The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Did you get anything good for Christmas?

00:00:02 ◼   ► - The art of Star Wars, The Force Awakens,

00:00:06 ◼   ► which Serenity recommended and is really good.

00:00:08 ◼   ► - What was that?

00:00:09 ◼   ► Is that a coffee table book? - That's a book

00:00:10 ◼   ► that shows all the design process.

00:00:11 ◼   ► Yeah, that shows the design process they went through,

00:00:13 ◼   ► which I always find fascinating.

00:00:15 ◼   ► - It seems, how did they make the book,

00:00:18 ◼   ► how is the book already out?

00:00:19 ◼   ► - Well, they showed stuff that they've been working on

00:00:22 ◼   ► for years and years, like early concepts for the movies

00:00:24 ◼   ► and designs they did and things that changed an awful lot

00:00:27 ◼   ► and stuff that Abrams would come back and forth

00:00:29 ◼   ► while he was working on Star Trek to kibitz about?

00:00:31 ◼   ► - Kibitz, I would say kibitz.

00:00:36 ◼   ► Am I wrong?

00:00:37 ◼   ► I'm wrong.

00:00:38 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:00:39 ◼   ► I probably got a little bit of Yiddish in mine.

00:00:41 ◼   ► - So like what changed?

00:00:45 ◼   ► I don't wanna go on Star Wars.

00:00:47 ◼   ► - I've only just started it because I've gotten so not used

00:00:49 ◼   ► to looking at physical media anymore

00:00:51 ◼   ► that it's a slow reading process for me.

00:00:53 ◼   ► But a lot of the early designs were just very different

00:00:57 ◼   ► and just the way they look

00:00:59 ◼   ► and some of the character ideas that they had.

00:01:01 ◼   ► I always get the feeling that Abrams writes

00:01:04 ◼   ► by the seat of his pants,

00:01:05 ◼   ► which is not my favorite characteristic of his.

00:01:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I definitely,

00:01:10 ◼   ► I keep saying I don't wanna go all Star Wars on this.

00:01:14 ◼   ► I do think, I mean, that's his reputation.

00:01:18 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know him personally,

00:01:19 ◼   ► but I mean, it's certainly his reputation.

00:01:21 ◼   ► And it's like, as one of my friends put it,

00:01:24 ◼   ► that is that he inevitably heads into every movie,

00:01:27 ◼   ► like, production starts with the story 85% written.

00:01:32 ◼   ► Which, it's just, that's his style, you know?

00:01:35 ◼   ► And I don't know that it's ever gonna change.

00:01:38 ◼   ► - And you get wonderful set pieces,

00:01:39 ◼   ► and sometimes the story takes a backseat to them.

00:01:41 ◼   ► - I did like "The Force Awakens," though.

00:01:45 ◼   ► I don't wanna leave people without the, I mean--

00:01:48 ◼   ► - I've seen it four times, I love the damn thing.

00:01:51 ◼   ► - Would you have gone and seen it four times anyway?

00:01:53 ◼   ► I mean, you really like it that much?

00:01:55 ◼   ► I've seen it twice.

00:01:56 ◼   ► - I can't watch the prequels again.

00:01:57 ◼   ► I have an inability to watch, I can watch movies a lot

00:01:59 ◼   ► and I can't watch the prequels or Man of Steel.

00:02:01 ◼   ► Movies like that I just can't watch again.

00:02:03 ◼   ► So this to me, it has to be a good Star Wars,

00:02:05 ◼   ► for me to watch it repeatedly.

00:02:07 ◼   ► - Man of Steel, again, I don't understand how that movie,

00:02:12 ◼   ► I don't understand how that movie got made.

00:02:14 ◼   ► - They don't have a Kevin Fahey,

00:02:17 ◼   ► who just oversees DC's properties

00:02:18 ◼   ► and no one gives a shit.

00:02:20 ◼   ► - Right, it's like you somehow run that up the chain

00:02:23 ◼   ► at Warner Brothers,

00:02:25 ◼   ► Which is like where it ultimately falls, right?

00:02:28 ◼   ► - Act three, he's gonna heat vision

00:02:30 ◼   ► a bunch of Kryptonian babies.

00:02:31 ◼   ► Okay, go for it.

00:02:32 ◼   ► - I mean, it's not a terrible movie,

00:02:37 ◼   ► but it's not Superman, you know what I mean?

00:02:39 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:02:40 ◼   ► - And the whole idea of shooting it

00:02:42 ◼   ► with that incredibly weird color palette

00:02:46 ◼   ► is so bizarre to me.

00:02:49 ◼   ► I don't understand how that works.

00:02:50 ◼   ► - And now they have Superman versus Batman,

00:02:51 ◼   ► which might be a good movie,

00:02:52 ◼   ► but it's as dark and dreary as the Suicide Squad.

00:02:55 ◼   ► So I don't know how you have Joker in a world where Superman might as well be the Joker.

00:02:58 ◼   ► It's a very odd juxtaposition.

00:02:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, there were definitely some good moments in the movie, but it's, I don't know.

00:03:04 ◼   ► Anyway, Force Awakens, I liked it a lot.

00:03:06 ◼   ► You know, I have some complaints.

00:03:08 ◼   ► I don't love it.

00:03:11 ◼   ► But again, I don't think that this is, this is no spoiler.

00:03:15 ◼   ► Again, I, you know, you leave your ears open if you haven't seen it yet, but you should

00:03:20 ◼   ► definitely go see it before you listen to the next episode of the talk show.

00:03:25 ◼   ► I feel like with this one, I feel like with, for example, with Spectre, I'll be very, very

00:03:30 ◼   ► cognizant of spoilers because I don't know that everybody goes to see it right away.

00:03:34 ◼   ► I feel like with Star Wars, you're sort of under an obligation where if you haven't seen

00:03:37 ◼   ► it by, say, the end of the calendar year, then it's on you if you're talking about spoilers.

00:03:44 ◼   ► I will just say that.

00:03:45 ◼   ► And I should say that this was a Star Wars movie to me and the other ones weren't.

00:03:47 ◼   ► So this to me is like the first real Star Wars movie we've had in almost 40 years.

00:03:51 ◼   ► Yeah, definitely.

00:03:52 ◼   ► I felt like it.

00:03:53 ◼   ► Well, I don't know.

00:03:54 ◼   ► I'm not a prequel hater

00:03:56 ◼   ► But I did I only want to rewatch coming up to this was because I watched them all a lot with my son when he was

00:04:02 ◼   ► younger

00:04:04 ◼   ► So I'm I've seen the prequels ton of times just because he liked all of the Star Wars movies

00:04:09 ◼   ► And I didn't hate any of them even the Phantom Men Menace. I didn't hate I mean obviously had a lot of complaints with it

00:04:16 ◼   ► but I

00:04:17 ◼   ► Didn't hate it and never redeemable moments in all of them or enjoyable moments in all of them

00:04:23 ◼   ► But the one that I definitely thought I liked the best was

00:04:26 ◼   ► Revenge of the Sith and so I rewatched that one before watching the

00:04:31 ◼   ► Despecialized editions of the original trilogy before seeing this and

00:04:36 ◼   ► even that one

00:04:38 ◼   ► Was even it gets worse as time goes on like I had a theory is that

00:04:43 ◼   ► The prequels and the special edition are George Lucas's punishment to us for liking Star Wars more than him. I

00:04:51 ◼   ► I'm so baffled that those movies came.

00:04:55 ◼   ► That's one of the things.

00:04:56 ◼   ► And I know I've said this before, but it's like,

00:05:01 ◼   ► I feel like the prequels, as they are,

00:05:06 ◼   ► without changing one thing about them,

00:05:09 ◼   ► make sense in a universe where George Lucas

00:05:14 ◼   ► didn't control Star Wars or had sold control of Star Wars

00:05:18 ◼   ► in the early 90s.

00:05:19 ◼   ► - To the guys at DC Comics.

00:05:20 ◼   ► And yeah, and something like that happened.

00:05:22 ◼   ► Like DC, you know, Warner Brothers and DC Comics

00:05:25 ◼   ► or some idiots at Fox did this.

00:05:29 ◼   ► And it's like, oh, what a crying shame,

00:05:32 ◼   ► what they've done.

00:05:33 ◼   ► It's baffling that he had complete authorial control

00:05:38 ◼   ► over the whole thing and that the guy who came up with,

00:05:41 ◼   ► you know, and deservedly so gets all the credit

00:05:44 ◼   ► in the world for the original trilogy,

00:05:47 ◼   ► that it was him who did this,

00:05:50 ◼   ► and that there's no indication that he was ever,

00:05:54 ◼   ► suffered any kind of severe head injury, or.

00:05:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:05:59 ◼   ► - Well, he wanted to do his experimental films,

00:06:00 ◼   ► and I think he kind of thinks we didn't let him,

00:06:02 ◼   ► that because of "Star Wars" he wasn't allowed

00:06:04 ◼   ► to make the experimental films he really wanted to make.

00:06:07 ◼   ► - That's the thing, I don't know if people know this,

00:06:09 ◼   ► but it's like, that's really who George Lucas was,

00:06:12 ◼   ► and if you look at like THX 1138,

00:06:14 ◼   ► or even like the student version of it before it,

00:06:17 ◼   ► they were really, really, I mean,

00:06:19 ◼   ► they're true art films in the '60s and '70s.

00:06:22 ◼   ► But that's not, I don't know.

00:06:29 ◼   ► I feel like he really likes the prequels.

00:06:31 ◼   ► I really do, when you listen to him talk.

00:06:33 ◼   ► I don't think that he was spiteful.

00:06:35 ◼   ► I feel like that's what he,

00:06:37 ◼   ► somehow that's what he decided he wanted to make.

00:06:39 ◼   ► But anyway, it doesn't hold up well.

00:06:40 ◼   ► And I also would say, most incredibly to me,

00:06:44 ◼   ► is that the effects really don't hold up.

00:06:46 ◼   ► Especially in the, well,

00:06:50 ◼   ► I didn't watch the other two recently,

00:06:51 ◼   ► but when I rewatched the Blu-ray version

00:06:54 ◼   ► of Revenge of the Sith, I was really kind of startled

00:06:59 ◼   ► 'cause it had been several years since I'd seen it.

00:07:01 ◼   ► And I was really startled at how poorly

00:07:04 ◼   ► I thought the effects held up overall.

00:07:06 ◼   ► - But then when you watched,

00:07:06 ◼   ► 'cause I did the same thing as you,

00:07:07 ◼   ► I watched the de-specialized editions

00:07:09 ◼   ► right before going to see The Force Awakens,

00:07:10 ◼   ► and those effects hold up great.

00:07:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, you can definitely,

00:07:13 ◼   ► even the ones where you know, like,

00:07:15 ◼   ► you can kinda see that it's not real,

00:07:17 ◼   ► maybe the stop motion on, like, a walker or something

00:07:21 ◼   ► isn't quite,

00:07:22 ◼   ► isn't quite right, but it,

00:07:27 ◼   ► the way that it fails, it doesn't get worse as time goes on.

00:07:30 ◼   ► - Absolutely. - Like, it fails in a way

00:07:32 ◼   ► that it failed right when they came out, you know,

00:07:35 ◼   ► or, you know, gets to, like, the 98, 99% marker.

00:07:38 ◼   ► And there's a certain charm to it.

00:07:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, absolutely.

00:07:42 ◼   ► - I think the biggest thing that really strikes me

00:07:45 ◼   ► about the prequel trilogy effects wise

00:07:49 ◼   ► is the uncanny valley of the fact

00:07:54 ◼   ► that almost everything was shot against a green screen.

00:08:00 ◼   ► And I can't-- - Almost a cartoon.

00:08:02 ◼   ► - You can pause any scene.

00:08:05 ◼   ► And just like the most mundane things,

00:08:07 ◼   ► like a meeting in Palpatine's office.

00:08:12 ◼   ► It's like they're just having a meeting in an office.

00:08:16 ◼   ► And I mean, we could go on and on and on about this

00:08:18 ◼   ► and talk about how the fact that,

00:08:20 ◼   ► how so many of the scenes were meetings in Palpatine's office

00:08:23 ◼   ► is a problem the whole time.

00:08:25 ◼   ► - Two shots just sitting on sofas.

00:08:26 ◼   ► - But it just, and you can freeze frame, pause the thing,

00:08:31 ◼   ► and I can't look at it and articulate logically

00:08:35 ◼   ► what it is that looks phony to me about it.

00:08:38 ◼   ► I can't, I don't know what it is,

00:08:41 ◼   ► but there's something, there is something to the whole thing

00:08:43 ◼   ► where it just looks like, you know,

00:08:46 ◼   ► like an inverse version of Roger Rabbit.

00:08:48 ◼   ► You've got all these real people in a cartoon world.

00:08:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, it reminds me of something you and Merlin

00:08:55 ◼   ► did a talk a long time ago, South by Southwest,

00:08:57 ◼   ► that I always loved, and it reminds me of what went wrong

00:09:00 ◼   ► with George Lucas is that he lost his inner editor

00:09:03 ◼   ► and he lost his external editor too.

00:09:05 ◼   ► There was no one to tell him yes and no,

00:09:08 ◼   ► no one that had the authority to do that at least.

00:09:10 ◼   ► He was just surrounded by enablers

00:09:11 ◼   ► and you can never do great work when people around you

00:09:14 ◼   ► are just saying, "Yeah, that's great all the time."

00:09:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, did we mention Lucas in particular at that talk?

00:09:18 ◼   ► - No, it was just about the craft of writing.

00:09:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it's definitely true.

00:09:23 ◼   ► I'll put a link in the show notes.

00:09:25 ◼   ► It's probably the high water mark

00:09:27 ◼   ► of my public speaking career.

00:09:28 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:09:29 ◼   ► - It was an awesome talk.

00:09:34 ◼   ► It was, I think I've said this before too,

00:09:36 ◼   ► like Merlin and I had this talk planned

00:09:38 ◼   ► and we had met the day before in his hotel room

00:09:41 ◼   ► down in Austin and we had a whole talk planned.

00:09:44 ◼   ► And then we were going on in the afternoon the next day

00:09:46 ◼   ► and in the morning we met again to go over it.

00:09:48 ◼   ► And we decided that it was total rubbish

00:09:51 ◼   ► and that it was a terrible idea.

00:09:53 ◼   ► And so we ripped it up and we decided

00:09:58 ◼   ► to do a different talk.

00:10:00 ◼   ► And at this point we were like 90 minutes away

00:10:03 ◼   ► from going on stage.

00:10:05 ◼   ► Well, not like when we decided to do that,

00:10:08 ◼   ► but like when we had completed like a draft of it

00:10:10 ◼   ► and we're like, well, let's run through it once.

00:10:12 ◼   ► And we ran through it once

00:10:13 ◼   ► and it took like 45 minutes, 50 minutes.

00:10:15 ◼   ► And we're like, oh my God, that was awful.

00:10:17 ◼   ► That was even worse.

00:10:18 ◼   ► And we're like, what do we do?

00:10:18 ◼   ► Do we go back to the one we threw away

00:10:21 ◼   ► or do we try to make do with this?

00:10:23 ◼   ► And we were like, oh shit, we don't even know.

00:10:24 ◼   ► We don't have a chance.

00:10:25 ◼   ► We only had 30 minutes before we went on stage

00:10:27 ◼   ► and we're like, this is gonna be terrible.

00:10:29 ◼   ► And then we were like, well, to hell with it.

00:10:30 ◼   ► It's just a panel at South by Southwest.

00:10:32 ◼   ► And so we went with the plan, you know, the new one.

00:10:35 ◼   ► And the second time we did it in front of the audience,

00:10:37 ◼   ► as soon as we finished, we looked at each other,

00:10:38 ◼   ► we're like, wow, that was great.

00:10:39 ◼   ► And ever since, I think more than any other public speaking

00:10:44 ◼   ► thing I've ever done in my life,

00:10:46 ◼   ► people come up to me still now and say,

00:10:48 ◼   ► that was pretty good.

00:10:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was an outstanding talk.

00:10:52 ◼   ► People should go listen to it if they haven't already.

00:10:54 ◼   ► - I'm not sure what the advice is though.

00:10:57 ◼   ► I feel like I'm giving people the advice

00:10:59 ◼   ► that if you ever do a run through of a talk

00:11:00 ◼   ► and it's terrible.

00:11:01 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:11:03 ◼   ► Stop. - Speak from the heart, John.

00:11:04 ◼   ► - You're all set, you're ready to go, go on stage.

00:11:07 ◼   ► Let me start, or anyway, the whole reason we're here

00:11:10 ◼   ► is we're gonna talk year in review.

00:11:11 ◼   ► Here we are at the end of 2015.

00:11:13 ◼   ► We did that, you and I did this last year on the show,

00:11:15 ◼   ► I thought it was great.

00:11:16 ◼   ► This is gonna be, we shouldn't have wasted any time

00:11:20 ◼   ► on the movie talk, 'cause there's a lot to talk about.

00:11:22 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:11:23 ◼   ► - And that's, and year in review, let's,

00:11:24 ◼   ► and mostly focused on Apple, Apple's year in review.

00:11:30 ◼   ► Before we get started on that, why don't I take our first break and thank one of the

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00:13:45 ◼   ► So where do we start? I say we go, what do you say, chronological, right?

00:13:48 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely. I think like the big thing this year is that for a couple years since 2012,

00:13:54 ◼   ► at least Apple hadn't had a spring event. So it was almost six months of no news up until WVDC,

00:14:00 ◼   ► and this year changed all that again. Yeah, it's like you can't please people because

00:14:03 ◼   ► in those years when they when they moved the iPad in like 2010, 11, I think even 12. Yeah.

00:14:14 ◼   ► New iPads came out in the early part of the year, spring, late winter, whatever you want to call it.

00:14:20 ◼   ► And then when they stopped that, like you said, we more or less started going until WWDC before we heard from them.

00:14:29 ◼   ► And people would complain, "What the hell are they doing? They've lost it. They don't do anything anymore."

00:14:34 ◼   ► Apple's not innovating.

00:14:35 ◼   ► Right.

00:14:36 ◼   ► Now when they do, it's, you know...

00:14:41 ◼   ► They've lost focus.

00:14:43 ◼   ► Yeah, they've lost focus. That's exactly it. Right. They're done.

00:14:47 ◼   ► The two things that were interesting to me at the beginning of the year was,

00:14:50 ◼   ► at the very beginning at least, was conjecture over Project Titan, which had just broken at the end of

00:14:54 ◼   ► the previous year, and yours and a few other people talking about the price of the gold watch,

00:14:58 ◼   ► because we had no idea back then what it was going to be.

00:15:01 ◼   ► Yeah, so like a year ago, that's really, you know, we knew that the watch was coming. We knew they

00:15:05 ◼   ► were going to have a gold one. Nobody knew what it was going to cost. And Titan, I don't know,

00:15:12 ◼   ► I don't know, it's anything different today than a year ago

00:15:15 ◼   ► regarding, that's the car for those of you

00:15:17 ◼   ► who don't keep Apple code names at the top of your head.

00:15:22 ◼   ► I don't know that any, you know, it's,

00:15:25 ◼   ► eventually it's gonna not be a secret rumor project,

00:15:30 ◼   ► but I don't know that anything happened this year

00:15:34 ◼   ► compared to last that makes it seem

00:15:36 ◼   ► any more-- - Just internal stuff.

00:15:37 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:15:38 ◼   ► - The Gold Watch was fascinating to me

00:15:40 ◼   ► because this year more than any other,

00:15:42 ◼   ► it felt like Apple started segmenting their product line

00:15:45 ◼   ► and that caused an incredible amount of stress and anxiety

00:15:48 ◼   ► for the community because we were used to really

00:15:50 ◼   ► there being few products,

00:15:51 ◼   ► almost every one of them was for us

00:15:53 ◼   ► and now there were gold watches and one port MacBooks

00:15:56 ◼   ► and products that might be Apple products

00:15:58 ◼   ► but not ones that we would want

00:16:00 ◼   ► and that was very uncomfortable for a lot of people.

00:16:03 ◼   ► - I think that we, and to me it was, I don't regret it

00:16:07 ◼   ► because I thought it was fascinating to think about.

00:16:09 ◼   ► I had a lot of fun writing about trying to guess what the watch pricing was going to be.

00:16:14 ◼   ► In hindsight though, we've spent way more time thinking.

00:16:17 ◼   ► We collectively spent way more time thinking and speculating on what the gold

00:16:22 ◼   ► Apple watch additions mean for Apple and this watch as a product before they came

00:16:27 ◼   ► out. Then afterwards, like once they came out,

00:16:31 ◼   ► it's like the gold one,

00:16:33 ◼   ► the difference between our universe where the Apple watch edition exists and the

00:16:39 ◼   ► alternate universe where the gold one doesn't even exist, it's there's almost

00:16:43 ◼   ► no differences between those those two hypotheticals.

00:16:46 ◼   ► --They had a nice spike in sales when Apple Store Dubai opened and that's about it.

00:16:50 ◼   ► --Oh, I have no doubt. I have seen them. I saw one, I forget when, must have been

00:16:58 ◼   ► August when I was in Vegas for a few days in August and I saw one on

00:17:02 ◼   ► somebody's wrist there. And I know I've heard from readers who've seen them, you

00:17:07 ◼   ► here and there. But they're definitely rare enough that it's like when people do see somebody wearing

00:17:11 ◼   ► one that they think like, "Hey, I'll email Gruber and tell him I saw somebody wearing one." For

00:17:17 ◼   ► obvious reasons, it's pretty rare. I mean, because they're really, really quite expensive.

00:17:21 ◼   ► Yeah, for me, it was more the sign because as Apple gets complaints all the time that they

00:17:26 ◼   ► never do anything different. They don't take risks. They don't experiment. They should buy

00:17:28 ◼   ► this company. And these are products that do take those kinds of risks, whether they gold Apple Watch

00:17:34 ◼   ► in the long lens of history is good or not, at least they were willing to try something

00:17:38 ◼   ► different. And I like when Apple does that. I would say this with the watch in hindsight,

00:17:42 ◼   ► and I just, you know, as the year petered out, or played out, I guess I should say,

00:17:47 ◼   ► I feel very strongly that the best Apple Watch is the Sport Edition. And I don't even mean it

00:17:58 ◼   ► in the sense that you're getting the more bang for your buck. You know, the way that sometimes

00:18:03 ◼   ► when people do reviews of like a category of product and they say here's our pick for the best

00:18:11 ◼   ► it's not necessarily that they mean it's the best it's the best given the price you know like the

00:18:17 ◼   ► best car might be the honda accord somebody would say but they're not trying to say that it's

00:18:21 ◼   ► literally a better car than uh you know 110 000 you know top of the line mercedes s class they're

00:18:29 ◼   ► They're saying that given, you know, I'm saying flat out that I think the Apple Watch Sport

00:18:33 ◼   ► Edition is the best version of the watch, period.

00:18:36 ◼   ► Like full stop, don't worry about the fact that it costs less than the other ones.

00:18:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it's got a wide variety of looks.

00:18:44 ◼   ► It's got the silver, the black, the rose gold, the gold.

00:18:46 ◼   ► It's super light.

00:18:47 ◼   ► It's got probably the best taptic engine of any of the watches.

00:18:51 ◼   ► A lot to recommend it.

00:18:52 ◼   ► It's the taptic engine that to me makes me say that because on mine, my, you know, the

00:18:57 ◼   ► that I personally own is the black stainless steel one. The Taptic

00:19:01 ◼   ► Engine was never that great to start with. It wasn't broken. I wouldn't

00:19:07 ◼   ► call it broken. It just didn't feel great and it certainly didn't feel like

00:19:10 ◼   ► the demo ones that Apple had, which were like the platonic ideal of what this was

00:19:16 ◼   ► supposed to feel like. And quite frankly, just didn't feel as good to me as the

00:19:19 ◼   ► sport one that I have. I've got a review unit sport watch here. My son has a sport

00:19:24 ◼   ► edition. The taptic engine just doesn't feel as good. And the other factor is that as the

00:19:30 ◼   ► years gone on, the taptic engine in my black stainless one has gotten worse. It's just somehow,

00:19:36 ◼   ► it's not weaker, but it's like looser somehow. It's very hard to describe.

00:19:40 ◼   ► I just feel very strongly that the Sport 1 is a superior product.

00:19:46 ◼   ► Yeah, my black stainless steel is the same. I think we got ours at the same time.

00:19:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, I got mine right away.

00:19:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, the black stainless steel that I have is the same.

00:19:56 ◼   ► And I don't know if that's because it's early on

00:19:58 ◼   ► and there were some rumors that they shipped later

00:20:01 ◼   ► because there was trouble

00:20:02 ◼   ► with one of the Taptic Engine suppliers

00:20:04 ◼   ► and they had to ditch a bunch of the engines

00:20:06 ◼   ► and that's pushed a lot of the delivery dates out.

00:20:09 ◼   ► But the stainless steel watch I got

00:20:11 ◼   ► with the Hermes strap later on

00:20:12 ◼   ► has a much better Taptic Engine,

00:20:14 ◼   ► so hopefully they figured that part out.

00:20:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, so that's interesting to me.

00:20:17 ◼   ► So you got, my sport, or not my sport,

00:20:21 ◼   ► My personal Apple Watch is one that I ordered on the first day you could order, which was,

00:20:25 ◼   ► I think, April 10th. And I got it, you know, at some point in mid-May.

00:20:30 ◼   ► That's interesting that you, so you got the Hermes one, which is a stainless steel

00:20:38 ◼   ► Apple Watch. Even after all this time, I still get, I still want to call it Apple Watch steel,

00:20:46 ◼   ► just when talking about it, just to be clear, as opposed to Apple Watch as a generic platform,

00:20:51 ◼   ► which is... anyway. That's... well, maybe this year they'll fix it. But it's interesting to me that you

00:20:59 ◼   ► feel like you got a better Taptic engine in that one. Yeah, and it shipped with watchOS 2 on it,

00:21:04 ◼   ► so I'm guessing that it was later in the production. It wasn't just an original,

00:21:07 ◼   ► you know, one that I had to update when I got it out of the box.

00:21:10 ◼   ► So that's, to me, is one. And interesting to me, that's just... the only thing I don't like

00:21:20 ◼   ► like about the sport one is the I do wish that that that it had the state or

00:21:27 ◼   ► sapphire crystal instead of the glass totally understand why it doesn't

00:21:32 ◼   ► because of the price but just in terms of giving it a a wholehearted

00:21:38 ◼   ► endorsement as if you were gonna buy an Apple watch today which one would I

00:21:42 ◼   ► recommend the only thing that would keep me from wholeheartedly recommending the

00:21:47 ◼   ► sport ones is the fact that it doesn't have the sapphire display. But even my

00:21:52 ◼   ► sons, which he has worn very regularly throughout the year, it definitely has

00:21:57 ◼   ► scratches but they're very very fine and they are definitely not visible unless

00:22:02 ◼   ► you're looking for them, like holding it up to the light. And you know he's just

00:22:06 ◼   ► an 11 year old kid. He's pretty careful with his stuff but I mean it's not

00:22:09 ◼   ► like he, you know, hasn't exposed it to a lot of, you know, wear and tear.

00:22:15 ◼   ► - You've spoken about this before,

00:22:16 ◼   ► and it feels like the production quality

00:22:19 ◼   ► on the Apple watches is as good, if not better,

00:22:22 ◼   ► than any product Apple's released.

00:22:23 ◼   ► Like the diamond-like coating

00:22:24 ◼   ► on the back stainless steel one,

00:22:26 ◼   ► I thought I've scratched it several times,

00:22:28 ◼   ► and it's turned out that it's taken some steel

00:22:29 ◼   ► or some concrete off of something else,

00:22:31 ◼   ► and the watch itself underneath is fine.

00:22:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's true for mine as well.

00:22:34 ◼   ► I will say that with the DLC coating on mine.

00:22:37 ◼   ► And I sent you pictures a few weeks ago of mine.

00:22:40 ◼   ► It literally looks mint condition.

00:22:43 ◼   ► I really feel like in terms of scratches,

00:22:46 ◼   ► I could, if I cleaned it with just warm water

00:22:49 ◼   ► and maybe a toothbrush or whatever they say to use,

00:22:53 ◼   ► but just to clean it to get some little bits of sand

00:22:56 ◼   ► and stuff like that or dust out of there.

00:22:58 ◼   ► In terms of scratches, I think I could pass it off

00:23:00 ◼   ► as mint, like new in box.

00:23:02 ◼   ► It is that unbelievable.

00:23:04 ◼   ► And that's not true for any kind of normal

00:23:06 ◼   ► stainless steel watch.

00:23:08 ◼   ► - Yes, it's remarkable.

00:23:10 ◼   ► So what about the launch of Apple Watch in hindsight?

00:23:15 ◼   ► Got a lot of, I would say controversy.

00:23:19 ◼   ► I would say that there was controversy about it

00:23:21 ◼   ► just in terms of the fact that it wasn't in stores.

00:23:26 ◼   ► You had to make appointments to try it on in stores.

00:23:30 ◼   ► Even people who ordered right on day one had,

00:23:33 ◼   ► some people didn't get their watches till the end of May.

00:23:36 ◼   ► There were certain bands that didn't even ship until summer.

00:23:39 ◼   ► Lots of people complained about that,

00:23:43 ◼   ► but is that just the nature of a brand new product

00:23:48 ◼   ► that the first time they ever made a watch,

00:23:50 ◼   ► of course the rollout's gonna be like that.

00:23:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think we've seen that previously

00:23:55 ◼   ► with some things like the retina displays

00:23:57 ◼   ► and the early iPhones.

00:23:58 ◼   ► It created production shortages.

00:24:00 ◼   ► And the thing with Apple is that they sprint

00:24:02 ◼   ► at those deadlines.

00:24:03 ◼   ► It's not like they have the products ready way in advance

00:24:05 ◼   ► and they just accumulate them for months.

00:24:07 ◼   ► They ship them as fast as possible.

00:24:09 ◼   ► And sometimes when you do that, you overshoot,

00:24:11 ◼   ► like something doesn't work out.

00:24:12 ◼   ► And I have the feeling that whether it was some

00:24:14 ◼   ► of the leathers for some of the straps

00:24:15 ◼   ► that they had to swap out or some of the Taptic engines

00:24:17 ◼   ► that didn't have the yield rates that they needed,

00:24:19 ◼   ► they just didn't have enough of them on hand.

00:24:21 ◼   ► And that coupled with the fact that it was a new product,

00:24:25 ◼   ► it ended up being a goofy launch.

00:24:27 ◼   ► And it felt like everything that they did was sort of

00:24:29 ◼   ► an attempt to mitigate the problems

00:24:32 ◼   ► with getting that product on the market

00:24:33 ◼   ► as best that they could.

00:24:34 ◼   ► - In hindsight though, right now after Christmas

00:24:38 ◼   ► And obviously, everything I saw was that there were no supply problems with any of the watches

00:24:45 ◼   ► for the holidays.

00:24:46 ◼   ► And just talking, our friend, Craig Hockenberry, just posted a thing about it, the downloads

00:24:51 ◼   ► of his little free clicker app for the watch that spiked, huge, huge spike on Christmas

00:24:58 ◼   ► Day.

00:25:00 ◼   ► So at least some anecdotal evidence that a significant number of people got Apple watches

00:25:06 ◼   ► for Christmas, which was obviously the plan.

00:25:09 ◼   ► That's not shocking or surprising news.

00:25:11 ◼   ► But in hindsight, the fact that the April, May,

00:25:15 ◼   ► June timeframe was a rocky launch

00:25:19 ◼   ► in terms of having everything available when it was,

00:25:21 ◼   ► yeah, so what?

00:25:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's, I don't wanna say it's concerning

00:25:26 ◼   ► because it's repeated, but we've seen that again

00:25:28 ◼   ► with things like the Apple Pencil,

00:25:29 ◼   ► which hasn't been available to launch with the iPad Pro.

00:25:33 ◼   ► They're getting a few in every now and then.

00:25:34 ◼   ► and again, brand new product,

00:25:36 ◼   ► and it's incredibly hard to coordinate the manufacturing

00:25:39 ◼   ► for all these brand new products all at one time.

00:25:41 ◼   ► And if Apple had their druthers,

00:25:42 ◼   ► they absolutely would want it all at the last time

00:25:44 ◼   ► because they'd sell far more that way.

00:25:46 ◼   ► - What's the availability on the pencil right now?

00:25:49 ◼   ► - Still drips, it's still coming,

00:25:50 ◼   ► they get a few in at a time and they sell out quickly.

00:25:53 ◼   ► - Well, we'll come back to that later,

00:25:58 ◼   ► but that's interesting.

00:25:59 ◼   ► I didn't know that that was hard to buy.

00:26:03 ◼   ► Looks like, oh yeah, if you go to apple.com today as we record

00:26:08 ◼   ► and try to buy from the website, it is available to ship four to five weeks.

00:26:12 ◼   ► Wow. Yeah.

00:26:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I kind of feel like that's the nature of some of these new things,

00:26:18 ◼   ► especially ones that really are sort of,

00:26:20 ◼   ► you know, like the watch or the pencil where it's it's not even just, well,

00:26:25 ◼   ► we used to have these, you know, hundred and.

00:26:28 ◼   ► 160 some pixel prints screens,

00:26:32 ◼   ► and now we've gone to four times the pixels, 330 per inch.

00:26:37 ◼   ► This is everything about it is a new thing.

00:26:42 ◼   ► All of it, it's not just the tip

00:26:44 ◼   ► or whatever other sensors are in the pencil,

00:26:46 ◼   ► it's the whole thing.

00:26:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, everything has to be almost perfect

00:26:50 ◼   ► to get it all to land at the same time

00:26:51 ◼   ► and once in a while it's not perfect

00:26:52 ◼   ► and we see that with the watch, with the pencil,

00:26:55 ◼   ► things like that.

00:26:56 ◼   ► - So what do you think with the watch,

00:26:59 ◼   ► What do you think we're gonna see this coming year?

00:27:03 ◼   ► - If we just look at past activities

00:27:06 ◼   ► being the best indicator of future activities,

00:27:08 ◼   ► I think the watch ends up getting,

00:27:11 ◼   ► almost like what happened with the iPad 2

00:27:12 ◼   ► or the iPhone 3G where they just get better at making it.

00:27:16 ◼   ► And that manifests itself in it being lighter.

00:27:19 ◼   ► I don't know if it necessarily has to be thinner

00:27:20 ◼   ► because it's got that sensor stack on it,

00:27:22 ◼   ► but there'll be a new design

00:27:24 ◼   ► 'cause that's what Apple does.

00:27:25 ◼   ► And my biggest hope, because some people are nervous

00:27:29 ◼   ► they have to change the casing every year.

00:27:30 ◼   ► I've got so many straps now,

00:27:31 ◼   ► my biggest nightmare is if the straps aren't compatible.

00:27:33 ◼   ► So I'm hoping that whatever they do with the watch,

00:27:35 ◼   ► we get a strap compatibility for as long

00:27:37 ◼   ► as we got 30 pin dock connector compatibility.

00:27:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would hope so.

00:27:41 ◼   ► But on the other hand, I don't wanna bet on it though.

00:27:44 ◼   ► I feel like that was at least their hope originally.

00:27:47 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:27:48 ◼   ► - I feel like they're not going to let that constrain them

00:27:52 ◼   ► if it means that they, if they feel like they could come out

00:27:56 ◼   ► with something really better,

00:27:58 ◼   ► that they would take that bullet in the early years of the product.

00:28:01 ◼   ► We'll see. I guess if I had to bet, I'd place a small bet that

00:28:07 ◼   ► whatever the Apple Watch 2 looks like, it'll be strap compatible.

00:28:11 ◼   ► There's some obvious gaps, like the first iPhone didn't have GPS, the first Apple

00:28:15 ◼   ► Watch didn't have

00:28:16 ◼   ► discrete GPS, it doesn't have discrete radio technology, and either you can't

00:28:20 ◼   ► just go on LTE or Wi-Fi.

00:28:21 ◼   ► You can go on Wi-Fi by itself, but it's not full on Wi-Fi.

00:28:24 ◼   ► So there's things like that, that once the thermal and

00:28:27 ◼   ► the power constraints go down low enough or they optimize well enough that they'll be able to build in.

00:28:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know if we're there yet though. I feel like it's not going to be...

00:28:35 ◼   ► I feel like we're not set for a radical upgrade.

00:28:41 ◼   ► Well, they're trying. I was at a Starbucks and I had my Apple Watch on and the guy goes,

00:28:45 ◼   ► "Oh wait, I have the Samsung Watch and it's got 3G!" And he ran into the back and he ran out with it.

00:28:49 ◼   ► And it was the size of a small phone on his wrist. And the other one that had 3G, they didn't end up

00:28:54 ◼   ► being able to ship it. I forget which one that was but it was a recent watch

00:28:57 ◼   ► that was gonna come out. Oh, it was LG. LG's yeah, they couldn't ship it because

00:29:02 ◼   ► this stuff is really hard. Yeah, I can't imagine that they're gonna have

00:29:06 ◼   ► independent 3G yet. I don't know, I mean eventually it's going to happen. I

00:29:12 ◼   ► feel like one year out that's a bit much to ask. What I would really like to see

00:29:16 ◼   ► is just for now, I would like to see an Apple Watch 2 that remains a satellite

00:29:22 ◼   ► of your iPhone and just is way way way more robust in terms of having a fast

00:29:31 ◼   ► responsive connection between the phone and the watch. The S2 computer on a chip

00:29:36 ◼   ► is gonna be super interesting to see. Yeah and I feel like that's the area

00:29:41 ◼   ► where they are most likely and again this is just looking at the last you

00:29:49 ◼   ► know, the eight, seven, eight years of Apple, the post iPhone Apple, the thing

00:29:58 ◼   ► that they have most consistently been able to do in terms of year-over-year

00:30:02 ◼   ► improvement, just give them 12 months and see what they come up with, is improve

00:30:07 ◼   ► those, those, you know, the CPUs and chipsets inside these devices. Yeah, we

00:30:14 ◼   ► could talk about this later, but one of my biggest story of the year for Apple

00:30:19 ◼   ► was Johnny Suruji's hardware platforms team.

00:30:22 ◼   ► Just the work that they've done

00:30:23 ◼   ► that almost never gets any credit,

00:30:25 ◼   ► but from chipsets to storage controllers

00:30:28 ◼   ► to things like 3D,

00:30:29 ◼   ► they've just been knocking it out the park.

00:30:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, they don't,

00:30:32 ◼   ► it's not that they don't get credit and it's unrecognized,

00:30:35 ◼   ► but for the most part, so much gets written about Apple

00:30:39 ◼   ► and it almost all gets written

00:30:41 ◼   ► from the external perspective

00:30:45 ◼   ► of looking at the final product.

00:30:47 ◼   ► and complaining about those things that are exposed on the outside,

00:30:53 ◼   ► as opposed to trying to look at it from the inside out and say,

00:30:58 ◼   ► "Good God, this is remarkable what the graphics performance is like on this iPad Pro."

00:31:04 ◼   ► Or if you really—

00:31:06 ◼   ► If someone had asked you 10 years ago,

00:31:07 ◼   ► if someone had come and told you,

00:31:09 ◼   ► "John, Apple's going to be the most exciting chip design company in the world,"

00:31:13 ◼   ► we would have all thought they were crazy.

00:31:15 ◼   ► Well, yeah, I think so too.

00:31:17 ◼   ► definitely just because it wasn't part of their history and now it kind of is but it's it also it's more silent because

00:31:24 ◼   ► They they're only customers themselves

00:31:27 ◼   ► Yes, you know and they're not

00:31:30 ◼   ► They're not peddling these chips to other makers to do things with

00:31:34 ◼   ► Which is a huge advantage because they don't have to worry about profit for profit or loss on a chipset level

00:31:39 ◼   ► They don't have to support other like they don't have to support things like DirectX on their chips

00:31:42 ◼   ► And they don't support anyone else's architecture and they can cater to exactly what they want to do on a software

00:31:47 ◼   ► side like for 4k sorry 3 4k streams you know handled at once right even even you

00:31:53 ◼   ► know after a couple of years of these devices even if you look at the just

00:31:57 ◼   ► like the first iPad in 2010 so just go back at this point that would be six

00:32:04 ◼   ► years ago right because we got to kind of start thinking about I was gonna say

00:32:08 ◼   ► five just did 2015 - 2010 but it's I've been a half yeah yeah well five and like

00:32:13 ◼   ► ten twelfths. Just go back to that first iPad and I remember you

00:32:19 ◼   ► know being very impressed by how smooth the the whole thing was and like just

00:32:24 ◼   ► scrolling when I first got my hands on it. But clearly it wasn't you know it had

00:32:29 ◼   ► a lower resolution or pixels per inch density than the iPhone did it was only

00:32:33 ◼   ► like 133 right because then that went to 266 when they went red. You could

00:32:39 ◼   ► definitely see pixels. And it wasn't that fast. And then if

00:32:43 ◼   ► you had given me the the pixel count of the iPad Pro, and so

00:32:48 ◼   ► when do you think they'll they'll be able to make one of

00:32:50 ◼   ► these devices, an iOS device with a display with that many

00:32:54 ◼   ► pixels and have it you know, complete, complete 60 frames per

00:32:58 ◼   ► second responsiveness? I would have thought well, it's

00:33:00 ◼   ► possible, but I would have thought, you know, maybe like 10

00:33:03 ◼   ► years. And you know, it was it was only five years. So that,

00:33:07 ◼   ► you know, it was at least double what I would have guessed as

00:33:09 ◼   ► as a optimistic scenario.

00:33:14 ◼   ► - There's a funny story about, you know,

00:33:16 ◼   ► Steve Jobs wanting sushi at Cafe Max.

00:33:18 ◼   ► So he just told them,

00:33:19 ◼   ► go get me the best sushi chef in the world.

00:33:21 ◼   ► And they went and got him a great sushi chef.

00:33:22 ◼   ► And the same time he said, you know, I want some,

00:33:24 ◼   ► I don't understand these chip set things.

00:33:26 ◼   ► I just want, just get me the best chip guy in the world.

00:33:28 ◼   ► And they went and got him the best chip guy in the world.

00:33:30 ◼   ► And over the time they just kept accumulating

00:33:32 ◼   ► really, really good chip people.

00:33:33 ◼   ► And I think most of them still aren't publicly well known

00:33:35 ◼   ► that those people are working at Apple,

00:33:36 ◼   ► but the team they've assembled there

00:33:38 ◼   ► absolutely industry leading. I think we're gonna only see more and more

00:33:41 ◼   ► impressive stuff from them as time goes on.

00:33:43 ◼   ► Yeah and I really do feel like

00:33:47 ◼   ► that's what Apple Watch needs the most. You know, you can criticize,

00:33:53 ◼   ► you know, it's... there's a weird aspect to it in terms of watches being jewelry

00:34:00 ◼   ► and watches being, you know, anything that qualifies as jewelry being something

00:34:04 ◼   ► that people use to sort of signify their own personal sense of style.

00:34:09 ◼   ► And the fact that if you look at traditional watches, it's a product category where it's

00:34:16 ◼   ► almost an uncountable number of options.

00:34:19 ◼   ► Even if you just said, "I'm going to go to my local shopping mall and I'm going to buy

00:34:23 ◼   ► myself a watch," just in the stores in that one mall that you go to, the number of watches

00:34:29 ◼   ► that you would consider if you looked at all of them is, you know, you wouldn't be able

00:34:33 ◼   ► to do it in a day.

00:34:34 ◼   ► staggering and that you know with with serious variety in in the in the the

00:34:42 ◼   ► looks that you can go through and then with Apple watch the pitch is everybody's

00:34:48 ◼   ► gonna get a watch that's more or less looks the same and yes there are you

00:34:51 ◼   ► know there's a difference between the steel and leather and the sport bands

00:34:57 ◼   ► but the watch itself is fundamentally this identical capsule-shaped rectangle.

00:35:08 ◼   ► And you know there's a reason for that. I don't think that they can't... it's not

00:35:12 ◼   ► feasible for them even with the number of you know just think about the variety

00:35:15 ◼   ► of options they have given this limited design. That's a weird thing and

00:35:20 ◼   ► And for people, not to go off on a,

00:35:24 ◼   ► down the rabbit hole of round versus rectangular,

00:35:29 ◼   ► which is the way to go for smartwatches,

00:35:31 ◼   ► I think they went rectangular for good reason,

00:35:36 ◼   ► but just even given that distinction alone,

00:35:39 ◼   ► I understand that,

00:35:40 ◼   ► and there's a reason that people could criticize that,

00:35:42 ◼   ► but I don't think that that's the sort of thing

00:35:44 ◼   ► that they need to look at for Apple Watch 2.

00:35:47 ◼   ► I feel like the basic look and layout of it

00:35:50 ◼   ► is fine and that's absolutely not what's holding it back

00:35:54 ◼   ► from being more useful to more people.

00:35:56 ◼   ► - It was good enough for Leia and Jedi,

00:35:57 ◼   ► it's good enough for me.

00:35:58 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:36:00 ◼   ► - That was amazing.

00:36:01 ◼   ► That was you who tweeted that, right?

00:36:02 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:36:03 ◼   ► - I can't believe I didn't see that screenshot more.

00:36:08 ◼   ► I hadn't seen that since Apple Watch came out.

00:36:12 ◼   ► So I'll put it in the show notes, I promise.

00:36:14 ◼   ► But Renee had posted a tweet,

00:36:16 ◼   ► a screenshot from Return of the Jedi

00:36:18 ◼   ► where Leia's risk communicator really does look like an Apple Watch.

00:36:24 ◼   ► I mean, not like so much that you would suspect that it was photoshopped onto the screenshot,

00:36:29 ◼   ► but it looks pretty similar.

00:36:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:32 ◼   ► Amazing.

00:36:33 ◼   ► So anyway, my hope for 2016's Apple Watch 2, which I'm guessing will probably come out

00:36:38 ◼   ► around the same time as last year's.

00:36:41 ◼   ► There are rumors already that there's going to be a March event this year again.

00:36:45 ◼   ► I would not be surprised if Apple Watch 2 comes out.

00:36:48 ◼   ► My guess is Apple Watch 2 will look very much like Apple Watch 1, case compatible, and that

00:36:56 ◼   ► all of the improvements will be pretty much from Johnny Cerucci's team, I think.

00:37:02 ◼   ► And of course, obviously software, you know, Apple Watch 3 to Apple Watch OS 3 to watch

00:37:11 ◼   ► OS 3 to take advantage of them.

00:37:14 ◼   ► - I agree and I think that the mistake

00:37:17 ◼   ► that we often make in technology is people say,

00:37:18 ◼   ► "I don't wanna buy a new Apple Watch."

00:37:20 ◼   ► Again, I just bought one last year,

00:37:21 ◼   ► but Apple's never targeted year over year.

00:37:23 ◼   ► I mean, they're happy if you wanna upgrade year over year

00:37:25 ◼   ► and there's some subscription things they're doing now

00:37:27 ◼   ► that is more geared towards that.

00:37:29 ◼   ► But traditionally, the second version is not meant

00:37:31 ◼   ► for the people who have the first version,

00:37:32 ◼   ► but for people who didn't, for whatever reason,

00:37:34 ◼   ► buy the first version.

00:37:35 ◼   ► And there's a lot of people who don't have Apple Watches

00:37:37 ◼   ► and those are the ones that they're gonna gun for

00:37:38 ◼   ► with the second.

00:37:40 ◼   ► - Right, and the criticism from people

00:37:41 ◼   ► who bought Apple Watch One is inevitable

00:37:44 ◼   ► and it will be vociferous.

00:37:46 ◼   ► But if you think about it from Apple's perspective,

00:37:48 ◼   ► and sometimes I think when I think about it

00:37:52 ◼   ► from Apple's perspective angle on an explanation

00:37:55 ◼   ► for why they're doing this, people get angry,

00:37:57 ◼   ► but they're still not being logical.

00:37:59 ◼   ► Like what else is Apple to do?

00:38:01 ◼   ► The only two options that they would have had

00:38:05 ◼   ► would have been not to release the Watch 1 last year at all

00:38:10 ◼   ► because there's a new one.

00:38:12 ◼   ► They knew that the 2 was coming out in 2016.

00:38:16 ◼   ► Which is true every year.

00:38:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:18 ◼   ► Which if you get locked into that type of thinking,

00:38:20 ◼   ► they would not release anything.

00:38:23 ◼   ► It would turn into Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory that's closed

00:38:25 ◼   ► and doesn't release anything, which

00:38:27 ◼   ► might be good for the privately held Wonka Chocolate Company,

00:38:29 ◼   ► but is not good at all for the publicly held Apple Incorporated.

00:38:35 ◼   ► And then what would be the other thing to do?

00:38:37 ◼   ► To not release Apple Watch 2, which they could do this year,

00:38:42 ◼   ► but just to make Apple Watch One users happy,

00:38:44 ◼   ► well, that's suicide in the tech world.

00:38:47 ◼   ► You can't just sell an old thing

00:38:49 ◼   ► so you don't annoy the people who've had it.

00:38:53 ◼   ► I mean, this is the, it's, you know,

00:38:55 ◼   ► I think Steve Jobs said it about as well as anybody could,

00:38:58 ◼   ► not really with a year over year upgrade,

00:39:00 ◼   ► but when the, back in 2007,

00:39:02 ◼   ► when the price dropped of the iPhone

00:39:05 ◼   ► two or three months after it first came out,

00:39:07 ◼   ► it was like, hey, this is technology.

00:39:11 ◼   ► It moves fast.

00:39:13 ◼   ► We're trying to make this as fast as possible

00:39:15 ◼   ► and sell it at the best price we can as fast as we can.

00:39:18 ◼   ► And we can't worry about breaking eggs along the way.

00:39:21 ◼   ► - No, and for the thing, people do get angry,

00:39:23 ◼   ► but for me, the explaining at least the best as we can

00:39:26 ◼   ► what Apple is thinking,

00:39:27 ◼   ► at least it lets people hate Apple intelligently.

00:39:29 ◼   ► Instead of hating them for superficial reactionary reasons,

00:39:31 ◼   ► they can listen to the explanation,

00:39:32 ◼   ► understand the point of view,

00:39:33 ◼   ► and then hate them for good reason.

00:39:35 ◼   ► - It does, it is.

00:39:39 ◼   ► I heard a lot of people say it.

00:39:41 ◼   ► I mean, I bought my stainless steel Apple Watch

00:39:46 ◼   ► with my eyes wide open knowing that it's probably

00:39:50 ◼   ► only gonna be good for a year.

00:39:52 ◼   ► And I'm an idiot, I just throw money away

00:39:54 ◼   ► on all sorts of Apple stuff.

00:39:56 ◼   ► I think the people who are sensible about it

00:39:59 ◼   ► and lots and lots of people I heard from said,

00:40:02 ◼   ► "I'm willing to wait a year to get my first Apple Watch."

00:40:05 ◼   ► Very sensible, very sensible take.

00:40:08 ◼   ► And if that's the type of personality you have,

00:40:10 ◼   ► you know, you're going to,

00:40:12 ◼   ► I think you're going to be very satisfied

00:40:14 ◼   ► with that patient.

00:40:15 ◼   ► Or people who are maybe slightly less patients

00:40:18 ◼   ► or maybe had more money willing to throw away.

00:40:20 ◼   ► People who said, "I'm gonna get one,

00:40:21 ◼   ► "but I'm gonna get the sport model

00:40:22 ◼   ► "because I bet I'm gonna wanna get a new one the next year."

00:40:26 ◼   ► All very pretty.

00:40:27 ◼   ► - Well, some people never want the Rev A board

00:40:28 ◼   ► and some people always wanna be on the ground floor

00:40:30 ◼   ► of a new technology

00:40:31 ◼   ► and there's different kinds of personalities.

00:40:33 ◼   ► Not everyone's the same

00:40:34 ◼   ► and you can sort of pick the one that you want

00:40:35 ◼   ► and it's up to you to make an informed,

00:40:37 ◼   ► rational adult decision.

00:40:38 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:40:40 ◼   ► All right, one last prediction on the Apple Watch.

00:40:43 ◼   ► Do you agree that it'll probably be announced in March?

00:40:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think this year's March event

00:40:48 ◼   ► will pretty closely mirror last year's.

00:40:50 ◼   ► - Do you think that it will be more like the Apple

00:40:55 ◼   ► or the iPhone 3G or the 3GS?

00:40:59 ◼   ► - See, that's interesting because the 3G famously,

00:41:02 ◼   ► the Apple didn't count it as a full version.

00:41:04 ◼   ► It was a one comma product.

00:41:06 ◼   ► It wasn't the two comma product, that was the 3GS.

00:41:08 ◼   ► So it was basically what the iPhone was meant to be

00:41:11 ◼   ► from an internal, at least tracking perspective,

00:41:14 ◼   ► where I think Apple Watch hardware, to your point,

00:41:17 ◼   ► will be similar.

00:41:18 ◼   ► I don't know what they're gonna designate it,

00:41:19 ◼   ► but I think I'm in agreement with you on that.

00:41:22 ◼   ► It's gonna be more of a rounding out

00:41:23 ◼   ► the way watchOS 2 was then another leap forward.

00:41:26 ◼   ► - So which one do you think it's gonna be more like?

00:41:30 ◼   ► - I think it'll be more like the 3G.

00:41:32 ◼   ► And keeping in mind that Apple often has

00:41:34 ◼   ► a conservative version of a product

00:41:35 ◼   ► and a very aspirational version of a product,

00:41:38 ◼   ► and they have to figure out which one

00:41:39 ◼   ► they can reliably deliver any year.

00:41:41 ◼   ► I think they absolutely have both ready,

00:41:43 ◼   ► but I think based on the Apple Watch this year,

00:41:45 ◼   ► I think we'll get more like the 3G version.

00:41:47 ◼   ► - I wonder, I was kind of thinking

00:41:50 ◼   ► maybe it would be more like a 3GS.

00:41:52 ◼   ► Like maybe more like, to compare them,

00:41:58 ◼   ► more like the original iPhone didn't exist,

00:42:03 ◼   ► that we started with the 3G and we're going to the 3GS.

00:42:07 ◼   ► In other words, it'll look a lot--

00:42:08 ◼   ► - I think the iPad 2 is a better comparison.

00:42:10 ◼   ► Let me talk to this thinner.

00:42:12 ◼   ► I agree with you, I think it's the inverse,

00:42:13 ◼   ► 'cause the iPhone 3G got a better radio,

00:42:15 ◼   ► but not a better processor.

00:42:18 ◼   ► And I think the Apple Watch 2 is gonna get

00:42:20 ◼   ► the better processor, not necessarily the radios.

00:42:23 ◼   ► - Right, that's what I'm thinking.

00:42:24 ◼   ► I'm thinking better processor,

00:42:25 ◼   ► and yeah, probably not better radios.

00:42:28 ◼   ► Well, we'll see.

00:42:29 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe I'm making sure of the two.

00:42:30 ◼   ► And maybe you're right that the iPad 2

00:42:32 ◼   ► is maybe the better example.

00:42:34 ◼   ► Although the iPad 2 is really largely

00:42:36 ◼   ► about making the thing thinner.

00:42:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, later. - I don't think we're gonna

00:42:40 ◼   ► see that with the watch.

00:42:41 ◼   ► I don't think we're gonna see a thinner version.

00:42:43 ◼   ► - I don't think we need to.

00:42:44 ◼   ► - Well, we will eventually, and I'm sure.

00:42:46 ◼   ► (both laughing)

00:42:49 ◼   ► We never need to.

00:42:51 ◼   ► I mean, there's,

00:42:52 ◼   ► but inevitably, they're going to get to a point

00:42:55 ◼   ► where Johnny Ive's team is going to start pressing the,

00:42:59 ◼   ► nah, we're gonna make it a lot thinner.

00:43:03 ◼   ► - Well, they typically make things thinner

00:43:05 ◼   ► because they wanna make them lighter

00:43:06 ◼   ► 'cause lighter for them is essential to usability,

00:43:08 ◼   ► but things like the Apple TV, 3D Touch,

00:43:11 ◼   ► there are exceptions to that rule for them.

00:43:13 ◼   ► There's things that they believe are important enough

00:43:14 ◼   ► features or capabilities that they're gonna just blow

00:43:17 ◼   ► through the envelopes on that.

00:43:19 ◼   ► But they have a huge thermal,

00:43:21 ◼   ► my understanding is that the S1 runs as hot

00:43:23 ◼   ► as it physically can for that enclosure.

00:43:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised,

00:43:27 ◼   ► especially given how slow some things are,

00:43:30 ◼   ► that there's just no way.

00:43:31 ◼   ► So anyway, we'll see, I'm excited about it.

00:43:34 ◼   ► - There was something else that was really cool

00:43:35 ◼   ► about the March event, and that was sort of the coming out

00:43:37 ◼   ► of Jeff Williams, like he introduced ResearchKit,

00:43:39 ◼   ► and that was the first time we saw who's arguably

00:43:42 ◼   ► one of the most powerful people at Apple on the stage.

00:43:45 ◼   ► - Right, he went from beginning of the year,

00:43:47 ◼   ► had appeared on stage, and was sort of a,

00:43:52 ◼   ► you know, it wasn't a secret, I mean,

00:43:54 ◼   ► it was there on the press bios page for Apple executives,

00:43:57 ◼   ► but wasn't really known publicly.

00:43:59 ◼   ► By the end of the year, he'd been promoted

00:44:01 ◼   ► to Chief Operating Officer.

00:44:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, and had been on stage, I think he was at WWC,

00:44:05 ◼   ► he was definitely at the September event,

00:44:07 ◼   ► and he owned the watch this year, it was his project.

00:44:11 ◼   ► - Yes, that is actually true, and not well known,

00:44:15 ◼   ► and kind of a, I thought about this,

00:44:20 ◼   ► and I didn't write much about it,

00:44:23 ◼   ► but I thought about it when they made the announcement

00:44:25 ◼   ► a week or two ago about the executive,

00:44:29 ◼   ► not really changes, it's more or less promotions,

00:44:31 ◼   ► and like you wrote in your piece that I'm more sort of making official changes

00:44:36 ◼   ► that have been made internally for a while.

00:44:38 ◼   ► Like Johnny Suruji's stature within the company was SVP level in terms of,

00:44:43 ◼   ► you know, the respect that he has and,

00:44:45 ◼   ► and the understanding of how important it is.

00:44:47 ◼   ► It just wasn't reflected in his official.

00:44:49 ◼   ► You do the job before you get the title at Apple.

00:44:51 ◼   ► Right. And, and, uh, I was thinking about it with, um,

00:44:55 ◼   ► with Jeff Williams and clearly part of the,

00:44:58 ◼   ► the gravity of being named COO of Apple is that in the modern era, which again, I always

00:45:06 ◼   ► say is post next reunification, there's only ever been one other COO and that was Tim Cook

00:45:13 ◼   ► and we see, you know, what that meant for him. And, you know, it clearly meant that

00:45:19 ◼   ► he was number two and in line to take over CEO if anything happened to the CEO. And I

00:45:25 ◼   ► I think it's hard not to think the same with Jeff Williams.

00:45:29 ◼   ► And the other thing too that made me think about it

00:45:31 ◼   ► is that to my knowledge, when Tim Cook was COO,

00:45:35 ◼   ► he never really had the role over a new product

00:45:38 ◼   ► the way that Jeff Williams did with the watch in particular.

00:45:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was a different,

00:45:44 ◼   ► like the iPhone was the clear example

00:45:46 ◼   ► of the big new product category

00:45:47 ◼   ► and that Scott Forestall basically owned,

00:45:49 ◼   ► I mean, Steve Jobs owned everything,

00:45:50 ◼   ► but Scott Forestall was the closest

00:45:52 ◼   ► to not being Steve Jobs and owning a product.

00:45:54 ◼   ► And there's no sort of Scott Forestall

00:45:57 ◼   ► that's all been unified now.

00:45:58 ◼   ► And they do have Kevin Lynch,

00:46:00 ◼   ► but he's doing just the software.

00:46:02 ◼   ► And I think a brand new product,

00:46:03 ◼   ► it needs somebody to sort of incubate it

00:46:06 ◼   ► and take care of it as a specific new product

00:46:08 ◼   ► before it can get reintegrated

00:46:10 ◼   ► into the existing structure in Apple

00:46:12 ◼   ► that ships iPhones and iPads every year.

00:46:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think that the operational angle on that is,

00:46:18 ◼   ► and again, I don't have the numbers off the top of my head,

00:46:22 ◼   ► But I think, I mean, the number of iPhones

00:46:27 ◼   ► they sold in 2007 was maybe, I don't know,

00:46:32 ◼   ► just a few million.

00:46:34 ◼   ► - Was in the millions, yeah.

00:46:36 ◼   ► - Of that first one until the one with the metal casing

00:46:40 ◼   ► was really, really small in the millions.

00:46:42 ◼   ► And I think they got to 10 million by the end of 2008,

00:46:47 ◼   ► which would be a full year of selling the original iPhone

00:46:50 ◼   ► and then six or seven months of selling the 3G.

00:46:53 ◼   ► But it was really--

00:46:54 ◼   ► - When they hit subsidies that it took off.

00:46:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's really with the 3G

00:46:58 ◼   ► where production really ramped up.

00:47:00 ◼   ► And for all of our, like we just mentioned it

00:47:05 ◼   ► earlier in the show, all of the bitching and moaning

00:47:07 ◼   ► about the early production delays on Apple Watch

00:47:11 ◼   ► in April and May, here we are just, you know,

00:47:16 ◼   ► nine months later and we've gone through a Christmas

00:47:18 ◼   ► where there were no supply problems.

00:47:21 ◼   ► And they've sold way more Apple watches.

00:47:23 ◼   ► Well, we don't know exactly what,

00:47:24 ◼   ► 'cause they're not, how many,

00:47:25 ◼   ► 'cause they're not breaking them out.

00:47:27 ◼   ► But it's clear that they've sold way more Apple watches

00:47:31 ◼   ► in this first year than they did iPhones in its first year.

00:47:34 ◼   ► And it's just- - They were able to do it

00:47:36 ◼   ► internationally, which the original iPhone wasn't.

00:47:38 ◼   ► It was available in one country

00:47:39 ◼   ► and then maybe three or four countries

00:47:40 ◼   ► for most of that year.

00:47:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's also very true.

00:47:43 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's, again, and I'm not saying that,

00:47:45 ◼   ► I don't bring this up to posit that the Apple Watch

00:47:48 ◼   ► is on pace to be more popular than the iPhone.

00:47:52 ◼   ► I think it's clearly just because Apple as a company

00:47:54 ◼   ► and its products, that it's more of a cultural phenomenon

00:47:59 ◼   ► and it can make a new product known to people

00:48:03 ◼   ► in a way that it couldn't before.

00:48:06 ◼   ► And they've broadened their base of people

00:48:09 ◼   ► who consider themselves Apple customers.

00:48:12 ◼   ► - And the iPod, it took a while for the iPod

00:48:14 ◼   ► to ramp up till after it became available on Windows.

00:48:16 ◼   ► It took a while for the iPhone to ramp up.

00:48:18 ◼   ► The iPad ramped up incredibly quickly,

00:48:19 ◼   ► but then it also sloped down fast too.

00:48:22 ◼   ► And it feels like you're on a highway

00:48:23 ◼   ► that has a speed limit.

00:48:24 ◼   ► And regardless of how fast you accelerate,

00:48:26 ◼   ► there's still that speed limit.

00:48:27 ◼   ► So you can have initial bursts

00:48:29 ◼   ► or you could have a slow acceleration,

00:48:31 ◼   ► but all the products sort of get there in the end.

00:48:33 ◼   ► - I also think that with the iPad,

00:48:35 ◼   ► which I think sold somewhere between like 10 and 15 million

00:48:39 ◼   ► in its first year.

00:48:40 ◼   ► Don't quote me on that,

00:48:43 ◼   ► pretty sure that's ballpark. I remember being on a TV show Clayton Morris's show

00:48:50 ◼   ► with with people guessing at first-year sales and it was like me and Andy and

00:48:54 ◼   ► Atko and yes I think Jason Snell I forget who else was on but my guess yeah

00:49:00 ◼   ► Jason was on remotely and my guess was way higher than everybody else's and I

00:49:05 ◼   ► was still a little low of what actually turned out but even then I feel like

00:49:10 ◼   ► making that original iPad wasn't anywhere near as much of a stretch

00:49:16 ◼   ► operationally because they had three years under their belt of making iPhones

00:49:20 ◼   ► and the technology was fundamentally the same except this was bigger and so it in

00:49:24 ◼   ► some ways that makes it easier whereas with the watch here they are taking

00:49:28 ◼   ► these iPhone style chips and display technology and etc and making a really

00:49:37 ◼   ► really small thing with incredibly tight tolerance for so many of these things physically that

00:49:42 ◼   ► it was harder.

00:49:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I feel like it was...

00:49:45 ◼   ► And the iPad ran, it even ran what was called iPhone OS at the time, where with WatchOS

00:49:49 ◼   ► they created that separate interface layer for like the clock faces and for carousel

00:49:52 ◼   ► and for some other thing.

00:49:54 ◼   ► Right.

00:49:55 ◼   ► The other big difference I think is that there was also 10 years of phones before the iPhone

00:50:00 ◼   ► and 10 years of tablets before the iPad, so they sort of knew what the problems were that

00:50:03 ◼   ► they wanted to fix, where with the Apple Watch they entered the product category very quickly,

00:50:07 ◼   ► quickly. And there isn't as much evidence as what they don't have as much

00:50:11 ◼   ► information about what that product needs to be. They're sort of part of the

00:50:14 ◼   ► experiment for the first time.

00:50:15 ◼   ► Yeah. All right. Let's take a break.

00:50:17 ◼   ► I'll thank another sponsor and then we'll go like next up is WWDC, right?

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00:53:57 ◼   ► All right, WWDC.

00:54:00 ◼   ► - Well, there was one thing right before WWDC

00:54:02 ◼   ► that was super interesting and that was

00:54:03 ◼   ► Johnny Iov getting promoted to Chief Design Officer.

00:54:06 ◼   ► - Oh, that is true.

00:54:07 ◼   ► - New direct reports going right to Tim Cook.

00:54:12 ◼   ► Yeah, who was new direct reports? It was Alan Dye.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Yeah, and Hohworth. I'm forgetting his first name.

00:54:17 ◼   ► Richard?

00:54:18 ◼   ► Richard Hohworth, yes.

00:54:22 ◼   ► And that created this whole, "Ah, is Johnny Ive leaving? Is his role changing?"

00:54:25 ◼   ► It was, again, a lot of noise.

00:54:27 ◼   ► I think over the course of the year, no one even really thinks about it anymore.

00:54:31 ◼   ► No, I don't think so.

00:54:34 ◼   ► And I get the feeling, I don't feel like...

00:54:39 ◼   ► You know, again, would it be the biggest shock in the world

00:54:42 ◼   ► if he leaves in a couple of years?

00:54:44 ◼   ► I guess not.

00:54:45 ◼   ► I mean, you never know.

00:54:47 ◼   ► And he's obviously a very private person.

00:54:49 ◼   ► You don't really know.

00:54:50 ◼   ► If you don't know him, how could you say?

00:54:54 ◼   ► And this could then be seen in hindsight

00:54:56 ◼   ► as a precursor to that.

00:54:58 ◼   ► But my guess is no, because from what I do know of him

00:55:03 ◼   ► and what, you know, if it's obvious

00:55:05 ◼   ► if he's obsessive about design,

00:55:07 ◼   ► What else is he going to do?

00:55:09 ◼   ► Like, it seems to me like what he would want to do

00:55:11 ◼   ► if he could do whatever he wanted to all day, every day,

00:55:14 ◼   ► is run Apple's design team.

00:55:17 ◼   ► - Well, we saw that in the 60 Minutes special.

00:55:18 ◼   ► They showed everything from his little sketchbook

00:55:20 ◼   ► where he made the wash designs,

00:55:22 ◼   ► to the CNC machine spitting it out behind him,

00:55:24 ◼   ► to his glee over the giant glass panels

00:55:26 ◼   ► being installed at Campus 2.

00:55:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, the biggest pieces of curved glass ever made.

00:55:33 ◼   ► - Yeah. - That's pretty interesting.

00:55:35 ◼   ► - What a great job.

00:55:36 ◼   ► Yeah, and I feel like what the promotion of Dai and Ho-Worth really meant was that it frees him up from administrative and bureaucratic responsibilities.

00:55:51 ◼   ► That there are meetings now that instead of he attending, you know, Dai and/or Ho-Worth can attend.

00:55:58 ◼   ► And just things like for people on the design team,

00:56:01 ◼   ► like approving vacation schedules or whatever else,

00:56:03 ◼   ► or the kind of administrative stuff

00:56:05 ◼   ► that somebody has to be in charge of.

00:56:07 ◼   ► It's not him anymore.

00:56:08 ◼   ► And that he can--

00:56:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think it's similar to what we'll talk about

00:56:11 ◼   ► with Phil Schiller later, where it removes bottlenecks

00:56:13 ◼   ► from the process of Apple as Apple scales.

00:56:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so.

00:56:16 ◼   ► And I think it lets him,

00:56:18 ◼   ► it lets him spend more time on what he's drawn to,

00:56:24 ◼   ► as opposed to what he, you know, the paraphernalia,

00:56:27 ◼   ► the miscellaneous stuff that you have to do,

00:56:30 ◼   ► that's just sort of busy work.

00:56:36 ◼   ► I don't know, for lack of a better term.

00:56:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's two universal truths in big business.

00:56:40 ◼   ► That is, everyone wants more management and more power,

00:56:42 ◼   ► and then anyone who has it wants to get rid of it.

00:56:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, and maybe that's exactly what this was about.

00:56:47 ◼   ► And I kind of get the feeling that both Dai and Holworth

00:56:50 ◼   ► are very, very trusted by Ive.

00:56:52 ◼   ► And so it's not, I don't think there's any kind

00:56:56 ◼   ► Machiavellian aspect to it where they're angling to take over. I feel like, you

00:57:01 ◼   ► know, they're at the stage in their careers where they're looking for more

00:57:04 ◼   ► management and authority and I really do think it's as simple as that he just

00:57:09 ◼   ► wants to spend, you know, he's only got, you know, so many hours in the day every

00:57:14 ◼   ► day and wants to spend them obsessing over every, you know, design, period.

00:57:20 ◼   ► Whether it's... And their teams are fantastic, like the the ID team and the

00:57:23 ◼   ► teams. They said only two people have ever left ID over the history on the

00:57:27 ◼   ► Ives tenure and those teams know what they're doing. Yeah well and it's a very

00:57:31 ◼   ► small team. I mean if and if there is a bottleneck still within the company that

00:57:35 ◼   ► might be part of it but I don't know that it's it's you know I think it's

00:57:39 ◼   ► clearly one of those mythical man-month type things we're throwing more people

00:57:42 ◼   ► at it isn't going to make more better design come out. I like that in that 60

00:57:46 ◼   ► minutes special one of the things I really liked seeing was that they

00:57:49 ◼   ► brought out the 10 prototype iPhone 6s. Yes. From every size, you know, from four

00:58:02 ◼   ► inches up to, I'm not quite sure what that biggest was, probably six, but that

00:58:08 ◼   ► they had ten different iPhone 6 shapes. And I don't know that, I don't, I, you

00:58:14 ◼   ► know, they didn't turn them on so you couldn't see whether they were actually

00:58:16 ◼   ► like electronic device, you know, like working iPhones or were they just things

00:58:20 ◼   ► that you held in your hand? But they had all ten of them there for for them to

00:58:25 ◼   ► display. I thought that was pretty cool. Yeah, and it wasn't just about the size

00:58:29 ◼   ► but to Ive that was part of the entire product experience of having a device of

00:58:33 ◼   ► that size. Yeah, it's, you know, I believed it when I said that, you know, that was

00:58:41 ◼   ► the story that they told when they came out with the two, you know, the 4.7 inch

00:58:45 ◼   ► and 5.5 inch iPhone 6 sizes.

00:58:48 ◼   ► And they said, you know, we made 10 versions

00:58:52 ◼   ► from every size from 4.0 up to I think 6.0 inches.

00:58:56 ◼   ► And that these were the two that felt right.

00:58:58 ◼   ► But I thought it was pretty cool

00:59:00 ◼   ► that they still had them there and brought them out.

00:59:03 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:59:04 ◼   ► Everything else under tarps.

00:59:05 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:59:06 ◼   ► I like the story.

00:59:10 ◼   ► It reminded me of the story from "The New Yorker"

00:59:13 ◼   ► which was the profile of Johnny Ive that came this year.

00:59:16 ◼   ► I guess that was this year, right?

00:59:17 ◼   ► - Had to be. - Had to be.

00:59:19 ◼   ► - Yeah. - It was right around

00:59:19 ◼   ► the watch launch. - Yeah, right around

00:59:20 ◼   ► the watch launch.

00:59:21 ◼   ► A truly, truly, almost book-length New Yorker profile

00:59:27 ◼   ► on Johnny Ive.

00:59:27 ◼   ► When he was in the, the guy who wrote it

00:59:33 ◼   ► was in the design lab, one of the tables,

00:59:36 ◼   ► several of the tables had those black shrouds over them,

00:59:39 ◼   ► and you could see that there was the outline

00:59:42 ◼   ► the shape of whatever it was. You could see like the vague shape of whatever it is they were covering.

00:59:47 ◼   ► But then there was one where it was completely flat.

00:59:49 ◼   ► It was just a table that was completely flat as though there was nothing on it.

00:59:52 ◼   ► Why was it covered up?

00:59:54 ◼   ► And then in hindsight, it was because that was the table that was going to be the Apple Watch display table.

01:00:02 ◼   ► Where as a profile, as a three-dimensional shape, it's exactly the same as Apple standard tables,

01:00:08 ◼   ► but it has a glass top that displays the Apple Watches underneath.

01:00:12 ◼   ► >> Yeah, and that pretty ingenious thing where the badges open up the drawers underneath the retail staff.

01:00:18 ◼   ► >> Yeah, yeah, very true. It's a very clever design. But I think it's fat and to me it's an emblem of

01:00:25 ◼   ► the way that design is truly a first-class practice at Apple. That it's exactly the same team

01:00:36 ◼   ► that is designing the tables that are in the stores to display the watch as who displayed

01:00:42 ◼   ► the watch itself, designed the watch itself, and who designed the packaging for the watch.

01:00:49 ◼   ► Right? They want to control the experience the entire way through the product's life,

01:00:55 ◼   ► basically. Right. The store itself is a product, including the lighting,

01:01:02 ◼   ► the surface that's used for the floor, the dimensions, the tables, the products themselves

01:01:10 ◼   ► are products and the packaging are products. And the process is whereby that goes from the table

01:01:16 ◼   ► to you in the bag and the entire thing is just brilliantly engineered. Yeah and I feel like

01:01:21 ◼   ► that's unique at that you know at Apple and I don't know I don't it's I think it would be very

01:01:26 ◼   ► difficult for other companies to replicate. Alright, June WWDC. Yes. I

01:01:36 ◼   ► would say the clunker of the bunch. I think that was a threefold

01:01:40 ◼   ► announcement fundamentally. iOS 9, Mac OS 10.11, Mac OS 10.11, El Capitan,

01:01:51 ◼   ► and Apple Music. And I think Apple Music has got to be considered the clunker of

01:01:56 ◼   ► a bunch. Yeah it was interesting because the first half it was all yeah and I

01:02:01 ◼   ► think watchOS too I think we saw that for the first time there but that was all

01:02:04 ◼   ► very engineering focused and Craig Federighi did his talk and I think Kevin

01:02:09 ◼   ► Lynch did the watch stuff it was Jeff Williams I forget and then it was an

01:02:13 ◼   ► incredibly abrupt change in tone when Eddie Q and then Jimmy Iovine and then

01:02:17 ◼   ► Drake came out on stage almost like a separate event that had been somehow

01:02:21 ◼   ► stuck together. Yeah, and it's funny to me or interesting because again treating

01:02:28 ◼   ► all of these things not as well that they it's easy to say to try to treat

01:02:35 ◼   ► the actual shipping products the things you buy the actual iPhone in your hand

01:02:39 ◼   ► the actual watch on your wrist as the only things that matter because that's

01:02:42 ◼   ► ultimately the most important thing but I find it instructive and it usually

01:02:47 ◼   ► pays off to treat everything from the actual events to the packaging to the ads to all

01:02:54 ◼   ► of it as looking for signs of, you know, is this as polished and coherent as it could

01:03:01 ◼   ► be? I think it's interesting, and again you can't prove a correlation, but it's interesting

01:03:06 ◼   ► that the announcement event of Apple Music at WWDC's keynote was sloppy and the actual

01:03:16 ◼   ► shipping Apple Music when it first came out was sloppy.

01:03:20 ◼   ► And not quite coherent.

01:03:23 ◼   ► Like a sort of lack of coherence.

01:03:25 ◼   ► - I think under Steve Jobs, he ran that show

01:03:29 ◼   ► and almost everything that went on during that show

01:03:31 ◼   ► was carefully scrutinized.

01:03:32 ◼   ► And I think Tim Cook lets people run their divisions

01:03:35 ◼   ► more than Steve Jobs did.

01:03:37 ◼   ► Maybe because Apple's so big now, he has to as well.

01:03:40 ◼   ► And they almost run like little companies,

01:03:42 ◼   ► especially iTunes, which has its own marketing,

01:03:44 ◼   ► its own events, its own developers.

01:03:47 ◼   ► It basically is its own company.

01:03:49 ◼   ► And when you see these things, I don't know how much

01:03:53 ◼   ► like someone like Tim Cook would play the Steve Jobs role

01:03:55 ◼   ► of saying, "No, you have to come out

01:03:56 ◼   ► "and you have to say this and I'm handling this

01:03:58 ◼   ► "and you're doing this."

01:03:59 ◼   ► And it is more open to each of the SVPs

01:04:04 ◼   ► to do their own thing.

01:04:05 ◼   ► And at the same time, some people just love

01:04:07 ◼   ► the traditional Steve Jobs keynote.

01:04:08 ◼   ► It's super polished.

01:04:10 ◼   ► There's some jokes, but it's super on point.

01:04:12 ◼   ► It's clear, it's concise.

01:04:13 ◼   ► And then Craig Federico gets laughs from making jokes.

01:04:16 ◼   ► So the next year we get more jokes.

01:04:18 ◼   ► And then they start talking about Eddie doing karaoke

01:04:21 ◼   ► and suddenly Eddie's doing a little bit of dancing.

01:04:23 ◼   ► And I think that they're trying to feel their way

01:04:26 ◼   ► into being a kinder, friendlier presentation,

01:04:30 ◼   ► but they don't know where that line is yet.

01:04:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I feel like that keynote in particular,

01:04:36 ◼   ► I think without question, this year's WWDC keynote

01:04:39 ◼   ► was the worst event Apple, the worst keynote,

01:04:44 ◼   ► not just call it an official keynote,

01:04:47 ◼   ► I'll just say keynote to include product introductions

01:04:50 ◼   ► like September's iPhone introduction.

01:04:54 ◼   ► It's the worst keynote that they've had since Steve died,

01:04:59 ◼   ► or maybe the worst one they ever had in the modern era,

01:05:02 ◼   ► because none of the ones with Steve were bad.

01:05:05 ◼   ► - Do you feel that the whole way through

01:05:06 ◼   ► or just because of the Apple Music segment?

01:05:09 ◼   ► I would say just because of the Apple Music segment.

01:05:11 ◼   ► But the fact that it ran so long,

01:05:13 ◼   ► even if the Apple Music segment had been coherent

01:05:16 ◼   ► and well thought out,

01:05:17 ◼   ► I think the fact that they blew so far past two hours

01:05:20 ◼   ► was a problem.

01:05:21 ◼   ► And I say this not just for the petty reason

01:05:27 ◼   ► that I really had to go to the bathroom by the end of it

01:05:29 ◼   ► and I was in the audience.

01:05:31 ◼   ► And just the fact that it's a long time to just sit.

01:05:37 ◼   ► I think like the unofficial rule

01:05:39 ◼   ► that they should be two hours at the most is good.

01:05:41 ◼   ► And I think it always plays out when

01:05:44 ◼   ► you see other companies that have

01:05:46 ◼   ► long events that go too long.

01:05:49 ◼   ► When it ends, you don't want the media,

01:05:51 ◼   ► who are giving most people out in the world,

01:05:54 ◼   ► their impression of it comes not firsthand.

01:05:56 ◼   ► Because even at a big place like WWDC, there's only 4,000 seats,

01:06:01 ◼   ► and most of them are conference attendees.

01:06:05 ◼   ► You don't want the first impression

01:06:07 ◼   ► to be from media people saying, "That was too long."

01:06:10 ◼   ► But the other thing that you usually can see

01:06:13 ◼   ► from other companies and that with Steve Jobs there,

01:06:16 ◼   ► you'd never, never happen,

01:06:17 ◼   ► is you see the internal politics playing out on stage.

01:06:21 ◼   ► The fighting over, you know, that stage time

01:06:24 ◼   ► is political capital within the company.

01:06:28 ◼   ► And whether it's good for the company or not,

01:06:30 ◼   ► that X number of people come out

01:06:33 ◼   ► and get X number of minutes for their thing,

01:06:36 ◼   ► they're all fighting for it

01:06:37 ◼   ► because they're fighting for their personal stature

01:06:40 ◼   ► or they're fighting for their products stature

01:06:43 ◼   ► within the company, as opposed to what is the best thing

01:06:46 ◼   ► for the company as a whole.

01:06:47 ◼   ► And I think Apple has, this year as well as any other year,

01:06:53 ◼   ► with Apple there are always products

01:06:57 ◼   ► that in and of themselves might be worth time

01:07:00 ◼   ► in a product introduction or a keynote

01:07:03 ◼   ► if there's a keynote coming up,

01:07:05 ◼   ► but get cut because there are so many other things

01:07:10 ◼   ► that are more worth it for them

01:07:13 ◼   ► if they're only gonna go for 90 minutes.

01:07:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, absolutely.

01:07:16 ◼   ► And I believe stuff was cut from this keynote.

01:07:18 ◼   ► Like my understanding is they wanted to get it down

01:07:19 ◼   ► to two hours, but especially the Apple Music segment,

01:07:22 ◼   ► it didn't even sound like it stayed on script,

01:07:24 ◼   ► which is something else that you don't see

01:07:25 ◼   ► in previous keynotes.

01:07:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:07:29 ◼   ► Like, and you know, Drake's like inexplicable,

01:07:33 ◼   ► like, "What the hell? What was that?" I just remember going back to my notes and

01:07:38 ◼   ► it was like, my notes are like, "Drake!" And then it's like, nothing.

01:07:43 ◼   ► And some people who aren't us, who are very young and very hip, love that Drake was on

01:07:46 ◼   ► stage but I think when you look at it overall in terms of an Apple event, it doesn't become

01:07:52 ◼   ► part of the cohesive whole. Usually in a good one, it doesn't matter

01:07:55 ◼   ► whether the person, if it's some kind of famous celebrity or something like that, there still

01:08:01 ◼   ► is a there's you can see whether you agree with it or not whether it worked for you personally

01:08:06 ◼   ► you can understand what the point was that that person was supposed to get across if you could

01:08:11 ◼   ► cut it and it doesn't affect the event you should cut it and likewise like tim cook's segue into

01:08:15 ◼   ► baseball which was interesting but like you could have cut that entire uh we're gonna give them all

01:08:19 ◼   ► iphone stuff and ipad stuff out of the keynote and it would not have changed the event at all

01:08:23 ◼   ► yeah but i can see why they put that in though it was it was a way of emphasizing

01:08:30 ◼   ► with third party proof that the anecdote was that I forget what team it was if it was the Royals

01:08:36 ◼   ► or who but somebody in Major League Baseball had hit like a you know like their 100th career home

01:08:45 ◼   ► run and it landed in their own team's bullpen where the relief pitchers warm up over the home

01:08:52 ◼   ► run fence so the relief pitchers on the team were in possession of this ball which the player

01:08:56 ◼   ► obviously wanted to have. So the relief pitchers put together a list of, "Here's what we want

01:09:00 ◼   ► you to buy us and we'll give you the ball." And everything on the list was an Apple product

01:09:07 ◼   ► and a 50-gallon barrel of lube.

01:09:11 ◼   ► Yeah, it was great, but at almost a two and a half hour keynote, I think, again, you start

01:09:17 ◼   ► cutting anything you can.

01:09:18 ◼   ► Well, they showed it, but they also Photoshopped out the 50-gallon barrel of lube, which I

01:09:26 ◼   ► I understand why they did, because I understand that they kind of want to keep these things

01:09:32 ◼   ► G-rated, if not PG, and the 50-gallon barrel of lube maybe makes it a little bit more PG-13.

01:09:44 ◼   ► But good God, was that funny.

01:09:46 ◼   ► They kind of took out the funniest part of it.

01:09:47 ◼   ► I agree.

01:09:48 ◼   ► I do know.

01:09:49 ◼   ► I know what you're talking about, though, that if it's already going over two hours,

01:09:51 ◼   ► even that, you take out.

01:09:53 ◼   ► How much do they need to brag about that?

01:09:55 ◼   ► I found it worrisome though, I do. I honestly feel like, I kind of feel like the most worrisome thing as an Apple Watcher of the year was not any product in particular, but the WWDC keynote as a whole.

01:10:10 ◼   ► And that's something only Tim Cook can take control of, and unless he wants to take control of that, I don't think we'll see that change.

01:10:18 ◼   ► Like it's it was one of the unique things about Steve Jobs and it wasn't the most important thing.

01:10:25 ◼   ► It was just the most the thing that we on the outside got to see was that he had an innate and

01:10:31 ◼   ► uncanny talent as a showman that he was good. He those keynotes were all entirely in his head.

01:10:40 ◼   ► And of course, they've always been broken up into segments because that's how you do it.

01:10:44 ◼   ► but that he had this ability like from, you know, seat to watching,

01:10:50 ◼   ► you know, Phil Schiller come out and do the introduction for the new MacBook

01:10:54 ◼   ► or Power Book or whatever it was going back in time.

01:10:56 ◼   ► And then this and that he could just close his eyes

01:11:00 ◼   ► and just see how this whole thing would play out and feel as a 90 minute show

01:11:06 ◼   ► and could figure out things like, you know what?

01:11:11 ◼   ► let's not introduce this at the end as one more thing.

01:11:15 ◼   ► Let's move it up front and blow people away

01:11:18 ◼   ► right out of the gate, you know,

01:11:20 ◼   ► and could just see how that would play, you know,

01:11:23 ◼   ► and knew which, you know, I think, you know,

01:11:25 ◼   ► some of it's arbitrary and you can quibble with it,

01:11:27 ◼   ► but that he, you know, like a film director

01:11:29 ◼   ► could just sort of feel how, you know,

01:11:33 ◼   ► whether these scenes are good in and of themselves,

01:11:36 ◼   ► what do they combine to as a whole as a show?

01:11:38 ◼   ► And there was and and combine the showmanship with the absolute

01:11:43 ◼   ► unquestioned authority of I don't care who you are.

01:11:47 ◼   ► I don't care if you're, you know, senior vice president of whatever.

01:11:50 ◼   ► This thing that you want to get, you know, that we've been rehearsing

01:11:53 ◼   ► for two weeks and you, you know, want the stage time to do.

01:11:58 ◼   ► If I've decide the night before the keynote that that whole thing is cut

01:12:01 ◼   ► because it just doesn't play right.

01:12:03 ◼   ► That's it. You know, there's no, you know, tough luck.

01:12:07 ◼   ► And I kind of feel like, I kind of just feel like that whole Apple.

01:12:11 ◼   ► I don't know, I just feel like the whole Apple Music intro was that nobody was

01:12:18 ◼   ► there with the authority to say, you know what, Eddie, this just isn't, this isn't

01:12:21 ◼   ► ready.

01:12:21 ◼   ► There's very few things like a lot of people will say this wouldn't happen if

01:12:25 ◼   ► Steve Jobs was around and usually that they have, they have no idea what Steve

01:12:28 ◼   ► Jobs would have decided any moment or not.

01:12:29 ◼   ► But this is one of those few things where you can look back at the long history of

01:12:32 ◼   ► Apple keynotes and see that he had a rhythm and a pace and a delivery and a

01:12:36 ◼   ► concept for these things that, you know, was just beyond anyone else in the industry. And

01:12:41 ◼   ► we're not getting that anymore.

01:12:43 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah, I really, I hesitate to ever pull that, play that card. But I would say that

01:12:50 ◼   ► that keynote and the Apple Music segment in particular, that's one of the few where I

01:12:55 ◼   ► would say that wouldn't happen if Steve was still around.

01:12:57 ◼   ► Yeah, well, it's one of the few things where you can do it because he was, there was no

01:13:01 ◼   ► one intermediating Steve Jobs and you. He was on stage and he was talking to the audience.

01:13:04 ◼   ► It was incredibly direct.

01:13:06 ◼   ► So it's not behind the scenes

01:13:08 ◼   ► and who was in charge of this and who did that.

01:13:09 ◼   ► It was Steve Jobs talking to us.

01:13:12 ◼   ► And I think that's an easy thing to talk about.

01:13:14 ◼   ► - Right, and I've heard it from people who work at Apple,

01:13:19 ◼   ► that Steve was the guy that he didn't just show up

01:13:24 ◼   ► and there wasn't somebody else organizing the show.

01:13:25 ◼   ► He really was putting the show together.

01:13:28 ◼   ► And I've also heard it from people who worked

01:13:32 ◼   ► at third party companies, but who were getting,

01:13:34 ◼   ► you know, were invited by Apple to, you know,

01:13:37 ◼   ► come on stage as, you know, you might,

01:13:41 ◼   ► and it's funny, it's always exactly the same,

01:13:44 ◼   ► which is that they get invited to come out,

01:13:45 ◼   ► they go into sequester.

01:13:47 ◼   ► It's like you're pretty much like locked into like Apple,

01:13:50 ◼   ► a very nice prison, and you rehearse and rehearse

01:13:54 ◼   ► and rehearse, and you have no idea

01:13:56 ◼   ► whether you're actually gonna be in the keynote

01:13:58 ◼   ► until, you know, like the night before.

01:14:01 ◼   ► And even then, you know, it might be you're in, you're out.

01:14:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, and their events team is absolutely spectacular

01:14:07 ◼   ► and they do a fantastic job,

01:14:08 ◼   ► but they don't control who's up on stage

01:14:10 ◼   ► for how long or saying what.

01:14:11 ◼   ► That's become the executive in charge of that thing.

01:14:14 ◼   ► And it's no longer just Steve Jobs.

01:14:16 ◼   ► - Right, and I do kind of feel,

01:14:18 ◼   ► bottom line is that it's sort of effectively a committee now

01:14:21 ◼   ► and it might be a small committee,

01:14:24 ◼   ► you know, Schiller, Eddy Cue, Shirley, Tim Cook.

01:14:28 ◼   ► You know, and I think I wouldn't underestimate,

01:14:30 ◼   ► Even though he's not on stage personally,

01:14:32 ◼   ► I wouldn't underestimate Johnny Ive's influence

01:14:34 ◼   ► on these things, on the events.

01:14:36 ◼   ► The fact that he does his in prerecorded films

01:14:41 ◼   ► is, doesn't make him less involved, I think,

01:14:44 ◼   ► in the structure of the events.

01:14:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, and even those, those videos used to have faces

01:14:49 ◼   ► and then used to have several people,

01:14:51 ◼   ► like Van Rietje would sometimes appear in them.

01:14:52 ◼   ► Definitely Bob Mansfield in previous years.

01:14:55 ◼   ► And this year it was just voiceover.

01:14:57 ◼   ► - Yeah. - And it was just Johnny Ive.

01:14:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, more cinematic, less documentary style,

01:15:02 ◼   ► and more, I don't know, like product,

01:15:07 ◼   ► like more advertising style.

01:15:09 ◼   ► - And to your point about Apple Music being a sloppy product

01:15:12 ◼   ► the thing to me is when they made that announcement,

01:15:13 ◼   ► when Jimmy Iovine said one single thought around music,

01:15:16 ◼   ► and you just start thinking about that

01:15:18 ◼   ► from an interface perspective,

01:15:20 ◼   ► and how many masters that has to save all,

01:15:22 ◼   ► like it has to serve all the traditional people,

01:15:24 ◼   ► like Jim Downer will have 40,000 songs on their hard drive,

01:15:27 ◼   ► has to serve people who only want to stream music.

01:15:30 ◼   ► They had a social network built into there,

01:15:32 ◼   ► so it has to be accessible.

01:15:33 ◼   ► And if you put that in a separate app,

01:15:35 ◼   ► no one is ever gonna open it by itself.

01:15:37 ◼   ► And it creates almost an impossible problem to be solved.

01:15:40 ◼   ► - Can I tell you a funny story I heard about Jimmy Yaupon?

01:15:43 ◼   ► - Absolutely.

01:15:45 ◼   ► - This is absolutely positively unverifiable

01:15:48 ◼   ► because this is like fourth hand,

01:15:51 ◼   ► maybe like a fourth hand story.

01:15:53 ◼   ► But in terms of the gist of the story

01:15:56 ◼   ► is that Jimmy Yovine, from people

01:16:00 ◼   ► who've had to deal with him within Apple, is eye rolling.

01:16:06 ◼   ► And that at one point when they were talking

01:16:08 ◼   ► about what to do with Apple Music,

01:16:10 ◼   ► he tossed out in a meeting the idea

01:16:14 ◼   ► that what if we get rid of apps, and when you just

01:16:18 ◼   ► turn on your iPhone, there's your music?

01:16:26 ◼   ► And they were like, "Wouldn't that just be like what the iPod was?"

01:16:30 ◼   ► And he was like, "No, no, it's still your phone, and you have the internet."

01:16:34 ◼   ► But you don't have to worry about apps.

01:16:35 ◼   ► You just turn on your phone, and there's your music.

01:16:38 ◼   ► - Streaming Taylor Swift, the mini, turn on your phone?

01:16:41 ◼   ► - I don't know if that's true or not.

01:16:44 ◼   ► I did not hear that from anybody at Apple.

01:16:46 ◼   ► I heard that from somebody who worked at Apple a long time ago

01:16:49 ◼   ► and still has friends at Apple.

01:16:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's the kind of stories where someone whose job it is

01:16:54 ◼   ► isn't to implement things on the atom or the bit or the pixel level.

01:16:58 ◼   ► We'll just throw those kinds of things out.

01:17:02 ◼   ► Turn on your phone and there's your music.

01:17:06 ◼   ► Punchier.

01:17:08 ◼   ► What was the event that Jimmy Yovine came out?

01:17:11 ◼   ► And was that the WWC keynote?

01:17:17 ◼   ► Yeah, well, he definitely came out during the WWC keynote.

01:17:19 ◼   ► And where he said something that seemed like a reference,

01:17:23 ◼   ► What was it? He was like a reference back to like a classic Apple moment and people applauded, but he didn't get it.

01:17:28 ◼   ► And he got confused and like turned around and looked at the slide.

01:17:31 ◼   ► Ah, no, I don't recall.

01:17:33 ◼   ► Oh, I forget. I forget the exact details of it.

01:17:37 ◼   ► But it was like, it probably wasn't one more thing.

01:17:41 ◼   ► But I can imagine that he was like, if he had said one more thing, and everybody like kind of clapped and applauded.

01:17:47 ◼   ► And he didn't even get that that was something that people who followed Apple for a long time would get.

01:17:52 ◼   ► And so he thought maybe something had gone wrong with the slides and something,

01:17:56 ◼   ► a glitch was on the slide behind him.

01:17:58 ◼   ► And that's why people were laughing to him inexplicably.

01:18:01 ◼   ► And so he got like, he paused and like turned around and looked at the slide,

01:18:05 ◼   ► but it's slide was right.

01:18:06 ◼   ► And then that only served to discombobulate him even further because now he,

01:18:10 ◼   ► now he had no idea why people were laughing. And it was very, very awkward.

01:18:15 ◼   ► It's always been hard to enculturate people into Apple.

01:18:18 ◼   ► And it's especially hard when you're getting this many new people,

01:18:19 ◼   ► but when these people come in at executive levels,

01:18:21 ◼   ► it's almost impossible.

01:18:22 ◼   ► So you have someone who's used to working in LA

01:18:25 ◼   ► and with Hollywood and with recording studios,

01:18:27 ◼   ► and you get them in a meeting with people

01:18:28 ◼   ► who've been making shiny boxes all their lives.

01:18:32 ◼   ► It's gonna be a clash.

01:18:33 ◼   ► - From the outside, it seems like maybe Angela Ornes

01:18:38 ◼   ► is doing well though.

01:18:39 ◼   ► - I think so.

01:18:41 ◼   ► I mean, this 60 Minutes was also a bit of her coming out.

01:18:43 ◼   ► And I always thought, I think we talked about it last year,

01:18:45 ◼   ► that she, because she was so vocal in her previous gig,

01:18:49 ◼   ► that she would be more of a spokesperson for Apple

01:18:51 ◼   ► and she would talk about retail more.

01:18:53 ◼   ► But apparently she's been hard at work behind the scenes

01:18:55 ◼   ► just melding the online and retail operations

01:18:58 ◼   ► and getting the new store concepts going.

01:19:01 ◼   ► It sounds like, it was funny because a couple of weeks ago

01:19:04 ◼   ► someone wrote an article saying,

01:19:05 ◼   ► "Where's Angela Ahrens?

01:19:05 ◼   ► Why she disappeared?"

01:19:07 ◼   ► And people on campus are like,

01:19:08 ◼   ► "Well, we see her all the time.

01:19:09 ◼   ► I understand the article."

01:19:11 ◼   ► - I kind of feel like people, there's,

01:19:15 ◼   ► you know, and again, I think it fits in

01:19:19 ◼   ► with a year in review

01:19:20 ◼   ► and talking about these events that this year,

01:19:24 ◼   ► there were more women on stage from Apple

01:19:29 ◼   ► during these events than ever before.

01:19:31 ◼   ► And that's a good thing.

01:19:35 ◼   ► And I don't think it is purely happenstance.

01:19:39 ◼   ► I think that it's something they're aware of internally.

01:19:43 ◼   ► I asked Phil Schuler about it on stage on the talk show

01:19:45 ◼   ► after WWDC.

01:19:48 ◼   ► Absolutely, they're aware of it.

01:19:49 ◼   ► But it has to be, it's not like we're going to find a woman to do this.

01:19:55 ◼   ► It's there have to be, the real problem is that,

01:19:58 ◼   ► wasn't that they didn't put women on stage,

01:20:00 ◼   ► it's that they didn't have women in positions where it was their products doing it.

01:20:06 ◼   ► Right?

01:20:06 ◼   ► >> Yeah, and not to make excuses for it, but Apple is an older company.

01:20:09 ◼   ► And older companies, they've had established people,

01:20:11 ◼   ► like Phil Schiller has been there for a long time,

01:20:12 ◼   ► Eddie Q, Tim Cook, all these people have been there for decades,

01:20:15 ◼   ► and they're amongst the best in the world.

01:20:17 ◼   ► where a new startup, they would have a much different demographic starting out

01:20:21 ◼   ► the gate than Apple would.

01:20:22 ◼   ► Right. It's not like they hire show people to

01:20:25 ◼   ► to present these things on stage at their event.

01:20:29 ◼   ► The products and services, whatever it is that they're announcing, are being

01:20:32 ◼   ► presented by the people

01:20:34 ◼   ► who are in charge of them and who know them best and who have shepherded them

01:20:38 ◼   ► through to existence. And so the fact that historically women

01:20:42 ◼   ► have been underrepresented on stage at Apple events

01:20:46 ◼   ► Doesn't mean that Apple has a problem picking who gets to go on stage in the event.

01:20:51 ◼   ► The problem is that they don't have enough women in positions of authority running teams within the company.

01:20:58 ◼   ► Yeah, or in their executive team, most specifically.

01:21:01 ◼   ► Right, who would therefore be the person to come on stage and do it.

01:21:05 ◼   ► You know, and obviously that's changing with Apple Pay.

01:21:09 ◼   ► Who's that? Her name escapes me at the moment.

01:21:12 ◼   ► I'm blanking on it too. Yeah, Apple Pay and Apple News.

01:21:15 ◼   ► Yes, both were represented by women, etc.

01:21:19 ◼   ► So for the people who are saying, "Well, where's Angela Ahrendts?"

01:21:22 ◼   ► Well, they're not going to bring Angela Ahrendts on stage to talk about a new Macbook or something like that.

01:21:27 ◼   ► It's not just, "Well, there's a woman on the SVP leadership team, therefore they should have her come out and do something."

01:21:34 ◼   ► It's only going to make sense for her to come on stage when there's some kind of retail news that they want to talk about.

01:21:42 ◼   ► And I think that's inevitable.

01:21:44 ◼   ► At some point, there's going to be something

01:21:46 ◼   ► that happens with retail that they're gonna wanna talk about

01:21:50 ◼   ► at one of these events.

01:21:51 ◼   ► And of course, it's gonna be her to talk about it.

01:21:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, retail or fashion,

01:21:54 ◼   ► and those are the things that Tim Cook used to speak about,

01:21:57 ◼   ► and they unfortunately cut those at the same time

01:21:59 ◼   ► they brought Angela Ahrens on,

01:22:00 ◼   ► because Tim Cook doesn't spend time on stage

01:22:02 ◼   ► talking about them anymore either.

01:22:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, I don't know about fashion though,

01:22:05 ◼   ► 'cause fashion would be too,

01:22:07 ◼   ► I guess I could imagine, maybe with the watch,

01:22:10 ◼   ► that there would be something to do with the watch as a product that its relation to the

01:22:15 ◼   ► fashion industry would make sense to have Angela Ahrendts be the person to do it. Because

01:22:19 ◼   ► it's also I think inextricably tied to retail where it's not just Apple's retail but retail

01:22:25 ◼   ► in general and the partnerships that they have with fashion related retailers that aren't

01:22:32 ◼   ► the Apple store.

01:22:34 ◼   ► Yeah and it's you and I know because we have a lot of mutual friends there but there are

01:22:39 ◼   ► phenomenally talented women engineers at Apple and women program managers and

01:22:44 ◼   ► designers and developers and those people don't just don't get to talk on

01:22:48 ◼   ► keynotes. Right, whether you know at any male female doesn't even matter that's

01:22:53 ◼   ► just not Apple doesn't run those type of keynotes where dozens of you know

01:22:57 ◼   ► mid-level. You get an occasional Chris Latner like I think that was a huge

01:23:02 ◼   ► exception too I don't think anyone like Chris Latner had ever spoken at a

01:23:04 ◼   ► keynote before. As opposed to the afternoon State of the Union keynote.

01:23:09 ◼   ► Which is, you know, where he's been, he has spoken before and where you would

01:23:12 ◼   ► expect it. And this year we had the phenomenal woman in charge of clock

01:23:15 ◼   ► faces get a tremendous talk at the State of the Union this year. I remember that.

01:23:19 ◼   ► That was great. Anyway, I did think on 60 Minutes, I've seen Angela

01:23:25 ◼   ► Arnett speak before, especially after when she first got

01:23:28 ◼   ► hired and announced it and I was researching into it. But her stint on the

01:23:33 ◼   ► the 60 Minutes segment did reiterate,

01:23:36 ◼   ► boy, she's a remarkably cogent and thoughtful person.

01:23:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, and I agree,

01:23:43 ◼   ► but I do think that it's great that Apple is doing this,

01:23:45 ◼   ► and it's similar to when Tim Cook came out.

01:23:47 ◼   ► He said, because if it was just up to me, I wouldn't,

01:23:49 ◼   ► because I'm a private person,

01:23:51 ◼   ► but it's important to be a role model,

01:23:53 ◼   ► and I think it's important to have diverse people

01:23:54 ◼   ► up on stage in super successful positions

01:23:57 ◼   ► in super successful companies like Apple

01:23:58 ◼   ► to be those role models,

01:24:00 ◼   ► and you have to give them opportunity.

01:24:03 ◼   ► Craig Federighi wasn't great, his first WWDC,

01:24:05 ◼   ► but he's terrific now.

01:24:06 ◼   ► And Jeff Williams, two events in, much better presenter.

01:24:09 ◼   ► And if you give them these opportunities,

01:24:10 ◼   ► they could be just as phenomenal.

01:24:12 ◼   ► And it's a super deep bench.

01:24:13 ◼   ► Like you have, you know, Greg Joswiak, also phenomenal,

01:24:16 ◼   ► who didn't get any time, I don't think,

01:24:17 ◼   ► at all on stage this year.

01:24:19 ◼   ► But you also have, you know, the woman in charge

01:24:21 ◼   ► of iPhone marketing is phenomenal.

01:24:23 ◼   ► And there will be opportunities when they get stage time.

01:24:25 ◼   ► And it'll just make, I think,

01:24:26 ◼   ► the company better for everybody.

01:24:28 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:24:32 ◼   ► What else about it at WWDC?

01:24:34 ◼   ► Anything else?

01:24:35 ◼   ► - Swift 2.0, and I think that's where they announced

01:24:37 ◼   ► that it was gonna open source.

01:24:40 ◼   ► - Oh, that is true.

01:24:41 ◼   ► It is when they announced that it would go open source

01:24:43 ◼   ► by the end of the year, and they did hit that.

01:24:45 ◼   ► I don't really have much to say about that.

01:24:49 ◼   ► I mean, I think I kinda covered that last week with Craig.

01:24:52 ◼   ► - A little bit. (laughs)

01:24:54 ◼   ► - Craig Federighi.

01:24:55 ◼   ► - Talk about stacking the guest deck.

01:24:56 ◼   ► - I don't think we need to cover Swift on this episode.

01:25:01 ◼   ► It's just suffice it to say it was a pretty big deal.

01:25:03 ◼   ► And it seems to be going very, very well.

01:25:05 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:25:06 ◼   ► Content blockers ended up being another thing

01:25:09 ◼   ► that enormous amounts of angst and stress was built over.

01:25:13 ◼   ► And again, at the end of the year,

01:25:14 ◼   ► we're hardly mentioning them.

01:25:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, and doesn't seem, you know,

01:25:18 ◼   ► doesn't seem to have really changed anything significant.

01:25:23 ◼   ► I think it's great.

01:25:24 ◼   ► I certainly, I enjoy running them.

01:25:26 ◼   ► And I do think that they make for a noticeable improvement,

01:25:31 ◼   ► but I don't think that they've bankrupted any,

01:25:33 ◼   ► or are even on pace to bankrupt any media properties.

01:25:37 ◼   ► - I'm kind of sad about that,

01:25:38 ◼   ► 'cause I thought that was one of,

01:25:39 ◼   ► because the industry is just, it's horrible and intransigent

01:25:41 ◼   ► and that was one of the few things

01:25:42 ◼   ► that could scare it out of its complacency.

01:25:44 ◼   ► And I don't think it's done a good enough job

01:25:46 ◼   ► scaring them to their bottom dollars yet.

01:25:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, I feel like there was more talk about that

01:25:50 ◼   ► when they were, when it was first come out and,

01:25:55 ◼   ► or actually right before they came out, really,

01:25:57 ◼   ► when people thought, you know, good God, you know,

01:26:00 ◼   ► A week from now, 70% of our mobile is gonna disappear.

01:26:03 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:26:04 ◼   ► - But in hindsight, you know,

01:26:07 ◼   ► there was like a day or two where the App Store charts

01:26:12 ◼   ► were dominated by content blockers,

01:26:17 ◼   ► and then not so much.

01:26:19 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:26:20 ◼   ► Hopefully next year that'll spike again.

01:26:23 ◼   ► - So what about the summer?

01:26:30 ◼   ► or anything over the summer?

01:26:31 ◼   ► I don't think so.

01:26:32 ◼   ► - There was some interesting stuff.

01:26:33 ◼   ► Out of nowhere an iPod Touch 6 finally came out,

01:26:36 ◼   ► a modern iPod Touch.

01:26:37 ◼   ► - Oh, that is true.

01:26:40 ◼   ► That was like July, right?

01:26:41 ◼   ► - Yeah. - It was like

01:26:42 ◼   ► the middle of July.

01:26:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, it didn't really do,

01:26:45 ◼   ► I mean, it was exact same design.

01:26:46 ◼   ► It did have a modern A7 processor.

01:26:49 ◼   ► So it's 64-bit.

01:26:51 ◼   ► And that was about all that came with it.

01:26:53 ◼   ► There was some new iPod colors as well,

01:26:55 ◼   ► but the iPod line didn't change at all.

01:26:58 ◼   ► - No.

01:26:58 ◼   ► Do you think that this might be it for the iPod touch?

01:27:03 ◼   ► - I think it's getting, I think the pressure

01:27:07 ◼   ► from the iPhones being more and more available

01:27:09 ◼   ► and affordable and the iPad mini being as popular as it is

01:27:13 ◼   ► kind of squeezes out the iPod touch in many ways.

01:27:15 ◼   ► It's still the cheapest, absolute cheapest way

01:27:17 ◼   ► to get to the App Store.

01:27:18 ◼   ► But I think the App Store now is a proven value

01:27:21 ◼   ► and people are willing to pay a little bit more

01:27:22 ◼   ► to get into it in order to get more functionality from it.

01:27:26 ◼   ► I was surprised by--

01:27:29 ◼   ► I think I've seen this from a few other places too.

01:27:31 ◼   ► But like when I think it was United or one of these airlines

01:27:36 ◼   ► was like, we're going to buy 10,000 iPhones

01:27:38 ◼   ► and give them to all of our gate agents and flight attendants

01:27:42 ◼   ► and et cetera.

01:27:45 ◼   ► That they weren't iPod Touches.

01:27:46 ◼   ► That it seems to me like it would make more sense for that

01:27:49 ◼   ► to be an iPod Touch, lower price.

01:27:52 ◼   ► Let's presume that there's some kind of workable Wi-Fi

01:27:55 ◼   ► in the airport that they can use.

01:27:58 ◼   ► That they wouldn't need to be a full,

01:28:00 ◼   ► why would you spend the extra money,

01:28:02 ◼   ► hundreds of extra dollars per unit for the phone

01:28:05 ◼   ► when it doesn't really make sense for them to be phoned

01:28:07 ◼   ► if they're just using them for that.

01:28:08 ◼   ► But that's what they're using the phone.

01:28:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's probably a greater dynamic

01:28:12 ◼   ► where you have sort of existing carrier relationships

01:28:14 ◼   ► with enterprise companies

01:28:16 ◼   ► and they're buying them in the thousands.

01:28:18 ◼   ► And if people are still wondering

01:28:20 ◼   ► why they're 16 gigabyte iPhones,

01:28:22 ◼   ► that's one of the big reasons is institutional buyers.

01:28:24 ◼   ► So it's almost like they just move from Blackberry to iPhone

01:28:27 ◼   ► or to something else.

01:28:29 ◼   ► - But it wasn't, I don't know, to me it wasn't.

01:28:35 ◼   ► - And they're sort of like web portals.

01:28:36 ◼   ► All they do is access web portals or business to B2B apps.

01:28:39 ◼   ► So they need almost nothing but a web connection.

01:28:42 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:28:43 ◼   ► Ooh, I just, her name just popped into my head.

01:28:46 ◼   ► Jennifer Bailey.

01:28:47 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:28:48 ◼   ► - It was killing me.

01:28:50 ◼   ► Jennifer Bailey is the Apple executive

01:28:52 ◼   ► who runs Apple Pay under EdiQ.

01:28:55 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:28:56 ◼   ► - Anything else in the summer?

01:28:57 ◼   ► - A whole bunch of other stuff, I think.

01:28:59 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:29:00 ◼   ► But she was the one who was on stage, at least.

01:29:02 ◼   ► - No, I think that, I mean, there was a minor stuff

01:29:04 ◼   ► like Apple killed one-to-one,

01:29:05 ◼   ► but very little else happened

01:29:07 ◼   ► until the monstrous event in September.

01:29:09 ◼   ► - Right, so before we get to that,

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01:32:16 ◼   ► HelloPillow.com/talkshow. No "the." That's the URL. All right, September.

01:32:23 ◼   ► Yeah. Boy, I feel like maybe we should have started with this because it's...

01:32:29 ◼   ► It was a big event.

01:32:31 ◼   ► Well, they only did one fall event this year, so they put everything into it.

01:32:34 ◼   ► Yeah. In hindsight, I feel like that's probably smart. And I feel like the other thing too is to

01:32:44 ◼   ► go circle back to what I said about WWDC. I feel like they clarified the messaging and the

01:32:53 ◼   ► coherency of the event significantly. I can't help but suspect that internally they recognized

01:32:59 ◼   ► that the WWDC keynote was not up to their own standards.

01:33:05 ◼   ► And the September event might have been even extra sharp because of it.

01:33:09 ◼   ► Yeah, it was for everything that they covered, and it was so big they didn't even have time to cover OS X or the Mac.

01:33:15 ◼   ► They managed to get it done in, I think, four well put together segments.

01:33:19 ◼   ► Yeah. I mean, and, you know, if we're going to look back at the year, I mean,

01:33:23 ◼   ► I mean, you know, easily the biggest mistake I published

01:33:28 ◼   ► on "Daring Fireball" was the night before the event

01:33:30 ◼   ► predicting that there's no way they're gonna have

01:33:32 ◼   ► only one event for the fall.

01:33:35 ◼   ► - Well, they hadn't before.

01:33:37 ◼   ► It had been iPhone and iPods or something else in September

01:33:41 ◼   ► and then Mac and iPad in October.

01:33:44 ◼   ► - Yeah. - I think two years

01:33:45 ◼   ► or three years before that.

01:33:46 ◼   ► But this year they had no new Mac.

01:33:48 ◼   ► They had the 4K iMac, but they sort of showed that off

01:33:51 ◼   ► already with the 5K iMac.

01:33:53 ◼   ► theater before? Well, I think if they wanted to, they could have. I think the

01:33:57 ◼   ► easiest way that they could have done it would be to hold the iPad Pro for

01:34:01 ◼   ► October and have a separate event just for the iPad Pro and then to fill out

01:34:05 ◼   ► the event "Demo El Capitan" and boom there you go there's a little smaller

01:34:11 ◼   ► event in October and it wasn't ready to ship anyway so it wouldn't have even

01:34:14 ◼   ► delayed the shipping of the iPad Pro. Although they wanted to get El Cap out

01:34:18 ◼   ► earlier this year, I think it shipped on September 30th which would have pulled

01:34:21 ◼   ► it out of that event. Yeah, but it wouldn't have it would have been fine if they would have held

01:34:25 ◼   ► El Capitan. It wouldn't have, you know, if they wanted to. I think it's just that they didn't want

01:34:29 ◼   ► to. But there, you know, it wasn't just my argument that I don't think they're going to have just one

01:34:33 ◼   ► event wasn't just that they have had two events for years. It was that if they only have one event,

01:34:38 ◼   ► there's no way they're going to cover all this stuff. Yeah. And some of these things are going

01:34:41 ◼   ► to have to be cut. And so I was right about that, that that some of these things would have to be

01:34:45 ◼   ► cut and they would go through the fall without even even redemmelling the tentpole features of

01:34:50 ◼   ► of El Capitan on stage.

01:34:52 ◼   ► I was just wrong that they might be willing to do that.

01:34:56 ◼   ► But I think that's a good-- - They had a release date

01:34:58 ◼   ► in the sidebar of the email and the slide

01:35:00 ◼   ► on the stage. (laughs)

01:35:02 ◼   ► - Right, this is how little time El Cap got on that event,

01:35:06 ◼   ► that when they announced the shipping date,

01:35:08 ◼   ► it was a screenshot of,

01:35:11 ◼   ► I think it was for the iPad Pro, right?

01:35:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was the mail app,

01:35:14 ◼   ► and you can see it was a mail from Phil in the song.

01:35:17 ◼   ► - It was like Phil, yeah, like Phil,

01:35:19 ◼   ► It was like an email from Phil Shiller to Federighi

01:35:21 ◼   ► or somebody saying like, yeah, El Cap ship date

01:35:26 ◼   ► will be September 30th, top secret, don't tell anyone.

01:35:29 ◼   ► And it was just in the screenshot to the mail client.

01:35:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:35:34 ◼   ► - And then very quickly, they had to get that up

01:35:36 ◼   ► on Apple.com, so otherwise it would have been pandemonium

01:35:38 ◼   ► with everyone calling to see if that was serious or not.

01:35:40 ◼   ► - Right, was it a joke or was it not?

01:35:42 ◼   ► We sat together for that one, right?

01:35:45 ◼   ► It was me and you and Clayton Morris, right?

01:35:47 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:35:48 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:35:50 ◼   ► I remember when that came up and we were whispering

01:35:54 ◼   ► with each other, like, was that real?

01:35:55 ◼   ► Did I see that?

01:35:56 ◼   ► Do you think that's what they mean?

01:35:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was.

01:35:59 ◼   ► I mean, it started off with Jeff Williams and the watch.

01:36:02 ◼   ► And it's interesting 'cause they showed off new watch bands

01:36:04 ◼   ► that, you know, Johnny and I have had shown off,

01:36:06 ◼   ► I think, at a Paris show, fashion show earlier in the year.

01:36:09 ◼   ► And then they announced Apple Watch Hermes.

01:36:11 ◼   ► I guess the first real example of Apple partnering

01:36:15 ◼   ► with a fashion shop, outside of their own,

01:36:18 ◼   ► which was super interesting to me.

01:36:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so too.

01:36:21 ◼   ► It makes me wonder about future things

01:36:27 ◼   ► like the car and stuff like that.

01:36:29 ◼   ► Will there be, and again, it would be interesting

01:36:33 ◼   ► even if it wasn't like to partner

01:36:35 ◼   ► with an existing car company,

01:36:36 ◼   ► but again, like maybe to partner with Hermes

01:36:39 ◼   ► and have like a car come out with an Hermes designed interior

01:36:43 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:36:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, again, they're gonna wanna have products

01:36:47 ◼   ► that are introductory, they get people in the door,

01:36:49 ◼   ► they're gonna have the product that most people

01:36:51 ◼   ► end up buying, which is usually the middle of the road

01:36:52 ◼   ► product, and they're gonna wanna have premium products.

01:36:54 ◼   ► People who want the absolute best,

01:36:56 ◼   ► and when you get to things like cars and watches,

01:36:58 ◼   ► with the absolute best, it isn't just about speeds and feeds.

01:37:01 ◼   ► - Wouldn't that be interesting?

01:37:02 ◼   ► I wonder, this had never really occurred to me before,

01:37:06 ◼   ► but in the way that they, for things like the car,

01:37:09 ◼   ► they have to be thinking in the scope of a decade, right?

01:37:13 ◼   ► That this thing got started at least three, four,

01:37:16 ◼   ► five years ago, maybe even more.

01:37:18 ◼   ► And it's probably at least three, four, five years away

01:37:23 ◼   ► from coming to market.

01:37:25 ◼   ► That this is something that they've had to think

01:37:27 ◼   ► in a decade long window for.

01:37:29 ◼   ► And in terms of what you and I talked about

01:37:35 ◼   ► earlier in the show about what was the point

01:37:38 ◼   ► of the gold Apple Watch edition models

01:37:42 ◼   ► and going through all this and selling these things

01:37:44 ◼   ► at these high prices for something that was going to sell in such low quantities.

01:37:48 ◼   ► I wonder if part of it isn't getting, you know,

01:37:53 ◼   ► rehearsing sort of going through the,

01:37:57 ◼   ► the bifurcated levels of product based on significantly different orders of

01:38:02 ◼   ► magnitude, different prices, um,

01:38:06 ◼   ► and partnering with companies and,

01:38:08 ◼   ► and creating truly luxurious, um,

01:38:13 ◼   ► materials using truly luxurious materials to separate these segments.

01:38:17 ◼   ► Not so much for the watch itself, but for the eventual car.

01:38:22 ◼   ► Because in the car, that's, it's going to be significantly more money and way more

01:38:27 ◼   ► important that there are maybe, maybe who knows, maybe the car will come out and

01:38:32 ◼   ► there's one model and it's, you know, $25,000 and that's it.

01:38:35 ◼   ► But somehow I don't think so.

01:38:36 ◼   ► Yeah, no, absolutely.

01:38:38 ◼   ► And that's why I think segmentation again was so important for Apple this year,

01:38:41 ◼   ► because as you get into, as you become a certain size,

01:38:45 ◼   ► your growth becomes limited,

01:38:46 ◼   ► you have to start segmenting.

01:38:48 ◼   ► And as you get into other product lines,

01:38:50 ◼   ► you can't just assume that they work the same way

01:38:52 ◼   ► that your existing product lines do.

01:38:53 ◼   ► Apple has been very canny about avoiding the pitfalls

01:38:56 ◼   ► that have hit a lot of other technology companies.

01:38:57 ◼   ► And part of the reason is that they sort of think

01:39:00 ◼   ► through these things, they pick something,

01:39:01 ◼   ► they focus on it, and they experiment

01:39:03 ◼   ► in a myriad of different ways,

01:39:05 ◼   ► including a lot of prototyping,

01:39:07 ◼   ► but also a lot of things like maybe like doing

01:39:09 ◼   ► Apple Watch from as a rendition or things like that so that when they get

01:39:12 ◼   ► into things like watches and things like cars they're not presenting them the way

01:39:16 ◼   ► they present you know an iPod shuffle they're presenting them within the

01:39:18 ◼   ► context of that product yeah I did think I do think it was interesting too that

01:39:25 ◼   ► by September you just mentioned you mentioned this a minute or two ago that

01:39:31 ◼   ► just it was a year after Apple Watch was initially unveiled but it was really

01:39:37 ◼   ► just May, June, July, August, so five months after it actually hit market where they had

01:39:45 ◼   ► all new bands and straps and didn't just add new bands and straps but actually replaced

01:39:51 ◼   ► some of the earlier colors, some of the pastels colored sport bands with, to my eyes, a much

01:40:00 ◼   ► more attractive overall lineup of colors.

01:40:02 ◼   ► And watch OS 2 is shipped five months after watch OS 1 which is very fast, you know apples

01:40:08 ◼   ► usual product rollouts

01:40:10 ◼   ► yeah, I

01:40:13 ◼   ► I'm more intrigued by the

01:40:15 ◼   ► hardware differences and the bands then then the OS because I kind of feel like watch OS 2

01:40:21 ◼   ► Calling it a 2.0 was

01:40:24 ◼   ► Is a little marketing II, you know, it's really sort of it was to me closer to here's the watch OS

01:40:31 ◼   ► we really had wanted to ship originally.

01:40:33 ◼   ► - Absolutely, it was around,

01:40:35 ◼   ► it filled in all the little gaps

01:40:36 ◼   ► that were obviously missing from the first one.

01:40:38 ◼   ► - Right, and there's a big difference obviously

01:40:39 ◼   ► with the native apps, you know,

01:40:41 ◼   ► third party native apps being able to run right on a watch

01:40:43 ◼   ► as opposed to just being projected on the watch

01:40:46 ◼   ► from your phone, like the original WatchKit apps.

01:40:49 ◼   ► But other than that, it's really hard to point to anything

01:40:53 ◼   ► in watchOS 2.0 that was really a 2.0 feature.

01:40:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's interesting though that it was,

01:41:01 ◼   ► they've sort of decoupled it.

01:41:02 ◼   ► You didn't have to wait for a new watch to get watchOS 2.0.

01:41:04 ◼   ► They were willing to use that sort of marketing lingo

01:41:06 ◼   ► with mid-cycle almost.

01:41:10 ◼   ► It just shows that the watch is a very,

01:41:11 ◼   ► they're treating the watch as a very different

01:41:13 ◼   ► sort of product than they have the phones previously.

01:41:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, I almost feel like, again,

01:41:18 ◼   ► part of it is that they've gone through the iPhone

01:41:21 ◼   ► to iPhone 3G transition within the first year

01:41:24 ◼   ► as opposed to waiting an entire year for it.

01:41:26 ◼   ► What was the other thing?

01:41:30 ◼   ► And the fact that so many, I mean, it's not even,

01:41:34 ◼   ► you don't even have to conjecture.

01:41:35 ◼   ► It's not like speculation or rumor

01:41:38 ◼   ► that some of the features, a lot of the features in WatchOS 2

01:41:41 ◼   ► were originally meant for WatchOS 1

01:41:44 ◼   ► because they showed them a year ago,

01:41:47 ◼   ► at the original watch event,

01:41:49 ◼   ► things like the additional watch faces,

01:41:53 ◼   ► like the, hey, pick your own,

01:41:54 ◼   ► choose your own photo from your photo library

01:41:56 ◼   ► and have that as your watch face.

01:41:58 ◼   ► They showed that in 2014, and it wasn't there when it shipped in 2015.

01:42:03 ◼   ► And some of the faces had the time travel already in them.

01:42:06 ◼   ► Yes.

01:42:06 ◼   ► Like all the stuff that we saw was just logical completions of the things

01:42:10 ◼   ► that had been set up in the first version.

01:42:12 ◼   ► Right.

01:42:12 ◼   ► It almost you know, the fact that time travel wasn't there originally,

01:42:15 ◼   ► almost it defeated the existence of the the crown.

01:42:20 ◼   ► Yes.

01:42:21 ◼   ► That the crown was meant to be there for that sort of, you know, here.

01:42:25 ◼   ► If you want to see where you're going to be later in the afternoon,

01:42:27 ◼   ► just look at your watch and spin the crown.

01:42:30 ◼   ► - And to your earlier point,

01:42:31 ◼   ► I mean, they weren't not capable of getting it ready

01:42:33 ◼   ► in that point, so should they have waited

01:42:35 ◼   ► until September to release it?

01:42:36 ◼   ► No, it was nice to get it out early

01:42:38 ◼   ► and they can add those things as they're going.

01:42:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, the other thing that I wanna talk about on that

01:42:44 ◼   ► is the rumors, and I don't doubt them,