The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► - This is gonna be a challenge, Rene.

00:00:01 ◼   ► I feel like this is gonna test all of my meager

00:00:04 ◼   ► podcast hosting skills to get this in on time.

00:00:07 ◼   ► We, you and I, I don't know how many years in a row,

00:00:09 ◼   ► we've done a year in review, Apple year in review

00:00:11 ◼   ► at the end of the year, this is it.

00:00:13 ◼   ► But yet we've got news to cover.

00:00:15 ◼   ► How are we gonna do it?

00:00:16 ◼   ► There's all sorts of new stuff that is out.

00:00:18 ◼   ► I'm not known for my brevity,

00:00:19 ◼   ► but I'm gonna make the best of it.

00:00:21 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:00:22 ◼   ► - How are you?

00:00:23 ◼   ► - Good, thank you, how are you doing?

00:00:25 ◼   ► - Well, I'm doing pretty well.

00:00:27 ◼   ► I'm cold, but it's, the good news is I went outside.

00:00:29 ◼   ► - You have an Intel Mac, though.

00:00:30 ◼   ► That's still got a built-in space heater,

00:00:31 ◼   ► so you're one up on me now.

00:00:33 ◼   ► - No, I'm not using an Intel Mac to record this show.

00:00:36 ◼   ► I'm on an M1, so I'm drawing no heat from my--

00:00:39 ◼   ► - Ah, same, yeah, same.

00:00:40 ◼   ► - I guess year in review, we could start with you.

00:00:43 ◼   ► This has been a big year for you,

00:00:45 ◼   ► and the last time you were on the show back in June,

00:00:48 ◼   ► and nothing had happened yet,

00:00:49 ◼   ► but since then, you've started a new gig,

00:00:52 ◼   ► and for those who don't know,

00:00:53 ◼   ► why don't you talk about it?

00:00:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, I joined YouTube as creator liaison,

00:00:58 ◼   ► and it's interesting because I was done.

00:01:01 ◼   ► My old company got bought out

00:01:02 ◼   ► by some giant UK media conglomerate,

00:01:05 ◼   ► and it wasn't my scene, so I quit.

00:01:08 ◼   ► I went independent.

00:01:09 ◼   ► Mutual friend Dave Whiskus helped me

00:01:11 ◼   ► get a whole YouTube thing going, and it was great.

00:01:13 ◼   ► Never gonna work for a company again,

00:01:15 ◼   ► and then a guy I knew, a friend of mine, Matt Koval,

00:01:17 ◼   ► who was the YouTube creator liaison, he resigned,

00:01:20 ◼   ► and I'd heard about that,

00:01:22 ◼   ► and it was a couple months going on,

00:01:23 ◼   ► and then another friend of mine who works at YouTube said,

00:01:25 ◼   ► "You should try out for the job,"

00:01:27 ◼   ► and I just kept saying, "No, I'm done.

00:01:29 ◼   ► "I'm never working for a company again."

00:01:31 ◼   ► He said, "Just meet with the team," and I did,

00:01:33 ◼   ► and it was like, I swear to God, John,

00:01:36 ◼   ► it was like one of those moments

00:01:37 ◼   ► where you're walked around the park,

00:01:38 ◼   ► and they say, "You don't wanna keep making soda water

00:01:40 ◼   ► "or come with us and dent the universe,"

00:01:43 ◼   ► because it was like really this opportunity

00:01:44 ◼   ► to help people, to help creators,

00:01:46 ◼   ► and all the people that they touch at a scale

00:01:49 ◼   ► that's like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,

00:01:51 ◼   ► and I always figured helping people choose phones

00:01:53 ◼   ► and helping people choose laptops, that's all great,

00:01:56 ◼   ► but the ability to help people change lives

00:01:59 ◼   ► was something I couldn't pass up,

00:02:01 ◼   ► so I decided to try to get the job,

00:02:02 ◼   ► and then I was very lucky to get it.

00:02:04 ◼   ► - I will say, you do seem, and I do feel like

00:02:07 ◼   ► when you announced it, which was a surprise,

00:02:11 ◼   ► you kept it a surprise for me, including,

00:02:13 ◼   ► all you'd let me know is

00:02:14 ◼   ► that you had an announcement coming up.

00:02:15 ◼   ► I did not press you, which I think you will agree.

00:02:18 ◼   ► I was a good friend, let you have your secret.

00:02:20 ◼   ► I know how that is, but I do feel

00:02:22 ◼   ► that once you announced it,

00:02:24 ◼   ► everybody sort of had the unique or the same reaction,

00:02:28 ◼   ► which was this seems like a job

00:02:30 ◼   ► that was invented for Renee,

00:02:32 ◼   ► and insofar as it is something

00:02:35 ◼   ► you seem keenly interested in,

00:02:37 ◼   ► but also over the years,

00:02:39 ◼   ► I believe that you have befriended

00:02:42 ◼   ► in the truest non-competitive sense

00:02:46 ◼   ► in the way that being on YouTube is not zero-sum, right?

00:02:50 ◼   ► I mean, ultimately it is,

00:02:51 ◼   ► 'cause there's only 24 hours in a day.

00:02:53 ◼   ► You can't watch more than 24 hours

00:02:56 ◼   ► of YouTube videos in a day,

00:02:57 ◼   ► I guess unless you speed 'em up,

00:02:59 ◼   ► but you know an awful lot of independent creators

00:03:03 ◼   ► on YouTube, for lack of a better word,

00:03:05 ◼   ► and they know you and like you,

00:03:08 ◼   ► and now your job is literally to help them?

00:03:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I advocate for creators inside of YouTube.

00:03:15 ◼   ► Like, everyone on YouTube is really pro-creator.

00:03:17 ◼   ► That was one of the things that,

00:03:18 ◼   ► I can't say it really surprised me,

00:03:19 ◼   ► but really made me happy,

00:03:21 ◼   ► was that everyone fiercely thought about creators

00:03:24 ◼   ► and prioritized creators, but it's my only job.

00:03:27 ◼   ► I don't have anything else to do but advocate for creators,

00:03:30 ◼   ► try to build empathy and understanding

00:03:31 ◼   ► about what creators go through.

00:03:33 ◼   ► All different kinds of creators,

00:03:34 ◼   ► 'cause it's not just one kind.

00:03:35 ◼   ► There's big and small and marginalized and mainstream

00:03:38 ◼   ► and all across the spectrum of cultural

00:03:40 ◼   ► and lifestyle interests.

00:03:42 ◼   ► Do all that inside YouTube,

00:03:44 ◼   ► but at the same time try to educate creators outside YouTube

00:03:47 ◼   ► so they understand the systems better

00:03:49 ◼   ► and can be more successful on the platform.

00:03:51 ◼   ► So it's sort of like half ombudsman, half evangelism.

00:03:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, I guess so, right?

00:03:56 ◼   ► I mean, and it's going back to Apple even,

00:03:59 ◼   ► the evangelists, sort of like the working in dev relations,

00:04:03 ◼   ► the equivalent, you know?

00:04:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, except I get to see things on Twitter

00:04:08 ◼   ► and interact with people,

00:04:09 ◼   ► which I think is different than Apple's culture.

00:04:12 ◼   ► The evangelists at Apple are amazing,

00:04:14 ◼   ► but they don't get to interact

00:04:15 ◼   ► in a public forum with developers,

00:04:18 ◼   ► and I also get to champion them inside

00:04:21 ◼   ► and say, "What are we doing here?

00:04:22 ◼   ► "Why is this happening on Twitter?

00:04:23 ◼   ► "What is going on?"

00:04:24 ◼   ► And try to find answers, which I think is fantastic.

00:04:27 ◼   ► - But you're still making videos.

00:04:30 ◼   ► - Yes, yeah, so part of the thing was

00:04:31 ◼   ► I never wanna not feel the pain of being a creator,

00:04:33 ◼   ► 'cause I think that helps with the empathy,

00:04:35 ◼   ► and I also wanna make sure if,

00:04:36 ◼   ► it's the same thing with code.

00:04:37 ◼   ► I don't want anyone else to hit the bugs first,

00:04:39 ◼   ► 'cause that's a terrible experience.

00:04:41 ◼   ► So I try to do all the different things that YouTube does

00:04:43 ◼   ► so that I can feel the same things

00:04:44 ◼   ► that creators are going through.

00:04:47 ◼   ► Which would be different.

00:04:49 ◼   ► Again, to stress the analogy,

00:04:50 ◼   ► it would be like if somebody who worked in dev relations

00:04:52 ◼   ► at Apple could still be an independent developer somehow.

00:04:56 ◼   ► Which it doesn't actually, I actually do understand.

00:04:59 ◼   ► Actually, can't spend too much time

00:05:03 ◼   ► going into the app store today.

00:05:04 ◼   ► We have time limits, but I understand

00:05:07 ◼   ► why that doesn't quite work out.

00:05:09 ◼   ► It's interesting to me, though,

00:05:11 ◼   ► that it does, that YouTube doesn't see this,

00:05:13 ◼   ► and I guess I can kind of see why.

00:05:16 ◼   ► The idea would be, well, wait a minute.

00:05:18 ◼   ► If you're making some kind of app,

00:05:19 ◼   ► how do you know it's not Apple's,

00:05:21 ◼   ► there's weird, people go to work for a big,

00:05:24 ◼   ► it's not just Apple, but you go to work

00:05:26 ◼   ► for one of these big companies.

00:05:28 ◼   ► Your employment contract often says something

00:05:32 ◼   ► to the effect of, it's just best not to work

00:05:35 ◼   ► on other software.

00:05:37 ◼   ► Whereas your video, your independent video creations,

00:05:41 ◼   ► there's no reason why YouTube would have any claim,

00:05:43 ◼   ► or even want claim to them, right?

00:05:44 ◼   ► YouTube itself has no interest in owning them,

00:05:48 ◼   ► as opposed to some sort of clever utility

00:05:50 ◼   ► for iOS or something like that,

00:05:52 ◼   ► where you could see the conflict

00:05:54 ◼   ► and you don't want to blur any lines.

00:05:56 ◼   ► This sort of is perfect?

00:05:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I did have to change my channel

00:06:00 ◼   ► in a non-insignificant way,

00:06:02 ◼   ► 'cause I was just doing complete Apple product coverage

00:06:04 ◼   ► and a lot of rumors and things.

00:06:05 ◼   ► Now I work inside Google, I have a lot of information

00:06:07 ◼   ► inside Google, so it's not fair for me

00:06:10 ◼   ► to do that kind of stuff.

00:06:11 ◼   ► So I try to do more video essays.

00:06:13 ◼   ► And also it wouldn't be fair if I had access to things

00:06:15 ◼   ► that weren't available, at least in public betas.

00:06:17 ◼   ► So we're all very careful to make sure that,

00:06:20 ◼   ► like I'm running it in a way that doesn't touch anything

00:06:22 ◼   ► that Google does, which is hard,

00:06:23 ◼   ► 'cause Google does so many things,

00:06:25 ◼   ► but also doesn't have access to anything

00:06:27 ◼   ► that a standard creator wouldn't have access to.

00:06:29 ◼   ► - Hmm, I getcha, I getcha.

00:06:31 ◼   ► And so anyway, here we are at the end of the year,

00:06:33 ◼   ► it's going well?

00:06:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic.

00:06:36 ◼   ► It's the best thing I've ever done.

00:06:37 ◼   ► Like I get to finish almost every day

00:06:39 ◼   ► knowing that I helped creators,

00:06:40 ◼   ► especially marginalized creators,

00:06:41 ◼   ► in like pretty amazing ways.

00:06:43 ◼   ► - That's pretty good.

00:06:44 ◼   ► All right, before we dig into actual news,

00:06:47 ◼   ► Apple Front, let's start with a thank you

00:06:50 ◼   ► to one of our sponsors here on my show.

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00:09:18 ◼   ► Let's get the news out of the way.

00:09:19 ◼   ► I would say, let's just go least pleasant to most pleasant.

00:09:24 ◼   ► And I've spent a lot of time writing about Twitter this month.

00:09:30 ◼   ► I think a very good interview with Anil Dash

00:09:33 ◼   ► an episode or two ago here on the show,

00:09:35 ◼   ► which the backstory on that is that things are moving

00:09:40 ◼   ► so fast at Twitter under Elon Musk

00:09:43 ◼   ► that usually I have about a 36, 48 hour turnaround here

00:09:48 ◼   ► between recording and publishing episodes,

00:09:51 ◼   ► sometimes closer to 24 hours, sometimes closer to 48.

00:09:54 ◼   ► So much had happened after Anil,

00:09:58 ◼   ► Anil and I record, I thought it went really well.

00:10:01 ◼   ► And I was really keen on having a guest

00:10:04 ◼   ► who was skeptical, to say the least,

00:10:07 ◼   ► that's almost putting it kindly,

00:10:08 ◼   ► skeptical of Elon Musk back in April

00:10:11 ◼   ► when it was first announced that he would buy Twitter

00:10:14 ◼   ► because I was publicly optimistic.

00:10:17 ◼   ► And so I wanted somebody who would push me on that

00:10:20 ◼   ► because I was turning, I was like, hmm,

00:10:23 ◼   ► looks like this might be one of those cases

00:10:25 ◼   ► where I get to apply my way to be right all the time

00:10:28 ◼   ► is to admit when you're wrong.

00:10:29 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:10:30 ◼   ► - And Anil was excellent and really made

00:10:33 ◼   ► a lot of keen points, further changed my mind

00:10:36 ◼   ► during the interview, which is always to me very exciting.

00:10:39 ◼   ► I find it very exciting to change my mind.

00:10:41 ◼   ► And I got worried after we recorded

00:10:44 ◼   ► because all of a sudden more stuff started happening.

00:10:46 ◼   ► And I was like, is this even gonna be relevant?

00:10:49 ◼   ► And it was literally the weekend where he laid off

00:10:56 ◼   ► three quarters, two thirds, whatever of their staff

00:10:58 ◼   ► and then additional people started resigning

00:11:02 ◼   ► and there was speculation, there were quotes in the press

00:11:05 ◼   ► from people who said that there were teams

00:11:07 ◼   ► that Twitter could not function without

00:11:09 ◼   ► who were down to zero headcount.

00:11:12 ◼   ► And so if it were true that Twitter couldn't function

00:11:15 ◼   ► without them, that the whole site might collapse,

00:11:17 ◼   ► which didn't happen, but I was,

00:11:20 ◼   ► it was a stressful 36 hours 'cause I was like,

00:11:22 ◼   ► I want this episode out, it was good.

00:11:24 ◼   ► - I don't have much more to say about that.

00:11:25 ◼   ► I will say though that in the last 24 hours as we record,

00:11:30 ◼   ► Twitter instituted an official policy,

00:11:33 ◼   ► including an official help page,

00:11:35 ◼   ► banning the inclusion of links to about, I don't know,

00:11:40 ◼   ► half a dozen, a dozen other social media sites.

00:11:43 ◼   ► It's funny what was included on the list and what wasn't.

00:11:45 ◼   ► It was like Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon,

00:11:48 ◼   ► which I think was the one that was under Elon Musk's skin.

00:11:50 ◼   ► Truth Social for some reason, but not LinkedIn and not,

00:11:55 ◼   ► I forget what else, or Tumblr.

00:11:56 ◼   ► - Not YouTube. - Yeah, not YouTube.

00:11:58 ◼   ► But YouTube would certainly make sense, I think,

00:12:01 ◼   ► because I, I don't know, it's--

00:12:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, and Notor was there too, which upset Jack.

00:12:07 ◼   ► - Yes, well, that seemed like it was just for Jack, right?

00:12:12 ◼   ► - Yeah. - What's it called?

00:12:12 ◼   ► Nostr? - Nostr, yeah, I don't know.

00:12:15 ◼   ► There's too few letters left and too many acronyms.

00:12:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't understand it.

00:12:20 ◼   ► I looked into it when I saw Jack was into it.

00:12:22 ◼   ► - Not, it's N-O-S-T-R, so it's sort of a 20,

00:12:26 ◼   ► sort of like a, I guess, maybe?

00:12:29 ◼   ► It's like, well, I don't know, though,

00:12:30 ◼   ► it's about predictions, but I looked into it

00:12:32 ◼   ► and it's not something you can sign up for.

00:12:34 ◼   ► It's like some kind of, it's way more nascent and nerdy

00:12:38 ◼   ► and you run it and generate, I don't know.

00:12:40 ◼   ► It's more cryptographically inclined.

00:12:42 ◼   ► - But not Hive, it was a real smorgasbord, a link tree,

00:12:45 ◼   ► a real smorgasbord of random things.

00:12:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, Hive is the one that exploded in popularity,

00:12:51 ◼   ► but then had sort of had to shut down for a bit

00:12:54 ◼   ► because they were so in over their heads.

00:12:56 ◼   ► Again, it doesn't seem like they were incompetent.

00:12:59 ◼   ► It just seems like a three-person project

00:13:02 ◼   ► exploded in popularity for reasons, you know.

00:13:04 ◼   ► Nobody can, you never know when something's

00:13:06 ◼   ► gonna blow up like that.

00:13:08 ◼   ► Post seems more, post.news is the name

00:13:12 ◼   ► of the social network.

00:13:14 ◼   ► Right now, they're web-only.

00:13:15 ◼   ► I honestly don't see the appeal, but you know,

00:13:20 ◼   ► maybe it's because it's designed for people

00:13:22 ◼   ► who are unlike me.

00:13:24 ◼   ► It seems to be drawn up to draw journalists,

00:13:29 ◼   ► for lack of a better word, media personalities,

00:13:31 ◼   ► which you would think I would be included in,

00:13:33 ◼   ► but I just don't see the appeal of it.

00:13:35 ◼   ► - No.

00:13:36 ◼   ► - But because it's going after media people

00:13:39 ◼   ► and Elon Musk is obsessed clearly,

00:13:41 ◼   ► whether you love him or hate him or are ambivalent,

00:13:43 ◼   ► he's clearly interested in publicity and attention.

00:13:47 ◼   ► Therefore, a network specifically geared towards people

00:13:51 ◼   ► in a position of media influence

00:13:52 ◼   ► is clearly gonna catch his attention.

00:13:54 ◼   ► - And this was all, by the way,

00:13:55 ◼   ► during the World Cup finale,

00:13:57 ◼   ► where attention became incredibly divided.

00:13:59 ◼   ► - Right?

00:14:01 ◼   ► - And he was there, alive,

00:14:02 ◼   ► like he's coordinating a less-well-sittin'-there-in-the-box,

00:14:04 ◼   ► watchin' the match.

00:14:05 ◼   ► - Right, in Qatar with a friend of the show, Jared Kushner.

00:14:09 ◼   ► - Jared and the homies.

00:14:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, and you know, well, by late last night,

00:14:14 ◼   ► the whole policy had been rescinded,

00:14:16 ◼   ► the help page was a 404,

00:14:18 ◼   ► and I guess it's a big nevermind.

00:14:20 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure if they've taken,

00:14:22 ◼   ► I haven't even tried it yet,

00:14:23 ◼   ► if they have taken out the filters,

00:14:25 ◼   ► the ham-fisted filters they've applied

00:14:28 ◼   ► to keep you from linking to your Mastodon account

00:14:30 ◼   ► in your Twitter bio.

00:14:32 ◼   ► I don't know if they've taken those out yet or not.

00:14:34 ◼   ► Who knows what's going on?

00:14:35 ◼   ► I'm just curious.

00:14:36 ◼   ► - My favorite was the quick journey of Paul Graham,

00:14:39 ◼   ► where he went from people who aren't CEOs of companies

00:14:41 ◼   ► shouldn't be telling Elon how to run this company,

00:14:43 ◼   ► to this is it, my last straw, I've had it,

00:14:45 ◼   ► I'm leaving from Mastodon, to Paul Graham is banned.

00:14:48 ◼   ► - I sympathize with Paul Graham though,

00:14:51 ◼   ► 'cause I feel like while his initial tweet

00:14:53 ◼   ► that he's getting dunked on from, I don't know,

00:14:56 ◼   ► a long, long couple of weeks ago,

00:14:58 ◼   ► where he said people who haven't been in this position

00:15:00 ◼   ► shouldn't criticize, you know,

00:15:02 ◼   ► he's run rocket and electric car companies,

00:15:05 ◼   ► that's harder, to now being, you know, yesterday,

00:15:07 ◼   ► while that, now the link policy has been rescinded,

00:15:09 ◼   ► so, you know, and Paul Graham did not close or shutter

00:15:13 ◼   ► or delete his Twitter account, he just said,

00:15:14 ◼   ► "I'm just gonna stop using it

00:15:16 ◼   ► "if this nonsense stays in policy."

00:15:18 ◼   ► Well, you know, it is funny, it is a journey,

00:15:21 ◼   ► it definitely fits the meme of how things started,

00:15:25 ◼   ► how they're going, right, which is an evergreen format.

00:15:29 ◼   ► - There were a couple of these, like the other one,

00:15:31 ◼   ► where the two others really stuck out to me,

00:15:32 ◼   ► one was a YouTuber, I would say like a right-leaning YouTuber,

00:15:37 ◼   ► somebody who's clearly in Elon Musk's wheelhouse right now,

00:15:41 ◼   ► said, "This is bad because I wanna use my link tree

00:15:44 ◼   ► "to connect to my YouTube and to my coffee products

00:15:47 ◼   ► "and all this," and Elon was like,

00:15:48 ◼   ► "Oh yeah, that's a good idea,

00:15:49 ◼   ► "so from now on we'll change it."

00:15:51 ◼   ► And it's just like that feedback loop to me is astonishing.

00:15:55 ◼   ► And then Jimmy, MrBeast tweeted, like Elon put up this,

00:15:59 ◼   ► we'll get to this, Elon put up this poll

00:16:00 ◼   ► about whether we should stay or not,

00:16:01 ◼   ► and Jimmy's like, "If you keep doing hair-brain stuff

00:16:04 ◼   ► "like this, no," with a barf emoji,

00:16:06 ◼   ► and usually when you push back on Elon, his fans flood you.

00:16:11 ◼   ► I've done three videos on Twitter,

00:16:12 ◼   ► same like you've been coming at your podcast,

00:16:14 ◼   ► I never got that much hate for covering Zuckerberg,

00:16:17 ◼   ► covering Google, covering Apple,

00:16:19 ◼   ► covering any other company's things

00:16:21 ◼   ► that I thought were not examples of good management.

00:16:24 ◼   ► I got destroyed on all of those videos.

00:16:27 ◼   ► And Jimmy is the first time I've seen someone respond

00:16:29 ◼   ► to Elon in a negative way where the fandom did not know

00:16:33 ◼   ► how to react and were kinda like,

00:16:35 ◼   ► "But Jimmy, Jimmy, please, let us just explain it to you."

00:16:38 ◼   ► - So yeah, I guess where we stand as we record,

00:16:41 ◼   ► God only knows where things will stand

00:16:43 ◼   ► by the time this episode drops

00:16:44 ◼   ► or where we'll be, the light,

00:16:46 ◼   ► the epochs from now that the end of the year is,

00:16:51 ◼   ► but as of yesterday's-- - The Twitter time.

00:16:55 ◼   ► - Cliffhanger episode of the Elon Musk show,

00:16:58 ◼   ► he had commissioned, or not commissioned,

00:17:01 ◼   ► but put up a Twitter poll for 12 hours,

00:17:03 ◼   ► should he stay or step down as CEO,

00:17:06 ◼   ► and the 57% to 43% said he should step down.

00:17:11 ◼   ► And he said, "I would abide by the poll, who knows?"

00:17:14 ◼   ► But we shall see. - It's hard to see.

00:17:16 ◼   ► Like it's hard because unless he sells a controlling stake

00:17:19 ◼   ► and deletes the app from his phone, frankly,

00:17:21 ◼   ► he will still own it,

00:17:22 ◼   ► and whoever runs it will be beholden to him.

00:17:25 ◼   ► Or the other prediction is that he wants out

00:17:28 ◼   ► Tesla's underperforming,

00:17:29 ◼   ► he's not responsible to shareholders at Twitter,

00:17:32 ◼   ► but he certainly is at Tesla,

00:17:33 ◼   ► and that this could be a sort of a graceful,

00:17:35 ◼   ► meme-y way of getting out of it.

00:17:37 ◼   ► - I guess, you know, if he's like done having fun

00:17:41 ◼   ► and he's like, you know-- - It's not worth it.

00:17:44 ◼   ► - You know, at least, at this point,

00:17:46 ◼   ► it is a stretch coming up with positive things.

00:17:49 ◼   ► To say the least, it is a stretch to come up

00:17:51 ◼   ► with positive things to say about Elon Musk

00:17:55 ◼   ► and his stewardship as owner of Twitter.

00:17:57 ◼   ► But one of them, at least, is that he does change his mind.

00:18:02 ◼   ► I mean, his frequent changes of mind

00:18:06 ◼   ► are a part of the problem,

00:18:08 ◼   ► but at least it's not like he came in

00:18:12 ◼   ► with a list of four things

00:18:14 ◼   ► and hasn't added to the list

00:18:17 ◼   ► or crossed some items off the list and said nevermind, right?

00:18:20 ◼   ► So who knows?

00:18:22 ◼   ► But I don't really see how, so long as he owns it,

00:18:25 ◼   ► I don't really see how this poll,

00:18:27 ◼   ► like, it's exactly what you said.

00:18:29 ◼   ► He can hire somebody, he can give them the title CEO,

00:18:33 ◼   ► but as a privately held company,

00:18:34 ◼   ► they would clearly answer to him.

00:18:36 ◼   ► So he is the de facto head of Twitter so long as he owns it.

00:18:41 ◼   ► And good luck selling it at this point at anything.

00:18:45 ◼   ► I mean, he could sell it,

00:18:46 ◼   ► but he couldn't sell it at anything near what he paid for.

00:18:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, 100%.

00:18:51 ◼   ► It is interesting because you see

00:18:53 ◼   ► all these different takes on it.

00:18:54 ◼   ► My usual take is when everyone talks,

00:18:55 ◼   ► when anyone talks about free speech on the internet

00:18:57 ◼   ► is that it is never as simple as just saying it.

00:19:01 ◼   ► Like just saying it out loud.

00:19:02 ◼   ► There was this wonderful thread,

00:19:03 ◼   ► I'm sure you saw it from one of the founders of Reddit,

00:19:06 ◼   ► who just basically said,

00:19:07 ◼   ► we just want to make good features,

00:19:08 ◼   ► but you humans are horrible to each other.

00:19:10 ◼   ► We have to stop all the time

00:19:11 ◼   ► just to fix all the human crap that's going on

00:19:13 ◼   ► and we can never get the features we want done.

00:19:15 ◼   ► And I thought it was like,

00:19:16 ◼   ► it was just showing how these things

00:19:18 ◼   ► inevitably fall into chaos.

00:19:19 ◼   ► And that was really instructive to me

00:19:22 ◼   ► because I think one of the things

00:19:23 ◼   ► that Elon is really good at is the attention economy,

00:19:25 ◼   ► but at a certain point you have to ask yourself,

00:19:28 ◼   ► is all attention equally valuable?

00:19:30 ◼   ► And this is something YouTube went through as well.

00:19:32 ◼   ► Like at a certain point,

00:19:33 ◼   ► it was all about click-through rates.

00:19:34 ◼   ► So people had these really click-baity thumbnails

00:19:37 ◼   ► and then it was all about watch times

00:19:38 ◼   ► and people would do increasingly sensational things

00:19:40 ◼   ► just to hold your attention

00:19:41 ◼   ► and some of those things were incredibly negative

00:19:43 ◼   ► because people will rubberneck,

00:19:45 ◼   ► will stop, will look at accidents,

00:19:47 ◼   ► but it wasn't a good feeling.

00:19:48 ◼   ► Like it just wasn't a healthy feeling.

00:19:50 ◼   ► So it shifted to figuring out

00:19:52 ◼   ► there were different kinds of watch time.

00:19:54 ◼   ► There was some watch time you felt good about,

00:19:55 ◼   ► that was satisfying,

00:19:56 ◼   ► and some that you felt really bad about

00:19:58 ◼   ► and they changed the entire way the system works

00:20:00 ◼   ► to prioritize satisfaction rather than just engagement.

00:20:03 ◼   ► And to me, I think that was a sea change

00:20:05 ◼   ► in just how algorithms approach people being more human.

00:20:08 ◼   ► And I think the risk that we have right now in Twitter

00:20:10 ◼   ► is that the attention right now is attention at any cost

00:20:13 ◼   ► and a lot of it is profoundly negative.

00:20:15 ◼   ► And that just has, at least for me,

00:20:17 ◼   ► like I don't feel like using Twitter the way I used to.

00:20:20 ◼   ► And I used to use Twitter a lot and I just,

00:20:22 ◼   ► I look there and it feels like I'm in the middle

00:20:23 ◼   ► of an accident and I just back away every day.

00:20:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm curious.

00:20:27 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like you've set up shop on Mastodon yet?

00:20:31 ◼   ► - I did, I set up an account.

00:20:32 ◼   ► When Melton did, I just copied whatever he did.

00:20:34 ◼   ► So I have an account.

00:20:35 ◼   ► I think I follow one person

00:20:37 ◼   ► and I don't think I've ever used it yet.

00:20:38 ◼   ► But I got to the point where like people will take

00:20:41 ◼   ► my username if I don't go pretty fast.

00:20:43 ◼   ► So I've set up as many things as I can

00:20:45 ◼   ► just to keep the username in case I ever need it.

00:20:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's part of the problem though with Mastodon.

00:20:51 ◼   ► And I'm warming up to it and I've actually broken the seal

00:20:54 ◼   ► and started using mine.

00:20:56 ◼   ► I don't know how much.

00:20:57 ◼   ► I would like to have at least one Twitter-like thing

00:21:02 ◼   ► in my life, whether it's Twitter or Mastodon.

00:21:05 ◼   ► But I don't know that I,

00:21:07 ◼   ► having two is an interesting, for me personally,

00:21:10 ◼   ► is an interesting psychological test

00:21:15 ◼   ► because it's sort of,

00:21:16 ◼   ► I was thinking about it while I was out running errands

00:21:20 ◼   ► the other day.

00:21:21 ◼   ► I went to my two places for wandering thoughts,

00:21:23 ◼   ► the shower and a walk.

00:21:24 ◼   ► But I was walking and I was thinking about it.

00:21:26 ◼   ► There's an old axiom that I really believe in about design.

00:21:31 ◼   ► And it's the design of anything.

00:21:33 ◼   ► A product, software, hardware,

00:21:36 ◼   ► how many brands of mustard to stock in your supermarket,

00:21:40 ◼   ► how many brands of ketchup, how many, you know.

00:21:43 ◼   ► That when you give people a choice,

00:21:47 ◼   ► there's always an implicit extra choice,

00:21:52 ◼   ► which is not to choose at all.

00:21:54 ◼   ► And it's counterintuitive because it's,

00:21:58 ◼   ► we're wired to think having a choice is always better.

00:22:03 ◼   ► Certainly having a choice is better

00:22:05 ◼   ► than having no choice at all.

00:22:06 ◼   ► And in many cases that is true,

00:22:08 ◼   ► but it's one of those, there's two sides to every coin.

00:22:12 ◼   ► And there are cases where having too many choices

00:22:14 ◼   ► is too much.

00:22:15 ◼   ► And there is a weird difference for me

00:22:19 ◼   ► that all of a sudden my combined stuff

00:22:23 ◼   ► I would like to see on a Twitter-like experience is now,

00:22:29 ◼   ► and it's permanently split between Twitter and Mastodon

00:22:32 ◼   ► to some degree because some number of people

00:22:35 ◼   ► who I definitely enjoy following

00:22:37 ◼   ► and have been followed on Twitter for over a decade

00:22:40 ◼   ► have moved permanently to Mastodon.

00:22:43 ◼   ► But I also see the- - All our original friends

00:22:44 ◼   ► have left, like I miss them dearly.

00:22:46 ◼   ► I don't see their tweets anymore,

00:22:46 ◼   ► and I really do miss them.

00:22:48 ◼   ► - And it does make looking at my Mastodon timeline

00:22:52 ◼   ► enjoyable in a retro way where it's like,

00:22:54 ◼   ► "Hey, this sort of feels like Twitter circa 2009," right?

00:22:58 ◼   ► Like early years of, like to me, the Twitter,

00:23:03 ◼   ► as I'm using Mastodon, Twitter,

00:23:06 ◼   ► or as I'm using Mastodon today,

00:23:09 ◼   ► I can recall the feelings of using the very early

00:23:14 ◼   ► Twitter-ific on the very- - Yeah, pre-,

00:23:17 ◼   ► Ashton Kutcher Twitter is what it is today.

00:23:19 ◼   ► - Right, the very early iPhones

00:23:22 ◼   ► with the lickable interfaces,

00:23:24 ◼   ► and everything's a little 3D and-

00:23:26 ◼   ► - Or it went mainstream.

00:23:28 ◼   ► - And it just feels like that.

00:23:30 ◼   ► And it's because it's the same people,

00:23:32 ◼   ► it is sort of an early adopter enthusiast crowd.

00:23:35 ◼   ► I mean, there's a million, there's like 10 million people,

00:23:37 ◼   ► I believe, now on Mastodon.

00:23:38 ◼   ► I don't know how many are active.

00:23:39 ◼   ► So it's not a tiny, tiny sliver.

00:23:41 ◼   ► It's not a tiny, niche, like just people

00:23:45 ◼   ► who listen to my show, right?

00:23:47 ◼   ► It's not like, oh, it's just people who are super nerdy

00:23:50 ◼   ► and know how to program or something like that.

00:23:52 ◼   ► It's definitely broader than that.

00:23:54 ◼   ► But it is definitely also nowhere near mass market

00:23:59 ◼   ► in terms of its appeal. - It's like old Mac field vibe.

00:24:02 ◼   ► - Right, and I do like that.

00:24:04 ◼   ► But it's weird though, because now when I want to satisfy

00:24:09 ◼   ► my read something vaguely like Twitter,

00:24:11 ◼   ► I've got to choose which icon to tap on my phone.

00:24:16 ◼   ► And that is, so I see, and I know a lot of the people

00:24:21 ◼   ► who have said, look, I am done with Twitter.

00:24:24 ◼   ► Either they like, maybe they even shuttered their account,

00:24:26 ◼   ► but they're at least, they're not cross-posting,

00:24:29 ◼   ► they're not splitting their time between the two.

00:24:31 ◼   ► They're like, I'm done with this guy, he's in that job.

00:24:33 ◼   ► Twitter's been shitty for a while anyway.

00:24:36 ◼   ► I'm all in on Mastodon.

00:24:38 ◼   ► I get why people do that.

00:24:40 ◼   ► It's the split that is, to me, very difficult.

00:24:43 ◼   ► And in a way, that's sort of,

00:24:45 ◼   ► also lessons I've been thinking about is it's like

00:24:47 ◼   ► new things that popped up post-Twitter,

00:24:51 ◼   ► and Instagram would be the most obvious,

00:24:53 ◼   ► even though Instagram's been around so long now too,

00:24:56 ◼   ► it's hard to remember that Instagram was a,

00:25:00 ◼   ► not a Twitter clone, but had obviously

00:25:02 ◼   ► learned lessons from Twitter.

00:25:04 ◼   ► - Yeah. - And famously,

00:25:06 ◼   ► when Instagram launched, Twitter still had API access

00:25:10 ◼   ► to your follower graph.

00:25:12 ◼   ► I don't know why they call it a graph,

00:25:13 ◼   ► but for whatever, that's the lingo.

00:25:15 ◼   ► But Instagram, in the very early days,

00:25:19 ◼   ► like those days when it was iPhone only,

00:25:22 ◼   ► largely bootstrapped off people's Twitter follower

00:25:27 ◼   ► and connection graph, right?

00:25:29 ◼   ► You could go into Instagram and connect it to your Twitter,

00:25:31 ◼   ► and it would find the people, oh,

00:25:34 ◼   ► all these people who follow you or you follow

00:25:36 ◼   ► or follow you on Twitter, we can connect you up on Instagram

00:25:39 ◼   ► and all of a sudden you're up and running

00:25:41 ◼   ► and it's largely the same people.

00:25:44 ◼   ► But it made sense conceptually that I wanted to use both

00:25:47 ◼   ► because what you posted to the two things

00:25:49 ◼   ► and what other people posted were so different,

00:25:52 ◼   ► especially in the early days of Instagram

00:25:54 ◼   ► when it was super, super clear

00:25:56 ◼   ► that not only did you only post photos,

00:25:58 ◼   ► you only posted square photos.

00:26:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, and photos from mobile, you got made fun of

00:26:02 ◼   ► if you posted a DSLR photo or something.

00:26:04 ◼   ► - Right, right, it was sort of an unofficial part of the,

00:26:07 ◼   ► not rules, but the sportsman-like conduct

00:26:11 ◼   ► was that you were supposed to be taking photos

00:26:13 ◼   ► with your phone and the phones were so crummy

00:26:17 ◼   ► circa 2010, 2011, and that's why they had those filters

00:26:21 ◼   ► that people have, I'm sure, largely forgotten,

00:26:23 ◼   ► but these overzealous photo filters

00:26:28 ◼   ► to make your phone images look like they were shot

00:26:31 ◼   ► on 30-year-old film stock with the,

00:26:36 ◼   ► replete with grungy details like corners of the image

00:26:40 ◼   ► that looked like the over-scanned film

00:26:45 ◼   ► on a flatbed scanner and that sort of thing.

00:26:46 ◼   ► - Sort of justify the badness.

00:26:48 ◼   ► - Right, but it was brilliant though

00:26:50 ◼   ► because it actually did make the photos, it was gimmicky,

00:26:53 ◼   ► and I think that they were keenly aware of it

00:26:55 ◼   ► and backed away at just the right time and said,

00:26:57 ◼   ► "You know what, we don't need to do this anymore."

00:26:59 ◼   ► But at the time, it made photos that coming right off

00:27:02 ◼   ► the camera roll on your phone,

00:27:05 ◼   ► which were kind of flat and looked like,

00:27:07 ◼   ► I mean, we don't really talk about cell phone photos anymore

00:27:11 ◼   ► but at the time, we were in this transition era

00:27:14 ◼   ► between when our phones took better pictures

00:27:16 ◼   ► than most point-and-shoot cameras to,

00:27:18 ◼   ► from when they know they, it kind of looks like

00:27:22 ◼   ► a $5 component that just got added on

00:27:25 ◼   ► on the back of your phone.

00:27:25 ◼   ► - Free iPhone 4, there were no such thing as selfies.

00:27:27 ◼   ► I mean, the world changes rapidly.

00:27:29 ◼   ► - Right, right, we had no front-facing camera.

00:27:31 ◼   ► Can you imagine selling, I mean,

00:27:33 ◼   ► it's just, I don't know what's more amazing

00:27:35 ◼   ► that the original iPhone didn't shoot any video at all,

00:27:38 ◼   ► let alone bad video, or that it didn't have

00:27:40 ◼   ► a front-facing camera until, what was it, the iPhone 4?

00:27:44 ◼   ► Is that right? - Yeah, iPhone 4.

00:27:45 ◼   ► - That sounds about, so there were three generations

00:27:47 ◼   ► of iPhone that had no front-facing camera,

00:27:50 ◼   ► which didn't seem weird, honestly.

00:27:52 ◼   ► I remember when the front-facing camera came out

00:27:54 ◼   ► and thought, ah, I guess I'll use it once, I don't know.

00:27:59 ◼   ► - And then faced, yeah, and then he made calls.

00:28:01 ◼   ► The interesting thing for me, though,

00:28:02 ◼   ► is I've been traveling a lot for my new job,

00:28:04 ◼   ► and one of the parts is I meet a lot of creators,

00:28:06 ◼   ► and I would typically, they would say,

00:28:07 ◼   ► "How do I get in contact with you?"

00:28:08 ◼   ► And I would say, "Twitter," and I increasingly noticed

00:28:11 ◼   ► that especially women creators, black creators,

00:28:14 ◼   ► LGBTQ creators, they were just either never on Twitter

00:28:17 ◼   ► or had got harassed off of Twitter years ago,

00:28:21 ◼   ► and we're all mostly on Instagram now.

00:28:23 ◼   ► It had become a real community for them

00:28:25 ◼   ► where they could participate with people

00:28:27 ◼   ► that didn't make them feel just horrible every day,

00:28:29 ◼   ► and that was really eye-opening for me.

00:28:31 ◼   ► So I sort of, now I try to be in all those places

00:28:34 ◼   ► because I know there's very different people there.

00:28:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's funny to sing the praises of a Facebook company,

00:28:42 ◼   ► but I do think that they, certainly Instagram

00:28:47 ◼   ► is their product that I'm the most familiar with

00:28:49 ◼   ► 'cause it's the one I'm active on,

00:28:50 ◼   ► but I have many complaints about Instagram,

00:28:53 ◼   ► and I'm sure that the people who are at meta

00:28:56 ◼   ► working on Instagram are so ever,

00:28:58 ◼   ► I don't think anybody's more thankful

00:29:00 ◼   ► that Elon Musk bought Twitter than them

00:29:03 ◼   ► because the social media meme of 2022 up until October

00:29:08 ◼   ► was that Instagram had sort of jumped the shark

00:29:11 ◼   ► for lack of a better summary.

00:29:12 ◼   ► By cramming ever more stuff into what was once

00:29:17 ◼   ► a very simple, very easy to understand app,

00:29:20 ◼   ► and now it's an entire system of sub-networks

00:29:25 ◼   ► and content types, and we could do a whole show

00:29:30 ◼   ► just about the way that Instagram has ruined

00:29:33 ◼   ► what it once was, which I'm not even passing judgment

00:29:37 ◼   ► 'cause maybe that's what they need to do to stay relevant.

00:29:39 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:29:40 ◼   ► Let's just give them the benefit of the doubt,

00:29:41 ◼   ► but at least now nobody's talking about it.

00:29:42 ◼   ► But one thing I do think is true is that Instagram

00:29:45 ◼   ► has, throughout all of this, I can complain at length

00:29:50 ◼   ► about their product decisions, but as a social destination,

00:29:55 ◼   ► it seemingly never had the problems Twitter has had

00:29:59 ◼   ► of being, oh, this is a place where you can get

00:30:03 ◼   ► discriminated against, you're gonna,

00:30:06 ◼   ► I mean, it happens, right?

00:30:07 ◼   ► But it seems like on Instagram that it's,

00:30:10 ◼   ► there are mechanisms in place that keep it

00:30:13 ◼   ► from turning into Twitter.

00:30:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, I wanna-- - For lack of a better term.

00:30:16 ◼   ► - At the risk of derailing a lot of this,

00:30:18 ◼   ► and I don't wanna do that, but there's this interesting thing

00:30:20 ◼   ► where somebody like Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk,

00:30:23 ◼   ► when they've removed all accountability,

00:30:24 ◼   ► like they don't have a board of directors,

00:30:25 ◼   ► well, Mark does, but he effectively owns

00:30:27 ◼   ► all the voting chairs, so it doesn't really matter,

00:30:29 ◼   ► and Elon owns the entire company,

00:30:31 ◼   ► and it reminds me of sort of like,

00:30:32 ◼   ► you know, when people talked about the prequels

00:30:33 ◼   ► with George Lucas, when you get to a certain stage,

00:30:36 ◼   ► you start to think that you know better

00:30:37 ◼   ► and you don't need accountability,

00:30:38 ◼   ► you don't need people who push back on you,

00:30:40 ◼   ► you don't need boards, you don't need editors,

00:30:42 ◼   ► and it's always to the detriment of the product

00:30:45 ◼   ► in the end, because there's no one person

00:30:46 ◼   ► who could ever really keep all of their own worst ideas

00:30:49 ◼   ► in check, and it does remind me a little bit

00:30:51 ◼   ► of those stories about Steve Jobs,

00:30:52 ◼   ► like not wanting to make iTunes,

00:30:54 ◼   ► but trusting Eddie and Phil enough to put it on Windows,

00:30:57 ◼   ► or not wanting to make a small tablet,

00:30:59 ◼   ► but like Eddie's saying, "We've gotta do this,"

00:31:01 ◼   ► and Steve's like, "Fine, but if you screw it up,

00:31:02 ◼   ► "it's your ass," you know, but he'd at least

00:31:04 ◼   ► like had people who would push back,

00:31:06 ◼   ► or even like Sal, when he's like,

00:31:07 ◼   ► "You can't get rid of these accessibility features,"

00:31:09 ◼   ► like he's just yelling at them in front of a group of people,

00:31:11 ◼   ► and they didn't get rid of those accessibility features.

00:31:14 ◼   ► That, to me, is the quality that I think so many

00:31:16 ◼   ► of the latter-day people who were equated to Jobs

00:31:19 ◼   ► are just so fundamentally missing out on.

00:31:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, I do think so, 'cause I do think that it's,

00:31:24 ◼   ► I really do believe it.

00:31:26 ◼   ► All of my years covering them, all of my years

00:31:29 ◼   ► knowing people who work at Apple,

00:31:31 ◼   ► I mean, obviously, there's a level of respect.

00:31:34 ◼   ► I mean, you see, you need, as a personal skill,

00:31:36 ◼   ► you need to be able to stand your ground respectfully.

00:31:40 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think Apple has ever been a shouty place.

00:31:44 ◼   ► People don't shout and have arguments,

00:31:46 ◼   ► but it has always been a place,

00:31:48 ◼   ► or at least post Steve Jobs' next reunification,

00:31:52 ◼   ► has been a place where you are definitely encouraged

00:31:55 ◼   ► to disagree, even with the boss, right?

00:31:57 ◼   ► Your boss, your boss's boss, you go right up to,

00:32:00 ◼   ► I'm in a meeting, holy crap, I'm in a meeting

00:32:02 ◼   ► with Steve Jobs, or in the modern days,

00:32:05 ◼   ► I'm in a meeting with Craig Federighi or Tim,

00:32:08 ◼   ► or whoever else it might be,

00:32:10 ◼   ► and you really disagree, you can tell them,

00:32:13 ◼   ► I really disagree, but you know,

00:32:15 ◼   ► be ready to make your case.

00:32:17 ◼   ► But they, and that they will listen,

00:32:19 ◼   ► and you may not win, but you will be listened to,

00:32:22 ◼   ► and you won't be fired just by disagreeing.

00:32:26 ◼   ► In fact, it's much more likely

00:32:28 ◼   ► that you're not going to succeed, and you,

00:32:31 ◼   ► in a place like Twitter today, it's obviously very clear

00:32:36 ◼   ► that disagreeing with the boss is a good way

00:32:38 ◼   ► to get fired by the next day.

00:32:40 ◼   ► And if the problem at Apple is that you never disagree

00:32:44 ◼   ► because you're too timid to, or you're worried

00:32:47 ◼   ► that that's not going to work,

00:32:48 ◼   ► you're not gonna get fired on a whim

00:32:50 ◼   ► because you didn't speak up, but you may not last long

00:32:53 ◼   ► 'cause that's not the culture.

00:32:54 ◼   ► You're expected to speak up, you know?

00:32:57 ◼   ► And I definitely think, you know, there's,

00:33:01 ◼   ► I think that's part of the Jobs, Steve Jobs legend

00:33:05 ◼   ► that is truly just pure legend and isn't really true, right?

00:33:09 ◼   ► Like, there's story, I don't think it's ever happened,

00:33:11 ◼   ► as far as I know.

00:33:12 ◼   ► I don't think it's ever, there's always that one,

00:33:13 ◼   ► the one story was that in the very early days of Jobs

00:33:16 ◼   ► back as CEO that he was in an elevator

00:33:18 ◼   ► with some random employee, and he asked them,

00:33:22 ◼   ► "What do you do?"

00:33:24 ◼   ► And they didn't really have a good answer,

00:33:25 ◼   ► and then he, but the elevator doors opened,

00:33:28 ◼   ► and he's like, "Well, give me your name

00:33:29 ◼   ► "'cause you're fired," you know?

00:33:30 ◼   ► And I don't think that, I really don't think

00:33:32 ◼   ► that that sort of thing ever happened.

00:33:34 ◼   ► It just doesn't, 'cause I don't think the people I know

00:33:37 ◼   ► who stayed at Apple and worked under Steve Jobs,

00:33:39 ◼   ► they never would, nobody would've put up with it.

00:33:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, absolutely.

00:33:43 ◼   ► Yeah, you can't keep the best people that way.

00:33:45 ◼   ► - So anyway, Twitter, I don't wanna say much more,

00:33:48 ◼   ► but I guess I'm, I've got, you know,

00:33:51 ◼   ► I'm starting to crack the knuckles on Mastodon.

00:33:54 ◼   ► I don't know, it's, and again, I'm all in favor of it,

00:33:57 ◼   ► and I think I have to say, I think it's holding up

00:34:00 ◼   ► to the growth better than I thought it would.

00:34:02 ◼   ► We'll see how it works long-term.

00:34:05 ◼   ► I do think the people who created it

00:34:07 ◼   ► and cultivated, both created it technically

00:34:10 ◼   ► and have been there, you know, and I'm,

00:34:15 ◼   ► I'm sensitive to the fact that there are people

00:34:19 ◼   ► who've been all in on Mastodon as their Twitter-like

00:34:22 ◼   ► social thing for years, right, at this point,

00:34:25 ◼   ► for four years or more, and now all of a sudden,

00:34:29 ◼   ► there's all, at least from their perspective, right,

00:34:32 ◼   ► not from the perspective of Twitter's overall user base

00:34:35 ◼   ► or certainly not Instagram's or go even bigger,

00:34:38 ◼   ► but from what Mastodon was three months ago

00:34:42 ◼   ► to where it is today, overwhelming majority of the users

00:34:47 ◼   ► are brand new, and that's always disruptive,

00:34:50 ◼   ► and I'm sure that there are things that the long-time,

00:34:53 ◼   ► years-long Mastodon users are already like,

00:34:57 ◼   ► "Ah, man, we had a really nice thing going," you know.

00:35:00 ◼   ► - Who let the kids in?

00:35:02 ◼   ► - Right, and it's, you know, it all goes back to the,

00:35:06 ◼   ► whatever they called it in September of every year

00:35:09 ◼   ► in the 90, you know, pre-web 90s on the internet

00:35:13 ◼   ► where the freshmen would come in and get their

00:35:16 ◼   ► Telnet accounts at their university,

00:35:18 ◼   ► and then all of a sudden, Usenet,

00:35:20 ◼   ► all of your favorite Usenet groups were full of people

00:35:23 ◼   ► who didn't know what they were doing.

00:35:25 ◼   ► - Or when AOL opened up to Usenet, that was the day.

00:35:28 ◼   ► - Right, that was the big one.

00:35:29 ◼   ► That was the end, that was the end of the,

00:35:32 ◼   ► I think that's when it became, I forget the lingo,

00:35:34 ◼   ► but it doesn't, but it effectively became

00:35:36 ◼   ► permanent September was the term,

00:35:39 ◼   ► 'cause it's never gonna stop at this point.

00:35:41 ◼   ► But it is, you know, it is what it is.

00:35:45 ◼   ► I guess the last thing I'll say before we wrap up the point

00:35:48 ◼   ► is that the other point that's been percolating in my head

00:35:51 ◼   ► is I think we all can see that there's never going to be

00:35:57 ◼   ► another Twitter in terms of being the one global,

00:36:02 ◼   ► unified, centralized, Twitter-like place

00:36:06 ◼   ► where you just post, it's a brilliant idea.

00:36:09 ◼   ► It is so simple that it's easy to overlook

00:36:11 ◼   ► how brilliant the fundamental concept of Twitter is,

00:36:14 ◼   ► because it's easy to understand.

00:36:16 ◼   ► You get an account, there's one namespace for accounts,

00:36:20 ◼   ► and what can you do?

00:36:22 ◼   ► You can post a limited amount of text in a box,

00:36:25 ◼   ► and it goes out to the people who choose to follow you,

00:36:29 ◼   ► and you can choose the people whose tweets

00:36:33 ◼   ► you yourself will see.

00:36:35 ◼   ► That's a brilliant, it sounds obvious,

00:36:38 ◼   ► it's hard to believe that somebody had to invent it,

00:36:40 ◼   ► and it's like many of the very best inventions,

00:36:43 ◼   ► it's really hard to see how it wasn't invented

00:36:47 ◼   ► earlier than 2006, but it wasn't, and it is brilliant,

00:36:52 ◼   ► but I ultimately think what Musk's stewardship of Twitter

00:36:57 ◼   ► is accelerating is the conclusion

00:37:00 ◼   ► that this is not a good idea for mankind, honestly,

00:37:05 ◼   ► and I don't mean this in any hyper-herpabolic sense

00:37:08 ◼   ► of drama, I just don't think humans are meant to,

00:37:13 ◼   ► from all political spectrums,

00:37:15 ◼   ► from all socioeconomic spectrums,

00:37:18 ◼   ► from all geographic spectrums around the world,

00:37:22 ◼   ► are all meant to be in one global namespace community.

00:37:26 ◼   ► I don't think that's suited to human psychology,

00:37:30 ◼   ► I really don't, and I think that where it sort of seems

00:37:34 ◼   ► to have wound up, where Twitter's ultimate,

00:37:38 ◼   ► the one thing that has been stable for, I would say,

00:37:43 ◼   ► maybe the last seven years, I would peg it as around 2015,

00:37:48 ◼   ► where Twitter's sustainable thing

00:37:53 ◼   ► was becoming an outrage machine,

00:37:56 ◼   ► and regardless of what you get outraged about,

00:38:01 ◼   ► whether it's national politics,

00:38:03 ◼   ► whether it's identity politics, whether it's economics,

00:38:07 ◼   ► whether it's technical issues,

00:38:09 ◼   ► it found equilibrium at a state where you keep getting,

00:38:17 ◼   ► you keep encountering viewpoints that make you outraged,

00:38:21 ◼   ► and it is taking advantage of a human instinct of,

00:38:26 ◼   ► and you can see why we evolved this way,

00:38:30 ◼   ► where when you encounter something that makes you outraged,

00:38:33 ◼   ► you react emotionally, and emotions are engaging,

00:38:36 ◼   ► and it's just unpleasant emotions, unfortunately.

00:38:41 ◼   ► - There was like this super weird thing

00:38:42 ◼   ► that back in the days of Mobile Nations,

00:38:44 ◼   ► we had a website for every different platform,

00:38:47 ◼   ► so like the Google site, the Microsoft site, the Apple site,

00:38:49 ◼   ► and one of the things that I found remarkable

00:38:51 ◼   ► is that the people on the Apple site,

00:38:53 ◼   ► they mostly just stuck on the Apple site.

00:38:55 ◼   ► They were happy, they talked about the products they had,

00:38:57 ◼   ► but in waves, you had people who preferred Nokia came in

00:39:00 ◼   ► and just wanted to yell at them for using Apple products,

00:39:03 ◼   ► and then when Nokia went away, it was like,

00:39:05 ◼   ► got out of favor, it was Blackberry people,

00:39:07 ◼   ► and I think it was the same people

00:39:08 ◼   ► just migrating to wherever there was the not Apple,

00:39:10 ◼   ► and then they went to Windows Phone and Android,

00:39:13 ◼   ► and they would always come and yell at it,

00:39:15 ◼   ► and at times when, 'cause there was a time

00:39:17 ◼   ► when the accounts were unified, when they weren't,

00:39:19 ◼   ► the people who just liked to talk about the Apple stuff

00:39:21 ◼   ► were happy, but the people who only wanted to yell

00:39:23 ◼   ► at other people were so upset,

00:39:25 ◼   ► because they no longer had a place to go and yell at people,

00:39:28 ◼   ► and I wonder if we lose this global system,

00:39:31 ◼   ► the people who are just happy, like discussing,

00:39:33 ◼   ► I don't know, Star Wars or Star Trek or whatever it is,

00:39:35 ◼   ► will have their own little communities,

00:39:37 ◼   ► and they'll just be happily discussing it,

00:39:38 ◼   ► but the people who just wanted to go to war every day

00:39:41 ◼   ► will have nowhere left to go,

00:39:42 ◼   ► and ultimately, they will have seen

00:39:43 ◼   ► to their own dissatisfaction.

00:39:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, so, yeah, that's well said,

00:39:50 ◼   ► and it's, we keep, we collectively as people

00:39:55 ◼   ► are learning a lot about human psychology

00:40:00 ◼   ► in very short order, because we've, in the internet era,

00:40:04 ◼   ► we've built systems that simply have no possible analogy

00:40:09 ◼   ► to the pre-internet, to pre-internet life.

00:40:12 ◼   ► There's just, there's no comparison.

00:40:16 ◼   ► There's no way that there's anything,

00:40:18 ◼   ► anything like Twitter was possible in the analog world.

00:40:22 ◼   ► It doesn't even make any sense.

00:40:23 ◼   ► I can't even imagine some kind of steampunk sci-fi

00:40:27 ◼   ► equivalent, and it turns out we're not hooked up.

00:40:31 ◼   ► There's a good reason for that, right,

00:40:32 ◼   ► and there's a good reason that humans segment themselves

00:40:35 ◼   ► naturally into communities, and that you can be a member

00:40:39 ◼   ► of multiple communities, based on your work,

00:40:42 ◼   ► based on your interests, based on your religion,

00:40:45 ◼   ► your family, there's all sorts of ways--

00:40:46 ◼   ► - Your sports team, the kind of food you're into.

00:40:48 ◼   ► - Right, right, right, or just being by yourself,

00:40:53 ◼   ► a community of one, but a community of everyone doesn't work,

00:40:59 ◼   ► and that's the ultimate lesson, and so I also feel that,

00:41:04 ◼   ► so I think that's one reason Twitter's never gonna

00:41:06 ◼   ► be replicated, and that Mastodon is never going to grow,

00:41:09 ◼   ► and I think that the creators of Mastodon

00:41:11 ◼   ► would be the first ones to say, yeah, that's good,

00:41:12 ◼   ► we don't want to be as big as Twitter,

00:41:15 ◼   ► and we don't want that, so the naysayers on Mastodon,

00:41:20 ◼   ► and I have my doubts still about some aspects of it,

00:41:23 ◼   ► and there's things I don't wanna, I won't belabor,

00:41:26 ◼   ► but it's clearly right now the best we have

00:41:29 ◼   ► as an alternative, but I definitely think, though,

00:41:31 ◼   ► that going into it without any sort of thing

00:41:34 ◼   ► where it's going to be a mega platform,

00:41:36 ◼   ► and there's no VC, it doesn't make sense,

00:41:40 ◼   ► because it isn't centralized, right,

00:41:41 ◼   ► and so all of these problems are avoided,

00:41:43 ◼   ► and a lot of the criticism is like, yeah,

00:41:45 ◼   ► but they're never gonna get to a billion users,

00:41:46 ◼   ► and it's like, yeah, that's the point, they shouldn't.

00:41:49 ◼   ► - Well, I don't know about you, but like,

00:41:50 ◼   ► 'cause I work remotely, I've worked remotely

00:41:52 ◼   ► for the last 12 years, and in that time,

00:41:55 ◼   ► I was always in, previously, the Mobile Nation Slack,

00:41:57 ◼   ► and the Creator Slack that I'm in,

00:41:59 ◼   ► and then Creator Discord groups, I have Work Gchat now,

00:42:02 ◼   ► and those are all small communities,

00:42:04 ◼   ► but those have become my water cooler now,

00:42:07 ◼   ► just because I haven't been using Twitter as much,

00:42:09 ◼   ► and it is a very different vibe,

00:42:11 ◼   ► but it's one that's seized to a similar need

00:42:13 ◼   ► of having a communal experience with people.

00:42:16 ◼   ► - Yeah.

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00:44:37 ◼   ► a total of $30 off a subscription

00:44:40 ◼   ► and access to limited-time holiday specials.

00:44:43 ◼   ► Just go to www.drinktrade.com/the-talk-show.

00:44:48 ◼   ► That's www.drinktrade.com/the-talk-show, all one word,

00:44:53 ◼   ► and that's for 30 bucks off, just for listeners of the show.

00:44:58 ◼   ► I'm literally drinking the last few sips

00:45:02 ◼   ► of my pot of Trade Coffee today,

00:45:04 ◼   ► right now, as I finish this read.

00:45:05 ◼   ► It is great stuff, and it's a great gift.

00:45:07 ◼   ► My thanks to them.

00:45:08 ◼   ► All right, onward and upward.

00:45:10 ◼   ► - Quick show. - Famous last words.

00:45:13 ◼   ► I do think that the year in review is actually going to be,

00:45:15 ◼   ► I think we can cover quickly,

00:45:19 ◼   ► because I actually think, well, you know, spoilers,

00:45:22 ◼   ► but I actually think that maybe Apple's 2022 year in review

00:45:26 ◼   ► is that it's the year that the COVID and the lockdown

00:45:29 ◼   ► finally caught up to them.

00:45:31 ◼   ► I'm not saying it was a bad year or off year,

00:45:33 ◼   ► but I was looking at it for the notes,

00:45:35 ◼   ► and I'm like, this is, you know,

00:45:37 ◼   ► and of course I always come into these

00:45:39 ◼   ► fabulously prepared, right, Rene?

00:45:41 ◼   ► - Same, yeah. (laughs)

00:45:42 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:45:43 ◼   ► But I have to say, it's like, hey,

00:45:46 ◼   ► there's actually not that much to talk about, so let's see.

00:45:48 ◼   ► But one more bit of news before we keep going,

00:45:51 ◼   ► a couple bits of news.

00:45:52 ◼   ► I want to talk a little bit about Freeform,

00:45:55 ◼   ► which is a new app Apple has just launched

00:45:58 ◼   ► with the latest updates to the Mac and iOS platforms

00:46:01 ◼   ► last week.

00:46:01 ◼   ► They did show it at WWDC when it shipped last week.

00:46:06 ◼   ► I saw an awful lot of people saying the same thing,

00:46:08 ◼   ► which was, hey, I sort of forgot about this,

00:46:10 ◼   ► because I kind of feel that the demo,

00:46:13 ◼   ► not that it was a bad demo at WWDC,

00:46:17 ◼   ► but it was intermixed with,

00:46:20 ◼   ► it was Craig Federighi and a bunch of people

00:46:22 ◼   ► on his software team, including friend of the show, Lop.

00:46:26 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:46:27 ◼   ► - Michael Lop was there,

00:46:28 ◼   ► referred to only by his last name, Lop.

00:46:30 ◼   ► But it was, you know, a bunch of coworkers,

00:46:33 ◼   ► the gimmick of the demo is a bunch of coworkers

00:46:37 ◼   ► planning a team retreat, I believe.

00:46:40 ◼   ► You know, like go to some place where you can swing on ropes

00:46:42 ◼   ► and--

00:46:43 ◼   ► - You can wear your tracksuits and just hang out.

00:46:46 ◼   ► - Right, wear your tracksuit and hang out.

00:46:48 ◼   ► But it was all, the demo was sort of mixed together

00:46:51 ◼   ► with FaceTime and iMessage

00:46:56 ◼   ► and sort of Freeform in the middle.

00:46:59 ◼   ► And even as somebody who's, you know,

00:47:01 ◼   ► obviously watches these keynotes professionally

00:47:04 ◼   ► and is to study the details as intricately as I can,

00:47:09 ◼   ► I'm not sure if five minutes after the keynote,

00:47:12 ◼   ► if I was sure that Freeform was going to be an app

00:47:15 ◼   ► or if it was going to be a new feature

00:47:17 ◼   ► built into iMessage and FaceTime.

00:47:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think they were trying to show that it was like,

00:47:22 ◼   ► 'cause they went to great pains to integrate iMessage

00:47:24 ◼   ► and FaceTime so you could move seamlessly

00:47:26 ◼   ► between group chats and group FaceTime.

00:47:28 ◼   ► And this seemed like the note board

00:47:30 ◼   ► that they were giving you to keep track of things

00:47:31 ◼   ► while you were talking or texting.

00:47:33 ◼   ► And it could either be integrated or its own thing.

00:47:36 ◼   ► - Right, but it's out now, I like it.

00:47:39 ◼   ► It is interesting, I think there's, you know,

00:47:43 ◼   ► the other hand, Apple doesn't come out

00:47:44 ◼   ► with new apps very often, right?

00:47:47 ◼   ► I would say the last time they came out

00:47:49 ◼   ► with a new app along these lines was Clips,

00:47:51 ◼   ► which still exists, it is still a thing.

00:47:54 ◼   ► - And Voice Memo, not Voice Memo,

00:47:56 ◼   ► the songwriting version.

00:47:57 ◼   ► I forget what it's called now,

00:47:59 ◼   ► but it like disappeared rapidly.

00:48:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, Clips is still around and Clips,

00:48:04 ◼   ► I still say, I know it doesn't seem to get a lot of use,

00:48:07 ◼   ► it doesn't seem to have a lot of uptake,

00:48:09 ◼   ► but I would still encourage everybody,

00:48:11 ◼   ► anybody who's interested in user interface design

00:48:14 ◼   ► to open it up every once in a while and look at it.

00:48:16 ◼   ► 'Cause I do think it's a fascinating app design-wise.

00:48:21 ◼   ► - I kind of see-- - It's terrific,

00:48:23 ◼   ► they just shipped a square app

00:48:24 ◼   ► in the age of vertical social.

00:48:26 ◼   ► - Yep, yep, that's part of it.

00:48:29 ◼   ► And I think the other part of it is that

00:48:33 ◼   ► the built-in tools for the networks where you share stuff,

00:48:41 ◼   ► it's hard to beat them, right?

00:48:44 ◼   ► So like creating your TikTok in TikTok at .app

00:48:49 ◼   ► or creating whatever you're making for Instagram

00:48:53 ◼   ► within instagram.app,

00:48:55 ◼   ► it's hard to get past that.

00:48:59 ◼   ► And I know people use other third-party software

00:49:01 ◼   ► to create content for those networks,

00:49:04 ◼   ► but Clips is, it never, it hasn't,

00:49:08 ◼   ► I don't wanna spend too much time on Clips,

00:49:10 ◼   ► but it's like a social network creation tool

00:49:13 ◼   ► in need of its own social network.

00:49:16 ◼   ► - Enough more than what the camera tools provide.

00:49:19 ◼   ► 'Cause otherwise you'd need Final Cut or Premiere

00:49:21 ◼   ► or something, you're not gonna use Clips.

00:49:23 ◼   ► - Right, but Freeform is, if you haven't checked it out,

00:49:26 ◼   ► it is fundamentally, it's very interesting to me.

00:49:30 ◼   ► 'Cause I've always been a fan of canvas-based apps.

00:49:33 ◼   ► This goes back to my background in graphic design

00:49:36 ◼   ► and really, really going deep and being,

00:49:39 ◼   ► for a large number of years earlier in my life,

00:49:43 ◼   ► QuarkXPress was my jam.

00:49:45 ◼   ► 'Cause I just loved the metaphor.

00:49:47 ◼   ► And back when QuarkXPress versus PageMaker

00:49:51 ◼   ► was still a debate, I was firmly in the QuarkXPress camp

00:49:55 ◼   ► because it stuck more to the basic canvas model

00:49:59 ◼   ► where, okay, you create a page size.

00:50:01 ◼   ► And this is where Freeform breaks apart.

00:50:04 ◼   ► Whereas in the desktop era, page size mattered.

00:50:07 ◼   ► There had, you know, eight and a half by 11 or 11 by 17,

00:50:12 ◼   ► but there had to be some sort of,

00:50:14 ◼   ► well, this is how big it would be when you print it.

00:50:16 ◼   ► And you'd make this and then you would drop boxes

00:50:20 ◼   ► onto the canvas and the boxes could contain different types.

00:50:24 ◼   ► You could create a box that would create an image

00:50:27 ◼   ► and then you would fill the image with an image

00:50:29 ◼   ► somewhere in your file system.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Or the box could be text, of course.

00:50:33 ◼   ► And you would fill the image, you could either type the text

00:50:36 ◼   ► or you could import from a document.

00:50:39 ◼   ► For some number of years, there was, you know,

00:50:41 ◼   ► while we chased the dream, there was the publish

00:50:44 ◼   ► and subscribe stuff where you could connect the text box

00:50:48 ◼   ► to a document and if the document changed

00:50:51 ◼   ► after you first imported, the changes would reflow live

00:50:55 ◼   ► into the thing that it felt very futuristic at the time.

00:50:58 ◼   ► Never really worked well enough to get most people I knew

00:51:03 ◼   ► who were in even a professional setting to go away

00:51:07 ◼   ► from the numbered revisions to the file.

00:51:11 ◼   ► Final, you know, Renee's column final,

00:51:14 ◼   ► Renee's column final final, Renee's column final final final.

00:51:19 ◼   ► Which one do you have?

00:51:22 ◼   ► Do you have final or final final?

00:51:24 ◼   ► I've got, I've just got final.

00:51:26 ◼   ► Oh no, you need final final.

00:51:27 ◼   ► - I have final JG edits.

00:51:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I need final JG edits final.

00:51:32 ◼   ► But it's a great metaphor for design.

00:51:35 ◼   ► And then you can move the boxes around

00:51:36 ◼   ► and you can connect them and you can drag other things out

00:51:39 ◼   ► and create lines and rules.

00:51:40 ◼   ► And that's, you know, basically freeform.

00:51:42 ◼   ► Except the canvas is unlimited,

00:51:47 ◼   ► so there's no page size.

00:51:49 ◼   ► And the other big metaphor change

00:51:51 ◼   ► is it's not document-based.

00:51:53 ◼   ► You don't create a new document

00:51:55 ◼   ► and then have a document somewhere where you need to save it

00:51:58 ◼   ► whether it's local on your machine or in your iCloud

00:52:01 ◼   ► or on your Dropbox.

00:52:03 ◼   ► It's more of a library app where, you know,

00:52:06 ◼   ► the same way like Apple Notes,

00:52:09 ◼   ► I guess is probably the app that is the most familiar

00:52:12 ◼   ► to the most people where your notes aren't corresponding

00:52:17 ◼   ► to individual files anywhere in the file system.

00:52:20 ◼   ► They're just in a library that is managed by the software

00:52:25 ◼   ► and the connection between what's yours and what's shared

00:52:30 ◼   ► is part of the design of the system.

00:52:34 ◼   ► Which is to say it is built for the modern era, right?

00:52:36 ◼   ► Documents as objects in the file system are,

00:52:40 ◼   ► they're never gonna go away.

00:52:42 ◼   ► You know, I still use them, I'm sure you use them,

00:52:44 ◼   ► I'm sure just about everybody who listens to this show

00:52:46 ◼   ► still uses them and depends on them for some things.

00:52:49 ◼   ► But going forward, it's a much more modern,

00:52:52 ◼   ► forward-thinking way to not worry about that.

00:52:56 ◼   ► That's just an implementation detail

00:52:57 ◼   ► and it's just a board or a,

00:53:01 ◼   ► I don't know what we call the ones in freeform.

00:53:03 ◼   ► I don't know what they're called, but it works.

00:53:06 ◼   ► You can share and right out of the gate,

00:53:07 ◼   ► it lets you share a space with other people

00:53:11 ◼   ► using just their iCloud ID, very much the way

00:53:14 ◼   ► that you can collaboratively edit Apple Notes

00:53:17 ◼   ► with somebody else and it's very Apple, you know,

00:53:21 ◼   ► the more of those features something like this debuts with,

00:53:24 ◼   ► the better they are in my opinion

00:53:27 ◼   ► because when you take an old thing

00:53:30 ◼   ► and then try to add new systems like collaborative editing,

00:53:33 ◼   ► which is complicated, right?

00:53:35 ◼   ► I mean, you don't even have to be a programmer

00:53:36 ◼   ► to think about the ways that letting two people edit

00:53:39 ◼   ► the same document of any type at the same time is, huh,

00:53:44 ◼   ► that you could see how that would get tricky pretty quick

00:53:47 ◼   ► as a programming task.

00:53:49 ◼   ► I think it's pretty neat and I can't think of anything else

00:53:51 ◼   ► quite like it and I'm really,

00:53:53 ◼   ► I'm glad to see Apple still coming up with ideas like that.

00:53:57 ◼   ► Do I wanna bet on whether it's going to become a hit

00:54:00 ◼   ► or is it really gonna languish a bit like clips?

00:54:05 ◼   ► It's hard to say, right?

00:54:06 ◼   ► I don't know, what do you think?

00:54:08 ◼   ► - I think it's like often the strengths are the weaknesses

00:54:11 ◼   ► or the blessings are the curses

00:54:12 ◼   ► and I think one of these examples

00:54:14 ◼   ► is that it is so tightly integrated into messages

00:54:16 ◼   ► and FaceTime that it makes it almost a no brainer

00:54:19 ◼   ► for people who are incredibly immersed in the ecosystem

00:54:21 ◼   ► to just use it, like it's similar to Apple Notes.

00:54:23 ◼   ► We're doing the show notes in free form today

00:54:25 ◼   ► but we've done them in Apple Notes previously

00:54:28 ◼   ► and it's incredibly easy to share them and use them

00:54:30 ◼   ► but because it's bound,

00:54:31 ◼   ► because it is so deeply meshed in the ecosystem,

00:54:34 ◼   ► it means there's no real use beyond this.

00:54:36 ◼   ► Like there's no green bubble of friends for your free forms

00:54:40 ◼   ► and that's gonna mean that in some capacity,

00:54:41 ◼   ► professionally or personally,

00:54:42 ◼   ► you're gonna run into a wall where it's gonna make sense

00:54:45 ◼   ► to share something that is maybe web-based instead

00:54:49 ◼   ► or maybe open source or multi-platform instead

00:54:52 ◼   ► and so it's a question of iMessage is so good

00:54:56 ◼   ► for people who, for families or friend groups

00:54:58 ◼   ► that have messaging that everyone just uses it

00:55:00 ◼   ► to the extent that it's one of the most popular

00:55:02 ◼   ► messaging solutions in North America.

00:55:04 ◼   ► FaceTime, it's almost like the default

00:55:06 ◼   ► when people talk about it on TV, FaceTime.

00:55:08 ◼   ► This could end up being that

00:55:10 ◼   ► but I think when it comes down to documents

00:55:11 ◼   ► and being able to share them,

00:55:12 ◼   ► a lot of people are deeply invested in stuff

00:55:15 ◼   ► that's web-based at this point.

00:55:17 ◼   ► - Yeah and there is a webby type feel to free form.

00:55:21 ◼   ► By the way, did you add anything

00:55:23 ◼   ► to our shared free form board for this?

00:55:25 ◼   ► - No, I was terrified because you had several links in there

00:55:28 ◼   ► before the year in review

00:55:29 ◼   ► and I figured if I put anything more in there,

00:55:31 ◼   ► we would just never get to year in review.

00:55:33 ◼   ► - Do me a favor and just add something

00:55:35 ◼   ► 'cause it occurred to me as I fired it up

00:55:38 ◼   ► and I'm looking at it for the show, I'm like,

00:55:41 ◼   ► 'cause if Renee has been adding to this,

00:55:43 ◼   ► I'm not getting them and I guess we should talk

00:55:47 ◼   ► about the fact that this isn't working.

00:55:49 ◼   ► - No, it's 100% working.

00:55:50 ◼   ► - Why did they make it?

00:55:56 ◼   ► I think that the only reason they made it

00:55:58 ◼   ► is that somebody within Apple sort of had the idea for this

00:56:02 ◼   ► and the more they talked about it

00:56:04 ◼   ► with other people at Apple,

00:56:05 ◼   ► the people are like, yeah, this is a good idea,

00:56:07 ◼   ► we could do this.

00:56:08 ◼   ► I believe, I don't know and of course,

00:56:10 ◼   ► Apple famously doesn't really give a lot of individual credit

00:56:13 ◼   ► to the people who conceive of and engineer ideas

00:56:16 ◼   ► but my understanding is that it's people,

00:56:19 ◼   ► I don't know if they're formerly of the iWork team

00:56:22 ◼   ► or they're still on the iWork team

00:56:24 ◼   ► but it's people who nearing and design-wise

00:56:27 ◼   ► have worked on pages and numbers and keynote

00:56:30 ◼   ► and their collaborative features

00:56:33 ◼   ► and building this from scratch

00:56:35 ◼   ► and it must, I think it works better conceptually

00:56:39 ◼   ► 'cause again, pages, numbers and keynote

00:56:42 ◼   ► are fundamentally anchored in the old metaphor

00:56:45 ◼   ► of the truth is a document that you save somewhere

00:56:50 ◼   ► in a file system somewhere

00:56:53 ◼   ► and yes, you can add people to it

00:56:55 ◼   ► but trying to make an online live collaboration thing

00:57:00 ◼   ► that is fundamentally rooted in a file

00:57:02 ◼   ► that is somewhere on a system is, it's a mismatch

00:57:07 ◼   ► and I think that's why Google Docs have always worked better

00:57:10 ◼   ► for collaborative editing than things

00:57:14 ◼   ► that are more rooted in the file system

00:57:17 ◼   ► because the Google Docs natural isn't really a file,

00:57:23 ◼   ► it's a URL that creates the illusion of being a file

00:57:27 ◼   ► but if you really want it to be a file,

00:57:28 ◼   ► you've got to take a snapshot and export.

00:57:31 ◼   ► - Yep, 100% and that's why I think that famous graph

00:57:34 ◼   ► that Steve Jobs stood in front of when he was announcing

00:57:36 ◼   ► iCloud showed the devices and something going up

00:57:39 ◼   ► and then copies of them coming back down

00:57:41 ◼   ► rather than something being propagated from the cloud.

00:57:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, let's see where Freeform goes

00:57:49 ◼   ► but I kind of have a feeling

00:57:50 ◼   ► that Apple is committed to this,

00:57:52 ◼   ► I think they think it's a good idea,

00:57:53 ◼   ► I think they're going to keep iterating on it

00:57:56 ◼   ► and it's going to be there

00:57:57 ◼   ► and it's also like many, many, many things

00:58:00 ◼   ► in the world of software,

00:58:01 ◼   ► it's hard to figure out the true appeal of it

00:58:05 ◼   ► until you need it and then all of a sudden

00:58:06 ◼   ► when you do need, it's like something

00:58:08 ◼   ► for everybody out there, it's like yeah,

00:58:10 ◼   ► I'll bet a lot of people have done what I did

00:58:11 ◼   ► which is sort of fire it up and kick the tires a little

00:58:15 ◼   ► and import this and import that

00:58:17 ◼   ► but you don't really have a thing

00:58:18 ◼   ► you really want to do with it yet

00:58:21 ◼   ► and it's like when you actually do have that thing

00:58:23 ◼   ► you really want to do,

00:58:25 ◼   ► then all of a sudden you'll be like,

00:58:26 ◼   ► hey, this is actually awesome,

00:58:28 ◼   ► my wife and I were redecorating our living room

00:58:32 ◼   ► and put a bunch of pictures of,

00:58:36 ◼   ► sort of thing that maybe people have done on Pinterest

00:58:38 ◼   ► or something like that but like,

00:58:39 ◼   ► hey, let's just share a bunch of photos

00:58:41 ◼   ► of other rooms we like and we could doodle on them

00:58:44 ◼   ► with an Apple pencil on an iPad and say,

00:58:47 ◼   ► ignore this, I'm not talking about art on the walls like this

00:58:51 ◼   ► I'm just talking about the color of the paint.

00:58:53 ◼   ► - So I do have a conspiracy theory though along those lines

00:58:56 ◼   ► and that is like I think a lot of the stuff Apple's done

00:58:58 ◼   ► over the last seven plus years has been prep work

00:59:01 ◼   ► for when they get into VR and AR more seriously

00:59:04 ◼   ► especially all the sharing emoji and FaceTime

00:59:07 ◼   ► and iMessage groups and this to me makes sense

00:59:11 ◼   ► when you're starting to talk about that world in the future

00:59:13 ◼   ► where you might just be walking,

00:59:15 ◼   ► like you and Amy walking through a room saying,

00:59:18 ◼   ► what do you wanna do with this

00:59:18 ◼   ► and you both put on your glasses

00:59:20 ◼   ► and you start moving things around

00:59:21 ◼   ► and freeform is an actual 3D environment that you share

00:59:25 ◼   ► like the counter antidote for Facebook horizons

00:59:30 ◼   ► where it's something personal and malleable.

00:59:32 ◼   ► - Maybe, who knows, I'm not quite sure

00:59:35 ◼   ► how this would look in VR but you know,

00:59:39 ◼   ► I don't know how anything's gonna look in VR.

00:59:41 ◼   ► - Same.

00:59:42 ◼   ► - I don't have too much more to say about it

00:59:44 ◼   ► but I'm glad that it's there

00:59:45 ◼   ► and I guess if I had to bet,

00:59:48 ◼   ► I'm gonna bet that it'll be to some degree,

00:59:51 ◼   ► I think it's gonna stick.

00:59:52 ◼   ► I think people when they encounter something

00:59:54 ◼   ► where they need something like this

00:59:56 ◼   ► or could use something like this,

00:59:58 ◼   ► are going to, it'll be a continual source of discovery

01:00:01 ◼   ► where months from now or a year from now,

01:00:03 ◼   ► somebody's gonna be like, yeah, I never used it

01:00:05 ◼   ► but then I tried freeform and it was perfect

01:00:07 ◼   ► for planning a vacation or something like that.

01:00:09 ◼   ► - Longer than a head of lettuce,

01:00:10 ◼   ► probably longer than music memos,

01:00:12 ◼   ► hopefully as long as clips.

01:00:14 ◼   ► - There is something weird, this is John Siracusa's gripe

01:00:17 ◼   ► on ATP was the fact that if you really just wanna scribble

01:00:21 ◼   ► on the board, you'd need an Apple Pencil

01:00:24 ◼   ► and there's no way to just scribble on the Mac

01:00:27 ◼   ► with your mouse which does seem like a strange omission

01:00:32 ◼   ► and it's kind of hard not to see how,

01:00:37 ◼   ► I don't know, not to suspect that somewhere

01:00:40 ◼   ► they're like the only good way to scribble is with a pencil

01:00:44 ◼   ► and therefore you need an iPad to do it.

01:00:48 ◼   ► I don't know, it's sort of an Apple--

01:00:50 ◼   ► - They just didn't get around to it yet.

01:00:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, or maybe they just, never underestimate

01:00:55 ◼   ► what simply is we did not get around to it yet

01:00:58 ◼   ► and Apple Pencil support on iPad was like a must be

01:01:02 ◼   ► in 1.0 feature and scribbling from the iPhone

01:01:06 ◼   ► without a pencil or from the Mac without even a touchscreen

01:01:10 ◼   ► are coming later and of course--

01:01:12 ◼   ► - Cut and paste third year problems.

01:01:14 ◼   ► - Right, and it is of course Apple

01:01:17 ◼   ► so we don't have any kind of roadmap public

01:01:20 ◼   ► of oh, don't forget, we're gonna add this, that

01:01:22 ◼   ► and the other thing.

01:01:23 ◼   ► I guess the other weird thing that strikes me about it

01:01:25 ◼   ► is the fact that the sticky notes have to be square

01:01:28 ◼   ► which I guess relates to what people think of

01:01:32 ◼   ► as sticky notes in the real world which are square

01:01:34 ◼   ► but you can grow them as big or as small as you want

01:01:39 ◼   ► and so by being able to grow them,

01:01:41 ◼   ► they're already not skeuomorphic, right?

01:01:44 ◼   ► You can't go and buy paper sticky notes

01:01:47 ◼   ► and stretch them to make them bigger

01:01:49 ◼   ► so once you can stretch them, why not let me stretch them

01:01:53 ◼   ► to make it longer or wider if that's what suits the content?

01:01:57 ◼   ► It seems slightly limiting that they have to be square

01:02:01 ◼   ► but that's a minor detail.

01:02:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, minimal shippable product.

01:02:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, well let's just jump right in without a break

01:02:10 ◼   ► to the last thing on my news to cover

01:02:13 ◼   ► and this is serendipity that you're on the show

01:02:15 ◼   ► 'cause I know you've had a keen interest in this.

01:02:18 ◼   ► You and I have talked about this on the show.

01:02:21 ◼   ► As many times as I've talked about the same thing

01:02:23 ◼   ► over and over again, you and I have talked about Apple

01:02:25 ◼   ► and backups and security and end-to-end encryption

01:02:29 ◼   ► and Apple, here we are, it's December,

01:02:31 ◼   ► usually the slow month but Apple actually has had some news

01:02:35 ◼   ► in addition to freeform.

01:02:37 ◼   ► The bigger news in my opinion is what Apple is calling

01:02:41 ◼   ► iCloud Advanced Data Security and in my show notes,

01:02:45 ◼   ► I only have one word and it is finally.

01:02:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, it deserves one.

01:02:49 ◼   ► - But it is an ironic finally where I'm not complaining

01:02:54 ◼   ► that it has taken them as long as they have.

01:02:56 ◼   ► Do I wish they had gotten to this point sooner?

01:02:59 ◼   ► I do, of course, because I think it is important

01:03:01 ◼   ► that it matters but I totally understand why they haven't

01:03:06 ◼   ► and I could see how if they opened,

01:03:11 ◼   ► if they invited you backstage metaphorically

01:03:14 ◼   ► and showed you every step of the way of the last 10,

01:03:18 ◼   ► maybe even more years of where they've moved iCloud security

01:03:23 ◼   ► that in some sense, it might be hard to imagine

01:03:30 ◼   ► how they could have moved faster.

01:03:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's also, it's one of those things where I think

01:03:35 ◼   ► everyone on Twitter tends to be a nerd

01:03:36 ◼   ► and because we're all on Twitter together,

01:03:38 ◼   ► we think everybody thinks the way that nerds think

01:03:40 ◼   ► and we think there's just a majority opinion

01:03:42 ◼   ► when really, it's a very small minority opinion

01:03:44 ◼   ► and we don't often think or empathize

01:03:46 ◼   ► with the larger community.

01:03:48 ◼   ► We think about, oh, everything has to be encrypted

01:03:51 ◼   ► because somebody might steal my XYZ

01:03:53 ◼   ► where for the vast majority of people, it's like,

01:03:55 ◼   ► oh my God, I forgot my password,

01:03:57 ◼   ► I'm never gonna get my baby pictures back

01:03:59 ◼   ► and that is the biggest harm or damage

01:04:01 ◼   ► that they could ever experience

01:04:03 ◼   ► and that's what used to have,

01:04:04 ◼   ► with the original version of iCloud,

01:04:06 ◼   ► you had to print out those recovery keys

01:04:08 ◼   ► and people lost them all the time and went to Apple

01:04:10 ◼   ► and Apple had to say, sorry, all that stuff is lost.

01:04:13 ◼   ► So the new version was more fail-safe than fail-secure

01:04:16 ◼   ► so that Apple could go in and recover those things

01:04:18 ◼   ► and yeah, it sucked for people who really did wanna use it

01:04:21 ◼   ► as a secure store for things that they would rather

01:04:24 ◼   ► lose the ability to access than ever have stolen

01:04:27 ◼   ► but that again is not a mainstream concern.

01:04:29 ◼   ► Mainstream people don't wanna lose things.

01:04:31 ◼   ► There's very few people who are targeted

01:04:32 ◼   ► for that kind of stuff.

01:04:34 ◼   ► So building that out is non-trivial.

01:04:36 ◼   ► I think we saw that with recovery contacts coming out.

01:04:39 ◼   ► I think that was a big step towards this

01:04:41 ◼   ► and just Apple finally figuring out a way

01:04:43 ◼   ► to make it optional because there's so many services

01:04:47 ◼   ► like this, Apple gets all the attention

01:04:48 ◼   ► but if you're accessing files on the web,

01:04:50 ◼   ► that's really complicated with full encryption.

01:04:52 ◼   ► Doing some of the things Dropbox or other storage providers

01:04:55 ◼   ► do really, really complicated if you're fully encrypted

01:04:58 ◼   ► and sometimes you've gotta make your own binary blob

01:05:00 ◼   ► on your computer and upload it

01:05:01 ◼   ► and then you can't retrieve files if you're like remote

01:05:04 ◼   ► and you wanna go back and just pull out a single file

01:05:06 ◼   ► from Ren's computer.

01:05:07 ◼   ► So big topic, really complicated but I'm really, really glad

01:05:11 ◼   ► that we have the option and I'm glad that the option

01:05:13 ◼   ► is not enabled by default because you have to go in there

01:05:16 ◼   ► and say, I am going to accept responsibility

01:05:19 ◼   ► for my own data loss.

01:05:20 ◼   ► Give me this, give me the recovery stuff,

01:05:22 ◼   ► I will manage this and then hopefully that's like

01:05:25 ◼   ► signifying that you're capable of doing

01:05:27 ◼   ► all that kind of stuff.

01:05:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I guess I should have recap that the,

01:05:31 ◼   ► to me the centerpiece of Apple's new advanced

01:05:34 ◼   ► iCloud data security system is that backups

01:05:39 ◼   ► and your iCloud photo library are now can be

01:05:43 ◼   ► if you opt in end to end encrypted which is

01:05:48 ◼   ► and again, Apple has been, without them ever saying

01:05:52 ◼   ► we are building towards enabling end to end backup

01:05:56 ◼   ► encryption and iCloud photo library,

01:05:59 ◼   ► the clues have been there that they've been working

01:06:04 ◼   ► towards this and of course, they famously,

01:06:07 ◼   ► they make such a big deal out of privacy and security

01:06:09 ◼   ► and they've, to their credit, like when there was that

01:06:14 ◼   ► shooting in San Bernardino, California a couple years ago

01:06:18 ◼   ► and the FBI had a phone from one of the suspects

01:06:23 ◼   ► and couldn't access the contents of it and wanted Apple to,

01:06:28 ◼   ► again, I followed it closely.

01:06:31 ◼   ► I believe that the long story short of that

01:06:32 ◼   ► was what they wanted Apple to do was to create

01:06:35 ◼   ► a one-off version of iOS that they could,

01:06:38 ◼   ► that could, I don't even know if it's possible

01:06:40 ◼   ► to flash it onto the phone but to somehow get it

01:06:43 ◼   ► onto the phone without destroying the contents of the phone

01:06:47 ◼   ► but then once this new version of iOS had been installed,

01:06:50 ◼   ► it would allow them to circumvent the,

01:06:53 ◼   ► enter the device passcode to unlock the encrypted contents

01:07:00 ◼   ► that are stored on the phone and they stood their ground

01:07:04 ◼   ► and made the argument in as plain a language as they could

01:07:07 ◼   ► without, they certainly weren't seeking confrontation

01:07:11 ◼   ► with the United States Department of Justice

01:07:13 ◼   ► but they also weren't going to compromise

01:07:15 ◼   ► on doing what they believe was right

01:07:17 ◼   ► and doing what they believe is right

01:07:18 ◼   ► is not deliberately creating a backdoor

01:07:21 ◼   ► and just in a little way, like the fact that the contents

01:07:24 ◼   ► of our phones are encrypted on device and, you know,

01:07:29 ◼   ► they, it just, it is an enormous subdivision

01:07:34 ◼   ► of Apple's software engineering division

01:07:36 ◼   ► that is devoted to these features and it is,

01:07:41 ◼   ► it encapsulates in so many ways the Apple is at its best

01:07:45 ◼   ► at the intersection of hardware and software

01:07:48 ◼   ► and that only Apple can do this, right,

01:07:49 ◼   ► because then you get into the areas where like

01:07:52 ◼   ► the entire concept of a hardware secure enclave on device

01:07:57 ◼   ► is truly essential, there's no,

01:08:00 ◼   ► the way that they do the encryption of your data

01:08:02 ◼   ► on the device is all based on that and it's hand in hand.

01:08:07 ◼   ► - And I know some people are gonna quibble

01:08:08 ◼   ► because like end to end encryption,

01:08:10 ◼   ► so all the stuff that goes off the iPhone between us

01:08:12 ◼   ► and Apple is end to end encrypted in transit.

01:08:15 ◼   ► At rest, it's also end to end encrypted.

01:08:17 ◼   ► The only difference was for iCloud backup,

01:08:20 ◼   ► for things that, there's two sort of clients,

01:08:21 ◼   ► there was regular iCloud backup

01:08:23 ◼   ► and there was secure iCloud backup for like health data

01:08:26 ◼   ► and things like that, that was always separate

01:08:27 ◼   ► but the general iCloud data, it was encrypted end to end,

01:08:30 ◼   ► it's just that Apple had a copy of the key.

01:08:32 ◼   ► So we had a copy of the key on our device,

01:08:34 ◼   ► Apple had a copy of the key, that way if we lost our key,

01:08:38 ◼   ► we lost our phone, we forgot like

01:08:39 ◼   ► when we originally printed out those things, whatever,

01:08:41 ◼   ► we lost our password, forgot it,

01:08:43 ◼   ► they, you could go through this elaborate,

01:08:45 ◼   ► exhausting recovery process, prove ownership

01:08:48 ◼   ► and reclaim a copy of your data and that was only possible

01:08:51 ◼   ► and the side effect of that was that then it was subject

01:08:54 ◼   ► to subpoena because it existed

01:08:55 ◼   ► and Apple could gain access to it.

01:08:57 ◼   ► - Right. - And I think that,

01:08:58 ◼   ► it was never, like I know some people were like,

01:08:59 ◼   ► oh, the FBI told Apple to do this.

01:09:01 ◼   ► I think Craig said that on Joanna's video too,

01:09:03 ◼   ► like we were never asked to do this,

01:09:05 ◼   ► like this was a customer service issue, first and foremost

01:09:08 ◼   ► and now they can have both,

01:09:09 ◼   ► which I think is better for everybody.

01:09:11 ◼   ► - Right, and that's what you and I have speculated for years,

01:09:14 ◼   ► you and I have been in complete agreement

01:09:15 ◼   ► that the biggest holdup to enabling end to end,

01:09:19 ◼   ► true end to end, what I would say,

01:09:21 ◼   ► I would quibble with what I think,

01:09:22 ◼   ► I think you slightly misspoke,

01:09:24 ◼   ► where I think to qualify as end to end,

01:09:28 ◼   ► there can't be a key held in the middle.

01:09:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's fair. - Right?

01:09:33 ◼   ► So it's, it is, you're, and people who don't follow

01:09:37 ◼   ► this closely have been like, wait,

01:09:38 ◼   ► my backups weren't encrypted before?

01:09:40 ◼   ► No, well, they were encrypted.

01:09:42 ◼   ► - Well, they weren't on a drive

01:09:43 ◼   ► where anybody could just walk in and take them,

01:09:44 ◼   ► like if somebody walked and took it off the drive,

01:09:46 ◼   ► they were still encrypted.

01:09:47 ◼   ► - Right, they're encrypted, your device encrypts them

01:09:51 ◼   ► as the backup is going to iCloud,

01:09:53 ◼   ► so over the wire or through the air,

01:09:56 ◼   ► let's face it, is more common, especially for an iPhone.

01:09:59 ◼   ► Over the internet, it's encrypted and it goes to Apple

01:10:04 ◼   ► and it gets stored on Apple.

01:10:05 ◼   ► - Ultimately, a cloud server is just a box

01:10:08 ◼   ► somewhere in a data center.

01:10:10 ◼   ► It's a computer in a data center

01:10:11 ◼   ► with drives connected to it.

01:10:14 ◼   ► On those drives, the data is encrypted,

01:10:17 ◼   ► and then when it comes back to you,

01:10:20 ◼   ► because let's say you're restoring from a backup,

01:10:22 ◼   ► it is sent back over the drive, over the air,

01:10:26 ◼   ► over the internet, encrypted,

01:10:28 ◼   ► till your device receives it and decrypts it

01:10:30 ◼   ► so that it can restore the backup.

01:10:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's encrypted not end to end.

01:10:33 ◼   ► I misspoke about that part.

01:10:35 ◼   ► - But the difference is that Apple held keys,

01:10:38 ◼   ► and then therefore, if they were given a proper subpoena,

01:10:43 ◼   ► then they could be forced to hand over the keys and the data,

01:10:48 ◼   ► whereas now, if you enable advanced data,

01:10:51 ◼   ► I'm gonna get this right, what's it called?

01:10:53 ◼   ► Advanced data security.

01:10:55 ◼   ► Advanced data protection, well, whatever it's called.

01:10:57 ◼   ► You enable it, you opt in.

01:11:00 ◼   ► What Apple does is they throw away their key.

01:11:05 ◼   ► So one of the things,

01:11:07 ◼   ► because they've been building towards this for years,

01:11:10 ◼   ► is you don't have to, if you decide to opt in,

01:11:14 ◼   ► it's not like, oh, but now your entire iCloud photo library

01:11:19 ◼   ► is invalidated because you hadn't been using it

01:11:22 ◼   ► 'cause advanced data security didn't exist before.

01:11:25 ◼   ► Now it does.

01:11:26 ◼   ► Now you've gotta re-upload your entire photo library.

01:11:30 ◼   ► No, you don't, because all they do is when you're like,

01:11:33 ◼   ► are you sure, are you really sure, okay, here you go,

01:11:36 ◼   ► they just throw away their key.

01:11:38 ◼   ► - And I believe you have to set up a recovery contact

01:11:41 ◼   ► or print out a recovery code

01:11:42 ◼   ► and put it in a safe deposit box

01:11:43 ◼   ► 'cause I mean, before you can enable it.

01:11:45 ◼   ► - Right, you have to have some sort, you have to tell them,

01:11:48 ◼   ► but they can't verify that the person,

01:11:50 ◼   ► if you've said, yes, I've printed this thing out,

01:11:53 ◼   ► you told me to print it and put it in my safe

01:11:56 ◼   ► or a safe deposit box

01:11:58 ◼   ► or wherever you keep your secure documents,

01:12:00 ◼   ► but you have to have one of those things set up.

01:12:02 ◼   ► I believe you can have both.

01:12:03 ◼   ► You can both set up a,

01:12:06 ◼   ► and I think that having that emergency contact,

01:12:11 ◼   ► a spouse, a sibling, a trusted friend, a parent,

01:12:15 ◼   ► whoever it is who you trust, and you're saying,

01:12:18 ◼   ► if anything ever happens and I get locked out of my iCloud,

01:12:21 ◼   ► I would let Renee be a person who could vouch for me

01:12:25 ◼   ► and could let me back into my account just by you--

01:12:30 ◼   ► - And I wouldn't get any information.

01:12:31 ◼   ► I would just be able to let you back in.

01:12:33 ◼   ► - Right, you wouldn't be, yes,

01:12:35 ◼   ► you wouldn't have access to my iCloud photo library.

01:12:38 ◼   ► You would just be able to,

01:12:40 ◼   ► it turns you into a person who can do

01:12:42 ◼   ► what my other devices do, which is say, yes, this is me.

01:12:46 ◼   ► I know this code.

01:12:47 ◼   ► It's the numbers 123007.

01:12:50 ◼   ► Type it in and you're good to go.

01:12:54 ◼   ► Or you can have one of these,

01:12:56 ◼   ► I think they're like 28 characters, something like that,

01:12:58 ◼   ► just long enough to certainly be safe

01:13:01 ◼   ► from any kind of brute force attack

01:13:03 ◼   ► that you can print out and put somewhere.

01:13:07 ◼   ► Counterintuitively, I know Bruce Schneier

01:13:09 ◼   ► has made this argument more eloquently

01:13:11 ◼   ► than anybody probably ever could,

01:13:14 ◼   ► that people intuitively think printing out

01:13:18 ◼   ► something very important like that is terrible security.

01:13:22 ◼   ► Oh my God, the worst thing you could ever do

01:13:24 ◼   ► is write your passwords down in a book

01:13:27 ◼   ► or print out this thing that is the key

01:13:30 ◼   ► to the kingdom of your entire iCloud account.

01:13:32 ◼   ► But it turns out human beings are really good

01:13:35 ◼   ► at keeping physical objects secret, right?

01:13:38 ◼   ► Because we evolved in the physical world

01:13:41 ◼   ► over millions of years.

01:13:43 ◼   ► And we're good at imagining things like that

01:13:46 ◼   ► and good at understanding what's a safe place

01:13:49 ◼   ► to put this and what's not.

01:13:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, 100%. - Right?

01:13:52 ◼   ► And--

01:13:55 ◼   ► - Marriage licenses, birth certificates,

01:13:57 ◼   ► all sorts of documents, we're very good at keeping those.

01:13:59 ◼   ► - Right, and if you just keep it in a drawer in your bedroom

01:14:04 ◼   ► and that's as safe as it is, that's probably pretty safe.

01:14:08 ◼   ► And if you have an adversary who's in your bedroom

01:14:11 ◼   ► going through your drawers,

01:14:12 ◼   ► you've got a lot of problems, right?

01:14:14 ◼   ► I mean, perfect is the enemy of good enough sometimes.

01:14:19 ◼   ► - It reminds me of Dave Nainian

01:14:20 ◼   ► when I was asking him about encrypting backups

01:14:22 ◼   ► for like a super duper.

01:14:23 ◼   ► He's just like, do you know how many valuable things

01:14:25 ◼   ► you have in your house that somebody might wanna steal?

01:14:27 ◼   ► Your wedding photos and your kids' photos

01:14:29 ◼   ► are probably low on that list.

01:14:30 ◼   ► Just back them up normally and put them someplace safe.

01:14:33 ◼   ► - But back in the early days of going online

01:14:37 ◼   ► and having an online life and having multiple accounts,

01:14:40 ◼   ► I know, I certainly succumb to this personally.

01:14:44 ◼   ► At some degree, your human intuition

01:14:47 ◼   ► is that the safest place to keep a password is in your brain.

01:14:50 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Right?

01:14:52 ◼   ► I've got it, I've got it up here.

01:14:53 ◼   ► And here I am, imagine me, if this was a YouTube show

01:14:56 ◼   ► instead of an audio podcast, I'm doing that thing

01:14:58 ◼   ► where I'm tapping my forehead, right?

01:15:00 ◼   ► Ah, it's up here, it's all up here.

01:15:03 ◼   ► And that's exactly though the mentality

01:15:05 ◼   ► that the next step after that is,

01:15:08 ◼   ► well, I can't memorize 40 different passwords

01:15:10 ◼   ► and I certainly wouldn't remember which one goes to which,

01:15:12 ◼   ► so why don't I think of one really clever password

01:15:16 ◼   ► and I'll use that really clever password everywhere.

01:15:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, yes. - It made sense, I did it.

01:15:22 ◼   ► - Or that plus the name of the site,

01:15:23 ◼   ► nobody'll ever guess that.

01:15:25 ◼   ► - Oh, right, right, I did that.

01:15:27 ◼   ► I definitely did, and every once in a while,

01:15:29 ◼   ► I still run into some old thing

01:15:31 ◼   ► that I haven't logged into in a while

01:15:33 ◼   ► and I'm like, oh, yep, I gotta change that password.

01:15:36 ◼   ► That's, you know, haven't logged in here

01:15:38 ◼   ► in a couple of years, but here, let me do this,

01:15:41 ◼   ► let me make a new one-time password, there it is.

01:15:44 ◼   ► It's saved in my iCloud keychain or wherever else.

01:15:47 ◼   ► But you know, it wasn't, it was misguided,

01:15:51 ◼   ► but I don't think it was stupid.

01:15:53 ◼   ► And I think if we re-rolled the universe a thousand times,

01:15:57 ◼   ► everybody would do it a thousand times.

01:15:59 ◼   ► We'd go through an era when everybody had

01:16:01 ◼   ► like their favorite password and would reuse it.

01:16:03 ◼   ► And it's, it's like I said with Freeform,

01:16:07 ◼   ► not having to evolve out of a document-based legacy concept

01:16:14 ◼   ► and can start with a cloud-based, no documents,

01:16:18 ◼   ► it's all in the library idea from the start.

01:16:22 ◼   ► iCloud has had to move live with now billions of users,

01:16:27 ◼   ► but you know, for a very long time,

01:16:29 ◼   ► hundreds of millions of users from a system

01:16:33 ◼   ► that wasn't created with true end-to-end encryption in mind

01:16:38 ◼   ► to get to a place where it is.

01:16:42 ◼   ► But, and again, everybody seems happy that,

01:16:47 ◼   ► with Apple's announcement about advanced data protection.

01:16:50 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, everybody outside of law enforcement

01:16:52 ◼   ► and probably some nation states.

01:16:55 ◼   ► - Right, and it's also easy to,

01:16:58 ◼   ► the other thing that was, I think I wrote about it.

01:17:02 ◼   ► It was so clear a year ago that Apple's now abandoned,

01:17:07 ◼   ► because that was the other bit of news

01:17:09 ◼   ► that Craig Federighi told Joanna Stern in her interview

01:17:12 ◼   ► with him about this stuff for the Wall Street Journal,

01:17:15 ◼   ► that Apple has decided to not go forward

01:17:17 ◼   ► with all the CSAM scanning stuff

01:17:20 ◼   ► that they had announced last year,

01:17:22 ◼   ► that they've taken the criticism to heart

01:17:24 ◼   ► and that they're going to focus their efforts on,

01:17:26 ◼   ► insofar as CSAM material of putting their efforts

01:17:31 ◼   ► towards nipping it in the bud before it's even created.

01:17:34 ◼   ► - Yeah. - You know,

01:17:34 ◼   ► and there's things they can do to help in that regard.

01:17:37 ◼   ► But the idea was, if they're going to move,

01:17:40 ◼   ► the thinking I had last year was,

01:17:42 ◼   ► if they're going to move iCloud Photo Library

01:17:44 ◼   ► to be end-to-end encrypted, at least optionally,

01:17:48 ◼   ► they're trying to say here, but we're still,

01:17:50 ◼   ► even with end-to-end encryption,

01:17:52 ◼   ► without us holding the keys,

01:17:54 ◼   ► we're still taking this, that, and the other step

01:17:56 ◼   ► to keep CSAM material from being part of somebody's library.

01:18:01 ◼   ► Whether they were right to a,

01:18:03 ◼   ► I actually still think that it was not,

01:18:07 ◼   ► I don't think that what they were proposing was a bad idea.

01:18:09 ◼   ► I wasn't, I was not opposed to it.

01:18:12 ◼   ► I see the arguments against it,

01:18:16 ◼   ► but I'm in the middle where I actually think the system

01:18:20 ◼   ► that they were proposing was not going to,

01:18:23 ◼   ► if they had instituted it,

01:18:25 ◼   ► I don't think it would have led to the problems

01:18:27 ◼   ► that people were thinking that there would be.

01:18:29 ◼   ► I don't think, I don't think that they were going

01:18:32 ◼   ► to be weak to potential attacks where somebody

01:18:37 ◼   ► could create a false image that isn't actually

01:18:42 ◼   ► CSAM child pornographic content,

01:18:45 ◼   ► but it would match the fingerprint of one that is,

01:18:49 ◼   ► and then they would somehow maliciously insert it

01:18:51 ◼   ► into your iCloud Photo Library and do that 20 times

01:18:55 ◼   ► or 30 times or whatever the threshold was,

01:18:58 ◼   ► and then boom, your account is flagged.

01:19:01 ◼   ► 'Cause even if they did that,

01:19:02 ◼   ► I thought that that human review step

01:19:04 ◼   ► where they would look at the image,

01:19:06 ◼   ► and if somebody can just insert,

01:19:09 ◼   ► if somebody wants to attack you in this way

01:19:12 ◼   ► and they have access and somehow can insert images

01:19:15 ◼   ► into your iCloud Photo Library,

01:19:17 ◼   ► why wouldn't they just put the actual

01:19:19 ◼   ► child pornographic material in your library

01:19:22 ◼   ► and let it be triggered? - I think a lot of that

01:19:23 ◼   ► was like, there's like one of the other side effects

01:19:26 ◼   ► of social media is that you have a lot of performative

01:19:28 ◼   ► desperation theater where people want to get attention

01:19:30 ◼   ► by making a lot of slippery slope arguments.

01:19:33 ◼   ► And I think some of them, like whether other countries

01:19:35 ◼   ► would try to impose their own databases.

01:19:37 ◼   ► There were concerns, I think the biggest one

01:19:39 ◼   ► for most people was just the emotional concern.

01:19:41 ◼   ► The idea that some part of your phone was no longer yours

01:19:43 ◼   ► was under control, and whether that's always been true

01:19:47 ◼   ► with system update processes or not,

01:19:49 ◼   ► it just felt like photos are mine, they're deeply personal,

01:19:51 ◼   ► and I don't like the idea of something being done

01:19:53 ◼   ► on my phone.

01:19:54 ◼   ► I always hoped it'd be a compromise solution

01:19:56 ◼   ► where either Apple would leverage the trusted intermediary

01:20:00 ◼   ► technology that they were doing with their VPN-like solution

01:20:03 ◼   ► where it would be done on a server in between you and Apple

01:20:06 ◼   ► so that Apple would have zero knowledge

01:20:07 ◼   ► but the bits wouldn't live on your phone

01:20:09 ◼   ► the same way they do now with the internet,

01:20:11 ◼   ► or that they would make a separate photos app

01:20:13 ◼   ► and say like, if you want your photos on your phone,

01:20:16 ◼   ► here's like the white icon version

01:20:17 ◼   ► and those phones are never going online,

01:20:19 ◼   ► but if you do want to make use of iCloud storage,

01:20:21 ◼   ► then you download the online yellow version or whatever,

01:20:24 ◼   ► and that one, you know that they're gonna go online

01:20:26 ◼   ► but they're gonna be scanned as they're going online,

01:20:28 ◼   ► and that way you can opt in or out,

01:20:30 ◼   ► like visibly opt in or out.

01:20:32 ◼   ► Realizing that's the word I was looking for.

01:20:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, that was sort of what I thought they were,

01:20:39 ◼   ► and I'll bet that when they said,

01:20:40 ◼   ► "Okay, we've taken your criticism to heart,"

01:20:43 ◼   ► I get it that it was sort of a philosophical,

01:20:46 ◼   ► not technical argument that people were offended

01:20:48 ◼   ► that it would be happening on their own devices

01:20:50 ◼   ► even if it's just fingerprinting.

01:20:52 ◼   ► - Right, I also though believe that there was no way

01:20:56 ◼   ► to get past people's fundamental misunderstanding

01:20:59 ◼   ► that they were not going to put a library of CSAM material

01:21:04 ◼   ► on everybody's phone for the checking,

01:21:06 ◼   ► just the fingerprints,

01:21:08 ◼   ► but I get it that people didn't even want the fingerprints.

01:21:11 ◼   ► Again, I'm not quite sure why that would bother me.

01:21:13 ◼   ► - It's like having a metal detector

01:21:15 ◼   ► on the door of your house instead of at the stadium

01:21:16 ◼   ► that you're gonna go watch the game at.

01:21:19 ◼   ► - I guess, I don't know, you know,

01:21:21 ◼   ► or like, I don't know, but I get it.

01:21:24 ◼   ► I think Apple listened.

01:21:25 ◼   ► I do think that, I'll bet that when, you know,

01:21:28 ◼   ► typical Apple, they took their time,

01:21:30 ◼   ► they said, "Okay, we're gonna listen.

01:21:32 ◼   ► "We're gonna put this on pause.

01:21:33 ◼   ► "We'll get back to you."

01:21:35 ◼   ► I'll bet that that is one of the things

01:21:37 ◼   ► they very strongly considered

01:21:38 ◼   ► was having these intermediary servers

01:21:41 ◼   ► and a two-step process where you connect to one,

01:21:45 ◼   ► this one connects to another,

01:21:46 ◼   ► but the one that does the processing

01:21:47 ◼   ► doesn't even know where it came from

01:21:49 ◼   ► and does the fingerprint checking

01:21:51 ◼   ► and then says, you know, this fingerprint is A-okay,

01:21:55 ◼   ► go ahead and upload it to iCloud Photo.

01:21:57 ◼   ► And I think that they ultimately said,

01:21:58 ◼   ► "You know what, why build all this stuff?

01:21:59 ◼   ► "Why don't we just skip it?"

01:22:01 ◼   ► You know, and then anybody who was gonna complain

01:22:04 ◼   ► and say, "Hey, you can't just let people

01:22:06 ◼   ► "end-to-end encrypt their photo library.

01:22:08 ◼   ► "What about, what if they're stashing

01:22:10 ◼   ► "horrible, horrible C-SAM material in their library?"

01:22:14 ◼   ► You know, they could say, "We tried.

01:22:15 ◼   ► "We had a proposal to look into this.

01:22:19 ◼   ► "We do care deeply about it,

01:22:21 ◼   ► "but your privacy is your privacy."

01:22:24 ◼   ► And this is one of those ways where they do,

01:22:26 ◼   ► like speaking to people at Apple

01:22:28 ◼   ► and getting briefed about it off the record,

01:22:30 ◼   ► that they do still look at it in the way that,

01:22:33 ◼   ► back in the day, pre-Cloud,

01:22:36 ◼   ► everything that you did on your computer was on a disk,

01:22:39 ◼   ► and the disk was in front of you somewhere,

01:22:41 ◼   ► whether it's a floppy disk or a hard disk or something.

01:22:44 ◼   ► And those disks were yours,

01:22:45 ◼   ► and it was up to you how secure they were

01:22:47 ◼   ► and how secure the room they were in was

01:22:50 ◼   ► and how, you know, and that all they're trying to do

01:22:55 ◼   ► in the modern digital age is put that level

01:22:58 ◼   ► of user control over the data back into their hands

01:23:03 ◼   ► if they want it.

01:23:05 ◼   ► The other complaint that I've seen people have,

01:23:07 ◼   ► I think the EFF, who I believe, you know,

01:23:09 ◼   ► is almost entirely on the right on this,

01:23:11 ◼   ► but like, I don't think I'm putting words

01:23:13 ◼   ► in the EFF's mouth that they were like,

01:23:16 ◼   ► "This is all great, except it shouldn't be opt-in.

01:23:18 ◼   ► "It should be the default for everybody."

01:23:22 ◼   ► I think that I disagree with that,

01:23:25 ◼   ► and I'm not quite sure.

01:23:26 ◼   ► Maybe someday it will be.

01:23:28 ◼   ► Maybe they'll get to the point,

01:23:30 ◼   ► and they'll maybe with 10 years of trusted use

01:23:35 ◼   ► of using other people you know in your family

01:23:39 ◼   ► as your trusted backup contact

01:23:42 ◼   ► to get back into your account.

01:23:44 ◼   ► But the customer service angle of this,

01:23:47 ◼   ► where clearly there are way more Apple customers

01:23:52 ◼   ► who come into the store and say,

01:23:55 ◼   ► "You know, I left my phone in a cab,

01:23:57 ◼   ► "and I don't know my iCloud password.

01:24:02 ◼   ► "I've forgotten it.

01:24:03 ◼   ► "I've tried to get in on the web 10 times,

01:24:07 ◼   ► "and it's locked me out.

01:24:08 ◼   ► "I don't know what to do.

01:24:09 ◼   ► "I have an iCloud backup, and I want to replace the phone

01:24:12 ◼   ► "that I just lost, but I don't know how to get my backup."

01:24:16 ◼   ► There is a process you can go through,

01:24:17 ◼   ► and it's obvious, you know.

01:24:19 ◼   ► It seems anecdotally, you know, in terms of like,

01:24:22 ◼   ► when's the last time you heard of anybody

01:24:24 ◼   ► getting ripped off this way?

01:24:26 ◼   ► You know, in other words,

01:24:27 ◼   ► that somebody comes into an Apple store,

01:24:28 ◼   ► and they're not me, and they're somehow saying,

01:24:30 ◼   ► "I'm John Gruber, and I," you know.

01:24:32 ◼   ► - It's an arduous process, though.

01:24:33 ◼   ► Like, they're very stringent about you proving

01:24:36 ◼   ► that you own the device and stuff, yeah.

01:24:39 ◼   ► - Right, it's not like,

01:24:40 ◼   ► "Oh, I have a 215 Genius Bar appointment,

01:24:43 ◼   ► "and after three minutes of explaining my problem,

01:24:46 ◼   ► "boom, the Genius behind at the Apple store

01:24:49 ◼   ► "has my full decrypted Apple."

01:24:53 ◼   ► Right, but it is possible.

01:24:56 ◼   ► And my understanding is that all of our speculation

01:24:59 ◼   ► that it's more common than you might think

01:25:02 ◼   ► has all been true, you know,

01:25:04 ◼   ► including just people who listen to the show

01:25:06 ◼   ► who work at Apple retail stores,

01:25:08 ◼   ► and they're like, "Yeah, it happens every," you know.

01:25:09 ◼   ► So at least once every day,

01:25:11 ◼   ► somebody comes in with this problem.

01:25:12 ◼   ► Whereas the problem of some foreign state

01:25:17 ◼   ► with an apparatus has hacked into Apple's cloud servers

01:25:24 ◼   ► and taken the key to your backup

01:25:28 ◼   ► and stolen your data that way, you know.

01:25:31 ◼   ► - It's, yeah, it's very small.

01:25:34 ◼   ► - Very small.

01:25:35 ◼   ► There are fewer people who need this

01:25:38 ◼   ► than there are people, typical consumers,

01:25:41 ◼   ► who probably shouldn't turn it on.

01:25:42 ◼   ► So I kind of feel, wouldn't be surprised

01:25:45 ◼   ► if this is the natural end state.

01:25:47 ◼   ► The only way I could see it becoming a little bit more

01:25:50 ◼   ► likely to be turned on by typical people

01:25:53 ◼   ► would be if like next year or the year after

01:25:56 ◼   ► or at some point in the next handful of years,

01:25:59 ◼   ► it becomes part of the onboarding process

01:26:01 ◼   ► for a new device or a new software update, you know,

01:26:06 ◼   ► that you install iOS 18 two years from now.