00:00:00 ◼ ► Matt I I have wanted to have you on the show for a very long time. I'm really glad to be on the show
00:00:15 ◼ ► Thought who else who else but this would be the week to invite you on for the first time
00:00:26 ◼ ► Your writing career is outside the the Apple sphere that that I tend to inhabit that listeners of this show might be most familiar with
00:00:35 ◼ ► I'm a political writer in Washington DC. I've been covering politics and economic policy here for probably 16 years now
00:00:58 ◼ ► It went wonky on me. So so now I can complain with everyone else about this butterfly keyboards and which keyboard which model
00:01:15 ◼ ► So literally the device that you could solve this problem by going out and buying a new $2400
00:01:54 ◼ ► It is. And here's the interesting thing. They added a feature. So they've had these smart battery
00:02:00 ◼ ► cases before, you know, and they've got the right sort of weird hump on the back and you fold them
00:02:05 ◼ ► over. And now, you know, clearly they need a new one for this new camera with a different cutout.
00:02:14 ◼ ► Okay, it is recessed as opposed to sticking out. So you know, like on these silicone cases that
00:02:21 ◼ ► Apple makes like they make fake buttons for the volume rockers and the power button that stick out.
00:02:27 ◼ ► This is a button that is sort of it's where you would expect a camera button to be. So it's on
00:02:34 ◼ ► the same side as the power button but down and it's recessed rather than sticking out. And from
00:02:52 ◼ ► you're in the camera app, it works as a shutter. That's a pretty good feature. It is an amazing
00:02:59 ◼ ► feature. I am generally someone who doesn't use a case. And when I do use a case, I want
00:03:13 ◼ ► life with the iPhone 11 Pro. So I don't really need a battery case. But I'm infatuated with
00:03:19 ◼ ► Adding buttons is shows there. There is a new philosophy. Yeah, it's a long time, right?
00:03:57 ◼ ► but it's it's some fraction of a second like maybe I'm going to guess to 200 milliseconds
00:04:05 ◼ ► so maybe like one fifth of a second you have to press and hold the button before the camera
00:04:52 ◼ ► the camera app almost instantly, but you can't just click it. There you go. Buttons. That's
00:04:59 ◼ ► evolution. And then they also saved American manufacturing. Thanks. Yeah. It's amazing.
00:05:15 ◼ ► here? So just thinking jokes? Well, I assume that people know, but we should explain it.
00:05:21 ◼ ► I believe that the timeline on this I'm sure it was in the works for weeks behind the scenes.
00:05:28 ◼ ► But officially, I first became aware this Monday, that the White House issued a statement,
00:05:34 ◼ ► it came from the White House. And they said that the, you know, President Trump is going
00:05:37 ◼ ► to tour Apple's Mac Pro assembly plant in Austin, Texas on Wednesday. And that was pretty
00:05:49 ◼ ► would be there presumably, you know, it didn't take a genius to think Tim Cook would probably
00:05:53 ◼ ► have to be there, you know, you can't really do it. It's the president. But that was very
00:06:09 ◼ ► see if I could obtain a media pass for this event, whatever it was. And I would have if
00:07:12 ◼ ► Apple manufacturing plant in Texas that will bring high paying jobs back to America. Today,
00:07:17 ◼ ► Nancy Pelosi closed Congress because she doesn't care about American workers. Right? That was the
00:07:27 ◼ ► Yeah, and I was also under the impression that Congress has actually been pretty busy this week.
00:07:37 ◼ ► Right. So they went on a recess right at the at the end of the day on Thursday. They went on recess
00:07:43 ◼ ► for the Thanksgiving week. So the members can go back home, see their family, see their constituents.
00:07:52 ◼ ► talking about crimes. But most importantly, they weren't opening a new factory. No, like at all.
00:08:06 ◼ ► And the old Mac pros. Yeah the trash can not even an Apple factory. Nope. It's a company called flex
00:08:15 ◼ ► One of my friends quipped in a private slack group that they must be pretty flexible because they probably haven't been making many Mac Mac pros
00:08:33 ◼ ► And put Tim Cook he was right there and you know could have said something he could have maybe tweeted later like a little
00:08:56 ◼ ► Just because they don't like Donald Trump, but also, you know me you journalists just like factually speaking. It's not what happened there
00:09:19 ◼ ► Right, like it's not like you can suddenly go from making the trashcan 2013 Mac Pro to these all together new
00:09:32 ◼ ► So there is a new assembly line in the plant. They Apple is does have a campus in Austin where
00:09:40 ◼ ► they do other things, but not not manufacturing assembly. It's right. It's like, like tech support,
00:09:45 ◼ ► like white collar jobs. And they are opening a second one. Yeah. That's like the real thing
00:09:51 ◼ ► that's happening. They had one and now there's two. Right, they're spending like a billion dollars
00:09:57 ◼ ► to expand, either expand the existing campus or open a new one. It's hard, you know, whatever you
00:10:02 ◼ ► it they're close enough to each other that you know i don't know what you count as the same campus
00:10:07 ◼ ► or not but they are building a billion dollars worth of you know campus there and they will be
00:10:13 ◼ ► hiring people to work there um but it is not manufacturing jobs or not new ones and again
00:10:26 ◼ ► who both try to report things truthfully and who value the truth and what they read about the world.
00:10:33 ◼ ► But seeing this, you could have seen this coming, I saw this coming a mile away that Trump was going
00:10:38 ◼ ► to claim that this was, I'm almost surprised he didn't claim that they were on the cusp of
00:10:43 ◼ ► assembling the Mac Pro in China until he swept in and, and yes, I it's an apple, you know,
00:10:49 ◼ ► has been playing this probably since 2016. I mean, well, I don't know, I forget the timeline
00:10:57 ◼ ► on the Mac Pro. But I guess it was 2017 when they had the special, hey, we're gonna do a new Mac Pro
00:11:04 ◼ ► and here's the future Pro Mac hardware. But it's they, you know, an Apple is Apple, it's even Trump
00:11:11 ◼ ► aside, they don't talk about things until they're ready to say it. So but it's and they don't like
00:11:15 ◼ ► to explain their back thinking and so whatever their plan B was for where to assemble these
00:11:25 ◼ ► in 2013 and assembled these very low quantity high end Mac Pro computers in Austin where
00:11:36 ◼ ► Right? Well, and it always seemed like the Mac Pro in Texas thing was in part a political
00:11:43 ◼ ► Gesture yes, they wanted to say they had a product that was made in the USA. They don't sell that many Mac pros
00:11:50 ◼ ► They are selling to a price insensitive client. I mean these things cost a ton of money, right?
00:11:55 ◼ ► Yeah, so they still won't tell you really they have like a starting price of $5,000 in a configuration
00:12:03 ◼ ► Right. So if you have to further pad the margins, whatever it's it's not a big deal, right?
00:12:09 ◼ ► And it lets them make the statement, right, and all their products, the laptops, the iPhones,
00:12:20 ◼ ► That's, you know, there are parts of it are actually made in America, but primary assembly
00:12:33 ◼ ► And it's not totally unusual to sort of be trying to make nice with politicians, to some
00:12:39 ◼ ► extent by having it here, but it's very, it's very tied into actually needing to work with
00:13:08 ◼ ► You know, they would have to pay tariffs on it. They're making it more expensive, but Trump gave them a bunch of waivers
00:13:14 ◼ ► So that's why they're doing it there and it's I mean it's it's backwards to say it's like a Trump policy success
00:13:35 ◼ ► but despite Trump's trade policies, and specifically needed exemptions from him, I mean, they call
00:13:46 ◼ ► from tariffs that they otherwise would have had to pay. And of course, all of these things,
00:13:50 ◼ ► you know, are made all around the world. But stuff like SSDs, and RAM, I think only comes
00:14:01 ◼ ► from American made manufacturer, of course, it's from all over the world. Right. And so
00:14:12 ◼ ► anybody, any other major character candidate had won the 2016 election, not just Hillary
00:14:17 ◼ ► Clinton, or Bernie Sanders, or I mean, I don't know who was second place in Republicans,
00:14:24 ◼ ► probably Ted Cruz, you know, I mean, in the altar of john k sik, none of them would have
00:14:29 ◼ ► done this. None of them would have done this none there would have been none of these tariffs
00:14:32 ◼ ► and this they still might have had a dog and pony show about the new assembly line here
00:14:39 ◼ ► in Texas because like you said it is a politically good move to be saying hey you know we're
00:14:45 ◼ ► Apple and everybody you know we're this big successful American company and we are putting
00:14:54 ◼ ► on the the before I leave that how politically positive that message is for mainstream America,
00:15:02 ◼ ► that was actually the subject of Tim Cook's first on camera interview as CEO. So Steve Jobs passed
00:15:11 ◼ ► away and at the end of 2011. And I forget what time it was, but it was sometime in 2012. Where
00:15:18 ◼ ► Tim Cook appeared on whatever the evening 60 minutes a show is that NBC has with Brian Williams.
00:15:26 ◼ ► And among, among many other things that have changed since 2012, Brian Williams stature at NBC
00:15:35 ◼ ► News has changed. Although I still like him. I actually like him a lot and feel like he kind of
00:15:39 ◼ ► got a bad rap over the whole exaggerating some stories thing. But But anyway, in an interview
00:15:44 ◼ ► with Brian Williams, it was sort of like, hey, why don't you make any of these computers here in the
00:15:48 ◼ ► the US. And Tim Cook's answer is, well, we're going to change that, you know, and it was
00:15:52 ◼ ► a positive message. You know, it wasn't untrue. I'm not saying it was BS, you know, it kind
00:16:04 ◼ ► like 1000th of as many items as Mac books, which is what everybody really thinks of when
00:16:16 ◼ ► numbers on iPhones are ridiculous. I mean, but it is something it is a real thing and they're doing
00:16:21 ◼ ► it. And it was so positive that that was Tim Cook's first on, you know, camera interview on national
00:16:36 ◼ ► like the first time either that Apple has sort of partnered, I guess, with the Trump administration
00:16:46 ◼ ► It was kind of smaller, but back in last year, early 2008, they sort of put out this press
00:17:13 ◼ ► It's totally true that they support people's incomes and jobs, but it had nothing to do
00:17:22 ◼ ► Apple doesn't ... Law doesn't pass in December, and then by January, Apple has a whole new
00:17:29 ◼ ► They work on these products on a years-long timeline, but the Trump administration, this
00:17:58 ◼ ► trying to say Apple is part of the American blue collar economy, which, you know, I mean,
00:18:03 ◼ ► it may or may not be to some extent, but it's nothing to do with with Donald Trump, except
00:18:18 ◼ ► Well, and it's it's specifically because Apple was in a very unique situation where they
00:18:23 ◼ ► had, I think, literally hundreds of hundreds of billions of dollars off outside the US.
00:18:48 ◼ ► The news just came out last week that Amazon is going to paid apparently going to pay $0
00:19:03 ◼ ► I think it was literally like $250 billion in cash, just sitting in like a bank in Ireland
00:19:10 ◼ ► that they it's money that they had made selling products around the world and they just kept them
00:19:14 ◼ ► in the bank accounts of international subsidiaries and thanks to the law that the Trump passed,
00:19:22 ◼ ► you know, in 2016, I think it was one of the first things that that he and the Republican Congress
00:19:26 ◼ ► did. Apple was able to move that money back in the country without paying taxes on it. And that's
00:19:31 ◼ ► is that a tax cut? I would argue yes, it is just not the type of tax cut you tend to think of you
00:19:49 ◼ ► that you do from that point forward. Right? So they pass the tax cut and then Apple saves
00:19:54 ◼ ► money on their profits. After the tax cut was based. This was a tax cut where they save
00:19:59 ◼ ► money on they save money on revenue that are profit that they generated for you know, 10
00:20:42 ◼ ► But you know, in general, if you were trying to sort of think of an American company that
00:22:27 ◼ ► have bandwidth to do so much at once to take on so many new kinds of things, which is good.
00:22:34 ◼ ► I mean, it's why they maintain a generally consistent high quality except for this fucking
00:22:47 ◼ ► But anyway, there's just no reason to think that Apple is not a good political case for
00:22:54 ◼ ► this tax bill, but they were one of the biggest winners and they really went all out to try
00:23:02 ◼ ► And then the bigger thing though is not the tariff waivers they got to build the Mac Pro,
00:23:16 ◼ ► But in theory, all this stuff, AirPods, MacBooks, iPhones, iPads, probably even this battery
00:23:24 ◼ ► case is all going to be hit with the next round of tariffs on Chinese imports. And that
00:23:33 ◼ ► It's and again, it's a little outside my realm. But I read Ben Thompson, Ben Thompson had
00:23:46 ◼ ► I forget if it was yesterday or the day before, but I think it was yesterday. And I think
00:24:17 ◼ ► same and take the hit on the margin. But one way or the other, it's bad news because clearly,
00:24:22 ◼ ► you raise the price, it's going to affect demand. I mean, that's literally like first day of
00:24:28 ◼ ► economics 101. And you people do not. Apple has conditioned investors to expect 38% profit margins
00:24:41 ◼ ► margins every quarter, quarter after quarter, it's actually, in my opinion, rather uncanny
00:24:47 ◼ ► how consistent their margins are. I don't think there's any funny business on that because
00:24:53 ◼ ► of all the things that you fudge in financial statements, the actual you know, the fluctuation
00:25:00 ◼ ► of the profit margin is not one of them that I've never heard of anybody, you know, going
00:25:04 ◼ ► to jail for an SEC violation because they fudge the profit margins. I mean, you've fudge
00:25:09 ◼ ► revenue or your fudge product, but 37 and a half to 38% every single quarter after quarter
00:25:20 ◼ ► we might be down to 36 next quarter, you guys be worried. And then here the results come
00:25:24 ◼ ► out 37.7% profit margin, it is unbelievably consistent. But like you said, with 37% profit
00:25:31 ◼ ► margin across the board, it's kind of hard to be sympathetic to them that they you know,
00:26:03 ◼ ► your kids and everything suddenly costs 10, 15% more, you're going to be pissed, you're
00:27:56 ◼ ► You never know, I mean, it's not the impeachment hearings, but you know, how explicit was the
00:28:00 ◼ ► quid pro quo? Who knew what? What kind of little message were being sold? But it really seems like
00:28:06 ◼ ► that is the game here that, you know, Tim Cook would really like waivers for the whole rest of
00:28:13 ◼ ► the Apple product line. Trump is inclined to give them to him, if Apple can do him some favors.
00:28:49 ◼ ► come back to that in a bit. But in a way, you know, in a way, he's the opposite of Steve Jobs,
00:28:53 ◼ ► or Steve Jobs was very easy to read and really had had a very hard time hiding his true emotions.
00:29:00 ◼ ► Tim Cook does and he also is very careful. I would say that that is, you know, by all accounts,
00:29:17 ◼ ► cautious person, he's chooses his words in public, you can almost see him thinking about them,
00:29:25 ◼ ► they're very cautious. And they often come across as very anodyne if he wants them to be where
00:29:31 ◼ ► there's just not much there there. And again, it does, like you said, it comes down to some of the
00:29:37 ◼ ► stuff with the quid pro quo stuff where, you know, and you know, Trump is literally when his defenders
00:29:43 ◼ ► literally want to say, well, he never actually said the words quid pro quo, and never even heard
00:29:47 ◼ ► of them before. So therefore, there couldn't have been a quid pro quo, even though it's just it's
00:29:54 ◼ ► just a word. He asked for a thing in exchange for another thing, which is quid pro quo. That's the
00:30:00 ◼ ► meaning of it. Right. So yeah, I get that. So I don't listen to the earnings calls. But I always
00:30:07 ◼ ► read the transcripts afterwards. That's my thing is I can't they go too slow for me. So I
00:30:13 ◼ ► I just wait and the people who bang out the transcripts, like Jason Snell, they have them
00:31:40 ◼ ► But also, the whole U.S.-Chinese relationship is going downhill for reasons that are bigger
00:31:49 ◼ ► There's this constant now concern about this Chinese company, Huawei, that makes, I mean,
00:32:06 ◼ ► And then of course, the Chinese themselves have been, you know, making trouble with the
00:32:29 ◼ ► And you know, I mean, Cook is not I guess he's not sweating this this round of tariffs,
00:32:43 ◼ ► Because like Trump may pass, but I don't think, you know, US-China tensions are going to and
00:32:48 ◼ ► the Chinese government, you know, this is like way outside my area, but they don't seem
00:33:03 ◼ ► But did you see this a couple of months ago, there was a Google led team of researchers
00:33:11 ◼ ► issued a report on a vulnerability and iPhones and that long story short, they didn't name
00:33:23 ◼ ► to using this exploit to target people with the in this Uighur situation in China where
00:33:36 ◼ ► putting them into concentration camps. I mean, that's no exaggeration. It's really just awful.
00:33:42 ◼ ► The New York Times has done a bunch of reporting on it recently about the conditions in these
00:33:46 ◼ ► camps. And Apple issued a press response to this Google story, which was to me tone deaf,
00:33:58 ◼ ► Because it really didn't express any sympathy to the Uighur people whom it was used against.
00:34:11 ◼ ► But the gist of it was it's only these Uighurs in China, who were actually affected by it.
00:34:23 ◼ ► And Android phones are more popular in China than the iPhone or something, you know, something
00:34:44 ◼ ► You know, it means a lot and also as you say right, I mean, so this is the bigger population
00:34:57 ◼ ► I mean if you if you read this stuff in the Times and elsewhere, it's it's totally appalling
00:35:05 ◼ ► I mean, they're trying to completely stamp out. Yeah this culture this this society and
00:35:13 ◼ ► But and I don't know how much Apple or anyone outside of China could actually do about it
00:35:35 ◼ ► Security vulnerability and this sort of callous or not maybe not callous but just unsympathetic
00:35:41 ◼ ► Public response is that if you're looking for signs that Apple is going out of its way not to
00:35:51 ◼ ► Chinese government officials, you could now maybe it just didn't occur to them. And maybe they were
00:35:58 ◼ ► really just pissed about the way that it looked like this exploit was only against iPhones and
00:36:02 ◼ ► not Android. And it happened to be a Google research team that issued the report. And they
00:36:07 ◼ ► really I think that there was even I forget what the issue was the news of the day, but Google even
00:36:16 ◼ ► they issued this report on iOS security. Don't mention Android and did it at a time that was
00:36:23 ◼ ► seemingly convenient for Google and the tech news cycle. Yeah, not mentioning and putting in a very
00:36:29 ◼ ► sympathetic stance on the Ugers. You know, it maybe it just didn't occur to them. But maybe it
00:36:35 ◼ ► did. And I thought, well, why why piss off China? You know, that seems like somebody who's going to
00:36:39 ◼ ► piss him off. It's besides beside the point we want to make, again, wouldn't have helped wouldn't
00:36:44 ◼ ► have gotten one person out of a concentration camp wouldn't have softened the Chinese government's
00:36:50 ◼ ► truly cruel stance towards this entire community of 10 million people. But it still would have been,
00:36:56 ◼ ► I think, the right thing to do in your statement on this to apologize to the to these people who
00:37:02 ◼ ► are truly going through something bad. Yeah. And I mean, I also I mean, I found this this flag thing
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00:40:05 ◼ ► My thanks to Hello pillow. So the flag emoji thing tell so the basic story there is China
00:40:12 ◼ ► is very sensitive to issues surrounding sovereignty. And you know what, we can touch on another
00:40:20 ◼ ► mutual, you're a much bigger NBA fan. Yeah, I am. But the NBA found itself in hot water
00:40:27 ◼ ► on the same issue. But they're, they're keenly aware of issues pertaining to sovereignty.
00:40:33 ◼ ► And it's partially what drives them to have these campaigns like in Tibet, and with the
00:40:46 ◼ ► that sort of mindset. And they're very sensitive to this, they, they, I think I'm going to
00:40:53 ◼ ► get it wrong. It's a shame, because we were just talking about him. But I always forget
00:41:02 ◼ ► that the Republic of China. So the the Republic of China is Taiwan. And it's a democracy and
00:41:11 ◼ ► it's it's it is not China, but China sort of wants you to think it's China. And they've done some
00:41:19 ◼ ► weird things over the years. Like they've insisted that airlines around the world list Taiwan as the
00:42:11 ◼ ► But Hong Kong has a different legal situation in which people are supposed to have the kind
00:42:16 ◼ ► of free speech rights that they had when it was part of the British Empire, rather than
00:42:44 ◼ ► But it was weird, too, because it happened in like, one of the eight updates to iOS 13.
00:43:26 ◼ ► where it remains on the keyboard, if you send it to somebody in Hong Kong, they will receive
00:43:44 ◼ ► But it's one of those things where it's like, well, of all the countries in all the world
00:43:49 ◼ ► where this bug could happen. It seems oddly curious that it would be the one where it's
00:44:00 ◼ ► Yeah. Right. Yeah. All of a sudden, you know, the Mexican flag is no longer available, but
00:44:22 ◼ ► I know firsthand from people who have family in Hong Kong, some readers of the site, you
00:44:33 ◼ ► They're pissed about a lot of things about China, but they're pissed about this keyboard
00:44:46 ◼ ► about it that way, if you think that there was some sort of political problem, and it's
00:44:52 ◼ ► almost hard to imagine it happening in the US, but if there was something where you suspected
00:44:57 ◼ ► that Apple removed the ability to type the Italian flag in on your iPhone, that Italian
00:45:04 ◼ ► Americans would be very angry about it. Right. And rightly so I'm not even saying Yeah, you
00:45:36 ◼ ► is just, you know, airing on the site. It certainly isn't what people in Hong Kong want.
00:45:41 ◼ ► If anybody's happy about it, it's people in China, but they're not the ones who are affected by it,
00:45:47 ◼ ► Yeah. And you know, part of what's disturbing about, you know, this kind of thing is that you
00:45:54 ◼ ► don't know where the limit is. Right. I mean, it's, it's a small thing, right? You know,
00:46:01 ◼ ► it's an emoji, it's a keyboard, it's a phone, it's one small city. But if China calls them up one day
00:46:08 ◼ ► and they say, "Well, Taiwan is not recognized as an independent country by the UN and other
00:46:14 ◼ ► official bodies, so we want you to take their flag off emoji keyboards all around the world,"
00:46:22 ◼ ► what's Apple gonna do, right? Because, you know, frankly, like, the ability to use a Chinese,
00:46:31 ◼ ► a Taiwanese flag emoji is not like a make or break feature for a typical consumer around the world,
00:46:37 ◼ ► right? They like iOS, they like the phone, they like the cameras, like, they're really good. It's
00:46:43 ◼ ► the best way to take pictures of your kids, right? So are you going to stop buying the phone because
00:46:48 ◼ ► some random flag goes away and there's a lot of money at stake in the Chinese market, in the
00:46:53 ◼ ► Chinese production line. But you also like to think that companies will stand up for some kind
00:47:02 ◼ ► of principle that people, even if China is going to do whatever they're going to do, their government
00:47:08 ◼ ► is going to do in the land they control, that we here in America, people in Europe, people in
00:47:13 ◼ ► Latin America that you know we live in societies with free speech and and that's what happened
00:47:18 ◼ ► with the NBA thing essentially is China reached through its importance to the international
00:47:24 ◼ ► basketball market to shut down you know discussion in in the United States right yeah and it was a
00:48:05 ◼ ► economic things, then it's going to help open up the country. You know, it's, in my opinion,
00:48:15 ◼ ► you won't go back. Whereas what's actually happened is that Chinese style censorship is
00:48:22 ◼ ► exporting out of China, more than our freedom of speech is going in, right? Like there's,
00:48:30 ◼ ► there is that whole NBA situation was about saying that he if you work in the NBA, you can't say you
00:48:36 ◼ ► support Hong Kongers. That that's crazy. Right? That's really crazy. And there was, you know,
00:48:43 ◼ ► there was tremendous optimism about the internet, specifically, right, that China is going to want
00:48:48 ◼ ► to be a wealthy, modern, technologically advanced society. So they're going to have to have the
00:48:53 ◼ ► internet and on the internet, you know, no one can control anything. And I don't know, I mean,
00:48:59 ◼ ► The internet is wonderful. I love the internet. I'm right there every day. It's it's my whole life
00:49:14 ◼ ► It was really really really wrong and it was very feasible to create a censored internet in China
00:49:44 ◼ ► And at least domestically, you know, we chat and whatever, it's, you know, it works fine.
00:49:52 ◼ ► on a political level or a free speech level or a human rights level, but the technology
00:49:58 ◼ ► turns out to be much more, you know, agnostic, I think, then then people wanted to believe
00:50:18 ◼ ► Western business people will break with our society's norms and standards for things like
00:50:25 ◼ ► free speech in order to make a buck. To be honest, right? I mean, and the NBA thing made
00:50:31 ◼ ► that so crystal clear. Like, again, it's sort of like making a big deal out of emoji because
00:50:37 ◼ ► you know, they're just emoji. They're literally drawn in a humorous cartoonish style. You
00:50:42 ◼ ► know, it seems like such a petty little thing. Although I think like as somebody who's mildly
00:50:46 ◼ ► interested in linguistics. It's actually fascinating, you know, the way people communicate with
00:50:52 ◼ ► them. But that's, that's a whole nother podcast. You know, it's a basketball, it's a sport,
00:51:02 ◼ ► people who talk about sports is it's insignificant. And to me, part of the reason why I love sports
00:51:07 ◼ ► is because it's insignificant. And it's exciting. It's fun to watch something with very highly
00:51:12 ◼ ► skilled people where the stakes don't matter. Like I might get all terribly worked up about
00:51:18 ◼ ► the Yankees in the postseason and feel terrible that they got knocked out again. But the truth
00:51:22 ◼ ► is nobody died. Nobody's hurt. You know, it's just a game. The fact that it's just a game,
00:51:33 ◼ ► microcosm of the whole thing, because it was all about the money. And everybody said it
00:51:36 ◼ ► was about the money. You didn't have to read between the lines. China said, if you know,
00:51:43 ◼ ► going to stop showing NBA games in China. And they met it. And they immediately stopped
00:51:48 ◼ ► the broadcast of a couple of preseason games that were meant to be broadcast there. And
00:51:52 ◼ ► the sneaker companies sell tons and, you know, I guess billions of dollars, billions of dollars
00:52:31 ◼ ► was great. And he did stand up for free speech. And he didn't insist, you know, they stood
00:52:35 ◼ ► up for the executive in Houston and said, we're not going to insist he be fired. I think he handled
00:52:41 ◼ ► the diplomacy of it very well by yeah, by maintaining saying that the NBA stands for free
00:52:47 ◼ ► speech. You know, I appreciate that. I really think that he's it's just a it just shows that it's the
00:52:53 ◼ ► best run of the major sport leagues and in the US. But it was so weird to see like NBA players,
00:53:02 ◼ ► you know, refusing like if it was me, man, I would again, I don't have a 30 million dollar
00:53:06 ◼ ► shoe contract to defend. Maybe I would feel differently if I did, right. But I'd like to
00:53:11 ◼ ► think that I, it would make me want to say I stand with Hong Kong, even if I didn't even know what the
00:53:16 ◼ ► hell was going on in Hong Kong. I'd be like, I stand with Hong Kong, you know, and here I come
00:53:20 ◼ ► to play preseason game. It was incredible. I mean, a lot of the players, high profile players were
00:53:25 ◼ ► clearly pissed, not at China, but at this Rockets GM for making trouble for them. And that's sad to
00:53:38 ◼ ► see. And you see this a lot actually in the realm of movies, where it's sort of accelerating from
00:54:00 ◼ ► one scene is cut and some of the language is changed but but otherwise the movie goes out
00:54:11 ◼ ► Chinese sensitivities to be so one of the ones I learned about is I don't know if you see the
00:54:17 ◼ ► Dr. Strange movie? Yes, I have. Yeah. Well, you know, Tilda Swinton's character in that,
00:54:25 ◼ ► the ancient one is a Tibetan monk in the comic books, and the filmmakers decided that a Tibetan
00:54:34 ◼ ► character would not be acceptable to China, so they just rewrote it. And the guy, you know,
00:54:40 ◼ ► he gives some quotes somewhere, and he's like, "Well, who wants to lose audience share in a big
00:54:46 ◼ ► moviegoing country because we decided to get political and you got to ask yourself like well,
00:54:50 ◼ ► okay, I mean, you know, people don't want to make everything about politics, right? It's a
00:54:54 ◼ ► comic book movie, like fine, I get that. But is having a character be Tibetan? Like how political
00:55:00 ◼ ► is that? Like, they're just there are two people, you know, that Chinese government doesn't like
00:55:06 ◼ ► that. Right. And just true. And you can spin it. That comic book canon is all kind of loose anyway,
00:55:15 ◼ ► because, you know, originally Peter Parker was a teenager in the 1960s, you know, so, and, and you
00:55:21 ◼ ► can do things like, okay, Aunt May was always really old, like, must have, you know, always,
00:55:29 ◼ ► this great aunt, not his aunt, you know, she was clearly like grandmotherly aged. And you can recast
00:55:36 ◼ ► her as Marisa Tomei, and she's, you know, mid 40s, or looks mid 40s, at least, and, you know, not an
00:55:43 ◼ ► old lady at all. That's fine. But you know, it that's different. You're not thinking like, hey,
00:55:47 ◼ ► they're just trying to avoid pissing off the people who hate old people. You know, there's,
00:55:53 ◼ ► there is no, there's no major market in the world where casting an 78 year old woman in the role of
00:56:00 ◼ ► Aunt May is offensive or politically dicey, whereas casting, you know, having a Tibetan monk might be.
00:56:07 ◼ ► And there's no people looking for it, right? I mean, you can imagine people in the Tibetan
00:56:11 ◼ ► diaspora, right? Who like, I don't know, right? Like no foreign army is going to come riding to
00:56:17 ◼ ► their rescue, but to see a member of their culture represented in a prominent movie, like that might
00:56:34 ◼ ► llamas and the monks and, you know, people do care about representation in these things. And it's
00:56:39 ◼ ► Why I guess Marvel speculated that the Chinese government would care preemptively got rid of it
00:56:58 ◼ ► I mean whether you're talking about streaming services or original content or you know, how do we read things?
00:57:04 ◼ ► How do we listen to things? How do we interfere? How do we interfere in elections in another country around the world?
00:58:05 ◼ ► sell sugar water? Or do you want to change the world that not not that they're pure idealists,
00:58:11 ◼ ► but that part of getting people to go work there and work hard is that you want to convince them
00:58:16 ◼ ► that this is a company that's doing something with positive impact on the world, right? They're not
00:58:22 ◼ ► just selling sugar water. Yeah, I thought that was an interesting moment. That was at a shareholders
00:58:26 ◼ ► meeting a couple of years back. And I thought I wasn't there. And I don't think they record them.
00:58:45 ◼ ► He meant it so much that he actually lost his cool a bit, you know, and for him to publicly
00:58:56 ◼ ► I, you can't help but think that he was that close as close as he's ever going to get to
00:59:31 ◼ ► you don't have to be blind or have a serious vision impairment to, to better use a computer
00:59:38 ◼ ► where everything where there's accessibility features that help them, you know, all of a
00:59:42 ◼ ► sudden, you can have software that can read the screen because the accessibility features have
00:59:47 ◼ ► to be able to read the screen, etc, etc. And, you know, I won't go off on a long rant about it. But
00:59:52 ◼ ► we're all we're all disabled at sometimes, like if you work as a bartender, and it's a noisy place,
01:00:03 ◼ ► good thing. You need them not because you're disabled, but because you're handicapped by
01:00:07 ◼ ► your environment. You know, it's right. It's all there. And I think Cook meant it, though,
01:00:12 ◼ ► but I think Apple does it. And I know they don't measure it. There is no the accessibility
01:00:15 ◼ ► team and the time they spend putting in accessibility features is not measured in profit and loss.
01:00:21 ◼ ► And while we made x amount of money by selling phones to people with hearing impairments,
01:00:39 ◼ ► And they also believe, you know, I mean, if you were to make a business case for it, you
01:00:50 ◼ ► We want to make the best phone and being the best phone means it's a phone everyone can
01:01:04 ◼ ► Even though it's a small thing, but it's like you're not standing up there and saying, "Well,
01:01:11 ◼ ► We put flag emojis on our keyboards and we're just going to, because you could always...
01:01:28 ◼ ► You could have tried to put out a presentation defending it in economic and business terms
01:01:51 ◼ ► It's like you can almost hear Tim Cook saying, "I'm delivering 38% profit margins to all
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01:04:05 ◼ ► apples showing dog and pony show Wednesday, which the White House turned around by the end of the
01:04:13 ◼ ► day in a campaign ad with a bombastic Michael Bay style score. I don't know how to describe it.
01:04:20 ◼ ► I don't know. It's like a 30 second spot. Maybe it's like I felt like 10 minutes watching it.
01:04:27 ◼ ► But it's, you know, subtlety is not really. Yeah, it's not there's a score and everything.
01:04:32 ◼ ► And it's, you know, it was cut together to make it look as though Apple had just opened a factory.
01:04:39 ◼ ► Everything that Trump had said at the thing that wasn't true that Apple had opened a factory thanks
01:04:43 ◼ ► to Donald Trump and it was bringing jobs back and Trump policy is good for Apple and Tim Cook is a
01:04:53 ◼ ► Trump supporter. I mean, that's, that's, I don't think I'm exaggerating. That's, you know, that,
01:04:58 ◼ ► what the, that's the message of the ad. And I don't think any of those things are true.
01:05:01 ◼ ► And it's a terrible ad and it was entirely shot. It's not an Apple owned facility. Cause I guess
01:05:07 ◼ ► as we mentioned, they, it does some company named flex that owns the that owns the actual
01:05:24 ◼ ► The whole thing is illegal, because it wasn't put out by like the Trump 2020 campaign, it
01:05:35 ◼ ► other, you know, to put, you know, like, can't use camp say that the White House isn't supposed
01:05:41 ◼ ► to be doing Trump's reelection work. But yeah, that's all they don't they don't really follow
01:05:45 ◼ ► that law anymore. But it used to be it used to be a major thing. It would have been shocking. I mean,
01:05:51 ◼ ► just 1015 years ago in the Bush administration would have been shocking if a White House video
01:05:57 ◼ ► was a transparent reelection ad for George W. Bush. I mean, it just would have been flabbergasting.
01:06:02 ◼ ► And it would have been the story of the day and the heads would have rolled and the video
01:06:06 ◼ ► would have been pulled in. And now it's just, you know, spitting in the wind. Yeah, but it's
01:06:13 ◼ ► it's really, to me a very low moment in Apple's history. I don't know how else to say it. And I
01:06:23 ◼ ► don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say so. And maybe, you know, I have an open enough mind
01:06:32 ◼ ► that honestly, like if I could talk to Tim Cook, off the record, obviously, and just, you know,
01:06:39 ◼ ► have him pitch me on why this was worth it. And maybe you know that this it's as cynical as it
01:06:45 ◼ ► sounds, that the numbers were so bad, if Apple had to pay these tariffs, and he's fully aware
01:06:52 ◼ ► of how bad this looks. And nobody's nobody in the world is less happy about the way that that tour
01:06:58 ◼ ► played out. And I'm sure he predicted everything Trump would say about it, that he opened the
01:07:03 ◼ ► factory and that it, you know, brought new jobs here, that I knew everything he was going to say,
01:07:08 ◼ ► and I did it anyway. And I would do it again, because that's how important it is to Apple,
01:07:18 ◼ ► Maybe I'm willing to listen to it. But even then, that's still sad. It's I'm still sad about the
01:07:23 ◼ ► state of affairs in the world, you know? Yep. I can't, I can't help but think that this is
01:07:28 ◼ ► a little bit of it isn't quite so magnanimous that it's a little bit more about greed, you know?
01:07:33 ◼ ► Right. Right. I mean, you know, what, what an extra tax, slower margins, if it goes down from
01:07:40 ◼ ► 38% to 29% gross margins for a couple years until there's a new president, would that would that be
01:07:47 ◼ ► the end of the world? And you know, you said this earlier, but the one thing you always hear from
01:07:52 ◼ ► from people at Apple is that the biggest challenge that they have is with talent, right? That, you
01:07:59 ◼ ► know, people who are good enough to work at Apple are good enough to work at lots of places. They
01:08:04 ◼ ► have, you know, good marketable skills. And in some ways, Apple's not like quite as cushy as some of
01:08:10 ◼ ► the other tech companies. Yeah, they don't pay the most for the most part. Yeah. For whatever reason,
01:08:35 ◼ ► If having some sense of ethics is a competitive advantage in securing talent, that would be
01:08:42 ◼ ► a very good thing for America and for the world because it's a it's a really competitive
01:08:48 ◼ ► marketplace, right? But if people if people don't care, what ends their work or put to,
01:08:54 ◼ ► you know, that's, that's really bad. You know, this was like Trump Trump even said it this
01:08:59 ◼ ► thing he said, Oh, you know, you don't need to worry about tariffs, because you're building
01:09:04 ◼ ► it here in America. And we were saying before, that's like, the opposite. No, it's the opposite.
01:09:40 ◼ ► about tariffs is you gave us an exemption, like, which is great, but it would have been
01:09:46 ◼ ► Right. Like, you know, I mean, I totally get it. And Tim Cook is not going to make a jerk
01:10:23 ◼ ► He could say that we're talking Friday afternoon about stuff that happened earlier this week.
01:10:34 ◼ ► company of ours, and I'm sure other people around the internet put inquiries in to Apple's
01:10:45 ◼ ► They wouldn't even confirm in a passive way, like, "Yes, in fact, this is the same plant
01:10:58 ◼ ► But you know, that's a that's a middle ground that companies can take right when everyone
01:11:18 ◼ ► And I will confirm that I myself contacted Apple PR specific in addition to having asked
01:11:22 ◼ ► if I could get a media pass, I actually asked afterwards, hey, my expectation is that this
01:11:43 ◼ ► your job in public relations is to provide accurate information to the media about what
01:11:50 ◼ ► is happening when people ask them. Normally, if you'd come in, if this had been two weeks
01:12:00 ◼ ► this new campus? Is that where they're making the Mac pros? They would have been like, No,
01:12:05 ◼ ► it's like a couple hours away. But you know, we are proud to work in the United States.
01:12:10 ◼ ► You know, they give you some pitch, but it wouldn't be like, Oh, I don't even know. Where
01:12:16 ◼ ► Apple, you know, famously, it does tend to issue no comment on almost anything and faint,
01:12:31 ◼ ► they will call or text or whatever and see if Apple will comment and Apple spokesperson
01:12:36 ◼ ► will always decline to comment that they don't comment on rumors and speculation. And I have,
01:12:45 ◼ ► clarification from Apple, it is on something sensitive, you know, and there have been times
01:12:52 ◼ ► over the years where I've gotten no response at all to certain questions. But I understand
01:12:57 ◼ ► it, because I'm asking about, you know, like the implications of a security bug or something
01:13:03 ◼ ► like that. I don't know, you know, but you can imagine where they would rather say nothing
01:13:30 ◼ ► as a character in a superhero movie, or just clarifying it. Yes, this is the same goddamn
01:13:37 ◼ ► plant that's been open since 2013. Here we are, and it's controversial. It's, you know,
01:13:52 ◼ ► know, guy, I don't review products. So I've never like tried to ask them, like, you know,
01:13:57 ◼ ► what's what, what are you going to do about about your next phone? And then and then they
01:14:01 ◼ ► tell you no. But you know, when I've had to ask them about like tax stuff, you know, like
01:14:06 ◼ ► any company like they've got their line they've got their spin like if you want to know like
01:14:11 ◼ ► what's the deal with blah blah blah you know stuff that's in their records and I just don't happen to
01:14:17 ◼ ► know how to dig it up but they just say it you know like it's fine it's company it's reporting
01:14:22 ◼ ► and it's it's truly odd to go into full no comment mode not to avoid some embarrassment to the
01:14:30 ◼ ► company but to avoid an embarrassment to the president of the United States yes like that's
01:14:47 ◼ ► It's I shouldn't even have to say this but it's this is the nature of Trump being Trump and it is not a left-right divide
01:15:12 ◼ ► It just never would have occurred to me that there'd be a moment where Apple this Apple stuff that I write about would involve the company
01:15:26 ◼ ► Yeah, here we are. I mean it shows how Trump also inserts himself into every walk of life in a
01:15:36 ◼ ► Reading daring fireball for a long time. I'm really excited to be on here, but it's also
01:15:52 ◼ ► Apple wants to make a new high-end desktop computer right like that should be a pretty niche II
01:16:00 ◼ ► Technology story that you know, frankly like even most people who care a lot about computers
01:16:09 ◼ ► Meddling with with everything. It's like it's depressing. I like I like to listen to a show like this for a respite
01:16:22 ◼ ► No, yeah, and there's no way to avoid it this week, sorry, I mean I'm not even apologizing for the
01:16:29 ◼ ► I mean, it's a couple people pointed out on Twitter like because they know my feelings on trumpet
01:16:42 ◼ ► Unfortunately, no, like you'd like to think that it's a story where it's like this is a story
01:16:47 ◼ ► I love to write about and talk about because it's right in the middle. It's like the John Gruber bullseye. This is great
01:16:56 ◼ ► there's this you have to write about this because it's in the dead center of Venn diagram of your
01:17:00 ◼ ► interests but not in a good way anyway let me take a break here and thank our next sponsor
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01:19:06 ◼ ► talk show. Here's the thing I thought of in my notes, I don't take extensive notes before the
01:19:12 ◼ ► show, as you might guess. But it occurred to me thinking about it, I as an Apple observer,
01:19:20 ◼ ► I have remained over the last, I guess it's eight years now. studiously cautious and conservative
01:19:32 ◼ ► about playing the, this wouldn't have happened or would have happened differently. If Steve Jobs,
01:19:38 ◼ ► if Steve Jobs were still around. Because I don't think it's useful. I think most of the
01:19:45 ◼ ► speculation along those lines was proven terribly wrong over the last few years. You know, I mean,
01:19:51 ◼ ► you know, the gist of it was like circa 2013. Apple's going under because Steve Jobs is gone,
01:19:56 ◼ ► and they'll never make another new product and we'll soon forget about him. And that's obviously
01:20:00 ◼ ► not true. But it is very difficult for me to imagine Steve Jobs appearing alongside Trump.
01:20:17 ◼ ► I don't know what would have happened in the alternate world where Steve Jobs was still
01:20:37 ◼ ► tariffs, right? Like that doesn't sound out, you know, to get the exemptions to the tariffs.
01:20:47 ◼ ► perhaps be more willing to do than Tim Cook, I could be wrong. I could be completely wrong.
01:20:51 ◼ ► I cannot imagine him standing there and doing it and putting on a suit and tie. I don't
01:21:10 ◼ ► just think about how fast things have changed remember who was on the other side of him
01:21:13 ◼ ► at the time like on Trump's left was Tim Cook and on his right was Jeff Bezos really hard
01:21:25 ◼ ► on the Washington Post. Who knows maybe if in the world where Steve Jobs was still around
01:21:31 ◼ ► and Tim Cook was still the CEO, it still would have been Tim Cook showing up in the way that
01:21:38 ◼ ► Steve Jobs even while CEO very rarely appeared on those quarterly analyst calls. It was Tim
01:21:45 ◼ ► Cook who handled it as you know, his CEO, Lieutenant, because it just wasn't Steve Jobs
01:21:50 ◼ ► his bag to talk the talk that analysts want to hear. So maybe it would have been but that
01:21:56 ◼ ► gets to your point about Trump being so sensitive to perceived slights and how things play.
01:22:05 ◼ ► it seems, you know, jobs is not the time to be as cagey as Tim Cook, right? I mean, the
01:22:45 ◼ ► kind of thing. And it's, it's, it's hard to imagine him being sort of half in public view
01:23:22 ◼ ► And they are apparently, he's apparently one of the closest members of the board to Steve
01:23:32 ◼ ► I just can't see it and letting Trump blather on and, you know, attract all the attention
01:23:39 ◼ ► You know, Tim Cook is obviously willing to be the quiet person, you know, right? What was the phrase?
01:23:47 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean could you jobs are not be the the second banana in any no relationship, right?
01:24:01 ◼ ► I don't know if I often get confused about the this seems like something that I should understand but I get I get confused by
01:24:09 ◼ ► the difference between strategy and tactics. But it was, I think it was both a strategy
01:24:15 ◼ ► and a tactic. But Steve Jobs had a thing where if he came into a room, he immediately asserted
01:24:28 ◼ ► what it was called. I had a code name at the time. But the guy who invented the segue had
01:24:38 ◼ ► you know, Jeff Bezos was there. And I forget who else was there. But Steve Jobs was one of the
01:24:41 ◼ ► people who was there. And Steve Jobs just comes in the room, took a look at it and say, this is
01:24:44 ◼ ► garbage and add like three things right off the bat. Like, there's another story. You know, this,
01:24:51 ◼ ► that's a room full of people, right? And he just wanted to assert that he was Steve. But you know,
01:24:55 ◼ ► if you read the story about I'll try, I'll try to remember to put it in the show notes,
01:24:58 ◼ ► his criticism of it was actually spot on. And his like, your idea that people are going to ride
01:25:03 ◼ ► around cities in this things, you're, you're, you're an idiot, that's never going to happen,
01:25:06 ◼ ► because of x, y and z. And of course, we live in a world today where electronic scooters and things
01:25:11 ◼ ► have become a much bigger turn. So there was he was on to something but the segue itself
01:25:16 ◼ ► never really took off in that way. I think that all of them are in use in malls, shopping malls
01:25:19 ◼ ► and Epcot center. You know, I think everyone riding one is a although I guess here in Philly,
01:25:33 ◼ ► segue tours. But yeah, it's a it's a niche. It never, it never changed the world. Yeah.
01:25:42 ◼ ► there's a whole bunch of them. But one time he met an executive from ESPN, or Disney or something
01:25:47 ◼ ► like that might have been like, after the pics, you know, sale of Pixar to Disney. And he met a
01:25:53 ◼ ► guy from ESPN, and ESPN had just come out. It was you know, this is before the iPhone. This is like
01:26:27 ◼ ► introduces himself to the guy. He's not like, Hey, nice to meet you. By the way, let me
01:26:32 ◼ ► taste on that phone. You guys mean kind of stinks. He just goes, your phone fucking sucks.
01:26:35 ◼ ► It's like he just asserts dominance, right? It's hard to imagine him being in a room with
01:26:45 ◼ ► of trying to, you know, assert dominance over each other. Yeah. I had this observation.
01:26:54 ◼ ► So Tim Cook, I think another adjective that you would describe Tim Cook as is diplomatic.
01:27:11 ◼ ► at the end, not bizarre if you follow Trump, but bizarre for the occasion rant about the
01:27:53 ◼ ► Getting elected and being president which are two different things very different things
01:28:05 ◼ ► Part of the job and Trump has just completely blown that up. So now now we've got a CEO of Apple who's a
01:28:32 ◼ ► Position right? I mean because you do have to deal with him. I mean any CEO of a big company
01:28:38 ◼ ► Needs to needs to navigate in a world where the president of the United States, you know exists
01:28:48 ◼ ► And normally, normally you wouldn't normally you wouldn't have a president push the envelope
01:29:23 ◼ ► was, was, was willing to back down, you know, he wasn't going to say, No, you're wrong,
01:29:29 ◼ ► And like, you could imagine, like, would Trump really like, go to town with them on tariffs
01:29:36 ◼ ► And you know, it's, it's good that Jeff Bezos has not, you know, curtailed The Washington
01:29:40 ◼ ► post in response to any number of the two pretty tweets from Trump and even suggestions
01:29:51 ◼ ► You know, it's really important for the world that, you know, people have some kind of backbone
01:30:05 ◼ ► And if they can't put themselves out there a little bit for like basic truth, you know,
01:30:16 ◼ ► He's so convinced that Bezos, I mean, by all a point, you know, you'd know it better than
01:30:33 ◼ ► He's the owner of the Washington Post is truly it's truly hands off editorially that there
01:30:37 ◼ ► There are no accounts at all of any kind of, Hey, let's take it easy on the stories about
01:31:07 ◼ ► rely on the Washington Post as your only source of information about the company, amazon.com.
01:31:13 ◼ ► But like the idea that Jeff Bezos is like directing their coverage of the Trump administration,
01:31:33 ◼ ► ownership to further his own agenda and punish his enemies, real or perceived, he so can't
01:31:48 ◼ ► Because what kind of what kind of a billionaire wouldn't wouldn't use his newspaper that way?
01:31:59 ◼ ► Be a little loose with your money and have people say nice things about you because you're the patron of a great newspaper
01:32:53 ◼ ► I never would have occurred to me in a million years that it would be the other way around and it would be the president
01:33:09 ◼ ► Review episode that's that's what this one was about Oh to spend an entire podcast episode talking about this
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01:35:34 ◼ ► Yes, it looks. It looks like a like like a rendering from old like Star Fox. Yeah. Super
01:35:46 ◼ ► As soon as I saw it, it looked to me like a rough draft of a DeLorean. And then I found
01:35:53 ◼ ► out I actually found it it is in fact made with stainless steel. And that gives it some
01:36:04 ◼ ► But I love that it's original and looks like nothing else. Like I think one of my knocks against Tesla
01:36:11 ◼ ► Is that I don't think they've done anything truly innovative in the exterior design of cars
01:36:22 ◼ ► but for the most part they just sort of look a lot like all the other sedans of the same size class and
01:36:28 ◼ ► And there's certain things that they do that I think are starting to look old fashioned.
01:36:42 ◼ ► And then when they do something original, like put the the gull wings on their SUV crossover thing, it's just stupid.
01:37:09 ◼ ► Well, yeah, but look, as somebody who is not at all in the market for a truck, I'm excited
01:37:26 ◼ ► So apparently the demo went poorly where they were showing how incredibly, you know, Elon
01:37:34 ◼ ► You know, he's a showman, but he was there talking about sledgehammer against the door,
01:37:40 ◼ ► no damage and that the glass he wanted to say it's bulletproof and then he caught himself
01:37:44 ◼ ► and said almost bulletproof, you know, which is because bulletproof has a very specific
01:37:55 ◼ ► Yeah, the bullet goes through your window and you don't want to be well well it almost didn't take it
01:38:07 ◼ ► I get was supposed to show that it won't crack and instead it shattered right in the demo
01:38:23 ◼ ► Yeah. But I also feel like he keeps promising things that don't actually like happen. Yeah,
01:38:30 ◼ ► totally. Like when were you supposed to like have a Mars colony soon? Yeah, but maybe his
01:38:36 ◼ ► optimism on that front. Like I'm not a huge Elon Musk supporter, but I'm glad he's there.
01:38:45 ◼ ► people who listen to the show who are bigger fans of him than me. I know that there's a
01:38:57 ◼ ► they got Steve Jobs when they bought next. And it is interesting. You know, I bring this
01:39:06 ◼ ► this description of Tim Cook being very cautious and have sort of very different person than
01:39:12 ◼ ► Steve Jobs. Whereas Elon Musk is the closest thing we have to a Steve Jobs like character,
01:39:33 ◼ ► And it benefits from having notwithstanding everything we've been saying about Jim Cook
01:40:10 ◼ ► blue computers. Whoa, right. And now it's like, you know, I think the boring thing gets
01:40:16 ◼ ► overstated sometimes, but it's very competent. And it's very mature. We know there's going to be a
01:40:21 ◼ ► new phone every year, right? So I'm not like, holy shit, they made a new phone. Yeah, it's obvious.
01:40:26 ◼ ► Yeah, my favorite example, well, not maybe not the best example. But I know one example of that was
01:40:31 ◼ ► iMessage, where they were unveiling iMessage for the first time, I forget what year it was, but you
01:40:37 ◼ ► know, early on in the phone. And apparently what happened is during the keynote rehearsals,
01:40:44 ◼ ► jobs hit upon the idea of well, let's open source this thing. And yeah, so then you just
01:40:51 ◼ ► I don't know if we can do that. And then he just said it. He'd said it on stage that we're
01:40:55 ◼ ► opening the whole thing. It's, you know, we're sending it to the standard bodies and whatever.
01:41:00 ◼ ► And I know for a fact that people who worked on the iMessage team, that was the first they
01:41:04 ◼ ► heard about it and they were like, "Did you feel that? What happened?" And they're like,
01:41:06 ◼ ► "We can't do that." And they're thinking about the parts of the code that can't be licensed,
01:41:11 ◼ ► can't be literally not just legally couldn't be open source, that there were patent protected
01:41:21 ◼ ► Yeah, it never happened. Never happened. Yeah. That's not going to happen with Tim Cook.
01:41:25 ◼ ► That is never going to happen with Tim Cook, where he's going to impetuously decide to open
01:41:31 ◼ ► source of major technology on, you know, 48 hours before a keynote and not tell the team or double
01:41:37 ◼ ► check that it's even possible. This is not going to happen. And they hit their deadlines, right?
01:41:41 ◼ ► I mean, that's like, you know, he's the logistics guy, he runs the company, it's big. We don't have
01:41:46 ◼ ► this like, when is there going to be a new Mac OS? So we had, they had to delay it because they
01:41:52 ◼ ► needed engineers to do the phone at one point. You know, and that's, but it was from a coverage
01:41:59 ◼ ► perspective more more entertaining. And Tesla is a very fun company, right? Yeah, it's a
01:42:11 ◼ ► way more entertaining than having it go well. Right. So right, you know, good for them.
01:42:15 ◼ ► Well, and Apple used to have demos fail much more regularly in the Steve Jobs era, because
01:42:20 ◼ ► I think they were more aggressive about them. And I was just talking to I think Joanna Stern
01:42:25 ◼ ► about it recently. I think it was Joanna when she was on. And it was before her time in
01:42:38 ◼ ► out on stage and jobs just didn't work. And jobs came back and was like asking the media
01:42:45 ◼ ► like he's like, you know why I my my people told me why it's because there's 587 hotspots
01:42:50 ◼ ► in this room right now shut them all down. If you're out there and you see someone with
01:42:54 ◼ ► it shut it down and it's like way off script. Right. And it was kind of scary to see angry
01:43:07 ◼ ► press area. And everybody still has the keyboards open. Everybody's nobody. Now I don't think
01:43:12 ◼ ► one person did the media close their laptop because they're all you know, either taking
01:43:16 ◼ ► notes or live blogging. It just didn't happen. But you know, now Yeah, it's been a long time
01:43:21 ◼ ► since they've had a demo fail. I think the riskiest one that they've done in recent years
01:43:24 ◼ ► was the when they introduced the cellular Apple watch. Do you remember this one? And they had the
01:43:31 ◼ ► woman out standing in it on a canoe in the middle of a lake with an ad like a super telephoto lens
01:43:37 ◼ ► to get her on camera. And she took a call from Jeff Williams live during the keynote on her
01:43:43 ◼ ► Apple watch while she was in the middle of a lake. But you gotta bet she'd been out on that lake like
01:43:48 ◼ ► for a month. She's living in the middle of the lake. People right. I mean, you know, it's very,
01:43:56 ◼ ► it just, it just seemed like in addition to the possible possibility of a technology failure,
01:44:02 ◼ ► that there was the possibility of a balance failure and she falls into the lake, you know,
01:44:06 ◼ ► it was bad weather. Yeah, bad weather. You can't be out there if there's lightning, you know,
01:44:11 ◼ ► it's there was there was but you we never know like what was what was plan F. You know,
01:44:26 ◼ ► Oh yeah, the vape. So this is right. So there, I, this is, I can tell I've become old because
01:44:33 ◼ ► I didn't even know there were vape apps. No, me neither. This is like, Oh yeah, I'm totally,
01:45:45 ◼ ► you want me to always have a hundred percent black or a hundred percent white yes or no
01:45:51 ◼ ► take on every single thing. I am not the pundit to read or listen to. I feel like this one
01:45:58 ◼ ► is like a sports instant replay where it's like, Damn, I don't know if he's in inbounds
01:46:07 ◼ ► if it was against what you wanted or what you squinted the TV and see, I just feel like
01:46:17 ◼ ► know that there's a reasonable source saying it's way safer than smoking. And then there's
01:46:27 ◼ ► these mysterious 42 deaths are so mysterious that, you know, we really don't even understand
01:46:37 ◼ ► Isn't this actually what you would you want to have a government for? Right? Yes. companies
01:46:47 ◼ ► say to Congress or the FDA or something to be like, look, like, a lot of people are yelling
01:46:51 ◼ ► at me from both sides about this. And like, we don't care, right? Like we have no financial
01:46:56 ◼ ► stake in this. We legitimately just want to do the right thing. But we want someone else to tell us
01:47:01 ◼ ► what what that is. Right? This is we have an FDA actually, for for a reason, right? And they should
01:47:10 ◼ ► make a decision. Yeah. And it's like, I get I get the argument that you know, one political party is
01:47:21 ◼ ► eased and wants to minimize the number of them. And that the other side maybe is a little
01:47:28 ◼ ► more public policy focused and is a little bit more prone to more and tighter regulations.
01:47:35 ◼ ► I get that argument. That's what the political process is supposed to iron out. And you should,
01:47:40 ◼ ► you know, in the long run, achieve a balance because if one side goes too far, the other
01:47:45 ◼ ► the public opinion should shift in the other party's favor. That's the way it's supposed
01:47:48 ◼ ► to work. But the FDA in particular, like along with the, like the national highway standards
01:48:01 ◼ ► highest possible chance known to man of surviving a car accident should not be a political issue
01:48:08 ◼ ► that it's like a triumph of engineering the way that you know, the accidents that people
01:48:50 ◼ ► And it's bizarrely, also a Trump issue, because weeks ago, Trump had latched on this, and
01:48:57 ◼ ► apparently at the behest of his wife and daughter had come out as in as wanting to ban and I
01:49:10 ◼ ► The FDA has this regulatory authority over tobacco and right the 2009 law so they could have banned it
01:49:29 ◼ ► Frankly idiotic lobbying pushback which showed him like polling that like all these single issue vape voters, right?
01:49:37 ◼ ► It was like out there. I'm gonna turn against him. I bet that gets it. I don't know. It's a technical issue
01:49:55 ◼ ► Scientists and the public health people to take a take a look at it and what Trump's initial idea that the flavored ones
01:50:02 ◼ ► You know really target a new market of teens. I mean that sounded reasonable to me it does to me
01:50:12 ◼ ► But this really is what we have regulatory agencies for and this seems strange for me for Apple to jump the gun
01:50:30 ◼ ► Nobody was quite pushing for it and it seems like the deaths are maybe related to like unreliable use of the mechanisms and black market
01:50:42 ◼ ► And I don't know why they exactly felt they had to like dive into it. Yeah, and it's far more controversial
01:50:48 ◼ ► We're not talking about where you and I aren't talking about vape at all, let alone Apple's
01:51:46 ◼ ► say, of course they are, you know, it, the numbers are crazy. Well, the numbers are crazy.
01:51:56 ◼ ► pretty reputable and does, you know, regarded as a good pollster, that 2016, it was like
01:52:08 ◼ ► was 27%. So going from 13 to 27% in two years, is rather stunning. I mean, that's, that's
01:52:26 ◼ ► And I'm betting that the numbers there's never been a two year period where the number of
01:52:30 ◼ ► 12th graders who've consumed alcohol in the last 30 years has doubled or halved, you know,
01:52:37 ◼ ► Yeah, you know, you know, marijuana is obviously getting more popular as it becomes legal and
01:52:42 ◼ ► more places across the country and is therefore easier to obtain and our society has more of a
01:52:46 ◼ ► hands off approach to it a decriminalization if not outright legalization, etc. So of course,
01:52:53 ◼ ► that's going up but not doubling in two years, you know, and alcohol is, you know, rather steady and
01:52:58 ◼ ► it's a known, you know, it's around, right? It whereas vaping is this phenomenon. And I feel like
01:53:04 ◼ ► the phenomenal nature of it is partly what drove Apple to say, let's just wash our hands of it for
01:53:50 ◼ ► I mean, the whole vaping policy issue is like larger, but it's, it's interesting where a
01:54:01 ◼ ► And the other thing that I think is really I'm very sensitive to it and hope that Apple
01:54:05 ◼ ► if they start walking this back to make some specific exemptions, I really hope that that
01:54:10 ◼ ► the hardware control angle where your people use these apps like the ones from packs, who
01:54:16 ◼ ► is apparently a top manufacturer, you can use the app to actually control the temperature
01:54:20 ◼ ► and whatever else and like verify, you know, you said verify the pods or whatever you put
01:54:26 ◼ ► in the thing, I don't know. But what you can verify that it's a legit pod containing legit
01:54:31 ◼ ► vaping source material. And apparently a lot of the problems that health problems people
01:54:35 ◼ ► have is with black market canisters or, you know, anyway, there's no way for the company
01:54:42 ◼ ► like that to work around the lack of an app. Because like if you take away all of the porno
01:54:49 ◼ ► apps, you can just go to Safari and get all of your pornography there. You know, you can
01:55:03 ◼ ► it. Whereas if you want to control your, your little vaping device, it has to be through
01:55:09 ◼ ► the app. And so I feel like that makes a difference. You know, in the HK maps live story from a
01:55:15 ◼ ► few weeks ago, again, tying multiple threads together here at the end of the show, Apple
01:55:19 ◼ ► in China, one of the reasons I know I've talked to people at Apple off the record about it,
01:55:25 ◼ ► they definitely you know, one of the considerations that they took on this was that anybody with
01:55:33 ◼ ► to bookmark it as a app on your home screen. The experience of doing that is almost almost
01:55:40 ◼ ► if not completely indistinguishable from the HK Maps app that was in the App Store because
01:55:45 ◼ ► the HK Maps app was really just a very thin wrapper around the website. And if anything,
01:55:54 ◼ ► first place is because they actually have a long standing rule that if your app is just
01:55:58 ◼ ► a wrapper around a website, it shouldn't be in the App Store. You should just let people use the
01:56:02 ◼ ► website. Right, right. There's no there's no substitute for this. There's no there's no
01:56:07 ◼ ► workaround. So but but yeah, right. But there is. So anyway, I hope we'll see how that plays out.
01:56:23 ◼ ► That's always a good sign you've podcasted for a long time. There we go. Matthew Iglesias,
01:56:29 ◼ ► everybody can see your work at Vox.com, where I believe you're like a co founder. You're,
01:56:33 ◼ ► you're, you know, if anything, yeah, and you've been writing about my own podcast called the
01:56:38 ◼ ► weeds, the weeds, but it's not about we know, it's about it's about public public policy weeds.
01:56:44 ◼ ► There's an entire one of the things I found in the App Store in terms of like, what's allowed,
01:56:51 ◼ ► and what's not allowed is there's an entire sub genre of games where if you search for weed baron,
01:56:55 ◼ ► where it's like your goal, it's like, you know, you run this, it's iPhone games. I mean,
01:57:00 ◼ ► it's a category where you are buying and selling marijuana and, you know, but they call it weed,
01:57:06 ◼ ► I guess to keep it legal. Not not your podcast. The weeds is very different than the weed.
01:57:18 ◼ ► Yeah. Can I tell you this? Can I just I want to say I can't let the show end without saying that I
01:57:22 ◼ ► I've been following your work forever. I mean, long, long time. I mean, just I know that we've
01:57:27 ◼ ► sort of came about came up at the same time in the early 2000s. In the early days of blogging,
01:57:33 ◼ ► you know, you were blogging at matty glacius.com. I believe back in the day, there you go. It was,
01:57:38 ◼ ► you know, one of my daily daily bookmarks top top three, four sites of the time of the era.
01:57:45 ◼ ► Ever since Twitter, though, every time I see your Twitter handle, and I know your name,