The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► - We're gonna make people so angry on this episode.

00:00:04 ◼   ► - Well, just for the record, it is 7.16 a.m.

00:00:07 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:00:08 ◼   ► - On a holiday week, the kids are still in bed.

00:00:10 ◼   ► And I insisted I'd be happy to wake up early

00:00:14 ◼   ► because I'm very excited about this episode.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Which we've been, it was funny 'cause we'll get to it later,

00:00:21 ◼   ► but I was actually confused when you posted

00:00:24 ◼   ► because we'd been talking about it for so long,

00:00:27 ◼   ► I thought you'd already written about it.

00:00:28 ◼   ► No.

00:00:30 ◼   ► We'll have to get to it then.

00:00:33 ◼   ► We have some sad news, though, to talk about first.

00:00:35 ◼   ► We have two obituaries to touch upon.

00:00:41 ◼   ► The one everybody, I'm sure, has heard about is Kobe Bryant,

00:00:46 ◼   ► Lakers superstar, which I hate to say,

00:00:49 ◼   ► it almost is like underselling what he meant to basketball

00:00:53 ◼   ► and the world at large.

00:00:56 ◼   ► died, passed away with his 13-year-old daughter

00:00:59 ◼   ► in a helicopter accident Sunday afternoon.

00:01:03 ◼   ► Just shocking.

00:01:04 ◼   ► And Clayton Christensen,

00:01:07 ◼   ► we can talk about after Kobe, I guess,

00:01:10 ◼   ► lost, he was only 67,

00:01:12 ◼   ► which again, nowhere near as young as Kobe.

00:01:14 ◼   ► Of course, he was 41, but still, just 60, you know.

00:01:17 ◼   ► That's how you know you're getting old,

00:01:18 ◼   ► is when you hear somebody die at 67

00:01:20 ◼   ► and you think, "Ah, too young."

00:01:22 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:01:23 ◼   ► No, I mean--

00:01:24 ◼   ► - He lost a battle with leukemia this week too.

00:01:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, I actually, I wrote about them in conjunction

00:01:30 ◼   ► because it was interesting because I had planned

00:01:32 ◼   ► to sort of write about Christiansen.

00:01:35 ◼   ► Obviously it's been a huge impact on Sir Chachere

00:01:39 ◼   ► and on me and didn't really, didn't know him.

00:01:43 ◼   ► But still, of anyone that's sort of been impactful

00:01:48 ◼   ► on what I write about, he's certainly top of the list

00:01:51 ◼   ► and a figure that's sort of widely known

00:01:54 ◼   ► and pretty widely revered in Silicon Valley.

00:01:56 ◼   ► And what was interesting about it,

00:02:00 ◼   ► then sort of the Kobe news happened,

00:02:02 ◼   ► and it was the age thing that was so striking to me,

00:02:05 ◼   ► because a lot of the people that have died,

00:02:09 ◼   ► or the older we get, the more the people that are like,

00:02:12 ◼   ► we're familiar with dying,

00:02:13 ◼   ► it's just kind of like something that you have to deal with.

00:02:16 ◼   ► They still always seem someone that I looked up to.

00:02:19 ◼   ► And Christian, to your point, is 67, which is unfortunately too young, but is still 28 years older than I am.

00:02:27 ◼   ► And it's like, man, that's a shame.

00:02:31 ◼   ► I hope I live longer than that, his poor family, etc., etc.

00:02:35 ◼   ► But it's still like, the way they're in your head is someone that you look up to, right?

00:02:40 ◼   ► Whereas Kobe, he was the same age as me, right?

00:02:45 ◼   ► I mean, he's two years older.

00:02:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:47 ◼   ► And so yes, you look up to his athletic accomplishments,

00:02:51 ◼   ► and obviously Kobe is a very complex character.

00:02:55 ◼   ► That is never far from mine, I think,

00:02:57 ◼   ► particularly with people my age,

00:02:59 ◼   ► because of the allegations against him from Colorado.

00:03:03 ◼   ► That's sort of like, when you grew up with him,

00:03:06 ◼   ► I remember him in high school.

00:03:07 ◼   ► I remember when he came to the NBA.

00:03:08 ◼   ► I remember when he won the titles with Shaq.

00:03:10 ◼   ► I remember when that trial dominated the news.

00:03:14 ◼   ► I remember when he sort of came back to win the title again.

00:03:17 ◼   ► And it was much more of a,

00:03:19 ◼   ► I'm not saying I'm Kobe's peer,

00:03:21 ◼   ► but it's like, it's just like,

00:03:22 ◼   ► I feel like my relationship with him

00:03:24 ◼   ► is so much different than my relationship with Christiansen,

00:03:26 ◼   ► neither of whom I knew,

00:03:28 ◼   ► but just because the age was very different.

00:03:30 ◼   ► So it was way more jarring for me,

00:03:31 ◼   ► like dramatically more jarring.

00:03:32 ◼   ► It's like, this is like my contemporary.

00:03:34 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:03:35 ◼   ► I'm a little bit in between.

00:03:36 ◼   ► I mean, I'm 46, so Jordan's 10 years older than me,

00:03:40 ◼   ► and Kobe was five years younger,

00:03:43 ◼   ► so I'm a little closer in age to Kobe,

00:03:45 ◼   ► but he always felt, you know.

00:03:46 ◼   ► And it is one thing, I know I don't wanna turn this

00:03:48 ◼   ► into a sports episode of the show,

00:03:52 ◼   ► but one thing about being a sports fan

00:03:55 ◼   ► is you're far more than other forms

00:03:59 ◼   ► of knowing famous people, like following politics closely

00:04:03 ◼   ► or like traditional celebrity news,

00:04:08 ◼   ► like actors and actresses,

00:04:10 ◼   ► is you're acutely aware of their age and your age.

00:04:13 ◼   ► You know, like how old is Brad Pitt?

00:04:15 ◼   ► I don't know, I have no idea.

00:04:16 ◼   ► The guy doesn't seem to age.

00:04:17 ◼   ► You know, Tom Cruise, I mean, Jesus Christ,

00:04:19 ◼   ► the guy looks exactly the same as he did 25 years ago.

00:04:22 ◼   ► You know, and you can keep,

00:04:26 ◼   ► these guys can keep making the same sort of movies

00:04:28 ◼   ► they used to make.

00:04:29 ◼   ► I mean, Harrison Ford was making,

00:04:31 ◼   ► is still making action movies.

00:04:32 ◼   ► I mean, he looks his age now,

00:04:33 ◼   ► but I mean, they're still gonna make

00:04:34 ◼   ► a new Indiana Jones movie, you know what I mean?

00:04:36 ◼   ► Like athletes don't get to do their thing

00:04:39 ◼   ► when they're honestly pushing 40.

00:04:43 ◼   ► It's a wonder that there are quarterbacks in the NFL

00:04:48 ◼   ► who are 40, 41, 42 still doing their thing.

00:04:52 ◼   ► Basketball doesn't really work that way.

00:04:54 ◼   ► Although, I just saw somebody in the NBA is 42

00:04:57 ◼   ► and still log in minutes.

00:04:59 ◼   ► - Well, we have Vince Carter, that's a huge exception.

00:05:02 ◼   ► And if there's the NBA is in particular,

00:05:04 ◼   ► 'cause it's so, I mean, the edges are so small

00:05:07 ◼   ► when it comes to sort of athleticism.

00:05:08 ◼   ► there's guys that are coming in the league now,

00:05:10 ◼   ► and they're coming in, it's like, oh, he's 21 years old.

00:05:13 ◼   ► That reduces his value as a prospect,

00:05:15 ◼   ► because he has, as a parent to a 19-year-old,

00:05:18 ◼   ► those two years of potential development

00:05:20 ◼   ► make a big difference, but the implication is,

00:05:22 ◼   ► to your point, yeah, you're super aware

00:05:25 ◼   ► of how old everyone is, because it's a critical part

00:05:27 ◼   ► of evaluating their potential,

00:05:31 ◼   ► how much it should be paid, et cetera, et cetera.

00:05:33 ◼   ► And yeah, there, the prime of your career

00:05:37 ◼   ► like 27 to 29 years old and and yeah and so the guys that guys that sort of retire it's like yeah

00:05:44 ◼   ► they've been on the downswing for a while you kind of know what's coming and and um you know

00:05:50 ◼   ► certainly we went through that went through that with with bryant and uh and yeah but but it's like

00:05:56 ◼   ► but it makes it almost more tragic in a way because it's like all right now on one hand it's

00:06:02 ◼   ► like oh wait you know if cody bryant was put on earth to play basketball he played basketball

00:06:06 ◼   ► played it well, accomplished all he could accomplish, and that was that. On the other hand,

00:06:10 ◼   ► you know, he more than most athletes really seemed to be leaning into sort of, you know,

00:06:17 ◼   ► his second act as it were. And he was so clearly, you know, for, you know, again, say what you will

00:06:26 ◼   ► and what needs to be said about his past. He was so clearly devoted to his family and, you know,

00:06:31 ◼   ► like the whole reason he had a helicopter was because he wanted to be able to drive his kids

00:06:34 ◼   ► He'd take his to school in the morning

00:06:35 ◼   ► and pick him up in the afternoon.

00:06:36 ◼   ► And that was the only way that was viable in Los Angeles.

00:06:38 ◼   ► And so he's been on thousands of helicopter rides.

00:06:41 ◼   ► And it's like, oh man, it's rough.

00:06:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I saw it.

00:06:47 ◼   ► There was a, it's just a heartbreaking clip.

00:06:49 ◼   ► I mean, all of it's heartbreaking.

00:06:50 ◼   ► It's just tragic.

00:06:51 ◼   ► But there was a clip of him on the Jimmy Kimmel show

00:06:54 ◼   ► recently, and I guess he has, or had, four daughters.

00:06:58 ◼   ► And-- - One was just born.

00:07:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, one was just born in June.

00:07:02 ◼   ► but he has one who's older, his second daughter was 13,

00:07:06 ◼   ► and she was the one who died with him

00:07:08 ◼   ► when the helicopter crashed going to a basketball game.

00:07:11 ◼   ► But he was talking to Jimmy Kimmel,

00:07:14 ◼   ► and I didn't see the initial context for the interview,

00:07:17 ◼   ► but it was basically that people keep coming up to him

00:07:19 ◼   ► and saying, "Hey, you got all these girls,

00:07:20 ◼   ► "but you gotta keep going, you gotta have a boy,

00:07:21 ◼   ► "someone to carry on your legacy, have a boy."

00:07:24 ◼   ► And he was like, "Hey, I already got a kid

00:07:25 ◼   ► "who's gonna carry on my legacy, Gigi," his daughter,

00:07:28 ◼   ► and that she's really good at basketball.

00:07:32 ◼   ► That's the one who died with him and then I was watching there were some clips on Twitter of her playing and man

00:07:36 ◼   ► There was a place she made as a 13 year old. It's like oh my god

00:07:39 ◼   ► There was this play where she stole the ball

00:07:42 ◼   ► I get a press and then like did like a spin move between two defenders and then like the nicest little easiest finger roll and it

00:07:49 ◼   ► Was like oh my god that she's got it. You know, she had it

00:07:53 ◼   ► Just I'm tearing up as I think about it

00:07:58 ◼   ► I mean, I'm not I'm a sports fan certainly not a Lakers fan

00:08:01 ◼   ► but it's like, man, when somebody dies,

00:08:02 ◼   ► I mean, you don't have to root for the team to just,

00:08:05 ◼   ► your heart just goes out.

00:08:07 ◼   ► And you're a bigger basketball fan than me,

00:08:09 ◼   ► but man, you just, what Kobe meant

00:08:12 ◼   ► to that generation of players, it's just unbelievable.

00:08:15 ◼   ► - Oh, that's something that's been super striking to me.

00:08:18 ◼   ► Because for you and I, it was Jordan, right?

00:08:20 ◼   ► Like, Jordan was the guy, you know,

00:08:22 ◼   ► I mean, just to do a rough analogy,

00:08:24 ◼   ► like, Jordan was like the Clay Christensen for me,

00:08:27 ◼   ► like, where you look up to him, like, you grow up with him.

00:08:29 ◼   ► Like he came in the league, you know, when I was just when I was just a kid and his dominant years in the 90s

00:08:35 ◼   ► I was in high school and so, you know

00:08:37 ◼   ► He was someone like he was older like he was doc

00:08:40 ◼   ► He was there present my whole life like even like the bird and Johnson, you know, Magic Johnson era like that's probably

00:08:47 ◼   ► What they were for you is what Jordan was for me

00:08:50 ◼   ► Yeah, like they were already there when I got there. I mostly remember them as a little kid

00:08:53 ◼   ► Well, and I mostly remember their their their sort of decline when I remember sort of their their prime

00:08:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I was yeah, but the age difference is such that the bird magic dr

00:09:03 ◼   ► J era is a little bit more for me what Jordan was for you

00:09:06 ◼   ► But like burden magic rookie year was 79 or 80 80

00:09:11 ◼   ► 79 - 80 maybe like where the 80

00:09:14 ◼   ► the 1980 finals was the one where Kareem had the the killer migraine headache couldn't play and

00:09:21 ◼   ► Magic who was the point guard played center came into Philly and won a huge game as the center

00:09:28 ◼   ► - Yup.

00:09:29 ◼   ► - When he played, I mean, it helps when you're 6'9",

00:09:31 ◼   ► you know, that you can just sub in for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

00:09:35 ◼   ► in the NBA Finals as a point guard.

00:09:37 ◼   ► - Right, we're the greatest players of all time.

00:09:39 ◼   ► - But still, it just showed that he was there.

00:09:41 ◼   ► But 1980, I was only seven years old,

00:09:43 ◼   ► I don't friggin' remember, I can't say it.

00:09:45 ◼   ► So by the time I really understood basketball,

00:09:47 ◼   ► Bird and Magic and Dr. J were already the guys,

00:09:52 ◼   ► you know what I mean?

00:09:53 ◼   ► They were just there, they were the NBA.

00:09:56 ◼   ► And Jordan was the first player at that level,

00:10:00 ◼   ► like someone who's in the argument

00:10:03 ◼   ► for best player of all time.

00:10:04 ◼   ► And who, I still would say is the best player,

00:10:06 ◼   ► but somebody who was in that argument,

00:10:08 ◼   ► who I remember being drafted, playing,

00:10:13 ◼   ► I remember Jordan playing college,

00:10:15 ◼   ► I remember when Jordan was on the Olympic team

00:10:18 ◼   ► with Bobby Knight as the coach.

00:10:20 ◼   ► And I remember, I remember the one,

00:10:24 ◼   ► I mean, again, I wanna talk about Kobe,

00:10:26 ◼   ► but I just remember, as like a seminal moment,

00:10:28 ◼   ► I remember the time, this '86 season,

00:10:30 ◼   ► when Jordan had a knee injury

00:10:32 ◼   ► and missed a ton of the regular season

00:10:33 ◼   ► and played in the playoffs

00:10:35 ◼   ► and lit the Celtics up for like 64 points

00:10:37 ◼   ► in a playoff game.

00:10:39 ◼   ► And the Celtics ended up wanting,

00:10:41 ◼   ► but Bird said something after the,

00:10:43 ◼   ► and Bird was like the most competitive,

00:10:45 ◼   ► rotten son of a bitch who ever played sports

00:10:47 ◼   ► and he was just like,

00:10:48 ◼   ► even though they hadn't finished the series yet,

00:10:50 ◼   ► he was like, "Yeah, he's the best player of all time."

00:10:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:10:54 ◼   ► which is not easy for those guys to say.

00:10:56 ◼   ► - No, not easy for Larry Bird to say.

00:10:58 ◼   ► - But that's the thing though,

00:10:59 ◼   ► is the way we feel about Jordan and Bird,

00:11:02 ◼   ► or you feel about Bird and Magic,

00:11:04 ◼   ► that's how all the players today feel about Kobe.

00:11:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, totally.

00:11:06 ◼   ► - And so it's like when you see them so devastated

00:11:09 ◼   ► that all the guys in the NBA looked up to him.

00:11:13 ◼   ► And he was like, he's your favorite player's

00:11:18 ◼   ► favorite player, basically, is the way to think about it.

00:11:21 ◼   ► And you can understand, it was like an age thing.

00:11:24 ◼   ► That makes me feel old, right?

00:11:26 ◼   ► It makes me feel old to see all these NBA players

00:11:29 ◼   ► that I love to watch, but they're all at least

00:11:32 ◼   ► like 10 years younger than me, right?

00:11:33 ◼   ► So of course Kobe's their guy, and it's not Jordan

00:11:36 ◼   ► in the latest for me.

00:11:37 ◼   ► - I know all of these guys, yeah, exactly what you said.

00:11:41 ◼   ► He meant so much to all of these guys,

00:11:42 ◼   ► and there's so many of them who say,

00:11:43 ◼   ► yeah, that's the guy who I watch,

00:11:45 ◼   ► and I was like, yeah, I wanna be in the NBA.

00:11:47 ◼   ► But one of the guys who stood out to me,

00:11:50 ◼   ► I mean, they have so many comments,

00:11:51 ◼   ► many tearful interviews in the last few days, but Steph Curry was talking about, I saw Steph Curry

00:11:57 ◼   ► and Steph said that the searing memory for him was that game where Kobe scored 80. And he's like,

00:12:05 ◼   ► "Look, I know Wilt Chamberlain scored 100, but I can't relate to that." And that might stand for the

00:12:12 ◼   ► ages. But that was like 1961 or something like that. These guys saw Kobe Bryant score 80 points

00:12:18 ◼   ► In a game and that's like what Steph was saying like I saw it. You know and it was like the modern game

00:12:23 ◼   ► Like I know and I know now I'm in the league and I know what that means

00:12:27 ◼   ► You know like I know how impossible that is to rack up 80 points in a game. You know and

00:12:31 ◼   ► It's just unbelievable

00:12:34 ◼   ► The thing with the other thing with the other thing with him is you know I wasn't like a fan either

00:12:39 ◼   ► I wasn't a Kobe fan. I've been you know there's a

00:12:42 ◼   ► You know particularly the waiters. You know he's notorious for you know he's gonna get his shots up

00:12:47 ◼   ► You say it was a modern game.

00:12:49 ◼   ► It was a modern game relative to Wilt,

00:12:51 ◼   ► but modern to today's more space-oriented,

00:12:54 ◼   ► three-point oriented, a bit more different,

00:12:59 ◼   ► different for sure.

00:13:01 ◼   ► But I think the thing that,

00:13:02 ◼   ► what marks this sort of,

00:13:05 ◼   ► there's different levels of greatness.

00:13:07 ◼   ► There's greatness purely in a basketball sense.

00:13:09 ◼   ► Like Tim Duncan, probably from a pure basketball sense,

00:13:12 ◼   ► a better player, more significant than Kobe.

00:13:17 ◼   ► but from a cultural sense, from the holistic nature of basketball, where it's not just about

00:13:22 ◼   ► what happens on the court, but the impact on those around you, the entire media landscape,

00:13:28 ◼   ► the sort of expansion of the NBA to China is a huge part of this. Like, Kobe was astronomically

00:13:35 ◼   ► more important than Tim Duncan. You know, it's kind of like, if you take a feeds and speeds

00:13:39 ◼   ► approach to basketball, you know, to tie it to like a sort of tech idea, like, yeah, Tim Duncan

00:13:44 ◼   ► as better feeds and speeds relative to Kobe,

00:13:46 ◼   ► like sort of historically speaking,

00:13:47 ◼   ► but if you take a holistic view of all,

00:13:50 ◼   ► everything that goes into being a basketball player,

00:13:51 ◼   ► everything that goes into being significant and meaningful,

00:13:54 ◼   ► like Kobe is just so much bigger,

00:13:57 ◼   ► and again, I say that as someone that's not a Kobe fan,

00:14:00 ◼   ► but it recognizes the fact that the impact

00:14:03 ◼   ► is just so huge.

00:14:07 ◼   ► - If you could go back in time

00:14:09 ◼   ► and draft either him or Tim Duncan as the GM of a team,

00:14:13 ◼   ► and your goal is to win championships,

00:14:15 ◼   ► I would take Tim Duncan in a heartbeat.

00:14:17 ◼   ► Although maybe you kinda wanna make sure

00:14:21 ◼   ► you have Pop there too.

00:14:22 ◼   ► - Well it's interesting, if you're a market like San Antonio

00:14:25 ◼   ► you wanna take Tim Duncan a million times out of a million.

00:14:28 ◼   ► If you're the Lakers, you wanna take Kobe.

00:14:30 ◼   ► Like you're the Lakers.

00:14:31 ◼   ► You're like the Lakers more than any franchise

00:14:34 ◼   ► are absolutely about winning.

00:14:36 ◼   ► They're the winningest franchise in history,

00:14:39 ◼   ► but they're also about the show.

00:14:42 ◼   ► I hate to say it, I hate the Lakers,

00:14:43 ◼   ► particularly as a Bucks fan, losing,

00:14:46 ◼   ► you know, he's talking about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,

00:14:47 ◼   ► like he was a Buck and lost into the Lakers

00:14:51 ◼   ► because he wanted to go to the big market,

00:14:52 ◼   ► the bright lights, and honestly,

00:14:54 ◼   ► Milwaukee probably wasn't the greatest place

00:14:55 ◼   ► for someone like him at that time in history.

00:14:58 ◼   ► But they're probably, along with the Yankees,

00:15:03 ◼   ► or at least in North American sports,

00:15:05 ◼   ► the greatest franchise because they do it all.

00:15:09 ◼   ► They win and they're like the star.

00:15:12 ◼   ► And they're like the top of the town.

00:15:13 ◼   ► - It's gotta be a show.

00:15:14 ◼   ► - Exactly, exactly.

00:15:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I was gonna say,

00:15:17 ◼   ► if you're running a sneaker company

00:15:19 ◼   ► and you wanna sign, you know,

00:15:20 ◼   ► rookie Tim Duncan or rookie Kobe Bryant to a deal,

00:15:24 ◼   ► you want Kobe.

00:15:25 ◼   ► - I don't even know which sneaker company

00:15:29 ◼   ► Tim Duncan was in.

00:15:29 ◼   ► - No, I don't know either.

00:15:30 ◼   ► I really don't.

00:15:31 ◼   ► Whereas everybody knows Kobe was with Nike.

00:15:35 ◼   ► - Everyone in the NBA wears,

00:15:37 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure it's the most popular shoe.

00:15:38 ◼   ► something like 33% or something, where are Kobe's?

00:15:41 ◼   ► - Which is crazy, right, for a retired player.

00:15:44 ◼   ► Just so sad, really sad.

00:15:49 ◼   ► And then Christensen, Clayton Christensen.

00:15:51 ◼   ► I don't know what's more likely.

00:15:54 ◼   ► I know that people, you know, there's a lot of people

00:15:56 ◼   ► listening to the show who don't know sports.

00:15:58 ◼   ► Maybe it's possible that there's more people listening

00:16:00 ◼   ► who do know Clayton Christensen.

00:16:01 ◼   ► - Do know Christensen, no.

00:16:02 ◼   ► This is a very unique audience.

00:16:05 ◼   ► - But he's best known for his,

00:16:08 ◼   ► - I would say, I mean, for his theory of disruption,

00:16:11 ◼   ► which I should let you summarize.

00:16:12 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:16:13 ◼   ► 'Cause I know you-- - Well, basically.

00:16:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:16:18 ◼   ► So the theory in general is that

00:16:19 ◼   ► if the established sort of companies in a market,

00:16:24 ◼   ► they succeed by listening to their customers.

00:16:26 ◼   ► And at some point, though, they sort of like,

00:16:29 ◼   ► they deliver a product that is good enough

00:16:32 ◼   ► for most customers, and so in the pursuit of growth,

00:16:35 ◼   ► they follow and listen to their most valuable customers

00:16:40 ◼   ► and most demanding customers,

00:16:44 ◼   ► and the products they build become more and more powerful,

00:16:45 ◼   ► more and more feature-filled, and more and more expensive.

00:16:48 ◼   ► And what happens is, a technological change enables

00:16:50 ◼   ► some new entrant to serve the same market,

00:16:54 ◼   ► but the new entrant serves people

00:16:57 ◼   ► that don't need the big product,

00:17:00 ◼   ► that have different needs,

00:17:03 ◼   ► and they can't afford a big product.

00:17:01 ◼   ► and it's worse, it's a worse product.

00:17:02 ◼   ► And this worse product comes in and it sort of

00:17:04 ◼   ► builds up a base and it starts to improve

00:17:07 ◼   ► and because it's the worst product,

00:17:08 ◼   ► it improves much more rapidly than sort of

00:17:10 ◼   ► the existing product and it's lower priced

00:17:12 ◼   ► because of technology and it sort of pulls in

00:17:17 ◼   ► and starts to capture, slowly go up market,

00:17:19 ◼   ► pulling in more and more people until the incumbent

00:17:21 ◼   ► is left with nothing but the highest end customers

00:17:23 ◼   ► and the super complicated, super expensive product

00:17:25 ◼   ► and this low end product sort of takes the entire market

00:17:27 ◼   ► from underneath them.

00:17:29 ◼   ► And so you can sort of see the allure here to technology,

00:17:34 ◼   ► because a technology change is critical to disruption.

00:17:38 ◼   ► If you're just a cheap product,

00:17:41 ◼   ► it's not a disruptive product,

00:17:42 ◼   ► because by the time you become as full featured

00:17:45 ◼   ► as the existing product, you're gonna be the same price.

00:17:48 ◼   ► The analogy I think is commonly used is,

00:17:51 ◼   ► if you're a Motel 6, you're not disruptive

00:17:53 ◼   ► to the Ritz-Carlton.

00:17:56 ◼   ► If you wanted to actually provide the same level of service

00:17:58 ◼   ► product that the Ritz-Carlton did, you have to charge as much as Ritz-Carlton does. You're

00:18:02 ◼   ► cheap because you deliver a cheap product. Whereas Airbnb is disruptive to Ritz-Carlton

00:18:08 ◼   ► because a technological change, which is sort of a platform that commoditizes trust where

00:18:14 ◼   ► you don't need sort of the brand name, you can start delivering on different vectors,

00:18:18 ◼   ► having a kitchen, having a yard, having a different location, all these sorts of things that

00:18:23 ◼   ► actually make it competitive in a way that's impossible for sort of a Ritz-Carlton to respond

00:18:29 ◼   ► in a sort of one-to-one fashion.

00:18:31 ◼   ► So to articulate this, you know, this is something, you know, and I certainly feel this too, there's

00:18:39 ◼   ► a big aspect of writing about these sorts of things where it's something that people

00:18:43 ◼   ► sort of knew and had an intuitive grasp on, and what's powerful is that someone sort

00:18:48 ◼   ► of write it down and put it in writing.

00:18:50 ◼   ► this is actually, there's a systematic way

00:18:52 ◼   ► that this works again and again.

00:18:54 ◼   ► And I think that's what Christian did,

00:18:56 ◼   ► particularly for the first wave of technology.

00:19:00 ◼   ► Like he wrote that in 1997,

00:19:02 ◼   ► which is sort of the end of the IT era,

00:19:05 ◼   ► the sort of beginning of the internet era.

00:19:07 ◼   ► And it was a sort of, I think,

00:19:10 ◼   ► catalyzing moment for a lot of executives

00:19:13 ◼   ► and venture capitalists that's like,

00:19:14 ◼   ► oh, that makes sense, I've seen this before.

00:19:17 ◼   ► - This is what keeps happening over and over again.

00:19:20 ◼   ► over again. And this is the pattern I should look out for.

00:19:24 ◼   ► - That's right, that's right. And what's interesting is

00:19:26 ◼   ► Christensen wrote it mostly for sort of existing,

00:19:29 ◼   ► you know, he worked at Harvard Business School,

00:19:30 ◼   ► so he writes it for existing managers of existing companies.

00:19:33 ◼   ► But VCs and tech executives took it as like marching orders,

00:19:37 ◼   ► right, 'cause they didn't want to look at being

00:19:40 ◼   ► the incumbent companies, like, oh, we're trying to build

00:19:42 ◼   ► the new entries, the new entrance to these industries,

00:19:45 ◼   ► you know, leveraging technology to have a sort of

00:19:47 ◼   ► fundamental cost advantage going forward,

00:19:49 ◼   ► where we can deliver a crappier product that attracts users,

00:19:52 ◼   ► but over time becomes something that's very competitive

00:19:55 ◼   ► with them and beats them.

00:19:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think that he helped systemize

00:20:02 ◼   ► in a very cogent way.

00:20:06 ◼   ► Like, there's a lot of people in that racket,

00:20:09 ◼   ► whatever you would call what he did,

00:20:11 ◼   ► whose writing I find impenetrable.

00:20:13 ◼   ► Whereas I always found the stuff I read of his

00:20:18 ◼   ► Very cogent, very clear.

00:20:20 ◼   ► And I think what he helped systemize was this idea that

00:20:23 ◼   ► what heretofore a lot of people had chalked up

00:20:29 ◼   ► to a bunch of unrelated flukes.

00:20:31 ◼   ► Like, you know, the Japanese import cars

00:20:38 ◼   ► coming in and taking over the,

00:20:41 ◼   ► maybe not taking over is the wrong word,

00:20:43 ◼   ► but certainly completely disrupting

00:20:46 ◼   ► the US automobile market.

00:20:47 ◼   ► I think is a prime example.

00:20:50 ◼   ► I know one of his biggest case studies

00:20:52 ◼   ► was like the steel industry and the way that lower cost--

00:20:56 ◼   ► - Mini mills. - Yeah, mini mills

00:20:58 ◼   ► took the market out from under US steel.

00:21:02 ◼   ► And I think a lot of people looked at all these things

00:21:04 ◼   ► as a series of flukes.

00:21:06 ◼   ► In the computer industry,

00:21:08 ◼   ► mainframes went to microcomputers,

00:21:11 ◼   ► and microcomputers were like terribly misnamed

00:21:14 ◼   ► 'cause they were huge.

00:21:16 ◼   ► - I know, what's funny is it was a terrible,

00:21:18 ◼   ► it was a terrible naming in general,

00:21:21 ◼   ► 'cause the personal computer was terribly named as well.

00:21:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, terribly.

00:21:23 ◼   ► - The phone's the personal computer, right?

00:21:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, totally. - Looking back, it's like

00:21:26 ◼   ► this desktop big thing on your thing,

00:21:28 ◼   ► oh, it's the personal computer.

00:21:29 ◼   ► - I think I wrote that at one time,

00:21:30 ◼   ► and if I didn't, do I, I sure wish I did.

00:21:32 ◼   ► I think I did, I think there was a

00:21:33 ◼   ► daring fireball piece one time

00:21:34 ◼   ► where I was like, one of my reviews of the iPhone,

00:21:36 ◼   ► where I was like, we blew it,

00:21:37 ◼   ► we wasted the name personal computer,

00:21:39 ◼   ► because this is the personal computer.

00:21:42 ◼   ► But microcomputers were only micro compared to mainframes.

00:21:47 ◼   ► And again, over and over again, this is a toy,

00:21:51 ◼   ► these aren't serious, and then all of a sudden

00:21:53 ◼   ► they put the other thing out of business,

00:21:54 ◼   ► and then the personal computer came in and they were toys,

00:21:57 ◼   ► and they're not useful for anything real,

00:22:00 ◼   ► and they're for hobbyists and people with unkempt beards.

00:22:04 ◼   ► And then next thing you know,

00:22:05 ◼   ► nobody knows what a microcomputer is.

00:22:07 ◼   ► And it happens over and over again.

00:22:09 ◼   ► and if they weren't flukes, that this is a pattern.

00:22:12 ◼   ► - Yep, I think that that's exactly right.

00:22:15 ◼   ► I mean, the, it's super interesting

00:22:20 ◼   ► because it means a lot to me personally,

00:22:22 ◼   ► in part because a big,

00:22:25 ◼   ► well, there's two parts with Christians.

00:22:26 ◼   ► I wrote about this a little bit in Daily Update this week.

00:22:29 ◼   ► The first one was I went to business school

00:22:31 ◼   ► not because I really wanted to go to business school,

00:22:33 ◼   ► but because I was an English teacher in Taiwan,

00:22:35 ◼   ► and it was the shortest, fastest route to legitimacy

00:22:38 ◼   ► in the US job market.

00:22:38 ◼   ► I'm like, you know, like I just wanted to weigh in to sort of US tech companies and

00:22:43 ◼   ► I thought, you know, I had been growing up on sort of tech culture online where the NBA

00:22:47 ◼   ► is worthless, etc, etc. So I was very sort of cynical and skeptical going in. And one

00:22:53 ◼   ► thing was just one, like being exposed to Christians in there, it was like, whoa, this

00:22:57 ◼   ► is amazing, right? Like, I didn't even realize, you know, how influential he was in tech.

00:23:01 ◼   ► I hadn't read him until I got to business school. It's like, it was so, to your point,

00:23:06 ◼   ► It was so intuitive.

00:23:07 ◼   ► And what's so fascinating about his insight

00:23:12 ◼   ► is so many sort of strategic evaluations,

00:23:16 ◼   ► and you look at companies and why they do what they do,

00:23:19 ◼   ► distilled to, wow, they're dumb.

00:23:20 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:23:22 ◼   ► Actually, no, these companies are filled

00:23:24 ◼   ► with very smart people.

00:23:25 ◼   ► And what was so interesting about disruption as a whole,

00:23:28 ◼   ► and I think is one of my biggest meta takeaways from it,

00:23:31 ◼   ► is the implication of it is managers can fail

00:23:35 ◼   ► by doing exactly what they're supposed to do.

00:23:37 ◼   ► Like their mistake, quote unquote,

00:23:40 ◼   ► is serving their customers well.

00:23:43 ◼   ► And it's like, well that's what's so elegant

00:23:47 ◼   ► about the theory, it's not saying

00:23:48 ◼   ► that they're doing things wrong,

00:23:50 ◼   ► it's that by doing things right,

00:23:52 ◼   ► they're putting themselves in an uncompetitive position

00:23:54 ◼   ► if some sort of paradigm change comes along.

00:23:57 ◼   ► And you see this again and again in technology

00:23:59 ◼   ► where the companies are dominant in one area

00:24:01 ◼   ► and they're like, why do startups succeed

00:24:03 ◼   ► in displacing them?

00:24:04 ◼   ► Well, because something fundamental in the core model shifts at the startup by virtue of being a startup can adapt themselves to and take advantage of in a way that an existing company with tons of people and tons of resources can't.

00:24:16 ◼   ► And I think almost the meta point, where it's like a cultural point and a cost structure point where you get locked into a way of doing business and aren't able to respond, it's what enables startups to succeed against super, you know, like startups don't just beat struggling companies, they

00:24:34 ◼   ► beat successful companies.

00:24:35 ◼   ► Why does that happen?

00:24:36 ◼   ► So it was like that matter point, I think,

00:24:39 ◼   ► is interesting as well.

00:24:41 ◼   ► But so that like was--

00:24:42 ◼   ► I first wrote about Christiansen in business school saying,

00:24:45 ◼   ► why has Apple not been disrupted?

00:24:47 ◼   ► And that was trying to sort of like put them together,

00:24:51 ◼   ► like the things about disruption and Apple's successes

00:24:55 ◼   ► seemed to go counter to that.

00:24:56 ◼   ► But by the time I started Chitekery,

00:24:58 ◼   ► which is a couple of years later,

00:24:59 ◼   ► I actually thought that-- because Christiansen

00:25:01 ◼   ► was very critical of the iPhone.

00:25:03 ◼   ► - I was gonna get to this, yeah.

00:25:05 ◼   ► - It's possibilities, right?

00:25:07 ◼   ► He thought Nokia wasn't gonna back

00:25:09 ◼   ► 'cause it's a state of technology, et cetera, et cetera,

00:25:10 ◼   ► and I'm like, no, that's wrong.

00:25:13 ◼   ► And actually, I actually wrote an article called

00:25:16 ◼   ► Why Clay Christensen is Wrong,

00:25:17 ◼   ► which was probably pretty combative in retrospect,

00:25:21 ◼   ► but this was me, like, you know,

00:25:23 ◼   ► fresh blogger, out of business school,

00:25:25 ◼   ► wanting to make a name for himself,

00:25:27 ◼   ► and so I was probably a little more aggressive

00:25:30 ◼   ► in my titling then than I would be now.

00:25:32 ◼   ► But it was, you know, it's like, I mean,

00:25:36 ◼   ► it's like Kobe, you know, Kobe Indian

00:25:39 ◼   ► wants to play Michael Jordan, he wants to beat him, right?

00:25:40 ◼   ► It's like, me wanting to take that on

00:25:44 ◼   ► was because he was such an intellectual hero for me

00:25:48 ◼   ► that like the greatest honor I could do,

00:25:49 ◼   ► it was like, I'm gonna take you on.

00:25:51 ◼   ► Like, I'm gonna say why this is wrong.

00:25:52 ◼   ► And you know, probably a bit audacious and brash

00:25:55 ◼   ► in retrospect, but it was a testament

00:25:58 ◼   ► to how much I looked up to him and his work

00:26:01 ◼   ► I would even think to write a piece called that.

00:26:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, basically, and I think he came around on this too,

00:26:08 ◼   ► and I think in a very interesting way,

00:26:10 ◼   ► and it just shows how intellectually,

00:26:12 ◼   ► his intellectual approach was the right way,

00:26:17 ◼   ► which was that he's, you know, to me, it's a huge thing.

00:26:20 ◼   ► Are you willing to admit a mistake?

00:26:21 ◼   ► It's one of the biggest things in the world.

00:26:23 ◼   ► And to me, it's, I mean, we could do a whole show

00:26:25 ◼   ► about how the whole world's going to hell in a handbasket

00:26:27 ◼   ► because nobody's willing to reconsider their views

00:26:30 ◼   ► on anything. But like I've always said, the only way to be right all the time is to more or less,

00:26:35 ◼   ► try to be right all the time, be smart enough to be right most of the time, but be humble enough

00:26:41 ◼   ► to recognize when you're wrong and then correct it. And if you can do that, then you can come

00:26:45 ◼   ► really close to being right all the time. But you've got to have that, that last part is

00:26:49 ◼   ► important because you're going to be wrong sometimes. You know, I am, no doubt about it.

00:26:54 ◼   ► But I thought his analysis of the iPhone was interesting.

00:26:57 ◼   ► Was that,

00:26:58 ◼   ► and,

00:27:00 ◼   ► if, you might have been wrong even if Apple had made

00:27:06 ◼   ► the iPod phone that we had,

00:27:08 ◼   ► a lot of us had been expecting.

00:27:09 ◼   ► But basically he thought, you know, this is expensive,

00:27:12 ◼   ► this is coming in at the high end.

00:27:14 ◼   ► Yes, it's, you know, just, you know,

00:27:16 ◼   ► it's certainly innovative and it's ahead of the pack,

00:27:19 ◼   ► but that the pack is gonna catch up

00:27:20 ◼   ► and then everybody's just gonna buy the mass market stuff.

00:27:23 ◼   ► more or less that the thing that happened to the Mac

00:27:26 ◼   ► with the Windows PCs would happen again.

00:27:29 ◼   ► I don't think that's an unfair summary.

00:27:33 ◼   ► And I think even he acknowledged later on

00:27:36 ◼   ► that his mistake was that the iPhone

00:27:39 ◼   ► wasn't disruptive to the cellphone industry.

00:27:43 ◼   ► It was disruptive to the PC industry.

00:27:47 ◼   ► And there, the iPhone wasn't a heavy-handed,

00:27:51 ◼   ► expensive over-the-top thing, it was pure disruptive theory.

00:27:56 ◼   ► It was lower end, it was underpowered, it was smaller.

00:28:01 ◼   ► It had this tiny little three and a half inch screen.

00:28:03 ◼   ► It ran a cut down version of a PC operating system.

00:28:08 ◼   ► It only ran one app on, it still only runs

00:28:10 ◼   ► one app on screen at a time, and totally replaced

00:28:14 ◼   ► so many hours of so many people's days

00:28:17 ◼   ► that they used to spend on PCs.

00:28:20 ◼   ► - That's right, it's a perfect example of disruption.

00:28:24 ◼   ► That's what's so ironic about it.

00:28:25 ◼   ► And you're right, and to his credit,

00:28:27 ◼   ► he admitted this later, he was thinking about the iPhone

00:28:32 ◼   ► as being a phone, which is understandable,

00:28:33 ◼   ► because the name is iPhone.

00:28:35 ◼   ► And the whole point is that it wasn't a phone.

00:28:37 ◼   ► It was a computer that happened to make phone calls.

00:28:40 ◼   ► And once you realized it was a computer,

00:28:43 ◼   ► it's the epitome of disruption.

00:28:45 ◼   ► And again, because the other thing too is

00:28:47 ◼   ► the way people used the iPhone at the beginning

00:28:50 ◼   ► was not to replace their computers.

00:28:52 ◼   ► It started out by doing other stuff, right?

00:28:54 ◼   ► And what's the point?

00:28:55 ◼   ► These products start serving needs

00:28:58 ◼   ► that are not met by sort of the incumbent,

00:29:00 ◼   ► and then they add on, they get better,

00:29:02 ◼   ► and then they start to take away from the incumbent.

00:29:04 ◼   ► And you end up with exactly what disruption theory

00:29:07 ◼   ► sort of predicts, where yes, at the very highest end,

00:29:10 ◼   ► you still have PCs.

00:29:11 ◼   ► There's things you can still only do on a PC,

00:29:14 ◼   ► and PCs actually over time have gotten more expensive,

00:29:18 ◼   ► particularly because the only ones using them

00:29:22 ◼   ► are the most demanding users,

00:29:24 ◼   ► and the entire bottom and middle part of the market

00:29:28 ◼   ► has just been completely taken over by the phone.

00:29:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, absolutely.

00:29:33 ◼   ► Just in terms of Mindshare,

00:29:36 ◼   ► in terms of what device do people upgrade more frequently,

00:29:40 ◼   ► I mean, people would just hold onto their PC now

00:29:43 ◼   ► until it frickin' breaks, whereas people,

00:29:46 ◼   ► I'm not saying, you know, and famously,

00:29:48 ◼   ► I know that year after year,

00:29:50 ◼   ► I repeat myself all the time,

00:29:52 ◼   ► that normal people don't upgrade their phones every year

00:29:54 ◼   ► or even two years.

00:29:55 ◼   ► They consider them very expensive purchases.

00:29:59 ◼   ► They put them in tank-like cases to protect them

00:30:02 ◼   ► because they're so expensive,

00:30:04 ◼   ► and they do use them for multiple years.

00:30:07 ◼   ► But they look forward to getting a new phone, right?

00:30:09 ◼   ► It's a fun, this is a fun thing when you decide,

00:30:11 ◼   ► hey, I'm gonna get a new iPhone 11,

00:30:13 ◼   ► and wow, look at this, I get, you know,

00:30:15 ◼   ► I have this amazing new camera and I can do all this stuff.

00:30:18 ◼   ► It's, the screen's bigger, it's so much brighter,

00:30:21 ◼   ► and they're happy.

00:30:22 ◼   ► Whereas people look forward to getting a PC

00:30:25 ◼   ► the way they look forward to getting a new microwave.

00:30:28 ◼   ► It's like-- - Exactly right.

00:30:30 ◼   ► - Oh, what a pain in the ass.

00:30:31 ◼   ► I gotta take this thing out of my cabinet

00:30:33 ◼   ► and I gotta figure out if it's gonna fit

00:30:35 ◼   ► and oh, man, and now the buttons I don't really like.

00:30:38 ◼   ► - Gotta try out 15 new mouses if you're John Sirquhousa.

00:30:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:30:43 ◼   ► It's just a chore for most people.

00:30:44 ◼   ► whereas the phone is something fun.

00:30:46 ◼   ► Yeah, anyway, I just thought that was really insightful

00:30:51 ◼   ► that he just totally, he completely recognized his mistake.

00:30:53 ◼   ► And it wasn't like to fit it.

00:30:55 ◼   ► It wasn't like, oh, now I figured out a way

00:30:57 ◼   ► to make it fit my famous theory.

00:30:59 ◼   ► It was that he figured out, you know, he's correct.

00:31:02 ◼   ► It totally disrupted the PC, you know?

00:31:04 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:31:05 ◼   ► - Which sort of will tie into something

00:31:07 ◼   ► we wanna talk about later with the iPad,

00:31:08 ◼   ► which also is closely related to the iPhone

00:31:12 ◼   ► definitely disruptive to the PC industry.

00:31:16 ◼   ► Or is it? Yeah. Well, anyway,

00:31:20 ◼   ► let me take a break here. Next after this. And thank our first sponsor,

00:31:24 ◼   ► our good friends at Linode. I want to say Linode, because

00:31:28 ◼   ► that's what it looks like, but it's Linode because they run Linux.

00:31:32 ◼   ► Linode is the, in my opinion, best

00:31:36 ◼   ► hosting service for getting your own server online. It is where

00:31:40 ◼   ► where I host Daring Fireball now.

00:31:41 ◼   ► I could not be happier.

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00:34:09 ◼   ► - I believe you wanted to say that

00:34:12 ◼   ► during a fireball runs faster now, slower.

00:34:15 ◼   ► - Oh, is that what I said, slower?

00:34:16 ◼   ► Well.

00:34:17 ◼   ► - I usually, I have the meat on.

00:34:19 ◼   ► I was gonna jump on and catch you.

00:34:21 ◼   ► - That'll catch people's ears.

00:34:22 ◼   ► No, it runs faster, so much faster.

00:34:24 ◼   ► It's ridiculous.

00:34:25 ◼   ► All right, what else do we have on the agenda

00:34:29 ◼   ► now that we're done with the obituary parts.

00:34:32 ◼   ► I just wanted to toss this out there

00:34:35 ◼   ► as a little bit of follow-up.

00:34:37 ◼   ► Glenn Fleischmann and I, I think,

00:34:38 ◼   ► talked about the Astros cheating scandal last week.

00:34:42 ◼   ► There's a new website I'm gonna put in the show notes,

00:34:44 ◼   ► signstealingscandle.com.

00:34:46 ◼   ► This guy is an obsessive, he's a Houston Astros fan,

00:34:48 ◼   ► and I give him credit.

00:34:50 ◼   ► He's an Astros fan, and he is so upset

00:34:52 ◼   ► that his beloved team,

00:34:55 ◼   ► stooped to such a lowly and dastardly level

00:34:58 ◼   ► to set up a cheating scandal. He logged 8,200 pitches from TV telecasts that are available

00:35:07 ◼   ► online from the Astros 2017 series and created a website with all sorts of data about which

00:35:14 ◼   ► batters were getting these trashcan signals.

00:35:18 ◼   ► It's just something that I think is not clear to maybe non-baseball fans. There is super

00:35:26 ◼   ► interesting I'd retweeted this last night but apparently Randy Johnson was

00:35:30 ◼   ► tipping his pitches throughout his career and he never knew until Eduardo Perez

00:35:35 ◼   ► told him at the at his Hall of Fame induction and and and be like oh

00:35:40 ◼   ► cheater like no that's not cheating right like right you picking up this

00:35:44 ◼   ► like this the guy beyond second and looking in on the catcher or a batter

00:35:48 ◼   ► observing a pitcher super closely and figuring out what they're pitching

00:35:51 ◼   ► That's smart baseball, right?

00:35:53 ◼   ► That's like, and the difference with the Astros

00:35:56 ◼   ► is using cameras and like phones and the Boston Red Sox

00:36:01 ◼   ► previously using like Apple watches,

00:36:03 ◼   ► it's using electronic means to do it.

00:36:06 ◼   ► That is the problem.

00:36:08 ◼   ► - Specifically, after the commissioner of baseball

00:36:10 ◼   ► sent a very curt letter to every team in the league,

00:36:15 ◼   ► reemphasizing that league policy is that

00:36:18 ◼   ► it comes to sign-stealing, electronic devices of any kind are completely verboten over the

00:36:24 ◼   ► line, you know, and they don't get into, like, the—what you can pick up with your own eyes

00:36:31 ◼   ► and maybe hand signals or whatever else you're doing without using electronics. The League

00:36:36 ◼   ► just sort of—they don't—there's no rules about it. It's just sort of a gray zone.

00:36:40 ◼   ► They didn't acknowledge it, but they—

00:36:41 ◼   ► Well, it's not a gray zone. It's a black—no, it's totally okay. Like, the idea of stealing—

00:36:43 ◼   ► Well, they don't mention it, though. But they don't—but the commissioner doesn't

00:36:47 ◼   ► say that it's okay, right?

00:36:48 ◼   ► The commissioner doesn't say it's okay

00:36:50 ◼   ► to steal signs with your eyes.

00:36:52 ◼   ► It's just understood that it is because how else,

00:36:54 ◼   ► you know, what else, you almost couldn't ban it.

00:36:57 ◼   ► But they sent a letter, all this stuff happened

00:37:01 ◼   ► after the league reemphasized what had already been

00:37:04 ◼   ► on the books, but just to make clear that electronics

00:37:07 ◼   ► of any kind, wired, wireless, anything that's electronic,

00:37:10 ◼   ► and everybody knows what's electronic and what's not,

00:37:13 ◼   ► is banned, and so, you know.

00:37:16 ◼   ► Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't see that about Randy Johnson.

00:37:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I'll pass it to you. But yeah, it's actually, it's funny. The reason I found

00:37:25 ◼   ► it is because another former Major Leaguer retweeted it and said, "Oh, it's totally

00:37:29 ◼   ► true. It's the only way I could square up against him." And what's amazing is, that's

00:37:35 ◼   ► the sort of thing where it's probably fairly widely known. Like, everyone's so helpless

00:37:40 ◼   ► against Randy Johnson that any tip you can get is going to help. And he was still completely

00:37:45 ◼   ► dominant, which goes to show what a dominant pitcher he was

00:37:49 ◼   ► if he was actually tipping his pitches

00:37:50 ◼   ► and was still striking guys out like crazy.

00:37:53 ◼   ► - Randy, for those of you who don't know,

00:37:56 ◼   ► Randy Johnson was six foot 10.

00:37:58 ◼   ► He was an enormously tall, he would have been tall

00:38:01 ◼   ► as a basketball player.

00:38:02 ◼   ► - And he threw like sidearms, or like three quarter arm.

00:38:08 ◼   ► - And was one of those tall lanky fellows

00:38:11 ◼   ► who you often do see in basketball.

00:38:14 ◼   ► There's the famous Leonardo da Vinci picture

00:38:18 ◼   ► of like the human typical scale of a human being.

00:38:23 ◼   ► And I don't know, I just assume everybody knows this,

00:38:26 ◼   ► but it's an interesting fact

00:38:28 ◼   ► that most people have an arm span.

00:38:31 ◼   ► In other words, you put your arms out side to side

00:38:33 ◼   ► from fingertip to fingertip

00:38:35 ◼   ► is usually almost exactly as tall as you are.

00:38:39 ◼   ► And Leonardo drew this in a circle.

00:38:42 ◼   ► put a circle around a figure of a man

00:38:44 ◼   ► with his arms straight out.

00:38:45 ◼   ► But sometimes there's a lot of basketball players

00:38:48 ◼   ► who have an arm span that's even longer than they are tall,

00:38:52 ◼   ► even though they are tall.

00:38:53 ◼   ► And it's a tremendous advantage in basketball

00:38:56 ◼   ► to have a very long arm span.

00:38:58 ◼   ► Randy Johnson was one of those types.

00:38:59 ◼   ► So in addition to being six foot 10, which is really tall,

00:39:03 ◼   ► and therefore makes the ball come out

00:39:04 ◼   ► at an angle you're not used to,

00:39:06 ◼   ► and the fact that he threw sidearm, which is weird,

00:39:09 ◼   ► and made the ball seem like it was coming out

00:39:11 ◼   ► side of the mound, his arms were so long that it was any, you know, would take a long stride

00:39:16 ◼   ► towards the plate that it was almost like he threw harder than most pitches, pitchers,

00:39:20 ◼   ► but because he was so long and his arms are so long, it was like, it was like he got to

00:39:23 ◼   ► start four feet closer to you.

00:39:25 ◼   ► Yep.

00:39:26 ◼   ► And it was coming in from the side if you're a left handed pitcher in particular, it's

00:39:29 ◼   ► like coming from behind your head.

00:39:30 ◼   ► You've probably seen it.

00:39:32 ◼   ► Because it was back in the era before interleague play.

00:39:35 ◼   ► So the National League players didn't really get to see American League players much and

00:39:38 ◼   ► and Randy Johnson was an American League pitcher,

00:39:40 ◼   ► but John Kruk, Philadelphia Phillies' first baseman

00:39:44 ◼   ► in the All-Star Game against, do you ever see that at bat?

00:39:48 ◼   ► - Yep, absolutely, just, hopeless.

00:39:52 ◼   ► - He's like, "Nope," in the All-Star Game,

00:39:56 ◼   ► and he just was like, "Nope."

00:39:58 ◼   ► I'll have to put a clip of it in the show notes,

00:39:59 ◼   ► 'cause it really shows you how crazy scary

00:40:02 ◼   ► he was as a pitcher.

00:40:03 ◼   ► - No, you just think about it, you're in there,

00:40:06 ◼   ► it's already sort of terrifying that these guys

00:40:08 ◼   ► coming in, you know, 100 miles per hour,

00:40:10 ◼   ► 'cause he would throw 100.

00:40:11 ◼   ► And it's literally coming from behind your head.

00:40:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:40:15 ◼   ► And cutting across you.

00:40:16 ◼   ► - John Kruk looked like if I was up there

00:40:22 ◼   ► batting against any major league pitcher,

00:40:24 ◼   ► I would just be terrified, leaning back,

00:40:27 ◼   ► diving backwards out of the box.

00:40:30 ◼   ► Anyway, I gotta put a link into the show notes

00:40:36 ◼   ► about this website where this guy obsessively documented

00:40:39 ◼   ► 8,200 pitches over the season.

00:40:43 ◼   ► I just, I'm always fascinated by anybody

00:40:45 ◼   ► who's obsessive about anything but this in particular.

00:40:48 ◼   ► And again, extra points for him being an Astros fan.

00:40:51 ◼   ► What else did I wanna talk about on follow up?

00:40:55 ◼   ► I guess I don't have a lot more to say.

00:40:57 ◼   ► Glenn and I last week really went deep

00:40:59 ◼   ► on the whole iPhone iCloud encryption thing.

00:41:04 ◼   ► So I don't have a lot to follow up on that.

00:41:06 ◼   ► I guess the one point I wanna make

00:41:08 ◼   ► and I sorta kinda need to write about it just to clarify

00:41:12 ◼   ► is, and I think that this is a little bit Apple's fault too,

00:41:17 ◼   ► is tossing around the word encryption

00:41:21 ◼   ► and what's encrypted and what's not.

00:41:22 ◼   ► Because it's, at this point, it isn't useful

00:41:27 ◼   ► to clarifying what the point is

00:41:28 ◼   ► of this whole thing with iCloud.

00:41:31 ◼   ► because everything is encrypted in transit.

00:41:35 ◼   ► Everything you do with iCloud from whatever your device is,

00:41:39 ◼   ► whether it's an iPhone, iPad, Mac,

00:41:42 ◼   ► in between your device and the iCloud servers

00:41:45 ◼   ► that Apple runs, on the network, everything is encrypted.

00:41:50 ◼   ► Everything you do.

00:41:51 ◼   ► On disk, on the iCloud servers,

00:41:58 ◼   ► everything is encrypted in some way,

00:42:00 ◼   ► except for email, and email's an exception

00:42:03 ◼   ► because that's just the way IMAP email works.

00:42:05 ◼   ► And I had a link to a Jeff Duncan article

00:42:08 ◼   ► from years ago explaining why, and it's complicated,

00:42:11 ◼   ► but it more or less, long story short,

00:42:13 ◼   ► is because email was invented in the prehistoric days

00:42:18 ◼   ► of the internet when nothing was encrypted

00:42:21 ◼   ► and everything was stored, plain text files on disk.

00:42:24 ◼   ► And email's like the one aspect of that prehistoric internet

00:42:29 ◼   ► that's still with us and will probably always be with us,

00:42:32 ◼   ► and it's just the nature of it that that's how email works.

00:42:34 ◼   ► It can't be encrypted.

00:42:36 ◼   ► So if you ever, if you are gonna commit crimes,

00:42:39 ◼   ► don't coordinate. - Don't email about them.

00:42:41 ◼   ► - Don't email about them.

00:42:42 ◼   ► Because even if you do the thing,

00:42:44 ◼   ► and I don't wanna go on a side note about it,

00:42:45 ◼   ► you, and I don't wanna get emails,

00:42:47 ◼   ► people telling me about like PGP,

00:42:50 ◼   ► where what you can do is email someone

00:42:52 ◼   ► where the text of the email is encrypted.

00:42:56 ◼   ► Because even then, even if you use something like PGP

00:42:59 ◼   ► to encrypt the text of your email,

00:43:02 ◼   ► the headers, the header files of the email

00:43:04 ◼   ► can't be encrypted.

00:43:05 ◼   ► There's no way to encrypt the whole thing.

00:43:07 ◼   ► And so like, okay, the contents of an email

00:43:09 ◼   ► can be encrypted, but it's a huge pain in the ass.

00:43:12 ◼   ► Almost nobody does it.

00:43:13 ◼   ► Email isn't really meant to be used that way.

00:43:16 ◼   ► And anybody who subpoenas your email or has access to it

00:43:20 ◼   ► can see all the headers anyway,

00:43:21 ◼   ► and they can see that you were emailing Les Parnas

00:43:24 ◼   ► whoever it was you were emailing.

00:43:26 ◼   ► So don't use email for crime.

00:43:29 ◼   ► Or anything you don't really,

00:43:32 ◼   ► anything you really feel like needs to be secret.

00:43:35 ◼   ► But anyway, the point I wanna make is Apple encrypts,

00:43:38 ◼   ► so email aside, for good reason,

00:43:40 ◼   ► everything that Apple stores on disk in iCloud

00:43:42 ◼   ► is quote unquote encrypted.

00:43:45 ◼   ► The issue is not what's encrypted and what's not.

00:43:49 ◼   ► The issue is who can decrypt what's there.

00:43:53 ◼   ► And there's two types.

00:43:55 ◼   ► There's the types of stuff that they store

00:43:57 ◼   ► that only you, the user, can decrypt

00:44:00 ◼   ► using your device keys and your personal password.

00:44:05 ◼   ► And then there's the stuff that both you can decrypt,

00:44:09 ◼   ► of course, and the stuff that Apple has its own key for

00:44:14 ◼   ► and can decrypt.

00:44:16 ◼   ► And iCloud backups are in that latter category

00:44:20 ◼   ► where Apple has a key to them

00:44:22 ◼   ► And the good part of it is if you are more likely,

00:44:27 ◼   ► probably if you listen to the show,

00:44:29 ◼   ► probably not you, but someone you know

00:44:32 ◼   ► forgets their iCloud password

00:44:35 ◼   ► and they leave their iPhone in a cab

00:44:38 ◼   ► or it gets run over by a car or something

00:44:40 ◼   ► and gets destroyed, now their iPhone is destroyed

00:44:44 ◼   ► and they go to buy a new iPhone

00:44:46 ◼   ► and the only backup they have is their iCloud backup

00:44:49 ◼   ► and they don't know their iCloud password.

00:44:51 ◼   ► What happens? Well, you can go to the Apple store and I actually don't know exactly what—a couple

00:44:59 ◼   ► people ask me, like, what do they do to confirm that you're you? Like, so that Joe Random

00:45:04 ◼   ► thief can't go into an Apple store and say, "Hey, I'm John Gruber. I need to get my iCloud

00:45:11 ◼   ► backup." I don't know what they do. You know, I guess they—hopefully they ask for ID and—I'm

00:45:15 ◼   ► actually not sure. I wish I did know exactly what they did to verify. But anyway, you can

00:45:20 ◼   ► if you somehow convince them you are who you are,

00:45:24 ◼   ► they can decrypt your iCloud backup

00:45:27 ◼   ► and then restore it to a new iPhone

00:45:29 ◼   ► and you don't lose anything.

00:45:31 ◼   ► The downside of that is that law enforcement

00:45:35 ◼   ► around the world can issue a subpoena.

00:45:37 ◼   ► Well, I say downside,

00:45:39 ◼   ► downside from a privacy perspective,

00:45:41 ◼   ► upside in some way,

00:45:42 ◼   ► which is why it's a debate for solving crimes.

00:45:45 ◼   ► If you actually are a criminal,

00:45:47 ◼   ► they can subpoena Apple and Apple can provide them

00:45:50 ◼   ► the contents of your decrypted iCloud backup. So that's the whole issue. Who can decrypt

00:45:56 ◼   ► it? Just you or you and Apple?

00:45:59 ◼   ► Yeah, that's right. And I think that that's a good articulation of the issue. And I'm

00:46:06 ◼   ► glad you pointed out at the end, there is good news that Apple can do that. And this

00:46:17 ◼   ► This is something I thought a lot in the context of Facebook.

00:46:21 ◼   ► Facebook's talking about encrypting Messenger by default and stuff like that.

00:46:27 ◼   ► And there's questions about child sexual abuse material online.

00:46:34 ◼   ► And one thing that comes up is that there's way more instance of it in Messenger than there is in WhatsApp.

00:46:40 ◼   ► And the question is, is that because people are more evil and nefarious on Messenger than they are on WhatsApp?

00:46:45 ◼   ► or is it because WhatsApp is already end-end encrypted, which means no one actually knows what's going through WhatsApp,

00:46:50 ◼   ► whereas Messenger is not.

00:46:51 ◼   ► And again, to your point, I think particularly in our corner of the internet,

00:46:59 ◼   ► where more people know who Clay Kirsch is than who Kobe Bryant is,

00:47:02 ◼   ► there's a tendency to, I think, over-index on one side as opposed to the other,

00:47:07 ◼   ► and say that, "Oh, obviously it should be this way."

00:47:09 ◼   ► There's real questions here, and again, that doesn't mean your position is wrong,

00:47:15 ◼   ► But I think those of us that,

00:47:18 ◼   ► I would say I'm a little more towards the middle,

00:47:21 ◼   ► but I'm absolutely even strong in encryption.

00:47:22 ◼   ► I believe there should be no back doors,

00:47:24 ◼   ► et cetera, et cetera.

00:47:25 ◼   ► I think by at least acknowledging and appreciating

00:47:29 ◼   ► those that come at it from a different perspective,

00:47:31 ◼   ► you can make a stronger argument for that position.

00:47:33 ◼   ► And so I think that's an important thing to call out.

00:47:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, you have to acknowledge.

00:47:37 ◼   ► Anybody who's a good actor and has,

00:47:41 ◼   ► is being honest and is knowledgeable about the entire situation, has to acknowledge either

00:47:48 ◼   ► way, no matter whether you're on the side of we really did, you know, Apple should maintain

00:47:53 ◼   ► these keys and provide them to law enforcement when subpoenaed for good reason, or if you're

00:47:59 ◼   ► on the side that Apple should switch iCloud backups to be truly end-to-end encrypted where

00:48:04 ◼   ► only the user has the key to do it, you have to at least acknowledge either way that there

00:48:09 ◼   ► are significant trade-offs.

00:48:11 ◼   ► You have to.

00:48:12 ◼   ► If you don't, you're either being dishonest

00:48:14 ◼   ► or you're ignorant.

00:48:17 ◼   ► - Right, and you're not gonna win the argument, right?

00:48:18 ◼   ► Like I actually think the most compelling argument,

00:48:21 ◼   ► and I made this a few years ago with the San Bernardino

00:48:25 ◼   ► case for winning this argument with sort of

00:48:28 ◼   ► the US government, is the US government itself

00:48:32 ◼   ► has an interest in encryption being strong

00:48:36 ◼   ► and easy to use for normal people because the US government

00:48:38 ◼   ► has more secrets and more value than sort of anyone.

00:48:41 ◼   ► But you think about it from an industrial perspective,

00:48:44 ◼   ► like the most valuable IP in a lot of the most,

00:48:46 ◼   ► in the strongest military in the world is United States.

00:48:49 ◼   ► It follows that the United States has more of an interest

00:48:52 ◼   ► in strong encryption than basically anyone else.

00:48:56 ◼   ► And because keys do get out, keys escape.

00:49:00 ◼   ► Like there's evidence of this again and again and again,

00:49:03 ◼   ► a backdoor is available to both the good guys

00:49:07 ◼   ► the bad guys and is usually found by the bad guys first and the and so there's a very sort of

00:49:13 ◼   ► utilitarian argument to be made in favor of encryption that's not just a you know uh you

00:49:18 ◼   ► know privacy good you know government bad sort of approach and i think actually would get the

00:49:23 ◼   ► industry further uh as far as you know politically speaking then a sort of pure sort of like you

00:49:29 ◼   ► know privacy principle based approach um from a winning hearts and minds sort of perspective

00:49:37 ◼   ► - I don't think Glenn and I have made this super clear.

00:49:41 ◼   ► The other thing I think is worth making super clear

00:49:43 ◼   ► is from an Apple perspective, two other things.

00:49:45 ◼   ► iMessage in particular and then your keychain.

00:49:49 ◼   ► And the keychain, your keychain,

00:49:51 ◼   ► if you use the iCloud keychain syncing,

00:49:54 ◼   ► syncs completely outside of the iCloud backup system

00:49:58 ◼   ► and is done in a way where only your keys can decrypt it

00:50:03 ◼   ► and Apple doesn't have it.

00:50:06 ◼   ► So if the FBI went to Apple and had a subpoena

00:50:11 ◼   ► for everything they have about you,

00:50:13 ◼   ► one thing they wouldn't get is your keychain.

00:50:16 ◼   ► They would not get all,

00:50:17 ◼   ► they wouldn't get any of your keychain.

00:50:19 ◼   ► iMessage is in a weird nether zone

00:50:22 ◼   ► where iMessage, from the get-go,

00:50:24 ◼   ► it is, it was, and I heard this way back when it was new,

00:50:29 ◼   ► like, you know, when Jobs announced it famously,

00:50:31 ◼   ► and said, we're gonna, no, and I guess it was FaceTime,

00:50:33 ◼   ► he said he was gonna open source, not iMessage.

00:50:36 ◼   ► But within like a year or two

00:50:38 ◼   ► of when iMessage was introduced,

00:50:40 ◼   ► I was talking to someone at Apple who said,

00:50:42 ◼   ► they had a very simple idea.

00:50:45 ◼   ► It would be like SMS, except,

00:50:49 ◼   ► some kind of cross between SMS

00:50:50 ◼   ► and then like AOL Instant Messenger, remember that?

00:50:53 ◼   ► - I do. - And Apple had,

00:50:55 ◼   ► you know, an AIM client.

00:50:56 ◼   ► They had iChat, which, you know,

00:50:59 ◼   ► and supported other protocols other than AIM too.

00:51:03 ◼   ► It would be a replacement for SMS and instant messaging,

00:51:06 ◼   ► and it would use your phone number and your Apple ID,

00:51:11 ◼   ► and/or, I guess I should say, your Apple ID

00:51:16 ◼   ► as a unique identifier for you.

00:51:19 ◼   ► The fact that it uses your phone number

00:51:21 ◼   ► would allow it to seamlessly replace SMS

00:51:23 ◼   ► for iPhone-to-iPhone communication,

00:51:25 ◼   ► 'cause it would default, whereas if you and I

00:51:29 ◼   ► had been SMSing together from your iPhone to my iPhone,

00:51:32 ◼   ► and then we upgraded to the version of iOS

00:51:35 ◼   ► that first had iMessage,

00:51:37 ◼   ► our communication would just go right to iMessage,

00:51:40 ◼   ► and we'd get blue bubbles instead of green ones,

00:51:42 ◼   ► and we'd continue without knowing,

00:51:43 ◼   ► other than the fact that our bubble color had changed,

00:51:46 ◼   ► but we would no longer be limited

00:51:47 ◼   ► by the technical limits of SMS,

00:51:49 ◼   ► and perhaps the cost limits,

00:51:52 ◼   ► because back then, which sounds ridiculous,

00:51:55 ◼   ► some people were still paying like 10 cents on SMS,

00:51:57 ◼   ► or had like a 500 SMS a month limit, or something like that.

00:52:02 ◼   ► And then the other thing in--

00:52:03 ◼   ► - The whole, what is it?

00:52:06 ◼   ► Oh, sorry, go ahead.

00:52:07 ◼   ► - The one other thing in that initial brief

00:52:09 ◼   ► on what should it be was it should be encrypted

00:52:12 ◼   ► in such a way that Apple cannot ever see the contents

00:52:16 ◼   ► of anybody's iMessages.

00:52:18 ◼   ► And then it was like, here.

00:52:19 ◼   ► That's what they told the engineering team.

00:52:21 ◼   ► They said, here, go build it.

00:52:22 ◼   ► But right from the get-go,

00:52:24 ◼   ► when it was just an idea on a whiteboard,

00:52:26 ◼   ► one of the things right up there with let's replace SMS

00:52:29 ◼   ► for iPhone-to-iPhone communication was,

00:52:32 ◼   ► Let's design this in such a way that we cannot technically

00:52:36 ◼   ► ever see the contents of anybody's iMessage.

00:52:39 ◼   ► - And I think the follow-up to your point though,

00:52:44 ◼   ► if you, and now they did iMessage in the cloud

00:52:48 ◼   ► and all that sort of thing or whatever,

00:52:50 ◼   ► it would still maintain that approach

00:52:53 ◼   ► where it's fully encrypted,

00:52:55 ◼   ► but if you have iCloud backups turned on--

00:52:59 ◼   ► - Right, this is the problem.

00:53:02 ◼   ► - You can access the backups.

00:53:03 ◼   ► - Right, iCloud in the cloud is every bit as secure,

00:53:07 ◼   ► or iMessage in the cloud. - iMessage in the cloud.

00:53:08 ◼   ► - iMessage in the cloud, it remains only decryptable

00:53:12 ◼   ► using your device keys.

00:53:15 ◼   ► The asterisk is that your iMessage key

00:53:20 ◼   ► is stored in your iCloud backup.

00:53:26 ◼   ► So your backup contains it.

00:53:28 ◼   ► In theory, Apple could change iMessage

00:53:33 ◼   ► to work like Keychain.

00:53:35 ◼   ► And even if they keep the iCloud backups

00:53:40 ◼   ► encrypted in a way where Apple has the key,

00:53:43 ◼   ► they could, and I believe should,

00:53:45 ◼   ► change iMessage so that the key isn't in your iCloud backup.

00:53:50 ◼   ► And the downside to that would be

00:53:53 ◼   ► if you're one of these users.

00:53:56 ◼   ► And apparently I heard from a bunch of people,

00:53:58 ◼   ► like people who work as geniuses in the stores

00:54:00 ◼   ► and people who's had friends and family

00:54:02 ◼   ► who've encountered it.

00:54:03 ◼   ► It truly is a common problem on a daily basis.

00:54:06 ◼   ► Somebody said, like a listener of the podcast said

00:54:09 ◼   ► that they were just in getting one of their

00:54:11 ◼   ► Apple products serviced.

00:54:14 ◼   ► And while they were waiting for the genius

00:54:16 ◼   ► to go in the back and run the diagnostics,

00:54:18 ◼   ► three different people came and their genius problem

00:54:21 ◼   ► was that they couldn't access their iCloud backup.

00:54:24 ◼   ► He said he couldn't believe it 'cause it was,

00:54:26 ◼   ► He's reading during Fireball and listening to my podcast and other podcasts, and it's

00:54:30 ◼   ► a hot topic.

00:54:32 ◼   ► And literally while he was at the Genius counter, three people came up and needed access to

00:54:37 ◼   ► their iCloud backups, and they didn't know their password.

00:54:41 ◼   ► Definitely a common problem.

00:54:42 ◼   ► The downside would be those people wouldn't be able to access their archive of iMessages.

00:54:49 ◼   ► You'd have to start over.

00:54:50 ◼   ► What seems a reasonable thing to give up, as it were.

00:54:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:54:55 ◼   ► people sort of see their iMessages as sort of transient. So I kind of feel like that's

00:55:00 ◼   ► sort of a, hopefully a—regardless of what Apple plans to do with the iCloud backups

00:55:06 ◼   ► and who has the keys, I really think they should move iMessage to that because I think

00:55:11 ◼   ► it's a good idea for privacy, and I also think it would meet people's expectations

00:55:17 ◼   ► for privacy with iMessage in the cloud.

00:55:19 ◼   ► Yeah, it's interesting because one of the reasons that law enforcement still wants more

00:55:26 ◼   ► access from Apple is actually not necessarily iMessages, because to your point, they can

00:55:31 ◼   ► often be gotten to through iCloud backups, but other encrypted programs like WhatsApp

00:55:37 ◼   ► or Signal or things along those lines where they want to turn on the phone because they

00:55:43 ◼   ► do need actually that sort of access.

00:55:46 ◼   ► WhatsApp is more secure than iMessage for this reason

00:55:50 ◼   ► because it only goes via your device, right?

00:55:55 ◼   ► And you notice this, if you wanna use WhatsApp

00:55:57 ◼   ► on your computer, it has to go through your device.

00:56:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it does, it has to go through your device

00:56:04 ◼   ► so your desktop thing is sort of just a proxy to your phone.

00:56:07 ◼   ► But your iPhone backup still contains whatever I--

00:56:11 ◼   ► - The WhatsApp backups, that's right.

00:56:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, the WhatsApp backups.

00:56:13 ◼   ► - No, it does.

00:56:14 ◼   ► - And, (laughs)

00:56:15 ◼   ► - I have to say I enjoy it.

00:56:16 ◼   ► That's how they got Paul Manafort.

00:56:18 ◼   ► - That's right, that's right.

00:56:21 ◼   ► - Paul Manafort was committing crimes on his phone

00:56:24 ◼   ► and thought he was being smart using WhatsApp

00:56:26 ◼   ► because it's end-to-end encrypted.

00:56:28 ◼   ► But they got him because they got his iCloud backup.

00:56:33 ◼   ► I laugh because I really don't like the guy in him.

00:56:38 ◼   ► - I think it's really interesting though

00:56:41 ◼   ► from a sort of a balance perspective

00:56:43 ◼   ► because what's the one thing in like,

00:56:48 ◼   ► like you could use your right to draw that distinction.

00:56:51 ◼   ► So if you want to use, you use like Signal or something,

00:56:53 ◼   ► right, if you want to be true,

00:56:54 ◼   ► if you want to not have those issues.

00:56:57 ◼   ► And so you have a choice as a user to figure out

00:57:01 ◼   ► what's the right software to use

00:57:03 ◼   ► that is truly encrypted, right?

00:57:05 ◼   ► But what's the one thing you really can't control?

00:57:08 ◼   ► You can't control like the hardware itself.

00:57:11 ◼   ► Like there is the hardware down to,

00:57:13 ◼   ► it's very root, is it secure?

00:57:16 ◼   ► And so I think there's an argument to be made

00:57:19 ◼   ► that Apple is actually in a very reasonable position

00:57:22 ◼   ► where the one part of the entire sort of system

00:57:27 ◼   ► that users can't control is the hardware itself

00:57:30 ◼   ► and is the hardware itself secure or not.

00:57:32 ◼   ► They can make choices about what cloud services they use,

00:57:35 ◼   ► what messaging services they use,

00:57:37 ◼   ► and so you can structure a truly secure

00:57:40 ◼   ► messaging environment on your phone

00:57:42 ◼   ► if you make all the right choices,

00:57:44 ◼   ► but also because Apple made the phone truly secure.

00:57:47 ◼   ► And so I think there's actually an argument to me

00:57:49 ◼   ► that Apple is actually exactly

00:57:51 ◼   ► where they should be right now,

00:57:52 ◼   ► where it is possible to be truly secure,

00:57:55 ◼   ► but Apple's not necessarily gonna do all the work for you.

00:57:58 ◼   ► And there's some, that's probably why WhatsApp

00:58:03 ◼   ► is slightly less secure than Signal 2.

00:58:06 ◼   ► It's not because Facebook wants to use the information

00:58:09 ◼   ► to snoop on you or for ads.

00:58:10 ◼   ► No, it's not actually, wouldn't be useful anyway,

00:58:14 ◼   ► and Facebook can't see the stuff,

00:58:16 ◼   ► but they also sort of can be responsible corporate citizens

00:58:20 ◼   ► as it were in a way that is not necessarily a burden,

00:58:24 ◼   ► nor should it be for signal, right?

00:58:27 ◼   ► Signal is, and I think it's a reasonable compromise

00:58:30 ◼   ► because the bad guys are going to figure it out.

00:58:34 ◼   ► The sort of dumb bad guys that sort of do crimes

00:58:36 ◼   ► like Paul Manafort are not necessarily gonna figure it out,

00:58:39 ◼   ► and they can get caught, but also the people

00:58:42 ◼   ► that truly need a secure environment

00:58:43 ◼   ► that can figure out, can understand this sort of stuff,

00:58:47 ◼   ► they can be truly secure as well, right?

00:58:49 ◼   ► And so I think whatever your position on Apple

00:58:53 ◼   ► and the iCloud backup point or Facebook

00:58:55 ◼   ► and WhatsApp and those sorts of things,

00:58:57 ◼   ► the fact of the matter is there's only one piece in here

00:58:59 ◼   ► that users can't make a choice about,

00:59:01 ◼   ► and that is the phone, and that is the part

00:59:03 ◼   ► where Apple has done huge efforts to make it truly secure.

00:59:09 ◼   ► And so while we can go back and forth in this middle area,

00:59:12 ◼   ► I think Apple deserves acknowledgement

00:59:15 ◼   ► for taking care of the one part

00:59:17 ◼   ► that I as a user cannot take care of.

00:59:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, I totally agree.

00:59:20 ◼   ► And I think it's,

00:59:24 ◼   ► so the way that you can,

00:59:27 ◼   ► if you're really concerned about it,

00:59:28 ◼   ► whether it's because you're committing crimes,

00:59:31 ◼   ► or really, and this second part is much more reasonable,

00:59:35 ◼   ► if it just is the nature of your personality

00:59:38 ◼   ► that you are not comfortable with Apple having a key

00:59:42 ◼   ► to your backed up data.

00:59:43 ◼   ► Totally reasonable.

00:59:44 ◼   ► I know, I just know, I know the people who listen

00:59:47 ◼   ► to the show and I know the sort of people

00:59:49 ◼   ► who read Daring Fireball, there's a lot of you out there.

00:59:52 ◼   ► Totally reasonable position.

00:59:53 ◼   ► And if you want your iOS life to be completely

00:59:58 ◼   ► under your control, you should stop using iCloud backup.

01:00:04 ◼   ► And if you do wanna backup your device,

01:00:05 ◼   ► which you probably do, you can still backup

01:00:07 ◼   ► your Mac or PC through iTunes or now in Mac OS 10.5 you do it through the finder, but

01:00:14 ◼   ► it's the same. You look at it, it's the same interface you used to see in iTunes,

01:00:18 ◼   ► and make sure you put a password on your backup, which…

01:00:21 ◼   ► And then you can sync that backup via Backblaze or whatever other service you want to use

01:00:28 ◼   ► so you can have sort of cloud backups. And you know what? I think that's totally reasonable.

01:00:31 ◼   ► Right.

01:00:32 ◼   ► Like the…

01:00:33 ◼   ► Or Dropbox.

01:00:34 ◼   ► We're arguing about default, right?

01:00:36 ◼   ► Because even if Dropbox is a subpoena,

01:00:38 ◼   ► it's an encrypted file that you need the password

01:00:41 ◼   ► to get into.

01:00:43 ◼   ► And I think we're arguing about defaults here, right?

01:00:45 ◼   ► The reality is, thanks to Apple's work on the phone,

01:00:49 ◼   ► you can live a fully encrypted life.

01:00:51 ◼   ► Is it a little more inconvenient?

01:00:54 ◼   ► It is, but that's the trade-off, right?

01:00:56 ◼   ► And I think it's reasonable to have that trade-off.

01:00:59 ◼   ► I was thinking about this when you said

01:01:00 ◼   ► you were talking about email

01:01:01 ◼   ► and how it's sort of like fundamentally insecure.

01:01:05 ◼   ► And my business is sort of built on email in some respect.

01:01:09 ◼   ► And what is attractive about it is

01:01:12 ◼   ► it is a fee that people check every day

01:01:14 ◼   ► that I can get into for free.

01:01:16 ◼   ► I don't need to pay a Facebook gatekeeper

01:01:18 ◼   ► or whatever it might be to get access to people.

01:01:20 ◼   ► The email is open and free.

01:01:22 ◼   ► And that's part of the trade-off

01:01:24 ◼   ► is it's because email is open and insecure

01:01:28 ◼   ► that it is actually an accessible market

01:01:30 ◼   ► for someone like me, for example,

01:01:31 ◼   ► or that it's available anywhere and everywhere on any device.

01:01:34 ◼   ► And that's just the way these things work.

01:01:36 ◼   ► The more encryption you want, the more defaults you want.

01:01:39 ◼   ► I know there's a societal issue.

01:01:41 ◼   ► There's a walled garden issue, right?

01:01:43 ◼   ► The more we put things, the more you lock things down,

01:01:47 ◼   ► by definition, the less interoperability you're gonna have.

01:01:49 ◼   ► The less you're gonna be able to sort of exchange data

01:01:52 ◼   ► across different platforms,

01:01:53 ◼   ► the more you're actually going to strengthen Apple's moat

01:01:57 ◼   ► or strengthen Facebook's moat.

01:01:58 ◼   ► And so if you care about competition,

01:02:00 ◼   ► You're actually, these encryption questions are actually,

01:02:03 ◼   ► there's another trade-off to think about.

01:02:05 ◼   ► And it's okay, again, I just, I hate absolutism

01:02:10 ◼   ► on any of this in any direction

01:02:12 ◼   ► because there's reasonable trade-offs to make

01:02:15 ◼   ► and I think we're in a good spot

01:02:17 ◼   ► because you can go all the way when it comes to encryption

01:02:21 ◼   ► but you don't have to and it's not even the default

01:02:24 ◼   ► and that's fine because as long as it's possible,

01:02:27 ◼   ► I feel pretty good about things.

01:02:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, and again, like you pointed out,

01:02:30 ◼   ► you can still get cloud-based backup with your,

01:02:34 ◼   ► I call them iTunes backups,

01:02:36 ◼   ► but that includes the Finder one for Catalina,

01:02:38 ◼   ► but the iTunes backup that is on your Mac or PC--

01:02:40 ◼   ► - And it works over Wi-Fi too, right?

01:02:41 ◼   ► So you don't even need to necessarily

01:02:43 ◼   ► plug into your phone every day.

01:02:44 ◼   ► It could just be when you come home every evening

01:02:46 ◼   ► and it does that backup in the background.

01:02:48 ◼   ► - Right, and you kind of, at least even if you're doing that

01:02:52 ◼   ► you kind of need to double check it once in a while

01:02:54 ◼   ► because just make sure it's still doing,

01:02:56 ◼   ► You don't wanna be the guy who forgot

01:02:58 ◼   ► that when you got a new MacBook Pro,

01:03:00 ◼   ► you never made sure that was still working again

01:03:04 ◼   ► and you haven't backed up for 13 months

01:03:06 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:03:07 ◼   ► I mean, that is the advantage to iCloud backup,

01:03:09 ◼   ► is it just happens automatically every night

01:03:12 ◼   ► as your iPhone is connected to a charger.

01:03:15 ◼   ► Even with the WiFi backup, you need, like you said,

01:03:18 ◼   ► you have some personal responsibility

01:03:21 ◼   ► to make sure it's working, but that's the trade-off.

01:03:23 ◼   ► But you can store that backup and use Backblaze or Dropbox or something, and there's nothing

01:03:30 ◼   ► that can happen.

01:03:31 ◼   ► Nobody can get into it even when it's in Dropbox or even iCloud.

01:03:34 ◼   ► You can even put it on iCloud Drive.

01:03:37 ◼   ► You just can't use iCloud backup.

01:03:39 ◼   ► And the other thing that I think is a little counterintuitive, I touched on it a couple

01:03:42 ◼   ► minutes ago, but if you're only backing up via your iTunes backup with a password, you

01:03:52 ◼   ► - And also use iMessage in the cloud

01:03:56 ◼   ► in a completely secure way because--

01:04:00 ◼   ► - Once you've run off iCloud backups,

01:04:01 ◼   ► then the key's no longer there.

01:04:02 ◼   ► - Right, 'cause that, I don't wanna use the word backdoor,

01:04:05 ◼   ► but that asterisk for somebody to get into your iMessage

01:04:09 ◼   ► in the cloud is because the key is stored

01:04:12 ◼   ► in your iCloud backup, and if you don't have

01:04:14 ◼   ► an iCloud backup, they don't have a way to get that key.

01:04:17 ◼   ► I guess the other hole in that that you should think about

01:04:21 ◼   ► if you're doing crimes, is okay,

01:04:25 ◼   ► you've turned off iCloud backup,

01:04:29 ◼   ► and you're only encrypting to your Mac or PC

01:04:33 ◼   ► with a password that only you know,

01:04:35 ◼   ► but anybody you're communicating with by iMessage,

01:04:38 ◼   ► if they're using iCloud backup

01:04:40 ◼   ► and the feds know you're collaborating with them,

01:04:43 ◼   ► they can subpoena their backup

01:04:45 ◼   ► and see your end of the messages

01:04:48 ◼   ► because they're backing it up to iCloud.

01:04:49 ◼   ► So there is that, keep it in mind.

01:04:52 ◼   ► But it's good, basically it's good to know how all this works and before the last month

01:04:57 ◼   ► or so I didn't even know how all this worked and I know just based on my reading that lots

01:05:01 ◼   ► and lots of readers didn't know how it worked and a lot of people were very surprised to

01:05:05 ◼   ► find out that Apple has a key to your iCloud backup.

01:05:10 ◼   ► And again, I don't think it's used willy-nilly.

01:05:13 ◼   ► I don't know the process.

01:05:14 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure everything they do to verify your ID but it's not like, you know, I do

01:05:18 ◼   ► think that on their side in iCloud there is some sort of process and a logging, you know,

01:05:23 ◼   ► like hopefully, I would hope, you know, there's no way for a rogue Apple employee to, you

01:05:29 ◼   ► know, spy on an ex-partner or something like that or stalk them or something like that,

01:05:36 ◼   ► you know, that there's some kind of log of Apple employee access to these keys to do

01:05:42 ◼   ► it. But the fact that you don't know that we don't know how that works is one of the

01:05:46 ◼   ► of the reasons why I emphasize that it's perfectly reasonable

01:05:48 ◼   ► for someone to say, I don't want any part of this,

01:05:50 ◼   ► if they can access my data.

01:05:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's exactly right.

01:05:55 ◼   ► - Last but not least, I wanted to emphasize,

01:05:58 ◼   ► I think I was wrong about it, or I would say

01:06:00 ◼   ► it was ambiguous, but there's this whole thing

01:06:02 ◼   ► where to get on your device, if law enforcement

01:06:06 ◼   ► or a criminal or a snoop, or somebody has your iPhone,

01:06:10 ◼   ► and they want to, they use one of these devices,

01:06:14 ◼   ► I guess it's mostly law enforcement,

01:06:15 ◼   ► one of these gray key devices or the celebrate thing

01:06:18 ◼   ► where they jailbreak the phone and then try to brute force

01:06:21 ◼   ► the password by circumventing the 10 guest limit.

01:06:25 ◼   ► Everything goes through the secure enclave.

01:06:27 ◼   ► And the big limiting factor, there's a key

01:06:30 ◼   ► in the secure enclave that is part of the encryption.

01:06:33 ◼   ► So there's no way to go around it.

01:06:35 ◼   ► It's not like, it's hard to understand.

01:06:38 ◼   ► I can't profess that I understand it perfectly,

01:06:40 ◼   ► but I understand the idea that one of the keys

01:06:43 ◼   ► that encrypts everything on your iOS device is,

01:06:47 ◼   ► part of it is your password or your passcode,

01:06:49 ◼   ► whatever you wanna call it,

01:06:50 ◼   ► but another part is a unique hardware key

01:06:53 ◼   ► in the secure enclave that there's no way around it

01:06:57 ◼   ► without that key, mathematically.

01:06:59 ◼   ► And there's an 80 millisecond per guess time.

01:07:06 ◼   ► That's eight hundredths of a second,

01:07:07 ◼   ► so roughly 12 guesses would get you to like 96,

01:07:12 ◼   ► 0.96 of a second. So roughly 12 guesses a second is the limit. The thing that I think I was ambiguous

01:07:20 ◼   ► about writing about it on Daring Fireball is that the 80 millisecond thing isn't like an if statement

01:07:26 ◼   ► in code where it's like, okay, there was a guess and then the next guess comes in and there's like,

01:07:32 ◼   ► if 80 milliseconds have passed, okay, process it, but if not, you know, wait. And that somehow that

01:07:38 ◼   ► could be hacked to either be longer, like make it three seconds, or in the case of someone trying

01:07:45 ◼   ► to crack the phone, you know, set it to zero and then it will process them as fast as they can.

01:07:50 ◼   ► It's not like that. It is—I'm 98 percent sure that the 80 millisecond thing is actually

01:07:58 ◼   ► mathematically produced. It's—there are—

01:08:01 ◼   ► - Well, what it is is there is a hardware key.

01:08:06 ◼   ► The thing with the Secure Enclave is

01:08:08 ◼   ► it's actually a processor, right?

01:08:09 ◼   ► It's part of, like, it's like a mini computer

01:08:12 ◼   ► in your computer, and it has its own software,

01:08:15 ◼   ► by the way, also.

01:08:16 ◼   ► And so this actually has a couple implications

01:08:18 ◼   ► because the, so you're right, it tangles a key

01:08:23 ◼   ► that is burned into your phone when the phone is produced

01:08:27 ◼   ► and is undiscoverable, right?

01:08:29 ◼   ► And so it's burned into your phone,

01:08:31 ◼   ► it's tangled with your passcode to create a hash

01:08:36 ◼   ► to encrypt all this sort of stuff.

01:08:38 ◼   ► And what happens is the way that it's entangled

01:08:42 ◼   ► to sort of untangle it, mathematically requires,

01:08:45 ◼   ► it's meant to be a super inefficient sort of calculation

01:08:49 ◼   ► so that it can't be done faster than 80 milliseconds

01:08:52 ◼   ► or 800 or whatever it is.

01:08:54 ◼   ► It literally takes that long.

01:08:55 ◼   ► And so it's not, to your point, it's not a software thing.

01:08:58 ◼   ► It's like, it's a math thing.

01:09:00 ◼   ► It literally can't be done faster than however long it takes.

01:09:04 ◼   ► It's an algorithm Apple deliberately chose because it would take 80 milliseconds on the

01:09:09 ◼   ► processor that's built into the secure enclave.

01:09:13 ◼   ► There's no way around it.

01:09:14 ◼   ► So the interesting thing that's a byproduct of that is the average time it takes for like

01:09:22 ◼   ► one of these devices that has access, jailbroken access, to the iOS computer that can talk

01:09:28 ◼   ► to the secure Enclave computer and try to make guesses as fast as it can with this 12 guesses

01:09:35 ◼   ► per second, what's the average time it would take to guess a passcode of different length?

01:09:41 ◼   ► So you can just multiply how many characters are involved,

01:09:44 ◼   ► raise to the power of how many of them there are. So if you just have a numeric passcode,

01:09:52 ◼   ► zero through nine, four digits. That's 10 to the power of four possible combinations,

01:09:58 ◼   ► right? It's, you know, 10,000, zero, zero, zero, zero, two, nine, nine, nine, nine.

01:10:04 ◼   ► And then the average time, you just divide that by two and take a guess that, you know, if you're

01:10:11 ◼   ► guessing all of them, half the time you're going to guess one that's before you get halfway through.

01:10:16 ◼   ► So the average time it would take to guess a four-digit numeric passcode, seven minutes,

01:10:21 ◼   ► six numbers is 11 hours. So that's the default option now. If you'd buy a new iPhone and just

01:10:27 ◼   ► set it up from scratch, Apple's going through the wizard, whatever you want to call it when you

01:10:33 ◼   ► start up, basically steers you towards a six-digit numeric passcode. It only takes 11 hours for one

01:10:41 ◼   ► of these devices to guess it at that 80 milliseconds per second and double it go to 22 hours and

01:10:47 ◼   ► you'll exhaust the entire space so a maximum of 22 hours um eight digits if you go custom 46 days

01:10:55 ◼   ► and then a 10 digit passcode 12 years so that's pretty good right you know what not just digit

01:11:02 ◼   ► but you can do alphanumeric passcodes so then you're right dramatically increasing the space

01:11:05 ◼   ► because now it's 36 possible characters. The other thing is—

01:11:09 ◼   ► Well, no, actually, and if you go uppercase, now you're up to 62.

01:11:14 ◼   ► Right.

01:11:15 ◼   ► And if you just count a handful of punctuation characters, like underscores and hyphens and

01:11:20 ◼   ► periods, you know, you can get up to 64, 65, 66 characters. So just, you know, these are numbers

01:11:28 ◼   ► from Jack Nickus from the Times, but I did—you know, you can do the math yourself. Like I said,

01:11:31 ◼   ► If you just count a 66-character space, 52 letters, uppercase, lowercase, 10 digits,

01:11:37 ◼   ► and the dash, underscore, period, and comma, or the hash sign, or something, or a space,

01:11:44 ◼   ► you know, space is easy to type and is often good for memorizing, you know, passcodes.

01:11:49 ◼   ► A four-character alphanumeric, seven days, six characters, 72 years, that's on average,

01:11:57 ◼   ► 144 years to exhaust the whole thing. And eight characters, just eight characters,

01:12:02 ◼   ► uppercase, lowercase, and digits, not even counting punctuation, 276,000 years.

01:12:08 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:12:09 ◼   ► So—

01:12:10 ◼   ► Justin: Right, and there's nothing Apple can do about it. And this is like the—I

01:12:14 ◼   ► was so exhausted in researching this with the San Bernardino thing, and I realized this time,

01:12:20 ◼   ► I think, because we've been talking about it too, there was actually more stuff—this stuff

01:12:23 ◼   ► has changed since then too. And one thing that's changed is what is done in the secret enclave and

01:12:28 ◼   ► what's done via the OS. And the OS still controls the wipe the phone after X number of attempts.

01:12:34 ◼   ► And that's the big thing that they want to erase. The other thing that I found out, actually,

01:12:38 ◼   ► I wasn't clear on this and Apple got back to me about this, was there is, because it's a

01:12:47 ◼   ► serial enclave, it's like a mini computer in your computer, right? People think about it as being

01:12:50 ◼   ► sort of safe, but like we're dealing with a computer, right?

01:12:53 ◼   ► And what it is, is a mini computer with its own

01:12:55 ◼   ► processor effectively, but that means it has its own

01:12:58 ◼   ► software that's actually different from the OS

01:13:00 ◼   ► software and that software can be updated.

01:13:03 ◼   ► You can update the software in the Secure Enclave.

01:13:05 ◼   ► However, you do need the password to update the software.

01:13:10 ◼   ► And so the, so theoretically you could update the

01:13:16 ◼   ► software in the Secure Enclave.

01:13:17 ◼   ► You still can't escape the mathematical reality of, you know, sure, decrypting this.

01:13:22 ◼   ► You could, but if you wanted to like maybe move the data to a different device that's faster,

01:13:28 ◼   ► et cetera, that's still limited by, you would still need to change the software on this

01:13:32 ◼   ► cure enclave itself, and that is limited by your passcode. So basically, Apple has made it so

01:13:36 ◼   ► it has to be, because of it's entangled with that hardware on the device, it has to be done

01:13:44 ◼   ► on the device, which is mathematically limited

01:13:48 ◼   ► to 80 milliseconds.

01:13:50 ◼   ► And so if you make an alphanumeric password

01:13:54 ◼   ► of X number of characters, it doesn't matter

01:13:57 ◼   ► what the FBI does or what Apple does.

01:13:59 ◼   ► It's basically unbreakable.

01:14:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, and so the eye-opening lesson from that

01:14:03 ◼   ► is something I'd never really pondered before.

01:14:05 ◼   ► And I will say, until two weeks ago,

01:14:07 ◼   ► I had been using a six-digit numeric passcode

01:14:10 ◼   ► on my iPhone and iPad ever since six digits

01:14:13 ◼   ► became available, and before that I was using four digits.

01:14:16 ◼   ► Partly out of laziness, partly out of

01:14:20 ◼   ► the perfectly reasonable, and I'm not trying to say

01:14:23 ◼   ► I'm virtuous, it's actually just that I'm very boring.

01:14:26 ◼   ► There's nothing, there's not a lot on my phone

01:14:30 ◼   ► that would be terribly upsetting for me

01:14:34 ◼   ► if a thief cracked it and got.

01:14:36 ◼   ► I mean, especially without my iCloud keychain, right?

01:14:40 ◼   ► it still wouldn't get you into, you know,

01:14:44 ◼   ► like my daring fireball server account

01:14:47 ◼   ► or something like that just because you got into my phone.

01:14:50 ◼   ► I don't know what I'm saying, I would relish it,

01:14:51 ◼   ► I hope nobody does, but my thinking until recently

01:14:55 ◼   ► was six digit passcode is good enough for me.

01:14:58 ◼   ► But when I saw these numbers and saw that, you know,

01:15:01 ◼   ► it could be cracked in 11 hours on average

01:15:03 ◼   ► and 22 at the max, I thought, you know what,

01:15:05 ◼   ► I should do the right thing and switch to alphanumeric

01:15:08 ◼   ► type of passcode.

01:15:10 ◼   ► But the thing that to me, I want to emphasize, and I think it's a good tip, is when you think

01:15:14 ◼   ► about this 80 millisecond limit, what we all know about picking good passphrases doesn't

01:15:19 ◼   ► really apply to this.

01:15:21 ◼   ► Like an eight character, for most uses when we're picking a new password for an online

01:15:26 ◼   ► account, everybody, you know, a lot of places won't even let you pick an eight character

01:15:32 ◼   ► passcode because they say it's not long enough.

01:15:35 ◼   ► Eight characters, as long as you're using like uppercase, lowercase, and a digit or

01:15:39 ◼   ► or a punctuation mark, you're literally talking

01:15:43 ◼   ► hundreds of thousands of years to crack.

01:15:45 ◼   ► I mean, you don't have to sacrifice a ton of convenience,

01:15:49 ◼   ► is what I'm trying to say, and pick a 15 to 20 character

01:15:54 ◼   ► passcode with a couple of punct,

01:15:57 ◼   ► and where you're typing it on the phone,

01:15:58 ◼   ► you're shifting between all of these keyboards,

01:16:02 ◼   ► it makes it all the harder to type,

01:16:04 ◼   ► and you can't see what you've typed

01:16:06 ◼   ► because they're coming up as bullets,

01:16:07 ◼   ► and so if you make a typo,

01:16:09 ◼   ► it's you're typing it over and over again,

01:16:12 ◼   ► you can err on the side of a very convenient passphrase

01:16:15 ◼   ► that you wouldn't ordinarily use for most things

01:16:19 ◼   ► and literally have your phone be secured

01:16:21 ◼   ► for 100,000 years of cracking attempts.

01:16:26 ◼   ► - That's right.

01:16:27 ◼   ► - Eight or nine characters and you're really good,

01:16:29 ◼   ► really good.

01:16:30 ◼   ► - Right, 'cause those passcodes generally,

01:16:34 ◼   ► they're like they're running them on like supercomputers,

01:16:37 ◼   ► And that's why they have to be super long and complicated.

01:16:39 ◼   ► Even then, they can, like 80 milliseconds,

01:16:42 ◼   ► it sounds like a small amount of time.

01:16:44 ◼   ► In computer world, it's just an astronomically long

01:16:47 ◼   ► amount of time that you definitely use to your advantage.

01:16:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I'll just repeat something that Glenn emphasized

01:16:53 ◼   ► but it's worth remembering, but is that,

01:16:55 ◼   ► asterisk, so long as you don't pick a dictionary word,

01:16:59 ◼   ► where the dictionary isn't necessarily

01:17:01 ◼   ► like the Scrabble dictionary, but like common dictionary

01:17:04 ◼   ► people's common passwords, like P-A-S-S-W-0-R-D. Yeah, don't use that one, because they're

01:17:14 ◼   ► going to—any smart cracker is going to run through commonly used passwords like that

01:17:20 ◼   ► before they start guessing by iterating through all possible combinations.

01:17:26 ◼   ► So as long as you pick something that you can memorize and isn't a commonly used word

01:17:31 ◼   ► password or your firstborn child's birth date in numbers with slashes, you are good for hundreds

01:17:39 ◼   ► of thousands of years and you do not need—it's in fact counterproductive. You're just wasting

01:17:43 ◼   ► typing and thumbs and your time by picking a 20-character passphrase that you would use if

01:17:49 ◼   ► you were setting up a new account online. And this is for your phone password specifically,

01:17:55 ◼   ► like your device passcode.

01:17:58 ◼   ► And I have to say, now that I've changed mine

01:18:00 ◼   ► to an alphanumeric, I have to say now

01:18:03 ◼   ► it really has become clear how seldom I have to enter it.

01:18:06 ◼   ► Really, it really does not come up very often.

01:18:10 ◼   ► I had to do it today 'cause I just upgraded to the new,

01:18:12 ◼   ► there's a new iOS dot release, and so I had to type it

01:18:17 ◼   ► to allow the update to install and type it

01:18:19 ◼   ► once the phone restarted, and I was like,

01:18:21 ◼   ► I haven't typed this in days.

01:18:23 ◼   ► Well, it turns out if you're in Asia

01:18:26 ◼   ► and you're wearing a medical mask,

01:18:28 ◼   ► you actually end up putting it in a lot

01:18:30 ◼   ► because your face-eye doesn't work anymore.

01:18:32 ◼   ► - You know what, we'll have to touch on that after the break.

01:18:34 ◼   ► I have to take a break, but I just went out today.

01:18:37 ◼   ► Oh, I have to tell, I should tell you the story.

01:18:39 ◼   ► I had to go to the post office today.

01:18:42 ◼   ► And on my way, I saw two Asian people.

01:18:46 ◼   ► I don't know, I have no idea if they're tourists.

01:18:47 ◼   ► I don't know if they live here, I don't know what,

01:18:49 ◼   ► but they were Asian and they were wearing medical masks.

01:18:52 ◼   ► and I'm just like, do you know something I don't know?

01:18:55 ◼   ► I'm trying not to get freaked out

01:18:57 ◼   ► by this whole coronavirus thing and not get,

01:18:59 ◼   ► there's a germaphobe in me that's dying to get out

01:19:03 ◼   ► and I'm like, seeing people walking around the street

01:19:07 ◼   ► with medical masks, I'm like, should I have one of those?

01:19:09 ◼   ► Should I get one of those?

01:19:11 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:19:13 ◼   ► - I think you're okay with that one.

01:19:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so too.

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01:22:52 ◼   ► I had to go to the post office, Ben.

01:22:57 ◼   ► This is the type of story I usually tell

01:23:00 ◼   ► at the beginning of a show.

01:23:01 ◼   ► But I never had, you have a PO box?

01:23:04 ◼   ► I don't know what they've got over there in Taiwan.

01:23:07 ◼   ► - I don't in Taiwan.

01:23:08 ◼   ► I do have one in the US.

01:23:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've never had one, and I've always wanted one.

01:23:11 ◼   ► 'Cause you know, I run a business,

01:23:13 ◼   ► and people wanna send me things, and I, you know,

01:23:15 ◼   ► I don't wanna, you know, I'm always,

01:23:17 ◼   ► you know, I'm a private person.

01:23:18 ◼   ► I don't wanna send out my home address to anybody.

01:23:22 ◼   ► I live in a city.

01:23:23 ◼   ► There's post offices nearby that's not really inconvenient.

01:23:26 ◼   ► Why don't I have a PO box?

01:23:27 ◼   ► I always, I put it off for years, years now.

01:23:29 ◼   ► Years and years and years, and I broke down.

01:23:31 ◼   ► I went and got it.

01:23:33 ◼   ► It turns out the way you get one is you have to go to the web first.

01:23:35 ◼   ► You got to go to the USPS.com.

01:23:37 ◼   ► You sign up for a PO box and you say which post office do you want it at and what size.

01:23:42 ◼   ► Then you can prepay right there over the web.

01:23:44 ◼   ► Then they tell you, "Print these two forms."

01:23:47 ◼   ► Then one form comes in when you print it.

01:23:49 ◼   ► It already has all your info.

01:23:50 ◼   ► It's nice.

01:23:51 ◼   ► It pre-fills a whole bunch of stuff like your name and your address and some kind of code

01:23:56 ◼   ► that verifies that you've paid.

01:23:59 ◼   ► then you gotta go to your post office with these forms

01:24:01 ◼   ► and two forms of ID, and then they give you the P.O. box.

01:24:05 ◼   ► So I go over there today, this is when I saw the pedestrians

01:24:10 ◼   ► with their medical masks on, freaked me out.

01:24:12 ◼   ► And then I immediately started thinking,

01:24:13 ◼   ► well, where's the number one place

01:24:14 ◼   ► where you could pick up this virus?

01:24:15 ◼   ► Probably the frickin' post office.

01:24:18 ◼   ► I go in there, and there's no line.

01:24:20 ◼   ► It feels like I've already won the jackpot, right?

01:24:24 ◼   ► How many times in the U.S. you don't really go

01:24:26 ◼   ► to the post office and see no line?

01:24:28 ◼   ► No line, but there's only one person behind the counter.

01:24:30 ◼   ► How's this possible?

01:24:31 ◼   ► So I walk right up, got my paperwork, I got my ID.

01:24:35 ◼   ► Takes, I don't know, more time than I would think,

01:24:38 ◼   ► given that all this paperwork's pre-filled.

01:24:40 ◼   ► More time than I would think to process, but I wait.

01:24:43 ◼   ► And she says, "All right, I gotta go find a key."

01:24:46 ◼   ► She disappears in the back.

01:24:48 ◼   ► And meanwhile, one or two people

01:24:50 ◼   ► have now gotten in line behind me.

01:24:52 ◼   ► Still nobody else working.

01:24:55 ◼   ► Minutes pass, and several minutes pass,

01:24:59 ◼   ► more people get in line.

01:25:01 ◼   ► I hear the jingling of keys

01:25:03 ◼   ► behind wherever she's gone behind her.

01:25:05 ◼   ► I hear keys jingling.

01:25:07 ◼   ► Nothing.

01:25:10 ◼   ► Finally, people start talking to me.

01:25:12 ◼   ► They're like, "Hey, what's going on?

01:25:13 ◼   ► "Like, what are we all waiting for?"

01:25:16 ◼   ► And I said, "I'm getting a P.O. box."

01:25:19 ◼   ► And they're like, "Well, where'd she go?"

01:25:21 ◼   ► And she said she had to get a key.

01:25:25 ◼   ► And I was, you know, I'm starting to feel self-conscious,

01:25:27 ◼   ► basically, right, 'cause I'm holding them up.

01:25:29 ◼   ► Even though I don't really think this is my fault,

01:25:31 ◼   ► I feel like going to the post office for a P.O. box

01:25:33 ◼   ► is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

01:25:35 ◼   ► I start looking around, and you can see the P.O. boxes,

01:25:38 ◼   ► and I start sort of mentally guessing how many they have.

01:25:41 ◼   ► It looks to me as though they have at least 1,000.

01:25:44 ◼   ► I would guess, if I had to, you know,

01:25:46 ◼   ► like guessing jelly beans in a jar to win a raffle

01:25:49 ◼   ► or something like that, I would guess maybe

01:25:50 ◼   ► they have 2,000 post-op P.O. boxes.

01:25:54 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like an unusual thing to do.

01:25:56 ◼   ► And then at this point, I looked at my watch,

01:26:01 ◼   ► and 10 minutes passed.

01:26:03 ◼   ► 10 full minutes.

01:26:04 ◼   ► I still hear keys jingling back there.

01:26:08 ◼   ► And thankfully, I will say to my fellow Philadelphians

01:26:12 ◼   ► who were there in line, I'm feeling very self-conscious.

01:26:15 ◼   ► Every single person was nothing but kind,

01:26:17 ◼   ► and everybody's laughing and joking.

01:26:19 ◼   ► Nobody was soured by this,

01:26:22 ◼   ► but I have to say I felt very self-conscious

01:26:24 ◼   ► about the whole thing.

01:26:26 ◼   ► Then she comes out and says, "I couldn't find the key.

01:26:30 ◼   ► I'm gonna have to change the lock on a box."

01:26:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:26:34 ◼   ► So, and then she's like, "So come back tomorrow."

01:26:37 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:26:39 ◼   ► That's where I left it.

01:26:40 ◼   ► - These don't have a PO box.

01:26:42 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, but she gave me the keys.

01:26:44 ◼   ► She gave me the keys to the lock

01:26:46 ◼   ► that they were gonna put on the box.

01:26:49 ◼   ► So I have keys to a P.O. box, but I don't have a P.O. box.

01:26:53 ◼   ► Anyway, that was my afternoon.

01:26:57 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:26:59 ◼   ► What do you want?

01:27:01 ◼   ► We should just dig into iPad, what do you think?

01:27:04 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, time to start the show.

01:27:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, time to start the show.

01:27:06 ◼   ► - An hour and a half in.

01:27:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, yesterday, or no, not yesterday, two days ago,

01:27:10 ◼   ► was the 10-year anniversary of the event

01:27:14 ◼   ► where Steve Jobs introduced the iPad.

01:27:17 ◼   ► and 10's a nice round number.

01:27:21 ◼   ► Lots and lots of people remembering

01:27:24 ◼   ► what it was like that day with people

01:27:26 ◼   ► of the press who were there,

01:27:28 ◼   ► people posting their original reviews,

01:27:30 ◼   ► people saying where they think the iPad stands.

01:27:32 ◼   ► And I used it as an opportunity to get a lot off my chest.

01:27:37 ◼   ► And like you said, you and I have talked

01:27:42 ◼   ► about this privately many times,

01:27:45 ◼   ► and it's almost to the point where it's almost like

01:27:47 ◼   ► one of the reasons like and there were a couple of people who are like where is

01:27:51 ◼   ► this rant been why is you know why did it take you so long to write this I've

01:27:54 ◼   ► been thinking the same thing for so long and part of it is I've got notes for a

01:27:58 ◼   ► lot of complaints about the iPad and you know the directors commentary of daring

01:28:03 ◼   ► fireball aspect of the show is that I've been meaning to write deeply critical

01:28:10 ◼   ► pieces a deeply critical piece about the state of the iPad software for well over

01:28:16 ◼   ► a year. And I haven't--

01:28:18 ◼   ► - I think longer than that.

01:28:19 ◼   ► We've been talking about this for a while.

01:28:22 ◼   ► Like I said, when you finally posted it,

01:28:23 ◼   ► I'm like, "Didn't you already post this?"

01:28:25 ◼   ► 'Cause we've been talking privately

01:28:28 ◼   ► about this particular thing for ages.

01:28:32 ◼   ► - And the pathology of it in my,

01:28:34 ◼   ► the weird parts of my brain is that I've been thinking of it

01:28:39 ◼   ► as a massive, like, four, five, six thousand word epic

01:28:43 ◼   ► during Fireball post where I get it all out at once in a single narrative that makes complete

01:28:49 ◼   ► sense and convinces everybody from Tim Cook on down that, "Yes, this is all right. We should

01:28:54 ◼   ► change it all." And here it is. It's a home run that was hit out of the park. And I started writing

01:28:59 ◼   ► about the 10-year anniversary of the iPad, and I was like, "You know what? I should just break the

01:29:03 ◼   ► ice on this and just get the highest level part of it off my chest, and I could do it in a couple

01:29:08 ◼   ► hundred words and then just do the rest and follow up pieces." And why in the hell did it take me

01:29:12 ◼   ► three years to figure it out that that would be a much more effective way for me to actually get

01:29:16 ◼   ► this off my chest. And it was funny because I wrote about it as well, building on top of you.

01:29:26 ◼   ► Someone posted on Twitter, like, "Oh, could I have let Jon have all the fun, right, with the iPad?"

01:29:32 ◼   ► I'm like, "No, actually, I said something cryptic in response, but the truth is,

01:29:38 ◼   ► you're like, "Okay, I've gotten this started. Can you please come in and jump on top of

01:29:43 ◼   ► it?" That was why I did it as sort of an email daily update first and then switched it to

01:29:48 ◼   ► being a public post, which is more ... It's interesting, to your point, right? To make

01:29:53 ◼   ► something a public post is like it feels so much weightier and more difficult than just

01:29:57 ◼   ► dashing an email together. Switching from one ... Dashing together is not right. When

01:30:03 ◼   ► I write the daily update for subscribers, by definition, they're people who have been

01:30:08 ◼   ► reading me for a while and they kind of already know where I'm coming from on certain issues.

01:30:12 ◼   ► And so, you can presume a certain sort of leeway as opposed to when you're writing a public article,

01:30:19 ◼   ► it might be the first article they read on your site and you want to be much more,

01:30:22 ◼   ► have everything wrapped up in a bow and all the things tied together. But I kind of felt

01:30:27 ◼   ► the same way as you, once you had written it, I'm like, "Oh, wait, I've been wanting to say all this

01:30:33 ◼   ► stuff too, so I'm just jumping on. And it's going to be out there, and we're going to podcast about

01:30:38 ◼   ► it, so might as well make it public. So here we are. And to say that reaction was mixed is an

01:30:44 ◼   ► understatement. I would almost say it was so bifurcated—I expected it, though. It was so

01:30:49 ◼   ► bifurcated. And I got more, yes, I agree with this, here, here, finally somebody is saying what

01:30:55 ◼   ► what I've been trying to say sort of reactions.

01:30:58 ◼   ► But I also got a bunch of,

01:31:01 ◼   ► you're just an old guy who loves the Mac

01:31:06 ◼   ► and you don't get it sort of things.

01:31:08 ◼   ► Couple of them, they all mention the word old.

01:31:11 ◼   ► And part of that is a frustra, it's just human nature,

01:31:17 ◼   ► but I find it deeply frustrating.

01:31:19 ◼   ► And it's this aspect of human nature

01:31:21 ◼   ► where everybody is drawn towards,

01:31:23 ◼   ► And I do feel like our society and internet culture

01:31:28 ◼   ► has only added a lot of fuel to the fire

01:31:32 ◼   ► of this natural impulse to make everything

01:31:35 ◼   ► black or white, binary.

01:31:37 ◼   ► It is the greatest thing ever,

01:31:39 ◼   ► or it is a total piece of steaming garbage, everything.

01:31:43 ◼   ► What do you think of the rise of Skywalker?

01:31:47 ◼   ► Great, great Star Wars movie, I love it.

01:31:49 ◼   ► Or it is J.J. Abrams should be put in prison,

01:31:52 ◼   ► you know, this is awful, this is the worst movie ever made, right? That's what people

01:31:56 ◼   ► are drawn to, that's how internet reactions have gone. And despite the fact that I emphasized

01:32:03 ◼   ► that the iPad is a beloved, something I like, something I use every day, something that

01:32:09 ◼   ► I realized that a lot of people, it's their most beloved personal computing device and

01:32:13 ◼   ► they're very effective and efficient with it, something that I called great even, but

01:32:18 ◼   ► but also has serious flaws.

01:32:20 ◼   ► You have to be willing to accept nuance,

01:32:23 ◼   ► in my criticism of the iPad,

01:32:25 ◼   ► did not register with people who love the iPad,

01:32:27 ◼   ► or at least some.

01:32:28 ◼   ► - Oh, it's so true.

01:32:30 ◼   ► And I'll verify, you are one of the heaviest iPad users

01:32:33 ◼   ► that I know personally.

01:32:35 ◼   ► Like this is a, it's not a,

01:32:40 ◼   ► if I'm the one that's more dismissive of audit

01:32:42 ◼   ► in many respects, 'cause I actually used it

01:32:44 ◼   ► less than I did before.

01:32:45 ◼   ► But no, just to your point,

01:32:47 ◼   ► What people struggle with, neither of us are saying it's a failed product.

01:32:51 ◼   ► Right.

01:32:52 ◼   ► It's not everything it could have been, right?

01:32:57 ◼   ► And this is when the hardest—I get this, I know exactly what you're talking about.

01:33:01 ◼   ► It's like, you have to look at something not as it is, but as it could be, and it's okay to

01:33:09 ◼   ► recognize and bemoan that there's some sort of potential or some sort of possibility

01:33:14 ◼   ► that was perhaps not reached.

01:33:16 ◼   ► Yeah, and I am a self-professed Mac person, and I probably always will be, and even in

01:33:24 ◼   ► the hypothetical universe where the iPad 10 years in was much closer to its potential

01:33:30 ◼   ► of where it could be 10 years in, still probably would be a Mac person.

01:33:37 ◼   ► But I would rather be in that world because I'd rather have it be a fair fight, whereas

01:33:43 ◼   ► the things that really frustrate me about the iPad aren't even a fair fight compared

01:33:47 ◼   ► to the Mac.

01:33:48 ◼   ► And I don't see how anybody could deny it.

01:33:51 ◼   ► And I do -- I don't want to generalize.

01:33:53 ◼   ► I really don't.

01:33:55 ◼   ► But I -- to put Apple computing users into three buckets.

01:34:02 ◼   ► And I realize that lots and lots of them are in all three, or at least two, but there's

01:34:09 ◼   ► iPhone users and there's iPad users and there's Mac users.

01:34:12 ◼   ► And again, I'm all three, lots of people are,

01:34:15 ◼   ► almost everybody has an iPhone, right?

01:34:17 ◼   ► There's very few people in the Apple ecosystem

01:34:19 ◼   ► who don't at least have an iPhone.

01:34:21 ◼   ► If, you know, maybe it's their only device,

01:34:22 ◼   ► or maybe it's the one thing they have in addition

01:34:25 ◼   ► to a Mac or an iPad, but people who use the iPhone,

01:34:30 ◼   ► so I'm not saying that there are three different groups,

01:34:32 ◼   ► but I'm just saying people who use the iPhone

01:34:34 ◼   ► will complain about aspects of the iPhone interface.

01:34:37 ◼   ► Mac users, we've been complaining about the Mac all along.

01:34:41 ◼   ► Like nobody is a bigger and more astute critic and loves to complain about aspects of the

01:34:49 ◼   ► Mac going back to 1984 than people who love the Mac the most.

01:34:54 ◼   ► The people who love the Mac the most are the most astute critics of everything that's wrong

01:34:59 ◼   ► about the Mac.

01:35:00 ◼   ► Look at John Siracusa's epic Ars Technica reviews of it, which would talk about new

01:35:09 ◼   ► new features, and when they were confusing or wrong or slow or whatever, he was the one

01:35:14 ◼   ► who wrote the most words about them.

01:35:18 ◼   ► iPad users, not all, like Federico Viticci, to his credit, who is probably the most efficient

01:35:25 ◼   ► iPad user I've ever heard of, has built his entire—he's a super productive person who

01:35:31 ◼   ► does—writes thousands and thousands of words a week and does podcasts and does all this

01:35:36 ◼   ► work on his iPad and shares his techniques and shortcuts and stuff like that to his readers.

01:35:44 ◼   ► It's a lot of what he writes about is at the meta level of how to be an iPad power user.

01:35:49 ◼   ► It fully acknowledges some of the things that I'm talking about as shortcomings.

01:35:54 ◼   ► There's certainly not everybody. That's what I mean about not generalizing. But boy, oh boy,

01:35:59 ◼   ► are there a lot of people out there who love their iPads, use it as their primary computing device,

01:36:05 ◼   ► and do not want to hear one bad word about it." There is a sort of emperor's new clothes aspect

01:36:14 ◼   ► to it where they're like, "Hey, these people who are saying the emperor is buck naked,

01:36:19 ◼   ► they're just haters." Well, I think it's interesting because you get this with Apple

01:36:24 ◼   ► just sort of as a whole. Yes, yes. Where Apple is part of people's—like, there's no other company

01:36:30 ◼   ► where people have Twitter handles that includes the company's logo in them, right? There's an

01:36:35 ◼   ► aspect of Apple that ties into people's identity. They're an Apple person. And I think that is taken

01:36:41 ◼   ► to 11 when it comes to the iPad. If you're an iPad person, that's what you do. You have made this

01:36:50 ◼   ► commitment. You've made it this end of your life. You're living in the future. You're not an old

01:36:54 ◼   ► fogey. You're using a Mac or a PC. And it's not something that you do. I don't know. Again,

01:37:03 ◼   ► A real danger in writing online is something you have to learn as an author very early

01:37:07 ◼   ► is that your Twitter commenters are not your core readership, right?

01:37:11 ◼   ► It's a sort of a fraction of the fraction.

01:37:14 ◼   ► But I think there is an aspect where all the things that you and I both know are the case

01:37:20 ◼   ► for Apple fans is just double the case when it comes to being an iPad person.

01:37:26 ◼   ► Yeah, like if you run a restaurant, the people who want to speak to the manager aren't

01:37:30 ◼   ► necessarily indicative of the entire clientele of the restaurant.

01:37:37 ◼   ► But I –

01:37:38 ◼   ► Well, but it's funny because there's an RUR that sort of makes the point, right?

01:37:42 ◼   ► Like why would it be part of your identity if it's something that's super accessible

01:37:46 ◼   ► and easy for everyone to use, right?

01:37:48 ◼   ► There's an aspect where it is special to use the iPad for all of your computing, and

01:37:54 ◼   ► the reason it's special is our entire point.

01:37:56 ◼   ► It shouldn't be so special.

01:37:57 ◼   ► It should be more broadly accessible.

01:37:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, absolutely should be.

01:38:01 ◼   ► And I really do find it hard.

01:38:04 ◼   ► I think that the only, one of the reasons

01:38:07 ◼   ► that we find ourselves in this situation 10 years in

01:38:11 ◼   ► is that I think there has to be a contingent within Apple

01:38:15 ◼   ► that is within Apple who is the same way,

01:38:18 ◼   ► who thinks this is fine, because look at our sales.

01:38:21 ◼   ► We're selling 10, 11, 12 million of the things

01:38:25 ◼   ► every quarter, quarter after quarter,

01:38:28 ◼   ► And there's so many things to love about it,

01:38:32 ◼   ► and that these other things, they must be fine.

01:38:34 ◼   ► And they're not fine.

01:38:36 ◼   ► There's some of these things are truly screwed up.

01:38:40 ◼   ► And one of the things I devoted my attention to

01:38:42 ◼   ► in my piece this week is the multitasking interface.

01:38:46 ◼   ► And I tried to make it clear, I think it was clear,

01:38:49 ◼   ► it doesn't seem like people were confused,

01:38:50 ◼   ► but when I talk about multitasking with iPad,

01:38:52 ◼   ► what I mean is putting two apps on screen at a time.

01:38:55 ◼   ► It is in the user interface sense

01:38:57 ◼   ► of seeing two things at a time,

01:38:59 ◼   ► whether it's side-by-side apps or slide over

01:39:02 ◼   ► or side-by-side with slide over.

01:39:04 ◼   ► A couple people pointed out that you can show two

01:39:06 ◼   ► and only two apps at a time is wrong

01:39:08 ◼   ► 'cause you're gonna have two apps on screen

01:39:09 ◼   ► with split screen and then do a slide over.

01:39:11 ◼   ► All right, you got me.

01:39:15 ◼   ► I think that's what I mean by multitasking.

01:39:20 ◼   ► I don't mean it in the computer science sense

01:39:22 ◼   ► because we've had quote-unquote multitasking

01:39:25 ◼   ► in the computer science sense of multiple processes

01:39:28 ◼   ► running on the iPad all along.

01:39:30 ◼   ► There've always been background processes running

01:39:33 ◼   ► to get new mail or to have incoming SMS

01:39:35 ◼   ► or phone calls answered and stuff like that.

01:39:37 ◼   ► So, you know.

01:39:38 ◼   ► - The phone multitasks, right?

01:39:41 ◼   ► In sort of a technological sense.

01:39:43 ◼   ► - Right.

01:39:44 ◼   ► - But that's not what you're referring to.

01:39:45 ◼   ► - But the split screen stuff,

01:39:46 ◼   ► putting two apps on screen at a time,

01:39:48 ◼   ► is in my opinion a fiasco.

01:39:50 ◼   ► I really, and part of me procrastinated

01:39:55 ◼   ► on getting this off my chest because, like I said,

01:39:58 ◼   ► I wanted to do too much at once in one epic piece.

01:40:02 ◼   ► I wanted to hit one baseball that literally

01:40:04 ◼   ► went out of Yankee Stadium, not just knock

01:40:07 ◼   ► a couple singles up the middle over a period

01:40:10 ◼   ► of a couple days and score some, win a couple games,

01:40:13 ◼   ► which is what I think I should have done

01:40:14 ◼   ► and I'm gonna try to do going forward.

01:40:19 ◼   ► But it's bad and it's confusing.

01:40:22 ◼   ► And I mean, I got so many responses from people

01:40:26 ◼   ► who I know are smart, really smart technical users,

01:40:29 ◼   ► people who, you know, Jeremy Zawadny,

01:40:32 ◼   ► who literally wrote like the O'Reilly book on SQL.

01:40:37 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:40:38 ◼   ► Like was like, yeah, I had no idea how to,

01:40:39 ◼   ► I had no idea you could get two apps on screen