything they want
01:41:30 ◼ ► I still think developers would have to work really really hard to figure out how to find a valuable niche or become a breakout
01:41:37 ◼ ► Mainstream sensation and it wouldn't just magically make any developer super affluent overnight. Yeah
01:41:44 ◼ ► I really do think though just to tie off the Xbox game pass thing that it's in some ways about games
01:42:02 ◼ ► The technology once you're talking about streaming the technology is there where somebody could easily make one if they it's that
01:42:10 ◼ ► Opening the door to streaming and so I think if they were going to make an exception and they made it for Xbox game pass
01:42:16 ◼ ► specifically the fact that you're still playing Xbox games that require a hardware controller and
01:42:21 ◼ ► Aren't really meant for the sort of mobile context that most mobile games are including Apple arcade games. It's not really
01:42:44 ◼ ► It's almost the inverse of the epic argument where the epic argument they're trying to say it's about everything
01:43:00 ◼ ► It's the broader perspective of they don't have a policy in place yet for streaming software, which is clearly coming
01:43:08 ◼ ► It's coming to games first. It's here for games. It's the present tense thing for games
01:43:24 ◼ ► It's it's coming and Apple isn't doesn't have an answer for it yet, you know and how in terms it
01:43:30 ◼ ► What what does it mean for a company that wants to have control over all of the apps on this platform?
01:43:37 ◼ ► You know, it's sort of like Microsoft when the web browser started becoming a thing. It's they only understood
01:43:52 ◼ ► But Scott McNeely's thin client future is finally getting closer to reality, you know and
01:43:57 ◼ ► Our you know our mutual dear friend guy English sent me something about that when this whole thing broke
01:44:04 ◼ ► He'd sent me, you know and guys like us for he has a long memory and remember stuff like that
01:44:09 ◼ ► But it is true the thin client from that era and you know Oracle was a big player in that too
01:44:31 ◼ ► But everybody at the time thought that the web would be the new windows and you'd run apps that were just like the apps you
01:44:37 ◼ ► Ran on Windows, but they go through your web browser and it's like that doesn't really make sense
01:44:41 ◼ ► Because it's just not good for it and the payload grew faster than the delivery system every time right and just
01:44:49 ◼ ► You know, I mean like there's the reason Gmail is very super super duper popular and doesn't look like
01:44:54 ◼ ► Windows or Mac app at all, you know, yeah, it's just you know, hey doesn't look like a Mac app or a Windows app
01:45:01 ◼ ► It looks like a web app and that's you know, you know, not good or bad in and of itself
01:45:13 ◼ ► Lowest common denominator software platform. Yeah. All right. Let's take a break. I'm gonna thank our third and final sponsor
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01:46:50 ◼ ► So now we've got epic and I feel like I do at least feel the news happened in the right order
01:46:58 ◼ ► Right, like wow this fight with Microsoft and Apple over the future of iOS gaming and Apple's tight-fisted control over
01:47:37 ◼ ► There's a lot of money at stake. There's two big companies with or three if you count Google
01:47:54 ◼ ► And it was engineered to be dramatic. I mean I had videos and it was just designed to be dramatic from the start
01:48:00 ◼ ► Yeah, it's you know, it's I've drawn the analogy dithering to a chess game and I'd you know, it's it very much so right
01:48:12 ◼ ► You got to get like three moves in before you start making choices because it's like oh
01:48:18 ◼ ► And if you know, you know that you're your opening move is this that might be a surprise
01:48:30 ◼ ► Fortnight sneaking in their own custom payment processing into an app. They'd submitted to Apple a week before that didn't have it exposed
01:48:40 ◼ ► And epic clearly thought Apple is almost certainly going to pull fortnight from the store in response
01:48:47 ◼ ► That happened hours later and within minutes of that the lawsuit dropped and the video dropped
01:48:55 ◼ ► So that's like you're playing white you make a surprising opening move Apple spend some time to think makes their move and a second they do
01:49:02 ◼ ► You're like I knew it and then you have your move ready to go and it's and they had a Google lawsuit ready, too
01:49:07 ◼ ► So I'm assuming they like so they must have figured that Google would pull the app, too
01:49:10 ◼ ► But they didn't have a video right there was no don't be evil video, right? Right and you know, I think part of that is
01:49:23 ◼ ► But then why do the lost like so that that was the thing for me and we can get at this later, too
01:49:27 ◼ ► It's that it would almost have been worse for Apple if they hadn't sued Google immediately as well. I
01:49:32 ◼ ► Wonder and I wonder if they thought you know if they thought to themselves maybe Google would like to
01:49:48 ◼ ► You know that maybe their epics thinking was maybe Google would like to make hay at Apple's expense, too
01:50:03 ◼ ► I mean, they're not above these big companies that play within our expectations of corporate decorum
01:50:33 ◼ ► I would have made a much smaller bet on Google and I think that they're just you know, that that epic sort of okay
01:50:43 ◼ ► But they're there everything they've done since has been less about Google and more about Apple
01:50:53 ◼ ► And I think when a lot of these things happen a lot of the feelings that get expressed are more generic or more
01:51:02 ◼ ► So people who have had grudges or fundamental philosophical disagreements about the way the app store
01:51:14 ◼ ► And in this case, we saw a bunch of people saying like, you know, the s the app store is a monopoly
01:51:18 ◼ ► Apple needs to open it up. They should allow side loading and the interesting thing to me. Is that
01:51:42 ◼ ► The way it works on Android is basically like gatekeeper in that you have to go in turn it on
01:51:46 ◼ ► Tap through a bunch of warning messages and then install the app and they said that that is enough
01:51:58 ◼ ► So when you argue that Apple should just allow gatekeeper on the iPhone that is an argument, you know
01:52:03 ◼ ► I will make that argument too, but it is nothing that would make epic any happier than they are right now
01:52:12 ◼ ► Correct me if I'm wrong. I actually did the research on this and now I've already forgotten and of course, I don't have the notes but
01:52:18 ◼ ► The way that epic did it wasn't that they pulled at fortnight from the Play Store they debuted
01:52:25 ◼ ► Android the Android version of fortnight outside the Play Store and they tried to do it only on their own
01:52:51 ◼ ► Installed it and it's actually I this is actually I have to say I just hadn't been curious until this point how side loading worked
01:53:04 ◼ ► Where at least on the latest version of Android? I think it's Android 10 whatever I'm running on my pixel
01:53:10 ◼ ► That's up to pixel 4 that's up to date. It's not a system-wide thing where you say allow apps from other sources
01:53:30 ◼ ► It's confusing because you you're in so the way that you go about it is I'm in Chrome with the default browser on
01:53:38 ◼ ► Android and I go to the epic site and I say I want to get fortnight and they say okay start by downloading
01:53:59 ◼ ► You know might might be dangerous blah blah blah. I wasn't sure what that dialogue. I'm not trying to be obtuse here
01:54:33 ◼ ► the path for getting fortnight on your Android phone is first use your browser to get epic games and
01:54:44 ◼ ► Then you can run epic games and you have to run through the same set of permission dialogues to let the epic game store install
01:55:01 ◼ ► Like you can turn off that requirement for gatekeeper, but there's no signed or notarized as far as I know
01:55:10 ◼ ► Here's the dialog box. It says Chrome for your security. Your phone is not allowed to install unknown apps from this source
01:55:22 ◼ ► So again, I think that that exact and this is on I'm on the epic games.com slash fortnight website and the dialog box
01:55:31 ◼ ► Just says Chrome for your security. Your phone is not allowed to install unknown apps from this source
01:55:35 ◼ ► I don't think it was a bad guess for me to say that the source is epic games calm but they mean
01:55:45 ◼ ► The next screen is your you jumps you right to settings says Chrome allow from this source
01:55:50 ◼ ► It's off by default and it says your phone and personal data are more vulnerable to attack by unknown apps
01:55:56 ◼ ► By installing apps from this source you agree that you are responsible for any damage to your phone or loss of data that may result
01:56:03 ◼ ► From their use and then you can turn it on. So I think there's a couple of things here number one
01:56:21 ◼ ► Anyway, they make you download epic games and then through epic games get fortnight, right?
01:56:27 ◼ ► But I think that also just shows us the marketing back to the Amazon store versus Google Play
01:56:31 ◼ ► Yeah, I definitely think so which is confusing too, right and it gets into the level of
01:56:40 ◼ ► Well, not necessarily because if you have a Samsung phone and you have access to the Play Store and the Samsung store
01:56:47 ◼ ► Well, it's also goes beyond that like when people say Android is open. Android is open to the vendors
01:56:51 ◼ ► There's very little about Android that's open to the end consumer unless you build it yourself from the open source project and very few human
01:57:03 ◼ ► like if there was an LG store you couldn't get the LG store on on Samsung or the Samsung store on
01:57:12 ◼ ► forcing 1+ not to include the epic game launcher built in which would make it easier for customers and we're forcing LG not to include it
01:57:33 ◼ ► I keep saying I'm not trying to be obtuse, but I'm really not I think that these are very reasonable
01:57:43 ◼ ► Which is important and I think correct and if we really want to get fortnight the path to do
01:57:55 ◼ ► To level first install the epic game store then install fortnight. It's their own dumbass fault
01:58:03 ◼ ► By not just allowing the fortnight dot APK to be downloaded directly from the web and only granting your web browser this
01:58:10 ◼ ► Super ability to install apps. That's their own fault for putting their their desire to have an epic game store
01:58:17 ◼ ► Ahead of making it as easy as possible to install fortnight. So if they've left that's sort of like I'm
01:58:26 ◼ ► Is that epic is not the Batman we want or need here because their goal is not to have you install
01:58:35 ◼ ► Their problem is not so much they hate the App Store and hate the Google Play Store in that they want to be an app
01:58:41 ◼ ► Store or a Google Play Store, they don't want to they don't want to give 30% of their income to Apple or Google
01:58:50 ◼ ► All right, and I'm gonna be on the opposite side of that fence right and much like a lot of the stuff with
01:58:58 ◼ ► He'd literally said I'm trying to keep the post office underfunded so they can't count the millions of ballots, you know
01:59:04 ◼ ► And they're like you weren't supposed to say that out loud. He's like, oh, yeah, that's what I'm doing
01:59:12 ◼ ► He even said like wouldn't it be great if you could buy once and have the same game on your PlayStation
01:59:19 ◼ ► And your switch and your phone and again, I'm not even disagreeing that from a user's perspective. That would be great
01:59:26 ◼ ► If you could buy a $60 app once and run it on two platforms and your phone with one purchase
01:59:36 ◼ ► But what what is he talking about as the mechanism for that he's talking about the epic store
01:59:41 ◼ ► I mean and his games right? He's not fighting any other developers battles, but his own
01:59:53 ◼ ► Wouldn't have bet heavily on it I can see why they're not making a big stink about it because it
02:00:12 ◼ ► It's like Google has moved away from the open Android model towards a far more controlled Google Play Services model over the years
02:00:18 ◼ ► But even with games they are far more controlling with games than they are with random software
02:00:22 ◼ ► But there's an awful lot of people who are what they're saying they want from iOS at a user's perspective is
02:00:35 ◼ ► But something that would let you install apps by clicking, you know off by everybody Oh, everybody reasonable agrees
02:00:45 ◼ ► There's some diehards on the issue who maybe would say that's somehow philosophically offensive
02:00:51 ◼ ► Off by default easily turned on with a warning that is not that is truthful and not yes
02:01:03 ◼ ► And therefore it would give you the user freedom to get things that either aren't allowed or otherwise
02:01:17 ◼ ► Thing where it's very uncomfortable for epic in my opinion to say well, what do you want Apple to do?
02:01:24 ◼ ► What could Apple do to just say? Okay, you know what Tim Sweeney and epic you're right. We're wrong
02:01:46 ◼ ► That's obviously not the answer because they're they're suing it Google - they want something more and if you read their lawsuit against Google
02:02:02 ◼ ► Are the whole reason they were a failure outside the play for Play Store and that they're unfair
02:02:14 ◼ ► we're all of a sudden there's an epic game store on your phone and that's it with no warning by default and
02:02:22 ◼ ► They want basically the epic game store to be on the App Store on the Google Play Store where you can tap it install it
02:02:28 ◼ ► And from then on you never have to go back to the App Store the play right and you know
02:02:35 ◼ ► native apps on the platform that are on your home screen etc and so forth and then when
02:02:41 ◼ ► Because they run the epic game store very similar. So the epic game store people aren't familiar with it
02:02:45 ◼ ► Tim Sweeney gets angry at so many people he got angry at valve steam because they charge 30% the industry standard is 30%
02:02:56 ◼ ► They were charging 30% and he didn't think he was getting value from that. So he made his own store and he's aggressive
02:03:02 ◼ ► so he's tried to assign a lot of games to exclusive agreements that would keep them out of the steam store as a way to compete and
02:03:25 ◼ ► He's delivering fundamentally less than what most like he's not delivering anywhere near the value that an App Store
02:03:36 ◼ ► He doesn't he doesn't have the ability to feature games doesn't have the the scope of the of the user commitment to it
02:03:41 ◼ ► But also that can change at any time. There's no law that says what a game store has to charge. So
02:03:46 ◼ ► He effectively just like people say it's David versus Goliath, but it's it's a young hungry Goliath who wants to be the Goliath
02:03:53 ◼ ► Can I just say also as an aside that the epic game store for Android that I did go ahead and install only has two games
02:04:00 ◼ ► It has fortnight and battle breakers, which I've never heard of so they make you jump through the hoop of
02:04:09 ◼ ► Which is the thing everybody is surely going there this week for just to have the option to install one of the game
02:04:14 ◼ ► I mean for now, I think the windows for I forget how many you're on the windows version
02:04:17 ◼ ► But they do have a bunch of apps that they're that they're effectively doing what the App Store does. They're brokering those apps, right?
02:04:22 ◼ ► Obviously with the Apple it's more of a fight obviously is you know, and it's a true it's a Trojan horse not
02:04:30 ◼ ► in the sense of being a you know, the the security industry term of a Trojan horse, but in the
02:04:36 ◼ ► Allegorical sense of the the story of the the original Trojan horse. They built this functionality into fortnight
02:04:44 ◼ ► Didn't have it enabled submitted the update got it approved and then turned it on remotely and boom
02:05:02 ◼ ► Apple not being as heavy-handed as they could be, you know, they're allowing it to stay up at least through August 28th
02:05:16 ◼ ► That's only because epic won't stop talking if Apple and Google put out apples put out two statements Google one statement
02:05:22 ◼ ► Sweeney is tweeting and it's just it's so much easier when you have things that you can respond to
02:05:28 ◼ ► Because I you know, I think that there's much better ways that Apple can handle this and I do think to your point earlier
02:05:38 ◼ ► This isn't like unity which is a standalone engine and it's not like hey, which you know base camp which has an app that
02:05:45 ◼ ► Not a framework that everyone depends on and an Android isn't in this discussion because nobody creates
02:05:52 ◼ ► Unreal games on Android but on on Apple's platforms they both Apple and epic have developers who are dependent upon this
02:06:28 ◼ ► I mean there have been some high-profile ones including infinity blade which is from epic and actually got them on stage at keynotes
02:06:58 ◼ ► Platforms that really need to be stable and predictable, you know, and you can say what you want
02:07:32 ◼ ► Initially let the first version through and then the second version before they officially launched
02:07:37 ◼ ► they were like, oh you need to implement in-app purchasing this isn't in compliance and
02:07:47 ◼ ► Jason Fried and David Hahnemeyer Hanson collectively, you know went public with it in a very effective way
02:07:58 ◼ ► No, he doesn't you know and there's such a good duo because there is sort of a it's not good cop bad cop
02:08:10 ◼ ► But it was a very effective campaign and as so many people accused them of engineering the whole thing as a stunt for publicity
02:08:22 ◼ ► How in the world would we possibly have predicted that you know, but all people saw was that oh you're getting a lot of publicity
02:08:33 ◼ ► Therefore this was all a publicity stunt. Whereas they're like, no we really just wanted to fit the ham app in the store
02:08:40 ◼ ► The launch wasn't the stunt there really the the litigation about the blockage was like they have a very prominent article on their website
02:08:52 ◼ ► and they are very effective at once something happens that they don't think is right and proper of
02:08:57 ◼ ► Marshalling that sort of internet rage in their direction to help them get what they want, right? And that's just good clean
02:09:07 ◼ ► And it shows that however disproportionate the financial might of Apple versus the base camp company
02:09:26 ◼ ► and their story at their their side of the argument is we thought hey was a lot like base camp and we've been doing this with
02:09:40 ◼ ► It's exactly what they developer who's not doing something outlandish should ever have to worry about whether their app gets on the store or not
02:09:46 ◼ ► Whereas what epic is done with fortnight literally is a publicity stunt. Yes. They had a publicity stunt
02:10:08 ◼ ► We we put a feature in our app for the App Store that completely violates one of the core rules
02:10:16 ◼ ► Right a rule that everybody is aware of and talks about all the time not like oh you never knew about rule
02:10:35 ◼ ► 1's and 0 digital content transactions they go through Apple and you pay Apple thou shalt put no payment system before me, right?
02:10:56 ◼ ► Developers large and small have with the App Store is that it's not predictable and look
02:11:01 ◼ ► I think it ties in with Microsoft and the Xbox game pass is that I think they thought they were going to be able to work
02:11:11 ◼ ► Let's just figure out what percentage you want and we'll agree to it and when Apple was like no
02:11:24 ◼ ► No, it totally there's this weird thing inside Apple and I don't know why it exists this way where they would they prefer not to say
02:11:33 ◼ ► But when they find something they don't like they want to make an example out of a very public app immediately as a way of
02:11:52 ◼ ► To developer confidence in the platform and I really wish they wouldn't do that. It just
02:11:57 ◼ ► It takes their most ardent supporter and turns them into a disgruntled angry individual and it is just no reason for it, right?
02:12:17 ◼ ► And if you really just want to let's break let's break this off snap this off and find a new perspective
02:12:23 ◼ ► Like one of the ways Apple could like let's rethink the App Store is how can we make this a lot more predictable?
02:12:45 ◼ ► Calling Netflix a reader app, you know, it's it just speaks to the fact that the rule is
02:12:50 ◼ ► Ambiguous in terms of what qualifies and what doesn't you know, and if you want to say games definitely don't qualify
02:12:56 ◼ ► Games are one of those things like pornography where there's a I know it when I see it, right?
02:13:01 ◼ ► It's you know, you can say games and people know what games are right bandersnatch is game like video
02:13:21 ◼ ► I'm not entirely sure epic foresaw Apple saying we're going to sever your Apple developer agreement
02:13:28 ◼ ► Maybe they did maybe they didn't but this is the thing and like you pointed it out. This is what puts Unreal Engine at risk
02:13:34 ◼ ► Because it has nothing to do with iOS it's because they develop it using max so that it can run on
02:13:45 ◼ ► You know presumably, you know the PC development where it's bread and butter of the unreal target audience of games
02:14:02 ◼ ► Although that's probably less relevant as time goes on and Apple and Mac's move to Apple silicon that the Mac will
02:14:08 ◼ ► As a byproduct of being more architecturally similar to iOS, but that's neither here nor there
02:14:16 ◼ ► they need to compile it on a Mac and if they need to compile it on a Mac they need an Apple developer license and
02:14:24 ◼ ► Technically, yeah, they could just say well, you know Renee they could let you sideload it
02:14:30 ◼ ► I mean, yeah, they hate that whole idea or they could register a new Apple developer license
02:14:36 ◼ ► Agreement and it's somebody else's name, you know that you know the Renee Richie, you know personal thing
02:14:44 ◼ ► If you want to say we're sticking to rules and we're looking at these and we have lawyers involved the license agreement
02:14:58 ◼ ► License the engine to themselves in perpetuity and have a developer account for the subsidiary. There's all sorts of legal shenanigans, right?
02:15:08 ◼ ► Unreal Engine as a platform for targeting iOS at risk for a fight that has nothing to do with Unreal Engine specifically at all
02:15:21 ◼ ► It should have been predictable because that is exactly what the other clause in the App Store thing says
02:15:28 ◼ ► But they had to know that it was a possibility because it is in that same agreement that they signed, right?
02:15:36 ◼ ► That's if we're gonna wrap up the show and and I think that there's a sentiment that I've seen from a lot of people and I
02:15:49 ◼ ► Putting Unreal Engine at risk to is heavy-handed and uncalled for and a bullying tactic
02:15:59 ◼ ► I could preface this quickly by saying like there's a lot of things I think people look at as individuals and not as companies and we
02:16:04 ◼ ► Saw that like a week or so ago when Apple is suing this company that has a pear-shaped logo and everyone's like
02:16:09 ◼ ► Oh, look Apple's evil, but the law literally says if you don't defend trademarks you lose them
02:16:15 ◼ ► I mean, there's things that happen as a company that are morally, you know, I don't say reprehensible
02:16:21 ◼ ► But because of the way laws are written and if they don't enforce the App Store agreement as written
02:16:29 ◼ ► but if they don't enforce it as written it becomes very hard to enforce it the next time when maybe it is and
02:16:34 ◼ ► Maybe they catch a new social network literally stealing everyone's data and they want to pull their license and the lawsuit says well
02:16:40 ◼ ► You didn't pull epics license. So why are you gonna pull ours? This is obviously not fair dealing
02:16:44 ◼ ► So you have to always look at these things in terms of companies not individuals, right?
02:16:52 ◼ ► Actually, it's maybe it's a bad example and that's what makes it a good example where the logo really isn't confused with the Apple logo
02:17:09 ◼ ► But a pear instead of an apple and there's different ways you can interpret that basic art direction
02:17:17 ◼ ► You could say well, that's something Apple needs to sue to defend the logo we're talking about with this pear company is not that at all
02:17:28 ◼ ► I think most reasonable people including me would say Apple didn't need to go after this company
02:17:32 ◼ ► but you can see how somebody in Apple legal who's looking after their interests in their job and the company's interests would say
02:17:43 ◼ ► Anything even vaguely involved with computers and a piece of fruit and a leaf on top. We're gonna say you can't do it. I
02:17:49 ◼ ► Disagree, but it's not like out of left field, right? It's not like it's not even that like it's it's not like they're suing them
02:17:57 ◼ ► They're just filing an objection and the person who gets the objection will just say no you're out of your minds
02:18:08 ◼ ► You're you're way, you know that whoever filed that for Apple legal is way out on the edge of protecting their Apple logo trademark. Yeah
02:18:15 ◼ ► Apple's saying we're going to remove your we're gonna cut you off from the Apple developer program is
02:18:24 ◼ ► It is a direct assault and the nature of it and if they want to be able to do that for other reasons
02:18:30 ◼ ► I think that they might have to do it here and if they didn't do it, like what else could they do?
02:18:34 ◼ ► What else could Apple do in the interim while this lawsuit is being fought and I will say I'm
02:18:47 ◼ ► Drop their lawsuit Apple isn't saying you have to drop your lawsuit or else we're not letting you
02:18:56 ◼ ► They're all Apple is saying that they have to do is submit a new version of fortnight that complies with the guidelines meaning takes out
02:19:05 ◼ ► Meaning all's good. You can continue with your lawsuit. You can do Apple and be in the App Store
02:19:13 ◼ ► What else could Apple do if they don't threaten to take the developer licensing agree away? I guess what they could do is just
02:19:20 ◼ ► Hit not just take fortnight out of the store, but make fortnight stop working on installed devices
02:19:37 ◼ ► That's I think where you're going is does that mean that in future cases with other companies where they really want to take away?
02:19:43 ◼ ► Their developer license agreement does it set a bad precedent where the company can say? Well the last time they just kicked the app out
02:19:50 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean precedent is everything that's why like like I'm not saying the pair thing wasn't ridiculous
02:19:55 ◼ ► It was but it's pro forma. It's like and I'm not saying this is a huge threat to the business, but it
02:20:01 ◼ ► Everything is based on precedent and if it says in the agreement, this is what happens 28 days after you do that
02:20:11 ◼ ► You're setting a precedent that in who who knows what egregious case comes up next it gets litigated saying well your honor
02:20:26 ◼ ► Ben Thompson's been mentioning lately that the the lace the case with Qualcomm brings up the time the difference between
02:20:33 ◼ ► anti-competitive and hyper competitive which is interesting, but the thing about anti-competitive is that in a lot of sense
02:20:40 ◼ ► Whenever we bring up anti-competitive what you're really also talking about is just being competitive. You know anti-competitive behavior and
02:20:50 ◼ ► competitive behavior is often the same thing right and it's not really anti meaning the opposite like
02:21:01 ◼ ► You know everybody hold hands and share collectively and the common good for everybody, right?
02:21:07 ◼ ► Or your illegal monopoly like some cable companies are where you you give up some form of regulation and in exchange for owning a market
02:21:14 ◼ ► Right anti matter and matter just cancel each other out anti competition and competition aren't opposites really
02:21:29 ◼ ► Disable fortnight on all the phones that are out there and they shouldn't revoke their developers cert
02:21:34 ◼ ► Well, then what what should they do? There's nothing there is nothing left what they just sit and take it and let fortnight
02:21:45 ◼ ► For and then when the next app does it what can they do then because they just they're not gonna do anything when force night
02:21:50 ◼ ► Did it so like every game like it look like the company that owns farm like Facebook owns
02:21:54 ◼ ► Farmville and the company that owns Candy Crush King, I think it is they will just switch to the same thing immediately
02:22:04 ◼ ► Then the lawsuit gets settled and it's settled in Apple's favor and all of a sudden there's a reckoning for all of these
02:22:10 ◼ ► But I mean, it's like it's it's hard to have someone it's basically it's Occupy Wall Street for the App Store at that point
02:22:15 ◼ ► Yeah, but anybody who does want to take their chances the way epic is certainly be free game for it
02:22:24 ◼ ► I think it's actually just shows how reckless it was in the first place for epic to wage the battle this way
02:22:29 ◼ ► They certainly could have they could have pulled fortnight, right? They could have done that instead
02:22:33 ◼ ► They could have just said we're not gonna put fortnight on iOS devices until Apple changes their policy
02:22:56 ◼ ► I don't want to lose them in your in my discussion of this right like Apple and epic and the courts can sort of
02:23:03 ◼ ► Omit them as best they can or use them as pawns to only make their side of the argument, but let's just face it
02:23:08 ◼ ► You know people who like playing fortnight on their devices should get to keep playing fortnight
02:23:13 ◼ ► And right now they are there get to keep playing fortnight and it is still hosted in the App Store
02:23:25 ◼ ► I got it on my phone even though I never had it because my son had it and we have family sharing and so I could
02:23:39 ◼ ► So it is still there include in it's the version that has the you know against the rules payment processing
02:23:53 ◼ ► You know people will say there's no choice but games are games. We were making that point earlier
02:23:59 ◼ ► You can play fortnight on Android you can play it on Xbox you can play it on PlayStation you can play it on switch
02:24:20 ◼ ► You go to the other stores and hopefully that's what Apple did with Verizon Verizon wasn't happy with their terms
02:24:36 ◼ ► there is this the sense that the Xbox game pass thing is anti-competitive on Apple's part because it is
02:24:44 ◼ ► Blocking Microsoft from doing this thing that Microsoft wants to provide and that a lot of iOS users want to use but in another sense
02:24:58 ◼ ► Games on your phone. There's a huge new competitive reason to buy an Android phone instead of an iPhone. So in a sense it's
02:25:07 ◼ ► Absolutely, but in terms of blaming me ultimately blaming epic for the putting unreal engine at risk and not blaming
02:25:14 ◼ ► Apple for saying that come August 28th. If you haven't fixed this we're gonna cancel sever your your developer account
02:25:30 ◼ ► implementation of the feature the way that they could have done this and had the same lawsuit is
02:26:10 ◼ ► You can make your case publicly that this would have allowed them to pass 20% or 30% savings on to the you know users
02:26:28 ◼ ► They did I don't believe there'd be any grounds for them to do it according to the terms
02:26:32 ◼ ► It's all epics own doing they gave Apple the ability to do it. So I think that the people who think Apple is being a
02:26:42 ◼ ► Who's the one who started it by doing something that they knew would open the door to it?
02:26:54 ◼ ► Yeah, and I think that goes to a lot of the motivation behind this because I think it really was
02:27:06 ◼ ► You can say like Tim Sweeney will say it's because he believes that those platforms sell
02:27:17 ◼ ► So they better earn their 30% and again, that's that's something that people can rightfully argue about
02:27:23 ◼ ► Also Sony owns 1.4 percent of epic 10 cent owns 40% of epic and 10 cent wants their own stores as well
02:27:30 ◼ ► Microsoft they made up famously and Nintendo licenses the Unreal Engine's they don't have a normal developer platform relationship with Nintendo
02:27:39 ◼ ► But beyond that, I think they know that under current US law and I don't know about the EU but under current US law
02:27:45 ◼ ► They would probably lose because there's no duty to deal you it's very hard to force a company
02:27:51 ◼ ► To to do business that they don't want to do so they would probably law lose a lawsuit under the current laws
02:28:00 ◼ ► Tim Cook and Sundar Pachai and everybody just testified in front of Congress and there is so much
02:28:06 ◼ ► momentum towards the regulation the breakup the the involvement in the tech industry that
02:28:13 ◼ ► If you wanted a story to slap down in front of Congress that would hurt Apple and probably help you
02:28:21 ◼ ► This is sort of like I wish I had a look at the end result and then reverse engineer how I get there and that
02:28:26 ◼ ► To me seems like what epic wants out of this is to change the game enough that they can become part of it
02:28:41 ◼ ► Are you saying that in terms of their battling this out in the court of public opinion? Yeah, I think also
02:28:48 ◼ ► But I think that they that they're creating a huge controversy that plays into the idea that people who are technologically
02:29:14 ◼ ► And it's very political but it's less political than the legislative branch who are literally elected politicians and
02:29:28 ◼ ► Like if you don't have the law you got nothing to argue about when you do and you're arguing, you know this case legally
02:29:41 ◼ ► But when you're arguing before Congress the way things should be holds a lot of sway because what Congress can do is write laws
02:29:48 ◼ ► The way they should be right that you know, and again, it's we have a whole discussion that yeah
02:29:54 ◼ ► Well, there's certain judges have certain perspectives and they interpret laws in different ways. And yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's not you can't remove it
02:30:00 ◼ ► It's not absolute that Congress is completely political and the judicial branch is not but
02:30:24 ◼ ► Thing they'll say epic will say look what mean Apple the monopolist forced us to do and now everybody on iOS
02:30:37 ◼ ► They're completely court of public opinion arguments, but they're good ones. You know, they work they certainly work for fortnight players
02:30:53 ◼ ► Maybe they saw the video when they launched fortnight because I don't know if anybody else knows that but I did I found it amusing
02:31:04 ◼ ► Yeah, they made it in game and they wanted to they wanted to weaponize the fortnight audience against Apple
02:31:15 ◼ ► I didn't try it on the other I tried it on switch and I tried it on Android and you see it they had an
02:31:20 ◼ ► In-game debut for it as well. Yeah, it's it's in yeah, it's in game and on switch and Android an anti-apple message
02:31:27 ◼ ► It's almost like they have monopoly control over the fortnight market. I found it amusing
02:31:43 ◼ ► They picked Google and Apple and I think they are juicier public court of public opinion targets
02:31:50 ◼ ► You never know how these things will turn out in court right look at Qualcomm which had like a terrible, you know
02:31:59 ◼ ► They appealed and the appeal was like three to zero who said no. Nope. That's all wrong, right?
02:32:07 ◼ ► One of the fascinating things is those Qualcomm lawyers who almost always fight against antitrust are now fighting for it
02:32:12 ◼ ► They're the same lawyers that epic hired to fight for it for them if this goes to a judge
02:32:32 ◼ ► Not maybe not in a quite the same way because as you mentioned they have partnerships with those companies
02:32:38 ◼ ► But it gives you know, I think in terms of getting trying to get the epic play store on those platforms
02:32:45 ◼ ► They're definitely going to use it if they win some kind of everything came up Milhouse epic judgment
02:32:51 ◼ ► Why wouldn't they write they can say screw our previous arrangement screw your 1.4 percent ownership of our company
02:32:57 ◼ ► We want the epic store on PlayStation 5 and you have to do it because here's the here's the law is our president
02:33:05 ◼ ► I did a community poll on my youtube channel because I wanted five options and Twitter only allows
02:33:10 ◼ ► For four because I wanted like I think apples right? I think epics, right? I think they both have points figured out
02:33:16 ◼ ► I think they're both dumb just stop it. And also honestly, I have way bigger problems in 2020 than this
02:33:30 ◼ ► They can do what they want, but almost everybody thought that Apple was being stupid and wrong about it
02:33:35 ◼ ► Nobody's affinity for Apple stopped them from thinking that it wasn't dumb for Apple to block Xbox streaming
02:33:59 ◼ ► Like I think the Google lawsuit was one of those mistakes and just them tweeting so much
02:34:04 ◼ ► I think was one of or just being so overly communicative. It's like a friend of mine Devon who runs a legal Eagle Channel
02:34:10 ◼ ► He just keeps saying like stop talking, you know, just don't talk. That's why you have a lawyer and they really I think should stop talking
02:34:19 ◼ ► The best thing they could do right now is to put the game back say that Apple forced them to do it
02:34:23 ◼ ► Gin up more negative sentiment against Apple try to litigate it in the courts where they may not win probably won't win
02:34:44 ◼ ► Browser ballot from Microsoft famously they wanted to help out opera and Slepnir and these other browsers
02:35:00 ◼ ► I think we'll get results that all of us look on thinking what why did we let this happen instead of doing anything?
02:35:17 ◼ ► Do you think without that if Microsoft were as free as ever or as free as Apple is with iOS to have their?
02:35:33 ◼ ► Edge would still be using them. You know, I'm not so sure that that would have stopped Chrome's
02:35:40 ◼ ► No, but I don't think it helped opera and it could help like I don't think it achieved what they want
02:35:49 ◼ ► I don't think that helps necessarily it was it was a huge distraction that didn't actually help the
02:35:53 ◼ ► Fundamental notion that it we'd in theory would be a lot better with a healthy market of multiple
02:36:06 ◼ ► We get down to look at Firefox these last couple weeks and geckos not I mean, who knows right?
02:36:11 ◼ ► Yeah, and the last thing just one thing I wanted to add to is that I really do mean that that epic is not the
02:36:20 ◼ ► Would have more confidence in epic if you if they ran their store better if they ran their store the way they wanted Apple to
02:36:31 ◼ ► Over epic take because epic said that they want to they want to get rid of the intermediation they want to let game creators sell
02:36:38 ◼ ► Directly to other gamers they want to make sure that the people who do the work get the money
02:36:46 ◼ ► Selling it as like emotes and other things in the epic store and giving the creators zero money
02:36:51 ◼ ► They are their behavior is more egregious than Apple in many of these circumstances well
02:36:57 ◼ ► it well and it ties into with the Xbox game pass where there's the mature way to do it in the immature way and
02:37:28 ◼ ► through an over-the-air update to the app turned the halo game into Microsoft game pass and there's a hundred games inside and
02:37:35 ◼ ► What are you gonna do now Apple right which would have been exactly analogous, you know, it's I think
02:37:48 ◼ ► People are actually saying that Netflix has a monopoly over Netflix content and aren't on
02:37:52 ◼ ► Don't deal well with other creators and demand all the rights and and the same arguments are going on there
02:38:03 ◼ ► That is surging and I just want to be real clear that epic does not represent any of that
02:38:12 ◼ ► I think there's a whole conversation about what what the app stores can do to be better for indie developers
02:38:17 ◼ ► This isn't that at all. Yeah. Yeah, it's just some it's some very interesting striking and very, you know
02:38:27 ◼ ► Fortnight are all about games and the hay thing is interesting because it's not even Spotify where they have to pay artists
02:38:32 ◼ ► Like it's not like epic is literally refusing to pay the people whose money they're making me
02:38:36 ◼ ► It's an argument over who gets to keep all of the profits from casino like businesses. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Renee
02:38:43 ◼ ► That's that call it a wrap. I mean, we've got plenty more to go an episode short episode. It's short year
02:39:02 ◼ ► What'd you break on the subscribers? I know you hundred thousand hundred thousand subscribers. We can make it a hundred and one thousand if everybody here