The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► I feel like you're on a roll.

00:00:01 ◼   ► - Oh, thank you.

00:00:02 ◼   ► - But you had a really good video the other day.

00:00:03 ◼   ► I don't have it in the notes yet, but I will.

00:00:07 ◼   ► On this analytics situation in the App Store.

00:00:14 ◼   ► We're just jumping right in, no small talk today.

00:00:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, absolutely.

00:00:18 ◼   ► - But this analytic situation in the App Store

00:00:21 ◼   ► and with these apps being discovered,

00:00:23 ◼   ► it's like everything with Facebook.

00:00:26 ◼   ► It's an unrolling scandal.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Like it's not like never ending.

00:00:31 ◼   ► Never ending, we learn one thing after another.

00:00:34 ◼   ► But basically the Wall Street Journal had a story last week

00:00:40 ◼   ► that really escalated this where they did some research

00:00:43 ◼   ► on a bunch of apps that take by nature of the app.

00:00:48 ◼   ► They take very personal information.

00:00:52 ◼   ► These are things like menstrual cycle,

00:00:55 ◼   ► calendar trackers for women.

00:00:57 ◼   ► What are some of the other examples?

00:01:02 ◼   ► - Real estate apps.

00:01:04 ◼   ► - Real estate apps.

00:01:05 ◼   ► - Houses you wanted to buy, yeah, there's a range of them.

00:01:07 ◼   ► - And yeah, so it's like financial information

00:01:11 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:01:12 ◼   ► And they got security experts and they, I guess,

00:01:16 ◼   ► hooked these things up to like something to look

00:01:19 ◼   ► at the network traffic coming in and out of the phones.

00:01:21 ◼   ► And these apps all, like as soon as you'd enter

00:01:24 ◼   ► this information, you put your weight in.

00:01:26 ◼   ► And as soon as you do it, it goes right to Facebook.

00:01:29 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:01:30 ◼   ► And my favorite part is right after the article,

00:01:33 ◼   ► Will Straphek, you know, @Chronic on Twitter,

00:01:35 ◼   ► who's just absolutely fantastic on information security.

00:01:38 ◼   ► He got involved and started decompiling

00:01:40 ◼   ► a bunch of other ones and finding like,

00:01:41 ◼   ► some of them were sending Google how often you had sex,

00:01:44 ◼   ► whether it was protected or not,

00:01:45 ◼   ► whether you were trying to conceive or not.

00:01:47 ◼   ► - Right, which people are entering into these apps

00:01:49 ◼   ► voluntarily because they're doing it for purposes of,

00:01:53 ◼   ► know, like the period trackers, you know, whether it's it, you know, even if even women

00:01:59 ◼   ► who aren't trying to get pregnant might be tracking their period for for health related

00:02:02 ◼   ► purposes that was even wait, it didn't even roll out the second you put the information

00:02:06 ◼   ► and it was sent to Facebook or Google or flurry or a company like that. Yeah, it's really

00:02:11 ◼   ► strange. And you know, and there have been stories for a while about other other such

00:02:14 ◼   ► things where retailers have been tracking people in the real world. Yeah. And Target

00:02:21 ◼   ► can figure out or to name one example that if you buy a x, y, and z, there's an 85% chance that you

00:02:29 ◼   ► just found out you're pregnant. And some of it's obvious, duh. It's like prenatal vitamins or

00:02:35 ◼   ► something like that. But then, just other things, there's just weird connections where

00:02:40 ◼   ► skin lotion or something like that, but they can make these connections and then start

00:02:47 ◼   ► sending you if you're on their mailing list, start sending you spam, mailing you spam for baby stuff.

00:02:56 ◼   ► Just weird. And a lot of times the companies, they'll always say, "Oh, it's anonymized." But

00:03:01 ◼   ► unless you're doing sort of like what Apple does with unique tokens that expire immediately in

00:03:06 ◼   ► differential, unless you're going that extra mile, anonymizing data doesn't do anything. It has been

00:03:10 ◼   ► proven trivial for these companies to get even just one single data point to tie you into these

00:03:15 ◼   ► profiles or shadow profiles if you don't use their services and then they know exactly

00:03:20 ◼   ► who that data is coming from.

00:03:21 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. Right. So yeah, the claims that this is anonymous, that

00:03:26 ◼   ► they're just sending, oh yeah, it's just a person who's telling us exactly, you know,

00:03:30 ◼   ► how much they weigh and what they've eaten today. You know, it doesn't hold much water

00:03:35 ◼   ► to say that it's anonymized because they can connect this in other ways.

00:03:39 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely.

00:03:40 ◼   ► And so anyway, you had a video about this on your channel and I thought one of the really

00:03:45 ◼   ► interesting segments of it was you pulled up an old, well obviously old at this point,

00:03:50 ◼   ► but I think it was from 2011, Steve Jobs at the All Things D conference talking about

00:03:56 ◼   ► a scandal at the time that I had since forgotten, the Flurry Analytics thing. Can you describe

00:04:02 ◼   ► that?

00:04:03 ◼   ► Yeah, so what happened was this article came out saying that Apple was working on new iPhones,

00:04:07 ◼   ► of course, and on tablet devices. And it was based on developers using Flurry Analytics

00:04:13 ◼   ► and people inside Apple using those apps

00:04:15 ◼   ► and the information on the device is being reported.

00:04:18 ◼   ► But what's delightful on stage is like you get,

00:04:21 ◼   ► Jobs has asked about it.

00:04:22 ◼   ► And he just starts saying like, we learned about this

00:04:25 ◼   ► and we were pissed off.

00:04:27 ◼   ► You know, there was still, and he's just so angry

00:04:30 ◼   ► that Apple immediately changed the App Store regulations

00:04:32 ◼   ► to forbid these kinds of analytics.

00:04:35 ◼   ► And it was immediately, you know, it bothered him

00:04:37 ◼   ► because he's big about surprise and delight.

00:04:39 ◼   ► And it basically betrayed

00:04:40 ◼   ► what Apple's upcoming product roadmap was.

00:04:43 ◼   ► And it seems like that is not at all dissimilar

00:04:45 ◼   ► to what these apps, they're not doing it

00:04:47 ◼   ► for devices anymore, but they're doing it for the customers.

00:04:49 ◼   ► - And there was, yeah, and there, it was like,

00:04:52 ◼   ► so we, you know, all this, this company came out,

00:04:54 ◼   ► they had, they had, they used the analytics to figure out

00:04:57 ◼   ► there was like a new iPad coming out, you know,

00:04:59 ◼   ► 'cause they could tell from, you know,

00:05:00 ◼   ► the code running in the analytics, you know, framework,

00:05:04 ◼   ► you know, would probe the system and say,

00:05:05 ◼   ► oh yeah, this is iPhone or iPad model, you know,

00:05:08 ◼   ► comma one or whatever was a new iPad and you know he said we looked at these apps

00:05:13 ◼   ► and it turned out that they were all using this flurry analytics and we were

00:05:16 ◼   ► like what the hell is that yeah yeah he was mad yeah well and it's an

00:05:23 ◼   ► interesting kind of mad because he's aware that he's on stage and you know

00:05:27 ◼   ► who can even imagine how you know what his reaction was inside Apple when he

00:05:32 ◼   ► wasn't on camera wasn't on stage when he found out that this is what was going on

00:05:36 ◼   ► But it was an interesting anecdote, a really good pull.

00:05:41 ◼   ► I had forgotten about it and I feel like it really,

00:05:44 ◼   ► you know, I don't know, it really hit me in the video

00:05:49 ◼   ► because it really shows how this has been going on

00:05:53 ◼   ► for a while, that Apple sort of has a blind spot to it

00:05:57 ◼   ► because they don't collect it, right?

00:05:58 ◼   ► Like, and I feel like that what Jobs is saying, you know,

00:06:02 ◼   ► maybe they shouldn't have been surprised that--

00:06:04 ◼   ► - Well, he says that they're naive.

00:06:05 ◼   ► That was the exact word to use. Yeah. So there you go, you know, right out of the horse's

00:06:09 ◼   ► mouth. I mean, no, no, no bones about it, right? Yeah, I feel like that. As much as

00:06:18 ◼   ► you would like to think, well, they're Apple, you know, woke up, and they got their handle

00:06:22 ◼   ► on it. But it's for everything we've seen in the last few years, especially the last

00:06:27 ◼   ► couple of months with these stories from TechCrunch and now the Wall Street Journal, that it's,

00:06:31 ◼   ► I don't know if you want to ever want to say Apple is still naive about this stuff, but

00:06:35 ◼   ► it's clearly spiraled out of their control in some ways.

00:06:40 ◼   ► Yeah. And what's hard too is that there are a lot of edge cases. For example, there was

00:06:43 ◼   ► a brouhaha about apps uploading your contact information, which is sometimes good, sometimes

00:06:48 ◼   ► bad because there are apps like you want to be able to download a third party address

00:06:52 ◼   ► book app if you know one of our really creative friends were to make one that's way better

00:06:56 ◼   ► than the system app. And you'd have to grant it access to the universal contacts database

00:07:00 ◼   ► for it to do anything important to you.

00:07:02 ◼   ► The same way like if you use Tweetbot,

00:07:04 ◼   ► you have to give it access to your Twitter profile.

00:07:06 ◼   ► But then there are other apps

00:07:08 ◼   ► that wanna spam your Twitter followers

00:07:09 ◼   ► or other apps that wanna just steal all your contacts.

00:07:12 ◼   ► And once you grant permission,

00:07:14 ◼   ► there has to be some way for Apple to then follow up

00:07:16 ◼   ► and hold them accountable

00:07:17 ◼   ► for what they do with that information.

00:07:20 ◼   ► - Did you see, I put it in the show notes

00:07:22 ◼   ► that our friends at Objective Development,

00:07:25 ◼   ► that they're the makers of a bunch of great Mac utilities

00:07:29 ◼   ► like Launch Bar and they have a long standing utility called Little Snitch, which is a utility

00:07:36 ◼   ► you install, then basically monitors every app you're running and notifies you when they

00:07:43 ◼   ► make a network connection. And yes, you can say, Okay, well, this is, you know, obviously,

00:07:48 ◼   ► I want you to allow my email client to connect to the server to get my email and send email

00:07:53 ◼   ► and you can say it don't, you know, I don't want to be noted, you know, you can dial down

00:07:58 ◼   ► the filters so that you're not getting pinged about everything because there's all sorts

00:08:01 ◼   ► of stuff on your Mac that you know is making network connections, but it's a way to bring

00:08:05 ◼   ► your attention to bits of network networking that you perhaps weren't aware of.

00:08:14 ◼   ► Yes.

00:08:15 ◼   ► And they have something, I hadn't seen this, but they tweeted this at me, something called

00:08:20 ◼   ► the Internet Access Policy.

00:08:24 ◼   ► And there...

00:08:25 ◼   ► It looks great.

00:08:26 ◼   ► pitching it as like the equivalent of a privacy policy.

00:08:29 ◼   ► Yeah, here's in their own words, while the latter describes in

00:08:34 ◼   ► clear text, which personal data is processed, stored and passed

00:08:37 ◼   ► on the internet access policy describes in machine readable

00:08:41 ◼   ► form, which internet connections a program creates and for what

00:08:46 ◼   ► purpose? Yeah, it sounds great. Super plain language. I really,

00:08:51 ◼   ► really would like to see more developers get behind this. I'd

00:08:54 ◼   ► like to see Apple get behind something like this?

00:08:56 ◼   ► I would… So I would like… On the first level, I would love for there just to be laws.

00:09:00 ◼   ► Like, there should really be laws protecting us. Data theft should be treated no differently

00:09:03 ◼   ► than any other kind of theft. And if any… Like I said in the video, if any startup CEO

00:09:07 ◼   ► or developer even thinks about stealing this kind of information, they should wake up in

00:09:11 ◼   ► a cold sweat screaming, apologizing, and pulling out the code because they'll do real jail

00:09:16 ◼   ► time. But, you know, that kind of stuff takes a long time. So in the meantime, if Will can

00:09:20 ◼   ► find this stuff Apple should implement higher will or implement somebody to do this kind

00:09:25 ◼   ► of stuff internally. And they should require right on that page where it says, you know,

00:09:28 ◼   ► the compatibility for your app, that the age restrictions for your app should have this

00:09:32 ◼   ► is the personal data that we collect. And this is who we share it with. And if developers

00:09:36 ◼   ► think that's going to stop you from downloading, then they should reevaluate their business

00:09:39 ◼   ► model because they shouldn't put anything on there that they're not proud of. There

00:09:42 ◼   ► was something I should correct an episode or two ago, one of these ongoing scandals

00:09:47 ◼   ► was about the framework, at least one, I don't know, I think it was a TechCrunch story, but

00:09:52 ◼   ► basically that there's popular frameworks that apps use that record your screen activity,

00:09:59 ◼   ► ostensibly for the purposes of like AB testing and, you know, there's certainly good uses

00:10:04 ◼   ► for that sort of thing, like if you want to track what, see how people who first download

00:10:12 ◼   ► your app go through the initial first run and what they tap on where they stop if if

00:10:17 ◼   ► 33% of the people stop at a certain point and never really come back to the app that's

00:10:23 ◼   ► good to know maybe want to revisit that the problem is that they're doing this these apps

00:10:27 ◼   ► are doing this without any kind of permission yeah they're just they're just collecting

00:10:33 ◼   ► the data and sending it I misspoke on the show and said that it I was under the impression

00:10:38 ◼   ► that it was just sending like sort of data, you know, the tap on this position, this button

00:10:46 ◼   ► was pressed, the screen was open for 20 seconds, that it wasn't like a movie, but I've been

00:10:51 ◼   ► told no.

00:10:52 ◼   ► Yeah, it is a movie.

00:10:54 ◼   ► That they're just that that what gets sent back to the developer, could you just hit

00:10:58 ◼   ► the play button and they can just watch you as though they were recording your screen,

00:11:03 ◼   ► you know, as though as though you were taking a movie, you know, they can see everything

00:11:06 ◼   ► you did in there.

00:11:07 ◼   ► And I asked about this if you agree to it fine and and and what you were agreeing to

00:11:13 ◼   ► It was told you in very plain language not some kind of inscrutable

00:11:18 ◼   ► 8-point type

00:11:21 ◼   ► 5,000 word thing that you know, everybody is going to skip past

00:11:25 ◼   ► Yeah, and I asked about this too because almost all the apps that were caught doing this were like banking apps or big

00:11:32 ◼   ► hospitality companies and it seemed weird because they every time you'd use those apps is making a server call and they know what you're hitting

00:11:39 ◼   ► And when you're hitting it, but was explained to me that they're just too

00:11:42 ◼   ► I don't know if lazy is the right word

00:11:43 ◼   ► But they they were looking for an easy way to package that and there are people that offered

00:11:47 ◼   ► Easy way so instead of them having to pull their server logs and like get hire someone to parse it for them and make it

00:11:52 ◼   ► Usable they just threw in these frameworks that were that we're making it easy for them

00:11:56 ◼   ► And it was good to see a bunch of developers say, you know

00:11:59 ◼   ► I would we would never use these our job doesn't need to be easy

00:12:02 ◼   ► It needs to be done with respect for our customers and we can do this without using those sketchy frameworks

00:12:06 ◼   ► It's just ridiculous how it just goes on and on and on

00:12:11 ◼   ► I

00:12:13 ◼   ► Really do Facebook Facebook just said that they don't think they don't allow their developers to take anything without your permission

00:12:18 ◼   ► Google refused to comment and just point at people at the policy

00:12:28 ◼   ► it you know

00:12:30 ◼   ► it's

00:12:32 ◼   ► it's just such a pervasive and I

00:12:35 ◼   ► actually misused the word in a post on daring fireball a couple days ago and then decided that

00:12:41 ◼   ► I wanted to use pervasive but I used perverted and then I kept it when I edited it and made it pervasive and perverted it

00:12:48 ◼   ► Really is a perverted. Yeah attitude on

00:12:51 ◼   ► Privacy like I and I really

00:12:56 ◼   ► Feel like I'm I've been naive about this to a certain extent like I've kind of known that it's going on

00:13:02 ◼   ► But the more that comes out the more I'm I find myself I think of myself as cynical and I don't really trust

00:13:09 ◼   ► the

00:13:12 ◼   ► I've long-standing opposition to a lot of the ad tech

00:13:16 ◼   ► Industry this whole idea of tech tracking and and personalizing advertising

00:13:25 ◼   ► and even being a cynic on this front and being involved and supporting myself through advertising and and

00:13:32 ◼   ► in a very purposeful way avoiding

00:13:36 ◼   ► the privacy, you know, my whole career has been based on trying to

00:13:42 ◼   ► Do ad supported publishing and podcasting in a way that is a hundred percent respectful of reader and listener

00:13:50 ◼   ► privacy. Even as a cynic, I find myself almost staggered by the depths of it and the this sort

00:13:57 ◼   ► of default mentality, both from Facebook and Google, maybe lump Amazon in with them too, as

00:14:04 ◼   ► the gorilla, Titanic companies that are collecting these dossiers on people to all of the the little

00:14:13 ◼   ► fish, just the individual apps from, you know, 50. I mean, how many banks have apps in the

00:14:21 ◼   ► App Store? Hundreds, I'm sure. Probably thousands from, you know, around the world. How many

00:14:25 ◼   ► of those apps are sending weird shit to the banks about what people are doing in the apps?

00:14:32 ◼   ► Like, yeah, why?

00:14:33 ◼   ► And one of the worst parts is, you know, Google has a business like Facebook and data harvesting

00:14:40 ◼   ► and a business like Apple and running an app marketplace.

00:14:43 ◼   ► And it's very hard to imagine Google

00:14:45 ◼   ► doing what's best for customers and what's

00:14:47 ◼   ► best for Google at the same time.

00:14:49 ◼   ► They're almost divided against themselves.

00:14:51 ◼   ► And when Will was looking at the apps for Google,

00:14:53 ◼   ► it was way harder to try to figure out

00:14:55 ◼   ► what they were doing than the apps from iOS.

00:14:57 ◼   ► You know, when Brent and Dave Whiskas and I

00:15:02 ◼   ► were making Vesper a notes app, and we

00:15:05 ◼   ► were going to do our own sync, we were very cognizant

00:15:08 ◼   ► that we have no idea what people are putting in their notes. We don't want to know. We

00:15:11 ◼   ► want to set this up in a way where we can't know. There was no view that we had where

00:15:17 ◼   ► we could look at the notes, the notes restored, encrypted on the server. But it's just a

00:15:25 ◼   ► silly little notes app that we were selling for four bucks, but we figured who knows?

00:15:29 ◼   ► People could write anything and everything in a notes app.

00:15:30 ◼   ► So the most important thing in their lives could be that note.

00:15:33 ◼   ► we take it, you know, let's, let's, let's be very deliberate every step of the way.

00:15:37 ◼   ► I can't help but think like, if you were working on a team that was making a period tracker for

00:15:45 ◼   ► women, you have to recognize instantly that this is super private information. This is super personal,

00:15:51 ◼   ► you know, hard to get more personal than a woman's health. Yeah. You would just think every step of

00:16:01 ◼   ► the way let's not screw up like that's what we were thinking with Vesper is how you know let's

00:16:06 ◼   ► let's follow you know all the best practices we can let's be cautious I mean and I say we be Brent

00:16:12 ◼   ► really was the one who designed and built the sync service but we were all on board with okay Brent

00:16:16 ◼   ► take your time and you know do this in a very cautious deliberately err on the side of you know

00:16:23 ◼   ► let's make sure this is as solid as possible that's just thinking about mistakes bugs like oh my god

00:16:29 ◼   ► we screwed up and we expose personal information through blank accidentally were horrified.

00:16:35 ◼   ► Let's do you know, let's fix it. Let's tell everybody. Let's know, you know, let's get

00:16:39 ◼   ► in front of this, whatever. That's the mentality you would just like to think that everybody

00:16:45 ◼   ► has. But on the other hand, here's these companies that it's not mistakes, it's purposeful. It's

00:16:49 ◼   ► let's include this Facebook analytic package in that's going to instantly send all of this

00:16:54 ◼   ► data to Facebook, like the mentality behind that doing that, clearly on purpose, right?

00:16:59 ◼   ► You don't accidentally include a Facebook analytics framework in your app and have it

00:17:04 ◼   ► wired up to, you know, the data. It's, I really feel like it is hard to overstate the, the

00:17:16 ◼   ► outrage that we collectively should have. And like you said, that our lawmakers across

00:17:22 ◼   ► the globe should have about getting on top of this.

00:17:27 ◼   ► And frankly, again, it's hard to expect Google to do anything because they're conflicted

00:17:31 ◼   ► on this, but Apple, if you talk to the Face ID team, for example, it wasn't like, "Let's

00:17:36 ◼   ► make Face ID and then we'll figure out how to make it private."

00:17:38 ◼   ► It's like you are not allowed to make Face ID unless every step along the way has been

00:17:43 ◼   ► carefully considered for preserving privacy.

00:17:45 ◼   ► And that's not just Face ID, that's everything that they build.

00:17:48 ◼   ► And the same thing needs to be applied to the App Store, especially because, again,

00:17:52 ◼   ► I don't think Google's going to do it.

00:17:54 ◼   ► And if Apple's making this their top-down, front-facing, most important feature, then

00:17:59 ◼   ► they've got to do that throughout their stack.

00:18:02 ◼   ► It's the way everything is monetized, too.

00:18:05 ◼   ► The way that these apps are all free and it's...

00:18:09 ◼   ► And I know there's...

00:18:10 ◼   ► Free is in your data.

00:18:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:12 ◼   ► The Tim Cook line that he loves a lot, which is,

00:18:15 ◼   ► if you're not the paying customer, you're the,

00:18:19 ◼   ► what's that, I'm? (laughs)

00:18:21 ◼   ► - You're the product, yeah. - You're the product, right.

00:18:24 ◼   ► And there's truth to that.

00:18:25 ◼   ► And I realize it doesn't apply in every way.

00:18:28 ◼   ► But there is a problem with expecting all this stuff

00:18:31 ◼   ► to be free, and that they're selling,

00:18:33 ◼   ► you're exchanging your privacy instead of your money

00:18:36 ◼   ► for these products and services.

00:18:38 ◼   ► And I think that people are starting to catch on to this.

00:18:42 ◼   ► And I really feel like the industry has spent,

00:18:46 ◼   ► it's not just like an app era thing,

00:18:48 ◼   ► it's really an internet era thing.

00:18:50 ◼   ► It goes to the whole use of the web

00:18:55 ◼   ► and how many websites have been free

00:18:56 ◼   ► and the tracking goes back to the origins

00:18:59 ◼   ► of ads on the internet.

00:19:03 ◼   ► And famously, you know, people don't like to pay for digital stuff, right? People, you know,

00:19:10 ◼   ► famously, you know, they'll spend $1,100 on a phone and then balk at spending $2 on a game

00:19:19 ◼   ► for the phone. But I feel like people are starting to wake up to the fact that this stuff isn't

00:19:26 ◼   ► really free, that there's something being lost in the exchange here, and that the, the,

00:19:32 ◼   ► the extraordinary just lack of respect that these companies have for customer privacy

00:19:40 ◼   ► is really starting to burst out of the "oh that's just inside baseball" and break into

00:19:49 ◼   ► the mainstream conversation about how we live our lives in this ever more digital world.

00:19:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And again, humans just psychologically,

00:20:00 ◼   ► evolutionarily speaking, we are tuned to think about the present and not the future. And

00:20:04 ◼   ► almost all the time we will mortgage our future for the present. And these are so good at doing

00:20:09 ◼   ► that because you think, oh, it's free. You don't see data the way you see time, the way you see

00:20:13 ◼   ► money. You don't feel it leaving your wallet. And everybody is data rich. It's a great equalizer.

00:20:18 ◼   ► Different people have different kinds of money, different amounts of time, different amounts of

00:20:21 ◼   ► money. But we all have invaluable data for these companies and they will happily take as much as

00:20:28 ◼   ► we will give in exchange for what we think are free products but are really front ends

00:20:32 ◼   ► for data harvesting services.

00:20:33 ◼   ► You know, I use this analogy all the time that we wouldn't tolerate in the real world

00:20:39 ◼   ► what we tolerate online, you know, like where you go shopping for a pair of boots in a store

00:20:47 ◼   ► and then all of a sudden every tab in your browser has ads for brown boots. We wouldn't

00:20:54 ◼   ► tolerate it in the real world. If you went into a shoe store in the real world and looked

00:20:59 ◼   ► at a pair of boots, can thought about them and thought, you know what? I'm not going

00:21:01 ◼   ► to buy these and you walk down the street. If somebody from the store followed you or

00:21:05 ◼   ► somebody from a boot company followed you and started asking you, you know, Hey, how

00:21:10 ◼   ► about these boots? How about that? How about we go into Macy's and, you know, look for

00:21:14 ◼   ► boots. Macy's has a sale on boots. You'd be so creeped out. It would, you know, you'd

00:21:21 ◼   ► be, you know, you'd object, you know, you would be like, you wouldn't just tolerate

00:21:27 ◼   ► it, right? You'd freak out in a way. And yet that's how everything happens online.

00:21:33 ◼   ► Yeah. If any of this stuff was made manifest, I think we talked about this last time. If

00:21:37 ◼   ► you were forced to see all your nudie pics and all your personal health data go into

00:21:42 ◼   ► a literal representation of these servers, you'd be aghast, but it's all invisible to

00:21:46 ◼   ► you. There's no real, there's no perceived cost.

00:21:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's really, I don't know.

00:21:51 ◼   ► Where do you think this is going with Facebook?

00:21:55 ◼   ► And on the app store?

00:21:56 ◼   ► I think you agree with me,

00:21:58 ◼   ► but I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

00:22:01 ◼   ► I feel like, okay, Apple actually is on the right in this,

00:22:06 ◼   ► that they really do,

00:22:09 ◼   ► they really do want to protect customers' privacy,

00:22:15 ◼   ► and they really don't wanna collect this stuff themselves.

00:22:18 ◼   ► But I think at least even though they're not doing it

00:22:22 ◼   ► and they're not condoning it,

00:22:24 ◼   ► it's happening in apps that are going through their store.

00:22:28 ◼   ► And so I do feel like they bear

00:22:30 ◼   ► a certain responsibility for this and for addressing it.

00:22:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, absolutely.

00:22:37 ◼   ► Again, I think it's a triple phase approach.

00:22:39 ◼   ► I think ultimately there has to be regulation.

00:22:41 ◼   ► Until there's regulation, it defaults down to the platforms,

00:22:44 ◼   ► Microsoft, Apple, and Google.

00:22:46 ◼   ► and again, pointing out that Google's conflicted on this.

00:22:49 ◼   ► What I would love Apple to do is to require

00:22:52 ◼   ► the privacy disclosure to be on the product page

00:22:54 ◼   ► and then to do exactly what Will does

00:22:56 ◼   ► and sniff the products to make sure

00:22:57 ◼   ► that what they're disclosing is the same

00:23:00 ◼   ► as what's on the page.

00:23:01 ◼   ► And if it's not, they reject them.

00:23:03 ◼   ► And if it's malicious, they do what they've done

00:23:05 ◼   ► with other violators, and that is delete

00:23:07 ◼   ► their developer accounts.

00:23:08 ◼   ► And that will create an environment

00:23:10 ◼   ► where this sort of behavior,

00:23:11 ◼   ► like this sort of behavior, we become normalized to it.

00:23:13 ◼   ► Like it just seems like it's what everybody does.

00:23:15 ◼   ► is desensitizing because there's a new scandal every day.

00:23:19 ◼   ► And the only way to stop that is to start doing things

00:23:21 ◼   ► that are severe, things that force you to wake up

00:23:23 ◼   ► and pay attention.

00:23:25 ◼   ► And I feel like if Apple,

00:23:26 ◼   ► Apple's the only one in any position to do this

00:23:28 ◼   ► because I'm not really sure what the state

00:23:30 ◼   ► of the Windows market is right now.

00:23:32 ◼   ► And Google probably will never do this,

00:23:34 ◼   ► at least not if Apple doesn't do it first.

00:23:36 ◼   ► But they're in a real position to set the same standard

00:23:38 ◼   ► for these apps that they're setting

00:23:39 ◼   ► for themselves internally.

00:23:41 ◼   ► And then things like what you pointed out

00:23:43 ◼   ► with the little Snitch company to help developers

00:23:45 ◼   ► who are doing this get the recognition that they deserve

00:23:48 ◼   ► and to get our confidence as customers.

00:23:50 ◼   ► And until those things happen,

00:23:52 ◼   ► companies are gonna keep doing this because it's easy.

00:23:54 ◼   ► They get bribed and extorted by the Googles

00:23:58 ◼   ► and the Facebooks to include this stuff

00:24:00 ◼   ► and they get benefits from doing it.

00:24:02 ◼   ► It feeds both their laziness and their finances,

00:24:06 ◼   ► so they're gonna keep doing it until someone stops them.

00:24:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I really do feel like Apple has to,

00:24:12 ◼   ► and they need to act quicker than legislation

00:24:15 ◼   ► is going to happen.

00:24:16 ◼   ► They can't just stand behind and say,

00:24:17 ◼   ► well, this stuff is legal.

00:24:19 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure what that is,

00:24:23 ◼   ► but I think you're right though,

00:24:23 ◼   ► that part of it would be having,

00:24:26 ◼   ► taking like what Straphec does

00:24:29 ◼   ► and make it part of the review process.

00:24:34 ◼   ► It's probably not simple enough.

00:24:37 ◼   ► I mean, with some of this stuff like the screen recording,

00:24:40 ◼   ► once the story broke. Because there's a known list of these analytics frameworks that supply

00:24:49 ◼   ► it, they could automate the process of looking through all the thousands and thousands of

00:24:56 ◼   ► apps in the App Store and finding apps that have these frameworks. And a lot of these

00:25:02 ◼   ► apps got like, the developers got like, "Hey, you've got three days to remove X, Y, and

00:25:07 ◼   ► Z from your app or it's going to be taken out of the App Store. So, you know, they obviously

00:25:13 ◼   ► have that capability. It's kind of cool that they could do that, but it's not enough.

00:25:19 ◼   ► They don't want to get into a situation of whack-a-mole where, okay, now we know we have

00:25:23 ◼   ► to change the name of the framework and hide it from the App Store review team. They don't

00:25:31 ◼   ► want to go down that path. I think the thing that they can monitor is actually looking

00:25:35 ◼   ► at the network calls that are going out of the app

00:25:38 ◼   ► and where they're going.

00:25:39 ◼   ► There's no way to hide that.

00:25:40 ◼   ► I mean, they can't necessarily see within them

00:25:42 ◼   ► 'cause hopefully all those calls are using SSL

00:25:45 ◼   ► so they're encrypted, but they can at least see

00:25:47 ◼   ► which servers are being notified.

00:25:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, which is what Will did.

00:25:50 ◼   ► He pulled out like the Google Analytics data.

00:25:52 ◼   ► There was that case of Uber saying,

00:25:54 ◼   ► "Don't do this if you're in the vicinity of Cupertino,"

00:25:56 ◼   ► but they still got caught.

00:25:57 ◼   ► And to me, that would be the malicious part

00:25:59 ◼   ► that just gets your account deleted.

00:26:01 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:26:03 ◼   ► I mean, obviously the rules are different when you're Uber.

00:26:05 ◼   ► And this drives some people crazy because they feel like Facebook and Google and Uber

00:26:09 ◼   ► get special treatment.

00:26:10 ◼   ► And they do the same way.

00:26:11 ◼   ► Like America will respond to China differently than it will respond to some very small country.

00:26:19 ◼   ► And a lot of people use and depend on these services.

00:26:22 ◼   ► And in essence, you have the web.

00:26:23 ◼   ► So like if you ever wanted to get rid of the Facebook app, people could still log into

00:26:26 ◼   ► Facebook on Safari.

00:26:28 ◼   ► So I think it has to go beyond just looking at it from the punitive sense.

00:26:32 ◼   ► It has to be really fixing this problem.

00:26:34 ◼   ► - Problem. - Yeah.

00:26:35 ◼   ► Well, it's an ongoing saga.

00:26:39 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break

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00:28:51 ◼   ► great stuff. All right, here's something I've been thinking about. So, um, and I don't think

00:28:57 ◼   ► I've talked about it on the show. And if I have, I've blacked out and forgotten it. There

00:29:03 ◼   ► is an apple privacy related the elephant in the room. And it ties into Apple's services

00:29:14 ◼   ► narrative and that look at our services revenue is growing, growing, growing. And, and the

00:29:22 ◼   ► basic gist is hey, of these big five companies,

00:29:26 ◼   ► especially Google and Facebook, maybe lump Amazon in,

00:29:31 ◼   ► these guys are doing sketchy stuff with your privacy.

00:29:33 ◼   ► We're not, we're Apple, we're not doing it.

00:29:36 ◼   ► The elephant in the room is the money

00:29:38 ◼   ► that Apple gets from Google

00:29:41 ◼   ► for making Google search the default in Safari

00:29:45 ◼   ► across the Mac and let's face it, in particular, iOS.

00:29:50 ◼   ► Um, it's, uh, I think it's Goldman Sachs who did some work on this and estimated it at

00:29:58 ◼   ► like 8 billion for 2018. Um, and I think that they estimate that it might go up to like

00:30:05 ◼   ► 12 billion for 2019. Um, that's a lot of money and it's a fairly high, it's a lot of money

00:30:13 ◼   ► period, right? We're talking $12 billion. That's, I mean, that's by anybody's standards,

00:30:17 ◼   ► and Apple and Google, that's a lot of money.

00:30:19 ◼   ► It's also a big chunk of Apple's services revenue.

00:30:25 ◼   ► Like a big chunk of Apple's services revenue is,

00:30:28 ◼   ► and I'm not gonna say they don't have to do anything,

00:30:33 ◼   ► but effectively, yeah, just keeping Google

00:30:35 ◼   ► as the default search engine in Safari.

00:30:38 ◼   ► So all of this stuff with Apple Music and with iCloud

00:30:43 ◼   ► and with their upcoming video service,

00:30:46 ◼   ► with their supposedly upcoming subscription news service

00:30:50 ◼   ► and anything else that would be filed under the,

00:30:54 ◼   ► look at all these new initiatives we have

00:30:56 ◼   ► to increase services revenue.

00:30:57 ◼   ► A big chunk of the money just comes from making Google

00:30:59 ◼   ► the default search engine.

00:31:02 ◼   ► And the privacy angle on this is,

00:31:05 ◼   ► how can we say that Google has problems,

00:31:09 ◼   ► you know, is a problematic company

00:31:10 ◼   ► in terms of respecting people's privacy

00:31:14 ◼   ► while Apple is pocketing $10 billion a year.

00:31:19 ◼   ► Like where do they think that money is coming from?

00:31:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, no, I did a video on this too,

00:31:26 ◼   ► but there was a whole bunch of things

00:31:27 ◼   ► that people say that, you know,

00:31:29 ◼   ► like there's the China situation

00:31:30 ◼   ► and there's just several of these.

00:31:32 ◼   ► And the one that you cannot justify is Google.

00:31:36 ◼   ► Now I've used DuckDuckGo because of the issues

00:31:39 ◼   ► I have with Google and it's simply not as good.

00:31:41 ◼   ► And that's Apple's overall point

00:31:42 ◼   ► is that Google is the best search engine.

00:31:45 ◼   ► But once, you know, if Apple just chose it

00:31:46 ◼   ► and wasn't getting paid for it,

00:31:47 ◼   ► that's an easy position to defend.

00:31:49 ◼   ► Google is the best search engine still.

00:31:51 ◼   ► We understand there's problems with it,

00:31:52 ◼   ► but we believe it's the best for our customers.

00:31:54 ◼   ► So we're using it, there's no money changing hands.

00:31:57 ◼   ► The minute the money changes hands,

00:31:58 ◼   ► then it's impossible to say

00:32:00 ◼   ► whether it's the best or not anymore.

00:32:02 ◼   ► If I had my druthers, there would be a box that pops up

00:32:05 ◼   ► because you can change it.

00:32:07 ◼   ► It's not like it's the only search engine.

00:32:08 ◼   ► You can go into Safari settings and choose DuckDuckGo

00:32:11 ◼   ► or Yahoo or Microsoft.

00:32:12 ◼   ► I don't know why they're still in there, but you can.

00:32:15 ◼   ► But if I had my draw, there's the first time,

00:32:17 ◼   ► the first run experience for Safari would pop up,

00:32:20 ◼   ► which search engine do you wanna use?

00:32:21 ◼   ► And if people tap on Google because they prefer the results

00:32:24 ◼   ► and they understand what comes with them, that's great.

00:32:28 ◼   ► If they have concerns, they can tap DuckDuckGo,

00:32:30 ◼   ► and that's great too.

00:32:31 ◼   ► And maybe people who work at Microsoft could tap on Bing,

00:32:34 ◼   ► but whatever, you'd have a conscious user decision to do it.

00:32:38 ◼   ► And Google could even pay them a bounty

00:32:40 ◼   ► for every person who taps on Google

00:32:41 ◼   ► if they really wanted to.

00:32:42 ◼   ► But to me, that sort of,

00:32:44 ◼   ► once you make privacy your distinguishing feature,

00:32:46 ◼   ► you've set the bar much higher.

00:32:48 ◼   ► Because I think Firefox famously gets almost all their money

00:32:51 ◼   ► from Google as well, which is super ironic,

00:32:53 ◼   ► giving Firefox the statements.

00:32:54 ◼   ► And Apple previously would say,

00:32:56 ◼   ► "Yeah, we use Google as a default,

00:32:57 ◼   ► "but we do everything we can to deny them information

00:32:59 ◼   ► "with do not track and with providing garbage input

00:33:02 ◼   ► "into the machine tracking,

00:33:04 ◼   ► "and by killing all the social plugins

00:33:06 ◼   ► "and killing the ads."

00:33:07 ◼   ► And that might be true.

00:33:09 ◼   ► still taking all the money. And they do some stuff that I would think Google would prefer

00:33:18 ◼   ► they didn't like when you in you're in Safari and you start typing in the magic, you know,

00:33:25 ◼   ► search or URL field. They have sometimes depending on what what you type suggested results that

00:33:34 ◼   ► aren't from your search engine provider, you know, that Apple

00:33:37 ◼   ► is somehow guessing what it is, you know, it's like the top

00:33:40 ◼   ► items, sometimes, you know, Siri, I guess they call them

00:33:44 ◼   ► Siri suggestions, right. But for the most part, you know, a lot

00:33:51 ◼   ► of the stuff that goes through that field goes through Google.

00:33:55 ◼   ► Yeah. And it's, you know, it must be if there's so many

00:33:59 ◼   ► negotiations that I would love to be a fly on the wall for it.

00:34:01 ◼   ► That is one that must be fascinating to me because Apple's obviously, I mean, if we take

00:34:08 ◼   ► Goldman Sachs' numbers, and I think I would probably wager that if they're not spot on,

00:34:14 ◼   ► they're close enough, you know, that it was somewhere between 8 to 12 billion 2018 and

00:34:19 ◼   ► now 2019.

00:34:21 ◼   ► They're obviously getting a lot of money from Google.

00:34:24 ◼   ► But on the other hand, Google is coming at this from a very strong position of strength

00:34:28 ◼   ► in terms of what are you going to do?

00:34:30 ◼   ► Are you really going to make being the default search engine?

00:34:33 ◼   ► Right?

00:34:34 ◼   ► Are you really going to make DuckDuckGo the default search engine?

00:34:37 ◼   ► Come on.

00:34:38 ◼   ► So there it would be worth a lot more.

00:34:42 ◼   ► I think about this.

00:34:43 ◼   ► If it's worth roughly 10 billion a year now, imagine what it would be worth in a world

00:34:49 ◼   ► where there were two or three search engines that were arguably of equal quality competitive.

00:34:58 ◼   ► What if Bing results really were indistinguishable from Google search results?

00:35:05 ◼   ► I suspect, I don't know, but and I suppose that they could prepare for this in advance.

00:35:11 ◼   ► It wouldn't be sprung on them at the last moment.

00:35:14 ◼   ► But I would wager heavily that Apple couldn't make like flip a switch tomorrow and make

00:35:20 ◼   ► DuckDuckGo the default search engine that DuckDuckGo wouldn't be able to handle that

00:35:24 ◼   ► sudden increase in traffic.

00:35:27 ◼   ► And you can't really do that. This is part of Google's strength in negotiating too, is

00:35:33 ◼   ► with so many hundreds of millions of iOS users. I mean, what does Apple estimate as the user

00:35:41 ◼   ► base? Is it up to a billion yet? I think it's a billion devices, maybe not a billion people,

00:35:48 ◼   ► but it's hundreds of millions of people clearly. In some way, I'm not going to say can't. Can't

00:35:53 ◼   ► is obviously they could, but it would be very difficult to change the default on people

00:36:00 ◼   ► just when they upgrade the OS, right? When you upgrade to iOS, I guess it'll be 14 this

00:36:08 ◼   ► year or is it 13?

00:36:09 ◼   ► I even did it intentionally. I switched to DuckDuckDoh and the first time I used it,

00:36:15 ◼   ► I didn't recognize the search page results. It's just been very confusing.

00:36:21 ◼   ► And there's an awful lot of people and it's really gets to the, you know, people aren't

00:36:27 ◼   ► supposed to be technical experts. That's the whole, you know, Apple way of, of, you know,

00:36:33 ◼   ► that's been Apple's motto from the get go. But Google's role, Google searches role on

00:36:41 ◼   ► the internet is if you know how the web works and you, you know, you know how to build a

00:36:48 ◼   ► website and you basically know you don't have to be able to write a search engine but if

00:36:53 ◼   ► you basically know it's just a simple form you type words you hit the button and then

00:36:59 ◼   ► it goes to the server and the server takes that query and makes its best guess as to

00:37:05 ◼   ► what it is you're looking for. You know you realize there is no anybody could make a search

00:37:10 ◼   ► engine there are dozens and dozens of search engines before Google really grew to prominence

00:37:15 ◼   ► there, you know, there was no dominant search engine. There were a handful. I was always

00:37:20 ◼   ► an Alta Vista man. Alta Vista was my go to. Yeah. You know, but but most people don't

00:37:33 ◼   ► don't realize that like they see Google as the internet, right? You know, there's the

00:37:38 ◼   ► famous stories about that the way people would get to Facebook is they go to Google and type

00:37:44 ◼   ► Facebook login and hit go. The Google search field is effectively like a command line interface

00:37:54 ◼   ► to the internet. And unlike the old command lines of Unix terminal and DOS where everything

00:38:03 ◼   ► is super fragile and you can make terrible mistakes or you have to type the name of the

00:38:08 ◼   ► precise, you know, make one character mistake. You know, it's wonderfully user friendly in

00:38:14 ◼   ► that you can make all sorts of spelling mistakes and not even use spaces and somehow it figures

00:38:20 ◼   ► out what you want anyway. And it just works. And they're at the top of your results is

00:38:25 ◼   ► exactly what you're looking for. It I think even if people understood, if you could somehow

00:38:33 ◼   ► sit everybody down across the world and give them a 15-minute lecture on what is a search

00:38:39 ◼   ► engine and how do you change your default search engine and make them understand this.

00:38:45 ◼   ► People would still be angry if the default was switched just by upgrading to iOS 13 or

00:38:50 ◼   ► whatever, let alone the fact that they wouldn't understand. They would be like, "What the

00:38:55 ◼   ► hell is this?" All right? So it's a tough position. I don't know that Apple… Again,

00:39:02 ◼   ► I'm not again not gonna say can't but it would be very difficult for them to

00:39:06 ◼   ► Not have Google as their default search engine in Safari even if they wanted to

00:39:10 ◼   ► But nobody's forcing them to pocket money from it

00:39:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean we say that it's 12 billion dollars and they offered me 12 billion dollars to use Google right? It's certainly

00:39:21 ◼   ► Well, and it reminds me of an argument that I often have with people about sports where people will argue sports fans will will argue

00:39:30 ◼   ► That such-and-such player, you know, it's gonna sign a 30 million dollar a year contract and they say well nobody deserves

00:39:36 ◼   ► No, that's too much money. These plate these players are greedy. Why in the world, you know, do you need that much money?

00:39:41 ◼   ► Well if the players weren't making the money that they're making

00:39:45 ◼   ► It's not like they're gonna lower

00:39:49 ◼   ► The ticket prices in the stadiums and arenas and it's not like they're gonna lower the price of the commercials. They're selling

00:39:57 ◼   ► During the telecasts which let's face is where most of the money in pro sports comes from

00:40:01 ◼   ► They're not going to lower the price of those ads that they see

00:40:05 ◼   ► courtside or ring, you know along the along the ring rink of the the

00:40:10 ◼   ► You know the hockey arena

00:40:13 ◼   ► All of that stuff

00:40:15 ◼   ► It's just gonna stay with the owners of the teams

00:40:17 ◼   ► Right if they're not the less they pay the players the more it's gonna stay with the owners of the teams and is that really?

00:40:22 ◼   ► What you want as a sports fan?

00:40:23 ◼   ► You know the rise in sports salaries going to players is actually a good thing, you know historically 40 50 years ago

00:40:31 ◼   ► It's almost criminal how underpaid players were in professional sports at least in the United States

00:40:35 ◼   ► You know that owners of bait the baseball teams collectively conspired

00:40:40 ◼   ► To under pay their players and and not allow them free agency

00:40:45 ◼   ► I mean all of this stuff is actually relatively new to pro sports

00:40:49 ◼   ► anyway along those same lines if

00:40:52 ◼   ► Apple weren't taking ten billion dollars a year from Google for

00:40:56 ◼   ► Google's being the default search engine and just did it for free to keep their hands clean that money would be in Google's pockets

00:41:03 ◼   ► so

00:41:05 ◼   ► You know, it's a tax or taxing

00:41:07 ◼   ► But I really feel like this is something that gook

00:41:12 ◼   ► It's getting untenable for Apple to keep taking this pro privacy stance without addressing this publicly

00:41:19 ◼   ► Yeah, it will it will always be used against them until it's addressed I

00:41:22 ◼   ► Really do wonder I know I

00:41:26 ◼   ► Get you duck duck go I didn't write about it, but I actually visited them recently because

00:41:33 ◼   ► The one cool thing that's happened recently is that

00:41:38 ◼   ► duck duck go and Apple have partnered on

00:41:41 ◼   ► Maps and yeah duck duck go now uses Apple Maps as its

00:41:48 ◼   ► it's mapping data. So it shows you Apple Maps when you search for a location all around

00:41:56 ◼   ► the world. And it's way, it's a huge upgrade for DuckDuckGo. They were using like open

00:42:04 ◼   ► something maps beforehand because DuckDuckGo has, they're not just more private than Google

00:42:11 ◼   ► or Bing or something like that. Like privacy is actually fundamental to DuckDuckGo's mission.

00:42:17 ◼   ► actually a higher priority for them than search, you know, result accuracy. So they, they, they

00:42:24 ◼   ► don't show or distribute any third party code. Like when you visit DuckDuckGo, there are no none

00:42:33 ◼   ► of the ads that they do have come from third parties, and inject any kind of JavaScript or

00:42:38 ◼   ► something like that, from a from any server other than theirs. That's a problem. They had to work

00:42:45 ◼   ► with Apple to get this map thing to work as the maps obviously aren't just static images,

00:42:49 ◼   ► there is a lot of code involved. But effectively, it all gets proxied through DuckDuckGo servers.

00:42:59 ◼   ► So you go to DuckDuckGo as a user in Safari, and you type your query, and the query goes to DuckDuckGo.

00:43:05 ◼   ► And if it's a location related query, or the results involve location stuff, DuckDuckGo on

00:43:12 ◼   ► their server talks to maps.apple.com and gets everything it needs and it goes to DuckDuckGo

00:43:18 ◼   ► and then DuckDuckGo delivers it to you. So maps.apple.com never sees your IP address,

00:43:24 ◼   ► never talks to you directly. And you don't have to know this. Nobody, no regular person just using

00:43:31 ◼   ► DuckDuckGo would know this. But that's how seriously they take your privacy. It's a really

00:43:36 ◼   ► cool thing. And it really is the sort of thing that gives DuckDuckGo, they're too small of

00:43:45 ◼   ► a company, I forget how many employees they have, it's somewhere like around 60 around

00:43:49 ◼   ► the world. That's the total size of the company. They, but effectively now they have a multi

00:43:58 ◼   ► billion dollar partner, helping them with maps, which is truly fascinating. And Apple

00:44:06 ◼   ► is motivated to make its maps better. This is an area where clearly they are at best

00:44:13 ◼   ► in second place to Google. They have terrific motivation in various ways to make their maps

00:44:23 ◼   ► better and not just, you know, let's spend a year or two making our maps better and then forget it.

00:44:30 ◼   ► This is something that the company obviously has to be committed to on an ongoing basis

00:44:34 ◼   ► in perpetuity from now until the end of maps being the useful thing, right? And DuckDuckGo,

00:44:41 ◼   ► as Apple Maps continues to improve and as directions and whatever else you get from Apple

00:44:46 ◼   ► maps, the data on the maps, the base of interesting locations, where stores are. One of Apple's

00:44:58 ◼   ► recent initiatives is where are all the stores and retailers inside airport terminals? As

00:45:05 ◼   ► that stuff improves, DuckDuckGo just gets it all for free, effectively. I thought that's

00:45:12 ◼   ► pretty interesting.

00:45:13 ◼   ► There's a bunch of people who just every time we talk about this say Apple should buy

00:45:16 ◼   ► DuckDuckDuck, make it the default search engine and invest heavily in it.

00:45:20 ◼   ► This is where you've read my mind, this is where I'm going is yes, that this comes

00:45:25 ◼   ► out and I've thought about that.

00:45:28 ◼   ► I have thought about that a lot.

00:45:30 ◼   ► I'm sure that people at Apple have thought about it but I don't think it's as simple.

00:45:41 ◼   ► I don't think it's a very simple decision.

00:45:43 ◼   ► I think there's a lot of very complex ramifications.

00:45:46 ◼   ► I think it's tempting to think of it simply

00:45:49 ◼   ► because surely Apple could write a check

00:45:54 ◼   ► that DuckDuckGo is big enough that DuckDuckGo would say yes.

00:46:00 ◼   ► Yes.

00:46:02 ◼   ► I really doubt it would even be

00:46:07 ◼   ► if Apple decided they wanted to go that route.

00:46:09 ◼   ► I don't even know that it would be a long negotiation.

00:46:11 ◼   ► I suppose it's possible that DuckDuckGo values its independence and maybe that number is

00:46:21 ◼   ► higher than it would be if they were looking to sell, which I know that they're not.

00:46:30 ◼   ► But surely Apple could, it wouldn't take too long for them to add enough zeros at the end.

00:46:34 ◼   ► Yes, I was just thinking the same thing.

00:46:36 ◼   ► I just saw the check getting longer.

00:46:39 ◼   ► write a check. And then you know, instead of like crossing out the first number and

00:46:43 ◼   ► making that one big, they just add add another zero at the end. And like, what about now?

00:46:50 ◼   ► So I don't think that part of it would be complicated. I think though, that it would

00:47:00 ◼   ► be comp, I think that there's a certain at a certain angle, I think Apple enjoys not

00:47:06 ◼   ► owning a search engine, you know, and, and think about all the controversies that pop

00:47:10 ◼   ► up all the time where, I mean, a recent one is this vaccination stuff where anti vaccination

00:47:21 ◼   ► propaganda comes up in it at the top of these search results, either in search engines or

00:47:28 ◼   ► Facebook, I think was just busted for promoting, you know, you search on Facebook for vaccination

00:47:34 ◼   ► stuff and it's all anti vaccination stuff. And part of it is the fact that I just read

00:47:43 ◼   ► a story that the pro vaccination doctors and experts have sort of given up because they

00:47:48 ◼   ► were their stuff was getting buried anyway, and it's settled science anyway. So they really

00:47:53 ◼   ► isn't there shouldn't be there isn't really much new stuff to write about. Apple by it

00:47:59 ◼   ► by not having a search engine, they avoid that. I mean, and there's all you know, you

00:48:02 ◼   ► name it. We could spend an hour listing controversial topics and

00:48:07 ◼   ► yes, absolutely. And where they fall in search results. And by

00:48:11 ◼   ► not YouTube has gone through two weeks of utter chaos over the

00:48:15 ◼   ► very topic. Right lately. Right, right. YouTube. Yes, absolutely.

00:48:21 ◼   ► It's almost in disarray. Yeah. You know, both in terms of

00:48:26 ◼   ► algorithmic. Well, the algorithmic recommendations is at

00:48:31 ◼   ► the heart of it. But a big part of it too is the unmoderated comments and the subject

00:48:35 ◼   ► of the comments. And so on the one hand, I think Apple likes not owning a search engine.

00:48:47 ◼   ► I also think they like making $10 billion a year from Google. And it would be very,

00:48:57 ◼   ► You know, and this is where I see this as a sort of unspoken conflict of interest on

00:49:02 ◼   ► Apple's part on privacy is let's say they do buy DuckDuckGo, and they just rename it

00:49:08 ◼   ► Apple search. And they maintain all of these private, you know, make it as private as they

00:49:13 ◼   ► can. And let's even further stipulate that they improve the search results to the point

00:49:23 ◼   ► where it's on par with Google search results,

00:49:28 ◼   ► that people are as satisfied with it as in general

00:49:31 ◼   ► as they are with Google search.

00:49:33 ◼   ► I really doubt that Apple would be able to make

00:49:36 ◼   ► 10 to $15 billion a year

00:49:40 ◼   ► without changing their privacy, right?

00:49:48 ◼   ► Like the whole reason Google make that it's so,

00:49:50 ◼   ► Google search is so valuable,

00:49:51 ◼   ► make so much money that Google's willing to spend $10 billion a year just to make it the

00:49:55 ◼   ► default in these in one browser. Apple would, let's face it would have to forgo a chunk

00:50:06 ◼   ► of that revenue. I mean, presumably they could have some kind of ads, but it wouldn't be

00:50:09 ◼   ► ad the ads wouldn't be as lucrative as Google's.

00:50:11 ◼   ► It's the developer ads from the App Store. But no, there's this anecdote about when Google

00:50:16 ◼   ► started and Larry and Sergey were adamant that it would have no ads because

00:50:21 ◼   ► when the minute you introduce ads it would fundamentally corrupt the very

00:50:25 ◼   ► nature of the search engine they wanted to be this very pure very scientific

00:50:29 ◼   ► very egalitarian very proper thing but then the dot-com bubble burst and their

00:50:33 ◼   ► VCs because a minute you take VCs you are no longer in charge of your destiny

00:50:38 ◼   ► their VCs said you have to monetize and so they turned on ads and ads are like

00:50:44 ◼   ► ultimate power that never really leads to corruption because you are no you are

00:50:47 ◼   ► no longer making a product to serve the customer you're now making a product to

00:50:50 ◼   ► serve the advertiser or the monetization engine and I don't you know Apple would

00:50:54 ◼   ► have to spend almost all that money as a giveaway just to provide a service for

00:51:00 ◼   ► users with very little upside to it and Apple is Apple is good at spending money

00:51:05 ◼   ► on accessibility they're good at spending money on several things that

00:51:07 ◼   ► they get no return from and Tim Cook is famously because angry Tim is my

00:51:11 ◼   ► favorite has famously stood up and said we don't give a damn about the ROI. But when

00:51:15 ◼   ► you start operating services at scale, which would be like iMessage on the web or for Android

00:51:20 ◼   ► or FaceTime on the web or for Android or a search engine, all of these things, and it

00:51:25 ◼   ► doesn't fit into Apple's existing business model, they would either have to do it at

00:51:28 ◼   ► a loss and there's only so many of those things they could do at a loss or they'd have to

00:51:31 ◼   ► start doing what big companies do to support that and that would make them just like Facebook

00:51:35 ◼   ► and Google.

00:51:36 ◼   ► DuckDuckGo does make money and they have ads, but they do it in a way that is completely

00:51:42 ◼   ► respectful of your privacy and doesn't track you.

00:51:48 ◼   ► I've spoken to them about it.

00:51:53 ◼   ► They didn't tell me exactly how much money they make and how much they make per search

00:51:57 ◼   ► or something like that because it's obviously confidential information, competitive.

00:52:04 ◼   ► be willing to bet though that they make less money per search than Google makes per search,

00:52:09 ◼   ► that it's less lucrative. So Apple could—

00:52:11 ◼   ► **Matt Stauffer:** Because Google, they're literally bidding—they've put people in

00:52:13 ◼   ► a situation to bid on those ads.

00:52:15 ◼   ► **Ezra Klein:** Right. That's a tough position for Apple to be in. And I think it's easier

00:52:21 ◼   ► for Apple to say, "We don't want to own our own search engine because that's not

00:52:24 ◼   ► our area of expertise and we don't want to be responsible for it," whatever. But

00:52:29 ◼   ► it's hard not to also think that they also enjoy their current relationship where their

00:52:35 ◼   ► hands are clean, but they still get now $12 billion a year from Google doing things that

00:52:42 ◼   ► they themselves are condemning privacy-wise.

00:52:44 ◼   ► And being pragmatically, this isn't new. A lot of people will just say, "Oh, Tim Cook

00:52:47 ◼   ► is greedy." This relationship has been going on. Even famously, when Steve Jobs was at

00:52:51 ◼   ► war with Google, it didn't change the default search engine in iOS. And at this point, like

00:52:57 ◼   ► Like you said, when you change it, not only does it affect every user, but if you suddenly

00:53:00 ◼   ► remove that income from Apple's services division, that's a whole different story

00:53:04 ◼   ► on Wall Street as well.

00:53:06 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, that's exactly, you know, that they've, if anything, that's the other

00:53:11 ◼   ► thing that I feel a little uncomfortable looking at, you know, where's, where, you know,

00:53:17 ◼   ► the state of Apple today and where they're going.

00:53:22 ◼   ► not just that I care about privacy, it's that I see this as a conflict, you know, that there's

00:53:28 ◼   ► tension inside Apple where they're promoting this services narrative to Wall Street as this is the

00:53:34 ◼   ► area of growth, you know, yes, or, I mean, Apple hasn't admit Apple hasn't said categorically,

00:53:40 ◼   ► iPhone unit sales are never going to grow again. But, you know, the truth is, they probably aren't

00:53:48 ◼   ► They probably have we probably have seen peak iPhone in terms of unit sales

00:53:51 ◼   ► you know and pushing services but look we have significant growth and lots of headroom in this

00:54:00 ◼   ► services area but where this huge chunk of it comes from just making Google search the default

00:54:07 ◼   ► search engine really would make it hard for them to change that at all. And you start having all

00:54:12 ◼   ► these things like when you sold computers you had to deal with resellers and when you sold phones

00:54:16 ◼   ► You have to deal with carriers. And when you sold music and TV, you have to deal with the

00:54:19 ◼   ► entertainment industry. But now you have to deal with medical regulation to be into health. You

00:54:23 ◼   ► have to deal with the organizations that govern financial stuff. When you get into Apple pay and

00:54:28 ◼   ► Apple credit cards and all these other things, and you start adding all these services businesses,

00:54:32 ◼   ► you start having to deal with not only the regulatory bodies, but all the companies that

00:54:36 ◼   ► are entrenched in those sectors. And it is messy. And, you know, yeah. And it's fun to, to think

00:54:43 ◼   ► about in the what if Well, what else could Apple do? Right? And they do, like I said, they do some

00:54:47 ◼   ► things where they have these serious suggested results that don't go through Google. But let's

00:54:51 ◼   ► face it, one of the things Google is interested in is not just keeping track of your search results,

00:54:57 ◼   ► but having you logged in to Google so that when you go to Google search, your your Google profile

00:55:03 ◼   ► is already there. And you can switch to you know, you can go to other Google properties in your

00:55:07 ◼   ► there. That obvious, you know, when you're logged into Google, and I try to log out of

00:55:13 ◼   ► Google all the time, and I still often find myself like, Oh, I've been logged in for days,

00:55:17 ◼   ► like, you know, I don't know that it's nefarious on Google, you log into your Gmail, then all

00:55:22 ◼   ► of a sudden, you're automatically logged into maps into YouTube and a bunch of other apps

00:55:26 ◼   ► as well. And that's for me is often where it happens is I do, I will log in to use Gmail,

00:55:31 ◼   ► and it's just easier to do it in a regular tab than to make a private tab or I guess

00:55:37 ◼   ► what I've tried to do recently is I don't really use Chrome much for anything. And I've

00:55:42 ◼   ► kind of got my Safari content blocking setup down where I don't need to use Chrome because

00:55:49 ◼   ► stuff I've got a nice setup where I there are very few websites I find that break in

00:55:54 ◼   ► Safari because I've got content blockers or something and I have to go to Chrome or something

00:55:58 ◼   ► like that. So I tend to just use Chrome just for using Google stuff. But anyway, one thing

00:56:04 ◼   ► that Apple could obviously do would be to have some kind of okay, you know, we'll keep

00:56:09 ◼   ► Google as the default search engine, but we'll also add a default behavior that will just

00:56:14 ◼   ► erase cookies from Google every four hours. So you're, you know, unless you you know,

00:56:21 ◼   ► you can go into settings Safari search and, you know, toggle a simple checkmark to say,

00:56:28 ◼   ► well, I guess they're not checkmarks anymore. What do we call? What do we call checkmarks

00:56:33 ◼   ► on iOS. Those little…

00:56:34 ◼   ► I just, I still call them check marks. I don't know if there's… I'm sure we'll get

00:56:37 ◼   ► an email now that we…

00:56:38 ◼   ► On/off. I guess we should call them on/off switches.

00:56:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:56:42 ◼   ► Right. Well, they're not radio.

00:56:43 ◼   ► Toggles.

00:56:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:56:45 ◼   ► Toggles.

00:56:46 ◼   ► Toggles. Well, the thing that's effectively a check box. You could turn it on, but it's

00:56:49 ◼   ► going to be off by default and it will, you know, it'll just keep you logged out of

00:56:54 ◼   ► Google even after you log in after, I don't know, two hours or four hours or something

00:57:00 ◼   ► like that. I'm pretty sure if Apple did that, that would, A, that would probably, they'd

00:57:07 ◼   ► have to, that would have to be part of a new negotiation. I would be fairly certain that

00:57:12 ◼   ► Google is smart enough that they've, the letter of their contract with Google, with Apple,

00:57:17 ◼   ► for making Google the search engine, you know, as it exists right now, I'd be very surprised

00:57:24 ◼   ► if it doesn't preclude something like that.

00:57:26 ◼   ► The scarier thing is for Google to say fine. We don't need you to help us put right

00:57:30 ◼   ► It's funny because I try to use Google in Chrome too and because our company a mobile nations and I'm where they we use Google

00:57:39 ◼   ► accounts and I try not to stay logged in but I have to to use my work stuff and then it keeps saying you need

00:57:45 ◼   ► To sign into sync and I do I don't want to sign it to sync

00:57:48 ◼   ► So every time I refuse it takes me out of my mobile nations account and gives me this fake

00:57:53 ◼   ► cupcake Renee avatar that I don't know what it is and I can't get out of it until I

00:57:57 ◼   ► Close everything and relog back into my account and they just do all these little things to make your life more miserable when you're not logged

00:58:03 ◼   ► into them

00:58:05 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break here

00:58:08 ◼   ► I think our next sponsor longtime sponsor of the show one of my favorite companies on the internet fracture

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01:01:31 ◼   ► What else is on the agenda today?

01:01:32 ◼   ► I had so many.

01:01:34 ◼   ► Oh, so much.

01:01:36 ◼   ► How about the shot on iPhone challenge?

01:01:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:01:41 ◼   ► Apple announced the winners yesterday.

01:01:43 ◼   ► A lot of iPhone XS Max and a lot of Americans.

01:01:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I was wrong.

01:01:48 ◼   ► I said I would eat my hat if at least one winner didn't come from China.

01:01:52 ◼   ► There were no winners from China.

01:01:53 ◼   ► I was a judge from China, which is interesting because I think that there would have been

01:01:56 ◼   ► It's just given the size of the market. Yeah, I just linked to this before we started recording the show. I

01:02:02 ◼   ► Love the winners. I'm not surprised that they're great. I mean, I think it's one of the

01:02:08 ◼   ► Not just a great Apple ad campaign

01:02:12 ◼   ► I think it's been one of the best ad campaigns in recent years is the shot on iPhone ad campaign and I feel like it's it's

01:02:18 ◼   ► a great

01:02:20 ◼   ► Campaign in so many ways because it makes good photographs make for good billboards, right?

01:02:26 ◼   ► It is a thing that real people really do with their phones. I don't know if there's any single

01:02:34 ◼   ► thing people do on their phone that more people do on their phones than take photographs, right?

01:02:39 ◼   ► I mean, you know, I'm sure listening--

01:02:42 ◼   ► You text and take photos and you text your photos.

01:02:44 ◼   ► Right. And you listen to music, right? I mean, and podcasts. I mean,

01:02:51 ◼   ► we wouldn't have had so many arguments about headphone jacks if that wasn't part of it.

01:02:55 ◼   ► it. And you know, and they obviously did. iPhone camera is technically great. It is

01:03:03 ◼   ► amazing. You know, it's not just the iPhone, just modern high end cell phone cameras are

01:03:09 ◼   ► just tremendous. So I'm not surprised that these winners are good, but I really I really

01:03:15 ◼   ► do like them. I love this one comment from Judge Austin man. Yeah, where he just says

01:03:21 ◼   ► it's just this one picture from Nikita, Yerush in Belarus shot with an iPhone 7, which is

01:03:28 ◼   ► pretty cool. That's the one thing I would have bet more than that somebody a winner

01:03:34 ◼   ► would be from China would be that at least some of the winners would be on older iPhones

01:03:38 ◼   ► because I and again, I don't think that they cook the books for it. But I, you know, I

01:03:44 ◼   ► just know and you see it in the ad campaigns to that it's not just, oh, look what you can

01:03:49 ◼   ► shoot with the latest and greatest $1200 iPhone tennis max it is hey the iPhone 7 from three

01:03:58 ◼   ► years ago is still a tremendous camera. Anyway, she did announcement for the concert for the

01:04:02 ◼   ► contest. They had success photos. Yeah, a couple of them. Yep. Anyway, Nikita's photo,

01:04:08 ◼   ► which is is also one of my favorites is of a tennis court. Like an orange tennis court.

01:04:14 ◼   ► Maybe that's clay, I don't know.

01:04:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

01:04:17 ◼   ► With the net and a line and a crack in the clay, and it's just a super simple photo.

01:04:27 ◼   ► And I just love Austin Mann's comment.

01:04:29 ◼   ► I love how accessible this image is.

01:04:30 ◼   ► You don't have to travel to Iceland to capture something beautiful.

01:04:33 ◼   ► It's right under your nose.

01:04:36 ◼   ► And I think that's so true because that's what I love about these iPhone.

01:04:40 ◼   ► I'm a long time avid amateur photographer. And I love looking at truly great photos from

01:04:48 ◼   ► truly great photographers because it's, you know, it's inspiring. It makes me want to up

01:04:52 ◼   ► my photography game. And one of the things that I think is so fascinating about seeing

01:04:59 ◼   ► pro photographers like Austin Mann, you know, who's, who's, if the name rings a bell, Austin

01:05:06 ◼   ► man is—last few years has been doing reviews of new iPhone cameras by taking them to exotic

01:05:15 ◼   ► locations around the world like Africa. He was the one year he was with a bunch of silverback

01:05:20 ◼   ► gorillas and I forget where else he's been.

01:05:22 ◼   ► I think he—

01:05:23 ◼   ► Jared Polin An incredibly talented photographer.

01:05:24 ◼   ► Pete Turner Super talented photographer and a very nice

01:05:27 ◼   ► guy. I met him—

01:05:28 ◼   ► Jared Polin Yeah, he's amazing.

01:05:29 ◼   ► Pete Turner —after the last iPhone event. And, you know, we've corresponded by email

01:05:34 ◼   ► for years too, but I met him in person

01:05:37 ◼   ► and he's super, super generous

01:05:38 ◼   ► and really is a super great enthusiast

01:05:41 ◼   ► about like helping people up their photography game

01:05:45 ◼   ► with phones, but one of the things that's amazing

01:05:47 ◼   ► looking at the images coming from a pro photographer

01:05:50 ◼   ► like that is you just have no excuse about equipment.

01:05:53 ◼   ► Like you can't say, well, he is using a $5,000 SLR.

01:05:58 ◼   ► - And I love how he gives like feedback too,

01:06:00 ◼   ► 'cause he's like, I love this new Smart HDR thing,

01:06:03 ◼   ► would you make it an impossible for me to take silhouettes

01:06:05 ◼   ► and it's part of my artistic repertoire.

01:06:07 ◼   ► So can we figure this out?

01:06:08 ◼   ► - Right, that's actually very true.

01:06:11 ◼   ► And a couple of these photos are taken in exotic locations,

01:06:17 ◼   ► but most of them aren't.

01:06:18 ◼   ► And that really is inspiring too, but it really is true.

01:06:21 ◼   ► There's not much, somebody who's an expert photographer

01:06:25 ◼   ► can use a quote unquote pro app like Halide,

01:06:33 ◼   ► which is a great, great iPhone camera app. And you can shoot raw instead of JPEG. And then by

01:06:39 ◼   ► shooting raw, you can get more in post than you could with the JPEG. And if you truly understand

01:06:50 ◼   ► what the effect that different shutter speeds have on an image or exposure times,

01:06:56 ◼   ► or ISO or whatever, there's some things you can adjust in some of these apps.

01:07:02 ◼   ► But for the most part, though, the pros, they might know more about that, but they're not

01:07:06 ◼   ► really using any kind of even software tools that aren't accessible to everybody.

01:07:10 ◼   ► So like the inspiration level on these is super high to me.

01:07:15 ◼   ► As opposed to say, like, a National Geographic photo contest, where they really are shot from

01:07:25 ◼   ► like the four corners of the globe. I was also like, just surprised that Apple didn't pan,

01:07:31 ◼   ► Like the it this isn't an apple pandering because there's no like oh look

01:07:34 ◼   ► This is using the new depth effect from our iPhone 10 are you know, like there's not a single portrait there?

01:07:40 ◼   ► They're not the usual Oh a picture of a pet picture of a face someone sitting on a corner, you know

01:07:46 ◼   ► If they really went for different looking stuff. Well, it's funny you would bring that up. I actually noticed looking at the winners that

01:07:52 ◼   ► So

01:07:55 ◼   ► promotionally Apple has spent a lot of time last two years talking about the portrait effect, which is about

01:08:00 ◼   ► blurring the background artificially, you know, through, you know, to create though, the look,

01:08:08 ◼   ► the quote unquote Boca effect of a shallow depth of field where the subject is in focus and the

01:08:14 ◼   ► background is out of focus and it's a lot of... Why did you bokeh Jacob? Why did you bokeh Jacob?

01:08:18 ◼   ► I mean, it's everywhere. It is. That's a funny ad. It's great. It's terrific. Yeah. That's,

01:08:24 ◼   ► if you haven't seen it, it's a couple of, I think it's, I think they're all women. It's a bunch of

01:08:29 ◼   ► moms are talking and one mom is taking a photo of the other mom's child and it's a portrait

01:08:34 ◼   ► photo and the other woman's child is in the background and she's like, "Why did you

01:08:41 ◼   ► Boca my child?" And she says, "I would never Boca, Jeff."

01:08:44 ◼   ► Why do you hate Jacob? What kind of person does that?

01:08:48 ◼   ► It's really funny though to see that. I just never expected—I've known the word Boca

01:08:53 ◼   ► for a long time as, like I said, as an amateur photo enthusiast. I never expected to see

01:08:58 ◼   ► it in a mainstream ad, you know, on primetime TV, but it's entered into vernacular. I actually

01:09:08 ◼   ► think it's interesting how many of these winning images actually have the opposite.

01:09:12 ◼   ► They have a truly infinite depth of field, you know, that there's a foreground subject

01:09:19 ◼   ► and a background that are both in focus. Here's this one. There's one of the winning photos

01:09:26 ◼   ► by Elizabeth Skarratt here in the US.

01:09:27 ◼   ► just looking at it now. Yeah, with an iPhone eight plus. So it's another older phone. But

01:09:32 ◼   ► it's a portrait of I guess her daughter up close to the camera with is that El Capitan

01:09:39 ◼   ► in the background?

01:09:40 ◼   ► It might be I'm not good with the mountains. I don't know there's mountains behind her

01:09:43 ◼   ► and let's just say it's a happy time. Right. But it's you know, the mountain is in focus,

01:09:48 ◼   ► the clouds, you know, literally 10s of miles away are in focus. And of course, the girl

01:09:54 ◼   ► little girl is in perfect focus, including individual strands of her hair. Yeah, I would

01:10:00 ◼   ► say that it's funny how many of these winners actually have a really deep depth of field.

01:10:05 ◼   ► And she uses contrast against the trees and the brightness of the grass to make the separation,

01:10:10 ◼   ► not the blur effect.

01:10:11 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a really good photo. And again, really hard to believe it's taken with a cell

01:10:17 ◼   ► phone. Really, it's inspiring.

01:10:23 ◼   ► They had a bunch of photographer judges, but they also had like Phil Schiller, Kayan Drance,

01:10:27 ◼   ► Sebastian Marinou-Mes.

01:10:28 ◼   ► They had a bunch of Apple, like people from the Apple marketing and the camera teams judging.

01:10:33 ◼   ► So you had a wide range.

01:10:34 ◼   ► If that's a name that might ring a bell.

01:10:36 ◼   ► She was actually on stage for the first time at the introduction of the iPhone, this year's

01:10:43 ◼   ► iPhones in September.

01:10:45 ◼   ► The A12 segment.

01:10:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:47 ◼   ► She, yeah, she had the segment, which was really, I think one of the toughest parts

01:10:51 ◼   ► was explaining how does the A12 AI stuff make photography better, which could easily have

01:11:01 ◼   ► gotten out into the weeds and instead was a really succinct, "Oh, okay, I get it.

01:11:07 ◼   ► We're making better images, not just through lenses and sensors. It really is billions.

01:11:14 ◼   ► It's like billions of computational decisions made for each shot instantaneously as you shoot

01:11:21 ◼   ► it. It was a really good segment.

01:11:22 ◼   ► And I know people have said this before, but it's worth pointing out, I've spoken to

01:11:24 ◼   ► a lot of companies where the marketing people are essentially salespeople. They're like

01:11:28 ◼   ► a used car salesman and they have no idea how the technology works or anything behind

01:11:32 ◼   ► it. They just want you to buy it. And Apple's team is very different. Most of them have

01:11:36 ◼   ► engineering degrees. They all are incredibly smart and they know how it works literally

01:11:40 ◼   ► down to the silicon. And you see that when they do present on stage. And also, Sebastian,

01:11:45 ◼   ► if people don't know Sebastian, he's been doing State of the Union for the last couple

01:11:48 ◼   ► Also very, very smart.

01:11:50 ◼   ► He runs the camera team now.

01:11:52 ◼   ► Used to be vice president of software at QNX previously.

01:11:54 ◼   ► These are all real serious people.

01:11:57 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. I think my favorite, here's, I picked my favorite.

01:12:00 ◼   ► I'm going to ask you yours. They're all good.

01:12:02 ◼   ► My favorite though is Darren Sohs.

01:12:04 ◼   ► He's from Singapore.

01:12:06 ◼   ► And it's a reflection of like a, I'm guessing like an apartment building.

01:12:09 ◼   ► It's hard to say. Some kind of high rise.

01:12:11 ◼   ► In a puddle.

01:12:13 ◼   ► And it, I don't know what, I don't know.

01:12:16 ◼   ► - You know, it's so, it's very obvious, I think,

01:12:19 ◼   ► is it Phil Schiller?

01:12:20 ◼   ► Yeah, Phil Schiller's comments on this one.

01:12:21 ◼   ► He was one of the judges.

01:12:23 ◼   ► It's a reflection that looks like a painting.

01:12:24 ◼   ► I mean, and it's the best way to say it.

01:12:27 ◼   ► But it looks so much like a painting, it's stunning.

01:12:30 ◼   ► And I think that, I think it would be a great photo anyway,

01:12:32 ◼   ► but there's a bird that's captured in the sky

01:12:35 ◼   ► that in like just the perfect location

01:12:38 ◼   ► that really makes it.

01:12:40 ◼   ► It's just, it's such a compelling image.

01:12:42 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:12:44 ◼   ► and just great color and that's probably my favorite.

01:12:46 ◼   ► - When you look at it every time,

01:12:47 ◼   ► you see the building and you look again,

01:12:49 ◼   ► you notice the puddle and you look again,

01:12:50 ◼   ► you notice the different, like the layers of the puddle.

01:12:52 ◼   ► It's just so many depths to it, so much depths to it.

01:12:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, what's your favorite?

01:12:57 ◼   ► - I like, I don't know if it's Dina or Dinah Al-Fasi

01:13:00 ◼   ► from Israel and she just got this perfect frame

01:13:03 ◼   ► of like this desolate sidewalk with a little tiny leaf

01:13:06 ◼   ► in the corner, but then this perfect heart-shaped puddle,

01:13:08 ◼   ► which is this deep blue and a person walking,

01:13:11 ◼   ► Again, everything is just perfectly framed in that instant

01:13:15 ◼   ► with like the world behind them, but you're not part of it.

01:13:17 ◼   ► But maybe if you follow them, you could be.

01:13:20 ◼   ► And it's just like, it's mystery and evocative

01:13:22 ◼   ► at the same time, mysterious and evocative.

01:13:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm also, it's like--

01:13:28 ◼   ► - iPhone 10, by the way.

01:13:29 ◼   ► - iPhone 10.

01:13:30 ◼   ► It's fascinating too, because until I noticed the leaf,

01:13:36 ◼   ► I was even unsure of the scale.

01:13:39 ◼   ► I kind of thought it was a relatively small puddle, but I wasn't sure. I don't know, it's

01:13:45 ◼   ► a great image too. They're all, you know, unsurprising. And then you realize the person

01:13:48 ◼   ► walking is upside down to make them look right side up in the puddle. And, you know, it's,

01:13:52 ◼   ► again, many layers of perception. Yeah, it's really cool. And I'm shocked, the 10 best photos

01:14:01 ◼   ► in this very highly promoted iPhone photo contest are all amazing images. But they really are. And

01:14:08 ◼   ► And it's super, super inspiring knowing

01:14:10 ◼   ► that I'm walking around every waking moment of my life

01:14:14 ◼   ► with a camera as good or better than what was used

01:14:18 ◼   ► to take every one of these images.

01:14:21 ◼   ► So thank you for making me feel like a terrible,

01:14:24 ◼   ► incompetent photographer Apple.

01:14:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, and what I love about it still is that,

01:14:29 ◼   ► like, you know, people argue about which camera is the best,

01:14:31 ◼   ► but you really, for just taking a camera out of your pocket

01:14:34 ◼   ► and taking a shot and not having to worry about the app

01:14:36 ◼   ► taking forever to launch or figuring out

01:14:38 ◼   ► which of 19 different AI modes you want to engage for.

01:14:41 ◼   ► Just take it out of your pocket, take a shot,

01:14:43 ◼   ► and odds are you're gonna get a really useful photo.

01:14:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, absolutely.

01:14:47 ◼   ► It's, I don't know, it's a,

01:14:51 ◼   ► for as depressing as our opening segment was

01:14:53 ◼   ► on the state of privacy in the industry,

01:14:55 ◼   ► it's, it's, it's super exciting to me

01:14:59 ◼   ► how amazing the cameras we have with us at all times are,

01:15:05 ◼   ► you know, including video. All right, next segment. How about we talk about folding phones?

01:15:13 ◼   ► Yeah, sure. So we have two folding phones now. We had, I think I spoke about it with

01:15:19 ◼   ► Glenn Fleishman in last week's episode, the Samsung Galaxy Fold. Very intriguingly named.

01:15:28 ◼   ► And the people who brought you the Samsung Galaxy Circle in previous years.

01:15:34 ◼   ► This was introduced at Samsung's "unpacked" event like a week and a half ago in San Francisco

01:15:42 ◼   ► at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium.

01:15:47 ◼   ► And now this week at the—what's the name of the show in Barcelona?

01:15:50 ◼   ► Michael Scott Mobile World Congress, MWC.

01:15:52 ◼   ► Dave Asprey MWC, Mobile World Congress is a big—every

01:15:58 ◼   ► other than Samsung and Apple introduced their phones at MWC. Huawei unveiled their Mate

01:16:07 ◼   ► X. Is it the Mate X or Mate 10? It's spelled with a mate.

01:16:11 ◼   ► Jon Sorrentino It's the Mate X. Yeah, it's hard. It's

01:16:12 ◼   ► hard to use, but yeah, it's the Mate X.

01:16:14 ◼   ► Dave Asprey All right, their folding phone. But before

01:16:17 ◼   ► I get to them, let me actually take a moment here on the side. Here's something I didn't

01:16:22 ◼   ► know. I think I forget if this was on the show or something I wrote about. I think it

01:16:26 ◼   ► was when I wrote about Samsung's phone and I had a little parenthetical wondering why

01:16:31 ◼   ► the hell do they call everything the galaxy whatever because it's just adding an extra

01:16:35 ◼   ► word every single thing they unveiled Samsung unveiled is the Samsung Galaxy blank. The

01:16:41 ◼   ► phones are the galaxy s 10 and s 10 plus the earbuds are the Samsung Galaxy buds. I think

01:16:49 ◼   ► they're calling them. Yeah, why not just the Samsung buds? Why not? Why do they insert

01:16:53 ◼   ► galaxy into all of it. And one answer I got from people is that Samsung is such a bizarre

01:17:01 ◼   ► conglomerate that they make washing machines and refrigerators and all of these other various

01:17:10 ◼   ► things that the galaxy thing is a way to say this is our computer stuff. I don't know.

01:17:17 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised if they come out with a galaxy refrigerator, frankly.

01:17:20 ◼   ► It's a bunch of different companies that all license the name Samsung and are owned

01:17:25 ◼   ► to a certain percentage by the Samsung company, I believe.

01:17:28 ◼   ► Not completely owned all the time, but partially owned at least.

01:17:32 ◼   ► The more interesting angle, and this is news to me, is that in Japan, Korean brands are

01:17:41 ◼   ► so frowned upon and looked upon with such disdain, and at least Samsung in particular,

01:17:46 ◼   ► Samsung doesn't use the Samsung brand in Japan. When you buy a Samsung phone in Japan,

01:17:53 ◼   ► it's just called like the Galaxy S10, and it doesn't say Samsung on the back,

01:17:57 ◼   ► so it's like a different SKU. It doesn't have that Samsung logo on it.

01:18:01 ◼   ► Like Datsun before Nissan.

01:18:04 ◼   ► Yeah, it's really wild. A couple of readers and listeners or whatever, you know, but

01:18:09 ◼   ► who live in Japan sent me pictures and stuff of like… And the other thing too is Japan is

01:18:15 ◼   ► Japan is still a very carrier-centric dominated country. Probably not that different in the

01:18:22 ◼   ► US. In Europe, there's a lot of places where your carrier is just an afterthought and people

01:18:28 ◼   ► just pop in SIMs and nobody even really…people change carriers a lot freer and buy their

01:18:35 ◼   ► phones independent of their carrier service. But Japan, it's still very dominated by

01:18:40 ◼   ► carriers. But you know, somebody had a photo, I forget which one of the Japanese maybe Docomo,

01:18:46 ◼   ► I think, but one of their stores. And like the Samsung kiosk doesn't say Samsung anywhere. It's

01:18:51 ◼   ► just all galaxy. So they use that galaxy brand so that they don't have to say Samsung. I really was

01:18:59 ◼   ► blown away by it. So it's kind of bizarre because I've always been hung up on the weird way that

01:19:04 ◼   ► Samsung loves to put their logo so big. It's not even a good logo. I mean, it's just billions on

01:19:10 ◼   ► putting it everywhere.

01:19:12 ◼   ► - Right, and that of all the things I always used to say,

01:19:14 ◼   ► they copied so much from the iPhone,

01:19:16 ◼   ► and the one thing they couldn't bring themselves to copy

01:19:19 ◼   ► was the humility of not putting your logo

01:19:21 ◼   ► on the front of the phone.

01:19:23 ◼   ► Like they kept that Samsung thing on the front of the phone

01:19:25 ◼   ► until they ran out of chance.

01:19:26 ◼   ► - Until there was no more front on the phone.

01:19:29 ◼   ► - Right, until there was no more front.

01:19:31 ◼   ► And then they started putting it on the back,

01:19:33 ◼   ► but not in Japan.

01:19:34 ◼   ► In Japan, it's Galaxy.

01:19:35 ◼   ► So there's my aside on that.

01:19:37 ◼   ► So I guess that means they're stuck

01:19:39 ◼   ► and the rest of the world calling everything Samsung Galaxy, blah, blah, blah.

01:19:45 ◼   ► Oh, man.

01:19:47 ◼   ► Anyway, we got the Huawei Mate X and we've got the Samsung Galaxy Fold and it's fascinating

01:19:55 ◼   ► one two punch because they literally fold the opposite way.

01:20:00 ◼   ► They're actually, you know, fundamentally in an Audi TM, fundamentally the same basic

01:20:06 ◼   ► idea.

01:20:07 ◼   ► a cell phone sized smartphone that unfolds to a squarish tablet size device. But because

01:20:16 ◼   ► the ones in any and ones in Audi, it's two very different takes on it. Neither one of

01:20:22 ◼   ► them is practically priced. The Samsung Galaxy Fold starts at $1980 and I think the Mate

01:20:32 ◼   ► is 2300 euros, which I did the calculation at least as of a day or two ago. That was

01:20:38 ◼   ► $2,600.

01:20:39 ◼   ► Chuck Liddell Yeah, which you can't get it. You'll have

01:20:42 ◼   ► to import it because you can't buy it in the U.S.

01:20:44 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Right, because Huawei has a very strange

01:20:48 ◼   ► relationship with the United States. It's funny being the iPhone enthusiast and now

01:20:58 ◼   ► being the one laughing at the prices of other people's phones.

01:21:03 ◼   ► At least it's not Samsung expensive is everything every Apple person can say now.

01:21:08 ◼   ► Yeah. And you know, but clearly it would be different though, if the Samsung Galaxy S

01:21:13 ◼   ► 10 were $2,000 because clearly the S 10 and S 10 plus and the S 10 E those three phones

01:21:19 ◼   ► are the ones that are meant to they are Samsung's flagship phones for 2019. This folding thing

01:21:27 ◼   ► is not meant to sell in huge quantities.

01:21:31 ◼   ► - No, that's part of the reason why it's priced out

01:21:32 ◼   ► because it's a small batch and they have to

01:21:35 ◼   ► sort of spread out the cost of running it

01:21:37 ◼   ► amongst the units.

01:21:38 ◼   ► And early adopters will pay a lot

01:21:40 ◼   ► because they're early adopters.

01:21:41 ◼   ► - I wonder, you know, I mean it certainly is a,

01:21:45 ◼   ► there's no mistaking it as a new phone, right?

01:21:47 ◼   ► I mean, it is definite, you know,

01:21:51 ◼   ► if you want somebody, if you want people to know

01:21:53 ◼   ► that you have a very expensive new phone,

01:21:56 ◼   ► that these are the ones to get.

01:21:58 ◼   ► - Let me just unfold my phone and give you that answer.

01:22:02 ◼   ► - I personally, I'm intrigued enough

01:22:06 ◼   ► that it's a topic on the show and I've linked to them both

01:22:09 ◼   ► and I'm following along, but I'm also convinced

01:22:12 ◼   ► that neither one of these really should be considered

01:22:16 ◼   ► more than a shipping prototype.

01:22:18 ◼   ► - I should have mentioned there was a third one there

01:22:20 ◼   ► that got much less attention, LG,

01:22:21 ◼   ► because they hadn't made a folding phone.

01:22:24 ◼   ► They made a case with a second display

01:22:26 ◼   ► that you put your phone in and then it essentially becomes a folding phone. And the case is really

01:22:30 ◼   ► expensive because it has that second display in it.

01:22:33 ◼   ► Dave Asprey But then there must be a gap or something,

01:22:34 ◼   ► right?

01:22:35 ◼   ► Jon Streeter Yes. There's like a hinge in the middle.

01:22:38 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Hmm.

01:22:39 ◼   ► Jon Streeter So it's two discrete screens.

01:22:41 ◼   ► Dave Asprey You know, it raises some questions. So with

01:22:45 ◼   ► Samsung's AnyDesign, where the folding display folds in and on itself, and then you have,

01:22:53 ◼   ► They put an extra display, therefore on the outside,

01:22:57 ◼   ► so there'd be something you can see

01:22:58 ◼   ► while the phone is folded.

01:22:59 ◼   ► - And a small one with these huge,

01:23:01 ◼   ► like inch and a half bezels on top and bottom too.

01:23:04 ◼   ► - Absolutely huge.

01:23:05 ◼   ► I mean, almost hard to believe chin and forehead bezels.

01:23:08 ◼   ► Like not like, oh my God, we're back to the old--

01:23:10 ◼   ► - Like Frankenstein's monster chin and forehead bezels.

01:23:12 ◼   ► - Right, not like the old iPhones

01:23:15 ◼   ► before the iPhone 10 chin and forehead.

01:23:18 ◼   ► We're talking way, way bigger.

01:23:20 ◼   ► Like unlike anything you've ever seen.

01:23:22 ◼   ► You know, you know it it

01:23:24 ◼   ► It's probably the lowest

01:23:27 ◼   ► You know, what's the term the screen?

01:23:29 ◼   ► Screen to bezel ratio. It's got to be the highest since like

01:23:35 ◼   ► flip phones

01:23:36 ◼   ► Yeah

01:23:37 ◼   ► I can't tell if it's like

01:23:38 ◼   ► components forced them to do that because it was just they just couldn't bury them under the screen or they thought it was so

01:23:43 ◼   ► Thick they needed to make the screen fall smaller for you to be able to use it one

01:23:46 ◼   ► I don't know what the what that was which wouldn't dictated the other well and how much of it's just price that you know

01:23:51 ◼   ► - Yeah. - The bigger the display.

01:23:52 ◼   ► I mean, clearly the idea with the Samsung One

01:23:55 ◼   ► of their concept is that that small outer display

01:24:00 ◼   ► in folded mode is really only meant

01:24:03 ◼   ► for very quick casual use.

01:24:05 ◼   ► In other words, you know, oh, you have a notification,

01:24:08 ◼   ► who's it from? - Yeah.

01:24:09 ◼   ► - Oh, my phone, somebody's calling me, who is it?

01:24:11 ◼   ► - I'm walking around, I can't stop and open it,

01:24:15 ◼   ► I just wanna get a couple quick things done.

01:24:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't even know if the camera works in that mode.

01:24:21 ◼   ► Like I don't even know if you know.

01:24:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's a whole series of cameras.

01:24:25 ◼   ► That's the other thing is it's got a whole series

01:24:26 ◼   ► of cameras on the back and then they have the biggest notch.

01:24:28 ◼   ► Like it's so big, it's like a pirate patch

01:24:30 ◼   ► on the inside for a whole bunch of internal cameras too.

01:24:33 ◼   ► - It's clearly the idea though is that anytime

01:24:37 ◼   ► you're actually doing anything,

01:24:38 ◼   ► you're going to take the phone and open it up and unfold it.

01:24:42 ◼   ► But at a fundamental level,

01:24:45 ◼   ► I think that the Huawei Audi design is better

01:24:50 ◼   ► because there is no extra screen, right?

01:24:53 ◼   ► It's just one screen and you only use half of it

01:24:56 ◼   ► when you're in phone mode.

01:24:58 ◼   ► You know, it seems less wasteful.

01:25:01 ◼   ► It's inelegant to have an extra screen.

01:25:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's more efficient but less protected

01:25:06 ◼   ► because now that plastic screen,

01:25:08 ◼   ► 'cause there's no folding Gorilla Glass yet,

01:25:10 ◼   ► is just always exposed to the outside world.

01:25:13 ◼   ► - In theory, you know,

01:25:16 ◼   ► and I understand why nobody's really pulled this off

01:25:19 ◼   ► and I understand why Apple hasn't done it, you know, but in theory, it's wasteful that

01:25:23 ◼   ► we even have front facing cameras. I mean, in theory, it would be nice if there was some

01:25:27 ◼   ► way that you could have one camera and then have it rotate. So that whether you know,

01:25:32 ◼   ► you're facing the phone, you know, taking a picture of yourself or taking the picture

01:25:36 ◼   ► away from the phone, it would be the same camera. You know, and in the same way, it's

01:25:41 ◼   ► wasteful to have a second display that you only use when the phone is in a secondary

01:25:45 ◼   ► I get it though that you know, they wanted to have it fold in and of itself. I don't know

01:25:51 ◼   ► Yeah, they wanted to make a book and Huawei is as that that it has one camera system and it sort of does a pass

01:25:55 ◼   ► Through when you want to take, you know selfies or else's well and yeah

01:25:59 ◼   ► I wasn't sure how they did that

01:26:02 ◼   ► neither of these seems super compelling to me though, and

01:26:06 ◼   ► There's a clearly a crease on the the Huawei one like though

01:26:13 ◼   ► You think like how do you how would you do this would not have it some kind of crease and it the answer is well

01:26:18 ◼   ► You don't there. It's not there is no magic way that this

01:26:22 ◼   ► You know, maybe someday we'll get there, you know, but as of now there is, you know

01:26:26 ◼   ► There's definitely a crease in the middle that's on day one. Like these are the demo units

01:26:30 ◼   ► You don't like it's hard to imagine what it's gonna look like a month two months a year in all right

01:26:34 ◼   ► Yeah, well, there's a real durability question with both. Yeah

01:26:37 ◼   ► Because especially with the wall way with where the main display is on the outside at all times

01:26:43 ◼   ► And yeah, I don't know what percentage of people use their phone with no case. I suspect

01:26:50 ◼   ► it's you know, I've talked about before I would guess it's a 10% or fewer

01:26:55 ◼   ► And if you put a screen protector on does that crease now as well? I mean like the whole thing. How would you do it?

01:27:00 ◼   ► Yeah, how would you do a screen protector?

01:27:02 ◼   ► And even you know and I tend not to use a case so I'm you know

01:27:07 ◼   ► Yeah

01:27:07 ◼   ► I'm in that group that mostly but I I'm also always as somebody who doesn't use a case very

01:27:13 ◼   ► hagdens in a which side of my phone is a display and which is not and if I'm ever setting it down on a

01:27:19 ◼   ► Surface I tend to set it with the display up, you know

01:27:24 ◼   ► So that yeah doesn't get scratched by something that might be on the table or surface

01:27:27 ◼   ► How do you do that when both sides are display, you know, there is no lucky side to drop it on or to get a scratch

01:27:37 ◼   ► Yep, and combine that with the fact that both of these because glass isn't yet

01:27:41 ◼   ► flexible they're both plastic screens not glass and

01:27:46 ◼   ► possibly therefore

01:27:49 ◼   ► More scratchable. Oh, absolutely. Definitely more scratchable. You have to put it in an iPod sock the minute you close it, right?

01:27:55 ◼   ► It's you know, how do you so I?

01:27:57 ◼   ► Don't know. I'm not sure the foldable phones will ever be a thing for for some reason some including durability and

01:28:05 ◼   ► The fact that people want to put them in cases, you know, and if people want to put their seven hundred and fifty dollar

01:28:11 ◼   ► phones in a kit protective case

01:28:14 ◼   ► Which is a total sensible totally sensible thing to do and way to think about it

01:28:18 ◼   ► You know, maybe I'm the idiot for not putting my phones in cases most of the time

01:28:22 ◼   ► I'll tell you what if it's two thousand dollars

01:28:25 ◼   ► It's only going to increase their desire to put it in a case and if the design of the phone is that well

01:28:29 ◼   ► You can't put it in a case because the whole gimmick is it unfolds?

01:28:32 ◼   ► I'm not sure that appeals to a lot of people and I don't know how you get around that

01:28:36 ◼   ► How do you design a phone that can fold whether it's an innie or an outie and still be able to put it in a protective?

01:28:42 ◼   ► case

01:28:43 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely

01:28:44 ◼   ► I mean to me this I

01:28:45 ◼   ► Remember when I was at CES and they introduced the galaxy note for the first time and they put it on every table in this

01:28:50 ◼   ► room that we went into and we all picked them up and

01:28:52 ◼   ► Looked at them and the screens were horrible because no one really had good screen tech

01:28:56 ◼   ► I mean there's one of the reasons Apple made the people you know

01:28:59 ◼   ► And one of the reasons Apple made the phone smaller

01:29:00 ◼   ► was so you could hit it.

01:29:02 ◼   ► But also that was literally the biggest size

01:29:04 ◼   ► they could make the screen back then

01:29:05 ◼   ► to a quality standard that they were found acceptable.

01:29:07 ◼   ► But Samsung's like, they just stretched it out

01:29:09 ◼   ► and it did not look good.

01:29:10 ◼   ► And that whole phone was deeply compromised.

01:29:13 ◼   ► But flash forward a few years

01:29:14 ◼   ► and we have really good big phones now.

01:29:17 ◼   ► And that's a much easier problem set to solve for

01:29:19 ◼   ► than the foldable phones.

01:29:21 ◼   ► So I love the idea.

01:29:22 ◼   ► I love the idea of having one thing that's my phone

01:29:25 ◼   ► that can open up into a tablet.

01:29:26 ◼   ► I think it's a brilliant idea.

01:29:29 ◼   ► It has not been realized yet to say it like easily,

01:29:33 ◼   ► but, and if it can never be realized well,

01:29:35 ◼   ► I will never buy one of them, but I hold out hope.

01:29:38 ◼   ► You know, Apple, I heard about Apple experimenting

01:29:40 ◼   ► with the stuff, I think back in the iPhone 4S days,

01:29:43 ◼   ► and obviously they're not happy with anything

01:29:45 ◼   ► 'cause they haven't shipped anything yet.

01:29:46 ◼   ► They have the resources and smarts

01:29:49 ◼   ► to basically prototype anything that they want

01:29:52 ◼   ► as often as they want.

01:29:53 ◼   ► So my guess is, you know, that they don't find

01:29:55 ◼   ► this technology acceptable yet either.

01:29:57 ◼   ► I don't know if they ever will,

01:29:59 ◼   ► but it is a compelling idea to have that one thing

01:30:02 ◼   ► that you can just like, almost like the Star Trek thing.

01:30:04 ◼   ► It's just a very,

01:30:06 ◼   ► people have been folding wallets and books for millennia.

01:30:08 ◼   ► It's something we're very used to.

01:30:10 ◼   ► - Well, to me, the canonical sci-fi prototype for this

01:30:15 ◼   ► are the devices in Westworld.

01:30:19 ◼   ► I mentioned this last week with Glenn,

01:30:21 ◼   ► but Westworld has these,

01:30:26 ◼   ► - What's the name of the company?

01:30:27 ◼   ► - I don't know.

01:30:30 ◼   ► - Basic idea of Westworld for those who aren't familiar

01:30:32 ◼   ► is that it's like at some point, unnamed point

01:30:35 ◼   ► in the somewhat near future,

01:30:37 ◼   ► there's a theme park you can go to where it's,

01:30:40 ◼   ► you're just, you get put into a cowboy outfit and you're,

01:30:44 ◼   ► you know, it's like the real, the wild West come to life

01:30:48 ◼   ► and you just get to be a...

01:30:50 ◼   ► - It's an old Michael Crichton movie

01:30:52 ◼   ► that they remade for TV.

01:30:53 ◼   ► - Right, and it's really good.

01:30:54 ◼   ► It's on HBO.

01:30:55 ◼   ► I really enjoy it tremendously, but the employees of the theme park use these tablet computers

01:31:02 ◼   ► that fold to be like cell phone size and are completely usable, folded or unfolded.

01:31:09 ◼   ► So you can put it in a pocket, fold it, take it out and use it if you just want to use

01:31:13 ◼   ► it, but then you can unfold it.

01:31:15 ◼   ► And they're maybe like the thickness of a credit card.

01:31:19 ◼   ► So they're very, very thin.

01:31:22 ◼   ► You know, just, you know, that, that, that future dream of just having a device that

01:31:29 ◼   ► is just a screen, no thicker than the screen, and everything is just in there.

01:31:36 ◼   ► And they look great.

01:31:37 ◼   ► It's they do a great job with the user interface.

01:31:39 ◼   ► I guess there's anything I would gripe about it seems to me like they make the user interface

01:31:43 ◼   ► too small.

01:31:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that if you actually saw that much information density, and a device, it

01:31:49 ◼   ► be untouchable. It wouldn't be unsuited to touch, but it's the sort of thing where it makes it look

01:31:55 ◼   ► more sci-fi-y to have more information on. So I would bet that they're fully aware that it's

01:32:02 ◼   ► actually unusable for touch information density, but looks cooler. So therefore, they went with

01:32:10 ◼   ► that direction. But anyway, they fold and unfold exactly the way, in theory, one would want their

01:32:18 ◼   ► phone to fold and unfold. So you can get a tablet size computer whenever you need it

01:32:23 ◼   ► and use a phone size thing when you don't.

01:32:25 ◼   ► Yeah, if Xiaomi had this, they haven't actually shown the phone off yet, but their CEO was using

01:32:30 ◼   ► a phone that was a tablet and you fold both the left and the right side in behind it and

01:32:35 ◼   ► that becomes your phone. So they're always experimenting with all sorts of crazy stuff.

01:32:38 ◼   ► It is an interesting idea. Would you are these things, are they phones that unfold or are they

01:32:44 ◼   ► tablets that fold up. It also speaks to the problems these companies are dealing with

01:32:52 ◼   ► where Android is a lot better for phones than it is for tablets. I think even Android proponents

01:33:01 ◼   ► would agree with that, that Android, however much you might like it as your phone operating

01:33:07 ◼   ► system, it's never really done a great job on tablets. Even Google seems to acknowledge

01:33:13 ◼   ► that by moving more towards Chrome as the OS for their tablet-sized devices than Android.

01:33:21 ◼   ► But if Android isn't good at being a tablet, then what's the point of having a phone that

01:33:24 ◼   ► opens up to tablet size?

01:33:26 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

01:33:28 ◼   ► You know, in theory, iOS would be a lot better at this than Android.

01:33:33 ◼   ► I was thinking about it too because you have the size classes already, so you just have

01:33:37 ◼   ► a regular size class.

01:33:39 ◼   ► When it opens up, it takes on—sorry, you have the compact size class that opens up,

01:33:43 ◼   ► a regular size class with the same kind of mechanics that you have in iOS and iPad apps

01:33:47 ◼   ► and you already have all those universal binaries. So their software story at least is I think much

01:33:51 ◼   ► cleaner at this point. Yeah. I don't know. I don't think either of these are going to be. I don't

01:33:56 ◼   ► think we're. My question is will they be popular enough that you'll actually maybe see one this

01:34:01 ◼   ► year? Like will somebody, will I get an email from somebody by the end of year and say hey I actually

01:34:05 ◼   ► saw somebody with the Galaxy Fold you know at the mall and wherever Peoria. I don't know. Like I

01:34:12 ◼   ► Like I don't even know if these things are realistic,

01:34:15 ◼   ► real products enough that we're even going to see them,

01:34:17 ◼   ► let alone be using them.

01:34:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think right now, again, these are like,

01:34:23 ◼   ► unlike Apple, Apple keeps their prototypes

01:34:25 ◼   ► and their shame internal.

01:34:26 ◼   ► These companies are very happy to sort of put them in public

01:34:29 ◼   ► and I think it benefits Apple too,

01:34:30 ◼   ► because, you know, Apple got to watch 10 years of smartphones

01:34:33 ◼   ► of Blackberries and Poms and Windows Mobile

01:34:35 ◼   ► and figure out what problems they had

01:34:36 ◼   ► and how Apple could solve them.

01:34:37 ◼   ► Same thing with tablet PC,

01:34:39 ◼   ► same thing with the different watch brands

01:34:41 ◼   ► this everyone's gonna watch these they'll have the same discussions that

01:34:44 ◼   ► we have and if you can solve a problem you can make a better product then

01:34:48 ◼   ► they'll go and if they're just flawed by nature then and there'll be no go

01:34:51 ◼   ► well like the idea of flexible displays is fascinating because we've you know

01:34:57 ◼   ► from the CRT until very until very recently displays were anything but

01:35:03 ◼   ► flexible they were completely inflexible typically would would crack very easily

01:35:08 ◼   ► easily if you tried to flex them.

01:35:13 ◼   ► What Apple's take on this, and one of the first ways that these flexible OLEDs have

01:35:19 ◼   ► been used in Samsung's case is to fold a little bit of the screen over the side of

01:35:24 ◼   ► the display.

01:35:27 ◼   ► And they had some weird UI experiments where they would show notifications in that area,

01:35:34 ◼   ► of like, what do they call them, chyrons, chyrons, like on TV, you know, like a little

01:35:39 ◼   ► ticker tape thing at the bottom of CNN or MSNBC or ESPN.

01:35:42 ◼   ► Jared Ranerelle It was like putting a little colored note sticker

01:35:45 ◼   ► on the outside of your book.

01:35:46 ◼   ► Dave Asprey I've never found that very compelling.

01:35:49 ◼   ► It kind of looks cool because it's literally edge to edge and there's no bezel at all

01:35:55 ◼   ► on the side.

01:35:56 ◼   ► So it looks good in a product photograph, but I've never understood the point of having

01:36:01 ◼   ► it because you can't hold the phone without covering up that part of it. Apple obviously

01:36:06 ◼   ► isn't impressed with that design. But the one area where Apple has used flexible displays

01:36:12 ◼   ► so far is in the iPhone X and now the XS and XS Max where they use the flexible nature

01:36:18 ◼   ► of the OLED to curve the display at the—I think it's just the top and bottom.

01:36:25 ◼   ► Yeah under but you don't it's only to make they're using the the the flexible nature of OLED

01:36:31 ◼   ► to make the iPhone 10 and

01:36:34 ◼   ► 10s displays go, you know from the top to bottom with no chin or forehead or minimal minimal bezel

01:36:42 ◼   ► That's the same as it is on the sides. The flexible part is completely hidden from view so you don't see it as flex

01:36:48 ◼   ► It's just that's the implementation detail of how they made it get look like it goes all the way from the top and bottom

01:36:55 ◼   ► So I think that's plugging into the module underneath it forcing a chin it can go it's right on the bottom of it

01:37:00 ◼   ► It goes underneath it not therefore hiding the chin there

01:37:02 ◼   ► Well, we're leaving it with the possibility making the chin area right 90 well over 99% of all iPhone 10

01:37:08 ◼   ► Owners have no idea that they're using a display that is flexed under the bottom and top

01:37:14 ◼   ► Because it doesn't look like it at all. Like yeah, totally

01:37:17 ◼   ► It's it's fascinating and such a difference to me that Apple, you know is using this expensive

01:37:23 ◼   ► state-of-the-art flexible screen technology in a way that completely hides the fact that it's flexible at all

01:37:29 ◼   ► Well, I think implementation detail right but that to me is so super appley

01:37:33 ◼   ► Whereas whereas like the initial Samsung thing was look at this. It's flexible

01:37:38 ◼   ► Look, it bends around the side like it couldn't be more in your face that hey, this is a flexible display

01:37:43 ◼   ► It goes back to that old Steve Jobs

01:37:45 ◼   ► Speech when he said we never want to look at a technology and figure out how to use it

01:37:50 ◼   ► that we wanna figure out a product

01:37:51 ◼   ► and then find the technology that enables it.

01:37:53 ◼   ► - I have a-- - And they wanted--

01:37:55 ◼   ► - Yep, it's such a great quote, yeah.

01:37:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, like they never looked at NFC and said,

01:38:00 ◼   ► "Hey, we oughta put this radio in."

01:38:01 ◼   ► They're like, "We need Apple Pay, what component?"

01:38:03 ◼   ► It's not a chipset, it's a feature set for them.

01:38:06 ◼   ► - I had a friend who, until recently, worked at Apple

01:38:09 ◼   ► and his remark upon seeing the,

01:38:12 ◼   ► I think the first of the, I think it was the Samsung one,

01:38:15 ◼   ► he goes, "That's a total," he just said the same thing,

01:38:18 ◼   ► That's a total Steve Jobs, that's a technology, not a product.

01:38:23 ◼   ► Somebody at Samsung was like, "Look, we could do this."

01:38:26 ◼   ► And then they said, "Okay, build a phone that does that."

01:38:28 ◼   ► Whereas nobody would really think, "Hey, let's build a display with a big crease

01:38:32 ◼   ► in the middle."

01:38:33 ◼   ► Well, I went to CES this year and I saw the Fruit Roll-Up TV from LG.

01:38:37 ◼   ► And at first I thought, "This is a brilliant idea because it'll just roll up to whatever

01:38:41 ◼   ► aspect ratio of the content you want to watch.

01:38:43 ◼   ► Like if it's a 16 by 9 show, it'll go to 16 by 9.

01:38:46 ◼   ► but if you're watching Lawrence of Arabia,

01:38:49 ◼   ► it'll give you like this,

01:38:50 ◼   ► no, you'll never have to worry about bars or anything again.

01:38:53 ◼   ► And they're like, nope, it's got two modes,

01:38:55 ◼   ► partially up for alarm clock, all the way up for TV.

01:38:58 ◼   ► That's it.

01:38:59 ◼   ► Like, well, then why use the technology?

01:39:01 ◼   ► - Well, I didn't think about,

01:39:04 ◼   ► that one I'm a little bit more,

01:39:06 ◼   ► I was actually gonna bring that up.

01:39:07 ◼   ► I actually feel like that LG rollable TV,

01:39:13 ◼   ► It's interesting to me if the nature of the room you want to put it in is such that you

01:39:19 ◼   ► don't want a TV up all the time.

01:39:21 ◼   ► Sure.

01:39:22 ◼   ► I don't know what that is.

01:39:25 ◼   ► I'm not a hide-the-TV person.

01:39:28 ◼   ► I'm a—look, I don't know.

01:39:30 ◼   ► Maybe—I don't know.

01:39:32 ◼   ► If you had a penthouse overlooking the city and you didn't want it to obstruct your view

01:39:35 ◼   ► until you wanted to watch the game.

01:39:38 ◼   ► Right.

01:39:39 ◼   ► And one time many years ago, I got an upgrade at Bellagio in Vegas and got a room that had

01:39:46 ◼   ► a TV at the foot of the bed.

01:39:49 ◼   ► And you hit a button and it would rise out.

01:39:53 ◼   ► And apparently Oprah Winfrey has had one of these for a long time.

01:39:55 ◼   ► My wife was very excited about that.

01:39:58 ◼   ► It's very cool.

01:39:59 ◼   ► - It really, it required a TV size box

01:40:04 ◼   ► at the foot of the bed because it would,

01:40:09 ◼   ► you know, the TV didn't,

01:40:11 ◼   ► there was a TV that was there all the time.

01:40:13 ◼   ► It just would go into this box and then you'd hit a button

01:40:16 ◼   ► and it would pop out of the box so you could see it.

01:40:19 ◼   ► In a case like that, the LG thing would be way more elegant,

01:40:23 ◼   ► you know, where it folds up into a little tiny box.

01:40:26 ◼   ► It doesn't have to, you know.

01:40:29 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:40:30 ◼   ► I'm sure we'll see it.

01:40:31 ◼   ► And I'm seeing them in advertising contexts

01:40:34 ◼   ► all over the place, that there's foldable displays

01:40:37 ◼   ► that people are putting up along the sides of buildings

01:40:39 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

01:40:40 ◼   ► I mean, it's clearly the future.

01:40:41 ◼   ► - Well, the rumor is, yes, you went in there,

01:40:43 ◼   ► the displays just curved up every side.

01:40:45 ◼   ► Like you even saw that in the Samsung event.

01:40:47 ◼   ► It looked like almost like a Celtic cross.

01:40:48 ◼   ► They had the displays folded around.

01:40:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think the initial uses that make a lot of sense

01:40:56 ◼   ► are in industrial—maybe that's the wrong word—installations, like lobby, if you're

01:41:04 ◼   ► going to use a display, big displays to decorate the lobby of your fancy new hotel, using flexible

01:41:11 ◼   ► displays would be way cooler. If you have circular columns in your building, it would

01:41:19 ◼   ► be kind of amazing to make a seamless display that wraps around the column in a, you know,

01:41:26 ◼   ► in a cylinder, a cylindrical display. There's all sorts of ways that flexible displays could

01:41:30 ◼   ► look cool, but I think in consumer technology, we haven't seen anything yet that's really

01:41:35 ◼   ► compelling.

01:41:36 ◼   ► Yeah, no, agreed.

01:41:37 ◼   ► And again, it is an interesting difference with Apple where Apple isn't going to show

01:41:42 ◼   ► a cruddy flexible phone that they don't want anybody to actually buy yet, just so

01:41:46 ◼   ► they can say first.

01:41:47 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, they never first is not on their in their vocabulary, right?

01:41:51 ◼   ► you could almost see it at Samsung's event that it's like the the

01:41:55 ◼   ► consumer technology equivalent of being in the YouTube comments and writing first and

01:42:01 ◼   ► Huawei did the same thing first and like we just saw the Samsung one last week, but okay, right?

01:42:06 ◼   ► It was a royale flex pie at CES, which was just horrible

01:42:09 ◼   ► I mean, they're all making these now which was also funny because there are a bunch of people who said only Samsung could make this

01:42:14 ◼   ► There's they're so far ahead. They've got years and years of lead. No one else can make this fold and then it's like eight of them

01:42:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I saw that I saw that there was a note speaking of Goldman Sachs where Goldman Sachs had a note saying that you know

01:42:28 ◼   ► I think it was overblown the reaction. I think you actually read the note

01:42:32 ◼   ► It was just if you know, and I think that if that needs to be in all caps

01:42:37 ◼   ► bold

01:42:40 ◼   ► and italics if

01:42:43 ◼   ► foldable phones become a thing Samsung might have a leg up a serious leg up on Apple because Samsung

01:42:48 ◼   ► produces their own screen technology and Apple is a

01:42:51 ◼   ► Buyer of screen technology made by others and I think that's actually a valid point. I think that you know

01:42:58 ◼   ► We see that now with the iPhone 10 and 10s that Samsung just charges them a fortune for those displays

01:43:03 ◼   ► Right, and I don't at this point. Nobody else can make them. Nobody else is making a no lead that meets apples

01:43:09 ◼   ► exacting demands for

01:43:12 ◼   ► You know color accuracy and etc. Etc. It is interesting now

01:43:16 ◼   ► There's you know, and and you see it with Samsung's devices and they're in a weird place, but to some degrees it's interesting that

01:43:22 ◼   ► Samsung's really the only other company that that can say that they follow the Tim Cook mantra of owning and controlling the core

01:43:31 ◼   ► technologies of their devices, I mean Samsung can do their own

01:43:35 ◼   ► CPUs and they do make their own displays

01:43:39 ◼   ► I mean Huawei is like that they make the key run processor

01:43:42 ◼   ► They even make the cell phone towers that it runs off of but they're just not gonna be sold

01:43:46 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break and thank our third

01:43:53 ◼   ► Final sponsor of the episode it is our good friends at

01:43:57 ◼   ► Squarespace I talked about Squarespace

01:44:00 ◼   ► At least every other episode they are one of the most long-running sponsors of this show

01:44:08 ◼   ► The reason why is because people keep signing up to build new websites or update old websites and move them to a new platform on

01:44:15 ◼   ► Squarespace using the code from the show

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01:46:19 ◼   ► What else is on our agenda Renee

01:46:26 ◼   ► God secret lives of Facebook moderators in America. This is a great story

01:46:30 ◼   ► I still haven't linked to it from during fireball because it was it really a great story by Casey Newton at

01:46:37 ◼   ► the verge

01:46:39 ◼   ► Really what probably the most compelling thing I've read all week

01:46:43 ◼   ► Talking about this company

01:46:47 ◼   ► That is sort of like a contractor for Facebook to do moderation here in the US. So it's not Facebook employees

01:46:55 ◼   ► It's what's the name of this company here?

01:46:57 ◼   ► Cognizant

01:47:00 ◼   ► C o g and I see a NT they have an office and I guess somewhere in Arizona and people come in you get this job and

01:47:07 ◼   ► It sounds it's almost dystopian I mean maybe I should take out the word almost it's it's dystopian and

01:47:17 ◼   ► Apparently that is not like like one of the bragging points that they make is that it's you know

01:47:24 ◼   ► know, they have windows and it's like a nice, it's not some dank basement. So maybe

01:47:30 ◼   ► that aspect of it isn't, isn't this topic, dystopian, I forget the word. But in terms

01:47:39 ◼   ► of what it's like to work there, it is, it's like you check in, you have to leave

01:47:45 ◼   ► your phone, you can't have any paper or pencils because they don't want people like

01:47:52 ◼   ► down the names of the people involved in the things that they're doing. They micromanage

01:48:00 ◼   ► your bathroom breaks, and you're expected to go through hundreds of disputed, flagged

01:48:08 ◼   ► things on Facebook every day, whether it's identifying whether somebody's

01:48:16 ◼   ► rant is racist or whether there's a, you know, somebody posts, they post just the worst stuff

01:48:22 ◼   ► you can imagine. Videos of people being killed by drones in the Middle East and, and obviously,

01:48:32 ◼   ► I'm sure tons of pornographic stuff. And you just have to go through hundreds of these things and

01:48:41 ◼   ► they get in big trouble if you're, you know, they audit, you know, a couple of dozen of your

01:48:49 ◼   ► everybody's things a week. And if yours don't match up with what they expect them to, you get

01:48:55 ◼   ► in trouble. There's not much money in this. It seems like whether they only pay like $28,000

01:49:00 ◼   ► a year for a full-time employee. And it really seems—

01:49:04 ◼   ► Yeah, they pay nothing and they just totally—and it sounds like these people are being

01:49:07 ◼   ► Destroyed like emotionally psychically in every way possible right because for 40 hours a week every week

01:49:14 ◼   ► They are just looking at nothing but the worst. I mean that's you know, the stuff that's innocuous isn't isn't getting flagged for moderation

01:49:22 ◼   ► so it's just 40 hours a day of

01:49:24 ◼   ► Evaluating the worst stuff posted to Facebook. Yeah, let's talk about one woman in the beginning who's just watching people getting murdered

01:49:32 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah, and she had like a panic attack and and yeah, you know it

01:49:37 ◼   ► You know, who can blame her? I mean, it's, you know, people aren't—most people aren't

01:49:45 ◼   ► hooked up to consume stuff like that.

01:49:47 ◼   ► Yeah, it's literally soul-crushing.

01:49:49 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like snuff films and stuff. It's really crazy. Facebook.

01:49:56 ◼   ► Yeah, player of the year. Well, you've mentioned this before. It's just like they—it's

01:50:05 ◼   ► It's not a company that normal people work at, it's just not.

01:50:08 ◼   ► - One of the things that was raised,

01:50:12 ◼   ► I mean, and one of the things that's a little

01:50:15 ◼   ► morally questionable is the relationship Facebook has

01:50:20 ◼   ► with these moderation companies like this,

01:50:21 ◼   ► that they're keeping this at arm's reach

01:50:24 ◼   ► and they're not making them full-time,

01:50:26 ◼   ► they're not making them Facebook employees,

01:50:27 ◼   ► they're employees of a company called Cognizant

01:50:29 ◼   ► and they have a contract with Facebook.

01:50:31 ◼   ► To me, there's a lack of ownership there,

01:50:35 ◼   ► that they should be full-time Facebook employees.

01:50:39 ◼   ► This is Facebook's problem.

01:50:40 ◼   ► This is the nature of their platform.

01:50:43 ◼   ► Farming this out to another company is,

01:50:48 ◼   ► there's a certain lack of,

01:50:52 ◼   ► I'm not surprised that that's how they do it,

01:50:54 ◼   ► but it seems like it's brushing it aside.

01:50:59 ◼   ► Like this is something that they should know.

01:51:01 ◼   ► - To be clear, there was an expose a couple weeks ago

01:51:03 ◼   ► about contract workers in Silicon Valley,

01:51:06 ◼   ► and it was Apple and Google and all the big companies.

01:51:09 ◼   ► And they were just, none of them were treated as well

01:51:11 ◼   ► as employees would be treated.

01:51:12 ◼   ► They were all micromanaged.

01:51:13 ◼   ► They all hated their jobs.

01:51:15 ◼   ► And it's just not a good culture.

01:51:16 ◼   ► And it seems to be endemic in the area.

01:51:20 ◼   ► But when you're dealing with material like this,

01:51:22 ◼   ► it seems to be especially, like verifying addresses

01:51:25 ◼   ► for Apple or Google onto a Maps app,

01:51:27 ◼   ► that's probably really boring work.

01:51:29 ◼   ► But these people are again watching the absolute worst

01:51:31 ◼   ► of humanity over and over again for nothing.

01:51:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, or not much.

01:51:37 ◼   ► And it helps obscure things like, you know,

01:51:40 ◼   ► what's the average salary of an employee at Facebook?

01:51:44 ◼   ► When all of these people making, here it is,

01:51:46 ◼   ► $28,800 per year to evaluate this.

01:51:51 ◼   ► And there's, you know, I don't know,

01:51:52 ◼   ► hundreds, thousands of these people?

01:51:54 ◼   ► Their low wages aren't bringing down

01:51:58 ◼   ► the company-wide average salary employee at Facebook.

01:52:02 ◼   ► You know, I saw some people in response to this saying,

01:52:06 ◼   ► you know, and that, and they're right.

01:52:10 ◼   ► I'm not disagreeing at all.

01:52:11 ◼   ► That the problem is that these, this shows that,

01:52:14 ◼   ► at least especially here in the US,

01:52:16 ◼   ► that like mental health care isn't part of a lot of,

01:52:21 ◼   ► even if you have health insurance,

01:52:24 ◼   ► getting treated for the emotional problems

01:52:28 ◼   ► that might develop doing a job like this

01:52:30 ◼   ► should be part of your healthcare.

01:52:33 ◼   ► I don't disagree with that all, I agree with it, sure.

01:52:36 ◼   ► But I feel like reading this article

01:52:39 ◼   ► and coming away with the primary take

01:52:42 ◼   ► that hey, something's busted in our,

01:52:44 ◼   ► another aspect of our healthcare system that's busted

01:52:47 ◼   ► is that these people aren't getting the mental healthcare

01:52:49 ◼   ► they need after dealing with this job.

01:52:51 ◼   ► I think you're whistling past the primary problem,

01:52:53 ◼   ► which is that this platform is assessable.

01:52:56 ◼   ► And that they're, you know, I don't know what the answer is.

01:53:01 ◼   ► You know, it obviously disband Facebook and shut it down

01:53:05 ◼   ► isn't going to happen, but let's let everybody

01:53:08 ◼   ► on the planet post whatever they want

01:53:10 ◼   ► and share it to like-minded individuals

01:53:13 ◼   ► is fundamentally a broken idea.

01:53:15 ◼   ► You know, to me, the fundamental idea of Facebook is broken.

01:53:21 ◼   ► Like this is not a good idea, you know, and we're seeing it, you know, and I don't know

01:53:26 ◼   ► what the answer is, but, and I'm not surprised in the least bit that it, that keeping it

01:53:32 ◼   ► moderated to the degree that it is moderated requires tremendous man hours to identify

01:53:39 ◼   ► and flag this stuff.

01:53:41 ◼   ► And even so, they still are obviously struggling with the accuracy rate.

01:53:47 ◼   ► You know, the article goes into the fact that these odd, you know, somebody, people from

01:53:50 ◼   ► Facebook who actually are Facebook employees do these audits.

01:53:55 ◼   ► And you know, the goal is to have a 95% success rate.

01:54:00 ◼   ► In other words, that, you know, if you're having this job as a moderator, 19 out of

01:54:05 ◼   ► 20 times your assessment of this is acceptable, it should stay up or this is unacceptable,

01:54:12 ◼   ► should take it down should agree with the person at Facebook. I'm not surprised at

01:54:18 ◼   ► all that this is human driven on both ends, not algorithmically driven. I don't, you

01:54:26 ◼   ► know, AI just isn't there yet to do this. I mean, I'm sure there's some stuff that

01:54:29 ◼   ► AI can flag, just like the way that spam, email spam filters are largely, you know,

01:54:36 ◼   ► almost entirely driven by software. Obviously, some stuff, like in the way that email can

01:54:42 ◼   ► be filtered algorithmically can work, but deciding whether the content of a video is

01:54:47 ◼   ► acceptable requires humans. It just doesn't scale.

01:54:51 ◼   ► Steve: The scale is impossible to understand how much content goes into these platforms,

01:54:56 ◼   ► Facebook, YouTube, all of these every second, not just every day, but every second it's

01:55:01 ◼   ► unmanageable let alone in total.

01:55:03 ◼   ► Dave: You know, and it comes back, you mentioned that YouTube is, to name the other giant in

01:55:09 ◼   ► YouTube is in the midst of a couple of controversies.

01:55:13 ◼   ► But the one that I saw last week was one involving,

01:55:18 ◼   ► effectively, pedophiles who are looking at videos

01:55:22 ◼   ► of mostly young girls.

01:55:25 ◼   ► And the algorithmic angle on this,

01:55:29 ◼   ► 'cause I don't think it would take off,

01:55:30 ◼   ► is that once you get into this rabbit hole of these videos,

01:55:34 ◼   ► all of your suggested videos over on the right-hand side

01:55:37 ◼   ► YouTube are more of them. Yeah. And it's awful, awful, awful, awful stuff. But part of it,

01:55:45 ◼   ► you know, part of it is the algorithm, not flagging it, you know, being smart enough,

01:55:50 ◼   ► the algorithm is smart enough to, to stitch these videos together and say, okay, if you

01:55:54 ◼   ► like this, you'll like that. And they're right. Or correct, I should say, you know, in that

01:56:00 ◼   ► these are related videos from the same people. But it's obviously wrong in the moral sense

01:56:05 ◼   ► that these things should ever be allowed to propagate. And quite frankly, it ultimately

01:56:12 ◼   ► gets to the bottom line of unmoderated comments are never end well on the internet. You know,

01:56:22 ◼   ► and it's awful to say it. And I realized that from a philosophical standpoint, and the democratization

01:56:27 ◼   ► of, you know, free speech, in theory, it's great that the internet allows everybody to

01:56:33 ◼   ► have a voice. But in practice, there's enough awful people in the world that having an unmoderated

01:56:39 ◼   ► forum, it never ends well. Well, you also remember the early days of the internet,

01:56:44 ◼   ► I used to run my own PHP Nuke and WordPress and movable type installations, and there would always

01:56:49 ◼   ► be a vulnerability where there were porn links put in or spam links put in or malware links put in,

01:56:54 ◼   ► just on an automated basis. And I would end up destroying the comment system just because I

01:56:58 ◼   ► couldn't keep up that I was getting a trivial amount of comments.

01:57:01 ◼   ► Yeah. I mean, one rule of thumb is that anything that can be abused will be

01:57:06 ◼   ► abused. Yes. You know, and it's inevitable, you know, so letters to the

01:57:11 ◼   ► editor in your local printed newspaper never had spam because there was no

01:57:17 ◼   ► there. And I really doubt that there was much spam ever sent to the newspapers

01:57:21 ◼   ► because you know, it's not going to get printed, right? There's somebody who's

01:57:24 ◼   ► reading these letters and deciding, here's six letters about our recent news coverage

01:57:29 ◼   ► and current events that show different perspectives and interesting points. Here's our six letters

01:57:36 ◼   ► of the day. It's all human curated, so there was never any impetus to abuse it.

01:57:42 ◼   ► Where it has to be delusional, not opportunistic to descend in nonsense.

01:57:46 ◼   ► Right. Whereas we've created an automated system where anybody can fill out this text

01:57:51 ◼   ► area for him and hit a button and whatever you typed in the field is going to show up

01:57:55 ◼   ► at the bottom of this post. Did not take long for that to be to be taken advantage of. What

01:58:03 ◼   ► was the six apart thing? Trackbacks? Yeah. Which weren't comments. It was like, it was

01:58:12 ◼   ► never that they would put the link to what you blogged about it in me. I never supported

01:58:17 ◼   ► it at Daring Fireball along the lines of why I never had comments at Daring Fireball is

01:58:23 ◼   ► I just never wanted to—I saw the problem all along and never—and again, it's like

01:58:28 ◼   ► many things in life, there are trade-offs where if you don't have comments, you don't

01:58:32 ◼   ► get the good comments either, and sometimes the comments are the best thing or somebody

01:58:36 ◼   ► could make a point that it was better than the post itself.

01:58:40 ◼   ► Like Asimko's comments are terrific, but I have no idea what he goes through in order

01:58:45 ◼   ► to maintain that quality.

01:58:46 ◼   ► Right. Well, it's close to a great day, right? Yeah

01:58:49 ◼   ► but track bats were track backs were like an automated way of linking an article or one post to another and saying like oh

01:58:57 ◼   ► Renee posted about the

01:59:00 ◼   ► Galaxy fold and I'm responding to his post and I put a track back in and then somehow there would be a link to my

01:59:07 ◼   ► Post at the bottom of your post because I sent the track back. Well, it didn't take long for those to be abused

01:59:12 ◼   ► They were all scraper. Yeah, like people just scraped your content. We're all in your talk backs, right?

01:59:16 ◼   ► It wasn't, you know, it was, you needed to write like a script to do it because it was

01:59:21 ◼   ► like a little simple API call. It wasn't just typing in a text area and hitting a button,

01:59:26 ◼   ► but it was easily automated and of course it was. Here's my question. What is the point

01:59:32 ◼   ► of YouTube comments?

01:59:34 ◼   ► Well, I guess there's a couple reasons why they do it. It's the same reasons that there've

01:59:39 ◼   ► always been comments on the web. One is to provide an open forum for discussion of the

01:59:43 ◼   ► content. The other one is that when there are comments and people argue in them, you

01:59:46 ◼   ► get way more page views because people come back,

01:59:48 ◼   ► not just to see the content again,

01:59:49 ◼   ► but to see what the discussion around the content is.

01:59:52 ◼   ► And if they get into arguments,

01:59:53 ◼   ► they come back again and again and again.

01:59:56 ◼   ► - Do your videos get a lot of comment?

01:59:59 ◼   ► - They get, yeah, I mean, like they get way more comments

02:00:02 ◼   ► than I've seen in blogs or Twitter or anything a long time

02:00:05 ◼   ► because YouTube has an incredible, and it's good and bad.

02:00:07 ◼   ► Like there are horrible comments that I delete.

02:00:11 ◼   ► Like I don't delete, you know, anyone arguing with me,

02:00:13 ◼   ► but there are like some gross things

02:00:15 ◼   ► that get posted in there, so I get rid of that.

02:00:17 ◼   ► But there are tons of comments on a lot of them, yeah.

02:00:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, that is the one thing about YouTube comments

02:00:22 ◼   ► is I never look, I'm so anti-comment that I don't even look.

02:00:27 ◼   ► Like I watch a fair amount,

02:00:30 ◼   ► well, probably by most people's standards,

02:00:31 ◼   ► I watch very little YouTube,

02:00:33 ◼   ► but I think I watch a fair amount of YouTube.

02:00:36 ◼   ► I never even look at the comments.

02:00:38 ◼   ► I mean, the only time I ever think about it

02:00:39 ◼   ► is at the end of all these videos from serious YouTubers

02:00:44 ◼   ► where they always say, if you like this video,

02:00:46 ◼   ► hit the thumbs up button or whatever,

02:00:48 ◼   ► and subscribe and leave a comment or whatever.

02:00:51 ◼   ► I hear them talking about it at the end of the video

02:00:54 ◼   ► as I'm about to close the tab, but I never actually look.

02:00:57 ◼   ► But when I do, when it occurs to me to look,

02:01:01 ◼   ► I'm often blown away by how many comments there are.

02:01:03 ◼   ► Like there are, holy crap, there's a lot of comments.

02:01:07 ◼   ► Like when you look at somebody's video

02:01:09 ◼   ► and it supposedly has 800,000 views,

02:01:14 ◼   ► and you're like, "Hmm, that's a lot of views."

02:01:16 ◼   ► But then you look at the comments

02:01:18 ◼   ► and you see how many there are.

02:01:19 ◼   ► It's like 1,200 comments or something,

02:01:20 ◼   ► and you're like, "Well, maybe there are 800,000 views

02:01:23 ◼   ► if 1,200 people commented on it."

02:01:25 ◼   ► - The scale of YouTube is,

02:01:27 ◼   ► when I started getting into it,

02:01:29 ◼   ► and then you look at someone like Shane Dawson

02:01:31 ◼   ► who's been making videos for a while,

02:01:32 ◼   ► but now will put up a 145-minute conspiracy theory video

02:01:35 ◼   ► and it gets 20 to 40 million views.

02:01:38 ◼   ► or Desposito I think just hit six billion views.

02:01:41 ◼   ► It just dwarfs I think anything else that's been built

02:01:44 ◼   ► on like a content platform on the internet.

02:01:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, at a technical level it is amazing.

02:01:49 ◼   ► And it's kind of interesting in a historical idea,

02:01:54 ◼   ► I forget what Google paid for YouTube,

02:01:56 ◼   ► but it's one of those, I think it was like a billion dollars

02:02:00 ◼   ► whatever it was, it's like up there with Facebook

02:02:05 ◼   ► buying Instagram, I just called them face gram.

02:02:08 ◼   ► That would be a good way to rebrand.

02:02:10 ◼   ► Facebook buying Instagram for a billion dollars,

02:02:13 ◼   ► or you would have to, the next reunification with Apple

02:02:18 ◼   ► for a couple hundred million dollars

02:02:20 ◼   ► has obviously turned out to be a great deal.

02:02:22 ◼   ► You'd have to, but like what would have happened to YouTube?

02:02:25 ◼   ► It's hard to imagine a future where,

02:02:28 ◼   ► a world where YouTube isn't part of Google, right?

02:02:31 ◼   ► Like who else could have bought them

02:02:33 ◼   ► and scaled them to be where they are?

02:02:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, there's a possibility

02:02:38 ◼   ► they could have become their own Google,

02:02:39 ◼   ► that just their growth would have been so well managed

02:02:41 ◼   ► that they would have become a company

02:02:42 ◼   ► like a Google or a Facebook.

02:02:44 ◼   ► And that's always like Snap never sold

02:02:46 ◼   ► because they want it to be the next Google

02:02:48 ◼   ► and who knows if that'll maybe not work out for them now.

02:02:52 ◼   ► That's sort of the two choices you have.

02:02:54 ◼   ► Google never sold, they were offered many times,

02:02:56 ◼   ► they never sold either.

02:02:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that that's the most likely

02:03:00 ◼   ► alternate universe is one where YouTube stuck independent

02:03:03 ◼   ► and became one of the big six companies.

02:03:07 ◼   ► 'Cause I just can't imagine who else could've done this

02:03:11 ◼   ► or would've tolerated it, right?

02:03:13 ◼   ► Like, you have to have a certain mindset to have a,

02:03:18 ◼   ► we'll let people post whatever video they want.

02:03:22 ◼   ► - Yeah.

02:03:22 ◼   ► - I mean, it's kind of crazy.

02:03:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, it really is.

02:03:28 ◼   ► And again, just like Facebook, it's like an impossible problem.

02:03:33 ◼   ► It really is.

02:03:34 ◼   ► And it's, you know, again, it's trade-offs, you know,

02:03:39 ◼   ► there were a lot of problems with the world of print

02:03:43 ◼   ► and, you know, mass media prior to the internet

02:03:47 ◼   ► where a lot of voices were locked out of the conversation.

02:03:52 ◼   ► And part of the reason why our society

02:03:55 ◼   ► was so much less tolerant than it is now,

02:03:58 ◼   ► not that we've, you know,

02:03:59 ◼   ► gotten rid of our problems with intolerance

02:04:03 ◼   ► as evidenced by many of today's headlines.

02:04:06 ◼   ► But the world is certainly inarguably a more tolerant place

02:04:10 ◼   ► than it used to be in the internet

02:04:12 ◼   ► and the providing voices and the allowing of publications

02:04:16 ◼   ► that with other perspectives certainly is a great thing

02:04:21 ◼   ► but it's trade-offs because it's also allowed people

02:04:25 ◼   ► who never would have gotten more of a crowd

02:04:28 ◼   ► than what they could assemble raving at a street corner

02:04:32 ◼   ► with a megaphone to have a very large audience.

02:04:37 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, the problem with YouTube and Facebook,

02:04:39 ◼   ► their strength is their weakness,

02:04:41 ◼   ► so they are incredible recommendation engines.

02:04:44 ◼   ► So for example, if I listen to your post WWDC podcast,

02:04:48 ◼   ► there's no sidebar that recommends Snell's post WWDC podcast,

02:04:52 ◼   ► the connected guys, there's just no way for me

02:04:54 ◼   ► to listen to more of the same thing.

02:04:56 ◼   ► I can listen to more of your stuff,

02:04:57 ◼   ► but not other people's takes.

02:04:58 ◼   ► Same thing if I read an article on Daring Fireball,

02:05:00 ◼   ► I don't also get, you know, Dalrymple's take

02:05:02 ◼   ► and Marco's take, but with YouTube videos

02:05:05 ◼   ► and with Facebook, they see what you want

02:05:07 ◼   ► and they give you more of it.

02:05:08 ◼   ► And that amplifies content.

02:05:09 ◼   ► Like you can get unbelievable.

02:05:11 ◼   ► Suddenly you could look up and your content's got a million,

02:05:13 ◼   ► two million views out of nowhere,

02:05:15 ◼   ► but also you're being shown conspiracy theory videos

02:05:18 ◼   ► and real, real dumb stuff right along with it.

02:05:21 ◼   ► So it amplifies both the good and the bad

02:05:22 ◼   ► to an unbelievable degree.

02:05:24 ◼   ► - Yeah.

02:05:25 ◼   ► I completely agree.

02:05:29 ◼   ► Well, lightning round.

02:05:31 ◼   ► A few other things before we wrap up.

02:05:33 ◼   ► There was this weird bug, well, maybe it's a bug.

02:05:36 ◼   ► I don't know what the hell this story is,

02:05:38 ◼   ► where Google's home speakers,

02:05:42 ◼   ► some point in the last week,

02:05:43 ◼   ► started showing a thing for Apple Music,

02:05:46 ◼   ► and everybody thought it was like,

02:05:49 ◼   ► "Oh, they prematurely launched this before it was ready."

02:05:52 ◼   ► 'Cause, you know, I mean, it's nowhere near,

02:05:56 ◼   ► it wouldn't be as surprising as the initial news

02:05:58 ◼   ► that Apple Music is available on Amazon's Echo ones

02:06:03 ◼   ► from earlier this year was.

02:06:04 ◼   ► But now that that's out,

02:06:05 ◼   ► well, if they're gonna do it on Echo,

02:06:07 ◼   ► if they could work out the terms with Google,

02:06:09 ◼   ► presumably they would and will do it on Google too,

02:06:11 ◼   ► but now they're saying it was just a bug.

02:06:14 ◼   ► But it's a very strange bug.

02:06:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, it works.

02:06:17 ◼   ► It's been available for Android since launch.

02:06:19 ◼   ► It doesn't surprise me.

02:06:20 ◼   ► Apple's whole thing is that they want people

02:06:22 ◼   ► who have family subscriptions

02:06:23 ◼   ► to be able to listen to it everywhere

02:06:24 ◼   ► because it makes it more valuable.

02:06:26 ◼   ► And they realize that there's a whole bunch of diversity

02:06:28 ◼   ► in people's homes and ecosystems.

02:06:30 ◼   ► So I wouldn't be surprised if it comes out.

02:06:32 ◼   ► I don't tend to take Google statements

02:06:33 ◼   ► on face value anyway.

02:06:34 ◼   ► - But then it, you know,

02:06:36 ◼   ► and I don't blame Apple for it, you know.

02:06:41 ◼   ► I think it kind of makes sense with the services push,

02:06:44 ◼   ► you know, and I don't think, I do think,

02:06:47 ◼   ► I think the HomePod is in many ways a misunderstood product

02:06:51 ◼   ► because it isn't meant to compete with $70

02:06:56 ◼   ► Echo and Google dots or whatever they call theirs.

02:07:01 ◼   ► It really is, you know, the best way to understand it is to listen to the way Apple describes

02:07:05 ◼   ► it and it really is supposed to be a nice $350 speaker system.

02:07:10 ◼   ► And the fact that it uses Siri as the interface is an implementation detail.

02:07:15 ◼   ► I mean, yes, you can use it for stuff.

02:07:17 ◼   ► I use it to turn off lights and raise the shades and lower the shades.

02:07:20 ◼   ► I do use it that way, but Apple knew at $350 that it was, even in the best case scenario,

02:07:30 ◼   ► not going to outsell $50 little hockey puck things.

02:07:36 ◼   ► They don't have one.

02:07:37 ◼   ► You've seen this before.

02:07:38 ◼   ► They're very candid.

02:07:39 ◼   ► It really was meant to be you have an empty room.

02:07:41 ◼   ► You want to drop one thing in that you can put almost anywhere and will sound great in

02:07:45 ◼   ► almost anywhere that you're in the room, and that's the problem it solves.

02:07:49 ◼   ► Siri is just the only way you control it because it's a speaker.

02:07:52 ◼   ► I can't help but think though that this bug wasn't really that like somebody, some rogue

02:07:57 ◼   ► individual at Google somehow put the Apple Music icon in there and just mocked it up.

02:08:04 ◼   ► Like, here's what it would look like if we had Apple Music and then accidentally shipped

02:08:08 ◼   ► it. Presumably, it is either a done deal and is coming and unannounced, or they're in the

02:08:14 ◼   ► midst of it far enough along that they're working on it and it was a mistake that it showed.

02:08:20 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what it feels like.

02:08:23 ◼   ► Yeah. And, you know, again, it makes sense that, you know, they want Apple Music everywhere you

02:08:28 ◼   ► listen to music. They're writing iTunes for Tizen, John. This is their service's story.

02:08:35 ◼   ► So that brings me to the upcoming rumored event a month from now, supposedly, this leaked in

02:08:43 ◼   ► advance. And of course, media partners are the leakiest companies. How in the world did Apple's

02:08:50 ◼   ► supposed Monday, March 25th event at the Steve Jobs Theater, how did it leak so far in advance?

02:08:56 ◼   ► Well, because they're talking, if it's true, they are talking to magazines and newspapers

02:09:04 ◼   ► about a subscription Apple News Service, and they are talking to various TV movie type companies

02:09:11 ◼   ► about, I guess, about, you know, some kind of subscription TV service, video service.

02:09:18 ◼   ► - Including which celebrities would be on stage, you know, that's the secret,

02:09:22 ◼   ► that's not gonna stay. - Right. I'm interested in what you think about it. And I'm guessing that if

02:09:31 ◼   ► this is true, that this would be an event where if there are any products to announce, it might be

02:09:38 ◼   ► there's a lot of smoke enough smoke that there's probably a fire to the fact that there's going to be some kind of reef

02:09:44 ◼   ► You know refresh to the air pods lineup

02:09:47 ◼   ► with the

02:09:51 ◼   ► Case that charges. Yeah

02:09:53 ◼   ► I'm just gonna say wirelessly but I

02:09:56 ◼   ► Really inductively ductively because it's not really wireless if it doesn't go over the air, but the wireless charging case also a

02:10:05 ◼   ► The air pods might come in black