The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hey there. I feel like I just saw you. Well, I feel like I did just see you. I mean, like

00:00:06 ◼   ► it was, it's not like one of those euphemisms. Boy, it seems like it was, it was like Monday,

00:00:11 ◼   ► Monday afternoon. What a week. Yeah, it's a big week. I was, did you see a baseball

00:00:22 ◼   ► prospectus is launching an entire site devoted to the Mets? I had that moment of like, the

00:00:27 ◼   ► that. It turns out they've got a bunch of local sites. They already have a Bronx site

00:00:32 ◼   ► for the Yankees. They don't have a Giants site, though. I feel slighted there. But it's

00:00:39 ◼   ► baseball. It's coming. It's gotta be coming. Giants are too big. It's a big market. And

00:00:45 ◼   ► they're a good team. I'm sure it'll happen. But ESPN did that. They launched like ESPN

00:00:48 ◼   ► Boston or something. Yeah, exactly. ESPN has a New York. Yeah. But they never did a California

00:00:56 ◼   ► even, let alone Bay Area sports sub-site. I don't know what it is. I think it's

00:01:00 ◼   ► because people in California don't care about sports. I think that's probably actually

00:01:04 ◼   ► the fact per capita. Some of us care about it, but most of us don't.

00:01:10 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Have you looked at the MLB app for Apple TV

00:01:15 ◼   ► recently, like in the preseason? Tim Cynova

00:01:18 ◼   ► No, I haven't. Dave Asprey

00:01:19 ◼   ► It has regressed in some very disappointing ways.

00:01:23 ◼   ► I think, and this is because people ask, you know, they probably ask you this, they definitely

00:01:28 ◼   ► ask me this because I've written about that app a bunch and I went to, I just went to

00:01:32 ◼   ► New York and met those guys, which was really cool to go to the MLB Advanced Media offices.

00:01:40 ◼   ► And the good guys, they love the Apple platforms, they've got a great team of developers. They

00:01:44 ◼   ► were really happy about the new Apple TV because the, did you ever see their PlayStation app?

00:01:50 ◼   ► No. Oh, it was amazing. It was better

00:01:53 ◼   ► I think maybe the Xbox one app is like this now

00:01:56 ◼   ► but there was a period in there where the PlayStation app was the MLB app like it had

00:02:01 ◼   ► you could see the metadata that they would drop in of like when there was a hit or when there was a homer or when there

00:02:07 ◼   ► Was a run and you could use the you know PlayStation controller to like jump jump to the next scoring play

00:02:12 ◼   ► Just incredible amounts of data. It was it was way more complex than anything I've seen on any other platform

00:02:18 ◼   ► So, I knew they were going to be excited about the Apple TV because they would be able to

00:02:22 ◼   ► build an app instead of just sort of like a list of streams. But the problem with the

00:02:27 ◼   ► MLB stuff is they make these press releases for spring training, but in reality, their

00:02:31 ◼   ► ship date is like the first day of the season. So, I am reluctant to write about their apps

00:02:37 ◼   ► during spring training because they're, you know, first off, the data that's being

00:02:43 ◼   ► collected and the video that's being generated is not of, it's like substandard quality

00:02:48 ◼   ► because it's not the regular season. So that's a big part of it. And I do think they're busy

00:02:53 ◼   ► doing the app version that's going to release on opening day. And that's the one to write about

00:02:58 ◼   ► because I bet that it's, yeah, what they've got on the Apple TV right now, what they've got on

00:03:03 ◼   ► the iPad right now. It's like, yeah, it's okay. But it's like spring training mode. I feel like

00:03:07 ◼   ► there's always a better version that drops at the end of March. I think so. I hope so. I think,

00:03:13 ◼   ► though that in this particular case I think that they might be sort of, well, I was going

00:03:20 ◼   ► to say behind the eight ball, but I might be mixing metaphors. But I feel like the platform

00:03:24 ◼   ► changes are so significant that I think they'll get there eventually because like you said,

00:03:29 ◼   ► it's a phenomenal team and they really do care. But at the moment, it's really kind

00:03:34 ◼   ► of weird how it's like worse than the old Apple TV app.

00:03:37 ◼   ► Yeah, that's not good. That's not good.

00:03:40 ◼   ► The big one is that you can't decide, like if you,

00:03:43 ◼   ► let's say you start to watch a game after it started,

00:03:45 ◼   ► but it's on, like the game started at seven

00:03:48 ◼   ► and you start watching at eight.

00:03:49 ◼   ► You don't even get the choice anymore

00:03:50 ◼   ► of whether you want to start from the beginning

00:03:52 ◼   ► or watch live.

00:03:53 ◼   ► It just sort of streams and puts you like, you know,

00:03:56 ◼   ► 30 seconds behind live.

00:03:57 ◼   ► - Oh, that's not good.

00:03:58 ◼   ► No, they mean to-

00:03:59 ◼   ► - But I'm sure they'll get to the bottom of it.

00:04:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm sure they will.

00:04:01 ◼   ► So you're a Yankee fan in Philly, so-

00:04:05 ◼   ► - Right.

00:04:06 ◼   ► - You're out of market. - So I'm very lucky, right.

00:04:08 ◼   ► there was this big class action lawsuit about a lot of things involving sports leagues and

00:04:15 ◼   ► video and in in out of market video and stuff like that and it's it's uh things are are changing

00:04:21 ◼   ► starting this year and one of the things that they changed is that they're offering like a

00:04:25 ◼   ► one team in market streaming package would you buy that instead of the everything it's like you could

00:04:30 ◼   ► say 40 bucks or 30 bucks and and just get yankees games or would you do you want the whole spread or

00:04:36 ◼   ► Do you buy the package? Do you buy the... I do buy the package. No, I definitely buy it.

00:04:40 ◼   ► And it's lucky. And for those of you who aren't sports fans, you know,

00:04:43 ◼   ► well, you got to listen to some sports talk on this show. But the gist of the in-market thing is,

00:04:48 ◼   ► and it sounds crazy, but if you're not a sports fan, you might think it's super crazy, is that

00:04:54 ◼   ► if you live in the home market of a team, so let's say for me, that would be the Philadelphia

00:05:01 ◼   ► Phillies. You can't stream their games home or away because the idea is you're

00:05:09 ◼   ► supposed to pay for cable to get the channel on cable that pays to carry

00:05:13 ◼   ► their games locally. But you can pay MLB, what is it, like 120 a year? Well, so part

00:05:18 ◼   ► of the settlement of the lawsuit, it's 100 this year. So for 100 bucks, you

00:05:24 ◼   ► can get the MLB thing and you can watch every game except for the ones that are

00:05:30 ◼   ► local to you. But they definitely, you know, and I'm sure that there's ways around it with

00:05:34 ◼   ► VPNs and stuff like that, but... It's tough on iOS, though, because iOS has location services, so

00:05:41 ◼   ► if you've got location services turned on, it's easier on a Mac to fake where you are in the world,

00:05:47 ◼   ► but it's harder on an iPhone or an iPad. Right, like the one time I was out, I remember it was like two years ago,

00:05:52 ◼   ► I think it was two years ago, the Yankees were playing the Oakland Athletics, and I was out for WWDC,

00:05:57 ◼   ► DC and I wanted to pop the game on my iPhone and they were like, "You can't watch it."

00:06:00 ◼   ► And I'm like, "Oh, you must have the wrong location for me." And I'm like, "Oh, wait.

00:06:06 ◼   ► You have the right location for me. It's an A's game."

00:06:09 ◼   ► It's one of those—I mean, this is not just a sports conversation because it's about how

00:06:12 ◼   ► technology is totally swamping the entertainment industry. This is like a TV industry problem

00:06:20 ◼   ► and how do you protect—I mean, it's very easy to say, "Well, people are cutting the

00:06:23 ◼   ► cord. You just have to deal with it. It's stupid that they're not offering it." But

00:06:26 ◼   ► If you look at the deal the Dodgers signed, their cable deal in LA is worth like $30 billion

00:06:32 ◼   ► or something like that. It's insane. It is an amazing amount of money. Why is it that

00:06:38 ◼   ► much money? The answer is because the cable company figures that if they control the Dodgers'

00:06:42 ◼   ► TV rights, Dodger fans in LA can't cut the cord. That's why it's worth as much as

00:06:48 ◼   ► it is, is because of that, which, you know, but at some point, I don't know what happens.

00:06:55 ◼   ► At some point, cable goes down to the point where they're going to have to try to find

00:06:58 ◼   ► another way to make money. One of the things about this shift that's happening with that

00:07:05 ◼   ► class action settlement is in parallel, they're making deals with local cable companies. So,

00:07:14 ◼   ► What's interesting about that is it means that if you have a cable login, so this is

00:07:18 ◼   ► not for cord cutters, but like, I used to work in downtown San Francisco two blocks

00:07:22 ◼   ► from the Giants ballpark, and I pay for cable.

00:07:26 ◼   ► And yet I couldn't sit in my office and watch the Giants game that was happening, because

00:07:31 ◼   ► I was in the local market, even though I could watch it at home or I could use like a Slingbox

00:07:35 ◼   ► to watch it, and that's changing.

00:07:37 ◼   ► They made a deal with most, but not all, it's like 22 teams now, where if you've got a cable

00:07:42 ◼   ► log in, you can watch the game. Even if it's a local game, you can watch it. And that seems

00:07:48 ◼   ► to be the next frontier for streaming is going to be everything is unlocked if you're paying

00:07:52 ◼   ► for cable in some form.

00:07:54 ◼   ► Yeah, the weird thing, one of the weird things is that you don't see the commercials, or

00:07:58 ◼   ► at least not the standard. Sometimes they sell other commercials, but usually the space

00:08:03 ◼   ► between innings is just dead air, and they're like, you know, in between innings or something

00:08:07 ◼   ► like that, you know, standby, the game will come back. And I had the idea years ago, and

00:08:12 ◼   ► you know, every time this has ever come up on the podcast, people write in and they say,

00:08:15 ◼   ► "Why don't they just show the commercials? If the way they make money is to sell commercials,

00:08:20 ◼   ► just show the same commercials to the people watching live." But it's what you said, which

00:08:24 ◼   ► is that the cable companies see it as a reason to get cable. It's more than just the commercials.

00:08:29 ◼   ► Yeah, they make their money on cable subscriptions. The commercials are a bonus. It's just like,

00:08:33 ◼   ► you know, you pay for a magazine subscription back in the day, but it still had ads in the

00:08:37 ◼   ► magazine. You get money from both streams come in and that's how you fund whatever

00:08:43 ◼   ► you're doing. And so I do wonder if part of the deal of showing local channels to people

00:08:49 ◼   ► who are local cable subscribers is that they have to set up like a feed where you're seeing

00:08:54 ◼   ► the local ads because that's probably one of the sticking points of the deal, right?

00:09:00 ◼   ► They've guaranteed their advertisers this coverage. So that might be—that's a technical

00:09:06 ◼   ► thing where, you know, the Fox Sports Southwest has to feed the Diamondbacks games to MLB

00:09:15 ◼   ► Advanced Media. It's probably, I mean, they're doing it anyway, but they probably feed a

00:09:18 ◼   ► version with commercials to them or something. It's technical, probably, more than anything

00:09:21 ◼   ► else, but that's why this is all complicated for all this stuff. There are contracts, and

00:09:26 ◼   ► there's big money, and there's technical limitations, and as tech people, we think, "Well, we can

00:09:32 ◼   ► solve this. We can solve this technologically." And then you realize, "Oh, tech is not the

00:09:37 ◼   ► problem." MLB Advanced Media is one of the most advanced streaming media organizations

00:09:43 ◼   ► in the world, maybe the most. They do so much for other people that people don't know about.

00:09:48 ◼   ► They're streaming the HBO Now service. They've done CBS's sports stuff. I think they do ESPN's

00:09:53 ◼   ► stuff. I mean, they are very good at what they do. Technical is not the problem. The

00:09:58 ◼   ► The problem is contracts that still exist and money where, you know, if a cable company

00:10:04 ◼   ► in LA is going to pay $30 billion for 30 years or 20 years or whatever of rights to the Dodgers,

00:10:12 ◼   ► then it's kind of hard to walk away from that if you're, you know, if you're Major

00:10:16 ◼   ► League Baseball, even if it does shut out cord cutters, because that's a lot of money.

00:10:19 ◼   ► Yeah, and remember that two years ago when HBO tried to do their own thing with HBO Go,

00:10:26 ◼   ► When the Game of Thrones premiere came out, it completely collapsed and they were literally

00:10:31 ◼   ► reduced to asking people, "Hey, why don't you wait a day?"

00:10:36 ◼   ► They got rid of the guy, too.

00:10:37 ◼   ► That's the most shocking thing.

00:10:39 ◼   ► The story is that their CTO was building this streaming infrastructure on the inside of

00:10:44 ◼   ► HBO.

00:10:45 ◼   ► They were like, "Well, yeah, but we're talking to Major League Baseball if we could use them."

00:10:50 ◼   ► He's like, "No, no, no, no, no.

00:10:51 ◼   ► We're going to do it."

00:10:52 ◼   ► Then there was that one day where they announced they were going to go with Major League Baseball

00:10:56 ◼   ► and that guy was leaving the company.

00:10:57 ◼   ► It was like, "Wow."

00:10:58 ◼   ► And then last year, when they had the MLB advanced media backed streaming system, it

00:11:04 ◼   ► was apparently seamless.

00:11:06 ◼   ► Rock solid, yeah.

00:11:07 ◼   ► I mean, I guess it's never perfect for everybody, but even cable's not perfect for everybody.

00:11:14 ◼   ► The other weird thing on this, well, weird for me, because as a Yankees fan, but it's

00:11:18 ◼   ► a lot of the pre-season coverage is the fact that Comcast still doesn't have...

00:11:23 ◼   ► they dropped the Yes Network, which is the Yankees entertainment and sports network that

00:11:27 ◼   ► carries at least 150 out of the 162 games a year. There's like 12 that are on Fox,

00:11:34 ◼   ► maybe a couple more than that because there's some on ESPN, but 140-some games at least

00:11:38 ◼   ► a year. Comcast dropped them in November and still hasn't picked them back up. At least

00:11:46 ◼   ► as of this recording, Friday, March 25th, the Yankees aren't going to be on TV if

00:11:50 ◼   ► if you're in New York, if you have cable.

00:11:52 ◼   ► Oh, so that's actually a very similar situation

00:11:55 ◼   ► to what's happened in LA for people who don't know.

00:11:57 ◼   ► LA, Time Warner Cable, has had this Dodgers deal,

00:12:01 ◼   ► and they have not been able to come to agreement

00:12:04 ◼   ► with the other cable company or satellite providers that

00:12:07 ◼   ► serve people in LA.

00:12:08 ◼   ► So there's a tiny percentage of people

00:12:10 ◼   ► in LA who are able to see the bulk of the Dodger

00:12:12 ◼   ► games on TV.

00:12:13 ◼   ► And I think that's still not worked out,

00:12:14 ◼   ► although I read somewhere that that was going to be worked out.

00:12:17 ◼   ► But it's kind of awful.

00:12:20 ◼   ► But this is, you know, it's like I talk about this.

00:12:23 ◼   ► So I do every week I do a podcast with Tim Goodman

00:12:25 ◼   ► from The Hollywood Reporter.

00:12:26 ◼   ► And we talk about this same thing a lot

00:12:28 ◼   ► 'cause it's transforming all entertainment.

00:12:30 ◼   ► All TV is doing this and it's like a death spiral.

00:12:33 ◼   ► I mean, they don't know where this is going.

00:12:35 ◼   ► They are desperately paying money to try and hold on

00:12:37 ◼   ► or mitigate how far the fall is, how fast it is.

00:12:42 ◼   ► I mean, and so you end up in these situations

00:12:45 ◼   ► where it makes no sense that the people of Los Angeles

00:12:48 ◼   ► New York can't see these baseball teams on their TV set and yet this is where we

00:12:54 ◼   ► are because there are bigger issues like the entire future of

00:12:58 ◼   ► their industry that they feel are at play.

00:13:00 ◼   ► Yeah, and it seems like it would only be fair if Comcast doesn't have the

00:13:05 ◼   ► Yankees and you're a Comcast customer that you should be able to get the MLB

00:13:09 ◼   ► app package, but it doesn't work that way. I think you're just blocked out,

00:13:15 ◼   ► which would drive me nuts. I don't know. And it's like a lot of negotiations when there

00:13:23 ◼   ► really is a hard deadline, which is opening day, which is a week away. I wouldn't be surprised

00:13:27 ◼   ► if a deal gets hammered out in the next week, but it just seems, I don't know. But like

00:13:33 ◼   ► I said, it's dominating the preseason talk about the Yankees because everybody's panicked

00:13:37 ◼   ► that they're not going to be able to watch the games.

00:13:40 ◼   ► Some of the problems with this, I mean, this goes to business models like on the web and

00:13:44 ◼   ► everywhere else, which is getting people to pay for a premium service is great, but it's

00:13:47 ◼   ► not the same as having everybody have it, right? You lose this whole layer of casual

00:13:52 ◼   ► fans in the case of baseball who are going to flip on a game and watch it from time to

00:13:56 ◼   ► time, but they're not going to ever pay $100 a year to do that, right? And so, and that's

00:14:02 ◼   ► why they don't, that's why, you know, Time Warner Cable in LA is not going to create

00:14:07 ◼   ► a Dodger fan package for everybody who isn't a Time Warner Cable customer to pay them $10

00:14:13 ◼   ► or $20 a month to watch the Dodgers because that's not their endgame. They want to cut

00:14:17 ◼   ► a deal with Comcast or whoever who will pay them a few dollars off of the bill of every

00:14:24 ◼   ► single subscriber and then it goes everywhere. I have a friend who's a cricket fan and

00:14:30 ◼   ► he's in Canada and he watches all these Indian cricket league matches and I was like,

00:14:36 ◼   ► "Oh, well that's interesting. I can check that out. You can't get it in the US."

00:14:39 ◼   ► Well you can, but it's priced for the hardcore fan. They've gone the other way where it's

00:14:43 ◼   ► like you can't be a casual fan of that thing in America, of cricket, because there is a

00:14:49 ◼   ► small group of people who love it and will pay like $100 to see one cricket tournament

00:14:54 ◼   ► or whatever they call them, and that's what they're going for. And you know, baseball

00:14:59 ◼   ► doesn't want to do that. They want to be, these are mainstream sports, they want to

00:15:03 ◼   ► make the deal where they get a huge amount of money and it's available to everybody,

00:15:08 ◼   ► And it makes me wonder about the future of broad appeal stuff if everything is a la carte,

00:15:15 ◼   ► because there's a lot of stuff that you're willing to watch if it's on, but are you willing

00:15:19 ◼   ► to pay for it?

00:15:21 ◼   ► That's very true.

00:15:23 ◼   ► All right, as good a time as any to take a break and thank our first sponsor, it's our

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00:17:45 ◼   ► should start with the with the event right we get to start with the event

00:17:49 ◼   ► then talk about the actual devices yeah I mean that seems like a good place to

00:17:53 ◼   ► to start.

00:17:54 ◼   ► Everybody, so many people, I say everybody, but so many complaints that it was, "Oh, this

00:17:58 ◼   ► is a boring event.

00:17:59 ◼   ► Why did they have an event?"

00:18:00 ◼   ► I kind of, the more I think about it, I think an event like this week's is actually more

00:18:03 ◼   ► interesting if you're like an Apple nerd than the bigger ones because I feel like it's a

00:18:09 ◼   ► little bit more revealing.

00:18:15 ◼   ► For example, just for example, like Jaws is a segment.

00:18:18 ◼   ► do you introduce a phone that has nothing new about it? It's a...

00:18:25 ◼   ► well, think about it though. It's a design that we've seen before. Okay, so

00:18:29 ◼   ► rose gold is new, but we have seen rose gold before. And all of the stuff that's

00:18:36 ◼   ► in the phone, the A9 processor, the camera from the iPhone 6s, being able to do

00:18:45 ◼   ► Apple Pay with the Touch ID sensor. We've seen it all before. So how do you

00:18:49 ◼   ► spend 10 or 15 minutes on stage talking about a phone that

00:18:54 ◼   ► everything I just said about is true? And we saw it. Literally nothing

00:18:58 ◼   ► new about that product other than the mixture of it. But you're right. The

00:19:04 ◼   ► the broad mainstream wants to see something like totally new blowing you

00:19:08 ◼   ► away from Apple every single time, which is unrealistic, but that's why you always

00:19:12 ◼   ► get the disappointing event every time. Every time there's an Apple event, people say it's

00:19:16 ◼   ► disappointing because that's just, unless it's the new iPhone, like the original iPhone or the

00:19:20 ◼   ► original iPad, it's just not going to be exciting. But for us, you're right. It becomes about like,

00:19:26 ◼   ► how does Apple communicate something like the iPhone SE and what is their positioning? Like,

00:19:32 ◼   ► why would you do that? Why would you do something? Because although there's no parts in it that are

00:19:36 ◼   ► new, it is the first time they've ever done a product like this. So it is new strategy-wise.

00:19:44 ◼   ► So if we care about strategy, then it's actually really interesting.

00:19:47 ◼   ► Right. And I feel like that's a little bit, in a way, it's more interesting for us as the,

00:19:53 ◼   ► you know, like I always say, "cremelanologist," to sort of parse out what they're doing with this.

00:19:57 ◼   ► Whereas if they had something altogether new, like a totally top-secret thing to make the iPhone

00:20:04 ◼   ► only two millimeters thick, like ridiculously thin. It's really just like a piece of glass.

00:20:08 ◼   ► It looks like the phone from Looper. Well, that sells itself, right? It's like that's not hard to

00:20:16 ◼   ► pitch because you've got this thing that's like, "Oh my god, just look at it. I can't believe they

00:20:19 ◼   ► made that." Whereas this is a lot more strategic. And it is. It is. This, like, for example, this is

00:20:25 ◼   ► the first time they've made a third phone from an industrial design, right? There was the iPhone 5,

00:20:31 ◼   ► then the 5S, and now the new one, the SE, is the first time they've reused a design for the third

00:20:37 ◼   ► time. A physical design. Yeah, I mean, I guess you could argue the 5C is close to the design of the

00:20:45 ◼   ► others, right? It's just the back plate is kind of different. But yeah, I guess it's a classic now.

00:20:51 ◼   ► I mean, if you think about it, yeah, the 4 is... 5 is just an elongated 4 in a lot of ways. So

00:20:57 ◼   ► So that's a design that has been with us for a very long time.

00:21:01 ◼   ► Well, but similar, but not as similar as this, where you could...

00:21:05 ◼   ► If you took the white one... I mean, that space black is different because they changed

00:21:10 ◼   ► the color with the 5 and 5S, but I think if you took the white one with the regular aluminum

00:21:14 ◼   ► back, you would really have to get close to be able to tell a 5S SE apart.

00:21:19 ◼   ► They're dead ringers. I mean, I brought a 5S with me to the event, thinking this would

00:21:26 ◼   ► be like this. I took some pictures and I mean they're dead ringers. They fit in the same

00:21:29 ◼   ► cases. The chamfer is matte instead of shiny, okay. The printing on the back is different

00:21:35 ◼   ► and the Apple on the back is different because it's I think screen printed in some way on

00:21:39 ◼   ► the 5S and it's like a stainless steel cutout like the modern phones on the new one, on

00:21:45 ◼   ► the SE. But otherwise, I mean, it's the same phone. It's not a rethink of what that phone

00:21:52 ◼   ► should be like. It is the old design with new insides.

00:21:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I sort of, I think, in a sense, it to me makes it the, it's like the all-time best

00:22:03 ◼   ► iPhone design, because it's the only one that got a third, a third go-around.

00:22:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I think, I think maybe you're right. I have a soft spot for the original iPhone

00:22:10 ◼   ► design. I was saying to somebody the other day that I feel like the original iPhone is

00:22:13 ◼   ► both my favorite design and also has some of the worst design elements in it of any

00:22:18 ◼   ► but I do I kind of like how how rounded the that original iPhone is but but the

00:22:25 ◼   ► five design is great and I like it a lot I saw somebody on Twitter was asking for

00:22:30 ◼   ► an iPhone SE case that is as close as possible to the original iPhone like it

00:22:36 ◼   ► would have to be longer obviously because the screens longer but that was

00:22:39 ◼   ► a good design too it was it was although I laugh at it now because I've got one

00:22:43 ◼   ► here and I look at it every now and then when a new iPhone comes out it's like

00:22:45 ◼   ► like, some of it is really beautiful, and then there's like the chrome, because it's

00:22:49 ◼   ► got like that soft, like the brushed aluminum back, but the front has got the shiny chrome

00:22:54 ◼   ► frame, and I'm like, wow, that's not, I mean, they would not have ever done that after that,

00:23:00 ◼   ► but that was what they did. You could see, they were just getting their feet wet. They

00:23:04 ◼   ► were learning at that point.

00:23:05 ◼   ► I feel like they've come so far in terms of how they fit pieces together, across all of

00:23:11 ◼   ► their devices really. Like if you look back and think to like the the titanium

00:23:16 ◼   ► power book which was sort of the forebearer of all modern power books and

00:23:22 ◼   ► Mac books. I mean it was even made of a different material. They

00:23:27 ◼   ► didn't get to aluminum yet and there were a lot of problems with titanium

00:23:30 ◼   ► with the flaking off of the coating. But the big difference to me was that

00:23:35 ◼   ► there were little plastic pieces across all of the seams. Like they couldn't just

00:23:39 ◼   ► make a corner out of titanium, it all needed to be sealed up with a plastic corner. And

00:23:44 ◼   ► the original iPhone was sort of like that too, where they needed like a piece of—like

00:23:49 ◼   ► literally, it was like a piece of chrome around the display, between the display and the aluminum.

00:23:53 ◼   ► And they had the black cut out at the bottom that was—

00:23:56 ◼   ► Right.

00:23:57 ◼   ► I mean, it was just—that was what they needed to do to assemble the thing. And then the

00:24:01 ◼   ► next generation phones were the, "Well, what if we just have a big polycarbonate back?"

00:24:06 ◼   ► And then with the 4 was like, all right, we figured out how to do this. And everything

00:24:10 ◼   ► comes from that. Just like you're right, the titanium power book, every MacBook has looked

00:24:14 ◼   ► like that since then. I mean, within, they've all essentially, you could tell they're all

00:24:20 ◼   ► of a kind. That was the moment where they went from being like black and brown plastic

00:24:24 ◼   ► to being that silver laptop that we know now.

00:24:27 ◼   ► Right. I mean, and just in little ways, I mean, if you compare it, if we're going to

00:24:32 ◼   ► go down memory lane and compare it to the original iPhone, you could just see how the

00:24:35 ◼   ► The whole industry, not just Apple, has come so far in 15 years or so of wireless, where

00:24:41 ◼   ► wireless stuff used to always have an actual antenna.

00:24:44 ◼   ► I remember seeing palm trios where there'd be an actual antenna up in the upper right

00:24:49 ◼   ► corner.

00:24:50 ◼   ► I had one of those.

00:24:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I absolutely did.

00:24:53 ◼   ► Everybody just accepted it because it was amazing.

00:24:55 ◼   ► I'm talking on the phone and I'm not connected to any wires.

00:24:58 ◼   ► Of course, there's got to be an antenna.

00:25:00 ◼   ► go to come so far where like in 2007 we complained about the black plastic on the back of the

00:25:06 ◼   ► iPhone because it needed to be plastic to get the antenna signals through and it's we

00:25:12 ◼   ► complained about that just because it didn't look great.

00:25:15 ◼   ► Yeah, it's well, it's it's kind of hard to think that it's been less than 10 years and

00:25:21 ◼   ► the whole industry, I mean, this has been talked about a lot that it's not just how

00:25:25 ◼   ► much better people have gotten at phones, which is absolutely true. Everybody has gotten

00:25:29 ◼   ► better at phones. But the drive to make smartphones and the miniaturization of all this tech has

00:25:35 ◼   ► led to all of these other spinoff devices because once you build these tiny computers,

00:25:42 ◼   ► you could do all sorts of other stuff with them too. And it's less than 10 years. I was

00:25:46 ◼   ► on some podcast where I said that I thought that in the end the smartphone, the computer

00:25:52 ◼   ► era would be seen as a footnote to the smartphone era. That that was like, remember when we

00:25:57 ◼   ► first made computers, you couldn't put them in your pocket, as opposed to how we

00:26:01 ◼   ► think of it now, which is, "Oh, now you can put a computer in your pocket." It's like,

00:26:04 ◼   ► I don't think in terms of history that's how we're gonna think about it.

00:26:08 ◼   ► It's like, it's already in less than 10 years changed so much about how people

00:26:11 ◼   ► interact all around the world that, you know, that's, and has driven so

00:26:16 ◼   ► much new technology. Yeah, totally. All right, back to the event. So here's

00:26:23 ◼   ► a question. Let's go through it. I have my notes now. Let's go through it

00:26:27 ◼   ► order. So Tim Cook comes out and starts with, well there's the 40 years

00:26:33 ◼   ► and 40 seconds thing, which was delightful. Included a Newton joke.

00:26:37 ◼   ► People forget that, I mean, people don't know that crossing out the Newton

00:26:42 ◼   ► wasn't just malicious. That was the actual pen stroke you used to

00:26:46 ◼   ► erase a word. I didn't notice that they actually went to that detail. I did not

00:26:51 ◼   ► notice that. Oh yeah, it's that little up and down zigzag across the

00:26:54 ◼   ► word, and then what they didn't, they didn't have time to have the little

00:26:56 ◼   ► puff of smoke. But that was the Newton gesture for that. So that was deep knowledge by whoever

00:27:03 ◼   ► made that video.

00:27:05 ◼   ► With a little bit of love. And then he came out and he addressed, as we say, the elephant

00:27:12 ◼   ► in the room, which was at the time on Monday Apple's pending court case against the FBI

00:27:17 ◼   ► the next day. And I thought he spoke very well on it. He's spoken well on it ever since

00:27:25 ◼   ► this issue started in early February, but I feel like he's gotten it down to a much

00:27:33 ◼   ► more compelling argument.

00:27:37 ◼   ► For example, earlier, a few weeks ago, he was comparing the creation of Government OS

00:27:43 ◼   ► to, he analogized it to cancer.

00:27:47 ◼   ► I think I know where he was going with that, but he's dropped that analogy, and I think

00:27:50 ◼   ► it's for the best that he did, because it doesn't hold up as well.

00:27:54 ◼   ► And the main reason I think is because cancer isn't man-made.

00:27:57 ◼   ► It's, you know, it's a, this, I mean there's man-made causes that can lead you to get it,

00:28:02 ◼   ► but it's, you know, the fact that it exists is an unfortunate aspect of nature in our

00:28:08 ◼   ► biology.

00:28:12 ◼   ► I think it's, if you're going to go that route, it's a little bit more like asking a company

00:28:16 ◼   ► to, you know, requiring a company to manufacture chemical weapons.

00:28:20 ◼   ► But that's an analogy that I don't think he wants to use.

00:28:23 ◼   ► I think it's a better analogy, but I don't think you want to use it because it's too

00:28:26 ◼   ► unpleasant.

00:28:29 ◼   ► I thought that the thing that he said that really was the way that I think that this

00:28:32 ◼   ► should go is when he said that we even see our phones as an extension of ourselves.

00:28:38 ◼   ► That to me is the angle that the discussion...

00:28:42 ◼   ► I know that this particular case has been dropped, but the issue is definitely not going

00:28:46 ◼   ► to go away.

00:28:47 ◼   ► that's the angle to go toward in terms of yes we are actually building warrant

00:28:53 ◼   ► resistant phones. Yeah you you did a you had a post and a link that I thought was

00:28:58 ◼   ► really great that was calling somebody on this argument like do we dare create

00:29:05 ◼   ► a warrant proof space do we dare do that a place where warrants can't reach and

00:29:10 ◼   ► the point the point that you linked to is that somebody said was our minds are

00:29:16 ◼   ► are a warrant-proof place. The concept of a place that is, and historically, there have been other places that are essentially warrant-proof, but certainly our minds are ours, and the information in them is not subject to a warrant.

00:29:31 ◼   ► And I think that I thought the same thing when he said that, that this is the, one of the key parts of Apple's argument is our phones are extensions of ourselves. There are, there are not even backup brains, they're part of our brains.

00:29:45 ◼   ► are where we keep information so we don't have to store it in our brains. It makes life

00:29:50 ◼   ► better that way. This is how people live in the 21st century, and therefore protecting

00:29:56 ◼   ► that is an extension of the protection that we've got essentially against self-incrimination.

00:30:02 ◼   ► This is part of our mind, and if the math means that the technology exists to lock something

00:30:09 ◼   ► up and nobody can get to it, then perhaps we're all best off considering it that, considering

00:30:18 ◼   ► it the extension of a warrant-proof space that already exists on our mind. So I definitely,

00:30:23 ◼   ► you know, he didn't go into it beyond just saying it's an extension of ourselves, but

00:30:28 ◼   ► you and I had the same thought, which is you read between the lines there and that is what

00:30:31 ◼   ► Apple is saying, is you can't pry it out of our head, and my phone is part of my head.

00:30:35 ◼   ► It is who I am, and if I can make it so that you can't see what's in there, then that's

00:30:43 ◼   ► okay.

00:30:44 ◼   ► That's part of the deal.

00:30:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:48 ◼   ► And then the FBI called a "Never mind."

00:30:53 ◼   ► Never mind.

00:30:55 ◼   ► Well, you saw the legal analysis—again, we're not lawyers—but you saw the legal

00:30:59 ◼   ► analysis over the weekend and the past week, which was sort of like, "This isn't looking

00:31:03 ◼   ► good for the FBI."

00:31:04 ◼   ► There's so many reasons that this is, that Apple seems to have the advantage here.

00:31:10 ◼   ► The tide seemed to turn.

00:31:11 ◼   ► I think even publicly, I think the FBI thought this was a slam dunk.

00:31:16 ◼   ► I think they thought that they were going to be able to do this and Apple was going

00:31:19 ◼   ► to roll over and the people were going to be on their side because they're talking

00:31:22 ◼   ► about terrorism and protecting a terrorist's phone and all of these things.

00:31:26 ◼   ► And then the tide starts to turn.

00:31:27 ◼   ► Their legal footing is kind of not as solid as they thought it would be.

00:31:32 ◼   ► And then so all of a sudden they say, well, we found another way, so never mind, which

00:31:36 ◼   ► even that excuse is terrible because they basically said, no, no, no, there is no other

00:31:40 ◼   ► way. We've searched everywhere. And everybody went, really? And then they're like, never

00:31:44 ◼   ► mind. It's hard not to look at that and say that the political calculation, either

00:31:49 ◼   ► they made it that this wasn't a good time to do this or somebody else in the executive

00:31:55 ◼   ► branch was like, "Don't, don't, just, just don't," right? Or, or, "Go talk to the NSA," or

00:32:02 ◼   ► whatever it was, but something happened. Figure out as graceful a way as possible

00:32:08 ◼   ► to get out of this, even if it's actually not graceful at all. Yeah, and I

00:32:13 ◼   ► think that it backfired on the FBI in two ways. I kind of, I kind of get

00:32:18 ◼   ► the feeling that they maybe never thought that this would go to actual

00:32:22 ◼   ► trial, but they thought it would be the other way, that the public opinion would go against

00:32:29 ◼   ► Apple so overwhelmingly that, okay, Apple thinks they want to fight this, but we'll turn up the

00:32:34 ◼   ► temperature on the terrorism dial, and they'll find out otherwise. And that didn't happen.

00:32:40 ◼   ► It certainly is not the case that the public was overwhelmingly in Apple's favor, but it was close

00:32:47 ◼   ► to 50/50 and from the polls that I did see, you know, it seemed like it was slowly moving

00:32:53 ◼   ► in Apple's favor. It certainly wasn't backfiring on Apple and I think that the FBI wasn't prepared

00:32:58 ◼   ► for that. And then the FBI looked at what their legal arguments were and were like,

00:33:02 ◼   ► "Shit, if we go to trial, this does not look good." And the other thing that they did that

00:33:07 ◼   ► was sort of like just dancing around and, you know, changing their mind, it was like

00:33:13 ◼   ► like Friday or Thursday or Friday,

00:33:16 ◼   ► but three or four days before it was supposed to go to trial,

00:33:18 ◼   ► they changed, they said,

00:33:20 ◼   ► "We would like this to be an evidentiary hearing

00:33:22 ◼   ► "where we call witnesses."

00:33:23 ◼   ► Which, you know, it's not like that's unusual

00:33:28 ◼   ► in and of itself, but it's unusual to do, you know,

00:33:30 ◼   ► request it at the last minute.

00:33:31 ◼   ► And my theory, and again, I'm just making this up,

00:33:34 ◼   ► I don't have any information to back it up,

00:33:36 ◼   ► but my guess is that they looked at the legal argument,

00:33:38 ◼   ► said, "We're kinda screwed.

00:33:40 ◼   ► "Maybe if we call some witnesses,

00:33:41 ◼   ► "we can make this a little bit less

00:33:43 ◼   ► about the facts and a little bit more like an emotional appeal, you know, a gut appeal to,

00:33:50 ◼   ► you know, we're trying to fight terrorism here. And then I think they realized over the weekend

00:33:57 ◼   ► that that really, you know, when they thought about it, that really wasn't going to work either.

00:34:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it is a combination of the law and the optics that happened to them. The optics,

00:34:07 ◼   ► you're exactly right. I think they expected that the people would be mixed on this, and

00:34:14 ◼   ► then when they heard about the details of Apple withholding information from a terrorist,

00:34:18 ◼   ► that the public would swing to their side, and it didn't do that. It was the reverse

00:34:21 ◼   ► of that, that people learned more about this issue and started to understand why Apple

00:34:26 ◼   ► was fighting it, so I think they miscalculated. And then yeah, Apple brings in Ted Olson,

00:34:30 ◼   ► Right? I mean, Apple like lawyered up to, to fight this as far as possible.

00:34:36 ◼   ► And, you know, I, I think you put those two together and, and there's a, and,

00:34:41 ◼   ► and they always had to have the knowledge that there was, even if they didn't know

00:34:44 ◼   ► there were zero day exploits that they could probably use, um, I'm sure they,

00:34:49 ◼   ► I'm sure they knew that they could find one if they wanted, it was like in their

00:34:53 ◼   ► back pocket a little bit.

00:34:54 ◼   ► And so that was the, the escape hatches.

00:34:57 ◼   ► Oh, Oh, we think let's put this on hold.

00:35:00 ◼   ► Because it's not dismissed.

00:35:00 ◼   ► It's just on hold for now.

00:35:02 ◼   ► Um, but I, I, yeah, it seems like it's, it seems like it's over.

00:35:06 ◼   ► I, and the one thing I noticed and it's, it really, I don't think you can overstate

00:35:12 ◼   ► how much Apple is truly standing on principle here in that it's, you know,

00:35:18 ◼   ► whether you think it's good marketing or not, and I think that Apple really

00:35:21 ◼   ► bristled at that accusation from the FBI, that they were doing this for marketing

00:35:24 ◼   ► purposes because so it, whether it helps them in marketing or not as beside the

00:35:29 ◼   ► point they truly, and obviously I think from starting at the very top with Tim Cook right

00:35:35 ◼   ► on down, really see it as a matter of principle. The reason it's a little unusual to see a

00:35:41 ◼   ► company do something like that is that you could see it in the polling that their negatives,

00:35:46 ◼   ► as they say in politics, have gone way up. It was like before this, the last time the

00:35:53 ◼   ► same polling group had it, it was like, "How many people have an unfavorable opinion of

00:35:57 ◼   ► Apple and it was like 8% and it's probably just a bunch of people who hate the Mac.

00:36:02 ◼   ► The people who get into Mac versus PC flame wars on the internet. But as of last week,

00:36:11 ◼   ► it was up to 21% or something like that. So the number of people in the United States with an

00:36:16 ◼   ► unfavorable opinion of Apple more than doubled, almost tripled just because of this issue,

00:36:23 ◼   ► just because of the very, you know, and thinking about it in very broad terms,

00:36:27 ◼   ► Apple is spitefully not helping the FBI unlock a phone that belongs to terrorists.

00:36:32 ◼   ► And that's just like this, that's the sort of PR that companies, you know, for good reason,

00:36:38 ◼   ► don't want. Yeah, that's the worst, the worst PR, right? The easiest thing to do is go along like

00:36:44 ◼   ► all the phone companies did and like a lot of tech companies have done, which is just go along,

00:36:48 ◼   ► keep it quiet, don't talk about the tap that you put in for the government, don't talk about this

00:36:52 ◼   ► you know, this work you do or this loophole that you've got, that's

00:36:58 ◼   ► certainly the best, right? Because then it's like nobody talks about it. You risk

00:37:01 ◼   ► having something like what happened with AT&T blow up where it's revealed that

00:37:06 ◼   ► there's this warrantless wiretapping going on in your telecom center.

00:37:10 ◼   ► There are risks there, but still, yeah, Apple's putting itself out there

00:37:15 ◼   ► and they know they're going to get portrayed by the United States

00:37:17 ◼   ► government of all places. The law and order wing of the United States

00:37:21 ◼   ► government as being on the side of terrorism, essentially. I mean, there's a senator who

00:37:28 ◼   ► stood in the Senate and declared that Apple was on the side of ISIS, right? I mean, this

00:37:33 ◼   ► is bad PR. But I do think that they're principled. And when we talk about this whole section

00:37:39 ◼   ► of the keynote, or the media event, not just Tim Cook, but when we went on to talk about

00:37:45 ◼   ► the health stuff and about the environment stuff, too, you know, it is a PR calculation.

00:37:50 ◼   ► media event, it is always going to be a PR calculation, but I do believe that

00:37:54 ◼   ► it's also a cultural thing at Apple. I don't believe they just do

00:38:00 ◼   ► this for good PR. This is part of who they are and the philosophy they have

00:38:04 ◼   ► about their products and how they're used.

00:38:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that the environment thing is a perfect example of that because

00:38:12 ◼   ► however many people care about it, I really think that the number of

00:38:16 ◼   ► of iPhones and iPads that they sell

00:38:20 ◼   ► because Apple has a good stance toward the environment

00:38:23 ◼   ► is like, you know, one person could carry them upstairs.

00:38:27 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:38:29 ◼   ► There are not very many people who are making their decision

00:38:32 ◼   ► on what to buy based on the environmental policies

00:38:35 ◼   ► of the company.

00:38:35 ◼   ► I think Lisa Jackson even said it,

00:38:38 ◼   ► that you can feel good about Apple's environment.

00:38:41 ◼   ► It's a way to make you feel good about it,

00:38:43 ◼   ► but it's not gonna sell it.

00:38:45 ◼   ► and you can't help but think that it's costing them

00:38:48 ◼   ► a significant amount of money.

00:38:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I think so.

00:38:53 ◼   ► But they've been, this is one of those funny cases

00:38:55 ◼   ► where I feel like they turn the corner too,

00:38:57 ◼   ► that they got rebuked by Greenpeace like 10 years ago.

00:39:01 ◼   ► And within a year or two, they started putting up

00:39:05 ◼   ► that slide that is on every product launch now,

00:39:07 ◼   ► which is the green checklist.

00:39:08 ◼   ► Which, you know, they don't have to do that.

00:39:11 ◼   ► They really don't have to do it now

00:39:12 ◼   ► when they always just check all the boxes.

00:39:14 ◼   ► But they have done a lot to make their products more recyclable

00:39:18 ◼   ► and less toxic.

00:39:19 ◼   ► And now they're doing things where they're buying

00:39:22 ◼   ► electricity.

00:39:23 ◼   ► It's not as if they've got solar panels on all their buildings

00:39:26 ◼   ► and all their buildings.

00:39:28 ◼   ► Some of it is like there's a huge solar farm in central

00:39:31 ◼   ► California that they basically bought and said,

00:39:34 ◼   ► we want all the power from this.

00:39:36 ◼   ► But they want to say that, and they want to talk about that.

00:39:39 ◼   ► And that is--

00:39:41 ◼   ► Again, I think it's good PR because it says we care, but I also think that they do actually

00:39:46 ◼   ► care.

00:39:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:48 ◼   ► And the other thing worth noting, I mean, it's, but Lisa Jackson being on stage is noteworthy

00:39:55 ◼   ► because A, she's never been on stage at an event before and B, you know, in the last

00:40:02 ◼   ► few years, there's been a growing awareness that most of the people Apple puts up on stage

00:40:08 ◼   ► are white men.

00:40:10 ◼   ► Yep.

00:40:11 ◼   ► anything, anybody who's, you know, can broaden the diversity of the people who are on stage,

00:40:21 ◼   ► it's a good thing in multiple ways. But it's, you know, I brought it up with Phil Schiller

00:40:24 ◼   ► when he was on the show at WWDC and he made the point, which is exactly what I suspected

00:40:29 ◼   ► is true, is that it's not like they pick people to do, you know, like, here's who's going

00:40:37 ◼   ► to do this. It's people who are responsible for the thing that they're pitching who do

00:40:40 ◼   ► it. So when JAWS comes up to do the iPhone SE, JAWS is not just a person who does product

00:40:48 ◼   ► marketing, he's product marketing for iPhone. And so the fact that Lisa Jackson was on stage,

00:40:54 ◼   ► she wasn't going to come out on stage to talk about the iPhone SE. It's because she's literally

00:40:58 ◼   ► in charge of Apple's environmental policy.

00:41:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I do think they're definitely making an attempt. It seems to me that they're asking

00:41:08 ◼   ► the question, like, how can we better, you know, reflect diversity on stage and in videos

00:41:17 ◼   ► and all those things. And they are not close to being sort of what you see from a Google

00:41:22 ◼   ► event or even a Microsoft event, but you can see that they're working on getting better.

00:41:29 ◼   ► I noticed not just Lisa Jackson, but in the videos, there were two videos featuring Apple

00:41:37 ◼   ► Apple employees, and one of them, a video was narrated by an Apple product manager who

00:41:43 ◼   ► is Asian, and there was one that featured, one of the health videos featured an Apple

00:41:50 ◼   ► employee who is an Indian woman. And so I did notice, like, the people in, the people,

00:41:55 ◼   ► and not just like the kids in the health study and all that, but the representatives of Apple

00:41:59 ◼   ► in those videos were people we hadn't seen before, voices we hadn't heard before, and

00:42:04 ◼   ► who do show some more of the diversity that is in existence at Apple. And, you know, what

00:42:09 ◼   ► I read that is that they're making an effort. And it's not like, I mean, it's not like there's

00:42:15 ◼   ► an incredibly diverse group on stage and that Apple's totally turned the corner. I guess

00:42:20 ◼   ► what I would say is that I think they're aware of the perception of it and are trying to

00:42:24 ◼   ► take some steps. But, you know, they got more work to do. But it's good to see new people

00:42:30 ◼   ► from Apple on stage. This is, it's not just about Apple's diversity. It's also like, Apple

00:42:35 ◼   ► used to be the least diverse company in the world because there was literally like a guy

00:42:40 ◼   ► who did almost everything publicly, right? Steve Jobs wanted to be the face of everything

00:42:45 ◼   ► Apple did. And you're saying they were the least diverse in terms of their public, in

00:42:49 ◼   ► terms of their public persona, because it was one guy. It was Steve Jobs was Apple,

00:42:53 ◼   ► right? And I think he cultivated that and he was, he was good at it. So why not do it?

00:42:58 ◼   ► I feel like Apple's corporate culture still continues to unwind with Katie Cotton leaving

00:43:03 ◼   ► and Steve Dowling taking over in PR. I feel like there's still unwinding out to be like,

00:43:10 ◼   ► lots of people work at Apple and let's get those voices on stage. It started with a small

00:43:16 ◼   ► group of people who we already knew who would pop up during Steve Jobs' keynotes and now

00:43:20 ◼   ► it keeps widening. I expect it to keep doing that, but it's kind of funny that I really

00:43:27 ◼   ► think they have they they are trying to change but they have to change from a model where

00:43:33 ◼   ► like nobody gets on stage except Steve and maybe a couple of lieutenants and they don't

00:43:38 ◼   ► I think they I think they know they need to not do that anymore yeah and I don't think

00:43:42 ◼   ► they're ever going to go the route of Google who like in a Google I/O keynote there might

00:43:46 ◼   ► be 20 people who come on stage I mean maybe I'm exaggerating a little but it's it's a

00:43:50 ◼   ► lot it's a lot of people coming out for a brief you know almost like individual

00:43:56 ◼   ► features you know here's somebody else to do this an Apple style of presentation

00:44:02 ◼   ► is isn't going to change because I think that they you know I think it works you

00:44:06 ◼   ► know and I think they believe it works there's a certain style to an Apple show

00:44:10 ◼   ► you know and it's it's fewer speakers coming out for longer segments you know

00:44:18 ◼   ► And then maybe somebody, you know, like at WWDC, there's a couple of things where they'll have somebody come out to do the demo, right?

00:44:23 ◼   ► and and there's you know, but

00:44:25 ◼   ► It's just it's just inherently a little different

00:44:28 ◼   ► The one thing with the Lisa Jackson thing. I didn't comment on it

00:44:32 ◼   ► I in my write-up on my thoughts and observations

00:44:36 ◼   ► but one of the things that a couple of readers called me on and I have to say correctly so is

00:44:40 ◼   ► It's a little disingenuous to

00:44:45 ◼   ► What I call her segment out on is that they pitched it as sort of like Apple is helping to save the climate

00:44:51 ◼   ► And I think that's a little it's a little

00:44:54 ◼   ► self-centered

00:44:56 ◼   ► Because I don't really think Apple's

00:44:59 ◼   ► Footprint as big as a company as they are is single-handedly really gonna move the dial on the overall climate of the planet

00:45:05 ◼   ► I think that they should pitch it more

00:45:07 ◼   ► I really do because I think and I think this is where it could help is pitch it more as

00:45:11 ◼   ► We're setting an example that we want all of our other fellow companies in the fortune 500 to follow

00:45:16 ◼   ► We're showing that it's possible to be

00:45:18 ◼   ► 100% renewable

00:45:21 ◼   ► Why is why aren't other companies doing the same

00:45:24 ◼   ► and I still believe that but the other thing I didn't mention and I did think about it was that they

00:45:31 ◼   ► They're they're very

00:45:35 ◼   ► carefully omitting their supply chain from their measurements, right? And I don't know,

00:45:40 ◼   ► it would be interesting. I mean, because that's one thing, like, Tim Cook is a numbers guy.

00:45:45 ◼   ► So I bet that he, you know, has those numbers coming from Lisa Jackson's team, which is,

00:45:50 ◼   ► what's the environmental footprint of our supply chain? And I would be interested to know how big

00:45:56 ◼   ► that is compared to the rest of Apple's operations. One of the interesting things, and I've seen Ben

00:46:02 ◼   ► Thompson write about this at Stratechery a little bit, and Guy Ramez-Nam, who is a science

00:46:07 ◼   ► fiction writer, but he also writes about the future of renewable energies. He's written

00:46:11 ◼   ► about it a lot that China is really changing to the point where China's path to renewable

00:46:18 ◼   ► energy from coal, basically, is it's rapid. It's happening rapidly, because, partially

00:46:27 ◼   ► because their pollution is horrible. But it's interesting. I wonder if there's something

00:46:35 ◼   ► behind the scenes where they talk to their supply chain and are leaning on them to do

00:46:39 ◼   ► this, because I think there's opportunity in the grid in China, knowing nothing about

00:46:45 ◼   ► the details of Chinese energy systems. But the country as a whole is adding huge amounts

00:46:50 ◼   ► of renewables and is going to keep doing that for a long time to come. So I do wonder if

00:46:55 ◼   ► that's happening in the background too, that maybe there's even a thought like, "Look,

00:46:59 ◼   ► these guys are all going to be switching to, you know, or investing in, you know, solar

00:47:06 ◼   ► in China."

00:47:07 ◼   ► And...

00:47:08 ◼   ► Well, there are advantages to running an authoritarian government. I mean, you can, you know, you

00:47:13 ◼   ► can make the trains run on time a little easier.

00:47:15 ◼   ► Yeah, well, and I just don't know how to handle their grid and whether you can say like, "We're

00:47:19 ◼   ► going to buy power here and we want the credit for that being our power, that wind farm that

00:47:23 ◼   ► you built. Let's say that that's the Hanhai wind farm. And that's the truth of a grid

00:47:29 ◼   ► in general is that you're essentially buying offsets. I mean, when Apple puts that solar

00:47:37 ◼   ► farm that's south of Monterey to work, it's not like there's an Apple campus right there

00:47:42 ◼   ► that's wired to it. It goes into…

00:47:44 ◼   ► Or a big cable, one big thick power cord, like the John Fogerty video.

00:47:50 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, you just plug it in and then you got it. No, it goes into the grid and then

00:47:54 ◼   ► the electrons are in the grid and then they take, but they get the credit for that generation.

00:47:59 ◼   ► So you know, electricity is weird, but they're trying and I would imagine that the supply

00:48:04 ◼   ► chain is probably going to get better just because I get the impression that the energy

00:48:08 ◼   ► mix in China is going to get better. But you know, who knows? You're right, I'm sure Tim

00:48:12 ◼   ► Cook knows.

00:48:14 ◼   ► Well, they conspicuously avoided mentioning it. And you know, I don't know, I don't really

00:48:19 ◼   ► blame them? I think if I was on their team, I probably would have said, "Yeah, we don't

00:48:23 ◼   ► want to." This does not mention it.

00:48:25 ◼   ► Tim Cynova I think you're right, though. I think it

00:48:27 ◼   ► would be great if Apple was just more an example of like, "Look, this is how a big company

00:48:31 ◼   ► can do this." And if you want to be a big company that can say, "Look, we're standing

00:48:34 ◼   ► up and we're going to be 100% renewables by this date," you can do it because Apple did

00:48:39 ◼   ► it. And even say, "Here's what it cost us," and it's realistic about how much it costs.

00:48:45 ◼   ► Because that's one of the arguments always. It's like, "Well, we don't know. It's a mystery,

00:48:49 ◼   ► Apple could say, "No, we know, and you can follow our lead. This is how much it'll

00:48:52 ◼   ► cost you to do this."

00:48:54 ◼   ► So then the last part of the Lisa Jackson's part of the show was the

00:48:58 ◼   ► introduction of Liam, the iPhone deconstructing robot, which was kind of a

00:49:04 ◼   ► surprise. I mean, because Apple doesn't really show you much behind the, you know,

00:49:10 ◼   ► behind the stage, ever. And it's sort of an interesting thing. And I wrote

00:49:17 ◼   ► about it, like my thing is I can't help but wonder if they're the same people working

00:49:21 ◼   ► on Liam, the deconstructing robot, or also working on a sibling robot who puts phones

00:49:28 ◼   ► together. Because before we ever got a look at the, you know, and Apple started publishing

00:49:36 ◼   ► photos of, you know, like the inside of the Foxconn factories, or assembly lines, I guess

00:49:42 ◼   ► is a better way to put it, you know, like when Tim Cook started going there, and there

00:49:45 ◼   ► photo ops and you could see it. I shouldn't have been surprised, but like

00:49:50 ◼   ► my gut feeling was that I thought it would be a lot more automated. And

00:49:54 ◼   ► because there are things, you know, like when you see like a car factory,

00:49:57 ◼   ► an auto factory, a lot of it is roboticized. Whereas putting these

00:50:01 ◼   ► electronics together is largely a, at least today, is largely a manual job.

00:50:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I wonder, and I don't know whether that's something that, does Apple do that

00:50:12 ◼   ► or does Apple talk to their manufacturers about doing that? Does Apple work with them and say,

00:50:18 ◼   ► "We want to reinvent how this goes on so that the people working in the factories are supervising

00:50:24 ◼   ► the robots rather than doing all the work themselves?" That would certainly reduce the

00:50:28 ◼   ► number of people working in the factories, which is certainly how the auto industry in the United

00:50:31 ◼   ► States had problems because you lost a lot of jobs that way. But I don't know, it's fascinating

00:50:40 ◼   ► to me because this is like, this is a thing people have talked about the problems of recycling

00:50:44 ◼   ► electronics for a long time, but I felt like there was never a drumbeat on it like there

00:50:47 ◼   ► was about some other stuff. But this is definitely, you know, this seems to be almost in the same

00:50:52 ◼   ► class as some of the other tech that we know exists back in the back of the Apple store,

00:50:57 ◼   ► where it's like it's in Apple's benefit to have a recycling program and they refurbish

00:51:00 ◼   ► phones and they didn't disassemble the parts and reuse them. And how much of this is about

00:51:07 ◼   ► being friendly to the earth and how much of this is about, uh, like it's good business sense to why

00:51:12 ◼   ► not? Why don't we reclaim all of these things and, and put them back to use? I don't know. It would

00:51:17 ◼   ► be an interesting, who, who builds that? Who builds Liam? Do you get a job as a, an engineer at Apple

00:51:22 ◼   ► and then discover that rather than building like the new iPhone, you're building a device to take

00:51:27 ◼   ► apart iPhone fives? Yeah, maybe. I guess so. I can't help but think that it was that it's an Apple

00:51:33 ◼   ► design machine. Yeah, well they said it's in California, so I assume so. Yeah, pretty cool

00:51:40 ◼   ► stuff. And then they gave Mashable a nice behind the scenes look at it, which is another sign of

00:51:45 ◼   ► the modern new Apple. I also, I guess before we move on, the other thing too, and Tim Cook,

00:51:55 ◼   ► I guess he mentioned it at the end, but that it's, you know, if everything goes according to

00:51:59 ◼   ► schedule, this will be, that will be, that was the last event they're gonna hold on campus.

00:52:03 ◼   ► Right. Well, on that campus.

00:52:05 ◼   ► On that campus, right. And a couple of people, and I guess it's just, I overlook how some of the

00:52:14 ◼   ► things that I find obvious, but other people don't, but a couple of readers were like,

00:52:17 ◼   ► "Did he just say that they're not going to release anything new this year?" And the answer is no, no,

00:52:23 ◼   ► no, no, no. That's not the point. It's the schedule that Apple's been on, the pattern that they've

00:52:27 ◼   ► kind of centered on is really sort of a three public event a year schedule. Something in

00:52:33 ◼   ► March, which is what we just had, of varying importance depending on whether they have

00:52:39 ◼   ► something majorly new to announce or not. WWDC in middle of June, which is probably

00:52:47 ◼   ► mostly software based, but maybe that's what they'll hold the new MacBooks for? I don't

00:52:50 ◼   ► know. They'll either release these new MacBooks with a press release between now and WWDC

00:52:56 ◼   ► hold them until WWDC. But that's my guess is that a bunch of us will get a call saying,

00:53:00 ◼   ► "Would you like to come for a briefing?" And they'll say, "We have new Macbooks, and here's

00:53:03 ◼   ► the embargo," and the press release will go out, and that'll be it. Like at the end of

00:53:06 ◼   ► April or something like that. Something like that, yeah. And then in September, there will

00:53:10 ◼   ► certainly be a major event, but they don't—because it's a major event, they're not going to hold

00:53:14 ◼   ► it in their tiny little town hall. They're going to hold it, like, last year at the Bill

00:53:18 ◼   ► Graham Auditorium. Right, or the Flint Center the year before that, or, you know, or Yerba

00:53:23 ◼   ► Bueno or Moscone West sometimes, but they'll find a big venue somewhere for

00:53:27 ◼   ► that huge club. I don't think they've ever done Moscone West other than for Macworld or

00:53:31 ◼   ► WWDC. Have they not? I think they did. I think, I'm sure somebody out there is

00:53:35 ◼   ► screaming at their car right now that they did, but my memory is that they have

00:53:39 ◼   ► done a single freestanding Moscone West event, but it's probably that is booked

00:53:45 ◼   ► up. I think it maybe it was just luck that there was some week where it wasn't

00:53:48 ◼   ► booked where they could just drop in and do it, but and they also can't just do it

00:53:51 ◼   ► for a day, right? Because we know Apple, they have days of prep to get the space exactly

00:53:55 ◼   ► the way they want it, so they can't just rent it for a day.

00:53:59 ◼   ► I think I have my gut feeling is that Yerba Buena is a thing of the past, again because

00:54:04 ◼   ► of size.

00:54:05 ◼   ► Yeah, it's 750. It's not that much bigger than Town Hall.

00:54:09 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's a lot of custom prep work to get the hands-on area.

00:54:16 ◼   ► Yeah, they built that whole—they built a whole new hands-on thing the last time they were at Yerba Buena.

00:54:22 ◼   ► The last time they did the Yerba Buena, they actually cut a hole in the wall. They actually took a wall out.

00:54:26 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:54:27 ◼   ► I remember asking—

00:54:29 ◼   ► That's Apple.

00:54:30 ◼   ► Yeah, I think—

00:54:31 ◼   ► Well, they built buildings, essentially, at Bill Graham and at the Flint Center.

00:54:37 ◼   ► I think Katie Cotton was still there at the time, and I spoke to somebody there, like, towards the end,

00:54:42 ◼   ► as they were getting ready to kick us out of the hands-on area. And I was like,

00:54:45 ◼   ► "This is like insanely expensive because you guys have to like rebuild the wall." And she was like,

00:54:48 ◼   ► "Yeah, we don't care." Yeah, that's about right.

00:54:51 ◼   ► Let me take another break here before we move on into the next segment of Apple's event. And thank

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00:57:05 ◼   ► Jeff Williams comes out and like I was sitting next to Matthew Panzorino in

00:57:09 ◼   ► the audience and when Jeff Williams was done and he was like let me hand this

00:57:13 ◼   ► off you know hand it back to Tim I was like I just whispered to Matthew I was

00:57:17 ◼   ► like let me hand things off to my brother Tim. It's uncanny how similar

00:57:22 ◼   ► Jeff Williams and Tim Cook's on stage demeanor is it I can't believe more

00:57:29 ◼   ► people don't don't comment on it yeah they they they seem similar they're

00:57:34 ◼   ► they're Tim is more polished but Tim's had more time to be more polished yeah

00:57:38 ◼   ► but Jeff Williams is sort of like where where Tim Cook was when Tim was the CEO

00:57:43 ◼   ► for Steve Jobs and would occasionally come out on stage to talk about like how

00:57:47 ◼   ► well the Mac is doing or something like that yeah you know one of the things we

00:57:50 ◼   ► did. So, you know, going into the town hall event, I had that realization like Friday

00:57:54 ◼   ► that it's probably the last one, and I went to Stephen Hackett and I said, "Would you

00:57:58 ◼   ► be interested in working with me on a piece like 'Looking Back at Town Hall'?" And we

00:58:01 ◼   ► — and we — and he replied with a list of YouTube videos of every town hall event since

00:58:06 ◼   ► 2001. That's Stephen Hackett in a nutshell.

00:58:09 ◼   ► That's crazy.

00:58:10 ◼   ► And I was looking at him, and it was a fun story to put together. We sort of split the

00:58:14 ◼   ► work. I've been to all of them, so I had like little tidbits, like when they took us

00:58:17 ◼   ► upstairs to the dorm room, the fake dorm room for the iPod HiFi.

00:58:20 ◼   ► I wasn't there for that. Oh no, that was so weird.

00:58:24 ◼   ► And there were some others like that, where I remember, and the original iPod event, I remember

00:58:29 ◼   ► going for that. But one of the funny things is that the X-Serve event, which was in May 2002,

00:58:36 ◼   ► has like super early Tim Cook. And it's interesting to see how far we've come since early Tim Cook,

00:58:44 ◼   ► who was explaining the sales strategy of the ex-serve. He's come a long way in the intervening

00:58:50 ◼   ► 14 years. Yeah, the comparison to Jeff Williams is interesting because it's just funny to

00:58:58 ◼   ► me how similar they are. It would be so easy to believe that they were brothers. But it's

00:59:04 ◼   ► also an interesting contrast in terms, like you said, how much more polished Tim Cook

00:59:07 ◼   ► has gotten and how really good he's gotten on stage.

00:59:12 ◼   ► - I think he's relaxed a little bit.

00:59:13 ◼   ► I think he realizes he doesn't need to be Steve Jobs, right?

00:59:16 ◼   ► Which is like, and I don't mean that in a,

00:59:18 ◼   ► oh, you gotta fill his shoes,

00:59:19 ◼   ► but more like Steve set the template.

00:59:21 ◼   ► Like you said, these Apple events,

00:59:22 ◼   ► Apple knows what it's doing.

00:59:24 ◼   ► I wrote a piece on Macworld a couple of weeks ago

00:59:26 ◼   ► about how everybody does an Apple event now.

00:59:27 ◼   ► Like Apple defined this corporate tech media event thing.

00:59:32 ◼   ► But if Steve's the template, then even if Steve's gone,

00:59:36 ◼   ► there is a moment where you struggle of like,

00:59:38 ◼   ► how do I do this?

00:59:39 ◼   ► What's my way of doing it?

00:59:40 ◼   ► instead of just reading Steve's lines for him.

00:59:44 ◼   ► And I feel like Tim Cook has gotten there now, where

00:59:47 ◼   ► it's an Apple event, and it's always

00:59:49 ◼   ► going to have the echoes of the Steve Jobs events.

00:59:52 ◼   ► But he just seems more comfortable in his own skin

00:59:54 ◼   ► on stage.

00:59:55 ◼   ► He smiles a lot more.

00:59:57 ◼   ► That's the thing.

00:59:57 ◼   ► I kept taking pictures because I do that at these Apple events.

01:00:00 ◼   ► And he used to be kind of serious,

01:00:05 ◼   ► and he would occasionally have a super awkward grin

01:00:08 ◼   ► that he'd be like, smile for the camera.

01:00:10 ◼   ► And he just seems to--

01:00:11 ◼   ► I mean, whether he's not--

01:00:13 ◼   ► he could be completely torn up inside and terrified,

01:00:16 ◼   ► for all I know.

01:00:17 ◼   ► But on stage, he is projecting what

01:00:20 ◼   ► seems like completely legitimate happiness about being up there.

01:00:23 ◼   ► And so I do feel like he's kind of completely embraced

01:00:27 ◼   ► his role now and knows who he is on stage

01:00:30 ◼   ► and what his public persona is and has come to terms with it.

01:00:34 ◼   ► Because yeah, I think he's come-- he's

01:00:37 ◼   ► going to be Tim Cook.

01:00:37 ◼   ► He's never going to be anything but that.

01:00:39 ◼   ► but he does feel like he's genuinely Tim Cook now.

01:00:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I couldn't say it better myself.

01:00:44 ◼   ► And I think that it doesn't matter

01:00:47 ◼   ► how naturally talented you are at anything,

01:00:49 ◼   ► you kinda have to do it for a little

01:00:50 ◼   ► before you settle into it.

01:00:52 ◼   ► - Sure. - Right?

01:00:53 ◼   ► It's like, I knew how to write

01:00:56 ◼   ► when I started "Daring Fireball,"

01:00:57 ◼   ► but if you read the first few entries,

01:00:59 ◼   ► first year or two of "Daring Fireball,"

01:01:01 ◼   ► there's a certain tone that's not,

01:01:02 ◼   ► it's not poorly written, but it's not right.

01:01:06 ◼   ► Or when you look at the first few years of any of your favorite comic strips,

01:01:12 ◼   ► like Peanuts or even Calvin and Hobbes,

01:01:15 ◼   ► it's like the characters aren't quite drawn right.

01:01:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh yeah, sure, they're all off model.

01:01:20 ◼   ► I remember when I was a kid reading the Garfield books,

01:01:22 ◼   ► and you start with book one, and you're like,

01:01:23 ◼   ► "What the hell is this? This is not Garfield."

01:01:25 ◼   ► - Right, it looks like a parody of Garfield or something.

01:01:28 ◼   ► That's it, and then it settles in, you know?

01:01:31 ◼   ► And then the natural, you know,

01:01:33 ◼   ► and I feel like Tim Cook's onstage persona

01:01:36 ◼   ► is exactly like that, and he has settled in.

01:01:38 ◼   ► Saying that he's more comfortable,

01:01:39 ◼   ► or he's just more himself is exactly it.

01:01:42 ◼   ► And I used to say, before when Steve Jobs was still around,

01:01:48 ◼   ► but for obvious reasons, we were all speculating

01:01:53 ◼   ► about what would happen post Steve Jobs.

01:01:55 ◼   ► And I used to say, and I guess it's still true in theory,

01:01:58 ◼   ► that it's not necessarily, it doesn't have to be the case

01:02:02 ◼   ► the CEO of Apple is the the spokesman for the company. And that, you know, Tim Cook could just

01:02:09 ◼   ► be the CEO and Phil Schiller could run the events. And in a way I was, I think I was right in a way

01:02:16 ◼   ► I was wrong. Where I was right in so far is that Tim Cook almost never sells the new products.

01:02:23 ◼   ► He always hands off to somebody to actually pitch the products, which is obviously the what, you

01:02:28 ◼   ► you know, Steve Jobs just did it all himself.

01:02:30 ◼   ► But I do kind of feel like it's important

01:02:32 ◼   ► that he's sort of the host of the show.

01:02:34 ◼   ► There is a certain, look, the buck stops here.

01:02:38 ◼   ► - Right, this is my company,

01:02:40 ◼   ► this is why we're doing what we're doing.

01:02:42 ◼   ► I thought there would be less of him, honestly.

01:02:44 ◼   ► I thought he would do that thing

01:02:45 ◼   ► where he'd come up at the beginning

01:02:46 ◼   ► and give the retail update,

01:02:49 ◼   ► all that stuff that they didn't even do in this,

01:02:51 ◼   ► but that's like the company's business.

01:02:53 ◼   ► And then hand it off, and he did this for,

01:02:54 ◼   ► I think at least one event, hand it off,

01:02:56 ◼   ► essentially not come back until the end and come back on stage and say, "See, this is

01:03:00 ◼   ► why we do what we do. Only Apple can do this. Thanks for being here. Goodbye." And that

01:03:04 ◼   ► would be it. But his presence is, he's much more like the glue that holds the thing together

01:03:09 ◼   ► than I thought he had. And I don't think he needed, he could have had Phil Schiller do

01:03:13 ◼   ► that, right? But he hasn't and he's done a good job at it.

01:03:16 ◼   ► Yeah, he's a little bit more like the host of the Oscars.

01:03:18 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:03:19 ◼   ► Where there certainly are, you know, a lot of the Oscar show is you're some, you know,

01:03:24 ◼   ► famous actor comes out to give the award for whatever. So it's not like the host does it

01:03:28 ◼   ► all, but the host does glue every segment together. And I feel exactly like you did.

01:03:33 ◼   ► I did not think we'd see as much of Tim Cook at events like this as we do, but it's all

01:03:38 ◼   ► good. Jeff Williams, Care Kit. Sounds like a big

01:03:43 ◼   ► deal. I don't know what to make of it, though. I'm not quite sure how that's going to work.

01:03:51 ◼   ► I mean, it's just so far outside of the mainstream. I think the answer is going to be that in a year,

01:03:57 ◼   ► we're going to hear, like we did about some of the health stuff, in a year and the research kit

01:04:01 ◼   ► stuff, we'll hear, "Oh, well, this is how Care Kit is being used to help patients." But beyond that,

01:04:07 ◼   ► I mean, unless you're—what I hope is that we'll see something from somebody who covers, like,

01:04:14 ◼   ► healthcare and research and medical stuff, write a story or write stories about what's

01:04:22 ◼   ► going on here with this because it's their area of expertise way more than it is ours.

01:04:27 ◼   ► I mean, I know some doctors and I've talked to them about Apple stuff and they say, "Well,

01:04:32 ◼   ► it looks cool." But unless you know somebody who's actually doing a research project that

01:04:36 ◼   ► is using this tech, it's harder to get a sense of what's going on. I think it's great that

01:04:42 ◼   ► they're doing it. I think this comes back to those corporate values again where Apple

01:04:46 ◼   ► looks at these devices and says, "We're making these devices and putting them in people's

01:04:49 ◼   ► pockets and it can change their lives. Who's going to make the tools that make the medical

01:04:56 ◼   ► industry capable of doing this? It should be us. We're the platform owner. We should

01:05:00 ◼   ► do this." And I think it's good that they're doing that, but I don't know how to judge

01:05:05 ◼   ► it.

01:05:06 ◼   ► Dave Asprey I thought it was pretty interesting because

01:05:08 ◼   ► just have a little bit of first-hand experience

01:05:10 ◼   ► in the last few years with surgery.

01:05:14 ◼   ► That the thing he said, like you're in the hospital

01:05:17 ◼   ► and you have the best people possible

01:05:20 ◼   ► who do this all day every day

01:05:21 ◼   ► and have up to the minute knowledge

01:05:24 ◼   ► dealing with every aspect of you.

01:05:25 ◼   ► Everything you're hooked up to,

01:05:26 ◼   ► every way you're monitored, the timing of everything

01:05:29 ◼   ► is all taken care of by truly expert professionals.

01:05:32 ◼   ► And then when they're discharged, they give you this.

01:05:34 ◼   ► And it's just like a sheet of paper.

01:05:36 ◼   ► And it's so funny, it was like not an exaggeration.

01:05:39 ◼   ► Like when my finger, my eye, every little surgery I've had

01:05:42 ◼   ► in the last few years, that's how they discharge you.

01:05:45 ◼   ► They give you like a piece of paper.

01:05:47 ◼   ► And I do read them and I follow the instructions

01:05:50 ◼   ► like religiously because I want these,

01:05:54 ◼   ► I wanted my finger to actually work again.

01:05:56 ◼   ► I was hoping that I would be able to see

01:05:58 ◼   ► out of my left eye again.

01:06:00 ◼   ► But I can totally understand though

01:06:01 ◼   ► how like a lot of people don't for whatever reason,

01:06:05 ◼   ► that they just don't think it's important or whatever.

01:06:08 ◼   ► I wonder how much better putting it in,

01:06:12 ◼   ► getting it into your phone will be.

01:06:13 ◼   ► I can see how it might be a lot better

01:06:15 ◼   ► if you can get like, if you can automate the,

01:06:18 ◼   ► hey, just like getting a text message,

01:06:20 ◼   ► you get an alert,

01:06:21 ◼   ► like without you having to manually set the alarm,

01:06:23 ◼   ► if you could just get the alert that says

01:06:25 ◼   ► it's time to take one of your pills.

01:06:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, or check your blood pressure or your,

01:06:33 ◼   ► anything like that, your blood oxygen count

01:06:35 ◼   ► or whatever it is that they're looking for.

01:06:38 ◼   ► Yeah, and I mean, that's the,

01:06:40 ◼   ► it's a little bit like all the fitness stuff, right?

01:06:42 ◼   ► It is the flip side of the fitness stuff.

01:06:43 ◼   ► - Yes, I think that's exactly the model, yeah.

01:06:46 ◼   ► - 'Cause it's still logging in motivation of personal data,

01:06:50 ◼   ► and the difference here is that somebody

01:06:52 ◼   ► is monitoring it for you because they're concerned

01:06:54 ◼   ► about your specific health issues

01:06:57 ◼   ► rather than it just being sort of you saying,

01:06:59 ◼   ► how many steps did I do, how much did I run today?

01:07:02 ◼   ► right or you know, but now if it's, you know, like a surgery,

01:07:04 ◼   ► like I had on my finger or somebody else might have on their knee or hip or

01:07:07 ◼   ► something like that, you know, not just stand up,

01:07:09 ◼   ► but it's time to do these stretching exercises.

01:07:12 ◼   ► Oh, I would totally, I did some physical therapy and I totally, um,

01:07:16 ◼   ► this is the podcast where old men talk about injuries. Um,

01:07:19 ◼   ► I did some physical therapy on my shoulder and it was, um,

01:07:22 ◼   ► always a challenge for me when I came back because they had a whole regimen down

01:07:27 ◼   ► and they gave me like the sheet of paper with some exercises circled in this

01:07:30 ◼   ► like really bad illustrations.

01:07:32 ◼   ► And I had done the exercises and I was like,

01:07:34 ◼   ► how do I do that again?

01:07:35 ◼   ► And it sort of fell apart very quickly.

01:07:37 ◼   ► And I did have that thought of like,

01:07:39 ◼   ► would it have been better if I had sat down with some app

01:07:44 ◼   ► and put in like a series of reminders or calendar events

01:07:49 ◼   ► or something to get me to do this?

01:07:52 ◼   ► And the answer is probably yes,

01:07:54 ◼   ► but, and that was my failure is that I just sort of like

01:07:56 ◼   ► took the piece of paper and figured I'd get to it.

01:07:58 ◼   ► And I never did.

01:07:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, I also think, and I think it's,

01:08:02 ◼   ► we mentioned this earlier on the show,

01:08:03 ◼   ► this whole endeavor by Apple with ResearchKit and CareKit

01:08:07 ◼   ► isn't really selling phones.

01:08:11 ◼   ► It really is a, and as much as we can bitch about Apple

01:08:17 ◼   ► jealously guarding its margins

01:08:23 ◼   ► by still selling 16 gigabyte devices

01:08:25 ◼   ► instead of starting everything at 32,

01:08:27 ◼   ► Here's an area, these areas like the environment

01:08:30 ◼   ► and health kit and, well maybe not health kit,

01:08:33 ◼   ► but research kit and care kit for sure,

01:08:36 ◼   ► aren't really about selling, you know, devices.

01:08:39 ◼   ► I really do think it is an institutional,

01:08:42 ◼   ► this is the right thing to do.

01:08:43 ◼   ► We're in a position to do this and we should do it.

01:08:45 ◼   ► We're making the world a better place.

01:08:47 ◼   ► - Right, I think it's almost like it's incumbent on us

01:08:49 ◼   ► because we've got a popular platform.

01:08:51 ◼   ► I don't know if Google has similar initiatives.

01:08:53 ◼   ► I kind of hope they do because it's,

01:08:55 ◼   ► as a platform owner, you kind of need to be the one to say,

01:08:57 ◼   ► yeah, we're gonna make this easier for these industries to work on our platform.

01:09:00 ◼   ► I think, and I think that it's the exact sort of thing that Google would do too.

01:09:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:04 ◼   ► It does seem like the sort of, you know, that without any sort of cynicism at all, that

01:09:09 ◼   ► it's, you know, it is the sort of thing that Google would want to do.

01:09:12 ◼   ► I mean, you're responsible for this, these devices that are on everybody's bodies. They

01:09:18 ◼   ► can make a huge impact, but they probably need a push because the industry is not monolithic

01:09:23 ◼   ► enough probably to create an initiative to do it, but you're the platform owner.

01:09:27 ◼   ► You could do it and then you could help them.

01:09:29 ◼   ► And there, there are eventual benefits, I think, from in terms of sales.

01:09:33 ◼   ► Like if you've got a healthcare professionals and the healthcare

01:09:37 ◼   ► industry really happy about how Apple listens to them and does all of this,

01:09:41 ◼   ► maybe in the end, they are more inclined to buy iPads or whatever, but it's super

01:09:46 ◼   ► indirect, it's not like research kit is going to, you know, sell thousands of

01:09:52 ◼   ► iPhones.

01:09:52 ◼   ► I think you're right about that.

01:09:53 ◼   ► Yeah. So then Tim Cook came back on stage and talked about Apple Watch. And this is a perfect

01:10:02 ◼   ► example of the sort of thing that years ago I would not have expected Tim Cook to handle.

01:10:07 ◼   ► It was Tim Cook who introduced the new, and again it's not blockbuster news, but new watch straps

01:10:14 ◼   ► across the line. Our, what did he say? Our spring colors. Yeah. Well, I think, you know,

01:10:23 ◼   ► I it's it's not just gently tweaked I definitely see this as some kind of

01:10:29 ◼   ► strategic move on Apple's part that they really are like every six months going

01:10:32 ◼   ► to you know I fully expect in September to

01:10:35 ◼   ► you know probably new watch hardware in September we can talk about that in a

01:10:38 ◼   ► moment too but you know new bands too

01:10:42 ◼   ► um

01:10:45 ◼   ► a couple of things one thing is that they reduce the price the starting price

01:10:48 ◼   ► for this the sport models drop 50 bucks um

01:10:52 ◼   ► So now it's a $2.99 starting price for the 38 millimeter sport.

01:10:56 ◼   ► I didn't check even.

01:10:57 ◼   ► Does, did the, did the bigger sport model also drop 50 bucks?

01:11:00 ◼   ► Oh, I didn't check either.

01:11:02 ◼   ► I think so.

01:11:02 ◼   ► I think the sport sport dropped 50.

01:11:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:11:05 ◼   ► I think that was the story is sport dropped 50.

01:11:07 ◼   ► The, the other side, I saw somebody on Twitter said, why didn't they drop the

01:11:10 ◼   ► addition 50 so that I think they were joking.

01:11:12 ◼   ► I was like, oh, that's good.

01:11:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:11:13 ◼   ► Um, but you know, you want to lower entry cost.

01:11:16 ◼   ► Uh, And you know, I got into it on a post, a brief post on during

01:11:22 ◼   ► Fireball the other day, where somebody otherwise...an article about something else just offhandedly

01:11:27 ◼   ► mentioned that it seems like it's a sign that the watch is selling lower than expected because

01:11:32 ◼   ► they dropped the price. And I don't think that that's necessarily true at all. I think

01:11:36 ◼   ► that the watch is...it could be, but I don't think you should draw that conclusion. I think

01:11:41 ◼   ► because it's been out for a year, but it was announced 18 months ago, that in 18 months,

01:11:48 ◼   ► idea that they could cut the price by 50 bucks and keep the margin around the same is a very

01:11:54 ◼   ► Apple-like thing to do. And then on Twitter, some people called me out and said, "Well,

01:11:58 ◼   ► Apple never drops the price of anything. Look, Macbooks are all still $8.99 and $9.99."

01:12:05 ◼   ► And it's true for certain products. They kind of try to keep a price and keep it there.

01:12:10 ◼   ► But on others, like, and I would compare that, especially the sport watch, I would compare

01:12:15 ◼   ► to the iPod in terms of what kind of product it is to Apple,

01:12:20 ◼   ► and the price points are similar.

01:12:22 ◼   ► And the iPods regularly dropped in price,

01:12:24 ◼   ► or at least the starting price of an iPod,

01:12:26 ◼   ► dropped by like 50 bucks or so pretty steadily

01:12:29 ◼   ► year after year after year until they got it down to

01:12:32 ◼   ► $50 ones that you attach to your jacket.

01:12:38 ◼   ► So I see that as something that I think

01:12:44 ◼   ► that we'll see, you know, eventually, you know, maybe a year or two from now that the

01:12:48 ◼   ► starting price will go to $199. And I don't know, I don't know what the bottom is, but

01:12:52 ◼   ► it's probably like $149 or something like that.

01:12:54 ◼   ► I think you're right. I think if you look at the price, if you look at the price when

01:12:58 ◼   ► it came out, you would have to say, is it Apple's intent that the Apple watch to get

01:13:02 ◼   ► into an Apple watch will always be $349 or $400 or something like that? Is that, is it

01:13:08 ◼   ► really their long-term plan that this will always be a $400 product? No, absolutely not.

01:13:14 ◼   ► Absolutely not. That's too expensive. It's a first-generation product. That's what they have

01:13:19 ◼   ► to sell it at. But in the long run, it's got to be cheaper than that, right? To start, at least.

01:13:23 ◼   ► It has to be. So I think that's part of it. I think, yeah, it's a product that's been out

01:13:28 ◼   ► there a long time. They want more people in the Apple Watch world, right? So you lower the price

01:13:33 ◼   ► a little bit. You've got margin to give now. I think it's fine. I do think that if they were

01:13:38 ◼   ► selling every single one that they could make and were supply-constrained, they wouldn't lower the

01:13:42 ◼   ► price. But you know, obviously not at that part of the cycle. Right. But I think you're right.

01:13:47 ◼   ► If Apple could make an Apple Watch, ultimately make an Apple Watch with good margins for 150

01:13:53 ◼   ► bucks, they would prefer to do that because this is an iPhone accessory. I think they would rather

01:13:58 ◼   ► have the volume go up. And then again, keeping in mind, even if you sold it at 150 bucks,

01:14:03 ◼   ► you got watch bands and then you've got your fancier models that are always going to be there

01:14:07 ◼   ► and always going to be enticing people to spend more money. I was talking to Mike Hurley on

01:14:13 ◼   ► our podcast, and he listed off all the watch bands that he's bought. He has spent as much on

01:14:20 ◼   ► watch bands for the Apple Watch as he spent on the Apple Watch.

01:14:23 ◼   ► >> That was an interesting number from Tim on stage. It was something that,

01:14:27 ◼   ► to my knowledge, had never revealed before. He said one-third of their Apple Watch customers

01:14:32 ◼   ► regularly change bands. >> Yeah, and I'm in there. I've got

01:14:36 ◼   ► three and I definitely cycle between them and it's kind of fun to not it

01:14:41 ◼   ► makes it a little bit different for a few weeks and I switch back yeah I got

01:14:46 ◼   ► Apple gave me a the the new space black one with Milanese as oh yeah to review

01:14:54 ◼   ► which is nice I'd I like it more than I I've wanted a couple days this week I

01:15:02 ◼   ► kind of don't like it though it for exactly the reason that I thought which

01:15:05 ◼   ► is that I kind of wear my watch out at the hinge of my wrist.

01:15:10 ◼   ► And so it's sort of like when I flex my wrist, it puts a little stress on the band and the

01:15:15 ◼   ► Milanese slips a little tiny bit as the way I wear it.

01:15:19 ◼   ► I feel like I would need to wear it a little bit higher on my wrist to keep it snug.

01:15:24 ◼   ► But I also got the nylon band and I like that a lot, the new nylon strap.

01:15:29 ◼   ► Yeah, there was a rumor that they were going to do like full on like NATO straps.

01:15:33 ◼   ► It's very, I was struck by something that Marco Arment said

01:15:37 ◼   ► on ATP the other week, which is,

01:15:39 ◼   ► and he's kind of like abandoned the Apple Watch

01:15:41 ◼   ► and has gone to mechanical watches and all that.

01:15:43 ◼   ► - Oh, he's off the deep end.

01:15:44 ◼   ► He's- - Yeah, oh, he, it's Marco.

01:15:46 ◼   ► He doesn't do anything halfway, right?

01:15:49 ◼   ► But what struck me about somebody

01:15:51 ◼   ► who's not into the Apple Watch anymore,

01:15:53 ◼   ► has moved on, said, and has done like real watches,

01:15:56 ◼   ► said Apple's bands are like second to none.

01:15:59 ◼   ► Apple really, really owns the watch band game.

01:16:02 ◼   ► And I agree with that.

01:16:02 ◼   ► I think their bands are really great.

01:16:03 ◼   ► I bought this Kickstarter thing that get lets you use any watch band with a,

01:16:07 ◼   ► it's got just a couple of lugs for the Apple watch.

01:16:10 ◼   ► And I put this black leather band that I had on them and it's terrible.

01:16:13 ◼   ► Like in, in context compared to the Apple leather band, it's just not even close.

01:16:17 ◼   ► And so that, that NATO strap rumor was interesting.

01:16:21 ◼   ► And it is, is it surprising at all that in, in the end, what Apple did is say,

01:16:25 ◼   ► we've got something that's kind of like that, but it's way better.

01:16:27 ◼   ► And then that's what the, this woven stuff is.

01:16:31 ◼   ► It's like Apple's take on the genre of NATO strap, but not the same.

01:16:36 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's funny too, because the one thing with the NATO strap is the real NATO straps go underneath the watch.

01:16:44 ◼   ► It's like one continuous piece of nylon that goes through the lug under the back so that the actual back of the watch doesn't touch your wrist.

01:16:52 ◼   ► it sits on top of the strap.

01:16:54 ◼   ► And I listened to the ATPX episode

01:16:58 ◼   ► and Syracuse was confused as to why that is.

01:17:02 ◼   ► There actually is like a tactical reason

01:17:04 ◼   ► for the design of the strap.

01:17:05 ◼   ► The idea is that if one of the bars of your watch

01:17:09 ◼   ► that holds a strap, if one of them breaks

01:17:11 ◼   ► while you're like in combat,

01:17:13 ◼   ► because it's just one strap that goes through,

01:17:16 ◼   ► if one of the bars breaks,

01:17:17 ◼   ► the watch won't come off your wrist.

01:17:19 ◼   ► It'll be flopping around because there's one bar broken,

01:17:22 ◼   ► but the rest of the strap will be going through the other bar.

01:17:27 ◼   ► Right, because you've essentially tied a strap to your wrist.

01:17:30 ◼   ► Right. They're super, super valuable.

01:17:34 ◼   ► I think that they regularly sell for like $50,000 or more,

01:17:39 ◼   ► but there's some vintage Rolexes that they made for the British military in the

01:17:45 ◼   ► late sixties and early seventies,

01:17:49 ◼   ► and that they only could use a NATO strap

01:17:53 ◼   ► because by the specs of the British military,

01:17:56 ◼   ► the crossbars in the watch,

01:17:58 ◼   ► the thing that you need, like, you know,

01:18:00 ◼   ► in a normal watch, you need like a special tool to like,

01:18:03 ◼   ► you know, it's called a spring bar,

01:18:04 ◼   ► so you compress it a little bit so it pops out

01:18:07 ◼   ► so you can change the strap.

01:18:08 ◼   ► Those bars were like welded or whatever you would call it.

01:18:13 ◼   ► You know, they weren't springy.

01:18:14 ◼   ► They were like part of the actual watch

01:18:17 ◼   ► so that they'd be leaving less likely to break.

01:18:19 ◼   ► So there is a tactical reason for that.

01:18:21 ◼   ► But that design wouldn't work at all with the Apple Watch

01:18:23 ◼   ► because the strap would actually cover the sensors.

01:18:25 ◼   ► - Exactly.

01:18:26 ◼   ► - So they had to do their own thing.

01:18:28 ◼   ► - Their little appley spin on it.

01:18:30 ◼   ► - Right.

01:18:31 ◼   ► I find it to be a very comfortable material though.

01:18:32 ◼   ► I have a strap like that on an old regular watch

01:18:36 ◼   ► that I have.

01:18:36 ◼   ► It's similar, it's not really a NATO style actually

01:18:38 ◼   ► 'cause I don't like the way that it sits on your wrist

01:18:41 ◼   ► when it goes through like that.

01:18:43 ◼   ► But it's NATO style and it just attaches to spring bars

01:18:47 ◼   ► a regular watch. But I find that nylon is actually a super comfortable material, especially

01:18:51 ◼   ► like in hot weather.

01:18:52 ◼   ► Yeah, and they look better. Some people say that they thought they looked kind of ugly

01:18:57 ◼   ► on the Apple website. They look way better in person.

01:19:00 ◼   ► Yeah, they're actually very hard to photograph, I think.

01:19:03 ◼   ► Yeah, well, it's almost like you get a little moire pattern on them. They are these super

01:19:07 ◼   ► patterned woven, multiple color woven fabrics, so they're hard to picture.

01:19:13 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm looking at it right now on Apple's website, and by putting them at any kind of angle,

01:19:18 ◼   ► even on a retina, my retina display here, it's not a good pattern on it.

01:19:24 ◼   ► Yeah, it looks weird.

01:19:25 ◼   ► It looks weird.

01:19:26 ◼   ► But in person, they look nice.

01:19:28 ◼   ► But no major earth-shaking news on Apple Watch, which is exactly what we expected.

01:19:33 ◼   ► Right.

01:19:34 ◼   ► So do you think—we talked about this in person after the event—you think that they have to do—

01:19:41 ◼   ► I kind of think they do have to do Apple Watch 2.0 in September.

01:19:45 ◼   ► I think, I think they need to do a refresh.

01:19:47 ◼   ► September will be two years since it was announced, uh, if not shipped.

01:19:50 ◼   ► Um, and so it's hard to say that the hardware is two years old because the

01:19:54 ◼   ► hardware didn't exist when it was announced, right?

01:19:56 ◼   ► It was, they were still working on it and then they got it out six months later.

01:19:59 ◼   ► But I feel like they do need to do a refresh at the same time.

01:20:03 ◼   ► I wonder what is an Apple Watch refresh look like and is it, you know, they've

01:20:07 ◼   ► got so much work I think to do on the software side still too, that is it,

01:20:11 ◼   ► it is it like I would like to see it be subtle I'd like it to see it be like yes

01:20:16 ◼   ► there's a new model but it looks like the old model more or less and all the

01:20:19 ◼   ► bands work with it it behaves more or less the same maybe it's more energy

01:20:23 ◼   ► efficient it lasts longer it's it's it's more it's faster whatever but it's sort

01:20:28 ◼   ► of like still Apple watch almost not like a stealth replacement Apple watch

01:20:32 ◼   ► 2 is completely new but more like now you know here's the new model of Apple

01:20:36 ◼   ► it's a little bit better and leave it at that because I feel like what they really don't want to do is give the impression that every two years there's going to be a completely different Apple Watch and all of your old stuff is going to be gone.

01:20:53 ◼   ► I think they almost want to make it feel timeless.

01:20:57 ◼   ► Like this is our design.

01:20:58 ◼   ► It's going to look like this for a while.

01:21:00 ◼   ► You can get used to it, feel good about buying one,

01:21:04 ◼   ► but we'll see.

01:21:07 ◼   ► That's my hope is that it's not

01:21:09 ◼   ► like a major phone announcement,

01:21:12 ◼   ► but it's more like, yeah,

01:21:13 ◼   ► the Apple Watch is a little bit better now,

01:21:15 ◼   ► but it's still the Apple Watch.

01:21:16 ◼   ► And especially on the hardware side,

01:21:19 ◼   ► because I think the hardware is,

01:21:22 ◼   ► it can always be improved, but it's not the problem with the Apple Watch. If I've got problems with

01:21:26 ◼   ► the Apple Watch, and we talked about this too when we were in Cupertino, you know, I think it's more

01:21:30 ◼   ► on the software. Like, after two years of use or in a year and a half where the public is using it,

01:21:36 ◼   ► they should have some better ideas about, like, assumptions they made two years ago that maybe

01:21:41 ◼   ► aren't right, that they need to fix in software. I think the hardware needs improvement too. I think

01:21:45 ◼   ► the thing is just too damn slow. Yeah, well, it's hard to tell, right? Because is that the software

01:21:51 ◼   ► the hardware, it's got to be the hardware that's just... the fact that it takes forever for apps to

01:21:55 ◼   ► launch and sometimes they don't. Well, and just for example, like, I just went through it again

01:21:59 ◼   ► because they let me have a review unit of the the Milanese thing, so I paired it with the...

01:22:04 ◼   ► and it's the whole hassle. It's such a... it's the worst thing in the world to complain about,

01:22:10 ◼   ► because what a great job I have. This is great. I mean, I... so I don't want to complain, and then

01:22:16 ◼   ► I, you know, Apple gives me these things to review and I get to play with this, all this stuff,

01:22:20 ◼   ► without having to buy it. It's great fun. But it's a pain in the ass, like with the way that

01:22:29 ◼   ► Apple Watch is paired to a phone, it's a pain in the ass to test a new phone because then you can't

01:22:34 ◼   ► really fully test it unless you're also pairing it with your watch, if that's how you normally,

01:22:39 ◼   ► if you actually wear an Apple Watch. And it's such a pain in the ass to pair and un-pair a watch.

01:22:45 ◼   ► But just pairing the new watch that they gave me to review, I paired it with the iPhone SE. So I'm

01:22:50 ◼   ► I'm leaving my watch, the one I actually bought and owned,

01:22:53 ◼   ► paired with the iPhone 6S that I bought and owned,

01:22:56 ◼   ► and I'm using their review unit watch

01:22:58 ◼   ► with the review unit phone.

01:23:00 ◼   ► What a pain in the ass it is to set up a new Apple Watch.

01:23:03 ◼   ► It is, it takes forever.

01:23:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's not just a reviewer's problem.

01:23:09 ◼   ► My wife had her, she had her iPhone screen break

01:23:14 ◼   ► and got a replacement and the replacement digitizer was bad,

01:23:17 ◼   ► So she took it back and they replaced the whole unit.

01:23:21 ◼   ► And you know what that means.

01:23:22 ◼   ► She had to then re repair her Apple Watch

01:23:25 ◼   ► and restore it from the backup and it took forever.

01:23:27 ◼   ► And then it wasn't working right.

01:23:29 ◼   ► And they said, wipe it and don't restore your backup

01:23:34 ◼   ► and see if it's something weird involving your backup.

01:23:38 ◼   ► So we wiped it and then we had to repair the Apple Watch

01:23:41 ◼   ► again and it's another like hour to set that up.

01:23:44 ◼   ► So there are real world scenarios

01:23:46 ◼   ► Where it's like anytime you change anything about your phone, you have to go through that

01:23:49 ◼   ► Apple Watch process again.

01:23:51 ◼   ► Right.

01:23:52 ◼   ► And I don't, and I think in the long run, they have to be aware of this because inside

01:23:56 ◼   ► Apple they have to be, you know, they probably pair and unpair Apple Watches more than anybody,

01:24:01 ◼   ► you know, while they're testing betas and testing, you know, prototype new devices and

01:24:05 ◼   ► stuff like that.

01:24:06 ◼   ► So they have to be aware of that.

01:24:07 ◼   ► But it's when you've gone through it and it's no longer novel, like when you've, when it

01:24:11 ◼   ► first came out and sure it took a long time, but you could like, you know, I was, you know,

01:24:16 ◼   ► just studying what it does and watching the little spinner go around and it's

01:24:20 ◼   ► like, "Oh, that's a clever thing," but now it's like, "Oh my god, this is ridiculous."

01:24:24 ◼   ► It really can take like an hour.

01:24:27 ◼   ► So yeah, I mean, the hardware... I would imagine

01:24:31 ◼   ► that a new Apple Watch would not look that different. There's a rumor

01:24:36 ◼   ► about putting a camera on it. I don't even know about that because it's just

01:24:39 ◼   ► going to take pictures up your nose. It seems ridiculous. But making the

01:24:44 ◼   ► processor faster and more energy efficient so that the battery lasts longer. These are things

01:24:51 ◼   ► that I could see, right? To me, it feels like that's what the new Apple Watch should be,

01:24:58 ◼   ► is like the old Apple Watch, except faster and last longer.

01:25:02 ◼   ► I can, the only thing I could think of using the camera for would not be FaceTime, because again,

01:25:08 ◼   ► the angle would be terrible and your arm would get tired within like 15 seconds.

01:25:13 ◼   ► Yeah. Um, I, I could see it though, if they can do it, it would almost be to me, the only

01:25:19 ◼   ► time I would imagine using it. And I've, I've been in this situation, like when I'm out

01:25:22 ◼   ► jogging and, and don't want to take my phone out of the pocket I have in or whatever. If

01:25:28 ◼   ► it's already in my, if I see something interesting, it would be interesting to just point my wrist

01:25:32 ◼   ► at it and take a picture. But there'd be no, there's problems with that too, right? Because

01:25:38 ◼   ► you don't, you wouldn't be able to look at the screen to, to do it. If you're pointing,

01:25:43 ◼   ► pointing your watch at something, if you can launch a camera app and it turns the bottom

01:25:48 ◼   ► button into a shutter for a picture, you could get a picture, but you're almost like shooting

01:25:54 ◼   ► it blind.

01:25:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I took some pictures of the Apple event without looking through the viewfinder of

01:25:58 ◼   ► low angles of Apple products in the hands-on area afterward, and they were all terrible

01:26:04 ◼   ► because I couldn't frame them right.

01:26:07 ◼   ► That's not going to be...

01:26:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I get the appeal of the Dick Tracy video watch kind of thing, but boy, that would not

01:26:12 ◼   ► be where I would put my... that's not the thing that's crying out on the Apple Watch.

01:26:16 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:26:17 ◼   ► Right?

01:26:18 ◼   ► Boy, if only it had a camera in there, man, then we would really have something.

01:26:21 ◼   ► That is not what I think is going on with the Apple Watch.

01:26:24 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:26:25 ◼   ► So, yeah, I do think, though, that the big news for the Watch, and hardware and software,

01:26:31 ◼   ► will all be in September.

01:26:32 ◼   ► I think it will be a huge part of the September event.

01:26:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:26:35 ◼   ► if there was a, if they talk about watchOS 3 a lot at WWDC,

01:26:40 ◼   ► if we get, maybe get a sense of that there, right?

01:26:46 ◼   ► And I'm hoping, I'm really hoping

01:26:48 ◼   ► that they rethink the whole thing,

01:26:50 ◼   ► because it feels like, and developers feel this way too,

01:26:53 ◼   ► I think, which is, you know,

01:26:55 ◼   ► the app model doesn't really work right,

01:26:58 ◼   ► and it's confusing and people aren't using apps

01:27:01 ◼   ► in large part on the watch.

01:27:03 ◼   ► When I talk to developers who have watch apps,

01:27:05 ◼   ► Their apps don't get used very much.

01:27:07 ◼   ► And that would be a good time for them to communicate with developers.

01:27:10 ◼   ► It's like, all right, we're going to make some changes to the watch.

01:27:13 ◼   ► Oh, we're going to make it simpler.

01:27:14 ◼   ► You know, this is how you're going to, your software is going to interact with it.

01:27:17 ◼   ► It's going to be a little bit different.

01:27:18 ◼   ► I would love to hear that at WWDC.

01:27:22 ◼   ► Uh, we'll see if they, cause I feel like after two years, they got to look at it

01:27:26 ◼   ► and go, oh yeah, we, we probably.

01:27:28 ◼   ► This whole complications and glances and apps from the app launcher screen.

01:27:33 ◼   ► and what we use the buttons for, it's like, we kind of got it wrong.

01:27:37 ◼   ► Let's, let's clean this up and do a take two on it. Um, and I hope they do.

01:27:41 ◼   ► I hope they don't, I hope they, uh, I think it would be hard for them not to

01:27:45 ◼   ► notice that. I hope they're like pride doesn't get in the way. I'm like, no, no,

01:27:48 ◼   ► no, no, no. It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. Uh, because I think

01:27:51 ◼   ► this product could be way better, even if all they did was change some of the

01:27:55 ◼   ► things about the software.

01:27:56 ◼   ► Yeah, I very much agree with that. I, we ever, my bottom line is that I think

01:28:02 ◼   ► they made a big mistake by offering apps in the first place.

01:28:05 ◼   ► That maybe eventually they should have done it,

01:28:07 ◼   ► but I think they should have bit the bullet

01:28:08 ◼   ► and done what they did with the iPhone

01:28:10 ◼   ► and wait at least a year before they opened it up to apps.

01:28:14 ◼   ► Just because the app experience is so poor,

01:28:19 ◼   ► it really would have been better to ship without it,

01:28:21 ◼   ► even though it would have inevitably led to people screaming

01:28:23 ◼   ► that they want apps only in theory,

01:28:27 ◼   ► but I still think it just the actual experience of it

01:28:31 ◼   ► and the way it's played out, I think bears that out.

01:28:33 ◼   ► Like you said, like developers even say,

01:28:35 ◼   ► we made the app, but nobody uses it.

01:28:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, and having your apps on your phone,

01:28:41 ◼   ► it is phone accessory, having your apps on your phone

01:28:44 ◼   ► do things on the watch that are interesting,

01:28:46 ◼   ► I like that idea.

01:28:47 ◼   ► I think the complications thing

01:28:48 ◼   ► is actually way more interesting.

01:28:50 ◼   ► I think glances are actually a little bit more interesting.

01:28:52 ◼   ► I'd almost rather glances be more powerful

01:28:55 ◼   ► and not have apps.

01:28:56 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:28:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I never want to go,

01:29:00 ◼   ► I can't remember the last time that I wanted to

01:29:02 ◼   ► and needed to go to the app screen.

01:29:04 ◼   ► So the pressing one of the primary buttons on the thing,

01:29:07 ◼   ► one press on the crown,

01:29:09 ◼   ► takes me to a place where I never wanna go.

01:29:11 ◼   ► Yep.

01:29:12 ◼   ► So anyway, I'm with you.

01:29:15 ◼   ► I knew hardware and I hope like a interesting

01:29:18 ◼   ► conceptual rethink of the software.

01:29:20 ◼   ► I didn't really think about the fact

01:29:21 ◼   ► that they might do that at WWDC.

01:29:24 ◼   ► I kind of bet that they don't

01:29:26 ◼   ► because I think that if they're going to do that,

01:29:29 ◼   ► Now that you mention it, I kind of think it could be a big tell as to whether they're

01:29:33 ◼   ► going to rethink it or not.

01:29:35 ◼   ► And I feel like if they talk about it at WWDC, it probably won't involve a major conceptual

01:29:41 ◼   ► rethink of how the watchOS works.

01:29:43 ◼   ► And if they are going to do it, I think they're going to save it for September so that they

01:29:47 ◼   ► can add to the surprise of the event.

01:29:49 ◼   ► Or it'll be one of those half-measures things where, you know, here are some new things

01:29:52 ◼   ► you can do with watch apps, and leaving aside that, oh well, we're actually going to change

01:29:57 ◼   ► how you get to them and how it works.

01:29:59 ◼   ► but only tell the developers what they need to know

01:30:02 ◼   ► to get their apps.

01:30:04 ◼   ► I don't know, I feel like they need to evangelize

01:30:06 ◼   ► with developers about watch apps,

01:30:08 ◼   ► because I feel like that was,

01:30:10 ◼   ► not only did the customers sort of get let down by the apps,

01:30:15 ◼   ► but the developers got let down by the apps.

01:30:16 ◼   ► It was their, they had to change midstream,

01:30:20 ◼   ► the watchOS 2 apps were different rules

01:30:22 ◼   ► than the original watch apps.

01:30:24 ◼   ► And so I feel like, yeah,

01:30:25 ◼   ► if they want active app developers on the watch,

01:30:29 ◼   ► they're gonna have to tell them a story of some kind at WWDC.

01:30:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think that the truth is

01:30:36 ◼   ► that they burned a little bit of trust, right?

01:30:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh yeah.

01:30:40 ◼   ► - The message from Apple, both publicly and privately,

01:30:43 ◼   ► by talking to developer relations people was,

01:30:46 ◼   ► seriously, you should do this,

01:30:48 ◼   ► you need a story to get on the watch, get on the watch.

01:30:53 ◼   ► And a lot of people listened to it

01:30:55 ◼   ► and a lot of people did it,

01:30:56 ◼   ► and I think a lot of people see it

01:30:57 ◼   ► as effectively wasted effort,

01:30:59 ◼   ► or at least effort that might have been better allocated

01:31:01 ◼   ► to something else.

01:31:02 ◼   ► Not that it was completely wasted,

01:31:03 ◼   ► but that maybe the time would have been better spent,

01:31:06 ◼   ► making your iPad version of your app better,

01:31:08 ◼   ► as opposed to--

01:31:10 ◼   ► - And not just because of like how many people,

01:31:12 ◼   ► it's not how many people have Apple watches.

01:31:14 ◼   ► That's not the issue.

01:31:15 ◼   ► The issue is people who have the Apple watches

01:31:17 ◼   ► aren't using their watch apps

01:31:18 ◼   ► because the app experience on the watch is bad.

01:31:21 ◼   ► - Right, right.

01:31:22 ◼   ► That brings us to the iPhone SE.

01:31:28 ◼   ► and Jaws did it on stage.

01:31:29 ◼   ► I guess we can just mix talking about the actual device

01:31:32 ◼   ► with the event.

01:31:34 ◼   ► I thought he did a good job.

01:31:36 ◼   ► I thought, you know, we haven't seen Jaws on stage

01:31:38 ◼   ► in a while and yeah, I think he's really,

01:31:41 ◼   ► he's a great presenter.

01:31:42 ◼   ► - I think so too.

01:31:43 ◼   ► I ran into him before the event

01:31:45 ◼   ► and I walked over from building one

01:31:49 ◼   ► where we all came in over to building four with him

01:31:52 ◼   ► and we were chatting 'cause he saw the town hall story

01:31:55 ◼   ► that we did and thought that was great

01:31:57 ◼   ► it turns out they had a slide about it at the end of the presentation. So we, we, people

01:32:00 ◼   ► were like, "Ah, see, it's not just us." Which was cool. And I've known that guy for a long

01:32:06 ◼   ► time because he used to be like the PowerBook product manager. I mean, he goes back a long

01:32:12 ◼   ► way at Apple and he is very good on stage. And one of those town hall events that we

01:32:19 ◼   ► found, he like was the person who introed the event. He like got up on stage and said,

01:32:24 ◼   ► morning everybody welcome to this Apple event. I'm like wow. I remember that one I think it was like

01:32:30 ◼   ► the iOS 2 or iOS 3. Yeah and it was like a March event where they were like announcing I think

01:32:37 ◼   ► maybe like iOS 3 and I think it was the iPhone software 3.0 I think is what they called it.

01:32:42 ◼   ► Right and it was at a time one of the times when Steve Jobs was on a medical leave. Right and it

01:32:48 ◼   ► was a year after they had they had launched the app store. Right. Yeah yeah so he's good and it

01:32:53 ◼   ► And it was great to see him on stage because I like him.

01:32:56 ◼   ► I think he's a good guy.

01:32:59 ◼   ► And I think he does a good job on stage.

01:33:01 ◼   ► He's always been sort of, you know,

01:33:04 ◼   ► he works for Phil Schiller.

01:33:06 ◼   ► So he doesn't get necessarily as many opportunities to shine

01:33:10 ◼   ► 'cause Phil could have done that demo, right?

01:33:11 ◼   ► But instead, Jaws did it.

01:33:13 ◼   ► And I thought he did a good job.

01:33:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's a tough pitch.

01:33:18 ◼   ► Like I said at the beginning of the show,

01:33:20 ◼   ► here's a phone that everything about it

01:33:22 ◼   ► is familiar in some way.

01:33:23 ◼   ► It's just a new combination.

01:33:24 ◼   ► And you know, I thought he did a good job.

01:33:26 ◼   ► And as somebody who's been looking forward

01:33:28 ◼   ► to the idea of a four inch phone that please, please, please

01:33:31 ◼   ► still has top of the line specs,

01:33:33 ◼   ► I was really happy with the announcement.

01:33:36 ◼   ► Tons of speculation before the event

01:33:38 ◼   ► that it was gonna have like a underclocked A9

01:33:43 ◼   ► if it does have an A9,

01:33:44 ◼   ► that the camera would be some sort of lesser image quality

01:33:48 ◼   ► compared to the 6S.

01:33:50 ◼   ► And both of those things turned out not to be true.

01:33:53 ◼   ► Yeah, it's funny. It makes sense to me, right? The rumors that, like, "Oh, it's going to be a redesigned thing."

01:34:03 ◼   ► And, you know, it's, uh... And, well, I mean, what you said about the idea of it being underclocked.

01:34:13 ◼   ► I was pondering that, because on one level, doesn't that make sense? It's like, well, it's going to be the cheapest phone.

01:34:17 ◼   ► It should be kind of lesser, right? And then, as I was listening, I thought, "Okay, I see what they're doing here.

01:34:22 ◼   ► doing a lot of what they did when they did the iPad Air 2, which is, "Let's max it

01:34:26 ◼   ► out now." And then we're going to just leave it there for a while. Because are they

01:34:29 ◼   ► really going to do a new iPhone SE every year? No, they're not. So pack it with the 6S

01:34:36 ◼   ► stuff for the most part right now. Pack that in. And I would call that this year's technology,

01:34:41 ◼   ► but it's not this year's technology, right? It's last year's technology. It's in

01:34:45 ◼   ► the current models, but there will be new models in a few months. So pack it with last

01:34:51 ◼   ► technology, but that will give you a couple, you know, two, three years where

01:34:55 ◼   ► you don't have to update it. And then in two or three years, you turn it around

01:34:59 ◼   ► again maybe and have it look perhaps even exactly the same as it does now

01:35:02 ◼   ► again, but at that point you'll put in the specs from the iPhone 7s or

01:35:07 ◼   ► whatever. Yeah, that's the... it's like I've been hoping for an iPhone 4 with

01:35:14 ◼   ► these specs for so long, and now that I've got it, I'm instantly worried about

01:35:17 ◼   ► about the future.

01:35:18 ◼   ► - Sure, right, because you may not be able to,

01:35:20 ◼   ► whatever amazing thing they announce this fall,

01:35:22 ◼   ► or even next fall, you know, may not come to that phone

01:35:26 ◼   ► for two years or three years.

01:35:28 ◼   ► - That's very true.

01:35:31 ◼   ► Now, so my thinking strategically is that

01:35:35 ◼   ► they're definitely not going to do a four-inch phone

01:35:38 ◼   ► in September, another one.

01:35:39 ◼   ► - No, certainly not.

01:35:41 ◼   ► - Right. - Certainly not.

01:35:42 ◼   ► I don't even think it'll be once a year.

01:35:44 ◼   ► - I don't think so either.

01:35:46 ◼   ► And I know, and that's a couple of people I've spoken to privately who are 4-inch fans.

01:35:53 ◼   ► I think it's too much to ask that they were going to do an iPhone 7 that comes in three sizes.

01:35:59 ◼   ► 4, 4.7, and 5.5.

01:36:02 ◼   ► Because it's only six months after this event, right?

01:36:04 ◼   ► So they'll go off cycle with events, but they almost never.

01:36:08 ◼   ► The only example I can think of is when they replaced the iPad 3 six months after it came out.

01:36:15 ◼   ► right? That was like the first retina iPad.

01:36:19 ◼   ► So underpowered for that. They're like, "Nope, forget it."

01:36:22 ◼   ► It was like the one iOS

01:36:26 ◼   ► clunker device that they've shipped. And it was nice in some ways because it was

01:36:30 ◼   ► retina, and retina in and of itself

01:36:32 ◼   ► is—I think that's why they did it, is that retina in and of itself is so

01:36:35 ◼   ► compelling.

01:36:36 ◼   ► We bought one, my wife used that for

01:36:39 ◼   ► several years, yeah. But it, you know, was replaced just six months after it came

01:36:44 ◼   ► out, which is unusual. But that was because it was, you know, there were problems with

01:36:48 ◼   ► the iPad 3. It was too heavy, it was underpowered, and there's no problems with the iPhone SE

01:36:54 ◼   ► like that.

01:36:55 ◼   ► No, and, you know, Apple has shown in the last few years that they're willing to take

01:36:59 ◼   ► these products and put them on something other than a one-year cycle. It's like, how do we

01:37:03 ◼   ► do more products? One way we do more products as Apple is not update all our products every

01:37:10 ◼   ► year, right? So, so they, the iPad Air is a great example. iPad Air 2, the iPad Mini

01:37:15 ◼   ► had a year where they didn't do a new version of it, right? And then you come

01:37:20 ◼   ► out with one and it's top of the line. Like the iPad Air 2 blew us away with

01:37:24 ◼   ► how much stuff was in it. And that's good because it was so far ahead that it had

01:37:29 ◼   ► a lot of like room to fall, a lot of time where it could kind of decay as other

01:37:34 ◼   ► products advanced and it would still be pretty good. And that's still, I mean,

01:37:38 ◼   ► cutting the price on it, that's still a pretty great product with a pretty great price even now.

01:37:43 ◼   ► But that I feel is what the SE story is. It's the same thing. It's like, let's max it out now,

01:37:48 ◼   ► because then it's just going to sit there for a couple years.

01:37:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I kind of feel like it's the iPhone 5C done right.

01:37:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah. I mean, the 5C, it was literally the old phone with color in it. And I think people

01:38:05 ◼   ► felt like they were getting, I think one of the reasons it didn't sell so well is

01:38:10 ◼   ► that they felt like they were getting kind of last year's tech, and it

01:38:13 ◼   ► was not really a new phone, it was just a new wrapper, and the iPhone SE is a new

01:38:18 ◼   ► phone, in an old wrapper. Well, and I know that there are definitely, you know, and

01:38:21 ◼   ► we say no, you know, we're always speaking, I always speak in extremes

01:38:25 ◼   ► because it's easier, you say nobody wanted to buy last year's phone, or nobody

01:38:29 ◼   ► wanted to buy a phone that didn't look like a premium iPhone, and of course

01:38:32 ◼   ► that's not true. Plenty of people bought the iPhone 5C. I'm sure there's lots of

01:38:36 ◼   ► people who are still using it. I've been on Apple's campus, and not

01:38:40 ◼   ► recently, but when it was fresher, I saw people, Apple employees,

01:38:44 ◼   ► who obviously are well-informed about the specs and could have any iPhone

01:38:50 ◼   ► that they want, who chose the 5C because they wanted the color.

01:38:54 ◼   ► It definitely appealed to some people. San Bernardino County loved it, too.

01:38:58 ◼   ► I think as friend of the show Ben Thompson has pointed out, I think in the aggregate

01:39:04 ◼   ► though it proved to be a mistake to make a phone that didn't look like a premium iPhone.

01:39:09 ◼   ► The iPhone brand is too, it hinges upon looking like a premium device and therefore it needs

01:39:15 ◼   ► to be made out of Apple's premium materials which at the moment are, you know, anodized

01:39:19 ◼   ► aluminum.

01:39:20 ◼   ► Yeah, it's almost like a, it's psychology that it can be cheaper, that's fine, but it

01:39:26 ◼   ► still needs to look like it's premium, like it's expensive. That's an important part of

01:39:31 ◼   ► the brand identity, I guess.

01:39:33 ◼   ► So my guess is, strategically, they're not going to do a new one next year. Maybe. I

01:39:39 ◼   ► wouldn't be surprised if they never make a four-inch iPhone again. And I know that that

01:39:43 ◼   ► kind of is a little contrary to JAWS's pitch on stage, which is that we've realized that

01:39:48 ◼   ► some people prefer a four-inch phone. I wouldn't be surprised if they never do again. But it

01:39:54 ◼   ► might be completely based on how well the iPhone SE sells. If it does sell well enough

01:40:00 ◼   ► that they're like, "Yeah, we should definitely keep this in the line, you know, something

01:40:03 ◼   ► at this size in the lineup," I wouldn't be surprised if we don't hear, get another one

01:40:07 ◼   ► for two years.

01:40:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I would be shocked if it wasn't on a two or three year cycle. And that's okay.

01:40:14 ◼   ► Not every Apple product needs to get updated every year. Because we just got trained that

01:40:18 ◼   ► there would always be a new one. And their bandwidth, I mean, like I said, the idea that

01:40:22 ◼   ► you've got now three different current iPhone models plus two of last year's that are still

01:40:29 ◼   ► being made and sold. So there's five new iPhones, right? You can't, and three current models,

01:40:35 ◼   ► you can't turn them all over every year. They just, they can't. They, they, Apple, I don't

01:40:40 ◼   ► think between its designers and engineers and all that, even Apple doesn't have the

01:40:43 ◼   ► bandwidth to do that and all the iPads that they've got now and all the Macs they've got

01:40:48 ◼   ► So you pull some things that are less vital and you put them on a two-year cycle. There's

01:40:53 ◼   ► nothing wrong with that. Until Monday, the four-inch iPhone that they were selling was

01:40:59 ◼   ► from 2013. It was two and a half years old. So I wouldn't be surprised at all. And in fact,

01:41:06 ◼   ► if you follow the Apple as a company of patterns, I think I wouldn't be surprised if maybe we get

01:41:11 ◼   ► another one two and a half years from now. Maybe they'll do a four-inch phone that premieres at the

01:41:16 ◼   ► September event. Yeah, could be, could be, or it'll be another thing like this where

01:41:20 ◼   ► in two years there'll be a spring event and it'll be the best tech from the iPhone 7S

01:41:26 ◼   ► inside the new iPhone SE. Right. One thing they mentioned multiple times, Jaws mentioned

01:41:34 ◼   ► at least twice, was that the chamfered edge is now matte instead of polished, which is

01:41:40 ◼   ► is true. It is you can if you look at it side by side with an iPhone five or five five or

01:41:47 ◼   ► five s you will see the difference. I thought it was a curious thing that they mentioned

01:41:50 ◼   ► multiple times though.

01:41:52 ◼   ► Well, I mean, it's like literally the only thing that's different about the phone. I

01:41:57 ◼   ► wonder I wonder whether that is a decision I would love to know if that is a decision

01:42:03 ◼   ► made for aesthetic reasons or financial reasons. Because is it is it that Johnny I've said

01:42:08 ◼   ► "You know, if I ever get a chance,"

01:42:11 ◼   ► I'm not gonna do a Johnny I voice,

01:42:12 ◼   ► "If I ever get a chance to revisit the 5S,

01:42:14 ◼   ► the thing that bothers me about it is

01:42:16 ◼   ► I really regret the shiny chamfered edge,

01:42:18 ◼   ► given that the rest of the edges are all matte,

01:42:21 ◼   ► it was a mistake, or whether it's more like,

01:42:25 ◼   ► "Hey, Johnny, it's gonna save us like $2 a phone

01:42:28 ◼   ► not to have the chamfered edge be shiny.

01:42:30 ◼   ► Do you care?"

01:42:31 ◼   ► And have him say, "Nah, it's fine."

01:42:32 ◼   ► - And he cared when the phone was new,

01:42:36 ◼   ► and he was like, "No, goddammit,

01:42:37 ◼   ► we're paying the 50 cents to do it.

01:42:39 ◼   ► And now it's sort of like he doesn't really care

01:42:42 ◼   ► about the SE now.

01:42:43 ◼   ► - I'd love to know whether it was that.

01:42:45 ◼   ► Like is it a financial decision

01:42:46 ◼   ► or is it like a revisitation of,

01:42:49 ◼   ► oh, I've changed my mind about the Chamfered edges now.

01:42:51 ◼   ► - I could see it either way.

01:42:52 ◼   ► I could see it that maybe it was actually difficult

01:42:54 ◼   ► to do the matte finish and they couldn't do it before.

01:42:56 ◼   ► And now they figured out a way to do it.

01:42:58 ◼   ► And now that's why they mentioned it twice

01:43:00 ◼   ► because it's a hard thing to do.

01:43:01 ◼   ► - They're proud of it.

01:43:02 ◼   ► I don't know either.

01:43:03 ◼   ► It certainly, I think it certainly makes the design

01:43:06 ◼   ► the phone more consistent to have it be not shiny on the on the chamfers because

01:43:11 ◼   ► nothing else is shiny. But I don't know from a from a aesthetic like a as a

01:43:18 ◼   ► hardware designer what what somebody like Johnny I would say about it I I'm a

01:43:22 ◼   ► little baffled but like literally that's it for the 5S because the 5S has the

01:43:26 ◼   ► has the double flash on the back so the the camera the flash everything other

01:43:31 ◼   ► than the Apple itself and the and the the printing on the back the only other

01:43:35 ◼   ► physical characteristic that is different is that chamfer. So I guess if

01:43:41 ◼   ► we talk about it because what else are we gonna say? Right, I guess. What do you

01:43:48 ◼   ► what are your thoughts on 4-inch phones? Are you a 4-inch? Are you tempted?

01:43:52 ◼   ► I'm a little bit tempted. I go back and forth on it. I mean the big

01:43:58 ◼   ► screens are nice. The thing I love about the about the 4-inch size and the

01:44:03 ◼   ► the iPhone 5 design is it's, um, it feels great in the hand. It's easier to hold.

01:44:08 ◼   ► The, the sixes do feel slippery and like, like they're like a polished rock. Um,

01:44:13 ◼   ► I've never felt comfortable. It's the first, I always wore my, uh, wore my iPhone

01:44:18 ◼   ► naked. Um, and I put a case on the, on the six and I moved that case to the

01:44:21 ◼   ► success, the Apple leather case, because it just, I needed it to be grippier. I

01:44:25 ◼   ► felt like it was going to slip out of my hands. I never feel that way with a, with

01:44:28 ◼   ► the fives. I've always, I've always felt that they were, they were super solid.

01:44:32 ◼   ► But, you know, the trade-off there is that the, yeah, the screen's a lot smaller.

01:44:36 ◼   ► And as somebody who is not a commuter anymore, um, I, you know, I don't rely

01:44:44 ◼   ► on my iPhone as much as I used to.

01:44:46 ◼   ► I use it when I'm out and I use it, like if I'm walking the dog or taking

01:44:50 ◼   ► a run or something like that, I'm listening to podcasts on it or something

01:44:52 ◼   ► like that, but I, I used to use it all the time when I was riding the bus and things

01:44:57 ◼   ► like that, and I don't, I don't do that anymore.

01:44:59 ◼   ► So, um, so for me, it's less of a productivity device than it used to be.

01:45:03 ◼   ► And so the smaller screen probably wouldn't make much of a difference to me.

01:45:07 ◼   ► Um, and it's, and it's easier to hold.

01:45:09 ◼   ► So I'm, I'm kind of on the fence about it.

01:45:11 ◼   ► I, I I'm tempted.

01:45:12 ◼   ► I totally am tempted.

01:45:14 ◼   ► Um, I'm also a little reluctant to embrace it because of what we said before, which

01:45:19 ◼   ► is it's, it's state of the art for six months, and then it probably will be not

01:45:24 ◼   ► state of the art for the next 18.

01:45:26 ◼   ► - Exactly, and then, it's like,

01:45:29 ◼   ► however much I prefer the size,

01:45:30 ◼   ► and I definitely prefer the size,

01:45:32 ◼   ► I'm not going to not have the top of the line phone.

01:45:35 ◼   ► So come September when the iPhone 7 comes out,

01:45:38 ◼   ► I'm gonna switch to that anyway.

01:45:40 ◼   ► - Which is why this is a phone for people who

01:45:43 ◼   ► aren't desperate to always be on the cutting edge,

01:45:47 ◼   ► like some of us, or for somebody for whom

01:45:50 ◼   ► the larger size is just a deal breaker.

01:45:52 ◼   ► And I've heard from, I know a bunch of people

01:45:54 ◼   ► who have held onto those five S's because they're like,

01:45:57 ◼   ► I don't want a bigger phone, it's too big for me.

01:45:59 ◼   ► And some of them, I mean, there was a conversation

01:46:01 ◼   ► on Twitter that I thought was pretty good about like,

01:46:04 ◼   ► you can overstate saying, well, women with small hands

01:46:08 ◼   ► prefer a small phone because I know a lot of women

01:46:10 ◼   ► who love huge phones because they just put their phone

01:46:13 ◼   ► in their purse and it doesn't matter.

01:46:15 ◼   ► But I do know people, men and women,

01:46:17 ◼   ► who find holding that big phone uncomfortable

01:46:20 ◼   ► and the little phone a lot more comfortable.

01:46:22 ◼   ► And so for those people, you know, I think, or uncomfortable in their pocket,

01:46:26 ◼   ► or they have small pockets and they can't fit a phone in their pocket.

01:46:29 ◼   ► Those are the people who are gonna, who are gonna love it as well as all the

01:46:32 ◼   ► people who want the, to buy an iPhone.

01:46:34 ◼   ► And this is going to be by far the cheapest iPhone they can buy.

01:46:37 ◼   ► Yeah, I do miss, I, there's so much of this design that I miss.

01:46:40 ◼   ► I love that it stands up on any side.

01:46:43 ◼   ► You can put it sideways to watch video.

01:46:45 ◼   ► You can stand it up to take pictures.

01:46:47 ◼   ► Uh, there's no camera bump, no camera bump.

01:46:49 ◼   ► Oh, and I'll say this too.

01:46:52 ◼   ► it's got a headphone jack on it so if the future of the iPhone and being on

01:46:55 ◼   ► the cutting edge is losing the headphone jack maybe I'm okay with having the the

01:46:59 ◼   ► retro phone that's that's not on the cutting edge I don't know it does feel a

01:47:05 ◼   ► little retro it does it's funny to talk about something that what the design

01:47:09 ◼   ► premiered in 2012 to talk about it being retro but it's it does it's from earlier

01:47:15 ◼   ► in the decade well anyway I like it and yeah my only the only reason I wouldn't

01:47:22 ◼   ► switch from my 4s or not 4s Jesus the 6s back and switch to this size is only

01:47:30 ◼   ► because I I think it's a you know a six why get used to it for six months only

01:47:34 ◼   ► to go back in September because you're gonna want that iPhone 7 whatever it is

01:47:39 ◼   ► right you're gonna want it yeah well I honestly it's the camera quality and I

01:47:43 ◼   ► say that knowing that II could I get slightly better optical that you know I

01:47:47 ◼   ► I get the optical image stabilization in the 6, in the plus,

01:47:52 ◼   ► but I'm not switching to a plus size phone.

01:47:54 ◼   ► - But okay, so what happens if there's that rumor

01:47:58 ◼   ► that there's gonna be a super fancy camera

01:48:00 ◼   ► that's only gonna be on a plus model?

01:48:02 ◼   ► Would that be enough?

01:48:03 ◼   ► Like a really good, maybe almost like SLR quality camera

01:48:08 ◼   ► on an iPhone, but you had to get the big iPhone.

01:48:10 ◼   ► Would you get the big iPhone for the camera?

01:48:12 ◼   ► - That is, I've been thinking about that

01:48:14 ◼   ► ever since the rumor.

01:48:15 ◼   ► I don't know what I'd do.

01:48:17 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:48:19 ◼   ► That would be a very hard question

01:48:20 ◼   ► because the camera is seriously so important to me.

01:48:23 ◼   ► I mean, I know I've said this before,

01:48:25 ◼   ► but I know it's called the iPhone,

01:48:27 ◼   ► but if I had to pick one component to break

01:48:29 ◼   ► and the option was you can, you know,

01:48:31 ◼   ► for the rest of the week,

01:48:32 ◼   ► you can either use this phone that doesn't make phone calls

01:48:35 ◼   ► or you can use this one that doesn't take pictures.

01:48:37 ◼   ► Almost all the time, I'd want the one

01:48:40 ◼   ► that has the broken phone but takes pictures.

01:48:42 ◼   ► It's more of an eye camera to me than an iPhone.

01:48:45 ◼   ► just too early. - Yeah, I'd agree.

01:48:46 ◼   ► I mean, for me, if all it did was take pictures

01:48:50 ◼   ► and play podcasts, I'd probably be okay

01:48:52 ◼   ► with not having it make phone calls.

01:48:55 ◼   ► - Right, so I don't know.

01:48:57 ◼   ► I really hope that the idea that the dual camera

01:49:00 ◼   ► is only in a plus, I hope that's not true.

01:49:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, me too, but I could see them doing that, right?

01:49:06 ◼   ► I mean, and I do think that cameras is one of these,

01:49:09 ◼   ► like, we've come so far with the smartphones

01:49:12 ◼   ► like we were talking about earlier,

01:49:13 ◼   ► but camera technology is like,

01:49:15 ◼   ► that's one of the frontiers of smartphones.

01:49:17 ◼   ► Cameras and then imperviousness to damage

01:49:20 ◼   ► seems to me like the big areas here.

01:49:22 ◼   ► And I can maybe throw in glare.

01:49:23 ◼   ► Like I'm glad that they've talked about glare

01:49:25 ◼   ► in the new iPad, which we'll get to,

01:49:26 ◼   ► because that's also an issue,

01:49:28 ◼   ► but it's not like it's gotta be faster.

01:49:31 ◼   ► All that is, sure, yeah, it's gotta have more battery life,

01:49:33 ◼   ► but great cameras in a smartphone is a,

01:49:38 ◼   ► that's a huge area of interest for anybody who's got it,

01:49:42 ◼   ► 'cause those are our cameras now.

01:49:44 ◼   ► So keep making them better.

01:49:45 ◼   ► - You talked about your love of the original iPhone feel,

01:49:50 ◼   ► and I feel the same way about it.

01:49:51 ◼   ► I love the outside design,

01:49:52 ◼   ► but it's always mind-blowing to me.

01:49:55 ◼   ► I mean, we're nine years into it,

01:49:56 ◼   ► but I still feel like it's the new thing, the iPhone,

01:49:59 ◼   ► but the original iPhone camera was a total piece of crap.

01:50:02 ◼   ► - It's terrible.

01:50:02 ◼   ► - It was just like a stock phone camera part from Japan.

01:50:07 ◼   ► I mean, I'm glad they put it in,

01:50:09 ◼   ► but it was almost useless.

01:50:13 ◼   ► It was no better than the type of pictures

01:50:16 ◼   ► you took with your dumb phone, really.

01:50:18 ◼   ► And it didn't even take video.

01:50:19 ◼   ► You couldn't even shoot bad video.

01:50:21 ◼   ► It just didn't do video.

01:50:23 ◼   ► - It reminded me of the bad cam,

01:50:24 ◼   ► or really, I was gonna say the bad camcorders

01:50:27 ◼   ► in the early days of VHS,

01:50:28 ◼   ► but no, it reminded me of the really bad

01:50:29 ◼   ► early digital cameras, where it's just,

01:50:31 ◼   ► it's streaky, it can't do low light at all.

01:50:34 ◼   ► It's a miracle that it's there at all,

01:50:35 ◼   ► but it's really like, why not put,

01:50:38 ◼   ► sure we should put a camera on it. It's not any good and you would never want to

01:50:41 ◼   ► use it unless you were desperate, but at least we have it. And it's come a long way.

01:50:44 ◼   ► And now we've got people, you know, we've got kids, you know, in the intervening

01:50:48 ◼   ► nine years, we've got kids who their entire, all of the video that's been

01:50:54 ◼   ► taken of them as little babies and growing up has all been shot on iPhones.

01:50:58 ◼   ► And it's great quality. Yeah, I mean, 4K video, it's just mind-blowing.

01:51:04 ◼   ► It's on my TV.

01:51:06 ◼   ► My TV, I actually do have a 4K TV.

01:51:07 ◼   ► I could figure out a way to put it on there.

01:51:09 ◼   ► I could watch that 4K video on there,

01:51:11 ◼   ► but it's just, yeah, it's come a long way.

01:51:14 ◼   ► And yet, I take pictures with my SLR, my five-year-old SLR,

01:51:19 ◼   ► and ooh, they're way better, right?

01:51:23 ◼   ► So there's plenty more work to be done.

01:51:25 ◼   ► - Oh, tons of room, especially in lower light.

01:51:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, and in the beauty of having these,

01:51:33 ◼   ► the smartphones having the processors they do, right,

01:51:36 ◼   ► is that the image processing is part of the equation too.

01:51:38 ◼   ► So software and chip design can help too.

01:51:42 ◼   ► So I mean, I don't know, did you see that?

01:51:45 ◼   ► There's like a thing that looks like a smartphone,

01:51:47 ◼   ► but it's not a smartphone, it's a camera,

01:51:48 ◼   ► and it's got like nine lenses on it.

01:51:50 ◼   ► - Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about.

01:51:52 ◼   ► I forget the name.

01:51:53 ◼   ► - And I know it's really weird, but you do,

01:51:56 ◼   ► I think we're entering that era now

01:51:58 ◼   ► where people are rethinking how you do photography

01:52:01 ◼   ► in a given that you have to have a flat device. And the answer is, well, I can't

01:52:06 ◼   ► have a long lens, but I could have a lot of lenses and use software because I've

01:52:09 ◼   ► got this super powerful processor here. And so I think things are gonna get

01:52:13 ◼   ► really interesting for phone photography in the next few years. Yeah, totally. I

01:52:16 ◼   ► don't think we're anywhere close to. And I think that the fact that the ad

01:52:19 ◼   ► campaign that they've really, really been pounding for close to two years, I

01:52:24 ◼   ► think now is shot with iPhone six. Yeah, you know, I just realized if it if the

01:52:30 ◼   ► the ad campaign is shot with iPhone 6S or whatever that,

01:52:34 ◼   ► I think that's what that is now, shot with iPhone 6S.

01:52:37 ◼   ► Will they allow pictures shot with the iPhone SEs?

01:52:41 ◼   ► Like, is that like, is there like a certain truth

01:52:46 ◼   ► in advertising that a phone, you know,

01:52:48 ◼   ► you can't use a picture shot with iPhone SE

01:52:51 ◼   ► if the campaign is shot with iPhone 6S?

01:52:53 ◼   ► - Maybe it'll just be shot with iPhone.

01:52:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's what I think the campaign

01:52:57 ◼   ► should be, shot with iPhone.

01:52:59 ◼   ► I don't think they should say success,

01:53:01 ◼   ► although maybe there's some sort of

01:53:04 ◼   ► trying to tempt people to upgrade aspect to it.

01:53:07 ◼   ► I guess the last thing, and here's another thing

01:53:10 ◼   ► that I did not write about on Monday,

01:53:12 ◼   ► and I think I should've, and I feel like

01:53:15 ◼   ► in reading other people's coverage,

01:53:17 ◼   ► so many excellent pieces that were written.

01:53:19 ◼   ► You had a good take.

01:53:21 ◼   ► Ben Thompson had a great take.

01:53:23 ◼   ► But the one thing I missed was the price.

01:53:27 ◼   ► And I feel like in large part in recent years,

01:53:30 ◼   ► I've really gotten away from talking about prices.

01:53:33 ◼   ► I just accept them for what they are.

01:53:34 ◼   ► And I think that it's, I'm doing a disservice

01:53:38 ◼   ► to my analysis by not taking it into an equation.

01:53:42 ◼   ► I think somebody called it out, like in one of my reviews,

01:53:44 ◼   ► recent big reviews, like maybe for the iPhone 6s,

01:53:46 ◼   ► I didn't even talk about like what the prices were

01:53:48 ◼   ► or whether people should buy it or not.

01:53:51 ◼   ► I just talk about what it does.

01:53:54 ◼   ► A 399 starting point for a top of the line iPhone

01:53:58 ◼   ► is a huge difference.

01:54:00 ◼   ► I think that the starting price for an iPhone 6S,

01:54:03 ◼   ► or I think it was like 649 to buy one

01:54:07 ◼   ► without a contract or anything.

01:54:09 ◼   ► So it's groundbreaking territory,

01:54:13 ◼   ► 399/499 for the 16 and 64 gig configurations.

01:54:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was talking to people about it

01:54:22 ◼   ► in terms of the, you know, with two year contract price,

01:54:24 ◼   ► which is not a thing anymore in most cases.

01:54:27 ◼   ► And, and it totally, it totally isn't.

01:54:30 ◼   ► But we all understand the context of that.

01:54:32 ◼   ► And in that context, the iPhone SE is free.

01:54:35 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Right?

01:54:36 ◼   ► Right, that's where it's fitting in the line

01:54:38 ◼   ► is it's a hundred below the, what is it?

01:54:43 ◼   ► The 6S base? - Yeah, yeah.

01:54:45 ◼   ► - That's where it fits.

01:54:46 ◼   ► It fits in the, exactly in the same slot as the 5S.

01:54:51 ◼   ► And that's just remarkable for something that's not two and a half year old technology.

01:54:55 ◼   ► That's six month old technology.

01:54:57 ◼   ► And Ben Thompson's, it really is.

01:54:59 ◼   ► And Ben Thompson's piece that you're talking about was really great because a lot of the criticism was

01:55:05 ◼   ► people were looking at what its price was going to be in India.

01:55:08 ◼   ► It's like retail price.

01:55:09 ◼   ► And he's so good with some of this international stuff especially.

01:55:13 ◼   ► He pointed out that the stores in India don't sell at the retail price.

01:55:19 ◼   ► and he did a calculation of like what,

01:55:22 ◼   ► considering the street prices of existing phones in India,

01:55:26 ◼   ► what the street price of this would be,

01:55:27 ◼   ► and it basically goes back to,

01:55:29 ◼   ► they priced it the way they did

01:55:30 ◼   ► to get it to be the price they want it to be,

01:55:32 ◼   ► which is essentially the same price as it is in the US

01:55:36 ◼   ► for India.

01:55:36 ◼   ► So he deflated some of the criticism

01:55:39 ◼   ► of like the exchange rate ruining the idea

01:55:43 ◼   ► that it might be a lower cost iPhone.

01:55:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

01:55:48 ◼   ► I don't have much to say about the price,

01:55:50 ◼   ► but I do think that it's noteworthy

01:55:52 ◼   ► and it signals a strategic change.

01:55:55 ◼   ► - The lowest cost iPhone right now,

01:55:58 ◼   ► for the first time in a while,

01:55:59 ◼   ► has almost all the features of the expensive iPhones, right?

01:56:04 ◼   ► It's not a low cost because it's two-year-old tech

01:56:10 ◼   ► right at the moment.

01:56:11 ◼   ► And that's good.

01:56:11 ◼   ► It's a good deal right now.

01:56:12 ◼   ► It's a great deal.

01:56:13 ◼   ► - Right, and I think that the way that we'll see this is,

01:56:17 ◼   ► and you know it they don't break out the models that much they did say on stage

01:56:23 ◼   ► jaws said that they sold 30 million four inch phones in 2015 it was actually your

01:56:30 ◼   ► piece that opened my eyes to it because you mentioned that they sell and you're

01:56:33 ◼   ► right up that they sell 230 million total so it's still only like 11% because

01:56:38 ◼   ► I wrote down in my notes 30 million four inch phones and I circled it like hey

01:56:41 ◼   ► it's still a popular size like I'm not I'm not a weirdo for wanting a four inch

01:56:45 ◼   ► phone but then I realized it's only it's only like 10%. Yeah well it's like 13 I did I mean

01:56:51 ◼   ► the the years are probably wrong but I looked at what they sold last year and um and it's 13% or

01:56:58 ◼   ► something like that but keep in mind that's 13% of a one to two one and a half to two and a half

01:57:02 ◼   ► year old phone right so they're going to sell more than that so I think it's totally reasonable that

01:57:08 ◼   ► the iPhone SE could be 15 to 20 percent of total iPhone sales which is you know if you're asking

01:57:15 ◼   ► me a question, is it worth updating the four-inch phone? Is it worth having this as part of

01:57:19 ◼   ► your product lineup, which is actually five phones wide? Yeah, I mean, if you're going

01:57:25 ◼   ► to sell 20% of your line is going to be this phone, it's totally worth it.

01:57:29 ◼   ► But I think if it proves as popular as I suspect it will be, which is a little bit more, you

01:57:34 ◼   ► know, maybe it'll creep up to like 15% to 20% of iPhones sold now that it has as good

01:57:41 ◼   ► a camera and it's just as fast. Because I feel like that's the two things that even casual people,

01:57:45 ◼   ► if you tell them this phone is just as fast and it takes just as good a pictures and video as the 6S,

01:57:51 ◼   ► then anybody who's tempted by the size will say, well, I don't, you know, I'm fine with the first

01:57:55 ◼   ► generation touch ID sensor and I'm fine without having 3D touch and the other little things that

01:57:59 ◼   ► are missing. It's going to affect the average selling price of iPhone, right? This is a move

01:58:05 ◼   ► where I think strategically Apple is now willing to have the average selling price of iPhone drop

01:58:11 ◼   ► in order to sell more phones throughout the world. Yeah, I agree, although I think

01:58:16 ◼   ► it'll be less dramatic than we might think because of the fact that they

01:58:21 ◼   ► already were selling a phone at this price. It's just gonna be a more for—and

01:58:25 ◼   ► again, it's gonna be that curve where it's gonna be the current phone for six

01:58:28 ◼   ► months, and then it's gonna be a step behind the high-end phones for a

01:58:32 ◼   ► year after that, and then for another unknown period after that, it'll

01:58:36 ◼   ► presumably be two years behind. So it'll have a, you know, it'll have a sales

01:58:40 ◼   ► curve that'll go back down. But for the first six months or year, it'll eat into the

01:58:45 ◼   ► ASPs a little bit, right? Just because it's a better phone at that price point. But it's

01:58:50 ◼   ► not like they didn't have one there before that wasn't, you know, they sold whatever

01:58:53 ◼   ► it was, 20 million of them at that price in the last year. So, you know, the ASP change

01:58:59 ◼   ► is only going to be in sort of the difference between the boost that they get because it's

01:59:04 ◼   ► a much better phone. But they are willing to do that. There's no doubt about it.

01:59:08 ◼   ► Anything else on the iPhone before we move on?

01:59:12 ◼   ► I don't know. I think we got

01:59:16 ◼   ► on the phone that it's all entirely things that have already existed.

01:59:19 ◼   ► Well then let me, before we move on to the iPad Pro,

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02:01:54 ◼   ► So then we got, now we have the iPad Pro, which I guess we could start by just talking

02:01:58 ◼   ► about the name, which was as rumored that there is nothing, you know, it's not the

02:02:02 ◼   ► iPad Air 3, it is just called iPad Pro. And I guess that's not unprecedented, right,

02:02:08 ◼   ► because the name of the 13-inch MacBook Pro is MacBook Pro, and the name of the 15-inch

02:02:13 ◼   ► MacBook Pro is MacBook Pro, so it's just, you know, specified by size.

02:02:17 ◼   ► It kills me, the decimals, though. It makes me sad. I really like to refer to these as

02:02:21 ◼   ► the 10- and 13-inch iPads. They're a little bit, they come up a little short, so there

02:02:27 ◼   ► There is nothing, you talk about having problems as a product reviewer, boo-hoo, but I have

02:02:33 ◼   ► to set up like a keyboard shortcut or something for 9.7-inch iPad Pro every time I type that

02:02:40 ◼   ► now.

02:02:42 ◼   ► It's like the little one, or the 10-inch, I call it the 10-inch, but it's not 10 inches

02:02:46 ◼   ► diagonal, it's 9.7 inches.

02:02:48 ◼   ► So I'm already sick of typing it out.

02:02:51 ◼   ► Yeah, me too.

02:02:53 ◼   ► I mean, maybe we can come up with a nickname for it, but that was the advantage of saying

02:02:56 ◼   ► 11" MacBook Air. It's like 11" is better than 9.7". That's not fun to write. But it does

02:03:03 ◼   ► make sense. I mean, this is the laptopification of the iPad line, where it's like, instead

02:03:11 ◼   ► of saying, "We're going to count by one every time we release one, and we're going to keep

02:03:16 ◼   ► the old ones around," instead it strikes me that this is a little bit more like, "Nope,

02:03:20 ◼   ► these are the slots. We've got a big one and a little one, and those are our iPad Pros,

02:03:25 ◼   ► next year if we if we update them they're just gonna fit in these slots

02:03:29 ◼   ► the old ones will go away and the new ones will be here and that's just like

02:03:33 ◼   ► like we do with laptops and desktops right there's no other than like the

02:03:37 ◼   ► ones that keep around for education like the non retina MacBook Pro I mean

02:03:40 ◼   ► generally when the retina MacBook Pro gets updated they don't keep the old one

02:03:44 ◼   ► around - it's like these are they replaced them with with new ones and

02:03:49 ◼   ► these are the new ones I feel like that's what they're doing with the iPads

02:03:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I feel like it's a sign of, at least from Apple's perspective, that they see this as it,

02:04:00 ◼   ► once it's gotten, this year is the year that the iPad became like an established product.

02:04:07 ◼   ► Maybe that's the wrong word, but that it's kind of grown up to the point where it's,

02:04:11 ◼   ► and they're, you know, they're, the whole push that Schiller gave on stage for it is that this

02:04:16 ◼   ► is a credible alternative to somebody upgrading from an older PC. This can be your primary