The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► What time you got? What do you got? What are you 11 o'clock?

00:00:02 ◼   ► 12 21 a.m. Oh my God.

00:00:04 ◼   ► Are you serious? Is this going to be all right?

00:00:06 ◼   ► Yeah. No, I I have it down to science.

00:00:09 ◼   ► I took a shower, then I weighed down for a 20 minute nap,

00:00:12 ◼   ► and then I drink up coffee and then I will calm myself down

00:00:15 ◼   ► with a couple of beers during the conversation. Sounds good.

00:00:18 ◼   ► No, I'm good. Don't worry about it.

00:00:24 ◼   ► OK. Although although we had we had we had a nice like home Korean barbecue

00:00:29 ◼   ► We over at the the in-laws place, of course, and she's like my mother-in-law is like a huge whiskey fan

00:00:37 ◼   ► So she always has really good stuff, but I limited myself to to us to a single a single serving

00:00:43 ◼   ► So you owe me one. I

00:00:46 ◼   ► Do that's that's a steep price to pay to be a guest on the show. I forgot I have you set up

00:00:53 ◼   ► I have Taipei set up in my today view I could I didn't need to ask you what time it was. I could have just

00:00:58 ◼   ► Open today my world clock. Well, I guess that that says enough about today

00:01:04 ◼   ► You know what? I I think the problem is that I usually I really only open that thing up for

00:01:10 ◼   ► It's it's kind of weird to have that bead today and notifications

00:01:13 ◼   ► like I understand why they grouped it together that way, but I think in practice it's weird because it's

00:01:18 ◼   ► One or the other is always two steps away instead of one step away

00:01:22 ◼   ► Yeah

00:01:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree. I don't know I never click on today either

00:01:28 ◼   ► I'm looking at like it actually took me a couple seconds to remember what you were talking about when he said today

00:01:32 ◼   ► It's I use it for notifications only and I don't know I guess that's kind of true on both OSes

00:01:39 ◼   ► although I was talking about the Mac not iOS, but

00:01:42 ◼   ► Kind of true on both of us is where I've always got it on

00:01:46 ◼   ► notifications not

00:01:49 ◼   ► Today, yeah

00:01:51 ◼   ► No, it's well, it's interesting because um, I

00:01:54 ◼   ► Don't know you you could almost see that as being being a shift right like I mean almost with

00:01:59 ◼   ► Everything is is more almost responsive in real time. Whereas today that's like that's like a plan and I don't maybe it's

00:02:07 ◼   ► we're hardly authorities to talk about having a set schedule and

00:02:12 ◼   ► Marching through the day. So we're probably outliers. Yeah, I've seen some people who wanted who've requested

00:02:18 ◼   ► They wish that there was a way to make at least on the Mac

00:02:21 ◼   ► I think only on the Mac, it wouldn't make sense on iOS,

00:02:23 ◼   ► but on the Mac that they could make that persistent

00:02:26 ◼   ► and just say, take those two inches

00:02:28 ◼   ► on the right side of my screen

00:02:29 ◼   ► and just always make it today.

00:02:31 ◼   ► And I've got a big 30-inch iMac here or something,

00:02:34 ◼   ► big Thunderbolt display.

00:02:37 ◼   ► I don't need the whole screen for this.

00:02:38 ◼   ► Just treat my screen as what's left

00:02:40 ◼   ► and give me that today view over there

00:02:42 ◼   ► so I've got a permanent agenda.

00:02:45 ◼   ► - Oh no, totally.

00:02:45 ◼   ► I did something similar to that

00:02:46 ◼   ► when I was at Microsoft and Windows 8

00:02:50 ◼   ► and you can mix like the regular desktop

00:02:53 ◼   ► and then like Windows 8 apps

00:02:55 ◼   ► and like a sliver on the side of the screen.

00:02:58 ◼   ► And so I put my calendar there for that exact reason.

00:03:01 ◼   ► It worked out perfectly

00:03:04 ◼   ► and then I just had a quick view of what was going on.

00:03:07 ◼   ► - And people have done that virtually

00:03:09 ◼   ► or in a mismatch of digital and analog

00:03:12 ◼   ► for as long as they've been using computers in their office

00:03:15 ◼   ► if you think about like sticky notes

00:03:16 ◼   ► on the side of a monitor.

00:03:19 ◼   ► Oh no, totally, totally.

00:03:21 ◼   ► I think that's something that's like,

00:03:24 ◼   ► what was the, were you talking, linked to this?

00:03:26 ◼   ► Like there's like that new accessory for like an iPad

00:03:28 ◼   ► where you can actually like have it

00:03:29 ◼   ► as a secondary display or whatever.

00:03:32 ◼   ► To me, the compiling case, if you have an iPad in your desk

00:03:36 ◼   ► is just, yeah, just have it there for your calendar

00:03:39 ◼   ► and stuff like that, I mean, it's.

00:03:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I didn't link to that.

00:03:42 ◼   ► I know which one, I forget the name

00:03:43 ◼   ► of the thing you're talking about,

00:03:44 ◼   ► but I know exactly what you're talking about.

00:03:46 ◼   ► And I've been looking at,

00:03:47 ◼   ► I've been thinking about trying that out,

00:03:48 ◼   ► But I wouldn't use it again.

00:03:50 ◼   ► I would not use it as a--

00:03:53 ◼   ► I wouldn't put an app over there, any app.

00:03:56 ◼   ► But I would think about using it exactly like you said,

00:03:58 ◼   ► as a sort of a pace board.

00:04:01 ◼   ► I don't know, like a bulletin board.

00:04:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:06 ◼   ► I'm a screen maven.

00:04:07 ◼   ► So I have three screens on my desk.

00:04:10 ◼   ► So I don't know if I even have room for an iPad.

00:04:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:14 ◼   ► What's the name of that thing?

00:04:15 ◼   ► Is it Reflector?

00:04:16 ◼   ► or is that a different thing?

00:04:18 ◼   ► - No, I think I wanna say sort of an L,

00:04:20 ◼   ► but I might be totally making that up.

00:04:23 ◼   ► But yeah, the idea is I think it was built

00:04:25 ◼   ► by a former Apple guy or something.

00:04:26 ◼   ► So like, and apparently it actually works quite well.

00:04:30 ◼   ► - See, Air Display, Duet?

00:04:34 ◼   ► - No, Duet, Duet, I think that's it.

00:04:37 ◼   ► - Duet Display, yeah, there we go.

00:04:40 ◼   ► I will put it in the show notes.

00:04:43 ◼   ► We'll look at it for next week.

00:04:46 ◼   ► Yeah, first school response,

00:04:48 ◼   ► duet display, X Apple engineers turn your iPad

00:04:50 ◼   ► into an extra screen.

00:04:51 ◼   ► So they, and that's their,

00:04:53 ◼   ► that's actually their page title for Google.

00:04:57 ◼   ► So they're definitely playing up

00:04:58 ◼   ► the X Apple engineer angle.

00:05:00 ◼   ► So, and effectively, 'cause that's what I remembered.

00:05:03 ◼   ► - That's interesting.

00:05:04 ◼   ► I wonder how that plays at the company.

00:05:07 ◼   ► Because the other thing too, is that,

00:05:11 ◼   ► Part of the reason that very few former Apple engineers

00:05:16 ◼   ► or people who've had any kind of involvement,

00:05:21 ◼   ► managers too, they don't talk about their experience

00:05:23 ◼   ► at Apple even when they leave is because so many

00:05:26 ◼   ► of them go back and they know that some of them go back.

00:05:29 ◼   ► - It's like a revolving door.

00:05:31 ◼   ► - It's like Steve Jobs, one of the things Steve Jobs did

00:05:34 ◼   ► when he came back to the company is get rid

00:05:37 ◼   ► of the sabbatical program.

00:05:40 ◼   ► There used to be, I forget how many years,

00:05:41 ◼   ► but every five years you got like a couple months sabbatical

00:05:45 ◼   ► and he got rid of that.

00:05:48 ◼   ► 'Cause he, you know, I forget various reasons.

00:05:51 ◼   ► But one of them was that an awful lot of the time

00:05:53 ◼   ► people would take a sabbatical

00:05:54 ◼   ► and then at the end of the sabbatical they'd quit.

00:05:57 ◼   ► But there's sort of a de facto sabbatical

00:05:59 ◼   ► where if you feel burned out, you just quit, you can leave.

00:06:03 ◼   ► And you know, as long as you're on good terms,

00:06:05 ◼   ► it's like the easiest way to get a job at Apple

00:06:07 ◼   ► is to have been a successful Apple employee before.

00:06:10 ◼   ► I can't tell you how many people I know

00:06:12 ◼   ► who've left and come back within sometimes a year,

00:06:15 ◼   ► sometimes it's actually pretty quick,

00:06:16 ◼   ► sometimes three, four years, but they do.

00:06:18 ◼   ► But one of the things you could do that would ruin that

00:06:20 ◼   ► would be to blab about the company in the interim.

00:06:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, totally.

00:06:27 ◼   ► No, it's a very, at this point,

00:06:30 ◼   ► everyone kind of knows about it.

00:06:31 ◼   ► And I think even Apple internally,

00:06:36 ◼   ► It's like it's totally accepted and kind of the assumption, yeah, you get burned out.

00:06:41 ◼   ► Yeah, only at Apple do you get burned out and go work at a startup to relax and then you come back.

00:06:47 ◼   ► Right.

00:06:49 ◼   ► Gives you an idea of what the pace and expectations are.

00:06:54 ◼   ► Yeah, but it is, you know, it's a better, I think it's, you know, it's an interesting way to do sabbaticals.

00:06:59 ◼   ► Quit, come back.

00:07:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean it works for them. I'm not sure that it's something that other companies want to adopt as a policy.

00:07:10 ◼   ► Did Microsoft have a sabbatical policy?

00:07:13 ◼   ► I don't think so. Not that I remember. I mean I wasn't really there long enough to have it matter for me.

00:07:21 ◼   ► But I've heard of people taking sabbaticals, but I don't think it was like a formal thing.

00:07:27 ◼   ► I think it was those things where if you're in good standing and...

00:07:30 ◼   ► The other thing with Microsoft is, in part because of where they're located,

00:07:35 ◼   ► I mean, there are more and more, you know, tech jobs in Seattle and the startups and stuff.

00:07:40 ◼   ► But in general, it's more of a big company talent with Microsoft and Amazon.

00:07:44 ◼   ► And no one from Microsoft wants to work at Amazon for the most part.

00:07:47 ◼   ► Because, you know, everyone thinks that, you know, they work insane hours and don't get paid anything.

00:07:52 ◼   ► So it's kind of a plus in Microsoft.

00:07:57 ◼   ► It's a plus in that, like, there's still a lot of really good employees.

00:08:00 ◼   ► Whereas if they had been the valley like you take them like HP or Yahoo especially before Marissa

00:08:04 ◼   ► America came back and they just lost they lost so many people you know in there. It's just like how do you come back from that?

00:08:10 ◼   ► Whereas Microsoft I think one of the advantage of being there is that they there's still a lot of like really strong people there

00:08:17 ◼   ► It's a disadvantage though because you get people that are just kind of there

00:08:20 ◼   ► And they're not particularly pleased about being there, and they're kind of a drag

00:08:23 ◼   ► so it cuts both ways but um

00:08:26 ◼   ► I think I do recall people, you know, taking some time off and you know

00:08:31 ◼   ► it being okay because they're valuable employees and you know, and

00:08:35 ◼   ► People appreciate that. Sometimes you need to unplug for a bit

00:08:39 ◼   ► It used to be I mean, this is ancient history, but it was you know when I was getting out of college in

00:08:46 ◼   ► 96 I mean Microsoft was

00:08:49 ◼   ► Notorious infamous

00:08:53 ◼   ► famous for being like the hardest place in the world to get hired.

00:08:57 ◼   ► It was, you know, that it was the play.

00:08:59 ◼   ► I think they practically invented the sort of gimmicky, you know,

00:09:03 ◼   ► you know, off the top of your head, how many marbles would fit in a,

00:09:07 ◼   ► you know, beer barrel or a Volkswagen bug type of interview question?

00:09:12 ◼   ► Why is a manhole cover around?

00:09:15 ◼   ► And yeah, and and also but tough,

00:09:19 ◼   ► like whiteboarding questions to fertile programmers.

00:09:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that that's probably, I mean, any company that's on top, it shifted to Google, right?

00:09:31 ◼   ► And it's, you know, some people have the nature or they want to like get on the next big thing.

00:09:37 ◼   ► But for a lot of people, the idea of being at the market leader and knowing, you know, that that's attracted a lot of people.

00:09:43 ◼   ► And those people are valuable, too, because you need those are the kind of folks that kind of provide long term stability.

00:09:48 ◼   ► stability because you know what's once they're set their set.

00:09:51 ◼   ► I mean, you do need the people that are willing to take risks and push forward.

00:09:55 ◼   ► But it's always a balance and it can create a certain arrogance, though,

00:09:59 ◼   ► like an institutional arrogance, because the gist of it is then it creates this.

00:10:03 ◼   ► It created a culture, I think, where the assumption was any

00:10:06 ◼   ► you have to be really smart to work at Microsoft and.

00:10:09 ◼   ► And therefore, everybody here is like the smartest people in the world.

00:10:13 ◼   ► And at the time, Microsoft had this extraordinary success

00:10:18 ◼   ► that seemed to back up the idea that the company was staffed with all of the best programmers

00:10:22 ◼   ► in the world.

00:10:23 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:10:24 ◼   ► No, it's definitely a problem.

00:10:26 ◼   ► And it's a problem on a few levels.

00:10:30 ◼   ► One, you definitely get arrogance or arrogant.

00:10:33 ◼   ► Two, it also kind of breeds a little bit of a bad culture in that everyone is all, it's

00:10:40 ◼   ► like the first time a lot of these people have gotten to a place where they're not for

00:10:43 ◼   ► sure the smartest person in the room.

00:10:46 ◼   ► And so everyone's very eager to show that they are the smartest person in the room.

00:10:50 ◼   ► And like people trying to show that they're smart is not conducive to, you know, collaborative

00:10:56 ◼   ► work or, you know, it is conducive to having a very dog eat dog sort of culture, which

00:11:02 ◼   ► Microsoft is very famous for.

00:11:05 ◼   ► And I think that probably plays into it.

00:11:09 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think Google is the inheritor of that.

00:11:13 ◼   ► I do think.

00:11:14 ◼   ► - Google is so much like Microsoft.

00:11:15 ◼   ► I mean, it just, in so many respects.

00:11:18 ◼   ► I mean, I've written from, just from a big picture,

00:11:21 ◼   ► like strategic perspective, I think that they're,

00:11:24 ◼   ► right now in a place similar to Microsoft,

00:11:25 ◼   ► you know, around 2000,

00:11:27 ◼   ► obviously that's somewhat controversial,

00:11:29 ◼   ► but not even that, but just the way they hire,

00:11:31 ◼   ► the way they treat employees, their status in the Valley,

00:11:34 ◼   ► the way people look at them.

00:11:36 ◼   ► I mean, for sure, they're the inheritor.

00:11:38 ◼   ► Even the, and I think you can agree with that,

00:11:42 ◼   ► even if you like Google and hate Microsoft

00:11:44 ◼   ► vice versa. And it's just a function of being kind of the big dog. And like, of course,

00:11:49 ◼   ► Apple is the biggest quote unquote from market perspective, but they've always, Apple's always

00:11:53 ◼   ► been very, it's Apple's of the Valley, but they're separate from the Valley. Like all

00:11:58 ◼   ► the startups and all the people like all look towards Google and people bottoms after that

00:12:03 ◼   ► just as they previously did Microsoft and Apple's always been kind of a bit of an aberration

00:12:08 ◼   ► from a cultural perspective, from a product development perspective. And obviously, you

00:12:12 ◼   ► you know, there's something to that.

00:12:14 ◼   ► - I think it's also, and from a personality perspective,

00:12:17 ◼   ► I think that the, I mean, and I know,

00:12:20 ◼   ► I think I've talked about this before in the show.

00:12:21 ◼   ► I know people who have gone between Google and Apple,

00:12:25 ◼   ► but not very few, fewer than any similar companies

00:12:30 ◼   ► that I know of.

00:12:30 ◼   ► Like, they just, the two companies tend to draw

00:12:33 ◼   ► very, very different personalities.

00:12:36 ◼   ► - No, for sure, and I think you can see this

00:12:38 ◼   ► from a social perspective.

00:12:40 ◼   ► I think Apple people tend to hang out with Apple people, whereas Google and this whole

00:12:47 ◼   ► startup culture is much more of a group and goes back and forth. You see tons of people

00:12:54 ◼   ► from Google going into startups and coming back and stuff like that. You do see it at

00:12:59 ◼   ► Apple, but I think to a much lower degree, I think you have more long-term employees

00:13:04 ◼   ► at Apple, I mean, it's hard to say.

00:13:07 ◼   ► I mean, we're probably both going off anecdote a bit,

00:13:10 ◼   ► but I definitely have always felt that,

00:13:12 ◼   ► the Valley company is Google,

00:13:15 ◼   ► even though Apple's the biggest.

00:13:16 ◼   ► Just Apple is kind of in its own world

00:13:18 ◼   ► and kind of always has been.

00:13:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, I also, personality-wise,

00:13:21 ◼   ► I think a lot of the people who I've gotten to know at Apple

00:13:25 ◼   ► who are very smart though,

00:13:27 ◼   ► but they're not the type of smart person

00:13:28 ◼   ► who wants to assert that they're the smartest person

00:13:30 ◼   ► in the world or in the room.

00:13:33 ◼   ► And they'd be happy not to be because they think cool now

00:13:36 ◼   ► I've got these other smarter people and almost like if you want to bring some sports ball into it. It's you know

00:13:42 ◼   ► What do you do if you've always been the star basketball player, but now you're only the third or fourth best

00:13:49 ◼   ► Are you happy because holy holy shit now?

00:13:52 ◼   ► I've got three guys on the team who are even better than me and I'll settle into a smaller role and we're gonna win or

00:14:00 ◼   ► Are you you know, are you upset and gonna complain about how many shots you're getting and stuff like that? No, totally

00:14:06 ◼   ► I and I mean, I I'm I think of I'm very vociferous in my you know, I love the NBA

00:14:13 ◼   ► I love basketball and one of the reasons I love it is because I think it's it's a sport that

00:14:17 ◼   ► It's one of the hardest sports to kind of figure out right?

00:14:21 ◼   ► I mean, I think we did might have talked to this last time what you know

00:14:23 ◼   ► Like baseball's at the end kind of a one-on-one game. Where is basketball the interaction?

00:14:29 ◼   ► Both on offense and especially on defense is is so important to it and it's and it's not

00:14:35 ◼   ► It's not you can't distill it to a spreadsheet

00:14:37 ◼   ► It's just one of those there's a lot of feel to it if that makes sense, right?

00:14:40 ◼   ► And with only five players on the court at any time one new player is a significant difference

00:14:46 ◼   ► I mean, I think maybe the canonical example would be when

00:14:49 ◼   ► when King James went to the Heat and they already had a

00:14:54 ◼   ► lineup of all-star players and they added

00:14:57 ◼   ► you know almost inarguably the best player in the league. That's not necessary, that wasn't

00:15:04 ◼   ► necessarily going to work out. There wasn't you know it was certainly a talent injection but it

00:15:11 ◼   ► it isn't necessarily it wasn't it wasn't fate that it was going to lead to success. Right it was so

00:15:17 ◼   ► fascinating we're seeing a replay now right and it's arguably going going worse than it did that

00:15:22 ◼   ► time. So no, with the Cavaliers? Yeah, yeah. Oh, totally. So the other thing that's interesting

00:15:30 ◼   ► about Apple that I've always found very fascinating is if you look at kind of the executive board of

00:15:36 ◼   ► most big companies, it's like Stanford, Stanford, MIT, Stanford, Stanford. But that's never been

00:15:42 ◼   ► the case for Apple. I mean, you look at it right now, I mean, you have, you know, Tim Cook went to

00:15:47 ◼   ► Auburn and Angela Aarons went to went to Ball State.

00:15:51 ◼   ► Eddie Q went to Eddie Q went to Duke, which is obviously, you

00:15:56 ◼   ► know that that's a prestigious school, but yeah, but it's not a

00:15:59 ◼   ► Valley school, right? It's not it's not a Valley school.

00:16:01 ◼   ► Schiller was Boston College, right?

00:16:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so. And at least

00:16:06 ◼   ► well, if he's not, he's for whatever reason, he's a huge fan

00:16:09 ◼   ► of their sports. Yeah, I think he is. I just quit. I just opened

00:16:14 ◼   ► a couple of them here. Um, the University of Massachusetts

00:16:16 ◼   ► Amherst, Dan Riccio, Phil Schiller is Boston College.

00:16:20 ◼   ► And I think that's

00:16:24 ◼   ► Jeff Williams, North Carolina State.

00:16:27 ◼   ► I mean, like state schools, right?

00:16:29 ◼   ► I mean, good schools, solid schools, but not very different than the

00:16:35 ◼   ► then than a lot of the valley.

00:16:37 ◼   ► And I think I think it's a big deal.

00:16:39 ◼   ► I think it matters.

00:16:40 ◼   ► And I'm biased in this regard.

00:16:42 ◼   ► I went to a state school.

00:16:44 ◼   ► I mean, it was no Drexel University, but Drexel is like Drexel is like the public school for

00:16:51 ◼   ► people who are otherwise going to end up in a state school. But yeah, I think it's I don't know,

00:16:59 ◼   ► I'm not objective in the slightest in this because when I was when I was getting my MBA,

00:17:06 ◼   ► I had a very hard time getting a job. And because I had this very kind of non-traditional background,

00:17:14 ◼   ► I had been living abroad, I'd been teaching English, traveling the world, stuff like that.

00:17:18 ◼   ► And lots of companies were like, people tell me, "Oh, it's very interesting, but I would never make

00:17:24 ◼   ► the cut for an interview. If I got a first interview, I'd never make it to a second one,

00:17:27 ◼   ► even if I thought the interview went very well." And kind of the one exception was Apple, where

00:17:33 ◼   ► everything went fantastically, got in, you know, relatively, you know, quite easily. And the

00:17:41 ◼   ► interviewer told me right off the bat or and I was fortunate because the like the interviewer

00:17:44 ◼   ► was sick so I interviewed with the hiring director like my first interview so that probably accelerated

00:17:48 ◼   ► things but she's like um like I wanted to hire you since I had your resume because it was so

00:17:55 ◼   ► off the wall like that's that's the sort of person that we're looking for and you go there and you

00:18:00 ◼   ► meet lots of people and I believe it because most of the people I met yeah there were some

00:18:04 ◼   ► Stanford people and there were some you know MIT people and stuff like that but uh a lot of people

00:18:10 ◼   ► had really weird backgrounds and did lots of strange stuff and they were super smart but they

00:18:14 ◼   ► were the weird weird people smart and I think that's I don't think that's an accident. Yeah

00:18:21 ◼   ► I know a lot of engineers at Apple or at least a couple I shouldn't say a lot I know a couple

00:18:25 ◼   ► at least who don't have any degree at all and I would say I know a lot who have degrees in things

00:18:32 ◼   ► other than computer science you know yeah physics a lot of physics I mean I don't know how many

00:18:38 ◼   ► both Indy and people at Apple. You know, people who went to school for physics and were programming

00:18:44 ◼   ► on the side, and then just got sucked into it. And it just was irrelevant to their job prospects

00:18:50 ◼   ► at Apple that they didn't have a computer science degree or, you know, whatever school wasn't their

00:18:56 ◼   ► thing in Nick Carlson's new book on on Marissa Meyer where she was. I forget who she was

00:19:04 ◼   ► dismissive of because she didn't have a college degree.

00:19:07 ◼   ► I don't remember. I haven't read it yet. I've only read the excerpts.

00:19:11 ◼   ► There was something though where she was, you know, she sort of just turned her nose

00:19:15 ◼   ► up at somebody else just because the person had didn't have a college degree.

00:19:20 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I mean, I mean, by all by all, you know, Google is kind of notorious for

00:19:27 ◼   ► having a very strong bias towards, you know, towards your degree in your GPA,

00:19:32 ◼   ► in particular if you're from Stanford and I think a lot of the Valley is and it's one of those things

00:19:37 ◼   ► where I think the problem with it is it raises the floor for who you hire. Like you're going to get

00:19:42 ◼   ► someone that's smart and capable but anytime you raise the floor you're also lowering the ceiling

00:19:47 ◼   ► because you're kind of constraining your options and if someone fits in a box like you're not going

00:19:54 ◼   ► to get out of the box thinking. I mean it's and I think Apple at least in my personal experience and

00:20:00 ◼   ► from people that I saw there and from what I talked to, and this is something that we did

00:20:04 ◼   ► talk about at Apple University, like the way Apple thinks about hiring, putting much more value on

00:20:10 ◼   ► non-school stuff. And if they're smart and if they're kind of weird and they've done interesting

00:20:17 ◼   ► things, then that's someone that we're interested in. And if they spent their whole day going to

00:20:24 ◼   ► schools and having a high GPA.

00:20:26 ◼   ► It might be useful, but

00:20:27 ◼   ► it's almost more of a

00:20:30 ◼   ► more of a challenge in some respects.

00:20:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:32 ◼   ► The other thing too, and

00:20:35 ◼   ► you like that whole like asserting

00:20:37 ◼   ► who's the smartest person in the room

00:20:39 ◼   ► like I've heard this

00:20:40 ◼   ► from other people too, but this is

00:20:41 ◼   ► like even personal experience

00:20:42 ◼   ► like way back when

00:20:44 ◼   ► probably close to 10 years ago,

00:20:45 ◼   ► I give up like 8 years ago

00:20:47 ◼   ► when I was at joint.

00:20:48 ◼   ► We had a meeting with Apple.

00:20:50 ◼   ► Just hey, we you know

00:20:52 ◼   ► we're interested in what you guys

00:20:53 ◼   ► are working on. This is when joint was not a hosting company when we were doing like a

00:20:58 ◼   ► web-based email calendar contacts notes syncing type thing.

00:21:05 ◼   ► And it was a you know it was a pleasant meeting it was you know maybe like 30 40 minutes but it

00:21:13 ◼   ► was like the opposite of anybody trying to assert who was the smartest all they wanted to do was

00:21:18 ◼   ► listen. That's it. They had they had questions, but there was absolutely no, it was the opposite.

00:21:23 ◼   ► It was almost like creepy how much they were just observing and listening to us and revealing

00:21:29 ◼   ► nothing about themselves. Yeah, well, if you want, I mean, if you want to get into like,

00:21:34 ◼   ► read way too much into this, like we probably already are, but if you want to take it

00:21:38 ◼   ► full speed ahead, one of the best things about being an intern at Apple is they have this like

00:21:43 ◼   ► this intern lecture series where basically the executive team, different members of the

00:21:48 ◼   ► executive team for lunch they come in for an hour and they talk. Some just talk the

00:21:53 ◼   ► whole time, some give presentations, others just do Q&A. So you got an hour with Steve

00:21:57 ◼   ► Jobs, an hour with Tim Cook, an hour with Phil Schiller, with Ron Johnson. It was an

00:22:04 ◼   ► incredible experience, worth the internship alone. But there was one that was really interesting

00:22:11 ◼   ► because this person came in and he was obviously the smartest person in the room and he was

00:22:21 ◼   ► also determined to make sure that everyone knew he was the smartest person in the room.

00:22:24 ◼   ► Is this person no longer at the company?

00:22:29 ◼   ► I'll give you one guess as to who this person was.

00:22:31 ◼   ► I'm guessing it was Scott Forstall.

00:22:33 ◼   ► I walked out of the meeting and I told a friend of mine and we talked to this like after he left

00:22:39 ◼   ► Apple like we because we talked about right afterwards like it was so it was jarring.

00:22:43 ◼   ► I mean he was so clearly brilliant but it like his it was just such a turn-off to listen to him

00:22:51 ◼   ► talk especially relative to to some of the other executives and and if you want to get you know

00:22:58 ◼   ► we're gonna really piss off all the Stanford listeners but yeah there's your Stanford guy

00:23:03 ◼   ► And and I don't know, like I wasn't it was one of those things where when he left,

00:23:09 ◼   ► I was shocked, but I was not surprised

00:23:12 ◼   ► because of that that lecture that I heard from him.

00:23:16 ◼   ► Well, I mean, there wasn't just that. There was I mean, I'd heard stuff.

00:23:19 ◼   ► I knew that it was I mean, I knew that he was a difficult person

00:23:23 ◼   ► to work with just to the grapevine. But

00:23:26 ◼   ► I the truth is, I think Apple misses him, to be honest.

00:23:29 ◼   ► But I also was not was not surprised.

00:23:33 ◼   ► I agree with that. I do, too.

00:23:35 ◼   ► And I think it's easy.

00:23:36 ◼   ► Like I laughed and said I knew who it was and I did know.

00:23:38 ◼   ► I instantly guessed it was it was for stall.

00:23:41 ◼   ► But I think he's an extremely complicated figure.

00:23:45 ◼   ► And I think explaining his role in Apple's success

00:23:48 ◼   ► over the last 15 years is extremely complicated.

00:23:51 ◼   ► And there's absolutely no way to paint it in either black or white

00:23:57 ◼   ► and say he is Miss, they suck without him or it was an easy no brainer to get rid of them.

00:24:04 ◼   ► Good riddance to bad rubbish. It is so so many different and I wouldn't even say gray. It's just

00:24:10 ◼   ► so many interweaved streaks of black and white. Absolutely. Good, bad part, good part, bad part,

00:24:16 ◼   ► good part, bad part. No, he's I mean, he is he's on the top five list of people most responsible

00:24:23 ◼   ► for Apple being where it is today.

00:24:24 ◼   ► - I think part of it was that I think he always had,

00:24:27 ◼   ► and I don't, you know, again, I met him once, you know,

00:24:30 ◼   ► after a keynote and we had like a half hour discussion

00:24:32 ◼   ► and it was great and he was, it was just me and him

00:24:34 ◼   ► shooting the shit in the hands-on area.

00:24:36 ◼   ► And he was, you know, clearly a reader of my site,

00:24:40 ◼   ► very complimentary to my work.

00:24:42 ◼   ► And we just talked about some cool stuff.

00:24:44 ◼   ► And, you know, it was no showy offy stuff at all.

00:24:48 ◼   ► It was just, you know, but he was very, very brilliant.

00:24:50 ◼   ► It was actually around the time of, what's it, 2010?

00:24:55 ◼   ► Might have been like WWDC 2010.

00:24:58 ◼   ► - iPhone 4.

00:25:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, iPhone 4, yes, iPhone 4,

00:25:03 ◼   ► and the iPad was like four months old.

00:25:07 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:25:08 ◼   ► - And a lot of this stuff where, I was gonna say kids,

00:25:13 ◼   ► but it's actually just about everybody,

00:25:14 ◼   ► but especially kids with autism and problems like that

00:25:19 ◼   ► were found to be doing sensational stuff

00:25:22 ◼   ► communication-wise with iPhones,

00:25:26 ◼   ► and now with the big iPad,

00:25:27 ◼   ► which really helps with fine motor control

00:25:29 ◼   ► 'cause there were bigger targets,

00:25:30 ◼   ► that it was a huge thing.

00:25:32 ◼   ► He was so amazingly engaged on that.

00:25:35 ◼   ► And this, you know, that is not like a,

00:25:37 ◼   ► hey, how to make the company another $10 billion.

00:25:40 ◼   ► It's clearly a small segment of the overall market

00:25:45 ◼   ► for iPads and iPhones,

00:25:47 ◼   ► but he was super, super engaged on it

00:25:49 ◼   ► and thought that we had this cool discussion about how

00:25:52 ◼   ► that a lot of the things that they designed,

00:25:54 ◼   ► not think they'd, you know,

00:25:56 ◼   ► all these things fell out of things that they just thought

00:25:58 ◼   ► were cool for regular people,

00:25:59 ◼   ► but it ends up being, you know,

00:26:02 ◼   ► super great for people with autism.

00:26:05 ◼   ► But it's this whole that, you know, his conclusion,

00:26:09 ◼   ► he said that they were looking into it to try to prove it,

00:26:11 ◼   ► to, you know, not just do it as a hunch,

00:26:13 ◼   ► but that it's just about a leave, you know,

00:26:16 ◼   ► eliminating a layer of abstraction,

00:26:18 ◼   ► that that whole thing where you move a mouse

00:26:20 ◼   ► which moves an arrow on the screen

00:26:22 ◼   ► and you do it, once you get used to using computers,

00:26:26 ◼   ► you just forget about it,

00:26:27 ◼   ► but that people with autism can never get past it,

00:26:29 ◼   ► that it's this abstraction

00:26:31 ◼   ► that just their brains don't make the connection.

00:26:34 ◼   ► And when they can put their finger

00:26:36 ◼   ► right on that button on screen and tap it,

00:26:39 ◼   ► it's not just like a little bit easier,

00:26:43 ◼   ► it's the difference between unable to make the connection

00:26:46 ◼   ► and completely able to make the connection.

00:26:49 ◼   ► And that other people who can use a mouse

00:26:51 ◼   ► and don't have any sort of impairment like that,

00:26:53 ◼   ► they might, they don't really think about the fact

00:26:57 ◼   ► that the iPad's a lot easier or the iPhone's a lot easier,

00:27:00 ◼   ► but that it ends up that subconsciously,

00:27:03 ◼   ► without thinking about it, it is,

00:27:05 ◼   ► and it actually is why they prefer using it.

00:27:08 ◼   ► - No, I think--

00:27:10 ◼   ► - It was a great conversation.

00:27:11 ◼   ► And the gist of it was just, he just was talking.

00:27:13 ◼   ► It was just me and him talking and it was great.

00:27:16 ◼   ► and I thought he was great.

00:27:17 ◼   ► And I also know, also know, I'll just add the other thing,

00:27:20 ◼   ► is that there are a ton of people,

00:27:22 ◼   ► ton of people who worked under him at Apple who loved him,

00:27:26 ◼   ► and loved working under him.

00:27:27 ◼   ► He was demanding, but that he was absolutely not,

00:27:32 ◼   ► he was, his problem's there. - He was fair.

00:27:37 ◼   ► - Well, and the other thing too that I heard

00:27:38 ◼   ► time and time again was that people who worked under him

00:27:40 ◼   ► always had the sense that he had their back.

00:27:43 ◼   ► - Right, right, that's what I was getting at, yeah.

00:27:45 ◼   ► No, totally. The other thing is that I actually think, I'm not sure, but I think in that talk,

00:27:50 ◼   ► I think he actually did talk a lot. It was the same summer, 2010, that I was there. And

00:27:54 ◼   ► so maybe it was on his mind. But I think he talked a lot about the accessibility stuff.

00:27:58 ◼   ► And I think, I'm not sure, but I think I've heard that he was really the driving force

00:28:02 ◼   ► for iOS being so advanced when it came to accessibility, like for the blind and stuff

00:28:07 ◼   ► like that.

00:28:08 ◼   ► Well, he certainly was a complete advocate for it, like a total advocate. He may not

00:28:13 ◼   ► would have been the sole driving force,

00:28:15 ◼   ► but he put his full advocacy behind it.

00:28:17 ◼   ► - Just in general, I really think,

00:28:20 ◼   ► well, I think Apple misses him in two parts.

00:28:23 ◼   ► I think one is his ability to,

00:28:28 ◼   ► I do think that iOS was incredibly,

00:28:33 ◼   ► given what it was, was not buggy at all

00:28:38 ◼   ► and was really good.

00:28:41 ◼   ► I think there's a discussion we had about some of the quality stuff, but two, I think he had a real passion and

00:28:48 ◼   ► push for usability and accessibility

00:28:52 ◼   ► not not just for like

00:28:55 ◼   ► disabled but for normal people and like and so much of the original iPhone OS that was so natural and so obvious

00:29:03 ◼   ► And that obviousness it's obvious when you use it, but it's not obvious when you design it, right?

00:29:09 ◼   ► It requires tons of iteration and tons of pushback and doing it again and again and certainly jobs was

00:29:14 ◼   ► Was the head of this and the and pushed for this but this was where this was where in particular

00:29:21 ◼   ► I think forced all really channel jobs and

00:29:23 ◼   ► Certainly iOS and I would say, you know, especially now once we're used to them look much better than the old iPhone OS

00:29:30 ◼   ► But I still think there's lots of areas where they're more difficult to use and more difficult in a not in that they're less obvious

00:29:38 ◼   ► And that's something that I think is missing still.

00:29:41 ◼   ► - I think a way that you get there is not so much

00:29:44 ◼   ► being able to find the truly simple,

00:29:49 ◼   ► seemingly obvious way to do it.

00:29:52 ◼   ► It's more of the refusal to accept the complicated,

00:29:57 ◼   ► the complex, it isn't clear how you do it.

00:30:02 ◼   ► But you start, you think, hey, here's how we'll lay out

00:30:06 ◼   ► the new calendar app for iOS 8.

00:30:08 ◼   ► And we'll do this and this and it sounds good

00:30:09 ◼   ► and you build it and then you use it

00:30:11 ◼   ► and it's like, but I'm kind of confused,

00:30:13 ◼   ► like how do I just show a list of events?

00:30:15 ◼   ► And eventually though, you kind of get used to it

00:30:17 ◼   ► and you can just say, well, you can do everything.

00:30:20 ◼   ► Now I've been testing it long enough,

00:30:22 ◼   ► I know it, good enough, let's ship it.

00:30:24 ◼   ► Whereas I think forestall, and again, like you said,

00:30:26 ◼   ► channeling jobs had an ability to say,

00:30:29 ◼   ► this isn't good enough, this is shit,

00:30:31 ◼   ► we've got to start over.

00:30:32 ◼   ► This can't be tweaked, we can't just move a button here,

00:30:35 ◼   ► we've got to throw this out because the whole thing is just not brain dead clear.

00:30:40 ◼   ► Yeah. It's so hard. Oh, sorry. Well, it's just, you can get,

00:30:45 ◼   ► you can just talk yourself into accepting something that's not quite clear.

00:30:48 ◼   ► Well, it's so hard. It's so hard when you're immersed. Yeah.

00:30:50 ◼   ► When you're immersed in it,

00:30:51 ◼   ► it's so hard to look at something through the eyes of a new user or a novice

00:30:55 ◼   ► user. Like that's a,

00:30:56 ◼   ► that's a truly like a skill and a gift that very few people,

00:31:01 ◼   ► including myself, I think, you know,

00:31:04 ◼   ► have because you're just used to it. And so it becomes a blind spot.

00:31:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:09 ◼   ► I guess I take a break right here. Thank our first sponsor. And, um,

00:31:16 ◼   ► it's our good friends at fracture. You guys remember fracture fracture is the

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00:31:29 ◼   ► not on a piece of paper that's under glass and put in a frame. They,

00:31:33 ◼   ► I don't know what they do.

00:31:34 ◼   ► They've got some kind of proprietary technology.

00:31:36 ◼   ► It's amazing.

00:31:37 ◼   ► They print your photo right on the glass.

00:31:40 ◼   ► The effect in person is like the analog equivalent

00:31:45 ◼   ► of these modern retina displays where the LCD is laminated

00:31:50 ◼   ► to the touch center where it looks like the pixels

00:31:54 ◼   ► are right on the glass.

00:31:56 ◼   ► That's what your photo looks like

00:31:57 ◼   ► when you get it back from fracture.

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00:32:06 ◼   ► And they ship them in these amazing

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00:32:14 ◼   ► the frame is the stand it's all sort of integrated and there's like a

00:32:20 ◼   ► total minimal amount of wasted cardboard

00:32:23 ◼   ► But when you get it out if you want to hang out on the wall

00:32:27 ◼   ► Or you want to prop it up on your desk. All that stuff is all built in

00:32:31 ◼   ► To what you get so you don't need to take this thing and then put a frame around it or put it in a frame

00:32:36 ◼   ► or do anything like that everything you need to like say hang it on the wall or

00:32:39 ◼   ► Prop it up on your desk is all built in to the packaging

00:32:43 ◼   ► Really cool looking so you can do it and then it's borderless

00:32:47 ◼   ► so it just is it just has a great effect very very aesthetically pleasing on your desk or

00:32:53 ◼   ► On your wall and the quality is

00:32:58 ◼   ► Just top-notch. I really really love the way pictures look from this. It's a great gift

00:33:03 ◼   ► If you haven't tried it yet you're you're nuts it's a really really good way and you know, I think

00:33:10 ◼   ► their big pitch, you know is

00:33:13 ◼   ► that as we go more and more digital digital digital digital with our photography we lose touch of

00:33:19 ◼   ► the almost the humanity of getting analog prints of your family and friends and

00:33:27 ◼   ► and events from your life that you wanna remember.

00:33:31 ◼   ► And the way that we used to in the old days,

00:33:33 ◼   ► all the best photos we had were of course analog

00:33:35 ◼   ► 'cause that's all we had.

00:33:37 ◼   ► And you had 'em hanging on your wall

00:33:38 ◼   ► or on your desk or on your mantle.

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00:34:14 ◼   ► So my thanks to Fracture.

00:34:15 ◼   ► Go get some pictures.

00:34:17 ◼   ► - So you mentioned the analog nature of photos.

00:34:23 ◼   ► Did you see that iPhone app

00:34:25 ◼   ► that basically it lets you take a picture,

00:34:29 ◼   ► but it doesn't show you the picture if you've taken it.

00:34:32 ◼   ► And once you've taken 24 pictures,

00:34:34 ◼   ► you can pay to have them mailed to you, like print it out.

00:34:37 ◼   ► - Oh no, I did see something about this.

00:34:39 ◼   ► This is like maybe a couple of weeks ago.

00:34:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's called White Album, I think.

00:34:44 ◼   ► I was just doing a quick search for it.

00:34:45 ◼   ► - White Album?

00:34:47 ◼   ► - I think so.

00:34:48 ◼   ► Yeah, whitealbumapp.com.

00:34:52 ◼   ► - Surprised the Beatles didn't have something to say

00:34:54 ◼   ► on an Apple device no less.

00:34:58 ◼   ► Wow that sounds terrible.

00:35:01 ◼   ► Yeah it was it's interesting because like I thought it was interesting because lots of people too are like

00:35:06 ◼   ► oh this is so great it's so wonderful and it's like yeah are you sure about that?

00:35:11 ◼   ► It's one of the things that it sounds great when you tweet it I'm not sure it'd be very great in actual real life.

00:35:16 ◼   ► - Right, and I also feel that

00:35:19 ◼   ► there's something about a digital viewfinder.

00:35:26 ◼   ► Even though the iPhone viewfinder is,

00:35:29 ◼   ► using your iPhone as a viewfinder

00:35:30 ◼   ► and holding it up and looking at it,

00:35:31 ◼   ► is so much bigger than what you'd see

00:35:34 ◼   ► with like an old analog film camera

00:35:36 ◼   ► when you'd look through the eyepiece.

00:35:38 ◼   ► But because it's a sensor, there's something about it

00:35:41 ◼   ► that makes it harder to frame exactly what you want.

00:35:45 ◼   ► I don't know. I feel like if I tried this, I would not take as good a pictures as I would

00:35:50 ◼   ► if I were using my old 35mm SLR looking through the viewfinder. No, I can't chimp and look

00:35:58 ◼   ► at the pictures as I take them, but I feel like I would get better pictures that way

00:36:02 ◼   ► because I'm looking through an actual analog viewfinder and there's no lag whatsoever.

00:36:06 ◼   ► No, I agree. Actually, I was just thinking about it. When I use my SLR, I don't look

00:36:13 ◼   ► at the photo I took most of the time unless I'm like worried about the exposure or something

00:36:17 ◼   ► right unless you notice something really weird like man this is there's such strong backlighting

00:36:21 ◼   ► like these people you know there's no way to get on the other side of them and the sun

00:36:24 ◼   ► is behind them you know I want to double check that this isn't just going to show up as a

00:36:28 ◼   ► silhouette right exactly exactly I just I take it and then I'll look at it whenever

00:36:32 ◼   ► I you know put them in a light room or whatever I used to get frustrated I don't even I can't

00:36:38 ◼   ► remember the last time I launched it I eat but I used to use hipstamatic a lot because

00:36:42 ◼   ► I thought they for a while I thought they had the best filters by far

00:36:45 ◼   ► But Hipstamatic had they were halfway in that regard where they they

00:36:51 ◼   ► Didn't let you apply filters to photos you'd already taken and they didn't let you change the filters on photos

00:36:57 ◼   ► you'd taken you had to set your

00:36:59 ◼   ► gimmicky fake lens and your gimmicky fake film and

00:37:04 ◼   ► Then whatever you took you got oh

00:37:07 ◼   ► Interesting. I never I never really used it

00:37:10 ◼   ► Yeah, it ended I it it's you know, and it was all in the name of this sort of well for lack of a better term

00:37:17 ◼   ► Skewamorphic pretending that you're that the hipstamatic app was a film camera

00:37:21 ◼   ► You know and that's different lens come, you know

00:37:24 ◼   ► You can might find a film you really like and then you put a different lens on and it gives it a slightly

00:37:28 ◼   ► I think the I think that the films always had the strongest effect on the filtering and the lens was a little secondary

00:37:34 ◼   ► but you could get different effects, but you couldn't see until after you took a photo and

00:37:38 ◼   ► And it was, you know, and if you took one and it was like,

00:37:41 ◼   ► it, you had it set up to look really good outside

00:37:45 ◼   ► on a sunny day and the pictures were nice and warm

00:37:47 ◼   ► and had a nice, you know, not gimmicky, filtery look,

00:37:50 ◼   ► but just, you know, an aesthetically pleasing look.

00:37:52 ◼   ► And then you went indoors and the same combination looked bad

00:37:55 ◼   ► you were like so many taps and turning the camera around

00:37:58 ◼   ► and switching the film.

00:37:59 ◼   ► It was crazy.

00:38:01 ◼   ► Like why not just let me do this

00:38:03 ◼   ► after I've taken the photos?

00:38:05 ◼   ► - It's interesting to think about that

00:38:06 ◼   ► with Instagram, right?

00:38:09 ◼   ► 'Cause you got on like an initial pass,

00:38:12 ◼   ► you would think that they're gonna be,

00:38:14 ◼   ► oh, they're in the same category.

00:38:16 ◼   ► But I mean, Instagram is an amazing app and service

00:38:20 ◼   ► because it's really forward.

00:38:24 ◼   ► And what I mean by that is like Instagram,

00:38:26 ◼   ► it was kind of the first really pure,

00:38:29 ◼   ► we were built for a mobile phone.

00:38:33 ◼   ► And part of that's in the workflow.

00:38:35 ◼   ► Like you can just take a picture

00:38:36 ◼   ► and then you apply the filter.

00:38:38 ◼   ► And yeah, you may be applying

00:38:39 ◼   ► a Kishi skeuomorphic type filter,

00:38:42 ◼   ► but it fits with the way you actually

00:38:45 ◼   ► take pictures on a phone.

00:38:47 ◼   ► And then just beyond that, the actual service,

00:38:49 ◼   ► you know, only really working on a phone

00:38:51 ◼   ► and having a bare bones website at best

00:38:53 ◼   ► for a very long time, even today, it's pretty bare bones.

00:38:57 ◼   ► Like they've always been a mobile first company

00:39:00 ◼   ► that is built around the phone with the assumption

00:39:03 ◼   ► that you're gonna use your phone.

00:39:05 ◼   ► And I think that's a big part of why, you know, they've been so successful.

00:39:08 ◼   ► Yeah. On the aesthetic side, there's no doubt Instagram.

00:39:11 ◼   ► I wouldn't call it a rip off.

00:39:13 ◼   ► I would just say that that they ate Hipstamatic's lunch,

00:39:16 ◼   ► where there's so much that they that they just took from hipstamatic, the square.

00:39:22 ◼   ► The only side, the only the only size you can or ratio you can have is square.

00:39:25 ◼   ► Hipstamatic has has had, I don't know,

00:39:30 ◼   ► the fake borders to make, you know, some of the films,

00:39:34 ◼   ► depending on what film you had, had like

00:39:36 ◼   ► Polaroid style borders, which if you recall,

00:39:38 ◼   ► Instagram had for like the first couple of years

00:39:41 ◼   ► of its existence.

00:39:42 ◼   ► - Right.

00:39:43 ◼   ► - You know, the basic look, like not just, you know,

00:39:48 ◼   ► that the films tended to look like old analog instant films.

00:39:53 ◼   ► All of that, you know, Instagram just borrowed

00:39:58 ◼   ► from Hipstamatic or followed Hipstamatic's lead.

00:40:01 ◼   ► - Right.

00:40:02 ◼   ► - But they did that in a better way,

00:40:04 ◼   ► because they they took advantage of they did all the things aesthetically that made people

00:40:09 ◼   ► like that look they you know, that's all the you know, just the pleasure it gives you to

00:40:14 ◼   ► have photos from your camera that look like that. And that may you know, just look cool.

00:40:19 ◼   ► Or look better or whatever you want to say look, hipper. With none of the none of the

00:40:26 ◼   ► goofy restrictions that hipstamatic imposed in the name of just pure hipster ism, you

00:40:31 ◼   ► The whole once you've set a filth, you know, you have to take the filter the photo with the filter

00:40:36 ◼   ► And if you don't like it tough take another photo, whereas Instagram would let you pick camera images from your camera roll

00:40:42 ◼   ► They would let you change the filter if you'd already taken it in Instagram, etc

00:40:47 ◼   ► And then you know multiply that by a hundred fold by having the genius of turning it into a Twitter like social network

00:40:54 ◼   ► Right. I mean that's that's you know, but it's all part of it

00:40:57 ◼   ► I mean if I think that if they had launched without filters at all

00:41:00 ◼   ► It would have taken a lot long and may not have taken off. Well that that's what's so brilliant about about

00:41:06 ◼   ► Instagram as a social network is they there was a

00:41:10 ◼   ► reason to use Instagram from day one even if you didn't have any friends and that that's what's so hard about

00:41:16 ◼   ► Getting any social network off the ground is is just finding people or discovering people and even Twitter today has this problem where people get

00:41:23 ◼   ► On there and they don't really have many followers and now Twitter's cut off from the Facebook, you know kind of connection feed

00:41:29 ◼   ► And it's like so I'm just like farting in the wind here like who's listening to what I have to say

00:41:33 ◼   ► Whereas with Instagram like you're getting value you can get value from Instagram even if you have zero followers

00:41:40 ◼   ► Yeah, even even if your Instagram feed is more or less just your own photos for now

00:41:45 ◼   ► Nobody's looking at him there. You can send you know email them and keep them and you know, right?

00:41:50 ◼   ► It's because the filters I mean because they're cool and they look neat and and

00:41:54 ◼   ► No, I agree. The other thing is just in general I think you just said something along these lines is

00:41:59 ◼   ► appreciating a product is so much more than just like the actual like

00:42:05 ◼   ► like

00:42:07 ◼   ► Instagram is successful. Yeah, maybe they they borrowed the the filter concept and a lot of

00:42:12 ◼   ► Was very similar to Hipstamatic, but that's not an it's very easy

00:42:17 ◼   ► It's stuck on that in like comparing companies or comparing products and all this sort of stuff

00:42:21 ◼   ► But if you think about the whole,

00:42:23 ◼   ► like the whole thing is the product.

00:42:25 ◼   ► It's all of it.

00:42:26 ◼   ► And even with Instagram, you can argue like,

00:42:30 ◼   ► they have a, how they're gonna make money in the future.

00:42:32 ◼   ► In the long run, that's gonna be part of the product.

00:42:34 ◼   ► And like, it's much more,

00:42:36 ◼   ► there's all these different facets that go into it.

00:42:38 ◼   ► And sure, some companies are approximately similar

00:42:40 ◼   ► on one facet, but they may be very different other ones.

00:42:42 ◼   ► And maybe those different things

00:42:44 ◼   ► that end up making the difference.

00:42:46 ◼   ► - Do you have any insight on this?

00:42:47 ◼   ► A couple of weeks ago, Dan Fromer was on the show.

00:42:49 ◼   ► And he it's been so long that I have almost forgotten the complaint that

00:42:54 ◼   ► Instagram still doesn't have an iPad app.

00:42:57 ◼   ► I do actually. I think it's, I think it's okay. I mean, I understand,

00:43:03 ◼   ► I understand the, the objection, but I think it comes back to Instagram being,

00:43:08 ◼   ► um, being a phone first app like that. That's where like,

00:43:14 ◼   ► so just from a very kind of narrow perspective, uh,

00:43:17 ◼   ► I think Instagram still sees more benefit from working on improving their phone apps

00:43:22 ◼   ► than they do on building an iPad app.

00:43:25 ◼   ► One.

00:43:26 ◼   ► Two.

00:43:27 ◼   ► The problem, I mean, now that people use iPads as cameras, this isn't quite as strong an

00:43:33 ◼   ► idea, but I think what's compelling about Instagram is I think Instagram is more than

00:43:36 ◼   ► almost, Instagram is like Facebook in that there is a very solid balance between creating

00:43:42 ◼   ► content and consuming content.

00:43:45 ◼   ► Whereas Twitter, I think a lot of people might just consume it, but they don't really put

00:43:50 ◼   ► stuff out there.

00:43:52 ◼   ► Whereas Instagram, people use it to make stuff and they use it to get stuff.

00:43:56 ◼   ► Yeah, but I almost think it's an outdated view of the iPad though.

00:44:00 ◼   ► I think in a lot of ways, and especially when it comes to photography, the iPad is a lot

00:44:05 ◼   ► more big iPhone than tablet laptop.

00:44:12 ◼   ► I do think so, especially for a certain segment of the population.

00:44:17 ◼   ► I mean, it's my mom's primary camera.

00:44:18 ◼   ► I mean, you'd like to go an entire podcast without mentioning your mom, but literally

00:44:22 ◼   ► it's my mom's primary camera.

00:44:24 ◼   ► There's too many people like that.

00:44:26 ◼   ► Every time I go to...

00:44:27 ◼   ► I used to make a note and I used to even...

00:44:30 ◼   ► Like when we'd go to Disney World, like a year or two ago, I would just snap photos

00:44:34 ◼   ► of people using tablets as cameras, just as like a thing to do while walking around the

00:44:42 ◼   ► And I didn't publish them anywhere to make fun of them, but I just had them privately and see how many how many photos of people

00:44:47 ◼   ► Using a tablet as a camera. Could I rack up in a day?

00:44:49 ◼   ► And my son, you know, my son used to laugh that it was that's the stupidest hobby to have at Disney World ever

00:44:55 ◼   ► You know, but I could usually get like 20 in a day and then I would just delete them all

00:45:00 ◼   ► It's not you couldn't even do anymore. You'd never you wouldn't be able to get from point A to point B

00:45:05 ◼   ► It's it's as common as seeing somebody using a phone as a camera and there's too many people who you know

00:45:10 ◼   ► They just don't see the distinction like I don't even see people I and when I first

00:45:14 ◼   ► Tried to get off I tried to get off my own high horse about making fun of people using tablets as cameras

00:45:21 ◼   ► Maybe like a year ago or so

00:45:23 ◼   ► I'd still get pushback from my listeners of the show and they'd be like, oh, come on. It's stupid-looking now

00:45:29 ◼   ► I don't even get that everybody it's just sunk in and I feel like it's almost ridiculous for an app

00:45:34 ◼   ► That's photo centric like Instagram not to be native on

00:45:37 ◼   ► What is for a lot of people their primary camera and then for the consumption side?

00:45:42 ◼   ► Consuming photos. It's always better to be bigger. So it would you know to look at your friends photos?

00:45:47 ◼   ► It's always gonna look bigger are the bigger on the biggest device. You know, you can use no, that's very I like

00:45:53 ◼   ► I think your point is right that the that

00:45:56 ◼   ► That justification may have made sense, but it makes increasingly less sense. That's that said they they I mean they're a part of Facebook

00:46:03 ◼   ► they they have access to numbers and where what people are using and where they're using it. So

00:46:09 ◼   ► I would imagine it's a it's not a uninformed decision. And the third factor is that it's

00:46:16 ◼   ► different I think in the iOS 8 era with the two font with the new phones because the difference

00:46:22 ◼   ► between making an iPad app and an iPhone app is nowhere near as different as it used to be.

00:46:30 ◼   ► Like it's it's really more in with these if you're doing it the right way.

00:46:35 ◼   ► If you can support the multiple iPhone sizes, there's almost no reason you shouldn't be

00:46:43 ◼   ► supporting the iPad 2. Yeah, the same thing. It's no longer too big things. It's these different,

00:46:48 ◼   ► you know, what are they called scaling factors or whatever?

00:46:50 ◼   ► To the scaling, though, I think there is a resolution issue. I know some people have

00:46:54 ◼   ► raised that as a possible reason as well. Like the Instagram photos are just super low resolution.

00:46:59 ◼   ► and might look like crap on the iPad.

00:47:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't think so.

00:47:03 ◼   ► - Then again, this is a company that got off the ground

00:47:05 ◼   ► by utilizing the iPhone 3G camera, so who knows?

00:47:09 ◼   ► - Right, yeah.

00:47:10 ◼   ► So my guess is it's coming, but it's almost,

00:47:13 ◼   ► it's almost like they're doing it on purpose at this point

00:47:17 ◼   ► because they do support the native iPhone 6 sizes and 6 Plus.

00:47:21 ◼   ► And I would suggest as an iPad app,

00:47:25 ◼   ► just, I think that's an app where you don't have to,

00:47:29 ◼   ► just a natively scaled version of the iPhone app

00:47:33 ◼   ► would be just fine.

00:47:34 ◼   ► You don't have to redesign it or relay it out

00:47:36 ◼   ► or do something different.

00:47:37 ◼   ► - Oh, I mean, their website is basically

00:47:39 ◼   ► a scaled up version of the iPhone app.

00:47:41 ◼   ► Like it's literally just like a column of photos

00:47:44 ◼   ► that might as well be the app put on a webpage.

00:47:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think the more, my guess is the explanation

00:47:50 ◼   ► is that I think that, you know,

00:47:52 ◼   ► they're a very conservative company.

00:47:54 ◼   ► Like this is a weird thing for a four year old,

00:47:58 ◼   ► what five-year-old startup that is part of Facebook and that has gone from 13 people

00:48:05 ◼   ► to a billion-dollar acquisition to a multi-billion-dollar asset in just a handful of years. Usually

00:48:14 ◼   ► you don't think of such companies as being conservative, but they are. They're very,

00:48:17 ◼   ► very conservative in my opinion, design-wise.

00:48:19 ◼   ► design-wise. You can arguably see the conservatism and the fact that they sold out so early.

00:48:24 ◼   ► Right. And, you know, yeah, I would say that's actually part of the conservatism. And I would

00:48:29 ◼   ► say the biggest sign of it is just how close what they have today is to what they shipped with the

00:48:35 ◼   ► first day. Like, it's, you know, they've definitely added a bunch of features and they've rewritten

00:48:40 ◼   ► the filters, but it's more or less the same thing. I mean, you would be... Somebody who got to, who,

00:48:47 ◼   ► like on the day that Instagram came out for iPhone

00:48:52 ◼   ► and just bought it, or you know, and you have to buy it,

00:48:55 ◼   ► just downloaded it, got into it and said, I love this.

00:48:58 ◼   ► I love this Instagram thing.

00:48:59 ◼   ► And just, you know, consumed the whole app,

00:49:02 ◼   ► understood the whole thing.

00:49:03 ◼   ► And if you took today's Instagram to that person

00:49:06 ◼   ► five years ago, four years ago, whatever it is,

00:49:08 ◼   ► they would be right at home.

00:49:10 ◼   ► They'd have like two or three new things to like,

00:49:13 ◼   ► oh, that's cool, but that's it.

00:49:16 ◼   ► No, it's a good point.

00:49:17 ◼   ► There's very few companies that you can say that about.

00:49:19 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I mean, it's just the genius of the genius of the of the whole entire concept to.

00:49:25 ◼   ► Right. Think about how different Twitter today is like logging into Twitter dot com and what you're exposed to compared to what you were five years ago.

00:49:33 ◼   ► It's very different. What else is in the news before we get to big picture stuff?

00:49:39 ◼   ► See, Box had their IPO today.

00:49:41 ◼   ► They did. And it popped very nicely.

00:49:45 ◼   ► Which is, I think, great for them. I kind of suspect that they underpriced a little

00:49:50 ◼   ► on purpose, just because there's been a bit of a cloud around the company for the last

00:49:55 ◼   ► year, which is not a good thing to have if you're trying to sell into very large enterprises

00:50:00 ◼   ► and assure them that you can hold onto all their data for the long run. Whereas now,

00:50:06 ◼   ► I think they're going to come out of this and there's going to be a ton of good news.

00:50:09 ◼   ► Wow, what a fantastic, the market loves them. And I think it's going to be really good for

00:50:14 ◼   ► them from a just a sales and

00:50:16 ◼   ► momentum perspective.

00:50:17 ◼   ► So I wouldn't be I wouldn't I

00:50:19 ◼   ► wouldn't be surprised if they

00:50:21 ◼   ► kind of knew they would probably

00:50:22 ◼   ► be leaving some money on the

00:50:23 ◼   ► table, but but that

00:50:25 ◼   ► they deemed kind of the the

00:50:26 ◼   ► shift in perception that this

00:50:28 ◼   ► will result in to

00:50:30 ◼   ► be to be worth it.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Yeah, the psychology of an IPO is

00:50:32 ◼   ► so weird because

00:50:34 ◼   ► it's like ideally in

00:50:36 ◼   ► some sense you want to price your

00:50:38 ◼   ► IPO at exactly

00:50:40 ◼   ► what the market is going to value

00:50:41 ◼   ► it at because otherwise you're

00:50:42 ◼   ► leaving money on the table. But then you're from your investors perspective, there's a

00:50:48 ◼   ► financial drive to underprice your IPO so that all of those investors shares, you know,

00:50:55 ◼   ► go up in value once the market prices it.

00:50:58 ◼   ► You know, I think it I think it I think it matters because the people you take like take

00:51:02 ◼   ► Facebook versus Twitter, like Facebook basically didn't pop at all. And then over time, it

00:51:07 ◼   ► actually went down. And and there's a lot of people who look at it from a narrow perspective

00:51:11 ◼   ► and say, well, Facebook did it just right.

00:51:13 ◼   ► They captured every available cent.

00:51:15 ◼   ► And then they'll look at Twitter,

00:51:17 ◼   ► and Twitter had a huge pop.

00:51:19 ◼   ► And they're like, oh, Twitter screwed up.

00:51:21 ◼   ► They left a lot of money on the table.

00:51:22 ◼   ► But I think if you actually look at it,

00:51:24 ◼   ► Facebook was under a ton of pressure right after their IPO.

00:51:28 ◼   ► And I think they were constrained strategically.

00:51:30 ◼   ► I suspect that Facebook should have bought Waze,

00:51:34 ◼   ► for example, the mapping app.

00:51:36 ◼   ► But I think that one reason they didn't is they couldn't really

00:51:40 ◼   ► justify spending over a billion dollars when they were under so much pressure from investors.

00:51:46 ◼   ► Because that was kind of the height of like Facebook is doomed mania,

00:51:50 ◼   ► where their stock had dipped to like a third of what it IPO'd at, or a half or whatever.

00:51:55 ◼   ► Whereas Twitter, Twitter arguably, Twitter has kind of been a disaster since they IPO'd.

00:52:00 ◼   ► Almost every earnings call has been worse than the last. Yet, yes, there's pressure and there's

00:52:06 ◼   ► There's been a lot of talk about Costello and stuff like that this year in particular,

00:52:10 ◼   ► but I don't think it's been nearly to the degree that Twitter probably deserves,

00:52:16 ◼   ► to be perfectly honest.

00:52:17 ◼   ► And I think part of that is because the stock is still up from the IPO.

00:52:20 ◼   ► Like that it like and so you look at it, yeah, the stock's down from its high,

00:52:24 ◼   ► but it's still higher than what it IPO'd at.

00:52:26 ◼   ► I think that that that that matters.

00:52:29 ◼   ► And if whereas if Twitter was down, like Facebook was down and had way worse

00:52:33 ◼   ► fundamentals than Facebook ever had, man, like this guy would be falling to a much

00:52:39 ◼   ► greater degree than it is right now. Yeah, and there's also some like the

00:52:43 ◼   ► incalculable part is the PR value of an IPO that pops as you say. Absolutely.

00:52:50 ◼   ► Like Netscape is, you know, maybe the canonical example? I don't know.

00:52:57 ◼   ► I mean, but that it gave the sense that Netscape was the future, you know, that

00:53:02 ◼   ► that however much money they left on the table

00:53:05 ◼   ► because the IPO popped on day one was worth, I don't know,

00:53:09 ◼   ► I think tens of millions of dollars in the perception of,

00:53:12 ◼   ► holy shit, there's a new tech industry titan in town.

00:53:17 ◼   ► - Absolutely, and it matters for hiring,

00:53:20 ◼   ► it matters for morale, and it matters for like,

00:53:23 ◼   ► the stock market, a lot of it is about perception and--

00:53:27 ◼   ► - Right, the popping is like, oh my God,

00:53:29 ◼   ► everybody else thinks this company is gonna kick ass.

00:53:31 ◼   ► Right, and that sticks with you.

00:53:33 ◼   ► And so it matters when, the bad news doesn't matter.

00:53:39 ◼   ► The way people perceive the bad news is what matters.

00:53:43 ◼   ► And if people come at it with the assumption that this is a valuable company that people are excited about,

00:53:48 ◼   ► then it's like, "Oh, that's okay. They'll get over it."

00:53:50 ◼   ► Whereas if it's a, "This company, man, everyone's down on it."

00:53:53 ◼   ► And then a piece of bad news comes out, it's like, "Oh man, this is terrible."

00:53:56 ◼   ► terrible. And like I said, I think you saw that with Facebook, which in retrospect, it

00:54:02 ◼   ► was ridiculous. Now the stock is well up from its IPO stage, but it took a lot longer than

00:54:12 ◼   ► it should have for the perception of Facebook to change. And arguably, I think even in the

00:54:17 ◼   ► I feel like Facebook is still serially underappreciated

00:54:22 ◼   ► for what a force it is, not just as a service and an app,

00:54:28 ◼   ► but as a financial, as a business.

00:54:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree with that.

00:54:34 ◼   ► And I think it's funny, 'cause it's complicated

00:54:39 ◼   ► as Facebook itself as a product is, in my opinion.

00:54:44 ◼   ► It's a pretty simple story financially.

00:54:47 ◼   ► It's, you know, they sell a lot of ads into the feed

00:54:50 ◼   ► and they make people pay to get placement

00:54:52 ◼   ► and because everybody uses it, it's worth it

00:54:57 ◼   ► and therefore, you know, the money's growing.

00:55:00 ◼   ► You know, whereas Twitter is a much simpler product

00:55:03 ◼   ► and any kind of argument they try to make

00:55:06 ◼   ► as to how they're gonna make money is,

00:55:08 ◼   ► my eyes roll back in my head and I fall asleep

00:55:11 ◼   ► 'cause I don't understand.

00:55:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, there is something to that.

00:55:15 ◼   ► I think the Facebook ad unit is like the best ad unit in tech.

00:55:19 ◼   ► I mean, it's like people are looking at that feed

00:55:22 ◼   ► multiple times a day, every day, more and more.

00:55:25 ◼   ► And a Facebook ad takes over your entire screen.

00:55:29 ◼   ► It might only be for a few seconds,

00:55:30 ◼   ► but for a few seconds, your entire screen

00:55:32 ◼   ► is filled with an ad, which on the web was never the case.

00:55:35 ◼   ► Like the ads were always off to the side.

00:55:37 ◼   ► They were accompanying stuff, and so they

00:55:40 ◼   ► were much easier to ignore.

00:55:42 ◼   ► And no, it's super compelling.

00:55:43 ◼   ► The other thing that's interesting though is you say Twitter is simple.

00:55:46 ◼   ► I almost wonder if this is a, like we talked about with, when we talk about Forstall,

00:55:51 ◼   ► like we're used to it and it feels simple and 140 characters seem simple,

00:55:55 ◼   ► but then you start trying to explain to people like, "Oh, don't start your Twitter with an @ mention

00:56:00 ◼   ► or some people still use RT or MT." Like there's all these kind of conventions that actually,

00:56:06 ◼   ► Twitter's pretty complicated and there's a lot of stuff. Like I think the last really smart thing

00:56:13 ◼   ► Twitter did from a product perspective was the native retweet because that did simplify

00:56:19 ◼   ► a convention. And there's so much other stuff that's cruft, that's risen up like these multi

00:56:24 ◼   ► tweets or the tweet storms and like all this and attaching photos to an image like that.

00:56:30 ◼   ► The company I find it's so frustrating because they're doing all this stuff and they're buying

00:56:36 ◼   ► these things and they're we're going to do developer tools and all this sort of crap when

00:56:39 ◼   ► And it's like there's so much low hanging fruit just from a product perspective and from an onboarding perspective, which is still a disaster

00:56:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I know what you mean. It's it comes. I think it can come across it comes across even to my eyes as very jargony

00:56:52 ◼   ► like computer jargony with all the RT's and MT's and

00:56:56 ◼   ► Honestly, even I think people get the at username and it's certainly one of them

00:57:01 ◼   ► I think it's the most powerful asset Twitter has I really do is the fact that when you turn on TV doesn't matter whether it's

00:57:07 ◼   ► politics or

00:57:09 ◼   ► Sports it's like the people who are on TV. They tell you their name and they tell you their Twitter handle

00:57:17 ◼   ► Yep, and people get that and that is super valuable

00:57:19 ◼   ► But I think and combine that with hashtags and to me the whole thing it comes across looking very jargony

00:57:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean I could we could do the whole rest of the show on my feelings on hashtags

00:57:32 ◼   ► But I know I realize they've taken off and I realized that people somewhat get them and that regular people do use them

00:57:38 ◼   ► But I do feel that it contributes to a visual

00:57:41 ◼   ► Jargon enos when you especially for new users where you're you know, you look at this stuff and they see all these weird punctuation characters

00:57:48 ◼   ► you know and starts to look like programming code and

00:57:50 ◼   ► The weird short hands like RT and MT and stuff like that. Yeah

00:57:54 ◼   ► No, I think um, I think we might have talked about Twitter my very first time this show

00:57:59 ◼   ► But I'm still I'm still like there now they're messing with the timeline like there's looked while you were gone and stuff

00:58:04 ◼   ► I honestly think like the timeline is such at this point as so much cruft associated with it

00:58:10 ◼   ► It's fantastic for all of us who are familiar with Twitter and used to it

00:58:15 ◼   ► but I it's pretty intimidating for a new user and I I wish they would re-embrace lists and like

00:58:22 ◼   ► Have channels and the idea that you could like a new user should be able to come under in the World Cup and dip into

00:58:28 ◼   ► the World Cup channel without having to like, you don't want to follow people in the World

00:58:34 ◼   ► Cup every day of the year. You just want to dip in and dip out. And there's no dip in

00:58:38 ◼   ► and dip out experience for a new user on Twitter right now.

00:58:41 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it kind of gets into some of the stuff that Evan Williams was writing about

00:58:47 ◼   ► and talking about in the last couple of weeks, with the whole, when Instagram passed Twitter

00:58:53 ◼   ► in terms of, I forget the metric, monthly average users.

00:58:58 ◼   ► - Monthly active users, yeah.

00:58:59 ◼   ► - Active users.

00:59:00 ◼   ► And he was like, I don't give a shit

00:59:01 ◼   ► how many monthly active users Instagram has.

00:59:04 ◼   ► And he has a great argument.

00:59:05 ◼   ► And the line can be taken out of context

00:59:07 ◼   ► and make it look like he's arrogant or whatever.

00:59:09 ◼   ► And you read his essay on it on Medium

00:59:12 ◼   ► and it's unsurprisingly for Evan Williams,

00:59:15 ◼   ► very, very thoughtful.

00:59:16 ◼   ► And he's right.

00:59:17 ◼   ► And it's when there's,

00:59:19 ◼   ► Twitter has important uses

00:59:22 ◼   ► that you just would never do on on Instagram, like when there were the the uprising in Egypt

00:59:28 ◼   ► and stuff like that. And people use hashtags to get the news out. And it, you know, breaking

00:59:34 ◼   ► news and stuff like that happens in a way on Twitter, that there's no equivalent on

00:59:39 ◼   ► any other service. The stuff in Ferguson, you know, the St. Louis demonstrations and

00:59:48 ◼   ► stuff like that all had a part on Twitter. I mean, I think that it's Twitter is central

00:59:54 ◼   ► to the way that the the protesters have organized for things like that. And there's, it's just

01:00:00 ◼   ► unique. But I feel like the thing that Twitter, Twitter, though, you know, Evan Williams doesn't

01:00:04 ◼   ► run Twitter anymore. And I feel like the problem is that Twitter has gotten at a leadership

01:00:09 ◼   ► level gotten caught up in that sort of Facebook ask monthly average users as an important

01:00:16 ◼   ► Metric, which has tied them up because I feel like what Twitter's natural place is for most people is far more about

01:00:24 ◼   ► consumption than about actually tweeting

01:00:26 ◼   ► No, right. Where?

01:00:27 ◼   ► Whereas Facebook is all about everybody sharing all of their stuff with their people, you know with their friends and family and stuff like that

01:00:34 ◼   ► Whereas I think the problem is well, what am I supposed to tweet? Maybe you're not supposed to tweet anything

01:00:38 ◼   ► maybe you're just supposed to you know, like you said get on a list or follow a hashtag for the World Cup or

01:00:43 ◼   ► for your favorite team

01:00:46 ◼   ► or for some sort of news event that you're interested in

01:00:51 ◼   ► and just follow along.

01:00:53 ◼   ► And maybe it's like a hobby that you wanna follow

01:00:55 ◼   ► all the time, or maybe it's just,

01:00:58 ◼   ► I just wanna follow the Super Bowl until next Sunday.

01:01:01 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:01:02 ◼   ► - But you don't wanna contribute anything.

01:01:04 ◼   ► You're not tweeting, you're just following along.

01:01:07 ◼   ► - No, what I said when that happened

01:01:09 ◼   ► in the Instagram thing, my take was,

01:01:10 ◼   ► I'm really sad that Twitter didn't buy Instagram,

01:01:13 ◼   ► mainly because if they had, Instagram would make

01:01:17 ◼   ► all the money and Twitter could just be Twitter.

01:01:19 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:01:20 ◼   ► - Because I mean, Instagram is gonna make

01:01:21 ◼   ► billions of dollars.

01:01:22 ◼   ► I mean, it's like Facebook, but even better.

01:01:25 ◼   ► Like you're gonna scroll through your photos,

01:01:27 ◼   ► there's gonna be ads in there,

01:01:29 ◼   ► and you're gonna do it anyway

01:01:30 ◼   ► because you're addicted to it.

01:01:31 ◼   ► And it's so obvious and Twitter--

01:01:36 ◼   ► - I'm surprised we don't see more ads in Instagram.

01:01:40 ◼   ► I don't know if I've ever seen one.

01:01:42 ◼   ► And I know that they announced it,

01:01:43 ◼   ► and I know that they had some demo versions of it,

01:01:45 ◼   ► but I check it almost every day,

01:01:48 ◼   ► and I can't remember seeing an ad in Instagram.

01:01:50 ◼   ► - No, it's still like a very limited sort of trial.

01:01:53 ◼   ► It's one of those things where Facebook doesn't need to.

01:01:56 ◼   ► Like Facebook is making so much money right now

01:01:58 ◼   ► that they can spend billions of dollars

01:02:00 ◼   ► on whatever they want to and not monetize.

01:02:04 ◼   ► And I almost think it's smart,

01:02:07 ◼   ► not just from a they wanna do it the right way,

01:02:09 ◼   ► but it's smart from a they can always

01:02:11 ◼   ► turn that faucet on if they need to.

01:02:13 ◼   ► And like what's the rush?

01:02:16 ◼   ► The stock market loves them, they're flying high.

01:02:18 ◼   ► They have like pretty much, they're as independent

01:02:22 ◼   ► as an independent company can be for the most part.

01:02:25 ◼   ► I mean just from a one, the stock market loves them

01:02:27 ◼   ► and two, Zuckerberg controls everything anyway.

01:02:29 ◼   ► So from that perspective, what's the rush?

01:02:34 ◼   ► - Right, and the gist of it is I, you know,

01:02:36 ◼   ► I don't know, I agree with you.

01:02:37 ◼   ► I'm surprised we just haven't seen it yet.

01:02:40 ◼   ► or just, 'cause I feel like the way to do it

01:02:42 ◼   ► is the old slowly boiled frog.

01:02:47 ◼   ► Start 'em slow and then slowly dial it up

01:02:49 ◼   ► to where you want it to be.

01:02:51 ◼   ► But you gotta start at some point.

01:02:53 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:02:54 ◼   ► Which they have, but I think they are going slower

01:02:58 ◼   ► than they need to just because they can.

01:03:01 ◼   ► - Right.

01:03:02 ◼   ► You see Tim Cook tweeted, congratulations on the box.

01:03:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, that was surprising.

01:03:11 ◼   ► - And I take note of that, you know,

01:03:14 ◼   ► in my, 'cause Tim Cook tweets,

01:03:16 ◼   ► and I'm almost dead certain

01:03:20 ◼   ► that it's actually him doing the tweeting,

01:03:22 ◼   ► but he doesn't tweet very often.

01:03:26 ◼   ► - Right.

01:03:26 ◼   ► - And so it's usually worth noting.

01:03:28 ◼   ► And I know he tweeted earlier in the week,

01:03:30 ◼   ► or I guess it's almost a week ago now,

01:03:32 ◼   ► for Martin Luther King Day, the holiday here in the US,

01:03:36 ◼   ► and he's repeatedly, his two heroes are Martin Luther King

01:03:41 ◼   ► and Robert Kennedy, so no surprise

01:03:44 ◼   ► that he would tweet something like that.

01:03:46 ◼   ► A nice thing for Apple's CEO to tweet,

01:03:50 ◼   ► but not necessarily newsworthy,

01:03:52 ◼   ► but him tweeting to box on an IPO

01:03:55 ◼   ► is, to me, a little interesting.

01:03:56 ◼   ► - Totally, I mean, from what I've seen on Twitter,

01:03:58 ◼   ► there's been a fair bit of speculation already,

01:04:01 ◼   ► and not speculation, just more like raised eyebrows.

01:04:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

01:04:06 ◼   ► I kind of feel like it's, you know,

01:04:08 ◼   ► an IPO, one thing about an IPO is it certainly,

01:04:12 ◼   ► it doesn't mean that Box is not gonna be

01:04:14 ◼   ► acquired by somebody else,

01:04:15 ◼   ► but it certainly makes it a lot less likely.

01:04:18 ◼   ► And, you know, I think Apple is happier

01:04:22 ◼   ► in a world where more companies like Box, IPO,

01:04:26 ◼   ► and stay independent satellites of the, you know,

01:04:31 ◼   ► the mammoth titans like Microsoft and Facebook and Google

01:04:35 ◼   ► than a world where every company that gets to that size

01:04:39 ◼   ► and stability gets acquired by somebody.

01:04:41 ◼   ► - Absolutely.

01:04:42 ◼   ► I think because Apple's not gonna do those acquisitions.

01:04:45 ◼   ► Apple's never gonna be the one

01:04:46 ◼   ► that acquires a lot of companies.

01:04:49 ◼   ► And therefore it means that most of those companies

01:04:52 ◼   ► would be going into companies that are more like

01:04:57 ◼   ► competitors to Apple, like Google or Microsoft or Facebook

01:05:00 ◼   ► or what have you.

01:05:03 ◼   ► - No, that's how I read it.

01:05:05 ◼   ► - That's a great, that's a really great,

01:05:06 ◼   ► I think that's exactly it.

01:05:08 ◼   ► - That's how I read it, because I feel like Apple can,

01:05:13 ◼   ► you know, happily and wholeheartedly partner with Box

01:05:16 ◼   ► on things like the, you know, the extent, you know,

01:05:18 ◼   ► the file sharing integration in Yosemite and iOS 8.

01:05:23 ◼   ► And would be a lot less likely to do that

01:05:27 ◼   ► if they thought Box was going to be acquired by Google.

01:05:30 ◼   ► Even though it's an open API that everybody can do.

01:05:34 ◼   ► So I guess who, you know, after Box, you know,

01:05:36 ◼   ► Dropbox would be next, right?

01:05:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think Neil Seibert,

01:05:39 ◼   ► like formerly Sammy the Walrus,

01:05:40 ◼   ► like he was one of those that's kind of speckling about it.

01:05:43 ◼   ► And he's like, well, would Apple do the same for Dropbox?

01:05:45 ◼   ► And I think for the reason you said, yeah, absolutely.

01:05:48 ◼   ► And I think when they demoed extensions,

01:05:50 ◼   ► I think they had both Box and Dropbox there.

01:05:54 ◼   ► And I think that's, yeah, Apple,

01:05:57 ◼   ► and it's a good, it's the exact sort of relationship

01:06:00 ◼   ► Apple likes, where they need Apple more

01:06:03 ◼   ► Apple needs them. Yeah. Yeah

01:06:06 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't think you know Apple has any desire to crush Dropbox

01:06:12 ◼   ► I really don't I mean, I know some people read into it and they think you know that they would just like everybody to you

01:06:17 ◼   ► Know I they want people to use iCloud Drive no doubt about it

01:06:20 ◼   ► I mean they made it so people would use it but if people would rather use Dropbox instead use Dropbox instead, you know

01:06:25 ◼   ► There's no way that they would go through the work to make things like Dropbox official because you know up until Yosemite Dropbox was just a dirty

01:06:32 ◼   ► hack to integrate with the finder. That's right, they actually they did like things

01:06:36 ◼   ► for Dropbox in Yosemite to actually make it work. Yeah, it's all officially sanctioned

01:06:43 ◼   ► and on the up and up those green check boxes that show you, you know, like in the finder

01:06:46 ◼   ► view when you're looking at something in your Dropbox. Dropbox is the one I use. I don't

01:06:51 ◼   ► use Box. I don't use any of the other third party ones, but I use Dropbox. And now you

01:06:55 ◼   ► get these official green check marks that you never got before. Like when you used to

01:06:59 ◼   ► to get like the little badge on your finder icon

01:07:02 ◼   ► that would show you that a file was syncing to Dropbox

01:07:05 ◼   ► and then it would go green when it was there.

01:07:07 ◼   ► That was all using private APIs on Dropbox's part.

01:07:12 ◼   ► And to their credit, I've been using Dropbox

01:07:16 ◼   ► from very early days and I'm very loathe,

01:07:19 ◼   ► always have been loathe to install third party extensions

01:07:23 ◼   ► that are using private APIs on Mac OS X.

01:07:28 ◼   ► But Dropbox, the features were worth it.

01:07:32 ◼   ► But I've always been like one foot,

01:07:34 ◼   ► like, hey, if I ever see problems,

01:07:36 ◼   ► if the finder starts going wacky, you're out the door.

01:07:39 ◼   ► - But they've never really been a problem.

01:07:41 ◼   ► - No, they've always been.

01:07:42 ◼   ► They're very, very, very excellently engineered

01:07:44 ◼   ► for something that was using private APIs.

01:07:48 ◼   ► And I also think it's interesting.

01:07:50 ◼   ► I always, when they announced that at WWDC,

01:07:54 ◼   ► I specifically thought about Dropbox,

01:07:56 ◼   ► A, because I'm the most familiar with them

01:07:58 ◼   ► I use them and B because they had their own thing that was working and in my experience

01:08:04 ◼   ► And I think most people's experience. I've never heard of anybody say wow Dropbox, you know

01:08:08 ◼   ► It's crash makes my computer crash or anything like that or corrupts my file system

01:08:11 ◼   ► But they had their own thing

01:08:14 ◼   ► Would they be willing to dump their own thing that they'd spent all that work on to use Apple's thing and they did

01:08:20 ◼   ► They've done the right thing and I wonder how much of that is you know that they they considered a good allocation of engineering

01:08:26 ◼   ► resources to go with the official APIs in Yosemite and how much of it because they still

01:08:31 ◼   ► have the old stuff because you can still run Dropbox on Mac OS 9 and I don't think it runs

01:08:37 ◼   ► on OS 9 now 10.10.9 10.8 10.7 I don't know how far back they go so they've still got

01:08:44 ◼   ► to keep their their private API stuff going for their support of older versions of Mac

01:08:49 ◼   ► OS and so a lot of times I think in you know in my experience is watching the way the industry

01:08:54 ◼   ► because a lot of times, and then, you know,

01:08:56 ◼   ► a company isn't gonna go with the new thing

01:08:58 ◼   ► because they wanna go with the backwards compatible thing,

01:09:00 ◼   ► even though it's not using a public API.

01:09:03 ◼   ► But Dropbox did the right thing, which in my opinion,

01:09:06 ◼   ► the right thing, which is to go with the official API,

01:09:08 ◼   ► even though it sort of forks their code.

01:09:10 ◼   ► And I wonder how much of that was about engineering

01:09:13 ◼   ► and how much of it was about politics

01:09:15 ◼   ► and keeping a good relationship with Apple.

01:09:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised

01:09:22 ◼   ► Apple worked with them on it.

01:09:24 ◼   ► And there was a bit of a quid pro quo here.

01:09:27 ◼   ► Like, you know, you got not a quid pro quo, but like, like,

01:09:31 ◼   ► OK, we'll help you fix this.

01:09:32 ◼   ► But you I mean, you have to adopt on day one. Yeah.

01:09:35 ◼   ► And I and as a user, it was seamless.

01:09:37 ◼   ► I didn't even notice when they switched over.

01:09:40 ◼   ► I think at some point, because I you know, I've been running

01:09:42 ◼   ► Yosemite since the public beta is in summer.

01:09:45 ◼   ► And I'm pretty sure at the time originally,

01:09:48 ◼   ► I'm almost certain that Dropbox didn't already support it.

01:09:50 ◼   ► I didn't even notice.

01:09:51 ◼   ► I actually didn't notice when Dropbox started supporting it until one day.

01:09:54 ◼   ► I was like, oh, they obviously are because I've got the new style

01:09:59 ◼   ► checkmarks, not the ones that are superimposed on the icon.

01:10:02 ◼   ► Yeah, it's interesting.

01:10:06 ◼   ► The other thing, the other thing, too, is I think,

01:10:09 ◼   ► you know, Aaron Levy, I haven't really heard anyone say a bad word about him.

01:10:14 ◼   ► I think people are are just happy that like it's been such a torturous

01:10:18 ◼   ► journey for box that they finally made it.

01:10:22 ◼   ► It's I would be surprised there's just a bit of like, you know.

01:10:25 ◼   ► Cook's just genuinely happy for him.

01:10:29 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm going to take another sponsor break, but before I do,

01:10:33 ◼   ► that's a good reminder.

01:10:34 ◼   ► I have a correction to make, just a minor one.

01:10:36 ◼   ► But last on the last show with Marco, I forget what we were talking about,

01:10:39 ◼   ► but I said something about me running

01:10:42 ◼   ► iOS nine.

01:10:44 ◼   ► And what I meant, I doubt I am not running iOS nine.

01:10:47 ◼   ► I'm running iOS 8 but combine that with the things where like MacRumors has like an increase in the number of

01:10:52 ◼   ► hits of people running iOS 9

01:10:55 ◼   ► From Cupertino

01:10:58 ◼   ► And I got I don't know a dozen emails from people asking whether I'm running iOS 9. No, I'm not

01:11:05 ◼   ► And if I were I wouldn't be able to say anything about it. Anyway, it was just a stupid

01:11:10 ◼   ► What's the verbal typo, I don't know

01:11:15 ◼   ► misspeak

01:11:16 ◼   ► Yeah, there's gotta be better world. Yeah

01:11:18 ◼   ► Well, whatever a verbal typo is that's all it was in the same way that I just said that Dropbox still runs on Mac OS 9

01:11:25 ◼   ► Yes. Yeah, the 9 seems to be a bit of a kryptonite number for you

01:11:29 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know what it is. I've I don't know something and I think

01:11:34 ◼   ► Mac OS going to

01:11:36 ◼   ► 10.10 somehow set over my trip odometer as well

01:11:40 ◼   ► it's like

01:11:43 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:11:45 ◼   ► - Well, according to urban dictionary,

01:11:47 ◼   ► a verbal typo is a thing, so.

01:11:50 ◼   ► - Okay, I can just call it a verbal typo?

01:11:52 ◼   ► - It works for me.

01:11:54 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:11:55 ◼   ► What about malaprop?

01:11:56 ◼   ► Is malaprop the right word?

01:11:57 ◼   ► - I don't think so, but I'm not confident to say it.

01:12:03 ◼   ► A malaprop or malapropism is the term for misspoken words.

01:12:06 ◼   ► Yep, there you go.

01:12:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, a malaprop.

01:12:08 ◼   ► The mistaken use of a word in place

01:12:10 ◼   ► of a similar sounding one, often with an attention.

01:12:12 ◼   ► Well, that's not quite right.

01:12:13 ◼   ► dancing of dance of flamingo instead of dance of flamenco.

01:12:17 ◼   ► Although I do make a lot of call prompts, so.

01:12:19 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:12:20 ◼   ► - I think that's a characteristic of someone

01:12:23 ◼   ► that read a lot and like,

01:12:25 ◼   ► I mean, neither of us I think go out that often.

01:12:30 ◼   ► So you encounter a lot of words,

01:12:32 ◼   ► but then when it actually comes to articulating them,

01:12:34 ◼   ► sometimes you, I swear to God,

01:12:36 ◼   ► we talked about this on a previous episode

01:12:38 ◼   ► about how we constantly mispronounce words.

01:12:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:12:42 ◼   ► 'cause there's a huge chunk of my vocabulary

01:12:45 ◼   ► or things that I read when I was growing up

01:12:48 ◼   ► and never heard anybody say

01:12:49 ◼   ► and so I just made up my own punctuation

01:12:51 ◼   ► or pronunciation in my head.

01:12:53 ◼   ► - Totally. - No idea of how it was

01:12:55 ◼   ► actually supposed to be pronounced.

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01:16:00 ◼   ► instance, because they expect to sell out. So that and that discount any discounts you get from

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01:16:12 ◼   ► edition fo re mo st edition.com and you'll get early access to their next cool project, which is

01:16:20 ◼   ► sort of secret other than the name.

01:16:22 ◼   ► So my thanks to them.

01:16:24 ◼   ► - It's weird, I feel over the last few weeks

01:16:28 ◼   ► I've encountered a few people that don't drink coffee

01:16:33 ◼   ► or they gave up coffee.

01:16:34 ◼   ► And I just don't understand,

01:16:37 ◼   ► I just don't understand what drives one to do such a thing.

01:16:40 ◼   ► They claim, "Oh, I feel great."

01:16:43 ◼   ► But that just reminds me of the Frank Sinatra quote.

01:16:47 ◼   ► What is it?

01:16:49 ◼   ► sorry for people that don't drink because when they wake up in the morning that's the

01:16:51 ◼   ► best they're going to feel all day.

01:16:54 ◼   ► Such a great line.

01:16:57 ◼   ► I think you and Merlin talked about the blogger drinking routine or something like that. Basically

01:17:06 ◼   ► you tell what time it is by what you're drinking. In the morning it's coffee, then it's like

01:17:11 ◼   ► SodaStream and then it's scotch or something along those lines. That's about how you know

01:17:16 ◼   ► what time it is, or martini in your case I suppose.

01:17:18 ◼   ► - Well, I don't drink martinis every day.

01:17:21 ◼   ► I am all over the place on alcohol.

01:17:24 ◼   ► I'm trying to expand my palette.

01:17:25 ◼   ► I just link to, I'm so proud of it.

01:17:27 ◼   ► I don't know, sometimes I really like to,

01:17:30 ◼   ► I like it when my linking to something blows it up.

01:17:35 ◼   ► A guy named, do you see this guy named Mark Bylock?

01:17:38 ◼   ► - I did, I put it in my Amazon cart.

01:17:40 ◼   ► The only problem is it's this big book

01:17:41 ◼   ► and they don't ship to Taiwan, I don't think.

01:17:44 ◼   ► The backstory on this is I don't remember where I saw it.

01:17:48 ◼   ► I don't remember.

01:17:49 ◼   ► And it's, do you ever pre-order stuff from Amazon?

01:17:51 ◼   ► I do it all the time.

01:17:52 ◼   ► It's like sending gifts to myself

01:17:54 ◼   ► because I always forget.

01:17:56 ◼   ► Always forget.

01:17:56 ◼   ► And so it was like at some point in December,

01:18:00 ◼   ► I got a thing from Amazon

01:18:02 ◼   ► and it was close to Christmas, really close.

01:18:04 ◼   ► It might've been like the 23rd or something like that.

01:18:06 ◼   ► And I had no pending gifts coming.

01:18:08 ◼   ► Everything I had ordered had already shown up.

01:18:10 ◼   ► I'd gotten everything done at a, you know, not last minute.

01:18:14 ◼   ► And a thing came and I assumed it was for my wife

01:18:16 ◼   ► and instead it was addressed to me.

01:18:18 ◼   ► It was from Amazon.

01:18:19 ◼   ► I thought, shit, I don't remember.

01:18:21 ◼   ► I have no idea what this is.

01:18:22 ◼   ► I opened it up and here it is, The Whiskey Cabinet,

01:18:24 ◼   ► this beautiful, beautiful book by Mark Bylock.

01:18:27 ◼   ► And then I remembered, oh, a couple months ago,

01:18:29 ◼   ► I pre-ordered this.

01:18:30 ◼   ► Oh, here it is.

01:18:31 ◼   ► And I thought, this book is beautiful.

01:18:35 ◼   ► It is beautiful photography, beautiful paper,

01:18:37 ◼   ► beautiful typography, and I couldn't wait to read it.

01:18:41 ◼   ► I was very excited.

01:18:43 ◼   ► I went up and it is so it's such a weird coincidence because you know I'm terrible.

01:18:47 ◼   ► I go days.

01:18:48 ◼   ► I literally go days without checking my email sometimes.

01:18:50 ◼   ► I don't.

01:18:51 ◼   ► It's I was just talking about this like I get less email than like when I worked at

01:18:55 ◼   ► Microsoft for example way less.

01:18:57 ◼   ► But it's so much more of a burden now because it's not my job.

01:19:00 ◼   ► Like it's pure additive whereas before like I lived in it.

01:19:04 ◼   ► So it was it was like almost more tolerable.

01:19:07 ◼   ► This was a day where I had gotten caught up on my inbox and I was you know down to the

01:19:10 ◼   ► inbox zero, at least for like, you know, this week. And I had

01:19:15 ◼   ► two new emails. One was junk and the other was from Mark bylock.

01:19:19 ◼   ► And I was like, What? That's crazy. The same guy's name is

01:19:22 ◼   ► what's on the book. And he's like, Hey, you know, no idea if

01:19:25 ◼   ► you're interested. I just wrote in a book on whiskey. You might

01:19:29 ◼   ► be interested. No, no, you know, I know no pressure to link it up

01:19:34 ◼   ► or anything. I just thought you might want a complimentary copy.

01:19:36 ◼   ► Tell me where to send it. I'll send one. I was like, literally

01:19:40 ◼   ► after right after I answered the ding dong of the UPS giving me the book that I'd paid

01:19:44 ◼   ► for so I quick snapped a photo with my phone and I was like too late I pre-ordered it months

01:19:49 ◼   ► ago.

01:19:50 ◼   ► That's awesome.

01:19:51 ◼   ► Which is like an amazing story.

01:19:52 ◼   ► Anyway long story short I read the book and I loved it so I linked it up on Daring Fireball

01:19:57 ◼   ► and it like sold out at Amazon.

01:20:00 ◼   ► So they have to like they had like order more from his publisher or something like that.

01:20:04 ◼   ► No I mean I can certainly relate.

01:20:06 ◼   ► I mean, I think, uh, I mean, back when I, back when I first, I mean, I started

01:20:11 ◼   ► Chitakari with the, I had a five-year plan.

01:20:14 ◼   ► Like I thought maybe in five years I could make, you know, make a living from it.

01:20:17 ◼   ► And then like move back to Taiwan and, you know, which is we wanted to do.

01:20:21 ◼   ► And, uh, and obviously it's taken off far more quickly than, than, than I anticipated.

01:20:27 ◼   ► I haven't, it's not even two years old yet.

01:20:29 ◼   ► Um, but, uh, but I mean, the big, kind of the, the real big jump was, I might have

01:20:35 ◼   ► told this story that talks about previously, but was you linking to it and saying, you

01:20:38 ◼   ► know, it's great new blog and stuff like that.

01:20:40 ◼   ► But what was funny about it, and sorry if I've told this one before, but I got an email

01:20:45 ◼   ► from you saying, "Oh, wow, you've been really prolific, really great stuff.

01:20:51 ◼   ► By the way, I noticed, and you went on this three-paragraph dissertation on a bad word

01:20:56 ◼   ► choice I had made."

01:20:57 ◼   ► And you're like, "Oh, I always make the same mistake as well, so I actually have a script

01:21:00 ◼   ► to fix it when I do it."

01:21:02 ◼   ► It was like with the etymology of the word and how it was used all sort of stuff and it was it was so classic

01:21:07 ◼   ► Like the John Gruber that you know, anyone might imagine and so right after that I can open up Google Analytics

01:21:13 ◼   ► I started like refreshing your page. I'm like, I bet he's gonna link to me soon

01:21:16 ◼   ► Like like 30 minutes later boom there it was

01:21:19 ◼   ► But I mean I I'll take the opportunity now being or so to thank you for that because it certainly was um, you know a good

01:21:29 ◼   ► No, I think I when you link to me I probably had like six hundred followers on Twitter and within you know

01:21:35 ◼   ► a couple days I had about fifteen hundred and

01:21:37 ◼   ► I mean, obviously I've gotten lots instant but that that was certainly kind of the the ignition or jumpstart. So thanks John

01:21:44 ◼   ► I do that

01:21:45 ◼   ► I if I see a typo or something like that and something I'm going to link to I do try to come and I know

01:21:50 ◼   ► If I know the person at all

01:21:52 ◼   ► Do try to tell them it before but I never say that I'm going to link to it because I I don't know

01:21:58 ◼   ► - You don't wanna lock yourself in.

01:22:01 ◼   ► - Well, partly I don't wanna lock myself in.

01:22:03 ◼   ► What if I change my mind?

01:22:05 ◼   ► What if I think, you know what, it's not worth linking to?

01:22:07 ◼   ► And the other part is it somehow

01:22:09 ◼   ► sounds a little presumptuous.

01:22:11 ◼   ► To me it's like, if I just say, hey, you have a typo here,

01:22:14 ◼   ► it's like I'm doing you a favor, I'm pointing it out.

01:22:16 ◼   ► If I say I'm about to link to you, but you have a typo,

01:22:19 ◼   ► it feels a little bit more like I'm not linking to you

01:22:22 ◼   ► until you fix this typo.

01:22:23 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Right?

01:22:24 ◼   ► And I don't wanna put that,

01:22:26 ◼   ► I don't wanna put any pressure on them.

01:22:28 ◼   ► - I should find out what the word was.

01:22:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, we could look up the email later, I'm sure.

01:22:35 ◼   ► But anyway, it made me think of that book by Mark Bylock

01:22:38 ◼   ► because the whole gist of the book is,

01:22:40 ◼   ► it's not comprehensive, it's not an encyclopedia,

01:22:43 ◼   ► it's just a sort of, I don't know,

01:22:47 ◼   ► I would guess maybe like 100 whiskeys from around the world.

01:22:51 ◼   ► Scotland, Ireland, United States, Canada, Japan.

01:22:55 ◼   ► and like his expert opinion and discussion

01:22:58 ◼   ► on what makes the different region,

01:23:02 ◼   ► what are the traditions and what makes them different

01:23:05 ◼   ► and what you should be looking for if you like one.

01:23:09 ◼   ► And I'm mostly a US bourbon rye drinker,

01:23:13 ◼   ► but I really like it.

01:23:16 ◼   ► And so I've been trying to expand my palette

01:23:19 ◼   ► to other things around the world.

01:23:20 ◼   ► - I think there's something about it not being comprehensive

01:23:23 ◼   ► Like, and that just makes it so much more accessible.

01:23:26 ◼   ► - Right, and I have from years and years ago,

01:23:29 ◼   ► and he has the unfortunately coincidental name,

01:23:32 ◼   ► Michael Jackson.

01:23:34 ◼   ► He's a famous, famous beer writer.

01:23:36 ◼   ► Like I drank beer a lot more

01:23:37 ◼   ► before I got into any kind of spirits.

01:23:39 ◼   ► And it's a useful, it's just a different type of book,

01:23:43 ◼   ► but Michael Jackson has like a beer book

01:23:47 ◼   ► that's encyclopedic.

01:23:48 ◼   ► It is, you know, no, I guess, you know, beer is,

01:23:51 ◼   ► there's so many microbrews,

01:23:52 ◼   ► I don't think anybody could cover them all,

01:23:54 ◼   ► but I think it's probably more like thousands of beers

01:23:56 ◼   ► than hundreds of beers.

01:23:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, exactly.

01:24:00 ◼   ► And I share the affinity for their beer.

01:24:02 ◼   ► By the way, I did find the email.

01:24:03 ◼   ► I wrote, "This jives with data showing little cyclicality

01:24:09 ◼   ► in Android purchases."

01:24:10 ◼   ► - Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:24:11 ◼   ► - Jive is a dance or an adjective for US black slang.

01:24:14 ◼   ► The word you want is jive.

01:24:16 ◼   ► And this is what killed me, is you had verb bracket,

01:24:20 ◼   ► no objective bracket informal,

01:24:22 ◼   ► be in a chord semicolon, agree.

01:24:24 ◼   ► Like it was like literally a dictionary definition.

01:24:27 ◼   ► It wasn't like a off hand, this is what it means.

01:24:30 ◼   ► It was like, they had the nomenclature

01:24:32 ◼   ► of a dictionary definition that like,

01:24:34 ◼   ► I note this because my habit was always to use jibe

01:24:36 ◼   ► with a G when I'm at J.

01:24:38 ◼   ► And you actually said you created a Texas spender snippet

01:24:40 ◼   ► to fix it automatically.

01:24:41 ◼   ► So yeah.

01:24:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's a common,

01:24:45 ◼   ► it still kicks in every time I try to use it.

01:24:47 ◼   ► I always use the wrong one.

01:24:48 ◼   ► - Well, as you note, confusingly enough,

01:24:49 ◼   ► Jibe as a verb means make insulting or mocking remarks

01:24:52 ◼   ► jeer, which is actually very close to one of the alternate

01:24:54 ◼   ► meanings of jive, which is taunt or sneer at.

01:24:56 ◼   ► - Right.

01:24:58 ◼   ► Yeah, it's very confusing.

01:25:00 ◼   ► Wait, so which is the one we want when we say

01:25:02 ◼   ► that it's in agreement with something?

01:25:03 ◼   ► - Jibe, J-I-B-E.

01:25:05 ◼   ► Your problem is you say G-I-B-E, and I said J-I-V-E,

01:25:08 ◼   ► which is like a dance.

01:25:09 ◼   ► - Right, right, right, right, right.

01:25:12 ◼   ► Yeah, actually, now that I think about it,

01:25:14 ◼   ► I think I've finally gotten that down,

01:25:15 ◼   ► and I do tend to type it right.

01:25:16 ◼   ► 'Cause if I had to guess, I would have, right there,

01:25:18 ◼   ► I would have guessed JIB.

01:25:20 ◼   ► - Yep, so that's the word, jibe.

01:25:24 ◼   ► - Right, that's the type of thing that you get

01:25:26 ◼   ► when you're pals with me.

01:25:27 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:25:29 ◼   ► - And your ability to be a pal with you

01:25:32 ◼   ► determines whether you find that endearing

01:25:34 ◼   ► or just absolutely irritating.

01:25:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, also some sad news to report,

01:25:39 ◼   ► ends up Michael Jackson, the beer hunter, died in 2007.

01:25:42 ◼   ► So my condolences to his family.

01:25:47 ◼   ► But his World Guide to Beer,

01:25:51 ◼   ► I don't know how many beers are in there.

01:25:52 ◼   ► But anyway, it's not that type of book, The Whiskey Cabinet.

01:25:55 ◼   ► It's, you know, I think he's got like,

01:25:58 ◼   ► like I said, probably under 100, I don't know, in the book.

01:26:00 ◼   ► But it's, you know, just a couple

01:26:01 ◼   ► from each region in each style.

01:26:03 ◼   ► - It's too bad for Michael Jackson that he never,

01:26:05 ◼   ► like, he didn't even get a single year of his life

01:26:06 ◼   ► where he was the only Michael Jackson.

01:26:09 ◼   ► - Oh, that's right.

01:26:10 ◼   ► I guess he died first, wow.

01:26:13 ◼   ► That's really a shame.

01:26:17 ◼   ► I had a little bit of that with that Jonathan Gruber,

01:26:20 ◼   ► economist guy.

01:26:21 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:26:22 ◼   ► - So what percentage of those tweets did you retweet?

01:26:25 ◼   ► - Oh, only the, I would say maybe 10% of them.

01:26:29 ◼   ► - Wow.

01:26:30 ◼   ► - It was, and it was.

01:26:31 ◼   ► - You retweeted quite a few and they were all hilarious.

01:26:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, that was a real quick on and off.

01:26:37 ◼   ► It was like a week long firestorm.

01:26:40 ◼   ► I know, I do thank, I thank the maker

01:26:43 ◼   ► that the guy's name was Jonathan, not John.

01:26:46 ◼   ► I don't know if he goes by John or what,

01:26:47 ◼   ► And at first, when it first started breaking,

01:26:49 ◼   ► there were an awful lot more John groupers,

01:26:51 ◼   ► and because he's Jonathan, he's J-O-N.

01:26:54 ◼   ► So it is spelled differently.

01:26:56 ◼   ► But that's certainly, I mean, you know,

01:26:59 ◼   ► when you are named John,

01:27:00 ◼   ► you're very sensitive to the H, no H thing.

01:27:02 ◼   ► But let's face it, that's a very typical mistake.

01:27:07 ◼   ► Like half the, well, I'd say a third of the Valentines

01:27:10 ◼   ► I got in elementary school were spelled J-O-N.

01:27:13 ◼   ► A third were spelled correctly,

01:27:14 ◼   ► and a third were spelled J-O-N-H.

01:27:16 ◼   ► I can totally sympathize because I'm Benjamin Thompson and Thompson actually has like multiple

01:27:22 ◼   ► spellings like three or four.

01:27:24 ◼   ► Right, there's the P, no P.

01:27:25 ◼   ► And it's so unfair because I both have a boring name and I have to spell it all the time.

01:27:30 ◼   ► Like it should be one or the other.

01:27:32 ◼   ► Like if you have to spell all the time it should be because you have a really kick ass

01:27:34 ◼   ► name that no one's heard of before.

01:27:35 ◼   ► But no, I have to spell it all the time and I'm just Benjamin Thompson.

01:27:39 ◼   ► Right, so somebody who does something famous or infamous named Ben Thompson but with no

01:27:43 ◼   ► No P is not the same name as you, but you're going to get conflated in it.

01:27:47 ◼   ► Well, I do appreciate that my nemesis on Google when I was trying to be the top result for

01:27:51 ◼   ► Ben Thompson, which I am now, was Ben Thompson, law man.

01:27:56 ◼   ► And like the top article from his Badass of the Week.

01:27:59 ◼   ► I'm like, "Oh, if I'm going to get confused with someone, I'll get confused with the Badass

01:28:03 ◼   ► of the Week."

01:28:04 ◼   ► Wow.

01:28:05 ◼   ► I just noticed.

01:28:06 ◼   ► I just, I haven't done this in a while.

01:28:07 ◼   ► I don't know if it's true for you.

01:28:08 ◼   ► For years, I even gave up on it.

01:28:11 ◼   ► I was not the top search in Google for Gruber just Gruber. It was always

01:28:16 ◼   ► Gruber Industries the people but this might be because I'm not signed in

01:28:21 ◼   ► What do you get if you search Google for group? I hate during fireball

01:28:24 ◼   ► Huh? See I get different I get twitter.com slash if I'm not signed in I get Jonathan Gruber the economist

01:28:30 ◼   ► And then Derry fireballs next and then John Gruber Twitter, but the other thing is because I'm in Taiwan

01:28:36 ◼   ► So, oh, there's all that stuff that affects it

01:28:38 ◼   ► I have a VPN here, but I won't sign anything so probably mess up my connection. Um, yeah, I haven't searched for years

01:28:43 ◼   ► I because I honestly don't I don't know I'm vain in other ways, but I'm not super I'd realize I I've

01:28:49 ◼   ► good enough Google juice, but

01:28:52 ◼   ► Gruber.com used to come up first for years and years and years

01:28:55 ◼   ► It's some kind of industrial company down in Arizona who got the domain name like in 1993 much to my sugar in

01:29:02 ◼   ► Yeah

01:29:04 ◼   ► I can't help but think and but I've never really heard anything about them

01:29:07 ◼   ► I can't help but think that there was some kind of rearranging of Google's algorithm that they used to favor

01:29:12 ◼   ► Search term in the dot-com over anything else

01:29:18 ◼   ► Oh, but for years and years and years, but the Gruber calm doesn't even show up in my first page

01:29:22 ◼   ► Stupid Jonathan Gruber guy

01:29:26 ◼   ► But anyway the best thing that happened with that was that at some point during the week where he was really in the news

01:29:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, so people who don't know,

01:29:36 ◼   ► he said something about Obamacare passed by

01:29:40 ◼   ► because people were stupid or something,

01:29:41 ◼   ► like something like that.

01:29:43 ◼   ► - He is a world-renowned economist at MIT,

01:29:47 ◼   ► and his specialty is healthcare legislature,

01:29:49 ◼   ► and he wrote the Massachusetts law,

01:29:53 ◼   ► or helped write the Massachusetts healthcare law

01:29:55 ◼   ► that Mitt Romney, when it, it's this whole,

01:29:58 ◼   ► you know, I don't wanna get into the politics of it,

01:29:59 ◼   ► but this weird situation where it was a healthcare law

01:30:03 ◼   ► that gave everybody in Massachusetts

01:30:05 ◼   ► universal healthcare coverage in a Republican style

01:30:09 ◼   ► because they had a Republican governor

01:30:11 ◼   ► who eventually went on to run for president.

01:30:13 ◼   ► And the way that President Obama went about

01:30:17 ◼   ► trying to get healthcare was instead of pursuing

01:30:19 ◼   ► a traditionally Democratic style,

01:30:21 ◼   ► which is the single payer,

01:30:24 ◼   ► was like, look, I just want people to have healthcare,

01:30:26 ◼   ► let's go the Republican route

01:30:28 ◼   ► and follow the Massachusetts model

01:30:31 ◼   ► and ended up being, obviously it's a political hot button

01:30:35 ◼   ► thing, anyway, he was also a consultant

01:30:38 ◼   ► on the national version of this law.

01:30:41 ◼   ► And then years ago, the weird thing about it

01:30:44 ◼   ► is that it wasn't something he said recently,

01:30:46 ◼   ► but it was like years ago at some kind of

01:30:48 ◼   ► conference for other economists.

01:30:52 ◼   ► So he wasn't speaking to the public,

01:30:54 ◼   ► had no, was being videotaped obviously,

01:30:55 ◼   ► but it wasn't, he's not a politician,

01:30:58 ◼   ► it wasn't gonna go spread wide.

01:31:00 ◼   ► it was this discussion about how the word tax is just toxic in American political culture.

01:31:06 ◼   ► And so to pay for the new health care law, they couldn't call anything they did to raise

01:31:10 ◼   ► money for it attacks. And so they called it I don't know what a subsidy instead, there's

01:31:15 ◼   ► some kind of way that through the vagaries of the way that the US Congress budget department

01:31:23 ◼   ► classifies different types of legislature, it wouldn't be called a tax, it would be called

01:31:27 ◼   ► a subsidy, but it's a rose by any other name.

01:31:29 ◼   ► It's people paying more money to a collection

01:31:32 ◼   ► that would then be distributed to pay for

01:31:35 ◼   ► the mechanics of the law.

01:31:37 ◼   ► And his explanation was very, it was honest,

01:31:41 ◼   ► but it was more or less that the American voters

01:31:45 ◼   ► are too stupid to know the difference,

01:31:47 ◼   ► that calling it something else

01:31:48 ◼   ► doesn't make it something else.

01:31:50 ◼   ► - Right.

01:31:50 ◼   ► - Which is true in a sense, but I mean in a way,

01:31:55 ◼   ► but it was taken by Republicans as an insult that he was,

01:31:59 ◼   ► you know, that the law was passed under false pretenses

01:32:02 ◼   ► and he became, you know, the public enemy number one

01:32:05 ◼   ► of American Republicans and an awful lot of them thought--

01:32:10 ◼   ► - To be at that at Gruber.

01:32:13 ◼   ► - At Gruber was, 'cause they would like,

01:32:16 ◼   ► even if they went so far as to see what at Gruber was

01:32:20 ◼   ► and then saw it was in fact somebody named John Gruber,

01:32:23 ◼   ► whether it had an H or not,

01:32:24 ◼   ► and he had a bunch of followers,

01:32:25 ◼   ► they just assumed it was him.

01:32:28 ◼   ► And so for about a week, I was inundated with vitriolic.

01:32:32 ◼   ► And I think part of it is that you had to make a mistake

01:32:36 ◼   ► to do that, which increased the chance

01:32:39 ◼   ► that the people doing it weren't really

01:32:41 ◼   ► the sharpest pencils in the case.

01:32:44 ◼   ► And so I took to retreating some of them.

01:32:47 ◼   ► It was interesting.

01:32:49 ◼   ► It was, you know, if you think that like the vitriol

01:32:52 ◼   ► that I get from, let's say, Android fanatics

01:32:56 ◼   ► when I say something disparaging about Android

01:32:59 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:33:00 ◼   ► If you think that's harsh,

01:33:01 ◼   ► the way that the political stuff is just unbelievable.

01:33:04 ◼   ► - Oh, it's, yeah, it's incredible.

01:33:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, people, I mean, just seriously saying things like,

01:33:10 ◼   ► go kill yourself at Gruber.

01:33:12 ◼   ► I mean, no exaggeration.

01:33:14 ◼   ► And it just occurred to me,

01:33:17 ◼   ► and I would write back to some of them,

01:33:18 ◼   ► some of them I would retweet,

01:33:19 ◼   ► some of them I would tweak a little,

01:33:21 ◼   ► And then some of them, I would just write back totally honest.

01:33:23 ◼   ► It's like, did you, you know, what were you thinking, you know, were you thinking that

01:33:27 ◼   ► I would see this when you wrote it?

01:33:30 ◼   ► You know, like, what goes through your mind if you're doing that?

01:33:32 ◼   ► Do you do you assume?

01:33:33 ◼   ► Do you think that the Jonathan Gruber was going to read that and perhaps feel bad about

01:33:38 ◼   ► himself because here's somebody wishing you would kill him like kill himself?

01:33:42 ◼   ► Why Why would you write that?

01:33:43 ◼   ► Like what is going through your mind?

01:33:46 ◼   ► How can you go through your day with so much hate?

01:33:48 ◼   ► I it was interesting to me

01:33:50 ◼   ► It's like the extreme opposite of like we were talking about before like the ability to like see a product through someone's eyes

01:33:57 ◼   ► It's like just a complete and utter lack of empathy

01:34:00 ◼   ► Yeah, and I you know, I could you go through the rest of your life like that or does this only spew out on Twitter?

01:34:07 ◼   ► And then there were a few people who I tweaked

01:34:09 ◼   ► I told some people that we were I was we were gonna next the next step was we were gonna come take your guns

01:34:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:34:16 ◼   ► Wait until next year when we come take your guns,

01:34:21 ◼   ► it's a healthcare issue.

01:34:22 ◼   ► They're like, I'd like to see you try.

01:34:26 ◼   ► And it's like, we're on our way.

01:34:28 ◼   ► You tell some of these people you're coming

01:34:31 ◼   ► to take their guns and it really riles them up.

01:34:33 ◼   ► Those are the best.

01:34:34 ◼   ► Anyway, that's died off for the most part.

01:34:39 ◼   ► But it really elevated this guy

01:34:41 ◼   ► in the Twitter rankings for Gruber though.

01:34:43 ◼   ► Jeez.

01:34:45 ◼   ► Anyway, but it's the best thing to happen.

01:34:47 ◼   ► I know it was Fox in particular, which really helped,

01:34:51 ◼   ► but Fox News, it was very clear to me,

01:34:55 ◼   ► as like probably the second most interested observer

01:34:57 ◼   ► in the country, that they,

01:34:59 ◼   ► there must have been a memo that circulated with,

01:35:02 ◼   ► and I don't think it had anything to do with me.

01:35:04 ◼   ► I don't think it had anything to do with me,

01:35:06 ◼   ► but they clarified, they unified on Jonathan Gruber

01:35:10 ◼   ► instead of John Gruber, MIT economists.

01:35:13 ◼   ► They at first when when the whole thing first broke it was like half and half where they would spell it J

01:35:17 ◼   ► Oh N or spell out the whole Jonathan and about halfway through the week Fox

01:35:21 ◼   ► Started consistently calling him Jonathan Gruber and it it helped a lot. I think interesting

01:35:26 ◼   ► Well, maybe you know your friendship with Clayton Morrison helped out there

01:35:30 ◼   ► You know, I thought about I actually was like at the it's funny because I was thinking about it and I was halfway thinking

01:35:38 ◼   ► Maybe I should write to Clayton and and just say, you know, I know you can't do anything about this whole thing

01:35:42 ◼   ► But if you could just you know pass the word around to call the guy Jonathan instead of John I would appreciate it

01:35:48 ◼   ► But I never even had to do that. It seemed like Fox

01:35:50 ◼   ► It happened on its own

01:35:52 ◼   ► Much much to the decrease in entertainment for the rest of us. Yeah

01:35:57 ◼   ► only other thing I could see in the news this week was

01:36:00 ◼   ► Other than the big Microsoft stuff, which I do want to talk about but you see Mark Gurman's report on the Apple watch

01:36:07 ◼   ► Yeah, somebody at Apple. He sold him there

01:36:10 ◼   ► Yeah, which is a little weird

01:36:12 ◼   ► I thought the more interesting thing that he had was that according to Mark Gurman and it's unnamed source at Apple that they have

01:36:18 ◼   ► 3,000 units

01:36:20 ◼   ► Already in use by Apple employees, although he doesn't say by Apple employees, but from what I understand

01:36:25 ◼   ► You know, I had heard a few weeks ago that there were a thousand in use. So German says 3,000

01:36:31 ◼   ► It could just be that they've expanded it, but it's all that they are all in

01:36:35 ◼   ► The hands of Apple employees. Well, I mean you you have to think it's a

01:36:40 ◼   ► relatively easy to pull off. I mean, more even more so than than a phone.

01:36:45 ◼   ► I mean, I guess the kind of screen being black is a bit of a giveaway, but I mean, a watch,

01:36:52 ◼   ► I mean, a watch is a watch, especially now. I mean, I mean, California never gets particularly

01:36:55 ◼   ► cold, but people are more likely wearing long sleeves and jackets and stuff like that. It's

01:36:59 ◼   ► kind of an ideal time to do it. I've thought for weeks, like when I heard weeks ago that there were

01:37:04 ◼   ► a thousand of them in use, I was a little surprised we haven't seen more because I remember in the

01:37:09 ◼   ► the six month run up to the iPhone coming out, there were none of them leaked. It wasn't

01:37:14 ◼   ► like the time the iPhone four, you know, was found in a bar. But there were like a steady

01:37:18 ◼   ► stream of here's a here's a blurry shot of a guy on Bart who was using an iPhone until

01:37:24 ◼   ► I took out my, you know, camera phone to take a picture of him and then he put it back in

01:37:28 ◼   ► his pocket, you know, but they were always there were a steady stream of reports of people

01:37:31 ◼   ► who'd spotted Apple employees with iPhones before it came out at the end of June. And

01:37:36 ◼   ► I haven't seen a single peep of anybody saying,

01:37:39 ◼   ► you know, I saw a guy with an Apple Watch at such and such.

01:37:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's a good point.

01:37:44 ◼   ► - I think it's, you know, I think it's like what you said,

01:37:45 ◼   ► a watch is just too, you know,

01:37:48 ◼   ► especially if you're being even

01:37:49 ◼   ► just a little bit circumspect about when you take it out,

01:37:52 ◼   ► when you're not at work or at home,

01:37:54 ◼   ► it's really, really hard to notice

01:37:57 ◼   ► that somebody's got an Apple Watch.

01:37:59 ◼   ► - That said, I mean, I saw someone using a smartwatch

01:38:03 ◼   ► the other day and it was like,

01:38:04 ◼   ► It was super obvious he was using a smart watch.

01:38:07 ◼   ► So maybe they're just not using them in public.

01:38:10 ◼   ► Maybe that's part of the instruction.

01:38:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, my understanding is the instruction

01:38:14 ◼   ► is you're allowed to use it and take it.

01:38:16 ◼   ► And if anybody even asks, they are allowed to say,

01:38:18 ◼   ► "Yes, it's an Apple Watch, I work for Apple,"

01:38:20 ◼   ► but they're not allowed,

01:38:21 ◼   ► certainly not allowed to take it off

01:38:22 ◼   ► and they're not allowed to do any kind of demonstration.

01:38:24 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:38:25 ◼   ► - And they are, but they're allowed to say,

01:38:26 ◼   ► "But I'm not allowed to do a demonstration."

01:38:28 ◼   ► - Well, that's one of the benefits

01:38:29 ◼   ► of having announced it already is there's nothing to hide.

01:38:33 ◼   ► - Right, there's nothing to hide.

01:38:34 ◼   ► And what you see when you're not using it

01:38:37 ◼   ► is all, you'll get a much better view of it on apple.com

01:38:39 ◼   ► than you will on somebody's wrist.

01:38:41 ◼   ► - It's interesting, I mean, I think the last time I was on,

01:38:43 ◼   ► we were talking about "All About the Watch."

01:38:45 ◼   ► And it was funny because I have a spidey sense

01:38:48 ◼   ► when you're gonna invite me on the talk show.

01:38:50 ◼   ► So I kind of had an idea that this week

01:38:53 ◼   ► was gonna be one of those weeks.

01:38:54 ◼   ► The same thing with the watch thing,

01:38:57 ◼   ► probably because I had a spastic result to that.

01:39:00 ◼   ► - To be clear, I asked you to be on about 30 seconds

01:39:02 ◼   ► before we started recording.

01:39:04 ◼   ► That's a little bit of exaggeration,

01:39:08 ◼   ► but it was funny.

01:39:08 ◼   ► I swear to God today.

01:39:10 ◼   ► I went to the gym.

01:39:10 ◼   ► I came back and I was I don't know why I was thinking about

01:39:13 ◼   ► I think I was listening to last week's episode while I was

01:39:16 ◼   ► working out and I was like, I think I was thinking like, oh,

01:39:20 ◼   ► I actually I thought John was gonna have me on this week,

01:39:22 ◼   ► but I guess not and then like 30 minutes later got a message

01:39:25 ◼   ► from you.

01:39:25 ◼   ► I know it's a little late, but do you have time today?

01:39:30 ◼   ► But no, I mean, one thing with the watch is,

01:39:35 ◼   ► another product I'm actually pretty intrigued about

01:39:39 ◼   ► is the Amazon Echo, like the box in your room.

01:39:43 ◼   ► And the reason I am, and I'm actually much more intrigued

01:39:45 ◼   ► by that than I ever was by the Fire Phone,

01:39:47 ◼   ► and I think people kind of just dismissed out of hand

01:39:49 ◼   ► because it came on the heels of the Fire Phone.

01:39:52 ◼   ► But like it sounds stupid, but the idea of just like

01:39:57 ◼   ► talking to something instead of like pulling something

01:39:59 ◼   ► of your pocket and then talking to it or with the watch just looking at your wrist instead

01:40:03 ◼   ► of pulling out your phone and looking at something.

01:40:06 ◼   ► It sounds so trivial, but convenience always wins.

01:40:12 ◼   ► We might have talked about this before, but little conveniences multiplied by all the

01:40:19 ◼   ► times that they matter end up being a big deal.

01:40:24 ◼   ► It's funny, I think that Echo's gotten mixed reviews, but a lot of people, there are people

01:40:29 ◼   ► who do really like it.

01:40:30 ◼   ► And I think it's because it's in a similar vein

01:40:33 ◼   ► to what I think the watch is gonna be,

01:40:35 ◼   ► where you don't kind of realize until you use it

01:40:38 ◼   ► like how it just makes life a little bit less,

01:40:42 ◼   ► a little more frictionless.

01:40:44 ◼   ► And the idea of it being the center is a long ways off

01:40:49 ◼   ► just for all the technical reasons more than anything.

01:40:53 ◼   ► But I think it's something-

01:40:54 ◼   ► - Convenience is always,

01:40:55 ◼   ► convenience is always are easier to see backwards

01:40:58 ◼   ► than forwards.

01:40:59 ◼   ► Yes, it's more easy to tell how much you appreciate it when it's taken away than

01:41:04 ◼   ► when you first get it always, you know, and it's the same way that like

01:41:08 ◼   ► When you go back to an older iPhone

01:41:13 ◼   ► It makes your current iPhone feel so much faster than it felt when you first got the new iPhone you get a new iPhone next

01:41:19 ◼   ► Your next generation a whatever chip like wow, this is great

01:41:22 ◼   ► It's a lot faster and if you put it down and take your year old one or your two-year-old one

01:41:27 ◼   ► especially like a two-year-old one, you're like, holy shit, this is so jaggy and

01:41:30 ◼   ► You know coming out of college and you get your first apartment and it has a dishwasher and you're like great, this is great

01:41:38 ◼   ► I love having the dishwasher. Well when your dishwasher breaks and you don't have a dishwasher anymore. You're like, holy shit

01:41:44 ◼   ► How do I live without a dishwasher? Right? Yep. No and I think I think you know that voice could be something like that

01:41:50 ◼   ► No

01:41:51 ◼   ► I I agree and I think it's one of those things where if you I mean

01:41:56 ◼   ► It's easy to look back and just like I but I really do think that people said like when the phone came out

01:42:01 ◼   ► It's like well I could do this I can do this on a computer

01:42:04 ◼   ► I can do this or especially the iPad think you probably saw this more than anything

01:42:07 ◼   ► like

01:42:10 ◼   ► Little little making it just a little bit easier

01:42:13 ◼   ► makes makes a really big difference and

01:42:16 ◼   ► And I I think that that's a good vector to look at any new product

01:42:23 ◼   ► Like does it doesn't make life just a little bit easier and if it does then that product probably has a chance

01:42:28 ◼   ► The thing I didn't understand about Amazon echo when they announced it and I you know

01:42:33 ◼   ► I announced it and I watched their their little video with the family, you know using it

01:42:37 ◼   ► I didn't understand that it was going to be invitation only for some period of time

01:42:43 ◼   ► Dave whiskers actually was just telling me he was thinking about getting one but it's like you don't buy one

01:42:48 ◼   ► You can't just buy one you go to the site and you request an invitation to buy. Yeah

01:42:51 ◼   ► So I actually just in the other thing is I just got my request just got granted and it said it's gonna ship in three

01:42:58 ◼   ► To four months or something like that. I

01:43:00 ◼   ► Suspect like they just got burned so badly by the phone that they weigh like they got way too conservative like they overcorrected and

01:43:07 ◼   ► It's really hard to ramp something and if you if you if you kind of started out with the assumption

01:43:13 ◼   ► We're gonna sell a hundred thousand units you get a million orders

01:43:17 ◼   ► Like it's not just that you're behind infinite million orders that but that that being behind kind of compounds

01:43:23 ◼   ► Yeah, so it's interesting though. I do think that you know

01:43:27 ◼   ► Like you said there is something and this is you know

01:43:30 ◼   ► Is this this is sort of closest to the how style interface of?

01:43:34 ◼   ► 2001 right where what was the interface with how on the discovery it was you just talked to how

01:43:41 ◼   ► You know, there was no button to push there was nothing you didn't have to go over and push a button to start talking to

01:43:46 ◼   ► You just talk to him because he was always listening.

01:43:49 ◼   ► No, yeah, that's the thing.

01:43:51 ◼   ► When you look at any new product,

01:43:53 ◼   ► it's so easy to...

01:43:55 ◼   ► So I made a bingo card for my podcast, Exponent,

01:44:00 ◼   ► and a notorious word I say is over index,

01:44:02 ◼   ► so I'm going to use it.

01:44:03 ◼   ► It's so easy to over index on what the product is today,

01:44:08 ◼   ► but to evaluate, you have to think about

01:44:10 ◼   ► what's this product going to be after three or four iterations.

01:44:13 ◼   ► And like, for example, the original Kindle,

01:44:15 ◼   ► the original Kindle was a piece of crap and it looked terrible and it felt terrible but like it

01:44:19 ◼   ► was so obvious that this is how we're going to read books going forward right and once it's thin

01:44:24 ◼   ► and easy to hold and actually I think the version 2 Kindle was was very good they actually there's

01:44:30 ◼   ► a huge jump from one to two but I think that this that's something with you see with the iPhone and

01:44:36 ◼   ► I think that's something with something like the Echo and I think I think it will be the case with

01:44:40 ◼   ► the watch as well, where it's not just you have to look at it not just as what it can do right now

01:44:45 ◼   ► and what capability it has right now or what battery life it has right now, you have to think

01:44:48 ◼   ► about what is this going to be in five years and can you see a path from here to there. And if that

01:44:54 ◼   ► path is a path that's easily understandable as in like our chip is going to get more efficient,

01:45:00 ◼   ► yes, our screens are going to get more efficient, yes, our battery is going to improve, not as fast

01:45:04 ◼   ► as those are going to get more efficient, but yes, they're going to improve. Like there's and you,

01:45:09 ◼   ► It's just like you have to be able to put yourself in the shoes of a new user.

01:45:12 ◼   ► It's the same sort of thing.

01:45:12 ◼   ► When you look at a product, you have to you have to be able to assimilate

01:45:16 ◼   ► what you know about the way technology progresses.

01:45:18 ◼   ► And that's how you evaluate a product, not you can't evaluate it on version one.

01:45:22 ◼   ► Yeah, one of the interesting things about Echo is to me,

01:45:25 ◼   ► it's the first new product from any of these companies in my memory

01:45:29 ◼   ► where battery isn't an issue because it's not battery operated.

01:45:33 ◼   ► It's something to plug in.

01:45:34 ◼   ► Yeah, like when's the last time somebody's come out with something

01:45:37 ◼   ► That doesn't isn't battery operated.

01:45:39 ◼   ► It's you know that

01:45:42 ◼   ► that's fascinating to me

01:45:43 ◼   ► because it's it just hasn't happened

01:45:45 ◼   ► in so long.

01:45:45 ◼   ► No, it's a great point.

01:45:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I think people were like

01:45:50 ◼   ► joked about like Amazon actually sold

01:45:52 ◼   ► tried to sell that as a feature.

01:45:53 ◼   ► I can plug it in

01:45:54 ◼   ► and I totally got that like it.

01:45:55 ◼   ► It's it's it's like it's your home.

01:45:58 ◼   ► It's your home assistant.

01:46:00 ◼   ► A lot of ways.

01:46:00 ◼   ► I think the problem for Amazon

01:46:02 ◼   ► obviously is, you know, there

01:46:04 ◼   ► they don't have the entire like

01:46:06 ◼   ► They don't have the mobile companion really to go with it, which obviously the phone,

01:46:11 ◼   ► you know, their phone was intended to be, I would imagine.

01:46:14 ◼   ► But but still, I think I think the concept is at least compelling.

01:46:18 ◼   ► And if if Echo isn't it, I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, in five, 10 years,

01:46:23 ◼   ► we all have a similar sort of device in our houses that we just talked to.

01:46:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I wonder I wonder if it's already in the works, if the you know, whatever the next

01:46:33 ◼   ► generation Apple TV is, is always listening.

01:46:36 ◼   ► Xbox, you know, Microsoft's done it with Xbox for a while,

01:46:40 ◼   ► or I don't know, is it OK Xbox?

01:46:42 ◼   ► Something like that has been a trigger for,

01:46:45 ◼   ► you've been able to give vocal commands

01:46:46 ◼   ► to your Xbox for a while.

01:46:48 ◼   ► I think going back to the previous Xbox, the 360.

01:46:51 ◼   ► - No, I mean, it seems like an obvious thing

01:46:53 ◼   ► for the Apple TV.

01:46:54 ◼   ► I mean, man, talk about a product that's stagnated.

01:46:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, yeah, I think that's basically,

01:47:00 ◼   ► I don't know if they've missed a deadline, you know,

01:47:03 ◼   ► and something has slipped or what,

01:47:05 ◼   ► but there's clearly something that was coming.

01:47:06 ◼   ► I mean, at this point, I would say,

01:47:09 ◼   ► I probably would have bet on something,

01:47:11 ◼   ► you know, a year ago, if we had talked a year ago,

01:47:13 ◼   ► I probably would have bet on some kind of new Apple TV

01:47:14 ◼   ► at the end of 2014.

01:47:16 ◼   ► So at this point, I would call it overdue.

01:47:18 ◼   ► And I kind of expect to see more,

01:47:21 ◼   ► I wouldn't be shocked if we don't see it in 2015,

01:47:23 ◼   ► 'cause I know maybe they've,

01:47:25 ◼   ► but if we're talking a year from now

01:47:27 ◼   ► and they still don't have a new,

01:47:29 ◼   ► like a truly new Apple TV,

01:47:31 ◼   ► then I would, a year from now,

01:47:33 ◼   ► I would think maybe they've written it off. Maybe they've you know abandoned. Yeah, cuz I I was I thought it was

01:47:38 ◼   ► 2013 so like yeah, that's what I meant by stagnating like setting as in like the Mac Pro stagnated

01:47:45 ◼   ► Like so yeah, either it's dying or it's because there's a wholesale kind of like refresh coming their weight

01:47:54 ◼   ► Yeah, they're waiting on something either a piece some kind of hardware or and or software that they

01:48:00 ◼   ► Need to make the one they want to make and it's not ready

01:48:03 ◼   ► I don't think they're giving up on it though because I mean especially I'm I think that homekit is is

01:48:08 ◼   ► Important even though we haven't heard a ton about it and an Apple TV is pretty important homekit

01:48:13 ◼   ► So yeah, I don't think they would do that if it was something they were giving up on

01:48:17 ◼   ► Yeah, and at the very least even in it in an Apple TV list world you need something in your house always plugged in

01:48:25 ◼   ► to make homekit really sing and so

01:48:29 ◼   ► Why not just make it a thing you put in your TV since everybody has a TV. Yep. No, right

01:48:34 ◼   ► It like it doesn't have to be Apple TV. It could be anything but why not just make it Apple TV

01:48:39 ◼   ► Yeah, no

01:48:40 ◼   ► I've always thought I mean I've I've long thought like they're gonna unify like the router and the Apple TV and

01:48:46 ◼   ► You know that would take care of some leg issues for one for it for airplay

01:48:51 ◼   ► If you like if the app ecosystem ends up like running off an iPhone or whatever it might be

01:48:58 ◼   ► But now I love the idea that you before it of like there being an echo types type angle to it as well

01:49:04 ◼   ► I think it makes I mean obviously Siri would be involved in it

01:49:07 ◼   ► But having it be kind of a an assistant that you can just talk to I think is really compelling I

01:49:12 ◼   ► Thought about that two years ago that why why not combine Apple TV with?

01:49:17 ◼   ► The airport router so then there's only one thing to plug in and I didn't think latency is even it's just a plus

01:49:24 ◼   ► I'm just thinking hey just one thing plug this in

01:49:27 ◼   ► and put your cable thing in the back,

01:49:29 ◼   ► put the power plug in and you're done.

01:49:31 ◼   ► And then I kind of thought, ooh, maybe not

01:49:34 ◼   ► when I got the latest generation AirPort

01:49:36 ◼   ► which was so much bigger.

01:49:38 ◼   ► - Right, but I think, I mean, I think,

01:49:40 ◼   ► but that has, that has the, that's an actual router,

01:49:43 ◼   ► like it has multiple ports and stuff like that.

01:49:45 ◼   ► I think the AirPort Express is probably a fuller expression

01:49:50 ◼   ► of like Apple's ideal router in a lot of ways.

01:49:53 ◼   ► - Well, my understanding is that the reason

01:49:54 ◼   ► the new AirPort Extreme is so tall

01:49:56 ◼   ► is that it was, and who knows,

01:50:00 ◼   ► who knows how long it was in the works

01:50:02 ◼   ► with Steve Jobs being gone,

01:50:04 ◼   ► but it was just purely engineering

01:50:06 ◼   ► that having antennas that are up,

01:50:08 ◼   ► bigger antennas that are up,

01:50:10 ◼   ► just is a big part of why it gets

01:50:12 ◼   ► better reception through your house.

01:50:14 ◼   ► Whereas the older ones that were so much smaller

01:50:16 ◼   ► were always constrained in terms of the energy,

01:50:19 ◼   ► the power of their antennas.

01:50:20 ◼   ► - Right, 'cause the super long-range ones

01:50:22 ◼   ► have actual antennas that stick up.

01:50:25 ◼   ► So that makes sense.

01:50:27 ◼   ► - It's a little bit more of a practical design

01:50:29 ◼   ► than a, you know, it's function over form.

01:50:33 ◼   ► But I don't know, it might be a hard sell

01:50:35 ◼   ► when all the other boxes are so small

01:50:37 ◼   ► and the old Apple TV was so small to say,

01:50:39 ◼   ► your new Apple TV is, you know, now 10 times.

01:50:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's a good point.

01:50:44 ◼   ► - I don't know, but it, you know, but on the other hand,

01:50:46 ◼   ► hey, just plug this one thing in and you're done,

01:50:48 ◼   ► is compelling.

01:50:49 ◼   ► What was the other thing?

01:50:53 ◼   ► So, Germin's other thing was all about

01:50:54 ◼   ► how the battery sucks on the Apple Watch.