The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Dan Fromer, I think it's been a while

00:00:01 ◼   ► since you've been on the show.

00:00:02 ◼   ► - It has, thanks for having me back, always fun.

00:00:05 ◼   ► - We got an Apple event coming up next week.

00:00:09 ◼   ► We're recording on Friday, the 6th of September.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Tuesday is the event out in California.

00:00:16 ◼   ► We can talk about that, obviously.

00:00:20 ◼   ► We've got other stuff to talk about.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Why don't we just start though, by talking about you, Dan.

00:00:25 ◼   ► - Oh sure, all right, let's do it.

00:00:26 ◼   ► - You've bounced around, you've left.

00:00:28 ◼   ► You were at Recode for a while.

00:00:30 ◼   ► You were editor-in-chief.

00:00:31 ◼   ► What were you at at Recode?

00:00:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, editor-in-chief for about two and a half years

00:00:36 ◼   ► until end of last year, late last year.

00:00:39 ◼   ► - Now you're on your own again, which makes me happy.

00:00:43 ◼   ► Makes me feel like I'm less alone.

00:00:45 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've always admired and yearned

00:00:51 ◼   ► for the indie publisher lifestyle.

00:00:53 ◼   ► And those who've heard me on this show before

00:00:57 ◼   ► may remember, what was it, eight years ago,

00:01:01 ◼   ► I started an indie site called Splat F,

00:01:04 ◼   ► which was covering Apple and the greater Apple ecosystem.

00:01:08 ◼   ► But that was during the era of banner ads

00:01:13 ◼   ► and it proved not to be a great business model

00:01:17 ◼   ► for a small indie publication,

00:01:21 ◼   ► even one with a really high-end audience.

00:01:23 ◼   ► And so I had some really amazing job opportunities

00:01:28 ◼   ► that I ended up taking for basically six years.

00:01:32 ◼   ► And in the meantime, the subscription model

00:01:38 ◼   ► has really taken off.

00:01:39 ◼   ► I give all credit to, I think, I'm pretty sure

00:01:43 ◼   ► in all industries, not just tech, but Ben Thompson

00:01:46 ◼   ► is really the one with Stratechery who was just

00:01:49 ◼   ► kind of getting started as I was kind of shutting down Splat F.

00:01:54 ◼   ► But this model of charging people $100 or $200 or $300

00:01:59 ◼   ► a year for access to, in theory, a newsletter, but also

00:02:04 ◼   ► a website, and probably much more, has really taken off,

00:02:09 ◼   ► especially for things that are professionally oriented,

00:02:14 ◼   ► that people can expense to their business,

00:02:18 ◼   ► or at least right off their taxes.

00:02:20 ◼   ► And so I started one.

00:02:22 ◼   ► I left Recode end of last year

00:02:25 ◼   ► and beginning of this year started something

00:02:28 ◼   ► called The New Consumer,

00:02:29 ◼   ► which you can find out at newconsumer.com.

00:02:32 ◼   ► It takes my almost 15 years as a journalist

00:02:38 ◼   ► covering technology and applies those lessons

00:02:42 ◼   ► to kind of the field that I'm most interested in personally,

00:02:44 ◼   ► which is consumer.

00:02:47 ◼   ► It's a golden era of e-commerce, a golden era of consumer.

00:02:50 ◼   ► You see all these new direct-to-consumer brands launching.

00:02:53 ◼   ► You see big companies like Amazon taking over the world.

00:02:56 ◼   ► You see really interesting new brands,

00:03:01 ◼   ► many of which sponsor podcasts like this one.

00:03:03 ◼   ► - Very true.

00:03:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's very true.

00:03:07 ◼   ► Yeah, and many of them have been enabled by technology

00:03:10 ◼   ► in a way that earlier brands have not,

00:03:12 ◼   ► whether that is literally selling

00:03:14 ◼   ► a technology-based product or service or using technology and digital marketing as the way

00:03:22 ◼   ► that they attract their customers and even using technology culture to iterate on their

00:03:32 ◼   ► product.

00:03:33 ◼   ► Anyway, I launched the new consumer in March actually at the Apple event where I think

00:03:39 ◼   ► I sat next to you at the Apple services event and have been doing it since then. It's been

00:03:46 ◼   ► going great. It is designed for professionals. It's $200 a year, which gets you two emails

00:03:54 ◼   ► a week from me. The model is very similar to…

00:03:58 ◼   ► How much is it again?

00:04:01 ◼   ► It's $200 a year. For now, I only offer an annual membership. Part of that was to

00:04:09 ◼   ► get that money up front to almost as a Kickstarter for my business.

00:04:13 ◼   ► But, uh, you know, I, I am,

00:04:15 ◼   ► I'm an ambitious person and I see it over time as being much more than just a

00:04:19 ◼   ► newsletter, um, you know, and,

00:04:21 ◼   ► and a membership at a community that I really want people who are focused on

00:04:25 ◼   ► the big picture in the longterm to be a part of. So I might, um, you know,

00:04:31 ◼   ► Ben, Ben and many others, it's funny,

00:04:33 ◼   ► I subscribed to probably four or five of these now. Um, you know,

00:04:36 ◼   ► I'm sure many of the listeners to this show know about

00:04:39 ◼   ► Above Avalon from Neil Seibart,

00:04:41 ◼   ► which is a really great Apple kind of financial--

00:04:44 ◼   ► - Investor focused.

00:04:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, investor focused financial analysis of Apple

00:04:48 ◼   ► and also the tech world through the lens of Apple.

00:04:51 ◼   ► But there's a great one that I get by Jon Ostrower

00:04:55 ◼   ► covering the aviation industry.

00:04:57 ◼   ► There's a bunch of them.

00:05:00 ◼   ► I guess the athletic is kind of,

00:05:03 ◼   ► the athletic is like a consumer version of this, right?

00:05:05 ◼   ► covering sports, it's less expensive.

00:05:08 ◼   ► Few people are expensing the athletic.

00:05:10 ◼   ► I am because I write about the media industry,

00:05:13 ◼   ► but most people are not expensing the athletic.

00:05:15 ◼   ► And of course the model is do some free articles

00:05:19 ◼   ► here and there.

00:05:20 ◼   ► I would love to get to the pace of doing one free article

00:05:24 ◼   ► a week in addition to the two paid ones

00:05:27 ◼   ► and try to do something that no one else is doing.

00:05:30 ◼   ► So it's not, I'm not writing straight news articles.

00:05:35 ◼   ► I'm doing analysis, I'm doing commentary,

00:05:38 ◼   ► I'm following up.

00:05:41 ◼   ► So it's so interesting how you can just follow up

00:05:44 ◼   ► on something and be the only person

00:05:46 ◼   ► who's following up on something.

00:05:48 ◼   ► Companies make these big announcements all the time

00:05:50 ◼   ► and a lot of them don't really work out

00:05:53 ◼   ► or work out differently than people imagine.

00:05:55 ◼   ► So I try to focus on the why and the how.

00:05:59 ◼   ► And it's a lot about e-commerce.

00:06:02 ◼   ► The tag is kind of a publication about how and why people spend their time and money.

00:06:11 ◼   ► Almost six months in, it's great.

00:06:12 ◼   ► I love it.

00:06:13 ◼   ► I'm sticking with it.

00:06:15 ◼   ► The caliber of the membership is really fantastic.

00:06:18 ◼   ► I really believe in the model.

00:06:21 ◼   ► And it's perfect for someone like me who really wants to control all aspects of the

00:06:27 ◼   ► publication and the business.

00:06:28 ◼   ► I designed the WordPress template myself.

00:06:31 ◼   ► I made the logo, I love doing all that sort of stuff.

00:06:34 ◼   ► I wish I had--

00:06:35 ◼   ► - You're a man after my own heart.

00:06:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I wish I had more time to make the charts

00:06:42 ◼   ► and do all that stuff, but part of it is just

00:06:44 ◼   ► the craziness of, and really the opportunity to do all of it

00:06:48 ◼   ► and I love this model, I love seeing people jump into it

00:06:53 ◼   ► and it's been really great so far.

00:06:55 ◼   ► - We are of a, like when we look back on it,

00:07:01 ◼   ► It's like, all right, me, I have an interesting,

00:07:05 ◼   ► I've carved out an interesting career,

00:07:07 ◼   ► but I have not bounced around.

00:07:10 ◼   ► Somehow I made it work

00:07:13 ◼   ► and then I just keep doing the same thing.

00:07:15 ◼   ► But I'm keenly tuned in to what's going on

00:07:21 ◼   ► with solo practitioners, for lack of a better word,

00:07:25 ◼   ► like you and Ben and Jason Kottke.

00:07:29 ◼   ► But also, just the whole media landscape,

00:07:33 ◼   ► like the people who you and I would consider peers,

00:07:37 ◼   ► roughly of our rough generation,

00:07:40 ◼   ► like what a crazy period to be in the media, right?

00:07:45 ◼   ► Like it's so different

00:07:48 ◼   ► from just when Daring Fireball started in 2002.

00:07:51 ◼   ► And some of the new sites,

00:07:52 ◼   ► places like Recode and The Verge

00:07:57 ◼   ► and all of the various Vox properties.

00:08:00 ◼   ► Like I love them and I spend an awful lot of time.

00:08:03 ◼   ► I mean, anybody who reads "Daring Fireball"

00:08:05 ◼   ► knows how often I wind up linking to Recode

00:08:08 ◼   ► and Buzzfeed News and Vox.

00:08:10 ◼   ► And these are all pop publications that I don't think

00:08:13 ◼   ► any of the ones I just mentioned were around 10 years ago.

00:08:16 ◼   ► Maybe "The Verge," I forget when that happened.

00:08:18 ◼   ► But, and they're great.

00:08:22 ◼   ► And you know, and I know so many people,

00:08:27 ◼   ► and it's no quite, it's just the way careers go, but someone like John Patzkowski, who's one of the

00:08:31 ◼   ► great Apple beat writers, has been at both Buzzfeed News and at Recode, was previously at the, I think

00:08:39 ◼   ► he was at the Wall Street Journal, right? He was there with the…

00:08:41 ◼   ► Trenton Larkin He was part of All Things D,

00:08:43 ◼   ► which became Recode. So Recode in some ways is young, but also in some ways is almost 13 years

00:08:49 ◼   ► old. But it's just an interesting time. But there was a period there where I wouldn't say I was

00:08:56 ◼   ► depressed. But there was a period where the solo practitioners really seemed to be drying

00:09:04 ◼   ► up. And I really thought that, like when I made Daring Fireball work, I thought, "This

00:09:09 ◼   ► is the future and there's going to be so many people doing this." And then I just happened

00:09:14 ◼   ► to have a leg up by a few years because in 2002, you still needed to be a bit of a web

00:09:22 ◼   ► developer to run your own website. And it was great that there were things like

00:09:26 ◼   ► movable type. But even just installing movable type was beyond the ken of somebody who didn't

00:09:33 ◼   ► have some kind of web development background. And then, I don't know, at some point it

00:09:38 ◼   ► seemed like it dried up, and now it really seems like it's back on the upswing. And

00:09:42 ◼   ► it's fascinating to me that it's not really through blogs. It's, like you just said,

00:09:48 ◼   ► largely or significantly through subscription newsletters. I hate to say it—I hope he

00:09:57 ◼   ► doesn't listen because he's on the show all the time—but Ben Thompson has done an

00:10:01 ◼   ► amazing job. And truly, I marvel at his output. He's a machine in terms of getting his daily

00:10:11 ◼   ► updates out and getting his free to the public to read, call him out every Tuesday. I think

00:10:18 ◼   ► Tuesdays is when his free one drops. I mean, week after week after week.

00:10:23 ◼   ► Trenton Larkin Yeah. Like scary consistency.

00:10:27 ◼   ► And it's always good too. It's, you know, it's obviously jealousy inducing, but also an inspiration.

00:10:35 ◼   ► And, um, you know, and, and by the way, not everyone can keep that pace up or even,

00:10:40 ◼   ► you know, my pace, um, you know, you see a lot of people starting newsletters and,

00:10:45 ◼   ► you know, even my free newsletter points party, which we're talking about that

00:10:49 ◼   ► later, but like, I haven't kept up with that nearly as much as I want to.

00:10:53 ◼   ► Um, but.

00:10:54 ◼   ► This model where you are, where your customers are literally, you know, the

00:11:00 ◼   ► people you're writing for and there's a direct two way relationship.

00:11:04 ◼   ► Um, I think it's great.

00:11:05 ◼   ► It really keeps me going.

00:11:07 ◼   ► I long to be as consistent as Ben.

00:11:11 ◼   ► And if I'm still doing this,

00:11:12 ◼   ► and I think he's been doing Stratechery now

00:11:15 ◼   ► for five or six years, and many of those full-time,

00:11:18 ◼   ► I would be so happy to be doing this in six or 10 years.

00:11:23 ◼   ► To me, it's amazing.

00:11:26 ◼   ► So huge credit to him, but also to you,

00:11:30 ◼   ► and everyone else who's doing this.

00:11:32 ◼   ► - The other thing that it plays into is,

00:11:34 ◼   ► And there was a talk that Merlin Mann and I, like a,

00:11:37 ◼   ► I don't know, God, it must have been like 2006 or 2007

00:11:42 ◼   ► at South by Southwest.

00:11:44 ◼   ► People still watch it all the time.

00:11:45 ◼   ► I think it's evergreen content,

00:11:47 ◼   ► but we're just talking about it and it's--

00:11:50 ◼   ► - I think I was there live.

00:11:51 ◼   ► - You might've been.

00:11:52 ◼   ► I think you might've been.

00:11:54 ◼   ► But then it was Merlin's point more than mine,

00:11:57 ◼   ► but it was more or less just finding your passion

00:12:02 ◼   ► and pursuing it.

00:12:04 ◼   ► I don't know, I'll find it for the show notes,

00:12:07 ◼   ► but it's always exciting and interesting

00:12:11 ◼   ► and very obvious to me when somebody is writing

00:12:14 ◼   ► about what they're passionate about.

00:12:17 ◼   ► Where, you know, like the worst is like going back to school

00:12:22 ◼   ► and like I, you know, I've turned out to be a quote unquote

00:12:28 ◼   ► professional writer and people seem to be a fan

00:12:30 ◼   ► of my writing, and sometimes I feel like I'm actually doing it pretty well. But I think

00:12:36 ◼   ► if you went back and read a lot of my stuff in high school that I handed in as assignments,

00:12:39 ◼   ► it was dreadfully dull because I was bored out of my mind. That's the worst. And sometimes

00:12:45 ◼   ► even when you're reading a newspaper or something, you can just kind of tell that

00:12:49 ◼   ► whoever wrote this, it's homework to them. And I think the opposite when you can find

00:12:55 ◼   ► writing about something that if money were no object, if they were independently wealthy,

00:13:02 ◼   ► they'd still want to be writing about blank. And as the reader, that passion,

00:13:08 ◼   ► it's just this symbiotic relationship where you want to read more from this person and the person

00:13:15 ◼   ► writing it wants to keep writing it because they've got this obsession. I think the way

00:13:20 ◼   ► Merlin put it was obsession times voice.

00:13:22 ◼   ► That's great. Yeah, exactly. To your earlier point, I think newsletters make it easy for

00:13:29 ◼   ► two reasons. One is it's very easy to set up a paywall for a newsletter that works.

00:13:36 ◼   ► You sign up once and you just get the email. Yes, there's a website that you can log into

00:13:43 ◼   ► and Memberful, the service that I use and that Ben uses and Jason Snell uses and Kottke

00:13:51 ◼   ► uses, it actually does a pretty good job at keeping you logged in.

00:13:54 ◼   ► However, guess what?

00:13:57 ◼   ► Everybody still reads their email and if your goal is to be essential to someone's professional

00:14:02 ◼   ► life, you better be in their email.

00:14:08 ◼   ► Of course, there will be a point where people are getting too much email and too many newsletters

00:14:11 ◼   ► and I've probably unsubscribed from a few,

00:14:15 ◼   ► even from people I like.

00:14:16 ◼   ► But right now it's working

00:14:18 ◼   ► and I love seeing Substack and other services

00:14:23 ◼   ► get investment and become popular.

00:14:27 ◼   ► To me it's a really interesting,

00:14:28 ◼   ► really great time as you say.

00:14:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, and Snell's,

00:14:33 ◼   ► I don't think Kottke charges for his newsletter,

00:14:35 ◼   ► but like the Six Colors model that Jason Snell has carved out

00:14:38 ◼   ► is sort of a hybrid model where there's a, you know, just a traditional blog with sponsors

00:14:45 ◼   ► and, you know, content daily and links and original articles. And, uh, but also a members,

00:14:54 ◼   ► members only program that gets you something like a exclusive to the members paying members

00:15:00 ◼   ► weekly newsletter, you know, and that hybrid model. I, I've always, I probably don't try

00:15:05 ◼   ► enough things. As I teeter towards old age, I was more successful in the early days of

00:15:12 ◼   ► Daring Fireball when I would just try stuff. I tried the membership thing way back when

00:15:18 ◼   ► I first went full-time with Daring Fireball in 2006. I figured there had to be something—I

00:15:24 ◼   ► don't want to repeat myself because I've spoken about this before—but my idea wasn't

00:15:28 ◼   ► to have original exclusive content. It was that what I call link list entries, which

00:15:39 ◼   ► is funny because it's like 90% of what I do now during fireball like that. That was the

00:15:43 ◼   ► new thing. Like for the first two years, all I had were the full articles, like the columns,

00:15:47 ◼   ► two or three a week. And then I thought, well, there's always a couple of little things I'd

00:15:51 ◼   ► like to link to, but I don't want to write a full article about it. And then I thought,

00:15:54 ◼   ► Well, what I could do is I could charge people members and they'd get an exclusive RSS feed

00:16:05 ◼   ► that would have the links as I posted them. And 24 hours after I posted each one, it would

00:16:11 ◼   ► go up on the website for everybody to see free of charge. So if you wanted to follow

00:16:15 ◼   ► what I linked to as I wrote it, you'd have to have the RSS feed. That didn't really work

00:16:21 ◼   ► out and then I switched to, I thought, just for technical reasons, basically because Google

00:16:26 ◼   ► Reader didn't work with subscription only RSS feeds or private RSS feeds. That's when

00:16:32 ◼   ► I came up with the idea for sponsorship for the RSS feed, which is basically how I feed

00:16:37 ◼   ► my family for the last—how I fed my family for the last 13 years.

00:16:42 ◼   ► But anyway, I think that's great. I talked about it last week on my show with Brent Simmons,

00:16:48 ◼   ► I think that the resurgence of newsletters, it goes hand in hand with a bit of the resurgence

00:16:54 ◼   ► of interest in RSS readers. Because I think that there's just a, a pleasure in the reading

00:17:05 ◼   ► experience where if I sign up for the new consumer, when a new issue comes into my email

00:17:12 ◼   ► box, I see it, I know exactly what it's going to be. And when I click on it or tap on it,

00:17:17 ◼   ► depending on what device I am.

00:17:19 ◼   ► There it is.

00:17:20 ◼   ► And it is nicely, it looks nice.

00:17:22 ◼   ► It is ready for me to read and I can start scrolling.

00:17:24 ◼   ► And there's nothing, no pop-ups come up telling me

00:17:28 ◼   ► that there's a fricking cookie policy

00:17:30 ◼   ► and I've got to say it, I'm okay with this.

00:17:33 ◼   ► There's no pop-up that comes up covering the content,

00:17:36 ◼   ► telling me I have to log in again,

00:17:38 ◼   ► like the goddamn Wall Street Journal,

00:17:40 ◼   ► which I pay a fortune for, right?

00:17:42 ◼   ► Like it makes it, reading stuff on the web that's paid

00:17:45 ◼   ► It's so annoying. It really is.

00:17:49 ◼   ► There's a Wall Street Journal in particular.

00:17:51 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know what the hell kind of cookie system

00:17:55 ◼   ► they have, but I get logged out of the Wall Street Journal

00:17:58 ◼   ► all the time and I pay, it's like probably one of my most,

00:18:01 ◼   ► if not the most expensive subscription I have.

00:18:04 ◼   ► It's ridiculous.

00:18:05 ◼   ► Like you wouldn't put up with it in the real world.

00:18:08 ◼   ► Like imagine if you paid, you know, whatever, you know,

00:18:11 ◼   ► a couple hundred bucks a year,

00:18:13 ◼   ► which is I think what I pay for the Wall Street Journal

00:18:14 ◼   ► to be like a member of a club. And every time you show up at

00:18:19 ◼   ► the every other time you show up at the club, they're like, Who

00:18:21 ◼   ► are you? Yeah. And you have to like, you'd be like, show them

00:18:24 ◼   ► your ID, you got to like sign in, you got to type a password

00:18:27 ◼   ► or something like that. Like you'd never tolerate it. Whereas

00:18:30 ◼   ► like with RSS, and RSS still isn't great for in my opinion,

00:18:34 ◼   ► and I don't think it ever will be forced for paywall stuff for

00:18:37 ◼   ► subscription for member only stuff. But that like you said,

00:18:40 ◼   ► that's why email and newsletters are fantastic. Right? Like, I've

00:18:44 ◼   ► subscribed to Stereotecory for years. I've never once had to reenter my credentials. Every time

00:18:49 ◼   ► Ben publishes something, there it is in my email box, ready to read. And I think that that is a big

00:18:57 ◼   ► part of this resurgence in, in email, the like oldest of old parts of the internet,

00:19:02 ◼   ► which is it's so fascinating to me, right? Like just the oldest thing on the internet that's still

00:19:11 ◼   ► thriving and it's like still growing. And honestly, you know, and I'm, I know I'm one of

00:19:16 ◼   ► the rare people. I mean, you and I are among the rare people. Like I actually really, really care

00:19:21 ◼   ► about the reader experience. And, you know, side note, it's driving me crazy how hard it is to,

00:19:28 ◼   ► I have to mess with my MailChimp template and I just haven't done it yet. But, you know, even

00:19:33 ◼   ► working at, and Vox media was great about this, like Rico, the verge, the sites in our, in our

00:19:39 ◼   ► our networks, like they also highly prioritize the reader,

00:19:43 ◼   ► but you read half the sites nowadays and you have to find like

00:19:48 ◼   ► three or four modal little tiny X's or click off these,

00:19:52 ◼   ► these passive aggressive email,

00:19:55 ◼   ► pop-up forums that are increasingly like, no,

00:19:59 ◼   ► I don't want free stuff from you jerk. You know, that kind of stuff.

00:20:02 ◼   ► It's like the X is like a 50% gray X on a,

00:20:05 ◼   ► on a 25% gray box. It is like,

00:20:09 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:20:10 ◼   ► I don't wanna live like that.

00:20:11 ◼   ► So it's great to be able to have a medium and a site

00:20:16 ◼   ► where there are no pop-ups,

00:20:20 ◼   ► there's no, you don't have to click off anything.

00:20:23 ◼   ► The typography is nice, it's from New Zealand.

00:20:26 ◼   ► I picked it out specifically for you.

00:20:29 ◼   ► And I don't know, to me it just feels great.

00:20:33 ◼   ► - There's no ads that are creeping me out,

00:20:38 ◼   ► just trying to sell me pants with me.

00:20:40 ◼   ► - Just a picture of me trying to sell you a subscription.

00:20:43 ◼   ► - With me knowing that I just bought two pairs of pants

00:20:46 ◼   ► two days ago on a website and now every goddamn site I go to

00:20:49 ◼   ► is trying to sell me pants.

00:20:51 ◼   ► It's like, I just bought pants.

00:20:52 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:20:53 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

00:20:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, anyway.

00:20:56 ◼   ► - Anyway, newsletters.

00:20:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's been great and I'll be writing

00:21:00 ◼   ► about the iPhone next week, so.

00:21:02 ◼   ► Or I guess this week, whenever this drops, but.

00:21:06 ◼   ► - Well, let me take a break.

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00:23:16 ◼   ► What should we move on to? I guess we should cover this event before we run out of time.

00:23:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, nothing important, just the iPhone event.

00:23:28 ◼   ► - Just the biggest event of the year.

00:23:31 ◼   ► I don't know what the biggest event of the year.

00:23:33 ◼   ► For me personally, it's probably WWDC

00:23:35 ◼   ► 'cause I'm a little bit more on the software side.

00:23:38 ◼   ► I do my live show, which has turned into a big deal.

00:23:42 ◼   ► For the greater world, clearly the September iPhone event

00:23:49 ◼   ► is the bigger deal because it's hardware.

00:23:51 ◼   ► and financially for Apple it is because that's still,

00:23:55 ◼   ► that's still what the company is.

00:23:57 ◼   ► - And also kind of historically,

00:23:59 ◼   ► or at least in the last decade,

00:24:00 ◼   ► where they've also kind of had the,

00:24:04 ◼   ► where they've showed off the big new stuff,

00:24:07 ◼   ► like the Apple Watch and--

00:24:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, true.

00:24:10 ◼   ► It's also a little interesting though,

00:24:12 ◼   ► because they hold it at the Steve Jobs Theater,

00:24:15 ◼   ► which is bigger than,

00:24:16 ◼   ► for years they'd hold the iPhone event

00:24:21 ◼   ► at weird, or not weird places, but just various,

00:24:25 ◼   ► they couldn't hold it on Apple's campus

00:24:27 ◼   ► because the old town hall is way, way too small.

00:24:30 ◼   ► So they would hold it at places

00:24:32 ◼   ► like the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium.

00:24:34 ◼   ► I think the last few years, that's where they had it

00:24:36 ◼   ► before they opened the Steve Jobs Theater.

00:24:40 ◼   ► They used to hold it at the Yerba Buena Theater

00:24:46 ◼   ► right there on the same block as Moscone,

00:24:50 ◼   ► which was still, that was pretty tight.

00:24:52 ◼   ► But even the Steve Jobs Theater,

00:24:53 ◼   ► I forget how many people can fit in there,

00:24:55 ◼   ► but it's not huge.

00:24:56 ◼   ► Whereas the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium was humongous.

00:25:01 ◼   ► And WWDC's keynote is humongous,

00:25:05 ◼   ► just an enormous cavernous space.

00:25:09 ◼   ► So it's interesting to me,

00:25:11 ◼   ► just at a meta level, how tight seating is

00:25:17 ◼   ► and how a little bit,

00:25:18 ◼   ► I know more people in the media who get invited, you know, can get a press invitation to the

00:25:23 ◼   ► WWDC than the iPhone event just be. And it's simply a factor of how many, how many butts

00:25:30 ◼   ► they can fit in the theater. So anyway, what are we expecting next week? That's the other

00:25:34 ◼   ► weird thing about the September event is that there's often not much of a surprise other

00:25:39 ◼   ► than details. Like, and so it's weird because I'm fascinated by the details, but it's in

00:25:47 ◼   ► in a large sense, the press will all,

00:25:48 ◼   ► it seems to always like the mainstream press will usually

00:25:52 ◼   ► just say, well, this is everything, you know,

00:25:55 ◼   ► three new iPhones, that's what we expected, no surprises.

00:25:59 ◼   ► - Right, and gripe about pricing and something else.

00:26:04 ◼   ► But I think that we can start with the iPhones.

00:26:07 ◼   ► I mean, it seems like we pretty much know

00:26:12 ◼   ► what we're gonna get, right?

00:26:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I think yeah, pretty much. It sounds, you know, and I think, I think it's unavoidable

00:26:21 ◼   ► given the leakiness of the supply chain, basically. And we've known this for my or we think we've

00:26:28 ◼   ► known it, let's, you know, put it whenever we speak with certainty of what we know. Let's

00:26:33 ◼   ► just put an asterisk that says, we're 98% sure that we're just going to get successors

00:26:38 ◼   ► to what we got last year. So there'll be a new phone that's like the 10 are a new phone

00:26:42 ◼   ► like the 10 S and a new phone like the 10 S max with the a 13 chip and that the the

00:26:48 ◼   ► two 10 S successors are going to have three camera systems on the back, which is the big

00:26:54 ◼   ► physical change instead of two cameras. So it'll be a big square back there instead of

00:26:58 ◼   ► a Tylenol capsule shape thing. Um, and new colors apparently supposedly maybe, uh, I've

00:27:10 ◼   ► I've heard, I don't know if this, I don't know.

00:27:12 ◼   ► I forget if this leaked or not,

00:27:13 ◼   ► or if I only heard this through the fence

00:27:14 ◼   ► that there might, that the 10 S models,

00:27:17 ◼   ► which I think are gonna be called Pro iPhone 11 Pro,

00:27:21 ◼   ► I don't know, but that the iPhone 11 Pro

00:27:23 ◼   ► will be offered in a new color, like a blue.

00:27:26 ◼   ► I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what I heard.

00:27:28 ◼   ► So it'd be, so it'd be the white with the silver trim,

00:27:32 ◼   ► the black, of course, can't not have black, gold and blue.

00:27:37 ◼   ► I don't know if that's true or not.

00:27:40 ◼   ► New 10 are also correspond to a blue watch. I wonder and we could talk about the watch

00:27:47 ◼   ► later because I wonder, you know, there's, you know, we'll talk about this, but that

00:27:50 ◼   ► there's rumors that they're going to have titanium ceramic in addition to stainless

00:27:54 ◼   ► steel and aluminum. And I wonder, I mean, aluminum to me would be the easiest to tint.

00:28:01 ◼   ► I don't know that. I don't know if I guess they could do titanium in any color they want

00:28:05 ◼   ► ceramic. I guess they could do and I ceramic, I guess you could do any color under the sun

00:28:08 ◼   ► because you're not even coating it, like you just make the ceramic in the material.

00:28:12 ◼   ► But anyway, let's talk about watches later. The big thing that I'm most interested in

00:28:17 ◼   ► is the three camera system for the pro models. And the idea is that in addition to the two lenses

00:28:25 ◼   ► we have now, like the regular lens and the 2X "telephoto lens," which isn't really telephoto,

00:28:31 ◼   ► but I get why Apple calls it telephoto because it's zoomed in at its natural resolution,

00:28:36 ◼   ► that there'll be the third camera that they're adding will be a wide angle lens that's significantly

00:28:43 ◼   ► wider than the standard lens. So there'll be the new one, you know, there's still be the default

00:28:48 ◼   ► one, which is what everybody, which is kind of a wide angle lens. I think it's like a 28 millimeter

00:28:53 ◼   ► equivalent for 35 millimeter cameras. The telephoto, which is the equivalent of a 50

00:29:00 ◼   ► and then a wider angle lens, which at least in terms of the rumors, nobody knows exactly how

00:29:05 ◼   ► wide wider angle is. I think that's interesting because I'm a camera enthusiast. The thing

00:29:13 ◼   ► I'm most interested though is how the, and again, this is the sort of thing that at least

00:29:20 ◼   ► so far hasn't leaked at all and tends not to because I think that it, the, the iOS 13

00:29:28 ◼   ► that go out to the public don't have the code that you know there it's a different fork within Apple

00:29:36 ◼   ► from the version that has the code that supports the new hardware features on new hardware right

00:29:43 ◼   ► so I'm most interested in what the camera team had has done software wise with that third camera

00:29:50 ◼   ► because there it's not just like a simple like

00:29:54 ◼   ► The on the phones with that we already have with the two cameras

00:29:59 ◼   ► it's not just well you're either using the one lens or you're using the other and

00:30:03 ◼   ► It just switches like like is though it was like a hardware switch between the two lenses

00:30:08 ◼   ► The software does some very interesting stuff, you know

00:30:14 ◼   ► It's like the fact that you can start a video with the 1x lens and it'll switch to the 2x lens if you zoom while you're

00:30:20 ◼   ► shooting and yet the video doesn't have like a skip where it looks like you've suddenly

00:30:25 ◼   ► flipped lenses. Um, the way that the portrait mode works and it uses the two X lens for

00:30:32 ◼   ► the photo but uses the one X lens to get the depth masks to help create that fake bokeh

00:30:39 ◼   ► effect. Like I've strongly, I have no idea. I have no insight information on it, but I

00:30:44 ◼   ► strongly suspect that they'll, they'll use this extra wide angle lens for similar stuff

00:30:49 ◼   ► to make photos better even when you're not actually shooting the photo with that lens?

00:30:53 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:30:55 ◼   ► That could be really interesting. If you look at where software has been

00:31:00 ◼   ► the most fun and interesting in photography, it's certainly not in the stock camera apps these days.

00:31:09 ◼   ► It's like the Instagram super zoom in stories and all the AR stuff that Snapchat and Instagram

00:31:16 ◼   ► have been doing. I always wonder how much Apple lets itself be inspired by stuff like

00:31:23 ◼   ► that that is more fun than practical. If there's a super zoom type effect or even just a suite

00:31:33 ◼   ► of special effects where it zooms in very quickly on someone switching between the different

00:31:41 ◼   ► cameras or something like that. That could be kind of fun. They've added some effects

00:31:47 ◼   ► over the years. I just wonder how wacky they will let themselves get.

00:31:52 ◼   ► I'm also sure there's probably things that we can't just imagine here on the fly that

00:31:57 ◼   ► when they show them off will be interesting and impressive. Once you've been developing

00:32:07 ◼   ► with multiple cameras for that long.

00:32:09 ◼   ► I imagine they've figured out some neat tricks

00:32:11 ◼   ► that could be cool.

00:32:13 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:32:15 ◼   ► Otherwise though, I don't know, you know,

00:32:19 ◼   ► what else, you know, with the phones.

00:32:21 ◼   ► I mean, I can't wait to see it,

00:32:23 ◼   ► but I don't know what else to conjecture about now,

00:32:27 ◼   ► three days in advance.

00:32:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, the pro thing is kind of interesting.

00:32:31 ◼   ► You know, how, is this gonna be the venue

00:32:35 ◼   ► to kind of talk about what it means to be a pro? Or is that

00:32:38 ◼   ► just straight up a marketing term? And then part B of that is

00:32:43 ◼   ► does it is it become the only pro item without a USB C port in

00:32:47 ◼   ► the lineup? I think that I think that one's been busted, right?

00:32:51 ◼   ► It's it's probably gonna be lightning still. So,

00:32:53 ◼   ► yeah, that's a good question. That's actually a really good

00:32:56 ◼   ► question. Because I and I say it's a good question. I know

00:32:59 ◼   ► it's a good question. Because I actually have at least three

00:33:01 ◼   ► different people have asked me that on Twitter in the last 24 hours based on my daring fireball

00:33:08 ◼   ► article guessing that they're going to call it the iPhone 11 Pro. So I have two answers

00:33:16 ◼   ► to that. One is according to the rumor mill from the supply chain, they're still all lightning.

00:33:24 ◼   ► And that's the sort of thing that would very likely leak just because there's nothing

00:33:32 ◼   ► Apple can do about it, right?

00:33:33 ◼   ► Because the actual—I don't know how many of the phones are actually in North America

00:33:39 ◼   ► already, but certainly some of them already are.

00:33:41 ◼   ► And prototypes have certainly been in the hands of Apple employees for months now.

00:33:47 ◼   ► And the review units that'll start getting seeded next week, I'm guessing, are already

00:33:51 ◼   ► here.

00:33:52 ◼   ► that they would want to cut it so close that they're—but who knows? I don't know

00:33:57 ◼   ► how that works. But if they're not here, they're on their way here because the review

00:34:01 ◼   ► units typically start getting seeded to people the day of the event. It's just no way to

00:34:10 ◼   ► hide something like that.

00:34:12 ◼   ► And then my other answer would be strategically, I think there's a very big difference. There

00:34:16 ◼   ► There is a correlation between the current Pro devices and USB-C ports, but on the Mac,

00:34:24 ◼   ► it never really made sense to have a Lightning port. So USB-C is just the next generation

00:34:29 ◼   ► of USB. So I feel like the fact that all the Mac Pros and MacBook—well, I guess the Mac

00:34:36 ◼   ► Pro actually doesn't have USB-C yet because the Mac Pro is from 10 years ago the one that

00:34:42 ◼   ► can buy today, but like the iMac Pro does and MacBook Pro does, and surely the new Mac

00:34:47 ◼   ► Pro that's coming out soon will have USB-C ports. I guess we even know that. We've

00:34:53 ◼   ► seen it already when it was previewed at WWDC.

00:34:58 ◼   ► The one that makes people who want to see the iPhone get a USB-C port hopeful is the

00:35:04 ◼   ► iPad Pro. That's the one. So when the iPad changed from iPad to iPad Pro, the Pro has

00:35:13 ◼   ► USB-C instead of Lightning, and they continue to make other iPads that are just called iPad

00:35:19 ◼   ► Air or iPad Mini, and they still have Lightning. And so I can see there's a certain logic

00:35:26 ◼   ► to the notion that if Apple is going to start calling some iPhones Pro and some are not

00:35:31 ◼   ► that the pro ones would have USB-C and the other ones would not. So I get that. But strategically,

00:35:38 ◼   ► I don't think there's I don't think Apple has ever even considered switching the iPhone to USB-C.

00:35:43 ◼   ► No, it's a fun exercise. But I can't imagine that would happen. There's the lightning ecosystem is

00:35:49 ◼   ► just too big. And, and also like for the iPad Pro, I think a lot of it was for the power delivery.

00:35:58 ◼   ► and the fast charging of something that has a giant battery in it. Whereas even an iPhone Pro,

00:36:05 ◼   ► I think, is still going to have a normal-ish battery and probably even continue to have a

00:36:10 ◼   ► smaller battery than whatever the XR becomes. So yeah. My money's on Lightning.

00:36:19 ◼   ► Yeah. And it would be even if the rumor mill were silent on it, I would say Lightning. And I'm going

00:36:25 ◼   ► going to say so the rumor mill, it doesn't go that far ahead.

00:36:29 ◼   ► I honestly still believe that every iPhone

00:36:33 ◼   ► will have lightning from now through the end of time

00:36:39 ◼   ► until they don't even have a port.

00:36:42 ◼   ► As long as there's a port that you plug into,

00:36:45 ◼   ► it'll be lightning, I think.

00:36:46 ◼   ► All right.

00:36:47 ◼   ► Yeah, that makes sense.

00:36:49 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:36:50 ◼   ► I'll at least say for the next five years.

00:36:51 ◼   ► I don't know who knows what would happen five years from now.

00:36:53 ◼   ► The cool thing. Oh, people don't believe me. People don't, I say this,

00:37:00 ◼   ► and I know some people are so skeptical and think that every corporation,

00:37:04 ◼   ► no matter which one that you did,

00:37:06 ◼   ► that they're full of shit with everything they say. But with Apple,

00:37:10 ◼   ► a lot of the time you really can take them at their word and their explanation

00:37:14 ◼   ► when the iPad pro switched to USB-C was that these,

00:37:19 ◼   ► The iPad Pro is meant as an alternative

00:37:24 ◼   ► to a traditional laptop PC,

00:37:27 ◼   ► and therefore they're using, including USB-C,

00:37:31 ◼   ► so that you can use PC peripherals.

00:37:34 ◼   ► That's what they said.

00:37:36 ◼   ► They also mentioned specifically

00:37:38 ◼   ► that it supports higher, faster charging rates,

00:37:41 ◼   ► and it comes with a, hmm, what is that iPad charger?

00:37:45 ◼   ► I forget how many watts.

00:37:47 ◼   ► - I think it's 18.

00:37:48 ◼   ► It ships with an 18 watt, but it can take advantage of up to a 30 watt charger

00:37:53 ◼   ► To charge even faster

00:37:56 ◼   ► So if you spend more money or the smarter thing go to somebody like anchor and buy a third-party

00:38:02 ◼   ► 30 watt charger

00:38:04 ◼   ► You could charge your iPad pro faster

00:38:06 ◼   ► And those things are tiny. They're amazing tiny anchors in particular are really really tiny

00:38:17 ◼   ► That's what they said and I think that's what they mean well

00:38:20 ◼   ► I don't think the iPhone will be able to take advantage of 30 watt charging. I mean, it's it would be interesting

00:38:25 ◼   ► I guess that's one small thing that we can conjectures is will Apple finally ship it with more than a 5 watt charger

00:38:30 ◼   ► Like a plaster is still shipped with 5 watt chargers and I know I know the nerds out there that and you know

00:38:39 ◼   ► I know a lot of you who are listening to my show are in that think that that's outrageous

00:38:43 ◼   ► but there really is a

00:38:46 ◼   ► Flip side to it which is that a lot of people like that chart the charger that they ship with iPhones because it's so small

00:38:51 ◼   ► And because therefore it fits anywhere. There's a plug it will fit and it fits in a

00:38:57 ◼   ► woman's purse

00:38:58 ◼   ► even if it's a very small perverse so they can carry a charger with them everywhere they go and

00:39:02 ◼   ► There's there really are and I've talked to people at Apple about this and I know people think it's because Tim Cook is

00:39:09 ◼   ► Is a tight wad and wants to squeeze an extra five dollars out of every?

00:39:15 ◼   ► iPhone sold by shipping a cheaper charger, but there really are millions and millions and millions

00:39:20 ◼   ► of iPhone users who prefer the little square five watt charger because it's because it's small and

00:39:27 ◼   ► they don't care if it's slower. And I know people don't. People who listen to the show don't believe

00:39:33 ◼   ► me, but I know that that's true. So hopefully what they'll do is ship it with a higher capacity

00:39:37 ◼   ► charger that's relatively small. Yeah, if they could get, you know, a faster or whatever you

00:39:43 ◼   ► I call it a higher capacity charge in that same exact size or keep it five whopper make it even smaller

00:39:49 ◼   ► I'm not sure how possible that is either but

00:39:52 ◼   ► I don't think it's funny. You know, I just spent four months overseas and the chargers are so big there. Yes

00:39:59 ◼   ► The UK ones look like some kind of like

00:40:07 ◼   ► There's something out of a Terry Gilliam film like it's meant to

00:40:12 ◼   ► - Meant to look silly.

00:40:14 ◼   ► - It's crazy, I mean, you can't put that in your pocket.

00:40:16 ◼   ► But yeah, although the ones in France were bigger,

00:40:21 ◼   ► but they were kind of skinny.

00:40:22 ◼   ► It was kind of a good shape.

00:40:24 ◼   ► But yeah, here's the thing.

00:40:27 ◼   ► The other thing is I think that,

00:40:29 ◼   ► and Apple probably knows this too,

00:40:30 ◼   ► that probably 90% of charging occurs at nighttime

00:40:35 ◼   ► while people are sleeping.

00:40:39 ◼   ► So the speed of the charge

00:40:41 ◼   ► is probably less important than.

00:40:42 ◼   ► What's obviously a bigger problem

00:40:45 ◼   ► is when you're almost out of battery

00:40:47 ◼   ► and you need a quick charge.

00:40:49 ◼   ► And that's where both of these things,

00:40:52 ◼   ► both the five watt and also the wireless charging,

00:40:55 ◼   ► which is increasingly common,

00:40:57 ◼   ► neither of those things really help with that.

00:40:58 ◼   ► - They don't help in that, oops, holy crap,

00:41:00 ◼   ► I forgot to charge my phone.

00:41:02 ◼   ► Or like every once in a while,

00:41:04 ◼   ► like I have the bedside wireless charging thing.

00:41:09 ◼   ► and the one I have, I forget, I think it's the Mophie.

00:41:12 ◼   ► You know, it's okay, the sweet spot isn't too small,

00:41:17 ◼   ► but it, you know, once every two months or so,

00:41:20 ◼   ► I'll have a night where I didn't quite hit it

00:41:23 ◼   ► and I'll wake up in the morning

00:41:24 ◼   ► and my phone didn't charge at all.

00:41:25 ◼   ► It would be nice, now usually with the way I live my life,

00:41:29 ◼   ► working here, it doesn't really matter,

00:41:30 ◼   ► but if I had to leave the house every day for, you know,

00:41:33 ◼   ► a commute or something like that, it would be nice.

00:41:36 ◼   ► It's nice every once in a while when you really,

00:41:38 ◼   ► your phone's already under 20% to charge it to at least like 80% pretty quickly. So fast

00:41:45 ◼   ► charging definitely has a use. And it would be nice if it came in the box.

00:41:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I love it with the with a 30 watt, anchor charger and then the USB C to lightning. Especially

00:41:55 ◼   ► if I you know, if I check into a hotel or something, I just I need to give me as much

00:41:59 ◼   ► charges I can get in 10 minutes before I have to leave. It's great for that. The thing that

00:42:05 ◼   ► I'm intrigued by is this rumor of wireless reverse charging

00:42:09 ◼   ► where you can theoretically charge your AirPods

00:42:13 ◼   ► off of the back of the new iPhone,

00:42:16 ◼   ► whether it's Qi or, you know, Qi plus Apple magic.

00:42:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, like will there be other things

00:42:24 ◼   ► that you can also put on the back of your phone

00:42:27 ◼   ► that would charge like?

00:42:28 ◼   ► - Could you bum a charge off someone else's phone

00:42:31 ◼   ► on your phone?

00:42:32 ◼   ► - Well, the Samsung ones that have this similar feature,

00:42:36 ◼   ► or at least conceptually the same feature,

00:42:38 ◼   ► definitely let you charge another phone

00:42:40 ◼   ► because they even, and they even advertise it

00:42:42 ◼   ► as like a, you know, like their TV ads show people like,

00:42:46 ◼   ► you know, this guy meets a girl in a coffee shop

00:42:49 ◼   ► and, you know, introduces himself by letting her

00:42:52 ◼   ► charge her phone on his phone.

00:42:55 ◼   ► - Cool.

00:42:56 ◼   ► - I don't think, from what I've heard,

00:42:58 ◼   ► I don't think Apple's is gonna do that.

00:42:59 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised if it's AirPods only.

00:43:02 ◼   ► And I don't think they could do the watch

00:43:04 ◼   ► because the watch needs like the magnetic connection.

00:43:06 ◼   ► Whereas the AirPods you could just put side by side.

00:43:09 ◼   ► But who knows, maybe they will, I don't know.

00:43:11 ◼   ► I mean--

00:43:12 ◼   ► - Well, did the watch ever get,

00:43:14 ◼   ► did the watch ever ship with whatever it needed

00:43:17 ◼   ► to charge off of the power mat?

00:43:20 ◼   ► Was that thing called the AirPad?

00:43:21 ◼   ► - AirPower.

00:43:22 ◼   ► - AirPower?

00:43:23 ◼   ► - Supposedly AirPower was just going to work

00:43:26 ◼   ► with all existing watches.

00:43:27 ◼   ► I remember when it was still a product,

00:43:30 ◼   ► I remember asking, and it wasn't gonna be like,

00:43:32 ◼   ► oh yeah, it'll only work with the new watch.

00:43:34 ◼   ► It supposedly would work with any watch.

00:43:36 ◼   ► - So maybe that would work, I don't know.

00:43:38 ◼   ► Although the watch, my problem is never the watch

00:43:41 ◼   ► running out of battery, it's only the phone, really.

00:43:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, same with AirPods, really.

00:43:46 ◼   ► I can't remember the last time I even heard the bloop, bloop,

00:43:51 ◼   ► that little sad sound.

00:43:52 ◼   ► - No, especially the new ones.

00:43:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I don't know.

00:43:56 ◼   ► To me, it's a neat feature, but it's not a big feature.

00:43:59 ◼   ► I'll tell you one thing I'm looking forward to on the new phone, supposedly. And again,

00:44:03 ◼   ► you know, it doesn't, it's only like words that have leaked. It's nobody seems to have

00:44:07 ◼   ► pictures yet. I mean, who knows? The last weekend is always, it's always dangerous recording

00:44:12 ◼   ► on a Friday before the event. And it's supposed, it's like, I want to get it out. So people

00:44:16 ◼   ► traveling and stuff like that, I could listen to it, but it's always surprising what might

00:44:20 ◼   ► leak on Sunday. Um, but one of the things people have said, sources have said is that

00:44:25 ◼   ► the glass back of the new phones might have a matte finish, at least in certain colors.

00:44:32 ◼   ► That would be very appealing to me. My least favorite thing about these phones over the

00:44:37 ◼   ► last three years, really, because I would leave it include the jet black iPhone 8 that

00:44:44 ◼   ► I carried for a year, is the way that you can't tell which side is which by touch. Like,

00:44:50 ◼   ► I think I said on a recent episode of the show, my one regret over the years of buying

00:44:54 ◼   ► iPhones is that I didn't get the matte black iPhone eight instead of the jet black because

00:45:00 ◼   ► I think I would have I think I liked the aesthetic better overall in the long term. I think I

00:45:04 ◼   ► was just infatuated by the glossy jet black at first the Darth Vader ish sort of finish.

00:45:11 ◼   ► But I just I really dislike the way that when you're and I tell you know, I I always try

00:45:17 ◼   ► to put the phone in my pocket the same way glass facing my thigh as opposed to the screen

00:45:22 ◼   ► out just in case something hits me in the thigh. Hopefully, it will crack the back,

00:45:27 ◼   ► not the front. But every once in a while, your phone is flipped around or it's on

00:45:33 ◼   ► the table or something like that. I don't know. To me, it's just generally… And

00:45:38 ◼   ► it also, to me, makes it more slippery. I would presume that a matte glass finish for

00:45:42 ◼   ► the back would literally have more texture. So I hope that's true.

00:45:51 ◼   ► On the lightning versus USB C front before we move on even further. The other thing that

00:45:55 ◼   ► I just, I cannot emphasize enough is among our crowd, people who listen to this show,

00:46:02 ◼   ► people who read this site, people who, people who really know, understand the difference,

00:46:06 ◼   ► like know what USB C is. They want USB C on the iPhone because they really are. And I

00:46:14 ◼   ► see it, I get it. They're enamored with the idea that they could carry fewer cables around.

00:46:20 ◼   ► it be neat if you could just, you could, even if you travel with an iPad and a phone and

00:46:26 ◼   ► a MacBook, if all you needed were USB-C cables and maybe you could just use the same charger,

00:46:32 ◼   ► just charge your phone overnight, then leave your iPad Pro plugged in in your hotel room

00:46:37 ◼   ► during the day and plug the MacBook in when you need it. That's great. I see the appeal

00:46:41 ◼   ► of that. That would really simplify the world in a way that you could just have it and maybe

00:46:48 ◼   ► you're a nerd and you carry, you try out Android phones throughout the year too. The more devices

00:46:54 ◼   ► you use, the more that appeals to you as a nerd. But normal people hated when Apple switched

00:47:01 ◼   ► from the 30 pin to lightning. They hated it. Hated it and everybody chalked it up to, or

00:47:08 ◼   ► not, everybody in the normal world chalked it up to Apple did this to get everybody to

00:47:13 ◼   ► buy the $30 lightning cables. It was a money grab. And if they switched to USB-C, even

00:47:21 ◼   ► though in the nerd world they would say they would praise Apple for switching to the industry

00:47:28 ◼   ► standard, the hundreds of millions of regular iPhone users out there who don't already have

00:47:38 ◼   ► lightning cables around their house and everywhere they need for their phone would see it as

00:47:42 ◼   ► a money grab that Apple's trying to get even though you we know you can buy USB C cables

00:47:47 ◼   ► from anywhere anybody. They would chop this up to you know, they would complain about

00:47:51 ◼   ► it. I can't tell you how many people in my family bitch to me when Apple switched to

00:47:57 ◼   ► lightning. And I would say don't you see how much more elegant it is that 30 pin cable

00:48:01 ◼   ► was gross and ugly. It was so bad. But they didn't see it that way. All they saw it was

00:48:07 ◼   ► that the cables they already owned and that the stands they already had or whatever didn't

00:48:11 ◼   ► work with their new phone and they had to throw them out or like people who like like

00:48:20 ◼   ► a married couple where somebody gets the new iPhone one year and the other spouse has the

00:48:26 ◼   ► old iPhone. Now they need two cables. People hate that. I cannot, the number of people

00:48:32 ◼   ► who would hate, hate a change to USB-C on a new iPhone vastly, I would say 10 times

00:48:41 ◼   ► outweighs the number of people who would be happy about it. And I realized that there's

00:48:47 ◼   ► people, nerds who are listening to me say this, and they're getting angry at me because

00:48:52 ◼   ► they don't believe it. But I'm telling you, in the real world, it's true.

00:48:55 ◼   ► Yeah, change is hard, man. Although I did pick up one of those 30-pin chords this week,

00:49:00 ◼   ► and I'm glad we're not using those right now.

00:49:04 ◼   ► It's sort of ludicrous-looking when you really think about it. It's really, they really were.

00:49:10 ◼   ► I mean, it was, it seemed like a breakthrough at the time, but yeah,

00:49:12 ◼   ► the time compared to a scuzzy pin or something like that. Right. But, but there were,

00:49:16 ◼   ► and they were like sharp clips in there to keep it, keep it in. Yeah.

00:49:23 ◼   ► Anything else on the iPhones that we expect next week? No, I just, every time the iPhone naming

00:49:29 ◼   ► comes up, I just, I always think back to the iPhone math and laugh my ass off. Remember that one?

00:49:34 ◼   ► It's like a terrible supply chain rumor that there was going to be an iPhone called the iPhone

00:49:40 ◼   ► math. I haven't thought about that in years. I think about all the time, I think it ended

00:49:46 ◼   ► up being the plus maybe or something like that. So maybe someone saw a plus sign or

00:49:50 ◼   ► the word plus. Maybe I never thought of that. Right. Right. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. Maybe

00:49:57 ◼   ► this will be the year that iPhone math. You know what? That actually is a very logical

00:50:04 ◼   ► explanation that they saw the plus sign and it's some kind of mistranslation from Chinese

00:50:10 ◼   ► to English turned it into math because it was plus.

00:50:15 ◼   ► Maybe. I don't know. I love it though. I want something like that again.

00:50:23 ◼   ► I will not devolve into politics, but there's somebody on Twitter with this thing with Trump

00:50:28 ◼   ► being obsessed with the, his, his statement five days ago that Alabama was in the path of the

00:50:34 ◼   ► hurricane. Uh, what Dorian? Yeah. Uh, and that he spent the last five days defending it and trying

00:50:41 ◼   ► to make up the, that's right. Somebody on Twitter conjectured that what happened was that the thing

00:50:46 ◼   ► that he saw said Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and all Bahamas, all Bahamas, read it as Alabama.

00:50:56 ◼   ► And I think that's so possible. I think that is so possibly where this whole thing came from.

00:51:01 ◼   ► And that's why he's convinced that he really was told that he's really told that really was told

00:51:06 ◼   ► that Alabama was was in the path of the hurricane. I love it all Bahamas. Amazing.

00:51:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't have anything else on the iPhone. I'm interested. I, you know, I think mostly

00:51:19 ◼   ► it'll be, you know, do you, uh,

00:51:24 ◼   ► do you think that they'll change the upgrade program at all either to, uh,

00:51:29 ◼   ► include it in some of the bundles that they're doing and,

00:51:33 ◼   ► or make it exclusive for the, uh, Apple card?

00:51:37 ◼   ► Or do you think that they'll just kind of stick with it?

00:51:39 ◼   ► In other words, would they do some kind of like,

00:51:43 ◼   ► for lack of a better word, Apple prime, let's just say,

00:51:48 ◼   ► I don't think they would call it that because Al Amazon so owns it, but for lack of, to

00:51:52 ◼   ► avoid trying to think of a better name, let's just call it Apple prime. There's a whole

00:51:56 ◼   ► bunch of daring fireball readers and talk show listeners have emailed me. So with this

00:52:01 ◼   ► idea you sign up, you pay Apple, I don't know, X hundred dollars a year and you get all of

00:52:09 ◼   ► it. You get all of their subscription stuff, the TV plus and the, uh, the news, you get

00:52:15 ◼   ► Apple music, you get Apple arcade and you get into some kind of upgrade program for

00:52:22 ◼   ► the iPhone, you know, which and they have that already. There is the upgrade program.

00:52:26 ◼   ► Right. And that's what I was curious about is specifically that upgrade program. But

00:52:30 ◼   ► the other, the other bundle too, I mean, that's a good question as well. I wonder, I like,

00:52:36 ◼   ► I see the appeal of it where, and I, there's definitely, you know, in terms of people who've

00:52:40 ◼   ► emailed me, there's definitely people out there who are interested in it. And I know,

00:52:43 ◼   ► I know firsthand from friends that a lot of friends I have used the upgrade program to

00:52:48 ◼   ► get a new phone every year.

00:52:51 ◼   ► I mean there's three strategies if you want a new phone every year, which I and number

00:52:55 ◼   ► one you're you're an oddball if you want a new iPhone every year because normal people

00:52:59 ◼   ► buy them and keep them now for longer and longer terms than ever because they're still

00:53:05 ◼   ► so useful longer than ever.

00:53:09 ◼   ► But I buy one every year I do.

00:53:12 ◼   ► And I'm, I do the dumbest thing possible, which is I keep all of my old ones so that

00:53:17 ◼   ► I can just say that I have them all.

00:53:21 ◼   ► Which is financially ridiculously stupid.

00:53:25 ◼   ► The other thing that I know a lot of people do is they, if they buy a new phone every

00:53:30 ◼   ► year, they just buy it, pay for it upfront.

00:53:32 ◼   ► And then when the new one comes out, they sell the old one.

00:53:35 ◼   ► And typically if it's in good condition or very good condition, it still has an awful

00:53:41 ◼   ► lot of value like a year old iPhone 10 S probably that might've sold for around $1,000 you could

00:53:47 ◼   ► you might be able to sell for 600 500 $600 and so you're not paying $1,000 a year to

00:53:54 ◼   ► get a new iPhone top of the line you're only paying like five four or $500 a year and then

00:54:01 ◼   ► but I do know a lot of people who use the upgrade program and I don't even know how

00:54:04 ◼   ► that works because I want to keep my old ones but could they combine it with media subscriptions

00:54:09 ◼   ► I honestly don't even know. I don't know if they would want to I don't know if they don't

00:54:12 ◼   ► want to cross streams on hardware sales and subscriptions. Clearly, I mean, one of the

00:54:20 ◼   ► things they didn't mention at the media event in March was any kind of they didn't even

00:54:24 ◼   ► mention the idea of a bundle. Let you know, leaving aside that they didn't tell us how

00:54:30 ◼   ► much a lot of this these things would cost. They didn't tell us what arcades going to

00:54:33 ◼   ► cost. They didn't mention what TV plus is going to cost. Uh,

00:54:36 ◼   ► clearly they should have a bundle right for just for the subscriptions alone.

00:54:43 ◼   ► Could they have a level of the bundle that includes the upgrade? They could.

00:54:47 ◼   ► And I think it would appeal to some people,

00:54:48 ◼   ► but I don't know if they would want to cross streams on that. I don't know how.

00:54:51 ◼   ► And if that's like some kind of accounting problem, I don't know.

00:54:54 ◼   ► What do you think? And apple cart only.

00:54:59 ◼   ► That's another thing that people are conjecturing. I don't know.

00:55:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I think probably not this year for that. Although it's interesting how much they've been

00:55:07 ◼   ► advertising the apple card. And I saw it on on baseball game yesterday. I've seen Twitter ads

00:55:15 ◼   ► for it. They're really going. I haven't seen it on a game yet. But maybe that's because I only

00:55:20 ◼   ► want do you watch on the MLB TV or Yeah, that's where I was watching. Well, maybe I'll start

00:55:26 ◼   ► I'll start seeing them soon, I don't know.

00:55:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I assume they're doing this

00:55:33 ◼   ► to make it a truly mainstream thing,

00:55:35 ◼   ► and it really has the possibility,

00:55:37 ◼   ► if you think about it, to become like the single

00:55:39 ◼   ► most popular credit card in America,

00:55:41 ◼   ► just by virtue of how fragmented that market is.

00:55:44 ◼   ► But anyway, the bundle thing, I mean,

00:55:46 ◼   ► that was definitely one of the things that I thought about

00:55:48 ◼   ► when we were sitting there in March was, wow,

00:55:50 ◼   ► they, A, they haven't given the prices

00:55:52 ◼   ► for a bunch of these things, and B,

00:55:55 ◼   ► Is everyone just going to have to pick and choose which one of these things they get

00:56:01 ◼   ► or are they going to do a big bundle?

00:56:04 ◼   ► I think that the products are kind of different enough that a bundle doesn't really make

00:56:12 ◼   ► a ton of sense.

00:56:15 ◼   ► The person who wants arcade games and the person who wants magazine content is probably

00:56:19 ◼   ► not the same person.

00:56:21 ◼   ► Maybe that is a reason to make them, to incentivize them with a discount.

00:56:28 ◼   ► Music has the broadest appeal, right?

00:56:31 ◼   ► I mean, because I don't know what percentage of people who own Apple products like listening

00:56:38 ◼   ► to music, but surely it's as high as almost anything you could say people subscribe to,

00:56:44 ◼   ► right?

00:56:45 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:56:46 ◼   ► It just seems like music is a universal thing.

00:56:49 ◼   ► Right.

00:56:50 ◼   ► - So right, will Apple Music and Apple TV+

00:56:54 ◼   ► get some sort of bundle opportunity?

00:56:57 ◼   ► Maybe the answer is no, we make things easy enough

00:57:01 ◼   ► to sign up for that, you know,

00:57:03 ◼   ► we don't need whatever mechanics come with the bundle

00:57:06 ◼   ► to make it work.

00:57:10 ◼   ► But, you know, there's also this bigger idea

00:57:15 ◼   ► of an overall like Apple+ or whatever you would call it,

00:57:19 ◼   ► Obviously I agree with you,

00:57:21 ◼   ► they're not gonna use the word prime,

00:57:23 ◼   ► but something that gets you all this stuff

00:57:25 ◼   ► and that's the question,

00:57:28 ◼   ► and the new iPhone every year, I don't know.

00:57:31 ◼   ► We'll see.

00:57:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, we'll see.

00:57:34 ◼   ► The other one that stands out is,

00:57:36 ◼   ► and I don't wanna go too long on it,

00:57:38 ◼   ► 'cause we'll find out, I think Tuesday,

00:57:40 ◼   ► I do think that the services stuff

00:57:41 ◼   ► is gonna be a big part of the event,

00:57:44 ◼   ► is the one that people are conjecturing about

00:57:46 ◼   ► the fact that TV plus, which is Apple's original content, just how are they going to, you know,

00:57:52 ◼   ► how could they sell it for $10 a month if Disney is selling a thing for $8 a month that

00:57:57 ◼   ► has the entire Disney library and Apple says, here, you will charge you $10 a month and

00:58:02 ◼   ► we've got, we're starting with five shows. I get that. Uh, and no content library either.

00:58:10 ◼   ► Uh, right, right. With no content library. Right. Which is like, you know, the, well,

00:58:15 ◼   ► Disney owns a massive content library. Netflix. By this time, Netflix has so much original

00:58:22 ◼   ► content with comedy specials and original shows that they do. They own a big content

00:58:27 ◼   ► library and they pay to get stuff. You know, they had friends for a long time, et cetera,

00:58:32 ◼   ► et cetera, all sorts of stuff. And HBO has all these movies and stuff that aren't original

00:58:38 ◼   ► to them. Apple plot TV plus isn't going to have that. I feel like there's gotta be something

00:58:42 ◼   ► more to TV plus in terms of how Apple is going to sell it than just $10 a month and you get

00:58:48 ◼   ► our shows and that's it. They could do that I guess and just say we're that's how confident

00:58:54 ◼   ► we are and that these shows are good that we're charging this premium compared to everybody

00:58:58 ◼   ► else but I think there's more to it and TV plus to me is the one that really seems like

00:59:03 ◼   ► it could go a long way by them just saying, Hey, if you're an Apple music subscriber,

00:59:09 ◼   ► get TV plus you've already got it just you don't have to do anything if you know these

00:59:15 ◼   ► shows the the morning show with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell it's

00:59:18 ◼   ► coming out it's debuting in October and if you're an Apple music subscriber you've already

00:59:22 ◼   ► got it I don't know if that's what they're gonna do and I know you know that and just

00:59:27 ◼   ► use it as a way to drive Apple music subscriptions right I don't know there's got to be something

00:59:33 ◼   ► more to it with that then it had I think there has to be some kind of right they can't just

00:59:37 ◼   ► I mean, they can do whatever they want, but it's a hard sell to say, "Hey, it's 10

00:59:41 ◼   ► bucks a month and we have these three shows for you to watch."

00:59:45 ◼   ► And sorry, we just lost two of them, too.

00:59:50 ◼   ► Yeah, it'll be interesting.

00:59:55 ◼   ► I think that's one of the parts that we know the least about.

00:59:58 ◼   ► Right.

00:59:59 ◼   ► There was a rumor, though, that the Apple Arcade is only going to be—and this was

01:00:03 ◼   ► was uncovered by Guy Rambeau, the hacker extraordinaire who writes at 9to5Mac and somehow got prerelease

01:00:10 ◼   ► access to the internal version of Apple Arcade that's being tested by Apple employees.

01:00:15 ◼   ► And once he got his hands on that, poked around the APIs, and it's by poking at those APIs

01:00:21 ◼   ► and getting responses, he, you know, at least at the time he was poking around, it seemed

01:00:26 ◼   ► like it was going to cost $4.99 a month to subscribe.

01:00:31 ◼   ► And I think everybody was thinking that they said, "Hey, Apple News is $10 a month."

01:00:40 ◼   ► Everybody tends to think, for good reason, that whatever you think Apple is going to

01:00:44 ◼   ► charge for something, double it and maybe that's right.

01:00:48 ◼   ► But sometimes they surprise us.

01:00:49 ◼   ► Remember the original iPad, everybody thought it was going to be $999 and everybody thought,

01:00:53 ◼   ► "Yeah, that sounds about right.

01:00:54 ◼   ► They've charged $1,000 for this amazing tablet."

01:00:57 ◼   ► And then it debuted, started at $499.

01:00:59 ◼   ► It was half the price.

01:01:01 ◼   ► So sometimes they surprise us.

01:01:02 ◼   ► I think the idea that Apple Arcade

01:01:04 ◼   ► might only be $5 a month would,

01:01:06 ◼   ► and the response I saw to that like on Twitter

01:01:09 ◼   ► and from readers was, "Wow, that's great.

01:01:11 ◼   ► "I was on the fence about it,

01:01:12 ◼   ► "but if it's only $5 a month, count me in."

01:01:15 ◼   ► You know?

01:01:16 ◼   ► So I don't know.

01:01:17 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised if the overall,

01:01:21 ◼   ► "Hey, even if you wanna subscribe to everything,

01:01:23 ◼   ► "it's not gonna cost as much as you're worried.

01:01:25 ◼   ► "They're not gonna charge you $50 a month for all of it."

01:01:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, that would be a huge splash.

01:01:31 ◼   ► I mean, I think that would definitely take the steam

01:01:33 ◼   ► out of a lot of the games that are not in there.

01:01:35 ◼   ► So that could be interesting.

01:01:37 ◼   ► The one I always wonder too about is iCloud,

01:01:39 ◼   ► which continues to stay the same price,

01:01:42 ◼   ► but not get more compelling.

01:01:45 ◼   ► - I got, I hope they, I don't know.

01:01:48 ◼   ► I think they would have said it at WWDC,

01:01:50 ◼   ► but boy, I don't know.

01:01:51 ◼   ► I would love, I just would love to see them

01:01:54 ◼   ► make it more of a no brainer for people

01:01:56 ◼   ► to upgrade their iCloud storage

01:01:57 ◼   ► so that they can upgrade, you know, back up their devices

01:02:00 ◼   ► and have the massive photo library backed up in the cloud

01:02:04 ◼   ► without concern.

01:02:06 ◼   ► But anyway, we'll see.

01:02:07 ◼   ► - I wonder if that, 'cause you still can't back up a Mac

01:02:09 ◼   ► to iCloud, right? - No.

01:02:10 ◼   ► - I wonder if that's like next year's Mac OS

01:02:15 ◼   ► and iCloud update, I don't know, who knows?

01:02:18 ◼   ► - Apple Watch, everybody for good reason presumes

01:02:22 ◼   ► will see Series 5 Apple Watches.

01:02:25 ◼   ► One of the rumors is that a new feature is going to be sleep tracking.

01:02:29 ◼   ► But it's not clear to me whether the sleep tracking is going to be for the new Series

01:02:33 ◼   ► 5 watch or if it's going to be in the OS and available to people who already own watches.

01:02:43 ◼   ► You can already, there are a bunch of good sleep tracking apps that use the Apple Watch.

01:02:49 ◼   ► It's just not built into the system software that comes with the watch.

01:02:52 ◼   ► But there's all sorts of good third-party watch apps for sleep tracking, which I've

01:02:57 ◼   ► been using for a couple of months now since I talked about it on the show with Merlin.

01:03:04 ◼   ► So we'll see how that goes.

01:03:05 ◼   ► But the bigger news, I guess, is on the hardware front, the idea that there's going to be

01:03:08 ◼   ► titanium and ceramic options for the watch.

01:03:15 ◼   ► After your show, I used the Sleep Tracker once, and it told me my sleep sucked.

01:03:20 ◼   ► So I stopped using it. I think that's probably why you're supposed to use it though, right?

01:03:25 ◼   ► I guess. I don't know. I started using it—I don't want to go too far into it—but

01:03:30 ◼   ► it was a couple months ago, and Merlin Mann was on the show, and I was under the weather.

01:03:34 ◼   ► I had some kind of bug, and I was sleeping really poorly. Now I'm back to normal. But

01:03:39 ◼   ► it is interesting. I do sleep—now that I have the tracker, I find that I sleep differently

01:03:42 ◼   ► than I expected. I sleep a little bit less than I've always thought I did. But also,

01:03:46 ◼   ► It varies day by day.

01:03:49 ◼   ► So if I get less sleep than usual,

01:03:51 ◼   ► if I only sleep seven hours,

01:03:52 ◼   ► I often sleep like 10 hours the next night if I can,

01:03:56 ◼   ► but on average it's about nine hours a night.

01:03:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's nice.

01:04:00 ◼   ► That's good, man.

01:04:02 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:04:03 ◼   ► - Indie publisher lifestyle, love it.

01:04:06 ◼   ► - Titanium ceramic.

01:04:08 ◼   ► They already had the ceramic edition watches

01:04:10 ◼   ► from a couple years ago,

01:04:11 ◼   ► and then there weren't any last year.

01:04:12 ◼   ► Now the rumor is they're coming back,

01:04:15 ◼   ► along with titanium. Titanium is a very interesting material for a watch. I know some people are

01:04:22 ◼   ► skeptical about it because way back, what, in 2002 or whenever, when the titanium G4

01:04:28 ◼   ► power books came out, the titanium flaked after usage especially didn't do very well

01:04:34 ◼   ► on the palm rest part with some people's, you know, the secretions from your hands.

01:04:41 ◼   ► I think Apple's material engineering has come a very long way since then. And just knowing

01:04:46 ◼   ► what I know about the watch world, titanium is an excellent material for watches and watch

01:04:51 ◼   ► grade titanium. They could color it and it wouldn't be as something that would flake

01:04:56 ◼   ► off. It would be baked into the material. And that the big difference between one of

01:05:00 ◼   ► the big difference between titanium and stainless steel is that titanium is significantly lighter.

01:05:06 ◼   ► So I don't know, it'd be interesting to see.

01:05:10 ◼   ► I'm curious how they're gonna fall price point wise.

01:05:12 ◼   ► Presumably titanium and ceramic, especially ceramic,

01:05:16 ◼   ► would both be more expensive than the stainless steel ones.

01:05:19 ◼   ► We shall see.

01:05:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's smart what they're doing with the,

01:05:25 ◼   ► my guess is the case design

01:05:27 ◼   ► probably doesn't change this year.

01:05:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't think so.

01:05:30 ◼   ► 'Cause it changed subtly with series four last year

01:05:34 ◼   ► and it got a little closer to the wrist

01:05:36 ◼   ► and they increase the size of the display

01:05:38 ◼   ► to go edge to edge.

01:05:39 ◼   ► But for the most part,

01:05:40 ◼   ► when you pass somebody on the street,

01:05:43 ◼   ► I can't tell if it's a series four or series three, two, one.

01:05:47 ◼   ► It's at an arm's distance.

01:05:49 ◼   ► It's just the iconic Apple Watch round-wreck shape.

01:05:53 ◼   ► So I don't think it would change again.

01:05:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, probably not.

01:05:56 ◼   ► I mean, obviously, you always want it to be thinner,

01:06:01 ◼   ► but it's totally fine.

01:06:04 ◼   ► And my guess is that,

01:06:07 ◼   ► so if the differences are mostly cosmetic or the material,

01:06:13 ◼   ► does the processor get faster

01:06:15 ◼   ► and that sort of stuff change too, you think?

01:06:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh yeah, I think--

01:06:19 ◼   ► - Battery life. - Yeah, definitely.

01:06:22 ◼   ► I think that team, and there's so much headroom to gain.

01:06:25 ◼   ► Like every single year, eventually, you know,

01:06:28 ◼   ► like I don't expect the new iPhones

01:06:33 ◼   ► to be significantly faster than last year's iPhones.

01:06:35 ◼   ► Like the iPhone A series chips have,

01:06:40 ◼   ► you know, it'd be like 10, 13%.

01:06:42 ◼   ► Somebody had a leaked benchmark from Geekbench

01:06:46 ◼   ► that was supposedly maybe the new 10R,

01:06:50 ◼   ► and it was like 13% faster or something like that.

01:06:52 ◼   ► And on multi-threaded, it was about the same.

01:06:56 ◼   ► It's just, you know, you can't keep making them

01:07:00 ◼   ► 50% faster every year.

01:07:02 ◼   ► run into the, you know, the laws of physics, but the watch processors are getting faster

01:07:08 ◼   ► and faster every year. So I'm sure it will be faster and have longer battery life, et

01:07:12 ◼   ► cetera. What about the rumor of a tile tracking dingus? Something like a little, there's this

01:07:18 ◼   ► rumor that they're going to come out with some kind of little things that you could

01:07:22 ◼   ► like put one in your wallet and then you can find your wallet from the find my whatever

01:07:28 ◼   ► app. I love it. Because, and actually when they announced the new Find My Mac thing that used that

01:07:38 ◼   ► kind of point to point mesh network, so that even when your Mac is offline, my mind immediately

01:07:48 ◼   ► jumped to that rumor of the tile thing and went, "Oh, is that how they're going to get the tile to

01:07:54 ◼   ► to work when it's theoretically offline.

01:07:56 ◼   ► I can't imagine it would have an LTE connection to it.

01:07:59 ◼   ► - I have tile trackers.

01:08:04 ◼   ► I got them for Christmas a few years ago.

01:08:07 ◼   ► I never really used them.

01:08:08 ◼   ► I keep one in my backpack and so I can find, you know,

01:08:10 ◼   ► but I've never lost my backpack.

01:08:12 ◼   ► To me, they weren't quite small enough

01:08:15 ◼   ► and it wasn't quite convenient enough.

01:08:17 ◼   ► So I didn't put one on my keys or anything.

01:08:22 ◼   ► last words. I don't really lose stuff. So I, but I have a dog who's small and likes to escape. So

01:08:28 ◼   ► I'm really excited for him to have one of these. Um, that would be a cool, that would be a cool

01:08:33 ◼   ► use case. I'd never, I didn't even think about that. You know what I lose? I lose things that I

01:08:37 ◼   ► can't possibly put a tracker on like, uh, my pen. Yeah. And, um, it's like one of the ways that I'm

01:08:45 ◼   ► slightly obsessive is I

01:08:47 ◼   ► Swear by these pens

01:08:50 ◼   ► Zebra Sarasa's gel pens they cost like three bucks each

01:08:55 ◼   ► They're very nice gel pens, but they're like three bucks each, but I and I you know, and I have a drawer full of them here

01:09:03 ◼   ► I I've already got I have dozens of them

01:09:05 ◼   ► But I like to get one and use it for a long time like years

01:09:08 ◼   ► And and I'll just replace the in cartridge and if I lose my current pen

01:09:14 ◼   ► It rather than do what I should do is just go get a new one out of the drawer

01:09:18 ◼   ► I'll spend an hour searching the house for it because I want to know where it is. Where is it?

01:09:23 ◼   ► But anyway

01:09:27 ◼   ► I'm still interested what apples angle on this because it seems like such an odd thing for Apple to get into that

01:09:33 ◼   ► I

01:09:34 ◼   ► Would think the only reason they would do it is if it's really compelling

01:09:39 ◼   ► So it reminds me of the the double-a battery charger

01:09:43 ◼   ► it's like you know what these things are out there, but we think we can do them ten times better and

01:09:47 ◼   ► It fits into the software which by the way will keep people, you know

01:09:51 ◼   ► if if it if it works once it's paid for itself, right and if

01:09:57 ◼   ► You know if you got 12 things tagged in your house

01:10:01 ◼   ► Then I guess you're sticking with the iPhone and not and not going to a to a Google pixel or something like that

01:10:07 ◼   ► that. Yeah. And you know, and then Scott to have, you know, it conceivably, it has to

01:10:11 ◼   ► be some kind of thing where it, it wouldn't just tell you, like, if I do find my iPhone,

01:10:17 ◼   ► like where the hell's my phone? It doesn't tell me where it is in my house. It doesn't

01:10:24 ◼   ► say it's in your bedroom dummy. It just says, Hey, it's in your house, right? Like, presumably

01:10:29 ◼   ► with these tags, it, you know, if you're going to find your keys, it's not good enough to

01:10:33 ◼   ► tell you it's in your house. It has to, it has to help you find

01:10:36 ◼   ► it, you know, in your couch cushions or wherever it actually

01:10:38 ◼   ► is. So I don't know how that'll work. But

01:10:41 ◼   ► well, that's where so that there's the AR mode, right?

01:10:44 ◼   ► Supposedly leaked. And if like, maybe you can look in it or show

01:10:47 ◼   ► up in your couch cushion, that would be like a killer demo if

01:10:50 ◼   ► they could do that. Right? Yeah, that seems like a cool thing. So

01:10:53 ◼   ► in other words, you go to the find my app, and you say find my

01:10:56 ◼   ► keys, and then it says like, just hold this up, and it

01:10:59 ◼   ► it switches to an AR mode and it points an arrow

01:11:03 ◼   ► towards your kitchen and you're like, oh yeah,

01:11:05 ◼   ► I left them on the kitchen counter, of course.

01:11:06 ◼   ► I remember now I put them down when I was putting,

01:11:09 ◼   ► you know, cream in my coffee or whatever.

01:11:12 ◼   ► That would be really cool.

01:11:15 ◼   ► And it would definitely be, and Apple is so

01:11:18 ◼   ► almost inexplicably all in on AR

01:11:23 ◼   ► that you can definitely see them demoing

01:11:24 ◼   ► the hell out of it on stage.

01:11:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, and again, this is the kind of thing

01:11:30 ◼   ► where they could probably sell them at a super high margin.

01:11:32 ◼   ► You'll probably end up accidentally spending a few hundred

01:11:35 ◼   ► dollars on them over the course of a couple years.

01:11:37 ◼   ► It keeps you locked into the ecosystem.

01:11:39 ◼   ► It keeps you using the Find My app.

01:11:41 ◼   ► And it's not like that money was gonna go anywhere else

01:11:46 ◼   ► on their stuff.

01:11:49 ◼   ► You're not gonna buy them instead of buying an iPad.

01:11:53 ◼   ► And it's cool, so why not do it?

01:11:56 ◼   ► And one of the things that I think Apple doesn't get enough credit for is their industry-leading

01:12:02 ◼   ► prowess at making really, really small gadgets. I know Serenity Caldwell, before she left

01:12:10 ◼   ► and joined Apple, wrote about it extensively on an annual basis, is, "Why don't other

01:12:16 ◼   ► smartwatch makers make watches that are meant to fit on women's smaller wrists?" And

01:12:23 ◼   ► I don't think it's because they don't care about the market.

01:12:25 ◼   ► I think that Apple is so much better at making tiny, small wrist computers that really only

01:12:30 ◼   ► Apple is able to make them at the 38-millimeter size and still have reasonable battery life

01:12:36 ◼   ► and all the same functionality and performance.

01:12:38 ◼   ► AirPods are tiny.

01:12:41 ◼   ► And I know there's other competing ones now, but there's a reason that Apple came out with

01:12:44 ◼   ► the first really great, tiny, not connected to each other by a wire under your chin or

01:12:51 ◼   ► behind your neck wireless AirPods is that they're really, really good at making tiny

01:12:56 ◼   ► little computers that could fit in something the size of an AirPod. So I think Apple's

01:13:01 ◼   ► tile could be remarkably small and very, very effective because I think they're really,

01:13:07 ◼   ► really good at that.

01:13:08 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Which is why I haven't used the tile I got

01:13:10 ◼   ► for free. It's just too big, right?

01:13:12 ◼   ► Jon Moffitt Yeah, that's what I thought, too. It was

01:13:13 ◼   ► too big for too many cases. And it would have—I carry so few keys, typically, that it would

01:13:17 ◼   ► have been like the, it would have been bigger than the rest of everything else I carry.

01:13:21 ◼   ► Yeah. Yep. Here's a question I got on Twitter right before we started recording. I think

01:13:26 ◼   ► it's fascinating per the event itself. Will Johnny I've be in attendance? I think, yeah,

01:13:34 ◼   ► he still works there. So I think so too. I think he'll be there for years to come. Actually.

01:13:40 ◼   ► I think. Ah, interesting. Uh, but it's a good question. And I, I would,

01:13:44 ◼   ► I would read into it if he weren't there and it would,

01:13:49 ◼   ► my interpretation and I don't know how we'll know if he's there. I mean,

01:13:52 ◼   ► cause it's, you know, it's not like he's going to be on stage, but typically,

01:13:57 ◼   ► you know,

01:13:57 ◼   ► I don't know how often he shows up like on the feed just when they show the

01:14:00 ◼   ► audience and stuff like that.

01:14:01 ◼   ► He's usually in the front row. He shows up in the,

01:14:04 ◼   ► no, he's usually in the second row. Oh really? Oh yeah. Better than me. Yeah.

01:14:09 ◼   ► because I've had I've sat up close a couple times. I don't I'm not going to say always

01:14:14 ◼   ► but because I don't know I don't I don't necessarily sit where I can see him every time. But at

01:14:19 ◼   ► least every time I have seen him he's he's in the second row usually but the one thing

01:14:26 ◼   ► that's very consistent is for like the last 10 years every single time I've seen him in

01:14:30 ◼   ► an Apple event he is seated right next to Laureen Powell. Oh, yes. Steve Jobs is

01:14:39 ◼   ► wife. Every time I have, and the only time I can't, the only time I would say that I

01:14:46 ◼   ► didn't see him seated next to her is because I didn't, I wasn't close enough to tell.

01:14:49 ◼   ► And I—

01:14:52 ◼   ► Interesting. I think they're friends.

01:14:55 ◼   ► Oh, they're, I think they're dear friends. I really do. I think that's why he sits next to her.

01:14:59 ◼   ► I think that they are genuinely close, very, very close. And for the same reason that she

01:15:07 ◼   ► keeps attending events is the same reason I think Johnny I've might still keep attending events is

01:15:13 ◼   ► because in some sense, whether he works there or not, there's there's so almost like a familial

01:15:17 ◼   ► relationship. You know, I see Bertrand surlay at the events still, year after year. I'm again,

01:15:26 ◼   ► I don't know if he goes to everyone, but I've seen him at them frequently. And he hasn't worked at

01:15:30 ◼   ► Apple since, I don't know, 2006. There are a lot, you know, people who leave on good terms,

01:15:37 ◼   ► you know, Scott Forstall doesn't show up at the events, but people who leave on their own terms

01:15:43 ◼   ► often keep coming back, you know, just because it's just part of the culture of being at Apple,

01:15:49 ◼   ► that they really, the people who, the executives who are there, they really do love these events.

01:15:56 ◼   ► So my guess is he will, and I would read into it if he wasn't.

01:16:00 ◼   ► Do you think he'll keep bringing his pals who fly in from overseas and all that kind of stuff?

01:16:06 ◼   ► Yeah, probably. He could probably bring as many people as he wants.

01:16:08 ◼   ► A bunch of the random guys I follow from Tokyo are

01:16:11 ◼   ► frequent guests of Johnny Ive at the Apple event. It's always funny.

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01:19:02 ◼   ► How about long term iPhone rumors? Touch IDs coming back supposedly within an in screen

01:19:08 ◼   ► sensor in addition to face ID and a new and what do you think about that? That's it's

01:19:15 ◼   ► a little weird to me and I'm a face ID believer and one of the rumors this year about the

01:19:19 ◼   ► new phones is that the face ID system is going to improve such that it's going to have a

01:19:23 ◼   ► much wider angle in particular to solve the problem of waking up your phone when it's

01:19:31 ◼   ► face up flat on a table. And it's funny because when that leaked a couple of weeks ago, it

01:19:37 ◼   ► was literally the day after my family had gone to eat at a restaurant and my wife was

01:19:43 ◼   ► complaining in particular about that because at the restaurant she had her phone on the

01:19:47 ◼   ► table and she even said, "The one thing I hate about this is that I can't look at my

01:19:51 ◼   ► phone just the way I could with the old one by putting my finger on it when it's on the

01:19:57 ◼   ► table." So it'd be cool if they solved that by having a wider angle. But other than making

01:20:05 ◼   ► face ID work even better. I can't see why I would want touch ID again. Some people,

01:20:12 ◼   ► when I linked to this the other day, said that the one thing they still hate about face

01:20:15 ◼   ► ID is using it with Apple Pay, that they hate to double-click the side button and that they

01:20:22 ◼   ► feel that's awkward and feel that that's the one thing that was better with touch ID, that

01:20:27 ◼   ► you just put your finger on the phone and get it near the NFC reader and beep, you're

01:20:31 ◼   ► And yeah, I don't know what to make of it.

01:20:36 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:20:37 ◼   ► - I wonder if there's more to it

01:20:41 ◼   ► than just what we have historically used

01:20:44 ◼   ► Touch ID and Face ID for.

01:20:48 ◼   ► If it, you know, it could be part of a more sophisticated

01:20:53 ◼   ► authentication scheme for two-factor or something like that.

01:20:57 ◼   ► Or I don't know, something seems weird.

01:21:00 ◼   ► I mean, I guess if you're daisy chaining

01:21:03 ◼   ► those two technologies together,

01:21:05 ◼   ► like there's almost zero percent.

01:21:07 ◼   ► Yeah, totally.

01:21:08 ◼   ► - But on the other hand, it's also more setup, right?

01:21:10 ◼   ► Because now when you get a new phone

01:21:12 ◼   ► or you restore your phone from the factory settings

01:21:14 ◼   ► or whatever, now you've got two things to set up, right?

01:21:17 ◼   ► And I've done it enough, like I've just reset an old iPad

01:21:20 ◼   ► to run the beta on and it's like touch ID,

01:21:23 ◼   ► even with like iOS 13, still,

01:21:25 ◼   ► it takes significantly longer to set up than face ID.

01:21:27 ◼   ► Like the face ID is remarkably quick

01:21:29 ◼   ► where you just move your head in a circle

01:21:31 ◼   ► and then they're like, do it again.

01:21:32 ◼   ► And they're like, okay, you're good.

01:21:33 ◼   ► And it's like, really?

01:21:34 ◼   ► That was it?

01:21:35 ◼   ► Like touch ID, it's like you touch, touch, touch,

01:21:37 ◼   ► and then they're like, change your grip.

01:21:38 ◼   ► And it's like, okay, touch, touch, touch.

01:21:41 ◼   ► I'm not gonna say it was, touch ID takes too long,

01:21:43 ◼   ► but everything you have to do,

01:21:46 ◼   ► there's enough stuff going on in that

01:21:48 ◼   ► you're setting up a new iPhone first run experience

01:21:52 ◼   ► that adding another one seems like,

01:21:55 ◼   ► I don't know, not that great.

01:21:57 ◼   ► And is the extra security worth that much?

01:21:59 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:22:00 ◼   ► I like you said, I think there's truth to this.

01:22:04 ◼   ► And the rumors, the Gurman rumor puts it at

01:22:09 ◼   ► maybe for next year's phones, but maybe not till 2021.

01:22:13 ◼   ► And then there was some other analyst

01:22:15 ◼   ► who I just linked to last night

01:22:17 ◼   ► who put out a report back in May,

01:22:20 ◼   ► pretty much saying the same two things

01:22:23 ◼   ► Gurman reported yesterday,

01:22:24 ◼   ► which is that Touch ID is coming back,

01:22:27 ◼   ► possibly in a sensor that would work on the whole screen.

01:22:30 ◼   ► So you wouldn't even have to put it on a circle

01:22:31 ◼   ► at the bottom, you could just put your finger

01:22:33 ◼   ► anywhere on the screen.

01:22:34 ◼   ► And this other rumor that there's gonna be a new SE,

01:22:39 ◼   ► small, cheap, smaller, cheaper iPhone coming in March

01:22:44 ◼   ► like the SE did back in 2016.

01:22:47 ◼   ► - I mean, maybe if this is part of like,

01:22:50 ◼   ► okay, they get rid of the notch

01:22:52 ◼   ► and the selfie camera is so small that

01:22:56 ◼   ► that a lot of the other stuff that they put in there

01:22:59 ◼   ► to do face ID no longer fits.

01:23:02 ◼   ► And the camera itself is less secure

01:23:07 ◼   ► than the old infrared camera,

01:23:09 ◼   ► but when it matches up with touch ID is secure.

01:23:12 ◼   ► I don't know, now I'm just making stuff up,

01:23:14 ◼   ► but there's gotta be something more to it, I think.

01:23:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I sorta do too.

01:23:20 ◼   ► But it's interesting, I don't know.

01:23:25 ◼   ► And is there anybody, like in the real world now

01:23:28 ◼   ► that we're two years into the Face ID era,

01:23:31 ◼   ► at least two years, as of next week it'll be two years

01:23:35 ◼   ► since the iPhone X was announced.

01:23:37 ◼   ► And everybody, like when Touch ID first came out,

01:23:41 ◼   ► and it's good that people tested it,

01:23:43 ◼   ► but people figured out that there's technically a way

01:23:46 ◼   ► that if somebody made a perfect print of your finger

01:23:49 ◼   ► and did like a little Mission Impossible thing

01:23:52 ◼   ► to put a silicon fake copy of your fingerprint,

01:23:56 ◼   ► they could get into your touch ID.

01:23:58 ◼   ► And people did testing two years ago

01:24:02 ◼   ► where they'd find identical twins

01:24:03 ◼   ► and see if they could get into their face ID.

01:24:06 ◼   ► And I remember there was a story

01:24:07 ◼   ► where some teenage boy could unlock his mom's,

01:24:11 ◼   ► he looked enough like his own mother

01:24:12 ◼   ► that he could unlock her phone with his face.

01:24:15 ◼   ► And Apple warned that twins are definitely a problem.

01:24:20 ◼   ► siblings might—like if you have two teenagers, like a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old, and

01:24:26 ◼   ► they're both the same gender, they might be able to unlock each other's phones.

01:24:33 ◼   ► But overall, Apple touted the fact that it was face IDs way more significant. I forget

01:24:38 ◼   ► the exact numbers Phil Schuler said on stage, but it wasn't a little bit more secure.

01:24:42 ◼   ► It was like one in 50,000 people could unlock a touch ID device, and it was like one in

01:24:47 ◼   ► million for face ID. Presumably if they use both, it would be 50,000 times a million. I don't know.

01:24:56 ◼   ► The thing I worry more about, and we saw this week what can happen is the

01:25:04 ◼   ► SIM card swapping with Jack Dorsey. I'm not sure if you've been SIM swapped yet,

01:25:13 ◼   ► But no, I was this summer and really tell you it's not fun. Really tell me how that happened

01:25:18 ◼   ► well, I was living in Paris for a few months and

01:25:23 ◼   ► Still have my US phone and woke up and I just read an article about a guy who had

01:25:29 ◼   ► Who had been sim swapped and

01:25:33 ◼   ► Got a hundred thousand dollars of Bitcoin stolen from him. Oh man, so I was already

01:25:42 ◼   ► - That's like losing cash because it's not,

01:25:45 ◼   ► you can't go and get a refund or whatever.

01:25:47 ◼   ► - Exactly, and so I was already worried about it.

01:25:49 ◼   ► I don't have any Bitcoin, so, you know,

01:25:52 ◼   ► but it still was not fun.

01:25:55 ◼   ► And I had written a post about crypto,

01:26:00 ◼   ► so I wonder if that's how someone, I don't know,

01:26:03 ◼   ► I'm even reluctant to even talk much about it,

01:26:07 ◼   ► and I haven't tweeted about it or anything,

01:26:08 ◼   ► but I'll talk a little bit about it here

01:26:10 ◼   ► because it happened.

01:26:11 ◼   ► Um, anyway, I woke up one morning already paranoid about this SIM swapping stuff.

01:26:17 ◼   ► And, um, you know, I had to get up at six for a flight and I noticed that my.

01:26:22 ◼   ► Network connection had been turned off, which was weird.

01:26:25 ◼   ► Um, and I had gotten a text overnight from my carrier saying, uh, your, your

01:26:33 ◼   ► SIM card has been changed, let us know if this isn't you or something like that.

01:26:39 ◼   ► And I was like, oh shit, I don't have time for this right now.

01:26:43 ◼   ► I have to go to the airport.

01:26:44 ◼   ► Um, so I immediately grabbed my wife's phone and called my carrier and said,

01:26:50 ◼   ► you idiots, um, and it's, I'm so frustrated cause I, I proactively

01:26:55 ◼   ► reached out to them and said, Hey, I'm really worried about this.

01:27:00 ◼   ► Will you make sure that my account is locked down?

01:27:02 ◼   ► And they're like, yeah, sure.

01:27:03 ◼   ► No, no worries.

01:27:04 ◼   ► No worries.

01:27:05 ◼   ► And they still did it.

01:27:06 ◼   ► Uh, it still got hacked.

01:27:08 ◼   ► And they haven't conclusively told me why.

01:27:12 ◼   ► If you look at most of these things,

01:27:16 ◼   ► it's someone goes into a store and my hunch is that

01:27:20 ◼   ► it's someone who works at a store,

01:27:23 ◼   ► gets a list from a friend of 10 accounts

01:27:27 ◼   ► that they want turned over or something like that.

01:27:30 ◼   ► And it may not even be an owned and operated store.

01:27:32 ◼   ► It might be one of those third party stores,

01:27:34 ◼   ► which seem even sketchier.

01:27:37 ◼   ► but they've got access to the ability,

01:27:40 ◼   ► like if it's a store with carrier,

01:27:44 ◼   ► let's not name any particular carrier, I guess,

01:27:47 ◼   ► but carrier X, if you can get a carrier X SIM card there,

01:27:51 ◼   ► that just the retail clerk can go in there

01:27:54 ◼   ► and type a phone number and print a new SIM card

01:27:56 ◼   ► and say, okay, that number is now on this card.

01:27:59 ◼   ► - I think so.

01:28:00 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:28:00 ◼   ► - And they're supposed to ask all sorts of questions

01:28:03 ◼   ► and verify it, but they could just,

01:28:05 ◼   ► they don't really have to.

01:28:06 ◼   ► all that stuff and that's what I didn't that's what I'd love to know like did someone

01:28:09 ◼   ► Make a fake ID with my name on it or do they just have a friend who works at one of those stores

01:28:14 ◼   ► You know wherever and said hey, let's swap these

01:28:17 ◼   ► Ten numbers did they look me up because I had written about Bitcoin or totally random. I don't know

01:28:24 ◼   ► Or was you know was I in one of the did they have a password of mine from a previous

01:28:33 ◼   ► hack of some sort of you know, whatever system I had, I don't

01:28:37 ◼   ► know. And I'm not sure if there's even a way to find out

01:28:40 ◼   ► for any of them. But at any rate, I got my number back

01:28:46 ◼   ► within, you know, five minutes of calling them. And it had only

01:28:49 ◼   ► been compromised for a few hours.

01:28:51 ◼   ► But were you able to get it back on the card you already had in

01:28:53 ◼   ► your phone? Yes. So you didn't have to like go, you didn't give

01:28:56 ◼   ► me your empower. So you can't go to us carrier. So wow, that's

01:28:59 ◼   ► exactly that's pretty smooth that it worked that well for

01:29:01 ◼   ► you.

01:29:02 ◼   ► It worked pretty well. However, I then and I made my flight

01:29:06 ◼   ► But then I spent the rest of the week in an absolute just state of paranoia

01:29:11 ◼   ► Right at my at my bars every five minutes like oh did I lose signal again? Did I lose signal?

01:29:16 ◼   ► And weren't you also weren't you also worried like which of any of my accounts been compromised?

01:29:23 ◼   ► Because maybe they were using the phone number is the second factor or something like that bingo

01:29:27 ◼   ► and in fact, the first thing they had done is try to

01:29:32 ◼   ► get into my two-factor account because that you can look up the

01:29:38 ◼   ► texts that your number has received.

01:29:40 ◼   ► And one of them was from the two-factor service I use.

01:29:46 ◼   ► And so they were able to at least see the accounts that I have two-factor

01:29:51 ◼   ► for, but they didn't know my password for that.

01:29:53 ◼   ► So they didn't actually get to decrypt them.

01:29:55 ◼   ► But my, my guess is that they were looking for Coinbase or something like that.

01:30:01 ◼   ► And I don't have any Bitcoin, so don't--

01:30:06 ◼   ► - Don't rob me.

01:30:08 ◼   ► - Don't even try, there's nothing there, I promise.

01:30:10 ◼   ► But it was crazy.

01:30:13 ◼   ► But what I did do then is a full security audit

01:30:16 ◼   ► and there's some really great guides on,

01:30:20 ◼   ► I think the one I found was on Medium,

01:30:21 ◼   ► of ways that you can really lock down your accounts,

01:30:26 ◼   ► including taking your phone number

01:30:29 ◼   ► off of your Google account and stuff like that.

01:30:32 ◼   ► And doing clever things with Google Voice.

01:30:34 ◼   ► So it sucked and it was more an emotional thing

01:30:39 ◼   ► than anything else.

01:30:41 ◼   ► I did get to see that the texts,

01:30:43 ◼   ► I didn't get to see the content of the text messages

01:30:46 ◼   ► they received, but I knew that there weren't a lot

01:30:50 ◼   ► and that they were not,

01:30:51 ◼   ► none of my actual accounts had been compromised

01:30:54 ◼   ► and I'm thankful for that.

01:30:57 ◼   ► This has happened to a dozen of the people

01:31:00 ◼   ► I know this summer, and it's crazy.

01:31:02 ◼   ► It's just an epidemic, and I don't think the carriers

01:31:05 ◼   ► are doing enough about it.

01:31:07 ◼   ► - No. - It's really not.

01:31:09 ◼   ► - And it's such an important part of your ID.

01:31:11 ◼   ► And there's so many places default to using your cell phone

01:31:15 ◼   ► as your second factor.

01:31:17 ◼   ► I'm often very lazy about such things,

01:31:21 ◼   ► and I was late to do two-factor on lots of things,

01:31:24 ◼   ► But over the last two years, I've cleaned up my act a lot.

01:31:29 ◼   ► And one of the things, my friend Mac Jay Ceglowski,

01:31:33 ◼   ► the pinboard guy, is really, he's so smart about it,

01:31:38 ◼   ► and he's really good at explaining it.

01:31:39 ◼   ► And he spends a lot of time talking to

01:31:43 ◼   ► people running for Congress.

01:31:47 ◼   ► He ran a thing that I supported last year

01:31:49 ◼   ► called the Great Slate, which is trying to get

01:31:51 ◼   ► Democrats elected in Republican districts, you know around like 10 great candidates around

01:31:56 ◼   ► the country. And in addition to like fundraising and trying to help them and stuff, he had

01:32:01 ◼   ► like a whole guide to what campaigns should do for information security, you know, and

01:32:08 ◼   ► one of the big things is don't use your, don't put your cell phone number on your Google

01:32:14 ◼   ► account. Do use Gmail, that Gmail is very secure and Google has very good security stuff,

01:32:21 ◼   ► but don't even give Google your phone number.

01:32:23 ◼   ► Use something else like Google Authenticator,

01:32:26 ◼   ► which has third-party options,

01:32:28 ◼   ► but then you get these one-time codes and stuff

01:32:30 ◼   ► because your SIM card just cannot be defended.

01:32:33 ◼   ► It really is dangerous.

01:32:35 ◼   ► And the same thing that you just said,

01:32:36 ◼   ► if you do have to use a phone number,

01:32:38 ◼   ► use a Google Voice number, which you can use

01:32:41 ◼   ► and you can get text messages too,

01:32:44 ◼   ► and then it's all that your Google Voice number

01:32:46 ◼   ► is as protected as your Google account,

01:32:49 ◼   ► and there's no SIM card that they can hack

01:32:52 ◼   ► to change the number or something like that.

01:32:54 ◼   ► So they can't take over your Google Voice number

01:32:56 ◼   ► unless they take over your Google account

01:32:57 ◼   ► and they can't, you know, all sorts of stuff.

01:32:59 ◼   ► Anyway, scary times, glad it worked out for them.

01:33:01 ◼   ► - Just make it hard, make it complicated.

01:33:03 ◼   ► And yeah, I mean, again, lucky that nothing was compromised

01:33:08 ◼   ► that I know of, but it was,

01:33:13 ◼   ► there were three or four days there

01:33:15 ◼   ► where that's basically all I was thinking about.

01:33:16 ◼   ► So everyone, be careful.

01:33:18 ◼   ► - Oh, why I started talking about this,

01:33:23 ◼   ► I wish that was something that Apple

01:33:25 ◼   ► could do something about with the phone.

01:33:27 ◼   ► And that's why I had high hopes for eSIM,

01:33:31 ◼   ► although, you know, when you think about it,

01:33:32 ◼   ► eSIM doesn't actually make it that much harder

01:33:35 ◼   ► for them to actually--

01:33:36 ◼   ► - 'Cause the SIMs are still assigned by the carriers.

01:33:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, but man, it's been what, a year now,

01:33:42 ◼   ► and eSIM really doesn't seem like much has happened with it.

01:33:47 ◼   ► you know, especially this summer, I was traveling a lot

01:33:49 ◼   ► and, you know, the carriers that had it,

01:33:52 ◼   ► they would have it for one of their types of accounts,

01:33:56 ◼   ► but not others.

01:33:57 ◼   ► A lot of times they wouldn't support it for prepaid.

01:33:59 ◼   ► So it's not like you could go into a Vodafone shop

01:34:02 ◼   ► in London and get a eSIM second line

01:34:05 ◼   ► as your prepaid account there.

01:34:07 ◼   ► I wonder if they'll talk about eSIM at all for the iPhone,

01:34:12 ◼   ► but I really wish actually the full hardware dual SIM

01:34:16 ◼   ► seem like it's actually still more useful

01:34:20 ◼   ► than having the eSIM.

01:34:21 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:34:22 ◼   ► It's no good, eSIM's no good for me.

01:34:25 ◼   ► I've figured out because as somebody who reviews iPhones

01:34:29 ◼   ► and also sometimes Android, or at least tries Android phones

01:34:33 ◼   ► and maybe wants to try using my main number with them,

01:34:36 ◼   ► but especially with just using several iPhones a year

01:34:39 ◼   ► based on getting review units,

01:34:41 ◼   ► just being able to pop out an actual SIM card

01:34:44 ◼   ► pop it into another phone is just, I kind of need it. But for most people, the eSIM

01:34:50 ◼   ► thing should be better. But I wish it were more secure. Anyway, it's not secure. If

01:34:56 ◼   ► you're out there, don't use your phone number as, your cell phone number as second factor.

01:35:01 ◼   ► It's really dangerous.

01:35:02 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the main thing.

01:35:03 ◼   ► Yeah. And if you have to use a phone number, get a Google Voice number. And, you know,

01:35:09 ◼   ► And if you run a service that requires a phone number as a second factor, push the people

01:35:16 ◼   ► at your service to support something like Google Authenticator and Authy and those things

01:35:23 ◼   ► that give you these one-time codes and stuff like that. Anything other than phone numbers.

01:35:30 ◼   ► Let me take another break right here and I'll thank our third and final sponsor of the show,

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01:37:54 ◼   ► I can't let you go. You're my points guy. You run the actual points party. Can't go

01:38:00 ◼   ► without talking a little bit about Apple Card. One thing I have a bit of follow-up where

01:38:07 ◼   ► a couple of weeks ago when I was talking about Apple Card, I think with Jim Dalrymple, and

01:38:11 ◼   ► I was talking about how I prefer cash back to points. I've had Amex for like 10 years

01:38:17 ◼   ► and we've got a gazillion points.

01:38:20 ◼   ► But that my, and I know,

01:38:23 ◼   ► I talk to you about this every year, Dan,

01:38:26 ◼   ► about how do I figure out how much money

01:38:28 ◼   ► an Amex point is worth?

01:38:29 ◼   ► It is maddeningly hard.

01:38:32 ◼   ► I, speaking out of my ass a few weeks ago on the show,

01:38:36 ◼   ► said I tend to think of them as being worth two cents each,

01:38:39 ◼   ► and a whole bunch of readers were like, you're nuts.

01:38:41 ◼   ► They're nowhere near two cents each.

01:38:42 ◼   ► Although, depending on what you do, like through Amex Travel,

01:38:45 ◼   ► you can maybe make them worth that.

01:38:47 ◼   ► But the way that Amazon lets you use your Amex points

01:38:52 ◼   ► just to buy stuff from Amazon,

01:38:53 ◼   ► you're only getting like 7/10 of a cent per point

01:38:57 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:38:58 ◼   ► So me valuing them at 2 cents each,

01:39:01 ◼   ► which would be the equivalent of 2% cash back,

01:39:03 ◼   ► is probably wrong.

01:39:05 ◼   ► - It's a little ambitious,

01:39:07 ◼   ► although I think that is what the point,

01:39:09 ◼   ► and the points guy is thepointsguy.com,

01:39:12 ◼   ► which is probably the biggest points site.

01:39:17 ◼   ► And it's like 100 employees now or something like that.

01:39:21 ◼   ► So if you look on their site,

01:39:22 ◼   ► it says MX membership rewards are worth two cents each.

01:39:26 ◼   ► And same as Chase Points.

01:39:29 ◼   ► That is very, very ambitious.

01:39:34 ◼   ► - Optimistic.

01:39:37 ◼   ► - Optimistic based on a very specific thing,

01:39:41 ◼   ► which is transferring them to a partner.

01:39:46 ◼   ► So one of the things you can do with the AmEx points

01:39:49 ◼   ► and Chase points and some other points programs

01:39:51 ◼   ► is transfer them sometimes on a one-to-one basis,

01:39:55 ◼   ► sometimes on a slightly different ratio to other programs.

01:39:59 ◼   ► - Like an airline or something.

01:40:02 ◼   ► - Exactly, and then use them to book award travel

01:40:07 ◼   ► in first class or business class.

01:40:10 ◼   ► and then use the theoretical value of that ticket

01:40:14 ◼   ► based on a cash fare that you would never actually pay,

01:40:17 ◼   ► like a $10,000 ticket.

01:40:20 ◼   ► And then you do the math and then you get to,

01:40:23 ◼   ► and it can be more than two points, two cents,

01:40:25 ◼   ► it could be five cents, it could be three to four cents.

01:40:29 ◼   ► And that, when I get that kind of rate, it's usually,

01:40:33 ◼   ► and I have a Amex too, I mostly do chase points,

01:40:36 ◼   ► When I get that rate, it's when I transfer points usually to,

01:40:42 ◼   ► often to a Hyatt Hotel account or something like that and book a room in

01:40:48 ◼   ► Tokyo that would cost $800 or something like that. And that's when I'm getting

01:40:52 ◼   ► more than 2 cents a point. It's rare though, to do that. And Amex actually

01:40:58 ◼   ► gives you a worse deal than Chase when you're just using their booking site.

01:41:03 ◼   ► which I didn't know. I got this Amex early this year or late last year and I didn't realize

01:41:10 ◼   ► that the points would be worth so little when you're booking through their system. Chase

01:41:16 ◼   ► actually gives you a better deal. If you have the reserve, it gives you one and a half cents

01:41:21 ◼   ► per point guaranteed basically. Amex is I think one cent per point if you're booking

01:41:28 ◼   ► a flight and even less if you're booking a hotel. But it really depends on the thing.

01:41:33 ◼   ► So yeah, the maximum value again is transferring it, which is totally doable if you specifically

01:41:41 ◼   ► know what you want. And then again, if you're going to really believe that the cash value is

01:41:47 ◼   ► how much it's worth, I mean, I don't think either of us are going to spend 10 grand, even on a first

01:41:53 ◼   ► class flight to Hong Kong or something like that. Some people do. People do every day.

01:41:58 ◼   ► It's amazing. What was that terrible leak that Apple was sending?

01:42:04 ◼   ► Yeah, on United. I think it was … Or that they just have a standing order for like 40

01:42:09 ◼   ► … A lot of business class tickets.

01:42:11 ◼   ► … 40 seats every single day on flights to Beijing.

01:42:15 ◼   ► Shenzhen or something.

01:42:16 ◼   ► Yeah, Shenzhen or something like that.

01:42:19 ◼   ► It's nice if you can do it, I guess.

01:42:21 ◼   ► So yeah, so that's where that two cents.

01:42:24 ◼   ► I try not to get less than one and a half cents per point from Chase and Amex and those

01:42:29 ◼   ► types of things.

01:42:30 ◼   ► This summer, I used some Amex points very well to take some last minute flights that

01:42:38 ◼   ► for whatever reason were priced inexpensively in points.

01:42:42 ◼   ► I think I was flying from Paris to Milan for the furniture festival.

01:42:47 ◼   ► But if you had paid cash for them, it was like 800 euros or something.

01:42:50 ◼   ► Well, that was one of the things that I heard from a couple of readers or listeners, I guess,

01:42:54 ◼   ► since I only talked about it.

01:42:55 ◼   ► But a couple of listeners who obviously know way more about it than I do said the same

01:42:58 ◼   ► thing that if you ever make last minute travel or flights—and I tend to because stuff like

01:43:05 ◼   ► Apple events, invitations don't tend to come far in advance.

01:43:11 ◼   ► It just happens.

01:43:13 ◼   ► When you book with points, typically—not always because they're airlines, so always

01:43:17 ◼   ► never applies—but typically, the points value doesn't go up when you book last minute.

01:43:24 ◼   ► Like a Paris to Milan flight might be the same number of points whether you book three

01:43:29 ◼   ► months in advance or three days in advance.

01:43:32 ◼   ► You can really score some deals that way in terms of what you would actually pay because

01:43:38 ◼   ► a lot of the times when you book last minute and you're just paying for the flight, you're

01:43:42 ◼   ► oh my god, I can't believe what I'm paying for this flight for a

01:43:45 ◼   ► seat and coach.

01:43:45 ◼   ► Totally. And the the maddening thing about points is that

01:43:51 ◼   ► there's no hard and fast rule like that could actually be more

01:43:54 ◼   ► points, it could be fewer. One crazy thing that tends to happen

01:43:58 ◼   ► is that sometimes airlines open up cheap points tickets right

01:44:02 ◼   ► away, right before the flight goes. Yeah, day before. And I of

01:44:07 ◼   ► course, am a jerk. So if I noticed that last year, I had an

01:44:11 ◼   ► an expensive points ticket booked

01:44:13 ◼   ► and I noticed that like the day before

01:44:16 ◼   ► that they had opened up a cheaper points ticket.

01:44:18 ◼   ► So I called in and had half my points refunded to me.

01:44:21 ◼   ► But hey, gotta do it, right?

01:44:25 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:44:26 ◼   ► - So yeah, that's a great strategy

01:44:27 ◼   ► is using points for last minute.

01:44:29 ◼   ► One thing that I didn't know until I got the Amex card

01:44:33 ◼   ► was I didn't realize it took a whole statement,

01:44:36 ◼   ► basically two statements before you get your points,

01:44:40 ◼   ► which makes the Apple Cash thing actually really,

01:44:43 ◼   ► really compelling because you literally get the cash

01:44:45 ◼   ► the next morning.

01:44:46 ◼   ► - I'm finding that now that I've had my card

01:44:50 ◼   ► for a couple of weeks now, my Apple card,

01:44:53 ◼   ► I find that very satisfying.

01:44:55 ◼   ► And it's irrational because, you know,

01:44:57 ◼   ► it's, you know, sometimes it's like I just bought

01:45:00 ◼   ► a six pack of beer and I'm getting 70 cents back

01:45:04 ◼   ► or I don't even know what it is, you know,

01:45:05 ◼   ► but sometimes it's like a quarter or something like that.

01:45:10 ◼   ► But I still find it satisfying.

01:45:13 ◼   ► It's like, here, here's some cash.

01:45:14 ◼   ► It's just right there, there you go.

01:45:16 ◼   ► - Yep, yeah, and I think, again,

01:45:19 ◼   ► if you're gonna invest a lot of time and energy

01:45:23 ◼   ► into and collect points and put together

01:45:26 ◼   ► the trip of a lifetime or the trip of a year

01:45:29 ◼   ► once or twice a year,

01:45:30 ◼   ► you can totally get a lot of value out of it.

01:45:34 ◼   ► Someday I'll actually do the math

01:45:36 ◼   ► and remember to write everything down

01:45:38 ◼   ► and see what my total redemption value for the year is.

01:45:42 ◼   ► It could be as high as 5% of my spend.

01:45:44 ◼   ► It could be even more, I don't know.

01:45:46 ◼   ► But if you're not, and if you just want some rewards

01:45:50 ◼   ► and you want them quickly and you want them to be useful,

01:45:54 ◼   ► I've already earned two free coffees from Apple Card

01:45:57 ◼   ► and I barely use it.

01:45:58 ◼   ► And just use it right away.

01:46:01 ◼   ► And I think for a lot of people,

01:46:02 ◼   ► that'll be super compelling.

01:46:04 ◼   ► - So basically what I've concluded is that,

01:46:08 ◼   ► like you said, it's optimistic to treat Amex points,

01:46:11 ◼   ► and you do get a point per dollar spent.

01:46:13 ◼   ► So if I buy a dollar on my Amex, I get a point.

01:46:18 ◼   ► Two months later.

01:46:19 ◼   ► - I believe you, and you, I think you still have

01:46:21 ◼   ► the Platinum, so you probably get five points per dollar

01:46:23 ◼   ► on airplane tickets and stuff like that.

01:46:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, but we also got the American card,

01:46:29 ◼   ► so now we're using that for the tickets.

01:46:32 ◼   ► But basically, if it's optimistic to treat an Amex point as worth two cents, on a day-to-day

01:46:45 ◼   ► basis, just going out buying groceries and doing all these things where I can use Apple Pay,

01:46:50 ◼   ► and day-to-day, my life here in Philadelphia, I can use Apple Pay just about everywhere,

01:46:58 ◼   ► know, just running errands. I just use the Apple Card now because getting 2% cash back

01:47:06 ◼   ► to me, it's like, well, then there's no optimism about it. I'm just getting 2% back in a cash

01:47:11 ◼   ► account. So why not? So anything where I actually have to hand the card over, I still use the

01:47:15 ◼   ► Amex and anything where I can use Apple Pay, I just use Apple Card.

01:47:20 ◼   ► Yup. Yeah. It ends up being a pretty decent deal, especially relative to most, I think,

01:47:29 ◼   ► half of the spending. So I wrote about this a bit on the new consumer. I wrote a couple

01:47:34 ◼   ► pieces on—I wrote one piece on Apple Card so far. And I should write my new points party

01:47:40 ◼   ► on Apple Card soon. The 2% is actually pretty good. I mean, half of all spending is still

01:47:46 ◼   ► on debit cards where people are getting nothing. A lot of that is because people either do

01:47:50 ◼   ► not want or can't get credit cards, although. So that's part of what Apple's trying to do

01:47:55 ◼   ► is make it easier to get a credit card and make it less punishing. I mean, you still

01:47:59 ◼   ► can spiral into debt, which is not good, but the fee structure, at least for the Apple

01:48:05 ◼   ► card, no late fees, no overcharge fees, all that kind of stuff is a lot friendlier than

01:48:10 ◼   ► than most cards, period.

01:48:12 ◼   ► But 2% is not bad.

01:48:17 ◼   ► And what's interesting is this little economy

01:48:20 ◼   ► that started to happen.

01:48:22 ◼   ► They've already reached,

01:48:23 ◼   ► they had the launch deal with Uber.

01:48:25 ◼   ► I'm not sure how long it goes for.

01:48:27 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:48:28 ◼   ► - Uber, if you use Uber and the Apple card through,

01:48:31 ◼   ► the Uber, I think it's only through Apple Pay.

01:48:34 ◼   ► I'm not entirely sure.

01:48:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know what, I'm not sure how that works either.

01:48:38 ◼   ► - Well, either way, they give you 3% back

01:48:40 ◼   ► instead of two, so that's 50% more reward spending on Uber.

01:48:45 ◼   ► Thought it was interesting they did it with Uber

01:48:47 ◼   ► even though they're shareholders in Lyft,

01:48:49 ◼   ► or at least were, anyway, doesn't matter.

01:48:51 ◼   ► And then on the other end, the Apple Cash economy,

01:48:55 ◼   ► and I don't know how much they're gonna talk

01:48:58 ◼   ► about Apple Cash because I think Apple Card

01:49:01 ◼   ► is probably the main message at least for now,

01:49:04 ◼   ► but you could see a world in which redeeming your Apple Cash

01:49:07 ◼   ► You could also get a deal whether you're spending it at a partner or on the iTunes store or

01:49:16 ◼   ► whatever where they could multiply your Apple cash by some certain amount in exchange for

01:49:23 ◼   ► using it toward something.

01:49:28 ◼   ► That hasn't really started yet.

01:49:30 ◼   ► Right now Apple cash is just worth whatever it is.

01:49:33 ◼   ► but I could see some,

01:49:35 ◼   ► I could imagine an interesting economy

01:49:37 ◼   ► picking up around Apple Cash at some point,

01:49:40 ◼   ► the way that Square Cash and some of the other ones

01:49:43 ◼   ► have built bonus programs.

01:49:46 ◼   ► Although Square has since ruined the--

01:49:49 ◼   ► - Oh, this, I wanted to, this is the thing.

01:49:51 ◼   ► So where, I forget when I was in New York

01:49:53 ◼   ► and you and I, and you introduced me to this.

01:49:56 ◼   ► Sometimes you-- - I think it was like,

01:49:58 ◼   ► it was almost a year ago, man. (laughs)

01:50:00 ◼   ► - Well, you introduced me. - Yeah, it was last fall.

01:50:02 ◼   ► I've had the Square Cash account.

01:50:04 ◼   ► That's where you use it.

01:50:07 ◼   ► They just call it cash.

01:50:08 ◼   ► It's the little green--

01:50:09 ◼   ► - Cash app. - Cash app.

01:50:10 ◼   ► And I've been using that to send money to friends,

01:50:14 ◼   ► to square up deals where one person puts a credit card in,

01:50:17 ◼   ► you'd send, you know, use Square Cash.

01:50:18 ◼   ► And it's easy to hook it up to your bank account

01:50:20 ◼   ► and move money in either direction,

01:50:23 ◼   ► without paying any fees at all,

01:50:25 ◼   ► just to put more money in my Square Cash account,

01:50:27 ◼   ► blah, blah, blah.

01:50:28 ◼   ► But what you can do with the Square Cash is you can say,

01:50:30 ◼   ► give me a debit card, not a credit card, a debit card. And

01:50:34 ◼   ► they send you a debit card. And it's nice because you can like

01:50:39 ◼   ► sign your name and then they actually like it laser embed the

01:50:41 ◼   ► signature right on the front of the card or you could draw like

01:50:44 ◼   ► a funny face, you could do whatever you want with it. Make

01:50:48 ◼   ► your own little design. But anyway, the reason you turned me

01:50:50 ◼   ► on to this was that they have these things, they actually do

01:50:53 ◼   ► have rewards, even though it's a debit card, they call them

01:50:55 ◼   ► boosts. And it's a weird system. And it's just the only way it

01:51:00 ◼   ► would pot like no bank could ever offer this this could only happen from a

01:51:03 ◼   ► startup with VC money coming in through a fire hose like no bank could ever do

01:51:09 ◼   ► this they're a public company now which is crazy but yeah yeah but no no no sane

01:51:15 ◼   ► bank would ever do this right like in the same way that no traditional

01:51:20 ◼   ► retailer could just take all of their profits and pump it back into the

01:51:24 ◼   ► business like Amazon did forever you know as opposed to actually turning a

01:51:29 ◼   ► profit. But the boosts actually pay. And the one boost—the idea is that every month or

01:51:38 ◼   ► so they change the boosts that are offered. And I guess they have partnerships with some

01:51:42 ◼   ► of these companies, and some of them they just do on their own. But they had for a while

01:51:45 ◼   ► they had like a Shake Shack boost. And you can only have one boost on your account at

01:51:49 ◼   ► a time. You go in the app and you say, "Here's the boost I want. I want Shake Shack." And

01:51:52 ◼   ► if you go to Shake Shack, you'd get like, I don't know, 15% off your order or something

01:51:57 ◼   ► like that. They still have Whole Foods on there. I think what they offer is like 5%

01:52:05 ◼   ► up to $200 or something like that. So it's equivalent to getting like the Amazon or the

01:52:11 ◼   ► Whole Foods card or whatever it is that you can get 5% at Whole Foods. But the one that

01:52:16 ◼   ► made me get the card is they had a—it was a coffee shop boost. And any coffee shop you

01:52:22 ◼   ► could buy, they would give you $1 back, not like a percentage,

01:52:26 ◼   ► $1. And I tend to buy just plain drip coffee. So it's like $2.50

01:52:31 ◼   ► or $3. I go in, get a coffee for $2.50. And using that card, I

01:52:37 ◼   ► would get a full dollar back every time. And I use that I got

01:52:42 ◼   ► the card as soon as you told me to I've used it for a year and

01:52:44 ◼   ► now that the bastards have taken it away. I don't understand how

01:52:49 ◼   ► it works anymore.

01:52:50 ◼   ► Well, now, I'm looking at it right now. Now you have to use

01:52:53 ◼   ► the card five times to unlock the boost. So basically, they're

01:52:57 ◼   ► trying to get you because people like me who only use it on boost

01:53:01 ◼   ► purchases.

01:53:01 ◼   ► I ever used it for a year. The car is totally worn out. Because

01:53:07 ◼   ► because the the the nearest coffee shop to me doesn't take

01:53:13 ◼   ► Apple Pay. So I'd have to hand the card over and so they're

01:53:16 ◼   ► scanning it, all I used it for was buying coffee. I was getting the equivalent of a

01:53:24 ◼   ► 40% cash back.

01:53:26 ◼   ► It was a great deal. I mean, the Whole Foods used to be 10%, now it's 5%. But 10% back

01:53:32 ◼   ► at Whole Foods is crazy. That's a way better deal than the Amazon card was giving you.

01:53:37 ◼   ► You can't get 10% on any credit card. It's insane.

01:53:40 ◼   ► No. No. Unless, no.

01:53:43 ◼   ► even 5% is a really good deal, especially on a debit card where

01:53:46 ◼   ► you're not, you know, you there's no even if you're

01:53:49 ◼   ► resistant to credit cards on principle or something like

01:53:52 ◼   ► that. 5% is great.

01:53:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I know how to get 10% back at Whole Foods, but it only

01:54:00 ◼   ► happens sometimes. Anyway, points party.com. I talked about

01:54:05 ◼   ► it there, I think but yeah, basically, they just want you to

01:54:09 ◼   ► use the card more to get that boost back.

01:54:12 ◼   ► And then I think it's only valid for five times after that.

01:54:15 ◼   ► It's still basically good for five bucks

01:54:17 ◼   ► every once in a while too.

01:54:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I don't wanna use that card anywhere else.

01:54:20 ◼   ► - No, what they have, and now it's,

01:54:23 ◼   ► so I'm looking at mine right now,

01:54:24 ◼   ► 10% off at Sweetgreen, 5% off at Ticketmaster,

01:54:28 ◼   ► 10% off Bed Bath and Beyond.

01:54:31 ◼   ► But the one that is an official partnership now actually

01:54:35 ◼   ► is 15% off every order at DoorDash.

01:54:38 ◼   ► and they just did a big deal with DoorDash.

01:54:42 ◼   ► They sold Caviar to DoorDash.

01:54:44 ◼   ► Caviar was the food delivery service that Square had owned.

01:54:47 ◼   ► - Oh, I didn't know that Square owned that, okay.

01:54:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, so they sold it to DoorDash

01:54:51 ◼   ► and they're doing this marketing partnership

01:54:54 ◼   ► with the Boost as well.

01:54:56 ◼   ► So if you look at most of the Boosts,

01:54:59 ◼   ► it says at the bottom,

01:55:00 ◼   ► Whole Foods has nothing to do with this.

01:55:04 ◼   ► Boost provided solely by Cash App.

01:55:08 ◼   ► The one with DoorDash does not say that.

01:55:10 ◼   ► So that is an official partnership.

01:55:12 ◼   ► But it's a very clever idea because again,

01:55:14 ◼   ► much like the Apple Cash and even actually

01:55:17 ◼   ► more than the Apple Cash,

01:55:18 ◼   ► it's money that you get back instantly.

01:55:20 ◼   ► And it's actual money.

01:55:21 ◼   ► It's not points that will show up in a month and a half

01:55:25 ◼   ► that you can use for something else.

01:55:26 ◼   ► So very clever. - No, it's literal cash.

01:55:28 ◼   ► Literal cash in a debit card account that you,

01:55:30 ◼   ► if you choose to, you can just transfer at no fee

01:55:33 ◼   ► right to your checking account

01:55:35 ◼   ► or whatever else you have hooked up

01:55:36 ◼   ► or send it to your friend.

01:55:37 ◼   ► I can send my friend Dan money and it's just right there from the money I got for buying

01:55:44 ◼   ► stuff with these boosts. So anyway, it's a cool thing to have and again, you don't pay

01:55:50 ◼   ► anything. You sign up, you get your cash account, it's free and then you transfer money to start

01:55:55 ◼   ► funding it free, get the card free and so I still recommend it even though they took

01:56:02 ◼   ► away my beloved coffee shop boost or at least they took it away from applying every single

01:56:07 ◼   ► time, but it's still a cool thing to have.

01:56:09 ◼   ► It's fun.

01:56:11 ◼   ► Cash App is one of those things where among the tech nerd or media Twitter, people don't

01:56:18 ◼   ► really use it that much.

01:56:19 ◼   ► Venmo, especially in New York, is very popular.

01:56:22 ◼   ► Cash App is huge.

01:56:24 ◼   ► The Square said in their earnings last quarter, I think that three and a half million people

01:56:28 ◼   ► were using the cash card alone in the month of June.

01:56:33 ◼   ► That's a lot of people.

01:56:34 ◼   ► I think it's only in America too.

01:56:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so too.

01:56:37 ◼   ► huge success. It's one of the top apps. If you look in the app store download rankings,

01:56:41 ◼   ► especially on the weekend, it's always in the top, I don't know, 25 or something like

01:56:45 ◼   ► that. So yeah, because it's got a big success. It's got the built in almost social media

01:56:50 ◼   ► viral effect where of course you're going to get more people who join in like especially

01:56:54 ◼   ► on weekends for the I think that the check sharing thing is just gotta be so it's so

01:56:59 ◼   ► obvious, right? So you go out with a bunch of pals and a couple of you already have the

01:57:03 ◼   ► the cash app. And then you can say, "Oh, what's the cash app?" And they say, "Oh, it's a free

01:57:07 ◼   ► app." And if you do it, then you can send me 15 bucks to square up the meal, no pun

01:57:13 ◼   ► intended. So you can totally see how it spreads. And you can tell people, "Hey, no fees. There

01:57:18 ◼   ► is no fee to sign up, no fee to transfer money, and it's super easy to use." It's actually

01:57:23 ◼   ► a really nicely designed app, in my opinion. There's one or two things that are hidden

01:57:29 ◼   ► behind like you have to like tap your avatar or something like that to get it. It's a little,

01:57:34 ◼   ► but for the most part it's designed for millennials who read with their fingers or something like that.

01:57:40 ◼   ► Yeah, but you know and it and much like apple card it's totally modern and when you buy something you

01:57:46 ◼   ► get a little notification that it was used immediately, which is I love you know because

01:57:53 ◼   ► it gives you that reassurance that if somebody does skim your number or something like that and

01:57:57 ◼   ► And you're as soon as they try, as soon as they use your number to buy something,

01:58:00 ◼   ► you're going to get a notification on your phone that tells you it was used.

01:58:03 ◼   ► Uh, uh, so anyway, I recommend it and all thanks to you.

01:58:07 ◼   ► I had the cash account, but the card, you know, I have to think, I have to thank you.

01:58:11 ◼   ► Yeah, it's cool.

01:58:13 ◼   ► The other funny thing is, uh, it's one of those things where, you know, I

01:58:16 ◼   ► never really see ads for it, but the minute you leave a big city and turn

01:58:20 ◼   ► the radio on somewhere, there's ads ads for cash app all the time on the radio.

01:58:25 ◼   ► Which is kind of funny.

01:58:26 ◼   ► It's like one of those things

01:58:27 ◼   ► where it's a truly mainstream product

01:58:29 ◼   ► that the tech elite just don't really use as much.

01:58:33 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Whatever, good.

01:58:35 ◼   ► - Square's still doing a good job too on the other end,

01:58:37 ◼   ► on the retail end, where I see more and more shops,

01:58:39 ◼   ► where places where I do use Apple Pay,

01:58:43 ◼   ► where they've got the Square readers for doing it,

01:58:48 ◼   ► for doing your transaction.

01:58:52 ◼   ► They've got the cool thing like the La Colombe,

01:58:55 ◼   ► which is my favorite coffee shop here in Center City, Philly.

01:58:58 ◼   ► They've got those ones where it's like two tablets.

01:59:02 ◼   ► And so there's a bigger tablet

01:59:04 ◼   ► that faces the person behind the counter

01:59:06 ◼   ► and a smaller tablet facing the customer

01:59:08 ◼   ► so that they don't have to,

01:59:09 ◼   ► like a lot of the iPad-based point of sale things

01:59:12 ◼   ► where there's just the one iPad,

01:59:14 ◼   ► they have to pivot it around for you to see it

01:59:17 ◼   ► and tap how much of a tip you want or whatever,

01:59:19 ◼   ► which isn't onerous, onerous,

01:59:23 ◼   ► however you pronounce the word,

01:59:25 ◼   ► But the little dual tablet system that the square terminals have is really elegant.

01:59:31 ◼   ► And in my experience, I don't know, it could just be like the placebo effect that I think

01:59:35 ◼   ► that they are good and faster.

01:59:37 ◼   ► To me, they seem to work faster, where the NFC reader is very, very fast with the iPhone

01:59:44 ◼   ► and the transaction goes through faster.

01:59:46 ◼   ► But that could just be my imagination.

01:59:48 ◼   ► Dave Asprey

01:59:50 ◼   ► The first responsive Android tablet in history?

01:59:52 ◼   ► I guess they're Android I guess they have to be because it would be insane if they wrote their own

01:59:56 ◼   ► operating system from scratch scratch, but I see well, maybe

02:00:00 ◼   ► Yeah, it would it would presumably be Android based right at any rate

02:00:05 ◼   ► But with you know with their own complete control over everything that goes into it

02:00:08 ◼   ► It's it is it's very iPad like in terms of responsiveness and accuracy of the touch and stuff like that

02:00:13 ◼   ► Yeah, and the build quality not to be that guy but the build quality seems very nice too. Yeah. Yeah

02:00:19 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a very nice thing. I think square overall is

02:00:22 ◼   ► in some ways it seems

02:00:25 ◼   ► More well, I think I think I think there's good reason for it to square of the two Jack Dorsey companies seems the more Jack Dorsey

02:00:33 ◼   ► Whereas Twitter went through so many weird

02:00:37 ◼   ► total upheavals where Dorsey was out and

02:00:41 ◼   ► They brought in dick and there was the times when

02:00:48 ◼   ► What's-his-name was the CEO?

02:00:50 ◼   ► the medium guy

02:00:52 ◼   ► have Williams Williams was you know, they they and then Ev was in and then he was out and then dick was gone and Jack is

02:00:58 ◼   ► back and and

02:01:00 ◼   ► Twitter is such a weird mishmash

02:01:02 ◼   ► Of everything, you know like I in my opinion. No one would look at Twitter's stuff and think that's a really elegant design

02:01:10 ◼   ► It's not bad. It's not ugly, but it's there's a lot of complex stuff. Whereas everything from Square is

02:01:16 ◼   ► Very very tidy in my experience from their hardware to their apps

02:01:21 ◼   ► It's a company. I really admire. Yeah

02:01:25 ◼   ► Anything else I

02:01:29 ◼   ► Think we've run the gamut there. Yeah, I don't expect anything else from the event. I know that there's Mac stuff coming

02:01:36 ◼   ► I don't expect them to do it. I think that the whole event will be

02:01:39 ◼   ► phones watches and

02:01:42 ◼   ► services. Some wacky thing happened this week where people are like, Oh, AR glasses. Now.

02:01:47 ◼   ► I also wouldn't be surprised if the tile tracker thing isn't in next week's event that it's just

02:01:55 ◼   ► could be but I you know, I don't know. I just feel like I feel like the phones, watches and

02:02:03 ◼   ► services alone would be enough to fill the event and then why dilute it with further stuff.

02:02:09 ◼   ► Right? Have there been hardware leaks of that or anything like that? Or is it just the software?

02:02:14 ◼   ► Just the software, I think. And the only hardware that's leaked is the diagrams of the things,

02:02:20 ◼   ► the little circles that are in the software, you know, that if you talk about the iOS 13 beta,

02:02:24 ◼   ► there's things that suggest it's like a little like a coin type thing with an apple logo in the

02:02:29 ◼   ► middle. So I know they've probably learned their lesson. But this could this be one of those things

02:02:34 ◼   ► where they're like, "And we're working on these little taggers."

02:02:39 ◼   ► No, I hope not. I think that they've learned a lesson. I've heard—I've actually,

02:02:43 ◼   ► you know, you're referencing AirPower and that they announced that prematurely. I've heard—

02:02:47 ◼   ► I mean, AirPods too were delayed quite a bit after the initial announcement.

02:02:51 ◼   ► But I don't think that they regret it. I think that they announced—I feel like they wished they—because

02:02:57 ◼   ► they did come out before Christmas, so I feel like that's as late as they could come out.

02:03:01 ◼   ► Like the day before, but yeah.

02:03:03 ◼   ► Right. But I kind of feel like they needed to announce, you know, like they needed to be

02:03:09 ◼   ► announced with the phones that dropped the headphone jack.

02:03:13 ◼   ► Totally. Yeah.

02:03:13 ◼   ► Yeah. So I don't think they regret it. I know from talking to several people at Apple that

02:03:18 ◼   ► there's a real, it's not just, "Hey, we screwed up with AirPower." It was, "This was screw up

02:03:27 ◼   ► in terms of gambling on a product that we didn't know we could build yet."

02:03:32 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, man, I still want it. But yeah, so yeah, I could, I don't know the,

02:03:39 ◼   ► because the hardware is the stuff that often is the thing that leaks, which is crazy. So

02:03:45 ◼   ► I don't know. I don't, I'm not sure what a, when a better time to, I guess when it's ready

02:03:51 ◼   ► is the right answer, but I'm not sure when a better time to roll that out would be,

02:03:55 ◼   ► do you think there'll be new AirPods? No, I don't. I think because I think these second

02:04:00 ◼   ► generation ones just came out. And I know that there are some rumors. I know Gurman

02:04:04 ◼   ► said that they're working on future ones, but I can't imagine that they would come

02:04:07 ◼   ► out before Christmas. I really don't. I think that would be a next year thing.

02:04:11 ◼   ► Cool. All right, then it sounds like a pretty simple thing. I guess the HomePod is the one

02:04:18 ◼   ► thing that seems like there would be a hardware leak from that too if there was something

02:04:24 ◼   ► new.

02:04:25 ◼   ► Well, there's a rumor that they're coming out with one with only two tweeters instead

02:04:28 ◼   ► of seven, which I was talking to Jim Dalrymple about it. He's a bigger music guy than me,

02:04:34 ◼   ► but I can only imagine that that would be a new lower cost HomePod in addition to the

02:04:41 ◼   ► existing HomePod because I just can't see the HomePod. The whole appeal of the HomePod

02:04:44 ◼   ► is how good it sounds. No matter how smart it is, there's no way a two-tweeter one could

02:04:49 ◼   ► be better than the seven-tweeter ones. So I don't know. That would be cool. But again,

02:04:53 ◼   ► I don't expect it. I would expect that later, you know that like an October event like yeah in October next year

02:04:58 ◼   ► Yeah, but like even if all that stuff's ready like the October events are always a little bit lower key in

02:05:05 ◼   ► Every regard and they they can therefore jump around more and say here's the new Mac. Here's the Mac Pro

02:05:12 ◼   ► We promised at WWDC and here's a new MacBook Pro 16 inch size

02:05:16 ◼   ► That's like this and here's the tile tracker and we've got two new iPad pros and you know

02:05:22 ◼   ► and jump around and do that. Whereas the September one, I feel like they don't want to cram a lot of

02:05:27 ◼   ► stuff in there. And the services narrative is so important to them in terms of the story that

02:05:36 ◼   ► they're selling to Wall Street that I'd be shocked. I would be absolutely shocked if they

02:05:43 ◼   ► don't unveil all of the details for the services they announced back in March on Tuesday,

02:05:50 ◼   ► including pricing, including dates, and doing that at their highest profile event of the

02:05:58 ◼   ► year, they're going to want to distract from that as little as possible. And therefore,

02:06:02 ◼   ► the only other thing I expect would be the phones and the watches.

02:06:07 ◼   ► Makes sense.

02:06:08 ◼   ► That's what I think. But, you know, who knows? I had one more idea, but I forgot it. Yeah,

02:06:16 ◼   ► Yeah, it probably wasn't good. Anyway, Dan Fromer, thank you. So the new consumer is

02:06:26 ◼   ► at newconsumer.com. Excellent newsletter. I enjoy every single issue of it. I feel like

02:06:33 ◼   ► also I enjoy the pace. If I want to complain, you know, we were Pat and Ben Thompson on

02:06:38 ◼   ► the back. I sometimes can't keep up with Stratechery. Not because I feel like he's writing needless

02:06:44 ◼   ► words, but because he writes too many good words. Whereas I really enjoy the couple times

02:06:49 ◼   ► a week pace of the new consumer.

02:06:51 ◼   ► Tom Bilyeu (01h00): Thank you. Yeah. And if you care about e-commerce

02:06:56 ◼   ► or consumer brands or marketing or just the future, give it a shot. NewConsumer.com.

02:07:00 ◼   ► Jay Famiglietti (01h00): Yeah. I really enjoy it. And people can follow

02:07:04 ◼   ► you on Twitter. You're an excellent Twitter follower @fromdome, F-R-O-M-E-D-O-M-E on Twitter.

02:07:11 ◼   ► I enjoy you there too. My thanks to you. Let me thank our sponsors. Sometimes I forget

02:07:16 ◼   ► to thank them at the end of the show. I'll go backwards. Eero, where you can go to get

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02:07:41 ◼   ► show. They obviously think there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there and they probably

02:07:43 ◼   ► are listening to the show. My thanks to them. Dan, thanks. See you soon.