00:00:00 ◼ ► What a week. I tell you, I upgraded to Mojave. No, really? Oh, we'll have to get to that. Oh my
00:00:08 ◼ ► god. So what do we got? We got big news, Jon Moltz. We got we got FaceTime. Yeah, big FaceTime bug.
00:00:14 ◼ ► We got a big Facebook scandal. Couple Facebook scandal. All the face stuff. We got Apple quarterly
00:00:27 ◼ ► we're recording on Wednesday, January 30. It's still breaking on this story. We don't quite know
00:00:32 ◼ ► how it's going to end up. But what we know is that yesterday TechCrunch ace reporter Josh Constein
00:00:37 ◼ ► broke a big story that Facebook got caught running some kind of spyware effectively like it was opt
00:00:47 ◼ ► in. Hey, pay is it is it spyware if they're paying paying you for to spy on you? I guess it still is.
00:00:57 ◼ ► beginning years ago, Facebook bought a VPN app called Obama. And this is a free VPN that was
00:01:05 ◼ ► supposedly advertised as, you know, protect your traffic. And a VPN can be totally legitimate way
00:01:16 ◼ ► could go to a public Wi Fi and all of your traffic goes over the secure SSH tunnel to the VPN server.
00:01:23 ◼ ► And so anybody on the local public Wi-Fi can't, you know, spy on your traffic. All they see is this
00:01:30 ◼ ► encrypted connection. All sorts of companies, of course, require the use of a VPN to connect to
00:01:37 ◼ ► company, you know, sensitive company data. And consumers can use a VPN to do things like
00:01:56 ◼ ► But because they ever done anything kind of the goodness of their heart the thing is when you connect via a VPN
00:02:06 ◼ ► But you you are you're you're handing everything all of the everything funnels through the VPN and and whoever owns the VPN knows everything
00:02:19 ◼ ► you have to trust them as much as the VPN as much as you would trust somebody sitting in front of your computer and
00:02:30 ◼ ► It's not like it was something that everybody who uses Facebook was secretly running behind the scenes. You had to you know, download of on oh and
00:02:41 ◼ ► they were collecting and they were collecting data on everything everybody who installed it did every app they launched every network connection
00:02:50 ◼ ► They used it to to make decisions like buying WhatsApp for 19 billion dollars because that data they had showed
00:03:00 ◼ ► And in September Apple put the kibosh on it when it came to light just how much they were collecting and you know
00:03:10 ◼ ► being billed under false advertising by declaring this was for privacy and then using it to
00:03:18 ◼ ► Violated terms of the the App Store. Yes. It wasn't simply arbitrary or you know, we don't like, you know
00:03:30 ◼ ► Immediately we now know as of yesterday immediately thereafter Facebook started doing something very similar
00:03:35 ◼ ► through a privately distributed beta that was signed with their enterprise certificate.
00:03:42 ◼ ► Now that's something, for example, so like a big company like IBM or any company really
00:04:04 ◼ ► through the App Store, but while it's in development, your employees can use it without
00:04:08 ◼ ► going through the App Store. TestFlight, which a lot of people probably know as Apple's
00:04:14 ◼ ► publicly facing beta distribution thing, is sort of one way to do that. But an enterprise,
00:04:29 ◼ ► Well, number one, Apple's terms for the enterprise specifically say that this is for the use
00:04:57 ◼ ► I mean, I don't even like, oh man. Like that's the part where you got to think like I can
00:05:07 ◼ ► see and what am I doing? Yeah. And they were, they were asking for, for kids down to 1313
00:05:30 ◼ ► agree to this check? Right? Like, you know, any kid, any kid could do that. Right? Like,
00:05:35 ◼ ► yeah, I, it's unclear to me how enforced that was. Is it sort of like, you know, like, we
00:05:41 ◼ ► I've got it set up so that when Jonas gets by a buys an app, you know, we have a family
00:05:55 ◼ ► don't with provisioning profiles that any anybody can install it from a website. You don't have to
00:06:11 ◼ ► But there's a whole bunch and Facebook isn't the only one that like issues these things to
00:06:18 ◼ ► widely and for free on the Internet. There's a whole bunch of other instances where this happens.
00:06:23 ◼ ► and like some like there's a there's a Minecraft thing that helps you like you can install like one
00:06:29 ◼ ► of the knocks against the iOS version of Minecraft is that it doesn't let you install mods like like
00:06:34 ◼ ► on Android you can actually install mods because you know the apps can interact with each other
00:06:39 ◼ ► more and this supposedly this I have not tried it but this profile will let you do that on iOS
00:06:46 ◼ ► and so obviously Hank you know downloaded that without thinking um and it's you know and it's
00:06:51 ◼ ► like the signature on it. I wish I had his device in front of me, but it's something like the
00:07:09 ◼ ► somebody on Twitter sent me a DM that showed that Google seemingly has a very similar app.
00:07:30 ◼ ► This is what I mean by that. We're recording on Wednesday held by tomorrow that who knows maybe Google's gonna be in hot water
00:08:10 ◼ ► you hit 50. And you know, hit those things. And it always, you know, whether you're particularly
00:08:15 ◼ ► sensitive to that or not. I'm not. I don't like get depressed if I when I hit a landmark birthday,
00:08:20 ◼ ► but you know, even if you're like me, and you're a bit cynical and jaded and except the warm and
00:08:26 ◼ ► breath of death, that's it's still you note it, right? And when other people get, you know,
00:08:33 ◼ ► maybe you really get upset when they hit hit some of these marks, but they don't ask you that. It's
00:08:36 ◼ ► always weird, weird ranges, you know, like, are you different? Yeah, they vary by whoever's asking
00:08:49 ◼ ► is there's usually like a 55 and up or something. I am quickly approaching that like, right.
00:08:55 ◼ ► And you just know that when you click that one, it just goes right in a circular file. Right?
00:09:00 ◼ ► Yeah, right. Right to dev null. Thanks. Thanks for reading. Don't care. Well, anyway, we're not even
00:09:17 ◼ ► AARON: The Facebook one, isn't it? The Google one, you get points toward the Google Play Store
00:09:22 ◼ ► or something like that? Seems worse almost. Although, if they're going for kids, that's
00:09:35 ◼ ► You would hope not yeah, but anyway, they called it a Facebook research app, although the the webpage
00:09:42 ◼ ► I mean there was a way that if you paid attention as you were clicking through that you could see this was going to Facebook
00:10:03 ◼ ► Right. It wasn't like they've registered a fake name or something. There was you know, eventually you could see that it was
00:10:13 ◼ ► Can see I worry I actually even mentioned to my son I brought this up to Jonas yesterday
00:10:28 ◼ ► Like I it's like the old what would you go? Yeah, I mean I need to go check Hank's device and make sure that's not on
00:10:34 ◼ ► There because I would not be surprised at all. It is it's like the old what would you do for a Klondike bar?
00:10:43 ◼ ► One of my all-time favorite tweets from the old days when we all we used to do like circa
00:10:53 ◼ ► It was back in the old favorite favorite favorite whatever favored whatever it was called. Yeah, I tweeted
00:11:13 ◼ ► What would you install for $20 a month? Yeah, it's hard to it's a hard thing to explain to a kid
00:11:24 ◼ ► And I don't think Hank fully gets it yet. But I mean that's serious money. I mean, what is it?
00:11:39 ◼ ► Math majors clearly but 240 bucks a year just to sign up and let Facebook see what you're doing on your phone tells you how how
00:11:53 ◼ ► Mean they probably wouldn't pay everybody, you know, they're not gonna what do they have like 1.7 billion users?
00:12:04 ◼ ► But you know to get you know, however many I'd be fascinated to know how many people they got to sign up for this
00:12:09 ◼ ► By the way, it's too bad the jigs up I would sign up and then just like screw around with it. I
00:12:17 ◼ ► Anyway, so the story broke yesterday. It's very clearly against the terms of the developer
00:12:27 ◼ ► enterprise certificate, which very clearly says this is for your employees. And Facebook
00:12:34 ◼ ► somehow initially, this is this is what gets me is TechCrunch does the you know, the responsible
00:12:40 ◼ ► thing there. They're straight and narrow reporting operation. So they contacted fate, you know,
00:13:18 ◼ ► Like that's a direct quote. It really does. It's not just that they broke the rules flagrantly
00:13:27 ◼ ► and that this is a sketchy thing to even want to do, right? Like the idea that you would even
00:13:32 ◼ ► have a meeting to say, "Well, how can we put something on a couple of thousand people's
00:13:41 ◼ ► like that's a weird you're you're already at a weird place where you're even thinking about it
00:13:46 ◼ ► yeah and it's not just that they did it but it's that that to me that the the cherry on the top
00:13:57 ◼ ► what could be wrong what could be wrong with this right certainly nothing we were just talking
00:14:05 ◼ ► we were reminiscing because jonas had a birthday recently and you know it brings up you know
00:14:10 ◼ ► remember when, remember when, when Jonas was little. And Jonas had a thing, it was so funny,
00:14:16 ◼ ► and I think it's genetic, and he got it from me, was if we caught him doing something he wasn't
00:14:21 ◼ ► supposed to do, like trying to get a cookie, which literally had happened. I know it's a cliche,
00:14:28 ◼ ► kids stealing cookies from the cookie jar, but we caught him trying to get a numino when he hadn't
00:14:33 ◼ ► asked if he could have a numino. And Amy would say, or Amy or me would say, "What are you doing?"
00:14:39 ◼ ► he would he would say don't look at me at the time it was a little angering and in hindsight
00:14:54 ◼ ► is he i think he was trying to do like a force you know like yeah an obi-wan thing right yeah
00:15:10 ◼ ► Facebook's reaction seems like the corporate equivalent of that. This isn't against the rules.
00:15:27 ◼ ► Well, no, I think they do know it's wrong. I think they do know it's wrong, because I really do. I
00:16:07 ◼ ► Just so a a moral if not immoral because one of the other stories that's that's come out in the last week was that
00:16:24 ◼ ► knowingly taking money from children know right who their own investigation showed that the kids
00:16:34 ◼ ► Virtual in-game currency right because that's a huge thing like there's a ton of games where you know
00:16:42 ◼ ► Yeah, and it's and then you can cash the points or the coins in for weapons or upgrades or second chances, whatever
00:16:50 ◼ ► But it turned out that they were spending their parents money because it was like the parents were like here
00:16:54 ◼ ► You know play this Facebook game play this game and they and there was no like unlike iOS or even Android
00:17:00 ◼ ► There was no mechanism for a parental approval. It's like you put your credit card in and anything that gets bought
00:17:09 ◼ ► And I I'm not saying you know, I I know that there have been cases where kids have run up bills on iOS, too
00:17:24 ◼ ► But even then it still prompts for like your you know your your fingerprint. Yeah face. It's gotten better
00:17:32 ◼ ► People were still trying to understand it on iOS and also I think Apple was still struggling to make the system work a little bit
00:17:38 ◼ ► Better yeah, I mean I kiss yeah, I mean Hank Hank did exactly that he got he like with the iPad he rang up like
00:18:00 ◼ ► Suggested is that they were very resistant to refunding it. Yeah, then they had a name for the kids. They were whales. Yeah, they well the
00:18:08 ◼ ► Big spender it's exactly which is exactly the terminology from the casino industry the casino
00:18:15 ◼ ► Angry Birds of all games. And here's a quote, this is a story that I linked a week or so ago
00:18:24 ◼ ► from Reveal. In nearly all cases, the parents knew their child was playing Angry Birds,
00:18:29 ◼ ► but didn't think the child would be allowed to buy anything without their password or authorization
00:18:40 ◼ ► well, my kid isn't gonna be able to buy anything unless I authorize it. Well, guess what? You just
00:18:44 ◼ ► click a button and you bought something. This lawsuit has uncovered actual internal documentation
00:18:56 ◼ ► from Facebook. So it's not just speculation. These are actual communications within the
00:19:08 ◼ ► Again, I'm not saying everybody on Facebook is bad, but there are clearly bad people in
00:20:18 ◼ ► I wouldn't refund Julian oh that's fine cool agreed just double checking $6,500 oh my god
00:20:27 ◼ ► and the worst part is that's not even Facebook's primary business model right making money
00:20:37 ◼ ► they would be, you know, I mean, these are people who knew it was a kid. I mean, it had
00:20:52 ◼ ► they gave the kid $6,500 worth of goods. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know what I mean?
00:20:57 ◼ ► Some kid goes on Amazon walk away with something actually physical. Yeah, right. Some kid goes
00:21:02 ◼ ► on Amazon and buys a $6,500 gaming PC. Again, something that Hank, I bought him a book one
00:21:11 ◼ ► time when he was little, and this was a long time ago, and on a computer and I stupidly did it on
00:21:17 ◼ ► his computer and left the credit card in there. What does it matter with you? I don't know.
00:21:22 ◼ ► And so he's on Amazon and he's just like, he's looking up wetsuits. He bought a thousand dollars
00:21:38 ◼ ► It was just like, "Oh, I didn't—" I was just clicking buttons. I didn't know what I was doing.
00:21:46 ◼ ► Well, I've always said that it's a cautionary tale. I don't claim to have any good advice.
00:22:55 ◼ ► um i forget what i was talking to who knew about it uh i was like talking to someone who worked at
00:23:01 ◼ ► a hotel and and the gist of it is that you would you know basically you would not believe how many
00:23:08 ◼ ► mini room charges are disputed that they are like i didn't drink it yet uh yeah yeah what do you mean
00:23:15 ◼ ► i what do you mean i drank all the vodka in the fridge i didn't i didn't touch it you mean like
00:23:21 ◼ ► Yeah, like they know. I've never once checked into a hotel and had like a half empty mini
00:23:34 ◼ ► could see where the slots are for the things, you know, but they, you know, apparently it
00:23:38 ◼ ► is extremely common for people to partake of the mini bar. And then when they're presented
00:23:44 ◼ ► with the bill, dispute all of it and just say, "I didn't do it." And that the hotels often
00:23:53 ◼ ► would imagine there's a similar situation with legitimate in-app game purchases, right?
00:24:16 ◼ ► legitimate. There's probably like a read. They probably, I mean, they must keep track of them
00:24:20 ◼ ► in some way and say, you know, like if you're if you're calling up every other day and doing it,
00:24:23 ◼ ► right, then right. There has to be eventually you get out. Right. You either have to do some
00:24:30 ◼ ► real parenting or you you have a problem. Yeah, it would be fascinating to know how that goes.
00:24:34 ◼ ► But when the first one comes in, I mean, and these people are saying they even know it. It's
00:24:38 ◼ ► the 13 year old. The fact that it's the 13 year old who who is the girl who's who's contacting
00:24:44 ◼ ► Facebook for this makes me it almost breaks my heart because it makes me think because it's not the parent writing and it's the girl
00:25:02 ◼ ► But it actually the fact that it was the girl writing in and that they're just lolling at her and I wouldn't refund
00:25:18 ◼ ► Yeah, it's just crazy though. I mean, obviously that's a mistake. There's no there's no universe, right?
00:25:29 ◼ ► Howard Schultz's daughter could be writing in and it's like there's no way even a billionaire isn't gonna let his 13 year old by
00:25:43 ◼ ► I don't know. I bet maybe there's somebody maybe there is somebody but I would hope nobody does that. Well, it's
00:25:58 ◼ ► So they're up in arms over there now, right? I mean today they're having a bad day over at Facebook because they none of their stuff
00:26:09 ◼ ► revoke their enterprise certificates, plural, according to recode because apparently they
00:26:16 ◼ ► have several. So their apps are all in the store. You can still download, you know, Facebook's still
00:26:21 ◼ ► in the App Store, Instagram, all the dozens of apps they have. And they still work perfectly
00:26:28 ◼ ► on your phone. But internal to Facebook, because they've disabled their enterprise certificate,
00:26:32 ◼ ► the employees versions of all these apps stopped working. Like when they revoke your certificate,
00:26:39 ◼ ► It means, you know, that it, I guess it doesn't delete the app from your device, but it means
00:26:45 ◼ ► that it doesn't work. Yeah. So I don't know how many thousands, tens of thousands of employees
00:26:51 ◼ ► Facebook has, but all of their installed versions of Facebook's app stopped working today.
00:26:56 ◼ ► I don't even begin to understand the processes that would be in place at a big company like that.
00:27:05 ◼ ► But I have friends who work at similarly sized companies or similar popularity companies.
00:27:14 ◼ ► The things I've heard this morning were like, "To say that this would be disruptive for us
00:27:20 ◼ ► would be an understatement." It's not just that you've got to go to the App Store and download
00:27:25 ◼ ► Facebook from the App Store and install it, but there's all sorts of automated testing and
00:27:29 ◼ ► et cetera, during the development, you know, the whole development workflow revolves around
00:27:34 ◼ ► having a working developer certificate. Testing, you know, in the production version of the app is
00:27:50 ◼ ► press time here, as they say, you know, unknown. But even if it's just a day, it is obviously a
00:28:28 ◼ ► companies hunger for data is just insatiable. It really is. And it's fascinating to me,
00:28:47 ◼ ► And Android famously has, has, you know, built into the system, the ability to you, you as
00:28:52 ◼ ► the user can say, you know, I think I'm on almost all Android phones, it's off by default,
00:28:57 ◼ ► you can turn on, you don't need to use like a secret, you know, thing. It's an officially
00:29:02 ◼ ► supported preference to sideload applications from other sources other than the Play Store.
00:29:07 ◼ ► Obviously, like in China, where Google it, this stuff doesn't really go through Google's Android,
00:29:11 ◼ ► everything is sort of a fork of the open source Android, you know, who knows what's going on.
00:29:16 ◼ ► But even with Apple's policies in place, where sideloading isn't really possible, it's a it
00:29:23 ◼ ► it seems like this developer certificate thing, the more we look at it in the last 24 hours,
00:29:27 ◼ ► it might be widely being used to sort of effectively do side loading. And B, it's sort of distressing
00:29:35 ◼ ► how much stuff goes through the App Store anyway, right? How much trackers and all sorts
00:29:40 ◼ ► of stuff is going on when people analyze what apps in the App Store are actually keeping
00:29:54 ◼ ► it's and I realize it's not the law. Right? Like, what Apple says our app store policies
00:30:00 ◼ ► doesn't mean it's illegal, right? I'm not saying Facebook did anything illegal, although
00:30:04 ◼ ► I there ought to be a law, as they say, right? Yeah. Well, it's Yeah, I mean, it seems like
00:30:10 ◼ ► there should be I mean, it certainly should be for adults only. I mean, like, a kid should
00:30:14 ◼ ► not be targeted by this stuff. Absolutely. I definitely think a kid shouldn't be. And I think
00:30:20 ◼ ► in adults, it seems almost like a kin to the kind of like medical experimentation where you get,
00:30:26 ◼ ► you know, you get paid to come in and like, take a drug or something like that. And I mean, that
00:30:35 ◼ ► stuff happens. They have conditions for those. So situations, there's a security expert named will,
00:30:43 ◼ ► I hope I pronounced his surname correctly. Strahfach. I followed him for years on Twitter.
00:30:49 ◼ ► He goes under the Twitter name "Chronic." But he's an outstanding security expert who's either
00:30:58 ◼ ► uncovered all sorts of shenanigans over the years or can analyze shenanigans that are discovered by
00:31:06 ◼ ► others. TechCrunch reached him for expert commentary. To me, this whole thing, TechCrunch has been
00:31:15 ◼ ► on a real roll. I thought it was an outstanding report because sometimes when a bigger publication,
00:31:23 ◼ ► say the New York Times or somebody gets something technical, you see that they get technical
00:31:34 ◼ ► for commentary as opposed to TechCrunch who went to a legitimate, well known, highly regarded
00:31:39 ◼ ► security expert. Anyway, here's what he said. This is a quote he gave to Facebook, this hands
00:31:44 ◼ ► Facebook continuous access to the most sensitive data about you. And most users are unable to
00:31:52 ◼ ► reasonably consent. There is no good way to articulate just how much power is handed to
00:31:57 ◼ ► Facebook when you do this. I thought that the key part of that is well, a good to emphasize that yes,
00:32:03 ◼ ► this hands over it that it's hard to even say how much how much Facebook knows about what you're
00:32:08 ◼ ► doing on your phone when you consent to this. But this idea that that users are unable to reasonably
00:32:15 ◼ ► consent. And I think that's going to be controversial, or people will disagree. Yeah. Like
00:32:22 ◼ ► I saw this morning, there was a headline that Facebook's controversial data tracking blah,
00:32:26 ◼ ► blah, blah. And I was like, this isn't controversial, because there's not really people
00:32:29 ◼ ► on the other side. Controversy is when there's people arguing one side and other people arguing
00:32:34 ◼ ► the other. Taxes are too high. No, taxes are too low. Well, there's two groups. It's controversy.
00:32:45 ◼ ► and I don't want to call him out by particular, but it's a somewhat reasonable take. His take
00:32:50 ◼ ► was sort of the, "Hey, it's a free country." I think he even said it in the tweet to me that,
00:32:58 ◼ ► They, you know, paid people $20 a month, told them, you know, what it does, and they agreed
00:33:26 ◼ ► I side with Straphic that people, yes, people agreed to the terms, but I don't think that
00:33:33 ◼ ► normal people, most people could really understand the profoundness of what they're handing over
00:33:41 ◼ ► And we don't, there's other things that we don't, we don't allow predatory lending practices.
00:33:44 ◼ ► Well, you know, we don't allow some, but we don't have enough restrictions on predatory
00:33:54 ◼ ► In fact, it's actually, I feel like that's one of the areas where the United States really
00:34:14 ◼ ► Well, and you think about the kind of, I mean, like you could make the, some people I've
00:34:18 ◼ ► seen making the argument like, well, who would do this and why would they do it? Well, like
00:34:21 ◼ ► you don't have very much money, 240 bucks a year might seem like an awful lot. And that might seem
00:34:27 ◼ ► like, oh, okay, well, you know, Facebook's getting something, they're getting something. So why not?
00:34:30 ◼ ► Well, because Facebook is getting a lot more than the people who are getting the money realize.
00:34:40 ◼ ► I don't want to say it's the capital L libertarian parties, but lowercase L libertarian philosophy
00:34:47 ◼ ► that people should be free to make their own choices would suggest that a payday lending
00:34:53 ◼ ► place that tells you, "Hey, we're going to charge 20% interest per week," if they charge what they
00:35:02 ◼ ► told you and you agreed to it, then why is that not allowed? Why can't you choose willingly and
00:35:07 ◼ ► openly to pay 20% weekly interest or whatever they might want to charge? And I'm of the opinion,
00:35:16 ◼ ► And I think the majority of people would agree that part of the role of government is to protect
00:35:22 ◼ ► people, protect the populace from themselves. And the truth is, too many people don't understand
00:35:40 ◼ ► there should be things that are outlawed, not because they're deceptive, but just because
00:35:46 ◼ ► it's outrageous. They're simply taking advantage of—they're taking advantage—this company's
00:35:55 ◼ ► taking advantage of people. I just read a thing the other day, another example. It is legal right
00:35:59 ◼ ► now, and I really, really feel like it's something that the United States has really ought to crack
00:36:03 ◼ ► down on our overdraft fees in bank accounts. And I forget the stat. I think it was like—I
00:36:13 ◼ ► don't know if it was for the quarter or the year, but somebody had a—and they had a link
00:36:16 ◼ ► citing it, but effectively they were like, "US banks made $3.5 billion last"—I'm going to say
00:36:22 ◼ ► year—"$3.5 billion on overdraft fees," which means they took $3.5 billion from people who were broke.
00:36:36 ◼ ► but you weren't broke because you had a savings account. But effectively, that's $3.5 billion
00:36:41 ◼ ► from people whose checking account was down to zero. It's wrong, right? And yes, you know,
00:37:20 ◼ ► I mean, other examples of similar things that we can cite. But yeah, I think the interesting
00:37:26 ◼ ► one of the interesting angles here is the sort of game of chicken that Facebook is obviously
00:37:31 ◼ ► willing to play with Apple, right? Because if you and I started a company and we made an app
00:37:40 ◼ ► and we use our developer certificate, if we did exactly what Facebook did, and we just did
00:37:49 ◼ ► exactly what they did, paid people $20 a month and use our developer beta certificate to go around
00:38:02 ◼ ► John company is their apps in the App Store are probably going away. Yeah, right. Probably
00:38:11 ◼ ► not much of an appeal process. You know, there's obvious angle to this. And again, this is
00:38:18 ◼ ► where I was going minutes ago with my look, I know Apple is not the law. But when we talk
00:38:23 ◼ ► legally there's a principle that doesn't really hold true effectively, but it's a good guiding
00:38:32 ◼ ► light, which is that the law applies equally to everyone. No one's above the law. It is hard not
00:38:39 ◼ ► to say that bigger companies in the app store are treated differently. That's clearly not exactly
00:38:47 ◼ ► how the app store has played out. Right. If you're big enough, you get treated differently.
00:39:06 ◼ ► I forget exactly why, but the gist of it was the Uber app acted differently when the geo,
00:39:22 ◼ ► it differently. So that when on the assumption that it was going to be tested by App Store
00:39:28 ◼ ► testers in Cupertino, they would miss behavior. They wouldn't see behavior that Uber was
00:39:35 ◼ ► trying to hide from Apple. And once uncovered, you could prove that the app was doing this.
00:40:21 ◼ ► seriously. We're not still going to be in the app store. Yeah. Anyway, so it's, it really seems
00:40:27 ◼ ► like Facebook has a sort of, a sort of assumes that they can do whatever they want until they
00:40:35 ◼ ► get caught and pay no price for it. Because what are you, what are you going to do? Pull Facebook
00:40:40 ◼ ► from the app store and say, there's no Facebook on iPhone. Yeah. And I mean, you know, in this
00:40:46 ◼ ► instance, it is fortunate in a way that it, well, I mean, I don't know if it's fortunate or not,
00:40:51 ◼ ► because eventually it seems like this is going to come to a head, but that Apple was able to
00:40:55 ◼ ► do something that really does seem like it's hurting Facebook internally without pulling
00:41:26 ◼ ► repercussions because what's Apple gonna do pull them from the App Store and I actually see that I you know
00:41:38 ◼ ► you know, what if can fake can Facebook cross a line where Apple would literally pull that
00:41:42 ◼ ► Facebook app from the App Store? Yeah, it would be interesting to see what would happen because
00:41:47 ◼ ► I mean, if they would just like said, okay, we're just on Android now. Right? It's that's,
00:41:52 ◼ ► you know, just, you know, it's seems unlikely, but it's possible. Right? There has to be some
00:41:59 ◼ ► line that they could cross, you know, and that would have that happen. And what would iPhone
00:42:04 ◼ ► owning Facebook users think. And would that death penalty include all of their apps, which
00:42:12 ◼ ► would include Instagram, WhatsApp? Even with the App Store in place, they hold an enormous
00:42:23 ◼ ► amount of power in this relationship. In some ways, it's incomprehensible to think that
00:43:05 ◼ ► For years she relied on it just to keep in touch with her parents who used to live back
00:43:13 ◼ ► But one of the things that I mean, she uses it for work because she's a private investigator.
00:43:22 ◼ ► that they put on Facebook that it is a great boon to her business because she's able to
00:43:27 ◼ ► figure things out about people and find people that she's looking for and do stuff like that
00:43:33 ◼ ► just through Facebook. Yeah, and you see all sorts of stories all the time about people's,
00:43:39 ◼ ► just from politics to gossip-type scandals, all sorts of stuff ends up through stuff that was
00:43:59 ◼ ► much of it is simply human nature on the part of users that once they're using it, they
00:44:15 ◼ ► day that Instagram went was in the app store. And I had heard of it before. I know MG Sigler
00:44:22 ◼ ► was a beta tester and I'd seen him tweet like they weren't exactly like they weren't completely
00:44:28 ◼ ► cloaked. There were beta users of Instagram who were tweeting like screenshots and stuff. So I
00:44:42 ◼ ► And I think I probably learned from MG when, you know, like, "Hey, it's in the App Store now."
00:44:47 ◼ ► And I, you know, I'd been intrigued by it. And of course, in a panic, really wanted to get
00:44:52 ◼ ► at Gruber. So I quick downloaded it, and I was like, "Got it." So I've been using it literally
00:44:58 ◼ ► since the day that it hit the App Store. And I used to like it a lot, and now I like it less.
00:45:14 ◼ ► angle on my "I've never had a Facebook account" because at this point, having an Instagram account
00:45:22 ◼ ► and continuing to use it puts me on no better whatever you want to call it, moral or, you know,
00:45:29 ◼ ► again, sanctimonious ground. I might as well have a Facebook account for all that matters.
00:45:35 ◼ ► I'm sure they're tracking everything through it, you know, so I'm on the fence about whether to
00:45:44 ◼ ► but I've used it. I've started using it a lot less than I used to. I don't think I've talked
00:45:49 ◼ ► about this on the show for it famously. Well, famously, in my mind, I didn't see ads. And I
00:45:55 ◼ ► continued not to see any ads in Instagram. And that that gravy train ended for me. I'm gonna say
00:46:02 ◼ ► like two months ago maybe yeah yeah you mentioned this someplace and it it worked for me for a while
00:46:11 ◼ ► and then but it's been you know it's been at least i mean it's been well over a year for sure
00:46:15 ◼ ► i don't know i've never understood i don't know anybody at instagram i don't know i never
00:46:20 ◼ ► understood why i wasn't getting ads for so long uh i certainly wasn't i was curious i in some ways
00:46:33 ◼ ► days when I didn't have Instagram ads. Because boy, oh boy, do they show a lot of them. Like,
00:46:47 ◼ ► was the slow, slowly temperature rising frog in a pot, you know that, you know, it started
00:47:08 ◼ ► is typical, I would say at least one out of four posts in my Instagram stream is an ad,
00:47:16 ◼ ► Yeah, that it's like the thing that's the thing that's super annoying is that they look
00:47:39 ◼ ► But one of the I think the way they implemented ads was a lot better because it's when it
00:47:43 ◼ ► scrolls it's like it's like you're scrolling up and the posts go away and like suddenly this ad
00:47:49 ◼ ► reveals and then you keep scrolling and then more of your posts come back up over the ad so it looks
00:47:55 ◼ ► like the ad is like a static thing in the background. I don't use tumblr anymore. I'll have to take it.
00:47:59 ◼ ► Yeah I know I mean I barely use it either but it's just a much it's a much more refreshing way to
00:48:05 ◼ ► have to deal with ads on a platform like if you're going to do it I wish they would do it that way
00:48:10 ◼ ► but of course they don't want to do it that way because they want you to think that it's like some
00:48:12 ◼ ► post that your friend made. I will say their ads are strikingly accurate. I mean they're way more
00:48:20 ◼ ► they really are. I mean some of it is obvious. I follow a bunch of watch brands on Instagram so I
00:48:26 ◼ ► see a lot of watch type stuff but I saw I got an I don't know where they got it I mean but I saw
00:48:32 ◼ ► an ad for American Giant. American Giant is that company that a couple of years ago they make
00:48:40 ◼ ► hoodies and sweatshirts and stuff like that. They're almost like a higher-end American apparel
00:48:53 ◼ ► was heralded as the greatest hoodie ever made. And all of a sudden, it was backordered by six
00:48:59 ◼ ► months. And I actually own one. I have one. And it is a very nice hoodie. But they showed me an ad.
00:49:21 ◼ ► I saw an ad in my Instagram feed for some kind of like an elastic strap you put on your shoulders.
00:49:28 ◼ ► Sort of looks like, you know, how like the James Bond holster that he puts for putting a gun under
00:49:33 ◼ ► suit. Like that sort of thing, but it's symmetric. And the idea is you put it on and it helps
00:49:44 ◼ ► That seemed to, well, maybe my posture could use some help too. But it intrigued me because
00:49:49 ◼ ► it seemed like it was out of nowhere. Although on the other hand, I was like, "Do they know
00:50:58 ◼ ► I've started doing more of is sharing just through shared iPhoto folders, whatever they called.
00:51:12 ◼ ► Bad about like, if I completely get off of Instagram is, you know, my mom and my dad won't
00:51:16 ◼ ► be able to see pictures of Hank and stuff like that. But, you know, I just I share a folder
00:51:25 ◼ ► Yeah. So to me, that's not an Instagram thing because I don't know, it's not no, it's not the
00:51:30 ◼ ► same. But I think it's that particular part of the problem. It is a Facebook alternative, though,
00:51:35 ◼ ► right? Because that's the sort of thing people use Facebook for is right, you know, the,
00:51:43 ◼ ► you don't want to post them publicly. So Facebook is the sort of thing where you can post them
00:51:47 ◼ ► privately. The iCloud sharing thing takes that role in my life, you know, we have some just a
00:52:06 ◼ ► know. She has iCloud, so I think there is. But that's what we put there. I take pictures
00:52:27 ◼ ► All right, hold on a sec. Let me take a break and hit the money button here. I tell you
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00:53:50 ◼ ► keep you up at night. In other words, it's a lower price but it's still a great mattress.
00:53:55 ◼ ► And they offer a wide array of other products, pillows, sheets, that sort of thing, anything
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00:54:13 ◼ ► premium mattresses compared to mattress stores because they've cut out the middleman. They
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00:55:19 ◼ ► visiting casper.com/talk show and using that code talk show. No, the just talk show all
00:55:33 ◼ ► that special code talk show terms and conditions apply. Yeah, so we were talking about the
00:55:48 ◼ ► stories feature integral to Instagram? I mean, I don't, I don't use the stories thing. I
00:55:52 ◼ ► don't get it. I know I'm old. I know people know how to do it. I saw Marco. I don't either.
00:56:27 ◼ ► who you chose to follow. And then if you're all heavily filtered, right. And then if you
00:56:32 ◼ ► want to, there's comments that are neatly organized as you know, one level in, you know,
00:57:29 ◼ ► It's not like you want people all of a sudden face timing you which will get to another segment of the show
00:57:34 ◼ ► Right. I don't want my Apple ideas my you know in the hypothetical world where Apple launched an Instagram competitor
00:57:53 ◼ ► I mean, I guess Apple could just open up a new username space, you know, and have there'd
00:57:57 ◼ ► be like a gold rush to claim your your desired name. Yeah. I don't think Apple would do it.
00:58:07 ◼ ► the private iCloud photo sharing, which again is a great feature. I don't know that they
00:58:17 ◼ ► No, it seems like another one of those things like the, you know, making books from pictures.
00:58:26 ◼ ► Right. And photos that they would, if they did it, that they would do it for a while and then they
00:58:31 ◼ ► go, eh, we're not doing this anymore. Yeah. And that's, that's one where they were already
00:58:35 ◼ ► doing it. All they had to do is keep doing it. And they had so little interest in it that they
00:58:39 ◼ ► canceled it. Right. So I don't know. I don't know what the solution is, you know, and, you know,
00:58:45 ◼ ► given their track record with ping and uh they even just canceled i don't see i definitely don't
00:58:51 ◼ ► see it happening yeah it's it you know i don't know what the betting odds would be that it would
00:58:57 ◼ ► succeed but it'd probably be pretty low based on their track record but at least they would have
00:59:05 ◼ ► of people with iphones you know they could make it uh you know prompt you in the photos app or
00:59:10 ◼ ► something, you know, whereas it's, I think the ship has long since sailed for some, you know,
00:59:21 ◼ ► like, I think if we went around and tried to raise capital to, we're gonna take on Instagram.
00:59:25 ◼ ► You know, even if we could prove that we had the technical chops to do it, it's, it's, you know,
00:59:33 ◼ ► at this point, it's, we're gonna, we're gonna use an enterprise certificate. You're gonna download
01:01:03 ◼ ► They don't show I think they do a similar thing to the thing where you can post multiple pictures to Instagram like so if you upload
01:01:10 ◼ ► Like you see one. Yeah that whole set right and then you can thumb you can you can thumb sideways through the other ones
01:01:16 ◼ ► But you don't have to see all of them. Yeah, I did see I have to look into it. I hope I'm not too late
01:01:25 ◼ ► There's some kind of thing where you've got to pay to keep your flicker right going and
01:02:01 ◼ ► I didn't use it enough for 25 bucks. I don't think I'm using enough for 50. So, but they,
01:02:06 ◼ ► yeah, you can download your, your old, all your old photos. So I did that. And then I, and I went,
01:02:12 ◼ ► so you can keep a thousand, like up to a thousand in the regular account, you know, like for free.
01:02:17 ◼ ► And so I went through and I just deleted a bunch that I decided weren't worth keeping anyway.
01:02:31 ◼ ► I like an idiot. I've got stuff there that's not just personal too. I've got Daring Fireball stuff
01:02:36 ◼ ► there. Even just as recently, I think as a couple months ago, shooting iPhone camera comparisons
01:02:43 ◼ ► posted, "Here's the old camera. Here's the new camera comparisons on Flickr," just because I
01:02:52 ◼ ► don't really have a good mechanism. I don't have any mechanism really for that sort of thing on
01:02:57 ◼ ► on Daring Fireball itself. It was always a good way because Flickr does all the moderation.
01:03:14 ◼ ► could comment on them. I feel like I can legitimately call it a business expense to keep it going
01:03:42 ◼ ► Brian Kardell It's not good. So it was group FaceTime, right? And so you make a group FaceTime
01:04:01 ◼ ► phone is ringing with the FaceTime call from Jon Gruber, I go down to the add person button
01:04:07 ◼ ► to do great group FaceTime and add myself, add me. I don't know how that's even possible, but
01:04:14 ◼ ► then once I do that, your phone starts broadcasting the audio to me, even though you haven't answered it.
01:04:23 ◼ ► And that there's a, I don't know how reliable this was. Supposedly then, if you hit the power button
01:04:33 ◼ ► or I hit the power button, I'm not sure which way it was, somehow there's a way that in some cases
01:04:38 ◼ ► people were able to trigger video as well, that it would start broadcasting video. Bad bug, really,
01:04:51 ◼ ► Once Apple, somebody at Apple, you know, the FaceTime team really got their hands on what
01:05:06 ◼ ► It's not. And of course, people, you know, took it too far. Because that's the world we live on.
01:05:13 ◼ ► Everybody's got to take it to the extreme and say that it's you know that it was it enabled surreptitious
01:05:18 ◼ ► Surveillance and there was an obvious trail right like you you're gonna if it happened to your phone if somebody took advantage of it
01:05:25 ◼ ► Let's say you're you didn't even hear it ringing like you left your phone and on your desk or something
01:05:34 ◼ ► Mm-hmm, and it's you know, it's not too hard to turn off FaceTime, you know, but you know that you got a FaceTime call
01:05:41 ◼ ► It's not like somebody could do it and your phone didn't even ring or light up and people could use
01:05:46 ◼ ► it to listen to you. It's, you know, it's not that bad. Although some people wrote about it as though
01:05:52 ◼ ► it were. Yeah. I think the worst, I mean, the, the it's bad, it's a, it's a bad bug and it obviously
01:06:00 ◼ ► should never, should never have shipped that way. And that's a very weird, it's, it's a very weird
01:06:06 ◼ ► thing to have happen. Yeah. But I mean, I think the worst thing is that they seem to have been
01:06:14 ◼ ► notified about it like almost a week beforehand, right? Right. That there was a 14-year-old kid who
01:06:26 ◼ ► which is of course a huge thing, you know, using any, you know, FaceTime or there's something
01:06:35 ◼ ► called Discord that Jonas uses now. FaceTime's obviously iPhone, iOS, Apple only. But even if
01:06:43 ◼ ► you're playing PC games, if everybody in your circle has iPhones, you could use FaceTime.
01:06:54 ◼ ► did everything. She's apparently an attorney in Arizona. And they're not a technical expert,
01:07:01 ◼ ► and her messages to Apple were clear about that, but a very clear communicator. And seemingly did
01:07:09 ◼ ► everything she could possibly do. She went to Apple support, which is probably not the right
01:07:14 ◼ ► place, but it's a good start, and eventually got directed to the actual channel where you're
01:07:20 ◼ ► supposed to report security issues and submitted it. And I think with an accurate enough reasonable
01:07:31 ◼ ► accurate enough steps to reproduce, you know, because that's always the thing with with bugs,
01:07:37 ◼ ► you know, all bugs should be reported. But if you can, this thing happened, and I don't know why.
01:07:42 ◼ ► And yeah, yeah, but a bug report that says here, do do a B, C, D, in that order, and you expect
01:07:49 ◼ ► blank to happen. And instead, this happens is a great bug report, especially if it really can't
01:07:56 ◼ ► be reproduced on other devices, not just your device. And this apparently could be reproduced
01:08:00 ◼ ► on anybody's device. Yeah, like a week ago, and it seemingly did not trigger any response
01:08:26 ◼ ► this ignored, whether because they get a thousand of these things a day and it was lost in the
01:08:40 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, you think you get faster is the, I mean, what would you do? What would you and I do?
01:08:57 ◼ ► I believe this has come up on the show before. Yeah. Well, yeah, it should come up every time.
01:09:03 ◼ ► Shortly after the after this. And so the butts incident. I yeah, right. The butts of the famous
01:09:09 ◼ ► but since it enough 2012 or whenever it was, um, I talked about it on Twitter and then I,
01:09:17 ◼ ► I filed a bug report, um, because I had a, you know, a developer account. Um, and that seemed to
01:09:23 ◼ ► get, that seemed to get some traction and actually, I mean, I think within like a week or so it was,
01:09:30 ◼ ► it was closed. Oh, that's the other thing that this, the mother did the mother at one point was
01:09:34 ◼ ► told to file a radar, which is really out there. I mean, and, and so she did, though, she saw she's
01:09:41 ◼ ► not a developer, but she went as far as to sign up for a developer account and filed a radar about
01:09:47 ◼ ► this. That's the which is really ridiculous. Going to through the security channel should be enough.
01:09:52 ◼ ► Right. You know, I tend to think though, that this is a, I don't think that Apple was hiding it. I
01:10:18 ◼ ► Because I really think that if this had been—if anybody in a position to recognize just how
01:10:25 ◼ ► bad this bug is and how bad the publicity is, it would have escalated to the point where
01:10:35 ◼ ► be a software update by the end of this week to address it, but the temporary fix of disabling
01:10:55 ◼ ► You know, that's a good enough stopgap, you know. And I feel like they want to get—they
01:11:02 ◼ ► need to fix it in a way that even when the software update is in place, that people who
01:11:13 ◼ ► but in the meantime, anybody who—I really firmly believe that anybody at Apple who would
01:11:17 ◼ ► recognize this properly. And if it had gotten to the next step, somebody recognizes it and
01:11:23 ◼ ► somebody has the ability inside Apple. And presumably the people reading those, the security
01:11:33 ◼ ► team would reproduce it and then immediately go and hit that button that turns off. Holy
01:12:25 ◼ ► Right. But, you know, somebody brought up, there was something that somebody reported on
01:12:29 ◼ ► like a support forum recently. I forget what the issue was, but there was a bad bug and somebody
01:12:47 ◼ ► of the thousands of posts per hour doesn't have a critical security bug that somebody's—because
01:12:51 ◼ ► it's just too much. But when somebody takes the time to officially report it through the
01:13:00 ◼ ► how much noise there is through that channel. You'd like to think that there's something
01:13:25 ◼ ► it's happened at the same time as this Facebook thing, and how can Apple preach about privacy
01:13:35 ◼ ► here between the two is that this is clearly a bug. This was not something that they did
01:13:46 ◼ ► Right. Whereas Facebook doesn't really have like a "whoops, we didn't mean to do that."
01:14:07 ◼ ► Yeah, so I don't know. I'd like to hear something about this process, but I doubt that we will.
01:14:18 ◼ ► not a good look. On the upside, you know, it doesn't—because it really only got publicized
01:14:27 ◼ ► yesterday. I mean, I don't know how many people—I don't know how many jerks tried to take advantage
01:14:32 ◼ ► of it yesterday before they shut down the group FaceTime server. But I haven't seen any horror
01:14:36 ◼ ► stories about it yet. So no, hopefully nobody really got, got taken advantage of in this way.
01:14:41 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, I mean, well, I mean, bugs happen. This is a really bad one
01:14:49 ◼ ► though. Uh, yeah. And I keep struggling with this whole thing. Like, I mean, is Apple buggier than
01:14:56 ◼ ► they used to be? What do you have? Do you have an opinion on that? Because I remember bugs from
01:15:04 ◼ ► days gone by and you know it's hard it's a hard thing i think and i don't think this is a case
01:15:12 ◼ ► of that i don't know what the code path is here that triggered it i'm guessing that this is just
01:15:17 ◼ ► a this isn't really sloppiness it's just some kind of face palm duh of course you know looking at the
01:15:23 ◼ ► source code you know this this whole add yourself to the group facetime thing is such a weird
01:15:34 ◼ ► Even if it was tested, I'm not sure that they would test the angle of hey the other person hasn't answered yet
01:15:44 ◼ ► There's something here. That's just an oversight. I don't think it's ineptitude. I think it's just the sort of bug that anybody
01:15:50 ◼ ► Yeah, even I'm so it's a talented and testing. It's a flaw in the testing processes. I guess I don't know. Yeah
01:16:00 ◼ ► I just yeah, I don't think so either but yeah, I see a lot of people claiming that that's true
01:16:05 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't see bugginess what I see that is worse than it used to be is an eye for details
01:16:28 ◼ ► And the reason they almost never got stuff like that wrong is that every single engineer at Apple?
01:16:34 ◼ ► Had the eye that that sense, you know that they cared about things like having the label for the checkbox
01:16:43 ◼ ► Like it just was what it's what drew people to the Mac in the first place and would draw a
01:16:50 ◼ ► software engineers to want to work at Apple writing this apps and control panels and system pref panels for Apple and
01:17:04 ◼ ► as they've grown the headcount, I'm not sure that they've managed to maintain the culture as well.
01:17:12 ◼ ► So I see more stuff like that, like just little HIG violations that it's like, oh my God,
01:17:17 ◼ ► nobody would ever do that. Dialogue boxes, like if you have two dial, if you have two boxes in a
01:18:02 ◼ ► just talked about. If Jonas goes to buy something and I approve it, it's like when I type
01:18:12 ◼ ► cancel button. It drives me nuts every goddamn time because I just can't see how anybody
01:18:17 ◼ ► who works at Apple doesn't know that you don't do that. And in fact, the guides in, if you
01:18:21 ◼ ► use the actual guides in interface builder and Xcode, it should auto size them that way.
01:18:30 ◼ ► they're doing something better. Yeah. So anyway, I see some stuff like that and I don't want
01:18:35 ◼ ► to take up the rest of the show, but I, the, my, my still in progress rant about the marzipan
01:19:08 ◼ ► is that they have sort of, without saying so, clearly switched to a policy of preferring
01:19:16 ◼ ► silent failure over showing an explicit error dialogue. So all sorts of stuff that can go
01:19:23 ◼ ► wrong often goes wrong and you don't see any error. Like, you know, I just as an example,
01:19:37 ◼ ► photo won't sync to your iCloud library. It just doesn't sync to the iCloud library. They
01:19:43 ◼ ► don't show you an error and say, "Hey, this photo is corrupt," and tell you which photo
01:19:54 ◼ ► has been incredibly good for me in the last few years, just incredibly good and surprisingly
01:20:01 ◼ ► fast, even when I've shot a bunch of 4K videos and stuff like that. It syncs to other devices
01:20:12 ◼ ► somebody couldn't target driving me insane better was that when it tells you at the bottom,
01:20:17 ◼ ► how many photos you have, I had one device, I forget which device, it doesn't even matter.
01:20:21 ◼ ► But I had like two Macs, an iPhone and iPad. And one of them had one fewer items. Or one
01:21:32 ◼ ► I had two versions of the photo somehow. So I could delete the one that was somehow not—once
01:21:38 ◼ ► I figured out which one it was, I just deleted it. And I didn't even lose the photo because
01:21:41 ◼ ► I had the identical photo. I had another copy of the photo in my library at the time. But
01:22:02 ◼ ► The thing that really drove me nuts is that they didn't show me an error message. Clearly
01:22:19 ◼ ► have it off the top of my head. I don't have another lid, but there's all sorts of things
01:22:26 ◼ ► um, of similar stuff with music, um, because that stuff has always been somewhat problematic.
01:22:33 ◼ ► Right. I don't have too much of a problem with it anymore, but, um, actually I never had a huge
01:22:37 ◼ ► problem with it, but you'd, you'd often get weird results of like, I would have the studio version
01:22:45 ◼ ► of a song on my Mac. And then when I would sync a playlist, it would put in like a live version of
01:22:51 ◼ ► the same song. And I, the reason it offends me this trend of not giving you errors for that,
01:22:57 ◼ ► you know, and just tell you what's, what's, what is the sync problem here? What songs are,
01:23:00 ◼ ► are, is iTunes sync confused by? I get it that it's like a sort of aesthetic ideal that error,
01:23:08 ◼ ► error dialogues are ugly and unseemly, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Windows is usually the,
01:23:15 ◼ ► the counter example where it's like, we're going to give you a neuro dialogue for everything.
01:23:20 ◼ ► and they're gonna cascade. Yeah, you have to close all of them. See how fast you can close them.
01:23:26 ◼ ► Right. But I think that's the, you know, to me, it's blaming the wrong thing. The problem isn't
01:23:35 ◼ ► the error dialogue. The problem is the bug that resulted in the error dialogue. Right? Yeah.
01:23:39 ◼ ► When you don't show that nobody suffers for the bug. Right. So that's my bigger complaint with
01:23:47 ◼ ► Apple's trends. I don't think that they do have more bugs though, and I don't think the
01:23:50 ◼ ► reliability is lower, although there's certain products that could be better. Having two
01:23:57 ◼ ► HomePods in our kitchen thing, again, I don't think we have time to really go into it, but
01:24:02 ◼ ► it's—I have to unplug and replug the HomePods on a surprisingly regular basis, although
01:24:10 ◼ ► in recent weeks I don't know that I have, so it may finally be getting better. But even
01:24:16 ◼ ► Even through Christmas, it was still semi-regularly, all of a sudden, one of the two HomePods in
01:24:31 ◼ ► replug it, fixed it, because there is no reset button and you can't tell it to reset. The
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01:27:42 ◼ ► talk show to 500 500 and listen for a change. That's audible.com/talk show. What is left?
01:27:52 ◼ ► You got Apple's financials that came out yesterday, end of the quarter. Now this is, in some ways,
01:28:03 ◼ ► weeks ago, Tim Cook had issued this extraordinary warning letter to investors, warning that
01:28:09 ◼ ► their guidance for the quarter they just reported was off by $7 billion, which sounds terrible,
01:28:16 ◼ ► but then you realize they still made $84 billion, the second most in company history and therefore
01:28:22 ◼ ► the second most in the history of corporations, period. Just to put perspective on it. And
01:28:33 ◼ ► as everybody, you know, when he issued that letter at the beginning of January, they knew
01:28:43 ◼ ► It ends up it was 84.3. But they, you know, they could announce something like their revenue
01:28:57 ◼ ► that was going south. I don't know exactly. Maybe some of the stuff they report in these
01:29:07 ◼ ► revenue, they know right away. It's not like somebody's sitting there with a calculator
01:29:15 ◼ ► one three seven five. So there's tax stuff and yeah, I mean things like that that yeah,
01:29:20 ◼ ► I you know, I think that there's some stuff that takes time to compile but you know when
01:29:24 ◼ ► he said it's going to be 84 billion you could pretty much bet the house it was 84 billion.
01:29:34 ◼ ► mean much obviously a bit smaller than Apple but it took us like two weeks to get the finance
01:29:51 ◼ ► reasons I got hired was to implement a new financial system and so we did all this stuff
01:30:00 ◼ ► I you know what else is you know so in some ways it wasn't surprising but it was interesting
01:30:04 ◼ ► to me it was the most interesting I was to read Tim Cook's prepared remarks in a number
01:30:10 ◼ ► of quarters to see. So they they they famously did or not releasing iPhone units anymore,
01:30:17 ◼ ► but they gave a lot of other information. Like what? Well, like one of the things they said,
01:30:23 ◼ ► they said like 1.4 billion. They installed base, right? Well, they said that the number I saw was
01:30:31 ◼ ► that the installed base, I think that's just talking iPhone. I don't think it was iOS devices,
01:30:38 ◼ ► No, he said iOS devices 1.4 billion and then he said—then they said iPhones was 900 million.
01:30:56 ◼ ► the common sense explanation for that is that with people using iPhones lasting longer,
01:31:03 ◼ ► there are more older iPhones that are in use either through the secondhand market or through
01:31:09 ◼ ► hand-me-downs within a family or among friends, where your kids are using iPhones. Previously,
01:31:16 ◼ ► the parents and the parents have the new iPhone. And so even though only one new iPhone
01:31:24 ◼ ► the hand-me-downs in use. What else was interesting? The China explanation, again, not surprising,
01:33:51 ◼ ► Well, because I think that they're accounting—I think some people speculate that they're
01:34:03 ◼ ► I don't know. But that it's ambiguously enough to find that they can… I don't know. I'm not
01:34:10 ◼ ► accusing them of any kind of fraud. I'm just saying I'm not sure that everybody buys that
01:34:28 ◼ ► or 60 something was 60 something percent. I can't remember if it was 65, but it was up there.
01:34:33 ◼ ► Well, and some people are like, "Whoa, that's too much." Some of that comes out of the 30% thing,
01:34:43 ◼ ► so that leads into that argument again. Well, but it makes you wonder because some of it can't be
01:34:47 ◼ ► more than 30%, right? Because it's coming from a 70/30 revenue split, right? So it makes you
01:34:56 ◼ ► wonder where the part that 60% comes from, you know? Allow me here to hit Insert. This is like
01:35:13 ◼ ► worry deeply that Apple's focus on growing services revenue puts the company's financial
01:35:22 ◼ ► interests at direct odds with the user experience of iCloud storage by keeping the free tier
01:35:31 ◼ ► at a ridiculous 5GB. I don't think the paid tiers, any of them, are that out of line with
01:37:15 ◼ ► it's presuming your whatever Mac or PC you're running iTunes on has a free space for it.
01:37:19 ◼ ► I would like to know what percentage of iPhone users even know that you can connect your iPhone
01:37:36 ◼ ► And I don't even know that it would occur to most people. I mean, my mom has an iPhone now.
01:37:44 ◼ ► I don't think it would occur to her in a million years to connect it to her Mac by USB. Other
01:37:57 ◼ ► I did it. I mean, I did it for like a crazy long time. But I have not done that in years.
01:38:02 ◼ ► All right. Here's the numbers. Before anybody writes in the correct. So here's the right
01:38:16 ◼ ► while total revenue from all other products and services grew 19%. So that's it. 15% decline
01:38:29 ◼ ► Yeah. Which makes me think and, you know, unit sales are pretty flat, I think. Just makes it.
01:38:40 ◼ ► It's just hard not to think that that's the the iPad Pro is sure pretty popular, right, right
01:38:47 ◼ ► Because it came out last quarter. So presumably a lot of people were waiting for a new iPad and bought the expensive iPad pros
01:38:57 ◼ ► Yeah, I think I talked about that the last time I saw it was like it's like I got the back at the bottom line
01:39:05 ◼ ► With just like a like a cover and it was like a thousand bucks practically. Yeah, I think it's pretty you know, there's a rumor
01:39:13 ◼ ► But there's rumors of upcoming iPad like regular iPad non pro updates and you know, the iPad mini apparently is
01:39:21 ◼ ► Still alive and we'll be getting an update of some sort. Yeah, and the iPod touch. Yeah, and the iPod touch
01:39:38 ◼ ► Genuinely ask because it seems to me like most people who even give a device like this to their kids are giving them old iPhones
01:39:45 ◼ ► Probably right, you know and it's still the iPod touch is 300 bucks. So it's not like it's cheap, you know
01:39:53 ◼ ► It's not like buying an iPod shuffle. Well, I know that mean certain I mean developers were buying them right for a while to test
01:40:04 ◼ ► Don't have the numbers. I feel like that was a vestige of the era when there weren't a lot of quote-unquote old spare iPhones
01:40:33 ◼ ► releases that they have in order to maximize like you know they know that the overall units
01:40:40 ◼ ► are going to be continued to be flat I don't know in forward and are they just trying to
01:41:16 ◼ ► it might have already been after Macworld Expo was no longer a thing. But I just remember
01:41:21 ◼ ► milling about the top floor of Moscone West before a keynote on a Monday or Tuesday, whatever
01:41:55 ◼ ► guy with an iPod touch. But without thinking about it, I thought it was next year's iPhone
01:42:00 ◼ ► and it was amazing. And he's just out here using it in front of hundreds of people. I've
01:42:09 ◼ ► who buys them. So I don't know. I think what's interesting, what occurred to me with these
01:42:27 ◼ ► And so to me, that really interesting, something I guess I knew, and everybody knows because
01:42:33 ◼ ► it's out there, but I just had never really thought about is that the iPad lineup is very
01:42:45 ◼ ► Fall's announcement of the new MacBook Air is, boy, Apple has a lot of MacBooks for around
01:42:52 ◼ ► $1200 or $1300. The MacBook, the MacBook Air, and the MacBook Pro without the touch bar
01:42:59 ◼ ► that have various trade-offs between them. But if you're kind of looking to spend $1300
01:43:12 ◼ ► things to choose from. Whereas the iPad lineup is very differentiated by price, right? You've
01:43:25 ◼ ► sure you can get a regular non-pro iPad and max out the storage and get it with cellular
01:44:09 ◼ ► I'm not going to use the iPad Air if you want to take that back go ahead. So I took the iPad Air
01:44:13 ◼ ► back and then I updated it and and it's it's still it's not a bad device. Well, it still does
01:44:20 ◼ ► everything. Yeah. And it's really old now. Yeah, I Well, I think that is clearly now that again,
01:44:27 ◼ ► they're not issuing. They're not telling you unit sales. But it seems as though the bleeding has
01:44:32 ◼ ► stopped in terms of iPad selling, you know, going downhill in terms of unit sales. And my gut
01:45:02 ◼ ► I really do think that's the explanation for why they were selling like 10 million of them
01:45:13 ◼ ► It's just that in the initial run-up, nobody had an iPad and therefore all the people who
01:45:18 ◼ ► kind of wanted one or could use one bought one. And a whole bunch of them are just still
01:45:30 ◼ ► web, you really don't need a newer one. And they last. They're really well-made. I don't
01:45:36 ◼ ► think they take nearly the abuse that a phone takes because they're not going in pockets and
01:45:40 ◼ ► purses and right yeah the other thing he had he had the original like we had given him the original
01:45:45 ◼ ► ipad again um and uh so he gave that back to me too that thing is a tank it's hilarious to hold
01:45:53 ◼ ► one of those things now and the bezel on it oh my god yeah it's really big and and pregnant on the
01:46:08 ◼ ► to have gone away. Remember? There was a mini scandal for a day that people were getting
01:46:15 ◼ ► brand new iPad Pros and they were bent out of the box or too easily bent. And then Apple
01:46:25 ◼ ► The Verge interpreted it as that's normal. But it seems like that died down and I haven't seen
01:46:32 ◼ ► anything again. I was curious about how that would play out after the initial kerfuffle. Would people
01:46:38 ◼ ► be able to say, "Look, here's one I just bought. It's clearly outside the four micrometers," or
01:46:45 ◼ ► whatever the hell they were saying, the four sheets of paper thickness that's within their specs.
01:46:51 ◼ ► Yeah, that seems like it went nowhere. Yeah, I mean, presumably, maybe it was just an early
01:46:59 ◼ ► flaw in the production process or the shipping process or something and they stamped it out.
01:47:03 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It seems like they got it. Yeah. All right, let me take a third
01:47:07 ◼ ► break here and thank our friends at Squarespace. I love Squarespace. Look, you need a website.
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01:48:37 ◼ ► who listen to this show just keep signing up for Squarespace, which is great. Got a special deal
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01:49:25 ◼ ► Yeah, that was pretty big. Do you see the New York Times story on the Apple having trouble
01:49:39 ◼ ► It was interesting to hear the details about a specific component, but specific component
01:49:58 ◼ ► There was a rumor from November that the information had the information is usually pretty subscriber only but usually, you know
01:50:04 ◼ ► their stuff pans out. And they didn't say Apple is coming out with a dongle, you know, one of these,
01:50:09 ◼ ► like a Chromecast thing where you just plug it into an HDMI port. But some kind of, you know,
01:50:21 ◼ ► - This is, yeah, I mean, one of our favorite, one of my pals on the rebound, one of our favorite
01:50:26 ◼ ► saws is just how expensive and out of whack with the rest of the market the Apple TV is.
01:50:32 ◼ ► And I feel I always joke about how particularly taken I feel for having gotten the one with a
01:50:39 ◼ ► larger drive capacity. I did too. Why did I do that? That was 40 bucks or whatever. It's like
01:50:47 ◼ ► just flushed down the drain. It's what's the there's the fear of missing out, right? There's
01:50:52 ◼ ► Yeah. So I've got fear of running out of space. Right. So yeah, yeah. So I mean, if they're right,
01:51:00 ◼ ► I mean, if they're, if the rumors of the streaming service are true, which they seem like they
01:51:06 ◼ ► probably are, then it seems like they need to reduce that price a bit so that they can get
01:51:15 ◼ ► that into more homes. Cause otherwise, you know, I mean, they're not going to, you got to run out
01:51:19 ◼ ► and you got to buy $150 Apple TV, and then you got to pay whatever a month for the streaming service.
01:51:24 ◼ ► That doesn't seem like that's going to go very far. Yeah. And really the way typical people think
01:51:28 ◼ ► is they're, you know, as the world moves from everything you watch comes through your cable
01:51:35 ◼ ► or your satellite, whatever traditional TV to a, I want to stream stuff over the internet. I want
01:51:41 ◼ ► to get my net. I want to watch Netflix. I want to watch Hulu. I want to watch HBO, but not through
01:51:47 ◼ ► my cable company or Amazon prime. Another perfect example, very popular, you know, I've got Amazon
01:51:53 ◼ ► prime. So I know I've already, I've already got access to these stuff. I want to watch it. How do
01:52:33 ◼ ► cost. They really are like $180 box. You think like, "Wow, this is amazing. It has an A10
01:52:40 ◼ ► processor," which we know is super fast and has crazy good graphics. I've heard the same
01:52:48 ◼ ► thing about HomePod too. Why is HomePod so much more expensive than these other speakers
01:52:56 ◼ ► actually sells it at a loss. Like, I don't know, I can't prove it. But you know, I don't
01:53:03 ◼ ► think it's a big loss. You know, I've always thought that the and again, who knows, you
01:53:15 ◼ ► in 2016 doesn't cost x it costs x minus something in 2018 because everything gets cheaper over
01:53:21 ◼ ► time. But I always thought and I don't have any source on this other than the oddity of
01:53:45 ◼ ► I know company-wide, Apple very famously has very high margins and somehow, almost to a
01:53:57 ◼ ► era, there was more fluctuation in the jobs era. But in the Cook era, even though they're
01:54:02 ◼ ► selling more stuff and you'd think there might be more fluctuation, it's very consistently
01:54:05 ◼ ► 38 to 39 percent company-wide margin. I think that with Apple TV and HomePod, they can sell
01:54:21 ◼ ► So, if anything, if you think it's a problem that these products are so expensive compared
01:54:30 ◼ ► to their competition that too few people buy them, it's not because Apple is charging too
01:54:36 ◼ ► much. It's because Apple engineered and designed too good of a product or too expensive of
01:55:17 ◼ ► years that are perfectly happy with don't have iTunes built in. You know, like, building
01:55:28 ◼ ► companies are all going to support AirPlay 2 out of the box. That's great to extend the
01:55:33 ◼ ► reach of AirPlay, but there's a gazillion TVs that people aren't in any mood to replace
01:55:49 ◼ ► TV experience. I would say just skip the App Store and sort of build a dongle that works
01:56:18 ◼ ► I have not touched a game on the Apple TV and I can't remember how long I have and I have a control
01:56:24 ◼ ► Yeah, I bought the Nimbus controller too and I don't nice controller, but yeah, it's not great though either. It's you know, yeah, it's alright
01:56:31 ◼ ► No ever since we bought a switch. I haven't played I don't really play a lot on the switch either
01:56:41 ◼ ► But if they were ever going to try to make a second run at making the Apple TV a gaming platform, you know, that might be
01:56:50 ◼ ► I feel like the critical error they made to have any hope of making Apple TV a gaming platform was not including a
01:56:55 ◼ ► Controller in in the box. Yeah, I think we've talked about this before. Yeah, absolutely and requiring all games
01:57:03 ◼ ► to work with the Apple TV remote as a gaming controller so that you can't even make a game that requires a
01:57:26 ◼ ► watching videos, TV shows and video, and there are plenty in every podcast that even has
01:57:34 ◼ ► mentioned Apple has mentioned all those problems. As a gaming controller, it is to gaming controllers
01:57:53 ◼ ► Tom Bilyeu (guest): Right? I mean, it's all you got, I guess, right? If you're on a desert
01:57:58 ◼ ► island with an Apple TV and an Apple TV remote, I guess you'll play those games with the Apple
01:58:03 ◼ ► TV remote, but it is not good. There's only so much interest you have in games that are
01:58:31 ◼ ► Oh, yeah, right, right. That was I was trying to think of what the other thing was. Yeah,
01:58:33 ◼ ► the second side of that coin. Right. Right. And, you know, we've you and I have both heard from
01:58:40 ◼ ► little birdies that there's some some legitimacy, there is some legitimacy to that, not that we know
01:58:45 ◼ ► it's going to happen, but that they've approached some people, they have approached people.
01:58:50 ◼ ► And, you know, I think that totally makes sense. Because what are the three ways people
01:58:55 ◼ ► entertain themselves with subscription media content. They subscribe to subscription music.
01:59:07 ◼ ► entertain themselves? Video games, right? That's it. And we know Apple has Apple Music.
01:59:17 ◼ ► to charge for it, whether they're going to bundle it with Apple Music or do it separately,
01:59:21 ◼ ► definitely doing it. So why not do it with games where they have a dominant position in mobile
01:59:27 ◼ ► gaming, however bad their position is on TV gaming and PC gaming? And it sounded like it was not going
01:59:38 ◼ ► to be the big name games. No, I don't think so. Because I don't ties into that because apparently
01:59:43 ◼ ► it's going to be you. You can't sell them on on Android as well. Right? Yeah, the idea is they
01:59:55 ◼ ► Right, right. So you could do like a PC version and you could do, you could have a console version,
02:00:00 ◼ ► but on mobile it would be iOS exclusive. And you could see why like the EA's of the world,
02:00:07 ◼ ► the big companies wouldn't be interested anyway, because they want to make their money on their own.
02:00:12 ◼ ► Right. You know, it sounds like something Apple should do and it sounds like something a company
02:01:17 ◼ ► We don't know what our royalties will be going forward because we don't know how popular
02:01:21 ◼ ► But if this upfront number looks like it's, you know, hey, that's already makes it worth
02:02:14 ◼ ► add it to your family plan. The way my family plays games on mobile devices, even without me,
02:02:19 ◼ ► it would be easily worth it. Easily. So I don't know. I say go Apple Go with that idea.
02:02:25 ◼ ► Yeah. No, that's that aspect is makes it probably definitely financially worth my while.
02:02:38 ◼ ► We didn't have you on in 2018 enough. We're going to make 2019 a year of molt on the talk show.
02:02:46 ◼ ► Everybody can get all the bolts they want on on other podcasts, including turning this car around.
02:03:02 ◼ ► I guess, this car around net or com. So yeah, you go to iTunes and you search for turning this car
02:03:09 ◼ ► That's regular regular Mac nerdery Mac and Apple nerdery at the the rebound correct and you can just same place