0:00:00Mg
0:00:01John long time no long time no here. Yeah, how are you?
0:00:05Very good been too long. So what what are you up to these days? What are you what the hell are you doing? So?
0:00:11I came back from the UK. I was over there for a year helping to set up
0:00:17Google Ventures European operations over there and with that off the ground I came back
0:00:22About I guess more than six months ago. Now is sometime last summer. It's actually
0:00:28We're heading back to the UK for the first time since we left, so it's almost been a year.
0:00:34Anyway, so back on the ground in San Francisco now.
0:00:38Back just to doing US Google Ventures, now called GV as a part of the
0:00:45Alphabet stuff, you know, so
0:00:48Google Ventures is one of the
0:00:50Alphabet
0:00:52companies that's a sister company now to Google versus being, you know, under
0:00:56Google. Same basic idea, but they would prefer we use the name GV instead of Google Ventures now.
0:01:03Right, as part of the whole, if it's really a sibling to Google and part of Alphabet, it shouldn't be called Google.
0:01:11Right, exactly. So yeah, so back, but doing the same stuff, just
0:01:15investing in, you know, mainly early stage, early to mid stage companies here.
0:01:24What do you do you think that having spent a whole year in in the UK?
0:01:29When you came back did it?
0:01:31Did you look at at the valley?
0:01:34Culture and sort of feel like you had fresh eyes or did feel like just instantly like, you know what I'm home
0:01:41It's a good question because I did think about that the longer sort of I was over there
0:01:46And obviously we were coming back fairly regularly
0:01:50I think I was back at least once a quarter in the in the US and mainly in the Bay Area when I came back
0:01:55But still the longer I was over there you do start to get detached from it
0:02:01And I felt like I was able to look at it from much more of a outsider perspective
0:02:06After having lived in the Bay Area for almost 10 years
0:02:08you know concurrently
0:02:11and
0:02:13It was
0:02:15interesting coming back
0:02:17And you do feel like you get just like sort of right back into the swing of things almost like you hadn't left
0:02:23but at the same time I had these lingering remembrances of what it was like being over in the UK and sort of
0:02:29Watching remotely both because of what we were talking about with the timezone thing was was one of the more interesting things
0:02:34When I would wake up in the morning
0:02:37It was mostly either people who were up really late or people who were out drinking or something like that were on Twitter
0:02:43And so I would have a much, much different usage of Twitter when I was over there than
0:02:50I do when I'm over here, and it's just sort of in the thick of it with everyone.
0:02:54When I'm over there, it's almost like you're using it to play catch-up and then talking
0:02:59to a few drunk people.
0:03:03But anyway, yeah, so when I came back, I did get right back into the swing of things, but
0:03:09But I still have these, hopefully, different perspectives on how the outside views Silicon
0:03:18Valley versus being in it for a decade.
0:03:22And do you think that outside the Valley startups are underrepresented or more likely to be
0:03:37overlooked?
0:03:38Yeah, like I that's my outsider's perspective. My outsider's perspective is that inside the valley
0:03:43The the focus is so insular because there's so many
0:03:47things going on and so many smart people and so many interesting things that it's it it
0:03:54Cultivates an idea that everything worth looking at is in the valley
0:03:57Yeah, that's a good way to frame because most people, you know talk about well, you're too far in the forest
0:04:02and
0:04:04You know you guys are just missing sort of what's outside of the valley the reality of the situation at least from my perspective is
0:04:10Sort of what you're suggesting which is that there are so many interesting things going on in Silicon Valley that it's it's honestly
0:04:16Just hard as a matter of time to be able to look outside of it
0:04:20Unless you happen to be in a locale that's outside of it
0:04:23So most of the people here who are investing here or certain companies here
0:04:28You know are you know very much in the in the thick of it?
0:04:32And so it is probably, it's definitely fair to say that, you know, sort of outside of Silicon Valley is underrepresented,
0:04:41underrepresented in the minds of everyone here. But I do think that that's just as much of a function of, again,
0:04:49there being so much here to think about and look at. And so it's just the proximity and time issue.
0:04:58But then when you move to somewhere else like London
0:05:01or any other locale, then of course
0:05:04you're closer to some of those things.
0:05:06And so you start to see outside of that.
0:05:08And that's not to say whether or not it's a good or bad thing.
0:05:13I think overall, everyone would agree,
0:05:14it's sort of a bad thing to have blind spots to something
0:05:17if you're not aware of it.
0:05:20But it's an easier thing that's said than done
0:05:25when the proximity thing is such a key factor.
0:05:29- I'm trying to think since the last time
0:05:36you've been on the show,
0:05:37what are some of the big high level changes
0:05:40to the type of stuff we talked about?
0:05:41- Well, Apple's still doomed.
0:05:43More doomed than ever.
0:05:47The more money they make, the farther they have to fall.
0:05:52It's a catastrophic fall that's happening.
0:05:55I think they only made whatever.
0:05:57What did they make?
0:05:5950 billion in revenue last quarter, something like that?
0:06:02- I thought something like that.
0:06:05Yeah, I think so.
0:06:06And 10 billion in profit.
0:06:08- It's more than all the major other tech companies combined.
0:06:11It's way more than any other company, of course,
0:06:14including Exxon and all the, maybe,
0:06:17but what's it?
0:06:19Aramco, I guess, is about to,
0:06:21or not Aramco, it's, what's the Saudi one?
0:06:25- Oh, I forget the name.
0:06:27I know what you're talking about, but I forget the name.
0:06:30- It sounds like they're about to go public
0:06:32or spun out partially, so we're about to see
0:06:34how much money potentially that they make,
0:06:35and it could be something comparable to Apple.
0:06:37So it might be the first time we get something like that.
0:06:41- Yeah, it just only compares to the gas and oil companies.
0:06:46And it's kind of funny, 'cause we grew up,
0:06:50I mean, even people who are significantly older than us,
0:06:53I think, grew up in a world where it's just-- well,
0:06:56of course the gas and oil companies
0:06:58are the biggest companies in the world.
0:07:00It's just like that's the world.
0:07:02Whereas it's like I'm old enough now to sort of--
0:07:05and with all the climate change stuff and all--
0:07:10the interest in renewable energy,
0:07:12everybody's looking at that and questioning it.
0:07:14And it's no longer taken as a given
0:07:19that this is just the way it is.
0:07:20But I did the math with all the skepticism
0:07:25with Apple's quote, unquote, bum quarter last quarter.
0:07:30And it really was true.
0:07:31I think, I forget if it was revenue or profit,
0:07:33I think I was looking at profit.
0:07:34And yeah, it was profit because that's why
0:07:36I took Amazon out of the equation
0:07:39because they don't try for profit.
0:07:40So it's almost like, it's like you're stacking the deck
0:07:45in the favor of Apple by comparing Amazon.
0:07:48I think it was like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook combined that they had more profit
0:07:52than.
0:07:53Right.
0:07:54Which is just insane.
0:07:56Especially with Microsoft, and Google too.
0:08:00I think Google is often, largely, has tried for profit.
0:08:04But Microsoft, famously, it was the most profitable company in the industry.
0:08:11Yeah.
0:08:12I remember when, thinking back to, I don't even remember how long ago, it was six, seven
0:08:17years ago or something sort of when I was at TechCrunch looking, trying to cover sort of the
0:08:22day-to-day of putting into context like just how fast Apple's growing and how big it is relative
0:08:27to some of the other tech companies. And I remember both putting it in the context of
0:08:32Microsoft at the time and Microsoft was still leaps and bounds ahead both certainly in profit
0:08:38and I think in still at revenue at that point. But the other one I remember is HP. Like HP was
0:08:45so far ahead in revenue that it seemed like Apple would never be able to surpass something like that.
0:08:50And then, you know, like 18 months later, it was so far in the rearview mirror that it was insane.
0:08:56Even the HP branded iPods couldn't change that.
0:09:01That's right. They somehow didn't write the ship. And now HP's been spun out,
0:09:06or it's got split up once, right? And I think they just sold a separate part of the enterprise
0:09:13version that was spun out. So it's like three separate companies now that was the one behemoth
0:09:17at that point that seemed seemed like you know a tech company can ever topple those those types
0:09:22of revenues and now it's funny. Yeah and it's like HP is one of those companies. It's not like I ever
0:09:28had a great interest in Hewlett-Packard you know I mean but they were at least relevant to the
0:09:34sphere of things that I read and now it's almost like when an article comes up with a review of
0:09:38like an HP laptop or something. I'm like, "Wow, HP, I haven't thought about them in
0:09:42like a year."
0:09:43Yeah, I'm the same way.
0:09:44I just don't even think about it.
0:09:46It's basically only when I see on Techmeme the earnings report of HP, and that's the
0:09:51only time I'll see the headline of, "Yeah, they beat," or, "They slightly missed," or
0:09:56whatever on their targets. It's such a mind-numbing headline to read. I just don't have time to
0:10:06really care that much anymore about HP.
0:10:08What's the name of Microsoft's tablet?
0:10:12Surface.
0:10:14Surface.
0:10:15Surface.
0:10:15So I just saw a review the other day where,
0:10:18where HP came out with like more or less their competitor to the surface.
0:10:23And it's,
0:10:25it's like,
0:10:26it's just like a surface and,
0:10:28and they're advertising it,
0:10:29but you can open it up and like,
0:10:30you know,
0:10:31replace the Ram and you can do this and that.
0:10:34And you know,
0:10:34It's like all this stuff that was like,
0:10:37the things people wanted to do with their PCs
0:10:39like 10 years ago.
0:10:40But then like the bottom line is,
0:10:41so it's just like a surface and out of the box,
0:10:43it's thicker and heavier.
0:10:45- That's great.
0:10:48Good job HP.
0:10:49- Good luck with that.
0:10:49- But so it's just, it's a tablet with a keyboard thing?
0:10:55- Yeah, I'll try to find the review
0:10:58and I'll put the link in the show notes.
0:11:00It's just like, I don't know,
0:11:03some division of HP is still making these things in it.
0:11:06It's squeaked out the side, but it's like,
0:11:08it's not surprising.
0:11:10- Yeah, it's the office space guy
0:11:14with the red stapler in the basement
0:11:15who's just doing this and no one realizes it, yeah.
0:11:19- Exactly, right.
0:11:20He's still down there making laptops
0:11:22and he's like looking around the industry
0:11:23and he's like, well, I guess that's the new form factor.
0:11:26And that's what he made.
0:11:27That's exactly it.
0:11:32You are, I think, you've been bullish on Uber.
0:11:44Yeah, sure.
0:11:45I mean, you know, GV is a pretty big investor in Uber.
0:11:49Right, so let's disclose it every time GV
0:11:53is an investor in somebody.
0:11:55But I feel like that, again, not having
0:12:00had you on the show in a long time, that to me, the ride sharing, and it doesn't have
0:12:05to be Uber in particular, but it seems to be accelerating at an almost crazy rate. And
0:12:18I could be wrong. Maybe one thing, a couple years ago, I don't know, I guess about 10
0:12:23ago. There were a lot here in Philly, especially the Zipcars was pretty common. And you'd see them,
0:12:30and I always noticed it because I noticed branding and stuff that, you know, the cars all had Zipcars
0:12:35printed on the side. And I knew where all the parking lots were, where they were. And it was
0:12:41something that when we were shopping for a car 10 years ago, we considered it. We've really strongly
0:12:47thought, maybe we don't have to buy a car. Maybe we could just do the Zipcars thing. But it's like,
0:12:51we kind of pretended, you know, like, "Well, let's pretend it's a rainy day, and how far do we have to
0:12:56go?" And it was like, "Yeah, this is pretty far." So we didn't go for it. We bought a car. But
0:13:00I've noticed, and this is totally anecdotal, but I don't see anywhere near as many Zip cars in
0:13:06Philadelphia as I used to. It seemed like that got popular, and now it's less popular, and I can't
0:13:12help it think that it's the ride sharing.
0:13:19Actually the last time I've been in Philadelphia in a long time, certainly well before Uber
0:13:23and Lyft and whatnot existed, so is Uber pretty ubiquitous? Is that how people get around?
0:13:29Well, I can't speak for the whole city of Philadelphia, but Philadelphia, center city
0:13:33Philadelphia is, you know, the downtown part of Philadelphia is all centralized. It's one
0:13:37contiguous rectangular block. And within Center City, Philly, it's never more than a five-minute
0:13:45wait for a black car or an SUV. I don't really do the UberX, but I think it's even less for that.
0:13:52And it's really, really common.
0:13:55And does Philly have good public transportation or really bad public transportation?
0:13:59I would qualify it as mediocre. We have two subway lines, one that goes east-west and one that goes north-south.
0:14:08So it's just effectively just like a plus that goes right through the center of the city.
0:14:14So like in the sporting complex, all the Phillies, the Eagles, the Sixers, all of this stuff is all in one big area way down in South Philly.
0:14:24So it's easy for me, like if I'm going to a game, I just walk to the what we call the
0:14:29Broad Street line, the one that goes north-south, hop on that and go south, and it's great.
0:14:34If you want to go anywhere off that plus grid, it's not so great.
0:14:37I mean there's buses, but eh.
0:14:39Yeah, no.
0:14:40I mean even in the cities now with great public transportation, New York obviously, London
0:14:45being another, it's still, you're still seeing Uber, Lyft, and all the rest sort of just
0:14:51taking over and becoming huge in all these markets just because, I mean, I think there's
0:14:56a number of things at play, but the convenience factor of course, like just dialing up something
0:15:01and it being there right at your doorstep and taking you exactly to where you need to go,
0:15:06you know, just makes sense for a lot of people. You talked about your wife and yourself sort of
0:15:13thinking about if Zipcar would make sense. You know, when Megan, my wife, and I moved over to
0:15:18to London, we sold our cars here in San Francisco.
0:15:22And so when we came back, we thought about what should we
0:15:26do.
0:15:26And right now, we still don't have cars.
0:15:28It's been almost a year.
0:15:29Neither one of us have a car.
0:15:31And we do use Uber to get everywhere, basically.
0:15:35A few times, we've rented a car, like if we're
0:15:37going for an extended trip up north or down south.
0:15:42But for 99% of our travel now is with Uber.
0:15:46And I want to preface that a little bit,
0:15:48because I know I sound like a Silicon Valley, perhaps,
0:15:52stereotype.
0:15:54Yeah, we can get everywhere we need to go on Uber.
0:15:56But the reality is, in a lot of, I think, metro areas now,
0:16:01it can be cheaper depending on your situation
0:16:06and depending on what you need to do.
0:16:07It's obviously a little bit different
0:16:09if you have children and some other life situations.
0:16:11But for the situation that we're currently in,
0:16:15It's definitely cheaper for us to use something like Uber and UberX and now UberPool,
0:16:20like the carpooling version of it, to get around a city versus owning a car,
0:16:24having to pay insurance, having to pay for gas, having to pay for parking,
0:16:28and everything else that's included.
0:16:30Yeah, and it's just one of those things that it's really opened my eyes to.
0:16:36Just, I know it sounds so obvious, it sounds such a duh, but it's like,
0:16:42"Good God, look at all these cars that are parked everywhere."
0:16:45And I know that this is part of just the basic argument,
0:16:48but it's that the industry is ripe for transportation.
0:16:50But when you're in a city and you just see cars parked everywhere,
0:16:55and you see buildings that are just parking garages just stacked with cars,
0:16:59and you just think, "All of these cars are just sitting here for hours and hours and hours,"
0:17:03and you think like an Uber is always in motion.
0:17:09Yeah. I mean, I think that that's a good point.
0:17:11And it's something that gets talked about a little bit,
0:17:13but not enough.
0:17:14And I think it will be talked about more and more
0:17:17as this becomes more of the reality in more places.
0:17:20But you're exactly right.
0:17:21Like, imagine the future, whether it's Uber and Lyft
0:17:26or the eventual sort of self-driving car elements,
0:17:30where all of a sudden, all of these spaces and cities
0:17:33are unlocked that are just used, as you said,
0:17:35to sort of house cars that just sit there all day,
0:17:38which is ridiculous.
0:17:40so much of city life is taken up by these giant parking garages.
0:17:44And when you can unlock that and you no longer need those,
0:17:47like cities become much better as a result of having all that space sort of
0:17:51freed up. And you can put any number of things there, anything you want,
0:17:54all these, uh, I, you know, who knows how much square footage is out there.
0:17:58That's, that's just devoted to parking, but it is a ton.
0:18:01Yeah. It's, it's, you know, and when you think about it and you just don't,
0:18:06know, like again, it's like, you know, when I first came to Philly, you know, for college in the early
0:18:1290s, I just assumed that the city would be full of cars. That's just the world as I knew it. But as I,
0:18:18you know, question it now, it's, this seems ridiculous.
0:18:21Yeah, I still do wonder. So I grew up in a suburb outside of Cleveland. And, you know, it's a fairly
0:18:30typical Midwestern-like suburb. And there, obviously, it's not super dense and you had
0:18:39to drive everywhere. And so I've been home a few times in the past few years and they
0:18:48have Uber and I do take it, but it's not nearly, of course, as ubiquitous as it would be in
0:18:54the city. Like even in downtown Cleveland, it would be a lot more ubiquitous, of course.
0:18:59And so I do wonder for the suburbs and outside regions
0:19:03how long that will take to tip.
0:19:05But I still think it will.
0:19:08I think it will spill out from the cities into that.
0:19:11And it's just a matter of having enough cars on the roads that
0:19:17are performing those tasks to be able to do it in a suburban
0:19:20area as well.
0:19:20I know a lot of people still think in the suburbs,
0:19:23it's just not feasible.
0:19:25You have to go grocery shopping and do
0:19:27all these things that are sort of always a drive away.
0:19:29But again, at scale, I'm not so sure
0:19:32that that's totally unreasonable.
0:19:35- I was listening to one of Bill Simmons' podcasts recently
0:19:40and I think only half ingest,
0:19:45he has a theory that because of Uber,
0:19:48there are more people having accidental third kids
0:19:52because Uber, the existence of Uber
0:19:55makes it so much easier for parents with kids
0:20:00to go out and have a couple drinks at dinner
0:20:03than they would in the past.
0:20:05If you had to drive, one of the two of you would have to,
0:20:08you know, would have to abstain.
0:20:10And if you just take an Uber to dinner,
0:20:12you can both drink.
0:20:14And so his theory, there's gonna be a lot more families
0:20:16with three kids instead of two.
0:20:18- That's pretty funny, I like that, the Uber boom.
0:20:23Uber's helping the world in families, with families.
0:20:27That's what it's all about.
0:20:30But it seems funny because it's just a funny idea
0:20:34that people are going to have extra babies.
0:20:37But there's a certain logic to it.
0:20:39Yeah.
0:20:39I do think it's true.
0:20:40I mean, it's sort of the flip side of that, just in general.
0:20:44Isn't it great to know when you go out in a city or not,
0:20:49anywhere, really, when you want to have a few drinks,
0:20:52like you just do not have to worry about it.
0:20:56And that just was not the reality 10 years ago, of course.
0:20:59- Right, and there's parts of Philly,
0:21:02I mean, it doesn't matter,
0:21:05it doesn't mean anything to you if you're not here,
0:21:06but like an area we call Fishtown,
0:21:09and it's like the gentrified area,
0:21:11like the part that was really kind of sketchy
0:21:13even 10, 15 years ago,
0:21:15and it's sort of like that's where all the hipster stuff is.
0:21:18But there's lots and lots,
0:21:20I mean, because of that, it's all sorts of new restaurants
0:21:23that open up, open up in that area.
0:21:25And it's always, even now that it's more popular,
0:21:29grossly underserved by cabs.
0:21:31So you can get a cab to go there easily,
0:21:34but then when you wanna leave, you are good luck.
0:21:39And it's actually the type of thing where you'd actually
0:21:42call a cab company, which seems like such
0:21:45an old-timey thing to do.
0:21:49But then you wait.
0:21:50And it's like every time--
0:21:52I remember in the old days before Uber and stuff
0:21:55like that, if I did call for a cab,
0:21:58you could wait half an hour and they don't come.
0:22:00Oh, yeah.
0:22:01I mean, that was very much the reality of the situation
0:22:04when I got to San Francisco almost 10 years ago.
0:22:07And of course, this is--
0:22:09everyone knows the thing now.
0:22:10Like, part of the reason why Uber came into existence--
0:22:12I mean, the main story was they were in Paris
0:22:15and sort of at a tech conference and sort of talking
0:22:18about wouldn't it be cool to have a black car service
0:22:20or whatever.
0:22:21But the reality is that when they got back
0:22:23to San Francisco, everyone was living in this reality
0:22:26where San Francisco public transportation was awful.
0:22:28And it still is awful outside of Uber.
0:22:30Muni is the line here that's the public transportation that
0:22:34goes down all the time and is always running late.
0:22:37And it's a constant joke.
0:22:39If you follow Matt Honan on Twitter,
0:22:41it's like 50% of his tweets are complaining about Muni.
0:22:45And then we have the BART system,
0:22:46which is we have all these like sort of half baked
0:22:50public transportation things.
0:22:51But when I moved to San Francisco,
0:22:52I lived in an area called Russian Hill, which
0:22:55was not connected to any or near any of the public transportation
0:22:58aside from the cable cars, which I would take every once
0:23:02in a while, which is sort of ridiculous
0:23:03because it's very much like a tourist thing.
0:23:05And so I'm on there with 50 tourists
0:23:08and I'm trying to take this to commute into Soma.
0:23:12And it takes forever because it goes slow to appreciate
0:23:14the view or whatever.
0:23:16But that was the reality of public transportation for me
0:23:20when I moved to San Francisco.
0:23:21And yes, so you would see a cab every once in a while.
0:23:25But if you would have to get lucky to spot one out there,
0:23:29and that was even still a better situation
0:23:32than trying to call one.
0:23:33I mean, I remember I would call them
0:23:35from my apartment in Russian Hill,
0:23:37and it would be often like a 45 minute wait.
0:23:40And about half the time, they just wouldn't show up at all.
0:23:42So you couldn't trust it.
0:23:43And so when people are talking about,
0:23:46there's just simple things that led to the rise
0:23:49of services like Uber and just why the cab companies
0:23:53get all mad that this is happening to them.
0:23:57It's like, I mean, they really did do it to themselves.
0:24:00- Yeah, in Philly, it's again a long story short,
0:24:04but the cab situation here is,
0:24:05I've told this story on the show before,
0:24:06but it really is true.
0:24:08Philly's cabs are really lower, less regulated
0:24:12in terms of like in just the, I mean we have,
0:24:14it's just like New York and other big cities
0:24:16where you have to have a taxi medallion.
0:24:18And they limit the number of medallions, you know.
0:24:22So it's like artificial scarcity.
0:24:24But the actual cars themselves
0:24:26don't have very high inspection standards.
0:24:28And New York does.
0:24:31And so most of the cabs on the road in Philadelphia
0:24:34are cabs that failed regular, you know, inspection.
0:24:39- That's funny, I didn't know that.
0:24:40just ship them down the Jersey Turnpike and sell them to cab companies in Philly. Or police
0:24:45cruisers. The last time I couldn't remember the name of the car, Crown Victorias. And
0:24:51some of them, if you actually pay attention to the Crown Vic cabs in Philly, you can actually
0:24:55still see the ones that have the police division on the back. They just paint them. They just
0:25:00paint over them.
0:25:01That's funny.
0:25:02And everybody knows that police officers abuse their cars. They drive them up curbs. They're
0:25:09in action. And then once the police are like, "Wow, this isn't even good enough to use for
0:25:13a police cruiser anymore," then they just sell them to a cab company in Philly. And
0:25:16they're just really, again, this is a total white wine. This is absolutely coming from
0:25:22a position of privilege. But the cab, most of the cabs in Philly, they're just gross.
0:25:27They're just grossed as beer. They don't smell good. The air conditioning, a lot of them,
0:25:34especially the Crown Vicks, and then the Crown Vicks are there because they're not making
0:25:37them anymore. So slowly but surely, they're getting off the roads and they're being replaced
0:25:41by newer cars. But like the Crown Vics, they all have the safety-style divider between
0:25:51you and the cab driver with plexiglass. Most of them, there's just like this gross, I
0:25:57swear to God, like a two-inch diameter tube down on the floor coming from the front, which
0:26:02is where the heater air conditioning gets sent to the back.
0:26:05Oh, that's great. I guess at first I thought you were going, that's where sort of the driver
0:26:12discharges when they've been driving for a long time. So that's slightly better than
0:26:15that.
0:26:16Yeah, it's slightly better. It's definitely better than that. But yeah, imagine like an
0:26:20accordion style tube, like a plastic tube. You know, those ones that kids can like wave
0:26:25around and they make like a funny noise. It's like that type of tube and it's just there
0:26:29on the floor and that's where your air conditioning comes from. It's really, they did it to themselves.
0:26:34And so that used to be the situation, too,
0:26:36with cabs in San Francisco.
0:26:37For sure, they were disgusting.
0:26:39They were ridiculous cars.
0:26:41I've noticed-- the only time that I ever take a cab anymore
0:26:44in San Francisco, I've taken a few coming back
0:26:46from the airport, just because obviously, a lot of cities,
0:26:49as I'm sure you know, too, have these weird rules around where
0:26:53an Uber or Lyft can pick you up.
0:26:54And it takes sometimes longer to wait
0:26:57because of that as a result. So if I'm in a hurry,
0:27:00I'll just hop in a cab.
0:27:01And so I've been in a few recently,
0:27:03coming back from places.
0:27:04And the cabs are night and day better
0:27:08than they were those eight years ago.
0:27:10I mean, it's the case of just the existence of Uber, Lyft,
0:27:13and everything else has forced them to up their game, which
0:27:19means no longer accordion tubes of heat.
0:27:23And of course, they all now have sort of--
0:27:26at first, none of them would take credit card
0:27:28in San Francisco.
0:27:29It drove me insane.
0:27:30Now they all seem to as a result of this.
0:27:33But yeah, things like that.
0:27:36And you can summon a few from apps now, it seems like,
0:27:39and whatnot.
0:27:40So it has risen.
0:27:42The tide has risen for all boats.
0:27:44But still, yeah, took that case for it to happen.
0:27:49All right, let's hold that thought
0:27:51because I'll come back to it.
0:27:52I don't want to talk about Apple and where
0:27:56the rise of the self-driving cars
0:27:57might play into Apple's car ambitions.
0:27:59but I'm going to take a break and thank our first sponsor.
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0:30:32So I would say this is one of the most frequent emails I get on a weekly basis from readers of
0:30:39Daring Fireball or listeners of the show is just readers just saying, "Hey, hey, John. Idea.
0:30:48what if Apple's car project isn't about a car that they're going to sell?
0:30:52What if it's like a self-driving car service? And I can't tell you,
0:30:57I mean literally I get two or three emails like that a week. And my answer is,
0:31:02if I answer the email, a lot of times I don't have time to answer emails.
0:31:06I'm sorry about that. But my answer is maybe, I don't know.
0:31:10It's possible. I mean,
0:31:13my only thing about that though is that Apple traditionally is a company that at
0:31:17core makes objects that are beautiful, that are well designed, that have like a
0:31:25sexiness to them, and then they sell them to people who want nice things at a
0:31:31premium price. That's just what Apple does. So common sense would tell me that
0:31:36just by history that if Apple's making a car, they're making a car that they plan
0:31:40to sell at a high profit. Yeah, I mean so that's been a thing that that's been
0:31:47bandied about I guess since the whole rumors of Apple cars started. First
0:31:52and foremost it was was it going to be an electric car and it seems like I
0:31:57mean that's it that seems like a for sure thing right there's no chance that
0:32:00Apple makes a you know an old gas guzzler type car. I would say of yeah I
0:32:07would say of all the maybes and who the hell knows what they're planning with
0:32:10cars that's the one thing I would I would say is a hundred percent a lot
0:32:13Yeah, because it's it's so off their brand at this point. We're so committed with environments and everything right like right
0:32:21Yeah, they're so committed to the environment. I mean here in I bet it's the same everywhere, but here in Philly
0:32:26That front of the store right now says this store is runs on 100% renewable. I saw that exact same thing the other day
0:32:34Yeah, there's there's no way
0:32:38You could sell a device that runs on gasoline
0:32:41Inside a store that says the store runs on our present renewable energy. You just can't it's off their brand
0:32:48So I just clearly they're not I don't even think they're they're looking at maybe yeah, maybe in like ten years
0:32:52They'll have the campaign like, you know, we you know, we really are upset that global warming has slowed to the level
0:32:59You know of sustainability, so we're really amping it up
0:33:02We want to want to get get that back on track. The world is becoming too cold
0:33:07And so yeah, so that I do wonder like I and I also think I mean
0:33:13I would I would guess that that also rules out a hybrid, you know, they could do something like that
0:33:18I guess but I would imagine that they just were in this we're at the place now with with where Tesla's at or it would
0:33:23Make no sense. I think to even do a hybrid approach. It has to be all electric, right? I
0:33:27Think so. I think even and I just think they can't get they just can't get near I think I
0:33:34I think branding wise is why I'm certain that they just can't get near gasoline, but I think just putting on my you know
0:33:41Predicting the future hat. I I just think that's on the way out
0:33:46I think that hybrids were obviously a stop grab and you know, maybe a necessary one
0:33:51I'm not even saying that they weren't you know that the hybrids are on a road aren't doing a good job
0:33:55But it clearly doesn't seem like that's where the puck is going
0:33:59So the other point of would Apple just do this as sort of a service type thing is an interesting question
0:34:06I mean, I'm with you that I it just doesn't seem like it's it's
0:34:11What they do that they would they would do something like that
0:34:15It is interesting to think about if they're you know
0:34:17If they're sort of looking at the big-level picture of what everyone else is looking at like with with regards to the quote-unquote doom of
0:34:23Apple, you know that they can't find they can't find a business. That's that's more interesting than the iPhone
0:34:29Do they start to really think outside the box?
0:34:32And as they start to go down the path more of services,
0:34:35I mean, maybe there's a chance that they realize that this,
0:34:40beyond just selling a car themselves,
0:34:43maybe it's more interesting to have a service
0:34:45that's potentially a more stable source of ongoing revenue.
0:34:50Maybe, but I don't think that that's the case,
0:34:54but that's the only argument I could make
0:34:57as to why they would do something like that.
0:35:00I do think the self-driving question itself is interesting.
0:35:03It also would seem to me that that's
0:35:06what they would likely be going after versus having it just
0:35:11be full-on electric.
0:35:12But I don't know about that.
0:35:13It's possible that they're doing a two-pronged approach, one,
0:35:17an electric car that you can drive yourself like Tesla,
0:35:20two, the fully self-driving one, or some sort of hybrid,
0:35:24as you know, like a lot of the Teslas now
0:35:25rolling out these software updates to do autonomous driving in some capacity, like when it's on
0:35:30the freeway and whatnot. So it could end up being something like that.
0:35:36I just feel like the timeline doesn't add up to bank on self-driving. My best guess,
0:35:44and it just sounds so like I'm trying to have it every way, I'm not making a firm prediction,
0:35:49But my guess is that Apple is working on electric cars,
0:35:53that they are absolutely working on
0:35:56self-driving technologies.
0:35:58Let's say the early, I think the earliest
0:36:01they could possibly actually unveil
0:36:04an Apple branded car is like 2020.
0:36:07So even if there's some kind of Apple magic
0:36:12that throwing their resources at,
0:36:14that proves me wrong, 2019,
0:36:18I mean, that just seems crazy to go from not having a car
0:36:21other than as a secret project
0:36:23to actually having them on the road that you can buy.
0:36:252019 seems like fantasy land.
0:36:28By 2020, will self-driving cars be there
0:36:33that you could do like the,
0:36:34not even have your hands on,
0:36:38not even be paying attention to the road?
0:36:39I just don't see that as possible.
0:36:41And even just legally.
0:36:42- Right.
0:36:43- Even if the technology,
0:36:44I think the technology is gonna get there before the laws--
0:36:47Yeah, I mean, that's 100% for sure.
0:36:51I mean, I guess they could--
0:36:56maybe you could look at it sort of like the way
0:36:58the iPhone rolled out, right?
0:36:59Like there were faster 3G services at the time, right?
0:37:06But they rolled out without 3G.
0:37:07And so maybe it is still the case,
0:37:10even if there was self-driving cars out on the road,
0:37:13or say 75% self-driving.
0:37:15It's like it could be self-driving beyond a few areas
0:37:20where it's not.
0:37:21It's possible that Apple would just roll out it as not
0:37:25advertised or whatever as self-driving,
0:37:28because they don't feel like it's
0:37:29a good enough experience yet.
0:37:30And I could see that world where it's like maybe Google
0:37:36is something out there, maybe Uber, maybe Tesla.
0:37:39And they're billing them more as self-driving,
0:37:42but Apple is a bit more cautious on that front.
0:37:45and really waiting for it to be like a fully self-driving
0:37:49thing before they go down that road.
0:37:51- Yeah, that's exactly what I think,
0:37:53is that they're planning for that full steam ahead,
0:37:56but that they are also planning,
0:37:59I'm guessing to ship a car before that's ready.
0:38:01- Yeah.
0:38:02- And that exactly, you know, the analogy to 3G and LTE,
0:38:05but 3G is the perfect example,
0:38:07'cause 3G was actually, there were 3G phones.
0:38:10It's actually one of the, you know,
0:38:11if you go back and look at the claim chowder of the people
0:38:13who panned the original iPhone, they'd be like,
0:38:16it's not even 3G.
0:38:17You know, it's, I think it's that sort of thing,
0:38:20where they're like, look, for practical purposes,
0:38:22we're gonna go with Edge for this one,
0:38:24and you know, we'll pick up 3G in a year or two.
0:38:27- But do you think that they would do,
0:38:29sort of like what Tesla's done,
0:38:31so they roll out one high-end, you know,
0:38:34Tesla started with the Roadster,
0:38:35which is like a super high-end, super fancy sports car,
0:38:38right, and then, and Elon Musk,
0:38:40in that great blog post many years ago,
0:38:42laid out exactly what they were gonna do
0:38:44and what they're now pulling off, right?
0:38:46That they would then roll out a cheaper version
0:38:49and then sort of a SUV type version.
0:38:52And then like the cheapest version,
0:38:55sort of the mass market version.
0:38:56Do you think Apple would take that approach,
0:38:58something akin to that, where they do sort of one at a time
0:39:01versus rolling out like say two models,
0:39:04like a high-end version and then more like the sedan
0:39:08for regular folks or something?
0:39:11Prior to Apple Watch, I would have said one for sure,
0:39:13because that's how Apple always did things, right?
0:39:16There's one iPhone, there's one iPad, here it is.
0:39:19This is the iPad.
0:39:20And only years down the road are there things like
0:39:24iPad Pros and iPad Minis and, you know,
0:39:27low-end models with two-year-old systems on a chip
0:39:30and high-end models with the latest and greatest.
0:39:32Only years down the road.
0:39:34But without, after Apple Watch, I think, I don't know.
0:39:38I don't know that, you know, maybe Apple Watch,
0:39:41I keep thinking that maybe Apple Watch is not that it was,
0:39:44not that the only reason they did it
0:39:45was as a test for the car,
0:39:46but that it lays out the formula for the car
0:39:50where they might do three, right?
0:39:53Apple Car Sport, $25,000 or something like that, $30,000.
0:39:58Apple Car, $50,000.
0:40:02And the Apple Car Edition for $100,000.
0:40:08And I'm laughing, but part of the reason I say that is that I know that there's an
0:40:14off, you know, executives at Apple.
0:40:16I've been to the Apple parking lot.
0:40:18There are a lot of really nice cars in the infinite loop parking lot.
0:40:22People who work at Apple have nice cars.
0:40:24It's almost like I've...
0:40:25And we know, like, Johnny Ive and Phil Schiller and who else?
0:40:33Eddie Q, right?
0:40:34He's on the board of Lamborghini, I think.
0:40:36Yes.
0:40:37- Yeah.
0:40:38- So they're obviously car guys.
0:40:40They like their fancy cars.
0:40:41- Right. - Yeah.
0:40:42- So, you know, how do you, you know,
0:40:48if there are already car guys who like exotic cars,
0:40:50how does Apple get into it without making an exotic car?
0:40:53- Well, and to tie it back
0:40:54to what we were talking about earlier,
0:40:56you know, we were talking about it in the context of Uber,
0:40:58like not needing to own a car anymore.
0:41:00Like if we're talking about, let's say it's 2020.
0:41:03So it's, you know, a little less than four years.
0:41:07say it's four years from now, four or five years from now.
0:41:10And more people are in the space of what you and your wife
0:41:16were debating, and me and my wife now live in,
0:41:19let's just say in urban areas at least, in city areas,
0:41:24that they feel like they don't need to own a car.
0:41:26Is it weird for Apple to be making a car that they would
0:41:29potentially be selling for whatever, $50,000 in a world
0:41:35where a decreasing number of people are buying cars?
0:41:38- That's a great question.
0:41:42That's part of why I find this whole topic fascinating
0:41:45'cause there's so many trends that are moving, right?
0:41:50There's the, we've talked about them,
0:41:52but there's the gas to electric.
0:41:55There's the self-driving is coming.
0:41:58There's, and then there's this whole shared,
0:42:02ride-sharing thing where people just don't own cars period. I think my guess
0:42:07is that okay fewer and fewer people are buying cars but Apple can enter and if
0:42:12you're gonna buy a car they're gonna they're gonna have a compelling car.
0:42:16You know that it's easy to say sure fewer people are buying cars but it's
0:42:21you know people also said fewer people are buying watches fewer people wear a
0:42:25watch than ever before. That's true that's a good point because I was gonna
0:42:28I was going to say like PCs, fewer people are buying PCs, right?
0:42:32But then Mac is still doing well, relatively speaking, but would they enter that world
0:42:36now knowing it's an overall shrinking world?
0:42:40And that's not to say they wouldn't, but it's a calculation you have to make.
0:42:45Yeah, I totally think so.
0:42:48But I just think that the market for cars is so big, that so many, you know, there are
0:42:53so many car companies and so many, you know, it's just so much money in the industry overall,
0:42:58even if it shrinks significantly,
0:43:01that Apple can take a sizable chunk
0:43:04of the profitable end of that market.
0:43:06And it still is huge.
0:43:07- Right, and it's a potential,
0:43:09talking, going back to the, what is the next iPhone,
0:43:12it's one of the potential things
0:43:14that could actually match the iPhone.
0:43:16Like I think we're all, I think everyone,
0:43:18I would assume you're in agreement now,
0:43:20and always have been, but like,
0:43:22that even at the best case scenario for Apple Watch,
0:43:27it cannot match what the iPhone did just because of the whole subsidy model,
0:43:32you know, and, and the way that,
0:43:35that the world just worked back then and the watch has nothing like that.
0:43:39Even if Apple sells more of them overall,
0:43:42they're not going to make as much money off of it because it's just a different
0:43:45business. Right. There's no way,
0:43:48even no matter how popular Apple watch becomes,
0:43:50it's not going to sell in the quantity that iPhone does.
0:43:53And each one they do sell is gonna sell
0:43:57for at least half the price,
0:43:59if not even less than half the price of the iPhone today.
0:44:03Because almost everybody gets the sport model.
0:44:05- Right, which is a mistake I made.
0:44:07- So it's a lower price product.
0:44:09It's a lower price, what, you did buy a sport?
0:44:11- No, I should have bought a sport.
0:44:13I bought the regular Apple Watch, not the edition.
0:44:15I bought the regular one and I'm just like,
0:44:17I don't know why I did that.
0:44:18I did that because I thought it would be slightly different
0:44:20or whatever, but it definitely should have gotten the sport.
0:44:22Anyway, that's an aside.
0:44:23- Yeah, well, I've mentioned,
0:44:26I'm actually wearing it today.
0:44:30I have the regular one with the space black,
0:44:33and I do like a link style bracelet,
0:44:35and it is a wonderful bracelet, and it's very comfortable.
0:44:38But I really think that the sport models are superior
0:44:41just because the Taptic engine works better.
0:44:44- Yeah, and wasn't it supposed to have
0:44:45a slightly better screen?
0:44:46I remember something slightly better, maybe?
0:44:51The display isn't any better, but the surface of the display on the regular Apple Watch
0:44:58is sapphire.
0:44:59The other one is whatever, ion-coated glass.
0:45:03So it does pick up fine scratches.
0:45:05But I've looked at my sons.
0:45:06My son has had an Apple Watch from, I guess, around a year and wears it a lot.
0:45:13And he's a 12-year-old kid and it's not like he's taking good care of it.
0:45:17I've looked at the screen and it does have fine scratches, but it's no different than
0:45:21than any other non-sapphire coated watch that I've worn.
0:45:25And when you're actually looking at the display head
0:45:27on the scratches, you can't see them.
0:45:29You have to do the thing where you turn the display off
0:45:31and kinda find a glaring light source
0:45:35to sort of spot the scratches.
0:45:36- Yeah, so anyway, so yeah,
0:45:41most people are buying the cheaper version.
0:45:44So the car, high-end cars are one of the few things
0:45:51that could produce the types of revenues that would match iPhone, potentially, at a massive scale.
0:45:57Right, or at least be like the same class of plan.
0:46:02Right.
0:46:02You know what I mean? So maybe the iPhone is still Jupiter, but the car potentially is another gas giant.
0:46:10Could be like Neptune or something like that.
0:46:12As opposed to the Apple Watch, which is really just like another Venus or Earth or Mars or something.
0:46:18Yes.
0:46:18Like it's a planet, it's not Pluto. It's a real planet.
0:46:24But it's, come on, you can't compare it to Jupiter.
0:46:26But the car could be, just because the car would sell, just, you know, it could easily sell for $30,000.
0:46:34Quite frank, you know, it's Apple, so it's probably more.
0:46:38So, I know you want to talk about the Peter Thiel thing too as well, and we can get to that.
0:46:43But while we're still on the topic of Apple,
0:46:45the one thing that I've been thinking about a lot recently
0:46:48is the whole Alexa and the rumors now.
0:46:53I think the information had the report the other day
0:46:55that Apple would be working on a potential Echo competitor.
0:47:00And of course, Google announced their home thing
0:47:03at I/O, which is the Echo competitor.
0:47:05And I'm interested in your take on that.
0:47:08I think at a high level, we went back and forth on Twitter
0:47:12a little bit one night.
0:47:13I think you know my perspective on it, which is that the--
0:47:18- Well, hold your thought, hold your thought.
0:47:19'Cause that was already in my list of topics
0:47:21I wanna talk to you about.
0:47:23And we could do a whole segment on it.
0:47:24So let me take a break and thank another sponsor,
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0:49:00- You quickly, before we go into Alexa and whatnot,
0:49:03you brought up Bill Simmons podcast earlier.
0:49:05I was always curious if you ever thought about doing what he does when he does his sponsor
0:49:10reads and plays like, I think he plays like a Tupac song or whatever in the background.
0:49:14But do you think about, you know, like a way to sort of, I don't know, perdition it differently
0:49:20than the rest of the show?
0:49:23I have, it's funny, it's very funny that you would bring that up because two reasons that
0:49:29I have thought about that is A) Bill Simmons podcast, which now with this whole ringer
0:49:34there's more of them and I've been listening to them and I've noticed that and I like it.
0:49:39I like I really like his reads too. I think he does a great job at it.
0:49:43It makes me want to up my game on making sure that the the reads are engaging.
0:49:49Like that's really one of the things I feel like I feel like when I do this show
0:49:53I'm just having fun talking to people who I like talking to and my job is
0:49:57doing the sponsor reads in a way that makes people not want to skip them. And how can I do that?
0:50:02What would I what would I what would it take for me if I were listening to the talk show?
0:50:05To not want to skip this ad and I never skip Bill Simmons's so I really and it inspires me
0:50:12But I've noticed that he plays that the music. Yeah, and then the the gang on
0:50:16Accidental tech podcast has started they've been it's almost like an in-joke where they haven't been playing music behind the reeds
0:50:23But they've been they've added little
0:50:27sounds to start it and close them. Okay, so people to give people an indication of like this is this is now, you know
0:50:34the sponsored break
0:50:37Ding ding ding and and you know and then it's the sponsoring and then and then when it's over
0:50:41It's like dun dun dun and then it's like you're back and and I have to mention because they did
0:50:44Marco Arment on ATP said that his inspiration for starting to do that when he edits the show is
0:50:50the absolutely great podcast which I've mentioned before hello internet with
0:50:56CGP Grey and the other guy.
0:51:02So I've listened to Simmons' podcast for a long time, dating back well to the earlier,
0:51:11probably near when he started it at ESPN.
0:51:14And I think, because originally they would play, I think they would play canned ads,
0:51:20and they still do this on many ESPN podcasts, and so he slowly evolved into more of the
0:51:26reads that you hear now and certainly what you do.
0:51:29And one of the reasons why I think you like him
0:51:32and I like him too is because he was so bad at it at first.
0:51:36It's almost like when someone told him that, well, you
0:51:41got to actually talk about it.
0:51:43That's what resonates with podcast listeners.
0:51:45And so if you're just having a conversation,
0:51:48then all of a sudden dive into a spiel about whatever
0:51:52the advertiser is doing, it comes across much better
0:51:55than sort of a canned recording of whatever
0:51:58the advertiser is saying.
0:52:00And so at first he was so bad at it.
0:52:03And I think he's evolved over time
0:52:05and almost like plays on like being bad at it
0:52:09because it's not so bad anymore,
0:52:10but it's like, it's just natural, right?
0:52:12It's like the way that he would talk about it.
0:52:15And I think you, honestly,
0:52:16I think you do a good job of it as well.
0:52:18But the only thing is his just feels like more raw.
0:52:22That's what it is.
0:52:23- Yeah.
0:52:24- Yeah.
0:52:25I have to add, Brady Harron is the other co-host of Hello
0:52:29Internet.
0:52:31But they do the same thing with the bumper sounds.
0:52:33I don't know.
0:52:34I have to think about it.
0:52:35I'm not setting my ways on this.
0:52:37OK, so Siri-- so the information had a scoop the other day
0:52:43that Apple is planning both a Siri API for developers
0:52:48to extend Siri and an Echo-like standalone device, which
0:52:53which is also competitive with the upcoming Google Home.
0:52:59Right.
0:53:00So, I have had an Amazon Echo.
0:53:06I always get confused whether I should call it Alexa or Echo.
0:53:09I know, yeah.
0:53:10It is the Echo.
0:53:11Alexa is the persona, obviously.
0:53:15But it's also how you address it.
0:53:16You say Alexa.
0:53:17Right.
0:53:18It's a weird branding issue.
0:53:22I think they should just call it Alexa, honestly.
0:53:24But anyway, so I've had one for several months now,
0:53:26about a quarter.
0:53:27And I definitely use it daily when I'm home,
0:53:32unless I'm on the road, of course.
0:53:34And I'm slowly but surely finding new use cases for it.
0:53:40It started as sort of novelty, of course,
0:53:42just what's the weather and whatever.
0:53:45Now I use it almost daily to read me the latest news, which
0:53:50is sort of another obvious one.
0:53:51But it's sort of a nice way just to--
0:53:54when you get up in the morning, just like, Alexa,
0:53:57what's the latest news?
0:53:58And it'll just start doing it.
0:53:59There's no phone to unlock.
0:54:01There's no button to push.
0:54:04You just speak out loud.
0:54:06That's what you want.
0:54:07My wife uses it all the time when she's cooking to say--
0:54:10and it's like a constant thing.
0:54:12It's almost like an orchestrated event of her cooking
0:54:17and with the Alexa in the kitchen saying,
0:54:19Alexa, set a timer for two minutes.
0:54:21Then two minutes goes by, it goes off.
0:54:22Alexa, off.
0:54:23Alexa, set a timer for five minutes.
0:54:25And it's like this whole thing that just goes on every night
0:54:28that she's cooking.
0:54:31It's really a good device.
0:54:33And I was skeptical of it when I first heard about it
0:54:36because it seemed ridiculous.
0:54:37It's a standalone, expensive thing
0:54:40that does a lot of what you can already
0:54:43do with Siri and Cortana and Google Now
0:54:48and some of the other things.
0:54:50But in using it, it's useful.
0:54:55Yeah, and there's a certain--
0:54:56like, the cooking in the kitchen scenario
0:55:00is almost ideal for it.
0:55:02I have one too.
0:55:03I just got it like three weeks ago,
0:55:05and I'm not using it that much.
0:55:10But I think one of the reasons-- do
0:55:11you have any of the smart home stuff, like light bulbs
0:55:14and stuff like that?
0:55:15I don't have anything like that.
0:55:16Yeah, not that I think we do have like one light bulb thing,
0:55:20but not that we use, and we don't have a Nest or anything like that currently installed.
0:55:24Right. But for the cooking stuff, so I know people definitely use their phones for stuff
0:55:29like that, and I know definitely people use a smartwatch, like your Apple Watch or whatever
0:55:35are the smartwatch to do that stuff too. But the thing with Echo is it's completely hands-free,
0:55:42so you don't have to push a button on a watch or fish your phone out of the pocket. I know
0:55:49your phone I guess if you know if you have a new iPhone you could if you have
0:55:52it plugged in you can try the hey you know the name of I try to avoid it's
0:55:57we don't have to beep it but Siri but you know it works even if not plugged in
0:56:04like this is a big thing that people oh yeah it does now that's that's the thing
0:56:07that you have to have a new one for now that's right that's a new feature right
0:56:10if you have like the iPhone success it just seems though that echo is more
0:56:17reliable. You can really count on it to make sure that it's given you the timer that you
0:56:26just told her to say. I really struggle with the pronoun for these things. I tend to use
0:56:36her with Siri, and it's even weirder because I know that in some countries it defaults
0:56:40to a male voice.
0:56:41That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So, should you use it? And the whole -- it's a very strange dynamic
0:56:48that I think will never be fully sorted out. But, yeah. So, you bring up like the -- I
0:56:55even hesitate to call it accuracy. Because I'm not 100% sure that Alexa is more accurate
0:57:03than, say, Siri. It seems that way. But it's just more reliable, right? And I think it's
0:57:09because it's a combination of things. But one of the things is that, you know, when
0:57:14you set up Siri, you have to set it up by saying, hey, I also don't want to set up all
0:57:20my devices. You know the word. Hey, she who shall not be named. And so, you have to do
0:57:27that a few times, right? And so, it's like Apple obviously thought that that's a good
0:57:31way to make it sort of personalized to you. And so, someone else can't necessarily set
0:57:36it off. But that is also a limiting factor, it seems like, and makes it less reliable.
0:57:43And so Amazon just deciding not to do it that way and just leaving it open so anyone can
0:57:48trigger it, ends up being, I think, a smarter implementation, at least for now, of how to
0:57:54do that.
0:57:55Yeah, and anecdotally, I've read this and I've had, since I've started talking about
0:58:00this and heard from people on Twitter and email sending me, that a lot of... I've heard
0:58:05it numerous times that people with young kids, their kids can use the echo really
0:58:12reliably and they have no luck at all with Siri. Siri really doesn't...
0:58:17Siri's speech recognition really isn't good with kids. And it's funny
0:58:21because it's like you know it. You know that kids don't speak as... I don't even
0:58:29know what the word is. They're not as articulate. They don't
0:58:31enunciate as crisply as adults. But you tend to think of it as, "Well, that's just how kids talk."
0:58:38But it's seemingly, from a speech recognition standpoint, they're just harder to understand.
0:58:43Whereas humans are so good that we don't really think of kids as being harder to understand,
0:58:47we just think of them as sounding as kids, because our natural linguistic abilities are so good that
0:58:54we just blow right through the way that they mispronounce words. Yeah, and so the kids thing
0:59:01is interesting also because before I got a echo everyone one of the main themes that kept coming
0:59:08up is like kids love it and I don't have kids you have a son like does your son use it like
0:59:13no not really he's he's but he I he kind of thinks it's pointless because but there's nothing he
0:59:20really wants to know from it that we have hooked up yeah we had fun we did have fun as the family
0:59:25the one one or two nights playing music and calling out you know and then it's it's funny
0:59:30because it's like if there's a song on and any one of the three of us doesn't like it, you can
0:59:34tell Alexa to stop and play something else. Yeah, and I think that that's been stated. I don't know
0:59:40if it's by Amazon or not, that that's one of the main use cases, of course, is playing the music.
0:59:46It's a seamless way to do, "Hey, Alexa," and I said, "Hey," you don't have to say, "Hey, of course,"
0:59:56Alexa play, you know, this station on Pandora or whatever. I think you can hook up,
1:00:02obviously Amazon Music, you can hook up Pandora. You can't hook up Apple Music right now, right? So
1:00:10so there's... I don't expect Apple to get on that quickly.
1:00:15Yeah, no, I don't either. But so that's one big use case. So the other thing is,
1:00:22It obviously has a decent speaker, but it's not great.
1:00:26It's not like a Sonos or something like that.
1:00:28And you can hook up--
1:00:29because we also got the dot thing.
1:00:31The dot is a smaller one.
1:00:33As an aside, the one thing I loved about that rollout
1:00:36was the fact that in order to first order a dot,
1:00:39you actually had to order it through the Echo.
1:00:40You had to say, like, Alexa, order me a dot.
1:00:44And it knew what it was.
1:00:46I mean, my wife actually did it.
1:00:47And within three minutes or whatever, it confirms.
1:00:50And so we had a dot ordered and come in shipping to our house.
1:00:54And we got it.
1:00:54And it worked beautifully.
1:00:55And you couldn't order it on the website, at least at the time,
1:00:58when they first rolled that out.
1:01:00So that was fascinating.
1:01:02I don't think you can now.
1:01:03I mean, I just searched Amazon for Echo.
1:01:05I don't see it.
1:01:06Echo dot.
1:01:06Let me see.
1:01:08So did you know it's--
1:01:10They do have it.
1:01:10You can get it.
1:01:11You can get Echo dot for $89 on Amazon.
1:01:17Do you know it's hilarious right now?
1:01:18No.
1:01:18So I just was giving that whole spiel,
1:01:23and I swear to God, I just triggered Alexa,
1:01:25and she's now playing music in my bedroom.
1:01:28So I'm in my office right now, one room down from the bedroom.
1:01:33I all of a sudden heard this music, and I'm like,
1:01:35is my wife home?
1:01:36Did she just start playing music?
1:01:37Because I thought I heard a voice.
1:01:39It was Alexa, and it was Alexa saying, now playing whatever.
1:01:42And so there's just music playing in the bedroom right now.
1:01:44I stand corrected.
1:01:45So there is a web page on Amazon for the Echo Dot,
1:01:48But it says, "Available exclusively from Alexa.
1:01:51Echo Dot is available in limited quantities
1:01:53and exclusively for Prime members
1:01:55through Alexa Voice Shopping."
1:01:57So I think that that's ingenious,
1:01:59because it obviously makes it so that, first and foremost,
1:02:03only sort of, quote unquote, "hardcore"
1:02:05users are going to be able to get it and get it that way.
1:02:08And people who already understand, right,
1:02:10they have to have Alexa--
1:02:12an Echo, sorry, to be able to do it.
1:02:14So it doesn't need some sort of new learning curve all of a sudden,
1:02:18because you should already know how to use it based on that.
1:02:21Yeah.
1:02:23I think the music playing is clearly--
1:02:26and when this rumor from the information
1:02:29came out that Apple has a device like this in the works,
1:02:33and that they've been working on it for quite a while, a bunch of people
1:02:36said, well, why?
1:02:37Why?
1:02:37I have my iPhone with me everywhere I go.
1:02:40If I'm going to use Siri, why would the world
1:02:43I want another device. I don't know what else they have planned for it. I don't know what other home
1:02:47integration, you know, home kit type features they might have in mind for what kind of a hub it might
1:02:53be for your entire home. But the speaker alone makes sense for Apple to do just because music
1:03:00is still such a big part of what they want to be known for. Yeah, and I'm sort of surprised that,
1:03:05you know, they weren't... I know that, you know, they're almost never the first mover in these
1:03:10these types of things.
1:03:11But I'm sort of surprised that some sort of combination
1:03:16of things didn't lead them down this path earlier,
1:03:19whether it be the Airport Express or Apple TV
1:03:25as basically the way to do this.
1:03:28There were all those rumors, remember,
1:03:29that Apple TV was going to be the hub of their whole home
1:03:33initiative.
1:03:34And maybe that still ends up being the case.
1:03:36But that was the whole thing about, why is it running iOS?
1:03:38and of course apps, but also maybe the HomeKit stuff.
1:03:43And yeah, I'm just a little surprised
1:03:47that they didn't make a all-in-one type device.
1:03:50And especially knowing the popularity of things like Sonos.
1:03:57And obviously, they had to work with Sonos
1:03:59to get Apple Music as one of the first things on there.
1:04:02But maybe it was--
1:04:03I think you made the joke the other day.
1:04:05Maybe it was the iPod Hi-Fi thing
1:04:08that sort of dissuaded them from doing that,
1:04:10because that was obviously a disaster.
1:04:13That's what I want them to call it.
1:04:14I want them to call it the Siri Hi-Fi.
1:04:16They have the trademark, yeah.
1:04:18So-- but yeah, it seems like--
1:04:24I think the way--
1:04:25someone was saying this the other day on Twitter,
1:04:28that it's great that we have Alexa,
1:04:31and it's cool that you can sort of hook it up to Sonos.
1:04:34It's a pain, honestly, because you have to do it through the back of the device and through
1:04:38a cable.
1:04:40It's not seamless at all.
1:04:41And now we have things like Eero and the newfangled routers that are out.
1:04:46It seems like someone should combine all of that into one thing, right?
1:04:50Yes, I think so.
1:04:53But you run into...
1:04:56I've thought about this, right?
1:04:58It seems like a big butt.
1:05:03thinking about my house now. The cable comes in in the living room and it's sort of like
1:05:10that's where the router needs to be. I mean I guess I could, I'd have to wire the house
1:05:18with internet or ethernet or something or get the cable company to come out and put
1:05:25another cable connector somewhere else if I wanted it to be in the kitchen.
1:05:32because that's where I want the music to play. You know what I mean? It's like, I don't know.
1:05:35I'm not quite sure. Yeah, I understand. Yeah, so that's like, that's one issue.
1:05:41But sort of, I don't know if you've had a chance to play around with like things like the Eero,
1:05:45and there's some other ones coming out that are, you know, these these newfangled routers that
1:05:49that allow you to better spread internet over your entire house. I have a box downstairs that's
1:05:56full of Eero kit, and it's still in the box. I just came the other day and I haven't had a
1:06:01chance to look at it. So it's on my radar and I'm going to set it up.
1:06:04Yeah, you should. I mean, we have one set up now and it's great. It's
1:06:11surprisingly great how well it works compared to what I previously just had a
1:06:16an airport. I had both at Extreme and then I had like an Express and I had
1:06:22like things like doing bridging and you know trying to get good service in the
1:06:26bedroom and then in the office and nothing has worked as well as this Eero
1:06:30thing works. And so I wonder if sort of this this device things that we're talking about,
1:06:37if they don't do, yeah, you have the main hub in the living room that's that's sort of connected to
1:06:42the still necessary for whatever reason cable modem. And then everything else is like a
1:06:47satellite version, sort of like the Echo Dot, right? It's like a smaller version of it. So no
1:06:52matter what room you're in, you're covered by it. It's sort of like what you have with Sonos now for
1:06:57for people who have Sonos in multiple rooms,
1:07:00they wirelessly connect to it.
1:07:03You can do wired, of course, but most people, I think,
1:07:06do the wireless version.
1:07:07And so some device, it's like a combination
1:07:10of all these things.
1:07:11So you have the speaker, you have the voice assistant
1:07:15type thing, and you have your Wi-Fi all in one thing.
1:07:20I mean, that seems like where all this should go,
1:07:23but I would imagine it'll take a while for someone
1:07:25to actually connect that all together
1:07:27to be able to work well.
1:07:28- Yeah, and it's just, you know, Apple has a very,
1:07:31you know, right at the forefront of WiFi,
1:07:33you know, I've been making base stations
1:07:36or whatever you wanna call them, you know,
1:07:38the thing that gives you WiFi in your house.
1:07:39I mean, Apple's been doing it.
1:07:41I mean, they were one of the first companies
1:07:44to really go public with it.
1:07:45Remember the Phil Schiller demo
1:07:47when he jumped onto like a mattress?
1:07:52- Yeah. (laughs)
1:07:54- It was like to prove that the iBook
1:07:56was getting the internet over the air.
1:07:58That's right.
1:07:58It was like heretofore unknown.
1:08:00Phil Schiller actually performed a stunt on stage.
1:08:03Like he jumped off a 10-foot high thing
1:08:06onto a padded landing thing and then showed that the iBook was
1:08:11still getting internet.
1:08:13So Apple's been doing that for a long time.
1:08:14I think that at this point, it just
1:08:17seems like it's too fiddly, especially for a house
1:08:20compared--
1:08:21an apartment, it's easy to fill it with your Wi-Fi.
1:08:25But even here, I have it set up pretty good.
1:08:27Right now, we just have the airport extreme.
1:08:30I don't have any of the satellite devices
1:08:32like I used to have.
1:08:33And it goes up one floor to my office, and it's pretty good.
1:08:39And it goes up two floors to our bedroom.
1:08:42And it's good enough, good enough
1:08:45that it doesn't make me want to get another thing.
1:08:48But even one floor down in our garage, it's gone.
1:08:51So it's like when you get in the car,
1:08:54it's like one floor down from where the router is,
1:08:56and you wanna update something on your phone quick.
1:08:59It's like sometimes you have to like do the fiddly thing
1:09:01where you turn off Wi-Fi because it's so bad.
1:09:04- Yeah.
1:09:05Yeah, you should try the zero thing.
1:09:08I think you'll like--
1:09:09- Oh, I'm gonna try it.
1:09:10I told you it's down, it's in the house.
1:09:12So it's a sure thing that I will try it.
1:09:15- Yeah.
1:09:16- So I don't know, maybe that's what Apple's going with.
1:09:18And I can't help but think that
1:09:19if the information's report is correct
1:09:21that they've been working on this device for quite a while,
1:09:24I mean, like, according to the information, years.
1:09:27It can't just be a speaker that listens for Siri,
1:09:31because if it's taken Apple years to do a speaker
1:09:36that listens for Siri, that's a problem.
1:09:40It has to be a little bit more ambitious than that
1:09:41in terms of serving as some kind of, you know,
1:09:45hey, you don't have to buy these six different things.
1:09:46You can just buy this, plug this thing in,
1:09:49and then you're set.
1:09:50- Well, and you brought it up.
1:09:51I mean, the importance of music, certainly to Apple,
1:09:54And they obviously know the popularity
1:09:56of something like Sonos.
1:09:58And do you think then it would be just as predicated
1:10:02around being a great speaker, sort of a Sonos competitor
1:10:05with Siri built in?
1:10:06Is that maybe what they would do?
1:10:09Maybe.
1:10:10And would they launch it as a family of devices
1:10:14at the beginning so that you can put them
1:10:17throughout your house?
1:10:19I mean, that seems to be one area that--
1:10:21And obviously Amazon is working on it, or adds a solution,
1:10:25because they have these dot devices that are
1:10:28meant to be satellite devices.
1:10:29And I know with Google Home, people
1:10:31asked when they announced it at I/O last week,
1:10:34well, what if you have two of these things, and they're like,
1:10:36well, we're working on that.
1:10:37We'll get back to you.
1:10:38It's a hard problem.
1:10:40Yes.
1:10:41And the Amazon-- so the dot--
1:10:43so in general, I think the consensus
1:10:45is the Echo speaker is OK.
1:10:47it's good enough for casual listening or whatever.
1:10:51And the Dot1 is considered to be much more subpar.
1:10:54It's obviously much smaller.
1:10:56It's just a tiny little thing.
1:10:57And that's why it has sort of the output
1:10:59to be able to hook it into a speaker.
1:11:00And that's what they suggest you do actually.
1:11:03So I wouldn't, like if I were Apple,
1:11:06I would imagine that the way to do it
1:11:07is just what we were talking about,
1:11:08to do like a really great speaker,
1:11:11like a Sonos-like speaker with the Siri capability built in.
1:11:15And I think that would be a great device
1:11:18for a lot of people.
1:11:19I don't know how much that would cost, you know,
1:11:21and like, do they run the risk of it being
1:11:24another Hi-Fi like device?
1:11:27That's just sort of like a niche product
1:11:29that's interesting to a few people.
1:11:30I think not, I think it's a lot more interesting
1:11:32to do it now, especially with everything
1:11:34we just talked about with Alexa, but I don't know.
1:11:38- With a Hi-Fi, they really, it was,
1:11:42I mean, I know for a fact that Steve Jobs
1:11:45was a huge fan of the Hi-Fi.
1:11:46He really was.
1:11:47And I mean, obviously, he's willing to--
1:11:51if it wasn't selling, it wasn't selling, even if he liked it.
1:11:54So it wasn't like he kept it around just because he liked it.
1:11:56But I know he liked it.
1:11:57And they really put-- it was before I was regularly
1:12:01attending their press events.
1:12:02And I was not at the intro event for it.
1:12:04But I remember reading about it.
1:12:05And they really went all out.
1:12:07And they set up--
1:12:09Jason Snell was there.
1:12:10And he was talking about it a few weeks ago
1:12:12when he was on the show.
1:12:13right there in the upstairs area
1:12:17where they do the press briefings at the press events
1:12:19above town hall, they brought in,
1:12:22like an Ikea almost, where they made a whole bunch
1:12:26of living rooms.
1:12:28And of course, like Apple, they were really nice.
1:12:31They made all these, they furnished the whole place
1:12:33as an apartment complex, and then had individual people
1:12:37you could come in, and it wasn't just like,
1:12:38hey, hit play and listen to it for a few seconds.
1:12:40They wanted you to relax, sit on the couch,
1:12:42pretend you live here and listen to this.
1:12:44- Have a drink.
1:12:46- Right, and they really pushed like,
1:12:47hey, doesn't this sound amazing?
1:12:49Like they really, really wanted to make that like,
1:12:53I mean, I didn't buy one, so I don't know.
1:12:56I don't know how good it sounded,
1:12:57but Apple at least really went all out,
1:12:59at least in terms of marketing,
1:13:00is pitching it as being high quality audio.
1:13:03So I think that's one area
1:13:04where they could definitely get a leg up on Echo,
1:13:06'cause Echo, it's good, it's not bad.
1:13:08It's good enough for like a speaker in your kitchen
1:13:11to play music, but it's not great.
1:13:14And so that plus--
1:13:16so a great speaker plus what you mentioned from the information
1:13:21report with the Siri APIs, which obviously everyone's
1:13:23been clamoring for since Siri came out.
1:13:26So that plus the ability to do much more
1:13:29than what the Echo can do.
1:13:32Because the Echo has an API, obviously,
1:13:34and a lot of people are playing around with it
1:13:36and doing some interesting things with it.
1:13:37Like we mentioned Uber.
1:13:38You can call an Uber from it right now.
1:13:40But it does feel like it's a little bit wonky.
1:13:47It's a little bit--
1:13:48not wonky, necessarily.
1:13:50It's just-- I'm sure you've used the app.
1:13:53The app is awful for the Echo.
1:13:56And it's hard to--
1:13:58it would be hard for anyone.
1:14:01It's even hard for me to figure out how exactly to find things
1:14:04to install and what to install.
1:14:06And it looks god awful.
1:14:07So Apple will obviously do a better job of that.
1:14:10And so it's then a question of like,
1:14:13is it leaps and bounds better than what Amazon can do right
1:14:17now if those APIs are good enough?
1:14:20Yeah.
1:14:21And I'm really curious what form these APIs come in
1:14:28in terms of like--
1:14:29I can only presume that it'll be apps somehow, I guess.
1:14:37apps on your iPhone or your iOS device.
1:14:42Yes, so do you need to have that app installed in order
1:14:46to have it be Siri ready?
1:14:50Right?
1:14:52Well, yeah.
1:14:53And if it's on multiple devices, how
1:14:56does your Siri-- if it's taking advantage
1:14:59of a third party extension, whatever you want to call it.
1:15:04Let's just say-- we've been talking about them.
1:15:07Let's just say Uber, right?
1:15:08Let's say that through an extension,
1:15:10you're going to allow Siri to hail you an Uber.
1:15:17Do you have to install it on all of your devices?
1:15:20I guess you would if it's through an app.
1:15:22But then how would it get to the standalone device?
1:15:27Yeah, that's weird.
1:15:30It's a good question, because it seems
1:15:32like it's an either/or thing, right?
1:15:33Either you would need it installed on all your devices
1:15:36that have hooked up to your Hey Siri stuff,
1:15:41or you would only do it on one so it doesn't get confused.
1:15:45Because say you have Uber installed on--
1:15:47they don't have an iPad version, but you can still obviously
1:15:49install it on an iPad.
1:15:50So say you had it on an iPad and your iPhone,
1:15:53and then you summoned the Uber via Siri, which one--
1:15:59I guess it opens both versions.
1:16:02Well, I mean, it doesn't matter, because on the back end,
1:16:06presuming you were tied into the same account,
1:16:08the same Uber account, when you open the app,
1:16:10it should know, they should be synced, right,
1:16:12in the backend.
1:16:13So I guess it doesn't really matter,
1:16:15but there's like a lot of more complicated issues,
1:16:20like the further you go down with that,
1:16:22like which version of the app that's running
1:16:26on which device are you summoning?
1:16:28- Right, it's, so I'm, I don't know.
1:16:33So my best guess is to compare it to Apple Watch.
1:16:37And so let's say they open up this Siri SDK.
1:16:40Then the Uber app on your iOS device
1:16:44could have the Siri extension.
1:16:47And then only on the iOS devices that
1:16:50have the latest version of the Uber app
1:16:53would the Siri integration work.
1:16:56But then also, maybe developers would
1:17:00be able to create like a Hi-Fi app.
1:17:04And just like the way that it'll say like,
1:17:07oh, there's an Apple Watch app that you can install,
1:17:13that there would be-- like if you have the Siri Hi-Fi,
1:17:17you would have a Siri Hi-Fi app on your phone.
1:17:20And then you'd go-- just like you go to the Apple Watch app
1:17:22to install an app on your watch, you'd
1:17:24go to the Hi-Fi app to install the extension on your Hi-Fi.
1:17:27That we're getting pretty complicated. Right. I see. And it's it makes sense to me like that's
1:17:35exactly what I think is it this makes sense to me technically because I can draw little arrows for
1:17:41all the devices and I see okay, so you download it to your phone and then from your phone, you can
1:17:45install it on your watch. And you can install it on the thing. But then it seems to me like you're
1:17:49doing an awful lot of fiddly system administrator type stuff with prices. Yeah. And so is there a
1:17:56better like is it just via the app and now apps require like I don't know some
1:18:01sort of new iCloud instance that it's that's like handling it right and that's
1:18:06exactly the other that it you know just erase everything that I just speculate
1:18:10about is there gonna be some kind of way that a developer would be able to have
1:18:14like an iCloud instance of this API and and and that's a total new territory for
1:18:20Apple.
1:18:21That's unlike anything I can think of that Apple's ever
1:18:26done.
1:18:26Yeah.
1:18:29Yeah, I don't know.
1:18:30But it's good that they're--
1:18:32I think it's smart, of course, that they're playing
1:18:34in this space.
1:18:35Smart that Google is as well.
1:18:37All these guys are pouring so many resources
1:18:40into these assistants and the whole AI aspect.
1:18:46obviously, Marco's post about DAPL and AI and stuff,
1:18:50that they need to be able to get enough data
1:18:56to constantly improve these things.
1:18:58And it's almost like table stakes.
1:19:01It seems like it's going to be now that you need to have
1:19:03the home version of whatever the assistant thing is
1:19:06to be able to keep up and remain on par
1:19:10with all the other competitors.
1:19:11- Yeah, one of the things I was thinking about
1:19:14in light of Marco's post the other day about it,
1:19:18is I was trying to think,
1:19:21'cause I didn't agree with him fully.
1:19:23It was a great post, and the ways that I disagree,
1:19:27it's just all, it's not like Marco's dumb,
1:19:30it's like, no, Marco's smart,
1:19:32and I actually see the logic of what he's saying,
1:19:33but something doesn't sit right with me.
1:19:35And then I thought about social networking,
1:19:38and social networking is obviously a huge part
1:19:41of the whole industry that we talk about.
1:19:43I mean, Facebook is a giant company now,
1:19:46and super influential.
1:19:48I mean, literally a scandal in the last few weeks,
1:19:53or a controversy, I should say, about whether or not
1:19:57Facebook is single-handedly skewing political news in the US.
1:20:03Hugely influential.
1:20:04Instagram is a huge success.
1:20:09Twitter.
1:20:10Twitter is Twitter.
1:20:11I love it, but it is what it is.
1:20:15But it certainly is--
1:20:18I don't want to go down the route
1:20:19of talking about Twitter as a business.
1:20:21But culturally, though, its influence is undeniable.
1:20:24I always say, the one thing about Twitter
1:20:26that it's just stunning how every time I watch TV news
1:20:30and somebody comes on, they tell you
1:20:32what their Twitter handle is.
1:20:34Well, and if you watch ESPN at all,
1:20:36it's a significant percentage of ESPN via reporting,
1:20:40via talking about tweets.
1:20:42It's crazy.
1:20:42Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:20:44Twitter's influence in the sports world alone is astounding.
1:20:49Especially as we go down the path of the NBA playoffs
1:20:51and stuff, it's--
1:20:52I don't know.
1:20:52I think-- well, and now, Major League Baseball
1:20:55has a ton of Twitter, too.
1:20:56So no, it's just everywhere in sports.
1:20:59Apple has no real social networking.
1:21:03And they've even tried twice.
1:21:04They had Ping.
1:21:05And then last year, the--
1:21:08I don't even remember what it's called--
1:21:10the middle tab of Apple Music.
1:21:12- Right, the thing that's going away apparently.
1:21:14- Right, and hasn't taken off, hasn't really,
1:21:18never gained a foothold, but so what?
1:21:19Apple has, in a second level way,
1:21:22sort of thrived on social networking
1:21:26because people use their iPhones to Facebook
1:21:30and to Instagram and to tweet.
1:21:33And it's only made, the rise of social networking
1:21:38largely coincides with the rise of the iPhone,
1:21:41and it's a big part of why.
1:21:43I think that there's a real difference
1:21:45that I was thinking about it,
1:21:46and the voice assistants aren't like that,
1:21:48because the voice assistants, to be useful,
1:21:51have to be built into the system.
1:21:53There is a Cortana app.
1:21:54There is, the Google app has all of the Google
1:21:58assistant type stuff.
1:22:01The startups that are in this space have apps.
1:22:07I can't remember some of their names, but you know, like--
1:22:09- Yeah, there's like operator,
1:22:12oh, well Viv is, yeah,
1:22:14they were-- - Viv will be an app.
1:22:15- By the Siri people, yeah.
1:22:17- Right.
1:22:18- Yeah.
1:22:19- So you can do that, but that doesn't make it,
1:22:22it doesn't work like that.
1:22:23You can't say go launch an app and then do it.
1:22:26It doesn't work like that.
1:22:27It has to be built into the system.
1:22:28- So the one outside the bounds though,
1:22:31which I'd be interested in your thoughts on then,
1:22:32is the Facebook Messenger one, Facebook M it's called, right?
1:22:36So that Facebook, obviously, famously does not have a phone.
1:22:40They run on other people's devices.
1:22:44But they do, by most accounts, have some of the foremost
1:22:48experts in AI working at Facebook.
1:22:51So how do you square that?
1:22:53Where do you think that they--
1:22:55where does that come into play?
1:22:57Because you think they're going after AI.
1:22:59They think they're going to be a leader in whatever
1:23:02comes of AI.
1:23:02And certainly, these assistant things are a big part of that,
1:23:05at least right now, and FacebookM is sort of one of the front runners right now for
1:23:11that, but they don't have the system level integration.
1:23:14It's a good question. It could just be to do the AI while you're in their apps. Facebook's
1:23:26advantage is, and I say this as someone who doesn't use Facebook, but part of what makes
1:23:33them so valuable is that, you know, people spend an awful lot of people spend an awful
1:23:38lot of time in Facebook. So they already have them there. So they almost are like their
1:23:45own system.
1:23:46Yeah, that's true.
1:23:47If you're already there, you're in Facebook on your phone or, you know, well, I think
1:23:52the phone's probably number one now. So you're in Facebook, you're on your phone, any kind
1:23:56of AI features that they can offer you, you're already there. So they have the need for that.
1:24:03or the opportunity.
1:24:05- Good way to frame it, I think.
1:24:06It's almost like, so the browser on a PC or Mac
1:24:11is not, you know, sort of,
1:24:14well, while they are baked into the system,
1:24:18it is a separate application
1:24:19that you're running all the time.
1:24:21Everyone's always running a browser, right?
1:24:22And that's like Facebook on the phone.
1:24:24- Yep.
1:24:25- Is sort of the, I mean, that's been said before, of course,
1:24:27but it is in that context, like basically the same thing.
1:24:30They even helpfully cheat and use the audio APIs
1:24:33to make sure they're literally running on your phone
1:24:35all the time.
1:24:36[LAUGHTER]
1:24:38I keyed, I keyed slightly.
1:24:41That brings to mind another one of the topics in this space
1:24:44that I want to talk about.
1:24:45And I've seen an awful lot of people bring this up.
1:24:47So one of the other rumors, it's separate from the information
1:24:50report, but there's also a rumor that has come out.
1:24:53I know MacRumors had it.
1:24:54I don't know if it was their original.
1:24:56I think it was.
1:24:56I think it was their original scoop.
1:24:58the next version of Mac OS is going to have Siri built in.
1:25:03- Yes.
1:25:04- And a lot of people read that and the question I got is,
1:25:07well, why do I have to talk to Siri?
1:25:09Why can't I just type like Spotlight?
1:25:12And then therefore, well, maybe that's the answer.
1:25:14Maybe the Spotlight feature goes away
1:25:17and it's replaced by Siri
1:25:18and you can either talk to it or type.
1:25:20- Yeah, that's a good question.
1:25:27I think that that, thinking about it for a few seconds
1:25:30just now, I think that that's probably
1:25:32the way they should do it.
1:25:33I think it's a little weird, like,
1:25:36Microsoft has done this too with Cortana.
1:25:38I think it's a little weird to have those things
1:25:40on the desktop in the same, trying to fit them
1:25:44into the same context as they exist right now
1:25:46on mobile devices, because you just use a desktop,
1:25:50laptop, whatever, traditional computer, differently.
1:25:55And you're right, a lot of it is text-based input.
1:25:58It's not vocal, which ties back to the whole thing of why
1:26:03I also think Alexa is important, because there is no way
1:26:06to interface with it besides the voice, but that's--
1:26:09that's a different route to go down.
1:26:12But yeah, so I think that Siri as a text-based thing
1:26:15is interesting.
1:26:16And that's also like going to Facebook M. Right now,
1:26:19it is mainly text, but it's all chat-based, right?
1:26:23So they're doing it the opposite way of what Siri and Alexa
1:26:27and Cortana and--
1:26:30the Google thing, I guess, is a hybrid, right?
1:26:32Because you can talk to it or it can just be--
1:26:37I mean, the main interface is to say, OK, Google.
1:26:39And then it loads, basically.
1:26:42It's doing a search query.
1:26:45So that's, I guess, the closest thing to that.
1:26:47And that would be Apple, if they did do Siri for Mac OS,
1:26:53doing it with the text thing would be, I guess, most comparable to that.
1:26:57Maybe. You know, there's a trick that I just learned recently. I didn't
1:27:01know this, but if you do invoke Siri on
1:27:05your iPhone and she
1:27:09hears you wrong, you can, on that results screen,
1:27:13you pull down on it and it shows you what Siri
1:27:17thought you said. And if you tap on that, you can edit that text.
1:27:21Oh really? I didn't know that.
1:27:23I didn't know it either. I just learned it in the last week or two from someone on Twitter in the midst of talking about all of this.
1:27:29I think it was in the context of that discussion of why can't you just enter text.
1:27:34And in other words, why can't you invoke Siri and then pull down or something to bring up a text field and just type your query to Siri.
1:27:41Because there are certain contexts where you can't write.
1:27:44Right. What if you're in a quiet area? Yeah, yeah, right.
1:27:47Huh. Yeah, I had no idea about that.
1:27:50So you can edit text after you've made your vocal query to Siri.
1:27:55You can edit it as text, but you can't just type it as text.
1:27:59So if you want to use that feature, you should just speak gibberish to Siri.
1:28:03Just whisper some quick gibberish.
1:28:05Right. To invoke the text mode.
1:28:09Anyway, interesting trick, I thought.
1:28:12Yeah, and then there was the report, I think it was Gherman, right?
1:28:17saying that there was a, or maybe it was a riff off of another report or something,
1:28:22but I know that 95 Mac wrote about it that the new MacBook Pro conceivably
1:28:29coming out at the end of the year would have the, this like OLED strip and you
1:28:36know one of the reasons why that might make sense is because then you could
1:28:40have a Siri button without having to have like a physical Siri button.
1:28:43Yeah, I saw that rumor and I don't know what to make of it. It seems kind of interesting.
1:28:52It seems like maybe it's also sort of like that... I don't remember if it was a Kickstarter.
1:28:58I think it might have been before Kickstarter. But do you remember a couple years ago there
1:29:02was somebody who was trying to make a keyboard?
1:29:04Yes, I know what this is. That LED keyboard thing?
1:29:07- Yeah, and it was, the idea was that each key,
1:29:11it was a physical keyboard,
1:29:12but each key would be a standalone LED.
1:29:15And so like, in the quote unquote normal mode,
1:29:19it would be, you know, QWERTY, you know,
1:29:21and it would be alphabetic and have numbers.
1:29:23But then like when you're using Photoshop,
1:29:25the key caps could change to all of the weird shortcuts.
1:29:29So you, you know, you could, you know,
1:29:32the H key would change to, you know,
1:29:35whatever H does in Photoshop.
1:29:37- Right.
1:29:38- Like a game could change all of the buttons
1:29:41to different weapons or something like that.
1:29:45- Yeah, and it's sort of, I guess, similar to on iOS
1:29:50when you have the virtual thing on top of the keyboard,
1:29:55where it suggests stuff,
1:29:57and so it can sort of dynamically do different things.
1:30:00- Right, so that LED keyboard never really,
1:30:03It never came to be a realistic project,
1:30:08but it certainly got people excited.
1:30:09I could see how this LED touchscreen
1:30:13in place of the function keys could work like that.
1:30:17And it gets to, it's like a little bit
1:30:21like the Mac keyboard getting a little taste
1:30:24of that spiel that Steve Jobs gave
1:30:28at the original iPhone introduction
1:30:30about what to do about the buttons on a phone
1:30:33because once you put them there, there's nothing else.
1:30:36They're set.
1:30:37And then if you come up with a new idea later,
1:30:40you'd like to have a different button.
1:30:42What do you do?
1:30:42And he goes, well, the answer is,
1:30:44we've solved this years ago with the graphical user interface.
1:30:46The answer is do it in software.
1:30:48So I can kind of see that.
1:30:49And quite frankly, the idea of F1, F2, F3 keys,
1:30:53even it's just fiddly.
1:30:56And I know Apple's started printing, hard-coded printing,
1:31:00like this is volume up, this is volume down,
1:31:02this is brightness.
1:31:04And that by default, that's what those keys do now.
1:31:08You have to actually trigger a system-wide preference
1:31:12to turn them into regular function keys.
1:31:14- Right, and I think most kids would have no, like F1,
1:31:19they would have no idea. - They have no idea.
1:31:20Yeah, my son, if I, I should do it
1:31:23when he gets home from school, I should actually see you.
1:31:26- Yeah, could you hit the F1 key?
1:31:28What, you mean the brightness down key?
1:31:30Which key? - You know, and I remember
1:31:32when I still have the extended keyboard in front of me,
1:31:35but the Apple extended keyboard,
1:31:38you know, the big tank keyboard that I use,
1:31:40it shipped with like a strip
1:31:42that went around the function keys.
1:31:44Like, it was like a, I don't know what you would call it,
1:31:48like a stencil almost that would surround the function keys.
1:31:53- Oh, yeah, okay.
1:31:54- Different pro apps would come,
1:31:56like QuarkXPress came with one.
1:31:58- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:31:59I actually remember that on IBM PCs,
1:32:01they had a similar thing with that, yeah.
1:32:03When the big keys, the big pushdown keys.
1:32:06- Right. - Yeah.
1:32:07- By default, F1, I think it was just like,
1:32:12I think it was just like ZXCV.
1:32:15So F1 was undo, F2 was cut, F3 was copy, and F4 was paste.
1:32:20But this is ancient Apple history.
1:32:23This is like stuff that worked in like 1991.
1:32:26- That's really funny though, 'cause that's like,
1:32:28you know, talking about this virtual OLED strip
1:32:31that is like the original version of that, right?
1:32:33Like software that would ship an actual physical printout
1:32:37that you would overlay around the keys
1:32:41to change their functions,
1:32:42to know what their function would be.
1:32:44- Yeah, so I think this idea sounds to me like,
1:32:49hey, this sounds like a really good idea.
1:32:51'Cause then instead of having these hard coded things
1:32:55that you could make that whole area flexible.
1:32:59Yeah, and then software updates, when they keep updating Mac OS
1:33:04and adding new things, they don't
1:33:05have to ship a new keyboard all of a sudden.
1:33:07Yeah.
1:33:09Mac OS flows off the tongue.
1:33:12I really like it.
1:33:13This is my favorite.
1:33:14I'm really excited about them renaming it Mac OS.
1:33:16I like it.
1:33:17But are they still going to do--
1:33:19they're still committed to the California thing?
1:33:21Is that the latest--
1:33:22I don't know.
1:33:23I have no idea.
1:33:24- Is it gonna be Mac OS, you know,
1:33:26the Hollywood or whatever?
1:33:30- I think so.
1:33:30I think that they're committed to the California thing.
1:33:32'Cause they've only done it for two years, right?
1:33:35Or did they do three?
1:33:37Oh no, three, 'cause there was Mavericks.
1:33:39- Yeah, that's right.
1:33:40- Mavericks was first.
1:33:41Yeah, I think they're committed to the California thing.
1:33:47And I think that, you know,
1:33:49but it's just gonna be Mac OS, you know, Hollywood.
1:33:53Yeah, well, I'll be glad to be done with the 10 elements of it, because we're at 10.11.5 now.
1:34:01It always bothered me all along. I've never been a fan of the name Mac OS X, and I was less of a fan when they officially changed it to OS X without the Mac.
1:34:14Really, never a fan of that name. Just because... Well, number one, I don't like Roman numerals. I just wrote about this...
1:34:21I hate Roman. I just hate them. They're absolutely terrible. There's arguments to be made that I
1:34:28mean, I'm not being facetious here. I've seen arguments that their stupid numeral system made the Romans so
1:34:36bad at math that it led to the decline of the Roman Empire because
1:34:42they fell to people who used a logical decimal, you know,
1:34:46system of indicating numerals that made math easier.
1:34:50I hate it. I just don't like Roman numerals. I hate the way it's, you know, this doesn't seem to be as big a problem anymore, but I hate it in the early years, the people who said Mac OS X.
1:35:01Oh, it still happens all the time. But yeah.
1:35:04It's not their problem. It's Apple's problem because it looks like Mac OS X because guess what? Normal people today don't speak in Roman numerals. If you show them an X, they say that's an X. They don't say, "Oh, I bet that's a 10."
1:35:17And then as time went on, it was as though, I mean, what was it? 2016? So 15 years of updates to
1:35:25the operating system. In their numbering system, it's like they've all been minor little feature upgrades
1:35:31for 15 years.
1:35:34So I think I read the, I don't know if you talked about this. I've read this somewhere.
1:35:40So, you know, they did when they did Super Bowl 50 this past year, they did Super Bowl 50 rather than Super Bowl L or whatever.
1:35:46but next year they're going back to the Roman numerals so it's like "LI" I think
1:35:51or something like that.
1:35:52I know, they are.
1:35:53It makes me want to scream because I was so happy.
1:35:57I was like, you know what, I was so happy because I thought that's brilliant.
1:36:01Fifty is the nicest, roundest number they're going to get to until a hundred.
1:36:08And now this is the way they get out of the mess they've created for themselves with these
1:36:14Roman numerals.
1:36:16You know what else screws me up with the Roman numerals?
1:36:17The Star Wars.
1:36:18I'm so confused over what the hell number the movies are.
1:36:23I really am.
1:36:24Once I got to the prequels, like four, five, and six,
1:36:28I understood that there's three.
1:36:30But now I'm like, what the hell is this episode eight?
1:36:32How, what, how have we updated already?
1:36:34And then it's like, just, I really,
1:36:37I don't like the Roman numerals in Star Wars,
1:36:39but there's no, they can't get out of it.
1:36:40They've already, they're already into it.
1:36:42The NFL could get out of it with the Super Bowl.
1:36:44did get out of it with 50 and now they're going backwards. Now they're going back. Super
1:36:49Bowl LI. Super Bowl LI. That's great. I used to like it, but I used to be amused by like
1:37:01it like old time Hollywood movies used to often put like the copyright in in Roman numerals.
1:37:07Oh, don't they still do that? I'm pretty sure some movies still do. So at the very end,
1:37:12I'm one of those people who stays through the credits,
1:37:14the annoying person who sits through the entire credits,
1:37:17even though I'm not reading everything.
1:37:18I just sort of like it as a time to think about what I just
1:37:20watched or whatever.
1:37:22And so I always stay through the end,
1:37:24and especially now with all the Marvel stuff
1:37:25where you have to stay through the end.
1:37:27But at the end, when they do the last credit thing,
1:37:31it's like the--
1:37:32whatever it is.
1:37:33I don't know if it's MPAA or whoever
1:37:36gets the last sort of screen.
1:37:38And they do the number of what actual movie it is,
1:37:42like how many movies have actually been.
1:37:45And it's still in Roman numerals, I'm pretty sure,
1:37:47because I know that because they just passed some milestone.
1:37:53I should look it up, but I don't even
1:37:55know what I would Google for.
1:37:57But they just passed some major milestone.
1:37:59And so it's now shorter because it's
1:38:02passed like 5,000 or whatever, 50,000 or something like that.
1:38:06Maybe it used to be though, and maybe it's not now,
1:38:08and maybe I'm remembering it slightly wrong.
1:38:10I know that they used to do it.
1:38:12What you're suggesting is like, yeah,
1:38:15the year and everything would be Roman numeral, right?
1:38:18And now I think this movie credit system at the very end,
1:38:23it may have switched back over to actual numbers
1:38:26because it just got too unwieldy,
1:38:27but I'm not 100% sure.
1:38:29I don't remember.
1:38:30- All right, I'll look it up.
1:38:31We'll look it up after the show.
1:38:33- All right.
1:38:33- Here's one answer.
1:38:35I don't know if this is definitive. I googled one.
1:38:37This is all I have time for to do live in the show.
1:38:39But there's a BBC article that says,
1:38:41perhaps one of the most notable areas
1:38:44where people are likely to come across Roman numerals
1:38:46is in TV and film credits where the convention
1:38:48is not to spell out what year something was made.
1:38:51The practice is believed to have started
1:38:54in an attempt to disguise the age of films
1:38:56or television programs.
1:38:57- Huh.
1:38:59- In other words, it's the opposite of claiming
1:39:01an undeserved antiquity.
1:39:02They're not trying to look old.
1:39:03they are trying to look like they're still young.
1:39:06Because nobody can tell.
1:39:09Here's an example, here's 1998 in Roman numerals.
1:39:12M-C-M-X-C-V-I-I-I.
1:39:15Crazy. - Yes.
1:39:18Yeah, I think I see the same thing now,
1:39:20this on Stack Exchange talking about, yeah.
1:39:23Copyright, Time Warner Studios, MC, yeah, right.
1:39:26That's exactly right.
1:39:26- I've already got it in the show notes.
1:39:28I'll put it there.
1:39:29Folks, you can listen, just check out the show notes there.
1:39:31- That's what it is then.
1:39:32I think I was conflating the two things.
1:39:34That is where they use the Roman numerals.
1:39:36The movie number is, I think, just a number.
1:39:39Yeah.
1:39:40Yeah.
1:39:41Okay.
1:39:42There we go.
1:39:43But that's where they are.
1:39:44What the hell are we talking about?
1:39:45How do we get from the keyboard with an OLED strip to Roman numerals?
1:39:48Because Mac OS.
1:39:49Oh, Mac OS X, right.
1:39:50Yeah.
1:39:51They're going to get rid of the X.
1:39:52Yeah, there we go.
1:39:58I wonder, would...
1:39:59No, no.
1:40:00No, no. Although I wonder, maybe they would like, if...
1:40:04I don't think you would have to have the new keyboard to use Siri on the Mac, but maybe
1:40:07they would do the little, you know, the animation for Siri, the horizontal thing, because it's
1:40:11such a horizontal animation, maybe the OLED strip will turn into the waveform.
1:40:16Yeah, that'd be pretty.
1:40:21The other thing with Germin's report, though, is that, and it's a little disappointing,
1:40:24because I was kind of hoping maybe new MacBook Pros would come out at WWDC, but his report
1:40:30it later this year, like a fall thing. Right, and there was some little nugget,
1:40:37I think, and I think that was based on, what's the one, the one, who is it, is it KJI or whatever,
1:40:44they have a pretty good track record of being right about those things. I think it was riffing
1:40:48off of that, but also talking about the fact that there's some potential for a 13-inch MacBook,
1:40:57not a pro, so there would be like the two pro models, and then we already have now the 12 inch,
1:41:03you know, Retina MacBook, and now there might be a 13 inch? It said that in there,
1:41:08which I was confused by, like why would they do a 12 and a 13 inch?
1:41:12Yeah, that seems wrong to me. It seems to me like they made the whole reason they made the
1:41:1712 inch in the first place was to split the difference between 13 and 11.
1:41:21Right. Right. And so, yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's something got lost in translation there.
1:41:29Yeah. Or they're going to switch to 13. I don't know. It doesn't make sense to have 12 and 13.
1:41:34They don't seem different enough to justify both of them existing.
1:41:38I mean, you could see where they would make a bigger one in order to put a second port.
1:41:44everyone complains of course about the one USB-C port. But then with a 14 or 15?
1:41:52I just think that they have to be different enough that just at a glance on the table in the Apple
1:42:00Store you can say, "Oh, that one's big, this one's small." If you're gonna have three, it has to be
1:42:08Rare, medium, and well done.
1:42:11You can't have a medium rare in there.
1:42:14It's too hard to tell apart.
1:42:17And that report also mentioned that they're likely
1:42:20keeping the MacBook Air around.
1:42:22And it will just be the cheaper--
1:42:24the low, the rare version, in your analogy--
1:42:30the cheaper, low-end version of what you get from Mac.
1:42:33So presumably still no Retina screen, I guess.
1:42:36Yeah, I think that the writing is on the wall.
1:42:38I know that this is to me, I get it all the time.
1:42:42And I know there's so many people,
1:42:44and I'm gonna make you angry
1:42:45if you're one of these people listening.
1:42:46I'm telling you right now, stop holding your breath
1:42:48for a retina MacBook Air, and it's just not gonna happen.
1:42:51And I know, I get emails all the time,
1:42:54this is what a lot of people want.
1:42:56They want exactly what the MacBook Air is right now
1:42:59with a retina screen.
1:43:00- And when they're asking for that,
1:43:02is it specifically that they want,
1:43:06like the certain type of power adapter
1:43:10and the older school USB ports rather than--
1:43:16because the new MacBook is very similar to what a MacBook Air
1:43:21is except for the ports, right?
1:43:25And the power, this performance, because it's slower.
1:43:28It's still slower than MacBook Air.
1:43:31And a refreshed MacBook Air, if it were to come, but it's not,
1:43:36I don't think, would be faster still.
1:43:38But the MacBook Air you can go by today
1:43:41is faster than the MacBook.
1:43:43And so if you push your machine a little bit,
1:43:45if you're like me, 50 browser tabs,
1:43:49or if you're using Xcode or something like that,
1:43:52photo editing, you want it.
1:43:55But no, I think it's very clear looking at the products
1:43:57that Apple's come out with recently, what they're doing.
1:44:00The MacBook, the new one, the MacBook One,
1:44:04will get faster over time. Right. And it will eventually, like in two years, that won't be an
1:44:09issue. Right. So is it worth it for Apple to spend money to make a retina MacBook Air when these
1:44:17things are just going to collide in two years? Right. And on the other end, the MacBook Pros
1:44:22are getting thinner. Like that's another part of this rumor with the OLED screen is that the
1:44:27MacBook, even though they got so much thinner a couple years ago when they went to the,
1:44:32you can't get a spinning hard drive anymore, everything's SSD, but it's going to get thinner
1:44:37still because that's what Apple does. They take products and make them thinner. So the MacBook
1:44:41Pros, at the more expensive side, and if performance is important to you, are going to get ever more
1:44:47air-like in their form factor, and the MacBook is going to get faster. And Apple's bet is that
1:44:54your need for ports is going to decrease over time. And so the MacBook Air, even though if they were
1:45:02to come out with a retina MacBook Air today, it would sell, might sell very well. It's
1:45:06a dead end, I think, in Apple's mind in terms of differentiation of the product line. That
1:45:12it's not, it would be too, it's too conflated with the other products or too easily mixed
1:45:17up. Right. And so right now the only reason the MacBook Airs exist is to hit the $899
1:45:24and $999 price points. Right. And I assume that's a lot of what they're selling to like
1:45:28right? That's their... is that also their school sort of selling? Oh, I think so. I would be...
1:45:35anybody... I would be surprised if schools were buying anything other than
1:45:41the MacBook Airs, because they don't have money, and B, they just don't...
1:45:47schools, you know, they're just not going to value something like retina. Right.
1:45:51You know, too bad kids. Even though kids have the sharpest eyes, and they're the
1:45:54most likely to be able to see the fuzzy pixels.
1:45:58- Well, just wait, give 'em time.
1:46:03Two years, kids, two years.
1:46:05- So I don't know, I wonder if we're gonna see
1:46:06any hardware at WWDC now, but on the other hand,
1:46:09we haven't had new Mac hardware in forever,
1:46:12except for the updated MacBook One,
1:46:15which was just a speed bump.
1:46:18- Yeah, I mean, the only hardware,
1:46:19if those reports are true, and maybe it won't even be
1:46:22released then, would be the thing
1:46:23We were just talking about that music Siri hub thing.
1:46:27But yeah, they usually don't do--
1:46:29they haven't done Mac hardware in a while, right?
1:46:31Because they announce the new OS,
1:46:34and then they wait to ship.
1:46:36Well, they did the updated 5K iMac last year
1:46:39with the new high gamut screen.
1:46:42Oh, that's right.
1:46:43OK.
1:46:44Yeah.
1:46:45By the way, when are they going to launch
1:46:47a display, external display, with Retina?
1:46:51Like, why have they not done that yet?
1:46:53That's a fantastic question. I think that this is something that I, because I have the 5k iMac,
1:46:59yeah, I have the old, the first one though, not the high gamut one. So you know, play a little sad
1:47:06violin song for me. I know that the ATP guys have gone on about this in detail and I, because I
1:47:13don't have a Mac Pro, I don't care enough to figure it out, but there's some kind of thing where
1:47:17Thunderbolt. Oh, right. The throughput is not there.
1:47:22Sufficient. And the only way that Apple made it work internally in the 5k iMac
1:47:27was by creating your own thing. Um, uh,
1:47:31so I think that's the problem. Uh, but maybe this WWDC is where the,
1:47:36the, the trashcan Darth Vader Mac pro came out.
1:47:42It is incredibly long overdue for an update.
1:47:46And so I know it's not like a best seller, but at the WWDC developer crowd, it actually is.
1:47:54So maybe that would be a nice... I haven't seen any rumors about it, but just in terms of being overdue,
1:48:00boy, that would be a nice announcement that would play extremely...
1:48:03I think it would play extremely well in a room if they said, "We've updated the Mac Pro.
1:48:07It blows away the old Mac Pro in performance, and you can hook up this 5K, beautiful 5K display to it."
1:48:14Finally, an actual finally.
1:48:17And yeah, I mean, given Apple's dominance in both design
1:48:20and film and everything, it's crazy
1:48:23that all these people can't use a screen that
1:48:28ties into all of the rest of the Apple products
1:48:30that they're using for that.
1:48:31Right, and again, I'm spoiled, but I've gone all--
1:48:36I guess I'm trying to think what my last non-retina device was.
1:48:40It was, I guess it was when I upgraded to this 5K iMac,
1:48:45what, like a year and a half ago.
1:48:46But now, everything is retina.
1:48:49My son still has a non-retina iPad.
1:48:52So I think it's like the only non-retina device in the house.
1:48:54And so I--
1:48:54Really?
1:48:55Like an animal.
1:48:57And when I see the screen, I'm like, oh my god,
1:48:59I can't believe you live in that one.
1:49:01Those pixels were pretty big.
1:49:03I still have--
1:49:04I'm actually sitting in front of right now the last iMac
1:49:08before it went retina.
1:49:10It's still nice, but yeah, you can definitely see the pixels.
1:49:13Yeah, it sticks out like a sore thumb.
1:49:15And it just seems crazy, like you said,
1:49:17it's just crazy that the customers who
1:49:19are willing to spend $10,000 on a Mac Pro--
1:49:24Have no option.
1:49:25They have to buy the Dell, whatever.
1:49:274K, whatever.
1:49:29Right.
1:49:30All right, let me take one last break here and thank
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1:52:08This is what we want to talk about the Peter Thiel thing.
1:52:12Sure. It's literally what all of Twitter is right now.
1:52:21I'm sure. So anybody who's listening has almost certainly heard, and if you read
1:52:24"Daring Fireball," I've been obsessed with it for days.
1:52:26I'll summarize it thus. There's an ongoing lawsuit where Hulk Hogan sued Gawker because
1:52:37a couple years ago Gawker obtained a sex tape. The backstory on that is all crazy too.
1:52:43Someone named Buddy the Love Sponge.
1:52:47Yes, not making it up. That is not made up.
1:52:49Somehow convinced Hulk Hogan to have sex with the guy's wife and he's like totally into it and the
1:53:02guy surreptitiously taped the encounter and then anyway, Gawker ran it and a few lists later,
1:53:10Hulk Hogan sued and won an enormous judgment, $140 million in the state of Florida against
1:53:17Gawker, which apparently would, not surprisingly, would bankrupt the company. There's an expectation
1:53:27among experts that on appeal, that Gawker is going to get that greatly reduced, maybe
1:53:33even overturned, that Gawker's chances are very good that it was tried in a place that
1:53:37was very amenable to Hulk Hogan. But you never know, and it's never good news to lose the
1:53:42first one. So, you know, Gawker's under wraps.
1:53:45And it turns out this week it came out that, like, one day it started with speculation
1:53:50that Nick Denton, the founder and owner of Gawker, publicly came out speculating that
1:53:55Hogan's lawsuit was funded by somebody. And he thought maybe, like, some billionaire in
1:54:02Silicon Valley. I don't know if Denton actually had Teal in mind at the time. I suspect he
1:54:06might have because how many billionaires--
1:54:08The speculation, again, amongst people with no inside information, but that this is--
1:54:15it was very likely, if this was the case, and there was a big if, like it seemed outrageous
1:54:21that that would actually be the situation, that it would likely be Peter Thiel being
1:54:26the most likely candidate to be the one.
1:54:28Right.
1:54:29there's a known grudge between the two because in 2007,
1:54:34Gawker's Valleywag property ran a story saying that,
1:54:42yes, Peter Thiel is gay, which, you know,
1:54:46was interpreted by many as outing.
1:54:49I think there's a very good case that that's what it was,
1:54:53but Valleywag and Gawker have always stood behind
1:54:55this argument that it was an open secret.
1:54:58everybody knew it just wasn't ever printed anywhere.
1:55:02And that it's, you know, I don't want to get into
1:55:04the politics of it, but that it's,
1:55:07the fact that we don't talk about it is sort of
1:55:10like bigotry against gays because it's positioning
1:55:16homosexuality as something that you would want to hide.
1:55:19Whereas it's not.
1:55:20Which I, personally I am amenable to, but anyway,
1:55:22that's just to get it out of the way though,
1:55:24that, you know, it's well known.
1:55:27I think it's even on the record that Peter Thiel was not happy with that story.
1:55:31And therefore, I think he likened, uh, the Valley wag to Al Qaeda.
1:55:36Yes. Yeah. No, literally. And that's really was his comparison.
1:55:40It's not like hyperbole, like you're exaggerating. That was,
1:55:42that was what he said. Right. Um, yeah.
1:55:47He's been known to have taken issue with numerous, even stories, not with him,
1:55:51but with other people who he knows that he knows other people who, you know,
1:55:54Gawker websites have run stories about that he found, you know, objectionable. So it turns out
1:56:01that it's, and now he's, Peter Thiel has gone on a record with the New York Times and admitted,
1:56:07"Yes, I bankrolled Hulk Hogan's lawsuit to the tune of 10 million dollars."
1:56:11And it's just crazy. It's like, this really is just like,
1:56:20like something from, you put on a TV show, right? Or a movie, you know, that it's like a crazy Game of Thrones plot twist.
1:56:28It's something that's like so outlandish that it seemed like,
1:56:33because I guess there were rumors about this going around during the trial itself, right?
1:56:36That someone was out there bankrolling this and, but everyone dismissed it, you know, reading about this in hindsight,
1:56:42everyone seemed to dismiss it because it was so outlandish.
1:56:45Right.
1:56:45And then Denton says his thing and it still seems outlandish, but there's like this,
1:56:49But if it were to be anyone, and then like Forbes somehow was able to find people who would speak, you know,
1:56:56off the record or on background, I guess, on it, and then next thing we know we have
1:57:03Teal talking to Andrew Ross Sorkin of New York Times directly about it.
1:57:09Within like a two-day span or whatever.
1:57:11Right, and the move during the trial that raised people's eyebrows and started the speculation was that the Hogan legal team
1:57:19dropped a charge that, if they had won, would have been covered by Gawker's insurance.
1:57:28Gawker's insurance would have this, whatever, it doesn't really matter which one it was,
1:57:31you know, what the legal term was, but there was one of the charges.
1:57:34And it seemed really curious to people that they would do that because the insurance company
1:57:41is way more likely to be able to pay the full amount of a large judgment than Gawker is.
1:57:47So it's not about the money.
1:57:49Right.
1:57:50That it was a move that totally seemed counter to maximizing
1:57:53the money that Hogan would win.
1:57:56And instead, it seemed specifically
1:57:58about trying to put Gawker out of business.
1:58:03Yeah.
1:58:04And so the most compelling--
1:58:08compelling is a weird word to use.
1:58:10But the most interesting thing about this whole thing to me
1:58:13is the amount of time that has passed from when the situation
1:58:19happened that you talked about with the story on Valley
1:58:24Wag outing or--
1:58:27Revealing that he's gay.
1:58:28Yeah, revealing that-- yeah, right.
1:58:29Peter Thiel is gay to the masses, let's say.
1:58:34And now, it's like--
1:58:37I don't know exactly how long it's been,
1:58:38but it's like eight years, nine years, or something like that?
1:58:42Yeah, I think it was nine years.
1:58:43I think it was a 2007 story.
1:58:46I think, I could be wrong by a year,
1:58:47but the story I've heard is that at some point in 2006,
1:58:50supposedly, Teal had warned Valley WAG,
1:58:55do not write about my personal life,
1:58:56or you will make an enemy of me.
1:59:00I don't think he threatened them,
1:59:01but privately had said, don't do this,
1:59:05or I'll do what I can.
1:59:07And 2007, I think, is when the story ran.
1:59:10But it's been roughly 10 years.
1:59:12And obviously most threats made in those veins end up being hollow or, you know, sort of like just things get forgotten over time and everyone moves on.
1:59:21Time heals all wounds.
1:59:23Right.
1:59:24But not here.
1:59:25And like the fact that this has been going on behind the scenes all these years later is just incredible.
1:59:32I mean, again, it's like a weird thing to say.
1:59:35It's like impressive in a weird way
1:59:38that someone is so determined to write
1:59:41what they view as this wrong
1:59:45that they've held onto it this long
1:59:46and like just figured out an avenue
1:59:49to actually be able to execute it.
1:59:52- All right.
1:59:53I will link to it in the show notes.
1:59:55I've already linked to it on "Daring Fireball,"
1:59:56but Felix Salmon writing at Fusion
1:59:59had a great analysis of just the depths
2:00:03of the evil geniusness of Thiel's revenge.
2:00:07Just going through step by step and just,
2:00:12A, how long he waited, and B,
2:00:13that the way that libel laws work,
2:00:16and typically, you know,
2:00:17Thiel's not the first super rich person
2:00:19to sue a publication over negative publicity.
2:00:23I mean, Donald Trump has done it many times.
2:00:25I mean, all sorts of people do it.
2:00:28But the way it typically works and the way everybody common sense thinks it works is
2:00:32if I'm a rich guy and I don't like what your publication wrote about me, I sue you about
2:00:38what you wrote about me.
2:00:41And the problem with that is that you'd have to prove that it was false or that it was
2:00:45slander or whatever.
2:00:46It's very, very hard.
2:00:48And as Samin has pointed out, so newspapers like the New York Times or any major publication,
2:00:56When they write about a rich person in a way that, "Hey, this is going to be controversial.
2:01:00They're not going to like this," they have a legal team that vets every sentence in the
2:01:04story before it goes out, specifically of, "Can we defend this in court?
2:01:09Can we defend?"
2:01:10Every single thing, "Can we defend this in court?"
2:01:12It's not just going through an editorial process.
2:01:13It goes through a legal process before it goes out.
2:01:16Therefore, it makes it very hard for the rich person who wants to sue a publication out
2:01:21of existence to win.
2:01:23Neil's strategy was not to sue Gawker over what they wrote about him, but was rather
2:01:29to put together a legal team to just go through everything Gawker has done for 10 years and
2:01:34look for something that they did that is legally questionable.
2:01:38And they struck gold with the Hogan sex tape.
2:01:41Right.
2:01:42And there's, you know, I think it's actually, even while we've been on this call recording
2:01:48the show, I think there have already been sort of other things leaking out because the
2:01:52The rumor, of course, is also that they've been looking for other avenues to execute
2:01:56a lawsuit over the years, and maybe they have even, but no one realized it at the time.
2:02:00I think some of that stuff is starting to come out now.
2:02:04It's just breaking so fast.
2:02:06It's so crazy.
2:02:07There are so many buts, and this story is so widespread.
2:02:14What I've written about on Daring Fireball, it's hard to cover all of these avenues.
2:02:19But I'll even say right up front that I don't know, a couple of people said, "Well, what
2:02:24do you think, you know, shouldn't this be about whether Hogan had a good case or not?"
2:02:27And doesn't he have a, you know, wasn't he actually, you know, what they did a violation
2:02:31of his privacy?
2:02:32I'm very, very, I certainly would never run a sex tape taken surreptitiously by someone
2:02:38else or publish it or spread it.
2:02:39I mean, I think it's, honestly, I think it's a despicable move.
2:02:44Just personally, just as a human being.
2:02:47I mean, and so I'm not even opposed to Hogan having won the suit.
2:02:51I don't think Gawker ever should have run it.
2:02:53Gawker's media have done, published numerous things over the years that I object to for
2:02:59multiple grounds.
2:03:00Notably, of course, the iPhone prototype was Gizmodo under Gawker.
2:03:09Right.
2:03:11Yeah.
2:03:12Yeah, so...
2:03:14So in a way that's part of the genius of Thiel's strategy is that he found a case where
2:03:21people who might otherwise object to the idea of a billionaire secretly funding a lawsuit to sue a company out of existence
2:03:29might be a little bit more likely to say, "Well, these are bad people. That's not right that they took a surreptitious sex tape and published it."
2:03:40it right I saw him sex tapes you calm sex tapes I know it wasn't probably
2:03:45wasn't on tape but what else would you call it well so because it's not a tape
2:03:51right it's not on tape but it seems like the term is sex tape yeah it's like the
2:03:57verbal equivalent of the floppy disk for save like we just don't have right a
2:04:02sex.mov. I don't know. A sex gif. So I read, you know, in leading up to this, I
2:04:14read a few different of the takes. So first of all, like we joked about, all of
2:04:19Twitter is talking about this. Like this is, in my mind we talked about Twitter
2:04:23earlier as like being, you know, sort of like this this fascinating zeitgeist of
2:04:27what's happening. In my view, when something like this happens, this makes
2:04:31Twitter almost unbearable, simply because everyone is talking about the same thing.
2:04:38And there's no way to follow a common thread. There's so many different angles and so much
2:04:45information coming in and so many opinions that it's like a hodgepodge of everything.
2:04:50And I can imagine a regular user after signing up for Twitter, say they signed up for Twitter
2:04:55yesterday, and they got recommended, they're interested in the news or something. And so
2:05:01So they got recommended like 15 accounts
2:05:02to follow that are journalists.
2:05:04And so now today, just imagine what their experience
2:05:06would be like looking at Twitter for the first time.
2:05:09It's just like, I don't even know where to begin.
2:05:13Just shut it down.
2:05:14This is dreadful, all these people talking about each other
2:05:17and talking about, no, you're wrong and arguing.
2:05:20And so with that back story, I try
2:05:24to avoid as much as possible of it
2:05:26until there was actually more actual news of what
2:05:32occurred and whatnot.
2:05:33And it seems like this morning there was some of that.
2:05:35We talked about the Aaron Ross Sorkin post with Teal.
2:05:39And then there's been some more interesting of the hot takes,
2:05:42I would say.
2:05:42And so I read yours, of course, which
2:05:44I liked because it was concise.
2:05:47And a lot of the problems I have with things of this nature
2:05:52are like, this is obviously going after at least the way
2:05:55that journalists perceive it, going
2:05:57after the heart of what journalism is
2:05:59and trying to destroy the institution.
2:06:01And so we get these thought pieces
2:06:03that are going to be 5,000 words and just going on and on.
2:06:09And most of them saying the same things
2:06:11or saying them in slightly different ways.
2:06:13And it's just like, again, it's impenetrable.
2:06:16It's hard to know where to begin with this.
2:06:18So I appreciate the concise nature of your take on this.
2:06:21Right, and I wasn't trying to capture the whole thing
2:06:24because I think it's too hard to capture the whole thing.
2:06:26But it's just one particular, like to me it's,
2:06:29I appreciate your kind words about it,
2:06:32but it was just to respond to this whole argument
2:06:35of whether anybody is trying to take away
2:06:37Peter Thiel's freedom of speech.
2:06:40And it's like, it was like this libertarian take on it,
2:06:44which sort of a pro, super right,
2:06:49using their super richness to their own advantage.
2:06:54and the idea that anybody who objects to that
2:06:56or takes offense at it is therefore trying to suppress it,
2:06:59which is not the case.
2:07:01The article that the guy linked to by Josh Marshall,
2:07:05he wasn't, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Media
2:07:07wasn't advocating, hey, we should pass a law
2:07:09to make this illegal, we should prevent this.
2:07:12He was just saying this is bad news for journalism.
2:07:16- Right.
2:07:16- Because it's revealed a way to anybody else
2:07:20who has sufficient funds to bankroll such things
2:07:23way to do the same thing against any other publication they don't like.
2:07:25Right, but so part of that is like this has existed for a long time to be able to do like this
2:07:31this whole thing isn't new but it's new I guess in this context and people's eyes are opening
2:07:39to it for the first time because what you know what Teal did is not illegal. This is
2:07:45you know this is an avenue that that others have used just maybe not in this direct way before or
2:07:51Or maybe they haven't, we just don't know about it.
2:07:54But what I liked about what you wrote--
2:07:56and maybe correct me if I missed representing it in some ways,
2:08:00but this is sort of my stance on it
2:08:03after one day of thinking about it--
2:08:07is so what Teal did is not illegal,
2:08:12whether you think it's unethical or sort of not--
2:08:17I don't know.
2:08:18There's so many words you could use to describe it.
2:08:20Anyway, it's not illegal and it's also, of course,
2:08:24not illegal for then Denton to suggest that someone's doing this,
2:08:28and that it's not illegal for Forbes to look into it and get sources saying,
2:08:32"Yeah, it's the sky," and then it's not illegal for Teal then to go and talk to
2:08:35New York Times and reveal why he did it.
2:08:40Now, apparently Denton's working on a rebuttal post about this.
2:08:43It's like, at the end of the day,
2:08:46I understand why everyone's up in arms of this, of course,
2:08:49But the situation does sort of sort itself out. And I think if Gawker went out of business,
2:08:55which is a real possibility, my thought there is, but like 1000 other Gawker's will just rise
2:09:03in its sort of place. And you could say, well, then some billionaire might take out them too.
2:09:11I have a hard time believing that there's honestly enough money in the world to sort of
2:09:17fight all these battles.
2:09:18And it's not just money, by the way, it's time too.
2:09:20Again, going back to what the most interesting thing
2:09:22about this to me is that Peter Thiel took the time
2:09:25and the extended time period to actually execute this plan.
2:09:29Most people would not do that, of course.
2:09:31And most people just don't have the time to do it.
2:09:33It's not worth their time to do it.
2:09:35And so I sort of, as sort of lame as it sounds,
2:09:39I think this thing sorts itself out naturally.
2:09:43- Yeah, I think, and especially as it settles in
2:09:47as 24 hour old news now, I think that the fears
2:09:51that this will become a playbook for billionaires
2:09:54to take on other publications are,
2:09:56not just hopefully unfounded,
2:09:57I think they're probably unfounded.
2:09:59I think this was a unique situation,
2:10:02both in terms of the way that Gawker
2:10:07opened themselves up to these sort of suits
2:10:11by being so, I don't know what the word is, reckless?
2:10:16aggressive, aggressive, fast and loose with what, you know,
2:10:21what should or should not be published.
2:10:23I, you know, could somebody do this to me, for example?
2:10:27Could somebody, it's like, what have I written
2:10:29that you could really take me to court over?
2:10:31You could definitely inconvenience me
2:10:33by just making me go to court and have to hire a lawyer
2:10:35to fight a bogus lawsuit.
2:10:37But I don't, you know what I mean?
2:10:39I don't know that, why would,
2:10:40I don't see why someone would do that,
2:10:42'cause the other part is that Peter Thiel
2:10:44had such a grievance against them.
2:10:47- Right.
2:10:50- I mean, is there somebody who I've called
2:10:51jackass of the week in the past who would do this to me?
2:10:53I don't know.
2:10:54I don't think so.
2:10:56- Yeah, but even if they would,
2:10:57so like, yeah, you may have pissed off plenty of people,
2:11:00I'm sure you have over the years, but--
2:11:02- I may have pissed off Peter Thiel
2:11:03by calling him an asshole.
2:11:05I don't know.
2:11:06- But have you opened yourself up to, you know,
2:11:10so that could open you up to, you know,
2:11:12like someone could try to sue you directly for slander or whatever, or liable. I always
2:11:18forget the difference.
2:11:19Yeah, I do too.
2:11:20But then could someone do this sort of surrogate lawsuit and actually go after you for something?
2:11:28It seems almost impossible. Yeah.
2:11:32I think part of it is that it's just that nobody ever thought that anybody... It just
2:11:37never occurred to someone to do this and and it speaks to teals I honest I mean
2:11:44again I called him an asshole and I stand by it and I think that him doing
2:11:47it in secret was cowardly I think that it only came out now is you know it you
2:11:53know kind of a coward's move but it was genius right it was extremely clever and
2:12:02it's the sort of you know that's why he's the success that he is is is a big
2:12:06and it's a huge part of the whole Silicon Valley,
2:12:10what are we looking for is we're looking for people
2:12:12who see things that nobody else sees.
2:12:15And this is an example of that, right?
2:12:17He saw an opportunity here to do this in a way that,
2:12:22it just never occurred to anybody else.
2:12:23I think that's why this has so,
2:12:26grabbed everybody's attention.
2:12:28- Well, and so, just to, I don't know,
2:12:30almost to play devil's advocate a bit on this,
2:12:32But when you call him an asshole for the way
2:12:37that he sort of executed it, I mean,
2:12:41maybe he executed it this way on purpose.
2:12:43He wanted to be in the shadows for all this time
2:12:46and then to have some sort of big reveal
2:12:48to make it that much more of a statement
2:12:50and to make it that much more meaningful
2:12:52when it did come out this way.
2:12:53Yeah.
2:12:54And the aforementioned Felix Salmon post definitely
2:12:59makes the case that--
2:13:01he makes a compelling case that revealing himself
2:13:04was absolutely part of it.
2:13:06- Part of the plan, yeah.
2:13:07- Because what it does is,
2:13:11it says this isn't, now you realize that whatever happens
2:13:15with the Hogan appeal, this isn't gonna stop.
2:13:19And he can keep this up indefinitely.
2:13:22And everybody knows that everybody can just go through
2:13:24in the back of their mind a list of things,
2:13:27articles that Gawker has published over the years
2:13:29that maybe they could get sued over.
2:13:30And it therefore means that anybody who is perhaps
2:13:34thinking of investing in Gawker is gonna think twice
2:13:37about it because it looks like if you're investing
2:13:39in Gawker, you're investing against Peter Thiel funding,
2:13:44trying to bankrupt the company.
2:13:46And they need the investment money because they need
2:13:49to deal with the legal fees and the potential judgment
2:13:53against Hogan.
2:13:54That revealing himself is part of it because now
2:13:59makes Gawker look like a way worse investment than it was, you know, Gawker, if you're,
2:14:03if anybody was thinking of investing in Gawker two days ago, it certainly looks like a worse
2:14:07investment now that you know that they've made a lifelong enemy of Peter Thiel and that
2:14:11he's set his sights on destroying the company. Unsurprisingly, there are already reports,
2:14:16of course, now that Gawker is trying to sell itself and, you know, it's being marked down
2:14:21way below what they, you know, were valued at just a few months ago. Yeah, and that's
2:14:28going to make it very hard.
2:14:30Yeah, I would say in terms of what I wrote,
2:14:32that if it turns out that it's true that Teal's plan all along
2:14:35was to reveal himself at a certain strategic point
2:14:38for the purpose of even kicking them when they're down,
2:14:44then it doesn't take away the asshole part of what I said.
2:14:46It takes away the coward part, because he didn't have a plan
2:14:49to remain secret forever, that it was only secret strategically
2:14:52for the first part of this deathless revenge scheme.
2:14:56Yeah, and I mean, I will say, I don't know Peter Tillettal.
2:14:59I'm fairly certain I've actually never met him,
2:15:02even though we sort of do the same thing now.
2:15:05But I also just--
2:15:08one of the things I'm trying to think about, again,
2:15:11a reaction to this in a 24-hour period,
2:15:13I don't recall the whole situation with Valley WAG
2:15:17when it happened those eight or nine years ago.
2:15:19I mean, I've heard about it after the fact.
2:15:25And I-- but I also have a hard time sort of discounting,
2:15:28like, well, I understand what Valleywag's position was,
2:15:34that it was sort of like publicly that he was known
2:15:38to be gay amongst a big enough circle
2:15:41that it should be sort of common knowledge.
2:15:44I don't know what his mindset--
2:15:45like, he was clearly--
2:15:47he's clearly very-- was very pissed off and very pissed off
2:15:50enough to do this whole plan.
2:15:52Like, I don't know that I'm one to say, like, is he wrong?
2:15:57You know, like a lot of people are saying that this is a major overblown thing
2:16:03that he's just taken it so far out of proportion and the response is not in
2:16:09proportion to what the original act was.
2:16:11But like, I don't know.
2:16:13I wasn't there.
2:16:14Like maybe he was like, his mindset was just totally destroyed by what they did.
2:16:21after he told them not to do it.
2:16:22So anyway, I just don't want to degrade that completely.
2:16:27I don't know what his mindset is.
2:16:29- Right, I hear you.
2:16:30As a devil's advocate, take,
2:16:32I shouldn't say I disagree, 'cause I don't know.
2:16:37I don't know Peter Thiel either, obviously.
2:16:40Right, so that's possible.
2:16:41That's possible that it really was
2:16:43so significantly stressful to him,
2:16:46emotionally harmful to him,
2:16:49that maybe it really isn't disproportionate.
2:16:51But the one goofy, I have to say that,
2:16:53here's a goofy part, I mean, this is goofy.
2:16:56Is Teal's description of this
2:17:01as the most philanthropic thing he's ever done in his life.
2:17:05- Oh yeah, the one. (laughs)
2:17:06- That is really, that's gonna go down
2:17:10as one of the things for people who are thinking
2:17:14that the inequality is out of control
2:17:16that the hyper-rich are detached from reality.
2:17:21I mean, there's exhibit A, it was Peter Thiel.
2:17:25I mean, whatever you think about this, right?
2:17:27I'm fully acknowledging that there's a devil's advocate
2:17:30take on this, that what he did is just revenge served cold,
2:17:34and was in some sense just.
2:17:37I don't agree, I think it's a vast overreaction.
2:17:40I go with, did you read Elizabeth Speer's take?
2:17:44- Yeah, yeah, I did.
2:17:45It's like if the United States attacked
2:17:49a small African country with the full weight
2:17:51of the armed services just for some small,
2:17:54disproportionate reaction.
2:17:58I'm on that side,
2:18:00but I agree with the devil's advocate take on that.
2:18:01But even if you agree with the devil's advocate take,
2:18:04this is not philanthropy.
2:18:07- I don't know, did you read Ben Thompson's take too
2:18:11in his newsletter today?
2:18:13It was interesting because I won't go into it then.
2:18:16I won't-- you can link to it.
2:18:17But it's-- I thought it was a fascinating way
2:18:22to frame it around the notion of superheroes and supervillains.
2:18:26And it's like, can these superheroes exist without a--
2:18:34I don't want to bungle this.
2:18:38But it's basically that in, so to say,
2:18:41the Marvel Cinematic Universe, what
2:18:44happens when the superheroes come
2:18:46is there's usually this super villain thing that
2:18:49ends up coming, it seems, coincidentally.
2:18:51But maybe it's not coincidental.
2:18:53Maybe it's the result of the superhero coming or vice versa.
2:18:56The superhero comes because the supervillain is there.
2:18:59And so they're intertwined.
2:19:01And he draws an interesting analogy
2:19:04to this whole situation of how this is going down,
2:19:08which I think is worth the read.
2:19:11There is a certain, and I know people have compared Elon Musk to a Bond villain,
2:19:16but Elon Musk doesn't seem, it doesn't, I can't think of anything he's done there.
2:19:22It makes him look like a jerk, but this, there is like a certain, you know,
2:19:27Bond movies and other movies are always full of, you know, evil billionaires or,
2:19:32you know, evil, maybe evil is too strong a word, but you know, right.
2:19:36Billionaires bent on scheming, scheming, scheming billionaires.
2:19:41And this is here it is in real life, you know like this
2:19:45Incredible scheme that nobody would have nobody really
2:19:49Perceived as possible like and when like you said before like when it came up in trial interviews like ah, yeah, come on
2:19:56That's this isn't a Marvel movie. Yeah
2:19:58But and then the other element to this like going back to where we started sort of like with the whole Twitter and it's just
2:20:05like oh
2:20:06My god, and this is this is going to go on for a while
2:20:09I mean, you know, like you said, you know, 24 hours sort of things die down
2:20:13But then there's more and more just keeps coming and this is like the perfect storm
2:20:17you know coming as someone who comes from the reporter side and now sort of
2:20:22You know far enough removed from it to sort of hopefully be somewhat
2:20:27Circumspect about it
2:20:31this is like the perfect storm of a story that's not going to die anytime soon because
2:20:36This is what?
2:20:38Many not all but many reporters love writing about more than anything else is their own profession and like, yeah
2:20:44You know things coming after it and the potential
2:20:47for
2:20:49The end of what they do and coming after potentially their livelihoods and stuff
2:20:54And so this is just the perfect storm for Twitter for media Twitter
2:20:58And it's gonna be non-stop stories about this for a long time to come. It seems like yeah to me. It's
2:21:05I can't it's almost hard to conceive of a better story for media Twitter. Yeah
2:21:10Yeah
2:21:14Anything else you wanted to talk about it
2:21:19No, those were pretty much wraps up my list
2:21:23so
2:21:26People can find your writing. Where are you doing? Most you're writing these days. So
2:21:32Almost always now on medium, I set up one of the publications there.
2:21:36Medium is of course again one of the GV investments, but before we invested in it,
2:21:43I was a huge fan of the simplicity of the platform and the CMS elements of it,
2:21:49having used many other CMSs throughout the years, which are a hodgepodge of things.
2:21:54So most of the writing I do now, I bought a domain called 500-ish, which was nice and short,
2:22:00and I try to keep the writing short these days since I don't have a ton of time to do it as much as I used to.
2:22:05So, that's where I am.
2:22:07500ish.com
2:22:10and on the Twitter, @mgsiegler
2:22:16Right?
2:22:16That's right.
2:22:18Alright.
2:22:20My thanks to you for your time and your observations.
2:22:24I would also like to give one more thanks to our sponsors.
2:22:28Casper, go buy a mattress. Audible, go buy some audiobooks.
2:22:34Wealthfront, invest all the money you have left after you've bought a mattress and
2:22:40bought some audiobooks. And sued Gawker, or sued Al Kogan.
2:22:45Yes, and sued somebody.