The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► I know you do a podcast entirely about superhero movies.

00:00:03 ◼   ► I do. That's shows and comic books.

00:00:06 ◼   ► That's the Biff show,

00:00:08 ◼   ► which we mentioned a lot of times at the end of the show.

00:00:10 ◼   ► I'll mention it up front.

00:00:12 ◼   ► You do that with Guy and Dan, thank you too.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Our good friends Guy English and Dan Morin,

00:00:20 ◼   ► the successful novelist in our crew.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Yeah, who's finally been on your show now.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Yeah. It was fantastic.

00:00:27 ◼   ► He was thrilled.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Well, what an idiot I am for waiting because he's great.

00:00:30 ◼   ► But anyway, I thought about you.

00:00:31 ◼   ► I don't know what happened.

00:00:33 ◼   ► Who knows? Could have been an edible.

00:00:35 ◼   ► But some-

00:00:37 ◼   ► Yeah, I hear that. I get that a lot.

00:00:38 ◼   ► Yeah, people think edibles and they think about me.

00:00:40 ◼   ► Somehow two nights ago,

00:00:42 ◼   ► I wanted to watch something.

00:00:46 ◼   ► Amy was asleep on the couch with me,

00:00:47 ◼   ► so I had free choice to pick

00:00:49 ◼   ► a movie that maybe she would have said, "That's stupid.

00:00:52 ◼   ► I don't want to watch that." I wound up watching-

00:00:54 ◼   ► That's how you thought about me.

00:00:55 ◼   ► Well, what I saw in the menu,

00:00:57 ◼   ► I'm just surfing for movies and I saw Richard Donner's cut of Superman II.

00:01:03 ◼   ► I still don't think I've seen it.

00:01:06 ◼   ► But I've heard the stories that I think,

00:01:10 ◼   ► and you probably know this more than I do encyclopedic wise,

00:01:14 ◼   ► but more or less when they decided to make Superman in 1979 and had a big budget,

00:01:20 ◼   ► and they got Marlon Brando.

00:01:21 ◼   ► They spent half the budget on getting Marlon Brando for 20 minutes.

00:01:27 ◼   ► Shot with the idea that this is going to be a hit,

00:01:31 ◼   ► we're going to make sequels,

00:01:32 ◼   ► and they shot parts of Superman II with it.

00:01:35 ◼   ► They shot more than a movie.

00:01:37 ◼   ► While we've got all these Gene Hackman and all these actors,

00:01:41 ◼   ► Ned Beatty, a great cast,

00:01:42 ◼   ► and they shot all of this.

00:01:44 ◼   ► Then something happened with the producers where Richard Donner had a falling out,

00:01:48 ◼   ► before they got to Superman II,

00:01:50 ◼   ► somebody else came in and shot half the movie.

00:01:52 ◼   ► It explains why Superman II is weird.

00:01:55 ◼   ► But I haven't seen Superman II in years.

00:01:57 ◼   ► Now, am I right so far?

00:01:58 ◼   ► I think as far as I know, yes.

00:02:00 ◼   ► Yeah. I know that they shot a lot of it at the same time,

00:02:04 ◼   ► and I know that there was a falling out.

00:02:06 ◼   ► I don't know a lot more than that.

00:02:07 ◼   ► It explains why Superman I has the bad guys from Superman II in it,

00:02:14 ◼   ► which I remember now as a kid.

00:02:16 ◼   ► Yeah, because they're teased at the beginning of that movie.

00:02:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:19 ◼   ► So anyway, what I was thinking two nights ago was,

00:02:23 ◼   ► I was enticed by this Richard Donner cut,

00:02:26 ◼   ► but I thought, you know what?

00:02:28 ◼   ► I haven't seen first Superman in forever.

00:02:31 ◼   ► I don't know. Maybe when my son,

00:02:33 ◼   ► who's now finishing up freshman year of college,

00:02:35 ◼   ► was a toddler.

00:02:37 ◼   ► I mean, it was a long time.

00:02:38 ◼   ► So I thought, let's watch Superman,

00:02:40 ◼   ► and I put it on. Wow,

00:02:42 ◼   ► what a weird movie.

00:02:44 ◼   ► Have you seen the Superman movie, the 1970?

00:02:48 ◼   ► Oh my God. Yeah. Honestly, I still think that it's the perfect superhero movie, honestly.

00:02:55 ◼   ► I really do.

00:02:55 ◼   ► I mean, it's very dated at now and certainly it's dated in terms of the special effects,

00:02:59 ◼   ► and there's a lot of hilarious '70s-isms in there.

00:03:03 ◼   ► But in terms of nailing the character,

00:03:06 ◼   ► I think it's perfect.

00:03:09 ◼   ► I guess what I'm trying to say is it is a very bad movie,

00:03:14 ◼   ► but it is very bad in the perfect ways.

00:03:22 ◼   ► The movie did go down like butter,

00:03:26 ◼   ► and I've got the goddamn score stuck in my head now for 48 hours consecutively.

00:03:33 ◼   ► There's in the back of my head,

00:03:35 ◼   ► whatever part of my brain gets song stuck in it,

00:03:38 ◼   ► it is the absolutely amazing John Williams Superman score.

00:03:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:43 ◼   ► But I'm going to assume for people out there listening,

00:03:47 ◼   ► I don't want to spend tons of time on Superman.

00:03:49 ◼   ► We're not spoiling this.

00:03:51 ◼   ► You've had your chance to see the movie.

00:03:55 ◼   ► But some of the things that are so weird,

00:03:58 ◼   ► there's a scene, number one,

00:04:02 ◼   ► that the whole preface to the movie on Krypton or as Marlon Brando calls it, Krypton.

00:04:08 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure.

00:04:11 ◼   ► Do we go with Brando's line read or do we go with what everybody else in the world says?

00:04:17 ◼   ► For 80 years of comic books.

00:04:19 ◼   ► Right.

00:04:19 ◼   ► But once you get to Metropolis and adult Clark Kent is joining the Daily Planet,

00:04:26 ◼   ► and Lois Lane is already the star reporter,

00:04:29 ◼   ► and the big story in town is there's

00:04:33 ◼   ► this Superman who's suddenly arrived and is solving crimes and stuff.

00:04:37 ◼   ► That premise was obvious.

00:04:40 ◼   ► I don't know. I think they could make this movie a thousand different ways,

00:04:44 ◼   ► and at some point, that's the setup.

00:04:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:47 ◼   ► Clark Kent, new to the paper, Superman new to town.

00:04:51 ◼   ► There's a scene where Clark and Lois leave the paper,

00:04:56 ◼   ► and they're walking around a corner,

00:04:58 ◼   ► and they get mugged.

00:05:02 ◼   ► A mugger is there with a gun,

00:05:04 ◼   ► and I don't know what he's asking for,

00:05:06 ◼   ► jewelry or a purse or something,

00:05:08 ◼   ► and Clark is, we know he's Superman.

00:05:12 ◼   ► He bungles the scenario such that the mugger fires the gun at Lois Lane from about two feet away,

00:05:21 ◼   ► right at her face,

00:05:22 ◼   ► and he catches the bullet in fast motion and falls down.

00:05:26 ◼   ► The guy, he didn't really want to murder her.

00:05:30 ◼   ► It just was a bungled.

00:05:31 ◼   ► Everybody got nervous, and as they say in Goodfellas, the gun went off.

00:05:36 ◼   ► Lois doesn't know any better because he pushed her aside.

00:05:39 ◼   ► But how reckless is that?

00:05:42 ◼   ► That is so crazy that you-

00:05:44 ◼   ► Well, I think the idea is that, well, I mean,

00:05:47 ◼   ► part of the idea is he is both of those characters, right?

00:05:50 ◼   ► He's Superman, he's pretty cool, he's confident,

00:05:53 ◼   ► but he's also Clark Kent,

00:05:54 ◼   ► and he's a guy who was raised in Kansas,

00:05:57 ◼   ► and he's new to the city.

00:06:00 ◼   ► He doesn't get what's going on.

00:06:03 ◼   ► And similarly, how he ends up going to confront Lex Luthor

00:06:07 ◼   ► and assumes that he's on top of the situation

00:06:10 ◼   ► and know Luthor has got him back on his heels.

00:06:12 ◼   ► And he should have known that from the beginning.

00:06:14 ◼   ► He's a bit of a rube, right?

00:06:17 ◼   ► Because he's just starting out.

00:06:20 ◼   ► And I think it fits in a way.

00:06:23 ◼   ► I mean, yeah, it is dumb, but he's not necessarily.

00:06:28 ◼   ► I mean, I think that's part of,

00:06:29 ◼   ► because he's so super powered, obviously,

00:06:32 ◼   ► he has to have some sort of flaw,

00:06:34 ◼   ► and his flaws is naivete.

00:06:37 ◼   ► - Naivete, yeah.

00:06:38 ◼   ► - It works, but it is,

00:06:40 ◼   ► when you really think about it, it's ridiculous.

00:06:42 ◼   ► And I guess that the premise is that he's so good at,

00:06:47 ◼   ► his Superman abilities are so unbelievable

00:06:51 ◼   ► that catching a bullet fired two feet of somebody

00:06:56 ◼   ► is an easy catch for him.

00:06:58 ◼   ► So it wasn't really putting her at risk,

00:07:00 ◼   ► but it seems like you're putting somebody at crazy risk

00:07:05 ◼   ► just to protect your super identity.

00:07:08 ◼   ► It's--

00:07:09 ◼   ► - Some of the other things, he makes it up to her later.

00:07:12 ◼   ► He turns time back and saves her.

00:07:13 ◼   ► - I think one of the things that the movie did perfectly,

00:07:18 ◼   ► and it explains the sort of, for lack of a better word,

00:07:21 ◼   ► lots of stupidness, but who cares?

00:07:24 ◼   ► Let's make the stupidness short.

00:07:25 ◼   ► Like how does intergalactic space travel work

00:07:30 ◼   ► in the Superman universe?

00:07:33 ◼   ► You just send-- - Yeah, don't spend

00:07:34 ◼   ► any time on it. - You send a little satellite

00:07:36 ◼   ► that looks like a Christmas decoration into the orbit,

00:07:39 ◼   ► and it looks like it's moving at the speed

00:07:41 ◼   ► like our satellites move, and ah,

00:07:43 ◼   ► two years later, it's at Earth.

00:07:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, okay.

00:07:46 ◼   ► - That part is not really germane to the Superman.

00:07:50 ◼   ► It's part of the Superman story, I guess,

00:07:51 ◼   ► but it's not what you want to concentrate on.

00:07:54 ◼   ► - But if you really do think about it,

00:07:55 ◼   ► again, and these are the thoughts pouring through my head,

00:07:58 ◼   ► like how stupid is this?

00:07:59 ◼   ► So Superman's father, Jor-El,

00:08:04 ◼   ► that is the only, he's both a leading politician

00:08:07 ◼   ► and scientist/statesman on Krypton,

00:08:12 ◼   ► sort of like a Ben Franklin type, I guess.

00:08:14 ◼   ► He's the only one who, everybody knows the story,

00:08:16 ◼   ► figures out that the planet is doomed.

00:08:19 ◼   ► Everybody else goes into denial,

00:08:21 ◼   ► and for some reason, instead of rescuing the whole family,

00:08:24 ◼   ► they decide to just send the toddler son

00:08:27 ◼   ► all by himself to planet Earth,

00:08:29 ◼   ► and somehow, through their observations

00:08:33 ◼   ► and advanced science, he already knows

00:08:37 ◼   ► all of the superpowers the young Kal-El, Superman,

00:08:41 ◼   ► will have on the planet, all right,

00:08:43 ◼   ► and knows that he'll look right, right?

00:08:46 ◼   ► Do they explain it?

00:08:47 ◼   ► It's like Star Trek.

00:08:48 ◼   ► Why does everybody look like a human

00:08:49 ◼   ► with a different decoration on their forehead?

00:08:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:08:52 ◼   ► - Don't explain it.

00:08:54 ◼   ► That's the way it is, right?

00:08:55 ◼   ► So he looks like a typical white male human

00:09:00 ◼   ► and has these powers.

00:09:02 ◼   ► All right, let's just concede that all of that makes sense,

00:09:07 ◼   ► but in his other role, in addition to forecasting doom

00:09:12 ◼   ► of the planet, he's also leading the trial

00:09:16 ◼   ► to incarcerate-- - He's a real Renaissance man.

00:09:20 ◼   ► - To incarcerate three super criminals on Krypton

00:09:25 ◼   ► who apparently attempted a, what do you call it?

00:09:28 ◼   ► - Coup or-- - Yeah, coup or a,

00:09:30 ◼   ► what do we call January 6th?

00:09:32 ◼   ► We have a word for it.

00:09:33 ◼   ► - Insurrection. - Insurrection.

00:09:35 ◼   ► They led an insurrection.

00:09:36 ◼   ► I can't believe I forgot the word, insurrection.

00:09:38 ◼   ► Also, I can't believe that now you and I

00:09:41 ◼   ► can talk about our recent insurrection.

00:09:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, really, yeah, yeah.

00:09:45 ◼   ► What's the, we have experience with it?

00:09:48 ◼   ► - Well, and we've also got, I was thinking about this too.

00:09:51 ◼   ► We've also, you and I, growing up, when we did,

00:09:54 ◼   ► it's moving in much slower motion than a massive explosion,

00:09:58 ◼   ► but we do kind of have the scientists telling us

00:10:01 ◼   ► that the planet is in trouble.

00:10:03 ◼   ► And everybody else going, ah.

00:10:07 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:10:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, after thousands and thousands of years

00:10:12 ◼   ► of people thinking that the Armageddon

00:10:14 ◼   ► was right around the door, that the second coming

00:10:17 ◼   ► was about to happen and the whole world was gonna end,

00:10:20 ◼   ► it could actually be happening on our watch.

00:10:22 ◼   ► But anyway, he leads their trial.

00:10:24 ◼   ► They're convicted by these weird people.

00:10:29 ◼   ► Only Marlon Brando is there in person.

00:10:31 ◼   ► The other ones are all on a big screen Zoom call.

00:10:34 ◼   ► Right, it's like, how advanced is their technology?

00:10:39 ◼   ► They use 40-foot movie screens for their Zoom calls.

00:10:43 ◼   ► - They were too busy to come in

00:10:46 ◼   ► for this particular trial.

00:10:48 ◼   ► - Right, and then they're sentenced to the Phantom Zone.

00:10:52 ◼   ► And I forget how the Phantom Zone has worked

00:10:55 ◼   ► in the comics over the time, but I always,

00:10:57 ◼   ► I think in the comics, it's sort of another dimension

00:11:00 ◼   ► where you go. - Yeah, something like that.

00:11:02 ◼   ► A timeless dimension where you're stuck for all eternity.

00:11:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, so like-- - Which seems like

00:11:07 ◼   ► maybe not a great idea either,

00:11:09 ◼   ► because obviously it doesn't work out so good.

00:11:12 ◼   ► - No, but it also, even if it did work out

00:11:14 ◼   ► as it was supposed to, it does seem cruel and unusual.

00:11:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, that too, right.

00:11:21 ◼   ► You know, it's sort of-- - And less incarceration.

00:11:26 ◼   ► - With no escape and nothing to do.

00:11:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, no, right, right, no room for improvement, no.

00:11:32 ◼   ► - No time.

00:11:33 ◼   ► It does, it sounds like many people's description

00:11:35 ◼   ► in religion of hell, and it doesn't,

00:11:40 ◼   ► anyway, it doesn't seem like civil liberties

00:11:42 ◼   ► are that great on planet Krypton.

00:11:44 ◼   ► But anyway, but this is how crazy it is.

00:11:47 ◼   ► He votes guilty, then in the movie,

00:11:51 ◼   ► the Phantom Zone is represented by a large glass square

00:11:56 ◼   ► that sort of twists through the world, and then it--

00:11:59 ◼   ► - They make 'em into an album cover.

00:12:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly, they make 'em into

00:12:03 ◼   ► a giant space-sized album cover,

00:12:07 ◼   ► and then it goes into space.

00:12:10 ◼   ► And of all the places in all the galaxies

00:12:13 ◼   ► where they might send the Phantom Zone prison

00:12:17 ◼   ► with three super criminals,

00:12:20 ◼   ► is they send that one to Earth too?

00:12:24 ◼   ► - I think there was just some sort of direct highway

00:12:28 ◼   ► that went to Earth, because they also send,

00:12:31 ◼   ► like, they send Supergirl, and I think there's a bunch of,

00:12:34 ◼   ► oh, and then, I don't know how at Mon-El,

00:12:38 ◼   ► so there's another planet that's orbiting the same sun

00:12:42 ◼   ► that Mon-El comes from, and then there's the dog,

00:12:45 ◼   ► which I assume is actually a Kryptonian dog,

00:12:49 ◼   ► which just looks like a regular,

00:12:51 ◼   ► also looks like a regular Earth dog.

00:12:53 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:12:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:56 ◼   ► There's, yeah, 80 years of comic books,

00:12:59 ◼   ► you can't, you need to just throw up your hands

00:13:02 ◼   ► and try and explain too much of it.

00:13:05 ◼   ► - But where, and again, it sounds like

00:13:07 ◼   ► I'm throwing this movie under the bus.

00:13:08 ◼   ► It is up its time.

00:13:10 ◼   ► - And honestly, I will defend this movie,

00:13:12 ◼   ► because I think character-wise,

00:13:14 ◼   ► yeah, there's a lot of silliness from it,

00:13:16 ◼   ► and like I said, it's very dated,

00:13:18 ◼   ► but I think, and his portrayal is particularly good.

00:13:22 ◼   ► - I think Lois' too.

00:13:25 ◼   ► I think Lois is a very, and it reminds me,

00:13:29 ◼   ► I don't know, again, backstory,

00:13:34 ◼   ► maybe they were up for the same roles,

00:13:35 ◼   ► but Margot Kidder plays Lois Lane,

00:13:38 ◼   ► and the character reminds me a lot of Marian

00:13:42 ◼   ► in Raiders of the Lost Ark, who was,

00:13:44 ◼   ► I'm forgetting her name.

00:13:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm forgetting it too.

00:13:48 ◼   ► - But it's similar, sort of, oh, Karen Allen played.

00:13:52 ◼   ► Marian in Raiders of the Lost Ark,

00:13:54 ◼   ► and it is sort of, there are obviously some things

00:13:59 ◼   ► that don't stand up to modern times now,

00:14:03 ◼   ► but more or less, both of them were progressive,

00:14:06 ◼   ► very progressive.

00:14:07 ◼   ► - For the time, yeah, 'cause they're tough.

00:14:09 ◼   ► They're tough as nails.

00:14:10 ◼   ► I mean, they're less, I mean, they're more,

00:14:13 ◼   ► I'm sorry, they're more ditzy than like Princess Leia,

00:14:16 ◼   ► but they're all still sort of cut from the same cloth.

00:14:20 ◼   ► - Right, and they don't need help,

00:14:23 ◼   ► or maybe eventually they do,

00:14:25 ◼   ► but they don't think they need help,

00:14:26 ◼   ► and they're not help-less, right?

00:14:29 ◼   ► And I think that's very different

00:14:31 ◼   ► than superhero movies or any kind of action movie,

00:14:35 ◼   ► what's the role of the woman going back through decades,

00:14:39 ◼   ► until you find rare exceptions like,

00:14:41 ◼   ► well, movies that aren't really action movies,

00:14:43 ◼   ► like if you go to the Humphrey Bogart classic era movies,

00:14:46 ◼   ► they weren't really written like serial adventures, right?

00:14:50 ◼   ► In the serial adventures that they based like Raiders

00:14:53 ◼   ► and Superman on, the women were just,

00:14:55 ◼   ► their only job was to be tied up in it.

00:14:57 ◼   ► - Hostages.

00:14:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, are they tied up to a train track

00:15:00 ◼   ► or tied up to a tree?

00:15:02 ◼   ► Which one did we do last week?

00:15:03 ◼   ► We'll do the other one this week.

00:15:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:15:06 ◼   ► There's a very famous gag that I really enjoyed,

00:15:09 ◼   ► and again, because it is sort of a timestamp

00:15:11 ◼   ► of what was New York, yeah, I know it's Metropolis,

00:15:15 ◼   ► but they will go all in with,

00:15:17 ◼   ► all right, in our world, Metropolis is New York,

00:15:19 ◼   ► it's clearly Manhattan.

00:15:21 ◼   ► There's a famous gag where the first time

00:15:23 ◼   ► he needs to be quick change from Clark to Superman,

00:15:28 ◼   ► because Lois, of all people, what are the odds,

00:15:30 ◼   ► is trapped in a helicopter that's about to crash

00:15:33 ◼   ► off the top of the building.

00:15:34 ◼   ► And he approaches a payphone on the sidewalk,

00:15:38 ◼   ► and it's not a phone booth, right?

00:15:41 ◼   ► The gimmick, the gimmick is Clark would always dash

00:15:44 ◼   ► into a phone booth, which adds clear walls,

00:15:47 ◼   ► but do a whirlybird quick change and pop out as Superman,

00:15:52 ◼   ► and that was a trope from the comics that everybody knew.

00:15:55 ◼   ► But here, the gag is, in New York in 1979,

00:15:59 ◼   ► the phones weren't booths anymore,

00:16:01 ◼   ► they were just sort of standalone phones on a panel,

00:16:05 ◼   ► and Clark gives it a look like, hmm, what am I gonna do?

00:16:08 ◼   ► - You can't change in here.

00:16:09 ◼   ► - Right, and it is very funny to 2023 Eyes,

00:16:12 ◼   ► because it was actually a big, there was a big to-do,

00:16:15 ◼   ► now I'm thinking, I was gonna say,

00:16:17 ◼   ► everything to me was last year,

00:16:19 ◼   ► but it might have been five years ago at this point,

00:16:23 ◼   ► like those pandemic years really are a blur.

00:16:26 ◼   ► But there was a big to-do when Manhattan

00:16:28 ◼   ► took out its last payphone period, right?

00:16:31 ◼   ► It was like, here, there was still a payphone at 57th and 6th

00:16:36 ◼   ► or something like that, and here we are taking it out.

00:16:39 ◼   ► There's no payphones at all anymore.

00:16:40 ◼   ► It was kind of-- - Yeah, yeah.

00:16:42 ◼   ► We were actually, we went to Victoria, BC a week before last

00:16:45 ◼   ► and in the Chinatown, there was a couple payphones.

00:16:48 ◼   ► I took a picture of one 'cause it was so flabbergasted,

00:16:50 ◼   ► but I didn't actually see, I didn't actually lift it up

00:16:53 ◼   ► to see if it worked, but I think it did.

00:16:54 ◼   ► It looked like it was in decent shape, actually,

00:16:57 ◼   ► surprisingly, but that's, yeah, that's the first one

00:16:59 ◼   ► that I've seen in years and years and years.

00:17:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, somewhere, I can, you know what?

00:17:03 ◼   ► Actually, the search will probably work

00:17:06 ◼   ► if I search my photo library for payphone.

00:17:08 ◼   ► - For phone booth? - Yeah.

00:17:09 ◼   ► Or not phone booth, but payphone at least, maybe.

00:17:12 ◼   ► But I've seen them around still,

00:17:15 ◼   ► and a lot of times, they look in bad shape.

00:17:18 ◼   ► But I've-- - Yeah, they're usually

00:17:19 ◼   ► covered in graffiti and oftentimes just beat to crap.

00:17:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, it doesn't look like something

00:17:23 ◼   ► you'd wanna put up against your ear.

00:17:25 ◼   ► But, and again, in hindsight, it seems odd that that was,

00:17:30 ◼   ► that's just what you did because you needed

00:17:32 ◼   ► a payphone for decades. - Yeah, yeah.

00:17:34 ◼   ► - But I've seen-- - But that is an interesting

00:17:35 ◼   ► slice of time, right? - Right.

00:17:37 ◼   ► - Because that period in which payphones,

00:17:39 ◼   ► the booths were replaced by those stands.

00:17:42 ◼   ► I mean, I suppose that must've lasted 30 years, right?

00:17:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, more or less. - Because, but it happened

00:17:47 ◼   ► in the mid to late '70s and then existed

00:17:50 ◼   ► until cellphones took over. - Yeah.

00:17:53 ◼   ► And I don't know what the thinking was in hindsight.

00:17:55 ◼   ► I'm like, why did they get rid of phone booths?

00:17:57 ◼   ► I guess the idea was when they first made public phones,

00:18:01 ◼   ► the idea was everybody wanted privacy for their,

00:18:04 ◼   ► it's all about the privacy.

00:18:05 ◼   ► We don't, you don't wanna be,

00:18:06 ◼   ► whatever you're saying on the phone,

00:18:08 ◼   ► you don't want passersby to overhear.

00:18:10 ◼   ► So we'll give you a little independent booth.

00:18:13 ◼   ► And I guess that's clearly more expensive

00:18:16 ◼   ► than just putting a phone on a stick.

00:18:18 ◼   ► And I really do think it was probably a hygiene problem.

00:18:23 ◼   ► You know? - I think it was also,

00:18:25 ◼   ► I bet, I mean, I bet people were living in them.

00:18:29 ◼   ► - Yeah. - People were probably

00:18:30 ◼   ► camping out in them and then you can't use the phone

00:18:32 ◼   ► because there's some poor soul in there

00:18:35 ◼   ► who's set it up as their house.

00:18:37 ◼   ► - Although they were, it's pretty hard,

00:18:39 ◼   ► as I recall, they were pretty tight.

00:18:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know, but if it's freezing cold and raining out,

00:18:45 ◼   ► I mean, you probably would take what you can get.

00:18:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, you could fold your knees up somehow

00:18:49 ◼   ► and sit on the floor. - Yeah, at least for a while.

00:18:51 ◼   ► I mean, you wouldn't stay in there forever, but.

00:18:53 ◼   ► - No, but, well, we've really brought this down.

00:18:56 ◼   ► (laughing)

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00:20:33 ◼   ► I wrote a post a little over a week ago

00:20:37 ◼   ► making a stink about an ad I saw in the settings app

00:20:41 ◼   ► and on my phone, and the gist of it is

00:20:43 ◼   ► for a couple of weeks, I'd been seeing,

00:20:45 ◼   ► and I think it was only on my phone,

00:20:47 ◼   ► and again, I'm the professional.

00:20:50 ◼   ► I probably should have double-checked this.

00:20:51 ◼   ► I don't know if it was on my iPad,

00:20:53 ◼   ► but on my phone, at the very top

00:20:56 ◼   ► of the first level of settings,

00:20:57 ◼   ► right underneath your Apple ID,

00:21:00 ◼   ► I was getting a promotion to try,

00:21:02 ◼   ► that I qualified for Apple Arcade for a three-month trial,

00:21:07 ◼   ► and it didn't make any sense to me

00:21:09 ◼   ► because I've been paying for the Apple One

00:21:12 ◼   ► family subscription for, I don't know, $30 or maybe more

00:21:16 ◼   ► because we have the extra storage,

00:21:17 ◼   ► but it's a good deal for us.

00:21:19 ◼   ► We watch Apple TV, we listen to Apple music.

00:21:22 ◼   ► What else do we get?

00:21:23 ◼   ► We don't use the fitness thing,

00:21:25 ◼   ► and I think we play the games a little.

00:21:27 ◼   ► I don't know, I'm not really a big gamer,

00:21:29 ◼   ► but we've got it, so why were they promoting?

00:21:31 ◼   ► If I'm already paying for the bundle with everything,

00:21:34 ◼   ► which presumably was what Apple wants people to do,

00:21:38 ◼   ► like I'm being a good Apple ecosystem customer

00:21:41 ◼   ► from their perspective by paying

00:21:43 ◼   ► the most expensive subscription they offer,

00:21:46 ◼   ► why are they badgering me here in the settings app

00:21:48 ◼   ► to get a free trial for the game?

00:21:51 ◼   ► Shouldn't they know?

00:21:53 ◼   ► So I need to follow up on that on Daring Fireball.

00:21:55 ◼   ► It won't take long, it won't even take nearly as long

00:21:57 ◼   ► as my explanation there, but--

00:21:59 ◼   ► - Did you get any result from that?

00:22:01 ◼   ► Is it still there or is it gone now?

00:22:03 ◼   ► - Well, what I did was I told myself,

00:22:05 ◼   ► this is how my brain works,

00:22:06 ◼   ► it's how I beat my procrastination,

00:22:09 ◼   ► is I told myself, I should write about this

00:22:12 ◼   ► on Daring Fireball, this is a good grist for the blog.

00:22:15 ◼   ► I won't tap through and say not now, right?

00:22:20 ◼   ► 'Cause if you tap that thing,

00:22:22 ◼   ► you get two options on the next page.

00:22:23 ◼   ► It's like subscribe to start my free trial or not now.

00:22:28 ◼   ► And I figured tapping not now would make it go away

00:22:31 ◼   ► and stop annoying me, but I told myself,

00:22:33 ◼   ► I'm not allowed to do that until I post.

00:22:36 ◼   ► So I wrote the article and then I thought,

00:22:38 ◼   ► okay, let's see if this gets rid of it.

00:22:40 ◼   ► And then I tapped not now and then it did go away

00:22:43 ◼   ► and it stayed away.

00:22:44 ◼   ► It's possible, maybe that was a mistake

00:22:46 ◼   ► 'cause maybe someone at Apple would have wanted to look at it.

00:22:48 ◼   ► But anyway, unsurprisingly, I posted some people

00:22:51 ◼   ► at Apple noticed and looked into it

00:22:54 ◼   ► with the boop speaking of superpowers,

00:22:58 ◼   ► my weird superpower where if I blog about a bug,

00:23:02 ◼   ► I can get-- - You get results?

00:23:05 ◼   ► - I could get results. - Unlike the rest of us.

00:23:07 ◼   ► - And like our friend Kal-El,

00:23:10 ◼   ► I try to use my superpower wisely and for good

00:23:14 ◼   ► and I don't wanna waste anybody's time.

00:23:16 ◼   ► - I will point out you're wearing a blue shirt today too.

00:23:18 ◼   ► - Yeah. (laughs)

00:23:21 ◼   ► The gist of it though is it boils down to the fact

00:23:24 ◼   ► that I'm one of the legacy accounts

00:23:27 ◼   ► with a separate Apple ID for iCloud

00:23:32 ◼   ► from my iTunes purchases ID.

00:23:37 ◼   ► So what happened was way back when I signed up for iTunes

00:23:42 ◼   ► before Mac.com was even a thing, right?

00:23:46 ◼   ► What we now call iCloud has had several names,

00:23:49 ◼   ► Mac.com, then it was me.com. - MobileMe?

00:23:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, MobileMe, but with the domain me.com

00:23:58 ◼   ► and then they were like, let's rebrand to iCloud

00:24:01 ◼   ► right at the tail end of Steve Jobs' life

00:24:04 ◼   ► and then iCloud.com.

00:24:07 ◼   ► You can tell which era somebody's ID is from

00:24:11 ◼   ► because you can, for me who signed up,

00:24:15 ◼   ► do you have a Mac.com?

00:24:16 ◼   ► I've got a Mac.com address.

00:24:18 ◼   ► But then you get for free the same name at me.com

00:24:23 ◼   ► and then the same name at iCloud.com.

00:24:25 ◼   ► But if you only sign up now, you only get iCloud.com

00:24:28 ◼   ► and you can't get Clark Kent at Mac.com to work.

00:24:34 ◼   ► But anyway, I had an iTunes account from 2001

00:24:36 ◼   ► when they first started selling things

00:24:38 ◼   ► and I signed up for that

00:24:39 ◼   ► with my @daringfireball email address.

00:24:43 ◼   ► And then Mac.com comes out and I signed up

00:24:47 ◼   ► and got my user ID.

00:24:50 ◼   ► And I don't know, I guess it's just sort of the way

00:24:55 ◼   ► that Apple wasn't good at services back then,

00:25:00 ◼   ► that they were separate, totally separate things

00:25:04 ◼   ► and they've always been separate things.

00:25:06 ◼   ► And I guess the chance, at some point what I could have done

00:25:10 ◼   ► was just go all in with my Mac.com ID like most people do

00:25:15 ◼   ► and use that ID for store purchases.

00:25:17 ◼   ► And then what I would have done though is lost the music.

00:25:19 ◼   ► I'd have the music but it wouldn't be in my history anymore

00:25:25 ◼   ► and whatever shows or movies I bought.

00:25:27 ◼   ► So I've just stuck with it for all these years.

00:25:30 ◼   ► I've got just a different log email and password

00:25:34 ◼   ► for purchases than I do for iCloud.

00:25:38 ◼   ► But it's all intersected now, it's all weird.

00:25:40 ◼   ► I think like the diagram on the whiteboard

00:25:43 ◼   ► of how this works is like the classic meme of Charlie

00:25:48 ◼   ► from "It's Always Sunny" with a crazy conspiracy theory.

00:25:51 ◼   ► Because I make purchases with this other ID

00:25:56 ◼   ► but my iCloud is where I make the purchase for Apple One

00:26:00 ◼   ► which is the subscription that gives us the access

00:26:04 ◼   ► to Apple TV+ and the music.

00:26:06 ◼   ► So it really does blur together at that point.

00:26:09 ◼   ► And something, something, the bug is I qualified

00:26:14 ◼   ► for three months of Apple Arcade

00:26:17 ◼   ► on my purchase ID account for something.

00:26:20 ◼   ► It doesn't matter what, I don't know.

00:26:22 ◼   ► I bought something and somehow the purchase I bought

00:26:26 ◼   ► with that ID like at the Apple store

00:26:28 ◼   ► and it qualified me for three months.

00:26:32 ◼   ► But because my iCloud ID is this other ID,

00:26:35 ◼   ► whatever the code is to say does this person

00:26:37 ◼   ► even need this free offer, it didn't work.

00:26:40 ◼   ► And people are looking into it and this will be fixed

00:26:44 ◼   ► supposedly in a future update.

00:26:45 ◼   ► And it's not, there is a sort of subtle,

00:26:49 ◼   ► this isn't really Apple's fault and this isn't a problem

00:26:52 ◼   ► that most people are facing sort of.

00:26:55 ◼   ► - I mean. - Yeah, it's probably not.

00:26:56 ◼   ► It's probably not something that a lot of people are facing

00:26:58 ◼   ► but it's still Apple's fault.

00:27:00 ◼   ► And I feel like there is,

00:27:03 ◼   ► as they layer on more and more services,

00:27:07 ◼   ► they run into more and more of these problems

00:27:10 ◼   ► because we had a problem recently

00:27:12 ◼   ► 'cause I think I just got Karen onto,

00:27:15 ◼   ► and I'm not sure if it's related to this

00:27:17 ◼   ► but it seems like it might be onto the Apple Card

00:27:21 ◼   ► she had not been on to date.

00:27:22 ◼   ► And so she finally joined the Apple Card thing

00:27:25 ◼   ► and now for some reason,

00:27:27 ◼   ► app purchases are not being shared correctly.

00:27:32 ◼   ► Like she has it turned on,

00:27:33 ◼   ► she has turned on shared app purchases with me and Hank

00:27:36 ◼   ► and yet every time she buys an app and Hank,

00:27:38 ◼   ► 'cause we did this 'cause we play game nights online

00:27:40 ◼   ► sometimes with friends and we were like,

00:27:42 ◼   ► "Let's play this this week."

00:27:43 ◼   ► And so she buys the app and then I go to buy it thinking

00:27:46 ◼   ► I'm not gonna be charged

00:27:47 ◼   ► when it comes time to click the button.

00:27:49 ◼   ► I click the button, I get charged again.

00:27:51 ◼   ► And it's like, and I went downstairs and they're like,

00:27:55 ◼   ► "We're gonna get another game.

00:27:56 ◼   ► "Let me check your device first."

00:27:57 ◼   ► And so here's, okay, it looks like it's set correctly

00:28:01 ◼   ► and did it again and still got charged twice.

00:28:04 ◼   ► So I don't know if it was related

00:28:06 ◼   ► to the Apple Card thing or not,

00:28:08 ◼   ► but for some reason it's not working right anymore.

00:28:11 ◼   ► And it just seems like it's one of those situations

00:28:13 ◼   ► where, and it used to, where something got added

00:28:16 ◼   ► and it screwed up the entire process.

00:28:19 ◼   ► - But are you saying then,

00:28:21 ◼   ► so you've got the family account with the three of you.

00:28:24 ◼   ► Are you saying though that if you make a purchase,

00:28:27 ◼   ► it does get-- - We haven't tried that yet.

00:28:29 ◼   ► I bet if I make a purchase, it will work correctly.

00:28:31 ◼   ► - Right, as the point person, I don't forget what they call--

00:28:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, as like the parent account.

00:28:38 ◼   ► I mean, she's literally a parent account as well,

00:28:41 ◼   ► but I'm the one who set it all up.

00:28:43 ◼   ► - Right.

00:28:45 ◼   ► It got me thinking in my post,

00:28:47 ◼   ► and it was sort of a way to,

00:28:49 ◼   ► it's been something that's been on my mind anyway,

00:28:51 ◼   ► is just the basic complaint of,

00:28:56 ◼   ► is Apple giving us too many ads

00:29:01 ◼   ► in abusing their position as the system provider

00:29:06 ◼   ► to show us ads that we shouldn't be seeing?

00:29:10 ◼   ► So okay, this one thing I saw in the Settings app

00:29:15 ◼   ► was a bug with an explanation.

00:29:18 ◼   ► But there are a lot of other places where Apple sends,

00:29:23 ◼   ► and I laugh, I'm laughing here on the podcast,

00:29:27 ◼   ► but I get the dilemma.

00:29:29 ◼   ► What is an ad comes up, right?

00:29:31 ◼   ► On this podcast, the ads are very obvious, right?

00:29:36 ◼   ► We're talking like we just were,

00:29:38 ◼   ► and then I take a break,

00:29:40 ◼   ► and I say I would like to thank a sponsor,

00:29:42 ◼   ► and then I name the sponsor,

00:29:44 ◼   ► and I have some talking points

00:29:46 ◼   ► to tell you, the listener, about,

00:29:48 ◼   ► and then at the end, there's always some kind of action item

00:29:52 ◼   ► which is usually a URL to go to their slash the talk show

00:29:57 ◼   ► or whatever the URL is,

00:30:00 ◼   ► and then we go back to talking about content,

00:30:02 ◼   ► and if you're the listener, that was an ad,

00:30:05 ◼   ► and that's how the show is monetized.

00:30:07 ◼   ► I think-- - And that's for people,

00:30:09 ◼   ► that is for people who are not paying for this content.

00:30:12 ◼   ► - Right. - No one has put down money

00:30:16 ◼   ► for this podcast. - Right.

00:30:17 ◼   ► That's the deal is you get to listen to the podcast,

00:30:20 ◼   ► and I read ads, and you get to do it.

00:30:22 ◼   ► - That's how it's paid.

00:30:23 ◼   ► - You buy an iPhone, and you give Apple $1,000,

00:30:27 ◼   ► and you start paying, you know,

00:30:29 ◼   ► your Verizon or AT&T or T-Mobile

00:30:32 ◼   ► or whoever your carrier is,

00:30:33 ◼   ► 50-plus dollars a month for service,

00:30:37 ◼   ► you're spending a lot of money,

00:30:38 ◼   ► and then you start,

00:30:41 ◼   ► and I think, and people have told me this,

00:30:45 ◼   ► people who are more sensitive to these ads,

00:30:47 ◼   ► it's an interesting personality trait

00:30:52 ◼   ► because people have very, it's not like binary.

00:30:55 ◼   ► You're either annoyed or not.

00:30:56 ◼   ► People just have a different range

00:30:58 ◼   ► of what they find annoying,

00:30:59 ◼   ► but there are some people who find all of these things

00:31:02 ◼   ► very, very annoying and would prefer to never get them,

00:31:06 ◼   ► but you start getting offers for things from Apple

00:31:09 ◼   ► like as, they're not text messages.

00:31:12 ◼   ► They're just notifications that come in,

00:31:15 ◼   ► and they say things like, because you bought an iPhone,

00:31:19 ◼   ► you qualify for, I don't even know what you get.

00:31:22 ◼   ► Remember, for a while, you'd get a full year

00:31:24 ◼   ► of Apple TV+ service, and there's promotions.

00:31:29 ◼   ► Maybe you get Apple Music 'cause you bought

00:31:31 ◼   ► during this back-to-school period or something like that.

00:31:35 ◼   ► Is that an ad, I guess?

00:31:38 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:31:39 ◼   ► - But it's like--

00:31:40 ◼   ► - I'd say it's an ad, for sure.

00:31:41 ◼   ► - Right.

00:31:42 ◼   ► The one that drives me crazy in particular

00:31:45 ◼   ► is every time I get an iPad,

00:31:46 ◼   ► they want me to set up Apple Pay on my iPad,

00:31:49 ◼   ► which I will use my Apple Card, yes,

00:31:54 ◼   ► but I don't also need to use my bank cards.

00:31:57 ◼   ► And on my iPad, I rarely ever do any of that stuff.

00:32:01 ◼   ► I do on my phone all the time, but not on my iPad.

00:32:04 ◼   ► And I have that red mark on it.

00:32:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:32:09 ◼   ► - I have to go through a process every time I get an iPad

00:32:11 ◼   ► to get rid of that red mark, and it's like, why?

00:32:13 ◼   ► It's not the way I use this device.

00:32:15 ◼   ► - You know what, and I think you've put your finger

00:32:17 ◼   ► on an aspect that, judging from emails and tweets

00:32:22 ◼   ► and stuff like that that I get sent,

00:32:23 ◼   ► people have a low tolerance for those red dots.

00:32:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, they really do.

00:32:30 ◼   ► People write giant articles about them.

00:32:32 ◼   ► - Right, and there's a lot of people,

00:32:34 ◼   ► I obviously don't famously have thousands and thousands

00:32:37 ◼   ► of unread emails, and I keep for whatever,

00:32:40 ◼   ► this is the part that I guess is weird,

00:32:42 ◼   ► that I don't have them on my Mac, but on my iOS devices,

00:32:46 ◼   ► I've never turned off the badge for mail.

00:32:49 ◼   ► So if I send a screenshot of my home screen,

00:32:51 ◼   ► some people are, they go into conniptions.

00:32:54 ◼   ► - They have a visceral reaction.

00:32:56 ◼   ► - But I get it, I do.

00:32:58 ◼   ► I totally understand the urge to not have any red badges

00:33:02 ◼   ► on any icons, and it's probably a much healthier way

00:33:06 ◼   ► to deal with it.

00:33:08 ◼   ► I think the people out there, those of you listening,

00:33:11 ◼   ► I'm sure there's thousands of you,

00:33:13 ◼   ► who if there's a red badge on your home screen,

00:33:16 ◼   ► you take care of it.

00:33:17 ◼   ► If it's a message, you read it.

00:33:19 ◼   ► If it's some other app that gives you red dots,

00:33:23 ◼   ► you go into the app and figure out what the dot is about

00:33:26 ◼   ► and make it go away, deal with it.

00:33:29 ◼   ► And then when your phone has no red badges,

00:33:31 ◼   ► you've dealt with everything you need to deal with.

00:33:34 ◼   ► So therefore, with that mentality,

00:33:37 ◼   ► when you've got a red dot that says,

00:33:39 ◼   ► "Set up Apple Pay on this device,"

00:33:42 ◼   ► and you don't want to set up Apple Pay, what do you do?

00:33:46 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, you go through the, you start the process

00:33:50 ◼   ► and then you stop it, which is dumb.

00:33:53 ◼   ► - Right.

00:33:54 ◼   ► - You know, there should just be, at the top level,

00:33:56 ◼   ► there should be just a "Dismiss this."

00:33:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's, and as a writer, I get it,

00:34:04 ◼   ► and I'm sure you do too.

00:34:06 ◼   ► You can easily imagine the meetings at Apple

00:34:11 ◼   ► that led to every word, every button, name.

00:34:16 ◼   ► It is all extremely thoughtful.

00:34:22 ◼   ► I think surprising people would be shocked

00:34:25 ◼   ► at how much time Apple spends tweaking that verbiage

00:34:30 ◼   ► to get it just so, but the just so

00:34:34 ◼   ► is sort of a very fine line of assuming

00:34:39 ◼   ► that ultimately you definitely want to set up Apple Pay.

00:34:43 ◼   ► Right? - Yeah.

00:34:44 ◼   ► - Like, you may not want to do it right now,

00:34:47 ◼   ► but even if you don't do it right now,

00:34:49 ◼   ► you're going to want to do it later.

00:34:51 ◼   ► But without coming out and telling you,

00:34:54 ◼   ► "We're Apple, the giant corporation

00:34:56 ◼   ► "who you just paid $1,000 for the phone,

00:34:58 ◼   ► "and we're gonna boss you around and annoy you

00:35:00 ◼   ► "with a red dot because we also want you

00:35:02 ◼   ► "to use our financial product."

00:35:05 ◼   ► They are not gonna say it that way,

00:35:07 ◼   ► and it's like they've got plausible deniability

00:35:11 ◼   ► with everything that they say.

00:35:13 ◼   ► I know, and in particular, I know that many people

00:35:16 ◼   ► are very annoyed by their not now buttons, right?

00:35:20 ◼   ► Because some people, they know the answer is never.

00:35:23 ◼   ► This device is going to my child

00:35:29 ◼   ► who's a first grader or something.

00:35:30 ◼   ► I'm going to set up this iPad for my first grader.

00:35:33 ◼   ► I am definitely not putting Apple Pay on this.

00:35:36 ◼   ► My first grade, my daughter in first grade

00:35:39 ◼   ► does not have a credit card.

00:35:41 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:35:42 ◼   ► So why must I do this?

00:35:44 ◼   ► And not now bothers them.

00:35:46 ◼   ► I see now not now doesn't bother me.

00:35:48 ◼   ► Not now I salute the cleverness of it

00:35:52 ◼   ► because it does mean, it has a very precise meaning,

00:35:56 ◼   ► but it also gives you the information,

00:36:00 ◼   ► 'cause if you are, I guess what Apple is thinking

00:36:03 ◼   ► is if you are thinking not now but maybe later,

00:36:08 ◼   ► pushing a not now button sort of gives,

00:36:11 ◼   ► and you're not an expert iOS user,

00:36:14 ◼   ► you're a very typical user,

00:36:16 ◼   ► it gives you some degree of confidence

00:36:17 ◼   ► that if you do change your mind in the future,

00:36:19 ◼   ► you haven't made a permanent decision.

00:36:22 ◼   ► But for the people who know that it is a--

00:36:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, I guess I suppose so, but it doesn't seem like,

00:36:29 ◼   ► it seems obvious that that's the kind of thing

00:36:31 ◼   ► that you could set up again later if you wanted to.

00:36:33 ◼   ► - It should be, you would think, but I--

00:36:35 ◼   ► - You do have to go find it, I guess.

00:36:37 ◼   ► - Right.

00:36:37 ◼   ► - Which for some people is a harder task than others.

00:36:41 ◼   ► - And a bigger picture, and Apple has, I think,

00:36:46 ◼   ► these ads are weird because they're all

00:36:49 ◼   ► for Apple's own services, right?

00:36:51 ◼   ► So it's not like somebody else is paying for them.

00:36:55 ◼   ► It's Apple itself promoting additional ways

00:36:59 ◼   ► to get more out of your device, right?

00:37:01 ◼   ► Some of them aren't an upsell at all, right?

00:37:03 ◼   ► Like the ones from the Tips app,

00:37:06 ◼   ► which I think is a very clever design

00:37:08 ◼   ► to help people who are new to the iPhone,

00:37:11 ◼   ► maybe they just switched from Android,

00:37:12 ◼   ► you know, according to Apple,

00:37:13 ◼   ► there's maybe like a million of them every week

00:37:16 ◼   ► or something, some crazy number of people

00:37:19 ◼   ► buying their first iPhones.

00:37:20 ◼   ► And I know for those of us who've been using them

00:37:23 ◼   ► too much for 15, 16 years, it's crazy,

00:37:28 ◼   ► but there are people who are new to it,

00:37:30 ◼   ► and I think the way that they sort of surface those tips

00:37:34 ◼   ► is, I think it's fascinating.

00:37:36 ◼   ► And I think it's the sort of thing where

00:37:38 ◼   ► there are very thoughtful, experienced designers

00:37:43 ◼   ► who are responsible for that,

00:37:44 ◼   ► and nobody really gives them credit and says,

00:37:46 ◼   ► "You know who's really on top of their game at Apple?

00:37:48 ◼   ► "The Tips team."

00:37:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, and as someone who doesn't jump on the betas

00:37:53 ◼   ► the minute after WWDC, I find them helpful too

00:37:57 ◼   ► because I usually don't.

00:37:58 ◼   ► I mean, I often get on public beta,

00:38:00 ◼   ► but even by that point, I'm trying to remember

00:38:04 ◼   ► exactly what all the new features are.

00:38:05 ◼   ► Only a month or so after WWDC, I'm like,

00:38:08 ◼   ► "Okay, what did they announce again?"

00:38:10 ◼   ► And so, I actually use the tip thing almost every time.

00:38:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, and they're not upselling you.

00:38:16 ◼   ► I think everything in tips is how to use

00:38:20 ◼   ► what you've already paid for.

00:38:21 ◼   ► - But it could be worse.

00:38:22 ◼   ► They could be allowing other parties to do these.

00:38:26 ◼   ► - Somebody at Apple is looking at that empty column

00:38:31 ◼   ► in the spreadsheet. - The one guy.

00:38:35 ◼   ► - There are other ones that they send you as a new user,

00:38:39 ◼   ► though, that if the message hits you

00:38:41 ◼   ► and you, the user, think, "Oh, that sounds interesting.

00:38:45 ◼   ► "I've been thinking about that.

00:38:46 ◼   ► "I would like to do that."

00:38:48 ◼   ► It is all about getting you to start paying Apple

00:38:51 ◼   ► a subscription price for Apple Music

00:38:53 ◼   ► or the Apple One bundle or something like that.

00:38:56 ◼   ► - I don't think they should never send such messages.

00:38:59 ◼   ► I think it is reasonable, and I think there are people

00:39:02 ◼   ► who don't know about these things,

00:39:05 ◼   ► and so it's worth messaging them.

00:39:08 ◼   ► But I wonder, though, if they aren't,

00:39:12 ◼   ► I mean, one way to look at anything in life

00:39:15 ◼   ► is that you have to figure out which side

00:39:17 ◼   ► you want to approach perfection from.

00:39:20 ◼   ► Assume we're all humans, we're gonna make mistakes,

00:39:23 ◼   ► and so should we err on the side of sending

00:39:27 ◼   ► too many promotional messages,

00:39:28 ◼   ► or should we err on the side of sending too few?

00:39:32 ◼   ► And I kind of feel like Apple is very close

00:39:35 ◼   ► to the right line, but they're coming at it from the,

00:39:39 ◼   ► "Well, if we're gonna make a mistake,

00:39:41 ◼   ► "let's send a few too many."

00:39:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:39:43 ◼   ► I don't feel like, in general, I feel like, yeah,

00:39:46 ◼   ► it does feel like it's just slightly too many,

00:39:48 ◼   ► and I don't get some of the ones

00:39:50 ◼   ► that other people seem to get for some reason.

00:39:54 ◼   ► Again, it's weird what some people experience

00:39:57 ◼   ► and what other people don't.

00:39:59 ◼   ► For instance, like you getting your arcade notification.

00:40:03 ◼   ► I don't, I mean, some people have shown things

00:40:08 ◼   ► that seem pretty egregious to me,

00:40:11 ◼   ► but I have not gotten those things.

00:40:13 ◼   ► Usually, I'll get, like, often I'll get a notification

00:40:15 ◼   ► that some show is available on Apple TV+.

00:40:20 ◼   ► And usually, it's like, okay.

00:40:22 ◼   ► I mean, it's either a show that I watch,

00:40:24 ◼   ► and it's a reminder that there's a new episode,

00:40:26 ◼   ► which is, I don't mind that so much,

00:40:29 ◼   ► 'cause sometimes I will forget.

00:40:30 ◼   ► The thing that drives me crazy is if I've already watched it,

00:40:33 ◼   ► which has happened several times.

00:40:35 ◼   ► It's like, there's a new episode of "Ted Lasso."

00:40:37 ◼   ► I was like, "Yeah, I watched it two hours ago.

00:40:39 ◼   ► "Why are you telling me about it?

00:40:40 ◼   ► "You should know that I saw it already."

00:40:42 ◼   ► - Right, well, and that sort of gets to a point

00:40:45 ◼   ► that I made in my article complaining about this settings bug

00:40:48 ◼   ► where we collectively have, certainly I have,

00:40:51 ◼   ► have complained strongly

00:40:54 ◼   ► about the surveillance-based advertising

00:40:57 ◼   ► epitomized by Facebook and Google,

00:41:00 ◼   ► where they seemingly know too much about you.

00:41:02 ◼   ► And my wife, Amy, she keeps, she knows that,

00:41:07 ◼   ► I think she knows that her devices aren't listening to her,

00:41:13 ◼   ► but she's had some really freaky things

00:41:18 ◼   ► and she's like, "Okay, come on."

00:41:19 ◼   ► So here's a recent example.

00:41:21 ◼   ► This isn't really about Apple.

00:41:23 ◼   ► I think it's more of an Instagram thing, but--

00:41:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's an Instagram.

00:41:28 ◼   ► - She bought a little shelf, little skinny shelf.

00:41:33 ◼   ► It looks almost like the type of thing,

00:41:36 ◼   ► remember in elementary school, did you have,

00:41:38 ◼   ► like when the books came back,

00:41:41 ◼   ► sometimes the kid you'd be tasked with,

00:41:44 ◼   ► "Here, take these books and put them back on the shelf

00:41:46 ◼   ► "in the right place," and it'd be like

00:41:48 ◼   ► a little wheelie cart for books.

00:41:50 ◼   ► She got something like that for our laundry room.

00:41:54 ◼   ► Very skinny and I think it goes between

00:41:56 ◼   ► the washer and the dryer, but she just wanted a place

00:41:58 ◼   ► to put some more, I don't know, fabric softener

00:42:01 ◼   ► and whatever else you keep in a laundry room.

00:42:04 ◼   ► But she bought it, she said, during the pandemic,

00:42:08 ◼   ► two years ago, and just never set it up.

00:42:11 ◼   ► And then a few weeks ago, she's like--

00:42:16 ◼   ► - Why didn't you set me up?

00:42:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, but she did, she took it out

00:42:20 ◼   ► and it ended up being an extremely easy assembly.

00:42:25 ◼   ► I said, "I'll do that," you know,

00:42:26 ◼   ► I thought I'd earned some good spouse points.

00:42:29 ◼   ► But unlike an Ikea thing where you have to put it all together

00:42:32 ◼   ► I think it has three shelves, the whole thing was together

00:42:34 ◼   ► except for the wheels on the bottom.

00:42:35 ◼   ► I just had to snap wheels on the bottom

00:42:37 ◼   ► and it was already together.

00:42:38 ◼   ► Because it's such a skinny little thing,

00:42:40 ◼   ► it wasn't difficult to box in an efficient space,

00:42:43 ◼   ► efficient way, anyway, I put it together,

00:42:45 ◼   ► now it's in our laundry room.

00:42:47 ◼   ► And the next day she got an ad on Instagram for that shelf,

00:42:52 ◼   ► the exact thing from the same company

00:42:55 ◼   ► that she'd bought two years ago.

00:42:58 ◼   ► And we had just spent like just a typical

00:43:01 ◼   ► husband and wife conversation about a task like that.

00:43:05 ◼   ► Like, "I'll do it, I'll put this together for you

00:43:07 ◼   ► "and then you'll have a nice little carton of life."

00:43:09 ◼   ► But she's like, "Now you tell me

00:43:10 ◼   ► "that this thing isn't listening to us."

00:43:12 ◼   ► And she knows that it's not.

00:43:13 ◼   ► And I said, "I don't even think we mentioned

00:43:15 ◼   ► "the name of the company, right?

00:43:16 ◼   ► "We talked about it, but it is weird, it's a weird thing."

00:43:21 ◼   ► All the way around to, so you just think like,

00:43:26 ◼   ► "How the hell does Instagram know so much about her

00:43:28 ◼   ► "that they're showing her a little Japanese

00:43:31 ◼   ► "laundry room shelf that she already bought two years ago?"

00:43:35 ◼   ► And was just thinking about it,

00:43:36 ◼   ► that's how on point their ads are.

00:43:37 ◼   ► And meanwhile, Apple doesn't know that John Moltz

00:43:41 ◼   ► just watched Ted Lasso two hours ago.

00:43:44 ◼   ► - I really look forward to driving my GM car down the road

00:43:48 ◼   ► and getting notifications for services

00:43:50 ◼   ► from General Motors on the dash of my car to sign up for.

00:43:55 ◼   ► - Isn't that, yes.

00:43:59 ◼   ► - Must press okay to proceed driving down the road.

00:44:02 ◼   ► - Right, I've been thinking so much more about that GM thing.

00:44:08 ◼   ► I guess it's a better podcast topic than a column topic

00:44:11 ◼   ► 'cause it's so speculative.

00:44:14 ◼   ► But it's like the more I think about it,

00:44:16 ◼   ► and GM just had, I think they did their earnings call

00:44:20 ◼   ► or something and it came up.

00:44:22 ◼   ► The basic story from three or four weeks ago was

00:44:25 ◼   ► they're going to drop CarPlay support

00:44:28 ◼   ► from future electronic vehicles,

00:44:31 ◼   ► but that the ones, the EVs and the gas cars

00:44:34 ◼   ► that already have CarPlay will keep having CarPlay,

00:44:38 ◼   ► which is weird in and of itself.

00:44:40 ◼   ► If you think there's a good idea,

00:44:42 ◼   ► why would you only say new?

00:44:44 ◼   ► But that's what they said.

00:44:46 ◼   ► But low and behold--

00:44:47 ◼   ► - Canceled the Volt. - The Volt, right.

00:44:49 ◼   ► So the Volt is their award-winning, probably I think,

00:44:55 ◼   ► I haven't driven one, but I do believe

00:44:57 ◼   ► it might be the most innovative vehicle GM has made

00:45:00 ◼   ► in a long time, especially if you're looking at it

00:45:03 ◼   ► from a EVs are the future.

00:45:07 ◼   ► They make lots and lots of big, big trucks and SUVs

00:45:11 ◼   ► and it's where they make most of their money

00:45:13 ◼   ► and lots and lots of Americans love to buy

00:45:16 ◼   ► very big trucks and SUVs and I don't.

00:45:19 ◼   ► I don't like driving them, I don't like renting them.

00:45:22 ◼   ► But for people with sort of, the Volt,

00:45:25 ◼   ► is it the Volt or the Bolt?

00:45:26 ◼   ► It was the Volt, right? - I can't remember.

00:45:28 ◼   ► - That might be the Volt.

00:45:28 ◼   ► Well, I'll try to blur my pronunciation together.

00:45:31 ◼   ► But anyway, that's the one that people were like,

00:45:34 ◼   ► well, that's the only car from GM I care about

00:45:37 ◼   ► and so at least they'll still keep carplay on that

00:45:40 ◼   ► because it's not a new EV.

00:45:42 ◼   ► But they've said they're canceling it

00:45:44 ◼   ► so that they can reuse that production effort.

00:45:48 ◼   ► - Volts with a B. - Yes, all right.

00:45:50 ◼   ► Volt would have been better though 'cause it's electric.

00:45:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, right, right.

00:45:55 ◼   ► - Maybe that-- - It's a lightning bolt.

00:45:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, all right.

00:45:58 ◼   ► All right, I'll give them the lightning bolt.

00:45:59 ◼   ► It's a good name, it's even a good name,

00:46:01 ◼   ► even though I couldn't remember it.

00:46:02 ◼   ► But it's a good name, they're gonna stop.

00:46:04 ◼   ► They're gonna stop making it.

00:46:06 ◼   ► And the thing that caught my attention

00:46:09 ◼   ► was that in this call where they talked about this

00:46:12 ◼   ► and said the Bolt is gone and we're going in a new direction

00:46:15 ◼   ► is they keep talking about data collection.

00:46:17 ◼   ► Right, like the line from--

00:46:21 ◼   ► - Well, that's, yeah, we said speculative

00:46:23 ◼   ► but it's not really that speculative, right?

00:46:25 ◼   ► Because they keep dropping the keywords

00:46:27 ◼   ► that make it seem like, no,

00:46:28 ◼   ► this is exactly what they're doing.

00:46:29 ◼   ► - Right.

00:46:30 ◼   ► - Rivian and Tesla famously,

00:46:34 ◼   ► Tesla makes them by far the most electric cars.

00:46:37 ◼   ► Rivian probably makes the premier critically acclaimed

00:46:42 ◼   ► SUVs and pickup trucks in the space.

00:46:46 ◼   ► And their explanation of why they go their own way

00:46:50 ◼   ► and don't support car play is that they want,

00:46:52 ◼   ► they both sound like Apple when they explain it.

00:46:54 ◼   ► They wanna make the whole experience

00:46:56 ◼   ► and control the whole experience

00:46:58 ◼   ► and they can't do that if they're putting up the screen

00:47:02 ◼   ► to some third party,

00:47:03 ◼   ► no matter how good the third party's thing is.

00:47:06 ◼   ► That they're offering a better user experience

00:47:09 ◼   ► by doing what Apple does with its devices, right?

00:47:13 ◼   ► Apple doesn't put Android on their cell phone hardware.

00:47:16 ◼   ► They have their own entire OS architecture

00:47:20 ◼   ► that is, that they're two sides of the same coin.

00:47:24 ◼   ► Apple talks about this almost every year

00:47:27 ◼   ► in their big product introductions.

00:47:29 ◼   ► Only Tim Cook, there was a year where the theme was,

00:47:31 ◼   ► only Apple, only Apple can do blank

00:47:34 ◼   ► because of this marriage of software and hardware

00:47:37 ◼   ► and they're trying to do that with their car.

00:47:38 ◼   ► Okay, blah, blah, blah.

00:47:39 ◼   ► And I, people, some people really like the Tesla interface.

00:47:43 ◼   ► The Rivian thing that I had the long test drive in,

00:47:46 ◼   ► it's good.

00:47:47 ◼   ► And it is more than just a rectangle.

00:47:49 ◼   ► It's this weird odd screen.

00:47:53 ◼   ► But Apple clearly is embracing that.

00:47:55 ◼   ► Last year at WWDC, they spent a long time in the keynote

00:47:57 ◼   ► at WWDC last year talking about, quote,

00:48:00 ◼   ► "Next generation carplay," which would be able to support

00:48:03 ◼   ► like a irregularly shaped screen that spans

00:48:08 ◼   ► from the driver across to the passenger,

00:48:10 ◼   ► going more in the direction of like Star Trek keyboard,

00:48:15 ◼   ► what's in front of you interfaces.

00:48:17 ◼   ► GM isn't really talking much about the user experience.

00:48:23 ◼   ► There's like lip service to it, like that, yeah, yeah,

00:48:26 ◼   ► that thing about if we control the whole thing, yeah, yeah.

00:48:28 ◼   ► We'll be-- - Yeah, it's gonna be great.

00:48:30 ◼   ► Yeah, sure. - Yeah, yeah.

00:48:31 ◼   ► But then what they really wanna talk about

00:48:33 ◼   ► is this data collection.

00:48:34 ◼   ► And it's like, what?

00:48:35 ◼   ► And there's something, something they said

00:48:37 ◼   ► that I quoted on "Daring Fireball"

00:48:38 ◼   ► that maybe they'll sell, they wanna sell some products,

00:48:41 ◼   ► right, which is where we're going,

00:48:42 ◼   ► that everybody wants subscription info.

00:48:44 ◼   ► They're looking at 20 to $30 billion a year

00:48:47 ◼   ► in subscription revenue for services

00:48:50 ◼   ► to operate the car you've already bought.

00:48:53 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:48:54 ◼   ► - And one of the things they mentioned was insurance.

00:48:57 ◼   ► And I'm like, well, that's, I was thinking stuff

00:48:59 ◼   ► like they're gonna come out with like GM music or something.

00:49:03 ◼   ► And you'll be able to get something like a Spotify

00:49:06 ◼   ► or Apple Music through GM.

00:49:09 ◼   ► And that's how you'll get your music.

00:49:12 ◼   ► My ancient Acura has built-in XM radio, right,

00:49:17 ◼   ► which we've subscribed to ever since we bought the car

00:49:21 ◼   ► in 2006, so that there'd be something like that.

00:49:24 ◼   ► Selling insurance based on the data you collect in the car,

00:49:29 ◼   ► that seems oppressive, right?

00:49:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:49:36 ◼   ► And it's not designed to make the car cheaper.

00:49:38 ◼   ► - No. (laughs)

00:49:39 ◼   ► - It's designed to increase their profit margin.

00:49:41 ◼   ► I mean, because they talked about their profit margin,

00:49:43 ◼   ► they expect their profit margin going up

00:49:44 ◼   ► from something like 12 to 14% to 20%, right?

00:49:47 ◼   ► - Right. - Yeah.

00:49:48 ◼   ► - We're not making, like that used to be a thing

00:49:52 ◼   ► that that's why Android's cheaper.

00:49:53 ◼   ► You can get an Android device,

00:49:54 ◼   ► and maybe you're sacrificing some of your personal data,

00:49:57 ◼   ► but you're getting a cheaper device,

00:49:58 ◼   ► and it's better for people who can't afford

00:50:00 ◼   ► to buy an iPhone.

00:50:02 ◼   ► But this is just like, nah, we're taking it all.

00:50:05 ◼   ► - A friend of the show, Casey Liss, sent me a text message

00:50:10 ◼   ► after I posted that to remind me that there have been

00:50:13 ◼   ► some deals like that for car insurance for a long time.

00:50:17 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, you could get a device.

00:50:18 ◼   ► - Yeah. - To get a car, to, yeah.

00:50:20 ◼   ► - Onboard diagnostic, OBD2 port.

00:50:23 ◼   ► It looks like a, like an HDMI port or something,

00:50:28 ◼   ► and if you--

00:50:30 ◼   ► - Like a house arrest anklet for driving a--

00:50:32 ◼   ► - Right. (laughs)

00:50:33 ◼   ► But you can buy, there used to be, I still can't,

00:50:36 ◼   ► I should look it up, actually,

00:50:37 ◼   ► but decades ago, maybe, at this point,

00:50:39 ◼   ► long, long time ago, early era of this show,

00:50:43 ◼   ► we had a sponsor that has since gone defunct,

00:50:46 ◼   ► but it was, they sold like a little, like $100 dingus

00:50:50 ◼   ► that you would put on that port.

00:50:52 ◼   ► But it wasn't to monitor you or sell you out

00:50:55 ◼   ► for advertising, it was like to give you,

00:50:59 ◼   ► and it had a phone--

00:51:00 ◼   ► - You would get the diagnostics that they could get

00:51:02 ◼   ► at the dealer, right?

00:51:03 ◼   ► - Right, in their, on your phone, right,

00:51:06 ◼   ► and you'd find out these things that, you know,

00:51:08 ◼   ► your car has all this data and you'd know that the, you know--

00:51:11 ◼   ► - I think I have it in a box.

00:51:13 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:51:13 ◼   ► - I have some, I've never used it.

00:51:15 ◼   ► I did use it 'cause they were a sponsor,

00:51:18 ◼   ► I still can't, I can't remember the name,

00:51:19 ◼   ► but anyway, that was, though, a product all for your benefit

00:51:22 ◼   ► and it would give you tips like you could monitor

00:51:26 ◼   ► what your gas efficiency is and alter your driving habits

00:51:30 ◼   ► to get more mileage, you know, by maybe coasting more

00:51:34 ◼   ► and not riding the brake up and down or whatever.

00:51:37 ◼   ► And there have been other dinguses that you can get

00:51:39 ◼   ► from your insurance company, I guess.

00:51:41 ◼   ► I've never known anybody who's done this,

00:51:43 ◼   ► but that if you voluntarily put this in your car

00:51:46 ◼   ► and let the insurance company monitor the information,

00:51:49 ◼   ► that they'll give you some kind of discount, you know?

00:51:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think there was, there's also one

00:51:53 ◼   ► that parents could do for kids.

00:51:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah. - Like your teenagers

00:51:57 ◼   ► learning to drive and you don't want them going to the bars

00:52:00 ◼   ► and whatever.

00:52:01 ◼   ► - Well, or maybe you don't want them going,

00:52:03 ◼   ► seeing how fast the car can go.

00:52:05 ◼   ► - Yeah. (laughs)

00:52:07 ◼   ► Basically doing all the stuff that I did when I was--

00:52:09 ◼   ► - Exactly, right.

00:52:10 ◼   ► - Learning to drive.

00:52:11 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:52:12 ◼   ► - I can't believe I'm alive, honestly.

00:52:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, man, I almost wasn't, several times.

00:52:16 ◼   ► - I, it's true for me too, I was with buddies

00:52:19 ◼   ► and my buddy Todd, he had a Mustang.

00:52:22 ◼   ► It was an old Mustang and the worst part,

00:52:25 ◼   ► it was like one of the ugliest Mustangs Ford ever made.

00:52:27 ◼   ► It was like from the--

00:52:28 ◼   ► - One of the '80s.

00:52:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, one of the '80s ones.

00:52:31 ◼   ► Four of us in a car, I was in the back seat

00:52:34 ◼   ► and we were just driving way too fast on rural roads

00:52:40 ◼   ► at night with our friend James behind us driving his car

00:52:44 ◼   ► and James is a good driver.

00:52:46 ◼   ► And my friend Ethan and I, we just looked at each other

00:52:50 ◼   ► and in the back seat and we're like, we're having fun.

00:52:52 ◼   ► We weren't drinking, no substances involved,

00:52:55 ◼   ► just teenage boys driving too fast on a rural road.

00:53:00 ◼   ► And we looked at each other and we're like,

00:53:01 ◼   ► maybe we should put our seat belts on.

00:53:03 ◼   ► And we, but it was an old '80s car,

00:53:06 ◼   ► so it was just lap belts.

00:53:07 ◼   ► And Todd lost control of the car completely

00:53:11 ◼   ► and sailed through, just went through a corn field

00:53:15 ◼   ► full of corn, this was like fall,

00:53:17 ◼   ► it was like October, early school year.

00:53:18 ◼   ► So the corn was big, just shot through the corn

00:53:23 ◼   ► at a very high speed and then shot back across the road,

00:53:27 ◼   ► I guess he turned the other way and slammed on the brakes

00:53:31 ◼   ► and we landed on some kind of, it was very hilly

00:53:35 ◼   ► and somebody had built like a driveway

00:53:38 ◼   ► in front of their house that was elevated.

00:53:40 ◼   ► And so it was like a 20 or 30 foot drop

00:53:43 ◼   ► and the car was right at the edge of it.

00:53:45 ◼   ► And it had, we'd gone through a fence

00:53:48 ◼   ► and there was like barbed wire or something

00:53:51 ◼   ► wrapped around the axle and, but we're all okay.

00:53:54 ◼   ► And the car's come to a complete stop.

00:53:56 ◼   ► Our friends behind us pulled up then

00:53:58 ◼   ► and they were all terribly shaken

00:54:00 ◼   ► 'cause all they saw was the car disappear into a field.

00:54:04 ◼   ► And then shoot across in front of them.

00:54:08 ◼   ► Everybody's okay, his car's a mess,

00:54:11 ◼   ► but then we're greeted by the property owner.

00:54:16 ◼   ► And we're laughing.

00:54:19 ◼   ► You'll never guess what he had in his hands.

00:54:21 ◼   ► - Oh, I bet it's a shotgun.

00:54:25 ◼   ► - It was, in fact, it was not just a gun, it was a shotgun.

00:54:28 ◼   ► He had a shotgun.

00:54:29 ◼   ► Now, who knows in 2023 what he would have in his hands.

00:54:33 ◼   ► It's probably, on it, I mean, we joke,

00:54:35 ◼   ► it's probably one of these assault rifles,

00:54:38 ◼   ► an AR-15 style thing.

00:54:39 ◼   ► But in 1991, or '90, it was a shotgun.

00:54:43 ◼   ► And it wasn't pointed at us, but he,

00:54:48 ◼   ► but we, and again, we were 100,

00:54:50 ◼   ► we were 0.0 blood alcohol amongst all of us.

00:54:53 ◼   ► So we were able to explain ourselves very quickly.

00:54:56 ◼   ► He said, well, I don't really, he was very gruff.

00:54:59 ◼   ► He's the sort of man who greets this loud bang

00:55:02 ◼   ► with a shotgun, but he said,

00:55:03 ◼   ► I've been looking to get rid of that fence, so no harm.

00:55:08 ◼   ► - Thanks a lot.

00:55:09 ◼   ► - Right, but we, I mean, we came that close

00:55:11 ◼   ► to just sailing over a 30 or 40 foot embankment

00:55:14 ◼   ► with lap belts on, and who knows what else

00:55:16 ◼   ► we might have hit in the field when he lost,

00:55:18 ◼   ► anyway, it's a digression, but probably would have been good

00:55:21 ◼   ► to have one of those sticks in Todd's car.

00:55:23 ◼   ► Well, actually, it probably wouldn't tear, well.

00:55:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, yeah, you probably would have done it anyway.

00:55:28 ◼   ► - Well, I guess, now in hindsight, as I think about it,

00:55:31 ◼   ► there was, it didn't matter if there were diagnostics.

00:55:34 ◼   ► There was no other explanation for his parents.

00:55:37 ◼   ► Now that I think about it.

00:55:39 ◼   ► - Oh, yeah, right, you come home and you've got,

00:55:41 ◼   ► yeah, barbed wire wrapped around the car.

00:55:43 ◼   ► - Right.

00:55:44 ◼   ► - Probably gonna need to do some fast talking.

00:55:46 ◼   ► - Yeah. (laughs)

00:55:48 ◼   ► But anyway, this future of GM sounds to me

00:55:53 ◼   ► like they're envisioning a, instead of an opt-in stick,

00:55:56 ◼   ► which is what we're talking about from before,

00:55:59 ◼   ► where you would say, okay, I will take, you know,

00:56:01 ◼   ► and the insurance company might say,

00:56:03 ◼   ► we're looking for people to drive safely

00:56:06 ◼   ► or something like that, or which roads you drive on,

00:56:09 ◼   ► or how much, how many miles you do drive, I don't know,

00:56:12 ◼   ► and we'll give you a discount if you stay under these limits

00:56:15 ◼   ► if you put this stick here in your car.

00:56:17 ◼   ► And if you say, okay, and then you're making this deal

00:56:20 ◼   ► with your eyes wide open.

00:56:21 ◼   ► I feel like the GM future is gonna be monitoring,

00:56:25 ◼   ► if they continue along this path,

00:56:27 ◼   ► monitoring people in a very, in my,

00:56:30 ◼   ► I think, anti-privacy way to, what, badger them?

00:56:35 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:56:37 ◼   ► And State Farm notices that you're a great driver

00:56:40 ◼   ► and would like you to switch.

00:56:41 ◼   ► Is that gonna come up on your dashboard?

00:56:43 ◼   ► - Right, as you're driving down the road.

00:56:46 ◼   ► - Right.

00:56:47 ◼   ► - As you're driving through a cornfield.

00:56:48 ◼   ► - Right, thanks to some sort of promotion

00:56:50 ◼   ► where surely GM would be taking it

00:56:52 ◼   ► for whatever number of people switch their insurance

00:56:56 ◼   ► based on this information, GM gets a cut.

00:56:59 ◼   ► - Yeah. - I don't know.

00:57:00 ◼   ► - I wonder if how well this is gonna work out

00:57:01 ◼   ► for them though.

00:57:02 ◼   ► I mean, I personally, I don't have CarPlay in my current car,

00:57:07 ◼   ► but I definitely wanna get it in my next car.

00:57:10 ◼   ► And I am, that is definitely a deciding factor.

00:57:13 ◼   ► So, but I don't think that I'm probably most people, right?

00:57:18 ◼   ► And maybe it will work for them,

00:57:23 ◼   ► but I doubt that their user experience

00:57:25 ◼   ► is going to be all that great, particularly.

00:57:29 ◼   ► - I doubt it too.

00:57:31 ◼   ► And the one thing I have in my mind,

00:57:33 ◼   ► I think I wrote about this on Daring Fireball,

00:57:34 ◼   ► but the one thing that's different about,

00:57:37 ◼   ► well, Tesla doesn't really have this problem

00:57:40 ◼   ► because of their newfangledness from top to bottom.

00:57:44 ◼   ► But for the traditional car makers,

00:57:47 ◼   ► the role of the car dealer is unlike, in my opinion,

00:57:53 ◼   ► I can't think of an analogy to any other product

00:57:56 ◼   ► that you buy like this, where you don't go,

00:57:59 ◼   ► you can buy your iPhone from Verizon,

00:58:04 ◼   ► you can buy it from Best Buy, right?

00:58:08 ◼   ► You can go, you don't have to buy your iPhone

00:58:10 ◼   ► directly from Apple, but those are just stores

00:58:13 ◼   ► and you don't have salesman, or I don't know,

00:58:16 ◼   ► maybe you do, I guess, in a Verizon store.

00:58:18 ◼   ► - There's probably some commission or something.

00:58:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it's not like buying a car.

00:58:21 ◼   ► And you can just buy directly from Apple.

00:58:24 ◼   ► But when you go to buy a Chevy Bolt,

00:58:26 ◼   ► you have to go to your local Chevrolet dealer,

00:58:28 ◼   ► which is an independently owned business.

00:58:31 ◼   ► And it's like an antitrust decision from,

00:58:34 ◼   ► I don't know, 100 years ago, or early, the 1940s,

00:58:39 ◼   ► I don't know when they put it into place,

00:58:40 ◼   ► but before we were born, so I've never known the world

00:58:44 ◼   ► where you don't have this, but there's, like,

00:58:46 ◼   ► in the US, laws that keep Chevy and Ford

00:58:49 ◼   ► from owning the car dealers.

00:58:51 ◼   ► Legally, they have to be owned by third parties.

00:58:55 ◼   ► We've often, by local, they become local celebrities

00:58:59 ◼   ► through their TV ads, right?

00:59:01 ◼   ► Everybody knows the jingle from certain car dealers.

00:59:05 ◼   ► We've got one here in Philly whose slogan,

00:59:08 ◼   ► for 30, 40 years, Gary Barbera, he sells Dodges.

00:59:13 ◼   ► Is Barbera the best?

00:59:15 ◼   ► Boy, I guess.

00:59:16 ◼   ► That's, I swear to,

00:59:19 ◼   ► swear to God, that's,

00:59:21 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:59:22 ◼   ► Is Barbera the best?

00:59:25 ◼   ► Boy, I guess.

00:59:27 ◼   ► But it's a weird slogan, but if you heard the voice,

00:59:31 ◼   ► the narrator is a very deep baritone, confident man,

00:59:35 ◼   ► so I guess his confidence in the line

00:59:38 ◼   ► really sells you on Gary Barbera.

00:59:40 ◼   ► But we've got a bunch of car dealers here in Philly

00:59:42 ◼   ► that are owned by Mike Piazza, former baseball star,

00:59:46 ◼   ► who never played for the Phillies,

00:59:48 ◼   ► but he was born and raised in the area

00:59:50 ◼   ► and now owns a bunch of car dealerships.

00:59:53 ◼   ► - Mets catcher for years.

00:59:56 ◼   ► - Right, Mets famously, I guess, most famously for the Mets.

00:59:59 ◼   ► But when you go to buy a car,

01:00:02 ◼   ► you can't buy a car from GM, right?

01:00:05 ◼   ► It's like a legal thing.

01:00:06 ◼   ► And it probably ought to be looked at.

01:00:08 ◼   ► I don't really think--

01:00:09 ◼   ► - Did Saturn sell directly though?

01:00:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe.

01:00:12 ◼   ► - For some reason it felt like Saturn.

01:00:13 ◼   ► I mean, that was their whole thing,

01:00:15 ◼   ► like they had a different deal.

01:00:16 ◼   ► And I don't know if that worked,

01:00:17 ◼   ► but I mean, I know that they didn't do haggling, right?

01:00:20 ◼   ► You got the price, that was the price.

01:00:23 ◼   ► But I don't know if the dealerships

01:00:24 ◼   ► were owned separately or not.

01:00:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, but that's why-- - I felt like they weren't.

01:00:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, but that was the story.

01:00:30 ◼   ► It was because they made a new brand

01:00:33 ◼   ► that they were allowed to do that, right?

01:00:36 ◼   ► So like, Saturn, because Saturn was a new label,

01:00:39 ◼   ► and again, it's all just sorta, what's the difference?

01:00:42 ◼   ► They're all owned by GM,

01:00:44 ◼   ► so the sub-brands are kind of a weird thing.

01:00:47 ◼   ► But yeah, and again, I don't know what people,

01:00:50 ◼   ► I don't know what the car buying experience is like

01:00:52 ◼   ► for our friends listening over in the UK and Germany

01:00:56 ◼   ► and the rest of Europe, but here,

01:00:58 ◼   ► because of this car dealer relationship,

01:01:02 ◼   ► it is a product that famously,

01:01:05 ◼   ► you don't really know what the price is of the product.

01:01:07 ◼   ► You go to the lot and you see the car,

01:01:10 ◼   ► like I would like to buy that car.

01:01:13 ◼   ► That's the model I was looking at.

01:01:14 ◼   ► I like the color, and then there's like a piece of paper

01:01:17 ◼   ► stuck to the windshield that lists--

01:01:21 ◼   ► - Which means nothing. - Yeah, and it lists

01:01:23 ◼   ► certain features the car has.

01:01:25 ◼   ► It's got a 3.2 liter engine, and it's got this and that,

01:01:30 ◼   ► and it's got the seat package

01:01:32 ◼   ► to get you the better seats or whatever,

01:01:35 ◼   ► and then there is a dollar sign and a price at the bottom,

01:01:40 ◼   ► but you're not supposed to pay that price,

01:01:43 ◼   ► and they might tell you, like during COVID

01:01:46 ◼   ► when cars production was all jammed up

01:01:49 ◼   ► and it was hard to buy cars,

01:01:50 ◼   ► they might tell you right to your face,

01:01:53 ◼   ► you have to pay more than that.

01:01:55 ◼   ► - Yeah. - You have to.

01:01:56 ◼   ► Literally, there's nothing you can do or say

01:01:58 ◼   ► that is gonna get this car off the lot at that price.

01:02:01 ◼   ► It's gonna be $10,000 more or 5,000 more

01:02:04 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:02:05 ◼   ► In normal times when production isn't jammed up,

01:02:07 ◼   ► you're, I guess, again, I've only bought one new car

01:02:12 ◼   ► in my life because I just don't drive that much,

01:02:13 ◼   ► and I don't, I did a really dumb thing

01:02:16 ◼   ► where we went to buy that car in 2006

01:02:20 ◼   ► after our previous car was at a point of collapse

01:02:24 ◼   ► to the point where I wasn't sure we could make it

01:02:27 ◼   ► to the car dealer.

01:02:28 ◼   ► My wife was like, "I don't know if we should be driving

01:02:31 ◼   ► "this car," and I was like, "Well, they'll give us

01:02:33 ◼   ► "some money for it, so we've gotta get it there."

01:02:35 ◼   ► Like, it worked out, but I kinda needed to buy the car,

01:02:40 ◼   ► which is not the position you're supposed to be in.

01:02:42 ◼   ► - No, yeah, you always wanna be able to walk off the lot.

01:02:44 ◼   ► - Right, but the sticker says the car costs $40,000,

01:02:48 ◼   ► and you're supposed to say, "I'll give you 35,000 right now,"

01:02:52 ◼   ► and they say, "I can't do that, my God, let me go to,"

01:02:55 ◼   ► and then, "I'll go talk to my manager,

01:02:57 ◼   ► "and my manager has good news for you.

01:02:59 ◼   ► "He's gonna take it down to 39,000,

01:03:02 ◼   ► "but that's our best offer," and then you're supposed to leave

01:03:05 ◼   ► in a huff, you're like, "Ah, I'm going to the Honda dealer,"

01:03:09 ◼   ► and then the guy's like, "Yeah," and the guy's like,

01:03:13 ◼   ► "Well, give me your phone number."

01:03:15 ◼   ► - They'll call you, yeah, exactly.

01:03:16 ◼   ► - And then they call, yeah.

01:03:18 ◼   ► - That's a ridiculous dance that you have to do.

01:03:21 ◼   ► We went, yeah, when we bought the first one,

01:03:24 ◼   ► we went together, which was a mistake,

01:03:25 ◼   ► because the second time, first, then you get in arguments,

01:03:29 ◼   ► and then they're playing you against each other,

01:03:31 ◼   ► and it's like, the second time, I was like,

01:03:32 ◼   ► "I'm going by myself," and I was able to use her

01:03:37 ◼   ► as an excuse, right, 'cause they go,

01:03:39 ◼   ► "I'm gonna go talk to my manager,"

01:03:40 ◼   ► and I go, "Well, I gotta go talk to my wife, I can't."

01:03:42 ◼   ► You use your wife as the manager.

01:03:45 ◼   ► I gotta clear it with her first, man.

01:03:47 ◼   ► You got your manager, I got my wife.

01:03:49 ◼   ► We'll get there eventually, but--

01:03:51 ◼   ► - But then, these are professionals,

01:03:53 ◼   ► and they get paid by commission, to some extent,

01:03:58 ◼   ► so that the salesperson who sells more cars makes more money

01:04:03 ◼   ► and it's what they do all day, every day, right?

01:04:07 ◼   ► And so, a rube like me, I know these things.

01:04:11 ◼   ► I'm at least not a complete ignorant rube who comes in

01:04:15 ◼   ► and just says, "Oh, you say that's the price?

01:04:17 ◼   ► "Okay, here you go."

01:04:18 ◼   ► I know you gotta haggle, and I know you gotta do some,

01:04:21 ◼   ► look it up in the Kelley Blue Book,

01:04:23 ◼   ► what you're supposed to pay,

01:04:24 ◼   ► and you're supposed to call other dealers.

01:04:28 ◼   ► If you're shopping for a Toyota,

01:04:31 ◼   ► you call three or four Toyota dealers

01:04:33 ◼   ► and see who gives you, ah, blah, blah, blah.

01:04:36 ◼   ► But of course, I did this once in my adult life.

01:04:38 ◼   ► I'm probably gonna do it again soon,

01:04:41 ◼   ► but how many of these am I gonna buy?

01:04:42 ◼   ► Whereas the car dealer, five days a week,

01:04:46 ◼   ► eight hours a day, over and over, this is what they do.

01:04:49 ◼   ► And if they're, either they're,

01:04:54 ◼   ► if they're good at it and enjoy it enough to keep doing it,

01:04:57 ◼   ► they're gonna get better at it, right?

01:04:59 ◼   ► It's the Malcolm Gladwell thing,

01:05:01 ◼   ► 10,000 hours of selling cars,

01:05:03 ◼   ► and all of a sudden you're the Paul McCartney

01:05:05 ◼   ► of car salesman, right?

01:05:07 ◼   ► Something, something.

01:05:08 ◼   ► But they smell things like that because they're good at it,

01:05:12 ◼   ► and they smell things like,

01:05:14 ◼   ► oh, the wife really likes this car.

01:05:17 ◼   ► Ah, yeah, and she's kinda thinking, I could see it.

01:05:22 ◼   ► She's kinda thinking this guy's being cheap

01:05:25 ◼   ► and they should just buy it.

01:05:26 ◼   ► What are you waiting for?

01:05:28 ◼   ► And then they know how to work that.

01:05:30 ◼   ► It's all, it's a weird thing.

01:05:32 ◼   ► - I used a broker one time,

01:05:33 ◼   ► which was really pretty good, actually.

01:05:36 ◼   ► I mean, you have to pay, it was a few hundred dollars.

01:05:38 ◼   ► I think it was like three or five, I can't remember.

01:05:40 ◼   ► But in a lot of ways it's worth it

01:05:43 ◼   ► enough to go through the aggravation,

01:05:45 ◼   ► and it was relatively quick.

01:05:47 ◼   ► - There's brokers you can use, which sounds good.

01:05:49 ◼   ► And again, these are, for most people,

01:05:51 ◼   ► it is by far and away the second most expensive thing

01:05:54 ◼   ► they're ever gonna purchase, right?

01:05:56 ◼   ► Your home is the most expensive.

01:05:59 ◼   ► And then this, we talk about this Apple stuff all the time,

01:06:01 ◼   ► but even my very expensive, maxed out MacBook Pro

01:06:06 ◼   ► was like $5,000, right?

01:06:09 ◼   ► And that's, I got a MacBook Pro,

01:06:12 ◼   ► I didn't get the 16 inch, so I would've had to pay more.

01:06:14 ◼   ► But I got the most RAM and the biggest SSD

01:06:17 ◼   ► and the fastest processor I could.

01:06:20 ◼   ► That's $5,000, right?

01:06:21 ◼   ► So cars are 40--

01:06:24 ◼   ► - Eight of a really good, of a good car.

01:06:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, so, but it's kinda nutty.

01:06:29 ◼   ► Nobody would buy a house without going through

01:06:31 ◼   ► professional realtor who's on your side, right?

01:06:36 ◼   ► And again, I hope--

01:06:38 ◼   ► - People do, people do, yeah, I mean, I think,

01:06:40 ◼   ► that does happen, but yeah, I wouldn't do it.

01:06:42 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, I shouldn't say never.

01:06:43 ◼   ► But the people who do it at least think

01:06:45 ◼   ► they themselves are expert enough to do it, right?

01:06:47 ◼   ► And whereas you probably should be going on to a lot

01:06:50 ◼   ► and buying a car without some kind of broke,

01:06:52 ◼   ► and again, somebody who you pay a couple hundred dollars to

01:06:55 ◼   ► who can save you a couple of thousand dollars.

01:06:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, right, right.

01:06:59 ◼   ► - And it's like, oh, this--

01:07:01 ◼   ► - And it's a question of what's your time worth, too.

01:07:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is how, oh, this is how business works.

01:07:06 ◼   ► I see, you're supposed to make money.

01:07:08 ◼   ► - But it's weird here in the United States

01:07:09 ◼   ► 'cause nothing else works the same.

01:07:10 ◼   ► - No, nothing works the same.

01:07:11 ◼   ► - Whereas you go, like, going to Hong Kong

01:07:13 ◼   ► and haggled over things in the street and stuff like that,

01:07:16 ◼   ► and you go other places and lots of other places

01:07:19 ◼   ► in the world and you haggle over things.

01:07:20 ◼   ► But here in the US, cars are the only thing.

01:07:23 ◼   ► - Right, and it's--

01:07:24 ◼   ► - They have good houses, I guess,

01:07:25 ◼   ► but that's between two parties or two people

01:07:29 ◼   ► rather than a business and a person.

01:07:33 ◼   ► - So I don't know, it just seems to me

01:07:35 ◼   ► like GM is heading into a dark place,

01:07:37 ◼   ► that they've looked at the possibility

01:07:40 ◼   ► of the computerization of cars,

01:07:43 ◼   ► which everything, that's the overarching theme

01:07:47 ◼   ► of the whole world for the last few decades,

01:07:51 ◼   ► is everything is turning into computers,

01:07:53 ◼   ► and it gives us stuff to talk about and write about.

01:07:57 ◼   ► But it leads to dark places,

01:08:02 ◼   ► when you start thinking about things like,

01:08:04 ◼   ► oh, we'll collect every single bit of data

01:08:05 ◼   ► about how they drive their car and when

01:08:08 ◼   ► and where they've gone and how fast they've gone.

01:08:10 ◼   ► And I guess, who was driving,

01:08:13 ◼   ► if there's some kind of connection

01:08:15 ◼   ► to your phone with Bluetooth?

01:08:16 ◼   ► Even though it's not CarPlay,

01:08:18 ◼   ► they could know who's the driver or--

01:08:20 ◼   ► - I'm sure there are, yeah,

01:08:21 ◼   ► there are other ways they can figure it out.

01:08:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, it's not hard to think

01:08:25 ◼   ► of ways to figure this out.

01:08:26 ◼   ► And you start down that path,

01:08:28 ◼   ► and it just feels not a good place.

01:08:32 ◼   ► But I guess, and as much as we complain about it,

01:08:35 ◼   ► all of these other ways that computers

01:08:37 ◼   ► have made experiences worse,

01:08:40 ◼   ► I keep complaining about 'em,

01:08:42 ◼   ► but they keep happening.

01:08:44 ◼   ► My big one is the computerization of TV,

01:08:48 ◼   ► which started to me with TiVo

01:08:52 ◼   ► and what was the TiVo rival?

01:08:55 ◼   ► I always forget, 'cause I joined Team TiVo very early on.

01:08:58 ◼   ► But in the late '90s when DVRs were brand new,

01:09:02 ◼   ► it was TiVo and some other company that didn't make it.

01:09:06 ◼   ► But the big deal was the other one

01:09:08 ◼   ► had a 30-second skip button,

01:09:10 ◼   ► and TiVo never added a 30-second,

01:09:13 ◼   ► or they did very, very recently,

01:09:15 ◼   ► which is a digression I should save

01:09:17 ◼   ► for when my fellow TiVo user, John Siracusa, is on the show.

01:09:22 ◼   ► But the gist of it was you'd buy TiVos and the other one,

01:09:26 ◼   ► and the idea was this makes your TV so much better for you,

01:09:30 ◼   ► because you can record all of your favorite shows,

01:09:33 ◼   ► and you subscribe to them,

01:09:35 ◼   ► so you don't have to memorize, oh, like with a VCR,

01:09:39 ◼   ► the dream of, oh, I'll just always record my favorite show

01:09:42 ◼   ► every Tuesday night at nine.

01:09:44 ◼   ► You've always gotta have a fresh tape,

01:09:46 ◼   ► the right tape in there,

01:09:47 ◼   ► and the programming of the VCR was notoriously bad.

01:09:52 ◼   ► It was a recurring stand-up bit for decades

01:09:56 ◼   ► that everybody's VCR just blinked 12.00

01:09:59 ◼   ► because nobody even knew how to set the time

01:10:01 ◼   ► on the damn thing.

01:10:02 ◼   ► And we effectively just used our,

01:10:04 ◼   ► most of us used our VCRs to play movies.

01:10:08 ◼   ► You'd go to the Blockbuster and get a movie

01:10:10 ◼   ► and put it in play.

01:10:11 ◼   ► The recording was such a pain because tapes sucked,

01:10:14 ◼   ► and the TiVo is just, no,

01:10:16 ◼   ► just tell it that your favorite show is NYPD Blue

01:10:19 ◼   ► from the '90s, and now every night, every week,

01:10:23 ◼   ► it'll just automatically record, and it'll be there,

01:10:25 ◼   ► and you can watch it on your time,

01:10:27 ◼   ► and there is a fast-forward button,

01:10:29 ◼   ► so if there are parts of the show, like the ads,

01:10:32 ◼   ► that you would like to skip, you just go blip, blip, blip,

01:10:35 ◼   ► and then you go right past them.

01:10:37 ◼   ► And anyway, the computer was there to just

01:10:40 ◼   ► improve it for you.

01:10:41 ◼   ► You watch the shows when you watch

01:10:43 ◼   ► instead of when they're broadcast,

01:10:45 ◼   ► and you have a fast-forward and rewind and pause button.

01:10:49 ◼   ► The pause itself was breakthrough.

01:10:51 ◼   ► Like it used to be, you'd be watching something

01:10:53 ◼   ► and you had to go to the bathroom.

01:10:55 ◼   ► You'd just be like, oh god, what am I gonna do?

01:10:58 ◼   ► And we've come around to the fact now

01:11:01 ◼   ► where computers are being used for streaming

01:11:04 ◼   ► to show you ads you can't skip, right?

01:11:07 ◼   ► That's, they're like, well, we'll solve this problem.

01:11:11 ◼   ► We'll make this ad unskippable,

01:11:13 ◼   ► and even though you pay some amount of money

01:11:17 ◼   ► for this level of Hulu or whatever,

01:11:20 ◼   ► because your level includes ads, they're unskippable.

01:11:24 ◼   ► You can fast-forward the show as much as you want.

01:11:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, right, all you want, yeah, right.

01:11:29 ◼   ► Skip the show if you want to, but you have to watch the ad.

01:11:31 ◼   ► - All right, and my wife watches a couple of shows on,

01:11:34 ◼   ► I think it's Peacock, and she watches enough of these things

01:11:38 ◼   ► where she's got better opinions

01:11:40 ◼   ► about the streaming services than I do.

01:11:43 ◼   ► She's figured out, if she pauses a show halfway through,

01:11:48 ◼   ► it'll remember where she was,

01:11:50 ◼   ► but it won't give her credit for the ads

01:11:52 ◼   ► she's already watched if she waits 48 hours

01:11:55 ◼   ► before watching again, and then all of a sudden,

01:11:58 ◼   ► she has to watch the same unskippable ads

01:12:00 ◼   ► she already had seen, and then she just wants

01:12:03 ◼   ► to throw the Apple TV remote out the window.

01:12:06 ◼   ► But that's where we've gone.

01:12:08 ◼   ► It's clearly, unskippable ads through a computer

01:12:12 ◼   ► is anti-user, right?

01:12:14 ◼   ► And you know the thinking behind it.

01:12:17 ◼   ► It's, well, that if we don't make them unskippable,

01:12:20 ◼   ► people will skip them.

01:12:22 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, for sure, yeah.

01:12:25 ◼   ► The worst was always, speaking of Biff,

01:12:27 ◼   ► I would watch these shows, these superhero shows on the CW,

01:12:32 ◼   ► and a lot of times, this was a while ago,

01:12:35 ◼   ► where I used to buy some of them off of iTunes,

01:12:37 ◼   ► but there were others that I was watching for the show

01:12:39 ◼   ► that I didn't want to own or whatever,

01:12:41 ◼   ► and so I would watch it on their CW app.

01:12:44 ◼   ► And I think they were challenged to get advertisers a lot.

01:12:48 ◼   ► It's like, it would always be like,

01:12:49 ◼   ► you get a detergent ad or something like that,

01:12:51 ◼   ► and then, but then they would show you ads

01:12:53 ◼   ► for their own shows, and often, they would show you the ad

01:12:56 ◼   ► for the show that you're watching,

01:12:59 ◼   ► which I always thought was hilarious.

01:13:00 ◼   ► It's like, I am literally watching this show right now.

01:13:02 ◼   ► Why are you showing me an unskippable ad

01:13:05 ◼   ► for the same show that I'm watching?

01:13:09 ◼   ► Anyway, I think unskippable ads are coming soon

01:13:13 ◼   ► to a car from General Motors near you.

01:13:16 ◼   ► I really do, and it's, I don't know.

01:13:20 ◼   ► It's just, again, I'm complaining now.

01:13:24 ◼   ► I'll complain when it happens.

01:13:25 ◼   ► I won't buy one of their cars.

01:13:26 ◼   ► - Hit the get-go. - Right.

01:13:28 ◼   ► I guess, and the problem, and again,

01:13:30 ◼   ► I don't even rent cars very frequently.

01:13:32 ◼   ► A lot of times, when I travel, most of the time,

01:13:34 ◼   ► when I go to California for Apple-type things,

01:13:36 ◼   ► I don't rent a car 'cause I don't really need one.

01:13:39 ◼   ► I just take an Uber or a cab from the airport,

01:13:43 ◼   ► just use Uber everywhere, but I do rent cars sometimes,

01:13:47 ◼   ► and that's, a lot of times, my personal experience

01:13:50 ◼   ► driving General Motors vehicles is through rental cars.

01:13:53 ◼   ► I'm not looking forward to winding up

01:13:57 ◼   ► with a car that doesn't have carplay and shows me ads.

01:14:01 ◼   ► I mean, 'cause you can only imagine that the rental cars

01:14:05 ◼   ► will have a different version of the operating system

01:14:08 ◼   ► optimized for renters.

01:14:10 ◼   ► - For rental cars. - Right.

01:14:12 ◼   ► - That would be interesting, yeah,

01:14:14 ◼   ► that will be interesting to see if that's what happens.

01:14:16 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:14:18 ◼   ► It's a, yeah, but it's a bad set of user experiences

01:14:23 ◼   ► all the way down. - It really is.

01:14:24 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break here

01:14:25 ◼   ► and talk about a good user experience.

01:14:27 ◼   ► How's that for a segue?

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01:16:42 ◼   ► I talk about Squarespace a lot, Jon.

01:16:46 ◼   ► I do, they're great.

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01:16:50 ◼   ► that they're a continuing sponsor, but it does,

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01:17:03 ◼   ► I had one other thing that I wanted to talk to you about,

01:17:07 ◼   ► which was, we talked about the CarPlay.

01:17:11 ◼   ► Huh, well, what's on your list?

01:17:15 ◼   ► - Was it Blue Sky?

01:17:16 ◼   ► - We could, do you wanna talk?

01:17:18 ◼   ► - Well, we could talk a little bit about Blue Sky.

01:17:20 ◼   ► I'm not an expert, but--

01:17:21 ◼   ► - Did you get in on the Blue Sky?

01:17:23 ◼   ► - I am in, yeah, yeah,

01:17:25 ◼   ► and I'm mostly just lurking at this point,

01:17:28 ◼   ► and it really did blow up this past week

01:17:30 ◼   ► 'cause it seemed like it was,

01:17:32 ◼   ► as far as the people that I follow,

01:17:34 ◼   ► which was not many to begin at the beginning of the week,

01:17:37 ◼   ► and is significantly more now,

01:17:40 ◼   ► there was really just one guy who was going before this week,

01:17:44 ◼   ► and now it's, there's a lot more,

01:17:46 ◼   ► there's a lot more traffic, I will say that for sure.

01:17:49 ◼   ► They seem to be, for the most part,

01:17:51 ◼   ► it's a lot of tech people, I think.

01:17:53 ◼   ► It's a lot of ex-Twitter people.

01:17:55 ◼   ► It's a lot of tech people at other tech companies,

01:17:58 ◼   ► and it's not a lot of,

01:18:02 ◼   ► at least the people who are most vocal on there

01:18:04 ◼   ► are not the people that I interact with the most currently,

01:18:09 ◼   ► at any rate.

01:18:10 ◼   ► - The basic idea is, and it is a good name even,

01:18:13 ◼   ► I think, Blue Sky?

01:18:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, sure.

01:18:15 ◼   ► - But back before the Empire,

01:18:19 ◼   ► back in the--

01:18:23 ◼   ► - Before the dark days.

01:18:24 ◼   ► - Before the dark days, before the Emperor,

01:18:28 ◼   ► Twitter had, under Jack Dorsey's leadership,

01:18:31 ◼   ► started this Blue Sky project

01:18:35 ◼   ► to sort of re-envision Twitter

01:18:38 ◼   ► as a open protocol public service

01:18:41 ◼   ► that wouldn't be centralized under one company's control,

01:18:46 ◼   ► like Twitter, like Instagram, like Facebook, right?

01:18:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, so which is funny,

01:18:53 ◼   ► because a lot of people had asked me for codes,

01:18:54 ◼   ► like, I wanna get my name, and I was like, okay, you can,

01:18:57 ◼   ► but it's basically the same thing as Mastodon,

01:18:59 ◼   ► you're getting your name on a particular server.

01:19:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, I had an impression of Blue Sky

01:19:04 ◼   ► when it was announced that,

01:19:06 ◼   ► I've met Jack Dorsey once or twice.

01:19:12 ◼   ► He was at an Apple event a couple years ago,

01:19:14 ◼   ► and I said hi to him.

01:19:15 ◼   ► Back in the very early years of Daring Fireball,

01:19:19 ◼   ► he sent me some, and he always had,

01:19:22 ◼   ► he's always been obsessed with very clever domains.

01:19:25 ◼   ► I think he had something like GU.ST,

01:19:29 ◼   ► and anyway, he sent,

01:19:30 ◼   ► it was before, when he was just like an engineer

01:19:33 ◼   ► working at Odeo, the company that started Twitter,

01:19:36 ◼   ► maybe even before he was hired there,

01:19:38 ◼   ► he was just sort of an interesting fellow,

01:19:40 ◼   ► but he wrote, and after I invented Markdown,

01:19:43 ◼   ► he wrote a little Mac utility

01:19:46 ◼   ► that would create a system service

01:19:51 ◼   ► that would process Markdown in any app.

01:19:54 ◼   ► It was super clever.

01:19:55 ◼   ► I actually used, there's a bunch of better ways to do it now.

01:19:59 ◼   ► You could do it through Automator.

01:20:01 ◼   ► I'm sure you could do it through shortcuts too now,

01:20:03 ◼   ► and just pick your own Markdown.

01:20:05 ◼   ► There's a dozen ways to do it,

01:20:06 ◼   ► but Automator didn't exist at the time,

01:20:08 ◼   ► so it wasn't easy.

01:20:10 ◼   ► Even though Macs had Perl and Still Do built in,

01:20:15 ◼   ► there wasn't an easy way.

01:20:16 ◼   ► Anyway, Jack Dorsey did that and sent me an email about it,

01:20:19 ◼   ► so I know him a little bit,

01:20:22 ◼   ► but my impression of him is that he's,

01:20:24 ◼   ► he's like a lot of very, very successful people.

01:20:29 ◼   ► He's just, he's very unusual,

01:20:30 ◼   ► and he does sort of have, I think, very clear,

01:20:34 ◼   ► I mean, I think he's said this publicly,

01:20:36 ◼   ► but he aspires to a certain, what's the word?

01:20:42 ◼   ► Idealism, he's an idealist, right?

01:20:47 ◼   ► And he's, I think he could see what a mess Twitter

01:20:52 ◼   ► had sort of become and had an idea in his head

01:20:55 ◼   ► for a sort of utopian alternative that would be open,

01:21:00 ◼   ► for all the reasons that open is better than closed

01:21:05 ◼   ► for social networking, there's lots of trade-offs,

01:21:08 ◼   ► and that Blue Sky was the,

01:21:09 ◼   ► and I just thought this is never gonna come to fruition.

01:21:11 ◼   ► This is, it's a fan, and he's too idealistic.

01:21:16 ◼   ► It's a certain level you need to be practical

01:21:18 ◼   ► to actually get something to launch,

01:21:21 ◼   ► and I didn't think anything would come of it.

01:21:23 ◼   ► I don't know if anything ever would have come with it if--

01:21:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm not, I'm definitely not convinced at this point,

01:21:29 ◼   ► but it's, like I said, it's taking off now,

01:21:31 ◼   ► definitely, instead of having a moment at this point,

01:21:33 ◼   ► but it seems, I said this someplace,

01:21:35 ◼   ► I don't remember where, but it seems like it is the answer

01:21:39 ◼   ► if you think Twitter's problems were technical.

01:21:42 ◼   ► And they're really, I mean, they are,

01:21:46 ◼   ► some of them definitely were, for sure,

01:21:48 ◼   ► and maybe this is an answer for those problems,

01:21:50 ◼   ► but it's definitely not been an answer, I don't think,

01:21:52 ◼   ► for many other problems, because they've had a whole bunch,

01:21:55 ◼   ► and they've already had, first of all,

01:21:57 ◼   ► you can't block anybody as far as,

01:21:58 ◼   ► unless they just recently added that,

01:22:00 ◼   ► but you, they had a problem because their invite codes

01:22:05 ◼   ► were apparently not long enough,

01:22:07 ◼   ► and people were, bad actors were brute forcing them

01:22:10 ◼   ► and getting onto the platform and making it miserable for--

01:22:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, I-- - For certain people.

01:22:15 ◼   ► - Well, and I think that's the idealism showing through,

01:22:18 ◼   ► and I know it's not Jack Dorsey who coded that,

01:22:21 ◼   ► but I think there's a certain,

01:22:23 ◼   ► hey, why make these invite codes, I think there were URLs,

01:22:27 ◼   ► 'cause I just got-- - Pretty, something like that,

01:22:29 ◼   ► yeah, because the first two,

01:22:31 ◼   ► there were like three sections,

01:22:32 ◼   ► and the first two were just like Blue Sky,

01:22:34 ◼   ► whatever the domain name is. - Yeah, yeah.

01:22:36 ◼   ► I've always thought, and yeah, this is a good topic,

01:22:38 ◼   ► I'm glad we're talking about it,

01:22:39 ◼   ► 'cause I've always been fascinated

01:22:41 ◼   ► by the mystery of traction.

01:22:45 ◼   ► How does a product or service gain traction,

01:22:49 ◼   ► and then once it does gain traction,

01:22:51 ◼   ► how do you keep it going?

01:22:54 ◼   ► And there are certain things that become so institutionalized

01:22:59 ◼   ► in our culture that you just don't even think

01:23:04 ◼   ► about it anymore, right?

01:23:05 ◼   ► Like, I don't wanna go on a long tangent

01:23:07 ◼   ► about Fox News and Tucker Carlson

01:23:09 ◼   ► and all the fun and adventures they've had,

01:23:12 ◼   ► but with all the recent news about them canning

01:23:16 ◼   ► Tucker Carlson, it just reminded me again

01:23:20 ◼   ► of just how weird a thing cable news is.

01:23:24 ◼   ► It's a very weird product, and everybody who has cable TV,

01:23:28 ◼   ► you've got MSNBC and CNN and Fox News,

01:23:30 ◼   ► and they've got financial channels,

01:23:33 ◼   ► and they just show news all the time,

01:23:36 ◼   ► even though there's not that much news,

01:23:38 ◼   ► and so they're just constantly, if you flip to them

01:23:41 ◼   ► in the middle of the day, constantly trying

01:23:44 ◼   ► to subtly convince you that there's something important

01:23:47 ◼   ► going on that you need to know about and stay tuned,

01:23:51 ◼   ► because it's, oh, you're never gonna believe

01:23:53 ◼   ► what's going on on Capitol Hill,

01:23:55 ◼   ► but we've got a reporter there, blah, blah,

01:23:57 ◼   ► but it has traction, cable news has, it is.

01:24:01 ◼   ► - It surprises me how long it has retained

01:24:04 ◼   ► that traction, too.

01:24:05 ◼   ► I mean, I don't, I haven't subscribed to a cable package

01:24:08 ◼   ► in, well, we did for a while when Karen's dad

01:24:11 ◼   ► was living here 'cause he wanted to watch sports,

01:24:12 ◼   ► but since then, prior to that and since then,

01:24:17 ◼   ► for 15 years or something like that,

01:24:20 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe it's not that long,

01:24:21 ◼   ► it seems like it's been that long,

01:24:23 ◼   ► but I've not subscribed to a cable package.

01:24:26 ◼   ► - Speaking of sports, how about the pickleball, right?

01:24:31 ◼   ► You, have you played pickleball?

01:24:33 ◼   ► - Pickleball a long time ago.

01:24:36 ◼   ► - All right. - I played pickleball

01:24:37 ◼   ► like 35 years ago, probably, for the first time.

01:24:41 ◼   ► I remember it distinctly.

01:24:43 ◼   ► - So for those of you, if you don't know,

01:24:46 ◼   ► pickleball is sort of like if tennis and ping pong

01:24:49 ◼   ► had a baby, so it's, like, I think by area,

01:24:54 ◼   ► a pickleball court is one third the size of a tennis court

01:24:59 ◼   ► and you play with like a wiffle ball,

01:25:01 ◼   ► like a softball-sized plastic ball,

01:25:03 ◼   ► and you have hard, like, plastic paddles,

01:25:07 ◼   ► and so you're playing a game that's like plastic paddles

01:25:11 ◼   ► hitting a plastic ball, so it's got like a ping pong-like

01:25:14 ◼   ► sound, but it's, you're not at a table,

01:25:17 ◼   ► you're on a court and you can work up a sweat,

01:25:19 ◼   ► and it's sort of a tennis-sized net,

01:25:22 ◼   ► and it's, here in the US, it's taking off,

01:25:25 ◼   ► it's very, very popular.

01:25:27 ◼   ► - I, it's wild, right?

01:25:28 ◼   ► I mean, 'cause like I said, I played it 35 years ago,

01:25:30 ◼   ► and then now I'm reading, like, pickleball takes

01:25:33 ◼   ► sweeping the country.

01:25:34 ◼   ► - And really?

01:25:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's sweeping the country,

01:25:36 ◼   ► and they're doing things like public parks

01:25:38 ◼   ► are repurposing tennis courts to be pickleball courts,

01:25:42 ◼   ► and because there's demand for it,

01:25:44 ◼   ► but the tennis players are annoyed

01:25:46 ◼   ► because pickleball makes--

01:25:48 ◼   ► - Of course.

01:25:49 ◼   ► - It makes a clacking noise.

01:25:50 ◼   ► Some people are--

01:25:51 ◼   ► - And kids with their pickleballs.

01:25:52 ◼   ► - Right, they're annoyed by the clacking noises

01:25:54 ◼   ► or something like that, or maybe they're annoyed.

01:25:56 ◼   ► - But it's easier, it's easier to play

01:25:59 ◼   ► 'cause the ball is sort of less reactive

01:26:01 ◼   ► than like a tennis ball.

01:26:02 ◼   ► It's not gonna go flying off into the distance

01:26:05 ◼   ► if you hit it the wrong way.

01:26:06 ◼   ► - Right, right, yeah.

01:26:08 ◼   ► Whereas a tennis ball, I played some tennis

01:26:10 ◼   ► when I was younger, and yes, sometimes, even when you're--

01:26:13 ◼   ► - You hit it, you hit it, and it just,

01:26:16 ◼   ► you can lose a tennis ball easily.

01:26:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, you gotta bring a lot of tennis balls

01:26:19 ◼   ► to the tennis court, you do, and you really could,

01:26:22 ◼   ► you're not gonna lose the pickleball.

01:26:24 ◼   ► - You're not gonna lose the pickleball.

01:26:25 ◼   ► - I want, I have not played it, but I do,

01:26:27 ◼   ► I used to play some tennis, I was not good,

01:26:30 ◼   ► I was very, didn't play like on the team.

01:26:32 ◼   ► But I was athletic enough that I could credibly play.

01:26:37 ◼   ► I could serve, I could hit a ball,

01:26:39 ◼   ► I played, 'cause I played baseball,

01:26:40 ◼   ► I had some fundamental athletic ability

01:26:45 ◼   ► to hit a fast-moving small ball with a stick

01:26:48 ◼   ► as it comes at me, thanks to baseball, mostly.

01:26:51 ◼   ► I used to be very good at ping pong as a,

01:26:53 ◼   ► like, I don't know, 11 year old or something.

01:26:56 ◼   ► I won some kind of county tournament

01:26:59 ◼   ► for like, I don't know, it wasn't like I was into ping pong,

01:27:03 ◼   ► but you'd go to the local playground,

01:27:06 ◼   ► and if you won your local playground's ping pong tournament,

01:27:09 ◼   ► you could play kids from other areas, and I beat them.

01:27:11 ◼   ► - Yeah. - So I'm pretty good

01:27:13 ◼   ► at ping pong, and I need to get in shape.

01:27:15 ◼   ► So this pickleball looks like, and I like,

01:27:18 ◼   ► and competition is a thing,

01:27:21 ◼   ► like I used to play recreational basketball

01:27:23 ◼   ► until I got too old, and maybe I'll get back into that

01:27:26 ◼   ► and play old man slow, low to the ground basketball, right?

01:27:31 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Like basketball.

01:27:33 ◼   ► Basketball is, the older you get,

01:27:37 ◼   ► the more it's more like a soccer.

01:27:39 ◼   ► It just stays, everything's low.

01:27:42 ◼   ► - Everything's low until somebody shoots the ball,

01:27:44 ◼   ► and then the ball falls to the ground and drops.

01:27:46 ◼   ► But I realize I need competition to drive me to exercise.

01:27:51 ◼   ► I just don't, I don't have it in me

01:27:53 ◼   ► to get on a stationary bike and just pedal.

01:27:57 ◼   ► I'm not gonna do it.

01:27:59 ◼   ► Now I'm old, and I don't know about you,

01:28:01 ◼   ► but I keep getting older every year.

01:28:03 ◼   ► - Yeah. (laughs)

01:28:05 ◼   ► I say it beats the alternative, but I'm not, yeah.

01:28:08 ◼   ► - But anyway. - Kinda wondering.

01:28:09 ◼   ► - Pickleball looks like something I would very much enjoy.

01:28:11 ◼   ► I like the competition.

01:28:12 ◼   ► It looks like I'd work up a sweat, and our local, the gym,

01:28:16 ◼   ► we had a gym that's a couple blocks away from us

01:28:18 ◼   ► that closed during the pandemic for the obvious reason,

01:28:21 ◼   ► and then they took advantage of that

01:28:24 ◼   ► to close for an extended period of time

01:28:27 ◼   ► to do major renovations that they'd been planning for deck.

01:28:30 ◼   ► You know, you live in the city, and things,

01:28:33 ◼   ► it's harder to do major construction.

01:28:36 ◼   ► So, and they're just reopening, and one of the bigs,

01:28:39 ◼   ► it's like, they got this, they got that pickleball.

01:28:42 ◼   ► Pickleball, we've got pickleball now.

01:28:43 ◼   ► Now we did not have pickleball before.

01:28:46 ◼   ► Lots of you mentioned it before

01:28:47 ◼   ► that we did not have pickleball,

01:28:49 ◼   ► and now we've got pickleball.

01:28:51 ◼   ► I'm into it, but I'm fascinated.

01:28:54 ◼   ► The sport is not new.

01:28:55 ◼   ► You yourself just said it came from the West Coast,

01:28:59 ◼   ► so that's probably why you were familiar with it.

01:29:01 ◼   ► - I mean, that's the, like, when I was in college,

01:29:03 ◼   ► I spent my junior year in Japan,

01:29:06 ◼   ► and I stopped in Seattle on my way back, mid-'80s,

01:29:10 ◼   ► and that was the first time I played pickleball

01:29:12 ◼   ► was in Seattle, yeah.

01:29:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's-- - I'd never heard of it.

01:29:15 ◼   ► - It's underhand serving, so there's, again,

01:29:17 ◼   ► the ball's not moving 100 miles an hour.

01:29:19 ◼   ► - Right. - Enough to work.

01:29:20 ◼   ► - It's designed to be something that's easy to pick up,

01:29:22 ◼   ► and probably like ping pong, you could probably

01:29:24 ◼   ► get really good at it. - Yeah, yeah, I think--

01:29:26 ◼   ► - Like, I mean, you see people play professional ping pong,

01:29:29 ◼   ► and you're like, oh my God.

01:29:29 ◼   ► - Yeah. - There's definitely

01:29:31 ◼   ► a difference between the average player

01:29:34 ◼   ► and people who get really, really good at it.

01:29:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:29:37 ◼   ► Somehow I've gotten, I don't know how,

01:29:39 ◼   ► because I didn't ask for it,

01:29:40 ◼   ► but you know how, like, when you check Instagram,

01:29:42 ◼   ► it's like, all of a sudden Instagram thinks