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The Talk Show

91: ‘BlackBerry Is Still Technically in Business’ With Dan Frommer

 

00:00:00   It's a very special week for you. You're now on the dole for both Google and Microsoft.

00:00:05   Very cool.

00:00:08   By the time this episode airs, that'll have been last week.

00:00:12   Oh, last week. Cool. We're in the future then also.

00:00:16   Thanks to Facebook for sponsoring this week.

00:00:19   Dan is referring to last week's Daring Fireball RSS feed sponsor, which was Google,

00:00:24   who took the spot to advertise job openings for their iOS apps, which I think is actually

00:00:31   a fantastic sponsorship. I hope they do well. I hope they get some good… If they get one

00:00:38   good candidate out of it, they'll be delighted. Tom Bilyeu (01h00m 5s):

00:00:41   Yeah, it's actually really smart, and I'm actually surprised more companies haven't been

00:00:45   looking to do… I mean, there are job boards. There's that one that a lot of the sites use.

00:00:51   But companies like Google and Apple too and all the big tech companies spend so much money

00:00:57   on recruiting it's not even funny.

00:00:59   So…

00:01:00   And it's more and more because it's really a…

00:01:03   They all say that it's their biggest… one of the biggest problems they have right

00:01:07   now.

00:01:08   Oh, totally.

00:01:09   Especially engineers.

00:01:10   I mean, they're willing to buy them for like a million dollars each in these acqui-hires.

00:01:12   So surely a few blog sponsorships here and there are good investment.

00:01:19   But actually it inspired me to get out the only Android device in my house, which I've

00:01:26   actually never used until today.

00:01:28   It's a Nexus 7.

00:01:29   I don't even know how we got it, but so long had passed between receiving it and trying

00:01:36   to use it that it had actually been bricked.

00:01:40   I plugged it in for a month and it still didn't charge at all.

00:01:45   And then today randomly I'm like throwing stuff out and I was like, "Oh, I should just

00:01:50   throw out this stupid Nexus 7 that never worked."

00:01:52   And I plugged it in and it started charging.

00:01:55   So who's to say?

00:01:58   I've spent the last six hours doing software updates on it and now it's ready to go.

00:02:06   So I'll get to experience the joy of Android 4.4, I believe.

00:02:09   I don't know.

00:02:10   I think the Nexus 7 is the current 7-inch tablet, isn't it?

00:02:15   Well this one is definitely not because it doesn't, I don't think it runs the, what is

00:02:20   it KitKat or something?

00:02:24   This is definitely a few years old.

00:02:26   So maybe there's a new Nexus 7 but this is like the first generation.

00:02:33   But cool, good stuff.

00:02:35   We can quibble about or talk about, we can probably make a whole show about what the

00:02:39   names of these devices are and the problems of the way that some of them are named.

00:02:44   Apple right up there with them, like with the way that they've switched to calling iPad.

00:02:50   At one point, they just called it iPad. Now it's just iPad Air and iPad Mini.

00:02:53   The new iPad?

00:02:56   Right, the new iPad for a while.

00:02:58   With Google, it seemed like with the Nexus, they started naming them after their sizes.

00:03:04   Like the Nexus 5 is a 5-inch phone, and the Nexus 7 is a 7-inch tablet, which is kind of cool while

00:03:12   they're new but then gets confusing if they come out with a new one. It says right here,

00:03:19   I'm at the Google site, it says Google Nexus 7. So I presume there have been more than one

00:03:24   tablet with the name Google Nexus 7.

00:03:28   Yeah, I guess you'd… I have no idea. And it's funny because Samsung does that with

00:03:36   with their tablets they do the size but then with the phones they do like the galaxy s

00:03:42   five

00:03:43   goes in order of number of releases like the iphone so

00:03:48   right samson and

00:03:50   so i wonder how wonderful see the end i wonder i i you know

00:03:53   that for example will there will it will there be a new phone this year called the

00:03:56   iphone six or they finally asked split to you know

00:04:00   yes just can ask you that too because uh... the

00:04:03   What is it? Pachkowski report on, was it Friday that the,

00:04:08   or sometime this week,

00:04:09   or well, now it's two weeks ago, what?

00:04:12   - Yeah, all right, this month, this month.

00:04:14   - This month, sometime in August,

00:04:17   the report that September is gonna be the iPhone event,

00:04:21   but no, you know, it doesn't say iPhone 6.

00:04:23   - Yeah, he wouldn't know though.

00:04:26   However he got, and his stuff on events is gold.

00:04:30   I don't think he's ever had a bad report on this thing.

00:04:32   No, I don't think so.

00:04:35   But wherever that would be…

00:04:36   We'll get to that in a second.

00:04:37   Right.

00:04:38   Wherever that comes from, though.

00:04:39   I mean, presumably, I always presume that he's got somebody in Apple PR who gives

00:04:44   him that stuff, but whoever it is…

00:04:48   That's my guess, too, but I have no idea.

00:04:49   Whoever it is isn't going to give him the name of the product.

00:04:52   I don't think they ever deliberately leak a name.

00:04:56   They put the date out there just to sort of, you know…

00:04:59   Yeah.

00:05:00   out there is sort of, you know, let everybody know what's coming without actually committing to it.

00:05:05   Right? They could back out at the last second and Pachkowski looks bad, but the Apple doesn't.

00:05:10   But they wouldn't give it a name.

00:05:12   Tom Bilyeu (01h00m 5s): I guess it seems weird now, but do you remember,

00:05:16   like, even the day of the iPad launch, no one really knew what it was going to be called?

00:05:20   Like, people were doubting that it would be called the iPad?

00:05:23   Pete Turner (01h00m 16s): Nope. Yeah, I totally remember that.

00:05:25   Tom Bilyeu (01h00m 19s): I think that was one of the names that had been thrown out there

00:05:28   because of what like a domain registration or something like that well and i think i think some

00:05:32   people came up with it naturally just because of ipod oh yeah true and and pad seems like a natural

00:05:39   thing for a pad-sized device and everybody immediately dismissed it as sounding like uh

00:05:45   tampon or something like a family what was your name it was the uh the slate or something no

00:05:50   oh i actually glass no i forget what i suggested it wasn't ipad though it wasn't glass no it wasn't

00:05:58   glass huh i forgot tab did i suggest itan no no i don't think it had an eye yeah i'm kind of sick

00:06:05   of the eyes yeah that's uh i don't remember although the i actually makes more sense for

00:06:11   these things than because i stood for internet right like that was the imac was the internet

00:06:16   man supposedly i mean that's how it was introduced with the imac is that it was the first mac built

00:06:21   for the internet age. And I think that the iMac was the first i product. Right, it was, you know,

00:06:29   but then again, they say it was made for internet, but then the one that really cemented the deal

00:06:34   and was a decade long foundation of the company, the iPod didn't get internet access until the

00:06:41   iPod touch. Right had nothing to do with the internet. Exactly. But then the iPhone fits

00:06:47   perfectly because that was like the first phone that actually did the internet better

00:06:53   than it did the phone.

00:06:54   Yeah, I think what's happened though, I think it's never explained, never talked about,

00:06:59   but like the undercurrent is that lowercase i capital product name just means Apple product.

00:07:11   That's it.

00:07:12   It doesn't really have any other connotation other than that.

00:07:14   Just means Apple product.

00:07:16   Right.

00:07:17   everyone calls it the iTouch still.

00:07:22   Maybe that's what I suggested the iPad name be.

00:07:25   I found an old post but I'm not going to read it while I'm talking to you.

00:07:28   That's rude.

00:07:29   We could edit it out.

00:07:31   I don't even know.

00:07:32   It's called "The Tablet."

00:07:34   Yeah, that's the piece.

00:07:36   December 31st, 2009.

00:07:38   I don't know if I suggested a name in there.

00:07:40   New Year's Eve post?

00:07:41   Well, you say, everyone I know at Apple refers to it as "The Tablet" but so far as I can

00:07:45   you can tell that's blah, blah, blah.

00:07:47   Most certainly not the name.

00:07:49   I had predicted it would be the iPod Touch HD,

00:07:55   which was, you know, not, ultimately not,

00:07:58   it's kind of what it is, but that's ultimately not,

00:08:01   obviously, what they called it.

00:08:03   I don't remember, I don't know what your,

00:08:06   all right, whatever, doesn't matter.

00:08:10   But speaking of those event dates,

00:08:13   something weird happened this past week where you like made it, you made a

00:08:19   typical John Gruber offhand comment, you know, seemingly knowing comment about

00:08:25   some sort of wrist device coming next month.

00:08:28   Well, I was cracking a joke about the Motorola, the Moto two 70 watch.

00:08:33   Yeah.

00:08:33   And how stupid it looks on the side.

00:08:35   Two 85.

00:08:36   I think we measured it.

00:08:38   It was two seven.

00:08:39   Oh, okay.

00:08:40   I go with two 70.

00:08:41   I like that.

00:08:42   Sounds good.

00:08:42   And you know that the bottom of the circle is cut off, but it charges on its side.

00:08:48   And so when you're charging it, it's like the, in watch terms, the like eight, nine

00:08:55   and 10 o'clock side is cut off.

00:08:59   But for some inexplicable reason, even though they cut off that part of the circular display,

00:09:04   they decide to show the charge as a circular meter around the perimeter, which means that

00:09:11   It's somewhere between like 70-- when you're in between 70 and 90%, you have no idea whether

00:09:18   you're closer to 70 or 90.

00:09:19   They just cut it off.

00:09:22   And they're shipping it.

00:09:23   They're going to ship that product.

00:09:24   So I was cracking a joke about that, and I said-- I should actually quote it, because

00:09:29   I guess it's the exact language I chose, which is unfortunate.

00:09:33   I wrote, "The only way this could get funnier would be if it doesn't even ship until after

00:09:37   Apple announces their wrist wearable thing next month. And then, and this is, now this

00:09:42   is a backstory on this. This is true, you know, my description of the talk show is the

00:09:46   director's commentary on Daring Fireball. So here we are. I posted that. This is, that

00:09:54   was Friday. And that we, my family and I were in Orlando, Florida after, for a week or so

00:10:00   of theme park fun. I think I was on my way to the airport. I don't know, either on my

00:10:06   way to the airport or at the airport when I posted that.

00:10:10   And what was your intent? You were just goofing around?

00:10:13   Well, I wanted to be like if the watch, the wrist thing comes out at next month's event,

00:10:21   it would be funny if – because Motorola promises that it's going to ship in the

00:10:25   summer, which gives them until September 21st. And they haven't announced it yet. And I

00:10:31   think it's going to look really, really bad as soon as Apple unveils whatever it is

00:10:36   that they're working on.

00:10:37   And I think it's almost certain at this point that Apple is working on something, and it's

00:10:41   almost certain that it's going to be announced this year.

00:10:43   And if it is announced this year, it'll almost certainly be announced either in September

00:10:49   or October.

00:10:50   I don't know when.

00:10:51   Right.

00:10:52   And then adding to this was that—I don't know if it was published shortly before your

00:10:57   post or shortly after but Pachkowski posted, you know, citing sources, whatever, that it's

00:11:06   going to happen in October period.

00:11:09   The wearable thing?

00:11:10   Yeah.

00:11:11   Oh, I didn't know that.

00:11:12   I thought he posted that back in June.

00:11:14   He updated that?

00:11:15   I don't know.

00:11:16   Let me look.

00:11:17   I thought he posted that like June 6th, that they were shooting for an October date.

00:11:21   Well, maybe that was an old article, but someone IMed it to me and they're like, "Who's your

00:11:25   money on Gruber or or patch well my money would be on patchkowski people seem to think i'm i'm

00:11:32   more prescient than than than i am and i know i do know that i have a terrible terrible guilty

00:11:39   habit i should be i should be guilty about it but i'm not of of when i do have information

00:11:45   coyly putting it out there without a source as as though it's my own speculation uh oh man this is

00:11:51   from June 6th. Yeah, it's from June. I got punked. I got punked and played. I thought

00:11:56   it was I thought it was published like at the same time as your right. Well, and he

00:12:00   and if you read it, he didn't say Apple is going to announce it in October, his June

00:12:06   6 thing said, Apple is shooting for October to release it, you know, meaning, you know,

00:12:12   who, you know, well, it was June. I mean, they still had a lot of work, whatever it

00:12:15   is that they're that they're working on June means they still had a lot of work left to

00:12:18   do on it.

00:12:19   And anything could happen.

00:12:20   And like in the last several years, they've had basically the September event and the

00:12:26   October event.

00:12:27   And if it's not ready for September, you can do it in October.

00:12:33   But if it is ready and if this is the kind of thing that is being pitched as an iPhone

00:12:37   accessory basically, then why not show it off in September?

00:12:41   I don't know.

00:12:42   Well, anyway, if you read the sentence that I wrote, I wrote, "The only way this could

00:12:46   get funnier would be if it doesn't even ship until after Apple announces their

00:12:52   wrist wearable thing next month and I when I wrote that I even thought I

00:12:55   should probably put something if they announce it in September instead of

00:12:59   October or something like something like that yeah but it's anything like that

00:13:06   takes the piss and vinegar out of the joke and I didn't write when Apple

00:13:10   announces their wrist wearable thing next month because if that was the clause I

00:13:14   thinking about writing, I would have used "if" instead of "when." If Apple announces

00:13:19   the wrist wearable thing next month.

00:13:21   And the whole thing is also further complicated that I was doing it from my phone, which makes

00:13:25   me lazier. It does. It makes me lazier to rewrite a sentence, whereas if I was at my

00:13:30   desk, I might, you know… I did notice that. I noticed that someone could read that as

00:13:35   me saying that they're definitely going to do it in September. I thought, "Nah,

00:13:38   no one will do that. Everybody knows I'm making a joke about the Moto 360." It's

00:13:42   It's like a two and a half hour flight from Orlando back to Philly.

00:13:47   And it happened to be a plane with no Wi-Fi.

00:13:52   So I had no idea.

00:13:53   I had no Wi-Fi.

00:13:54   There was a hashtag, John.

00:13:55   It was #hasgrooberlanded.

00:13:56   #hasgrooberlanded.

00:13:57   And I get off, and it had gone like bananas.

00:14:00   It was like top of tech meme.

00:14:02   John Gruber confirms iWatch is going to be released in September.

00:14:07   And I was like, no, I didn't.

00:14:09   And then I--

00:14:10   Some more Fridays, man.

00:14:12   Right.

00:14:13   And then it's like 10 o'clock on a Friday, and I'm like, "I guess I should update it?"

00:14:18   And I thought, "Nah, fuck that.

00:14:19   I'm not going to update it," because I didn't say that.

00:14:21   I don't let the other people look foolish for reading too much into it.

00:14:27   And there's too much.

00:14:28   It was too much to update, because I do think, I'm certain that they're planning to announce

00:14:35   it either in September or October.

00:14:38   I don't know that they will.

00:14:39   Anything can happen at the last minute.

00:14:41   But I think that they'll have two events.

00:14:44   Mainly-- and this is one thing I often forget-- is even people who read my stuff, listen to

00:14:51   the-- I don't know, maybe people who listen to the show are more tuned in.

00:14:54   But there's so many people who read Darren Fireball and follow tech, period, but who

00:15:00   don't seem to pick up on, to me, very obvious patterns of Apple as a company.

00:15:07   I say this a lot. I repeat myself on this, but they're a company of annual patterns.

00:15:11   And they do break them sometimes. The iPhone used to be a thing the first few years that

00:15:15   came out in June or early July, very early July. And then it switched to becoming like

00:15:22   a late September thing, announced in early September, released two weeks later. And once

00:15:28   they switched that, they stuck to that, and they've stuck to it ever since. And the last

00:15:33   few years. They've had a September event with the iPhone and an October event with

00:15:38   the iPad. And I just assume that they'll probably stick to that this year. And therefore,

00:15:44   they've got two events. And if they're going to do the wearable thing, they'll

00:15:48   have to pick one of those two events to include it on. So I don't have anybody who's told

00:15:55   me that. I don't know. Nobody told me that. I'm just working it out myself. I do think

00:15:58   it's very, in some ways it makes sense. Because the other thing too is it's not just that

00:16:03   they have to pick one of the two events and find time for it, but their events typically

00:16:07   have like a narrative that runs through them. And if they're announcing more than one thing,

00:16:11   they figure out some kind of way to tie it together in the show as part of like one story.

00:16:18   And I kind of feel like like a wearable wrist thing. Sounds to me like something that would

00:16:24   be easier to tie in with new iPhones than with the iPad.

00:16:27   Yeah, especially if it requires an iPhone to be used.

00:16:32   Right.

00:16:33   Well, we can talk about that later because that's a question.

00:16:37   But I do think though that even if or at least if it goes best with it.

00:16:40   Yeah.

00:16:41   And if it's an accessory, if it's a $200 iPhone accessory, you know, show it off with the

00:16:47   iPhone.

00:16:48   Right.

00:16:49   And the the new iPads last year came with the M seven coprocessor two, but it certainly

00:16:54   makes a lot more sense that if the storyline is about health and fitness tracking, right,

00:17:00   the health kit sort of, you know, going health kit expanding from a little 90 seconds spot

00:17:05   during WWDC to here's why we're doing this, you know, 90 minute presentation on on health

00:17:12   and fitness tracking with a bunch of partners, etc. It seems to me like that would fit more

00:17:16   naturally with the iPhone and new iPhones that also have or I guess maybe have an M

00:17:22   8 fitness activity tracker than with the iPad which I feel like they included the M7 on

00:17:30   the iPad because why not?

00:17:32   That's probably not a very expensive component but I don't think tracking your feet based

00:17:36   on your iPad is going to give you your footsteps is going to give you a very accurate count.

00:17:41   Right.

00:17:42   Yeah.

00:17:43   I mean and if it needs any sort of Bluetooth connection to a device to sync to your cloud

00:17:50   kit right or cloud whatever your iCloud account is that's most likely going to

00:17:55   be an iPhone and not an iPad yeah but it probably could technically be an iPad

00:17:59   but my guess is that the majority of people will sync with an iPhone right

00:18:04   and further complicating this is Yosemite you're not complicating it I

00:18:08   would say almost clarifying it is Yosemite which last year the Mac OS 10

00:18:14   update shipped in October not September and I think the year before right or

00:18:20   maybe not I don't know I forget I'm making no last year did and I know this

00:18:25   year it seems to be tracking behind iOS and Mark Gurman of 9 to 5 Mac said it

00:18:30   was enough it was going to come in October which it makes a lot of sense

00:18:36   and it just doesn't make sense to assuming you know it also even if it

00:18:42   we're ready, it just doesn't make sense as part of the iPhone event, whereas it makes

00:18:47   more sense as the iPad event because iPads and Macs are a little bit more similar overlapping.

00:18:53   And so if they're going to do a—and that's what they've done the past few years, is

00:18:57   sort of repeat the Yosemite thing from WWDC, you know, like here's these 10 features

00:19:04   we think you really want to know about in Yosemite. And, you know, for some of us who

00:19:08   pay close attention and remember the WWDC keynote clearly. It's a little bit of a repeat.

00:19:14   But for people who haven't been paying close attention, which is part of the whole message,

00:19:18   the whole point of marketing is to repeat your message, to get it through. That's what

00:19:23   they do. But I presume that's going to take up a big chunk of the October event.

00:19:27   Dave Asprey Especially if there's a 12-inch paper-thin

00:19:31   MacBook Air retina ready to go to. There runs an AA chip. No, that's not going to happen.

00:19:38   which I don't expect.

00:19:39   So, I found a post on Business Insider that says, "Canvas, a perfect name for Apple

00:19:46   tablets says Apple God John Gruber."

00:19:49   I wonder who may have written that post.

00:19:51   Oh, that was me.

00:19:53   Look at that.

00:19:55   Anyway, yeah, Canvas.

00:19:57   That was the…

00:19:59   In hindsight, that sounds stupid.

00:20:02   That's why they don't let me name things.

00:20:05   But iPad sounded stupid, too.

00:20:07   Yeah, maybe if they called it Canvas.

00:20:10   Well, I don't know.

00:20:12   I guess the one thing about iPad in hindsight

00:20:15   is it somehow makes it feel like a sibling to iPhone

00:20:19   in a way that if they'd called it the one thing iPhone

00:20:23   and the other thing Canvas,

00:20:25   that they wouldn't seem like there is aligned.

00:20:28   - Yeah, and especially with the notion

00:20:31   that they were gonna rename iPhone OS to iOS,

00:20:35   which I think was, was that before that?

00:20:36   No, it was after.

00:20:37   Because it would have been a giveaway before.

00:20:40   Well, the iPod Touch, but yeah.

00:20:43   Oh, yeah.

00:20:45   But they still called it—they never seemed to hesitate to make it clear that the iPod

00:20:53   Touch, despite its name, was an iPhone without a phone.

00:20:57   Yeah, iPhone OS4 renamed iOS4 2010.

00:21:02   Right.

00:21:03   So, there you go.

00:21:06   true. I mean, and circling back to what you said, you know, back 10 minutes ago, you know,

00:21:11   it's true that nobody, not only do people not know the name of the first iPad in 2010,

00:21:18   nobody even really knew. There was no confirmation, no leaks that it ran iPhone, what was then called

00:21:25   iPhone OS. Like, I sent a footnote on my piece, "The Tablet," where I wrote, I would not be

00:21:32   surprised to find out that the tablet uses UIKit aka Coco Touch as its programming API.

00:21:38   Like I kind of thought it would because it seemed to make sense to me, but no, I didn't. Nobody knew.

00:21:42   There weren't any kind of leaks. Nothing leaked out of them.

00:21:45   My favorite was an article, I think from Nick Bilton,

00:21:50   where he said that the tablet interface would surprise you.

00:22:01   It was basically like, get ready for a big surprise about you will be very surprised by how you

00:22:07   interact with a new tablet. I don't know, which is like, I don't know who told him that that

00:22:13   doesn't seem, I don't know, it doesn't seem like my illustration was, was a woman with a,

00:22:18   with a crazy brain helmet on like a brain measurement helmet. That would have been a

00:22:25   very apt description for the original iPhone. But yeah, it's not, you know, it was in fact,

00:22:30   I guess it's really could really say it's wrong given how many people came out of the iPad intro with I

00:22:35   Can't believe we got all excited for that. It's just a big iPhone

00:22:38   Exactly. Yeah, and actually did a roundup before the iPad was announced of

00:22:45   kind of artist renderings of what it might look like and

00:22:48   There's actually one that looks exactly like the current iPad mini by

00:22:58   Jesus Diaz of gizmodo. Oh, yes, it looks exactly like today's iPad mini

00:23:04   It did not look like the first iPad but it's kind of funny so I so some of those renderings of

00:23:11   Whatever the iWatch is gonna be called might be

00:23:16   Somewhat accurate someday in the future, but I don't know

00:23:21   Yeah, I do wonder about that. I do have I heard one thing

00:23:25   Well, you know what? Let me take a break about first culture and and we'll get back to it

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00:24:07   Servers takes a while for the first backup, especially depending on your upstream thing

00:24:12   There's no no getting around that might take a while might take a couple days

00:24:16   Maybe even a week depending on how much stuff you have to get that up there after that. Everything's incremental

00:24:20   Just stays backed up

00:24:23   Then you can do whatever you want. You can restore one file at a time. You can restore all your files

00:24:30   Disaster strikes or you're you're across the country, but need your whole system

00:24:34   You don't know what to do. You can get them to

00:24:37   Put your whole backup on an external drive you have to pay for it

00:24:41   But then they'll ship it right to you get it all right back in your hands right away

00:24:45   They have iPhone app so you can access and share any of your files from wherever you are

00:24:50   you don't have to

00:24:52   Tunnel through anything to get to your own Mac your Mac could be sleeping in your backpack offline

00:24:57   You can just use your iPhone and access

00:24:59   Back blazes stuff and get any one file that you need send it off. Send it off from the iPhone app

00:25:05   Great great software

00:25:07   You get a risk-free

00:25:09   No credit card required required trial. Nothing's wrong. I don't think with a credit card required trial

00:25:16   But it's of course it's better without one because when you put your credit card in you think that means if I forget

00:25:22   that when the trials up, they're going to start charging me.

00:25:24   No, you don't have to worry about that.

00:25:26   You just sign up, no credit card required trial at backblaze.com/daringfireball and

00:25:33   get started.

00:25:34   You get a whole month to see how it works.

00:25:35   And I guarantee you by the end of that, you'll be giving them your credit card.

00:25:38   You're going to want to sign up.

00:25:41   And the whole thing, it's five bucks a month, five bucks a month for each Mac that you want

00:25:46   to have in your backblaze account.

00:25:49   the best deal I've ever heard of for online backup so my thanks to them

00:25:53   remember go to back blaze comm slash daring fireball they keep sponsoring a

00:25:59   show because people keep signing up I can't believe everybody hasn't signed up

00:26:02   already I actually have a back blaze pro tip because the first time I you know

00:26:08   that first sink obviously is gonna take a long time because there's whatever a

00:26:12   terabyte of data but it was going so unbelievably slow I didn't know what was

00:26:17   It was like, you know, would maybe do a hundred meg a day.

00:26:21   And it turned out that my stupid iMac was falling asleep

00:26:24   after whatever, 10 minutes each time.

00:26:27   And that was interrupting the upload process somehow.

00:26:31   So I turned sleep off and boom,

00:26:34   it was done in like two days.

00:26:35   - Yeah, just have it set to display,

00:26:37   to sleep your monitor.

00:26:38   - Yeah.

00:26:39   So, and maybe it's 'cause it's a old, old ass iMac that,

00:26:44   you know, with the spinning hard drive and all that stuff.

00:26:47   but try that if you need it to speed up.

00:26:52   - I have heard one whisper, I mean, and this is horribly,

00:26:57   this is like third party, third hand,

00:27:00   just something floating in the wind,

00:27:03   but that the, whatever the wearable thing

00:27:06   that they have coming out, that it has a square display.

00:27:09   I don't even, I wouldn't--

00:27:12   - So it has a display.

00:27:14   - That's what I've heard, that it has a display,

00:27:17   to me is interesting if it's true because that implies a lot of things I think because

00:27:21   if it has a display to me that means it's going to it maybe it is more of a watch type

00:27:25   thing I've declined to call it a watch and I've certainly declined to call it the I watch

00:27:31   not because I know that it is not a watch and I've seen people on Twitter speculate

00:27:36   on that that I call it a risk wearable thing that doesn't mean that I know that it's not

00:27:43   a watch it just means that I don't know what the heck it is and I don't know that it is

00:27:46   a watch. I just know that they're working on a wrist wearable thing. Yeah, I've heard that it

00:27:51   has a square display. Hmm. Well, I think that I think it kind of has to well, I don't know. I've

00:27:57   those mock ups that you see where people make it like the whole band is a flexible display. And

00:28:03   it's a lot of it is display. They look cool as a as a mock up. But I think they're problematic.

00:28:11   If you think about it in practical terms, because which way are they oriented?

00:28:15   Yeah, you know what I mean? Like if you know, you've seen those mockups, but if it's just a band,

00:28:20   and like the whole top half of it is a color display. To get a lot of text,

00:28:27   you'd have to turn your wrist sideways. Otherwise, you just have a real skinny display that's real

00:28:31   tall. I even had some stupid ideas were like the display part pops out and you can spin it.

00:28:39   That doesn't make any sense.

00:28:43   So I don't remember the last time I talked to you about this, but I did a story a few

00:28:51   weeks ago for Quartz where I dug up every Apple wearable that they've ever shipped and

00:28:57   posted photos of it, dating back to the old iPod remote which clipped onto your shirt.

00:29:06   My favorite were the Sony MiniDisc remote controls, which I don't think I posted in

00:29:10   the article, but they were awesome.

00:29:13   They had a little display on them and they clipped right onto your shirt.

00:29:17   But then also Apple has done earbuds and the iPod Shuffle series, including three or four

00:29:23   different designs of the iPod Shuffle, including one that they had screwed up and had to revert

00:29:29   course.

00:29:32   And then of course the last one was the iPod Nano, which people made watch bands for.

00:29:40   Not the current iPod Nano, the previous iPod Nano.

00:29:45   I've got one of those in my hand right now.

00:29:48   Which is surprisingly similar.

00:29:50   Obviously, many years have passed and technology has improved, but those LG and Samsung watches

00:29:57   just seem like they're that.

00:29:59   And I don't know, maybe Apple was like, "Oh, this is brilliant.

00:30:05   Let's shift course on the iPod Nano and we'll come back to this watch thing and make it

00:30:09   look just like this in a few years."

00:30:12   But I don't know.

00:30:13   It seems to me like if that was the right course of action, they would have just kept

00:30:17   with it.

00:30:18   I think it was called the TikTok, T-I-K-T-O-K.

00:30:23   It was an early Kickstarter.

00:30:26   Huge success.

00:30:27   Huge success.

00:30:28   band to fit the this little the little square nano i have it i have one right here and i believe apple

00:30:34   later sold them in this in their store yeah they did sell them i think and i think other companies

00:30:39   came out with them i don't think anybody had the success that these guys had but i've said to people

00:30:43   before like when i see these android wear devices coming out that if they don't look better than

00:30:50   the tick tock which you know the the the ipod nano combined with the tick tock which is a device that

00:30:57   that wasn't even designed to be a watch, then that's a problem.

00:31:01   Yeah.

00:31:02   Like if you can't make a watch that looks better than a device

00:31:06   that wasn't really designed to be a watch that could be made

00:31:09   into one by a Kickstarter--

00:31:10   Four years ago.

00:31:11   Four years ago.

00:31:12   Or whatever it was, three or four years ago.

00:31:14   Yeah.

00:31:16   And that's the round screen.

00:31:18   Maybe that's progress.

00:31:20   But just everything about iOS and obviously Mac OS

00:31:25   has been built on you know screens with corners and a top and a bottom and that

00:31:29   kind of stuff

00:31:30   and I give you see how

00:31:33   how hard it's been just to get people to make iPad apps

00:31:36   I don't know about getting

00:31:40   you know having a monry think everything again for around

00:31:44   well around make sense given the traditional

00:31:48   watches and clocks where your you've got this radio dial

00:31:52   of minute and hour and second hands that sweep around in a circle, it makes sense.

00:31:58   You're showing circular dials, it makes sense to put it in a circle.

00:32:00   It's the reason why all sorts of things that use a dial, like a speedometer in a car,

00:32:09   you know, the tachometer in a car have—

00:32:12   Crop circle.

00:32:13   Right.

00:32:14   Crop circles, sundials, have traditionally been or often are circles.

00:32:20   But for everything else, circles are pretty problematic as a display, like for displaying

00:32:26   text of any kind, because you only get the full width right at the equator.

00:32:32   Yeah, unless you're supposed to read it in a spiral or something.

00:32:38   Right.

00:32:39   Laying out text in a circle is incredibly inefficient.

00:32:42   Yeah.

00:32:43   Yeah.

00:32:44   When you say "square," do you literally mean square or do you mean rectangular?

00:32:47   No, I mean square.

00:32:50   the iPod nano. Interesting. I you know, again, this I mean, you can I don't know, there's

00:32:57   probably another freaking bullshit thing that business insider is gonna Gruber says, iPod

00:33:02   nano is a square. Sure, sure. Right. Right now. I might still have a login. I don't know.

00:33:07   It should say if it wanted to be honest, they should take Gruber says sketchy third hand

00:33:13   source here's whisper that Apple wearable thing might have square display.

00:33:19   Yeah, I don't see that. I don't know. I don't know. I wouldn't bet money on it. Well, I'd get a little now

00:33:25   Okay, not much. I wouldn't bet big I

00:33:29   Would bet big that there will be there will be a some wearable thing unveiled in September or October

00:33:35   I would bet an extra five dollars that it would have a square display. I

00:33:40   Could see that. All right

00:33:44   Anyway, I'm on that side too. So the biggest implication to me of it having a display is

00:33:50   battery life. Because the battery having a display to me is means that it's going to

00:33:56   leads to all sorts of questions about how that how is this thing going to have a usable battery life?

00:34:02   Yeah, because that is the one nice thing about this Nexus seven is that it's already told me that

00:34:09   over half of the power I've consumed is the screen.

00:34:12   Yeah. Does the does iOS 8 tell you that? I don't remember. Something like that.

00:34:18   Yeah. You know what? They have an app shaming feature, but I don't think like, like,

00:34:23   Android has had that for a while. And we'll tell you things that aren't just based on the app,

00:34:28   but things like cellular networking, right in general, and the display, just the power display,

00:34:35   I think that the iOS 8 feature only lists apps by the order in which they've consumed

00:34:43   energy.

00:34:44   Yeah, yeah, so 58% of my Nexus 7 energy consumption has been the screen today.

00:34:53   I have a feeling that that app shaming feature in iOS 8, I think it's going to prove popular.

00:34:59   I think it's also going to cause some weird problems.

00:35:02   I think part of it is because people are going to be surprised by what's using power.

00:35:07   I've heard—I don't use Facebook, so I don't know—but I've heard from a lot of people

00:35:10   that Facebook.app consumes an unseemly amount of energy based on the default settings for

00:35:19   background, like stuff that it tries to do in the background.

00:35:22   Dave Asprey

00:35:23   Well, that's good then.

00:35:24   And then—

00:35:25   Dave I think it might even be a big reason why

00:35:27   app because of course you know in combination with the fact that it uses a lot of power

00:35:31   it's on a lot of iPhones and people who probably more than any other app that's a good question

00:35:37   I thought about that with the Google sponsorship of of daring fireball for iOS apps because

00:35:44   clearly if you you know some of Google's apps or are inordinately popular Google Maps is

00:35:51   I would guess the most popular of the Google app right but you know I would think so you

00:35:57   You know, but a bunch of their apps are very popular.

00:35:59   Gmail's, their Gmail app is super popular.

00:36:03   - Yeah, their search app.

00:36:04   - Yeah.

00:36:05   - Which I think was their first app, maybe.

00:36:08   - Yeah, I think the one that's just called Google

00:36:10   and it's the one that gives you the Google Now functionality.

00:36:12   - Yeah.

00:36:13   - But clearly with the Google,

00:36:17   with certain of Google's apps,

00:36:19   you can reach a lot more people than,

00:36:21   or YouTube is probably maybe number one.

00:36:23   Maybe YouTube is number one.

00:36:25   - Oh, I don't know, 'cause for so long,

00:36:26   it was a system app and then everyone had to re-get it.

00:36:29   - Well, I don't know.

00:36:30   At least on certain contingent of people,

00:36:32   it's gotta be number one.

00:36:33   Like, you know, my--

00:36:35   - I'm gonna guess Facebook is the all-time number one.

00:36:37   - Yeah, I would, if I had to bet on

00:36:39   what's the most popular app of all,

00:36:41   which app is on the highest percentage of iPhones in use,

00:36:44   I would say Facebook.

00:36:46   - So if that is really a huge power suck,

00:36:49   then we're gonna hear about it.

00:36:50   - Right.

00:36:51   - Although, you know, there's a difference

00:36:53   between consumption and...

00:36:56   Well, the bandwidth example is another one.

00:37:00   So I just did a post on Friday where I revealed

00:37:02   where the last 6.8 gigs of my cellular data have gone.

00:37:10   And the biggest source was Twitter.

00:37:15   Twitter, which you think of as a simple

00:37:18   140-character text app,

00:37:21   used over two gigabytes of data for me in the last few months.

00:37:26   Which is kind of surprising.

00:37:28   Of course, a lot of that is photos and built-in web

00:37:32   browser, that kind of stuff.

00:37:33   But I never would have guessed that Twitter was my number one

00:37:37   bandwidth hog.

00:37:39   And actually, I asked Quartz readers

00:37:41   to fill out a survey of their number one app that

00:37:47   uses the most cellular bandwidth.

00:37:48   And I'm going to do a write-up of those findings, too.

00:37:51   but a lot of them, I've looked at them so far,

00:37:52   a lot of them also say Tweetbot and Twitter.

00:37:56   - Well, it is the case with my iOS 8 phone.

00:38:01   I'm using iOS 8 this summer on the betas

00:38:03   on my year-old iPhone 5 that every time I go,

00:38:06   you go to Settings, General, Usage, Battery Usage,

00:38:10   and it shows you if you wait a couple seconds,

00:38:12   it lists your apps by battery usage.

00:38:15   Tweetbot is number one for me,

00:38:18   But I know how much I use Twitter when I'm on my phone.

00:38:22   And that includes, like when I tap a link,

00:38:25   most of the time I just read it right there

00:38:27   in Tweetbot's built-in browser.

00:38:30   - Totally, yeah. - And I'll use it

00:38:31   to watch videos too.

00:38:33   And it's not just the actual tweets that I'm reading.

00:38:37   The way that on iOS you load the web pages

00:38:40   and videos and stuff by default

00:38:41   and the Twitter client contributes to that.

00:38:43   So based on my,

00:38:47   you know and i don't know exactly how much i use tweetbot but my hunch is that their battery you

00:38:52   know their their number one ranking in the battery usage is totally fair and it's in completely in

00:38:58   line with how much i use tweetbot but i suspect that there's going to be a lot of people and i

00:39:02   even saw i think paul i think it was paul hadad from the the app bots or tweetbot whatever their

00:39:08   company name is TapBots. What did I call it? AppBots. That would work too. TapBots. He

00:39:19   even said back right after the feature was announced in WWDC that he's dreading it because

00:39:23   he knows that they're going to get blamed for, "Hey, my iPhone says TweetBots using

00:39:30   the most power."

00:39:31   Dave Asprey No, actually, you're just a Twitter addict,

00:39:33   and that's how it works.

00:39:36   So Facebook is using a lot of power in the background though, that's potentially problematic.

00:39:43   And I actually think I've turned off background app refresh for Facebook and location services.

00:39:52   And the new Foursquare app too is always polling your location, I turned all that stuff off.

00:39:58   There was a thing I linked to maybe it was months ago now, but I know it was a couple

00:40:01   weeks ago where it was a former Apple genius posting a top 10. Here's how to get more battery

00:40:06   from your iPhone and like number Oh, yeah, number one was turn off everything for Facebook

00:40:10   in the background. Totally. But it doesn't think that there I think someone was saying

00:40:16   how they did that. And then their percentage went up. Maybe even on the show. I don't know.

00:40:21   I don't know. I do know. I just checked on my beta iPhone that it doesn't list anything

00:40:25   like that screen or anything like that. It's all it's just a list of apps. But anyway, I do think

00:40:32   though that the if it has a screen and it sounds to me like it probably does that that it unless

00:40:39   Apple has invented some kind of new technology, which I wouldn't put past them, but that it could

00:40:43   mean that it's like a in the best case, you've got to charge it every couple days thing.

00:40:51   Yeah, I also met with a guy not long ago who makes chips for wearable devices and some

00:40:56   of the stuff that is going on there is interesting too, like chips that generate power based

00:41:02   on motion and that kind of stuff.

00:41:05   Right, which is an old idea from the watch world, right?

00:41:08   Where automatic watches, which have been around, I think they came out in the 50s, but I think

00:41:14   they were sort of a novelty.

00:41:15   But then by the 60s, you know, a lot of high end, most high end wristwatches were, you

00:41:19   It came with an automatic movement, which meant that once wound, if you wore it, just

00:41:27   the motion of going through the day would keep the—I forget what it's called—the

00:41:31   wellspring, something like that, some kind of spring, keep it wound.

00:41:35   As long as you keep wearing the watch, it'll stay wound.

00:41:38   Tom Bilyeu: Right.

00:41:39   I once bought a watch that was powered by water, and that was stupid.

00:41:44   That didn't work very well.

00:41:45   Dave Asprey What do you mean?

00:41:46   Are you serious?

00:41:47   Yeah, it's like there was this there was you just like put water on it and then it would supposedly

00:41:52   Shock itself maybe and it would work. It was it was awful. It's barely, you know, it didn't really work

00:41:58   I'm imagining something like the mr. Fusion Drive from back to the future

00:42:02   Where it like yeah, right?

00:42:05   Yeah, it's like it's like trying to power a light bulb with a potato or something. It just you know

00:42:11   Right, but the watch world long recognized that even just daily winding your watch

00:42:17   was a pain in the ass and

00:42:20   So I were you know, I think that the effort that went into designing automatic movements. It's to me fascinating to me. It's exactly like

00:42:28   you know, it's like that I think the type of minds even today that go into like being like a

00:42:34   you know mechanical watchmaker or

00:42:38   someone who repairs it is a lot like being a programmer because you're thinking of

00:42:41   You know if this you know, the gear moves this way it'll do this and 60 times a minute. It'll do this and

00:42:49   You know, it's the same sort of logical

00:42:52   Mindset that that required for computer programming and I think coming up with these automatic movements that never need to be wound

00:42:58   So long as you keep wearing them took an enormous amount of work

00:43:01   But I think it's because they recognized that daily every day waking up and having to wind your watch was you know?

00:43:07   keeping people from wearing watches.

00:43:10   Yeah, and how many charging stations

00:43:13   do you need next to your bed now?

00:43:15   I mean, that Motorola watch thing

00:43:18   did not look like the kind of thing

00:43:20   I'd want to have to deal with every day or two.

00:43:23   Right, and there's so many questions.

00:43:24   Like, a device you have to charge comes with so many things.

00:43:26   Number one, just how many devices

00:43:28   do you have to charge on a regular basis?

00:43:30   It's asking a lot.

00:43:32   Even asking for one is a lot.

00:43:34   There could come a time 20 or 30 years from now where we look back on having to charge

00:43:40   anything on a regular basis as laughable.

00:43:45   And yet, at the same time now, I don't have to charge my iPad every day, but I'd certainly

00:43:49   have to charge my iPhone every day.

00:43:51   And even then, it's like that means every time I travel, I've got to take a charger.

00:43:54   All right.

00:43:56   So the clasp of the watch is the lightning port plug.

00:44:01   Yeah.

00:44:02   Yeah, you know it. That's a great question. No, but like is is lightning our lightning ports waterproof

00:44:07   I've heard some people speculate that they are you know that the one reason phones the iPhone still isn't waterproof is the audio port

00:44:16   And the phones that claim to be I don't know. I think that a traditional audio port can't be made waterproof people

00:44:24   Correct me if I'm wrong

00:44:27   But that I lightning in theory could be but Apple doesn't advertise it as such because the iPhone isn't water resistant

00:44:33   So they just don't want to get into that but the lightning port could be

00:44:35   But a lightning port on a watch would be ugly

00:44:39   Yeah, I mean that's just yeah, the Nike fuel ban has this weird thing where the?

00:44:46   lock locking clasp type thing is

00:44:49   Part of the charging system, right?

00:44:53   So yeah, I guess if the if they but you still needed like a little dock for it, right and it wasn't wasn't great

00:45:00   Alright, so I guess if you hit it somewhere else on the watch on the band somewhere

00:45:05   Yeah, maybe you could do put it somewhere where it's you know, when you have it off your I've been exposed

00:45:09   But when it's on you don't see it could be something clever like that

00:45:12   But even then even if it's a lightning port you're still asking people who you know if to have another

00:45:18   lightning port at their bedside

00:45:21   Yeah, right and another one that you take with you when you travel

00:45:25   Yeah, and there's also like this wireless charging stuff

00:45:30   But it seems like it's still several years away from so wireless charging ports are in or I guess it's not a port

00:45:38   But wireless charging is interesting because then you don't have an ugly port on the device, right?

00:45:42   But then you've got to have a dock that you take with you everywhere

00:45:45   You got to have one wherever you want to charge it

00:45:47   And so if you you know have one bedside and then when you travel, what do you do?

00:45:50   Do you take your one with you, or do you have to buy a second one for $50 and keep it in

00:45:57   your suitcase?

00:45:58   Dave: Yeah, it's not ready.

00:45:59   I mean, someday it'll be built into all kinds of stuff.

00:46:02   Like I think Starbucks is rolling out new tables that have them built into the table

00:46:08   or something.

00:46:09   But it's going to take way too long before that's even…

00:46:13   Dave: Right.

00:46:15   So I don't know.

00:46:16   If it was a device without a screen, I could see how Apple could have something, a lot

00:46:21   of inventive stuff to keep power usage down and maybe, like you said, kinetic motion so

00:46:27   that you could use that to charge it.

00:46:30   I have a citizen watch from a couple years ago that has, they call it EcoDrive, E-C-O-D-R-I-V-E.

00:46:40   It's a quartz watch, battery operated, but the battery recharges with a solar cell that's

00:46:49   on the face of the watch, which you can hardly see.

00:46:53   In certain light, you can see that it's not really a black dial.

00:46:58   It's got a slightly not black in the center of it because it's actually a solar cell.

00:47:04   It's worked great.

00:47:05   The watch keeps perfect time, and I've never needed to replace the battery.

00:47:10   pass the time when you'd have to replace a regular quartz watch battery. But I don't

00:47:14   think there's much, you know, I think it, you know, using solar to charge something

00:47:20   that only tells the time and the day of the month is a far cry from even a no display

00:47:26   fitness tracker that's going to have Bluetooth and you know, other types of things like that.

00:47:32   Yeah. And the minute you had the Instagram app, all bets are off. But if it has a display,

00:47:37   I think some kind of magical charging, seemingly magical charging that doesn't need you to

00:47:43   charge it in every couple days is out of the question.

00:47:45   I think if it has a display, it's got to be something you charge every couple days

00:47:49   at least.

00:47:51   Then that means to me that it has to be far more compelling in terms of what it does to

00:47:57   get people to buy into the hassle of buying another daily or near daily charging device.

00:48:05   It's got to be way more compelling than something that, hey, just buy this, put it on your wrist,

00:48:09   and it'll just work for weeks until you need to charge it.

00:48:12   Dave Asprey Do you think it has a headphone jack?

00:48:14   Probably not if it needs to be water resistant.

00:48:16   Dave Right.

00:48:17   I think anything you put on your wrist has to be water resistant.

00:48:19   Dave Yeah.

00:48:20   I remember those old watches that had a built-in AM radio.

00:48:24   And I got very excited about that idea of listening to a baseball game without needing

00:48:31   anything else, but not very practical. Also, you look like a moron with earbuds coming

00:48:38   off your wrist. Yeah, you do. That's actually the reason I bought the TikTok is I thought,

00:48:43   Hey, this would be great. I can then I can wear my nano on my wrist when I run. But yeah,

00:48:50   somehow it's it's way too I found it way worse and that my arm was always getting tangled

00:48:54   in the cord compared to compare arm bands like kind of work. But you know, a lot of

00:49:00   people run with the arm band around your bicep or something.

00:49:03   - Right, but they--

00:49:04   - But all the way down your wrist.

00:49:05   - Right, it's because it's all the way down your wrist.

00:49:07   Yeah, it doesn't work out as well.

00:49:08   I think that if it somehow broadcasts audio,

00:49:10   it has to be over Bluetooth.

00:49:12   - Yeah, yeah.

00:49:13   Oh, right, the Bluetooth EarPods

00:49:17   that were, someone made up the fake secret about those.

00:49:22   - Oh, you're right, on the secret app,

00:49:24   somebody posted a, yeah, I don't think we,

00:49:27   I don't know if I ever talked about it on the show,

00:49:29   because it happened at WWDC.

00:49:31   - Oh, is that what it was?

00:49:32   - Yeah.

00:49:33   - It was like right before or something.

00:49:34   - No, it was while I was in San Francisco for WWDC.

00:49:37   - Oh, nice.

00:49:38   - It's such a busy, hectic week for me.

00:49:40   But yeah, there was a, again, I think top of tech meme,

00:49:43   it was like an anonymous post on Secret

00:49:45   that somebody who had been on the wireless headphones team

00:49:48   was just let go from Apple,

00:49:51   and that the whole team had been let go,

00:49:52   and that they were so bitter

00:49:53   that they were going to spoil it.

00:49:55   - Yeah, right.

00:49:56   - And there are wireless headphones

00:49:58   coming out for new devices this fall.

00:50:01   And then after everybody had taken it as,

00:50:04   oh, this anonymous post on secret, it must be true,

00:50:07   or is probably true, or is at least worth reporting,

00:50:10   then a couple days later, the same guy was like,

00:50:12   hey, I'm sorry, I made the whole thing up.

00:50:14   - Yeah. (laughs)

00:50:16   Just great, you know.

00:50:17   It's plausible, but I definitely--

00:50:20   - No, it wasn't plausible.

00:50:21   I forget the exact details of it,

00:50:22   but it wasn't plausible because it didn't make any sense--

00:50:25   - Well, wireless earbuds are kind of plausible.

00:50:27   Oh yeah, but it didn't make any sense that Apple would disband the team.

00:50:30   No, no.

00:50:31   If they were successful at designing it.

00:50:33   I mean, like if they had failed to design the headphones, maybe people would get fired

00:50:37   because hey, we told you to design wireless headphones and you didn't do it.

00:50:40   But if they did, the point of the post was that we did and that they're coming out and

00:50:43   they're pretty cool.

00:50:44   And it's like, well then why would Apple fire you?

00:50:47   Yeah.

00:50:48   Apple doesn't…

00:50:49   You get a promotion and you take over everything.

00:50:52   Right.

00:50:53   But it was funny.

00:50:54   It was like a complete…

00:50:56   No company.

00:50:57   Apple's the one company that does that what company what same company would fire

00:51:01   around a random stuff might but

00:51:04   Congratulations on just successfully. Well, I would be as part of Microsoft might as part of a downsizing, right?

00:51:12   They've announced that they've got to lay people off - they want to reduce headcount apples not having a layoff

00:51:17   No, although it was a little interesting that they got rid of so many people for beats, but I guess those were not like the core

00:51:26   people that they acquired the company for so

00:51:28   It certainly wasn't why they required the company right right?

00:51:33   I wonder if they're if that's gonna be something they talk about yet in

00:51:37   September slash October or if it's too soon for that like a you know any sort of

00:51:42   New stuff from beats new stuff from beats the one thing I'd love

00:51:47   is an Apple TV app because

00:51:50   none of the other subscription music services have one and

00:51:54   And that would be a reason for me to think about using beats, is if I could--

00:51:59   Hmm, I never thought about that.

00:52:00   --from the TV.

00:52:01   Yeah, I was thinking the other day, because I had my whole iTunes match

00:52:05   library available there, and wanted to use that to play music when we had some people over.

00:52:11   And we're like, oh, there's no Spotify app on the-- or RDO app on the Apple TV.

00:52:17   It would be awesome if they kicked one out pretty quickly for beats.

00:52:22   but it might be asking too much. It's only, I think the deal just closed like a couple weeks ago, so.

00:52:28   Yeah, I wonder about that. And I wonder, I wonder too how it ties into whether or not, and I, you

00:52:35   know, again, this is pure speculation, but whether or not there's a major Apple TV update coming soon.

00:52:42   You know, even if it's...

00:52:44   Well, isn't there like a beta one with it, with a slightly refreshed look or something?

00:52:49   No, I don't know about that. I don't know if it has a new look. If there is, I didn't see that.

00:52:52   I think there was a new build last week. I don't know. I don't touch the betas for that

00:52:58   kind of stuff. So I'm not sure. All right. But I just wonder though, that if Apple was going

00:53:03   to commit to making a beats app for Apple TV, whether they would do it for the current

00:53:08   Apple TV generation or put that in the third major version of the iOS Apple TV.

00:53:17   Yeah, they've been adding a bunch of stuff. A lot of it is, you know, not very useful, but...

00:53:22   Although I think there's a new NFL app coming or something like that.

00:53:26   Yeah. Well, isn't it going to have...

00:53:29   ...possible to do the Sunday ticket?

00:53:35   I don't know if they announced that. I think... Because I think DirecTV still controls that,

00:53:40   but I think there's an NFL app that does other stuff.

00:53:44   But I don't I haven't been paying that close of attention. No, here it is Apple TV NFL Sunday ticket coming to iOS

00:53:51   Oh, not not Apple TV iOS and Mac for 20 right now it is decoupled from

00:53:57   Direct TV now it's no longer exclusive to direct TV, which I think is gonna be huge. Well

00:54:02   No, that's not actually true. No now

00:54:06   People got really excited because there was some news release about that

00:54:11   But if you if you read the fine print you have to punch in your zip code and

00:54:15   Most of America does not qualify for the streaming direct streaming Sunday ticket like my in Chicago

00:54:24   My mom's zip code does not qualify in New York

00:54:28   You can do it, but you've always been able to do in New York because it's almost impossible to get direct TV here

00:54:33   But yeah, that was like blown way out of proportion that's actually not

00:54:39   Hmm not that not happening

00:54:41   It's like University people who live in dorms can do it and then also people who live in

00:54:47   Basically, New York City and maybe I don't know about some other

00:54:51   cities where you just can't install a dish or that they assume most people can't because obviously I guess some people in New York City could

00:54:59   but

00:55:00   right

00:55:01   But most we need like a place to you know, screw in the satellite dish with the southern reception and all that kind of stuff

00:55:09   I don't have that.

00:55:13   So anyway, I don't know, but there's like I think an NFL app coming that does some other

00:55:20   stuff.

00:55:21   Yeah, some NFL app.

00:55:22   I don't know.

00:55:23   Well, most of the other major pro leagues have something similar.

00:55:28   Yeah.

00:55:29   At least in the US.

00:55:30   I mean, that's half the reason I have an Apple TV is the at bat or whatever it's called.

00:55:36   Now no breaking new ground here, but it does though, every time they add an app or whatever

00:55:44   you want to call them, a channel to the current Apple TV, it strains the limits of the simple

00:55:50   up, down, left, right, infrared remote more and more.

00:55:55   So I'd still think that it's a sign that a new Apple TV is coming with some kind of new

00:56:00   UI.

00:56:01   Yeah, at this point.

00:56:04   And you can hide this stuff, I guess, but all the things that make the App Store so

00:56:14   logical and great, like developers being able to issue updates and all that kind of stuff,

00:56:19   that's still very much missing from Apple TV.

00:56:23   The infrared thing, it's just strained more and more.

00:56:27   it's like especially like some coasters in front of my apple tv and i i couldn't use the remote i

00:56:33   had to move them right so they were blocking the line of sight right like we have uh the xbox one

00:56:40   now and i don't you really use it as a tv but it's like the main xbox interface though is is

00:56:46   sort of like windows 7 you know with tiles and some of the tiles are big and some are small but

00:56:51   you largely navigate it up down left right select but because you have a real controller and it's

00:56:57   you know, got a Bluetooth connection. Every time you hit up, it goes up. Every time you hit

00:57:02   right, it goes right. And it happens instantly because it's a controller that's built for,

00:57:06   you know, video game like timing. And then every time I go back to the Apple TV, and it's like

00:57:16   up, up, up, up, up, just to go up once. Trying to target the little sensor exactly. It's like,

00:57:23   God, this is maddening. Even just switching the Bluetooth would be a huge upgrade. I think that

00:57:26   they'll probably do more but even if they just came out with an apple tv that had a bluetooth

00:57:30   remote and stuck to up down left right select it would be an upgrade i think that's probably the

00:57:36   kind of thing that's ready to roll they're just they're waiting for other stuff but i wonder too

00:57:40   though if they have something more in mind for the main interface than just a five by whatever grid

00:57:47   of apps because it's there's a certain limit to that you know to the usefulness of that yeah i

00:57:54   You know, but you also think they may have done that for the phone by now and they haven't done anything like that

00:58:00   So I wonder and if they do it with the beats app, I wonder it would be an interesting sign of

00:58:05   How are they gonna treat beats?

00:58:07   like are they gonna treat beats as part of Apple because you know how like there's you can

00:58:11   Hold select down on Apple TV on any of the apps outside the top row and move them around

00:58:16   So like if you use Netflix all the time, you can make sure that it's in the upper left

00:58:22   Right below the built-in movies app, but the movies TV shows music computers and settings apps

00:58:28   Are locked in in the top row the ones that are tied to Apple stuff?

00:58:32   Like would be beats treated as one of those Apple things that you can't move around or would it be?

00:58:36   like

00:58:39   More like iTunes trailers, which is an app that you can move all the way to the bottom if you don't use it

00:58:44   Right. Yeah, I mean my guess is probably more like iTunes trailers

00:58:49   Yeah, I think so, but then they have two different music services. I don't know it gets weird but I

00:58:54   Where does beats go on in iOS - is it become part of the music app or is it always a separate app store app?

00:59:02   All right, I think I think they're gonna keep it separate and I think they're gonna keep

00:59:06   Again, the and the retail stores I brought this up weeks ago like when it was first announced

00:59:10   but like are they going to get rid of the

00:59:12   Bose headphones and then you know, oh no JBL no, but are they gonna give beats special treatment?

00:59:19   I mean, I don't think they'll give beats bad treatment and they might give them slightly premium treatment, you know in terms of I think

00:59:25   They kind of do already. I mean, yeah, it seems like so many of the headphones were beats to begin

00:59:30   Yeah, I noticed that I want as soon as they announced before they even announced it when it just was like a reported

00:59:36   Hey Apple is going to buy them for this much money and we were all like wow

00:59:39   I stopped in the Apple Store just to look at how much beat stuff they had and where it was and I guess it I

00:59:46   I think it was safe to say that it was the most dominant headphone in the Apple store

00:59:50   already, but still treated like this is…here's a section of the store where we sell stuff

00:59:56   from other companies.

00:59:57   Yeah.

00:59:58   All right.

00:59:59   Let me take a break and thank our second sponsor, our good friends at Squarespace.

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01:02:04   thanks to Squarespace, a long-time supporter of this show. So what else were we talking about?

01:02:10   We're talking about, I guess, the events next week, next month, whatever.

01:02:13   Tom Bilyeu (01h00m 5s): Yeah, well, do you want to talk about the

01:02:16   international, like the Samsung's troubles in…

01:02:21   Pete L

01:02:21   uh, yeah, cause you wrote about that. That was actually, I wrote a little about it and I mean,

01:02:27   I've been reading a lot about it and obviously I don't have the encyclopedic knowledge that

01:02:33   say Benedict Evans or, or Ben Thompson have about, you know, the Asian markets, uh, for

01:02:41   mobile devices, but it's really interesting what's happening right now because, uh, and this was,

01:02:48   I don't know if I should, I don't know if I was going to write this post or not, but

01:02:51   remember that slide from the original iPhone announcement where Steve Jobs had all the old

01:02:57   smartphones up? Yeah. It seems like all those companies are gone, basically. Yeah, it was. It

01:03:04   was like Palm, Palm Nokia and Blackberry, right? Something like that. Yeah. And did he have a

01:03:10   Samsung up? If he did, it was the Samsung Blackjack, which was their hilariously

01:03:17   - Literally a copy of the Blackberry.

01:03:20   I know he referenced the Blackjack here.

01:03:23   It's the Motorola Q, the Blackberry, the Palm Trio,

01:03:28   and the Nokia E62.

01:03:31   - Yeah, so Motorola, Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry.

01:03:35   - Yeah, basically all toast.

01:03:37   So it's interesting because,

01:03:39   and that happened over the course of several years,

01:03:43   and of course, Motorola is still technically,

01:03:46   I think now part of--

01:03:48   - It's going to be part of Lenovo.

01:03:51   - That's what I think.

01:03:52   - I don't know if that's actually finalized yet though.

01:03:54   I don't know that it has.

01:03:55   - I think so, I don't know.

01:03:56   But Nokia's part of Microsoft

01:03:58   and HP probably still owns the rights to someday relaunch

01:04:03   Palm or something like that.

01:04:06   - Yeah.

01:04:06   - And BlackBerry's still technically in business too.

01:04:09   But you see Samsung flying high and besides Apple,

01:04:14   the only truly profitable company in mobile,

01:04:16   then all of a sudden things aren't looking so great.

01:04:20   You know, in the story that they're getting kind of their butts kicked in China and things

01:04:26   aren't so great in India either where they supposedly had built such a great distribution

01:04:31   system and that kind of stuff.

01:04:32   It's fascinating.

01:04:33   And, you know, people…

01:04:34   Well, in China they've been passed, they've lost the number one spot for smartphones to

01:04:39   Xiaomi, right?

01:04:42   I guess.

01:04:43   Of course, that's the kind of thing that it's probably close and it could probably change back and and it's but still yeah

01:04:49   And it's to be fair. It's based on

01:04:52   largely on third-party market share

01:04:55   Summaries from companies like IDC which I just linked to a few weeks ago about how?

01:05:00   Yeah, how made up some of their PC market share numbers have been over the years, you know

01:05:06   But it's the best that we can go by but at the very least we in there pretty, you know

01:05:10   I'm sure they're in the ballpark right but sticking to facts. We do know that financially Samsung has reported a bad a bump quarter

01:05:17   Yeah, that's a fact

01:05:19   So it's not out of the question that you know

01:05:23   It seems like it it matches with that that they've lost momentum in China and then they've lost momentum in India

01:05:29   which is very different and we and I linked to

01:05:31   Ben Thompson piece and a news report, you know, but about how different India is from China that we

01:05:39   They call it the brick countries. I've said this before and it's so weird to me, but it's Brazil Russia India and China

01:05:45   But really all that those that they're you know that there's different economics from like Western Europe and the US

01:05:52   But the thing that the only thing that those countries really have in common is that they're huge

01:05:56   And then there's a lot of people in all of them

01:05:58   but like India and China really can't be lumped together as one thing because

01:06:02   Economically, they're so very different

01:06:05   like there may be you know a billion poor people truly and

01:06:10   You know so many electronics are made in China that that was

01:06:14   Natural for for local Chinese companies to all of a sudden

01:06:20   But the biggest difference and Ben Thompson wrote about this was is that in China has incredible economic

01:06:27   What's it called inequality

01:06:30   Where yes, there are the poor people in China are very very poor by our standard

01:06:35   But there's an awful lot of people who, or some number of people in China who make,

01:06:40   you know, have very high income.

01:06:43   It's spread tremendously.

01:06:45   And even if it's only a few percent, a few percent of, you know, two billion people in

01:06:49   China is tens, if not hundreds of millions of people.

01:06:53   And in India, the poor are even poorer, and there's not as much income inequality, where

01:07:00   the people at the top aren't making as much as the people in China.

01:07:04   So it's a very different economic situation.

01:07:07   I think the problem Samsung face--

01:07:08   or the other thing that Samsung--

01:07:10   this is what I wanted to mention.

01:07:10   And I think I'd like to hear your thoughts on it--

01:07:13   is to me, it ties in with a trend

01:07:15   that I've noticed recently is that people have sort of shut

01:07:18   up about Apple needs to make a cheap iPhone, which I think

01:07:22   was part of a narrative that started about two to three

01:07:25   years ago, which was, hey, Samsung is gaining market

01:07:28   share, whether it was in the US or worldwide in smartphones.

01:07:33   and androids

01:07:36   to gaining even faster but samsung's gobbling up a huge part of it that

01:07:40   that there go apples in trouble

01:07:43   and to the only way they can

01:07:45   win back market shares with the cheap

01:07:48   cheap iphone

01:07:49   uh... which is very different thing than a lower

01:07:52   priced iphone

01:07:53   like just gently edging lower and lower into lower price points year-over-year

01:07:59   that apple needs to jump in headfirst with the cheap i've found to stave this

01:08:03   off

01:08:04   kiz look samsung's killing samsung is just uh... or is growing too fast and

01:08:09   now that samsung's cooled off i think it coincides with people

01:08:14   close to j_ r_ ho had a post on business insider maybe apple knows what it's

01:08:18   doing without a time strategy after all something to that yet totally but it was

01:08:23   funny it's it's a funny headline and i know that the machel made fun of it

01:08:26   But in some ways, it's actually a great headline because it actually, to me, encapsulates what I

01:08:32   think a lot of analysts, pundits, and investors are actually thinking.

01:08:37   I think it's a little more nuanced than that, though, because it's not just that Samsung,

01:08:44   the phone maker, was cleaning Apple's clock. It's that Android, the platform,

01:08:53   was if market share is what you're going by,

01:08:56   Android has destroyed Apple, period.

01:08:59   Like, it's not even close.

01:09:02   It's not Windows Mac level, but it's like, whatever,

01:09:05   70, 30 or something like that worldwide, 80, 20, I don't know.

01:09:10   And the thinking was that if this is the new,

01:09:16   if this is the new OS platform war,

01:09:19   and for the next 20 years or something like that,

01:09:24   then Apple can't afford to not be the dominant player there

01:09:28   because this isn't just about phones,

01:09:31   this is about tablets and all kinds of future devices

01:09:35   and now extending to televisions

01:09:37   and probably now wearables and all that kind of stuff.

01:09:40   So if Apple loses people's phones,

01:09:44   they've lost that person's whole life

01:09:46   And if this is the new software platform

01:09:50   for the next couple decades,

01:09:51   then that's potentially troublesome.

01:09:53   But I think we've seen that maybe

01:09:57   the market share advantage that Android has

01:10:00   is a lot more splintered than

01:10:02   the Western dominated Windows Mac war.

01:10:06   Like what's going on with Android in China

01:10:10   is probably pretty different than what's going on

01:10:13   with Android in Western markets.

01:10:16   hardware and software wise and you have these messaging companies that catch on in different

01:10:24   markets and become really huge and popular and that kind of stuff.

01:10:29   Maybe it's a dawning realization on more people that market share isn't everything.

01:10:35   It doesn't trump everything.

01:10:37   Mobile is different and that market share and mobile is different than it meant in the

01:10:42   PC platform.

01:10:44   As I've said before though, even in PCs, the Mac still exists.

01:10:48   And by most accounts I've seen in terms of traditional PC, not counting tablets, just

01:10:53   counting what we always thought of, things with Intel CPUs, x86 CPUs, laptops, desktops

01:10:59   running either Windows or Mac or Linux, that Apple makes about 50% of the profit in the

01:11:07   whole PC industry.

01:11:09   far and away number one in terms of the profit they have in the PC industry in a what everybody

01:11:15   would consider a mature market, a settled mature market.

01:11:22   And I would say it's also almost never now that you run into the real problem which was

01:11:27   that software existed for Windows but not for Mac.

01:11:31   You can pretty much get whatever you want for Mac.

01:11:34   Obviously there's some stuff that's still games.

01:11:37   is still a different situation.

01:11:40   - Right, although mobile has kind of,

01:11:43   and the game consoles have kind of made PCs

01:11:46   less important for gaming.

01:11:47   - Yeah, I don't see people complain.

01:11:49   I still think clearly Windows PCs are far more,

01:11:53   have more new titles and run things better.

01:11:57   - Excel is still better for Windows, obviously, but--

01:12:00   - But I don't see people complaining

01:12:01   about games on Macs anymore so much,

01:12:03   mainly because I think mobile is a bigger deal

01:12:05   consoles are a bigger deal.

01:12:08   Yeah.

01:12:08   But this was the big fear that if Android gets this huge advantage in

01:12:13   market share, that all of a sudden, all the best apps are going to be either

01:12:18   Android first or Android only.

01:12:21   And as my reporting about a month and a half ago proved, that's not the case.

01:12:27   Like Android, despite its massive market share lead, is still either getting

01:12:33   developed at the same time as iOS or after.

01:12:38   There are very few important apps that are Android first or Android only.

01:12:45   I don't know if that's going to change.

01:12:46   It might.

01:12:47   But it doesn't look like it.

01:12:49   It doesn't seem to be happening.

01:12:53   So that's what that whole market share/platform war argument was about.

01:13:00   And I know that's what Jay was thinking because Jay and I were working together and

01:13:03   we were talking about this stuff.

01:13:07   And Henry, our boss, was the one writing that the iPhone was dead in the water.

01:13:13   Remember that?

01:13:14   And that was all based on the argument that this platform war really, really, really mattered

01:13:21   and that market share was key to that.

01:13:24   And I think we're learning that mobile is a little different, at least so far.

01:13:30   No one knows what's going to happen in a few years.

01:13:31   Well, I think the thing that's different is the post-internet world.

01:13:36   I think that's the thing that really…

01:13:38   A lot of things happened between '95, 1994, '95, and 1998, which I think people confused

01:13:49   in their head as meaning, "Hey, when you lose the market share war, you go away.

01:13:53   You go bye-bye."

01:13:54   a lot of people summed it up as in the back of their heads that Windows 95 came out and was

01:14:01   either as good or at least good enough as the Mac. And people, you know, Windows 95 came out and

01:14:09   people lined up around stores to get it at midnight like they do for Apple products,

01:14:14   right? It was that popular, right? I mean, that's, that's, I mean, just a good basic rule of thumb.

01:14:20   If you have normal consumers lining up around the block to get into a store to buy your

01:14:26   product, you've got something.

01:14:28   Apple has that now.

01:14:29   Microsoft had it then.

01:14:31   And it was a problem for Apple.

01:14:34   And a big thing too was with the big, whether it was 90 to 10, 95, 5, whatever the percentage

01:14:41   split was between Windows and Mac PCs, when you had to interchange stuff by floppy disk,

01:14:47   and even the floppy disks had different formats.

01:14:49   And if you put a Mac floppy disk into a Windows PC, it would say, "Do you need to reformat

01:14:54   this?"

01:14:55   And you'd lose everything on it.

01:14:56   And Macs eventually gained the ability to read DOS formatted disks, but Microsoft was

01:15:01   never going to bother supporting Mac formatted disks.

01:15:04   And the file formats weren't the same.

01:15:06   And if you had a Word document that was created on a PC and you opened it, Microsoft Word

01:15:09   on your Mac, and everything reflowed, and then when you sent it back to people, it was

01:15:14   all screwed up.

01:15:15   It was all a problem.

01:15:16   And it was all—

01:15:17   - Didn't we buy some $60 app to just convert?

01:15:20   - Yeah, I forget the name of that.

01:15:22   It was great.

01:15:22   It worked a charm.

01:15:24   I forget the name of that app.

01:15:25   I know exactly what you're talking about.

01:15:27   But all those things, but then the internet happened.

01:15:29   And then Apple got into financial problems

01:15:32   and really was on the cusp of bankruptcy.

01:15:34   But not really so much just because of market share

01:15:37   and problems on the Mac,

01:15:38   but just that the company was horribly run

01:15:40   and that they'd had these failed initiatives

01:15:43   that the next, it was a far more complex story

01:15:45   than just market share.

01:15:46   But the internet really healed over the whole, "Hey, I'm using platform A and you're

01:15:54   using platform B and we need to communicate and exchange stuff."

01:15:57   Right?

01:15:58   And that really helped, I think, not just Apple, but anybody who wanted to come up with

01:16:01   a new platform forever after, is that you don't have to worry about it.

01:16:05   I mean, even just simple networking, just getting a Mac and Windows computer on the

01:16:08   same network in the early 90s was almost impossible, and especially to have them both be treated

01:16:14   as peers.

01:16:15   Whereas the internet is this open standard,

01:16:18   you know, involves all these open standards for networking.

01:16:21   - Yeah, and even if you look at the native apps

01:16:23   that are the most popular on Android and iOS,

01:16:27   they're all basically just interface code,

01:16:30   you know, interacting with an API.

01:16:32   So even if, you know, Android gets some sort of,

01:16:36   you know, market share advantage, it's not that hard.

01:16:39   Like people would build Windows apps

01:16:40   and then not build a Mac app because it was,

01:16:44   and a lot of money and time and all this stuff and documents

01:16:47   and all that sort of everything you just described.

01:16:49   But the difference between building an iOS app

01:16:52   and an Android app is mostly just interface code

01:16:54   at this point. - Right.

01:16:55   So in really broad terms, conceptually,

01:16:57   the whole computing world is built on,

01:16:59   the foundation is now the internet.

01:17:01   - Yeah. - And it's,

01:17:03   not just the World Wide Web, but TCP/IP in general

01:17:06   and HTTP, it's the internet.

01:17:08   And then we all pick devices that run a certain platform

01:17:12   and connect to the internet.

01:17:14   Whereas pre-internet, the foundation of the world

01:17:17   was whatever operating system your computer was running.

01:17:20   And so if you were on a Mac, the Mac OS

01:17:23   and the ecosystem of Mac apps

01:17:25   was the foundation of the computing world.

01:17:27   And for PCs, it was Windows and Windows apps.

01:17:31   And that meant that they were not compatible.

01:17:33   So I think in the modern world,

01:17:34   it's very possible,

01:17:39   not just for two platforms to coexist and thrive,

01:17:42   like Android and iOS, but it could be three.

01:17:45   I think it's unlikely that there'd be a slew,

01:17:47   that there'd be like 10 different platforms

01:17:50   for mobile devices that would thrive.

01:17:53   - But yeah, we're seeing like third place now dip to,

01:17:56   what, 3% of the market or four?

01:17:59   So it looks like a two horse race at this point.

01:18:02   - But I don't think it's inconceivable.

01:18:04   Reroll the dice for the last six or seven years,

01:18:07   and you come up with an alternate universe

01:18:09   where maybe if it had come out a little sooner

01:18:12   and it had more corporate support,

01:18:14   that Palm OS was still 6%, 7%, like a max sized market.

01:18:19   And with good margins, it's a good business.

01:18:23   - Yeah.

01:18:24   - But I think a lot of people looked at those,

01:18:27   that Apple's near bankruptcy and decided

01:18:30   that in a platform battle, if you don't win,

01:18:33   you're gonna go bankrupt.

01:18:34   And don't really think about the fact that Apple came back

01:18:37   And that that was a long time ago.

01:18:39   And that now that the market has matured, the Mac business has been thriving

01:18:43   for well over a decade consistently.

01:18:45   So by those lines, the company then that may be in the greatest position of power

01:18:52   is not necessarily the company that runs the OS, but the company that runs those

01:18:57   backend services, um, which increasingly is Google.

01:19:03   And so, but I'm also a little surprised by how committed Google has been to continuing to make

01:19:11   stuff for iOS, you know, to the point that they would even sponsor your website. When they could,

01:19:19   theoretically, say, "Okay, from now on, our best stuff is Android only." And, you know,

01:19:25   there's some stuff like Google now, I think, is probably going to be a better experience than

01:19:28   Android because yeah well Google now is a unique example because it's really tied into the the

01:19:34   system you know the idea that you need to launch an app for it really defeats it it really wants

01:19:37   to be in that that gifted position that Siri is in yeah so if that if if that sort of feed stream

01:19:45   AI type thing is the future of you know mobile computing then that's the kind of thing where

01:19:51   Apple market share could be a problem right like like you know unless Apple does a better job at

01:19:58   that with Siri, although, you know, I think, for example, I think that there were an R

01:20:02   third party keyboard apps for iOS now, but they just run as an app and, you know, show their

01:20:09   keyboard and you do your typing and copy and paste it and go back to another app and paste it into

01:20:13   the app, which nobody's going to do. Like the only way you could really have a thriving market of

01:20:19   third party keyboards for your OS is if you really support them at the system level, like Apple's

01:20:24   doing it i think that that's probably popular

01:20:27   whereas something like google now isn't really going to have a chance to thrive

01:20:31   unless apple somehow made siri

01:20:33   that sort of thing where you could replace siri

01:20:37   google now or with uh...

01:20:41   katana

01:20:42   yeah i don't know if they would ever do that

01:20:44   jeanette i've just me talking made the i_o_s_ eight uh...

01:20:48   hahaha hey siri thing

01:20:49   i was wondering what that was

01:20:52   that's funny

01:20:53   Seems like I cut you off.

01:20:55   Can you please repeat that?

01:20:56   Yeah.

01:20:57   It said, it heard me save, replace Siri with,

01:21:00   and she got upset.

01:21:02   - Nice.

01:21:03   Yeah, so I wonder if there's a point at which Google,

01:21:06   you know, sees the market share in their advantage,

01:21:10   and says, all right, well, we're done doing Google Maps

01:21:12   for iOS now, or something like that.

01:21:14   But it doesn't seem to be the direction they're going in.

01:21:17   - Yeah, and as Microsoftian as Google sometimes,

01:21:20   old Microsoftian as Google sometimes is,

01:21:22   that doesn't seem to be the way they think.

01:21:25   That would be--

01:21:25   - Well, I--

01:21:26   - I think there might be some people within Google

01:21:28   who think that, but I think that certainly

01:21:29   the people making the iOS SHAPs aren't, would be--

01:21:33   - And I think they're so scared of antitrust stuff

01:21:37   that they won't, because that could really screw them up.

01:21:42   Like if they had to chop themselves up.

01:21:45   So, you know, a public seeming support for iOS

01:21:51   probably makes them look really good.

01:21:53   - Yeah, in the same way that it did for Microsoft in 1997,

01:21:56   when they cut the deal with Apple

01:21:57   and committed to five years of office support

01:22:01   and stuff like that.

01:22:02   Even more so because Microsoft was already in

01:22:05   big antitrust trouble at the time.

01:22:06   - Right. - Right.

01:22:08   Yeah, that's something that Google has to worry about

01:22:10   that Apple doesn't because Google has at least one monopoly,

01:22:14   which is on web search.

01:22:16   - Yeah, and Chrome is starting to move in that direction too

01:22:20   Well, I don't think Chrome is ever going to get to monopoly size, though.

01:22:27   No, probably not.

01:22:28   But the other thing they're doing now, and I actually learned a lot about this on Friday,

01:22:34   is that the EU is really looking into the way they're using Google+ as part of search

01:22:42   results.

01:22:43   Mm-hmm.

01:22:44   And they may just get a slap on the wrist, but some other stuff might happen that makes

01:22:49   it really bad for them so I don't know. But, so we'll see about that. But yeah, Google

01:22:56   search is obviously their biggest.

01:22:57   Well the EU, I know the EU is largely skeptical and I do, I'd, you know, wouldn't be surprised

01:23:04   at all. Maybe I'd be more surprised if something big doesn't come of it. But just the general

01:23:08   way that Google favors its own products and search results.

01:23:11   Yeah.

01:23:12   That like if you just

01:23:13   Yeah, and it's getting worse and

01:23:15   If you just type in, I'm guessing, I don't know, I'm going to go to Google and just type,

01:23:18   If you type calendar software, does it suggest Google Calendar?

01:23:24   And I know that when you search for businesses,

01:23:26   they show Google+ results for that business.

01:23:29   It's not part of-- well, it doesn't show Google Calendar

01:23:33   as a first result, but I don't know.

01:23:36   But I know if you type a restaurant name,

01:23:38   it favors the Google+ page for that.

01:23:41   Oh, you know what?

01:23:42   If you just type calendar-- all right,

01:23:43   if you just type the word calendar into Google,

01:23:44   the first result is Google Calendar.

01:23:46   Oh, nice.

01:23:47   Well, I don't know.

01:23:51   I don't know, but I know that the EU looks very askance at that, because that's what

01:23:56   they would call, is it bundling?

01:23:59   I don't know what the antitrust term for it is, but it's using, it's exactly what Microsoft

01:24:04   got in trouble with with Windows.

01:24:07   Having a monopoly is not necessarily illegal, and often isn't illegal at all, but using

01:24:11   that monopoly to gain an advantage in a different market is.

01:24:15   is.

01:24:16   Right.

01:24:17   And if they're using the Google search monopoly to promote Google+ unreasonably against natural

01:24:25   competitors, then that could be problematic.

01:24:28   And not having a monopoly gives Apple way more freedom than they would otherwise.

01:24:34   There's probably an arm's length list of things that Apple is doing that if iOS had 90% smartphone

01:24:42   market share would certainly have.

01:24:45   I certainly have the EU taking them to court and might even have the US Department of Justice,

01:24:50   which has, even with Obama in the seventh year of his administration, is far more business friendly

01:24:58   than the EU. Yeah, the App Store itself. Yeah, I think, yeah, that's probably the prime example,

01:25:06   that the way that they run the App Store and that there's no sideloading of apps,

01:25:09   that would probably be the central, that would probably be the big one. That would probably be

01:25:15   like the centerpiece of a legal fight. And I don't think they'd be able to win it.

01:25:19   Yeah, which things have… I remember when the App Store first launched, that was kind of a lot of

01:25:25   controversy. But people seem to have gotten used to it. And with test flight, who knows? In a

01:25:34   couple years, there could be more widespread sideloading of apps, but who knows?

01:25:41   But that would definitely be the thing. And I've even seen people make the stupid argument,

01:25:44   which is that Apple does have a monopoly. They have a monopoly on the OS for iPhones,

01:25:48   but that's not a monopoly.

01:25:51   Yeah. Is anyone running Android? Can you crack an iPhone and run Android on there? I don't think so.

01:25:57   I've seen people try. Maybe there was like once or twice a long time ago where somebody got

01:26:02   something vaguely working, but it's not a thing. Well, you cannot. So back to Samsung,

01:26:10   I think that the other thing that we're really seeing is that Samsung has, they've done a

01:26:18   great job and they've obviously had a good couple of years, but that they're, it's increasingly

01:26:23   becoming obvious that they're getting pinched on both sides, that Apple still dominates,

01:26:29   or maybe not dominates, but certainly has a long-term sustained advantage at the high

01:26:33   end of the smartphone market, like the multi-hundred priced handsets that Apple still sells a majority

01:26:40   of those.

01:26:41   Dave Asprey Which is historically where the profits are.

01:26:44   Dave Asprey Yeah, where the profits are.

01:26:46   And at the low end, at the lower priced end, where Apple doesn't compete at all, they're

01:26:50   increasingly losing to companies like Xiaomi and other ones that a lot of us here in the

01:26:57   US haven't even heard of or don't even have access to.

01:27:01   But certainly that's been a problem for them in China.

01:27:04   And that is where their market share is eroding.

01:27:07   Right, and those get people to look at Samsung stuff and then maybe even buy a higher end

01:27:14   thing or something like that.

01:27:15   Right, and you lose the advantage to maybe it's not high margin, but low margin times

01:27:22   a big number still equals a lot of money.

01:27:24   Yeah.

01:27:25   And you lose that advantage.

01:27:28   And then all the scale advantages that come with all that.

01:27:34   The post I published that you linked to obviously was a little tongue in cheek.

01:27:39   Here's Samsung's future stock chart and it was the Nokia chart from the day the iPhone

01:27:45   launched to the day that Microsoft bought Nokia, which looks like a downhill ski slope.

01:27:54   I don't think that's the future for Samsung.

01:27:58   huge conglomerate and they do so much more stuff than I think Nokia did, ranging from

01:28:05   TVs to the chips that go into other phones and that kind of stuff. I don't see them collapsing,

01:28:13   but it doesn't look great either. They've proven to be more nimble than Nokia,

01:28:20   but I don't know if they're nimble enough. They don't really have good footing in this market,

01:28:27   where I think Apple does and I think company like Xiaomi does and maybe even I know Ben

01:28:34   Thompson is a big is bullish on Lenovo once they finish the Motorola app acquisition and

01:28:45   Lenovo might do really well in China and other places just you know nipping you know five

01:28:52   percent here six percent there seven percent to another company and all of a sudden the

01:28:55   low end is bifurcated and maybe is a lot more like the PC market.

01:29:01   Yeah and now all of a sudden Apple has a 5-inch iPhone and maybe you don't need to buy that

01:29:06   Galaxy Note.

01:29:07   Right.

01:29:08   The last few years, to compare the smartphone market and the PC market, the last few years

01:29:13   have been sort of like if one PC maker just had an enormous market share of Windows, 60-70%

01:29:23   of Windows sales, like raw Dells, that would be really good for Dell.

01:29:27   But that's not how the PC market is.

01:29:29   The PC market, I think the number one spot has moved around a lot, but it's never been

01:29:34   more than 20% for HP or Dell or any one company.

01:29:42   You quickly get into that long tail where there's all sorts of no-name companies making

01:29:46   really cheap machines, and it's all split up.

01:29:50   As we can see, there's no money to be made in a market like that.

01:29:56   Nobody else other than Apple is making big money in PCs.

01:29:59   It might soon be that no other company other than Apple is making big money in mobile handsets.

01:30:04   Dave Asprey Right.

01:30:05   There's nothing locking Samsung customers into Samsung the way that there would be.

01:30:12   They've tried too.

01:30:13   They've tried to make their own music.

01:30:16   and I think, I don't know if they ever did their own app store, but they, you know, they

01:30:21   show up in music, they do have an app store and none of that really caught on, I think

01:30:27   in large part because they're not very good at software.

01:30:32   And also Google has pressured all the Android companies to, you know, kind of promote Google

01:30:38   Play and not, you know, at risk of losing all the Google support.

01:30:44   So I think Google has made it such that Samsung really doesn't have that much to lock people

01:30:51   into.

01:30:52   Right.

01:30:53   I think they're obviously aware of it because there's no other reason that Tizen, their

01:30:56   own software platform, even exists.

01:31:00   But like you said, they're just not good at it.

01:31:01   And if they're not even good at making apps for Android, I mean, how good are they going

01:31:05   to be at making an entire platform?

01:31:08   And it's such an uphill battle.

01:31:10   I mean, Microsoft, who we know is good at making platforms and good at making developer

01:31:16   tools and creating developer APIs, can't get much traction in the market and can't get

01:31:23   first-class support from third-party developers the way that Android and iOS have.

01:31:28   Well, then how is Samsung going to do it with an all-new platform, right?

01:31:31   Because it's not just good enough.

01:31:32   Even if they made a version of Tizen that was, objectively speaking, good enough, you

01:31:38   know like as good as android it's that alone doesn't mean that they would get an app store

01:31:44   full of third-party apps right it's totally and then even if and if they don't then it's dead in

01:31:50   the water you know to borrow henry's phrase it really would be yeah i'm i mean because look at

01:31:55   microsoft has been trying to even pay companies to make windows phone apps and that's been such

01:32:01   an uphill battle, as it is.

01:32:05   To close the loop on this, it really makes it just seem even how much more impressive

01:32:12   and unlikely it was for Apple to succeed so strongly because they weren't making mobile

01:32:20   phones before and they weren't making touch-based operating systems and app stores and all that

01:32:26   kind of stuff.

01:32:27   It was kind of nuts how well they've done.

01:32:31   and the profit margins and all that sort of stuff.

01:32:34   And not just pieces of it, but all of it.

01:32:36   Like it's, the iPhone really is a lot more,

01:32:39   you know, for all the praise it's gotten,

01:32:41   it really is more, even more impressive than it seems.

01:32:45   - Yeah, I totally agree.

01:32:46   And I think that it's, the way that they made it look easy,

01:32:50   makes it easy to overlook that.

01:32:52   - Yeah.

01:32:53   - Yeah, I'm just looking here.

01:32:54   So Instagram, this is one example,

01:32:55   but Instagram for Windows Phone debuted eight months ago.

01:32:59   so early 2014, but Instagram for Android came in March 2012.

01:33:04   So two years after Android,

01:33:06   they came out with a Windows phone version,

01:33:08   and Instagram was rather famous for being iOS only

01:33:11   for what seemed like a long time.

01:33:14   Seemed like the Android version

01:33:15   took them a long time to get to.

01:33:18   - Right, and I remember reading that it was Nokia

01:33:21   that actually got them to do a Windows version,

01:33:25   not even Microsoft.

01:33:26   it was that they were impressed by the cameras on

01:33:30   nokia hardware so they went

01:33:32   when build a windows phone right so just repeat that over and over again with

01:33:35   everybody and then you know filter that down to the smaller developers you know

01:33:39   the true indie shops where it's just a handful of developers and designers

01:33:44   and you're just not going to get

01:33:46   they're just you're not going to get the support 'cause they're all writing

01:33:49   i_o_s_ and

01:33:51   and and right now

01:33:53   I should look at the BlackBerry app store and see what's going on there right now.

01:33:57   I bet a lot of people have abandoned the companies that had made apps even at the beginning of

01:34:03   it might not be doing that anymore.

01:34:06   I wonder if there's an updated MLB app this year.

01:34:10   I don't even know.

01:34:11   Yeah, maybe, but I wonder.

01:34:13   Yeah, I don't even know about that.

01:34:15   There used to be.

01:34:17   I have a bit of FU.

01:34:19   I know most podcasts do the FU at the beginning.

01:34:22   I should mention this.

01:34:24   Actually, I guess we should...

01:34:25   Oh, there's still At Bat for BlackBerry.

01:34:27   Look at that.

01:34:28   Look at that.

01:34:29   At Bat 2014?

01:34:30   Yup.

01:34:31   I bet there's some good stories behind that.

01:34:33   I wonder if it runs on... does it run on both platforms, though?

01:34:36   Is it just for the old BlackBerry, or does it run on the BlackBerry 10?

01:34:41   Because it's two different platforms.

01:34:42   BlackBerry 10.

01:34:43   Huh.

01:34:44   So there you go.

01:34:45   But you must purchase a device-specific version of At Bat 14 from the BlackBerry world to

01:34:51   to access it on BlackBerry 10.

01:34:54   I don't know what that means, but cool.

01:34:56   - I think you have to tell them exactly

01:34:58   which BlackBerry model you have,

01:34:59   because there's two entirely different platforms.

01:35:02   Anyway, my FU is, when I had Moltz on the show last episode,

01:35:07   I was saying how I can't believe people in today's world

01:35:11   would buy polarized sunglasses

01:35:13   because it makes your iPhone look crazy.

01:35:16   And have you ever seen that?

01:35:19   You have polarized sunglasses?

01:35:20   I have to take them off.

01:35:22   Yeah, screens look crazy.

01:35:23   Every screen looks different too.

01:35:25   Like the iPad and the iPhone have different effects.

01:35:28   Well, I heard, I got an earful from the fans of polarized sunglasses.

01:35:35   And to summarize it, I don't want to stay on it, but apparently if you buy "goods"

01:35:39   polarized sunglasses, it shouldn't be a problem.

01:35:42   That's only a function of bad polarized sunglasses.

01:35:45   If you get expensive ones that are good, your iPhone will look good.

01:35:50   when you hold the iPhone in its natural portrait orientation, when you hold it sideways, then

01:35:56   you get the problem. But so apparently it is possible to use an iPhone with polarized

01:36:01   sunglasses. So my apologies to fans of polarized sunglasses in the polarized sunglass industry.

01:36:09   I don't know where mine are. Actually, you remember that was the first time we met you

01:36:15   put my sunglasses on and you were shocked at how dirty they were.

01:36:20   I didn't put yourself I know why because I was thinking about I was thinking about their array bands

01:36:24   and I was thinking about getting a pair and

01:36:26   I asked you if it was on the roof deck at the

01:36:29   The Mac world no, no the the deck the Mac world deck. No, it was in New York

01:36:36   No, no, no, I was it SF. Yes. Oh is a macro party Nell's party. I thought it was the the deck book reading

01:36:44   No, I think I didn't get to go to that. You didn't go. Oh, oh

01:36:49   That was a different time. I know what you're talking about. You're talking about

01:36:51   Kudol's yeah, baseball book. Yeah, I say did the deck but no not the baseball book. It was the oh the

01:36:58   Field tested book. Yeah field tested books where people have read is the first time I met you

01:37:03   That's not I didn't have those sunglasses back then. All right

01:37:06   Anyway, that is the first time we met though

01:37:08   Field-tested books was the thing that kudol used to run where he'd asked people to write you'd write a review of a book

01:37:14   where you read it and so

01:37:18   Which is a brilliant idea.

01:37:20   Right.

01:37:20   And so you--

01:37:21   Because it really makes a difference.

01:37:22   Right.

01:37:22   If you remember that I read this one book when

01:37:25   I was at this one place, then that was field tested books.

01:37:28   And it was fascinating, I thought.

01:37:30   And I had written one, and they held a reading in New York.

01:37:34   And you were there.

01:37:35   It was a lovely event.

01:37:36   It was terrific.

01:37:37   Yeah, it was great.

01:37:37   I still have that book somewhere.

01:37:39   I wonder where.

01:37:40   Yeah, yeah.

01:37:41   And they had collected them into a book.

01:37:44   Anyway, I don't know where my sunglasses are.

01:37:47   They're over on the somewhere else play polarized. I remember them being very they are polarized. So I actually want Ike and they're clean, too

01:37:54   Hold on. Give me two seconds. I'm gonna find them. They're right

01:37:57   Next to me. All right, go look for him and I'm gonna read the I'm gonna do a third sponsor play

01:38:02   No, I'm gonna take this opportunity while Dan is hunting down

01:38:06   His polarized sunglasses to tell you back. All right. Well, I'm taking this opportunity to tell people about transporter file. Please do

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01:42:29   at www.filetransporterstore.com. My thanks to them. All right, you got your shades on?

01:42:36   I do. And so I have four screens in front of me. I have a MacBook Air, I have an iPhone

01:42:43   5, I have an iPad mini, and I have this Nexus 7. And they all behave differently with these

01:42:49   sunglasses. Some of them work portrait but not landscape. Some of them work

01:42:54   landscape but not portrait. Some work both and some work everything but

01:43:00   diagonal. So who knows? Well I do think it's interesting that the iPad mini and

01:43:07   the iPhone 5 have different screens. Well meaning what? When you look at your

01:43:11   iPhone 5 what do you see? Well I see a green as if you had put a green gel

01:43:17   over my glasses. So it's terrible. Right. And it doesn't matter whether you hold it

01:43:21   sideways or not. No, no, no. If you turn it sideways, it works fine. But that's landscape?

01:43:25   Well, it's almost like two-thirds diagonal where the colors are better. Well, that's

01:43:33   no good, though. Nobody uses their phone at two-thirds diagonal. No, right. So it's not

01:43:37   great. But the iPad mini literally looks totally normal with my sunglasses on. So there's a

01:43:44   - In both orientations?

01:43:46   - Well, mostly portrait.

01:43:49   - But not landscape.

01:43:50   - Landscape, it's a little darker.

01:43:52   But either way, so all that mythology

01:43:57   about how they just cut the same screen out of the...

01:44:00   - Yeah, no, I think we've gotten away from that.

01:44:02   I think we know that.

01:44:03   - I don't think that's right.

01:44:05   - Yeah.

01:44:06   - Because they also laminate the screen

01:44:07   to the glass differently.

01:44:09   They still have another, whatever, 16th of an inch,

01:44:14   could make this ipad skinnier if they that way it got rid of some of that space it was most obvious

01:44:19   i thought and i realized that that's that i i propagated that and and it's because they've stuck

01:44:25   to it was a simplistic thinking that because they've stuck to these same pixel resolutions

01:44:31   you know in the pre-retina world there were only two two pixel resolutions you know pixels prints

01:44:36   the iPhone 1 which was like 162 or 163 and the iPad one which was 133 and all their iOS devices

01:44:45   were one of those two pixel resolutions and then in the retina world it just doubled that it was

01:44:49   like you know it's 320 something 323 and 267 pixels per inch and every device has one of those

01:44:57   pixels prints thing but it's it's that's and there might be some economies of scale to sticking with

01:45:02   with that but obviously certain devices have different ones. I thought the most obvious

01:45:06   was when they came out with the the iPhone 5 coming up on two years ago and the still

01:45:14   today current because they didn't update it last year the iPod touch that had the 16 to

01:45:19   9 aspect ratio and it's you know really lightweight and thin device you know the one the metal

01:45:24   the current iPod touch the one that has the camera strap thing and everything because

01:45:29   the same new screen size, same pixel prints resolution,

01:45:34   but the saturation and colors on the iPod touch

01:45:37   is just nowhere near the quality of the iPhone 5.

01:45:40   - And similarly with the iPad Air and the iPad Mini,

01:45:45   the iPad Air has such noticeably more vivid color

01:45:50   than the Mini.

01:45:51   - Yeah, I think so too.

01:45:52   I noticed that. - Which as a mini owner,

01:45:53   I never noticed, but then when I had them side by side,

01:45:56   it was pretty shocking.

01:45:58   - Yeah, I think the mini might have better quality

01:46:00   than the iPod touch,

01:46:02   but it's definitely not up to the iPad Air.

01:46:04   iPad Air is like--

01:46:06   - It's crazy.

01:46:07   - Yeah.

01:46:08   I don't know, I guess 'cause it has a bigger battery

01:46:10   or something.

01:46:11   - Yeah.

01:46:11   - But anyway, the polarized sunglasses,

01:46:13   I don't mean to make a terrible pun,

01:46:15   but apparently it's a very polarizing topic.

01:46:19   - Yeah, it's a shady...

01:46:21   (laughing)

01:46:23   I think the moral of the story is,

01:46:25   you're going sunglass shopping, bring your phone and see what works.

01:46:29   Yeah, and take a look at your phone when you buy the sunglasses.

01:46:33   Right.

01:46:34   Yeah. There's Amazon Hachette. Is that how you say it? Is it Hachette? Hachette?

01:46:40   I think it's Hachette.

01:46:41   Hachette?

01:46:41   Yeah.

01:46:43   Where Amazon and Hachette, one of the five major book publishers, are in a continuing spat that

01:46:51   they're taking public and there's been an authors united movement between—again, it's not unanimous,

01:47:00   certainly not that all authors or even all successful authors are on Hachette's side.

01:47:06   Definitely not the case. But there's a lot of authors who are—see it on the publisher side.

01:47:11   And then Amazon launched a sort of ham-fisted readers united site, which really wasn't united

01:47:18   by readers. It was entirely by and written by Amazon. But more or less, they're making

01:47:24   the case that it's in readers' interests for Amazon to come out on top of this because

01:47:28   ebooks will be cheaper. But it's, boy, it's an ugly fight.

01:47:34   It is. And I, well, I think it's ugliest to those of us who are somewhat exposed to it.

01:47:42   I don't know if most people even know it's happening.

01:47:46   Well, I don't know that. I think people are noticing more and more though because of things like

01:47:50   Hachette books not coming out on Amazon or at least not being available pre-order on Amazon,

01:47:57   which true, you know, and for I don't know what 14 or 17 years, I don't know, however long Amazon's

01:48:04   been selling books. There's an awful lot of us who just, you know, if you hear about a new book,

01:48:09   or it's coming out, you just go to Amazon to start typing the book title, and you can

01:48:13   either buy it if it's shipping or say, send me this when it comes out. And

01:48:17   I think the biggest problem is that no one knows which label their book is going to be on.

01:48:23   Right.

01:48:23   It's just confusing. I think it's like when a certain movie studio gets pulled from iTunes

01:48:30   or something or Netflix or whatever. You don't know that it's missing for that reason.

01:48:36   Yeah. Or even when it's one that you kind of know, like I probably a lot of people

01:48:40   would know that Star Wars is 20th Century Fox because everybody remembers that the 20th

01:48:45   Century Fox fanfare before the Star Wars song.

01:48:49   Right. Or like everyone knows Pixar is Pixar or something like that.

01:48:52   Yeah. And that they're owned by Disney now.

01:48:54   Yeah.

01:48:55   Certainly. I think that's pretty…that's another good common one. But nobody really thinks of that

01:48:59   in terms of, "Am I going to be able to watch this?" Like, you never had to…like in the

01:49:04   old days when we'd go to Blockbuster to rent a movie, you never thought, "Well, shit, I want

01:49:09   to watch The Unforgiven, but that's Warner Brothers. And Blockbuster doesn't have Warner

01:49:15   Brothers movies. So I guess I'll have to go to that other--

01:49:19   - Hollywood video.

01:49:20   - Yeah, where the Warner Brothers are.

01:49:22   - Yeah, that part of it is--

01:49:25   - And I would say with books, it's even less so, because it's those fanfares that make

01:49:30   that stick in my mind. I mean, I'm pretty sure The Unforgiven is Warner Brothers. But

01:49:38   I certainly remember, you know, there's a lot of movies where I remember the fanfare I saw before

01:49:43   it. Whereas the little tiny publisher stamp on books, boy, I don't know many books that I know

01:49:48   which of the big five publishers published it. No, definitely not. So, I don't know.

01:49:55   I have trouble taking sides here, even as a potential someday book author. I don't think I

01:50:04   know enough about what's going on. And that's the thing is I don't think anyone has actually said

01:50:08   what they're specifically disagreeing about. Like it's vaguely has to do with pricing for ebooks or

01:50:15   something like that. Well, yeah, it's who gets to pick the price of ebooks. Yeah, really is it the

01:50:19   but like the details matter. And I don't think anyone's actually revealed what the details are

01:50:24   that I've seen. I don't know. Right. Amazon wants them to be capped at 999. And, you know,

01:50:31   Hash it any other book publishers want to be able to sell new titles, you know at whatever price they want

01:50:38   You know it is it's pretty complicated and it's you know, it's fun and with subscription coming into play now

01:50:47   It's gonna get screwed up again

01:50:49   Yeah, totally gonna get screwed up again, you know go back to the early days of Netflix streaming when they were

01:50:58   less than two good movies to watch.

01:51:01   Like that's what the book rental,

01:51:04   book subscription services look like now.

01:51:07   Imagine how that's gonna have to go through

01:51:09   all kinds of crap now.

01:51:11   - Yeah.

01:51:12   There's a long article that I haven't posted

01:51:16   it during Fireball yet.

01:51:17   I probably will by the time this podcast comes out tomorrow.

01:51:22   It would probably already have posted it.

01:51:23   But I haven't posted it 'cause I haven't finished

01:51:25   reading it yet by a guy named Christopher Wright,

01:51:27   is an author. And he kind of, it's a big long argument, but it's, I think it has to be long

01:51:33   because it's complicated. Sometimes, you know, when I write an article and it ends up real

01:51:38   long, I think, am I just spouting off or am I, is it just that complex that it takes a

01:51:43   lot of words to describe it? And I think in this case, his article is long because it

01:51:47   is complex. Which is mostly that, you know, Hashid is really not looking after readers

01:51:53   or authors, they're looking after their own interests. And Amazon isn't really, you know,

01:51:57   doing anything for the benefit of anybody else than Amazon.

01:52:00   And that's just the way it is.

01:52:01   And so whoever wins, it's not really going to be a victory for anybody but Hashit or

01:52:07   Amazon and it's probably going to be Amazon anyway because Hashit really doesn't have…

01:52:11   Amazon's the one in a position of strength.

01:52:15   And the big thing is that the downside…

01:52:18   The reason it may not be good for us as readers or even us as authors, you and I, for Amazon

01:52:24   to win isn't because lower prices are bad because Amazon has a good argument, you know,

01:52:29   a couple of good arguments and they're just common sense. One is that an e-book should

01:52:33   be cheaper than a paper version because it's cheaper to send bits than it is to cut down

01:52:38   trees, turn them into paper and print a book. And even Amazon has made this argument that

01:52:45   because you have fewer rights with a digital version, an e-book, because it's locked by

01:52:49   DRM and you can't resell it. You can't give it to somebody else. If I buy a paper

01:52:56   book, I can read it and then sell it to somebody else. You can't do it with an e-book.

01:53:01   I thought it was interesting that Amazon, which is the company putting the DRM on the

01:53:05   books, is even making the argument that, "Hey, this makes them less valuable, and therefore

01:53:09   they should cost less." I think that's a common sense argument and it makes sense.

01:53:14   Same way that a paperback should cost less than a hardcover edition because it's not

01:53:18   as nice and it didn't cost as much to make. And they also make the argument, Amazon, that

01:53:25   it's, you know, in terms of like authors and royalty, that they've shown through their

01:53:29   own analysis of data that in general, like a book that is an e-book that's selling for

01:53:37   $15, $14.99, of course, but call it $15, will sell X number of copies that the same book

01:53:44   at $10, $9.99, would sell like 1.7 times as much, and therefore make more money and get

01:53:54   70% more readers. So you'd have more readers and you'd make more money because it would

01:53:59   be more than the 1.5 that you would need to break even. But the big downside to the whole

01:54:05   thing if Amazon wins, and they probably will, is that they're building an effective monopoly

01:54:11   on ebooks and that it'll be ripe for abuse and everybody will be at Amazon's liberty

01:54:20   in terms of ebooks once they lock down the market.

01:54:23   And I guess another missing part of the equation is what percentage of revenue and profits

01:54:30   are still coming from $30 hardcover books that you need to still somewhat justify the

01:54:37   price for without $10 ebooks?

01:54:41   thing I've seen and I've seen a lot of people could be the analogy to the

01:54:45   there's a lot of people are the people on the side that they should definitely

01:54:49   be cheaper maybe even a lot cheaper ebooks a lot of them are drawing on the

01:54:53   analogy that paperbacks are relatively new to the book industry and I guess

01:54:58   they came to be popular in the 1930s it's not quite the same though the

01:55:07   analogy that it's like a third tier like that used to just be hardcover editions

01:55:11   and then it was hardcover and paperback and now it's hardcover paperback and ebooks. The difference

01:55:17   that I see though is one of like what do you call them? Frames, you know, the like opening weekend,

01:55:23   what do you call that? Oh, windows? Windows, right, yeah. But that, you know, the way that,

01:55:28   to my knowledge, the, you know, the major book publishers have worked is that new books only

01:55:35   come out in hardcover. Like when Stephen King comes out with a new book, it doesn't come out

01:55:39   and hardcover and paperback at the same time, and you can choose to save half the price

01:55:43   by buying the paperback.

01:55:45   If you want it when it's new, like when the new Harry Potter books came out and people

01:55:48   lined up at midnight to buy them, you had to buy the hardcover, which was the more expensive

01:55:53   version.

01:55:54   And that the paperback came out, it was like home, the same way that you can't buy most

01:55:57   movies at the opening weekend.

01:56:00   You have to wait to get them.

01:56:03   And ebooks don't seem to be like that.

01:56:06   want to get – like if Stephen King has a new book and you want to read it on your Kindle,

01:56:09   you get it on the same day that the hardcover comes out.

01:56:12   Tom Bilyeu (01h00m 25s): Yeah, I think there was a period where they

01:56:15   were trying to not have that available, but I think that that's done. They have to do

01:56:21   it.

01:56:22   Darrell Bock I don't know. And I kind of see how you – that

01:56:24   the publishers – I kind of see it from the publisher's perspective that they should

01:56:26   have a right to charge a premium while demand is at a premium. And again, you could say,

01:56:33   they're just gouging the diehard fans. But that's what pays to keep the books coming out.

01:56:38   I think if you really want to read it in an opening weekend, you want to read that

01:56:42   new Stephen King novel as soon as it comes out, they should be allowed to charge $17 for it.

01:56:48   And then drop the price to $9.99 in the long run, three months later, six months later,

01:56:54   same thing with movies coming out on home video.

01:56:57   Yeah, and so many markets work like that, you know, and that demand is not necessarily

01:57:03   gouging, like it's being among the first to get something is, to many people, worth

01:57:10   more money.

01:57:11   Right, because you know, if you know, if you're not that hell-bent on reading it right

01:57:15   away, or you already have a big stack of books in front of you that are waiting you to read,

01:57:19   and you can wait, then you know you're going to pay a lower price.

01:57:23   Same way that, you know, if—

01:57:24   It kind of works like that on iTunes.

01:57:26   I don't know if it's on purpose,

01:57:27   but so many new releases are only available for purchase,

01:57:31   and then you can't rent them for, you know,

01:57:33   whatever, another month or something like that.

01:57:35   - Yeah, and they always tell you, you know,

01:57:36   available for rent on, you know, September 26th.

01:57:40   - I've found myself buying movies

01:57:41   that I don't actually want to own

01:57:44   because I don't want to wait a month

01:57:46   before they're four bucks.

01:57:47   - Right, but, and then with a lot of other movies,

01:57:50   I've found myself saying, I don't want to buy this.

01:57:52   I know I just want to rent it,

01:57:53   and I'll add it to my wish list, I'll come back to it,

01:57:55   you know, when it comes out for rent.

01:57:57   Yeah, I've done the same thing, where like,

01:57:58   there's some movies where I wanna see it right away,

01:58:01   and I know that maybe I'll only watch it once,

01:58:03   but I'll pay the 14.99 to buy it.

01:58:05   - Yep.

01:58:08   - Yeah, so I kinda see the, you know, the thinking there.

01:58:11   I'm guessing, I think, like in those rentals,

01:58:15   I know Apple has limits on that, but I, you know,

01:58:17   in some movies, and some movies too,

01:58:19   they cost more to rent, you know?

01:58:21   there's new editions that I've seen that cost $5.99 to rent.

01:58:26   And I think there's sometimes with the ones that are still in theaters,

01:58:29   it's $6.99 to rent it.

01:58:31   Yeah, I think one was like $10.

01:58:33   Yeah, so I think Apple gives the studios or whoever it is,

01:58:38   if it's like an independent motion picture, whoever

01:58:40   controls the rights to the movie, they give them

01:58:42   some pricing control on the rental and purchase price.

01:58:46   And that's the big thing that sticks, I think,

01:58:48   a lot of the publishers cross with Amazon is that Amazon wants to just have unilateral

01:58:56   control over the price of their stuff.

01:58:58   And that's it is how Amazon's app store works.

01:59:02   You can like set like a suggested price, but if I am when you have an app in the Amazon

01:59:06   store, if they decide they want to sell it for 99 cents, they just sell it for 99 cents

01:59:11   and you get your 30% of that.

01:59:13   And it hasn't had a big effect on the app industry because the Amazon App Store is a

01:59:19   relatively small player in mobile apps.

01:59:22   But in terms of e-books, the Kindle store is dominant, probably a monopoly.

01:59:29   Although it's not a monopoly, I think in legal terms it's a monopsony, which is different

01:59:36   and confusing, but I think has different—it might give them a lot more leeway in terms

01:59:41   of antitrust laws, you know, and that whole weird thing that frustrated a lot of us with

01:59:48   the Apple e-books case, which has cost them hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees,

01:59:52   where Apple, which had a sliver of the e-book case, is the company that got taken to court

01:59:58   by the Department of Justice and lost hundreds of millions of dollars in fees for colluding

02:00:04   with the book publishers.

02:00:07   In Amazon, the company that has the monopsony, the overwhelming majority of e-book sales,

02:00:16   you know, is under no – hasn't received any scrutiny at all.

02:00:19   Here's the dictionary definition.

02:00:21   Yeah.

02:00:22   Great work, guys.

02:00:23   Monopsony, a market situation in which there is only one buyer, right?

02:00:27   And that's – because that's the thing is that it's not that they have a monopoly

02:00:31   on book sales because there's these five publishers that have all the, you know – it's

02:00:35   they sell the books not really directly to the customer, they sell them to Amazon and

02:00:39   Amazon resells them to people. And that they're really effectively without Amazon, there is

02:00:45   no e-book market. I don't know if that's quite true to say, but it would be interesting to

02:00:49   see. I've seen very different percentages from very different people when they've published,

02:00:54   like how many of their book sales come from Amazon, ebook sales come from Amazon versus

02:00:58   iTunes and Kobo and who else? Whoever else.

02:01:03   Sony, Nook, I don't know.

02:01:05   Yep.

02:01:08   - Anything else?

02:01:09   What else you got?

02:01:10   - I've just been enjoying the summer.

02:01:14   I've been getting in the weeds on a few topics.

02:01:20   I think my best post last week was about how

02:01:24   AOL still has a large, profitable dial-up business.

02:01:29   - I saw that.

02:01:32   Actually, I think one of the more interesting posts I've done recently was looking at Google

02:01:37   Apps and how successful they've been at stealing the startup and growing the kind of mid-sized

02:01:48   company ranks that should be Microsoft customers for Exchange and all their enterprise stuff.

02:01:56   Microsoft is effectively betting the company on the cloud and oh I saw that

02:02:01   Yeah, I saw that and that was an interesting post. Yeah, so you what you did is

02:02:07   You guys looked at the MX records. Yeah, so I picked

02:02:11   150 companies

02:02:14   So the 50 the fortune 50 so the biggest 50 companies by market cap

02:02:21   Right, isn't that fortune 50 something like that? Yeah, I think it's market cap

02:02:25   It's either market cap or or rev it. Yeah, I think it's market cap and then

02:02:30   50 companies from the last why combinator class those were like that startups the tiniest companies and then this

02:02:38   mid-level tier which were

02:02:40   Very scientifically chosen they were the first 50 companies that I thought of that were mid-sized

02:02:48   ranging from Tesla to

02:02:52   So they were public and private companies including Dropbox Twitter

02:02:56   Tesla I don't have the list in front of me, but but companies like that. Yeah, and

02:03:02   of the of the hugest companies, you know the ones that that were

02:03:06   You know stereotypical enterprise companies

02:03:10   Of those 50 only one of them used Google

02:03:15   Apps for their email and that was Google

02:03:21   I, you know what, I laugh, but when I was reading the article, I remember thinking,

02:03:25   "Ooh, I wonder who the one is?" And I swear to God, and then you say it was Google. I was like,

02:03:31   "Oh, duh." It was like the ultimate, it was a type of trick question where I pride myself on

02:03:37   being able to think, "Oh, it's got to be Google." And I did not get that.

02:03:41   Well, and you know, there's caveats, like maybe some wing of one of these companies uses Google

02:03:46   apps for some stuff or maybe you know maybe everyone uses their personal gmail at the office

02:03:51   but it's it's a fair test though i think yeah it was it was universal you know i i looked up the

02:03:56   mx records for 150 companies and and so the you know the startup the y combinator i think it was

02:04:04   like all but four or six of them used google that's a little surprising to me too because that it was

02:04:13   that high. I mean, it's not so yeah, it's like 92%. So it was

02:04:16   like all but I don't know,

02:04:19   because it's not that hard to, you know,

02:04:23   46. So all but four of them. use Google, I think one of them might

02:04:30   have been used. So outlook was showing up in these results,

02:04:34   occasionally. So like the, you know, theoretically, Microsoft's

02:04:38   answer to Google Apps would be cloud based outlook. So that

02:04:43   was showing up in some of them.

02:04:44   I'm a little surprised it was as high as 92%, because it's not that hard to run your own

02:04:50   mail server, you know, with like a, you know, the way you run like a, you know, that you

02:04:54   get a lot of it for free from like a web host and sign up for whatever dream host or something.

02:05:00   Yeah. And they'll run your imap for you. Well, a lot of those web hosts have been kicking

02:05:04   that off to Google because it used to be free. And because that's a huge, you know, monkey

02:05:12   off their back because hosting email is probably not fun for any of those companies in terms

02:05:16   of support and that kind of stuff.

02:05:18   I'm also surprised, maybe it just speaks to my mindset, but I'm a little surprised that

02:05:21   a lot of those companies wouldn't switch off, even if they were using it when they were

02:05:26   at the three guys in a garage stage, that they didn't switch off.

02:05:30   Once they could hire a sysadmin, that they wouldn't say, "Hey, let's run our own mail

02:05:36   servers."

02:05:37   aspect of that an awful lot of those companies have negotiated with Google for like, hey,

02:05:44   maybe Google wants to acquire us or maybe we need to work with them. And do you really

02:05:48   trust Google?

02:05:49   Not yet, or even security stuff like do we trust Google to right. So the most interesting

02:05:56   part though, was the those mid tier companies. And that's where 60% of them used Google apps.

02:06:04   And that includes Twitter includes both Dropbox and box, both of them use Google for their

02:06:12   email.

02:06:13   And those are, you know, as I wrote in the piece, like those would be potential competitors

02:06:19   even, you know, like, yeah, Dropbox already probably has a pretty and box, you know, has

02:06:25   pretty good enterprise sales for their storage services.

02:06:29   So maybe they should offer email hosting too, who knows?

02:06:34   But that was really surprising.

02:06:35   So it's not that, you know, Microsoft still has a huge hold over the biggest enterprise

02:06:41   customers but the growing companies, you know, Microsoft's future customers seem to be really

02:06:50   sticking with Google.

02:06:51   So we'll see.

02:06:53   You know, Microsoft still has I think like 90% of the revenue in the email hosting market

02:06:59   I think that's what they told me,

02:07:01   something around that range, or maybe 95% or something.

02:07:04   No, it was 'cause Microsoft, or what's it called?

02:07:07   IBM Lotus also still has some.

02:07:09   So maybe it was like 80% Microsoft,

02:07:11   but it was still a very strong dominating position.

02:07:15   But revenue's not important to Google.

02:07:18   They're not in the email apps business for the money.

02:07:22   They're doing it for the control.

02:07:25   The money, Google gets all the money they need

02:07:28   from search advertising, which is another--

02:07:31   - But I do think though, because everybody knows

02:07:35   that they, don't they, I mean they've admitted,

02:07:38   I mean they say that they scan your email

02:07:40   to show contextual ads.

02:07:43   - Right, and that generates money.

02:07:45   - Being able to scan your email to build their profile

02:07:52   of you has gotta be a huge source of accuracy

02:07:56   for the targeted ads that they show.

02:07:59   - True, and the fact that you're logging in

02:08:01   for your email means you're logged in

02:08:04   while you're doing searches.

02:08:05   But even beyond that, my understanding is that

02:08:08   they actually are running Google Apps as a business now.

02:08:11   Like they're not trying to lose a lot of money on it.

02:08:14   Which is one of the reasons they got rid of the free tier

02:08:17   and that kind of stuff.

02:08:19   So it's still I think less than 10%,

02:08:23   I think 90% of Google's revenue is still advertising,

02:08:26   but it's still, I think now other is 10%

02:08:30   or something like that, so growing.

02:08:33   But it was interesting, I was in the command line

02:08:38   like searching MX records and I would see,

02:08:41   wow, this big ass company is still using Gmail.

02:08:44   That's pretty crazy.

02:08:46   - Yeah, and I think that there's a,

02:08:48   it's hard to make a man understand something

02:08:51   that his job depends on him not understanding

02:08:53   sort of angle to, you know, once a company, everybody had to have email, internet-based

02:09:01   email at some point in the 90s.

02:09:03   It became just as essential as having telephone lines into your company.

02:09:09   And for a lot of them, they might have already had internal email based on, I don't know,

02:09:13   whatever antiquated Microsoft or Lotus crap that they had, and then they had to install

02:09:18   gateways to the internet, and it was all convoluted and crazy.

02:09:21   But it all required a big, large IT staff.

02:09:24   And then doing anything…like when you're a startup, not having anybody who has to worry

02:09:29   about the email server is great because you can concentrate on the thing that you're

02:09:35   trying to build and you can save on your head count and it really matters even if it's

02:09:39   just one person because you're lean and mean and you're starting…

02:09:41   Whereas if you're already the IT staff with a full-time IT job at Procter & Gamble or

02:09:46   something like that, you're not going to make decisions on what products and services

02:09:51   buy based on, "Well, now we can get rid of us. We can make this choice that would obviate

02:09:57   the need for our jobs."

02:09:58   Totally. Yeah. And so many of those enterprise deals are, you know, yeah, you get an exchange

02:10:05   server. We also get office license for everyone in the company and Windows and all that stuff.

02:10:10   So it's a huge deal that's beyond the scope of just email and Outlook. But the companies

02:10:17   companies that are starting as three person startups now and are growing into.

02:10:21   So some of the companies, I just pulled up the spreadsheet, some of the companies that

02:10:26   are still Google customers, you know, were less than 10 people a few years ago.

02:10:30   And those are like Airbnb, um, uh, Warby Parker, Tumblr, you know, all of these companies are

02:10:39   still using Google apps despite the fact that they are worth billions of dollars.

02:10:45   Is Tumblr.

02:10:46   Yeah, isn't that kind of crazy if you think about it be giving that their own by yahoo

02:10:49   Yeah, and well, they've also maintained a pretty

02:10:53   Yeah, but that's still a little crazy like they still have their own office. It's a little crazy. But yeah tumblr. Um,

02:10:59   Uh a bunch of boring ones like etsy does

02:11:04   you know and one of those it's one of those things too where it's there's

02:11:08   No real it's not that you can't migrate but it's a pain in the ass because oh, yeah total, you know

02:11:14   You've got to somehow download all of your email from Google and put it somewhere and then upload it to the other

02:11:20   Yeah, if like for example tumblr wanted to switch to Yahoo mail or something like that

02:11:24   And the truth is with that one. I looked up what Yahoo itself uses, but I'm I would bet that it's not Gmail, right?

02:11:31   I would guess not but on the other hand too is the simple fact that Gmail is

02:11:37   objectively better than Yahoo mail and

02:11:39   You know, it's it's a good sign

02:11:42   I guess it shouldn't be that surprising. It's a good sign that tumblr is allowed to stay on gmail

02:11:47   You know wasn't by yeah by edict forced to do it because it would have been a shit sandwich to everybody at tumblr

02:11:52   It's like right. Yeah, we're going to yahoo. Nothing's going to change also your email is gonna be yahoo mail is like

02:11:58   You know I quit

02:12:01   I wonder what beats music is on oh good question

02:12:07   That's a really gonna look it up now. No don't look at up now, but that's be a good follow-up

02:12:12   Yeah, there you go because I wonder if they're on Gmail I wonder if that would be a thing apples

02:12:16   It's are they still on exchange at Apple. I don't know. No, I don't think they use exchange

02:12:20   I think they're just like some you know straight. Yeah straight Unix

02:12:24   IMAP I

02:12:26   Think could be I could look at the headers from an email. Yeah

02:12:30   Here here's an email from Apple. Oh apparently the iWatch is coming on September 9th

02:12:41   Where's the show headers? Oh, I see Oracle communications messaging server. Yeah

02:12:46   No, that's not exchange. No

02:12:49   Yeah, that's what I see to Oracle communication messaging server. All right. So there we go. Good. There you go Oracle

02:12:57   Yeah, it's uh, Larry Ellison and can you imagine how that deal got done?

02:13:04   Yeah, there's a there was a yacht involved. Yeah

02:13:08   Two people. Yeah

02:13:11   (laughs)

02:13:12   You're moving your email to Oracle.

02:13:14   - Anything else?

02:13:17   What else you got?

02:13:18   - Cubs are decent again.

02:13:20   - What, are they?

02:13:22   I've missed that if that's true.

02:13:24   - No, well they're in last place,

02:13:25   but they just called up the number one prospect.

02:13:28   And so he hit a game-winning home run his first day.

02:13:32   His first major league hit was a game-winning home run.

02:13:35   - What position does he play?

02:13:36   - I think he's playing second.

02:13:38   I think he's a shortstop naturally.

02:13:40   Yeah, I've heard about him.

02:13:43   So I've been watching the games and it's finally exciting.

02:13:45   They're not going to be good probably for a year or two.

02:13:50   I'm guessing 2016 is when they have a shot.

02:13:53   You got faith though?

02:13:54   You think they're on the right track?

02:13:55   Well, no.

02:13:56   I mean, come on.

02:13:57   I've now gotten to the point where I'm just, you know, we'll see what happens.

02:14:01   Show me the actual World Series.

02:14:03   Like when they were in the NLCS, I was still very skeptical.

02:14:08   when you grow up with this, you're like... and it's kind of spread over into kind of how I see all

02:14:14   kinds of stuff, but we'll see when it actually happens. But it's exciting to watch because I

02:14:19   used to love watching games and they've just been so bad for so long that I haven't even bothered.

02:14:24   I didn't even sign up for MLB TV this year until last week. Do you get a discount on that?

02:14:30   No, because I did the monthly, which I think is always going to be the same price. But if you sign

02:14:36   up for the year, I don't know, but you should. Yeah, well, it's great. Well, it's a fantastic

02:14:43   deal for me. I've said this over and over. I mean, if you if your favorite team is out

02:14:46   of town, it's an amazing deal. If your favorite is in town, it's it's questionable. They

02:14:51   should they should have a different tier. They should have like a tier for people who

02:14:55   are fans of the in in game in town team where you pay less, but you can only watch so many

02:15:00   games a year. Because I can then when you go on vacation, you can watch. Well, what

02:15:04   What they did was the Yankees did a deal with, I think, one of the cable providers.

02:15:10   So you could sign up for MLB TV, but you had to pay through some – maybe through the

02:15:17   – I don't know.

02:15:18   It was crazy.

02:15:19   It was like – and it was more expensive, I think.

02:15:21   This is one of those things where you're like, "These guys are not thinking about

02:15:25   their customers at all."

02:15:29   But it was some weird thing, I think, with Cablevision maybe where you could sign up.

02:15:34   I don't know.

02:15:34   Obviously, I didn't do it.

02:15:35   But--

02:15:36   You know, I'll tell you.

02:15:37   I'm not just saying this because you're

02:15:38   a friend and you're a frequent guest on the show.

02:15:41   But I mean it is that in the last couple of months,

02:15:44   I've found more and more good stuff at Quartz.

02:15:48   Yeah, we're trying hard.

02:15:50   We're expanding.

02:15:52   There's an opening on my team if you want

02:15:54   to be a science writer in New York.

02:15:58   And we're also working on getting someone in San Francisco

02:16:01   to write tech for us.

02:16:02   So it's great.

02:16:03   I really like it. I wasn't really looking for a day job, but I found a great one and

02:16:09   I'm really happy there. There is really good stuff on the site.

02:16:13   Yeah. I have a piece. I haven't posted it yet. It will probably be the first post tomorrow

02:16:19   queued up by Lily Kuo on Chinese regulation of social media. It's on the really good article.

02:16:33   I thought.

02:16:34   I have not read that one yet.

02:16:35   So I'm going to have to check it out.

02:16:36   Well, wait till I find it on Daring Fireball.

02:16:37   I will.

02:16:38   Because then it will show up in your referral.

02:16:40   Anyway, good stuff there.

02:16:41   Dan is, I think, killing it over there.

02:16:46   It's been fun.

02:16:47   It's good to be back in the saddle.

02:16:49   At the QZ.com.

02:16:52   And City Notes, of course, is still a thing.

02:16:55   Yeah, we should have a new app out sometime this year.

02:17:00   Hopefully sooner than the end of the year.

02:17:01   So stay tuned for that.

02:17:03   Yeah, same time as the Moto 270.

02:17:05   Yeah, right.

02:17:07   Just follow me on Twitter @fromDome and you'll get updates on all the stuff that I'm working

02:17:12   on.

02:17:13   All right.

02:17:14   Well, that's great.

02:17:15   So thanks for being here.

02:17:16   Thank you.