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The Talk Show

37: Live from Úll 2013

 

00:00:00   Where's our Guinness?

00:00:02   Oh, Bulmer's. Awesome, awesome.

00:00:05   You remember the last time I did a live talk show?

00:00:09   I think it was the last time I did a live one. It was the one at WWDC.

00:00:12   And it was me and Cable Sasser from Panic.

00:00:15   Oh, I sat on something. Jesus Christ.

00:00:17   That's your present, man.

00:00:19   And we're like, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes in and it's going...

00:00:23   I mean, Cable's great, so the thing was the dynamite.

00:00:25   And my phone goes off in my pocket.

00:00:28   I thought, everybody knows I'm doing this. Who the hell would text me?

00:00:31   And of course, I took it out and did the slide in front of the...

00:00:35   It's my wife saying that they closed the bar.

00:00:40   - Jackass. - Disaster.

00:00:43   And that her and Mike Montero were going to kick my ass.

00:00:46   So I interrupted the show and had them reopen the bar.

00:00:49   Apparently they did it as like a courtesy to me and Cable to...

00:00:54   Hey, we don't want anybody quiet.

00:00:56   I get the feeling it's not going to be a problem in Ireland.

00:00:58   No, I think we're good.

00:00:59   The bar's still open, right?

00:01:00   Okay, good.

00:01:01   Sweet.

00:01:02   Michael Lobb, good to see you.

00:01:05   There is a tornado warning in Dublin.

00:01:08   This is actually not... This is totally true.

00:01:10   This is totally true, I'm told.

00:01:12   Is this a normal thing?

00:01:13   Yeah, is this... How common are tornadoes?

00:01:15   First time.

00:01:17   Alright, first time.

00:01:20   That's why I didn't show up on my weather app.

00:01:22   What do we do?

00:01:24   Who's got a flight tonight?

00:01:26   I don't think you're going anywhere.

00:01:28   Really, these are the pauses you were doing during your talk, they were driving me crazy.

00:01:38   I'm like, "Is he, has he lost the thread, is it dramatic?"

00:01:48   And you were solid, but it was like, every time I was looking over at Amy Jane going like,

00:01:52   "It could be over!"

00:01:54   You know, and you guys were sitting in front and I could see you and I could tell that you were...

00:02:00   "Oh my god, he lost it. It's gone. He's no slides. Totally screwed."

00:02:05   It did not happen. I did not lose, like you said, you called it losing the thread.

00:02:12   I did not, but have you ever seen anybody lose the thread during a talk?

00:02:15   I've done it. I'm up there and I'm up there and I do my slide and I get the next one. I'm like...

00:02:18   I have no idea what I'm talking about.

00:02:21   Interesting segue about random thing.

00:02:24   To me, when I give a talk, I have a series of points I want to make.

00:02:28   And I do this thing now where I do write the whole thing out in some form where I could just read it,

00:02:34   but that's just to get all the thoughts out.

00:02:36   But then I have these bullet points, and I know that there's a connection from this one to the next one.

00:02:42   And the pauses really weren't, "Oh shit, what's my next point?"

00:02:45   It's, "I know what my next point is, but have I made all the jokes I wanted to make on this one?"

00:02:50   Right, right, right. They were killing me. It was killing me.

00:02:53   I did forget one joke, and this is great, having the talk show here, I can do it,

00:03:00   is the one joke I wanted to make, and I thought of it literally like 10 minutes before I was

00:03:05   going to go on, I thought, "Oh, that is perfect. It's a perfect joke," was towards the end of my talk

00:03:10   and I was talking about my problems with the word uncompromising.

00:03:14   And what I wanted to say is, I was going to say, "I'm going to steal Michael's shtick and say,

00:03:20   When you say uncompromising, I hear, I don't know what the fuck I believe in.

00:03:27   It's a good shtick. It's a very good shtick.

00:03:29   It is. It works for me.

00:03:31   So one of the things is we could actually talk Apple at the conference.

00:03:37   Oh, my God. Let's do that.

00:03:38   Let's actually do it.

00:03:39   Yeah.

00:03:39   It's not news news.

00:03:41   I think it was maybe like 10 days ago, but I've been in an airplane and stuff.

00:03:46   But Ron Johnson, former head of Apple retail, left like two years ago, became the CEO of

00:03:52   JCPenney, a department, US department store chain, and he got fired like ten years ago.

00:03:59   How would you describe JCPenney? I suspect for all of our European

00:04:03   audience members, they probably don't really know.

00:04:07   JCPenney, your department store, nothing in particular, no, what was that?

00:04:11   Yeah, exactly. So nothing particularly noteworthy about it.

00:04:14   Suffering because it was sort of in the price war and they brought Ron in to, you know, sprinkle some Apple magic on top of it.

00:04:21   And then nowhere near as cheap as Walmart.

00:04:24   Right.

00:04:24   And doesn't look it is more upscale, but not truly upscale, not like a...

00:04:30   And again, I don't know which change you guys know, but like Macy's or Bloomingdale's or something like that.

00:04:34   Nordstrom's, you guys probably don't know, but Nordstrom's is like the best.

00:04:39   Not it's like in between like they didn't know if they were discounted. They didn't know if they were nice

00:04:43   The other big thing that they did and they were almost famous for it in the retailing and this is stuff

00:04:49   I learned after Ron Johnson took the job, but the JC penny had in all seriousness like

00:04:55   275 sales a year

00:04:58   Like so that's practically like every single weekday. There would be a new sale where this is 40% off and that's 30% off

00:05:08   And that the only people who effectively shop there were people who were looking for barbers.

00:05:13   So what do you think...

00:05:16   I have so many questions about why do you think he left to go there in the first place?

00:05:20   I didn't work with Ram when I was at Apple at all.

00:05:22   I had like a couple meetings. Really, really smart guy.

00:05:24   But I mean the story I tell myself is it's just like you've kind of like built the retail giant

00:05:30   that is the Apple store.

00:05:32   And it was like time to go do something different, right?

00:05:34   So, I mean, there was no scuttlebutt about like,

00:05:38   hey, there was a problem there.

00:05:39   He gave a lot of advanced warning to Apple.

00:05:42   It seemed like a graceful transition.

00:05:44   And he suddenly wanted to go like, you know,

00:05:45   revive JCPenney.

00:05:47   Also, JCPenney is based in Texas,

00:05:49   which I think is where he was from.

00:05:50   So it was closer to home as well.

00:05:53   - The other thing too, I guess, just,

00:05:54   I mean, probably a lot of people know,

00:05:56   but biographically or like job career-wise,

00:05:58   before Apple, he was at Target,

00:06:00   which was very successful.

00:06:01   So it was really, it wasn't just the success of Apple.

00:06:04   It was like two straight retail successes, Target and then Apple.

00:06:08   And then it was just like, I mean, we were talking about this before.

00:06:12   It's like it's so what happened, right, is one of my my my theories is that

00:06:16   he didn't have the product that was going to walk people into the stores.

00:06:20   Right. JC Penney, what do you know about it?

00:06:22   If you don't know anything about it. But it was like, what is the thing?

00:06:24   You would go to an Apple store because you want an iPhone,

00:06:26   you want an iPad or whatever it was.

00:06:28   He didn't have that thing, that compelling thing to get you to walk in the front door.

00:06:32   So that was one of the things that I think was one of the things he was just

00:06:35   screwed right out of the gate was he didn't have that compelling reason.

00:06:37   Because then I think you can you could say that that's the Apple retail store is

00:06:42   all starts from that foundation of here's what we have these great products

00:06:47   that we're very proud of and that people want and we'll build everything else

00:06:52   around that. Yeah. I mean, if you go into an Apple store there, famously,

00:06:56   this is well known as a built after museums. Right.

00:06:58   I've talked I think I talked about this at the last old

00:07:01   They're built after museums. They're big, huge, wide open spaces.

00:07:04   Butcher block table.

00:07:05   Everything is about being honoring the product, right?

00:07:08   And walking in there.

00:07:09   It's just museum to the art that they're building out there.

00:07:11   And it's like, how do you do that when you don't actually have that product?

00:07:14   You got to like, chill off, right?

00:07:16   And that's that's it seems like one of the things he was struggling with.

00:07:19   Target is is sort of the opposite direction, I think,

00:07:25   because Target's like the sort of store where you go to buy everything. Right.

00:07:28   Target you buy everything from paper towels to a new basketball.

00:07:34   I mean, they even sell groceries and stuff there now.

00:07:37   And so it's sort of the opposite problem.

00:07:39   They don't really have to focus on anything.

00:07:41   But I feel like a JC Penney's where they really close for the most part.

00:07:45   But they don't have any unique thing.

00:07:48   You get the same pair of Levi's there you could get at the other one.

00:07:51   Yeah. But whatever he was doing, I mean, do you think you had a you think they gave

00:07:54   him enough time? No, I don't.

00:07:56   I feel like what happened, the really weird thing,

00:07:59   and they weren't doing well, it is true.

00:08:00   I mean, and I guess, you know,

00:08:01   eventually you've got to pull the plug on a CEO change.

00:08:05   But I think the thing that's so bizarre

00:08:07   is that they fired him and replaced him

00:08:10   with the guy who was there before.

00:08:12   So like, you know, effectively they're bored.

00:08:15   It wasn't just,

00:08:16   all right, we'll hire you.

00:08:19   When they hired him two years ago,

00:08:20   we're going to try something new.

00:08:21   We're going to buy into your radical ideas

00:08:24   to really change this company because we need change,

00:08:26   because we're not doing that well.

00:08:27   And then two years later, they're like,

00:08:29   let's just go back to where we were.

00:08:30   Which they know sucked.

00:08:32   - Right, right, right.

00:08:33   The existing state of sucked.

00:08:35   - We like our old sucked better.

00:08:37   (audience laughing)

00:08:39   - Well, I mean, the stock was down like what,

00:08:40   51% or something like that?

00:08:42   I mean, so disaster, right?

00:08:43   But still, it's like how long did it take Apple

00:08:45   to get back to a happy state?

00:08:47   It was, you know, he came back in '97,

00:08:49   stock was still the same in 2002, right?

00:08:52   So they gave him a long leash.

00:08:54   Right, and that's a very good comparison.

00:08:56   Like how long does it take to turn around a big company that's gotten itself in a

00:09:00   deep rut? And Apple is a great example.

00:09:03   So two years after Steve Jobs came back, it was ninety nine.

00:09:06   Right. So they're still two years away from the iPod.

00:09:10   Right.

00:09:12   No iTunes.

00:09:14   I mean, effectively we were just selling Macs that were blue instead of beige.

00:09:18   Right. I mean, and, you know, Mac OS X was still two years out.

00:09:22   It was in the works, but, you know.

00:09:23   It's not the branding campaign, the think different thing was going.

00:09:26   He was setting it up.

00:09:27   But I mean, this is something that was amazing to me about Apple is you go and

00:09:30   like, I linked, I wrote about this a while ago.

00:09:32   This is a '97 video.

00:09:33   Remember that he does Q&A after one of the events?

00:09:36   Steve was doing Q&A after one of the events.

00:09:38   And he sits down and he answers questions and they're hostile.

00:09:43   The audience is hostile because he's just killed OpenDoc and

00:09:46   he's just, it's been a bloodbath.

00:09:48   So he's up there, ask me whatever you want.

00:09:50   And he sits there and he spends, just total ad hoc,

00:09:53   spends an hour and a half answering questions.

00:09:56   And if you go from now and you look at that talk,

00:09:58   you know all of the things he was thinking about.

00:10:01   He's like, yeah, it's going to be networked.

00:10:02   It's going to be something like a cloud or this sort of thing.

00:10:04   He was really sketching it out and then did it

00:10:07   for the next 10 years.

00:10:08   But it really took that long to get there.

00:10:10   Yeah, it's an amazing talk because in hindsight,

00:10:13   you're like, I can't believe he's talking about this in 1997

00:10:15   because he's describing the iPad and iCloud of today.

00:10:20   But it really took that long to get there.

00:10:23   And I know that JC Penney is not exactly

00:10:26   an apples to oranges comparison with Apple computer, right?

00:10:30   Sorry.

00:10:31   But obviously it's a very different business.

00:10:34   But I still think, though, that a lot of those things that take so long,

00:10:38   it takes long in any case.

00:10:40   And brand awareness is definitely one of them.

00:10:43   And that's the thing that JC Penney was fighting,

00:10:45   was this idea that it was nobody's favorite store.

00:10:49   And to change that, I think two years is not enough time.

00:10:52   - Yeah, I totally agree with that.

00:10:53   And I think that's what you were saying,

00:10:54   but they were, I mean, again, someone got,

00:10:56   to me, putting back the old CEO in,

00:10:59   is there's a political battle that someone won.

00:11:00   They're like, "Hey, bring Frank back,"

00:11:02   'cause the old suck was so much better.

00:11:04   - It makes me think, I mean, again, I have no idea.

00:11:06   It could be totally wrong, but it makes me think

00:11:07   that there was somebody who never

00:11:08   wanted Ron Johnson there in the first place.

00:11:10   - Yeah.

00:11:11   - So here's a question I've gotten

00:11:13   from a surprising number of readers by email,

00:11:17   and I don't know how to answer it

00:11:18   because I'm not in that game.

00:11:21   But you might have an insight.

00:11:22   Do you think there's any chance now

00:11:24   that Ron Johnson would go back to Apple?

00:11:26   Apple actually doesn't have a retail chief right now.

00:11:28   - I have no insider knowledge, but it makes total sense.

00:11:31   Again, the exit seemed like it was clean.

00:11:33   It didn't seem like there was any sort of battle

00:11:35   or any sort of forestalling.

00:11:37   (audience laughing)

00:11:40   But it seemed like it was clean.

00:11:42   So given that the other guy had flamed out,

00:11:44   it seems like it wouldn't surprise me.

00:11:47   Right, and I do think in general it is unusual for someone like once you go

00:11:52   to CEO, once your title is CEO it's pretty rare that you're ever going to get

00:11:56   another title other than maybe chairman or president or something, you know, a bit of...

00:12:00   you don't go back to being senior VP

00:12:03   except Apple's sort of a weird company where I feel like Apple, and they've been so

00:12:07   successful that Apple senior vice presidents are sort of on par with CEOs

00:12:11   at other companies.

00:12:13   It wouldn't surprise me, but again it's like what is, why did he leave in the

00:12:16   first place? What's the big challenge to Apple retail right now? I mean, it's everywhere.

00:12:20   Right. And they have like a sort of formula, you know?

00:12:24   Yeah, they do, right. So what is that next thing that you're going to go and do? Is that

00:12:30   a tornado?

00:12:31   [Laughter]

00:12:32   Okay.

00:12:33   Let me take a break. I want to thank the first of our sponsors. And that is amazing. I honestly

00:12:40   did not know this before we set up this talk, but it's our friends at Panic.

00:12:45   We've got Neven Murgen here and their new app, Status Board.

00:12:51   Now I showed you this, and this is the truth, you guys could think I'm full of it or not,

00:12:55   but I showed this to you before I knew that they were sponsoring the show, and you almost

00:12:59   shit your pants.

00:13:00   Well, at first I said, "Oh, they did Dashboard, that's so cool."

00:13:05   Yeah, I mean, but that's sort of what it is.

00:13:08   knows, a long time ago, Panic published a blog post where they showed their little internal

00:13:12   in their office the status board and it showed like bug counts or like unread messages in

00:13:16   the support queue. Or project state. Right. Really cool and of course it's Panic so it

00:13:21   was beautiful. And everybody loved it. Well then they had the brilliant idea of saying

00:13:24   hey we made this thing, everybody loves it, let's make it a product. And they did and

00:13:27   it's this great new iPad app that lets you make your own status boards. And it's sort

00:13:32   of like Lego-like widgets where you can just pick these precise things like one of them

00:13:37   you can hook up to an email account or one of them you can hook up to a Twitter feed

00:13:42   and you have Twitter come in. You can get obvious stuff like weather, stuff like that.

00:13:49   And it's extensible. They've got – if you're a nerd, if you want to nerd out, you can hook

00:13:52   it up to any – almost any arbitrary thing that could be graphed or staticized with a

00:13:58   little bit of coding and work. But the preset stuff alone is great.

00:14:03   - Right, stunning.

00:14:04   I have a question for you on that.

00:14:05   So we've talked about the eye, right?

00:14:08   Does the product have sort of the,

00:14:10   do you have the eye to actually be able to identify

00:14:12   a beautiful product?

00:14:13   And outside of Apple, which companies do you think

00:14:17   have the ability to build Apple quality products?

00:14:20   Obviously, Panic is one of those,

00:14:22   but what are the other ones that you think are like,

00:14:23   you're like, whoa, it's almost like--

00:14:25   - Well, let me finish the sponsorship.

00:14:26   - Oh, sorry, go, keep going.

00:14:27   (audience laughing)

00:14:29   It's a great sponsorship.

00:14:32   No, it's super simple. I'm almost done.

00:14:35   But the drag and drop stuff that you can do that's preset is fantastic.

00:14:38   The stuff you can customize makes it amazing.

00:14:41   And it runs on the iPad and it looks great and maybe that's what you want to do

00:14:44   is set it up on an iPad and run it, but it also does AirPlay video out.

00:14:48   So you... That's not a TV. I thought that was a TV.

00:14:51   Well, that's a TV.

00:14:53   You can hook it up to a giant 60-foot plasma thing in your office or your home

00:14:57   or whatever and have, you know, a totally cool, absolutely panic-style thing.

00:15:02   - Gorgeous.

00:15:03   - In the App Store, you go to find out more

00:15:05   at their website, panic.com/statusboard.

00:15:09   I'll bet if you just go to panic.com on the homepage,

00:15:11   there's a big--

00:15:12   - I guess so.

00:15:13   - Probably really cool animation too.

00:15:15   This guy's make me sick.

00:15:16   (laughing)

00:15:17   It's 10 bucks in the App Store

00:15:19   and it is an amazing, amazing deal, I think.

00:15:21   And a great app.

00:15:23   Who else?

00:15:23   Who else has that eye?

00:15:25   - Lauren Brikter.

00:15:26   - Yeah, Lauren Brikter definitely has the eye.

00:15:28   That's the guy who letter pressed and pulled a refresh.

00:15:31   Who else though?

00:15:33   No pressure.

00:15:34   - Are you hiring?

00:15:35   (audience laughs)

00:15:36   - Is there anyone here?

00:15:37   - I always worry that he's building a team.

00:15:39   - I don't know.

00:15:40   - You know, how about the Tapbot guys?

00:15:47   - Oh, Tapbot, definitely.

00:15:48   - Right, and theirs is obviously

00:15:50   super strongly opinionated, you know?

00:15:52   - Right, right, right.

00:15:55   - But they know, like they have their aesthetic

00:15:57   in their head and they know,

00:15:59   they know when they've got it.

00:16:00   Right, right.

00:16:02   Yeah.

00:16:04   It's a short list though.

00:16:05   I don't know.

00:16:05   You're just putting me on the spot here.

00:16:07   Twitteriffic.

00:16:08   Twitteriffic, that's a good one.

00:16:09   Yeah, yeah.

00:16:11   Iconfactory.

00:16:12   Iconfactory, also solid.

00:16:13   Yeah.

00:16:15   Craig Hockenberry.

00:16:16   Yeah, just throw names out.

00:16:17   Let's see.

00:16:18   OmniGroup.

00:16:19   Ooh, see, I would say OmniGroup makes great software.

00:16:23   No, OmniGroup makes great software,

00:16:24   but I don't look at it like-- when we talk about the eye,

00:16:27   it's a certain look of it.

00:16:29   And to me, OmniGroup software does not jump out in that way.

00:16:32   Right.

00:16:32   It's great software, but does it have that final degree

00:16:36   of polish?

00:16:36   You know the Panic Eyes.

00:16:37   It's like, his cable's like-- he's just sitting there working

00:16:41   on that one round corner for like a weekend,

00:16:44   just to get it just right.

00:16:46   Briktor, yes.

00:16:47   Letterpress.

00:16:48   Great.

00:16:50   Yes.

00:16:51   Yes.

00:16:52   Sofa is a good example, and I think that's exactly--

00:16:55   and this is this lingo that Michael and I use,

00:16:58   talking about the eye and SOFA is a great example where they had Kaleidoscope and then

00:17:04   what else did SOFA have?

00:17:05   Versions, right?

00:17:06   The version control app.

00:17:08   And that is, that's super, that's actually a super panicky thing to do because Panic,

00:17:13   even though they make these friendly, very, very attractive apps, some of them are super

00:17:19   nerdy like FTP apps, right?

00:17:21   I mean, they've been working on FTP apps since like 1997.

00:17:24   Super nerdy thing.

00:17:25   File transfer to Unix servers, right?

00:17:27   and they, let's do it really, really pretty.

00:17:30   Versions is a great example of that sort of thing.

00:17:32   Let's take one of the nerdiest technologies in the world,

00:17:35   version control, and let's make it really look good.

00:17:38   And you look at other GUI version control apps.

00:17:42   I mean, I'm not saying they're bad,

00:17:43   but they look like command line app brought to life.

00:17:47   - Exactly.

00:17:48   - Tower.

00:17:49   - Tower is a great app.

00:17:51   That's another one that is the same sort of approach.

00:17:56   But the Sofa guys are interesting,

00:17:57   What struck me was, and I think they're still on the hunt,

00:18:00   but the guys who've, the acquisitions that Facebook has made

00:18:04   over the last two years or so have largely been specifically

00:18:09   about what you and I call the eye.

00:18:11   Mike Madison, the push-pop press guys

00:18:14   and the Al Gore book they made is exactly like that.

00:18:16   And you can tell that they had a lot to do

00:18:19   with the Facebook home thing,

00:18:20   'cause Mike Madison's thing is this aversion to buttons.

00:18:24   He really wants, he really thinks

00:18:26   the whole touchscreen thing, it should have as few buttons as possible.

00:18:30   And so the Facebook home thing doesn't have any buttons.

00:18:33   Like it's actually in or out, you think about it, you're like, no, of course not.

00:18:36   No, it doesn't.

00:18:37   You just drag your little avatar around.

00:18:38   I mean, maybe that counts as a button.

00:18:40   Probably.

00:18:41   I haven't used it yet.

00:18:42   I haven't seen it yet.

00:18:43   But you don't just tap it.

00:18:44   Everything is motion.

00:18:45   No.

00:18:46   Haven't heard of them.

00:18:47   I haven't heard of them.

00:18:48   Double twist.

00:18:49   Double twist?

00:18:50   Yeah.

00:18:51   I haven't heard of it.

00:18:52   Double twist?

00:18:56   No, I wouldn't know.

00:18:58   It's a short list.

00:19:00   It's a short list.

00:19:01   Yeah, I don't know.

00:19:02   Delicious.

00:19:06   Oh, yeah, Will Shipley.

00:19:07   Yeah, yeah.

00:19:08   Yeah.

00:19:10   I hate to say it.

00:19:11   No!

00:19:12   I hate to say it.

00:19:13   I hate to give him the credit, but yeah, yeah.

00:19:15   Yeah, definitely.

00:19:16   It's good.

00:19:17   Yeah, he's good.

00:19:18   And the character.

00:19:19   And I actually feel, and I don't know,

00:19:21   this is not gossip or stuff,

00:19:24   but I do think that that was sort of part of it

00:19:28   is that Will Shipley is, you know.

00:19:29   - Will Shipley. - Yeah.

00:19:30   But I actually think that that was sort of

00:19:34   some of the stress inside the Omni Group when he was there,

00:19:36   'cause he was a co-founder and he was there for a long time.

00:19:39   But I feel like he wanted to go

00:19:42   in this delicious direction visually,

00:19:44   this exuberant visual design.

00:19:47   - Right, right, right.

00:19:47   And it didn't really fit with the rest of the way the Omni Group wanted to make stuff,

00:19:52   which was a little bit more straightforward.

00:19:55   Right.

00:19:55   I don't know, exuberant is the word that comes to mind.

00:19:57   Yeah, absolutely.

00:19:58   So back to Apple, let's go back to Apple.

00:20:03   Here's the other thing I wanted to talk to you about.

00:20:05   So there have been no product releases from Apple this year, right?

00:20:10   Yeah, this is the one that...

00:20:11   April 14th.

00:20:12   April 14th.

00:20:13   What is the...

00:20:14   Actually, there's two things that worry me.

00:20:15   There's the fact that it's April 14th

00:20:17   and nothing has come out that we're sitting here

00:20:18   and gossiping up about at Ool.

00:20:21   But the other one that worries me

00:20:22   is the Buzz Machine about the next thing,

00:20:24   whatever that might be.

00:20:26   We're not talking about either.

00:20:27   I mean, there's the watch, but everyone kind of goes,

00:20:28   "Watch, okay, maybe."

00:20:31   But it's like, to me, there's this dearth

00:20:33   of like gossip going on right now that worries me.

00:20:36   What do you think?

00:20:37   - I don't know.

00:20:39   I think it's definitely curious.

00:20:42   I think part of it is

00:20:44   They really do, like they generally, I think, want to have stuff on a somewhat annual schedule.

00:20:51   And they like having a new version of the iPhone every year.

00:20:55   iPad last three years every March, is that right?

00:20:59   Last two years?

00:21:00   Yeah.

00:21:01   I think the first one, the original event was at the end of February, but it didn't

00:21:04   come out to the first week of April.

00:21:05   Three years in a row.

00:21:06   Roughly March.

00:21:07   Crickets right now.

00:21:10   But what they did last year was they had this weird one where they did one six months after

00:21:14   the previous one. Right. And I do feel that at a certain level that it's just as simple

00:21:19   as well in general, we'd like it to be annual. But when we're ready, we're ready, you know,

00:21:24   and if the one phone took 18 months and threw them off this June schedule, well, so be it,

00:21:29   we're going to wait till we get it right. And if they also could do a new generation

00:21:34   iPad just six months later after the other one, well, they're not going to wait. Why

00:21:39   because their competitors aren't going to wait.

00:21:43   But in hindsight, as we keep going

00:21:45   and there's been no new iPad in March,

00:21:48   it makes me think that one of the reasons they put that iPad

00:21:52   with the new dock connector out last year

00:21:54   was that they knew it was going to be on the market longer.

00:21:58   Yeah, I don't know.

00:22:00   It's curious to me.

00:22:02   The other worry that I have is I think the thing that they have

00:22:05   to prove to the entire planet is they

00:22:07   They have to be able to do that new thing without Steve.

00:22:10   And it has to be, everything that's come out

00:22:13   has been derivative of an existing thing,

00:22:15   whether it's the mini, or whether it's this,

00:22:16   or whether it's that, it all is,

00:22:18   it clearly came from a game plan that was already set.

00:22:20   That first new leg on the stool,

00:22:23   that's the one everyone's gonna be like, okay, whew.

00:22:25   Right, but until you see that, everyone's kinda like,

00:22:28   we're gonna make this, is this gonna work?

00:22:29   Are we gonna be able to pull this off?

00:22:31   - I do think it's a coincidence.

00:22:32   I just think it's coincidental timing.

00:22:34   But I think it's very bad timing for Apple

00:22:36   that they've hit this, I'm not even gonna say dry patch,

00:22:40   but maybe just a part where nothing's ready yet

00:22:43   at a time where perception wise out in the world,

00:22:47   there is an awful lot of see,

00:22:48   they can't do it without Steve Jobs out there.

00:22:51   - You think it's a coincidence?

00:22:52   - I do think it's a coincidence,

00:22:54   but I think it's really an unfortunate one

00:22:55   'cause I feel like now is when they really,

00:22:57   like a killer new product a week ago,

00:23:01   like early April or at the end of March

00:23:02   would have been just what the doctor ordered

00:23:05   for the company.

00:23:06   - Completely agree.

00:23:07   - Do you think we will, here's a question.

00:23:10   Do you think now though that we've gotten through April

00:23:12   and it doesn't look like anything's coming in April

00:23:15   and who knows, maybe I've got an email saying

00:23:16   come to California next week.

00:23:18   I don't think so, but where's Jim?

00:23:20   Jim would know.

00:23:21   Not here.

00:23:23   - Okay, upstairs.

00:23:25   - Yeah, probably talking to Apple.

00:23:26   (laughing)

00:23:28   Do you think now that we've gotten through

00:23:32   and clearly the iPad, there's no new iPad coming out

00:23:34   the schedule the last few years, would they sneak it in in May before WWDC or is it like,

00:23:41   if not now, wait for WWDC?

00:23:43   Well, this is that Buzz machine that I was talking about because we all collectively

00:23:46   have these long conversations.

00:23:48   It somehow leaks.

00:23:49   I don't know how it leaks.

00:23:50   Maybe it's you, maybe it's other people, but like little bits of it, it's coming out and

00:23:54   we start having these conversations.

00:23:56   I've been in Dublin for three days now and I haven't had any conversation about like,

00:24:00   "Hey, are you going to get the new blah, blah, blah?"

00:24:02   So that pre-buzz generating thing, whether it's deliberate or not, doesn't currently

00:24:07   exist.

00:24:08   So to me that means there's nothing imminent that's going to be there.

00:24:11   And maybe they're just, maybe like he was talking out on whatever he was on, 60 Minutes,

00:24:15   maybe he's really clamped down and really locked it down, which would be amazeballs.

00:24:20   But I knew you were going to use that word.

00:24:25   It's Michael's word of the week.

00:24:27   That would be great.

00:24:28   But you know, I mean bigger, who knows?

00:24:30   That would be the first time, right?

00:24:31   It'd be first everything else. There's it's nothing has been like an explicitly

00:24:34   But it's just we sort of built together the picture over the like two months before it actually arrives

00:24:39   We're like well, it could be a pad or I mean our tablet or this sort of thing well

00:24:42   Then the and the tablets a good example be where

00:24:45   Somehow it was I think it was it was the timing of it was that Steve Jobs was on a medical leave right absence

00:24:53   right and came back in the summer and

00:24:56   it was

00:24:58   It just somehow everybody at Apple just sort of knew that Steve's back and what he's doing is the tablet right and he's committed to

00:25:05   It and it was from summer until February and that's when they shipped it and it was the iPad

00:25:08   So nobody knew exactly what it looked like there were no screenshots that leaked. I don't even think the hardware leaked for that one. I

00:25:15   Yeah, nobody really knew so everybody, you know, is it gonna be is it gonna be this size?

00:25:20   Is it gonna be this size is gonna be thick is it gonna be thin?

00:25:24   No, I don't think okay

00:25:27   (audience laughs)

00:25:30   - Nobody really knew, so they did keep that under wraps,

00:25:32   but the fact that they were working on a tablet was known.

00:25:35   I mean, I would have bet everything on it.

00:25:37   - Exactly, we had some approximation of what it might be,

00:25:40   and right now we're talking about watches.

00:25:43   - And I think I've given a lot of thought

00:25:46   to the watch thing.

00:25:47   I think the watch thing, I almost,

00:25:49   I really think that it might just be like a joke.

00:25:53   (audience laughs)

00:25:54   Like somebody at Apple has obviously told a few reporters,

00:25:56   Because Bloomberg or somebody was like,

00:25:59   according to sources, close to the company.

00:26:01   100, Johnny Ives, 100 engineers working on a watch.

00:26:05   And it's like, 100 engineers on a watch, really?

00:26:07   (laughing)

00:26:09   I really think it's maybe like a joke

00:26:12   to get Samsung to make watches.

00:26:14   (laughing)

00:26:16   Right?

00:26:18   They're like, Johnny Ives, they're like dying.

00:26:21   - We got to get on it.

00:26:22   We pink and black and white, let's get going.

00:26:24   - Right, and then like, you know, like Tim Cook is like

00:26:27   talking to Foxconn and they're like,

00:26:29   well we've got this other factory over here

00:26:30   and Samsung's using it to make watches

00:26:31   and Tim Cook's like.

00:26:32   (audience laughing)

00:26:36   - Got 'em.

00:26:37   - And then, you know, they're like, all right, all right,

00:26:40   call Bloomberg up, tell him it's got to be really big.

00:26:43   (audience laughing)

00:26:45   Heavy. - Yeah, exactly.

00:26:47   - Really heavy. - Lot of weight to it.

00:26:49   (laughing)

00:26:51   - I kind of think with the watch thing.

00:26:53   - It's the greatest prank ever, right.

00:26:56   - And when the stories came out there,

00:26:57   everybody was talking about it,

00:26:58   and then hacker news is, you know,

00:27:00   iWatch and it's a tech meme and top story is out,

00:27:02   blah, blah, blah, watches.

00:27:03   And then, you know, it really were a story.

00:27:05   I'm not even making it up where it was like,

00:27:07   someone in Google was like,

00:27:07   "Well, we're working on watches too."

00:27:10   And they're very smart.

00:27:13   And all of a sudden, everybody's talking about watches

00:27:15   out of this rumor that Apple is doing.

00:27:17   I really don't think it's a thing.

00:27:18   - How many people are wearing a watch right now?

00:27:22   25%.

00:27:23   Can I tell you what I think the single biggest problem with the whole idea of Apple doing

00:27:28   watches?

00:27:29   When you go into a real watch store, there are one side men's watches, other side ladies'

00:27:37   watches.

00:27:38   And there's a reason for that.

00:27:40   What is Apple going to do?

00:27:41   You don't go in and buy ladies' iPods and men's iPads.

00:27:44   They make products that appeal to everybody.

00:27:48   And I don't see how you do that with a watch.

00:27:51   You've made this argument with me before. I don't think this holds water because they are really good at building fashion items.

00:27:57   And I think they, of any company, could build something which would be, had universal appeal to either gender.

00:28:03   Maybe I'm just, I lack the imagination to imagine a universal watch.

00:28:07   But you agree though that they'd only do one.

00:28:09   Oh yeah. Have they ever not done that?

00:28:13   The other thing, I think I've said this before, but my other theory on it is that it's just the new, this year's iPod Nano.

00:28:19   And maybe it comes with a wrist strap.

00:28:21   Right.

00:28:22   Yeah, could be.

00:28:25   The other big problem I see with it is the display technology.

00:28:29   Because I do wear a watch, but that's because I want to glance at my wrist and I want to

00:28:32   see the time immediately.

00:28:33   Right now.

00:28:34   And I do not want to have to turn it on.

00:28:35   So the way that people wear the old iPod Nano as a watch, kind of cool, looks cool, would

00:28:40   drive me nuts though.

00:28:41   You got to hit a button to turn it on.

00:28:45   But like a bright colorful LCD screen will suck the battery right, you can't leave it

00:28:48   on.

00:28:49   are using E ink and I got one of those, you can't read it.

00:28:52   It's like, you know, it's kind of horrible.

00:28:55   - I just don't understand the use case.

00:28:56   That's the thing is, it's like it's attached to my phone,

00:28:58   I've got two things and what's going on there.

00:29:00   I can see some interesting things being on the screen,

00:29:02   but it seems like more complexity rather than less

00:29:05   than any scenario that I imagine, and that's bad.

00:29:07   It should be simple.

00:29:09   There should be some simple use case

00:29:10   that I haven't yet imagined.

00:29:12   - Right, I'm imagining that if there really is smoke

00:29:14   to this fire, it may well be a thing you put on your wrist,

00:29:18   but it's not a watch.

00:29:20   Stop thinking of it as a watch in terms of what we think

00:29:22   of as watches.

00:29:24   And there's tons of opportunity.

00:29:26   It would be awesome if you could run apps and stuff like that.

00:29:29   Panic status watch.

00:29:30   Sweet.

00:29:31   That'd be awesome.

00:29:32   How many mails do I have?

00:29:33   Shoot.

00:29:33   There's another one.

00:29:40   Just thinking about the no releases.

00:29:42   So what's the product that they've had the longest

00:29:45   run without a release on?

00:29:47   Mac Pro. Exactly, see this is our audience, right?

00:29:52   Right, these are guys who are running Xcode and... Right, right, right. Have like seventeen displays.

00:29:56   Right, and it actually matters. So it's been...

00:29:59   Do you know, I looked it up before the show started, the last Mac Pro was

00:30:03   released in

00:30:06   two thousand one.

00:30:08   It's been twelve years,

00:30:10   give or take. No. Really?

00:30:14   - That's not right.

00:30:15   - When was it?

00:30:16   I think it was 2009, 2008.

00:30:18   And they had like a upgrade last year.

00:30:21   It was like--

00:30:23   - But it's still the same ID, it's still the cheese grater,

00:30:25   it's still huge and so much metal.

00:30:27   You look at it now after you're looking at the iMac

00:30:28   and you're like, that is just a waste.

00:30:30   But there's people love it.

00:30:31   There's people that really get,

00:30:33   they like the expandability.

00:30:34   - Yeah, but there's people who I remember,

00:30:36   and this is, you know, like, when I really get in touch

00:30:38   with the demand for the Mac Pro

00:30:41   is when I'm hanging out with developers

00:30:43   place like this because developers truly truly want like like if they let's say they came out with the top of the line Intel

00:30:50   Best chips Intel has best fastest thing they could make tomorrow

00:30:54   It's not really even fast enough for these guys it really adds the truth about writing code and doing certain really

00:31:00   you know Photoshop and stuff like that I

00:31:02   Remember at WWDC last year people coming up to me, and they'd be like hey John nice to meet everybody

00:31:08   Hey, what are they gonna do a Mac Pro?

00:31:12   Do you think it's I know that man you can't even buy one in certain countries in Europe anymore

00:31:18   Right because that you guys are filming out. There's like a new law that passed about what is it?

00:31:24   the fans or something

00:31:26   Are you lying?

00:31:29   Right, but it's so old that it's no longer compliant with the laws for making computers and the EU

00:31:41   - So they banned it.

00:31:42   - Yes, when they just don't sell them here.

00:31:44   Do you think it's--

00:31:46   - I think it's, the thing I think about is,

00:31:48   they're so into what they've learned with the iPhone

00:31:51   and the iPad, and you can even see it on the iMac,

00:31:53   and the Air, it's like, simplicity.

00:31:54   You don't want to have to configure it,

00:31:56   and this is sort of the antithesis of what nerds like,

00:31:58   is I wanna fuck with it a little bit, right?

00:32:00   And that, but that world is something

00:32:02   that they're not modeling for.

00:32:04   They model for that world, but it's like,

00:32:05   here's everything that you need.

00:32:06   It's perfect, right?

00:32:08   Just go with it.

00:32:09   So I'm sure that there's a lot of people

00:32:10   that would be very cranky about that.

00:32:11   I used to run part of the Mac OS X server team,

00:32:13   so we love to tinker with stuff,

00:32:15   but it's not, and this worries people,

00:32:17   is it's not, there's not as much tinkering that can go on,

00:32:20   and they seem to be moving away from that

00:32:22   in terms of the hardware.

00:32:23   - And I think it really shows how,

00:32:25   even though Apple, by market cap,

00:32:27   is the biggest company in the world,

00:32:28   or second biggest or whatever,

00:32:29   and doing really well, and has an incredible head count,

00:32:32   even if you subtract all of the retail people,

00:32:34   big, big company, it's gotten big,

00:32:37   But they're not run like most big companies where there's these little

00:32:42   divisions within the company and because any other company or the way people would

00:32:46   think Apple would be run, there'd be somebody who runs the Mac Pro division.

00:32:50   Right.

00:32:50   And the Mac Pro division would only make Mac Pros.

00:32:52   And so they're going to keep coming out with them on a regular basis because that's

00:32:56   the whole you know, if they don't, they're going to lose their jobs.

00:32:59   And there isn't anybody like that at Apple.

00:33:01   And it's like they've only got so much

00:33:03   attention and their attention is clearly not on the Mac Pro.

00:33:07   Obviously.

00:33:07   And I mean, there's demand out there,

00:33:08   but I don't think it's-- how many would buy a new back

00:33:11   pro right now?

00:33:13   That's less than the watch.

00:33:14   Yeah, not as many hands as I thought.

00:33:15   Less than the watch.

00:33:16   Yeah.

00:33:16   [LAUGHTER]

00:33:19   Let me just-- I'll take the break right now.

00:33:28   Let me thank our second sponsor for the show.

00:33:29   And our second sponsor is Squarespace.

00:33:32   Squarespace is a longtime sponsor of the talk show.

00:33:35   fabulous, fabulous service where you sign up

00:33:38   and they do everything to give you a website.

00:33:41   They do domain name registration.

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00:33:48   That's the big new thing they have this year

00:33:50   is they do your own shopping right there on your website.

00:33:54   Drag and drop, you set the prices, they do the commerce,

00:33:57   you don't have to write all the code.

00:33:59   Who here has written code to do credit card processing?

00:34:02   Who here wants-- - Wow.

00:34:03   Who here would ever want to write code

00:34:05   to do credit card processing?

00:34:06   Nobody.

00:34:07   It's the worst.

00:34:08   It's like--

00:34:08   There's two over here.

00:34:11   Paul and Andy.

00:34:13   It's the worst job in the world.

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00:34:27   of great templates that you can choose from

00:34:30   to set the look of your site.

00:34:34   It is so much easier to get started

00:34:36   with a good looking website today than when me and you were

00:34:39   installing Perl scripts and removable type in 2002.

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00:34:43   Those are good times.

00:34:44   And you can customize it all, too.

00:34:46   So if you don't know code, you can set it all up just

00:34:48   by clicking and looking and figuring it out.

00:34:50   And you can just look at it visually.

00:34:52   And if you do know code, you can customize everything.

00:34:54   So my thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring the show.

00:34:57   Find out more.

00:34:57   They have a special URL so that you

00:34:59   know that you're coming from the show, which is squarespace.com/the-talk-show-four.

00:35:07   The talk show four. Yeah, because it's like the fourth time they've...

00:35:10   I've got it.

00:35:11   The URL is just the talk show. It's the on the website on the...

00:35:15   Lex Friedman has corrected it.

00:35:17   In the front row.

00:35:18   The URL is the talk show.

00:35:20   Okay.

00:35:20   And the coupon code is the talk show four.

00:35:22   Is there a slash between talk show and four?

00:35:25   Just try-- Squarespace itself is so much easier than this deal.

00:35:31   So don't take this as any kind of sign

00:35:35   that this is what Squarespace is like.

00:35:37   Go to squarespace.com/thetalkshow.

00:35:40   And then when you sign up, they'll say, hey,

00:35:42   do you want a coupon code?

00:35:43   And they're going to save you a lot of money.

00:35:45   You type in the talk show for.

00:35:48   All right, Lex has signed off on this.

00:35:49   All right, very good.

00:35:55   I don't have anything more on Apple.

00:35:56   Okay.

00:35:56   Right?

00:35:57   I'm out. I'm actually done.

00:35:59   This is the last show.

00:36:01   And I'm out.

00:36:03   Right.

00:36:03   No.

00:36:05   But...

00:36:07   And we're talking. I don't even think I've introduced this.

00:36:10   Everybody at home knows we're the...

00:36:12   Why is there an audience here?

00:36:13   We're here at the OOL conference in Dublin, Ireland.

00:36:15   We just...

00:36:16   OOL.

00:36:16   OOL with the accent to the right.

00:36:18   You have to hold down the 3 key on the keyboard to get that.

00:36:21   It's very confusing.

00:36:22   It's Sunday.

00:36:23   Yeah, no, you know, you can just hold down the you now.

00:36:25   Oh, so you I'm sorry.

00:36:27   Yeah, not the three, right?

00:36:28   But they have the new thing and the Mac is like the iPod where you can

00:36:31   hold down.

00:36:31   You're like, I'm going to

00:36:32   Yeah.

00:36:34   Did you

00:36:40   did you did totally side topic.

00:36:46   Did you memorize a bunch of keystrokes for some of the weird characters?

00:36:49   I still have I'm going to date myself here.

00:36:52   I still remember all the WordPress, not WordPress, that's not--

00:36:54   - WordPerfect. - WordPerfect.

00:36:56   - I knew what you were going for.

00:36:57   - I can still do that.

00:36:57   I can like boom, boom, boom, I can still imagine that.

00:36:59   That's how it's ingrained in my head.

00:37:01   - The ones that I have are the ones for curly quotes,

00:37:05   apostrophes, and quotes because,

00:37:07   and it's not a hard programming challenge,

00:37:09   but it took until the year 2000 for smart quotes

00:37:13   to become usable in layout applications.

00:37:17   So if you did any kind of graphic design,

00:37:19   You never typed apostrophes and quotes.

00:37:22   You did the shift command control bracket.

00:37:26   I can see that giving you a lot of rage back then.

00:37:28   Oh, yeah.

00:37:29   And I used to do it in Twitter.

00:37:34   Now, the iPhone makes it really easy.

00:37:36   You just hold the key, and then you

00:37:37   can slide over and get the curly quote.

00:37:39   But I used to type curly apostrophes in my tweets

00:37:41   by hand that way.

00:37:43   And then Tweetbot added it as a feature,

00:37:44   and it was like, oh my god, I can't

00:37:46   believe I was such an asshole.

00:37:48   It's so much nicer to just type instead of...

00:37:52   That.

00:37:56   We speak together at a couple conferences a year.

00:38:00   I've never...yeah, you're my conference friend. That's the only time we see each other.

00:38:04   Yeah, exactly. I've never actually been in the same, like, where your house is or my house is.

00:38:08   And everybody, we've all been...

00:38:12   I'm not telling you my address. I can get it, you know.

00:38:16   you know. But everybody. I keep forgetting that you work there. That's the place that

00:38:27   we won't mention. But all the speakers keep saying, emphasizing, my god, what,

00:38:35   thank you to Paul and to Dermain. What a great conference. Amazing conference.

00:38:38   But why though? I mean there is something going on here, like

00:38:42   everybody just says it's great and we all seem to acknowledge it's great and

00:38:45   and it really does seem like the attendees are happy.

00:38:49   But what is it?

00:38:50   I can't quite, I'm not quite sure I see

00:38:53   what the special--

00:38:53   - I think it has something to do with the eye

00:38:55   that we were talking about earlier,

00:38:56   which is that sort of, that attention to detail

00:38:59   that they have about everything that they do, right?

00:39:01   Is like, you know, you can sense by the typography

00:39:05   that they care about what they're doing, right?

00:39:07   It's not just thrown together, it's like,

00:39:09   you've sat there and go like, oh, this is beautiful.

00:39:11   I wanna touch this, I kinda wanna lick it a little bit.

00:39:14   But it's that sort of thing, and it kind of just

00:39:17   flows all together.

00:39:18   So when you're looking up at-- I was commenting

00:39:21   on the projector from the event.

00:39:23   Beautiful 20 by 40 screen, is that right?

00:39:26   And just like great-- it looks great.

00:39:29   And it's that attention to detail that I think is one

00:39:32   thing.

00:39:33   Oh, and the great speakers, too.

00:39:34   [LAUGHTER]

00:39:37   But it's a lot--

00:39:37   [LAUGHTER]

00:39:41   It's a little self-advocatizing.

00:39:42   (laughing)

00:39:44   - Yeah, the speakers are great.

00:39:45   - Amazing.

00:39:47   - Great choices, fellas.

00:39:48   - Another thing I thought,

00:39:51   I was blown away by the year over year.

00:39:54   I know I said this when I was on stage,

00:39:55   but that last year was great.

00:39:57   And if the fact that I came back is proof

00:40:00   that I thought it was good and worth coming back to,

00:40:02   but I really can't believe one year over another

00:40:05   how much improved it was.

00:40:06   - Yeah.

00:40:08   Amazing conference.

00:40:09   - And I do feel, I feel like it suited

00:40:11   level of attention to detail is suited to the audience of people making apps for these

00:40:16   obsessive compulsive pixel perfect designs.

00:40:20   Well, of course, we're going to want to come to the conference where they sent a guy to

00:40:23   Japan to find wood to make the logo for the bad.

00:40:28   Right?

00:40:29   Of course.

00:40:30   You go out, you leave here and everybody here is like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, great.

00:40:33   That was really well done.

00:40:34   These are nice badges."

00:40:35   And then you go out in the real world and say, "I was at a conference and they sent

00:40:37   a guy to Japan to find little chips of wood."

00:40:38   They'd be like what kind of an asshole are you?

00:40:41   And then you realize oh, yeah, I was it all and it seemed normal there

00:40:49   It made sense at the time I guess

00:40:53   When I guess your pants really far away from Ireland

00:40:57   But the badges were so nice they're beautiful

00:41:02   It was like it was it was sort of a sensory sort of experience you're opening it up and look at the pages and in

00:41:07   the paper it's just nice and thick and it's gorgeous so attention to detail

00:41:11   yeah absolutely and I also think it does seem you know it seems perfectly suited

00:41:17   to this city like it's the right conference in the right city yeah you

00:41:21   feel you feel a little bit of I mean I'm from the Silicon Valley you feel like

00:41:24   you're hanging out with like the right nerds right it's like these are people

00:41:28   who care about what they're doing they're building important things and

00:41:30   you know I love being in Dublin because it feels very familiar to me so I

00:41:37   I ran this by you yesterday, I hope you remember.

00:41:39   - Uh oh, what time was it?

00:41:41   You ran it by me?

00:41:43   - But you and I, for years now, have pondered the idea

00:41:47   of maybe jointly producing a conference ourselves.

00:41:49   - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we have.

00:41:51   - And we've done a lot of talking.

00:41:52   - Lot of drinking.

00:41:54   - And it's, you know, there's no use keeping it a secret,

00:41:59   'cause it's probably not gonna happen.

00:42:00   - No, probably not.

00:42:01   But it's a great idea.

00:42:02   - Right.

00:42:06   But one of the big ideas we've done a lot of drinking and talking over is where would

00:42:11   we have it?

00:42:12   And part of it really stems from South by Southwest, which is the first place where

00:42:16   we really were going on a regular basis.

00:42:19   Rest in peace, South by.

00:42:21   Right.

00:42:22   Austin is great.

00:42:23   Haven't been back in a few years.

00:42:24   It's kind of blown up and over.

00:42:25   But it used to be amazing.

00:42:27   It used to be truly amazing.

00:42:30   bigger than Ool, but in the early days, the web part of it was close in spirit, you know,

00:42:37   and really the same sort of interactions and the same sort of friendships that are formed from it,

00:42:44   you know, and the same type of speakers and the same sort of, I just saw somebody give a talk,

00:42:49   and then right after that a talk that, oh my God, it was even better. But also part of what

00:42:56   what made South by Southwest great was Austin.

00:42:58   Austin was a great town.

00:42:59   - Yes.

00:43:00   - Right?

00:43:01   So we tossed that out.

00:43:02   But the one idea we had, and it almost ties back

00:43:04   to the Unprofessional show before,

00:43:06   we thought about would we have a conference in Vegas?

00:43:09   - Yeah.

00:43:09   - And we've mentioned this to people,

00:43:13   like we're thinking about doing a tech conference,

00:43:14   might have it in Vegas, and then it's bifurcated, right?

00:43:19   It's like we say, like hey, Michael and I were thinking

00:43:22   maybe we would do a conference, and people are like,

00:43:24   And we're like and in Vegas and then half the people are like where do I send my money and then the other half are

00:43:29   Like that's the grossest thing I've ever

00:43:31   Why would you do that?

00:43:34   Do it anywhere else have it anywhere else in the world. Why would you want me to go there?

00:43:40   It's a fake city right right. It's a fake city. That's the thing about it

00:43:44   I think that people is first up

00:43:46   It's really easy to get there anyone from in the states you can get there really easily

00:43:48   But I think there's it's just it's built out of the middle of a desert

00:43:52   And there's like you know some of our favorite places to speak are like just soaking in their culture in Vegas is a shithole, right?

00:43:59   It's beautiful, and I love it there, but it's like you're like wow this person just threw up on my kids

00:44:04   Well one of my favorite stories about Vegas, and it's a new thing is

00:44:13   There's a new breed of

00:44:18   I don't even want to call them panhandlers,

00:44:20   but people trying to hustle money on the street.

00:44:22   And the old one.

00:44:23   Those guys?

00:44:24   No, no, no, no, no.

00:44:25   Not those guys.

00:44:25   No, but the old one was, and they're still there,

00:44:28   is people who are wearing illegal, no copyright costumes,

00:44:33   like a Mickey Mouse, but like this really gross looking Mickey

00:44:37   Mouse.

00:44:38   Like really gross.

00:44:39   Like clearly, obviously Disney is not

00:44:42   selling the real Mickey Mouse costumes to people

00:44:44   to dress up in.

00:44:45   So it's like, but it's just like gross.

00:44:47   and like the eyes are dead.

00:44:50   And then you see someone letting their little sweet little

00:44:53   three-year-old girl pose next to them.

00:44:55   It's the same thing in Times Square in New York.

00:44:56   They have these guys.

00:44:58   And it's superheroes and Mickey Mouse and stuff like that.

00:45:01   That's old, and they're still there.

00:45:03   But the new one-- and this says everything

00:45:05   there is to say about Vegas.

00:45:06   The new one is, kick me in the nuts for $20.

00:45:14   Look at the-- you can't see this on the radio

00:45:16   or whatever we're listening to, there's shrugging going on.

00:45:18   'Cause people are like, "Ooh, God, yeah,

00:45:19   "I'm gonna do it."

00:45:20   - I was there with my wife, and we saw the first guy

00:45:24   with the sign, and he looked like a college kid, you know?

00:45:26   And he didn't look, he did not look like homeless,

00:45:29   he just looked like hipster.

00:45:30   And he had a sign.

00:45:34   - Had five bucks.

00:45:35   - Kick me in the nuts, $20.

00:45:37   And we thought, our first thought wasn't that it was legit,

00:45:41   we thought maybe it was like a college fraternity

00:45:44   hazing thing like, you've got to walk down the strip holding the sign that says you can

00:45:48   kick me in the nuts for 20 bucks and deal with the people you got. And then you go like

00:45:51   10 more feet and there's another guy and this guy's sign was kick me in the nuts, $20, no

00:45:55   cup.

00:45:56   Did you do it?

00:46:01   No.

00:46:02   Well, I...

00:46:05   Did Amy do it? Because I can see that.

00:46:09   No, because she wouldn't, she would never kick a stranger in the nuts. She would, she

00:46:12   She has like a list of people.

00:46:16   You're like, "I've got to get down this list first before I go for strangers."

00:46:21   But the thing that really caught my mind about that was, what to me is more disturbing?

00:46:29   The guy who's doing this 20 bucks at a pop, or the guy, and you know he's mostly guys,

00:46:35   the guy who's going to say, "Yes, I'm going to pay you $20."

00:46:38   Here's 200 bucks, and they do it 10 times.

00:46:41   See if you're still standing there like what type

00:46:44   What type of low-grade psychopath you have to be to want to kick a strange man in the nuts?

00:46:51   like and

00:46:53   For the women out there allow me to emphasize getting kicked in the nuts is horrifying

00:46:57   It really is it is it is really it's really painful

00:47:02   Yeah

00:47:02   You got on I don't we were talking about the physics of it like how much where do you want the toe to go to?

00:47:07   maximize the kick and like, and it's just, yeah, there's more.

00:47:10   And so I understand like that to me.

00:47:13   And that also to me emphasizes the gross out factor of, oh,

00:47:17   it sounds like a cool conference, but it's in Las Vegas.

00:47:20   But to me, the parts that are would be cool about it, maybe, maybe would be

00:47:26   the fact that there's so much space, everything's big.

00:47:29   Right.

00:47:31   So if everybody in the conference decides

00:47:34   to go out and have a few beers afterwards.

00:47:36   There's actually room for everybody.

00:47:37   - Right, right, right.

00:47:38   - Right?

00:47:39   - You know, I mean, it's there, it's a party place.

00:47:41   I always worry that we'd lose like three quarters

00:47:43   of our people 'cause there's like this 20 bucks

00:47:45   in the nuts guy and they're like,

00:47:47   "Wait, Grover's speaking, but the guy not there is kidding."

00:47:49   - Right, like how, however sparsely attended

00:47:52   the morning sessions are usually--

00:47:54   - Right, right, right, you'd have to start like at four.

00:47:56   (laughing)

00:47:58   - Right, like we're gonna wrap up Friday night.

00:48:01   We'll see all of you Sunday at three.

00:48:03   Have a good time.

00:48:07   Here's 20 bucks.

00:48:08   I do that.

00:48:08   I think.

00:48:09   Right.

00:48:13   We can pay the guy to come in.

00:48:14   Right.

00:48:17   Like an open bar.

00:48:18   We'll have like an open, an open nut.

00:48:21   Open nut kick in the back.

00:48:24   That's a good close.

00:48:28   (audience laughing)

00:48:31   - Well, should we open these or,

00:48:35   Paul, do you want us to open these?

00:48:36   Me first?

00:48:37   All right, we got some gifts here.

00:48:39   - Yes, from the wonderful people.

00:48:41   They spelled my name right, sweet.

00:48:43   - These are from the conference organizers.

00:48:47   - I'm trying to predict based on prior gifts what this is.

00:48:50   I'm guessing.

00:48:51   - Somebody went to the bookstore today.

00:48:53   - It's something like typography.

00:48:54   - Draw your own file.

00:48:57   - Bam!

00:48:58   [APPLAUSE]

00:49:01   Did you cheat?

00:49:01   That was amazing.

00:49:02   I did not.

00:49:04   That was amazing.

00:49:06   All right.

00:49:07   Something about zen koans.

00:49:15   We got a ticket, too, for the lottery,

00:49:17   which we can't actually redeem.

00:49:19   Oh, if I win, I'm collecting it.

00:49:23   This is-- let's see here.

00:49:26   Oh, unmentionables from family jewels to friendly fire, what we say instead of what we mean.

00:49:33   [Laughter]

00:49:35   Wow.

00:49:36   Pretty close.

00:49:37   Damn.

00:49:38   [Applause]

00:49:40   Not bad.

00:49:42   Thank you. I want to thank, everybody's been thanking Paul and Dermot. They've gotten enough thanks.

00:49:46   I want to thank all of you because this is a very small room and it's very warm and most of you are standing

00:49:52   And I cannot even tell you how much I appreciate

00:49:55   your willingness to stand and listen to this.

00:49:57   - Amazing crowd.

00:49:58   What makes a conference, just to full circle,

00:50:01   is the people, right?

00:50:02   And that's what makes it.

00:50:03   What's great about South by Way Back When

00:50:04   is the fact that you go and you meet just people

00:50:07   that you wanna hang out with.

00:50:07   - And people would stand and wait for the fire marshal

00:50:09   to be like, "You can't stand here."

00:50:10   And we'd be like, "I'm not leaving this talk."

00:50:12   (audience laughing)

00:50:14   - So it's the people, right?

00:50:15   - Right.

00:50:16   Thank you.

00:50:17   - Thank you guys.

00:50:17   - Nut kicker got downstairs. - Downstairs.

00:50:20   30 euros.

00:50:21   It's 30 years.

00:50:22   Thank you guys.

00:50:23   Thank you.

00:50:24   Good job.

00:50:25   Thank you.

00:50:25   [APPLAUSE]

00:50:28   Good job.

00:50:29   Thank you.

00:50:30   [APPLAUSE]

00:50:34   [ Silence ]