The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Mg

00:00:01 ◼   ► John long time no long time no here. Yeah, how are you?

00:00:05 ◼   ► Very good been too long. So what what are you up to these days? What are you what the hell are you doing? So?

00:00:11 ◼   ► I came back from the UK. I was over there for a year helping to set up

00:00:17 ◼   ► Google Ventures European operations over there and with that off the ground I came back

00:00:22 ◼   ► About I guess more than six months ago. Now is sometime last summer. It's actually

00:00:28 ◼   ► We're heading back to the UK for the first time since we left, so it's almost been a year.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Anyway, so back on the ground in San Francisco now.

00:00:38 ◼   ► Back just to doing US Google Ventures, now called GV as a part of the

00:00:45 ◼   ► Alphabet stuff, you know, so

00:00:48 ◼   ► Google Ventures is one of the

00:00:50 ◼   ► Alphabet

00:00:52 ◼   ► companies that's a sister company now to Google versus being, you know, under

00:00:56 ◼   ► Google. Same basic idea, but they would prefer we use the name GV instead of Google Ventures now.

00:01:03 ◼   ► Right, as part of the whole, if it's really a sibling to Google and part of Alphabet, it shouldn't be called Google.

00:01:11 ◼   ► Right, exactly. So yeah, so back, but doing the same stuff, just

00:01:15 ◼   ► investing in, you know, mainly early stage, early to mid stage companies here.

00:01:24 ◼   ► What do you do you think that having spent a whole year in in the UK?

00:01:29 ◼   ► When you came back did it?

00:01:31 ◼   ► Did you look at at the valley?

00:01:34 ◼   ► Culture and sort of feel like you had fresh eyes or did feel like just instantly like, you know what I'm home

00:01:41 ◼   ► It's a good question because I did think about that the longer sort of I was over there

00:01:46 ◼   ► And obviously we were coming back fairly regularly

00:01:50 ◼   ► I think I was back at least once a quarter in the in the US and mainly in the Bay Area when I came back

00:01:55 ◼   ► But still the longer I was over there you do start to get detached from it

00:02:01 ◼   ► And I felt like I was able to look at it from much more of a outsider perspective

00:02:06 ◼   ► After having lived in the Bay Area for almost 10 years

00:02:08 ◼   ► you know concurrently

00:02:11 ◼   ► and

00:02:13 ◼   ► It was

00:02:15 ◼   ► interesting coming back

00:02:17 ◼   ► And you do feel like you get just like sort of right back into the swing of things almost like you hadn't left

00:02:23 ◼   ► but at the same time I had these lingering remembrances of what it was like being over in the UK and sort of

00:02:29 ◼   ► Watching remotely both because of what we were talking about with the timezone thing was was one of the more interesting things

00:02:34 ◼   ► When I would wake up in the morning

00:02:37 ◼   ► It was mostly either people who were up really late or people who were out drinking or something like that were on Twitter

00:02:43 ◼   ► And so I would have a much, much different usage of Twitter when I was over there than

00:02:50 ◼   ► I do when I'm over here, and it's just sort of in the thick of it with everyone.

00:02:54 ◼   ► When I'm over there, it's almost like you're using it to play catch-up and then talking

00:02:59 ◼   ► to a few drunk people.

00:03:03 ◼   ► But anyway, yeah, so when I came back, I did get right back into the swing of things, but

00:03:09 ◼   ► But I still have these, hopefully, different perspectives on how the outside views Silicon

00:03:18 ◼   ► Valley versus being in it for a decade.

00:03:22 ◼   ► And do you think that outside the Valley startups are underrepresented or more likely to be

00:03:37 ◼   ► overlooked?

00:03:38 ◼   ► Yeah, like I that's my outsider's perspective. My outsider's perspective is that inside the valley

00:03:43 ◼   ► The the focus is so insular because there's so many

00:03:47 ◼   ► things going on and so many smart people and so many interesting things that it's it it

00:03:54 ◼   ► Cultivates an idea that everything worth looking at is in the valley

00:03:57 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a good way to frame because most people, you know talk about well, you're too far in the forest

00:04:02 ◼   ► and

00:04:04 ◼   ► You 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

00:04:10 ◼   ► Sort 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

00:04:16 ◼   ► Just hard as a matter of time to be able to look outside of it

00:04:20 ◼   ► Unless you happen to be in a locale that's outside of it

00:04:23 ◼   ► So most of the people here who are investing here or certain companies here

00:04:28 ◼   ► You know are you know very much in the in the thick of it?

00:04:32 ◼   ► And so it is probably, it's definitely fair to say that, you know, sort of outside of Silicon Valley is underrepresented,

00:04:41 ◼   ► underrepresented in the minds of everyone here. But I do think that that's just as much of a function of, again,

00:04:49 ◼   ► there being so much here to think about and look at. And so it's just the proximity and time issue.

00:04:58 ◼   ► But then when you move to somewhere else like London

00:05:01 ◼   ► or any other locale, then of course

00:05:04 ◼   ► you're closer to some of those things.

00:05:06 ◼   ► And so you start to see outside of that.

00:05:08 ◼   ► And that's not to say whether or not it's a good or bad thing.

00:05:13 ◼   ► I think overall, everyone would agree,

00:05:14 ◼   ► it's sort of a bad thing to have blind spots to something

00:05:17 ◼   ► if you're not aware of it.

00:05:20 ◼   ► But it's an easier thing that's said than done

00:05:25 ◼   ► when the proximity thing is such a key factor.

00:05:29 ◼   ► - I'm trying to think since the last time

00:05:36 ◼   ► you've been on the show,

00:05:37 ◼   ► what are some of the big high level changes

00:05:40 ◼   ► to the type of stuff we talked about?

00:05:41 ◼   ► - Well, Apple's still doomed.

00:05:43 ◼   ► More doomed than ever.

00:05:47 ◼   ► The more money they make, the farther they have to fall.

00:05:52 ◼   ► It's a catastrophic fall that's happening.

00:05:55 ◼   ► I think they only made whatever.

00:05:57 ◼   ► What did they make?

00:05:59 ◼   ► 50 billion in revenue last quarter, something like that?

00:06:02 ◼   ► - I thought something like that.

00:06:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

00:06:06 ◼   ► And 10 billion in profit.

00:06:08 ◼   ► - It's more than all the major other tech companies combined.

00:06:11 ◼   ► It's way more than any other company, of course,

00:06:14 ◼   ► including Exxon and all the, maybe,

00:06:17 ◼   ► but what's it?

00:06:19 ◼   ► Aramco, I guess, is about to,

00:06:21 ◼   ► or not Aramco, it's, what's the Saudi one?

00:06:25 ◼   ► - Oh, I forget the name.

00:06:27 ◼   ► I know what you're talking about, but I forget the name.

00:06:30 ◼   ► - It sounds like they're about to go public

00:06:32 ◼   ► or spun out partially, so we're about to see

00:06:34 ◼   ► how much money potentially that they make,

00:06:35 ◼   ► and it could be something comparable to Apple.

00:06:37 ◼   ► So it might be the first time we get something like that.

00:06:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, it just only compares to the gas and oil companies.

00:06:46 ◼   ► And it's kind of funny, 'cause we grew up,

00:06:50 ◼   ► I mean, even people who are significantly older than us,

00:06:53 ◼   ► I think, grew up in a world where it's just-- well,

00:06:56 ◼   ► of course the gas and oil companies

00:06:58 ◼   ► are the biggest companies in the world.

00:07:00 ◼   ► It's just like that's the world.

00:07:02 ◼   ► Whereas it's like I'm old enough now to sort of--

00:07:05 ◼   ► and with all the climate change stuff and all--

00:07:10 ◼   ► the interest in renewable energy,

00:07:12 ◼   ► everybody's looking at that and questioning it.

00:07:14 ◼   ► And it's no longer taken as a given

00:07:19 ◼   ► that this is just the way it is.

00:07:20 ◼   ► But I did the math with all the skepticism

00:07:25 ◼   ► with Apple's quote, unquote, bum quarter last quarter.

00:07:30 ◼   ► And it really was true.

00:07:31 ◼   ► I think, I forget if it was revenue or profit,

00:07:33 ◼   ► I think I was looking at profit.

00:07:34 ◼   ► And yeah, it was profit because that's why

00:07:36 ◼   ► I took Amazon out of the equation

00:07:39 ◼   ► because they don't try for profit.

00:07:40 ◼   ► So it's almost like, it's like you're stacking the deck

00:07:45 ◼   ► in the favor of Apple by comparing Amazon.

00:07:48 ◼   ► I think it was like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook combined that they had more profit

00:07:52 ◼   ► than.

00:07:53 ◼   ► Right.

00:07:54 ◼   ► Which is just insane.

00:07:56 ◼   ► Especially with Microsoft, and Google too.

00:08:00 ◼   ► I think Google is often, largely, has tried for profit.

00:08:04 ◼   ► But Microsoft, famously, it was the most profitable company in the industry.

00:08:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:12 ◼   ► I remember when, thinking back to, I don't even remember how long ago, it was six, seven

00:08:17 ◼   ► years ago or something sort of when I was at TechCrunch looking, trying to cover sort of the

00:08:22 ◼   ► day-to-day of putting into context like just how fast Apple's growing and how big it is relative

00:08:27 ◼   ► to some of the other tech companies. And I remember both putting it in the context of

00:08:32 ◼   ► Microsoft at the time and Microsoft was still leaps and bounds ahead both certainly in profit

00:08:38 ◼   ► and I think in still at revenue at that point. But the other one I remember is HP. Like HP was

00:08:45 ◼   ► so far ahead in revenue that it seemed like Apple would never be able to surpass something like that.

00:08:50 ◼   ► And then, you know, like 18 months later, it was so far in the rearview mirror that it was insane.

00:08:56 ◼   ► Even the HP branded iPods couldn't change that.

00:09:01 ◼   ► That's right. They somehow didn't write the ship. And now HP's been spun out,

00:09:06 ◼   ► or it's got split up once, right? And I think they just sold a separate part of the enterprise

00:09:13 ◼   ► version that was spun out. So it's like three separate companies now that was the one behemoth

00:09:17 ◼   ► at that point that seemed seemed like you know a tech company can ever topple those those types

00:09:22 ◼   ► of revenues and now it's funny. Yeah and it's like HP is one of those companies. It's not like I ever

00:09:28 ◼   ► had a great interest in Hewlett-Packard you know I mean but they were at least relevant to the

00:09:34 ◼   ► sphere of things that I read and now it's almost like when an article comes up with a review of

00:09:38 ◼   ► like an HP laptop or something. I'm like, "Wow, HP, I haven't thought about them in

00:09:42 ◼   ► like a year."

00:09:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm the same way.

00:09:44 ◼   ► I just don't even think about it.

00:09:46 ◼   ► It's basically only when I see on Techmeme the earnings report of HP, and that's the

00:09:51 ◼   ► only time I'll see the headline of, "Yeah, they beat," or, "They slightly missed," or

00:09:56 ◼   ► whatever on their targets. It's such a mind-numbing headline to read. I just don't have time to

00:10:06 ◼   ► really care that much anymore about HP.

00:10:08 ◼   ► What's the name of Microsoft's tablet?

00:10:12 ◼   ► Surface.

00:10:14 ◼   ► Surface.

00:10:15 ◼   ► Surface.

00:10:15 ◼   ► So I just saw a review the other day where,

00:10:18 ◼   ► where HP came out with like more or less their competitor to the surface.

00:10:23 ◼   ► And it's,

00:10:25 ◼   ► it's like,

00:10:26 ◼   ► it's just like a surface and,

00:10:28 ◼   ► and they're advertising it,

00:10:29 ◼   ► but you can open it up and like,

00:10:30 ◼   ► you know,

00:10:31 ◼   ► replace the Ram and you can do this and that.

00:10:34 ◼   ► And you know,

00:10:34 ◼   ► It's like all this stuff that was like,

00:10:37 ◼   ► the things people wanted to do with their PCs

00:10:39 ◼   ► like 10 years ago.

00:10:40 ◼   ► But then like the bottom line is,

00:10:41 ◼   ► so it's just like a surface and out of the box,

00:10:43 ◼   ► it's thicker and heavier.

00:10:45 ◼   ► - That's great.

00:10:48 ◼   ► Good job HP.

00:10:49 ◼   ► - Good luck with that.

00:10:49 ◼   ► - But so it's just, it's a tablet with a keyboard thing?

00:10:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'll try to find the review

00:10:58 ◼   ► and I'll put the link in the show notes.

00:11:00 ◼   ► It's just like, I don't know,

00:11:03 ◼   ► some division of HP is still making these things in it.

00:11:06 ◼   ► It's squeaked out the side, but it's like,

00:11:08 ◼   ► it's not surprising.

00:11:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's the office space guy

00:11:14 ◼   ► with the red stapler in the basement

00:11:15 ◼   ► who's just doing this and no one realizes it, yeah.

00:11:19 ◼   ► - Exactly, right.

00:11:20 ◼   ► He's still down there making laptops

00:11:22 ◼   ► and he's like looking around the industry

00:11:23 ◼   ► and he's like, well, I guess that's the new form factor.

00:11:26 ◼   ► And that's what he made.

00:11:27 ◼   ► That's exactly it.

00:11:32 ◼   ► You are, I think, you've been bullish on Uber.

00:11:44 ◼   ► Yeah, sure.

00:11:45 ◼   ► I mean, you know, GV is a pretty big investor in Uber.

00:11:49 ◼   ► Right, so let's disclose it every time GV

00:11:53 ◼   ► is an investor in somebody.

00:11:55 ◼   ► But I feel like that, again, not having

00:12:00 ◼   ► had you on the show in a long time, that to me, the ride sharing, and it doesn't have

00:12:05 ◼   ► to be Uber in particular, but it seems to be accelerating at an almost crazy rate. And

00:12:18 ◼   ► I could be wrong. Maybe one thing, a couple years ago, I don't know, I guess about 10

00:12:23 ◼   ► ago. There were a lot here in Philly, especially the Zipcars was pretty common. And you'd see them,

00:12:30 ◼   ► and I always noticed it because I noticed branding and stuff that, you know, the cars all had Zipcars

00:12:35 ◼   ► printed on the side. And I knew where all the parking lots were, where they were. And it was

00:12:41 ◼   ► something that when we were shopping for a car 10 years ago, we considered it. We've really strongly

00:12:47 ◼   ► thought, maybe we don't have to buy a car. Maybe we could just do the Zipcars thing. But it's like,

00:12:51 ◼   ► we kind of pretended, you know, like, "Well, let's pretend it's a rainy day, and how far do we have to

00:12:56 ◼   ► go?" And it was like, "Yeah, this is pretty far." So we didn't go for it. We bought a car. But

00:13:00 ◼   ► I've noticed, and this is totally anecdotal, but I don't see anywhere near as many Zip cars in

00:13:06 ◼   ► Philadelphia as I used to. It seemed like that got popular, and now it's less popular, and I can't

00:13:12 ◼   ► help it think that it's the ride sharing.

00:13:19 ◼   ► Actually the last time I've been in Philadelphia in a long time, certainly well before Uber

00:13:23 ◼   ► and Lyft and whatnot existed, so is Uber pretty ubiquitous? Is that how people get around?

00:13:29 ◼   ► Well, I can't speak for the whole city of Philadelphia, but Philadelphia, center city

00:13:33 ◼   ► Philadelphia is, you know, the downtown part of Philadelphia is all centralized. It's one

00:13:37 ◼   ► contiguous rectangular block. And within Center City, Philly, it's never more than a five-minute

00:13:45 ◼   ► wait for a black car or an SUV. I don't really do the UberX, but I think it's even less for that.

00:13:52 ◼   ► And it's really, really common.

00:13:55 ◼   ► And does Philly have good public transportation or really bad public transportation?

00:13:59 ◼   ► I would qualify it as mediocre. We have two subway lines, one that goes east-west and one that goes north-south.

00:14:08 ◼   ► So it's just effectively just like a plus that goes right through the center of the city.

00:14:14 ◼   ► So 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.

00:14:24 ◼   ► So it's easy for me, like if I'm going to a game, I just walk to the what we call the

00:14:29 ◼   ► Broad Street line, the one that goes north-south, hop on that and go south, and it's great.

00:14:34 ◼   ► If you want to go anywhere off that plus grid, it's not so great.

00:14:37 ◼   ► I mean there's buses, but eh.

00:14:39 ◼   ► Yeah, no.

00:14:40 ◼   ► I mean even in the cities now with great public transportation, New York obviously, London

00:14:45 ◼   ► being another, it's still, you're still seeing Uber, Lyft, and all the rest sort of just

00:14:51 ◼   ► taking over and becoming huge in all these markets just because, I mean, I think there's

00:14:56 ◼   ► a number of things at play, but the convenience factor of course, like just dialing up something

00:15:01 ◼   ► and it being there right at your doorstep and taking you exactly to where you need to go,

00:15:06 ◼   ► you know, just makes sense for a lot of people. You talked about your wife and yourself sort of

00:15:13 ◼   ► thinking about if Zipcar would make sense. You know, when Megan, my wife, and I moved over to

00:15:18 ◼   ► to London, we sold our cars here in San Francisco.

00:15:22 ◼   ► And so when we came back, we thought about what should we

00:15:26 ◼   ► do.

00:15:26 ◼   ► And right now, we still don't have cars.

00:15:28 ◼   ► It's been almost a year.

00:15:29 ◼   ► Neither one of us have a car.

00:15:31 ◼   ► And we do use Uber to get everywhere, basically.

00:15:35 ◼   ► A few times, we've rented a car, like if we're

00:15:37 ◼   ► going for an extended trip up north or down south.

00:15:42 ◼   ► But for 99% of our travel now is with Uber.

00:15:46 ◼   ► And I want to preface that a little bit,

00:15:48 ◼   ► because I know I sound like a Silicon Valley, perhaps,

00:15:52 ◼   ► stereotype.

00:15:54 ◼   ► Yeah, we can get everywhere we need to go on Uber.

00:15:56 ◼   ► But the reality is, in a lot of, I think, metro areas now,

00:16:01 ◼   ► it can be cheaper depending on your situation

00:16:06 ◼   ► and depending on what you need to do.

00:16:07 ◼   ► It's obviously a little bit different

00:16:09 ◼   ► if you have children and some other life situations.

00:16:11 ◼   ► But for the situation that we're currently in,

00:16:15 ◼   ► It's definitely cheaper for us to use something like Uber and UberX and now UberPool,

00:16:20 ◼   ► like the carpooling version of it, to get around a city versus owning a car,

00:16:24 ◼   ► having to pay insurance, having to pay for gas, having to pay for parking,

00:16:28 ◼   ► and everything else that's included.

00:16:30 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's just one of those things that it's really opened my eyes to.

00:16:36 ◼   ► Just, I know it sounds so obvious, it sounds such a duh, but it's like,

00:16:42 ◼   ► "Good God, look at all these cars that are parked everywhere."

00:16:45 ◼   ► And I know that this is part of just the basic argument,

00:16:48 ◼   ► but it's that the industry is ripe for transportation.

00:16:50 ◼   ► But when you're in a city and you just see cars parked everywhere,

00:16:55 ◼   ► and you see buildings that are just parking garages just stacked with cars,

00:16:59 ◼   ► and you just think, "All of these cars are just sitting here for hours and hours and hours,"

00:17:03 ◼   ► and you think like an Uber is always in motion.

00:17:09 ◼   ► Yeah. I mean, I think that that's a good point.

00:17:11 ◼   ► And it's something that gets talked about a little bit,

00:17:13 ◼   ► but not enough.

00:17:14 ◼   ► And I think it will be talked about more and more

00:17:17 ◼   ► as this becomes more of the reality in more places.

00:17:20 ◼   ► But you're exactly right.

00:17:21 ◼   ► Like, imagine the future, whether it's Uber and Lyft

00:17:26 ◼   ► or the eventual sort of self-driving car elements,

00:17:30 ◼   ► where all of a sudden, all of these spaces and cities

00:17:33 ◼   ► are unlocked that are just used, as you said,

00:17:35 ◼   ► to sort of house cars that just sit there all day,

00:17:38 ◼   ► which is ridiculous.

00:17:40 ◼   ► so much of city life is taken up by these giant parking garages.

00:17:44 ◼   ► And when you can unlock that and you no longer need those,

00:17:47 ◼   ► like cities become much better as a result of having all that space sort of

00:17:51 ◼   ► freed up. And you can put any number of things there, anything you want,

00:17:54 ◼   ► all these, uh, I, you know, who knows how much square footage is out there.

00:17:58 ◼   ► That's, that's just devoted to parking, but it is a ton.

00:18:01 ◼   ► Yeah. It's, it's, you know, and when you think about it and you just don't,

00:18:06 ◼   ► know, like again, it's like, you know, when I first came to Philly, you know, for college in the early

00:18:12 ◼   ► 90s, I just assumed that the city would be full of cars. That's just the world as I knew it. But as I,

00:18:18 ◼   ► you know, question it now, it's, this seems ridiculous.

00:18:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I still do wonder. So I grew up in a suburb outside of Cleveland. And, you know, it's a fairly

00:18:30 ◼   ► typical Midwestern-like suburb. And there, obviously, it's not super dense and you had

00:18:39 ◼   ► to drive everywhere. And so I've been home a few times in the past few years and they

00:18:48 ◼   ► have Uber and I do take it, but it's not nearly, of course, as ubiquitous as it would be in

00:18:54 ◼   ► the city. Like even in downtown Cleveland, it would be a lot more ubiquitous, of course.

00:18:59 ◼   ► And so I do wonder for the suburbs and outside regions

00:19:03 ◼   ► how long that will take to tip.

00:19:05 ◼   ► But I still think it will.

00:19:08 ◼   ► I think it will spill out from the cities into that.

00:19:11 ◼   ► And it's just a matter of having enough cars on the roads that

00:19:17 ◼   ► are performing those tasks to be able to do it in a suburban

00:19:20 ◼   ► area as well.

00:19:20 ◼   ► I know a lot of people still think in the suburbs,

00:19:23 ◼   ► it's just not feasible.

00:19:25 ◼   ► You have to go grocery shopping and do

00:19:27 ◼   ► all these things that are sort of always a drive away.

00:19:29 ◼   ► But again, at scale, I'm not so sure

00:19:32 ◼   ► that that's totally unreasonable.

00:19:35 ◼   ► - I was listening to one of Bill Simmons' podcasts recently

00:19:40 ◼   ► and I think only half ingest,

00:19:45 ◼   ► he has a theory that because of Uber,

00:19:48 ◼   ► there are more people having accidental third kids

00:19:52 ◼   ► because Uber, the existence of Uber

00:19:55 ◼   ► makes it so much easier for parents with kids

00:20:00 ◼   ► to go out and have a couple drinks at dinner

00:20:03 ◼   ► than they would in the past.

00:20:05 ◼   ► If you had to drive, one of the two of you would have to,

00:20:08 ◼   ► you know, would have to abstain.

00:20:10 ◼   ► And if you just take an Uber to dinner,

00:20:12 ◼   ► you can both drink.

00:20:14 ◼   ► And so his theory, there's gonna be a lot more families

00:20:16 ◼   ► with three kids instead of two.

00:20:18 ◼   ► - That's pretty funny, I like that, the Uber boom.

00:20:23 ◼   ► Uber's helping the world in families, with families.

00:20:27 ◼   ► That's what it's all about.

00:20:30 ◼   ► But it seems funny because it's just a funny idea

00:20:34 ◼   ► that people are going to have extra babies.

00:20:37 ◼   ► But there's a certain logic to it.

00:20:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:39 ◼   ► I do think it's true.

00:20:40 ◼   ► I mean, it's sort of the flip side of that, just in general.

00:20:44 ◼   ► Isn't it great to know when you go out in a city or not,

00:20:49 ◼   ► anywhere, really, when you want to have a few drinks,

00:20:52 ◼   ► like you just do not have to worry about it.

00:20:56 ◼   ► And that just was not the reality 10 years ago, of course.

00:20:59 ◼   ► - Right, and there's parts of Philly,

00:21:02 ◼   ► I mean, it doesn't matter,

00:21:05 ◼   ► it doesn't mean anything to you if you're not here,

00:21:06 ◼   ► but like an area we call Fishtown,

00:21:09 ◼   ► and it's like the gentrified area,

00:21:11 ◼   ► like the part that was really kind of sketchy

00:21:13 ◼   ► even 10, 15 years ago,

00:21:15 ◼   ► and it's sort of like that's where all the hipster stuff is.

00:21:18 ◼   ► But there's lots and lots,

00:21:20 ◼   ► I mean, because of that, it's all sorts of new restaurants

00:21:23 ◼   ► that open up, open up in that area.

00:21:25 ◼   ► And it's always, even now that it's more popular,

00:21:29 ◼   ► grossly underserved by cabs.

00:21:31 ◼   ► So you can get a cab to go there easily,

00:21:34 ◼   ► but then when you wanna leave, you are good luck.

00:21:39 ◼   ► And it's actually the type of thing where you'd actually

00:21:42 ◼   ► call a cab company, which seems like such

00:21:45 ◼   ► an old-timey thing to do.

00:21:49 ◼   ► But then you wait.

00:21:50 ◼   ► And it's like every time--

00:21:52 ◼   ► I remember in the old days before Uber and stuff

00:21:55 ◼   ► like that, if I did call for a cab,

00:21:58 ◼   ► you could wait half an hour and they don't come.

00:22:00 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:22:01 ◼   ► I mean, that was very much the reality of the situation

00:22:04 ◼   ► when I got to San Francisco almost 10 years ago.

00:22:07 ◼   ► And of course, this is--

00:22:09 ◼   ► everyone knows the thing now.

00:22:10 ◼   ► Like, part of the reason why Uber came into existence--

00:22:12 ◼   ► I mean, the main story was they were in Paris

00:22:15 ◼   ► and sort of at a tech conference and sort of talking

00:22:18 ◼   ► about wouldn't it be cool to have a black car service

00:22:20 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:22:21 ◼   ► But the reality is that when they got back

00:22:23 ◼   ► to San Francisco, everyone was living in this reality

00:22:26 ◼   ► where San Francisco public transportation was awful.

00:22:28 ◼   ► And it still is awful outside of Uber.

00:22:30 ◼   ► Muni is the line here that's the public transportation that

00:22:34 ◼   ► goes down all the time and is always running late.

00:22:37 ◼   ► And it's a constant joke.

00:22:39 ◼   ► If you follow Matt Honan on Twitter,

00:22:41 ◼   ► it's like 50% of his tweets are complaining about Muni.

00:22:45 ◼   ► And then we have the BART system,

00:22:46 ◼   ► which is we have all these like sort of half baked

00:22:50 ◼   ► public transportation things.

00:22:51 ◼   ► But when I moved to San Francisco,

00:22:52 ◼   ► I lived in an area called Russian Hill, which

00:22:55 ◼   ► was not connected to any or near any of the public transportation

00:22:58 ◼   ► aside from the cable cars, which I would take every once

00:23:02 ◼   ► in a while, which is sort of ridiculous

00:23:03 ◼   ► because it's very much like a tourist thing.

00:23:05 ◼   ► And so I'm on there with 50 tourists

00:23:08 ◼   ► and I'm trying to take this to commute into Soma.

00:23:12 ◼   ► And it takes forever because it goes slow to appreciate

00:23:14 ◼   ► the view or whatever.

00:23:16 ◼   ► But that was the reality of public transportation for me

00:23:20 ◼   ► when I moved to San Francisco.

00:23:21 ◼   ► And yes, so you would see a cab every once in a while.

00:23:25 ◼   ► But if you would have to get lucky to spot one out there,

00:23:29 ◼   ► and that was even still a better situation

00:23:32 ◼   ► than trying to call one.

00:23:33 ◼   ► I mean, I remember I would call them

00:23:35 ◼   ► from my apartment in Russian Hill,

00:23:37 ◼   ► and it would be often like a 45 minute wait.

00:23:40 ◼   ► And about half the time, they just wouldn't show up at all.

00:23:42 ◼   ► So you couldn't trust it.

00:23:43 ◼   ► And so when people are talking about,

00:23:46 ◼   ► there's just simple things that led to the rise

00:23:49 ◼   ► of services like Uber and just why the cab companies

00:23:53 ◼   ► get all mad that this is happening to them.

00:23:57 ◼   ► It's like, I mean, they really did do it to themselves.

00:24:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, in Philly, it's again a long story short,

00:24:04 ◼   ► but the cab situation here is,

00:24:05 ◼   ► I've told this story on the show before,

00:24:06 ◼   ► but it really is true.

00:24:08 ◼   ► Philly's cabs are really lower, less regulated

00:24:12 ◼   ► in terms of like in just the, I mean we have,

00:24:14 ◼   ► it's just like New York and other big cities

00:24:16 ◼   ► where you have to have a taxi medallion.

00:24:18 ◼   ► And they limit the number of medallions, you know.

00:24:22 ◼   ► So it's like artificial scarcity.

00:24:24 ◼   ► But the actual cars themselves

00:24:26 ◼   ► don't have very high inspection standards.

00:24:28 ◼   ► And New York does.

00:24:31 ◼   ► And so most of the cabs on the road in Philadelphia

00:24:34 ◼   ► are cabs that failed regular, you know, inspection.

00:24:39 ◼   ► - That's funny, I didn't know that.

00:24:40 ◼   ► just ship them down the Jersey Turnpike and sell them to cab companies in Philly. Or police

00:24:45 ◼   ► cruisers. The last time I couldn't remember the name of the car, Crown Victorias. And

00:24:51 ◼   ► some of them, if you actually pay attention to the Crown Vic cabs in Philly, you can actually

00:24:55 ◼   ► still see the ones that have the police division on the back. They just paint them. They just

00:25:00 ◼   ► paint over them.

00:25:01 ◼   ► That's funny.

00:25:02 ◼   ► And everybody knows that police officers abuse their cars. They drive them up curbs. They're

00:25:09 ◼   ► in action. And then once the police are like, "Wow, this isn't even good enough to use for

00:25:13 ◼   ► a police cruiser anymore," then they just sell them to a cab company in Philly. And

00:25:16 ◼   ► they're just really, again, this is a total white wine. This is absolutely coming from

00:25:22 ◼   ► a position of privilege. But the cab, most of the cabs in Philly, they're just gross.

00:25:27 ◼   ► They're just grossed as beer. They don't smell good. The air conditioning, a lot of them,

00:25:34 ◼   ► especially the Crown Vicks, and then the Crown Vicks are there because they're not making

00:25:37 ◼   ► them anymore. So slowly but surely, they're getting off the roads and they're being replaced

00:25:41 ◼   ► by newer cars. But like the Crown Vics, they all have the safety-style divider between

00:25:51 ◼   ► you and the cab driver with plexiglass. Most of them, there's just like this gross, I

00:25:57 ◼   ► swear to God, like a two-inch diameter tube down on the floor coming from the front, which

00:26:02 ◼   ► is where the heater air conditioning gets sent to the back.

00:26:05 ◼   ► Oh, that's great. I guess at first I thought you were going, that's where sort of the driver

00:26:12 ◼   ► discharges when they've been driving for a long time. So that's slightly better than

00:26:15 ◼   ► that.

00:26:16 ◼   ► Yeah, it's slightly better. It's definitely better than that. But yeah, imagine like an

00:26:20 ◼   ► accordion style tube, like a plastic tube. You know, those ones that kids can like wave

00:26:25 ◼   ► around and they make like a funny noise. It's like that type of tube and it's just there

00:26:29 ◼   ► on the floor and that's where your air conditioning comes from. It's really, they did it to themselves.

00:26:34 ◼   ► And so that used to be the situation, too,

00:26:36 ◼   ► with cabs in San Francisco.

00:26:37 ◼   ► For sure, they were disgusting.

00:26:39 ◼   ► They were ridiculous cars.

00:26:41 ◼   ► I've noticed-- the only time that I ever take a cab anymore

00:26:44 ◼   ► in San Francisco, I've taken a few coming back

00:26:46 ◼   ► from the airport, just because obviously, a lot of cities,

00:26:49 ◼   ► as I'm sure you know, too, have these weird rules around where

00:26:53 ◼   ► an Uber or Lyft can pick you up.

00:26:54 ◼   ► And it takes sometimes longer to wait

00:26:57 ◼   ► because of that as a result. So if I'm in a hurry,

00:27:00 ◼   ► I'll just hop in a cab.

00:27:01 ◼   ► And so I've been in a few recently,

00:27:03 ◼   ► coming back from places.

00:27:04 ◼   ► And the cabs are night and day better

00:27:08 ◼   ► than they were those eight years ago.

00:27:10 ◼   ► I mean, it's the case of just the existence of Uber, Lyft,

00:27:13 ◼   ► and everything else has forced them to up their game, which

00:27:19 ◼   ► means no longer accordion tubes of heat.

00:27:23 ◼   ► And of course, they all now have sort of--

00:27:26 ◼   ► at first, none of them would take credit card

00:27:28 ◼   ► in San Francisco.

00:27:29 ◼   ► It drove me insane.

00:27:30 ◼   ► Now they all seem to as a result of this.

00:27:33 ◼   ► But yeah, things like that.

00:27:36 ◼   ► And you can summon a few from apps now, it seems like,

00:27:39 ◼   ► and whatnot.

00:27:40 ◼   ► So it has risen.

00:27:42 ◼   ► The tide has risen for all boats.

00:27:44 ◼   ► But still, yeah, took that case for it to happen.

00:27:49 ◼   ► All right, let's hold that thought

00:27:51 ◼   ► because I'll come back to it.

00:27:52 ◼   ► I don't want to talk about Apple and where

00:27:56 ◼   ► the rise of the self-driving cars

00:27:57 ◼   ► might play into Apple's car ambitions.

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00:30:32 ◼   ► So I would say this is one of the most frequent emails I get on a weekly basis from readers of

00:30:39 ◼   ► Daring Fireball or listeners of the show is just readers just saying, "Hey, hey, John. Idea.

00:30:48 ◼   ► what if Apple's car project isn't about a car that they're going to sell?

00:30:52 ◼   ► What if it's like a self-driving car service? And I can't tell you,

00:30:57 ◼   ► I mean literally I get two or three emails like that a week. And my answer is,

00:31:02 ◼   ► if I answer the email, a lot of times I don't have time to answer emails.

00:31:06 ◼   ► I'm sorry about that. But my answer is maybe, I don't know.

00:31:10 ◼   ► It's possible. I mean,

00:31:13 ◼   ► my only thing about that though is that Apple traditionally is a company that at

00:31:17 ◼   ► core makes objects that are beautiful, that are well designed, that have like a

00:31:25 ◼   ► sexiness to them, and then they sell them to people who want nice things at a

00:31:31 ◼   ► premium price. That's just what Apple does. So common sense would tell me that

00:31:36 ◼   ► just by history that if Apple's making a car, they're making a car that they plan

00:31:40 ◼   ► to sell at a high profit. Yeah, I mean so that's been a thing that that's been

00:31:47 ◼   ► bandied about I guess since the whole rumors of Apple cars started. First

00:31:52 ◼   ► and foremost it was was it going to be an electric car and it seems like I

00:31:57 ◼   ► mean that's it that seems like a for sure thing right there's no chance that

00:32:00 ◼   ► Apple makes a you know an old gas guzzler type car. I would say of yeah I

00:32:07 ◼   ► would say of all the maybes and who the hell knows what they're planning with

00:32:10 ◼   ► cars that's the one thing I would I would say is a hundred percent a lot

00:32:13 ◼   ► Yeah, because it's it's so off their brand at this point. We're so committed with environments and everything right like right

00:32:21 ◼   ► Yeah, they're so committed to the environment. I mean here in I bet it's the same everywhere, but here in Philly

00:32:26 ◼   ► That front of the store right now says this store is runs on 100% renewable. I saw that exact same thing the other day

00:32:34 ◼   ► Yeah, there's there's no way

00:32:38 ◼   ► You could sell a device that runs on gasoline

00:32:41 ◼   ► Inside a store that says the store runs on our present renewable energy. You just can't it's off their brand

00:32:48 ◼   ► So I just clearly they're not I don't even think they're they're looking at maybe yeah, maybe in like ten years

00:32:52 ◼   ► They'll have the campaign like, you know, we you know, we really are upset that global warming has slowed to the level

00:32:59 ◼   ► You know of sustainability, so we're really amping it up

00:33:02 ◼   ► We want to want to get get that back on track. The world is becoming too cold

00:33:07 ◼   ► And so yeah, so that I do wonder like I and I also think I mean

00:33:13 ◼   ► I would I would guess that that also rules out a hybrid, you know, they could do something like that

00:33:18 ◼   ► I 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

00:33:23 ◼   ► Make no sense. I think to even do a hybrid approach. It has to be all electric, right? I

00:33:27 ◼   ► Think so. I think even and I just think they can't get they just can't get near I think I

00:33:34 ◼   ► I 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

00:33:41 ◼   ► Predicting the future hat. I I just think that's on the way out

00:33:46 ◼   ► I think that hybrids were obviously a stop grab and you know, maybe a necessary one

00:33:51 ◼   ► I'm not even saying that they weren't you know that the hybrids are on a road aren't doing a good job

00:33:55 ◼   ► But it clearly doesn't seem like that's where the puck is going

00:33:59 ◼   ► So the other point of would Apple just do this as sort of a service type thing is an interesting question

00:34:06 ◼   ► I mean, I'm with you that I it just doesn't seem like it's it's

00:34:11 ◼   ► What they do that they would they would do something like that

00:34:15 ◼   ► It is interesting to think about if they're you know

00:34:17 ◼   ► If 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

00:34:23 ◼   ► Apple, you know that they can't find they can't find a business. That's that's more interesting than the iPhone

00:34:29 ◼   ► Do they start to really think outside the box?

00:34:32 ◼   ► And as they start to go down the path more of services,

00:34:35 ◼   ► I mean, maybe there's a chance that they realize that this,

00:34:40 ◼   ► beyond just selling a car themselves,

00:34:43 ◼   ► maybe it's more interesting to have a service

00:34:45 ◼   ► that's potentially a more stable source of ongoing revenue.

00:34:50 ◼   ► Maybe, but I don't think that that's the case,

00:34:54 ◼   ► but that's the only argument I could make

00:34:57 ◼   ► as to why they would do something like that.

00:35:00 ◼   ► I do think the self-driving question itself is interesting.

00:35:03 ◼   ► It also would seem to me that that's

00:35:06 ◼   ► what they would likely be going after versus having it just

00:35:11 ◼   ► be full-on electric.

00:35:12 ◼   ► But I don't know about that.

00:35:13 ◼   ► It's possible that they're doing a two-pronged approach, one,

00:35:17 ◼   ► an electric car that you can drive yourself like Tesla,

00:35:20 ◼   ► two, the fully self-driving one, or some sort of hybrid,

00:35:24 ◼   ► as you know, like a lot of the Teslas now

00:35:25 ◼   ► rolling out these software updates to do autonomous driving in some capacity, like when it's on

00:35:30 ◼   ► the freeway and whatnot. So it could end up being something like that.

00:35:36 ◼   ► I just feel like the timeline doesn't add up to bank on self-driving. My best guess,

00:35:44 ◼   ► and it just sounds so like I'm trying to have it every way, I'm not making a firm prediction,

00:35:49 ◼   ► But my guess is that Apple is working on electric cars,

00:35:53 ◼   ► that they are absolutely working on

00:35:56 ◼   ► self-driving technologies.

00:35:58 ◼   ► Let's say the early, I think the earliest

00:36:01 ◼   ► they could possibly actually unveil

00:36:04 ◼   ► an Apple branded car is like 2020.

00:36:07 ◼   ► So even if there's some kind of Apple magic

00:36:12 ◼   ► that throwing their resources at,

00:36:14 ◼   ► that proves me wrong, 2019,

00:36:18 ◼   ► I mean, that just seems crazy to go from not having a car

00:36:21 ◼   ► other than as a secret project

00:36:23 ◼   ► to actually having them on the road that you can buy.

00:36:25 ◼   ► 2019 seems like fantasy land.

00:36:28 ◼   ► By 2020, will self-driving cars be there

00:36:33 ◼   ► that you could do like the,

00:36:34 ◼   ► not even have your hands on,

00:36:38 ◼   ► not even be paying attention to the road?

00:36:39 ◼   ► I just don't see that as possible.

00:36:41 ◼   ► And even just legally.

00:36:42 ◼   ► - Right.

00:36:43 ◼   ► - Even if the technology,

00:36:44 ◼   ► I think the technology is gonna get there before the laws--

00:36:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, that's 100% for sure.

00:36:51 ◼   ► I mean, I guess they could--

00:36:56 ◼   ► maybe you could look at it sort of like the way

00:36:58 ◼   ► the iPhone rolled out, right?

00:36:59 ◼   ► Like there were faster 3G services at the time, right?

00:37:06 ◼   ► But they rolled out without 3G.

00:37:07 ◼   ► And so maybe it is still the case,

00:37:10 ◼   ► even if there was self-driving cars out on the road,

00:37:13 ◼   ► or say 75% self-driving.

00:37:15 ◼   ► It's like it could be self-driving beyond a few areas

00:37:20 ◼   ► where it's not.

00:37:21 ◼   ► It's possible that Apple would just roll out it as not

00:37:25 ◼   ► advertised or whatever as self-driving,

00:37:28 ◼   ► because they don't feel like it's

00:37:29 ◼   ► a good enough experience yet.

00:37:30 ◼   ► And I could see that world where it's like maybe Google

00:37:36 ◼   ► is something out there, maybe Uber, maybe Tesla.

00:37:39 ◼   ► And they're billing them more as self-driving,

00:37:42 ◼   ► but Apple is a bit more cautious on that front.

00:37:45 ◼   ► and really waiting for it to be like a fully self-driving

00:37:49 ◼   ► thing before they go down that road.

00:37:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's exactly what I think,

00:37:53 ◼   ► is that they're planning for that full steam ahead,

00:37:56 ◼   ► but that they are also planning,

00:37:59 ◼   ► I'm guessing to ship a car before that's ready.

00:38:01 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:38:02 ◼   ► - And that exactly, you know, the analogy to 3G and LTE,

00:38:05 ◼   ► but 3G is the perfect example,

00:38:07 ◼   ► 'cause 3G was actually, there were 3G phones.

00:38:10 ◼   ► It's actually one of the, you know,

00:38:11 ◼   ► if you go back and look at the claim chowder of the people

00:38:13 ◼   ► who panned the original iPhone, they'd be like,

00:38:16 ◼   ► it's not even 3G.

00:38:17 ◼   ► You know, it's, I think it's that sort of thing,

00:38:20 ◼   ► where they're like, look, for practical purposes,

00:38:22 ◼   ► we're gonna go with Edge for this one,

00:38:24 ◼   ► and you know, we'll pick up 3G in a year or two.

00:38:27 ◼   ► - But do you think that they would do,

00:38:29 ◼   ► sort of like what Tesla's done,

00:38:31 ◼   ► so they roll out one high-end, you know,

00:38:34 ◼   ► Tesla started with the Roadster,

00:38:35 ◼   ► which is like a super high-end, super fancy sports car,

00:38:38 ◼   ► right, and then, and Elon Musk,

00:38:40 ◼   ► in that great blog post many years ago,

00:38:42 ◼   ► laid out exactly what they were gonna do

00:38:44 ◼   ► and what they're now pulling off, right?

00:38:46 ◼   ► That they would then roll out a cheaper version

00:38:49 ◼   ► and then sort of a SUV type version.

00:38:52 ◼   ► And then like the cheapest version,

00:38:55 ◼   ► sort of the mass market version.

00:38:56 ◼   ► Do you think Apple would take that approach,

00:38:58 ◼   ► something akin to that, where they do sort of one at a time

00:39:01 ◼   ► versus rolling out like say two models,

00:39:04 ◼   ► like a high-end version and then more like the sedan

00:39:08 ◼   ► for regular folks or something?

00:39:11 ◼   ► Prior to Apple Watch, I would have said one for sure,

00:39:13 ◼   ► because that's how Apple always did things, right?

00:39:16 ◼   ► There's one iPhone, there's one iPad, here it is.

00:39:19 ◼   ► This is the iPad.

00:39:20 ◼   ► And only years down the road are there things like

00:39:24 ◼   ► iPad Pros and iPad Minis and, you know,

00:39:27 ◼   ► low-end models with two-year-old systems on a chip

00:39:30 ◼   ► and high-end models with the latest and greatest.

00:39:32 ◼   ► Only years down the road.

00:39:34 ◼   ► But without, after Apple Watch, I think, I don't know.

00:39:38 ◼   ► I don't know that, you know, maybe Apple Watch,

00:39:41 ◼   ► I keep thinking that maybe Apple Watch is not that it was,

00:39:44 ◼   ► not that the only reason they did it

00:39:45 ◼   ► was as a test for the car,

00:39:46 ◼   ► but that it lays out the formula for the car

00:39:50 ◼   ► where they might do three, right?

00:39:53 ◼   ► Apple Car Sport, $25,000 or something like that, $30,000.

00:39:58 ◼   ► Apple Car, $50,000.

00:40:02 ◼   ► And the Apple Car Edition for $100,000.

00:40:08 ◼   ► And I'm laughing, but part of the reason I say that is that I know that there's an

00:40:14 ◼   ► off, you know, executives at Apple.

00:40:16 ◼   ► I've been to the Apple parking lot.

00:40:18 ◼   ► There are a lot of really nice cars in the infinite loop parking lot.

00:40:22 ◼   ► People who work at Apple have nice cars.

00:40:24 ◼   ► It's almost like I've...

00:40:25 ◼   ► And we know, like, Johnny Ive and Phil Schiller and who else?

00:40:33 ◼   ► Eddie Q, right?

00:40:34 ◼   ► He's on the board of Lamborghini, I think.

00:40:36 ◼   ► Yes.

00:40:37 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:40:38 ◼   ► - So they're obviously car guys.

00:40:40 ◼   ► They like their fancy cars.

00:40:41 ◼   ► - Right. - Yeah.

00:40:42 ◼   ► - So, you know, how do you, you know,

00:40:48 ◼   ► if there are already car guys who like exotic cars,

00:40:50 ◼   ► how does Apple get into it without making an exotic car?

00:40:53 ◼   ► - Well, and to tie it back

00:40:54 ◼   ► to what we were talking about earlier,

00:40:56 ◼   ► you know, we were talking about it in the context of Uber,

00:40:58 ◼   ► like not needing to own a car anymore.

00:41:00 ◼   ► Like if we're talking about, let's say it's 2020.

00:41:03 ◼   ► So it's, you know, a little less than four years.

00:41:07 ◼   ► say it's four years from now, four or five years from now.

00:41:10 ◼   ► And more people are in the space of what you and your wife

00:41:16 ◼   ► were debating, and me and my wife now live in,

00:41:19 ◼   ► let's just say in urban areas at least, in city areas,

00:41:24 ◼   ► that they feel like they don't need to own a car.

00:41:26 ◼   ► Is it weird for Apple to be making a car that they would

00:41:29 ◼   ► potentially be selling for whatever, $50,000 in a world

00:41:35 ◼   ► where a decreasing number of people are buying cars?

00:41:38 ◼   ► - That's a great question.

00:41:42 ◼   ► That's part of why I find this whole topic fascinating

00:41:45 ◼   ► 'cause there's so many trends that are moving, right?

00:41:50 ◼   ► There's the, we've talked about them,

00:41:52 ◼   ► but there's the gas to electric.

00:41:55 ◼   ► There's the self-driving is coming.

00:41:58 ◼   ► There's, and then there's this whole shared,

00:42:02 ◼   ► ride-sharing thing where people just don't own cars period. I think my guess

00:42:07 ◼   ► is that okay fewer and fewer people are buying cars but Apple can enter and if

00:42:12 ◼   ► you're gonna buy a car they're gonna they're gonna have a compelling car.

00:42:16 ◼   ► You know that it's easy to say sure fewer people are buying cars but it's

00:42:21 ◼   ► you know people also said fewer people are buying watches fewer people wear a

00:42:25 ◼   ► watch than ever before. That's true that's a good point because I was gonna

00:42:28 ◼   ► I was going to say like PCs, fewer people are buying PCs, right?

00:42:32 ◼   ► But then Mac is still doing well, relatively speaking, but would they enter that world

00:42:36 ◼   ► now knowing it's an overall shrinking world?

00:42:40 ◼   ► And that's not to say they wouldn't, but it's a calculation you have to make.

00:42:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I totally think so.

00:42:48 ◼   ► But I just think that the market for cars is so big, that so many, you know, there are

00:42:53 ◼   ► so many car companies and so many, you know, it's just so much money in the industry overall,

00:42:58 ◼   ► even if it shrinks significantly,

00:43:01 ◼   ► that Apple can take a sizable chunk

00:43:04 ◼   ► of the profitable end of that market.

00:43:06 ◼   ► And it still is huge.

00:43:07 ◼   ► - Right, and it's a potential,

00:43:09 ◼   ► talking, going back to the, what is the next iPhone,

00:43:12 ◼   ► it's one of the potential things

00:43:14 ◼   ► that could actually match the iPhone.

00:43:16 ◼   ► Like I think we're all, I think everyone,

00:43:18 ◼   ► I would assume you're in agreement now,

00:43:20 ◼   ► and always have been, but like,

00:43:22 ◼   ► that even at the best case scenario for Apple Watch,

00:43:27 ◼   ► it cannot match what the iPhone did just because of the whole subsidy model,

00:43:32 ◼   ► you know, and, and the way that,

00:43:35 ◼   ► that the world just worked back then and the watch has nothing like that.

00:43:39 ◼   ► Even if Apple sells more of them overall,

00:43:42 ◼   ► they're not going to make as much money off of it because it's just a different

00:43:45 ◼   ► business. Right. There's no way,

00:43:48 ◼   ► even no matter how popular Apple watch becomes,

00:43:50 ◼   ► it's not going to sell in the quantity that iPhone does.

00:43:53 ◼   ► And each one they do sell is gonna sell

00:43:57 ◼   ► for at least half the price,

00:43:59 ◼   ► if not even less than half the price of the iPhone today.

00:44:03 ◼   ► Because almost everybody gets the sport model.

00:44:05 ◼   ► - Right, which is a mistake I made.

00:44:07 ◼   ► - So it's a lower price product.

00:44:09 ◼   ► It's a lower price, what, you did buy a sport?

00:44:11 ◼   ► - No, I should have bought a sport.

00:44:13 ◼   ► I bought the regular Apple Watch, not the edition.

00:44:15 ◼   ► I bought the regular one and I'm just like,

00:44:17 ◼   ► I don't know why I did that.

00:44:18 ◼   ► I did that because I thought it would be slightly different

00:44:20 ◼   ► or whatever, but it definitely should have gotten the sport.

00:44:22 ◼   ► Anyway, that's an aside.

00:44:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, I've mentioned,

00:44:26 ◼   ► I'm actually wearing it today.

00:44:30 ◼   ► I have the regular one with the space black,

00:44:33 ◼   ► and I do like a link style bracelet,

00:44:35 ◼   ► and it is a wonderful bracelet, and it's very comfortable.

00:44:38 ◼   ► But I really think that the sport models are superior

00:44:41 ◼   ► just because the Taptic engine works better.

00:44:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, and wasn't it supposed to have

00:44:45 ◼   ► a slightly better screen?

00:44:46 ◼   ► I remember something slightly better, maybe?

00:44:51 ◼   ► The display isn't any better, but the surface of the display on the regular Apple Watch

00:44:58 ◼   ► is sapphire.

00:44:59 ◼   ► The other one is whatever, ion-coated glass.

00:45:03 ◼   ► So it does pick up fine scratches.

00:45:05 ◼   ► But I've looked at my sons.

00:45:06 ◼   ► My son has had an Apple Watch from, I guess, around a year and wears it a lot.

00:45:13 ◼   ► And he's a 12-year-old kid and it's not like he's taking good care of it.

00:45:17 ◼   ► I've looked at the screen and it does have fine scratches, but it's no different than

00:45:21 ◼   ► than any other non-sapphire coated watch that I've worn.

00:45:25 ◼   ► And when you're actually looking at the display head

00:45:27 ◼   ► on the scratches, you can't see them.

00:45:29 ◼   ► You have to do the thing where you turn the display off

00:45:31 ◼   ► and kinda find a glaring light source

00:45:35 ◼   ► to sort of spot the scratches.

00:45:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, so anyway, so yeah,

00:45:41 ◼   ► most people are buying the cheaper version.

00:45:44 ◼   ► So the car, high-end cars are one of the few things

00:45:51 ◼   ► that could produce the types of revenues that would match iPhone, potentially, at a massive scale.

00:45:57 ◼   ► Right, or at least be like the same class of plan.

00:46:02 ◼   ► Right.

00:46:02 ◼   ► You know what I mean? So maybe the iPhone is still Jupiter, but the car potentially is another gas giant.

00:46:10 ◼   ► Could be like Neptune or something like that.

00:46:12 ◼   ► As opposed to the Apple Watch, which is really just like another Venus or Earth or Mars or something.

00:46:18 ◼   ► Yes.

00:46:18 ◼   ► Like it's a planet, it's not Pluto. It's a real planet.

00:46:24 ◼   ► But it's, come on, you can't compare it to Jupiter.

00:46:26 ◼   ► But the car could be, just because the car would sell, just, you know, it could easily sell for $30,000.

00:46:34 ◼   ► Quite frank, you know, it's Apple, so it's probably more.

00:46:38 ◼   ► So, I know you want to talk about the Peter Thiel thing too as well, and we can get to that.

00:46:43 ◼   ► But while we're still on the topic of Apple,

00:46:45 ◼   ► the one thing that I've been thinking about a lot recently

00:46:48 ◼   ► is the whole Alexa and the rumors now.

00:46:53 ◼   ► I think the information had the report the other day

00:46:55 ◼   ► that Apple would be working on a potential Echo competitor.

00:47:00 ◼   ► And of course, Google announced their home thing

00:47:03 ◼   ► at I/O, which is the Echo competitor.

00:47:05 ◼   ► And I'm interested in your take on that.

00:47:08 ◼   ► I think at a high level, we went back and forth on Twitter

00:47:12 ◼   ► a little bit one night.

00:47:13 ◼   ► I think you know my perspective on it, which is that the--

00:47:18 ◼   ► - Well, hold your thought, hold your thought.

00:47:19 ◼   ► 'Cause that was already in my list of topics

00:47:21 ◼   ► I wanna talk to you about.

00:47:23 ◼   ► And we could do a whole segment on it.

00:47:24 ◼   ► So let me take a break and thank another sponsor,

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00:48:23 ◼   ► your daily commute.

00:48:25 ◼   ► Really, I think the reason Audible keeps coming back

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00:48:30 ◼   ► if you're listening to me read this sponsored blurb,

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00:48:56 ◼   ► My thanks to Audible for their continued sponsorship

00:48:58 ◼   ► of this show.

00:49:00 ◼   ► - You quickly, before we go into Alexa and whatnot,

00:49:03 ◼   ► you brought up Bill Simmons podcast earlier.

00:49:05 ◼   ► I was always curious if you ever thought about doing what he does when he does his sponsor

00:49:10 ◼   ► reads and plays like, I think he plays like a Tupac song or whatever in the background.

00:49:14 ◼   ► But do you think about, you know, like a way to sort of, I don't know, perdition it differently

00:49:20 ◼   ► than the rest of the show?

00:49:23 ◼   ► I have, it's funny, it's very funny that you would bring that up because two reasons that

00:49:29 ◼   ► I have thought about that is A) Bill Simmons podcast, which now with this whole ringer

00:49:34 ◼   ► there's more of them and I've been listening to them and I've noticed that and I like it.

00:49:39 ◼   ► I like I really like his reads too. I think he does a great job at it.

00:49:43 ◼   ► It makes me want to up my game on making sure that the the reads are engaging.

00:49:49 ◼   ► Like that's really one of the things I feel like I feel like when I do this show

00:49:53 ◼   ► I'm just having fun talking to people who I like talking to and my job is

00:49:57 ◼   ► doing the sponsor reads in a way that makes people not want to skip them. And how can I do that?

00:50:02 ◼   ► What would I what would I what would it take for me if I were listening to the talk show?

00:50:05 ◼   ► To not want to skip this ad and I never skip Bill Simmons's so I really and it inspires me

00:50:12 ◼   ► But I've noticed that he plays that the music. Yeah, and then the the gang on

00:50:16 ◼   ► Accidental tech podcast has started they've been it's almost like an in-joke where they haven't been playing music behind the reeds

00:50:23 ◼   ► But they've been they've added little

00:50:27 ◼   ► sounds to start it and close them. Okay, so people to give people an indication of like this is this is now, you know

00:50:34 ◼   ► the sponsored break

00:50:37 ◼   ► Ding ding ding and and you know and then it's the sponsoring and then and then when it's over

00:50:41 ◼   ► It's like dun dun dun and then it's like you're back and and I have to mention because they did

00:50:44 ◼   ► Marco Arment on ATP said that his inspiration for starting to do that when he edits the show is

00:50:50 ◼   ► the absolutely great podcast which I've mentioned before hello internet with

00:50:56 ◼   ► CGP Grey and the other guy.

00:51:02 ◼   ► So I've listened to Simmons' podcast for a long time, dating back well to the earlier,

00:51:11 ◼   ► probably near when he started it at ESPN.

00:51:14 ◼   ► And I think, because originally they would play, I think they would play canned ads,

00:51:20 ◼   ► and they still do this on many ESPN podcasts, and so he slowly evolved into more of the

00:51:26 ◼   ► reads that you hear now and certainly what you do.

00:51:29 ◼   ► And one of the reasons why I think you like him

00:51:32 ◼   ► and I like him too is because he was so bad at it at first.

00:51:36 ◼   ► It's almost like when someone told him that, well, you

00:51:41 ◼   ► got to actually talk about it.

00:51:43 ◼   ► That's what resonates with podcast listeners.

00:51:45 ◼   ► And so if you're just having a conversation,

00:51:48 ◼   ► then all of a sudden dive into a spiel about whatever

00:51:52 ◼   ► the advertiser is doing, it comes across much better

00:51:55 ◼   ► than sort of a canned recording of whatever

00:51:58 ◼   ► the advertiser is saying.

00:52:00 ◼   ► And so at first he was so bad at it.

00:52:03 ◼   ► And I think he's evolved over time

00:52:05 ◼   ► and almost like plays on like being bad at it

00:52:09 ◼   ► because it's not so bad anymore,

00:52:10 ◼   ► but it's like, it's just natural, right?

00:52:12 ◼   ► It's like the way that he would talk about it.

00:52:15 ◼   ► And I think you, honestly,

00:52:16 ◼   ► I think you do a good job of it as well.

00:52:18 ◼   ► But the only thing is his just feels like more raw.

00:52:22 ◼   ► That's what it is.

00:52:23 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:52:24 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:52:25 ◼   ► I have to add, Brady Harron is the other co-host of Hello

00:52:29 ◼   ► Internet.

00:52:31 ◼   ► But they do the same thing with the bumper sounds.

00:52:33 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:52:34 ◼   ► I have to think about it.

00:52:35 ◼   ► I'm not setting my ways on this.

00:52:37 ◼   ► OK, so Siri-- so the information had a scoop the other day

00:52:43 ◼   ► that Apple is planning both a Siri API for developers

00:52:48 ◼   ► to extend Siri and an Echo-like standalone device, which

00:52:53 ◼   ► which is also competitive with the upcoming Google Home.

00:52:59 ◼   ► Right.

00:53:00 ◼   ► So, I have had an Amazon Echo.

00:53:06 ◼   ► I always get confused whether I should call it Alexa or Echo.

00:53:09 ◼   ► I know, yeah.

00:53:10 ◼   ► It is the Echo.

00:53:11 ◼   ► Alexa is the persona, obviously.

00:53:15 ◼   ► But it's also how you address it.

00:53:16 ◼   ► You say Alexa.

00:53:17 ◼   ► Right.

00:53:18 ◼   ► It's a weird branding issue.

00:53:22 ◼   ► I think they should just call it Alexa, honestly.

00:53:24 ◼   ► But anyway, so I've had one for several months now,

00:53:26 ◼   ► about a quarter.

00:53:27 ◼   ► And I definitely use it daily when I'm home,

00:53:32 ◼   ► unless I'm on the road, of course.

00:53:34 ◼   ► And I'm slowly but surely finding new use cases for it.

00:53:40 ◼   ► It started as sort of novelty, of course,

00:53:42 ◼   ► just what's the weather and whatever.

00:53:45 ◼   ► Now I use it almost daily to read me the latest news, which

00:53:50 ◼   ► is sort of another obvious one.

00:53:51 ◼   ► But it's sort of a nice way just to--

00:53:54 ◼   ► when you get up in the morning, just like, Alexa,

00:53:57 ◼   ► what's the latest news?

00:53:58 ◼   ► And it'll just start doing it.

00:53:59 ◼   ► There's no phone to unlock.

00:54:01 ◼   ► There's no button to push.

00:54:04 ◼   ► You just speak out loud.

00:54:06 ◼   ► That's what you want.

00:54:07 ◼   ► My wife uses it all the time when she's cooking to say--

00:54:10 ◼   ► and it's like a constant thing.

00:54:12 ◼   ► It's almost like an orchestrated event of her cooking

00:54:17 ◼   ► and with the Alexa in the kitchen saying,

00:54:19 ◼   ► Alexa, set a timer for two minutes.

00:54:21 ◼   ► Then two minutes goes by, it goes off.

00:54:22 ◼   ► Alexa, off.

00:54:23 ◼   ► Alexa, set a timer for five minutes.

00:54:25 ◼   ► And it's like this whole thing that just goes on every night

00:54:28 ◼   ► that she's cooking.

00:54:31 ◼   ► It's really a good device.

00:54:33 ◼   ► And I was skeptical of it when I first heard about it

00:54:36 ◼   ► because it seemed ridiculous.

00:54:37 ◼   ► It's a standalone, expensive thing

00:54:40 ◼   ► that does a lot of what you can already

00:54:43 ◼   ► do with Siri and Cortana and Google Now

00:54:48 ◼   ► and some of the other things.

00:54:50 ◼   ► But in using it, it's useful.

00:54:55 ◼   ► Yeah, and there's a certain--

00:54:56 ◼   ► like, the cooking in the kitchen scenario

00:55:00 ◼   ► is almost ideal for it.

00:55:02 ◼   ► I have one too.

00:55:03 ◼   ► I just got it like three weeks ago,

00:55:05 ◼   ► and I'm not using it that much.

00:55:10 ◼   ► But I think one of the reasons-- do

00:55:11 ◼   ► you have any of the smart home stuff, like light bulbs

00:55:14 ◼   ► and stuff like that?

00:55:15 ◼   ► I don't have anything like that.

00:55:16 ◼   ► Yeah, not that I think we do have like one light bulb thing,

00:55:20 ◼   ► but not that we use, and we don't have a Nest or anything like that currently installed.

00:55:24 ◼   ► Right. But for the cooking stuff, so I know people definitely use their phones for stuff

00:55:29 ◼   ► like that, and I know definitely people use a smartwatch, like your Apple Watch or whatever

00:55:35 ◼   ► are the smartwatch to do that stuff too. But the thing with Echo is it's completely hands-free,

00:55:42 ◼   ► so you don't have to push a button on a watch or fish your phone out of the pocket. I know

00:55:49 ◼   ► your phone I guess if you know if you have a new iPhone you could if you have

00:55:52 ◼   ► it plugged in you can try the hey you know the name of I try to avoid it's

00:55:57 ◼   ► we don't have to beep it but Siri but you know it works even if not plugged in

00:56:04 ◼   ► like this is a big thing that people oh yeah it does now that's that's the thing

00:56:07 ◼   ► that you have to have a new one for now that's right that's a new feature right

00:56:10 ◼   ► if you have like the iPhone success it just seems though that echo is more

00:56:17 ◼   ► reliable. You can really count on it to make sure that it's given you the timer that you

00:56:26 ◼   ► just told her to say. I really struggle with the pronoun for these things. I tend to use

00:56:36 ◼   ► her with Siri, and it's even weirder because I know that in some countries it defaults

00:56:40 ◼   ► to a male voice.

00:56:41 ◼   ► That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So, should you use it? And the whole -- it's a very strange dynamic

00:56:48 ◼   ► that I think will never be fully sorted out. But, yeah. So, you bring up like the -- I

00:56:55 ◼   ► even hesitate to call it accuracy. Because I'm not 100% sure that Alexa is more accurate

00:57:03 ◼   ► than, say, Siri. It seems that way. But it's just more reliable, right? And I think it's

00:57:09 ◼   ► because it's a combination of things. But one of the things is that, you know, when

00:57:14 ◼   ► you set up Siri, you have to set it up by saying, hey, I also don't want to set up all

00:57:20 ◼   ► my devices. You know the word. Hey, she who shall not be named. And so, you have to do

00:57:27 ◼   ► that a few times, right? And so, it's like Apple obviously thought that that's a good

00:57:31 ◼   ► way to make it sort of personalized to you. And so, someone else can't necessarily set

00:57:36 ◼   ► it off. But that is also a limiting factor, it seems like, and makes it less reliable.

00:57:43 ◼   ► And so Amazon just deciding not to do it that way and just leaving it open so anyone can

00:57:48 ◼   ► trigger it, ends up being, I think, a smarter implementation, at least for now, of how to

00:57:54 ◼   ► do that.

00:57:55 ◼   ► Yeah, and anecdotally, I've read this and I've had, since I've started talking about

00:58:00 ◼   ► this and heard from people on Twitter and email sending me, that a lot of... I've heard

00:58:05 ◼   ► it numerous times that people with young kids, their kids can use the echo really

00:58:12 ◼   ► reliably and they have no luck at all with Siri. Siri really doesn't...

00:58:17 ◼   ► Siri's speech recognition really isn't good with kids. And it's funny

00:58:21 ◼   ► because it's like you know it. You know that kids don't speak as... I don't even

00:58:29 ◼   ► know what the word is. They're not as articulate. They don't

00:58:31 ◼   ► enunciate as crisply as adults. But you tend to think of it as, "Well, that's just how kids talk."

00:58:38 ◼   ► But it's seemingly, from a speech recognition standpoint, they're just harder to understand.

00:58:43 ◼   ► Whereas humans are so good that we don't really think of kids as being harder to understand,

00:58:47 ◼   ► we just think of them as sounding as kids, because our natural linguistic abilities are so good that

00:58:54 ◼   ► we just blow right through the way that they mispronounce words. Yeah, and so the kids thing

00:59:01 ◼   ► is interesting also because before I got a echo everyone one of the main themes that kept coming

00:59:08 ◼   ► up is like kids love it and I don't have kids you have a son like does your son use it like

00:59:13 ◼   ► no not really he's he's but he I he kind of thinks it's pointless because but there's nothing he

00:59:20 ◼   ► really wants to know from it that we have hooked up yeah we had fun we did have fun as the family

00:59:25 ◼   ► the one one or two nights playing music and calling out you know and then it's it's funny

00:59:30 ◼   ► because it's like if there's a song on and any one of the three of us doesn't like it, you can

00:59:34 ◼   ► tell Alexa to stop and play something else. Yeah, and I think that that's been stated. I don't know

00:59:40 ◼   ► if it's by Amazon or not, that that's one of the main use cases, of course, is playing the music.

00:59:46 ◼   ► It's a seamless way to do, "Hey, Alexa," and I said, "Hey," you don't have to say, "Hey, of course,"

00:59:56 ◼   ► Alexa play, you know, this station on Pandora or whatever. I think you can hook up,

01:00:02 ◼   ► obviously Amazon Music, you can hook up Pandora. You can't hook up Apple Music right now, right? So

01:00:10 ◼   ► so there's... I don't expect Apple to get on that quickly.

01:00:15 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I don't either. But so that's one big use case. So the other thing is,

01:00:22 ◼   ► It obviously has a decent speaker, but it's not great.

01:00:26 ◼   ► It's not like a Sonos or something like that.

01:00:28 ◼   ► And you can hook up--

01:00:29 ◼   ► because we also got the dot thing.

01:00:31 ◼   ► The dot is a smaller one.

01:00:33 ◼   ► As an aside, the one thing I loved about that rollout

01:00:36 ◼   ► was the fact that in order to first order a dot,

01:00:39 ◼   ► you actually had to order it through the Echo.

01:00:40 ◼   ► You had to say, like, Alexa, order me a dot.

01:00:44 ◼   ► And it knew what it was.

01:00:46 ◼   ► I mean, my wife actually did it.

01:00:47 ◼   ► And within three minutes or whatever, it confirms.

01:00:50 ◼   ► And so we had a dot ordered and come in shipping to our house.

01:00:54 ◼   ► And we got it.

01:00:54 ◼   ► And it worked beautifully.

01:00:55 ◼   ► And you couldn't order it on the website, at least at the time,

01:00:58 ◼   ► when they first rolled that out.

01:01:00 ◼   ► So that was fascinating.

01:01:02 ◼   ► I don't think you can now.

01:01:03 ◼   ► I mean, I just searched Amazon for Echo.

01:01:05 ◼   ► I don't see it.

01:01:06 ◼   ► Echo dot.

01:01:06 ◼   ► Let me see.

01:01:08 ◼   ► So did you know it's--

01:01:10 ◼   ► They do have it.

01:01:10 ◼   ► You can get it.

01:01:11 ◼   ► You can get Echo dot for $89 on Amazon.

01:01:17 ◼   ► Do you know it's hilarious right now?

01:01:18 ◼   ► No.

01:01:18 ◼   ► So I just was giving that whole spiel,

01:01:23 ◼   ► and I swear to God, I just triggered Alexa,

01:01:25 ◼   ► and she's now playing music in my bedroom.

01:01:28 ◼   ► So I'm in my office right now, one room down from the bedroom.

01:01:33 ◼   ► I all of a sudden heard this music, and I'm like,

01:01:35 ◼   ► is my wife home?

01:01:36 ◼   ► Did she just start playing music?

01:01:37 ◼   ► Because I thought I heard a voice.

01:01:39 ◼   ► It was Alexa, and it was Alexa saying, now playing whatever.

01:01:42 ◼   ► And so there's just music playing in the bedroom right now.

01:01:44 ◼   ► I stand corrected.

01:01:45 ◼   ► So there is a web page on Amazon for the Echo Dot,

01:01:48 ◼   ► But it says, "Available exclusively from Alexa.

01:01:51 ◼   ► Echo Dot is available in limited quantities

01:01:53 ◼   ► and exclusively for Prime members

01:01:55 ◼   ► through Alexa Voice Shopping."

01:01:57 ◼   ► So I think that that's ingenious,

01:01:59 ◼   ► because it obviously makes it so that, first and foremost,

01:02:03 ◼   ► only sort of, quote unquote, "hardcore"

01:02:05 ◼   ► users are going to be able to get it and get it that way.

01:02:08 ◼   ► And people who already understand, right,

01:02:10 ◼   ► they have to have Alexa--

01:02:12 ◼   ► an Echo, sorry, to be able to do it.

01:02:14 ◼   ► So it doesn't need some sort of new learning curve all of a sudden,

01:02:18 ◼   ► because you should already know how to use it based on that.

01:02:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:23 ◼   ► I think the music playing is clearly--

01:02:26 ◼   ► and when this rumor from the information

01:02:29 ◼   ► came out that Apple has a device like this in the works,

01:02:33 ◼   ► and that they've been working on it for quite a while, a bunch of people

01:02:36 ◼   ► said, well, why?

01:02:37 ◼   ► Why?

01:02:37 ◼   ► I have my iPhone with me everywhere I go.

01:02:40 ◼   ► If I'm going to use Siri, why would the world

01:02:43 ◼   ► I want another device. I don't know what else they have planned for it. I don't know what other home

01:02:47 ◼   ► integration, you know, home kit type features they might have in mind for what kind of a hub it might

01:02:53 ◼   ► be for your entire home. But the speaker alone makes sense for Apple to do just because music

01:03:00 ◼   ► is still such a big part of what they want to be known for. Yeah, and I'm sort of surprised that,

01:03:05 ◼   ► you know, they weren't... I know that, you know, they're almost never the first mover in these

01:03:10 ◼   ► these types of things.

01:03:11 ◼   ► But I'm sort of surprised that some sort of combination

01:03:16 ◼   ► of things didn't lead them down this path earlier,

01:03:19 ◼   ► whether it be the Airport Express or Apple TV

01:03:25 ◼   ► as basically the way to do this.

01:03:28 ◼   ► There were all those rumors, remember,

01:03:29 ◼   ► that Apple TV was going to be the hub of their whole home

01:03:33 ◼   ► initiative.

01:03:34 ◼   ► And maybe that still ends up being the case.

01:03:36 ◼   ► But that was the whole thing about, why is it running iOS?

01:03:38 ◼   ► and of course apps, but also maybe the HomeKit stuff.

01:03:43 ◼   ► And yeah, I'm just a little surprised

01:03:47 ◼   ► that they didn't make a all-in-one type device.

01:03:50 ◼   ► And especially knowing the popularity of things like Sonos.

01:03:57 ◼   ► And obviously, they had to work with Sonos

01:03:59 ◼   ► to get Apple Music as one of the first things on there.

01:04:02 ◼   ► But maybe it was--

01:04:03 ◼   ► I think you made the joke the other day.

01:04:05 ◼   ► Maybe it was the iPod Hi-Fi thing

01:04:08 ◼   ► that sort of dissuaded them from doing that,

01:04:10 ◼   ► because that was obviously a disaster.

01:04:13 ◼   ► That's what I want them to call it.

01:04:14 ◼   ► I want them to call it the Siri Hi-Fi.

01:04:16 ◼   ► They have the trademark, yeah.

01:04:18 ◼   ► So-- but yeah, it seems like--

01:04:24 ◼   ► I think the way--

01:04:25 ◼   ► someone was saying this the other day on Twitter,

01:04:28 ◼   ► that it's great that we have Alexa,

01:04:31 ◼   ► and it's cool that you can sort of hook it up to Sonos.

01:04:34 ◼   ► It's a pain, honestly, because you have to do it through the back of the device and through

01:04:38 ◼   ► a cable.

01:04:40 ◼   ► It's not seamless at all.

01:04:41 ◼   ► And now we have things like Eero and the newfangled routers that are out.

01:04:46 ◼   ► It seems like someone should combine all of that into one thing, right?

01:04:50 ◼   ► Yes, I think so.

01:04:53 ◼   ► But you run into...

01:04:56 ◼   ► I've thought about this, right?

01:04:58 ◼   ► It seems like a big butt.

01:05:03 ◼   ► thinking about my house now. The cable comes in in the living room and it's sort of like

01:05:10 ◼   ► that's where the router needs to be. I mean I guess I could, I'd have to wire the house

01:05:18 ◼   ► with internet or ethernet or something or get the cable company to come out and put

01:05:25 ◼   ► another cable connector somewhere else if I wanted it to be in the kitchen.

01:05:32 ◼   ► because that's where I want the music to play. You know what I mean? It's like, I don't know.

01:05:35 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure. Yeah, I understand. Yeah, so that's like, that's one issue.

01:05:41 ◼   ► But sort of, I don't know if you've had a chance to play around with like things like the Eero,

01:05:45 ◼   ► and there's some other ones coming out that are, you know, these these newfangled routers that

01:05:49 ◼   ► that allow you to better spread internet over your entire house. I have a box downstairs that's

01:05:56 ◼   ► full of Eero kit, and it's still in the box. I just came the other day and I haven't had a

01:06:01 ◼   ► chance to look at it. So it's on my radar and I'm going to set it up.

01:06:04 ◼   ► Yeah, you should. I mean, we have one set up now and it's great. It's

01:06:11 ◼   ► surprisingly great how well it works compared to what I previously just had a

01:06:16 ◼   ► an airport. I had both at Extreme and then I had like an Express and I had

01:06:22 ◼   ► like things like doing bridging and you know trying to get good service in the

01:06:26 ◼   ► bedroom and then in the office and nothing has worked as well as this Eero

01:06:30 ◼   ► thing works. And so I wonder if sort of this this device things that we're talking about,

01:06:37 ◼   ► if they don't do, yeah, you have the main hub in the living room that's that's sort of connected to

01:06:42 ◼   ► the still necessary for whatever reason cable modem. And then everything else is like a

01:06:47 ◼   ► satellite version, sort of like the Echo Dot, right? It's like a smaller version of it. So no

01:06:52 ◼   ► matter what room you're in, you're covered by it. It's sort of like what you have with Sonos now for

01:06:57 ◼   ► for people who have Sonos in multiple rooms,

01:07:00 ◼   ► they wirelessly connect to it.

01:07:03 ◼   ► You can do wired, of course, but most people, I think,

01:07:06 ◼   ► do the wireless version.

01:07:07 ◼   ► And so some device, it's like a combination

01:07:10 ◼   ► of all these things.

01:07:11 ◼   ► So you have the speaker, you have the voice assistant

01:07:15 ◼   ► type thing, and you have your Wi-Fi all in one thing.

01:07:20 ◼   ► I mean, that seems like where all this should go,

01:07:23 ◼   ► but I would imagine it'll take a while for someone

01:07:25 ◼   ► to actually connect that all together

01:07:27 ◼   ► to be able to work well.

01:07:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's just, you know, Apple has a very,

01:07:31 ◼   ► you know, right at the forefront of WiFi,

01:07:33 ◼   ► you know, I've been making base stations

01:07:36 ◼   ► or whatever you wanna call them, you know,

01:07:38 ◼   ► the thing that gives you WiFi in your house.

01:07:39 ◼   ► I mean, Apple's been doing it.

01:07:41 ◼   ► I mean, they were one of the first companies

01:07:44 ◼   ► to really go public with it.

01:07:45 ◼   ► Remember the Phil Schiller demo

01:07:47 ◼   ► when he jumped onto like a mattress?

01:07:52 ◼   ► - Yeah. (laughs)

01:07:54 ◼   ► - It was like to prove that the iBook

01:07:56 ◼   ► was getting the internet over the air.

01:07:58 ◼   ► That's right.

01:07:58 ◼   ► It was like heretofore unknown.

01:08:00 ◼   ► Phil Schiller actually performed a stunt on stage.

01:08:03 ◼   ► Like he jumped off a 10-foot high thing

01:08:06 ◼   ► onto a padded landing thing and then showed that the iBook was

01:08:11 ◼   ► still getting internet.

01:08:13 ◼   ► So Apple's been doing that for a long time.

01:08:14 ◼   ► I think that at this point, it just

01:08:17 ◼   ► seems like it's too fiddly, especially for a house

01:08:20 ◼   ► compared--

01:08:21 ◼   ► an apartment, it's easy to fill it with your Wi-Fi.

01:08:25 ◼   ► But even here, I have it set up pretty good.

01:08:27 ◼   ► Right now, we just have the airport extreme.

01:08:30 ◼   ► I don't have any of the satellite devices

01:08:32 ◼   ► like I used to have.

01:08:33 ◼   ► And it goes up one floor to my office, and it's pretty good.

01:08:39 ◼   ► And it goes up two floors to our bedroom.

01:08:42 ◼   ► And it's good enough, good enough

01:08:45 ◼   ► that it doesn't make me want to get another thing.

01:08:48 ◼   ► But even one floor down in our garage, it's gone.

01:08:51 ◼   ► So it's like when you get in the car,

01:08:54 ◼   ► it's like one floor down from where the router is,

01:08:56 ◼   ► and you wanna update something on your phone quick.

01:08:59 ◼   ► It's like sometimes you have to like do the fiddly thing

01:09:01 ◼   ► where you turn off Wi-Fi because it's so bad.

01:09:04 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:09:05 ◼   ► Yeah, you should try the zero thing.

01:09:08 ◼   ► I think you'll like--

01:09:09 ◼   ► - Oh, I'm gonna try it.

01:09:10 ◼   ► I told you it's down, it's in the house.

01:09:12 ◼   ► So it's a sure thing that I will try it.

01:09:15 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:09:16 ◼   ► - So I don't know, maybe that's what Apple's going with.

01:09:18 ◼   ► And I can't help but think that

01:09:19 ◼   ► if the information's report is correct

01:09:21 ◼   ► that they've been working on this device for quite a while,

01:09:24 ◼   ► I mean, like, according to the information, years.

01:09:27 ◼   ► It can't just be a speaker that listens for Siri,

01:09:31 ◼   ► because if it's taken Apple years to do a speaker

01:09:36 ◼   ► that listens for Siri, that's a problem.

01:09:40 ◼   ► It has to be a little bit more ambitious than that

01:09:41 ◼   ► in terms of serving as some kind of, you know,

01:09:45 ◼   ► hey, you don't have to buy these six different things.

01:09:46 ◼   ► You can just buy this, plug this thing in,

01:09:49 ◼   ► and then you're set.

01:09:50 ◼   ► - Well, and you brought it up.

01:09:51 ◼   ► I mean, the importance of music, certainly to Apple,

01:09:54 ◼   ► And they obviously know the popularity

01:09:56 ◼   ► of something like Sonos.

01:09:58 ◼   ► And do you think then it would be just as predicated

01:10:02 ◼   ► around being a great speaker, sort of a Sonos competitor

01:10:05 ◼   ► with Siri built in?

01:10:06 ◼   ► Is that maybe what they would do?

01:10:09 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:10:10 ◼   ► And would they launch it as a family of devices

01:10:14 ◼   ► at the beginning so that you can put them

01:10:17 ◼   ► throughout your house?

01:10:19 ◼   ► I mean, that seems to be one area that--

01:10:21 ◼   ► And obviously Amazon is working on it, or adds a solution,

01:10:25 ◼   ► because they have these dot devices that are

01:10:28 ◼   ► meant to be satellite devices.

01:10:29 ◼   ► And I know with Google Home, people

01:10:31 ◼   ► asked when they announced it at I/O last week,

01:10:34 ◼   ► well, what if you have two of these things, and they're like,

01:10:36 ◼   ► well, we're working on that.

01:10:37 ◼   ► We'll get back to you.

01:10:38 ◼   ► It's a hard problem.

01:10:40 ◼   ► Yes.

01:10:41 ◼   ► And the Amazon-- so the dot--

01:10:43 ◼   ► so in general, I think the consensus

01:10:45 ◼   ► is the Echo speaker is OK.

01:10:47 ◼   ► it's good enough for casual listening or whatever.

01:10:51 ◼   ► And the Dot1 is considered to be much more subpar.

01:10:54 ◼   ► It's obviously much smaller.

01:10:56 ◼   ► It's just a tiny little thing.

01:10:57 ◼   ► And that's why it has sort of the output

01:10:59 ◼   ► to be able to hook it into a speaker.

01:11:00 ◼   ► And that's what they suggest you do actually.

01:11:03 ◼   ► So I wouldn't, like if I were Apple,

01:11:06 ◼   ► I would imagine that the way to do it

01:11:07 ◼   ► is just what we were talking about,

01:11:08 ◼   ► to do like a really great speaker,

01:11:11 ◼   ► like a Sonos-like speaker with the Siri capability built in.

01:11:15 ◼   ► And I think that would be a great device

01:11:18 ◼   ► for a lot of people.

01:11:19 ◼   ► I don't know how much that would cost, you know,

01:11:21 ◼   ► and like, do they run the risk of it being

01:11:24 ◼   ► another Hi-Fi like device?

01:11:27 ◼   ► That's just sort of like a niche product

01:11:29 ◼   ► that's interesting to a few people.

01:11:30 ◼   ► I think not, I think it's a lot more interesting

01:11:32 ◼   ► to do it now, especially with everything

01:11:34 ◼   ► we just talked about with Alexa, but I don't know.

01:11:38 ◼   ► - With a Hi-Fi, they really, it was,

01:11:42 ◼   ► I mean, I know for a fact that Steve Jobs

01:11:45 ◼   ► was a huge fan of the Hi-Fi.

01:11:46 ◼   ► He really was.

01:11:47 ◼   ► And I mean, obviously, he's willing to--

01:11:51 ◼   ► if it wasn't selling, it wasn't selling, even if he liked it.

01:11:54 ◼   ► So it wasn't like he kept it around just because he liked it.

01:11:56 ◼   ► But I know he liked it.

01:11:57 ◼   ► And they really put-- it was before I was regularly

01:12:01 ◼   ► attending their press events.

01:12:02 ◼   ► And I was not at the intro event for it.

01:12:04 ◼   ► But I remember reading about it.

01:12:05 ◼   ► And they really went all out.

01:12:07 ◼   ► And they set up--

01:12:09 ◼   ► Jason Snell was there.

01:12:10 ◼   ► And he was talking about it a few weeks ago

01:12:12 ◼   ► when he was on the show.

01:12:13 ◼   ► right there in the upstairs area

01:12:17 ◼   ► where they do the press briefings at the press events

01:12:19 ◼   ► above town hall, they brought in,

01:12:22 ◼   ► like an Ikea almost, where they made a whole bunch

01:12:26 ◼   ► of living rooms.

01:12:28 ◼   ► And of course, like Apple, they were really nice.

01:12:31 ◼   ► They made all these, they furnished the whole place

01:12:33 ◼   ► as an apartment complex, and then had individual people

01:12:37 ◼   ► you could come in, and it wasn't just like,

01:12:38 ◼   ► hey, hit play and listen to it for a few seconds.

01:12:40 ◼   ► They wanted you to relax, sit on the couch,

01:12:42 ◼   ► pretend you live here and listen to this.

01:12:44 ◼   ► - Have a drink.

01:12:46 ◼   ► - Right, and they really pushed like,

01:12:47 ◼   ► hey, doesn't this sound amazing?

01:12:49 ◼   ► Like they really, really wanted to make that like,

01:12:53 ◼   ► I mean, I didn't buy one, so I don't know.

01:12:56 ◼   ► I don't know how good it sounded,

01:12:57 ◼   ► but Apple at least really went all out,

01:12:59 ◼   ► at least in terms of marketing,

01:13:00 ◼   ► is pitching it as being high quality audio.

01:13:03 ◼   ► So I think that's one area

01:13:04 ◼   ► where they could definitely get a leg up on Echo,

01:13:06 ◼   ► 'cause Echo, it's good, it's not bad.

01:13:08 ◼   ► It's good enough for like a speaker in your kitchen

01:13:11 ◼   ► to play music, but it's not great.

01:13:14 ◼   ► And so that plus--

01:13:16 ◼   ► so a great speaker plus what you mentioned from the information

01:13:21 ◼   ► report with the Siri APIs, which obviously everyone's

01:13:23 ◼   ► been clamoring for since Siri came out.

01:13:26 ◼   ► So that plus the ability to do much more

01:13:29 ◼   ► than what the Echo can do.

01:13:32 ◼   ► Because the Echo has an API, obviously,

01:13:34 ◼   ► and a lot of people are playing around with it

01:13:36 ◼   ► and doing some interesting things with it.

01:13:37 ◼   ► Like we mentioned Uber.

01:13:38 ◼   ► You can call an Uber from it right now.

01:13:40 ◼   ► But it does feel like it's a little bit wonky.

01:13:47 ◼   ► It's a little bit--

01:13:48 ◼   ► not wonky, necessarily.

01:13:50 ◼   ► It's just-- I'm sure you've used the app.

01:13:53 ◼   ► The app is awful for the Echo.

01:13:56 ◼   ► And it's hard to--

01:13:58 ◼   ► it would be hard for anyone.

01:14:01 ◼   ► It's even hard for me to figure out how exactly to find things

01:14:04 ◼   ► to install and what to install.

01:14:06 ◼   ► And it looks god awful.

01:14:07 ◼   ► So Apple will obviously do a better job of that.

01:14:10 ◼   ► And so it's then a question of like,

01:14:13 ◼   ► is it leaps and bounds better than what Amazon can do right

01:14:17 ◼   ► now if those APIs are good enough?

01:14:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:21 ◼   ► And I'm really curious what form these APIs come in

01:14:28 ◼   ► in terms of like--

01:14:29 ◼   ► I can only presume that it'll be apps somehow, I guess.

01:14:37 ◼   ► apps on your iPhone or your iOS device.

01:14:42 ◼   ► Yes, so do you need to have that app installed in order

01:14:46 ◼   ► to have it be Siri ready?

01:14:50 ◼   ► Right?

01:14:52 ◼   ► Well, yeah.

01:14:53 ◼   ► And if it's on multiple devices, how

01:14:56 ◼   ► does your Siri-- if it's taking advantage

01:14:59 ◼   ► of a third party extension, whatever you want to call it.

01:15:04 ◼   ► Let's just say-- we've been talking about them.

01:15:07 ◼   ► Let's just say Uber, right?

01:15:08 ◼   ► Let's say that through an extension,

01:15:10 ◼   ► you're going to allow Siri to hail you an Uber.

01:15:17 ◼   ► Do you have to install it on all of your devices?

01:15:20 ◼   ► I guess you would if it's through an app.

01:15:22 ◼   ► But then how would it get to the standalone device?

01:15:27 ◼   ► Yeah, that's weird.

01:15:30 ◼   ► It's a good question, because it seems

01:15:32 ◼   ► like it's an either/or thing, right?

01:15:33 ◼   ► Either you would need it installed on all your devices

01:15:36 ◼   ► that have hooked up to your Hey Siri stuff,

01:15:41 ◼   ► or you would only do it on one so it doesn't get confused.

01:15:45 ◼   ► Because say you have Uber installed on--

01:15:47 ◼   ► they don't have an iPad version, but you can still obviously

01:15:49 ◼   ► install it on an iPad.

01:15:50 ◼   ► So say you had it on an iPad and your iPhone,

01:15:53 ◼   ► and then you summoned the Uber via Siri, which one--

01:15:59 ◼   ► I guess it opens both versions.

01:16:02 ◼   ► Well, I mean, it doesn't matter, because on the back end,

01:16:06 ◼   ► presuming you were tied into the same account,

01:16:08 ◼   ► the same Uber account, when you open the app,

01:16:10 ◼   ► it should know, they should be synced, right,

01:16:12 ◼   ► in the backend.

01:16:13 ◼   ► So I guess it doesn't really matter,

01:16:15 ◼   ► but there's like a lot of more complicated issues,

01:16:20 ◼   ► like the further you go down with that,

01:16:22 ◼   ► like which version of the app that's running

01:16:26 ◼   ► on which device are you summoning?

01:16:28 ◼   ► - Right, it's, so I'm, I don't know.

01:16:33 ◼   ► So my best guess is to compare it to Apple Watch.

01:16:37 ◼   ► And so let's say they open up this Siri SDK.

01:16:40 ◼   ► Then the Uber app on your iOS device

01:16:44 ◼   ► could have the Siri extension.

01:16:47 ◼   ► And then only on the iOS devices that

01:16:50 ◼   ► have the latest version of the Uber app

01:16:53 ◼   ► would the Siri integration work.

01:16:56 ◼   ► But then also, maybe developers would

01:17:00 ◼   ► be able to create like a Hi-Fi app.

01:17:04 ◼   ► And just like the way that it'll say like,

01:17:07 ◼   ► oh, there's an Apple Watch app that you can install,

01:17:13 ◼   ► that there would be-- like if you have the Siri Hi-Fi,

01:17:17 ◼   ► you would have a Siri Hi-Fi app on your phone.

01:17:20 ◼   ► And then you'd go-- just like you go to the Apple Watch app

01:17:22 ◼   ► to install an app on your watch, you'd

01:17:24 ◼   ► go to the Hi-Fi app to install the extension on your Hi-Fi.

01:17:27 ◼   ► That we're getting pretty complicated. Right. I see. And it's it makes sense to me like that's

01:17:35 ◼   ► exactly what I think is it this makes sense to me technically because I can draw little arrows for

01:17:41 ◼   ► all the devices and I see okay, so you download it to your phone and then from your phone, you can

01:17:45 ◼   ► install it on your watch. And you can install it on the thing. But then it seems to me like you're

01:17:49 ◼   ► doing an awful lot of fiddly system administrator type stuff with prices. Yeah. And so is there a

01:17:56 ◼   ► better like is it just via the app and now apps require like I don't know some

01:18:01 ◼   ► sort of new iCloud instance that it's that's like handling it right and that's

01:18:06 ◼   ► exactly the other that it you know just erase everything that I just speculate

01:18:10 ◼   ► about is there gonna be some kind of way that a developer would be able to have

01:18:14 ◼   ► like an iCloud instance of this API and and and that's a total new territory for

01:18:20 ◼   ► Apple.

01:18:21 ◼   ► That's unlike anything I can think of that Apple's ever

01:18:26 ◼   ► done.

01:18:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:18:29 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

01:18:30 ◼   ► But it's good that they're--

01:18:32 ◼   ► I think it's smart, of course, that they're playing

01:18:34 ◼   ► in this space.

01:18:35 ◼   ► Smart that Google is as well.

01:18:37 ◼   ► All these guys are pouring so many resources

01:18:40 ◼   ► into these assistants and the whole AI aspect.

01:18:46 ◼   ► obviously, Marco's post about DAPL and AI and stuff,

01:18:50 ◼   ► that they need to be able to get enough data

01:18:56 ◼   ► to constantly improve these things.

01:18:58 ◼   ► And it's almost like table stakes.

01:19:01 ◼   ► It seems like it's going to be now that you need to have

01:19:03 ◼   ► the home version of whatever the assistant thing is

01:19:06 ◼   ► to be able to keep up and remain on par

01:19:10 ◼   ► with all the other competitors.

01:19:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, one of the things I was thinking about

01:19:14 ◼   ► in light of Marco's post the other day about it,

01:19:18 ◼   ► is I was trying to think,

01:19:21 ◼   ► 'cause I didn't agree with him fully.

01:19:23 ◼   ► It was a great post, and the ways that I disagree,

01:19:27 ◼   ► it's just all, it's not like Marco's dumb,

01:19:30 ◼   ► it's like, no, Marco's smart,

01:19:32 ◼   ► and I actually see the logic of what he's saying,

01:19:33 ◼   ► but something doesn't sit right with me.

01:19:35 ◼   ► And then I thought about social networking,

01:19:38 ◼   ► and social networking is obviously a huge part

01:19:41 ◼   ► of the whole industry that we talk about.

01:19:43 ◼   ► I mean, Facebook is a giant company now,

01:19:46 ◼   ► and super influential.

01:19:48 ◼   ► I mean, literally a scandal in the last few weeks,

01:19:53 ◼   ► or a controversy, I should say, about whether or not

01:19:57 ◼   ► Facebook is single-handedly skewing political news in the US.

01:20:03 ◼   ► Hugely influential.

01:20:04 ◼   ► Instagram is a huge success.

01:20:09 ◼   ► Twitter.

01:20:10 ◼   ► Twitter is Twitter.

01:20:11 ◼   ► I love it, but it is what it is.

01:20:15 ◼   ► But it certainly is--

01:20:18 ◼   ► I don't want to go down the route

01:20:19 ◼   ► of talking about Twitter as a business.

01:20:21 ◼   ► But culturally, though, its influence is undeniable.

01:20:24 ◼   ► I always say, the one thing about Twitter

01:20:26 ◼   ► that it's just stunning how every time I watch TV news

01:20:30 ◼   ► and somebody comes on, they tell you

01:20:32 ◼   ► what their Twitter handle is.

01:20:34 ◼   ► Well, and if you watch ESPN at all,

01:20:36 ◼   ► it's a significant percentage of ESPN via reporting,

01:20:40 ◼   ► via talking about tweets.

01:20:42 ◼   ► It's crazy.

01:20:42 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:20:44 ◼   ► Twitter's influence in the sports world alone is astounding.

01:20:49 ◼   ► Especially as we go down the path of the NBA playoffs

01:20:51 ◼   ► and stuff, it's--

01:20:52 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:20:52 ◼   ► I think-- well, and now, Major League Baseball

01:20:55 ◼   ► has a ton of Twitter, too.

01:20:56 ◼   ► So no, it's just everywhere in sports.

01:20:59 ◼   ► Apple has no real social networking.

01:21:03 ◼   ► And they've even tried twice.

01:21:04 ◼   ► They had Ping.

01:21:05 ◼   ► And then last year, the--

01:21:08 ◼   ► I don't even remember what it's called--

01:21:10 ◼   ► the middle tab of Apple Music.

01:21:12 ◼   ► - Right, the thing that's going away apparently.

01:21:14 ◼   ► - Right, and hasn't taken off, hasn't really,

01:21:18 ◼   ► never gained a foothold, but so what?

01:21:19 ◼   ► Apple has, in a second level way,

01:21:22 ◼   ► sort of thrived on social networking

01:21:26 ◼   ► because people use their iPhones to Facebook

01:21:30 ◼   ► and to Instagram and to tweet.

01:21:33 ◼   ► And it's only made, the rise of social networking

01:21:38 ◼   ► largely coincides with the rise of the iPhone,

01:21:41 ◼   ► and it's a big part of why.

01:21:43 ◼   ► I think that there's a real difference

01:21:45 ◼   ► that I was thinking about it,

01:21:46 ◼   ► and the voice assistants aren't like that,

01:21:48 ◼   ► because the voice assistants, to be useful,

01:21:51 ◼   ► have to be built into the system.

01:21:53 ◼   ► There is a Cortana app.

01:21:54 ◼   ► There is, the Google app has all of the Google

01:21:58 ◼   ► assistant type stuff.

01:22:01 ◼   ► The startups that are in this space have apps.

01:22:07 ◼   ► I can't remember some of their names, but you know, like--

01:22:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's like operator,

01:22:12 ◼   ► oh, well Viv is, yeah,

01:22:14 ◼   ► they were-- - Viv will be an app.

01:22:15 ◼   ► - By the Siri people, yeah.

01:22:17 ◼   ► - Right.

01:22:18 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:22:19 ◼   ► - So you can do that, but that doesn't make it,

01:22:22 ◼   ► it doesn't work like that.

01:22:23 ◼   ► You can't say go launch an app and then do it.

01:22:26 ◼   ► It doesn't work like that.

01:22:27 ◼   ► It has to be built into the system.

01:22:28 ◼   ► - So the one outside the bounds though,

01:22:31 ◼   ► which I'd be interested in your thoughts on then,

01:22:32 ◼   ► is the Facebook Messenger one, Facebook M it's called, right?

01:22:36 ◼   ► So that Facebook, obviously, famously does not have a phone.

01:22:40 ◼   ► They run on other people's devices.

01:22:44 ◼   ► But they do, by most accounts, have some of the foremost

01:22:48 ◼   ► experts in AI working at Facebook.

01:22:51 ◼   ► So how do you square that?

01:22:53 ◼   ► Where do you think that they--

01:22:55 ◼   ► where does that come into play?

01:22:57 ◼   ► Because you think they're going after AI.

01:22:59 ◼   ► They think they're going to be a leader in whatever

01:23:02 ◼   ► comes of AI.

01:23:02 ◼   ► And certainly, these assistant things are a big part of that,

01:23:05 ◼   ► at least right now, and FacebookM is sort of one of the front runners right now for

01:23:11 ◼   ► that, but they don't have the system level integration.

01:23:14 ◼   ► It's a good question. It could just be to do the AI while you're in their apps. Facebook's

01:23:26 ◼   ► advantage is, and I say this as someone who doesn't use Facebook, but part of what makes

01:23:33 ◼   ► them so valuable is that, you know, people spend an awful lot of people spend an awful

01:23:38 ◼   ► lot of time in Facebook. So they already have them there. So they almost are like their

01:23:45 ◼   ► own system.

01:23:46 ◼   ► Yeah, that's true.

01:23:47 ◼   ► If you're already there, you're in Facebook on your phone or, you know, well, I think

01:23:52 ◼   ► the phone's probably number one now. So you're in Facebook, you're on your phone, any kind

01:23:56 ◼   ► of AI features that they can offer you, you're already there. So they have the need for that.

01:24:03 ◼   ► or the opportunity.

01:24:05 ◼   ► - Good way to frame it, I think.

01:24:06 ◼   ► It's almost like, so the browser on a PC or Mac

01:24:11 ◼   ► is not, you know, sort of,

01:24:14 ◼   ► well, while they are baked into the system,

01:24:18 ◼   ► it is a separate application

01:24:19 ◼   ► that you're running all the time.

01:24:21 ◼   ► Everyone's always running a browser, right?

01:24:22 ◼   ► And that's like Facebook on the phone.

01:24:24 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:24:25 ◼   ► - Is sort of the, I mean, that's been said before, of course,

01:24:27 ◼   ► but it is in that context, like basically the same thing.

01:24:30 ◼   ► They even helpfully cheat and use the audio APIs

01:24:33 ◼   ► to make sure they're literally running on your phone

01:24:35 ◼   ► all the time.

01:24:36 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

01:24:38 ◼   ► I keyed, I keyed slightly.

01:24:41 ◼   ► That brings to mind another one of the topics in this space

01:24:44 ◼   ► that I want to talk about.

01:24:45 ◼   ► And I've seen an awful lot of people bring this up.

01:24:47 ◼   ► So one of the other rumors, it's separate from the information

01:24:50 ◼   ► report, but there's also a rumor that has come out.

01:24:53 ◼   ► I know MacRumors had it.

01:24:54 ◼   ► I don't know if it was their original.

01:24:56 ◼   ► I think it was.

01:24:56 ◼   ► I think it was their original scoop.

01:24:58 ◼   ► the next version of Mac OS is going to have Siri built in.

01:25:03 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:25:04 ◼   ► - And a lot of people read that and the question I got is,

01:25:07 ◼   ► well, why do I have to talk to Siri?

01:25:09 ◼   ► Why can't I just type like Spotlight?

01:25:12 ◼   ► And then therefore, well, maybe that's the answer.

01:25:14 ◼   ► Maybe the Spotlight feature goes away

01:25:17 ◼   ► and it's replaced by Siri

01:25:18 ◼   ► and you can either talk to it or type.

01:25:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's a good question.

01:25:27 ◼   ► I think that that, thinking about it for a few seconds

01:25:30 ◼   ► just now, I think that that's probably

01:25:32 ◼   ► the way they should do it.

01:25:33 ◼   ► I think it's a little weird, like,

01:25:36 ◼   ► Microsoft has done this too with Cortana.

01:25:38 ◼   ► I think it's a little weird to have those things

01:25:40 ◼   ► on the desktop in the same, trying to fit them

01:25:44 ◼   ► into the same context as they exist right now

01:25:46 ◼   ► on mobile devices, because you just use a desktop,

01:25:50 ◼   ► laptop, whatever, traditional computer, differently.

01:25:55 ◼   ► And you're right, a lot of it is text-based input.

01:25:58 ◼   ► It's not vocal, which ties back to the whole thing of why

01:26:03 ◼   ► I also think Alexa is important, because there is no way

01:26:06 ◼   ► to interface with it besides the voice, but that's--

01:26:09 ◼   ► that's a different route to go down.

01:26:12 ◼   ► But yeah, so I think that Siri as a text-based thing

01:26:15 ◼   ► is interesting.

01:26:16 ◼   ► And that's also like going to Facebook M. Right now,

01:26:19 ◼   ► it is mainly text, but it's all chat-based, right?

01:26:23 ◼   ► So they're doing it the opposite way of what Siri and Alexa

01:26:27 ◼   ► and Cortana and--

01:26:30 ◼   ► the Google thing, I guess, is a hybrid, right?

01:26:32 ◼   ► Because you can talk to it or it can just be--

01:26:37 ◼   ► I mean, the main interface is to say, OK, Google.

01:26:39 ◼   ► And then it loads, basically.

01:26:42 ◼   ► It's doing a search query.

01:26:45 ◼   ► So that's, I guess, the closest thing to that.

01:26:47 ◼   ► And that would be Apple, if they did do Siri for Mac OS,

01:26:53 ◼   ► doing it with the text thing would be, I guess, most comparable to that.

01:26:57 ◼   ► Maybe. You know, there's a trick that I just learned recently. I didn't

01:27:01 ◼   ► know this, but if you do invoke Siri on

01:27:05 ◼   ► your iPhone and she

01:27:09 ◼   ► hears you wrong, you can, on that results screen,

01:27:13 ◼   ► you pull down on it and it shows you what Siri

01:27:17 ◼   ► thought you said. And if you tap on that, you can edit that text.

01:27:21 ◼   ► Oh really? I didn't know that.

01:27:23 ◼   ► I 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.

01:27:29 ◼   ► I think it was in the context of that discussion of why can't you just enter text.

01:27:34 ◼   ► And 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.

01:27:41 ◼   ► Because there are certain contexts where you can't write.

01:27:44 ◼   ► Right. What if you're in a quiet area? Yeah, yeah, right.

01:27:47 ◼   ► Huh. Yeah, I had no idea about that.

01:27:50 ◼   ► So you can edit text after you've made your vocal query to Siri.

01:27:55 ◼   ► You can edit it as text, but you can't just type it as text.

01:27:59 ◼   ► So if you want to use that feature, you should just speak gibberish to Siri.

01:28:03 ◼   ► Just whisper some quick gibberish.

01:28:05 ◼   ► Right. To invoke the text mode.

01:28:09 ◼   ► Anyway, interesting trick, I thought.

01:28:12 ◼   ► Yeah, and then there was the report, I think it was Gherman, right?

01:28:17 ◼   ► saying that there was a, or maybe it was a riff off of another report or something,

01:28:22 ◼   ► but I know that 95 Mac wrote about it that the new MacBook Pro conceivably

01:28:29 ◼   ► coming out at the end of the year would have the, this like OLED strip and you

01:28:36 ◼   ► know one of the reasons why that might make sense is because then you could

01:28:40 ◼   ► have a Siri button without having to have like a physical Siri button.

01:28:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I saw that rumor and I don't know what to make of it. It seems kind of interesting.

01:28:52 ◼   ► It seems like maybe it's also sort of like that... I don't remember if it was a Kickstarter.

01:28:58 ◼   ► I think it might have been before Kickstarter. But do you remember a couple years ago there

01:29:02 ◼   ► was somebody who was trying to make a keyboard?

01:29:04 ◼   ► Yes, I know what this is. That LED keyboard thing?

01:29:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it was, the idea was that each key,

01:29:11 ◼   ► it was a physical keyboard,

01:29:12 ◼   ► but each key would be a standalone LED.

01:29:15 ◼   ► And so like, in the quote unquote normal mode,

01:29:19 ◼   ► it would be, you know, QWERTY, you know,

01:29:21 ◼   ► and it would be alphabetic and have numbers.

01:29:23 ◼   ► But then like when you're using Photoshop,

01:29:25 ◼   ► the key caps could change to all of the weird shortcuts.

01:29:29 ◼   ► So you, you know, you could, you know,

01:29:32 ◼   ► the H key would change to, you know,

01:29:35 ◼   ► whatever H does in Photoshop.

01:29:37 ◼   ► - Right.

01:29:38 ◼   ► - Like a game could change all of the buttons

01:29:41 ◼   ► to different weapons or something like that.

01:29:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's sort of, I guess, similar to on iOS

01:29:50 ◼   ► when you have the virtual thing on top of the keyboard,

01:29:55 ◼   ► where it suggests stuff,

01:29:57 ◼   ► and so it can sort of dynamically do different things.

01:30:00 ◼   ► - Right, so that LED keyboard never really,

01:30:03 ◼   ► It never came to be a realistic project,

01:30:08 ◼   ► but it certainly got people excited.

01:30:09 ◼   ► I could see how this LED touchscreen

01:30:13 ◼   ► in place of the function keys could work like that.

01:30:17 ◼   ► And it gets to, it's like a little bit

01:30:21 ◼   ► like the Mac keyboard getting a little taste

01:30:24 ◼   ► of that spiel that Steve Jobs gave

01:30:28 ◼   ► at the original iPhone introduction

01:30:30 ◼   ► about what to do about the buttons on a phone

01:30:33 ◼   ► because once you put them there, there's nothing else.

01:30:36 ◼   ► They're set.

01:30:37 ◼   ► And then if you come up with a new idea later,

01:30:40 ◼   ► you'd like to have a different button.

01:30:42 ◼   ► What do you do?

01:30:42 ◼   ► And he goes, well, the answer is,

01:30:44 ◼   ► we've solved this years ago with the graphical user interface.

01:30:46 ◼   ► The answer is do it in software.

01:30:48 ◼   ► So I can kind of see that.

01:30:49 ◼   ► And quite frankly, the idea of F1, F2, F3 keys,

01:30:53 ◼   ► even it's just fiddly.

01:30:56 ◼   ► And I know Apple's started printing, hard-coded printing,

01:31:00 ◼   ► like this is volume up, this is volume down,

01:31:02 ◼   ► this is brightness.

01:31:04 ◼   ► And that by default, that's what those keys do now.

01:31:08 ◼   ► You have to actually trigger a system-wide preference

01:31:12 ◼   ► to turn them into regular function keys.

01:31:14 ◼   ► - Right, and I think most kids would have no, like F1,

01:31:19 ◼   ► they would have no idea. - They have no idea.

01:31:20 ◼   ► Yeah, my son, if I, I should do it

01:31:23 ◼   ► when he gets home from school, I should actually see you.

01:31:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, could you hit the F1 key?

01:31:28 ◼   ► What, you mean the brightness down key?

01:31:30 ◼   ► Which key? - You know, and I remember

01:31:32 ◼   ► when I still have the extended keyboard in front of me,

01:31:35 ◼   ► but the Apple extended keyboard,

01:31:38 ◼   ► you know, the big tank keyboard that I use,

01:31:40 ◼   ► it shipped with like a strip

01:31:42 ◼   ► that went around the function keys.

01:31:44 ◼   ► Like, it was like a, I don't know what you would call it,

01:31:48 ◼   ► like a stencil almost that would surround the function keys.

01:31:53 ◼   ► - Oh, yeah, okay.

01:31:54 ◼   ► - Different pro apps would come,

01:31:56 ◼   ► like QuarkXPress came with one.

01:31:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:31:59 ◼   ► I actually remember that on IBM PCs,

01:32:01 ◼   ► they had a similar thing with that, yeah.

01:32:03 ◼   ► When the big keys, the big pushdown keys.

01:32:06 ◼   ► - Right. - Yeah.

01:32:07 ◼   ► - By default, F1, I think it was just like,

01:32:12 ◼   ► I think it was just like ZXCV.

01:32:15 ◼   ► So F1 was undo, F2 was cut, F3 was copy, and F4 was paste.

01:32:20 ◼   ► But this is ancient Apple history.

01:32:23 ◼   ► This is like stuff that worked in like 1991.

01:32:26 ◼   ► - That's really funny though, 'cause that's like,

01:32:28 ◼   ► you know, talking about this virtual OLED strip

01:32:31 ◼   ► that is like the original version of that, right?

01:32:33 ◼   ► Like software that would ship an actual physical printout

01:32:37 ◼   ► that you would overlay around the keys

01:32:41 ◼   ► to change their functions,

01:32:42 ◼   ► to know what their function would be.

01:32:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I think this idea sounds to me like,

01:32:49 ◼   ► hey, this sounds like a really good idea.

01:32:51 ◼   ► 'Cause then instead of having these hard coded things

01:32:55 ◼   ► that you could make that whole area flexible.

01:32:59 ◼   ► Yeah, and then software updates, when they keep updating Mac OS

01:33:04 ◼   ► and adding new things, they don't

01:33:05 ◼   ► have to ship a new keyboard all of a sudden.

01:33:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:33:09 ◼   ► Mac OS flows off the tongue.

01:33:12 ◼   ► I really like it.

01:33:13 ◼   ► This is my favorite.

01:33:14 ◼   ► I'm really excited about them renaming it Mac OS.

01:33:16 ◼   ► I like it.

01:33:17 ◼   ► But are they still going to do--

01:33:19 ◼   ► they're still committed to the California thing?

01:33:21 ◼   ► Is that the latest--

01:33:22 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:33:23 ◼   ► I have no idea.

01:33:24 ◼   ► - Is it gonna be Mac OS, you know,

01:33:26 ◼   ► the Hollywood or whatever?

01:33:30 ◼   ► - I think so.

01:33:30 ◼   ► I think that they're committed to the California thing.

01:33:32 ◼   ► 'Cause they've only done it for two years, right?

01:33:35 ◼   ► Or did they do three?

01:33:37 ◼   ► Oh no, three, 'cause there was Mavericks.

01:33:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's right.

01:33:40 ◼   ► - Mavericks was first.

01:33:41 ◼   ► Yeah, I think they're committed to the California thing.

01:33:47 ◼   ► And I think that, you know,

01:33:49 ◼   ► but it's just gonna be Mac OS, you know, Hollywood.

01:33:53 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I'll be glad to be done with the 10 elements of it, because we're at 10.11.5 now.

01:34:01 ◼   ► It 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.

01:34:14 ◼   ► Really, never a fan of that name. Just because... Well, number one, I don't like Roman numerals. I just wrote about this...

01:34:21 ◼   ► I hate Roman. I just hate them. They're absolutely terrible. There's arguments to be made that I

01:34:28 ◼   ► mean, I'm not being facetious here. I've seen arguments that their stupid numeral system made the Romans so

01:34:36 ◼   ► bad at math that it led to the decline of the Roman Empire because

01:34:42 ◼   ► they fell to people who used a logical decimal, you know,

01:34:46 ◼   ► system of indicating numerals that made math easier.

01:34:50 ◼   ► I 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.

01:35:01 ◼   ► Oh, it still happens all the time. But yeah.

01:35:04 ◼   ► It'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."

01:35:17 ◼   ► And then as time went on, it was as though, I mean, what was it? 2016? So 15 years of updates to

01:35:25 ◼   ► the operating system. In their numbering system, it's like they've all been minor little feature upgrades

01:35:31 ◼   ► for 15 years.

01:35:34 ◼   ► So I think I read the, I don't know if you talked about this. I've read this somewhere.

01:35:40 ◼   ► So, 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.

01:35:46 ◼   ► but next year they're going back to the Roman numerals so it's like "LI" I think

01:35:51 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:35:52 ◼   ► I know, they are.

01:35:53 ◼   ► It makes me want to scream because I was so happy.

01:35:57 ◼   ► I was like, you know what, I was so happy because I thought that's brilliant.

01:36:01 ◼   ► Fifty is the nicest, roundest number they're going to get to until a hundred.

01:36:08 ◼   ► And now this is the way they get out of the mess they've created for themselves with these

01:36:14 ◼   ► Roman numerals.

01:36:16 ◼   ► You know what else screws me up with the Roman numerals?

01:36:17 ◼   ► The Star Wars.

01:36:18 ◼   ► I'm so confused over what the hell number the movies are.

01:36:23 ◼   ► I really am.

01:36:24 ◼   ► Once I got to the prequels, like four, five, and six,

01:36:28 ◼   ► I understood that there's three.

01:36:30 ◼   ► But now I'm like, what the hell is this episode eight?

01:36:32 ◼   ► How, what, how have we updated already?

01:36:34 ◼   ► And then it's like, just, I really,

01:36:37 ◼   ► I don't like the Roman numerals in Star Wars,

01:36:39 ◼   ► but there's no, they can't get out of it.

01:36:40 ◼   ► They've already, they're already into it.

01:36:42 ◼   ► The NFL could get out of it with the Super Bowl.

01:36:44 ◼   ► did get out of it with 50 and now they're going backwards. Now they're going back. Super

01:36:49 ◼   ► Bowl LI. Super Bowl LI. That's great. I used to like it, but I used to be amused by like

01:37:01 ◼   ► it like old time Hollywood movies used to often put like the copyright in in Roman numerals.

01:37:07 ◼   ► Oh, don't they still do that? I'm pretty sure some movies still do. So at the very end,

01:37:12 ◼   ► I'm one of those people who stays through the credits,

01:37:14 ◼   ► the annoying person who sits through the entire credits,

01:37:17 ◼   ► even though I'm not reading everything.

01:37:18 ◼   ► I just sort of like it as a time to think about what I just

01:37:20 ◼   ► watched or whatever.

01:37:22 ◼   ► And so I always stay through the end,

01:37:24 ◼   ► and especially now with all the Marvel stuff

01:37:25 ◼   ► where you have to stay through the end.

01:37:27 ◼   ► But at the end, when they do the last credit thing,

01:37:31 ◼   ► it's like the--

01:37:32 ◼   ► whatever it is.

01:37:33 ◼   ► I don't know if it's MPAA or whoever

01:37:36 ◼   ► gets the last sort of screen.

01:37:38 ◼   ► And they do the number of what actual movie it is,

01:37:42 ◼   ► like how many movies have actually been.

01:37:45 ◼   ► And it's still in Roman numerals, I'm pretty sure,

01:37:47 ◼   ► because I know that because they just passed some milestone.

01:37:53 ◼   ► I should look it up, but I don't even

01:37:55 ◼   ► know what I would Google for.

01:37:57 ◼   ► But they just passed some major milestone.

01:37:59 ◼   ► And so it's now shorter because it's

01:38:02 ◼   ► passed like 5,000 or whatever, 50,000 or something like that.

01:38:06 ◼   ► Maybe it used to be though, and maybe it's not now,

01:38:08 ◼   ► and maybe I'm remembering it slightly wrong.

01:38:10 ◼   ► I know that they used to do it.

01:38:12 ◼   ► What you're suggesting is like, yeah,

01:38:15 ◼   ► the year and everything would be Roman numeral, right?

01:38:18 ◼   ► And now I think this movie credit system at the very end,

01:38:23 ◼   ► it may have switched back over to actual numbers

01:38:26 ◼   ► because it just got too unwieldy,

01:38:27 ◼   ► but I'm not 100% sure.

01:38:29 ◼   ► I don't remember.

01:38:30 ◼   ► - All right, I'll look it up.

01:38:31 ◼   ► We'll look it up after the show.

01:38:33 ◼   ► - All right.

01:38:33 ◼   ► - Here's one answer.

01:38:35 ◼   ► I don't know if this is definitive. I googled one.

01:38:37 ◼   ► This is all I have time for to do live in the show.

01:38:39 ◼   ► But there's a BBC article that says,

01:38:41 ◼   ► perhaps one of the most notable areas

01:38:44 ◼   ► where people are likely to come across Roman numerals

01:38:46 ◼   ► is in TV and film credits where the convention

01:38:48 ◼   ► is not to spell out what year something was made.

01:38:51 ◼   ► The practice is believed to have started

01:38:54 ◼   ► in an attempt to disguise the age of films

01:38:56 ◼   ► or television programs.

01:38:57 ◼   ► - Huh.

01:38:59 ◼   ► - In other words, it's the opposite of claiming

01:39:01 ◼   ► an undeserved antiquity.

01:39:02 ◼   ► They're not trying to look old.

01:39:03 ◼   ► they are trying to look like they're still young.

01:39:06 ◼   ► Because nobody can tell.

01:39:09 ◼   ► Here's an example, here's 1998 in Roman numerals.

01:39:12 ◼   ► M-C-M-X-C-V-I-I-I.

01:39:15 ◼   ► Crazy. - Yes.

01:39:18 ◼   ► Yeah, I think I see the same thing now,

01:39:20 ◼   ► this on Stack Exchange talking about, yeah.

01:39:23 ◼   ► Copyright, Time Warner Studios, MC, yeah, right.

01:39:26 ◼   ► That's exactly right.

01:39:26 ◼   ► - I've already got it in the show notes.

01:39:28 ◼   ► I'll put it there.

01:39:29 ◼   ► Folks, you can listen, just check out the show notes there.

01:39:31 ◼   ► - That's what it is then.

01:39:32 ◼   ► I think I was conflating the two things.

01:39:34 ◼   ► That is where they use the Roman numerals.

01:39:36 ◼   ► The movie number is, I think, just a number.

01:39:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:39:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:39:41 ◼   ► Okay.

01:39:42 ◼   ► There we go.

01:39:43 ◼   ► But that's where they are.

01:39:44 ◼   ► What the hell are we talking about?

01:39:45 ◼   ► How do we get from the keyboard with an OLED strip to Roman numerals?

01:39:48 ◼   ► Because Mac OS.

01:39:49 ◼   ► Oh, Mac OS X, right.

01:39:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:39:51 ◼   ► They're going to get rid of the X.

01:39:52 ◼   ► Yeah, there we go.

01:39:58 ◼   ► I wonder, would...

01:39:59 ◼   ► No, no.

01:40:00 ◼   ► No, no. Although I wonder, maybe they would like, if...

01:40:04 ◼   ► I don't think you would have to have the new keyboard to use Siri on the Mac, but maybe

01:40:07 ◼   ► they would do the little, you know, the animation for Siri, the horizontal thing, because it's

01:40:11 ◼   ► such a horizontal animation, maybe the OLED strip will turn into the waveform.

01:40:16 ◼   ► Yeah, that'd be pretty.

01:40:21 ◼   ► The other thing with Germin's report, though, is that, and it's a little disappointing,

01:40:24 ◼   ► because I was kind of hoping maybe new MacBook Pros would come out at WWDC, but his report

01:40:30 ◼   ► it later this year, like a fall thing. Right, and there was some little nugget,

01:40:37 ◼   ► I think, and I think that was based on, what's the one, the one, who is it, is it KJI or whatever,

01:40:44 ◼   ► they have a pretty good track record of being right about those things. I think it was riffing

01:40:48 ◼   ► off of that, but also talking about the fact that there's some potential for a 13-inch MacBook,

01:40:57 ◼   ► not a pro, so there would be like the two pro models, and then we already have now the 12 inch,

01:41:03 ◼   ► you know, Retina MacBook, and now there might be a 13 inch? It said that in there,

01:41:08 ◼   ► which I was confused by, like why would they do a 12 and a 13 inch?

01:41:12 ◼   ► Yeah, that seems wrong to me. It seems to me like they made the whole reason they made the

01:41:17 ◼   ► 12 inch in the first place was to split the difference between 13 and 11.

01:41:21 ◼   ► Right. Right. And so, yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's something got lost in translation there.

01:41:29 ◼   ► Yeah. Or they're going to switch to 13. I don't know. It doesn't make sense to have 12 and 13.

01:41:34 ◼   ► They don't seem different enough to justify both of them existing.

01:41:38 ◼   ► I mean, you could see where they would make a bigger one in order to put a second port.

01:41:44 ◼   ► everyone complains of course about the one USB-C port. But then with a 14 or 15?

01:41:52 ◼   ► I just think that they have to be different enough that just at a glance on the table in the Apple

01:42:00 ◼   ► Store you can say, "Oh, that one's big, this one's small." If you're gonna have three, it has to be

01:42:08 ◼   ► Rare, medium, and well done.

01:42:11 ◼   ► You can't have a medium rare in there.

01:42:14 ◼   ► It's too hard to tell apart.

01:42:17 ◼   ► And that report also mentioned that they're likely

01:42:20 ◼   ► keeping the MacBook Air around.

01:42:22 ◼   ► And it will just be the cheaper--

01:42:24 ◼   ► the low, the rare version, in your analogy--

01:42:30 ◼   ► the cheaper, low-end version of what you get from Mac.

01:42:33 ◼   ► So presumably still no Retina screen, I guess.

01:42:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that the writing is on the wall.

01:42:38 ◼   ► I know that this is to me, I get it all the time.

01:42:42 ◼   ► And I know there's so many people,

01:42:44 ◼   ► and I'm gonna make you angry

01:42:45 ◼   ► if you're one of these people listening.

01:42:46 ◼   ► I'm telling you right now, stop holding your breath

01:42:48 ◼   ► for a retina MacBook Air, and it's just not gonna happen.

01:42:51 ◼   ► And I know, I get emails all the time,

01:42:54 ◼   ► this is what a lot of people want.

01:42:56 ◼   ► They want exactly what the MacBook Air is right now

01:42:59 ◼   ► with a retina screen.

01:43:00 ◼   ► - And when they're asking for that,

01:43:02 ◼   ► is it specifically that they want,

01:43:06 ◼   ► like the certain type of power adapter

01:43:10 ◼   ► and the older school USB ports rather than--

01:43:16 ◼   ► because the new MacBook is very similar to what a MacBook Air

01:43:21 ◼   ► is except for the ports, right?

01:43:25 ◼   ► And the power, this performance, because it's slower.

01:43:28 ◼   ► It's still slower than MacBook Air.

01:43:31 ◼   ► And a refreshed MacBook Air, if it were to come, but it's not,

01:43:36 ◼   ► I don't think, would be faster still.

01:43:38 ◼   ► But the MacBook Air you can go by today

01:43:41 ◼   ► is faster than the MacBook.

01:43:43 ◼   ► And so if you push your machine a little bit,

01:43:45 ◼   ► if you're like me, 50 browser tabs,

01:43:49 ◼   ► or if you're using Xcode or something like that,

01:43:52 ◼   ► photo editing, you want it.

01:43:55 ◼   ► But no, I think it's very clear looking at the products

01:43:57 ◼   ► that Apple's come out with recently, what they're doing.

01:44:00 ◼   ► The MacBook, the new one, the MacBook One,

01:44:04 ◼   ► will get faster over time. Right. And it will eventually, like in two years, that won't be an

01:44:09 ◼   ► issue. Right. So is it worth it for Apple to spend money to make a retina MacBook Air when these

01:44:17 ◼   ► things are just going to collide in two years? Right. And on the other end, the MacBook Pros

01:44:22 ◼   ► are getting thinner. Like that's another part of this rumor with the OLED screen is that the

01:44:27 ◼   ► MacBook, even though they got so much thinner a couple years ago when they went to the,

01:44:32 ◼   ► you can't get a spinning hard drive anymore, everything's SSD, but it's going to get thinner

01:44:37 ◼   ► still because that's what Apple does. They take products and make them thinner. So the MacBook

01:44:41 ◼   ► Pros, at the more expensive side, and if performance is important to you, are going to get ever more

01:44:47 ◼   ► air-like in their form factor, and the MacBook is going to get faster. And Apple's bet is that

01:44:54 ◼   ► your need for ports is going to decrease over time. And so the MacBook Air, even though if they were

01:45:02 ◼   ► to come out with a retina MacBook Air today, it would sell, might sell very well. It's

01:45:06 ◼   ► a dead end, I think, in Apple's mind in terms of differentiation of the product line. That

01:45:12 ◼   ► it's not, it would be too, it's too conflated with the other products or too easily mixed

01:45:17 ◼   ► up. Right. And so right now the only reason the MacBook Airs exist is to hit the $899

01:45:24 ◼   ► and $999 price points. Right. And I assume that's a lot of what they're selling to like

01:45:28 ◼   ► right? That's their... is that also their school sort of selling? Oh, I think so. I would be...

01:45:35 ◼   ► anybody... I would be surprised if schools were buying anything other than

01:45:41 ◼   ► the MacBook Airs, because they don't have money, and B, they just don't...

01:45:47 ◼   ► schools, you know, they're just not going to value something like retina. Right.

01:45:51 ◼   ► You know, too bad kids. Even though kids have the sharpest eyes, and they're the

01:45:54 ◼   ► most likely to be able to see the fuzzy pixels.

01:45:58 ◼   ► - Well, just wait, give 'em time.

01:46:03 ◼   ► Two years, kids, two years.

01:46:05 ◼   ► - So I don't know, I wonder if we're gonna see

01:46:06 ◼   ► any hardware at WWDC now, but on the other hand,

01:46:09 ◼   ► we haven't had new Mac hardware in forever,

01:46:12 ◼   ► except for the updated MacBook One,

01:46:15 ◼   ► which was just a speed bump.

01:46:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, the only hardware,

01:46:19 ◼   ► if those reports are true, and maybe it won't even be

01:46:22 ◼   ► released then, would be the thing

01:46:23 ◼   ► We were just talking about that music Siri hub thing.

01:46:27 ◼   ► But yeah, they usually don't do--

01:46:29 ◼   ► they haven't done Mac hardware in a while, right?

01:46:31 ◼   ► Because they announce the new OS,

01:46:34 ◼   ► and then they wait to ship.

01:46:36 ◼   ► Well, they did the updated 5K iMac last year

01:46:39 ◼   ► with the new high gamut screen.

01:46:42 ◼   ► Oh, that's right.

01:46:43 ◼   ► OK.

01:46:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:46:45 ◼   ► By the way, when are they going to launch

01:46:47 ◼   ► a display, external display, with Retina?

01:46:51 ◼   ► Like, why have they not done that yet?

01:46:53 ◼   ► That's a fantastic question. I think that this is something that I, because I have the 5k iMac,

01:46:59 ◼   ► yeah, I have the old, the first one though, not the high gamut one. So you know, play a little sad

01:47:06 ◼   ► violin song for me. I know that the ATP guys have gone on about this in detail and I, because I

01:47:13 ◼   ► don't have a Mac Pro, I don't care enough to figure it out, but there's some kind of thing where

01:47:17 ◼   ► Thunderbolt. Oh, right. The throughput is not there.

01:47:22 ◼   ► Sufficient. And the only way that Apple made it work internally in the 5k iMac

01:47:27 ◼   ► was by creating your own thing. Um, uh,

01:47:31 ◼   ► so I think that's the problem. Uh, but maybe this WWDC is where the,

01:47:36 ◼   ► the, the trashcan Darth Vader Mac pro came out.

01:47:42 ◼   ► It is incredibly long overdue for an update.

01:47:46 ◼   ► And so I know it's not like a best seller, but at the WWDC developer crowd, it actually is.

01:47:54 ◼   ► So maybe that would be a nice... I haven't seen any rumors about it, but just in terms of being overdue,

01:48:00 ◼   ► boy, that would be a nice announcement that would play extremely...

01:48:03 ◼   ► I think it would play extremely well in a room if they said, "We've updated the Mac Pro.

01:48:07 ◼   ► It blows away the old Mac Pro in performance, and you can hook up this 5K, beautiful 5K display to it."

01:48:14 ◼   ► Finally, an actual finally.

01:48:17 ◼   ► And yeah, I mean, given Apple's dominance in both design

01:48:20 ◼   ► and film and everything, it's crazy

01:48:23 ◼   ► that all these people can't use a screen that

01:48:28 ◼   ► ties into all of the rest of the Apple products

01:48:30 ◼   ► that they're using for that.

01:48:31 ◼   ► Right, and again, I'm spoiled, but I've gone all--

01:48:36 ◼   ► I guess I'm trying to think what my last non-retina device was.

01:48:40 ◼   ► It was, I guess it was when I upgraded to this 5K iMac,

01:48:45 ◼   ► what, like a year and a half ago.

01:48:46 ◼   ► But now, everything is retina.

01:48:49 ◼   ► My son still has a non-retina iPad.

01:48:52 ◼   ► So I think it's like the only non-retina device in the house.

01:48:54 ◼   ► And so I--

01:48:54 ◼   ► Really?