ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Have you ever been defeated by a bottle of seltzer? Because I just was.

00:00:04 ◼   ► Alright, story time ladies and gentlemen. Tell me more.

00:00:07 ◼   ► There's not much of a story. I can't get my bottle of seltzer that I first got open. I had to get a second one and open it instead.

00:00:15 ◼   ► I'll try to tiff open it for you.

00:00:17 ◼   ► So, okay, so it's a bottle of Hals. And as I believe I talked about on the talk show with Jon Gruber here at the beach, Hals is wonderful flavored fizzy water, flavored seltzer.

00:00:29 ◼   ► It's my favorite brand by far for flavored seltzer. Way better than Le Croix.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Problem is, Hals is, as far as fizzy waters go, it is really fizzy.

00:00:40 ◼   ► To the point where you have to actually be very careful to open in the bottle.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Because even if you've babied it and treated it normally, there's a high chance it will explode if you open it too fast.

00:00:50 ◼   ► It is the fizziest of fizzy waters that I've ever found.

00:00:53 ◼   ► And sometimes this immense pressurization results in the cap being really hard to open.

00:01:00 ◼   ► You feel the bottle, it feels like rock solid. There's no flex in it at all. You feel like it's going to explode.

00:01:05 ◼   ► Alright, now slow down. Genuine questions. So this is like a plastic bottle with a screw top cap?

00:01:10 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like a 20 ounce plastic clear bottle with a screw top cap. Just like a soda bottle.

00:01:15 ◼   ► I was going to say, if it was glass, all you needed was a sword, right?

00:01:18 ◼   ► You could do that thing they do with champagne when ships go off.

00:01:21 ◼   ► Oh yeah. So normally my approach to this would be to get something that is rubbery, like the back of a potholder or something.

00:01:29 ◼   ► And apply that to the cap with the twisting hand so that I have more grip and I can twist it really hard.

00:01:35 ◼   ► I got out, potholder number one, made of silicone. Grab it, twist as hard as I possibly can. I cannot get this thing to budge.

00:01:43 ◼   ► Got to the second point where I'm like, alright, you know what, fine, I'll get a second one.

00:01:47 ◼   ► Second potholder on the holding still hand, like the hand that holds the bottle still.

00:01:51 ◼   ► I still can't open this. I gave up and I just got a different one. But that bottle is going to be sitting in my fridge.

00:01:58 ◼   ► I got to open it sometime. Do I use a drill? What am I doing?

00:02:02 ◼   ► You got a pair of pliers?

00:02:04 ◼   ► Maybe?

00:02:06 ◼   ► Just need a tiny bit of leverage. It's only hard because it's so hard to grip.

00:02:09 ◼   ► Because there's so little surface area and the diameter is so small that you don't have a lot of torque.

00:02:13 ◼   ► You just need some kind of mechanical advantage. It will come right open.

00:02:16 ◼   ► Or you just need to do the thing from kung fu movies where you concentrate all of your power into that tiny little spot.

00:02:24 ◼   ► It's all about instantaneous power. It's not about over time. You just need to get all of your power for a short period of time to just crack that thing open.

00:02:34 ◼   ► That's what you need to do.

00:02:35 ◼   ► I thought I was doing that.

00:02:37 ◼   ► No, what you were doing is, you're trying to do it and your strength is spread out over a long period of time and doing nothing. You just got to concentrate it all.

00:02:45 ◼   ► I have never actually been defeated by one. I've never even had to involve a second pot holder.

00:02:50 ◼   ► To involve a second pot holder and then to still lose, this is new to me. I've never done this.

00:02:56 ◼   ► Here are a couple of things. First of all, do you remember the, I don't remember what the name of this was, but there was some stupid challenge video, like the ice bucket challenge.

00:03:04 ◼   ► What you were supposed to do was do some reverse roundhouse kick and then just graze the top of a bottle and have the cap go spinning off.

00:03:12 ◼   ► First of all, I need to see film of you trying to do exactly that, a reverse roundhouse kick.

00:03:18 ◼   ► Is that the one where they had all the videos of people getting kicked in the face?

00:03:21 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. I need to see that.

00:03:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not doing that.

00:03:23 ◼   ► Second of all, my college chemistry is coming back, so PV equals nRT.

00:03:28 ◼   ► If you make it, now I'm going to screw this up and I'm going to get so much email.

00:03:33 ◼   ► If you make the temperature go up or down, will that make pressure go up or down? God, I'm dumb.

00:03:39 ◼   ► Down, well I think down.

00:03:40 ◼   ► Yeah, but you're assuming it's the pressure. I don't think it's the pressure that's making it hard to open probably. It's just a stuck cap.

00:03:46 ◼   ► I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I think next up is pliers and if that doesn't work, I'm going drill.

00:03:52 ◼   ► Let me ask you another question because apparently I'm full of them today. How much did this cost, this single bottle of seltzer?

00:03:59 ◼   ► I don't know. I got like the case discount.

00:04:02 ◼   ► So just a ballpark estimate.

00:04:04 ◼   ► Probably like a dollar or two, something like that.

00:04:06 ◼   ► Throw the freaking thing out and move on.

00:04:08 ◼   ► No, you got to get it open. What are you doing?

00:04:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not going to.

00:04:11 ◼   ► You can't let it win.

00:04:12 ◼   ► And it's black cherry. It's the best flavor.

00:04:14 ◼   ► Yeah, there you go. That's nice. Mechanical advantage. You use your smart little monkey brain. We have tools.

00:04:19 ◼   ► We understand how we can magnify our force by moving over a larger distance with the help of a lever that amplifies your torque by being farther from the center of the cap.

00:04:30 ◼   ► But also gripping on it with, yes, we can do this. Or like I said, just give it a tiff and she'll open it for you.

00:04:36 ◼   ► Did you try that yet? Because that's another problem is like you use up your initial burst of strength because you gradually bleed out that initial burst of strength because you don't expect it to be that hard.

00:04:45 ◼   ► And then after that, you're permanently weakened. Just give it to a fresh person. And especially if they're good at opening things, Tiff will just take it and go kachak and it'll be open.

00:04:52 ◼   ► And it will explode all over my office.

00:04:54 ◼   ► Well, come on. You have to have her try now.

00:04:56 ◼   ► Yeah. Call her in and get it. Call her in and have her give it a try.

00:04:59 ◼   ► Call it.

00:05:00 ◼   ► It's upstairs now. Like I left it up there and took a second bottle down here.

00:05:02 ◼   ► Well, I'm sure she can go get it.

00:05:04 ◼   ► I had to settle for mango, which is fine, but like it's no black sherry.

00:05:07 ◼   ► Just turn away from the mic and yell. She'll hear you.

00:05:10 ◼   ► Hold on. I'll message her.

00:05:12 ◼   ► No, don't message her.

00:05:14 ◼   ► Yeah, that's not as fun.

00:05:15 ◼   ► You have to yell.

00:05:16 ◼   ► In this house we yell. We don't text message each other from one floor to the other.

00:05:21 ◼   ► Tiff, Syracuse is yelling at you.

00:05:24 ◼   ► No, that's not what you're supposed to yell. Tell her to bring, get the bottle of seltzer in the fridge and bring it down.

00:05:29 ◼   ► Don't tell her why. Just have her bring it down. And when she brings it down, say, "Can you open that for me?"

00:05:34 ◼   ► Just real casual-like.

00:05:35 ◼   ► Hey, Tiff's here. All right. We need you to go upstairs to the fridge.

00:05:39 ◼   ► Please.

00:05:40 ◼   ► Please. And get a bottle of black sherry. It has to be a particular one that I just tried to open and failed to open.

00:05:46 ◼   ► No, you ruined it.

00:05:47 ◼   ► Oh, boo.

00:05:48 ◼   ► Apparently I ruined it by telling you that.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Yes. Just tell her which bottle it is, though.

00:05:52 ◼   ► I got to figure out. Well, hold on. I got to show you which one it is.

00:05:55 ◼   ► The excuse has begun already. Oh, I didn't give her the right bottle. She got one of the easy ones.

00:05:59 ◼   ► It's not the only one. It's a black sherry one that's rock hard. It should be, it's in the rack.

00:06:04 ◼   ► That's right.

00:06:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:06 ◼   ► Oh, golly. This is going nowhere good real quick.

00:06:12 ◼   ► Do it far away from that computer, too, by the way.

00:06:15 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

00:06:16 ◼   ► Oh, no, why? Why?

00:06:16 ◼   ► Where's Casey's computer? We'll do it next to Casey's camera.

00:06:19 ◼   ► I'm actually, I should cover mine just for safety's sake. You're four or five hundred miles away, but you never can be too careful.

00:06:25 ◼   ► Yeah, where's Groomer's Review Unit? I can do it over that one, too.

00:06:28 ◼   ► All right, Tiff is back with two black sherrys. Is this all that was in there?

00:06:33 ◼   ► They're both very hard.

00:06:34 ◼   ► All right, so I don't know which one of these it was that I tried to open, but I just tried before the show to open one. I couldn't open it.

00:06:43 ◼   ► Have Tiff open both of them.

00:06:44 ◼   ► So you want me to open it?

00:06:45 ◼   ► John wants you to open both of them.

00:06:47 ◼   ► Oh, God.

00:06:48 ◼   ► Careful, they're going to explode.

00:06:49 ◼   ► They're going to go everywhere.

00:06:50 ◼   ► Slowly.

00:06:51 ◼   ► Well, put a towel down.

00:06:52 ◼   ► It's hard, right?

00:06:53 ◼   ► I got it.

00:06:55 ◼   ► Tell her I believe in her.

00:06:56 ◼   ► All right, you got one.

00:06:58 ◼   ► Oh, close it.

00:06:59 ◼   ► We're counting on her.

00:07:00 ◼   ► That was a close call.

00:07:03 ◼   ► All right, try the second one.

00:07:05 ◼   ► I'm very unskilled. It didn't overcome.

00:07:06 ◼   ► I'm going to really have to drink a lot of seltzer tonight, but it's fine.

00:07:09 ◼   ► I am using my shirt.

00:07:11 ◼   ► All right, she's in progress on the second one.

00:07:12 ◼   ► This one hurts.

00:07:13 ◼   ► Yeah, it hurts.

00:07:14 ◼   ► It's so hard.

00:07:19 ◼   ► Oh, even better.

00:07:21 ◼   ► God damn.

00:07:23 ◼   ► That's the one.

00:07:24 ◼   ► You can't do it, right?

00:07:25 ◼   ► My hand's like bleeding.

00:07:28 ◼   ► My hand is bleeding.

00:07:30 ◼   ► You do it.

00:07:31 ◼   ► I can't do it.

00:07:32 ◼   ► It's getting harder.

00:07:33 ◼   ► All right, all right, Tiff gave it a try.

00:07:35 ◼   ► Now it's time for mechanical advantage.

00:07:37 ◼   ► We've got a pair of pliers.

00:07:38 ◼   ► Now, John, why don't you open it with a pair of pliers somehow?

00:07:40 ◼   ► We have one in that cheap little tool kit upstairs.

00:07:43 ◼   ► We had the channel locks, but I think I lost them to the basement.

00:07:48 ◼   ► All right, pliers.

00:07:49 ◼   ► Can you get the pliers from the cheap tool kit upstairs or any?

00:07:52 ◼   ► I know we probably have them in there at least.

00:07:54 ◼   ► We're probably going to need the channel locks.

00:07:56 ◼   ► Yeah, we need good pliers.

00:07:58 ◼   ► All right, I'll be back.

00:07:59 ◼   ► All right, super.

00:08:00 ◼   ► Wait, give me the one I opened.

00:08:01 ◼   ► Here, this is the one you opened.

00:08:02 ◼   ► You can put it back in the fridge.

00:08:03 ◼   ► I'll just forget it tomorrow.

00:08:04 ◼   ► Yeah, and channel lock is the kind of pliers you need, so that's the right tool for that job.

00:08:08 ◼   ► Yeah, well, we don't have good tools here.

00:08:10 ◼   ► We have cheap crappy tools in like an Amazon tool kit,

00:08:12 ◼   ► but cheap crappy channel lock pliers will do the job.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Well, channel lock is a brand.

00:08:16 ◼   ► It's not.

00:08:17 ◼   ► No, it's a kind.

00:08:18 ◼   ► No, it's not.

00:08:19 ◼   ► I know it's a brand all one word, but like.

00:08:22 ◼   ► Oh, sorry, I didn't hear the space in your phrase.

00:08:29 ◼   ► Channel lock is an American company that produces hand cooled.

00:08:31 ◼   ► It's like, it's what do you call it? A proprietary eponym.

00:08:34 ◼   ► I don't even know what the generic term is.

00:08:35 ◼   ► What is it?

00:08:36 ◼   ► Channel lock with a space.

00:08:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:39 ◼   ► All right, she's back with pliers.

00:08:41 ◼   ► Now, now John says you can open that with pliers.

00:08:45 ◼   ► You absolutely can.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Yeah, I can.

00:08:47 ◼   ► Yeah, you can.

00:08:48 ◼   ► I can't.

00:08:49 ◼   ► I use all my strength.

00:08:50 ◼   ► I got it.

00:08:51 ◼   ► She got it.

00:08:52 ◼   ► There you go.

00:08:53 ◼   ► Mechanical advantage.

00:08:54 ◼   ► Done and done.

00:08:55 ◼   ► All right.

00:08:56 ◼   ► Close it.

00:08:59 ◼   ► The hairless apes win again.

00:09:01 ◼   ► Take that bottle.

00:09:02 ◼   ► Releasing pressure.

00:09:06 ◼   ► I got, I got, I've diffused it.

00:09:07 ◼   ► I've diffused the bomb.

00:09:09 ◼   ► It's done.

00:09:10 ◼   ► Everything's fine.

00:09:11 ◼   ► It's open.

00:09:12 ◼   ► So John was right.

00:09:13 ◼   ► It took pliers.

00:09:14 ◼   ► Not a drill.

00:09:15 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:09:16 ◼   ► Where are you going to get the drill?

00:09:17 ◼   ► Just drill a hole in the side of it and let it squirt out into your mouth?

00:09:20 ◼   ► Bye.

00:09:21 ◼   ► Thanks, honey.

00:09:22 ◼   ► This is a tech show, right?

00:09:23 ◼   ► Yep, it's a tech show.

00:09:24 ◼   ► This is all that tech news.

00:09:25 ◼   ► Bye.

00:09:26 ◼   ► I love you.

00:09:27 ◼   ► Bye.

00:09:28 ◼   ► Tiff Arment, everyone.

00:09:29 ◼   ► Yay.

00:09:30 ◼   ► Did you know, Marco, that the channel lock company, one word, no spaces, was founded

00:09:34 ◼   ► in 1886 when George B. Day Arment, D-E-A-R-M-E-N-T, a blacksmith from Evansburg, Pennsylvania,

00:09:39 ◼   ► did stuff?

00:09:40 ◼   ► His name wasn't George Channel Lock?

00:09:42 ◼   ► That's a B.S.

00:09:43 ◼   ► No.

00:09:44 ◼   ► Turns out.

00:09:45 ◼   ► All right, so people who are listening to this on the not bootleg feed, you have missed

00:09:50 ◼   ► approximately 12 minutes and 10 seconds of Marco fumbling with seltzer.

00:09:55 ◼   ► And while that may not sound like a good elevator pitch, I assure you it was quite funny.

00:10:00 ◼   ► So if you would like to get a copy of the bootleg feed where all this shenanigans happens

00:10:04 ◼   ► that we cut out for this version of the episode, you're welcome.

00:10:07 ◼   ► That's staying in, though.

00:10:08 ◼   ► Oh, no, no, no.

00:10:09 ◼   ► Then this is all bogus.

00:10:10 ◼   ► You don't know you have to cut it.

00:10:11 ◼   ► Not all of it.

00:10:12 ◼   ► I mean, all of it won't be in.

00:10:13 ◼   ► All right, so anyway, moving on.

00:10:15 ◼   ► ATP.fm/join.

00:10:16 ◼   ► You should check it out.

00:10:17 ◼   ► If you like that sort of thing, we do other stuff like that also on the bootleg often

00:10:22 ◼   ► where, you know, something goes wrong or we mess with each other or whatever.

00:10:25 ◼   ► So that's the kind of extra bonus content you get with lower audio quality but faster

00:10:29 ◼   ► in the bootleg.

00:10:32 ◼   ► We are -- you and I are just killing it on the sales pitches tonight.

00:10:35 ◼   ► Oh, goodness.

00:10:36 ◼   ► All right.

00:10:37 ◼   ► So should we actually get the show started?

00:10:39 ◼   ► Is that a reasonable thing to do at this juncture?

00:10:41 ◼   ► Wait for someone to bring me a black cherry seltzer.

00:10:43 ◼   ► Yeah, now I'm still stuck with my mango, my second choice here.

00:10:46 ◼   ► I probably should have kept one of those other ones.

00:10:48 ◼   ► Ah, the struggle.

00:10:49 ◼   ► I'm hoping that she earned it.

00:10:50 ◼   ► Yeah, it's fair.

00:10:52 ◼   ► So let's start with some info from a friend of the show, Guy Rambo, with regard to the

00:10:56 ◼   ► T2.

00:10:57 ◼   ► I think John was mostly talking about this last week, and you were doing it off the cuff,

00:11:02 ◼   ► and you made a couple of minor errors.

00:11:04 ◼   ► So Guy, with the benefit of listening to it after the fact and being able to pause and

00:11:09 ◼   ► probably actually already knowing all this stuff, wrote a little bit about the T2.

00:11:13 ◼   ► This is a tiny bit long, but it's a pretty good summary of what the T2 is for and how

00:11:18 ◼   ► it works.

00:11:19 ◼   ► So, oh, no.

00:11:20 ◼   ► What happened?

00:11:21 ◼   ► Tiff just messaged me.

00:11:22 ◼   ► Oh, no.

00:11:23 ◼   ► A photo of inside the fridge saying, "In case you need help tomorrow," and she has placed

00:11:28 ◼   ► the pliers in the little bin that holds our seltzers in the fridge.

00:11:34 ◼   ► That is excellent spousal trolling right there.

00:11:37 ◼   ► It's an assisted device for your drinking.

00:11:40 ◼   ► That'll be the show art for the pre-show.

00:11:42 ◼   ► Well done.

00:11:43 ◼   ► Well done.

00:11:44 ◼   ► All right, so some information on the T2 from Guy Rambo.

00:11:47 ◼   ► The T2 chip is not what drives the UI in the touch bar when your Mac is running on Mac OS.

00:11:52 ◼   ► It only displays the function keys in the touch bar when there is no touch bar server, which

00:11:55 ◼   ► is a Mac OS process running.

00:11:56 ◼   ► When the touch bar server is running, all it does is get pixels from Mac OS and then

00:11:59 ◼   ► blit them onto the rectangular OLED panel.

00:12:01 ◼   ► You can verify this by using the show touch bar option in Xcode, which works even when

00:12:05 ◼   ► the Mac doesn't have a touch bar.

00:12:06 ◼   ► The same is true of the touch bar in Sidecar.

00:12:08 ◼   ► The T2 chip is required mainly for touch ID and other security features, which are part

00:12:12 ◼   ► of the Secure Enclave, which-- I almost said "enclav" there for some crazy reason, but

00:12:16 ◼   ► that's all right-- which is part of the Secure Enclave, which comes in all of Apple's chips.

00:12:20 ◼   ► The way it works is that Daemons on Mac OS act as proxies to Daemons running on Bridge

00:12:24 ◼   ► OS, which is the thing that runs on the T2, a system that Apple calls "multiverse."

00:12:29 ◼   ► So, from the point of view of consumers of the APIs for functionality provided by the

00:12:33 ◼   ► T2 chip, it doesn't matter if the thing is going over to the T2 or if it's implemented

00:12:37 ◼   ► directly, which means that the ARM Macs with a touch bar or no separate chip driving it

00:12:41 ◼   ► aren't as big a deal as you'd think.

00:12:43 ◼   ► >> Which is bad news, because I was excited by the idea that it would be wasteful to,

00:12:48 ◼   ► you know, reimplement the touch bar in a single chip, because I didn't think they would put

00:12:52 ◼   ► two of the chips in there, but it sounds like it's not a big deal, unfortunately.

00:12:56 ◼   ► So, that probably means they'll have touch bars, right?

00:12:58 ◼   ► Because if it really just is sort of accepting pixels that are drawn elsewhere, and all the

00:13:02 ◼   ► other functions it provides are already built into the system on a chip, so you don't need

00:13:05 ◼   ► a separate one, I think they could easily get away-- it sounds like they could easily

00:13:09 ◼   ► get away with a single system on the chip plus a touch bar.

00:13:12 ◼   ► And if they can get away with it, it seems like they'll do it, because that's what they've

00:13:15 ◼   ► been doing with the touch bar.

00:13:16 ◼   ► They just keep including it on their expensive models, and you get it whether you like it

00:13:20 ◼   ► or not.

00:13:21 ◼   ► It's kind of depressing.

00:13:22 ◼   ► >> Or, I mean, you know, if-- what this basically shows is there's not really a technical reason

00:13:27 ◼   ► why they have to get rid of it, but there still could be like a justification to gracefully

00:13:32 ◼   ► bow out of this now that they are redesigning the hardware in a major way, and especially

00:13:36 ◼   ► if they add touch screens.

00:13:37 ◼   ► That's the big thing, is like, if they add touch screens, I don't see how the touch bar

00:13:41 ◼   ► would stay there.

00:13:43 ◼   ► I mean, but that could just be wishful thinking.

00:13:45 ◼   ► If they don't add touch screens, then it's more, you know, I think it's more optimistic

00:13:50 ◼   ► to expect them to remove it.

00:13:52 ◼   ► >> And Apple does-- my understanding is that Apple does gather some basic metrics about

00:13:57 ◼   ► how frequently the features they ship in their products are used by customers, right?

00:14:01 ◼   ► Just sort of, you know, completely anonymous, back of the envelope statistical sampling

00:14:06 ◼   ► of like, do people use-- that's how they know things like, oh, Messages is the most used

00:14:10 ◼   ► app on iOS, which they said like in a keynote or something, right?

00:14:13 ◼   ► They only know that because they have metrics on, you know, what apps do people launch,

00:14:17 ◼   ► right?

00:14:19 ◼   ► And so the problem with the touch bar is like, well, maybe they would know like, okay, it's

00:14:22 ◼   ► time to ditch touch bar because it's not a very popular feature and this is a good time

00:14:25 ◼   ► to ditch it while saving face, blah, blah, blah, touch max, blah, blah, like we said

00:14:28 ◼   ► in the last show.

00:14:29 ◼   ► But the metrics on the touch bar have to be pretty high because you can't avoid using

00:14:33 ◼   ► it if you ever need the escape key or a function key, like, or the volume keys.

00:14:38 ◼   ► Like, you can't really measure people's satisfaction with it, but it's unavoidable.

00:14:43 ◼   ► So the usage numbers, they must say, look, you know, people who buy our touch bar max,

00:14:47 ◼   ► they all use it a ton.

00:14:48 ◼   ► It's like, well, we have no choice.

00:14:49 ◼   ► Like it's the only place where those keys, those quote unquote keys are.

00:14:53 ◼   ► So I hope that doesn't encourage them to keep it around.

00:14:57 ◼   ► Or if they do keep it around, they need to enhance it.

00:14:58 ◼   ► Like they need to go some direction or another, either make it better and cooler on a regular

00:15:02 ◼   ► basis or a ditch it.

00:15:04 ◼   ► Well, and the flip side of the coin is I don't know what specifically about having their

00:15:10 ◼   ► own CPU would make better, cooler, faster, stronger, what have you.

00:15:14 ◼   ► But, you know, one of the things that everyone keeps saying is that, oh, when Apple controls,

00:15:20 ◼   ► you know, the hard, the CPU and the rest of the hardware stack, they can integrate things

00:15:25 ◼   ► better.

00:15:26 ◼   ► And maybe that would be applicable to the touch bar.

00:15:29 ◼   ► Maybe they could, it would enable them to do something that they can't, but want to

00:15:32 ◼   ► do today.

00:15:33 ◼   ► I haven't a clue what that would be specifically, but you never know.

00:15:36 ◼   ► Maybe they'll make it better.

00:15:37 ◼   ► Maybe just having it on the same system on a chip would make it less buggy for reasons,

00:15:42 ◼   ► for reasons.

00:15:43 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:15:44 ◼   ► >> Alternately, I mean, they could always make it optional.

00:15:45 ◼   ► That would be, I know that's a crazy thing to suggest.

00:15:48 ◼   ► >> Because that would be the real metric of like, do people like it?

00:15:51 ◼   ► Are they willing to pay more for it?

00:15:52 ◼   ► Hell, if they made it a zero-cost option, even that would give them some info about,

00:15:56 ◼   ► do people want it or do they not want it?

00:15:58 ◼   ► >> Right.

00:15:59 ◼   ► And in the meantime, we do have kind of that choice because the error doesn't have it.

00:16:03 ◼   ► And so, you know, I think possibly one option that might open up, you know, as we make this

00:16:08 ◼   ► architecture transition is assuming that this is probably going to result in a overall increase

00:16:14 ◼   ► in performance on the Mac, the error might become good enough for people for whom today

00:16:20 ◼   ► they have to buy the MacBook Pro to get the resources they need.

00:16:23 ◼   ► I hate the Touch Bar so much, maybe I would step down to the error for my future purchase.

00:16:26 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:16:27 ◼   ► You know, that might become more realistic as performance gets better.

00:16:30 ◼   ► >> I don't think it's just the performance.

00:16:32 ◼   ► I think we might have a question about this later or maybe in a future episode.

00:16:36 ◼   ► But like the difference when Apple controls the system on chips for all their laptops,

00:16:40 ◼   ► the difference between the MacBook Pro and the Air is going to be even more emphatically

00:16:45 ◼   ► GPU power, I would imagine, right?

00:16:47 ◼   ► Because I don't think Apple is going to make lots of very different cores, right?

00:16:52 ◼   ► Maybe the core count will distinguish it.

00:16:54 ◼   ► But like I don't expect Apple to make, you know, three different, three completely different

00:17:00 ◼   ► system-mounted chips that differ in tremendous ways.

00:17:02 ◼   ► I suspect them to do kind of like what they do with the phone on the iPad, where the iPad

00:17:05 ◼   ► is kind of like the phone, maybe with some more cores, but then also a bigger GPU.

00:17:08 ◼   ► Like that's what distinguishes it.

00:17:09 ◼   ► But they don't have different cores.

00:17:11 ◼   ► Like whatever the core of the year is or the core of that generation, that's what you get,

00:17:15 ◼   ► right?

00:17:16 ◼   ► Sort of no equivalent, at least until they do the Mac Pro, of like a Xeon-level thing

00:17:19 ◼   ► where it's like a very different chip than the lesser chip.

00:17:23 ◼   ► So in that case, if you don't care about GPU, which you probably don't if you're just doing

00:17:26 ◼   ► Xcode or whatever, it could be that for a given core count, the MacBook Air CPU score

00:17:33 ◼   ► is exactly the same as the MacBook Pro because it's exactly the same chip.

00:17:36 ◼   ► And if you have the same number of cores and you don't care about the bigger GPU, which

00:17:39 ◼   ► is easy to scale because they just add execution units and it scales up very easily, maybe

00:17:43 ◼   ► the Air actually would be just as fast for Xcode, again, assuming they give the same speed

00:17:48 ◼   ► as SSD or whatever.

00:17:49 ◼   ► And the people with the MacBook Pro need the GPU power for Final Cut Pro rendering or whatever

00:17:53 ◼   ► people do with it or games or whatever.

00:17:55 ◼   ► Can I take us on a brief aside?

00:17:57 ◼   ► Is that allowed, Dad?

00:17:58 ◼   ► Because I know we're in the middle of follow-up.

00:18:00 ◼   ► But if you'll permit me.

00:18:03 ◼   ► We only have two items today, so plenty of time for this.

00:18:04 ◼   ► Hell, we can even open up another seltzer.

00:18:06 ◼   ► I mean, it's still a follow-up as long as it's about something we have ever talked about

00:18:11 ◼   ► before even remotely.

00:18:12 ◼   ► That is not the definition of follow-up, but feel free to ask me to answer that on robot

00:18:16 ◼   ► or not and I'll clarify.

00:18:17 ◼   ► Oh, I should do that.

00:18:19 ◼   ► All right.

00:18:20 ◼   ► So anyway, all of us, myself very much included, have been thinking about, oh, we're going

00:18:23 ◼   ► to get these laptops that have battery life measured in calendar years, figuratively speaking,

00:18:28 ◼   ► of course.

00:18:29 ◼   ► And these new Apple Silicon powered chips are going to be just completely gentle on

00:18:33 ◼   ► batteries and these MacBook Pros are going to go from whatever they claim, like eight

00:18:37 ◼   ► hours of battery life to 16 hours of battery life, maybe even a day of battery life or

00:18:42 ◼   ► something like that.

00:18:43 ◼   ► And that seems to be the most logical conclusion on the surface because that's kind of what

00:18:47 ◼   ► these chips seem to be aimed toward.

00:18:50 ◼   ► They're being put in these devices like iPhones and iPads that battery life is a pretty big

00:18:56 ◼   ► priority, especially on an iPhone.

00:18:58 ◼   ► And it occurred to me, what if Apple continues to do the Apple thing and they just continue

00:19:05 ◼   ► to target eight hours of battery life or whatever, you know, whatever the number is, the actual

00:19:08 ◼   ► number doesn't matter, let's say eight hours.

00:19:10 ◼   ► So what if they continue to target eight hours of battery life and this Phantom MacBook Pro

00:19:13 ◼   ► that's going to come in like the fall or in the spring or something, but instead of being

00:19:19 ◼   ► a smidgen faster than an Intel Mac or an Intel MacBook Pro, instead of being a lot faster

00:19:25 ◼   ► than an Intel MacBook Pro, it is hilariously faster, just like night and day faster.

00:19:32 ◼   ► Like do you think that they would make, and I'll start with Marco and then I'd like to

00:19:34 ◼   ► hear John's take as well.

00:19:36 ◼   ► Do you think that they would, instead of going for infinite battery life, again, figuratively

00:19:41 ◼   ► speaking, do you think they would just go for broke when it comes to these things being

00:19:46 ◼   ► just incredibly, incredibly fast?

00:19:48 ◼   ► Or I guess the obvious alternative is, would they try to do some sort of balance where

00:19:51 ◼   ► maybe it gets, you know, it goes from eight hours to 12 hours of battery life, but it's

00:19:55 ◼   ► still like five times faster than the most recent Intel MacBook Pro.

00:19:59 ◼   ► What do you think Marco?

00:20:00 ◼   ► Well, I mean, it's hard for me to say because I'm going to nitpick the question as I, as

00:20:05 ◼   ► I tend to do.

00:20:06 ◼   ► John?

00:20:07 ◼   ► Oh yeah, well, I'm going to nitpick the basis of the question, which is I don't think they

00:20:12 ◼   ► would have that choice because if you look at like the way performance increases and

00:20:17 ◼   ► battery life work over time, the battery life gains have largely come from advances in managing

00:20:25 ◼   ► low power states for the processors.

00:20:27 ◼   ► So when the computer's not doing much, how much can it reduce that power usage?

00:20:32 ◼   ► And then it can, you know, it can peak to handle quick performance needs, then it goes

00:20:36 ◼   ► back down.

00:20:37 ◼   ► Almost all battery life gains, you know, in the last decade have been advances in that

00:20:42 ◼   ► low power management, not reductions in the high power state and how much power it uses

00:20:48 ◼   ► or how much performance you can get in a high power state.

00:20:50 ◼   ► In fact, it's actually gone the opposite direction in a lot of cases.

00:20:53 ◼   ► High powered states of processors actually draw more power now than ever.

00:20:57 ◼   ► But we have large, we have long battery life because most of the time, you know, they can,

00:21:02 ◼   ► they can burst up to that high speed for a fraction of a second, do whatever they have

00:21:05 ◼   ► to do and then kick back to idle.

00:21:07 ◼   ► But the actual performance ceiling, if you're actually using it to do things to be really

00:21:12 ◼   ► fast, burns tons of power.

00:21:15 ◼   ► Now we don't know what the performance characteristics of the ARM processors for Apple will be.

00:21:20 ◼   ► We can kind of look at what they are in the iPad and iPhone so far and they seem to be

00:21:24 ◼   ► in a relatively similar pattern there of like, you know, the low power state can be super

00:21:29 ◼   ► low power.

00:21:30 ◼   ► They even have those low power cores that they can, you know, they can enable only those

00:21:34 ◼   ► when only, you know, low power stuff is needed.

00:21:36 ◼   ► And then they have these high power cores that can ramp up real fast, like they're going

00:21:39 ◼   ► to do the same thing on the Mac.

00:21:40 ◼   ► I believe the documentation even says as much, but they're not going to be able to ramp up

00:21:45 ◼   ► that peak power magically much further than Intel could in the same power envelope.

00:21:52 ◼   ► So I don't think we're going to actually see massive battery life improvements when you're

00:21:57 ◼   ► stressing out the processors.

00:21:58 ◼   ► Whatever, you know, whatever Apple decides to design their thermal limits in each product

00:22:02 ◼   ► for, that's going to decide like how much heat can you dissipate?

00:22:05 ◼   ► Like, you know, in a 16 inch MacBook Pro right now, that's I believe a 45 ish watt CPU.

00:22:11 ◼   ► But the way TDP works with Intel and everything, it actually can go higher than that.

00:22:15 ◼   ► That's just kind of like the target average minimum rings that it should be able to cool.

00:22:19 ◼   ► But if you push an eight core i9 MacBook Pro, if you push those CPUs all the way, it's going

00:22:24 ◼   ► to use more than 45 watts until it can, like until it has to hit some kind of thermal limit

00:22:29 ◼   ► and then it has to like slow down.

00:22:30 ◼   ► But for the most part, like these processors when you actually hit them hard, you get no

00:22:36 ◼   ► battery life on any modern laptop.

00:22:39 ◼   ► And that's been the case forever.

00:22:41 ◼   ► So I don't think the Apple Arm transition is going to magically fix that.

00:22:46 ◼   ► It might make it better.

00:22:47 ◼   ► It might make, you know, give you a little more performance or, you know, even if it

00:22:51 ◼   ► gave you 50% more performance, that would be huge.

00:22:54 ◼   ► That would be a huge deal.

00:22:56 ◼   ► But you're still looking at an hour of battery life if you're actually pushing the processor

00:22:59 ◼   ► hard.

00:23:00 ◼   ► So I don't think we're going to have that kind of jump.

00:23:03 ◼   ► I think any gains we have are going to be on the like, you know, power management doing

00:23:08 ◼   ► lower, lower needs kind of end, if that makes sense.

00:23:12 ◼   ► John, I mean, other John.

00:23:16 ◼   ► So the target battery life thing that the issue with the current Pro laptops is that

00:23:21 ◼   ► they're all below what I think Apple would decide is an appropriate target.

00:23:24 ◼   ► Like for whatever reason, Apple decided 10 hours is appropriate for iPads, and they've

00:23:28 ◼   ► been targeting that for years and they've been achieving it, but it's because they're

00:23:31 ◼   ► satisfied with that.

00:23:32 ◼   ► And I think customers are too.

00:23:33 ◼   ► Like people who have iPads are fairly satisfied with the battery life.

00:23:36 ◼   ► You're not out and about with them as much, so you don't find yourself stranded with an

00:23:39 ◼   ► uncharged iPad because, you know, like people complain about phones because it's not, it

00:23:43 ◼   ► doesn't use in the same way.

00:23:44 ◼   ► The battery is physically larger on iPads.

00:23:46 ◼   ► Like iPad battery life, that 10 hour thing, you could argue that they should be creeping

00:23:49 ◼   ► it up over time, but in general, it is satisfactory.

00:23:52 ◼   ► Not true at all for the MacBook Pros.

00:23:55 ◼   ► No one is satisfied with battery life in the MacBook Pro, almost no matter what they're

00:23:58 ◼   ► doing.

00:23:59 ◼   ► Uh, and it's part of it for the reason that Margot just said, like you can, if you ask

00:24:03 ◼   ► that machine to do all that it can do, it's such a difference from that machine being

00:24:07 ◼   ► idle, right?

00:24:08 ◼   ► Um, and then Mac OS compounds that because Mac OS does not have the draconian energy

00:24:13 ◼   ► controls that iOS does.

00:24:15 ◼   ► All that means that an ARM chip in a Mac laptop is going to be in a much more harsh environment

00:24:20 ◼   ► than it would be in even the most powerful iPad, right?

00:24:24 ◼   ► That said, um, I think with an ARM chip, uh, Apple can probably pick a target that it finds

00:24:31 ◼   ► acceptable for average usage and achieve it right.

00:24:35 ◼   ► Like they can, you know, they can design this and say, look, here's our, here's our goal

00:24:38 ◼   ► for battery life.

00:24:39 ◼   ► It is whatever our number hour is doing using these type of application.

00:24:43 ◼   ► Like they have to come up with some kind of scenario that they think is acceptable target.

00:24:46 ◼   ► I think that target will be higher than the current target because again, they can choose

00:24:50 ◼   ► whatever target they want.

00:24:51 ◼   ► They can choose, we want the battery life to be less than the current laptops, right?

00:24:54 ◼   ► And just burn everything out, but they won't.

00:24:56 ◼   ► They're going to choose a higher target because they can achieve it.

00:24:58 ◼   ► And at that target, it will also be embarrassingly faster.

00:25:02 ◼   ► Like they don't have to choose either or I think they can get more battery life and also

00:25:06 ◼   ► completely embarrass any Intel laptop in all benchmarks, right?

00:25:09 ◼   ► Under all circumstances, right?

00:25:11 ◼   ► So yes, if you run it hard, it's going to have shorter battery life, but it will still

00:25:15 ◼   ► be longer than if you ran an Intel laptop just as hard and it will be faster and do

00:25:20 ◼   ► more work during that period of time.

00:25:21 ◼   ► Like that's the beauty of this transition.

00:25:23 ◼   ► It's like the power of these generators in the Intel transition.

00:25:26 ◼   ► You know, the same factors that conspire to make it the right time to make the move also

00:25:30 ◼   ► mean that the new machines will be really good compared to the old ones.

00:25:34 ◼   ► In this case, it's going to be that, you know, they ship five nanometer chips in their max

00:25:38 ◼   ► and their best max now have 10 nanometer chips in them, right?

00:25:41 ◼   ► And that's going to make a huge difference.

00:25:43 ◼   ► And also just the general performance per watt gains, the performance per watt lead

00:25:47 ◼   ► that Apple's ARM chips have had over Intel for a long time and do currently, right?

00:25:51 ◼   ► So I expect that the trade off they will choose is more battery life than the current ones

00:25:56 ◼   ► in the big pro model that I'm talking about.

00:25:57 ◼   ► More battery life than the current ones and even more performance.

00:26:02 ◼   ► On the very low end fanless ones, I can imagine them making a different trade off, which is

00:26:07 ◼   ► adequate performance that is still way better than an adorable, but a really long battery

00:26:11 ◼   ► life because, you know, we can tune it for that thing.

00:26:14 ◼   ► It'll have fewer cores, it will have a smaller GPU, all that other stuff, right?

00:26:17 ◼   ► So I'm still of the opinion that we will be able to have our cake and eat it too.

00:26:21 ◼   ► We will get more battery life and tremendously bigger performance.

00:26:24 ◼   ► They won't balance it really far in one direction or the other.

00:26:27 ◼   ► And I think what they'll do, I think their target for battery life will be higher than

00:26:31 ◼   ► current ones.

00:26:32 ◼   ► And by the way, Casey, you keep saying like eight hours.

00:26:33 ◼   ► What planet are you on where you're getting eight hours of battery life out of a MacBook

00:26:36 ◼   ► Pro doing any work?

00:26:37 ◼   ► That does not happen.

00:26:38 ◼   ► Like if you get five hours doing intensive work on a MacBook Pro, you're extremely lucky.

00:26:43 ◼   ► So I think they will target, you know, maybe an hour more than the current MacBook Pro

00:26:49 ◼   ► on whatever measurement they want to do and sort of average workload.

00:26:53 ◼   ► And then the performance will be much embarrassingly better.

00:26:56 ◼   ► One thing I hope that they tackle with this transition, and this might take a few generations

00:27:01 ◼   ► because it's a pretty big job, but one thing I really hope they tackle is there was this

00:27:07 ◼   ► story and I don't know if it was true or not, but there was a rumor that went around.

00:27:12 ◼   ► I don't think it was ever actually backed up by anything concrete where back when, like

00:27:18 ◼   ► I think when the MacBook Air was being developed, apparently, allegedly, and forgive me if I'm

00:27:22 ◼   ► getting the details wrong, this is from memory, apparently there was a meeting with Steve

00:27:25 ◼   ► Jobs in the room where he apparently like walked in the room and had like an iPad and

00:27:31 ◼   ► turned it on and it just immediately woke from sleep.

00:27:34 ◼   ► And allegedly he like dropped a MacBook on the table and is like, why can't this do that?

00:27:39 ◼   ► Do you remember that rumor when that was going on?

00:27:41 ◼   ► - I do, yep, yep, yep.

00:27:43 ◼   ► - And so there's always been this huge difference and there's lots of reasons for it, many of

00:27:46 ◼   ► which are good reasons.

00:27:48 ◼   ► Why when you open up a Mac does it not instantly, why isn't it instantly on?

00:27:54 ◼   ► Like the way that an iOS device you power on, you hit the sleep button, it just wakes

00:27:58 ◼   ► up.

00:28:00 ◼   ► Why in the background during all that time it was closed, why doesn't it keep things

00:28:05 ◼   ► updating in the background the way that iOS apps do?

00:28:08 ◼   ► Why can't it like receive a notification and ding at you or something or alert you or keep

00:28:14 ◼   ► things up to date or whatever?

00:28:15 ◼   ► And there's lots of reasons for that and they've had all sorts of like little baby steps like

00:28:19 ◼   ► Power Nap over time where Power Nap is allegedly supposed to solve that problem of like letting

00:28:26 ◼   ► things update periodically in the background while the computer's asleep.

00:28:30 ◼   ► Does it work for anybody?

00:28:31 ◼   ► 'Cause it doesn't ever work for me, like nothing ever seems up to date.

00:28:36 ◼   ► Maybe I'm just missing its effect but--

00:28:37 ◼   ► It works mostly--mostly apps that support it are the built-in Apple apps, third-party

00:28:41 ◼   ► support for it.

00:28:42 ◼   ► I don't remember--I remember doing a section of the review, I don't remember what third-party

00:28:46 ◼   ► support looks like but basically if you don't use Apple Mail and don't care about time machine

00:28:50 ◼   ► running you might not notice that it's doing stuff.

00:28:53 ◼   ► But it does stuff and you know, related to this, one of the things that my Mac currently

00:28:56 ◼   ► does that I haven't quite figured out how to stop it from doing yet is my Mac will wake

00:29:00 ◼   ► from sleep, my Mac Pro will wake from sleep when a reminder appears.

00:29:04 ◼   ► And I want the reminder to appear on my Mac so I can't tell it, "Oh, don't show me that

00:29:08 ◼   ► reminder."

00:29:09 ◼   ► Like literally like the reminders app, you know, the Apple reminders app.

00:29:11 ◼   ► I do want those to appear on my screen but if my Mac Pro is asleep I don't want that

00:29:16 ◼   ► reminder to wake it up.

00:29:17 ◼   ► And it does, it wakes it from a dead sleep.

00:29:19 ◼   ► So obviously there's enough going on there when it's quote-unquote "sleeping" to--you

00:29:24 ◼   ► know, it's checking for reminders periodically or it's accepting push notifications, like

00:29:28 ◼   ► it's not really asleep asleep, right?

00:29:31 ◼   ► So that is happening and I think it does time machine when it's asleep and if I use Apple

00:29:35 ◼   ► Mail I'm pretty confident that it would be checking my mail.

00:29:37 ◼   ► But I forget how widespread that support is.

00:29:39 ◼   ► But you're right, the main issue is like, "Okay, but what kind of sleep modes are available

00:29:43 ◼   ► to me with an Intel processor versus what kind of sleep modes are available with the

00:29:46 ◼   ► Apple system on a chip?"

00:29:48 ◼   ► And obviously the sort of screen-off, fanless, low-power, extremely hostile iOS environment

00:29:55 ◼   ► of just nothing runs unless I allow it to run allows iOS devices to be basically running

00:30:00 ◼   ► all the time when the screen is off, they're still running and you know, behind the scenes

00:30:04 ◼   ► in a very low power mode but mostly doing all the stuff that you would expect.

00:30:07 ◼   ► Because it's just as cruel when it's quote-unquote "on" about running background stuff.

00:30:11 ◼   ► Whereas when the Mac's on, running background stuff it's a free-for-all and now when it's

00:30:14 ◼   ► off there's just suddenly this new set of rules that the Mac is not used to.

00:30:17 ◼   ► Right.

00:30:18 ◼   ► And so I hope this is an area that they can tackle.

00:30:20 ◼   ► Like when you combine a more instant on experience, which and I do think, I do think the ARM transition

00:30:27 ◼   ► is a necessary precursor to doing that well.

00:30:29 ◼   ► You know, you have advances, not only is Apple able to control all the power states of everything,

00:30:35 ◼   ► but they have those low power cores.

00:30:37 ◼   ► You can do things like only ever use like one or two low power cores when the lid's

00:30:41 ◼   ► closed or whatever.

00:30:42 ◼   ► And so you do have I think a better ability to have low power states where you can keep

00:30:47 ◼   ► things basically awake but you know, not in a super low power state and then you can wake

00:30:52 ◼   ► up very quickly.

00:30:54 ◼   ► And then also when you combine that hopefully with cellular options, God I hope so.

00:30:59 ◼   ► That, like part of the reason I love using the iPad with cellular as an out and about

00:31:04 ◼   ► computer has nothing to do with the iPad form factor or the OS and has so much more to do

00:31:09 ◼   ► with that instant wake and constant cellular connectivity.

00:31:13 ◼   ► So if you could have that in a Mac, that would be way more of a productive travel machine

00:31:18 ◼   ► for me when I'm out and about doing small errands and stuff like that.

00:31:21 ◼   ► I could just have like a MacBook that had cellular or a MacBook Air that had cellular

00:31:25 ◼   ► and have it be instant wake, you know, always on.

00:31:29 ◼   ► That would be such a radically different experience than using a Mac laptop today.

00:31:33 ◼   ► - You know, to go back a step, I'm a little bothered by you having said that your skeptical

00:31:38 ◼   ► Power Nap even works because I can tell you on my two month old MacBook Pro, I know Power

00:31:44 ◼   ► Nap works because it causes the machine to reboot itself every time.

00:31:47 ◼   ► - Great.

00:31:48 ◼   ► - And let's not forget that I turned it off because that was the only way to prevent it

00:31:52 ◼   ► from rebooting itself constantly.

00:31:53 ◼   ► - I think we have different definitions of work then.

00:31:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:31:58 ◼   ► It works in the sense that it does something that requires me to turn my computer, crash

00:32:02 ◼   ► the computer.

00:32:03 ◼   ► - Right.

00:32:04 ◼   ► Let me check.

00:32:05 ◼   ► I have Power Nap off as well and I also have Wake for Network Access off.

00:32:08 ◼   ► I have all the things off because I want my machine, as we've discussed in the past, I

00:32:11 ◼   ► want it to stay asleep, but it still wakes up and reminders come in.

00:32:13 ◼   ► So obviously the sleep mode is still awake enough to know that reminders are happening.

00:32:19 ◼   ► And it's prompt.

00:32:20 ◼   ► It's not like a periodic check.

00:32:21 ◼   ► There must be some kind of push.

00:32:22 ◼   ► So like I said, Wake for Network Access is not on, but something is getting through to

00:32:26 ◼   ► it to let it know.

00:32:27 ◼   ► Maybe it's just a timer.

00:32:28 ◼   ► I don't even know what's going on inside there.

00:32:30 ◼   ► But anyway, I wish I could stop it from doing that because all my other devices show the

00:32:35 ◼   ► same reminder.

00:32:37 ◼   ► - We are sponsored this week by Raycon Earbuds.

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00:33:59 ◼   ► [music]

00:34:03 ◼   ► - Apple News has a podcast question mark?

00:34:07 ◼   ► Marco, tell me about this.

00:34:08 ◼   ► - Asterisk.

00:34:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:34:10 ◼   ► - So Apple launched Apple, is it Apple News Today?

00:34:13 ◼   ► Is that what it's called?

00:34:14 ◼   ► Apple News Today?

00:34:15 ◼   ► - I think that's right.

00:34:16 ◼   ► - It has some generic name like that.

00:34:17 ◼   ► Anyway, they called it the Apple Podcast.

00:34:20 ◼   ► - Today at Apple News Today at Apple News.

00:34:22 ◼   ► - By Apple.

00:34:23 ◼   ► - Plus at Apple.

00:34:24 ◼   ► - In Apple News.

00:34:25 ◼   ► - Mark Jacobs presents Mark by Mark Jacobs.

00:34:28 ◼   ► Remember that one?

00:34:29 ◼   ► You remember that one?

00:34:30 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:34:31 ◼   ► Someone put that meme in the chat.

00:34:32 ◼   ► - So this is interesting.

00:34:34 ◼   ► Well, I think the story is a little more interesting than the podcast.

00:34:38 ◼   ► So they launched this new podcast called Apple News Today that is about like eight to 10

00:34:44 ◼   ► minutes a day so far of basically a quick little news recap.

00:34:48 ◼   ► And it seems to be promotion for Apple News and News Plus.

00:34:53 ◼   ► That seems to be the reason they are doing it.

00:34:56 ◼   ► And partially maybe promotion for Apple Podcasts because it is kind of an Apple Podcast exclusive.

00:35:05 ◼   ► And I'll get back to that in a minute.

00:35:07 ◼   ► But the podcast itself is, have you heard it, either of you?

00:35:12 ◼   ► - No.

00:35:13 ◼   ► - Well, you can listen to Novocast, but I'll get to that in a second as well.

00:35:18 ◼   ► So it's kind of fluffy and light and I don't, it's kind of bland to me.

00:35:26 ◼   ► I don't listen to a lot of these kind of podcasts.

00:35:29 ◼   ► But to me it seems kind of like a shorter and worse version of The Daily by the New

00:35:34 ◼   ► York Times.

00:35:36 ◼   ► Like if you listen to, if you want like a once a day quick summary of what's going on

00:35:40 ◼   ► in the news and you want it to have occasional depth and occasional interesting topics and

00:35:45 ◼   ► well produced and have it be made by a major news organization, I think The Daily is a

00:35:50 ◼   ► way better version of this.

00:35:52 ◼   ► If you want a tech version, there's Tech Meme Ride Home and the whole Ride Home network.

00:35:56 ◼   ► There's lots of other things that do this.

00:35:58 ◼   ► Apple News today, I've listened to it so far and honestly I find it really low value.

00:36:05 ◼   ► But it's brand new, they're getting their feet under them, whatever.

00:36:08 ◼   ► Maybe it'll get better down the road.

00:36:10 ◼   ► The more interesting part of this is that this appears to be, to the best of my knowledge,

00:36:15 ◼   ► the first Apple Podcasts exclusive podcast that they have launched.

00:36:20 ◼   ► And the role of podcast business has really heated up a lot over the last few years, especially

00:36:27 ◼   ► in the area of exclusive podcasts.

00:36:30 ◼   ► This is not incredibly new of a concept.

00:36:32 ◼   ► There have been exclusive podcasts before.

00:36:35 ◼   ► Stitcher Premium I think is one of the longest running like exclusive podcast platforms where

00:36:39 ◼   ► they'll like pay celebrities to do their shows there and you know you have to listen

00:36:43 ◼   ► in their app using their paid service or whatever.

00:36:46 ◼   ► Luminary famously raised a bunch of money and set it all on fire and is now setting

00:36:50 ◼   ► even more money on fire trying to reclaim the first pile of money they set on fire which

00:36:54 ◼   ► that is always going to work.

00:36:57 ◼   ► But much more famously Spotify recently has been doing all these tons of deals including

00:37:03 ◼   ► buying Gimlet which disclosure I made some money from.

00:37:07 ◼   ► But also they recently bought Joe Rogan in a very, very large deal.

00:37:11 ◼   ► And so there's all this like you know arms race heating up about exclusive podcasts.

00:37:17 ◼   ► And Apple has been quietly like hiring people to do what kind of sounds like make exclusive

00:37:24 ◼   ► podcasts for a while now and we haven't really heard anything about it or seen any

00:37:29 ◼   ► results of it.

00:37:30 ◼   ► And I think this might be the very first time that we're actually seeing the results of

00:37:32 ◼   ► that.

00:37:33 ◼   ► So Apple News Today is a podcast quote, a podcast that is listed in Apple Podcasts.

00:37:40 ◼   ► But is not seemingly public.

00:37:44 ◼   ► Now there is an asterisk to this.

00:37:48 ◼   ► It kind of gets to like what defines a public podcast?

00:37:53 ◼   ► It has an RSS feed.

00:37:57 ◼   ► I don't know where this RSS feed is listed but it has one and if you know the URL which

00:38:04 ◼   ► 9to5 Mac published anybody can access it and you can add it to any podcast app.

00:38:12 ◼   ► It also has an iTunes ID or slash Apple Podcast they've rebranded it but what used to be called

00:38:17 ◼   ► an iTunes ID where you have like you know the Apple in a podcast.apple.com slash something

00:38:22 ◼   ► something slash ID and then like an eight digit or 10 digit number at the end.

00:38:27 ◼   ► And the way that most podcast apps get their directory you know they get like search results

00:38:32 ◼   ► or what to show or whatever usually they query the iTunes API and you can query it for title,

00:38:39 ◼   ► URL, whatever and it will send you back a list of iTunes entries that have these ID

00:38:45 ◼   ► numbers and they have an entry in them called, it's a JSON dictionary for each one, title,

00:38:51 ◼   ► artist, whatever and then it has an entry called feed URL.

00:38:55 ◼   ► And so normally what every podcast app that I know of except for like a couple of special

00:38:59 ◼   ► cases like Google and Spotify that have their own directories but for the most part like

00:39:02 ◼   ► most podcast apps that you know you would all be familiar with they search the Apple

00:39:06 ◼   ► podcast directory for whatever the user searched for they get that feed URL key out of the

00:39:12 ◼   ► dictionary for each thing that they fetched and then you go to that feed URL directly

00:39:19 ◼   ► and that's the RSS feed and that's where all the actual podcast data is and everything.

00:39:24 ◼   ► So the iTunes directory is serving as only like directory listing to tell you here are

00:39:30 ◼   ► podcasts that exist that are registered with Apple that Apple's staff has like vetted

00:39:36 ◼   ► to be seemingly legit, seemingly not illegal or inappropriate or anything like that.

00:39:42 ◼   ► Here's the RSS feed and then you go to the RSS feed from that point forward and Apple's

00:39:46 ◼   ► no longer in the picture.

00:39:47 ◼   ► So they really are just like a listing service that's telling you here's our RSS feeds

00:39:51 ◼   ► for these podcasts that we think are legit podcasts.

00:39:54 ◼   ► And so the definition of what is a public podcast, the way most people interpret that

00:40:00 ◼   ► is something you can get to in any podcast app.

00:40:04 ◼   ► The more technical side of it seems to be it has to have a public RSS feed.

00:40:08 ◼   ► But realistically if it's not listed on Apple podcast with a public RSS feed it's

00:40:13 ◼   ► not going to seem like a public podcast to most people most of the time.

00:40:17 ◼   ► What Apple news today has is a little bit interesting.

00:40:21 ◼   ► Apple news today has an iTunes ID.

00:40:24 ◼   ► It is playable and searchable in Apple podcasts.

00:40:26 ◼   ► It shows up in the Apple podcast directory even in the API if you search for it.

00:40:31 ◼   ► However, its entry in the API does not have a feed URL.

00:40:36 ◼   ► That's just missing.

00:40:39 ◼   ► So it kind of seems like Apple doesn't want other apps to play this.

00:40:43 ◼   ► Now if one were to manually set in a database in a podcast app this feed URL matches this

00:40:51 ◼   ► iTunes ID if you happen to know the right feed URL and you happen to make it public

00:40:56 ◼   ► it happens to play just fine.

00:40:58 ◼   ► So most podcast apps that have kind of been on top of this story you can now search for

00:41:05 ◼   ► Apple news today and just play it.

00:41:07 ◼   ► And it works because most podcast apps have realized oh we just add this RSS feed and

00:41:13 ◼   ► make it searchable for this title and it will work.

00:41:17 ◼   ► And I think the reason it has an RSS feed that's undocumented and not listed in the

00:41:22 ◼   ► public API is I think Apple wants it to be an exclusive to Apple podcasts because they're

00:41:28 ◼   ► trying to gain some kind of leverage over Spotify which is eating a lot of their market

00:41:32 ◼   ► share in the podcast player space.

00:41:35 ◼   ► But the Apple podcast apps do not do server-side crawling.

00:41:42 ◼   ► They crawl RSS feeds directly.

00:41:44 ◼   ► Apple has some server-side crawling to update its directories and everything but when you

00:41:48 ◼   ► play a podcast in Apple podcasts it is directly crawling the RSS feeds from your app on your

00:41:54 ◼   ► phone or on your Mac or whatever.

00:41:56 ◼   ► And so for the Apple podcast app to be able to play this exclusive podcast without significantly

00:42:03 ◼   ► rewriting it and rewriting some backend server stuff which is probably a bigger project within

00:42:08 ◼   ► Apple than what they can probably get engineering resources for right now.

00:42:13 ◼   ► For it to be playable in their own app they had to give it an RSS feed.

00:42:17 ◼   ► So I think it has one just for that reason and they're just kind of quietly trying to

00:42:24 ◼   ► keep it relatively hidden so the other apps don't all just play it and take away their

00:42:30 ◼   ► slight benefit of having this show be exclusive to them.

00:42:35 ◼   ► So in this way, this attempt at exclusivity to Apple podcasts for a new show that they're

00:42:41 ◼   ► probably going to promote pretty heavily, this one didn't really work.

00:42:45 ◼   ► We can all play it.

00:42:46 ◼   ► Although Spotify can't play it because to be included in Spotify you have to opt in

00:42:51 ◼   ► because Spotify maintains their own directory.

00:42:54 ◼   ► They don't use Apple's and they have their own crap that you have to agree to to be listed

00:42:57 ◼   ► there.

00:42:58 ◼   ► So it won't ever be playable on Spotify in all likelihood but not because Spotify doesn't

00:43:03 ◼   ► know the RSS feed URL.

00:43:04 ◼   ► It's because Apple doesn't agree to be included in Spotify's directory and you have to agree

00:43:08 ◼   ► to it to be included.

00:43:09 ◼   ► But for the most part, for the rest of us, it's this kind of like weird move that Apple

00:43:14 ◼   ► has made that is a little unsettling because Apple has a ton of power in the podcasting

00:43:22 ◼   ► space.

00:43:23 ◼   ► They always have.

00:43:24 ◼   ► They have by far the largest market share of the player.

00:43:27 ◼   ► They have the directory that almost every other app for iOS and even some apps for other

00:43:33 ◼   ► platforms are just kind of not cool.

00:43:34 ◼   ► But even almost every podcast app uses their directory as its directory.

00:43:41 ◼   ► To be in the podcast ecosystem you have to register with Apple basically.

00:43:45 ◼   ► If you don't, you're invisible.

00:43:48 ◼   ► We've been kind of comfortable as an industry with Apple having all this share so far because

00:43:55 ◼   ► they've been pretty benign.

00:43:58 ◼   ► They have all this power but while they mean a lot to podcasting, podcasting doesn't mean

00:44:04 ◼   ► a lot to Apple.

00:44:05 ◼   ► It's a very, very, very small drop in the bucket to Apple the company.

00:44:10 ◼   ► So while they have all this power, the podcasting group seemingly has never really had the resources

00:44:15 ◼   ► to do anything bad with it.

00:44:17 ◼   ► They've never really tried to like lock it down.

00:44:20 ◼   ► They've run this API that allows apps like mine to search their directory, crawl the

00:44:25 ◼   ► directory fairly frequently, fairly aggressively and they don't seem to really care or mind

00:44:32 ◼   ► that all these apps are built on their directory.

00:44:35 ◼   ► They seem to quietly endorse it actually.

00:44:39 ◼   ► They have the biggest podcast player in the world by share so they have just a ton of

00:44:44 ◼   ► power but they have so far been really good at only using that power to participate in

00:44:53 ◼   ► and strengthen the open RSS based public ecosystem of open podcasting.

00:45:00 ◼   ► It's been wonderful.

00:45:01 ◼   ► It's been largely a fluke that podcasting has been as good and as distributed and as

00:45:06 ◼   ► free and independent and open as it is for all this time and it's largely because Apple

00:45:13 ◼   ► has all this power but hasn't ever really done anything with it.

00:45:16 ◼   ► So now they're starting to do something with it and that is a little scary.

00:45:22 ◼   ► The good thing is they don't have like 100% power.

00:45:25 ◼   ► Now their market share is estimated to be roughly about 60% of the player market which

00:45:31 ◼   ► is a ton but 60% is very different from like 90% or 95% or 100%.

00:45:37 ◼   ► They have enough power that they can start wielding it in ways like this with exclusives

00:45:42 ◼   ► and things like that but they probably can't afford to alienate too many people because

00:45:47 ◼   ► they have in a way you can look at it as only 60% market share.

00:45:52 ◼   ► That other 40% is a lot of people.

00:45:55 ◼   ► So I'm hoping this is just like a little, I'm hoping this is a part of some small effort

00:46:01 ◼   ► that Apple gave some money to the podcast team and was like here, make some exclusive.

00:46:06 ◼   ► We're annoyed at Spotify and they're going to probably make a few more of these things.

00:46:12 ◼   ► I hope it doesn't become much more than that and knowing Apple it probably won't

00:46:17 ◼   ► be because again, podcasting is still a drop in the bucket for the company as a whole and

00:46:22 ◼   ► we know that Apple is not great at multitasking and this is probably never going to be a major

00:46:26 ◼   ► focus for the company.

00:46:28 ◼   ► Even in their services push to try to get more services revenue, if you do the math

00:46:32 ◼   ► and you look at like how many people listen to podcasts and how much money could they

00:46:35 ◼   ► possibly make from the podcasting business if they did various scheme, X, Y, or Z, it's

00:46:40 ◼   ► a drop in the bucket for them.

00:46:41 ◼   ► So I don't even think they're going to do much like that.

00:46:43 ◼   ► I don't think there's going to be another like podcast plus service.

00:46:46 ◼   ► I don't think it's going to be like a major thing.

00:46:49 ◼   ► I think they might use it more like this, which is this podcast seems to be a promo

00:46:54 ◼   ► for news plus, but other than that, I hope and I don't think that they're going to

00:47:02 ◼   ► really do anything bad here, but it does give me pause that they did just launch an exclusive

00:47:08 ◼   ► podcast for the first time and they did it in a really basic way.

00:47:13 ◼   ► They kind of like barely even latch the screen door shut, but it's still a notable move

00:47:21 ◼   ► that is a little concerning, but hopefully not going to end up in it as a big deal.

00:47:25 ◼   ► It's kind of weird.

00:47:27 ◼   ► It's like security through the minimum possible amount of obscurity, right?

00:47:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:47:31 ◼   ► We just, we just won't tell you that the URL.

00:47:33 ◼   ► So it's weird for a couple of reasons.

00:47:34 ◼   ► One, if they just want to keep it out of Spotify's hand, as you noted, you don't,

00:47:38 ◼   ► you just don't give it to Spotify then you don't have to like hide the URL and the

00:47:41 ◼   ► iTunes director or anything.

00:47:42 ◼   ► You can just not have it on Spotify.

00:47:44 ◼   ► And you know, it's an Apple podcast cause they pay for its creation.

00:47:47 ◼   ► They pay the host like, you know, it's, it's Apple's property.

00:47:50 ◼   ► Like so they're making their own podcast.

00:47:51 ◼   ► Good for them.

00:47:52 ◼   ► But like let's talk about how would things be different if they had just made it just

00:47:55 ◼   ► like another podcast?

00:47:56 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like things would be different at all.

00:47:58 ◼   ► Like you said, every third party podcast app has figured out the hiding of the URL and

00:48:03 ◼   ► just put connected the URL on their own database.

00:48:05 ◼   ► And it's like, okay, well basically this, this podcast is playable everywhere.

00:48:09 ◼   ► Now.

00:48:10 ◼   ► The real question is, does Apple consider that to be a bad thing?

00:48:12 ◼   ► Will they look up and say, Oh, we actually mostly just wanted this to be playable in

00:48:17 ◼   ► the Apple podcast app, but it looks like everyone has figured out our clever ruse and now it's

00:48:20 ◼   ► playable in all the podcasts app on iOS.

00:48:23 ◼   ► Is that bad?

00:48:24 ◼   ► I don't think it seems like they don't consider that bad because they could have locked it

00:48:27 ◼   ► down a lot harder, but it didn't.

00:48:28 ◼   ► I have a question for Marco though.

00:48:30 ◼   ► I don't know if you know the answer to this, but like how does the Apple podcast app get

00:48:34 ◼   ► the RSS URL?

00:48:35 ◼   ► Is there another API endpoint that gives them that answer?

00:48:37 ◼   ► Is it hard coded into the binary?

00:48:38 ◼   ► Where did they, where does that app get the URL from?

00:48:41 ◼   ► We all know where the third party apps got it from nine to five Mac or whatever, you

00:48:45 ◼   ► know, everyone else got it from just by, by snooping the, uh, you know, the line between

00:48:49 ◼   ► snooping the network.

00:48:50 ◼   ► Basically you can figure out where it's requesting the feed from or like, you know, reading the

00:48:55 ◼   ► SQLite database or something like from the debt from desktop podcast app.

00:48:59 ◼   ► Once you have an app that's requesting an RSS feed, it's pretty hard to hide the URL

00:49:03 ◼   ► is right.

00:49:04 ◼   ► But the point is, uh, where does, where does the podcast app initially get the Apple podcast

00:49:08 ◼   ► app, get the RSS feed URL for the show?

00:49:11 ◼   ► Apple has all sorts of functionality for the podcast app that is not exposed in the public

00:49:16 ◼   ► API.

00:49:17 ◼   ► Um, they also have like a whole sync backend for it to sync your progress between different

00:49:20 ◼   ► devices and everything.

00:49:21 ◼   ► So I'm guessing they have a totally separate API that they use and that the, the iTunes

00:49:27 ◼   ► API, which honestly I'm shocked was ever a thing.

00:49:31 ◼   ► I'm even more shocked.

00:49:32 ◼   ► It's still a thing.

00:49:33 ◼   ► I'm happy it is cause it enables my entire business.

00:49:35 ◼   ► And if the iTunes API went away tomorrow, uh, for podcast lookups, we'd have a pretty significant

00:49:41 ◼   ► problem in our business that we like all of us would have to solve somehow.

00:49:45 ◼   ► Um, but as far as I can tell, I, it seemed like this like weird one off thing that they

00:49:51 ◼   ► made this API back forever ago when like for like the iTunes music store and for some reason

00:49:55 ◼   ► they still run it and we're all very thankful.

00:49:57 ◼   ► But anyway, um, I'm guessing that they have their own separate API for this, for their,

00:50:00 ◼   ► for their own clients.

00:50:01 ◼   ► Cause it had like their clients have so much more functionality and authenticated API.

00:50:04 ◼   ► I mean not just an open API like that.

00:50:06 ◼   ► You can't actually use that API cause it's authenticated using secrets of the Apple podcast

00:50:10 ◼   ► have has, but you don't yada yada all that business.

00:50:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:50:13 ◼   ► I mean it also could be, I mean given, given the relative lack of technical sophistication

00:50:19 ◼   ► of this exclusive content, it could also be as simple as like they might have just a different

00:50:23 ◼   ► user agent check or something on the API.

00:50:25 ◼   ► So if you pretended to be Apple podcast app, that that field will be filled in with your

00:50:30 ◼   ► response.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:50:32 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know.

00:50:33 ◼   ► That wouldn't surprise me either.

00:50:34 ◼   ► But I think the podcast team within Apple, they don't seem like they get a lot of attention

00:50:37 ◼   ► and resources from the parent company.

00:50:39 ◼   ► Like it seemed, it's always seen like this kind of like wonderful, incredibly benign

00:50:43 ◼   ► and useful side project that's enabled this wonderful entire industry, but that Apple

00:50:48 ◼   ► has never given a ton of resources to so that it could ever be anything evil or bad.

00:50:53 ◼   ► It's been wonderful.

00:50:54 ◼   ► I'm so happy it's been this way.

00:50:56 ◼   ► You know, everyone listening to this show, everyone listening to podcasts today owes

00:51:00 ◼   ► a lot of that to that exact dynamic of the podcast business being mostly locked up by

00:51:06 ◼   ► Apple in terms of market share and power, but that Apple has just kept it as a, you

00:51:12 ◼   ► know, participating and enabling member of the completely open RSS based ecosystem as

00:51:17 ◼   ► opposed to making something totally locked down where it was all proprietary and everything,

00:51:21 ◼   ► which is what everyone else does with podcasts.

00:51:22 ◼   ► That's what Spotify does.

00:51:23 ◼   ► That's what Google does.

00:51:24 ◼   ► That's what Stitcher tried to do.

00:51:26 ◼   ► Like it's, everyone else is trying that method.

00:51:29 ◼   ► Spotify is having quite a bit of success with it actually.

00:51:31 ◼   ► They're having a scary amount of success, but the world of podcasting being as awesome

00:51:37 ◼   ► and free and open as it is owes that in almost entirety to Apple and to the way Apple has

00:51:44 ◼   ► treated this.

00:51:45 ◼   ► So if that dynamic is going to change with an Apple, that is scary to all of us.

00:51:50 ◼   ► But fortunately it has gotten so big and so mature and so diverse during that time that

00:51:58 ◼   ► I don't think, you know, as I was saying with like Apple having, you know, quote only

00:52:01 ◼   ► 60% market share now, I think it's so big and so diverse now that they won't be able

00:52:07 ◼   ► to screw it up too badly even if they try to.

00:52:10 ◼   ► And hopefully they won't even try to because, you know, among like the people, I've met

00:52:15 ◼   ► a couple of the people who work in Apple podcasts and they have their heads on straight.

00:52:21 ◼   ► Like they know what they are, they know what they do, they know their importance and they

00:52:26 ◼   ► seem to embrace their role in the open ecosystem and they seem to have good intentions.

00:52:34 ◼   ► It's ultimately, I think they're generally in good hands and I think they're going

00:52:40 ◼   ► to stay a small enough part of the company by like revenue and importance that they probably

00:52:46 ◼   ► won't get anything screwed up too badly.

00:52:48 ◼   ► It's funny actually, I had a chance to meet Eddy Cue once extremely briefly.

00:52:54 ◼   ► We were like walking past each other in the press area once and the only thing I told

00:52:59 ◼   ► him was, you know, hi, I'm Marco, overcast, blah, blah, blah.

00:53:01 ◼   ► And I said, thank you for not ruining podcasts and please keep it up.

00:53:08 ◼   ► He said, you too.

00:53:09 ◼   ► I don't know if he knew who I was.

00:53:10 ◼   ► I mentioned podcasts to him.

00:53:11 ◼   ► He's like, I haven't ruined that.

00:53:12 ◼   ► Wait a second.

00:53:13 ◼   ► Hold on a second.

00:53:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:16 ◼   ► Podcasting owes its entire existence to Eddy Cue basically.

00:53:20 ◼   ► The benign neglect of Eddy Cue.

00:53:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:22 ◼   ► Yes.

00:53:23 ◼   ► He's a very busy man and this is why we are how we are.

00:53:27 ◼   ► He's too busy to deal with podcasts any more intrusively than what we have now, which is

00:53:32 ◼   ► good.

00:53:33 ◼   ► Leave it alone, please.

00:53:34 ◼   ► You mentioned that it might be like a problem if the iTunes podcast director went away,

00:53:39 ◼   ► but that's like a classic Christ-tunity there.

00:53:41 ◼   ► So first of all, right now we have a problem in the open podcast ecosystem that Apple owns

00:53:46 ◼   ► the directory.

00:53:47 ◼   ► It's not a big problem because like you said, they've been good and a good benevolent

00:53:51 ◼   ► dictator is better than an evil dictator, right?

00:53:53 ◼   ► But still dictator.

00:53:55 ◼   ► For it to be truly open, there should be an open directory, right?

00:53:57 ◼   ► So let's say one day someone at Apple changes their mind and says, you know what?

00:54:01 ◼   ► Forget about it.

00:54:02 ◼   ► The iTunes podcast directory is proprietary.

00:54:05 ◼   ► You don't have access to it.

00:54:06 ◼   ► Third party people, tough luck, right?

00:54:08 ◼   ► The good thing for us and the bad thing for Apple is that it has been open for so long

00:54:13 ◼   ► that many, many people have copies of that directory as of the second they shut the door,

00:54:18 ◼   ► right?

00:54:19 ◼   ► You have one.

00:54:20 ◼   ► Lots of other people have one.

00:54:21 ◼   ► We have the info, right?

00:54:22 ◼   ► And so from that point on, you could go in two possible directions out here.

00:54:26 ◼   ► The good path would be, oh, everyone gets together in the open podcast ecosystem and

00:54:31 ◼   ► collaborates on some open podcast directory that no one company owns or controls and it's

00:54:35 ◼   ► a collaborative exercise.

00:54:36 ◼   ► It's all touchy feely granola and everybody just shares the directory, right?

00:54:41 ◼   ► And what that would mean, it would be worse for podcasts because they'd be like, oh,

00:54:44 ◼   ► you have to add yourself to the iTunes directory and also the open podcast directory because

00:54:47 ◼   ► if you want to be playable in the other 40% of podcast apps, you got to be in the open

00:54:51 ◼   ► directory and if you want to be playable in Apple's thing, you got to add to the iTunes

00:54:54 ◼   ► directory.

00:54:55 ◼   ► And then also I just have to Spotify if you care about that, right?

00:54:58 ◼   ► That would be bad, but at least we would have dislodged ourselves as a community from Apple

00:55:03 ◼   ► controlling the directory because we'd have the open directory, which started as an exact

00:55:06 ◼   ► match of the iTunes directory and from there expanded in fits and starts and it would be

00:55:11 ◼   ► a battle to actually get people to know that the open directory exists, get people to submit

00:55:14 ◼   ► to it.

00:55:15 ◼   ► It would be hard, but I feel like you could do it.

00:55:18 ◼   ► In fact, if you were very successful, you could get to the point where people only submitted

00:55:22 ◼   ► to the open podcast directory and Apple started reading from the open podcast directory to

00:55:25 ◼   ► populate its, you know what I mean?

00:55:26 ◼   ► Like that would be the tremendous success scenario.

00:55:29 ◼   ► So then you've dislodged yourself, like podcasts are like Usenet now and it's all open and

00:55:35 ◼   ► free and peer to peer and just, you know.

00:55:37 ◼   ► The bad thing that could happen, which is probably more likely knowing the world the

00:55:41 ◼   ► way it is, as they close the doors, everyone's got a copy of it and some new proprietary

00:55:46 ◼   ► company springs up and says, "We're going to be the new Apple.

00:55:49 ◼   ► We're going to be the new private company that controls the podcast directory for the

00:55:52 ◼   ► outside world," because Apple's keeping their directory to themselves.

00:55:55 ◼   ► So now we'll be the new evil dictator out here for the "open directory" world.

00:55:59 ◼   ► Haha, everyone has to submit to us because we have a hundred million dollar VC money

00:56:03 ◼   ► to advertise to the whole world that we're the new open podcasting directory.

00:56:07 ◼   ► If you want your podcast to be listed anywhere except for Apple's app, you have to list to

00:56:10 ◼   ► us and they spend their hundreds of million dollars to spread that message and eventually

00:56:14 ◼   ► everybody does that and now they're the evil company that controls it, right?

00:56:19 ◼   ► We have that.

00:56:20 ◼   ► That would be Spotify.

00:56:21 ◼   ► That's how that would go.

00:56:22 ◼   ► Right, but they're not even pretending to be open.

00:56:23 ◼   ► This company would totally be like, "Oh, we're the new Apple.

00:56:27 ◼   ► We're the new for the open podcasting world," because all they would be is a directory.

00:56:31 ◼   ► They wouldn't be a service.

00:56:32 ◼   ► They wouldn't be like Spotify.

00:56:33 ◼   ► Their whole play would be, "We're just a directory and we don't charge you any money and everything's

00:56:37 ◼   ► open."

00:56:38 ◼   ► They would spend all their VC money to get to the point where they can start turning

00:56:42 ◼   ► the screws, but they would just be a directory, right?

00:56:44 ◼   ► That's the evil person.

00:56:45 ◼   ► I mean, I think there are companies that are trying.

00:56:48 ◼   ► They're just really small and nobody really cares.

00:56:50 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:56:51 ◼   ► It's because Apple's directory is open.

00:56:53 ◼   ► How are you going to compete with?

00:56:55 ◼   ► Right.

00:56:56 ◼   ► So obviously the scenario of benevolent Apple controlling directory is way better than the

00:57:02 ◼   ► evil dictatorial other company, but the longer this goes on, the more I kind of wish that

00:57:10 ◼   ► podcasting was as open as the web or – I mean, the web is a problem too.

00:57:15 ◼   ► This is the problem with open stuff where you want to direct your things.

00:57:18 ◼   ► Podcasts are small enough that you can imagine having an open directory, again, like Usenet

00:57:22 ◼   ► groups and everything, where – I mean, I don't know the technical details about Usenet

00:57:27 ◼   ► works, but having distributed – I guess DNS is similar.

00:57:31 ◼   ► Any of these things where there's a directory, it's a problem.

00:57:32 ◼   ► The web, you say, "Oh, the web is open.

00:57:34 ◼   ► Anyone can put up a website," but the web is so big that you need these huge billion-dollar

00:57:38 ◼   ► companies to bank a search engine from and then you get something like Google, where

00:57:41 ◼   ► yeah, technically the web is open, but if you want to find anything out, you're going

00:57:45 ◼   ► through some company that has to have some way to make money because it's such a big

00:57:48 ◼   ► job.

00:57:49 ◼   ► But a podcast directory in the grand scheme of things is not that big.

00:57:51 ◼   ► Like someone could start a Patreon and run a podcast directory for the entire internet.

00:57:55 ◼   ► Well, I wouldn't assume that.

00:57:59 ◼   ► If only people would submit to them, that's the problem.

00:58:01 ◼   ► But like the actual volume of data, like the number of podcasts in the world is way smaller

00:58:06 ◼   ► than the number of web pages and does not grow as fast.

00:58:08 ◼   ► So I think the actual volume of data is such that you could get a reasonable AWS bill that

00:58:14 ◼   ► you could pay with a well-supported Patreon and have a small couple-person company that

00:58:19 ◼   ► runs it.

00:58:20 ◼   ► It's just that no one would send you your podcast.

00:58:21 ◼   ► That's the big challenge.

00:58:22 ◼   ► That's why the VC people are dangerous there.

00:58:24 ◼   ► Well, there are a few exacerbating factors here with podcasting.

00:58:27 ◼   ► So first of all, it's way more of a human problem than an engineering problem.

00:58:32 ◼   ► Your AWS bill is going to be a drop in the bucket compared to your staffing because the

00:58:36 ◼   ► way that, like one of the biggest, most important things the Apple directory does is vet stuff

00:58:42 ◼   ► and keep out a large amount, not 100%, but a large amount of spam and illegal stuff and

00:58:50 ◼   ► you know, porn stuff that you don't want to deal with.

00:58:52 ◼   ► They do a lot.

00:58:54 ◼   ► And to do that, it wouldn't surprise me if the approval editorial side of the Apple Podcasts

00:59:01 ◼   ► team is larger significantly than the engineering side.

00:59:05 ◼   ► I bet it is.

00:59:06 ◼   ► I don't know that, but I bet it is because they have to have people who speak every language

00:59:11 ◼   ► going through probably thousands of podcast submissions every day or week figuring out

00:59:17 ◼   ► like which of these are legit that we should enable in our directory and which of them

00:59:21 ◼   ► are just like, you know, bots or scams or like, you know, copies of other people's podcasts

00:59:27 ◼   ► that this person's uploading illegally as their own or porn stuff.

00:59:31 ◼   ► There's so much that they don't allow in the directory that they filter out with human

00:59:36 ◼   ► review.

00:59:37 ◼   ► So you have to have a lot of humans in a lot of different regions and cultures and languages

00:59:42 ◼   ► to be able to adequately review those things.

00:59:44 ◼   ► And then there has to be some kind of way where like, when you have a directory, you're

00:59:50 ◼   ► going to have disputes, you're going to have problems, you're going to have claims, you're

00:59:54 ◼   ► going to have to have people who, again, who know all these languages, who can respond

00:59:58 ◼   ► to claims and disputes from all over the world for all different kinds of language content

01:00:02 ◼   ► and who have to resolve disputes.

01:00:03 ◼   ► When somebody says, "Hey, that's my podcast," and someone else copied it, somebody has to

01:00:06 ◼   ► resolve that dispute.

01:00:08 ◼   ► If somebody files a DMCA report, you got to look at it and you got to figure like, is

01:00:11 ◼   ► this legit?

01:00:12 ◼   ► Like, you know, is it, if they file a trademark dispute, you got to look at that.

01:00:15 ◼   ► So like this, it's a very like human, messy, expensive thing to run.

01:00:20 ◼   ► In a way, Apple, again, like part of the reason Apple has done a great service to the

01:00:23 ◼   ► podcast and business is it would never be possible for apps like mine that have a one

01:00:29 ◼   ► person staff to ever have anything close to a legitimate, useful directory that isn't

01:00:36 ◼   ► full of like, it doesn't just get spammed constantly.

01:00:39 ◼   ► Like, it's already hard enough.

01:00:40 ◼   ► Like, I had to, there were like some, you know, weird like dangerous, hateful podcasts

01:00:48 ◼   ► that got through Apple's directory that I had to remove over time from like, that had

01:00:54 ◼   ► like, you know, omit from overcast promotional areas.

01:00:56 ◼   ► Because like, you know, you don't want them showing up like in, like in, in your like,

01:00:59 ◼   ► "Hey, you might like this crazy hate content over here."

01:01:03 ◼   ► You know, so like even, even me keeping up with that is nearly impossible as one person.

01:01:08 ◼   ► To have all the, the entire world of podcasting go into your directory and submitting stuff

01:01:14 ◼   ► all the time and to have so many apps like mine just kind of assuming that if it's

01:01:18 ◼   ► in the Apple podcast directory, it's probably not going to cause problems for me to display

01:01:23 ◼   ► to my app.

01:01:24 ◼   ► Like, you know, even simple stuff like, I don't want, if you search for certain keywords,

01:01:28 ◼   ► it would be kind of bad if somebody's artwork had like porn in it.

01:01:32 ◼   ► That would be something I'd have to deal with.

01:01:33 ◼   ► And with Apple podcasts, I don't have to deal with that because they are very strict

01:01:36 ◼   ► about that.

01:01:37 ◼   ► They have rules against it.

01:01:38 ◼   ► They have people reviewing it.

01:01:39 ◼   ► And so as a result, I don't really have to worry that my app might accidentally display

01:01:42 ◼   ► porn when somebody doesn't want to see it because it's all from this review directory.

01:01:47 ◼   ► So you have to have people looking for that.

01:01:48 ◼   ► You have to have people responding to those.

01:01:50 ◼   ► So there's all those issues.

01:01:52 ◼   ► And then there's also this weird, really obnoxious podcast producer cultural issue regarding

01:02:00 ◼   ► RSS feed locations and RSS feed changes.

01:02:08 ◼   ► So when you are on any other part of the web, suppose you make a website.

01:02:15 ◼   ► Suppose we're in the bad old days of GeoCities where most people did not own their own domain

01:02:21 ◼   ► name.

01:02:22 ◼   ► So if you made a blog somewhere, your blog was some service name dot com slash some directory

01:02:29 ◼   ► slash your user ID.

01:02:32 ◼   ► And imagine you wanted to change hosts.

01:02:34 ◼   ► Well, you would create a new one and you would move everything over and the only way for

01:02:40 ◼   ► your old audience to find you at the new place would be if you either left a link up forever

01:02:46 ◼   ► and left that old account open or if the old account host was willing to do a redirect,

01:02:50 ◼   ► which most of them weren't, it was kind of crappy.

01:02:53 ◼   ► And so in order to mitigate this, people eventually learned who produced websites professionally,

01:02:59 ◼   ► "Hey, we should own our own domain names and then we can point that to whatever host

01:03:03 ◼   ► we're on."

01:03:05 ◼   ► And if we happen to change where URL is, we can implement something called an HTTP redirect.

01:03:11 ◼   ► What a great concept.

01:03:13 ◼   ► You can even specify in the redirect whether this is a temporary redirect or a permanent

01:03:16 ◼   ► one.

01:03:17 ◼   ► So if you move your site from one URL to another one, you can have the old one send a 301 redirect

01:03:22 ◼   ► that says a permanent redirect and then sites that have any kind of bot or app or bookmark

01:03:28 ◼   ► or whatever to your old one should then be updated to point to the new one.

01:03:32 ◼   ► And it's right there in the spec, it's technical and it's clear.

01:03:36 ◼   ► That's not how podcast RSS feeds are treated in the real world almost ever.

01:03:42 ◼   ► Podcast RSS feeds in the real world are treated the way web hosting used to be treated, where

01:03:46 ◼   ► people host like big to small, lots of podcasts, they host their RSS feed at some service that's

01:03:54 ◼   ► giving them analytics or ad insertion or something.

01:03:59 ◼   ► The RSS feed is almost never on your publisher's domain name.

01:04:03 ◼   ► It is almost always at some stupid service.

01:04:07 ◼   ► And then when their business unit changes and they want to go to a different service

01:04:11 ◼   ► or if it's a novice and they're like, "Hey, I always in this free thing.

01:04:14 ◼   ► I've hit their limits.

01:04:15 ◼   ► Now I'm going to my own WordPress site or whatever."

01:04:18 ◼   ► They got to move their feed.

01:04:19 ◼   ► They don't do redirects ever, ever, ever.

01:04:23 ◼   ► I don't know why.

01:04:25 ◼   ► This part of the web and the way it works technically and moving hosts around never

01:04:32 ◼   ► reached the podcast business.

01:04:34 ◼   ► The way people do redirects in the podcast world is they go to Apple and they say, "Change

01:04:40 ◼   ► my RSS feed from the old thing to this new address."

01:04:44 ◼   ► And they expect every single other app to update as a result.

01:04:50 ◼   ► And we have to.

01:04:51 ◼   ► For a while, Overcast didn't for the first couple of years or few years and it was a

01:04:54 ◼   ► constant problem and I had to eventually build in the support for these quote redirects where

01:04:59 ◼   ► the Apple ID just points to a different URL now and there is no HTTP redirect in place

01:05:03 ◼   ► for it.

01:05:04 ◼   ► It's just now the ID goes somewhere else and I have to account for that.

01:05:07 ◼   ► I have to poll them every so often to see if they've moved and when they have moved,

01:05:12 ◼   ► I have to change my feed.

01:05:14 ◼   ► I'm crawling.

01:05:15 ◼   ► It's this weird administrative redirect basically.

01:05:20 ◼   ► And also, that can be done not only by people in their interface but sometimes they have

01:05:27 ◼   ► to email Apple and say, "Hey, I lost control of my podcast account.

01:05:31 ◼   ► Can you please reassign it with this new feed?"

01:05:34 ◼   ► Some human at Apple Podcasts has to evaluate that and see is this legit?

01:05:38 ◼   ► Is this a scam?

01:05:39 ◼   ► Did this person really lose access?

01:05:41 ◼   ► Are they trying to take control of someone else's feed?

01:05:44 ◼   ► So it's a really messy problem.

01:05:46 ◼   ► And podcasters on a whole, they see Apple Podcasts as it.

01:05:52 ◼   ► That is the entire world to them.

01:05:55 ◼   ► And their podcast exists not as a URL of an RSS feed but as an entry in Apple Podcasts

01:06:01 ◼   ► that they can point to whatever they want to point to at any given time and not worry

01:06:05 ◼   ► about the HTTP backend of everything.

01:06:08 ◼   ► So that would be yet another thing that if the Apple Podcasts directory became closed,

01:06:14 ◼   ► we would be screwed on that.

01:06:16 ◼   ► The rest of us out here, we would be totally screwed on people doing these administrative

01:06:20 ◼   ► redirects because they would just never tell us.

01:06:24 ◼   ► Whatever directory we would launch instead or try to assemble, they would never tell

01:06:28 ◼   ► us.

01:06:29 ◼   ► Well, it feels like all this stuff can be overcome.

01:06:31 ◼   ► Everything you described is true but the internet itself has a long history of solving these

01:06:35 ◼   ► exact problems.

01:06:36 ◼   ► They're going to go back to Usenet, which I don't know the deep technical details

01:06:38 ◼   ► of, but it was very similar in that, "Oh, anybody can make a news group."

01:06:41 ◼   ► Or, "How are you going to stop people from making a million news groups?

01:06:43 ◼   ► How are you going to stop people from making porn news groups?"

01:06:45 ◼   ► The answer is you have a bunch of administrators of various servers who basically work for

01:06:48 ◼   ► free and making a news group had a process and just a bunch of unpaid people collaborating

01:06:55 ◼   ► to make sure that there aren't a million news groups in porn.

01:06:57 ◼   ► Well, they just made a bunch of porn news groups and they're over there if you want

01:06:59 ◼   ► to find them and they're sectioned off.

01:07:01 ◼   ► Later in the more modern internet times, Wikipedia has basically every problem you just described.

01:07:06 ◼   ► The biggest one to overcome is how do you get people to update stuff in Wikipedia?

01:07:09 ◼   ► And that's like, if podcast producers only tell iTunes about the update, why would they

01:07:13 ◼   ► tell some open directory?

01:07:14 ◼   ► Well, they tell some open directory because they want the other 40% of the podcast players

01:07:17 ◼   ► to be able to hear their content.

01:07:18 ◼   ► And it's annoying for them and now they have to tell two places.

01:07:21 ◼   ► But again, if you do a good job of it, you can shift the center of gravity so that the

01:07:25 ◼   ► podcast producers just start updating the open one and then Apple pulls from the open

01:07:28 ◼   ► one because the open one can't pull from Apple because they closed it down.

01:07:31 ◼   ► But all these problems, spam, porn, how do I pay all these people, verification, like

01:07:36 ◼   ► Wikipedia has all those problems in spades and Wikipedia is not perfect, far from it.

01:07:40 ◼   ► But it's a much larger scale system than a podcast directory in terms of sheer number

01:07:44 ◼   ► of entries.

01:07:46 ◼   ► Probably even just in English, it's this huge, large, multiple languages and all this stuff.

01:07:51 ◼   ► These are solvable problems.

01:07:52 ◼   ► We have a way as a community based on open standards with a bunch of loosely assembled

01:07:57 ◼   ► volunteers to provide this public good on the internet, which is this relatively small

01:08:01 ◼   ► in the grand scheme of things directory full of podcast information.

01:08:05 ◼   ► But getting from where we are now to there has this dangerous middle area where lots

01:08:09 ◼   ► of things can go wrong and it's much more straightforward for someone to get a few hundred

01:08:13 ◼   ► million dollars of VC money and advertise that they're the new "open podcast directory"

01:08:17 ◼   ► and get everyone to start submitting to them and pay people, like you said, to do all the

01:08:21 ◼   ► things you described the old fashioned way just by giving people money and then get everybody

01:08:25 ◼   ► to do that and get everybody to stop sending it to Apple and then start turning the screws

01:08:28 ◼   ► and mess with everybody.

01:08:30 ◼   ► So I agree that there's lots of danger between where we are now and that goal, but every

01:08:35 ◼   ► time I think about Apple having that much power and us just relying on their kindness

01:08:41 ◼   ► and their good sense.

01:08:42 ◼   ► Like someday all those people with kindness and good sense are going to retire and hopefully

01:08:45 ◼   ► they hire people behind them who also have kindness and good sense.

01:08:49 ◼   ► But in the end, like you said earlier, we're mostly protected by the fact that the amount

01:08:55 ◼   ► of money that podcasts can ever add to Apple's bottom line is insignificant as far as they're

01:09:00 ◼   ► concerned so they'll never pursue it unless they get much much much smaller or spin off

01:09:05 ◼   ► the podcast business or something terrible like that.

01:09:07 ◼   ► But I don't know, I do dwell on it because an open podcast directory is absolutely a

01:09:12 ◼   ► thing that could exist with systems that have been proven to work.

01:09:15 ◼   ► It's just very difficult to get from where we are to there.

01:09:18 ◼   ► In conclusion, please Eddie, never retire.

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01:10:45 ◼   ► And video's going to buy Arm?

01:10:48 ◼   ► Arm I forget who owns Arm now.

01:10:50 ◼   ► Is it Softbank?

01:10:51 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:10:52 ◼   ► That's right.

01:10:53 ◼   ► The ownership gets passed around but apparently the company that owns it is thinking of something

01:10:56 ◼   ► like selling Arm.

01:10:57 ◼   ► And this is all just rumor stuff.

01:10:59 ◼   ► One of the rumored potential buyers is Nvidia.

01:11:01 ◼   ► And I just want to touch on this briefly because for a couple of reasons.

01:11:05 ◼   ► One, Apple is not super duper friendly with Nvidia.

01:11:08 ◼   ► If you haven't noticed over the past years, decades, or whatever, why exactly?

01:11:14 ◼   ► There's all sorts of reasons.

01:11:15 ◼   ► There's business reasons.

01:11:16 ◼   ► There's technical reasons.

01:11:17 ◼   ► Back when Steve Jobs was around, there was personal reasons.

01:11:20 ◼   ► But the bottom line is you don't see a lot of Nvidia GPUs in Macs for a long time and

01:11:25 ◼   ► they're not buddy-buddy.

01:11:26 ◼   ► So the question is, what if Nvidia buys Arm?

01:11:29 ◼   ► I'm forgetting the second slide why Nvidia might want to buy Arm.

01:11:32 ◼   ► Whatever.

01:11:33 ◼   ► What if they buy it?

01:11:34 ◼   ► Could that be potentially harmful for Apple?

01:11:36 ◼   ► And the quick answer is well, no.

01:11:38 ◼   ► Apple's got an architecture license.

01:11:40 ◼   ► They're all set.

01:11:41 ◼   ► They can make chips.

01:11:42 ◼   ► They don't need Arm for anything except for this license which I don't know if this is

01:11:46 ◼   ► rumor or truth but it's a perpetual license or whatever.

01:11:49 ◼   ► Apple was an early investor in Arm.

01:11:51 ◼   ► Whoever buys Arm, they're not stopping Apple from continuing to make "Apple Silicon chips."

01:11:56 ◼   ► Which, by the way, are Arm.

01:11:58 ◼   ► Apple just doesn't want to say that but whatever.

01:12:01 ◼   ► So yeah, whoever buys Arm, not a big deal for Apple.

01:12:03 ◼   ► But that's just short-term thinking.

01:12:05 ◼   ► If you think on the scale that Apple thinks and maybe in this next item we'll talk about

01:12:08 ◼   ► the scale that Apple thinks, you're fine until and unless the eventuality that I've talked

01:12:17 ◼   ► about many times actually comes to pass which is what if Arm becomes the next x86 as in

01:12:23 ◼   ► eventually the whole industry moves to it.

01:12:25 ◼   ► If we're coming out of right now a long period of time where x86 was it, like personal computers

01:12:30 ◼   ► use it, eventually it came to dominate on the server, it was just everywhere.

01:12:33 ◼   ► It was so everywhere that Apple switched to it.

01:12:35 ◼   ► It was just x86 was everywhere.

01:12:37 ◼   ► And Apple during that time gained a lot of benefit and added a lot of value to its product

01:12:43 ◼   ► by selling you a thing that could also virtualize your server.

01:12:48 ◼   ► Because hey, if you have an Intel Mac, an x86 Mac and use x86 on your servers, you want

01:12:53 ◼   ► to run a virtualization environment on your laptop that runs Linux at more or less full

01:12:59 ◼   ► speed so you can test your stuff that you're going to run on your x86 servers, great, that

01:13:03 ◼   ► works great.

01:13:04 ◼   ► What if you want to run Windows?

01:13:05 ◼   ► Hey, we can run Windows at full speed.

01:13:08 ◼   ► You can reboot into it, you can run it at virtualization.

01:13:11 ◼   ► That added value to Apple's Intel Macs.

01:13:13 ◼   ► That's part of the reason they switched to Intel.

01:13:16 ◼   ► As we come out of the Intel/Wintel x86 Everywhere era now, we're not in an era where everything

01:13:22 ◼   ► runs Arm.

01:13:23 ◼   ► We're in this weird place where PCs and servers are on x86.

01:13:28 ◼   ► All the billions of mobile devices run Arm.

01:13:30 ◼   ► Apple runs Arm and it's kind of split up here.

01:13:34 ◼   ► But if we eventually get to a place where everything's Arm, there's Arm on the server,

01:13:38 ◼   ► all the phones and tablets run Arm, all PCs run Arm and they run Arm on Windows, right?

01:13:43 ◼   ► All the game consoles are on Arm.

01:13:45 ◼   ► Just everybody goes to Arm.

01:13:46 ◼   ► It becomes as saturated with Arm as it was in x86.

01:13:51 ◼   ► If that comes to pass, which is still an open question whether we would ever get there,

01:13:54 ◼   ► but if it did, Apple's products would gain value by being a place where you could virtualize

01:14:00 ◼   ► your server environment, run Windows, do all the things.

01:14:03 ◼   ► That would add value to Apple products.

01:14:04 ◼   ► Like I said, if they have a perpetual license, all right, they're fine.

01:14:07 ◼   ► They don't care who owns Arm, they're good, right?

01:14:09 ◼   ► What Apple would be worried about for the long term is what happens when the Arm equivalent

01:14:15 ◼   ► of x86-64 comes along.

01:14:16 ◼   ► I don't mean literally 64-bit because obviously Arm is already 64-bit, but that's something

01:14:20 ◼   ► that happened in the x86 world.

01:14:23 ◼   ► Intel had x86 and they wanted to go through an architecture transition to what they thought

01:14:28 ◼   ► was going to be the successor, which was not x86-64.

01:14:31 ◼   ► It was the whole Itanium thing.

01:14:33 ◼   ► But anyway, they were going to make an advance.

01:14:36 ◼   ► It turns out their advance was crappy for a variety of technical and business reasons

01:14:40 ◼   ► didn't take off.

01:14:41 ◼   ► But AMD came up with x86-64, which was a more straightforward 64-bit enhancement of x86.

01:14:47 ◼   ► That turned out to be the thing that the whole industry moved to.

01:14:49 ◼   ► When we say Intel Max today, they're all running x86-64.

01:14:52 ◼   ► It's not just x86, right?

01:14:56 ◼   ► If Arm ever does something like that, where like, "Oh, here's the next leap in the Arm

01:15:00 ◼   ► instruction set," and everybody adopts that except for Apple.

01:15:05 ◼   ► Like they say, "Okay, well, you know, all you Arm servers, this is the next leap.

01:15:08 ◼   ► This is our next instruction set.

01:15:10 ◼   ► It's the new variant of Arm.

01:15:12 ◼   ► It's incompatible with the old variant, but it's our new next step.

01:15:15 ◼   ► And it's a new architecture and it's new IP."

01:15:16 ◼   ► And Apple doesn't have a license to it.

01:15:19 ◼   ► If someone that Apple doesn't like, or someone that doesn't like Apple, owns Arm during that

01:15:26 ◼   ► time, they have the ability to turn the screws on Apple and say, "Well, you have a choice

01:15:30 ◼   ► now, Apple.

01:15:31 ◼   ► You can continue to make your own chips however the hell you want it.

01:15:33 ◼   ► You don't need us.

01:15:34 ◼   ► You have great chip designers.

01:15:35 ◼   ► Technically, you don't need us.

01:15:36 ◼   ► But if you do that, you no longer can run easily or at all in virtualization this new

01:15:42 ◼   ► Arm instruction set that's going to come out 20 years from now that's incompatible with

01:15:45 ◼   ► the current one."

01:15:46 ◼   ► In the same way that x864 was incompatible with, obviously it was a 6430-bit transition.

01:15:53 ◼   ► But anyway, you can imagine if someone owns Arm and they do that and they become the new

01:15:57 ◼   ► Intel, they will make advancements in their instruction set.

01:16:00 ◼   ► And if they won't license that, if Apple's license doesn't include that, because it's

01:16:03 ◼   ► very easy to make something that Apple's license doesn't include some entirely new thing, that's

01:16:07 ◼   ► a problem for Apple.

01:16:08 ◼   ► And that would force them to make a choice.

01:16:10 ◼   ► They would either have to pay the money to this company that owns the new Arm instruction

01:16:15 ◼   ► set or they'd have to go off on their own.

01:16:17 ◼   ► And neither one of those is particularly attractive.

01:16:20 ◼   ► Now, maybe Apple's not thinking that far in advance.

01:16:23 ◼   ► Or maybe Apple already has enough of a stake in the company that they feel like, you know,

01:16:28 ◼   ► Apple's ace in the hole here is, "No matter what happens with this whole Arm deal, at

01:16:33 ◼   ► any point we can just buy them, right?"

01:16:34 ◼   ► And they could say, "Yeah, whoever owns them, at any point if they become a problem for

01:16:38 ◼   ► us we can just dump money on their head and now we've solved this problem."

01:16:42 ◼   ► Because in the grand scheme of things, Arm is a tiny fraction of Apple's size.

01:16:46 ◼   ► And they can always do that.

01:16:47 ◼   ► But the question in the near term is, "Do we want to do that now, just to nip this problem

01:16:52 ◼   ► in the bud and just buy up Arm's business just to protect future stuff?"

01:16:57 ◼   ► And the reason I mention this is because if Apple was going to go its own way with its

01:17:03 ◼   ► own instruction set, now would have been the time that they did that.

01:17:07 ◼   ► But they didn't.

01:17:08 ◼   ► They moved the Macs to Arm, all their other things were on Arm.

01:17:13 ◼   ► It's Arm.

01:17:14 ◼   ► Like, it's compatible.

01:17:16 ◼   ► The Arm instruction set is not an Apple proprietary instruction set.

01:17:20 ◼   ► They don't control it.

01:17:22 ◼   ► They influence the instruction set probably in a strong way by suggesting perhaps that

01:17:26 ◼   ► Arm should include this instruction, which is useful for that type of thing.

01:17:29 ◼   ► But technically speaking, they don't 100% own and control the Arm instruction set, right?

01:17:35 ◼   ► Even though they call them Apple Silicon chips, because the chips themselves are Apples.

01:17:38 ◼   ► But the instruction set they run is a variant of Arm that you can look up and standardize

01:17:43 ◼   ► and everything.

01:17:44 ◼   ► So I'm interested in this negotiation and sale just to see if Apple cares enough now

01:17:50 ◼   ► to just say, "Look, if we just buy them now, we don't have to worry about this anymore."

01:17:54 ◼   ► Or if they say, "We can buy them anytime we want.

01:17:56 ◼   ► Why the hell would we spend money on them now?"

01:17:58 ◼   ► Because if you buy them, you've got to deal with all the other people.

01:18:01 ◼   ► Licensing Arm, and it's just a distraction.

01:18:02 ◼   ► You don't want to license things to a bunch of people.

01:18:04 ◼   ► That's not the business Apple is in.

01:18:05 ◼   ► Apple's in the business of making its products.

01:18:06 ◼   ► It's not the business licensing the FaceTime protocol so everyone can interoperate with

01:18:11 ◼   ► it like Steve Jobs said on stage.

01:18:13 ◼   ► That's not what they're into, right?

01:18:14 ◼   ► So the smart money says Apple just ignores this and lets whoever wants to buy Arm buy

01:18:18 ◼   ► Arm.

01:18:19 ◼   ► And the smart money says whoever buys Arm is going to be nice to Apple because they're

01:18:22 ◼   ► a big customer, presumably.

01:18:24 ◼   ► I mean, does Apple pay Arm any money now?

01:18:27 ◼   ► Or is it just like a one-time thing where they just get their perpetual license and

01:18:30 ◼   ► never talk to Arm again?

01:18:31 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:18:32 ◼   ► But I would imagine that they would still collaborate with Apple.

01:18:35 ◼   ► So it's probably not that big of a deal, but it got me thinking about how important

01:18:41 ◼   ► it may eventually become under some scenarios for Apple to actually control the instruction

01:18:47 ◼   ► set that runs all of its things.

01:18:49 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:18:50 ◼   ► If this is so long ago, if it's 20 years from now, then maybe they'll just move everything

01:18:53 ◼   ► to risk five, continue to call it Apple Silicon, and use an open source instruction set that

01:18:58 ◼   ► nobody owns and then the problem is solved again for another 20 years.

01:19:02 ◼   ► Probably not a big deal, but I just thought it was an interesting story going by today.

01:19:06 ◼   ► I don't know what would happen, but it certainly seems to me like it would solve some problems

01:19:12 ◼   ► if Apple just said, "Well, that's ours."

01:19:14 ◼   ► We own that now.

01:19:16 ◼   ► But I agree with you that they would have little to no interest in doing any of the

01:19:20 ◼   ► licensing and stuff that's been going on so far.

01:19:23 ◼   ► It kind of reminds me a little bit, and this is a very, very loose analogy, but it reminds

01:19:28 ◼   ► me a little bit of Dark Sky, which was bought a few months ago.

01:19:32 ◼   ► They stated pretty much immediately that the API was going away for third parties in something

01:19:38 ◼   ► like a year, year and a half or whatever.

01:19:40 ◼   ► I almost wonder if Apple, if they were to buy ARM, would just say, "Well, all the stuff

01:19:46 ◼   ► that we've already got contracts for, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll keep that going, but there

01:19:49 ◼   ► will be no more evermore, forevermore."

01:19:51 ◼   ► Well, it would be in Apple's interest to continue licensing if there is even a glimmer

01:19:57 ◼   ► of getting to the point where ARM is everywhere, because again, Apple derives value.

01:20:01 ◼   ► They want the same instruction set that's on their Macs and on their iPads to be on

01:20:05 ◼   ► the servers.

01:20:06 ◼   ► They want it to be the thing that Windows runs on.

01:20:08 ◼   ► They want it to be everywhere, because that adds value to their products by being interoperable.

01:20:13 ◼   ► Now, we're not there now, so if they bought them today, they don't have that much incentive

01:20:17 ◼   ► to continue licensing, except for the fact that if you were to shut those doors, you'd

01:20:21 ◼   ► make a lot of enemies, first of all, and second of all, the whole rest of the world would

01:20:24 ◼   ► just come up with something different anyway, and now you're isolated again.

01:20:27 ◼   ► Like I think with the Intel transition and with the move to ARM, Apple has continued

01:20:32 ◼   ► to acknowledge that it is valuable to be on the same page as everyone else when it comes

01:20:37 ◼   ► to an instruction set.

01:20:39 ◼   ► The benefits you might gain from having your own secret proprietary thing, use that for

01:20:43 ◼   ► the implementation, which they do.

01:20:45 ◼   ► They certainly do.

01:20:46 ◼   ► Their system-managed chips are great, right?

01:20:47 ◼   ► But it's better.

01:20:49 ◼   ► Apple wants to be on the same instruction set as everyone else.

01:20:52 ◼   ► They just want to have the best implementation of that instruction set, and that's basically

01:20:55 ◼   ► what they have with mobile and ARM.

01:20:56 ◼   ► Everyone else is using ARM on their phones, too.

01:20:58 ◼   ► Apple's ARM chips are just better, right?

01:21:00 ◼   ► That's a great place to be.

01:21:02 ◼   ► The only potential risk is this.

01:21:03 ◼   ► Oh, well, what if the people who actually own ARM, A, get mean about it, and B, they

01:21:09 ◼   ► would have to have a new IP, basically, because I'm sure Apple's license covers anything that

01:21:15 ◼   ► is remotely looking like ARM, but maybe the company that owns ARM goes the next leap.

01:21:20 ◼   ► It's just as simple as having a new SIMD extension or one or two new instructions.

01:21:25 ◼   ► You can make a new thing, give it a new branding so that it falls outside Apple's architecture

01:21:29 ◼   ► agreement, right?

01:21:30 ◼   ► And get the whole rest of the industry to move to that, and now Apple's isolated again?

01:21:34 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:21:35 ◼   ► I'm probably overthinking this.

01:21:37 ◼   ► In reality, someone's going to buy it and just reap that sweet licensing income and

01:21:42 ◼   ► be friendly with Apple, and we won't care about it.

01:21:44 ◼   ► All right, so Apple announced, was it today, yesterday, sometime recently, that they're

01:21:49 ◼   ► going to be carbon neutral for its supply chain and products by 2030, which, when I

01:21:55 ◼   ► first read that, I was like, "Well, I mean, it's going to take a while," and then I realized,

01:21:58 ◼   ► "Oh, God, we're already in 2020, and at the rate we're going, we're never going to leave

01:22:01 ◼   ► it."

01:22:02 ◼   ► So maybe they do have time.

01:22:03 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:22:04 ◼   ► But in theory, they will be carbon neutral for its supply chain and products in less

01:22:09 ◼   ► than 10 years, which is super cool.

01:22:11 ◼   ► And as someone who's become more and more of a tree hugger as I get older, I really

01:22:16 ◼   ► appreciate this, and I think that this is excellent.

01:22:18 ◼   ► I'm impressed by it, and it seems like, from what little I've read into it, it seems like

01:22:24 ◼   ► there's a lot of, they're doing a lot with solar, they're doing a lot with wind, and

01:22:29 ◼   ► then I guess they're doing whatever that thing is where you purchase credit or something

01:22:32 ◼   ► like that to offset carbon that you're using.

01:22:35 ◼   ► I never quite understood how that worked, but basically, when you put it all together,

01:22:38 ◼   ► it should be completely carbon neutral.

01:22:41 ◼   ► Yeah, as Apple says in their press releases, Apple's own operations of its own buildings

01:22:46 ◼   ► and all that stuff has been carbon neutral for a while.

01:22:48 ◼   ► This is ambitious and impressive because they're saying, yeah, so obviously, Apple controls

01:22:53 ◼   ► its stuff, like it controls the electricity that runs Apple Park and all of its stores

01:22:58 ◼   ► and all the other stuff.

01:22:59 ◼   ► And yeah, like you said, the offsets are mostly what they do, which is like, we don't have

01:23:03 ◼   ► access to get solar power to this store, but what we'll do is we'll pay for solar power

01:23:09 ◼   ► to go to someone who's near a solar plant, offsetting the carbon that we're causing by

01:23:14 ◼   ► using electricity from this coal-fired plant that's near our store.

01:23:17 ◼   ► They're basically trying to say, like, how much CO2 is going into the atmosphere before

01:23:21 ◼   ► we make the store and how much CO2 is going into the atmosphere after we make the store.

01:23:24 ◼   ► And they're carbon neutral if that amount doesn't change.

01:23:26 ◼   ► Like we made a new store, it's using electricity, but the amount of carbon that's going to the

01:23:30 ◼   ► air is not increasing.

01:23:31 ◼   ► That's carbon neutral.

01:23:32 ◼   ► That's my understanding of it anyway.

01:23:33 ◼   ► So a lot of it is with offsets, but offsets aren't a cheat or a trick or something.

01:23:37 ◼   ► It's just a practical way to be able to do it because maybe you make an Apple store and

01:23:42 ◼   ► there's no way to get solar power to it.

01:23:43 ◼   ► What are you going to do?

01:23:44 ◼   ► Not make the store there?

01:23:45 ◼   ► So offsets are a reasonable thing to be doing.

01:23:48 ◼   ► But this is like, okay, Apple stuff is all carbon neutral, but what about all the tons

01:23:54 ◼   ► of company that Apple buys from?

01:23:56 ◼   ► Someone is manufacturing Apple stuff, whether it's Foxconn or whoever.

01:24:00 ◼   ► Some other company is manufacturing it.

01:24:02 ◼   ► And that company has factories and has workers and they get parts from someplace.

01:24:06 ◼   ► And those parts are manufactured in different factories.

01:24:08 ◼   ► And this is the whole supply chain, right?

01:24:10 ◼   ► So their goal is to use their power, as far as I understand this, to use their power as

01:24:14 ◼   ► a very big buyer of things and someone who puts a lot of money into manufacturing and

01:24:20 ◼   ► all that stuff, to get the people it buys from to do the same thing that Apple does.

01:24:26 ◼   ► You have to be carbon neutral to get this contract.

01:24:28 ◼   ► And that just trickles down the chain.

01:24:29 ◼   ► Also, if you want a piece of the big iPhone manufacturing contract, which is probably

01:24:33 ◼   ► very lucrative because they make a lot of iPhones and they're expensive to make and

01:24:37 ◼   ► you can charge a lot of money for the assembly because the product itself…

01:24:41 ◼   ► If you want that, you have to be carbon neutral.

01:24:44 ◼   ► And then all the way down to the company that you're getting the tiny little screws from

01:24:48 ◼   ► that hold the iPhones together, if you want the tiny little screw contract for the iPhone,

01:24:52 ◼   ► you have to be carbon neutral.

01:24:54 ◼   ► And that's why it's a 10-year plan.

01:24:55 ◼   ► It's like, "Okay, well, we can't just say that today because we would know and build

01:24:58 ◼   ► our stuff."

01:24:59 ◼   ► Right?

01:25:00 ◼   ► But 10 years from now, the goal is we use our power and influence in the industry to

01:25:05 ◼   ► do this, to cause everyone else to be more environmentally conscious.

01:25:10 ◼   ► Even though it's annoying for them and even though it costs them more money, we're hoping

01:25:13 ◼   ► that net-net they will agree that it is worth their while to do this to, as a side effect,

01:25:18 ◼   ► improve the planet, yada, yada, yada.

01:25:20 ◼   ► But really, if you want that Apple contract, this is what we want you to do.

01:25:23 ◼   ► And normally, people use their buying power to say, "If you want that Apple contract,

01:25:27 ◼   ► you better give us the lowest price.

01:25:28 ◼   ► You better guarantee your parts all work perfectly.

01:25:31 ◼   ► You better eat any costs on losses.

01:25:32 ◼   ► If you're late, you lose all your money."

01:25:34 ◼   ► Like, that's normally what companies do with their power is they destroy their suppliers,

01:25:38 ◼   ► see Walmart and other companies.

01:25:40 ◼   ► They use their power in a capitalist system to crush their suppliers, to cause human suffering

01:25:46 ◼   ► down the chain, to make other people make less money, make them more sad and hurt them.

01:25:52 ◼   ► And Apple, I'm sure, does that too because they're a big company.

01:25:55 ◼   ► But to offset that a little tiny bit at least, Apple also tries to do good things.

01:26:00 ◼   ► And this is a good thing that Apple is doing not because they make more money like, "Oh,

01:26:04 ◼   ► it's all marketing."

01:26:05 ◼   ► Apple would just say they have green products.

01:26:08 ◼   ► I don't think that the marketing advantage of this effort comes close to matching what

01:26:15 ◼   ► it's going to cost Apple and the entire supply chain in terms of time and money and effort

01:26:19 ◼   ► to make this happen.

01:26:20 ◼   ► Apple is doing this because they think it's the right thing to do.

01:26:24 ◼   ► And yes, also, it's good for the company or PR, so on and so forth.

01:26:26 ◼   ► But if it was really such a clear PR win, every company would be doing this.

01:26:33 ◼   ► Every company isn't doing this.

01:26:34 ◼   ► Apple is one of the standouts in this.

01:26:37 ◼   ► And so the other link we'll put in the show, it says there's a Medium post by Lisa Jackson

01:26:41 ◼   ► who's heading this initiative and also a Vogue article profile of her.

01:26:46 ◼   ► You can read these interviews or read what she has to say in her own blog and decide

01:26:50 ◼   ► for yourself if she's a corporate shill cynically doing something so they can put a green leaf

01:26:54 ◼   ► sticker on Apple boxes or whether she really believes in it.

01:26:57 ◼   ► I think she really believes in it.

01:26:58 ◼   ► I think Apple as a company really believes in it.

01:27:00 ◼   ► And I applaud them for doing this.

01:27:03 ◼   ► This is really excellent.

01:27:04 ◼   ► And I don't know, to some degree, I almost feel like you kind of have to go on faith

01:27:08 ◼   ► that they're doing what's right, they're doing what they're saying.

01:27:11 ◼   ► But I tend to believe them.

01:27:14 ◼   ► Tim doesn't seem like he's really interested in BS.

01:27:18 ◼   ► So yeah, this looks excellent to me.

01:27:21 ◼   ► I haven't had the time to read the interviews or the Medium post, but I will at some point.

01:27:25 ◼   ► And I'm really excited for this.

01:27:27 ◼   ► It really makes me feel good that a company that I really enjoy and care about is trying

01:27:30 ◼   ► to do the right thing.

01:27:31 ◼   ► And I think that's something that Tim Cook's Apple has been doing better and more of, is

01:27:37 ◼   ► doing the things, not because they're easy, but because they are hard.

01:27:41 ◼   ► That's a reference, John.

01:27:42 ◼   ► And doing them the things that are right, because that's what they should be doing.

01:27:47 ◼   ► And even though it's really not in a company's interest to do what's right, a lot of the

01:27:50 ◼   ► time, it's in a company's interest to make money, which often means it's in their interest

01:27:54 ◼   ► to do what's wrong.

01:27:56 ◼   ► But for Apple, they're not perfect by any stretch.

01:27:58 ◼   ► There's a million things that Apple does wrong.

01:28:00 ◼   ► But I think more than most companies, they genuinely do try to do what's right.

01:28:03 ◼   ► And I admire that.

01:28:04 ◼   ► They're spending their entire BS budget on the App Store 30% thing.

01:28:09 ◼   ► Yeah, they do.

01:28:12 ◼   ► The reason I buy the sincerity for a lot of these efforts is they happen regularly, and

01:28:19 ◼   ► they don't happen in response to some problem.

01:28:22 ◼   ► No one is out there right now saying, "Apple is polluting the planet.

01:28:25 ◼   ► They're one of the worst polluters in the world."

01:28:27 ◼   ► I mean, I'm sure someone says it somewhere, because everyone's always saying something

01:28:29 ◼   ► bad about Apple.

01:28:30 ◼   ► But in general, Apple has a pretty good reputation in terms of environmental impact of their

01:28:34 ◼   ► efforts.

01:28:36 ◼   ► They've always been trying to make the packaging smaller, to reduce their carbon footprint,

01:28:39 ◼   ► to recycle more.

01:28:40 ◼   ► Of course, everyone, because they're the biggest company in the world, or one of the biggest

01:28:43 ◼   ► tech companies, whatever, I don't know what their market cap is now.

01:28:45 ◼   ► But anyway, because they're so big, there's always going to be someone saying, "Apple,

01:28:49 ◼   ► you're not doing enough."

01:28:50 ◼   ► But Apple's reaction to that is not to sort of get cranky about it and argue.

01:28:56 ◼   ► Their reaction to it is always to try to do better themselves.

01:29:01 ◼   ► They would agree that they have more to do, and then they'd just keep doing it.

01:29:06 ◼   ► They were already carbon neutral themselves.

01:29:07 ◼   ► They could have just coasted on that and said, "Look, all our stuff is carbon neutral.

01:29:10 ◼   ► We can't control what our suppliers do."

01:29:12 ◼   ► But their answer with this plan, the answer to a question that very few people were asking,

01:29:16 ◼   ► except for the most extreme, is, "Well, what about your suppliers?

01:29:18 ◼   ► Can you do something about them?"

01:29:19 ◼   ► Apple's saying, "Yeah, actually, we're going to have a goal that our whole supply chain

01:29:22 ◼   ► is carbon neutral."

01:29:24 ◼   ► Then there'll be further efforts.

01:29:26 ◼   ► I think Apple is 100 percent trying to do the right thing here, and I admire them for

01:29:31 ◼   ► it.

01:29:32 ◼   ► As Marco said, there's plenty of other things to complain about.

01:29:35 ◼   ► Even within the supply chain, there's this carbon neutral stuff.

01:29:38 ◼   ► Even this could be implemented in a way that's draconian.

01:29:41 ◼   ► And of course, there's all the human labor issues of how are they treating their workers,

01:29:46 ◼   ► and Apple's been trying to address that, which has proven a lot harder than this carbon neutral

01:29:50 ◼   ► stuff because they have all these agreements with their suppliers that you have to not

01:29:54 ◼   ► make your customers work overtime and yada yada, but Apple also has in their contracts,

01:29:57 ◼   ► "Oh, if you're late, your entire company goes under because we get all the money."

01:30:03 ◼   ► The incentives are aligned for their suppliers to say, "Yes, yes, we're treating our workers

01:30:07 ◼   ► well.

01:30:08 ◼   ► They're not working 20-hour shifts," and then make them work 20-hour shifts.

01:30:12 ◼   ► Challenges remain, but on the environmental stuff, I'm glad to see progress.

01:30:16 ◼   ► Do we want to talk about that 30 percent study?

01:30:19 ◼   ► I know almost nothing about it, so I am useless.

01:30:23 ◼   ► Parker wants to say something about it.

01:30:24 ◼   ► He can't.

01:30:25 ◼   ► I don't think we have anything good to say about it.

01:30:26 ◼   ► I haven't read it because we all know what it's going to be.

01:30:28 ◼   ► It's going to be a PR puff thing that Apple is talking about how much they're contributing

01:30:33 ◼   ► to the economy by allowing and enabling the entire business of everything going on in

01:30:39 ◼   ► the world right now that flows through their phones and their stores and how if it's all

01:30:43 ◼   ► their fault this is all happening, they're going to claim responsibility for the entire

01:30:46 ◼   ► economy basically and all that to try to change the discussion away from their pretty clear

01:30:53 ◼   ► anti-competitive issues with various App Store policies.

01:30:59 ◼   ► This is just the next thing in their continued campaign to try to deflect all the legitimate

01:31:06 ◼   ► criticism of what they do with App Store and App Purchase rules and things like that.

01:31:12 ◼   ► It's not really going to ever be a legitimate fair conversation from their end because they're

01:31:18 ◼   ► clearly, again, as I said, they're spending their entire BS budget on this.

01:31:22 ◼   ► They have a point of view on what they're doing and it is, I think, far from everyone

01:31:29 ◼   ► else's reality.

01:31:30 ◼   ► I think that Apple's biggest weakness in this area seems to be the sincere belief at high

01:31:37 ◼   ► levels in Apple that it is actually reasonable, that the profits and the money and everything

01:31:45 ◼   ► are apportioned in a deserving way, that Apple really thinks that it does deserve what it

01:31:50 ◼   ► gets because, in fact, maybe it even deserves more because Apple made the platform and all

01:31:56 ◼   ► these software vendors would be nothing without the platform.

01:31:59 ◼   ► The reverse side of that, if they really believe that and also don't believe enough in the

01:32:07 ◼   ► reverse side of that, that Apple wouldn't be Apple without all those apps that third

01:32:09 ◼   ► parties made, that's the most dangerous place to be because if you sincerely believe that

01:32:14 ◼   ► you are being wronged.

01:32:15 ◼   ► It always seemed that Bill Gates believed this in the antitrust trial back in the '90s.

01:32:20 ◼   ► You'd see his testimony.

01:32:21 ◼   ► He believed in his heart of heart that he was getting a raw deal and everything that

01:32:26 ◼   ► Microsoft got they deserved and everyone else was just complaining and trying to dethrone

01:32:29 ◼   ► them because they held all the money in power.

01:32:33 ◼   ► You can see how you can get into that mindset, but if you're in that mindset, you're not

01:32:37 ◼   ► going to make your case well.

01:32:39 ◼   ► You're just like, "These ungrateful developers, I can't believe they don't see what we see

01:32:45 ◼   ► – which is that we deserve this and just be quiet about it."

01:32:50 ◼   ► That's not a good place to come from.

01:32:52 ◼   ► Very often it seems that there is that sincere belief inside Apple.

01:32:56 ◼   ► They feel aggrieved and they feel like what they get is what they deserve and they probably

01:33:01 ◼   ► even deserve more.

01:33:02 ◼   ► You're never going to come to an amicable agreement like that.

01:33:06 ◼   ► Now, I don't want to get into the whole legal, antitrust, anti-competitive stuff because

01:33:09 ◼   ► I think my opinions are probably different than most people's on that.

01:33:13 ◼   ► In the end, it doesn't matter.

01:33:15 ◼   ► There's what's legal and there's what makes everybody happy.

01:33:19 ◼   ► You really do need to come – if you're a platform vendor and you have a reliance

01:33:23 ◼   ► on third-party application developers, which Apple 100% does no matter what they may think

01:33:28 ◼   ► in their deepest moments or agreement, if that's a word, you have to get a relationship

01:33:36 ◼   ► that makes everyone at least a little bit happy and at least a little bit unsatisfied.

01:33:41 ◼   ► You have to strike a compromise.

01:33:42 ◼   ► You can't have an adversarial relationship with your developers.

01:33:47 ◼   ► Whatever the deal is, whatever the grievances are, you have to find somewhere that you can

01:33:51 ◼   ► both benefit.

01:33:53 ◼   ► Arguably, Apple hasn't really crossed that line over the course of this whole time.

01:33:58 ◼   ► Developers aren't fleeing Apple's platforms.

01:34:00 ◼   ► There are lots of complaints.

01:34:01 ◼   ► Apple makes changes just enough to keep everybody sort of on an even keel.

01:34:05 ◼   ► If the massive resentment from developers is about the 30% grows or if various political

01:34:10 ◼   ► factions that don't even represent developers but use them as a political tool decide it's

01:34:14 ◼   ► time to take down Apple for whatever legal, ideological or political reasons, that's

01:34:19 ◼   ► a problem for Apple.

01:34:20 ◼   ► I think the Microsoft trial – I mean, there's a couple of lessons of Microsoft trial, but

01:34:24 ◼   ► one of them is if you as a corporate entity, app like Bill Gates as an individual did in

01:34:29 ◼   ► a testimony, it's not going to make you look good and it's not going to make you

01:34:32 ◼   ► a friend of developers and it will take a while to heal that relationship.

01:34:36 ◼   ► The other lesson of the Microsoft trial is that, yeah, it seemed to go bad for them,

01:34:39 ◼   ► but in the end, money, power, momentum and some good decision making after that led to

01:34:44 ◼   ► the Microsoft of today, which is resurgent and better off than it was then arguably from

01:34:48 ◼   ► a technological and business perspective, right?

01:34:51 ◼   ► So yeah, Apple's probably too big to fail.

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01:37:02 ◼   ► All right, let's do some Ask ATP.

01:37:07 ◼   ► And Eduard Rosenberg writes, "If our Macs can run iOS apps, could iPad soon run Mac

01:37:12 ◼   ► apps?

01:37:13 ◼   ► What if the new touchability of Big Sur apps in their toolbars is not about touchscreen

01:37:17 ◼   ► Macs, but about bringing Final Cut Pro, Logic, and Xcode to the iPad?"

01:37:21 ◼   ► I mean, I understand the logic here, but I don't see any of that happening.

01:37:25 ◼   ► In no small part because all of these apps that Eduard is citing, those are all AppKit

01:37:30 ◼   ► apps as far as I knew, and that would be extremely not fun and not easy to bring back to iOS.

01:37:39 ◼   ► And so I just, I really don't see this happening.

01:37:40 ◼   ► But Marco, what do you think?

01:37:41 ◼   ► I mean, it's even worse.

01:37:42 ◼   ► Those are probably ProKit apps, which is even a whole other level.

01:37:46 ◼   ► Anyway, yeah, I'm with you.

01:37:49 ◼   ► I don't think the major Mac Pro apps are coming to the iPad in a meaningful way anytime

01:37:56 ◼   ► soon.

01:37:57 ◼   ► A part of that is about the frameworks they're built on not being available on iOS, as you

01:38:02 ◼   ► said.

01:38:03 ◼   ► But another part of that that's probably an even bigger part, because if they really wanted

01:38:07 ◼   ► to, yeah, they could rewrite the Final Cut UI for iPad.

01:38:11 ◼   ► They could rewrite the Logic UI, all billion screens of it, for the iPad.

01:38:16 ◼   ► They could rewrite Xcode for the iPad, or they could make it make Xcode Lite for iOS,

01:38:23 ◼   ► which is kind of sort of what Playgrounds is, but not quite.

01:38:27 ◼   ► But ultimately, all of these apps would have significant real world trouble running on

01:38:35 ◼   ► iOS, because all of them depend on a platform in which you are heavily multitasking and

01:38:41 ◼   ► making heavy use of lots of external files and plug-ins and all sorts of other stuff,

01:38:46 ◼   ► external tools, integrating with the workflows in lots of different ways.

01:38:49 ◼   ► And while iOS can technically do a lot of that stuff, it's so much more of a hindrance

01:38:56 ◼   ► on iOS.

01:38:57 ◼   ► It's so much more clunky.

01:38:59 ◼   ► Many of those tools and plug-ins and everything aren't available for iOS.

01:39:04 ◼   ► You could probably bring over each of these apps to iOS.

01:39:08 ◼   ► However, the ecosystems around them either can't or won't be there in practice.

01:39:16 ◼   ► And with all these pro tools, you're not going to get any pros to actually switch over and

01:39:22 ◼   ► to actually start using these in meaningful volume on the iPad.

01:39:26 ◼   ► So until those ecosystem dynamics change, which may never happen.

01:39:31 ◼   ► So until all those other pro tools get involved.

01:39:35 ◼   ► When I'm using Xcode, I'm not just using Xcode.

01:39:39 ◼   ► I'm also using Git Tower and I'm using Terminal and I'm using web browsers and I'm using TextMate

01:39:45 ◼   ► to do the web side of things.

01:39:47 ◼   ► I'm doing so many other things.

01:39:48 ◼   ► I'm using command line tools.

01:39:50 ◼   ► I'm using build scripts that deal with other tools.

01:39:54 ◼   ► It's not just one tool that you're using.

01:39:57 ◼   ► I'm using Terminal windows to connect to my SQL instances.

01:40:00 ◼   ► There's so much in a development workflow besides just what's in the Xcode window itself.

01:40:08 ◼   ► And so much of that stuff would be clunky or impossible or missing on the iPad.

01:40:13 ◼   ► And the same thing applies to when pros use Final Cut and Logic and everything.

01:40:16 ◼   ► So again, I don't see it happening for those reasons in particular.

01:40:22 ◼   ► And while Apple could technically make these apps available on iPad, I don't think they

01:40:27 ◼   ► would because ultimately I don't think anybody's really asking for the reality of what that

01:40:33 ◼   ► would actually be.

01:40:34 ◼   ► Yeah, one of the reasons that they brought iOS apps to the Mac with Catalyst is that

01:40:40 ◼   ► the Mac can handle you chucking a whole other bunch of frameworks on there.

01:40:44 ◼   ► So they basically brought a bunch of UIKit over and suddenly you launch a Catalyst app

01:40:47 ◼   ► and now it's loading this whole other set of libraries that your other Mac apps aren't

01:40:50 ◼   ► loading.

01:40:51 ◼   ► And the Mac has had a bunch of different APIs for years.

01:40:54 ◼   ► You mentioned ProKit, which is this private framework that a bunch of Apple's pro apps

01:40:58 ◼   ► use.

01:40:59 ◼   ► And then some apps are running AppKit and some apps used to be running Carbon.

01:41:02 ◼   ► The Mac has always had lots of different frameworks and libraries there and it's wasteful.

01:41:07 ◼   ► It's wasteful to have it all.

01:41:08 ◼   ► And there's a reason why don't we have two of them all the time.

01:41:10 ◼   ► It's wasteful in development effort, but you don't want to have them all in memory.

01:41:13 ◼   ► That's why they got rid of 32-bit.

01:41:14 ◼   ► It's a waste to have both 32-bit and 64-bit copies of AppKit in memory just because you

01:41:18 ◼   ► launch one 32-bit app that uses AppKit.

01:41:20 ◼   ► Now you have 32-bit equivalents of all those libraries in memory.

01:41:23 ◼   ► It takes memory, right?

01:41:25 ◼   ► But you can get away with that on the Mac at various times because the Macs just have

01:41:29 ◼   ► more RAM.

01:41:30 ◼   ► If you wanted to bring Final Cut Pro to the iPad, I mean Final Cut Pro doesn't run on

01:41:35 ◼   ► iOS.

01:41:36 ◼   ► Yes, they have the same Core OS, but A, you need all the frameworks.

01:41:39 ◼   ► You need ProKit, AppKit, whatever bits of foundation that it needs, all sorts of frameworks

01:41:43 ◼   ► and stuff.

01:41:44 ◼   ► So right away you're loading a whole second set of libraries that no other app on iOS

01:41:47 ◼   ► is loading.

01:41:48 ◼   ► It's like you've doubled your memory footprint because when you run five apps running UI

01:41:53 ◼   ► kit, there's just one copy of UI kit in memory, right?

01:41:56 ◼   ► But there's also OS features that don't exist in iOS.

01:41:59 ◼   ► Probably not a lot of them, but enough of them that Final Cut Pro or underlying things

01:42:02 ◼   ► use that you would need to either add those features to iOS, add those particular behaviors

01:42:10 ◼   ► or those particular system calls or kernel abilities or whatever else, even to something

01:42:14 ◼   ► as simple as, "Hey, iOS doesn't have swap."

01:42:17 ◼   ► And the Mac OS does.

01:42:19 ◼   ► And Final Cut Pro might rely on swap existing and not being killed when it gets out of memory

01:42:22 ◼   ► during a brief period.

01:42:24 ◼   ► Like bringing it over would be a big deal.

01:42:27 ◼   ► And the iPad and certainly the iPhone don't have that kind of overhead.

01:42:31 ◼   ► They usually have just enough RAM to get by with a bunch of apps running iOS.

01:42:35 ◼   ► They're not going to give iPads twice the amount of RAM so you can suddenly load AppKit

01:42:39 ◼   ► apps on them or AppKit and ProKit apps or whatever, right?

01:42:44 ◼   ► And Apple's behavior when trying to "bring apps to the iPad" has been the opposite.

01:42:50 ◼   ► It's been to make a new app that fits within iOS and then bring that to the Mac.

01:42:55 ◼   ► Remember they did that with iWork?

01:42:57 ◼   ► Like they want to re-envision Logic or Final Cut Pro or whatever, or Xcode for that matter,

01:43:03 ◼   ► for the iPad.

01:43:05 ◼   ► And there's the new vision of how it's going to work and it works with touch and it's a

01:43:09 ◼   ► different conception of how it works.

01:43:11 ◼   ► They don't just take the Mac apps and port them.

01:43:13 ◼   ► So there's a whole bunch of philosophical and hard and fast hardware, eventually monetary

01:43:20 ◼   ► reasons why they're not going to do this.

01:43:21 ◼   ► Like the monetary reason is you'd have to pay more to have iPads with more RAM just

01:43:25 ◼   ► so you can support this probably unsatisfying, very clunky, memory hungry port of Final Cut

01:43:31 ◼   ► and you have to change iOS to support it.

01:43:33 ◼   ► And in the end, if they wanted a way for you to edit video on the iPad, they'd do what

01:43:37 ◼   ► they've already done with iMovie and stuff.

01:43:39 ◼   ► They'd make a way for you to edit video on the iPad that is iPad-centric and that is

01:43:43 ◼   ► actually good on the iPad.

01:43:46 ◼   ► In the same way that Final Cut or whatever, there are iPad audio apps.

01:43:51 ◼   ► They do not look like a straight port of Final Cut or a straight port of some Mac audio editor.

01:43:55 ◼   ► They look like purpose-built iPad audio editors and that's what that market wants.

01:44:00 ◼   ► I don't expect this.

01:44:01 ◼   ► People also ask about virtual machines.

01:44:03 ◼   ► Like oh, if you just run a VM, an ARM-based Mac VM inside there, then you don't have to

01:44:07 ◼   ► worry about all the operating system and framework things.

01:44:09 ◼   ► But you still have to worry about the RAM even more so.

01:44:12 ◼   ► You're running a whole second of OS in there.

01:44:14 ◼   ► So maybe we'll get there someday where iPads eventually have enough RAM where you can run

01:44:17 ◼   ► little Mac virtual machines and run Mac apps.

01:44:19 ◼   ► But then you run into all the stuff that Marco talked about which is oh, you're going to

01:44:22 ◼   ► run Final Cut?

01:44:23 ◼   ► I guess your 17 terabytes of video footage are just going to be hanging off the edge

01:44:27 ◼   ► of your iPad, aren't they?

01:44:28 ◼   ► Oh, they're not?

01:44:30 ◼   ► I guess you have a 10 gig ethernet.

01:44:31 ◼   ► Oh, you don't have that either, do you?

01:44:33 ◼   ► Hmm, well how will it be reading those files over Wi-Fi?

01:44:35 ◼   ► Oh, it can't stream 8K footage from your, you know, like there's always associated stuff

01:44:40 ◼   ► with these pro apps that like the iPad's just not the right platform for them.

01:44:44 ◼   ► So don't hold your breath for this, but someone will probably jailbreak one and run a cool

01:44:49 ◼   ► little ARM-based Mac virtual machine sometime in the next few years and that'll be a fun

01:44:54 ◼   ► YouTube video somebody will make.

01:44:56 ◼   ► Moving on, James would like to know each line of Intel-based Macs has a range of CPU options

01:45:02 ◼   ► available.

01:45:03 ◼   ► Will multiple silicon Macs like a new MacBook Pro will also have multiple system-on-chip

01:45:07 ◼   ► options or will they simplify the offering?

01:45:09 ◼   ► I think this is a good question.

01:45:11 ◼   ► We kind of alluded to this earlier.

01:45:12 ◼   ► I think they would only offer one.

01:45:14 ◼   ► I think John, you were talking about this pretty early in the episode.

01:45:17 ◼   ► I think it will be only one.

01:45:19 ◼   ► I think it will be this is the chip for the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

01:45:23 ◼   ► This is the chip for the 16-inch MacBook Pro and that's that.

01:45:25 ◼   ► John, I'll give you a chance in a second to weigh in one more time in a little more detail,

01:45:29 ◼   ► but Marco, what do you think?

01:45:31 ◼   ► I'm actually going to go the other way on this.

01:45:33 ◼   ► I think there will be multiple options on at least some of the products, probably the

01:45:38 ◼   ► higher-end ones.

01:45:40 ◼   ► Two reasons, basically.

01:45:41 ◼   ► Number one, some of the products, like if you look at the Mac Pro, for instance, or

01:45:46 ◼   ► the iMac Pro, or even to some degree the highest end of the other products like the 27-inch

01:45:52 ◼   ► iMac or the 16-inch MacBook Pro, usually in most of these products you have significant

01:45:58 ◼   ► differences in core count between the low end and the high end.

01:46:02 ◼   ► Now, some of this is just because of the way Intel has done their product lines and everything

01:46:05 ◼   ► like that, but some of it's also because there are significant differences in need.

01:46:09 ◼   ► So, for instance, like the Mac Pro and the iMac Pro have huge ranges in how many cores

01:46:14 ◼   ► you can get and therefore how much parallel performance you can get for your CPU.

01:46:18 ◼   ► And there's thousands of dollars in price difference between the low end and the high

01:46:22 ◼   ► end.

01:46:23 ◼   ► So it does make sense to offer that for profit reasons alone because they're not going to

01:46:30 ◼   ► put the biggest chip they can possibly make in every one if they can charge you $3,000

01:46:36 ◼   ► extra for the 40-core version for your Mac Pro compared to the base model that might

01:46:41 ◼   ► only have 16 cores or whatever.

01:46:43 ◼   ► So there's a pretty significant profit margin motive to just have segmentation on that basis.

01:46:49 ◼   ► A second reason that's related economically is one thing we talked about in the past,

01:46:55 ◼   ► binning.

01:46:56 ◼   ► This idea that when you're making chips, not all of them are going to have all their cores

01:47:01 ◼   ► work properly.

01:47:03 ◼   ► Not all of them are going to be able to run at full speed because you'll have minor imperfections

01:47:07 ◼   ► from the manufacturing process.

01:47:09 ◼   ► And so you will have in the manufacturing of these chips, you'll have some that can run

01:47:14 ◼   ► faster than others and some that can only run eight cores instead of 12 or 20 cores

01:47:20 ◼   ► instead of 40 or whatever.

01:47:22 ◼   ► Apple is going to have the same issues with their manufacturing as Intel does.

01:47:27 ◼   ► Everyone's still making chips.

01:47:28 ◼   ► You have the same issues when you make these large, complicated chips for main processors

01:47:33 ◼   ► of high end computers.

01:47:35 ◼   ► They're going to have binning of different chips into different abilities and speeds.

01:47:40 ◼   ► So they might as well do something with them so they can do what everyone else does.

01:47:44 ◼   ► And they can sell the ones that didn't pass the test at the high speed, clock them down

01:47:49 ◼   ► and sell them as low speed chips at a low price.

01:47:52 ◼   ► And if they can only make a few that can run all the cores super fast, then they'll make

01:47:58 ◼   ► that a high end option for a high price.

01:48:00 ◼   ► I don't think they're going to be able to escape that dynamic simply because they're

01:48:05 ◼   ► making the chips their own way now.

01:48:08 ◼   ► And I hesitate to say themselves because they have a fab partner.

01:48:11 ◼   ► I assume it's TSMC making the chips.

01:48:14 ◼   ► I don't know if we know that.

01:48:15 ◼   ► - It is, we know it.

01:48:16 ◼   ► - Okay, good.

01:48:17 ◼   ► So there is still a chip fab making these chips that will have all these economic issues

01:48:23 ◼   ► with them.

01:48:24 ◼   ► And so I have a feeling there will be multiple options for anything that is high end.

01:48:30 ◼   ► The low end products, things like the MacBook Air, if the 12 inch comes back, maybe even

01:48:35 ◼   ► the other 13 inch pros, or maybe if the 14 happens, that might because that's kind of

01:48:40 ◼   ► half high end.

01:48:41 ◼   ► But I'm guessing the low end products might not have multiple options.

01:48:46 ◼   ► But the high end ones almost certainly will for those reasons.

01:48:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, all that stuff about binning and everything is the unescapable reality of silicon manufacturing.

01:48:55 ◼   ► But the thing is, that's true of every chip they've ever made for iPhones and iPads too.

01:48:59 ◼   ► And historically speaking, Apple has chosen not to do that with the iPhones and iPads.

01:49:04 ◼   ► You can't get an iPad with a faster clock chip.

01:49:06 ◼   ► You can't get an iPad with more cores.

01:49:08 ◼   ► You get what you get, right?

01:49:11 ◼   ► I think though the Mac line, since it goes up so much higher, eventually you get to the

01:49:15 ◼   ► point where you can't do that.

01:49:16 ◼   ► So what I think they'll do is there will be fewer CPU choices because the low end to the

01:49:22 ◼   ► low mid range will just have one choice, just because that's the way Apple has historically

01:49:26 ◼   ► done things with its own system-mounted chips, right?

01:49:30 ◼   ► So there won't be on like the low end MacBook whatever, or even the MacBook Air, you won't

01:49:35 ◼   ► be like, "Oh, you can get the i7 or the i9."

01:49:38 ◼   ► But as you start getting closer to the higher end machines, yeah, and they'll vary things

01:49:42 ◼   ► like core count.

01:49:43 ◼   ► I don't even know if they're very clock speed, but they're going to definitely say, "Okay,

01:49:46 ◼   ► well, you can get it with the regular CPU or the big one."

01:49:49 ◼   ► And then of course the Mac Pro, they'll have seven options, then they just get ridiculous

01:49:52 ◼   ► in price, right?

01:49:53 ◼   ► So they can't avoid giving options.

01:49:56 ◼   ► I think they will give fewer than they have with Intel.

01:49:59 ◼   ► And honestly, I'm not entirely sure why they've been so insistent that every single Mac down

01:50:03 ◼   ► to the lowest end has like one CPU option and another one for a little bit more.

01:50:08 ◼   ► They could have just chosen, and I think they have with a few models here and there, just

01:50:11 ◼   ► chosen one CPU for them, but they always said, "Well, Intel will sell us another one of these

01:50:15 ◼   ► that has slightly higher clock speed.

01:50:18 ◼   ► We'll take 50% margin on that.

01:50:20 ◼   ► We get the chip from Intel for 50 bucks more.

01:50:22 ◼   ► You pay us 300 bucks more.

01:50:23 ◼   ► Done and done."

01:50:24 ◼   ► Right?

01:50:25 ◼   ► But I just don't think they'll do that from a manufacturing simplicity perspective when

01:50:28 ◼   ► they're the ones paying to make all the chips, just because they haven't done it with their

01:50:32 ◼   ► phones and iPads, even the iPad Pros.

01:50:34 ◼   ► The closest they come on the iPad Pros is you got more RAM with the one that had the

01:50:37 ◼   ► one terabyte flash or whatever, but the system on a chip have just been the same, and I think

01:50:41 ◼   ► they will stick to that simplification for everything at least halfway up their line.

01:50:46 ◼   ► Colby Todisco writes, "As a person super new to code, I feel like each language is nearly

01:50:50 ◼   ► infinite and so daunting to learn all of.

01:50:53 ◼   ► Knowing so little of the industry, I'm curious how much you guys know of your preferred language

01:50:56 ◼   ► and how much is spent on Stack Overflow to keep learning."

01:50:59 ◼   ► This is extremely hard to quantify.

01:51:02 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:51:03 ◼   ► For me, looking at Swift particularly, I know some of it, maybe even a lot of it, but I

01:51:11 ◼   ► don't know if I would even go that far.

01:51:13 ◼   ► I know some, and there's a lot, a lot, a lot I don't know.

01:51:17 ◼   ► The good news is for most of it, I either have a vague notion of what things do or how

01:51:23 ◼   ► I could accomplish something, but I wouldn't say I can solve any problem immediately without