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The Talk Show

288: ‘It Shouldn’t Be Hard to Get a Smoothie’ With Dan Frommer

 

00:00:00   Dan Fromer, good to have you back on the show.

00:00:02   - Thank you, long time.

00:00:03   - Yeah, feels like it.

00:00:06   And Skype is telling me 10 months.

00:00:09   I don't know if that's accurate.

00:00:10   - I think that's right.

00:00:12   - I know, I do know I didn't see you last week.

00:00:15   - Oh my gosh, yeah.

00:00:16   What a strange thing.

00:00:21   - Let me jump right into it

00:00:23   and talk about the keynote a little.

00:00:24   I'm still not done talking about it,

00:00:26   But here's a quote from your newsletter, The New Consumer,

00:00:29   talking about the actual keynote itself,

00:00:32   the presentation, sort of the cinema.

00:00:34   Here's a quote, "Remember how 'Oceans 11'

00:00:36   "felt faster and more modern than any heist movie before it?

00:00:40   "That's what this was like."

00:00:42   I love that synopsis of the keynote.

00:00:45   I think that that, and again, you could say,

00:00:47   well, it's, you know, they're trying to say

00:00:49   electronic gadgets and operating systems,

00:00:51   it's not as cool as 'Oceans 11'.

00:00:54   It's the keynote equivalent though, and it is.

00:00:56   It's just faster.

00:00:58   - Yeah, and I guess they couldn't do it that way

00:01:04   if they were still pretending to be talking

00:01:08   to a theater of, what is it, 6,000 people

00:01:11   or something like that?

00:01:13   - Yeah, I don't know.

00:01:14   - But because they weren't, and they knew they weren't,

00:01:17   they really kind of chopped out all the crowd reaction parts

00:01:22   and they were speaking straight into the camera

00:01:25   instead of pretending to be speaking to a room.

00:01:29   It really worked.

00:01:30   - Yeah, I thought it was really interesting.

00:01:34   It was, and I felt such a relief

00:01:38   as I read other people's takes on it.

00:01:43   I listened to ATP's post keynote episode,

00:01:48   and having everybody say, hey, that was a lot to digest

00:01:51   that went by so fast made me feel better

00:01:55   about the fact that I felt overwhelmed

00:01:57   when it was over.

00:01:59   And I don't think, I still don't think it was too much.

00:02:02   I don't think that, you know, if I had to give notes,

00:02:06   I would say maybe slow down a little.

00:02:09   But the other problem that they have with these keynotes,

00:02:14   whether they're live in, you know, like regular,

00:02:17   traditional ones or this one that's virtual,

00:02:19   is in terms of deciding what makes the cut

00:02:24   for the keynote or not,

00:02:25   it's not like writing a movie,

00:02:30   or maybe it's sort of like adapting a book

00:02:32   or something like that, where the book is 700 pages

00:02:35   and there's a lot of plot points

00:02:36   and somehow you gotta make it two hours.

00:02:39   Here's the list of everything they're doing

00:02:43   for the next year across all of these platforms.

00:02:47   they're doing it whether it makes the keynote or not.

00:02:50   So it's like you could say, all right,

00:02:51   we're gonna cut this feature from the keynote.

00:02:55   We're not even gonna mention it too much.

00:02:57   That doesn't mean the feature isn't there,

00:02:58   and those of us who wanna cover it

00:03:00   still have to figure it out eventually anyway.

00:03:04   So it's a hard thing to give notes on.

00:03:08   Did they pack too much into the keynote?

00:03:11   - Well, it's just interesting how different it is

00:03:13   than three or four or five years ago

00:03:16   when, I don't know if you remember,

00:03:18   but they would start the iOS segment

00:03:20   and they'd be like, all right,

00:03:21   we've got 12 new tent poles or whatever it is,

00:03:24   and they would have all those icons on the screen.

00:03:26   I think this year it was two or three

00:03:28   or something like that.

00:03:29   And instead they're kind of opening up new worlds,

00:03:32   like this whole concept of widgets,

00:03:35   which you could theoretically spend two hours

00:03:38   just on widgets, and I'm sure,

00:03:40   I haven't had a chance to watch the technical videos

00:03:42   from those sessions, but I'm sure there's some pretty

00:03:45   interesting stuff there, but it's not like the old days

00:03:47   where it's like, and now we have FaceTime,

00:03:50   or all these changes coming to the mail app

00:03:53   or something like that.

00:03:54   - Yeah, it seemed, I don't know if 10 was the magic number,

00:04:00   but it always felt to me like a lot of times

00:04:02   they'd have 10 features, like maybe it was

00:04:04   a Steve Jobs axiom, you know, let's pick 10/10 polls,

00:04:09   and you can imagine the prep sessions in the weeks

00:04:13   leading up to the big announcement where there's 20,

00:04:17   and all right, here's the 20, all right,

00:04:19   we'll cut these two, now we're down to 18,

00:04:21   next meeting, get it down to 15,

00:04:24   and eventually you get it down to the 10.

00:04:26   This felt a little bit more aggressive than that.

00:04:30   I think you're right, I don't think,

00:04:31   I wouldn't say there were 10 10-poles

00:04:33   for any of these things.

00:04:34   - I guess maybe the watch had a few things.

00:04:37   It's a platform that's still kind of less developed,

00:04:41   Whereas iOS, like, you know, what a, (laughs)

00:04:46   at this point we're like, all right,

00:04:47   we can change default apps, there you go. (laughs)

00:04:50   It's not like there's a ton of,

00:04:52   I mean, I guess if you wanted to be creative,

00:04:54   you could come up with a whole next set

00:04:57   of 10, 20 features to add, but it's certainly,

00:05:00   you know, and I think people's literacy

00:05:02   of learning new features has changed over the years, too.

00:05:06   People are much more, you know,

00:05:08   this is a device you've now used for a decade

00:05:11   all the time, so I think people learn new things faster

00:05:15   and don't need to be walked through them quite as literally

00:05:18   as they may have needed to five or six years ago.

00:05:21   - Maybe.

00:05:23   I do think that,

00:05:29   I also think that the attention,

00:05:30   and I, you know, you can never please everybody, right?

00:05:33   I mean, there's 50 different ways of saying that.

00:05:38   I feel like iOS, the iPhone version of iOS in particular,

00:05:43   changed the least and it's sort of the most additive.

00:05:46   Although what they did change is at the very,

00:05:49   they even emphasized it.

00:05:50   This is your main interface to the phone, the home screen.

00:05:53   Okay, finally we're gonna put widgets

00:05:55   wherever you want them and we're gonna deal with this issue

00:05:59   of your fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh page apps

00:06:04   just being a complete mess.

00:06:07   But I feel like they did it in a good way where it is not,

00:06:11   it really should not confuse anybody moving,

00:06:16   who's already learned how to use an iPhone.

00:06:18   It's not like all of a sudden they're gonna upgrade

00:06:21   their iPhone or buy a new one and then they're gonna be lost

00:06:23   on the homepage, it's pretty similar.

00:06:26   - Yeah.

00:06:28   - It's sort of a power user feature,

00:06:30   which I know is often an overused term,

00:06:32   but to me one of the best ways of describing

00:06:34   a good power user feature is the sort of thing

00:06:38   that's out of the way of normal people.

00:06:42   They don't even know it's there,

00:06:44   but it is there in a very discoverable way

00:06:47   for somebody who's enthusiastic enough to dig into it.

00:06:51   So you could find it on your own

00:06:53   by sort of learning to understand the insert platform here,

00:06:58   the Mac way of thinking or the iPhone way of thinking.

00:07:02   Well, I would think maybe it would be here.

00:07:04   I'll go to the share button and open this sheet

00:07:06   and scroll down and oh yeah, here's where you can

00:07:08   you know, do X, Y, or Z.

00:07:12   You learn to find features like that.

00:07:14   And I feel like those home screen features

00:07:17   fall into that category where you, you know,

00:07:20   I guess it all starts with jiggle mode.

00:07:22   - Right. (laughs)

00:07:24   - I don't know.

00:07:26   I was so excited that he called it jiggle mode

00:07:29   in the keynote and then a bunch of people at Twitter like,

00:07:32   they've always called it jiggle mode.

00:07:33   It's like I don't recall anybody in an Apple keynote

00:07:35   calling it jiggle mode.

00:07:37   - It's the kind of joy that we need these days, Jon.

00:07:40   - Yeah.

00:07:41   I thought that was the other thing about the keynote

00:07:45   that I thought they did a very good job of,

00:07:48   is they kept it lighthearted and it was sunny.

00:07:52   Literally sunny in a lot of places

00:07:55   where they clearly filmed in the atrium

00:07:59   of the Steve Jobs Theater with lots of

00:08:01   California sunshine outside.

00:08:03   You know, it's difficult times to do a keynote

00:08:10   for multiple reasons. - Yeah.

00:08:12   - And I feel like they hit the right tone.

00:08:13   Couple of jokes, not too many, fewer than usual.

00:08:16   But I feel like tonally really hit it.

00:08:21   You know, like you just, you can't,

00:08:22   you certainly can't accuse them of being,

00:08:24   pretending that the current situation isn't going on,

00:08:29   whether the current situation is the protests

00:08:33   and the Black Lives Matter protests

00:08:38   and police stuff around the country

00:08:39   or the COVID-19 situation,

00:08:43   I think that they acknowledge all of it pretty well.

00:08:46   - Yeah, and I'm curious how far out

00:08:50   they kind of rewrote that intro.

00:08:52   I guess they had several weeks to prepare for it.

00:08:56   I thought it was actually really well done

00:08:58   the way that the first shot was basically a reverse shot

00:09:02   of the Steve Jobs stage that you normally would never see

00:09:05   except for like a crowd reaction shot

00:09:07   showing an empty theater.

00:09:09   And there's Tim kind of washed in backlighting,

00:09:13   doing his Tim thing where he kind of rises above

00:09:17   just running Apple and acts as sort of a world leader

00:09:21   in a way that, I mean honestly,

00:09:24   that's probably more substantive than anything

00:09:26   our actual leaders have said about either of those things.

00:09:29   So I think it was well done.

00:09:31   And not too over the top, and not too cheesy,

00:09:34   and not too prolonged, but well done.

00:09:38   - I guess I will take a break.

00:09:43   I wanna keep moving, but I definitely wanna,

00:09:46   when we come back, and I knew you were gonna write about it.

00:09:49   I couldn't wait to read it.

00:09:51   You wrote about app clips, and I knew,

00:09:53   'cause it's, you know, what was the announcement

00:09:56   that was more up the alley of new consumer.

00:09:59   - Totally. - But let's take a break

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00:12:30   App Clips.

00:12:32   This to me is either...

00:12:34   Here's what I think, and then I want to hear more of your thoughts because I thought you

00:12:37   had a pretty good take on it.

00:12:39   I think this is either going to be a really big deal or a complete bust, and there's not

00:12:44   much room in the middle. The sign of any good new technology, right? I think so. That's

00:12:51   not a bad rule of thumb that it's either going to go big or go home. I mean, it's interesting.

00:12:57   So I assume everyone here kind of knows what app clips are, but if not, it's, it's a piece

00:13:02   of your iPhone app. So it's not new. I mean, it could be new code, but it's part of your

00:13:09   apps binary that is loaded in a completely different way

00:13:14   by someone who does not have your app.

00:13:17   And they load it by, and it's a bunch of different things.

00:13:21   And the examples are basically like,

00:13:23   if you're Panera Bread and you have this whole app

00:13:27   where you have all your nutrition info

00:13:28   and a map that has all your locations

00:13:31   and all this kind of stuff,

00:13:32   if someone shows up in the store

00:13:34   and they see a sign that says,

00:13:38   We'll get into the QR code in a second,

00:13:40   but basically they can load this app clip

00:13:45   that's just the ordering sheet.

00:13:47   So, and the whole idea is it has to be under 10 meg,

00:13:50   which is actually very small.

00:13:52   I mean, I looked at a bunch of the apps like Starbucks.

00:13:56   I think Starbucks is almost 200 megs.

00:13:59   Well, you know, these, it's funny,

00:14:03   but like these apps do a lot these days.

00:14:05   You know, you have your whole--

00:14:06   - Do you know what though?

00:14:07   You know what though?

00:14:08   I think a lot of that though is unnecessary bloat.

00:14:10   I've seen people analyze it.

00:14:12   I think part of it is that they do a lot,

00:14:14   but part of it is that modern app development

00:14:18   is a lot of, well, we'll just throw a framework in there.

00:14:21   And this framework's eight megabytes,

00:14:23   and this framework's 13 megabytes.

00:14:25   And all they're doing is putting a framework in

00:14:27   that does one little thing.

00:14:28   Next thing you know, it's a 200 megabyte app download.

00:14:30   - Yeah, here's the one that tracks you

00:14:32   while you're walking around.

00:14:33   Here's the one that, yeah.

00:14:34   - Right.

00:14:36   So essentially, the whole idea is for an essential part

00:14:41   of your app to be able to be almost streamed,

00:14:44   'cause it's 10 megs, in real time,

00:14:48   that people can use very quickly to get something done.

00:14:52   Whether it's, I'm standing in the lobby of Panera,

00:14:56   especially, and this is super helpful during COVID,

00:14:58   like you're standing outside of Starbucks,

00:15:00   you wanna order a coffee for contactless pickup,

00:15:04   You don't wanna have to download this app,

00:15:07   figure out the navigation,

00:15:09   sign up for a loyalty account, log in.

00:15:13   Every time I open the Grubhub app or whatever,

00:15:16   it's like, forget my address.

00:15:18   I just wanna see the menu of a restaurant.

00:15:20   Don't ask me my address, don't ask,

00:15:23   let's skip all the throat clearing

00:15:25   and just get into this point

00:15:26   where I can just get one thing done very quickly.

00:15:29   The sample app that Apple uses in the WWDC sessions

00:15:33   is a smoothie ordering app.

00:15:35   And you can kind of see where you're standing

00:15:38   in front of the smoothie kiosk,

00:15:40   all you wanna do is just order a smoothie very quickly,

00:15:43   and boom, the app clip gets you the ordering screen.

00:15:46   That's it.

00:15:47   And then of course, this is Apple,

00:15:49   so you're encouraged to use Apple Pay,

00:15:52   and then you're encouraged to offer your customers

00:15:55   the opportunity to let people sign up for a loyalty account

00:15:59   with Sign In with Apple and all these things.

00:16:03   But why I wrote about this for the new consumer

00:16:05   and the part of it that I think is gonna be

00:16:08   either the thing that takes it to that level

00:16:11   where it's just part of how we use our phones in the future

00:16:14   or not is this thing that's called the AppClip code.

00:16:18   And it's a round QR code.

00:16:21   There's still a lot of details about how it's gonna work

00:16:23   that we don't know yet, but the thinking is

00:16:27   that there's gonna be this sticker

00:16:29   that with this QR code on it that's round,

00:16:33   that also has an embedded NFC chip.

00:16:35   And both of those things,

00:16:37   whether you move your phone close to it

00:16:39   or take a photo of the QR code,

00:16:42   will trigger a URL that is a deep link into your app

00:16:45   that not only is to a specific page,

00:16:47   but could also be associated

00:16:49   with a specific geographic location.

00:16:52   And in fact, your app can actually ping the server

00:16:54   and confirm that you're actually in the location

00:16:56   that the sticker is supposed to be in.

00:16:58   So that helps if you're, again,

00:17:00   to go back to our Starbucks analogy,

00:17:03   it not only knows that you wanna go

00:17:04   straight to the order screen,

00:17:06   but it knows what exact location you should be ordering from.

00:17:09   So you don't have to go through the process

00:17:10   of looking at the map, trying to figure out

00:17:13   which of the four Starbucks in your immediate vicinity

00:17:17   is the one you're standing in front of.

00:17:19   And this extends to,

00:17:22   another example they gave is a scooter rental service.

00:17:26   If you have 10,000 scooters in your fleet,

00:17:29   each code will be different and each code will actually be

00:17:32   delineated to that specific scooter,

00:17:35   so boom, it'll check, okay, is this scooter in our network

00:17:39   where we think it's supposed to be?

00:17:41   Start riding, pay for it,

00:17:44   deal with all the other nonsense later.

00:17:46   So it's an interesting idea.

00:17:50   We're in this era where a lot of companies have iPhone apps

00:17:53   that do a lot of different things.

00:17:55   They keep taking advantage of all these new technologies

00:17:57   in the phone, but if you just wanna get

00:17:59   one simple thing done, pay for parking,

00:18:02   order something, make a purchase,

00:18:06   I think it could be a really interesting

00:18:08   and compelling use for gaming and art, maybe.

00:18:11   I don't know if that's gonna be allowed,

00:18:13   but it seems very much purposely designed

00:18:16   to just get one thing done very quickly,

00:18:20   which, well, there's a whole other set of things

00:18:25   we can talk about, but yeah, that's the overview.

00:18:27   - I think that a couple of the interesting parts,

00:18:31   another way to think of it is just sort of

00:18:33   a mini version of the app, right?

00:18:36   Like there's not, and it's a little hard to,

00:18:40   I always feel like the best way to learn anything

00:18:42   is to just start using it, and you can't quite do it yet

00:18:45   because nobody has app clips out yet,

00:18:48   and you can't just say, you know, like,

00:18:49   oh, they've already worked with Starbucks,

00:18:52   and if you run the iOS 14 beta,

00:18:56   you can already get the Starbucks app clip.

00:18:59   Doesn't work like that,

00:18:59   so you kinda have to go by the sessions.

00:19:01   But it's really just a mini version of the app,

00:19:04   and part of it shows my age as somebody who came of age

00:19:09   in the '90s building websites when we tried to,

00:19:13   we measured websites by the kilobyte.

00:19:15   And it mattered, right?

00:19:18   It was like, that was like,

00:19:19   it wasn't just a sign of professional pride

00:19:21   and perfectionism, it was like,

00:19:24   when I was doing freelance web development

00:19:25   in the mid to late 90s and early 2000s,

00:19:29   it's like being able to tell people

00:19:31   you'd have a faster website

00:19:33   and it would actually load pretty,

00:19:35   as quick as you can imagine on a modem connection,

00:19:38   it mattered.

00:19:39   And so talking about 10 megabytes as a small payload

00:19:42   still sounds to me like a lot.

00:19:44   - I think my whole FTV account was two megs, so.

00:19:47   (laughing)

00:19:49   But on the other hand, like you pointed out,

00:19:52   a lot of very popular apps that are also

00:19:57   the very much, the type of apps that ought to be

00:20:00   using the App Clips feature have 180 megabytes,

00:20:04   200 megabytes just to get the app.

00:20:07   And then the bigger difference too,

00:20:08   in addition to a lot less to download,

00:20:11   so it's there installed and running,

00:20:14   one tenth the size easily, maybe more,

00:20:18   is the first run experience, right?

00:20:20   The idea is that if you get the app for ordering

00:20:24   from the Slurpee place or, what'd you say the example was?

00:20:29   Not Slurpees, what's the-- - Smoothies, yeah.

00:20:31   - Smoothies, that's what we call Slurpees nowadays.

00:20:33   But if the idea is you get the app clip

00:20:38   and then you can pre-order your thing,

00:20:40   it's not gonna sit there and ask you for email

00:20:43   and a password and all this nonsense,

00:20:46   and go check your email for the confirmation code

00:20:49   and tap the thing and oh, go fish it out of your spam

00:20:52   because it actually went to spam

00:20:53   and then click the link in there and now you're registered.

00:20:56   By that time, you've already missed your turn

00:20:59   to get your smoothie.

00:21:01   So have it just launch, show me the things

00:21:05   and then you tap it and it already knows you're there

00:21:08   'cause you got it, like you said,

00:21:09   and hopefully it removes a lot of it.

00:21:11   And I feel like what they're competing with in some ways

00:21:15   is, the obvious thing they're competing with

00:21:19   is just downloading the whole app

00:21:22   and going through the normal first run experience

00:21:25   and the permissions and et cetera, et cetera.

00:21:28   But the other thing they're competing against

00:21:30   is just the good old fashioned real world, right?

00:21:34   Like, how many places have you been in your life

00:21:38   for decades where if you're a regular,

00:21:40   you get a little business card

00:21:42   that's like every 10 times you come in,

00:21:44   they stamp it and then you get like a free sandwich

00:21:46   or something like that.

00:21:48   And that's all the card does.

00:21:50   Everybody understands what it does.

00:21:52   They give you the card, they're like,

00:21:53   "Hey, would you like this?"

00:21:54   And, "Here, I'll stamp it."

00:21:56   And then buy nine more sandwiches and you get a free one.

00:22:00   Everybody understands what that card is, how it works,

00:22:04   and you can make the personal choice

00:22:06   as to whether it's actually something

00:22:08   you wanna stick in your wallet and you'll use,

00:22:11   which a lot of people do,

00:22:12   or if you'll just politely wait 'til you're out of sight

00:22:15   and throw it away.

00:22:16   But it's easy, you understand it.

00:22:19   Nobody's confused by that card, right?

00:22:22   And so the idea with an app clip is,

00:22:25   if you just point your phone,

00:22:26   no matter how easy they make these app clip codes,

00:22:31   and I do think they look pretty easy,

00:22:33   and I think the NFC stuff certainly helps make it easier

00:22:36   where you just kind of get your phone close to it

00:22:38   and it should pop up with,

00:22:39   Do you wanna load the app clip for Dan's Smoothie Shop?

00:22:42   And then, yeah, that's exactly why I'm waving my phone

00:22:45   at this tap a button and then you've got it.

00:22:47   And a seven to eight, nine megabyte download

00:22:53   over a typical LTE network

00:22:55   is actually going to happen pretty fast.

00:22:57   There you are.

00:22:58   It's pretty close to the seamlessness

00:23:01   of just picking up a flyer, right?

00:23:03   Or a lot of busy takeout places will have,

00:23:06   Obviously a lot of places have a menu on the wall

00:23:09   that you can look at, but they'll give you back

00:23:12   in pre-COVID days like a laminated menu

00:23:14   to look at while you're in line or something like that.

00:23:17   - Totally, and let's not forget,

00:23:20   it's actually very easy to just stand there

00:23:21   and order a smoothie off the menu.

00:23:24   That's not a hardship, but that is assuming

00:23:28   that there is a person there to take the order,

00:23:31   and that's assuming that you're actually standing there.

00:23:34   And one of the interesting things about app clips

00:23:36   is that not only are they discoverable in that setting,

00:23:41   the physical setting, but they're also gonna be deep linked

00:23:44   from the Apple Maps listing for a location.

00:23:47   They're shareable, you can text message someone

00:23:50   a link to it.

00:23:51   So it's a little more elaborate than just

00:23:54   scan this QR code and load this thing.

00:23:57   I think a good analogy is it's kind of like a webpage

00:24:00   versus a website, and I think we talked about

00:24:03   this mini app thing.

00:24:06   To me, and we'll see how it works in practice,

00:24:10   my guess is that there's gonna be a lot of things

00:24:12   that the kind of ideal demo suggests

00:24:16   that it would be useful for,

00:24:17   where it turns out that it's just not that useful.

00:24:19   And then there's gonna be a bunch of new stuff,

00:24:21   whether it's vending machines or new types of retail designs,

00:24:26   this whole COVID period where you really are trying

00:24:29   to minimize contact with staff,

00:24:31   and a lot of places are not passing out menus at all,

00:24:36   where it could actually be very useful and reduce friction.

00:24:39   And a lot of times people are not only reluctant

00:24:43   to download an app, but they'll download it

00:24:45   and then never use it.

00:24:46   I mean, I probably have three pages of apps on my phone

00:24:48   that I've never even used.

00:24:49   So if you can get someone to not only stop

00:24:54   and see that something is available for purchase,

00:24:57   but get the page to order it and order it

00:25:00   and place the order within seconds

00:25:03   instead of minutes or whatever it is,

00:25:06   It could be very useful, but again, we'll see.

00:25:10   I don't know.

00:25:11   Maybe not.

00:25:12   - The other one that everybody keeps mentioning,

00:25:15   and I think it's maybe a better example

00:25:17   of something app clips can do that the real world can't,

00:25:21   are the parking apps.

00:25:23   And so I think part of the idea is,

00:25:26   you know, a municipality can have a certain app,

00:25:29   and you get the app clip,

00:25:31   and instead of pumping quarters into a meter,

00:25:34   you just use the app.

00:25:35   and

00:25:37   Part of the say well quarters everybody understood quarters and the inconvenience was if you did if you had the quarters you were set

00:25:44   and if you didn't you're screwed and

00:25:47   That did suck if you were out of quarters, and I think we've all been in that situation

00:25:52   And you know and then you learn to just hide a roll of quarters somewhere in your car, and they're always there

00:26:02   But the thing that an app can do is an app can do things like hey you you know

00:26:07   I know you put in exactly 90 minutes of time and at 80 minutes

00:26:12   I can send you an alert and you're still at your kids

00:26:15   School play or something like that and you get an alert that says hey, you know your your meters up in 10 minutes

00:26:21   Do you want to put more time in and then maybe you can just put the more time in right there?

00:26:25   You know punch it into the phone

00:26:27   instead of being the jerk who has to get up

00:26:30   from the kindergarten sing-along and run out

00:26:33   and pump quarters into a meter.

00:26:35   That's pretty cool, right?

00:26:36   Then you feel like you're living in the future

00:26:38   and it's like, hey, that was pretty cool.

00:26:41   And you also feel like, hey, I don't have to,

00:26:44   I don't know how long this dentist appointment's gonna take.

00:26:47   I better just put $4 a quarters in here.

00:26:50   You know, you don't know.

00:26:51   So I could see it.

00:26:54   - So a few other things that I think are really interesting

00:26:56   about the implementation is that to that point,

00:26:59   that notification, the whole idea, again,

00:27:03   is to lower friction, so it's actually not gonna prompt you

00:27:06   to see if you want that notification or not.

00:27:08   It's not gonna ask you for permission

00:27:09   to send you notifications for, I think, eight hours,

00:27:12   or also location information for that first query,

00:27:17   that first confirmation that you're in the place

00:27:20   that it thinks you are.

00:27:21   So it's a much less, the onboarding process

00:27:24   a lot less kind of hairy.

00:27:28   Another interesting thing is that because it's part of,

00:27:32   because the app clip is part of the main binary of your app,

00:27:36   there's this thing like this shared data pool,

00:27:40   I guess you could call it,

00:27:43   where if you download the full app

00:27:46   after you use the app clip,

00:27:48   it will move your information over into the main app.

00:27:51   So you don't have to sign up for an account a second time

00:27:54   or anything like that, which I think is pretty slick.

00:27:57   Then there's this idea that these app clips are

00:28:01   almost ephemeral in a way, like if you don't use them,

00:28:04   if you only use them once, if you're visiting a new city

00:28:07   and you get five app clips 'cause you're at restaurants

00:28:10   that you don't go to in your main city,

00:28:13   and you never use them again, Apple will actually

00:28:16   just clear 'em off your phone for you,

00:28:19   which is kind of interesting.

00:28:20   If you do use them over and over, it will keep them.

00:28:24   And then lastly, this idea that an app can have

00:28:30   multiple app clips that are active on your phone

00:28:32   at the same time.

00:28:33   So imagine Yelp could make an app clip for,

00:28:37   if it wanted to, every business in its directory

00:28:39   that's this kind of discreet branded app clip,

00:28:43   and you could have seven different app clips

00:28:44   from the Yelp app on your phone,

00:28:46   each of those for different locations.

00:28:49   I imagine at that point you're just gonna get the Yelp app,

00:28:51   but you start to see how,

00:28:53   and I was just on, not to plug another podcast,

00:28:57   but I was talking about this with one of the partners

00:29:01   from Andreesen Horowitz on one of their podcasts this week

00:29:05   who studies the China market a lot.

00:29:06   And this kind of pushes us towards this era

00:29:10   that has not really happened in the US of these super apps

00:29:12   where a lot of the activity is not every restaurant

00:29:17   making their own app or every chain making their own app,

00:29:19   but having a place within a WeChat or a bigger ecosystem.

00:29:23   So a lot to kind of sketch out where maybe this is

00:29:27   gonna happen over the next 10 years, maybe not,

00:29:30   but it is kind of a really interesting new point where,

00:29:34   and I guess this exists in other app platforms like

00:29:38   Snapchat has its own version of this,

00:29:40   I think Android does too, but it's an interesting thing

00:29:43   from an iOS perspective as well.

00:29:46   - It feels to me like the Android version.

00:29:49   I forget what they call it.

00:29:50   But it doesn't seem like that ever really took off.

00:29:54   I mean, and that's sort of the,

00:29:56   it's a bust possible future for app clips that I see.

00:30:00   Like, I never hear anybody talking about,

00:30:03   oh, I was somewhere and I got the Android card

00:30:07   or whatever they call the little clips.

00:30:10   I've never heard anybody talk about using such a thing.

00:30:13   - Certainly don't hear about it, yeah.

00:30:15   But Apple has a very successful track record

00:30:19   at getting people to do stuff

00:30:20   that no one else can get them to do.

00:30:22   So I don't know, we'll see.

00:30:24   I think it's neat, I don't know if I'm gonna use them.

00:30:27   I mean, I guess I will to test them out

00:30:29   if I see them out and around.

00:30:30   I'm very interested in how these stickers are gonna happen.

00:30:33   I asked Apple, and they're not talking about it yet,

00:30:37   but and they kind of say in some of the session videos,

00:30:41   like we're gonna make tools that help you

00:30:45   make these stickers, I don't know if they're gonna

00:30:47   approve stickers, are they gonna make you guarantee

00:30:50   that you're not gonna vandalize public places

00:30:53   with these stickers?

00:30:54   I think there's a lot of unknowns to those stickers

00:30:57   that we'll have to find out, but.

00:30:59   - Well, I didn't even think about that angle,

00:31:01   but that is an angle because it is sort of clearly the,

00:31:05   I don't think there's an Apple logo on it,

00:31:07   but it's very clearly an iPhone in the center of the thing.

00:31:12   They sort of look like a fingerprint,

00:31:14   like the Touch ID fingerprint.

00:31:15   They're like a, combined with,

00:31:18   people are saying the Maze from Westworld

00:31:23   and also the Hatch logos from Lost.

00:31:30   But it's sort of like a circular fingerprint type thing

00:31:37   with, and I don't know how to read it or decipher it,

00:31:40   but you can see that there's sort of a Morse code-y pattern

00:31:45   to the concentric rings, you know,

00:31:47   short, long dashes as the rings go around.

00:31:51   So you don't have to be a cryptographer

00:31:55   to try to figure out how to actually read it

00:31:57   and figure out what it is,

00:31:58   but you can see that it's an embedded code,

00:32:00   same way that you can look at a QR code

00:32:02   and see that there's this black and white pattern.

00:32:05   But I guess it sort of raises the pattern,

00:32:08   Why don't they just use QR codes?

00:32:11   And I think I know the answer to that.

00:32:14   (laughs)

00:32:15   Which is, well, there's two answers.

00:32:18   One, my first, the one that made me laugh,

00:32:21   is that QR codes are so freaking ugly.

00:32:23   They're just ugly.

00:32:24   They're horrible, they're so super ugly.

00:32:27   And I think Apple resisted using them for so long.

00:32:30   And then I forget when, but like a year or two ago,

00:32:33   maybe three years ago, they did build in a feature

00:32:36   to the iOS camera where if you just open up your camera app

00:32:39   and point it at a QR code, it will recognize it

00:32:42   and then say like, oh, okay, do you wanna open

00:32:45   the Starbucks app or whatever the QR code is for?

00:32:48   Write in the camera app because prior to that,

00:32:51   you had to go to the app store and get like a QR code reader

00:32:55   and it was like a whole cottage industry of,

00:32:58   I mean, literally, I'm not even exaggerating.

00:33:00   - Hundreds.

00:33:01   - Maybe hundreds, hundreds of apps

00:33:04   because Apple chose not to build it into the system,

00:33:09   it was an obvious need.

00:33:10   Their QR codes are all over the world.

00:33:13   And so, in one sense, it's like,

00:33:17   well, the App Store works.

00:33:18   You know, you could just go to the App Store and get it,

00:33:20   but which one do you get?

00:33:22   And they're all just, you know,

00:33:23   every single one just was some variation

00:33:25   of any obvious name you could think of.

00:33:28   You know, QR code scanner, QR code reader,

00:33:32   reader for QR codes, you just name it, there was an app for it. They all look the same,

00:33:38   they all had cheese ball icons, they all were from developers you've never heard of,

00:33:42   and what do you do? I don't know. So I'm glad they built it into the camera app so you don't

00:33:48   have to worry about it, but I can see why Apple's not using it. QR codes, they are so ugly. And then

00:33:53   the second idea is, QR codes are cross-platform and work for everybody, and I think they always

00:33:59   just transform into a URL and I think that by doing their own scheme they have a lot

00:34:05   more control over it. They can build something proprietary that's just for iPhones and it

00:34:11   can, I don't know what the actual decoded app clip code resolves to. Maybe it is just

00:34:20   it, but I don't know if there's anything else in addition to the URL. Right. Like presumably

00:34:24   it's something that points to apps.apple.com

00:34:29   or whatever the new URL,

00:34:31   the top level domain is for the app store.

00:34:33   So presumably there's a URL in there,

00:34:36   but I don't know if there's anything else.

00:34:38   - Some of this is in the videos, but I don't remember.

00:34:41   But I don't know what the code goes to.

00:34:44   And if it's, could Google hijack that then

00:34:47   in a future version of Android

00:34:49   and translate that to a deep link into Android apps?

00:34:53   I don't know.

00:34:53   - Right, I don't know.

00:34:55   And it raises the question to however popular

00:34:59   the iPhone is in the United States,

00:35:01   it certainly varies by countries around the world.

00:35:04   And does a business want to have two different things?

00:35:09   One of the nice advantages of most payment systems

00:35:14   that take Apple Pay is that they also are,

00:35:17   they're not tied specifically,

00:35:19   it's not like an Apple branded reader

00:35:22   that only takes iPhones for Apple Pay or Apple Watch,

00:35:26   it is an NFC payment thing

00:35:29   that also can take Android phone payment.

00:35:32   So that's good for the business.

00:35:35   I think it's good not to have that locked into one platform.

00:35:39   - Well, and then imagine this world

00:35:40   where you walk into a restaurant

00:35:42   and they have the Grubhub app code,

00:35:46   they have the TripAdvisor app code,

00:35:48   they have the Resi and the OpenTable.

00:35:52   Which of these do I wanna use?

00:35:53   I don't even know.

00:35:54   - Right, and then it's just another variation

00:35:57   of the 300 different QR code reader apps in the App Store.

00:36:00   It's like, what do I do?

00:36:00   I don't know what to do. - Totally.

00:36:02   - Right, you kind of want that clarity.

00:36:04   I mean, it should not be hard to get a smoothie.

00:36:08   - Yeah. (laughs)

00:36:08   - I keep wanting to say Slurpee.

00:36:10   - I mean.

00:36:11   - It shouldn't be hard to get a Slurpee either.

00:36:14   (laughs)

00:36:16   But whatever cold, refreshing treat you want to order,

00:36:20   it shouldn't be complicated,

00:36:21   and you shouldn't have to learn what to get.

00:36:24   And then you mentioned it in New Consumer too,

00:36:26   is on the other end, in addition to the proliferation

00:36:30   of choices and trying to reduce that from the business

00:36:33   and the consumer side, how do you avoid the scams?

00:36:36   How do you keep a company from making an app clip

00:36:39   for Dan's smoothie shop that you don't even know about,

00:36:44   which we've learned is actually a problem

00:36:46   with a lot of the food delivery places.

00:36:48   Like a huge problem.

00:36:51   There's a place here, I was telling a friend,

00:36:53   there's a place here in Philly.

00:36:55   It's been here, I don't know, 30 years,

00:36:58   Pete's Famous Pizza, and they do their own delivery.

00:37:02   And it's one of these places, it's a pizza place.

00:37:06   They have two locations vaguely in center city Philly.

00:37:09   You know, they're strategically located

00:37:11   to cover the maximum area.

00:37:14   They have their own trucks and cars.

00:37:16   You see them riding around.

00:37:18   It's not even just like a magnet that somebody puts on.

00:37:20   They own their cars. You see Pete's Famous Pizza driving around. And one of the—I forget who it was,

00:37:27   Grubhub. If it was not Grubhub, I apologize to those of you who work at Grubhub. But one of

00:37:32   those type of places had a scam website instead of like—and Pete's has their own website. But it was

00:37:39   like if you Google Pete's Famous Pizza Philly, you'd get like—there's an alternate URL and it

00:37:45   and it looks legit, it's like Pete's Famous Pizza in Philly,

00:37:48   and if you order from there,

00:37:50   you're getting a Pete's Famous Pizza,

00:37:52   but they're the ones going to get it,

00:37:54   even though Pete's has delivery.

00:37:56   It's crazy.

00:37:57   It's like a total scam.

00:37:58   And so how do you keep that sort of mindset

00:38:02   from creeping into this app clip thing?

00:38:05   Presumably Apple's thinking about that

00:38:07   because that seems right up the alley

00:38:09   of all the privacy-focused stuff

00:38:11   they've been working on across the board.

00:38:13   - Right, and that's where I don't know,

00:38:15   will it just be a best practice

00:38:18   where they advise you not to create app clips

00:38:21   for businesses that don't want them,

00:38:23   or will they actually enforce it somehow?

00:38:26   I don't know.

00:38:27   It's gonna be interesting though.

00:38:28   Are we gonna start seeing app clips in ads,

00:38:30   or on posters, or?

00:38:32   - Yeah, yeah, and what's the right to print them?

00:38:35   'Cause part of making them look better,

00:38:37   like part of what makes QR codes so ugly

00:38:40   is that they just look like black and white status.

00:38:42   dorky. Yeah, but much like the universal product codes that have been around, I guess, since

00:38:52   the '70s, maybe the '80s. I know that I was a very young kid when they first started appearing

00:38:57   on every product. UPC codes, they are ugly. I guess Apple does put them on their products.

00:39:09   I think there's some kind of you know, like laws that you have to but you know

00:39:13   It kind of bugs them to do it because they are ugly

00:39:15   But they're not as ugly as QR codes because QR codes go in two dimensions. Whereas the UPC code is just one dimensional

00:39:22   array of thin and thick lines

00:39:25   The QR code being a two-dimensional square of static is really ugly, but they're very easy to print

00:39:33   You know, I've seen them, you know, you could just print them on whatever laser printer or inkjet printer

00:39:37   you have and just spit them out and tape them to your wall.

00:39:41   Like if Apple's goal with these is to make these stickers

00:39:44   look good, and they certainly do look attractive

00:39:48   in their demos so far, but how do you get them?

00:39:51   Like if you can't just print them yourself.

00:39:54   - And that's the thing, I don't know.

00:39:55   Perhaps you'll be able to export a digital file,

00:39:59   but if you want one with embedded NFC,

00:40:02   you have to order them through a partner that,

00:40:04   and I don't know, is this like,

00:40:05   "Is moo.com gonna sell these,

00:40:07   "or is Apple gonna sell them themselves

00:40:09   "for a buck apiece?"

00:40:10   I have, I don't know.

00:40:12   It'll be interesting to see that.

00:40:13   I asked and they didn't say, so we'll see.

00:40:16   - Right.

00:40:18   All right, let me take a break here.

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00:41:54   I guess the one last thing about app clips

00:41:59   that I would like to talk about

00:42:01   that it is sort of it I've been waiting for this for decades I mean this is no exaggeration of

00:42:08   something with the sort of ease of use of just loading a web page in terms of like you know

00:42:15   you're not really like weighing your computer down or installing a thing but it not a web page not

00:42:23   something that is just a url that goes into a web browser and renders in the browser and has all the

00:42:30   limits of a web page in a web browser. And I know that the web browsers have added, you know,

00:42:37   and continue to add APIs and become more app-like over time, but there's still...

00:42:42   It just seems like people have thought about things like this for a long time, like just,

00:42:48   here, just go here, and instead of typing a crufty URL that's prone to typos, especially on your

00:42:55   phone while you're out in public, just point your phone at this thing or just

00:43:01   hold it near this thing and then a thing pops up and you just hit a button and

00:43:04   now you've got the thing. But instead of being a web page, it is an app and it can

00:43:10   maybe look better, load faster, store data. You know, like you said, you can expand

00:43:17   to the full app at some point, install the whole app, and then all the stuff

00:43:21   if you've already done any app clip just moves over.

00:43:24   But also presumably can guard your privacy in a way,

00:43:29   you know, it's almost 100% certain

00:43:31   that Apple has designed app clips with privacy in mind

00:43:35   in a way that as we're learning week by week,

00:43:39   the web was not.

00:43:40   - Yes, and use all the sensors that are in your phone

00:43:44   and the camera and all sorts of other things.

00:43:47   And let's not forget, yes, this sounds pretty useful

00:43:52   for the iPhones that we all have,

00:43:54   but a lot of this seems to be setting things up

00:43:57   for AR glasses, where those 10 megs

00:44:01   have to go through to another device.

00:44:03   Speed really is of the essence,

00:44:08   but this idea of the physical world

00:44:10   having these digital kind of portals or on-ramps

00:44:14   is really interesting in the context of

00:44:18   actually being able to see them with glasses

00:44:20   and then use them on that screen

00:44:23   that's right in front of you.

00:44:24   So I have no idea what those types of experiences will be.

00:44:28   I'm sure I could take an edible

00:44:31   and come up with some ideas,

00:44:32   but I think that's obviously where a lot of this

00:44:37   is kind of being set up for.

00:44:39   And as I say, I think in the piece,

00:44:42   Apple is very good at setting future Apple up for success,

00:44:45   and I think this is an example of that.

00:44:47   - Yeah, and I think, you know,

00:44:50   and I keep thinking back to Apple Pay,

00:44:53   and I forget how many years ago Apple Pay first came out,

00:44:56   but you know, they're a very patient company,

00:45:01   even though it doesn't seem like they're patient

00:45:03   because they keep moving things forward every year,

00:45:06   but there are things they do that they know

00:45:09   are not gonna pay off for five years.

00:45:12   You know, and Apple Pay is certainly one of them.

00:45:15   And I think like when Apple Pay first came out,

00:45:18   and six months later, there were initial numbers

00:45:21   of what percentage of U.S. retail transactions

00:45:24   were going through Apple Pay,

00:45:26   and people were rolling their eyes like,

00:45:28   oh my God, almost nobody's using it.

00:45:29   Well, it's like, even in,

00:45:31   I don't know what the best case scenario was,

00:45:33   but that's the sort of shift in consumer habits

00:45:36   that is obviously a long-term play.

00:45:39   I remember at the time reading about

00:45:43   like the history of credit cards,

00:45:44   and I know you're a credit card,

00:45:45   you're a much bigger credit card nerd than me,

00:45:49   but like when credit cards first became a thing,

00:45:52   like I think it was the '60s, right,

00:45:54   like with diners card and stuff,

00:45:56   very few people used them, and the idea was bizarre,

00:46:00   you know, that you just give, you go to a restaurant

00:46:03   and give somebody a piece of plastic

00:46:06   with numbers on it and they walk away with it

00:46:09   and come back and you just, that counts as paying your bill?

00:46:13   It was very strange and you know,

00:46:15   it is kind of wild when you think about the fact

00:46:17   that credit cards were truly like an honor system

00:46:22   until, I don't know, some point in the 80s

00:46:25   when there was some kind of networking and communication.

00:46:29   But I remember going to Kmart in particular with my mom.

00:46:33   my mom had a credit card.

00:46:34   And they had like a phone book full of like,

00:46:38   I don't know if they were the good numbers

00:46:39   or the bad numbers.

00:46:40   Like a phone book full of like MasterCard numbers

00:46:45   and Visa numbers.

00:46:46   And my mom would give the credit card over

00:46:48   and then the clerk would go through the phone book

00:46:50   and look for the number.

00:46:52   I never could figure out if they were looking for like,

00:46:54   okay, it's in here or it's, you know,

00:46:57   like is it a list of good numbers

00:47:02   or a list of, these are the ones that people have ripped off

00:47:06   but they'd look it up in a book

00:47:07   and I guess they got like a new book every month

00:47:09   or every couple months.

00:47:10   It's crazy that that's how credit cards worked.

00:47:13   Took a long time to take off

00:47:15   and I think that contactless payment with phones

00:47:18   is taking off faster than that

00:47:19   but it certainly seems like AppClip

00:47:22   is the same sort of thing where the real payoff,

00:47:24   if it takes off, it might be five to 10 years in the future.

00:47:28   - Yep.

00:47:31   I think that the idea that they're thinking about AR already has got to be true, right?

00:47:35   It has to be, because it's so clearly—you don't even have to know the exact nature

00:47:43   of what they're thinking the AR glasses product will be to imagine that having some

00:47:49   kind of card come up when you're in Starbucks that you can see, but it's really just sort

00:47:55   of a card and it doesn't have anywhere near the depth

00:47:58   of screens and hierarchy that a full iPhone app would have.

00:48:02   'Cause that just seems, no matter how good the experience

00:48:05   with AR is, it doesn't seem appropriate, right?

00:48:07   It just seems like a sort of shallow card-like interface

00:48:11   is just what the doctor ordered.

00:48:13   - Yeah, something very simple and one-dimensional.

00:48:17   - Yeah.

00:48:19   - We'll see.

00:48:20   - Yeah.

00:48:22   What else?

00:48:24   Anything else from WWDC that really jumped out to you?

00:48:26   - I'm curious, since it's been something

00:48:29   we've been thinking and talking about for decades,

00:48:33   how the Apple Silicon announcement

00:48:38   kind of fit your expectations as expected

00:48:42   or different than what you thought it might be?

00:48:45   - It was very much in line with what I expected.

00:48:49   And I think, if I was wrong,

00:48:52   And a couple people have found the places.

00:48:54   The only area where I think I've been wrong for years on it

00:48:57   was that I thought it would happen a couple of years sooner.

00:49:01   I think that there was a post in Daring Fireball in 2017

00:49:06   where people thought I was being coy

00:49:09   in dropping one of those hints

00:49:10   where I actually know something

00:49:12   but just sort of act like I'm predicting it

00:49:14   and said something like next year

00:49:16   when there's arm-based max or something like that.

00:49:19   And I was just being a wiseacre

00:49:21   I obviously didn't know that, but other than maybe me being a little bit more aggressive

00:49:28   on what I thought they could do, it pretty much played out as I expected.

00:49:34   I think the one thing people are really getting wrong, and on my show last week, Federighi

00:49:40   even said it, was that you can't judge the performance of Mac on Apple Silicon by these

00:49:47   developer kits that are actually starting to get in developer hands today. I actually

00:49:51   know a couple of friends who got them today. But that this, paraphrasing Federighi on my

00:49:57   show that they run fine, they're good, but that it really only shows what their chip

00:50:04   team is capable of when they're not even trying, because this isn't designed for the Mac at

00:50:09   all. It's literally just the A12Z from the iPad. And I think that's what people are getting

00:50:15   the wrong impression on it.

00:50:16   'Cause Apple's in a tight spot where they really want

00:50:21   to hold their powder to brag about how awesome

00:50:25   their chips are gonna be for when they're ready

00:50:27   to sell them, because that's just how they are,

00:50:29   and it's actually smarter marketing.

00:50:30   You don't want to get people too excited about 'em

00:50:32   before they can buy 'em.

00:50:34   But on the other hand, they kinda wanted to leave the hints

00:50:36   that, hey, these are gonna be really fast.

00:50:39   - Yeah, I wonder if, is Geekbench allowed

00:50:43   as per the borrowing terms,

00:50:45   or are you not allowed to do that?

00:50:48   - So, we're recording at the wrong time for this.

00:50:53   So, you can run Geekbench,

00:50:57   but Geekbench hasn't been recompiled for ARM.

00:51:02   So you're really only running,

00:51:03   you're not testing the hardware,

00:51:06   you're testing the Rosetta 2 emulation

00:51:09   of x86 on the hardware.

00:51:13   And I believe, now I don't have

00:51:15   the developer transition kit.

00:51:17   I didn't order one because I don't,

00:51:21   I have enough stuff to do this summer

00:51:23   and I feel like the last thing I need is another computer.

00:51:27   And I know that it's not indicative

00:51:30   of what they're going to actually ship.

00:51:32   And so, not that I'm not interested,

00:51:36   but I feel like here's something

00:51:37   I can just let other people do

00:51:39   and I'll read what they say

00:51:41   and the great privilege of the format of Daring Fireballs

00:51:44   is if somebody else writes something really awesome,

00:51:46   I just link to it and then it's like,

00:51:48   check it off my list, there you go.

00:51:50   Somebody wrote an awesome piece

00:51:52   about the Developer Transition Kit hardware,

00:51:55   I'll just link to it.

00:51:56   Here, go read, this person's great write-up.

00:51:58   So I didn't agree to any terms because I don't have one.

00:52:03   So I could say that somebody on Twitter,

00:52:07   I saw somebody on Twitter was posting

00:52:08   And I think that the Geekbench numbers look sort of like those of, roughly speaking, like

00:52:14   a 2015 iMac, which doesn't seem great because that's five years old as a Mac.

00:52:22   But you have to remember, it's running an emulation and it is a benchmark.

00:52:30   So it's supposed to be taxing.

00:52:32   So off the top of my head, I would say for a developer transition kit running a chip

00:52:38   that's not even from designed to run a mac it's from an ipad running an x86 to arm emulation

00:52:47   getting that speed from a you know 15 1600 mac from five years ago sounds good to me good i mean

00:52:56   do you remember yeah soft windows 95 what that ran like you could barely play minesweeper

00:53:00   i remember all of those because like i just did another callback to to being a web developer in

00:53:07   in the 90s, you know, I didn't, you either,

00:53:11   the best way to do it was to actually just have a PC

00:53:14   next to you, you know, and you'd either

00:53:17   do all your development in home site on a PC

00:53:20   and then turn around and test it on a Mac,

00:53:22   or you do all your development in BB Edit on a Mac

00:53:25   and then turn around and test it on a PC

00:53:27   so you could test it in all the popular browsers.

00:53:30   I didn't have a PC, I didn't, A, didn't wanna buy one,

00:53:33   didn't have room for one, and so I just ran, like,

00:53:36   what was it called, virtual PC was the one I had.

00:53:40   - That was one of them.

00:53:41   I had that, I had soft Windows 95, I remember,

00:53:44   which was like a full-on software emulator.

00:53:45   - I think I had that one too.

00:53:46   - Which was not good.

00:53:47   - Yeah.

00:53:48   They were all not good.

00:53:51   They were good enough in that they were running

00:53:53   the actual code, and so for testing the visual fidelity

00:53:57   of a website, they were great, because if it looked good,

00:54:00   then you knew it would be good.

00:54:02   They just weren't, they were so slow that it was no way

00:54:05   to judge the actual load time.

00:54:07   But I remember them well.

00:54:10   - Do you remember, so while we're talking about emulators,

00:54:13   do you remember, it was like around 2000,

00:54:15   you could buy a PlayStation emulator for the Mac

00:54:19   and actually play PlayStation discs natively?

00:54:23   - No, I don't remember this at all.

00:54:25   - I forgot the name of it, it was super weird though.

00:54:27   It was so random and there were no good controllers,

00:54:30   so you were playing PlayStation games on a Mac

00:54:34   without a PlayStation controller.

00:54:36   - And of course, like the 640 by 480 VGA screen

00:54:39   looked so crappy on a, I think I was using a Power Mac,

00:54:44   or the laptops, PowerBook G3 at that point, but.

00:54:48   - Yeah, PowerBook.

00:54:49   - Do you think, now also going back probably too early,

00:54:54   they used to sell a desktop Mac that had a Intel chip

00:54:59   and a PowerPC chip in it.

00:55:02   Do you think they will--

00:55:03   - Yeah.

00:55:04   - Those were probably super unpopular.

00:55:06   I think that was even--

00:55:08   - I forget what that was called.

00:55:09   - Yeah, I think that was before Steve came back,

00:55:11   but do you think there would be like a Mac Pro board

00:55:16   that you could run Intel and also run Apple Silicon

00:55:20   in the same tower?

00:55:21   - The Mac Pro is a big question mark,

00:55:27   because the Mac Pro, the new modern Mac Pro

00:55:30   that's now six months old is such a beast

00:55:34   of a architecture and has those boards

00:55:38   that you can swap in and as obvious.

00:55:41   So I'm not gonna say no with the Mac Pro

00:55:44   that there would be some sort of way

00:55:45   that you could just buy like a PC on a board

00:55:49   that you just stick into a new Mac Pro

00:55:52   and now you've got an Intel-based computer

00:55:54   inside your Apple Silicon Mac Pro computer.

00:55:59   But for all other Macs, including even the iMacs,

00:56:04   Pro. I don't think that's feasible. I just don't think it's a good idea. But I don't

00:56:11   think so. Because it's always weird. Because even with the old Mac that had the two cards,

00:56:16   it was like you ran Windows, and in the Mac it looked like an app, but it really was running

00:56:23   the operating system on an entirely different CPU in the box. Yeah, it was weird. And so

00:56:31   So it was sort of like having two computers running at once, but the secondary computer

00:56:36   was projecting its video out into a window on your Mac.

00:56:43   Instead of going to a real video outsource, it was going into a window in the other computer.

00:56:50   It was all very weird.

00:56:52   I'm not sure what you buy from that.

00:56:54   I'm not sure what you get.

00:56:55   I think that it sounds like an interesting idea

00:57:00   and it certainly sounds like at some technical level

00:57:02   the Mac Pro could support a PC on a card

00:57:06   that you just stick into one of those slots,

00:57:07   but what would you actually do?

00:57:09   How would it actually work?

00:57:10   Why not just buy a PC?

00:57:12   - Yeah, especially these days,

00:57:13   the network is so fast you can run it wherever.

00:57:16   Do you think that the first wave

00:57:20   of Apple Silicon powered Macs will be

00:57:25   like super dramatic industrial design different

00:57:29   or will they be like the first wave of Intel Macs

00:57:32   that were pretty similar?

00:57:34   - Well, I think they'll be dramatic.

00:57:39   And some of the Intel ones were dramatic, like the--

00:57:44   - The MacBook, the plastic MacBook, yeah.

00:57:45   - Yeah, yeah, so they got rid of the,

00:57:48   what they called the iBook,

00:57:50   which was the consumer version of the PowerBook

00:57:52   in the PowerPC era and called the MacBooks,

00:57:55   which is so funny 'cause it's a name,

00:57:58   it's a name they keep coming up with

00:58:01   and they're always very striking and then they go away

00:58:04   and then there is no more computer just called MacBook,

00:58:07   but the MacBooks were those black and white plastic-y ones

00:58:11   and everybody remembers the black one looked cooler

00:58:13   and also cost more.

00:58:16   It's still one of my favorite little footnotes

00:58:20   of Apple history that they literally charged more

00:58:24   for a black version of the same computer.

00:58:28   And I've still, even off the record,

00:58:31   have never heard what the deal is with that

00:58:33   if they really were just charging

00:58:35   'cause they knew it looked so much better

00:58:37   or if it actually did cost more.

00:58:39   - I think the minimum configuration was higher.

00:58:43   - Yeah, yeah. - I made Henry Bodger

00:58:44   buy me one, that was my first computer

00:58:46   at Alley Insider in 2007.

00:58:49   It was awesome.

00:58:50   It was a great machine.

00:58:51   - Yeah, I do think that that was part of it too,

00:58:55   that yeah, the minimum configuration was higher

00:58:57   and maybe spec for spec, they were the same price.

00:59:00   But basically, if you just walked in the Apple store,

00:59:03   looked at the two, thought the black one was cooler,

00:59:06   you were looking at at least $100 extra outlay,

00:59:08   which, but they were totally cooler looking computers

00:59:12   than the iBooks that came before them.

00:59:14   I think that, to answer your question,

00:59:18   I think that the first, I don't think there's gonna be

00:59:21   any confusion over which Macs are the new Apple Silicon ones

00:59:26   and which ones are the older Intel ones.

00:59:30   Maybe with the iMac, they'll do something.

00:59:33   I mean, the iMac, as we know it, is sort of long

00:59:36   in the tooth and it hasn't been updated for a while.

00:59:38   The iMac Pro has never been updated.

00:59:41   They came out with it.

00:59:42   It got universally great reviews.

00:59:47   everybody acknowledges that it has a truly genius

00:59:52   heating architecture to keep it from running hot,

00:59:58   yet very, very quiet, and they've never updated it.

01:00:02   So are they going to do another round of updates

01:00:04   to the iMac while they're still on Intel?

01:00:06   And if they do, are they gonna make them look new?

01:00:08   I mean, there's room, you know, there's the chin,

01:00:11   as we call it at the bottom of the iMac,

01:00:13   sorta looks outdated at this point.

01:00:14   It seems like the iMac should just be all screen,

01:00:17   and it's not, and are they gonna wait?

01:00:20   Are they really gonna make people keep buying

01:00:22   the ones we have now that are kind of a couple years

01:00:24   out of date for six more months,

01:00:26   or are they going to give us a new one?

01:00:29   I don't know, so the iMac, maybe.

01:00:30   I think with MacBooks, though,

01:00:33   the ARM ones are gonna look all new.

01:00:34   I don't know how, I mean, 'cause I'm not a designer,

01:00:38   but I would just guess thinner.

01:00:40   I would guess just new design language screens

01:00:44   that go closer to edge to edge.

01:00:46   I think it's pretty telling

01:00:47   that while they made the 16-inch MacBook Pro,

01:00:50   even bumping it up from 15-inch

01:00:53   in terms of how big the screen size is,

01:00:56   they made it go closer to the side to side,

01:00:58   but they didn't even do that with the 13-inch.

01:01:01   There certainly is a lot of room with the 13-inch

01:01:03   to make it look a lot more modern.

01:01:05   - I mean, I just even think back to that 12-inch MacBook

01:01:08   that I loved for so long,

01:01:09   but just had such terrible battery life

01:01:11   that that's the kind of thing where,

01:01:13   and then you take the current iPad Pro,

01:01:15   which is so thin and so fast,

01:01:18   and yes, they don't have a keyboard they have to deal with.

01:01:21   But yeah, to me, that's gonna be the sweet spot,

01:01:25   is that kind of good consumer-level laptop

01:01:29   where you could probably at least bump up

01:01:32   to 10 real hours of battery life

01:01:35   and probably make it a lot easier to have built-in cellular.

01:01:39   I know that was always an issue with the Intel Macbooks

01:01:43   and a lot of stuff like that.

01:01:45   And I've been waiting for it for years,

01:01:47   so I'm actually really excited for that.

01:01:49   - Yeah, I think something returning to the idea

01:01:53   of the just plain MacBook from the last couple years,

01:01:57   not the 2006 one that was plastic,

01:02:02   but the super thin and light one,

01:02:04   they must return to that because the MacBook Air,

01:02:08   the new MacBook Airs that are now like the flagship

01:02:11   MacBooks in Apple's lineup, and they're great machines,

01:02:15   and they're pretty much exactly what I think

01:02:17   the $1,100 to $1,300 Apple MacBook

01:02:23   for most people should be.

01:02:25   I think they're really great.

01:02:26   I think they're nice and thin.

01:02:29   You could make something a lot thinner, right?

01:02:31   It's the MacBook that they got rid of

01:02:34   shows that they could make something a lot thinner.

01:02:36   It's just that they were kind of slow

01:02:37   didn't get great battery life, you know. So if they could do something that's super impressively

01:02:43   small like that, boy, I think that would sell. Cellular, I think is, you know, most people

01:02:51   seem to be talking about touch screens, and I guess we should talk about that. I'd love

01:02:55   to hear if you think they're going to do touch screen max. If they do, I think that's clearly

01:02:59   the time. I don't even, and again, it's not because they can't do touch screens on Intel,

01:03:05   but if they're gonna have this line in the sand

01:03:08   that we're doing this big transition,

01:03:10   why not put as many of the transition type things,

01:03:13   like there are no Macs with a touchscreen,

01:03:16   and then there's a transition to there are some Macs

01:03:20   with touchscreens, why not have it all be the same line?

01:03:23   And it certainly is a compelling argument

01:03:27   in terms of selling it, and it would drive

01:03:30   all the people nuts because Apple has spent years,

01:03:33   It's very happily to spend all of the years

01:03:36   where they have no touchscreen Mac saying,

01:03:37   we think touchscreens on the laptop form factor

01:03:40   are a bad idea, and then until they do it,

01:03:44   and then it's the best idea they've ever had.

01:03:46   And they, of course, there's some aspect

01:03:49   to the introduction that makes it seem

01:03:51   as though they invented it.

01:03:53   - Totally.

01:03:54   - And it just, it's just, I live for those moments

01:03:58   to see the reactions from people.

01:03:59   - I mean, that was definitely the kind of takeaway

01:04:02   from the new UI for OS 11, I guess we're at now.

01:04:07   I definitely saw a lot of tweets saying,

01:04:10   oh, these touch targets are for fingers,

01:04:13   not for mouse cursors or mouse buttons.

01:04:16   It's so funny 'cause ever since I got

01:04:20   the iPad Pro keyboard case with the trackpad,

01:04:23   I almost never touched the screen anymore,

01:04:26   except with the pencil.

01:04:28   So I don't know.

01:04:32   There are some places where it's super useful,

01:04:35   but if anything, I'm less interested in a touchscreen.

01:04:40   It might be nice, though, to have pencil support,

01:04:43   and it really depends on the balance of weight,

01:04:46   if you're poking at the screen

01:04:48   and it's flopping the computer around.

01:04:50   But I would say that on the balance, I'm probably more,

01:04:56   I'd be far less surprised if they did integrate touch

01:05:00   to the Mac than before just by seeing the,

01:05:04   kind of the new paradigm of the Mac UI.

01:05:08   - Yeah, I don't know.

01:05:11   Some people seem to look at the new 10,

01:05:14   or not 10, it's actually Mac OS 11 now,

01:05:16   but people look at Big Sur, and some people look at it

01:05:20   and seem to think this is definitely for a touchscreen

01:05:25   because some things have a little bit more space

01:05:27   and some of the icons look more like iPad icons.

01:05:31   I see some of what they're saying,

01:05:33   but there's a lot to me that doesn't look

01:05:36   any more touch-friendly than it ever was,

01:05:39   and that doesn't mean that I think it's not gonna happen.

01:05:41   I just, I think people are seeing what they wanna see.

01:05:43   I think the people who seem to think it

01:05:46   is a clear predictor of touchscreen support

01:05:51   in the ARM-based Macs coming next year

01:05:53   seem to be a one-to-one correlation

01:05:56   with the people who most want it to happen,

01:05:58   and as opposed to sort of objectively looking at it.

01:06:02   And on that particular point,

01:06:04   I feel pretty objective about it.

01:06:06   I'm not opposed to it, I'm just not dying for it either.

01:06:09   I really don't feel strongly about it.

01:06:11   The only part I feel very strongly about

01:06:13   is I really, really, and I don't think it's gonna happen,

01:06:17   I would hate to see the Mac go to an interface

01:06:21   where everything is expected and has to be sized for touch,

01:06:25   because there's so much good Mac software

01:06:28   where the information density,

01:06:30   you know, they just look at the palettes in Photoshop

01:06:32   or any other app that's like Photoshop.

01:06:34   I don't wanna have a palette in Photoshop

01:06:36   where all the buttons are double the size and spaced apart

01:06:40   so that you can make them fingerprint friendly.

01:06:44   I like having them packed together.

01:06:46   That's my only concern,

01:06:47   and I think that's possible where you, you know,

01:06:50   and I think it's the way they would go.

01:06:53   I think it's sort of like the inverse of the iPad,

01:06:55   where the iPad is still touch first,

01:06:57   but now it has a trackpad that you can use,

01:07:00   but somebody who doesn't have one would never know it.

01:07:03   My wife doesn't have the keyboard with the trackpad.

01:07:06   She uses her iPad as much as anybody I know.

01:07:09   She uses her iPad more than her Mac

01:07:12   and iPhone combined by far.

01:07:15   I don't know that she even knows

01:07:16   that her iPad OS has trackpad support,

01:07:18   'cause I don't know that she reads my website.

01:07:20   (laughing)

01:07:22   But that's the way it should be it still is right and I feel like the right way for the Mac to gain touchscreen

01:07:27   Support would be okay. So if you bought one that has a touchscreen now you can scroll by putting your finger on your screen

01:07:33   But if you're still using your Mac connected to you know, like if you just spent six thousand dollars on an Apple

01:07:40   Whatever the thing display is called which obviously doesn't have touch. It doesn't feel like you're left out right total

01:07:47   You know, so I feel like add, you know, the Mac is mouse first

01:07:51   and touch second in the way that the iPad remains

01:07:54   touch first and trackpad second.

01:07:57   - Yeah. - I think that's possible.

01:07:58   - So another way of interpreting that is just like,

01:08:00   you know, the iPad is gonna look more like,

01:08:03   perhaps even more like Big Sur at some point,

01:08:06   or you know, if those visual paths

01:08:09   are converging more and more,

01:08:11   perhaps one of them will never get touch support,

01:08:14   but if the idea is to make it

01:08:15   so that they look more like each other,

01:08:17   perhaps, I don't know.

01:08:18   I don't know.

01:08:21   - We'll be, we'll be interesting.

01:08:23   - Have you installed, have you installed

01:08:24   any of the betas yet?

01:08:25   - I have not.

01:08:26   I usually wait for the public betas

01:08:28   because I don't really have spare machines.

01:08:31   So, yeah.

01:08:34   - I keep thinking about it.

01:08:35   I mentioned it with Fansarino,

01:08:36   he was on my show last week,

01:08:38   but ordinarily because I travel in the summer more,

01:08:42   I depend on my phone, so I haven't installed betas

01:08:44   on my regular iPhone for years

01:08:47   because I just can't take the chance,

01:08:48   but I'm not going anywhere this summer,

01:08:50   So I'm sort of like, why not?

01:08:52   - Yeah, the extra hits of the battery life

01:08:54   does not matter at all.

01:08:55   - You know, it's like I know a lot of people out there

01:08:58   cutting their own hair, and it's like, well, why not?

01:09:00   I'm not going anywhere.

01:09:01   Nobody's seen me in months, so what's the difference?

01:09:04   - Yeah.

01:09:06   - So it's like, why not have a phone that's half brick?

01:09:08   But everybody I know who's installed it has said

01:09:11   that they're seemingly on a ying-yang schedule,

01:09:14   where iOS 12 two years ago, everybody was like,

01:09:17   this is the most stable beta I've ever seen from Apple.

01:09:19   This is actually more stable than iOS 11 was in production.

01:09:23   This is fantastic.

01:09:24   And then last year,

01:09:25   iOS 13 was sort of one of the least stable releases

01:09:30   they've ever had.

01:09:31   Remember the weird release like in August

01:09:33   where they suddenly pulled the developer betas

01:09:36   'cause they kind of had to do a release to manufacturing

01:09:39   and it wasn't really ready.

01:09:41   And then it was really weird where like

01:09:44   the initial wave of brand new iPhone 11s

01:09:47   that came out in September had iPhone, iOS 11 or 13.0,

01:09:52   but 13.1 came out like four days later.

01:09:56   I mean, it was weird.

01:09:59   Apple didn't wanna talk about it 'cause they're Apple,

01:10:03   but basically, they were behind.

01:10:06   The software was behind.

01:10:07   They had to ship because the hardware's coming

01:10:09   and they did the best they could.

01:10:11   And they kind of made it all work by October,

01:10:15   which, you know, all credit to them.

01:10:18   - Well, and I think that-- - But it seems like--

01:10:20   - Balances up against the fewer, maybe,

01:10:22   new features this year, is that the focus was on quality.

01:10:26   And of course, any constraints from having people

01:10:29   working at home too, I'm sure that

01:10:31   slowed things down as well.

01:10:32   - I'm curious about that, and I sort of,

01:10:37   if, you know, I always, after my live show

01:10:39   or interview show, whatever you want to call it,

01:10:41   remote show this year, I always have the feeling,

01:10:44   the questions in the back of my head that I sort of wish I'd asked that I didn't ask.

01:10:49   And on my list, it wasn't that I forgot to ask, but it was just sort of was in one of my question

01:10:55   cards that it just felt like we ran out of time, was to talk about, you know, like, and I don't

01:11:01   know what, I don't know if they would have answered it. I, you know, was, I don't, I just don't know.

01:11:06   But basically, has the work from home shift since March affected what they're working on? Like,

01:11:14   Like are they doing more bug fixes

01:11:16   because it's more amenable to engineers working at home

01:11:20   or is it sort of like, no, this is,

01:11:23   even if this hadn't happened,

01:11:25   the iOS 14 you see today

01:11:26   probably would have been pretty much the same?

01:11:29   I don't think they would have answered

01:11:30   but I still think it's an interesting question.

01:11:33   Here, let me take a break.

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01:13:31   The only other thing I wanted to talk to you about,

01:13:35   'cause I feel like I have to,

01:13:37   is a little bit of media kibitzing.

01:13:40   - Oh yeah. - You see,

01:13:42   and there's a lot of it going on.

01:13:45   I'm sort of nibbling around the edges of it.

01:13:49   And it's sort of coming together in a couple of ways.

01:13:54   Like the whole thing with social media networks

01:14:00   sort of getting there,

01:14:04   stopping trying to having it both ways.

01:14:07   And just today, before we recorded, Reddit closed the Donald subreddit, which is where

01:14:14   all the Trump fans got their hate on for years.

01:14:19   Twitter has, in recent weeks, started putting labels on the more egregious of Trump's tweets,

01:14:26   and Facebook has not, and has really started to take flack for it, and has seen a lot of

01:14:33   name advertisers not boycott them. It's an interesting dance, like Coca-Cola to name

01:14:42   one, and Unilever, which is a big—if you've never heard of Unilever, half of your supermarket

01:14:48   is fully Unilever products. They've said that they're going to just stop advertising

01:14:56   on social media for six months and see what happens. Well, it happens to coincide with

01:15:01   a massive recession. So it's not necessarily tied to controversy. But it just seems to

01:15:08   me my take on this, and again, maybe I'm the one seeing what I want to see here. Maybe

01:15:12   I'm the one who's blinded by bias. But what I think is happening is that these social

01:15:17   media groups have networks have tried for years to sort of have it both ways where they're

01:15:24   trying to say, "Everybody's welcome. We want the whole country. We want the whole world,

01:15:29   whether you're on this side or that side

01:15:32   of the political divide, no matter how extreme

01:15:34   one of those sides might get,

01:15:36   we're after the biggest audience,

01:15:39   so we're gonna be the home to all of it,

01:15:41   and that's the spirit of free speech.

01:15:43   And you know, sounds good until it starts going awry.

01:15:49   And I feel like what's happened is that people are like,

01:15:51   I don't want anything to do with this network

01:15:53   if they're gonna allow X, Y, and Z.

01:15:55   And so now you've got, you have to make a choice,

01:15:58   which is we're going to allow this one side

01:16:02   to post things that the other side finds unacceptable,

01:16:06   or we're gonna lose one or the other.

01:16:08   If we say you're not allowed to do it,

01:16:10   they're going to say you're biased against us

01:16:11   because we're quote, unquote, conservative.

01:16:14   Or if they allow these people to post whatever they want,

01:16:19   they're gonna lose people who say,

01:16:21   I find this to be hateful.

01:16:22   Curious what you think is going on

01:16:25   and where you think it's heading.

01:16:26   I mean, you look at Facebook, which is now 16 years old,

01:16:31   something like that.

01:16:32   Is it a utility?

01:16:35   Is it like AT&T where it just pushes whatever people

01:16:40   on one end send to people on the other end?

01:16:42   Is it a service?

01:16:43   Is it a publisher?

01:16:45   And I think for a long time, Mark Zuckerberg described it

01:16:49   as utility, in fact, he used to call it, I believe,

01:16:52   a social utility.

01:16:54   But social utility is not funded by advertising

01:16:58   from the biggest companies in the world.

01:17:00   And it runs an application layer

01:17:04   and an application platform, in fact.

01:17:06   And so in the last four or five years, six years,

01:17:11   probably the biggest conversation in the tech industry

01:17:14   is that these huge social networks,

01:17:19   primarily Facebook but also Twitter,

01:17:21   to some degree, YouTube as well, Reddit,

01:17:23   they need to take more responsibility for what they are.

01:17:27   And you see that through varying degrees.

01:17:32   Even Twitter, which gets a lot of applause

01:17:35   for the kind of little asterisks

01:17:39   as they put on Trump tweets now.

01:17:42   (Dave laughs)

01:17:44   - Which is really what it amounts to.

01:17:46   - It's such a weenie thing, and it's so Twitter.

01:17:48   But it's not an easy, by the way,

01:17:53   not an easy problem to solve,

01:17:54   and also not just a problem here in the US.

01:17:57   This was a much bigger problem in other countries

01:18:01   before it was here, where people were actually being,

01:18:05   a lot of people were killed.

01:18:06   But you could see also the severity of this and how,

01:18:10   I think people make it seem like it's so easy

01:18:15   for Mark Zuckerberg to just make one decision

01:18:18   then that will solve everything.

01:18:19   That's just not the case.

01:18:21   These are complicated problems

01:18:23   that are different everywhere.

01:18:25   There are places where there are laws.

01:18:27   There are places where there aren't laws.

01:18:29   You know, there's probably a lot of Americans

01:18:33   who wish that Twitter would just delete Trump's account.

01:18:36   And you could make a very good case

01:18:39   for why that should not be allowed either.

01:18:41   If Twitter decides we are a journalistic entity,

01:18:48   you know, we're a publisher, of course, then it can have whatever, you know, then it can

01:18:52   publish whatever it wants and, and not publish whatever it wants.

01:18:57   But I don't think anyone wants that from Twitter or Facebook either.

01:19:00   I don't think they want the effective, you know, the equivalent of the app review process

01:19:05   for every single post that goes through these services.

01:19:08   That's kind of not even possible.

01:19:10   There's just so much content that flows through them and so many people using them.

01:19:14   You know, imagine the app queue for approval if there were two billion developers trying

01:19:19   to ship updates every day.

01:19:21   That just wouldn't really work.

01:19:23   So it's not an easy problem to solve.

01:19:27   You also can't really say with a straight face that any of these companies are doing

01:19:30   a great job at it, especially not Facebook, especially not YouTube and Twitter.

01:19:37   There's just so much bad stuff that happens as well.

01:19:41   And this is just gonna be part of the reality

01:19:45   for quite a long time.

01:19:46   I mean, we're not close to having near perfect AI analysis

01:19:51   of speech that would like rule out all but .01% of edge cases

01:19:56   that's just not really happening either.

01:20:01   - Yeah.

01:20:03   I think it's really hard to put your finger on

01:20:06   because I feel like what they've built

01:20:09   are so nebulous in certain ways, these social networks,

01:20:13   that analogies to anything else break down.

01:20:17   But the phone network, the old-fashioned landline phone

01:20:20   network was a true utility.

01:20:23   You could put it in terms of--

01:20:26   especially the pre-internet era, it

01:20:28   was the definition of a utility.

01:20:30   And when you picked up your phone, all you got

01:20:32   was a dial tone.

01:20:33   And it just meant your phone is working.

01:20:35   and then you punched numbers in and got connected.

01:20:39   You know, everything changes.

01:20:41   You can't really call it a utility

01:20:44   when Facebook has an algorithm

01:20:46   that suggests things to you, right?

01:20:49   You know, and there were apps.

01:20:51   We didn't call them apps, but it's like,

01:20:53   and it shows how old I am that I remember it.

01:20:56   But then there was even an entire Seinfeld episode

01:20:59   about the movie phone.

01:21:00   - Oh yeah. - You know, like,

01:21:01   that was how you found out what movies were playing.

01:21:03   You'd call it, I swear to God,

01:21:05   This is what you did and it was awesome because before movie phone you had to like find a newspaper

01:21:10   And find the movie listing page and figure it out like if you just wanted to figure out

01:21:14   What movies were playing and where you'd call a phone number and there was a guy and he'd tell you you know

01:21:21   It was a recorded voice and you punch in your zip code and and then he would say, you know

01:21:25   You could go to this movie theater and they've got this movie and you'd hit seven to hear the times and it was playing at

01:21:31   7 and 9 30 p.m. At this movie theater and then you tell your friends that's where it is and you'd go it's like

01:21:37   Facebook is more like you pick up your phone and your phone just says you would you like to talk to movie phone?

01:21:43   You know what? I mean? Like that's it that changes it from being a utility. It's different, you know

01:21:48   And I think the other thing too is that they've sort of backed themselves into a corner

01:21:53   Here where and again this analogy has all sorts of holes in it, but maybe in the 1950s everybody went shopping downtown

01:22:01   and you'd go downtown and that's where all the stores are and because it was a public square

01:22:06   if somebody with a political message could stand on the corner and shout it because it was public and then in the 70s everybody went

01:22:13   To indoor shopping malls and they were all privately owned and everybody went to the malls

01:22:17   But they wouldn't let

01:22:19   kooks stand in this middle of the hallway and shout their stuff because it was privately owned and then you could say

01:22:26   You're shutting down free speech because this is where everybody is

01:22:30   But it's not a town square. It's a private property and if they allow you to do it then it's on them, right?

01:22:37   And it's I don't know what the solution is because you can't make everybody go back to going downtown where it is

01:22:43   free and open and nobody controls it but it is you if you own them all and you let a

01:22:49   Kook whether they're left-wing kooks right-wing kooks religious kooks

01:22:54   Whatever it is, if you just let them sit there with a megaphone and shout at people that's on you

01:22:59   It is a complicated scenario.

01:23:03   Anyway, we could do all that.

01:23:05   - We could, yeah.

01:23:06   It's complicated.

01:23:07   It's never gonna be perfect,

01:23:08   but it certainly could be better,

01:23:10   and yeah, we'll see what happens.

01:23:14   - All right, always good to talk to you.

01:23:15   - Thank you so much.

01:23:16   - I love talking to you after WWDC.

01:23:18   Everybody can, what's the domain for new consumer?

01:23:21   - Newconsumer.com, yeah.

01:23:23   Check it out.

01:23:24   - And that's your newsletter.

01:23:25   I enjoy reading it.

01:23:26   It feels like you're doing a great job.

01:23:28   - I think.

01:23:30   - I'm having fun. - Really, really great.

01:23:32   - That's part of it.

01:23:33   - Yeah, well, you know what, I feel it.

01:23:35   I can feel it in your writing.

01:23:37   It feels like you're, I don't know,

01:23:39   you could probably tell me, you know me well enough.

01:23:43   You could tell when I'm in a good mood on "Daring Fireball."

01:23:46   - Absolutely, yeah.

01:23:47   - Newconsumer.com, and then on Twitter,

01:23:51   of course you are from Dome, F-R-O-M-E, D-O-M-E.

01:23:57   I don't know why I'd say that,

01:23:59   because I'm sure everybody's already following you.

01:24:01   Thanks, Dan.

01:24:02   - Would hope so, thank you.