288: ‘It Shouldn’t Be Hard to Get a Smoothie’ With Dan Frommer
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Dan Fromer, good to have you back on the show.
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- Thank you, long time.
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- Yeah, feels like it.
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And Skype is telling me 10 months.
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I don't know if that's accurate.
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- I think that's right.
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- I know, I do know I didn't see you last week.
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- Oh my gosh, yeah.
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What a strange thing.
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- Let me jump right into it
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and talk about the keynote a little.
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I'm still not done talking about it,
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But here's a quote from your newsletter, The New Consumer,
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talking about the actual keynote itself,
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the presentation, sort of the cinema.
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Here's a quote, "Remember how 'Oceans 11'
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"felt faster and more modern than any heist movie before it?
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"That's what this was like."
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I love that synopsis of the keynote.
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I think that that, and again, you could say,
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well, it's, you know, they're trying to say
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electronic gadgets and operating systems,
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it's not as cool as 'Oceans 11'.
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It's the keynote equivalent though, and it is.
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It's just faster.
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- Yeah, and I guess they couldn't do it that way
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if they were still pretending to be talking
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to a theater of, what is it, 6,000 people
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or something like that?
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- Yeah, I don't know.
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- But because they weren't, and they knew they weren't,
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they really kind of chopped out all the crowd reaction parts
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and they were speaking straight into the camera
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instead of pretending to be speaking to a room.
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It really worked.
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- Yeah, I thought it was really interesting.
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It was, and I felt such a relief
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as I read other people's takes on it.
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I listened to ATP's post keynote episode,
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and having everybody say, hey, that was a lot to digest
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that went by so fast made me feel better
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about the fact that I felt overwhelmed
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when it was over.
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And I don't think, I still don't think it was too much.
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I don't think that, you know, if I had to give notes,
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I would say maybe slow down a little.
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But the other problem that they have with these keynotes,
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whether they're live in, you know, like regular,
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traditional ones or this one that's virtual,
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is in terms of deciding what makes the cut
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for the keynote or not,
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it's not like writing a movie,
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or maybe it's sort of like adapting a book
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or something like that, where the book is 700 pages
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and there's a lot of plot points
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and somehow you gotta make it two hours.
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Here's the list of everything they're doing
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for the next year across all of these platforms.
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they're doing it whether it makes the keynote or not.
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So it's like you could say, all right,
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we're gonna cut this feature from the keynote.
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We're not even gonna mention it too much.
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That doesn't mean the feature isn't there,
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and those of us who wanna cover it
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still have to figure it out eventually anyway.
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So it's a hard thing to give notes on.
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Did they pack too much into the keynote?
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- Well, it's just interesting how different it is
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than three or four or five years ago
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when, I don't know if you remember,
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but they would start the iOS segment
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and they'd be like, all right,
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we've got 12 new tent poles or whatever it is,
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and they would have all those icons on the screen.
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I think this year it was two or three
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or something like that.
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And instead they're kind of opening up new worlds,
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like this whole concept of widgets,
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which you could theoretically spend two hours
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just on widgets, and I'm sure,
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I haven't had a chance to watch the technical videos
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from those sessions, but I'm sure there's some pretty
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interesting stuff there, but it's not like the old days
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where it's like, and now we have FaceTime,
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or all these changes coming to the mail app
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or something like that.
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- Yeah, it seemed, I don't know if 10 was the magic number,
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but it always felt to me like a lot of times
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they'd have 10 features, like maybe it was
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a Steve Jobs axiom, you know, let's pick 10/10 polls,
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and you can imagine the prep sessions in the weeks
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leading up to the big announcement where there's 20,
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and all right, here's the 20, all right,
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we'll cut these two, now we're down to 18,
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next meeting, get it down to 15,
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and eventually you get it down to the 10.
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This felt a little bit more aggressive than that.
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I think you're right, I don't think,
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I wouldn't say there were 10 10-poles
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for any of these things.
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- I guess maybe the watch had a few things.
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It's a platform that's still kind of less developed,
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Whereas iOS, like, you know, what a, (laughs)
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at this point we're like, all right,
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we can change default apps, there you go. (laughs)
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It's not like there's a ton of,
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I mean, I guess if you wanted to be creative,
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you could come up with a whole next set
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of 10, 20 features to add, but it's certainly,
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you know, and I think people's literacy
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of learning new features has changed over the years, too.
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People are much more, you know,
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this is a device you've now used for a decade
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all the time, so I think people learn new things faster
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and don't need to be walked through them quite as literally
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as they may have needed to five or six years ago.
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I do think that,
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I also think that the attention,
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and I, you know, you can never please everybody, right?
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I mean, there's 50 different ways of saying that.
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I feel like iOS, the iPhone version of iOS in particular,
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changed the least and it's sort of the most additive.
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Although what they did change is at the very,
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they even emphasized it.
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This is your main interface to the phone, the home screen.
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Okay, finally we're gonna put widgets
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wherever you want them and we're gonna deal with this issue
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of your fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh page apps
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just being a complete mess.
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But I feel like they did it in a good way where it is not,
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it really should not confuse anybody moving,
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who's already learned how to use an iPhone.
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It's not like all of a sudden they're gonna upgrade
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their iPhone or buy a new one and then they're gonna be lost
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on the homepage, it's pretty similar.
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- It's sort of a power user feature,
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which I know is often an overused term,
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but to me one of the best ways of describing
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a good power user feature is the sort of thing
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that's out of the way of normal people.
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They don't even know it's there,
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but it is there in a very discoverable way
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for somebody who's enthusiastic enough to dig into it.
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So you could find it on your own
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by sort of learning to understand the insert platform here,
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the Mac way of thinking or the iPhone way of thinking.
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Well, I would think maybe it would be here.
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I'll go to the share button and open this sheet
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and scroll down and oh yeah, here's where you can
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you know, do X, Y, or Z.
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You learn to find features like that.
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And I feel like those home screen features
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fall into that category where you, you know,
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I guess it all starts with jiggle mode.
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- Right. (laughs)
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- I don't know.
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I was so excited that he called it jiggle mode
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in the keynote and then a bunch of people at Twitter like,
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they've always called it jiggle mode.
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It's like I don't recall anybody in an Apple keynote
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calling it jiggle mode.
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- It's the kind of joy that we need these days, Jon.
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I thought that was the other thing about the keynote
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that I thought they did a very good job of,
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is they kept it lighthearted and it was sunny.
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Literally sunny in a lot of places
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where they clearly filmed in the atrium
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of the Steve Jobs Theater with lots of
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California sunshine outside.
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You know, it's difficult times to do a keynote
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for multiple reasons. - Yeah.
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- And I feel like they hit the right tone.
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Couple of jokes, not too many, fewer than usual.
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But I feel like tonally really hit it.
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You know, like you just, you can't,
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you certainly can't accuse them of being,
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pretending that the current situation isn't going on,
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whether the current situation is the protests
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and the Black Lives Matter protests
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and police stuff around the country
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or the COVID-19 situation,
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I think that they acknowledge all of it pretty well.
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- Yeah, and I'm curious how far out
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they kind of rewrote that intro.
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I guess they had several weeks to prepare for it.
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I thought it was actually really well done
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the way that the first shot was basically a reverse shot
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of the Steve Jobs stage that you normally would never see
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except for like a crowd reaction shot
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showing an empty theater.
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And there's Tim kind of washed in backlighting,
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doing his Tim thing where he kind of rises above
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just running Apple and acts as sort of a world leader
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in a way that, I mean honestly,
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that's probably more substantive than anything
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our actual leaders have said about either of those things.
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So I think it was well done.
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And not too over the top, and not too cheesy,
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and not too prolonged, but well done.
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- I guess I will take a break.
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I wanna keep moving, but I definitely wanna,
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when we come back, and I knew you were gonna write about it.
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I couldn't wait to read it.
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You wrote about app clips, and I knew,
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'cause it's, you know, what was the announcement
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that was more up the alley of new consumer.
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- Totally. - But let's take a break
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My thanks to Linode.
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This to me is either...
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Here's what I think, and then I want to hear more of your thoughts because I thought you
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had a pretty good take on it.
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I think this is either going to be a really big deal or a complete bust, and there's not
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much room in the middle. The sign of any good new technology, right? I think so. That's
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not a bad rule of thumb that it's either going to go big or go home. I mean, it's interesting.
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So I assume everyone here kind of knows what app clips are, but if not, it's, it's a piece
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of your iPhone app. So it's not new. I mean, it could be new code, but it's part of your
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apps binary that is loaded in a completely different way
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by someone who does not have your app.
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And they load it by, and it's a bunch of different things.
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And the examples are basically like,
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if you're Panera Bread and you have this whole app
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where you have all your nutrition info
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and a map that has all your locations
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and all this kind of stuff,
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if someone shows up in the store
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and they see a sign that says,
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We'll get into the QR code in a second,
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but basically they can load this app clip
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that's just the ordering sheet.
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So, and the whole idea is it has to be under 10 meg,
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which is actually very small.
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I mean, I looked at a bunch of the apps like Starbucks.
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I think Starbucks is almost 200 megs.
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Well, you know, these, it's funny,
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but like these apps do a lot these days.
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You know, you have your whole--
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- Do you know what though?
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You know what though?
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I think a lot of that though is unnecessary bloat.
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I've seen people analyze it.
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I think part of it is that they do a lot,
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but part of it is that modern app development
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is a lot of, well, we'll just throw a framework in there.
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And this framework's eight megabytes,
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and this framework's 13 megabytes.
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And all they're doing is putting a framework in
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that does one little thing.
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Next thing you know, it's a 200 megabyte app download.
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- 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.
00:14:36
◼
►
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.
00:15:47
◼
►
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.
00:19:49
◼
►
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.
00:25:12
◼
►
- 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.
00:25:37
◼
►
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
◼
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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.
00:32:15
◼
►
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.
00:33:01
◼
►
- 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.
00:36:11
◼
►
- It shouldn't be hard to get a Slurpee either.
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.
00:37:57
◼
►
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.
00:40:18
◼
►
All right, let me take a break here.
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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.
00:47:31
◼
►
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.
00:48:19
◼
►
- We'll see.
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.
00:53:48
◼
►
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--
00:55:04
◼
►
- 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.
01:03:54
◼
►
- 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.
01:07:22
◼
►
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.
01:08:34
◼
►
- 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?
01:09:06
◼
►
- 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.
01:11:34
◼
►
I'll thank our third and final sponsor of the show,
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our good friends at Squarespace.
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And I know you say, "Well, how does Squarespace
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So my thanks to Squarespace.
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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
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Like the whole thing with social media networks
01:14:00
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sort of getting there,
01:14:04
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stopping trying to having it both ways.
01:14:07
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And just today, before we recorded, Reddit closed the Donald subreddit, which is where
01:14:14
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all the Trump fans got their hate on for years.
01:14:19
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Twitter has, in recent weeks, started putting labels on the more egregious of Trump's tweets,
01:14:26
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and Facebook has not, and has really started to take flack for it, and has seen a lot of
01:14:33
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name advertisers not boycott them. It's an interesting dance, like Coca-Cola to name
01:14:42
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one, and Unilever, which is a big—if you've never heard of Unilever, half of your supermarket
01:14:48
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is fully Unilever products. They've said that they're going to just stop advertising
01:14:56
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on social media for six months and see what happens. Well, it happens to coincide with
01:15:01
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a massive recession. So it's not necessarily tied to controversy. But it just seems to
01:15:08
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me my take on this, and again, maybe I'm the one seeing what I want to see here. Maybe
01:15:12
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I'm the one who's blinded by bias. But what I think is happening is that these social
01:15:17
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media groups have networks have tried for years to sort of have it both ways where they're
01:15:24
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trying to say, "Everybody's welcome. We want the whole country. We want the whole world,
01:15:29
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whether you're on this side or that side
01:15:32
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of the political divide, no matter how extreme
01:15:34
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one of those sides might get,
01:15:36
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we're after the biggest audience,
01:15:39
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so we're gonna be the home to all of it,
01:15:41
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and that's the spirit of free speech.
01:15:43
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And you know, sounds good until it starts going awry.
01:15:49
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And I feel like what's happened is that people are like,
01:15:51
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I don't want anything to do with this network
01:15:53
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if they're gonna allow X, Y, and Z.
01:15:55
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And so now you've got, you have to make a choice,
01:15:58
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which is we're going to allow this one side
01:16:02
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to post things that the other side finds unacceptable,
01:16:06
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or we're gonna lose one or the other.
01:16:08
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If we say you're not allowed to do it,
01:16:10
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they're going to say you're biased against us
01:16:11
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because we're quote, unquote, conservative.
01:16:14
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Or if they allow these people to post whatever they want,
01:16:19
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they're gonna lose people who say,
01:16:21
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I find this to be hateful.
01:16:22
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Curious what you think is going on
01:16:25
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and where you think it's heading.
01:16:26
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I mean, you look at Facebook, which is now 16 years old,
01:16:31
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something like that.
01:16:32
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Is it a utility?
01:16:35
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Is it like AT&T where it just pushes whatever people
01:16:40
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on one end send to people on the other end?
01:16:42
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Is it a service?
01:16:43
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Is it a publisher?
01:16:45
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And I think for a long time, Mark Zuckerberg described it
01:16:49
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as utility, in fact, he used to call it, I believe,
01:16:52
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a social utility.
01:16:54
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But social utility is not funded by advertising
01:16:58
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from the biggest companies in the world.
01:17:00
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And it runs an application layer
01:17:04
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and an application platform, in fact.
01:17:06
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And so in the last four or five years, six years,
01:17:11
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probably the biggest conversation in the tech industry
01:17:14
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is that these huge social networks,
01:17:19
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primarily Facebook but also Twitter,
01:17:21
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to some degree, YouTube as well, Reddit,
01:17:23
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they need to take more responsibility for what they are.
01:17:27
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And you see that through varying degrees.
01:17:32
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Even Twitter, which gets a lot of applause
01:17:35
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for the kind of little asterisks
01:17:39
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as they put on Trump tweets now.
01:17:42
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(Dave laughs)
01:17:44
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- Which is really what it amounts to.
01:17:46
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- It's such a weenie thing, and it's so Twitter.
01:17:48
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But it's not an easy, by the way,
01:17:53
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not an easy problem to solve,
01:17:54
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►
and also not just a problem here in the US.
01:17:57
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This was a much bigger problem in other countries
01:18:01
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before it was here, where people were actually being,
01:18:05
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a lot of people were killed.
01:18:06
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But you could see also the severity of this and how,
01:18:10
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I think people make it seem like it's so easy
01:18:15
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for Mark Zuckerberg to just make one decision
01:18:18
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then that will solve everything.
01:18:19
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That's just not the case.
01:18:21
◼
►
These are complicated problems
01:18:23
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►
that are different everywhere.
01:18:25
◼
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There are places where there are laws.
01:18:27
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There are places where there aren't laws.
01:18:29
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►
You know, there's probably a lot of Americans
01:18:33
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who wish that Twitter would just delete Trump's account.
01:18:36
◼
►
And you could make a very good case
01:18:39
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►
for why that should not be allowed either.
01:18:41
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►
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
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publish whatever it wants and, and not publish whatever it wants.
01:18:57
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But I don't think anyone wants that from Twitter or Facebook either.
01:19:00
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►
I don't think they want the effective, you know, the equivalent of the app review process
01:19:05
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for every single post that goes through these services.
01:19:08
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That's kind of not even possible.
01:19:10
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►
There's just so much content that flows through them and so many people using them.
01:19:14
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►
You know, imagine the app queue for approval if there were two billion developers trying
01:19:19
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►
to ship updates every day.
01:19:21
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►
That just wouldn't really work.
01:19:23
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So it's not an easy problem to solve.
01:19:27
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►
You also can't really say with a straight face that any of these companies are doing
01:19:30
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a great job at it, especially not Facebook, especially not YouTube and Twitter.
01:19:37
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There's just so much bad stuff that happens as well.
01:19:41
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►
And this is just gonna be part of the reality
01:19:45
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►
for quite a long time.
01:19:46
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I mean, we're not close to having near perfect AI analysis
01:19:51
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►
of speech that would like rule out all but .01% of edge cases
01:19:56
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►
that's just not really happening either.
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
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►
But the phone network, the old-fashioned landline phone
01:20:20
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network was a true utility.
01:20:23
◼
►
You could put it in terms of--
01:20:26
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especially the pre-internet era, it
01:20:28
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was the definition of a utility.
01:20:30
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►
And when you picked up your phone, all you got
01:20:32
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►
was a dial tone.
01:20:33
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And it just meant your phone is working.
01:20:35
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and then you punched numbers in and got connected.
01:20:39
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You know, everything changes.
01:20:41
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►
You can't really call it a utility
01:20:44
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►
when Facebook has an algorithm
01:20:46
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►
that suggests things to you, right?
01:20:49
◼
►
You know, and there were apps.
01:20:51
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►
We didn't call them apps, but it's like,
01:20:53
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►
and it shows how old I am that I remember it.
01:20:56
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►
But then there was even an entire Seinfeld episode
01:20:59
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►
about the movie phone.
01:21:00
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►
- Oh yeah. - You know, like,
01:21:01
◼
►
that was how you found out what movies were playing.
01:21:03
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►
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
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►
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
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►
You know what? I mean? Like that's it that changes it from being a utility. It's different, you know
01:21:48
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►
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
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►
To indoor shopping malls and they were all privately owned and everybody went to the malls
01:22:17
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►
But they wouldn't let
01:22:19
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►
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
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►
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
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►
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
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►
It is a complicated scenario.
01:23:03
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►
Anyway, we could do all that.
01:23:05
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►
- 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
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►
- 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.
01:23:30
◼
►
- 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
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►
Thanks, Dan.
01:24:02
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►
- Would hope so, thank you.