ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► We're in for a long show tonight, are we not?

00:00:02 ◼   ► I don't, honestly, I don't know how long the FBI thing's gonna last.

00:00:05 ◼   ► I hope you put that on the pre-show.

00:00:07 ◼   ► Marco's classic.

00:00:09 ◼   ► Honestly, I don't think there's much to say.

00:00:11 ◼   ► Always says that.

00:00:13 ◼   ► I never say it's gonna be a short show, though. That's always you.

00:00:16 ◼   ► But you say it in a different way. That's the way you say it.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Can you tell I have a cold?

00:00:22 ◼   ► My streak is over. I thought I was gonna go two whole winters without getting sick.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Almost made it out of this one. So close.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Can we just drive you over to Craig's house and you can fix your cold?

00:00:32 ◼   ► I recognize that wasn't the best use of that metaphor, but I just cannot get tired of that

00:00:35 ◼   ► metaphor.

00:00:36 ◼   ► It's so good.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Yeah, it's kind of mean though, like, this gets back to what I was saying on the past

00:00:41 ◼   ► show when we were talking about the new open app coming on podcast or whatever.

00:00:46 ◼   ► It's so easy to make fun of that, but that type of story is an example of people opening

00:00:51 ◼   ► up.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Like, it's the type of thing that in a more controlled PR environment would never come

00:00:56 ◼   ► out. And it's slightly unfortunate that that's the story that they put out there because

00:01:04 ◼   ► even on the merits it's kind of like, well, you're trying to make an emotional appeal,

00:01:09 ◼   ► but realistically speaking that's not an effective way for an organization to address problems,

00:01:13 ◼   ► to have the head honchos of these huge swaths of the biggest company in the world be addressing

00:01:19 ◼   ► problems on an individual level with their own particular max. Like that's not, you need

00:01:23 ◼   ► better tools to manage this problem. So it just seems like you're trying to sway me emotionally

00:01:28 ◼   ► with this anecdote, but it doesn't even make sense. But that's the type of thing that you

00:01:32 ◼   ► do when you open up about yourself and your personal life, and I'm sure it really is true,

00:01:37 ◼   ► and so I'm glad we know that that's what's going on. And now we can, I guess, make our

00:01:43 ◼   ► own judgments about the effectiveness of the strategy of driving things to Craigfidter

00:01:48 ◼   ► East House. I don't know. It's also trying to say how passionate they are, that even

00:01:51 ◼   ► these big important people are not above getting down to a problem that they encounter, that

00:01:58 ◼   ► they're not going to leave it to the lower people and say, "Oh, they'll take care of

00:02:00 ◼   ► that," that they really want to fix every little problem they found. So it's multifaceted,

00:02:04 ◼   ► it's personal, it's human, it's flawed, it's everything that the new open Apple, the new

00:02:10 ◼   ► more open Apple is about.

00:02:11 ◼   ► So, I only have a few questions about it. First of all, in what part of a Ferrari does

00:02:16 ◼   ► an iMac fit?

00:02:18 ◼   ► They have a lot of cars. Here's the rule of thumb. If you have a Ferrari, it is not

00:02:21 ◼   ► your only car.

00:02:22 ◼   ► That's fair. Okay. Second question. Can you imagine being Federighi and basically

00:02:28 ◼   ► being like the tech support team for the entire company?

00:02:31 ◼   ► I wonder if that's like a power move. Like, do you have something wrong with Apple Music?

00:02:36 ◼   ► Do you like drive your computer over to Eddie's house?

00:02:39 ◼   ► I feel like it's unfair because all of Eddie's stuff is all cloud and services. Like, you

00:02:43 ◼   ► you can't really drive a broken iTunes store request over to Eddie's house.

00:02:48 ◼   ► Well, you just bring your computer and say, "Why is all my album metadata messed up? Fix

00:02:53 ◼   ► this." And you come back on Monday and you say, "Is it done? Did you fix my album metadata?"

00:02:57 ◼   ► I think it's even funnier to imagine like, you know, you're Craig Federighi, you're like

00:03:02 ◼   ► sitting down at dinner with your family and you know, you hear this like loud, you know,

00:03:06 ◼   ► V12 pull up on the driveway like, "Oh God, again?" "Oh, it's Eddie again. Hold on everyone."

00:03:12 ◼   ► Does he have the 599?

00:03:14 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:03:15 ◼   ► I don't know if Ferrari's wanted to even...

00:03:17 ◼   ► I was just guessing there was probably a V12 one.

00:03:19 ◼   ► There is.

00:03:20 ◼   ► Is there only one?

00:03:21 ◼   ► There's only one.

00:03:22 ◼   ► Well, there's the FF.

00:03:23 ◼   ► Is that the V12, Casey, do you remember?

00:03:26 ◼   ► I thought so, but I too am not an encyclopedia of Ferrari.

00:03:31 ◼   ► There's two front-engine V12s, I think.

00:03:33 ◼   ► One of them's really ugly and four-wheel drive.

00:03:36 ◼   ► That's the FF.

00:03:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:38 ◼   ► Is that even a Ferrari?

00:03:39 ◼   ► It really is.

00:03:40 ◼   ► If it's ugly and four-wheel drive?

00:03:41 ◼   ► It still is.

00:03:42 ◼   ► John would suffer through.

00:03:44 ◼   ► Oh, I wouldn't if I got that I would sell it immediately and buy a better one.

00:03:47 ◼   ► Ah, man. Anyway, we should probably do some follow-ups, shouldn't we?

00:03:55 ◼   ► Tell me about Figma, which I don't even remember talking about.

00:03:58 ◼   ► It was that vector thing, remember that app that was gonna let you draw vectors in a different way?

00:04:03 ◼   ► And I said on the website, basically they had a big sign-up button instead of a big download button.

00:04:07 ◼   ► So I was like, oh, there's nothing to download.

00:04:09 ◼   ► You know, like, you can sign up and I guess they'll tell you more when it's ready.

00:04:12 ◼   ► Like, as in, the thing wasn't out yet.

00:04:14 ◼   ► And David Klein tweeted to say that he said, "I believe Figma is 100% in the browser.

00:04:19 ◼   ► Nothing to download."

00:04:20 ◼   ► So when it does arrive, apparently it's going to be a web app.

00:04:23 ◼   ► But I still think you can't yet try it.

00:04:24 ◼   ► But anyway, if I can try it for free online, I definitely will, because I'm interested

00:04:28 ◼   ► in how it's going to work.

00:04:29 ◼   ► So, fair enough.

00:04:30 ◼   ► That was quick and easy.

00:04:32 ◼   ► And why don't you tell us about everyone's favorite font, Comic Sans.

00:04:35 ◼   ► Yes, a friend of the show and a flophouse adjacent microcelebrity, John McCoy, and a

00:04:44 ◼   ► friend of mine, pointed out that in all our discussion of Comic Sans, or Microsoft Bob

00:04:49 ◼   ► rather, we didn't mention that Comic Sans, the much hated font, was created for, but

00:04:54 ◼   ► not shipped with Microsoft Bob.

00:04:55 ◼   ► So you can read the Wikipedia entry on Comic Sans and you will see that it was created

00:04:59 ◼   ► to try to fit in with the Microsoft Bob world, which explains why it's so awful.

00:05:02 ◼   ► But it didn't make it in time so it didn't ship with it.

00:05:05 ◼   ► So yet another thing you can blame on Microsoft Bob.

00:05:09 ◼   ► Have you ever used Microsoft Bob, Jon?

00:05:11 ◼   ► I don't think so.

00:05:12 ◼   ► I think I only, I've read about it in magazines when it came out, but I don't, I don't, I

00:05:17 ◼   ► didn't have a PC obviously and none of my friends who had a PC had it.

00:05:20 ◼   ► All right, Jon, stop listening for a second.

00:05:23 ◼   ► Casey, we have to, for April Fool's Day, somehow find a way to put Microsoft Bob on

00:05:28 ◼   ► a computer in Jon's office.

00:05:30 ◼   ► I don't remember using it.

00:05:32 ◼   ► I bet you I did at some point, but I don't remember having done so.

00:05:35 ◼   ► I installed Windows 8 on a VM on my Mac.

00:05:38 ◼   ► That felt really weird.

00:05:39 ◼   ► Well, to be fair, Windows 8 felt really weird to Windows users also.

00:05:42 ◼   ► I know.

00:05:43 ◼   ► I know.

00:05:44 ◼   ► You ever try doing an edge swipe with a mouse cursor on a windowed VM?

00:05:48 ◼   ► It's really hard.

00:05:49 ◼   ► Wow.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Again, in all fairness, doing everything in Windows 8 is really hard.

00:05:53 ◼   ► Well, just remember that was my life, boys, until just a couple weeks ago.

00:05:56 ◼   ► Oh, congratulations again for getting out of that.

00:05:59 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:06:00 ◼   ► - I'm so happy, I really am.

00:06:03 ◼   ► Anyway, we are done with follow up, are we not?

00:06:06 ◼   ► - That's it?

00:06:07 ◼   ► - That's it, just two small items.

00:06:08 ◼   ► - Wow, look at us go.

00:06:09 ◼   ► Let's celebrate by talking about something awesome.

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00:08:27 ◼   ► - So there's been big breaking news

00:08:31 ◼   ► that has happened since we recorded last.

00:08:34 ◼   ► And I think it's important we talk about it.

00:08:36 ◼   ► Microsoft has bought Xamarin.

00:08:38 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:08:40 ◼   ► - I'm sorry, I just, yeah.

00:08:42 ◼   ► That news is fine.

00:08:43 ◼   ► I really appreciated your intro there.

00:08:47 ◼   ► - I didn't think much about Xamarin,

00:08:48 ◼   ► but if you had asked me,

00:08:50 ◼   ► hey, does some company own Xamarin now?

00:08:53 ◼   ► I would have maybe guessed Microsoft.

00:08:55 ◼   ► I know like, didn't NetWare own them at some point?

00:08:57 ◼   ► - Something like that, yeah, yeah.

00:08:58 ◼   ► - But I had basically, honestly,

00:09:00 ◼   ► I had lost track of who owned them,

00:09:01 ◼   ► and they've been so closely associated with Microsoft

00:09:04 ◼   ► that if you had told me, oh yeah, no,

00:09:06 ◼   ► Microsoft owns Xamarin, I would have been like,

00:09:07 ◼   ► oh yeah, that sounds right.

00:09:09 ◼   ► So the fact that Microsoft bought them

00:09:11 ◼   ► makes sense to me, I think.

00:09:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, so let me catch everyone up.

00:09:14 ◼   ► So Xamarin was originally called Mono,

00:09:19 ◼   ► and it was an open source re-implementation of .NET

00:09:23 ◼   ► that was designed to bring .NET to other platforms.

00:09:26 ◼   ► And initially this really meant Linux,

00:09:28 ◼   ► but over time it became more about allowing you

00:09:32 ◼   ► to write .NET code, usually C# code,

00:09:35 ◼   ► that ran on Android and iOS.

00:09:37 ◼   ► And I looked at it way back when it was mono one,

00:09:40 ◼   ► or I'm sorry, it was a long time ago,

00:09:42 ◼   ► right when they first started supporting the iPhone,

00:09:44 ◼   ► I forget what version that was.

00:09:46 ◼   ► And as we've talked about a handful of times on the show,

00:09:49 ◼   ► it felt like exactly how I would have written

00:09:52 ◼   ► bridging platform to go between the world of C# and iOS. That's a compliment. It felt

00:09:59 ◼   ► really, really good. Now it's still a total hack, but it felt like it was really well

00:10:05 ◼   ► designed and really, really well done. And so Microsoft has since bought Xamarin, which

00:10:10 ◼   ► again used to be called Mono, so now it's being folded into Microsoft. And this is kind

00:10:14 ◼   ► of an extension of what they did a year or so, maybe two years ago, when they open sourced

00:10:19 ◼   ► a lot of the .NET framework.

00:10:20 ◼   ► So in part, see that Xamarin and other people like them could

00:10:25 ◼   ► use Microsoft code in order to get the bits of .NET they needed,

00:10:29 ◼   ► and then Xamarin could go back to doing the thing they were good at,

00:10:32 ◼   ► which was just building that cross-platform layer.

00:10:35 ◼   ► So Microsoft is buying Xamarin.

00:10:37 ◼   ► We'll see what that means.

00:10:38 ◼   ► This reminds me of our conversations in

00:10:40 ◼   ► the past about Project Islandwood,

00:10:42 ◼   ► which was/is, I haven't really kept up with it,

00:10:46 ◼   ► a cross-platform setup that Microsoft had to bring iOS apps onto Windows 10. I think

00:10:54 ◼   ► that's mostly died. Is that true?

00:10:56 ◼   ► Was it ever alive? I mean, I know they released that in some form, and I know people looked

00:11:01 ◼   ► at the code and it was horrendous and full of tons of temporary hacks and to-do implementations

00:11:07 ◼   ► and everything.

00:11:08 ◼   ► Well, because wasn't it like a re-implementation of UIKit on top?

00:11:11 ◼   ► That was the idea. I remember it didn't come out right after Swift was announced and

00:11:17 ◼   ► is not compatible with Swift at all. So there was that issue. The other issue is that it

00:11:22 ◼   ► tries to be a layer so that you can port your iOS app right over to Windows Phone or Windows

00:11:30 ◼   ► in general. I don't know which version of Windows, but right over to Windows something

00:11:33 ◼   ► or other. It would just re-implement all the basic iOS frameworks. I honestly have not

00:11:40 ◼   ► heard of anybody using it for any reason. I mean, the reason why iOS developers are

00:11:45 ◼   ► not making their apps for Windows is not because we can't cross-compile them, it's because

00:11:51 ◼   ► we don't care because there's not enough of a market. Literally. I mean, I'm not

00:11:54 ◼   ► trying to be mean. It's like, if we wanted to make apps for those platforms, we would

00:11:59 ◼   ► just make them correctly, using their native tools and their native apps. The fact that

00:12:03 ◼   ► that there is this weird half-compatibility layer

00:12:07 ◼   ► that is kind of half-baked and kind of half-works

00:12:10 ◼   ► and is probably only half-supported by anybody,

00:12:14 ◼   ► that's not really gonna change anyone's mind meaningfully.

00:12:16 ◼   ► That might help out a couple of consultants

00:12:19 ◼   ► on really tight time constraints,

00:12:20 ◼   ► but even then, are the clients even asking for Windows apps?

00:12:25 ◼   ► There just seems like there is so little demand and will

00:12:29 ◼   ► for people to make Windows apps.

00:12:31 ◼   ► this is not going to meaningfully change that.

00:12:34 ◼   ► - You know, if this was the 90s,

00:12:35 ◼   ► the old story was like,

00:12:37 ◼   ► don't bother trying to make a Linux compatible implementation

00:12:41 ◼   ► of the common language runtime or .NET,

00:12:44 ◼   ► because you're just playing into Microsoft's trap.

00:12:46 ◼   ► And even though Microsoft says all these things about,

00:12:48 ◼   ► oh, you know, cross-platform runtime,

00:12:51 ◼   ► virtual machine environment, C#, blah, blah, blah,

00:12:54 ◼   ► really what they're just trying to do is trap you.

00:12:55 ◼   ► So that's why the Linux computer always kind of

00:12:58 ◼   ► looked at them, you know,

00:12:59 ◼   ► with a little bit of warily saying,

00:13:02 ◼   ► I don't really want to make any Linux apps using this Microsoft

00:13:05 ◼   ► technology.

00:13:05 ◼   ► No, no, it's not a Microsoft technology.

00:13:07 ◼   ► It's totally open.

00:13:07 ◼   ► It'll be just like, eh, I don't know about that.

00:13:10 ◼   ► And if we were still in the '90s and Microsoft was still

00:13:12 ◼   ► that company that everyone was scared of

00:13:14 ◼   ► and everyone suspected they were going to embrace, extend,

00:13:17 ◼   ► extinguish, all this other stuff,

00:13:18 ◼   ► what everyone would be saying was, see,

00:13:20 ◼   ► we were really smart not to try to build anything in Linux

00:13:22 ◼   ► based on the common language runtime or .NET.

00:13:25 ◼   ► Because if we did, now Microsoft bought them,

00:13:27 ◼   ► and guess what?

00:13:27 ◼   ► cross-platform stuff that they were doing before. Well, that's all over now. And everything that is

00:13:33 ◼   ► in Xamarin is going to become Windows only and nothing's going to be cross-platform anymore

00:13:36 ◼   ► because, you know, it was just like it was a trap, basically. Get people to distract Linux,

00:13:41 ◼   ► which was a big threat to Microsoft in their own mind back in the 90s, and to use Microsoft

00:13:46 ◼   ► technologies and then take those technologies away and make them proprietary from that point on.

00:13:52 ◼   ► But of course, the modern Microsoft buying Xamarin for exactly the opposite reasons,

00:13:56 ◼   ► because they're a company that has shown that they're good at doing things cross-platform,

00:14:00 ◼   ► and the new Microsoft wants to sell whatever it is they have to sell to as many people as possible.

00:14:06 ◼   ► And they're moving away from "the only way to get this is to get it on Windows."

00:14:10 ◼   ► You know, Azure Web Services are an example of courting iOS developers and stuff to you.

00:14:15 ◼   ► You can use these web services with your iOS app. They'll sell anything to anyone because they think

00:14:21 ◼   ► they have valuable things and they're no longer in a position where they can say,

00:14:25 ◼   ► we have valuable technology and the only way you can get it is to be Microsoft and Windows

00:14:29 ◼   ► and proprietary from top to bottom because nobody does that anymore. It's not even an option. So

00:14:34 ◼   ► I think this purchase of Xamarin would have blown the minds of Linux advocates in the 90s,

00:14:39 ◼   ► the idea that they're buying them because they're so good at cross-platform stuff,

00:14:42 ◼   ► and that surely what they're going to do with those people and that technology is

00:14:46 ◼   ► more cross-platform things, not like "oh now finally we can stop people from using our technology

00:14:52 ◼   ► to do anything except for make apps for our platform.

00:14:55 ◼   ► - So here's a question.

00:14:56 ◼   ► I don't, you know, I haven't looked too much into this,

00:14:59 ◼   ► so forgive me, but, you know, back in the '90s

00:15:03 ◼   ► when Sun Microsystems made this really, really expensive

00:15:07 ◼   ► custom proprietary hardware and software

00:15:10 ◼   ► to run custom Sun boxes, and then Sun invented Java,

00:15:15 ◼   ► and Java is seen by many as kind of a big strategic blunder

00:15:19 ◼   ► by Sun because the whole point of Java

00:15:21 ◼   ► is to make proprietary platforms and hardware

00:15:23 ◼   ► completely irrelevant and marginalize them

00:15:25 ◼   ► and make the same software run everywhere.

00:15:27 ◼   ► And so many people think that was Sun

00:15:29 ◼   ► kind of eroding their own company's strong points

00:15:33 ◼   ► and their own revenue sources.

00:15:35 ◼   ► Trying to apply that today, I mean,

00:15:38 ◼   ► what does Microsoft get big picture-wise, long-term-wise,

00:15:41 ◼   ► what do they get out of making Linux servers

00:15:45 ◼   ► a first-class platform for .NET development?

00:15:49 ◼   ► because right now, Microsoft makes a big portion

00:15:52 ◼   ► of their revenue with Windows servers

00:15:55 ◼   ► and Windows server-side components and licensing from that.

00:15:58 ◼   ► And how does that, obviously with Satya Nadella's

00:16:03 ◼   ► new leadership focused more on services and enterprise stuff

00:16:06 ◼   ► it seems like this might be the opposite

00:16:08 ◼   ► of what they wanted to do, right?

00:16:10 ◼   ► It seems like this is long-term,

00:16:12 ◼   ► removing them from being required to use their tools.

00:16:16 ◼   ► So now, you know, like the server-side stuff,

00:16:18 ◼   ► now, like before, one of the biggest reasons why people would buy Windows servers was not

00:16:24 ◼   ► because they're particularly amazing, but because they had to to run their .NET server

00:16:28 ◼   ► stuff because the .NET stuff was what they were comfortable developing in or what they

00:16:32 ◼   ► used already or what was best for them for whatever reason. So Windows had a lot of,

00:16:36 ◼   ► or Microsoft had a lot of server-side software sales from people who were kind of forced

00:16:40 ◼   ► to use Windows server who might have chosen Linux if they could have. And with these,

00:16:45 ◼   ► And the Mono project and then the Xamarin thing,

00:16:49 ◼   ► like this is not new, but it's always kind of been

00:16:53 ◼   ► like a second class citizen.

00:16:54 ◼   ► It was always kind of like, well,

00:16:56 ◼   ► if you were the IT manager,

00:16:57 ◼   ► you probably wouldn't choose that

00:16:59 ◼   ► 'cause you'd be scared of compatibility or whatever.

00:17:01 ◼   ► So how does it help Microsoft now

00:17:04 ◼   ► to have Linux be or become soon a first class citizen

00:17:09 ◼   ► to run their server side stuff,

00:17:12 ◼   ► which means nobody needs to buy Windows servers anymore.

00:17:15 ◼   ► - Why does it help Apple to open source Swift,

00:17:19 ◼   ► or let me rephrase, why does it help Apple

00:17:22 ◼   ► to make Swift compatible with Linux?

00:17:24 ◼   ► That's a better question.

00:17:26 ◼   ► - Well, I think first of all, that Apple needs Swift

00:17:30 ◼   ► on Linux because they need to run their own services on it.

00:17:33 ◼   ► I think that's a big thing right now with Apple

00:17:35 ◼   ► is that their services are built on what is rumored

00:17:41 ◼   ► be a lot of web objects and old Java stuff and just like kind of just like old stuff

00:17:45 ◼   ► that is that either is not maintained anymore or is maintained only by Apple or is not the

00:17:50 ◼   ► right tool for the job or is just in disrepair and so I think Apple really wants Swift on

00:17:56 ◼   ► Linux for themselves for their own service division. With Microsoft I don't know how

00:18:01 ◼   ► much they need I don't know I don't know if that's why I'm asking like this this is I

00:18:04 ◼   ► don't know if this is necessarily even a good question but just like is this a good idea

00:18:08 ◼   ► for Microsoft long term to make Windows Server unnecessary.

00:18:13 ◼   ► - But they don't make their money off Windows Server

00:18:15 ◼   ► as much as they make it off Exchange licenses

00:18:17 ◼   ► and Office licenses and stuff.

00:18:19 ◼   ► Oracle is a great example.

00:18:22 ◼   ► Oracle is an enterprise software company

00:18:23 ◼   ► that makes tons and tons of money.

00:18:26 ◼   ► And they don't sell, they don't force you

00:18:29 ◼   ► to buy an operating system.

00:18:30 ◼   ► I mean, they do have Oracle Enterprise Linux, right?

00:18:32 ◼   ► But it's Linux, right?

00:18:34 ◼   ► They don't sell hardware.

00:18:36 ◼   ► they're just selling you their software and it's qualified in certain pieces of hardware and there's

00:18:40 ◼   ► relationships with people who will sell you the hardware and what OS you should have or whatever.

00:18:44 ◼   ► But when you sell, what they're gonna, what they want to sell you is an exchange license for a

00:18:50 ◼   ► certain number of people or whatever. And it's not as if doing this makes it more likely that there

00:18:56 ◼   ► will be a successful exchange competitor. Like Google's always tried to do with Google Apps and

00:18:59 ◼   ► everything, which is an entirely different approach and much more server side. But as far as Microsoft

00:19:03 ◼   ► is concerned. You mentioned like Apple, like, oh, Apple has its own Linux server. So of course,

00:19:06 ◼   ► they want Swift on Linux. It's not unreasonable to imagine that Microsoft might decide kind of like,

00:19:13 ◼   ► I mean, you were talking about Sun before, one of the things that did Sun in was Linux, right?

00:19:18 ◼   ► The idea that you can only run Exchange on a Windows server, it's crappy for kind of everyone,

00:19:24 ◼   ► including Microsoft. Would Microsoft ever want to, you know, can you imagine a world where Microsoft

00:19:29 ◼   ► sold you Exchange and Office, all of which ran on the Linux of your choice, but there's a couple

00:19:34 ◼   ► that Microsoft recommends, including maybe a Microsoft variant of Linux. Sure. Because

00:19:38 ◼   ► if that means that Microsoft doesn't have to spend money maintaining a proprietary server OS

00:19:43 ◼   ► that was never quite as good as Linux anyway, then that's a win. And that's sacrilege in like

00:19:47 ◼   ► the Steve Ballmer thing. What are you talking about? Windows is the crown jewel and blah, blah,

00:19:50 ◼   ► blah. But this is a brave new world here. And if you're really going to do services,

00:19:54 ◼   ► you can't be tied to a particular server platform, especially when it's one that's like,

00:19:59 ◼   ► more difficult to manage. It has fewer companies behind it. I mean, Linux is basically

00:20:03 ◼   ► raced across the entire server-side ecosystem, erasing every single proprietary competitor,

00:20:09 ◼   ► so much so that former proprietary competitors say, "Okay, well, we'll just have our own variant

00:20:13 ◼   ► of Linux." And everyone's okay with that. And just like that's, like that part of the ecosystem has

00:20:18 ◼   ► not been become the part where you make your money. And an enterprise has never been. You

00:20:21 ◼   ► You make your money off support contracts and licensing and charging per seat or per

00:20:25 ◼   ► CPU or whatever the heck you do.

00:20:27 ◼   ► You don't make it off selling them hardware boxes or OS licenses.

00:20:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I couldn't agree with that enough.

00:20:33 ◼   ► I remember being tangentially involved with pricing quotes for things like SharePoint

00:20:39 ◼   ► and BizTalk and all of these big, big, big software packages that are not the server.

00:20:45 ◼   ► These are the things you're installing on Windows Server.

00:20:48 ◼   ► And I can't remember the details now, but oftentimes it was by processor, then when

00:20:52 ◼   ► multi-core processors became a thing, I think at some point some software might have been

00:20:57 ◼   ► moved to a bi-core installation cost.

00:21:01 ◼   ► So if you have a 15-core computer, that doesn't make any sense, a 16-core computer with, you

00:21:06 ◼   ► know, I don't know, four processors, then you're paying 16 times whatever the single

00:21:12 ◼   ► amount is.

00:21:13 ◼   ► they make absurd amounts of money off of the software, just comically large amounts of money

00:21:18 ◼   ► off the software. And to come back to one of your original questions, Marco, like why would—what

00:21:22 ◼   ► is Microsoft in? What do they get out of this? I think what Microsoft gets out of this is,

00:21:30 ◼   ► it would be neat for them if writing C# was kind of the lingua franca of server-side programming.

00:21:40 ◼   ► And obviously there will never be one language that's the standard language of server-side

00:21:44 ◼   ► programming, but in the same way that Java is huge today, in part because it's open source,

00:21:51 ◼   ► so much of .NET is going open source now that why couldn't .NET be the new Java in the future?

00:21:57 ◼   ► **Matt Stauffer** Because it's the old Java?

00:21:59 ◼   ► **Jared Stauffer** Well...

00:22:00 ◼   ► **Matt Stauffer** That's better than the old Java.

00:22:01 ◼   ► **Jared Stauffer** It's a lot better than the old Java.

00:22:02 ◼   ► **Matt Stauffer** It has better support, you know what I mean?

00:22:04 ◼   ► Especially now that Sun has been gobbled up and everything, like who is...

00:22:09 ◼   ► I mean, I guess Java lurches forward. But if anyone was going to compete against Java,

00:22:13 ◼   ► as like he says, the sort of default safe enterprise server side language, it would be C#.

00:22:19 ◼   ► And part of the thing that's been hurting Microsoft's story is, yeah, but then we got to

00:22:24 ◼   ► buy Windows servers. And everyone knows that feeling, like, especially if you have an organization

00:22:28 ◼   ► that has all their other servers that are Linux based and everyone's happy with them. And they're

00:22:31 ◼   ► all they have an entire organization built up around managing those servers. They like the idea

00:22:36 ◼   ► that they can buy different hardware from different vendors and change, you know, different

00:22:40 ◼   ► distributions and everything like that. And then someone comes in and says, "Hey, you guys should

00:22:44 ◼   ► use T# and write all your server-side stuff in T# using this server-side framework and this and that."

00:22:49 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, but then we have to introduce Windows servers." Nobody wants that. Like,

00:22:52 ◼   ► you can't really mix. It's almost like they keep those people separate. Like,

00:22:55 ◼   ► you have one set of people who manage the Linux-based servers and one set of people who

00:23:02 ◼   ► manage the Windows-based servers. And I don't know if you bring those people to the same room that

00:23:05 ◼   ► that they will just collide and annihilate.

00:23:09 ◼   ► I think the other thing we should say, a couple of quick notes. First of all, C# is a great

00:23:14 ◼   ► language. It really, really is. I know there are going to be people out there who are rolling

00:23:17 ◼   ► their eyes, but truly, C# is a wonderful, wonderful language that can be many, many,

00:23:22 ◼   ► many different things to many, many, many different people. I've been writing a lot

00:23:26 ◼   ► of Swift over the last couple of weeks, and I'm really loving Swift, but C# is also a

00:23:32 ◼   ► truly wonderful language and fixes many of the ills that Java brought to the table.

00:23:38 ◼   ► And let's assume for a second that your firm or your staff is really into C#.

00:23:46 ◼   ► Maybe they've never touched Microsoft servers, but they're really into C# and they think

00:23:51 ◼   ► to themselves, "Man, I really want to go to the cloud with this C# instead of staying

00:23:56 ◼   ► on-premise with Linux or on-premise with Microsoft.

00:23:58 ◼   ► It doesn't matter."

00:24:00 ◼   ► What cloud environment should we go to?

00:24:03 ◼   ► We could just go to Azure, which probably will do very well with a C#-based deployment.

00:24:10 ◼   ► And even if Azure is Microsoft's service behind the scenes, who cares, because you don't have

00:24:13 ◼   ► to worry about it.

00:24:14 ◼   ► So anyway, so I think that there's plenty to gain from Microsoft by doing this, but

00:24:20 ◼   ► we'll see what really ends up happening.

00:24:22 ◼   ► I don't know how much Xamarin specifically will make a difference, but the idea of Microsoft

00:24:26 ◼   ► pushing to being everywhere or to having C# everywhere, I think is a good thing.

00:24:32 ◼   ► Jon, any other last thoughts?

00:24:33 ◼   ► Yeah, one minor point. Speaking of both Oracle and Sun, yes, of course, Oracle was the company

00:24:39 ◼   ► that bought Sun, which means that Oracle does actually sell hardware now because Sun used to

00:24:42 ◼   ► sell hardware and now Oracle sells hardware through Sun. So they sell ZFS storage devices

00:24:46 ◼   ► and stuff like that. Ding!

00:24:47 ◼   ► Does that count? Does that count?

00:24:50 ◼   ► Yeah, does that count as a ding?

00:24:52 ◼   ► ZFS storage devices? There are file systems on them.

00:24:55 ◼   ► I don't think it counts, but that's a tough one.

00:24:58 ◼   ► All right, I rescind. I rescind my ding.

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00:26:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, so there's been some interesting things going on

00:26:34 ◼   ► with the United States government and Apple.

00:26:36 ◼   ► And I don't even, do we really need to recap this?

00:26:40 ◼   ► I guess we probably should give the short, short version.

00:26:42 ◼   ► - An overview would be helpful

00:26:44 ◼   ► for people who listen in the future.

00:26:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, although anyone listening to the story in real time,

00:26:48 ◼   ► as we noted, this story came out

00:26:50 ◼   ► right after we recorded last week, so presumably everyone listening to the show, when it's

00:26:53 ◼   ► released, knows all these details, but we should summarize.

00:26:57 ◼   ► Is that mean I'm the one summarizing? I can take a crack at it real quick.

00:27:01 ◼   ► You do seem to be the chief summarizer on the show. Maybe Jon—you and Jon are close

00:27:05 ◼   ► for that, I don't know. Co-chief summarizers?

00:27:08 ◼   ► I'm certainly not, so I know I'm safe. I can sit back here and drink my tea.

00:27:10 ◼   ► All right, how about I'll take a stab at it here, and you guys can interrupt when you're

00:27:16 ◼   ► So there was a terrible, terrible, terrible shooting in December, I believe, of last year

00:27:22 ◼   ► in San Bernardino, California. A couple of people took it upon themselves to commit this

00:27:28 ◼   ► really heinous act and kill a lot of people. And that's really, really terrible. And there's

00:27:31 ◼   ► no discussion about that. It's terrible. It was a terrorist act. It's something that's

00:27:38 ◼   ► really unfortunate. These two people, suspects, perpetrators, whatever we'd like to call them,

00:27:44 ◼   ► One of them, it was I believe a husband-wife pair, the husband had two phones, two iPhones

00:27:49 ◼   ► as far as we know.

00:27:50 ◼   ► One of them was destroyed, that was his personal phone, his wife's personal phone also destroyed.

00:27:55 ◼   ► He also had an iPhone 5C that was issued to him by his job, which coincidentally is the

00:28:00 ◼   ► San Bernardino government.

00:28:03 ◼   ► The iPhone 5C has a passcode on it, and it is quite possible that it could be set up

00:28:11 ◼   ► such that if you enter the passcode incorrectly 10 times in a row, it will nuke everything on the

00:28:16 ◼   ► phone. The iPhone is in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI. The FBI wants

00:28:24 ◼   ► what's on that phone, but they can't get to it because it has this passcode. It could have the

00:28:30 ◼   ► destruction setting turned on such that if they enter the wrong code 10 times, it will destroy

00:28:36 ◼   ► itself or destroy all the data.

00:28:38 ◼   ► Additionally, they were advised by Apple at some point or another, "Hey, we have iCloud

00:28:45 ◼   ► backups.

00:28:46 ◼   ► We don't have any from the last six or so weeks.

00:28:48 ◼   ► I forget exactly how many.

00:28:49 ◼   ► It doesn't really matter.

00:28:51 ◼   ► We don't have a recent iCloud backup.

00:28:53 ◼   ► We have a semi-recent one."

00:28:56 ◼   ► And what you should do is you should take the phone and bring it to this guy's work,

00:29:00 ◼   ► where presumably there is a known Wi-Fi network.

00:29:05 ◼   ► you should turn the phone on and just let it sit overnight, plug it in, let it sit overnight.

00:29:08 ◼   ► And presumably, if everything has been set the way it usually is set, that will back

00:29:13 ◼   ► up—the phone will back itself up to iCloud one more time, and it—the implication from

00:29:19 ◼   ► what we've read is that not everything in iCloud is as well encrypted as perhaps we'd

00:29:23 ◼   ► like it to be. Thus, Apple could get to that data and hand it over to the FBI and everyone's

00:29:28 ◼   ► happy.

00:29:29 ◼   ► I'm actually—honestly, I'm pretty sure from Apple's point of view, nothing in iCloud

00:29:33 ◼   ► is encrypted. So there's—

00:29:34 ◼   ► - It may be.

00:29:35 ◼   ► - You can do the encrypted backups through iTunes

00:29:38 ◼   ► on your desktop and it's off by default.

00:29:39 ◼   ► So for a while, as we all learned,

00:29:41 ◼   ► whenever we get a new phone or our phone would die,

00:29:43 ◼   ► we'd have to get a replacement one,

00:29:45 ◼   ► we'd have to reenter all of our passwords.

00:29:47 ◼   ► And the reason why is because anything that's encrypted

00:29:49 ◼   ► on the device in the keychain,

00:29:51 ◼   ► which is where all your passwords and stuff are stored,

00:29:53 ◼   ► any unencrypted backup does not include those things.

00:29:58 ◼   ► So by default, the iTunes backups wouldn't include them

00:30:00 ◼   ► unless you check the little box saying encrypt my backup,

00:30:03 ◼   ► which we all do, 'cause we are professional iPhone restorers

00:30:06 ◼   ► but not everyone knows that.

00:30:07 ◼   ► And then with iCloud backups,

00:30:09 ◼   ► there is no option to encrypt iCloud backups,

00:30:11 ◼   ► at least not today, maybe in the future

00:30:13 ◼   ► there will be as a result of this.

00:30:14 ◼   ► - Well they are encrypted but Apple has the key.

00:30:16 ◼   ► - Well right, so they aren't encrypted to Apple.

00:30:19 ◼   ► And so as a result, nothing that's encrypted on the phone

00:30:23 ◼   ► in Keychain gets backed up.

00:30:26 ◼   ► But almost everything, like any kind of content,

00:30:29 ◼   ► text messages I assume would be there,

00:30:32 ◼   ► any kind of app data that's marked as being for backup,

00:30:37 ◼   ► so documents you've made in apps and everything,

00:30:40 ◼   ► those would be included,

00:30:41 ◼   ► and Apple had access to all those,

00:30:43 ◼   ► and Apple gave access to all of those to the FBI

00:30:45 ◼   ► before this even blew up and became a thing,

00:30:47 ◼   ► because Apple had access to them through iCloud.

00:30:49 ◼   ► - But they only had an older backup,

00:30:51 ◼   ► they're several weeks old, it doesn't matter how many.

00:30:54 ◼   ► So they advised the FBI and San Bernardino police,

00:30:57 ◼   ► take the phone to the San Bernardino government,

00:30:59 ◼   ► whatever particular branch this person was in, leave it on overnight, and it'll back

00:31:03 ◼   ► itself up to iCloud.

00:31:05 ◼   ► At which point, the police and FBI awkwardly grabbed at their collars, pulling them away

00:31:09 ◼   ► from their necks, and said, "About that, we might have changed his iCloud password

00:31:16 ◼   ► already.

00:31:17 ◼   ► So that phone is going to try to back up to iCloud, maybe, and it's going to see that

00:31:24 ◼   ► it doesn't really have the right password, so that's not going to work.

00:31:29 ◼   ► Right.

00:31:31 ◼   ► So the FBI has decided to ask Apple for a few things.

00:31:36 ◼   ► It would like Apple to write a custom build of iOS that, as far as the FBI is concerned,

00:31:43 ◼   ► they are happy to be signed in such a way that it would only work on this particular

00:31:48 ◼   ► device.

00:31:49 ◼   ► It will allow them to, it will bypass the setting that will self-destruct the encryption

00:31:57 ◼   ► after ten failed passcode attempts, so they can attempt as many as they'd like.

00:32:03 ◼   ► Additionally, they'd like any sort of time delay to go away, if there is one, and I forget

00:32:08 ◼   ► exactly when those came in and when they're there and when they're not, but suffice to

00:32:11 ◼   ► say if there is a time delay they'd like it to go away, and additionally they'd like to

00:32:14 ◼   ► be able to enter the passcode not by meaty fingers on a screen, but by Bluetooth or Wi-Fi

00:32:19 ◼   ► or a cable or any way so that it can be automated with an external computer.

00:32:24 ◼   ► The FBI has said we'd like to do it at our place or, Apple if you'd prefer, we can do

00:32:29 ◼   ► it at your house.

00:32:30 ◼   ► That's fine too.

00:32:31 ◼   ► The end game for the FBI is they want to be able to throw a gazillion passcodes at this

00:32:37 ◼   ► thing in a very short window of time to brute force their way into it.

00:32:42 ◼   ► So that, by some measures, and we'll get into what we think here in a second, but some people

00:32:48 ◼   ► People are of the opinion that that's a perfectly reasonable point of view from the FBI.

00:32:54 ◼   ► That they only want it for one phone, they only want to do it this once, and they're

00:32:59 ◼   ► even willing to have Apple do it in Cupertino, in Apple's own environment, and the FBI will

00:33:05 ◼   ► either come to them, or if Apple gives them, like, remote access to a machine that can

00:33:10 ◼   ► enter passcodes, the FBI will do it remotely, they don't care.

00:33:13 ◼   ► They just want it this one time for this one phone to see if possibly, maybe, something

00:33:18 ◼   ► on that will indicate that this was part of a wider terrorist plot rather than a couple

00:33:23 ◼   ► of crazy people doing something that is really, really just uncool.

00:33:29 ◼   ► That's the FBI's perspective.

00:33:31 ◼   ► Apple's perspective is, "Hey, if we do this once, that's establishing a legal precedent

00:33:37 ◼   ► that means you can ask us to do this many, many more times.

00:33:41 ◼   ► only that, but we would have to write code to do this. And that seems a bit

00:33:44 ◼   ► unreasonable to tell us to write a bunch of code to allow you to to brute-force

00:33:50 ◼   ► your way into a phone that we've spent a long time trying to make sure that isn't

00:33:55 ◼   ► possible. Beyond that, a lot of government entities have come out of the woodwork

00:34:01 ◼   ► over the last 48 hours saying, "You know what? If this works for the FBI, we have a

00:34:06 ◼   ► bunch of iPhones, we'd like you to do that for two, okay? Cool. Sounds great. So Apple

00:34:11 ◼   ► is of the opinion that this is a backdoor. And again, we'll get into what we think in

00:34:15 ◼   ► a second, but Apple says this is a backdoor, and in fact, just earlier today, Tim Cook

00:34:20 ◼   ► did a special with ABC News where he used the analogy that creating this is like creating

00:34:27 ◼   ► a software version of cancer.

00:34:28 ◼   ► Which, by the way, I think a virus would be a better analogy there.

00:34:33 ◼   ► Didn't test as well.

00:34:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I thought he hammered that analogy a little too hard, because it isn't that great

00:34:40 ◼   ► of one.

00:34:41 ◼   ► He had a handful of talking points, and unfortunately the interviewer had more than a handful of

00:34:45 ◼   ► questions, so it was just like, after the first round, it was like, "Which one of my

00:34:49 ◼   ► talking points am I going to use as a reply for this question?"

00:34:52 ◼   ► Yeah, it was the same thing just over and over and over again, which is really too bad.

00:34:56 ◼   ► But in any case, so Apple is of the opinion, this is a backdoor, once we've done this once,

00:35:01 ◼   ► we're going to be asked to do it a thousand times.

00:35:03 ◼   ► We don't think it's fair to do it even once.

00:35:05 ◼   ► We don't think it's fair to us.

00:35:06 ◼   ► We don't think it's fair to our customers.

00:35:08 ◼   ► We're not into it.

00:35:09 ◼   ► So Apple is saying, we're not going to do it.

00:35:12 ◼   ► And more than that, Tim Cook said in this interview, we are willing to go all the way

00:35:18 ◼   ► to the Supreme Court fighting this because we think that's what's right.

00:35:21 ◼   ► Is that a pretty reasonable summary of where we are today?

00:35:24 ◼   ► Yeah, pretty much.

00:35:25 ◼   ► - Pretty much, I mean like, there's a lot more detail here

00:35:28 ◼   ► that we could just, just by stating everything

00:35:30 ◼   ► we have either learned or that's been talked about

00:35:33 ◼   ► over the last week or so since this really broke,

00:35:36 ◼   ► we could fill the whole hour and a half with this

00:35:39 ◼   ► and we shouldn't because it'll take too long.

00:35:41 ◼   ► I think let's assume that everyone who wants to know more

00:35:44 ◼   ► about this will go and read up on whatever's new

00:35:46 ◼   ► and whatever has happened so far,

00:35:48 ◼   ► and I think it's probably safe for us to talk about it now

00:35:51 ◼   ► rather than just keep going over the details of it, right?

00:35:54 ◼   ► Good deal.

00:35:55 ◼   ► All right, so what do we think?

00:35:57 ◼   ► - It makes me sad.

00:35:58 ◼   ► Every part of this makes me sad.

00:36:01 ◼   ► There's so much of this that is just like crappy politics

00:36:05 ◼   ► playing each other out,

00:36:06 ◼   ► and mostly on the government side, honestly.

00:36:09 ◼   ► I mean, listeners of this show should know

00:36:11 ◼   ► that we do not shy away from criticizing Apple

00:36:15 ◼   ► when it is warranted.

00:36:18 ◼   ► We will call them out on things that we think are BS

00:36:21 ◼   ► or things that we think are worse than they should be

00:36:23 ◼   ► or are just not good enough. In this case though, I think Apple is mostly in the right,

00:36:33 ◼   ► and not 100% in the right. And again, we should point out also, none of us are lawyers, so

00:36:39 ◼   ► I apologize to anybody listening to this who knows more about the law than we do, who's

00:36:44 ◼   ► screaming at whatever we don't mention or get wrong. But the one thing that I think

00:36:52 ◼   ► makes this a weaker argument for them is that it is technically possible for them to do

00:36:58 ◼   ► this. And I wonder in the future, you know, I assume it's already somebody's project

00:37:03 ◼   ► at Apple, if it wasn't already. I assume it is now somebody's project at Apple to

00:37:08 ◼   ► head an effort to actually make this impossible to do in the future, to remove their technical

00:37:13 ◼   ► ability to do anything like this. And there are a number of ways that they could do that,

00:37:17 ◼   ► number of challenges to that. But ultimately, I think, I mostly agree with Apple that they—I

00:37:26 ◼   ► stand with them that they ideally shouldn't do this, but it does weaken their argument

00:37:31 ◼   ► a little bit that they can do it.

00:37:33 ◼   ► Steven: When you say "can do it," what you mean is—don't let me put words in

00:37:38 ◼   ► your mouth, I'm just trying to make sure we're on the same page—what you mean is

00:37:40 ◼   ► they could write a custom version of iOS that is specifically for this one and only one

00:37:46 ◼   ► phone that would get the FBI what they're asking for.

00:37:49 ◼   ► - I think.

00:37:50 ◼   ► Now, first of all, it is definitely worth reading this article, and please forgive me

00:37:55 ◼   ► for the pronunciation if I get it wrong, by Jonathan Ziyarski.

00:37:58 ◼   ► He, I don't know him, but he appears to be somebody who specializes in iOS forensics

00:38:05 ◼   ► and like testifying in court using iOS forensic tools and creating forensic tools.

00:38:12 ◼   ► And his post here kind of explains the legal implications of everything Apple kind of would

00:38:17 ◼   ► have to do if they make this instrument, the FBI's demand that they make.

00:38:20 ◼   ► I don't think the FBI is really asking for just this one phone to be decrypted once and

00:38:25 ◼   ► that's it.

00:38:26 ◼   ► I think they're asking for the continuous ability to do this whenever it is warranted

00:38:32 ◼   ► or whenever there is a court order or a warrant to do it.

00:38:36 ◼   ► And even if they aren't asking for that now, that's really what they're asking

00:38:40 ◼   ► for.

00:38:41 ◼   ► Even if they're not asking for that in the legal text,

00:38:45 ◼   ► that is what will happen here,

00:38:46 ◼   ► because this will set precedent,

00:38:47 ◼   ► and then it'll be so much easier

00:38:49 ◼   ► next time someone asks for this to be like,

00:38:51 ◼   ► oh, well, you did it for that.

00:38:52 ◼   ► This was just as important.

00:38:54 ◼   ► And I think Tim Cook covered that pretty well.

00:38:55 ◼   ► Honestly, ultimately, I think his interview on ABC News,

00:38:58 ◼   ► I watched it right before the show tonight,

00:39:00 ◼   ► I think his interview actually was very good overall.

00:39:03 ◼   ► There were some parts that were a little bit uncomfortable

00:39:06 ◼   ► and cringe-worthy, but overall, I think it was very good.

00:39:08 ◼   ► And I think it came off very well.

00:39:09 ◼   ► And I think at a time like this,

00:39:14 ◼   ► this really shows the strength of Tim Cook

00:39:18 ◼   ► and how we are lucky to have Tim Cook

00:39:21 ◼   ► as the CEO of Apple during times like this.

00:39:23 ◼   ► - I could not agree more.

00:39:25 ◼   ► - This is exactly where he shines.

00:39:27 ◼   ► He is clearly, and he's shown us in the past,

00:39:30 ◼   ► but this just shows more now,

00:39:32 ◼   ► he's clearly very principled

00:39:36 ◼   ► and he won't be pushed around

00:39:38 ◼   ► if it goes against his principles. And I think this just shows, I mean, you're not going

00:39:43 ◼   ► to see any other company or any other executive put up the fight that he's going to put

00:39:47 ◼   ► up on this. It's simple as that. I mean, you're not going to see anyone better than

00:39:50 ◼   ► Tim fight this on that side of it. That, you know, again, I could nitpick a few little

00:39:55 ◼   ► things he said, but overall I thought it was very good. So, honestly, I really do think

00:40:00 ◼   ► that Apple is totally in the right to fight this, only again, only with that asterisk

00:40:06 ◼   ► that it sure would be better if their actual answer was, "We actually can't technically

00:40:13 ◼   ► do this, it is impossible." Because then it's, you can argue whether it should be

00:40:17 ◼   ► legal to make things like that, but you can't argue about this case anymore. Then, because

00:40:21 ◼   ► everyone's playing off everyone's emotions on this. And Tim did this too with his responses,

00:40:26 ◼   ► he kind of had to, but like, you know, the interviewer's like, "Well, think about

00:40:30 ◼   ► the victims, the FBI is all about, this isn't about our ability to decrypt phones forever,

00:40:34 ◼   ► it's about these 14 families victims. And yes, it is about them. And because this horrible

00:40:39 ◼   ► event happened. People were killed. There is no, there's nothing about that that is

00:40:44 ◼   ► anything but horrible and a huge tragedy. But the FBI is also using this for their political

00:40:49 ◼   ► gain. They knew that. They set this case up as a perfect fighting battleground to fight

00:40:55 ◼   ► this issue on that they believe they are entitled. And this is not just the FBI. This is all

00:41:01 ◼   ► law enforcement and federal intelligence in America, they believe they are entitled to

00:41:07 ◼   ► access any information and any possessions and any people that they want to, that they

00:41:12 ◼   ► believe they need to to get their job done, or that they just think might be a problem

00:41:16 ◼   ► or might be relevant to crimes that might happen or might have happened. They believe

00:41:21 ◼   ► they are entitled to it all. And they get it most of the time. You know, like I made

00:41:25 ◼   ► a quick little blog post about this. Look at everything we've learned from Edward Snowden's

00:41:28 ◼   ► revelations about the NSA over the last couple years and everything that's spun out from

00:41:32 ◼   ► that. It's very clear between that and between things that happen at lower levels of law

00:41:39 ◼   ► enforcement where they're just murdering people and getting away with it. It's very

00:41:42 ◼   ► clear that the culture of law enforcement in the whole country from national down to

00:41:49 ◼   ► local is incredibly entitled and just kind of mad. They operate like a lawless military

00:41:57 ◼   ► dictatorship where they are entitled to everything they want in their minds and they usually

00:42:05 ◼   ► get it. And even when it's illegal, they do it anyway and they get away with it most

00:42:10 ◼   ► of the time, if not all the time. They get away with it almost all the time. So they

00:42:16 ◼   ► are above the law in their minds. They believe they are entitled to everything and they'll

00:42:20 ◼   ► say it's about national security but that's kind of like angry macho neo-con craziness.

00:42:26 ◼   ► In reality, this culture that they have is that they are entitled to everything all the

00:42:31 ◼   ► time, whatever they want they're entitled to, to do their job, you know, whatever.

00:42:35 ◼   ► They think they're entitled to everything, right?

00:42:38 ◼   ► And our country so far, in recent years, if not ever, in recent years, supports that.

00:42:44 ◼   ► We support by what judges say, by what the people do and don't get mad about, by how

00:42:50 ◼   ► quickly we all forget things.

00:42:53 ◼   ► the people and the courts and all the way up to the presidency, everyone in this system

00:42:58 ◼   ► is complacent and permits this to happen. So the reality is, it doesn't really matter

00:43:03 ◼   ► what's legal here, what matters is what we will tolerate. And they know that, and

00:43:08 ◼   ► so that's why they're playing all these emotional buttons, you know, they're talking

00:43:10 ◼   ► about the victims and families and Tim's talking about kids being, you know, everyone

00:43:13 ◼   ► knowing the location of your kids. This is why this whole thing just makes me so sad,

00:43:18 ◼   ► It really does because, oh jeez, I mean,

00:43:23 ◼   ► let's just say that there are reasons

00:43:25 ◼   ► I don't usually talk about politics.

00:43:26 ◼   ► If you think I'm negative and bitter about Apple stuff,

00:43:30 ◼   ► this is how I feel about politics.

00:43:32 ◼   ► I try to avoid it as a topic for my own happiness and sanity.

00:43:36 ◼   ► - I just wanted to make one quick thought,

00:43:38 ◼   ► and then I'd like to hear what Jon has to say about this.

00:43:41 ◼   ► But as I was watching this interview tonight,

00:43:43 ◼   ► which I think was a little bit unfortunate

00:43:46 ◼   ► because as you had said, or one of you had said,

00:43:48 ◼   ► you know, it was the same talking points from both sides,

00:43:51 ◼   ► just repeated over and over.

00:43:52 ◼   ► I feel like the entire interview

00:43:53 ◼   ► could have been like four and a half minutes long.

00:43:55 ◼   ► But anyway, I caught myself sitting there

00:43:58 ◼   ► as I'm listening to this, and I thought to myself,

00:44:00 ◼   ► this is why we have Tim Cook.

00:44:02 ◼   ► You know, this is why Tim Cook is here,

00:44:04 ◼   ► is for this very moment right now.

00:44:07 ◼   ► Because I don't doubt that maybe Steve Jobs

00:44:09 ◼   ► would have fought it the same way Tim is,

00:44:11 ◼   ► but I don't know if he would have done as good a job at it.

00:44:14 ◼   ► And I am so unbelievably proud of Tim Cook

00:44:18 ◼   ► and all of Apple for standing up

00:44:20 ◼   ► for what I believe to be right

00:44:21 ◼   ► and for doing the right thing

00:44:22 ◼   ► because this is not easy for really either side

00:44:25 ◼   ► or anyone involved, but particularly for Apple

00:44:28 ◼   ► and all the credit in the world to Apple.

00:44:31 ◼   ► As you said, we have a tendency to call it like we see it.

00:44:34 ◼   ► And sometimes we see it to be not so sunny,

00:44:36 ◼   ► but I could not be more proud of Apple and Tim Cook

00:44:39 ◼   ► than I am right now.

00:44:40 ◼   ► Jon, what do you have to say about all this?

00:44:42 ◼   ► - I was thinking about how Steve Jobs

00:44:44 ◼   ► to handle that interview. Like, at the very least he would have, I mean, Steve Jobs has

00:44:48 ◼   ► more sort of natural charisma than Tim Cook. I feel like a lot of the things when you're

00:44:55 ◼   ► watching it, if you are supportive of Apple's position in this, the interviewer would ask

00:45:01 ◼   ► some leading question to try to, you know, get Tim to say something. And Tim would just

00:45:06 ◼   ► go back to his talking points, not falling for the trap. Jobs would have said the things

00:45:10 ◼   ► that we're thinking. Like they sort of, you know, come back at him and, you know, take more digs at

00:45:16 ◼   ► the government and law enforcement. Tim was always like, you know, we respect law enforcement, we

00:45:19 ◼   ► want to work with them, we want to work together. Jobs would have been, would have let the fact that

00:45:23 ◼   ► he is pissed been, you know, be clear that he is pissed at how this is going. You know, Tim Cook

00:45:28 ◼   ► got a little bit closer. Now, it's a question of whether that would have been actually better in

00:45:31 ◼   ► terms of PR or just, you know, it would have been more satisfying for people who agree with him

00:45:36 ◼   ► already. Would it have been any more convincing for people who don't in the court of public

00:45:39 ◼   ► opinion, I don't know. So anyway, that's a sideshow. One thing that Marco said that stuck

00:45:45 ◼   ► out to me was the idea that this feels worse because Apple can technically do this. And

00:45:51 ◼   ► again, I'm not a lawyer, I don't know about the legal consequences, but when I think about

00:45:54 ◼   ► it, I think that is not relevant at all. Because legal, question-wise, there's two parts to

00:46:01 ◼   ► this. One is what Marco alluded to when he said, "Well, it would be better if they made

00:46:04 ◼   ► a system that Apple couldn't break into." Because then Apple would just say, "Well,

00:46:08 ◼   ► know, we can't do anything. Oh, well, sorry, we can't help you. Like, technically, we can't

00:46:13 ◼   ► help you. There's nothing we could do. All the money and all the time in the world wouldn't

00:46:16 ◼   ► solve this for us. That immediately leads to, okay, we're just going to outlaw cryptography,

00:46:21 ◼   ► which is a would-be-in-terrible-stupid rule because you can't outlaw math. And, you know,

00:46:26 ◼   ► so whatever. So that's one end of that. But that's what I think this case is about. When

00:46:31 ◼   ► I think about it is, just because Apple can do it doesn't mean the government can order

00:46:35 ◼   ► them to do it. Like, the government can't make any one of its citizens or corporations or entities

00:46:43 ◼   ► or whatever do compel them to do something just because they feel like it, right? There has to be

00:46:49 ◼   ► established law as in, when we issue you a search warrant, you have to let us search, right? That's,

00:46:54 ◼   ► you know, you can't just say, you know, it'd be nice if Apple wrote, you know, a custom operating

00:46:59 ◼   ► system to let us crack into this phone. Yeah, that would be nice, wouldn't it? But do you,

00:47:03 ◼   ► the government have the power to compel a corporation to do work for you because you

00:47:06 ◼   ► think it would be cool? Like that's why this is a legal case like this will be decided in the

00:47:10 ◼   ► courts and with legislation and so on and so forth. But the idea like Marco said that law

00:47:15 ◼   ► enforcement, you know, they can technically do this. Why don't we just ask them to? Can't we

00:47:19 ◼   ► make them do that? Aren't we like in charge here? Like, and the answer is no, you can't really make

00:47:24 ◼   ► them and if Apple doesn't want to, they're going to challenge you and you're gonna have to go

00:47:27 ◼   ► through the legal system and try to figure out whether this is something you can even ask them

00:47:30 ◼   ► to do. So I always think it is as I have in the notes here, cryptography versus conscription. Can

00:47:36 ◼   ► you conscript a corporation to write software on your behalf if you are law enforcement?

00:47:41 ◼   ► Because you feel like it not based on any existing law on the books or any legal precedent or

00:47:46 ◼   ► whatever, just because it's a thing that's possible. And one of the things I think about

00:47:50 ◼   ► not this is the same thing at all, but like the idea that individuals and corporations can have

00:47:54 ◼   ► rights. The idea that the government can't demand that you testify against

00:48:01 ◼   ► yourself, you have the right to remain silent. They cannot compel you to speak

00:48:05 ◼   ► against yourself. They may ask you, you know, where you were you on the date such

00:48:09 ◼   ► and such and if they're accusing you of something you can just not answer them

00:48:12 ◼   ► and they can't compel you to answer because it is you could answer oh it's

00:48:16 ◼   ► much worse because you know you have a voice you could answer them if you want

00:48:19 ◼   ► why won't you answer the question they can't compel you to because it's your

00:48:22 ◼   ► right to keep that in mind. Again, this may or may not be speech or whatever, but the

00:48:26 ◼   ► whole idea that someone is capable of doing something does not mean, well, if you're capable

00:48:30 ◼   ► of doing it, the government should be able to compel you to do it. That doesn't make

00:48:33 ◼   ► any sense. So that has to be sorted out in the law. And then conceptually, since we're

00:48:39 ◼   ► late to the story and everyone's gone through all the details and we went through a lot

00:48:42 ◼   ► of them already anyway, the thing that really boggles my mind about this conceptually is

00:48:49 ◼   ► The short view so many people have, like people who are on the wrong side of this issue, as

00:48:53 ◼   ► in people who don't agree with me, right?

00:48:57 ◼   ► The incredible short view they have, like just big picture, like pull back from this

00:49:00 ◼   ► issue, pull back from this one phone, pull back from details about like how it's been

00:49:04 ◼   ► tailor made to set legal precedent and how, you know, like all the details of the other

00:49:10 ◼   ► things wanted to decode stuff and whether you can do it with this one phone and think

00:49:13 ◼   ► of the children and the terrorist victims and all this other stuff and the details of

00:49:16 ◼   ► or whether there's anything on the phone.

00:49:18 ◼   ► And also, by the way, the code is probably 111,

00:49:21 ◼   ► or 1-1-1-1, or 1-2-3-4.

00:49:23 ◼   ► They should just try those two codes

00:49:24 ◼   ► and they would be unlocked.

00:49:25 ◼   ► But even if they did, they would quickly lock it again,

00:49:26 ◼   ► because that's not what this thing is about.

00:49:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, if also, if you're talking about

00:49:29 ◼   ► what's most likely--

00:49:30 ◼   ► - There's nothing on the phone.

00:49:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's way more likely that the person's work phone,

00:49:35 ◼   ► that they had personal phones that they destroyed

00:49:38 ◼   ► or were destroyed.

00:49:40 ◼   ► Yeah, it's way more likely the work phone

00:49:42 ◼   ► has nothing useful on it.

00:49:43 ◼   ► But the FBI knows that,

00:49:45 ◼   ► And that's why it isn't about that.

00:49:47 ◼   ► It's about, you know, they chose this case to publicize.

00:49:51 ◼   ► They chose to publicize it and not do the negotiations

00:49:55 ◼   ► in secret where Apple requested.

00:49:58 ◼   ► They chose this because they knew that emotionally

00:50:02 ◼   ► that the will of the people would probably be on their side

00:50:06 ◼   ► because they can play the angles of terrorism

00:50:08 ◼   ► and victims and everything like--

00:50:10 ◼   ► - Oh, that's what I'm getting at.

00:50:11 ◼   ► The will of the people, right?

00:50:13 ◼   ► So I would be speaking to the people at this point, the people who don't agree that this

00:50:17 ◼   ► is the right thing to do.

00:50:18 ◼   ► Just keep pulling back from this case, from this thing, from phones, from encryption,

00:50:23 ◼   ► from all the details or whatever, and just think over the last several decades or whatever,

00:50:29 ◼   ► the general trend in American government has been people being afraid and looking for anyone

00:50:36 ◼   ► who promises to make them safer and giving up rights to get that imagined safety.

00:50:41 ◼   ► 9/11 on but even before that the whole idea was if you scare enough people and say we can you know

00:50:48 ◼   ► someone is going to kill you and your family unless we can tap all your telephone calls and

00:50:52 ◼   ► read all your mail and all you can get like whatever it is just just the general trend if

00:50:56 ◼   ► you put on a graph you can argue about specifics or whatever but there is no arguing that the

00:51:00 ◼   ► general trend has been away from civil liberties and towards government has access to more and more

00:51:06 ◼   ► stuff and that has been motivated generally by people being afraid either people making them

00:51:11 ◼   ► them afraid or people legitimately being afraid and people taking advantage of that fear to

00:51:14 ◼   ► say, "Now we in law enforcement can do our job better because you're afraid. You need

00:51:19 ◼   ► to give us these rights." And time and again, law enforcement and government have proven

00:51:23 ◼   ► that once they get the rights, they don't give them back. They use them in the ways

00:51:26 ◼   ► that they didn't say that they said they weren't going to use them. They abuse them. There's

00:51:30 ◼   ► no repercussions for that. And it's a ratcheting mechanism that never slides the other direction

00:51:34 ◼   ► and only goes to more and more and technologies enabling to do this. Now, every individual

00:51:39 ◼   ► point you can argue with like, oh, do I agree about this? And what about phone wiretapping?

00:51:42 ◼   ► What about Snowden or whatever? You can argue every individual point, but when you put it

00:51:45 ◼   ► on a big graph, this is a massive trend, a massive long term trend away from civil liberties

00:51:51 ◼   ► and towards a loss of individual rights, right? Specifically, when it comes to law enforcement,

00:51:57 ◼   ► surveillance and privacy. And so even in this individual case, you just have to like you

00:52:02 ◼   ► have to color all of your thinking to say, is should we just continue to play out this

00:52:07 ◼   ► thing on these individual battles slowly ratcheting our way up? How does this all end? Such a

00:52:13 ◼   ► long slide, you have to at some point say, "There's a limit." You just can't keep asking

00:52:18 ◼   ► for more and more and more and generations of people living and dying and just getting

00:52:21 ◼   ► used to what the government does until—you just can't keep going in that direction

00:52:25 ◼   ► further. It has to be a pendulum. It has to be a cycle. There has to be a swing. And at

00:52:30 ◼   ► some point, you have to start swinging in the other direction. At some point, your fear

00:52:35 ◼   ► of being killed by terrorists has to be trumped by the, granted, much more intellectual ideas

00:52:40 ◼   ► that the country is supposedly founded on of some amount of individual liberty and rights.

00:52:46 ◼   ► Does that swing back all in the other direction? We have freedom of speech, but we also have

00:52:52 ◼   ► slander laws and can't yell fire in a crowded theater. It's just like the basics of civics

00:52:57 ◼   ► 101. There are extremes and we've been headed in this other direction for so long that I

00:53:02 ◼   ► think that every problem that touches on this you at all has to be viewed in the

00:53:06 ◼   ► context of the humongous long clear unidirectional slide that we've been in

00:53:11 ◼   ► for so long and so anybody who's for this I have to say don't you know don't

00:53:16 ◼   ► think of this individual issue do you agree that this we've been going this

00:53:19 ◼   ► direction for far too long at what point do we need to turn around at what point

00:53:23 ◼   ► do we need to start swinging in the other direction I think personally we're

00:53:26 ◼   ► way past that point but even if you don't think we're past that point if

00:53:28 ◼   ► you're not thinking about that point if just every time something comes up that

00:53:32 ◼   ► you're afraid of or that you need your, you know, support the troops law enforcement is

00:53:36 ◼   ► always right. The government is our friend, blah, blah, blah. If every single time something

00:53:40 ◼   ► comes up, you never even occur to you to look at where we're going and how we have to swing

00:53:43 ◼   ► into the direction. And I'm far from, you know, a libertarian individual rights nut

00:53:49 ◼   ► job type person like I'm far from that. But I'm just saying like, no matter where you

00:53:52 ◼   ► are, if you never if you never considered like, this movement, this graph, this spec,

00:53:58 ◼   ► then it will never occur. It'll just it and there's no like, oh, it'll be too late. Like

00:54:01 ◼   ► there is no too late. It'll just be the new normal, the new normal, the new normal. The

00:54:04 ◼   ► only thing we'll have to compare ourselves with is the rest of the world that is hopefully

00:54:08 ◼   ► slightly more sane in these matters, although the UK shows maybe not because they've got

00:54:11 ◼   ► surveillance everywhere too. Things need to eventually swing back in the other direction.

00:54:17 ◼   ► And it just seems like anybody who is at this point against this thing is showing that they're

00:54:22 ◼   ► thinking entirely with their heart and their fear and all those things that do them credit

00:54:29 ◼   ► in general, but when it comes to establishing legal precedence and giving powers to the

00:54:32 ◼   ► government to, you know, rights to privacy, and again, it's all these details, like people

00:54:37 ◼   ► don't know these details about encryption and all like, it's too esoteric. It's too,

00:54:41 ◼   ► that's why it's the perfect case for the government. It's too, Tim Cook can't make the real case,

00:54:44 ◼   ► because it's too detailed and your eyes glaze over and you're just like, but terrorists

00:54:47 ◼   ► bad, give the government what they want, right? That is exactly the same thing that's got

00:54:50 ◼   ► us doing all the crazy things we've been doing since 9/11. And I just feel like you can't

00:54:55 ◼   ► continue to go in that direction forever. Everybody should, at the very least, every

00:54:59 ◼   ► time they make any argument about it, they should have to explain why not only is this

00:55:03 ◼   ► the right thing to do in this case, but I believe that it is essential for us to ratchet

00:55:07 ◼   ► this thing up one more notch. You know, for invading our privacy and for giving law enforcement

00:55:12 ◼   ► government more power. In fact, that is essential. And this, because if anyone says it's just

00:55:16 ◼   ► this one time or it's just this one thing or whatever, it's like they haven't looked

00:55:19 ◼   ► at history, recent history, or ancient history or any kind of history. That's not the way

00:55:23 ◼   ► it works. Once someone gets power, they don't give it up again unless you take it from them.

00:55:27 ◼   ► Yeah, but honestly, I totally agree. First of all, I think everything you said is gold.

00:55:34 ◼   ► But looking at history and looking at the present and the direction and everything,

00:55:42 ◼   ► I don't think I see a lot of evidence that it ever really does swing back in the direction.

00:55:47 ◼   ► Well, you know, America itself was a swing in the other direction. There was more authoritarian

00:55:52 ◼   ► government control under a king than there was under a democracy. There was a huge swing in the

00:55:56 ◼   ► other direction. It does go back and forth in cycles. Like you just study history. There are

00:56:00 ◼   ► times where the government has more power over its citizenry, and then less power and then more

00:56:05 ◼   ► and then less. And, you know, it's clear which direction we're going in now. And it's clear why

00:56:09 ◼   ► in America anyway. There's no reason we can't reverse that trend. And you would think like,

00:56:14 ◼   ► Oh, well, you know, people like being under the king because it provides a measure of safety. And

00:56:20 ◼   ► if we had a king like the Mongol hordes would come and kill them or whatever. There's always

00:56:24 ◼   ► some reason to be like, yeah, it's terrible, but it's better than the alternative, right?

00:56:28 ◼   ► But at some point, people are like, you know, f the king, we're chopping his head off, and we're

00:56:32 ◼   ► gonna have our own system of government or whatever, like we're throwing his tea overboard.

00:56:36 ◼   ► Those are big, messy calamities. But there are smaller victories as well. I mean, just look at

00:56:42 ◼   ► the Constitution. It's been amended many times to give people more rights and take rights away from

00:56:48 ◼   ► the government. Say, you know, previously you could own people, now we think that's not such a great

00:56:53 ◼   ► idea. So maybe write that into the Constitution. Or, for example, you can't drink alcohol anymore.

00:56:58 ◼   ► No, never mind, you can't. You know, previously, we had the right to stop you from drinking alcohol.

00:57:03 ◼   ► Then later we said, no, we probably shouldn't have that right.

00:57:05 ◼   ► Yeah, but on the other side of it, like, like, maybe, I mean, first of all, you know,

00:57:10 ◼   ► there's different, there's different versions of like, a government that has too much power,

00:57:15 ◼   ► that's too oppressive that people revolt against or overthrow. You know, like, it,

00:57:21 ◼   ► granted, this is way out of our usual comfort zone, so please forgive me for anything I'm

00:57:24 ◼   ► butchering here. But, you know, like, if you think about, like, the way that we are being

00:57:29 ◼   ► oppressed by the surveillance and police states here, it's in a way that most people don't

00:57:36 ◼   ► care about, because they don't think it affects them. And so, it's hard, like, if

00:57:42 ◼   ► the government is taxing the crap out of you, you know, like, or taking your land and stuff

00:57:48 ◼   ► like that, like, you know, if that's happening to a whole bunch of people, that's enough

00:57:53 ◼   ► to make people revolt, in most cases historically. But if they're just like, you know, keeping

00:57:59 ◼   ► records of your text messages in these weird secret things that no one really thinks about

00:58:04 ◼   ► or knows about, and then even when we're told they exist, everyone's like, "Eh,

00:58:07 ◼   ► well, it doesn't really matter," and then we all forget and go watch The Bachelor,

00:58:10 ◼   ► Like, I feel like the ways in which things are going so badly that we're talking about

00:58:16 ◼   ► here are ways that people don't care about enough.

00:58:19 ◼   ► Well they care about them when there are consequences though.

00:58:22 ◼   ► Well but for most people there are no consequences to this that they see.

00:58:25 ◼   ► It doesn't matter if it's not consequences for most people for anything, it just matters

00:58:29 ◼   ► that there are consequences for somebody.

00:58:31 ◼   ► You just need, you just need basically, you need an attractive young person to encounter

00:58:37 ◼   ► a problem. You know, like, like, for the same perfect storm that makes these things a great

00:58:43 ◼   ► case of the FBI, there's the opposite too. Right? And, and here's the thing that makes

00:58:47 ◼   ► me optimistic about it, because in general, despite insane gerrymandering, and all sorts of other

00:58:53 ◼   ► things, we still have a system where people vote. And so if people get angry enough, the people who

00:59:00 ◼   ► are in power get voted out and new people get voted in. So it's always up to someone else to

00:59:05 ◼   ► find a way to exploit the public to get them elected. And people are always motivated to

00:59:08 ◼   ► do that. And there are smart people trying to get them elected instead of somebody else.

00:59:14 ◼   ► And so there'll always be at least some way for us to effect change.

00:59:16 ◼   ► Yeah, but also like, but over time, you know, as technology has progressed, as the world

00:59:22 ◼   ► has gotten more, you know, just more kind of globalized, and you know, as everything

00:59:29 ◼   ► including manipulation and centralization of power has progressed. What if oppression

00:59:36 ◼   ► by government and by police apparatuses, apparati, what if this has actually gotten so good that

00:59:44 ◼   ► now they're so good and things are so big and there's so much power concentrated in

00:59:50 ◼   ► so few hands these days and the science of manipulating people and manipulating the media

00:59:57 ◼   ► and controlling the messaging of everything, that has gotten so advanced. We have gotten

01:00:01 ◼   ► so good at concentrating power basically and keeping those people in power that that kind

01:00:10 ◼   ► of overthrow or change just doesn't happen anymore. In ways like certain forms of warfare

01:00:17 ◼   ► basically don't happen anymore because we as a society have found more effective things

01:00:23 ◼   ► cover those needs or wants. You know, certain types of media don't exist anymore. Certain

01:00:28 ◼   ► types of legal issues are just not debated anymore. Certain types of freedoms are just

01:00:33 ◼   ► assumed that we will either always have or that we will never have. It seems like we've

01:00:37 ◼   ► moved forward, we've moved past many of these things and we've advanced so much that I feel

01:00:40 ◼   ► like the police states are so in control now of almost every first world country. And so

01:00:48 ◼   ► So the combination of the establishment of control here along with these issues usually

01:00:55 ◼   ► not bothering most everyday people in ways that they can notice or get mad about, plus

01:01:01 ◼   ► the ability for the people who want to keep things this way to very effectively control

01:01:06 ◼   ► the media narrative and to have media so centralized that's even possible. I feel like the conditions

01:01:12 ◼   ► are such now that a significant revolution can't really happen anymore. Does that make

01:01:18 ◼   ► sense? Am I just crazy?

01:01:20 ◼   ► You're falling into the Illuminati trap where you imagine that it's possible for

01:01:24 ◼   ► a conspiracy of people to actually keep their stuff together and actually be all powerful

01:01:29 ◼   ► and controlling. Bottom line, people are people. That's what undoes all of these things.

01:01:34 ◼   ► If any grand conspiracy theory requires people to be so much more competent than anyone else,

01:01:38 ◼   ► much more intelligent and capable and organized and able to keep secrets and able to like that

01:01:46 ◼   ► any conspiracy theory that relies on that is obviously false because that just does not happen

01:01:50 ◼   ► there are no better set of people better able to control things and if and that's what i was saying

01:01:54 ◼   ► before there may be individual people who are good at that but they're in opposition to each other and

01:01:58 ◼   ► also all of them are just plain old people with their own stupid foibles and desires and things

01:02:03 ◼   ► that don't make any sense. And that general, the general chaos of people being people means that,

01:02:08 ◼   ► in the end, not saying it all works itself out. But like I said, as long as you're, as long as

01:02:14 ◼   ► you're not in a military dictatorship in which you have to like have a bloody revolution to change

01:02:18 ◼   ► things, as long as we still have some way to change things without taking up arms, which at

01:02:23 ◼   ► this point would be non workable anyway. Because seriously, the entire United States population

01:02:30 ◼   ► versus the entire U.S. Army if you set up that battle, assuming both sides were highly motivated

01:02:35 ◼   ► against each other, which makes no sense because the army is made up of the children of the

01:02:38 ◼   ► citizenry or whatever. But anyway, if you can imagine that scenario, we lose every time. Anyway,

01:02:42 ◼   ► doesn't matter. As long as voting still functions in some tiny way, which is getting

01:02:48 ◼   ► tinier all the time, granted, but as long as it still works in some way, and as long as people

01:02:52 ◼   ► are still stupid people with their own weird desires and motivations, that sort of like

01:02:58 ◼   ► dystopian sci-fi narrative where the few rule, the Illuminati rule and the Morlocks are just

01:03:07 ◼   ► like lulled into a sense of… In many ways, idiocracy is a much more plausible scenario

01:03:14 ◼   ► in which everybody is a bunch of dunces. But the idea that the…

01:03:17 ◼   ► Well, I feel like the reason that the idiocracy resonates so much and we use it as such an

01:03:23 ◼   ► often metaphor in these circles, is because that it like, the way that I'm picturing

01:03:29 ◼   ► there being a big problem for any kind of meaningful progress on these fronts is not

01:03:34 ◼   ► the Illuminati situation. It's not a big conspiracy theory. If anything, what we've

01:03:40 ◼   ► seen over the last, you know, 10, 20 years or whatever, probably longer, what we've

01:03:44 ◼   ► seen is that the government or those in power can do audacious things, possibly even things

01:03:52 ◼   ► that are illegal, and they can just do them right in the open. And if they message it

01:03:56 ◼   ► correctly, which they have found more and more effective ways to do over time, as long

01:04:01 ◼   ► as it's messaged correctly publicly, they can get away with it almost every time.

01:04:05 ◼   ► But there are people who are motivated to get them out of office. Other people want

01:04:09 ◼   ► those jobs, and they have the same tools and knowledge that they're disposable to battle

01:04:12 ◼   ► them. If someone does something like that, it's guaranteed when they come up for election

01:04:16 ◼   ► and someone wants to run against them, they're going to bring up the thing, and they're

01:04:19 ◼   ► they're going to bring it up in the unfavorable angle using all the tricks of the trade and

01:04:22 ◼   ► emotional appeals. I think elections, again, not the cure for this, but elections are the

01:04:28 ◼   ► hedge against this because all the tools they have to get away with stuff, people who want

01:04:32 ◼   ► them out of office have to run against them to do the exact same thing.

01:04:35 ◼   ► David ELLIS-COPP: Yeah, but that's also based on a number of big assumptions of A, that

01:04:40 ◼   ► the population cares what people say in election debates and everything.

01:04:44 ◼   ► David ELLIS-COPP But you have to learn how to make them care.

01:04:46 ◼   ► That's how you get elected.

01:04:47 ◼   ► You have to do all the tricks in the book to get people – I mean, look at Donald Trump.

01:04:51 ◼   ► He's using all the tricks in the borough to get – to win the Republican nomination.

01:04:54 ◼   ► He's an idiot, right?

01:04:55 ◼   ► How is he doing that?

01:04:56 ◼   ► Because he knows how to manipulate and play the game, right?

01:04:59 ◼   ► Not that I'm saying he's the greatest person, but like if Donald Trump can get this close

01:05:04 ◼   ► to being president, it shows that anybody can.

01:05:07 ◼   ► Like you know what I mean?

01:05:09 ◼   ► The tools are there for everybody.

01:05:11 ◼   ► Everyone has access to Twitter.

01:05:13 ◼   ► Everyone can be on a reality show where they say you're fired.

01:05:15 ◼   ► can put their face on it. Like, all the tools are there for everybody. And people are constantly

01:05:20 ◼   ► hungry to kick out the old guys and bring in the new guys. And they know it's possible

01:05:24 ◼   ► because elections happen. And if they can convince you to vote for them, then they get

01:05:27 ◼   ► the job and then they can be corrupt and have power and do stuff or whatever, you know,

01:05:31 ◼   ► so like, again, in sci fi stories, it's always like, well, or in military dictatorships,

01:05:36 ◼   ► or in places like North Korea, where the people have no power, and literally sometimes have

01:05:40 ◼   ► no food, right? It's much harder. But in a first world country, with even a remotely functioning

01:05:48 ◼   ► government where people get to vote, there was always hope. And even if it's a hope of like, get

01:05:54 ◼   ► the current terrible people out and get a different even more terrible but terrible in a

01:05:58 ◼   ► different way person in that still hope it's not as if like, it's going to be you know, a military

01:06:04 ◼   ► dictatorship where where the the supreme ruler passes it on to his son and so on and so forth.

01:06:09 ◼   ► the only way you get out of it is with a bloody revolution or something. So I'm not as pessimistic

01:06:14 ◼   ► as you are about it because I think most of the scenarios where it's like intractable

01:06:20 ◼   ► and we're never going to escape from it just don't work out in reality because people

01:06:24 ◼   ► are just people, like I said. I hope you're right. I am, don't worry. You usually are,

01:06:31 ◼   ► so I have some confidence here. You're generally right. I mean, it's not to say that it can't

01:06:35 ◼   ► be disastrous, because I think one of the sci-fi stories and scenarios that is plausible

01:06:39 ◼   ► is like the one where you get the crazy person like Trump or something in there. Or like

01:06:43 ◼   ► the, what is it, um, Firestarter. Anyway, don't want to spoil that book for people.

01:06:49 ◼   ► Someone like Trump comes in and then like nukes somebody and we all die. Like, that's

01:06:52 ◼   ► always a possibility. But I feel like I lived through that as a child of the 80s and it's

01:06:56 ◼   ► like, it's all hat now. The whole world could blow up at any second because of a cowboy

01:07:00 ◼   ► in the White House. That's still a possibility, it's still out there, so don't say that

01:07:03 ◼   ► not going to happen because it could. But again, that could have happened back in the

01:07:07 ◼   ► olden days of the 80s, just as much as can happen with President Trump and terrorist

01:07:12 ◼   ► nuking things or whatever. Terrorist nuking things, by the way, is exactly why they want

01:07:15 ◼   ► to be able to monitor every single thing you do. Aren't you afraid of terrorists nuking

01:07:18 ◼   ► you? Please let me have access to everything in your entire life and you have no rights

01:07:21 ◼   ► and we can hold you without trial forever.

01:07:23 ◼   ► Wow. All right, let's talk about something that's happy and awesome and then I have a

01:07:28 ◼   ► question for you guys.

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01:09:10 ◼   ► - Real time follow up, I'm gonna blame this on the cold,

01:09:12 ◼   ► which by the way I have, hey, have you heard I have a cold?

01:09:14 ◼   ► I have a cold.

01:09:16 ◼   ► Not fire starter, obviously the dead zone, sorry.

01:09:20 ◼   ► Brain fart there.

01:09:22 ◼   ► You know, as Donald Trump would say,

01:09:23 ◼   ► he can shield himself from an assassin

01:09:25 ◼   ► by holding a young child in front of him

01:09:26 ◼   ► to still win the nomination.

01:09:28 ◼   ► All right, enough politics.

01:09:29 ◼   ► - Oh my goodness. - Oh God.

01:09:31 ◼   ► Now that I'm sad.

01:09:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, seriously.

01:09:33 ◼   ► - Is there anything better we can talk about tonight?

01:09:34 ◼   ► - Well, I have a question that's related,

01:09:37 ◼   ► but maybe less sad, hopefully less sad.

01:09:40 ◼   ► Let's assume, well, it's gonna start sad, actually.

01:09:43 ◼   ► Let's assume that Apple is told you have to do this,

01:09:48 ◼   ► and the world is upset, we are upset,

01:09:52 ◼   ► and actually we haven't talked that much

01:09:54 ◼   ► about how this relates to the rest of the world.

01:09:55 ◼   ► But anyway, everyone's upset.

01:09:57 ◼   ► Apple's told they have to do this.

01:10:00 ◼   ► And Apple says to its engineers,

01:10:02 ◼   ► "You have to do this now."

01:10:05 ◼   ► What happens if all the engineers that work at Apple

01:10:07 ◼   ► that have any sort of knowledge

01:10:09 ◼   ► as to how to make this happen just say no?

01:10:11 ◼   ► - Well, they get fired because it's insubordination.

01:10:15 ◼   ► - Do they?

01:10:16 ◼   ► I mean, one would assume, I agree.

01:10:18 ◼   ► - It's civil disobedience.

01:10:19 ◼   ► Civil disobedience is basically like

01:10:21 ◼   ► if you refuse to do what the law says you have to do,

01:10:24 ◼   ► accept the consequences of it, which is either get fired or go to jail. Like I mean, like, basically

01:10:28 ◼   ► if Apple's CEOs refuse to comply with the thing, then they're in contempt of court or whatever,

01:10:33 ◼   ► you know, thing and they if the people in charge of the company cooperate and tell their subordinates

01:10:39 ◼   ► to do it and the subordinates don't, then the subordinates to get fired for insubordination.

01:10:42 ◼   ► It's not as if there's some scenario where that we can all sit on their hands and say, well, you told

01:10:47 ◼   ► us to do it. And I told these guys to do it, but they won't. Oh, well, like, court order is a court

01:10:51 ◼   ► order and there's consequences for whoever it is that decides to defy it. And they could.

01:10:57 ◼   ► Civil disobedience is a way to protest unjust laws. But part of civil disobedience is that

01:11:02 ◼   ► you accept the punishment associated with disobeying the laws. And that's part of civil

01:11:06 ◼   ► disobedience. So yes, that could happen. But I really doubt it would.

01:11:09 ◼   ► Right. I mean, yeah, eventually, like, you know, if Tim Cook was thrown in jail over

01:11:14 ◼   ► not obeying a final court order, then somebody else would replace him because the company

01:11:19 ◼   ► have to continue operating somehow, and then that person would authorize it. Or they'd

01:11:24 ◼   ► go to jail and the next person would. Eventually you'd find somebody who would do it. So that's

01:11:29 ◼   ► not really a way out.

01:11:31 ◼   ► And really, realistically speaking, they would just do it if they were ordered to. But then

01:11:34 ◼   ► simultaneously what they would be doing is, like Mark said before, they're already obviously

01:11:39 ◼   ► working on an operating system that they themselves can't hack into, and that just leads to the

01:11:42 ◼   ► next legal fight, which is, should it be legal to make these things? Which is another incredibly

01:11:46 ◼   ► stupid legal fight that like, at a certain point, law enforcement becomes just so misguided

01:11:51 ◼   ► in what they want. Like in some respects, I'd say they're already past that point. I

01:11:54 ◼   ► know. But like, when the system is working the way you expect it to, like law enforcement

01:11:58 ◼   ► is highly motivated to to get all the powers they possibly can to, to enforce the law and

01:12:04 ◼   ► solve crimes, right? It's checks and balances that there has to be some opposing force.

01:12:08 ◼   ► The other side says, Yeah, law enforcement, you may want this, but civil rights dictate

01:12:11 ◼   ► x, y and z like, and when the checks and balances get out of balance, then we you know, that's

01:12:15 ◼   ► why you get this long-term trend and what didn't take much to unbalance it, just giant

01:12:19 ◼   ► terrorist attacks on American soil and then it gets all unbalanced, right?

01:12:21 ◼   ► Can I also make the minor correction that law enforcement's incentive is not to solve

01:12:26 ◼   ► crimes, it's to close cases. Not necessarily solving them, just to close the case. Solving

01:12:32 ◼   ► them suggests they're doing it correctly. In the grand scheme of things, again, people

01:12:35 ◼   ► being people, the idea is just to obtain power. But whatever, let's not get into motivations

01:12:41 ◼   ► and particular disincentives. But anyway, when things are working, what like, what I'm

01:12:45 ◼   ► getting at is that it's not necessarily a bad thing to have two parts of your system

01:12:49 ◼   ► of government that are in opposition to each other and both highly motivated and doing

01:12:54 ◼   ► everything they can. It's a problem when one side keeps winning for decades on end, because

01:12:58 ◼   ► then you get, you know, they're not balancing each other anymore. Like there is no more

01:13:01 ◼   ► balance, right. But in this case, in the crypto thing, like say, Apple's order to do it, they

01:13:06 ◼   ► do it. Two years later, they come up with a new version of iOS that they can't even

01:13:09 ◼   ► crack into. Eventually all the old iOS devices would go out of use so no criminals are using

01:13:13 ◼   ► them anymore. And of course all the criminals upgraded to the one that Apple can't break

01:13:16 ◼   ► into. Similar scenario comes up. Law enforcement has this thing, they want to get into it.

01:13:22 ◼   ► Apple can't do it. They're pissed off about it. It becomes a legal issue. You know, the

01:13:28 ◼   ► senators and congresspeople who think they can best get elected by scaring their citizenry

01:13:35 ◼   ► into thinking this needs to be done, they say, "It's outrageous that an American company

01:13:39 ◼   ► can make phones that the American government can't break into. That should not be allowed.

01:13:42 ◼   ► And so they propose legislation that makes cryptography illegal, right? And at that point,

01:13:46 ◼   ► you would hope someone in law enforcement would realize that it's asinine, right? America can make

01:13:52 ◼   ► whatever it wants illegal. You can't get rid of math. Like the rest of the world has the math.

01:13:56 ◼   ► People can write programs themselves that make cryptography that in theory can't be cracked by,

01:14:02 ◼   ► you know, the world's biggest computers for some, you know, like, that's, you can't unring that

01:14:07 ◼   ► bell. Like that exists. And so if you make it illegal, for all that's going to do is

01:14:11 ◼   ► make law abiding US companies not do that. But everyone else can do it. Right? And it's

01:14:18 ◼   ► a it's a it doesn't help law enforcement, right? And practically speaking, criminals,

01:14:24 ◼   ► including terrorists are not as sophisticated as people think they are. But if they wanted

01:14:26 ◼   ► to be like, you know, even even this guy's phone, if he had used an alphanumeric password,

01:14:32 ◼   ► the government wouldn't the FBI wouldn't be able to ask Apple to crack into it anyway,

01:14:35 ◼   ► it would take too long, right? Maybe he did on his personal phone. Yeah, well he destroyed

01:14:39 ◼   ► that, so anyway. The way the system should work is American companies should be able

01:14:44 ◼   ► to make technology they want with the best, you know, cryptography available to them,

01:14:48 ◼   ► and the government should be able to spend its hojillions of dollars in tax money to fund,

01:14:53 ◼   ► you know, what are they called, like, not black box budget, but like, you know, budget

01:14:58 ◼   ► that you, there's some word for like secret budgets that you're not even allowed to know

01:15:01 ◼   ► how much money they spend like Homeland Security and the NSA. By all means, give this iPhone

01:15:06 ◼   ► to the NSA's experts and have them break into it using huge supercomputers that you built

01:15:11 ◼   ► with taxpayer money. Like if you figure out how to break in, good on you, right? Because

01:15:17 ◼   ► that is a proper balance where people get to make better and better cryptography unconstrained

01:15:22 ◼   ► by the law and the government, maybe it's a little bit unbalanced, but the government

01:15:26 ◼   ► with its huge funding gets to hire the smartest people in the world and build the world's

01:15:30 ◼   ► biggest computers to try to crack that cryptography, and yeah, you can have that battle. And that's

01:15:34 ◼   ► the way it's worked for, you know, forever in this country, is that the government does

01:15:40 ◼   ► have smart people to try to crack things, and people try to make uncrackable things

01:15:43 ◼   ► on the outside, and they go back and forth, right? But this is the new strategy of like,

01:15:47 ◼   ► "We don't want to do that. It seems hard. Apple, can you just unlock it for us?" And

01:15:50 ◼   ► so...

01:15:51 ◼   ► Well, because it isn't about this phone. It's about having easier and faster access to any

01:15:56 ◼   ► phone they want.

01:15:57 ◼   ► Right, basically to be able to, "I'm the boss of you. I can make you do things." So anyway,

01:16:02 ◼   ► if Apple loses this case, Apple will unlock the phone, then Apple will use its lobbying

01:16:06 ◼   ► power and its millions and try to rally the tech companies to try to get legislation to

01:16:10 ◼   ► make this, you know, like, it'll be the whole political process. But eventually, Apple will

01:16:14 ◼   ► make a phone that they themselves can't crack into. And then that will be a political football

01:16:20 ◼   ► where it has to be, "Can we try to make this illegal?" Maybe that fight will be, you know,

01:16:25 ◼   ► it's the same in all these things you would hope eventually the public will be

01:16:30 ◼   ► persuaded that Apple and privacy and cryptography kind of has a point even as

01:16:35 ◼   ► esoteric as it is I think eventually it will be understandable enough that a big

01:16:41 ◼   ► because like the crypto one you just have to explain to him look making this

01:16:43 ◼   ► illegal for Apple doesn't do anything terrorists can do this right now you

01:16:46 ◼   ► know it doesn't doesn't matter all it does is mean that it's easier for other

01:16:50 ◼   ► people to get into your phone it doesn't make it any easier for people to get

01:16:53 ◼   ► into terrorists' phones because A, terrorists don't do important things on phones and

01:16:56 ◼   ► B, if they wanted to encrypt things so that no one could get it except for them, they

01:16:59 ◼   ► could do it now, they could have done it a decade ago, they have the technology, that's

01:17:05 ◼   ► not what's stopping them.

01:17:07 ◼   ► You have a lot more hope than I do for our people and our politicians and our law enforcement

01:17:11 ◼   ► because everything you just said could apply also to drugs.

01:17:15 ◼   ► Like, why make drugs illegal?

01:17:17 ◼   ► Then regular people will be penalized for not having drugs but then everyone else will

01:17:20 ◼   ► have drugs.

01:17:21 ◼   ► Yeah. And they did it anyway, and look what it's doing.

01:17:26 ◼   ► I would make the same big picture argument with the war on drugs, where it's like,

01:17:30 ◼   ► regardless of what you may think about an individual issue, what has happened over the

01:17:33 ◼   ► past 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years in terms of the war on drugs and what have the results

01:17:37 ◼   ► been? What are the intended goals and what have the actual results been? And maybe pick

01:17:41 ◼   ► a different strategy if what you're trying to do is the exact opposite of what you're

01:17:43 ◼   ► causing to happen. And that gets into all puritanical, that actually does have deep

01:17:49 ◼   ► roots in America, the whole idea of like finding who to blame or punish versus solving the

01:17:53 ◼   ► actual problem and yeah, yeah, yeah. This is not a political podcast, we're going

01:17:57 ◼   ► into too many issues, but some things do seem really intractable because of the particular

01:18:02 ◼   ► nature of America. We haven't even talked about guns, by the way, which I'm sure we'll

01:18:05 ◼   ► get feedback about. There's all those arguments, you gave them cryptography, exactly the same

01:18:09 ◼   ► arguments you could give for—anyway, we're not going to talk about guns. Anyway, people

01:18:12 ◼   ► have opinions, but this—it's kind of a shame that this is weird and esoteric and

01:18:18 ◼   ► techy because in that way it probably like Apple could lose this one. Apple is going

01:18:26 ◼   ► to lose this one in the court of public opinion. Apple could win it in the legal court but

01:18:31 ◼   ► even if Apple like quote unquote wins in court they're gonna come out of this as a company

01:18:35 ◼   ► that half of America thinks helps terrorists. There's just no avoiding that. Which is a

01:18:39 ◼   ► shame for Apple. It's a shame for people who don't understand the larger implications,

01:18:44 ◼   ► don't understand the trends in American life over the past several decades or who agree

01:18:49 ◼   ► with it because they're constantly terrified of everything because they watch Fox News

01:18:53 ◼   ► all the time, I don't know. Or any news for that matter, let's not just call it that.

01:18:56 ◼   ► They watch NBC all the time and all they know is the things that are going to kill them.

01:19:01 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a shame. That's a bummer for Apple. I mean, that's got to bum Tim Cook

01:19:06 ◼   ► out because I think he's a savvy enough person to know that even if he wins, he loses

01:19:11 ◼   ► a little bit in this one.

01:19:12 ◼   ► And that's why it's so interesting and admirable here on the side of it that they are standing

01:19:17 ◼   ► up for this because the upside for them is not large here.

01:19:23 ◼   ► There is almost no upside for them. I don't understand. You could say, "Oh, the upside

01:19:27 ◼   ► is that they can sell more people phones." Like Marco said, people don't care enough

01:19:30 ◼   ► about this. They're, "I'm going to buy the Apple phone because it's less likely the government's

01:19:33 ◼   ► going to..." No one thinks about that. There's barely any upside for that. It is a net loss

01:19:39 ◼   ► for Apple no matter how this turns out, I feel like.

01:19:41 ◼   ► It's a huge loss. And the silver lining I can see in this, the only silver lining I

01:19:46 ◼   ► can really see in this, is that Apple is no stranger to bad press, you know, and to negativity

01:19:56 ◼   ► about them and rumors or slight mistruths or even truths about them that just suck being

01:20:04 ◼   ► spread in the media very quickly and basically sticking around forever. You know, any kind

01:20:09 ◼   ► of iPhone flaw or the quitting your apps thing even,

01:20:14 ◼   ► or the idea that they changed the dock port

01:20:20 ◼   ► to the lightning port to make you re-buy all your cables.

01:20:23 ◼   ► - Don't get me started.

01:20:25 ◼   ► - There's negativity about Apple spreads so much

01:20:30 ◼   ► in the general population now that,

01:20:32 ◼   ► this is not new for Apple,

01:20:35 ◼   ► this won't be the only negative thing about them

01:20:36 ◼   ► that a lot of people truly or falsely believe.

01:20:41 ◼   ► And the other thing is that that might help them here is part of what makes it so hard

01:20:46 ◼   ► for things like the Snowden revelations to really stick around in the news cycle, that

01:20:54 ◼   ► people will move on.

01:20:55 ◼   ► You know, like next week Kanye West will say something and that'll be like, and then

01:21:00 ◼   ► all this won't matter anymore.

01:21:01 ◼   ► It's like the attention span of the hot topic

01:21:06 ◼   ► in American news is so short,

01:21:09 ◼   ► especially for something like this where,

01:21:11 ◼   ► you know, like the Snowden stuff,

01:21:12 ◼   ► where it's kind of complicated,

01:21:14 ◼   ► and there's no good solution or end game here

01:21:18 ◼   ► that's going to happen,

01:21:20 ◼   ► and just understanding the topic in general is complicated.

01:21:23 ◼   ► I've had a number of non-geeks bring up this topic

01:21:27 ◼   ► in the last week or so since it came out,

01:21:30 ◼   ► And every time their reaction is not

01:21:33 ◼   ► what is Apple doing to help terrorists,

01:21:35 ◼   ► it's what exactly is going on here?

01:21:37 ◼   ► 'Cause it's a hard topic to understand

01:21:40 ◼   ► if you aren't very technical

01:21:42 ◼   ► and also haven't read a really good summary of it.

01:21:45 ◼   ► It's all very sensationalized

01:21:47 ◼   ► and very being boosted by the media here and there,

01:21:52 ◼   ► but nobody really, in general,

01:21:54 ◼   ► people don't really understand it

01:21:55 ◼   ► or don't have a very accurate picture of it.

01:21:58 ◼   ► So honestly, I don't think it's going to stick around for very long in the news cycle.

01:22:04 ◼   ► I think I'd be surprised if anybody was talking about it two weeks from now.

01:22:08 ◼   ► To give some support for your pessimism, Marco, by the way.

01:22:10 ◼   ► Thanks.

01:22:11 ◼   ► For issues like this that are technical, that people don't really care that much about,

01:22:16 ◼   ► that you need to kind of be into the intellectual or legal side of it to really have it hold

01:22:21 ◼   ► your attention because it's too complicated to think about otherwise, very often leads

01:22:25 ◼   ► to terrible laws that take a long time if ever to go away. It doesn't mean they'll never go away,

01:22:30 ◼   ► it just means that we may all be dead. Some recent examples are like the DMCA, all the weird,

01:22:36 ◼   ► you know, stuff involving cable television and breaking encryption on ink cartridges for printers

01:22:46 ◼   ► and like all the laws, most of those are done by corporate lobbying, obviously, but laws that are

01:22:51 ◼   ► about technical issues like if the if I feel it really feel like if you took any

01:22:55 ◼   ► individual American to put them into a room and playing explain the DMCA and

01:22:59 ◼   ► the actual consequences of it they would come down on the side that this is a

01:23:02 ◼   ► stupid law you know they would understand the motivations but this is

01:23:05 ◼   ► not the way to do it because it can be abused in all these ways and look at how

01:23:08 ◼   ► it works and blah blah blah but the bottom line is that pass it's still the

01:23:12 ◼   ► law of land it's not going away anytime soon eternal copyright another great

01:23:14 ◼   ► example you can explain some on that until you're blue in the face you could

01:23:17 ◼   ► probably convince pretty much everybody individually but overall people like

01:23:21 ◼   ► "Yeah, I don't know, whatever. They should know Mickey Mouse, I guess." Like, no one

01:23:25 ◼   ► thinks about the long-term consequences of copyright without end or any, like, outlawing

01:23:30 ◼   ► encryption is the one I'm thinking about.

01:23:31 ◼   ► The entire patent system?

01:23:32 ◼   ► Yeah, the entire patent system, like, outlawing encryption. Would that, can some, could they

01:23:36 ◼   ► outlaw encryption despite how stupid it is? Like, I'm hoping that law enforcement realizes

01:23:40 ◼   ► that outlawing encryption is pointless and they wouldn't even pursue it. But if they

01:23:42 ◼   ► did pursue it, they'd get it, because—

01:23:44 ◼   ► Law enforcement is not a culture of trying to understand things.

01:23:50 ◼   ► It's not a culture. It's just like some things are, you know, like you need people, sort

01:23:54 ◼   ► of subject matter experts thinking about the consequences, and then also pair them with

01:23:58 ◼   ► people who are good at convincing other people to do what they say. And that's how you get

01:24:02 ◼   ► good law. It's really easy to get bad laws. And we have lots of examples for bad laws.

01:24:07 ◼   ► You're just hoping that like, and what I'm getting at is that your pessimism is not that

01:24:11 ◼   ► this is like a, you know, a one way slide into doom. It's just that some of these things

01:24:15 ◼   ► take a really, really long time to turn around long enough that you know, we won't live to

01:24:19 ◼   ► see them. Like, do you think we'll ever live to see the DMCA taken away? No, probably not.

01:24:23 ◼   ► Do you think we'll ever live to see reasonable copywriter Pat Moll? Certainly not, right?

01:24:28 ◼   ► But it doesn't mean those things are hopeless and they will never swing back in the other

01:24:32 ◼   ► direction because all you need, because people are so fickle and have short attention spans

01:24:38 ◼   ► and can't be into the intellectual details of every single freaking thing that the government

01:24:41 ◼   ► does, the system is always ripe for a small group of smart people to capitalize on a crisis

01:24:48 ◼   ► in a way to make something good happen instead of something bad. And that is always a possibility

01:24:53 ◼   ► in any sort of democracy. And so that's why I think long term, we'll never get to the

01:24:56 ◼   ► really cool dystopias in the sci-fi movies, because what I always think about when I watch

01:25:00 ◼   ► those movies is like, that's fine. But long term, long term, like, I mean, even though

01:25:06 ◼   ► you have the rise of Hitler, right? Eventually, people realize we should fight this guy, right?

01:25:10 ◼   ► And it's like, you'll never have something like that. That would be a fantasy. Well,

01:25:13 ◼   ► what about Hitler? He was pretty terrible. He was, you're right. But it didn't lead to

01:25:16 ◼   ► and it's Hitler forever. Like, you know, people die, people are killed, people fight. Like,

01:25:22 ◼   ► again, we could all nuke ourselves and that makes it, that doesn't want to satisfy a belief

01:25:26 ◼   ► where everybody's nukes like, "Yeah, that could happen." And then, you know, the machines

01:25:30 ◼   ► take over, I guess, I don't know. But the ones where it's just like a bunch of people

01:25:33 ◼   ► who sort of like boil the frog and they slowly, they slowly, slowly like find themselves in

01:25:38 ◼   ► increasingly dire situations and they can't get themselves out of it and then you just

01:25:41 ◼   ► fast forward like thousands of years and it never gets any better. That just doesn't seem

01:25:45 ◼   ► plausible too because in the end people are people they don't want to be

01:25:48 ◼   ► uncomfortable they don't want to you know be sad or hurt they want to just

01:25:52 ◼   ► hang out and the holodeck will kill everybody we all know that but aside

01:25:56 ◼   ► from that we're fine I'm too depressed to even make an infinite timescale joke

01:26:02 ◼   ► you don't need an event time scale for holodeck you need a holodeck and that's

01:26:06 ◼   ► it end of humanity sorry everybody on that happy note I think we're out of

01:26:13 ◼   ► Do you want to give some other topic anyway just to not end on that even though we'll

01:26:17 ◼   ► go over time?

01:26:18 ◼   ► I don't care.

01:26:19 ◼   ► We can do it in the post show.

01:26:20 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Squarespace, Fracture, and Harry's, and we

01:26:24 ◼   ► will see you next week.

01:26:25 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, 'cause it was accidental, oh it

01:26:36 ◼   ► was accidental.

01:26:37 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him, 'cause he was a little

01:26:41 ◼   ► And Casey wouldn't let him 'Cause it was accidental

01:26:45 ◼   ► It was accidental And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM

01:26:54 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:27:03 ◼   ► So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:27:08 ◼   ► ♪ N-T-M-R-O-R-M-N-S-I-R-A-C ♪

01:27:13 ◼   ► ♪ U-S-A-C-R-O-Q-S-A ♪

01:27:15 ◼   ► ♪ It's accidental ♪

01:27:16 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:27:18 ◼   ► ♪ They didn't mean to ♪

01:27:21 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:27:22 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:27:23 ◼   ► ♪ Tech podcast ♪

01:27:25 ◼   ► ♪ So long ♪

01:27:28 ◼   ► - All right, so what do you wanna talk about then?

01:27:30 ◼   ► What's happy these days?

01:27:32 ◼   ► - Anything else besides this?

01:27:34 ◼   ► - I wanna save my Blu-ray thing

01:27:36 ◼   ► for a happier, more tech-heavy week when we come out of this politics show and swear never

01:27:43 ◼   ► to talk about it. You know, it's Apple's fault, right? It's not like we choose – it's like

01:27:46 ◼   ► the car thing. It's like Apple building a car. You know, we had a car podcast and now

01:27:51 ◼   ► we have a tech podcast. And then Apple decides they're going to make a car, maybe, allegedly,

01:27:55 ◼   ► possibly. That's not on us. It's not like you say, "You just wanted to talk about cars

01:28:01 ◼   ► again." I'm not making there be rumors about Apple making a car. And similarly, we don't

01:28:05 ◼   ► want to talk about politics on the show. We avoid it as much as we can, but then Apple,

01:28:10 ◼   ► the main tech company we talk about on the show, has to get into a big fight in the government

01:28:13 ◼   ► on a political issue. What can we do? I'm sorry, it had to happen. And it's very difficult

01:28:20 ◼   ► to talk about political issues without getting political. So if you're angry that we talk

01:28:23 ◼   ► about the politics on the show, and you're thinking of sending us an email or tweet that

01:28:26 ◼   ► tells us we should stick to technology, we were. Blame Apple, blame the government. This

01:28:31 ◼   ► is a technology-related issue, 100%.

01:28:33 ◼   ► isn't it?

01:28:34 ◼   ► - So is that the happy topic?

01:28:36 ◼   ► - No, that's just like the preemptive whining.

01:28:39 ◼   ► - At this point I feel like we should just

01:28:41 ◼   ► pull the record and be done.

01:28:42 ◼   ► - Oh my God, I don't even wanna talk about the Mac Pro.

01:28:45 ◼   ► - Is there news?

01:28:46 ◼   ► - No, I'm not gonna bite, I'm not gonna bite.

01:28:48 ◼   ► I'm not gonna bite.

01:28:49 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:28:50 ◼   ► - All right, I wanted to know if there was news,

01:28:51 ◼   ► but if there's no news, that's fine.

01:28:51 ◼   ► - Of course, always assume there's no news with the Mac Pro,

01:28:54 ◼   ► because almost all the time,

01:28:56 ◼   ► with the exception of Phyllis Shiller's act of innovation,

01:28:58 ◼   ► every other time there's no news about the Mac Pro.

01:29:01 ◼   ► - Oh, there was the repair thing,

01:29:02 ◼   ► where everyone's Mac pros that were like failing,

01:29:04 ◼   ► they have like a repair extension program to help them.

01:29:07 ◼   ► - God damn it.

01:29:08 ◼   ► That wasn't this week though.

01:29:09 ◼   ► - I know, it was semi-recent, but I feel bad for Mike

01:29:11 ◼   ► 'cause he sold it 'cause it was flaky,

01:29:12 ◼   ► but if he had kept it a little bit longer,

01:29:14 ◼   ► he could have got all new guts

01:29:16 ◼   ► that presumably don't suffer

01:29:17 ◼   ► from whatever weird problems he was having.

01:29:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, but the iMac was a better computer for him anyway.

01:29:21 ◼   ► - I thought it was, it's great

01:29:22 ◼   ► for putting your iPad in front of.

01:29:24 ◼   ► It's a nice backdrop, he puts a screen saver on it

01:29:27 ◼   ► so he can look at it while he uses his iPad in front of it.

01:29:30 ◼   ► - Oh, iPad people, you can talk about them.

01:29:31 ◼   ► That's not, no, they have good news.

01:29:33 ◼   ► They have the Pencil news, this thing.

01:29:35 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, we didn't mention that.

01:29:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, with the 9.3 beta, all the betas up 'til now

01:29:41 ◼   ► had removed the ability to use the Apple Pencil

01:29:44 ◼   ► to do certain UI tasks like scrolling lists

01:29:48 ◼   ► and panning things.

01:29:49 ◼   ► And our friends noted that over the last few weeks

01:29:54 ◼   ► and months as 9.3's been in beta,

01:29:57 ◼   ► and then we heard from a few people,

01:30:00 ◼   ► I think including ATP Tipster,

01:30:01 ◼   ► that this was actually not a bug,

01:30:04 ◼   ► this was actually a choice that Apple had made

01:30:06 ◼   ► that the pencil shouldn't be used for these things.

01:30:09 ◼   ► And then over the last few days,

01:30:11 ◼   ► a whole bunch of people wrote articles about it,

01:30:12 ◼   ► and last week or two weeks ago,

01:30:14 ◼   ► Cortex complained about it very effectively,

01:30:16 ◼   ► and so there was a whole bunch of complaining about it

01:30:19 ◼   ► over the last couple of weeks,

01:30:20 ◼   ► and then Apple announced yesterday, I believe,

01:30:23 ◼   ► that, well, they gave a wonderfully spun PR statement

01:30:27 ◼   ► to the effect of, oh, we always plan to do it this way,

01:30:30 ◼   ► wave and next beta it'll be back, it was just temporarily removed. Of course it wasn't,

01:30:35 ◼   ► and of course that was PR spin, but it's fine.

01:30:39 ◼   ► I don't know if I'd take that at face value because the thing, again, this is the more

01:30:43 ◼   ► open Apple which is nice that they're telling us, like the old Apple wouldn't tell us at

01:30:46 ◼   ► all, like we would be under NDA and developers would just—

01:30:49 ◼   ► Well, they told us something.

01:30:52 ◼   ► Baby steps, right? But the real thing is what I've always been thinking of is like, what

01:30:55 ◼   ► would be the motivation for removing this functionality? I think Steven F. on Twitter

01:30:59 ◼   ► had a couple of speculation about what it might be,

01:31:01 ◼   ► but he was wrong.

01:31:02 ◼   ► I'm thinking like, why would they remove it?

01:31:05 ◼   ► Assume it's intentional, right?

01:31:06 ◼   ► And assume they're not telling you it's intentional

01:31:07 ◼   ► 'cause they don't want to.

01:31:08 ◼   ► I'm just trying to think of a plausible reason

01:31:10 ◼   ► for them to intentionally remove it.

01:31:12 ◼   ► Like, I can't come up with anything.

01:31:14 ◼   ► - The best reasons I heard were,

01:31:16 ◼   ► one was the idea that you could be scrolling things

01:31:21 ◼   ► with your finger, but you should only be using the pencil

01:31:23 ◼   ► to tap or make marks on things,

01:31:26 ◼   ► and to kind of clarify what the pencil is used for,

01:31:29 ◼   ► but like, you know, people aren't idiots.

01:31:31 ◼   ► They know what the pencil is for.

01:31:33 ◼   ► So I think that's not a great reason.

01:31:36 ◼   ► The other reason I heard that was more,

01:31:39 ◼   ► I think more likely and more credible,

01:31:40 ◼   ► was simply that Apple didn't want to,

01:31:45 ◼   ► they didn't want people to get into the habit

01:31:46 ◼   ► of not using touch as the primary interface

01:31:49 ◼   ► to iOS in general, to the overall UI

01:31:52 ◼   ► and overall usage of these devices.

01:31:53 ◼   ► They wanted the primary interface to remain touch

01:31:56 ◼   ► and they didn't want anybody making apps

01:31:58 ◼   ► that had a bunch of tiny touch targets,

01:32:00 ◼   ► and they didn't want people to be using Pencil full-time.

01:32:03 ◼   ► But the reality is, that is not also a good enough reason.

01:32:07 ◼   ► First of all, if people make apps

01:32:09 ◼   ► with a bunch of tiny touch targets, who cares?

01:32:12 ◼   ► If that's truly not what most people are doing,

01:32:15 ◼   ► those apps won't succeed.

01:32:15 ◼   ► The market will solve that problem.

01:32:17 ◼   ► - That's such a bad reason that I like to think

01:32:19 ◼   ► that it wasn't there, but here, say that was the reason.

01:32:21 ◼   ► - But that is a modern Apple reason.

01:32:23 ◼   ► - So say that was the reason.

01:32:25 ◼   ► What I would like to see is for Apple to say that.

01:32:27 ◼   ► Like, why can't that debate ever happen in public?

01:32:31 ◼   ► This is like a half debate, where they passive aggressively

01:32:33 ◼   ► do something, don't tell you why.

01:32:35 ◼   ► People complain, and then they reverse it,

01:32:36 ◼   ► and never told you why they were going

01:32:37 ◼   ► to do it in the first place.

01:32:38 ◼   ► Instead of the first beta comes out with it,

01:32:42 ◼   ► news sites realize that this is the thing.

01:32:44 ◼   ► They write stories about it.

01:32:45 ◼   ► And then there's a public dialogue

01:32:47 ◼   ► where Apple immediately says, oh, no, no, guys,

01:32:49 ◼   ► you don't understand.

01:32:49 ◼   ► Here's why we did this.

01:32:50 ◼   ► We did it because we don't want people making

01:32:52 ◼   ► an absolute touch target.

01:32:53 ◼   ► At least then you can have a real debate about the merits of the issue, as opposed to now

01:32:57 ◼   ► where the debate happens entirely internally and it's just a one-sided thing where people

01:33:01 ◼   ► complain outside and maybe you're screaming into a void or maybe Apple is listening.

01:33:06 ◼   ► Did you convince them?

01:33:07 ◼   ► Or maybe they're going to say it was an accident?

01:33:09 ◼   ► This whole black box thing where you don't know—not that we need to be privy to everything

01:33:13 ◼   ► that's going on there, but I just think it would behoove everyone in this dysfunctional

01:33:17 ◼   ► relationship between customer and cooperation, to speak openly with each other to believe

01:33:23 ◼   ► enough in each other for Apple to tell us the real reason they want to make a functional

01:33:26 ◼   ► change in the OS. And then we can talk about the reasons why we think that's dumb. Or,

01:33:31 ◼   ► you know, like, instead of just saying, we can't tell this is a mistake or not, but God,

01:33:35 ◼   ► if this is intentional, please don't do it. Because maybe Apple can convince us, maybe

01:33:39 ◼   ► they have a really good reason that we haven't thought of, right? Or maybe, you know, the

01:33:43 ◼   ► reason has to do with unreleased product that we don't know about, and they can't tell us,

01:33:45 ◼   ► I understand this is always going to be a limited situation here.

01:33:48 ◼   ► I just feel like it would be a healthier feedback loop between customer and cooperation.

01:33:55 ◼   ► Not that either one has the entire rights to know what the other one is thinking all

01:33:58 ◼   ► the time, but I think we need to get closer to a relationship where people like Marco

01:34:02 ◼   ► don't assume that everything Apple says is a lie because they're not going to reveal

01:34:05 ◼   ► their real reasoning.

01:34:06 ◼   ► Well, I didn't say that.

01:34:07 ◼   ► I just think the PR statement was pretty clearly BS, but it doesn't really matter.

01:34:11 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:34:12 ◼   ► You're just assuming it is because the reason sounds so dumb to you.

01:34:15 ◼   ► but then you don't know what to think.

01:34:16 ◼   ► Do you think like, are they being disingenuous?

01:34:18 ◼   ► Why would they hide it?

01:34:19 ◼   ► Especially since they've changed their mind.

01:34:20 ◼   ► Wouldn't you come out and say,

01:34:22 ◼   ► we were originally doing it for reason X,

01:34:24 ◼   ► but now we're convinced.

01:34:24 ◼   ► Because that would be the truth then.

01:34:25 ◼   ► The truth would be, we had this reason, people complained,

01:34:29 ◼   ► we were convinced by their complaints

01:34:31 ◼   ► that our reasons don't trump their desires,

01:34:33 ◼   ► therefore we changed our mind.

01:34:34 ◼   ► Like that's a healthy dialogue instead of,

01:34:37 ◼   ► if you know, again, if what you're saying is true,

01:34:39 ◼   ► instead of pretending that that wasn't really the case

01:34:42 ◼   ► and oh, we were always meant to do this, right?

01:34:43 ◼   ► assuming, again, assuming they're pretending,

01:34:45 ◼   ► it just seems like a dysfunctional relationship.

01:34:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

01:34:49 ◼   ► At least it's fixed, you know?

01:34:51 ◼   ► Like, whenever people in our parts make big complaints

01:34:56 ◼   ► about a change, Apple is floating in a beta,

01:35:02 ◼   ► we always hear from people, I always see people responding,

01:35:05 ◼   ► or they respond to me if I'm one of the critics,

01:35:07 ◼   ► of like, why do you bother doing this?

01:35:09 ◼   ► You're just complaining with Apple.

01:35:11 ◼   ► But the reason we bother doing it is 'cause it works,

01:35:13 ◼   ► because then these things do tend to get fixed.

01:35:16 ◼   ► - Well, it's random reward, it works sometimes.

01:35:18 ◼   ► It works randomly, you know, like if it worked every time,

01:35:21 ◼   ► it wouldn't be as motivating to do it,

01:35:23 ◼   ► and if it worked never, we would never do it,

01:35:24 ◼   ► but it works enough of the time.

01:35:26 ◼   ► - Well, I think, you know, like these kind of decisions,

01:35:28 ◼   ► these are probably debated inside Apple, right?

01:35:30 ◼   ► Almost every decision that like we get mad about,

01:35:33 ◼   ► chances are people inside Apple were also mad about them

01:35:35 ◼   ► and they argued about them, and so when outsiders

01:35:39 ◼   ► pile onto the argument or draw attention to the argument,

01:35:42 ◼   ► that helps that side inside Apple win the argument,

01:35:45 ◼   ► or it helps change people's minds.

01:35:48 ◼   ► So it is very effective.

01:35:51 ◼   ► And again, you're not gonna win every time,

01:35:53 ◼   ► because if you're trying to argue for something like,

01:35:54 ◼   ► well, you know what, I'm tired of app review,

01:35:56 ◼   ► there shouldn't be app review.

01:35:58 ◼   ► Well, you're not gonna win that, that's unlikely.

01:36:00 ◼   ► - You can keep arguing that, because someday,

01:36:02 ◼   ► that will be on the table. - On an infinite time scale.

01:36:04 ◼   ► - It'll be on the table again. - Yes, I got it.

01:36:07 ◼   ► - Well, and another example is you can complain

01:36:09 ◼   ► about the file system for, I don't know, a decade.

01:36:11 ◼   ► right we feel better now and and then you know maybe eventually they'll come

01:36:15 ◼   ► around but uh but yeah no that's the function of the the tech press like I

01:36:19 ◼   ► mean this is happening whether you know whether Apple admits it or not of course

01:36:23 ◼   ► it's always been happening cuz Apple's made up of people and they read tech

01:36:25 ◼   ► press about themselves because you know that's the way it works and as you

01:36:29 ◼   ► pointed out there's always dissension within the company but in the end

01:36:34 ◼   ► certain people are in charge and certain people aren't and Apple is not a

01:36:36 ◼   ► democracy and neither is the press and neither is anything else but we're just

01:36:40 ◼   ► trying to get is a healthier symbiosis where Apple's potential customers are

01:36:46 ◼   ► telling it what they would want and Apple it wants to give customers what

01:36:50 ◼   ► they want but maybe not those customers maybe they see other customers who

01:36:54 ◼   ► they're not currently talking to you know like it's not it's not as if

01:36:57 ◼   ► customers should be in charge of Apple and it's not as if Apple should be in

01:37:00 ◼   ► charge of the customers it's just the and it's opening up like I feel like the

01:37:04 ◼   ► dialogue is opening up more than it used to be and this is healthy we just just

01:37:07 ◼   ► have a ways to go yet.

01:37:08 ◼   ► - Do you guys use the iPad Pro Marco?

01:37:12 ◼   ► - No, you're talking about me and John or me and Tiff?

01:37:14 ◼   ► - You and Tiff.

01:37:15 ◼   ► - Oh, she uses it, she's using it tonight

01:37:17 ◼   ► and she uses the pencil to navigate a bunch of stuff.

01:37:20 ◼   ► And if I use the iPad Pro or any iPad on a regular basis,

01:37:24 ◼   ► I would certainly consider doing the same thing

01:37:26 ◼   ► because I like the pencil a lot.

01:37:29 ◼   ► As an input device, it is really nice.

01:37:32 ◼   ► And there's all sorts of arguments other people have made

01:37:34 ◼   ► about it being either more efficient or better for advanced work or better for ergonomics

01:37:40 ◼   ► or better for accessibility for certain people.

01:37:42 ◼   ► Or it just feels better. The mic argument is sometimes it just feels better.

01:37:46 ◼   ► Exactly. If I were an iPad user or if I was the kind of person who liked writing things

01:37:51 ◼   ► with pens and pencils, I would certainly be using it all the time. But neither of those

01:37:55 ◼   ► things apply to me, unfortunately. So it's not really for me. But I do respect it a lot

01:37:59 ◼   ► as a really nice input device.

01:38:01 ◼   ► I do wonder a little bit though, like in these type of feedback cycles and relationships

01:38:07 ◼   ► that part of the reason the old Apple would not do something like this is because it was

01:38:11 ◼   ► seen as like a sign of weakness.

01:38:12 ◼   ► Like oh, we weren't right, we were wrong about something, we need to change it.

01:38:16 ◼   ► But part of it is also that it is legitimately like taking the angry feedback from your most

01:38:25 ◼   ► enthusiastic users as a way to design your products is a formula for death.

01:38:30 ◼   ► Apple doesn't do that for a good reason. You never want to like just listen to

01:38:34 ◼   ► your most enthusiastic users because you will evolve your product in a way that

01:38:39 ◼   ► caters more and more to like the expert, the super enthusiast, and you

01:38:44 ◼   ► will never get something like the iPhone because the super Apple

01:38:46 ◼   ► enthusiasts were like drawing pictures of like OS X on a phone or something, you

01:38:50 ◼   ► know what I mean? Apple doesn't do that to its credit. It knows the trap of, or

01:38:54 ◼   ► Microsoft has done it so many ways, you keep adding features because your experts

01:38:57 ◼   ► wants features and you go to your experts or whatever. But for the iPad Pro, it's kind

01:39:02 ◼   ► of a sign that Apple realizes that at this point in the iPad Pro's history, that fanatical

01:39:07 ◼   ► group of users who really love the thing, that's all they've got at this point. Like,

01:39:12 ◼   ► if they're going to betray those people for some larger market, that they don't have faith

01:39:16 ◼   ► that that will materialize. So they better listen to the most passionate iPad Pro users,

01:39:22 ◼   ► there aren't many iPad Pro users, presumably, and it is kind of a high-end

01:39:26 ◼   ► enthusiast product. Like, there's a whole other line of iPads for the rest of the

01:39:29 ◼   ► world and phones for the rest of the world, but for the iPad Pro, now if you're

01:39:34 ◼   ► gonna listen to anybody about anything, like, that's where you would do it. On the

01:39:38 ◼   ► other hand, if the iPad Pro was burning up the sales chart and everybody was

01:39:42 ◼   ► buying one and it was, like, taking over for the Mac and Mac sales are gonna be

01:39:45 ◼   ► down 50% and iPad Pro sales were gonna be, like, half the iPhone sales next year,

01:39:50 ◼   ► they would feel confident to ignore those people and say it's more important

01:39:53 ◼   ► to go with our gut instinct of whatever their internal reasoning is. So in some

01:39:57 ◼   ► ways it gives me a view of how Apple sees the current state of the

01:40:02 ◼   ► iPad Pro market. They're not in a position right now to just do what they

01:40:06 ◼   ► want despite the the howls of enthusiasts. Whereas on many other

01:40:13 ◼   ► markets, for example the iPhone, people howling to be able to sideload apps,

01:40:17 ◼   ► apps, Apple confidently ignored them as the sales graph for iPhones went up like a ski

01:40:22 ◼   ► jump. And they were in a position of strength there. But on the iPad Pro, not right now.

01:40:28 ◼   ► Yeah, and as much as it sucks for Apple to be losing things, as much as it sucks for

01:40:34 ◼   ► them, I like what comes out of them when they have a fire lit under them. I like when they're

01:40:39 ◼   ► not in a dominant position, when they're fighting really hard. That tends to be when

01:40:43 ◼   ► the best stuff comes out of them.

01:40:45 ◼   ► Except for TV boxes.

01:40:46 ◼   ► Sorry, low blow.

01:40:50 ◼   ► So much competition in that market.

01:40:52 ◼   ► That's a different topic.

01:40:53 ◼   ► That's my…

01:40:54 ◼   ► Honestly, have you used it?

01:40:55 ◼   ► That's my Blu-ray top.

01:40:56 ◼   ► I know, I know.

01:40:57 ◼   ► I'm just saying.

01:40:58 ◼   ► I also thought there was so much competition that was really good until I tried to use

01:41:01 ◼   ► the competition.

01:41:02 ◼   ► Well, there is a lot of competition.

01:41:04 ◼   ► It's just not really good.

01:41:05 ◼   ► Yeah, that's fair.

01:41:08 ◼   ► Is that a fire lit under them or is it just like tepid water dripping on their toes?

01:41:11 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:41:12 ◼   ► It's called fire, but yeah, it doesn't really work that way.

01:41:15 ◼   ► I'd like to set it on fire.

01:41:16 ◼   ► [BEEP]