29: The Mac Faithful, with John Moltz
00:00:00
◼
►
This is the talk show with John Gruber. I'm John Gruber your host
00:00:03
◼
►
My special guest this week is John moltz
00:00:06
◼
►
You should do that again. Do your Zeldman impression. That's not really a Zelda. I can't do a Zelda an impression, really
00:00:14
◼
►
I'm sort of just doing a very like what he did is he just instantly and naturally
00:00:18
◼
►
Did like a very professional introduction right off the top of his head, you know
00:00:24
◼
►
I can't do it and I don't do impressions and and Zelda has such a great voice my god
00:00:28
◼
►
I told him at the end of the show, it's like voices on podcasts are like fonts for reading,
00:00:33
◼
►
and his voice font is just so great. It's got this incredibly rich voice that I do not like.
00:00:42
◼
►
Yeah, I was going to say, unlike both of us.
00:00:44
◼
►
You got the big back page column in Mac world this week.
00:00:51
◼
►
I think it's new, right?
00:00:55
◼
►
The February, the February issue.
00:00:59
◼
►
Which I believe is the latest.
00:01:00
◼
►
I always get them, I always get them late.
00:01:02
◼
►
I'm always like the last person to get them for some reason.
00:01:06
◼
►
And I, and people.
00:01:07
◼
►
I get confused because I feel like here's, I've got two of them here in front of me and
00:01:11
◼
►
the covers are very similar.
00:01:13
◼
►
They're white covers with red Mac world and fonts and they both have pictures of white
00:01:18
◼
►
iPods on the front.
00:01:21
◼
►
One of them is February 2013, one of the ones November 2012.
00:01:25
◼
►
November 2006.
00:01:26
◼
►
But anyway, it's the February one.
00:01:28
◼
►
I liked your little blurb on the very nice website where you told people to go to the
00:01:32
◼
►
newsstand to read it and then you wrote, "Airport?"
00:01:34
◼
►
Where do people buy magazines?
00:01:36
◼
►
I don't know.
00:01:37
◼
►
Where do you?
00:01:38
◼
►
You used to be – you could buy them everywhere.
00:01:40
◼
►
It's a funny – it made me laugh though because I did realize that –
00:01:42
◼
►
I was thinking about that.
00:01:44
◼
►
I was like thinking – I'm telling people to go out and buy the magazine.
00:01:46
◼
►
Where the heck are they going to go?
00:01:47
◼
►
They're going to drive to the airport.
00:01:50
◼
►
If I didn't have a subscription in that world, I'm not sure where I would go.
00:01:54
◼
►
Barnes and Noble? I think they still have magazines.
00:01:56
◼
►
Yeah, I mean those places do, but ours closed. We had a Borders,
00:02:00
◼
►
and it closed. So in Tacoma, I don't think, I mean,
00:02:04
◼
►
other than used, we have some great used bookstores, but other than used bookstores, we
00:02:08
◼
►
can't buy a book. Yeah, there's no used magazine stores.
00:02:12
◼
►
Maybe there's, I don't know. I think the moment
00:02:16
◼
►
for that is that. Yeah, right. You don't want to
00:02:20
◼
►
to go there don't go into those places but the digit it's funny though because
00:02:26
◼
►
your column on this this the February 2013 issue of Mac and it's not online
00:02:31
◼
►
yet is that right yeah I always get so confused when I don't even do they even
00:02:34
◼
►
know what right what goes online right when I don't know what the deal is
00:02:39
◼
►
frankly I don't think your thing is it online though is it is not no I know I'm
00:02:42
◼
►
almost positive that it is not I look for it too and and but it's I think they
00:02:47
◼
►
eventually do that though. It's perfectly timed though because I feel like it's
00:02:52
◼
►
it that the the headline says it all why Apple drives people crazy and which is
00:02:56
◼
►
which is what yeah from the last time you were on the show because we were I
00:03:01
◼
►
asked you about it and I feel like it's really come up again this week all over
00:03:07
◼
►
the place like I feel like everybody you know I don't know it's like this this
00:03:11
◼
►
pre earnings because what it's a week from today when Apple's earnings come
00:03:15
◼
►
Yes, one week from today or Wednesday or was it Wednesday? It's usually a Wednesday or Tuesday or Wednesday, right?
00:03:21
◼
►
Well, it'll be next next week. Yeah, it's a middle of next week 17th. Yeah sometime next week either Wednesday or Thursday
00:03:28
◼
►
I think that Apple will do it and I think that's part of it
00:03:31
◼
►
I think it's partly because we're one week out from their earnings and everybody's piling on but
00:03:35
◼
►
There is there's like this the the collective
00:03:39
◼
►
craziness that Apple drives people to
00:03:43
◼
►
Sanity and stupidity and and just you know turning off of frontal lobes is I get a peak fervor. I feel this week
00:03:51
◼
►
Maybe I'm just sensitive to it. Maybe it's like once you start looking for it completely, right? I'm just just craziness that are craziness
00:03:58
◼
►
But I don't want to ask you to do a
00:04:03
◼
►
Reading of your column, but what what is that? Can you restate it though?
00:04:07
◼
►
Can you give the gist of it of your argument of what drives what about Apple drives people crazy? Well?
00:04:13
◼
►
Well, I feel like there's a lot of things, factors,
00:04:18
◼
►
that go into this.
00:04:19
◼
►
And I was only able to, because of the size constraints
00:04:23
◼
►
of the back page, only able to go into some of them.
00:04:27
◼
►
But a lot of it-- one of the factors I talked about
00:04:32
◼
►
was this sort of checklist mentality
00:04:34
◼
►
that people don't understand Apple's product development
00:04:38
◼
►
And they sort of apply the same view
00:04:42
◼
►
that they would to any other product category-- Coke, Pepsi,
00:04:47
◼
►
soda, cars, anything.
00:04:49
◼
►
And the easiest way to evaluate stuff
00:04:51
◼
►
is just to have a checklist, which
00:04:52
◼
►
is kind of what places like Consumer Reports use
00:04:56
◼
►
and a lot of the technology sites
00:04:58
◼
►
use to do evaluation of products,
00:05:00
◼
►
because it's just easier that way.
00:05:01
◼
►
And so they have this checklist mentality,
00:05:03
◼
►
and they go down the checklist.
00:05:04
◼
►
And Apple products often don't-- I mean,
00:05:07
◼
►
they're not built that way.
00:05:08
◼
►
They're built for fit and finish and design
00:05:10
◼
►
and many other factors that don't easily
00:05:12
◼
►
lend themselves to being evaluated by a checklist
00:05:15
◼
►
And so these guys go through, and they-- mostly guys--
00:05:19
◼
►
and they say the Samsung device did better
00:05:24
◼
►
because it's got a bigger screen, or it's got a projector
00:05:30
◼
►
That is true.
00:05:31
◼
►
There is a phone now with a built-in projector.
00:05:34
◼
►
Which I think is just utter madness.
00:05:35
◼
►
But there is something that you can check off on a list,
00:05:39
◼
►
and Apple will never have a phone with a projector in it.
00:05:42
◼
►
So they give more checks to the Samsung device,
00:05:47
◼
►
and Apple's device gets fewer, and so they
00:05:49
◼
►
say the Samsung device won.
00:05:51
◼
►
And then what happens is Mac users, Apple fans,
00:05:56
◼
►
get into the comments and start screaming loudly
00:05:59
◼
►
that they don't understand what they're a bunch of idiots.
00:06:01
◼
►
And this starts this sort of feedback loop for insanity,
00:06:05
◼
►
where these people think that we're all completely unreasonable
00:06:07
◼
►
because their fully scientific process has determined
00:06:12
◼
►
that the Samsung device is better.
00:06:14
◼
►
So therefore, they try and come up with an explanation
00:06:16
◼
►
for why are we so bent out of shape about this?
00:06:21
◼
►
And their only explanation that they can come up with
00:06:23
◼
►
is that it's a religion.
00:06:25
◼
►
- That's one of my favorites.
00:06:28
◼
►
And it never gets old.
00:06:30
◼
►
It never dies. - Apparently, it never dies.
00:06:33
◼
►
- Well, and part of it too, and it's that the F word,
00:06:37
◼
►
faithful. The Apple faithful. Or sometimes I still see—I just saw
00:06:42
◼
►
yesterday, and it's one of those things where I never know whether I should link
00:06:45
◼
►
to it and throw traffic at this crap just to make a joke or to let it slide.
00:06:50
◼
►
But I let it slide, but it was an argument. And the gist of it was that
00:06:54
◼
►
the people who buy Apple—all Apple products—are, you know, the religious
00:07:00
◼
►
fervor. But they called them the Mac faithful. It's the Mac faithful who are
00:07:04
◼
►
buying the iPhones and iPads and Macs when, you know, you just—
00:07:09
◼
►
35 million a quarter.
00:07:12
◼
►
I mean, there's 50 million—they're expecting to sell 50 million iPhones in the last three
00:07:17
◼
►
months alone when they report their numbers next week.
00:07:20
◼
►
I mean, no matter whether it's a little bit higher or a little bit lower, it's not
00:07:23
◼
►
going to be too far away from 50 million.
00:07:25
◼
►
They don't sell 50 million Macs, you know?
00:07:28
◼
►
Like, the whole idea that there's an Apple faithful and that's who they sell to is
00:07:32
◼
►
wrongheaded and nuts, too.
00:07:33
◼
►
but I think that they still toss around the term
00:07:36
◼
►
Mac faithful to describe them shows just how burned
00:07:41
◼
►
into their lizard brains this view of Apple is.
00:07:49
◼
►
- You know, I think I was with you the last time,
00:07:51
◼
►
or I put it in context of like first impressions
00:07:56
◼
►
in that people's brains like were evolutionarily wired
00:08:00
◼
►
to make first impression, or not even first impressions,
00:08:02
◼
►
But initial impressions of people,
00:08:05
◼
►
and people don't really change that much over time,
00:08:08
◼
►
and so we're just not wired to change our minds
00:08:11
◼
►
about somebody or a thing.
00:08:14
◼
►
And evolutionary, there's no reason to really have
00:08:18
◼
►
a conception of a corporation, because there weren't any.
00:08:21
◼
►
But I think our brains are just,
00:08:23
◼
►
we treat 'em the same way.
00:08:24
◼
►
We have emotional, the way that you have
00:08:26
◼
►
an emotional response to a person,
00:08:28
◼
►
you have an emotional response to companies.
00:08:30
◼
►
that I think it's an awful lot of people who formed their view of Apple in the 90s
00:08:36
◼
►
when the company was in trouble and it looked like you could really make
00:08:41
◼
►
the argument that their basic strategy of controlling the whole experience,
00:08:47
◼
►
doing the software, doing the hardware, doing things their own way, that you
00:08:52
◼
►
could, you know, reasonably make a data backed argument then that it was that's
00:08:56
◼
►
the wrong way to go and that doesn't work. And that the other way, the PC way, the open
00:09:01
◼
►
way of using, you know, Microsoft's operating system and having a whole ecosystem of crazy,
00:09:07
◼
►
you know, configurations of hardware, that's the way to go. Well, you could back that up
00:09:11
◼
►
then. And I feel people burn that into their mind, that Apple is stubborn and wrong and
00:09:17
◼
►
a niche and designs for twee design aficionados and it's not successful. And that's the way
00:09:25
◼
►
way it is. And everything that's happened since that seems to poke a hole in that, they
00:09:30
◼
►
just see that as a fluke.
00:09:32
◼
►
You know, that the…
00:09:33
◼
►
Tim Cynova The things will write themselves…
00:09:35
◼
►
Dave Asprey The fluke that's going to be corrected
00:09:37
◼
►
Tim Cynova Things will write themselves… yeah, yeah.
00:09:38
◼
►
Things will write themselves eventually. I have a cute little phrase for people. I mean,
00:09:40
◼
►
this kind of thought process, which is people cutting themselves on Occam's razor. Because
00:09:45
◼
►
they… it's a simple explanation. And usually, you know, they say that simple explanation
00:09:52
◼
►
is usually the right one. It's not true in all cases, and it's not true in this
00:09:56
◼
►
case. The idea that the mobile landscape is exactly the same as the PC landscape was in
00:10:04
◼
►
the '90s is really not the case at all. There are certain similarities, but to say
00:10:12
◼
►
that it's going to play out exactly the same is just wrong-headed.
00:10:15
◼
►
Well, and here's the other thing I keep coming back to, and I feel like I should…
00:10:19
◼
►
This is an idea that I could expand into a pretty good article, maybe.
00:10:23
◼
►
Hang on, I want to type this down.
00:10:25
◼
►
I want to get this down so I can steal it from you.
00:10:29
◼
►
Primarily what people are arguing about today is iOS.
00:10:31
◼
►
It's phones and the tablet.
00:10:33
◼
►
And when they say that Apple's going to run into the same problem that they did before,
00:10:36
◼
►
it's this basic argument that Android is the new Windows and iOS is the new Mac.
00:10:41
◼
►
what happened to Apple with the Mac against Windows in the 90s is repeating itself now,
00:10:46
◼
►
but it's Android and Google instead of Microsoft and Windows. And there's a couple of problems
00:10:53
◼
►
with that. One, Apple back in the 90s with the Mac never, ever, ever had this sort of
00:11:00
◼
►
success that they have now with iOS in terms of the millions of users and brand awareness.
00:11:08
◼
►
They didn't have the retail presence because they didn't even have retail stores. There's
00:11:11
◼
►
many things that are different, right? They were not the world's most profitable company
00:11:14
◼
►
at some point, you know, when the Mac was at its peak and Windows 95 hadn't come out yet. They
00:11:20
◼
►
weren't the most, I mean, they were doing better than they were in those dark years of 96, 97, 98,
00:11:25
◼
►
but they were never the world's most profitable company. They were never the biggest PC seller.
00:11:29
◼
►
They never had, you know, market share like they have with the iPad and tablets. None of these
00:11:35
◼
►
things were true. But I would just say, I would push all that aside and just go back and just
00:11:39
◼
►
revisit the idea that something actually went wrong for Apple in the PC industry.
00:11:44
◼
►
They did have a couple of bad years, but they had really bad management at that time, right?
00:11:50
◼
►
Just look at where the Mac is today.
00:11:53
◼
►
It has 25 or 26 consecutive quarters of outgrowing the PC industry as a whole, right?
00:12:00
◼
►
And it's very profitable.
00:12:03
◼
►
Did Apple actually lose the PC wars?
00:12:05
◼
►
I don't even see the argument of that.
00:12:08
◼
►
that there – yes, there were a couple of years where things were bad. But in hindsight,
00:12:12
◼
►
and given the stability that's happened in the last 15 years with the Mac, how can
00:12:18
◼
►
you argue that they even lost that one?
00:12:19
◼
►
Tim Cynova If you add the iPad in now, as you consider
00:12:22
◼
►
that a computer, you can't really say that.
00:12:27
◼
►
I think and I think it let's just call the PC industry. Let's let's separate the iPad from it, right?
00:12:32
◼
►
Let's say that that's post PC and let's say the PC industry is
00:12:35
◼
►
What we thought let's draw the line at
00:12:38
◼
►
2007 and say before the iPhone what we thought of is the PC industry just tops and
00:12:43
◼
►
laptops running Windows or Mac or Linux and
00:12:47
◼
►
You know keyboards and mice and pointers that that type of thing
00:12:52
◼
►
I would guess that if you separated out Apple's profits, I mean in fact I don't even think
00:12:58
◼
►
I have to guess. I'm almost certain that Microsoft is still the most profitable PC
00:13:04
◼
►
company. That Microsoft makes more profits from what that definition I just made of PCs
00:13:11
◼
►
than Apple. And maybe Intel makes the second most, I don't know. But Apple certainly
00:13:17
◼
►
makes a lot and I'm pretty sure that they make more profit than any other company that
00:13:22
◼
►
makes PC hardware. That they make more profit on it than HP or any of those companies. It's
00:13:29
◼
►
certainly a very good business.
00:13:30
◼
►
Tim Cynova That's interesting that nobody's…
00:13:31
◼
►
Dave Asprey But yet I feel like there's still this assumption
00:13:33
◼
►
that Apple screwed the pooch with PCs in the 90s.
00:13:36
◼
►
Tim Cynova Yeah. It's interesting that nobody's done
00:13:39
◼
►
that. That you don't see somebody, I mean everybody focuses so much on mobile right
00:13:44
◼
►
right now that nobody really is having that argument anymore.
00:13:49
◼
►
No, and I feel like the time to make it is fading too because the PC industry is shrinking.
00:13:56
◼
►
And now that it's shrinking, I mean, like I kind of misspoke just before going on the
00:14:01
◼
►
air here. I posted a thing about Apple and why is Apple expected. It was an argument
00:14:06
◼
►
from some woman that Apple needs to introduce something new. And I just, you know, a brief
00:14:11
◼
►
piece and I just said well why does Apple need to do something new when they
00:14:14
◼
►
the things that they've already got are all profitable the Mac iPad and iPhone
00:14:18
◼
►
all profitable and growing and somebody pointed out that the Mac isn't actually
00:14:21
◼
►
growing anymore I feel like quarter to quarter sales might even be down a
00:14:25
◼
►
little bit what I was thinking was that they're still growing it's still
00:14:31
◼
►
outpacing the in PC industry as a whole it's just that the PC industry as a
00:14:35
◼
►
whole is starting to shrink so fast that even with the Mac doing well relative to
00:14:40
◼
►
all other PCs, it's still actually shrinking quarter to quarter. But that's all, it's
00:14:45
◼
►
actually, you know, it's one of those like nice problems to have because it's all
00:14:49
◼
►
about the iPad. Because so many fewer laptops are being sold because people are buying iPads.
00:14:54
◼
►
Right. And I wanted to talk to you about that. I wanted to discuss that as well, that, that,
00:15:00
◼
►
what you had. Yeah, I was just looking up the Mac unit sales numbers and they're up,
00:15:06
◼
►
up year over year but just barely yeah it's close it you know it's it would be
00:15:16
◼
►
tough to say growing anymore but they're still strong and compared to their
00:15:19
◼
►
historical numbers they are they are they are literally growing it's it's but
00:15:24
◼
►
they'll have to have a pretty good quarter to be I think they would do it I
00:15:26
◼
►
think they would do it they are still growing but it's it's not by it's not a
00:15:29
◼
►
lot it's not no and they maybe maybe these numbers for this last quarter will
00:15:34
◼
►
be pretty good because they introduced a couple of new, you know, they had new iMacs and…
00:15:39
◼
►
Steven: They shipped late though. I don't know. I wonder how many…
00:15:42
◼
►
Steve, off camera, I'm not sure if the 13… I don't know. I guess the 13-inch MacBook
00:15:45
◼
►
Pro is their best-selling laptop. I don't know.
00:15:48
◼
►
Steven, off camera Really?
00:15:49
◼
►
Steve, off camera I would think the Air…
00:15:50
◼
►
Steve, off camera I would think the Air…
00:15:51
◼
►
Steve, off camera Or at least you can't get Retina. I don't
00:15:53
◼
►
know. They might have a really good number…
00:15:55
◼
►
Steve, off camera Yeah.
00:15:56
◼
►
Steve, off camera …for Macs. You know, anybody who was holding
00:15:58
◼
►
out on a new iMac…
00:15:59
◼
►
Steve, off camera God forbid anybody wait until next week to
00:16:01
◼
►
find out. We shall…
00:16:02
◼
►
Steve, off camera Right.
00:16:03
◼
►
I'll talk about it now.
00:16:04
◼
►
Maybe it actually won't show up in the quarterly results, though, because like the iMac didn't
00:16:08
◼
►
ship until the first week of December.
00:16:09
◼
►
That's the thing I'm thinking.
00:16:10
◼
►
So maybe they didn't, maybe they were, it wasn't, because it wasn't available the whole
00:16:13
◼
►
quarter, maybe it'll be this next quarter where we'll see, you know, the spike from
00:16:17
◼
►
the new introductions.
00:16:19
◼
►
But the holiday quarter usually does better than, regardless of whether they—
00:16:23
◼
►
Yeah, because, you know, computers, you know, maybe it's not, it's kind of a big ticket
00:16:26
◼
►
Christmas gift, but it still is the sort of thing that people will buy and call it a Christmas
00:16:32
◼
►
But the thing about that that I think is that it's fine for them to go along for a while
00:16:39
◼
►
and just try and ride the growth of these existing products.
00:16:42
◼
►
But eventually, the Apple that we know is more about going into new markets and reinventing
00:16:49
◼
►
a new market and staking out the high end and scooping up all the profit and leaving
00:16:57
◼
►
the low end for everybody else.
00:16:59
◼
►
Right, and I'm certainly not arguing that they never need to introduce something – a
00:17:03
◼
►
major new disruption.
00:17:05
◼
►
I just think, though, that it's goofy to say they need it immediately.
00:17:09
◼
►
And that's the thing – that's the other thing.
00:17:11
◼
►
There's a big difference between they need a major new disruption eventually versus they
00:17:16
◼
►
need a major new disruption now, right now.
00:17:19
◼
►
And that's something else I think I touched on in that column is that there's this myth
00:17:25
◼
►
that Apple, under Steve Jobs, churned out—and I think we've talked about this before—but
00:17:30
◼
►
churned out a groundbreaking product pretty much every quarter, which is not at all the
00:17:36
◼
►
In hindsight, it's gotten to the point where, yeah, every single time the guy came on stage,
00:17:38
◼
►
he obliterated an industry.
00:17:41
◼
►
And Tim Cook still hasn't done it.
00:17:44
◼
►
And it's been a whole year, and Tim Cook still hasn't done it.
00:17:46
◼
►
But you could say the iMac was groundbreaking, I guess, even though the operating system
00:17:54
◼
►
was exactly the same as the previous operating system. So they did the iMac, they did the
00:17:59
◼
►
iPod three years later, and then they did the iPhone six years after the iPod. Something
00:18:13
◼
►
Right, which is way longer than the scope of period we're looking at right now from
00:18:17
◼
►
need, you know, everybody points to the original iPad in 2010.
00:18:22
◼
►
So that's, we're coming close to about three years.
00:18:27
◼
►
But we still haven't even hit.
00:18:28
◼
►
Which would be the bare minimum for coming up with something new.
00:18:34
◼
►
So, and as somebody, one of the things I linked to recently said, I think it was this piece
00:18:38
◼
►
from Harvard Business Review by Dan Palata, who made the exact same point you just did,
00:18:43
◼
►
they went six years without a disruption under Steve Jobs between the iPod and
00:18:49
◼
►
iPhone is that when the iPad came out which everybody now hails as the thing
00:18:55
◼
►
that they need to do something like that again a lot of these same people said
00:18:59
◼
►
that it's just a big iPod just a big iPhone that they didn't even count it
00:19:03
◼
►
when it appeared yeah that's usually the hallmark I mean the iPhone is the the
00:19:11
◼
►
the exception. I've often said this, that it's like the holy grail of Apple introductions,
00:19:16
◼
►
because it was the one that blew everybody away. It blew me away, you know, I'm assuming
00:19:23
◼
►
it blew you away. It blew the people who get Apple away, and it blew the people who don't
00:19:27
◼
►
get Apple away. Everybody, even the people who don't understand the company, were like,
00:19:30
◼
►
"Well, wow, that's a thing." That's amazing. Why can't you do that every time?
00:19:34
◼
►
And that was my first Macworld, was that one.
00:19:38
◼
►
And I remember, I think I was sitting,
00:19:41
◼
►
I might have been sitting next to Glenn.
00:19:43
◼
►
Yeah, right, I might have been sitting
00:19:44
◼
►
next to Glenn Fleishman at the time,
00:19:45
◼
►
and I thought, are they all like this?
00:19:47
◼
►
This is amazing.
00:19:49
◼
►
- That was the one where everybody recognized it.
00:19:56
◼
►
But all the other ones usually are met,
00:19:58
◼
►
like it's a good sign that Apple's onto something
00:20:00
◼
►
if it's greeted with a collective meh.
00:20:04
◼
►
Yeah, yeah, right.
00:20:06
◼
►
It's getting—I kind of pity the guy because I feel like it's going to go on his tombstone,
00:20:10
◼
►
but Commander Taco's famous Slashdot reaction to the original iPod. What was it?
00:20:16
◼
►
Apple releases iPod. This is from Slashdot on October 23, 2001.
00:20:21
◼
►
And here's what Commander Taco wrote. "No wireless, less space than a nomad. Lame."
00:20:28
◼
►
It's even better than I remember. Lame.
00:20:31
◼
►
Also, he didn't capitalize Nomad.
00:20:36
◼
►
I feel like there's a sort of disdain to that.
00:20:41
◼
►
Did you have an MP3 player before the iPod?
00:20:46
◼
►
Yes, I did not.
00:20:50
◼
►
Amy had a Rio something or another.
00:20:54
◼
►
was a flash-based jobbie and it held 10 songs, 11 if you picked the right song.
00:21:02
◼
►
So it was cool in the sense that if you were used to the song restrictions of a CD or a tape,
00:21:15
◼
►
where you could have about one album worth, you could do it. And it was this device that was way
00:21:20
◼
►
lighter than the spinning disc player and smaller and never had to worry about jostling
00:21:28
◼
►
it and having it skip or something like that. But in hindsight, it was a collective pain
00:21:34
◼
►
in the ass where if you're sick of the 10 songs that were on it, you had to connect
00:21:37
◼
►
it to your Mac. I think it used SoundJam. SoundJam was what she used to manage music.
00:21:43
◼
►
Tim Cynova Right. That's what I did too. At the time,
00:21:45
◼
►
I got it just before going to Tokyo. My wife and I spent three months in Tokyo and it was
00:21:50
◼
►
working there and it was actually,
00:21:53
◼
►
I mean for me it was pretty good
00:21:55
◼
►
because it was like a shuffle.
00:21:57
◼
►
It was like an iPod shuffle because you just load it up
00:22:00
◼
►
with a few songs, obviously more size constraint.
00:22:05
◼
►
But I had like a 20 minute commute and it was perfect.
00:22:10
◼
►
But you know.
00:22:14
◼
►
- It was funny, the interface was so bad
00:22:17
◼
►
that I really do think, no joke,
00:22:19
◼
►
It was harder to find a specific song, even though there were only 10 or 11 songs total,
00:22:24
◼
►
than on an iPod that you might have loaded up with thousands.
00:22:27
◼
►
It was useless.
00:22:28
◼
►
I mean, the interface for it was useless, which is something that Apple rightly recognized.
00:22:32
◼
►
There's no point in having the screen on there.
00:22:34
◼
►
You know what the songs are.
00:22:38
◼
►
It shouldn't have been published off of.
00:22:39
◼
►
And you're going to play them in a random order.
00:22:40
◼
►
There was no point in having the screen.
00:22:41
◼
►
The screen just made it worse.
00:22:44
◼
►
And it also comes to that thing.
00:22:45
◼
►
It also gets to the point that Siracusa made this week in an article about companies, the
00:22:51
◼
►
software being the weak link in all of these hardware products at CES.
00:22:58
◼
►
What was wrong with all the MP3 players before the iPod was their software.
00:23:02
◼
►
The interface was just horrendous.
00:23:05
◼
►
This is what I don't understand about this cheap iPhone thing is the way Apple made cheap
00:23:12
◼
►
iPods is by stripping out features and making a better, more restricted device that just
00:23:18
◼
►
did less but did it really well and easily.
00:23:22
◼
►
And I don't see how they're going to be able to do that with an iPhone.
00:23:27
◼
►
You can't strip out the platform.
00:23:30
◼
►
You can't have one that's just a phone.
00:23:33
◼
►
So what exactly are you removing?
00:23:38
◼
►
And it seems like they're going with this, you know, to date they've just been going
00:23:41
◼
►
with this last year's model thing.
00:23:44
◼
►
And I don't understand if they're going to do that.
00:23:48
◼
►
There's an intellectual laziness to the argument, this,
00:23:52
◼
►
oh yes, finally they're going to make a cheap iPhone.
00:23:56
◼
►
And it's the same people who think that that's
00:24:01
◼
►
welcome and good news.
00:24:03
◼
►
But their arguments in favor of it are intellectually so lazy.
00:24:07
◼
►
It really all comes down to what I call the church of market
00:24:11
◼
►
It's just this religious fervor that market share is the most important thing and anything
00:24:17
◼
►
that's a move from market share is good and anything that doesn't help your market
00:24:21
◼
►
share is bad.
00:24:23
◼
►
Regardless of things like profitability or consumer loyalty or building out the platform
00:24:30
◼
►
in a sane way from a developer's perspective, none of that matters.
00:24:33
◼
►
All that matters is if they sold an iPhone cheaper, they'd gain market share.
00:24:38
◼
►
Scully says that you should know myself that's it ipso facto it's it would be
00:24:41
◼
►
good for Apple and if they don't do it it's bad and John Scully says you should
00:24:44
◼
►
do it you should not do it what I didn't read this gully thing yet I have it open
00:24:50
◼
►
and he basically is well his point was that they should make a small I mean a
00:24:54
◼
►
cheaper iPhone to do just that you know and Scully I saw some I saw I know that
00:25:01
◼
►
he has a thing I didn't read it yet but uh he gets he's getting a bad rap because
00:25:05
◼
►
He didn't leave Apple in too bad a shape.
00:25:09
◼
►
And the Newton thing didn't work out, but boy, he was close to a thing.
00:25:16
◼
►
I just think he's – but his business management is poorly suited to Apple's strengths.
00:25:24
◼
►
But if I were him, that said, even given that he left the company in pretty good shape – and
00:25:28
◼
►
it was really Michael Spindler, his successor, who ran the company into the ground, who you
00:25:32
◼
►
never hear of anymore.
00:25:33
◼
►
I don't know what that guy's doing.
00:25:34
◼
►
He's the guy I'd like to hear people get, you know, "What do you think Apple should
00:25:39
◼
►
You might get a really good answer out of him.
00:25:40
◼
►
But if I were Scully, boy, I would never ever get near those questions.
00:25:44
◼
►
I just, you know, don't, don't, just don't.
00:25:49
◼
►
You know what I mean?
00:25:51
◼
►
You're the guy who ran Steve Jobs out of the company.
00:25:54
◼
►
I would like to go…
00:25:55
◼
►
And maybe, you know, and it's such a long, complicated thing, and maybe that really was
00:25:58
◼
►
good for Jobs because it really made him reevaluate things and he learned lessons and, you know,
00:26:04
◼
►
you could even argue that culturally Next was more of like a sibling to Apple than its
00:26:11
◼
►
competitor and that the reunification in 1998 was really more like two halves that never
00:26:17
◼
►
should have been separated coming together but it never would have happened if Jobs hadn't
00:26:22
◼
►
been kicked out and, you know, then they never would have had Next Step which turned into
00:26:27
◼
►
OS X and blah blah blah. But in a nutshell though, Scully screwed up. I feel like he
00:26:33
◼
►
should just say one nice sentence about Apple and say, "But I'm not going to comment
00:26:39
◼
►
on their management."
00:26:40
◼
►
Yeah, it's like talking about an old girlfriend.
00:26:43
◼
►
Right. Or it's like, what was his name? Pete Best talking about Beatles albums. You
00:26:49
◼
►
know what I mean? Given a critique of what was wrong with the White Album. You know what?
00:26:54
◼
►
Pete Best doesn't do that, and that for good reason.
00:26:58
◼
►
Talking about management, old management of Apple,
00:27:00
◼
►
I would like to go back and look at--
00:27:01
◼
►
I haven't done this recently, and I
00:27:03
◼
►
don't know if there's a concise place to look at this--
00:27:05
◼
►
but what the product mix looked like when jobs or when
00:27:10
◼
►
Emilio took over.
00:27:13
◼
►
Because they had all those-- and if you included the clones.
00:27:19
◼
►
I mean, it was just a mess.
00:27:21
◼
►
Yeah, it really was.
00:27:24
◼
►
Yeah, because the clones were in place before Emilio came in.
00:27:32
◼
►
Emilio wasn't there that long.
00:27:34
◼
►
He was only there for like, was it less than a year?
00:27:35
◼
►
Maybe a year and a half or something.
00:27:36
◼
►
He gets a bad rap too, because he actually did a pretty good job.
00:27:40
◼
►
I mean, he didn't introduce anything new to fix the company, but he stopped a lot of
00:27:50
◼
►
the bleeding.
00:27:52
◼
►
triage surgeon, you know what I mean?
00:27:54
◼
►
Like an ER doctor who came in and at least fixed
00:27:58
◼
►
the stuff that was awful.
00:27:59
◼
►
And then it was up to Jobs to come in and get some new stuff
00:28:04
◼
►
that was going to turn it around.
00:28:08
◼
►
But yeah, I would love to see-- I could just
00:28:10
◼
►
see it as one of those things like on a Tumblr site,
00:28:12
◼
►
like one of those posters.
00:28:14
◼
►
And instead of just like all Apple products in history,
00:28:16
◼
►
just what was the product lineup like in the summer of '96?
00:28:23
◼
►
What did you own back then?
00:28:25
◼
►
I had a Power Mac 9600, which was an incredible machine
00:28:33
◼
►
at the time.
00:28:34
◼
►
And I think it was a machine that debuted at like $4,000 or $5,000.
00:28:42
◼
►
And it somehow quickly got superseded.
00:28:48
◼
►
I forget what--
00:28:48
◼
►
That happened a lot.
00:28:50
◼
►
But I got it brand new right after the next thing had come out, and I got it for $2,100.
00:28:58
◼
►
So six months earlier, it was retailing for $4,500, and I got it for $2,100 and used it
00:29:07
◼
►
It was one of the best computers I've ever owned.
00:29:09
◼
►
I had a Performa 6400, which is widely considered a road apple, but I really liked that.
00:29:20
◼
►
I really liked it.
00:29:24
◼
►
I guess it wasn't a Power – was it a Power – was my thing called a Power Map?
00:29:25
◼
►
I think it was called a Power Map.
00:29:26
◼
►
I think you forgot.
00:29:27
◼
►
I think it was called a Power Map.
00:29:29
◼
►
It probably would have been …
00:29:30
◼
►
I actually forget, but I'm pretty sure that it was a Power Map.
00:29:31
◼
►
I know it was a 9600.
00:29:32
◼
►
Were they still making Quadras?
00:29:33
◼
►
No, it wasn't a Quadra because it was – it wasn't Quadra – Quadra wasn't Power
00:29:39
◼
►
power PC. And this was my first power PC. I think there was a power manual. And I remember
00:29:45
◼
►
specifically that it was a 9600 because I named my hard drive like "HAL 9600." My
00:29:51
◼
►
hard drive icon on that machine was a HAL icon. Because I thought, you know, if it's
00:29:57
◼
►
9600 and HAL was the HAL 9000, you know, obvious way to name your computer.
00:30:03
◼
►
Did you use a kaleidoscope and lots of icon packs?
00:30:08
◼
►
That's a great question. I did on and off for years.
00:30:13
◼
►
A kaleidoscope I didn't really get into, but I did use—because I feel like by the time
00:30:19
◼
►
kaleidoscope came out, I had outgrown that urge.
00:30:23
◼
►
What I remember using was—was it called Aron?
00:30:29
◼
►
Maybe. There was—yeah.
00:30:30
◼
►
And it was by the guy who eventually went on to make kaleidoscope with somebody else,
00:30:34
◼
►
but it was Aron. And he also had one. It was just an extension you dropped in your folder
00:30:38
◼
►
and it changed the look and feel of your windows to look like anything. This is the crazy part,
00:30:46
◼
►
is that Apple had purposefully ceded, like to Mac World and Mac user, screenshots of the next
00:30:52
◼
►
generation Mac OS, the Copeland and whatever the other, Gershwin, whatever the hell they were
00:30:57
◼
►
coming out with, and they were like, "Here's what it's going to look like." Like that. They were like
00:31:02
◼
►
so desperate for publicity and they're so stagnant on the OS is that to keep people excited, they
00:31:08
◼
►
revealed like two years in advance what everything was going to look like. And so this guy, what
00:31:13
◼
►
was it, Greg Landweber made an extension called Aron which gave you that look and feel right
00:31:21
◼
►
now. I think it was like $10 shareware or something like that. And then he came out
00:31:25
◼
►
with one, I forget what it was called, but it did the same thing but made the Mac look
00:31:28
◼
►
like the BOS with the yellow tab style windows. I ran that for a while.
00:31:34
◼
►
But like I said, like you said, I think it's an itch that you get for a while, and then
00:31:40
◼
►
once you've scratched it, you're done.
00:31:42
◼
►
Yeah, all of a sudden you feel silly.
00:31:45
◼
►
Maybe it's an age thing.
00:31:46
◼
►
Or maybe it's an age thing.
00:31:47
◼
►
Or something like that.
00:31:48
◼
►
Like cosplay or something.
00:31:51
◼
►
I haven't lost the urge for that yet.
00:31:53
◼
►
I just felt like that.
00:31:54
◼
►
I don't know.
00:31:56
◼
►
I always thought that, especially in those days with the system extensions, that the
00:32:01
◼
►
curve for power users was that as you got more and more into your Mac as an
00:32:06
◼
►
enthusiast and a geek and someone who's just into it, you added more and more
00:32:10
◼
►
extensions and when you, you know, for those of you who don't remember, when you
00:32:13
◼
►
booted your Mac in those days, each system extension you had would put a
00:32:17
◼
►
little icon up at the bottom of the screen and you'd get this. Usually it
00:32:20
◼
►
would just go across one row, but if you were like really into it, you'd get two
00:32:23
◼
►
rows and then if you really loaded your system up with extensions, you know, you'd
00:32:26
◼
►
get the third row or even a fourth row. And you could measure how much of a nerd
00:32:30
◼
►
you were by how many rows of those icons you got when you started your computer.
00:32:34
◼
►
But I always thought that when you got to a certain point, it was like a bell curve
00:32:37
◼
►
and it started going down the other way.
00:32:39
◼
►
And the people who really knew the Mac and really got into it ran with as few extensions
00:32:44
◼
►
as possible.
00:32:45
◼
►
Tim Cynova – Yeah, because there was always that sense of dread that it would stop as
00:32:50
◼
►
it was loading those icons.
00:32:51
◼
►
John Greenewald – Oh, because it would happen sometimes.
00:32:53
◼
►
Yeah, exactly.
00:32:54
◼
►
Tim Cynova – I mean, I would have a lot.
00:32:55
◼
►
John Greenewald – That you'd be doing it and one of the icons would come up and
00:32:57
◼
►
then it would just stop at that point.
00:32:58
◼
►
Tim Cynova – It would just freeze.
00:32:59
◼
►
the operating system would just lock up while we were booting because you've gotten a conflict.
00:33:03
◼
►
I know I've talked about this probably with Dan on an old talk show, but
00:33:08
◼
►
one of the greatest software, one of the greatest apps in the history of macOS was Conflict Catcher,
00:33:15
◼
►
which was a program whose entire point was defined and help you find and identify conflicts between
00:33:23
◼
►
system extensions and identify them and then you could have like you know if
00:33:29
◼
►
extension a which made your cursor turn into Snoopy dog when instead of a watch
00:33:35
◼
►
when you were waiting for something conflicted with extension B which gave
00:33:41
◼
►
you like a system-wide Apple script menu or something like that you could like
00:33:45
◼
►
set presets and say okay when I'm running this extension I'm not running
00:33:49
◼
►
this one and when I'm running the other one I'm not running this one and you
00:33:51
◼
►
like switch between them when you started up. And the app, I just remember it was like,
00:33:56
◼
►
you know, it was like, what were they doing then? The app was written by Jeff Robin, who
00:34:01
◼
►
went on to write Sound Jam, which you may have heard of is now called iTunes, and he's
00:34:05
◼
►
still at Apple.
00:34:06
◼
►
Oh, is he really? Okay.
00:34:07
◼
►
Yeah, because he still does the demos. He did the demo of iTunes 11.
00:34:13
◼
►
He's still in charge of iTunes.
00:34:16
◼
►
But Conflict Catcher was a huge hit.
00:34:19
◼
►
And it's just so funny in hindsight that it was necessary.
00:34:21
◼
►
necessary because we were running these things.
00:34:23
◼
►
Do they eventually, well they made their own, right?
00:34:27
◼
►
They made some sort of conflict management.
00:34:29
◼
►
Yeah, but it wasn't powerful.
00:34:30
◼
►
No, it wasn't nearly as powerful.
00:34:31
◼
►
Like you could do it manually, but you couldn't save sets or something like that.
00:34:35
◼
►
Yeah, something like that.
00:34:37
◼
►
Well, the gist of it though is that, you know, ultimately long term they needed to move to something like
00:34:43
◼
►
Mac OS X with a modern architecture where one process isn't going to hang, whether it's an extension or whatever,
00:34:50
◼
►
isn't going to hang your whole computer. But like the people who used to complain
00:34:54
◼
►
about their Macs locking up inevitably had like four rows of system extensions
00:34:58
◼
►
and they were all using you know APIs that weren't meant to be used by third
00:35:03
◼
►
party developers. Whereas if you just stuck to what Apple gave you, you just ran
00:35:06
◼
►
the stock OS, it was very very reliable and it was pretty hard to do that though.
00:35:12
◼
►
Because there were so many, I mean developers just began to ship those
00:35:15
◼
►
things like crazy and you'd get a new box set of software and it would install 15 extensions.
00:35:22
◼
►
Right. Everything was an extension. Man, you needed like Adobe Type Manager. Just to render
00:35:28
◼
►
PostScript fonts, you needed an extension from Adobe. ATM, Adobe Type Manager. And you
00:35:34
◼
►
had to name Adobe Type Manager. I mean, we're really out in the weeds here. But remember
00:35:38
◼
►
you had to name Adobe Type Manager with a tilde.
00:35:41
◼
►
Oh, yeah. Yeah, they definitely…
00:35:42
◼
►
tilde ATM because it had to load last because of I don't even know why but you
00:35:48
◼
►
had to make sure it loaded last and it loaded in alphabetical order and tilde
00:35:51
◼
►
sorted to the bottom whereas most punctuation characters sorted to the top
00:35:56
◼
►
before the letters and so it was tilde ATM I don't miss that no I don't miss
00:36:03
◼
►
that at all which was sort of the one thing that Windows I mean even as a Mac
00:36:07
◼
►
user we had to say that Windows 95 with protected memory and none of that stuff
00:36:14
◼
►
was was actually an improvement we would bitch about the look and feel and how it
00:36:18
◼
►
was all stolen from yeah there was a stable Mac that was antithetical to
00:36:27
◼
►
apples the way things ought to have ran you know that you really did have to be
00:36:32
◼
►
it's almost it's almost the complete polar opposite of the App Store mind
00:36:37
◼
►
mindset, where the App Store mindset is, "Look, we've vetted this stuff, and it's in a
00:36:42
◼
►
You know, both two levels of protection.
00:36:45
◼
►
A, we've vetted it personally before we allowed it into the store, and B, there's
00:36:49
◼
►
a sandbox that technically locks this software into an area where it's not going to mess
00:36:54
◼
►
up your whole system.
00:36:55
◼
►
So we can't guarantee you that the app is going to be good, but we can guarantee you
00:36:58
◼
►
that it's not going to – you're not going to screw up your computer in any way
00:37:02
◼
►
by installing anything from the App Store.
00:37:04
◼
►
Whereas in the '90s, with the late era of System 7 and System 8, you really had to almost
00:37:10
◼
►
be an expert when you installed anything to make sure that it wasn't going to hose your
00:37:15
◼
►
system, which was exactly the opposite of the System 7 and 8 days, where you really
00:37:19
◼
►
had to do a before and after on your extensions folder to make sure that nothing sketchy had
00:37:24
◼
►
been stuck in there.
00:37:26
◼
►
Tim Cynova And you allocated memory manually.
00:37:28
◼
►
Remember that?
00:37:30
◼
►
Dave Asprey That seems so ridiculous.
00:37:33
◼
►
Tim Cynova It does.
00:37:34
◼
►
completely ridiculous.
00:37:37
◼
►
You the human being decided how much RAM to give Photoshop.
00:37:42
◼
►
RAM doubler.
00:37:44
◼
►
Anyway, we should stop talking about that because it sounds like old man.
00:37:47
◼
►
You know what though?
00:37:48
◼
►
I do feel though that it does show though that Apple – yeah, Apple was not in great
00:37:52
◼
►
shape in 1996.
00:37:54
◼
►
That's the point.
00:37:56
◼
►
And it's not true.
00:37:57
◼
►
In many, many ways.
00:37:58
◼
►
But do you want to talk about the stock, the whole stock thing?
00:38:02
◼
►
Before we get into the stock thing, let's take a break,
00:38:04
◼
►
and I will do, I'm gonna do a sponsor break.
00:38:10
◼
►
- I wanna tell you about a great new app for the iPad.
00:38:14
◼
►
It's called Infinite Refrigerator.
00:38:16
◼
►
Infinite Refrigerator.
00:38:18
◼
►
Net name's gonna make total sense to you
00:38:20
◼
►
as soon as I tell you what it does.
00:38:21
◼
►
Infinite Refrigerator provides you with one or more
00:38:26
◼
►
personalized virtual refrigerators,
00:38:29
◼
►
and the idea is that you make one for each of your kids,
00:38:32
◼
►
and you use it to display digital photos,
00:38:36
◼
►
pictures of artwork, report cards, notes,
00:38:40
◼
►
anything that you might put up
00:38:42
◼
►
on your real-life refrigerator in your kitchen,
00:38:44
◼
►
you can put up instead on your virtual refrigerator,
00:38:47
◼
►
an infinite refrigerator.
00:38:49
◼
►
Why would you do this?
00:38:51
◼
►
It eliminates the guilt that sort of
00:38:53
◼
►
is the implicit guilt.
00:38:54
◼
►
When you put stuff up on a real refrigerator
00:38:57
◼
►
and then time goes on and you get more pictures
00:38:59
◼
►
and you've gotta take the old stuff down
00:39:01
◼
►
to put the new stuff up.
00:39:04
◼
►
If you do an Infinite Refrigerator instead,
00:39:06
◼
►
you never have to take stuff down.
00:39:07
◼
►
You can just keep piling it in because it's a computer.
00:39:10
◼
►
It can store it all.
00:39:11
◼
►
And it gives you a permanent digital home
00:39:15
◼
►
for these type of mementos.
00:39:17
◼
►
Photos that you store on an Infinite Refrigerator
00:39:20
◼
►
support full screen pan and zoom,
00:39:21
◼
►
just like the built-in Photos app.
00:39:23
◼
►
You can pick them from your camera roll,
00:39:25
◼
►
or you can take a new picture using the app.
00:39:30
◼
►
Put them up, it looks like a thumbnail on this little virtual fridge, there's a little
00:39:34
◼
►
Tap the photo, zooms to full screen, pan and zoom, everything you want.
00:39:38
◼
►
Tap again to close and you're back to the refrigerator view.
00:39:43
◼
►
You can supply a title and a note for each photo.
00:39:45
◼
►
You can even record audio commentary or have your kid record audio commentary describing
00:39:50
◼
►
the photo or the picture or the image or whatever it is in their own voice.
00:39:55
◼
►
Unlike the real refrigerator in your kitchen, an infinite refrigerator never forgets, right?
00:40:00
◼
►
And hanging next to each Infinite Refrigerator is a calendar.
00:40:03
◼
►
I'll write there on screen.
00:40:04
◼
►
Tap the calendar and you can go back in time and see what the refrigerator looked like
00:40:10
◼
►
This is the type of app where it's kind of fun to use to keep, you know, to start using,
00:40:13
◼
►
but you're really not – and you can just imagine this.
00:40:16
◼
►
The benefits really aren't going to come until you've been using it for months or a year
00:40:20
◼
►
or even a couple of years and you have a whole bunch of mementos stored in this thing.
00:40:24
◼
►
And then you can use the calendar view to go back and see what it looked like six months
00:40:28
◼
►
or a year ago and just sort of page through time like that.
00:40:32
◼
►
Fridges, the whole fridge, the whole collage type layout
00:40:35
◼
►
that you make or any individual photo can be shared
00:40:39
◼
►
through the app via email, iMessage, Twitter, Facebook,
00:40:43
◼
►
all the standard iOS sharing stuff.
00:40:46
◼
►
So how much does it cost?
00:40:47
◼
►
Here's the deal.
00:40:49
◼
►
It's an iPad app built for iOS 6.
00:40:52
◼
►
Download the app from the App Store, absolutely free,
00:40:55
◼
►
free download.
00:40:56
◼
►
But here's the hitch.
00:40:57
◼
►
You only get one fridge to start with.
00:40:59
◼
►
It's Glacier Blue.
00:41:00
◼
►
Now you can make more than one of them,
00:41:01
◼
►
but if you want to use the other colors,
00:41:03
◼
►
they've got five other styles and colors of fridges,
00:41:06
◼
►
it's an in-app purchase, $1.99.
00:41:10
◼
►
So it's a free app.
00:41:11
◼
►
Download it, there's no limits to it,
00:41:13
◼
►
but you're using the Blue Fridge.
00:41:14
◼
►
You wanna use other colors, two bucks.
00:41:17
◼
►
Two bucks to unlock the whole app.
00:41:19
◼
►
Super cheap.
00:41:20
◼
►
What a great deal.
00:41:21
◼
►
Their website, go to infiniterefrigerator.com.
00:41:26
◼
►
Refrigerator.com that's infinite refrigerator.com you'll find that all the information you need you'll get see how cool it looks
00:41:32
◼
►
really cool built for kids
00:41:35
◼
►
Last thing I noticed there's in the little virtual kitchen you get there's a little virtual kitchen surrounding your fridge
00:41:42
◼
►
They even have a toaster and you can write messages on a piece of toast and keep that in there
00:41:47
◼
►
So I feel like there's something in here
00:41:49
◼
►
You could tie this together with that Tim Cook line last year about
00:41:55
◼
►
Combining a toaster in a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user
00:41:59
◼
►
Well, here's an app that combines a refrigerator and a toaster and it's actually pretty cool. So maybe maybe Tim Cook was wrong on that
00:42:06
◼
►
Once again, my thanks to infinite refrigerator go check them out at infinite refrigerator calm
00:42:12
◼
►
So the stock yes, all right, what do you want it? What do you want to say about this stock?
00:42:19
◼
►
I try not to write about the stock, but I feel like what's happened recently is so extraordinary that it's so absurd
00:42:25
◼
►
that you can't not talk about it. Right. And I tried to spend at least a little bit of time trying
00:42:32
◼
►
to understand the situation with the options, with the call options on this. Why, because you had
00:42:42
◼
►
posted a link to something from November explaining why there is a large block of options out there,
00:42:53
◼
►
so that with prices in the range of like 550 to 800 or something like that. So it is in
00:43:02
◼
►
the best interest of these money managers who have those options out there to try to
00:43:08
◼
►
keep Apple's price down until they expire.
00:43:11
◼
►
I don't know what – I don't know enough about the stock market to know what like an
00:43:16
◼
►
option like that costs for. But let's – the gist of it though is that back in the summer
00:43:20
◼
►
when the stock was flying really high, like up around $700, and spent most of the summer
00:43:26
◼
►
in the 600s.
00:43:29
◼
►
People who bought these options, options come with, have an expiration date, and it seems
00:43:36
◼
►
like a lot of them expire this week.
00:43:40
◼
►
At price points, let's say, like you said, $550 to $650 or something like that.
00:43:43
◼
►
People who thought the stock would still be like that.
00:43:45
◼
►
So you'd buy the option for, let's say, I don't know, I don't know, I'm throwing this
00:43:51
◼
►
out there, 10 bucks, I don't know.
00:43:53
◼
►
Maybe it's higher, it's got to be higher, maybe it's higher.
00:43:55
◼
►
But you buy the option for $10.
00:43:56
◼
►
You don't own the stock, you're not buying the stock, you're just buying the right to
00:43:59
◼
►
buy the stock at a certain price at a certain date.
00:44:04
◼
►
And you're betting that come January 19th, Apple stock will still be up at like $700
00:44:10
◼
►
And your option to buy the stock at $550 means you can buy a whole bunch of shares of Apple
00:44:15
◼
►
at 550 come January and it's already worth $700 because that's what the stock is at.
00:44:22
◼
►
And then you make money – you made money by betting that the stock would be higher
00:44:26
◼
►
on that date than the option price.
00:44:29
◼
►
And on the converse side, the person who sells these options is making sort of the opposite
00:44:37
◼
►
if come the date that the options expire, the stock is under that striking price for
00:44:43
◼
►
the option, they win because they keep the money that you paid for, that 10 bucks per
00:44:49
◼
►
share that you paid for the option to buy it, and they still own a share that they had
00:44:54
◼
►
to buy to cover these options if the person had actually bought them. But because it's
00:44:58
◼
►
under the price, they don't have to sell it.
00:45:00
◼
►
Is that – did that sound right?
00:45:02
◼
►
That sounds right to me, yes.
00:45:04
◼
►
Right so that there's all these institutional investors who and and the guy you know and I guess these options you can you can like
00:45:11
◼
►
Look up what the options are I mean it wasn't like he was making stuff up like like we do
00:45:15
◼
►
He was actually found on you know all these out
00:45:18
◼
►
You know he was tallying all the options that are out there just at five hundred and fifty dollars
00:45:22
◼
►
And it was like I don't know six hundred million dollars worth of them
00:45:25
◼
►
And that wasn't counting the ones at higher prices, and so it's easy to say that there's
00:45:31
◼
►
well over a billion dollars at stake if Apple's stock is like at 500 or lower in the next
00:45:40
◼
►
Which in turn leads to, you know, the people who have those options, certainly motivates
00:45:44
◼
►
them to sort of poo-poo, badmouth the stock and make, you know, these arguments like we've
00:45:50
◼
►
been talking about earlier in the show about why Apple's in trouble and that they're not
00:45:53
◼
►
doing too well and the stock is down.
00:45:55
◼
►
And we should say that the bulk of this recent decline in Apple's, I don't even know what
00:46:03
◼
►
it's at now actually, but the sort of the doldrums that they're in right now is because
00:46:08
◼
►
a couple of publications came out and said that iPhone 5 demand was soft based on the
00:46:13
◼
►
fact that they had heard from some people, nameless people, that Apple had cut orders
00:46:21
◼
►
for iPhone 5 screens in half without really getting into what exactly that means.
00:46:30
◼
►
Right. I mean, here's the Wall Street Journal version of it. There were two publications
00:46:36
◼
►
that had this, I guess, Sunday night to Monday morning. It ran on the front page, I think,
00:46:41
◼
►
of the Journal on Monday. It was Nikkei, N-I-K-K-E-I. It's a Japanese newspaper. I don't know if
00:46:48
◼
►
It's like the Japanese equivalent of the Wall Street Journal or what.
00:46:51
◼
►
But it's Japanese and so what I know about it is all secondhand.
00:46:55
◼
►
It's people I guess can read Japanese and translating it.
00:47:00
◼
►
And the journal, which seemingly had the exact same information.
00:47:03
◼
►
Here's how the journal story started.
00:47:07
◼
►
And the headline was "Apple Cuts Orders for iPhone Parts."
00:47:12
◼
►
Apple Incorporated has cut its orders for components for the iPhone 5 due to weaker
00:47:17
◼
►
than expected demand. People familiar with the situation," said Munday. So there's
00:47:22
◼
►
like no if, ands, or buts in that sentence, right? I mean, they're not saying who the
00:47:26
◼
►
people familiar with the situation are, and they never go on to really clarify. But that's—if
00:47:31
◼
►
you take that at face value, if you read the Wall Street Journal and think that, well,
00:47:34
◼
►
it's the Wall Street Journal, so if, you know, if you read it, it must be true. There's
00:47:37
◼
►
no hemming or hawing or—well, you know, there's two things in there. One, that the
00:47:43
◼
►
components were cut by half or no it didn't say that in the first paragraph
00:47:48
◼
►
but it does say in the next paragraph it says Apple's orders for iPhone screens
00:47:52
◼
►
for the January March quarter for example have dropped to roughly half of
00:47:56
◼
►
what the company had previously planned to order two of the people said so half
00:48:00
◼
►
is a huge number that's huge it doesn't even matter what you know what what it
00:48:04
◼
►
was from or two and they don't hammer ha or say maybe it's or that it's a sign of
00:48:10
◼
►
of weaker than expected demand for the iPhone 5.
00:48:13
◼
►
They say that, the journal says,
00:48:14
◼
►
it's due to weaker than expected demand.
00:48:16
◼
►
And the stock took a bath on that over the next two days.
00:48:23
◼
►
I mean, it really, I think it dropped by,
00:48:25
◼
►
I forget, market cap-wise, it dropped by $170 million,
00:48:30
◼
►
billion dollars, which is bigger than all but
00:48:32
◼
►
maybe the 10 biggest corporations in the world.
00:48:36
◼
►
They dropped in value by more than the size
00:48:38
◼
►
of most big companies.
00:48:39
◼
►
And originally they...
00:48:42
◼
►
And I wrote a lot about it this week. I think the whole thing is a pile of horse shit.
00:48:47
◼
►
I really do. And the Nikai one from Japan gave actual numbers.
00:48:54
◼
►
It said that they said that the original order was for 65 million displays.
00:49:00
◼
►
But apparently the journal had that in there originally and then removed it.
00:49:04
◼
►
and then removed it.
00:49:05
◼
►
And took it out. Like Sunday night online, they had that in there. And I don't think
00:49:10
◼
►
it appeared in print, and by the time I read the story Monday morning, it wasn't in there,
00:49:15
◼
►
that they had the same thing. But they didn't replace it with another number, which to me
00:49:19
◼
►
is a huge problem. When you say it's dropped by half, but you don't say what—you don't
00:49:25
◼
►
even give a ballpark range for what the original numbers were, there's no way to ever verify
00:49:29
◼
►
that, right? Because then come next quarter, Apple will release and say how many iPhones
00:49:33
◼
►
they sold and we can take a pretty good guess that what percentage of them were iPhone fives based on the average selling price
00:49:42
◼
►
Whatever that number is
00:49:44
◼
►
You could say well the journal was right because Apple expected to sell double that no matter what it is because they didn't give the number
00:49:51
◼
►
It's like when Amazon says that they've sold the most kindles ever in a quarter
00:49:54
◼
►
But they never tells you how many they sold so who knows you know maybe they went from 10 to 11
00:50:00
◼
►
Right or that the you know I forget Amazon always does that they never reveal how many kindles they've sold, but they'll say things like
00:50:06
◼
►
You know it was 150 percent higher than the previous record for Kindle sold in the quarter. Yeah, but it's you know 150 percent of
00:50:14
◼
►
Question mark and if they could guess if the number it just none of it
00:50:18
◼
►
Just none of it makes any sense because it seems unlikely that they would order 65 million screens for the current quarter
00:50:25
◼
►
Right it really makes no sense and nobody seemed to question this or well
00:50:29
◼
►
I did but it seemed like most people people who should know better never questioned it that it's such an unusual number because there's
00:50:35
◼
►
the most they've ever sold in a quarter is 37 million its iPhones in a quarter and that was last year's holiday quarter and
00:50:42
◼
►
This year. There's the consensus among analysts both the Wall Street ones and the independent analysts like Andy Zaki
00:50:51
◼
►
Who's you know have a much more accurate track record is?
00:50:54
◼
►
is about 50 million. So they'd go from 37 million last year to 50 million this year,
00:50:59
◼
►
year over year for the holiday quarter. And nobody is really picking a number much higher
00:51:05
◼
►
than 50. And the next quarter after the holiday quarter, they've always sold less than the
00:51:11
◼
►
holiday quarter because there's so many people who buy them as holiday gifts. And now, the
00:51:16
◼
►
last two years, the holiday quarter is when the new iPhone came out. So you get the double
00:51:21
◼
►
whammy of both the people who are like, like us, who are like, "I want the new iPhone
00:51:25
◼
►
as soon as it comes out and order it in that quarter and you get the holiday gift bump."
00:51:31
◼
►
Like, so last year they went from 37 million in the holiday quarter to 35 million in this
00:51:36
◼
►
January to March quarter, which is like, I think, roughly 5% drop. In all previous years,
00:51:42
◼
►
there's some level of drop from holiday to the next quarter. But yet, if you take the
00:51:46
◼
►
65 million number at face value, then somehow Apple expected 30 percent growth in the January/March
00:51:54
◼
►
quarter after the holiday quarter, even though there's no historical reason for it and they're
00:51:59
◼
►
not introducing a new model or anything like that. It just doesn't make any sense. Like,
00:52:05
◼
►
if they actually wanted to order that many displays, it seems like somebody was drunk.
00:52:11
◼
►
Although I guess the other argument I've seen, which I hadn't thought of, the other argument
00:52:16
◼
►
I've seen, I think Horace is dead you, you know, typical of the smart, bad bastard, but
00:52:21
◼
►
somebody pointed out that it could just be that they're getting higher than expected
00:52:24
◼
►
yields, that maybe they, you know, had expected that only four out of every five displays
00:52:31
◼
►
they ordered would be up to their snuff, and that they're finding that, you know, 95 percent
00:52:36
◼
►
of them are passing their requirements, so that they, maybe they originally planned to
00:52:40
◼
►
order 65 million not because they expected to buy…sell 65 million iPhones, but that
00:52:45
◼
►
they needed 65 million to sell 45 million because they expected 20 million of them to
00:52:50
◼
►
be duds or something like that.
00:52:51
◼
►
So there's other arguments you can make, but it's still the 65 million thing just
00:52:55
◼
►
does not…it doesn't make any sense.
00:52:59
◼
►
And it doesn't make any sense that they would need to cut it in half due to…this
00:53:03
◼
►
is the bigger part, I think, regardless of the actual number.
00:53:06
◼
►
The bigger part is whether such a cutoff would be due to weaker than expected demand, because
00:53:12
◼
►
there seems to be no sign that there's weaker than expected demand.
00:53:14
◼
►
I am almost across the border saying that they expect 50 million iPhones sold this quarter
00:53:20
◼
►
– the quarter that they're going to announce next week – versus 37 million last year,
00:53:24
◼
►
which is higher, not lower.
00:53:26
◼
►
And they only caught up with demand about a month ago.
00:53:29
◼
►
They spent most of that holiday quarter with – you know, when you go to the website with
00:53:33
◼
►
with, you know, like seven to ten day lead times when you ordered one. They spent most,
00:53:39
◼
►
you know, up until I think December, they, you know, they hadn't, production hadn't
00:53:42
◼
►
caught up with demand. They'd clearly been making them as fast as they could.
00:53:46
◼
►
Tim Cynova It's ridiculous. I mean, and then of course
00:53:49
◼
►
the usual collection of ne'er-do-wells have been saying, "See, we told you that iPhones,
00:53:57
◼
►
nobody likes iPhones anymore."
00:53:59
◼
►
Right. And the other thing I got inundated with is accusations of, you know, I swear
00:54:04
◼
►
to God, one guy called me Baghdad Bob. You know, it's like, I don't know, I can't
00:54:14
◼
►
win. I mean, there's no use worrying about it. I mean, but this is why I drink. But this
00:54:20
◼
►
is no way, you know, they're so convinced that it doesn't matter how many holes you,
00:54:26
◼
►
solid holes you can poke and say, "Boy, this just doesn't add up," and point to
00:54:31
◼
►
interesting ways of looking at why it doesn't add up. It's the fact that
00:54:35
◼
►
there's so many people, and it gets back to, you know, what we were talking about
00:54:38
◼
►
at the beginning of the show, who are so convinced that Apple is set to fall and
00:54:42
◼
►
that the iPhone is collapsing, that they just took that journal story and
00:54:50
◼
►
that's it. It's the gospel, right? And so anybody who's arguing otherwise is just
00:54:54
◼
►
grasping at straws because they're beloved apple.
00:54:57
◼
►
Yeah, because it's a religion.
00:54:58
◼
►
Because it's a religion.
00:55:02
◼
►
So next week, there's a couple of things to look for.
00:55:06
◼
►
Look to see what happens with Apple's share price because of these options and then look
00:55:11
◼
►
to see at the conference call, part of the conference call, how many iPhones they sold,
00:55:18
◼
►
which you should do every quarter.
00:55:21
◼
►
I do wish that they would break it out.
00:55:22
◼
►
guess, you know, I mean we should, we're lucky because Apple reveals a lot more
00:55:26
◼
►
sales data than a lot of its competitors. I mean, like I said, Amazon has never
00:55:29
◼
►
revealed how many Kindles they've sold of any kind. Google never reveals how
00:55:37
◼
►
many Android phones are sold. They just have that weird activation number that
00:55:40
◼
►
they never define what the hell it means. And, you know, they certainly don't
00:55:46
◼
►
reveal numbers of their own Nexus stuff, which they would know more than just
00:55:50
◼
►
activation. They should know exact sales numbers. Nobody really reveals any of that.
00:55:54
◼
►
So I guess you wish I mean I'm greedy though I wish that Apple would break it
00:55:57
◼
►
down and say we sold this many iPhone 5's this many 4's and this many 4S's.
00:56:01
◼
►
Yeah I guess so apparently I guess it's not it's not required for audit purposes
00:56:07
◼
►
to do that. No but they you can kind of backwards engineer it though by at least
00:56:12
◼
►
getting a ballpark estimate by looking at the average selling price and right
00:56:17
◼
►
through analytics. But it's kind of weird that app developers and websites, mobile websites,
00:56:22
◼
►
looking at their statistics can kind of suss out how many. Although I'm not sure if a website
00:56:27
◼
►
can tell if your iPhone's an iPhone 5. I think it would just know the version number. I guess
00:56:32
◼
►
it's only the app developers that get the analytics that they can kind of tell, you
00:56:36
◼
►
know, what the CPU is. You can tell by screen size, right? Couldn't you do the – doesn't
00:56:43
◼
►
to tell the screen size? Oh, it does. I don't know. In that instance, you can tell. I guess
00:56:49
◼
►
what I'm saying is I don't know how to – I guess since the iPhone – it does report
00:56:55
◼
►
the screen size, you can tell because the only iPhone with the 1136 pixel height is
00:57:00
◼
►
the iPhone 5. But it's weird that Apple reports more than
00:57:03
◼
►
other – I mean, Apple, which is famously – Secretive. It reports more about what
00:57:10
◼
►
sell than other companies do.
00:57:12
◼
►
Yeah, and you know, part of it is that they're not really secretive about everything. They're
00:57:16
◼
►
really mostly secretive about what they're going to do.
00:57:19
◼
►
And they're not so secretive about what they have done.
00:57:22
◼
►
What they've done.
00:57:24
◼
►
You know, and I feel, you know, I've always said this too, that, you know, and it still
00:57:27
◼
►
continues even now that Jobs is gone. But Jobs' explanations on stage talking about
00:57:32
◼
►
products really, I have always thought they were incredibly insightful and honest about
00:57:38
◼
►
about where Apple was coming from when they made the thing.
00:57:41
◼
►
You know, that it was like an honest explanation
00:57:44
◼
►
of here's what we were thinking we could do
00:57:46
◼
►
and here's how we did it.
00:57:47
◼
►
I went back and watched the iMac unveiling,
00:57:54
◼
►
which I don't think I'd actually seen that before.
00:57:57
◼
►
- I don't think I have either.
00:57:59
◼
►
Wasn't he wearing like a weird suit?
00:58:00
◼
►
- Yeah, he was wearing a, well, he was wearing a jacket.
00:58:04
◼
►
It was like a suit with a button-up shirt,
00:58:07
◼
►
button up to the top without its eye.
00:58:10
◼
►
It was weird. It's like, I guess, it's sort of like if you ever thought, like,
00:58:14
◼
►
you know, in a heyday in that decade-long run, if you ever, like, crossed your mind,
00:58:18
◼
►
like, "Why does he wear the same stuff every day?" And then you look at some of the
00:58:22
◼
►
stuff he wore before he settled on that, and you're like, "Maybe he was right to
00:58:25
◼
►
settle on the black shirt and jeans," and that's it.
00:58:30
◼
►
He had some goofy outfits in those first couple years.
00:58:34
◼
►
He swore us like a sweater vest for a long time.
00:58:41
◼
►
Do you have a link to that YouTube?
00:58:42
◼
►
Is it on YouTube?
00:58:44
◼
►
It is on YouTube.
00:58:45
◼
►
I can find it for you.
00:58:47
◼
►
You should send me that.
00:58:48
◼
►
We'll put that in the show notes.
00:58:50
◼
►
But it's interesting.
00:58:51
◼
►
I thought it was just funny how he touts the mouse as like the best mouse ever made.
00:58:56
◼
►
You know, you can get people fired up about that.
00:58:57
◼
►
You know that my wife is an enormous fan of the hockey puck.
00:59:01
◼
►
Are you kidding me?
00:59:03
◼
►
I forget. She tweeted about it a couple months ago, and a couple of other of our nerd friends,
00:59:08
◼
►
a couple of them chimed in and said, "You know, I liked it too." It was not universally despised.
00:59:13
◼
►
Although I think it was majority despised.
00:59:16
◼
►
Tim Cynova Yeah. I had a little like, they just, they sold like these clip-on things,
00:59:22
◼
►
these plastic, like a clip-on tie, with basically a piece of plastic you clipped on it to make it a
00:59:28
◼
►
more like a normal mouse.
00:59:30
◼
►
Yeah, I never had a computer that came with one of the round mice, so I never really spent a lot of
00:59:36
◼
►
time with it. I mean, it's... But I guess the argument, the main argument about it was that
00:59:42
◼
►
because it was perfectly round, there was no way to tell which way it would... When you just held it
00:59:47
◼
►
without looking at it, you couldn't be certain what the orientation was. Yeah. Yeah. Not a fan.
00:59:54
◼
►
a lot of people thought it was uncomfortable too.
00:59:56
◼
►
It was wide, which I liked because it just, that felt good, but I couldn't tell which way it was
01:00:04
◼
►
going. Let me do the second sponsor break and then we can wrap up and finish the show. And our second
01:00:11
◼
►
sponsor, long-term, big fans of the talk show. If you listen, you know that they're a regular
01:00:16
◼
►
sponsor. I'm a big fan of their product. It's Tonks Coffee. You drink coffee, John?
01:00:24
◼
►
I do drink coffee. I'm drinking some coffee. Have you tried the Tonks? I have not yet, but it's on my
01:00:28
◼
►
list of things to do. See, but this is, see, this is why they're coming back to sponsor the show
01:00:32
◼
►
again, as I know to get me that there are a lot of people out there just like you who are coffee
01:00:37
◼
►
drinkers, talk show listeners, and you listen to it, and you hear me say these good things about
01:00:41
◼
►
Tonks, and you think, "You know what? I'm gonna get around to that. I'm gonna sign up for that."
01:00:45
◼
►
But you haven't done it yet. Well, I'm telling you that you should. Get off your asses, go to Tonks.org,
01:00:50
◼
►
and sign up and try it. And you're going to thank me later, and you're going to—look,
01:00:54
◼
►
here's some of the tweets I still get. I save these tweets. Here's a tweet from Tara Mann,
01:00:59
◼
►
M-A-N-N. "Alright, trying out Tonks coffee. Your sponsorship of Gruber's talk show worked. I'm
01:01:05
◼
►
excited." Well, I guarantee you she's going to be happy that she did it. Here's another one.
01:01:10
◼
►
Matthew Rather, long time listener of the talk show, he's already tweeted, "I thought
01:01:17
◼
►
the coffee from the big box membership store was okay. Then I tried Tonks coffee. Can't
01:01:23
◼
►
drink that shit anymore." That's how good Tonks is. And I'm telling you, that's the
01:01:28
◼
►
biggest downside to Tonks is you sign up for Tonks. Before you've signed up, they've gone
01:01:35
◼
►
around the world sourced the best beans from all around the globe they've
01:01:39
◼
►
roasted them themselves just right as soon as they roast them they seal them
01:01:44
◼
►
up and then they send them out to the membership they send them out fresh
01:01:47
◼
►
roasted coffee sealed tight shows up at your door the only downside to this it's
01:01:52
◼
►
the best coffee in the world roasted to perfection fresh sent to your door the
01:01:57
◼
►
downside is you'd get harder and harder to drink stuff that not talks coffee
01:02:01
◼
►
because everything else starts tasting like like crap. I can't say enough good
01:02:07
◼
►
things about them. I keep getting these tweets and emails from people who are
01:02:11
◼
►
like, "You know what? I listened to it. I tried it. You were right. It's great."
01:02:14
◼
►
Don't think about it as something you're gonna do eventually. Do it now.
01:02:18
◼
►
You're gonna thank me for it. You can go there. And the best part is, this is a
01:02:21
◼
►
great deal. This is, to me, is the genius of their business model, is this free
01:02:24
◼
►
trial. Because nobody wants to sign up for a subscription sight unseen, no
01:02:30
◼
►
No matter how many good things I say about them, I feel like a lot of people, nobody
01:02:34
◼
►
wants to say I'm going to spend however much money a month.
01:02:38
◼
►
And then if I don't like it, if I'm not satisfied, I got to back out.
01:02:40
◼
►
You don't have to take my word for it.
01:02:43
◼
►
They'll just send you some and you're going to try it and then you're going to think,
01:02:45
◼
►
"Well, I was nuts.
01:02:46
◼
►
I should have just listened to them and paid for it and signed up."
01:02:49
◼
►
So go ahead, tonx.org, T-O-N-X dot org.
01:02:53
◼
►
Go check them out if you drink coffee.
01:02:55
◼
►
You're going to thank me later.
01:02:59
◼
►
else? What do we got left on the agenda? Here's a question. And again, this is one of the
01:03:06
◼
►
reasons why I sometimes feel out of place talking about the stock. I'm not really a
01:03:10
◼
►
stock expert and my Apple's stock price is not really the reason that I follow them.
01:03:17
◼
►
I don't own Apple stock because I don't feel like it would be appropriate with what I do.
01:03:26
◼
►
I do feel though that it's it is like it when it really fluctuates like it has recently
01:03:32
◼
►
It's a level of absurdity that even somebody like me is not an expert can can see that this just is irrational
01:03:39
◼
►
You know that it's not built on based on what what investors call the fundamentals meaning the numbers, right?
01:03:45
◼
►
There's there's so many
01:03:49
◼
►
It's like 12 dimensional chip. It's like trying to understand 12 dimensional chess, right?
01:03:53
◼
►
There's so many other things that go into it, and so many things that are just straight
01:03:58
◼
►
out gambling that have nothing to do with the company at all, like these option calls,
01:04:06
◼
►
that it seems like they're just better off not worrying about it.
01:04:13
◼
►
So there's a measurement of a company stock price called the P/E ratio, price to earnings.
01:04:19
◼
►
And again, correct me if I'm wrong, but the basic idea is you take the company's profits
01:04:26
◼
►
and you multiply it by a certain – or you take the company's stock price and you divide
01:04:31
◼
►
it by what their profits are, and that's the P/E ratio.
01:04:34
◼
►
In other words, the price of the stock versus how much profit they're making, I guess,
01:04:41
◼
►
And like the average for the S&P 500 is 15.
01:04:45
◼
►
In other words, the average stock price of a big company is about 15 times the profit
01:04:50
◼
►
of that company. And you know, some companies are higher, some companies are lower. But
01:04:54
◼
►
you know, 15 to me seems like a reasonable…somehow it makes sense to me. That seems about right.
01:05:02
◼
►
What, 15 is, you know, four years quarterly? You know, so a company is worth about four
01:05:10
◼
►
years times its profits? I don't know. Sounds about right. Apple's is at like 10. And if
01:05:16
◼
►
you subtract the hundred billion dollars in cash that they have in the bank, which seems
01:05:20
◼
►
fair because if you're just going to say, here's what the company's worth, which is
01:05:24
◼
►
what the stock price is supposed to represent, well, the cash you should be able to just
01:05:28
◼
►
subtract from that. If you subtract that that massive amount of cash, it's nine. So their
01:05:34
◼
►
their PE ratio is way less than the average company. Yet they've been in the midst of
01:05:40
◼
►
this incredible growth over the last couple of years. And the number that gets me is Amazon's.
01:05:46
◼
►
Amazon's P/E ratio, and I'm not making this up, it's like 2,600. It's not an exaggeration.
01:05:55
◼
►
Amazon lives in like this—I linked to a Matt Iglesias article a while ago that Amazon
01:06:00
◼
►
lives in this world where investors do not care about their profits, that their stock
01:06:05
◼
►
The stock price is not, bears no relation to their profitability whatsoever.
01:06:09
◼
►
They're the market share poster child.
01:06:11
◼
►
Right. And Apple, I think, is almost the opposite.
01:06:14
◼
►
Right. I was just going to say, they're two ends of the spectrum.
01:06:17
◼
►
Even though they have profits. Massive profits.
01:06:20
◼
►
I just, I don't get that. It seems like it's still the same old dot-com bubble mentality where,
01:06:28
◼
►
"Oh, yeah, they're not making any money, but eventually, eventually they'll make money."
01:06:34
◼
►
I mean, Amazon's been doing this for 15 years.
01:06:38
◼
►
Yeah, I feel like with Amazon, Amazon's interesting.
01:06:41
◼
►
And I have to admit, I don't get that strategy.
01:06:44
◼
►
Like to me, it's just, it's not just because it's Apple, but I, there's something, you
01:06:49
◼
►
know, I think it's part of what just appeals to me about the whole thing is that I understand
01:06:53
◼
►
what Apple's doing is making money every time they sell something and then just putting
01:06:59
◼
►
that money away and not squandering it.
01:07:00
◼
►
Now, I understand that.
01:07:01
◼
►
That's not how I behave in real life.
01:07:03
◼
►
I make money and then I squander every dollar of it. But I wish that I had the discipline
01:07:08
◼
►
to build up a huge, you know, $100 billion cash hoard.
01:07:13
◼
►
And before the show, when I was making notes, I wrote down the 100—I wanted to talk about
01:07:17
◼
►
this—and I wrote down 100 billion cash. And I thought, "That can't be right. No,
01:07:21
◼
►
it's 10 billion, right? It can't be 100." But it is. It's 100—they have $100 billion
01:07:25
◼
►
in cash that they're just sitting on. But when I wrote it down, it seemed like a preposterous
01:07:32
◼
►
It does seem preposterous. It seems crazy.
01:07:36
◼
►
Right. But it doesn't seem to have any kind of value in that it doesn't become valuable in the
01:07:43
◼
►
stock. And you know, I guess you could argue maybe reasonably that the run-up that Apple had
01:07:50
◼
►
last year over the summer when the stock price reached its peak, maybe that was a little
01:07:55
◼
►
irrational too, just as irrational as the dive that it's taken in the last three months. But,
01:08:02
◼
►
even at its peak, their PE ratio was still like, never got more than like 12 or 13. It still never
01:08:10
◼
►
reached the average PE ratio of a company in the S&P 500. That you could make a reasonable case
01:08:16
◼
►
that only looking for a PE value of the average company in the S&P 500, that Apple stock should,
01:08:22
◼
►
you know, should be up at around, I don't know, 800 or 850 or something like that.
01:08:25
◼
►
I had a screen capture that I had for a little while, and I finally eventually just deleted
01:08:31
◼
►
because I didn't know where to post it. But it was our local paper, I followed their Twitter
01:08:37
◼
►
account. And I think they're just, they're pulling wire stories for this stuff because they don't,
01:08:41
◼
►
they don't follow this directly themselves. But it was back in October, I think when Apple,
01:08:49
◼
►
both Apple and Amazon were reporting their quarterly numbers. Apple had a good quarter,
01:08:57
◼
►
missed the analyst estimates of course again. But Amazon reported a loss, if I remember
01:09:08
◼
►
Yeah, I think the last quarter Amazon reported a pretty big loss, like $247 million.
01:09:11
◼
►
Yeah. Both of the tweets which came within 15 minutes of each other or something like
01:09:18
◼
►
that said about each of them, "Apple misses analyst's estimates.
01:09:26
◼
►
Amazon misses analyst's estimates," as if the two both had equally bad quarters.
01:09:33
◼
►
When Amazon reported a big loss and Apple made a whole crap ton of money.
01:09:39
◼
►
Darrell Bock Yeah, and you've written about this pretty
01:09:42
◼
►
well about when Apple does miss the analyst projections that it is so… the way it gets
01:09:51
◼
►
played in the stories is so misleading. It is… and again, I'm not trying to be a
01:09:57
◼
►
reflexive "defend Apple at all costs and paint no matter what the news is" is good
01:10:02
◼
►
for Apple, but it emphasizes "miss, miss, miss, miss, miss" and doesn't mention
01:10:09
◼
►
that it was the miss involved $8.2 billion in profit.
01:10:14
◼
►
And it's sort of – I mean I think the idea, if you want to take their point of view,
01:10:18
◼
►
is that it's an industry shorthand for if you have money in Apple, you might have just
01:10:26
◼
►
overestimated because if you were betting on what the analyst said, then they weren't
01:10:33
◼
►
quite right.
01:10:34
◼
►
But for the average person, they don't understand that.
01:10:39
◼
►
They just think Apple had a bad quarter.
01:10:43
◼
►
And it's entirely – yeah, because they don't put that context in there, right?
01:10:48
◼
►
And it emphasizes only the – it emphasizes only the miss.
01:10:53
◼
►
And the miss is just of numbers that analysts pull out of their hats.
01:10:57
◼
►
I mean, not entirely.
01:10:59
◼
►
You know, I –
01:11:00
◼
►
It's based on something, but it's never –
01:11:02
◼
►
They've got spreadsheets that they're looking at.
01:11:03
◼
►
But they're just making a guess.
01:11:05
◼
►
I guess, hopefully in most cases, an educated guess, but it's still just a guess. And
01:11:10
◼
►
you look at things like, well, year over year, how are they doing? And it's up, up, up,
01:11:14
◼
►
up, up, you know. Even in the quarter with the miss, it was up, up, up. It's just that
01:11:20
◼
►
it just wasn't up as high as a lot of these analysts had guessed. And it's just, you
01:11:25
◼
►
know, and again, I'm not saying that they shouldn't report that, but it just seems
01:11:27
◼
►
like the way that they presented is so heavy-handed. And I think part of it, even if you don't
01:11:33
◼
►
have to be have an apple bias a specific anti-apple bias but I think it's this
01:11:38
◼
►
mindset that we've written so many good things about Apple and their success
01:11:41
◼
►
that we need to emphasize anything that's bad in the name of objectivity
01:11:49
◼
►
you know I think that's you know it gets back to why everybody jumped on this
01:11:53
◼
►
and ten agate story you know so it's such fervor is that well here's
01:11:59
◼
►
something we can say that Apple did that is imperfect and now we're going to
01:12:03
◼
►
to hammer it into the ground.
01:12:06
◼
►
It's very strange to me that they come up with such vastly different numbers.
01:12:14
◼
►
And I'll tell you, here's the point I wanted to make, was that it seems like Apple's
01:12:16
◼
►
getting hurt because for a long time, Apple would offer their own guidance.
01:12:21
◼
►
They still do.
01:12:22
◼
►
I think they're legally obligated to it.
01:12:23
◼
►
At the end, after they report the last quarter, they offer guidance for the coming quarter.
01:12:28
◼
►
Apple notoriously offered
01:12:30
◼
►
Sandbagged guidance, you know in other words, you know
01:12:34
◼
►
They it was not what Apple honestly expected to report
01:12:38
◼
►
It was it was a number that it was a number they were sure they were comfortable
01:12:42
◼
►
We're yeah, it was a number they would pick their
01:12:47
◼
►
Numbers and they'd be a little you know somewhat higher than Apple's project own projections
01:12:52
◼
►
But all of them were short of reality and I think that what's happened over the last year is that you know
01:12:58
◼
►
they've finally caught on that Apple's projections are so low that they've adjusted
01:13:05
◼
►
their own to be even higher to compensate and that they've really more gotten good.
01:13:12
◼
►
It's like even the miss that they reported last quarter wasn't that far off.
01:13:18
◼
►
It was actually so like it's really not so much that Apple missed or came way below.
01:13:23
◼
►
It was that these analysts projections were actually pretty spot on for a while.
01:13:28
◼
►
once instead of coming in way under and having Apple blow them away.
01:13:35
◼
►
Which is another – yeah, it's just another element of the whole thing that makes this
01:13:41
◼
►
also incomprehensible and I throw my hands at that trying to figure this stuff out.
01:13:47
◼
►
It doesn't seem like – you always think, "Well, maybe the people who are really into
01:13:51
◼
►
this stuff, they know all this."
01:13:52
◼
►
But it really – I don't get that sense.
01:13:56
◼
►
And I think the analysts know all this.
01:13:57
◼
►
And I'll bet most of the people out there who listen to the show,
01:14:01
◼
►
I'll bet a lot of them do own some Apple stock.
01:14:03
◼
►
And hopefully the way that they do it is just buy it when somebody--
01:14:07
◼
►
like last week, when somebody prints something stupid
01:14:09
◼
►
and the stock drops down.
01:14:12
◼
►
Buy it then, and then just put it away and don't look at it.
01:14:16
◼
►
And assume that it's gone up and will keep going up in the long run over time.
01:14:20
◼
►
But if I owned Apple stock and looked at the numbers
01:14:25
◼
►
and week to week and jackass by jackass. I would have indigestion. I would be like sick.
01:14:32
◼
►
Mike: So much of it – and the thing is it's – there's that famous phrase that's always
01:14:38
◼
►
in – if you get like a statement from your mutual fund company and it's like past performance is no
01:14:44
◼
►
indication of future performance or something like that. And it gets back to that point about
01:14:49
◼
►
whether or not Apple needs a hit. And whether or not they sold a lot of iPhones this past quarter,
01:14:57
◼
►
I mean, that's done. It's the stuff that they're going to do in the future that's going to get you
01:15:03
◼
►
growth potential out of the stock, provided the market doesn't do something dumbass like
01:15:11
◼
►
like it's been doing the last week.
01:15:14
◼
►
So you kind of have to decide based
01:15:18
◼
►
on the history of the company-- I mean,
01:15:21
◼
►
I guess you base this judgment on the history of the company
01:15:24
◼
►
and the management of the company,
01:15:25
◼
►
whether or not you think that they're
01:15:27
◼
►
going to be able to do something in the future that's
01:15:30
◼
►
going to be a big hit and they're going
01:15:31
◼
►
to get a lot of growth out of.
01:15:32
◼
►
And I don't understand-- you could
01:15:34
◼
►
say that Steve Jobs is the only one that could innovate at Apple
01:15:37
◼
►
and so therefore I don't think the company's going to do.
01:15:41
◼
►
They're just going to make iPhones and iPads
01:15:43
◼
►
and Macs for the rest of forever
01:15:46
◼
►
and they'll never have another breakout product.
01:15:49
◼
►
But I don't, that seems incredibly short-sighted to me.
01:15:53
◼
►
And I don't own the stock, but just for--
01:15:55
◼
►
- The thing, and it's, I just feel like all of them,
01:16:00
◼
►
all of their executives, but Tim Cook in particular,
01:16:03
◼
►
he's the one, you know, he's the one who sits on the throne now. My hat is off to him for
01:16:10
◼
►
just not blowing his stack and going nuts because there's no way he can't win and he surely knows it,
01:16:18
◼
►
right? So he's getting excoriated now because Apple hasn't released a major new innovation
01:16:23
◼
►
disruption since he took over as CEO. And if and when eventually they do, I guarantee 99, 99, 99,
01:16:33
◼
►
times out of a hundred, 99 chance out of a hundred, it's going to be dismissed as, "Wow,
01:16:39
◼
►
that's terrible. This guy's no Steve Jobs." And if Jobs had died two years earlier and
01:16:47
◼
►
the iPad, exactly as it is, exactly as it was in 2010, was introduced under Tim Cook,
01:16:54
◼
►
that whole, "Oh, it's just a big iPhone. Meh, you know, that's it. It's just a nine-inch
01:17:01
◼
►
it would have been ratcheted up to 11 as it's nothing but a big iPhone total turd
01:17:07
◼
►
This guy is no Steve Jobs
01:17:09
◼
►
All he did is take the iPhone and make it 10 inches guys an idiot apples apples doomed and
01:17:15
◼
►
They still would have sold just as many right because real people that tune out to they go and yeah
01:17:21
◼
►
I go in the store for the most part. That's cool. This is cool
01:17:24
◼
►
I'm gonna buy but I think it would have been you know and and you know
01:17:26
◼
►
I I expect that whatever you know Apple's next big thing is it's you know
01:17:30
◼
►
Like, almost all of their things that have been innovations don't look like innovations
01:17:35
◼
►
to the people watching right away, to most people.
01:17:41
◼
►
That's just not how it works.
01:17:46
◼
►
Under Jobs, there was enough faith that they would just say, "Eh, kind of a turkey."
01:17:52
◼
►
But now that he's gone and everybody is looking for this doom situation, this "Apple
01:17:56
◼
►
can't function without Steve Jobs," the exact same thing is just going to be turned
01:17:59
◼
►
up to 11. Yeah. So it'll be interesting to see when they do release something. And I
01:18:06
◼
►
personally don't have any doubt that eventually within the next few years they'll enter some
01:18:14
◼
►
new market. I would think they have to. Yeah. I think it's inevitable. But I just don't
01:18:20
◼
►
know that you – it'll happen when – you can't make it happen now. There was no way
01:18:27
◼
►
to make the iPhone sooner. Yeah, you can argue that, "Wow, it took six years between the
01:18:31
◼
►
original iPod until they did the iPhone. Why couldn't they do that sooner?" But there was
01:18:36
◼
►
no way. I mean, the iPhone was so ahead of its time technologically. I just don't think
01:18:41
◼
►
there was any way to make it before. There weren't chips or touch screen. None of the
01:18:45
◼
►
technology existed.
01:18:46
◼
►
Tim Cynova You could argue that the fact that – I mean,
01:18:49
◼
►
this is – I know people are going to roll their eyes at this, but the fact that they
01:18:52
◼
►
haven't introduced something is just proof that the company is actually still the same
01:18:57
◼
►
because companies that are bad throw crap out the door every day and respond immediately
01:19:06
◼
►
to whatever is going on in the market and try to match what's happening, whereas Apple
01:19:11
◼
►
sits on their stuff and makes sure they get it right before they send it out the door,
01:19:18
◼
►
which is why these things only come out every three to six years or whatever it is.
01:19:23
◼
►
And in the meantime, they're going to keep doing what they've always done, which is iterate
01:19:26
◼
►
on the stuff that's already out there and popular as aggressively as they can. And iteration
01:19:32
◼
►
to iteration never really making any single great leap forward, but yet, you know, and
01:19:39
◼
►
with a little bit, even just a little bit of hindsight, making remarkable progress,
01:19:42
◼
►
right? I mean, three years ago, they were still selling the iPhone 3GS. I mean, you
01:19:46
◼
►
compare the iPhone 5 to the 3GS and it's, you know, it's like night and day. That's
01:19:52
◼
►
the other thing that kills me about these, the pessimists on Apple that say that like,
01:19:57
◼
►
I keep saying over and over again that innovation in smartphones is over. Like, smartphones
01:20:01
◼
►
are done, so they've got to move on to the next big thing because smartphones have been
01:20:05
◼
►
completely commoditized. And it's like, are you nuts? It's like, I can't believe
01:20:10
◼
►
anybody would think that when there's so much more room for faster computing and faster
01:20:17
◼
►
graphics and thinner phones and more durable materials and I mean just the camera alone
01:20:27
◼
►
is making such unbelievable progress year over year. I mean that's like the one thing
01:20:31
◼
►
where I can almost tell like when I look back at like family photos and stuff like that
01:20:37
◼
►
like I look back at the ones I snapped on my iPhone two years ago and they look terrible
01:20:41
◼
►
like just from a technical perspective. Just camera technology alone is, there's so much
01:20:49
◼
►
room for potential for new hardware and stuff going forward. Makes me nuts.
01:20:56
◼
►
Hey, I'm going to see you at Macworld.
01:21:01
◼
►
Oh yeah, I'm going to Macworld. That's worth being on the show. Everybody out there,
01:21:07
◼
►
everybody should go to Macworld Expo. What is that, two weeks?
01:21:10
◼
►
I think we'll be there two weeks from today.
01:21:14
◼
►
I think I'm on a panel two weeks from today.
01:21:17
◼
►
You want any panels or anything?
01:21:18
◼
►
You're speaking?
01:21:19
◼
►
Mike: Not that I know of.
01:21:20
◼
►
Not yet anyway.
01:21:23
◼
►
I often get drawn into something late because I always book late.
01:21:26
◼
►
I am booked.
01:21:27
◼
►
I am now booked as of a couple of days ago.
01:21:32
◼
►
But yeah, looking forward to it.
01:21:35
◼
►
I haven't been to San Francisco.
01:21:36
◼
►
That's fair.
01:21:37
◼
►
On the talk show where I get to see you.
01:21:38
◼
►
I'll see you soon.
01:21:39
◼
►
That's right.
01:21:40
◼
►
That's right.
01:21:40
◼
►
[BLANK_AUDIO]