The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Where do we even start, Ben?

00:00:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I was actually kind of optimistic we could just avoid watch discussion.

00:00:09 ◼   ► Possibly. I don't know.

00:00:11 ◼   ► Well, then that article dropped today.

00:00:13 ◼   ► But it's almost like at this point, it's like I just want to come out and then let's talk about it.

00:00:20 ◼   ► But no, Apple via wired had to drop a sack of turd on the front porch.

00:00:28 ◼   ► So we're recording on Thursday, April 2nd.

00:00:31 ◼   ► Show's probably gonna come out tomorrow, Friday.

00:00:33 ◼   ► So we're still in this void between,

00:00:39 ◼   ► three weeks ago was this event.

00:00:43 ◼   ► Three weeks from now is when real people

00:00:47 ◼   ► will start getting to watch.

00:00:49 ◼   ► We're still a full week away from the watch being

00:00:51 ◼   ► in stores for people to look at with their own eyes.

00:00:55 ◼   ► Right, like right now, 99.9999% of people

00:01:00 ◼   ► who are interested in Apple Watch

00:01:02 ◼   ► have not seen one in person.

00:01:04 ◼   ► - Right. - Right?

00:01:05 ◼   ► I mean, you go out a lot of nines on that.

00:01:08 ◼   ► I got it. - No, totally.

00:01:09 ◼   ► It's only been at the two events.

00:01:12 ◼   ► - Right. - Well, I guess no,

00:01:13 ◼   ► 'cause people are wearing them in public, I guess.

00:01:15 ◼   ► - Combined with employees, but I'm sure though,

00:01:17 ◼   ► and even people who glanced it on employees

00:01:20 ◼   ► with testing units out in the wild, you can do that,

00:01:24 ◼   ► I'm sure that if you say hey is that an Apple watch that they'll say yes, but then I'm sure that this

00:01:28 ◼   ► They've got like a standard reply. That's more or less, but I can't show it to you and said they're not allowed to like

00:01:33 ◼   ► That's exactly right. They're not allowed to let people examine it

00:01:35 ◼   ► But it's

00:01:40 ◼   ► Interesting like to me

00:01:41 ◼   ► I've and I've been talking about it the last few weeks is why in the world would Apple schedule things this way and I think

00:01:45 ◼   ► That the article today is part why I think that they wanted

00:01:51 ◼   ► They didn't want the cycle like with a regular revision where it's event

00:01:55 ◼   ► next week reviews

00:01:58 ◼   ► Two days later go buy it right like this 10-day cycle of most of their you know

00:02:05 ◼   ► Which called flagship products, you know new iPhones come out on an event on a?

00:02:10 ◼   ► Usually a Monday or Tuesday

00:02:13 ◼   ► Then the reviews come out a week later and

00:02:19 ◼   ► Then like on a Wednesday, I think usually usually Tuesday or Wednesday

00:02:24 ◼   ► And then Fridays are always the day where people who've pre-ordered will get theirs delivered and stores will have them and people can line up

00:02:31 ◼   ► It's like a you know

00:02:33 ◼   ► 10 day cycle 11 day cycle

00:02:35 ◼   ► The watch is way off of that and I can only guess that it's because they want to fill that space between last month's event and

00:02:41 ◼   ► this month's release with a

00:02:44 ◼   ► Drumbeat a steady drumbeat of stuff

00:02:48 ◼   ► Promotional stuff, you know, good morning America TV now this and wired

00:02:53 ◼   ► So today what tell me what's the article we're talking about?

00:02:58 ◼   ► So wired dropped this article

00:03:01 ◼   ► entitled iPhone killer the secret history of the Apple watch

00:03:04 ◼   ► and

00:03:07 ◼   ► David Pierce

00:03:09 ◼   ► Wrote an article

00:03:11 ◼   ► Where he clearly got clearly, you know blessed by Apple PR. He talked talked to people at Apple. He spent a lot of time

00:03:17 ◼   ► with the Human interface designers day.

00:03:21 ◼   ► His name is... I can't find his name right.

00:03:23 ◼   ► Alan Dye.

00:03:24 ◼   ► Alan Dye.

00:03:25 ◼   ► And with any of these pieces, and this is kind of the trouble with posting them, is

00:03:36 ◼   ► you don't know like to what extent what is coming from Apple, what's coming from the

00:03:41 ◼   ► spin that PR is giving him, and then what if it's coming from Pierce.

00:03:46 ◼   ► But the kind of overarching theme of the article is that the real goal of the watch is to make you not need your iPhone so much.

00:03:56 ◼   ► And it's focused on the notifications and the idea that it will free you from your phone.

00:04:00 ◼   ► I would say, I'm going to interrupt and I'm going to subtly tweak that and say that it's not so much that you don't need your iPhone, but that it...

00:04:09 ◼   ► it because it's all coming from the phone right it all only works if you're

00:04:15 ◼   ► in Bluetooth range of the phone so it's more like a dashboard to your phone

00:04:23 ◼   ► well I think it's it's it's more like because they talked about like like

00:04:28 ◼   ► winch talked about in the article you talked Kevin Lynch um the idea of like

00:04:32 ◼   ► you can be playing with your kids and you can get a notification and you can

00:04:36 ◼   ► glance at it realize it's not that important you can keep doing what you're

00:04:38 ◼   ► You're not actually pulling out of your pocket and filling with it and all that sort of stuff,

00:04:42 ◼   ► which is hardly a new thesis.

00:04:44 ◼   ► It's interesting that this seems to be the story that Apple is choosing to tell.

00:04:50 ◼   ► But I mean frankly I think that – oh, and by the way, I think that they said at the

00:04:55 ◼   ► event that the watch will work on your home Wi-Fi network.

00:05:00 ◼   ► But I'm not 100% sure on that.

00:05:04 ◼   ► I think that that's only, but it's only, again, I cannot, I'm 100% sure, but I'm 99% sure

00:05:11 ◼   ► that all that means though is, I think you're correcting me, that as long as your phone

00:05:15 ◼   ► and your watch are on the same Wi-Fi network, even if Bluetooth is out of range.

00:05:22 ◼   ► That's correct.

00:05:23 ◼   ► So you can set your phone down like on the front door, next to the front door or next

00:05:27 ◼   ► to your bed and you can go around the house and your watch will still have full functionality.

00:05:32 ◼   ► And the idea there, and it sounds great, is that you can, you know, if you need to charge

00:05:36 ◼   ► your phone or whatever, you can do it and, you know, go watch TV two floors away from

00:05:41 ◼   ► where it's charging and you're not going to be out of touch from notifications you're

00:05:45 ◼   ► expecting.

00:05:46 ◼   ► Right, exactly.

00:05:47 ◼   ► That's why I just looked it up.

00:05:48 ◼   ► That's exactly what it is.

00:05:49 ◼   ► So yeah, so I think you're probably right.

00:05:53 ◼   ► And if you think about the other, you know, because you have to think of this not in terms

00:05:57 ◼   ► of the normal Apple watch but an Apple new product launch and it was the case with particularly

00:06:06 ◼   ► the iPhone but also the iPad that there was a big break between the introduction and the

00:06:12 ◼   ► actual unveiling of the device.

00:06:14 ◼   ► In the case of the iPhone, there was a second event as well.

00:06:16 ◼   ► There was …

00:06:17 ◼   ► Exactly, exactly. Which was a good three weeks before the phone as well. So, yeah, so I think

00:06:27 ◼   ► big picture you're probably right. Frankly, I think this article is a PR disaster.

00:06:35 ◼   ► I would not go that far, but I don't think it was good.

00:06:40 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I mean the killer line which is already all over Twitter and stuff is this

00:06:46 ◼   ► idea that Apple decided they wanted to do a watch and they had to figure out what it

00:06:51 ◼   ► was for which kind of confirms the worst suspicions that people had about the watch in a very

00:07:03 ◼   ► sort of not subtle way, a very blunt sort of way.

00:07:08 ◼   ► And of course, like I said, you don't know what the balance is between Apple PR and what

00:07:12 ◼   ► Apple employees said and what Pierce came up with.

00:07:19 ◼   ► Where is that line?

00:07:21 ◼   ► It sounds bad.

00:07:22 ◼   ► Where is that line?

00:07:23 ◼   ► I can't find it.

00:07:24 ◼   ► Let me find it.

00:07:25 ◼   ► It's pretty close to the top.

00:07:28 ◼   ► Maybe I don't have the phone.

00:07:29 ◼   ► Apple decided to make a watch and only then set out to discover what it might be good

00:07:33 ◼   ► for, besides displaying the time.

00:07:36 ◼   ► some of these terrible web pages that has like the pictures and the text growing on

00:07:39 ◼   ► top of it, which like theoretically looks good, but drives me up the wall.

00:07:43 ◼   ► Yeah, it's, you know what? I read it on my phone and it was actually really good. Like

00:07:48 ◼   ► the phone is much better on the phone. Yeah. I just say beer and now I'm looking at it

00:07:51 ◼   ► in a desktop browser and it's a disaster for reading in my opinion. Yeah. So there's, there's

00:07:56 ◼   ► two parts. The first one is that first one, there's a big at the top apple side and make

00:07:59 ◼   ► a watch and let itself discover to discover what it might be good for. Um, and then there's

00:08:03 ◼   ► There's another line about Johnny Ive.

00:08:05 ◼   ► I began dreaming about an Apple Watch just after CEO Steve Jobs death in October 2011

00:08:11 ◼   ► and that is basically like insinuating that I've, yeah, I've began a deep investigative

00:08:20 ◼   ► horology studying how reading the edition of the sonnet horology became an obsession

00:08:23 ◼   ► and the obsession became a product.

00:08:25 ◼   ► Along the way the Apple team landed upon the watch's reason to talk.

00:08:28 ◼   ► It came down to this and then they get the phone is ruining your life which I definitely

00:08:33 ◼   ► presume is is Pierce's kind of summary of it but like it doesn't matter this is

00:08:37 ◼   ► on Apple and they're the one that's orchestrated this and like I said the

00:08:43 ◼   ► problem is it's really feeding into all the worst or the most pessimistic kind

00:08:48 ◼   ► of conceptions about the watch yeah the line is Pierce's it's not a quote yeah

00:08:56 ◼   ► here's that this is just prose from Pierce Apple decided to make a watch and

00:09:00 ◼   ► only then set out to discover what it might be good for,

00:09:02 ◼   ► parentheses, besides, you know, displaying the time.

00:09:05 ◼   ► Which is a weird thing to put in parentheses,

00:09:11 ◼   ► because who says that it has to,

00:09:16 ◼   ► that telling the time has to be a primary function?

00:09:20 ◼   ► - Right, and the thing is, is like, what's funny is,

00:09:26 ◼   ► The next sentence actually very much fits my feeling about the watch.

00:09:32 ◼   ► I don't remember if it says on the podcast, I think I said it to you before.

00:09:37 ◼   ► The quote is, "There was a sense that technology was going to move onto the body," says Alan

00:09:42 ◼   ► Dye who runs Apple's human interface group.

00:09:45 ◼   ► "We felt like the natural place, the place that had historical relevance and significance

00:09:48 ◼   ► was the wrist."

00:09:52 ◼   ► That's my whole thesis for the watch as well.

00:09:55 ◼   ► It's the natural progression of technology.

00:09:59 ◼   ► It keeps getting smaller and keeps getting more personal and where do you go from the

00:10:03 ◼   ► phone?

00:10:04 ◼   ► The watch just seems the obvious place to go and I think the history of technology shows

00:10:11 ◼   ► that personal and convenience trumps anything and that actually is the reason to be bullish.

00:10:19 ◼   ► The problem is it's a subtle point that requires putting in kind of historical context

00:10:27 ◼   ► of technology and the way things move and the way things will go over time like what

00:10:34 ◼   ► happens when the watch has cellular radios for example.

00:10:37 ◼   ► And either Apple didn't do a good job of setting up that framing for Pierce or he ignored

00:10:45 ◼   ► it but read but the fact the matter is I actually think that's exactly right but

00:10:50 ◼   ► like but it doesn't sound good that's why it's a PR disaster I have to go meta

00:10:58 ◼   ► on the story before we talk about I think there is a lot to talk about here

00:11:03 ◼   ► with this feature story but I'd have to go meta first about the story as opposed

00:11:09 ◼   ► to the watch and the team and the decisions you know and I'm gonna get

00:11:12 ◼   ► this out of the way I feel like I have to clear the decks is that it's

00:11:17 ◼   ► complaining about the the way that it's written is petty and catty but that's

00:11:24 ◼   ► how we writers are and there's a part of this where I think holy shit I could

00:11:28 ◼   ► have done what's better job if they would have given me a full day with

00:11:31 ◼   ► Lynch and die and let me talk to them on the record extensively I could have done

00:11:37 ◼   ► a much better job and I honest that's that is that's what I as I'm reading

00:11:42 ◼   ► the story that's what I thought and I got to the bottom and I thought wow this

00:11:48 ◼   ► they picked the wrong guy to give this access to like to me this was very this

00:11:53 ◼   ► is a very lightweight article did you ever get one of those there's a

00:11:56 ◼   ► steakhouse in Philly that has these great when you get the bread before your

00:12:02 ◼   ► meal they're really big and it looks like holy show I could never eat that

00:12:05 ◼   ► that's this like muffin type bread thing and then you open it open it up and

00:12:09 ◼   ► there's nothing in the inside right you know it's like it's actually not a

00:12:12 ◼   ► a lot of bread. It's like some kind of thing that puffs up and like a, you know,

00:12:16 ◼   ► like more like a pastry than bread. That's what this article is like to me.

00:12:20 ◼   ► It's very empty. Part of it though, here's the thing that I think is part of it, is

00:12:25 ◼   ► look at the timing of it. It came out today. It looks like, you know, it's pretty,

00:12:29 ◼   ► I don't know how many, how long it is, but it sounds to me like he got this access

00:12:35 ◼   ► to to Lynch and Dye sometime after the event last month, but probably a couple

00:12:41 ◼   ► weeks ago yeah it wasn't it wasn't yesterday or at least 3500 word yeah so

00:12:47 ◼   ► at least or at least a week ago I mean I think it would be at least a week maybe

00:12:51 ◼   ► more but some you know but anyway I and who knows maybe he did but it certainly

00:12:56 ◼   ► doesn't sound and and and Pierce never said here's the thing Pierce never says

00:12:59 ◼   ► in here that he's had the watch that he himself is you know got access to one

00:13:05 ◼   ► and it doesn't read like a review in any way. So I'm guessing he didn't. I mean, I'm sure

00:13:12 ◼   ► that they had, you know, you know that he got to see demos from the watches that Lynch

00:13:17 ◼   ► and Dye and others were wearing and that they had demo units similar to the ones that were

00:13:21 ◼   ► at the event, etc. But he didn't get to he doesn't have firsthand experience of what

00:13:25 ◼   ► it's like to use the watch. So how do you write this story? Like, so on the one hand,

00:13:29 ◼   ► I think I could have done this better. But on the other hand, even if they had offered

00:13:32 ◼   ► it to me. I don't see how I could have accepted it unless they let me use the watch for a

00:13:36 ◼   ► week first so that I'd have a frame of reference. How do you talk to the two people? Maybe they're

00:13:46 ◼   ► the only two sources he has on the record, but Dai is the user interface point person

00:13:51 ◼   ► for the watch, or they say for all of Apple's human interface group, but led the team that

00:13:58 ◼   ► did the watch interface and Lynch was in charge of the software team that implemented the

00:14:03 ◼   ► designs.

00:14:05 ◼   ► So I don't understand how you have the best possible interview with those two unless you

00:14:13 ◼   ► are familiar with the product that they're talking about.

00:14:18 ◼   ► So I understand why Apple might want an article coming out before the pre-orders to keep the

00:14:25 ◼   ► hype level up but it's to me a waste of time.

00:14:28 ◼   ► So on the one hand, I wish that they'd pick me to write it or ask me to write it but on

00:14:32 ◼   ► the other hand, there's no way I would have accepted it unless I had firsthand experience

00:14:34 ◼   ► with the watch because I feel like I'm going in blind.

00:14:37 ◼   ► >> Yeah, well, that's why and you're right.

00:14:40 ◼   ► Saying a PR disaster is a little strong but because who knows how much it's going to break

00:14:44 ◼   ► through but this is why I place -- that's one of the many reasons why I place -- I think

00:14:51 ◼   ► this article reflects poorly on Apple's communications team.

00:14:56 ◼   ► And the reason is a few things.

00:14:59 ◼   ► One, the reason you just articulated, right?

00:15:01 ◼   ► Like if it is an empty, like one,

00:15:03 ◼   ► maybe they did pick the wrong guy.

00:15:04 ◼   ► I don't know, I don't know, I don't know David Pierce.

00:15:06 ◼   ► He has a great reputation.

00:15:07 ◼   ► So, you know, but you're right.

00:15:10 ◼   ► He was put in a difficult position

00:15:12 ◼   ► by having to write about something that he,

00:15:14 ◼   ► you're right, I agree.

00:15:15 ◼   ► It seems like he hasn't used.

00:15:17 ◼   ► to like, there's a certain art to messaging something and origin stories and things like

00:15:30 ◼   ► that and it might be true that Apple decided to do a watch and then figure it out but I

00:15:39 ◼   ► would also bet that Apple decided to do a phone and then figure out what it would do

00:15:43 ◼   ► as well.

00:15:44 ◼   ► The thing about this thing that everyone's latching onto is if you actually think about

00:15:52 ◼   ► it, it's not really that controversial.

00:15:57 ◼   ► That's how products like this are developed.

00:16:02 ◼   ► But that's not how you necessarily tell the story.

00:16:05 ◼   ► The way you told the phone story was we all hated our phones so we wanted to do something

00:16:09 ◼   ► better.

00:16:10 ◼   ► And that was the line and everyone remembers that.

00:16:13 ◼   ► remembers Steve Jobs saying that at the keynote.

00:16:16 ◼   ► And that line,

00:16:19 ◼   ► like there's no line like that about the watch.

00:16:25 ◼   ► And now the line that is, especially with this article,

00:16:30 ◼   ► gonna kind of become cemented,

00:16:33 ◼   ► particularly on the tech press,

00:16:34 ◼   ► is that Apple wanted to make a watch.

00:16:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think I am in complete agreement with you.

00:16:39 ◼   ► I don't think it's damning,

00:16:40 ◼   ► And I don't think it's, I don't know, whatever the app is,

00:16:44 ◼   ► what's the opposite of damning?

00:16:46 ◼   ► I don't think it's anything, it's nothing.

00:16:47 ◼   ► Because I think you're right, all products start like that.

00:16:50 ◼   ► Like, okay, let's try to make a phone

00:16:51 ◼   ► and see if it comes out.

00:16:53 ◼   ► Or really like the way Apple did it was,

00:16:55 ◼   ► let's try to make a phone and they made two phones, right?

00:16:57 ◼   ► There was the Fidel team working on the iPod OS version

00:17:02 ◼   ► of the phone and there was the four stall Bertrand Cerlet

00:17:08 ◼   ► Bertrand Serlet side trying to do the "we can seriously we can strip down OS X to something

00:17:15 ◼   ► that will run on this trust us" side and then it was like okay this is the one.

00:17:21 ◼   ► Well the thing is with the phone is the phone had a reason to exist and that was that it

00:17:26 ◼   ► was a phone and what's funny about the line that we're talking about is like everyone

00:17:33 ◼   ► pretends like I don't know why it's in parentheses you're right like the watch does have a

00:17:38 ◼   ► reason to exist. It's a watch. Like it tells the time. And now admittedly this is less

00:17:46 ◼   ► compelling because everyone needs a phone but clearly over the last several years more

00:17:51 ◼   ► and more people have decided they don't need watches. So I appreciate that there's more

00:17:57 ◼   ► of a need to create value outside of that to get people who have never worn a watch

00:18:06 ◼   ► to start wearing one. That said, it's not like this is Google Glass, for example, where

00:18:14 ◼   ► there was no pre-existing kind of thing for it to fit into. There was no framing for it

00:18:22 ◼   ► to fit into. It was a completely new-to-the-world thing, whereas the phone was a phone, but

00:18:28 ◼   ► more. And this is a watch, but more. And I think this is why Apple -- and this is almost

00:18:33 ◼   ► where Apple kind of got it but not quite. That's why Tim Cook, the first thing he said

00:18:37 ◼   ► about the phone, it keeps super accurate time, which was kind of weird. But I think that

00:18:42 ◼   ► was the idea, was establishing that this is a watch first and foremost. And that's why

00:18:46 ◼   ► it's called Apple Watch. It's not called a smartwatch. All that sort of stuff. And I

00:18:51 ◼   ► think you see that in here. There is a lot of the imaging about the watch faces and there's

00:18:59 ◼   ► about the Mickey Mouse thing in here and the SORR thing.

00:19:03 ◼   ► I think Apple was going for that, but there's a lack of clarity in their messaging.

00:19:17 ◼   ► I think Apple, the company, is doing very well, but I think this is an area they've

00:19:20 ◼   ► struggled with consistently since Steve Jobs passed away.

00:19:26 ◼   ► If you think about it, this is the one area that he really did micromanage.

00:19:30 ◼   ► He looked over everything and approved everything when it came to messaging and the fear about

00:19:35 ◼   ► micromanaging is what happens when the micromanager goes away.

00:19:38 ◼   ► Do the people that are left have the skills and ability to come up with stuff of their

00:19:43 ◼   ► own or are they just people who implement it?

00:19:46 ◼   ► I haven't seen super compelling evidence quite frankly in the last several years, I've written

00:19:50 ◼   ► about this several times that Apple really has their,

00:19:54 ◼   ► their messaging muscle fully developed.

00:19:56 ◼   ► Hold that thought. Cause I, I want to come back to that exact point. Hold that.

00:20:01 ◼   ► I want to go back. What's in your hands. Okay.

00:20:06 ◼   ► Cause I'm really bad at holding a thought.

00:20:08 ◼   ► Cause that's another meta point that I want to make,

00:20:15 ◼   ► but to go back to my admitted

00:20:19 ◼   ► pettiness complaining about the article and professional jealousy. I'm also, I

00:20:24 ◼   ► don't do that all the time. I certainly like the Ian Parker profile of

00:20:28 ◼   ► Johnny Ive in The New Yorker from a few, I guess it's a few months ago now, yeah

00:20:32 ◼   ► February 23rd, was fantastic. Absolutely tremendous, a piece for the ages. I don't

00:20:40 ◼   ► even know that I have a niggle about it. I guess my only niggle was that when he

00:20:43 ◼   ► quoted me that he didn't quote the better part of the line.

00:20:48 ◼   ► So I will get to your quote soon in this article. I'm not Yeah,

00:20:53 ◼   ► exactly. I'm not above you know, I don't every single time

00:20:57 ◼   ► somebody gets, you know, access to Apple. I'm not I don't think

00:21:00 ◼   ► wow, that should have been me this Ian Parker story for the New

00:21:02 ◼   ► Yorker. Fantastic. Also, I've been endless in my praise for

00:21:08 ◼   ► the new becoming Steve Jobs book, which I think is

00:21:11 ◼   ► fantastic and I recommend to everybody and I think it's I'm not gonna say it's perfect but I think it

00:21:17 ◼   ► is excellent truly excellent and a great complement to everything that's especially as a complement to

00:21:23 ◼   ► all the other books that have been written about jobs and Apple in you know last few decades so

00:21:29 ◼   ► it's not like I always complain about people who write about Apple you know it's not like I'm

00:21:33 ◼   ► constantly saying I could have done that better I could have done that better but I just think in

00:21:38 ◼   ► case a lot of people could have done this better. Yeah but I mean at the end

00:21:45 ◼   ► of the day like I mean I think the the fault for the Isaacson book falls on

00:21:52 ◼   ► Jobs. Yeah I do too. Well both I'd say both. Well I mean yes it does but I think

00:21:57 ◼   ► but like you know one one can suspect that you know why didn't Jobs pick

00:22:03 ◼   ► someone that knew him well and knew Apple well and new technology well. Well

00:22:07 ◼   ► And there's a great story in becoming Steve Jobs that Bruce Schlander tells of when he was at the Wall Street Journal

00:22:13 ◼   ► One and this was like in this was before he I think it was

00:22:18 ◼   ► Before he met Jobs the first time and why he was nervous meeting him the first time in the 80s

00:22:23 ◼   ► Was that he had a colleague at the Wall Street Journal who got an interview with Jobs

00:22:28 ◼   ► I think while he was still at Apple and he was like Jobs just interrupted the interview and said something to the effect of

00:22:34 ◼   ► Do you understand anything at all about this fucking stuff that we're talking about? Do you understand any of this?

00:22:39 ◼   ► Just called him out on it, you know

00:22:41 ◼   ► And a guy probably didn't and I kind of feel like if you know, I think jobs is probably a really good

00:22:47 ◼   ► Judge of whether people understood the stuff that they were talking about. I think it was really hard to bullshit that man

00:22:54 ◼   ► I think he had to know that Isaacson just didn't know what the fuck he was talking about with his work

00:22:59 ◼   ► Which I you know, I agree the buck stops with jobs

00:23:03 ◼   ► Well, that's the same thing here. I mean like

00:23:06 ◼   ► this is like I

00:23:08 ◼   ► Don't think I don't think this article

00:23:11 ◼   ► accomplished what Apple wanted it to accomplish and

00:23:15 ◼   ► And I think the buck stops stops with Apple. Yeah, so let's think back so this idea

00:23:21 ◼   ► Hey, let's make a watch and we don't know what it's gonna do

00:23:24 ◼   ► but let's just set out to do it and that like you said a lot of people are latching on to this as proof that it's

00:23:29 ◼   ► the whole thing was doomed in a folly.

00:23:32 ◼   ► That's exactly, I think that's exactly what they do with everything.

00:23:34 ◼   ► The key is to go back to that line from a year or two ago that "thousand no's for every yes," right?

00:23:41 ◼   ► Do well, do a thousand crazy things and the

00:23:44 ◼   ► the trick isn't in coming up with the brilliant idea from the outset, right?

00:23:51 ◼   ► That's, that is, that's death. If you only, if you just sit there and wait at

00:23:57 ◼   ► The idea stage until you have a perfect idea and it's all comes together and then go build it. That's death

00:24:03 ◼   ► That's the way you make crap products

00:24:06 ◼   ► you have to get your hands dirty get the clay and start molding the clay and start making things and

00:24:12 ◼   ► try it and

00:24:14 ◼   ► Look at it and think is this anything and then if you think it's something keep going and then even after you've spent a lot

00:24:20 ◼   ► Of time on it eventually you've got to say

00:24:22 ◼   ► Well, it was worth it. But no, we're not gonna do this and then you know you abandon it

00:24:28 ◼   ► Paul Paul throughout posted it posted to like a bunch of like old old

00:24:33 ◼   ► stuff that he had

00:24:36 ◼   ► today and he posted this amazing kind of like like

00:24:40 ◼   ► statue type thing that was like a a a

00:24:44 ◼   ► Concept case for Longhorn. It was like these three CDs and a glass case and it was way overdone and out of there

00:24:52 ◼   ► But it's funny that you mention that because that was like the classic case of pre-planning.

00:24:58 ◼   ► Like Microsoft, "Oh, we're going to do all this stuff.

00:25:00 ◼   ► We're going to redo the file system.

00:25:01 ◼   ► We're going to redo all user relational databases."

00:25:04 ◼   ► All this crazy stuff and they got so focused on this is the idea and now we're going

00:25:09 ◼   ► to make it happen that they spun themselves into the ground and took years to recover

00:25:16 ◼   ► from that.

00:25:17 ◼   ► No, I think you're exactly right.

00:25:20 ◼   ► You don't start with an idea.

00:25:21 ◼   ► start with a ton of ideas and whittled down.

00:25:24 ◼   ► So it's a three year project. And the the idea you know, the

00:25:28 ◼   ► people are latching on to the idea that the that the mistake

00:25:31 ◼   ► was made back on day one when they said let's make a watch and

00:25:34 ◼   ► figure out what what it could be good for. No, if if the watch is

00:25:38 ◼   ► a bad product, if it's if this is, you know, or even not, not

00:25:44 ◼   ► bad, even if it's just not great. The problem wasn't on day

00:25:47 ◼   ► The problem was on day 800, 700, somewhere around there,

00:25:52 ◼   ► maybe even 900 when they didn't just say, you know what?

00:25:55 ◼   ► No, this isn't good enough.

00:25:57 ◼   ► It's not at the beginning stage.

00:25:59 ◼   ► It's at that end stage.

00:26:02 ◼   ► It's having the discipline of, what do they say, killing your babies.

00:26:06 ◼   ► And even though you've invested two years in this,

00:26:08 ◼   ► you may have to backtrack a year.

00:26:10 ◼   ► And there is some of that in here.

00:26:12 ◼   ► There's some of that in the Wired story where they say that they've

00:26:15 ◼   ► you know, had to rebuild some of the software

00:26:17 ◼   ► from scratch three times.

00:26:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I thought it was interesting.

00:26:21 ◼   ► They actually had the same interface as the Pebble Time.

00:26:25 ◼   ► - Yes, yes.

00:26:26 ◼   ► - Which is really interesting.

00:26:27 ◼   ► - That was one of the things I called out.

00:26:29 ◼   ► I actually called that out.

00:26:30 ◼   ► Let me see here.

00:26:31 ◼   ► Here's the quote.

00:26:32 ◼   ► "An early version of the software served you information

00:26:36 ◼   ► "in a timeline, flowing chronologically

00:26:37 ◼   ► "from top to bottom.

00:26:39 ◼   ► "That idea never made it off campus.

00:26:41 ◼   ► "The ideas that will ship on April 24

00:26:43 ◼   ► are focused on streamlining the time it takes a user to figure out whether something is worth

00:26:47 ◼   ► paying attention to. So yeah, it sounds, which is, and again, that drove me nuts though that

00:26:52 ◼   ► Pierce didn't delve more into that, into their idea, if they told him about that idea, I would

00:26:57 ◼   ► have loved to have heard more about it and see just how much it was like the Pebble 2.0 interface.

00:27:02 ◼   ► Because that's, that's the Pebble 2.0 is, what is it, up is old and down is,

00:27:09 ◼   ► Up is old, the middle is now, and down is the future.

00:27:13 ◼   ► Right.

00:27:13 ◼   ► And it sounds like the criticism is.

00:27:15 ◼   ► And now we're reading into an article that

00:27:18 ◼   ► was reading into whatever.

00:27:19 ◼   ► But was that-- that leaves everything

00:27:23 ◼   ► the same level of priority.

00:27:25 ◼   ► And so now you're just scrolling through stuff

00:27:27 ◼   ► that may be important, stuff that may not be.

00:27:29 ◼   ► And the situation here is, I think,

00:27:33 ◼   ► that Apple redid the interface to more surface things in the moment and then either have

00:27:40 ◼   ► them go away or have them or have it be more immediate and more reactive.

00:27:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:48 ◼   ► Alan Dye is actually an interesting guy.

00:27:50 ◼   ► I don't know him personally, but he's active and I knew of him and even though his name

00:27:58 ◼   ► probably isn't that well known, is somewhat controversial if you consider the whole, you

00:28:05 ◼   ► know, you change in UI direction from iOS 7 and Yosemite to be controversial, because

00:28:12 ◼   ► he led that work, you know, working directly under Ive. And it's the fact that his background

00:28:17 ◼   ► is graphic design.

00:28:20 ◼   ► Yep. I was I was thinking the exact same thing.

00:28:24 ◼   ► he came into Apple and Schiller's product marketing group and did things like the packaging,

00:28:31 ◼   ► you know, like boxes and stuff like that, and then moved to take a leadership role in

00:28:38 ◼   ► user interface design.

00:28:40 ◼   ► And the, like I said, I would call it controversy.

00:28:44 ◼   ► And people inside Apple, I know, you know, there are people who strongly disagree with

00:28:48 ◼   ► the direction.

00:28:50 ◼   ► I think that is the criticism of the iOS 7 aesthetic is that it looks fantastic, but

00:28:55 ◼   ► there's a difference between looking good in a screenshot and actually being something

00:29:00 ◼   ► that you interact with.

00:29:02 ◼   ► I think all the criticism is about the affordances, like how do you know what to do, what to press.

00:29:08 ◼   ► That's something that I do think is lacking and is still lacking.

00:29:13 ◼   ► Even though, no question, iOS 7, I would say it looked a million times better than the

00:29:17 ◼   ► previous version, it is harder to use.

00:29:20 ◼   ► Yeah, and you know, it's inside the company, like HR wise,

00:29:27 ◼   ► there's been turnover, like where there are. And again, I

00:29:34 ◼   ► don't think it's complete. It's not like all of the old human

00:29:38 ◼   ► interface team was let go, forced out, and they're all, you

00:29:42 ◼   ► know, have new jobs elsewhere. And a whole new team came in.

00:29:46 ◼   ► But in some ways it's, you know,

00:29:49 ◼   ► you know, some of the old people are still there and, you know,

00:29:52 ◼   ► it wasn't a complete reshuffling, but it was definitely

00:29:56 ◼   ► somewhat of a reshuffling, right?

00:30:00 ◼   ► Yup. No, I've heard the same thing.

00:30:02 ◼   ► You know that. And, and there's definitely some, you know, uh,

00:30:06 ◼   ► user interface people from the other side,

00:30:08 ◼   ► the old school people who have left Apple and are at, you know,

00:30:11 ◼   ► Google and other places now in, in the Valley, uh,

00:30:15 ◼   ► And Di is sort of, I forget the other name.

00:30:19 ◼   ► I know there's another person

00:30:20 ◼   ► who came from product marketing.

00:30:21 ◼   ► You know, and there's some resentment

00:30:25 ◼   ► from the people who don't think,

00:30:26 ◼   ► who don't agree with the direction.

00:30:28 ◼   ► Just as an aside.

00:30:32 ◼   ► Let me take a break and then we'll come back

00:30:35 ◼   ► to that point that I told you to keep in your hands.

00:30:37 ◼   ► Is that all right?

00:30:38 ◼   ► I think it's a good time.

00:30:39 ◼   ► - It was slipping through my fingers,

00:30:40 ◼   ► but with a reminder, I just re-grabbed it.

00:30:42 ◼   ► - All right, hold on.

00:30:42 ◼   ► Let's take a break and let's thank

00:30:44 ◼   ► our first sponsor. It's our good friends at Fracture. You guys know Fracture. I talk about

00:30:51 ◼   ► them. They've been sponsoring the show all year long. Great, great service. They print

00:30:58 ◼   ► photographs directly on glass. You take pictures with your iPhone, any camera you want. You've

00:31:05 ◼   ► got them. They're all on your computer, right? In the old days, all your pictures were analog

00:31:11 ◼   ► And it was easy.

00:31:12 ◼   ► You could just buy a frame.

00:31:13 ◼   ► You put the best ones up.

00:31:14 ◼   ► We've got everything digital now.

00:31:16 ◼   ► It's great to print your photos.

00:31:19 ◼   ► It really is your best photos.

00:31:21 ◼   ► You put them up.

00:31:22 ◼   ► You get some pictures of your kids or your family and stuff like that.

00:31:25 ◼   ► You put them up on the wall.

00:31:28 ◼   ► And then all of a sudden, you look at them and my God, everybody's older, right?

00:31:31 ◼   ► We've got a picture.

00:31:32 ◼   ► I just saw it the other day.

00:31:33 ◼   ► It was from my wife's and my wedding.

00:31:37 ◼   ► And God, it was a long time ago.

00:31:38 ◼   ► and one of her cousins was just a tiny little girl,

00:31:41 ◼   ► like preschool age, and now she's like a senior

00:31:44 ◼   ► in high school, and it's like, holy shit, look at her.

00:31:47 ◼   ► What a great reminder.

00:31:48 ◼   ► Printing photos, I can't recommend it enough.

00:31:51 ◼   ► Well, Fracture is a great way to do it.

00:31:54 ◼   ► You send them your photos, they print them directly on glass,

00:31:58 ◼   ► not a piece of paper stuck to glass.

00:32:00 ◼   ► I don't even know how they do it,

00:32:01 ◼   ► some kind of proprietary secret sauce.

00:32:04 ◼   ► They print them right on the glass,

00:32:05 ◼   ► just like the way that our iPhones are laminated,

00:32:09 ◼   ► the pixels are laminated to the glass.

00:32:11 ◼   ► It's a fantastic effect.

00:32:13 ◼   ► It really looks great.

00:32:16 ◼   ► And it lets you mount them in these amazingly minimal ways,

00:32:20 ◼   ► because there's no reason--

00:32:22 ◼   ► you don't need to have a border around the frame,

00:32:24 ◼   ► because there's no piece of paper that's secured to the glass.

00:32:27 ◼   ► So you can get these amazing edge-to-edge--

00:32:29 ◼   ► just the glass, just the picture, just the picture,

00:32:32 ◼   ► just sitting there.

00:32:34 ◼   ► Really, really amazing stuff.

00:32:36 ◼   ► Great prices, all sorts of sizes,

00:32:39 ◼   ► from really small stuff you can put on your desk

00:32:41 ◼   ► to really big, like 23 by 23 square,

00:32:46 ◼   ► I forget how big the big rectangle one,

00:32:47 ◼   ► something 28 inches, 27 inches, really, really big.

00:32:51 ◼   ► And the amazing thing about that too,

00:32:55 ◼   ► is it ties into, I think, Apple's campaign

00:32:57 ◼   ► with the iPhone 6 camera, the shot with iPhone,

00:33:00 ◼   ► with just how good iPhone pictures look blown up big.

00:33:05 ◼   ► We know that the iPhone has a good camera,

00:33:08 ◼   ► but it's like you still think, well, it's a phone camera,

00:33:10 ◼   ► so you can't blow it up real big.

00:33:11 ◼   ► It's like, actually you can, there's plenty of pixels.

00:33:13 ◼   ► You can go to 20 some inches with photos taken

00:33:16 ◼   ► with your iPhone and they look amazing.

00:33:18 ◼   ► I mean, some of the ones in the Apple store,

00:33:19 ◼   ► they've got blown up to like six feet and they look great.

00:33:22 ◼   ► So where do you go to find out more?

00:33:26 ◼   ► go to fractureme.com and you can sign up. Is there a code? I think there's a code but

00:33:36 ◼   ► I forget it. Well, I'll tell you later about the code. Go there. Go to fractureme.com and

00:33:47 ◼   ► get some pictures printed and my thanks to fracture. All right. What was the thought

00:33:55 ◼   ► that I had told you to hold in your hands.

00:33:57 ◼   ► So the idea is that Apple's messaging

00:34:03 ◼   ► hasn't been as crisp as it once was.

00:34:06 ◼   ► And I always hate to dip into the since Steve Jobs

00:34:14 ◼   ► sort of narrative.

00:34:15 ◼   ► But I think this is the one area where Apple does miss him.

00:34:20 ◼   ► And I think a reason they miss him

00:34:21 ◼   ► is in part because he was so deeply involved in the messaging, approving everything.

00:34:31 ◼   ► You cannot overstate how involved he was more than product design.

00:34:38 ◼   ► The problem with that is the danger of having a micromanager is while the micromanager is

00:34:43 ◼   ► there, presuming he's brilliant as Jobs obviously was particularly when it came to messaging,

00:34:49 ◼   ► get great work but once the micromanager is gone everyone underneath the micromanager has just been

00:34:55 ◼   ► in pure execution roles. I just got a message from headquarters. Headquarters says the code

00:35:00 ◼   ► for fracture it's a daring fireball all one word and when you use that you save 15 percent. So let's

00:35:06 ◼   ► screw it let's not fix it in editing let's let it go this will stick in your head because it came

00:35:10 ◼   ► mid conversation daring fireball use that code when you buy your fracture and you save 15 percent

00:35:14 ◼   ► their prices are already really good. Yes, and here's the big difference. It's another meta angle

00:35:20 ◼   ► on this story is in the jobs era. It wasn't just that he controlled the messaging from behind the

00:35:25 ◼   ► scenes. It was a strategy of truly severe limited access to any and all Apple employees, including

00:35:36 ◼   ► Jobs himself. Yep. And that's one of the things that really sticks out to me reading "Becoming

00:35:43 ◼   ► Steve Jobs was just how much more accessible he was personally right up

00:35:52 ◼   ► through coming back to Apple in 1997. That it really was a and even maybe even

00:36:02 ◼   ► in those first two years you know the first few years there at Apple he was

00:36:06 ◼   ► still a lot more accessible to again not any and all not any you know

00:36:12 ◼   ► Joe or Jane Charlie reporter from anybody but with hand-picked reporters

00:36:16 ◼   ► from you know big-name publications like the Wall Street Journal and Fortune and

00:36:21 ◼   ► etc he was pretty accessible and then that that got shut down really and

00:36:27 ◼   ► nobody they nobody got to talk to Apple executives and you certainly didn't see

00:36:31 ◼   ► this it is clearly a huge strategic change at Apple in terms of just how

00:36:39 ◼   ► many people they've made accessible to the press in the run-up to the watch.

00:36:43 ◼   ► Huge profile of Johnny Ive in The New Yorker which was clearly months in the

00:36:48 ◼   ► making. I mean maybe the better part of 2014 you know with a series of

00:36:53 ◼   ► interviews and trips to California. Enormous access that was granted to Ian

00:36:59 ◼   ► Parker and the Financial Times had a you know clearly not as detailed and as

00:37:06 ◼   ► lengthy as Ian Parker, but pretty pretty good interview with Johnny Ive on the record. There

00:37:11 ◼   ► was a Tim Cook profile by Adam Leschinsky in oh boy.

00:37:18 ◼   ► Fortune. I don't know.

00:37:20 ◼   ► I, I, I've, because they, I swear to God, by the way my brain works, it's like a hashing

00:37:27 ◼   ► algorithm and because they both start with F O R and their business publications, I always

00:37:31 ◼   ► confuse fortune.

00:37:32 ◼   ► It's fortune. It's fortune.

00:37:35 ◼   ► That was last week and I think I'm forgetting some.

00:37:40 ◼   ► Well, and then after the event last year, there was a bunch too.

00:37:43 ◼   ► He was in the Bloomberg Businessweek with that crazy cover.

00:37:48 ◼   ► But yeah, it's interesting.

00:37:49 ◼   ► I'm actually going back.

00:37:51 ◼   ► It's not perfect but I'm searching in Google for the time period up to the actual launch

00:37:57 ◼   ► of the watch or the phone, sorry, back in 2007.

00:38:01 ◼   ► You would think that any sort of article like this sort of wire article would be somewhere

00:38:05 ◼   ► at the top and I can't find anything like it.

00:38:08 ◼   ► The only thing I can find are the reviews that dropped a week before.

00:38:12 ◼   ► I don't recall, and I think I would have, I don't recall every hearing about who designed

00:38:18 ◼   ► the interface for the iPhone.

00:38:21 ◼   ► And I don't recall, I mean we knew Johnny Ive.

00:38:24 ◼   ► You know in in the jobs era the best that you got outside Apple was just public

00:38:31 ◼   ► recognition of who did what

00:38:34 ◼   ► Yep, Johnny

00:38:35 ◼   ► I would like give a speech like once a year like usually somewhere in Great Britain and like that that that was that was about

00:38:40 ◼   ► It and he was already talking in the the videos

00:38:44 ◼   ► You know, I think I think I've I've was already, you know, either being interviewed

00:38:49 ◼   ► It wasn't really like now he narrates them

00:38:51 ◼   ► But then it was like he was the you know, the talking head with the white background, you know talking about what you know

00:38:57 ◼   ► The you know meticulous design and you know dropping all those

00:39:00 ◼   ► excellently

00:39:02 ◼   ► impeccably pronounced adjectives

00:39:04 ◼   ► You know, we always know who Schiller is because Schiller is on stage

00:39:08 ◼   ► But you just never got behind this, you know, there's never any kind of access like this like talking them to people who designed

00:39:17 ◼   ► You know the look and feel of the buttons for iOS one and stuff like that

00:39:21 ◼   ► Right.

00:39:22 ◼   ► It's all you got was the story that Jobs presented on stage.

00:39:26 ◼   ► Right.

00:39:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:28 ◼   ► So I think there's a couple of things here.

00:39:29 ◼   ► So one, it was super tightly controlled which means like you're not getting a story like

00:39:36 ◼   ► this that I think that I suspect it came out with a spin that Apple probably wouldn't

00:39:46 ◼   ► prefer.

00:39:48 ◼   ► So that's kind of part one.

00:39:51 ◼   ► This is kind of the risk of being open.

00:39:53 ◼   ► But part two is even the people who are talking don't have a crispness in what they're saying.

00:40:01 ◼   ► And I know like, again, the narrative for skeptics in particular is that why does this

00:40:07 ◼   ► exist?

00:40:08 ◼   ► Again, I actually think this is what's hard about messaging.

00:40:11 ◼   ► I actually think what they're saying in this article is exactly right.

00:40:18 ◼   ► I don't believe that advancement in technology and computing happens because great people

00:40:24 ◼   ► force it into being.

00:40:26 ◼   ► I think that there's an ongoing march forward progress of technology and the great companies

00:40:35 ◼   ► and the great visionaries like Steve Jobs, their skill is not in birthing things per

00:40:42 ◼   ► se.

00:40:43 ◼   ► where the wave is going and catching it and being on the cutting edge of it.

00:40:49 ◼   ► And that's why you see again and again like there's all these examples of history of like

00:40:53 ◼   ► stuff being invented by multiple people at about the same time, right?

00:40:57 ◼   ► It's because like it's the time for something and this is my philosophy with technology.

00:41:01 ◼   ► My very first post is just actually like stated this and I think it's the time and exactly

00:41:07 ◼   ► what he said, the next place is the watch.

00:41:11 ◼   ► The problem is that that's not how the press writes stories. The press doesn't write

00:41:15 ◼   ► about the big picture contextual place in technology for this advice. That's why I

00:41:20 ◼   ► have a job because that's what I write about. But I write to a limited niche audience. What

00:41:25 ◼   ► press wants, they want the hero and they want the open and shut story and case. That's

00:41:31 ◼   ► why you had Steve Jobs with the iPhone being like, "We all hated our phones so we made

00:41:35 ◼   ► a better one. That you can latch onto that. That's not here. It consistently hasn't been

00:41:42 ◼   ► here. You think you first saw the iPad. Now you're seeing it now.

00:41:46 ◼   ► Dave Asprey I think one of the most interesting things

00:41:48 ◼   ► that's come out of this barrage of behind this access and quotes from Apple's leaders,

00:41:56 ◼   ► design leaders, I thought one of the most interesting was the Ive quote in the Financial

00:42:00 ◼   ► Times article, which overall wasn't a great article, wasn't really, you know, but this line

00:42:05 ◼   ► was great, which isn't surprising, but more, you know, I've said exactly what you're saying, but it

00:42:10 ◼   ► was great to hear from. We approached the phone with, from this perspective, that we all hated the

00:42:16 ◼   ► phones that we had, hated them, and we're approaching the watch as that we love watches. We love the

00:42:24 ◼   ► traditional world of mechanical watches, and we're approaching the watch with reverence for what's

00:42:29 ◼   ► come before us and that is a totally different approach and it's informed everything we did

00:42:33 ◼   ► and it's fascinating to hear that right nothing no kind of trash talk at all about

00:42:39 ◼   ► the traditional world of of watches yeah it is interesting but then this article doesn't go into

00:42:46 ◼   ► that at all it just says you know johnny i've took a deep dive into horology and i think that

00:42:51 ◼   ► was even a mistake because from what i understand it wasn't just that johnny i've went and had like

00:42:55 ◼   ► a I'm gonna go become a huge watch expert everybody who worked on the watch like they brought in

00:43:02 ◼   ► horological experts and it wasn't just Johnny Ive who studied up on it it was everybody who was

00:43:09 ◼   ► involved like the whole team more or less became world-class experts in in the history and you know

00:43:18 ◼   ► everything you'd want to know to be a serious you know watch expert yeah and I don't think that

00:43:24 ◼   ► that comes across in the story.

00:43:28 ◼   ► I do think, and in terms of it being outside Apple's control, I can't help but think

00:43:32 ◼   ► that Katie Cotton, wherever she is this morning, is enjoying her morning cup of tea or coffee

00:43:39 ◼   ► or whatever she drinks and is just shaking her head.

00:43:42 ◼   ► >> I was under the impression she started out with scotch first thing.

00:43:46 ◼   ► >> I don't think so.

00:43:48 ◼   ► >> No, yeah.

00:43:51 ◼   ► I think I agree.

00:43:53 ◼   ► And like there and the people got people.

00:43:58 ◼   ► People obviously especially journalists, you know, very much disliked that era of Apple

00:44:05 ◼   ► from a PR perspective and disliked Katie Cotton by and large.

00:44:10 ◼   ► But the fact the matter is Apple didn't Apple's message always got across.

00:44:17 ◼   ► Apple wasn't out to me because there was there was nothing else to write about.

00:44:19 ◼   ► The only thing they let out was exactly what they wanted to let out.

00:44:24 ◼   ► And again, like I said, it's almost like the problem here and the problem with this

00:44:28 ◼   ► article and with all these articles is they're too honest.

00:44:32 ◼   ► And I appreciate that and you appreciate that.

00:44:36 ◼   ► But kind of unfiltered honesty, and this is kind of maybe we can lead into your BOSA remark

00:44:43 ◼   ► Like, unfiltered honesty without... it's not a soundbite.

00:44:50 ◼   ► It doesn't spread.

00:44:54 ◼   ► Or it leaves itself open to all kinds of interpretations.

00:44:59 ◼   ► And you kind of see that happening in the hands of someone like Ian Parker,

00:45:06 ◼   ► who, remember, took 17,000 words to do it.

00:45:10 ◼   ► Like what was it about the link that mattered too?

00:45:13 ◼   ► It was all the context that was put around it, right?

00:45:15 ◼   ► When you put context around honesty, then it's so fulfilling and it's like you read

00:45:22 ◼   ► that article like eating a steak dinner or something, right?

00:45:25 ◼   ► But when you have honesty but without deep understanding or context, it leaves itself

00:45:34 ◼   ► open to interpretation which I think happened here and so you had Pierce's interpretation

00:45:38 ◼   ► on top of it. Two, you get unintended sound bites. I think that's exactly what happened.

00:45:45 ◼   ► The sound bite is Apple didn't have a plan for the watch. Again, I think if you look

00:45:49 ◼   ► at big picture, a watch is the natural thing to do next and it does tell time.

00:45:54 ◼   ► Dave Asprey And I honestly think that that's the better

00:45:56 ◼   ► way to approach it is, okay, let's approach it with an empty mind and anything and everything

00:46:00 ◼   ► goes. As opposed to, I'm telling you, the worst way to design anything is to have the

00:46:05 ◼   ► the whole thing in your head and then go make the thing in your head without

00:46:09 ◼   ► constant iteration and revisiting and feeling it as it becomes realer and

00:46:14 ◼   ► realer and realer. It's, it's to me,

00:46:16 ◼   ► one of the secrets of Apple's success in the last, um, geez,

00:46:20 ◼   ► what are we even up to now? 20, 20 years, 15 years. What the hell?

00:46:25 ◼   ► How long has it been?

00:46:25 ◼   ► Well, the, well, the iPod was 18 years, 14 years.

00:46:29 ◼   ► I'm going to say 18 years since 97.

00:46:31 ◼   ► That's fair. Uh,

00:46:34 ◼   ► is that they don't, you know, it's not like somebody goes off with a notebook, sketches a thing,

00:46:41 ◼   ► and draws it all up, and then somebody goes and makes it, which is I think how a lot of technology has been made ever since the outset of technology.

00:46:49 ◼   ► Oh, totally. I mean, I think people have this idea that Apple has this grand vision.

00:46:53 ◼   ► And one thing that I got a chance to really dig deep into when I was at Apple was looking

00:47:01 ◼   ► at how iTunes came about.

00:47:06 ◼   ► And what people forget about this, I might have told this story, I don't know if it

00:47:09 ◼   ► was to you before, but you remember in 2000 Apple had a big event where they were like,

00:47:16 ◼   ► what made Mac the first time around?

00:47:19 ◼   ► It was desktop publishing.

00:47:21 ◼   ► we think we know what's next and it's going to be movies and iMovie and it was the iMac and it was

00:47:27 ◼   ► like we are gonna like you can make home movies and this is what we're gonna be all about.

00:47:32 ◼   ► Yeah. And then like nine months later or nine months later or somewhat absurdly short amount

00:47:37 ◼   ► of time Steve Jobs gets on stage and gives a completely different vision like could not be

00:47:42 ◼   ► more different and that was the digital hub speech so we think the Mac's gonna be a digital hub for

00:47:46 ◼   ► all these devices. Yeah and I think he almost admitted that it was a mistake right because

00:47:50 ◼   ► it also coincided with with making CD-R drives standard because part of the

00:47:57 ◼   ► problem with the the prior max was that you couldn't make music discs right no

00:48:04 ◼   ► no I mean they implicitly admitted it was a problem I don't I mean see jobs

00:48:09 ◼   ► never want to stand up and say we we screw this up but I mean it was yeah he

00:48:14 ◼   ► had a good way of doing he had a good way of doing it without saying you know

00:48:18 ◼   ► He was I would say one of his greatest gifts was his way of

00:48:21 ◼   ► Backtracking even publicly and somehow making it not look like an admission of error, right?

00:48:28 ◼   ► No exactly and you hear this but you hear this is what cook always praised about jobs is how you change his mind all the

00:48:33 ◼   ► Time like I mean to think that Apple has a master plan and just executes it is is

00:48:39 ◼   ► Not just on misunderstand Apple, but it's to misunderstand how progress happens

00:48:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean again, this is back to my kind of big meta thesis like you figure out what's next you don't make what's next

00:48:51 ◼   ► yeah, and

00:48:53 ◼   ► I'm sorry go well and you have to look at what people are doing and and that era you're talking about it

00:48:57 ◼   ► It was a it was a dividing point between Mac and PC users

00:49:02 ◼   ► Not just in terms of any kind of political affiliation or tribal affiliation, whatever you want to call it

00:49:09 ◼   ► But just in terms of what real people were really doing and on the PC side

00:49:14 ◼   ► what people were doing was downloading a lot of music from Napster and

00:49:17 ◼   ► And then burning CDs, you know, 10 11 12 13 songs, whatever you could fit

00:49:23 ◼   ► Or I guess you could fit more

00:49:25 ◼   ► I guess you could with mp3s you could if you had an mp3 player that could read them off CD

00:49:29 ◼   ► but anyway, people were burning CDs with music whether it was to play them as

00:49:32 ◼   ► regular CDs or to play them in

00:49:36 ◼   ► MP3 players that could read MP3s off CDs people were doing it and Mac users weren't because they didn't have CDR drives. Yeah

00:49:43 ◼   ► My favorite actually one of my favorite jobs quotes comes around this time. I it's it's actually really hard to find

00:49:50 ◼   ► I think it's you have to either an archive off. I'll try to find it, you know in a bit

00:49:54 ◼   ► But basically he says like I thought we've missed it

00:49:57 ◼   ► Like I thought I screwed up like and it was like the most like stark admission of like jobs thing

00:50:03 ◼   ► admitting that he thought that he totally blew it.

00:50:06 ◼   ► He said they thought they were too late.

00:50:07 ◼   ► They thought they were too late to music.

00:50:09 ◼   ► They made the wrong focus.

00:50:10 ◼   ► They made the wrong bet by focusing on movies.

00:50:12 ◼   ► And what's amazing is, I mean, the company internally,

00:50:16 ◼   ► in that year or nine months, however long it was,

00:50:19 ◼   ► completely transformed.

00:50:20 ◼   ► Like, the iMovie guys were like top of the heap, right?

00:50:22 ◼   ► Within a matter of weeks, like, completely reorganized,

00:50:26 ◼   ► completely deprioritized.

00:50:28 ◼   ► iTunes was gonna be, they went out and bought SoundJam

00:50:31 ◼   ► And turned around and you think about Apple has this reputation, they do stuff for years

00:50:37 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:50:38 ◼   ► I do believe they do that today but they delivered iTunes and these new Macs in something like

00:50:44 ◼   ► nine months and then they hadn't even conceived of the iPod yet.

00:50:50 ◼   ► A month later was when Rubenstein went to Japan and visited Toshiba.

00:50:55 ◼   ► He was like, "Oh, we have this little hard drive.

00:50:56 ◼   ► We don't know what to do with it."

00:50:57 ◼   ► He's like, "Oh, I know what we could do with that."

00:50:59 ◼   ► And that was in February and they watched the iPod in September.

00:51:03 ◼   ► So the iPod was conceived, designed, all that in six months.

00:51:09 ◼   ► In 2001.

00:51:10 ◼   ► In 2001.

00:51:12 ◼   ► And that's not like…

00:51:19 ◼   ► Starting with a breakthrough from Toshiba.

00:51:21 ◼   ► It is a crazy story.

00:51:23 ◼   ► The basic idea there was that standard laptop hard drives were 2.5 inches and Toshiba came

00:51:28 ◼   ► up with a 1.8 inch hard drive. And none of the PC makers wanted it because well, and

00:51:36 ◼   ► it the 2.5 inch size was fine because the the laptops even the smallest one had to at

00:51:43 ◼   ► least the minimum size for the laptop with the keyboard and with a reasonable screen.

00:51:48 ◼   ► That inch didn't matter. There was nothing to do with the space saving the space saving

00:51:53 ◼   ► made no difference to the design of laptops and laptops were the only devices these other

00:51:58 ◼   ► companies had that needed smaller drives, right? You had to go to something as radically smaller

00:52:04 ◼   ► as like the first iPods to make to say, here's where you need something that here's where 2.5

00:52:10 ◼   ► inches is too too big. You needed it. And nobody else had a device in mind that that needed that.

00:52:17 ◼   ► No, it's a it's a wonderful example of how, you know, particularly technology like and this is why

00:52:23 ◼   ► This is why technology companies generally, even though you want people that have a wide

00:52:31 ◼   ► range of experiences and wearable arts, that sort of stuff, but that's why the technological

00:52:37 ◼   ► background is valued because at the end of the day, what is possible and what isn't

00:52:43 ◼   ► is governed by the technology.

00:52:45 ◼   ► That's a big part of why the iPhone succeeded whereas something like the Newton didn't.

00:52:50 ◼   ► The technology just wasn't there whereas the iPhone was on the edge of possible.

00:52:55 ◼   ► The processor was just barely fast enough.

00:52:56 ◼   ► They did do all kinds of tricks to make it responsive like they did.

00:53:02 ◼   ► The touchscreen technology was just getting cheap enough and it's understanding that

00:53:10 ◼   ► intersection and having the patience to watch something when it's ready.

00:53:14 ◼   ► Quite frankly, if you want to criticize the watch for anything, first of all, I was just

00:53:19 ◼   ► Just wait until it actually comes out and you can use it.

00:53:22 ◼   ► But two, I think if you look at the arc of personal technology, of course the next thing

00:53:32 ◼   ► is going to be the risk.

00:53:33 ◼   ► That's my opinion but I think it's pretty clear.

00:53:35 ◼   ► The question is when is the right time and the right time will be governed by the available

00:53:40 ◼   ► technology.

00:53:43 ◼   ► And so the criticism of the watch, if it ends up deserving criticism, is not that it shouldn't

00:53:48 ◼   ► exist.

00:53:49 ◼   ► Should it exist now or should it exist later?

00:53:52 ◼   ► Yeah, and I would say a great example of that is the Newton.

00:53:56 ◼   ► And, you know, the Newton was a great product.

00:54:02 ◼   ► I really, really appreciated the OS.

00:54:05 ◼   ► I thought it was a great design.

00:54:07 ◼   ► I think you could quibble about some of the details.

00:54:10 ◼   ► I think that the way that they made some of the apps blessed,

00:54:14 ◼   ► you know, the way that at the bottom of the screen,

00:54:16 ◼   ► there were certain apps that had a permanent location there and you couldn't change them,

00:54:20 ◼   ► was questionable. But it was also fixable. They could go forward in a new way. But to me,

00:54:25 ◼   ► though, I have talked, I talked about this a long time ago, but to me, the fundamental

00:54:29 ◼   ► failure of the Newton was that it came too soon, insofar as there was no wireless networking at

00:54:37 ◼   ► the time. And any device of that basic gist form factor needed wireless networking. And I know

00:54:44 ◼   ► palm had some success with palm pilots in that era. And there

00:54:48 ◼   ► wasn't Wi Fi or cellular networking at the time. But I

00:54:51 ◼   ► think if you look at palm success with the palm pilot, and

00:54:54 ◼   ► how many they sold it was it was a hit among us, right? I had

00:54:59 ◼   ► one I had a hand. I carried around for years and loved it.

00:55:03 ◼   ► But there was no way like, my parents were going to get one or

00:55:08 ◼   ► my sister, my sister was would never get one. It's, you know,

00:55:11 ◼   ► normal people weren't going to get one, right. And it's because

00:55:14 ◼   ► it didn't have wireless and because it didn't have wireless it couldn't

00:55:16 ◼   ► communicate and you know what people do they communicate that's the fundamental

00:55:20 ◼   ► gist of why the internet got popular in the 90s was people communicated with

00:55:26 ◼   ► each other until people could communicate with each other they had no

00:55:28 ◼   ► interest in in you know PCs the mass market it was only for us nerds yeah and

00:55:35 ◼   ► same thing with handhelds and you know that's what doomed the Newton the Newton

00:55:41 ◼   ► needed anything that's that you carried around in your hand and each wireless

00:55:45 ◼   ► networking because it needs to be a communications device now I think that

00:55:49 ◼   ► that it is it is the perfect example and and this is you know this gets to why

00:55:55 ◼   ► why Apple has focused on the communication aspect of the watch and

00:56:00 ◼   ► you know the drawing and the heart be on sort of stuff I mean what obviously

00:56:03 ◼   ► again left to wait and see how it actually works out in real life but

00:56:08 ◼   ► But that's why it's a tentpole feature because that's what matters to normal people.

00:56:19 ◼   ► I want to talk about the headline for this article.

00:56:23 ◼   ► It drives me crazy.

00:56:26 ◼   ► This is the Wired article.

00:56:28 ◼   ► The headline is "iPhone Killer colon the secret history of the Apple Watch."

00:56:35 ◼   ► None of that is true.

00:56:38 ◼   ► It is not an iPhone killer.

00:56:43 ◼   ► To me, a bad headline is like a bad first impression.

00:56:49 ◼   ► Everything has to recover from that.

00:56:52 ◼   ► So the article, the headline sets up such a false impression.

00:57:02 ◼   ► The watch is useless without your iPhone.

00:57:04 ◼   ► Literally.

00:57:05 ◼   ► not literally I guess there's certain functionality still works outside the

00:57:09 ◼   ► range of your phone but it is fundamentally designed to work as a it

00:57:16 ◼   ► is a companion it is supposed to make your life with your phone better that's

00:57:21 ◼   ► the gist of it it's not a killer and maybe someday it will be right maybe

00:57:25 ◼   ► someday there will be it certainly seems possible with the march of technology

00:57:30 ◼   ► that that within a few years whether that's three years four years five years

00:57:34 ◼   ► years, six years, that you know, the watch will have its own Wi Fi first, probably

00:57:38 ◼   ► a watch could have its own cellular and be the main device and then you would buy something

00:57:45 ◼   ► like an iPod touch just to be your four inch five inch screen that connects to the watch.

00:57:52 ◼   ► It must have Wi Fi because of the whole it works in your house even when you Yeah, but

00:57:56 ◼   ► it doesn't use but like you can't set it up. Let's say it's a like you never log into your

00:58:01 ◼   ► home Wi-Fi. It's that whole Wi-Fi back channel thing. You don't type a password into your

00:58:08 ◼   ► watch so that when your phone isn't there, it's on the internet and getting notifications.

00:58:14 ◼   ► It's only that back channel, I forget what the technical term for it is, but it's that

00:58:17 ◼   ► way that Wi-Fi can now have--

00:58:18 ◼   ► >>Steve Paulson Wi-Fi Direct, I think.

00:58:19 ◼   ► >>Steve Paulson Yeah, something like that. I'm saying that

00:58:23 ◼   ► in the future, clearly, it's a natural progression that the watch would have its own Wi-Fi and

00:58:28 ◼   ► and then you could leave house without your phone.

00:58:30 ◼   ► And if it knows the Starbucks network,

00:58:33 ◼   ► it can, when you get there, it'll get notifications

00:58:36 ◼   ► and email and stuff like that right there.

00:58:38 ◼   ► And then you can send text messages or iMessage,

00:58:40 ◼   ► at least not SMS, but you could send messages and emails

00:58:43 ◼   ► right from your watch without your phone present.

00:58:46 ◼   ► That's coming in the future, surely,

00:58:48 ◼   ► unless the product is so unpopular that they stop making it.

00:58:52 ◼   ► - Right, well, I mean, LG just watched a watch with LTE.

00:58:55 ◼   ► I mean, so it's like it's in the realm of possibility.

00:58:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think Samsung had,

00:59:00 ◼   ► didn't Samsung have one with LTE?

00:59:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, they launched it last year.

00:59:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, clearly it's possible.

00:59:03 ◼   ► It's just a question of when it'll be ready

00:59:05 ◼   ► for an Apple caliber product.

00:59:07 ◼   ► - Right.

00:59:08 ◼   ► - That headline is so bad.

00:59:09 ◼   ► It's not an iPhone killer, absolutely not.

00:59:12 ◼   ► And then the secret history of the Apple Watch,

00:59:14 ◼   ► boy, that is really overstating the hacks tests

00:59:17 ◼   ► that he got, right?

00:59:18 ◼   ► I mean, how much does,

00:59:21 ◼   ► this is not the secret history of the Apple Watch, right?

00:59:24 ◼   ► Like if there's a problem with the article,

00:59:26 ◼   ► it's that it's so incomplete about the creation story

00:59:28 ◼   ► of the Apple Watch.

00:59:29 ◼   ► There are very few details about what paths they went down

00:59:35 ◼   ► and backtracked on in the three years

00:59:37 ◼   ► that they were working on it.

00:59:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, even the one that was in here

00:59:42 ◼   ► that was kind of interesting about the timeline

00:59:44 ◼   ► wasn't really fleshed out.

00:59:46 ◼   ► - No, it wasn't fleshed out in any degree.

00:59:49 ◼   ► So, you know, who has on the, to me,

00:59:51 ◼   ► click baby headline from Wired.

00:59:54 ◼   ► Compare that to the New Yorker, which the headline is,

00:59:58 ◼   ► "The Shape of Things to Come--

01:00:00 ◼   ► How an Industrial Designer Became Apple's Greatest Product."

01:00:03 ◼   ► And then their title tag for the article,

01:00:05 ◼   ► which is a little different, is "Jonathan Ive

01:00:08 ◼   ► and the Future of Apple."

01:00:10 ◼   ► Totally fair.

01:00:11 ◼   ► Not clickbaity at all.

01:00:12 ◼   ► And the article got tons of attention.

01:00:14 ◼   ► It got all the attention it deserves.

01:00:15 ◼   ► Well, welcome to the reality of today's World Wide Web.

01:00:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:23 ◼   ► Let's take a break and then the last thing we can do

01:00:25 ◼   ► on the article is talk about the quote they have for me.

01:00:30 ◼   ► There's another area where I'll complain.

01:00:33 ◼   ► - We'll get to the real area while you're grumpy.

01:00:35 ◼   ► - Yeah.

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01:01:37 ◼   ► So if you just wanna put up a dashboard

01:01:39 ◼   ► that graphs things like your app sales for the last month

01:01:44 ◼   ► or last week or whatever,

01:01:45 ◼   ► dash and you use app figures already.

01:01:48 ◼   ► Well, number one, if you don't use app figures,

01:01:50 ◼   ► you should look into it.

01:01:51 ◼   ► But then if you use Dash, you can hook up to app figures

01:01:53 ◼   ► and get that graphed in a really, really cool way.

01:01:57 ◼   ► And you're not limited to their pre-built widgets.

01:02:02 ◼   ► They have an API, so you can do custom data.

01:02:04 ◼   ► The API you can use to push real-time data

01:02:08 ◼   ► or pull it from sources like Google Drive, Dropbox,

01:02:13 ◼   ► or pretty much anywhere on the web.

01:02:15 ◼   ► So if you can build something that can put data

01:02:18 ◼   ► into Dropbox, which is pretty easy.

01:02:21 ◼   ► It's pretty much just like writing a file.

01:02:23 ◼   ► You can then set up a custom dash widget

01:02:26 ◼   ► that'll just log in your Dropbox account

01:02:29 ◼   ► and pull the data from there.

01:02:30 ◼   ► The pricing model is fairly simple.

01:02:33 ◼   ► Free accounts get unlimited public dashboards

01:02:37 ◼   ► so that people can share live data with the world,

01:02:40 ◼   ► with the community.

01:02:42 ◼   ► If you upgrade to Pro,

01:02:43 ◼   ► you can get unlimited private dashboards

01:02:47 ◼   ► and you can get themes and access to the real-time push

01:02:50 ◼   ► API.

01:02:51 ◼   ► The real-time push API is only for pro accounts.

01:02:55 ◼   ► $10 a month, that's it.

01:02:56 ◼   ► Just $10 a month and you can get a pro account.

01:02:59 ◼   ► Really cool.

01:03:00 ◼   ► So the free account, you can use it just to see how cool it is.

01:03:03 ◼   ► Use the free account, see how cool it is.

01:03:06 ◼   ► But they're also running a limited time promotion.

01:03:08 ◼   ► If you sign up for a free account today at their website--

01:03:12 ◼   ► now their website is thedash.com, thedash.com--

01:03:17 ◼   ► you'll get one private dashboard in addition

01:03:21 ◼   ► to your free accounts unlimited public dashboards.

01:03:24 ◼   ► So you can even try the private dashboards for free

01:03:28 ◼   ► with the limited time promotion just to see how cool it is.

01:03:31 ◼   ► No credit card required

01:03:33 ◼   ► and they will keep your private dashboard.

01:03:36 ◼   ► You'll keep it forever.

01:03:38 ◼   ► So it's not like during the limited time promotion

01:03:40 ◼   ► once it's over your private dashboard disappears,

01:03:43 ◼   ► you get to keep it.

01:03:45 ◼   ► Really cool stuff. So go check them out at the dash dot com. Thanks to them.

01:03:51 ◼   ► Do you want to read the part of the first paragraph? It's the first paragraph of

01:03:59 ◼   ► David Pierce's story. Sorry about that. I stepped out for a second. Oh, that's all right.

01:04:06 ◼   ► Oh, I found the quote, by the way. Fortunately, Isaacson, which the thing about the essence

01:04:13 ◼   ► books like half of it was just like rewriting other people's stuff. But he told Fortune

01:04:19 ◼   ► and as soon as it in here, "I felt like a dope," he told Fortune. "I thought we

01:04:23 ◼   ► had missed it. We had to work hard to catch up." Speaking about music and the fact that

01:04:29 ◼   ► they kind of rejiggered everything.

01:04:35 ◼   ► I know you share my frustration with this, like the whole mythology about Apple creating

01:04:40 ◼   ► these new products. Apple really hasn't created new products. They've created new

01:04:46 ◼   ► user interfaces but the idea of a WIMP interface was famously initially came up at Xerox. The

01:04:57 ◼   ► idea of an MP3 player wasn't new. The idea of a smartphone wasn't new. The idea of

01:05:01 ◼   ► a tablet wasn't really new. What they do though is they do it really well and part

01:05:10 ◼   ► of doing it really well is they do it at the right time with the right technology. Again,

01:05:17 ◼   ► it goes back to this fundamental myth-making nature of the press. I know this is the case

01:05:23 ◼   ► in all arenas. This is the case in politics, this is the case in sports. More and more

01:05:28 ◼   ► with sports, I'm a huge sports fan, there's more and more writing about the intricacies

01:05:33 ◼   ► of the game and game planning and how people run plays like that, which I love, I dig into.

01:05:39 ◼   ► But the sports writing that we had for years and what you still get in places like ESPN

01:05:43 ◼   ► and stuff like that, at least on the front page, is the mythological great man or great

01:05:48 ◼   ► woman overcoming adversity to win the day when that's actually a story and it's

01:05:57 ◼   ► not how products are made.

01:05:59 ◼   ► But again, like I said, it's on Apple to create the myth and it's the myth making

01:06:06 ◼   ► that is gone.

01:06:07 ◼   ► Do you want to read the first paragraph of this iPhone killer story?

01:06:13 ◼   ► I guess it's the second paragraph.

01:06:15 ◼   ► There is a paragraph marker.

01:06:16 ◼   ► No, it's the first.

01:06:18 ◼   ► Oh yeah, you're right.

01:06:19 ◼   ► Oh, because it's a terrible layout.

01:06:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:06:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:06:22 ◼   ► Kevin Lynch, I'll skip around a little bit.

01:06:25 ◼   ► I'll read the other parts.

01:06:27 ◼   ► In early 2013, Kevin Lynch accepted a job offer from Apple.

01:06:30 ◼   ► Funny thing about the offer, it didn't say what he would be doing.

01:06:34 ◼   ► It was odd that Apple even offered him a job.

01:06:36 ◼   ► During his eight years at Adobe, most recently as chief technology officer, he was best known

01:06:40 ◼   ► as the only person dumb enough to publicly fight Steve Jobs with the iPhone's lack of

01:06:43 ◼   ► support for flash videos, which of course he wasn't the only one, but whatever.

01:06:47 ◼   ► When Lynch announced his move, the reaction was immediate.

01:06:50 ◼   ► They want this guy?

01:06:51 ◼   ► Apple blogger John Gruber called Lynch, "A bozo, a bad hire."

01:06:58 ◼   ► New paragraph.

01:07:00 ◼   ► I didn't though.

01:07:01 ◼   ► I know it's nuanced and it's harsh but when he was hired this was actually

01:07:06 ◼   ► exactly two years ago Tuesday 19th of March 21 T 13 this is all in the

01:07:13 ◼   ► headline I'll put this in the show notes don't forget exhibit a in the case that

01:07:21 ◼   ► newly hired Apple VP of Technology Kevin Lynch is a bozo a bad hire the nuance

01:07:30 ◼   ► there is I didn't say he is a bozo a bad hire. I said there is a case to be made

01:07:36 ◼   ► that he is and the case to me was you know not that it was good or that it was

01:07:42 ◼   ► convincing but you know and I quote from the blog post that he had written at

01:07:48 ◼   ► Adobe three years ago talking about flash player and and so here's this is

01:07:54 ◼   ► these are words from Kevin Lynch so three years before so 2010 we are now in

01:07:59 ◼   ► a verge of delivering Flash Player 10.1 for smartphones with all but one of the top manufacturers.

01:08:05 ◼   ► This includes Google's Android, RIMS Blackberry, Nokia, Palm Pre, and many others across form

01:08:13 ◼   ► factors including not only smartphones but also tablets, netbooks, and internet connected

01:08:17 ◼   ► TVs. Flash in the browser provides a competitive advantage to these devices because it will

01:08:23 ◼   ► enable their customers to browse the whole web. So those are Lynch's words, right? That's, you know,

01:08:29 ◼   ► he wrote that, or at least he put his name on it. And I wrote, well, how'd that work out? Those

01:08:35 ◼   ► companies and platforms are now either a this is and this was two years ago, a out of business,

01:08:41 ◼   ► be on the verge of going out of business or C have abandoned flash player entirely.

01:08:47 ◼   ► And even include D that the web is kind of on on deathwatch as it is.

01:08:52 ◼   ► Yeah, well, at least on mobile and the watch, right?

01:08:55 ◼   ► So I stand by it. I'm not, you know, I, but I didn't say he was, I said there was a case to

01:09:05 ◼   ► be made that he was. And I know that I'm asking for nuance that the press typically doesn't give,

01:09:13 ◼   ► but to me, it's important. Like, it's, you know, clearly, we're going to judge Kevin Lynch on the

01:09:18 ◼   ► quality of Apple Watch software and you know he might prove himself that you

01:09:24 ◼   ► know okay you know he was dealt a bad hand at Adobe and the argument would be

01:09:29 ◼   ► then that he was the loyal company man and that he knew he knew damn well when

01:09:34 ◼   ► he wrote it that it was a bad hand and he was loyal to the company

01:09:39 ◼   ► but I just I don't like that I don't like having it quoted that I said he was

01:09:43 ◼   ► a bozo because I didn't say that and I wouldn't have because I don't feel like

01:09:46 ◼   ► you know, to me the nuance is important. It could be that he knew damn well that it was a pile of

01:09:54 ◼   ► shit and that he was just, you know, being the right, you know, doing right by the company as

01:09:59 ◼   ► he saw fit. I don't know if I've ever... Yes, reading it, I have to be honest. Reading it,

01:10:09 ◼   ► yes, you clearly said it is a case. You didn't say he was a bozo. I will say that I very much

01:10:15 ◼   ► remembered your post about Kevin Lynch and when I saw the quote in the article

01:10:21 ◼   ► a I knew you'd be annoyed but B I thought it was totally fair that's what

01:10:25 ◼   ► I remembered you saying so well it's not unfair I wouldn't say unfair but I feel

01:10:29 ◼   ► like it misses the nuance and then there's another line from his what he

01:10:34 ◼   ► wrote he wrote for example the recent Nexus one from Google will rock with a

01:10:38 ◼   ► great experience in the browser with flash player 10.1 and then I said yeah

01:10:43 ◼   ► it rocked so hard Google dropped Flash Player support from Android last year

01:10:48 ◼   ► with a link to where Google dropped Flash Player support from Android.

01:10:53 ◼   ► No, the interesting thing though, I completely shared your skepticism. I mean,

01:10:59 ◼   ► I was and remain very critical of the initial watch unveiling, again for the exact same reason,

01:11:07 ◼   ► because I just felt the messaging was so poor.

01:11:11 ◼   ► And I called out the fact that, boy, the Kevin Lynch part really bothered me.

01:11:15 ◼   ► I was bothered when he was hired.

01:11:17 ◼   ► Other people were bothered when he was hired and I linked to this post, by the way.

01:11:21 ◼   ► And then I said, "For me, at least, his seeming inability to focus or prioritize his

01:11:25 ◼   ► software demo confirmed many of those misgivings."

01:11:29 ◼   ► So no, I mean, there's no question that he had a ton of skepticism.

01:11:32 ◼   ► I will say I thought he crushed the watch event.

01:11:39 ◼   ► I thought his was by far the strongest part of the second watch event.

01:11:42 ◼   ► I thought he captured the way the watch can transform your life.

01:11:49 ◼   ► My case for the watch has always been – again, I take less of the Apple Watch in particular

01:11:56 ◼   ► and more of a where is technology going view.

01:11:59 ◼   ► One, I think that's the natural next place.

01:12:01 ◼   ► Two, I think what's interesting is the phone gave us the ability to interact with anyone

01:12:08 ◼   ► and anything anywhere in the world, but what the watch will give us is the chance to interact

01:12:12 ◼   ► with everything in our physical environment.

01:12:15 ◼   ► That's what Winch demoed.

01:12:16 ◼   ► That's more of a longer range vision because a lot of the stuff for that isn't in place

01:12:21 ◼   ► yet.

01:12:22 ◼   ► That's what he did.

01:12:25 ◼   ► That's why I'm bullish because I think that the watch makes sense, like a watch makes

01:12:31 ◼   ► sense one and two, Apple deserves the benefit of the doubt.

01:12:36 ◼   ► They're three for three right now and if anyone's going to nail it until they prove otherwise,

01:12:41 ◼   ► I'll presume they will and that's at the core.

01:12:44 ◼   ► That's why I'm bullish and I think Apple and Lynch in particular demonstrated that at the

01:12:49 ◼   ► last event but that's not coming across in these articles.

01:12:53 ◼   ► One thing I heard when I wrote that, and I don't think I wrote about it, I don't remember if I said

01:13:01 ◼   ► it on the show, but after I wrote that, this was back when he was first hired, one thing I heard

01:13:06 ◼   ► from, let's say, a well-placed birdie in Cupertino, who would know, a birdie with a position who would

01:13:15 ◼   ► know if it were true said to me that in fact Steve Jobs had personally

01:13:21 ◼   ► recruited now obviously he was hired if he was hired in 2013 13 two years ago

01:13:28 ◼   ► Steve Jobs was already dead but what I heard from one source who would know was

01:13:34 ◼   ► that Jobs tried to recruit him years prior I don't know exactly when probably

01:13:40 ◼   ► 2010 or 2011. Probably 2010 thinking about it. And he turned him down specifically because he

01:13:52 ◼   ► thought it he owed it to Adobe to stick with them and that it would he he thought it would look that

01:13:58 ◼   ► Lynch thought it would really make Adobe look bad if he left for Apple in the middle of the flash

01:14:03 ◼   ► in the middle of this flash player stuff. And that he stuck with them out of loyalty with Adobe out

01:14:09 ◼   ► out of loyalty. Now I did, you know, I would if Lynch told me

01:14:13 ◼   ► that I would take it as fact I heard it from a secondhand

01:14:16 ◼   ► source. So take it with a grain of salt. I don't know if that's

01:14:19 ◼   ► true, or if it's been, I don't know. But I heard that.

01:14:21 ◼   ► I've been thinking he was with my macro media. So presumably,

01:14:25 ◼   ► I mean, you've solar. Um, that might have been maybe that was

01:14:29 ◼   ► the connection. I don't know.

01:14:29 ◼   ► I wonder though, because solar was there so long ago. That's

01:14:33 ◼   ► true. That's we're talking mid 90s. So I don't know about

01:14:36 ◼   ► that.

01:14:39 ◼   ► Here's the thing though about the loyalty angle. To me, the best thing you can say about Lynch is

01:14:42 ◼   ► if he believed all that stuff about Flash Player for mobile being a great thing that's going to

01:14:50 ◼   ► help everybody but Apple and that Apple should get on it. If he really thought in 2011, or was it

01:15:00 ◼   ► 2010, he wrote that in 2010. If he really thought that Flash Player for mobile was a winner for

01:15:07 ◼   ► everybody but Apple and that Apple should get on board and do it. To me that's a

01:15:10 ◼   ► damming because it's it was just bad technology and it was really bad for

01:15:15 ◼   ► mobile you know. You know I'm I agree and you get to the like the Johnny Ive

01:15:21 ◼   ► article and talking about the idea that you know you're not being honest if

01:15:26 ◼   ► you're not like being critical. At the same time before I went to Microsoft

01:15:32 ◼   ► and when they first unveiled Windows 8 at all things D. This would be 2011. I thought

01:15:39 ◼   ► it was awful. I trashed it. I posted myself on Twitter, which unfortunately is no longer

01:15:47 ◼   ► there because one of my classmates was like, "Dude, you know you're going to work there,

01:15:50 ◼   ► right? Someone might be reading that." People who follow me through will be shocked to hear

01:15:54 ◼   ► this. I already got in trouble with my Twitter account previously due to Apple actually.

01:16:00 ◼   ► It's a long convoluted story.

01:16:02 ◼   ► Not when I was at Apple.

01:16:03 ◼   ► It was a school thing.

01:16:07 ◼   ► But then I went to Microsoft and I worked on Windows 8.

01:16:13 ◼   ► And one of the things is when you're working on it and you're recruiting and I was in charge

01:16:17 ◼   ► of – or not in charge – I was one of the people on the team getting developers to build

01:16:21 ◼   ► for Windows 8.

01:16:23 ◼   ► And you're kind of selling it, right?

01:16:26 ◼   ► And there's a certain sense of like, "I can't.

01:16:33 ◼   ► Maybe I should just quit if I don't believe in it."

01:16:35 ◼   ► But if you're fresh out of school, it's a big opportunity.

01:16:41 ◼   ► The team's got reorganized.

01:16:42 ◼   ► I was doing a job several levels above me.

01:16:44 ◼   ► Ton of responsibility.

01:16:45 ◼   ► Had a ton of impact.

01:16:46 ◼   ► And there's a kind of subconscious thing like, "Well, maybe I have my doubts, but

01:16:53 ◼   ► I'm going to put those in a cover for now and I'm going to work my ass off and do the

01:16:57 ◼   ► best I can," which I did.

01:16:59 ◼   ► I told close friends.

01:17:01 ◼   ► I told them about my misgivings and the issues with it, but boy, as far as it impacted my

01:17:06 ◼   ► day-to-day life, my professional life, I was giving it my all.

01:17:10 ◼   ► Sure enough, when it came out, all my initial misgivings ended up being totally spot on,

01:17:17 ◼   ► But I kind of look back at both humbled for sure and a little ashamed but also appreciative

01:17:25 ◼   ► for how you can lose sight of what is true.

01:17:31 ◼   ► And yeah, if you're someone like Johnny Iver, arguably Kevin Lynch in his position,

01:17:35 ◼   ► you have the luxury of you can step off.

01:17:38 ◼   ► But there are so many things in history where people kind of like just go down the wrong

01:17:42 ◼   ► path and man I join you in judging him but I also empathize and can sympathize

01:17:50 ◼   ► because I I feel bad about it I feel bad that I sucked in at the same time I can

01:17:56 ◼   ► appreciate why that happened to me right because and who knows what he was saying

01:18:00 ◼   ► inside the Adobe right I mean that's you know what he said publicly I I would not

01:18:06 ◼   ► want to put my name on something public that to go that all in on if I was the

01:18:12 ◼   ► CTO of Adobe in 2010. There's no way I would have put my name on that publicly,

01:18:17 ◼   ► even no matter how loyal I wanted to be to the company. And I realized that as,

01:18:20 ◼   ► you know, the CTO of Adobe, he couldn't say anything bad about it at the time publicly,

01:18:26 ◼   ► and that Adobe as a whole was going to market it and try to do it. But he had to know it was a bad

01:18:34 ◼   ► technology and a really bad fit for mobile devices and processors in terms of performance and just

01:18:41 ◼   ► where everything was going.

01:18:43 ◼   ► I mean, I took so much flak at the time from certain people

01:18:47 ◼   ► with my adamant, my absolute adamant

01:18:49 ◼   ► that Flash was terrible for mobile.

01:18:53 ◼   ► I've always thought Flash was terrible even for desktop,

01:18:55 ◼   ► but it was horrible.

01:18:57 ◼   ► And that the best thing that ever happened to the web,

01:19:00 ◼   ► the open web, was Apple's refusal

01:19:03 ◼   ► to put Flash on these devices.

01:19:05 ◼   ► And it single-handedly, in my opinion,

01:19:09 ◼   ► got video out of the proprietary

01:19:12 ◼   ► and terribly performing Flash Player

01:19:14 ◼   ► and into, you know, just, you know,

01:19:19 ◼   ► you know, HTML5 compatible, what, H.264 and et cetera,

01:19:24 ◼   ► that can be played more efficiently and openly

01:19:28 ◼   ► and doesn't require any sort of lock-in

01:19:31 ◼   ► to one particular plugin architecture.

01:19:34 ◼   ► It's funny, I actually kind of stumbled across this personal website via Wikipedia and it

01:19:40 ◼   ► has his kind of, you know, it's in paragraph form but kind of what he's done and there

01:19:45 ◼   ► is no mention of the word Flash.

01:19:47 ◼   ► Surprisingly, I talked about Adobe as at CTO at Adobe helped define Creative Cloud and

01:19:54 ◼   ► Adobe Marketing Cloud.

01:19:57 ◼   ► No Flash.

01:19:58 ◼   ► Earlier, this is Kevin Lynch from his website. I will put this in the show notes on if I write it down on paper

01:20:03 ◼   ► It'll get in

01:20:05 ◼   ► Earlier I was a Mac software developer

01:20:07 ◼   ► I helped develop the first Mac release of frame maker and then led their core technology team frame technology was also acquired

01:20:13 ◼   ► By Adobe prior to this I helped establish one of the first Mac software startups in 1984

01:20:18 ◼   ► Framemaker you ever use framemaker. Nope. Ooh great rate software really great software

01:20:25 ◼   ► And the fact that it, like Adobe sort of,

01:20:28 ◼   ► I guess it's gone now, I guess it's dead.

01:20:29 ◼   ► I don't think it ever made the transition to OS X.

01:20:31 ◼   ► I think it was, I don't think there was ever

01:20:34 ◼   ► a native OS X version of it.

01:20:36 ◼   ► And it was strategically subsumed by InDesign.

01:20:40 ◼   ► And InDesign was way more, the thing with Framemaker,

01:20:42 ◼   ► we used to, I used it at Barebones, where we had the--

01:20:44 ◼   ► - It was super focused, right?

01:20:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, it wasn't quite as designer-y as I would like.

01:20:50 ◼   ► And I used to live and breathe in QuarkXPress.

01:20:54 ◼   ► And so, I mean--

01:20:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's what I knew.

01:20:56 ◼   ► I used QuarkXPress.

01:20:57 ◼   ► - I would get frustrated by some of the ways

01:21:00 ◼   ► that Frame wasn't as designed.

01:21:03 ◼   ► Like, Quark, I could make a thing print out

01:21:06 ◼   ► with the exact design I wanted, down to,

01:21:09 ◼   ► I'm gonna say hundredth of an inch,

01:21:11 ◼   ► but it might've even been thousandths of an inch.

01:21:13 ◼   ► I mean, and it was spot on accurate.

01:21:15 ◼   ► And then it would just, you know,

01:21:16 ◼   ► it would come out of the printer exactly everything,

01:21:19 ◼   ► positioned exactly where I wanted it.

01:21:21 ◼   ► And Framemaker didn't let you position things

01:21:24 ◼   ► quite as precisely as Quark.

01:21:26 ◼   ► But the thing that Frame had was these book making features

01:21:29 ◼   ► where you could select, like for making,

01:21:32 ◼   ► here's the canonical example,

01:21:34 ◼   ► is to make an index for the book.

01:21:36 ◼   ► Is you could select text and say,

01:21:38 ◼   ► "I wanna make an index entry right here."

01:21:40 ◼   ► And you got precise control over what the entry

01:21:45 ◼   ► and the index would be called, where it pointed to.

01:21:48 ◼   ► And then as you edited the document and moved things around,

01:21:51 ◼   ► it just worked. - Update.

01:21:53 ◼   ► Right, you just did not have to worry

01:21:55 ◼   ► about your index connections breaking or working.

01:21:58 ◼   ► It was brilliant and it really, really,

01:22:00 ◼   ► and it's a tricky, tricky problem to solve.

01:22:03 ◼   ► Really, I mean, doing a good index for a book

01:22:06 ◼   ► is infamously difficult and expensive

01:22:09 ◼   ► to get someone to do it.

01:22:11 ◼   ► And at the time, the BB edits manual was thick.

01:22:15 ◼   ► I mean, it was, I don't know,

01:22:16 ◼   ► I was saying it was like 300 pages.

01:22:17 ◼   ► And had a great index.

01:22:20 ◼   ► And it was so easy, Framemaker made it so easy

01:22:23 ◼   ► to keep that index up to date as you went

01:22:26 ◼   ► and added new features and stuff.

01:22:28 ◼   ► Great, great, great app.

01:22:30 ◼   ► So that's a feather in his cap.

01:22:31 ◼   ► - Well, we all have our ups and downs.

01:22:40 ◼   ► Anyhow, like I said, I was hoping we were not gonna

01:22:44 ◼   ► have an Apple Watch an hour, an hour and a half in, so.

01:22:48 ◼   ► - I do, it's funny that you brought it up though,

01:22:49 ◼   ► 'cause that's exactly where I was going

01:22:51 ◼   ► with the whole, you know, like with his role

01:22:55 ◼   ► with Flash and Mobile is on the one side,

01:22:58 ◼   ► he really believed that it was the, you know,

01:23:00 ◼   ► could be the future of Mobile,

01:23:02 ◼   ► which would indicate that he's a bozo.

01:23:05 ◼   ► I don't believe that.

01:23:07 ◼   ► I think that my guess is that he knew

01:23:09 ◼   ► exactly what the score was,

01:23:11 ◼   ► and he was just being loyal to Adobe.

01:23:13 ◼   ► That though, like you said, in and of itself is maybe not,

01:23:17 ◼   ► loyalty as a general thing is great,

01:23:19 ◼   ► But maybe in that case, it's like,

01:23:22 ◼   ► I was gonna go there with the Johnny Ive story

01:23:24 ◼   ► about Steve Jobs saying,

01:23:26 ◼   ► don't just say good things about it, you gotta be honest.

01:23:28 ◼   ► If you're not being honest,

01:23:29 ◼   ► you're doing a disservice to the people you're talking to.

01:23:33 ◼   ► And that it was a disservice to Adobe

01:23:35 ◼   ► to let them keep pushing Flash Forward.

01:23:38 ◼   ► Because it was--

01:23:40 ◼   ► - It's so rare though.

01:23:42 ◼   ► I mean, it's, especially in big companies.

01:23:45 ◼   ► - Right, and Adobe is doing pretty good.

01:23:47 ◼   ► Their last quarter, their results were pretty good.

01:23:50 ◼   ► And I'm happy to see that.

01:23:52 ◼   ► I think the industry is better with a healthy,

01:23:55 ◼   ► strong, successful Adobe as an independent company.

01:23:58 ◼   ► - Oh no, I completely agree.

01:23:59 ◼   ► And the way they've transitioned their products

01:24:02 ◼   ► to being a service basically has been really impressive.

01:24:07 ◼   ► No, I completely agree.

01:24:11 ◼   ► Actually, they just released a new app a couple hours ago.

01:24:14 ◼   ► I don't know if you've seen it yet.

01:24:15 ◼   ► Adobe Slate, a visual storytelling app for the iPad where you can basically use photos

01:24:21 ◼   ► and text to create a story.

01:24:26 ◼   ► It feels so Adobe-esque in the best possible way.

01:24:31 ◼   ► It's like letting you weigh stuff out, create something that looks really, really great,

01:24:36 ◼   ► to create your own product in a sense.

01:24:38 ◼   ► Adobe lets you create products in the best possible sense or when they're at their

01:24:45 ◼   ► best. And what's what's fascinating about this is, like,

01:24:50 ◼   ► who is arguably if you think about it, who is who if anyone

01:24:54 ◼   ► is pushing the envelope in the iPad right now? Like, there

01:24:58 ◼   ► there aren't many and wouldn't it be fascinating if kind of

01:25:00 ◼   ► like the the the two companies that arguably are producing some

01:25:05 ◼   ► of the most compelling iPad apps right now are Adobe and

01:25:07 ◼   ► Microsoft. Yeah. Like it's well, and that would like a replay.

01:25:10 ◼   ► All right. Yeah, it is a replay to the Mac. Right? Yep. Because

01:25:14 ◼   ► let's just say that 84 84 was you know the original Mac was a severely limited machine 85 86

01:25:22 ◼   ► 87 or so is when I would say the Mac really kind of got up off the ground in terms of the performance of

01:25:30 ◼   ► The I don't know if they were up to this 68 0 20 yet, but it was getting close

01:25:37 ◼   ► You know the 68 of 20s and the 60

01:25:39 ◼   ► 8 Oh 30s eventually

01:25:43 ◼   ► But other and and with other form factors where you could get bigger displays and stuff like that

01:25:49 ◼   ► And more RAM and then famously, you know the desktop publishing industry

01:25:54 ◼   ► Which was built on the Mac that didn't come from Apple Apple never had a desktop publishing app

01:25:59 ◼   ► I mean Apple came out with the laser rider which certainly helped but

01:26:02 ◼   ► you know, it was software from Adobe and Quark and

01:26:06 ◼   ► Who did page maker Aldis yep

01:26:11 ◼   ► that really made that an industry and

01:26:13 ◼   ► Again, Microsoft it was apps like Excel Excel started on the Mac right or at least became a hit on up started started on the Mac

01:26:20 ◼   ► Microsoft Word

01:26:23 ◼   ► was a huge Mac app

01:26:25 ◼   ► you know lots of great software from Microsoft for the app for for the Mac in the 80s and

01:26:32 ◼   ► Absolutely helped make the Mac for and obviously never got entrenched as a widespread, you know business computer

01:26:38 ◼   ► But in places that did have Macs, it was Microsoft software that made it plausible.

01:26:43 ◼   ► Yeah, that would be interesting.

01:26:46 ◼   ► I know this is a little controversial, but I kind of feel like Apple, to some extent,

01:26:56 ◼   ► the way that I feel they've limited the App Store and limited the ability to build sustainable apps,

01:27:01 ◼   ► in my estimation, without not having things like trials, not having things like easy upgrades,

01:27:06 ◼   ► grades. I kind of feel like that one there's the whole you know

01:27:13 ◼   ► commoditize your compliments like cheap apps is good for the platform within

01:27:16 ◼   ► within a certain limit. But on the other hand I think they they remembered you

01:27:22 ◼   ► know being in that position where it got to the point where the Microsoft and

01:27:26 ◼   ► Adobe apps were more important than the Mac. Right. And like Steve Jobs had to

01:27:30 ◼   ► like prostrate it prostrate himself said we might have to edit that out.

01:27:37 ◼   ► No way.

01:27:38 ◼   ► No way are we editing that out.

01:27:40 ◼   ► But it's really morbid considering the person talking about it.

01:27:45 ◼   ► You know like almost like literally with this massive visage of Bill Gates up on his screen

01:27:52 ◼   ► you know Microsoft riding into the rescue and then Adobe when they went to OS X Adobe

01:27:58 ◼   ► wouldn't even come over right?

01:27:59 ◼   ► they refuse them. Our customers aren't really there. Apple never wanted to be able to hostage

01:28:07 ◼   ► to app makers again. It turns out though because no one has really been able to build, especially

01:28:16 ◼   ► in the productivity space, a meaningful business on the iPad in particular, it turns out it's

01:28:22 ◼   ► the same guys that are there. It's Microsoft and it's Adobe. I just find it fascinating

01:28:27 ◼   ► and kind of like the history of this relationship.

01:28:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, they were definitely,

01:28:33 ◼   ► I think that with,

01:28:36 ◼   ► and again, I don't wanna go on a huge digression

01:28:37 ◼   ► about circa 1997 industry politics,

01:28:42 ◼   ► but it is interesting though.

01:28:45 ◼   ► I do think so that, you know,

01:28:46 ◼   ► that Adobe and Microsoft, at least especially combined,

01:28:50 ◼   ► held far more sway over Apple's future

01:28:53 ◼   ► than Apple itself did.

01:28:55 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:28:56 ◼   ► Maybe they could have gotten by with one and on board and not the other. Either way, but not both.

01:29:02 ◼   ► And, you know, and it certainly, you know, exemplified with the original Rhapsody

01:29:08 ◼   ► introduction, like with the first in, you know, the first plan that was announced post

01:29:11 ◼   ► next reunification, which was a very, it was much, it was more or less

01:29:18 ◼   ► the next step operating system without carbon. It was you're going to have to rewrite for cocoa.

01:29:26 ◼   ► I don't even know if they'd called it Coco yet, but more or less, you know, it was more or less

01:29:29 ◼   ► We're gonna you know, we're gonna do it

01:29:31 ◼   ► Put a new Apple style UI on the next step operating system, right? And there was no there's no carbon no carbon and

01:29:39 ◼   ► That went over like a lead balloon and more or less like Microsoft said we're not doing that

01:29:45 ◼   ► Because it would be a rewrite right and everybody knows, you know going from these existing code bases on the Mac

01:29:53 ◼   ► To pure next step would have been it's a complete rewrite

01:29:57 ◼   ► It's a all new platform and they were gonna know we're not gonna do it Adobe was like nope

01:30:01 ◼   ► Does that's that does not its starter and they Apple announced it, right?

01:30:05 ◼   ► I mean and then they had to backtrack and that's for stalls decision

01:30:08 ◼   ► It was for Scott for stall who really was the champion of carbon within Apple

01:30:12 ◼   ► which I still think is one of the most telling stories that that paints for stall is as a

01:30:21 ◼   ► Complex figure, you know, it's there's no way to just say I was a he was a jerk and so they fired him

01:30:27 ◼   ► Because if that was true, I mean and he was a guy who you know

01:30:31 ◼   ► I think he went to work at next right out of college

01:30:33 ◼   ► I mean he'd been in I mean, I think all he'd ever done in professional life was work

01:30:36 ◼   ► For for next and it was only platforming new and yet he was the guy spearheading

01:30:41 ◼   ► We need to support we need to create this carbon thing to support this legacy stuff, you know

01:30:47 ◼   ► Whereas the public the perception from outside Apple was that the next people came in and had no respect for the Mac stuff

01:30:53 ◼   ► That was already there and it couldn't be further

01:30:54 ◼   ► I mean there might be some people who are like that but forced all exemplifies that it you know

01:30:58 ◼   ► There were there was a guy who couldn't have been more pureblood next who was pushing for carbon

01:31:04 ◼   ► Which was what got them on board?

01:31:07 ◼   ► And I think it was the right decision

01:31:09 ◼   ► But I think jobs always resented that they had to do that right that does absolutely right

01:31:13 ◼   ► It's the fact that they didn't control their own destiny

01:31:16 ◼   ► Yeah, and that is so core to Apple now and the way they think about all their business.

01:31:28 ◼   ► Yeah. Let me take a break here and thank our next sponsor of the show, Casper. Have you

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01:35:33 ◼   ► What else do you want to talk about?

01:35:37 ◼   ► What else do I want to talk about?

01:35:41 ◼   ► It's been a pretty busy week.

01:35:45 ◼   ► I thought the title thing was interesting, the music thing.

01:35:48 ◼   ► wrote about that. The Jay-Z streaming service. There's been

01:35:52 ◼   ► the Amazon button, which I love you. You were you were debating

01:35:56 ◼   ► if it's either if it's genius or stupid. I think it's I think

01:35:59 ◼   ► it's absolutely genius.

01:36:00 ◼   ► All right, that we've already that's a good lesson. That's

01:36:04 ◼   ► let's see if we can tackle some of these quickly. The Jay-Z

01:36:08 ◼   ► music service. I think it here's my take. I haven't read in

01:36:12 ◼   ► detail. It's a right it's been busy week, my high level take on

01:36:16 ◼   ► What's it called?

01:36:18 ◼   ► Title T I D a L like like the ocean tide right number one bad name because it's

01:36:24 ◼   ► indistinguishable audibly from title

01:36:27 ◼   ► Like you're you know, TI TLE bad product name this to me reeks of

01:36:33 ◼   ► Everybody well, I don't know that we know

01:36:39 ◼   ► But we're pretty close to knowing that beats audio apples beats audio is relaunching soon

01:36:45 ◼   ► Under I don't know if it's gonna keep the name

01:36:48 ◼   ► Or if it's gonna be rebranded under iTunes or Apple or something like that, you know Apple music who knows

01:36:53 ◼   ► But it's coming. I

01:36:56 ◼   ► think

01:36:58 ◼   ► probably at WWDC

01:37:00 ◼   ► And if not soon thereafter, but I think they would love to announce it at WWDC

01:37:07 ◼   ► Everybody knows it's coming and it just this title thing from Jay Z sounds like well, let's hurry up and announce something

01:37:15 ◼   ► thing beforehand.

01:37:16 ◼   ► Mike Santos I mean it is shipping.

01:37:20 ◼   ► You can sign up for it right now.

01:37:24 ◼   ► But I think it's just pretty much a rebrand of the service that they bought.

01:37:28 ◼   ► The thing that I found interesting in relation to the Apple thing was there was, well first

01:37:32 ◼   ► off there was some reports at the end of last year, I think originally the New York Post

01:37:35 ◼   ► about Jimmy Iovine and Apple trying to sign up exclusives for their service and after

01:37:41 ◼   ► After the title launch, there was an interview with Jay Z in Billboard where they asked him

01:37:46 ◼   ► specifically about competing with Iovine.

01:37:50 ◼   ► He said he's speaking with Billboard about bidding competitively with Iovine behind the

01:37:54 ◼   ► scenes of title and beach respective launches.

01:37:57 ◼   ► Jay Z said, "Listen, Jimmy, you're Jimmy Iovine.

01:38:01 ◼   ► You're an Apple, truthfully you're great.

01:38:03 ◼   ► You don't have to do this.

01:38:05 ◼   ► I don't have to lose in order for you guys to win.

01:38:06 ◼   ► Let's just remember that.

01:38:07 ◼   ► Sorry, Jay Z."

01:38:09 ◼   ► As long as Iovine is with Apple, Apple will absolutely be out to win and they're not

01:38:17 ◼   ► going to play nicely for the good of music.

01:38:19 ◼   ► And it's just very convenient that the good of music according to this group happens to

01:38:25 ◼   ► be very good for them personally and actually it happens to be good for their labels too.

01:38:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm skeptical.

01:38:34 ◼   ► It doesn't really change anything.

01:38:36 ◼   ► it doesn't change anything and if there's not going to be any meaningful

01:38:40 ◼   ► exclusives in particular then they're competing on the merits of the product.

01:38:44 ◼   ► Presumably they'll have some exclusives from Jay-Z.

01:38:47 ◼   ► I don't know if there's going to be others.

01:38:49 ◼   ► But they don't. The only exclusive they have at launch that is meaningful is Rihanna's latest single.

01:38:55 ◼   ► They don't really have anything else. People have reported they have Taylor Swift's back-head log,

01:39:00 ◼   ► but Taylor Swift's back-head log is on Beats right now. It's on RDO. It's on any service

01:39:03 ◼   ► that doesn't have a free tier. Her objection was always to the free tier. So no, they don't

01:39:09 ◼   ► have any exclusives and they won't have exclusives because to put from a label perspective and

01:39:15 ◼   ► frankly from an artist perspective to have an exclusive is dumb. The cost in making music

01:39:21 ◼   ► is upfront. It's actually recording the music. Once it's recorded, you want to get it in

01:39:26 ◼   ► as many channels as possible because your marginal cost is zero. So you want to sell

01:39:31 ◼   ► as many as possible, which means having it everywhere.

01:39:34 ◼   ► And so the idea of exclusive, like it just doesn't, like all the, you're having like

01:39:39 ◼   ► a mixture of business models and stuff like that, which means that all the left is competing

01:39:43 ◼   ► with on the product.

01:39:44 ◼   ► Well, you've got to get something in exchange.

01:39:47 ◼   ► Look at when Apple landed the Beatles catalog.

01:39:50 ◼   ► It clearly, that was in exchange for an enormous marketing campaign.

01:39:56 ◼   ► Yep.

01:39:57 ◼   ► Right?

01:39:58 ◼   ► I mean, Apple was running Beatles ads.

01:39:59 ◼   ► Apple was paying for them.

01:40:01 ◼   ► It was an enormous campaign to promote it.

01:40:03 ◼   ► You have to get something.

01:40:04 ◼   ► You can't just say, okay, it's an exclusive

01:40:05 ◼   ► and it's only on this thing.

01:40:06 ◼   ► You've gotta be getting, to do that,

01:40:08 ◼   ► you've gotta be getting something either promotional

01:40:10 ◼   ► or cash to make it worthwhile.

01:40:13 ◼   ► - Right, and the ones that control it,

01:40:16 ◼   ► or especially anything in the back catalog,

01:40:19 ◼   ► it's mostly the labels.

01:40:20 ◼   ► And the labels' interest is having,

01:40:24 ◼   ► they're fine to have a bunch of these guys

01:40:27 ◼   ► competing with each other.

01:40:30 ◼   ► I mean, that's why I'm long-term bearish on Spotify.

01:40:33 ◼   ► I don't like subscription services in general.

01:40:36 ◼   ► I think they're a great value for the consumer,

01:40:39 ◼   ► but I think they're a bad idea for most artists.

01:40:44 ◼   ► But as long as they exist,

01:40:50 ◼   ► I don't know, I lost my train of thought.

01:40:52 ◼   ► I was getting a little worked up.

01:40:54 ◼   ► - Well, here's my thing on Jay-Z's attitude.

01:40:56 ◼   ► - That's the 1/3 AM, lost the train of thought.

01:40:58 ◼   ► You don't have to win or we don't have to lose for you to win, blah, blah, blah.

01:41:04 ◼   ► Compare and contrast to video.

01:41:05 ◼   ► With video, Apple doesn't have their own custom content.

01:41:10 ◼   ► Apple doesn't have Apple-produced shows.

01:41:13 ◼   ► So Apple can treat Netflix and HBO Go and HBO—what's the new one?

01:41:20 ◼   ► HBO Now?

01:41:21 ◼   ► You know, and Apple doesn't have to—there is no competition with Apple.

01:41:27 ◼   ► guess what Apple does sell music and Apple's view on how much of the music

01:41:32 ◼   ► out there they should be selling is all of it. Well not just that but this if you

01:41:37 ◼   ► know if and when Apple launches a streaming service that's a zero-sum game

01:41:40 ◼   ► no one is going to be subscribed to multiple streaming services. Right yeah

01:41:43 ◼   ► that's another good example right because people yeah and that's another

01:41:46 ◼   ► difference of video where you might in fact I am both a Netflix subscriber and

01:41:51 ◼   ► an HBO subscriber because I want to watch both shows that are on exclusive

01:41:56 ◼   ► to Netflix and exclusive to HBO.

01:41:58 ◼   ► Right, but those are like their vertical business models.

01:42:01 ◼   ► They're Apple-like in a way, right?

01:42:03 ◼   ► They're using their exclusive content to get you to sign up for their service because you

01:42:07 ◼   ► can only get House of Cards on Netflix.

01:42:10 ◼   ► You can only get Game of Thrones on HBO.

01:42:13 ◼   ► Whereas when it comes to music because it's controlled by the labels and they want to

01:42:18 ◼   ► be everywhere, that means all the services end up having pretty much the same stuff.

01:42:25 ◼   ► What else was going on this week?

01:42:26 ◼   ► Well, along those lines actually, I thought I loved this story because it was so classic

01:42:33 ◼   ► Apple.

01:42:34 ◼   ► It's funny, I thought we were going to talk about Apple at all.

01:42:36 ◼   ► That's the way it goes.

01:42:38 ◼   ► There's a story yesterday in Recode about how Apple is going to get for their TV service,

01:42:44 ◼   ► they want to get the networks to pay for the streaming.

01:42:49 ◼   ► So basically, Apple will sign up all the networks on there and instead of the networks delivering

01:42:55 ◼   ► bring their content to Apple and then Apple streams to the Apple TV, they'll stream

01:43:00 ◼   ► individually to the Apple TV.

01:43:02 ◼   ► The quote here is great.

01:43:03 ◼   ► "Eddie Q, who has the company's media efforts and leading negotiations for the

01:43:06 ◼   ► streaming service, has told them that Apple feels it should concentrate on what it's

01:43:09 ◼   ► best at, creating consumer hardware and software, and leave other tasks like streaming infrastructure

01:43:13 ◼   ► for people who specialize in it."

01:43:16 ◼   ► This is so great on multiple levels.

01:43:19 ◼   ► It's great because one, it's true.

01:43:21 ◼   ► Honestly, I don't want Apple focusing on the streaming.

01:43:24 ◼   ► I don't want Chinese dubbing.

01:43:27 ◼   ► Two, you missed that because you were actually at the first Apple event.

01:43:29 ◼   ► Yeah, and the one where I couldn't make it last month was great.

01:43:33 ◼   ► The stream was perfect for me.

01:43:35 ◼   ► The only complaint I saw of others was that other people seemed to get on one that was

01:43:38 ◼   ► a minute or two behind.

01:43:40 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the case with streaming always.

01:43:43 ◼   ► I watch the NBA a lot, a week past, and I'm always slightly behind Twitter, which sucks

01:43:47 ◼   ► because something big will happen and I'll see it first.

01:43:53 ◼   ► But anyhow, so this Apple thing…

01:43:54 ◼   ► Mad Fientist Wouldn't that be a cool Twitter client feature

01:43:56 ◼   ► if you could tell your Twitter client to put you five minutes behind?

01:44:00 ◼   ► Dave Asprey It would be fantastic.

01:44:02 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, Twitter, we were going to talk about that I think.

01:44:06 ◼   ► But the other thing that's great about this is this is what Apple does again and again

01:44:14 ◼   ► in industry after industry is because Apple has such a dominant hold on the consumer and

01:44:20 ◼   ► the customer relationship, what they end up doing is they get other people to do the really

01:44:26 ◼   ► expensive undifferentiated commodity work for them.

01:44:31 ◼   ► And then Apple gets to blame them when anything goes wrong.

01:44:33 ◼   ► So like with the iPhone, right, what's the actual expensive part of an iPhone?

01:44:38 ◼   ► It's the carrier service.

01:44:40 ◼   ► Like the amount of money it costs to build up a network is massive.

01:44:47 ◼   ► But Apple doesn't do any of that.

01:44:48 ◼   ► They get the carriers to do it for them and when the call goes bad and you can't get

01:44:54 ◼   ► online, do you blame Apple?

01:44:55 ◼   ► No, you blame AT&T.

01:44:56 ◼   ► And then they leverage that into getting Verizon to take it because Verizon is losing customers

01:45:00 ◼   ► to AT&T.

01:45:03 ◼   ► And you see Apple do this again and again.

01:45:06 ◼   ► The banks are paying Apple for the privilege of Apple Pay.

01:45:09 ◼   ► Why?

01:45:10 ◼   ► Because the banks are fearful that people will switch banks just to get access to Apple

01:45:14 ◼   ► Pay.

01:45:16 ◼   ► Now they're going to do this with this network thing that the networks like are looking for alternative revenue streams

01:45:20 ◼   ► they want to get they want to be a part of the Apple thing and

01:45:23 ◼   ► Apple you can you can see it like Apple has them reeled in and then I was like, oh by the way

01:45:28 ◼   ► We're not so good at this streaming thing. Why don't you take care of that?

01:45:30 ◼   ► Guess what? That's that is really expensive and there's no value add

01:45:34 ◼   ► It's a pure commodity and Apple is gonna somehow get out of paying it. I think any interesting conversation

01:45:40 ◼   ► Email conversation yesterday with our friend Darth of you know

01:45:44 ◼   ► the greatest guy on the internet.

01:45:47 ◼   ► - Yes, with the greatest avatar.

01:45:50 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:45:51 ◼   ► And he was surprised by it because his take was Apple,

01:45:57 ◼   ► he was surprised that Apple wouldn't wanna control that.

01:45:59 ◼   ► Because, and his take, and I think he's right here,

01:46:01 ◼   ► is that if the stream, for somebody's stream

01:46:04 ◼   ► on this new Apple TV is shitty,

01:46:06 ◼   ► people are gonna blame Apple.

01:46:08 ◼   ► Because we may know as insiders that Apple,

01:46:10 ◼   ► the way that they've architected this

01:46:11 ◼   ► is that you bring your own streaming technology, you know,

01:46:14 ◼   ► you know, you bring your own servers and streaming stuff.

01:46:18 ◼   ► The consumer isn't going to know that the consumer is going to know.

01:46:21 ◼   ► I bought the new Apple TV and I went to whatever it is.

01:46:25 ◼   ► I wanted to watch the NBA thing and the stream sucked. Apple TV sucks.

01:46:29 ◼   ► But what if every stream works except for that one?

01:46:32 ◼   ► Like, well, CBS is patchy, but every other stream works fine.

01:46:36 ◼   ► Like, right. Then who is going to get blamed? Right.

01:46:39 ◼   ► Maybe then even a consumer would figure out, you know, oh, I guess I should blame the NBA.

01:46:44 ◼   ► I mean, we had this we had this conversation on Twitter last night about about this topic.

01:46:51 ◼   ► And someone pointed out that if you want to take a cynical view of things, Steve Jobs managed to

01:46:58 ◼   ► successfully blame the iPhone 4 on people holding it wrong. So never don't. You can always ask just

01:47:05 ◼   ► is how far Apple can get people to admit.

01:47:09 ◼   ► Actually, it was our fault.

01:47:10 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:47:11 ◼   ► Well, and the other fact, I think it's complicated.

01:47:13 ◼   ► The other factor is some of these companies

01:47:15 ◼   ► really do do streaming well.

01:47:16 ◼   ► Netflix streaming is pretty excellent.

01:47:19 ◼   ► MLB has fantastic streaming,

01:47:22 ◼   ► and they're so good at it

01:47:24 ◼   ► that they're actually white labeling it for a whole bunch.

01:47:28 ◼   ► I forget, yeah, I guess they're gonna do HBO, right?

01:47:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, they're doing HBO.

01:47:32 ◼   ► Yeah, they're doing a whole bunch of folks.

01:47:33 ◼   ► Yeah, they've built up some-- - My prediction.

01:47:34 ◼   ► I'll make a prediction right here, which is that,

01:47:37 ◼   ► and I know that HBO's like go crapped out

01:47:41 ◼   ► with Game of Thrones last year.

01:47:43 ◼   ► Now that they're backed by MLB,

01:47:45 ◼   ► I'm gonna make a prediction that it's gonna go well

01:47:49 ◼   ► because I think the MLB stuff is really, really good.

01:47:53 ◼   ► The only times I ever have problems

01:47:54 ◼   ► are when I'm pretty sure that it's my Comcast connection

01:47:57 ◼   ► and everything in the house seems to be pretty slow.

01:48:01 ◼   ► MLB, the MLB Technologies Group

01:48:04 ◼   ► does streaming amazingly well.

01:48:06 ◼   ► It's a really great group.

01:48:08 ◼   ► So I think they're going to do well.

01:48:10 ◼   ► And I think the problem for some of those, like MLB,

01:48:13 ◼   ► I think Apple would have a very difficult time getting MLB

01:48:16 ◼   ► on board with a new Apple TV if they couldn't

01:48:19 ◼   ► use their own streaming.

01:48:21 ◼   ► No, that's interesting.

01:48:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:48:22 ◼   ► I don't see how they would do it.

01:48:24 ◼   ► I think they've put such an investment into it,

01:48:26 ◼   ► and they trust it so completely that I

01:48:30 ◼   ► think they'd have a hard time getting people to do it.

01:48:32 ◼   ► And I think it's in the interest of these companies,

01:48:35 ◼   ► like Netflix and MLB, to control their own streaming

01:48:37 ◼   ► so that they're not tied to Apple's device.

01:48:40 ◼   ► That, to me, is the difference, that they're not

01:48:42 ◼   ► looking to lock people in.

01:48:45 ◼   ► The thing that struck me--

01:48:45 ◼   ► Another great point.

01:48:46 ◼   ► The other thing that struck me about it,

01:48:47 ◼   ► though, is that if this is it and Apple has no--

01:48:50 ◼   ► like, I guess what I would kind of hope to see Apple do

01:48:53 ◼   ► is if you want to bring your own streaming,

01:48:54 ◼   ► bring your own streaming.

01:48:55 ◼   ► If you don't, there's a different tier.

01:48:58 ◼   ► And maybe Apple would obviously have

01:48:59 ◼   ► to take a bigger cut of the revenue

01:49:01 ◼   ► because they'd be providing it.

01:49:02 ◼   ► But it would be interesting and neat to me

01:49:04 ◼   ► if Apple had an option where a channel could

01:49:07 ◼   ► use relay on Apple, rely on Apple to provide

01:49:11 ◼   ► all the backend infrastructure.

01:49:13 ◼   ► So that truly small indie channels could exist

01:49:18 ◼   ► for Apple TV, right?

01:49:19 ◼   ► Like the App Store.

01:49:20 ◼   ► So that three guys could start a, you know,

01:49:25 ◼   ► Apple TV channel and without paying, you know,

01:49:28 ◼   ► an arm and a leg for a massive backend for streaming the video

01:49:32 ◼   ► that all you need is the camera and the production stuff and you

01:49:34 ◼   ► send the video to Apple and Apple takes care of everything

01:49:38 ◼   ► else.

01:49:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't think so. And I, I mean, that's, that's, I think a

01:49:44 ◼   ► harder job than it than it sounds like, because I mean, how

01:49:48 ◼   ► many three guys in a camera are you gonna allow? Yeah, well, I

01:49:51 ◼   ► don't know, is it gonna be an app store? But if it's an app

01:49:53 ◼   ► store, right, I don't think they've built them all in, I

01:49:56 ◼   ► I don't think it's going to be like you turn on the app,

01:50:00 ◼   ► like it is now, where you turn on the new Apple TV today,

01:50:04 ◼   ► you get all the channels.

01:50:05 ◼   ► And I think there's a way you can hide the ones

01:50:07 ◼   ► you don't want to see, but they're all there.

01:50:09 ◼   ► I'm thinking of more like an app store type thing,

01:50:13 ◼   ► where if you wanted to get a channel, you know, like...

01:50:15 ◼   ► You ever seen these YouTube videos?

01:50:19 ◼   ► You probably have, 'cause I know you're into stuff like this.

01:50:22 ◼   ► There's crazy successful YouTubers who do things like,

01:50:26 ◼   ► There's a woman who makes a huge amount of money.

01:50:28 ◼   ► Nobody even knows what her name is.

01:50:31 ◼   ► Unboxing Disney toys.

01:50:33 ◼   ► All she does is unbox Disney toys.

01:50:37 ◼   ► - I am aware and no, I do not watch.

01:50:40 ◼   ► - But no, I don't think you're,

01:50:41 ◼   ► I wasn't saying that I think you're a subscriber

01:50:43 ◼   ► to her channel.

01:50:44 ◼   ► I'm saying it seems to me that you'd be aware

01:50:46 ◼   ► that she exists, that she's making a terrific living,

01:50:50 ◼   ► doing nothing but unboxing Disney toys.

01:50:53 ◼   ► - Yup, and kids love it.

01:50:54 ◼   ► kids love it so I'm just saying that

01:50:59 ◼   ► why wouldn't Apple maybe want to disrupt Google and have let her make an Apple TV

01:51:07 ◼   ► channel and it wouldn't show up by default everybody wouldn't get the woman

01:51:11 ◼   ► who unboxes Disney toys channel on their Apple TV but if you wanted it you'd go

01:51:15 ◼   ► to the App Store for Apple TV and get it and you could put it on your home page

01:51:19 ◼   ► and it wouldn't go through YouTube it would just go through Apple like it is

01:51:24 ◼   ► It's always interesting to think about what will the user interface look like.

01:51:27 ◼   ► Will you be able to – will it stay kind of like it is and if you get the bundle that

01:51:35 ◼   ► people are talking about Apple getting, will you be able to only have the channels/apps

01:51:40 ◼   ► that you want to have on there or will there be a specific TV app where – and then it

01:51:46 ◼   ► operates more like a traditional TV.

01:51:50 ◼   ► If you think about it, why would Apple want to just recreate a broken paradigm?

01:51:55 ◼   ► That's interesting.

01:51:56 ◼   ► Well, and it also ties back to something you mentioned an hour ago, which was with every

01:52:03 ◼   ► major platform, Apple's unveiled a new input device.

01:52:09 ◼   ► The remote.

01:52:10 ◼   ► Right.

01:52:11 ◼   ► Again, they didn't invent the mouse, but they made the mouse mass market.

01:52:16 ◼   ► They didn't invent...

01:52:17 ◼   ► Well, I guess that's the thing.

01:52:20 ◼   ► People get so hung up on the actual invention and by all means, invention is fantastic.

01:52:29 ◼   ► But it is just as innovative to bring something to market in a meaningful way.

01:52:34 ◼   ► And that's what Apple does.

01:52:35 ◼   ► Apple makes markets.

01:52:37 ◼   ► They made a market for the mouse.

01:52:39 ◼   ► They made a market for all these other devices.

01:52:42 ◼   ► Dave Asprey The click wheel, right?

01:52:43 ◼   ► Spinning device.

01:52:44 ◼   ► Jeff

01:52:44 ◼   ► they made the market for MP3 players and they made the market for smartphones.

01:52:47 ◼   ► It doesn't mean they made the smartphone, but making the market is more meaningful,

01:52:51 ◼   ► it's more profitable, and frankly, it's much more difficult.

01:52:55 ◼   ► And they made the market for touch screens.

01:52:57 ◼   ► I mean, and again, touch screens have existed for a long, long time, but they made the market

01:53:01 ◼   ► to make it a mass market technology.

01:53:03 ◼   ► No other product had a mass market touch screen before the iPhone.

01:53:06 ◼   ► And that's where everyone benefits because then the cost comes down because it gets scale.

01:53:13 ◼   ► So my question is do they have something like that for a new Apple TV?

01:53:16 ◼   ► Because the whole up down left right thing is not innovative.

01:53:20 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised if we're still stuck with up down left right select play.

01:53:23 ◼   ► Hopefully, God almighty, please God, not infrared, please Bluetooth, for God's sake.

01:53:30 ◼   ► Honestly, if it comes out with a new Apple TV and it's an infrared remote,

01:53:35 ◼   ► I don't know. I don't know what I would do. I was going to say I'd sell all my Apple stuff,

01:53:42 ◼   ► but I don't own any Apple stock. I'm gonna buy I would buy Apple stock just so I could sell it.

01:53:47 ◼   ► I think you're gonna sell your Apple stuff. I'm like that seems a little extreme.

01:53:53 ◼   ► No, I wish I owned Apple. It would make me wish I owned Apple stock so I could sell it.

01:53:57 ◼   ► It would it would be very upsetting, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's

01:54:02 ◼   ► Bluetooth remote and just up down left right select and play. But I would love it if they've

01:54:08 ◼   ► got something right. I'd love it if they have something that makes it better. So I don't

01:54:13 ◼   ► know.

01:54:14 ◼   ► I mean do so I mean the job is out scene and he's now at BuzzFeed you know said reported

01:54:22 ◼   ► that there's a new device and actually has an eight chip it has a meaningful amount of

01:54:26 ◼   ► storage for apps and an app store. And he pointed out that the Apple TV it says starting

01:54:33 ◼   ► at $69, which it also ends at $69 currently.

01:54:38 ◼   ► So you're buying the... there's going to be multiple Apple TVs, one of which has an app

01:54:46 ◼   ► store and...

01:54:47 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:54:48 ◼   ► Maybe that's starting it.

01:54:49 ◼   ► Maybe we're all reading way too much into the starting at $69 because I don't understand

01:54:52 ◼   ► if they come out with a new one, why wouldn't the world when they just get rid of the old

01:54:55 ◼   ► one?

01:54:56 ◼   ► Why would they even want to make it available if it's running an entire, you know, entirely

01:55:00 ◼   ► different platform?

01:55:01 ◼   ► Because the $69 point I think is important.

01:55:03 ◼   ► And this is a huge mistake that Microsoft made.

01:55:07 ◼   ► Microsoft wanted, like the whole reason for the Xbox, the big picture strategic reason

01:55:13 ◼   ► was that they wanted to own the living room.

01:55:16 ◼   ► And the idea was we'll start with a console and then we'll expand into all these functions

01:55:22 ◼   ► so that we own that screen.

01:55:24 ◼   ► That was the whole three screens in a cloud sort of thing.

01:55:26 ◼   ► The problem with that is they started in the wrong place.

01:55:28 ◼   ► They started in a place that meant it had to be expensive.

01:55:31 ◼   ► And as long as the Xbox was several hundred dollars, they were never going to crack the

01:55:37 ◼   ► mass market.

01:55:39 ◼   ► And I think that's a cautionary tale and I think Apple and all the other folks, Google

01:55:48 ◼   ► and Amazon and Roku, they're taking the better approach which is delivering kind of a minimum

01:55:54 ◼   ► viable product for a device and keeping the price low.

01:55:58 ◼   ► then when and if Apple brings this out,

01:56:02 ◼   ► and maybe Apple does wanna go up against the consoles,

01:56:05 ◼   ► maybe they do want to really dominate that space.

01:56:10 ◼   ► To do that, you're gonna have to spend some money,

01:56:15 ◼   ► but you don't wanna lose the accessibility

01:56:19 ◼   ► in having the core function of the TV

01:56:21 ◼   ► accessible to lots of people.

01:56:23 ◼   ► So I think the multiple model approach

01:56:25 ◼   ► actually makes a ton of sense.

01:56:27 ◼   ► maybe maybe I do think there's a chance that they're going there might be some

01:56:32 ◼   ► classic Christiansen style disruption potential there again and I know I'm not

01:56:39 ◼   ► a gaming expert but I think the a8 is good enough and it's you know it's not

01:56:44 ◼   ► gonna render as many you know polygons per frame as you know the ps4 or the

01:56:50 ◼   ► Xbox One. But if it's only $99, it might and it might be good enough because it

01:56:58 ◼   ► you know in terms of how many pixels are on a 1080 HD screen it's fewer.

01:57:05 ◼   ► It's not that many. Right, it's fewer than iOS devices the A8 already handles.

01:57:10 ◼   ► So I've actually argued both sides of this. Like I was all about the Apple TV and

01:57:15 ◼   ► and its potential previously.

01:57:19 ◼   ► And I don't, I, this is why the biggest question to me

01:57:23 ◼   ► about the new Apple TV is you were kind of hinting at it.

01:57:26 ◼   ► It's the input method.

01:57:28 ◼   ► - Right.

01:57:29 ◼   ► - I think as long as if the Apple TV

01:57:33 ◼   ► does not have a controller, like a proper controller,

01:57:37 ◼   ► the traditional consoles are going to be safe.

01:57:41 ◼   ► Now their growth might be capped.

01:57:43 ◼   ► like they're going to have trouble finding new customers, but they will, the current

01:57:49 ◼   ► kind of hardcore gamers will be there and it's a large enough market that the publishers

01:57:56 ◼   ► will stay and it will still continue to be a profitable industry.

01:58:00 ◼   ► What gets really interesting is if there is this mythical higher level Apple TV and it

01:58:08 ◼   ► has a proper controller and I think we're talking more like 199 or 179 maybe, that

01:58:13 ◼   ► is where like meaningful disruption becomes a possibility.

01:58:18 ◼   ► I don't know, the whole disruption thing, I've written about this a few times, I think

01:58:29 ◼   ► the core theory is really compelling and explains a lot of stuff but I've picked nuts with

01:58:36 ◼   ► whole modular integrated sort of stuff.

01:58:43 ◼   ► One thing that bothers me about that is it's kind of assumed with once a company is disrupted

01:58:50 ◼   ► that they're done, like they're doomed, they're going to go out of business.

01:58:53 ◼   ► That's actually what Christophson said.

01:58:55 ◼   ► I think the way it turns out though and we've seen this play out is that a company -- and

01:59:02 ◼   ► And this is partly because the market is just so huge now because the way it has disruption

01:59:06 ◼   ► is the lower guy comes in and he's capturing customers that the incumbent doesn't care

01:59:11 ◼   ► about and then he expands, captures more of the customers and the incumbent retreats to

01:59:14 ◼   ► the high end.

01:59:16 ◼   ► And the problem is the high end becomes so small relative to the mass market that everyone,

01:59:20 ◼   ► all the supporting players flee the high market and they serve the mass market and then the

01:59:25 ◼   ► big incumbent is doomed.

01:59:28 ◼   ► The problem is the market is just so huge.

01:59:31 ◼   ► Like you need – and we've talked this with Apple, you need to not think about things

01:59:34 ◼   ► in relative terms.

01:59:36 ◼   ► Apple has X percent of the market.

01:59:38 ◼   ► You need to look at absolute numbers.

01:59:39 ◼   ► Apple has hundreds of millions of customers, right?

01:59:42 ◼   ► It doesn't matter if they have 10 percent of the market or 15 percent of the market

01:59:45 ◼   ► if 10 percent of the market is hundreds of millions of people because hundreds of millions

01:59:48 ◼   ► of people is plenty to support developers and keep them on board, all that sort of stuff.

01:59:54 ◼   ► And this is the fundamental thing people like Henry Blodgett get wrong consistently about

01:59:58 ◼   ► their thesis about why the iPhone is doomed.

02:00:02 ◼   ► I think this is the case with, this is my thing about consoles is that as long as they're

02:00:08 ◼   ► dedicated, there's so many people, even in a percentage basis that's small, there's so

02:00:12 ◼   ► many people that play these games, it will remain a space where you can build a nice

02:00:17 ◼   ► business and have a nice business.

02:00:19 ◼   ► The problem is you're just not going to grow.

02:00:22 ◼   ► And I think I'm repeating myself a bit now, but I think that I'm super excited about the

02:00:29 ◼   ► Apple TV in particular, mainly because it could go in so many directions.

02:00:34 ◼   ► I'll keep you focused until we land this ship.

02:00:37 ◼   ► Let me do one last sponsor and then we'll wrap up the show, but it's our good friends

02:00:41 ◼   ► at Igloo.

02:00:42 ◼   ► Now you guys know Igloo.

02:00:44 ◼   ► They're the intranet that you will actually like.

02:00:47 ◼   ► You can share news, organize files, coordinate calendars, manage projects, anything you'd

02:00:54 ◼   ► want to do with a team, with a company, you can do on the igloo platform.

02:01:00 ◼   ► Their latest upgrade, they call it Viking, revolves around documents and how you interact

02:01:05 ◼   ► with them, gather feedback and make changes.

02:01:09 ◼   ► They've even added the ability to track who has read critical information to keep everyone

02:01:13 ◼   ► on the same page.

02:01:14 ◼   ► a type of organization where sometimes there's a document that everybody, somebody absolutely

02:01:19 ◼   ► needs to see and sign off on and get approval, you can do that and get proof of it like more

02:01:24 ◼   ► or less like a red receipt for an iMessage or an email. You can get that for a document

02:01:29 ◼   ► now in igloo. Very important for some organizations. If you've been holding off on igloo for that,

02:01:36 ◼   ► now they've got it. Just like red receipts for email really, but less annoying because

02:01:40 ◼   ► have a good interface for it. If your company has a legacy Internet that looks

02:01:45 ◼   ► like it was built in the 90s and it probably was built in the 90s, you should

02:01:50 ◼   ► give igloo a try. They've got all this all sorts of other cool stuff like

02:01:56 ◼   ► Twitter like micro blogs imagine having a private Twitter like service just for

02:02:00 ◼   ► your team totally private their stuff their their service everything works on

02:02:06 ◼   ► any kind of device it's all web-based so you can use it on big desktop machines

02:02:10 ◼   ► machine works great on phones, tablets, anything like that, and really customizable.

02:02:18 ◼   ► Free to use for up to 10 people, so you can try it out, find out everything you want to

02:02:23 ◼   ► know about it before you start paying for more than 10 people to use it.

02:02:27 ◼   ► You can sign up at – here's the website igloosoftware.com/tts, the initials for this

02:02:35 ◼   ► show, the talk show, igloosoftware.com/tts.

02:02:38 ◼   ► sign up there you get the free trial use that URL with / TTS and they'll know you came from

02:02:45 ◼   ► the show really great give it a try it's worth going to the website if you've never done

02:02:51 ◼   ► it just to check out the sandwich videos that they have to promote the site they're really

02:02:56 ◼   ► funny from our good friend Adam Lisa gores company so go there just to watch the sandwich

02:03:02 ◼   ► videos if you haven't done it but sign up if you have any kind of need for an internet

02:03:05 ◼   ► for your team. Really great stuff. And I thank igloo for their continued support of Daring

02:03:11 ◼   ► Fireball. What else you want to talk about, Ben? Want to talk about basketball? Or should

02:03:17 ◼   ► we talk about maybe we should Wisconsin man final final final for I'm rooting for him.

02:03:22 ◼   ► That's my team in the final four. But that's that's not we better not get into that. We've

02:03:26 ◼   ► got real stuff to talk about. What about me? You want to do meerkat and periscope? Sure.

02:03:30 ◼   ► I've I told my my members that I was gonna be writing about it like three weeks ago

02:03:36 ◼   ► And I still haven't written. I wrote a couple of pieces about basically I said that you know

02:03:39 ◼   ► Meerkat is almost certainly doomed

02:03:43 ◼   ► Would you would you call this the the coincidental rise of the two another one of those things like you mentioned before like just in

02:03:49 ◼   ► the history of science, you know like going all the way back to Newton and Leibniz with calculus being you know

02:03:55 ◼   ► developed pretty much simultaneously separately by the two geniuses

02:04:00 ◼   ► Is this another one of those things where like Meerkat and Periscope more or less arrived

02:04:03 ◼   ► at the same time? It's just like

02:04:07 ◼   ► everything was in the right, everything got to the right place at the right time?

02:04:10 ◼   ► No, absolutely. I mean the idea of live streaming is in a new one and there's, there are services that are out there that I've

02:04:17 ◼   ► had some success. Like YouNow, I think is actually has, is a lot bigger than people realize. Um, but

02:04:22 ◼   ► the idea, having the connectivity everywhere, having LTE everywhere, like it gets really dodgy on 3G.

02:04:28 ◼   ► So you need LTE you need the quality cameras you need the App Store you need the Twitter, you know the Twitter graph

02:04:36 ◼   ► You also need I think you need data

02:04:39 ◼   ► packages that with sufficient

02:04:42 ◼   ► Gigabytes per month that people feel comfortable. Yeah, it's consuming and sharing

02:04:47 ◼   ► Video streaming video content like this, which is it it's it's part of your LTE

02:04:54 ◼   ► LTE in itself isn't enough if it's not affordable enough that people feel like they can just

02:05:00 ◼   ► sit there and watch people making these videos.

02:05:03 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Right. Exactly. Exactly. I think it's a

02:05:06 ◼   ► great example of the time was right for this product to emerge and it just so happened

02:05:13 ◼   ► to emerge within two weeks of each other.

02:05:15 ◼   ► Dave I described it as a science fiction scenario.

02:05:19 ◼   ► There's some pushback from people like that. They're like, "Oh, come on. Live streaming

02:05:22 ◼   ► isn't new. It's not new. So, you know, what is science fiction about this? To me, the

02:05:26 ◼   ► part that science fiction is the universality, the way that anybody can do it. It's all free.

02:05:36 ◼   ► You don't have to pay for anything other than what you've already paid for, which is your

02:05:39 ◼   ► iPhone and your data plan.

02:05:41 ◼   ► plan. To me it's the size. It's this 4.5 inch device that is doing this. The sort of equipment

02:05:52 ◼   ► that was needed to do just video much less. You could live stream 20 years ago. You needed

02:05:59 ◼   ► a big ass camera. You needed a microwave connection. You needed a van with a massive satellite

02:06:04 ◼   ► dish on top of it. You're doing exactly that with a piece of glass in your hand.

02:06:10 ◼   ► I think the thing, and I think the thing that is the most science fictiony in terms of if

02:06:14 ◼   ► you went back 20 years and described periscoping to somebody 20 years ago, or let alone longer,

02:06:22 ◼   ► but the most amazing aspect of it to me is that the device for producing and the device

02:06:30 ◼   ► for consuming is exact and the app, it's the same app and device for being a producer as

02:06:37 ◼   ► a consumer. You use your iPhone with Periscope or Meerkat to create a stream or to consume it.

02:06:46 ◼   ► And that to me is the magic. And it's so easy to overlook because it seems so obvious once you see

02:06:51 ◼   ► it in action. But that's revolutionary that the right like your TV set is not a TV studio.

02:06:58 ◼   ► Yeah, it is anything but it doesn't even have it. You know, it's just unrelated, right? Because

02:07:03 ◼   ► This gives much more of the sense of it being like a portal, right?

02:07:06 ◼   ► It's like you're in one side and out the other.

02:07:10 ◼   ► Whereas, whereas previous last streaming, it's unidirectional.

02:07:14 ◼   ► Like it's coming from the studio to your TV.

02:07:17 ◼   ► There wasn't the sense, even if, even if a mirror camera scope is one way,

02:07:21 ◼   ► the container is such that it's a bi-directional relationship.

02:07:26 ◼   ► It is crazy to me.

02:07:28 ◼   ► I think it's so exciting and funny that it's the same device for somebody, you know, like somebody with

02:07:35 ◼   ► 10,000 followers, you know 10 20 30 thousand followers who gets hundreds and hundreds

02:07:41 ◼   ► Maybe a thousand people watching their streams

02:07:42 ◼   ► They're using an iPhone with

02:07:45 ◼   ► Periscope to send that and all the people watching it are using an iPhone with Periscope to watch it

02:07:50 ◼   ► It's exact same device in the exact same app

02:07:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean it's it real like I I haven't like I'm with you. I mean the first so I really

02:07:59 ◼   ► III was at the Apple the the watch event

02:08:03 ◼   ► The second one that you missed and tonight

02:08:07 ◼   ► I yeah

02:08:07 ◼   ► And I started and that was when I really started using it was I was using it in line saying outside like before the event side

02:08:13 ◼   ► I was saying I saw you I saw you on the stream. I saw you standing up you had a seat

02:08:18 ◼   ► I think you're in like the third row and I saw you standing up on your phone and I text you guys like you're on

02:08:23 ◼   ► the stream and you're on your phone and you're like, "I'm meerkatting."

02:08:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

02:08:27 ◼   ► It was mind-blowing.

02:08:29 ◼   ► You look up there and you see you had 350 people watching you.

02:08:33 ◼   ► There are 350 people all over the world.

02:08:37 ◼   ► You write a website.

02:08:38 ◼   ► It's already amazing.

02:08:39 ◼   ► You can look at your analytics and you see someone logging on from Brazil or Russia or

02:08:44 ◼   ► wherever it may be.

02:08:46 ◼   ► That's already mind-blowing enough, but the immediacy of knowing someone is sitting somewhere

02:08:52 ◼   ► are 6,000 miles away from me and they are seeing exactly what I'm seeing because I am

02:08:59 ◼   ► holding up this device. It's an incredible experience.

02:09:04 ◼   ► Dave Asprey The truth is though, I'm with you, I think

02:09:07 ◼   ► Meerkat is fucked. I think it was obvious even before Periscope came out. I'm not an

02:09:13 ◼   ► expert on social media. I'm a nerd and I follow this stuff. Meerkat caught my attention. I

02:09:20 ◼   ► I was like, oh, this is something and I see this.

02:09:22 ◼   ► But then Twitter immediately got word out

02:09:25 ◼   ► that they had purchased,

02:09:26 ◼   ► 'cause here too, before Meerkat came out,

02:09:28 ◼   ► the fact that Twitter had bought Periscope

02:09:30 ◼   ► was not public knowledge.

02:09:32 ◼   ► - Right.

02:09:33 ◼   ► - They bought Periscope,

02:09:35 ◼   ► and I don't know if it's on the record

02:09:36 ◼   ► or if it's just rumored, but for $100 million,

02:09:38 ◼   ► which if it's true, I think was rivals,

02:09:42 ◼   ► I think it's gonna end up rivaling

02:09:45 ◼   ► Facebook's purchase of Instagram for $1 billion

02:09:48 ◼   ► as one of the great acquisitions of this decade.

02:09:51 ◼   ► I really do. - No, absolutely.

02:09:53 ◼   ► - I think if they got Periscope for 100 million,

02:09:55 ◼   ► it's gonna go down as a great acquisition

02:09:59 ◼   ► and exhibit A in the case that Dick Costello

02:10:02 ◼   ► is actually a pretty good CEO, I think.

02:10:05 ◼   ► - No, I agree.

02:10:07 ◼   ► The reason why Meerkat is screwed is because

02:10:10 ◼   ► what is so power, like what,

02:10:13 ◼   ► the thing about Twitter is,

02:10:16 ◼   ► Twitter is so many things to so many different people in so many different scenarios, right?

02:10:21 ◼   ► That's what makes it so great and that's what makes it so hard to use for a new user in

02:10:26 ◼   ► particular.

02:10:27 ◼   ► But for sure, one of the core values of Twitter is real time, right?

02:10:32 ◼   ► When something happens, you go to Twitter, you can search, you can get the reaction.

02:10:35 ◼   ► We talked about it just a second ago with watching a game and how annoying it is when

02:10:38 ◼   ► Twitter is like five seconds ahead.

02:10:40 ◼   ► That's how real time it is.

02:10:41 ◼   ► Twitter is faster than my stream of the game and it's frustrating.

02:10:48 ◼   ► And so both Meerkat and Twitter are - and the reason why Meerkat was a threat to Twitter

02:10:53 ◼   ► and why it's a good thing they had acquired Periscope was that it was unbundling one of

02:10:59 ◼   ► the core features of Twitter because real time in text is one thing but real time in

02:11:05 ◼   ► video is another thing entirely in a dramatically more powerful way.

02:11:10 ◼   ► So you have someone tweeting about like a fire going on or the plane crash.

02:11:15 ◼   ► Like I was tweeting when the plane crash happened in Taiwan a few weeks ago.

02:11:18 ◼   ► Built the gas explosion in New York last week.

02:11:22 ◼   ► Right. Yeah, no, exactly.

02:11:24 ◼   ► Which happened to be like the day Periscope came out.

02:11:26 ◼   ► So, so, so helpful.

02:11:27 ◼   ► That has a that that is like

02:11:32 ◼   ► that has to be Twitter because Twitter has Twitter has to has to own that.

02:11:37 ◼   ► Yeah. And yeah, that's why America had a screwed

02:11:40 ◼   ► because they're so fundamentally tied to what Twitter is.

02:11:43 ◼   ► Like Twitter already owns the real time space,

02:11:47 ◼   ► which means all the people that you wanna find

02:11:49 ◼   ► or follow in real time are already on Twitter,

02:11:52 ◼   ► which means you have to have access to the Twitter graph

02:11:54 ◼   ► to, and they now don't.