The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Lots to talk about. What do you want to start with? Do you want to start with this Microsoft Build keynote?

00:00:05 ◼   ► Yeah, it was interesting. Did you watch it?

00:00:10 ◼   ► No, I didn't watch it.

00:00:13 ◼   ► I was going to, but I ran out of time.

00:00:15 ◼   ► Yeah, sorry. I failed to bell you out there.

00:00:18 ◼   ► It was good. It was funny. I really liked it as I was listening to it.

00:00:21 ◼   ► There was very much a coherent vision that took the idea of, "What's going on?

00:00:28 ◼   ► took the idea of Microsoft, by necessity, has to

00:00:33 ◼   ► leap over the mobile area.

00:00:36 ◼   ► And to an extent they certainly have in the cloud, but painting a vision beyond that.

00:00:41 ◼   ► And from a big picture, what I liked best is that at previous builds, there's always two keynotes.

00:00:46 ◼   ► And the first day is usually the Windows keynote, and

00:00:51 ◼   ► the second day is the Azure keynote, and this year it's the opposite. Azure is the first day and Windows is the second day.

00:00:56 ◼   ► and I think that's appropriate because that's realistically where Microsoft's growth and opportunities are.

00:01:01 ◼   ► So from that perspective, I enjoyed it.

00:01:05 ◼   ► I think the problem though is all that stuff on the edge, Microsoft talked about building a sort of thing from the cloud away the edge,

00:01:13 ◼   ► like they don't have very many edge endpoints and that continues to be a problem.

00:01:17 ◼   ► Edge being the devices that people use. Is that what you mean?

00:01:22 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, even on not just mobile devices, but also sort of on computers.

00:01:28 ◼   ► I mean, the big computer, the big criticism I've always had for Microsoft, and even under Satya Daddala,

00:01:34 ◼   ► is they've done a great job of sort of locking in the folks that they've always had.

00:01:40 ◼   ► But if you're a new company starting today, which piece of Microsoft software are you going to buy and why?

00:01:46 ◼   ► And Microsoft doesn't have a very good answer for that question.

00:01:49 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a very good point. I would buy none. You would probably buy Excel, right?

00:01:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I have Office 365. I actually use that for my email, in part because I vastly prefer using

00:02:06 ◼   ► email on an offline client, even if it's Outlook, as opposed to... The problem with Gmail is I have

00:02:11 ◼   ► an assistant, so I have some shared mailboxes, and it only supports shared mailboxes through the

00:02:15 ◼   ► through the online interface.

00:02:16 ◼   ► So that's honestly the reason why I use Office 365.

00:02:19 ◼   ► But yeah, but I mean, beyond that,

00:02:23 ◼   ► I used Google Docs for a year,

00:02:25 ◼   ► or Google Apps, I should say, or whatever it's called,

00:02:27 ◼   ► for the first several years,

00:02:29 ◼   ► and there's times I miss it, times I don't.

00:02:32 ◼   ► But realistically, it's not really,

00:02:34 ◼   ► if it wasn't for my own personal,

00:02:36 ◼   ► I can choose software based on my own personal foibles.

00:02:38 ◼   ► If I were an administrator,

00:02:40 ◼   ► if Chuckery was a larger company,

00:02:42 ◼   ► I'm sure I would be on Google.

00:02:45 ◼   ► I mean, I'm obviously an edge case in that I've lived a Windows-free life my entire life.

00:02:52 ◼   ► But off the top of my head, the only Microsoft software I can think that I use regularly

00:02:56 ◼   ► is right now Skype.

00:02:58 ◼   ► I don't think I use anything else.

00:03:00 ◼   ► I haven't had Microsoft Office in, oh my god, at least 10 years.

00:03:06 ◼   ► I don't even remember.

00:03:08 ◼   ► I don't know if I ever even used it on Mac OS X.

00:03:13 ◼   ► you're probably better off for that case.

00:03:16 ◼   ► But I mean, if you use Excel, like for real,

00:03:19 ◼   ► which I rarely do, but the occasional times I do,

00:03:23 ◼   ► it's like there's numbers is not really competitive.

00:03:26 ◼   ► If you want to just display stuff,

00:03:27 ◼   ► like make a little chart,

00:03:29 ◼   ► numbers is actually arguably better and easier.

00:03:32 ◼   ► And certainly, you know,

00:03:33 ◼   ► Excel makes some really ugly charts.

00:03:35 ◼   ► But there are some things I occasionally do on Excel that,

00:03:39 ◼   ► I mean, numbers just, it's not,

00:03:42 ◼   ► Numbers is what it is.

00:03:44 ◼   ► It serves its role well.

00:03:45 ◼   ► It's not an Excel competitor, though.

00:03:46 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:03:47 ◼   ► I have nothing to do with Excel.

00:03:48 ◼   ► I haven't used Excel in a long time, but I was never a serious spreadsheet person.

00:03:51 ◼   ► But when I've seen serious spreadsheets, it's a very impressive piece of software.

00:03:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it's kind of like the ... People have made this point before, but it's very true.

00:04:01 ◼   ► It really is sort of the programming language for normal people.

00:04:05 ◼   ► Yes.

00:04:06 ◼   ► If you think about it, people bend it to do all kinds of crazy things, in part because

00:04:11 ◼   ► it's offering in-place computation in a way that is accessible for normal people who don't

00:04:18 ◼   ► know how to code it. Obviously there's VB, there's basic or whatever it's called, virtual

00:04:21 ◼   ► VB, I can't even remember what it's called. VB script or whatever.

00:04:25 ◼   ► VB basic. Yeah, whatever the scripting language is. So you can do actual programming, which

00:04:29 ◼   ► again is still different than, still pretty basic, but even just using a cell equals this

00:04:37 ◼   ► cell plus that cell divided by that cell. That's programming. In that respect, it's

00:04:42 ◼   ► even more impressive when you think of it in that light.

00:04:45 ◼   ► Even back in 1991, when I was a freshman in college, as a freshman, I ended up switching

00:04:53 ◼   ► to computer science the next year, but as a freshman, I was an engineering major. There

00:04:58 ◼   ► was a mandatory intro to programming course, but not—again, this wasn't the computer

00:05:06 ◼   ► sciences was, you know, and it was all, it was ridiculous for me. I mean, I was like a,

00:05:11 ◼   ► in like the, on the, on the computer programming team in high school. I was, I was, it was great

00:05:18 ◼   ► for me. I was the type of student you're, I don't know if you were the same, but when I got a course

00:05:21 ◼   ► like that, I didn't try to place out of it. I was just like, oh, this is great. I don't have to do

00:05:25 ◼   ► any work. But we ended up, I think, like second half of the thing was like an intro to Pascal,

00:05:32 ◼   ► which dates me, and we were still learning Pascal.

00:05:36 ◼   ► But I think the first month of the course

00:05:38 ◼   ► was all spent in Excel.

00:05:40 ◼   ► It was sort of like Excel was the,

00:05:42 ◼   ► this is how you learn to program.

00:05:44 ◼   ► And I think--

00:05:45 ◼   ► - Oh, that's interesting, 'cause it's trying

00:05:47 ◼   ► to build the mindset, not necessarily build.

00:05:48 ◼   ► - Exactly. - Yeah,

00:05:49 ◼   ► that makes a ton of sense, yeah.

00:05:51 ◼   ► - And honestly, going through life,

00:05:53 ◼   ► I bet more engineers do programming in Excel

00:05:56 ◼   ► than writing source code, I mean, at least in some ways.

00:06:01 ◼   ► I think the other thing that Excel has, and all spreadsheets,

00:06:04 ◼   ► but the thing that they have that really makes them

00:06:07 ◼   ► is so much more approachable for people

00:06:09 ◼   ► who think they can't program but are actually

00:06:11 ◼   ► creating their own custom programmatic things,

00:06:13 ◼   ► is it makes data structures completely visual.

00:06:18 ◼   ► So there's this entire layer of abstraction

00:06:21 ◼   ► of creating a data structure that is completely removed.

00:06:24 ◼   ► You just see it.

00:06:25 ◼   ► and so much data actually fits conceptually in a grid,

00:06:30 ◼   ► and you don't even know it, you don't realize

00:06:33 ◼   ► that as you're setting up this two-dimensional,

00:06:35 ◼   ► and I know you can do three-dimensional stuff too,

00:06:37 ◼   ► but even if it's just a simple little

00:06:39 ◼   ► two-dimensional spreadsheet,

00:06:41 ◼   ► you're creating a data structure,

00:06:42 ◼   ► but you're not really thinking about it that way.

00:06:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that's exactly it,

00:06:46 ◼   ► and you can visualize, you can literally visualize

00:06:50 ◼   ► how the numbers are moving around

00:06:52 ◼   ► and moving through equations.

00:06:55 ◼   ► you're debugging, you don't even realize you are,

00:06:57 ◼   ► but that's exactly what's going on.

00:06:59 ◼   ► - Anyway, nothing but good things to say about Excel.

00:07:01 ◼   ► So what else happened at this keynote?

00:07:02 ◼   ► What are they talking about?

00:07:03 ◼   ► What's the big, what do people need to know

00:07:07 ◼   ► about where Microsoft wants people to go?

00:07:09 ◼   ► And build it, for those who don't know,

00:07:11 ◼   ► it's their developer conference,

00:07:12 ◼   ► so it's not necessarily consumer-focused,

00:07:15 ◼   ► but it's what they want people, developers, to do.

00:07:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, I think that's part of the point,

00:07:21 ◼   ► is there really wasn't anything for consumers

00:07:24 ◼   ► in this at all.

00:07:25 ◼   ► I mean, there was, they had the sort of Cortana skills kit,

00:07:28 ◼   ► you know, which it would be, you know,

00:07:30 ◼   ► analogous to sort of the Amazon Echo skills,

00:07:33 ◼   ► things like that.

00:07:34 ◼   ► They have a new database service for Azure

00:07:38 ◼   ► called Cosmos DB, which is very interesting.

00:07:40 ◼   ► But again, speaking of data structure is not really

00:07:43 ◼   ► something that people, you know,

00:07:45 ◼   ► most people would think about or care about.

00:07:48 ◼   ► And whereas tomorrow or what time is it?

00:07:51 ◼   ► Yeah, tomorrow.

00:07:52 ◼   ► I always try to speak in terms of US time,

00:07:54 ◼   ► even when it's not, but tonight my time.

00:07:57 ◼   ► Tomorrow they will have, I think,

00:07:59 ◼   ► more consumer-facing stuff, but again,

00:08:01 ◼   ► I think it's really emblematic of the shift

00:08:04 ◼   ► in the company that that is on day two.

00:08:06 ◼   ► And to me, that's kind of the biggest high-level takeaway.

00:08:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's, they're sort of doing,

00:08:14 ◼   ► on their own, volition under Satya Nadella,

00:08:18 ◼   ► what some people 10 years ago had,

00:08:21 ◼   ► I guess more than 10 years ago at this point,

00:08:24 ◼   ► had argued that should be done by law,

00:08:26 ◼   ► which is break the Windows division off

00:08:28 ◼   ► into its own subsidiary or separate company

00:08:31 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:08:32 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:08:33 ◼   ► - You know, let Microsoft stay focused on the future

00:08:37 ◼   ► and let Windows sort of ride out the, you know,

00:08:41 ◼   ► the role that it has to play

00:08:42 ◼   ► as sort of legacy infrastructure.

00:08:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

00:08:46 ◼   ► And I didn't think they were capable of it.

00:08:50 ◼   ► Windows was so long, had so much gravitational pull

00:08:55 ◼   ► in the company.

00:08:58 ◼   ► I mean, to the extent that at one of these keynotes

00:09:00 ◼   ► a while ago, Azure was renamed Windows Azure,

00:09:02 ◼   ► even though it wasn't really Windows.

00:09:05 ◼   ► But yeah, that's a great point.

00:09:07 ◼   ► One of my favorite little details here is they announced

00:09:08 ◼   ► that you could access the command line in your Azure dashboard

00:09:11 ◼   ► or whatever it is, through a web browser or on a mobile app.

00:09:15 ◼   ► and it supports Bash today and PowerShell is coming.

00:09:20 ◼   ► PowerShell is the command line program for Windows.

00:09:24 ◼   ► And to me, that really shows it, right?

00:09:28 ◼   ► Which one do they support first?

00:09:30 ◼   ► They support Bash because what actually matters

00:09:32 ◼   ► for most cloud applications is,

00:09:34 ◼   ► what most developers are used to is, you know,

00:09:36 ◼   ► Winix and the Winix shell,

00:09:38 ◼   ► and so that's what they're serving first.

00:09:41 ◼   ► And the Windows part is coming, but it will come soon.

00:09:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, it isn't PowerShell in a nutshell.

00:09:46 ◼   ► Like, there was the DOS prompt,

00:09:49 ◼   ► and PowerShell was sort of the,

00:09:51 ◼   ► okay, you want a command line terminal type thing,

00:09:53 ◼   ► but DOS is a piece of crap.

00:09:56 ◼   ► So here's something modern,

00:09:58 ◼   ► and at least maybe not modeled after Unix shells,

00:10:03 ◼   ► but at least is as powerful as a Unix shell.

00:10:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, it's a whole thing.

00:10:08 ◼   ► I mean, it's a shell and a whole,

00:10:11 ◼   ► its own scripting language,

00:10:12 ◼   ► and it's now actually open source, but it was released

00:10:16 ◼   ► in 2006, I believe, I'm just looking it up.

00:10:19 ◼   ► So, I mean, it's very far removed from the sort of DOS days.

00:10:23 ◼   ► I mean, it's a proper shell, like it's used very heavily

00:10:27 ◼   ► by system administrators and folks that are managing

00:10:30 ◼   ► computers and things like that, and it's used on the server.

00:10:32 ◼   ► So, I mean, it's a proper shell, but it's not,

00:10:35 ◼   ► you know, it's different than, as one would expect,

00:10:38 ◼   ► it's different than Bash.

00:10:41 ◼   ► Can I just, as an aside, it's so funny,

00:10:42 ◼   ► 'cause I didn't think we'd be talking about shells,

00:10:44 ◼   ► but I, do you ever use, do you use the command line

00:10:48 ◼   ► on Mac OS X, you use it sometimes, right?

00:10:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, rarely, I have a couple servers that,

00:10:53 ◼   ► not my, not the Stryker server that's managed,

00:10:55 ◼   ► but I have a few other servers that I do stuff on,

00:10:59 ◼   ► and I use it for that, but I rarely,

00:11:01 ◼   ► I don't do much scripting on my main computer.

00:11:05 ◼   ► - Do you care what shell you use?

00:11:07 ◼   ► - No, I don't care at all.

00:11:08 ◼   ► I use it very rarely.

00:11:10 ◼   ► I've used the Unix shell since at least 1992.

00:11:16 ◼   ► That's when I switched to computer science at Drexel.

00:11:20 ◼   ► And I know enough to get whatever I need to do done,

00:11:28 ◼   ► but I've never enjoyed it.

00:11:30 ◼   ► Never really.

00:11:30 ◼   ► And I never really liked writing shell scripts.

00:11:33 ◼   ► And so if I ever had anything that most people would write a shell script,

00:11:36 ◼   ► once I found out about Perl, I just wrote everything in Perl

00:11:39 ◼   ► and just treated Perl, if I needed to,

00:11:40 ◼   ► as my shell scripting language.

00:11:43 ◼   ► So I never really got deep roots.

00:11:45 ◼   ► And I know-- I think Mac OS X used to, when it first shipped,

00:11:49 ◼   ► was using TCSH as the shell or something.

00:11:53 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:11:53 ◼   ► And at some point, it switched to Bash,

00:11:55 ◼   ► because Bash is the most popular modern scripting language,

00:12:00 ◼   ► because Linux uses it, I think.

00:12:03 ◼   ► But I never had deep roots.

00:12:06 ◼   ► people get tied up and they have like these shelf or files,

00:12:10 ◼   ► you know, the, what do you call it, your profile,

00:12:12 ◼   ► where you've got all these aliases

00:12:14 ◼   ► and all this stuff set up so that you can't really

00:12:16 ◼   ► switch shells very easily 'cause you'd have to

00:12:17 ◼   ► rewrite it all.

00:12:18 ◼   ► So anyway, recently, I switched my shell,

00:12:22 ◼   ► or my max, to fish.

00:12:24 ◼   ► Have you heard about this shell?

00:12:26 ◼   ► - I've heard you chatting about it, but no.

00:12:30 ◼   ► - It's fascinating, and I think anybody who has deep roots

00:12:33 ◼   ► into a Unix shell is not gonna switch,

00:12:35 ◼   ► But it's like a new shell.

00:12:38 ◼   ► It's something that this guy, Peter Ammann, made.

00:12:42 ◼   ► He's an engineer at Apple.

00:12:44 ◼   ► This isn't an Apple project.

00:12:45 ◼   ► It's something he did on the side.

00:12:47 ◼   ► But it's amazing.

00:12:47 ◼   ► And the thing I like about it is it's completely logical

00:12:51 ◼   ► in terms of how you do stuff.

00:12:53 ◼   ► And it doesn't have any kind of-- by separating itself

00:12:58 ◼   ► from the history of Unix shells, it breaks a bunch of things

00:13:04 ◼   ► that other Unix shells all do.

00:13:06 ◼   ► But just for one thing, one thing that's so nice,

00:13:08 ◼   ► is that instead of spewing a whole bunch of dot files,

00:13:12 ◼   ► the Unix way of making a file quote, unquote invisible

00:13:15 ◼   ► is to start the name with a dot, which is so gross

00:13:18 ◼   ► that we're still using that.

00:13:19 ◼   ► But you end up with six of these files in your home folder

00:13:26 ◼   ► for each shell that you use.

00:13:28 ◼   ► 'Cause then they're on, they don't have names

00:13:30 ◼   ► that make any sense.

00:13:31 ◼   ► - No, they drag me up the wall.

00:13:32 ◼   ► I know exactly what you're talking about.

00:13:33 ◼   ► Right.

00:13:34 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense at all.

00:13:36 ◼   ► With Fish, you still have a dot file, but it's a folder.

00:13:43 ◼   ► What is it called?

00:13:45 ◼   ► It's called-- boy, I'm really exciting tonight, aren't I?

00:13:49 ◼   ► I should do this late at night all the time.

00:13:53 ◼   ► It's called-- I think it's called like dot config or something

00:13:55 ◼   ► like that.

00:13:56 ◼   ► And it makes a folder instead of a file.

00:13:59 ◼   ► And it's just one folder called dot config.

00:14:02 ◼   ► And inside there is where everything else goes.

00:14:11 ◼   ► So there's like a folder in .config that says fish.

00:14:15 ◼   ► And then inside that folder is all of fish's stuff.

00:14:17 ◼   ► So if other utilities use this convention,

00:14:21 ◼   ► everything could go nice and neatly into one folder called .config.

00:14:25 ◼   ► Anyway, it's really neat.

00:14:26 ◼   ► I'll put a link in the show notes to fish.

00:14:28 ◼   ► I think it's really neat.

00:14:31 ◼   ► So, oh, it reminds me, when was the last time I was on?

00:14:34 ◼   ► Um, 2000, January 2017 looks like.

00:14:38 ◼   ► And we talked about the Mac a little bit then.

00:14:41 ◼   ► And I do have to say, I think pretty much that episode

00:14:44 ◼   ► holds up, I think, pretty well after the news

00:14:47 ◼   ► that's come out about the Mac Pro and things like that.

00:14:52 ◼   ► Like I think our general presumption was that

00:14:55 ◼   ► there was a screw up, they wound up being a bakunt

00:14:57 ◼   ► and they're not abandoning the platform.

00:15:00 ◼   ► And it was just a screw up.

00:15:01 ◼   ► And I think that's basically what ended up happening.

00:15:04 ◼   ► So I'm glad we got that one right.

00:15:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so too.

00:15:09 ◼   ► Anyway, before I leave Phish, I'll just say this.

00:15:11 ◼   ► If you're a nerd and nerdy enough to use the terminal,

00:15:13 ◼   ► but you've somehow never gotten attached

00:15:15 ◼   ► to Bash or C-Shell or Z-Shell or any of those things,

00:15:20 ◼   ► you should give Phish a try.

00:15:21 ◼   ► It's really easy to install through Homebrew.

00:15:23 ◼   ► And I like it so much more than any shell I've ever tried,

00:15:27 ◼   ► because it just somehow makes sense.

00:15:28 ◼   ► It makes sense that it comes from somebody who works at Apple, because it sort of makes sense in the way Apple software does.

00:15:33 ◼   ► Right. That's what made me think of it, is the idea of one even having access to a shell,

00:15:38 ◼   ► and being able to change it, and all the things you can do through a shell.

00:15:43 ◼   ► It's a thing you do on computers. I was trying to remember why I went back to that last episode.

00:15:48 ◼   ► But yeah, that's why. It's a great example.

00:15:51 ◼   ► It does things like it has like if you want to change the color the syntax coloring for the shell like for which?

00:15:56 ◼   ► Like a command is this color the arguments are this color the outputs this color an error is this color?

00:16:02 ◼   ► You when you config you don't have to just type in a file you can do something and it opens a little web

00:16:06 ◼   ► Local web browser window and so you can visually pick the colors and see actually see the colors as you edit them

00:16:12 ◼   ► It's it. Oh nice amazing stuff. It's

00:16:15 ◼   ► Anyway, it's really cool

00:16:19 ◼   ► So anyway, PowerShell is coming soon.

00:16:23 ◼   ► And Bash is already the default and first available thing.

00:16:28 ◼   ► That's amazing.

00:16:28 ◼   ► For this dashboard sort of interface for--

00:16:31 ◼   ► The other thing I saw was announced was--

00:16:34 ◼   ► I forget what they call it, but whatever Microsoft's version

00:16:36 ◼   ► of Xcode is.

00:16:37 ◼   ► What's it called?

00:16:39 ◼   ► Virtual Studio?

00:16:40 ◼   ► Visual Studio, whatever they call it.

00:16:41 ◼   ► Oh, Visual Studio, yeah, not Visual Studio.

00:16:42 ◼   ► Visual Studio.

00:16:43 ◼   ► Is now-- I know it wasn't a surprise,

00:16:44 ◼   ► but there's a version of it for Mac now, which is crazy.

00:16:49 ◼   ► Yep, and they did a demo and it was more like oh we're doing a demo on a Mac

00:16:54 ◼   ► It wasn't like a we're demoing this program

00:16:56 ◼   ► Actually when they were doing the I think was when they're demoing the shell and it was on a Mac. Yeah

00:17:02 ◼   ► And that it you know, it's of a piece. It's the exact same, you know two sides of the same coin with the windows

00:17:10 ◼   ► keynote being on day two

00:17:13 ◼   ► the entire idea that

00:17:16 ◼   ► if you're developing on Windows server-side technologies,

00:17:20 ◼   ► the assumption that you're developing with a Windows client

00:17:23 ◼   ► with your hands on the keyboard is no longer there.

00:17:26 ◼   ► Like they're completely committed and realized that,

00:17:29 ◼   ► I don't know if it's a majority of developers,

00:17:33 ◼   ► but certainly an enormous chunk of them

00:17:35 ◼   ► are using Macs as their client,

00:17:38 ◼   ► whether they're writing Mac software or not,

00:17:40 ◼   ► even if they're just doing like web development

00:17:41 ◼   ► or Windows development or something like that,

00:17:43 ◼   ► or anything server-side, I think.

00:17:46 ◼   ► there's an enormous chunk of them who are using Macbooks.

00:17:50 ◼   ► Yep, and the platforms that they're developing

00:17:54 ◼   ► for, yes on PC it's still

00:17:58 ◼   ► Windows still has a more than dominant share

00:18:02 ◼   ► but PCs aren't

00:18:06 ◼   ► the past in a very real way, or

00:18:10 ◼   ► to a topic I'm sure we'll get to, they were never even a thing.

00:18:14 ◼   ► And that's a reality that Microsoft has to deal with for,

00:18:18 ◼   ► and I think they by and large are,

00:18:20 ◼   ► again, that doesn't mean that they're out of the woods

00:18:22 ◼   ► because they still have,

00:18:24 ◼   ► they still have to actually reach consumers,

00:18:25 ◼   ► actually get in front of them,

00:18:27 ◼   ► both in terms, both, and that applies to business

00:18:29 ◼   ► just as much as it applies to end users.

00:18:32 ◼   ► But at least they're not stuck focused on the past.

00:18:37 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:18:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, so now we're in an unusual,

00:18:43 ◼   ► how things change situation,

00:18:47 ◼   ► where Microsoft is the company that's flexible

00:18:49 ◼   ► about what machines people are using

00:18:52 ◼   ► to develop against their technologies,

00:18:53 ◼   ► and Apple's the company that makes you develop on a Mac

00:18:57 ◼   ► to write for their phone OS.

00:18:59 ◼   ► - Right, exactly, exactly.

00:19:01 ◼   ► - Not that I blame Apple for it.

00:19:02 ◼   ► That might have come out as me blaming them.

00:19:05 ◼   ► It makes perfect sense. - No, they can't.

00:19:07 ◼   ► but it's just a funny situation.

00:19:12 ◼   ► Apple's the company with an operating system

00:19:18 ◼   ► with such overwhelming market share

00:19:20 ◼   ► that they can compel developers to buy a machine

00:19:23 ◼   ► that they otherwise wouldn't buy

00:19:25 ◼   ► just to do development for it.

00:19:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's hard to, especially if you were following Apple,

00:19:31 ◼   ► I'm sure it's harder for you than for me.

00:19:34 ◼   ► I mean, back in, I was following Apple in the '90s,

00:19:36 ◼   ► I wasn't using one, and to really appreciate the extent to which they are not the underdog

00:19:45 ◼   ► at all.

00:19:46 ◼   ► It's easier for the situation to change on the ground before it changes your mental

00:19:52 ◼   ► state.

00:19:53 ◼   ► I think that's a problem for Apple.

00:19:55 ◼   ► That was a problem for Apple internally, too.

00:19:57 ◼   ► The way you act and behave changes when you're dominant as opposed to when you're the sort

00:20:04 ◼   ► of scrappy underdog.

00:20:06 ◼   ► Yeah, totally.

00:20:10 ◼   ► So what else is going on at Surface, or not Surface, at Build?

00:20:14 ◼   ► You know, that's the conference I was at the one time.

00:20:16 ◼   ► I was in a video.

00:20:17 ◼   ► Yes, that's right.

00:20:18 ◼   ► It feels like a long time ago.

00:20:21 ◼   ► Well, it's crazy.

00:20:24 ◼   ► It was a while ago.

00:20:25 ◼   ► It has to have been what?

00:20:26 ◼   ► Four, five years ago?

00:20:29 ◼   ► Three years ago, I think.

00:20:30 ◼   ► I think it was three.

00:20:31 ◼   ► Was that all?

00:20:32 ◼   ► I think so.

00:20:33 ◼   ► I thought I was still in the States when that happened.

00:20:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it was three years ago, but I could be wrong.

00:20:37 ◼   ► But long story short, for those who don't remember, this was when I was working with

00:20:40 ◼   ► Brent Simmons and Dave Whisk. We called ourselves Q branch, and we had our app Vesper.

00:20:44 ◼   ► And we did the syncing, our own syncing backend,

00:20:49 ◼   ► for various reasons. But we built it on, I guess,

00:20:53 ◼   ► I think we were there, we were doing it at the time when they called it Windows Azure.

00:20:58 ◼   ► And they made us one of the examples in a little video that they showed in the keynote.

00:21:06 ◼   ► It flew us out there and everything. It was kind of nice. Kind of weird though.

00:21:10 ◼   ► They have a real-time translator for Microsoft PowerPoint that's kind of nifty.

00:21:16 ◼   ► So when you can be presenting and it will show real-time translation of the...

00:21:24 ◼   ► Yeah, so that's kind of interesting.

00:21:29 ◼   ► But again, it was mostly all back end stuff, which is fine.

00:21:32 ◼   ► I think as far as consumer-facing stuff, the one today

00:21:39 ◼   ► is probably going to be more interesting.

00:21:44 ◼   ► But then again, they just announced the Windows S

00:21:46 ◼   ► and the new laptops a couple weeks ago.

00:21:49 ◼   ► So I think there supposedly might be a Cortana speaker,

00:21:50 ◼   ► like an Echo-type device, which, but again,

00:21:55 ◼   ► actually getting customers' hands

00:21:58 ◼   ► is gonna be the challenge.

00:22:01 ◼   ► - I guess the reason I was gonna say,

00:22:03 ◼   ► as somebody who observes Apple, it's weird,

00:22:05 ◼   ► because I have muscle memory,

00:22:10 ◼   ► and it's weird to see a company that's so un-Apple-like.

00:22:15 ◼   ► Like, it's baffling to me that they would hold an event

00:22:18 ◼   ► a week before their big developer conference

00:22:21 ◼   ► where they would talk about a new operating system

00:22:23 ◼   ► and unveil these new products.

00:22:25 ◼   ► Like why wouldn't you do that in a keynote?

00:22:27 ◼   ► But I'm guessing that the keynote this morning ran long

00:22:30 ◼   ► and then the Windows one tomorrow,

00:22:31 ◼   ► their keynotes already run long.

00:22:34 ◼   ► - Right, I mean, and today was really,

00:22:36 ◼   ► I mean, it was much more of, yeah,

00:22:39 ◼   ► it was pretty hardcore, like back-end development

00:22:42 ◼   ► or line of business application sort of stuff.

00:22:44 ◼   ► I mean, it wasn't a really consumer-facing thing at all.

00:22:48 ◼   ► Not in the slightest.

00:22:53 ◼   ► And yeah, maybe they could have announced

00:22:55 ◼   ► the things tomorrow, but I think, yeah,

00:22:56 ◼   ► there's a very clear sort of bifurcation,

00:22:59 ◼   ► and I think you nailed it before,

00:23:02 ◼   ► like Windows is sort of its own thing,

00:23:03 ◼   ► particularly the consumer-facing side of Windows.

00:23:06 ◼   ► And I think there's relatively free rein

00:23:09 ◼   ► to do what they can to support and earn customers,

00:23:11 ◼   ► but that doesn't necessarily really have much impact,

00:23:14 ◼   ► particularly from a strategic perspective

00:23:16 ◼   ► on the rest of Microsoft,

00:23:18 ◼   ► which is really the future of the company.

00:23:20 ◼   ► And this is probably a good example of that.

00:23:24 ◼   ► - It was weird.

00:23:26 ◼   ► I know today's build, they move it around,

00:23:28 ◼   ► I think they often move it around,

00:23:31 ◼   ► but this year's was in Seattle.

00:23:32 ◼   ► When I went two or three years ago,

00:23:34 ◼   ► three, four years ago, whenever it was,

00:23:35 ◼   ► it was in San Francisco, in Moscone,

00:23:37 ◼   ► which only added to this sort of--

00:23:39 ◼   ► - Weird feeling.

00:23:42 ◼   ► Bizarro, like I was in a Bizarro developer, Bizarro WWDC,

00:23:47 ◼   ► because they even had the keynote third floor,

00:23:50 ◼   ► where Apple always calls the room presidio.

00:23:52 ◼   ► Those big convention spaces are sort of modular.

00:23:59 ◼   ► There's walls that can be moved around to change the shape

00:24:02 ◼   ► and make rooms slightly bigger or smaller.

00:24:07 ◼   ► But the thing that Microsoft did--

00:24:09 ◼   ► and I've seen so many keynotes in that room,

00:24:11 ◼   ► because Mac World Expo used to have keynotes in the same room,

00:24:15 ◼   ► WWDC every year.

00:24:18 ◼   ► Well, I guess those are the two things, but they're Mac World

00:24:20 ◼   ► Expo and WWDC keynotes in that room.

00:24:23 ◼   ► And Apple's configuration of the room is almost always the same.

00:24:26 ◼   ► You'd almost think that the room always looks like that,

00:24:29 ◼   ► but it's actually like an Apple setup.

00:24:32 ◼   ► When WWDC is done, everything in there is out.

00:24:36 ◼   ► And the thing that Microsoft did was

00:24:38 ◼   ► they had their stage along what,

00:24:41 ◼   ► in Apple's configuration, is the side.

00:24:44 ◼   ► Like, Apple sets the room with the stage in the front,

00:24:46 ◼   ► and the room goes back long.

00:24:48 ◼   ► Microsoft set it up so that the stage was wide,

00:24:53 ◼   ► and the room wasn't as deep.

00:24:55 ◼   ► And they set-- - Right.

00:24:56 ◼   ► - And the way that that made sense,

00:24:58 ◼   ► even though it made more people,

00:24:59 ◼   ► everybody was closer to the stage

00:25:01 ◼   ► in Microsoft's configuration,

00:25:02 ◼   ► but people were further from the center

00:25:05 ◼   ► if you didn't have a center seat.

00:25:06 ◼   ► and they made up for that by having huge screens

00:25:09 ◼   ► that were just showed the same,

00:25:11 ◼   ► instead of having one big screen that shows something,

00:25:13 ◼   ► they had like a wall of screens

00:25:15 ◼   ► that all showed the same thing over and over again.

00:25:18 ◼   ► And it just weirded me out.

00:25:21 ◼   ► It was just, it's like coming home

00:25:24 ◼   ► and somebody has moved all of the furniture,

00:25:26 ◼   ► like everything is the same except they've rotated

00:25:29 ◼   ► every room in your house by 90 degrees.

00:25:31 ◼   ► - That would be weird.

00:25:34 ◼   ► But yeah, no Moscone keynote again this year.

00:25:37 ◼   ► I mean, they've been in the, what is it,

00:25:40 ◼   ► the Billy Graham Auditorium, is that what it's called?

00:25:44 ◼   ► - I have something like that.

00:25:46 ◼   ► I don't think they might, they might never do,

00:25:48 ◼   ► Apple might never do a Moscone keynote again.

00:25:49 ◼   ► - Right, that's what I was gonna say, yeah.

00:25:51 ◼   ► It might be, which is fine, it wasn't the greatest.

00:25:55 ◼   ► I didn't like the, I'm not a big fan

00:25:57 ◼   ► of the Apple setup in Moscone.

00:25:59 ◼   ► - I'm not either, really.

00:26:01 ◼   ► I don't have anything against it,

00:26:02 ◼   ► but I thought the Microsoft setup was actually very nice.

00:26:05 ◼   ► It worked very well.

00:26:06 ◼   ► And I felt like everybody got to,

00:26:10 ◼   ► you couldn't really see,

00:26:11 ◼   ► may not be able to see the actual people,

00:26:12 ◼   ► but if, you know, I feel like if you were seated

00:26:15 ◼   ► along the side, you had a much bigger screen in front of you

00:26:17 ◼   ► than you get seated in the back in Moscone in Apple setup.

00:26:21 ◼   ► - Right, exactly.

00:26:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't think Apple,

00:26:24 ◼   ► Apple might never have an event in San Francisco again.

00:26:26 ◼   ► You never say never, I mean, who knows?

00:26:28 ◼   ► But I, 'cause I feel like for their smaller events,

00:26:32 ◼   ► are going to have them at their headquarters in the Steve Jobs

00:26:34 ◼   ► Theater.

00:26:34 ◼   ► Right.

00:26:35 ◼   ► I don't think you named the theater Steve Jobs Theater

00:26:38 ◼   ► unless you intend to use it quite a bit.

00:26:41 ◼   ► To unveil new products.

00:26:41 ◼   ► Right.

00:26:42 ◼   ► Like, I'm sure there--

00:26:45 ◼   ► Have you been to the new campus yet?

00:26:46 ◼   ► No, I've never.

00:26:47 ◼   ► I don't even know where it is.

00:26:48 ◼   ► I was asking about it when I was out there for the MacPro Summit,

00:26:53 ◼   ► whatever you want, a roundtable discussion.

00:26:57 ◼   ► It was a-- I guess it just isn't close.

00:26:59 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:27:00 ◼   ► To be--

00:27:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I used to work there.

00:27:01 ◼   ► So in one of the buildings that was torn down.

00:27:04 ◼   ► So I definitely know where it is.

00:27:06 ◼   ► But yeah, it's like another exit down the freeway

00:27:09 ◼   ► from where the current campus is.

00:27:12 ◼   ► And you could drive there through city roads.

00:27:15 ◼   ► But yeah, it's a little bit of a hike.

00:27:17 ◼   ► It's on the other side of the freeway.

00:27:20 ◼   ► So it just wasn't convenient.

00:27:21 ◼   ► And I didn't have a car.

00:27:22 ◼   ► So it wasn't like I was going to take an Uber to go

00:27:25 ◼   ► look at a construction site.

00:27:27 ◼   ► I mean, the flyovers that people publish from those drones

00:27:29 ◼   ► are probably better than what you'd get looking at the ground from the outside.

00:27:33 ◼   ► Yep, yeah, I think so.

00:27:37 ◼   ► I mean, maybe, you gotta imagine

00:27:41 ◼   ► the, well I guess we'll see with the iPhone, with the

00:27:45 ◼   ► iPhone announcement, but they did that in San Jose

00:27:49 ◼   ► also, not last year, but for the, when they did the watch,

00:27:53 ◼   ► the watch unveiling was in San Jose.

00:27:57 ◼   ► Yeah, where was that? I forget where it was. I don't think it was San Jose. No, it was

00:28:02 ◼   ► at the watch unveiling was at the college in Cupertino.

00:28:09 ◼   ► Oh, was that in Cupertino? I thought that was San Jose.

00:28:14 ◼   ► It's like some, I forget the name of the college, but De Anza or something, I forget what the

00:28:18 ◼   ► hell it is, but it was not. No, the one that was in San Jose was an iPad event in 2011,

00:28:23 ◼   ► I think, or 2012, I don't know.

00:28:26 ◼   ► It was right before Scott Forstall got fired.

00:28:29 ◼   ► - How was the De Anza auditorium or whatever it was?

00:28:34 ◼   ► - It was all right.

00:28:36 ◼   ► It wasn't anything to write home about.

00:28:40 ◼   ► That was the one where Apple built

00:28:41 ◼   ► a big mysterious white box out front.

00:28:43 ◼   ► - Right, right, right.

00:28:44 ◼   ► And that was De Anza College.

00:28:46 ◼   ► - Is that what it is, De Anza College?

00:28:48 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:28:49 ◼   ► - It was okay.

00:28:51 ◼   ► I'm not surprised that they haven't been back since.

00:28:54 ◼   ► I don't think it was great.

00:28:55 ◼   ► I think the one thing people don't seem to understand

00:28:58 ◼   ► is that the Steve Jobs Theater is not that big either.

00:29:00 ◼   ► Like there's no way they can't have

00:29:02 ◼   ► like a WWDC keynote there.

00:29:07 ◼   ► Some people have speculated that maybe this year

00:29:10 ◼   ► they'll secretly bus everybody to the new campus

00:29:12 ◼   ► to have the keynote there or something.

00:29:14 ◼   ► It's like that's, you can't bus 5,000 people there.

00:29:19 ◼   ► but B, it's not a 5,000 person auditorium.

00:29:21 ◼   ► I don't know what the seating capacity is.

00:29:22 ◼   ► - And C, they don't want 5,000 people

00:29:24 ◼   ► running around on campus.

00:29:26 ◼   ► - Right, I don't think they want people on their campus.

00:29:29 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, the old one, Town, what's it called?

00:29:33 ◼   ► - Town Hall.

00:29:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, Town Hall, I mean, that was tiny.

00:29:36 ◼   ► - It is tiny.

00:29:36 ◼   ► - But I'm sure, yeah, that makes sense though.

00:29:42 ◼   ► I suppose the, I bet WWSU will end up

00:29:45 ◼   ► back in San Francisco.

00:29:46 ◼   ► We'll see, they'll probably see how it goes this year.

00:29:49 ◼   ► And then, because the reason it's in San Jose this year

00:29:51 ◼   ► is 'cause Moscone Center's under construction.

00:29:53 ◼   ► - I don't believe that.

00:29:54 ◼   ► I don't believe that.

00:29:55 ◼   ► I really don't.

00:29:56 ◼   ► - Well, basically all of the,

00:29:58 ◼   ► but everyone is not in Moscone by and large.

00:30:01 ◼   ► Like have there been any big events there?

00:30:03 ◼   ► I mean, I know only part of Moscone's under construction,

00:30:05 ◼   ► but I don't think Apple's the only one to--

00:30:08 ◼   ► - Well, there's stuff on their schedule if you look.

00:30:10 ◼   ► So North and South, Moscone North and South,

00:30:12 ◼   ► the big, like the expo hall ones, are closed

00:30:15 ◼   ► and they're ripping up the street.

00:30:17 ◼   ► If there's an argument for it,

00:30:18 ◼   ► the fact that they've got the street ripped up. I guess that's Howard Street is all ripped

00:30:21 ◼   ► up for the north and south expansion. But Moscone West is still open and is not being

00:30:27 ◼   ► renovated. Before Apple made this announcement, you could look on the schedule and there was

00:30:33 ◼   ► like one open week in June. But otherwise, there's stuff in Moscone West all the time.

00:30:41 ◼   ► I could be wrong.

00:30:42 ◼   ► Yeah. No, you're right. I don't know.

00:30:44 ◼   ► I mean, who cares if the street's ripped up? I've seen people say, "Well, the street's

00:30:48 ◼   ► all ripped up, but who gives a crap?

00:30:50 ◼   ► I don't know, nobody's, it's not like everybody's driving

00:30:52 ◼   ► down Howard Street to get to WWDC.

00:30:54 ◼   ► I think if Apple wanted to have it at Moscone West this year

00:30:57 ◼   ► they would've.

00:30:57 ◼   ► I think there's other reasons, you know,

00:31:01 ◼   ► whether they got a better deal, whether they really,

00:31:04 ◼   ► you know, I do think, I think Apple is,

00:31:07 ◼   ► if you can put a personality on a company,

00:31:09 ◼   ► they're a homebody company.

00:31:11 ◼   ► They don't, they're not a San Francisco company.

00:31:14 ◼   ► I know they have a couple of offices there,

00:31:16 ◼   ► but they really are, as a company,

00:31:19 ◼   ► they're at home on their campus in Cupertino.

00:31:22 ◼   ► And I feel like being closer to home is better for them.

00:31:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, no question.

00:31:27 ◼   ► I mean, just being in the Valley,

00:31:30 ◼   ► I mean, they're not its own insular sort of culture.

00:31:34 ◼   ► Like, it's much less sort of interspersed.

00:31:37 ◼   ► I mean, obviously at an employee level,

00:31:38 ◼   ► that's not necessarily the case.

00:31:39 ◼   ► But especially once you get more into senior management,

00:31:42 ◼   ► I mean, it's its own world.

00:31:44 ◼   ► Like it's in the same geographic area,

00:31:47 ◼   ► but the rest of the valley I think is much more

00:31:50 ◼   ► intertwined with Google and there's much more

00:31:53 ◼   ► of a sort of back and forth in that perspective

00:31:55 ◼   ► when it comes to sort of big valley companies

00:31:57 ◼   ► and San Francisco.

00:31:59 ◼   ► But yeah, Apple has always been its own sort of universe.

00:32:04 ◼   ► And you see it all over the place,

00:32:05 ◼   ► not just in the valley, you see it sort of online,

00:32:07 ◼   ► you see it when it comes to Apple fans.

00:32:09 ◼   ► There's a lot of people who are Apple fans

00:32:11 ◼   ► that are not necessarily tech fans.

00:32:14 ◼   ► I certainly see that when it comes to readers.

00:32:16 ◼   ► And you see it in popular culture where it's interesting.

00:32:22 ◼   ► It really is its own sort of entity for better or worse.

00:32:27 ◼   ► And I think at a practical level, it's absolutely the case.

00:32:30 ◼   ► I mean, there's no argument, no spin.

00:32:32 ◼   ► It's just a fact that San Jose is so much closer to Apple's

00:32:37 ◼   ► campus or campuses in Cupertino that for engineers at Apple who have things to do that week that

00:32:46 ◼   ► they need to be at the office, they can swing by.

00:32:48 ◼   ► They might be able to do a couple of hours' work in their office and then go to WWDC in

00:32:53 ◼   ► the afternoon for labs or something like that.

00:32:56 ◼   ► And people might get, you know, attendees might get interaction with significantly more

00:33:01 ◼   ► engineers from Apple who couldn't take an entire day to go up to San Francisco because

00:33:06 ◼   ► it's night and day. I mean, San Francisco can be over an hour away, depending on traffic.

00:33:13 ◼   ► And San Jose, it's probably like a 10, 15 minute drive.

00:33:16 ◼   ► Yep, exactly. You found a good spot for the talk show?

00:33:21 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. I'm in the California theater where that iPad event was, the one that was

00:33:27 ◼   ► in San Jose.

00:33:29 ◼   ► So is it a lot bigger than the old place?

00:33:32 ◼   ► The place where I had my show?

00:33:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:34 ◼   ► - My God, it's so much bigger.

00:33:35 ◼   ► It's, I think it has like an 1100 seat capacity.

00:33:38 ◼   ► And I think-- - Oh, wow.

00:33:39 ◼   ► - When we had it at Mezzanine in San Francisco,

00:33:43 ◼   ► which I love, which I still, if, you know,

00:33:45 ◼   ► I love that facility, I love doing the show there,

00:33:47 ◼   ► but I think we capped it at 500.

00:33:50 ◼   ► I think you could, Mezzanine's attendance cap

00:33:54 ◼   ► is significantly higher than that, but 500 seems to,

00:33:58 ◼   ► you know, and judging from people's reactions

00:34:00 ◼   ► over the years, it keeps it from getting too crowded.

00:34:03 ◼   ► Like I don't want to pack the most number of people in there.

00:34:05 ◼   ► I feel bad when people, like I think tickets sold out

00:34:08 ◼   ► in like 10 minutes last year.

00:34:10 ◼   ► So I feel bad that people who want to go can't come,

00:34:13 ◼   ► but I'd rather have everybody,

00:34:16 ◼   ► I'd rather have fewer people come

00:34:17 ◼   ► and more people excluded,

00:34:18 ◼   ► but have everybody be comfortable.

00:34:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, are there gonna be drinks?

00:34:22 ◼   ► I think that's probably the more pressing question.

00:34:24 ◼   ► - There will be drinks,

00:34:25 ◼   ► and I don't know how that's gonna work,

00:34:27 ◼   ► because it's a real theater theater,

00:34:30 ◼   ► and I don't know how easy--

00:34:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm looking at the pictures right now.

00:34:32 ◼   ► - Right, I don't know how easy it'll be

00:34:33 ◼   ► for people who are sitting in the middle of a row

00:34:35 ◼   ► to go get drinks, so I don't know,

00:34:36 ◼   ► it might have to be sort of a,

00:34:38 ◼   ► you know, get your load on,

00:34:41 ◼   ► get your load on before the show starts.

00:34:42 ◼   ► - That was the great thing about "Mezzanine,"

00:34:44 ◼   ► is you could like, I mean, obviously there was the seating,

00:34:46 ◼   ► and if you were in a seat, well,

00:34:47 ◼   ► the interviewer or the show was going on,

00:34:50 ◼   ► you wouldn't get up and go,

00:34:51 ◼   ► but you could also just sort of be in the back

00:34:53 ◼   ► and be, you know, mingling a little bit

00:34:56 ◼   ► and getting a drink, and so yeah,

00:34:58 ◼   ► it kind of served a, you could watch the show

00:35:01 ◼   ► - In multiple ways, which is nice.

00:35:04 ◼   ► - Well, we'll see, I don't know.

00:35:06 ◼   ► But 1,100 people, Jesus, that's gonna be nerve-wracking.

00:35:08 ◼   ► There's a balcony and everything.

00:35:11 ◼   ► - It does, oh, it's very beautiful.

00:35:13 ◼   ► I'm looking at the pictures right now.

00:35:15 ◼   ► - Tickets still aren't on sale, but they will be soon.

00:35:19 ◼   ► - Oh, that's right, okay, I forgot that you hadn't.

00:35:24 ◼   ► Maybe you can get them on sale

00:35:27 ◼   ► by the time you post this podcast.

00:35:27 ◼   ► - I am, I'm not waiting until the last minute,

00:35:29 ◼   ► but there's lots of little, it's not too much work.

00:35:32 ◼   ► I don't have to, it's not like I'm sitting there

00:35:34 ◼   ► hooking microphones up and stuff,

00:35:35 ◼   ► but there's a lot of details to be worked out yet.

00:35:39 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:35:40 ◼   ► - Well, hopefully I didn't give anything away.

00:35:41 ◼   ► - No, no, no, no, none of that's a secret.

00:35:43 ◼   ► Even the venue is, it's right there on Apple's website

00:35:46 ◼   ► and stuff like that, so I'm not keeping it secret.

00:35:48 ◼   ► Anyway, let's take a break.

00:35:50 ◼   ► I'll thank our first sponsor,

00:35:51 ◼   ► it's our good friends at Fracture.

00:35:53 ◼   ► Fracture is the photo decor company that's out to rescue

00:35:57 ◼   ► your favorite images from the digital ether.

00:35:59 ◼   ► That's their words, not mine.

00:36:00 ◼   ► Here's what they do.

00:36:01 ◼   ► They take your photos and they print them directly on glass.

00:36:03 ◼   ► Right there, on the glass.

00:36:05 ◼   ► On the glass.

00:36:06 ◼   ► Not a piece of paper glued to glass.

00:36:08 ◼   ► I don't know what they have.

00:36:08 ◼   ► They have custom proprietary stuff.

00:36:10 ◼   ► They just put glass into the printer.

00:36:13 ◼   ► The printer puts your photo right on the glass

00:36:16 ◼   ► and then they mail it to you and it looks amazing.

00:36:19 ◼   ► It's got that retina effect where it just looks like,

00:36:22 ◼   ► it doesn't look, it looks,

00:36:24 ◼   ► there's just such a different effect

00:36:25 ◼   ► than a piece of paper behind a piece of glass in a frame.

00:36:29 ◼   ► And it takes all the pain in the ass stuff

00:36:31 ◼   ► out of hanging pictures up.

00:36:32 ◼   ► Because this happens to me every time.

00:36:35 ◼   ► Every time I used to get like IKEA frames

00:36:38 ◼   ► or something like that, you put a photo in there

00:36:39 ◼   ► and then you have to get those little things on the back

00:36:42 ◼   ► that secure the cardboard, you flip them up

00:36:45 ◼   ► and then you put the picture in

00:36:46 ◼   ► and you put the cardboard back in

00:36:47 ◼   ► and you flip them back down.

00:36:48 ◼   ► And inevitably the picture goes like two degrees off

00:36:52 ◼   ► and you gotta open it up, start all over again.

00:36:53 ◼   ► What a pain in the ass.

00:36:55 ◼   ► With the pictures from Fractured,

00:36:57 ◼   ► there's nothing like that can happen.

00:36:58 ◼   ► It's just a piece of glass,

00:36:59 ◼   ► so it's always perfectly aligned.

00:37:01 ◼   ► And they ship you everything you need

00:37:03 ◼   ► to hang it on a wall in the box.

00:37:05 ◼   ► They even include the wall anchor.

00:37:07 ◼   ► Just upload your digital photo on their website,

00:37:09 ◼   ► pick the size, and just wait for it to show up in the mail.

00:37:12 ◼   ► That's it, could not be easier.

00:37:14 ◼   ► Where do you go to find out more?

00:37:17 ◼   ► fractureme.com/podcast.

00:37:21 ◼   ► Every time I read it, I feel like I'm making a mistake

00:37:24 ◼   ► and that that's some kind of placeholder,

00:37:25 ◼   ► but that's really the URL, fractureme.com/podcast.

00:37:29 ◼   ► And then I guess they use the same URL for all podcasts.

00:37:33 ◼   ► But then at the end when you buy it, they'll say,

00:37:35 ◼   ► "Hey, where'd you find out about Fracture?"

00:37:36 ◼   ► And you can say, "The talk show."

00:37:38 ◼   ► "Hey, go buy some for Father's Day.

00:37:40 ◼   ► "It's a great, great gift."

00:37:41 ◼   ► "Too late for Mother's Day."

00:37:42 ◼   ► "Mother's Day is like two days from now,

00:37:43 ◼   ► "but Father's Day is coming up next month.

00:37:47 ◼   ► "What an amazing gift.

00:37:48 ◼   ► "Go buy a fracture for your father, your husband,

00:37:52 ◼   ► "anything like that.

00:37:53 ◼   ► What a great gift.

00:37:54 ◼   ► - Well, FractureMe is memorable.

00:37:59 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:37:59 ◼   ► - And so, URLs are hard.

00:38:01 ◼   ► Someone was making fun of,

00:38:04 ◼   ► there's a tweet on the effect of,

00:38:06 ◼   ► tech people are so uncreative that they have a site

00:38:09 ◼   ► about strategy and tech culture techery.

00:38:11 ◼   ► And I'm like, it's true, I have no excuse.

00:38:14 ◼   ► I mean, Derry Firewall is always,

00:38:16 ◼   ► I've always like, damn it, I should've hired you

00:38:19 ◼   ► to get a name, to find me a name before I started.

00:38:22 ◼   ► but now it's too late.

00:38:27 ◼   ► But the other thing too is getting a URL is hard.

00:38:29 ◼   ► One of the things when I started, I had no money.

00:38:31 ◼   ► I was in debt.

00:38:34 ◼   ► And the idea of going out and spending money

00:38:36 ◼   ► to get a URL or whatever, or Twitter handle,

00:38:40 ◼   ► all that stuff, one of the advantages of Stereocory

00:38:43 ◼   ► is it was available.

00:38:45 ◼   ► I would, like I said, I probably wouldn't use it again

00:38:46 ◼   ► if I was starting over because it's hard to say,

00:38:49 ◼   ► hard to spell, which is not a good combo.

00:38:50 ◼   ► But yeah, it's hard.

00:38:53 ◼   ► The whole URL Twitter handle thing is tough.

00:38:57 ◼   ► I remember fracturing me,

00:39:00 ◼   ► especially now after you sort of made that little joke.

00:39:04 ◼   ► - You know that I have during fireball.com, right?

00:39:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it redirects to .net.

00:39:09 ◼   ► - Right, and some people don't ask about that anymore.

00:39:11 ◼   ► In the early years, people would be like,

00:39:12 ◼   ► "Why do you redirect to .net?

00:39:16 ◼   ► "Wouldn't most people, if they have both, redirect to .com?"

00:39:19 ◼   ► And I think it's like to me it's like I started using the internet so early

00:39:26 ◼   ► When most domains weren't dot-coms, you know

00:39:30 ◼   ► like dot orgs and dot ed use that use were probably the most popular that I used and

00:39:35 ◼   ► net - but to me

00:39:39 ◼   ► Dot-com was sort of crass in the early years and I know that in the you know

00:39:43 ◼   ► after the doc, you know even called the bubble the dot-com bubble like dot-com sort of became the the

00:39:49 ◼   ► the neutral one, right?

00:39:51 ◼   ► It's like ground zero of all the top level domains.

00:39:54 ◼   ► Like, by default, you want a .com.

00:39:57 ◼   ► But like, when I was, in my mind,

00:40:00 ◼   ► it's still sort of crass, I don't know.

00:40:02 ◼   ► Like in the early years, all the .com sites were garbage.

00:40:07 ◼   ► - Right, well, it was supposed to be like commercial, right?

00:40:09 ◼   ► I think that's what it stands for.

00:40:11 ◼   ► Then, yeah, I like, I agree, I like .net better.

00:40:15 ◼   ► But yes, I give in to the prevailing,

00:40:18 ◼   ► I own Surtakri.net also, but it redirects

00:40:20 ◼   ► in the opposite direction.

00:40:21 ◼   ► - Right, and like Kotki, I think a lot of early types,

00:40:26 ◼   ► you know, like me and Kotki--

00:40:27 ◼   ► - I always did like Kotki.org.

00:40:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it wouldn't work, like, neither,

00:40:32 ◼   ► it somehow is part of the domain,

00:40:33 ◼   ► like Kotki.net wouldn't be right,

00:40:35 ◼   ► and Kotki.com would be awful.

00:40:37 ◼   ► Like, it just, it wouldn't be the same,

00:40:39 ◼   ► like Kotki.org is exactly right.

00:40:41 ◼   ► And for whatever reason in my mind,

00:40:44 ◼   ► it's just, like when you rewrite a sentence

00:40:46 ◼   ► and just use the same words, but you put a clause

00:40:50 ◼   ► in the middle of the sentence as opposed to at the end

00:40:52 ◼   ► or something like that, and one way it reads great

00:40:54 ◼   ► and one way it doesn't, to me, daringfireball.net

00:40:57 ◼   ► reads better than daringfireball.com.

00:40:59 ◼   ► I remember-- - Yeah, well, the great thing--

00:41:01 ◼   ► Well, sorry. - Go ahead, go ahead, Ben.

00:41:03 ◼   ► - Oh, no, I was just gonna say,

00:41:05 ◼   ► the great thing about Daring Fireball is

00:41:06 ◼   ► it's so distinct that you can, one,

00:41:10 ◼   ► if you type, if you type in a URL,

00:41:12 ◼   ► and the thing is that no one actually types,

00:41:14 ◼   ► us nerds do, but the vast majority of people

00:41:17 ◼   ► don't even type URLs.

00:41:19 ◼   ► Like the, Google has the whole, you know,

00:41:22 ◼   ► like a huge number, back in the day,

00:41:25 ◼   ► like they could track how popular Facebook was

00:41:27 ◼   ► because of people typing Facebook into Google

00:41:30 ◼   ► to go to Facebook.

00:41:31 ◼   ► So for normal people it doesn't really register,

00:41:33 ◼   ► but that's the great thing about doing Fireball,

00:41:35 ◼   ► even if you do a URL or you do a Google search,

00:41:36 ◼   ► whatever, it's going to, it's memorable

00:41:38 ◼   ► and it's gonna come up right away.

00:41:40 ◼   ► - Wasn't there a thing where,

00:41:43 ◼   ► Off the top of my head, I'm not remembering it right,

00:41:45 ◼   ► but there was a thing where the number one result

00:41:47 ◼   ► for Facebook login was no longer the Facebook login page

00:41:51 ◼   ► and the poor bugger who had,

00:41:54 ◼   ► it was just some guy's site or something

00:41:55 ◼   ► and the guy was just inundated with thousands of people

00:41:59 ◼   ► saying, "What have you done to Facebook?

00:42:01 ◼   ► "This doesn't look like Facebook."

00:42:03 ◼   ► Do you remember this?

00:42:05 ◼   ► - I don't, but that would be brutal.

00:42:06 ◼   ► - Right, it was pretty big,

00:42:08 ◼   ► 'cause that's how people get to the Facebook login sign.

00:42:10 ◼   ► They go to Google and then type Facebook login

00:42:13 ◼   ► and hit return, y'all expect to be taken there.

00:42:15 ◼   ► Funny stuff.

00:42:19 ◼   ► That's how my son gets around the internet,

00:42:21 ◼   ► he just types stuff into Google.

00:42:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's pretty normal.

00:42:26 ◼   ► I mean, that's pretty normal behavior.

00:42:28 ◼   ► I mean, if people, you know,

00:42:30 ◼   ► to the extent people are still using the internet,

00:42:32 ◼   ► I mean, it really shows the extent to which Google

00:42:37 ◼   ► is the sort of winch pin for the internet.

00:42:41 ◼   ► I mean, yes, you can type URLs, go to places,

00:42:43 ◼   ► but the reality is, and the way that people

00:42:45 ◼   ► actually experience online is through Google.

00:42:48 ◼   ► It's not just about like typing Facebook

00:42:50 ◼   ► into the Google search page, but there's just so much stuff.

00:42:54 ◼   ► There's so many things that it's incomprehensible

00:42:58 ◼   ► to anyone, even the smartest person on earth.

00:43:03 ◼   ► And Google, what makes Google so brilliant

00:43:06 ◼   ► and such a brilliant sort of invention

00:43:08 ◼   ► is that the old search engines,

00:43:12 ◼   ► the more stuff there was, the more they bogged down.

00:43:14 ◼   ► 'Cause they were, I mean,

00:43:15 ◼   ► the original Yahoo was literally a directory.

00:43:17 ◼   ► I mean, obviously the future search engines

00:43:19 ◼   ► were much more sophisticated,

00:43:21 ◼   ► but Google by sort of building on top of the link

00:43:23 ◼   ► instead of building on top of the pages themselves,

00:43:26 ◼   ► well, it turned out when you got more links,

00:43:29 ◼   ► Google got smarter and understood it better.

00:43:31 ◼   ► And when the web got larger, everyone else got worse,

00:43:35 ◼   ► except for Google, which actually got even better.

00:43:37 ◼   ► And that's sort of the core piece of the company's dominance

00:43:42 ◼   ► and why they're the winchpin for the entire internet.

00:43:48 ◼   ► - Which brings us to Windows 10 S and the way that,

00:43:54 ◼   ► on Windows 10 S you can't change your default search engine.

00:43:59 ◼   ► You get Bing and you like it.

00:44:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think that's,

00:44:03 ◼   ► I believe they're giving away 10 S to the OES.

00:44:07 ◼   ► So that's the primary way that they're going to,

00:44:10 ◼   ► I mean obviously there's app sales as well.

00:44:12 ◼   ► But app sales and Bing searches and stuff like that.

00:44:16 ◼   ► I think Bing is actually profitable now,

00:44:19 ◼   ► or very close to it.

00:44:21 ◼   ► It has been for a little bit actually.

00:44:23 ◼   ► - It should be, don't you think?

00:44:24 ◼   ► I mean it doesn't make sense that they'd keep

00:44:27 ◼   ► losing money on it.

00:44:28 ◼   ► 'Cause I mean, how much could it cost other than labor?

00:44:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's one of those things where

00:44:36 ◼   ► It's not like a winnier sort of thing

00:44:39 ◼   ► where they make a little more money, a little more money,

00:44:42 ◼   ► and that now they're profitable and they're growing.

00:44:43 ◼   ► It's like you're either losing a lot

00:44:45 ◼   ► or you're making a good amount

00:44:47 ◼   ► once you get the sort of scale effects that are kicking in.

00:44:50 ◼   ► But yeah, it's still actually growing pretty decently.

00:44:55 ◼   ► I think 5.3 billion in revenue the last fiscal year.

00:44:58 ◼   ► - I should try it again.

00:44:59 ◼   ► I haven't tried Bing in a while.

00:45:01 ◼   ► I've done different Macs or different devices

00:45:04 ◼   ► at any given time.

00:45:05 ◼   ► I sometimes switch to DuckDuckGo,

00:45:07 ◼   ► which I admire as the plucky little startup,

00:45:10 ◼   ► and they're local to Philly too,

00:45:13 ◼   ► it gives me a little affection for them.

00:45:15 ◼   ► But I have to admit that there's a lot of times

00:45:18 ◼   ► with DuckDuckGo where it's semi free,

00:45:22 ◼   ► yeah, if you're gonna do it,

00:45:24 ◼   ► at some point in the week, you're gonna be typing,

00:45:27 ◼   ► there's a trick they have,

00:45:28 ◼   ► you can even type like G exclamation mark

00:45:30 ◼   ► and it redoes the same query but redirects you to Google.

00:45:33 ◼   ► because there's just sometimes it's not as good

00:45:36 ◼   ► as Google search.

00:45:37 ◼   ► I mean, they do some really cool stuff

00:45:39 ◼   ► and I like the privacy aspect of it, but it's not as good.

00:45:41 ◼   ► But the thing that surprises me is I thought Microsoft

00:45:45 ◼   ► might catch up to Google search with Bing

00:45:46 ◼   ► 'cause it seems like the sort of problem

00:45:49 ◼   ► that Microsoft would be able to solve.

00:45:53 ◼   ► Like it never surprises me that Microsoft software

00:45:56 ◼   ► never has as nice of a UI as Apple software

00:45:59 ◼   ► because it's institutionally they just don't have

00:46:01 ◼   ► the people who have the taste for that.

00:46:04 ◼   ► But web search is really just,

00:46:07 ◼   ► you don't have to have taste for that.

00:46:08 ◼   ► It's a purely algorithmic challenge to get that right.

00:46:13 ◼   ► - Well, not quite, you need data.

00:46:14 ◼   ► I mean, the thing with Google is,

00:46:17 ◼   ► the algorithm itself is far beyond

00:46:22 ◼   ► any one person could,

00:46:26 ◼   ► it was designed by a person to start,

00:46:28 ◼   ► but at this point it's so complex and convoluted,

00:46:30 ◼   ► And a lot of it is just constant iterative feedback.

00:46:32 ◼   ► So when people are doing searches,

00:46:34 ◼   ► and I'm not talking about the individualized searches,

00:46:37 ◼   ► just as a whole, like which results are the quick,

00:46:40 ◼   ► like Google wants the first,

00:46:41 ◼   ► the proper result to be the first result.

00:46:43 ◼   ► So they are tracking which result you actually click on,

00:46:45 ◼   ► where, how far down you go.

00:46:47 ◼   ► And plus websites are optimizing themselves for Google.

00:46:50 ◼   ► And so Microsoft has to, you know, attach onto that.

00:46:54 ◼   ► But it's one of those situations

00:46:55 ◼   ► where thanks to the feedback loop

00:46:58 ◼   ► that comes from having the most data

00:46:59 ◼   ► and the most users and the most searches,

00:47:02 ◼   ► if two identical search engines,

00:47:04 ◼   ► if one starts at 51% market share

00:47:07 ◼   ► and one starts at 49% market share,

00:47:09 ◼   ► absent sort of any exterior force,

00:47:12 ◼   ► the one with 50% market share is going to get better

00:47:15 ◼   ► over time relative to the other one,

00:47:17 ◼   ► which means, and then when it gets better,

00:47:19 ◼   ► that lets it get more users

00:47:20 ◼   ► because it's a better search engine.

00:47:22 ◼   ► And then it gets even more data relative to the competition,

00:47:25 ◼   ► so it even has a bigger advantage.

00:47:27 ◼   ► So the reality is even Microsoft can have the smartest

00:47:30 ◼   ► sort of search folks in the world,

00:47:32 ◼   ► but because it's a problem that's not just

00:47:34 ◼   ► about algorithm design, it's about the entire

00:47:37 ◼   ► sort of system and having iterative feedback loop,

00:47:40 ◼   ► they will, it's very difficult to ever catch up

00:47:45 ◼   ► absent some sort of like incredible breakthrough.

00:47:49 ◼   ► - You can't buy your way out of it.

00:47:50 ◼   ► There's no way to throw any money at it.

00:47:52 ◼   ► Doesn't get you there.

00:47:53 ◼   ► That's interesting.

00:47:54 ◼   ► I think that to me has to be the explanation

00:47:57 ◼   ► because I just don't think the problem is that

00:48:01 ◼   ► Microsoft doesn't have the intelligence

00:48:03 ◼   ► and the engineering to do it.

00:48:04 ◼   ► And they obviously had no problem spending money on it.

00:48:09 ◼   ► For years, famously, they were losing billions on Bing.

00:48:12 ◼   ► I think that's just it, though, that Google's so popular

00:48:15 ◼   ► that their popularity feeds upon their accuracy.

00:48:20 ◼   ► - Right, and this is where-- - Or their accuracy

00:48:22 ◼   ► feeds upon their popularity.

00:48:24 ◼   ► - And this is where Google is, in some respects,

00:48:26 ◼   ► It's like a Facebook effect, but it's like there is a sort of network effect, but it's

00:48:30 ◼   ► not necessarily about people per se, it's the interaction between people and the sort

00:48:34 ◼   ► of data they generate.

00:48:36 ◼   ► But you get the same sort of idea where the larger service, like because I think I always

00:48:41 ◼   ► write a lot about user experience.

00:48:43 ◼   ► And the point I always have to, I sometimes forget to make this, and when I forget to

00:48:47 ◼   ► make this point, I always regret it because I get a bunch of people asking me, you know,

00:48:50 ◼   ► pointing, asking questions.

00:48:51 ◼   ► User experience does not mean user interface.

00:48:54 ◼   ► The user interface is an important part of the user experience and is critical for something

00:48:58 ◼   ► like a phone, for example, that's in your hand, you're interacting with.

00:49:02 ◼   ► And actually, we can talk about WeChat stuff in a little bit, but the user experience is

00:49:08 ◼   ► the totality of the experience, which means having better search results means it's

00:49:13 ◼   ► a better experience.

00:49:14 ◼   ► Having more friends on Facebook, more family on Facebook, not having to try to recruit

00:49:19 ◼   ► people to get on there means it's a better experience that has nothing to do with the

00:49:23 ◼   ► interface per se.

00:49:28 ◼   ► And these aspects of the experience,

00:49:29 ◼   ► they build on themselves.

00:49:32 ◼   ► And this is why you have these companies that are so dominant.

00:49:33 ◼   ► And what makes it so tricky, and I've been writing a lot about

00:49:36 ◼   ► this over the last year or so, these companies are so powerful

00:49:39 ◼   ► because of these sort of data effects and these network effects.

00:49:43 ◼   ► And they're powerful in a way that's actually better for the

00:49:46 ◼   ► consumer.

00:49:49 ◼   ► Google is popular because it's better, which means it gets more

00:49:50 ◼   ► users.

00:49:49 ◼   ► and when it gets more users, it actually becomes even better,

00:49:52 ◼   ► which means it's positive on the user perspective.

00:49:56 ◼   ► And same thing with Facebook.

00:49:57 ◼   ► It has the most users, so more people join it

00:50:00 ◼   ► because it's there, and the more people join it,

00:50:02 ◼   ► now it has more users, and you get the same sort of

00:50:04 ◼   ► feedback loop where people choose it because it's better.

00:50:08 ◼   ► And that sort of makes, from an antitrust perspective,

00:50:12 ◼   ► that makes US antitrust law fall completely apart

00:50:15 ◼   ► because it's based on consumer benefit,

00:50:18 ◼   ► and actually they're providing a ton of consumer benefit.

00:50:20 ◼   ► That's why they're winning.

00:50:21 ◼   ► - Right.

00:50:22 ◼   ► - Sorry, that was a summary of like 15

00:50:26 ◼   ► Chicago articles that I've been writing about.

00:50:29 ◼   ► - Did you see the story that, I think The Verge had it,

00:50:33 ◼   ► that the Surface laptop, now the most unique thing

00:50:37 ◼   ► about these Surface laptops that they announced

00:50:39 ◼   ► is that other than the keyboard and the trackpad,

00:50:42 ◼   ► what you touch on the front face is

00:50:46 ◼   ► like a soft touch leather, like fake leather type thing,

00:50:50 ◼   ► but it's like a, it's called--

00:50:52 ◼   ► - Which looks awful to me, but--

00:50:53 ◼   ► - Alcantara, apparently a lot of car makers

00:50:56 ◼   ► use it, high-end car makers.

00:50:58 ◼   ► Well, I don't wanna judge it on photos,

00:51:01 ◼   ► but from the photos, to me it looks terrible.

00:51:03 ◼   ► I would not want that.

00:51:04 ◼   ► I wouldn't, if I had the choice when buying a laptop,

00:51:08 ◼   ► whether I just have the bare aluminum surface

00:51:11 ◼   ► or like, no pun intended, surface,

00:51:14 ◼   ► or have it covered with this stuff,

00:51:15 ◼   ► without having seen it in person,

00:51:17 ◼   ► I would, zero hesitation, I would just say,

00:51:19 ◼   ► "Just give me the aluminum, this seems like a disaster."

00:51:23 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:51:24 ◼   ► - But I saw people excoriating Microsoft

00:51:27 ◼   ► for having told the Verge that you need to

00:51:31 ◼   ► treat it like a luxury purse or something like that,

00:51:37 ◼   ► or a luxury handbag.

00:51:39 ◼   ► And I think people took that as meaning

00:51:44 ◼   ► that it's like dainty and that it's,

00:51:46 ◼   ► you're like, you have to treat it preciously.

00:51:49 ◼   ► I think that's how people reacted to this.

00:51:51 ◼   ► Like the headline, I think.

00:51:52 ◼   ► Microsoft says the fabric on the Surface laptop

00:51:54 ◼   ► should be cared for like a luxury handbag.

00:51:57 ◼   ► And I think The Verge did a disservice with that headline

00:52:01 ◼   ► 'cause it's not really, that's not a quote.

00:52:04 ◼   ► The only quote in that headline is the word luxury.

00:52:07 ◼   ► Here's the actual statement from Microsoft.

00:52:11 ◼   ► I hate this use of the word luxury.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Just like anything luxury that you buy,

00:52:16 ◼   ► like that should be luxurious or something,

00:52:19 ◼   ► or any luxury product that you buy.

00:52:21 ◼   ► But it still, it seems self-serving for them

00:52:23 ◼   ► to describe it as luxury.

00:52:25 ◼   ► But anyway, just like anything luxury that you buy,

00:52:28 ◼   ► like great handbags or a pair of shoes

00:52:30 ◼   ► or even expensive cars,

00:52:32 ◼   ► there is a care that's needed for the device.

00:52:34 ◼   ► So I think there has to be some care for it.

00:52:40 ◼   ► But I think the thing that people aren't,

00:52:42 ◼   ► Maybe you and I understand it with our spouses,

00:52:46 ◼   ► but you can get, like, there are handbags

00:52:50 ◼   ► that are, might be, you know, from a luxury brand,

00:52:54 ◼   ► and they're not really dainty.

00:52:55 ◼   ► They're actually the opposite.

00:52:56 ◼   ► They're actually very, they're built to last for decades,

00:53:01 ◼   ► you know, and you do have to treat leather,

00:53:04 ◼   ► and if you get it wet, you have to take care of it

00:53:06 ◼   ► right away and stuff like that.

00:53:07 ◼   ► But they actually hold up surprisingly well.

00:53:10 ◼   ► They're not dainty little Fabergé eggs.

00:53:12 ◼   ► They're actually much more rugged in some ways

00:53:15 ◼   ► than typical lower cost bags.

00:53:19 ◼   ► So that's-- - Right, sometimes you buy

00:53:22 ◼   ► a nice bag or a nice pair of shoes that are luxury,

00:53:26 ◼   ► but you buy them because they last way longer

00:53:29 ◼   ► and hold up much better and age much more attractively

00:53:33 ◼   ► than something that's lower cost.

00:53:35 ◼   ► - Right, there was a weird Twitter account

00:53:39 ◼   ► I was into for a while.

00:53:41 ◼   ► It was one of those ones that was interesting,

00:53:42 ◼   ► only when it was anonymous, and then when somebody figured out

00:53:45 ◼   ► who the guy was, it was no fun anymore.

00:53:47 ◼   ► GS Elevator, remember that?

00:53:50 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:53:50 ◼   ► It was written from the perspective of stuff overheard

00:53:54 ◼   ► in the elevators at Goldman Sachs.

00:53:58 ◼   ► And it was often hilarious, often very rude,

00:54:01 ◼   ► sort of from that--

00:54:02 ◼   ► Very lewd.

00:54:03 ◼   ► that bro, alpha male banker mentality.

00:54:08 ◼   ► But I remember the guy who wrote it had like,

00:54:12 ◼   ► it was like a, he also had like articles

00:54:15 ◼   ► and it was just like, all right,

00:54:16 ◼   ► so you got a job in an investment bank,

00:54:18 ◼   ► here's what, you're a kid out of college,

00:54:20 ◼   ► here's the clothes that you need to buy.

00:54:22 ◼   ► And one of his things was that you should get like,

00:54:25 ◼   ► I forget if he recommended Gucci or what,

00:54:29 ◼   ► but you know, something like,

00:54:30 ◼   ► get like a nice pair of Gucci shoes.

00:54:31 ◼   ► Yes, there's $800 or $700, but they will last you way longer

00:54:36 ◼   ► than 10 pairs of $200 shoes if you take care of them.

00:54:41 ◼   ► - Right, yep.

00:54:42 ◼   ► - There's obviously some things that are luxury priced

00:54:45 ◼   ► that are not, that you're just throwing, like a sports car.

00:54:49 ◼   ► Like if you buy a Lamborghini,

00:54:50 ◼   ► you're just pissing money away.

00:54:51 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:54:52 ◼   ► It's not really, you're not really buying it

00:54:55 ◼   ► for the value of, I mean, the car is valuable,

00:54:59 ◼   ► but it's not like you're not going to sink

00:55:01 ◼   ► tens of thousands of dollars in it maintenance as you go.

00:55:03 ◼   ► Like nobody buys a Lamborghini because it's worth it.

00:55:06 ◼   ► - It's a good investment.

00:55:07 ◼   ► - Reliability wise compared to a Honda.

00:55:09 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:55:11 ◼   ► - Yup.

00:55:13 ◼   ► - But there are some things like a nice shoe

00:55:14 ◼   ► or a nice belt or something like that

00:55:16 ◼   ► where you actually, yes, you're paying a lot of money,

00:55:18 ◼   ► but it's actually, you might be paying five times more

00:55:21 ◼   ► than what you're used to,

00:55:21 ◼   ► but you're actually getting like 10 times better product.

00:55:24 ◼   ► I don't think that the Surface laptop is like that though.

00:55:28 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:55:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I went to use that word choice.

00:55:33 ◼   ► And yeah, now that I'm looking at that

00:55:35 ◼   ► just like anything luxury, that's dried me up the wall.

00:55:37 ◼   ► That's terrible.

00:55:38 ◼   ► - They have to, they have to have tested this.

00:55:41 ◼   ► I know, like last week on the show,

00:55:43 ◼   ► Renee and I were joking about that the iPad,

00:55:46 ◼   ► or iPod that came, I think it was like an iPod Nano

00:55:50 ◼   ► that was super easily scratched.

00:55:52 ◼   ► Do you remember that one?

00:55:53 ◼   ► - It was the original, the original Nano.

00:55:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was almost in a, you know,

00:55:58 ◼   ► - I would love, it's one of those like

00:55:59 ◼   ► behind the scenes things,

00:56:00 ◼   ► I would love to someday get that story out of Apple

00:56:03 ◼   ► as to how in the hell did they make tens of thousands

00:56:07 ◼   ► of these things or half a million of these things

00:56:09 ◼   ► out of a plastic that you scratch with your fingernail.

00:56:13 ◼   ► Like what the hell were they thinking?

00:56:14 ◼   ► How did that not get caught in testing?

00:56:17 ◼   ► - I know, 'cause if you saw one, like they,

00:56:19 ◼   ► within not long, I mean they would be

00:56:22 ◼   ► just completely destroyed, like to the point

00:56:24 ◼   ► where you could barely even read the screen.

00:56:26 ◼   ► - We-- - In the whole,

00:56:27 ◼   ► It was the whole front, not just the screen.

00:56:28 ◼   ► The entire surface would be just completely all shredded up.

00:56:33 ◼   ► - It's hard to remember compared to iPhones

00:56:36 ◼   ► where everything is so much closer to the surface now.

00:56:39 ◼   ► But with the iPods, even with the Nano,

00:56:42 ◼   ► there was sort of a thick layer of screen,

00:56:44 ◼   ► or not even screen, but just plastic

00:56:47 ◼   ► on the whole front of all these models, or a bunch of them.

00:56:50 ◼   ► I remember we got them when I was working at Joyent.

00:56:55 ◼   ► I forget, we hit some kind of milestone or something.

00:56:57 ◼   ► And so everybody in the company got one as a gift.

00:57:00 ◼   ► In our company, like chat,

00:57:06 ◼   ► I forget what we even used for chat.

00:57:07 ◼   ► It wasn't Slack, obviously it wasn't around,

00:57:09 ◼   ► but the equivalent of Slack's.

00:57:10 ◼   ► - IRC.

00:57:11 ◼   ► - It wasn't IRC though, I forget what we were using.

00:57:14 ◼   ► - Hip, hip, hip chat.

00:57:15 ◼   ► And that was a long time ago too.

00:57:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't remember.

00:57:18 ◼   ► I don't know why I'm drawing a blank on that,

00:57:20 ◼   ► but we had like a company-wide chat

00:57:21 ◼   ► and when everybody got these and we're like,

00:57:23 ◼   ► everybody was having fun with their new iPod

00:57:25 ◼   ► and it took like an hour for people to be like,

00:57:28 ◼   ► holy shit, mine's all scratched up.

00:57:30 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:57:31 ◼   ► - Anyway. - 2005, man,

00:57:34 ◼   ► that's already been 12 years.

00:57:35 ◼   ► - I can't help but think that Microsoft had to have

00:57:38 ◼   ► stress tested these things with actual sweaty palms

00:57:42 ◼   ► and warm, use this for a while with,

00:57:46 ◼   ► maybe have us in a warm room with somebody

00:57:49 ◼   ► who sweats through their palms or something.

00:57:52 ◼   ► These things can't just pick up ugly palm sweat stains.

00:57:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure I want to admit to this,

00:58:00 ◼   ► but even my MacBook is always the keyboard

00:58:03 ◼   ► and that all ends up just totally filthy.

00:58:05 ◼   ► It's pretty disgusting, actually.

00:58:07 ◼   ► I should probably clean it.

00:58:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, you probably should.

00:58:09 ◼   ► That's gross, Ben.

00:58:10 ◼   ► - I don't know, it just doesn't seem like,

00:58:14 ◼   ► the more I think about it,

00:58:14 ◼   ► this just doesn't seem like a good idea.

00:58:16 ◼   ► I don't know, it just seems,

00:58:18 ◼   ► too many laptops get too grungy, as is,

00:58:21 ◼   ► as easy to clean a surface as aluminum is.

00:58:25 ◼   ► I mean, it's pretty hard to think of something

00:58:27 ◼   ► that's easier to clean than that.

00:58:29 ◼   ► - Everyone just wants them to make a nice laptop.

00:58:31 ◼   ► That's all they want, just a regular,

00:58:34 ◼   ► so they did the Surface Book thing,

00:58:35 ◼   ► or first they did the Surface and the Surface Book thing,

00:58:37 ◼   ► and now there's a laptop, but yeah, it has,

00:58:40 ◼   ► but I mean, I know there's lots of politics

00:58:43 ◼   ► and competing with OEMs, all that sort of stuff, but yeah.

00:58:49 ◼   ► I'd rather get a ThinkPad with the nub anyway.

00:58:53 ◼   ► I'd-- a nub.

00:58:56 ◼   ► I mean, I think it's so different.

00:58:58 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:58:58 ◼   ► Didn't they use it in the old days?

00:58:59 ◼   ► It was like the nub was the only thing, right?

00:59:01 ◼   ► They didn't even have a trackpad.

00:59:02 ◼   ► Yep, it used to be just the nub.

00:59:05 ◼   ► But yeah, they have both now.

00:59:06 ◼   ► That's almost like an Apple devotion,

00:59:08 ◼   ► like Apple's devotion to the single button mouse.

00:59:11 ◼   ► In a world where everybody went the other way,

00:59:14 ◼   ► the old IBM ThinkPad's devotion to the little red nub.

00:59:18 ◼   ► Well, I mean, there's lots of people that,

00:59:23 ◼   ► I mean, relatively speaking, not a ton,

00:59:26 ◼   ► but there are people like it.

00:59:28 ◼   ► I mean, if you're used to it, it's one of those things

00:59:31 ◼   ► where if you really like it, why would you,

00:59:33 ◼   ► you're going to just keep buying ThinkPad,

00:59:38 ◼   ► you're not even going to think about it.

00:59:40 ◼   ► And I think part of the problem, too, is this,

00:59:41 ◼   ► touchpads have always been so terrible on Windows.

00:59:43 ◼   ► Right.

00:59:45 ◼   ► So terrible.

00:59:46 ◼   ► That was the big reason.

00:59:47 ◼   ► Yeah, that was one of the big reasons

00:59:44 ◼   ► that when I was at Microsoft, I used a ThinkPad.

00:59:48 ◼   ► And that was the biggest reason I started using the nub

00:59:52 ◼   ► in the first place, that the trackpad was atrocious.

00:59:54 ◼   ► But then you use it and you actually grow

00:59:56 ◼   ► to really, really like it.

00:59:57 ◼   ► I mean, not having to, I mean, you're absolutely used to it

01:00:02 ◼   ► moving, you don't move your hand much on a computer,

01:00:07 ◼   ► but on a MacBook.

01:00:08 ◼   ► But just having it right there.

01:00:10 ◼   ► Once you're used to it, it's nice.

01:00:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's great.

01:00:12 ◼   ► - I mean, I'm an actual differentiation.

01:00:14 ◼   ► It's in a world, like the big problem that PC OEMs have

01:00:18 ◼   ► is that what's to keep, let's say you sell somebody

01:00:21 ◼   ► an HP laptop, what's to keep them from buying

01:00:24 ◼   ► a different brand the next time they buy one?

01:00:26 ◼   ► Nothing, really.

01:00:28 ◼   ► And the little red nubbin is actually a little bit

01:00:30 ◼   ► of a differentiator, if they have the muscle memory for it.

01:00:35 ◼   ► Yep, I always thought they were weird.

01:00:40 ◼   ► Anyway, what else do you want to talk about before we get to the WeChat thing?

01:00:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:53 ◼   ► Well, I actually think we've, through talking about various things, have set the stage nicely.

01:01:01 ◼   ► So, what do you think about the two new echoes?

01:01:05 ◼   ► There's the camera one, and then there's the one with the screen.

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01:03:19 ◼   ► Yeah, so Amazon, they have two new,

01:03:25 ◼   ► what do they call them, Echo products?

01:03:27 ◼   ► They both--

01:03:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's the Echo Look, which is just a camera,

01:03:31 ◼   ► and then there's the,

01:03:33 ◼   ► and they're pitching it for putting in your closet

01:03:37 ◼   ► or wardrobe, and then the Echo,

01:03:40 ◼   ► the bigger, probably the one they made a bigger splash about

01:03:43 ◼   ► was the Echo Show, which is a, has a screen,

01:03:46 ◼   ► has a screen that says, now Echo can show you things,

01:03:49 ◼   ► I believe is the tagline.

01:03:50 ◼   ► - Right, and obviously also has a camera,

01:03:52 ◼   ► since it does like photo, video calls.

01:03:57 ◼   ► - Right, which I actually think is the most,

01:04:01 ◼   ► the most interesting part of it,

01:04:02 ◼   ► and it really featured very heavily

01:04:05 ◼   ► in the introductory video.

01:04:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, I have to watch that again,

01:04:10 ◼   ► but it did seem like it's almost more like,

01:04:13 ◼   ► the bigger announcement is that they're doing their own,

01:04:17 ◼   ► they don't have a name for it though, right?

01:04:19 ◼   ► There's no, they don't have a name like FaceTime.

01:04:22 ◼   ► - Right, no, it's just,

01:04:23 ◼   ► it's not just the Echo Show,

01:04:26 ◼   ► 'cause they updated the Alexa app,

01:04:30 ◼   ► And so you can go between phones and the Echo Show

01:04:35 ◼   ► or Echo Show to Echo Show.

01:04:37 ◼   ► I don't know for sure if you can go phone to phone,

01:04:41 ◼   ► but I presume you can.

01:04:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so. - I think I wrote about

01:04:44 ◼   ► yesterday I wrote that, I presume you can,

01:04:45 ◼   ► and I was gonna look it up,

01:04:46 ◼   ► and then I don't remember if I actually looked it up.

01:04:49 ◼   ► But yeah, it is basically a FaceTime competitor

01:04:52 ◼   ► without being called a FaceTime competitor,

01:04:55 ◼   ► but that's certainly what it is.

01:04:56 ◼   ► - Well, it's, 'cause it, yeah,

01:04:58 ◼   ► So the trick to the whole thing is that they've updated the phone app for, I guess, Android

01:05:05 ◼   ► and iOS.

01:05:06 ◼   ► I know the iOS one's updated.

01:05:07 ◼   ► Where both for you to have one of these calls with somebody who doesn't own an Echo or who

01:05:17 ◼   ► would want to use this if you had to be in the room where your Echo is to get the call?

01:05:23 ◼   ► It's like all of a sudden you're back to landline days where you've got a quick run to the kitchen

01:05:28 ◼   ► to take a phone call.

01:05:31 ◼   ► That's not going to fly.

01:05:32 ◼   ► Well, yeah, but I remember when the Echo first came along,

01:05:39 ◼   ► it was the original introductory video, which unfortunately

01:05:44 ◼   ► has been taken down.

01:05:45 ◼   ► But it was super corny.

01:05:48 ◼   ► And I remember a lot of people made fun of it.

01:05:50 ◼   ► But actually, I kind of liked it because it was--

01:05:53 ◼   ► and you can see the same thing in the new Echo Show video,

01:05:56 ◼   ► which is it's very sort of, there's no like fancy,

01:06:00 ◼   ► like marketing commercial stuff going on here.

01:06:03 ◼   ► It's very straightforward,

01:06:04 ◼   ► like showing people explicit use cases for this product

01:06:07 ◼   ► and people going through these use cases.

01:06:09 ◼   ► Like the dad is changing the baby's diaper

01:06:11 ◼   ► and he's ordering new diapers.

01:06:12 ◼   ► Like it's not subtle at all, but I kind of liked that.

01:06:14 ◼   ► Like it's, you're not limited to a 30 second grab.

01:06:18 ◼   ► You're not trying to instill sort of,

01:06:20 ◼   ► I think there's a mistake a lot of marketers in tech

01:06:23 ◼   ► have traditionally made is they've,

01:06:25 ◼   ► they hire these branding agencies,

01:06:26 ◼   ► especially in the early days of tech,

01:06:27 ◼   ► these branding agencies that were used to doing

01:06:29 ◼   ► like consumer goods, consumer packaged goods,

01:06:31 ◼   ► and there it's all about building sort of brand affinity

01:06:34 ◼   ► because the goal is when someone's in a store

01:06:36 ◼   ► and they're faced with like 15 options for crackers,

01:06:40 ◼   ► that they choose one or the owner or whatever it might be,

01:06:43 ◼   ► they choose one and they don't really know

01:06:45 ◼   ► why they chose it, they just do,

01:06:47 ◼   ► and that's the payoff of all that advertising

01:06:49 ◼   ► and branding and all that sort of stuff.

01:06:52 ◼   ► With tech products, it's much more of a deliberate choice.

01:06:56 ◼   ► So to use sort of brand-type marketing,

01:06:59 ◼   ► I think is much inferior to just showing it,

01:07:04 ◼   ► showing how it works.

01:07:05 ◼   ► I mean, this is something,

01:07:06 ◼   ► some of my favorite Apple ads actually

01:07:08 ◼   ► were the original iPhone ads.

01:07:10 ◼   ► Not the first one, like the "Hello, hello"

01:07:12 ◼   ► at the Academy Awards, but all the ads after that

01:07:14 ◼   ► for the first year, they were just showing people

01:07:16 ◼   ► using the phone.

01:07:18 ◼   ► - The ones with Bob Bircher, I think his name was, right?

01:07:21 ◼   ► Yeah, and at the very end, the phone would ring.

01:07:24 ◼   ► So they'd show them reading the New York Times.

01:07:26 ◼   ► They'd show them scrolling, playing a game,

01:07:29 ◼   ► or not playing a game, but doing stuff on the phone

01:07:30 ◼   ► that you could do on the phone.

01:07:32 ◼   ► And then at the very end of the commercial,

01:07:34 ◼   ► and it's the same one every time,

01:07:35 ◼   ► the phone would ring, say, "Oh, and it's a phone."

01:07:37 ◼   ► And it was so effective both in explaining

01:07:40 ◼   ► what the iPhone is,

01:07:41 ◼   ► they were also teaching people how to use it.

01:07:43 ◼   ► One of some of my favorite commercials,

01:07:45 ◼   ► just because I think the way they really,

01:07:49 ◼   ► It was a new way of doing commercials

01:07:51 ◼   ► that I think was much better for a tech product

01:07:54 ◼   ► and something that I was always very frustrated by

01:07:58 ◼   ► when I was at Microsoft

01:07:59 ◼   ► 'cause I thought so many of the commercials

01:08:02 ◼   ► were in this CPG branding mindset

01:08:05 ◼   ► when you're selling a very different kind of product.

01:08:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, those iPhone commercials were brilliant

01:08:11 ◼   ► 'cause they were fast, I mean, they were 30-second spots,

01:08:13 ◼   ► but they showed things and they, you know--

01:08:17 ◼   ► - They showed it, they showed the product.

01:08:18 ◼   ► But it was like real things, and they're like,

01:08:20 ◼   ► look, maybe you don't believe it.

01:08:22 ◼   ► Maybe you hear somebody saying,

01:08:23 ◼   ► you know, you can get maps on your phone now,

01:08:25 ◼   ► on these iPhones, you can get a usable map.

01:08:28 ◼   ► But they'd show it, they'd say,

01:08:29 ◼   ► here, look, type Starbucks, and hit one button.

01:08:33 ◼   ► Very easy, just says, you know, like search or whatever,

01:08:36 ◼   ► and then a map shows up showing how far you are

01:08:38 ◼   ► from Starbucks, or whatever the example was

01:08:40 ◼   ► in the commercial.

01:08:41 ◼   ► - Yep, yep, exactly, yeah.

01:08:42 ◼   ► The map one was a big one, and that was,

01:08:44 ◼   ► and it was so immediately became apparent

01:08:46 ◼   ► the value was to people, right?

01:08:48 ◼   ► Right.

01:08:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:08:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:08:51 ◼   ► This is something you can understand.

01:08:54 ◼   ► Apple understood that-- it sounds funny,

01:08:58 ◼   ► but it's the thing that I think a lot of tech people, even

01:09:00 ◼   ► tech marketers overlook, is that you tell a lot of people, OK,

01:09:05 ◼   ► you've got a cell phone.

01:09:06 ◼   ► We know that.

01:09:07 ◼   ► We know you're frustrated by it.

01:09:09 ◼   ► We know that you probably can't figure

01:09:11 ◼   ► out how to do anything on it other than make the phone calls.

01:09:15 ◼   ► We're trying to sell you a phone that does,

01:09:17 ◼   ► it browses the web, gets your email,

01:09:20 ◼   ► has maps, lets you watch YouTube videos.

01:09:24 ◼   ► But trust us, none of this is more complicated

01:09:27 ◼   ► and making phone calls is even easier

01:09:28 ◼   ► than it was on your old phone.

01:09:30 ◼   ► - Yep, yeah, it's exactly right.

01:09:33 ◼   ► So I mean, these Amazon Echo spots are not like that

01:09:38 ◼   ► and they're not nearly as highly produced

01:09:40 ◼   ► and they're still pretty corny.

01:09:42 ◼   ► But if you're showing a product, a $200 product,

01:09:46 ◼   ► and in the original echo I think was the same,

01:09:48 ◼   ► I think it was $99 for Prime members,

01:09:49 ◼   ► but people are on your, you're on the web,

01:09:52 ◼   ► you have infinite space, you can show as short

01:09:54 ◼   ► or long a video as you want,

01:09:55 ◼   ► you're not limited to 30 seconds,

01:09:57 ◼   ► and people are being deliberate about their choice,

01:10:00 ◼   ► why not take advantage of that and actually show

01:10:04 ◼   ► how this product might be useful?

01:10:05 ◼   ► And I think that's something they've done

01:10:07 ◼   ► pretty consistently with these,

01:10:08 ◼   ► and I think it's smart, I think it's a much better way

01:10:12 ◼   ► to think about marketing your product,

01:10:16 ◼   ► 'cause you're marketing a different kind of product

01:10:17 ◼   ► in a different context, particularly for Amazon,

01:10:20 ◼   ► because it's on their, they have a big website

01:10:22 ◼   ► that they can use.

01:10:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know that the, I'm gonna get the name wrong,

01:10:27 ◼   ► I can't remember these right, 'cause there's weird,

01:10:29 ◼   ► like the Echo Show and Echo Look, but it's like, to me--

01:10:32 ◼   ► - Echo Dot is the little one.

01:10:33 ◼   ► - Well, Echo Show is the one with the TV set,

01:10:38 ◼   ► and Echo Look is the one that's like for your dressing room.

01:10:41 ◼   ► Right. But you could call it like it's one of those things where, all right, Echo Look

01:10:50 ◼   ► is the one that is a camera and you show it, you get dressed and you get like a selfie

01:10:54 ◼   ► and you can get like some kind of analysis as to whether your shoes match your belt or

01:11:00 ◼   ► whatever. But it just the name Echo Look, it could also mean the thing that you look

01:11:05 ◼   ► at, the thing with the screen, right? And Echo Show, which is the one with the screen,

01:11:10 ◼   ► That could be the name of the one that's the camera.

01:11:12 ◼   ► Like here, Echo, let me show you what I'm wearing.

01:11:14 ◼   ► Right?

01:11:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I would call the other one, this is just called Echo Camera.

01:11:18 ◼   ► I think so too, because then it's clear.

01:11:20 ◼   ► That's what it is.

01:11:21 ◼   ► Right.

01:11:22 ◼   ► And I think the whole gives you tips on what you wear.

01:11:26 ◼   ► I always feel like they put that in for the tech geeks.

01:11:29 ◼   ► The reality is this whole taking pictures of your outfit is a huge thing, a massive

01:11:35 ◼   ► thing and people do it every day.

01:11:37 ◼   ► They mostly do it by holding out their arm

01:11:42 ◼   ► and taking a selfie, or staying in front of a mirror

01:11:43 ◼   ► and snapping a picture.

01:11:45 ◼   ► It's a massive, massive, massive thing.

01:11:49 ◼   ► So I think that's clearly what this product is focused on,

01:11:51 ◼   ► then that's the point of it.

01:11:55 ◼   ► And maybe in the long run it will be useful

01:11:56 ◼   ► to do the sort of AI stuff,

01:11:59 ◼   ► but I almost feel like that was throwing a bone

01:12:02 ◼   ► to all the techies saying, "Oh, and there's this thing too."

01:12:03 ◼   ► It's a selfie camera, like that's what it is.

01:12:05 ◼   ► And that's not to belittle it

01:12:08 ◼   ► because that is a massive market.

01:12:10 ◼   ► And it's a massive market that's really interesting.

01:12:12 ◼   ► There's lots of stuff about retail and retail changing.

01:12:14 ◼   ► And one of the big drivers of this is social media.

01:12:17 ◼   ► And on social media, it used to be back in the day,

01:12:20 ◼   ► like what drove fashion was it was all a status thing, right?

01:12:23 ◼   ► You want to go and you go to the mall

01:12:24 ◼   ► and you buy the high status items

01:12:26 ◼   ► and then you would wear them to school or whatever.

01:12:29 ◼   ► Now it's much more about standing out,

01:12:31 ◼   ► popping out on social media.

01:12:32 ◼   ► and variety and having something interesting and different

01:12:35 ◼   ► is much more important.

01:12:37 ◼   ► And I think, and just playing into that.

01:12:40 ◼   ► - I laugh because you said you wear it to school

01:12:42 ◼   ► or whatever and I know exactly why you said that.

01:12:45 ◼   ► And I think I even know why you hesitated after saying it.

01:12:48 ◼   ► I think you had the same thought that I had did

01:12:49 ◼   ► as you said it is you're talking from the perspective

01:12:52 ◼   ► of me and you two guys in our 40s.

01:12:54 ◼   ► - I know, I know.

01:12:55 ◼   ► - Because when retail was the only way to buy clothes,

01:13:00 ◼   ► that's when you and I were in school.

01:13:02 ◼   ► And by the time we got out of school,

01:13:06 ◼   ► that was when the internet was a thing.

01:13:08 ◼   ► And I had the same thought.

01:13:09 ◼   ► It's like, well, yeah, back in the days,

01:13:10 ◼   ► back in the days when you used to have to buy

01:13:12 ◼   ► all your clothes at the mall, you'd wear them to school.

01:13:15 ◼   ► Everybody wore them to school.

01:13:16 ◼   ► But of course there were generations of adults ahead of us

01:13:20 ◼   ► who wore them to other places.

01:13:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it is funny.

01:13:25 ◼   ► Like it's always hard to, or you have to be like super,

01:13:29 ◼   ► You're right, because the hesitation was the snap of self-awareness, like I'm probably

01:13:33 ◼   ► over-personalizing this experience.

01:13:35 ◼   ► But you do see this sort of traditional brands that dominated malls, and they're all struggling

01:13:44 ◼   ► mightily.

01:13:48 ◼   ► You see other things, like there's this other websites and services that are much

01:13:53 ◼   ► more inexpensive and it's much more about having something unique and different as opposed

01:14:00 ◼   ► to having the same branded t-shirt as everybody else.

01:14:03 ◼   ► I saw a thing that, I think the New York Times just had a story that the J. Crew is in financial

01:14:08 ◼   ► distress.

01:14:09 ◼   ► I think Gap is too.

01:14:11 ◼   ► There's companies that would like--

01:14:13 ◼   ► Yeah, Abercrombie and Fitch, all of them are struggling.

01:14:17 ◼   ► Right.

01:14:18 ◼   ► thought, well Abercrombie & Fitch was always a little bit more niche, you know, because

01:14:25 ◼   ► they had the, you know, it smells weird and it purposefully made an unwelcoming front

01:14:31 ◼   ► to, it's actually kind of an interesting retail strategy where they, they kind of made the

01:14:34 ◼   ► front of their stores sort of hard to get into. Like I said, having a big wide opening,

01:14:39 ◼   ► they would just have a door and it was sort of, you know, um, like they wanted, you know,

01:14:45 ◼   ► It's totally contrary to most retailers,

01:14:49 ◼   ► but it was sort of like they only wanted

01:14:50 ◼   ► the right people to come in, you know,

01:14:52 ◼   ► young people who were shopping for Abercrombie clothes.

01:14:55 ◼   ► But anyway, the gap to me is more of the universal,

01:14:59 ◼   ► my God, everybody can go in the gap

01:15:00 ◼   ► and find something that they would consider wearing.

01:15:03 ◼   ► It's weird that they're having, not weird,

01:15:06 ◼   ► but it's just, it's obviously like

01:15:09 ◼   ► a foundation of American retail is crumbling

01:15:12 ◼   ► if stores like that aren't doing well.

01:15:14 ◼   ► - Here's a question for you.

01:15:16 ◼   ► Do you ever, like when you need,

01:15:19 ◼   ► like you feel like you need some new shirts,

01:15:21 ◼   ► do you go out and buy shirts in a retail store

01:15:24 ◼   ► or do you buy everything online?

01:15:25 ◼   ► - I usually, every summer, I go and just buy a ton of stuff.

01:15:31 ◼   ► Actually, we always, it's a thing,

01:15:35 ◼   ► 'cause my brother lives in Minneapolis,

01:15:37 ◼   ► and so we always go there and see my brother,

01:15:40 ◼   ► and then one day we go to the Mall of America

01:15:42 ◼   ► and there's no sales tax on clothing there,

01:15:44 ◼   ► and everything's there, and we just spend one day buying,

01:15:47 ◼   ► or at least I do, try to buy all the clothes

01:15:49 ◼   ► I need for the entire year.

01:15:51 ◼   ► Would I do need things otherwise?

01:15:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I go to department stores here.

01:15:55 ◼   ► I don't buy online.

01:15:58 ◼   ► But everything online here is mostly in Chinese

01:16:01 ◼   ► and whatnot, and it's obviously a little more difficult.

01:16:02 ◼   ► But my wife buys a ton of stuff online.

01:16:04 ◼   ► She buys stuff online all the time.

01:16:05 ◼   ► - My wife buys everything online, almost everything.

01:16:08 ◼   ► I can't recall the last time she went out

01:16:11 ◼   ► shopping for clothes.

01:16:12 ◼   ► She just buys everything online.

01:16:14 ◼   ► Unlike me, she's not afraid to send stuff back.

01:16:16 ◼   ► Like that's my problem.

01:16:18 ◼   ► I don't, I hate, I just don't like packing stuff up

01:16:21 ◼   ► to send back. - Yep.

01:16:22 ◼   ► - It's irrational, it's completely irrational.

01:16:25 ◼   ► And it's not like I've amassed all these,

01:16:28 ◼   ► like a big pile of clothes that I don't like

01:16:31 ◼   ► or that don't fit, that I just suck the,

01:16:35 ◼   ► just eat the cost of it because I don't send it.

01:16:38 ◼   ► But it's why I don't buy stuff like shirts.

01:16:40 ◼   ► Like if I was gonna buy like a dress shirt,

01:16:42 ◼   ► I don't buy it online.

01:16:43 ◼   ► Unless I know-- - I'm the same way.

01:16:45 ◼   ► - If I know that there's like a shirt

01:16:48 ◼   ► from Banana Republic, that I already have one,

01:16:52 ◼   ► and I know the exact size, and I can judge from the picture

01:16:54 ◼   ► exactly what this one looks like, I would buy that online.

01:16:57 ◼   ► But that's because I've actually tried it on.

01:16:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm the same way.

01:17:01 ◼   ► That sort of, like, yes it's a hassle to get in the car

01:17:05 ◼   ► and like go to the store, or however you get you

01:17:09 ◼   ► to the store, but for me, that sort of hassle

01:17:12 ◼   ► doesn't register, whereas having a bunch of boxes

01:17:14 ◼   ► and having to pack stuff up and put it out,

01:17:17 ◼   ► and oh, that just sounds like absolute torture to me.

01:17:20 ◼   ► Even if you were to actually go through

01:17:22 ◼   ► and add up the number of minutes that it takes, it's less,

01:17:24 ◼   ► the feeling of it is much worse.

01:17:28 ◼   ► So I'm completely with you.

01:17:29 ◼   ► - But for stuff like underwear and socks

01:17:31 ◼   ► and stuff like that, I don't think I've bought anything

01:17:33 ◼   ► like that in a retail store in 10 years.

01:17:36 ◼   ► I mean, why would you?

01:17:38 ◼   ► It's crazy.

01:17:39 ◼   ► You feel like you need some new underwear.

01:17:41 ◼   ► Boom.

01:17:42 ◼   ► Just click a couple of buttons and it's at your house.

01:17:45 ◼   ► The Amazon apparel thing is very interesting because they've not announced any numbers

01:17:49 ◼   ► about it, but there's hints that it's actually doing much better than you think and they're

01:17:54 ◼   ► growing really rapidly.

01:17:56 ◼   ► I suspect a lot of it is probably things like you just said, basics and whatnot.

01:18:04 ◼   ► At a minimum, they're for sure making massive investments in it.

01:18:07 ◼   ► huge, not just the Amazon book, although I think that is interesting in that regard,

01:18:13 ◼   ► but they have all kinds of interesting projects going on.

01:18:15 ◼   ► They've launched multiple brands, their brands, for different categories.

01:18:24 ◼   ► They own Zappos.

01:18:25 ◼   ► Yeah, but this is all in Amazon itself.

01:18:29 ◼   ► I think it's not, the Zappos thing was, I think they bought them because they were

01:18:36 ◼   ► doing well and they're an e-commerce site,

01:18:37 ◼   ► and so they wanted to take them out.

01:18:41 ◼   ► I mean, they just closed down,

01:18:42 ◼   ► or they're on the verge of closing down.

01:18:43 ◼   ► What's the other one they bought?

01:18:44 ◼   ► Oh, diapers.com.

01:18:46 ◼   ► Same thing.

01:18:47 ◼   ► I think in the long run, I would be surprised

01:18:51 ◼   ► if Zappos remains an ongoing concern,

01:18:52 ◼   ► but I mean, people like it, people go there,

01:18:54 ◼   ► so maybe they'll keep it around.

01:18:56 ◼   ► But the long run for sure is all Amazon.

01:18:59 ◼   ► They want, because, and this is the other thing,

01:19:01 ◼   ► oh, this is the topic we should talk about.

01:19:02 ◼   ► I haven't written about this yet,

01:19:03 ◼   ► but the Amazon Prime video being on Apple TV.

01:19:08 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, well that's, I'm making a note,

01:19:10 ◼   ► we'll talk about that in a minute.

01:19:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, well because I think Amazon is really trying

01:19:14 ◼   ► to own every aspect of, they want to be the facilitator

01:19:19 ◼   ► of basically everything in your life,

01:19:20 ◼   ► particularly everything in the home,

01:19:22 ◼   ► and this is what makes the whole Echo line

01:19:24 ◼   ► so brilliant for Amazon.

01:19:26 ◼   ► I mean, the opportunity, the reason the opportunity is there

01:19:29 ◼   ► is because the home is the one place

01:19:31 ◼   ► you don't necessarily have your phone with you, right?

01:19:32 ◼   ► If you're out and about, you always have your phone with you.

01:19:35 ◼   ► If you're at home, it's plugged in and charging.

01:19:40 ◼   ► The other thing is, if you're out and about to just suddenly talk at random, it's getting

01:19:44 ◼   ► perhaps more and more socially acceptable, but still a little weird.

01:19:47 ◼   ► Whereas at home, to shout at an Echo is totally fine.

01:19:52 ◼   ► It's your house.

01:19:53 ◼   ► You can do what you want.

01:19:54 ◼   ► Also, it fits with the long-term Amazon model of basically being the infrastructure for

01:20:03 ◼   ► your home.

01:20:04 ◼   ► It's how the things in your home get there.

01:20:05 ◼   ► It's how you resupply.

01:20:07 ◼   ► It's how you do everything.

01:20:09 ◼   ► The focus on clothes and Echo and all that sort of stuff fits into that.

01:20:16 ◼   ► Having another brand that's not Amazon, I think, doesn't fit into that in the long one,

01:20:21 ◼   ► especially with Prime, 'cause they want to be,

01:20:23 ◼   ► it's all Amazon, it's all Prime,

01:20:25 ◼   ► and so I, we'll see how long Zappos is for this world,

01:20:30 ◼   ► but I doubt it'll be a focus

01:20:31 ◼   ► of their sort of apparel efforts.

01:20:33 ◼   ► - Oh, I think Zappos is doing well.

01:20:35 ◼   ► Maybe it just continues to run as a sort of independent,

01:20:39 ◼   ► you know, I think you could easily be a,

01:20:42 ◼   ► well, maybe not, maybe they make you sign in with Amazon.

01:20:44 ◼   ► I don't know, but I was gonna say

01:20:45 ◼   ► that I think you can shop at Zappos

01:20:47 ◼   ► and not even know that they're a subsidiary, but.

01:20:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, but right, and I think that's fine for Amazon,

01:20:54 ◼   ► I mean, as long as it's not someone else,

01:20:57 ◼   ► as long as they own it.

01:20:59 ◼   ► - Here's the thing that, it doesn't surprise me,

01:21:01 ◼   ► but it's, it's still, I still found it striking,

01:21:06 ◼   ► was how much of the reaction to the Amazon,

01:21:09 ◼   ► or the Echo Look, the one that's a camera

01:21:11 ◼   ► for you getting dressed, was a sort of knee-jerk,

01:21:15 ◼   ► you think I'm putting a camera connected to the cloud

01:21:18 ◼   ► in my dressing room, you gotta be kidding me.

01:21:21 ◼   ► Like a sort of knee jerk, I am not putting

01:21:24 ◼   ► a computerized camera that uploads pictures to the web

01:21:29 ◼   ► that you don't trust it or whatever.

01:21:31 ◼   ► And I understand it and it certainly is,

01:21:34 ◼   ► it's a reasonable concern that you'd want it to be private

01:21:39 ◼   ► and you'd want it to come from a company that you trust

01:21:41 ◼   ► and it's common sense that you'd think,

01:21:44 ◼   ► at least think twice before you bought it and installed it.

01:21:47 ◼   ► But I think it's almost silly to take the point that you don't think that we're

01:21:53 ◼   ► going to have cameras all over our houses soon.

01:21:57 ◼   ► It's clearly, that's where it's the only way to go.

01:22:00 ◼   ► Yeah, and the other thing too is, is a camera really much worse than the Echo itself?

01:22:09 ◼   ► The entire category is very problematic.

01:22:12 ◼   ► But that's how people reacted to that a couple years ago.

01:22:14 ◼   ► They did.

01:22:15 ◼   ► It just dies down.

01:22:17 ◼   ► I'm not saying that we should...

01:22:20 ◼   ► I think anybody who knows me at all through the show or

01:22:25 ◼   ► Daring Fireball would guess that I'm...

01:22:27 ◼   ► it's not like I rush headlong into new things without

01:22:31 ◼   ► thinking about them.

01:22:33 ◼   ► In some ways I'm a lowercase c conservative.

01:22:36 ◼   ► A lot of the...

01:22:38 ◼   ► I don't...

01:22:40 ◼   ► I find out what I like and then I stick with it.

01:22:42 ◼   ► So I'm not drawn to new and shiny all the time.

01:22:47 ◼   ► But I feel like everybody's a little bit too,

01:22:50 ◼   ► in some ways, it's good that there's a lot of people

01:22:52 ◼   ► whose first concern is privacy,

01:22:54 ◼   ► as opposed to thinking about the cool things

01:22:56 ◼   ► you could do with something like this.

01:22:57 ◼   ► But I'm reminded of, God, it must probably be like '99

01:23:02 ◼   ► or something like that, but way back,

01:23:04 ◼   ► you know, around the millennium,

01:23:07 ◼   ► when like Mac apps, indie Mac apps

01:23:10 ◼   ► first started adding features

01:23:11 ◼   ► where they would phone home and just say,

01:23:15 ◼   ► you couldn't even upgrade,

01:23:17 ◼   ► sparkle the technology where you can hit a button

01:23:20 ◼   ► and have, you're using version 3.1,

01:23:23 ◼   ► version 3.2 is out, would you like to upgrade?

01:23:25 ◼   ► And you just hit a button and it downloads

01:23:27 ◼   ► and upgrades and quits and relaunches,

01:23:28 ◼   ► and there you go, you're running a new one.

01:23:30 ◼   ► But there were apps that would just put a dialogue up

01:23:32 ◼   ► and say, hey, there's a new version,

01:23:34 ◼   ► do you wanna go to the website and download it?

01:23:36 ◼   ► And people freaked the fuck out

01:23:38 ◼   ► because they were like, what the hell?

01:23:40 ◼   ► and sniffing the network traffic.

01:23:43 ◼   ► It's not like they were revealing anything,

01:23:46 ◼   ► but the fact that the app was phoning home with anything,

01:23:49 ◼   ► even just to check the version, was too much for people.

01:23:53 ◼   ► And there were people who would do, like, Nday meant it.

01:23:56 ◼   ► I'm deleting this app, I'm switching to a competitor,

01:23:58 ◼   ► because there's no way that any software of mine

01:24:01 ◼   ► is going to phone home to the developer server,

01:24:04 ◼   ► even if it's just to check the version.

01:24:07 ◼   ► And I don't want to make fun of it too bad,

01:24:10 ◼   ► but I mean, that's, you know,

01:24:12 ◼   ► is there an app that you use today

01:24:15 ◼   ► that doesn't notify you when there's a new version?

01:24:18 ◼   ► And I feel like we're going that way

01:24:21 ◼   ► with microphones and cameras.

01:24:23 ◼   ► - We are.

01:24:24 ◼   ► I think there's two sort of points to make.

01:24:27 ◼   ► One is your broader point,

01:24:29 ◼   ► and this is the most important point,

01:24:30 ◼   ► is this is sort of inevitable.

01:24:33 ◼   ► Like we're going down this direction,

01:24:34 ◼   ► and the fact of the matter is that

01:24:36 ◼   ► most people just don't care.

01:24:38 ◼   ► And this applies to their online privacy,

01:24:41 ◼   ► it applies to, and this is the big problem

01:24:44 ◼   ► with sort of fighting for privacy

01:24:49 ◼   ► when it comes to technology products

01:24:50 ◼   ► is that unfortunately people don't care.

01:24:53 ◼   ► And maybe at some point there'll be some scandal

01:24:56 ◼   ► that's so bad and so big that it will actually become

01:25:00 ◼   ► something that people care about,

01:25:01 ◼   ► but to date there's no evidence that that's going to happen.

01:25:04 ◼   ► People value convenience, they just do.

01:25:07 ◼   ► And related to that though, it actually is really concerning, like the whole echo thing.

01:25:15 ◼   ► I have echoes over my house, but the actual, it's not really clear.

01:25:22 ◼   ► Amazon says that they're secure and all this sort of stuff, but there's no really

01:25:27 ◼   ► recourse for people if they were used badly.

01:25:32 ◼   ► It really is just kind of trusting this massive corporation is going to do the right thing.

01:25:41 ◼   ► Obviously people can and will track their network and make sure that it's only sending

01:25:45 ◼   ► when Alexa is triggered or whatever it might be.

01:25:48 ◼   ► But then once it gets on the servers, you don't really know what's happening to it.

01:25:51 ◼   ► It really is a massive, massive problem.

01:25:53 ◼   ► Unfortunately, it's a problem that absent some sort of popular will, it's hard to

01:26:00 ◼   ► to see anything being done about it.

01:26:03 ◼   ► - Right, once you're Yodingas,

01:26:07 ◼   ► turn out the lights in the kitchen, command goes there,

01:26:11 ◼   ► you have no idea where that audio goes

01:26:13 ◼   ► and how long it lasts and what they do with it.

01:26:16 ◼   ► It is a black box.

01:26:17 ◼   ► So I'm not discounting the privacy concerns,

01:26:19 ◼   ► but I think, and it's just like,

01:26:21 ◼   ► it's such a small example,

01:26:22 ◼   ► but just like how apps that can run a version check

01:26:26 ◼   ► and notify you of a new version,

01:26:28 ◼   ► It is a trade-off of privacy where there is some information

01:26:33 ◼   ► of yours that is going to the developer and they can

01:26:35 ◼   ► maybe a lot of times send other things too,

01:26:39 ◼   ► like what model Macintosh you're on

01:26:41 ◼   ► and how much RAM you have or something like that.

01:26:43 ◼   ► You are trading some privacy

01:26:45 ◼   ► by allowing the software to do it,

01:26:46 ◼   ► but in return you're getting something of such convenience.

01:26:50 ◼   ► It is so much, the days when you used to have to manually

01:26:53 ◼   ► like follow, there used to be a website like Mac Update

01:26:56 ◼   ► where you'd, like, part of my morning was go to Mac update

01:27:00 ◼   ► and what was the other one?

01:27:01 ◼   ► Version tracker.

01:27:03 ◼   ► You'd go to version tracker and just see

01:27:05 ◼   ► if any of the software I use has a new version out

01:27:08 ◼   ► and if so, go and update it.

01:27:10 ◼   ► I mean, that was actually part of my daily routine.

01:27:13 ◼   ► It seems like madness at this point.

01:27:17 ◼   ► And there's so much of the convenience of these

01:27:19 ◼   ► AI assistants and we're just, just touching our toes in it.

01:27:26 ◼   ► like, I don't know, the more I think about it,

01:27:29 ◼   ► and I know I've been talking about it

01:27:30 ◼   ► a lot more on the show,

01:27:31 ◼   ► like if I were to go to a company like Apple

01:27:35 ◼   ► or Microsoft or something or Google,

01:27:37 ◼   ► like what would I wanna be working on?

01:27:39 ◼   ► I mean, until now, almost unquestionably,

01:27:43 ◼   ► what I would wanna be working on

01:27:44 ◼   ► is visual user interface stuff for the GUI.

01:27:47 ◼   ► I think if I were there now,

01:27:51 ◼   ► I think the AI stuff would be what I would wanna work on,

01:27:54 ◼   ► 'cause I feel like there's so much potential there.

01:27:57 ◼   ► - One thing that's interesting about the Echo

01:27:59 ◼   ► and with the Echo Show is I think in some respects

01:28:02 ◼   ► it was good for Amazon to launch with just the speaker

01:28:05 ◼   ► because it sort of, it was like the original Mac

01:28:08 ◼   ► launching without arrow keys.

01:28:10 ◼   ► So you had to use the mouse and the foundation

01:28:14 ◼   ► of it being a voice interface is baked in very, very deeply

01:28:19 ◼   ► and so now the show comes out and it has a screen,

01:28:21 ◼   ► but it's not a touchscreen.

01:28:23 ◼   ► It's still all voice controlled.

01:28:25 ◼   ► But it's weird because if it came out originally,

01:28:27 ◼   ► we'd say, "Wow, there's a screen.

01:28:28 ◼   ► "It's not a touchscreen.

01:28:29 ◼   ► "This is so weird."

01:28:30 ◼   ► And people wouldn't really get how to interact with it.

01:28:32 ◼   ► Now it's like, "Oh, wow, it's so much so convenient.

01:28:36 ◼   ► "It's an echo with a screen."

01:28:38 ◼   ► The whole framing and the way you think about the product

01:28:40 ◼   ► is actually totally different

01:28:42 ◼   ► because it was a more limited product to start out with.

01:28:46 ◼   ► - I did not realize it was not a touchscreen.

01:28:48 ◼   ► I find that shocking.

01:28:49 ◼   ► It's not a touchscreen?

01:28:51 ◼   ► - No.

01:28:52 ◼   ► - Wow, that's shocking to me.

01:28:54 ◼   ► I find that crazy, I think that's a huge mistake.

01:28:57 ◼   ► I think there's all sorts of things that you'd want to do

01:28:59 ◼   ► that you'd want to be able to touch to confirm

01:29:01 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:29:02 ◼   ► - Wait, yeah, no, I'm totally wrong, it is a touchscreen.

01:29:05 ◼   ► - Oh, geez. (laughs)

01:29:07 ◼   ► I thought maybe someone at Amazon had a stroke or something.

01:29:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, that's funny, I don't know,

01:29:16 ◼   ► I knew it was a touchscreen and it suddenly got stuck

01:29:18 ◼   ► in my head that it was not a touchscreen.

01:29:19 ◼   ► The point I was meaning to make,

01:29:22 ◼   ► tell Cable to, or tell Cable to--

01:29:26 ◼   ► - No way, man, we're leaving it in.

01:29:28 ◼   ► - The point I was trying to make, though,

01:29:29 ◼   ► is the primary means of interacting with it is voice.

01:29:34 ◼   ► Had it been a touchscreen to start out with,

01:29:35 ◼   ► that's what I'm trying to say,

01:29:36 ◼   ► it would have been much more limited than it is,

01:29:40 ◼   ► because every, you know, developers, all the skills,

01:29:42 ◼   ► would have all been biased towards touch.

01:29:45 ◼   ► Now they're all biased towards voice,

01:29:46 ◼   ► and you can add on touch.

01:29:48 ◼   ► That was weird, I just completely hallucinated

01:29:50 ◼   ► for like five minutes there.

01:29:51 ◼   ► I just wrote about it yesterday,

01:29:52 ◼   ► I wrote about it being a touch screen.

01:29:54 ◼   ► - I do see your point though, I see your point though,

01:29:56 ◼   ► that it is voice first and it matters what's first.

01:30:00 ◼   ► That the Mac being mouse first influenced the design

01:30:04 ◼   ► of the GUI in a way that if you could have treated it

01:30:07 ◼   ► as keyboard first, that's how the software

01:30:10 ◼   ► would have been written, because that's how

01:30:11 ◼   ► all the other software on all the other platforms

01:30:13 ◼   ► was written.

01:30:13 ◼   ► - Right, exactly, exactly.

01:30:15 ◼   ► That was so weird.

01:30:16 ◼   ► - You could use an original Macintosh,

01:30:19 ◼   ► like if you had two of the original Macintosh side by side,

01:30:22 ◼   ► and one of them only had the mouse hooked up,

01:30:24 ◼   ► and the other one only had the keyboard hooked up,

01:30:27 ◼   ► you could get more done on the one

01:30:28 ◼   ► that had the mouse hooked up.

01:30:30 ◼   ► And there might have been things

01:30:31 ◼   ► that you couldn't even do on the keyboard.

01:30:32 ◼   ► Yeah, you couldn't even get to the menu bar.

01:30:35 ◼   ► The only thing you could do in the menu bar