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The Talk Show

273: ‘My Cousin Hans’ With Rene Ritchie

 

00:00:00   I did the thing that I said I was going to do. I don't know if you listen to my show with Rich Siegel, but I said I had to use a dongle to go from this Onyx Blackjack USB device to the thing.

00:00:15   I mean, by the time the show is over, by the time I'm done doing the talk show, it's recursive.

00:00:26   By the time I'm done, I'll have about four or five hours of backloaded backstory about

00:00:36   the USB interface to Skype.

00:00:39   And that'll be it.

00:00:40   That'll be it.

00:00:41   It'll be the final show.

00:00:42   You'll know it's over when I've got about four hours of backstory.

00:00:47   I'll record two hours of it. I'll leave two hours of it unsaid,

00:00:51   just to give people that, you know, uh, you know,

00:00:54   something to hope for in the future. It'll all be about, uh,

00:00:58   USB interfaces, but I'll tell you what, I finally did it.

00:01:02   I bought that cable that I was talking about, which is USB B.

00:01:06   I don't know what the hell it is. Yeah. USB B,

00:01:11   which is the dumbest port ever, right? I mean, who that? Why,

00:01:14   why does that even exist? But anyway,

00:01:18   but anyway, I got USB B to USB C.

00:01:23   So there's no dongles. You are listening to me, René,

00:01:27   with no dongles. There,

00:01:31   there is not a single dongle between my voice in your ears and the

00:01:35   ears of our hundreds of listeners.

00:01:39   I did the same thing. I was heard you talking about it and I ordered the USB B to the USB

00:01:43   C because my, I have this fancy high end USB pre two amp and it still has a damn USB B

00:01:51   port on it.

00:01:53   Oh man. Hey, while we're on it, while we're on the topic, what's, what's the name of this

00:01:59   thing that so so there actually is some news that has broken in the last few

00:02:09   weeks and it's this consortium I don't know what you want to call it with the

00:02:17   Amazon and Google and Apple and they're gonna try chip right basically it seems

00:02:26   like Apple is spearheading it it it kind of seems like it's coming from Apple but

00:02:33   basically it sounds like it's an idea to make a home connected devices like hey

00:02:47   dingus or hey uh uh hey google or whatever your your favorite uh dinguses devices

00:02:57   uh sort of make it like a usb type thing where interoperable right where they're interoperable

00:03:06   and i gotta tell you if they pull it off no one's gonna be happier than me i am we've got

00:03:14   a whole bunch. I, you know, this show is, you know, it's supposed to be about technology.

00:03:22   It's not supposed to be about my personal life. I'll just tell you though, I'll just,

00:03:25   I'll peel back a layer of the Gruber family life. And my wife loves Christmas trees, loves them.

00:03:33   I absolutely loves them. We've got, I don't know. I mean, we've got more Christmas trees than you

00:03:39   can believe. But what we've got is every single one of them is plugged in to a dingus that goes

00:03:47   into the light socket so that we can say to our Amazon dingus, "Hey, Amazon dingus,

00:03:58   turn off the Christmas trees," or "Hey, Amazon dingus, turn on the Christmas trees," or like,

00:04:07   Hey Amazon dingus, turn off Jonas's Christmas tree and then it turns off the Christmas tree

00:04:15   in Jonas's room.

00:04:16   And yes, our son has Christmas tree in his room.

00:04:20   Why is Christmas tree?

00:04:22   Yeah.

00:04:23   And, and it's, you know, I, I, I know that there are some light socket things, you know,

00:04:31   our power socket things that, that work with Siri, but it was easy.

00:04:35   The easiest thing to do was to just buy the Amazon ones and,

00:04:40   and they're from Amazon. They're pretty easy to set up.

00:04:44   This is the second year we've had them. They were pretty easy to,

00:04:50   and I labeled them, but you know, some of them, you know, didn't,

00:04:54   didn't survive the year with the, I don't know why,

00:04:58   but it wasn't that bad to reset them up a year later.

00:05:03   It could have been easier in my opinion, but yeah.

00:05:06   - But I started with the HomeKit one

00:05:10   and because it was called light,

00:05:11   when I just destroyed my entire ability

00:05:13   to turn lights on and off.

00:05:15   So I had to rename it.

00:05:16   I ended up making a scene.

00:05:18   So before I would just say turn off the lights

00:05:20   and we turn off all the lights.

00:05:21   But then when I got this thing,

00:05:22   I would say turn off the lights

00:05:23   and it would just turn off the nightlight

00:05:25   on the stupid plug.

00:05:26   So I made a scene and I renamed it to Ho Ho Ho for Christmas.

00:05:30   But then I did the inevitable thing

00:05:32   and now I've renamed it to,

00:05:33   and now I have a machine gun.

00:05:35   (laughing)

00:05:37   - Which ties in to me when my cousin Hans,

00:05:42   who unfortunately, you know what, he gets a bad rap.

00:05:47   You know what I mean?

00:05:49   He was, you know, trying to make an honest--

00:05:51   - He was an entrepreneur.

00:05:52   - Trying to make, yeah, he's an entrepreneur,

00:05:53   trying to make an honest transaction in Los Angeles,

00:05:56   you know, back in the late '80s.

00:06:00   But but anyway, it this chip thing, if they can pull it off, and if Apple can lead the

00:06:10   way, and it's, it's interesting to me, I don't know where it's gonna go.

00:06:17   But the thing that's interesting to me is that Apple's initial, it's like the announcement

00:06:22   came and Apple says, Hey, and by the way, here's this thing we have on GitHub.

00:06:27   thing that they have on GitHub is like this whole thing about like device security.

00:06:32   I give it I give it at least a 50 50 shot as as turning into sort of the USB of

00:06:45   internet connected device assistant directed device protocols. I don't know what to call it.

00:06:57   - You kind of, like if you use Siri or HomeKit,

00:06:59   you kind of have to hope that this works

00:07:01   because given Apple's way of making products,

00:07:03   their hyper-focused way of making products,

00:07:05   they don't even make a router anymore.

00:07:07   And every other company not only bought a router,

00:07:10   like Amazon bought Eero and Samsung bought SmartThings,

00:07:13   and Google has the Google Wi-Fi system.

00:07:16   - And they're advertising it.

00:07:16   - But they have all the products.

00:07:18   They have every product.

00:07:19   They have their own locks, their own lights,

00:07:20   their own, they've bought the entire ecosystem.

00:07:22   And coincidentally, they don't support HomeKit,

00:07:25   even if they previously announced that they would.

00:07:27   - Isn't that the most interesting?

00:07:32   To me, that is the single most interesting

00:07:35   derivative of the whole angle is, okay.

00:07:42   So,

00:07:43   where we stand at the end of 2019

00:07:49   is Apple is interested enough in home connected devices

00:07:53   that they're going to get involved in this new industry

00:07:58   attempt at a standard called chip, where they can, you know,

00:08:03   somebody can make like a wall socket and they can,

00:08:08   if this all works out, they'll adhere to the standard.

00:08:12   And then you could use it with Alexa. You could use it with Google.

00:08:16   You could use it with Siri. You could use it with Samsung's dingus.

00:08:21   What's the Samsung dingus called?

00:08:23   He Oh, yeah, nobody uses it.

00:08:26   Yeah. Hero. What's his name?

00:08:28   I don't know whatever his name is, but you could use it with anybody.

00:08:32   And and you and I could start a company that would have our own thing

00:08:37   and we could adhere to the standard and all these things could

00:08:41   could work with our new product.

00:08:45   And that wouldn't that be great because Bixby had to look it up Bixby.

00:08:50   (laughing)

00:08:51   - Bill.

00:08:52   I always think of, well.

00:08:54   (laughing)

00:08:56   - Well, it was the Siri people, right?

00:08:57   Like they made it and then Samsung bought it

00:08:59   and renamed it to Bixby.

00:09:00   - But, I go back to,

00:09:03   - Bill Bixby.

00:09:05   - It always goes back to Bill.

00:09:07   I always have like this,

00:09:08   everything goes back to the '70s for me.

00:09:12   - And the music at the end of the Hulk

00:09:13   when he's just lonely and walking off

00:09:14   into the distance again.

00:09:15   (laughing)

00:09:18   Why didn't his pants pop off?

00:09:20   He had stretch pants before his time

00:09:24   But they weren't stretch pants. Nope

00:09:27   like if I if I were afflicted with it with a with a

00:09:34   terrible condition where I had been hit by gamma radiation and

00:09:39   if I got upset I

00:09:42   Turned into a green monster

00:09:47   and tripled in size because I turned into a Hulk.

00:09:52   I swear to God, every day, Rene,

00:09:57   I wouldn't wear anything but stretch pants.

00:10:01   - But yoga pants all the way down.

00:10:02   - Yeah, but he didn't wear, he never wore,

00:10:05   he wore regular pants, but the pants never popped off.

00:10:09   It would have been a very different show, I suppose.

00:10:14   - Yeah, the Tarantino version

00:10:15   would have been super different.

00:10:16   Because you gotta think if everything gets big,

00:10:18   if your biceps get big and your neck gets big

00:10:22   and your thighs get big,

00:10:23   you gotta figure everything gets big.

00:10:26   - But like all the bodybuilders at the time,

00:10:27   he just didn't hit his legs hard at the gym.

00:10:29   He ignored it for pectoral and bicep growth.

00:10:32   - It would have been a very different show

00:10:34   if all the clothes came off.

00:10:37   But anyway, it's the new year.

00:10:41   - Yeah.

00:10:45   Hey, you know, this is probably the last show.

00:10:49   Well, probably, where by probably,

00:10:51   I mean absolutely 100%, definitely.

00:10:55   This is the last show of the decade.

00:10:57   - Yeah. - Yeah.

00:10:58   Right here on the talk show,

00:11:00   we've been broadcasting since, I don't know how long,

00:11:04   but here we go, last show of the decade.

00:11:07   I might as well take a break right now

00:11:11   and thank our first sponsor.

00:11:13   It's the holiday season.

00:11:15   I feel like, you know, you gotta be a little loose

00:11:18   on the last show of the decade.

00:11:21   Here we go.

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00:15:16   All right, I feel like we're three parentheticals in.

00:15:23   Where were we?

00:15:24   (laughing)

00:15:25   - We're so deep.

00:15:26   We were talking about Chip still.

00:15:27   - Oh, Chip.

00:15:28   All right, so I hope it works out

00:15:32   because I do feel like if you just buy like a $20 thing

00:15:37   that you stick in a socket and all it is is a power plug

00:15:42   to put your Christmas trees in.

00:15:43   It should work with all of your,

00:15:47   whatever your favorite voice assistant is.

00:15:51   In theory, this is great.

00:15:54   And I feel like Apple's source code dump,

00:15:58   which is a very, you know, very much security based is a very good sign that Apple at least

00:16:08   is thinking, hey, let's get everybody to adopt this stuff. Let's get them to do it in a way

00:16:14   that is secure and private. And, you know, it let's not try to lock anybody into Siri

00:16:25   Versus these other things. Let's just you know, if you're if you're making a $20 thing to plug your Christmas tree into

00:16:31   Let's just make it work with everything

00:16:33   Yeah, I think it's very practical like Apple was late to market because they cared about security and everyone were throwing out these cameras and

00:16:42   These devices that had absolutely no

00:16:44   Security concerns and everyone made wired articles about how he could hack your house

00:16:47   All of a sudden and a lot of them didn't care because they were selling product and it was

00:16:52   convenient for them to think about security.

00:16:55   But I think Apple is approaching this a lot

00:16:56   like they approach WebKit where they can't be dominant

00:17:00   and they can't make every product themselves.

00:17:02   So what they can best do, it's like that old joke

00:17:04   that everyone makes everything proprietary

00:17:07   that makes them money, but then open source is everything

00:17:09   that makes their competitors money

00:17:10   because that's the best strategy.

00:17:12   And if they make this alliance,

00:17:14   then at least they can take part,

00:17:15   they can benefit from the overall ecosystem

00:17:17   and hopefully donate something to security end of it as well.

00:17:20   - You know, it's an interesting comparison to WebKit

00:17:22   because in a weird way they do kind of dominate with WebKit

00:17:26   because WebKit's the only web rendering engine

00:17:31   on the iPhone and the iPhone,

00:17:33   I don't know if you've heard about it,

00:17:35   but it's kind of a thing.

00:17:36   - Well sure, but when they did it,

00:17:37   like when Milton did that whole project,

00:17:39   it was by no means gonna be a dominant.

00:17:41   - Right, because it was years before the iPhone

00:17:43   even existed, right.

00:17:44   But I feel like that's where they kind of are with Siri,

00:17:51   where they've got ambitious goals,

00:17:56   and I think they get a bad rap, I really do.

00:18:00   And this is not trying to be an Apple cheerleader

00:18:04   in the very least.

00:18:05   I think Siri has gotten so much better

00:18:09   that it is one of the most,

00:18:12   here, it's the decade in review.

00:18:15   I feel like one of the underreported stories

00:18:20   of the decade in review is how much better Syria has gotten in the last three or four

00:18:25   years.

00:18:27   It still isn't great.

00:18:29   But part of what makes it frustrating is that it still has so far to go.

00:18:35   And part of what makes it something that people think just plain sucks is that it's based

00:18:43   on their first impressions from three or four years ago.

00:18:47   I feel and I really, you know, that's human nature.

00:18:51   But I feel like, you know, you give something x number of chances and x is some

00:18:56   reasonable integer, like four or five, six. And if,

00:19:01   if it lets you down that number of times, you're just like, forget it.

00:19:04   I'm not going to use it anymore. And people give up on it. And then three,

00:19:08   four years later, the thing that, you know, like Siri is so much better,

00:19:13   but people don't try it because they think,

00:19:16   ah, it never understands what I say.

00:19:19   - Yeah, I mean, the thing for me is that there's just,

00:19:22   there's still even now an inconsistency to it.

00:19:25   And I've joked about it, like I can say call my mom

00:19:27   and nine times it works perfectly.

00:19:28   The 10th time it calls some hairdresser

00:19:30   that I've never heard of.

00:19:32   And it just, it makes me think there's a server

00:19:33   in Eddie Q's closet that he's never updated,

00:19:35   but it's still somehow attached to the CDN

00:19:38   and we all hit it once every 10 to 20 times.

00:19:41   And it's just, it's flabbergasted.

00:19:43   But I think you're right, because Siri is Assistant One,

00:19:46   it's built into every iPhone,

00:19:48   and you see it with every new phone

00:19:49   and every new iOS update,

00:19:51   that if they can make compelling features,

00:19:53   when you do that setup buddy every time,

00:19:56   they have a chance to hook you in.

00:19:57   They just gotta figure out

00:19:58   what those compelling things are.

00:19:59   - Yeah.

00:20:00   So the chip thing, I hope it works out, but we'll see.

00:20:06   But it would be great if you could just confidently buy

00:20:12   wall socket adapters from IKEA and know that they'll work with all of the major

00:20:18   Assistants, you know, it would be great. It would be absolutely great. I don't know how they make that happen

00:20:24   I feel like it's a little bit more, you know

00:20:27   Maybe a lot more complicated than something like USB where it's all just wires. I feel like

00:20:34   taking these

00:20:36   audio

00:20:38   Directions in various languages, you know and passing them through I'm sure it's more complicated

00:20:44   But in theory this is the way everything should be

00:20:47   Even just basic functionality because a lot of houses are mixed assistant houses now and if you have an Alexa at home

00:20:54   But then you go out for a jog wearing your air pods and Apple watch

00:20:57   You should still be able to say turn my thermostat on or turn on the lights on your way home

00:21:02   And it shouldn't matter which assistant you're using at the time. Well, that's us. We're a mixed assistant house. Yeah, we've got the

00:21:08   We've got the Alexa, we've got the HomePods,

00:21:12   we've obviously got a bunch of iPhones

00:21:15   and iPads laying around.

00:21:17   But like I said, our Christmas tree wall socket things

00:21:21   are all only on the Alexa system.

00:21:25   And at times--

00:21:27   - You've got OK Google on your Pixel phone.

00:21:30   - Yeah, but I don't have that hooked up to my phone.

00:21:33   (laughing)

00:21:34   But, you know, it would be great if everything

00:21:39   could work with everything, the way that USB does.

00:21:43   If you have a charger, if you just plug it in

00:21:48   and you have a thing that goes from this plug

00:21:50   to that device, then it can charge anything.

00:21:53   - Like I'm sure they'll screw it up.

00:21:54   They'll say, oh, that's chip one compatible

00:21:56   and you need chip 1.2 compatibility on there.

00:21:58   They'll screw us up some way,

00:21:59   but at least it'd be a beginning.

00:22:01   - Well, anyway, I hope it works out.

00:22:04   I kind of feel like it is in everybody's interests.

00:22:09   It's not, lock-in in theory is a competitive advantage,

00:22:13   but I feel like in this realm,

00:22:16   it really would be better for everybody

00:22:18   if there were a successful standard

00:22:22   that just let people make just basic things,

00:22:29   light bulbs and wall sockets and stuff

00:22:34   that just worked with everything,

00:22:36   and so they didn't have to do it.

00:22:38   And if Apple has already done a lot of the groundwork

00:22:42   on the, hey, let's make sure this is private and secure,

00:22:45   then I feel like these other companies

00:22:47   can piggyback off that and say like,

00:22:49   well, maybe we don't care as much about security

00:22:54   and privacy as Apple does,

00:22:56   but if they've already done the work,

00:22:58   why don't we piggyback off that?

00:22:59   That would be good.

00:23:01   - Also, their competitors own so much of the market,

00:23:04   becoming harder and harder to have just home kit stuff. Like I

00:23:07   remember the Natatmo doorbell looked so much better, so much

00:23:10   more private, so much more secure than the ring doorbell,

00:23:13   which we still hear horror stories about. And it was

00:23:15   announced last year. And I still don't think it shipped. There's

00:23:19   no there's not many options. So

00:23:20   have you been following this story about the ring? security

00:23:25   issues?

00:23:26   It's a bunch of them. Yeah, it's an interesting story to me,

00:23:32   because what's happened to some people who have them is absolutely horrible, horrible,

00:23:39   horrible, horrible stuff. So no denying that. And then ring came out a couple of days after

00:23:45   the story broke and said, Hey, this isn't really a security problem with our product. It's the fact

00:23:54   that all we have is a like to get into a ring you just need an email and a password and

00:24:04   so many literally millions tens millions probably hundreds of millions of people

00:24:12   around the world use the same email and password for multiple services because you know that's

00:24:22   You know, it everybody says don't do that. But you know hundreds of millions of people do that and

00:24:28   if one service

00:24:31   somewhere

00:24:34   Stores your password as the password which they shouldn't do in the first place, right?

00:24:40   It should only be stored written to disk in a hashed format

00:24:44   Like some Home Depot is gonna do it right somewhere, right?

00:24:47   Some Home Depot or I don't want to throw Home Depot into the bus

00:24:51   - They were one of the biggest preachers, I think, recently.

00:24:53   There's another one.

00:24:54   There's a couple really big store breaches.

00:24:56   - Well, then let's throw 'em under the bus.

00:24:58   - Yeah. (laughs)

00:24:59   - But somebody like Home Depot stores your password

00:25:02   as the actual password and the email,

00:25:06   and then if they get hacked,

00:25:09   and 20 million email and passwords get leaked,

00:25:14   then that hack goes out.

00:25:20   Any malfees out there who wants it can download the whole thing and then they can just start

00:25:29   trying random services with all of these email and password combinations.

00:25:34   It did it with Disney Plus the weekend it came out.

00:25:38   And got in, right?

00:25:39   It's crazy.

00:25:41   But it speaks to the fact that security experts have been saying for a long time that they

00:25:50   that, Hey, don't use the same password on more than one service, blah, blah,

00:25:54   blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:25:56   And they keep saying it and people keep doing it because that's what they did.

00:26:01   But it's like, it's not even you,

00:26:03   like you could be the most scrupulous person who has never told another human

00:26:08   soul what your magic password is that you use on multiple services.

00:26:17   And you don't even tell your partner,

00:26:22   you don't tell your kids, you don't tell your pastor,

00:26:26   you don't tell anybody.

00:26:29   It's only in your head.

00:26:31   But if one of those services gets hacked

00:26:34   and the service stores your password in plain text,

00:26:38   all of a sudden anybody can try that email

00:26:41   and password combination on ABCDEFG,

00:26:47   just go down the list of services that you would like to try to get a hack into.

00:26:52   They try your email and password and you didn't do anything wrong.

00:26:58   Other than the fact that you reuse the same password on more than one service,

00:27:02   all of a sudden you're in.

00:27:04   And it sounds like that's exactly what happened to these ring people, right?

00:27:08   Is that you get one of these ring cameras,

00:27:14   You put it in your house or outside or whatever.

00:27:17   But the one you know, the people who are obviously traumatized by this,

00:27:21   rightfully so, you know, are the ones who have them inside their house.

00:27:25   And it's it's not that the ring is easily hackable

00:27:31   and that if if I find out, hey, Rene Ritchie has a ring camera

00:27:36   and then I can just magically hack into your camera easily. No.

00:27:43   But it's if I have this list of 20 million email addresses and passwords and I start

00:27:51   randomly trying them.

00:27:53   So I can't target you specifically, but I might hit you randomly by going through these,

00:28:01   you know, millions of email and password combinations I've downloaded from some hacked website that

00:28:08   idiotically stored their passwords in plain text.

00:28:12   And then all of a sudden, now I'm hooked up to your camera

00:28:15   and I can see everything your camera sees.

00:28:18   And the people who are into this are terrible people

00:28:24   and they're saying weird things.

00:28:26   They look in the camera and they see it's a child

00:28:28   and they're saying terribly racist things to these kids.

00:28:33   It's all horrible.

00:28:36   In a sense, the ring people are right

00:28:39   that they weren't hacked, but in another sense,

00:28:44   it's like if it's something as sensitive

00:28:47   as a camera and microphone pointing into your house,

00:28:52   you probably should have set it up

00:28:55   with something better than email plus password security.

00:28:59   - I mean, Apple learned this the hard way

00:29:01   because that's how the original iCloud breaches happen

00:29:03   with people either reusing passwords

00:29:05   We're having security questions for celebrities that were on Wikipedia, right?

00:29:09   Basically, right.

00:29:10   I mean, that was the Sarah Palin thing too.

00:29:12   No, that's very true.

00:29:13   And no, Scarlett Johansson.

00:29:15   I mean, it wasn't just political.

00:29:17   It was it was a bunch of people who who had their iClouds,

00:29:21   iCloud accounts hacked.

00:29:23   And it was. Yeah, you're exactly right, though.

00:29:25   It was very similar where

00:29:27   it was just email plus password and the,

00:29:33   you know, extra questions for security, which I available

00:29:38   answers, which I, I hate every time. I've never been

00:29:43   comfortable with them. I mean, I'm talking like going back 20

00:29:46   years when they're like, Hey, what's your father's middle

00:29:49   name? And I'm like, Hey, that's not that. You know, I mean,

00:29:54   like, somebody could easily look that up. And I'm like, but I

00:29:58   generally answered them truthfully, because I'm like,

00:30:01   what else am I gonna do?

00:30:03   And I know that like one password

00:30:06   lets you like answer them with, you know,

00:30:09   a complete gibberish answer

00:30:11   so that you can look up in one password,

00:30:14   what does Google think my father's middle name is?

00:30:19   - Yes. - And it's like, you know.

00:30:23   - A pseudo random blob. - Gliberal, bleh.

00:30:26   - As a hilarious aside, in the province of Quebec,

00:30:30   still ask you for your mother's maiden name as a security question but it's illegal by law for

00:30:35   people for a wife to take your husband's name they you have to keep your maiden name so everybody

00:30:40   knows everybody's maiden name because that's the name they go by but they still ask it as a

00:30:45   security question we can't win uh but it just shows that all of those that that that that whole

00:30:54   path of personal security of of asking you things that supposedly only you would know it's it the

00:31:05   whole path is broken and the right path is you know some kind of second factor thing with every

00:31:14   password being total gibberish or yeah if not gibberish you know just like three random three

00:31:22   three or four random words separated by dots or dashes

00:31:27   or something like that. - Something that adds

00:31:28   some entropy to your password.

00:31:29   - Right, but not something that has any kind of meaning

00:31:33   to you personally, but...

00:31:35   - And that's why Apple came out with that whole,

00:31:37   well, the first two step authentication

00:31:39   and then the new two factor authentication.

00:31:41   My only issue with Ring is that it's sort of like,

00:31:44   they just, they keep doing stuff like this.

00:31:46   Like they famously let the Ukrainian outsource company

00:31:49   have direct access to people's camera feeds

00:31:51   out of expediency.

00:31:52   And then they gave, like they had this whole thing going on

00:31:54   with the cops where they would help them install

00:31:56   like the ring doorbells.

00:31:58   And it just feels like they need to reprioritize security

00:32:01   in their list of things that matter to them.

00:32:03   - Well, and right.

00:32:06   So I feel like they,

00:32:10   and I haven't bought the ring camera things

00:32:14   and I really could use them to be honest at our front door.

00:32:22   And, but I've honestly had like a bad privacy feeling

00:32:27   about them the whole time.

00:32:31   And I get it that they're not hacked

00:32:34   because they're easily hackable.

00:32:36   I get it that they got, that people are getting hacked

00:32:40   because it's just a simple email password thing

00:32:45   and so many millions of people's emails

00:32:50   plus password they use everywhere have been leaked,

00:32:54   that's basically how they've been quote unquote hacked.

00:32:57   So I get it that it's not their fault

00:32:59   that if you used a good, strong, unique password with Ring

00:33:04   and that's all you did, the only security step you took

00:33:10   was that your Ring account uses a good, strong,

00:33:15   unique password, you're good.

00:33:18   I get it and that's what I would do

00:33:22   But it's not what everybody in my family would do. It's certainly not what everybody I know would do

00:33:28   You know, most people don't do that. And so it is kind of on ring to

00:33:35   Have designed a system and I say this all the time on during fireball. We're like good design

00:33:41   Isn't really

00:33:44   It shouldn't be centered on what people should do. It should be centered on what people will do. It's considerate, right?

00:33:51   It's what what will people do not what should they do because people aren't going to do the should thing

00:33:59   Most of the time they're gonna do what they will do, you know

00:34:04   It's the old story about like how do you set the pathways on a college campus?

00:34:09   And it's like, just lay down grass everywhere,

00:34:13   wait a year, and then see where the paths are worn,

00:34:18   and then pave those,

00:34:19   because people are gonna walk there anyway.

00:34:22   - Yeah, I also think that,

00:34:24   I think it's fair to say that as much as these are products,

00:34:27   when you're dealing with a company like Amazon,

00:34:28   and like Google, and like Facebook,

00:34:30   they are also intended to be data harvesting endpoints.

00:34:33   So they're designed to take your stuff

00:34:35   and put it on Amazon or Google or Facebook servers.

00:34:38   And that means there has to be an inherent

00:34:40   greater level of security.

00:34:42   Like that Nanatmo, Natatmo,

00:34:43   I forget how to pronounce their name,

00:34:44   that doorbell, it saves to an SD card.

00:34:46   Like there is, or to your personal Dropbox,

00:34:49   there's no like their server end.

00:34:51   So I think if you're designing this stuff

00:34:52   and you're marketing it,

00:34:53   and you're also your side business or your side hustle

00:34:55   or your main hustle is sucking in all this data

00:34:58   so you can feed your algorithms

00:34:59   and your facial recognition and whatever,

00:35:02   there's an even higher standard

00:35:03   for you to provide the protection

00:35:04   to the people who are using those devices.

00:35:07   - Yeah, I think so completely.

00:35:08   All right, let's take a break.

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00:40:04   All right, so you don't have a Ring camera.

00:40:11   - No, and I've thought about them too,

00:40:13   but I think even if I would ever get one,

00:40:14   it would only ever be plenty out.

00:40:16   I would never have one inside the house.

00:40:18   - Well, yeah, I wouldn't want a camera inside my house

00:40:22   no matter what company it was from.

00:40:24   You know, like, even if like Apple split itself

00:40:29   and said, hey, we're gonna fork our company,

00:40:31   we're gonna keep going with Apple as Apple,

00:40:34   and we're also gonna make a company

00:40:36   called the Privacy Company.

00:40:38   And literally, it's just devoted,

00:40:42   a company single-mindedly focused on privacy.

00:40:47   And I still wouldn't want the camera in my house,

00:40:51   But I would like a better camera outside my house.

00:40:55   I have a crappy doorbell that has a crappy camera

00:41:00   from like 2006 pointing outside at the doorbell.

00:41:04   I would like a better camera there.

00:41:05   So I guess I'll buy something.

00:41:08   And I'm not, you know,

00:41:09   what's the worst thing that could happen?

00:41:10   The worst thing that could happen is what?

00:41:13   24 hours a day, seven days a week

00:41:18   is storing what happens outside my house

00:41:23   and going to a server, right?

00:41:25   - John taking the garbage out Tuesday again.

00:41:28   - Right.

00:41:29   So every Sunday night when I take the garbage out,

00:41:32   there I am.

00:41:32   - And you're Hulk fans.

00:41:36   - If it's pointed outside your house,

00:41:39   to me, the worst privacy violation that could happen

00:41:44   is a thing that somebody else could photograph, right?

00:41:49   Because it's outside your house.

00:41:52   So that's not why I don't get it, but eh.

00:41:56   - And I say this as someone who realizes

00:41:57   that every Mac and iPad and iPhone and Google phone

00:42:00   and whatever I have in my house has a camera on it.

00:42:03   I just try not to think of that.

00:42:04   - Hey, maybe you wanna put tape over your camera.

00:42:07   And it's like, I've seen no evidence

00:42:11   that the green light that indicates that the camera is in use isn't physically connected

00:42:18   to the camera.

00:42:22   In my humble opinion, I can't prove it, nobody can prove it, and obviously if you put a piece

00:42:28   of tape over the camera, you can prove that the camera isn't filming you.

00:42:35   But in my opinion, I don't worry about the cameras on my devices.

00:42:40   I really do feel like there's, you know,

00:42:44   and you know, all my devices are Apple devices,

00:42:47   but I do feel like there's pretty strong proof

00:42:51   and from what I know personally,

00:42:54   pretty strong evidence that they take it very seriously.

00:42:58   That like, I don't think Tim Cook has tape over his camera.

00:43:02   And I know people are like, hey, you know,

00:43:04   there's that thing as Zuckerberg

00:43:06   and Zuckerberg's using a MacBook

00:43:08   and he's got tape over the camera.

00:43:09   Like if Mark Zuckerberg has tape over his camera,

00:43:12   then I'm putting tape over my camera.

00:43:13   And it's like, well, maybe that was,

00:43:16   A, we have no idea if that was actually his computer,

00:43:20   and B, he didn't make the computer.

00:43:23   You know, like show me.

00:43:24   - No, but he was Facebook running on it,

00:43:25   so you have to be careful.

00:43:26   - Exactly, right.

00:43:27   He's the guy who runs a company

00:43:29   that is trying to use your camera surreptitiously

00:43:32   without turning the light on.

00:43:35   I don't think Tim Cook or Phil Schiller or Eddy Cue

00:43:40   or Craig Federighi, I don't think any of them have tape

00:43:45   over the cameras on their MacBooks

00:43:48   because I think they know that if the camera's on,

00:43:51   the light comes on and that's, you know,

00:43:54   you know that it's on.

00:43:55   So I trust it that way.

00:43:59   And maybe I'm wrong, but I've seen no evidence

00:44:03   that that's not the way that it actually works.

00:44:07   - No, it's tied into the secure element

00:44:08   on all the modern Macs and iPhones and everything anyway.

00:44:10   So it's basically a hardware channel,

00:44:12   which I think is better in some cases.

00:44:15   - Yeah.

00:44:16   Did you get a Mac Pro?

00:44:18   - I did not.

00:44:20   I was thinking about it and I had what I called

00:44:22   a bunch of FOMO YOLO jealousy when I saw all of our friends

00:44:26   getting them and unboxing them.

00:44:28   But the 2016 MacBook Pro is just so good.

00:44:32   And I'm only shooting 4K RAW, which, you know,

00:44:35   it sounds like a lot, but this machine is crushing it.

00:44:39   And I don't, like if I was doing multi-stream 8K RAW

00:44:43   or Arri Alexa, like Jonathan Morrison or MKBHD or iJustine,

00:44:48   or some of that photogrammetry stuff that Alex Lindsey does

00:44:51   that takes days, it would be a blessing to me.

00:44:54   But there's, I was like just looking at it

00:44:56   and looking at my budget and going, but I don't need it.

00:44:59   And because I didn't need it,

00:45:00   managed to stop myself from buying it. It's... I even thought about the display

00:45:08   but by the time I thought about it it was pushed into February and that let me

00:45:10   say okay I don't have to think about it right now. Well there's a couple of

00:45:13   things that are pushing late so one of the things that is fascinating to me and

00:45:19   it it's not really related but did you see how long the delay is on AirPods Pro?

00:45:28   No, I didn't. If you tried to buy AirPods Pro in any time in the last like three

00:45:36   four weeks there like the delivery date is late January so in terms of like hey

00:45:43   it's two weeks before Christmas I wanted to get you know my kid my spouse whoever

00:45:50   AirPods Pro you you were screwed it was absolutely almost no chance you know

00:45:56   There were like random. It says four weeks right now

00:45:59   You know you you could randomly find a store that might be near you that had them

00:46:05   But for the most part it was five or six weeks

00:46:08   Four or five weeks delivery which to me is crazy

00:46:12   I

00:46:14   The pro and I realized the air pods pro or something that

00:46:20   Tens and tens of millions of people are interested in and might want to buy and I realized that the pro display

00:46:26   XDR is something that only thousands of people are interested in and want to buy but

00:46:32   Yeah similar in terms of you can't get one right now. You just can't go in and buy one

00:46:40   You know obviously two very different price points yes

00:46:49   We're talking five thousand dollars plus thousand dollars stand versus you know

00:46:54   What what what are the air pods Pro like I loved your line?

00:46:58   I think it was a WWC talk show and you said that you thought 6k was the price when they kept calling it that

00:47:03   It's so close. It's

00:47:05   If you get your stand, it's so close. It's a thousand dollars a K. I

00:47:11   Think it's I think you know

00:47:15   Obviously people who are looking for the pro display XDR are looking to buy a display to use for years to come

00:47:22   it is not a

00:47:24   One-off purchase. It's not something you make on a whim. It is something you do professionally blah blah blah and

00:47:30   AirPods Pro or something that maybe you buy and a year or two from now you'll get new

00:47:38   whatever's you know AirPods Pro 2 or whatever will come out and

00:47:43   and they're $200 versus 6,000 with a stand

00:47:48   or 7,000 with a stand and the matte finish.

00:47:52   - And those wheels, don't forget those wheels.

00:47:53   - And while you can't get the wheels on display,

00:47:56   I don't think the display has wheels.

00:47:58   Although, you know, let's give them time.

00:48:01   And again, I laugh because it's a very high price point.

00:48:07   I don't think that it's an unreasonable price point

00:48:10   for what it is.

00:48:11   I just read a story today from an animation company

00:48:16   where they were like, hey, you know,

00:48:18   everybody's joking about these displays,

00:48:21   but prior to these displays being available,

00:48:24   it would have cost us $30,000 a seat to get

00:48:28   a display of this caliber in front of everybody

00:48:33   on our team, and now we can do it for $6,000.

00:48:38   - I was joking on Twitter, 'cause I got an email

00:48:41   B&H saying that their new Sony reference display was in stock and it was like

00:48:44   $42,000 and I didn't see a stand on yeah

00:48:47   Right, so I mean I laugh because they're just expensive period yeah

00:48:53   But I thought it was really interesting that the AirPods Pro were sold out so far in advance of Christmas, you know, I

00:49:02   Do I still I have to be honest. I'm still using my

00:49:08   review unit. I didn't I didn't buy them.

00:49:11   And I feel terrible because I was going to buy one for me and my wife.

00:49:16   She doesn't listen to my podcast, so hopefully she won't hear this.

00:49:19   But I was going to get them for her for Christmas.

00:49:22   And then, you know, it was like December 14th or something.

00:49:25   And I'm thinking, hey, it's only December 14th.

00:49:28   I've got plenty of time. I'm ahead of the game.

00:49:31   I'm not doing the thing I do every year where I screw up and wait too long

00:49:37   to get and and then I go to get AirPods Pro and they're like uh delivers January 20th and I'm like

00:49:43   ah shit yeah I I have a very similar thing I bought a pair for myself because I was you know

00:49:50   because I tried to replace the the review units and then I couldn't get them for Christmas

00:49:53   ended up giving the ones I bought as a Christmas gift and I have to buy myself a pair as soon as I

00:49:58   I can get them. I love them and I will tell you and this is good

00:50:05   time as any to reveal it. I did I have a pair of bows,

00:50:11   whatevers, you know, qs 30s, whatever the hell they call them

00:50:15   the over the ear things that are also Bluetooth, noise canceling,

00:50:21   blah, blah, blah. But I took a trip on an airplane at the end

00:50:27   of, or early in December. And I took them and my AirPods and I

00:50:35   will say, I will never travel with those Bose things again.

00:50:39   Ever. There's 0.0 chance that I will ever take them on my trip.

00:50:46   It's not the same because the Bose ones are over the ears

00:50:52   before you even turn them on, they do block out more noise than AirPods Pro, literally

00:51:00   with no electricity being used, no noise canceling algorithm or anything.

00:51:08   They do because they're over your ear.

00:51:10   And when the noise canceling is on, it is different.

00:51:15   And if your goal is to put them in your ear and go on an airplane and not listen to anything,

00:51:26   you're not listening to a podcast, you're not listening to music, you literally just

00:51:31   want the noise canceled.

00:51:33   Well, then you should probably still stick with some kind of over the ear thing because

00:51:39   it is a little bit better, but not that much better.

00:51:45   It is different.

00:51:47   You can definitely hear the difference.

00:51:50   But if you're listening to anything, if you're listening, if you're watching movies on your

00:51:55   iPad or Mac or whatever, if you're listening to music, it is negligible how different they

00:52:05   are.

00:52:06   And I'm not even sure which one is quote unquote better.

00:52:10   But the fact that the AirPods are so tiny and it is absolutely astounding to me how

00:52:20   competitive they are in terms of the noise canceling quality.

00:52:26   And you know, I think for a lot of people, you know, being in an airplane mid-flight

00:52:32   is sort of the noise canceling default scenario.

00:52:37   It's absolutely amazing how competitive the AirPods Pro are

00:52:46   with something like the current Bose QS,

00:52:51   whatever number they are.

00:52:57   - Yeah, no, totally.

00:52:59   I've used a bunch of them too.

00:53:00   And I know there are some people who are audiophiles

00:53:02   and they complain about the sound quality of the AirPods

00:53:04   and fair enough, but I've used them on a ton of flights now

00:53:07   and a ton of different travel scenarios,

00:53:09   coffee shops all over the place.

00:53:11   And I'm astounded at something, not just this small,

00:53:14   but most of the space in here

00:53:16   isn't taken up with audio tech,

00:53:17   it's taken up with a bunch of computer tech

00:53:19   and they can still wrangle out

00:53:20   this kind of performance from them.

00:53:21   - It's really, and they're so much smaller.

00:53:25   And I, you know, what you actually carry on to the plane,

00:53:30   you know, the difference in weight and volume,

00:53:34   especially volume between the AirPods Pro

00:53:39   and a pair of over-the-ear noise canceling headphones

00:53:43   is so phenomenal, it's just ridiculous.

00:53:47   - And I know I should, but I don't get told

00:53:49   to take them off anywhere nearly as I do

00:53:51   when I'm wearing, when I used to wear those big,

00:53:52   the big headphones. - Yeah.

00:53:53   - Those were super obvious.

00:53:55   - 'Cause they look at you and they're like,

00:53:56   "Hey, take that off."

00:53:59   It's really-- - Please, they don't notice

00:54:01   half the time. - All right.

00:54:03   - And it's weird, it's like the end of 2019

00:54:04   and we have, I forget what it was,

00:54:06   a 10 core audio processors in our ears.

00:54:08   That's how far we managed to go within a decade.

00:54:11   (laughing)

00:54:13   - Everything's gonna be a computer, Rene, everything.

00:54:20   - Yep, yeah.

00:54:23   But I have to say I taking them both on one flight and actually

00:54:29   taking time to try them side by side was such and again, this is

00:54:36   the service I provide to the listeners of the talk show is

00:54:39   now you don't have to do it. If you own AirPods Pro, just just

00:54:45   listen to me don't even try the other ones. Leave them at home,

00:54:47   sell them, give them to your brother in law, whoever will

00:54:51   take them, get rid of them. You don't need them anymore. Just use

00:54:54   the AirPods Pro. And and the dera and the other thing that I

00:54:59   brought with me on the same flight was regular old fashioned

00:55:03   non noise cancelling AirPods, although they were the second

00:55:07   generation one. And it it is tremendous the difference that

00:55:14   the noise cancelling AirPods Pro make when when you're on an

00:55:18   airplane. You it's exactly what I thought, which is that the

00:55:23   earbuds are really, they're not useless on an airplane, you

00:55:28   know, but it's there's just so much that white noise from that

00:55:33   would just whoosh noise on an airplane flight. And it's just

00:55:41   the perfect scenario for where you really do need, you know,

00:55:47   And I use that word somewhat cautiously, need,

00:55:51   but you really do need noise canceling on an airplane.

00:55:55   And it just makes all the difference in the world.

00:56:00   Really, just tremendous.

00:56:03   I love the AirPods Pro.

00:56:06   We can segue into this,

00:56:12   'cause it's part of the reason I wanted to have you

00:56:14   on the show this week was your product

00:56:18   of the decade selection.

00:56:20   AirPods Pro are up there.

00:56:22   I would say they're in the finalists, you know,

00:56:26   they're in the playoffs.

00:56:30   - My only thing was that I feel like their best decade

00:56:33   is yet to come.

00:56:34   Like they've been huge, they started in 2016,

00:56:36   but they made huge leaps this year.

00:56:38   And if you follow the thread,

00:56:40   it just feels like they're gonna be even bigger

00:56:42   in the next few years.

00:56:42   - Yeah, I totally agree.

00:56:44   like way longer battery life, way better noise cancellation and way better sort of Siri integration.

00:56:53   Yeah, I kind of feel like at some point in the next, I would say even like three years,

00:56:59   there will be a pair of AirPods that just make even today's AirPods Pro seem like garbage.

00:57:05   Like they'll stream Apple podcasts and Apple music, maybe some third party stuff directly.

00:57:09   You won't even need to watch anymore.

00:57:13   All right, let's just segue right into that. So you had a piece recently, Renee, where you picked

00:57:20   out again, this is the last episode of this podcast in the decade. And don't give me any of

00:57:28   this nonsense that the decade start in 2021. Everybody knows the way human brains work,

00:57:37   That's a decade start, you know, the prince didn't have a song called let's party like it's

00:57:43   2000 it was 1999, you know, you know, oh, sorry a kid. You're not really 10 years old

00:57:49   You gotta wait till next year exactly

00:57:51   So we're days away. The show will come out right before the cusp of the new year

00:57:58   but then it's then, you know, it's the toggle of the decade I

00:58:05   Personally don't do and you know this. Yeah, you personally know this people listening to this know it I

00:58:12   Don't do a lot of like hey best blank of the year bless best this of the year

00:58:19   It's just not my style and it's not because I'm opposed to it. It's just not what I'm good at

00:58:26   I don't have enthusiasm for it. So let the people who do do it and I'll just link to

00:58:33   so and so's, hey, here's the best apps of the year, the best,

00:58:37   you know, products of the year are the best blanks of the decade.

00:58:41   But a decade, you know, it's a bigger deal.

00:58:44   I feel like I ought to speak up.

00:58:47   You're you. You made a declaration.

00:58:50   Best product of the decade. And it was.

00:58:53   The the Apple Watch.

00:58:56   Yeah. And tell me, tell me why you picked Apple Watch.

00:59:01   - So I did think of a few things

00:59:04   like because it's been such a big decade for Apple

00:59:06   like for everything from the iPad to the MacBook Air

00:59:09   which was essentially the template

00:59:10   for every Ultrabook we got for the rest of the decade.

00:59:13   There was just so much to AirPods

00:59:14   there were just so many things.

00:59:16   Some people love the iPhone 4, the iPhone 10

00:59:18   but to me the big difference is that the Apple Watch

00:59:22   was a change within the way that a lot of these products

00:59:26   worked and were designed to work because it saves lives.

00:59:31   And a lot of people, as soon as I say that people say,

00:59:33   well, phones save lives and computers save lives

00:59:35   and tablets, and that's all true, they absolutely do.

00:59:38   But the Apple watch was designed systematically

00:59:42   to save lives and features were designed specifically

00:59:45   to save lives.

00:59:45   Like they took the health, the heart rate monitor

00:59:48   which originally was just meant

00:59:50   to give an accurate calorie count.

00:59:52   But as they were doing their research

00:59:53   they started finding patterns,

00:59:55   they started exploring it more

00:59:56   and they realized they could detect AFib for example.

00:59:59   actually did low heart rate monitoring

01:00:01   and high heart rate monitoring.

01:00:03   And then the ECG app and fall detection

01:00:05   and international emergency calling,

01:00:08   which you know, a phone can't really like,

01:00:09   they're supposed to be able to do it,

01:00:10   but just if you have an accident

01:00:12   and your phone is thrown out of your head,

01:00:13   it just, in so many situations,

01:00:15   the Apple Watch deliberately and specifically saves lives.

01:00:19   And to me, that was just such a huge change

01:00:22   in the continued evolution of personal computing.

01:00:24   - I, did you see the,

01:00:28   There was somebody wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times in the last few days where it was like,

01:00:34   "Ah, the whole Apple tells you you can count on the Apple Watch for hard stuff."

01:00:41   And it's like, "Ah, maybe not so fast."

01:00:44   And it's like, it was such a total, like, the worst, in my opinion, of like,

01:00:52   hey, let's take the opposite approach

01:00:56   to what everybody's saying and take that,

01:01:00   write a whole column about that.

01:01:02   Where like the headline and the subhead

01:01:06   were flat out flat wrong.

01:01:11   And then you read the column and it's like,

01:01:13   ah, all right, yeah, this isn't, it's not so wrong.

01:01:16   So it's not as easy to link to and disagree with.

01:01:21   But my rule of headlines is that the headline

01:01:26   is 50% of what matters.

01:01:27   If the headline misleads,

01:01:30   then it doesn't matter what the article says,

01:01:32   whether it's a news reporting piece or an opinion column,

01:01:36   you've already put people on the wrong path because,

01:01:41   and it's only gotten worse because when you share stuff

01:01:45   on Twitter or I guess Facebook, whatever,

01:01:49   When you paste the link all they see is the headline and the subhead

01:01:54   Tell you like in any algorithm. It's the click-through rate is determined by the picture and the headline right? That's it and

01:02:00   The basic gist of this sort of hey not so fast with the Apple watch is saving lives is like hey

01:02:11   Apple did this story or a study of a

01:02:16   couple thousand people who opted in to do it and only X a small number of people actually

01:02:23   Participated and actually did everything they were supposed to do and of those people only a small percentage

01:02:31   actually had

01:02:33   Atrial fibrillation and it's like

01:02:37   But there was not one person

01:02:44   Who?

01:02:45   Anything bad happened because they did it right not one person

01:02:50   had like hey my life was made worse because I

01:02:55   Put on an Apple watch and tried the heart monitor or anything and signed up for this study

01:03:01   Whereas even if it's a small number of people there's a small number of people who the watch was like hey

01:03:09   Go to your doctor

01:03:12   because I

01:03:13   Something might be wrong with your heart and those people that it was like, oh shit. Yeah, there's something wrong with my heart

01:03:20   I should do it it

01:03:22   it was like the opposite of

01:03:24   I get the idea and it's like writing a column that says hey

01:03:31   You're probably not going to

01:03:36   Have your life bettered in

01:03:40   in terms of your heart health if you buy an Apple watch is not a great column.

01:03:46   Whereas "Hey, Apple says they're going to save your life and they're not" is like a

01:03:52   better column.

01:03:53   I totally get that.

01:03:57   But it's totally off the point, right?

01:03:59   Like the only people who like the watch flagged are people who like should go to the doctor

01:04:08   And I don't know, it annoyed me in a way.

01:04:13   - Yeah, no, I get it totally because over the,

01:04:19   like so the Apple Watch came out and for five years,

01:04:22   it's been a failure and beleaguered

01:04:24   and has gotten very little recognition.

01:04:26   And that's despite people like Neil Seibert

01:04:28   and of course, Didya doing the math and showing

01:04:30   people were saying like Alexa was a smash hit

01:04:32   and the Apple Watch was outselling it.

01:04:34   And the Apple Watch now and the AirPods

01:04:36   have both outsold iPod at its peak.

01:04:39   And they're still like not considered breakthrough

01:04:41   or hit products by a huge swath of people.

01:04:45   And it's flabbergasting to me.

01:04:46   I think, I don't know if it's just jealousy

01:04:48   or some sort of weird technology disorder

01:04:51   that infects a lot of people in the industry.

01:04:54   But by any token, they're selling amazingly well.

01:04:57   And it's bringing all these health and fitness features

01:04:59   to people who at the worst will have a better life.

01:05:02   And at best will, like my friend, Georgia, who you know,

01:05:04   she fell down the stairs

01:05:06   and it went off and she was badly hurt.

01:05:09   And luckily her husband hurt her and came running down,

01:05:12   but if she'd been home alone,

01:05:13   that would have called 911 for her when she could not.

01:05:16   - You know what, that's a great example

01:05:19   because I feel like the atrial fibrillation feature,

01:05:24   which Apple has to get country by country

01:05:28   regulatory approval for, for good reason.

01:05:34   this isn't a complaint about government regulations,

01:05:38   but for good reason, they have to get approval for it.

01:05:43   And so it definitely is limited by where you live.

01:05:48   So if you live in the US or Canada, you've already got it.

01:05:52   You do have it in Canada.

01:05:56   - Yeah.

01:05:57   (laughing)

01:05:58   Finally.

01:05:58   (laughing)

01:05:59   - But as you go around--

01:06:01   - We got it in July of last year.

01:06:02   - Thank God.

01:06:03   - Yeah, but as you go around the world,

01:06:06   you may not have it if you live outside of North America.

01:06:10   But for good reason.

01:06:15   But the fall detection thing, to me,

01:06:19   is way more interesting

01:06:21   than the atrial fibrillation thing

01:06:25   because it just seems more common

01:06:29   And it doesn't require the regulatory approval that it does.

01:06:34   And it works, it really does.

01:06:38   I know your friend, Georgia, had a fall.

01:06:43   I've gotten emails, I'm sure you have too.

01:06:46   I've gotten emails from people who read Daring Fireball,

01:06:50   'cause there's hundreds of thousands of people

01:06:52   who read my website, and so even if only

01:06:56   tenth of a percent of people suffer a bad fall and only among

01:07:02   the people who actually own an Apple Watch and whatever

01:07:06   percentage those people would deem fit to email me about it.

01:07:11   But I've gotten several emails from people who are like, Hey,

01:07:15   I slipped on the third stair.

01:07:18   I fell down three stairs.

01:07:20   I'm fine.

01:07:21   I was fine.

01:07:23   But maybe if I was instead of being 45 years old,

01:07:28   if I was 85 years old, I wouldn't have been fine.

01:07:31   And the watch was like, hey, are you okay?

01:07:34   We detected a fall.

01:07:36   Do you want to call services?

01:07:39   And they're like, this is phenomenal.

01:07:43   And they're like, as soon as I got that, I was like,

01:07:45   you know what I did?

01:07:46   I bought my dad and my mom an Apple watch, you know,

01:07:51   because you know, my dad is 84, you know,

01:07:55   and if he took a fall like that, he probably wouldn't be okay.

01:07:59   And it would be phenomenal if he could just tap one button on his

01:08:05   left wrist to call nine 11 services.

01:08:08   It really is very impressive technology.

01:08:12   And I get it. I it's not my pick for product of the decade,

01:08:17   but I get why you picked it.

01:08:20   And the services that provide these sorts of things

01:08:23   are typically really expensive every month,

01:08:25   you know, when you add them up.

01:08:27   But also like this is one of those things

01:08:29   where it's only Apple.

01:08:30   Like yes, there are other watches on the market,

01:08:32   but Qualcomm so far has not been able to make

01:08:34   good watch silicon because no one's really buying it

01:08:37   in sufficient quantities.

01:08:38   So they have like an old phone chip,

01:08:40   they've rehashed twice and now added a coprocessor to,

01:08:43   and Wear OS from Google,

01:08:45   even people who love Android will tell you

01:08:47   it's non-functional in terms of being a wearable OS.

01:08:49   And that shows you just how hard it is to make these things.

01:08:52   If Google, one of the best software companies in the world,

01:08:55   and Qualcomm, one of the best chipset companies in the world

01:08:57   can't even get it together,

01:08:58   and that's with the Apple Watch to compete with.

01:09:01   So if Apple wasn't in this market,

01:09:03   I don't think we'd be very far at all

01:09:04   when it comes to wearables.

01:09:05   - Well, and I think,

01:09:08   I think that, and again, I say this

01:09:13   as somebody who years ago wished that,

01:09:17   You know, I said Apple needs its Nikon.

01:09:20   And that was comparing Apple to Canon and the way that in the the camera, you know.

01:09:27   Yeah. It shows how many years ago that I was only talking about Canon Nikon,

01:09:32   because I think they've been passed in so many ways by other companies,

01:09:37   especially Sony, who has really, really stepped up their camera game.

01:09:41   But the basic idea stands, which is that if you want

01:09:47   a serious professional camera, you have several,

01:09:52   at least a handful of companies to choose from.

01:09:56   And it's probably not reasonable

01:10:00   to expect dozens of companies.

01:10:03   Markets tend to consolidate,

01:10:07   competition tends to force people out,

01:10:10   but it's not good when you don't have competition.

01:10:15   It's not good for you.

01:10:17   It's definitely not good for your customers,

01:10:20   but the thing that to me is counterintuitive

01:10:24   is that it's not good for the company itself

01:10:27   because that's how you end up getting locked

01:10:31   into a weird corner and the whole market goes another way

01:10:36   and you're not ready to go there.

01:10:38   And cameras are to me the perfect example

01:10:44   where there's always been, at least in my lifetime,

01:10:49   a couple of brands that you could choose from

01:10:52   that offer truly excellent professional cameras.

01:10:57   And the problem,

01:11:00   and I think it's a serious, serious problem

01:11:04   for those of us in the Apple ecosystem,

01:11:06   is you get locked into the Apple ecosystem

01:11:09   and you get ruled out

01:11:14   of these other devices, you know,

01:11:19   and you hope that Apple is keeping up,

01:11:23   but you know, again, it's a whole tangent, we won't take--

01:11:27   - Televisions are the same thing.

01:11:28   There's just so many competing brands.

01:11:29   - Yeah, but on the watch front, it's the opposite,

01:11:34   where Apple is so racing ahead on what you can do

01:11:39   with a modern digital watch, a computer on your wrist.

01:11:44   And they're so far ahead of every other company that it's embarrassing to the other companies,

01:11:54   to be honest.

01:11:55   And, you know, it's part of the reason.

01:11:57   I'm not going to say you're wrong for picking Apple Watch as the product of the decade.

01:12:02   And I would honestly say that above and beyond any particular reason to buy an Apple Watch

01:12:08   today. To me, the the best argument for your decision to

01:12:14   say that's the product of the decade is how far ahead it is

01:12:18   than anything that competes with it. It's it's absolutely

01:12:22   ridiculous. It it is Steve Jobs is hey. We're 5 years ahead of

01:12:27   the competition. Honestly, I would say it's more than 5

01:12:31   years ahead of the competition. It's it's absolutely ridiculous

01:12:35   how far ahead Apple watches compared to the next best Apple Watch.

01:12:41   Yeah. Which isn't that great and only works and runs Tizen.

01:12:46   And and is big and chunky and doesn't look good.

01:12:51   And and again, there are so many ways, you know,

01:12:55   we could do a whole podcast on just the ways that we want Apple Watch to get better.

01:13:02   Oh, yeah, absolutely. Starting with the fact that we really I mean,

01:13:05   everybody wants it to be an independent device, right?

01:13:09   Like you don't want it to have to be tied to an iPhone.

01:13:13   My nephew, who's like, I think he's 10.

01:13:17   I don't know. But, you know, he's around 10.

01:13:20   He's either nine, 10 or 11.

01:13:22   Got an Apple Watch for Christmas, but he doesn't have an iPhone.

01:13:27   Yeah. And so it's weird.

01:13:31   Right like so his iPhone is tied to his dad's phone. Yeah, and

01:13:36   Why should that be it should be it it's a perfectly reasonable thing

01:13:43   for people to say you know what I want my

01:13:46   11 year old son to have an Apple watch, but I don't want him to have an iPhone and cellular service and all this stuff

01:13:54   the fact that you can't do that cleanly is

01:13:58   Weird and I think that's what they're working towards because if you look at what they've been doing like adding LTE adding an independent app store

01:14:05   It seems like they're putting all the bricks in place so that they can tie that they can cut that tether

01:14:09   Yeah, I totally think so. Although I kind of thought once they added LTE. I thought that by the end of

01:14:16   2019 we'd be there

01:14:19   It's not real LTE still it's still piggybacking on exactly LTE and I think they have to take that next step, right?

01:14:26   totally and

01:14:28   You know and in theory it shouldn't require that either even just the Wi-Fi

01:14:34   You should be able to put it put the phone on Wi-Fi and when you're home

01:14:39   Have it yeah, but you know could be better

01:14:43   Well, it's like the iPhone was tethered to iTunes until iOS 5 and then we got iCloud

01:14:47   And that was that was the five versions in so we've just passed five versions in for the watch

01:14:53   But it's a way more constrained device

01:14:55   So I'm willing to cut them like a couple of years slack on their timeline

01:14:58   Well, I'll come a little slack but I should absolutely be that that would be fat like it's that there's like a couple more features

01:15:06   But that's the biggest one because like people will say Apple watch and support Android. No, that's that's short-term thinking

01:15:12   That's way too much work for way too little benefit

01:15:14   Yeah, we just make it independent and anybody with any phone or no phone can write it. Yeah, exactly

01:15:19   No, that's it. It's that iCloud moment where the truth is in the cloud

01:15:25   and devices are just devices and you should be able to you know opt in have

01:15:33   it prompt you and tell you hey we're gonna store all of this data from your

01:15:38   watch in your iCloud account in the cloud do you agree or do you not agree

01:15:44   but if you agree there it goes and then you're good you know and well like a

01:15:52   mutual friend Dieter Bohn was saying he went back to an Android phone but he

01:15:55   uses his Apple watch to stay in contact with iMessage and if but you imagine he

01:16:00   still has to have an iPhone somewhere right it's piggybacking on that and be

01:16:03   great if that wasn't the case yeah all right let me take another break here and

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01:19:52   All right, product of the decade.

01:19:58   You picked Apple Watch.

01:20:00   All right, here's my pick.

01:20:01   My pick, and I've been thinking about this a lot,

01:20:03   and it was specifically prompted by your piece.

01:20:07   I think Apple Watch is a good pick.

01:20:09   My pick is iPhone X.

01:20:12   And I think that the iPhone X

01:20:19   has been so,

01:20:25   in a large part overlooked in terms of how profoundly

01:20:30   it changed how much work they had to do on the hardware side

01:20:35   and the software side to get it to where it was

01:20:44   when it shipped.

01:20:45   And the hardware side takes so much longer

01:20:51   than people think.

01:20:54   I honestly think and I feel like I've been writing about this for years and years and

01:20:59   years that it takes, you know, I don't know, close to two years for them for Apple to ship,

01:21:06   you know, to lock in hardware in the large part and at least a year in the smallest part,

01:21:17   like if they want to make the smallest of small changes, it still takes a year before

01:21:22   they get to the point where they because they make so many of these things. I talking to

01:21:28   people at Apple and and having friends who work there. Honestly, I think I've been underselling

01:21:34   how long it takes to make hardware. I think it is it. The lead way is so long. It is ridiculous

01:21:43   to make Apple quality hardware. Absolutely. And the fact that they don't make

01:21:49   I don't know what you would call it, you know

01:21:55   Asterisk hardware, you know footnote hardware, you know, like the the Samsung Galaxy fold

01:22:04   That's just to name one example. Let's even if it hadn't had the problems that it had

01:22:11   In terms of the initial versions, you know, actually literally breaking while people using them

01:22:18   So even if everything had gone as they had hoped,

01:22:23   it was asterisk hardware where it was a footnote,

01:22:27   where it was like, ah, you know,

01:22:28   a couple thousand people are gonna buy these things.

01:22:31   This was not--

01:22:32   - Well, a better story, it's like the Galaxy S10

01:22:34   that shipped, I think it was,

01:22:35   I can't remember if it was the S10 or the Note 10,

01:22:37   but originally they designed it without buttons.

01:22:40   It was gonna be like one of those capacitive

01:22:42   or squeeze things, and one of the executives finally saw it

01:22:45   and said no, and like just, when you start thinking

01:22:47   that they had done that before it was signed off on

01:22:50   is just not the way Apple works.

01:22:52   But then they had to put all the buttons on one side

01:22:54   and they couldn't do the buttons.

01:22:55   And that is not how you ever want

01:22:58   a hardware production pipeline to work.

01:23:01   But we take it for granted that Apple fixes those things

01:23:04   before we ever see them.

01:23:05   - So bad.

01:23:15   You would like everything to be thoughtfully designed

01:23:25   and thought through.

01:23:26   And most companies don't do that, unfortunately.

01:23:32   It goes back to being considerate.

01:23:33   You want to be considerate.

01:23:34   Right.

01:23:35   And basically, the one thing I hear--

01:23:41   and I know you have friends at Apple,

01:23:43   And I know you have sources at Apple.

01:23:45   I have friends and sources and friends who are sources.

01:23:48   But the one thing that comes back over and over again

01:23:51   is that they really do,

01:23:55   the people at Apple really do try to make the devices

01:24:00   and computers that they themselves would want to buy

01:24:04   and that they're happy to buy

01:24:06   and recommend to their friends.

01:24:07   And it's not about, hey, let's make sure 2019

01:24:12   we hit our revenue number and let's ship whatever we have to

01:24:17   ship at whatever price point to hit this thing. It's, it's, it's

01:24:22   a constant iteration of, let's try to make the thing that we

01:24:27   want to buy ourselves. And, you know, when they fall short, when

01:24:33   when the keyboards suck on Mac books, you know, the best

01:24:38   sources I've had on that over the last couple of years are

01:24:42   people inside Apple, you know, who are like, yeah, the keyboard sucks.

01:24:46   It's terrible. And, uh, you know,

01:24:49   but we're, we're working on it. We, we realize it, you know,

01:24:54   that was to me,

01:24:55   the thing that was like the light at the end of the tunnel of the bad keyboard

01:25:00   saga on Mac books, which again,

01:25:03   we're not out of yet because they've only shipped the first, you know,

01:25:06   the only thing they've shipped with the new keyboard is the 16 inch MacBook pro

01:25:11   Although I do think that the

01:25:14   The rest of the keyboards they are shipping I think have fixed the hey keys get stuck

01:25:22   They're just not great keyboards, right? They can the edge off of it, right? That's the same thing

01:25:27   It's like they could have they can't revert because they have a whole roadmap going ahead that requires certain things

01:25:32   From a keyboard so they have to literally make a new keyboard

01:25:35   Which is a two-year endeavor the way that they make keyboards, right? Exactly, which you know

01:25:40   it's it's the downside to relying on a company that makes everything from the

01:25:47   Operating system to the hardware is that if they screw up

01:25:53   You're buying screwed up

01:25:55   Products, you know, there's there's no way around that

01:25:59   Yeah, they can they can fix an antenna, you know about half a year but they can fix that keyboard fast, right

01:26:07   So my pick for the private advocate is the iPhone 10 and and the reason why is

01:26:14   that I

01:26:16   Really do think that they pulled off

01:26:19   Like in a way and I love it. I love like close-up magic. I love like

01:26:26   The Penn and Teller show I I just love it

01:26:30   But I almost feel like they pulled off a magic trick where they had they said like hey

01:26:37   We're ten years into this thing where we've created this thing. That is the most successful

01:26:43   Consumer product in the history of consumer products literally

01:26:48   I mean you can really make the case that the original iPhone

01:26:52   going through the iPhone 8 is

01:26:56   the single most

01:27:00   Successful product in history. I mean and I'm talking about

01:27:04   toothpastes

01:27:06   tied detergent washing machines

01:27:09   Corvettes and and cars and

01:27:13   Boeing airplanes, you know, you can go all the way from a tube of toothpaste

01:27:19   to a

01:27:22   50 million dollar Boeing

01:27:24   747 the single most

01:27:27   successful

01:27:29   product in

01:27:31   History is the iPhone it really is they've they've made more money than anybody and you know

01:27:37   I mean the people have oligopoly control over fossil fuel resources

01:27:39   Yeah, it's astounding. It's absolutely astounding

01:27:44   But that the fundamental notion of the iPhone is it is this thing?

01:27:51   with a screen and

01:27:53   one button underneath and the button is you you click the button and that takes you out of whatever you're doing

01:28:01   To the home screen and then you click another thing on the home screen and then that's what you're doing

01:28:08   to a device with no button and

01:28:11   I really do think that it is

01:28:15   under remarked upon

01:28:18   how successfully

01:28:20   They changed the fundamental

01:28:23   fundamental

01:28:25   Root level of how the system works on these devices of

01:28:30   The most popular product on the planet

01:28:36   With the iPhone 10 and I really and and I really do think that the

01:28:44   the iPhone 10's fundamental notion of how these devices work is

01:28:52   Easily suited for another 10-year run, you know and until they need to do it again

01:28:58   Maybe longer, you know and no other computing platform in history has ever made that transition

01:29:05   mid-flight

01:29:07   without any sort of

01:29:09   Decline and popularity or something like that. I

01:29:12   So that's my pick. I really do think that the iPhone 10 and

01:29:17   consider myself guilty as

01:29:21   having not written enough about how

01:29:24   brilliant this transition

01:29:27   has been

01:29:31   between

01:29:32   the old way of having a

01:29:35   Home button a physical home button to the new way of having no button and doing everything with gestures on the screen

01:29:43   it

01:29:45   It is so

01:29:47   easily overlooked and it's the success of the idea

01:29:52   and the implementation that it was so easy to overlook.

01:29:56   - It's so interesting to me too,

01:29:58   because it's one of those things where you look back

01:30:01   and Apple replaced the iPod mini,

01:30:03   most successful iPod at the time with the iPod nano,

01:30:06   which people thought was absurd.

01:30:08   And here you have the iPhone,

01:30:09   which is the iconic phone for so many people

01:30:11   with that home button.

01:30:13   And they replaced it with another phone,

01:30:16   but they did it in a very opinionated way

01:30:18   and they tested other things.

01:30:20   Like they had a virtual home button

01:30:21   on some of the early prototypes that was a different UI,

01:30:24   but they were like, no, we're getting rid of it.

01:30:26   We're going all into this.

01:30:27   And just by comparison, you look at like Android 10

01:30:30   and a bunch of the Android devices

01:30:31   and people are still complaining and arguing

01:30:33   about how the gestures should work

01:30:35   and being upset by the different implementations.

01:30:38   Apple managed to do that in one cut of the knife.

01:30:40   And I think that's part of what makes Apple, Apple.

01:30:43   It's that they do all the testing internally.

01:30:45   they come to a very opinionated choice,

01:30:47   then they stick by it and they put it in the complete package

01:30:50   that feels like it's one thing and works.

01:30:53   - Right, I've always said, you know,

01:30:55   and you know, it's always good grist for a talk or a column

01:31:00   or an entire podcast.

01:31:03   What is design?

01:31:04   What does design mean?

01:31:06   But fundamentally to me, design is making decisions.

01:31:11   And the more you design something,

01:31:16   the more of those decisions you make as the designer,

01:31:22   as opposed to leaving to the user.

01:31:25   And they made very, very strong decisions

01:31:30   with the iPhone 10, whereas there is no option,

01:31:34   there's no way to configure the phone

01:31:37   to put a virtual home button down there.

01:31:41   You know what, I don't want this to be different.

01:31:43   I just wanna have a thing down there that I tap.

01:31:46   There's certainly room, they could have done it,

01:31:48   and they didn't.

01:31:49   And I think the fact that so few people

01:31:53   have complained about it is absolutely extraordinary.

01:31:57   - Also don't let people opt out,

01:31:59   which I think you can still do on Android.

01:32:00   Like, the boot ninja can't say no,

01:32:02   you can't swipe left or right on this app.

01:32:05   The apps had to adapt to the new paradigm.

01:32:07   - Right, and so...

01:32:10   I don't want to get into an argument about who's ripping off whom blah blah blah and

01:32:18   I know that there have been the new fundamental notion in the iPhone 10 era is that instead

01:32:24   of a home button you swipe up from the bottom and that is how you go back to the home screen

01:32:33   or if you swipe up a little it's how you get to the app switcher and I get it I know that

01:32:40   that there have been other touchscreen devices

01:32:44   that have a swipe up from the bottom to blank metaphor

01:32:48   or conceptual design.

01:32:53   Going back to the Palm Pre, which was--

01:32:56   - It's actually just as a fun aside,

01:32:58   there was a bunch of designers at Apple

01:33:00   that did a lot of that stuff.

01:33:01   Like the original version of Safari on the original iPhone

01:33:04   had the card metaphor.

01:33:05   It was abandoned later, but it had it.

01:33:07   And then when, what's his name?

01:33:10   John Rubenstein left, a bunch of designers went with him

01:33:14   and they made WebOS and then when that failed,

01:33:16   half of them went to Google with Mateus Duarte

01:33:18   and half of them went back to Apple

01:33:20   and they're still making those interfaces.

01:33:22   - Right, so I get it.

01:33:24   It's not about being first, it is about doing it right.

01:33:29   And it's a debate that goes all the way back

01:33:34   to the original Macintosh where the people

01:33:40   who want to take credit away from Apple

01:33:43   and Steve Jobs' Macintosh team from the early '80s

01:33:48   and they wanna say, they just ripped off Xerox

01:33:52   and all the stuff that Xerox was doing.

01:33:55   And that, you can find quotes from Steve Jobs

01:34:00   who was like, once I saw the Xerox stuff,

01:34:02   I knew that every computer was gonna work this way,

01:34:05   blah, blah, blah.

01:34:06   And you're like, well then, he was just a ripoff artist.

01:34:10   But it's more complicated than that to me,

01:34:14   where it's like you have to look at it

01:34:16   and figure out the right way to do it.

01:34:21   And there's a reason why this,

01:34:24   it wasn't just like institutional obstinance

01:34:28   on Xerox's part.

01:34:30   What they were making, these $20,000 systems,

01:34:34   to get started,

01:34:38   It was so expensive that of course it wasn't going to really take root at a consumer level.

01:34:45   And when you really look at it, it's like, okay, there's overlapping windows and there's

01:34:51   a mouse that you can drag and it moves a pointer on the screen and you can click on buttons.

01:34:58   But when you get past that and you actually look at how the Xerox systems worked pre-Macintosh,

01:35:05   It's like, well, it was kind of shitty, right?

01:35:09   It wasn't great.

01:35:12   And then you use the original, you know,

01:35:15   system one from 1984 with the Macintosh.

01:35:19   And you're like, this is, you know, it's limited.

01:35:21   It's missing so much.

01:35:24   It is missing a lot, but what is here,

01:35:27   everything that is here is actually great.

01:35:30   It works exactly the way you would expect it to.

01:35:34   It is really, really well thought out.

01:35:37   That's the difference.

01:35:40   And to me, the thing that the iPhone 10 pulled off,

01:35:45   looking at this, is this transition from a,

01:35:51   what's the fundamental notion of the system?

01:35:56   And to me, the fundamental notion of the 2007 iPhone

01:36:01   is we have a rectangular screen

01:36:04   And it's in one of two states.

01:36:07   It's either on the home screen where you have a list of apps,

01:36:12   and then you tap an app.

01:36:14   And when you do tap an app, then the second state

01:36:17   is the app has the screen.

01:36:20   And then how do you get out of the app?

01:36:24   The app doesn't have anything to do with it.

01:36:28   It's this button underneath the screen, and you tap it,

01:36:33   and then you go back to the home screen.

01:36:34   The app closes and then you're back at the home screen.

01:36:38   And they obviously parlayed that single button

01:36:43   into extra functions over the years.

01:36:46   They made it so that a double tap

01:36:48   would put you in multitasking mode

01:36:50   once they allowed apps to maintain their state

01:36:54   in the background and famously turned it

01:37:00   into a fingerprint sensor with the iPhone 5S, I believe.

01:37:05   - Yeah, absolutely.

01:37:06   - So they extended that basic system for a while,

01:37:13   but the iPhone 10 was like just a total rethink of,

01:37:18   hey, what should the phone be today?

01:37:22   And the answer of there should be no button,

01:37:26   it should just be entirely a screen on the front face,

01:37:30   informed everything else about it,

01:37:32   including the hardware,

01:37:35   which involved the notch and the face ID sensor.

01:37:39   And face ID has worked fabulously, you know?

01:37:43   - Yeah.

01:37:44   - Since it came out, you know,

01:37:45   fingerprint sensor was controversial at first,

01:37:50   the face sensor was controversial.

01:37:52   Everybody is a little skeptical of these biometric authentication things at first.

01:37:57   Until any other vendor does it.

01:37:59   Yeah.

01:37:59   Until they do it.

01:38:00   And the notch itself was controversial aesthetically, et cetera, et cetera.

01:38:07   But the fact that they set that hardware in stone two years in advance and then

01:38:15   caught up to it with software by the time it shipped and had it be such a cohesive

01:38:20   system that for people who switch from an old iPhone to the new one, if I honestly don't

01:38:31   know anybody technical or non-technical who truly regrets upgrading to a 10 class phone.

01:38:40   To me, that's the product of the decade.

01:38:43   And it's amazing when you think about how many things had to come together for that

01:38:47   because in order for Face ID to work,

01:38:49   they had to have the neural network

01:38:51   in the silicon like built in.

01:38:52   Back then people were saying Apple had no idea

01:38:54   about artificial intelligence were being mapped by Google.

01:38:57   They're so far behind in every,

01:38:58   and two years prior to people saying that,

01:39:00   they were baking AI into a neural engine block

01:39:03   on the processor.

01:39:05   And they even like, not like Samsung,

01:39:06   where they made a folding screen,

01:39:07   they folded the display backwards against itself

01:39:10   in the device, they wouldn't have to have a chin.

01:39:13   And we're still seeing new phones come out with a chin

01:39:15   because they either can't afford or can't figure out

01:39:17   how to do that reversal for the display.

01:39:20   So it is an amazing,

01:39:23   just like the original iPhone was an amazing achievement

01:39:25   in terms of multi-touch and, you know,

01:39:27   all these technologies coming together.

01:39:29   This is, I agree with it, it's totally a valid choice too,

01:39:32   because so many things had to come together.

01:39:35   It was like shooting arrows into arrows

01:39:36   that then hit a target for that phone to ship.

01:39:39   - Yeah, and I think there, you know,

01:39:44   You know, I wish that there was a Mac

01:39:47   Cuz you know the Mac is my favorite Apple product is my favorite product in the world

01:39:52   I wish there was a Mac that I could pick as a product of the decade

01:39:55   I do think that the Mac is back on track

01:39:58   I think that with the iMac Pro and the new 16 inch

01:40:03   MacBook Pro and

01:40:06   Even in the air from 2010 it defined like every ultra book that came out for the rest of the decade was based on that

01:40:11   Yeah, that would be my that's exactly where I was going was

01:40:16   that if you want to pick the product of the decade and not

01:40:19   be biased towards stuff that came out in the last 18 months

01:40:24   at the end of the decade, the 2010 MacBook Air is arguably

01:40:29   it has to be on the list because every single it got to the

01:40:35   point where unless you were looking at the back of the open

01:40:40   laptop to see if it had a glowing Apple logo, you

01:40:44   couldn't tell if it was a MacBook or not. Right. It was

01:40:47   like, yeah, if you're looking at the front of it, it was

01:40:50   aluminum, it was wedge shaped, it had a black keyboard that lit

01:40:53   up. And I mean, every single laptop looked like 2010 MacBook

01:41:00   Air for quite a number of years. I was funny, because when I

01:41:04   would put that on a shortlist,

01:41:06   totally. And when I did the product of the decade list, like

01:41:08   I was going through it and I looked at a bunch of other ones

01:41:11   like the Verge had the iPhone 4 at the top of their list.

01:41:15   And I think you can make an argument for that too

01:41:17   because it was such like the first retina display,

01:41:19   first front facing camera, all these things.

01:41:22   But when you look at that list and you go through it

01:41:24   from iPad to 2010 MacBook Air to the iPhone 4,

01:41:29   you could argue the iPad Pro maybe, AirPods, Apple Watch,

01:41:33   iPhone 10, there's not a lot of room

01:41:36   for other companies on that list.

01:41:37   And it's an amazing amount of technology for one company

01:41:41   to have put out to have changed the decade that much.

01:41:43   - Well, and you know, a company that's beleaguered and...

01:41:47   - Yes, and is failing and their worst decades

01:41:51   are behind them, they never attained the same.

01:41:52   - And clearly needs to fire their CEO.

01:41:55   - Yes.

01:41:56   What is that guy even doing?

01:41:59   - You know what's funny?

01:42:03   I've only been writing Daring Fireball since 2002.

01:42:07   And so, you know, it's coincided

01:42:11   with a very, very good run for Apple.

01:42:15   I wish that I'd been writing it since 1992

01:42:22   so that I could have that decade under my belt

01:42:26   of saying that the Apple, you know,

01:42:29   Apple does need a new CEO.

01:42:32   Apple CEO is an idiot.

01:42:35   Apple CEO doesn't get it.

01:42:37   I wish, because if you had listened to me,

01:42:40   if you had been my personal friend in that era,

01:42:42   you would have heard me rant about such things.

01:42:46   But it does make me wonder why,

01:42:50   like if the world is so critical of Tim Cook

01:42:56   and his stewardship of Apple over the last

01:43:01   nine years as CEO, what would they be saying if Apple actually did have a terrible CEO?

01:43:09   Like if Gill immediately if Gill Emilio was the CEO now,

01:43:15   it's absolutely astounding because when they when he was the CEO,

01:43:22   they were so much smaller and so much less consequential to the daily life of so many people.

01:43:29   There were people, there were columnists and commentators who astutely pointed out some

01:43:39   of the problems, but it's absolutely astounding to me how common the criticism is that Tim

01:43:49   Cook has done nothing as CEO. Still, even to this day, it really is, you know, the iPhone.

01:44:00   iPhone X truly was a total reset of the concept of what a cell phone should be. AirPods are

01:44:10   a true phenomenon. They still start at $160. They're very expensive for headphones.

01:44:22   And you see them everywhere. iPad is everywhere. Again, I have so many complaints. I cannot

01:44:33   even get into it as a—

01:44:37   I was watching that movie Noel on Disney+ over the holidays and every kid wanted an

01:44:41   iPad and you just can't buy that kind of mainstream publicity.

01:44:45   And again, that's not Apple TV+, that's Disney+, right?

01:44:51   The Mac is still going strong and yes, admittedly they even said at that thing a couple years

01:44:59   ago that they kind of took their eye off the ball with the Mac for a while.

01:45:05   But you know, the new, if anything, right now the only gap in the Mac lineup is this

01:45:14   is the idea of a mid range desktop, which clearly isn't been a gap forever, right?

01:45:20   But which clearly they know about, you know, there's, you could argue that with the trash

01:45:27   can style Mac Pro, that they had their eye off the ball of what a high end Mac Pro should

01:45:34   be that it was outside their view. Whereas if the gap is in the mid range, they at least know about

01:45:40   it. And whether they're going to whether they're going to fill the gap, or whether they feel like

01:45:47   the gap is okay, that we're just gonna let it be, they at least know there's no you can't possibly

01:45:55   not know about it. If you're making this device that, you know, is $52,000 and has 1.5 terabytes

01:46:03   It's a ram.

01:46:04   - That pro workflow team was such a stroke of genius

01:46:07   because having those people in there

01:46:08   to hit all this stuff before consumers have,

01:46:11   they're the ones arguing for the stuff inside Apple now,

01:46:13   doing everything that every pro wants inside the company.

01:46:16   And they have to,

01:46:17   like there was that great thing

01:46:18   about Steve Jobs hating consultants

01:46:19   because they had no skin in the game.

01:46:21   They didn't have to ship.

01:46:22   And these people have deliverables.

01:46:23   They're not just sitting there telling Apple what to do.

01:46:26   They have to make the stuff that Apple uses

01:46:28   inside the company.

01:46:29   And they're fighting not just for Apple stuff,

01:46:31   but they're fighting to make Adobe stuff run better.

01:46:33   - Yeah, totally. - On that, it's amazing.

01:46:35   - Absolutely. - Amazing, smart team.

01:46:37   - Yeah, all right, let me take one last spot here

01:46:40   and thank our fourth final sponsor,

01:46:43   last sponsor of the decade.

01:46:45   Unbelievable, I can't believe it.

01:46:47   I mean, how many sponsor reads have I done this decade?

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01:49:52   And there you go.

01:49:53   That is the final sponsor read of this podcast

01:49:58   for the decade.

01:49:59   And don't give me this nonsense about decades starting

01:50:05   in the next year.

01:50:06   Nobody thinks that way.

01:50:08   Everybody knows. - It's not human readable.

01:50:10   - Yeah, no, it's, come on.

01:50:12   This is the end of the decade.

01:50:14   - It's like if you wanna win a pet into word,

01:50:15   you can go for that, but no.

01:50:16   - All right, so my pick is the iPhone X.

01:50:19   Your pick was the Apple Watch.

01:50:21   What else is, I think you're right that the MacBook Air

01:50:26   from like 2010 should be on that short list.

01:50:30   What else do you think is on the list

01:50:32   for the best products of the last decade?

01:50:35   There's a few things like from Apple

01:50:36   I mentioned already the iPad because it was literally born in 2010 and it seemed just update after update including the iPad Pro

01:50:42   Then you designed iPad Pro

01:50:44   Beyond Apple, I think Tesla like the model you could argue between the Model S or the Model 3

01:50:49   I think what they've done is really consumer eyes

01:50:52   What was previously sort of niche and it certainly popularized what was previously sort of niche technology?

01:51:01   So I was taught the last episode of the show is just mentioning I we don't drive a lot but I've still got this

01:51:08   2006 Acura

01:51:10   And again at 2006 it doesn't even have it doesn't even have an I

01:51:17   iPod connector

01:51:19   You know, I mean it not only does it not have USB or carplay or anything it literally

01:51:25   We bought it the year before the iPod stuff

01:51:30   You know became a standard thing

01:51:32   It's it's an old car

01:51:34   And we you know

01:51:37   Over the holidays, you know, we went to see my wife's mom and we went to my parents house

01:51:43   And so, you know done, you know

01:51:46   we do a bit more driving at the end of December than we typically do by far and

01:51:50   I was pumping gas the other day because you know

01:51:54   We did the driving and we had to pump gas and I was like, this is ridiculous

01:51:59   Like when you really think about it, it's like

01:52:02   We're just pumping this

01:52:05   flammable liquid dead dinosaurs that is not that cheap right it's three bucks a gallon yeah, you know

01:52:14   It's more expensive than like Tropicana orange juice

01:52:19   It is pretty expensive. You're pumping it into a tank, and then you're just lighting it on

01:52:28   Yes, it is not efficient. So I I do give Tesla credit, you know

01:52:35   Again, I I don't love any of their cars except for this new I love the cyber. Yeah

01:52:43   I love it and I get it that it's sort of

01:52:46   Ridiculously over the top but I kind of feel like they screwed up with all of their previous

01:52:54   designs where they kind of made all of their previous designs look like

01:53:00   Mid-range

01:53:03   Japanese

01:53:04   Honda

01:53:06   Toyota

01:53:07   You know, yeah like generic but sort of messed up generic, right?

01:53:12   And then the only thing that was really distinctive about them was when they got rid of the grill in the front

01:53:19   yes, they didn't need it but

01:53:22   Aesthetically it looked like cars that had their mouths sewn shut. Yeah. Yeah

01:53:28   You know what? I mean? Whereas the new Cybertruck like the bad Deadpool from that horrible Wolverine exactly

01:53:34   exactly

01:53:37   It just looks it just looked like a car

01:53:40   The the Tesla's without the grills to me just look like cars that are suffocating

01:53:46   They don't they don't look good and I get it

01:53:49   I totally get that if you don't need a grill, you shouldn't have a grill just for aesthetic reasons

01:53:56   And I get that it's at painted

01:53:59   BMW in particular into a design corner because

01:54:04   They're one of their signatures of all of their cars are those kidney bean

01:54:09   Grills on the front and if they don't need them what how are you gonna know it's a BMW I get it

01:54:16   I get it.

01:54:18   But it's an opportunity for a company like Tesla

01:54:22   that has no gas-driven or diesel-driven car--

01:54:28   no legacy.

01:54:29   And just sealing it up was sort of the wrong decision,

01:54:35   in my opinion.

01:54:36   Yeah, no, totally.

01:54:37   And the profile of their cars, they're

01:54:42   just not that great looking of cars in my opinion. I get it that they drive cool and

01:54:48   they accelerate fast and there's all sorts of good things, but just looking at them,

01:54:54   they're not that cool. I think that the Cybertruck, which is a ridiculous name, but I love it.

01:55:02   I just love it. It's like the DeLorean Motor Company never

01:55:10   went away, you know, and they just kept, you know, if they hadn't gone, if they had somehow

01:55:16   succeeded in the early 80s, you know, and they were still around today, that's what

01:55:23   they would be making, you know, and I love it.

01:55:26   I think, I just wish that they would make a, I have no need for a truck at all.

01:55:32   Absolutely not.

01:55:34   But I need a car, so I just wish that, you know, and I don't think it's too much to

01:55:39   extrapolate that maybe their next car would be from the design language of the

01:55:45   Cybertruck but that's what I want I want a sedan yeah I want a sedan from the

01:55:51   design language of the Tesla Cybertruck I love smartest like inside people are

01:55:55   like where's the stuff to connect it's got like NASA quality connections you

01:55:59   just loop things over the whole thing is so smartly thought out yeah like granted

01:56:03   I'm sure everything he makes is secretly for Mars like from the tunnels to the

01:56:06   trucks to everything, but you know, utility is utility.

01:56:09   Yeah, I love it. And to me is the promise of Tesla. It's the

01:56:15   first it's the two most interesting Tesla products to

01:56:20   me are the the roadster, which was their first car. Yeah, you

01:56:25   know, it was sort of a Miata style. It was literally a Lotus

01:56:28   I think. Yeah, like, Lotus. Yeah, it was I definitely a

01:56:33   Lotus hardware with a Tesla drivetrain and this Cybertruck.

01:56:40   And I really feel like the Cybertruck to me is the first thing that made me look at Tesla

01:56:46   and say, I think that this company really might do what all of its proponents are saying

01:56:53   they might do.

01:56:54   They might really own the car business going forward.

01:56:59   If they extrapolate that design language into a full line of cars, I I think it's brilliant

01:57:06   Yeah, absolutely and nothing else is really like it. Yeah, it's just lead distinct and it's authentic is what it feels like

01:57:12   Yeah, and you know and to me they they took some steps backward, you know

01:57:18   Like the model X with those gull wings that go up dumb and the model 3 is like

01:57:26   You know what it I get it that is more affordable, but it's way less cool than the Model S

01:57:31   You know the Model S is looks way better, but the Model S. Which is expensive and which is

01:57:37   Undeniably a great sedan

01:57:40   Yes in my opinion doesn't look great

01:57:43   It doesn't look bad, but it doesn't look it doesn't look like Tesla had to make it if it doesn't look like Tesla had to

01:57:49   Make it. What's the point of making it exactly whereas the Cybertruck? It's like oh, man. They had to yeah

01:57:55   nobody else could have made this car and to me that's the one what you want is that reaction

01:58:03   like when when apple announced the original iphone and yeah famously the the blackberry people had

01:58:10   a high level meeting the next day and they came to the conclusion that apple had faked it and it was

01:58:17   a complete fraud that it was impossible they were like well the bottom line is that they couldn't

01:58:24   have done this so they must be lying. I don't know what they're going to do in six months when they

01:58:29   say they're going to ship it but it can't possibly be what they say it is. When in fact it actually

01:58:35   was. That's what you want, right? And that to me is the Cybertruck. The Cybertruck is like people

01:58:41   from Ford and Chevy and whoever else, Honda, Toyota, they're like, "Ah, nobody's going to buy

01:58:46   that. It looks like, you know, Back to the Future fan fiction or something like that." Yeah, guess

01:58:53   Guess what? That's what you want from the other companies.

01:58:55   Whereas like the Model S, it's like,

01:58:58   it just looks like a really nice, you know, Honda Accord.

01:59:01   - Like anyone to try to get a crafted out.

01:59:03   - And then, you know, it's like you just sort of

01:59:05   stretch this one part out and...

01:59:07   - Yeah. Totally.

01:59:09   - All right. What else? End of the decade. Last episode.

01:59:13   - I'd argue the Echo, because it really sort of

01:59:16   popularizing everything about the home base

01:59:18   for far field digital assistant.

01:59:22   Yeah, I could see that in a,

01:59:25   in a kind of introduced people to the whole,

01:59:28   let's have a device where the primary interface is talking to it, you know?

01:59:33   Yeah. Which I think going forward,

01:59:38   you know, hold me to it, René. Yes.

01:59:43   10 years from now,

01:59:44   let's record the end of the 2020s episode.

01:59:49   Me and you, I do think that that,

01:59:52   the defining interface of the next decade it you know it's it's natural

01:59:59   it's what humans do we talk right we we communicate ideas and so far they've

02:00:07   been so primitive just so utterly primitive you know and and you know I'm

02:00:13   a huge Kubrick fan and and 2001 predicted that by 2001 we'd have this

02:00:19   how 9,000 capability at least in like

02:00:23   You know trillion dollar spaceship, but even even with the trillion dollars you couldn't buy a how 2000 today, right?

02:00:31   Yeah, even Jeff Bezos Knight Rider, right? Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook cannot get Knight Rider

02:00:38   quality

02:00:40   AI today, it's hard. It is it is much harder than we thought but it's it's so obviously

02:00:48   obviously

02:00:50   The way the future like we've conquered the visual computer

02:00:55   interface and

02:00:57   I don't mean that to say that there's nowhere to go that that ten years from now our visual

02:01:04   GUI interfaces will look exactly the same

02:01:07   but

02:01:09   We did I mean we conquered this a long time ago

02:01:12   I would say you know in the first decade in the 80s 80s through the mid 90s. We kind of

02:01:18   conquered the basic concepts of what should a computer interface on a screen

02:01:24   look like. And even if VR becomes a huge thing, it's still the... it's just a display...

02:01:35   It's like UI elements are still UI elements. Exactly. It's a display problem

02:01:41   and a battery life problem and a field of view problem,

02:01:46   but the basic idea of if we present people

02:01:50   with these things on screen, we know how to do it well.

02:01:54   And we know, you'll see a scrolling list in front of you

02:01:58   and you just move your hands and you'll do this.

02:02:01   Whereas the verbal interface of speaking to a thing,

02:02:06   we know what it should be like.

02:02:10   It should be like me talking to you.

02:02:13   And I say things to you that the transcript

02:02:17   of which may not make that much sense, but you get it.

02:02:21   And all of the thousands of people listening to me

02:02:23   talk to you get it.

02:02:25   We just expect it being the computer to get it.

02:02:31   That to me is the next step. - Conversational inference.

02:02:34   Yeah, absolutely.

02:02:35   That's why like when Apple hired John Giannandrea,

02:02:38   I was sort of happy because I think Apple's

02:02:40   near-term future has to involve some form of Siri OS,

02:02:43   whether it's an actual Siri OS,

02:02:45   or it's just a spread out distributed

02:02:48   across a variety of devices.

02:02:49   As much as we hear rumors about them working on reality OS

02:02:52   for the glasses, I really hope that they're working

02:02:55   even harder on Siri OS because whether

02:02:58   that's never gonna fully replace screens,

02:03:00   but it's gonna be a huge part of our-

02:03:01   - I think it's more important going forward.

02:03:04   I'm, and again, 10 years from now, you'll be on the show,

02:03:10   maybe I'll have to eat my words.

02:03:11   Maybe we'll have to listen to this particular episode and go back and,

02:03:15   and I'll be like, John, we were crazy at carefully. We predicted that.

02:03:18   I think that the verbal interface is way more important than the,

02:03:24   than a VR visual interface. And I get it.

02:03:28   I totally get that. Like, uh, you know,

02:03:32   like having,

02:03:33   if you have always on glasses that have this and they can

02:03:38   always pop up, you know, the name of people, you know, somebody you've only met once and

02:03:44   it just pops the person's name over their head and you can always know their name. That

02:03:48   would be great. I need that. I totally get it. But I still feel that fundamentally the

02:03:55   idea of how that would work, we've already worked out, you know, whereas the idea of

02:04:02   how the verbal interface will work has not been worked out yet and like the

02:04:09   movie her is a good template and well near that yet oh absolutely you know yeah

02:04:14   and well and and you know this is not the Star Wars holiday spectacular yes

02:04:22   although I should say to those of you listening you know who knows maybe the

02:04:26   next episode will be, first episode of 2020. I mean, I gotta have a Star Wars holiday spectacular

02:04:34   soon thanks to the new movie. But I will say that to me, one of the many brilliant ideas

02:04:42   of the original Star Wars movie from 1977 was that moment when C-3PO starts coming down

02:04:48   the steps and the bartender is like, "We don't serve your kind here." And he's like, "Get

02:04:52   out of here. And there's like this resentment towards droids and automation. And I, that

02:05:01   whole sort of disdain towards droids is, is really brilliant. Because as a kid, I was

02:05:11   like, Oh my God, why wouldn't you want that? I would love if I owned any business, any

02:05:15   business imaginable to mankind. A bar, a restaurant, a hardware store,

02:05:20   anything, even a hair salon. I would still welcome a droid. If a droid came in, if C-3PO came in,

02:05:28   I'd be like, "Come on in!" I would love to talk to you because you are amazing because you're a

02:05:35   robot who can talk and walk and do things, right? The idea that in that universe that there's this

02:05:42   disdain towards droids was to me one of the most brilliant ideas because it was clearly

02:05:49   super exciting that they existed but also super insightful that maybe the you know carbon-based

02:05:57   light forms would be yeah disdainful of them uh i you know where are we going with this you know

02:06:05   like i i i often my wife gives me a hard time because i'll say something to one of our assistants

02:06:11   whether it's, you know, we've got the Alexa stuff and we've got the Siri stuff and I'll say something to one of them and then I

02:06:17   Often have to at the end of it. I say thank you

02:06:20   And I know I'm being a smartass and I know that it doesn't do anything and my wife is like, why are you doing it?

02:06:28   Why do you say thank you? You're an asshole, you know

02:06:30   Well, I just don't want to be a jerk, but I kind of feel like as a society

02:06:37   We're tending towards we're gonna be jerks to the assistance. Yeah

02:06:41   Yeah, it is human nature and we like to be jerks to things that we can be jerks to

02:06:47   you know and it's like, you know a society has gotten more progressive and so like

02:06:54   You don't want to get into an uber and be a jerk to your uber driver because you feel like a jerk

02:07:05   But you there's like a human nature where a lot of people like to be jerks and if you can be a jerk to a robot

02:07:12   That would be you know

02:07:14   There's no downside to it and I kind of feel like that's where we're going

02:07:18   Like we want one like the Google one for kids forces you to use your manners and say please and thank you

02:07:23   Yeah, there is or an Amazon one. I feel like there's one of those that do that

02:07:26   Well, I and I kind of feel like that it's fighting a losing battle

02:07:31   Like that's my one of my predictions for the coming decade. Is that the somebody?

02:07:36   One or more companies are gonna get the voice assistant thing really good. They're gonna become a

02:07:43   major part of daily life and

02:07:45   Most people are gonna be total

02:07:48   jerks to the system and

02:07:51   Not me and I'm gonna be this weirdo

02:07:55   It's you know like in a way that likes, you know, some people are like, oh, that's the guy who wears a bowtie

02:08:00   I'm going to be the guy who continues to say thank you to his voice assistant.

02:08:05   Yeah, I do it too, but I always thought it was because I was Canadian, but I'll use your word.

02:08:10   I'm Canadian without liking cold weather.

02:08:15   I probably should have been born in Canada, to tell you the truth.

02:08:20   Yeah, you would have eaten way more stuff with me and Guy that way.

02:08:24   (laughing)

02:08:26   Anything else?

02:08:26   What else is on our last podcast of the decade?

02:08:31   I can't think of anything.

02:08:34   I'm gonna call it.

02:08:34   - No, I mean, there's a lot of other stuff,

02:08:36   but I think all the home automation stuff

02:08:39   just falls out of the serial X,

02:08:41   and that was the innovation that led to all of that.

02:08:43   - Well, but bottom line is that

02:08:47   I think it's such a complicated problem,

02:08:49   but it really, it just has to be,

02:08:53   And I do think we're getting there.

02:08:55   I think that AI is so clearly getting,

02:08:57   did you see the thing that the Pixelmature guys

02:09:02   shipped about a week or two ago?

02:09:04   - No.

02:09:05   - So the Pixelmature Pro shipped a,

02:09:09   just like a, you know, I don't know,

02:09:15   minor dot one update.

02:09:18   But they have a new image scaling algorithm

02:09:21   that is based on a machine learning thing.

02:09:26   And it is astounding.

02:09:32   And the basic idea is that you can take a small image,

02:09:35   like a 200 by 200 profile picture,

02:09:38   and you wanna scale it to 400 by 400,

02:09:41   and it actually interpolates the pixels

02:09:43   in a way that you get a,

02:09:46   you could take a small image and scale it up

02:09:49   and have it look so much better than any other algorithm

02:09:54   that I've ever seen before.

02:09:56   It is absolutely phenomenal.

02:09:59   It is, to me, if you wanna say to somebody

02:10:03   who doesn't know what quote unquote machine learning is

02:10:07   or does or how it's making things,

02:10:11   it's like their blog post explaining it

02:10:15   is the best thing I've ever seen in terms of,

02:10:18   Look, here's how image scaling from a small image

02:10:23   to a large image used to work.

02:10:25   Here's the examples of the output.

02:10:28   - Bicubic interpolation.

02:10:30   - Well, and bicubic is obviously the dumbest one.

02:10:34   - Yeah.

02:10:35   - But anybody can understand it.

02:10:38   You don't have to be a nerd or a computer programmer

02:10:41   to get it.

02:10:42   You're like, oh yeah, I get it.

02:10:43   You're just sort of taking the individual.

02:10:45   I see everything as a pixel.

02:10:47   a pixel is a square.

02:10:49   If you just make every square two times larger,

02:10:53   this is what you get.

02:10:54   And I get that if you do that and then kind of apply

02:10:59   a quote unquote sharpening algorithm, this is what you get.

02:11:03   There's just no way to take a small image

02:11:05   and make a large image out of it

02:11:07   without making it look like crap.

02:11:09   And then you look at what they're doing with this thing,

02:11:12   with this new algorithm, and it's like,

02:11:14   that's kind of astounding.

02:11:16   - Yeah.

02:11:17   It really is. And I feel like that, you know, I've never been a doubter of machine learning

02:11:27   and I totally get there at this moment at the cusp of 2020 where we're still in the

02:11:35   early days of it. And so I feel like the 10 years from now episode of the show where you

02:11:42   you and I are talking about the 2020s,

02:11:45   I feel like that's gonna be a big part of it.

02:11:48   And I feel like that's gonna be a huge part

02:11:51   of making conversational computer interfaces work.

02:11:55   There's just no way to do it

02:11:59   with a bunch of human written if this, if that,

02:12:02   if else, else, else, if, if.

02:12:06   You can't do it.

02:12:06   It's gotta be machine learning.

02:12:08   That's how our brains sort of work that way, right?

02:12:12   And that's how the computers have to work.

02:12:14   But it's absolutely going to be, to me,

02:12:18   the story of the next decade is having computers

02:12:22   that can just listen to us talk

02:12:25   and understand the nonsense that's coming out of our mouths.

02:12:29   - That's wild.

02:12:30   It's like, it's because they're not really coded,

02:12:32   they're trained.

02:12:32   And I try to explain it to people,

02:12:33   like think of Tinder for machines,

02:12:35   where it's like, yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes,

02:12:37   no, no, no, yes, hot dog.

02:12:39   And you don't know how they get to hot dog,

02:12:41   but eventually they learn hot dog.

02:12:43   - That's so true, right?

02:12:46   It's absolutely true.

02:12:50   All right, anything else?

02:12:54   - No, I think that's, I mean,

02:12:56   there's all sorts of cans of worms

02:12:57   that all the AI and machine learning open up,

02:12:59   but that's a whole different show.

02:13:00   - Yeah, absolutely.

02:13:01   What do you think on that,

02:13:06   If we talk about one last thing, it would be if we've ended on this topic of voice assistance

02:13:16   being sort of the map to the future and the biggest road forward.

02:13:22   The one product Apple has that is the most voice assistant driven is the HomePod.

02:13:28   HomePod is sort of seen as a dud product, you know that that has undersold

02:13:34   Where do you think Apple is going on that I

02:13:39   Tend to think that they there I think they're gonna stick with it. I don't think they're gonna abandon it

02:13:46   I think that they've got to drive the price down. Oh

02:13:48   Yeah, totally. I mean like when you when you separate the actual product from what it is and like AirPods are just our near-field Siri

02:13:56   That's really what they are.

02:13:57   They're the ability to have Siri with you everywhere

02:14:00   in the easiest, most compact form possible.

02:14:02   But the whole future is partly ambient computing.

02:14:05   You don't wanna have to have a device with you.

02:14:07   You wanna be able to walk around freely

02:14:08   and just say things and have them happen.

02:14:11   And you have to have some sort of,

02:14:13   or the best thing to have for that

02:14:14   is a stable in-room presence,

02:14:16   which is far field Siri and that is HomePod.

02:14:19   But I think initially when you talk to Apple,

02:14:22   they were making that for five years.

02:14:23   That was started long before these idea of like Echo

02:14:28   or Google hubs came out.

02:14:30   And they literally made a speech.

02:14:31   It was like almost a reverse of what usually happens.

02:14:33   Apple brought a speaker to a home assistant fight.

02:14:36   And I think it's just their process is sort of slow

02:14:39   and hyper-focused.

02:14:40   And when you look at it in two different ways,

02:14:42   one is the technology they invented for HomePod

02:14:45   has been amazing.

02:14:46   Like everything from the new iPhone speakers

02:14:49   to the new MacBook Pro speakers are phenomenal

02:14:51   in large part because of HomePod style technology,

02:14:56   they just have to reimagine that product

02:14:59   into being something smaller and more compact

02:15:02   and being in forms that people want,

02:15:04   like a HomePod mini or a HomePod theater.

02:15:07   And I think once they get that going,

02:15:08   it'll start gaining much more traction.

02:15:10   - Yeah, and I kind of feel like

02:15:13   if augmented reality is a huge technology,

02:15:21   landscape for the next 10 years, I feel like AirPods are the best product

02:15:30   currently on the market. And everybody, I, we're, we as humans are more visually

02:15:38   biased than any other sense. All of the five senses visual is the one that we're

02:15:45   biased towards. And so the fact that AirPods are completely audio completely, that's all

02:15:52   they do is audio, that there's no other sensation to them. Although I guess they have a bit

02:15:59   of taptic feedback with the AirPods Pro, but consider that an asterisk. But I still feel

02:16:05   that they are the best AR product anybody has ever shipped to date.

02:16:11   And I don't know if you saw this, but there was someone at WWDC the year before last,

02:16:14   They made an app where you wear the AirPods

02:16:16   and even if you're very low vision,

02:16:18   they will talk you through walks and runs in the city.

02:16:21   And they were just a bunch of athletes

02:16:22   who hadn't been able to go outside and exercise for years.

02:16:26   And they were just wearing AirPods and running.

02:16:28   And like the sound of their voice

02:16:29   and the look on their face was transformative.

02:16:32   - That's unbelievable.

02:16:34   I did not see that, but it's, I believe it.

02:16:36   And it's truly impressive.

02:16:39   And, you know,

02:16:43   I'm not skeptical about Apple's goggle type initiatives that are rumored.

02:16:52   I'm I raised the questions because I just don't know the answers.

02:16:57   Like why in the world would you want to wear these things all day long?

02:17:01   I don't get it.

02:17:02   I'm not saying I don't believe that it'll come to be.

02:17:06   And that 10 years from now when we're doing our 2029 wrap up show,

02:17:12   the end of December, that we won't be wearing Apple branded

02:17:17   goggles that we've never taken off in our waking hours for the

02:17:20   last three years or something like that. I'm not disputing

02:17:24   that. I'm just saying I don't get I just can't imagine what

02:17:29   they would do. But just there's so much potential there. And the

02:17:34   fact that you could just wear AirPods and have them navigate

02:17:37   you through a city that you can't see well enough to navigate without them.

02:17:43   It just it's just flabbergasting when you think about the potential

02:17:47   of what you could do with something that was in your field of vision.

02:17:50   Yeah, no, it's it's I'm super excited about this next decade

02:17:54   as amazing as this last decade has been, and I would never predict

02:17:57   that half the things we got, I can't even imagine what's coming next.

02:18:00   Yeah, it's, you know, it's always moving forward.

02:18:04   Anyway, Renee, Richie, you're a friend of the show.

02:18:07   You're always on frequently.

02:18:10   Thank you for being on the year end wrap up show.

02:18:14   Everybody can follow you on Twitter @ReneeRitchie,

02:18:19   your YouTube channel.

02:18:22   What's the best way to get to your YouTube channel?

02:18:25   - YouTube.com/vector.

02:18:27   - Oh, that would, couldn't be easier.

02:18:28   YouTube.com/vector.

02:18:31   And you're doing, I mean, how many episodes do you do a week?

02:18:35   - Three to four.

02:18:36   That, I don't understand, see, last time you were on I said the same thing, I don't understand

02:18:40   how that's even possible.

02:18:42   And I saw, you started shooting your video in raw, and you did the raw grade, and you

02:18:50   showed a still on Twitter, and I was like, holy shit, that looks really good.

02:18:56   What are you shooting with?

02:18:57   What camera are you using?

02:18:59   So I've upgraded, I've got a Canon C200 now, which is a cinema camera, so you can put actual

02:19:04   Canon lenses on and I still really like Canon lenses

02:19:08   'cause I had a bunch of them to begin with

02:19:09   but also they still make really, really good lenses.

02:19:12   So I'm shooting raw, which is the same

02:19:13   as like shooting a raw photograph.

02:19:15   It just means that you have so much more,

02:19:17   like there's so much more detail in the image

02:19:20   but also you can recover, like you can re-white balance,

02:19:22   you can color grade and I'm just learning.

02:19:25   So I'm doing the very classic movie one

02:19:27   which is teal and orange.

02:19:28   So you push teal into the shadows

02:19:30   and orange into the flesh tones.

02:19:32   And that's what I'm starting with for now.

02:19:34   youtube.com/vector

02:19:37   Really one of my favorite youtube channels. I don't I'll tell you the truth renee. I don't watch a lot of youtube, but

02:19:44   Yeah, I watch yours

02:19:46   Thank you, but you know, i'm a huge fan of canon class. I I think canon, uh

02:19:52   there

02:19:55   You know, I don't want to piss off the nikon people

02:20:00   I don't want to piss off the Sony people either. I have always

02:20:04   I the thing I've always liked about Canon glass is that Canon glass?

02:20:09   To me is neutral it is it it it is

02:20:15   It's putty in your hands and you can do what you want and there's no limits to it

02:20:22   And and their color is so good. Like I shot I was shooting with Panasonic before I've shot with Sony

02:20:27   I've seen a lot of the higher-end stuff too and just the color that you get off of Canon is still very very so people like

02:20:34   To say like and I get it. I I do like like cameras and yeah, you know

02:20:39   You know and I'm not gonna

02:20:43   I say this because I don't want to ever rule out the idea that I'm never gonna just

02:20:48   Pop into the Leica store and drop $5,000 and buy like a camera because I might do it. I might do it

02:20:54   Yeah, but I haven't yet. But people imbue upon like a magic,

02:21:01   you know that you just buy the $5,000 like a system with a nice

02:21:06   you know, Sumo locks 2.0 lens and then you pointed at something

02:21:12   and you get a wonderful picture. And you know, they're great

02:21:17   cameras and they are great glass. I personally love the

02:21:21   Canon I like the Canon systems because it it it's not they're not trying to tell

02:21:30   you it's magic it's just yeah like it'll make the best of whatever you point to

02:21:35   that you know and what comes off the sensors or is just again so pretty right

02:21:39   it is just so technically pristine yeah right yeah and then you can do with it

02:21:46   what you will. But anyway, that looked amazing.

02:21:49   - Oh, thank you.

02:21:50   - It really, really, no, really, it really did.

02:21:53   You know, maybe, you know, the orange and green thing,

02:21:59   you know, you could be pushing it too far,

02:22:01   but it looks good.

02:22:02   - I just learned, like I said, I'm just learning.

02:22:03   So I started looking at the more advanced stuff

02:22:06   that people do, like there's five and six

02:22:07   and eight point color that's way beyond me now.

02:22:10   So I just started with the easiest one that I could find.

02:22:12   - Well, you clearly, you need a Pro Display XDR

02:22:14   to be able to truly push the limits of it.

02:22:18   Anyway, people can see that.

02:22:20   And of course, iMore.com, where you're the editor.

02:22:25   What's your title?

02:22:26   I don't know.

02:22:27   - It keeps changing.

02:22:27   I just show up for work now.

02:22:29   I think it's just your analyst now or something.

02:22:31   - Yeah, he's Rene at iMore.com.

02:22:35   Anyway, happy new year.

02:22:37   Thank you for doing the decade closing episode

02:22:40   of the show with me.

02:22:41   And I'll talk to you next decade.