Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► - Hello and welcome to Connected episode 305.

00:00:11 ◼   ► I'd like to thank our sponsors this week,

00:00:16 ◼   ► Squarespace and Pingdom.

00:00:18 ◼   ► My name is Stephen Hackett and I am joined by my friend

00:00:21 ◼   ► and yours, Mr. Myke Hurley.

00:00:23 ◼   ► - I enjoyed you checking the episode number.

00:00:26 ◼   ► - 305.

00:00:28 ◼   ► And five.

00:00:30 ◼   ► I could do it in the NASCAR voice again.

00:00:33 ◼   ► Nah.

00:00:33 ◼   ► I was a hit, but not with me in Federico.

00:00:38 ◼   ► Speaking of Federico, he's here too.

00:00:40 ◼   ► Hey buddy.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Hello.

00:00:42 ◼   ► Hi.

00:00:43 ◼   ► Please don't ever do the NASCAR voice again.

00:00:45 ◼   ► You sound awake.

00:00:47 ◼   ► Caffeinated.

00:00:48 ◼   ► I just had it a few minutes ago.

00:00:51 ◼   ► You would know if you were a member of connected pro.

00:00:56 ◼   ► Because it happened during the show.

00:00:59 ◼   ► Federico created an innovative espresso consumption technique.

00:01:03 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:01:04 ◼   ► Called chugging.

00:01:08 ◼   ► Connectedpro.co.

00:01:09 ◼   ► That's the URL, right?

00:01:10 ◼   ► Sure, it is now.

00:01:12 ◼   ► Connectedpro.co.

00:01:13 ◼   ► Connectedpro.co.

00:01:14 ◼   ► That's the way to spell it.

00:01:19 ◼   ► Follow up.

00:01:20 ◼   ► There's a lot of NASCAR artwork floating around out there.

00:01:23 ◼   ► I just want to point out Michael's render of a NASCAR race car with the Connected Pro artwork on it.

00:01:29 ◼   ► It looks awesome.

00:01:31 ◼   ► So being the show notes, it's like if we were going to race,

00:01:34 ◼   ► which one of the three of us would race? Probably not me because I can't drive.

00:01:39 ◼   ► So which one of the two of you would be the most likely to get behind the wheel of the NASCAR car?

00:01:45 ◼   ► It has to be Steven, right?

00:01:48 ◼   ► Why?

00:01:48 ◼   ► Because, well, just because I feel like this car, is it gonna have like an actual shift?

00:01:56 ◼   ► Or is it gonna be one of those fake American cars with automatic shift?

00:01:59 ◼   ► Oh yeah, oh they've gotta be shift if it's a race car.

00:02:03 ◼   ► Okay, if it's gonna be shift it's gonna be me then.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Okay, you have no air conditioning, you're sitting on top of a fire extinguisher,

00:02:09 ◼   ► and you have a net for a window. It'll be fun.

00:02:11 ◼   ► Sounds dangerous, I like it.

00:02:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:13 ◼   ► It's like, how do you know how I usually drive?

00:02:16 ◼   ► I want to feel like James Dean riding this. I don't think James Dean driving that car.

00:02:21 ◼   ► Well, something like that. Something like that. I know I'm gonna make Casey either very happy

00:02:28 ◼   ► or very upset about my shift comment. He'll be happy. He believes in that, yeah. That's

00:02:34 ◼   ► the thing that he wants. One thing we like about Casey. Too bad they're all dying out, and it's a

00:02:40 ◼   ► lost art. Can I tell y'all a story about I was driving yesterday. I was driving yesterday and

00:02:46 ◼   ► I was on the highway and a big like tractor trailer, 18 wheeler thing kicked like ran over

00:02:55 ◼   ► I guess there was some gravel in the road, not really sure, but kicked up some rocks and I caught

00:03:00 ◼   ► one basically dead center in my windshield and now have a crack going both up and to the side

00:03:09 ◼   ► of the impact. So on my list next week is have my windshield replaced in my truck. I'm not happy

00:03:14 ◼   ► about this at all. It's very annoying. I saw that on your Instagram, I think. Sorry about that. Well,

00:03:21 ◼   ► at least you didn't break the window. Oh yeah, that would have been bad news. I mean, it's

00:03:25 ◼   ► safety glass. Like it's laminated somehow. So it's designed to sort of take a hit and be okay,

00:03:34 ◼   ► but it's a bummer. I'm going to get it fixed because you can get ticket for it.

00:03:38 ◼   ► Well I mean all glass is safety glass until it breaks.

00:03:42 ◼   ► Well you know what I mean.

00:03:43 ◼   ► You know all glass has an impact level.

00:03:49 ◼   ► So anyways I'm gonna get that taken care of but I don't want to get pulled over for it.

00:03:54 ◼   ► Just replace it with a net.

00:03:56 ◼   ► Yeah like Federico's NASCAR. It's the windshield though like I feel like net on the side is okay.

00:04:02 ◼   ► You don't want that in the front then that rock would have come.

00:04:04 ◼   ► If you get a mosquito net it will be fine enough that nothing's gonna get in.

00:04:09 ◼   ► It's not gonna catch a rock at highway speeds.

00:04:11 ◼   ► It broke glass.

00:04:12 ◼   ► It's gonna punch right through that net.

00:04:13 ◼   ► Well the glass didn't do a good job of it either, did it?

00:04:16 ◼   ► Well it didn't hit me, so in a way it did its job.

00:04:18 ◼   ► Just pull the net really tight.

00:04:21 ◼   ► Like a trampoline?

00:04:22 ◼   ► Yeah, it'll just bounce off.

00:04:23 ◼   ► Yeah, a windshield.

00:04:24 ◼   ► You'll hit the truck back, you show them.

00:04:27 ◼   ► Yeah, take that.

00:04:29 ◼   ► That truck.

00:04:31 ◼   ► There's a very connected episode of Upgrade this week that I think listeners of this show

00:04:36 ◼   ► will enjoy if they haven't heard or don't listen to Upgrade, where Steven came on the

00:04:41 ◼   ► show and we reviewed the icons of the new Mac OS version of Big Sur.

00:04:49 ◼   ► What is it called?

00:04:50 ◼   ► What is the name of this version of Mac OS Federico?

00:04:53 ◼   ► Oh, Big Sur.

00:04:54 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:04:56 ◼   ► And Jason assumed the role of Federico.

00:04:59 ◼   ► nobody particularly asked him to, but he definitely did. And it's quite a wild episode of Upgrade,

00:05:06 ◼   ► and I'm actually very pleased for it. So it's a fun one to listen to. It's episode 308.

00:05:12 ◼   ► If you're looking for more Japes from a tech show, then these are some more Japes. There

00:05:16 ◼   ► was definitely Japes in this show.

00:05:18 ◼   ► Big Tichi energy.

00:05:20 ◼   ► He did have that BTE.

00:05:24 ◼   ► A little bit behind... not behind baseball, inside baseball.

00:05:28 ◼   ► Behind the baseball?

00:05:29 ◼   ► Behind the baseball.

00:05:30 ◼   ► Behind baseball.

00:05:31 ◼   ► A little behind baseball for you.

00:05:32 ◼   ► Everything's behind baseball right now, am I right?

00:05:35 ◼   ► Can't keep control of that baseball season over there, can you?

00:05:38 ◼   ► No, it's out of hand already.

00:05:40 ◼   ► What, it last like six days?

00:05:42 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:05:43 ◼   ► Oh, boy.

00:05:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:45 ◼   ► Way to go, Miami.

00:05:46 ◼   ► We're rooting for everybody.

00:05:48 ◼   ► We were gonna record this, it was gonna be like half an hour, right?

00:05:50 ◼   ► I was gonna come on, we were gonna record it first, and then y'all would see the rest

00:05:55 ◼   ► of the show and then in edit you would drop me and you know my segment in the

00:05:59 ◼   ► middle it's not unusual it's kind of how we do these things if there's a guest

00:06:03 ◼   ► right so you can cut them loose it all just stick around for an hour and a half

00:06:05 ◼   ► mm-hmm and it was important for me because I had a show that afternoon I

00:06:09 ◼   ► was like I can't do a whole episode of upgrade well we basically did it's

00:06:13 ◼   ► basically most of the episode because it got off the rails about it's over in an

00:06:18 ◼   ► hour of the episode was was just the three of us I can't silly about icons

00:06:23 ◼   ► Yeah, but it's very fun

00:06:25 ◼   ► We ended up throwing out a bunch of the episode that we hadn't yet recorded and so but it was it's better for it

00:06:31 ◼   ► So it's good if people want to listen to it. There's also tons of chapters, which was really difficult to put together

00:06:36 ◼   ► But it works so it's like chapter art for all of the icons that you can compare them. So yeah, it's a fun episode

00:06:41 ◼   ► Alright, let's move into some tiny topics and I wanted to talk to y'all about do

00:06:49 ◼   ► D-U-E, because all of these names sound the same when I say them.

00:06:51 ◼   ► Has to always be, like every time I ever mention it.

00:06:55 ◼   ► D-U-E.

00:06:56 ◼   ► Yep.

00:06:57 ◼   ► D-U-E.

00:06:58 ◼   ► D-U-E.

00:06:59 ◼   ► Not D-E-W.

00:07:00 ◼   ► Not D-O.

00:07:01 ◼   ► D-O.

00:07:02 ◼   ► So this is an app that I think most people, I at least, primarily use it on my iPhone.

00:07:08 ◼   ► It's a reminders app, but its trick is that it can remind you endlessly almost to do something.

00:07:14 ◼   ► It's persistent.

00:07:15 ◼   ► like the reminder will keep occurring until you actually check it off. Like you can leave it,

00:07:21 ◼   ► like if you ignore the first notification, most applications it's just then oh well that's that.

00:07:27 ◼   ► But DUE will keep notifying you, it will keep sending more and more notifications until you

00:07:32 ◼   ► go into the app and or like from notification actually remove the reminder, which is very good.

00:07:36 ◼   ► It's a very fun feature isn't it? Super helpful for things like taking medicine,

00:07:41 ◼   ► like that kind of stuff right? It's like it's really good for stuff like that.

00:07:43 ◼   ► Yep. But the the Mac app has been pretty bad for a long time. I would imagine most people use this

00:07:51 ◼   ► on their phone. This is the type of tool that I think is really useful on the phone. And the good

00:07:57 ◼   ► news is there's a new version on the Mac. John over at Mac stories reviewed it. So go check that

00:08:02 ◼   ► out. It'll be in the show notes. Really nice visual overhaul looks much nicer. And I kind of want to

00:08:08 ◼   ► see like is this something that you guys use on the Mac is it just an iPhone

00:08:13 ◼   ► thing for you and then I want to talk a little bit about the pricing. Just an

00:08:17 ◼   ► iPhone thing. I don't even use you on my iPad like it is an iPhone application

00:08:22 ◼   ► for me like that's where I use it. The one I find interesting about this

00:08:28 ◼   ► revision on the Mac is that the design is completely different and quite

00:08:34 ◼   ► opinionated like there's some real big typography decisions and stuff which I

00:08:39 ◼   ► find interesting like I wonder if they're gonna if the developer is gonna

00:08:42 ◼   ► bring this design style over to iOS too but it's quite peculiar I feel to see a

00:08:49 ◼   ► design refresh happen on a multi-platform application but the Mac

00:08:53 ◼   ► gets the design change first that doesn't really feel like a thing that

00:08:56 ◼   ► happens very much anymore. Yeah I don't use it. Oh do you know? You used to though, you

00:09:02 ◼   ► have or at least you have used it haven't you? I have at some point and I feel like it was just

00:09:06 ◼   ► making me very anxious. So like this idea of it keeps reminding you until you do something.

00:09:14 ◼   ► I've been trying to get rid of such things in my life as much as possible either by a combination of

00:09:20 ◼   ► well mostly delegating stuff to other people because I'm very bad at like these very specific

00:09:28 ◼   ► deadlines down to the minute.

00:09:31 ◼   ► Well, let me tell you, I don't put any work stuff in here.

00:09:35 ◼   ► So like the things that I have in due right now is like to get up and stretch

00:09:40 ◼   ► every few hours, to text my mom every day and to do the washing up.

00:09:46 ◼   ► They're the only things that are currently in due and I add things here or there.

00:09:49 ◼   ► But they're the stuff that I have repeating.

00:09:51 ◼   ► Like there's no quote unquote tasks in there, you know?

00:09:54 ◼   ► Yeah, but I do those anyway.

00:09:55 ◼   ► you know how much I speak with my mom.

00:09:57 ◼   ► Like, yeah, but this is like meets, this is the game of like, I want to be the

00:10:02 ◼   ► first person to send the text message, right?

00:10:05 ◼   ► Like this is the thing with my mom.

00:10:06 ◼   ► Love you, mom.

00:10:07 ◼   ► You're not listening, but I love you.

00:10:08 ◼   ► But like, if I get the message in first, it's important rather than she contacts

00:10:14 ◼   ► me and it's like, oh, so you still alive?

00:10:16 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:10:17 ◼   ► Like, so you're, you're, you're fine then are you over there?

00:10:19 ◼   ► So got to get that message in and can't forget.

00:10:21 ◼   ► So like I have that reminder every day, but yes, I've been around you.

00:10:24 ◼   ► it's inescapable. Mm-hmm so yeah and I don't really have anything other than

00:10:33 ◼   ► you know yeah I guess get up every couple of hours and stretch but that's

00:10:38 ◼   ► that's my medicine in here cuz like if I don't think if I don't have a reminder

00:10:43 ◼   ► for my pills in the morning I will forget them even though I take them

00:10:46 ◼   ► twice a day every single day so like who's an old man now huh me

00:10:54 ◼   ► I have my medicine in it too.

00:10:56 ◼   ► And I feel very lucky, I don't have any medicine to take.

00:10:58 ◼   ► Well, although I've had my fair share of medicine before, so...

00:11:00 ◼   ► I was gonna say, you've done your penance.

00:11:02 ◼   ► It kinda compensates for that.

00:11:04 ◼   ► Of the three of us, I would have assumed you would definitely have medicine.

00:11:08 ◼   ► I'm actually, I think that's really great to hear that you don't.

00:11:10 ◼   ► No, man. I'm totally free.

00:11:12 ◼   ► Totally drug-free.

00:11:14 ◼   ► Do you want some pills? Do you want some?

00:11:16 ◼   ► Very nice.

00:11:17 ◼   ► I've got some extras if you need them.

00:11:18 ◼   ► I can mail you some.

00:11:19 ◼   ► Nah, I'm good.

00:11:21 ◼   ► But yeah, it sort of compensates for before, so...

00:11:23 ◼   ► So, yeah, I totally get it. It makes sense for medicine.

00:11:26 ◼   ► Yeah, you took all your pills, right? Like, all the pills you're ever gonna have to take,

00:11:30 ◼   ► you've taken them already.

00:11:31 ◼   ► Many, many, many of those.

00:11:32 ◼   ► I think that's how that works, right? You just did them all at once.

00:11:35 ◼   ► I did it before.

00:11:38 ◼   ► Oh, dear. So anyway, pricing?

00:11:42 ◼   ► Yeah, pricing. So how this is working is that the Mac app is a separate $15 purchase from

00:11:51 ◼   ► the iOS and iPadOS version.

00:11:54 ◼   ► I think a lot of developers are doing this, right,

00:11:56 ◼   ► even in the age of Catalyst, and I don't know,

00:11:58 ◼   ► I don't think this is built on Catalyst,

00:12:00 ◼   ► I don't think it is, it doesn't look like it is.

00:12:02 ◼   ► - I can't imagine it would be,

00:12:03 ◼   ► because it doesn't look anything like the iPhone app.

00:12:05 ◼   ► - So that's, I have no complaints about that,

00:12:07 ◼   ► separate Mac app, that's totally cool.

00:12:09 ◼   ► After that, it's $10 a year,

00:12:13 ◼   ► and if you stop paying, basically any future,

00:12:17 ◼   ► any updates that you've gotten through the subscription

00:12:19 ◼   ► will remain available.

00:12:20 ◼   ► so you're paying for sort of updates, future features?

00:12:25 ◼   ► - This is the sketch model, right?

00:12:27 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:12:27 ◼   ► - Where you keep, like you maintain access

00:12:31 ◼   ► to what you paid for, but the new stuff you don't get,

00:12:34 ◼   ► which I also think working copy uses on iOS.

00:12:37 ◼   ► - The iOS view app, by the way, has a similar thing.

00:12:41 ◼   ► It's $6.99 and then $5 a year.

00:12:44 ◼   ► I actually, I think this is quite an interesting model.

00:12:48 ◼   ► Like, I think it's... I'm cool with it, really.

00:12:53 ◼   ► It's not bad.

00:12:55 ◼   ► I mean, I don't feel... You're right.

00:12:58 ◼   ► Sketch would be the big player who does this.

00:13:01 ◼   ► But it's an interesting proposition, I would say.

00:13:07 ◼   ► I guess it can get a little tricky if you stop paying

00:13:12 ◼   ► and then a few months later, or a couple of years later,

00:13:15 ◼   ► you decide to subscribe again, it can get complicated to keep track of this timeline.

00:13:21 ◼   ► It does feel complicated. It does feel complicated. I mean, from a development perspective,

00:13:26 ◼   ► I bet this adds in a lot of complications. Like checking all the things that you paid for before.

00:13:34 ◼   ► Because there's got to be so many lines drawn, right?

00:13:36 ◼   ► Exactly. Now you consider this as part of the purchase and this as part of the in-app purchase,

00:13:42 ◼   ► but I'm coming to it a year after I've purchased. How do I get all of it? It seems complicated.

00:13:47 ◼   ► Yeah, it's definitely easier to say, look, it's ten dollars a month. Either you like it or not.

00:13:53 ◼   ► But yeah, it's nice to have some apps trying something different from the usual subscription

00:14:00 ◼   ► stuff. Also, I think Agenda probably does this. So it is semi-popular among indie developers,

00:14:10 ◼   ► I would say. Yeah. It's an interesting model, for sure.

00:14:14 ◼   ► I'm trying to work out what the point of the model is, right?

00:14:17 ◼   ► So what is the thinking? That you're still making people pay you,

00:14:21 ◼   ► and you still want a subscription because it is the best model for you as a developer to get that revenue.

00:14:29 ◼   ► But you're trying to stop people from getting mad at you by saying,

00:14:33 ◼   ► "You don't have to pay me." Except the one time.

00:14:37 ◼   ► I think part of the problem that it's trying to solve is the idea that you're renting software.

00:14:46 ◼   ► So they're trying to say the things you paid for, you own them.

00:14:50 ◼   ► So those features are yours.

00:14:52 ◼   ► And if you stop paying, it's not like we need to kick you out of the house.

00:14:57 ◼   ► You can keep those features.

00:14:59 ◼   ► I guess that's the primary point here.

00:15:02 ◼   ► interesting right because it is a business model which is created and is

00:15:07 ◼   ► essentially the same as an for pay app turning into a subscription right it's

00:15:15 ◼   ► the same thing but we're just doing it all up front so rather than saying oh

00:15:20 ◼   ► we're now a subscription company if you want new features you have to give me

00:15:25 ◼   ► money every year which is happening a lot right I was that happened in

00:15:29 ◼   ► Fantastic Cow and lots of people got upset because they thought like I've

00:15:33 ◼   ► bought this once and it's mine forever but it's the same outcome of like you

00:15:38 ◼   ► give some amount of money and then get continuing features moving forward but

00:15:43 ◼   ► that's the proposition at first right like everyone in theory should know can

00:15:48 ◼   ► know about it upfront rather than it being like quote unquote a bait-and-switch

00:15:53 ◼   ► right I guess it's like kind of the model and it's different to some

00:15:58 ◼   ► Some applications, say like a Carrotweather, where you get a subscription and it's for

00:16:06 ◼   ► an additional feature set, but it doesn't mean you won't get any other new features.

00:16:13 ◼   ► It's quite confusing, isn't it? All this stuff. All this stuff.

00:16:16 ◼   ► I want to keep track of. Very confusing.

00:16:19 ◼   ► I would kind of like it if everyone could just agree on one thing.

00:16:24 ◼   ► - That's assuming-- - I could just chill.

00:16:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, that too.

00:16:28 ◼   ► But that's assuming though that there's a one size fits all

00:16:31 ◼   ► to business models, which is just simply not the case.

00:16:35 ◼   ► - It seems like I just downloaded it.

00:16:36 ◼   ► It also seems like the upgrade pass,

00:16:38 ◼   ► which is what they're calling the net purchase,

00:16:40 ◼   ► also unlocks more features, and so it's kind of a mix.

00:16:43 ◼   ► I just think that, I mean, I agree,

00:16:45 ◼   ► like the business model should work for the developer.

00:16:47 ◼   ► I think this one's fairly reasonable,

00:16:49 ◼   ► if not a little expensive, but I think the wording

00:16:52 ◼   ► is just a little confusing to people.

00:16:53 ◼   ► Like you can have an app and you can have features behind it and yeah, I don't know.

00:16:58 ◼   ► I agree with you on this.

00:16:59 ◼   ► A little messy around the edges, I think, potentially.

00:17:02 ◼   ► It is a, it is complex, but clear if that makes sense, right?

00:17:09 ◼   ► In the sense of like, you get this, this is what you get.

00:17:12 ◼   ► If you want more, there's this, but the complexity makes it hard to understand,

00:17:16 ◼   ► even though they've added a clarity to it.

00:17:19 ◼   ► Like that can, that kind of stuff can be difficult to explain, but yeah,

00:17:23 ◼   ► Yeah, it's an interesting business model for sure.

00:17:27 ◼   ► Last time on Connected Pro I talked about using Notion to potentially categorize my

00:17:34 ◼   ► Apple collection and inventory it.

00:17:37 ◼   ► I did spend a little time putting some more things into it and I think it's just, I don't

00:17:42 ◼   ► think it's for me.

00:17:44 ◼   ► Both me and Federico on last week's Connected Pro told you that this was a bad idea.

00:17:49 ◼   ► Yeah, but I had to experience it myself.

00:17:52 ◼   ► It was to use Notion to create a database which emulates the database you already have

00:17:57 ◼   ► on your website, which is currently just a bulleted list of all of the products that

00:18:01 ◼   ► you have.

00:18:02 ◼   ► But then you wanted to take Notion and embed it into your website.

00:18:06 ◼   ► Right.

00:18:07 ◼   ► Second belief you thought that was a potential solution.

00:18:10 ◼   ► Yeah, and it was just full of holes, even just at a simple level that I think Notion

00:18:17 ◼   ► Notion is a good tool to do this, but I just know you wouldn't like it.

00:18:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's where I've ended up.

00:18:24 ◼   ► I like the way the pages can look.

00:18:26 ◼   ► I went in and made little header images and I pulled fancy art for each of the sections,

00:18:32 ◼   ► but A, I could spend a lot of time fiddling with it and not actually doing work.

00:18:36 ◼   ► But B, I think the real problem I have is I want this data to be pretty flexible.

00:18:42 ◼   ► I like to be able to get it in and out.

00:18:44 ◼   ► Yes, Notion has export, don't email me, but it's not really what I want.

00:18:48 ◼   ► It's like how Evernote has export too, but they'll export it in a way that you can't

00:18:52 ◼   ► really use it.

00:18:53 ◼   ► It does, but you're kind of copy and paste 600 notes into Apple Notes.

00:18:58 ◼   ► So I don't really know what I'm going to look at, because I do want to do something more

00:19:02 ◼   ► than just the list I have on 512, because there's other things I'd like to have.

00:19:09 ◼   ► Like I'd like to have the model name.

00:19:10 ◼   ► would be good for is that you could drill down so you could be like click

00:19:15 ◼   ► into desktops then you could click into Mac pros and then there's these Mac pros

00:19:19 ◼   ► like that kind of model that kind of structure is is kind of cool yeah and I

00:19:27 ◼   ► built all of that and it was neat but I'd like additional fields and I again I

00:19:32 ◼   ► could do all this in plain text but I would like you know 12 inch iBook G4

00:19:37 ◼   ► and then the AppleCare name, you know, late 2005,

00:19:40 ◼   ► and then maybe some specs about it, or a notes field.

00:19:43 ◼   ► So I could, like, I'd like this to be

00:19:44 ◼   ► a more robust inventory system.

00:19:46 ◼   ► - Have you looked into any online Wiki tools?

00:19:50 ◼   ► - That felt all like just the same amount of overhead

00:19:53 ◼   ► that Notion would have.

00:19:55 ◼   ► So honestly, what I'm thinking right now

00:19:57 ◼   ► is it may be as simple as something like a Google sheet

00:20:01 ◼   ► with a tab for desktop notebook, et cetera.

00:20:04 ◼   ► And I could embed that if I wanted to,

00:20:06 ◼   ► if people wanted to look through it,

00:20:07 ◼   ► or link to it in a read-only fashion.

00:20:09 ◼   ► - Please don't embed anything on your website.

00:20:12 ◼   ► - I thought about Airtable as well,

00:20:14 ◼   ► but Airtable just does way more than what I need for this.

00:20:17 ◼   ► So not doing that.

00:20:18 ◼   ► - Why can't you just do a bunch of pages?

00:20:20 ◼   ► - 'Cause I would just like the data

00:20:22 ◼   ► to be a little more structured than it is.

00:20:24 ◼   ► But still flexible.

00:20:26 ◼   ► - You can make it structured.

00:20:28 ◼   ► You can make a bunch of pages, have a table of contents,

00:20:30 ◼   ► and everything links to sub pages and all that kind of stuff.

00:20:33 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:20:35 ◼   ► So anyways, we'll see where this goes.

00:20:36 ◼   ► I think you should have a wiki. Like an actual wiki.

00:20:40 ◼   ► Or that. Or that. Because it's...

00:20:43 ◼   ► Isn't it like open source and you can roll your own?

00:20:46 ◼   ► Yeah, I could put it on the server that WordPress runs on and have it as its own little thing.

00:20:52 ◼   ► I think it should be a wiki.

00:20:53 ◼   ► I could do it in iWeb. That's a bad idea.

00:20:56 ◼   ► You could do it in iWeb, probably. Which would feel, you know, realistic.

00:21:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:00 ◼   ► Could iWeb make wikis?

00:21:02 ◼   ► I don't think so.

00:21:04 ◼   ► Okay.

00:21:05 ◼   ► But I think a wiki is what you want here.

00:21:07 ◼   ► - Wiki.

00:21:09 ◼   ► - Everything else is messy for what you're looking for.

00:21:13 ◼   ► I think that's your best option.

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00:22:36 ◼   ► So quite literally, as we are recording the show right now, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai,

00:22:42 ◼   ► Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are participating in a hearing with the U.S.

00:22:46 ◼   ► Congress House antitrust subcommittee.

00:22:48 ◼   ► Each of the CEOs is being quizzed on various antitrust and anti-competitive issues.

00:22:54 ◼   ► Like it's happening right now.

00:22:56 ◼   ► It ended up getting delayed by like an hour.

00:22:58 ◼   ► So I think I just checked while Stephen was was reading a

00:23:03 ◼   ► Pingdom ad and Tim Cook is beginning his portion, I believe, or is at least

00:23:07 ◼   ► talking now. But and honestly, like

00:23:11 ◼   ► I expect there's going to be an element of frustration to trying to follow along

00:23:16 ◼   ► with these things, as there always is, as you will have varying levels of

00:23:20 ◼   ► technical know-how across the Congress people that are quizzing them.

00:23:27 ◼   ► So what will come out of this hearing? I don't know.

00:23:30 ◼   ► I mean, it could be of interest and if it is, we'll follow up.

00:23:33 ◼   ► But what I wanted to talk about right now is

00:23:36 ◼   ► really the thing that's probably the most interesting thing to talk about,

00:23:40 ◼   ► which is Tim Cook's

00:23:43 ◼   ► statement that he was going to make was published beforehand.

00:23:49 ◼   ► All four CEOs had their, I believe they actually have to submit them in advance.

00:23:53 ◼   ► So they also published them.

00:23:55 ◼   ► Apple published what looked to be a scanned PDF, which is very weird, but that's what

00:24:00 ◼   ► they did.

00:24:01 ◼   ► So it was published.

00:24:03 ◼   ► And I wanted to go through a selection of quotes and talk about them.

00:24:11 ◼   ► But I have a question I want to ask maybe Steven in advance to see if he knows the answer.

00:24:19 ◼   ► Is it legal for Tim Cook to lie to Congress?

00:24:23 ◼   ► If they're put under oath, then no, he cannot lie.

00:24:28 ◼   ► I don't know if these hearings in particular were under oath, maybe someone in the chat

00:24:33 ◼   ► room who is watching this could tell us, but I believe they have to tell the truth.

00:24:38 ◼   ► And can he willfully misguide rather than lie?

00:24:46 ◼   ► Like tell a half-truth?

00:24:48 ◼   ► I don't think so.

00:24:49 ◼   ► I mean, I think the idea is you are here as a trusted witness and you don't want to commit

00:24:57 ◼   ► perjury.

00:24:58 ◼   ► And the definition of perjury is you are not telling the entire truth.

00:25:02 ◼   ► Okay.

00:25:03 ◼   ► Well, let's keep that in mind as we go through some of these statements, shall we?

00:25:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:25:08 ◼   ► I mean, look, yeah.

00:25:09 ◼   ► People play the game, right?

00:25:12 ◼   ► They go through and they answer how they want to answer or they answer other questions.

00:25:16 ◼   ► That's really the thing that people do is they're asked a question and they just say

00:25:19 ◼   ► something else. So they're confirming in the Discord that they were sworn in.

00:25:23 ◼   ► Some of these statements are challenging if you look at them in that light. So I'm not saying

00:25:30 ◼   ► they're lies, but they don't feel complete truth to me in some instances. All right, so I've picked

00:25:35 ◼   ► out a selection of quotes from the statement that Cook has given. "After beginning with 500 apps,

00:25:43 ◼   ► today the App Store hosts more than 1.7 million, only 60 of which are Apple software. Clearly if

00:25:50 ◼   ► Apple is a gatekeeper, what we have done is to open the gate wider. We want to get every app we

00:25:56 ◼   ► can on the store, not keep them off." How do you feel about that statement? Personally I feel very

00:26:03 ◼   ► weird about it. Because I don't really get the argument of comparing the total number of available

00:26:11 ◼   ► apps from third-party developers on the store versus the 60 made by Apple,

00:26:16 ◼   ► because there's a critical difference there. Apple provides you with built-in

00:26:21 ◼   ► apps for key tasks for your phone, and obviously developers can make

00:26:28 ◼   ► alternatives. However, the big issue there is that, yes, if you just run the numbers

00:26:34 ◼   ► there's a huge divide between 1.7 million and 60. However, the issue, I think the real issue here,

00:26:43 ◼   ► and the reason why they're having these discussions with Apple in the first place,

00:26:48 ◼   ► is Apple does not let you change the default app for key tasks, like a key category, such as

00:26:57 ◼   ► browsing the web or listening to music on your phone. They don't let you change the default

00:27:03 ◼   ► option. So, yeah, it's only 60. However, those are very important. And of those 60

00:27:11 ◼   ► apps, we can say 10 of them are crucial to the way that an iPhone operates. And

00:27:16 ◼   ► also, what's even stranger in seeing this statement is how of those 60 apps, at the

00:27:25 ◼   ► very least, four of them, App Store, Music, TV and News, they come with the subscription service

00:27:35 ◼   ► built in. So, Apple Arcade, Apple Music, Apple TV Plus and Apple News Plus, that directly competes

00:27:44 ◼   ► with alternatives from the App Store. So, there's a... basically, like, this is a textbook

00:27:52 ◼   ► conflict of interest right there where the platform owner that makes the rules that third-party

00:27:59 ◼   ► developers need to follow, it also competes with those other developers directly on the App Store

00:28:09 ◼   ► for similar products, for similar services. So essentially the party making the rules

00:28:18 ◼   ► is also putting others at a direct disadvantage. Because let me ask you, how many times have you

00:28:24 ◼   ► seen Spotify or the Google Play Store or other competing services highlighted with emphasis

00:28:34 ◼   ► on the App Store, with like promotional banners saying "here's this great new Spotify feature!"

00:28:40 ◼   ► If it was an even competition, even if it was a fair competition, you would see equal promotion

00:28:48 ◼   ► for all of those services.

00:28:50 ◼   ► But it's not an equal competition

00:28:52 ◼   ► because Apple is putting others at direct disadvantage

00:28:55 ◼   ► in that you have this weird scenario

00:28:57 ◼   ► where Apple makes the rules,

00:28:59 ◼   ► others have to follow the rules,

00:29:01 ◼   ► but oh, it just so happens that Apple also makes services

00:29:05 ◼   ► that directly compete with those developers.

00:29:08 ◼   ► - I think Apple, or I think Tim is making two,

00:29:10 ◼   ► two points in one here, which I don't,

00:29:13 ◼   ► which I think is trying to like maybe

00:29:14 ◼   ► misdirect a little bit.

00:29:16 ◼   ► So one is the thing that you're talking about, which is how they're trying to say

00:29:21 ◼   ► that it's a free and open market because we only make 60 out of the 1.7 million

00:29:26 ◼   ► applications,

00:29:27 ◼   ► which would be a very fair point if most of those applications were not pre

00:29:33 ◼   ► installed on the device, right?

00:29:36 ◼   ► Like which is not a thing that he's talking about here at all, right?

00:29:40 ◼   ► Like as you know, if, if all of those applications were available,

00:29:45 ◼   ► like Facebook's apps or Spotify's apps are in the exact same way, then you could say that this is

00:29:51 ◼   ► level, but that's not the case. And also, I am a person who believes in capitalism, right? I have

00:30:02 ◼   ► views from socialism and capitalism in my own personal belief set. I am mostly okay with the

00:30:09 ◼   ► the idea of Apple and Google putting their own applications

00:30:13 ◼   ► on the devices that they sell.

00:30:15 ◼   ► Just from a basic level, I'm OK with that.

00:30:17 ◼   ► There is a lot of wavy lines where things get complicated.

00:30:21 ◼   ► But just at a core level, I'm totally fine with the fact

00:30:24 ◼   ► that Apple ships an email application.

00:30:26 ◼   ► Right?

00:30:26 ◼   ► Doesn't bother me.

00:30:28 ◼   ► I can choose to move if I want to.

00:30:30 ◼   ► And also, the second statement that Tim is making here

00:30:33 ◼   ► is about saying whether Apple is a gatekeeper or not.

00:30:37 ◼   ► And I can understand what he's getting at here, right?

00:30:40 ◼   ► That like, if they are a gatekeeper,

00:30:43 ◼   ► it's a really big gate that they're operating, right?

00:30:47 ◼   ► If 1.7 million applications are on the App Store,

00:30:51 ◼   ► they're not really key, from the idea of like,

00:30:55 ◼   ► the question of will we allow your app on the store,

00:30:59 ◼   ► vast majority of the time the answer is yes, we will.

00:31:02 ◼   ► Right?

00:31:03 ◼   ► - Right, it's about the, I mean,

00:31:05 ◼   ► The problem is why he's in front of Congress is the restrictions placed on apps after they're

00:31:10 ◼   ► allowed through the gate.

00:31:11 ◼   ► Exactly, which we're going to get to.

00:31:13 ◼   ► We're doing this piece by piece, right?

00:31:15 ◼   ► And that is a very good point.

00:31:16 ◼   ► But like, and this is this is again, it's like the smoke and mirrors that all of these

00:31:20 ◼   ► CEOs will be trying to to show here is like, they're trying to take things piece by piece

00:31:27 ◼   ► to build that case.

00:31:28 ◼   ► So let's move on.

00:31:29 ◼   ► When the App Store was created, the prevailing distribution options available to software

00:31:33 ◼   ► developers at the time did not work well. Brick and mortar stores charged high

00:31:38 ◼   ► fees and had limited reach. Physical media like CDs had to be shipped and

00:31:42 ◼   ► were hard to update. I like this because how many Mac customers bought all their

00:31:49 ◼   ► software at Apple stores like Apple brick-and-mortar stores like you were in

00:31:53 ◼   ► this business you're still in this business. What this totally disregards is

00:31:58 ◼   ► is that lots of developers were able to host their software on websites. There were standardized

00:32:06 ◼   ► payment systems like PayPal and plenty of others you could just plug into your website

00:32:13 ◼   ► and you could sell it directly to a consumer and then you could email them when there was

00:32:18 ◼   ► an update. You know this... I never bought software on disks from my Mac. From when I

00:32:24 ◼   ► I was a Mac user.

00:32:25 ◼   ► - I think the only thing I did was Office.

00:32:27 ◼   ► I think Office is the only thing I ever bought on CD,

00:32:30 ◼   ► other than like iLife and iWork, I guess.

00:32:32 ◼   ► But yeah, if I needed like a FTP client or an RSS reader,

00:32:37 ◼   ► I would just fire up Camino on my PowerBook

00:32:40 ◼   ► and like go shopping around.

00:32:42 ◼   ► And the reason I think this is particularly problematic is

00:32:45 ◼   ► we're primarily talking about the iOS app store in this,

00:32:49 ◼   ► but he compares it to what it was like for PCs and Macs.

00:32:54 ◼   ► It's a little bit of a weird comparison,

00:32:58 ◼   ► but it's something that, yeah, okay,

00:33:02 ◼   ► yes, CDs weren't ever gonna work for the iPhone.

00:33:05 ◼   ► Something else had to be invented for the iPhone.

00:33:08 ◼   ► What you did wasn't necessarily inevitable.

00:33:12 ◼   ► It could have been another way.

00:33:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, so when I asked my question first,

00:33:17 ◼   ► this isn't what I consider to be the lie in his statement, which we will get to,

00:33:21 ◼   ► but this is one of the half truths of completely ignoring the fact that people

00:33:28 ◼   ► could and were downloading software and still do on the Mac.

00:33:35 ◼   ► And this idea that like, well, the only way it could have been done on the iPhone

00:33:40 ◼   ► was if there was an app store, like it was some organic solution.

00:33:43 ◼   ► Right.

00:33:43 ◼   ► Right? Where like there was possibility to do it in another way.

00:33:47 ◼   ► I mean, we could have still sold physical CDs that you had to plug in via like a

00:33:52 ◼   ► cable and put in a CD drive. Right?

00:33:54 ◼   ► Like this idea that the app store is better because it's not a brick and mortar

00:34:02 ◼   ► store. It's like, it doesn't make any sense.

00:34:05 ◼   ► Like that it really like this point is, is, is very classic, like misdirection on

00:34:11 ◼   ► the part of Tim Cook and Apple. We didn't talk about it because it was just really annoying

00:34:16 ◼   ► and I was just waiting for this, but there was that whole study that they published a

00:34:19 ◼   ► week or so ago where they were talking about all of this stuff and trying to say how much

00:34:23 ◼   ► of a better deal the app store is because people don't have to pay to put their stuff

00:34:29 ◼   ► into stores. I'm sorry, it doesn't work out, it's not true. And especially when you look

00:34:35 ◼   ► at companies like Panic and Rogamiba, who are successful software businesses today that

00:34:43 ◼   ► sell their stuff for the Mac but cannot make or have not been able to make by their own

00:34:49 ◼   ► admission an iOS-based business work for them. Both of those companies have had iOS apps

00:34:58 ◼   ► that they no longer make because the economics didn't work out. iOS versions of Mac software.

00:35:05 ◼   ► So like a market where they can set their own rules can work for them, where they have

00:35:10 ◼   ► to work within Apple's rules, they cannot make it work financially for them.

00:35:15 ◼   ► So to say that this is the only way and that it's the best way isn't necessarily true.

00:35:22 ◼   ► And it's very frustrating to see Apple continually talking about this idea where buying software

00:35:32 ◼   ► digitally doesn't exist.

00:35:34 ◼   ► really frustrating me now because they keep doing it and it is smoke and mirrors completely

00:35:41 ◼   ► and I find it frustrating. Federico, what do you think about this point?

00:35:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I really also don't get it. It feels very disingenuous maybe to say this is the

00:35:54 ◼   ► only way that we can do this when you have so many examples of, not just in the past

00:36:00 ◼   ► And not just from your other platform, but right now at this very moment from other platforms

00:36:07 ◼   ► like Android, for example, showing all the different ways that you can install apps digitally

00:36:16 ◼   ► without necessarily having the single gatekeeper, the single marketplace as the only solution.

00:36:21 ◼   ► And also, if you want to be really technical about it, on iOS itself, Apple has right now

00:36:31 ◼   ► systems to install apps without the App Store, such as TestFlight, such as installing corporate

00:36:40 ◼   ► apps, enterprise apps via certificates that prove the point wrong.

00:36:45 ◼   ► So this is totally your decision to make the App Store the only marketplace for consumers.

00:36:52 ◼   ► It is not a truth that exists on its own, it's something that you decided.

00:36:58 ◼   ► So I really hope that they question Tim Cook about this one, because this is something

00:37:03 ◼   ► that you thought should be the only way.

00:37:06 ◼   ► It's not necessarily, and technically, the only way.

00:37:10 ◼   ► The thing that I think about in hearing that is the iTunes Music Store.

00:37:14 ◼   ► the App Store was based on the music store in the beginning.

00:37:17 ◼   ► Even in iTunes Connect,

00:37:19 ◼   ► there were weird music fields for years

00:37:21 ◼   ► when you went to go upload an app.

00:37:23 ◼   ► They looked the same, they worked the same way.

00:37:26 ◼   ► And I wonder how much of that has influenced the App Store

00:37:31 ◼   ► even beyond that initial reach.

00:37:33 ◼   ► They saw music as this way to have a central store.

00:37:37 ◼   ► You could buy music, it was all integrated

00:37:39 ◼   ► from the store to iTunes to your iPod.

00:37:42 ◼   ► and they saw that and they looked at the phone like,

00:37:45 ◼   ► oh, well, let's just take these lessons

00:37:46 ◼   ► and apply them to the phone.

00:37:48 ◼   ► Whereas in another timeline, the music store wasn't here

00:37:51 ◼   ► and they were starting from scratch,

00:37:53 ◼   ► I'm not positive they would have ended up

00:37:56 ◼   ► in exactly the same place.

00:37:58 ◼   ► - Interesting.

00:37:59 ◼   ► - That history, I think, had, at least in the early days,

00:38:01 ◼   ► a huge influence on how this worked.

00:38:03 ◼   ► - It may have been a different,

00:38:06 ◼   ► well, it would have been a different Apple, right?

00:38:08 ◼   ► Like to follow your thinking,

00:38:10 ◼   ► where they may have not been coming at this

00:38:13 ◼   ► from such a position of strength

00:38:15 ◼   ► that the music store and the iPod had allowed them to be.

00:38:18 ◼   ► I mean, we are assuming that they even would have made

00:38:20 ◼   ► the iPhone, which they wouldn't,

00:38:21 ◼   ► but nevertheless, like, I would have,

00:38:24 ◼   ► in that alternate timeline that you're talking about,

00:38:28 ◼   ► it would have been much more likely to assume

00:38:31 ◼   ► that there would be a more Mac level of software, right?

00:38:36 ◼   ► Where like, you could get it from multiple places.

00:38:39 ◼   ► All right, I wanna move on.

00:38:40 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:38:40 ◼   ► - This one's important.

00:38:41 ◼   ► The App Store guidelines ensure a high quality,

00:38:44 ◼   ► reliable and secure user experience.

00:38:46 ◼   ► They are transparent and applied equally

00:38:49 ◼   ► to developers of all sizes and in all categories.

00:38:51 ◼   ► There is your lie.

00:38:52 ◼   ► - Yes, that's true. - That's a lie, right?

00:38:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, there are special deals

00:38:58 ◼   ► they've cut with big companies,

00:39:01 ◼   ► mostly around content deals.

00:39:04 ◼   ► There are also thousands of examples, right,

00:39:08 ◼   ► of these rules not being transparent,

00:39:10 ◼   ► these rules not being easy to understand.

00:39:13 ◼   ► - Well, but also public ones,

00:39:15 ◼   ► like, hey, going back a few weeks ago.

00:39:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's really my bigger point.

00:39:19 ◼   ► We hear about a few.

00:39:21 ◼   ► How many small developers with no Twitter following,

00:39:24 ◼   ► with, you know, aren't on podcasts,

00:39:28 ◼   ► go through this and we never hear about them, right?

00:39:30 ◼   ► It's the few that I, that to me,

00:39:32 ◼   ► make me wonder about the many,

00:39:34 ◼   ► and it's not clear.

00:39:36 ◼   ► Apple changes things,

00:39:37 ◼   ► they're not clear on when they change things.

00:39:39 ◼   ► They were, I mean, this is ancient history now,

00:39:42 ◼   ► but when they launched the App Store,

00:39:43 ◼   ► the entire platform was under an NDA.

00:39:47 ◼   ► Developers couldn't talk to each other at all.

00:39:49 ◼   ► And they lifted that in 2008, that's a long time ago.

00:39:52 ◼   ► But if you go back and read,

00:39:54 ◼   ► in that time I have a link in the show, it's about this,

00:39:57 ◼   ► they said, "People have stolen our work from us in the past

00:40:00 ◼   ► "and we thought an NDA was important to protect that."

00:40:03 ◼   ► And I think Apple, even today, views itself

00:40:07 ◼   ► as this company that's way smaller

00:40:10 ◼   ► and way less powerful than it is,

00:40:12 ◼   ► and they make decisions based out of that,

00:40:14 ◼   ► and developers are stuck calling the bag.

00:40:17 ◼   ► - You know that the way that they get out of this one,

00:40:19 ◼   ► it's semantics.

00:40:21 ◼   ► They didn't say the App Store rules.

00:40:24 ◼   ► They said the App Store guidelines.

00:40:26 ◼   ► They said the guidelines are transparent

00:40:28 ◼   ► and applied equally.

00:40:29 ◼   ► The guidelines are essentially

00:40:31 ◼   ► the human interface guidelines,

00:40:32 ◼   ► or in this case the App Store guidelines.

00:40:34 ◼   ► They are not the rules, they're not the contract

00:40:37 ◼   ► that you sign as a developer.

00:40:39 ◼   ► They're not the part that describes fees and commissions.

00:40:44 ◼   ► They say App Store guidelines, and by guidelines they mean,

00:40:49 ◼   ► oh, we want to ensure that apps are well designed

00:40:53 ◼   ► and there's an app--

00:40:54 ◼   ► - What about the review guidelines though?

00:40:57 ◼   ► - Well, they said App Store--

00:40:59 ◼   ► - Like that's, I think that's what we're talking about here,

00:41:01 ◼   ► right? Is the review guidelines. By keeping the language as vague as possible,

00:41:05 ◼   ► they can make this statement. The App Store guidelines.

00:41:09 ◼   ► What are the App Store guidelines? They can be anything, right?

00:41:12 ◼   ► But let's assume that like, we know what this should mean, right?

00:41:16 ◼   ► And we know what he is inferring

00:41:21 ◼   ► to, or like, if you're correct,

00:41:24 ◼   ► what he's appearing to infer to is the review guidelines. Like,

00:41:28 ◼   ► that is what we call like the App Store guidelines. You could be completely

00:41:32 ◼   ► correct that they could be like, "Well, we were talking about the HIG." Right? Like, or

00:41:38 ◼   ► whatever. But if we take it at what it's meant to mean, right, which is the review

00:41:44 ◼   ► guidelines, this is not true. It's not true to say they are applied equally to

00:41:51 ◼   ► developers of all sizes and in all categories. This is just categorically

00:41:57 ◼   ► untrue because there are cases where applications are put under different levels of scrutiny

00:42:06 ◼   ► and decisions can be made but that next application down the road has to go down the same

00:42:13 ◼   ► thing. This is happening in the public right now, right? We had, hey, they had to go through this

00:42:18 ◼   ► whole thing with Apple and they got through. Then there was this report about Airbnb and companies

00:42:24 ◼   ► that have moved that were like coaching and fitness companies. This is like a report in

00:42:29 ◼   ► the New York Times, I think this week, where like Apple is like systematically going through

00:42:33 ◼   ► to each one of them and having making them go through some sort of process. Like if you

00:42:38 ◼   ► have to do that, they are not being applied equally, are they? Because you would just

00:42:43 ◼   ► make a ruling and that's it. Right? Like I just it is not accurate to say that these

00:42:50 ◼   ► guidelines are applied equally to quote developers of all sizes and categories.

00:42:56 ◼   ► It's just not the case because a developer who's small enough and gets

00:43:00 ◼   ► caught up in this new thing where Apple says to you "hey you've made money

00:43:05 ◼   ► you've made money and we've never asked for it before if you're not big enough

00:43:08 ◼   ► you will not get to fight it out with them like hey did like basecamp did you

00:43:14 ◼   ► just won't get that so that's not fair and equal is it like it just isn't and

00:43:19 ◼   ► And so much of this I really don't like.

00:43:23 ◼   ► I am a almost at this point lifelong Apple fan, right?

00:43:28 ◼   ► And my understanding of who they are as a company

00:43:33 ◼   ► is not this company.

00:43:35 ◼   ► This is Microsoft in my mind, right?

00:43:40 ◼   ► The company who's doing this stuff,

00:43:42 ◼   ► and they have to go and sit in antitrust and anti-compet--

00:43:47 ◼   ► you guys following me?

00:43:48 ◼   ► This just feels so wrong to me for what I think Apple is,

00:43:53 ◼   ► that we're even having to have these conversations

00:43:57 ◼   ► where we're picking apart Tim Cook's statement.

00:44:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree.

00:44:01 ◼   ► It's an uncomfortable position to be in

00:44:03 ◼   ► and it's totally a self-own on their part,

00:44:06 ◼   ► because again, they came up with this whole system.

00:44:09 ◼   ► - All right, for the vast majority of apps on the App Store,

00:44:11 ◼   ► developers keep 100% of the money they make.

00:44:15 ◼   ► The only apps that are subject to a commission

00:44:18 ◼   ► are those where the developer acquires a customer on an Apple device

00:44:21 ◼   ► and where the features or services would be experienced and consumed on an Apple

00:44:26 ◼   ► device.

00:44:27 ◼   ► What does this even mean?

00:44:29 ◼   ► What does the majority of apps developers keep 100% of the money they make mean?

00:44:33 ◼   ► Aren't most apps free within that purchase?

00:44:36 ◼   ► Right. See,

00:44:36 ◼   ► I also think that this is another situation where we are either

00:44:41 ◼   ► dealing with A, a lie or B,

00:44:44 ◼   ► a intended misdirection. Now,

00:44:47 ◼   ► I was thinking this and I was listening to Dithering today and John Gruber and Ben Thompson

00:44:54 ◼   ► also made this point as well.

00:44:56 ◼   ► If we're saying money, that's probably true.

00:45:01 ◼   ► For the vast amount of money made on the App Store, developers keep it because that's your

00:45:05 ◼   ► companies like Netflix who do not use Apple's in-app purchase, Amazon, right?

00:45:12 ◼   ► But there's no way that the vast majority of apps on the App Store developers keep 100%

00:45:17 ◼   ► the money they make. And they're sure also including free apps and saying they make money

00:45:23 ◼   ► through advertising. Like this statement is like 12 levels of obtuse.

00:45:31 ◼   ► I love the part where they say the only apps that are subject to like, oh yeah, the only

00:45:38 ◼   ► apps, just about a million of them. The only apps that are subject to the Commissioner

00:45:44 ◼   ► Literally any app that wants to charge someone on your platform because you won't allow them

00:45:51 ◼   ► to charge people in any other way.

00:45:54 ◼   ► They make it sound like such a rare instance where the developer acquires a customer on

00:46:01 ◼   ► an Apple device, meaning when you use an in-app purchase, which is like...

00:46:05 ◼   ► Because that's also not true, right?

00:46:07 ◼   ► Where like, you could be a customer from another platform, right?

00:46:11 ◼   ► But now you're using an Apple device, "Oh well now I have to go through their system

00:46:16 ◼   ► to get whatever it is that I want."

00:46:19 ◼   ► Like Kindle.

00:46:20 ◼   ► If I own a Kindle, I want to buy a Kindle book, like yeah, you don't make any money

00:46:28 ◼   ► because you won't allow Amazon to take money any other way.

00:46:33 ◼   ► You cannot do it in the Kindle app, right?

00:46:36 ◼   ► The levels of like tying themselves up into knots to make these statements is just like

00:46:42 ◼   ► so uncomfortable to me.

00:46:44 ◼   ► The only app service.

00:46:45 ◼   ► Apple's commissions are comparable to or lower than commissions charged by the majority of

00:46:51 ◼   ► our competitors and they are vastly lower than the 50 to 70 percent software developers

00:46:57 ◼   ► paid to distribute their work before we launched the app store.

00:47:02 ◼   ► Okay, this one is just perfect.

00:47:04 ◼   ► Because first I would like to know

00:47:06 ◼   ► where this 50 or 70% comes from.

00:47:09 ◼   ► - Seriously. - And also,

00:47:11 ◼   ► you're comparing essentially life in 2020

00:47:13 ◼   ► to life in the 1990s,

00:47:15 ◼   ► when the apps store did not even exist.

00:47:18 ◼   ► So it's not,

00:47:19 ◼   ► this really doesn't make any sense to me.

00:47:23 ◼   ► First of all, it's really not a good look to say,

00:47:25 ◼   ► oh, we're charging 30%,

00:47:26 ◼   ► because look at what Google and Amazon are doing.

00:47:30 ◼   ► We're not the bad guys,

00:47:31 ◼   ► who are just following their lead.

00:47:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, of course, when you were first

00:47:35 ◼   ► and set the price, which is 30%,

00:47:37 ◼   ► - You were first and set the price.

00:47:39 ◼   ► - Who was gonna say, who was gonna charge more than you?

00:47:42 ◼   ► - Right, exactly.

00:47:43 ◼   ► So first you say we invented the App Store,

00:47:47 ◼   ► but then when it comes to the commissions,

00:47:49 ◼   ► you're saying, but no, look, look at the other folks.

00:47:52 ◼   ► We're doing the same.

00:47:53 ◼   ► We're like, ah, I don't know.

00:47:57 ◼   ► I feel like we should be doing the questioning.

00:48:00 ◼   ► not US politicians. Yes. I agree. Tech podcasters should be in charge of this.

00:48:07 ◼   ► Yeah. It's just, I hate all of it, right? Like, and most of the time, and I always,

00:48:14 ◼   ► I mean, I always can ultimately separate the political side of Apple and the part that

00:48:21 ◼   ► I love, right? Isn't the same way that I spent a lot of, I don't even know if it was this

00:48:26 ◼   ► year anymore being angry about what Cook was doing for Trump, right?

00:48:30 ◼   ► Yes.

00:48:31 ◼   ► Like that upset me and angered me, but I could still separate it and I can still do the same

00:48:37 ◼   ► here. I think I'm just frustrated about the fact that I have to because, you know, I think

00:48:44 ◼   ► you can make an argument like for a lot of the companies, even the companies that Apple

00:48:49 ◼   ► is sitting up against their word today about kind of like, how much money do you need,

00:48:56 ◼   ► right? How much money do you need as a company? Now, a lot of Apple's competitors, they don't

00:49:03 ◼   ► have the profit levels that Apple has. They don't have the cash on hand that Apple has. So there's

00:49:08 ◼   ► an argument that they can make of like, well, we need to make all this money and be so ruthless

00:49:13 ◼   ► because we have to pay our people and run our business, right?

00:49:16 ◼   ► But Apple makes so much money, right?

00:49:20 ◼   ► They have I don't know, they have like billions, trillions of cash

00:49:25 ◼   ► in the bank now.

00:49:27 ◼   ► Like how much more money do you need to actually make?

00:49:32 ◼   ► Right. Like how much more do you need?

00:49:35 ◼   ► And I know that there's this whole question of like and I get it, right,

00:49:38 ◼   ► because we're going to talk about this tomorrow with the earnings.

00:49:42 ◼   ► Apple has a responsibility to their shareholders, right?

00:49:44 ◼   ► Like I understand all of that.

00:49:46 ◼   ► But there's just this like real

00:49:49 ◼   ► com like conflict of like, do you really have to

00:49:54 ◼   ► push developers for this 30% the way that you do?

00:50:00 ◼   ► Like how much of your bottom line is that?

00:50:03 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:50:05 ◼   ► This is so complicated.

00:50:07 ◼   ► And this statement, it just made me so angry when I read it

00:50:11 ◼   ► that I'm happy that you two allowed me to pick it apart.

00:50:14 ◼   ► Yes.

00:50:16 ◼   ► I also have a very difficult time trying to separate

00:50:20 ◼   ► disagreeing with the company that otherwise I really like,

00:50:24 ◼   ► because I like their products, on this kind of stuff,

00:50:28 ◼   ► political stuff and antitrust matters.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Because I really like my phone, and I really like using apps,

00:50:35 ◼   ► and I make my living on this stuff.

00:50:37 ◼   ► But also, I fundamentally disagree

00:50:39 ◼   ► with a lot of these things.

00:50:41 ◼   ► So it's, you know, really complex feelings

00:50:43 ◼   ► going on right now, essentially.

00:50:46 ◼   ► - I mean, I agree with you, but I think that's good, right?

00:50:48 ◼   ► I think people who pledge allegiance

00:50:51 ◼   ► to any of these companies and just agree

00:50:53 ◼   ► with everything they say or do,

00:50:55 ◼   ► like you've gone too far, right?

00:50:58 ◼   ► These are corporations that don't really care about us

00:51:02 ◼   ► and they are extremely multifaceted, right?

00:51:04 ◼   ► I think Apple makes the best tech products in the world.

00:51:07 ◼   ► That's why I use them and why I talk about them for a living.

00:51:10 ◼   ► Do they do things in politics

00:51:12 ◼   ► and with the environment that I love?

00:51:13 ◼   ► Absolutely, more than ever.

00:51:15 ◼   ► - Yes, yes.

00:51:16 ◼   ► - But then it comes to this and other antitrust issues

00:51:20 ◼   ► and all the big tech companies have, you know,

00:51:23 ◼   ► guilt on their heads over this stuff.

00:51:26 ◼   ► And that is, I think in a way,

00:51:30 ◼   ► it may be an inevitable side effect

00:51:32 ◼   ► of companies being this big, right?

00:51:33 ◼   ► Maybe you talk about breaking up companies.

00:51:35 ◼   ► I don't know how you break up Apple.

00:51:37 ◼   ► I mean, it's easier to think about that

00:51:39 ◼   ► with other companies like Facebook

00:51:41 ◼   ► has to get rid of Instagram and WhatsApp.

00:51:43 ◼   ► Amazon has to divorce the store and AWS.

00:51:47 ◼   ► You know, I don't know how you would split up Apple,

00:51:49 ◼   ► but I do think there are things Apple can,

00:51:52 ◼   ► could, and should do to alleviate some of these issues.

00:51:57 ◼   ► I think that there are steps forward they could take

00:52:00 ◼   ► to make this more tenable for developers and for users.

00:52:03 ◼   ► 'Cause a lot of this stuff is anti-user, right?

00:52:06 ◼   ► when you download the Netflix app and it doesn't do anything,

00:52:09 ◼   ► you have to like figure out to go out on the web

00:52:12 ◼   ► and sign up and give them your credit card

00:52:13 ◼   ► when it'd be way easier just to tap the button in the app

00:52:17 ◼   ► and sign up and you get the benefit of things like Apple Pay

00:52:21 ◼   ► or the App Store subscription or sign in with Apple,

00:52:25 ◼   ► all those things that make your account safer and better,

00:52:28 ◼   ► you can't have because Apple wants their 30%.

00:52:31 ◼   ► And if Netflix were to play ball and they used to do this,

00:52:35 ◼   ► as did others, it was 30% more expensive

00:52:39 ◼   ► to do it in the app than on the web,

00:52:40 ◼   ► because some developers just passed that cost along.

00:52:43 ◼   ► All that is bad for customers,

00:52:44 ◼   ► all that's bad for developers,

00:52:46 ◼   ► and turns out Apple needs those people

00:52:48 ◼   ► if they wanna keep making that cash.

00:52:50 ◼   ► - I may be wrong about this,

00:52:52 ◼   ► and I wanna revisit what I'm about to say,

00:52:54 ◼   ► maybe in a couple of years,

00:52:55 ◼   ► see if I got it right or not,

00:52:57 ◼   ► but I have a strong feeling that

00:53:00 ◼   ► this is not gonna go well for these companies.

00:53:02 ◼   ► I just feel like, historically speaking,

00:53:04 ◼   ► whenever the US government or also the European Union,

00:53:09 ◼   ► they start having these conversations, right?

00:53:11 ◼   ► These hearings about monopoly and antitrust.

00:53:14 ◼   ► I feel like the deal is pretty much done

00:53:17 ◼   ► and I feel like this story is gonna go in one direction

00:53:21 ◼   ► and it's not gonna end up well.

00:53:23 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, we're at the point now

00:53:24 ◼   ► where it's just how bad.

00:53:26 ◼   ► - Exactly, yes.

00:53:27 ◼   ► - Right, 'cause this is what Microsoft went through, right?

00:53:30 ◼   ► Like, it starts, it starts now, right?

00:53:33 ◼   ► because, and it's a similar thing,

00:53:35 ◼   ► is they don't get you here, they'll get you in Europe.

00:53:38 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:53:39 ◼   ► - Right? - Yep.

00:53:40 ◼   ► - Someone's gonna get you.

00:53:42 ◼   ► - That's what I think.

00:53:44 ◼   ► Something is just how bad is it gonna be for you?

00:53:47 ◼   ► Realistically speaking, how much you're gonna have to change

00:53:50 ◼   ► the way that your operating system works

00:53:52 ◼   ► or that your distribution network,

00:53:57 ◼   ► that your marketplace works.

00:53:58 ◼   ► And in the case of Facebook,

00:54:00 ◼   ► how bad is it gonna be for your executives

00:54:02 ◼   ► and the way that you essentially,

00:54:04 ◼   ► what The Verge was able to obtain emails

00:54:08 ◼   ► about the Instagram acquisition.

00:54:11 ◼   ► They said neutralize a potential competitor.

00:54:13 ◼   ► So how bad is it gonna be for those people in charge?

00:54:18 ◼   ► But something, I just feel like something's gonna happen.

00:54:21 ◼   ► It's not like we can have the conversation saying,

00:54:25 ◼   ► "Oh, but yeah, they're gonna have these hearings

00:54:26 ◼   ► and nothing is gonna come out of this."

00:54:28 ◼   ► either in the US or with the European Union,

00:54:32 ◼   ► something will change, just how much.

00:54:36 ◼   ► That's what I personally feel like.

00:54:39 ◼   ► - Well, let's talk about some possible things

00:54:42 ◼   ► that could change.

00:54:43 ◼   ► We're not regulators, we're not lawyers,

00:54:45 ◼   ► we're just enthusiasts, but we came up with a couple things

00:54:48 ◼   ► that we thought Apple could either be forced to do

00:54:51 ◼   ► or they could do voluntarily to get on everyone's

00:54:53 ◼   ► good graces.

00:54:54 ◼   ► I think the first obvious, probably easiest one

00:54:58 ◼   ► is take the 30% cut that they take and cut it in half.

00:55:03 ◼   ► 15% for everything off the bat.

00:55:05 ◼   ► Right now, if you have a subscription,

00:55:06 ◼   ► after the one year market's 15%,

00:55:09 ◼   ► which is a good change, right?

00:55:10 ◼   ► It's a good change.

00:55:12 ◼   ► But 30% for in-app purchases, first year subscription,

00:55:17 ◼   ► upfront paid apps, which is a smaller and smaller number,

00:55:21 ◼   ► at least on iOS, that should all be 15%.

00:55:24 ◼   ► - Yep, I agree. - I think that they would

00:55:26 ◼   ► - They would lose money, yes, but I think they would also

00:55:29 ◼   ► gain some money, right, from companies that they could

00:55:32 ◼   ► maybe woo back at 15%.

00:55:35 ◼   ► But ultimately, let's imagine that they lost 15 billion

00:55:40 ◼   ► in a year or whatever.

00:55:45 ◼   ► Look, it's a lot of money, right?

00:55:49 ◼   ► Don't think it's that much money to Apple.

00:55:52 ◼   ► I just don't.

00:55:53 ◼   ► You know, like, what do they make, like 90 billion a quarter?

00:55:56 ◼   ► If they lost 10% a quarter, they would still be turning profits.

00:56:02 ◼   ► And again, it's like, yeah, it's a lot of money.

00:56:07 ◼   ► You might make some of it back up in revenue.

00:56:09 ◼   ► But if this is the type of thing that might get the regulators to leave you

00:56:15 ◼   ► alone, maybe that's a good thing to do.

00:56:18 ◼   ► Right?

00:56:19 ◼   ► Like maybe it is better for your company in the long run if you can do something that

00:56:27 ◼   ► stops people from looking at you as an anti-competitive company.

00:56:31 ◼   ► It feels like it's probably a good idea.

00:56:34 ◼   ► And that's tangled up with the fact that this is services revenue.

00:56:38 ◼   ► It is a growing part of their business in their quarterly earnings, which you mentioned

00:56:43 ◼   ► are this week on July 30th.

00:56:46 ◼   ► That is the area of growth that Wall Street looks at and they would be differentizing

00:56:49 ◼   ► This is why they won't do it. And this is also why they have become increasingly tough on this point.

00:56:56 ◼   ► Especially over the last couple of years. Because they need to show growth in this area for multiple reasons now.

00:57:03 ◼   ► Because it's their only growth area and also because Apple's doing more in services.

00:57:08 ◼   ► And because they don't break it out, if they have a decline because they reduced this, people might say

00:57:12 ◼   ► "Oh well Apple TV is not doing very well either then."

00:57:15 ◼   ► So that this is what I know why they're doing it. So as you say, right, like we know why they're doing it

00:57:19 ◼   ► But is it the right thing to do?

00:57:23 ◼   ► That's the question

00:57:26 ◼   ► So up next I had all apps

00:57:28 ◼   ► Should have the ability to take external payment solutions for subscriptions in their app

00:57:34 ◼   ► Without Apple taking a cut so Netflix you could sign in directly pay

00:57:40 ◼   ► Netflix with your credit card outside of Apple system

00:57:43 ◼   ► I think it should be an option that you use Apple system

00:57:46 ◼   ► I think that'd be nice because a lot of us would like to use Apple pay or run it through iTunes, but this

00:57:51 ◼   ► Distinction they have around reader apps. We have to have an outside paid, you know membership of some sort

00:58:00 ◼   ► That's overly messy. It's bad for

00:58:02 ◼   ► customers and I think that it could really

00:58:05 ◼   ► Help them bring back those big players like like Netflix and others and look if Netflix were to do this

00:58:12 ◼   ► and we're just using them as an example because everybody knows them, if you could pay in the app without

00:58:17 ◼   ► 30% or 15% going to Apple

00:58:20 ◼   ► Stick an Apple pay button in there. You know what? I would probably use it and Apple will get a little percentage of that

00:58:25 ◼   ► Right. They're not losing everything

00:58:27 ◼   ► but

00:58:30 ◼   ► Having users download app that is basically an empty shell until they go out to the internet and pay for something

00:58:35 ◼   ► It's just a bad bad user experience

00:58:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I think the struggle with that one though is then just so many companies with one use Apple at all, right?

00:58:44 ◼   ► And then they'll I mean, I mean this is again what it's whether it's right or wrong or whether they should just do it

00:58:50 ◼   ► But like that it's tricky, but I think it should be a thing that can be done

00:58:56 ◼   ► Yeah

00:58:56 ◼   ► So I don't have to jump through a million hoops when I download applications

00:59:01 ◼   ► Because if you say it's a bad user experience and which do you prefer money or user experience?

00:59:06 ◼   ► Yeah, and my ideas go from the smallest change to the biggest change, which we'll get to.

00:59:12 ◼   ► So I understand this one is vastly more complicated and more risky from a business perspective.

00:59:17 ◼   ► So I agree with you, like, why wouldn't it just everyone go build a web server they could

00:59:21 ◼   ► take payments through, right?

00:59:23 ◼   ► That's an easy thing to do.

00:59:24 ◼   ► And you could save yourself in trouble.

00:59:27 ◼   ► The last one I had was sort of the the nuclear option.

00:59:32 ◼   ► third party apps via sideloading, or even other app stores. Apple is not going to do

00:59:37 ◼   ► this of their own free will. I think if they were told to do it by the governments of the

00:59:42 ◼   ► world, they would fight it. But it is sort of the ultimate fix for this. Okay, if you

00:59:48 ◼   ► don't like the app store policies or rules, go this part of your phone, do this thing

00:59:52 ◼   ► and have at it.

00:59:54 ◼   ► And I guess really, if the the people doing the the questioning would be a little more

01:00:00 ◼   ► tech-savvy, they could ask about why it's possible on a Mac to have something like Gatekeeper,

01:00:07 ◼   ► which is also quite the funny name given the circumstances, why you can have something

01:00:13 ◼   ► like that technology on the Mac but not have it on the phone, where you can still, if your

01:00:18 ◼   ► argument is the App Store is the only distribution service for iPhones because it is secure,

01:00:28 ◼   ► then does it mean that your computers are not secure?

01:00:31 ◼   ► Or does it mean that on the Mac you

01:00:33 ◼   ► found a way to make it work with notarization and all

01:00:37 ◼   ► those technologies that allow developers to distribute apps

01:00:40 ◼   ► outside of the App Store, but then you

01:00:42 ◼   ► don't want to do it on the iPhone

01:00:45 ◼   ► because it's in your best financial interests

01:00:49 ◼   ► not to have that technology?

01:00:52 ◼   ► Or is there any other reason?

01:00:54 ◼   ► I don't expect you to see any of these questions at today's hearing, but it is an argument worth considering.

01:01:01 ◼   ► Site loading is not this wild idea when you consider how the same company makes computers that have an app store

01:01:11 ◼   ► and that have a secure site loading method based on Gatekeeper and, now since last year, a couple of years ago, notarization.

01:01:20 ◼   ► And we've seen that in effect when we've had problems such as transmission, the BitTorrent

01:01:27 ◼   ► client that was essentially compromised, and Apple, I believe, was able to pull the plug

01:01:35 ◼   ► on that application via Gatekeeper.

01:01:38 ◼   ► So why not offer the same solution on the App Store?

01:01:42 ◼   ► I feel like this should be one of the questions, and I don't think it's totally like this

01:01:46 ◼   ► wild theory, because it's happening right now on the Mac. The other app stores, that

01:01:53 ◼   ► I believe is never going to happen, right? Apple is never going to allow the Google Play

01:01:58 ◼   ► Store or the Amazon App Store on the iPhone. Unless they're forced to.

01:02:02 ◼   ► Unless they're forced to, but even then, as Stephen said, they would fight that.

01:02:06 ◼   ► Oh, of course they would, yeah. Much more, I believe, than if the European

01:02:11 ◼   ► Union said it's gonna be mandatory for you to allow cyclone right because I

01:02:17 ◼   ► feel like that they could probably figure out to bring gatekeeper to iOS

01:02:21 ◼   ► yeah and also fill it with warnings you know right like like they do on Catalina

01:02:29 ◼   ► right like it's it they can make it a possible thing but not a great

01:02:34 ◼   ► experience which I'm okay with. But yeah the idea of them being told like

01:02:43 ◼   ► "Oh Google's now allowed to put the Play Store and distribute whatever applications they

01:02:47 ◼   ► want like they're gonna have a big problem with that" and they would have good reason

01:02:51 ◼   ► to have a big problem with it but you know if you play the game you're playing you may

01:02:58 ◼   ► end up in a situation where some court tells you that's what you're gonna do and that's

01:03:03 ◼   ► the risk you've decided to take, right? So before we wrap this up, there's one, I was

01:03:10 ◼   ► just checking, there was one thing that I saw, maybe a little clarification about the

01:03:16 ◼   ► money point. Cook says the majority of apps, 84% are paid no money, the rest are on the

01:03:23 ◼   ► 70/30 or 85/15 revenue split. Cook insists Apple doesn't bully developers.

01:03:29 ◼   ► Okay. Well yeah, most apps don't use it, but if they... but you also make... it's so weird,

01:03:38 ◼   ► this whole thing is so weird. I'm intrigued to see how this... the result of all of this,

01:03:42 ◼   ► like once it's concluded today, but honestly I feel like the points that we have made today

01:03:49 ◼   ► are the exact same points that we would have made even if we had recorded this episode tomorrow.

01:03:54 ◼   ► Like I don't think we feel any differently about this whole thing.

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01:05:37 ◼   ► - Let's talk about the stuff that we love to talk about,

01:05:40 ◼   ► which is Apple product releases.

01:05:42 ◼   ► So according to some apparently notable product leakers

01:05:46 ◼   ► Twitter. I'm not familiar with these accounts but there are so many accounts these days

01:05:53 ◼   ► that leak things to varying levels of success that it was at least worth talking about.

01:05:59 ◼   ► This was compiled by an analyst firm Seeking Alpha and they went through and pulled all

01:06:05 ◼   ► of this stuff together and it basically talks of three dates at which Apple will be releasing

01:06:13 ◼   ► products between now and the end of the year. It includes various products that we are expecting

01:06:20 ◼   ► them to release. I don't know if this necessarily talks about announcement dates or product

01:06:29 ◼   ► launch dates, both or either, right? Like it doesn't really seem to, I can't really

01:06:34 ◼   ► draw a conclusion as to which is which, you know, like when might they announce something,

01:06:38 ◼   ► when might they release something, but it at least kind of gives a potential roadmap

01:06:42 ◼   ► for what we might see through the rest of the year and by and large I think it makes

01:06:46 ◼   ► sense so let me go through the dates and we can stop and talk about each of these products

01:06:50 ◼   ► in turn where we're interested.

01:06:52 ◼   ► August 19th, just a couple of weeks away, new iMac is one of them.

01:06:59 ◼   ► So there are varying levels of rumor about this iMac.

01:07:06 ◼   ► Some say it's brand new, some say it looks like the old one, some say it's Intel, some

01:07:11 ◼   ► say it's Intel with Apple Silicon or a combination or none of them?

01:07:15 ◼   ► It's not a combination. I can promise you that.

01:07:18 ◼   ► I think that this is a spec bump to the Intel iMac as we know it. It's been the same since 2012.

01:07:25 ◼   ► I wrote about that on Mac Stories. Federico didn't read it, but it's on the site.

01:07:31 ◼   ► And I just read it if it was on my website.

01:07:35 ◼   ► I just don't see them coming out of the gates with the new iMac design

01:07:40 ◼   ► And there's a new Apple silicon iMac around the corner. I think this is going to be the holdover.

01:07:45 ◼   ► I thought it kind of be the last Intel iMac, I think. And so I wouldn't get too excited about

01:07:52 ◼   ► a new design. But while I was talking about the iMac, so I looked into these Twitter accounts, and

01:07:57 ◼   ► they get some stuff, right. But there's also some like really dumb stuff in here. So

01:08:02 ◼   ► one of these tweets says, this person also said the August iMac would be in memory of Steve Jobs.

01:08:10 ◼   ► They said in memory of Steve Job.

01:08:12 ◼   ► Steve Job. Oh, well, who knows who that is. But the ninth

01:08:16 ◼   ► anniversary of job stepping down to CEO is next month, like a,

01:08:20 ◼   ► you don't do anything for the ninth anniversary of anything.

01:08:23 ◼   ► Be Apple doesn't really do anniversaries hardly at all,

01:08:27 ◼   ► unless they're making fun of old products to sell new ones. And

01:08:31 ◼   ► see, even if this was true, why would it be the last Intel Mac

01:08:35 ◼   ► like if they're going to make a Steve Jobs anniversary

01:08:39 ◼   ► computer so here's what I will say on this here's what I will say on this

01:08:43 ◼   ► these two things can be true that the parlet comes out and it's on that day

01:08:49 ◼   ► but they don't have to be related right?

01:08:51 ◼   ► but why memory of Steve Jobs though? I don't really get it like of all things right?

01:08:56 ◼   ► of all things you could celebrate like the iPhone 10 or whatever like a spec bump for the iPhone

01:09:03 ◼   ► the last Intel chip in the Mac

01:09:05 ◼   ► On the ninth anniversary, not the tenth anniversary, not the anniversary of his death.

01:09:12 ◼   ► Not even the tenth one, it's just a random date for a random computer.

01:09:16 ◼   ► It's not really a nice gesture when you think about it.

01:09:19 ◼   ► It's kind of a slam.

01:09:21 ◼   ► You gotta send this intel mess, we're gonna name the last one after you, buddy.

01:09:28 ◼   ► Finally.

01:09:30 ◼   ► Out from under the tyranny of Steve Jobs.

01:09:35 ◼   ► Do I think it's possible there will be a new iMac in August? I do think that that is possible,

01:09:39 ◼   ► right? Like, do I think that it will have a new design? I mean, honestly, personally,

01:09:45 ◼   ► the jury's not out on that one for me. Why would they do it? On the last Intel iMac?

01:09:52 ◼   ► Because that might just be what they have ready. Like, they did it the last time. I'm

01:09:58 ◼   ► not saying that that's a reason to do it. They added an iSight camera the previous time.

01:10:03 ◼   ► Right. But it's not a it's not a redesign in the sense that the current iMac is eight

01:10:09 ◼   ► years old and needs like an overhaul to match the pro display XDR. I don't know. I just

01:10:14 ◼   ► don't see it. We can move on though. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt it. I just got

01:10:18 ◼   ► mad. I'm not saying it's a definite. It's just more that like if it happened, I'll be

01:10:22 ◼   ► like, oh, that's really cool. But I wouldn't be like, what? Right. Like, you know, I would

01:10:27 ◼   ► just be like, yeah, the IMAX looked the same forever. It's about time they changed it.

01:10:31 ◼   ► Right? I don't know though, right?

01:10:33 ◼   ► Another thing that this wasn't in there, but it has been news that I thought was interesting.

01:10:39 ◼   ► The 5K display, the OG 5K display is now sold out in the US.

01:10:46 ◼   ► I mentioned, I think I may have mentioned this show, I tried to get one of these in the UK and couldn't

01:10:52 ◼   ► like weeks ago and now you can't get the 5K displays.

01:10:57 ◼   ► Now, if Apple was going to do a new display and launch it alongside the iMac, they're

01:11:03 ◼   ► not going to make a display if the display matches that looks like the current iMac,

01:11:08 ◼   ► right?

01:11:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:11:10 ◼   ► Because that would be very weird.

01:11:13 ◼   ► So if they are launching a new iMac and a new display at the same time, would they not

01:11:19 ◼   ► in theory look the same and therefore maybe be a new design?

01:11:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:11:25 ◼   ► No, that's a point in that column.

01:11:27 ◼   ► I think another point is I'm kind of assuming

01:11:29 ◼   ► that the iMac will be one of the first machines

01:11:32 ◼   ► because it doesn't sell as well as the notebooks.

01:11:35 ◼   ► Clearly notebooks outsell desktops by a mile.

01:11:38 ◼   ► But I think the iMac--

01:11:39 ◼   ► - All of the rumors are talking about laptops

01:11:41 ◼   ► and not the iMac though.

01:11:42 ◼   ► - Right, so what I'm getting to is that

01:11:46 ◼   ► the iMac is kind of like the flagship Mac

01:11:48 ◼   ► even though it's important to Apple.

01:11:50 ◼   ► If the iMac is still a year and a half off,

01:11:53 ◼   ► well they could get an Intel iMac out the door

01:11:56 ◼   ► and maybe that design have a little more time on the shelf before it moves to Apple Silicon.

01:12:01 ◼   ► But if it's a year and a half off, couldn't they also do the redesign?

01:12:04 ◼   ► That's what I'm saying. Like they could do the redesign if it's a year and a half off,

01:12:08 ◼   ► if it's three months off. So I don't know. I don't know. Anyways.

01:12:12 ◼   ► So who knows? I still think that there is more question around this iMac. Like I don't

01:12:18 ◼   ► feel like it's a done deal yet, in my mind. August 19th also, AirPods Studio.

01:12:26 ◼   ► Okay, you have my attention.

01:12:29 ◼   ► Could happen. I actually could imagine this happening not with the iPhone.

01:12:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:36 ◼   ► Right? Well like logically you might say to yourself, oh they would want to unveil this alongside the iPhone.

01:12:41 ◼   ► But if these are like $400 headphones, maybe you don't want to.

01:12:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:46 ◼   ► Right? Like because I don't know if it's necessarily like, oh hey every iPhone owner, buy a set of these.

01:12:53 ◼   ► because I really don't think that's what this product is. To further this

01:12:58 ◼   ► point, apparently this date August 19th would also see a new HomePod and a

01:13:03 ◼   ► HomePod mini. Now AirPod Studio, HomePod 2 and HomePod mini, I can imagine those

01:13:09 ◼   ► all coming together. There's three questionable audio purchases, right? Like

01:13:14 ◼   ► really who should buy any of them? So it kind of makes sense to put them all

01:13:20 ◼   ► together. What do you guys think about that? In AirPods Studio... What is a HomePod 2?

01:13:26 ◼   ► What is a HomePod 2? Maybe they didn't mean HomePod 2 but HomePod 2

01:13:33 ◼   ► like do they have updates for... I don't know. I can imagine a HomePod Mini

01:13:40 ◼   ► happening before the second edition of the HomePod. Sure, sure, but like what would you

01:13:47 ◼   ► put it in a second version of a HomePod? I have no idea. I mean like, look, you could

01:13:52 ◼   ► always say like "hey we made it sound better" but like really is there any point? Exactly.

01:13:58 ◼   ► Like it already sounds pretty good and they did the whole thing with the spatial audio

01:14:03 ◼   ► before like it's... is there even a need for a better sounding HomePod? I don't really

01:14:11 ◼   ► think that sound is the problem. So maybe a cheaper version or maybe a version like

01:14:16 ◼   ► Like if you want to go in a completely different direction, maybe a display, maybe a HomePod

01:14:21 ◼   ► that you can put on a nightstand that has a bit more information displayed on the screen.

01:14:29 ◼   ► Maybe it's that, right?

01:14:31 ◼   ► Something completely different because the current one didn't really work out well for

01:14:35 ◼   ► them.

01:14:37 ◼   ► But I have no idea.

01:14:38 ◼   ► I think of all this, the most interesting one of course is the AirPods Studio because

01:14:43 ◼   ► I really feel that Apple has an opportunity here to go after the same market of people

01:14:53 ◼   ► purchasing Beats headphones, but with the AirPods brand, which you could argue that

01:14:57 ◼   ► in 2020 has much wider recognition than Beats, honestly.

01:15:01 ◼   ► Yeah, at this point. I think that of these products, the AirPods Studio is clearly the

01:15:09 ◼   ► be the success product of these, right? Like even have a HomePod Mini because still, like

01:15:16 ◼   ► a HomePod Mini, like what is that product doing?

01:15:20 ◼   ► It's a HomePod that sounds worse and does even less. It sounds like a dream product.

01:15:28 ◼   ► Just what I wanted!

01:15:29 ◼   ► Look, it's just what I was looking for, a worse HomePod.

01:15:33 ◼   ► And I like the idea personally of a home pod of a screen.

01:15:39 ◼   ► Carl's freaking out in the chat room because he thinks he's seen the matrix that they'll

01:15:42 ◼   ► put widgets on it.

01:15:44 ◼   ► Which like, I mean yeah that could make sense.

01:15:46 ◼   ► I do not...

01:15:47 ◼   ► They'll only be down the left hand side.

01:15:49 ◼   ► Forsee Apple making a home pod of a screen on it.

01:15:53 ◼   ► Like that's a good joke, I like that one.

01:15:54 ◼   ► But I just, I don't see it happening for the time being.

01:15:58 ◼   ► We don't even have, we don't even have real widgets on iPad.

01:16:02 ◼   ► on a home page. Yeah, that seems like a great idea, but…

01:16:09 ◼   ► Like a very optimistic idea. It seems like a lot of product development

01:16:13 ◼   ► to put into a product which isn't done very well.

01:16:16 ◼   ► Yeah. I think. Seems like a tad too much.

01:16:19 ◼   ► Alright, so we move on to September 8th. Oh, no. Why does it have to be September

01:16:25 ◼   ► 8th? Why can't it be September 28th? iPhone 12.

01:16:30 ◼   ► iPhone 12 being shown off September 8th. I mean if it was shown off on September 8th

01:16:39 ◼   ► I would be surprised if it still came out in September. I really do not think we are

01:16:45 ◼   ► getting a new iPhone released this side of October. I don't think it's going to happen.

01:16:53 ◼   ► I would be intrigued to be proven wrong. I would like to be proven wrong. I would like

01:16:58 ◼   ► my iPhone sooner always right? But I don't see it. No I don't want it sooner I want it

01:17:04 ◼   ► as late as possible. But what I'm gonna say which I hate to say Federico is that they

01:17:10 ◼   ► show off the new iPhone because between September 8th and October 8th iOS 14 comes out. No.

01:17:19 ◼   ► Okay. Right? The only reason I can imagine you would show you would have an event that

01:17:26 ◼   ► early is if iOS comes out before, is coming out still in September. Otherwise, like, if

01:17:32 ◼   ► it's not coming out in October, why would you have the event on September 8th? Right?

01:17:38 ◼   ► Like surely you don't want to destroy your iPhone sales for a three week period. That's

01:17:43 ◼   ► a lot of money even at that time of year. But I don't know. Right. I don't know.

01:17:48 ◼   ► Maybe it's not September 8th. Maybe that's as simple as that.

01:17:51 ◼   ► Maybe it's not September 8th. Maybe they have one iPhone to sell on September 12th. Right.

01:17:55 ◼   ► whatever like you know they could stagger the line if they're gonna have

01:18:00 ◼   ► four of them they might have done that anyway so who knows but coloring this

01:18:06 ◼   ► has been a thing people wanted a blue iPhone last year apparently we could get

01:18:11 ◼   ► a blue iPhone this year replacing the green I can see that and I would like

01:18:15 ◼   ► that yeah this was rumored back in the lead-up to the midnight green phone I

01:18:20 ◼   ► think it was been around forever but yeah I think they're gonna just keep

01:18:24 ◼   ► turning over the colors I would love to know they will never tell us the

01:18:27 ◼   ► breakdown of colors like was the midnight green popular? I see a lot of the

01:18:32 ◼   ► midnight green. But is it because it was new like would it be popular in the

01:18:36 ◼   ► second year? I don't know. I have some real-time follow-up guys. Okay. I wouldn't

01:18:41 ◼   ► interrupt you if this wasn't very relevant to what we just talked about.

01:18:44 ◼   ► It's not very relevant. The US government has copies of email exchanges

01:18:50 ◼   ► between Tim Cook offering contracts to Baidu, the Chinese network, for something called

01:18:58 ◼   ► a fast track app approval. Which doesn't line up with what they said.

01:19:06 ◼   ► Oopsies! Oopsies!

01:19:08 ◼   ► Oh, God.

01:19:10 ◼   ► Oopsies! Oh, Timmy, so fair, isn't it, Tim? See? You bunch of liars.

01:19:18 ◼   ► There's also one where Steve Jobs apparently suggests cutting off Joe Hewitt who wrote

01:19:24 ◼   ► the first Facebook iPhone app.

01:19:26 ◼   ► He made critical comments about the App Store and Objective-C and Jobs apparently wrote

01:19:30 ◼   ► "I just suggest we cut Joe off from now on."

01:19:34 ◼   ► Anything Steve Jobs said, like I don't want to enter that into evidence personally because

01:19:38 ◼   ► it was such a long time ago.

01:19:39 ◼   ► I mean look, they're naming an iMac after him, you gotta do something.

01:19:47 ◼   ► He's like, "Thanks, Steve. We're gonna name this iMac after you now." But like that one

01:19:52 ◼   ► is like, "Yeah, that's really bad, but like also, I don't know." But this, this, was this

01:19:56 ◼   ► Tim Cook named in this, this Baidu thing?

01:20:00 ◼   ► Mark Gurman said, "This email chain shows Tim Cook offering contacts for Baidu to fast

01:20:06 ◼   ► track app approvals, which doesn't line up with what all app developers being treated

01:20:10 ◼   ► the same."

01:20:11 ◼   ► Is Baidu the company that they invested in? The ride sharing company?

01:20:15 ◼   ► No, there are different names. Was it DD or something?

01:20:18 ◼   ► DD, yes, yes, DD. Baidu is... isn't that a search company?

01:20:23 ◼   ► I think? I don't remember. Oh, this is so good.

01:20:28 ◼   ► I can't believe it. I mean, look, we knew, right?

01:20:35 ◼   ► Like, logic dictated that this stuff happens all the time.

01:20:40 ◼   ► Like, because of course, right? Like if I'm running this business, I have people working on the

01:20:46 ◼   ► Facebook account to fast track app approvals. But I also wouldn't lie about that, right? Like, I would

01:20:53 ◼   ► say like, yeah, of course. Like, are you wild? Of course we have that. Merely every single person in

01:21:00 ◼   ► the world has the Facebook app installed on their phone. We have to make sure their approval process

01:21:04 ◼   ► goes okay. It's logic. Well, it came out about the Uber app that they were doing the what

01:21:11 ◼   ► would they call it? It was great. Something was like the project name, where they would

01:21:17 ◼   ► do all of these things like shadow ban users and tinker with ratings and all this stuff.

01:21:24 ◼   ► And they had it set up where the app would check its location. And if it was in Apple's

01:21:29 ◼   ► campus where review happens those features wouldn't be there.

01:21:33 ◼   ► I forgot about that.

01:21:35 ◼   ► Yeah Kyle just put a link in the in the chat room.

01:21:39 ◼   ► It'll be in the show notes.

01:21:40 ◼   ► I'll put it in the show notes but it Myke put in the show notes everybody.

01:21:44 ◼   ► I want my attribution.

01:21:45 ◼   ► Hey Federico, Myke put it in the show notes.

01:21:49 ◼   ► But and then like there's this phone call right like what's his name from Uber who got

01:21:54 ◼   ► kicked out and Tim Cook like have a phone call and they get scolded like Apple needs

01:21:59 ◼   ► or at least once the Uber app on the iPhone,

01:22:02 ◼   ► and so they're willing to play games

01:22:05 ◼   ► where if a small app, the argument was,

01:22:07 ◼   ► if a small app developer did this,

01:22:08 ◼   ► they would just be banned.

01:22:09 ◼   ► But because it's Uber, they get leeway.

01:22:12 ◼   ► - And again, if I am running Apple, if I'm Tim Cook,

01:22:18 ◼   ► I would run my business that way, right?

01:22:21 ◼   ► I understand it.

01:22:23 ◼   ► But at the same time, you gotta say that's what you're doing.

01:22:28 ◼   ► And I feel like it's a question of,

01:22:32 ◼   ► if the Facebook app got removed from the app store,

01:22:36 ◼   ► everyone will be super mad about it. Right. But like, you've got to be open.

01:22:41 ◼   ► And so, you know, you have those things,

01:22:43 ◼   ► like if you have more than a million users, you are now in this tier.

01:22:47 ◼   ► And anyone who has more than a million users can be in this tier.

01:22:51 ◼   ► And like this is to make sure that applications of large user bases

01:22:57 ◼   ► have their users protected and keep their services running for people to depend

01:23:02 ◼   ► on them. That doesn't sound wild, does it? Like I just,

01:23:07 ◼   ► I just, I just bear, I just bear. That was actually very relevant.

01:23:12 ◼   ► A real time follow up. I'm sorry that I doubted you Federico. I apologize.

01:23:16 ◼   ► I'm glad you learned your lesson.

01:23:18 ◼   ► Wow. I did learn it.

01:23:21 ◼   ► I feel like I may learn another lesson through trusting you where now you will

01:23:25 ◼   ► jump in with something else, which is completely irrelevant.

01:23:28 ◼   ► That's the thrill of knowing me though, isn't it?

01:23:31 ◼   ► Anytime there could be a prank.

01:23:33 ◼   ► That's right.

01:23:34 ◼   ► Uh, also on September 8th, iPad.

01:23:37 ◼   ► What's that going to be, do you think?

01:23:38 ◼   ► I did some homework.

01:23:40 ◼   ► The uh, the last time the iPads were updated, the iPad mini and the iPad Air were March

01:23:46 ◼   ► 2019.

01:23:47 ◼   ► The regular iPad, the cheap one, was September 2019.

01:23:51 ◼   ► And then the Pro just got updated back in March.

01:23:55 ◼   ► Which feels like a hundred years ago.

01:23:56 ◼   ► Do you guys remember the iPad Pro got an update this year?

01:23:59 ◼   ► Totally forgotten about it.

01:24:00 ◼   ► Simpler times.

01:24:02 ◼   ► I remember because I have it.

01:24:03 ◼   ► I think about it a lot.

01:24:05 ◼   ► Like "Oh, I bought that one."

01:24:07 ◼   ► I think about it when I see the weird gap in the back of my keyboard case.

01:24:10 ◼   ► But so I don't think it's the Pro necessarily.

01:24:15 ◼   ► Generally those are in October.

01:24:16 ◼   ► They're not with the iPhone.

01:24:17 ◼   ► Well actually the iPad Pro is listed later on in this list.

01:24:21 ◼   ► Now I would like a modern designed iPad mini. That's what I want.

01:24:26 ◼   ► Same. Yes. Yes. Apple, if you're listening and if you're planning on giving me any review

01:24:32 ◼   ► units this year, please, if you had to choose, like we can only give you one. I really want

01:24:39 ◼   ► to get that iPad mini and I really want to write about it because I think it's such an

01:24:43 ◼   ► interesting product. Like I've been using my iPad mini so much over the past few months,

01:24:47 ◼   ► the old one with the home button. I have a lot of thoughts about it and I cannot wait to see an

01:24:54 ◼   ► iPad mini that has a modern design and face ID and the whole like gestural engine for controlling

01:25:03 ◼   ► the interface. Like this iPad mini has grown so much on me over the past few months. It really

01:25:10 ◼   ► is up there with the iPad Pro in terms of like my favorite Apple devices. I really really really

01:25:15 ◼   ► like it. And there's a bunch of ways that it could improve and so I'm generally curious about what

01:25:21 ◼   ► the next one could look like and could work like and like what kind of role could it fit in my life.

01:25:27 ◼   ► So yeah, honestly, if you cannot tell, I'm very excited about this idea.

01:25:34 ◼   ► I would love to see just more stuff happening with the iPad hardware in general, right? Like

01:25:42 ◼   ► like just make it all better, you know?

01:25:44 ◼   ► That would be super fun.

01:25:46 ◼   ► Like, you know, why not?

01:25:47 ◼   ► Like get rid of all the bezels on all of them, right?

01:25:50 ◼   ► And I wonder if we would see, what do you think about like

01:25:54 ◼   ► an iPad mini with like an in display

01:25:57 ◼   ► fingerprint sensor or something?

01:25:59 ◼   ► Do you think that would happen?

01:26:00 ◼   ► Or do you think they would do face ID on that product?

01:26:03 ◼   ► I think they would do face ID and they would do like that stuff

01:26:06 ◼   ► should happen on the phone first.

01:26:08 ◼   ► First, OK.

01:26:09 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah, eventually, why not?

01:26:11 ◼   ► But I think if they are going to do it, I feel like they should do it.

01:26:16 ◼   ► And they're going to do it on the iPhone first.

01:26:18 ◼   ► I feel like it is a foregone conclusion now that Touch ID will come back in some form.

01:26:22 ◼   ► Right. Like, I feel like they must have made that decision now,

01:26:27 ◼   ► because who doesn't want it?

01:26:28 ◼   ► Right. Who today does not want Touch ID to come back?

01:26:32 ◼   ► Like, I'm wearing masks all the time and I really hate putting in my passcode to pay for things in Apple Pay.

01:26:39 ◼   ► Right, because I have to wear masks and want to wear masks, but I wear masks in

01:26:43 ◼   ► retail stores and it's so much slower for me to use Apple Pay now because I have to

01:26:47 ◼   ► put my password in every time.

01:26:48 ◼   ► So like I would love Touch ID to return at this point.

01:26:51 ◼   ► I would love to have both.

01:26:52 ◼   ► I want both. I think that'd be great.

01:26:53 ◼   ► Apple Watch Series 6.

01:26:56 ◼   ► I wonder what they're going to do with this because the Series 5 surprised us

01:27:02 ◼   ► right with the always on display.

01:27:05 ◼   ► I don't really have a good sense for what the Series 6 could do.

01:27:09 ◼   ► Or like if I'm going to be as excited about that as I watch what's the Series 5, what

01:27:13 ◼   ► do you think?

01:27:14 ◼   ► But this is also a B for September 8th if Dave Federico doesn't want to come.

01:27:18 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean I think that the 3D Touch coming out of watchOS 7 I think all but guarantees

01:27:24 ◼   ► that the new watch won't have the hardware for that.

01:27:26 ◼   ► Now will that make it thinner or lighter or give it better battery life?

01:27:30 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:27:31 ◼   ► Maybe a little bit.

01:27:32 ◼   ► The thing that I think about is sleep tracking seems like they're gonna gear that up and

01:27:37 ◼   ► maybe the new watch hardware would have something better suited for that.

01:27:43 ◼   ► I don't know what that would be, but the watch hardware at least is kind of getting to a

01:27:48 ◼   ► point for me after the bigger screens and the always on display.

01:27:55 ◼   ► I'm kind of running out of low hanging fruit for the hardware itself other than just like

01:27:59 ◼   ► massive battery life improvements. So I'm with you. I don't really know what to expect

01:28:04 ◼   ► here.

01:28:05 ◼   ► >>

01:28:06 ◼   ► New sensors on the watch would be interesting. We talked about this in the context of the

01:28:12 ◼   ► lack of mindfulness features at WWDC in watchOS 7. And we said maybe those are coming with

01:28:21 ◼   ► like stress detection and all those. I think at some point there was a rumor saying that

01:28:27 ◼   ► watchOS 7 was going to feature like support for detecting panic attacks for example and

01:28:33 ◼   ► we said maybe those are coming but with the addition of new sensors for future watch hardware

01:28:41 ◼   ► so that would be really interesting I think.

01:28:44 ◼   ► That would be nice.

01:28:45 ◼   ► And then also air tags.

01:28:47 ◼   ► Oh finally, I mean those have been rumored for what like over a year at this point?

01:28:53 ◼   ► I think that this product would have been out by now but just there hasn't been a right

01:28:57 ◼   ► time to launch a product which is ostensibly to help you find things outside.

01:29:03 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah.

01:29:05 ◼   ► Right? Not the right market to produce this product in. I mean, the only reason I could

01:29:12 ◼   ► imagine Apple would put this out is because they will allow third parties to have this

01:29:19 ◼   ► with iOS 14. So, with the Find My integration. And then finally, October 27th, Apple Silicon

01:29:26 ◼   ► MacBook a MacBook Pro 13 inch apparently coming towards the end of the year?

01:29:32 ◼   ► Stephen what do you think? I like the idea of there being a consumer and a

01:29:37 ◼   ► professional notebook so we can start to see how Apple could separate those lines

01:29:43 ◼   ► a little bit with Apple Silicon. I also assume this is the MacBook Air. I don't

01:29:47 ◼   ► think this actually means like the 12 inch MacBook is coming back but having

01:29:51 ◼   ► an Air good consumer notebook thin and light and then you have a Pro that could

01:29:56 ◼   ► be thin and light but drastically faster. Like I just I want to see how they start

01:30:01 ◼   ► to tease those lines out. I kind of assumed there'd be desktops early on

01:30:07 ◼   ► like a Mac Mini or an iMac like we said earlier the iMac may be further off but

01:30:11 ◼   ► if they're gonna do notebooks I think having these two is a interesting choice

01:30:17 ◼   ► and they're the most popular ones right like most people don't buy 16 inch MacBook Pro

01:30:20 ◼   ► most people buy a 13 inch MacBook Pro or MacBook Air and so getting Apple

01:30:25 ◼   ► into their most popular Macs off the bat will be a real move of strength.

01:30:30 ◼   ► iPad Pro, what would this be? 5G is an obvious one.

01:30:36 ◼   ► Yeah, wait Steven, what did you just say? I said a fake G.

01:30:41 ◼   ► Thanks, thanks, thanks. Just wanted to double check there. Yeah 5G, I mean, but

01:30:47 ◼   ► you would expect, so my thinking would be that like the current iPad Pro with just

01:30:52 ◼   ► 5G in it would seem a bit weird, right? Like I feel like that's two nothing updates. So

01:30:58 ◼   ► like I feel like if they're gonna put 5G in an iPad this year, this year, it should probably

01:31:03 ◼   ► have some other stuff in it too?

01:31:05 ◼   ► I mean, I expect a spec bump, right? It's still rocking the variant of the A12, so move

01:31:10 ◼   ► that up to the A13 or 14 and put 5G in it. I think between those two things, like performance

01:31:16 ◼   ► increase, maybe a little bit better camera, better networking, that's an iPad update.

01:31:21 ◼   ► I think they're done jerking the sizes around.

01:31:24 ◼   ► You know, they did that for a while in the iPad Pro.

01:31:25 ◼   ► Every time there was a new one,

01:31:26 ◼   ► the sizes were slightly different.

01:31:28 ◼   ► I think they've settled in now,

01:31:30 ◼   ► and I expect it to resume more predictable updates,

01:31:34 ◼   ► at least for a little while.

01:31:36 ◼   ► - A bigger iPad Pro, though, will be interesting,

01:31:40 ◼   ► especially in the year when you're introducing features

01:31:43 ◼   ► such as multi-column.

01:31:45 ◼   ► It will be a really nice demo to have an iPad Pro

01:31:50 ◼   ► that lets you use multiple apps and multiple columns in iPadOS 14.

01:31:55 ◼   ► This is a personal wish of mine. I've long wanted to have a 15 or 16 inch iPad Pro.

01:32:02 ◼   ► Just a thought. I don't think it's even been rumored even.

01:32:06 ◼   ► But it would be interesting to consider as a potential way to keep tweaking the sizes

01:32:12 ◼   ► without introducing a new size rather than tweaking the existing lineup.

01:32:16 ◼   ► There was also the rumor of the mini-LED display.

01:32:19 ◼   ► I don't think we've heard any more updates on this front over the past few months.

01:32:25 ◼   ► No.

01:32:26 ◼   ► So maybe it's just 5G camera, CPU, and that's it.

01:32:30 ◼   ► But I think it would be really fascinating to have a bigger iPad Pro now that the iPad

01:32:34 ◼   ► software has, you know, sidebars and three column layouts and all that kind of stuff,

01:32:39 ◼   ► especially because the multi-column stuff works in Split View, for example, but you

01:32:45 ◼   ► don't get the multiple columns in Split View.

01:32:47 ◼   ► You only get two of them.

01:32:49 ◼   ► So it would be nice to have that kind of products to show how the UI can scale up to bigger

01:32:55 ◼   ► sizes and whatnot.

01:32:56 ◼   ► So here's to hoping, but I don't think it's going to happen, personally.

01:33:01 ◼   ► I don't know about the mini LED yet.

01:33:05 ◼   ► I just don't know, right?

01:33:06 ◼   ► Like I don't know if I can tell when they might do that.

01:33:09 ◼   ► It's definitely something Apple is likely to do, that kind of technology.

01:33:12 ◼   ► Would it be this year?

01:33:13 ◼   ► Would the iPad get it first?

01:33:16 ◼   ► Possibly.

01:33:17 ◼   ► Like would I love a bigger iPad?

01:33:18 ◼   ► Yes, just why not, right?

01:33:20 ◼   ► I would love like a 15, 16, 17 inch iPad

01:33:24 ◼   ► that just sits in a permanent position.

01:33:26 ◼   ► Like I want that.

01:33:28 ◼   ► That is a device that I would love.

01:33:30 ◼   ► The last thing, really finishing this off with a bang

01:33:33 ◼   ► for the October 27th event, Apple TV 4K.

01:33:37 ◼   ► - Wow, yes.

01:33:38 ◼   ► So forget everything I said about the iPad Mini.

01:33:41 ◼   ► This is the product I want.

01:33:42 ◼   ► - This is the one, right?

01:33:43 ◼   ► - This is the one, yes.

01:33:45 ◼   ► - I don't know what this is.

01:33:47 ◼   ► I mean, my expectation is mostly just to get it off the chip that it's on.

01:33:51 ◼   ► I don't even remember what chip it's on.

01:33:53 ◼   ► Right, so maybe both the HomePod and the Apple TV, if they come out this year, is primarily

01:33:59 ◼   ► to get them off those chips, but you would expect they've got to also maybe do at least

01:34:04 ◼   ► something with both of them.

01:34:05 ◼   ► I don't, I have no idea what you would do with the Apple TV.

01:34:08 ◼   ► Like I really don't know what, what they would do with that.

01:34:11 ◼   ► Well, I have an idea.

01:34:13 ◼   ► Okay.

01:34:14 ◼   ► redesigning the remote would be a good first step. You know, have an actual remote for

01:34:20 ◼   ► actual people.

01:34:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:34:22 ◼   ► That would be a good change. I cannot think of anything that the Apple TV does not handle

01:34:30 ◼   ► well performance-wise. Obviously, nobody, like no actual human being right now has an

01:34:37 ◼   ► 8K television. So that's out of the question for now. So I'm going to say maybe redesign

01:34:44 ◼   ► the remote and make it smaller if possible because the footprint for small

01:34:51 ◼   ► apartments and whatnot, I mean it's already small but why not? And maybe, maybe, but

01:34:57 ◼   ► that's a stretch. A game controller could be an interesting idea but does Apple

01:35:03 ◼   ► really have the knowledge or willingness to do one when they have pretty great

01:35:09 ◼   ► support for the DualShock and Xbox controller, especially in iOS 14 with all the new game

01:35:16 ◼   ► controller APIs. So are they really incentivized to make their own controller? Maybe if they can

01:35:23 ◼   ► sell it at a premium, but I don't really know if they want to do one. So I'm gonna say redesign the

01:35:28 ◼   ► remote and make it smaller and cheaper. I will say if we get all of this this year,

01:35:35 ◼   ► It'd be a nice way to end the year.

01:35:37 ◼   ► That's a lot of things, right?

01:35:40 ◼   ► Maybe I won't get so mad about Tim Cook anymore.

01:35:42 ◼   ► We'll find out.

01:35:43 ◼   ► Only time will tell.

01:35:45 ◼   ► He's the gatekeeper to our max.

01:35:47 ◼   ► Come on.

01:35:48 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:35:49 ◼   ► All right, if you want to find links to stuff we spoke about, head on over to the website.

01:35:55 ◼   ► Relay.fm/connected/305.

01:35:56 ◼   ► I was on a show the other day and said the wrong show name of the URL.

01:36:01 ◼   ► It was very embarrassing.

01:36:03 ◼   ► Which one was it and what did you do?

01:36:05 ◼   ► ingenious I said liftoff did you I did yeah I didn't even notice it I didn't

01:36:09 ◼   ► either in the edit I didn't notice it oh boy gone out the door oh boy so you want

01:36:15 ◼   ► to point your web browser relay data film / connected / 305 while you're

01:36:21 ◼   ► there there's a bunch of fun activities you can become a member you will receive

01:36:24 ◼   ► connected Pro a ad-free version of the podcast each week that is longer with

01:36:29 ◼   ► bonus content. This week we spoke about sleep schedules and horses. That's as good as it

01:36:35 ◼   ► sounds.

01:36:36 ◼   ► True, it's true. And also vacations.

01:36:38 ◼   ► Yes.

01:36:39 ◼   ► When we were 16 years old.

01:36:41 ◼   ► If you are a member, thank you so much for your support. You can also send us an email

01:36:45 ◼   ► from the website with feedback or a follow up, or you can find us on Twitter. Myke, is

01:36:49 ◼   ► there an I-M-Y-K-E. Myke, name another podcast you're on.

01:36:53 ◼   ► The test drivers, we just did an episode comparing the OnePlus Nord and Asus ROG Phone.

01:37:00 ◼   ► Gaming Phone!

01:37:01 ◼   ► Gaming Phone versus Cheap Phone.

01:37:03 ◼   ► Federico can be found on Twitter @Vatici.

01:37:08 ◼   ► He is the editor-in-chief of MacStories.net and is hard at work on his iOS 14, iPad OS

01:37:15 ◼   ► 14 review.

01:37:16 ◼   ► I'm very excited to see it.

01:37:19 ◼   ► Me too.

01:37:20 ◼   ► Can't wait to see it.

01:37:21 ◼   ► You can find me on Twitter as ISMH.

01:37:26 ◼   ► I host a bunch of shows here on Relay as well

01:37:28 ◼   ► and you can find my writing at 512pixels.net.

01:37:32 ◼   ► I'd like to thank our sponsors, Pingdom and Squarespace.

01:37:36 ◼   ► Until next week gentlemen, say goodbye.

01:37:39 ◼   ► Arrivederci.

01:37:40 ◼   ► Cheerio.