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The Talk Show

142: ‘They Sherlocked F.lux’ With Dan Frommer

 

00:00:00   You were at CES.

00:00:01   - I was.

00:00:02   - Now correct me if I'm wrong.

00:00:04   So this is the second year, okay.

00:00:05   And you came on the show last year

00:00:06   and talked about CES, right?

00:00:07   - I think this might be our third or fourth

00:00:10   annual CES discussion.

00:00:13   And I think the first two I didn't go

00:00:14   and were like, oh, we should go.

00:00:17   And then last year I went for the first time.

00:00:19   - It is absolutely a John Gruver, the talk show tradition

00:00:25   that like mid January, I have someone on,

00:00:28   we talk about CES and then I say, you know what,

00:00:30   damn it, next year I'm going.

00:00:32   And then next year comes and goes and I don't go.

00:00:36   - You almost need to start planning it now.

00:00:38   And it's funny because they've already changed the website

00:00:40   over to 2017 CES.

00:00:43   I wonder if they have a script that does that.

00:00:45   It was like the next day, boom.

00:00:48   Their website's already turned over.

00:00:49   It was great, man, I love it.

00:00:52   It was super fun.

00:00:54   It's absolute insanity.

00:00:55   I mean, you go to Vegas a lot.

00:00:57   And I had not been to Vegas in 10 years actually

00:01:01   before last year's CES and it is absolute chaos.

00:01:06   I mean there are 200,000 people there who do not belong.

00:01:09   They are from, it's kind of neat because basically

00:01:13   what happens is at the beginning of the year,

00:01:15   not everyone but 200,000 people who work in tech

00:01:21   and in adjacent industries are all living

00:01:24   in one city for a week.

00:01:25   So you run into people who, you know, you would not expect to see, I'm totally

00:01:30   like randomly ran into a guy in a restaurant.

00:01:34   We were both waiting to eat at the bar and we ended up eating lunch together.

00:01:38   Who's like, was partially responsible for the creation of the MP3, uh, random,

00:01:43   random stuff like that.

00:01:44   And then you're like reading Slack and your coworkers are like, Hey, you know,

00:01:48   that Reed Hastings is giving a talk across, you know, in another place in Vegas.

00:01:52   I'm like, no, I didn't know that.

00:01:54   You know, there's just so much going on.

00:01:56   It's absolute madness and chaos,

00:01:59   but if you can tolerate it,

00:02:03   and I guess enough trips to Tokyo have now made me

00:02:05   totally chilled out around massive crowds,

00:02:09   it's really cool, it's very special.

00:02:11   - I think the crowds, that wouldn't bother me.

00:02:14   I can take crowds in small doses.

00:02:17   I mean, I go to Disney a couple times a year

00:02:19   and stuff like that.

00:02:20   What I like though, if you go somewhere like that,

00:02:23   is if you can take the time to spend some time

00:02:27   somewhere away from the crowd every day.

00:02:29   - Yeah, where it gets to you,

00:02:31   I don't mind the actual crowd where it gets to you

00:02:33   is that the infrastructure is just way beyond capacity.

00:02:37   I mean, people are talking about waiting an hour

00:02:40   just to get on the monorail.

00:02:42   Just to get into the station.

00:02:44   Or you wanna go anywhere to eat lunch, forget it.

00:02:47   Like you're waiting.

00:02:48   Or they have this shuttle bus that goes from one,

00:02:53   'cause it basically takes up both the Sands

00:02:56   and the Las Vegas convention centers.

00:02:58   And they have a shuttle bus, a free shuttle bus

00:03:00   that goes between them.

00:03:02   It can't be more than a mile.

00:03:03   And you know what? - It's not far.

00:03:05   - No, and I've walked it, and it's totally walkable.

00:03:07   I mean, there's barely any sidewalk,

00:03:09   but this bus trip takes like 40 minutes

00:03:13   because there's so much traffic,

00:03:14   because everyone else is in a cab

00:03:16   trying to get between these places.

00:03:17   And it's just madness.

00:03:20   Last year I stayed at the fairly far south end of the strip

00:03:25   and this year one of my priorities was

00:03:27   stay somewhere further, closer to the action.

00:03:29   So at least you could walk from--

00:03:31   - South is the airport side, right?

00:03:33   Like down by Mandalay Bay?

00:03:35   - Yeah, Mandalay Bay.

00:03:36   - It's funny, in my head I feel like that's up,

00:03:38   like that's up the strip.

00:03:40   - Oh yeah.

00:03:40   - Down the strip is down by like the wind.

00:03:42   - Stratosphere.

00:03:43   - Yeah, but it's the other way around, right?

00:03:44   - Right, yeah.

00:03:45   And so that was useful, although a lot of the stuff,

00:03:49   A lot of the official press conferences are at Mandalay Bay.

00:03:53   - That's crazy though.

00:03:54   It's so far away.

00:03:55   - I know.

00:03:56   I'm in a fortunate position where I could basically pick,

00:04:00   Quartz, where I work, qz.com,

00:04:03   we're still small enough that we can be picky

00:04:08   about what we cover.

00:04:09   So I don't have to actually go and live blog

00:04:12   an Nvidia press conference or something like that.

00:04:15   No one's telling me I need to do that.

00:04:17   So I actually got to skip all those official

00:04:20   press conference type things.

00:04:21   So I didn't actually have to go down

00:04:22   to Mandalay Bay this time.

00:04:23   But a lot of the action, like the good stuff's going on

00:04:27   at Cosmopolitan, at the Wynn, and Venetian.

00:04:32   So you really wanna be hanging out toward,

00:04:37   kind of center to north strip most of the time.

00:04:41   - So was anybody else from Quartz there,

00:04:43   or were you the only representative of Quartz there?

00:04:46   - No, several, I think there were four of us this year,

00:04:49   two from our ad side, and then my colleague, Mike Murphy,

00:04:52   who's a reporter who writes about,

00:04:55   we have a beat called Machines with Brains,

00:04:59   and it's drones, robots, AI, and that kind of stuff.

00:05:03   And he was very busy, there was a lot.

00:05:05   Although he came to CES with a cold, you can't do that.

00:05:10   (laughing)

00:05:12   'Cause you're gonna get sick by the end,

00:05:14   but you can't show up with a cold.

00:05:15   so I felt bad about that.

00:05:17   So yeah, he was there with me and we were basically

00:05:21   just doing meetings, hitting the show floor.

00:05:24   The show floor is comically extensive.

00:05:27   Like you can walk, I had my Apple Watch with me,

00:05:31   so Wednesday was my busiest day.

00:05:33   I think I walked over 14 miles on Wednesday,

00:05:38   whereas on an average day I probably walked six to eight.

00:05:41   - Yeah, that's a lot.

00:05:42   Anything over 10 is a--

00:05:43   I did 27,000 steps, so that was pretty crazy.

00:05:48   In boots too, which was dumb.

00:05:50   But it was cool.

00:05:53   - So it's a recurring theme,

00:05:56   and I know we say this every year,

00:05:57   but everybody goes to CES, quote unquote everybody goes,

00:06:01   and then all the writers, they all say they hate it.

00:06:05   Everybody just, as soon as it, it hasn't even started yet,

00:06:07   and Twitter is filled with people in our racket

00:06:11   saying how much they hate it.

00:06:13   which always makes me think, well then, why do you go?

00:06:16   You know, like, why does everybody go to this thing

00:06:19   that they hate?

00:06:19   But I'm exactly with you.

00:06:20   My temptation to go is, it's because I, obviously,

00:06:25   I could write whatever the hell I want,

00:06:27   so I'm not going, and I can skip whatever I want.

00:06:30   So, well, I understand that the hatred comes from people

00:06:32   who, if you get an assignment from an editor,

00:06:35   and they're like, here, here's your list

00:06:36   of press conferences to go to,

00:06:38   figure out what's new from, you know, LG and Samsung,

00:06:42   and you know, whoever, and it all just starts

00:06:44   to blur together because everybody is making

00:06:46   the exact same things.

00:06:47   Five inch Android phones and tablets and curved OLED TVs

00:06:52   and it all just blurs together.

00:06:54   And then you've got a schlep from one end to the other

00:06:56   and it's gotta be backbreaking,

00:06:58   if you can't pick and choose where you go.

00:07:01   - One of the things we struggled with was we shot a video.

00:07:04   Mike put on this exoskeleton suit that's designed

00:07:08   to age you to like a hundred years old

00:07:10   or something like that and do various things.

00:07:12   It had like VR goggles built in

00:07:14   and things that would make your muscles,

00:07:17   that basically make your body move more slowly

00:07:20   and it would affect your vision and all this stuff.

00:07:23   And we took this video of him in this suit

00:07:26   and then we realized that we literally didn't have

00:07:29   the ability to upload the video to Dropbox.

00:07:32   I'm not gonna tether on my cell phone and do it.

00:07:36   Our hotel wifi sucked, we couldn't do it.

00:07:38   It's like, okay, we almost have to go to a Starbucks.

00:07:41   And I wonder if the press room had a free

00:07:44   ethernet connection.

00:07:45   We didn't actually go in the press room

00:07:46   because it seemed like it was kind of a dump,

00:07:49   but actually that may have solved our problem.

00:07:53   But it's just stuff like that

00:07:54   where you're just completely out of your element.

00:07:57   But it's amazing, like you go,

00:07:59   one of the things we did is we scraped the list of exhibitors

00:08:02   and just did some very basic text analysis

00:08:04   to see if there's anything interesting we could find.

00:08:08   One thing that was cool was over 500 of the companies

00:08:11   had the word Shenzhen in the title of the company.

00:08:15   There are aisles and aisles and aisles of tiny booths

00:08:20   with one or two people from Shenzhen, from China,

00:08:23   who come to America once a year and there they are

00:08:26   and I got a great little tour from a little old lady

00:08:30   of her line of perfect GoPro knockoffs.

00:08:34   And she's like giving me a demo of these things.

00:08:37   the same case, same size, you know,

00:08:39   it looks exactly like a GoPro,

00:08:41   but it's $60 or something like that.

00:08:43   - Was she saying it looks like a GoPro?

00:08:47   Or was that, so she was mentioning the word GoPro.

00:08:50   - Yeah, yeah, totally.

00:08:51   Like that's the same case as a GoPro.

00:08:54   Actually, one of the booths, you probably saw this,

00:08:56   one of the booths that the,

00:08:58   one of the hoverboard knockoffs was so similar

00:09:01   to this one specific kind of balance board thing

00:09:06   that the US Marshals raided it.

00:09:08   - No, I didn't see this.

00:09:09   - Oh yeah.

00:09:10   I think Bloomberg got tipped off

00:09:12   'cause I think some other sites got tipped off too

00:09:14   and they videotaped it.

00:09:15   And basically the US Marshals raided a booth.

00:09:19   They confiscated all the product and shut these guys down.

00:09:23   Yeah, yeah, it was crazy.

00:09:26   I mean, there are a lot of knockoff looking things.

00:09:29   And I believe the Bloomberg article interviewed someone

00:09:34   from the people who put together the show.

00:09:37   And they're kind of, as long as you're not,

00:09:41   I forgot what the kind of limitations are,

00:09:44   but basically like, don't be too fake,

00:09:45   I think is the line.

00:09:48   So in this case, that didn't work out.

00:09:52   - It's gotta be such a surprise to the vendor.

00:09:54   'Cause you know what I mean?

00:09:56   It's like, there's the culture of how we value knockoffs.

00:10:03   it's so different between here and China.

00:10:06   And it's obviously, the whole concept

00:10:09   of intellectual property isn't really

00:10:10   like an institutional, cultural thing over there.

00:10:13   Like there's no way that they would have,

00:10:17   that had to be a complete surprise.

00:10:19   'Cause if they would have thought it's even a possibility,

00:10:20   they would have dialed it back.

00:10:23   - I think so.

00:10:23   It seemed like they were surprised.

00:10:26   I wasn't there and I actually tried to look for the booth,

00:10:28   but I couldn't really find it.

00:10:29   And it wasn't really worth putting a lot of effort into.

00:10:32   But that's the kind of stuff that goes on.

00:10:35   But meanwhile, there's like 40 different drone companies

00:10:38   of all shapes and sizes.

00:10:41   A bunch of companies who paid up big bucks for big booths,

00:10:46   like the size of an Intel booth from China

00:10:49   that you really haven't heard of

00:10:51   unless you're in the TV industry.

00:10:53   So it was really fascinating.

00:10:56   You realize how insignificant you are in the world

00:11:00   when you're at CES.

00:11:01   There's just so much stuff you've never heard of,

00:11:04   and there's so many people who are doing stuff

00:11:07   that is similar to what you're doing,

00:11:09   but you've never heard of before,

00:11:11   and you walk around exhausted, dehydrated,

00:11:16   and it's cool, I love it, it's great.

00:11:19   - Why are you dehydrated?

00:11:22   Can't you get water?

00:11:24   - I guess, yeah.

00:11:26   I joke about this, but I almost set calendar reminders

00:11:30   saying, "Okay, drink water right now.

00:11:32   "Make sure you have lunch."

00:11:33   Because then it's three o'clock

00:11:34   and you haven't eaten lunch and you're falling asleep.

00:11:37   I was carrying around a Kind bar in my backpack

00:11:40   just to make sure that if I needed some protein,

00:11:43   I'd still be alive.

00:11:44   - I find that true.

00:11:46   I've developed the reflexive habit

00:11:49   of always be drinking something in Vegas.

00:11:51   So in the morning, you're guzzling coffee,

00:11:54   or afternoon, whenever you wake up.

00:11:57   But then in the afternoon, it's like at any free moment,

00:12:00   if you have an opportunity to put water in your hand, do it.

00:12:03   'Cause it's like, in addition to the dehydrating effects

00:12:08   of alcohol, the desert air really is a thing

00:12:12   if you're not used to it.

00:12:13   I mean, and it really, even if you don't drink alcohol,

00:12:16   I mean, you're gonna get dried out in Vegas.

00:12:19   - Shockingly, it was actually raining a couple of the days,

00:12:22   which was super weird.

00:12:25   - Yeah, I remember, I saw people,

00:12:27   and that definitely makes everything worse,

00:12:29   any temptation to walk is decreased.

00:12:32   People actually drive.

00:12:33   I've been out there when it rained and it's like people, the natives, the locals, they

00:12:37   don't know how to drive in the rain.

00:12:41   It's not icy, obviously.

00:12:43   It's usually even in the winter above freezing.

00:12:47   But the roads get a little wet and people are slipping and sliding.

00:12:50   They don't even know how to drive on wet roads.

00:12:52   Dave Asprey Yeah, that was weird.

00:12:57   But it didn't get too bad.

00:12:58   So I brought an umbrella and I didn't have to use it.

00:13:01   So it was fine.

00:13:02   It was interesting though.

00:13:03   And I definitely feel like going back,

00:13:06   I'm definitely gonna go back next year

00:13:08   from in the position too.

00:13:10   I think that like the,

00:13:12   and my advice to you would be,

00:13:14   do you think a little bit ahead of time

00:13:17   and plan way ahead.

00:13:19   I booked my hotel in, I wanna say November

00:13:23   and by then like every good place was sold out.

00:13:25   You really have to do it in like August or September,

00:13:28   whenever they open up reservations, just book it

00:13:31   and think a little bit ahead of time

00:13:33   about what you want to get out of it,

00:13:36   but really save a lot of time to wing it

00:13:39   because there's just gonna be stuff that

00:13:41   either you don't know about until you get there or--

00:13:44   - I'm always confused by just the basic schedule of CES.

00:13:48   Tell me if I'm wrong.

00:13:49   I think the convention itself, the show floor,

00:13:53   is Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

00:13:55   - Yeah, and it changes, it was different this year though,

00:13:59   actually, it was--

00:14:01   - Maybe that's why I'm confused then.

00:14:02   - Yeah, I think this year it was Wednesday,

00:14:06   Thursday, Friday, Saturday, but I think previous years

00:14:09   it was like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

00:14:12   I don't know, it was definitely a day off this year

00:14:14   to go later, I think because of the holiday.

00:14:17   - But everybody who covers it, or almost everybody

00:14:19   who covers it, comes a couple days early

00:14:21   because there's pre-show announcements,

00:14:24   Like there's like, I don't know if they call them keynotes,

00:14:27   but there's like big keynote addresses that happen

00:14:31   like this week, like this year, like on Monday and Tuesday.

00:14:34   - There are press conferences and then there are keynotes

00:14:37   and they're separate, I guess.

00:14:39   I don't know, I remember like Steve Ballmer always did

00:14:42   what it was like the Sunday night.

00:14:44   - Right, the kick off. - Warm up, yeah, the kick off.

00:14:46   I don't know, like this year there were some things,

00:14:48   we were gonna go on Sunday and then I think there may have

00:14:52   even been some stuff Saturday or at least Sunday.

00:14:55   Uh, and we decided to fly in on Monday and then leave Friday.

00:14:59   And we did miss some stuff that had happened Monday.

00:15:02   But Tuesday, like the show floor is not, was not open yet.

00:15:06   Although we got in to do a couple of meetings.

00:15:09   Um, they like escorted us in and they were, it was crazy.

00:15:12   Like a lot of the booths were, were barely half finished like the day before.

00:15:16   And people were definitely there all night working to set stuff up.

00:15:20   And it's absolutely like there's, you could, you could get killed by a machine

00:15:25   any second, like there were just lots of stuff going on.

00:15:28   Uh, and then Wednesday is when it was totally open and just chaos.

00:15:35   Like I had a guided tour of the Samsung booth, but it was really not useful for

00:15:41   any of us because there were just so many people standing between you and the

00:15:45   refrigerator with a TV on it that you could barely even see it, it was just

00:15:49   absolute chaos. And most of that stuff was at the Las Vegas convention center or was

00:15:55   it split like the show floors were literally split between the convention center and the

00:15:59   sands split and I bet there's a some sort of theme to it like that. So the basement

00:16:06   of the sands has a lot of very small booths. And that's actually one of the best things

00:16:13   I did was I met up with a couple guys from Kickstarter and they took me on a tour of

00:16:20   the little, like the interesting startups that had all either done Kickstarters or were

00:16:26   going to be doing Kickstarters. And that was actually really cool because there's a bunch

00:16:31   of stuff I had never heard of and it was all pretty good. There's just a lot of garbage

00:16:36   everywhere so you have to try to find the good stuff.

00:16:39   the thing that I miss about Macworld and Macworld was you know and and it's I've

00:16:43   said that you know I'll say it again next year too but the whole reason I

00:16:47   never got into the habit of going to CES was that it overlapped with Macworld and

00:16:52   I went to Macworld and then even when Macworld like after like Macworld's

00:16:58   multi-year slow demise from being a thing to being literally nothing started

00:17:06   with them moving the date around, where they moved it to the end of January. And then there

00:17:10   was the one year where they had it like Super Bowl weekend, which was stupid. I forget where

00:17:15   my it went into February, I think before they finally pulled the plug. But even then, when

00:17:19   it wouldn't overlap, it just felt that felt like too much. Like it felt like I don't want

00:17:23   to go to two of these things if I don't have to. So I'll just keep going to Mac world.

00:17:27   But that's what one of the reasons I didn't get in the habit of it. But one of my favorite

00:17:30   things about going to Mac world without question, was talking to the little booths, the little

00:17:35   booths were always way more interesting than the big ones because usually you get to talk

00:17:39   to the actual principals and there would always be at least a couple of booths that were like,

00:17:45   "Wow, I did not even know that that was possible," type products.

00:17:50   Yeah, one of them I saw that was pretty cool was a very small booth of a company that makes

00:17:57   this clip-on camera that just kind of goes on your lapel and it's not recording video

00:18:02   all day. It's constantly doing image analysis and recognition and making a text list via

00:18:08   API of all the stuff that you've seen that day.

00:18:11   Wow, that's crazy.

00:18:13   Yeah, it was very cool. I actually have to write it up. I took some photos of it and

00:18:17   I'll write up a post about it. This is the kind of thing where it's like, "This is really

00:18:23   cool technology. This could be a cool product in a couple of years or in a year, or it could

00:18:28   be nothing but here these guys are you know they got kind of a you know an

00:18:33   okay-looking booth and this really interesting technology that you know and

00:18:39   it's actually kind of cool like you know and of course with any camera that's

00:18:44   always on privacy concerns but you could maybe train it to your LinkedIn account

00:18:49   so it could tell you who you're looking at at a party or something like that I

00:18:53   I don't know. It was interesting and it was one of those things where I was like,

00:18:58   "All right, this is kind of the value of coming to a show like this because I never

00:19:02   probably would have met these people otherwise and it's not like you're

00:19:07   standing in the gigantic Intel booth, wondering what you're

00:19:10   doing there." So that was pretty cool.

00:19:13   I saw there was an episode of, I mean, it's not a new idea, but the BBC show

00:19:22   Sherlock. I think it was Sherlock, but there was like a billionaire magnate bad guy sort of person

00:19:30   and he had like heads he had just had regular wire rim glasses but when they showed his first person

00:19:36   perspective it would instantly give him a sort of profile of anybody whose face he was looking at,

00:19:41   you know, their name and you know some facts about them. And I feel like we're I feel like that is

00:19:47   like it's still science fiction, but it's very, very near term science fiction.

00:19:52   Like it's going to happen, you know, within the next decade.

00:19:55   Yeah. I mean, I kind of I'm always the guy who wants I want the

00:20:02   feed of random Instagram photos that I'm in the background of.

00:20:05   No, I do, too. I'm I'm you know, I feel like we as a society and culture

00:20:12   just we're already wrapping our heads around the fact that everything is on camera all the time.

00:20:17   Totally, you know, and it's, you know, it's like, and some of

00:20:21   the people who are adjusting the slowest are the ones who really

00:20:26   should be adjusting the quickest, you know, like the way

00:20:28   that when police officers have some kind of incident, and it's

00:20:31   all caught on tape, and you see that it's just absolutely

00:20:34   horrible police work. That's actually, you know, to me, it's

00:20:38   helping to make our society better. I mean, there's

00:20:42   obviously trade offs, big, big trade offs, and there's some

00:20:44   and definite downsides to the lack of privacy.

00:20:46   - I think that specifically has proven to be very powerful

00:20:51   over the last couple years.

00:20:53   What was weird though was looking up and seeing a guy

00:20:57   wearing Google Glass for the first time in over a year.

00:21:01   That was crazy.

00:21:02   That was very weird.

00:21:04   - How many people did you see at CES wearing Google Glass?

00:21:07   'Cause I feel like if there's anywhere left

00:21:08   that people are still pretending that Google Glass

00:21:11   is gonna be a thing, it's CES.

00:21:13   I saw two in a row and that was it.

00:21:16   Like two in the basement of the Palms,

00:21:19   or Palms, the basement of the Sands Convention Center.

00:21:24   And that was at the whole show, two guys.

00:21:27   And the one guy was like tall and large

00:21:29   and it was just kind of weird.

00:21:32   But that was the last time I'd seen him.

00:21:33   Sometimes in New York, you see them

00:21:35   when you're walking around over by the Google offices.

00:21:39   But otherwise I haven't seen one in over,

00:21:42   least over a year.

00:21:43   All right, let's hold this thought.

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00:24:03   So here's, so you didn't get there till Monday,

00:24:07   you're saying?

00:24:08   - That's right, Monday night.

00:24:10   - So what did you do on Tuesday?

00:24:11   - Tuesday, I woke up too early and got breakfast

00:24:16   and then we went to this meeting

00:24:21   where Mike wore the exoskeleton and it was--

00:24:24   - How did you set that meeting up?

00:24:26   That's one of my worries is that I would go there

00:24:28   and without having set anything up

00:24:30   and I don't have like, I don't have anybody

00:24:32   set stuff up for me and then I'd get out there and I'd just, you know, end up playing blackjack

00:24:35   all day.

00:24:36   See, that would be fun. I would like to play blackjack with you all day because as we'll

00:24:40   discuss in a minute, I did not play any blackjack. Uh, so which is, which is not excusable. I

00:24:46   don't see that again. I don't see how that's possible. I know. So, so here's, here's the

00:24:51   worst part of CES. When you sign up for a press badge, your email gets given to all

00:24:59   the 3000 or whatever, 2000 companies that have, uh, signed up to exhibit and you get

00:25:06   emails from about half of them.

00:25:08   I'm not even exaggerating.

00:25:10   Like I, this year I was smart and I, I did the Gmail thing where you can add a plus sign.

00:25:16   So I made it, you know, Dan plus ces@qz.com so I could filter there now all filtering

00:25:22   into the toilet.

00:25:23   Like I'm not getting the people are still sending emails.

00:25:26   They're good for them, but I'm not seeing any of them.

00:25:29   So you get, you're overwhelmed for weeks.

00:25:32   - I know about that trick.

00:25:33   I just wanna just, I mean, hold you there.

00:25:35   Is that it instantly popped into my head.

00:25:38   I mean, it's like if I was the type of dirtbag

00:25:40   who ran like a PR, well, PR people aren't dirtbags,

00:25:43   but if I was about to start sending email to those people,

00:25:45   I would write like a little script

00:25:47   that takes any Gmail address with the plus

00:25:49   and take out the plus, you know what I mean?

00:25:52   Like it would be so easy to algorithmically filter that out.

00:25:55   - Yeah, I mean, I'm sure some,

00:25:57   a couple of people remarked on it.

00:25:59   They were like, oh, clever with the plus sign or whatever.

00:26:02   I mean, I get a lot of email from PR people as it is.

00:26:05   And I'm actually, I would say pretty fair

00:26:09   about just asking people not to send me

00:26:11   certain types of email.

00:26:12   - I find it so hard like at a convention or conference

00:26:15   or something like that.

00:26:16   I'm terrible at staying on top of my email

00:26:18   on a normal day when I'm at my desk,

00:26:19   but it's really, I always fall behind.

00:26:21   And so to have them making it even harder

00:26:24   to just keep an eyeball on what's coming into my email

00:26:28   would be terrible.

00:26:29   - The problem for me is that I've now been at inbox zero

00:26:33   for four years, which means all day

00:26:36   I'm constantly deleting emails.

00:26:38   I don't let them pile up anymore.

00:26:41   So anyway, so I would get invited to everything

00:26:46   from like tours to meetings to press conferences

00:26:50   and that kind of stuff.

00:26:51   And I accepted, I think, five or six of the,

00:26:55   I don't know, roughly a thousand that I got.

00:26:58   And I say--

00:27:00   - And those came, but just to be clear,

00:27:02   those came long before the show even started

00:27:06   because it starts when you actually register with CES

00:27:09   like in November or whatever.

00:27:11   - Yes. - Okay.

00:27:13   - Yeah, so, you know, and some of them are like party

00:27:16   invites, some of the stuff doesn't come until

00:27:19   Um, you know, the week before or a couple of days before, but a lot of the companies

00:27:25   are, you know, trying to set up as many meetings as possible.

00:27:29   You can also kind of check what, what topics you're interested in.

00:27:32   And I think I was probably a little too excited about checking lots of different topics that

00:27:37   I should not have like audio, you know, you check off audio and then every headphone company

00:27:43   is emailing you asking for a meeting and that kind of stuff.

00:27:45   So I think next year I'll probably be more selective about that and do even fewer meetings.

00:27:54   If you need to get a last minute meeting, they're pretty much always available.

00:27:58   The stuff that's really cool is going to be kind of hard to access anyway and those are

00:28:02   the people who are least likely to set stuff up with you ahead of time unless you're the

00:28:09   the verge or something like that.

00:28:10   Um, who get first dibs on a lot of stuff.

00:28:14   Uh, so yeah, I set all that stuff up and so what else I Tuesday, you know, I had

00:28:20   a couple of meetings and, uh, I had lunch and then I went to, uh, a dinner probably.

00:28:28   And then met up with people.

00:28:30   Oh, Tuesday, I went to a party and probably stayed out late and yeah.

00:28:36   And, uh, that's when I saw Rupert Murdoch.

00:28:38   That was kind of interesting.

00:28:40   And so where was he?

00:28:42   He was just walking down the hall of the wind.

00:28:44   That's where he stayed.

00:28:46   So I actually wrote this article.

00:28:49   So, so one thing I didn't know, uh, and I thought it was going to be, I thought

00:28:53   it was going to be a bigger surprise to people then it turned out to be no one

00:28:56   really cared, but, um, so Eddie Q was at CES, Eddie Q you wrote an article on this.

00:29:03   Yes.

00:29:04   Oh, I didn't see it.

00:29:05   Eddie Q is at CES speaking at Rupert Murdoch's private mini conference, which

00:29:11   he holds in his suite every year.

00:29:13   It's two days and he brings in like a fantastic list of people.

00:29:17   Um, and it's not for the public or anything.

00:29:20   It's for news Corp and Fox executives.

00:29:24   And this year, the people who were scheduled to present range from the CEO

00:29:29   of Snapchat to, uh, Sundar from Google, CEO of Google, uh, Eddie

00:29:35   Q from Apple and a bunch, just a bunch of other, like the guy from salesforce.com,

00:29:41   a bunch of other really high level, uh, Benedict Evans from Andreessen,

00:29:45   Horowitz, some, some startup people.

00:29:47   And, um, so that's cool.

00:29:49   And I, you know, that's the kind of thing where it's like, there's

00:29:52   this whole huge CES thing going on.

00:29:54   Meanwhile, in Rupert Murdoch suite, there's like the best, you know, one of

00:29:59   the best conference lineups in the world.

00:30:01   And it's just for like a handful of top executives who work for him.

00:30:06   But that's the kind of thing you can do at CES because so many of those people

00:30:09   are there anyway.

00:30:09   Right.

00:30:10   Uh, although it was interesting because of course, Apple somewhat famously does

00:30:14   not have an official presence at CES.

00:30:17   Uh, my guess is that, you know, some people from Apple go just to kind of look

00:30:22   at stuff, there'll be kind of silly not to, um, I know for a fact that it, and

00:30:26   even when Mac world was a thing and it was coincident that there were people

00:30:31   from the product marketing group who went every year

00:30:34   just to do the due diligence of walking around.

00:30:36   And the question was always whether,

00:30:39   what they would put on their badge.

00:30:41   And most of the time I think they just would officially go

00:30:44   and they'd have Apple on the badge

00:30:45   and if people wanted to talk them up, they'd do it.

00:30:47   They just didn't,

00:30:47   it wasn't real cloak and dagger stuff, they just,

00:30:51   but they were there to just see what else

00:30:54   the industry's doing.

00:30:56   - Yeah, I mean, it'd be foolish not to.

00:30:59   I think that someone was telling me

00:31:00   that they saw a couple Apple people this year

00:31:05   just walking around, but I wasn't there for that.

00:31:08   - Yeah, I wouldn't even be surprised

00:31:09   if it's actually multiple teams,

00:31:10   like different, not even in coordination,

00:31:13   the product marketing people there are just there in general

00:31:16   but maybe notebook engineers are there

00:31:18   just to look at all the crazy notebooks

00:31:21   that are being put together.

00:31:23   - Yeah, I would and then you get to be in Vegas.

00:31:26   - Right.

00:31:28   - And maybe run into Rupert Murdoch.

00:31:30   He looked good, he was wearing a nice suit

00:31:32   and some sneakers, walking down the hallway

00:31:36   outside of a party that I was leaving.

00:31:39   - So it was just like in the hotel, you mean?

00:31:41   Like a hallway?

00:31:42   - Yes, in the Wynn, outside of one of their

00:31:44   like nightclub-y type venues.

00:31:47   - Huh.

00:31:48   Crazy.

00:31:49   - Yeah, I mean-- - What time of day was that?

00:31:51   - This was around, I think, 11 p.m. or 10 something p.m.

00:31:59   See, that's why you go to CES.

00:32:00   - Totally.

00:32:01   Yeah, actually, I'll never forget.

00:32:03   One of my, when I worked at Forbes,

00:32:05   now almost 10 years ago,

00:32:07   one of my colleagues wrote an article about,

00:32:10   actually it may have been CES 10 years ago

00:32:13   where she was randomly at a booth

00:32:16   when Bill Gates showed up to look at the booth,

00:32:19   and what an interesting and cool experience that was.

00:32:22   Like, can you imagine being the tiny booth operator

00:32:25   and then yoink, Bill Gates walks up and says,

00:32:28   "Hey, give me a demo."

00:32:29   (laughing)

00:32:31   I'll have to find that article.

00:32:32   I wonder if Forbes has archived that.

00:32:34   - Have you ever worked at trade show booth?

00:32:36   - I don't think so.

00:32:40   When I was a kid, my dad, I think,

00:32:42   had a booth or like a part of one at some point

00:32:45   for a store he was involved in,

00:32:46   but I never had to work a booth.

00:32:49   - I did when I worked at Barebones software

00:32:52   for BB Edit and I guess MailSmith even at the time.

00:32:54   But we'd have a booth at Macworld,

00:32:56   and it is grueling.

00:32:59   Sometimes though, it could be like, I don't know,

00:33:03   it's like three in the afternoon

00:33:04   and you've been on your feet since nine

00:33:06   and you've been making the same pitch over and over again.

00:33:09   And you know, repetition has never been good for me.

00:33:12   I mean, not that I'm not good at it,

00:33:13   but I get bored quickly.

00:33:15   But then all of a sudden, like you meet somebody

00:33:17   and somebody will tell you this amazing story

00:33:18   of how like BB Edit, you know,

00:33:20   saved their website or something like that.

00:33:22   And they just want to thank you

00:33:24   and you're just like, oh my God, that's amazing.

00:33:26   and he made my day, you know.

00:33:27   Let me go get Rich Segal, and you can tell it to his face.

00:33:30   - That's great.

00:33:31   - But boy, it is hard, it is really hard.

00:33:35   And you can just see it.

00:33:36   Now it's just a funny thing to have

00:33:39   under my belt this experience.

00:33:40   And now whenever I'm at a trade show and I walk around,

00:33:42   I have a sympathy for every single person

00:33:46   doing those, you know, working those booths

00:33:48   that I wouldn't have had otherwise.

00:33:50   - Yeah, it's grueling, and you have like

00:33:52   trade show approved vendors

00:33:55   that you have to do everything with,

00:33:56   and good luck, there's a 20 minute line for the bathroom.

00:34:01   - So what else, what else did you do at CES?

00:34:07   - Oh, I hung out with Walt Mossberg, that was a highlight.

00:34:12   - I saw that. - That's when you were

00:34:14   texting me. - I saw a periscope.

00:34:16   This is my perspective, it's,

00:34:18   oh, I think it might have been maybe like 1230 at night,

00:34:23   east coast time so would have been maybe like 930 Vegas that sound about right?

00:34:27   I think so yeah. And I saw somebody who I follow on Twitter from the Verge

00:34:31   tweeted a link to Periscope that they're Periscoping from

00:34:35   inside a blinged out a crazy blinged out limo that

00:34:39   Neelay had rented for some unknown reason. And I thought I gotta see this because I

00:34:44   don't know I know what a regular

00:34:46   limo looks like I gotta see what like a special you know

00:34:49   call attention to it limo looks like so I put the Periscope on and it's a

00:34:53   and a couple of other people I knew from The Verge.

00:34:56   And the inside of this limo, it really was like,

00:34:58   it was like all the leftover neon from old Las Vegas

00:35:02   was all inside this limo.

00:35:04   - Basically.

00:35:05   - And then the Periscope is painting around

00:35:07   and here's Verge staffers,

00:35:08   and I was just about ready to disconnect

00:35:10   'cause it's a buoyant.

00:35:11   And then I see a guy and I was like,

00:35:12   holy shit, that one guy looks like Dan Fromer.

00:35:14   And I was like, who is that?

00:35:15   And then they're like, and we've got Dan from Quartz,

00:35:18   and I'm like, holy shit, it is Dan Fromer.

00:35:20   And I was like, wow, now it's like,

00:35:22   Now I have a friend in the limo, now I'm interested.

00:35:25   And I noticed, it seemed to me like everybody

00:35:27   was a little tipsy and you were like just totally normal.

00:35:30   And then it got crazier because then it got

00:35:35   to the far side of this, it was a truly massive limo.

00:35:38   And then all of a sudden, Walt Mossberg

00:35:39   and Kara Swisher were in there.

00:35:41   - Yeah, they were riding in the back seat.

00:35:44   - And I was fascinated.

00:35:47   What were you guys doing?

00:35:49   You guys were on your way from like one end of the strip

00:35:52   to the other?

00:35:53   - We were all at a dinner that they have

00:35:57   usually the last night or one of the last nights every year,

00:36:02   a kind of a press dinner.

00:36:04   And I guess we were all going to the Cosmopolitan

00:36:09   where there was a Twitter Spotify party.

00:36:12   And rather than taking four cabs,

00:36:15   Neil, I think threw his hands up and said,

00:36:17   "Let's get a limo."

00:36:18   So I just went in the limo.

00:36:21   Um, and uh, yeah, that was it.

00:36:24   I mean, it wasn't, uh, I don't think it was preplanned or anything.

00:36:28   It just happened.

00:36:28   It was funny though.

00:36:30   I did, but it's the sort of thing that happens when, like, what do you say on a

00:36:34   Periscope when they, when they put the camera in your face, I never know what to

00:36:37   say.

00:36:38   I never, I don't know what to say.

00:36:39   It was, it was funny though.

00:36:40   I am, I'm like, there were like 300 people watching.

00:36:43   I enjoy Periscope.

00:36:45   I, but I'm, it, it, it, it requires a certain personality that I, I, I am not in

00:36:50   in possession of to really be good at it.

00:36:53   - I haven't done, I don't think I've ever done one.

00:36:57   - The other problem I have with it,

00:36:58   and last time I tried using it,

00:36:59   I think I tried using it when the Pope was in town here

00:37:02   in Philly and I was doing some periscopes walking around

00:37:05   at the crazy ways that they'd shut down

00:37:09   enormous major thoroughfares in Philly,

00:37:12   which created this, it was awesome,

00:37:13   but it's like you had these like six, seven lane streets

00:37:18   that were entirely free of cars, not even like parked cars.

00:37:21   It was great.

00:37:21   But the problem for me is I've got so many Twitter followers

00:37:25   that I easily overflow the limits of Periscope,

00:37:28   even just for something like that.

00:37:30   - Did you recently join Snapchat?

00:37:36   - I did, that was me.

00:37:38   - That was you?

00:37:39   - Yeah.

00:37:40   - Okay, I was like, oh, that's weird.

00:37:42   - Do you understand Snapchat?

00:37:43   - No, no, and someone was, and this,

00:37:46   I'm not that old, but I sound like it.

00:37:48   I mean, someone was, was showing it to me the other day and, uh, I have not,

00:37:53   I don't think I've ever posted anything.

00:37:55   Cause I just don't really know what to post or, or how, I guess the whole idea

00:38:00   is that it's kind of very raw, uncut, like spur of the moment life through

00:38:05   your eyes, whereas I'm more of a retouch edit, like frame the perfect, uh,

00:38:11   in, you know, I'd say I'm more of an Instagram person than a Snapchat person.

00:38:16   You need to I my understanding of snapchat previously was that it was

00:38:21   like texting service where everything was ephemeral and nothing gets saved and

00:38:26   Everybody had you can send dick pics

00:38:28   but people did use it for that but then like teenagers could use it and send like

00:38:33   Love notes to each other and know that there are going to be disappeared by the next day and that

00:38:38   That made sense to me and I felt like I understand what this product does and I'm not a teenager anymore

00:38:44   I have no I have no need for it. So I didn't know but then I've hurt now

00:38:47   It's more like a social network and I see what turned me on to it was do you know who Gary for Vaynerchuk is? Yes

00:38:53   Gary Vaynerchuk has been raving about it lately and he's been saying that he hasn't been this excited about something since Twitter circa

00:39:02   2007 and he really was I do remember that's when I first met Gary and Gary was huge on Twitter in like 2006-2007

00:39:09   Said this thing is gonna blow up. It's gonna be huge

00:39:11   everybody's going to be on Twitter. And he was right. And so that him saying that this is how

00:39:16   he feels about Snapchat made me think, well, I should sign up for this and see if I can figure

00:39:21   it out. And so I did. And there's a part of the process where it's like, do you want us to, you

00:39:25   know, notify, you know, here's people, you know, if from your address book, do you want to follow

00:39:31   them? And I did. And you're, you're not the first person who's asked, is this really you?

00:39:35   Because it, I guess it seems a little surprising that I would sign up for Snapchat.

00:39:40   - Well, it was also under the name of the site

00:39:42   and not as your name.

00:39:44   - Oh, right, and that was because...

00:39:46   - You might be a little late to get the Gruber name on.

00:39:50   - Yeah, I couldn't get it,

00:39:52   and all the variations on Gruber weren't there.

00:39:55   And I also had the notion that if it does become a thing,

00:40:00   maybe it would be more of a daring fireball thing

00:40:02   than a personal thing.

00:40:04   - Yeah, it actually would not be,

00:40:06   it's kind of like Periscope in the same way.

00:40:09   It's like, here's a kind of unedited view of life,

00:40:14   maybe from the WWDC press bullpen or something like that.

00:40:18   - Yeah, that's exactly what I was saying.

00:40:20   But I didn't even get the right

00:40:20   Daring Fireball name either, right?

00:40:22   - Oh, really?

00:40:23   - I think there's like,

00:40:24   I had to put like a dash in it or something.

00:40:25   I don't know, because some,

00:40:26   I don't know who the shitbag is,

00:40:27   but some jerk has Daring Fireball.

00:40:30   Like that can't possibly be legit.

00:40:33   Like whoever it is stole it from me.

00:40:35   - Well, did you see on Peach?

00:40:38   Have you used Peach yet?

00:40:39   - Yeah, I'm on the Peach.

00:40:41   - I'm on the Peach.

00:40:43   Someone has, Casey Johnston got P. Marka,

00:40:47   so she's (laughs)

00:40:49   Peaching it up.

00:40:51   - Is she really?

00:40:52   - Yeah.

00:40:52   - Is she masquerading as--

00:40:57   - I think just the username.

00:41:00   I actually haven't looked at it in a couple days, so.

00:41:03   - The Peach is really weird, I think.

00:41:06   So what happened, for anybody who missed this, and trust me, if you did, you're not really

00:41:11   missing anything.

00:41:12   It was like over the weekend, I think it was over the weekend, but within the last few

00:41:15   days, all of a sudden, everybody on Twitter is talking about a new social network called

00:41:18   Peach.

00:41:19   And in fact, the fact that I just tried to get my name on Snapchat and couldn't, I do

00:41:24   have this habit where if I hear of a new social network, even if I think there's a very low

00:41:27   chance I want to do it, I'll quick sign up to try to get a username that I want.

00:41:31   And so I signed up for this peach and it's as best as I can figure out it.

00:41:36   Number one, I don't quite get it,

00:41:38   but as best as I can figure out is it sort of like Twitter,

00:41:41   except that instead of getting a timeline,

00:41:44   you have to go to each single,

00:41:46   every single person you follow individually to see what they're up to.

00:41:49   And it's a poor idea for a social network implemented in a,

00:41:55   uh, a very poorly made and designed app. Like the buttons in the app don't,

00:42:00   you tap the button and there's no visual indication

00:42:03   that you've tapped it.

00:42:04   There's no highlight.

00:42:05   And to make it even worse, nothing happens sometimes.

00:42:09   And then you tap it again and it's gone

00:42:12   because whatever it is that you tapped to do before,

00:42:14   it took three seconds and then it went away.

00:42:17   It's a very, very shitty app.

00:42:18   - It's interesting.

00:42:22   I mean, it's actually, as Twitter starts to add more,

00:42:28   I don't know what you would call them, formats or something, media types to Twitter.

00:42:32   This is kind of like, you know, going a giant leap ahead of that because you can make drawings,

00:42:37   you can make animations, you can add photos.

00:42:42   But the timeline is weird.

00:42:43   It's not a timeline of posts, it's a timeline of people.

00:42:48   So one of the more interesting analyses I read, basically said, you know, you're incentivized

00:42:56   to just post as much as possible because then you'll always be at the top of the

00:42:59   timeline and you know, you won't be spamming people in the sense that they'll

00:43:03   see 20 of your posts in a row, but.

00:43:05   You know, you'll always be the person at the top of the timeline

00:43:09   and that might get annoying.

00:43:10   I don't know.

00:43:11   It's uh, I don't think it's worth talking about much more.

00:43:15   No, let's not, as with any new social network, most of the posts, well, not

00:43:19   most, but many of the posts are about peach itself, so we'll see if it gets beyond

00:43:24   that. What's interesting about it is that it's made by one of the people who made

00:43:29   it is the guy who made vine. So that's the only reason it got any kind of

00:43:34   traction because vine is a real thing and there's real people who are you know

00:43:38   using it happily and it's it you know but I don't think this is a fine or

00:43:42   unless it they somehow quote-unquote pivot and invent a new something new

00:43:47   that you can do with this that's different than what this is yeah it's

00:43:51   always dangerous to say like there's been too many of there's been too many

00:43:54   social networks because I'm sure someone said there were too many search engines, um, right

00:44:00   before Google came out. So, you know, who knows what's actually going to happen, but it seems like

00:44:05   this is one of those things where it's just not different enough to really justify putting too

00:44:11   much time and effort into, um, maybe it'll catch on among some like path was huge in Singapore or

00:44:19   or something or Indonesia or wherever.

00:44:22   But yeah, we'll stop talking about Peach now.

00:44:28   - All right, well, we'll stop talking about Peach

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00:46:52   One more thing I want to say about CES now, now having been twice, all the, you know,

00:46:58   this was a different apple that back then it was, it was smaller and, you know, still,

00:47:03   I would say maybe a little more mysterious, but all the so-called rumors and like calls

00:47:08   for Apple to headline CES and all that stuff.

00:47:13   That was just completely idiotic.

00:47:16   Even now more in hindsight than it seemed then.

00:47:19   There's no way that Apple is going to waste their time trying to have any sort of signal

00:47:25   among the noise at CES.

00:47:27   There's absolutely no reason for them to do that.

00:47:30   And just even halfway believing that that could have happened back then just seems completely

00:47:35   foolish now.

00:47:37   I miss Macworld and I really do and its heyday was great.

00:47:42   And it was for exactly what you said though.

00:47:44   It's that it was a way,

00:47:46   the main reason was just the fact that everybody

00:47:48   who covered Apple or worked in Apple related things

00:47:51   was all in San Francisco at the exact same time,

00:47:55   which was great.

00:47:56   And then secondarily, it was great.

00:47:58   It was actually great.

00:47:58   So every year I'd find one or two things,

00:48:01   new companies of making products

00:48:03   that I didn't know otherwise.

00:48:05   And even in the internet era, when that became a lot easier,

00:48:10   to find little companies that are from oddball locations

00:48:14   around the world, it still always happened.

00:48:18   But I totally understand why Apple pulled the plug

00:48:20   on their involvement in Macworld,

00:48:21   which was way less involved than it would have been

00:48:23   if they'd gone to CES, right?

00:48:25   'Cause Macworld, especially the San Francisco one,

00:48:28   which was the last show, was local to them.

00:48:30   And the entire show revolved around their ecosystem.

00:48:35   But I totally understand why they got away from it.

00:48:39   - Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised

00:48:40   if like someone took a meeting with someone from CEA

00:48:44   or whatever and heard them out.

00:48:46   But there's just no, Apple can command as much attention

00:48:51   as it gets on its own.

00:48:53   Why would it participate in something

00:48:56   that's gonna be super noisy and not focused?

00:49:00   - Yeah, and the thing, and Apple, I think,

00:49:03   actually was upfront about this.

00:49:04   I think when they stopped, they publicly said,

00:49:07   this is the last time we're gonna do a Macworld keynote.

00:49:10   It was the year that,

00:49:13   it was the year when Steve Jobs fell ill again

00:49:18   and ended up going on a medical leave.

00:49:21   And he, you know, they announced like his medical leave,

00:49:24   I forget, it was like December, January.

00:49:26   But they said that, you know--

00:49:30   - Very messily, if you recall.

00:49:33   it was handled very poorly, probably because of Steve.

00:49:36   You know, that it was his desire for privacy

00:49:40   was in direct conflict with the company's need to,

00:49:44   they, A, they were giving a keynote at Macworld Expo

00:49:47   in early January, and B, you know,

00:49:50   they have certain public obligations

00:49:51   regarding the executive leadership.

00:49:53   It was all very messy.

00:49:54   It's all, you know, obviously it's a moot point now,

00:49:58   but I remember though that it was announced

00:50:01   that A, Phil Schiller will be giving the keynote

00:50:04   at Macworld next month, and B,

00:50:06   this will be the last keynote Apple ever gives

00:50:08   at Macworld Expo.

00:50:09   So they announced that before the Macworld Expo,

00:50:13   which was, and some people took that as sort of a dick move

00:50:17   'cause it kind of did cast a funereal feel

00:50:22   to the whole thing, 'cause I mean, they were,

00:50:24   they still had at least two more Macworlds after that,

00:50:26   but everybody knew at this point

00:50:28   that it was going to be a greatly diminished Macworld

00:50:31   without Apple. But on the other hand, I kind of think, I don't know that it was a dick

00:50:34   move pre-announcing that because I think it gave everybody a chance to soak it up and

00:50:39   it maybe gave people who were like, "Eh, maybe I'll go, maybe I'll not go." It motivated

00:50:43   them to, "Yeah, I better go."

00:50:44   Yeah, that was the only year I went and it was really cool to be able to see it once.

00:50:54   Anything else from CES?

00:50:56   I don't think so.

00:50:57   I mean, you know, I could go on forever.

00:51:00   It was, it was really interesting.

00:51:01   Um, it was fun.

00:51:03   It was exhausting.

00:51:05   And, uh, next year you're coming so we can, so someone will play blackjack with me.

00:51:09   I can't believe you didn't play any blackjack.

00:51:11   How do you not find time for blackjack?

00:51:13   Cause it would be like 2 AM and I hadn't, you know, it was like,

00:51:16   Oh, I guess I should go to sleep.

00:51:18   Um, see, cause the people, you know, the people I was with, they either

00:51:22   would just want to keep drinking or.

00:51:24   I don't know.

00:51:26   I actually don't know. And there's like some, I think it started ironically,

00:51:29   but there's like a lot of the tech writers play pie gal poker, um,

00:51:34   which I also didn't get to play. We were going to,

00:51:36   and then I got separated from that group and I don't know if they ever did or

00:51:39   not, but, um, anyway, next year.

00:51:42   See that I,

00:51:44   I'm starting to get a sense of how this could happen and why it's inexplicable

00:51:48   to me,

00:51:48   how you can have like a four day trip to Vegas and not end up playing blackjack.

00:51:52   And it sounds to me, and I know you, I think this is probably true.

00:51:55   It seems to me that the difference is that you have at least a lick of common

00:51:59   sense. I don't know. I don't know. I was, yeah,

00:52:05   no, I would have liked to, uh, in like last year I was like, Oh,

00:52:10   I'll just do it the last night. And then the last night it was like 1 am.

00:52:13   And I,

00:52:13   I couldn't even put a hundred bucks on the Cubs to win the world series last

00:52:17   year. Cause I ran out of time before the sports book closed.

00:52:19   Oh, did you get it in this year? No. Or are they not taking,

00:52:23   Are they not taking those yet?

00:52:24   I don't know.

00:52:25   I'm sure they're taking them.

00:52:26   It's there.

00:52:28   I don't know.

00:52:28   I guess they probably could win this year.

00:52:30   I didn't think they were going to win.

00:52:32   I didn't think they were going to be even close last year.

00:52:34   So they're going to be, I think they're going to be good.

00:52:36   They're going to be good.

00:52:37   Are they going to be the national league favorites?

00:52:40   Maybe.

00:52:40   Could be because it's going to be cardinals have gotten worse.

00:52:44   Cardinals have gotten more in the Mets.

00:52:45   Come on the Mets.

00:52:46   That was a fluke.

00:52:47   The Mets have gotten worse already.

00:52:48   The Mets have already lost, lost talent and I don't think they're going to sign

00:52:51   Caspidus

00:52:52   They've met till have pitching and that's it and then the Dodgers are in turmoil, right?

00:52:58   And nobody I don't think anybody knows what's gonna happen with the Dodgers and they're probably worse because they they lost

00:53:02   What's his name the pitcher? Oh

00:53:04   What's his name

00:53:09   The guy who used to be on the Royals. Yeah, I forgot

00:53:12   So anyway, I think your cubbies are gonna be I don't think you're gonna get good odds. Just could hear one

00:53:17   - Yeah, that's the thing.

00:53:19   - This could be the year where you get your Cubs

00:53:21   win the World Series ticket

00:53:22   and you end up winning like $600 on a $100 bet.

00:53:25   - Not even, I think it's like four to one

00:53:27   or something right now. - Wow.

00:53:28   - I think last year was seven to one.

00:53:31   - That just doesn't seem right.

00:53:32   It seems like even when the Cubs have talent,

00:53:33   the Cubs ought to have--

00:53:34   - They're the Cubs.

00:53:36   - Yeah, they're the Cubs.

00:53:37   There ought to be like a,

00:53:38   they're the Cubs discount on the tickets.

00:53:41   And the same way with the Yankees

00:53:42   that even when the Yankees look like

00:53:44   they're not in a good spot,

00:53:45   they don't really have it,

00:53:46   The Yankees still should only be like eight to one

00:53:49   every year, even if they have no chance.

00:53:52   Because they're the Yankees.

00:53:53   Like you shouldn't really, you should not be able

00:53:56   to make a lot of money by betting on the Yankees

00:53:58   to win the World Series.

00:53:58   - No, that's practically cheating.

00:54:00   - Right. (laughs)

00:54:02   That's why I love them.

00:54:06   It's like betting on the house.

00:54:08   - Basically, yeah.

00:54:09   - So anyway, basic gist of it, you go to CES,

00:54:13   you go two days early or so,

00:54:14   'cause you wanna hit these, the keynotes

00:54:16   and the announcements and then you book two days,

00:54:19   you stay there for two days to do the show floor.

00:54:22   Can you do the whole show floor in two days?

00:54:25   - You'll never get, you'll never do the whole thing.

00:54:28   - You have to pick and choose.

00:54:29   - Even we didn't get to talking about

00:54:31   more than one tiny portion of it.

00:54:34   There's the whole convention center,

00:54:35   which is like the north, central and south halls,

00:54:38   each of which have multiple zones.

00:54:41   And then there's the West Gate too,

00:54:43   which is something else I don't even know.

00:54:45   I didn't even go to the West Gate.

00:54:47   I don't know. - What the hell is that?

00:54:48   - That's something else.

00:54:49   It's like next door.

00:54:50   - I've seen the sign.

00:54:53   I don't even know what it is though.

00:54:54   Is it like a hotel, casino?

00:54:56   - Yeah, I think it's kind of a junky casino hotel

00:54:58   with its own convention center.

00:55:00   - And part of CES is in there.

00:55:02   - Yeah.

00:55:03   - I think it's so crazy.

00:55:06   I'm going next year.

00:55:07   - Yeah, you should.

00:55:08   - I should book it. - Let's do it.

00:55:10   - All right.

00:55:11   - Stay somewhere nice though.

00:55:12   - Well, I'll only stay at the Wynn.

00:55:14   - Oh, well, all right.

00:55:15   That might be pricey.

00:55:17   - Might be. (laughs)

00:55:20   - When I looked, well, when I looked at it,

00:55:21   it had sold out, but I think before that,

00:55:23   all right, we'll figure out how to do this early

00:55:26   so that we don't get screwed, but.

00:55:28   - I wonder what the, I know that they sell,

00:55:31   I know that the Wynn and Encore sell out

00:55:33   because they're, A, they're the best place on the strip,

00:55:36   and B, it's, well, there's no ideal location,

00:55:40   but it's about as close to ideal as you can get

00:55:43   because it's right across the street from the Venetian and the Palazzo,

00:55:47   which is the where the, the, the,

00:55:48   that's the casino that's connected to the sands convention center.

00:55:52   Yes. And so my guess is that the, you know, the first,

00:55:56   like my hotels, the first night was $50 and the second,

00:56:00   the third and fourth nights were $350. Wow.

00:56:05   Yeah. It's like a huge,

00:56:06   like just the difference between pre CES and

00:56:11   Where did you stay?

00:56:13   Well, I stayed at the Flamingo.

00:56:15   Oh, that's right.

00:56:16   You told me that.

00:56:17   You did tell me that.

00:56:17   Right.

00:56:18   And the Flamingo is not that great.

00:56:20   It's a pretty good location.

00:56:22   Yeah, it was well located, and it's on the monorail.

00:56:24   So that was fine.

00:56:26   It was fine.

00:56:26   I mean, I stayed in the new tower, and it was fine.

00:56:30   But hey, maybe next year by CES we'll

00:56:33   have the Las Vegas City Notes so you'll

00:56:35   know where to actually hang out.

00:56:39   Yeah.

00:56:39   Well, I know where to hang out.

00:56:40   Oh, you know where to hang it.

00:56:41   Yeah.

00:56:42   I should probably write the Las Vegas city notes.

00:56:44   Did you see, I relaunched it.

00:56:46   No, you've been offline a lot.

00:56:48   Lily.

00:56:48   Yeah.

00:56:48   If you go to city notes.co, uh, you know, as, uh, I think I, you know, talked

00:56:54   about it on the show before, but the, the idea was that I was making these

00:56:58   apps where, um, if you go, if you're traveling to a city and you just want

00:57:02   a short list of like the cool stuff where your cool friend would take you.

00:57:07   and not the lame touristy stuff or like, you know, fancy, silly stuff.

00:57:13   Um, did I would just have this list for you.

00:57:16   And I did a New York one and I had a San Francisco one and these were iPhone

00:57:19   apps that I was selling in the app store.

00:57:21   And, um, it was, you know, long story short, it was cumbersome to make and,

00:57:28   uh, and update these apps as apps.

00:57:31   And it was also not really, you know, the paid app model has, uh, as you know,

00:57:36   is not a great business model for for certain types of uh... of content so

00:57:41   it's a website now it's city notes dot co i have a tokyo and a paris list up

00:57:46   there and if you're going to those cities check 'em out

00:57:49   and work on new york next and

00:57:52   then probably los angeles and uh...

00:57:54   you know it's working as a website it's like

00:57:57   free for me to update and

00:57:59   keep current and uh...

00:58:01   we'll see what happens

00:58:02   but interesting that's my little side project yeah i'm you know we'll see what

00:58:06   We'll see what happens with it, but I just relaunched it about a month ago and so far

00:58:12   so good.

00:58:13   Excellent.

00:58:14   What else is going on?

00:58:16   Do you want to talk about this El Chapo?

00:58:21   I haven't read the Sean Penn thing yet.

00:58:23   Did you?

00:58:24   I did, but I didn't finish it.

00:58:26   It's like the stupidest thing.

00:58:28   I couldn't remember which device I was reading it on, so I haven't gotten back to it.

00:58:32   But I loved it.

00:58:33   I thought it was fantastic.

00:58:34   I really, really liked it.

00:58:36   I'm going to read it tonight.

00:58:38   I think it's one of the best pieces written by a non-writer.

00:58:42   It's funny, it seems like maybe Rolling Stone...

00:58:46   I'm not sure what the backstory is, and I don't know how much of this is out there,

00:58:49   and I just don't know because I didn't finish the article yet.

00:58:52   He visited him in October, and the article's coming out now, but it seems like maybe they

00:58:56   felt like their hand was pressed when the authorities took El Chapo back into custody

00:59:01   and they wanted to publish it.

00:59:03   But it's clearly a very light editing pass, you know, in terms of it doesn't read like

00:59:11   your typical Rolling Stone feature.

00:59:15   A lot of Sean Penn's personality is infused in the prose, and I think he did a hell of

00:59:21   a job.

00:59:22   There's certain touches that, as a writer, like, felt like, you know, a little over the

00:59:27   the top like it's a little awkward in certain phrasing but for the most part

00:59:33   though I really enjoy the visceral nature nature of the pros I think is

00:59:38   just a tremendous read and it's just such a crazy idea you know it I kind of

00:59:45   fascinated by Sean Penn you know he just does things that other people it just

00:59:49   never occurs of to do right remember like with with the hurricane in New

00:59:54   Orleans. What was that hurricane? What was it called? Katrina? Katrina. There's like,

00:59:59   there's Sean Penn, like, in a rowboat saving people, you know, getting them off

01:00:05   their roofs, you know, like, what the hell is Sean Penn doing on a rowboat in New

01:00:09   Orleans? How did he get there? How do you get to a flooded city if you

01:00:13   don't live there? You know, it's not like he's, he just went, you know, what a crazy

01:00:18   idea to have is I'm gonna go meet the most notorious drug kingpin in the world

01:00:22   today and write a story about it.

01:00:25   Yeah, and a lot of the criticism has been that El Chapo...

01:00:31   Chapo or Chapo?

01:00:32   Well, I guess in Spanish you'd say Chapo.

01:00:36   El Chapo.

01:00:37   He was given editorial control, essentially,

01:00:39   that he was allowed to make changes or at least reject the...

01:00:46   It was submitted.

01:00:47   The agreement was, we'll submit to you a manuscript,

01:00:51   And if you have objections, we will take your objections.

01:00:53   Right.

01:00:54   So a lot of people are saying, and, and whatever they said that he didn't make

01:00:59   any changes or something like that.

01:01:00   But a lot of people are criticizing that as, uh, you know, essentially, uh, you

01:01:05   know, a press release from El Chapo, uh, written by Sean Penn submitted to rolling

01:01:11   stone, which is, you know, historically a journalistic organization and they just

01:01:16   go and run it.

01:01:17   Um, I don't know.

01:01:19   I think it's, I think it's, uh, that's kind of the time we're in where a lot of

01:01:23   places are just publishing directly on medium and, uh, or on their websites

01:01:27   or something like that, if you look at Elon Musk, he does the same thing.

01:01:31   So I don't, you know, I, it would be a tough call if I were the editor of

01:01:35   rolling stone, I think that if I were the publisher of rolling stone, I'd be very,

01:01:39   like, very excited about this because it's certainly gotten them a lot of attention

01:01:43   and probably a lot of web traffic.

01:01:44   And, um, but it's interesting.

01:01:47   Like, do you allow that? What do you...?

01:01:50   Here's my take. And this is really what I wanted to talk about. It was that journalistic angle.

01:01:54   I don't have a problem with it because right up front, that's how the article starts,

01:02:00   is in italics, like it's an editor's note, it explains that situation entirely, which is that

01:02:06   part of the deal for this entire thing before it started was an agreement that the article would be

01:02:11   submitted to El Chapo's people for their approval. And it was, and they didn't make any changes.

01:02:17   And so to me, the "what makes it okay" is the fact that they disclosed that in very clear language right up front.

01:02:25   And that they sec... like, so the El Chapo people said, "We want to approve the article."

01:02:29   And I think the Rolling Stone people said, "Okay, we'll do it, but we're going to explain what was approved."

01:02:36   You know, "We're going to explain that this deal was in place, and we're going to say whether or not you changed anything."

01:02:43   And so to me, obviously that's less than ideal. It'd be great if the El Chapo people just said you can write whatever you want,

01:02:49   but obviously they weren't gonna let that happen. And so,

01:02:52   yeah, the world is a better place that this article exists than if it didn't. Like it was, it's not like they had the option

01:02:59   to do it without that arrangement.

01:03:01   Right. The fact that it was disclosed to me makes it

01:03:05   acceptable. Like I think the people who are objecting to it on a, like it's failing a certain purity test are being

01:03:13   A lot of them are jealous that they didn't get the story, I think.

01:03:16   Yeah.

01:03:17   I mean, the truth about this, there are no rules.

01:03:19   It's not like there's a law or something that says that, you know, every, every

01:03:23   article published anywhere must be vetted by something or something like that.

01:03:27   I mean, uh, so whatever, uh, if, if you're jealous that your publication did not get

01:03:34   the scoop on El Chapo from Sean Penn, um, I guess that sucks, but it is interesting.

01:03:40   I think it's, I think it's cool.

01:03:42   I want to read it. I saved it. I'm going to read it.

01:03:45   Uh, I,

01:03:47   I like the idea of getting kind of raw writing from non-traditional writers.

01:03:52   I think that's really interesting.

01:03:54   That to me is exactly what it feels like. And in terms of, well,

01:03:59   the argument that this could just be a press release from El Chapo,

01:04:02   obviously that's a risk. I mean,

01:04:04   but you just read the article with an open mind and judge for yourself.

01:04:08   And I having read most of the article would say it's definitely not the case.

01:04:11   It doesn't whitewash over anything. It's really just sort of a first-person narrative. You are there. This is what it's like to try to get to this guy

01:04:18   story. To me, it was just a good read.

01:04:22   But I think you have to keep an open mind on something like that. And I also think that there's a certain

01:04:27   sanctimoniousness among the professional journalists who like object to this on

01:04:32   you know, this is not the way it's done by serious publications.

01:04:38   is that those publications that have those rules, like if and I'm sure a lot of them really do have it codified, you know, like

01:04:44   60 minutes does not allow the sources of a show to

01:04:49   See it before it airs

01:04:52   That's fine. That's you know, it's fine to have rules like that and it certainly does protect you from you know

01:04:58   Accusations that you're you're currying favor with your subjects or something

01:05:02   But those publications obviously they miss out on an awful lot of stuff that they're that these you know

01:05:07   these rules and traditions keep them from getting. Exactly. And self-publishing, like

01:05:14   you said, like how much stuff is going on medium these days. The world where, you know,

01:05:21   in the old days, they could take a stance like that and the only people who could really

01:05:26   get a story out were the ones who owned a printing press and had a million or two million

01:05:32   in circulation, newspaper or magazine.

01:05:34   You don't need that anymore, right?

01:05:37   So anybody can handle two or three million people

01:05:40   reading their site if they publish it on WordPress

01:05:43   or Medium or something like that.

01:05:44   And so they don't control the means of distribution anymore

01:05:51   and they're sort of holding on,

01:05:53   oh, you know, get me to the fainting couch.

01:05:55   They let the subject pre-approve the story.

01:05:57   It's this is, you know, I've got the vapor,

01:06:00   somebody get the smelling salt. It's ridiculous. Yeah, it's fascinating. Dave

01:06:04   Weiner actually wrote a good essay about this, making many of these same points

01:06:09   and I totally agree. I mean, listen, I went to, you know, quote-unquote

01:06:14   "professional journalism school." I mean, that's what my undergrad college was and

01:06:18   I don't care. I think it's great that people can sell publish now. There's

01:06:23   certain things that I won't do because that's the job I have, but

01:06:28   But that's fine.

01:06:30   I think the best thing you can do is be very clear about what happened and what didn't

01:06:34   happen and it seems like that's what they did here.

01:06:37   Right.

01:06:38   I feel...

01:06:40   Dave Weiner has been thinking about these things since the invention of the web in the

01:06:45   90s.

01:06:46   And I think he has a really interesting perspective on this stuff.

01:06:52   And I think it is, to make a long story short, I think that institutional journalism, the

01:07:01   capital J journalism, like you said, like going to actual journalism school and working

01:07:05   at a long standing, you know, traditional publication, they've made things more complicated

01:07:12   than it really is.

01:07:13   They've set up this, this like, written and or unwritten list of rules of how it's done.

01:07:18   Whereas the truth of it is, lowercase j journalism that anybody can conduct is, to me, fundamentally

01:07:27   about getting the truth out there.

01:07:31   Whether it's true facts or whether it's, in a lot of my writing, truly what I believe

01:07:37   and think, my opinion, my honest opinion about how things are going, that's what it's all

01:07:41   about and that's it.

01:07:42   And so part of the truth could be like writing a disclaimer that says the subject of this

01:07:47   the story had the following demands, and that's the truth.

01:07:51   The truth is we had this arrangement, and now you know it.

01:07:53   - Yeah, let's be honest, like the people with all the rules

01:07:58   get stuff wrong all the time too, so.

01:08:00   - Exactly. - It's not like

01:08:02   they lead to perfection. - Right, and you know,

01:08:05   and I love the New York Times.

01:08:06   New York Times is one of my favorite newspapers,

01:08:09   or it is my favorite newspaper, and it's its source

01:08:11   that I read, I read something in the New York Times

01:08:13   every single day.

01:08:14   But, you know, and they exemplify

01:08:18   that sort of traditional journalism,

01:08:19   and they've had some absolutely terrible things

01:08:22   in the last few decades, you know,

01:08:23   with the Judy Miller reporting on the lead up

01:08:27   to the Iraq War, and who was the guy they had,

01:08:31   the serial fabulous, Jason-- - Oh, Jason, hmm.

01:08:36   - Well, whatever his name was, Jason.

01:08:38   You know-- - Jason Bourne?

01:08:40   No, uh, it was a J A Y S O N too.

01:08:44   Oh, right.

01:08:44   Uh, Jason Blair.

01:08:45   Yeah.

01:08:46   Jason Blair.

01:08:47   So they had a reporter on the staff who it turns out had, uh, serially

01:08:51   fabricated news reports.

01:08:53   Uh, uh, you know, again, those rules are not a protection against

01:08:58   things like that going wrong.

01:08:59   And fundamentally in both of those cases, the problem is that it wasn't

01:09:02   the truth that was coming out.

01:09:04   You know, what Judy Miller was reporting from her sources in Iraq was not the

01:09:08   truth and that led to disastrous circumstances. And the Jason Blair stuff, it didn't really

01:09:14   lead to any kind of disaster like the Iraq war, but the whole problem is that it greatly

01:09:20   diluted the credibility of if it's printed in the New York Times, it's true.

01:09:26   And then all those David Pogue reviews. I miss Pogue.

01:09:32   Well, I don't see his stuff anymore. I was just talking to somebody about that, that

01:09:38   But I know he's still doing this thing at Yahoo.

01:09:41   I just saw him recently too.

01:09:43   Oh, I saw him in New York when I was getting my iPad Pro review unit.

01:09:49   He must have been right before me.

01:09:54   I was going into a hotel while he was coming out.

01:09:57   So he still does.

01:09:58   But I don't know what it is.

01:09:59   There's some kind of tech meme search optimization strategy that the Yahoo people aren't doing.

01:10:08   doing because I don't see his stuff. I don't know what, I don't know why that is.

01:10:12   Yeah, I don't know. Like now that Mossberg is, you know, not at the journal and is writing for

01:10:17   Recode and The Verge and stuff, I still see Mossberg reviews, you know, like they percolate

01:10:22   into my peripheral vision and it's like, oh, open that in a tab. Whereas pogues don't. I somehow wind

01:10:29   up not without any David Pogue tabs. Yeah, same. Maybe he just needs to tweet more. Yeah, maybe,

01:10:36   I don't know. Let's take one last break here. I'll thank our third and final sponsor of the day. And

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01:12:05   that needs an internet.

01:12:06   What else is on the list?

01:12:10   - I just wanted to say, that's something I think of a lot,

01:12:12   is like how to get your stuff noticed.

01:12:17   It's really interesting, it's almost hard to predict

01:12:19   who's gonna read your stuff, and it's almost,

01:12:21   really it doesn't seem to be correlated

01:12:25   with how much traffic your site gets,

01:12:27   even or anything like that.

01:12:30   It's almost a different kind of science.

01:12:33   And I don't know, I don't know if there's a way to crack it,

01:12:36   but it's something that fascinates me

01:12:37   because sometimes I put a lot of effort into an article

01:12:41   and it just won't get read or the other way around.

01:12:44   Like, you know, something that surprisingly does really well

01:12:48   and sometimes it's, you know, you get lucky with a headline

01:12:50   or a link here or there, but it really is weird

01:12:54   how the web works with sharing

01:12:57   and just getting read and who's reading it and sharing it.

01:13:01   - I have found that,

01:13:04   and I don't know quite why it would be,

01:13:08   but to me, in my career,

01:13:11   in the time I've been writing "Daring Fireball,"

01:13:13   one of the apical moments was,

01:13:16   you know, it's like a meteor that changed the,

01:13:19   you know, hit and changed the world forever,

01:13:21   was when Google shuttered Google Reader.

01:13:25   Google Reader shuttering instantly cut into the traffic

01:13:30   that Daring Fireball gets.

01:13:32   So if I measure, I don't think it cut people.

01:13:34   I honestly don't, I truly believe that the number of people

01:13:37   who read my writing on a regular basis,

01:13:39   if anything, continued to slowly grow.

01:13:41   But in terms of like page views,

01:13:43   it was instantaneous and permanent.

01:13:47   And the number of pages I get per month

01:13:49   is way fewer than from before.

01:13:52   And it correlates exactly to when Google

01:13:54   pulled the plug on Google Reader.

01:13:56   And I think, my guess is that a lot of,

01:14:01   awful lot of people who read "Daring Fireball"

01:14:04   used Google Reader and they subscribed to my site.

01:14:07   And whenever something new came up,

01:14:09   they would go to, you know,

01:14:11   click the thing that would go to my website.

01:14:13   And I would register, you know,

01:14:15   my analytics and whatever would register as a hit.

01:14:19   And anyway, long story short,

01:14:20   I don't get the traffic I used to in terms of page views.

01:14:22   I've never been happier that I don't have page view tied advertising because that would

01:14:29   have been, it really would have hit.

01:14:31   It absolutely would have hurt if the advertising on Daring Fireball was correlated to page

01:14:35   views.

01:14:36   And I think it's just that people now, a lot of people check it when it comes to mind instead

01:14:40   of checking as soon as, you know, treating Google readers like a notification system

01:14:45   of, "Oh, Gruber posted something.

01:14:46   I'll go check it out."

01:14:49   The other thing, and this is where I'm getting at,

01:14:51   is that pre-Google Reader,

01:14:53   I was very, very good at guessing

01:14:55   which longer pieces I wrote were gonna have legs

01:14:57   and which ones weren't, and now I don't.

01:15:00   I often think, wow, I think I hit a home run with this one,

01:15:04   and it doesn't really, like the next day,

01:15:06   nothing is, there's no bump.

01:15:09   And then like last month, I wrote,

01:15:11   I spent an awful lot of time

01:15:13   really examining the battery case.

01:15:16   - Oh, I remember.

01:15:19   And all the lot of the feedback I got was why in the world would you spend that much

01:15:21   time on the battery case?

01:15:23   And the explanation is, it's because I could write about it.

01:15:27   I found it interesting.

01:15:28   I think there were some very interesting things about it.

01:15:31   And because it's such a simple little thing, you can fully consider it.

01:15:37   You can explore every little alley and crevice and notion about it.

01:15:40   But it was one of the most popular things I've written in months.

01:15:44   I think it was more popular than my iPhone 6s review.

01:15:48   If I just measure by page views and seemingly

01:15:51   how many new people did it.

01:15:52   And I wasn't even the first to write the article.

01:15:54   But somehow that one really took off.

01:15:56   And I no longer can predict which ones

01:15:59   are gonna be popular or not.

01:16:01   - Speaking of that article, I mean, I still can't believe

01:16:04   how controversial that battery case was.

01:16:08   - Well, I guess that's why the article was popular.

01:16:11   I think that people really have strong feelings

01:16:14   about this. I mean you also went very deep on it. Yeah, I think what it is too

01:16:19   is that there's an awful lot of people who viscerally hate this design. They

01:16:23   really do. I mean they are... it is like, you know, like bringing up Obama or

01:16:31   something, you know, with your, you know, your crazy uncle who's a Donald Trump

01:16:36   supporter, you know, it like, it like turns on like a red anger bulb in

01:16:40   people's heads and there are some people cannot even talk about it you know you

01:16:44   know you would you would think that an argument a little debate if you will

01:16:48   over the design of a phone battery pack would be the sort of thing that would

01:16:53   not make anybody angry but you would be wrong and so the people who dislike it

01:16:58   really really dislike it and it it if seemingly it seems to offend them on an

01:17:03   emotional level and on the other side I think what maybe made my article popular

01:17:08   is that the people who either are intrigued by it or actually like it, they can't articulate

01:17:13   what why. It's, it's, again, almost like at an emotional level, they're like, Oh, I don't

01:17:18   know, it doesn't look bad to me. But they're, they, I think that they've largely been quiet

01:17:24   in public, because if you try to take that position, anything other than this design

01:17:31   is an abject failure. And maybe johnny I've is, you know, we ought to investigate whether

01:17:35   that he's losing his mind.

01:17:37   If you take any position short of that,

01:17:38   the people who hate it will jump all over you.

01:17:40   And most people don't wanna be jumped all over.

01:17:43   Me, I don't care.

01:17:44   The only way--

01:17:48   - You know what it reminds me of?

01:17:49   Have you ever seen the Boeing Dreamlifter?

01:17:52   - Oh, I think so, yeah.

01:17:53   - Just like the 747 that they just added a bubble on top of

01:17:57   to make it big enough so they could carry the fuselage

01:18:02   of the Dreamliner?

01:18:04   Yeah.

01:18:04   Yeah.

01:18:04   It's literally like just putting a bump on the, uh, you know, around, around the.

01:18:08   The 747.

01:18:10   Um, yeah, I think it's funny.

01:18:12   Uh, it reminds me a lot of when a new logo comes out and everyone just jumps on it.

01:18:18   The first day, you know, this is horrible.

01:18:20   I can't believe it.

01:18:21   And then no one cares after that.

01:18:23   Um, I think, you know, and so much of the design of that thing is how it works.

01:18:29   And I haven't used it.

01:18:32   I haven't used it, I have a 6S Plus,

01:18:34   so I don't need a battery pack, but, brag.

01:18:39   But actually I did need a battery pack at CES.

01:18:42   - Oh, that's interesting, even with the Plus.

01:18:45   - Yeah, 'cause the cell signal is so bad there

01:18:47   that I'm sure you're using way more battery

01:18:49   than you should be.

01:18:50   And-- - Yeah, even when,

01:18:52   I've never been in CES, obviously, or repeated again,

01:18:55   but I've been to Vegas many times,

01:18:56   and Vegas has notoriously bad, in my opinion,

01:18:58   cellular coverage.

01:19:00   And in addition to the fact that the cellular coverage

01:19:02   isn't that great in general,

01:19:03   that's just talking like if you're outside or near a door,

01:19:05   but the buildings are these caverns

01:19:08   and they're the Faraday cage aspect of

01:19:11   what it's like when you're covered by three tons of concrete

01:19:15   and who even knows whether if you're underground

01:19:18   or above ground or where the hell you are,

01:19:20   it could definitely be a challenge.

01:19:23   - Yeah, I got one of those anchor packs

01:19:26   that's supposedly big enough to charge a MacBook

01:19:30   and an iPad and a phone and all kinds of stuff.

01:19:33   So I did use that.

01:19:35   But anyway, I don't remember where I was,

01:19:37   but if you need a battery pack,

01:19:40   it seems like it actually works pretty well,

01:19:41   which is the whole point.

01:19:42   So I don't know, whatever.

01:19:44   I thought you went deliciously over the top on that post,

01:19:48   but as you say, it's a small enough thing

01:19:51   where you can really examine it from every angle

01:19:55   And why not?

01:19:56   Like that's the whole point of being a self-publisher

01:19:59   on the web is you could do something ridiculous like that.

01:20:02   - The other thing I'm thinking about,

01:20:05   and I went and bought a bunch of them.

01:20:07   But I've always been, and I even said it there

01:20:09   on the bottom of my article,

01:20:10   my solution to battery challenge days

01:20:14   is to have a little external battery pack,

01:20:16   but I like the little ones.

01:20:17   I like ones that I can put in my other pocket

01:20:19   and it's almost like I don't even notice it's there.

01:20:22   And Mophie makes a bunch of them.

01:20:24   But I honestly consider it to be a shortcoming

01:20:27   in their company in that they make too many of them.

01:20:29   And that one of the things I really, really appreciate

01:20:32   about Apple is that if you're going to buy an Apple blank

01:20:35   and insert any product there,

01:20:37   you can go and decide which one to get.

01:20:39   And it's, I'm an indecisive person and I will pause it,

01:20:43   but I never have a problem figuring out

01:20:44   which MacBook to buy.

01:20:46   I, and even now at a moment when their lineup is in flux

01:20:50   and they still have the old MacBook Airs

01:20:52   and the new MacBook One, which is underpowered,

01:20:55   and the MacBook Pro.

01:20:56   I know which Mac I want.

01:20:57   I want the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

01:21:00   That's the best, that's the one I want.

01:21:02   I find it so hard to figure out,

01:21:04   go to mophie.com and figure out which battery pack to buy,

01:21:07   because they not only have different sizes

01:21:09   in terms of like, well, here's the small one

01:21:11   that'll refill one iPhone from, you know,

01:21:13   throughout the day.

01:21:14   Or here's a really big one that you could use

01:21:16   to charge an iPad and two phones or something like that.

01:21:20   but they also have multiple designs.

01:21:22   They have ones with built-in cables,

01:21:24   not with built-in cables, ones, you know,

01:21:26   that it's too much.

01:21:28   They should be the ones who, they're the battery experts.

01:21:30   They should design the right design

01:21:33   and then I don't have to worry about it.

01:21:35   It's almost like when you go to mofeed.com

01:21:37   and pick a battery pack or the, you know,

01:21:40   external battery pack, you almost have to design it yourself

01:21:44   'cause you've got to figure out,

01:21:46   do you want an integrated cables?

01:21:47   Do you want to have separate cables?

01:21:49   Do you care that the battery is gonna charge by micro USB,

01:21:53   but the phone is gonna charge by lightning,

01:21:55   so you have to bring two different things at night?

01:21:58   Does it do pass through charging,

01:22:00   meaning that at the end of the day,

01:22:02   when you put up next to your hotel bed,

01:22:04   do you have one thing to plug in,

01:22:05   and the battery will fill your phone first

01:22:08   and then fill itself up,

01:22:09   or do you have to plug two different things in

01:22:11   because the battery pack won't charge the phone

01:22:14   while it itself is being charged?

01:22:16   They have all of those options are there

01:22:18   for you to consider.

01:22:19   from just one company and I kind of, I find it maddening.

01:22:23   So I feel like I want to write an article and figure out which,

01:22:25   which is the best one and effectively design it for Mophie.

01:22:29   This is your version of Marco's headphone test. Yes, exactly. It's exactly it.

01:22:34   It's my version of Marco's headphone test is battery packs,

01:22:37   except that I'm only going to do Mophie's and speaking of Marco,

01:22:40   Marco recommended one to me personally. Uh,

01:22:44   I can't find it here.

01:22:46   The other one to check out is Anker, A-N-K-E-R,

01:22:49   which are some ex-Google people

01:22:51   who make very nice battery and charging stuff.

01:22:56   They're the ones who I also have a four port USB charger,

01:22:59   which I travel with now.

01:23:01   So I can, don't have to bring any of the Apple

01:23:04   charging bricks, I just bring this and plug in my Macbook,

01:23:09   iPhone, Apple Watch, and can charge something else

01:23:13   at the same time.

01:23:14   - All right, I'll take a look at the Anker ones.

01:23:15   But anyway, Marco recommended one to me.

01:23:18   He bought at Amazon for 24 bucks.

01:23:21   And it has built-in cables.

01:23:24   And I'm a built-in cable fan,

01:23:25   so you don't, you know, it's just one thing

01:23:27   to put in your pocket.

01:23:28   And the son of a bitchin' thing broke.

01:23:31   I hadn't even gotten past the point

01:23:32   where I was just testing how, you know,

01:23:34   like how quickly and, you know,

01:23:38   just testing a whole bunch of different,

01:23:39   these battery packs on my phone

01:23:41   every time I'd let my phone go down.

01:23:42   I'd only used it like three times,

01:23:44   I'd never even taken it out of the house, so it wasn't like it was dropped or anything

01:23:48   like that.

01:23:49   The lightning port on it just stopped working.

01:23:53   So I think there's a sort of "you get what you pay for" aspect in there.

01:23:56   And I also found it curious that Marco, of all people, was the one who recommended this

01:24:01   cheap one to me.

01:24:03   Hmm.

01:24:04   Yeah.

01:24:05   Maybe an imposter.

01:24:07   I don't remember the name of the company.

01:24:10   It was weird.

01:24:11   Oh, here it is.

01:24:12   on my desk. I hate to throw the company under the bus, but it's a volt ready. V O L T R

01:24:19   E A D Y. And if you go to Amazon and look at the volt ready, you'll see what I mean

01:24:23   about these integrated cables. And they're super, super thin. The cables. I mean, it's,

01:24:29   it's so much thinner than the lightning port itself. And I, you know, I don't, I think

01:24:33   that's probably why it broke. I think you need like a good thick cable.

01:24:40   - Have you installed iOS 9.3 yet?

01:24:43   - No, I have not.

01:24:45   - I haven't either, I'm not in the beta cycle.

01:24:48   - What's different about it?

01:24:52   - The Sherlock Flux or whatever that thing is called,

01:24:58   F-Lux, so you can get the warmer colors at nighttime

01:25:03   so it's easier on your eyes when you're about to go to sleep.

01:25:07   - Interesting.

01:25:09   And there were all those new features for education,

01:25:12   like the multiple user mode and that kind of stuff,

01:25:16   which you assume is gonna be part of iOS 10.

01:25:19   - Yeah. - So everyone can--

01:25:21   - No, but it's still just in beta, right?

01:25:23   - Yes, yeah, yeah.

01:25:24   - I thought maybe I really was out to lunch.

01:25:27   - No. - No, I'm kind of done.

01:25:29   I do the betas of the major new OS over the summer,

01:25:33   but that's mainly because I know my phone's a year old,

01:25:36   I'm getting a new phone anyway,

01:25:37   So if it goes belly up and it's usually there's like major major features

01:25:41   I want to get get a hold of them but for stuff like the minor ones. I usually don't do the pay this

01:25:45   Yeah, same. Have you?

01:25:48   Have you been using the Apple TV a lot

01:25:51   Every day every day. Have you used the game controller yet? Yeah, I have the game controller

01:25:58   I don't use it very frequently because I just I just don't play video games

01:26:02   Yeah, I bought one to

01:26:05   To hopefully play games on and I used it the first day I had it and then I haven't used it since then

01:26:11   Yeah, but that's really just me. It's not like that. I couldn't find some games. I liked I found a couple games

01:26:16   I really liked but

01:26:18   It just never occurs to me to play video games

01:26:20   Yeah, I mean either I thought I would though. I

01:26:23   thought so too, I think of all the things like if I time-traveled back and talked to my

01:26:30   Like 10 11 12 year old self

01:26:32   I think that I would have lots of good news to tell young John Gruber and I think he would be very happy about his

01:26:37   Future but I think the of all the things he'd be most surprised by is that I would tell him that I

01:26:42   You're gonna grow up and have the financial ability

01:26:45   And the flexibility in your daily schedule to own and play any video game

01:26:52   You want for as long as you want practically speaking and you're not going to

01:26:59   Yeah, I think that pretty much I think that it my like

01:27:04   12-year-old self would instantly suspect that whoever this guy who does kind of look like me

01:27:10   And it was credibly well cast to play the person who's going to prank me and tell me that it's me when I'm 42

01:27:18   Is obviously full of shit because there's no chance that if I could spend four or five hours every night playing cool video games that

01:27:26   I wouldn't be doing it. I

01:27:29   I downloaded one for the Apple Watch, which, you know, that was another one of those things

01:27:33   where they were like, "Oh, WatchOS 2 is going to be, you know, it's going to be really helpful

01:27:38   for games because they'll be able to run directly on the watch and also be able to use the digital

01:27:44   crown as a controlling mechanism."

01:27:47   And no, not fun.

01:27:50   One of the games was like a, almost like a card game type thing and it was just too,

01:27:55   weird and the other one was like pong type thing and it was just so jerky that

01:27:59   I saw that I kept losing because I either got the same one or I downloaded

01:28:04   a similar one and I think maybe there might be a bunch because if all you have

01:28:08   is the crown pong is a very obvious concept and it was terrible it was

01:28:14   absolutely terrible yeah I did not enjoy that as as we head into the new Apple

01:28:20   Watch season and I suspect that they're going to announce it early ish this year

01:28:25   you know, at this event that they're supposedly having in March, I do think we'll get a new watch.

01:28:31   And as we, you know, what do we think of Apple Watch? I have to write this piece, I do, because

01:28:36   I have a lot of thoughts on it. But bottom line, I think it's very clear in hindsight that they

01:28:41   should not have had any apps at all for the first Apple Watch. I mean, maybe eventually it'll be an

01:28:46   app platform, but it's clearly not ready for it yet. And slow apps is way worse than no apps,

01:28:53   in my opinion. And to me, even now, even, you know, with watchOS 2 and everything,

01:28:59   it's also still incredibly inconsistent, where if I go to like a weather app on

01:29:05   the watch, sometimes it'll just spin and spin and spin until the screen goes off.

01:29:10   And if I go to the exact same app, like Dark Sky or something, and take my phone

01:29:15   out of my pocket and go to Dark Sky, it works instantly and has all, you know, all

01:29:19   the data I want, you know, the information about the weather that I was looking for.

01:29:22   And so what it doesn't take long to be psychologically conditioned to

01:29:26   Because you don't trust that it's even going to work at all on the watch

01:29:30   It doesn't take you very long at all that you just instinctively go for the app on your phone

01:29:35   Totally especially with

01:29:39   the this s 6s phones being so fast and also the 3d touch shortcuts like it's now

01:29:46   You know when the watch launched to me

01:29:49   it was really helpful to be able to quickly access something

01:29:52   without reaching in my pocket

01:29:54   and taking out this giant phone.

01:29:56   But now the phone is so fast that,

01:29:59   and the Touch ID unlock is so fast

01:30:02   that it actually is faster now again to take my phone out

01:30:06   than to try to get anything done on the watch.

01:30:08   - Right, it's just, and that doesn't mean that the watch

01:30:12   as a whole is a failure, but I feel like what

01:30:15   this first watch was good and interesting for

01:30:18   is just the ambient stuff, you know, the tracking, the health, you know,

01:30:21   tracking your stuff,

01:30:22   doing the workouts and whatever you configure to be shown at a glance on your,

01:30:27   you know, without even doing anything is, you know, and that's enough,

01:30:31   that's enough to make it a product.

01:30:32   I think that the idea that they had to make had to have apps and their first one

01:30:36   was wrong.

01:30:37   And I think it's kind of funny because they famously had no apps on the first

01:30:41   iPhone. And it turns out that the phone was absolutely, you know,

01:30:45   probably the best platform for quote unquote apps that mankind has ever

01:30:50   created.

01:30:50   It's like the pinnacle of apps as the central premise of how you're going to use

01:30:54   a device. Um, didn't even have it at first. So if the,

01:30:57   if the phone could get away without it at first,

01:30:59   I don't see why the watch couldn't have. And I think in hindsight,

01:31:01   the watch should have,

01:31:02   yeah, I wrote kind of a, whatever it was like seven month review, uh,

01:31:08   about a month ago now. And that was, you know, similar. I mean, my,

01:31:12   my high level conclusion was I still use it every day and I still really like it a lot,

01:31:17   but I'm not using it for any new things than I was at the beginning.

01:31:21   I'm still basically using it for the same things as I did when I started.

01:31:25   So in that way, it felt stalled in the sense that we were promised this kind of unlimited

01:31:30   platform and no one's really taking advantage of it.

01:31:34   Whereas in reality, I'm very happy with the things that it does well, the fitness tracking,

01:31:39   the, you know, again, I'm always surprised how useful it is

01:31:43   to have the time in front of me,

01:31:45   especially with my phone now being so unwieldy.

01:31:48   And, you know, and a few very other basic things, so.

01:31:54   - I enjoyed that.

01:31:55   I've enjoyed that from other people too.

01:31:56   I know Marco was saying on his podcast,

01:31:59   either the last episode or the last one I listened to,

01:32:01   where he's, like for Christmas, got a mechanical watch

01:32:04   because he's, you know,

01:32:06   he never wore a watch in his entire life,

01:32:08   but just the convenience of having the time on your wrist,

01:32:10   it turns out that's actually pretty cool.

01:32:13   All of us like me have been wearing watches in my life,

01:32:15   it's like, come on, why did you have to be told this?

01:32:19   - I know, I was the kid with the nerd watch in school

01:32:23   with the calculator or Casio or whatever,

01:32:25   but I forgot, I forgot all about that.

01:32:27   Honestly, like the temperature is cool to have.

01:32:30   - Yeah, that's the one thing when I wear

01:32:31   my traditional watch, my regular watch,

01:32:34   the one thing that I miss every single day

01:32:38   is that I expect to be able to look at my wrist

01:32:40   and see what the temperature is outside.

01:32:42   - Yeah, I like it. - And every time,

01:32:45   it's always, I mean, it's uncanny

01:32:49   how I could go days without wearing my Apple Watch

01:32:51   and I still, as I'm heading out the door

01:32:53   and deciding which coat to put on, I look at my wrist

01:32:56   and I'm like, oh, it's not gonna help.

01:32:58   - Yeah, are you Apple paying with it?

01:33:01   - Yeah, I do, when I have it on, I Apple pay,

01:33:03   and that's another thing too is,

01:33:05   'cause the supermarket where we go

01:33:07   is a Whole Foods and they take Apple Pay.

01:33:09   And I instantly, every single time,

01:33:12   whether I'm wearing my Apple Watch or not Apple Watch,

01:33:14   I put my wrist up to the kiosk.

01:33:17   (laughing)

01:33:18   - Nice.

01:33:19   Yeah, I do.

01:33:22   I mean, almost every day I do that, so.

01:33:24   - It is, I find, and I thought so.

01:33:27   I thought it would be true back in May when I first got it,

01:33:29   and it turns out it's very true.

01:33:30   It is terrific in the East Coast winter

01:33:33   to have an Apple Pay thing

01:33:35   that you don't have to fish out of your pocket

01:33:37   when you're wearing a coat

01:33:38   and layers of clothing and stuff.

01:33:40   - Gloves too. - Right.

01:33:42   - And actually you can go straight through the sleeve.

01:33:44   You don't even need to roll up your sleeve.

01:33:47   You just double click on that button

01:33:50   and the NFC will go right through your shirt.

01:33:53   - It is interesting.

01:33:53   I'll tell you one thing too is I never used the single click

01:33:58   on that contact thing to contact people.

01:34:01   - Only by accident.

01:34:02   - Right, and so I really feel like in hindsight,

01:34:05   got that wrong. Like single click should have been Apple Pay and double click should have

01:34:09   been jumped to context shortcuts, at least for me personally. Because when I do want

01:34:13   to contact somebody, like if I want to text my son, I'll do it via Siri. I'll long press

01:34:19   the other thing and just say, text Jonas, whatever it is I want to text him. Because

01:34:25   you have to dictate the text anyway. So why not just initiate the contact from the voice

01:34:32   too?

01:34:33   It seems-- - Yeah, I assume

01:34:34   they probably thought people would be doing the drawings

01:34:37   and the touch stuff more than they do.

01:34:39   Like I haven't done that stuff in months.

01:34:41   - No, only when somebody gets a new Apple Watch.

01:34:43   - Yeah, right. (laughs)

01:34:45   - In hindsight, I mean, it's just one of those things where,

01:34:47   and I kind of, it makes me a little worried.

01:34:50   It's a worrisome product in some ways about Apple

01:34:52   'cause it makes me wonder what made them think

01:34:55   while they were using it themselves

01:34:56   that this would be useful.

01:34:58   It just seems to me that if they spent

01:35:01   as much time thinking about it as I have

01:35:03   in the first six months while I wore it.

01:35:05   Why didn't they come to the same conclusions I did?

01:35:08   I mean, that's a good, the whole idea was a great idea.

01:35:12   I was very intrigued by it,

01:35:13   the idea that you would have these favorite people

01:35:16   and one touch away from just sending your heartbeat

01:35:19   or whatever, fabulous idea.

01:35:21   But then I feel like once you actually have it on your wrist

01:35:24   and you can do it, it turns out it doesn't really stick.

01:35:27   - I think that it's gonna be,

01:35:30   Some of the most interesting things are gonna be

01:35:32   what they change based on what they've now learned

01:35:35   from millions of people using this thing.

01:35:38   And that's the software as well as the hardware.

01:35:41   I think we've already seen they realizing

01:35:43   that the Sport is the main watch.

01:35:48   There's more colors now, we'll see what else

01:35:51   changes with that.

01:35:52   - Well, I said-- - The software changes.

01:35:54   Yeah, I know you said it was the best one.

01:35:56   - Yeah, I think it's the best one.

01:35:57   I think all of the worrying that people did,

01:35:59   I think this is to me one of the most interesting things about it.

01:36:02   It's all the worrying people did that the common person is going to get short changed

01:36:06   and gets this cruddy aluminum one and it's only rich people who can afford a $1000 stainless

01:36:12   steel one who are going to get the nice one.

01:36:14   It's actually the other way around.

01:36:15   The people who bought the $400 sport one got the best watch.

01:36:18   I really do believe that.

01:36:20   Yeah, I love mine.

01:36:22   So I'm just super curious to see what they change software wise too.

01:36:28   Yeah, I am too. And I don't...

01:36:31   The software group has really gotten good at keeping

01:36:35   a little... not much leaks out of Apple software these days. So I think we're in

01:36:39   for a surprise.

01:36:40   I don't think that, you know, who knows? I mean, you never know what Mark Germin's

01:36:44   gonna

01:36:44   figure out. But yeah, I don't know. I think there's a good chance that we'll be

01:36:48   surprised. So any guesses we have are actually

01:36:51   real guesses. If you ask me right now,

01:36:54   what do I think they're gonna do? I'm gonna guess a lot of

01:36:58   health and sensor related improvements.

01:37:01   And this one might be more of a me just wishful thinking, but I really,

01:37:06   really,

01:37:06   really would like to see them do something a lot smarter with where the aggregate

01:37:11   health data is, you know,

01:37:15   making health center more of a here's everything that we know about you type

01:37:21   thing. Like to me,

01:37:23   it's way too separated with the activities is just for the watch stuff and

01:37:28   Not you and you know what I mean? Right. And you know, I have six months or well, I have eight months of aggregated

01:37:36   Fitness tracking like okay. What what higher level trends can you tell me? Yeah, you know

01:37:42   Okay, when you I don't know when you work out on the weekend you do something better during the week

01:37:50   I don't know just like give me some more other than that page of all the rings, which is kind of cool, but

01:37:58   Was cool, you know the first couple times I looked at it

01:38:00   It is nice to be able to go back and kind of brag about the day. I walked

01:38:04   27,000 steps steps at CES, but it would be great to actually get some more useful information out of that page

01:38:11   Yeah, I think that if there's if they're paying attention to how people seem to be using the watch in the real world

01:38:18   It's gonna be a lot more about quantifying

01:38:19   You know and helping you make sense and organize your the data that the watch knows and like I mean the other thing too

01:38:25   is if I'm not wearing my watch but I have my phone with me, the minimal compared to the watch,

01:38:30   but the minimal tracking that the phone does should be easily combined with the watch,

01:38:34   you know, to create an overall picture of my activity and stuff like that and where I've been.

01:38:40   And then the other thing I think I hope that they're working on is I think that they should

01:38:44   really work to make it smarter about whether it's watch faces or the glances or locate, you know,

01:38:53   but something so that it's just smarter about showing you what you want to be looking at when you look at your wrist.

01:38:57   Yeah, there's plenty of context that knows about, you know, where I'm at, what I'm doing, that it could...

01:39:04   I would even trust it to shuffle the complications for me somehow.

01:39:09   Yeah.

01:39:10   Based on the context, you know, if I'm at the airport, show me the travel complications.

01:39:16   If it's nighttime, show me, you know, certain things.

01:39:19   And I know that it would be kind of obnoxious to have to program the logic behind that so maybe you wouldn't be able to program it

01:39:26   but

01:39:27   to me that would be there's so much more context that

01:39:31   That they could be integrating into a lot of the decisions about what they show you

01:39:35   Were there a lot of?

01:39:39   Android watches at the CES not in a really noticeable way

01:39:45   I mean, last year it was so,

01:39:48   the whole watch thing was very novel,

01:39:50   and of course there was the famous Apple Watch knockoff,

01:39:54   and yeah, a lot of the boots I guess had

01:39:56   kind of Android watches, but I think that

01:39:59   it didn't really, it wasn't like a huge thing.

01:40:04   I mean, like Samsung had one,

01:40:05   but I think their only major change was just the color.

01:40:07   - Yeah.

01:40:08   - And then there was that Fitbit thing

01:40:12   that looks a little like an Apple Watch.

01:40:14   - They put it like a hexagonal.

01:40:16   It's like they cut off corners.

01:40:18   - Yeah, I kinda dumped on it.

01:40:19   I looked at it, it's fine, I mean, whatever.

01:40:21   If you're trying to buy a $200 thing or whatever,

01:40:25   and you want a Fitbit that also does a couple other things.

01:40:29   - The advantage that Fitbit has is they can get away

01:40:31   with an ugly-ish design, and quite frankly,

01:40:33   I think that their thing is ugly.

01:40:35   It's certainly uglier than the Apple Watch.

01:40:38   - Yeah.

01:40:38   - They can get away with it because their audience

01:40:40   is primarily looking at fitness tracking.

01:40:42   And so if the thing you're most interested in

01:40:44   is fitness tracking,

01:40:45   therefore less than great aesthetics,

01:40:50   you can get away with it.

01:40:51   Whereas Apple Watch, its primary thing

01:40:54   is it's supposed to be a good looking watch.

01:40:56   - Yeah, and I think the whole point behind this

01:40:59   is that they wanna become a more universal device

01:41:03   and get away from, you know, the biggest risk to Fitbit

01:41:07   is that fitness tracking becomes an app

01:41:09   on a more universal device as opposed to a separate thing

01:41:14   that you carry around.

01:41:17   The way that calculator is now an app on a phone

01:41:20   or a flashlight, no one's carrying a little mag light

01:41:24   around anymore, it's your camera flash.

01:41:27   So I could see why they would wanna kind of go after

01:41:32   that more mainstream universal, more useful market,

01:41:36   but I just don't know if they're the company

01:41:38   that has the software and the ecosystem that they can get enough people using it.

01:41:44   I mean, there's still, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's selling a lot.

01:41:47   People are buying a lot of foot bits there.

01:41:48   The brand has a awareness and people like it, but I don't know.

01:41:53   I think they're doomed because I think that they're not going to be able to stay

01:41:57   far enough ahead to, to, to stay ahead of the eventual good enough fitness tracking

01:42:04   that's built into other devices.

01:42:06   You know, including

01:42:07   - Yeah, I think right before, right after they went public,

01:42:11   I did kind of a trolly post where I said,

01:42:13   Fitbit's long-term stock chart revealed

01:42:16   or something like that,

01:42:18   or the long-term sales chart revealed,

01:42:19   and it was the shipments curve of the iPod.

01:42:23   It was like, you know, this is a single-purpose device

01:42:27   that has basically become an app

01:42:29   on a more general-purpose device.

01:42:32   - Over the holidays, we were at Amy's mom's house

01:42:34   for something, I don't know,

01:42:36   at some point during the Christmas, New Year's thing,

01:42:38   and it must have been Christmas,

01:42:40   and her mom had a LED Maglite,

01:42:45   and I was just blown away by how awesomely powerful

01:42:50   the flashlight is.

01:42:53   All the flashlights, and we have a bunch of them

01:42:55   from Maglite, I've always been a fan of their stuff

01:42:57   'cause it's so well made,

01:42:58   but ours are all the old incandescent thing,

01:43:01   and I was like, wow, it's like I have somehow

01:43:03   missed this revolution, and I need to upgrade

01:43:05   or flashlight. So I went flashlight shopping for myself. And it's so funny how it's like

01:43:11   maglite has all this, so many slogans on a bunch of their smaller ones. So it's like,

01:43:15   you know, yes, you really do need a flashlight. Yes, you can, you can have a flashlight that's

01:43:19   so much better than the one on your phone. And it's like, if you're telling people that

01:43:22   they, if you're just reminding them that they still need to buy a flashlight, you're, you're

01:43:26   in trouble. Like it is exactly, it mirrors exactly what the consumer camera company started

01:43:32   saying five or six years ago about,

01:43:34   "Yeah, you totally need a $200 point and shoot camera."

01:43:38   And it's like, no you don't.

01:43:39   Go to any tourist location in the world

01:43:41   and look at what people are using.

01:43:42   They're all using their phones.

01:43:44   - Totally.

01:43:48   - And the flashlight is right there.

01:43:50   It's like, who knew?

01:43:52   To me, it's like something I would have never predicted.

01:43:54   I mean, and Apple obviously didn't predict it

01:43:55   'cause they were a little late to the game

01:43:57   at making it something that you didn't need an app for.

01:44:00   but I use my iPhone as a flashlight

01:44:03   probably at least once a day every day.

01:44:04   - Every day, yeah.

01:44:06   It's crazy to me, but it's awesome.

01:44:09   - Right, but it's, you know, to me in the same way,

01:44:12   I'm not saying MagLite's going out of business,

01:44:14   but they're gonna go,

01:44:15   their business that was selling little $10 ones

01:44:18   that you keep at your desk is gone.

01:44:21   And it's never gonna come back.

01:44:22   The only lights, flashlights they're gonna sell

01:44:23   are the big serious ones that you need, you know,

01:44:26   where you really do want like a, you know,

01:44:28   a two D cell flashlight.

01:44:31   - Yeah, and I mean, and just to bring it back to that Fitbit

01:44:35   I guess that was the criticism was that it wasn't going

01:44:37   after the serious fitness market

01:44:39   'cause it doesn't have a GPS.

01:44:41   - Right.

01:44:42   - You know, the marathon runners aren't using that model.

01:44:46   And I don't think it's gonna be enough of an Apple watch

01:44:49   to beat Apple or even the Google watches

01:44:53   at being a more general purpose device.

01:44:56   - Yeah.

01:44:57   Anything else you wanna talk about this week, Dan?

01:45:00   - Not really. (laughs)

01:45:05   - There was, you know what--

01:45:06   - What do you wanna talk about?

01:45:07   - Well, I was gonna say there was,

01:45:09   it comes and goes, but it's,

01:45:12   I don't write about finance generally,

01:45:16   but I'm somewhat intrigued by it,

01:45:18   and I don't think that the company is immune to it.

01:45:21   I think even if you're primarily interested in Apple

01:45:23   because of their products, as I am,

01:45:26   that you still have to consider their stock price

01:45:30   and their quarterly financials

01:45:32   because they're a publicly held company.

01:45:35   And we're at a point, the whole market is down,

01:45:38   quite frankly, but Apple is down further than the market

01:45:41   and they're trading at a ridiculously low

01:45:44   price to earning ratio at the moment.

01:45:46   And it just brings out the crazies.

01:45:50   I mean, you cannot make this up.

01:45:53   I mean, this guy, Trip Chaudry, is almost comically,

01:45:57   it really is hard to believe that he's not a parody,

01:46:00   that there's somebody out there who made up the name

01:46:02   and, you know, like the McElope,

01:46:04   and it's a fake analyst who doesn't even exist,

01:46:07   and for years now, he's been getting away with this

01:46:10   and getting quoted, and he keeps saying

01:46:12   more and more outrageous things,

01:46:14   and everybody just keeps quoting him.

01:46:16   That, you know, putting the word analyst

01:46:18   in front of your name is somehow this magical credibility

01:46:21   badge.

01:46:23   He literally said last week, he called Tim Cook a bozo

01:46:26   and called for him to be not fired.

01:46:29   He called for him to be demoted back to chief operating

01:46:32   officer.

01:46:34   Amazing.

01:46:34   And says that John Rubenstein should come back to the company

01:46:38   and become the CEO.

01:46:40   Perfect.

01:46:41   Which is not going to happen.

01:46:44   That is not the way it works.

01:46:45   Maybe co-CEO with Fidel.

01:46:47   I guess, yeah, bring them all back.

01:46:49   And that Angela Arndt's is a nitwit or something.

01:46:51   I forget what his word was and she's gotta go.

01:46:54   Meanwhile, Apple stores have never been more popular

01:46:57   or more successful.

01:46:58   - I mean, there is a lot of,

01:47:04   I wouldn't say pessimism as much as just kind of,

01:47:10   people are not quite sure if iPhone sales

01:47:14   are gonna grow this year.

01:47:16   And I don't know, maybe that doesn't matter

01:47:18   to the average person.

01:47:20   It does matter to Apple as a growth story.

01:47:26   And growth certainly is important in any company.

01:47:29   And sure, there are cycles where things flatten out

01:47:35   or maybe they decrease a little

01:47:36   and they start growing again.

01:47:37   And yes, Apple, relative to the market,

01:47:44   That's one thing, but there are companies

01:47:46   whose stock performed great last year.

01:47:49   I believe Amazon was one of those.

01:47:50   - Amazon, definitely.

01:47:51   Amazon, it seems like everybody has really, really

01:47:53   caught on to Amazon, and I think deservedly so.

01:47:57   But just little things like the way that Amazon,

01:48:00   by most, the accounting I've seen,

01:48:03   got 51% of the online holiday shopping.

01:48:05   That's an enormous number,

01:48:07   and it's sort of a magic number, too.

01:48:09   Fundamentally, if they got 49% of it

01:48:13   instead of 51%, it's the same.

01:48:15   It's a rounding error and probably well within

01:48:17   the margin of error for however the outside group

01:48:20   guesstimated the numbers.

01:48:22   But 51 is over that 50% line and that's a magic number

01:48:26   and you can see why that would fuel

01:48:29   investor confidence in their stock.

01:48:31   - Yeah, so in the meantime you have

01:48:34   this huge group of analysts who try to guess every quarter

01:48:40   how many phones Apple's gonna sell

01:48:42   and what their revenue and profits are gonna be.

01:48:43   And what's been happening recently

01:48:47   is that they've been reducing their forecast

01:48:49   for iPhone sales and for, I think also for revenue.

01:48:53   I don't have the trend line in front of me.

01:48:57   I actually have access to what I thought

01:48:59   would be an interesting chart

01:49:00   of like how the estimates change over time,

01:49:03   but they actually changed so little

01:49:04   that it's just kind of a flat line.

01:49:06   It's not very, it's not actually a very interesting chart,

01:49:09   but we'll see.

01:49:11   - And yeah, this could possibly be a year.

01:49:14   And by the way, this has been known for a while.

01:49:16   Like I think I wrote about this in, I would say July

01:49:20   or even April of last year that this coming year

01:49:24   could be the year where the company doesn't grow very much

01:49:28   if at all.

01:49:29   And we'll see.

01:49:32   I mean, it certainly does matter for some reasons,

01:49:36   but it also seems to be creating an opportunity

01:49:39   for a lot of people to blow things out of context

01:49:42   and be silly about things.

01:49:44   - There's a very interesting story here, I think,

01:49:48   but it's all nuanced and it requires, you know,

01:49:51   let's be serious about this,

01:49:52   that this company, the biggest company in the world

01:49:55   is not going to implode.

01:49:56   It's, like we're talking about growth stopping,

01:49:59   not that the iPhone is going to,

01:50:02   the way some of these people are talking about it

01:50:04   is as though, I mean, here's the literal headline,

01:50:06   the iPhone slowdown spells doom for Apple.

01:50:09   I mean, that's an actual headline

01:50:10   in an ostensibly serious business publication.

01:50:13   It's ridiculous.

01:50:14   It doesn't spell doom.

01:50:15   But it certainly is interesting.

01:50:18   And I think it's almost, if you're realistic about it,

01:50:21   you have to admit that just back of the envelope math

01:50:25   would suggest that the basic story is actually very easy.

01:50:30   iPhone sales were suppressed for at least a year or two,

01:50:33   it seems, because consumers decided they liked bigger phones and the iPhone didn't have a

01:50:39   big phone. And it takes Apple at least two years to make a change like that because of

01:50:46   their "we only do one major new design a year and we bet the bank on it." They're stuck

01:50:52   with it for two years. And when the 6 and 6S came out, or the 6 and 6 Plus came out

01:50:58   last year. There was, A, it satisfied the demand, but B, it was pent up because a lot

01:51:04   of people had waited because there were rumors. I mean, anybody who, like us, knows casual

01:51:10   people who are like, "Hey, is it true that Apple's going to come out with a bigger phone?"

01:51:13   And we'd be like, "Well, you know, give your standard, I don't know, but it certainly seems

01:51:17   like it." That's what all signs point to. And they were like, "Cool, I'm going to get

01:51:21   that," and they waited for it. And then they did, and they had unbelievable sales.

01:51:26   I think that the sales so far, from what we know,

01:51:29   that the 6S and the 6S Plus are matching that,

01:51:32   but the question is are they gonna grow even further?

01:51:35   And they may not, but the thing that's also very obvious

01:51:37   is that at this point, they're getting to the point

01:51:40   where they're running out of people on the planet

01:51:42   who can afford iPhones.

01:51:44   - Right, which they're maybe actually gonna help out

01:51:48   with the second hand-me-down subscription phones this year.

01:51:53   phones this year. We'll see.

01:51:58   At this point, though, they're reaching a point where I really think that to grow, it

01:52:03   has to be at the lower end by widening the number of lower-cost phones that are being

01:52:09   sold that are iPhones. Because at the high end, I really do think they're at the point

01:52:14   where there just aren't untapped people left.

01:52:21   There are a few Google employees with Nexus phones and then that's about it.

01:52:27   And that's where other products come into play too, like the watch or the Apple TV,

01:52:31   but those are both so early in their life cycle that there's even Apple Music, which

01:52:37   we calculated is on a billion dollar revenue run rate.

01:52:41   Billion dollars is not that much to Apple.

01:52:44   How many watches do we think that they sold?

01:52:47   The last time I ran, after last quarter,

01:52:50   my number was around five million,

01:52:52   just based on kind of the changes

01:52:54   in that other products thing.

01:52:56   Could be a little more than that,

01:52:57   but the Christmas quarter is probably gonna be

01:53:00   on another level, so.

01:53:01   - Right.

01:53:02   - We'll know in a few weeks.

01:53:03   I mean, just making up a completely random number,

01:53:05   I would guess that they probably moved

01:53:07   like five to 10 million last quarter alone,

01:53:10   but who knows, I have no idea.

01:53:13   - Right, and each one of those

01:53:16   that

01:53:19   it did the average selling prices easily gassed at around five hundred dollars

01:53:22   because

01:53:23   overwhelmingly most of them are sport and the sport ones are four hundred dollars and

01:53:27   then you know just enough of those steel ones would raise it up to around five

01:53:30   hundred

01:53:31   if they every million that they sell is five hundred dollars in revenue that's

01:53:36   what is that

01:53:38   so basically a billion for every two million

01:53:40   phones, their watches so and so they've you know they've built in year one a

01:53:44   multi-billion dollar business, which is pretty good.

01:53:47   And I think it's about that.

01:53:48   Yeah.

01:53:48   But if you're Apple, it's not going to really drive much growth, especially if

01:53:53   you have to offset, you know, the iPad declining and, um, you know, the Mac is.

01:53:59   The Mac has been up, but it sometimes falls and that sort of stuff.

01:54:03   So, yeah, my guess is that the iPad is stabilized.

01:54:06   I think that the iPad is going to settle in as a nine to 10 million, a quarter

01:54:13   device in the same way that the Mac has long been a very very stable product

01:54:18   where but it but it actually grown in a very nice but conservative way where in

01:54:26   the old days you know like 10 15 years ago it was like a million max a quarter

01:54:32   was the magic number good quarters were over a million and bad quarters were

01:54:36   under a million and it's slowly but steadily grown to the point now where

01:54:41   they're doing like three, four, four and a half million

01:54:44   max a quarter.

01:54:45   - More.

01:54:46   - Is it more now?

01:54:47   - Yeah, well I'm gonna pull out my spreadsheet here.

01:54:52   So give me 10 seconds, but let's see,

01:54:55   last quarter was 5.7.

01:54:59   - There you go, I'm behind the times.

01:55:00   So they've grown past five.

01:55:02   - Which is I believe a record.

01:55:03   - Right.

01:55:04   - All time record.

01:55:06   - You know, and I noticed though,

01:55:08   I noticed just the other day,

01:55:09   I saw a guy in Starbucks and he was working on an old,

01:55:14   remember the white MacBooks?

01:55:16   Remember the ones that you could either get white or black?

01:55:18   And he was working on one of those.

01:55:19   It was in beautiful shape.

01:55:21   It was absolutely, it really was.

01:55:23   It was totally clean and the screen looked great

01:55:27   and he was working on like, I couldn't tell which app.

01:55:29   It was either Excel or Numbers.

01:55:31   It was clearly a spreadsheet.

01:55:32   Doing work on it and it looked great.

01:55:35   And so I had no surprise that he's still using it.

01:55:38   But that's what normal people do

01:55:39   is they buy a MacBook or a laptop

01:55:42   and they use it until it breaks.

01:55:45   - Hey, this is a 2009 iMac we're using.

01:55:47   So we're chatting right now.

01:55:49   - Right, and I feel like the iPad,

01:55:51   my theory on the iPad is that it sold

01:55:55   in these 20 million a quarter numbers

01:55:58   because it was this sensational new thing

01:56:01   that met a demand that no product had ever met before.

01:56:04   And lots of people decided,

01:56:06   hey, I could use one of those.

01:56:07   And they weren't replacing anything.

01:56:09   and they were adding it to their life.

01:56:11   And so it was way out of proportion

01:56:13   to what could be expected in a normal quarter.

01:56:16   And that now it's settled in.

01:56:19   And it settled in, I think, roughly like

01:56:21   somewhere around two times the number of Macs they sell.

01:56:25   And that that's the natural number of iPads

01:56:27   to be sold a quarter.

01:56:28   - Yep, and hey, I just bought an iPad too, off eBay,

01:56:32   just to use as a screen.

01:56:34   So the old ones have value too.

01:56:36   - Yeah, and again, I don't think people get rid of them

01:56:38   until they break.

01:56:39   - No, I had to stop using my original iPad

01:56:42   because it was still on, I think iOS 5.

01:56:44   And the app we were using to watch TV on

01:56:49   needed iOS 7, I think so.

01:56:52   Got an iPad 2 and now I'm solved.

01:56:56   - So I don't know.

01:56:59   I think that the hyperventilating over this is ridiculous.

01:57:03   I do think it's interesting though.

01:57:04   It's interesting to say what does Apple do

01:57:07   now that the iPhone has reached peak iPhone.

01:57:10   - Right, and much like when they mess something small up

01:57:16   with the product, people love to jump on it.

01:57:18   So imagine the whole company collapsing,

01:57:23   or not collapsing, but actually just not growing

01:57:26   like crazy for a few quarters in a row.

01:57:30   But yeah, what do they do?

01:57:31   They've done a few things,

01:57:35   and we'll see.

01:57:38   - Well, and I think in terms of anybody

01:57:40   who's looking for growth,

01:57:42   I don't see how the watch could have done better

01:57:44   in the first year.

01:57:45   And honestly, I've given the numbers it's gotten.

01:57:47   I think that they've sold outside the number,

01:57:49   outside how well it deserves to have sold.

01:57:51   I don't think it's that great of a 1.0 product,

01:57:53   but it's actually remarkable that they're selling

01:57:56   as many millions of them as it seems like they are.

01:57:59   And I think that's great.

01:58:01   And I think it's only gonna get better.

01:58:02   And they do really, in the last few years,

01:58:05   they've really, with every product since the iPad, they do an amazing job in the first

01:58:10   two or three years of greatly improving the product. I mean the iPad went from the iPad

01:58:17   to the iPad 2, which is way thinner. Then there was the iPad 3, which was weird because

01:58:22   it went retina, but it got thicker and heavier, which was a weird sort of, now you have this

01:58:26   awesome retina screen, but it's also thicker and heavier. And then ever since, from that

01:58:30   point onward, it's just gotten crazily thinner and faster and lighter. So I expect the exact

01:58:35   same trajectory with the watch, with a very aggressive annual schedule.

01:58:39   Yeah, I'm excited. I've liked mine a lot more than I thought I would. But it's still a long

01:58:48   way to get between now and 100 million units a year.

01:58:54   One last thing I thought of from CES was that it sort of ties into the "What does Apple

01:58:58   do now and it sort of ties into my thing about maybe they shouldn't have done apps on the

01:59:03   watch was a, I think it was Dieter Bone for the Verge had an article about Tizen, which

01:59:07   is Samsung's not Android, their own homegrown operating system and that maybe it's going

01:59:13   to do okay even though it never, you know, nobody, there's no app developers, you know,

01:59:18   targeting Tizen. And that's sort of the problem that windows exemplifies is that at best,

01:59:27   usually there's just one dominant platform that developers write for.

01:59:31   In the old days it used to be the Windows, then it became on the desktop,

01:59:36   then it became the web. And nowadays it's split. People still develop

01:59:40   for the web, but on mobile people develop for iOS and they develop for Android.

01:59:44   And if you're trying to be the third, you're out of luck because there's just

01:59:49   too much to ask. So Windows doesn't really get apps. And Tizen certainly

01:59:54   gets less than Windows. But that maybe, you know, I guess what he was writing about was

01:59:59   these Samsung watches that are running Tizen. And it occurs to me that as we move past the

02:00:05   phone and get into these other devices, platforms going forward and operating systems, apps

02:00:11   may not need to be a part of that. Like, and having your own operating system that you

02:00:16   inside your company completely control and you can have your engineers optimize it, you

02:00:21   You know, what you really want to work on is low energy consumption.

02:00:25   Well, you can make that the highest priority because you have your own operating system.

02:00:31   Or if you want to do like what Apple's done with Metal and make this, you know, incredibly

02:00:36   custom and high performance graphics pipeline, you can do that and you can bake that into

02:00:42   the operating system at whatever point where it makes the most sense for your desires because

02:00:46   you control the operating system.

02:00:49   I just think that a lot of these things going forward that are going to become computerized,

02:00:53   they don't need apps.

02:00:54   And therefore, it doesn't matter if Samsung can do a good watch and it runs Tizen, but

02:00:59   there's no third-party apps for it, that may not matter at all.

02:01:02   And where I'm going with this is, to me, the car might be the same thing, where what you

02:01:06   want out of your computerized car has nothing to do with third-party apps.

02:01:10   Right.

02:01:11   I mean, so Tizen is also being used, I believe, in many of their televisions, as well as the

02:01:17   new fridge with a tablet built into it and a bunch of this stuff.

02:01:21   And, you know, you can laugh, but if every, if every gadget is eventually

02:01:25   going to have a screen on it, um, you know, your washing machine or something

02:01:29   and the value of the apps, the logic is mostly running in the cloud and, and

02:01:34   what you're, um, interacting with is just, you know, either a notification

02:01:38   or a, you know, just a button that basically says, run this, this app in

02:01:43   the background or respond to a notification or something,

02:01:47   then absolutely.

02:01:49   It doesn't, you don't really need all the UI development

02:01:52   or a separate app running on the device.

02:01:56   - Did you see the summon feature for the Teslas?

02:02:02   - You know, I feel dumb 'cause I actually had heard

02:02:06   about that before but I didn't realize

02:02:08   it hadn't been announced.

02:02:10   Yeah, I saw that.

02:02:12   It's cool.

02:02:12   the type of stuff that I think that's this is the revolution that's coming to the car

02:02:16   industry and it has nothing to do with apps, right? Like the fact that you can't get apps

02:02:20   for your Tesla does not change anybody's desire to buy a Tesla at all in either direction.

02:02:26   Whether you didn't want one before you do. The fact that it's not an app platform is

02:02:30   irrelevant. It's the fact that the car can do it. Apps are just the wrong concept for

02:02:35   a car. They really are. I mean, I know that there's certain things like maybe you would

02:02:39   want something app-like for music,

02:02:42   but it doesn't have to be apps.

02:02:43   You just wanna get music in your car.

02:02:45   And yep, so the summon feature is really cool.

02:02:48   It's like you can, you tell your Tesla

02:02:52   that you're ready to go to work,

02:02:53   and the Tesla will like open the garage door,

02:02:57   get outside, and be right there at the curb

02:03:01   ready for you to get in and drive.

02:03:04   And when you get home, you can just get out of the Tesla

02:03:07   in front of your house and go in the front door,

02:03:08   and Tesla will go through the nitpicky detail

02:03:12   of carefully driving itself into your garage.

02:03:15   - And like the crazy long-term thing they said was like,

02:03:19   if you're in LA, your car will drive from New York

02:03:22   and come pick you up or something like that.

02:03:23   - Right, that's absolutely, yeah.

02:03:26   Right, right now it's like limited to a very,

02:03:28   very near proximity around your house or whatever,

02:03:31   but that they've already got it in place,

02:03:34   plans in place where you'll be able to do it

02:03:35   from any distance where there's contiguous land access.

02:03:39   So, you know, you can't make your car magically

02:03:40   get itself to Hawaii, but you can.

02:03:42   - Yet.

02:03:43   - Yeah, but you can go LA to New York.

02:03:45   - Yeah, I love this.

02:03:47   I think that the concept of a car

02:03:54   and of transport is really changing a lot.

02:03:57   And yeah, I mean, it was funny because CES

02:04:01   was literally the week before the biggest car show

02:04:05   in the world, but it's there that a lot of these companies

02:04:08   were making their big announcements

02:04:09   because they're all trying to position themselves

02:04:12   as technology companies now.

02:04:13   And you know, some of them are gonna,

02:04:17   what I love about Tesla is just that these ideas

02:04:21   are so wacky, but then they just release a software update

02:04:25   and they're there, like the self-driving mode.

02:04:27   I don't think anyone the week before was like,

02:04:30   "Oh, I wonder when my Tesla's gonna be able to drive itself."

02:04:33   And then Elon Musk is like, "Here it is, boom."

02:04:36   And I think they even have to dial it back now

02:04:38   'cause it was like a little too crazy.

02:04:40   I love it.

02:04:42   - Did I mention this on the show?

02:04:45   I forget if I did or not.

02:04:46   I have such a terrible podcast amnesia,

02:04:48   but that I got to ride in a self-driving Mercedes Benz.

02:04:52   - Oh, cool.

02:04:53   - And it was amazing.

02:04:54   It's truly, truly amazing.

02:04:56   Mercedes flew a bunch of, not a bunch,

02:04:59   a small number of writers out.

02:05:01   And I don't know why they picked me,

02:05:02   but I didn't question it.

02:05:04   - Where'd you go?

02:05:05   - Sunnydale, Sunnyvale, Mountain View,

02:05:08   somewhere out there, somewhere out,

02:05:10   it's out in the valley, down the street from Yahoo.

02:05:12   And got to ride in a self-driving S-Class.

02:05:17   We went out on the highway and the car drove,

02:05:20   did everything, it was amazing.

02:05:23   And it works, it absolutely works.

02:05:25   And it's not perfect yet, obviously,

02:05:28   But if anything, all of the imperfections

02:05:30   are on the side of being conservative.

02:05:32   It is, it's a very heavy breaker.

02:05:35   It breaks very, very aggressively.

02:05:36   We were heading up like an on-ramp

02:05:39   to get onto a highway and go high-speed driving.

02:05:42   And it was later in the afternoon

02:05:44   and we were heading right into the sun.

02:05:46   And basically, just talking to their engineers,

02:05:50   all of the things that make driving hard for humans

02:05:52   are the exact same thing that make self-driving hard.

02:05:54   If you have trouble seeing,

02:05:55   the cameras on the car have trouble seeing as well.

02:05:57   And it was really a lot of glare.

02:05:59   And it braked going up the ramp because the glare was so bad

02:06:03   that it couldn't really even see.

02:06:05   It was like the status indicated was just like,

02:06:07   can't tell what's ahead, therefore it's going to stop.

02:06:10   And it was an unnatural thing

02:06:12   that a human wouldn't have done.

02:06:14   And a couple of other times,

02:06:16   it broke a little bit too aggressively.

02:06:18   But for the most part, I think you could easily,

02:06:20   if you didn't tell somebody,

02:06:21   I think you could, and blindfolded them,

02:06:23   I think that you could easily,

02:06:25   the cars they already have today

02:06:27   could easily fool somebody in thinking

02:06:29   that a human did the driving.

02:06:31   - That's great.

02:06:33   Yeah, that's gonna be awesome.

02:06:34   - So one of the questions I asked them was,

02:06:37   do they anticipate, and that they're obviously solving,

02:06:40   they're solving really, really fascinating

02:06:43   AI engineering problems, hardware, software, sensors,

02:06:47   the braking systems and the software,

02:06:49   of course, to drive all this,

02:06:50   but they're also solving legislative

02:06:53   and regulatory problems at the same time.

02:06:56   And do they, like right now, I said,

02:06:59   I could go buy a Mercedes Benz.

02:07:00   Any Benz I drive off the lot, I can instantly go

02:07:03   and greatly exceed any speed limit in the United States

02:07:07   at my own discretion.

02:07:08   Will I have that ability in a self-driving car?

02:07:11   And I was told quite bluntly, no.

02:07:15   There's almost no chance that it would be legal

02:07:17   for them to make a self-driving car

02:07:19   that'll exceed speed limits, which is kind of weird.

02:07:22   And it's gonna drive the sort of libertarian mindset

02:07:25   people I think a little nutty, but their explanation was, "But why do you want to drive faster

02:07:29   now?" It's because you're bored. And if you're not paying attention to the road, if you're

02:07:36   just reading or watching TV or whatever on your way to work, you're not going to care

02:07:40   that it takes five minutes longer.

02:07:42   Totally. And I think I also saw something similar with the Tesla thing where it's programmed

02:07:51   that it could maybe go, I think, five miles over the limit or something like that based

02:07:54   on where it is? I'm not sure, I may be making that up, but I thought I read something about

02:07:58   that. And then of course, if you need to go faster, there's the flying car that they had

02:08:04   at CES too, the scary quadcopter with a person in it. Did you see that?

02:08:11   No, I did not.

02:08:12   Oh yeah, that's the, it was like a human-sized drone.

02:08:15   Oh God.

02:08:16   So great, so we got that to look forward to.

02:08:20   The one thing talking to people at Mercedes is they were very, they, you know, it's, they

02:08:27   are very confident in their ability and that they are going to have world class self driving

02:08:31   cars. I mean, I wrote in one that already was real, the real deal. Um, but they're talking,

02:08:37   they, they, they divide this, the stages of self driving cars in like four levels and

02:08:42   like level one is like the stuff that we already have. You can get on the market today where

02:08:46   where you can set your car to maintain distance

02:08:49   from the car in front of it.

02:08:50   And that Tesla has a feature where you can turn on a thing

02:08:54   and it'll do the highway driving for you.

02:08:57   But part of stage one is that stage one means

02:09:02   you still have a human driver who is expected

02:09:06   to be able to take over the control of the car in an instant,

02:09:09   like hands ready to take over at all times.

02:09:13   And that's where the industry is today

02:09:15   in terms of what's on the market,

02:09:17   and that they were absolutely,

02:09:18   it was like they considered it almost seemingly,

02:09:21   this wasn't what they said,

02:09:22   but reading between the lines,

02:09:23   it seemed like they were angry,

02:09:25   and it was like a setback to the industry

02:09:28   that when Tesla first made this feature available,

02:09:30   that jackasses were setting up GoPros

02:09:32   and showing themselves reading the newspaper

02:09:35   while their car drove.

02:09:36   There was a guy who got in the backseat of his Tesla

02:09:39   while it was on a highway in California.

02:09:43   And that it's so, that's not, that's not,

02:09:46   you're not supposed to do that.

02:09:48   And somebody's gonna do that in a disaster,

02:09:51   you know, they're gonna have a catastrophic accident

02:09:53   because of it and it's going to, you know,

02:09:56   the fear is it's gonna make people say,

02:09:58   we should ban self-driving cars

02:10:00   before they even get a chance to do it.

02:10:03   Who would do that?

02:10:07   What kind of a-- - Yeah.

02:10:09   - And it really is funny.

02:10:10   It's like, it's just like some random Yahoo

02:10:13   with a Tesla is gonna ruin this for everybody.

02:10:16   - Yeah, I think if you go on YouTube

02:10:18   and search like Tesla fail,

02:10:19   you'll find some people who were very surprised

02:10:23   by what they were recording.

02:10:25   But yeah, I mean, it's interesting.

02:10:29   And I'm sure we've seen other tech example.

02:10:33   I mean, it's not too dissimilar

02:10:35   from what we're seeing with Airbnb and Uber,

02:10:38   where there's the company that wants to

02:10:42   kind of skirt the way that things have always been

02:10:43   and then reality which will fit somewhere in the middle.

02:10:47   - I just think bottom line for Apple is that

02:10:49   until they get to their car comes out,

02:10:51   which is even if everything goes swimmingly,

02:10:53   it's gonna be 2020, 21 or something like that.

02:10:56   I think, I don't see how they can get it out before 2020.

02:11:02   But who knows?

02:11:02   But even if I'm wrong,

02:11:04   it's not gonna be that much earlier.

02:11:06   Until then, I don't see how they can do anything

02:11:08   to create like a totally grossly inflate

02:11:13   the revenue of the company, right?

02:11:17   Like watches and other things that they could do

02:11:20   in the interim.

02:11:20   The watch is a good business, but like you said,

02:11:22   like a billion here and a billion there

02:11:24   doesn't move the line for Apple very much.

02:11:26   - Right, unless it's the kind of thing

02:11:28   where almost everyone within iPhone gets one too,

02:11:32   but then it's still smaller than the iPhone.

02:11:34   It's still, it's basically accessory level.

02:11:37   - But I think that the Wall Street's desire

02:11:39   for Apple to do that is just magical thinking.

02:11:42   And I think it's good as somebody who wants the company

02:11:45   to continue doing good work.

02:11:47   It's good that they're, by all appearances,

02:11:50   are not obsessed with finding another iPhone.

02:11:54   I think that they knew going into it

02:11:55   that the watch was not going to be like the iPhone,

02:11:57   and they did it anyway.

02:11:59   And I think that's as it should be.

02:12:00   I think the phone is like a once in a generation opportunity.

02:12:05   - Yeah, I don't think anything can be like the iPhone,

02:12:08   at least in the next, you know,

02:12:10   at least knowing what we know today about the world,

02:12:14   I don't think there's gonna be another product

02:12:16   that is like the iPhone for Apple.

02:12:18   - Right, it's just a perfect storm of everything.

02:12:22   It's this device that everybody wants one

02:12:25   and that they have engineering advantages.

02:12:28   - Just couldn't be-- - And the price is hidden,

02:12:32   all that stuff. - Right, right, right.

02:12:34   that nobody even knows what they're really paying for it.

02:12:36   And they just, the industry just keeps finding new ways

02:12:39   to further obfuscate just how much you're paying.

02:12:42   - Yeah.

02:12:43   (laughing)

02:12:44   - I love it when you tell somebody that,

02:12:45   like if you just buy a no contract iPhone,

02:12:48   that it's, you know, eight or nine hundred dollars,

02:12:49   and they're like, well I would never pay that.

02:12:51   But yet, they have an iPhone.

02:12:53   It's like, trust me, you're paying it.

02:12:56   Anything else?

02:13:00   - That's good, I think.

02:13:01   - All right, Dan Fromer at Quartz,

02:13:03   That's qz.com.

02:13:04   I'll make sure to throw in a couple links

02:13:07   to your CES stuff.

02:13:08   - I didn't do much, so I'll send you what I did.

02:13:12   But, which was nice.

02:13:15   - Well, it's always good talking to you.

02:13:17   - Yep, From Dome on Twitter.

02:13:18   - From Dome on Twitter.

02:13:19   And citynotes.co.