0:00:00I 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.
0:00:15I mean, by the time the show is over, by the time I'm done doing the talk show, it's recursive.
0:00:26By the time I'm done, I'll have about four or five hours of backloaded backstory about
0:00:36the USB interface to Skype.
0:00:39And that'll be it.
0:00:40That'll be it.
0:00:41It'll be the final show.
0:00:42You'll know it's over when I've got about four hours of backstory.
0:00:47I'll record two hours of it. I'll leave two hours of it unsaid,
0:00:51just to give people that, you know, uh, you know,
0:00:54something to hope for in the future. It'll all be about, uh,
0:00:58USB interfaces, but I'll tell you what, I finally did it.
0:01:02I bought that cable that I was talking about, which is USB B.
0:01:06I don't know what the hell it is. Yeah. USB B,
0:01:11which is the dumbest port ever, right? I mean, who that? Why,
0:01:14why does that even exist? But anyway,
0:01:18but anyway, I got USB B to USB C.
0:01:23So there's no dongles. You are listening to me, René,
0:01:27with no dongles. There,
0:01:31there is not a single dongle between my voice in your ears and the
0:01:35ears of our hundreds of listeners.
0:01:39I did the same thing. I was heard you talking about it and I ordered the USB B to the USB
0:01:43C because my, I have this fancy high end USB pre two amp and it still has a damn USB B
0:01:51port on it.
0:01:53Oh man. Hey, while we're on it, while we're on the topic, what's, what's the name of this
0:01:59thing that so so there actually is some news that has broken in the last few
0:02:09weeks and it's this consortium I don't know what you want to call it with the
0:02:17Amazon and Google and Apple and they're gonna try chip right basically it seems
0:02:26like Apple is spearheading it it it kind of seems like it's coming from Apple but
0:02:33basically it sounds like it's an idea to make a home connected devices like hey
0:02:47dingus or hey uh uh hey google or whatever your your favorite uh dinguses devices
0:02:57uh sort of make it like a usb type thing where interoperable right where they're interoperable
0:03:06and i gotta tell you if they pull it off no one's gonna be happier than me i am we've got
0:03:14a whole bunch. I, you know, this show is, you know, it's supposed to be about technology.
0:03:22It's not supposed to be about my personal life. I'll just tell you though, I'll just,
0:03:25I'll peel back a layer of the Gruber family life. And my wife loves Christmas trees, loves them.
0:03:33I absolutely loves them. We've got, I don't know. I mean, we've got more Christmas trees than you
0:03:39can believe. But what we've got is every single one of them is plugged in to a dingus that goes
0:03:47into the light socket so that we can say to our Amazon dingus, "Hey, Amazon dingus,
0:03:58turn off the Christmas trees," or "Hey, Amazon dingus, turn on the Christmas trees," or like,
0:04:07Hey Amazon dingus, turn off Jonas's Christmas tree and then it turns off the Christmas tree
0:04:15in Jonas's room.
0:04:16And yes, our son has Christmas tree in his room.
0:04:20Why is Christmas tree?
0:04:22Yeah.
0:04:23And, and it's, you know, I, I, I know that there are some light socket things, you know,
0:04:31our power socket things that, that work with Siri, but it was easy.
0:04:35The easiest thing to do was to just buy the Amazon ones and,
0:04:40and they're from Amazon. They're pretty easy to set up.
0:04:44This is the second year we've had them. They were pretty easy to,
0:04:50and I labeled them, but you know, some of them, you know, didn't,
0:04:54didn't survive the year with the, I don't know why,
0:04:58but it wasn't that bad to reset them up a year later.
0:05:03It could have been easier in my opinion, but yeah.
0:05:06- But I started with the HomeKit one
0:05:10and because it was called light,
0:05:11when I just destroyed my entire ability
0:05:13to turn lights on and off.
0:05:15So I had to rename it.
0:05:16I ended up making a scene.
0:05:18So before I would just say turn off the lights
0:05:20and we turn off all the lights.
0:05:21But then when I got this thing,
0:05:22I would say turn off the lights
0:05:23and it would just turn off the nightlight
0:05:25on the stupid plug.
0:05:26So I made a scene and I renamed it to Ho Ho Ho for Christmas.
0:05:30But then I did the inevitable thing
0:05:32and now I've renamed it to,
0:05:33and now I have a machine gun.
0:05:35(laughing)
0:05:37- Which ties in to me when my cousin Hans,
0:05:42who unfortunately, you know what, he gets a bad rap.
0:05:47You know what I mean?
0:05:49He was, you know, trying to make an honest--
0:05:51- He was an entrepreneur.
0:05:52- Trying to make, yeah, he's an entrepreneur,
0:05:53trying to make an honest transaction in Los Angeles,
0:05:56you know, back in the late '80s.
0:06:00But but anyway, it this chip thing, if they can pull it off, and if Apple can lead the
0:06:10way, and it's, it's interesting to me, I don't know where it's gonna go.
0:06:17But the thing that's interesting to me is that Apple's initial, it's like the announcement
0:06:22came and Apple says, Hey, and by the way, here's this thing we have on GitHub.
0:06:27thing that they have on GitHub is like this whole thing about like device security.
0:06:32I give it I give it at least a 50 50 shot as as turning into sort of the USB of
0:06:45internet connected device assistant directed device protocols. I don't know what to call it.
0:06:57- You kind of, like if you use Siri or HomeKit,
0:06:59you kind of have to hope that this works
0:07:01because given Apple's way of making products,
0:07:03their hyper-focused way of making products,
0:07:05they don't even make a router anymore.
0:07:07And every other company not only bought a router,
0:07:10like Amazon bought Eero and Samsung bought SmartThings,
0:07:13and Google has the Google Wi-Fi system.
0:07:16- And they're advertising it.
0:07:16- But they have all the products.
0:07:18They have every product.
0:07:19They have their own locks, their own lights,
0:07:20their own, they've bought the entire ecosystem.
0:07:22And coincidentally, they don't support HomeKit,
0:07:25even if they previously announced that they would.
0:07:27- Isn't that the most interesting?
0:07:32To me, that is the single most interesting
0:07:35derivative of the whole angle is, okay.
0:07:42So,
0:07:43where we stand at the end of 2019
0:07:49is Apple is interested enough in home connected devices
0:07:53that they're going to get involved in this new industry
0:07:58attempt at a standard called chip, where they can, you know,
0:08:03somebody can make like a wall socket and they can,
0:08:08if this all works out, they'll adhere to the standard.
0:08:12And then you could use it with Alexa. You could use it with Google.
0:08:16You could use it with Siri. You could use it with Samsung's dingus.
0:08:21What's the Samsung dingus called?
0:08:23He Oh, yeah, nobody uses it.
0:08:26Yeah. Hero. What's his name?
0:08:28I don't know whatever his name is, but you could use it with anybody.
0:08:32And and you and I could start a company that would have our own thing
0:08:37and we could adhere to the standard and all these things could
0:08:41could work with our new product.
0:08:45And that wouldn't that be great because Bixby had to look it up Bixby.
0:08:50(laughing)
0:08:51- Bill.
0:08:52I always think of, well.
0:08:54(laughing)
0:08:56- Well, it was the Siri people, right?
0:08:57Like they made it and then Samsung bought it
0:08:59and renamed it to Bixby.
0:09:00- But, I go back to,
0:09:03- Bill Bixby.
0:09:05- It always goes back to Bill.
0:09:07I always have like this,
0:09:08everything goes back to the '70s for me.
0:09:12- And the music at the end of the Hulk
0:09:13when he's just lonely and walking off
0:09:14into the distance again.
0:09:15(laughing)
0:09:18Why didn't his pants pop off?
0:09:20He had stretch pants before his time
0:09:24But they weren't stretch pants. Nope
0:09:27like if I if I were afflicted with it with a with a
0:09:34terrible condition where I had been hit by gamma radiation and
0:09:39if I got upset I
0:09:42Turned into a green monster
0:09:47and tripled in size because I turned into a Hulk.
0:09:52I swear to God, every day, Rene,
0:09:57I wouldn't wear anything but stretch pants.
0:10:01- But yoga pants all the way down.
0:10:02- Yeah, but he didn't wear, he never wore,
0:10:05he wore regular pants, but the pants never popped off.
0:10:09It would have been a very different show, I suppose.
0:10:14- Yeah, the Tarantino version
0:10:15would have been super different.
0:10:16Because you gotta think if everything gets big,
0:10:18if your biceps get big and your neck gets big
0:10:22and your thighs get big,
0:10:23you gotta figure everything gets big.
0:10:26- But like all the bodybuilders at the time,
0:10:27he just didn't hit his legs hard at the gym.
0:10:29He ignored it for pectoral and bicep growth.
0:10:32- It would have been a very different show
0:10:34if all the clothes came off.
0:10:37But anyway, it's the new year.
0:10:41- Yeah.
0:10:45Hey, you know, this is probably the last show.
0:10:49Well, probably, where by probably,
0:10:51I mean absolutely 100%, definitely.
0:10:55This is the last show of the decade.
0:10:57- Yeah. - Yeah.
0:10:58Right here on the talk show,
0:11:00we've been broadcasting since, I don't know how long,
0:11:04but here we go, last show of the decade.
0:11:07I might as well take a break right now
0:11:11and thank our first sponsor.
0:11:13It's the holiday season.
0:11:15I feel like, you know, you gotta be a little loose
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0:12:11I've got the bigger one because I don't travel overseas that much.
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0:12:38they expand they have like a little thing right in the midsection they can
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0:13:01terrific set of wheels I've had an away suitcase ever since they started
0:13:08sponsoring the show. It must be five, six years at this point.
0:13:11I if not, it's close. It still seems like brand new. I've taken
0:13:16it on every single trip I have taken since they have started
0:13:21sponsoring the show and they sent me this suitcase. It still
0:13:25seems like brand new. It is absolutely unbelievable. And
0:13:29their carry ons have built in USB charging packs that pop
0:13:37Right out because if you need to check the bag, they're like, hey, you can't put a lithium
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0:14:17'cause it's a really high capacity battery.
0:14:20It's not like, hey, you have to charge your suitcase
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0:15:16All right, I feel like we're three parentheticals in.
0:15:23Where were we?
0:15:24(laughing)
0:15:25- We're so deep.
0:15:26We were talking about Chip still.
0:15:27- Oh, Chip.
0:15:28All right, so I hope it works out
0:15:32because I do feel like if you just buy like a $20 thing
0:15:37that you stick in a socket and all it is is a power plug
0:15:42to put your Christmas trees in.
0:15:43It should work with all of your,
0:15:47whatever your favorite voice assistant is.
0:15:51In theory, this is great.
0:15:54And I feel like Apple's source code dump,
0:15:58which is a very, you know, very much security based is a very good sign that Apple at least
0:16:08is thinking, hey, let's get everybody to adopt this stuff. Let's get them to do it in a way
0:16:14that is secure and private. And, you know, it let's not try to lock anybody into Siri
0:16:25Versus these other things. Let's just you know, if you're if you're making a $20 thing to plug your Christmas tree into
0:16:31Let's just make it work with everything
0:16:33Yeah, 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
0:16:42These devices that had absolutely no
0:16:44Security concerns and everyone made wired articles about how he could hack your house
0:16:47All of a sudden and a lot of them didn't care because they were selling product and it was
0:16:52convenient for them to think about security.
0:16:55But I think Apple is approaching this a lot
0:16:56like they approach WebKit where they can't be dominant
0:17:00and they can't make every product themselves.
0:17:02So what they can best do, it's like that old joke
0:17:04that everyone makes everything proprietary
0:17:07that makes them money, but then open source is everything
0:17:09that makes their competitors money
0:17:10because that's the best strategy.
0:17:12And if they make this alliance,
0:17:14then at least they can take part,
0:17:15they can benefit from the overall ecosystem
0:17:17and hopefully donate something to security end of it as well.
0:17:20- You know, it's an interesting comparison to WebKit
0:17:22because in a weird way they do kind of dominate with WebKit
0:17:26because WebKit's the only web rendering engine
0:17:31on the iPhone and the iPhone,
0:17:33I don't know if you've heard about it,
0:17:35but it's kind of a thing.
0:17:36- Well sure, but when they did it,
0:17:37like when Milton did that whole project,
0:17:39it was by no means gonna be a dominant.
0:17:41- Right, because it was years before the iPhone
0:17:43even existed, right.
0:17:44But I feel like that's where they kind of are with Siri,
0:17:51where they've got ambitious goals,
0:17:56and I think they get a bad rap, I really do.
0:18:00And this is not trying to be an Apple cheerleader
0:18:04in the very least.
0:18:05I think Siri has gotten so much better
0:18:09that it is one of the most,
0:18:12here, it's the decade in review.
0:18:15I feel like one of the underreported stories
0:18:20of the decade in review is how much better Syria has gotten in the last three or four
0:18:25years.
0:18:27It still isn't great.
0:18:29But part of what makes it frustrating is that it still has so far to go.
0:18:35And part of what makes it something that people think just plain sucks is that it's based
0:18:43on their first impressions from three or four years ago.
0:18:47I feel and I really, you know, that's human nature.
0:18:51But I feel like, you know, you give something x number of chances and x is some
0:18:56reasonable integer, like four or five, six. And if,
0:19:01if it lets you down that number of times, you're just like, forget it.
0:19:04I'm not going to use it anymore. And people give up on it. And then three,
0:19:08four years later, the thing that, you know, like Siri is so much better,
0:19:13but people don't try it because they think,
0:19:16ah, it never understands what I say.
0:19:19- Yeah, I mean, the thing for me is that there's just,
0:19:22there's still even now an inconsistency to it.
0:19:25And I've joked about it, like I can say call my mom
0:19:27and nine times it works perfectly.
0:19:28The 10th time it calls some hairdresser
0:19:30that I've never heard of.
0:19:32And it just, it makes me think there's a server
0:19:33in Eddie Q's closet that he's never updated,
0:19:35but it's still somehow attached to the CDN
0:19:38and we all hit it once every 10 to 20 times.
0:19:41And it's just, it's flabbergasted.
0:19:43But I think you're right, because Siri is Assistant One,
0:19:46it's built into every iPhone,
0:19:48and you see it with every new phone
0:19:49and every new iOS update,
0:19:51that if they can make compelling features,
0:19:53when you do that setup buddy every time,
0:19:56they have a chance to hook you in.
0:19:57They just gotta figure out
0:19:58what those compelling things are.
0:19:59- Yeah.
0:20:00So the chip thing, I hope it works out, but we'll see.
0:20:06But it would be great if you could just confidently buy
0:20:12wall socket adapters from IKEA and know that they'll work with all of the major
0:20:18Assistants, you know, it would be great. It would be absolutely great. I don't know how they make that happen
0:20:24I feel like it's a little bit more, you know
0:20:27Maybe a lot more complicated than something like USB where it's all just wires. I feel like
0:20:34taking these
0:20:36audio
0:20:38Directions in various languages, you know and passing them through I'm sure it's more complicated
0:20:44But in theory this is the way everything should be
0:20:47Even just basic functionality because a lot of houses are mixed assistant houses now and if you have an Alexa at home
0:20:54But then you go out for a jog wearing your air pods and Apple watch
0:20:57You should still be able to say turn my thermostat on or turn on the lights on your way home
0:21:02And 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
0:21:08We've got the Alexa, we've got the HomePods,
0:21:12we've obviously got a bunch of iPhones
0:21:15and iPads laying around.
0:21:17But like I said, our Christmas tree wall socket things
0:21:21are all only on the Alexa system.
0:21:25And at times--
0:21:27- You've got OK Google on your Pixel phone.
0:21:30- Yeah, but I don't have that hooked up to my phone.
0:21:33(laughing)
0:21:34But, you know, it would be great if everything
0:21:39could work with everything, the way that USB does.
0:21:43If you have a charger, if you just plug it in
0:21:48and you have a thing that goes from this plug
0:21:50to that device, then it can charge anything.
0:21:53- Like I'm sure they'll screw it up.
0:21:54They'll say, oh, that's chip one compatible
0:21:56and you need chip 1.2 compatibility on there.
0:21:58They'll screw us up some way,
0:21:59but at least it'd be a beginning.
0:22:01- Well, anyway, I hope it works out.
0:22:04I kind of feel like it is in everybody's interests.
0:22:09It's not, lock-in in theory is a competitive advantage,
0:22:13but I feel like in this realm,
0:22:16it really would be better for everybody
0:22:18if there were a successful standard
0:22:22that just let people make just basic things,
0:22:29light bulbs and wall sockets and stuff
0:22:34that just worked with everything,
0:22:36and so they didn't have to do it.
0:22:38And if Apple has already done a lot of the groundwork
0:22:42on the, hey, let's make sure this is private and secure,
0:22:45then I feel like these other companies
0:22:47can piggyback off that and say like,
0:22:49well, maybe we don't care as much about security
0:22:54and privacy as Apple does,
0:22:56but if they've already done the work,
0:22:58why don't we piggyback off that?
0:22:59That would be good.
0:23:01- Also, their competitors own so much of the market,
0:23:04becoming harder and harder to have just home kit stuff. Like I
0:23:07remember the Natatmo doorbell looked so much better, so much
0:23:10more private, so much more secure than the ring doorbell,
0:23:13which we still hear horror stories about. And it was
0:23:15announced last year. And I still don't think it shipped. There's
0:23:19no there's not many options. So
0:23:20have you been following this story about the ring? security
0:23:25issues?
0:23:26It's a bunch of them. Yeah, it's an interesting story to me,
0:23:32because what's happened to some people who have them is absolutely horrible, horrible,
0:23:39horrible, horrible stuff. So no denying that. And then ring came out a couple of days after
0:23:45the story broke and said, Hey, this isn't really a security problem with our product. It's the fact
0:23:54that all we have is a like to get into a ring you just need an email and a password and
0:24:04so many literally millions tens millions probably hundreds of millions of people
0:24:12around the world use the same email and password for multiple services because you know that's
0:24:22You know, it everybody says don't do that. But you know hundreds of millions of people do that and
0:24:28if one service
0:24:31somewhere
0:24:34Stores your password as the password which they shouldn't do in the first place, right?
0:24:40It should only be stored written to disk in a hashed format
0:24:44Like some Home Depot is gonna do it right somewhere, right?
0:24:47Some Home Depot or I don't want to throw Home Depot into the bus
0:24:51- They were one of the biggest preachers, I think, recently.
0:24:53There's another one.
0:24:54There's a couple really big store breaches.
0:24:56- Well, then let's throw 'em under the bus.
0:24:58- Yeah. (laughs)
0:24:59- But somebody like Home Depot stores your password
0:25:02as the actual password and the email,
0:25:06and then if they get hacked,
0:25:09and 20 million email and passwords get leaked,
0:25:14then that hack goes out.
0:25:20Any malfees out there who wants it can download the whole thing and then they can just start
0:25:29trying random services with all of these email and password combinations.
0:25:34It did it with Disney Plus the weekend it came out.
0:25:38And got in, right?
0:25:39It's crazy.
0:25:41But it speaks to the fact that security experts have been saying for a long time that they
0:25:50that, Hey, don't use the same password on more than one service, blah, blah,
0:25:54blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
0:25:56And they keep saying it and people keep doing it because that's what they did.
0:26:01But it's like, it's not even you,
0:26:03like you could be the most scrupulous person who has never told another human
0:26:08soul what your magic password is that you use on multiple services.
0:26:17And you don't even tell your partner,
0:26:22you don't tell your kids, you don't tell your pastor,
0:26:26you don't tell anybody.
0:26:29It's only in your head.
0:26:31But if one of those services gets hacked
0:26:34and the service stores your password in plain text,
0:26:38all of a sudden anybody can try that email
0:26:41and password combination on ABCDEFG,
0:26:47just go down the list of services that you would like to try to get a hack into.
0:26:52They try your email and password and you didn't do anything wrong.
0:26:58Other than the fact that you reuse the same password on more than one service,
0:27:02all of a sudden you're in.
0:27:04And it sounds like that's exactly what happened to these ring people, right?
0:27:08Is that you get one of these ring cameras,
0:27:14You put it in your house or outside or whatever.
0:27:17But the one you know, the people who are obviously traumatized by this,
0:27:21rightfully so, you know, are the ones who have them inside their house.
0:27:25And it's it's not that the ring is easily hackable
0:27:31and that if if I find out, hey, Rene Ritchie has a ring camera
0:27:36and then I can just magically hack into your camera easily. No.
0:27:43But it's if I have this list of 20 million email addresses and passwords and I start
0:27:51randomly trying them.
0:27:53So I can't target you specifically, but I might hit you randomly by going through these,
0:28:01you know, millions of email and password combinations I've downloaded from some hacked website that
0:28:08idiotically stored their passwords in plain text.
0:28:12And then all of a sudden, now I'm hooked up to your camera
0:28:15and I can see everything your camera sees.
0:28:18And the people who are into this are terrible people
0:28:24and they're saying weird things.
0:28:26They look in the camera and they see it's a child
0:28:28and they're saying terribly racist things to these kids.
0:28:33It's all horrible.
0:28:36In a sense, the ring people are right
0:28:39that they weren't hacked, but in another sense,
0:28:44it's like if it's something as sensitive
0:28:47as a camera and microphone pointing into your house,
0:28:52you probably should have set it up
0:28:55with something better than email plus password security.
0:28:59- I mean, Apple learned this the hard way
0:29:01because that's how the original iCloud breaches happen
0:29:03with people either reusing passwords
0:29:05We're having security questions for celebrities that were on Wikipedia, right?
0:29:09Basically, right.
0:29:10I mean, that was the Sarah Palin thing too.
0:29:12No, that's very true.
0:29:13And no, Scarlett Johansson.
0:29:15I mean, it wasn't just political.
0:29:17It was it was a bunch of people who who had their iClouds,
0:29:21iCloud accounts hacked.
0:29:23And it was. Yeah, you're exactly right, though.
0:29:25It was very similar where
0:29:27it was just email plus password and the,
0:29:33you know, extra questions for security, which I available
0:29:38answers, which I, I hate every time. I've never been
0:29:43comfortable with them. I mean, I'm talking like going back 20
0:29:46years when they're like, Hey, what's your father's middle
0:29:49name? And I'm like, Hey, that's not that. You know, I mean,
0:29:54like, somebody could easily look that up. And I'm like, but I
0:29:58generally answered them truthfully, because I'm like,
0:30:01what else am I gonna do?
0:30:03And I know that like one password
0:30:06lets you like answer them with, you know,
0:30:09a complete gibberish answer
0:30:11so that you can look up in one password,
0:30:14what does Google think my father's middle name is?
0:30:19- Yes. - And it's like, you know.
0:30:23- A pseudo random blob. - Gliberal, bleh.
0:30:26- As a hilarious aside, in the province of Quebec,
0:30:30still ask you for your mother's maiden name as a security question but it's illegal by law for
0:30:35people for a wife to take your husband's name they you have to keep your maiden name so everybody
0:30:40knows everybody's maiden name because that's the name they go by but they still ask it as a
0:30:45security question we can't win uh but it just shows that all of those that that that that whole
0:30:54path of personal security of of asking you things that supposedly only you would know it's it the
0:31:05whole path is broken and the right path is you know some kind of second factor thing with every
0:31:14password being total gibberish or yeah if not gibberish you know just like three random three
0:31:22three or four random words separated by dots or dashes
0:31:27or something like that. - Something that adds
0:31:28some entropy to your password.
0:31:29- Right, but not something that has any kind of meaning
0:31:33to you personally, but...
0:31:35- And that's why Apple came out with that whole,
0:31:37well, the first two step authentication
0:31:39and then the new two factor authentication.
0:31:41My only issue with Ring is that it's sort of like,
0:31:44they just, they keep doing stuff like this.
0:31:46Like they famously let the Ukrainian outsource company
0:31:49have direct access to people's camera feeds
0:31:51out of expediency.
0:31:52And then they gave, like they had this whole thing going on
0:31:54with the cops where they would help them install
0:31:56like the ring doorbells.
0:31:58And it just feels like they need to reprioritize security
0:32:01in their list of things that matter to them.
0:32:03- Well, and right.
0:32:06So I feel like they,
0:32:10and I haven't bought the ring camera things
0:32:14and I really could use them to be honest at our front door.
0:32:22And, but I've honestly had like a bad privacy feeling
0:32:27about them the whole time.
0:32:31And I get it that they're not hacked
0:32:34because they're easily hackable.
0:32:36I get it that they got, that people are getting hacked
0:32:40because it's just a simple email password thing
0:32:45and so many millions of people's emails
0:32:50plus password they use everywhere have been leaked,
0:32:54that's basically how they've been quote unquote hacked.
0:32:57So I get it that it's not their fault
0:32:59that if you used a good, strong, unique password with Ring
0:33:04and that's all you did, the only security step you took
0:33:10was that your Ring account uses a good, strong,
0:33:15unique password, you're good.
0:33:18I get it and that's what I would do
0:33:22But it's not what everybody in my family would do. It's certainly not what everybody I know would do
0:33:28You know, most people don't do that. And so it is kind of on ring to
0:33:35Have designed a system and I say this all the time on during fireball. We're like good design
0:33:41Isn't really
0:33:44It shouldn't be centered on what people should do. It should be centered on what people will do. It's considerate, right?
0:33:51It's what what will people do not what should they do because people aren't going to do the should thing
0:33:59Most of the time they're gonna do what they will do, you know
0:34:04It's the old story about like how do you set the pathways on a college campus?
0:34:09And it's like, just lay down grass everywhere,
0:34:13wait a year, and then see where the paths are worn,
0:34:18and then pave those,
0:34:19because people are gonna walk there anyway.
0:34:22- Yeah, I also think that,
0:34:24I think it's fair to say that as much as these are products,
0:34:27when you're dealing with a company like Amazon,
0:34:28and like Google, and like Facebook,
0:34:30they are also intended to be data harvesting endpoints.
0:34:33So they're designed to take your stuff
0:34:35and put it on Amazon or Google or Facebook servers.
0:34:38And that means there has to be an inherent
0:34:40greater level of security.
0:34:42Like that Nanatmo, Natatmo,
0:34:43I forget how to pronounce their name,
0:34:44that doorbell, it saves to an SD card.
0:34:46Like there is, or to your personal Dropbox,
0:34:49there's no like their server end.
0:34:51So I think if you're designing this stuff
0:34:52and you're marketing it,
0:34:53and you're also your side business or your side hustle
0:34:55or your main hustle is sucking in all this data
0:34:58so you can feed your algorithms
0:34:59and your facial recognition and whatever,
0:35:02there's an even higher standard
0:35:03for you to provide the protection
0:35:04to the people who are using those devices.
0:35:07- Yeah, I think so completely.
0:35:08All right, let's take a break.
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0:40:04All right, so you don't have a Ring camera.
0:40:11- No, and I've thought about them too,
0:40:13but I think even if I would ever get one,
0:40:14it would only ever be plenty out.
0:40:16I would never have one inside the house.
0:40:18- Well, yeah, I wouldn't want a camera inside my house
0:40:22no matter what company it was from.
0:40:24You know, like, even if like Apple split itself
0:40:29and said, hey, we're gonna fork our company,
0:40:31we're gonna keep going with Apple as Apple,
0:40:34and we're also gonna make a company
0:40:36called the Privacy Company.
0:40:38And literally, it's just devoted,
0:40:42a company single-mindedly focused on privacy.
0:40:47And I still wouldn't want the camera in my house,
0:40:51But I would like a better camera outside my house.
0:40:55I have a crappy doorbell that has a crappy camera
0:41:00from like 2006 pointing outside at the doorbell.
0:41:04I would like a better camera there.
0:41:05So I guess I'll buy something.
0:41:08And I'm not, you know,
0:41:09what's the worst thing that could happen?
0:41:10The worst thing that could happen is what?
0:41:1324 hours a day, seven days a week
0:41:18is storing what happens outside my house
0:41:23and going to a server, right?
0:41:25- John taking the garbage out Tuesday again.
0:41:28- Right.
0:41:29So every Sunday night when I take the garbage out,
0:41:32there I am.
0:41:32- And you're Hulk fans.
0:41:36- If it's pointed outside your house,
0:41:39to me, the worst privacy violation that could happen
0:41:44is a thing that somebody else could photograph, right?
0:41:49Because it's outside your house.
0:41:52So that's not why I don't get it, but eh.
0:41:56- And I say this as someone who realizes
0:41:57that every Mac and iPad and iPhone and Google phone
0:42:00and whatever I have in my house has a camera on it.
0:42:03I just try not to think of that.
0:42:04- Hey, maybe you wanna put tape over your camera.
0:42:07And it's like, I've seen no evidence
0:42:11that the green light that indicates that the camera is in use isn't physically connected
0:42:18to the camera.
0:42:22In my humble opinion, I can't prove it, nobody can prove it, and obviously if you put a piece
0:42:28of tape over the camera, you can prove that the camera isn't filming you.
0:42:35But in my opinion, I don't worry about the cameras on my devices.
0:42:40I really do feel like there's, you know,
0:42:44and you know, all my devices are Apple devices,
0:42:47but I do feel like there's pretty strong proof
0:42:51and from what I know personally,
0:42:54pretty strong evidence that they take it very seriously.
0:42:58That like, I don't think Tim Cook has tape over his camera.
0:43:02And I know people are like, hey, you know,
0:43:04there's that thing as Zuckerberg
0:43:06and Zuckerberg's using a MacBook
0:43:08and he's got tape over the camera.
0:43:09Like if Mark Zuckerberg has tape over his camera,
0:43:12then I'm putting tape over my camera.
0:43:13And it's like, well, maybe that was,
0:43:16A, we have no idea if that was actually his computer,
0:43:20and B, he didn't make the computer.
0:43:23You know, like show me.
0:43:24- No, but he was Facebook running on it,
0:43:25so you have to be careful.
0:43:26- Exactly, right.
0:43:27He's the guy who runs a company
0:43:29that is trying to use your camera surreptitiously
0:43:32without turning the light on.
0:43:35I don't think Tim Cook or Phil Schiller or Eddy Cue
0:43:40or Craig Federighi, I don't think any of them have tape
0:43:45over the cameras on their MacBooks
0:43:48because I think they know that if the camera's on,
0:43:51the light comes on and that's, you know,
0:43:54you know that it's on.
0:43:55So I trust it that way.
0:43:59And maybe I'm wrong, but I've seen no evidence
0:44:03that that's not the way that it actually works.
0:44:07- No, it's tied into the secure element
0:44:08on all the modern Macs and iPhones and everything anyway.
0:44:10So it's basically a hardware channel,
0:44:12which I think is better in some cases.
0:44:15- Yeah.
0:44:16Did you get a Mac Pro?
0:44:18- I did not.
0:44:20I was thinking about it and I had what I called
0:44:22a bunch of FOMO YOLO jealousy when I saw all of our friends
0:44:26getting them and unboxing them.
0:44:28But the 2016 MacBook Pro is just so good.
0:44:32And I'm only shooting 4K RAW, which, you know,
0:44:35it sounds like a lot, but this machine is crushing it.
0:44:39And I don't, like if I was doing multi-stream 8K RAW
0:44:43or Arri Alexa, like Jonathan Morrison or MKBHD or iJustine,
0:44:48or some of that photogrammetry stuff that Alex Lindsey does
0:44:51that takes days, it would be a blessing to me.
0:44:54But there's, I was like just looking at it
0:44:56and looking at my budget and going, but I don't need it.
0:44:59And because I didn't need it,
0:45:00managed to stop myself from buying it. It's... I even thought about the display
0:45:08but by the time I thought about it it was pushed into February and that let me
0:45:10say okay I don't have to think about it right now. Well there's a couple of
0:45:13things that are pushing late so one of the things that is fascinating to me and
0:45:19it it's not really related but did you see how long the delay is on AirPods Pro?
0:45:28No, I didn't. If you tried to buy AirPods Pro in any time in the last like three
0:45:36four weeks there like the delivery date is late January so in terms of like hey
0:45:43it's two weeks before Christmas I wanted to get you know my kid my spouse whoever
0:45:50AirPods Pro you you were screwed it was absolutely almost no chance you know
0:45:56There were like random. It says four weeks right now
0:45:59You know you you could randomly find a store that might be near you that had them
0:46:05But for the most part it was five or six weeks
0:46:08Four or five weeks delivery which to me is crazy
0:46:14The pro and I realized the air pods pro or something that
0:46:20Tens and tens of millions of people are interested in and might want to buy and I realized that the pro display
0:46:26XDR is something that only thousands of people are interested in and want to buy but
0:46:32Yeah similar in terms of you can't get one right now. You just can't go in and buy one
0:46:40You know obviously two very different price points yes
0:46:49We're talking five thousand dollars plus thousand dollars stand versus you know
0:46:54What what what are the air pods Pro like I loved your line?
0:46:58I think it was a WWC talk show and you said that you thought 6k was the price when they kept calling it that
0:47:03It's so close. It's
0:47:05If you get your stand, it's so close. It's a thousand dollars a K. I
0:47:11Think it's I think you know
0:47:15Obviously people who are looking for the pro display XDR are looking to buy a display to use for years to come
0:47:22it is not a
0:47:24One-off purchase. It's not something you make on a whim. It is something you do professionally blah blah blah and
0:47:30AirPods Pro or something that maybe you buy and a year or two from now you'll get new
0:47:38whatever's you know AirPods Pro 2 or whatever will come out and
0:47:43and they're $200 versus 6,000 with a stand
0:47:48or 7,000 with a stand and the matte finish.
0:47:52- And those wheels, don't forget those wheels.
0:47:53- And while you can't get the wheels on display,
0:47:56I don't think the display has wheels.
0:47:58Although, you know, let's give them time.
0:48:01And again, I laugh because it's a very high price point.
0:48:07I don't think that it's an unreasonable price point
0:48:10for what it is.
0:48:11I just read a story today from an animation company
0:48:16where they were like, hey, you know,
0:48:18everybody's joking about these displays,
0:48:21but prior to these displays being available,
0:48:24it would have cost us $30,000 a seat to get
0:48:28a display of this caliber in front of everybody
0:48:33on our team, and now we can do it for $6,000.
0:48:38- I was joking on Twitter, 'cause I got an email
0:48:41B&H saying that their new Sony reference display was in stock and it was like
0:48:44$42,000 and I didn't see a stand on yeah
0:48:47Right, so I mean I laugh because they're just expensive period yeah
0:48:53But I thought it was really interesting that the AirPods Pro were sold out so far in advance of Christmas, you know, I
0:49:02Do I still I have to be honest. I'm still using my
0:49:08review unit. I didn't I didn't buy them.
0:49:11And I feel terrible because I was going to buy one for me and my wife.
0:49:16She doesn't listen to my podcast, so hopefully she won't hear this.
0:49:19But I was going to get them for her for Christmas.
0:49:22And then, you know, it was like December 14th or something.
0:49:25And I'm thinking, hey, it's only December 14th.
0:49:28I've got plenty of time. I'm ahead of the game.
0:49:31I'm not doing the thing I do every year where I screw up and wait too long
0:49:37to get and and then I go to get AirPods Pro and they're like uh delivers January 20th and I'm like
0:49:43ah shit yeah I I have a very similar thing I bought a pair for myself because I was you know
0:49:50because I tried to replace the the review units and then I couldn't get them for Christmas
0:49:53ended up giving the ones I bought as a Christmas gift and I have to buy myself a pair as soon as I
0:49:58I can get them. I love them and I will tell you and this is good
0:50:05time as any to reveal it. I did I have a pair of bows,
0:50:11whatevers, you know, qs 30s, whatever the hell they call them
0:50:15the over the ear things that are also Bluetooth, noise canceling,
0:50:21blah, blah, blah. But I took a trip on an airplane at the end
0:50:27of, or early in December. And I took them and my AirPods and I
0:50:35will say, I will never travel with those Bose things again.
0:50:39Ever. There's 0.0 chance that I will ever take them on my trip.
0:50:46It's not the same because the Bose ones are over the ears
0:50:52before you even turn them on, they do block out more noise than AirPods Pro, literally
0:51:00with no electricity being used, no noise canceling algorithm or anything.
0:51:08They do because they're over your ear.
0:51:10And when the noise canceling is on, it is different.
0:51:15And if your goal is to put them in your ear and go on an airplane and not listen to anything,
0:51:26you're not listening to a podcast, you're not listening to music, you literally just
0:51:31want the noise canceled.
0:51:33Well, then you should probably still stick with some kind of over the ear thing because
0:51:39it is a little bit better, but not that much better.
0:51:45It is different.
0:51:47You can definitely hear the difference.
0:51:50But if you're listening to anything, if you're listening, if you're watching movies on your
0:51:55iPad or Mac or whatever, if you're listening to music, it is negligible how different they
0:52:05are.
0:52:06And I'm not even sure which one is quote unquote better.
0:52:10But the fact that the AirPods are so tiny and it is absolutely astounding to me how
0:52:20competitive they are in terms of the noise canceling quality.
0:52:26And you know, I think for a lot of people, you know, being in an airplane mid-flight
0:52:32is sort of the noise canceling default scenario.
0:52:37It's absolutely amazing how competitive the AirPods Pro are
0:52:46with something like the current Bose QS,
0:52:51whatever number they are.
0:52:57- Yeah, no, totally.
0:52:59I've used a bunch of them too.
0:53:00And I know there are some people who are audiophiles
0:53:02and they complain about the sound quality of the AirPods
0:53:04and fair enough, but I've used them on a ton of flights now
0:53:07and a ton of different travel scenarios,
0:53:09coffee shops all over the place.
0:53:11And I'm astounded at something, not just this small,
0:53:14but most of the space in here
0:53:16isn't taken up with audio tech,
0:53:17it's taken up with a bunch of computer tech
0:53:19and they can still wrangle out
0:53:20this kind of performance from them.
0:53:21- It's really, and they're so much smaller.
0:53:25And I, you know, what you actually carry on to the plane,
0:53:30you know, the difference in weight and volume,
0:53:34especially volume between the AirPods Pro
0:53:39and a pair of over-the-ear noise canceling headphones
0:53:43is so phenomenal, it's just ridiculous.
0:53:47- And I know I should, but I don't get told
0:53:49to take them off anywhere nearly as I do
0:53:51when I'm wearing, when I used to wear those big,
0:53:52the big headphones. - Yeah.
0:53:53- Those were super obvious.
0:53:55- 'Cause they look at you and they're like,
0:53:56"Hey, take that off."
0:53:59It's really-- - Please, they don't notice
0:54:01half the time. - All right.
0:54:03- And it's weird, it's like the end of 2019
0:54:04and we have, I forget what it was,
0:54:06a 10 core audio processors in our ears.
0:54:08That's how far we managed to go within a decade.
0:54:11(laughing)
0:54:13- Everything's gonna be a computer, Rene, everything.
0:54:20- Yep, yeah.
0:54:23But I have to say I taking them both on one flight and actually
0:54:29taking time to try them side by side was such and again, this is
0:54:36the service I provide to the listeners of the talk show is
0:54:39now you don't have to do it. If you own AirPods Pro, just just
0:54:45listen to me don't even try the other ones. Leave them at home,
0:54:47sell them, give them to your brother in law, whoever will
0:54:51take them, get rid of them. You don't need them anymore. Just use
0:54:54the AirPods Pro. And and the dera and the other thing that I
0:54:59brought with me on the same flight was regular old fashioned
0:55:03non noise cancelling AirPods, although they were the second
0:55:07generation one. And it it is tremendous the difference that
0:55:14the noise cancelling AirPods Pro make when when you're on an
0:55:18airplane. You it's exactly what I thought, which is that the
0:55:23earbuds are really, they're not useless on an airplane, you
0:55:28know, but it's there's just so much that white noise from that
0:55:33would just whoosh noise on an airplane flight. And it's just
0:55:41the perfect scenario for where you really do need, you know,
0:55:47And I use that word somewhat cautiously, need,
0:55:51but you really do need noise canceling on an airplane.
0:55:55And it just makes all the difference in the world.
0:56:00Really, just tremendous.
0:56:03I love the AirPods Pro.
0:56:06We can segue into this,
0:56:12'cause it's part of the reason I wanted to have you
0:56:14on the show this week was your product
0:56:18of the decade selection.
0:56:20AirPods Pro are up there.
0:56:22I would say they're in the finalists, you know,
0:56:26they're in the playoffs.
0:56:30- My only thing was that I feel like their best decade
0:56:33is yet to come.
0:56:34Like they've been huge, they started in 2016,
0:56:36but they made huge leaps this year.
0:56:38And if you follow the thread,
0:56:40it just feels like they're gonna be even bigger
0:56:42in the next few years.
0:56:42- Yeah, I totally agree.
0:56:44like way longer battery life, way better noise cancellation and way better sort of Siri integration.
0:56:53Yeah, I kind of feel like at some point in the next, I would say even like three years,
0:56:59there will be a pair of AirPods that just make even today's AirPods Pro seem like garbage.
0:57:05Like they'll stream Apple podcasts and Apple music, maybe some third party stuff directly.
0:57:09You won't even need to watch anymore.
0:57:13All right, let's just segue right into that. So you had a piece recently, Renee, where you picked
0:57:20out again, this is the last episode of this podcast in the decade. And don't give me any of
0:57:28this nonsense that the decade start in 2021. Everybody knows the way human brains work,
0:57:37That's a decade start, you know, the prince didn't have a song called let's party like it's
0:57:432000 it was 1999, you know, you know, oh, sorry a kid. You're not really 10 years old
0:57:49You gotta wait till next year exactly
0:57:51So we're days away. The show will come out right before the cusp of the new year
0:57:58but then it's then, you know, it's the toggle of the decade I
0:58:05Personally don't do and you know this. Yeah, you personally know this people listening to this know it I
0:58:12Don't do a lot of like hey best blank of the year bless best this of the year
0:58:19It's just not my style and it's not because I'm opposed to it. It's just not what I'm good at
0:58:26I don't have enthusiasm for it. So let the people who do do it and I'll just link to
0:58:33so and so's, hey, here's the best apps of the year, the best,
0:58:37you know, products of the year are the best blanks of the decade.
0:58:41But a decade, you know, it's a bigger deal.
0:58:44I feel like I ought to speak up.
0:58:47You're you. You made a declaration.
0:58:50Best product of the decade. And it was.
0:58:53The the Apple Watch.
0:58:56Yeah. And tell me, tell me why you picked Apple Watch.
0:59:01- So I did think of a few things
0:59:04like because it's been such a big decade for Apple
0:59:06like for everything from the iPad to the MacBook Air
0:59:09which was essentially the template
0:59:10for every Ultrabook we got for the rest of the decade.
0:59:13There was just so much to AirPods
0:59:14there were just so many things.
0:59:16Some people love the iPhone 4, the iPhone 10
0:59:18but to me the big difference is that the Apple Watch
0:59:22was a change within the way that a lot of these products
0:59:26worked and were designed to work because it saves lives.
0:59:31And a lot of people, as soon as I say that people say,
0:59:33well, phones save lives and computers save lives
0:59:35and tablets, and that's all true, they absolutely do.
0:59:38But the Apple watch was designed systematically
0:59:42to save lives and features were designed specifically
0:59:45to save lives.
0:59:45Like they took the health, the heart rate monitor
0:59:48which originally was just meant
0:59:50to give an accurate calorie count.
0:59:52But as they were doing their research
0:59:53they started finding patterns,
0:59:55they started exploring it more
0:59:56and they realized they could detect AFib for example.
0:59:59actually did low heart rate monitoring
1:00:01and high heart rate monitoring.
1:00:03And then the ECG app and fall detection
1:00:05and international emergency calling,
1:00:08which you know, a phone can't really like,
1:00:09they're supposed to be able to do it,
1:00:10but just if you have an accident
1:00:12and your phone is thrown out of your head,
1:00:13it just, in so many situations,
1:00:15the Apple Watch deliberately and specifically saves lives.
1:00:19And to me, that was just such a huge change
1:00:22in the continued evolution of personal computing.
1:00:24- I, did you see the,
1:00:28There was somebody wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times in the last few days where it was like,
1:00:34"Ah, the whole Apple tells you you can count on the Apple Watch for hard stuff."
1:00:41And it's like, "Ah, maybe not so fast."
1:00:44And it's like, it was such a total, like, the worst, in my opinion, of like,
1:00:52hey, let's take the opposite approach
1:00:56to what everybody's saying and take that,
1:01:00write a whole column about that.
1:01:02Where like the headline and the subhead
1:01:06were flat out flat wrong.
1:01:11And then you read the column and it's like,
1:01:13ah, all right, yeah, this isn't, it's not so wrong.
1:01:16So it's not as easy to link to and disagree with.
1:01:21But my rule of headlines is that the headline
1:01:26is 50% of what matters.
1:01:27If the headline misleads,
1:01:30then it doesn't matter what the article says,
1:01:32whether it's a news reporting piece or an opinion column,
1:01:36you've already put people on the wrong path because,
1:01:41and it's only gotten worse because when you share stuff
1:01:45on Twitter or I guess Facebook, whatever,
1:01:49When you paste the link all they see is the headline and the subhead
1:01:54Tell you like in any algorithm. It's the click-through rate is determined by the picture and the headline right? That's it and
1:02:00The basic gist of this sort of hey not so fast with the Apple watch is saving lives is like hey
1:02:11Apple did this story or a study of a
1:02:16couple thousand people who opted in to do it and only X a small number of people actually
1:02:23Participated and actually did everything they were supposed to do and of those people only a small percentage
1:02:31actually had
1:02:33Atrial fibrillation and it's like
1:02:37But there was not one person
1:02:44Who?
1:02:45Anything bad happened because they did it right not one person
1:02:50had like hey my life was made worse because I
1:02:55Put on an Apple watch and tried the heart monitor or anything and signed up for this study
1:03:01Whereas even if it's a small number of people there's a small number of people who the watch was like hey
1:03:09Go to your doctor
1:03:12because I
1:03:13Something might be wrong with your heart and those people that it was like, oh shit. Yeah, there's something wrong with my heart
1:03:20I should do it it
1:03:22it was like the opposite of
1:03:24I get the idea and it's like writing a column that says hey
1:03:31You're probably not going to
1:03:36Have your life bettered in
1:03:40in terms of your heart health if you buy an Apple watch is not a great column.
1:03:46Whereas "Hey, Apple says they're going to save your life and they're not" is like a
1:03:52better column.
1:03:53I totally get that.
1:03:57But it's totally off the point, right?
1:03:59Like the only people who like the watch flagged are people who like should go to the doctor
1:04:08And I don't know, it annoyed me in a way.
1:04:13- Yeah, no, I get it totally because over the,
1:04:19like so the Apple Watch came out and for five years,
1:04:22it's been a failure and beleaguered
1:04:24and has gotten very little recognition.
1:04:26And that's despite people like Neil Seibert
1:04:28and of course, Didya doing the math and showing
1:04:30people were saying like Alexa was a smash hit
1:04:32and the Apple Watch was outselling it.
1:04:34And the Apple Watch now and the AirPods
1:04:36have both outsold iPod at its peak.
1:04:39And they're still like not considered breakthrough
1:04:41or hit products by a huge swath of people.
1:04:45And it's flabbergasting to me.
1:04:46I think, I don't know if it's just jealousy
1:04:48or some sort of weird technology disorder
1:04:51that infects a lot of people in the industry.
1:04:54But by any token, they're selling amazingly well.
1:04:57And it's bringing all these health and fitness features
1:04:59to people who at the worst will have a better life.
1:05:02And at best will, like my friend, Georgia, who you know,
1:05:04she fell down the stairs
1:05:06and it went off and she was badly hurt.
1:05:09And luckily her husband hurt her and came running down,
1:05:12but if she'd been home alone,
1:05:13that would have called 911 for her when she could not.
1:05:16- You know what, that's a great example
1:05:19because I feel like the atrial fibrillation feature,
1:05:24which Apple has to get country by country
1:05:28regulatory approval for, for good reason.
1:05:34this isn't a complaint about government regulations,
1:05:38but for good reason, they have to get approval for it.
1:05:43And so it definitely is limited by where you live.
1:05:48So if you live in the US or Canada, you've already got it.
1:05:52You do have it in Canada.
1:05:56- Yeah.
1:05:57(laughing)
1:05:58Finally.
1:05:58(laughing)
1:05:59- But as you go around--
1:06:01- We got it in July of last year.
1:06:02- Thank God.
1:06:03- Yeah, but as you go around the world,
1:06:06you may not have it if you live outside of North America.
1:06:10But for good reason.
1:06:15But the fall detection thing, to me,
1:06:19is way more interesting
1:06:21than the atrial fibrillation thing
1:06:25because it just seems more common
1:06:29And it doesn't require the regulatory approval that it does.
1:06:34And it works, it really does.
1:06:38I know your friend, Georgia, had a fall.
1:06:43I've gotten emails, I'm sure you have too.
1:06:46I've gotten emails from people who read Daring Fireball,
1:06:50'cause there's hundreds of thousands of people
1:06:52who read my website, and so even if only
1:06:56tenth of a percent of people suffer a bad fall and only among
1:07:02the people who actually own an Apple Watch and whatever
1:07:06percentage those people would deem fit to email me about it.
1:07:11But I've gotten several emails from people who are like, Hey,
1:07:15I slipped on the third stair.
1:07:18I fell down three stairs.
1:07:20I'm fine.
1:07:21I was fine.
1:07:23But maybe if I was instead of being 45 years old,
1:07:28if I was 85 years old, I wouldn't have been fine.
1:07:31And the watch was like, hey, are you okay?
1:07:34We detected a fall.
1:07:36Do you want to call services?
1:07:39And they're like, this is phenomenal.
1:07:43And they're like, as soon as I got that, I was like,
1:07:45you know what I did?
1:07:46I bought my dad and my mom an Apple watch, you know,
1:07:51because you know, my dad is 84, you know,
1:07:55and if he took a fall like that, he probably wouldn't be okay.
1:07:59And it would be phenomenal if he could just tap one button on his
1:08:05left wrist to call nine 11 services.
1:08:08It really is very impressive technology.
1:08:12And I get it. I it's not my pick for product of the decade,
1:08:17but I get why you picked it.
1:08:20And the services that provide these sorts of things
1:08:23are typically really expensive every month,
1:08:25you know, when you add them up.
1:08:27But also like this is one of those things
1:08:29where it's only Apple.
1:08:30Like yes, there are other watches on the market,
1:08:32but Qualcomm so far has not been able to make
1:08:34good watch silicon because no one's really buying it
1:08:37in sufficient quantities.
1:08:38So they have like an old phone chip,
1:08:40they've rehashed twice and now added a coprocessor to,
1:08:43and Wear OS from Google,
1:08:45even people who love Android will tell you
1:08:47it's non-functional in terms of being a wearable OS.
1:08:49And that shows you just how hard it is to make these things.
1:08:52If Google, one of the best software companies in the world,
1:08:55and Qualcomm, one of the best chipset companies in the world
1:08:57can't even get it together,
1:08:58and that's with the Apple Watch to compete with.
1:09:01So if Apple wasn't in this market,
1:09:03I don't think we'd be very far at all
1:09:04when it comes to wearables.
1:09:05- Well, and I think,
1:09:08I think that, and again, I say this
1:09:13as somebody who years ago wished that,
1:09:17You know, I said Apple needs its Nikon.
1:09:20And that was comparing Apple to Canon and the way that in the the camera, you know.
1:09:27Yeah. It shows how many years ago that I was only talking about Canon Nikon,
1:09:32because I think they've been passed in so many ways by other companies,
1:09:37especially Sony, who has really, really stepped up their camera game.
1:09:41But the basic idea stands, which is that if you want
1:09:47a serious professional camera, you have several,
1:09:52at least a handful of companies to choose from.
1:09:56And it's probably not reasonable
1:10:00to expect dozens of companies.
1:10:03Markets tend to consolidate,
1:10:07competition tends to force people out,
1:10:10but it's not good when you don't have competition.
1:10:15It's not good for you.
1:10:17It's definitely not good for your customers,
1:10:20but the thing that to me is counterintuitive
1:10:24is that it's not good for the company itself
1:10:27because that's how you end up getting locked
1:10:31into a weird corner and the whole market goes another way
1:10:36and you're not ready to go there.
1:10:38And cameras are to me the perfect example
1:10:44where there's always been, at least in my lifetime,
1:10:49a couple of brands that you could choose from
1:10:52that offer truly excellent professional cameras.
1:10:57And the problem,
1:11:00and I think it's a serious, serious problem
1:11:04for those of us in the Apple ecosystem,
1:11:06is you get locked into the Apple ecosystem
1:11:09and you get ruled out
1:11:14of these other devices, you know,
1:11:19and you hope that Apple is keeping up,
1:11:23but you know, again, it's a whole tangent, we won't take--
1:11:27- Televisions are the same thing.
1:11:28There's just so many competing brands.
1:11:29- Yeah, but on the watch front, it's the opposite,
1:11:34where Apple is so racing ahead on what you can do
1:11:39with a modern digital watch, a computer on your wrist.
1:11:44And they're so far ahead of every other company that it's embarrassing to the other companies,
1:11:54to be honest.
1:11:55And, you know, it's part of the reason.
1:11:57I'm not going to say you're wrong for picking Apple Watch as the product of the decade.
1:12:02And I would honestly say that above and beyond any particular reason to buy an Apple Watch
1:12:08today. To me, the the best argument for your decision to
1:12:14say that's the product of the decade is how far ahead it is
1:12:18than anything that competes with it. It's it's absolutely
1:12:22ridiculous. It it is Steve Jobs is hey. We're 5 years ahead of
1:12:27the competition. Honestly, I would say it's more than 5
1:12:31years ahead of the competition. It's it's absolutely ridiculous
1:12:35how far ahead Apple watches compared to the next best Apple Watch.
1:12:41Yeah. Which isn't that great and only works and runs Tizen.
1:12:46And and is big and chunky and doesn't look good.
1:12:51And and again, there are so many ways, you know,
1:12:55we could do a whole podcast on just the ways that we want Apple Watch to get better.
1:13:02Oh, yeah, absolutely. Starting with the fact that we really I mean,
1:13:05everybody wants it to be an independent device, right?
1:13:09Like you don't want it to have to be tied to an iPhone.
1:13:13My nephew, who's like, I think he's 10.
1:13:17I don't know. But, you know, he's around 10.
1:13:20He's either nine, 10 or 11.
1:13:22Got an Apple Watch for Christmas, but he doesn't have an iPhone.
1:13:27Yeah. And so it's weird.
1:13:31Right like so his iPhone is tied to his dad's phone. Yeah, and
1:13:36Why should that be it should be it it's a perfectly reasonable thing
1:13:43for people to say you know what I want my
1:13:4611 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
1:13:54the fact that you can't do that cleanly is
1:13:58Weird 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
1:14:05It seems like they're putting all the bricks in place so that they can tie that they can cut that tether
1:14:09Yeah, I totally think so. Although I kind of thought once they added LTE. I thought that by the end of
1:14:162019 we'd be there
1:14:19It's not real LTE still it's still piggybacking on exactly LTE and I think they have to take that next step, right?
1:14:26totally and
1:14:28You know and in theory it shouldn't require that either even just the Wi-Fi
1:14:34You should be able to put it put the phone on Wi-Fi and when you're home
1:14:39Have it yeah, but you know could be better
1:14:43Well, it's like the iPhone was tethered to iTunes until iOS 5 and then we got iCloud
1:14:47And that was that was the five versions in so we've just passed five versions in for the watch
1:14:53But it's a way more constrained device
1:14:55So I'm willing to cut them like a couple of years slack on their timeline
1:14:58Well, 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
1:15:06But that's the biggest one because like people will say Apple watch and support Android. No, that's that's short-term thinking
1:15:12That's way too much work for way too little benefit
1:15:14Yeah, we just make it independent and anybody with any phone or no phone can write it. Yeah, exactly
1:15:19No, that's it. It's that iCloud moment where the truth is in the cloud
1:15:25and devices are just devices and you should be able to you know opt in have
1:15:33it prompt you and tell you hey we're gonna store all of this data from your
1:15:38watch in your iCloud account in the cloud do you agree or do you not agree
1:15:44but if you agree there it goes and then you're good you know and well like a
1:15:52mutual friend Dieter Bohn was saying he went back to an Android phone but he
1:15:55uses his Apple watch to stay in contact with iMessage and if but you imagine he
1:16:00still has to have an iPhone somewhere right it's piggybacking on that and be
1:16:03great if that wasn't the case yeah all right let me take another break here and
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1:19:52All right, product of the decade.
1:19:58You picked Apple Watch.
1:20:00All right, here's my pick.
1:20:01My pick, and I've been thinking about this a lot,
1:20:03and it was specifically prompted by your piece.
1:20:07I think Apple Watch is a good pick.
1:20:09My pick is iPhone X.
1:20:12And I think that the iPhone X
1:20:19has been so,
1:20:25in a large part overlooked in terms of how profoundly
1:20:30it changed how much work they had to do on the hardware side
1:20:35and the software side to get it to where it was
1:20:44when it shipped.
1:20:45And the hardware side takes so much longer
1:20:51than people think.
1:20:54I honestly think and I feel like I've been writing about this for years and years and
1:20:59years that it takes, you know, I don't know, close to two years for them for Apple to ship,
1:21:06you know, to lock in hardware in the large part and at least a year in the smallest part,
1:21:17like if they want to make the smallest of small changes, it still takes a year before
1:21:22they get to the point where they because they make so many of these things. I talking to
1:21:28people at Apple and and having friends who work there. Honestly, I think I've been underselling
1:21:34how long it takes to make hardware. I think it is it. The lead way is so long. It is ridiculous
1:21:43to make Apple quality hardware. Absolutely. And the fact that they don't make
1:21:49I don't know what you would call it, you know
1:21:55Asterisk hardware, you know footnote hardware, you know, like the the Samsung Galaxy fold
1:22:04That's just to name one example. Let's even if it hadn't had the problems that it had
1:22:11In terms of the initial versions, you know, actually literally breaking while people using them
1:22:18So even if everything had gone as they had hoped,
1:22:23it was asterisk hardware where it was a footnote,
1:22:27where it was like, ah, you know,
1:22:28a couple thousand people are gonna buy these things.
1:22:31This was not--
1:22:32- Well, a better story, it's like the Galaxy S10
1:22:34that shipped, I think it was,
1:22:35I can't remember if it was the S10 or the Note 10,
1:22:37but originally they designed it without buttons.
1:22:40It was gonna be like one of those capacitive
1:22:42or squeeze things, and one of the executives finally saw it
1:22:45and said no, and like just, when you start thinking
1:22:47that they had done that before it was signed off on
1:22:50is just not the way Apple works.
1:22:52But then they had to put all the buttons on one side
1:22:54and they couldn't do the buttons.
1:22:55And that is not how you ever want
1:22:58a hardware production pipeline to work.
1:23:01But we take it for granted that Apple fixes those things
1:23:04before we ever see them.
1:23:05- So bad.
1:23:15You would like everything to be thoughtfully designed
1:23:25and thought through.
1:23:26And most companies don't do that, unfortunately.
1:23:32It goes back to being considerate.
1:23:33You want to be considerate.
1:23:34Right.
1:23:35And basically, the one thing I hear--
1:23:41and I know you have friends at Apple,
1:23:43And I know you have sources at Apple.
1:23:45I have friends and sources and friends who are sources.
1:23:48But the one thing that comes back over and over again
1:23:51is that they really do,
1:23:55the people at Apple really do try to make the devices
1:24:00and computers that they themselves would want to buy
1:24:04and that they're happy to buy
1:24:06and recommend to their friends.
1:24:07And it's not about, hey, let's make sure 2019
1:24:12we hit our revenue number and let's ship whatever we have to
1:24:17ship at whatever price point to hit this thing. It's, it's, it's
1:24:22a constant iteration of, let's try to make the thing that we
1:24:27want to buy ourselves. And, you know, when they fall short, when
1:24:33when the keyboards suck on Mac books, you know, the best
1:24:38sources I've had on that over the last couple of years are
1:24:42people inside Apple, you know, who are like, yeah, the keyboard sucks.
1:24:46It's terrible. And, uh, you know,
1:24:49but we're, we're working on it. We, we realize it, you know,
1:24:54that was to me,
1:24:55the thing that was like the light at the end of the tunnel of the bad keyboard
1:25:00saga on Mac books, which again,
1:25:03we're not out of yet because they've only shipped the first, you know,
1:25:06the only thing they've shipped with the new keyboard is the 16 inch MacBook pro
1:25:11Although I do think that the
1:25:14The rest of the keyboards they are shipping I think have fixed the hey keys get stuck
1:25:22They're just not great keyboards, right? They can the edge off of it, right? That's the same thing
1:25:27It's like they could have they can't revert because they have a whole roadmap going ahead that requires certain things
1:25:32From a keyboard so they have to literally make a new keyboard
1:25:35Which is a two-year endeavor the way that they make keyboards, right? Exactly, which you know
1:25:40it's it's the downside to relying on a company that makes everything from the
1:25:47Operating system to the hardware is that if they screw up
1:25:53You're buying screwed up
1:25:55Products, you know, there's there's no way around that
1:25:59Yeah, they can they can fix an antenna, you know about half a year but they can fix that keyboard fast, right
1:26:07So my pick for the private advocate is the iPhone 10 and and the reason why is
1:26:14that I
1:26:16Really do think that they pulled off
1:26:19Like in a way and I love it. I love like close-up magic. I love like
1:26:26The Penn and Teller show I I just love it
1:26:30But I almost feel like they pulled off a magic trick where they had they said like hey
1:26:37We're ten years into this thing where we've created this thing. That is the most successful
1:26:43Consumer product in the history of consumer products literally
1:26:48I mean you can really make the case that the original iPhone
1:26:52going through the iPhone 8 is
1:26:56the single most
1:27:00Successful product in history. I mean and I'm talking about
1:27:04toothpastes
1:27:06tied detergent washing machines
1:27:09Corvettes and and cars and
1:27:13Boeing airplanes, you know, you can go all the way from a tube of toothpaste
1:27:19to a
1:27:2250 million dollar Boeing
1:27:24747 the single most
1:27:27successful
1:27:29product in
1:27:31History is the iPhone it really is they've they've made more money than anybody and you know
1:27:37I mean the people have oligopoly control over fossil fuel resources
1:27:39Yeah, it's astounding. It's absolutely astounding
1:27:44But that the fundamental notion of the iPhone is it is this thing?
1:27:51with a screen and
1:27:53one button underneath and the button is you you click the button and that takes you out of whatever you're doing
1:28:01To the home screen and then you click another thing on the home screen and then that's what you're doing
1:28:08to a device with no button and
1:28:11I really do think that it is
1:28:15under remarked upon
1:28:18how successfully
1:28:20They changed the fundamental
1:28:23fundamental
1:28:25Root level of how the system works on these devices of
1:28:30The most popular product on the planet
1:28:36With the iPhone 10 and I really and and I really do think that the
1:28:44the iPhone 10's fundamental notion of how these devices work is
1:28:52Easily suited for another 10-year run, you know and until they need to do it again
1:28:58Maybe longer, you know and no other computing platform in history has ever made that transition
1:29:05mid-flight
1:29:07without any sort of
1:29:09Decline and popularity or something like that. I
1:29:12So that's my pick. I really do think that the iPhone 10 and
1:29:17consider myself guilty as
1:29:21having not written enough about how
1:29:24brilliant this transition
1:29:27has been
1:29:31between
1:29:32the old way of having a
1:29:35Home button a physical home button to the new way of having no button and doing everything with gestures on the screen
1:29:43it
1:29:45It is so
1:29:47easily overlooked and it's the success of the idea
1:29:52and the implementation that it was so easy to overlook.
1:29:56- It's so interesting to me too,
1:29:58because it's one of those things where you look back
1:30:01and Apple replaced the iPod mini,
1:30:03most successful iPod at the time with the iPod nano,
1:30:06which people thought was absurd.
1:30:08And here you have the iPhone,
1:30:09which is the iconic phone for so many people
1:30:11with that home button.
1:30:13And they replaced it with another phone,
1:30:16but they did it in a very opinionated way
1:30:18and they tested other things.
1:30:20Like they had a virtual home button
1:30:21on some of the early prototypes that was a different UI,
1:30:24but they were like, no, we're getting rid of it.
1:30:26We're going all into this.
1:30:27And just by comparison, you look at like Android 10
1:30:30and a bunch of the Android devices
1:30:31and people are still complaining and arguing
1:30:33about how the gestures should work
1:30:35and being upset by the different implementations.
1:30:38Apple managed to do that in one cut of the knife.
1:30:40And I think that's part of what makes Apple, Apple.
1:30:43It's that they do all the testing internally.
1:30:45they come to a very opinionated choice,
1:30:47then they stick by it and they put it in the complete package
1:30:50that feels like it's one thing and works.
1:30:53- Right, I've always said, you know,
1:30:55and you know, it's always good grist for a talk or a column
1:31:00or an entire podcast.
1:31:03What is design?
1:31:04What does design mean?
1:31:06But fundamentally to me, design is making decisions.
1:31:11And the more you design something,
1:31:16the more of those decisions you make as the designer,
1:31:22as opposed to leaving to the user.
1:31:25And they made very, very strong decisions
1:31:30with the iPhone 10, whereas there is no option,
1:31:34there's no way to configure the phone
1:31:37to put a virtual home button down there.
1:31:41You know what, I don't want this to be different.
1:31:43I just wanna have a thing down there that I tap.
1:31:46There's certainly room, they could have done it,
1:31:48and they didn't.
1:31:49And I think the fact that so few people
1:31:53have complained about it is absolutely extraordinary.
1:31:57- Also don't let people opt out,
1:31:59which I think you can still do on Android.
1:32:00Like, the boot ninja can't say no,
1:32:02you can't swipe left or right on this app.
1:32:05The apps had to adapt to the new paradigm.
1:32:07- Right, and so...
1:32:10I don't want to get into an argument about who's ripping off whom blah blah blah and
1:32:18I know that there have been the new fundamental notion in the iPhone 10 era is that instead
1:32:24of a home button you swipe up from the bottom and that is how you go back to the home screen
1:32:33or if you swipe up a little it's how you get to the app switcher and I get it I know that
1:32:40that there have been other touchscreen devices
1:32:44that have a swipe up from the bottom to blank metaphor
1:32:48or conceptual design.
1:32:53Going back to the Palm Pre, which was--
1:32:56- It's actually just as a fun aside,
1:32:58there was a bunch of designers at Apple
1:33:00that did a lot of that stuff.
1:33:01Like the original version of Safari on the original iPhone
1:33:04had the card metaphor.
1:33:05It was abandoned later, but it had it.
1:33:07And then when, what's his name?
1:33:10John Rubenstein left, a bunch of designers went with him
1:33:14and they made WebOS and then when that failed,
1:33:16half of them went to Google with Mateus Duarte
1:33:18and half of them went back to Apple
1:33:20and they're still making those interfaces.
1:33:22- Right, so I get it.
1:33:24It's not about being first, it is about doing it right.
1:33:29And it's a debate that goes all the way back
1:33:34to the original Macintosh where the people
1:33:40who want to take credit away from Apple
1:33:43and Steve Jobs' Macintosh team from the early '80s
1:33:48and they wanna say, they just ripped off Xerox
1:33:52and all the stuff that Xerox was doing.
1:33:55And that, you can find quotes from Steve Jobs
1:34:00who was like, once I saw the Xerox stuff,
1:34:02I knew that every computer was gonna work this way,
1:34:05blah, blah, blah.
1:34:06And you're like, well then, he was just a ripoff artist.
1:34:10But it's more complicated than that to me,
1:34:14where it's like you have to look at it
1:34:16and figure out the right way to do it.
1:34:21And there's a reason why this,
1:34:24it wasn't just like institutional obstinance
1:34:28on Xerox's part.
1:34:30What they were making, these $20,000 systems,
1:34:34to get started,
1:34:38It was so expensive that of course it wasn't going to really take root at a consumer level.
1:34:45And when you really look at it, it's like, okay, there's overlapping windows and there's
1:34:51a mouse that you can drag and it moves a pointer on the screen and you can click on buttons.
1:34:58But when you get past that and you actually look at how the Xerox systems worked pre-Macintosh,
1:35:05It's like, well, it was kind of shitty, right?
1:35:09It wasn't great.
1:35:12And then you use the original, you know,
1:35:15system one from 1984 with the Macintosh.
1:35:19And you're like, this is, you know, it's limited.
1:35:21It's missing so much.
1:35:24It is missing a lot, but what is here,
1:35:27everything that is here is actually great.
1:35:30It works exactly the way you would expect it to.
1:35:34It is really, really well thought out.
1:35:37That's the difference.
1:35:40And to me, the thing that the iPhone 10 pulled off,
1:35:45looking at this, is this transition from a,
1:35:51what's the fundamental notion of the system?
1:35:56And to me, the fundamental notion of the 2007 iPhone
1:36:01is we have a rectangular screen
1:36:04And it's in one of two states.
1:36:07It's either on the home screen where you have a list of apps,
1:36:12and then you tap an app.
1:36:14And when you do tap an app, then the second state
1:36:17is the app has the screen.
1:36:20And then how do you get out of the app?
1:36:24The app doesn't have anything to do with it.
1:36:28It's this button underneath the screen, and you tap it,
1:36:33and then you go back to the home screen.
1:36:34The app closes and then you're back at the home screen.
1:36:38And they obviously parlayed that single button
1:36:43into extra functions over the years.
1:36:46They made it so that a double tap
1:36:48would put you in multitasking mode
1:36:50once they allowed apps to maintain their state
1:36:54in the background and famously turned it
1:37:00into a fingerprint sensor with the iPhone 5S, I believe.
1:37:05- Yeah, absolutely.
1:37:06- So they extended that basic system for a while,
1:37:13but the iPhone 10 was like just a total rethink of,
1:37:18hey, what should the phone be today?
1:37:22And the answer of there should be no button,
1:37:26it should just be entirely a screen on the front face,
1:37:30informed everything else about it,
1:37:32including the hardware,
1:37:35which involved the notch and the face ID sensor.
1:37:39And face ID has worked fabulously, you know?
1:37:43- Yeah.
1:37:44- Since it came out, you know,
1:37:45fingerprint sensor was controversial at first,
1:37:50the face sensor was controversial.
1:37:52Everybody is a little skeptical of these biometric authentication things at first.
1:37:57Until any other vendor does it.
1:37:59Yeah.
1:37:59Until they do it.
1:38:00And the notch itself was controversial aesthetically, et cetera, et cetera.
1:38:07But the fact that they set that hardware in stone two years in advance and then
1:38:15caught up to it with software by the time it shipped and had it be such a cohesive
1:38:20system that for people who switch from an old iPhone to the new one, if I honestly don't
1:38:31know anybody technical or non-technical who truly regrets upgrading to a 10 class phone.
1:38:40To me, that's the product of the decade.
1:38:43And it's amazing when you think about how many things had to come together for that
1:38:47because in order for Face ID to work,
1:38:49they had to have the neural network
1:38:51in the silicon like built in.
1:38:52Back then people were saying Apple had no idea
1:38:54about artificial intelligence were being mapped by Google.
1:38:57They're so far behind in every,
1:38:58and two years prior to people saying that,
1:39:00they were baking AI into a neural engine block
1:39:03on the processor.
1:39:05And they even like, not like Samsung,
1:39:06where they made a folding screen,
1:39:07they folded the display backwards against itself
1:39:10in the device, they wouldn't have to have a chin.
1:39:13And we're still seeing new phones come out with a chin
1:39:15because they either can't afford or can't figure out
1:39:17how to do that reversal for the display.
1:39:20So it is an amazing,
1:39:23just like the original iPhone was an amazing achievement
1:39:25in terms of multi-touch and, you know,
1:39:27all these technologies coming together.
1:39:29This is, I agree with it, it's totally a valid choice too,
1:39:32because so many things had to come together.
1:39:35It was like shooting arrows into arrows
1:39:36that then hit a target for that phone to ship.
1:39:39- Yeah, and I think there, you know,
1:39:44You know, I wish that there was a Mac
1:39:47Cuz you know the Mac is my favorite Apple product is my favorite product in the world
1:39:52I wish there was a Mac that I could pick as a product of the decade
1:39:55I do think that the Mac is back on track
1:39:58I think that with the iMac Pro and the new 16 inch
1:40:03MacBook Pro and
1:40:06Even in the air from 2010 it defined like every ultra book that came out for the rest of the decade was based on that
1:40:11Yeah, that would be my that's exactly where I was going was
1:40:16that if you want to pick the product of the decade and not
1:40:19be biased towards stuff that came out in the last 18 months
1:40:24at the end of the decade, the 2010 MacBook Air is arguably
1:40:29it has to be on the list because every single it got to the
1:40:35point where unless you were looking at the back of the open
1:40:40laptop to see if it had a glowing Apple logo, you
1:40:44couldn't tell if it was a MacBook or not. Right. It was
1:40:47like, yeah, if you're looking at the front of it, it was
1:40:50aluminum, it was wedge shaped, it had a black keyboard that lit
1:40:53up. And I mean, every single laptop looked like 2010 MacBook
1:41:00Air for quite a number of years. I was funny, because when I
1:41:04would put that on a shortlist,
1:41:06totally. And when I did the product of the decade list, like
1:41:08I was going through it and I looked at a bunch of other ones
1:41:11like the Verge had the iPhone 4 at the top of their list.
1:41:15And I think you can make an argument for that too
1:41:17because it was such like the first retina display,
1:41:19first front facing camera, all these things.
1:41:22But when you look at that list and you go through it
1:41:24from iPad to 2010 MacBook Air to the iPhone 4,
1:41:29you could argue the iPad Pro maybe, AirPods, Apple Watch,
1:41:33iPhone 10, there's not a lot of room
1:41:36for other companies on that list.
1:41:37And it's an amazing amount of technology for one company
1:41:41to have put out to have changed the decade that much.
1:41:43- Well, and you know, a company that's beleaguered and...
1:41:47- Yes, and is failing and their worst decades
1:41:51are behind them, they never attained the same.
1:41:52- And clearly needs to fire their CEO.
1:41:55- Yes.
1:41:56What is that guy even doing?
1:41:59- You know what's funny?
1:42:03I've only been writing Daring Fireball since 2002.
1:42:07And so, you know, it's coincided
1:42:11with a very, very good run for Apple.
1:42:15I wish that I'd been writing it since 1992
1:42:22so that I could have that decade under my belt
1:42:26of saying that the Apple, you know,
1:42:29Apple does need a new CEO.
1:42:32Apple CEO is an idiot.
1:42:35Apple CEO doesn't get it.
1:42:37I wish, because if you had listened to me,
1:42:40if you had been my personal friend in that era,
1:42:42you would have heard me rant about such things.
1:42:46But it does make me wonder why,
1:42:50like if the world is so critical of Tim Cook
1:42:56and his stewardship of Apple over the last
1:43:01nine years as CEO, what would they be saying if Apple actually did have a terrible CEO?
1:43:09Like if Gill immediately if Gill Emilio was the CEO now,
1:43:15it's absolutely astounding because when they when he was the CEO,
1:43:22they were so much smaller and so much less consequential to the daily life of so many people.
1:43:29There were people, there were columnists and commentators who astutely pointed out some
1:43:39of the problems, but it's absolutely astounding to me how common the criticism is that Tim
1:43:49Cook has done nothing as CEO. Still, even to this day, it really is, you know, the iPhone.
1:44:00iPhone X truly was a total reset of the concept of what a cell phone should be. AirPods are
1:44:10a true phenomenon. They still start at $160. They're very expensive for headphones.
1:44:22And you see them everywhere. iPad is everywhere. Again, I have so many complaints. I cannot
1:44:33even get into it as a—
1:44:37I was watching that movie Noel on Disney+ over the holidays and every kid wanted an
1:44:41iPad and you just can't buy that kind of mainstream publicity.
1:44:45And again, that's not Apple TV+, that's Disney+, right?
1:44:51The Mac is still going strong and yes, admittedly they even said at that thing a couple years
1:44:59ago that they kind of took their eye off the ball with the Mac for a while.
1:45:05But you know, the new, if anything, right now the only gap in the Mac lineup is this
1:45:14is the idea of a mid range desktop, which clearly isn't been a gap forever, right?
1:45:20But which clearly they know about, you know, there's, you could argue that with the trash
1:45:27can style Mac Pro, that they had their eye off the ball of what a high end Mac Pro should
1:45:34be that it was outside their view. Whereas if the gap is in the mid range, they at least know about
1:45:40it. And whether they're going to whether they're going to fill the gap, or whether they feel like
1:45:47the gap is okay, that we're just gonna let it be, they at least know there's no you can't possibly
1:45:55not know about it. If you're making this device that, you know, is $52,000 and has 1.5 terabytes
1:46:03It's a ram.
1:46:04- That pro workflow team was such a stroke of genius
1:46:07because having those people in there
1:46:08to hit all this stuff before consumers have,
1:46:11they're the ones arguing for the stuff inside Apple now,
1:46:13doing everything that every pro wants inside the company.
1:46:16And they have to,
1:46:17like there was that great thing
1:46:18about Steve Jobs hating consultants
1:46:19because they had no skin in the game.
1:46:21They didn't have to ship.
1:46:22And these people have deliverables.
1:46:23They're not just sitting there telling Apple what to do.
1:46:26They have to make the stuff that Apple uses
1:46:28inside the company.
1:46:29And they're fighting not just for Apple stuff,
1:46:31but they're fighting to make Adobe stuff run better.
1:46:33- Yeah, totally. - On that, it's amazing.
1:46:35- Absolutely. - Amazing, smart team.
1:46:37- Yeah, all right, let me take one last spot here
1:46:40and thank our fourth final sponsor,
1:46:43last sponsor of the decade.
1:46:45Unbelievable, I can't believe it.
1:46:47I mean, how many sponsor reads have I done this decade?
1:46:50But this is the last one I will do this decade,
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1:48:26Start thinking about like hey, I've been meaning to do XYZ
1:48:30Here's my resolutions blah blah blah
1:48:33if
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1:49:52And there you go.
1:49:53That is the final sponsor read of this podcast
1:49:58for the decade.
1:49:59And don't give me this nonsense about decades starting
1:50:05in the next year.
1:50:06Nobody thinks that way.
1:50:08Everybody knows. - It's not human readable.
1:50:10- Yeah, no, it's, come on.
1:50:12This is the end of the decade.
1:50:14- It's like if you wanna win a pet into word,
1:50:15you can go for that, but no.
1:50:16- All right, so my pick is the iPhone X.
1:50:19Your pick was the Apple Watch.
1:50:21What else is, I think you're right that the MacBook Air
1:50:26from like 2010 should be on that short list.
1:50:30What else do you think is on the list
1:50:32for the best products of the last decade?
1:50:35There's a few things like from Apple
1:50:36I mentioned already the iPad because it was literally born in 2010 and it seemed just update after update including the iPad Pro
1:50:42Then you designed iPad Pro
1:50:44Beyond Apple, I think Tesla like the model you could argue between the Model S or the Model 3
1:50:49I think what they've done is really consumer eyes
1:50:52What was previously sort of niche and it certainly popularized what was previously sort of niche technology?
1:51:01So 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
1:51:082006 Acura
1:51:10And again at 2006 it doesn't even have it doesn't even have an I
1:51:17iPod connector
1:51:19You know, I mean it not only does it not have USB or carplay or anything it literally
1:51:25We bought it the year before the iPod stuff
1:51:30You know became a standard thing
1:51:32It's it's an old car
1:51:34And we you know
1:51:37Over the holidays, you know, we went to see my wife's mom and we went to my parents house
1:51:43And so, you know done, you know
1:51:46we do a bit more driving at the end of December than we typically do by far and
1:51:50I was pumping gas the other day because you know
1:51:54We did the driving and we had to pump gas and I was like, this is ridiculous
1:51:59Like when you really think about it, it's like
1:52:02We're just pumping this
1:52:05flammable liquid dead dinosaurs that is not that cheap right it's three bucks a gallon yeah, you know
1:52:14It's more expensive than like Tropicana orange juice
1:52:19It is pretty expensive. You're pumping it into a tank, and then you're just lighting it on
1:52:28Yes, it is not efficient. So I I do give Tesla credit, you know
1:52:35Again, I I don't love any of their cars except for this new I love the cyber. Yeah
1:52:43I love it and I get it that it's sort of
1:52:46Ridiculously over the top but I kind of feel like they screwed up with all of their previous
1:52:54designs where they kind of made all of their previous designs look like
1:53:00Mid-range
1:53:03Japanese
1:53:04Honda
1:53:06Toyota
1:53:07You know, yeah like generic but sort of messed up generic, right?
1:53:12And then the only thing that was really distinctive about them was when they got rid of the grill in the front
1:53:19yes, they didn't need it but
1:53:22Aesthetically it looked like cars that had their mouths sewn shut. Yeah. Yeah
1:53:28You know what? I mean? Whereas the new Cybertruck like the bad Deadpool from that horrible Wolverine exactly
1:53:34exactly
1:53:37It just looks it just looked like a car
1:53:40The the Tesla's without the grills to me just look like cars that are suffocating
1:53:46They don't they don't look good and I get it
1:53:49I totally get that if you don't need a grill, you shouldn't have a grill just for aesthetic reasons
1:53:56And I get that it's at painted
1:53:59BMW in particular into a design corner because
1:54:04They're one of their signatures of all of their cars are those kidney bean
1:54:09Grills on the front and if they don't need them what how are you gonna know it's a BMW I get it
1:54:16I get it.
1:54:18But it's an opportunity for a company like Tesla
1:54:22that has no gas-driven or diesel-driven car--
1:54:28no legacy.
1:54:29And just sealing it up was sort of the wrong decision,
1:54:35in my opinion.
1:54:36Yeah, no, totally.
1:54:37And the profile of their cars, they're
1:54:42just not that great looking of cars in my opinion. I get it that they drive cool and
1:54:48they accelerate fast and there's all sorts of good things, but just looking at them,
1:54:54they're not that cool. I think that the Cybertruck, which is a ridiculous name, but I love it.
1:55:02I just love it. It's like the DeLorean Motor Company never
1:55:10went away, you know, and they just kept, you know, if they hadn't gone, if they had somehow
1:55:16succeeded in the early 80s, you know, and they were still around today, that's what
1:55:23they would be making, you know, and I love it.
1:55:26I think, I just wish that they would make a, I have no need for a truck at all.
1:55:32Absolutely not.
1:55:34But I need a car, so I just wish that, you know, and I don't think it's too much to
1:55:39extrapolate that maybe their next car would be from the design language of the
1:55:45Cybertruck but that's what I want I want a sedan yeah I want a sedan from the
1:55:51design language of the Tesla Cybertruck I love smartest like inside people are
1:55:55like where's the stuff to connect it's got like NASA quality connections you
1:55:59just loop things over the whole thing is so smartly thought out yeah like granted
1:56:03I'm sure everything he makes is secretly for Mars like from the tunnels to the
1:56:06trucks to everything, but you know, utility is utility.
1:56:09Yeah, I love it. And to me is the promise of Tesla. It's the
1:56:15first it's the two most interesting Tesla products to
1:56:20me are the the roadster, which was their first car. Yeah, you
1:56:25know, it was sort of a Miata style. It was literally a Lotus
1:56:28I think. Yeah, like, Lotus. Yeah, it was I definitely a
1:56:33Lotus hardware with a Tesla drivetrain and this Cybertruck.
1:56:40And I really feel like the Cybertruck to me is the first thing that made me look at Tesla
1:56:46and say, I think that this company really might do what all of its proponents are saying
1:56:53they might do.
1:56:54They might really own the car business going forward.
1:56:59If they extrapolate that design language into a full line of cars, I I think it's brilliant
1:57:06Yeah, absolutely and nothing else is really like it. Yeah, it's just lead distinct and it's authentic is what it feels like
1:57:12Yeah, and you know and to me they they took some steps backward, you know
1:57:18Like the model X with those gull wings that go up dumb and the model 3 is like
1:57:26You know what it I get it that is more affordable, but it's way less cool than the Model S
1:57:31You know the Model S is looks way better, but the Model S. Which is expensive and which is
1:57:37Undeniably a great sedan
1:57:40Yes in my opinion doesn't look great
1:57:43It 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
1:57:49Make it. What's the point of making it exactly whereas the Cybertruck? It's like oh, man. They had to yeah
1:57:55nobody else could have made this car and to me that's the one what you want is that reaction
1:58:03like when when apple announced the original iphone and yeah famously the the blackberry people had
1:58:10a high level meeting the next day and they came to the conclusion that apple had faked it and it was
1:58:17a complete fraud that it was impossible they were like well the bottom line is that they couldn't
1:58:24have done this so they must be lying. I don't know what they're going to do in six months when they
1:58:29say they're going to ship it but it can't possibly be what they say it is. When in fact it actually
1:58:35was. That's what you want, right? And that to me is the Cybertruck. The Cybertruck is like people
1:58:41from Ford and Chevy and whoever else, Honda, Toyota, they're like, "Ah, nobody's going to buy
1:58:46that. It looks like, you know, Back to the Future fan fiction or something like that." Yeah, guess
1:58:53Guess what? That's what you want from the other companies.
1:58:55Whereas like the Model S, it's like,
1:58:58it just looks like a really nice, you know, Honda Accord.
1:59:01- Like anyone to try to get a crafted out.
1:59:03- And then, you know, it's like you just sort of
1:59:05stretch this one part out and...
1:59:07- Yeah. Totally.
1:59:09- All right. What else? End of the decade. Last episode.
1:59:13- I'd argue the Echo, because it really sort of
1:59:16popularizing everything about the home base
1:59:18for far field digital assistant.
1:59:22Yeah, I could see that in a,
1:59:25in a kind of introduced people to the whole,
1:59:28let's have a device where the primary interface is talking to it, you know?
1:59:33Yeah. Which I think going forward,
1:59:38you know, hold me to it, René. Yes.
1:59:4310 years from now,
1:59:44let's record the end of the 2020s episode.
1:59:49Me and you, I do think that that,
1:59:52the defining interface of the next decade it you know it's it's natural
1:59:59it's what humans do we talk right we we communicate ideas and so far they've
2:00:07been so primitive just so utterly primitive you know and and you know I'm
2:00:13a huge Kubrick fan and and 2001 predicted that by 2001 we'd have this
2:00:19how 9,000 capability at least in like
2:00:23You know trillion dollar spaceship, but even even with the trillion dollars you couldn't buy a how 2000 today, right?
2:00:31Yeah, even Jeff Bezos Knight Rider, right? Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook cannot get Knight Rider
2:00:38quality
2:00:40AI today, it's hard. It is it is much harder than we thought but it's it's so obviously
2:00:48obviously
2:00:50The way the future like we've conquered the visual computer
2:00:55interface and
2:00:57I don't mean that to say that there's nowhere to go that that ten years from now our visual
2:01:04GUI interfaces will look exactly the same
2:01:07but
2:01:09We did I mean we conquered this a long time ago
2:01:12I would say you know in the first decade in the 80s 80s through the mid 90s. We kind of
2:01:18conquered the basic concepts of what should a computer interface on a screen
2:01:24look like. And even if VR becomes a huge thing, it's still the... it's just a display...
2:01:35It's like UI elements are still UI elements. Exactly. It's a display problem
2:01:41and a battery life problem and a field of view problem,
2:01:46but the basic idea of if we present people
2:01:50with these things on screen, we know how to do it well.
2:01:54And we know, you'll see a scrolling list in front of you
2:01:58and you just move your hands and you'll do this.
2:02:01Whereas the verbal interface of speaking to a thing,
2:02:06we know what it should be like.
2:02:10It should be like me talking to you.
2:02:13And I say things to you that the transcript
2:02:17of which may not make that much sense, but you get it.
2:02:21And all of the thousands of people listening to me
2:02:23talk to you get it.
2:02:25We just expect it being the computer to get it.
2:02:31That to me is the next step. - Conversational inference.
2:02:34Yeah, absolutely.
2:02:35That's why like when Apple hired John Giannandrea,
2:02:38I was sort of happy because I think Apple's
2:02:40near-term future has to involve some form of Siri OS,
2:02:43whether it's an actual Siri OS,
2:02:45or it's just a spread out distributed
2:02:48across a variety of devices.
2:02:49As much as we hear rumors about them working on reality OS
2:02:52for the glasses, I really hope that they're working
2:02:55even harder on Siri OS because whether
2:02:58that's never gonna fully replace screens,
2:03:00but it's gonna be a huge part of our-
2:03:01- I think it's more important going forward.
2:03:04I'm, and again, 10 years from now, you'll be on the show,
2:03:10maybe I'll have to eat my words.
2:03:11Maybe we'll have to listen to this particular episode and go back and,
2:03:15and I'll be like, John, we were crazy at carefully. We predicted that.
2:03:18I think that the verbal interface is way more important than the,
2:03:24than a VR visual interface. And I get it.
2:03:28I totally get that. Like, uh, you know,
2:03:32like having,
2:03:33if you have always on glasses that have this and they can
2:03:38always pop up, you know, the name of people, you know, somebody you've only met once and
2:03:44it just pops the person's name over their head and you can always know their name. That
2:03:48would be great. I need that. I totally get it. But I still feel that fundamentally the
2:03:55idea of how that would work, we've already worked out, you know, whereas the idea of
2:04:02how the verbal interface will work has not been worked out yet and like the
2:04:09movie her is a good template and well near that yet oh absolutely you know yeah
2:04:14and well and and you know this is not the Star Wars holiday spectacular yes
2:04:22although I should say to those of you listening you know who knows maybe the
2:04:26next episode will be, first episode of 2020. I mean, I gotta have a Star Wars holiday spectacular
2:04:34soon thanks to the new movie. But I will say that to me, one of the many brilliant ideas
2:04:42of the original Star Wars movie from 1977 was that moment when C-3PO starts coming down
2:04:48the steps and the bartender is like, "We don't serve your kind here." And he's like, "Get
2:04:52out of here. And there's like this resentment towards droids and automation. And I, that
2:05:01whole sort of disdain towards droids is, is really brilliant. Because as a kid, I was
2:05:11like, Oh my God, why wouldn't you want that? I would love if I owned any business, any
2:05:15business imaginable to mankind. A bar, a restaurant, a hardware store,
2:05:20anything, even a hair salon. I would still welcome a droid. If a droid came in, if C-3PO came in,
2:05:28I'd be like, "Come on in!" I would love to talk to you because you are amazing because you're a
2:05:35robot who can talk and walk and do things, right? The idea that in that universe that there's this
2:05:42disdain towards droids was to me one of the most brilliant ideas because it was clearly
2:05:49super exciting that they existed but also super insightful that maybe the you know carbon-based
2:05:57light forms would be yeah disdainful of them uh i you know where are we going with this you know
2:06:05like i i i often my wife gives me a hard time because i'll say something to one of our assistants
2:06:11whether 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
2:06:17Often have to at the end of it. I say thank you
2:06:20And 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?
2:06:28Why do you say thank you? You're an asshole, you know
2:06:30Well, I just don't want to be a jerk, but I kind of feel like as a society
2:06:37We're tending towards we're gonna be jerks to the assistance. Yeah
2:06:41Yeah, it is human nature and we like to be jerks to things that we can be jerks to
2:06:47you know and it's like, you know a society has gotten more progressive and so like
2:06:54You don't want to get into an uber and be a jerk to your uber driver because you feel like a jerk
2:07:05But 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
2:07:12That would be you know
2:07:14There's no downside to it and I kind of feel like that's where we're going
2:07:18Like we want one like the Google one for kids forces you to use your manners and say please and thank you
2:07:23Yeah, there is or an Amazon one. I feel like there's one of those that do that
2:07:26Well, I and I kind of feel like that it's fighting a losing battle
2:07:31Like that's my one of my predictions for the coming decade. Is that the somebody?
2:07:36One or more companies are gonna get the voice assistant thing really good. They're gonna become a
2:07:43major part of daily life and
2:07:45Most people are gonna be total
2:07:48jerks to the system and
2:07:51Not me and I'm gonna be this weirdo
2:07:55It's you know like in a way that likes, you know, some people are like, oh, that's the guy who wears a bowtie
2:08:00I'm going to be the guy who continues to say thank you to his voice assistant.
2:08:05Yeah, I do it too, but I always thought it was because I was Canadian, but I'll use your word.
2:08:10I'm Canadian without liking cold weather.
2:08:15I probably should have been born in Canada, to tell you the truth.
2:08:20Yeah, you would have eaten way more stuff with me and Guy that way.
2:08:24(laughing)
2:08:26Anything else?
2:08:26What else is on our last podcast of the decade?
2:08:31I can't think of anything.
2:08:34I'm gonna call it.
2:08:34- No, I mean, there's a lot of other stuff,
2:08:36but I think all the home automation stuff
2:08:39just falls out of the serial X,
2:08:41and that was the innovation that led to all of that.
2:08:43- Well, but bottom line is that
2:08:47I think it's such a complicated problem,
2:08:49but it really, it just has to be,
2:08:53And I do think we're getting there.
2:08:55I think that AI is so clearly getting,
2:08:57did you see the thing that the Pixelmature guys
2:09:02shipped about a week or two ago?
2:09:04- No.
2:09:05- So the Pixelmature Pro shipped a,
2:09:09just like a, you know, I don't know,
2:09:15minor dot one update.
2:09:18But they have a new image scaling algorithm
2:09:21that is based on a machine learning thing.
2:09:26And it is astounding.
2:09:32And the basic idea is that you can take a small image,
2:09:35like a 200 by 200 profile picture,
2:09:38and you wanna scale it to 400 by 400,
2:09:41and it actually interpolates the pixels
2:09:43in a way that you get a,
2:09:46you could take a small image and scale it up
2:09:49and have it look so much better than any other algorithm
2:09:54that I've ever seen before.
2:09:56It is absolutely phenomenal.
2:09:59It is, to me, if you wanna say to somebody
2:10:03who doesn't know what quote unquote machine learning is
2:10:07or does or how it's making things,
2:10:11it's like their blog post explaining it
2:10:15is the best thing I've ever seen in terms of,
2:10:18Look, here's how image scaling from a small image
2:10:23to a large image used to work.
2:10:25Here's the examples of the output.
2:10:28- Bicubic interpolation.
2:10:30- Well, and bicubic is obviously the dumbest one.
2:10:34- Yeah.
2:10:35- But anybody can understand it.
2:10:38You don't have to be a nerd or a computer programmer
2:10:41to get it.
2:10:42You're like, oh yeah, I get it.
2:10:43You're just sort of taking the individual.
2:10:45I see everything as a pixel.
2:10:47a pixel is a square.
2:10:49If you just make every square two times larger,
2:10:53this is what you get.
2:10:54And I get that if you do that and then kind of apply
2:10:59a quote unquote sharpening algorithm, this is what you get.
2:11:03There's just no way to take a small image
2:11:05and make a large image out of it
2:11:07without making it look like crap.
2:11:09And then you look at what they're doing with this thing,
2:11:12with this new algorithm, and it's like,
2:11:14that's kind of astounding.
2:11:16- Yeah.
2:11:17It really is. And I feel like that, you know, I've never been a doubter of machine learning
2:11:27and I totally get there at this moment at the cusp of 2020 where we're still in the
2:11:35early days of it. And so I feel like the 10 years from now episode of the show where you
2:11:42you and I are talking about the 2020s,
2:11:45I feel like that's gonna be a big part of it.
2:11:48And I feel like that's gonna be a huge part
2:11:51of making conversational computer interfaces work.
2:11:55There's just no way to do it
2:11:59with a bunch of human written if this, if that,
2:12:02if else, else, else, if, if.
2:12:06You can't do it.
2:12:06It's gotta be machine learning.
2:12:08That's how our brains sort of work that way, right?
2:12:12And that's how the computers have to work.
2:12:14But it's absolutely going to be, to me,
2:12:18the story of the next decade is having computers
2:12:22that can just listen to us talk
2:12:25and understand the nonsense that's coming out of our mouths.
2:12:29- That's wild.
2:12:30It's like, it's because they're not really coded,
2:12:32they're trained.
2:12:32And I try to explain it to people,
2:12:33like think of Tinder for machines,
2:12:35where it's like, yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes,
2:12:37no, no, no, yes, hot dog.
2:12:39And you don't know how they get to hot dog,
2:12:41but eventually they learn hot dog.
2:12:43- That's so true, right?
2:12:46It's absolutely true.
2:12:50All right, anything else?
2:12:54- No, I think that's, I mean,
2:12:56there's all sorts of cans of worms
2:12:57that all the AI and machine learning open up,
2:12:59but that's a whole different show.
2:13:00- Yeah, absolutely.
2:13:01What do you think on that,
2:13:06If we talk about one last thing, it would be if we've ended on this topic of voice assistance
2:13:16being sort of the map to the future and the biggest road forward.
2:13:22The one product Apple has that is the most voice assistant driven is the HomePod.
2:13:28HomePod is sort of seen as a dud product, you know that that has undersold
2:13:34Where do you think Apple is going on that I
2:13:39Tend to think that they there I think they're gonna stick with it. I don't think they're gonna abandon it
2:13:46I think that they've got to drive the price down. Oh
2:13:48Yeah, 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
2:13:56That's really what they are.
2:13:57They're the ability to have Siri with you everywhere
2:14:00in the easiest, most compact form possible.
2:14:02But the whole future is partly ambient computing.
2:14:05You don't wanna have to have a device with you.
2:14:07You wanna be able to walk around freely
2:14:08and just say things and have them happen.
2:14:11And you have to have some sort of,
2:14:13or the best thing to have for that
2:14:14is a stable in-room presence,
2:14:16which is far field Siri and that is HomePod.
2:14:19But I think initially when you talk to Apple,
2:14:22they were making that for five years.
2:14:23That was started long before these idea of like Echo
2:14:28or Google hubs came out.
2:14:30And they literally made a speech.
2:14:31It was like almost a reverse of what usually happens.
2:14:33Apple brought a speaker to a home assistant fight.
2:14:36And I think it's just their process is sort of slow
2:14:39and hyper-focused.
2:14:40And when you look at it in two different ways,
2:14:42one is the technology they invented for HomePod
2:14:45has been amazing.
2:14:46Like everything from the new iPhone speakers
2:14:49to the new MacBook Pro speakers are phenomenal
2:14:51in large part because of HomePod style technology,
2:14:56they just have to reimagine that product
2:14:59into being something smaller and more compact
2:15:02and being in forms that people want,
2:15:04like a HomePod mini or a HomePod theater.
2:15:07And I think once they get that going,
2:15:08it'll start gaining much more traction.
2:15:10- Yeah, and I kind of feel like
2:15:13if augmented reality is a huge technology,
2:15:21landscape for the next 10 years, I feel like AirPods are the best product
2:15:30currently on the market. And everybody, I, we're, we as humans are more visually
2:15:38biased than any other sense. All of the five senses visual is the one that we're
2:15:45biased towards. And so the fact that AirPods are completely audio completely, that's all
2:15:52they do is audio, that there's no other sensation to them. Although I guess they have a bit
2:15:59of taptic feedback with the AirPods Pro, but consider that an asterisk. But I still feel
2:16:05that they are the best AR product anybody has ever shipped to date.
2:16:11And I don't know if you saw this, but there was someone at WWDC the year before last,
2:16:14They made an app where you wear the AirPods
2:16:16and even if you're very low vision,
2:16:18they will talk you through walks and runs in the city.
2:16:21And they were just a bunch of athletes
2:16:22who hadn't been able to go outside and exercise for years.
2:16:26And they were just wearing AirPods and running.
2:16:28And like the sound of their voice
2:16:29and the look on their face was transformative.
2:16:32- That's unbelievable.
2:16:34I did not see that, but it's, I believe it.
2:16:36And it's truly impressive.
2:16:39And, you know,
2:16:43I'm not skeptical about Apple's goggle type initiatives that are rumored.
2:16:52I'm I raised the questions because I just don't know the answers.
2:16:57Like why in the world would you want to wear these things all day long?
2:17:01I don't get it.
2:17:02I'm not saying I don't believe that it'll come to be.
2:17:06And that 10 years from now when we're doing our 2029 wrap up show,
2:17:12the end of December, that we won't be wearing Apple branded
2:17:17goggles that we've never taken off in our waking hours for the
2:17:20last three years or something like that. I'm not disputing
2:17:24that. I'm just saying I don't get I just can't imagine what
2:17:29they would do. But just there's so much potential there. And the
2:17:34fact that you could just wear AirPods and have them navigate
2:17:37you through a city that you can't see well enough to navigate without them.
2:17:43It just it's just flabbergasting when you think about the potential
2:17:47of what you could do with something that was in your field of vision.
2:17:50Yeah, no, it's it's I'm super excited about this next decade
2:17:54as amazing as this last decade has been, and I would never predict
2:17:57that half the things we got, I can't even imagine what's coming next.
2:18:00Yeah, it's, you know, it's always moving forward.
2:18:04Anyway, Renee, Richie, you're a friend of the show.
2:18:07You're always on frequently.
2:18:10Thank you for being on the year end wrap up show.
2:18:14Everybody can follow you on Twitter @ReneeRitchie,
2:18:19your YouTube channel.
2:18:22What's the best way to get to your YouTube channel?
2:18:25- YouTube.com/vector.
2:18:27- Oh, that would, couldn't be easier.
2:18:28YouTube.com/vector.
2:18:31And you're doing, I mean, how many episodes do you do a week?
2:18:35- Three to four.
2:18:36That, I don't understand, see, last time you were on I said the same thing, I don't understand
2:18:40how that's even possible.
2:18:42And I saw, you started shooting your video in raw, and you did the raw grade, and you
2:18:50showed a still on Twitter, and I was like, holy shit, that looks really good.
2:18:56What are you shooting with?
2:18:57What camera are you using?
2:18:59So I've upgraded, I've got a Canon C200 now, which is a cinema camera, so you can put actual
2:19:04Canon lenses on and I still really like Canon lenses
2:19:08'cause I had a bunch of them to begin with
2:19:09but also they still make really, really good lenses.
2:19:12So I'm shooting raw, which is the same
2:19:13as like shooting a raw photograph.
2:19:15It just means that you have so much more,
2:19:17like there's so much more detail in the image
2:19:20but also you can recover, like you can re-white balance,
2:19:22you can color grade and I'm just learning.
2:19:25So I'm doing the very classic movie one
2:19:27which is teal and orange.
2:19:28So you push teal into the shadows
2:19:30and orange into the flesh tones.
2:19:32And that's what I'm starting with for now.
2:19:34youtube.com/vector
2:19:37Really 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
2:19:44Yeah, I watch yours
2:19:46Thank you, but you know, i'm a huge fan of canon class. I I think canon, uh
2:19:52there
2:19:55You know, I don't want to piss off the nikon people
2:20:00I don't want to piss off the Sony people either. I have always
2:20:04I the thing I've always liked about Canon glass is that Canon glass?
2:20:09To me is neutral it is it it it is
2:20:15It's putty in your hands and you can do what you want and there's no limits to it
2:20:22And and their color is so good. Like I shot I was shooting with Panasonic before I've shot with Sony
2:20:27I'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
2:20:34To say like and I get it. I I do like like cameras and yeah, you know
2:20:39You know and I'm not gonna
2:20:43I say this because I don't want to ever rule out the idea that I'm never gonna just
2:20:48Pop into the Leica store and drop $5,000 and buy like a camera because I might do it. I might do it
2:20:54Yeah, but I haven't yet. But people imbue upon like a magic,
2:21:01you know that you just buy the $5,000 like a system with a nice
2:21:06you know, Sumo locks 2.0 lens and then you pointed at something
2:21:12and you get a wonderful picture. And you know, they're great
2:21:17cameras and they are great glass. I personally love the
2:21:21Canon I like the Canon systems because it it it's not they're not trying to tell
2:21:30you it's magic it's just yeah like it'll make the best of whatever you point to
2:21:35that you know and what comes off the sensors or is just again so pretty right
2:21:39it is just so technically pristine yeah right yeah and then you can do with it
2:21:46what you will. But anyway, that looked amazing.
2:21:49- Oh, thank you.
2:21:50- It really, really, no, really, it really did.
2:21:53You know, maybe, you know, the orange and green thing,
2:21:59you know, you could be pushing it too far,
2:22:01but it looks good.
2:22:02- I just learned, like I said, I'm just learning.
2:22:03So I started looking at the more advanced stuff
2:22:06that people do, like there's five and six
2:22:07and eight point color that's way beyond me now.
2:22:10So I just started with the easiest one that I could find.
2:22:12- Well, you clearly, you need a Pro Display XDR
2:22:14to be able to truly push the limits of it.
2:22:18Anyway, people can see that.
2:22:20And of course, iMore.com, where you're the editor.
2:22:25What's your title?
2:22:26I don't know.
2:22:27- It keeps changing.
2:22:27I just show up for work now.
2:22:29I think it's just your analyst now or something.
2:22:31- Yeah, he's Rene at iMore.com.
2:22:35Anyway, happy new year.
2:22:37Thank you for doing the decade closing episode
2:22:40of the show with me.
2:22:41And I'll talk to you next decade.