The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► 90 minutes or bust. I think we have the title already.

00:00:03 ◼   ► I remember when people used to complain when the show was over an hour.

00:00:09 ◼   ► Yeah, and then you just gave up on it. I got bitter actually because someone recommended

00:00:16 ◼   ► my podcast on Twitter, which I appreciated, and which I will add because people are going to

00:00:21 ◼   ► bitch that I'm recording with you and I haven't recorded Xplo all summer. We're going to record

00:00:26 ◼   ► the next episode later later today. So I'm back. I'm podcasting. But someone's like, oh, yeah,

00:00:33 ◼   ► but the problem is, you know, all those podcasts go on forever. They need some good editing. I'm

00:00:36 ◼   ► like, I spend hours every week editing our podcast to keep it to an hour. Don't let me in with

00:00:41 ◼   ► Gruber. I was very I was upset. Well, I know what they mean, though. I and I, you know, it would be

00:00:46 ◼   ► a very different show, though. You know, it's, it's, have you heard of this? The slack? I think

00:00:52 ◼   ► I think it's called the Slack Variety Pack.

00:00:55 ◼   ► - No, I don't think so.

00:00:57 ◼   ► - It's new.

00:00:58 ◼   ► Yeah, Slack Variety Pack.

00:01:02 ◼   ► If you just Google Slack Variety Pack, you'll find it.

00:01:05 ◼   ► So it's a podcast that Slack is sponsoring-ish.

00:01:10 ◼   ► It's not, the people who are making it

00:01:13 ◼   ► are not Slack employees,

00:01:15 ◼   ► but they don't even get names or credit.

00:01:17 ◼   ► And this is all, you know, as by design.

00:01:21 ◼   ► But it's so, you know, it's sort of like

00:01:23 ◼   ► the way that like,

00:01:26 ◼   ► I think like, wasn't like the Milton Berle show,

00:01:30 ◼   ► like the Texaco Star Hour or something like that.

00:01:33 ◼   ► The Texaco is something, you know.

00:01:35 ◼   ► So it's just a podcast with the name,

00:01:37 ◼   ► the Slack Variety Pack,

00:01:38 ◼   ► and there's very, very minimal Slack promotion in it.

00:01:42 ◼   ► But it's like each little 20 minute episode

00:01:45 ◼   ► is like a series of three or four minute,

00:01:49 ◼   ► very edited, like NPR style segments.

00:01:52 ◼   ► It's sort of like NPR for nerds.

00:01:55 ◼   ► - Right. - And it's really good.

00:01:56 ◼   ► I did an interview with them for an episode

00:01:58 ◼   ► that's coming up, probably not, maybe like a month,

00:02:01 ◼   ► seems like they're like a month ahead

00:02:03 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:02:05 ◼   ► But I listened to a few episodes before I agreed to do it

00:02:07 ◼   ► and I was blown away.

00:02:08 ◼   ► It's like NPR, very edited, tightly, tightly edited.

00:02:11 ◼   ► Which is great and I love it

00:02:13 ◼   ► and I've subscribed to the Slack Variety Pack

00:02:15 ◼   ► And in theory, I could do a show that is similarly edited.

00:02:19 ◼   ► I mean, and, you know, but I don't.

00:02:23 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:24 ◼   ► - But I think it's fine though,

00:02:27 ◼   ► because like this ends up being,

00:02:29 ◼   ► and you put it as like the director's commentary

00:02:31 ◼   ► for "Daring Fireball,"

00:02:33 ◼   ► which, you know, is very tightly written and edited.

00:02:36 ◼   ► So it kind of makes sense that it's the opposite.

00:02:40 ◼   ► And yeah, I think both serve a role.

00:02:41 ◼   ► I mean, the talk show is great

00:02:43 ◼   ► when you're like cleaning house or something.

00:02:45 ◼   ► and it's, or I mean, now you know where I categorize you.

00:02:49 ◼   ► - Right, or driving, walking on, doing errands

00:02:53 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:02:54 ◼   ► No, it's exactly, to me though,

00:02:55 ◼   ► that those two forms are very traditional in radio,

00:02:58 ◼   ► where MBR has been NPR

00:03:00 ◼   ► and has done these tightly edited segments.

00:03:03 ◼   ► I mean, for those of you outside the States,

00:03:04 ◼   ► NPR is, the US is National Public Radio,

00:03:08 ◼   ► and it's very, I would say,

00:03:11 ◼   ► I think it's outstanding quality and very well regarded.

00:03:14 ◼   ► And they have shows like All Things Considered

00:03:19 ◼   ► and what was the show that was,

00:03:22 ◼   ► Ira Glass's show, This American Life.

00:03:25 ◼   ► - This American Life, yeah.

00:03:26 ◼   ► - That are famous for the quality of the writing

00:03:30 ◼   ► and the broadcasting, but also they're tightly edited.

00:03:33 ◼   ► And on the other side, talk radio has been a thing

00:03:36 ◼   ► as long as there's been radio.

00:03:37 ◼   ► And that's more like what my podcast is like.

00:03:40 ◼   ► And most of the podcasts in our racket are like.

00:03:43 ◼   ► It is funny that I think we have this mini discussion every time I'm on because I think

00:03:50 ◼   ► you messaged me 90 minutes or bust and I think I just replied with a straight LOL.

00:03:54 ◼   ► I'm surprised it wasn't an emoji.

00:03:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm rusty.

00:03:59 ◼   ► I'm a little off my game.

00:04:01 ◼   ► What would be the emoji?

00:04:02 ◼   ► I'm jet lagged too.

00:04:03 ◼   ► I'm jet lagged too.

00:04:04 ◼   ► I'll get out.

00:04:05 ◼   ► It's 6.53 am here and I've been awake for like six hours.

00:04:06 ◼   ► What would be the emoji you would throw at me?

00:04:08 ◼   ► The poop?

00:04:11 ◼   ► - I really like the emoji with the one eye open

00:04:14 ◼   ► and the tongue sticking out.

00:04:15 ◼   ► - Right, I gotcha.

00:04:17 ◼   ► You've had a busy summer.

00:04:18 ◼   ► You were traveling in the States

00:04:19 ◼   ► and now you're back on the other side of,

00:04:22 ◼   ► what do we call the Atlantic, the pond.

00:04:24 ◼   ► What do we call the Pacific?

00:04:26 ◼   ► - The Pacific is the big pond, I don't know.

00:04:28 ◼   ► - Big pond.

00:04:29 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:04:30 ◼   ► - It's definitely a lot bigger than the Atlantic,

00:04:32 ◼   ► I'll tell you that.

00:04:33 ◼   ► - I'm sure that's exactly what,

00:04:34 ◼   ► well, I know, in fact, I've done it.

00:04:35 ◼   ► I know what it feels like when you're flying over it.

00:04:39 ◼   ► - I had a particularly rough one this time because,

00:04:41 ◼   ► Yes. I mean, it was just me and my two kids. My wife every summer comes back a

00:04:45 ◼   ► couple weeks early. We've only done two summers. But that's like her annual

00:04:50 ◼   ► vacation. She gets two weeks of filming around. But I realized that I haven't

00:04:58 ◼   ► done the like, because my parents are in the Midwest, so go from Chicago to Taipei,

00:05:01 ◼   ► there's no direct flight. So you have to connect. And prior to that, we were in

00:05:06 ◼   ► Seattle. And then last year, we did an overnight stay in Seoul, Korea on the way

00:05:10 ◼   ► back. I hadn't done the one trip all the way in a while. So I forgot just how brutal it

00:05:16 ◼   ► was. Then to make it worse, our flight going got moved forward an hour and a half and our

00:05:20 ◼   ► flight going back got delayed. So it actually ended up being 26 hours door to door. Two

00:05:25 ◼   ► hours at the airport in Chicago. So yeah, it was rough. The kids were awesome. They

00:05:31 ◼   ► were pretty experienced at this point. But man, it was hard.

00:05:34 ◼   ► O'Hare? Had to be O'Hare. Yeah, O'Hare. My parents are in this weird spot. They're

00:05:40 ◼   ► outside Madison but to the south of Madison where they're far enough from the Madison

00:05:45 ◼   ► Airport and close enough to O'Hare, it doesn't make sense to fly from Madison, but that means

00:05:50 ◼   ► you have to drive two hours to O'Hare, which just adds a whole layer of stink on top of

00:05:55 ◼   ► the entire endeavor.

00:05:56 ◼   ► I was thinking of Midway, which is…

00:05:58 ◼   ► Oh, that's awesome.

00:05:59 ◼   ► Midway doesn't make any sense for international travel.

00:06:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that…

00:06:04 ◼   ► I hate Southwest, but I think most of it's because in Chicago it's only Midway, which

00:06:09 ◼   ► which is on the south side of Chicago,

00:06:10 ◼   ► and it is just awful to get to.

00:06:12 ◼   ► So I've sworn off that.

00:06:16 ◼   ► - It's good though.

00:06:17 ◼   ► For me, I've liked it over the years

00:06:18 ◼   ► because it's good if you just wanna go to downtown Chicago.

00:06:22 ◼   ► - Right, that's right.

00:06:23 ◼   ► - You fly into mid, and Southwest has tons of flights

00:06:26 ◼   ► every day between Philly and Midway.

00:06:29 ◼   ► So you have tons of options,

00:06:31 ◼   ► and then you get off and you just walk right over

00:06:35 ◼   ► to whatever, the CTA, and you get a card,

00:06:38 ◼   ► 20 bucks on it and it's like the end point for the I think it's the orange line you don't have to like pay attention

00:06:44 ◼   ► You just get on an orange train and next thing, you know, you're downtown. It's actually pretty pretty good

00:06:48 ◼   ► But for anything else, you know, you gotta go to a hair

00:06:50 ◼   ► But it's good though. I mean I mean air travel. I mean it sounds so cliche but like I

00:06:56 ◼   ► Used to swear off

00:06:58 ◼   ► You know, I I phoned I've been doing this for what 13 years now and I saw off ever flying us airline or the Pacific

00:07:05 ◼   ► But I've jumped full back in with United

00:07:08 ◼   ► Basically because they have all their cross-specific planes now have Wi-Fi and power at their seats.

00:07:15 ◼   ► Which is, it's unbelievable what it, I mean, yeah I know the whole Wi-Fi thing has been done, but because they actually have satellite Wi-Fi which works way better than that go-go crap.

00:07:23 ◼   ► And it's relatively, it's stunningly cheap, it's like $16 or $17, and man it just transforms the whole flight.

00:07:31 ◼   ► Oh my god, this is gonna, we're easily on pace for a 90 minute show since we haven't even touched any.

00:07:36 ◼   ► - I'm not touching it.

00:07:37 ◼   ► Can I just tell you I had the worst go-go experience ever

00:07:40 ◼   ► a few weeks ago.

00:07:41 ◼   ► I'm trying to remember if it was coming home from WWDC.

00:07:46 ◼   ► That would be months ago, but it was sometime this summer.

00:07:49 ◼   ► Might have been coming home from WWDC.

00:07:52 ◼   ► And Amy was out with me, and we're flying home

00:07:55 ◼   ► on US Airlines/American.

00:07:59 ◼   ► It's all one thing now, but they've, I don't know.

00:08:01 ◼   ► They're like in this weird one boat,

00:08:03 ◼   ► one foot in one boat and one foot in the other.

00:08:06 ◼   ► - Right. - State right now.

00:08:07 ◼   ► We get on, and I've, 'cause of Philly,

00:08:10 ◼   ► Philly is a huge US air hub and has been forever,

00:08:14 ◼   ► so I mean, that's where I'm platinum

00:08:15 ◼   ► and that's where I fly all the time.

00:08:18 ◼   ► And I always just book my go-go when I get on the plane.

00:08:21 ◼   ► That's what I've always done.

00:08:23 ◼   ► And I've heard that you're supposed to book

00:08:24 ◼   ► a day in advance or whatever,

00:08:26 ◼   ► and it just never occurred to me.

00:08:27 ◼   ► So we get on the plane and I'm looking at the go-go options,

00:08:30 ◼   ► and there are no options to get service

00:08:34 ◼   ► for more than an hour other than,

00:08:37 ◼   ► and the hourly rate was, I don't know, onerous.

00:08:40 ◼   ► It was really expensive,

00:08:41 ◼   ► other than signing up for a monthly subscription.

00:08:44 ◼   ► - And then you can't unsubscribe, right?

00:08:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, when you get a monthly subscription to Go-Go,

00:08:51 ◼   ► there is no way to cancel it.

00:08:53 ◼   ► You have to call them or email them.

00:08:56 ◼   ► - Which you can't do from a void.

00:08:58 ◼   ► - And it's 50 bucks.

00:09:00 ◼   ► - Oh, they're a terrible company.

00:09:02 ◼   ► I mean, it seems criminal,

00:09:04 ◼   ► but I did have a flight later that month,

00:09:07 ◼   ► and I knew I was flying at the,

00:09:08 ◼   ► it was, it had to be WWDC,

00:09:10 ◼   ► 'cause I knew it was June,

00:09:11 ◼   ► and I knew I was flying again at the end of June.

00:09:13 ◼   ► And I thought, you know, it actually would work out almost,

00:09:17 ◼   ► you know, like the 50 bucks isn't that bad, so I did it.

00:09:20 ◼   ► I felt so bad, but I was watching, it was so fun.

00:09:25 ◼   ► It felt bad, but I was watching this woman

00:09:27 ◼   ► one row up across the aisle from me on her tablet.

00:09:32 ◼   ► And I think it was actually, it was interesting for a few reasons.

00:09:34 ◼   ► I think it was a Kindle tablet, not an iPad.

00:09:38 ◼   ► And it's very unusual for me to see people using tablets on,

00:09:42 ◼   ► you know, regular consumer type people using consumers on iPads.

00:09:45 ◼   ► And all she was doing was over and over and over again trying to get on the Wi-Fi

00:09:48 ◼   ► and get the, you know, just let me pay for Wi-Fi for this flight.

00:09:52 ◼   ► And she's looking at the options and she's like, and I could see, and

00:09:55 ◼   ► she was like reading all the fine print and thinking, you know,

00:09:58 ◼   ► I could see what she was thinking, you know,

00:10:00 ◼   ► that there must be some little fine print thing

00:10:02 ◼   ► like click here to just get a pass for this flight.

00:10:05 ◼   ► And she couldn't find it.

00:10:06 ◼   ► She spent like 25 minutes trying to sign up for Wi-Fi.

00:10:10 ◼   ► - Well, what's bad is, I mean,

00:10:12 ◼   ► obviously they have a monopoly and a captive audience,

00:10:13 ◼   ► all that sort of stuff and all, you know,

00:10:15 ◼   ► no real incentive to provide decent service.

00:10:17 ◼   ► But the thing that's kind of nasty is I use them.

00:10:22 ◼   ► I used to use them a lot when I,

00:10:23 ◼   ► I used to travel a lot with Microsoft.

00:10:25 ◼   ► And so I had like a monthly account or whatever like that.

00:10:28 ◼   ► And so I experienced the impossible to cancel thing.

00:10:30 ◼   ► Um, but they now, if you sign up, they.

00:10:35 ◼   ► Opt you into storing your credit card with them and give

00:10:38 ◼   ► you no option to opt out.

00:10:39 ◼   ► Right.

00:10:39 ◼   ► And so like they will keep your credit card no matter what.

00:10:42 ◼   ► And then, so I, I, I bought it and then I logged in and immediately

00:10:46 ◼   ► remove my credit card and needs to say four days later, I get on return

00:10:50 ◼   ► flight and my credit card is still there.

00:10:51 ◼   ► So not only do they opt you in without, without giving you an option, they

00:10:56 ◼   ► actually failed or lied to actually remove

00:10:59 ◼   ► when I told them to.

00:11:00 ◼   ► Yeah, they're an awful company.

00:11:02 ◼   ► And the satellite-based stuff is so much better.

00:11:05 ◼   ► I think they're watching satellite service,

00:11:06 ◼   ► but yeah, I hope they die.

00:11:07 ◼   ► I mean, they're, it's really bad.

00:11:11 ◼   ► - The only thing that's good about the monthly plan

00:11:12 ◼   ► is it seems like if you do agree to this $50 a month thing,

00:11:16 ◼   ► you can then have your laptop on

00:11:20 ◼   ► and put it away under a seat or something,

00:11:23 ◼   ► and then you get out your iPhone,

00:11:25 ◼   ► you can get on with your iPhone.

00:11:26 ◼   ► And then when you go back to your iPad, it's still on.

00:11:29 ◼   ► As opposed to the, every time you log on

00:11:32 ◼   ► with a second device, you're logged out

00:11:33 ◼   ► of the previous device that you--

00:11:35 ◼   ► - Oh, interesting.

00:11:36 ◼   ► That's nice, yeah, for sure.

00:11:38 ◼   ► All right, well, we're not gonna,

00:11:40 ◼   ► we have to do this 90 minute thing.

00:11:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, we're gonna get it, we'll make it.

00:11:44 ◼   ► Best flight--

00:11:45 ◼   ► - Not like anything happens in August, so.

00:11:47 ◼   ► - Best customer service flight experience I've ever had

00:11:49 ◼   ► was a Southwest flight out of Midway.

00:11:54 ◼   ► it was at one of the C4 conferences, so it was probably like 2007 or 2008. And in

00:11:59 ◼   ► Philadelphia, the subway lines are colored and like the blue line runs

00:12:05 ◼   ► east-west, orange line runs north-south, and there aren't like, there aren't

00:12:11 ◼   ► multiple colors on the same track. And I knew from previous years that to get out

00:12:15 ◼   ► to Midway, I knew which it was this, you know, because it was the same hotel, you

00:12:19 ◼   ► I go to the station, go up the steps,

00:12:21 ◼   ► and take an orange train on the right.

00:12:25 ◼   ► And that'll be going the right direction.

00:12:26 ◼   ► I remembered it.

00:12:27 ◼   ► And so it was me and another guy

00:12:28 ◼   ► who was at the conference, actually.

00:12:30 ◼   ► And actually, I guess I was the one who raced up.

00:12:33 ◼   ► I raced up the stairs and there was a train already there.

00:12:35 ◼   ► And I was like, this is my lucky day.

00:12:37 ◼   ► And I jump into the train and I look

00:12:39 ◼   ► and I recognized a face from the CIFAR conference,

00:12:41 ◼   ► like somebody else who attended.

00:12:43 ◼   ► Didn't know him.

00:12:44 ◼   ► I think he knew who I was.

00:12:46 ◼   ► So I sat down and we just started talking.

00:12:49 ◼   ► and we made quick friends,

00:12:50 ◼   ► and it was a great way to pass the time.

00:12:52 ◼   ► And then all of a sudden I thought,

00:12:53 ◼   ► "You know, this is taking longer than it usually does."

00:12:56 ◼   ► We like, we look out the window,

00:12:59 ◼   ► and it does not look anything like what I remember

00:13:02 ◼   ► the trip to Midway looking.

00:13:03 ◼   ► And it ends up that in Chicago,

00:13:05 ◼   ► they have multiple colored trains

00:13:07 ◼   ► that take the same track. - The same life, right.

00:13:10 ◼   ► - Actually, maybe it was my fault.

00:13:12 ◼   ► It might've been that we were going up the steps together,

00:13:14 ◼   ► and I told them, "Quick, get on."

00:13:16 ◼   ► Now that I think about it.

00:13:18 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:13:19 ◼   ► If you're out there--

00:13:20 ◼   ► - If you're down in the loop, yeah,

00:13:21 ◼   ► they're all on the same track.

00:13:22 ◼   ► - I don't remember this fellow's name,

00:13:24 ◼   ► but if you're out there listening to the show

00:13:26 ◼   ► and you remember this, I'm very sorry.

00:13:28 ◼   ► Well, it ends up we were way out in North Chicago

00:13:31 ◼   ► and it was not a good neighborhood.

00:13:34 ◼   ► And we asked, got off, we recognized the interstate,

00:13:39 ◼   ► got off and I asked a CTA employee,

00:13:40 ◼   ► hey, what's the best way we can get a cab?

00:13:43 ◼   ► And they were like, get back on the train

00:13:45 ◼   ► and go all the way back downtown.

00:13:47 ◼   ► And I'm like, are you joking?

00:13:49 ◼   ► And they're like, there are no cabs out here.

00:13:50 ◼   ► There's no cabs.

00:13:52 ◼   ► So that's really, and I was like, are you serious

00:13:56 ◼   ► that that's like the best way?

00:13:57 ◼   ► And they're like, yeah, the best way for you

00:13:58 ◼   ► to get to Midway would be to get back on the same train

00:14:00 ◼   ► you were just on going the other way,

00:14:01 ◼   ► go all the way back down to where you were

00:14:03 ◼   ► and wait for the train that you should have gotten on.

00:14:06 ◼   ► So what I'm doing is I take out my cell phone

00:14:09 ◼   ► and call Southwest and I'm thinking I am screwed.

00:14:14 ◼   ► and during Fireball was just barely off the ground,

00:14:18 ◼   ► rebooking for hundreds of dollars more

00:14:21 ◼   ► was gonna be seriously an expense

00:14:23 ◼   ► that I was not prepared for.

00:14:25 ◼   ► I call Southwest and tell 'em,

00:14:26 ◼   ► and the woman says, "Hi, I have another flight

00:14:30 ◼   ► "leaving 70 minutes after the one you were on.

00:14:33 ◼   ► "How about that one?"

00:14:34 ◼   ► And I was like, "Yeah, how much is it gonna cost?"

00:14:35 ◼   ► She was, "Nothing."

00:14:36 ◼   ► I was like, "Really?"

00:14:38 ◼   ► And she was like, "Yeah, it's the same price,

00:14:40 ◼   ► "so don't worry about it."

00:14:41 ◼   ► that will make you a happy customer for a very long time.

00:14:45 ◼   ► - I was like, I'm going to be about an hour late,

00:14:48 ◼   ► so that is absolutely perfect.

00:14:50 ◼   ► And she was like, okay, thanks for flying Southwest.

00:14:52 ◼   ► And it took like three minutes,

00:14:55 ◼   ► and I went from having an absolutely horrible day

00:14:58 ◼   ► to having, I actually felt better

00:15:00 ◼   ► than if I had just made my flight.

00:15:02 ◼   ► - That's the thing, that is the thing

00:15:03 ◼   ► about customer service that, there's two things,

00:15:07 ◼   ► I think about customer service

00:15:08 ◼   ► and also about like just buying stuff,

00:15:10 ◼   ► that makes such a difference. I mean, a good service experience can actually make something

00:15:16 ◼   ► better than it was originally. Like even if you're dealing with a broken product or something

00:15:19 ◼   ► like that. I had to do the, you know, I had to do the, I also got my Apple watch replaced.

00:15:24 ◼   ► I think we talked about this on Twitter or whatever. The Taptic Engine was failing, but

00:15:29 ◼   ► yeah, I mean, it's still not the, you walk in and they give you a new one on the spot

00:15:34 ◼   ► because they now they have to mail them in with the watches, but still it took two days

00:15:38 ◼   ► and they called me up and they gave me a brand new watch and like the fact I didn't have to like

00:15:44 ◼   ► hassle them about it or like you know it's it's just it makes a big difference for sure yeah

00:15:49 ◼   ► but that it's interesting though you mentioned the the uh I'm gonna I'm gonna hijack the conversation

00:15:54 ◼   ► okay um because why you're here obviously a big thing about if you were up in the middle of

00:15:59 ◼   ► nowhere was now you could call an uber much more easily and they're much better at serving you know

00:16:03 ◼   ► serving underserved areas than than cabs have ever been.

00:16:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I do. I wonder about that.

00:16:09 ◼   ► Yeah, well, the Uber thing is interesting in general, but I do

00:16:13 ◼   ► hope at some point we get to the the Uber this is a long

00:16:16 ◼   ► extended segue to like cars and ride sharing and all this and I

00:16:21 ◼   ► am I would love to get your thoughts about the the

00:16:25 ◼   ► seemingly all but confirmed Apple car because I am still a

00:16:30 ◼   ► little baffled about the whole thing. But we don't need to do

00:16:32 ◼   ► to now, but I would love to.

00:16:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, why don't I take a moment here

00:16:38 ◼   ► as we rocket towards our 90 minute episode length.

00:16:42 ◼   ► I'll take a moment here and thank our first sponsor

00:16:44 ◼   ► and then we can do that.

00:16:45 ◼   ► We can just talk about the Apple Car stuff

00:16:46 ◼   ► that's popped up in the last month or so.

00:16:50 ◼   ► 'Cause I don't think I've talked about it

00:16:51 ◼   ► and I know you haven't because you've been off the air.

00:16:54 ◼   ► But let me take a moment and thank our first sponsor.

00:16:56 ◼   ► It's our good friends at Harry's.

00:17:01 ◼   ► go to harrys.com and use the promo code "THETALKSHOW"

00:17:04 ◼   ► and you'll save five bucks off your first purchase.

00:17:07 ◼   ► What do they sell?

00:17:08 ◼   ► Harry's offers high quality razors and blades

00:17:12 ◼   ► for a fraction of the price of the big name razor brands.

00:17:16 ◼   ► Harry's was started by two guys who wanted a better product

00:17:19 ◼   ► without paying an arm and a leg.

00:17:21 ◼   ► The story I remember hearing was that one of the founders

00:17:23 ◼   ► was traveling or something, forgot his razor,

00:17:26 ◼   ► went into the drugstore, big name drugstore

00:17:30 ◼   ► right next to the hotel he was staying at

00:17:32 ◼   ► and couldn't even get it because the blades and everything

00:17:35 ◼   ► were locked behind those plexiglass cabinets

00:17:37 ◼   ► with a padlock and you have to find an employee

00:17:40 ◼   ► of the store and get him to come over

00:17:42 ◼   ► and unlock the padlock and then you get

00:17:44 ◼   ► to actually buy the stuff and it's like,

00:17:45 ◼   ► why can't I just buy this stuff?

00:17:48 ◼   ► And that's where he got the idea that, you know,

00:17:51 ◼   ► this is a perfect thing to sell online.

00:17:53 ◼   ► Really, really serious company though.

00:17:56 ◼   ► They make their own razor blades.

00:17:58 ◼   ► They bought an old blade factory in Germany.

00:18:01 ◼   ► They were buying the blades from them

00:18:02 ◼   ► and they liked the blades they were getting so much.

00:18:04 ◼   ► They just bought the factory.

00:18:06 ◼   ► That must be nice if you can do that.

00:18:09 ◼   ► These are high quality, high performing German blades

00:18:12 ◼   ► crafted by shaving experts, giving you a better shave

00:18:15 ◼   ► that respects your face and wallet.

00:18:17 ◼   ► They offer factory direct pricing.

00:18:20 ◼   ► That's how they sell these quality blades, so much cheaper.

00:18:24 ◼   ► 'Cause they make 'em in their factory

00:18:27 ◼   ► and then they package 'em up

00:18:28 ◼   ► and then they just ship them right to you.

00:18:29 ◼   ► And there's no middleman, no distributors,

00:18:31 ◼   ► no retailers, nothing like that.

00:18:33 ◼   ► That's how they cut the price in half.

00:18:35 ◼   ► And it really is about half the price.

00:18:38 ◼   ► Their starter set is an amazing deal.

00:18:40 ◼   ► 15 bucks gets you a razor moisturizing shave cream

00:18:44 ◼   ► or gel, your preference, and three razor blades.

00:18:47 ◼   ► I got my starter kit years ago.

00:18:51 ◼   ► Whenever, you've been listening to the show for a long time,

00:18:53 ◼   ► you know how long Harry's has been a sponsor.

00:18:55 ◼   ► They sent me one of these years ago

00:18:56 ◼   ► when I first got started.

00:18:57 ◼   ► And I've looked at it recently.

00:19:00 ◼   ► It looks brand new.

00:19:01 ◼   ► It looks absolutely like mint condition.

00:19:03 ◼   ► It really does hold up.

00:19:04 ◼   ► And I just keep it on a shelf in the shower.

00:19:07 ◼   ► I mean, it's not even, it's not like I baby it

00:19:10 ◼   ► or anything like that.

00:19:10 ◼   ► Really high quality stuff.

00:19:12 ◼   ► Replacement blades are two bucks each or less.

00:19:17 ◼   ► You can get eight pack for 15 bucks,

00:19:18 ◼   ► 16 pack for just $25.

00:19:21 ◼   ► Really, really great stuff.

00:19:23 ◼   ► And really nice packaging.

00:19:26 ◼   ► great heavy feel to the blade.

00:19:28 ◼   ► Everything is just really nice.

00:19:29 ◼   ► My dad, out of the blue, unprompted by me,

00:19:32 ◼   ► I guess he like loads my website,

00:19:34 ◼   ► I don't know, once a week or something like that,

00:19:37 ◼   ► just to see what I'm up to.

00:19:38 ◼   ► Not the sort of person who buys stuff like this online.

00:19:44 ◼   ► He told me he saw that they were a sponsor of my thing.

00:19:48 ◼   ► I swear to God, I didn't tell him go buy this.

00:19:49 ◼   ► He went and did it on his own.

00:19:51 ◼   ► He was like, man, this is really nice.

00:19:53 ◼   ► So there's a testimony.

00:19:55 ◼   ► dad Bob Gruber tells you that Harry's razor blades and shaving cream are

00:20:01 ◼   ► really nice. Also my dad is a notorious cheapskate. Does not listen to the show. I

00:20:07 ◼   ► hope he doesn't. But he's pretty tight-fisted. Thought it was a great

00:20:13 ◼   ► deal. In fact, I don't think he would have done it if not. So there you go.

00:20:17 ◼   ► There's a testimony from my dad. Go check them out. Like I said, go to harrys.com

00:20:23 ◼   ► and use the promo code "Talkshow".

00:20:26 ◼   ► Know the, I don't know what I said at the beginning of the read, but at the end here,

00:20:30 ◼   ► just remember, "Talkshow", know the, and you will save five bucks off your first purchase.

00:20:35 ◼   ► So that $15 starter kit is just ten bucks.

00:20:38 ◼   ► My thanks to Harry's.

00:20:40 ◼   ► So how did you end up with a Mac way back in the day if your father was a notorious

00:20:46 ◼   ► cheapskate?

00:20:47 ◼   ► Oh, that's a great question.

00:20:50 ◼   ► Well, first part is, and I've told this before,

00:20:54 ◼   ► when I was growing up, I did not own a computer.

00:20:56 ◼   ► And because my parents would not buy me one,

00:21:01 ◼   ► and a lot of my friends were having trouble

00:21:03 ◼   ► getting their parents to buy them a computer.

00:21:05 ◼   ► They were relatively expensive in the 80s.

00:21:07 ◼   ► And the line most of my friends got was,

00:21:09 ◼   ► I'm not gonna spend all that money,

00:21:11 ◼   ► you're not gonna use it.

00:21:12 ◼   ► And my parents' explanation to me was,

00:21:14 ◼   ► we're not gonna buy you a computer

00:21:15 ◼   ► because if we do, you're never gonna leave the house.

00:21:18 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:21:19 ◼   ► This is true.

00:21:20 ◼   ► And I resented it deeply, 'cause I wanted nothing

00:21:22 ◼   ► in the world more than a computer.

00:21:24 ◼   ► But I have to say that there was, you know,

00:21:27 ◼   ► there's some merit to their argument,

00:21:29 ◼   ► and they in some ways knew me better than perhaps,

00:21:32 ◼   ► you know, I know myself.

00:21:34 ◼   ► And I, you know, I don't know,

00:21:36 ◼   ► I certainly read a lot more books and novels as a teenager

00:21:39 ◼   ► than I would have if I owned a computer.

00:21:42 ◼   ► - That's interesting, because like I tend to kind of like

00:21:46 ◼   ► resent my parents for a similar reason.

00:21:48 ◼   ► Like they, I didn't really, you know, have access to a computer or was never really pushed in that direction, even though like, you know, kind of wonder like, well, if I had been into that before I went to school, like what, you know, what track would I be on now?

00:22:02 ◼   ► Would I be, you know, a, a programmer?

00:22:05 ◼   ► Would I have started my own company or whatever, blah, blah, blah.

00:22:07 ◼   ► And, um, obviously in, in the end, it ended up working out pretty well to end up having much more of a kind of literary background, a lot of reading, um, water writing.

00:22:17 ◼   ► I did the student paper thing as well.

00:22:19 ◼   ► But it's interesting you kind of put it,

00:22:21 ◼   ► say that word resentment,

00:22:23 ◼   ► 'cause it's something I thought about as well.

00:22:25 ◼   ► But it actually probably turned out for the best.

00:22:28 ◼   ► - And in high school, now I did have a pretty good

00:22:30 ◼   ► computer science teacher in high school,

00:22:34 ◼   ► and we had a little lab.

00:22:35 ◼   ► Mostly Apple, I guess by the time I got to high school,

00:22:39 ◼   ► they were mostly Apple II GS's,

00:22:41 ◼   ► and I think there was one Macintosh.

00:22:45 ◼   ► And I appreciated the Macintosh greatly.

00:22:48 ◼   ► I really did, and I enjoyed my time on it.

00:22:50 ◼   ► But I chose to spend most of my time on the 2GS

00:22:54 ◼   ► 'cause that's where I was most familiar.

00:22:55 ◼   ► And for writing the programming assignments I had,

00:22:58 ◼   ► I was most familiar with the tools.

00:23:00 ◼   ► But then when I went to college in 1991 at Drexel,

00:23:05 ◼   ► you had to have access to a Macintosh.

00:23:07 ◼   ► Now that didn't mean you had to buy one,

00:23:08 ◼   ► 'cause there was a lab, but I mean,

00:23:10 ◼   ► effectively though, it was highly recommended

00:23:12 ◼   ► that all incoming freshmen buy one.

00:23:14 ◼   ► And the student discounts at the time were tremendous.

00:23:17 ◼   ► I think it was close to 50% off.

00:23:19 ◼   ► It might have been like 40% off.

00:23:21 ◼   ► - Nice.

00:23:22 ◼   ► - So I got a Macintosh when I was a freshman in college.

00:23:26 ◼   ► And it was a big reason,

00:23:27 ◼   ► one of the reasons I wanted to go to Drexel

00:23:29 ◼   ► is that I knew that if I got a computer

00:23:30 ◼   ► when I was a freshman,

00:23:31 ◼   ► I certainly wanted it to be a Macintosh.

00:23:34 ◼   ► - Interesting.

00:23:35 ◼   ► Oh, it's funny.

00:23:36 ◼   ► I mean, my parents tend to be more on the frugal side as well

00:23:41 ◼   ► shall we say.

00:23:44 ◼   ► I don't know, it's funny, I would not normally think of you as being frugal.

00:23:48 ◼   ► Oh, I'm not.

00:23:49 ◼   ► Nor of myself.

00:23:51 ◼   ► So it's just, we, I think, had a similar reaction to that.

00:23:56 ◼   ► No, my sister is, though. My sister's two years older.

00:23:59 ◼   ► Oh, my sister is the same way. She's incredible.

00:24:02 ◼   ► That's funny.

00:24:03 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, knows where everything is, you know, actually balances the checkbook, etc., etc.

00:24:10 ◼   ► knows which store has certain items that are cheaper than the other store.

00:24:14 ◼   ► I'm so grateful for it. I honestly want to switch all my credit card usage to American Express just

00:24:19 ◼   ► because their Apple Pay implementation actually shows every single charge. Whereas I also have

00:24:26 ◼   ► a couple other cards. They only show the charge on your phone when you charge it

00:24:30 ◼   ► with using Apple Pay. But American Express, every single charge with the card will show on your

00:24:35 ◼   ► on your phone as a notification.

00:24:36 ◼   ► - Yes, yeah.

00:24:37 ◼   ► - Which I think is great because I don't wanna be bothered

00:24:40 ◼   ► to go through my statement every month

00:24:42 ◼   ► and make sure there aren't fraudulent charges.

00:24:44 ◼   ► So the fact that it pops up every time is fantastic.

00:24:48 ◼   ► It hurts me that only American Express does that.

00:24:51 ◼   ► - I totally love that.

00:24:54 ◼   ► Now is that, yes, and I know exactly

00:24:57 ◼   ► where I was going with this.

00:24:59 ◼   ► So that only works though with Apple Pay,

00:25:04 ◼   ► even though it, like you said,

00:25:06 ◼   ► you have to have an Apple Pay device.

00:25:08 ◼   ► And that means, like for the couple of weeks

00:25:11 ◼   ► over the last year where I've switched back

00:25:13 ◼   ► to my iPhone 5S for testing,

00:25:15 ◼   ► like when I first started testing iOS 9,

00:25:17 ◼   ► I didn't wanna put it on my 6, so I put it on 5S.

00:25:21 ◼   ► And I swear, not the size of the screen,

00:25:25 ◼   ► the biggest thing that I missed

00:25:26 ◼   ► was getting those Amex notifications.

00:25:29 ◼   ► I honestly, there was a day where my heart skipped

00:25:32 ◼   ► and I thought, wait a minute,

00:25:34 ◼   ► Is this busted?

00:25:35 ◼   ► I'm not getting, I was like, oh, it's because it goes through.

00:25:37 ◼   ► It doesn't go through the Amex app.

00:25:39 ◼   ► It goes through Apple Pay and what they call the wallet now, but used to be called Passbook.

00:25:44 ◼   ► Well, it's wallet in, is it?

00:25:47 ◼   ► Nine.

00:25:48 ◼   ► I think it's still Passbook on iOS 8, which by the way, I've never, yeah, it's gotten

00:25:52 ◼   ► a, I haven't put it, I haven't installed iOS 9 yet.

00:25:55 ◼   ► I never installed anything early.

00:25:57 ◼   ► You're smart, but I'm so used to iOS 9 that I'm talking about it as though it's the present

00:26:00 ◼   ► version.

00:26:01 ◼   ► It's that good to me.

00:26:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:03 ◼   ► has gotten, even on iOS 8, it's so much better than it used to be. I've actually been pretty

00:26:10 ◼   ► impressed with it. Does iOS 9 fix the removing flights or hotel stays that you've already done,

00:26:16 ◼   ► like in the past? No, I don't think so. Ah, that's like the one killer.

00:26:20 ◼   ► But like the whole like- Does it do them automatically?

00:26:21 ◼   ► Yeah, because they stay in there. You have to dismiss each individually, which if you're

00:26:26 ◼   ► traveling with your family and you have like four tickets on your passbook, you have to go through

00:26:31 ◼   ► and dismiss each one individually, which is really annoying.

00:26:34 ◼   ► But that said, the way it uses location and time data

00:26:38 ◼   ► to have the thing there instantly available,

00:26:41 ◼   ► I've been very impressed and happy with it.

00:26:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, I really, really missed it when I went back.

00:26:47 ◼   ► So anyway, that's how I got started with the Mac in 1991.

00:26:50 ◼   ► Even though I knew it from the '80s,

00:26:52 ◼   ► from having used it and spent some time on it

00:26:54 ◼   ► in high school.

00:26:55 ◼   ► What about you?

00:26:56 ◼   ► - I started out with, when I went to school,

00:27:01 ◼   ► I built my own PC and I actually started a little business on the side, putting PCs

00:27:07 ◼   ► together for people. I was like, you know, Michael Dell prodigy or something.

00:27:10 ◼   ► Um, but, uh, no, I, so I put it together in my own PC and upgrade it with

00:27:15 ◼   ► different parts and all that, that was that I did that all the way through

00:27:18 ◼   ► school. And then, uh, I didn't get a Mac.

00:27:21 ◼   ► I got a Mac when I came to Taiwan in 2003.

00:27:25 ◼   ► And I think I had a laptop that I bummed off like an ex-girlfriend or something.

00:27:29 ◼   ► I think it was broke and like if I fix it, can I have it?

00:27:32 ◼   ► Um, and, and I did fix it and then she wanted it back and then I had it.

00:27:35 ◼   ► And you'll say at some point she could be my ex-girlfriend.

00:27:38 ◼   ► I don't think it was about that.

00:27:39 ◼   ► Um, but, uh, but yes, around that time, actually it was when the, uh, the first

00:27:46 ◼   ► like flat screen iMac came out.

00:27:49 ◼   ► Uh, not the, not the, not the one with the arm, the one where like

00:27:53 ◼   ► the screen was the computer.

00:27:54 ◼   ► Um, it was all white and like, I just thought that was just awesome.

00:27:58 ◼   ► I used a Mac a bit in school, but mainly at the newspaper to do layout.

00:28:08 ◼   ► But not much, but I thought that computer was so cool and I liked it so much that I

00:28:12 ◼   ► ended up buying an iBook.

00:28:14 ◼   ► I don't know what happened in the transition to buying that.

00:28:17 ◼   ► But I didn't have any money then at all.

00:28:19 ◼   ► I think it was probably just a matter of that got me in the door.

00:28:23 ◼   ► So that was when Tiger, around Tiger, I think it was Panther, I think Tiger came out a couple

00:28:28 ◼   ► months after that and yeah I use a Mac pretty much since then I was the

00:28:34 ◼   ► head of like the Mac Club at Kellogg like because back you know helping

00:28:38 ◼   ► people like actually Kellogg being a business schooler you know they provided

00:28:41 ◼   ► they had Windows PCs but to use a Mac you know it's a little a little more

00:28:44 ◼   ► difficult and so it kind of blew everyone's mind when I left Kellogg to go

00:28:48 ◼   ► work at Microsoft because I was kind of known as the the Mac Apple guy but

00:28:55 ◼   ► Microsoft is good. Windows, I think, this is really interesting actually. Windows isn't

00:29:01 ◼   ► that bad. There's things I like about it better than a Mac. Some of the window management

00:29:06 ◼   ► stuff I think is actually pretty great. And actually I've installed a couple of utilities

00:29:10 ◼   ► on the Mac to replicate some of it. It's called BetterSnapTool. It lets you basically

00:29:15 ◼   ► move Windows around with the keyboard. It's pretty great. There's a free endorsement.

00:29:23 ◼   ► The problem with Windows, and this is kind of counterintuitive, was the application situation.

00:29:29 ◼   ► The third-party apps just all sucked.

00:29:33 ◼   ► Obviously the Microsoft apps were good and much better on Windows than they are on the

00:29:37 ◼   ► Mac, but things like OmniFocus or a Twitter app, just all this basic stuff.

00:29:47 ◼   ► The Mac was even back then, I guess it wasn't that long ago, but it was so much better than

00:29:54 ◼   ► the Windows situation where everything, at best, you could find something third party,

00:29:59 ◼   ► but it'd be super ugly.

00:30:00 ◼   ► It just looked like crap and the monetization would be weird.

00:30:07 ◼   ► Actually the biggest problem I had with using Windows was not Windows, it was not having

00:30:11 ◼   ► enough apps, which at the time I told some people that and they totally didn't believe

00:30:15 ◼   ► Oh, no, that's the big advantage Windows has but even by then for a consumer sort of I wasn't consumers working enterprise obviously, but but for

00:30:23 ◼   ► Personal app usage the situation was was pretty dire even then and obviously it's it's only gotten worse since then

00:30:31 ◼   ► Yeah, have you ever used a Moom?

00:30:33 ◼   ► The couple of these utilities mo om

00:30:37 ◼   ► It's I have I don't use it. I don't but if I were to use a Windows management utility

00:30:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's probably what I would get.

00:30:44 ◼   ► I'll put some links in here.

00:30:46 ◼   ► Just another utility, you know.

00:30:49 ◼   ► I kind of agree.

00:30:51 ◼   ► I don't use any third party utilities for that anymore,

00:30:53 ◼   ► but I do kind of agree that managing a bunch of open windows

00:30:57 ◼   ► on OS X with the stock stuff is kinda convoluted.

00:31:02 ◼   ► - It's kinda hard to--

00:31:04 ◼   ► - Keep it orderly.

00:31:05 ◼   ► - Once you get used to the snapping stuff,

00:31:06 ◼   ► it's pretty awesome.

00:31:08 ◼   ► - Truth be told, I haven't used Windows

00:31:12 ◼   ► since like, I think I used it for like a few weeks

00:31:16 ◼   ► on a contracting job in 2000.

00:31:18 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:31:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, which is understandable.

00:31:25 ◼   ► - 2003.

00:31:26 ◼   ► - No, I mean, once I left, I went right back to the Mac.

00:31:31 ◼   ► - Do they still have like the C drive, right?

00:31:33 ◼   ► Like if you buy like a brand new Windows machine,

00:31:38 ◼   ► you still have like a C drive, right?

00:31:40 ◼   ► they do I think it might be less exposed like I think you know your default view

00:31:45 ◼   ► in the explorer is more like you know your documents and pictures and stuff like that

00:31:49 ◼   ► but that said there's aspects of Windows

00:31:53 ◼   ► the Windows Explorer app like the actual file management that

00:31:56 ◼   ► that are better than the Mac and like

00:32:00 ◼   ► the way you can have I mean maybe it's more power user stuff but you can actually

00:32:03 ◼   ► view the tree like the left

00:32:05 ◼   ► and like have the apps on the right or you can like cut and paste

00:32:08 ◼   ► Like, just, I don't know, I think it's one of those things

00:32:11 ◼   ► where if you're always used to the Finder,

00:32:15 ◼   ► you would think it odd,

00:32:16 ◼   ► but if you've used it the other way,

00:32:18 ◼   ► I don't know, I definitely--

00:32:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, we will never finish in 90 minutes

00:32:21 ◼   ► if we get started on the Finder,

00:32:22 ◼   ► because I'm still not used to the OS X Finder.

00:32:25 ◼   ► If you're used to the real Finder from the classic Mac OS,

00:32:30 ◼   ► then it's all just ugly and brutal.

00:32:33 ◼   ► That's where the action was.

00:32:36 ◼   ► I think in general, Mac OS users and people who like the old Finder and Spatial Finder

00:32:42 ◼   ► are what up.

00:32:43 ◼   ► It seems to me tend to be more mouse-centric in their usage of the computer.

00:32:48 ◼   ► Was that a fair characterization?

00:32:51 ◼   ► I don't think so.

00:32:52 ◼   ► I think for some people that is true, but I wasn't.

00:32:54 ◼   ► And once you learned some of the keyboard shortcuts for the old Finder, it was great.

00:33:02 ◼   ► command up would go up a level command in the list view,

00:33:07 ◼   ► which is what everybody, you know, everybody's smart used.

00:33:09 ◼   ► You could command left and right to close up,

00:33:12 ◼   ► open and close levels of hierarchy,

00:33:14 ◼   ► and option command left right to do the whole,

00:33:18 ◼   ► you know, subfolders too.

00:33:20 ◼   ► And then you can type ahead,

00:33:22 ◼   ► and you could type ahead to select,

00:33:24 ◼   ► you still can, a lot of these things still work,

00:33:25 ◼   ► but in the old Finder, it never screwed you over

00:33:28 ◼   ► and it kept stuff open, and you could do stuff like,

00:33:31 ◼   ► You still can, but like, just start typing the first few letters of something and it selects the first thing that matches the first few letters.

00:33:38 ◼   ► Without entering any kind of command or anything, you just type it.

00:33:41 ◼   ► I don't know, I learned to use the keyboard very quickly with the old Finder.

00:33:46 ◼   ► And it was always very fast and it never felt like I had to wait for anything.

00:33:49 ◼   ► But that's another show. I'll save that show for when Syracuse is on.

00:33:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I was going to say, I think my perspective is distorted by having him talk about the

00:34:01 ◼   ► Spatial Finder.

00:34:04 ◼   ► It's kind of been a multi-decade campaign at this point, I think.

00:34:09 ◼   ► And we didn't even talk about Chromebooks either, which I actually do really like.

00:34:18 ◼   ► What else?

00:34:19 ◼   ► What do you remember?

00:34:20 ◼   ► Windows 95 came out this week was the 25th anniversary of Windows 95.

00:34:25 ◼   ► No, because I didn't have a computer because I was in high school.

00:34:28 ◼   ► So when I got a computer or when I built my computer, I think that Windows 98 had either just come out or was about to come out.

00:34:36 ◼   ► So I think I started with Windows 98. I'd used Windows 95, but no, I wasn't part of the whole line up and do it.

00:34:47 ◼   ► I was following like I was following the news at by that point

00:34:51 ◼   ► I think I'd subscribe to actually I think I'd actually subscribe to some computer magazines

00:34:56 ◼   ► I was still in high school like we did those old like fundraising drives, you know, resell magazines door-to-door

00:35:01 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, just in retrospect just kind of ridiculous

00:35:04 ◼   ► But so I was I was subscribed to a few of them. So I definitely followed it

00:35:09 ◼   ► Even from afar but no I was not a part of it

00:35:13 ◼   ► But I did enjoy your your your YouTube linking

00:35:17 ◼   ► in response to it.

00:35:20 ◼   ► - It was something.

00:35:22 ◼   ► I thought it was, I still thought it was garbage.

00:35:25 ◼   ► It was just better looking garbage than Windows 3.1.

00:35:28 ◼   ► It did stop-- - Well, I mean--

00:35:30 ◼   ► - It did stop your eyes from bleeding,

00:35:32 ◼   ► but it did actually manage memory competently.

00:35:35 ◼   ► - Yeah. - This is more

00:35:36 ◼   ► than you could say for the Mac.

00:35:38 ◼   ► - Well, you know, but the Mac at least, I don't know.

00:35:40 ◼   ► I've favored user interface design over lower level,

00:35:44 ◼   ► you know, Mac OS of the era definitely had problems,

00:35:46 ◼   ► and it was showing its age.

00:35:49 ◼   ► But I would say 1995, it wasn't quite even there yet.

00:35:52 ◼   ► I would say at that point,

00:35:53 ◼   ► there were still advantages to be had

00:35:55 ◼   ► by having an operating system that was so low to the ground

00:35:58 ◼   ► that memory wasn't managed like that.

00:36:02 ◼   ► - Right.

00:36:03 ◼   ► Well, I think it speaks to how good the user interface was.

00:36:07 ◼   ► People talk about Apple dying,

00:36:09 ◼   ► but the fact that they didn't die speaks to how good it was

00:36:13 ◼   ► because the reality is on almost every conceivable metric

00:36:16 ◼   ► feature angle, I mean the Mac was pretty hopelessly behind. It was way more expensive and way

00:36:22 ◼   ► worse performance.

00:36:23 ◼   ► Yeah, that was really, I think that it, by '96, '97 it was, the fact that the operating

00:36:32 ◼   ► system was so crufty under the hood and that memory was all shared was definitely a problem

00:36:40 ◼   ► that they knew and that's why, you know, that it came to a head and that's why they bought

00:36:43 ◼   ► next. But the machines of the time were not unusable. They weren't bad. I mean, you know,

00:36:49 ◼   ► you could make them bad, though. That was one of the things that people got. And if you used a stock

00:36:54 ◼   ► Mac, this is the thing that people don't remember, if you used a stock Mac and you did not install

00:36:59 ◼   ► third-party extensions, you would have a pretty stable experience. The thing that really kind of

00:37:06 ◼   ► did that in were web browsers. It was even the good ones at the time had a tendency to really lock up

00:37:13 ◼   ► up your machine.

00:37:13 ◼   ► But the people who would complain and say like,

00:37:16 ◼   ► I had a Mac in 1994 and it crashed all the time,

00:37:19 ◼   ► they installed all of these system extensions

00:37:22 ◼   ► that were all running in the same memory space

00:37:24 ◼   ► as everything else.

00:37:25 ◼   ► It was more or less like people were making

00:37:27 ◼   ► their own operating system.

00:37:29 ◼   ► - Right.

00:37:30 ◼   ► - But that's a long story.

00:37:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, we're doing everything we can

00:37:34 ◼   ► to not meet our goal, I think.

00:37:35 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:37:36 ◼   ► You mentioned before, let's move on,

00:37:41 ◼   ► Let's talk about the Apple Watch and the Taptic Engine.

00:37:46 ◼   ► I think that among the top problems with Apple Watch,

00:37:50 ◼   ► now low these many months in,

00:37:51 ◼   ► I think the Taptic Engine is one of the top problems,

00:37:55 ◼   ► and probably the only hardware problem.

00:37:57 ◼   ► Or no, I guess I have a second hardware problem.

00:37:59 ◼   ► I have a list of three top Apple Watch problems,

00:38:02 ◼   ► and one of them is the Taptic Engine,

00:38:03 ◼   ► which I don't think is good enough.

00:38:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, what's interesting is I think that's arguably

00:38:09 ◼   ► killer feature of the watch. Like that was what I missed the most when I didn't have the watch for

00:38:15 ◼   ► three days was back to buzzing in my pocket. Like that was really annoying. And so yeah, I think

00:38:23 ◼   ► the fact that it's a hardware problem is magnified by the fact that it's so, I think, central to the

00:38:29 ◼   ► value that the device does provide, which to me is all about, you know, is the notifications and

00:38:36 ◼   ► and some of the complications.

00:38:38 ◼   ► I have said for a long time and maintained

00:38:40 ◼   ► that it was a mistake to launch with these hybrid apps.

00:38:42 ◼   ► I think they just ruin the user experience.

00:38:46 ◼   ► But the Taptic Engine is great,

00:38:48 ◼   ► except for the fact that,

00:38:49 ◼   ► especially in the stainless steel models,

00:38:50 ◼   ► it seems to be failing for a lot of people.

00:38:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that,

00:38:58 ◼   ► and do you think that's true?

00:38:59 ◼   ► Do you think it's a lot of them in the stainless steel?

00:39:00 ◼   ► 'Cause that was what my review unit was that had a bad one.

00:39:03 ◼   ► - That's what, I mean, based on Twitter responses,

00:39:05 ◼   ► I mean, when I posted that mine is failing,

00:39:08 ◼   ► I got quite a few responses

00:39:10 ◼   ► and it seemed to be all stainless steel models

00:39:13 ◼   ► that were having problems.

00:39:14 ◼   ► And if you remember, I think it was the stainless steel

00:39:16 ◼   ► models that were the most delayed too,

00:39:18 ◼   ► getting out the door.

00:39:19 ◼   ► Remember there was the story about like one supplier

00:39:22 ◼   ► of taptic engines, they had bad ones.

00:39:25 ◼   ► So I don't know, there seems to have been,

00:39:28 ◼   ► there seems to be some sort of common thread here

00:39:31 ◼   ► involving the stainless steel models and the taptic engine

00:39:33 ◼   ► and there being a problem.

00:39:35 ◼   ► I think that there's too many people who've had them fail.

00:39:40 ◼   ► Maybe not so much that it really hurts the platform,

00:39:44 ◼   ► but it's obviously a problem.

00:39:46 ◼   ► And I think even in the ones that don't fail,

00:39:49 ◼   ► it's not good enough.

00:39:51 ◼   ► And I could be wrong,

00:39:53 ◼   ► 'cause it was one afternoon 11 months ago,

00:39:57 ◼   ► 11 and a half months ago now,

00:39:59 ◼   ► when I first got to see the prototype,

00:40:02 ◼   ► late pre-production Apple watches that they had

00:40:05 ◼   ► at the event last year,

00:40:07 ◼   ► six months before they actually shipped.

00:40:10 ◼   ► But what I recall from the ones

00:40:11 ◼   ► that I got to put on my wrist there,

00:40:13 ◼   ► the Taptic sensation was better.

00:40:16 ◼   ► And it wasn't, it was just more satisfying.

00:40:20 ◼   ► It felt more like a tap, whereas this,

00:40:24 ◼   ► and more like something that you couldn't miss.

00:40:27 ◼   ► Like the ones that they had a year ago just seemed to me

00:40:30 ◼   ► like they had like hit this sweet spot between

00:40:33 ◼   ► you're not gonna miss this,

00:40:34 ◼   ► but this isn't going to startle or annoy you.

00:40:39 ◼   ► - Right.

00:40:39 ◼   ► - It was just, it was very humane

00:40:42 ◼   ► is the best way that I could put it.

00:40:43 ◼   ► In the way that if I were standing behind you

00:40:47 ◼   ► and you were talking to somebody

00:40:48 ◼   ► and I needed to get your attention,

00:40:49 ◼   ► I could tap you on the shoulder in an appropriate way

00:40:52 ◼   ► depending on the urgency of the matter.

00:40:55 ◼   ► Like is this seriously an emergency?

00:40:57 ◼   ► I would tap you more aggressively.

00:41:00 ◼   ► If it was just, I do hate to interrupt,

00:41:02 ◼   ► but I just want to let you know I have something for you.

00:41:04 ◼   ► I would tap you in a certain way on the shoulder

00:41:06 ◼   ► and you could interpret that.

00:41:08 ◼   ► The watches I remember from September just sort of had that

00:41:11 ◼   ► and I really thought this is a huge aspect of the thing.

00:41:14 ◼   ► Whereas the watch I wear now,

00:41:16 ◼   ► I just, I do miss taps.

00:41:20 ◼   ► I don't think, in fact, I know that it's not defective.

00:41:22 ◼   ► I don't think I don't have a watch

00:41:25 ◼   ► with a defective Taptic Engine.

00:41:26 ◼   ► It just isn't that great though.

00:41:28 ◼   ► And I feel like it needed to be, or it needs to be.

00:41:31 ◼   ► And I feel like it's one of those things

00:41:32 ◼   ► that next generations, they're gonna figure something out

00:41:35 ◼   ► to do it better.

00:41:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's interesting.

00:41:38 ◼   ► I think my new watch actually,

00:41:39 ◼   ► I feel it's not as good as my original watch

00:41:42 ◼   ► when I first got it.

00:41:43 ◼   ► Again, it's hard to measure

00:41:44 ◼   ► 'cause you're going based on memory.

00:41:46 ◼   ► But the, so the way it failed was it went from feeling

00:41:49 ◼   ► like a tap to feeling like a vibration.

00:41:52 ◼   ► Like, so it was like it was getting loose or something.

00:41:54 ◼   ► And so, and that had less of a sense of the tapping

00:41:58 ◼   ► 'cause it's just kind of just this buzzing on your wrist

00:42:00 ◼   ► as opposed to being that very distinct tap.

00:42:03 ◼   ► And I do think my new one,

00:42:04 ◼   ► well, it's tighter than the one that was failing.

00:42:06 ◼   ► It still feels more vibratey than like a tap

00:42:10 ◼   ► that I recall.

00:42:14 ◼   ► Again, I recall it was from when I watched first got it

00:42:16 ◼   ► or if it was from the event also.

00:42:17 ◼   ► But yeah, I think that, yeah.

00:42:21 ◼   ► And it's interesting.

00:42:24 ◼   ► I'm curious if the smart ones are different

00:42:26 ◼   ► or the sport ones are different.

00:42:27 ◼   ► But like I said, it's my favorite feature.

00:42:31 ◼   ► So hopefully they do clean it up.

00:42:34 ◼   ► - All right, I need to sneak in here

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00:47:41 ◼   ► What what are you what are your other two problems?

00:47:44 ◼   ► Well, actually I'm gonna renumber them and I'm gonna say that tapped a quad tapped again Jen disappointing

00:47:49 ◼   ► I'm gonna number that number two. I'm gonna say number one is that apps are slow and whereby apps I mean anything that goes between

00:47:56 ◼   ► the phone and the watch

00:47:59 ◼   ► Like not just third party. I think the third party stuff is is really just embarrassing as the months go on

00:48:04 ◼   ► It's unusable and in some days

00:48:06 ◼   ► It's just seems worse and the end but then even the built-in stuff it can be can be

00:48:12 ◼   ► Sometimes it's like it just works and you're like this is the future and other times

00:48:16 ◼   ► It's like I hit the little weather

00:48:17 ◼   ► You know the temperature thing on my face to open the weather app and it just spins and spins and spins

00:48:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm in an weather is too slow. Yeah, and I've got a good connection, you know, I'm at home and Wi-Fi

00:48:27 ◼   ► you know everything should work just fine and something

00:48:30 ◼   ► Somewhere it it you know, it doesn't work

00:48:34 ◼   ► So so I have to two comments on that one for what I agree about whether being way too slow

00:48:40 ◼   ► And it's frustrating to the other thing that's really irritating is whether doesn't update based on your location

00:48:46 ◼   ► You have to open up the watch app in your phone and change the default city

00:48:49 ◼   ► Which to me is it seems like such a miss?

00:48:52 ◼   ► I mean, I'm sure it'll be fixed but it's like because I travel a lot

00:48:56 ◼   ► So I've this relatively regularly. Um, one thing that's great about the Apple watch is I made a travel face

00:49:03 ◼   ► Basically where as leaving from Chicago, I had the Chicago time

00:49:07 ◼   ► I had Tokyo time where we were switching planes and I had Taipei time where we're going and

00:49:10 ◼   ► I also had the chronograph to measure how long we'd flying and the timer to measure how long until like we were supposed to land

00:49:16 ◼   ► It was awesome. Like I usually will fly with the little computer, you know

00:49:21 ◼   ► The flight path in front of me just mainly to see that all the time

00:49:26 ◼   ► But the watch was actually way better because I could immediately see the time whenever I wanted but the fact but so it's it's it's almost

00:49:33 ◼   ► A great travel thing. I just wish would update when when you get there. Yeah

00:49:36 ◼   ► Third I'm gonna say is this is one that does not affect me, but it absolutely affects

00:49:42 ◼   ► Amy my wife

00:49:44 ◼   ► Workouts killed the battery

00:49:47 ◼   ► It yeah, she you know when she and it's one of the read, you know

00:49:50 ◼   ► And it's clearly it's heavily advertised as a reason to buy the watch is as a you know workout

00:49:55 ◼   ► measuring fitness companion and it just you know she goes to the gym and she

00:50:03 ◼   ► comes back and she could leave with the hundred percent charge and comes back

00:50:06 ◼   ► and her watch is under 50% and then not with without enough to get to the end of

00:50:13 ◼   ► the day so I don't know if it's you know the exact type of workout she's doing I

00:50:18 ◼   ► don't know if other ones I think the fact that hers is 38 instead of 42 has a

00:50:22 ◼   ► a factor in that. But that's a real like one day of of battery life. It does seem like

00:50:30 ◼   ► that's, you know, it seems crazy compared to what watches were like before Apple Watch

00:50:34 ◼   ► where you have to charge your damn watch every night and that can be a problem. But it's

00:50:40 ◼   ► it when it works. It seems like yeah, that's I can get used to I can handle this. This

00:50:44 ◼   ► is okay. But if you can't get through the day, it's a deal breaker and doing a workout

00:50:49 ◼   ► and having it not get through the day is a real problem,

00:50:53 ◼   ► I think. - Yeah.

00:50:53 ◼   ► - My last item is sort of a sub-item of the apps

00:50:58 ◼   ► or slow thing, it might be related to why

00:51:01 ◼   ► sometimes they get slow.

00:51:02 ◼   ► I think that sometimes there's a finicky connection

00:51:06 ◼   ► between the watch and phone.

00:51:07 ◼   ► And I feel like it has to be, ideally,

00:51:10 ◼   ► especially for the prices they're charging it,

00:51:12 ◼   ► it really ought to be 100% thing.

00:51:15 ◼   ► Like, when you connect a keyboard to a Mac

00:51:19 ◼   ► through USB, it always works, right?

00:51:22 ◼   ► Like, if it doesn't, you know that you just,

00:51:25 ◼   ► you've got a bad keyboard, right?

00:51:27 ◼   ► - USB or Bluetooth?

00:51:28 ◼   ► - USB, and I think it's, I think Bluetooth is the reason

00:51:32 ◼   ► that this watch, you know, but that's not my problem, right?

00:51:35 ◼   ► You know, if you've spent $1,000 on an Apple Watch,

00:51:38 ◼   ► the fact that Bluetooth is very difficult to program

00:51:41 ◼   ► and has all sorts, you know, whatever, not your problem.

00:51:44 ◼   ► It should work as reliably as USB, as plugging--

00:51:48 ◼   ► - Let me guess, you wear your watch on your left wrist

00:51:51 ◼   ► and put your phone in your right pocket.

00:51:53 ◼   ► - I do.

00:51:54 ◼   ► - Yep, I'm sure that's why.

00:51:56 ◼   ► 'Cause the human body is a,

00:51:58 ◼   ► it's like we're a big sack of water.

00:52:01 ◼   ► - You know what though, my wife has had more problems

00:52:03 ◼   ► than me with this, including recently,

00:52:06 ◼   ► and she seldom carries her phone in a pocket.

00:52:09 ◼   ► It's usually in her purse or something like that.

00:52:12 ◼   ► She doesn't usually keep it in a pocket.

00:52:15 ◼   ► And sometimes it's like it just says

00:52:18 ◼   ► they're right next to each other.

00:52:19 ◼   ► And not often, not often,

00:52:21 ◼   ► but it was just like a week or two ago.

00:52:23 ◼   ► But her phone and her watch,

00:52:24 ◼   ► and she isn't running any beta software on anything.

00:52:26 ◼   ► She's not running OS betas.

00:52:29 ◼   ► But her watch was showing the I can't see the phone icon,

00:52:33 ◼   ► the red, scary red icon.

00:52:35 ◼   ► And they're right next to each other.

00:52:36 ◼   ► And getting them to see each other again,

00:52:39 ◼   ► it's the best thing we could figure out to do

00:52:40 ◼   ► was to reset her watch

00:52:45 ◼   ► and then restore it, repair it, restore it from the backup

00:52:48 ◼   ► that she had on the phone.

00:52:50 ◼   ► It just seems like something you should never have to do

00:52:53 ◼   ► for a luxury. - Wow, that's pretty bad.

00:52:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:52:57 ◼   ► - And it was weird, it was like, you know,

00:52:59 ◼   ► that the magic repairing, like where you point your camera

00:53:02 ◼   ► at the cool animated QR code equivalent,

00:53:07 ◼   ► but that they made look not ugly,

00:53:10 ◼   ► that wasn't working for her.

00:53:12 ◼   ► And even though I know that that's,

00:53:13 ◼   ► I was there with her when she paired it originally it and and it was you know in any kind of lighting like really good

00:53:19 ◼   ► Midday lighting with lots of sunshine just wasn't working

00:53:21 ◼   ► She had yeah, I had the I couldn't get a parent when I was at the Apple store gave my new one

00:53:28 ◼   ► For some reason the genius ended up doing it

00:53:32 ◼   ► And I just think that it's got to and I think Apple probably I think that they're aware of this because I think that's how high

00:53:38 ◼   ► their aspirations are. But all these little fiddly little problems are fine

00:53:42 ◼   ► for something like the Pebble that's aimed at a certain like that sort of

00:53:46 ◼   ► people who Pebble advertises to and when you charge the sort of prices that

00:53:49 ◼   ► Pebble advert you know charges people you know this sort of finicky trying to

00:53:56 ◼   ► get one piece of technology to talk to another is just what we're used to and

00:54:00 ◼   ► that's acceptable. I think that Apple has raised the bar with so many other things

00:54:05 ◼   ► in their ecosystem and with the pricing that they charge and the sort of, you know, consumer

00:54:14 ◼   ► accessible luxury message that they're putting forth, it's just not acceptable.

00:54:21 ◼   ► It's interesting you talk about the luxury angle.

00:54:22 ◼   ► I will say the, beyond the apps, which again I think, I feel like the fact that it shipped

00:54:29 ◼   ► these hybrid apps was very concerning to me as what it says about Apple as a whole.

00:54:34 ◼   ► who someone should have said no to that um that that aside the the luxury angle like the the the

00:54:41 ◼   ► biggest issue i have with the watch and i've still worn it every day and i missed it when it was gone

00:54:47 ◼   ► um but is i do i'm not like a some watch connoisseur i only have one swiss watch that i got

00:54:53 ◼   ► for my wedding for my in-laws um but i i miss wearing it like i miss going into like i'm going

00:54:59 ◼   ► to a nice store and i can be dressed you know jeans and a shirt but you know if you're wearing

00:55:04 ◼   ► like that nice watch like it's there's a certain sense and feeling that comes from from that and

00:55:11 ◼   ► I don't get that from the Apple Watch I have the stainless steel with the stainless steel band you

00:55:15 ◼   ► know it's you know relatively high model but it definitely well I absolutely think that it looks

00:55:22 ◼   ► a lot better than the competing smart watches and that's fine I guess people may agree or disagree

00:55:28 ◼   ► it still feels pretty geeky and not like a luxury item. Even if the quality's nice,

00:55:34 ◼   ► the workmanship's nice, I miss not having that luxury item. I don't know, I'm wearing it anyway,

00:55:42 ◼   ► Parks and I'm a geek in part because like I said, I find the notifications, or I more find the not

00:55:48 ◼   ► buzzing in my pocket really nice. But I get what they're going for with that. At least for me,

00:55:55 ◼   ► I'm not sure that they delivered on that specific point.

00:55:57 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:55:58 ◼   ► You're just traveling.

00:55:59 ◼   ► How do you find traveling with the Apple Watch?

00:56:03 ◼   ► - No, it's great.

00:56:04 ◼   ► Like I said, I find it,

00:56:05 ◼   ► I think it's great because the multiple watch faces

00:56:09 ◼   ► you can set, like,

00:56:10 ◼   ► I set up like a custom watch face just for the trip,

00:56:13 ◼   ► which was super, super valuable.

00:56:16 ◼   ► And because I'm lazy, I don't,

00:56:18 ◼   ► I have zero battery life issues.

00:56:19 ◼   ► Even flying that 26 hour trip,

00:56:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:56:23 ◼   ► No problem as far as battery life goes.

00:56:27 ◼   ► - It is true.

00:56:27 ◼   ► If you don't do a workout, it does get outstanding better.

00:56:31 ◼   ► I find that it's half great for traveling

00:56:34 ◼   ► and half terrible for traveling.

00:56:37 ◼   ► And I'm not sure-- - Interesting.

00:56:39 ◼   ► - So like, I do think that the directions are pretty great.

00:56:42 ◼   ► We just had to-- - Oh, see, I never used that

00:56:45 ◼   ► because-- - We just had to drive

00:56:47 ◼   ► somewhere and we don't have like a dashboard GPS type thing.

00:56:51 ◼   ► I find getting the directions on my wrist

00:56:53 ◼   ► while I'm driving the car to be just terrific,

00:56:56 ◼   ► absolutely terrific.

00:56:57 ◼   ► And I know I'm thinking about it,

00:57:00 ◼   ► you know, that it's gonna tap me

00:57:01 ◼   ► when I got a turn coming up,

00:57:03 ◼   ► and I can glance and see it.

00:57:04 ◼   ► It's really, really like it for that.

00:57:07 ◼   ► I like it for little things like as convenient as it is,

00:57:09 ◼   ► if you've got like a boarding pass on the watch,

00:57:12 ◼   ► in a way like you said with Passbook,

00:57:14 ◼   ► that it just comes up,

00:57:15 ◼   ► be like, knows you're at the airport,

00:57:17 ◼   ► and it just comes up.

00:57:18 ◼   ► 'Cause how many, especially when you're traveling with kids,

00:57:21 ◼   ► A lot of times your arms are full

00:57:23 ◼   ► or you just don't feel like digging through.

00:57:25 ◼   ► It's pretty cool for stuff like that.

00:57:27 ◼   ► Oh, I remember on the Amtrak train one time

00:57:32 ◼   ► and I had my boarding pass on the watch

00:57:35 ◼   ► and it's just so great 'cause on Amtrak

00:57:38 ◼   ► you sit down and you wait and they come around

00:57:40 ◼   ► and get your tickets.

00:57:42 ◼   ► And so instead of having to sit there with your ticket out

00:57:43 ◼   ► or fish it out of your pocket or something like that,

00:57:45 ◼   ► you just show 'em your wrist

00:57:47 ◼   ► and it's already right there.

00:57:48 ◼   ► Really great.

00:57:49 ◼   ► The thing I don't like about traveling with the Apple Watch

00:57:51 ◼   ► is I really don't like having to set up another charger

00:57:55 ◼   ► in a hotel.

00:57:57 ◼   ► - Oh, right.

00:57:58 ◼   ► - It really, like when we were at Disney World last month,

00:58:01 ◼   ► it really was, it was like, I just gave up on it.

00:58:04 ◼   ► I was like, I'm just gonna wear my old watch every day.

00:58:06 ◼   ► I'm just, just forget it.

00:58:07 ◼   ► I'll put the Apple Watch back on when I go home

00:58:09 ◼   ► because it just got to be too much where I just,

00:58:11 ◼   ► we just had too many, you know,

00:58:14 ◼   ► three phones and three Apple Watches was just too much.

00:58:16 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:58:19 ◼   ► Especially if you're staying in an older hotel room

00:58:21 ◼   ► that doesn't have many outlets or relatively inaccessible.

00:58:25 ◼   ► - Most hotels, even, well, it is probably a factor of age,

00:58:28 ◼   ► but even at some nicer hotels, it's hard.

00:58:31 ◼   ► The one we were at at Disney had the additional problem

00:58:34 ◼   ► where it was sort of like a lot of the sockets,

00:58:37 ◼   ► they were loose, and so sometimes you'd have a charger

00:58:40 ◼   ► in there and it wouldn't.

00:58:41 ◼   ► But then it's like the three,

00:58:42 ◼   ► it's like we just have a tangle of these white cables,

00:58:44 ◼   ► and it's like you just look for a lightning or the thing

00:58:47 ◼   ► and you plug it in.

00:58:48 ◼   ► It happened to me the one day as I attached it to the thing

00:58:52 ◼   ► and I went to bed and I woke up in the morning

00:58:53 ◼   ► and it was dead and I was like,

00:58:55 ◼   ► "What the heck, how'd that happen?"

00:58:55 ◼   ► And I started pulling on the thing

00:58:57 ◼   ► and it wasn't plugged into anything.

00:58:59 ◼   ► It was just an unplugged in Apple Watch charger

00:59:04 ◼   ► and I was like, "You know what, to hell with that.

00:59:05 ◼   ► "I'm putting this away and I'll wear it when I go home."

00:59:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, that's definitely a good point

00:59:10 ◼   ► and I think it's kind of one of those ones

00:59:13 ◼   ► that will never go away.

00:59:16 ◼   ► - It does give me anxiety.

00:59:16 ◼   ► - If you think about it.

00:59:18 ◼   ► It gives me anxiety though.

00:59:19 ◼   ► - What do you think about it?

00:59:20 ◼   ► - Here's the anxiety I get.

00:59:22 ◼   ► The anxiety I get is then when I don't wear it

00:59:26 ◼   ► and we're at this theme park and I walk 10 miles,

00:59:29 ◼   ► I'm not getting any points for it.

00:59:30 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:59:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, so like the gamification is working against you.

00:59:35 ◼   ► - Yes, absolutely.

00:59:37 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:59:38 ◼   ► It's funny, the whole like,

00:59:42 ◼   ► I haven't turned any of those notifications off.

00:59:46 ◼   ► I will tell you the hour notification to stand up is really irritating when you're on a plane.

00:59:53 ◼   ► I haven't turned it off, I think, out of some misguided notion that it would be bad for

01:00:00 ◼   ► my health to turn it off, even though I never listen to it.

01:00:07 ◼   ► I think I've talked about this on the show before.

01:00:09 ◼   ► I think that, and again, I say this knowing that Famous Last Words is trying to tell some

01:00:15 ◼   ► engineer what seems like it should be easy. So I'm not gonna

01:00:19 ◼   ► say it should be easy. But it seems to me like it should be

01:00:21 ◼   ► possible for the watch to make a very educated guess that you are

01:00:26 ◼   ► on an airplane. Because it knows when you're at an airport. Right.

01:00:32 ◼   ► And it's that's good point, right? And especially if it

01:00:36 ◼   ► knows that it has a passbook, or as it's now called an iOS nine

01:00:41 ◼   ► wallet entry for a flight and it knows what time the flight is and if it can

01:00:48 ◼   ► somehow then I don't know I guess it doesn't have an alt altimeter right but

01:00:55 ◼   ► there ought to be some it just seems to me like there ought to be some kind of

01:00:58 ◼   ► way that it can figure out that you're probably on a plane and maybe it could

01:01:01 ◼   ► even ask you maybe they could even say are you gonna be on a plane are you

01:01:05 ◼   ► getting on this flight and then not ask you for that I have to admit that that

01:01:09 ◼   ► is I find that to be terribly annoying too because especially like in this you know second third

01:01:14 ◼   ► fourth hour of a flight when you're really starting to get antsy and you're like I just

01:01:17 ◼   ► wish this goddamn plane would get to where it's going and then your watch is like stand up move

01:01:21 ◼   ► around and it's like screw you Apple Watch you know I'm so one I laugh at your second third fourth

01:01:28 ◼   ► hour characterization after my my 13 hour flight yesterday um two they the the standing indicator

01:01:37 ◼   ► like can't figure out whether you're actually standing or not either. It just goes at the

01:01:41 ◼   ► 10 minutes to the hour no matter what. Which is kind of annoying when you're walking around,

01:01:45 ◼   ► it taps you on the wrist and says, "Hey, you ought to stand up."

01:01:47 ◼   ► That's weird though. Sometimes it seems to know that you have been standing and it doesn't show

01:01:53 ◼   ► it to you. I don't get it every hour at the 50-minute mark. I get it.

01:01:58 ◼   ► Yeah, who knows? Maybe I don't.

01:02:01 ◼   ► But there are some times when I am up and I get it and then it's like, "Come on." I don't know.

01:02:06 ◼   ► Anyway, those are my top complaints about the Apple Watch.

01:02:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's all fair.

01:02:14 ◼   ► I, for the record, remain pretty bullish on it.

01:02:17 ◼   ► Just because I think the arc of technology...

01:02:21 ◼   ► One thing that I think is interesting is even when all these apps are coming,

01:02:24 ◼   ► I'm still a little skeptical about the app situation.

01:02:26 ◼   ► I think I said this on the show previously, that what matters for one area doesn't necessarily matter on the next one.

01:02:34 ◼   ► Just because apps matter on the phone. I don't think it's necessarily the case they matter for the watch

01:02:37 ◼   ► where I think the watch remains super compelling is

01:02:41 ◼   ► you know as a way to interact with the world around you, you know, and like

01:02:47 ◼   ► when you can start your car with it or unlock doors with it or

01:02:50 ◼   ► identify yourself with it like that's when it's it's becomes just a must-have and

01:02:56 ◼   ► Really transformed what you do in the meantime, like I've been very pleased with the notification stuff

01:03:02 ◼   ► Um, and, uh, yeah, I just wish that I just wish that Apple.

01:03:07 ◼   ► I, they just shouldn't have shipped the third party apps at all, but I've said

01:03:11 ◼   ► that like four times and you haven't taken the bait yet, so I'll let it be.

01:03:13 ◼   ► I know.

01:03:14 ◼   ► I mean, I, I, I even asked Shiller about it in the live show, you know, was it,

01:03:18 ◼   ► you know, what was the thinking if you knew you were going to have, uh, This

01:03:23 ◼   ► fuller SDK just a few months later, even though, yes, announcing it in June

01:03:28 ◼   ► doesn't mean it's shipping, it's not going to ship presumably until next month

01:03:31 ◼   ► September. But even so, if that 1.0 watch kit had never existed, right now, there'd be some

01:03:39 ◼   ► jackass out there writing articles and having written them all summer that Apple Watch is dead

01:03:44 ◼   ► because it doesn't have any third-party software. But in the grand scheme of things, it would have

01:03:49 ◼   ► only gone five months without... Right.

01:03:52 ◼   ► Without... And saying something is like, and all the reviews would have dinged the Apple Watch

01:03:57 ◼   ► for it, but like, oh, but of course it will be rectified soon. Like that's a very different

01:04:01 ◼   ► than like, the watch is slow. Because like, if you don't interact with the apps at all, the watch,

01:04:08 ◼   ► in my estimation, is perfectly acceptable. And the new Apple that's not quite so secretive,

01:04:14 ◼   ► the Apple that had Jeff Williams at Recode's conference in late May, just say that he could,

01:04:25 ◼   ► you know, coyly say that, and this ties in with what you want to talk about, that cars are the

01:04:31 ◼   ► ultimate mobile device. You know, more or less not saying yes, we're working on a car, but really

01:04:38 ◼   ► towing, getting right up to the line. I think that that Apple, today's Apple, could have also said at

01:04:45 ◼   ► the exact same event, you know, maybe at Re/code that yes, we are working on an SDK for Apple Watch

01:04:51 ◼   ► and we'll have, you know, stay tuned for WWDC next month.

01:04:53 ◼   ► - Right. - You know.

01:04:55 ◼   ► - No, I totally agree. - It could have come out.

01:04:58 ◼   ► You know, and it even could have come out,

01:04:59 ◼   ► maybe it could have even come out at the,

01:05:01 ◼   ► when they had the event in March where, you know,

01:05:04 ◼   ► the second event where they, you know, seeded the things

01:05:06 ◼   ► and even said, you know, and, you know, stay tuned,

01:05:08 ◼   ► you know, for WWDC and we'll have, you know, this thing.

01:05:11 ◼   ► - Well, and not just that, but like, this is,

01:05:14 ◼   ► that's what Apple does.

01:05:15 ◼   ► Like, I mean, when you're,

01:05:16 ◼   ► I'm sure it probably irks you that one of your,

01:05:19 ◼   ► one of your best articles is not on daring fireball.com. Oh, I've said that before.

01:05:23 ◼   ► Yeah, the one I made that mistake once. Yeah, the mac will like this, how Apple rules like

01:05:30 ◼   ► their version ones are supposed to be under under featured like there's there's

01:05:37 ◼   ► there's a there's two, like things that a product should be measured on one is the features,

01:05:43 ◼   ► but the other one is like how done it is like how complete it is. And by complete, I don't mean that

01:05:48 ◼   ► it's fully featured, I mean that the features that are there work perfectly.

01:05:52 ◼   ► And like what Apple's always been good at is, yes, well, this is a version one, it's going to be

01:05:58 ◼   ► missing a lot of stuff, but whatever is there is going to work really, really well. Remember the

01:06:02 ◼   ► iPhone one? Like that is arguably the most stable iPhone of all, right? I mean, that thing was

01:06:07 ◼   ► incredible for what it was, even though it was missing all kinds of like basic stuff, you know,

01:06:15 ◼   ► copy and paste and all that, all this very stuff that we can all name. But what was there worked

01:06:21 ◼   ► perfectly. Better in general, at least in Apple's mindset, to ship without a feature at all than to

01:06:26 ◼   ► ship with a crappy version of the feature. Exactly, exactly. And that's what so irks me

01:06:32 ◼   ► about the watch or concerns me as an Apple observer is to me the app situation is adding

01:06:40 ◼   ► because to check a box and it's adding

01:06:43 ◼   ► a poor implementation of it,

01:06:45 ◼   ► instead of taking the lumps for, you know,

01:06:48 ◼   ► in reviews for missing something,

01:06:50 ◼   ► it added something in it and added it poorly.

01:06:52 ◼   ► And that's a problem.

01:06:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's almost like they took somebody at Apple,

01:06:57 ◼   ► and who knows, maybe everybody was in agreement

01:07:00 ◼   ► and there wasn't a fight about it.

01:07:01 ◼   ► But it seems to me like something

01:07:03 ◼   ► that maybe was an internal debate,

01:07:05 ◼   ► that there had to be some people in there

01:07:08 ◼   ► who thought the same thing we do.

01:07:10 ◼   ► And it makes me think that the faction that won out

01:07:12 ◼   ► and shipped it took the wrong lesson from the iPhone.

01:07:17 ◼   ► Because famously, and we know this in hindsight,

01:07:20 ◼   ► and famously with the original iPhone,

01:07:23 ◼   ► it didn't ship with a SDK.

01:07:27 ◼   ► And I don't think it would have under any circumstances.

01:07:29 ◼   ► Even if the whole company was unanimous

01:07:32 ◼   ► that we need to have apps for this thing

01:07:34 ◼   ► just like we do for the Mac.

01:07:36 ◼   ► In 2007, that still wouldn't have happened

01:07:38 ◼   ► because the OS was still, they weren't ready

01:07:41 ◼   ► to have public APIs, and that's one thing Apple's always,

01:07:44 ◼   ► or at least the next side of Apple,

01:07:47 ◼   ► actually even the non-next side,

01:07:48 ◼   ► I think it's been pretty good about over the years,

01:07:51 ◼   ► is that they, once they publish APIs,

01:07:53 ◼   ► they're pretty good about supporting them going forward

01:07:56 ◼   ► until they're deprecated.

01:07:58 ◼   ► They don't really change things like that.

01:08:00 ◼   ► But famously, there were people on,

01:08:06 ◼   ► Steve Jobs was on that side of it

01:08:08 ◼   ► that really thought that they didn't need apps.

01:08:10 ◼   ► That this, we can do all the apps we need.

01:08:12 ◼   ► That it would more or less be like what Apple TV

01:08:14 ◼   ► has been up till date.

01:08:15 ◼   ► Where not that they wouldn't have new apps going forward,

01:08:18 ◼   ► but they would be things like the YouTube app

01:08:20 ◼   ► or they would do them in partnership with somebody else.

01:08:23 ◼   ► And that if maybe if there was a Netflix app

01:08:25 ◼   ► two years later, Apple would write the Netflix app

01:08:28 ◼   ► and put it on the phone with API help from Netflix

01:08:32 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

01:08:33 ◼   ► That they could just do it all themselves

01:08:35 ◼   ► and have a dozen, you know, couple of dozen apps.

01:08:39 ◼   ► And that would be fine.

01:08:40 ◼   ► And that the other side was, no, we should, you know,

01:08:42 ◼   ► open this up and have an app store.

01:08:44 ◼   ► And they looked at how this went

01:08:46 ◼   ► and how the app store was so, you know,

01:08:47 ◼   ► has now become so essential to the success

01:08:50 ◼   ► of the iPhone and the iPad.

01:08:52 ◼   ► And just blindly said, well, therefore,

01:08:56 ◼   ► we need to do this for the watch.

01:08:58 ◼   ► And we need to have it right away.

01:08:59 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:09:00 ◼   ► I agree.

01:09:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, I, yeah.

01:09:04 ◼   ► I'm trying to think which apps I use. I use Overcast sometimes. But that's about it.

01:09:09 ◼   ► I don't use a single one. I tried the SPG Keyless entry. But yeah, it was too much hassle. You have

01:09:21 ◼   ► to go into the apps and you have to click it. It would work better if they had a beacon or

01:09:25 ◼   ► something so it came up automatically. That would be awesome. And so that's going to be my whole

01:09:29 ◼   ► vision about having your watch do stuff for you. Apple Pay on the watch is great. Just

01:09:36 ◼   ► double-click it and do it. It needs to be that easy to have your watch interact with

01:09:40 ◼   ► the environment. Actually, I opened up the app screen, find the SPG app, open it, then

01:09:45 ◼   ► you had to click to unlock key. It was a multi-step process that was totally not worth it. On

01:09:51 ◼   ► the phone, the phone worked great, maybe just because the phone's faster. You still had

01:09:56 ◼   ► to open the app, but yeah, other than that,

01:10:01 ◼   ► I haven't really touched an app at all in a long time.

01:10:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, I very seldom go back to that app screen.

01:10:09 ◼   ► And just for example, to time this 90-minute episode

01:10:11 ◼   ► of the talk show, I wanted to run a timer on my watch,

01:10:13 ◼   ► and the way I run a timer is I know that third over

01:10:17 ◼   ► from the left is the chronograph watch face,

01:10:21 ◼   ► which I love for doing timing,

01:10:24 ◼   ► because I just don't have to launch anything.

01:10:26 ◼   ► there's a button right there on the watch face that starts at stopwatch.

01:10:29 ◼   ► Yep. No, I put timer and I have timer and alarm on my watch face. And those are

01:10:36 ◼   ► that's what I use by far the most. Right. As far as applications go, and they work

01:10:41 ◼   ► well, because they're native to the watch. Like there's no, there's no lag

01:10:44 ◼   ► and using them they work quickly. Yeah, so it's it will be interesting long

01:10:51 ◼   ► term though. I mean, I think that, uh, I will see what happens with these

01:10:55 ◼   ► version two apps. I'm, um, I'll be interested to see which ones break

01:11:00 ◼   ► through if if any.

01:11:02 ◼   ► Oh, you know what, I was gonna stop. I was gonna move to a new

01:11:04 ◼   ► topic. But the other thing I knew I wanted to say something. I'm so

01:11:07 ◼   ► glad you said that is that I'm thinking, this is my hunch. And I

01:11:11 ◼   ► can't, I don't have concrete examples. But I my hunch, though,

01:11:16 ◼   ► is that the third party key isn't the app like the delivery,

01:11:21 ◼   ► Whether it's technically in code that's in a dot app bundle,

01:11:25 ◼   ► that doesn't matter. But it's the concept of an app, what

01:11:29 ◼   ► faces a user and in iOS parlance, an app is a thing

01:11:32 ◼   ► that is an icon on the home screen and you launch it and

01:11:35 ◼   ► then it gets the whole screen and then you interact with it

01:11:38 ◼   ► until you hit the home button and go back to the home screen

01:11:41 ◼   ► that is full of apps. And Apple Watch has that right. They have

01:11:45 ◼   ► this thing full of apps and you launch it and takes over the

01:11:47 ◼   ► screen. I just think it's the wrong metaphor. Yeah, or package. To me, what's interesting

01:11:56 ◼   ► and what works best from third parties right now are the notifications and the ones that

01:12:00 ◼   ► are smart and that you can tap and get a list of buttons that give you options to do things

01:12:06 ◼   ► like with the Do app that I use for certain reminders.

01:12:09 ◼   ► And I have you tried Outlook yet from Microsoft, the email client? They have an excellent Apple

01:12:15 ◼   ► watch app actually for that exact reason.

01:12:16 ◼   ► You get a notification on email, you scroll down and there's archive, delete,

01:12:20 ◼   ► delay to later, or like whatever, whatever the actions you want to do on an email.

01:12:24 ◼   ► And yeah, it's all within a location layer.

01:12:27 ◼   ► And so actually that is actually an application that I use, even though I

01:12:31 ◼   ► never actually launched the application.

01:12:33 ◼   ► Right.

01:12:33 ◼   ► You're not really using it in the app metaphor.

01:12:35 ◼   ► You're using it in this notification metaphor and you don't, you know, the

01:12:38 ◼   ► people who put that together, aren't writing a whole app.

01:12:41 ◼   ► They're just saying, okay, after this notification, here's a list of the

01:12:44 ◼   ► actions we want to present and then you do these actions and yes they've

01:12:48 ◼   ► written an app that has code that when you say archive knows and you know it

01:12:52 ◼   ► tells the app okay take that email message and move it to the archive

01:12:55 ◼   ► folder but it's it from the user it doesn't feel like using an app and the

01:13:00 ◼   ► other thing that I think might be a big deal it with watch watch OS 2.0 are the

01:13:06 ◼   ► third-party complications yes being able to put those complications on your watch

01:13:12 ◼   ► faces I think could be a real step up and within a month or two everybody is going to

01:13:18 ◼   ► be like I can't believe we lived without this because I've got my favorite thing.

01:13:21 ◼   ► I've got my Yankee scores right here on my watch or whatever your favorite thing is.

01:13:26 ◼   ► But then again, again that's not really, that's not an app.

01:13:30 ◼   ► It's not using it as an app.

01:13:31 ◼   ► It's using it as this little thing on a face that you can tap and launch the app but that

01:13:36 ◼   ► you don't really think of it that way.

01:13:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I think in the key thing here is all of them are are

01:13:43 ◼   ► and this is where the watch is compelling is the degree to which it it integrates with like the

01:13:50 ◼   ► External world as opposed to being like all included into an app like an app on a phone

01:13:55 ◼   ► What makes the phone amazing is the phone anywhere you go?

01:13:58 ◼   ► You're connected to the internet and all apps as you know, you've written about a ton like you have the web

01:14:03 ◼   ► you know

01:14:06 ◼   ► HTTP is

01:14:07 ◼   ► thriving, even if www is, you know, kind of on the decline in

01:14:11 ◼   ► mobile. And if you that's what makes the phone remarkable is

01:14:15 ◼   ► the way it keeps you connected to the internet everywhere. But

01:14:19 ◼   ► that that implies a different user experience where you're

01:14:21 ◼   ► inside of an app because you're what you're not actually

01:14:24 ◼   ► inside inside the app, you're inside of Facebook, or you're

01:14:26 ◼   ► inside of Twitter, or you're inside of whatever, you know,

01:14:29 ◼   ► the New York Times or whatever, whatever it might be. Whereas

01:14:32 ◼   ► the watch, if you think about that complication, what what

01:14:34 ◼   ► it's doing is that complication is putting the information into like your external world

01:14:41 ◼   ► or the notification is like interrupting what you're doing now and the context that you're

01:14:45 ◼   ► operating in is not contained within the device it's like your world's context and I think that

01:14:51 ◼   ► hints at why I'm still boss on the watch and why I think you know in the long run this will be not

01:14:57 ◼   ► just a luxury but much more of a must-have device is the degree to which it will let you

01:15:04 ◼   ► like integrate computing with everything around you. The physical world not just the virtual

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01:19:35 ◼   ► I will say I quick did the conversion of the centimeters to inches

01:19:40 ◼   ► using Spotlight which I used to be, speaking of third-party resources, I used to be a huge

01:19:45 ◼   ► launch bar user.

01:19:48 ◼   ► Yeah I can't get used to life without launch bar. Well I was for a very long time

01:19:53 ◼   ► but basically what happened was their

01:19:56 ◼   ► copy/paste functionality had this weird bug for like a very long time

01:20:00 ◼   ► and everyone complained about it

01:20:01 ◼   ► and so I gave up and ended up using another

01:20:04 ◼   ► another clipboard manager, which by the way, I will say like that's the number one reason I don't use the

01:20:10 ◼   ► Chromebook, which I always talk about loving, more than I do is because I can't live without a clipboard manager.

01:20:17 ◼   ► It's always something, right?

01:20:19 ◼   ► So I tried out, like let me try just using this and using Spotlight.

01:20:25 ◼   ► I did have to add, I cheated because I'm not using pure Spotlight.

01:20:29 ◼   ► I added something called Flashlight.

01:20:30 ◼   ► So Flashlight adds a bunch of additional functionality just to Spotlight including the ability to

01:20:36 ◼   ► like I can search directly in different domains or there's all kinds of stuff that adds on

01:20:41 ◼   ► to it to make it much more launch bar like with a lot of custom actions that you can

01:20:45 ◼   ► do.

01:20:46 ◼   ► But I have to admit I've been with it for like six months now.

01:20:50 ◼   ► I'm pretty happy with it.

01:20:51 ◼   ► I've never heard of Flashlight.

01:20:52 ◼   ► I will put this in the show notes.

01:20:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I couldn't use straight Spotlight.

01:20:57 ◼   ► I have to have the stuff that Flashlight adds.

01:20:59 ◼   ► - One second, I'm gonna put it in the show notes.

01:21:01 ◼   ► Here I am.

01:21:02 ◼   ► That's me pasting it into the show notes.

01:21:04 ◼   ► So that gives it, I give it a 50% chance

01:21:07 ◼   ► of making it into the actual show notes.

01:21:10 ◼   ► How we doing on time?

01:21:11 ◼   ► We're at--

01:21:12 ◼   ► - We're running pretty long.

01:21:13 ◼   ► We're at an hour and 16 minutes.

01:21:15 ◼   ► So we have 14 minutes technically.

01:21:16 ◼   ► - To do the rest of the show.

01:21:18 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:21:18 ◼   ► We might run slightly long, but that's not too long.

01:21:21 ◼   ► We're not more than a minute longer.

01:21:22 ◼   ► - I really generally do wanna get your thing

01:21:24 ◼   ► on this Apple car thing.

01:21:26 ◼   ► So here's my conundrum in a nutshell with the Apple car thing.

01:21:30 ◼   ► Is the issue I have with, obviously there's lots of smoke and think there'd be fire.

01:21:35 ◼   ► There's two possible outcomes here.

01:21:38 ◼   ► One is that Apple produces like a normal car,

01:21:40 ◼   ► which I think they could do a good job in electric car and be very competitive.

01:21:44 ◼   ► Except that I have questions about the long-term trajectory of the car market,

01:21:48 ◼   ► particularly with the rise of things like Uber and car sharing and that sort of thing.

01:21:51 ◼   ► I think in the long run, car ownership is likely to decline, which seems odd to launch

01:21:59 ◼   ► into that.

01:22:00 ◼   ► The other option is to do the self-driving car, which I think is certainly the long-term

01:22:04 ◼   ► trajectory.

01:22:05 ◼   ► But then I question Apple's competence in pulling off a self-driving car, which seems

01:22:11 ◼   ► to fit much more to Google's strengths, particularly the data-intensive approach they're taking

01:22:18 ◼   ► to it.

01:22:19 ◼   ► I just, I mean, clearly there's lots of smoke here,

01:22:23 ◼   ► but it just, I don't know,

01:22:25 ◼   ► it doesn't seem to quite add up for me.

01:22:27 ◼   ► I mean, maybe this comes from my, like I said,

01:22:29 ◼   ► you said use Apple Maps for the watch.

01:22:31 ◼   ► I don't because it's unusable here in Taiwan.

01:22:35 ◼   ► I tried it when I first got the watch

01:22:37 ◼   ► and it told me to make two illegal turns,

01:22:40 ◼   ► both of which would have gotten me killed.

01:22:42 ◼   ► So I don't know.

01:22:44 ◼   ► So I'm baffled about the whole thing, to be honest.

01:22:48 ◼   ► I'm not baffled, I can't figure out what I think.

01:22:51 ◼   ► - Just a rehash, as of this recording,

01:22:54 ◼   ► we are recording on Wednesday, August 26th,

01:22:57 ◼   ► show will probably be out tomorrow,

01:22:58 ◼   ► but some of the smoke that's appeared in the last,

01:23:03 ◼   ► over the summer is a whole bunch of hirings at Apple

01:23:07 ◼   ► that people have spotted from LinkedIn profiles changing

01:23:10 ◼   ► and et cetera of car people of various sorts.

01:23:15 ◼   ► It doesn't even matter going through them one by one.

01:23:18 ◼   ► It's a whole bunch of people with experience

01:23:19 ◼   ► in the car industry or from Tesla or from BMW

01:23:22 ◼   ► or what have you.

01:23:24 ◼   ► And it doesn't make any sense for Apple to have hired

01:23:26 ◼   ► all of them if they're not making a car

01:23:28 ◼   ► or something car related.

01:23:32 ◼   ► And then there was the thing, who got that scoop

01:23:34 ◼   ► where Apple is trying to book--

01:23:36 ◼   ► - The Guardian did, the test track.

01:23:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, at a test track that, and I took issue with it

01:23:42 ◼   ► and just, my point was that the Guardian's headline

01:23:45 ◼   ► was something about Apple, you know,

01:23:48 ◼   ► shows that Apple is working on an autonomous car.

01:23:51 ◼   ► And I didn't see that as being evident

01:23:53 ◼   ► that it was an autonomous car.

01:23:55 ◼   ► - Right, it could have been a normal car.

01:23:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, and what people said to me in response

01:23:59 ◼   ► was that it's not just a test track,

01:24:00 ◼   ► it's like a little fake town,

01:24:02 ◼   ► this area, it's a gold naval base

01:24:06 ◼   ► somewhere in San Francisco or something,

01:24:08 ◼   ► and that it doesn't make sense for anything

01:24:09 ◼   ► other than an autonomous car,

01:24:12 ◼   ► because if you wanna test a regular car,

01:24:13 ◼   ► you can test that anywhere.

01:24:14 ◼   ► I'm not sure that holds though,

01:24:16 ◼   ► because I think Apple definitely wants testing area nearby,

01:24:20 ◼   ► so the fact that they could get a test track in Detroit

01:24:23 ◼   ► or something like that, that doesn't help them.

01:24:25 ◼   ► And who knows, maybe there are some minor

01:24:28 ◼   ► autonomous features, collision detection

01:24:31 ◼   ► or something like that that they're working on,

01:24:32 ◼   ► but that it's not really a self-driving car.

01:24:34 ◼   ► Because the thing to me, and maybe I'm wrong,

01:24:36 ◼   ► I hope I'm wrong, I think self-driving cars sound great.

01:24:39 ◼   ► I really hope that they come sooner than later.

01:24:42 ◼   ► I hope, you know, it sounds fantastic.

01:24:44 ◼   ► It just seems to me though,

01:24:47 ◼   ► my gut feeling is that it's way off.

01:24:49 ◼   ► That's really far off in the future.

01:24:52 ◼   ► Not really, I don't know, 10 years old?

01:24:55 ◼   ► - It sounds like we're in the same boat here,

01:24:58 ◼   ► which is interesting 'cause some people, I mean like--

01:25:00 ◼   ► - It seems like we're far enough out

01:25:01 ◼   ► that Apple wouldn't need to wait for that

01:25:03 ◼   ► if they wanna get into the car business

01:25:05 ◼   ► and that they can do this iterative

01:25:07 ◼   ► and get in and start figuring out, you know,

01:25:09 ◼   ► how are they gonna sell them

01:25:10 ◼   ► around the country and the world.

01:25:12 ◼   ► - Right, right.

01:25:14 ◼   ► - And get in and start doing that

01:25:15 ◼   ► before they have the self-driving aspect down.

01:25:19 ◼   ► And then come out with the self-driving car

01:25:25 ◼   ► at the same time that they would have anyway.

01:25:27 ◼   ► And on a longer scale, like what I was saying before

01:25:30 ◼   ► about the App Store for the iPhone,

01:25:32 ◼   ► that it didn't make sense,

01:25:33 ◼   ► even if they had been 100% internally committed,

01:25:36 ◼   ► which they weren't,

01:25:37 ◼   ► but even if they had been internally committed to,

01:25:39 ◼   ► we should do an app store for the iPhone.

01:25:43 ◼   ► It didn't make sense for them to wait until 2008

01:25:46 ◼   ► to ship the first one.

01:25:47 ◼   ► The one that they shipped in 2007

01:25:48 ◼   ► was totally worth shipping when they did.

01:25:51 ◼   ► I think it would be totally worth Apple, if they could,

01:25:53 ◼   ► shipping a car in 2020 that is sort of traditional

01:25:57 ◼   ► in terms of how you drive it

01:26:00 ◼   ► and doing a self-driving car in 2025.

01:26:03 ◼   ► - That's that, I like that.

01:26:04 ◼   ► That makes sense.

01:26:05 ◼   ► And because like there's still clearly

01:26:07 ◼   ► significant market for for a car now and for all the various reasons like I mean

01:26:12 ◼   ► beyond the you know Johnny I've loves cars but also just from a pure finance

01:26:18 ◼   ► perspective there's a lot to like about Apple doing a car and yes and the other

01:26:23 ◼   ► thing is if they started out with normal cars they could outfit those cars with

01:26:27 ◼   ► all the sensors and stuff to start gathering data that would go into a

01:26:34 ◼   ► self-driving car. Like what's, you know, Google can put a bunch of mapping cars

01:26:39 ◼   ► in the road, Apple can could theoretically get a bunch of like actual

01:26:43 ◼   ► cars in the road gathering data, improving, you know, their their data set

01:26:48 ◼   ► and their algorithms and that sort of stuff. That's, having it, thinking of it as

01:26:52 ◼   ► being a multi-stage process, that's one of the more satisfactory answers I

01:26:57 ◼   ► figured. Thank you, this has been productive, I appreciate it.

01:26:59 ◼   ► I just wrote them down but I've had them in my head and it's dangerous for me to

01:27:03 ◼   ► to walk around with things like this in my head

01:27:05 ◼   ► that aren't written down.

01:27:06 ◼   ► So now I've got them written down.

01:27:07 ◼   ► But I've got three reasons why I think it makes sense

01:27:09 ◼   ► for Apple to be working on a car.

01:27:11 ◼   ► One is financial.

01:27:14 ◼   ► Cars are expensive and they are a big business.

01:27:17 ◼   ► There are millions of cars sold in the world

01:27:20 ◼   ► and they sell for tens of thousands of dollars.

01:27:22 ◼   ► So that's a good, in general,

01:27:26 ◼   ► that's a good business to be in.

01:27:29 ◼   ► Two, the market is ripe for technical disruption.

01:27:33 ◼   ► And it is, it's already happening with the move

01:27:36 ◼   ► to electric drive trains and stuff like that.

01:27:40 ◼   ► Power sources and the way that drive trains

01:27:43 ◼   ► are changing based on that.

01:27:45 ◼   ► And self-driving is another area,

01:27:49 ◼   ► I guess it's unrelated.

01:27:51 ◼   ► I guess you could have a self-driving car

01:27:52 ◼   ► that runs on gasoline and you can certainly

01:27:54 ◼   ► have an electric car that isn't self-driving.

01:27:56 ◼   ► But that's two big areas though

01:27:58 ◼   ► where there's enormous technical disruption.

01:28:02 ◼   ► And so the market is obviously going to change.

01:28:05 ◼   ► I think the car market is going to look a lot different in 20

01:28:08 ◼   ► years than it does now.

01:28:09 ◼   ► And that's not necessarily true now

01:28:11 ◼   ► from where it was 20 years ago.

01:28:13 ◼   ► The top car makers today are pretty much the same ones

01:28:16 ◼   ► as the top car makers 20 years ago.

01:28:18 ◼   ► And the cars are technically very, very similar.

01:28:21 ◼   ► I don't think that's going to be true 20 years from now.

01:28:24 ◼   ► So it's a good time to get in.

01:28:26 ◼   ► And, like as a 2A subpoint on that,

01:28:31 ◼   ► when computers come into a new market,

01:28:35 ◼   ► and there's the old standbys,

01:28:38 ◼   ► and then there's the computer companies,

01:28:40 ◼   ► it's the computer companies that seem to do better

01:28:44 ◼   ► building the old thing,

01:28:47 ◼   ► than the old thing makers are at computerizing their things.

01:28:52 ◼   ► - Right, so like the RIM example.

01:28:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, RIM is a perfect example,

01:28:56 ◼   ► where RIM built these phones and pagers,

01:29:00 ◼   ► and all of a sudden it got to a point

01:29:02 ◼   ► where these things could be real computers.

01:29:05 ◼   ► And I know that's sort of an arbitrary distinction

01:29:07 ◼   ► saying that today's smartphones are real computers

01:29:10 ◼   ► and the RIM models from 10 years ago were not,

01:29:13 ◼   ► but I stand by it.

01:29:16 ◼   ► And that companies like Apple were better at making phones,

01:29:20 ◼   ► even if like the, and famously,

01:29:22 ◼   ► they're like the first phone dropped calls a lot,

01:29:25 ◼   ► whether that was AT&T's fault or Apple's fault or whatever.

01:29:28 ◼   ► Apple got better at making phone antennas a lot quicker

01:29:31 ◼   ► than RIM got at building computers.

01:29:34 ◼   ► And I think that the same thing could happen with cars.

01:29:37 ◼   ► If computing matters, I think Apple's gonna be able

01:29:39 ◼   ► to make a car easier than even BMW or Mercedes.

01:29:44 ◼   ► Companies with good, well-run companies with good histories

01:29:47 ◼   ► are gonna be at making computers.

01:29:49 ◼   ► - Well, there's this, oh sorry, go ahead.

01:29:50 ◼   ► - Well, my third factor is very simple.

01:29:52 ◼   ► The car market has always been, for 100 years and counting,

01:29:57 ◼   ► a market where design matters.

01:29:59 ◼   ► Yep.

01:30:01 ◼   ► And that plays into Apple's strengths.

01:30:03 ◼   ► Well, not just that.

01:30:04 ◼   ► I would add a couple of things.

01:30:05 ◼   ► When the rumors first came out, I

01:30:07 ◼   ► wrote a very similar article saying there's actually

01:30:10 ◼   ► a lot of things here that make sense.

01:30:11 ◼   ► And you nailed most of them.

01:30:13 ◼   ► I would just add, from the design matters perspective,

01:30:22 ◼   ► the making electric cars gotten a lot simpler. So, or electric

01:30:27 ◼   ► cars relative to a mechanical car is a much simpler thing to

01:30:30 ◼   ► build like electric motors are much more well, you're not

01:30:33 ◼   ► you're an actual car like is a controlled explosion happening

01:30:37 ◼   ► constantly. And so the level of refinement needed to build like

01:30:41 ◼   ► a quality engine and all that sort of things is much different

01:30:45 ◼   ► and a much different skill set than than electric car where so

01:30:48 ◼   ► it's much easier to enter the market now than than it was. And

01:30:51 ◼   ► And what happens is, and I think you were driving at this, because having engine expertise

01:30:58 ◼   ► and knowing how to build a great combustion engine is no longer a price of entry, that

01:31:05 ◼   ► changes what matters, the priority.

01:31:09 ◼   ► So it used to be that you first off, making a good engine was table stakes, and then you

01:31:14 ◼   ► could get to the "user interface."

01:31:18 ◼   ► But now that the engine is no longer a price of entry, what matters most changes because

01:31:25 ◼   ► there's new table stakes.

01:31:27 ◼   ► Just look at what BMW's name stands for, right?

01:31:31 ◼   ► Bavarian Motor Works.

01:31:32 ◼   ► Bavarian Motor Works, exactly.

01:31:34 ◼   ► And so this gets to my second point, which is that the reason why I think you said that

01:31:39 ◼   ► the list of top makers will be very different in 20 years than it is today is it's anytime

01:31:45 ◼   ► because of this fundamental change from mechanical to electric, and again, this is not even touching

01:31:49 ◼   ► on the self-driving stuff, which I think you perfectly articulated is going to be a separate

01:31:53 ◼   ► event. Because you have this shift from mechanical to electric, everyone's starting from the

01:32:00 ◼   ► same spot, objectively. This is like going to mobile, right? Everyone's like, "Oh, Microsoft

01:32:06 ◼   ► missed mobile." Microsoft didn't miss mobile. They were on mobile earlier than anyone else.

01:32:10 ◼   ► The issue was that what mattered in mobile, it was a brand new paradigm, being good at

01:32:14 ◼   ► the desktop didn't advantage you on mobile.

01:32:18 ◼   ► In fact, if anything, it made Microsoft worse off because the temptation to take the desktop

01:32:25 ◼   ► paradigm and stick it onto mobile was overwhelming.

01:32:29 ◼   ► That's exactly what they did, right?

01:32:31 ◼   ► Windows Mobile actually had a start button that you pressed with the stylus and it popped

01:32:35 ◼   ► up a menu, like a Windows 95 menu.

01:32:40 ◼   ► And I think it's probably going to be the same challenge with cars.

01:32:46 ◼   ► It's not just that the mechanical guys no longer have an advantage over the electric

01:32:50 ◼   ► guys.

01:32:51 ◼   ► It's that they're actually at a disadvantage because they will be much less capable of

01:32:57 ◼   ► truly starting with a fresh sheet and rethinking what a car means.

01:33:03 ◼   ► And if you start with the idea that it's going to be an electric car and all that other stuff

01:33:07 ◼   ► that has to do with mechanical engine goes away, then yeah, you have something like Tesla

01:33:12 ◼   ► having like a 17 inch screen in their car, right? Because that's actually much more important.

01:33:18 ◼   ► And I think that's a reason why in these big transitions, the big players actually end

01:33:23 ◼   ► up completely transforming.

01:33:26 ◼   ► And look at my reasons. Number one, they're expensive and people spend a lot of money

01:33:30 ◼   ► on them. Two, it's a market ripe for tech disruption. Three, it's a market where design

01:33:35 ◼   ► and has historically mattered.

01:33:36 ◼   ► Those are the same three things going on with the watch.

01:33:41 ◼   ► People spend a lot of money on the watch.

01:33:43 ◼   ► It's ripe for technical disruption.

01:33:46 ◼   ► And what I mean by that is that we've reached a point

01:33:50 ◼   ► where you can build a Unix computer

01:33:53 ◼   ► that runs in a watch size device,

01:33:55 ◼   ► which is, and that's networked,

01:33:58 ◼   ► which is a point of disruption.

01:33:59 ◼   ► So that's, you know, whether or not, you know, who knows,

01:34:01 ◼   ► maybe the digital watches are gonna die again.

01:34:04 ◼   ► Maybe it'll be a fad like the '80s.

01:34:06 ◼   ► But there certainly seems like it's a time for disruption

01:34:08 ◼   ► because it wasn't possible before and it is possible now.

01:34:11 ◼   ► And three, it's a market where design matters.

01:34:14 ◼   ► Well, that's absolutely, I mean,

01:34:15 ◼   ► I don't know that that's more true for any market

01:34:18 ◼   ► other than watches.

01:34:19 ◼   ► Maybe, you know, the only other thing you can compare it to

01:34:23 ◼   ► would be women's fashion, you know,

01:34:27 ◼   ► in terms of the importance of design

01:34:29 ◼   ► and the incredible variety of it that's out there.

01:34:32 ◼   ► So the exact same reasons I think that Apple got into watch market are exactly the reasons

01:34:36 ◼   ► they'd get in the car market.

01:34:38 ◼   ► And it's exactly the same reasons they got into the cell phone market.

01:34:41 ◼   ► They're expensive.

01:34:42 ◼   ► It's a market that's ripe for technical disruption in an area where Apple's expert and design

01:34:48 ◼   ► matters.

01:34:49 ◼   ► Well, I would add, I guess the thing I would phrase about the technical disruption, I would

01:34:53 ◼   ► refine it further to say it's not just that there's technical disruption, it's that what

01:34:58 ◼   ► used to be a mechanical object is becoming a computer and Apple is a computer company

01:35:03 ◼   ► and a car today is a mechanical object with all these computers stacked on top of it

01:35:09 ◼   ► like some models have like nearly 100 microprocessors but if you think like the

01:35:14 ◼   ► reason why there's 100 different ones that are all distinct and they all you know in why it's

01:35:18 ◼   ► hard for your typical mechanic to even service a modern car is because they're all kind of tacked

01:35:23 ◼   ► on, right? But if you start with the assumption that an electric car is a computer with wheels

01:35:31 ◼   ► attached, then it becomes very obvious that a computer company is going to have an advantage

01:35:39 ◼   ► in the long run. And that's the same with the phone. It was no longer a phone with, you know,

01:35:45 ◼   ► calendar functionality or email functionality. It became a computer that could also make calls.

01:35:51 ◼   ► And that flipping of the paradigm is what makes it

01:35:55 ◼   ► an attractive market for Apple, for Google,

01:35:58 ◼   ► for the big software companies.

01:36:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think you're exactly right,

01:36:03 ◼   ► and your example that the entrenched market leaders

01:36:07 ◼   ► are the ones who have the hardest trouble zooming out

01:36:10 ◼   ► far enough to go back and just start over.

01:36:13 ◼   ► The phone's best example that I can think of,

01:36:15 ◼   ► and I know I've harped on this for years,

01:36:18 ◼   ► is the fact that the iPhone doesn't have a green

01:36:20 ◼   ► make a call button and a red hang up button.

01:36:23 ◼   ► And I'm sure, in fact, I know I've mentioned it before

01:36:26 ◼   ► and I think people have pointed,

01:36:28 ◼   ► there are certain phones that came out before

01:36:29 ◼   ► that didn't have those things, but very few.

01:36:33 ◼   ► They're way off in the corner of phone history.

01:36:36 ◼   ► Every single mainstream cell phone that was ever made

01:36:39 ◼   ► before the iPhone had, in fact,

01:36:41 ◼   ► the colors almost never changed.

01:36:42 ◼   ► They had a green button to make a call

01:36:44 ◼   ► and a red button to hang up the call.

01:36:47 ◼   ► So getting rid of those buttons was just like a huge,

01:36:50 ◼   ► and really just relegating the phone to an app status.

01:36:54 ◼   ► And I've said this before too, I think in hindsight,

01:36:56 ◼   ► I think if there's a mistake that Apple's made

01:36:58 ◼   ► in the, what's it been, eight years since the phone,

01:37:02 ◼   ► I feel, I really wish that they would further reduce

01:37:05 ◼   ► the magical nature of the phone app.

01:37:10 ◼   ► I don't want, I would like to reduce an incoming phone call

01:37:14 ◼   ► to the same sort of notification I get from anything else.

01:37:17 ◼   ► - Oh, totally.

01:37:18 ◼   ► Well, why should it take over my screen and do, yeah.

01:37:21 ◼   ► - Like, sure, let me set a ringtone.

01:37:23 ◼   ► So if I have the volume on, it'll play the ringtone,

01:37:26 ◼   ► but I don't want it to take over the whole screen.

01:37:28 ◼   ► And if I have it on silent,

01:37:30 ◼   ► I just want it to drop down a little window shade at the top.

01:37:33 ◼   ► Phone calls are just not that important to me.

01:37:35 ◼   ► So if anything, I feel like Apple has fallen behind

01:37:37 ◼   ► in reducing the fact that the phone should be just an app.

01:37:42 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:37:44 ◼   ► magical features, you know, like when you get a phone call the way it takes over no matter what

01:37:47 ◼   ► you're doing. But for the most part, they and I don't think any of the existing phone makers

01:37:52 ◼   ► would have made that jump. No, I that's exactly right. They could have, but they didn't.

01:37:57 ◼   ► Right. Well, that's always the thing. And this is the this is why startups succeed and why

01:38:01 ◼   ► incumbents fail it like the incumbent usually has more experience, they have more capital,

01:38:06 ◼   ► they have more money to invest. But all that pales in comparison to one your incentives,

01:38:13 ◼   ► and two, your kind of preconceived notions.

01:38:16 ◼   ► Like, if you, like when Microsoft came up,

01:38:19 ◼   ► if you want to characterize the OS or computer as like a square,

01:38:23 ◼   ► like make it a physical object,

01:38:25 ◼   ► like they were motivated to make the most perfect square in the world

01:38:28 ◼   ► that fit this new paradigm of a PC.

01:38:31 ◼   ► The problem is when the phone came along,

01:38:34 ◼   ► what you needed was a triangle.

01:38:35 ◼   ► And Microsoft was so invested in everything about their corporation

01:38:39 ◼   ► and everything about their organization,

01:38:40 ◼   ► and their incentives were perfectly aligned to make the best squares in the world,

01:38:45 ◼   ► which meant they viewed the triangle as an attempt to push the square into it.

01:38:52 ◼   ► Whereas if you started from scratch with the triangle, it's not just that you are starting

01:38:59 ◼   ► from the same place as Microsoft, so you have an equal chance to them. You actually have a better

01:39:04 ◼   ► chance because you know what you're targeting and you don't have all that baggage and cruft.

01:39:10 ◼   ► So famously disruption, it's not just that Microsoft,

01:39:13 ◼   ► there's a financial aspect where they wanna keep

01:39:15 ◼   ► the old financial stream, but it goes deeper

01:39:17 ◼   ► than just finances.

01:39:19 ◼   ► It's like the very way people think,

01:39:21 ◼   ► like is conditioned for a certain view of the world.

01:39:25 ◼   ► And it's incredibly difficult to break out of that,

01:39:28 ◼   ► particularly in a large organization where this stuff

01:39:31 ◼   ► is like, is embedded deep in the culture

01:39:33 ◼   ► and the way people think about things.

01:39:36 ◼   ► - We just, we've gone over 90 minutes,

01:39:37 ◼   ► but I'm just gonna call time out here,

01:39:40 ◼   ► and I'm just gonna say that the remainder

01:39:42 ◼   ► of the show doesn't count.

01:39:44 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:39:45 ◼   ► I wanna take a moment here during this timeout

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01:41:18 ◼   ► It's an outstanding price point for a really good mattress.

01:41:24 ◼   ► I, it just, it still blows me away

01:41:27 ◼   ► when I think about when I got,

01:41:28 ◼   ► they sent me one of these things last year.

01:41:31 ◼   ► It comes in a little box.

01:41:32 ◼   ► You cannot believe that there is a full-size mattress

01:41:34 ◼   ► in this little box and it's got instructions.

01:41:38 ◼   ► Kind of weighs as much as you'd think a mattress would weigh

01:41:40 ◼   ► but it is an incredibly small box

01:41:42 ◼   ► because it doesn't have springs and stuff like that.

01:41:45 ◼   ► That stuff is like ancient technology.

01:41:47 ◼   ► It's all just foam and they just, I don't know,

01:41:49 ◼   ► somehow vacuum pack it into this thing.

01:41:52 ◼   ► So you put it in a room where you want the mattress.

01:41:54 ◼   ► That's the most important thing.

01:41:55 ◼   ► Listen to the box and then you open the box the right way

01:41:59 ◼   ► and it's just, it makes cool noise

01:42:01 ◼   ► that I won't try to replicate as it just sucks in the air

01:42:04 ◼   ► and then all of a sudden, boom,

01:42:06 ◼   ► you've got a mattress in your room.

01:42:07 ◼   ► It feels like you're living in Back to the Future

01:42:11 ◼   ► or something like the future of Back to the Future

01:42:13 ◼   ► where you put a little pizza in the thing

01:42:17 ◼   ► and 10 seconds later you got a full pizza,

01:42:19 ◼   ► except instead of a pizza, it's a mattress.

01:42:22 ◼   ► Does that make sense?

01:42:23 ◼   ► I hope so.

01:42:25 ◼   ► Could not be an easier way.

01:42:26 ◼   ► I've got a whole bunch of tweets, I've been retweeting them.

01:42:28 ◼   ► People are buying these things