The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► What a week. What a week.

00:00:02 ◼   ► God. So I thought that we would be talking about my interview with

00:00:08 ◼   ► Craig Federighi and Eddy Cue and Apple Software Quality and we can get to that later

00:00:13 ◼   ► but obviously this is this is a week when there's actually a very clear... I can't wait to get to that later.

00:00:19 ◼   ► So let's I mean for anybody who's had their head in the ground all week

00:00:25 ◼   ► Or anybody who I guess is listening, you know

00:00:28 ◼   ► I guess you always have to preface these podcasts because who knows when somebody's gonna listen to you know

00:00:32 ◼   ► Go back and listen to old episodes, but this was the week

00:00:34 ◼   ► where

00:00:36 ◼   ► Tuesday night Apple published an open letter from Tim Cook

00:00:39 ◼   ► Revealing that the FBI had obtained a court order to compel Apple to

00:00:46 ◼   ► Long story short supply the FBI with a custom version of iOS that would help them

00:00:54 ◼   ► break the passcode of an iPhone 5C that was owned by,

00:00:59 ◼   ► or wasn't really owned by, was used by one of the shooters

00:01:06 ◼   ► in the San Bernardino incident a few months ago.

00:01:10 ◼   ► - Right.

00:01:11 ◼   ► - And Apple is saying that they have helped

00:01:15 ◼   ► and cooperated with law enforcement many times in the past,

00:01:19 ◼   ► and I think they might still in the future,

00:01:21 ◼   ► but in terms of what they're willing to do,

00:01:23 ◼   ► supplying, you know, more or less writing malware for iOS is a line that they

00:01:28 ◼   ► don't want to cross. And then all hell broke loose.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Well I have a lot of respect for Apple for standing up for it, you know, for

00:01:40 ◼   ► what they believe in. They could just as easily have, you know, gone along

00:01:46 ◼   ► with it and kept quiet, but they didn't. Yeah, I wrote it, you know, it's a

00:01:52 ◼   ► - Funny thing, we can write about this too.

00:01:54 ◼   ► It's an interesting, I took an interesting strategy

00:01:59 ◼   ► this week on "Daring Firebolt."

00:02:00 ◼   ► I've been very active, I have a lot of posts on this,

00:02:02 ◼   ► but I didn't write like a feature of a column or article.

00:02:05 ◼   ► It's all just links and my commentary interspersed in there

00:02:09 ◼   ► without really writing one big article.

00:02:11 ◼   ► And I expected, like when I woke up Wednesday morning,

00:02:14 ◼   ► I thought, well, I gotta write,

00:02:15 ◼   ► I have to write like a big piece about this.

00:02:17 ◼   ► And as I started like reading everything that was out there,

00:02:21 ◼   ► I was like, you know, one way to put it would be that

00:02:24 ◼   ► I spent the week blogging, not writing.

00:02:26 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Right.

00:02:27 ◼   ► - You know what I mean?

00:02:28 ◼   ► And in a way, I feel like it was a better use of my time

00:02:31 ◼   ► and a better service to the readers of Daring Fireball

00:02:35 ◼   ► because I found so many good articles

00:02:37 ◼   ► that other people had written

00:02:39 ◼   ► that were making the points I wanted to make

00:02:40 ◼   ► that rather than remake them myself,

00:02:43 ◼   ► why not just point them to them

00:02:45 ◼   ► and then add my two cents on this?

00:02:47 ◼   ► But anyway, one of the points I did make,

00:02:49 ◼   ► And I really think it's important for people who listen to our shows or read our websites because I think

00:02:53 ◼   ► overwhelmingly the people who like read during fireball or the loop and listen to the talk show are

00:02:58 ◼   ► already on our side and that they they and that they have a basic enough grasp of the way encryption works that they

00:03:04 ◼   ► See apples point

00:03:07 ◼   ► But I really can't emphasize enough how many you know how I

00:03:11 ◼   ► Don't we're in an echo chamber here with the people who agree with this and if you get outside it and go to the real

00:03:17 ◼   ► world where people don't understand encryption, the support for Apple is not as clear-cut or

00:03:23 ◼   ► blanket. And it's dangerous for Apple politically that they really are going out on the limb.

00:03:29 ◼   ► >> Yeah, they really are. And it's not funny, I guess, but it's...

00:03:37 ◼   ► When you look at the case that the FBI chose to use this on, I mean, they were very deliberate.

00:03:46 ◼   ► They wanted something that would fire up the public so much against Apple.

00:03:51 ◼   ► And in some ways that's worked. You know, people are saying, in some circles, people are saying

00:04:00 ◼   ► that Apple should comply because these were bad people and we need to stop bad people. But there's

00:04:07 ◼   ► bigger issues than that. It's not just this one issue. Yeah, it's not so much maybe fired up

00:04:13 ◼   ► against Apple is the wrong way to put it. Not to quibble with your words, but it's a

00:04:17 ◼   ► little bit more that people would universally side with the FBI and say, "Well, the FBI

00:04:23 ◼   ► has got to be able to get at these people's phones." And it really is a just perfectly

00:04:29 ◼   ► crafted case from the FBI's perspective because it was a terrible incident. Everybody agrees

00:04:34 ◼   ► with that. I mean, Apple goes out of its way to say, "This is a terrible incident and we'll

00:04:39 ◼   ► do anything we can that we think is within the law and within our the

00:04:45 ◼   ► interest of maintaining overall security for our users to help but let's just

00:04:49 ◼   ► face it I mean the fact that these were people from a Muslim background it it

00:04:56 ◼   ► makes it even worse there's there's an element to and there's a lot you know as

00:04:59 ◼   ► opposed to if it was the guy remember it was just like a week or two prior to

00:05:04 ◼   ► that if it was the guy from Colorado who shot up Planned Parenthood, that wouldn't do it

00:05:11 ◼   ► at the way that having it be suspects of a Muslim descent, just because that's the way

00:05:18 ◼   ► it is, that's human nature.

00:05:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:21 ◼   ► And that's what they're banking on.

00:05:24 ◼   ► Right.

00:05:25 ◼   ► That it's just that the politics of that and the emotional dynamic of that are just overwhelmingly

00:05:32 ◼   ► powerful. And I don't know that it is. I think Ann Apple is saying, maybe not.

00:05:38 ◼   ► Well, and I think if you look at Tim Cook's letter, it's very compelling. I think it was well thought out, very well written, and he brings up some really great points.

00:05:55 ◼   ► I mean, that was written, I mean, you could see Tim saying that.

00:06:00 ◼   ► And I think by now we all can believe what Tim says. He stands on principle,

00:06:10 ◼   ► and he does what he says he's going to do.

00:06:14 ◼   ► Tom Bilyeu (01;01;01;01)

00:06:17 ◼   ► Matthew Panzareno had a good article pointing out the differences, that there's one of the

00:06:24 ◼   ► cynical takes on this is, and it's definitely not just from one source and

00:06:30 ◼   ► Matthew Panzareno's story had a couple of links to it, but I'm gonna paraphrase it,

00:06:34 ◼   ► but that more or less claiming that Apple is showboating and trying to gain

00:06:40 ◼   ► publicity for being, you know, having these super secure phones and, you know,

00:06:46 ◼   ► getting people to say, "Wow, iPhone is so powerful the FBI can't even crack it," and

00:06:50 ◼   ► and using that as a positive thing.

00:06:52 ◼   ► And in the past, Apple has helped the FBI 70 times

00:06:56 ◼   ► to do the same thing.

00:06:58 ◼   ► And, you know, if you wanna be cynical like that

00:07:03 ◼   ► and say that Apple is trying to make this a thing

00:07:05 ◼   ► that brag about the iPhone security, you're welcome to.

00:07:08 ◼   ► But I really think that that's,

00:07:10 ◼   ► I don't think that's the case.

00:07:13 ◼   ► I think it's so risky because now you've got

00:07:15 ◼   ► like presidential candidates, like don't, you know,

00:07:17 ◼   ► ridiculous, ridiculous that I'm talking about

00:07:20 ◼   ► seriously, but he is the lead, the leading Republican presidential candidate is saying flat

00:07:26 ◼   ► out Apple Apple should absolutely who do they think they are? Where his actual words? Who do

00:07:30 ◼   ► they think they are? He'd be you know, they absolutely should comply with this court case

00:07:33 ◼   ► that it's become part of our, you know, political debate. And to say that this is a sure win,

00:07:38 ◼   ► you know, PR wise for Apple is to me, I think you're looking for the cynical angle. But the

00:07:45 ◼   ► bigger difference is that what Apple has done in the past when they've helped law enforcement

00:07:48 ◼   ► is very different. And I know saying very might you might say,

00:07:53 ◼   ► Oh, it seems, you know, just like one little step. It's

00:07:55 ◼   ► different. It's, you know, in the past, they've helped them,

00:07:58 ◼   ► you know, without modifying the software, help them use the

00:08:01 ◼   ► software as is to get data off the phone, right. And in times

00:08:06 ◼   ► past, in years past, a lot less of the information on the phones

00:08:09 ◼   ► was encrypted. It's really only in recent years that the entire

00:08:15 ◼   ► disk of the, you know, storage volume of the iPhone is full disk encrypted. Let me ask you something.

00:08:21 ◼   ► Why do you think the other tech companies haven't taken a stronger stand?

00:08:28 ◼   ► Well, I think it's multifaceted, but I think one of them is that, and I think it was

00:08:39 ◼   ► was Panzareno again who had the, was it the why Apple piece and more or less, no

00:08:44 ◼   ► it wasn't Panzareno, it was Kieran Healy who I linked to, that's right. I'll try to

00:08:50 ◼   ► put that in the show notes, but Kieran Healy, his argument was to

00:08:55 ◼   ► again to paraphrase, Apple's the only company that still makes hardware, that

00:08:59 ◼   ► really is a hardware company and because of that, you know, none of these other

00:09:03 ◼   ► companies, you know, Google, yes, Google makes Nexus devices and yes Microsoft

00:09:07 ◼   ► makes the Nokia phones, which have literally no exaggeration,

00:09:12 ◼   ► like 1.1% market share.

00:09:16 ◼   ► It's not as important to them, whereas Apple's fundamental business is selling

00:09:19 ◼   ► hardware to people.

00:09:20 ◼   ► And that there's a trust issue there that puts Apple in a position

00:09:27 ◼   ► that no other company really is, where this is a big deal.

00:09:31 ◼   ► Secondarily, I think that there are other-- and again,

00:09:34 ◼   ► this is starting to be a little cynical.

00:09:36 ◼   ► but I think that, you know, and the New York Times

00:09:38 ◼   ► has even mentioned this in articles,

00:09:39 ◼   ► but that Apple doesn't depend on government sales

00:09:42 ◼   ► to a large degree, whereas Microsoft just signed,

00:09:45 ◼   ► for example, a huge deal to get the entire

00:09:48 ◼   ► Department of Defense to upgrade all of their PCs

00:09:51 ◼   ► to Windows 10, and that they don't wanna anger them.

00:09:56 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure why Google doesn't take a stronger stand,

00:10:00 ◼   ► but they clearly don't.

00:10:02 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:10:03 ◼   ► - What do you think?

00:10:04 ◼   ► Well, I was talking to Peter Cohen last night,

00:10:08 ◼   ► and Peter said,

00:10:10 ◼   ► maybe they don't want everybody to know

00:10:15 ◼   ► that they've already cooperated with the government,

00:10:17 ◼   ► which is, you know, really cynical, Stan, but,

00:10:21 ◼   ► I don't know, I mean, obviously they don't want

00:10:28 ◼   ► the FBI sites turned on them.

00:10:31 ◼   ► - Right. - You know, they're just

00:10:31 ◼   ► trying to keep their head down.

00:10:33 ◼   ► that's an obvious point, but is there something else in there?

00:10:38 ◼   ► I mean, if they take a big stand,

00:10:42 ◼   ► is the government gonna come back and say,

00:10:43 ◼   ► well, what are you talking about?

00:10:45 ◼   ► You've already given us lots of info.

00:10:48 ◼   ► - Right, that in some way, however, to whatever degree

00:10:51 ◼   ► they've already cooperated with the government in the past

00:10:52 ◼   ► is something the government can hold against them,

00:10:54 ◼   ► publicity-wise.

00:10:55 ◼   ► That might be a good argument there.

00:10:57 ◼   ► And I'll just emphasize, one of the things that's,

00:11:00 ◼   ► I think, overlooked in this,

00:11:02 ◼   ► if you just look at it in broad terms that,

00:11:03 ◼   ► wow, Apple won't cooperate with the FBI

00:11:05 ◼   ► on this San Bernardino case.

00:11:07 ◼   ► They have already, like they, and just for example,

00:11:10 ◼   ► the suspect in this case apparently was using

00:11:13 ◼   ► iCloud backup until a certain point.

00:11:16 ◼   ► And I actually think this is one of the things

00:11:20 ◼   ► that I've been looking around.

00:11:21 ◼   ► I don't know that we on the outside

00:11:23 ◼   ► have a very good understanding of just how available,

00:11:27 ◼   ► what is the encryption on the stuff

00:11:30 ◼   ► that's backed up from iCloud, like when they come.

00:11:34 ◼   ► But anyway, Apple did comply with the FBI

00:11:37 ◼   ► and supplied them with access to some,

00:11:40 ◼   ► some, some subset of their,

00:11:42 ◼   ► whatever is the unencrypted part of the iCloud backup

00:11:45 ◼   ► from the San Bernardino shooter.

00:11:47 ◼   ► The reason the FBI wants the phone

00:11:49 ◼   ► is that there was like six weeks

00:11:51 ◼   ► after the last backup to iCloud,

00:11:53 ◼   ► you know, between the last backup and the incident.

00:11:58 ◼   ► And they're concerned,

00:12:00 ◼   ► And it seems like a reasonable concern that maybe there's some actionable intelligence in that interim.

00:12:07 ◼   ► But it's not like Apple hasn't done what they can. They're just saying, "Here's a line we're not going to draw."

00:12:11 ◼   ► Or, "We are going to draw."

00:12:13 ◼   ► I want to read this one bit from Tim Cook's letter. There's a whole thing that's really good, but I really like this part.

00:12:19 ◼   ► "The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers,

00:12:26 ◼   ► tens of millions of American citizens from sophisticated hackers and cyber criminals.

00:12:29 ◼   ► And here's the, to me, the really compelling part of this.

00:12:33 ◼   ► The same engineers who built strong encryption into the iPhone to protect our users would,

00:12:39 ◼   ► ironically, be ordered to weaken those protections and make our users less safe.

00:12:45 ◼   ► And I, to me, that is really compelling.

00:12:46 ◼   ► I, you know, if you're an engineer at Apple who works on this security stuff, you're more

00:12:52 ◼   ► less your career is devoted to only in one direction making things more secure

00:12:59 ◼   ► for users and then to be compelled to do the exact opposite is I honestly I think

00:13:05 ◼   ► it's something that some people would object to do that some people would say

00:13:08 ◼   ► you know you can court order me to do it but I'm not gonna do it and would they

00:13:12 ◼   ► be right in some sense I mean maybe not Lee I'm not a lawyer I can't I can't say

00:13:17 ◼   ► legally that they could object but certainly morally great

00:13:22 ◼   ► i i mean i i i don't know where this goes

00:13:28 ◼   ► what if

00:13:31 ◼   ► apple is compelled to do this what do they do

00:13:36 ◼   ► well i mean we know what's going to the supreme court either way

00:13:42 ◼   ► I guess. I honestly don't know how stuff works its way through the Supreme Court though.

00:13:49 ◼   ► In a case where the FBI might be saying, "Time is of the essence. We want to get this information while it's still warm."

00:13:58 ◼   ► There's no point to getting it. They're not building a case. One thing to note, just in case anybody has forgotten the details of it,

00:14:04 ◼   ► they're not using this to build a criminal case against the San Bernardino shooters because they're dead.

00:14:10 ◼   ► So, it's really just trying to find actionable intelligence that might lead them to discover

00:14:16 ◼   ► if there was anybody else involved, if there's anybody else they know who they ought to be

00:14:21 ◼   ► looking at who might be planning something in the future.

00:14:26 ◼   ► So in that case, time is of the essence, so I don't know.

00:14:30 ◼   ► I would guess it's going to, though?

00:14:35 ◼   ► the FBI obviously you know in the Justice Department has some sort of path

00:14:39 ◼   ► to expedite you know a case to the Supreme Court. But aren't they using this

00:14:43 ◼   ► more as a precedent so that they can say okay you you've been ordered to do this

00:14:49 ◼   ► and by the way we have these other five phones that we need it done on. Right I

00:14:54 ◼   ► think I think that this is all about precedent I think it's less and again

00:15:00 ◼   ► you can accuse me of being cynical and maybe I'm wrong but it it seems to me

00:15:04 ◼   ► from what I know of the case, that the two San Bernardino suspects didn't don't really

00:15:10 ◼   ► seem like they were part of, you know, a widespread terrorist group. It wasn't like they were

00:15:17 ◼   ► really part of like a al Qaeda or ISIS or whatever, you know, other groups are out there.

00:15:23 ◼   ► That they were just two kooks, you know, and, you know, mentally ill and and poisoned by

00:15:30 ◼   ► this ideology, but it doesn't really seem like they were any kind of masterminds.

00:15:35 ◼   ► I mean, it wasn't really a very—I mean, it was a terrible tragedy, but it really seemed

00:15:39 ◼   ► a little bit more bitterly personal that they went and shot up a place where they worked,

00:15:42 ◼   ► and they had personal beefs with the people who shot it up.

00:15:46 ◼   ► So I think, logically, that the FBI making a big case of this isn't really about getting

00:15:55 ◼   ► information that's going to save people and that they really need it. I think it's

00:16:00 ◼   ► about the precedent. I mean, and that once you've got what if they win this, and they

00:16:05 ◼   ► get this, they have a precedent that says we can come now we can use this precedent

00:16:10 ◼   ► to compel tech companies, not just to give this give us information that they have access

00:16:16 ◼   ► to, but to force them to write software that gives us the access that we want to write.

00:16:23 ◼   ► I mean, and it's all sorts of there's all sorts of implications that this if you take

00:16:28 ◼   ► precedent is as logical that all sorts of things could happen could they compel apple to re-engineer

00:16:34 ◼   ► iMessage to to uh to so that it's not end-to-end encrypted anymore right and the the fallout from

00:16:44 ◼   ► this is endless could be but okay so let's look at it the other way what if apple wins

00:16:54 ◼   ► I think that nothing bad happens.

00:16:58 ◼   ► I think.

00:16:59 ◼   ► I mean, and I guess other than the fact that it's possible that in the future case there

00:17:05 ◼   ► would be one where there's information on a phone that law enforcement has and they

00:17:11 ◼   ► can't get to it and if they could, it would be better for society.

00:17:15 ◼   ► but that sort of situation is,

00:17:20 ◼   ► that's the price of liberty, right?

00:17:25 ◼   ► Like you can't take,

00:17:25 ◼   ► I don't think you can take the absolute,

00:17:27 ◼   ► I personally feel very strongly,

00:17:29 ◼   ► you can't take the absolutist position

00:17:31 ◼   ► that law enforcement should be able to get anything

00:17:33 ◼   ► and everything they want.

00:17:35 ◼   ► - Let's say that the FBI wins,

00:17:37 ◼   ► and now Apple has to write the software

00:17:41 ◼   ► and break into the phone,

00:17:43 ◼   ► but what's stopping people then just not using Apple's built-in things and using another

00:17:51 ◼   ► form of app and strong encryption?

00:17:54 ◼   ► Right.

00:17:55 ◼   ► Do they, does the FBI then need to sue that company to open it up?

00:17:59 ◼   ► Right.

00:18:00 ◼   ► That's one of the reasons that I feel, I honestly feel that the FBI is being driven,

00:18:06 ◼   ► and part of this is really driven by the public statements of like FBI director Comey and

00:18:10 ◼   ► others is that a large part of this is, I hate to say it, because I'd like to think

00:18:17 ◼   ► that we'd have better people in there, but people who genuinely don't understand the

00:18:21 ◼   ► technology.

00:18:22 ◼   ► And they don't understand that either everybody has security through encryption or nobody

00:18:30 ◼   ► does, and that there is no way to have security.

00:18:35 ◼   ► And again, a couple of people have emphasized this.

00:18:38 ◼   ► privacy angles on this but there's I think the security angle is is more

00:18:45 ◼   ► compelling and you know it's a little you know some of its conflated but it's

00:18:49 ◼   ► you know what happens if somebody steals your phone or you leave it in a cab and

00:18:56 ◼   ► somebody gets it and it's it's not it and it's relatively easier there's some

00:19:01 ◼   ► sort of known way to get to the contents of it well there's that's genuine

00:19:06 ◼   ► security problem given the information that a lot of us have on our phones. You know,

00:19:10 ◼   ► financial information, you know, and the personal information, you know, the photos we have

00:19:15 ◼   ► and stuff like that. It's definitely a security thing, but I feel like that the FBI clearly

00:19:23 ◼   ► doesn't see this properly, that they're looking, they're somehow looking for some kind of magic

00:19:28 ◼   ► solution, but it would really, like a law that crippled Apple's ability just to pick

00:19:35 ◼   ► one company, or any US company though, but a US company to not have secure encryption

00:19:42 ◼   ► on these devices would really harm them in the worldwide market. It truly would because

00:19:49 ◼   ► there's absolutely nothing. It wouldn't keep people, bad guys, from having encryption.

00:19:53 ◼   ► It would only keep them from having encryption out of the box on a US-made device. Right?

00:20:00 ◼   ► Isn't that what, I mean, that's more or less what you're saying, right?

00:20:03 ◼   ► Yeah, and okay, so the US government wins this

00:20:07 ◼   ► Then every other government is gonna come and say yeah, we kind of want to look at this fellas phone

00:20:13 ◼   ► Absolutely and you know that there's this funny thing and who knows by the time the show airs

00:20:20 ◼   ► Maybe the times will have a separate story about it. But there was this weird thing. I linked to yesterday where it was actually

00:20:29 ◼   ► Edward Snowden was the one whose Twitter account and he's been all over this on Twitter for obvious reasons

00:20:35 ◼   ► but Edward Snowden noted a passage in a New York Times story on this that was about China and

00:20:42 ◼   ► Like within an hour that whole segment of the article was edited out of the New York Times article and it still isn't back

00:20:49 ◼   ► But basically here's what it said. I'll just read it

00:20:51 ◼   ► This is from a New York Times report China is watching the dispute closely analysts say the Chinese government

00:20:56 ◼   ► does take cues from the United States when it comes to encryption regulations and that it would most likely demand that

00:21:02 ◼   ► multinational companies provide

00:21:04 ◼   ► accommodations similar to those in the United States. Last year Beijing backed off several proposals that would have mandated that foreign firms provide

00:21:11 ◼   ► providing encryption keys for devices sold in China after

00:21:14 ◼   ► heavy pressure from foreign trade groups.

00:21:17 ◼   ► A push from American law enforcement agencies to unlock iPhones would embolden Beijing to demand the same.

00:21:24 ◼   ► I think it's clear.

00:21:28 ◼   ► I mean, China is just one country.

00:21:29 ◼   ► I mean, why wouldn't every country?

00:21:31 ◼   ► - Right, and then what?

00:21:32 ◼   ► Is Apple's gonna need to open up a brand new company

00:21:35 ◼   ► just to deal with all of this stuff?

00:21:38 ◼   ► - Right.

00:21:39 ◼   ► - I mean, does Apple give the software to the FBI

00:21:44 ◼   ► in order to hack it themselves,

00:21:47 ◼   ► or does the FBI give the device to Apple and Apple does it?

00:21:51 ◼   ► - I believe from what I read of this case

00:21:53 ◼   ► FBI has offered either way that they've said whatever you want if you want to

00:21:58 ◼   ► give us the software and have us do it we'll do it if you want us to bring the

00:22:03 ◼   ► device to you and do it at your facilities we'll do that they just want

00:22:06 ◼   ► the code but it's a slippery slope either way I really do think so I

00:22:11 ◼   ► absolutely and I know that slippery slope arguments it maybe they're

00:22:16 ◼   ► overused you know overall just in our debates about all sorts of stuff but I

00:22:21 ◼   ► but I think in this case, it really is a slippery slope.

00:22:26 ◼   ► - Isn't the government's position

00:22:29 ◼   ► that they just want this one device?

00:22:33 ◼   ► That's all we want, we just want this one device.

00:22:36 ◼   ► But once that's done, there's no turning back.

00:22:40 ◼   ► - Right, because that's how the law works.

00:22:42 ◼   ► It's one case sets precedent for future cases.

00:22:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, which is why Apple has to take a stand on this one.

00:22:48 ◼   ► And that's why I think what the government did

00:22:52 ◼   ► in choosing this case was so strategic for them.

00:22:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think, and again, the basic,

00:23:01 ◼   ► just about it with, if you really wanna talk

00:23:04 ◼   ► about good guys and bad guys,

00:23:06 ◼   ► is that even reasonably smart and well-organized bad guys

00:23:11 ◼   ► are going to use their own encryption software.

00:23:14 ◼   ► Not necessarily that they wrote, but that they're going to,

00:23:17 ◼   ► It obviously is out there and the US can't stop

00:23:21 ◼   ► the rest of the world from writing

00:23:23 ◼   ► good secure encryption software.

00:23:25 ◼   ► - Right.

00:23:27 ◼   ► - They're just going to use third party software

00:23:30 ◼   ► if the first party software can.

00:23:32 ◼   ► And maybe for reasonable reasons,

00:23:34 ◼   ► maybe the smart ones already don't trust

00:23:36 ◼   ► anything written by Apple or Google

00:23:39 ◼   ► or any other US company and they're already doing it.

00:23:43 ◼   ► And the dumb bad guys--

00:23:45 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:23:48 ◼   ► They're dumb, right?

00:23:49 ◼   ► So why do you need to make everybody's software insecure?

00:23:53 ◼   ► Do your job, right?

00:23:55 ◼   ► And I guess part of it is that there's an entitlement

00:23:58 ◼   ► in the US, like law enforcement gets so,

00:24:01 ◼   ► in the US is in such a privileged position

00:24:04 ◼   ► in terms of what they get and the way that they're,

00:24:10 ◼   ► you know, they have access to so much stuff.

00:24:13 ◼   ► But that there's a sense of entitlement

00:24:15 ◼   ► that not only should they be able to get stuff,

00:24:16 ◼   ► but they should be able to get whatever they want easily.

00:24:19 ◼   ► And there is, you know, that's not necessarily the case.

00:24:21 ◼   ► If the truth is that it's really,

00:24:23 ◼   ► really mathematically difficult,

00:24:26 ◼   ► or even to the point of calling it impossible

00:24:28 ◼   ► to break the encryption on a device,

00:24:30 ◼   ► well, tough noogies, you know what I mean?

00:24:31 ◼   ► You've got that's, you know, you guys have a tough job.

00:24:34 ◼   ► I mean, I'm not saying that glibly,

00:24:36 ◼   ► and I realized that the stakes can be high

00:24:38 ◼   ► in a criminal case or in an investigation,

00:24:41 ◼   ► but that's just the way it is.

00:24:43 ◼   ► It's really, it's not that different than arguing.

00:24:48 ◼   ► And I go, these analogies sometimes to the real world can get difficult, but it's like,

00:24:58 ◼   ► sometimes people will say, you know, how would you feel if somebody kidnapped a family member

00:25:05 ◼   ► and the police knew where they were,

00:25:10 ◼   ► but they couldn't break down the door.

00:25:12 ◼   ► That's a rough, that's a tough analogy

00:25:15 ◼   ► because I don't think there exists a door

00:25:18 ◼   ► that the police can't break into.

00:25:19 ◼   ► - Right.

00:25:20 ◼   ► - But that's sort, but what if you could make one?

00:25:22 ◼   ► What if somebody invents a door,

00:25:26 ◼   ► you could build a house that the police can't break into?

00:25:30 ◼   ► Would that be illegal?

00:25:31 ◼   ► Not with, there's no law against it now.

00:25:33 ◼   ► you'd have to pass a law specifically against it, right?

00:25:36 ◼   ► It's just that the math is such that we've been able

00:25:38 ◼   ► to make virtual locks through encryption

00:25:42 ◼   ► that are actually unbreakable.

00:25:44 ◼   ► - The government of all organizations tells us to be safe

00:25:52 ◼   ► and tells us to, you know,

00:25:54 ◼   ► not necessarily encrypt everything,

00:25:58 ◼   ► but do everything that you can to protect yourself

00:26:01 ◼   ► your identity and protect all of this stuff. But as soon as they make a backdoor, then

00:26:07 ◼   ► that backdoor is there for everybody. And I don't know what they don't understand

00:26:13 ◼   ► about that. I mean, you mentioned it earlier about these people not understanding the technology,

00:26:18 ◼   ► but do they not care that they're making a backdoor? Or do they really not understand

00:26:25 ◼   ► that once a backdoor is there, it's there for all?

00:26:27 ◼   ► Well, I'll just mention Trump before. I'll pick someone from the other side.

00:26:31 ◼   ► But I've listened to Hillary Clinton talk about this several times.

00:26:36 ◼   ► And her argument is, "We'll put enough smart people in a room,

00:26:41 ◼   ► and I'm sure they'll be able to come up with something."

00:26:44 ◼   ► And I genuinely think she believes that.

00:26:48 ◼   ► But what they're looking for and what they claim that

00:26:54 ◼   ► Smart people at Apple and Google ought to be able to make is is

00:26:57 ◼   ► Something that the FBI can use and no one else can use and that's just not that's not possible

00:27:01 ◼   ► And there's just we keep talking in circles about it, but there's just no way that it could happen

00:27:08 ◼   ► so

00:27:10 ◼   ► Doesn't the government have enough smart people of their own that are telling them?

00:27:15 ◼   ► This is impossible. I don't know there must be at it at a certain level

00:27:21 ◼   ► Right, but that maybe that they're not because they're not at the you know

00:27:25 ◼   ► Executive ranks that they're you know, they're it's treated as well. That's your argument, you know, here's our argument

00:27:33 ◼   ► we want the information and

00:27:36 ◼   ► It seems to be kind of a you know, they've got the blinders on and they can see

00:27:42 ◼   ► Beyond Apple is the information they just have to get through Apple to get it

00:27:48 ◼   ► Yeah, this all fits with something and I think Apple is not surprised by this

00:27:53 ◼   ► I think Apple as I don't you know, I know a couple of these articles have really put this as a

00:27:58 ◼   ► Lynch pin of the Tim Cook era at Apple and I'm not quite sure how much that has to do with the difference between Tim

00:28:05 ◼   ► Cook and Steve Jobs and how much it has to do with just the timing of

00:28:08 ◼   ► you know when jobs got ill enough to step down and

00:28:13 ◼   ► Cook took over, you know, which is when this issue became hot, you know that

00:28:18 ◼   ► that, you know, it just coincides, you know, that the transition from jobs to Cook coincides

00:28:26 ◼   ► with when this, you know, the cell phones as objects of desire from law enforcement really

00:28:32 ◼   ► heated up. But the gist of it is, I heard this years ago from a couple people at Apple, was that

00:28:39 ◼   ► the edict came down from the top, from Tim Cook on down, that anything new that we create that stores

00:28:47 ◼   ► data, we should store in a way that even we can't see it. So that when we get

00:28:55 ◼   ► requests for it, we can say we can't give it to you. And that

00:29:02 ◼   ► anything we already have existing systems that maybe don't comply with

00:29:06 ◼   ► that, they need to be identified and we need to rewrite them in a way that

00:29:12 ◼   ► that protects the data so that even we can't do it

00:29:16 ◼   ► and that that's the only way that we can object.

00:29:19 ◼   ► And the purpose of this isn't to obstruct law enforcement,

00:29:24 ◼   ► it's that if we don't take that philosophy

00:29:27 ◼   ► that even we can't get the data, then it's not really safe.

00:29:31 ◼   ► - Right, and I think that goes back a lot

00:29:35 ◼   ► to where Apple makes its money.

00:29:38 ◼   ► They don't want your data.

00:29:39 ◼   ► They don't care about your data.

00:29:41 ◼   ► and others do.

00:29:44 ◼   ► So, you know, it's reasonable,

00:29:47 ◼   ► I mean the argument that we talked about with Peter,

00:29:50 ◼   ► it's reasonable to consider the fact

00:29:53 ◼   ► that other companies have cooperated in the past

00:29:58 ◼   ► because they do look at the data, you know?

00:30:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, one of the things, and another one,

00:30:04 ◼   ► I know I mentioned earlier that I'm really curious

00:30:06 ◼   ► about what, let's just say,

00:30:09 ◼   ► if you're a iCloud backup user,

00:30:11 ◼   ► and the FBI comes to Apple and says,

00:30:15 ◼   ► "We'd like to see Jim Dalrymple's iCloud backup."

00:30:18 ◼   ► What do they get?

00:30:19 ◼   ► I would love to know that.

00:30:21 ◼   ► And if there's an answer that Apple has given,

00:30:23 ◼   ► I couldn't find it.

00:30:24 ◼   ► So if anybody knows, I would love to know.

00:30:26 ◼   ► The other question I have this week,

00:30:28 ◼   ► and it gets back to your original question

00:30:30 ◼   ► of why is it Apple that's in this fight?

00:30:33 ◼   ► How come we never hear about,

00:30:34 ◼   ► they're not, I get none of them are US companies

00:30:39 ◼   ► except other than Microsoft,

00:30:41 ◼   ► but like we never hear about Samsung or LG

00:30:44 ◼   ► or any of these other companies.

00:30:45 ◼   ► Like what do they do when a suspect has an Android phone?

00:30:48 ◼   ► Why is this not in the news at all?

00:30:50 ◼   ► Like what happens?

00:30:51 ◼   ► Is it that it's,

00:30:53 ◼   ► is it just one of those things where Apple gets headlines

00:30:58 ◼   ► and so people only write about it

00:30:59 ◼   ► when it's Apple and the iPhone?

00:31:01 ◼   ► Or is Android different?

00:31:04 ◼   ► And it's like trivial that even when you have a passcode

00:31:08 ◼   ► there's some way that they can get the information they want? I don't

00:31:12 ◼   ► understand why nobody's writing about that. And I don't have the, you know, I

00:31:16 ◼   ► don't have the perspective on it. Well, there must be some requests from the

00:31:22 ◼   ► government to Google for information. There must be. Oh, definitely. And the

00:31:30 ◼   ► thing about Google, but that's online content. And who knows, maybe

00:31:33 ◼   ► it's because if you use an Android phone everybody who uses Android phones signs

00:31:39 ◼   ► up for Google and going to Google is enough that they don't need to go to the

00:31:43 ◼   ► right that's what I'm saying you know that they they have I don't know though

00:31:47 ◼   ► because there's things like text messages right so Android users send a

00:31:51 ◼   ► lot of SMS text messages they don't go through Google right so if the FBI wants

00:31:56 ◼   ► to see those they need to get them off the phone I can't help but think that

00:32:01 ◼   ► that they would want to still want to access the phone.

00:32:03 ◼   ► And you know, does, what percentage of Android users

00:32:07 ◼   ► back up all of their photos to Google?

00:32:10 ◼   ► I mean, it must be some percentage, but is it all?

00:32:12 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:32:13 ◼   ► - Okay, I'm gonna throw something out there

00:32:15 ◼   ► that may be funny, but maybe as we know

00:32:20 ◼   ► from the things that we see,

00:32:22 ◼   ► maybe Android is just so full of holes

00:32:26 ◼   ► that the FBI can hack it themselves.

00:32:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's sort of what I'm hinting at.

00:32:31 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:32:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:32:34 ◼   ► - You know, iOS is a very secure operating system

00:32:39 ◼   ► and a lot of it because Apple doesn't really care

00:32:42 ◼   ► about your data, they care about your security

00:32:47 ◼   ► and your privacy and I'm trying not to be too

00:32:53 ◼   ► Fanny here, but I believe that to be true and we've seen the malware and things that can infect

00:33:04 ◼   ► Android phones. So what's, I mean, I tend to think that the FBI just sat down with some of

00:33:10 ◼   ► its smart people and said, "Hack this thing." And they can. Yeah, I don't know. Let me take a break

00:33:19 ◼   ► here and we come back to it but I'll take a break here and thank our first

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00:35:59 ◼   ► Well, I don't is there more to say about the FBI Apple case at the moment. Maybe not

00:36:05 ◼   ► Do you believe what the FBI says and do you believe what Apple says? I believe what Apple

00:36:14 ◼   ► says and I think they're very careful. I think they are and it's just a hallmark of Tim Cook is

00:36:21 ◼   ► is a and and I would say without question the biggest difference between Cook and Jobs is that

00:36:31 ◼   ► Jobs would would fly off the handle and

00:36:36 ◼   ► You know just a small example, but remember in 2007 when

00:36:43 ◼   ► It was people the first iPhone came out and people hey

00:36:47 ◼   ► How come we can't write native apps and he said ah you don't you know you're bad you write a bad native app

00:36:52 ◼   ► We'll bring down the whole West Coast phone network

00:36:54 ◼   ► Now I

00:36:59 ◼   ► There's an argument to be made that it's you know

00:37:01 ◼   ► Like what if it was a super popular app like Facebook and what if there was a terrible bug that you know?

00:37:07 ◼   ► Kept the data connection on full-time if the app was installed

00:37:11 ◼   ► There's some you know, it's not it's completely ridiculous, but it wasn't a good answer, but that's jobs right whereas Tim Cook

00:37:18 ◼   ► Tim Cook is is so he's like a surgeon with every word out of his mouth in public. Yes, and

00:37:26 ◼   ► I do I believe that I don't think there's anything that Apple said at least in that open letter that I

00:37:33 ◼   ► even raised an eyebrow

00:37:36 ◼   ► me neither, I mean the only thing that I think is up for debate is whether it qualifies as a backdoor and

00:37:42 ◼   ► The only reason I'd say that and Tim Cook says, you know, and he even admitted says in the letter

00:37:47 ◼   ► The FBI is using different words. I call it a backdoor, but he's even acknowledging

00:37:52 ◼   ► He's careful enough and fair enough that he even acknowledges that there's a debate over whether

00:37:57 ◼   ► backdoor is the right word. And I think that argument that it's not a backdoor is that a

00:38:01 ◼   ► backdoor, maybe you could argue, is something that Apple ships to everybody. And it's in the

00:38:07 ◼   ► phone that you buy from Apple. It's already there. You know, that this is something that the FBI,

00:38:15 ◼   ► you know, that's not what the FBI is asking for. They're not asking, the FBI is not asking Apple to

00:38:19 ◼   ► push a software update to every iPhone out in the world that would let them bypass the

00:38:24 ◼   ► passcode. They're saying, "Do this, just one." But, you know, given the providios that Tim

00:38:29 ◼   ► Cook said, I believe him. With the FBI, I don't know. And I think the one argument a

00:38:34 ◼   ► couple people have made, including John McAfee, is that, "Come on."

00:38:40 ◼   ► The show ends right now.

00:38:43 ◼   ► Come on.

00:38:45 ◼   ► Come on.

00:38:46 ◼   ► It's either the FBI is lying and they have hackers on their staff who could break in

00:38:51 ◼   ► to get this passcode right now, or they're incompetent because they should be able to.

00:38:56 ◼   ► Like why can't they go right down the street to the NSA and have this thing unlocked?

00:39:02 ◼   ► And I find it very difficult to believe that the NSA couldn't do this.

00:39:06 ◼   ► And that if it was, if this one phone really was that important that they would do that.

00:39:11 ◼   ► And I find that disingenuous.

00:39:13 ◼   ► And it's also what makes me think it's about the legal precedent, not the actual information

00:39:17 ◼   ► on the San Bernardino suspects phone.

00:39:20 ◼   ► So you you think that the NSA could hack this iPhone on their own?

00:39:26 ◼   ► I don't have any reason to believe that are not that I don't have reason to believe it.

00:39:30 ◼   ► I don't have proof.

00:39:32 ◼   ► I can't prove that for the obvious reason that, you know, the NSA keeps everything all

00:39:37 ◼   ► of their capabilities secret.

00:39:39 ◼   ► if I had to bet, oh, I would bet heavily that the NSA could access the information on this

00:39:45 ◼   ► phone. So why bother going through all this? Why not just go get the precedent? But does the

00:39:51 ◼   ► precedent actually matter if they can hack it? Well, I think because going forward in the future,

00:39:56 ◼   ► they're concerned about the ever escalating security of these phones. And I guess that's

00:40:02 ◼   ► one area where we could talk about where, you know, one of the aspects of this is whatever

00:40:08 ◼   ► happens to Apple in the courts on this case, I think it's only going to motivate them to

00:40:17 ◼   ► further cleverly design the encryption mechanisms on the iPhone to make it impossible in the

00:40:24 ◼   ► future to even comply with a request like this.

00:40:31 ◼   ► So here's something we don't know, and it's a little technical and hopefully I will keep

00:40:35 ◼   ► this straight enough that I'm going to be accurate. But the phone in this case is an

00:40:41 ◼   ► iPhone 5C, the San Bernardino phone, and the 5C is before the Secure Enclave and before

00:40:46 ◼   ► Touch ID. And that makes it a simpler case cryptographically to get. Starting with the

00:40:57 ◼   ► iPhone 5s and going forward the phones, iPhones with the touch ID and the secure

00:41:05 ◼   ► Enclave. Now touch ID is sort of irrelevant but it's the phones that have

00:41:09 ◼   ► touch ID that have the secure Enclave. They use the secure Enclave in the path

00:41:15 ◼   ► of encryption to enforce it and so one of the things that limits the rate of so

00:41:23 ◼   ► mathematically and you don't really have to I even I really I have a computer

00:41:27 ◼   ► science degree and I did really well in math and I really this stuff really

00:41:30 ◼   ► boggles my mind. But basically one of the keys used to encrypt the data on the

00:41:36 ◼   ► phone is on the secure enclave and so as you know the the phone iOS verifies that

00:41:43 ◼   ► the passcode is correct it goes through the secure enclave and this your secure

00:41:48 ◼   ► enclave adds its key and there's no way to get that key from iOS it just says

00:41:53 ◼   ► "Okay, secure enclave, here's the passcode that was sent. Now, output of that, you give me the thing that lets me decrypt this."

00:42:02 ◼   ► And it's the secure enclave that enforces this 80 millisecond time between brute force attempts,

00:42:10 ◼   ► which isn't that long, except that if you want to do millions of them to get like a six digit passcode,

00:42:16 ◼   ► 80 milliseconds means it takes a lot longer to go through all of them than it would otherwise.

00:42:21 ◼   ► And if you use an alphanumeric password,

00:42:24 ◼   ► if you're really concerned about security on your phone

00:42:26 ◼   ► and you use letters and numbers on the passcode,

00:42:28 ◼   ► it really does make it,

00:42:30 ◼   ► the 80 millisecond attempt between decryption attempts

00:42:33 ◼   ► really does make it time-wise impossible.

00:42:36 ◼   ► The question is,

00:42:39 ◼   ► can Apple be forced to put like a Flash update

00:42:44 ◼   ► on the secure enclave

00:42:46 ◼   ► to eliminate the 80 millisecond time between attempts.

00:42:51 ◼   ► And I think Apple hasn't said publicly,

00:42:56 ◼   ► but reading between the lines,

00:42:57 ◼   ► I think the answer right now might be yes.

00:43:01 ◼   ► And what somebody has said was that, for example,

00:43:04 ◼   ► like the iPhone 5S shipped with the Secure Enclave

00:43:07 ◼   ► and it didn't have that 80 millisecond enforcement

00:43:09 ◼   ► between attempts.

00:43:11 ◼   ► And then a software update later on added it.

00:43:15 ◼   ► So if they could add something like that to Secure Enclave,

00:43:18 ◼   ► they could obviously take it away.

00:43:20 ◼   ► The question is, and I don't know that Apple's,

00:43:25 ◼   ► and I don't think they wanna say,

00:43:27 ◼   ► is can those flash updates to the Secure Enclave today,

00:43:31 ◼   ► can they happen while the phone is locked?

00:43:34 ◼   ► Because that's, you know,

00:43:35 ◼   ► the whole point is if the phone is already locked,

00:43:38 ◼   ► maybe they can't flash update the Secure Enclave

00:43:41 ◼   ► to change the passcode, right?

00:43:43 ◼   ► It's like a catch-22.

00:43:47 ◼   ► But if you can, that might be something

00:43:50 ◼   ► that Apple is very strongly looking at in the future

00:43:52 ◼   ► to say, well, now we're going to engineer.

00:43:54 ◼   ► We're going to have Johnny Suruji's team engineer

00:43:57 ◼   ► at Secure Enclave, where this 80 millisecond attempt

00:44:00 ◼   ► between passcode attempts is hardwired into the silicon,

00:44:04 ◼   ► and there's nothing we can do about it.

00:44:07 ◼   ► And there's got to be other things that they're

00:44:09 ◼   ► looking at going forward.

00:44:10 ◼   ► Like, I don't think we are at the end of Apple's

00:44:13 ◼   ► we secure your data on the phone. I think that every single year, in the last five years, the

00:44:19 ◼   ► system has gotten more clever and more completely sealed up so that even Apple can't do anything

00:44:27 ◼   ► with it. What if Apple said they lose this case and they say, "Okay, we will give you

00:44:36 ◼   ► this information," but then they lock up the next operating system even tighter so that

00:44:40 ◼   ► there is no possible way. I don't even know if that's possible. Right. No, I think it has to be,

00:44:46 ◼   ► though, I definitely think it's possible to lock it up tighter. I think that that they could,

00:44:51 ◼   ► you know, create definitely create a system where the the the flash, you know, the ROM,

00:45:00 ◼   ► whatever you want to call it, the code that runs on the secure enclosure, where it can't be can't

00:45:06 ◼   ► be updated while the phone is locked. I think that's definitely technically possible.

00:45:10 ◼   ► I mean, I could be wrong, but I think it is. So what does the government do then? Does it go

00:45:16 ◼   ► to court and say you can't make your OS any stronger? Right. And at that point,

00:45:25 ◼   ► I, you know, I guess they could try to pass the law, but you really do start running up against

00:45:32 ◼   ► issues like A) that would cripple US tech companies competitively worldwide.

00:45:40 ◼   ► Absolutely, it would be crippling.

00:45:42 ◼   ► I mean, who would want a US tech product if they knew that by mandated by US law that

00:45:48 ◼   ► it had to be insecure?

00:45:51 ◼   ► And B) I think that there's a very strong constitutional argument that that's a violation

00:45:55 ◼   ► of free speech.

00:45:57 ◼   ► that code is speech and saying you can't write code

00:46:00 ◼   ► that does this is, you know, it's more or less saying

00:46:04 ◼   ► that this, you know, this form of mathematics is illegal.

00:46:08 ◼   ► - Oof, what a case.

00:46:11 ◼   ► - I really do think it comes down to a sense of entitlement

00:46:13 ◼   ► on law enforcement, that they feel like any information

00:46:15 ◼   ► that exists, they should be able to access.

00:46:17 ◼   ► And they're unwilling to wrap their heads around the idea

00:46:19 ◼   ► that we're coming to a point where there will exist

00:46:23 ◼   ► information in the universe that they simply can't get.

00:46:26 ◼   ► I mean, and I keep thinking, and again,

00:46:29 ◼   ► this isn't really a legal argument,

00:46:30 ◼   ► it's just sort of a philosophical argument.

00:46:32 ◼   ► But they've never had a right

00:46:35 ◼   ► to the information in your head.

00:46:37 ◼   ► And in fact, the US Constitution has the Fifth Amendment,

00:46:42 ◼   ► which means that you have a right

00:46:46 ◼   ► not to incriminate yourself.

00:46:49 ◼   ► And so if you invoke it, even if you committed a crime,

00:46:56 ◼   ► you cannot be forced to admit it in court.

00:46:59 ◼   ► In some sense-- again, I'm not speaking legally,

00:47:05 ◼   ► but philosophically, the information on your phone

00:47:09 ◼   ► is in some way an extension of what's in your head.

00:47:12 ◼   ► The pictures you've taken are things

00:47:14 ◼   ► you've seen that you want to remember.

00:47:15 ◼   ► the notes you've written to yourself are your notes.

00:47:20 ◼   ► I just don't think it's that outlandish, philosophically,

00:47:23 ◼   ► that you could have a phone that is so securely encrypted

00:47:27 ◼   ► that if law enforcement takes it,

00:47:31 ◼   ► that they can't access it, any more so

00:47:33 ◼   ► than that they don't have a right to read your mind

00:47:37 ◼   ► or force you to testify against yourself.

00:47:40 ◼   ► How long will this case go on?

00:47:43 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:47:44 ◼   ► can't help but think it's I this particular case who knows but I feel

00:47:49 ◼   ► like the argument isn't going to stop like even if this case gets resolved

00:47:53 ◼   ► somehow quickly it's the next one coming is is is going to be the same I believe

00:48:00 ◼   ► that this will go all the way to the Supreme Court because I don't think

00:48:03 ◼   ► either side will just let it fall.

00:48:11 ◼   ► But if they lose, if the government loses this case, will they try a different tact?

00:48:21 ◼   ► Is there another legal way for them to say, "Okay, well we argued this last time, but

00:48:28 ◼   ► now we're arguing this."

00:48:30 ◼   ► Is this going to go on forever?

00:48:34 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:48:37 ◼   ► One thing we didn't mention is that the foundation of the FBI's request and the judge granted

00:48:44 ◼   ► against Apple is based on the All Writs Act of 1789.

00:48:51 ◼   ► Basing this on a law from 1789 would suggest that the law really didn't have encrypted

00:48:57 ◼   ► cell phones in mind.

00:49:01 ◼   ► Unless Nostradamus did it.

00:49:05 ◼   ► Two of the things that I've taken away this week is that one, if the FBI

00:49:09 ◼   ► wins, this sort of grants them, under this All Rits Act,

00:49:13 ◼   ► precedent that says we can get whatever we want. We can use this ancient law to get

00:49:17 ◼   ► whatever we want. We have this very powerful ability to

00:49:21 ◼   ► force tech companies to help us

00:49:25 ◼   ► by writing new code and and stuff like that so that would be good for the FBI

00:49:30 ◼   ► from their perspective I don't think that's good public policy I think

00:49:33 ◼   ► that's terrible but from law enforcement's perspective that would be

00:49:36 ◼   ► they would see that as a win and I think if they lose this is why I almost feel

00:49:40 ◼   ► like the FBI might see this as a no-lose situation is if they lose then they go

00:49:46 ◼   ► to Congress and say look the law on the book we just tried it we have to you

00:49:51 ◼   ► know, they go to they go to Congress, and they say, we have

00:49:55 ◼   ► to be able to get this stuff to keep people safe from these

00:49:58 ◼   ► crazy terrorists. That's very compelling to a lot of

00:50:01 ◼   ► politicians who either believe it or be cowardly, you know, it

00:50:07 ◼   ► just don't want to be seen on the wrong side of terrorism,

00:50:12 ◼   ► right, of being, quote, unquote, strong against terrorism. And

00:50:17 ◼   ► they go to Congress and say, Look, we just tried with this

00:50:19 ◼   ► law that's on the books and it we lost so we need you to pass a new law that

00:50:25 ◼   ► says blah about you know encryption and stuff like that and I think the only

00:50:31 ◼   ► good solution for us publicly would be if if that fails too but I feel like the

00:50:36 ◼   ► FBI might suspect that they've got the the support on in Congress to do that

00:50:44 ◼   ► here's a question for you I wanted to ask before we move off it is does being

00:50:50 ◼   ► a Canadian give you a different perspective on this because I feel like

00:50:55 ◼   ► Americans are often too insular and we see these things as u.s. only issues and

00:50:59 ◼   ► just simply being on the other side of the US Canadian border does it give you

00:51:04 ◼   ► a different perspective you know it's we don't really have a lot of things like

00:51:12 ◼   ► this that would come up. You know, I can't see the Canadian government suing Apple. You know, it's

00:51:23 ◼   ► just not something that... Does it give... do you have a sense that you don't have like an

00:51:31 ◼   ► implicit trust of the US Department of Justice? No, I don't think it's that. I think

00:51:42 ◼   ► we're more we're more trusting than what you guys are of your government we may

00:51:51 ◼   ► not like it like you know our government will put in new taxes which they do all

00:51:56 ◼   ► the time and we just say oh gosh darn it that's awful but you know we pay it

00:52:04 ◼   ► that's fine you know whereas you guys may riot oh like no no you're not gonna

00:52:10 ◼   ► to do that. The thing I keep thinking about too is just that the stuff is also

00:52:14 ◼   ► new. It's only 20-25 years that anybody really, you know, public, you know, typical

00:52:19 ◼   ► people had access to computers and computer networking. And law enforcement

00:52:23 ◼   ► worked just fine before that. It's just, it's not like everything that they used

00:52:27 ◼   ► to be able to do before there were cell phones that they can't do anymore.

00:52:31 ◼   ► It's just new information and new, a new source of evidence that they have had

00:52:37 ◼   ► access to. But if they don't have access to it, if they can't get anything they want off an iPhone

00:52:43 ◼   ► that has a strong passcode on it, I don't think that that means that law enforcement can't do its

00:52:48 ◼   ► job. Well, and but the difference between then and now is that then the bad guys weren't using cell

00:52:56 ◼   ► phones either. So there were they were recording information in different ways that that the

00:53:04 ◼   ► government could have access to. So if they're now using the cell phones to record all of their

00:53:11 ◼   ► information and the government can't access it, then there is an argument that they don't have

00:53:16 ◼   ► access like they used to. But I'm still drawing back to what you said about the NSA. If the NSA

00:53:26 ◼   ► has access. This seems like a dangerous move for the government to do for a precedent that they

00:53:34 ◼   ► might not need. You know, I don't know. It could be a bad move if they can get it. I mean,

00:53:44 ◼   ► I don't understand why they just wouldn't say, "Eh, whatever. You know, you don't need to give

00:53:49 ◼   ► us that. We've got access anyway to anything that we want." I really don't think that they do.

00:53:54 ◼   ► Could the iPhone be that good that they don't?

00:54:00 ◼   ► You never know if the NSA knows of a flaw in the scheme, they're going to keep their mouth shut about it.

00:54:09 ◼   ► But it does seem to me that Apple is moving towards creating a complete system that can mathematically be shown that it can't be broken.

00:54:19 ◼   ► with the combination of you know with the secure enclave and when and with all

00:54:27 ◼   ► the various ways that the keys are stored to get everything in encrypted or

00:54:31 ◼   ► unencrypted oh boy we're in for how long do you think that this initial part will

00:54:39 ◼   ► take is this like a month thing or I don't know I yeah I guess I know Apple's

00:54:46 ◼   ► been given till February recording on February 19th and I know they have like one week to

00:54:53 ◼   ► file their response. So I think you know a couple of months I'm guessing. I'll take a

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00:57:23 ◼   ► What about my interview last week with Federighi and Q?

00:57:27 ◼   ► Do you listen to it?

00:57:28 ◼   ► >> I did.

00:57:29 ◼   ► I did actually. It was great. I thought it was a great interview.

00:57:34 ◼   ► You know, you got some scoops in there too. It was awesome.

00:57:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I wasn't expecting that. It's like they didn't say, "Hey, we're going to give you some

00:57:43 ◼   ► stuff." It's like when Eddie first started saying that, I really kind of expected it.

00:57:48 ◼   ► I was like, "Am I hearing this right? That you're giving me this information that I'm pretty sure

00:57:54 ◼   ► never came out before." I was ready to hear him get a punch in the shoulder from like...

00:57:58 ◼   ► I thought it was really good interview they were they were very open and and it

00:58:10 ◼   ► you know it kind of seemed like just three guys sitting around chatting well

00:58:17 ◼   ► that's definitely the case I mean in the argument against it would be and it seemed

00:58:21 ◼   ► like you know I worried afterwards that maybe I didn't ask good enough questions

00:58:26 ◼   ► Hard questions is maybe the wrong term to use, but maybe I didn't press quite hard enough.

00:58:32 ◼   ► I really was worried afterwards. And then the show came out and I read all the reactions,

00:58:36 ◼   ► I read all the emails, I read all the tweets, and most people seemed to really like it.

00:58:40 ◼   ► But there were definitely some people who were like, "Dude, you asked this question,

00:58:43 ◼   ► and they didn't give a straight answer, and you didn't press them on it."

00:58:46 ◼   ► And you're always gonna have that, though. I mean, you and I have been doing this long enough to

00:58:52 ◼   ► know that no matter what we ask that people are gonna react like that and my

00:58:59 ◼   ► take on it is well at least I asked and I thought even the ones that they didn't

00:59:05 ◼   ► answer straightforwardly they at least they weren't there the answers weren't

00:59:09 ◼   ► completely empty you know and and I know that they're you know they're both

00:59:17 ◼   ► surprisingly good this is the thing that blows me away it's it's for two people

00:59:21 ◼   ► who don't do podcasts regularly. I mean, I know Federighi was on the show back in

00:59:25 ◼   ► December to talk about Swift. I don't know that Eddie Q. I don't know that he's

00:59:29 ◼   ► ever done a podcast before. I've seen him on interviews like at Recode or

00:59:32 ◼   ► something like that, but he doesn't do it a lot. But it's... they came across as like

00:59:38 ◼   ► naturals, right? Yeah. And I know that there's no way that if they're not going

00:59:42 ◼   ► to answer it the first time, they're not going to answer it if I reassert it.

00:59:46 ◼   ► and then all of a sudden it the discussion loses the the flow yeah well

00:59:55 ◼   ► I I think that you got a lot of great information I think that yes I mean I

01:00:01 ◼   ► texted you when I listened to it last week and and said you know it was great

01:00:09 ◼   ► interview. It was informative, it was, you know, entertaining. So you actually got a

01:00:18 ◼   ► lot more than what I would have suspected. The one thing that I think is

01:00:24 ◼   ► interesting is the... it goes beyond any words that actually came out of either

01:00:30 ◼   ► of their mouths, is the fact that the interview happened at all shows that

01:00:35 ◼   ► that Apple definitely cares about this whole perception

01:00:41 ◼   ► of Apple software being in decline,

01:00:45 ◼   ► or having less care and thought put into it

01:00:49 ◼   ► than their hardware.

01:00:51 ◼   ► And that Apple-- the fact that the interview happened at all

01:00:54 ◼   ► shows that Apple wants to counter that,

01:00:57 ◼   ► which I thought was interesting.

01:00:58 ◼   ► And so any sort of thought that Apple doesn't pay attention

01:01:02 ◼   ► to these discussions on the outside,

01:01:05 ◼   ► I think it's clear that they do,

01:01:10 ◼   ► up to the very highest levels of the company.

01:01:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree.

01:01:14 ◼   ► I've interviewed Eddie before.

01:01:19 ◼   ► I never interviewed Craig,

01:01:21 ◼   ► but interviewed Eddie before,

01:01:23 ◼   ► and he's a great guy.

01:01:26 ◼   ► I really like Eddie.

01:01:31 ◼   ► I think their personalities came across in the interview that you gave.

01:01:36 ◼   ► I mean, yeah, it's great to get the information,

01:01:38 ◼   ► but they could have been wet blankets in the interview too,

01:01:42 ◼   ► and it would have been very difficult.

01:01:44 ◼   ► And then maybe that's when you start asking the questions just to--

01:01:49 ◼   ► no, answer this.

01:01:52 ◼   ► One question, if there's one-- and it's always the case

01:01:55 ◼   ► that there's always at least one.

01:01:57 ◼   ► It's like, it's all over.

01:01:58 ◼   ► We were like, hit stop and the recording is over and I think that's great.

01:02:02 ◼   ► And then immediately I'm like, "Oh, I knew the one question I wanted to ask."

01:02:06 ◼   ► Is I really wanted to ask Eddie and I can't believe I forgot it or just-- it was in my

01:02:11 ◼   ► notes but it just never seemed to come up in the flow.

01:02:14 ◼   ► I wanted to ask Eddie if he himself has ever hit the bug where your iPhone or your iOS

01:02:21 ◼   ► device, could be iPhone, could be iPad, but your iOS device starts asking you for your

01:02:26 ◼   ► iCloud password and you enter it and then it like a second goes by and then

01:02:32 ◼   ► it comes the same dialogue comes back up and then you enter it and it goes away

01:02:36 ◼   ► just long enough that you think okay it's stuck and then it comes back and it

01:02:41 ◼   ► doesn't say your password was incorrect and like when when it when I hit this

01:02:46 ◼   ► you know and I think everybody's part of the same way where you can kind of enter

01:02:50 ◼   ► your iCloud password pretty fast and you do it and then it's when you hit this

01:02:55 ◼   ► bug which I know exists I've you know I've seen it firsthand I know other

01:02:59 ◼   ► people talk about it but then like by the third time you start entering your

01:03:02 ◼   ► password very very carefully yeah are you like me like can you do it one

01:03:06 ◼   ► character at a time with one finger and you actually look at the pop-up letters

01:03:11 ◼   ► as they come and then you hit return and then it goes away and you think oh that's

01:03:16 ◼   ► all and then it comes back up I wanted to ask Eddie that and I didn't and damn

01:03:21 ◼   ► I really regret it. Were you satisfied with the

01:03:24 ◼   ► With the way that the conversation went. I mean, yeah, I really was I I worry deeply about it because I I don't feel like

01:03:31 ◼   ► Being in that role of interviewing people like that. It is comes naturally to me

01:03:37 ◼   ► So, I mean I stressed I don't I hope it didn't sound that way, but I stressed greatly about it before

01:03:42 ◼   ► No, it didn't sound that way

01:03:45 ◼   ► Like I said, I thought it was a really

01:03:48 ◼   ► entertaining interview

01:03:50 ◼   ► I think that implicit in their response to the issue of the software, you know, being in decline is that

01:03:57 ◼   ► I thought one of the most interesting answers to that was Craig Federighi said that the bar is being raised, it's higher than ever.

01:04:08 ◼   ► And that's in terms of expectations that we have for how reliable everything will work and how polished everything will be.

01:04:15 ◼   ► I thought that was, you know, again, it's sort of a non-answer, no, maybe, but I think it's an interesting way of looking at it,

01:04:24 ◼   ► and that we collectively see these as problems now, simply because we have higher expectations.

01:04:32 ◼   ► - Okay, so let's look at that though.

01:04:36 ◼   ► Why do we have higher expectations?

01:04:41 ◼   ► I think it's because Apple gives us higher expectations.

01:04:46 ◼   ► You know, we're not, I don't think that we as consumers

01:04:51 ◼   ► are saying to Apple, you know, your software is awful.

01:04:56 ◼   ► It seems to me more that Apple is saying, you know,

01:05:01 ◼   ► when they do events and stuff, our software is great.

01:05:05 ◼   ► And 99% of the time, it really is great.

01:05:09 ◼   ► But then when that 1% hits,

01:05:13 ◼   ► it's like, okay, this isn't so great.

01:05:18 ◼   ► So are we just holding Apple up to their own words

01:05:25 ◼   ► and what they say about their software?

01:05:27 ◼   ► Or are we being unfair and saying,

01:05:31 ◼   ► No, I don't think we are being unfair.

01:05:33 ◼   ► And I think that it is central to the entire,

01:05:37 ◼   ► Apple's own, you know, there's a lot of times

01:05:42 ◼   ► where in other cases where Apple seems to be held

01:05:47 ◼   ► either by a publication or just one individual pundit

01:05:51 ◼   ► or somebody to an unreasonably high standard

01:05:53 ◼   ► that other companies aren't held to.

01:05:55 ◼   ► And I call them out sometimes, you call them out,

01:05:59 ◼   ► other, you know, and Macalobe calls them out all the time. This is a case, though, where

01:06:06 ◼   ► I think Apple itself asks to be held to a higher standard, right, that Apple itself

01:06:12 ◼   ► proclaims that our products because we do the whole, you know, this is their story that

01:06:17 ◼   ► because we do the whole thing, we control the software and the hardware and the integration

01:06:21 ◼   ► between them, we provide an overall better experience than our competitors who don't

01:06:27 ◼   ► have that whole software and hardware story to tell.

01:06:32 ◼   ► They say that, that's Apple's story.

01:06:35 ◼   ► And I've long thought that that's the,

01:06:37 ◼   ► can Apple succeed in the long run?

01:06:44 ◼   ► Yes, but I think that the only way they succeed

01:06:47 ◼   ► in the long run is by continually providing

01:06:50 ◼   ► a better overall experience.

01:06:55 ◼   ► and blurring the lines between hardware and software.

01:06:58 ◼   ► - And I think that overall,

01:07:00 ◼   ► they've done a great job with that.

01:07:01 ◼   ► Even when you look at the integration between devices,

01:07:06 ◼   ► I mean, not just the integration

01:07:08 ◼   ► between hardware and software,

01:07:10 ◼   ► but the integration between iPad, Mac, iPhone,

01:07:14 ◼   ► that handoff and iMessage being everywhere

01:07:20 ◼   ► and all that kind of stuff,

01:07:23 ◼   ► that makes the devices more useful for me.

01:07:26 ◼   ► - Oh, tremendously for me.

01:07:27 ◼   ► But I feel like that's one of those things though,

01:07:30 ◼   ► where there's, you know, for so many,

01:07:32 ◼   ► a handoff works great for me.

01:07:33 ◼   ► And I do it all the time,

01:07:34 ◼   ► where I'll be like walking around the house,

01:07:36 ◼   ► making coffee or something,

01:07:37 ◼   ► and reading something on my phone,

01:07:40 ◼   ► and I wanna link to it from Daring Fireball,

01:07:43 ◼   ► but why not, I'll just wait till I get to my desk

01:07:46 ◼   ► and do it from my iMac where I have a nice keyboard.

01:07:48 ◼   ► And all I do is just sit down at my desk

01:07:50 ◼   ► while the phone is still open.

01:07:51 ◼   ► And right there at the side of my dock

01:07:52 ◼   ► is the little handoff Safari thing.

01:07:56 ◼   ► So I click one button and a second later,

01:07:59 ◼   ► the webpage that was on my phone is now,

01:08:01 ◼   ► I click one button on my Mac

01:08:04 ◼   ► and the thing on my phone is now on my Mac.

01:08:09 ◼   ► And it works great for me.

01:08:09 ◼   ► But with 700 million iCloud users,

01:08:14 ◼   ► are there a million of them for whom that doesn't work

01:08:18 ◼   ► for reasons they don't understand?

01:08:21 ◼   ► Is 99.9% of people having it work good enough?

01:08:26 ◼   ► And then how do you solve it for the last 10th percent?

01:08:30 ◼   ► - Well, I think one thing that we all know

01:08:34 ◼   ► is that there's always gonna be problems

01:08:36 ◼   ► and bugs with software.

01:08:38 ◼   ► And we're accepting of that.

01:08:41 ◼   ► I really believe that we are accepting of that.

01:08:45 ◼   ► And if you look at something like iCloud,

01:08:48 ◼   ► iCloud is a favorite,

01:08:50 ◼   ► one of the favorite whipping horses of people.

01:08:54 ◼   ► For me, iCloud works great.

01:08:58 ◼   ► iCloud services work great.

01:09:00 ◼   ► And I think a lot of it comes down to how we use it.

01:09:02 ◼   ► So I use iCloud more like,

01:09:05 ◼   ► more like a consumer, you know?

01:09:12 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:09:13 ◼   ► - And I--

01:09:14 ◼   ► - Well, I'll give one example that I know I'm not alone with

01:09:17 ◼   ► is the syncing of the text shortcuts. So in other words, like if you set up, you know, like a text,

01:09:26 ◼   ► the way that OS X and iOS have like a simple text expander like system where you can have a little

01:09:33 ◼   ► shortcut like you type "addr" and then it expands to your full address. I was bedeviled for months

01:09:43 ◼   ► with an inability, they're supposed to sync between devices.

01:09:47 ◼   ► And for months, I was absolutely bedeviled by

01:09:51 ◼   ► syncing problems between them, where just all sorts of craziness would happen,

01:09:56 ◼   ► where they'd be doubled, where they all of a sudden none of them

01:09:59 ◼   ► were on my phone, and sometimes on my, I mean, anything that

01:10:03 ◼   ► could go wrong went wrong. All of a sudden my Mac went back to, or

01:10:06 ◼   ► one of my Macs would go back to like the default ones

01:10:10 ◼   ► that ship when it's brand new.

01:10:12 ◼   ► And I think that what happened was that

01:10:18 ◼   ► the problems initially happened for me

01:10:20 ◼   ► when I was running the iOS 9 beta last summer on my phone.

01:10:24 ◼   ► And that something got corrupted in my iCloud account

01:10:28 ◼   ► that even after iOS came out of, iOS 9 came out of beta,

01:10:32 ◼   ► that something was wrong with those keyboard shortcuts

01:10:36 ◼   ► or text shortcuts, whatever they call them.

01:10:39 ◼   ► And then for months afterwards, it was all messed up.

01:10:41 ◼   ► And eventually though, it just got fixed.

01:10:46 ◼   ► And knock on wood, but for the last few months,

01:10:51 ◼   ► it just works.

01:10:53 ◼   ► And I've even doubted myself and just gone there

01:10:56 ◼   ► and painstakingly held my phone up to my Mac

01:10:59 ◼   ► and scrolled both lists to make sure that there's not like,

01:11:02 ◼   ► oh, I just know there's gonna be one missing.

01:11:04 ◼   ► And I'd get to the bottom and be like,

01:11:06 ◼   ► damn, they're all there and they're all the same.

01:11:08 ◼   ► And so, you know, I don't know who knows how that happened. Who knows if it fixed itself?

01:11:13 ◼   ► Who knows if somebody at Apple fixed a bug, figured it out, and did it?

01:11:17 ◼   ► But even when stuff like that happens, and again, I don't want to be seen here as

01:11:22 ◼   ► wholly on Apple's side of this argument, but I do think though that

01:11:28 ◼   ► it's easy for somebody

01:11:31 ◼   ► who's experienced the same thing to look at the

01:11:34 ◼   ► syncing between those text shortcuts is buggy because it was buggy and to overlook the fact that it's not buggy right now. I

01:11:40 ◼   ► know Syracuse is always talking on ATP that he can't get his addresses to sync.

01:11:47 ◼   ► And I gotta tell you, I have not had a problem with address syncing in iCloud

01:11:52 ◼   ► ever. I mean, and I've been using it since it was called, you know,

01:11:57 ◼   ► iTools or whatever it used to be before Mac.com.

01:12:01 ◼   ► Maybe back then maybe back then I had some I don't know. I didn't even have an iPhone back then

01:12:05 ◼   ► So I don't even know what I was sinking it, too

01:12:07 ◼   ► So maybe I wouldn't even know what if I had sync problems

01:12:09 ◼   ► But at least in recent years, my address is definitely sync and they sync fast. Yeah, I don't have problems with calendars with contacts

01:12:17 ◼   ► I don't have problems thinking any of that stuff. I don't have problems with iCloud Drive, you know, it sinks

01:12:24 ◼   ► I mean you could you could

01:12:26 ◼   ► reasonably make the argument should iCloud drive be more like Dropbox and sure but looking at the

01:12:33 ◼   ► service as it is I don't have problems with how it works and you know when the the problems that

01:12:43 ◼   ► we do have like this password thing just seem to be so bizarre is it is it something that's

01:12:53 ◼   ► you know it can't be unique to to just one person obviously because a lot of people have it but is

01:12:58 ◼   ► it unique to a setup yeah i don't know you know so i you know i think that they're getting there

01:13:05 ◼   ► i think that's the gist of it um i do worry i do worry that one of the reasons and and i i just

01:13:11 ◼   ► don't think it's deniable i mean this is like when the whole thing that started this new round

01:13:18 ◼   ► of apple software is is not as good as it used to be or not as good as it should be however way you

01:13:22 ◼   ► you want to phrase it. It started with Mossberg's column, and then the same day you and I both

01:13:27 ◼   ► wrote about it. And my take is that my angle was that one thing I think is undeniable is

01:13:33 ◼   ► that it is true that their software is not as good as the hardware. But maybe that's

01:13:36 ◼   ► just the way it has to be, because the hardware is in some ways simpler, and certain aspects

01:13:45 ◼   ► of the hardware have to be bug-free. Like, you can't, there's no way that they can do

01:13:51 ◼   ► do a software upgrade of the camera lens.

01:13:53 ◼   ► Right?

01:13:53 ◼   ► Right.

01:13:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:13:56 ◼   ► And so the requirements of that-- and so here's

01:13:58 ◼   ► another argument.

01:14:00 ◼   ► Does the ability to do software updates make Apple--

01:14:04 ◼   ► and anybody else who can do them-- make them lazy

01:14:07 ◼   ► about shipping B-quality software,

01:14:10 ◼   ► because they know they can make it

01:14:11 ◼   ► A-quality software over the air, or they think they can?

01:14:14 ◼   ► Whereas is it different than in the old days,

01:14:16 ◼   ► where the software had to be printed on a CD or a DVD,

01:14:20 ◼   ► or if you want to go back further, floppy disks.

01:14:22 ◼   ► And if there was a bug, the bug might never

01:14:25 ◼   ► get fixed by the consumer, because software updates

01:14:29 ◼   ► were so hard to distribute.

01:14:32 ◼   ► It used to be a big, big deal to ship the gold

01:14:35 ◼   ► master of a piece of software.

01:14:37 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, it was huge.

01:14:39 ◼   ► And not that an OS update still isn't taken seriously,

01:14:42 ◼   ► or that there's all sorts of rigorous quality control

01:14:47 ◼   ► that it goes through.

01:14:48 ◼   ► but it's not like it used to be when hard software went through an actual,

01:14:53 ◼   ► you know, effectively it'd be turned into hardware when you put it on a disc.

01:14:57 ◼   ► That's right. Yeah. Well, I, and I think that, you know,

01:15:02 ◼   ► for a lot of developers,

01:15:03 ◼   ► they do think I'll release this now and I can fix it.

01:15:08 ◼   ► But I mean, we,

01:15:11 ◼   ► we know too that there are,

01:15:14 ◼   ► you can't account for every configuration.

01:15:18 ◼   ► And the Mac App Store, I think, has done a lot

01:15:22 ◼   ► to help with every app is going to work.

01:15:26 ◼   ► At least you have that feeling.

01:15:28 ◼   ► These are tested, we know they're good,

01:15:34 ◼   ► and we put them out there for sale on the Mac App Store.

01:15:37 ◼   ► So that helps a lot.

01:15:39 ◼   ► The App Store helps a lot.

01:15:40 ◼   ► I think it's great that Apple has the review process

01:15:44 ◼   ► they do with all of the stuff. I wonder if some of the Apple software would make it through the

01:15:49 ◼   ► review process sometimes. Well, it wouldn't. A lot of the stuff that doesn't, you know,

01:15:55 ◼   ► doesn't follow the sandboxing rules wouldn't. Although a lot of Apple, I say that, but I know

01:16:01 ◼   ► that a lot of Apple, most of Apple's, you know, own first-party apps are sandboxed, so it's not

01:16:06 ◼   ► entirely, but they don't, you know, if they need to, they don't mind giving themselves an exemption.

01:16:14 ◼   ► I thought an interesting angle and I don't know if I was satisfied with the

01:16:19 ◼   ► answer from Craig but on the issue of is Apple shifting away from monolithic

01:16:24 ◼   ► feature updates for OS's. In other words I think for the last few years all the

01:16:30 ◼   ► major new features of OS X and iOS have been announced at WWDC and then they all

01:16:36 ◼   ► ship in the fall when the release versions come out and every once in a

01:16:41 ◼   ► while there'll be one that maybe waits till the next release like remember

01:16:45 ◼   ► there I think like two years ago there was a keychain something related to the

01:16:50 ◼   ► keychain and it wasn't in the initial versions of either OS but it came out

01:16:55 ◼   ► like in the November updates and it was something there was some kind of bug

01:16:59 ◼   ► with like a keychain feature but for the most part they're all announced at WWDC

01:17:03 ◼   ► and then they all come out in the fall at once and then Apple spends the next

01:17:06 ◼   ► six months fixing bugs in those OSes and before they turn their attention to

01:17:11 ◼   ► next year's OSes and are they moving away from that sort of let's do all the

01:17:16 ◼   ► features at once to a more let's keep working on these features in parallel

01:17:21 ◼   ► and then when they're ready then we'll ship them like with the seemingly

01:17:26 ◼   ► imminent iOS 9.3 which is now in public beta which has maybe not huge features

01:17:32 ◼   ► but some significant features.

01:17:33 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:17:34 ◼   ► - The F-Lux thing with the,

01:17:36 ◼   ► the F-Lux like feature with the night shift color palette,

01:17:41 ◼   ► and maybe the most significant one

01:17:44 ◼   ► for a smaller number of users,

01:17:46 ◼   ► but for those who it applies to,

01:17:47 ◼   ► it's a really major update to the OS

01:17:50 ◼   ► is the way that for education purposes,

01:17:52 ◼   ► iPads can have multiple users now,

01:17:53 ◼   ► and you could have any student sign into any iPad.

01:17:56 ◼   ► That's the sort of feature

01:17:58 ◼   ► that you typically would only come in a major,

01:18:01 ◼   ► you know, dot o release of the OS. I can't help but think that

01:18:06 ◼   ► common sense says that while marketing wise, that's less

01:18:11 ◼   ► powerful, because you can't just announce all this stuff at once,

01:18:14 ◼   ► that from a quality perspective, letting these features come out

01:18:19 ◼   ► naturally when they're ready, even if it's in the point three

01:18:22 ◼   ► update to the major version of the OS is is, you know, common

01:18:26 ◼   ► sense is that just seems like it's a better process for

01:18:29 ◼   ► quality.

01:18:31 ◼   ► And I don't mind smaller feature updates.

01:18:36 ◼   ► I really don't.

01:18:37 ◼   ► I just want things to be secure and stable.

01:18:42 ◼   ► That's my main thing.

01:18:45 ◼   ► That's what I want from them.

01:18:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I wonder how much, you know,

01:18:51 ◼   ► how much do they need the major OS updates

01:18:55 ◼   ► to have big marketing type features?

01:18:58 ◼   ► I mean, obviously they're always gonna have some,

01:19:00 ◼   ► But how much do you need 10 tentpole features in an OS update?

01:19:07 ◼   ► Maybe that's an outdated way of looking at an operating system.

01:19:09 ◼   ► I think it is.

01:19:12 ◼   ► That it's really more--

01:19:14 ◼   ► it's enough to just say, come this fall,

01:19:20 ◼   ► and they're announced new iPhones,

01:19:21 ◼   ► to just talk about what's new in the iPhone itself.

01:19:23 ◼   ► Here's this new camera that does blah, blah, blah.

01:19:26 ◼   ► And here's how much better it is than the old camera.

01:19:28 ◼   ► And here is how much faster graphics performance is

01:19:33 ◼   ► compared to last year,

01:19:34 ◼   ► which lets you do these amazing things like play this game

01:19:38 ◼   ► and do this stuff.

01:19:39 ◼   ► Like, isn't that enough?

01:19:41 ◼   ► Like rather than, you know,

01:19:44 ◼   ► and let the engineers who are working on iOS

01:19:46 ◼   ► focus on just continually crossing off

01:19:49 ◼   ► every little niggling little bug that's bothering people.

01:19:53 ◼   ► - Well, I think that we need something.

01:19:56 ◼   ► You know, it's always nice when Apple announces a new iPhone

01:20:00 ◼   ► that you can now do panoramic pictures

01:20:05 ◼   ► and we have this great camera.

01:20:07 ◼   ► And the fact is people rely on that camera.

01:20:12 ◼   ► - But that's tied, that's a good example though.

01:20:13 ◼   ► It's obviously the panoramic camera thing

01:20:15 ◼   ► is obviously software because it's,

01:20:17 ◼   ► but it's also hardware, right?

01:20:20 ◼   ► It wasn't like they could have done it without any camera.

01:20:23 ◼   ► It was tied to it.

01:20:25 ◼   ► it's very specific to the camera and the phone.

01:20:28 ◼   ► - So I brought up three points

01:20:32 ◼   ► in the article that I did on the software

01:20:35 ◼   ► of why some of the bad software or bad things happen.

01:20:41 ◼   ► One was that they knew about it and released it anyway.

01:20:48 ◼   ► Two was that they didn't know.

01:20:51 ◼   ► they were given a date released by March 1st, that's it.

01:20:56 ◼   ► What do you think it is?

01:21:01 ◼   ► - Well, I definitely think that it's part of the,

01:21:03 ◼   ► it's part of why I think the monolithic release schedule

01:21:06 ◼   ► is problematic is that the iPhones have to come out

01:21:11 ◼   ► in September and I mean, I say have to in a way

01:21:18 ◼   ► that if they didn't, if something truly catastrophic

01:21:20 ◼   ► happened to the supply chain, a natural disaster in Asia,

01:21:27 ◼   ► something truly catastrophic.

01:21:29 ◼   ► And Apple literally calls a meeting in late August

01:21:34 ◼   ► and says, wow, we have to postpone the iPhone 7 launch

01:21:38 ◼   ► until January.

01:21:41 ◼   ► It's not going to sink the company.

01:21:42 ◼   ► I mean, it would definitely be bad for the company.

01:21:45 ◼   ► I'm sure it would be bad for their stock.

01:21:49 ◼   ► But to keep everything according to plan,

01:21:52 ◼   ► the iPhone has to come out in September.

01:21:55 ◼   ► And if the new iPhone comes out in September,

01:21:58 ◼   ► iOS 10 has to come out in September,

01:22:00 ◼   ► because the new iPhone are always engineered

01:22:03 ◼   ► such that they need the newest version

01:22:04 ◼   ► of the operating system.

01:22:07 ◼   ► And therefore, iOS, whatever this year's new version number

01:22:13 ◼   ► is, come hell or high water,

01:22:15 ◼   ► is shipping in the middle of September.

01:22:19 ◼   ► and that's how it is and that's why i feel like

01:22:21 ◼   ► the more features you're promising for that release the

01:22:26 ◼   ► more risk there is that some of them are not going to be

01:22:29 ◼   ► you know fully baked

01:22:31 ◼   ► well and and didn't we see that and you talked about it

01:22:35 ◼   ► last week with with craig and eddie about apple tv i mean there are new

01:22:38 ◼   ► features coming out for apple tv that just

01:22:41 ◼   ► didn't make it

01:22:42 ◼   ► right in the in the software

01:22:45 ◼   ► Yeah, and you know, does that mean that they should have postponed the release of the app with the new Apple TV?

01:22:50 ◼   ► I think definitely not I think right as they released it. It was a compelling upgrade and a compelling device

01:22:56 ◼   ► But that's just the nature of it, you know, but isn't I think there's the big difference

01:23:01 ◼   ► between

01:23:04 ◼   ► releasing software that's

01:23:06 ◼   ► Missing features and Apple never says it can do this and it can't to releasing software

01:23:14 ◼   ► that Apple says it'll do this and it doesn't. Right, yeah I definitely think so.

01:23:23 ◼   ► Here's an example, so maybe this is the way that I if I could bend Phil Schiller

01:23:29 ◼   ► and Tim Cook's ear and Craig's ear on on this. Take a look, compare it to the

01:23:35 ◼   ► release of Photos for Mac which was announced at WWDC but without they just

01:23:40 ◼   ► said early next year. And I think it had a very good launch. I think Photos for Mac

01:23:46 ◼   ► to complete the circle and iCloud photo library and complete this circle of, okay

01:23:51 ◼   ► now if all of your photos are on all of your devices that are signed into iCloud

01:23:56 ◼   ► in a in a storage sensitive way so that you know if you have thousands of

01:24:03 ◼   ► photos you have the option of whether you want the full version on any

01:24:06 ◼   ► particular device. It all worked really well but I think part of that was that

01:24:10 ◼   ► didn't promise a date and say that come hell or high water it's going to ship on this date.

01:24:14 ◼   ► Right. Like I would like to see more features that WWDC and APIs announced as this is coming

01:24:21 ◼   ► within the next year. You know, and if it's not in iOS 10.0, if we have to wait till 10.1,

01:24:30 ◼   ► so be it. I agree. And I do think you had a strong point. I definitely think you had

01:24:34 ◼   ► a strong point that there are some cases where Apple has shipped stuff where it's, it just

01:24:39 ◼   ► seems inexcusable. Like you had to know that this was not ready to ship.

01:24:42 ◼   ► Right. And, and that's, that's where I wonder, you know,

01:24:48 ◼   ► it seems obvious that you knew that this didn't work. And if,

01:24:54 ◼   ► if you want to release software like that, then release it as, as beta say,

01:24:59 ◼   ► you know, we have this,

01:25:00 ◼   ► this new thing and we're going to release it today as public beta.

01:25:06 ◼   ► we're looking forward to your feedback.

01:25:10 ◼   ► And if that's the case,

01:25:13 ◼   ► then I think the whole conversation changes

01:25:17 ◼   ► on whether the software is good or not.

01:25:22 ◼   ► Because I've been running beta software for OSs

01:25:29 ◼   ► and for things like that.

01:25:29 ◼   ► I never write about it because it's not fair

01:25:32 ◼   ► to write about beta software like that.

01:25:37 ◼   ► But as soon as you come to me and say,

01:25:39 ◼   ► this software is ready,

01:25:43 ◼   ► you can do all of these great and wonderful things,

01:25:47 ◼   ► and we're proud to announce it and release it today.

01:25:51 ◼   ► And then it doesn't?

01:25:52 ◼   ► Or not just that it doesn't, but that it has major bugs?

01:26:00 ◼   ► Which brings us to the next segment of the show where we should talk about iTunes and Apple Music.

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01:28:22 ◼   ► save some bucks. So that brings us to iTunes, which was again, I think that's one thing

01:28:33 ◼   ► that on Twitter people called me out for not pressing eddy cue hard enough on but on the

01:28:38 ◼   ► other hand, I felt like he acknowledged that it's on the table that may be on the desktop

01:28:42 ◼   ► that iTunes should be broken up like it is on iOS and have separate apps for playing

01:28:48 ◼   ► music, for managing device updates, for, you know, I mean it's just kind of ridiculous

01:28:54 ◼   ► what iTunes on the desktop does, you know, how much stuff it's required to do.

01:28:58 ◼   ► Well, and you can see why they don't want to mess with it because it processes, you

01:29:05 ◼   ► know, billions of dollars in transactions.

01:29:07 ◼   ► Right.

01:29:08 ◼   ► Well, and it's actually used a lot.

01:29:09 ◼   ► I think one of the numbers that was dropped

01:29:11 ◼   ► in that interview last week was that

01:29:14 ◼   ► there's 100 million people who still update

01:29:16 ◼   ► and sync their device through a USB cable to iTunes.

01:29:20 ◼   ► So I mean, 100 million users is a real number.

01:29:23 ◼   ► - Yep, I can understand that.

01:29:26 ◼   ► And for the record, I know that I've been very outspoken

01:29:31 ◼   ► about Apple Music and the problems that I've had with it.

01:29:37 ◼   ► I use Apple Music all the time.

01:29:40 ◼   ► Every day I use Apple Music

01:29:43 ◼   ► and it has gotten really, really good.

01:29:47 ◼   ► It really has.

01:29:48 ◼   ► Eddie and his team, I think have done a tremendous job

01:29:54 ◼   ► in fixing a lot of the errors and problems

01:29:59 ◼   ► that Apple Music had,

01:30:02 ◼   ► which brings me back to the point of,

01:30:05 ◼   ► at what point does Apple release software knowing that it's,

01:30:09 ◼   ► it doesn't work that well, you know, was Apple music one of those,

01:30:13 ◼   ► because when you start using it,

01:30:16 ◼   ► you can see where all the flaws were.

01:30:21 ◼   ► All right. Did it, did it,

01:30:22 ◼   ► was it really dictated by the quality of the software was the release dictated

01:30:25 ◼   ► by when the negotiating rights opened up.

01:30:28 ◼   ► And I tend to think that it was

01:30:34 ◼   ► The release was based on a date,

01:30:37 ◼   ► not on the quality of the software.

01:30:39 ◼   ► Because what we see now with the quality of the software,

01:30:42 ◼   ► I would have been extremely happy with.

01:30:44 ◼   ► - Well, what specific things do you think are better now

01:30:47 ◼   ► than in the past year?

01:30:49 ◼   ► 'Cause you've been, I mean, without,

01:30:50 ◼   ► I would say almost without question,

01:30:52 ◼   ► one of the leading critics of Apple Music

01:30:55 ◼   ► in terms of bugginess and inconsistency and confusion.

01:30:59 ◼   ► - Well, and it's, the bugginess and inconsistency

01:31:02 ◼   ► isn't just on iPhone.

01:31:03 ◼   ► it's on Mac, it's on Apple TV, you know, and I think if you look at the service overall,

01:31:14 ◼   ► everything has gotten better. The app has gotten better, the stations, the algorithm that they use

01:31:22 ◼   ► for their radio stations has gotten better, the curated stations have gotten better,

01:31:29 ◼   ► everything has gotten better. There are still bugs in the software and people have accused me of

01:31:37 ◼   ► looking for bugs. I don't have time in my day to look for bugs. I really don't. So I've told

01:31:47 ◼   ► Apple that the reason that I'm able to find these bugs is because I use it so much. That's it.

01:31:54 ◼   ► That's the only reason that I find them. And when I find them, I tell them about them.

01:32:01 ◼   ► It's funny. I know it's got to be the same for you, but it always amuses me when like

01:32:08 ◼   ► two emails in a row or maybe two tweets in a row, just back to back. And it's the fact that they're

01:32:12 ◼   ► back to back that makes it so amusing. Where there's one accusing you of being in Apple's

01:32:16 ◼   ► pocket and one accusing you of unfairly criticizing Apple and just looking for things to say over the

01:32:23 ◼   ► exact same thing that you wrote. Yeah, it's true. It's true. It happens. And what I'm not even sure

01:32:31 ◼   ► that Apple recognizes this, but the reason that I'm so upset or I was so upset about Apple Music

01:32:40 ◼   ► is because I care about it so much. Well, and it also seemed like some of your initial problems

01:32:44 ◼   ► were data loss, which is sort of the cardinal, you know, like there's all sorts of things that

01:32:48 ◼   ► that are forgivable and bugs and data loss is like high up on the list of ones

01:32:53 ◼   ► that are unforgivable.

01:32:55 ◼   ► Well you auto designed systems ideally such that data never gets lost.

01:33:00 ◼   ► And to be, to be fair and open to Apple here,

01:33:04 ◼   ► the data loss came from a misunderstanding of what I knew iTunes matched to do.

01:33:14 ◼   ► So apparently I deleted the song, some of my own songs,

01:33:19 ◼   ► and not knowing that the way that iTunes match worked

01:33:25 ◼   ► had changed.

01:33:26 ◼   ► So the songs weren't there, but they were there.

01:33:32 ◼   ► And then some of the other ones I deleted,

01:33:35 ◼   ► but I just, I don't think that the way that they implemented

01:33:42 ◼   ► iTunes Match as a service in Apple Music

01:33:45 ◼   ► was a good thing to do

01:33:49 ◼   ► because they, before you could turn,

01:33:52 ◼   ► you could see with iTunes Match,

01:33:54 ◼   ► you could see your purchased music

01:33:55 ◼   ► and your uploaded music and your matched music.

01:33:59 ◼   ► So I could turn off Apple Music

01:34:01 ◼   ► or I could use iTunes Match on all my devices

01:34:07 ◼   ► and basically see all my music.

01:34:09 ◼   ► But when they implemented Apple Music,

01:34:11 ◼   ► They made iTunes match part of iCloud Music Library.

01:34:14 ◼   ► So if I wanted to get rid of iCloud Music Library

01:34:17 ◼   ► and just see my iTunes match,

01:34:21 ◼   ► there was no way to do that, but I didn't know that.

01:34:23 ◼   ► - And it gets to my complaint with it,

01:34:27 ◼   ► is that in some ways,

01:34:29 ◼   ► I think what makes me an astute critic of software

01:34:31 ◼   ► is that I'm kind of an idiot

01:34:33 ◼   ► and I really have cognitive problems with complex software.

01:34:38 ◼   ► I really think I do.

01:34:39 ◼   ► I just need it to be obvious,

01:34:41 ◼   ► Not necessarily simple, but I need it to be obvious.

01:34:45 ◼   ► And I really feel like, and I tried to get there last week

01:34:49 ◼   ► with Federighi and Q, but that I really like what they did

01:34:54 ◼   ► with Photos for Mac.

01:34:55 ◼   ► And I say this knowing that I know that there are people

01:34:58 ◼   ► out there who really miss some features from iPhoto

01:35:01 ◼   ► that aren't in Photos for Mac.

01:35:03 ◼   ► But I really like it because I really,

01:35:06 ◼   ► when I open Photos for Mac, it's not that there aren't

01:35:09 ◼   ► other features I wish that they would add back.

01:35:11 ◼   ► And it's not like, I feel, especially in terms of editing images, I really, and I, you know,

01:35:16 ◼   ► I just feel like it's coming and that this is how it's going to evolve in the years to

01:35:19 ◼   ► come.

01:35:20 ◼   ► But I really like that I open it up and I understand where everything is and in a way

01:35:26 ◼   ► that if they had tried to glom it into iPhoto, I don't think it would have worked.

01:35:31 ◼   ► Whereas with iTunes, I just really feel like by continuing to build on the same foundation

01:35:38 ◼   ► that was the original iTunes from a decade ago, they've wound up with something that's

01:35:44 ◼   ► just confusing. And iTunes Match is a perfect example of that. When they first came out

01:35:48 ◼   ► with iTunes Match, I understood what it was meant to do and it sounded appealing and I

01:35:52 ◼   ► paid for it and I guess I still do pay for it. But now that they have Apple Music, I

01:35:57 ◼   ► just feel like it's too much. I feel like there should be just like two things. Here's

01:36:02 ◼   ► your music which you have copies of right here on your on your computer and

01:36:07 ◼   ► you can sync them to your other devices if you want and then if you want to pay

01:36:12 ◼   ► us to have access to you know music like a subscription basis that's Apple music

01:36:20 ◼   ► like I kind of feel like iTunes match should just go away well see I I really

01:36:25 ◼   ► liked iTunes match because then I could have one copy of my music on on my

01:36:31 ◼   ► computer and then I could just use iTunes match and not take up space on my

01:36:37 ◼   ► device you know on my iPhone or my iPad I could just use the iTunes match and

01:36:41 ◼   ► get a whole cloud library but when they when they changed that and rolled it

01:36:47 ◼   ► into iCloud music library I'm basically paying for a service that it doesn't do

01:36:53 ◼   ► what it did you know in my mind they kind of took away a feature but are

01:36:59 ◼   ► still charging me for that feature. But if I look at Apple Music today, right now, I

01:37:09 ◼   ► was using it this morning before we did this. And if I look at the app and the service,

01:37:18 ◼   ► it's something that I would recommend. I think it's great. And I use the radio more now than

01:37:26 ◼   ► what I've ever used radio before. I mean I was a big fan of Pandora because I think Pandora had

01:37:32 ◼   ► the best algorithmic radio service out there. Better than Spotify, better than Apple, better

01:37:39 ◼   ► than everybody. But Apple's is getting really really good. So the way that I use radio is

01:37:48 ◼   ► I'll pick a song like Guns N' Roses. So pick Sweet Child of Mine or Welcome to the Jungle.

01:37:52 ◼   ► [MUSIC]

01:38:06 ◼   ► I'll say, make a station based on this song.

01:38:09 ◼   ► What I expect here from that station is basically hit after hit after hit,

01:38:17 ◼   ► nothing but hits

01:38:19 ◼   ► for as long as I play that station and

01:38:22 ◼   ► I I'll use that when I go for a drive or you know what I'm doing something that I just want to hear

01:38:29 ◼   ► You know, I have people over and I pick a song

01:38:33 ◼   ► I want to hear other songs like that and nothing but hits and for a while what you were getting from

01:38:40 ◼   ► From the radio stations was and this is even before Apple music you were getting

01:38:47 ◼   ► kind of like the the best of the b-sides that nobody ever wanted to hear and I would just

01:38:54 ◼   ► be skipping through songs saying what is this why why are you playing and you know that's

01:39:03 ◼   ► that's what you ended up with that's not the case anymore now I'm hearing a lot of great

01:39:08 ◼   ► songs you know just and and that's great so what I also use the hard rock channel the

01:39:16 ◼   ► pre-done curated hard rock channel on Apple Music and it's gotten really really really good.

01:39:24 ◼   ► And I use that for discovery and I have added so many songs to my library from the hard rock

01:39:32 ◼   ► channel that you know I'll be listening to songs and hearing new music and say yeah that's pretty

01:39:39 ◼   ► good and I'll reach over and tap the the heart button so I'll heart that and then

01:39:45 ◼   ► you know two or three days later I'll be you know listening to the hard rock

01:39:50 ◼   ► channel and that song will will come on again and I'll say geez that's pretty

01:39:53 ◼   ► good I'll reach over to hit the heart button and I'll have already hearted it

01:39:57 ◼   ► so I said well I need to add that to my library and I'll go in and add that song

01:40:02 ◼   ► sometimes I'll add the whole album but I'll add that song to my library and

01:40:05 ◼   ► And then I also rate it with stars.

01:40:08 ◼   ► So then it goes into my playlist of,

01:40:13 ◼   ► you know, I have a playlist done of four stars or higher.

01:40:18 ◼   ► So if I'm going on a long drive,

01:40:21 ◼   ► I'll put on that playlist of all the songs forever

01:40:24 ◼   ► that I've rated four stars or higher.

01:40:26 ◼   ► And you know, I could have a couple thousand songs in there

01:40:29 ◼   ► and I know that I'm gonna love every single one of them.

01:40:34 ◼   ► It sounds like you you're having a much better experience with it than you used to

01:40:37 ◼   ► Well, yeah, I mean it but see that's why I need my library right as as part of this because people have said

01:40:45 ◼   ► You know like I added uh, and this was this was a couple months ago. I haven't tried it since but I added uh,

01:40:52 ◼   ► Led zeppelin one and two

01:40:54 ◼   ► To from my music to my itunes library

01:40:58 ◼   ► and it changed the names of those those classic albums to Led Zeppelin Mothership, which is their

01:41:04 ◼   ► greatest hits album. And it just it just pissed me off, you know, I'm saying come on, no, no, no,

01:41:12 ◼   ► it's not, that's not it. Right, and it's even worse that it was those albums because those,

01:41:17 ◼   ► it's wrong in any case to botch the album name, but they're so canonical, you know, iconic,

01:41:24 ◼   ► you know what I mean? Like Led Zeppelin, every Zeppelin album, but especially to me,

01:41:28 ◼   ► one, two, three, and four. Well, I can't, Houses of the Holy, they're all, they're all,

01:41:33 ◼   ► you just know which album it is, right? But things like that I don't find happen much anymore.

01:41:40 ◼   ► There are, and see, that's why I want my own music, because I've spent the last, you know,

01:41:46 ◼   ► what 15 years rating songs in iTunes and and using those playlists for ratings and also for plays

01:41:59 ◼   ► you know what are what are my uh my top 500 songs played of all time in my iTunes library I have a

01:42:06 ◼   ► playlist for that right so if I want to narrow down you know the stars and to just what I've

01:42:12 ◼   ► actually played, then I guess it would be all Aussie songs, but you know, then I can take that playlist.

01:42:20 ◼   ► And people have said, you know, when I posted a picture of Led Zeppelin 1 and 2 being changed to

01:42:27 ◼   ► Mothership, and people said, "Why would you add it from your own songs when you can just add it from

01:42:36 ◼   ► from Apple Music and be done with it.

01:42:38 ◼   ► And my argument was, well,

01:42:42 ◼   ► then you're admitting that it doesn't work.

01:42:46 ◼   ► I mean, you're basically admitting defeat and saying, fine.

01:42:49 ◼   ► It doesn't work, I'll just do what Apple wants me to do.

01:42:53 ◼   ► No, I have valid reasons that I want this stuff on my own.

01:42:58 ◼   ► And do I wanna spend like a year going through all my music

01:43:02 ◼   ► updating the stuff from Apple Music with all the ratings and everything I had? No, I'm

01:43:08 ◼   ► not going to do that.

01:43:09 ◼   ► So, while we're talking about Apple Music, have you seen a story about, I think it was

01:43:13 ◼   ► Hollywood Reporter that broke it, but that Apple is backing a TV series, maybe a limited

01:43:22 ◼   ► run TV series about and starring Dr. Dre?

01:43:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I did see that.

01:43:29 ◼   ► And to me, the interesting part was, so anybody who's been waiting for a while for Apple to

01:43:35 ◼   ► start having their own exclusive content, because they're sort of the last ones to the

01:43:40 ◼   ► game.

01:43:41 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know, I guess Microsoft doesn't really, but YouTube, you know, through, you

01:43:44 ◼   ► know, Google through YouTube has YouTube Red only content.

01:43:49 ◼   ► Hulu, obviously, it's all about their own content.

01:43:52 ◼   ► Netflix has their own content.

01:43:56 ◼   ► And Amazon has exclusive content if you're an Amazon Prime number.

01:44:01 ◼   ► So the question is, if Apple, if it's true, and it seems like it's definitely true that

01:44:06 ◼   ► they're shooting this Dr. Dre thing, like the Hollywood Reporter had reports of who's

01:44:11 ◼   ► in it and what the content is.

01:44:14 ◼   ► I'm fascinated by the idea of how are they going to release it.

01:44:21 ◼   ► Are they going to sell it through iTunes?

01:44:23 ◼   ► pay $1.99 an episode like you do for shows from networks? Are they going to make it so

01:44:30 ◼   ► that if you are an Apple Music subscriber you get it for free? Would they do both so

01:44:35 ◼   ► that if you're not an Apple Music subscriber you can buy it? But if you're, you know, if

01:44:40 ◼   ► you do, is it like, sign up for Apple Music and you can watch this Dr. Dre show? And if

01:44:44 ◼   ► so, isn't Apple Music a bad name for Apple Music? It's also, right? Like, it's less than

01:44:51 ◼   ► a year old but it's already you know in the way that itunes got this name that with tunes you know

01:44:58 ◼   ► the root word of itunes is tunes and it evolved in all these ways that eventually had nothing to do

01:45:03 ◼   ► with music is apple music already about video content and don't forget that uh itunes uh itunes

01:45:11 ◼   ► was itunes music store and they they dropped music right you know like uh ios was iphone

01:45:18 ◼   ► Right. Is Apple ever going to stop naming things music and then going on to make them go in other ways?

01:45:23 ◼   ► And just it would be like if Amazon Prime had been named Amazon Free Shipping.

01:45:27 ◼   ► The Amazon Free Shipping Club. No, it's like they had the foresight when they named it Amazon Prime

01:45:33 ◼   ► that, "Hey, we might do all sorts of cool stuff for people who sign up for this. So let's just

01:45:38 ◼   ► give it a name that just sort of means, you know, Amazon Premium customer."

01:45:42 ◼   ► But I think I think they they did such a good job with with iTunes over the years that people know

01:45:48 ◼   ► You know, you just go to iTunes to get everything which may be part of the problem in trying to split it up

01:45:54 ◼   ► You know, I but you know with your your question

01:45:58 ◼   ► I mean it would make sense for Apple because they have the money to be able to say yes sign up for

01:46:04 ◼   ► Apple music and get dr. Dre's show for free

01:46:10 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:46:11 ◼   ► - You know, they could very well do that.

01:46:13 ◼   ► I think it's interesting that they are getting into it,

01:46:16 ◼   ► and I think it's a good thing, and they need to do it.

01:46:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, what if, I mean, it could, I don't know,

01:46:23 ◼   ► I mean, they have so many options, but it could,

01:46:25 ◼   ► could just say if you have any Apple device,

01:46:29 ◼   ► you can watch it for free, you know?

01:46:30 ◼   ► Any iPhone, iPad, Apple TV can watch this show for free.

01:46:35 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:46:37 ◼   ► I'm very curious what they would do,

01:46:39 ◼   ► or what they're going to do.

01:46:40 ◼   ► I've been thinking about it for a long time

01:46:41 ◼   ► 'cause I've long, everybody's long suspected Apple

01:46:44 ◼   ► might get into original content.

01:46:46 ◼   ► But now that they are, I'm excited to find out

01:46:48 ◼   ► how they're actually gonna go to market with it.

01:46:50 ◼   ► 'Cause I don't think it's clear.

01:46:52 ◼   ► - It is gonna be, well, and let's not forget

01:46:54 ◼   ► that they grew from, what, six million subscribers

01:46:59 ◼   ► to 11 million, they told you on the show last week.

01:47:05 ◼   ► I mean, that's huge.

01:47:07 ◼   ► funny because it's not huge by Apple standards. Like on the same show, you know, they mentioned

01:47:12 ◼   ► that they have 700 million users, 700 and some million total users, and they've only got 11

01:47:19 ◼   ► million on Apple Music, but it's, you know, it's in comparison to other streaming services, and it is

01:47:25 ◼   ► sort of a slow and steady wins the race type thing. Right, and like by huge I meant huge increase in

01:47:32 ◼   ► in a relatively short period of time.

01:47:35 ◼   ► I mean, they almost doubled it.

01:47:37 ◼   ► So here's the question though.

01:47:39 ◼   ► Did they double it because of this Taylor Swift thing?

01:47:43 ◼   ► I mean, for a while it looked like

01:47:44 ◼   ► Taylor Swift had bought Apple.

01:47:46 ◼   ► - Right.

01:47:47 ◼   ► - Because she was just everywhere.

01:47:48 ◼   ► You walk into a retail store,

01:47:49 ◼   ► the stores were just plastered with Taylor Swift.

01:47:52 ◼   ► The iTunes store was plastered with Taylor Swift.

01:47:56 ◼   ► I mean, every banner was Taylor Swift.

01:47:58 ◼   ► Is that why it grew?

01:48:01 ◼   ► And I've also said before that--

01:48:05 ◼   ► - I don't think it hurt.

01:48:06 ◼   ► - Well, it certainly didn't hurt.

01:48:08 ◼   ► I mean, is it because the service over that time got better?

01:48:13 ◼   ► I understand that there are a lot of people,

01:48:16 ◼   ► a lot of people that never had a problem with Apple Music.

01:48:20 ◼   ► I get that, I've talked to those people, you know?

01:48:25 ◼   ► And I envy those people, I really do.

01:48:28 ◼   ► But if you came to me today with Apple Music and said,

01:48:33 ◼   ► here it is, I'd be 100% behind it

01:48:38 ◼   ► and I can't see saying a bad thing.

01:48:41 ◼   ► Like I said, there's still a couple of niggly little bugs

01:48:44 ◼   ► in it, but nothing that I would say,

01:48:47 ◼   ► oh, this is terrible.

01:48:49 ◼   ► I mean, it's just a software bug, I don't care.

01:48:52 ◼   ► - Well, I think the music industry is going,

01:48:55 ◼   ► clearly kind of going the same way as the TV and video world, where exclusives drive

01:49:07 ◼   ► the subscriptions. Netflix isn't Netflix without the Netflix original content at this point,

01:49:16 ◼   ► even though a lot of what people watch on Netflix are their whole library of movies and stuff like

01:49:20 ◼   ► that but it's the fact that they have some stuff that you can only get on

01:49:23 ◼   ► Netflix that is you know if you're only going to subscribe to one or two monthly

01:49:28 ◼   ► services you know it's the exclusive stuff that makes you pick which ones it

01:49:32 ◼   ► is and just as the you know another example so the and it just seems like

01:49:36 ◼   ► you know Taylor Swift having original stuff on on Apple music like the movie

01:49:42 ◼   ► they made and stuff like that is exclusive yeah and then you've got

01:49:46 ◼   ► Kanye West who has a new album out that's only on Tidal and he said for whatever reason you know

01:49:52 ◼   ► that it's never going to be on, he called it Apple, but it's never going to be on

01:49:55 ◼   ► yeah and I for one am thankful that he's not going to be on Apple Music so

01:50:04 ◼   ► I saw him on Saturday Night Live last week I thought it was like incomprehensible

01:50:09 ◼   ► I mean, I'm a little old and I'm definitely not in the demo, but it was a very bizarre performance.

01:50:17 ◼   ► He's an interesting guy. But again, though, it's just... but you just never used to see that in the

01:50:22 ◼   ► old days. There was never like an album that came out from a major act that was only at

01:50:26 ◼   ► Tower Records. Right. Right? It just wasn't how the industry worked. And it just seems like now,

01:50:33 ◼   ► especially from the perspective of the the the the superstar music acts that

01:50:40 ◼   ► it's all about exclusives and Apple is in a strong position in my opinion in

01:50:45 ◼   ► that regard because they can a pay for it and be I think that from them you

01:50:52 ◼   ► know in addition to just the fact that Apple has the money to pay for it they

01:50:55 ◼   ► know people know that Apple has the marketing ability to to really help you

01:50:59 ◼   ► know that if Apple is behind you in the marketing you know you've got a really

01:51:03 ◼   ► marketing partner. Yep, I agree and I love the fact that they are getting into this original

01:51:12 ◼   ► content. I can't wait to see where that goes. But there's a lot of things that they can do.

01:51:20 ◼   ► They have a lot of connections and you know what I think is really funny? Remember the whole thing

01:51:26 ◼   ► with Jimmy Iovine talking about women and playlists.

01:51:30 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:51:32 ◼   ► That women are sitting around talking about boys

01:51:36 ◼   ► and listening to music and they need help with playlists.

01:51:39 ◼   ► The latest commercial were three women

01:51:41 ◼   ► sitting around talking about breaking up

01:51:43 ◼   ► and listening to music.

01:51:45 ◼   ► I thought that was kind of ironic.

01:51:47 ◼   ► - Oh, and I guess that brings us to the last

01:51:50 ◼   ► and final scandal of the week,

01:51:52 ◼   ► which is that in the, I think that was the commercial,

01:51:54 ◼   ► There's one of the new two new iPhone commercials Apple at the narrator young woman pronounces the word

01:52:01 ◼   ► Jeff as

01:52:03 ◼   ► GIF which is how I pronounce it is it you know the GIF image format is it a soft?

01:52:07 ◼   ► Soft G or hard G and Apple has come out strongly on the hard G side

01:52:12 ◼   ► Which is where I've always been me too, so but there we go, but I know people are losing losing their shit over that yeah

01:52:20 ◼   ► Well, we have we have so much time in our hands these days that we can we can lose their shit over something like like that

01:52:28 ◼   ► But I don't what is the right way? I've always said gift

01:52:32 ◼   ► This is why it's the long story short the controversy is that the I think it was one guy

01:52:38 ◼   ► I mean, I guess I can look it up in the show notes, but whoever it was who created it

01:52:42 ◼   ► If you remember it was a unisys

01:52:44 ◼   ► Image format that they had a patent on and that they never enforced it

01:52:49 ◼   ► But then when the and and it was like a sort of obscure image format in like the late 80s early 90s

01:52:56 ◼   ► But then when the web happened and we needed really tightly, you know, very small

01:53:02 ◼   ► byte count image format and then all the browsers supported the format and it exploded and then Unisys was like hey, dude

01:53:10 ◼   ► We still own a patent on that and really kind of made a stink about it

01:53:15 ◼   ► Anyway, the the team or the guy at unisys who invented it and stands for graphics interchange format and the guy who invented it

01:53:22 ◼   ► says it they've always pronounced it with the soft G Jeff like the peanut butter and

01:53:27 ◼   ► Therefore the that side of the argument says the guy who invented it says it's Jeff. Therefore. It's Jeff

01:53:33 ◼   ► Whereas

01:53:37 ◼   ► Everybody else is like if it's graphics interchange format. It's a hard G. It's gif and

01:53:43 ◼   ► Who cares what the original guy said language evolves naturally and the natural way that this has evolved is that it's a hard G

01:53:50 ◼   ► okay, so

01:53:52 ◼   ► The big question doesn't matter

01:53:55 ◼   ► People but there was like when that video came out there was like an hour or two on Twitter where that's all anybody was talking about

01:54:02 ◼   ► I mean, do you go to anybody and say gift and they don't know what you're talking about?

01:54:07 ◼   ► No, no, I just I just think it sounds better great

01:54:11 ◼   ► I'd be very curious to know like whether readers and listeners of the show if

01:54:16 ◼   ► how they fall it seems like

01:54:19 ◼   ► it's a little bit like the vodka versus gin martini thing where there's

01:54:25 ◼   ► The the one side cares a lot and the other side is like hey you pronounce it. However you want

01:54:31 ◼   ► Yeah, you know like with martinis the people who like vodka martinis other people, you know, and somebody else's well

01:54:37 ◼   ► I think a real martini has to be made with gin and the vodka person says, okay

01:54:40 ◼   ► Enjoy your gin martini. But the gin martini person is like, "You're not drinking a real martini. That's not a martini. You're..."

01:54:46 ◼   ► And I feel like the hard G gif people are like... I say gif, you say gif. Alright.

01:54:52 ◼   ► But the soft G people really get bent out of shape about it. Apparently because the guy who created it says it's the other way.

01:55:02 ◼   ► Anyway, Apple says it's hard G, so I say it's hard G.

01:55:05 ◼   ► I always said hard G.

01:55:08 ◼   ► anything else before we wrap up? I don't think so. I guess I have a correct I

01:55:17 ◼   ► guess most podcasts do their corrections at the beginning. Two episodes ago I said

01:55:26 ◼   ► and I think that was with Ben Thompson I I was we were talking about the new

01:55:31 ◼   ► four-inch iPhone that's supposedly coming next month and I think I said

01:55:34 ◼   ► that it's gonna have the A8 processor that's a year old from the iPhone 6. And Mark Gurman

01:55:40 ◼   ► has reported that it's an A9. I think a couple other rumors have said A9. I misspoke on the

01:55:46 ◼   ► air. So the rumor is, I don't know if it's true or not, but anyway, I should correct

01:55:49 ◼   ► it that the rumor as reported by Mark Gurman and I think others is that the new 4-inch

01:55:54 ◼   ► iPhone is gonna have an A9 processor which would put it at the, you know, six months

01:56:02 ◼   ► behind the iPhone 6s and 6s plus in terms of specs and that is exactly why when I was on the

01:56:08 ◼   ► show with Ben that I said I think that it's a phone that Apple intends to keep on the market

01:56:12 ◼   ► for 18 to 24 months because they're putting the top of the line a9 in there and that makes a lot

01:56:17 ◼   ► more sense I misspoke when I said a8 though and I regret the error well anything else clearly you're

01:56:23 ◼   ► not trustworthy anymore I mean can I ask you one question before you can ask me anything Joe all

01:56:31 ◼   ► Do you use Apple Music? Not a lot. I don't listen to a lot of music, to tell you the truth.

01:56:36 ◼   ► I haven't in a long time. I can't work with music playing.

01:56:42 ◼   ► Well, I could. I shouldn't say I can't. But I'm a little princess in a pea. I like to...

01:56:46 ◼   ► with a pea under my mattress. I like to work in silence, so I don't listen to music

01:56:51 ◼   ► when I'm writing or reading. If I do want to listen to music, though,

01:56:56 ◼   ► I would. Yeah, okay. I was just wondering. I think where I will eventually use Apple Music the most

01:57:02 ◼   ► and I need to get a new car to make it work better, but I anticipate, you know, that getting a car

01:57:12 ◼   ► where instead of using Sirius, which we have in our car, I would much rather have Apple Music

01:57:18 ◼   ► and just go over the LTE connection on my phone because it would be a much higher quality. Even

01:57:25 ◼   ► Even my shitty ears can hear the horrible compression on current satellite radio.

01:57:32 ◼   ► So it would be way higher fidelity.

01:57:34 ◼   ► And obviously, I think I would just rather go through the Apple Music stations and the

01:57:38 ◼   ► Apple Music algorithms and have the complete access to my personal library at all times,

01:57:43 ◼   ► rather than just choose from the stations that Sirius offers.

01:57:48 ◼   ► The car is where I would listen to music, but I don't drive much, so it's not that much.

01:57:52 ◼   ► Even there, it's not much.

01:57:55 ◼   ► Like when I go out on a walk in the city or something like that,

01:57:57 ◼   ► I listen to podcasts instead of music.

01:57:58 ◼   ► I don't really listen to it much.

01:58:00 ◼   ► But if I do listen to music, I do use it.

01:58:01 ◼   ► But I don't use it enough that I have strong opinions on it.

01:58:04 ◼   ► So that's why I don't really write much about Apple Music.

01:58:08 ◼   ► Well, give it a try.

01:58:09 ◼   ► I think you'll like it.

01:58:12 ◼   ► Everybody can check out Jim's work, of course,

01:58:14 ◼   ► at loopinsight.com.

01:58:17 ◼   ► That's Jim's website.

01:58:18 ◼   ► And on Twitter, he's--

01:58:20 ◼   ► I'm going to guess.

01:58:21 ◼   ► My guess is your username is jdalrimple.

01:58:25 ◼   ► That is it.

01:58:26 ◼   ► - And you can enjoy his plight, his plight on, you know.

01:58:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:58:37 ◼   ► - No, there's no plight anymore.

01:58:39 ◼   ► It's all good.

01:58:40 ◼   ► - It's polite tweets.

01:58:42 ◼   ► All right, Jim, thanks a lot.

01:58:44 ◼   ► It's good talking to you.

01:58:46 ◼   ► - You too, man.