The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► last day of school oh big day talk about a big day that's it's like the greatest

00:00:06 ◼   ► holiday in the world so you get a half day you know what they do and it's awful

00:00:11 ◼   ► I think is is it's like a not a quite a half day it's like an early dismissal

00:00:16 ◼   ► and then there's a sing a quote unquote thing where you the parents are invited

00:00:22 ◼   ► to go to the gym the gymnasium great acoustics there and the kids sing like

00:00:28 ◼   ► three songs and then they get to go home. I skipped. I'm missing it right now as we

00:00:35 ◼   ► speak.

00:00:38 ◼   ► Mike: Well, my kid's got another week. I don't know why. Your kid goes to like a...

00:00:45 ◼   ► Dave: Private school.

00:00:49 ◼   ► Mike; A fancy military academy.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Academy yeah it's a military a lot of marching it's nice though because

00:00:59 ◼   ► usually it's one of those things that last most years it coincides with WWDC

00:01:05 ◼   ► so I don't get to be here for last day of school but this year it's it's a week

00:01:10 ◼   ► early so so I think usually his schedule would be next week - it's I don't know

00:01:15 ◼   ► why I don't know you know it's it seems like all sorts of early June stuff has

00:01:22 ◼   ► been moved around this year?

00:01:24 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Well, some of those private schools use older

00:01:28 ◼   ► calendars.

00:01:29 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Like ones like Gregorian calendars or something?

00:01:33 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Yeah, something.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Yeah, Julian.

00:01:35 ◼   ► Is there a Julian calendar?

00:01:36 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Just to maintain their tradition.

00:01:39 ◼   ► Tim Cynova That's right because they've been using

00:01:41 ◼   ► them for years.

00:01:42 ◼   ► They don't want to switch.

00:01:43 ◼   ► That's why it's a private school.

00:01:45 ◼   ► They didn't want the government telling them which calendar to use.

00:01:48 ◼   ► You know, I had a conversation with my son.

00:01:53 ◼   ► He's really into the Harry Potter books now.

00:01:55 ◼   ► Oh, good.

00:01:55 ◼   ► And I couldn't be prouder, because I didn't read books of that length

00:02:01 ◼   ► when I was in third grade.

00:02:02 ◼   ► I never read for pleasure.

00:02:04 ◼   ► I was-- I don't know.

00:02:05 ◼   ► It's amazing I turned out to be a writer.

00:02:07 ◼   ► So I'm super proud of him, and he's really into them.

00:02:11 ◼   ► And at one point, he said something about, wouldn't it be great if this were real

00:02:14 ◼   ► and I could go to Hogwarts?

00:02:16 ◼   ► And I said, well, it sounds like fun.

00:02:17 ◼   ► But think about it.

00:02:19 ◼   ► You'd have to move away from me and your mom.

00:02:23 ◼   ► You'd have to go there.

00:02:24 ◼   ► And he just looked at me, and he was like, and your point is--

00:02:29 ◼   ► and I was like, wow.

00:02:30 ◼   ► That was most of the idea.

00:02:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:32 ◼   ► It's like he doesn't even care about the Defense

00:02:35 ◼   ► Against the Dark Arts crap.

00:02:36 ◼   ► He just wants to get out of the house already.

00:02:40 ◼   ► I just want to live in a dorm somewhere.

00:02:41 ◼   ► I really thought we could wait until he

00:02:43 ◼   ► was a teenager for that.

00:02:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:47 ◼   ► I guess they really do that in Britain, or at least they used to, right?

00:02:53 ◼   ► They used to have schools like that where they go away at like 11.

00:02:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it was a-- they have a weird thing too where a public school in Britain

00:03:02 ◼   ► is what we call a private school.

00:03:04 ◼   ► And I don't know what they call it, what we call a public school.

00:03:08 ◼   ► But like a public--

00:03:10 ◼   ► A lorry.

00:03:11 ◼   ► I believe they call it a lorry.

00:03:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:12 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:03:16 ◼   ► So I made an app.

00:03:19 ◼   ► So I heard.

00:03:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I read about it.

00:03:21 ◼   ► It was on the internet.

00:03:22 ◼   ► I read about it on your site.

00:03:23 ◼   ► It was a very nice thing.

00:03:24 ◼   ► Oh, I also used it for two weeks before it came out.

00:03:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:27 ◼   ► It's nice.

00:03:28 ◼   ► I like it.

00:03:29 ◼   ► I use it every day.

00:03:30 ◼   ► Do you really?

00:03:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I do.

00:03:32 ◼   ► I do too.

00:03:33 ◼   ► I mean, that's how I knew that.

00:03:34 ◼   ► That's how I felt like I told myself in the lead up to releasing.

00:03:38 ◼   ► Every time I get real nervous, I'd be like, "You know what?

00:03:40 ◼   ► I like it, so it's got to be something."

00:03:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:43 ◼   ► I mean, of course, I'm on your podcast, so I have to suck up to you.

00:03:46 ◼   ► But I do like it.

00:03:47 ◼   ► >> No, you don't really.

00:03:48 ◼   ► I think it would be dynamite.

00:03:50 ◼   ► It would be great if we had an argument over if you said, "You know what?

00:03:55 ◼   ► This is a real turd."

00:03:57 ◼   ► >> It's the worst app I've ever used.

00:04:03 ◼   ► I use it to – I wrote on my website.

00:04:05 ◼   ► I use it to track story ideas for the most part, just things that I want to write about

00:04:10 ◼   ► and possibly stuff that I might want to pitch to Macworld or some other place.

00:04:13 ◼   ► and I just keep track of it. I tag it by who I might want to pitch it to, and they got

00:04:19 ◼   ► ten really shitty ideas in there right now.

00:04:23 ◼   ► Dave So I built it. I don't know if everybody

00:04:26 ◼   ► knows. Probably everybody knows by now, but I worked on it with Brent Simmons, legendary

00:04:31 ◼   ► developer, and Dave Whiskus, a very, very good designer. But let's face it. Whiskus

00:04:37 ◼   ► is no Simmons.

00:04:38 ◼   ► Tim Who is, though.

00:04:40 ◼   ► Dave No, not really.

00:04:41 ◼   ► Tim That may be an unfair comparison.

00:04:43 ◼   ► Yeah, you know Brent really is amazing

00:04:46 ◼   ► I mean Dave is super talented and Dave's the one who I worked with the most like I had the most

00:04:51 ◼   ► interaction like it is a funny thing with the three-man team, but

00:04:55 ◼   ► Dave ended up being sort of the hub where

00:04:59 ◼   ► Dave and I would go back and forth on design and I mean like literally I'll bet we have tens of thousands of instant messages

00:05:07 ◼   ► since December when we started

00:05:10 ◼   ► I mean, I should figure out a way to write a script to like go through the message logs

00:05:14 ◼   ► and count them.

00:05:15 ◼   ► But I mean, thousands of iMessages.

00:05:19 ◼   ► And then we'd settle on something and Dave would be the one who would give it to Brent

00:05:24 ◼   ► in a form that, "Here, this is what we want you to make.

00:05:28 ◼   ► This is what it should look like."

00:05:29 ◼   ► But, you know, I certainly had interactions with Brent.

00:05:34 ◼   ► You know, we were using the glassboard internally.

00:05:37 ◼   ► But he's amazing.

00:05:39 ◼   ► He truly is.

00:05:40 ◼   ► Like, working with Brent Simmons is exactly what you think it might be like.

00:05:45 ◼   ► Like things he'll, you know, be like, "Look, we want you to change this to be like this."

00:05:50 ◼   ► And he'd be like, "Whew.

00:05:51 ◼   ► All right.

00:05:52 ◼   ► It's going to take two days."

00:05:54 ◼   ► And 30 minutes later, he's like, "Uh, I figure…"

00:05:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it's literally.

00:05:57 ◼   ► He'd be like, "You know what?

00:05:58 ◼   ► I was stupid.

00:05:59 ◼   ► We could use the blah, blah, blah.

00:06:01 ◼   ► I never used it before.

00:06:02 ◼   ► I never looked at it, but it was really easy to hook up and now it works."

00:06:06 ◼   ► We'd be like, "Oh, okay."

00:06:08 ◼   ► It must be nice to be able to do that.

00:06:13 ◼   ► I made a number of false starts at trying to learn how to program just anything, really.

00:06:22 ◼   ► I always hit a wall, but I always dreamed that it would be nice to be able to have that

00:06:26 ◼   ► facility.

00:06:27 ◼   ► Dave: Me too.

00:06:29 ◼   ► I'll tell you what it's like with having Brent and Dave to combine, really, for me.

00:06:37 ◼   ► I used to use, remember the real basic?

00:06:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:06:41 ◼   ► - It's still around, but it's sort of shifted

00:06:43 ◼   ► in terms of its focus.

00:06:44 ◼   ► But back when it first came out and it was Mac only,

00:06:47 ◼   ► it was really great for someone like me who can program,

00:06:53 ◼   ► but is not really good at programming,

00:06:55 ◼   ► and it sort of does all the scaffolding for you,

00:06:58 ◼   ► and you can just sort of put a button in a thing

00:07:00 ◼   ► and drag it around and make it look right,

00:07:02 ◼   ► and then click on the button and say,

00:07:03 ◼   ► here's the code that the button should run.

00:07:05 ◼   ► It was a lot, or a hypercard for people who are older

00:07:07 ◼   ► have longer memories. It's a lot like that. Yeah. And I've read so often on during fireball

00:07:12 ◼   ► over the years, I've, you know, bemoaned the lack of, for lack of a better sake, a modern

00:07:17 ◼   ► hypercard, right? Like, let's say something for iPhone or iPad, where you could, you know,

00:07:22 ◼   ► drag stuff around and sort of wouldn't be a replacement for Xcode, it would be sort

00:07:26 ◼   ► of a higher level Xcode for, you know, less, you know, talented people. I don't know how

00:07:34 ◼   ► us to say it. I don't know. You know, I mean, well, but like the difference between iPhoto

00:07:40 ◼   ► and Lightroom or Aputure, right? Like, you know, something that's not for pros. And if you are a

00:07:46 ◼   ► pro, if you're taking professional caliber photography, you're not gonna use iPhoto to,

00:07:51 ◼   ► to, you know, take out the red eye, you're going to use Photoshop and Lightroom, you know, the

00:07:56 ◼   ► equivalent of that for programming. Working with Brent and Dave is like having that, except from

00:08:02 ◼   ► like a hundred years in the future where you just talk to the thing and it's like

00:08:07 ◼   ► it's like no I here's the idea I think that when you slide the hamburger button

00:08:14 ◼   ► over to get to the sidebar there should be like this parallax effect on the

00:08:19 ◼   ► sidebar as it drags out instead of just being there it would kind of and and ten

00:08:24 ◼   ► minutes later it's like I just do a pull from the source you know the the

00:08:29 ◼   ► the Mercurial source code thing and do a build and it's on my phone and it works. And it's

00:08:33 ◼   ► like what? It is amazing. It really has been a tremendous amount of fun for me.

00:08:40 ◼   ► So everyone should just have their own Brent Simmons.

00:08:43 ◼   ► That's exactly my point. Everybody should go out and buy it. You should probably buy

00:08:47 ◼   ► Vesper. Go to the Vesperapp.co website. Can you believe some son of a bitch has been sitting

00:08:53 ◼   ► on Vesperapp.com? It's just like a placeholder. What the hell is that? It's just a thing.

00:08:58 ◼   ► like somebody 10 years ago randomly bought that yeah so we had to settle for

00:09:04 ◼   ► Vesper app didn't that co well that's not so bad but he didn't he didn't

00:09:08 ◼   ► contact you and contacted yet and tried to sell it to you for five thousand ten

00:09:12 ◼   ► thousand no not yet maybe he will I don't know seems like that that would be

00:09:18 ◼   ► likely the next shoe to drop so my smart right I mean yeah I guess I don't know

00:09:25 ◼   ► who knows I never tell you about the guy who has newspaper calm now go to

00:09:31 ◼   ► newspaper calm is it alright yeah it is safe for work I guarantee you it is the

00:09:37 ◼   ► in fact it is the safest for work website on the internet everybody out

00:09:43 ◼   ► there listening to the show open or I'll open up your phone and go to newspaper

00:09:47 ◼   ► Which is why it's taking so long.

00:09:53 ◼   ► I see what you did there.

00:09:56 ◼   ► Did it work?

00:10:01 ◼   ► Newspapers dot com?

00:10:02 ◼   ► I thought it was newspaper dot com.

00:10:06 ◼   ► Just stuck.

00:10:10 ◼   ► That could be.

00:10:13 ◼   ► Well anyway it points to...

00:10:14 ◼   ► We're not having good technology days.

00:10:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:18 ◼   ► Well, here's the spoiler.

00:10:19 ◼   ► It points to DaringFireball.net.

00:10:20 ◼   ► Oh, really?

00:10:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:23 ◼   ► And it's not mine.

00:10:27 ◼   ► I don't own it.

00:10:28 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:10:29 ◼   ► No.

00:10:30 ◼   ► Whoever owns it though knows that it's valuable.

00:10:33 ◼   ► And I don't even know his name.

00:10:34 ◼   ► I think he did email me.

00:10:36 ◼   ► I might have his name.

00:10:38 ◼   ► What happened is I started getting offers from people who wanted to buy it. And I was

00:10:48 ◼   ► like, "Why are people doing this? Why am I getting offers for this domain that I don't

00:10:52 ◼   ► have?" And then I went to it and I saw that it pointed to darinkfireball.net and I got

00:10:56 ◼   ► very confused. And so somehow I got in touch with the guy. And long story short, he's had

00:11:01 ◼   ► it for years. He knows it's valuable. He doesn't really want to sell it though and doesn't

00:11:04 ◼   ► don't want to give it to jerks." And he said, "I just – but I really like your website,

00:11:09 ◼   ► so I figured I'd just point it there for now. I have nothing better to put there."

00:11:12 ◼   ► And I was like, "Okay. That's cool with me." And he was like, "If you don't want it, I'll

00:11:16 ◼   ► take it away." And I was like, "No, I don't care."

00:11:18 ◼   ► Tim Cynova That explains all your page views.

00:11:20 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Yeah. Wouldn't that be funny if that actually

00:11:23 ◼   ► is? Tim Cynova

00:11:24 ◼   ► Oh, there it works. I did it. I tried it again. I just went – it came right out.

00:11:26 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Yeah. It was like some kind of hiccup on the

00:11:28 ◼   ► redirect. Tim Cynova

00:11:29 ◼   ► The first – yeah. Dave Asprey

00:11:30 ◼   ► Wouldn't that be hilarious if he sold it and something else went there and then all

00:11:33 ◼   ► of a sudden my traffic just completely dried up. It ends up that my website is not that

00:11:38 ◼   ► popular at all. That would be hilarious.

00:11:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm sure that would be really funny for you. So, by the time this episode comes

00:12:00 ◼   ► out…

00:12:01 ◼   ► over the weekend. I want this episode.

00:12:02 ◼   ► Oh, yeah. Okay. So, we can talk. We can talk WWDC.

00:12:06 ◼   ► Yeah. WWDC is coming up. You know what's amazing about WWDC is – oh, you know what

00:12:12 ◼   ► I should tell everybody? I want to tell everybody before we move on that – so, why do I have

00:12:18 ◼   ► John Moltz on the show instead of Brent and Dave? I'll have Brent and Dave on the show

00:12:21 ◼   ► eventually anyway. But they've got podcast too. Brent has the one he does with Michael

00:12:26 ◼   ► Simmons, the identical cousins. Michael Simmons is a guy behind Fantastic Al and a bunch of

00:12:33 ◼   ► other great, great apps. But Brent and him, who are not related, just because their last

00:12:39 ◼   ► name is the same, they have to have a podcast together. And that's cool. And Dave, of course,

00:12:45 ◼   ► right here on Mule Radio, has The Unprofessional with Lex Friedman, which is a pretty good

00:12:51 ◼   ► podcast. I don't know. I've never listened to it.

00:12:53 ◼   ► but they get some pretty good guests.

00:12:56 ◼   ► - They do, they do, you've been on it, right?

00:12:58 ◼   ► - Apart from me and your wife.

00:12:59 ◼   ► - Well, they did, yeah, well, do they have other guests?

00:13:03 ◼   ► No, they get amazing guests, that's actually their shtick.

00:13:05 ◼   ► - They really get great guests.

00:13:06 ◼   ► - They do.

00:13:07 ◼   ► - I don't know how they do it, but they get great guests.

00:13:10 ◼   ► - But we figured, hey, you know what would be fair,

00:13:17 ◼   ► would be maybe we'll do the talk show eventually,

00:13:20 ◼   ► but why don't we do somebody else's show?

00:13:22 ◼   ► And so we did Renee Ritchie and Guy English's Debug Podcast.

00:13:27 ◼   ► And they were beta testers too, so they knew about them.

00:13:30 ◼   ► We recorded it a few days ago, and that's out.

00:13:34 ◼   ► So you can just Google it.

00:13:36 ◼   ► But anybody who likes the talk show,

00:13:37 ◼   ► you're going to love this episode of Debug.

00:13:40 ◼   ► It is two hours of us talking everything Vesper,

00:13:44 ◼   ► and collaboration, and how do people--

00:13:46 ◼   ► three guys who work in Seattle, Denver, and Philadelphia

00:13:52 ◼   ► collaborate and make an app. I thought it really turned out great. So look for that.

00:13:56 ◼   ► It's the Bug Pod Debug. It's over there at the iMore website, but it's really, really

00:14:02 ◼   ► good. I think people here are going to like it.

00:14:04 ◼   ► Tim Cynova You know that Rene Ritchie? He's a smart guy.

00:14:07 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Oh, my God. He's just incredibly smart.

00:14:10 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Yeah. And Guy English is good looking.

00:14:14 ◼   ► Yeah, he is bastard

00:14:16 ◼   ► WWDC

00:14:23 ◼   ► So, you know, what's amazing? I think it's amazing. We're recording this on Friday. There is like nothing

00:14:28 ◼   ► Like there's a little is there did I miss well? Well, there's the okay Mac Pro, right, right and

00:14:35 ◼   ► MacBook Air right those two seem pretty sure

00:14:40 ◼   ► For next week, right? Yeah

00:14:43 ◼   ► And then everything else is kind of a...

00:14:50 ◼   ► The Mac Pro. So what do you think is going on with that? I saw Marco had like a detailed

00:14:54 ◼   ► thing. Some of these guys get real into it.

00:14:56 ◼   ► Yeah, Marco is really into it.

00:14:58 ◼   ► Right, because Marco gets... I guess that's because he really needs it. But Marco really

00:15:02 ◼   ► gets into it with the Intel roadmap and knowing what Intel has and therefore what's possible.

00:15:11 ◼   ► I don't know. Maybe I'm just losing it as I get older. I just can't do that level of

00:15:17 ◼   ► research. I'm just going to wait for Apple to tell me what's in the damn thing.

00:15:22 ◼   ► Yeah. Would you really buy one?

00:15:25 ◼   ► I would consider it because I've still been putting this off for years and years of just

00:15:30 ◼   ► breaking down and getting a new computer. My computer is ancient. I still call it a

00:15:36 ◼   ► My display is ancient.

00:15:39 ◼   ► It's only 20 inches.

00:15:41 ◼   ► I think it's like eight, nine years old.

00:15:43 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:15:45 ◼   ► So I'm due for a nice big upgrade here on my desk.

00:15:48 ◼   ► And I've just been waiting for the right one.

00:15:50 ◼   ► And I just keep putting off buying an iMac

00:15:52 ◼   ► because I just feel like it's--

00:15:54 ◼   ► I don't know, I'm just resistant to tying my display

00:15:56 ◼   ► to the computer.

00:15:58 ◼   ► And I don't think the Mini--

00:15:59 ◼   ► I don't want the Mini.

00:16:00 ◼   ► I want something better.

00:16:01 ◼   ► If it's going to be on my desktop,

00:16:02 ◼   ► I want something that's going to be fast for years to come.

00:16:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:06 ◼   ► It does seem more though that it really is a pro, it's more of a pro machine than it

00:16:13 ◼   ► used to be.

00:16:15 ◼   ► Even much more than, what's it called now?

00:16:18 ◼   ► The MacBook Pro.

00:16:22 ◼   ► Because the laptop seems like more people get it than just really professionals.

00:16:26 ◼   ► Whereas only professionals are really interested in the Mac Pro these days.

00:16:31 ◼   ► It used to be that it was not an uncommon thing to get a machine that you wanted to

00:16:36 ◼   ► use for gaming or whatever and you would upgrade it.

00:16:38 ◼   ► So you wanted something that you could upgrade all the parts inside of.

00:16:42 ◼   ► And now the prices have come down to the point where it's just like you just buy a new one

00:16:47 ◼   ► every few years.

00:16:48 ◼   ► You keep up that way.

00:16:50 ◼   ► Because I always ran into this problem.

00:16:51 ◼   ► I haven't had a pro since my last one was like a 1999 Sawtooth.

00:16:58 ◼   ► And I used it for years and kept upgrading components on the inside.

00:17:02 ◼   ► But then eventually you run into the problem where third-party peripheral makers won't

00:17:07 ◼   ► support adding cards.

00:17:09 ◼   ► They only want to…

00:17:12 ◼   ► If you're not plugging the device into an Apple-supplied USB 3.0 card, they're not

00:17:20 ◼   ► going to help you.

00:17:23 ◼   ► So if you put a PCI, third-party PCI card that gives your older Mac USB 3, you're out

00:17:33 ◼   ► of luck.

00:17:34 ◼   ► So it doesn't seem like it's worth it anymore.

00:17:37 ◼   ► No.

00:17:38 ◼   ► And it sounds like from the rumors that what they're going to do, if they really do have

00:17:42 ◼   ► Mac Pros to announce, is that they're going to change from internal, you know, it's still

00:17:47 ◼   ► going to be the upgradable machine, but it's going to be all about the, what's it called,

00:17:51 ◼   ► the Thunderbolt.

00:17:52 ◼   ► Thunderbolt.

00:17:53 ◼   ► and it's going to be so I think I can only assume if it's external rather than

00:18:00 ◼   ► internal therefore the actual Mac Pro will therefore shrink in size

00:18:05 ◼   ► tremendously yeah and then you'll just you know connect whatever external stuff

00:18:10 ◼   ► you need through Thunderbolt yeah which is interesting it would be I mean is that

00:18:18 ◼   ► I guess that's possible I guess I should have I guess Syracuse it would know he's

00:18:21 ◼   ► He's probably rolling his eyes at our ignorance.

00:18:24 ◼   ► He's probably having a stroke as he listens to this episode.

00:18:29 ◼   ► Would it be possible to have an external video card?

00:18:31 ◼   ► I guess so.

00:18:32 ◼   ► I guess that's the whole point.

00:18:33 ◼   ► Right?

00:18:34 ◼   ► If you wanted to add an extra video card to add another Al Gore-style 30-inch display

00:18:38 ◼   ► to your desk, you'd have some kind of external thing that you would connect.

00:18:43 ◼   ► That seems crazy.

00:18:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:45 ◼   ► It's a whole new world.

00:18:49 ◼   ► I think that's the gist of the expectations that Mac Pro hardware Macbook Airs

00:18:53 ◼   ► Well, will they will they or not be retina? I don't know I guess that's the big question

00:18:59 ◼   ► But most you know, I think most of the thing is gonna be about the software it's gonna be about Mac OS 10

00:19:05 ◼   ► 10.9 and iOS 7 right and nobody seems to know Jack about anything about it. Yeah

00:19:12 ◼   ► Which is kind of exciting. So is it Monday? Yes, it's Monday morning, right?

00:19:18 ◼   ► because the WWDC runs all week

00:19:22 ◼   ► so that keynote is monday even though they usually prefer Tuesday

00:19:26 ◼   ► announcements and stuff

00:19:28 ◼   ► now i'm super excited i know absolutely almost absolutely nothing i don't think

00:19:33 ◼   ► i've been this ignorant of what's coming

00:19:36 ◼   ► software-wise

00:19:38 ◼   ► for a keynote

00:19:40 ◼   ► since the iphone one back in

00:19:42 ◼   ► two thousand seven

00:19:44 ◼   ► which is great i'm super excited about it

00:19:47 ◼   ► unless they get up there and they don't have anything to announce.

00:19:51 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:19:52 ◼   ► Wouldn't that be great?

00:19:56 ◼   ► The one thing I keep hearing over and over again from friends who would know is the one

00:20:02 ◼   ► word I keep hearing is that some of the stuff they're going to show is "polarizing."

00:20:07 ◼   ► Flat?

00:20:08 ◼   ► No, polarizing.

00:20:10 ◼   ► Polarizing?

00:20:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:13 ◼   ► I also heard from somebody that just, quote, "All the leaks are wrong," which is interesting.

00:20:21 ◼   ► I have no idea what to make of it.

00:20:26 ◼   ► One way that could be, wouldn't it be great if it was like the new look couldn't be more

00:20:33 ◼   ► extravagantly skeuomorphic?

00:20:35 ◼   ► It's like a liberal – like the entire OS looks like the Liberace house in that Candelabra

00:20:42 ◼   ► It's all like gold and shiny.

00:20:47 ◼   ► We got rid of all the felt and leather and replaced it with gold and platinum.

00:20:50 ◼   ► It's skins.

00:20:51 ◼   ► They have a whole bunch of skins.

00:20:54 ◼   ► And then you do an in-app purchase to upgrade.

00:20:57 ◼   ► To get more.

00:20:58 ◼   ► Right.

00:20:59 ◼   ► To get like a better, you know, like it comes with diamonds, but they're like low on, what

00:21:05 ◼   ► are those things?

00:21:06 ◼   ► Clarity and the color.

00:21:08 ◼   ► Cut and clarity.

00:21:09 ◼   ► Cut and clarity.

00:21:10 ◼   ► You kind of do an in-app upgrade to get a better diamond better and bigger diamonds

00:21:13 ◼   ► You remember all those remember those skins that they had and was it a West eight

00:21:19 ◼   ► That ever actually come that ever did that did that ever actually come out? Oh my god John

00:21:27 ◼   ► I can't believe you remember used to get kaleidoscope, right?

00:21:30 ◼   ► There was that kaleidoscope for years right and then they did put they did put that in yeah

00:21:34 ◼   ► But what happened is and then jobs took it back out when he got back before it actually shipped

00:21:40 ◼   ► So they shipped OS 8 with the appearance manager. It was what it was called. It was the shift where it was called the appearance manager. Capital A, capital M.

00:21:54 ◼   ► And that was a big pain in the ass for developers to support a lot of rewriting. Which was all about making it themable.

00:22:04 ◼   ► And then Jobs got there and said, "These other themes all look like garbage.

00:22:07 ◼   ► We're not shipping them.

00:22:08 ◼   ► Take them out.

00:22:09 ◼   ► You know, we're – the user doesn't design the system.

00:22:13 ◼   ► We do.

00:22:14 ◼   ► This is what it looks like."

00:22:15 ◼   ► So they had – they shipped the OS with this appearance manager that supported multiple

00:22:18 ◼   ► themes that never had more than one theme.

00:22:21 ◼   ► And I guess the other ones leaked, you know, that – what was it?

00:22:24 ◼   ► Gizmo?

00:22:25 ◼   ► And Tecmo or something like that.

00:22:27 ◼   ► Tecmo was like a dark black one, you know.

00:22:30 ◼   ► It's like a kids' one.

00:22:31 ◼   ► Was that Gizmo?

00:22:32 ◼   ► I think that was Gizmo. Gizmo looked like Nickelodeon. It was asymmetrical and had little

00:22:38 ◼   ► squiggly spiral straws and stuff like that. But they never shipped it. I don't remember

00:22:49 ◼   ► if hackers, I think hackers, like enthusiasts, ended up backwards engineering the theme format

00:22:54 ◼   ► and so you could, in a way that you could get kaleidoscope themes, you could get appearance

00:22:58 ◼   ► manager themes but I don't think it ever overtook I think the people who are into

00:23:03 ◼   ► that still stuck with kaleidoscope because it actually yeah yeah it was

00:23:06 ◼   ► better right and more they had more themes right so what do you expect well

00:23:17 ◼   ► other than this there's two hardware things that I mentioned I don't know

00:23:20 ◼   ► either it would be nice to see something about the iPhone hardware wise but

00:23:28 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like that's the… unless they come out… unless they're doing a

00:23:34 ◼   ► launch of a cheaper phone.

00:23:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I just don't see it.

00:23:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:40 ◼   ► No way.

00:23:41 ◼   ► No.

00:23:42 ◼   ► I mean, it would certainly be a big drop out of nowhere.

00:23:43 ◼   ► I mean, would it be shocking?

00:23:45 ◼   ► No.

00:23:46 ◼   ► But it just seems like that sort of thing, if it were coming, would be braced for it.

00:23:53 ◼   ► And I do think that the thing Tim Cook said at the-- was it D11?

00:23:59 ◼   ► I think that was the only place he really spoke.

00:24:01 ◼   ► But where he said, we've got great stuff in the line later in the year and next year.

00:24:05 ◼   ► I think that means I know iOS devices till later in the year.

00:24:11 ◼   ► Mac doesn't even count anymore, really.

00:24:14 ◼   ► Well, it doesn't in terms of what drives the market at large.

00:24:19 ◼   ► Like, you know, it doesn't matter.

00:24:21 ◼   ► Like, let's just say Monday, come Monday, they announce a new Mac Pro.

00:24:24 ◼   ► And it makes everybody happy.

00:24:27 ◼   ► John Siracusa is happy.

00:24:29 ◼   ► Marco is happy.

00:24:30 ◼   ► You know, it's super powerful.

00:24:32 ◼   ► It is super expandable.

00:24:34 ◼   ► It is at a great price.

00:24:36 ◼   ► And it looks cool.

00:24:38 ◼   ► That does nothing to Apple's stock.

00:24:40 ◼   ► And it does nothing.

00:24:41 ◼   ► It shouldn't actually.

00:24:42 ◼   ► That's this is one case.

00:24:43 ◼   ► It's not a complaint because I think, you know, the most possible Mac Pros they would

00:24:46 ◼   ► sell at the best price with great margins and it's an amazing product is almost negligible

00:24:52 ◼   ► to their bottom line.

00:24:56 ◼   ► That's why Tim Cook, I think, has to say that.

00:25:01 ◼   ► They can't oversell the Mac Pro as being an important product.

00:25:06 ◼   ► Yeah, there I mean it seems like the Mac line is

00:25:09 ◼   ► Caught up with the the malaise that's affecting the PC industry as a whole. Yeah, I definitely think so

00:25:18 ◼   ► Speaking of stock price though. Do you see this? I just saw this today on

00:25:23 ◼   ► Strat tech Gary that's the the new website from Ben

00:25:27 ◼   ► Ben Thompson

00:25:33 ◼   ► Been reading that site. I have it's a good site. Yeah

00:25:35 ◼   ► He's got a thing here.

00:25:39 ◼   ► Samsung Electronics lost $12 billion in market value on smartphone worries.

00:25:44 ◼   ► So it seems like they're copying everything from Apple.

00:25:47 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Shamelessly.

00:25:49 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Now they're even copying irrational investor

00:25:53 ◼   ► panic that loses billions of dollars in market cap in a single day.

00:25:59 ◼   ► Tim Cynova On slowing sales of flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone.

00:26:03 ◼   ► phone. Right, which I don't know because I don't know. Again, and this is, you know,

00:26:09 ◼   ► here's, here's, you know, here's me trying to be, or hopefully showing that I'm not,

00:26:14 ◼   ► you know, blindly pro-apple. Like, this makes no sense to me. This, you know, Samsung is,

00:26:22 ◼   ► everybody, for everything I saw is that the Galaxy S4 is selling exactly as they wanted

00:26:26 ◼   ► the Galaxy S4 to sell. It seemed like it was selling fairly well, but at the same time,

00:26:31 ◼   ► I think some of the analysts, all this stuff is about Wall Street expectations. What they

00:26:35 ◼   ► had expected was something like 30 million a quarter, and it was only selling like 20

00:26:42 ◼   ► million a quarter. They had to cut their expectations.

00:26:45 ◼   ► Dave: Yeah, I guess. I don't know.

00:26:47 ◼   ► Tim N

00:27:00 ◼   ► It's a wildly competitive business and traditionally fortunes do change every few years.

00:27:06 ◼   ► So I'm not saying that Samsung and Apple's positions are locked in and a sure thing going

00:27:12 ◼   ► forward forever and ever.

00:27:13 ◼   ► Of course not.

00:27:14 ◼   ► But $12 billion in market cap in a day doesn't seem anywhere near rational.

00:27:21 ◼   ► Seems like anybody investing in mobile technology, tablets and cell phones at all, pretty much

00:27:28 ◼   ► treats it like being drunk at the blackjack table.

00:27:32 ◼   ► "Ah, double down.

00:27:33 ◼   ► I'm out.

00:27:34 ◼   ► I'm out."

00:27:35 ◼   ► I don't know where…

00:27:38 ◼   ► I always think that they try to keep that money in the same sort of industry in general.

00:27:46 ◼   ► So if you're not investing in Apple and Samsung, who the heck are you going to take

00:27:49 ◼   ► your money out of?

00:27:50 ◼   ► You should take your money out of those two.

00:27:52 ◼   ► Where are you putting it?

00:27:56 ◼   ► The other thing that Ben Thompson had talked about, I think maybe it was last week that

00:28:00 ◼   ► I wanted to talk to you about, was Apple TV predictions because he has predicted an SDK

00:28:07 ◼   ► for the Apple TV on Monday.

00:28:10 ◼   ► We had talked about this.

00:28:11 ◼   ► I feel like you and I talked about this a while ago.

00:28:15 ◼   ► No one's been talking about that recently, but he brought that back up.

00:28:18 ◼   ► That's a good topic.

00:28:20 ◼   ► Let's get to it, but let's do the first sponsor break first and then we'll do that.

00:28:24 ◼   ► And the first sponsor, this is great, I'm going to tell you about An Event Apart.

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00:28:32 ◼   ► They have upcoming events.

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00:28:38 ◼   ► like one big show a year and then you got to go there and do it.

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00:29:46 ◼   ► I've been to several Event Aparts.

00:29:50 ◼   ► And they're one of the best run, smoothest conferences I've ever been at.

00:29:56 ◼   ► I was actually at the very first one.

00:29:58 ◼   ► The first one was actually in Philadelphia, I think back in, I want to say 2007, 2008-ish,

00:30:05 ◼   ► something like that.

00:30:06 ◼   ► It was right here in Philadelphia.

00:30:07 ◼   ► And I was at one a couple of years ago in Chicago.

00:30:09 ◼   ► It was fantastic.

00:30:12 ◼   ► Amazing conference.

00:30:13 ◼   ► Mike: Yeah.

00:30:14 ◼   ► And they always have some of our pals speaking.

00:30:17 ◼   ► Speaking. Oh, yeah, great speakers. Really really great. See Mike Monteiro's mug on their page

00:30:23 ◼   ► Yeah, Mike's been there

00:30:25 ◼   ► Jason Santa Maria is a longtime speaker there man. Does that guy know how to talk about typography and stuff like that?

00:30:32 ◼   ► Great great stuff. So Apple TV next week boy, that would be a good surprise. That would be exciting. Yeah

00:30:39 ◼   ► Here's why I think he's wrong though

00:30:44 ◼   ► Unless I think and and guy English and I have talked this over, you know, you know, it's no deja vu

00:30:50 ◼   ► But we've talked about on the show

00:30:52 ◼   ► I think that he's right that there is an SDK coming for Apple TV and apps and that it'll be a third-party thing. I

00:31:00 ◼   ► Don't think it's coming to the Apple TV that we have today. I think it requires

00:31:05 ◼   ► Next generation hardware and the reason I think that is that I think it requires some sort of next generation

00:31:13 ◼   ► remote. And the current one just doesn't have the support for that.

00:31:19 ◼   ► No, you can't do anything with the current one.

00:31:21 ◼   ► You could do—the only thing you could do—it's fine for play/pause and seek, up/down/left/right,

00:31:28 ◼   ► play/pause, but it's not good for any—so it really wouldn't be good for apps that

00:31:33 ◼   ► did anything more than just deliver video content, which alone is a big deal. I mean,

00:31:39 ◼   ► let's face it, things are TV. But I think that thing needs games and stuff like that.

00:31:46 ◼   ► And I think that needs a next generation remote. And I don't think that the remote can be,

00:31:51 ◼   ► well, just use this app on your iPhone or iPod or iPad or something like that.

00:31:57 ◼   ► **Matt Stauffer:** Why not?

00:31:58 ◼   ► **Ezra Klein:** Because I think it's clumsy. I think it's

00:32:01 ◼   ► weird to think that you've got to fish your iPhone out of your pocket just to do anything

00:32:05 ◼   ► on the TV. I think you need a remote that sits there on your coffee table and it's ready

00:32:09 ◼   ► to go. And it doesn't cost $600 or $700. I mean, I guess iPod Touch is 220 now that they

00:32:19 ◼   ► have the new one. But you can't sell a $99 set-top box that requires a $220 remote. It

00:32:26 ◼   ► just doesn't work. And I just don't think an app is the right thing. I don't think because

00:32:31 ◼   ► apps. This is the other thing is I think that the, you know, iPhone is all about looking

00:32:38 ◼   ► at the screen and touching things right TV is about looking not at your remote, it's

00:32:43 ◼   ► about looking at the screen. Right, you need a remote that that you don't look at to use.

00:32:51 ◼   ► And the iPhone is not it a piece of glass is, you know, it gives you no affordance for

00:32:55 ◼   ► for knowing what you're doing.

00:32:58 ◼   ► Gosh, it seems weird to think of Apple shipping

00:33:01 ◼   ► a remote with physical keys for gaming.

00:33:07 ◼   ► Yeah, this is where my imagination fails me.

00:33:10 ◼   ► And maybe I'm wrong.

00:33:11 ◼   ► Maybe I'm all wet, and it really is something about apps,

00:33:15 ◼   ► an app that you control it with.

00:33:17 ◼   ► Or maybe it's like a Kinect type thing,

00:33:19 ◼   ► and you wave your hand and talk to it.

00:33:21 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:33:21 ◼   ► I lack the imagination to even think about what it is.

00:33:25 ◼   ► but I just know that it just seems to me in my gut though,

00:33:28 ◼   ► like I can't imagine what the new thing

00:33:31 ◼   ► that I think they have to make to make this happen is,

00:33:34 ◼   ► but I do know that the one I have downstairs isn't it.

00:33:38 ◼   ► Right, you can't just have that little crummy remote.

00:33:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, but really just the remote.

00:33:43 ◼   ► It's not so much anything with the device.

00:33:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't think that in terms of,

00:33:48 ◼   ► now that they've got 1080p output,

00:33:50 ◼   ► they're set in terms of like hardware,

00:33:54 ◼   ► and I don't think it needs to be all that computationally. Although maybe it needs better

00:33:58 ◼   ► graphics for games. I don't think that they're obviously not going to, well not obviously,

00:34:03 ◼   ► but I think we know Apple isn't going to get in a graphics horsepower race with Xbox and

00:34:09 ◼   ► PlayStation and sell $300, $400 things that are at a loss. But more graphics power is

00:34:20 ◼   ► always better. But I don't know how different it is than the Retina iPad. I think that these

00:34:29 ◼   ► A6 or A7 or whatever the next one's going to be are already pretty graphically powerful.

00:34:37 ◼   ► Tim Cynova So that's sort of the dark horse.

00:34:41 ◼   ► Dave Asprey What do you think?

00:34:42 ◼   ► Well, I don't see why they couldn't deliver a remote next week and the SDK.

00:34:53 ◼   ► But I certainly haven't heard anything.

00:35:00 ◼   ► He was the only one that I noticed talking about it, and I just jog my memory that that

00:35:04 ◼   ► was something, seemed like something that was on our list of possibilities and then

00:35:07 ◼   ► dropped off the radar. Because it didn't happen for a while.

00:35:13 ◼   ► Yeah, and I guess the other thing that I, you know, maybe he's right is, is I guess

00:35:21 ◼   ► the other thing I think in my head is it would be weird if they announced it and

00:35:25 ◼   ► said, "Hey, we have this great new app store," and said, "You have to buy a new

00:35:28 ◼   ► Apple TV and all of you guys who've already bought an Apple TV, you know,

00:35:32 ◼   ► tough noogies." You know, like, that's a hard... Not that Apple never does that. Not

00:35:37 ◼   ► Not that Apple never is afraid to give you tough noogies news,

00:35:42 ◼   ► lovers of floppy drives.

00:35:43 ◼   ► But it seems a little--

00:35:47 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:35:48 ◼   ► It seems like that's a tough thing to--

00:35:50 ◼   ► Well, why couldn't they just sell the remote separately, too?

00:35:53 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe.

00:35:53 ◼   ► Does that-- I guess I can--

00:35:55 ◼   ► It comes with a new one.

00:35:57 ◼   ► Right.

00:35:58 ◼   ► And maybe--

00:35:59 ◼   ► And you probably-- I mean, if you're going to have--

00:36:01 ◼   ► it's going to be like--

00:36:02 ◼   ► Bluetooth is what it would be.

00:36:03 ◼   ► that Bluetooth level four that's low power.

00:36:07 ◼   ► - And if it's gonna be like the Wii or whatever,

00:36:09 ◼   ► you're probably gonna want six of them.

00:36:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe, I don't know.

00:36:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I didn't even think about that,

00:36:18 ◼   ► that if it's like a combination remote game controller,

00:36:21 ◼   ► you'd want multiple ones.

00:36:22 ◼   ► - You guys have a, you have a Wii U.

00:36:26 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:36:27 ◼   ► - And that does have, that has a screen,

00:36:30 ◼   ► but it actually has physical buttons.

00:36:32 ◼   ► on the remote. Yes. It's a weird thing. Jonas really likes it. Just by coincidence, it really

00:36:44 ◼   ► is funny. Our old Wii crapped out a couple of days before Christmas. We actually needed

00:36:54 ◼   ► something. I guess I could have bought a new Wii. It does seem, though, like the Wii U

00:37:01 ◼   ► it's just not getting a lot of games. And the controller is interesting, but it is weird.

00:37:05 ◼   ► Yeah. The weirdest thing about it is that it currently only supports one. Like, you

00:37:12 ◼   ► can use as many – for – to play multiplayer games, you just use the old Wii controllers.

00:37:17 ◼   ► But the new – the new touch screen, the one that gets all the things, the system can

00:37:21 ◼   ► only support one of those at a time. Huh. Because that's not what the – I'm pretty

00:37:28 ◼   ► pretty sure that's not what the intro, you know, like the videos showed when the thing

00:37:32 ◼   ► came out.

00:37:33 ◼   ► I don't know. I don't think that they showed multiple. I don't know. But it does. It was

00:37:37 ◼   ► a surprise to me. It's because it just seemed to me like, yeah, just seems no fair. You

00:37:44 ◼   ► know, here, I play a two player game and I get this fancy new touchscreen thing here,

00:37:48 ◼   ► you get a joystick. But I guess all the multiplayer games that we have so far when you do play

00:37:52 ◼   ► multiplayer at both people have to use the the old school Wii remote. And it's just single

00:37:57 ◼   ► player games where you get the touch screen one.

00:38:01 ◼   ► You know, and there's some cool games that take advantage of it.

00:38:03 ◼   ► He's got this Batman Arkham Asylum game, which is a questionable content level for a nine-year-old.

00:38:10 ◼   ► I was going to say, they're the one that's rated for like 14 and up.

00:38:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:14 ◼   ► My wife heard him.

00:38:18 ◼   ► But he's seen, you know, he's seen The Shining, so.

00:38:24 ◼   ► But it does have some cool stuff where the gimmick is that the touch screen is...

00:38:34 ◼   ► Batman has built a new thing on his suit where he's sort of got like an iPhone built into his wrist

00:38:39 ◼   ► on his armor and I'm so old. He's got an iWatch? Yeah, sort of. Yeah, he's got like a... yeah,

00:38:46 ◼   ► yeah, he's got like a big four-inch iWatch and the the remote is the iWatch.

00:38:52 ◼   ► So like, you know, you so you know the game is first-person perspective.

00:38:58 ◼   ► Right, and it's it seems like well done but it's I you know I'm not

00:39:05 ◼   ► surprised that Nintendo's not doing too well. Yeah, I think you know I do think

00:39:11 ◼   ► the potential there is for the sort of explosive vibrance in gaming that you see in the App Store

00:39:21 ◼   ► from iPhone and iPad where two guys can just go and make games. And I know that there's things

00:39:28 ◼   ► like that for PlayStation and there's a marketplace or something like that. But Apple does that better

00:39:34 ◼   ► than anybody else. Like everybody will say, "Hey, PlayStation's had the, what do you call it,

00:39:39 ◼   ► and Xbox has the 360 market or Xbox Live or whatever the hell it's called where you can

00:39:44 ◼   ► download indie games. So like everything else, Apple won't be first, but they'll be.

00:39:50 ◼   ► >> Yeah. On the Wii, they seem like they're older. I don't know what it's like on the

00:39:59 ◼   ► Xbox, but it seems like they're older games on the Wii and usually not. The indie ones

00:40:04 ◼   ► are not necessarily as good as the stuff that you get on the disk.

00:40:08 ◼   ► Right. Whereas I foresee with Apple, it would be a type of thing where an indie game might

00:40:13 ◼   ► turn out to be the hit game of the year. The biggest game. You're not in this little ghetto

00:40:19 ◼   ► where EA and the big publishers like that are all the flagship titles and you're over

00:40:25 ◼   ► here in the little market. I would foresee it like the app store where two guys can make

00:40:35 ◼   ► Doodle jump and the thing is like the top grossing app and the whole thing for the year

00:40:39 ◼   ► right

00:40:43 ◼   ► on the world

00:40:45 ◼   ► it seems like and that's you know that kind of

00:40:50 ◼   ► almost a whole new platform is would be a great thing for Apple right now given the

00:40:56 ◼   ► whining and complaining

00:40:58 ◼   ► yeah it kind of would be I still think and I've said this before many times and our poor

00:41:03 ◼   ► friend Gene Munster, who I really think is losing his mind. You see he tweeted at me

00:41:11 ◼   ► when I…

00:41:12 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. You told me that.

00:41:14 ◼   ► Yeah. Good spirit. Good ticket and stride. Gene Munster, for those of you who don't

00:41:21 ◼   ► know, is an Apple analyst. He's somewhere out of like Minneapolis or something like

00:41:25 ◼   ► that, long-term follower of the company, oft-quoted. He's always available to media looking for

00:41:31 ◼   ► a quote on Apple. And for the most part, I think he gets the company. He's not a jackass.

00:41:37 ◼   ► He's a pretty astute analyst. But he's obsessed. I would say, I think for about five or six

00:41:46 ◼   ► years with the idea of Apple selling a TV set. In his world, the Apple TV is an actual

00:41:54 ◼   ► screen, the 50, 60-inch LCD or whatever it would be, screen. And he's been saying that

00:42:00 ◼   ► it's coming in a year for about five years. Would you say that's right?

00:42:06 ◼   ► I think that's about right. And as time goes on, and they might be working, but

00:42:10 ◼   ► his obsession is just palpable, like where, you know, he'll chime in every

00:42:17 ◼   ► time on a conference call, when it's time for Gene Munster, you know it's gonna be

00:42:22 ◼   ► something about Apple TV. And he hears stuff, you know, that just isn't

00:42:28 ◼   ► there. It's like when Tim Cook on the last one said, more or less, I mean this isn't

00:42:35 ◼   ► a quote, but he said, "We've got some great products that we're working on for later

00:42:39 ◼   ► this year and next year." Right? More or less is what he said. Gene Munster heard that

00:42:47 ◼   ► as, "We're going to have an Apple TV later this year or next year." Right? I mean,

00:42:53 ◼   ► like well maybe you know it could be but that's not what he said but I think I

00:43:01 ◼   ► still think I think that Apple's TV strategy is what we see I think it's

00:43:06 ◼   ► right in front of us it's a $99 box that you hook up to any TV that you want and

00:43:12 ◼   ► you know and there's some iteration some iteration of that right but not not it

00:43:17 ◼   ► yeah I don't it doesn't seem like there's value and in trying to get into

00:43:21 ◼   ► making thousand dollar huge screens right or you know and I've said this

00:43:29 ◼   ► before too maybe they would but only as like in addition to a box that you can

00:43:37 ◼   ► put into anybody's TV right that they would still sell the $99 box and maybe

00:43:42 ◼   ► they would also sell an Apple branded TV set that has it built in but so you can

00:43:47 ◼   ► get on the platform and buy the apps and use your Apple TV with your existing TV set. And

00:43:52 ◼   ► if you're in the market for a new TV set, you could just buy the Apple one and have

00:43:56 ◼   ► one less box. But I don't think that they would go TV set only because it seems to me

00:44:01 ◼   ► like they'd be purposefully taking only a very small part of the market, which is the

00:44:05 ◼   ► people in the market for a new TV set.

00:44:08 ◼   ► I mean, like look at the iPhone, right? The iPhone has been a tremendous hit. But people

00:44:15 ◼   ► didn't buy them all at once. People bought them over time as they needed or wanted a new cell

00:44:22 ◼   ► phone. It's a huge hit, but Apple doesn't make – I mean, idiots like us go get in line and buy

00:44:27 ◼   ► stuff on day one, but that's not normal people. Normal people bought their iPhone when their old

00:44:32 ◼   ► iPhone – when their old phone broke or they finally got fed up with it or just kind of got

00:44:36 ◼   ► in the mood or especially when their contracts were up.

00:44:39 ◼   ► Yeah, the contract. It's the contract.

00:44:42 ◼   ► So I think the TV industry had a great decade because just about everybody I know has shifted

00:44:51 ◼   ► from big old clunky glass CRTs to nice flat screen plasma or LCD or whatever, wide screen

00:45:02 ◼   ► TVs. But everybody, I think normal people think, "Well, now I'm set. It's like the Fight

00:45:08 ◼   ► club thing. I had a nice couch. I solved the couch problem. Now, I don't need to worry

00:45:13 ◼   ► about a couch. Well, now, I feel like my TV set is set. I'm not in the market for a new

00:45:18 ◼   ► TV set.

00:45:19 ◼   ► Mike: Yeah. It's the same thing with cars. People also sometimes speculate that Apple

00:45:30 ◼   ► release a car. You can't just get into that. You got to wait a long time in order to make

00:45:40 ◼   ► any money out of either one of those businesses because people aren't just going to up and

00:45:44 ◼   ► run out and buy another one.

00:45:45 ◼   ► Dave Asprey But if they sold it as a $99 box that you attach

00:45:49 ◼   ► to anybody's TV, all of a sudden, it's a new thing and you don't have to replace anything

00:45:54 ◼   ► and you don't have to outlay a large amount of cash and boom, you're in.

00:45:58 ◼   ► I've got a couple of other things I want to talk about.

00:46:04 ◼   ► But let's do the second sponsor and then we'll do that and then we'll finish up.

00:46:09 ◼   ► I want to talk about the eBook, Price Fixing.

00:46:12 ◼   ► Man, I like that.

00:46:14 ◼   ► Isn't it getting funny?

00:46:18 ◼   ► I can't wait to talk about it.

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00:48:31 ◼   ► a website you're not if you don't check out Squarespace yeah the great thing

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00:49:00 ◼   ► Absolutely. E-book price fixing case. So that's gone to trial. It's kind of interesting. Now,

00:49:13 ◼   ► I've had a busy week with Vesper,

00:49:15 ◼   ► so I'm not as versed on this as I would be in a normal week,

00:49:20 ◼   ► but I've been following,

00:49:21 ◼   ► and Philip Elmer DeWitt has had some good coverage,

00:49:24 ◼   ► as have some others.

00:49:26 ◼   ► My perspective at the outset of this is that,

00:49:29 ◼   ► and again, and critics of me

00:49:36 ◼   ► who think I have a pro-Apple bias,

00:49:38 ◼   ► maybe this is a case where they're right,

00:49:40 ◼   ► because my thought going into this

00:49:42 ◼   ► is that this seems like bullshit.

00:49:44 ◼   ► Because, and you know, I'm not alone.

00:49:48 ◼   ► Scott Turow, the president of the Authors Guild months ago

00:49:51 ◼   ► had an op-ed in the New York Times

00:49:53 ◼   ► in saying that the authors are on Apple's side of this,

00:49:56 ◼   ► that they were opposed to Amazon,

00:49:58 ◼   ► which had either a monopoly or a near monopoly on ebooks

00:50:03 ◼   ► and were selling books at a loss.

00:50:07 ◼   ► Like Scott Turow or anybody, big name novelist,

00:50:11 ◼   ► comes out with a new novel.

00:50:12 ◼   ► Publisher wants the ebook version at $15.

00:50:16 ◼   ► So Amazon would buy it for $15 from them

00:50:19 ◼   ► and sell it for $9.99.

00:50:22 ◼   ► And now that's, you know, from a consumer point,

00:50:24 ◼   ► now that's great.

00:50:24 ◼   ► I can see and I know there's a lot of fans

00:50:26 ◼   ► of Amazon for doing this,

00:50:27 ◼   ► 'cause consumers think that's great.

00:50:29 ◼   ► I don't care if Amazon sells at a loss.

00:50:31 ◼   ► I've saved five bucks on a book.

00:50:34 ◼   ► That's great.

00:50:35 ◼   ► Authors don't like it though,

00:50:37 ◼   ► even though they get paid the wholesale price they wanted,

00:50:39 ◼   ► because what they could see

00:50:40 ◼   ► is that if Amazon solidified a long-term monopoly,

00:50:44 ◼   ► then all of a sudden Amazon's going to say,

00:50:47 ◼   ► okay, now your wholesale cost is $6

00:50:52 ◼   ► because we're gonna keep selling them at 9.99

00:50:53 ◼   ► and now we'd like to have a profit.

00:50:55 ◼   ► And they'd have to acquiesce because there's a monopoly

00:50:58 ◼   ► and there's no other way to do it.

00:51:00 ◼   ► And so instead of $15 books, it would be $6 books.

00:51:03 ◼   ► And consumers would be left out of it

00:51:05 ◼   ► because they'd still be buying 9.99 books.

00:51:07 ◼   ► all of a sudden the revenue generated by these books would be decimated.

00:51:11 ◼   ► I'm not saying that's exactly what would happen, but that's the point of view of the authors

00:51:15 ◼   ► and publishers of Amazon's selling at a loss thing.

00:51:22 ◼   ► And this agency model is a way to make sure that publishers can't sell, resellers can't

00:51:29 ◼   ► sell books at a loss.

00:51:31 ◼   ► It's this app store model that's exactly like the app store where whatever the price is,

00:51:36 ◼   ► the store gets 30%, and that's it.

00:51:43 ◼   ► It's an interesting case because there are several ways to look at it.

00:51:47 ◼   ► Because you could say, "Oh yeah, Apple's the bad guy because they're trying to drive

00:51:51 ◼   ► the prices up."

00:51:53 ◼   ► But at the same time, Amazon, so it's price fixing because Apple's trying to go in and

00:51:58 ◼   ► get all these publishers to collude in fixing the prices of these books.

00:52:03 ◼   ► At the same time, Amazon, because it's a monopoly, doesn't have to do collusion in

00:52:09 ◼   ► order to have price fixing.

00:52:10 ◼   ► It just fixes the price because it just does it itself.

00:52:15 ◼   ► It's power as a basic – I mean, it's arguably – it's pretty close to a monopoly.

00:52:23 ◼   ► There are other ways to get books.

00:52:25 ◼   ► But –

00:52:26 ◼   ► You know, and Apple – and it's not that Apple wanted to raise prices.

00:52:30 ◼   ► It's that Apple wanted to let publishers set prices.

00:52:32 ◼   ► So, like for example, with Vesper, we chose the price.

00:52:37 ◼   ► We could have charged 99 cents.

00:52:39 ◼   ► We could have charged – what was that I'm rich app?

00:52:44 ◼   ► $999.99.

00:52:45 ◼   ► I think that's the maximum.

00:52:46 ◼   ► I forget how much that was.

00:52:48 ◼   ► The maximum price in the app store.

00:52:51 ◼   ► We picked the price and whatever price – it has to end at 99 cents.

00:52:56 ◼   ► So any integer from 0 to 99 or 999 and then Apple takes 30 percent off every sale and

00:53:04 ◼   ► that's it.

00:53:05 ◼   ► We picked the price.

00:53:06 ◼   ► Why shouldn't the people who make books have that same privilege or right to set the price

00:53:12 ◼   ► of their book?

00:53:14 ◼   ► It doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

00:53:16 ◼   ► But here's another way of putting it.

00:53:22 ◼   ► to me another way of putting it is that Apple's proposal to booksellers is why don't we sell

00:53:28 ◼   ► ebooks like we sell apps. You set the price, we take 30% and handle the distribution in

00:53:36 ◼   ► the DRM. And you know, so I don't see how that's anymore price fixing than it's price

00:53:42 ◼   ► fixing with the app store.

00:53:45 ◼   ► And yet all these publishers rolled over.

00:53:48 ◼   ► Right. I don't think they wanted to fight.

00:53:52 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah, and there's a lot there's lots of reasons why they might have done that but apparently they did

00:53:57 ◼   ► Yeah, they just didn't want to deal with it

00:53:59 ◼   ► And they're still they are still have what they wanted which is the agency model

00:54:03 ◼   ► Right that they've sort of given in to the DOJ, but they still have the agency model, right? Isn't that how the Kindle thing works?

00:54:09 ◼   ► Is an Amazon Amazon on the same page with that now, yes, yeah

00:54:19 ◼   ► So then yesterday, this is the thing that to me is just amazing is

00:54:26 ◼   ► There's two good stories well, the one is this is the first one is an Amazon executive took the stand and

00:54:38 ◼   ► Wouldn't answer any questions. This is Russell

00:54:43 ◼   ► Brandon Eddy, Amazon's vice president for Kindle content, was asked in court about a

00:54:48 ◼   ► meeting he attended in Jeff Bezos' boathouse.

00:54:53 ◼   ► And he said, "I'm not comfortable discussing the contents of that meeting."

00:54:56 ◼   ► And he wouldn't even say whether Bezos was there.

00:55:03 ◼   ► How weird is that?

00:55:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:55:05 ◼   ► What was that picture that you had retweeted?

00:55:12 ◼   ► Was that a joke?

00:55:13 ◼   ► Yeah, that was a joke. It was a retweet of...

00:55:17 ◼   ► Okay, I didn't get it.

00:55:18 ◼   ► Well, it was a scene from The Godfather.

00:55:20 ◼   ► Okay.

00:55:22 ◼   ► Somebody... The picture I retweeted was...

00:55:24 ◼   ► I didn't place it.

00:55:25 ◼   ► Here's a picture from the meeting at Bezos' house, and it was...

00:55:29 ◼   ► It was the lake house in The Godfather II, where Michael decides to take care of...

00:55:36 ◼   ► Take care of his brother, Fredo.

00:55:38 ◼   ► right now.

00:55:41 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:55:44 ◼   ► So there's that, yeah, which is very strange.

00:55:48 ◼   ► And well, anyway, it's very strange.

00:55:52 ◼   ► And then today, there's another story about, this is on the verge, about Google's testimony.

00:56:01 ◼   ► No, I didn't see that.

00:56:03 ◼   ► I haven't seen it.

00:56:07 ◼   ► They basically got the Google guy up on the stand and he initially said that publishers

00:56:20 ◼   ► were telling him directly that Apple, told him directly that they were switching to the

00:56:27 ◼   ► agency model because contracts they entered into with Apple required it.

00:56:32 ◼   ► And then when they started cross-examining him, he said, "Well," basically said,

00:56:39 ◼   ► "Who told you that?"

00:56:41 ◼   ► He said, "I can't remember who told me that."

00:56:43 ◼   ► And then he said, "Well, it might have been somebody on my team that they told."

00:56:47 ◼   ► And he basically just admitted that he did not know of any instances of publishers telling

00:56:52 ◼   ► anybody that.

00:56:53 ◼   ► That's bizarre.

00:56:54 ◼   ► He completely, completely collapsed.

00:57:02 ◼   ► seems like a very strange why would you go in saying that if you weren't able to

00:57:08 ◼   ► back it up that is very very strange so I asked about the guy the Amazon guy who

00:57:14 ◼   ► wouldn't answer the questions I thought that was so bizarre and and in a way it

00:57:18 ◼   ► was explained to me is well a it could have been sort of a taking the Fifth

00:57:22 ◼   ► Amendment invoking the the the right not to incriminate yourself and which you

00:57:27 ◼   ► shouldn't I I you know it's a amazing part of our Constitution and I fully

00:57:32 ◼   ► support it. But, you know, when you invoke it, it does imply that, you know, that you're

00:57:39 ◼   ► acknowledging a crime may have been committed, you know.

00:57:43 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:57:44 ◼   ► Like, and I really...

00:57:46 ◼   ► Well, not necessarily.

00:57:48 ◼   ► Right. But it's, you know, effectively he's a hostile witness. But I guess what the other

00:57:51 ◼   ► thing that, you know, not being a lawyer, I didn't really think through, is that your

00:57:56 ◼   ► obligation when you're on the stand and under oath in a court case, you are absolutely,

00:58:01 ◼   ► law are, you know, with serious repercussions, you must tell the truth. But that doesn't

00:58:07 ◼   ► mean you have to answer. So, I, see, I thought like yes/no questions you had to answer, but

00:58:13 ◼   ► you don't. So they could say, "Was Jeff Bezos there?" And you can just say, "I'm not comfortable

00:58:17 ◼   ► answering that. That's the truth. You're not lying." But they can't make you answer. And,

00:58:25 ◼   ► you know, make of that what you will if you're on the jury or the judge. So, like, if, let's

00:58:30 ◼   ► say Bezos was there. You can't say no, that's perjury. Now you've committed a felony. You

00:58:35 ◼   ► can refuse to answer though, which is kind of just, I don't know. I would be so...

00:58:41 ◼   ► >> They have to invoke some kind of law in order to compel you to answer the question.

00:58:48 ◼   ► And in this instance, I don't think... They would have to... I guess they would have to

00:58:58 ◼   ► evidence that a crime was being committed at the meeting.

00:59:01 ◼   ► >> Right.

00:59:02 ◼   ► >> Right?

00:59:03 ◼   ► And then they will be able to say, well, if you're withholding evidence about what happened

00:59:07 ◼   ► at this meeting, you're withholding evidence of a crime.

00:59:12 ◼   ► And they have no evidence that a crime was committed at the meeting.

00:59:17 ◼   ► Other than the murder of Fredo.

00:59:23 ◼   ► We know there was a murder at the meeting, but other than that, we don't know what else

00:59:27 ◼   ► It just really seems to me like a bad deal.

00:59:33 ◼   ► And the other thing too is that it, you know, by all, everybody seems to suggest that this

00:59:37 ◼   ► case was prompted by Amazon.

00:59:39 ◼   ► That it was Amazon that got the DOJ, the Department of Justice to investigate this.

00:59:46 ◼   ► But it seems as though Amazon did the exact same thing Apple did.

00:59:50 ◼   ► They negotiated contracts with the publishers with the same terms.

00:59:57 ◼   ► They're very strange to me. It really seems like a waste of time.

01:00:00 ◼   ► I got to assume that Amazon spends a lot of money lobbying.

01:00:04 ◼   ► I guess. It really just seems though...

01:00:07 ◼   ► A lot more than Apple.

01:00:08 ◼   ► Yeah. And that brings back that thing from a couple of weeks ago when Tim Cook was down

01:00:13 ◼   ► there in front of the Senate testifying on taxes. And the guy at Politico had the thing

01:00:18 ◼   ► that... Or I think it was Politico. I don't know where it was. Maybe it was the Washington

01:00:21 ◼   ► Examiner or something. But more or less, the message really was nothing about Apple's taxes.

01:00:25 ◼   ► It was really, "Hey, you guys should spend a lot more money on taxes."

01:00:27 ◼   ► money on that. Otherwise, we're going to drag you down here again in a couple of months.

01:00:34 ◼   ► It's a nice business you have here. I'd be ashamed of something you have to do with it.

01:00:43 ◼   ► No, it's an ugly business. The last thing in the news, I think, I mean, again, I'm behind

01:00:49 ◼   ► with the Vesper, but there's this whole, let's just call it what it is, a shitstorm about

01:00:55 ◼   ► about the US government and national security agency and a couple of things actually. Two

01:01:04 ◼   ► separate ones, at least two separate things but they're of the same piece. A couple of

01:01:10 ◼   ► days ago, the Guardian got a tremendous scoop where they found a thing that shows that Verizon

01:01:18 ◼   ► wireless in the US turns over to the NSA the phone records of everybody.

01:01:25 ◼   ► They don't turn over the phone calls according to this.

01:01:28 ◼   ► It's just the records and that the NSA, the darkest of the spook organizations in the

01:01:34 ◼   ► US, the one that does all the electronic eavesdropping has phone records of everybody, every call

01:01:43 ◼   ► you've made, every call everybody's made.

01:01:47 ◼   ► you know, you're everybody. So just the, just the who called and who they called, right?

01:01:54 ◼   ► Which is, you know, a huge, it's, you know, don't think, wow, who cares about that? That's huge.

01:02:00 ◼   ► Incredible. I mean, you can draw all sorts of, oh, and location data, all the metadata associated

01:02:07 ◼   ► with your cell phone account, which is a lot. And I would presume, I think it's, you know,

01:02:15 ◼   ► I don't know that you could even find anybody to take this bet.

01:02:18 ◼   ► I can only presume that it just so happens that it's the Verizon thing that leaked.

01:02:22 ◼   ► It doesn't mean that only Verizon's doing it.

01:02:25 ◼   ► If you think AT&T and Sprint and T-Mobile, et cetera, haven't too, you know, I've got

01:02:33 ◼   ► a bridge to sell you.

01:02:35 ◼   ► And I don't blame -- I can't believe these words are coming out of my mouth.

01:02:40 ◼   ► I don't blame the carriers.

01:02:43 ◼   ► I think this is like a godfather situation.

01:02:48 ◼   ► I think the NSA came to them with an offer they could not refuse.

01:02:53 ◼   ► You're going to give us everything and you're also not going to tell anybody that this is

01:02:59 ◼   ► going on and you're going to like it.

01:03:03 ◼   ► I think.

01:03:04 ◼   ► I don't know that they had an option.

01:03:05 ◼   ► I don't think this was like, "Hey, would you mind giving us all of your customers'

01:03:11 ◼   ► data and Verizon was like, "Sure."

01:03:13 ◼   ► Why not?

01:03:14 ◼   ► Well, they say that this was done under the Protect America Act.

01:03:18 ◼   ► Right.

01:03:19 ◼   ► And that they're-

01:03:20 ◼   ► So they probably walked in there waving the act and saying, "You have to give us this

01:03:25 ◼   ► or we'll- "

01:03:26 ◼   ► Right.

01:03:27 ◼   ► And the act of the law, in addition to authorizing them to do it, also indemnifies the carriers.

01:03:36 ◼   ► that there is no basis for anybody to sue Verizon for doing it, that the law says they

01:03:42 ◼   ► are in the clear.

01:03:45 ◼   ► And then the next piece is the Washington Post came out with this thing about this thing

01:03:50 ◼   ► called PRISM, P-R-I-S-M, it's an acronym, that all sorts of companies like Google, Apple,

01:04:00 ◼   ► Facebook, I don't know who else, you name them, but the big ones are...

01:04:05 ◼   ► Microsoft, YouTube, Skype, AOL.

01:04:09 ◼   ► Everybody but Twitter, the big ones.

01:04:11 ◼   ► And Dropbox.

01:04:12 ◼   ► They said Dropbox is coming, I guess.

01:04:15 ◼   ► And they also said about Apple that Apple resisted and that whether it's a coincidence

01:04:19 ◼   ► or not that they got on it shortly after Steve Jobs died.

01:04:24 ◼   ► Oh yeah, you're right. You're right about Dropbox. Yeah, coming.

01:04:27 ◼   ► You know, whether that's just a coincidence that Apple got on board after Steve Jobs died

01:04:33 ◼   ► whether Jobs personally was resisting, we don't know.

01:04:38 ◼   ► But it also is one of those things where it seems like

01:04:42 ◼   ► part of the deal isn't just that they're giving the data,

01:04:45 ◼   ► it's also that they are not allowed to talk about it.

01:04:47 ◼   ► And a lot of companies today have issued statements,

01:04:52 ◼   ► but there's a lot of, they're not blanket denials.

01:04:55 ◼   ► They are, they're saying--

01:04:57 ◼   ► - I was gonna say, this would be,

01:04:59 ◼   ► this would be, it would have been a good week

01:05:00 ◼   ► to buy stock in weasel words.

01:05:03 ◼   ► Yes, there's a lot of statements that the NSA or that the US federal government does

01:05:09 ◼   ► not have direct access to our servers.

01:05:15 ◼   ► That the NSA doesn't have a box connected to Google data centers or Apple data centers

01:05:20 ◼   ► or Facebook data centers.

01:05:23 ◼   ► And somebody on Twitter, I think it was, I don't know, I saw some people talking about

01:05:27 ◼   ► One very, very easy work around that does not contradict any of these denials from these

01:05:35 ◼   ► companies would be, well, do they send a copy of the data to the NSA?

01:05:40 ◼   ► Not that the NSA has a box that's connected, but do these companies have something in place

01:05:45 ◼   ► where everything gets copied and then sent to the NSA?

01:05:49 ◼   ► If that's what's going on, none of the denials would contradict it.

01:05:53 ◼   ► And the other statement that came out was they said, I can't remember if it was the

01:05:57 ◼   ► NSA or the administration said that they are not targeting US citizens.

01:06:06 ◼   ► And my reading of that is, well, if we're collecting everything, we're not targeting

01:06:12 ◼   ► US citizens.

01:06:13 ◼   ► We're just getting it all.

01:06:19 ◼   ► We go to Verizon and we ask them for all their records and they give us all their records.

01:06:23 ◼   ► we have not targeted US citizens.

01:06:25 ◼   ► And then later what we do is we go in and they target certain individuals who are of

01:06:30 ◼   ► interest.

01:06:39 ◼   ► And I didn't see Obama's press conference today, but I read some of the quotes from

01:06:44 ◼   ► and it was really it was about everything that you would expect of

01:06:51 ◼   ► somebody not really seemingly enough concerned about the but the problem here

01:07:01 ◼   ► yeah I gotta say I'm pretty disappointed I think yeah yeah I am too Pauline here

01:07:08 ◼   ► I am now I've got to agree this is so bad I'm in agreement with Mike Arrington

01:07:13 ◼   ► My guarantee is I had a blog post today on this.

01:07:17 ◼   ► I guess I'll put it in the show notes, but it's – here's what he says on the Washington

01:07:23 ◼   ► Post story.

01:07:24 ◼   ► Because what they had, what the Washington Post based this on was an NSA presentation,

01:07:29 ◼   ► like a keynote deck or a – what's the one from Microsoft?

01:07:33 ◼   ► PowerPoint deck.

01:07:34 ◼   ► Probably PowerPoint.

01:07:35 ◼   ► That leads to Washington.

01:07:36 ◼   ► I'm sure it's PowerPoint.

01:07:40 ◼   ► And it stated that the NSA is tapping direct quote.

01:07:43 ◼   ► This is what the presentation said, "Tapping directly into the central servers of nine

01:07:47 ◼   ► leading U.S. Internet companies to collect information on users."

01:07:50 ◼   ► And as Arrington says on the story, one of these must be true.

01:07:55 ◼   ► One, the NSA presentation is fake and the Washington Post got duped.

01:07:59 ◼   ► Two, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Apple, et cetera, are lying in terms of their denials.

01:08:08 ◼   ► Or three, the presentation is real and the companies are carefully drafting responses

01:08:13 ◼   ► so that they aren't technically lying. I believe the third option is the truth.

01:08:17 ◼   ► Yes. It seems like that's got to be it.

01:08:18 ◼   ► Look at this. We're stuck saying we agree with Mike Arrington. I think it shows…

01:08:23 ◼   ► That's really the most hurtful part of this whole thing, isn't it?

01:08:25 ◼   ► It really is. But it's…

01:08:27 ◼   ► Even more so than the government having your Verizon records.

01:08:31 ◼   ► Exactly. Here's the thing here I saw. I'm going to link up on the site, but this is

01:08:37 ◼   ► the editorial board at the New York Times. Let me see the passage I wanted to...

01:08:49 ◼   ► Here it is. "The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr.

01:08:54 ◼   ► Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it

01:08:59 ◼   ► it is given and very likely abuse it. And I couldn't agree more. Yeah. The answer is,

01:09:09 ◼   ► "Hey, terrorists, scary, scary, scary stuff going on out there. You should trust us. We've

01:09:13 ◼   ► got it."

01:09:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:15 ◼   ► And, you know, I don't know. That doesn't fly with me.

01:09:18 ◼   ► Me either.

01:09:19 ◼   ► Very sad.

01:09:20 ◼   ► I mean, the terrible thing is all of this stuff was approved by Congress.

01:09:24 ◼   ► Right.

01:09:25 ◼   ► So, it just doesn't seem like we'll ever get any rectification of this, because the

01:09:34 ◼   ► people who would investigate it were the people who have approved it.

01:09:38 ◼   ► And even though Republicans love to investigate and try and find fault with the administration,

01:09:45 ◼   ► they probably won't.

01:09:46 ◼   ► I just don't see them doing anything about this.

01:09:47 ◼   ► I guess the best—

01:09:48 ◼   ► Because they're knee-deep in it too.

01:09:50 ◼   ► Right.

01:09:51 ◼   ► would be for them to sort of have an about face on this and figure out a way to unite

01:10:01 ◼   ► their dislike and their obstinance of anything Obama does and make this the central part

01:10:07 ◼   ► of it because it would actually be good for the country.

01:10:10 ◼   ► A perfect example of that is the quote unquote Obamacare, the healthcare legislation that

01:10:17 ◼   ► Obama pushed through, which is actually based on proposals that used to come from Republicans.

01:10:24 ◼   ► Like back in the 90s when Clinton was president and they tried to rejigger everything, their

01:10:30 ◼   ► proposal was far more, well let's just say progressive, liberal, you know, more like

01:10:36 ◼   ► what other people have around the world.

01:10:39 ◼   ► And the Republican answer wasn't, you know, you can't just say, "Well, no."

01:10:42 ◼   ► You know, you have to have a counter proposal.

01:10:44 ◼   ► And their counterproposal, which was more based on working with the existing insurance

01:10:48 ◼   ► companies and et cetera, was pretty much exactly what Obamacare is.

01:10:51 ◼   ► And it's just that by the time Obama got to it, they were like, "Well, no.

01:10:55 ◼   ► We don't want it."

01:10:56 ◼   ► Well, they should do that with the -- see, now that -- here's a case where I could get

01:11:00 ◼   ► behind it.

01:11:01 ◼   ► They should get behind -- they should do that.

01:11:02 ◼   ► Where, yeah, you were -- sure, you were on board with it a decade ago.

01:11:06 ◼   ► Just find some technicality to say, "Well, but it's different just because," and fight

01:11:11 ◼   ► bite this tooth and nail and get some of this stuff dismantled.

01:11:13 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Or just say enough is enough.

01:11:16 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Enough is enough, right.

01:11:18 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Even if you said that the real danger has

01:11:22 ◼   ► passed or something, we needed it then, but we don't need it anymore.

01:11:27 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Right. And a big part of it to me is at least

01:11:29 ◼   ► be transparent about what is going on. There was a great article. I wish I could. I've

01:11:36 ◼   ► looked for it before, but there was an article I read a long time ago in Wired Magazine from

01:11:41 ◼   ► somebody like a futurist type person who's specialized in thinking about privacy.

01:11:47 ◼   ► And his stance, he's very, very pro-privacy, but his stance was like on a specific issue

01:11:53 ◼   ► of security cameras.

01:11:57 ◼   ► Let's say like the one that the government installs, like municipalities, like let's

01:12:01 ◼   ► say the ones at stoplights.

01:12:04 ◼   ► That if the government is going to have security cameras, then everybody should be able to

01:12:09 ◼   ► access them. That if there's a camera at the intersection of Sixth and Spruce, anybody

01:12:15 ◼   ► should be able to access it. And so if law enforcement wants to use it to see if a crime

01:12:20 ◼   ► was committed there, they can use it and use it as evidence, but anybody can get it. If

01:12:25 ◼   ► there's an archive of it, then it all has to be publicly available.

01:12:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:29 ◼   ► You know? And if you say, "Well, no, no, no. Everybody

01:12:31 ◼   ► shouldn't have it." Well, then you shouldn't have a camera there. Right? And that, you

01:12:36 ◼   ► know, and then it goes back to the idea that they're really, you know, we

01:12:39 ◼   ► shouldn't be thinking of the government as a separate entity, that the government

01:12:42 ◼   ► is us. It's, you know, it's our elected officials. And it makes it, it makes a

01:12:47 ◼   ► tremendous amount of sense. You think, well, you know, that seems creepy if

01:12:51 ◼   ► everybody could just look and see what's going on at, you know, this street

01:12:54 ◼   ► intersection. Well, then don't put cameras there. But if a camera is there, everybody

01:12:57 ◼   ► should have access to it. It's not exactly the same as... I'm not saying

01:13:01 ◼   ► everybody should have access to everybody's phone records, but if you're...

01:13:05 ◼   ► Everybody should have access to everybody else's Google Glass records.

01:13:08 ◼   ► That's now that I can get behind.

01:13:10 ◼   ► Oh my god.

01:13:14 ◼   ► Because if there's nothing wrong with Google Glass then...

01:13:18 ◼   ► Or if you know if there is something wrong don't don't put it on your face.

01:13:23 ◼   ► I actually saw a surprising number of people on Twitter yesterday because Vesper 1.0 does not

01:13:34 ◼   ► It does not sink to any service in the cloud.

01:13:38 ◼   ► What you put in Vesper is on your phone.

01:13:40 ◼   ► I saw a lot of people draw the connection between that and this Prism stuff and say,

01:13:44 ◼   ► "You know what?

01:13:45 ◼   ► I like that it doesn't sink," which is not why it doesn't sink.

01:13:49 ◼   ► This is not a tinfoil hat thing.

01:13:54 ◼   ► But you know what?

01:13:55 ◼   ► It's funny because I was thinking about it.

01:13:56 ◼   ► They kind of have a point.

01:13:57 ◼   ► You can put that in the notes.

01:14:02 ◼   ► Use that as an advertising point.

01:14:04 ◼   ► It protects your data by…

01:14:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:06 ◼   ► Paints us in a corner about future sync options.

01:14:09 ◼   ► I know.

01:14:11 ◼   ► Because it's everybody, too.

01:14:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:16 ◼   ► You can't go right.

01:14:17 ◼   ► You can't go iCloud.

01:14:18 ◼   ► You can't go Azure.

01:14:20 ◼   ► Nope.

01:14:21 ◼   ► You can't go…

01:14:22 ◼   ► Is Amazon listed?

01:14:23 ◼   ► Dropbox.

01:14:24 ◼   ► I can't believe that.

01:14:26 ◼   ► I didn't see Amazon. It seems like everybody else is on the list. It seems like they would

01:14:38 ◼   ► too.

01:14:39 ◼   ► I didn't see it. I don't know. It's an interesting and depressing thing. I hope that this is

01:14:49 ◼   ► not one of those things that blows over. I kind of hope that this is something that sticks

01:14:52 ◼   ► because it's worrisome.

01:14:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:55 ◼   ► Again, I don't really blame the companies so much.

01:14:58 ◼   ► I don't think that any of these companies, I don't think that Apple or Google or Microsoft

01:15:05 ◼   ► just jumped on this and gleefully, I think that they were given offers they could not

01:15:10 ◼   ► refuse.

01:15:12 ◼   ► But we'll see.

01:15:13 ◼   ► I think it would be good to see this stuff investigated and see.

01:15:16 ◼   ► Mike: I suppose you could try and challenge the constitutionality of the law, but then

01:15:23 ◼   ► you really set yourself up for trouble.

01:15:24 ◼   ► Yeah. And the NSA is, you know, the more you read about it, it really is sort of a spooky

01:15:32 ◼   ► organization where there's a lot less oversight over them than the FBI or the CIA. They operate,

01:15:40 ◼   ► I'm not going to say autonomously, but more autonomously than any other similar organization

01:15:47 ◼   ► in our government. They're right behind you right now.

01:15:50 ◼   ► Oh, I'm sure they're listening to this. I mean, we know they're hooked into Skype.

01:15:53 ◼   ► Yeah, right, right. They're at least collecting it.

01:15:58 ◼   ► They may not actually listen to it, but they're collecting.

01:16:03 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Right. Like the guys at the NSA, and they probably are. I mean,

01:16:06 ◼   ► they're chock full of computer guys. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of their

01:16:10 ◼   ► employees are computer programmers. I mean, there's probably a lot of people at the NSA who listen to

01:16:15 ◼   ► the show. They get to listen to it early. Hello.

01:16:19 ◼   ► Hello NSA listeners of the talk show.

01:16:26 ◼   ► They're all having a good laugh right now.

01:16:31 ◼   ► They think—

01:16:32 ◼   ► We hate you.

01:16:34 ◼   ► We hate you.

01:16:36 ◼   ► We're very angry at you right now.

01:16:38 ◼   ► How spooked would you be if our Skype call dropped?

01:16:43 ◼   ► Thank you.